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Henze, who met Montejo in Cuba, described "El Cimarron" as a "recital for four musicians," here the bass baritone Davone Tines, the flutist Emi Ferguson, the percussionist Jonny Allen and the guitarist Jordan Dodson. They brought to life the political, emotional and musical threads that run through this riveting work, in a simple yet effective production, developed by the American Modern Opera Company and directed by Zack Winokur. And they conveyed the quality suggested in Henze's intriguing description of "El Cimarron" as more like a collective recitation than a dramatic piece for an accompanied singer. Read an interview with Ms. Bullock, Mr. Winokur and Mr. Tines about "El Cimarron" The vocal writing shifts from spoken passages to quasi sung phrases, then fleeting episodes of plaintive song and furious eruptions during moments of peril and anger. Mr. Tines charismatically handled the shifts of style so naturally you almost didn't notice when, say, muttered words of despair slipped into dreamy lyrical musings. (The libretto, by Hans Magnus Enzensberger, was performed in an English translation by W. Nick Hill.) As written, the three instruments often appear to be speaking or mingling with the solo voice. On Friday, extended episodes were daringly hushed and subdued. During frenzied scenes, the music was driven by a din of percussion and screeching flute. Yet passages evoking forest murmurs and insects were suggested by flecks of percussion, plucked guitar and gently reedy flute sounds. When Montejo recalls the brutality of slavery, the horrific tales are sometimes backed by mellow Latin American dance rhythms, as if to suggest that such degradations were just the daily drudgery of a slave's life. Ms. Bullock, who introduced the performance by reading from the memoir, said that the way she described her Met residency at its start as an exploration of "silent voices" no longer seemed right. They were not silent, she said; they were just "not listened to," not "given a platform, the way I was."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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The artist Claudia Chaseling with "Radiationscape," which she is painting for the lobby of the Time Equities building in New York. A massive Anish Kapoor sculpture integrated into the base of a TriBeCa building. Custom works by Robert Indiana and Olafur Eliasson featured at a condominium opening next year in Miami. And three artistic takes on the traditional scale model by the kinetic sculptor Es Devlin, which take up prime space in the sales gallery for the XI, a residential tower south of Hudson Yards in New York. All are examples of artists trading the white box space of galleries for upscale commercial and residential real estate projects, an idea that might have been considered "selling out" a generation ago. "The gallery is a format that is struggling," said the Argentine curator Ximena Caminos, formerly of the Malba museum in Buenos Aires and now chief creative officer of the Honey Lab cultural space in Miami's Blue Heron hotel and residential project, which is now under development. "It's transactional; the artist doesn't have that much creative freedom, and there is a lot of pressure to make money in a short period of time." Artists, she said, are seeking new places to showcase their work, especially if the pieces are large in scale. Less than a decade on, even early and midcareer artists are being lured by real estate developers to make art for public consumption and reach an audience they might never have been exposed to. "Having art in the lobby can communicate that they are a company that cares about culture," Ms. Lamensdorf said. Ms. Lamensdorf recently asked the abstract painter Claudia Chaseling to produce a permanent piece for the lobby of her company's building at 55 Fifth Avenue, which opened Sept. 20. Ms. Chaseling, who is German, said she took on the "unusual challenge" with relish. "A public building gives me an opportunity to be visible on a different level than a gallery space would," she said. "In galleries, people come to see art; in public buildings you have a lot of passers by who have no clue about art and I am all for as many people seeing my work as possible, and for everyone having their own perspective on it," she said. Her "Radiationscape," a response to the Indian Point nuclear power plant, drips from 55 Fifth Avenue's wall onto the lobby floor. True, the commission is not exactly what one would expect from either an avant garde artist or a real estate developer. "I don't consider my work with developers as compromising my artistic integrity at all," Ms. Chaseling added. Examples of major developers bringing large scale artworks into the public sphere are especially prevalent in American art hubs like Chicago and Los Angeles, but the most prominent examples are found in New York and Miami. The Lever House in Midtown Manhattan, which is owned by the RFR co founder and principal Aby Rosen, was an early adopter of this growing trend, and the midcentury building has become a de facto walk by museum for the lunch crowd, which can view a rotating roster of large scale pieces through the glassy walls. "Everyone can understand, when they stand in the presence of a piece, that feeling of 'this is right' for the space," said Mr. Rosen. He helped found the Lever House Art Collection in 2003, which has commissioned pieces by artists like Jorge Pardo and John Chamberlain. The artist Rachel Feinstein, whom Mr. Rosen commissioned to do a large mirror painting for his new Foster Partners designed building, 100 East 53rd Street, said she appreciated the front and center placement her "Panorama of New York" would receive at the tower rising close to the Seagram Building. "About a billion people will see it more people than a museum with a much wider variety," she said. Other developments are shifting the meaning of what and where an art gallery can be. Ms. Caminos hopes that her Honey Lab, which will include a gallery and art program, at Miami's Blue Heron development will engage locals of every stripe. "To use art as cultural activation is beautiful," she said. "Art is a bridge between socio economic classes, an opportunity to give residents interesting conversations." Also in Miami is KAR Properties' One River Point, which has a fully developed, multidisciplinary arts program within its multiple public galleries and a riverfront park. One River Point's rotating exhibition program will include shows conceived in collaboration with artists, guest curators and Miami arts institutions. Further afield, artists are also working with developers, even in places that are only just beginning to see the value in real estate and art partnerships. Cidade Matarazzo, a residential development in Sao Paulo, Brazil, is built around a "house of creativity," a dedicated space for artists in residence. "I don't think museums are the exclusive way to distill the message of the prophets of modern times," the developer, Alexandre Allard, said of prominent artists today. "There is not much art in the street in Brazil. But I believe in the extraordinary potential of my country to convey messages about religion, community, race and ethnicity through art." Mr. Allard hopes that 30 million people will visit his complex, which includes a hotel, and residential and commercial structures, each year and walk away astonished. "I believe Matarazzo is the model of the sustainable museum of the future," he said. Carpenter Company, in staid Boston, is following similar thinking. At the developer's Four Seasons Hotel One Dalton Street, David Bowie's personal curator, Kate Chertavian, is "using the vocabulary of Boston" to put pieces on the walls by established artists like Duke Riley, Yinka Shonibare and Tacita Dean that have staying power. "There are a limited number of spaces where collections can be permanently on view, and artists enjoy being included in one," Ms. Chertavian said. Erica Samuels, who has curated projects such as the lobby of Extell's One57 in Manhattan, is always on the hunt for new places for artists to present their works, and the semipublic nature of a real estate development, she said, is a sign that the art world is evolving. "I think we may be entering a new age of patronage," she said. "There is a great responsibility on the real estate developers that maybe they don't even realize, while at the same time, the stigma of an artist working with a rich developer is fading." Ultimately, Ms. Samuels said, galleries are still a place of prestige, but "everyone is craving a new way to create a dialogue and to be a part of culture." She said she thought of this as a new way to construct the perfect triumvirate. "A smart developer hires a great architect, who needs a great interior designer, who needs a great artist," she explained. "Taken together, you can bring out the best gestalt of a space."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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A sprawling five bedroom apartment at the Marquand, a century old Beaux Arts Revival building on the Upper East Side that was converted into luxury condominiums two years ago by the HFZ Capital Group, sold for 21,082,866.25 and was the most expensive closed sale of the week, according to city records. The monthly charges for the sponsor unit, No. 9E, at 11 East 68th Street, on a prime block between Fifth and Madison Avenues, are 18,445. Madeline Hult Elghanayan and Sabrina Saltiel of Douglas Elliman Real Estate were the listing brokers. Melanie Lazenby, also of Elliman, brought the buyer, whose identity was shielded by the limited liability company Panta Rhei, which means "everything flows" in ancient Greek. (It was also the name of a former progressive rock band from Hungary.) Ms. Elghanayan said the buyer, described as a New Yorker who "will be living there full time" with family, was drawn to the apartment's loftlike feel and "terrifically bright" rooms, made possible by enormous windows, two of which are bay style. "And you have fabulous views," she added, including a glimpse of Central Park.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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New claims for unemployment benefits dropped for the first time in three weeks, the government reported Thursday, but the economy remains under pressure as Covid 19 cases surge and fresh restrictions on businesses loom in some states. The Thanksgiving holiday is likely to have delayed the filing of claims, and economists warn there will be more job losses ahead if the pandemic worsens. "It's still bad," said Diane Swonk, chief economist at the accounting firm Grant Thornton in Chicago, noting that recent job losses were broad and concentrated in industries that were hit hard early in the pandemic: food services, health care, retail establishments and hotels. Nearly 714,000 people filed initial claims for state unemployment insurance last week, compared with 836,000 the week before, the Labor Department reported. With seasonal swings factored in, last week's total was 712,000. "People don't apply as much when there are holidays," Ms. Swonk added. "There is a natural falloff that occurs, but we just don't know how big it was." Ms. Swonk compared the effect to the drop in hospitalization data for the coronavirus that has been noted on Sundays and holidays. The Thanksgiving related dip could be offset by belated claims when this week's numbers are released. Almost 289,000 new claims were tallied under the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which provides support to freelancers, gig workers, the self employed and others not ordinarily eligible for unemployment insurance. Pandemic Unemployment Assistance is one of two emergency federal jobless benefit programs set to expire at the end of the month. Millions will be scrambling to make up for the lost aid, even as their reduced spending power dampens overall economic growth. A new stimulus package has proved elusive on Capitol Hill because of a standoff over its size, though a compromise effort by a bipartisan group of legislators this week has provided some momentum. The absence of additional aid has caused many economists to ratchet down their economic forecasts. Mike Gapen, chief U.S. economist at Barclays, sees virtually no growth in the first quarter of 2021, followed by a rebound as mass vaccinations begin and consumer behavior returns to normal. 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. Indeed, there are some hopeful indicators alongside the job market gloom: a booming stock market, brisk sales of new and existing homes, and reasonably healthy spending going into the holiday shopping season. But until the pandemic is under control, those factors will be overwhelmed by official restrictions on businesses and reluctance to engage in activities like travel or indoor dining. "I think the economy is on a solid footing, but we may just hit a couple of bumps between now and the end of the first quarter," Mr. Gapen said. "Stimulus would be helpful, of course." To make matters worse, the surge in Covid 19 cases has brought on a wave of hospitalizations that threatens to overwhelm the health care system and force a return to the stay at home orders imposed last spring. California, for example, is considering another lockdown to stem the pandemic's spread, a move that would have broad implications. Already, other hard hit states are seeing extensive layoffs. Illinois reported nearly 19,000 initial claims for unemployment insurance in the week ending Nov. 21, while Michigan said there were more than 17,000 filings. In both states, hotels and restaurants were among the most affected industries. Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at the consulting firm MFR, noted that the highest weekly tally ever for jobless claims before the pandemic was 695,000 in 1982, well below last week's total. "The fact that more than eight months into the crisis initial claims are still running at such a high level is, in absolute terms, bad news," he said in a note to clients. "Moreover, with the pandemic again worsening, it is likely that claims will remain quite elevated for some time to come." More clues to the economy's trajectory are due Friday morning, when the Labor Department releases its monthly jobs report, which details hiring by employers as well as the ranks of the unemployed. In October, employers added 638,000 jobs. The consensus estimate among Wall Street analysts surveyed by Bloomberg is that the November report will show 469,000 new jobs and that the unemployment rate will tick down to 6.8 percent from 6.9 percent. But there is an extraordinary range of forecasts, with some economists predicting a gain comparable to October's and others warning of a loss in the tens of thousands. Oxford Economics expects the report to show a net loss of 60,000 jobs, which would be the first decline since April, while Morgan Stanley Research has predicted an increase of 630,000. One reason for the dissonance is that measures of the economy's health have come in a conflicting and confusing rush. "The barometers that economists use to anticipate the jobs report are all giving us different reads right now," said Ernie Tedeschi, an economist at the accounting firm Evercore ISI. "We're just not sure beforehand what data is going to be good at picking up the extraordinary circumstance of a pandemic during the holiday season and what data is not going to be good."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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Last November, Fabien Baron was trying to collect 498,000 in back pay for his work as the editorial director of Interview. The magazine's owner, Peter Brant, was in Kentucky buying a 2 million horse. Soon after, the magazine hired the freelance writer Brian Moylan to do a short piece on the celebrity figure skater Adam Rippon. He performed his services and never got paid. (His fee would have been 315 "not enough for my rent but enough to buy a pair of shoes," Mr. Moylan said.) With folks clamoring for payment, it wasn't that surprising when Interview's employees were summoned to their SoHo offices in May and told the magazine was folding. Its parent company, Brant Publications, was filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy, with close to 300 unpaid creditors including Mr. Baron, who earlier that month sued the company to recover his money. Celebrity focused print magazines have been on thin ice for a while now. Friends of Interview's founder, Andy Warhol, acknowledged that if he were alive today, magazines would not likely be his focus. "He would have gone insane with the internet," said Diane von Furstenberg. "He would never have slept." Predictably, when it was announced that Interview was folding, tributes from Annie Lennox, Gwyneth Paltrow and Naomi Campbell came over Instagram. According to Mr. Brant, who would agree to speak with The New York Times only by email, the magazine "could not survive the sea change in its industry." He said that Interview magazine is a "separate legal entity" from himself and added that he put 7 million of his own money into the magazine over the last decade alone making him its "biggest creditor." But it's difficult to separate Mr. Brant from Interview; it is effectively a family business. Mr. Brant first invested in the magazine in 1969, the year it was founded, with his cousin Joe Allen. From 1989 to 2008, Mr. Brant's first wife, Sandra Brant, ran the business side. The editor at that time was Ingrid Sischy, who subsequently became Ms. Brant's girlfriend and then her wife. In 2008, Mr. Brant bought his ex wife's share. Two of his children, with Ms. Brant, have helped run Interview. His second wife, the supermodel Stephanie Seymour, had a title there as a contributing fashion editor. On May 25, Interview's chief revenue officer, Jason Nikic, released a memo that said Interview would rise from the dead under the ownership of an entity called Crystal Ball Media. The next issue, he said, would come in September. The new creative director would be Mel Ottenberg, a stylist who works with Rihanna. Interview, he promised, would be "as beautiful, as creative, and as visually stunning as ever." The president would be Kelly Brant, Mr. Brant's daughter and the magazine's digital director. This was a strangely confident assertion. To assume ownership of the bankrupt magazine, Crystal Ball Media likely will have to earn the support of a court appointed bankruptcy trustee. In all likelihood, Crystal Ball will have to to outbid other prospective buyers. But Mr. Baron was infuriated that a Brant might again run Interview when Mr. Brant's company ignored months of prodding to pay him his money. In a statement, Mr. Baron's spokesman, Zak Rosenfield, said: "Peter Brant has proven to be an exploitive and dishonorable businessman who considers himself above the law, with his stewardship of Interview magazine the most recent example. It is now abundantly clear that Interview was kept afloat for decades because of half truths, unkept promises and his exploitation of the passions and pocketbooks of contributors and staffers, some with meager means, who were eager to carry on the Warhol vision." For a magazine whose paid circulation hovered around 230,000 at its peak, Interview had an outsize footprint. Warhol first published it in 1969 and used to stroll down Madison Avenue handing copies to passers by. He threw parties for it at Studio 54. He carried a tape recorder in his pocket, which he used to supply Interview with content. It was first populated with film reviews by college kids. But Warhol's pop culture leanings, his ambitions to get fashion advertisers, and his interest in politics quickly seeped into the magazine. "He was constantly trying to grab my crotch," said Mr. Talley. One day he and Warhol and Azzedine Alaia went to the movies. "Andy was on one end and I was on the other, with Azzedine in between us. So Andy slowly snakes his hand across Azzedine's leg and onto my lap. I jumped up and screamed. Azzedine could not stop laughing." Ultimately, Mr. Talley also came to find it amusing. "It was not a Harvey Weinstein moment," he said. "Andy was a charming person because he saw the world through the kaleidoscope of a child. Everything was 'gee golly wow.' " Warhol said this "10 times every five minutes," said Ms. Furstenberg. Others found that phony. Ms. Lebowitz said she stayed distant because she was convinced he was "not a good influence on the young." Warhol used celebrity portrait gigs to obtain cover subjects, and used cover interviews to pitch himself as a for hire portraitist. "He invented synergy," Mr. Colacello said. "This was not ethical journalism." Warhol could also be deeply cynical. Ms. Blond owns a May 1986 copy of Interview with Tom Cruise on the cover. Warhol had drawn a penis dangling from his mouth. She'd save it, wisely. Others were not as careful. From 1978 to 1981, Ms. Lebowitz was paid entirely in art. "Let me assure you it was worth nothing then," she said. "I sold all my Warhols two weeks before he died for virtually zero. And I believe that's why he died." When people gossip about Peter Brant, and they have been doing that for more than 30 years, a few incidents come up repeatedly. In 1986, the United States Polo Association banned him from play after he reportedly challenged an umpire to a fist fight. He filed a 30 million antitrust lawsuit against the organization and lost. In 1990, he paid the government hundreds of thousands of dollars after being convicted of a misdemeanor for failing to keep adequate tax records. This included billing personal expenses such as silk sheets, massages, and scalp treatments to his newsprint companies. He spent 84 days in jail, which was surprising to Ms. Lebowitz only because "most rich people don't pay their taxes and manage to avoid going to jail." In 2009, Mr. Brant and his second wife, Ms. Seymour, got into a messy and public divorce battle, where they traded accusations of infidelity and substance abuse. Hearings were set to determine how their assets should be divided, but the day they were to begin, Mr. Brant and Ms. Seymour waltzed into court hand in hand and announced they were reconciling. Mr. Brant grew up in the Jamaica Estates section of Queens. His father owned a paper empire, and one of his close friends at Kew Forest School was Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump and Mr. Brant ventured into Times Square together, and bought stink bombs, hot peppered gum, and plastic vomit. Around the time they finished seventh grade, Fred Trump found his son Donald's switchblade and sent him off to the New York Military Academy . While Mr. Brant was in college at the University of Colorado, he met his first wife and began using his family's money to buy art. That led to a meeting with Warhol and an investment in his magazine. For a while, Warhol and the Brants were close. They traveled to Paris and shopped for art deco furniture together. Ms. Brant took a job at Interview as its advertising director. "They were unique among contemporary collectors in that their interest wasn't just about art," Mr. Colacello said. "It was architecture, landscaping, decorating and fashion. They really had an aesthetic approach across the board. They were a great couple. And they had great taste." Some people thought it was strange to encounter two people in their twenties with an ownership stake in a magazine. "But to tell you the truth, I've never really understood what owning Interview means," Ms. Lebowitz said. "It didn't make any money, and everyone lied about the circulation. I know that because when I was really young, I used to drive the magazine to the printers. I got fifty dollars for it. The sales they were telling people was like five times the print run ." Mr. Brant pressed Warhol and his colleagues to keep costs down. "He would question why we paid our bills so quickly," Mr. Colacello said. "I said, 'We pay everyone within 90 days.' He said, 'No, no, no. You pay when the lawyers call.'" A rift developed. "He was a tough businessman and Andy wanted control," said Vincent Fremont, who worked for Warhol and later for Mr. Brant. In 1975, Warhol was struggling to finance the film "Bad." Mr. Brant agreed to provide 1.2 million and give back his ownership stake in the magazine. (It was supposed to go to Warhol's close aide, Fred Hughes.) Then, Mr. Brant decided he would invest only 1 million and made that contingent on Warhol putting in 200,000 of his own money perhaps not an unreasonable demand to anyone who's seen one of Warhol's films. Warhol refused, so Mr. Hughes stepped in and gambled his savings on the film. It lost a pile of dough and everyone felt burned. Mr. Brant began auctioning off his Warhols. "I had to meet Peter Brant for lunch at the office," Warhol dictated for his diary in 1981. "He was just awful. He picked out some prints, and now we're all settled with him on the money he invested in Bad and he never has to come back. Good." When Warhol died in 1987, Interview was on hard times. Two years later, Mr. Brant bought it at auction for 12 million. His cousin Mr. Allen couldn't believe it. "I thought he was nuts. I said 'why would you want to do this,' and he really didn't answer," Mr. Allen said. Mr. Brant was occupied with his paper empire and his art holdings, which came to include freshly commissioned works of his wife by Julian Schnabel, Francesco Clemente and Maurizio Cattelan. (The sculpture Mr. Cattelan built in her honor was actually a legless, dead eyed mannequin he referred to as "Trophy Wife.") In 2003, Mr. Brant was accused of tax fraud in a civil suit by James Comey, then the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The art dealer Larry Gagosian and Mr. Brant, the charges said, set up a shell company to buy and sell art. After earning 17 million, the men declared the company bankrupt. Mr. Brant wound up contributing to a 9.1 million settlement with the government. Outwardly, Ms. Brant and Mr. Brant enjoyed a progressive divorce. But there were tensions, according to friends of the couple. Mr. Brant didn't always love being in business with his ex wife and her girlfriend, while Ms. Sischy and Ms. Brant grew tired of Mr. Brant's drama. Ms. Seymour got bored in Greenwich as Ms. Sischy and Ms. Brant traveled the world with designers whose ad campaigns she'd once appeared in. As the marriage between Ms. Seymour and Mr. Brant turned into what one friend called a "mansion on fire," Ms. Sischy and Ms. Brant decided it was time to gain some independence. They approached various publishers about buying Mr. Brant's stake in Interview. But ultimately, they sold themselves: In 2008, Mr. Brant gave them 15 million for their stake in the magazine and Conde Nast hired them to be roving international editors. "I do not have a history of not paying my debts," said Mr. Brant in an email to the Times, adding that he feels badly "for anyone that lost money due to Interview Inc.'s bankruptcy." "In the last 10 years, I loaned Interview, Inc. in excess of 7 million so that it could continue to pay its employees and the costs of its operations," he wrote. "I never took out money from the business." He blamed his creditors for the magazine's demise. Because people who hadn't been paid were suing to be paid, Mr. Brant said, he was left with "no other option but to liquidate" Interview's assets. "There was no buyer that would take on the debt and liabilities of the business, and therefore no possibility that it could devise a plan to become profitable again in its current structure," he wrote. Bankruptcy laws don't require owners to assume responsibility for debts at declining businesses even when those owners live with their supermodel wives on giant Greenwich estates, surrounded by modernist masterworks. "The purpose of having a corporation is to insulate against personal liability," said Susheel Kirpalani, a partner at Quinn Emanuel who specializes in bankruptcy and who was not involved in the case. But those circumstances do provide added opportunity for outrage. "To announce plans to relaunch the magazine free of that debt in three months, with his daughter at the helm, is not only sinister, but a premeditated sham," said Mr. Rosenfield, the rep for Mr. Baron. Ms. Lebowitz simply shrugged. "I don't have as much faith in rich people as other people seem to have," she said. "Morals and aesthetics are not related. Surely you've noticed."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Vera Rubin, a young astronomer at the Carnegie Institution in Washington, was on the run in the 1970s when she overturned the universe. Seeking refuge from the controversies and ego bashing of cosmology, she decided to immerse herself in the pearly swirlings of spiral galaxies, only to find that there was more to them than she and almost everybody else had thought. For millenniums, humans had presumed that when we gaze out at the universe, what we see is a fair representation of reality. Dr. Rubin, with her colleague Kent Ford, discovered that was not true. The universe all those galaxies and the vast spaces between was awash with dark matter, an invisible something with sufficient gravity to mold the large scale structures of the universe. Esteemed astronomers dismissed her findings at first. But half a century later, the still futile quest to identify this "dark matter" is a burning question for both particle physics and astronomy. It's a pursuit that stretches from underground particle colliders to orbiting telescopes, with all manner of ground based observatories in between. Last week the National Science Foundation announced that the newest observatory joining this cause will be named the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The name replaces the mouthful by which the project was previously known: the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, or L.S.S.T. The observatory, jointly financed by the N.S.F. and the Department of Energy, under construction on a mountain called Cerro Pachon, in Chile, will begin operating in 2022. By recording images of the entire sky every few days, it will produce a time lapse movie of the universe. It is the first national observatory to have been named for a woman, the announcement said. "Named after an astronomer who provided important evidence of the existence of dark matter," wrote France Cordova, the Foundation's outgoing director, "the NSF Vera C. Rubin Observatory seems destined to make science history with its extraordinary capabilities that will come to bear in the next few years." And finally there is the new Annie Maunder Astrographic Telescope at the venerable Royal Greenwich Observatory, just outside London. It is named after Annie Maunder, who with her husband Walter made pioneering observations of the sun and solar cycle of sunspots in the late 1800s. Heros of science, all of them. In a field known for grandiloquent statements and frightening intellectual ambitions, Dr. Rubin was known for simple statements about how stupid we are. In an interview in 2000 posted on the American Museum of Natural History website, Dr. Rubin said: In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark to light matter is about a factor of 10. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance to knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade. Once upon a time cosmologists thought there might be enough dark matter in the universe for its gravity to stop the expansion of the cosmos and pull everything back together in a Big Crunch. Then astronomers discovered an even more exotic feature of the universe, now called dark energy, which is pushing the galaxies apart and speeding up the cosmic expansion. These discoveries have transformed cosmology still further, into a kind of Marvel Comics super struggle between invisible, titanic forces. One, dark matter, pulls everything together toward its final doom; the other, dark energy, pushes everything apart toward the ultimate dispersal, some times termed the Big Rip. The rest of us, the terrified populace looking up at this cosmic war, are bystanders, made of atoms, which are definitely a minority population of the universe. Which force will ultimately prevail? Which side should we root for? Until recently the money was on dark energy and eventual dissolution of the cosmos. But lately cracks have appeared in the data, suggesting that additional forces may be at work beneath the surface of our present knowledge. The discoverers of dark energy won the Nobel Prize in 2011. So far, dark matter has not been so honored. Dr. Rubin was perennially mentioned as a possible candidate for the prize. But she died in 2016, a poster child for the consistent failure lamented every October, when the prizes are announced of the Nobel committee to honor women, and of the general struggle of women in science to receive respect and opportunity. Once, summoned to a meeting with an eminent astrophysicist, Dr. Rubin arrived to be told they would have to talk in the lobby, because women were not allowed upstairs in the offices. Years later, when she finally gained access to the 200 inch Palomar telescope in California, she found that there was no women's restroom there. So she taped an outline of a women's skirt over the image of the man on the door, turning it into a ladies' room. Now she has an observatory of her own. Among its main missions, the Rubin Observatory will investigate the cosmic push pull between dark matter and dark energy, peeling back layers of the sky and of the past. Its data will chart how fast clusters of galaxies (drawn together by dark matter gravity) have grown over cosmic time, and how fast the spaces between these clusters (created by the push of dark energy) have grown as the universe has expanded. "The Rubin Observatory is expected to significantly advance what we know about dark matter and dark energy," Dr. Cordova said. "So the Rubin name will have yet another way to inspire women and men eager to investigate." Dr. Cordova went on to praise Congress, which has steadfastly defended the foundation's budget against White House cuts over the last few years. Natalie Batalha, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who was one of the leaders of NASA's Kepler planet hunting space mission, said, "It's heartening and highly appropriate to see Vera Rubin honored in this way."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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The everyday poison known as toxic masculinity becomes dangerously easy to swallow in "Linda Vista," Tracy Letts's inspired, ruthless take on the classic midlife crisis comedy. In the sunny opening scenes of this very funny, equally unsettling Steppenwolf Theater production which opened on Thursday at the Hayes Theater you'll probably feel like cozying up to that sheepish, disheveled big guy who rules the stage with his outspoken wit. Played with immense, shaggy charm and anger to match by Ian Barford in a performance that reminds you of how brilliantly bruising Steppenwolf acting can be, this charismatic loser is named Wheeler. Actually, it's Dick Wheeler, but he prefers to dispense with the first name, perhaps on the theory that it's better not to provide too many clues to your essential nature. When we first see Wheeler, he's moving into new digs in San Diego, with the help of his best friend, Paul (Jim True Frost), schlepping boxes and overstuffed bags with the sloppy casualness of college boys returning to campus. Never mind that Wheeler is 50. Is this talk too sexist for comfort? Wheeler might argue that he and Paul are just goofing (sort of), that they're also enlightened 21st century men who understand that some kinds of behavior regarding the opposite sex are no longer cool. You can sense that kind of self consciousness at work when he's talking to women. Anyway, Wheeler a word snob who has a gift for stating home truths that nobody else dares utter soon has the audience in the palm of his 11 1/2 sized hand . And when discussing a group of possible Trump voters, he declaims, "you cannot be friends with these people," the theater bursts into applause. Now cut to a scene early in the second act when Wheeler, on a date in a restaurant, ends a promising relationship with a brusque, simple sentence that lands like a lethal karate chop. This time, the audience gasps in something like horror. It won't be the last time it does so. This gasp inducing moment was exactly when I decided that Mr. Letts's latest play, directed with astutely varied pacing and room for rage by Dexter Bullard, was going to be a lot more interesting than I had thought. Up to that point, I had worried that the Pulitzer Prize winning author of "August: Osage County" was simply reanimating a tired literary formula. By that, I mean the tale of the clever, existentially challenged womanizer staring down the second half of his life. Traditionally, he's a man we can't help enjoying no matter how badly he behaves because he wallows so eloquently in his own pain. And as he keeps racking up the sexual conquests, a part of us is meant to cheer him on. My dad had shelves of novels about such men written by Kingsley Amis, John Updike and Philip Roth. Similar types regularly stalked Broadway and the West End, in plays by dramatists as different as Simon Gray ("Butley," "Otherwise Engaged"), Alan Ayckbourn ("The Norman Conquests") and Neil Simon ("Jake's Women"). Letts, for the record, has already explored this much tilled territory in his Pulitzer shortlisted "Man From Nebraska," seen here in 2017 (and, like "Linda Vista," a Second Stage presentation.) That, though, was a lyrical and oblique work that heard the abyss of nonexistence roaring within long silences. "Linda Vista" is as packed with nasty zingers as an HBO sitcom. And in the production's first half I worried that Letts might be hoping to fill the vacuum left by the death of Simon, the lucrative master of the breezy comedy of anxiety. Before Letts swam into the mainstream with "August," he was a master of pitch dark comedies that measured the grisliest depths of human behavior ("Killer Joe," "Bug"). I am happy to report that this side of him is alive and squirming in "Linda Vista." Here are the bare bones of its familiar sounding plot: Wheeler, in the midst of a protracted divorce and estranged from (and seemingly uninterested in) his 13 year old son, moves into his own place, an apartment complex (as squalidly sterile as such environments can be, in Todd Rosenthal's set, lighted without mercy by Marcus Doshi ). Wheeler was once a photographer for a Chicago newspaper, but now repairs cameras in a storefront shop. He presents himself picturesquely as a born loser and is delighted when a young woman in a bar offers this quick sketch character portrait: "Let me guess. You're a deadbeat, work a dead end job, married no wait, divorced hate your wife and kids, hate everybody, depressed, can't get laid, your body's breaking down, the only thing that still runs is your mouth ." Pretty accurate. Except it turns out Wheeler can get laid. There are four female characters in "Linda Vista," and you suspect that he has either bedded, or will bed, every one of them. And that despite his failing hip and fatuous flippancy during emotional crises, he'll always find women who want him. And oh, the pity of it. The women we meet in "Linda Vista" (and though that's what Wheeler's neighborhood is called, doesn't it sound like the ultimate girlfriend?) are a diverse lot. And they are blessed with a self preserving intelligence that always keeps them this side of social caricature. They are beautifully portrayed by Sally Murphy (as Margaret, Paul's wife); Cora Vander Broek (Jules, a professional life coach and Margaret's good friend); Caroline Neff (Anita, who works in the shop with Wheeler); and Chantal Thuy (Minnie, a 20 something American Vietnamese rockabilly chick). Two of them, I should warn you, appear with Barford in stark naked , tragicomic sex scenes that elicit the awkwardness and loneliness of human erotic congress. It feels fitting that the women outnumber the men here, who are rounded out by Wheeler's boss, Michael (Troy West), who is so creepily sexist he makes Wheeler look saintly. And each female character, in her own way, has learned how to navigate an environment that has been polluted by misogyny. Such an attitude is atmospheric in "Linda Vista," and it manifests in an assortment of casual cultural references: to a true crime television show (about a sex slave in a basement); comic book superhero movies; humiliation porn; and that monumental work of navel gazing, "My Struggle" by Karl Ove Knausgaard. Wheeler, it must be said, has plenty of acidic comments to make about such phenomena. Sure, he's a perpetually randy man, but he gives great lip service to the more reasonable forms of political correctness. And though he can be lacerating to others, he's hardest of all on himself. How could you not fall for this self flagellating, frustrated artist, who looks, as one woman puts, it "like a turtle who doesn't know he's lost his shell"? But don't make the mistake of equating vulnerability with harmlessness.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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The Knicks have made Tim Hardaway Jr. and Courtney Lee available via trade in advance of the N.B.A.'s Feb. 7 trade deadline, according to three people familiar with the team's stance. The team's motivation in both cases is largely financial, according to the people, who were not authorized to discuss the situation publicly. Finding a trade before the deadline to shed either Hardaway's or Lee's contract without taking salary back that extends beyond this season would ensure that the Knicks have the requisite salary cap space in July to pursue top tier free agents such as Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and Kemba Walker. It remains to be seen, however, if the Knicks will be able to find a trade partner for Hardaway or Lee without attaching an additional asset to the deal, such as future draft compensation or their 2017 first round pick, Frank Ntilikina. The Knicks can technically generate roughly 55 million in salary cap space this summer, but the cap hold for the restricted free agent Kristaps Porzingis and other looming expenses such as a first round draft pick in June and a June 20 deadline for picking up Allonzo Trier's 3.6 million team option for next season could cut into that figure substantially. Hardaway, who at 26 has been a productive offensive player for the Knicks but a defensive liability, is scheduled to earn 18.2 million next season, with a 19 million player option to follow in 2020 21. Although he is averaging a team leading 19.6 points per game, Hardaway is shooting just 39.2 percent from the floor. Lee, 33, is scheduled to earn 12.8 million next season in the final year of his current contract. He has averaged just 14.9 minutes a game in 10 appearances this season, and has since fallen entirely out of Coach David Fizdale's rotation. Lee has not played in a game since Dec. 27. The veteran Knicks forward Enes Kanter has also been made available by the Knicks in advance of the trade deadline. But dealing Kanter before the deadline would not help the Knicks' salary cap situation this summer because Kanter's 18.6 million salary is an expiring contract. Kanter did not play Wednesday night against Houston and has grown increasingly frustrated with his dwindling role, with the Knicks (10 36) firmly focused on developing their younger players and prioritizing draft position. After the Knicks' loss to the Rockets on Wednesday night, Kanter told reporters he had been informed by Fizdale in the morning that he would be starting, only to spend the entire game on the bench although Kanter did acknowledge that he was informed of the change in direction before tipoff by the assistant coach Keith Smart. "What they're doing is pretty messed up," Kanter said. "I deserve way better. They didn't explain me anything. I'm just going to let my agent handle it. "I love the Knicks, don't get me wrong. I love the crowd and M.S.G. and have love for this city, but I want to play basketball. Either play me or just let me play someplace." The Knicks have been trying to accommodate Kanter with a trade, according to one person with knowledge of the team's thinking. Trading Kanter, however, is complex because of his team high salary. The Knicks do not want to take on contracts in return that last beyond this season to maintain financial flexibility for free agency and re signing Porzingis. Kanter is expected to seek a contract buyout from the Knicks to become a free agent if the deadline passes without a trade to a new team. He would have to be waived by the Knicks by March 1 to remain playoff eligible for another team this season.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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WASHINGTON At a hearing in February, Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, complained that Congress and the Federal Reserve had traded places. During previous periods of high unemployment, members of Congress pressed the Fed to print more money even as the Fed remained wary of the inflationary consequences of such efforts. After the Great Recession, by contrast, the loudest criticism has come from politicians demanding that the Fed shut down its printing press and raise interest rates. Republicans like Mr. Garrett argue the central bank needs to be reined in because they say it has abandoned caution in its continuing effort to stimulate faster economic growth. They say the Fed was granted considerable autonomy so it could keep inflation under control, and it is now abusing that independence. "The people pushing back on your decisions are those arguing for a tougher monetary policy, not a looser one," Mr. Garrett told Janet L. Yellen, the Federal Reserve chairwoman, during the hearing in late February. "This flies in the face of the original stated rationale for political independence in monetary policy." The Fed has long been a popular target for politicians during periods of economic distress. Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University, has shown that congressional prodding of the Fed rises and falls with the unemployment rate. But she also found a striking shift: Democrats once proposed most bills to change the Federal Reserve but in recent years Republicans have taken their place, offering about two thirds of such measures since 2010. The Fed's chairman for most of that period, Ben S. Bernanke, was a Republican initially appointed by a Republican president. Under his leadership, the Fed reduced interest rates nearly to zero and embarked on several rounds of highly unusual "quantitative easing," amassing more than 4 trillion in Treasury and mortgage backed securities in a bid to further reduce borrowing costs for business and consumers. Easy money policies like those pursued by Mr. Bernanke and continued by Ms. Yellen historically have drawn support from populist politicians in both parties. But Ms. Binder suggested that Republicans were attacking those policies in part because Democrats had supported the Fed's efforts to fight unemployment, and the polarization of national politics encouraged the parties to accentuate their differences. "You now have these hard money populists from the right who are concerned that monetary policy has been too lax and that the Fed needs to tighten," Ms. Binder said. "It's an inversion of what we might more typically see." One proposal, which the House has passed twice in recent years, is known as "Audit the Fed." Backed by Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican who is running for president, it would authorize the Government Accountability Office to review monetary policy decisions. A stronger measure, backed by the Republican leadership of the House Financial Services Committee, would require the Fed to publish a mathematical formula that it planned to follow in raising and lowering interest rates. The Fed would then be required to explain deviations from the path prescribed by the formula. There are also proposals to change the selection process for members of the Fed's policy making committee, including a plan to strengthen the role of the banking industry in picking the presidents of the Fed's 12 regional reserve banks. So far, however, none of the measures have gained traction in the Senate, where Democrats still have considerable power to stall legislation. And the White House has expressed general opposition to restrictions on the Fed's autonomy. The Fed is charged by Congress with minimizing inflation and maximizing employment, a mandate formalized in 1978 by the Humphrey Hawkins Act. Since the Great Recession, inflation has been unusually slow while jobs have been unusually scarce. Ms. Yellen and other Fed officials have described the Fed's actions as a necessary response to those circumstances. "The root of the issue at this point, I can sum it up in two words, Humphrey and Hawkins," said Barney Frank, the former Massachusetts congressman. "What you have is a vehement objection to the dual mandate. Many Republicans do understand that the atmospherics of repealing the unemployment part of the dual mandate would be very bad, but they are opposed to it philosophically." Some Republicans are in favor of directing the Fed to focus solely on price stability, in line with the operating instructions for most central banks in developed nations, including the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan. The Republican senators Bob Corker of Tennessee and David Vitter of Louisiana introduced legislation in 2013 that directed the Fed to focus on keeping inflation low. Bills being put forward now, however, do not attack the dual mandate directly. The proposal to make the Fed adopt a policy rule, for example, includes a baseline rule that incorporates both inflation and a measure of economic output. But that rule, known as the Taylor Rule, suggests that the Fed has kept interest rates near zero for too long, and the bill would require the Fed to justify that choice. John Taylor, a professor of economics at Stanford University and the intellectual force behind the legislation, said that requiring the Fed to establish a policy rule would serve the same purpose as the checklists that some hospitals use to help doctors avoid errors. "Practical experience and empirical studies show that checklist free medical care is wrought with dangers just as rules free monetary policy is," Mr. Taylor wrote in a recent defense of his proposal. The proposal also is intended to increase the Fed's accountability. "What you want is something that permits you to see that the policies that are carried out are carried out for the benefit of the public," said Allan Meltzer, an economist at Carnegie Mellon University. "So choose your strategy, and we monitor you." The House Financial Services Committee passed the legislation along party lines last year, but it went no further. The author, Representative Bill Huizenga, a Michigan Republican who heads the monetary policy subcommittee, said in a statement that he remained determined to "bring the Federal Reserve out of the shadows" and that he planned to introduce a modified version of the legislation later this year. Fed officials say that they do consult rules in their deliberations, but that central banking is the art of knowing when to deviate from those rules. Mr. Bernanke said recently at the Brookings Institution that the Fed had articulated a policy rule: targeting 2 percent annual inflation and maximum employment. "I don't think you can get much more precise than that because I don't think you can deal with the uncertainties that arise in actual policy making," he said. The legislation would allow the Fed to change its policy rule as often as it liked, but opponents of the measure still worry that it would inhibit the Fed's flexibility. "Law can be very sticky," said Peter Conti Brown, a scholar of central banking at Stanford Law School. "The thing that I fear about a statutory policy rule is that it would get stuck in inertia and make it very difficult to deviate even if there was a consensus among economists that there should be that deviation." The current debate also has revived a struggle that dates to the Fed's creation in 1913. Republicans want to strengthen the independence of the Fed's regional reserve banks, whose presidents participate in monetary policy decisions, while Democrats want to strengthen the federal government's control. Legislation introduced by Mr. Garrett would let the regional banks select their own boards and increase the banking industry's representation on those boards. It would also let the banks pick presidents without Washington's approval. A countervailing bill introduced by Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, would make the president of the New York Fed a presidential nominee, subject to confirmation by the Senate. A coalition of community groups is pressuring the Fed to allow public input in the selection process for all regional Fed presidents. Most of these proposals are revivals of earlier legislation, from earlier periods of frustration, and Mr. Conti Brown said it was quite likely nothing would change. "I think chances are strong that if the recovery holds, then even though the Fed after the crisis is a much bigger and more powerful institution, the Fed will slink back into the shadows," he said. "People like me are just going to be talking to other academics and central bankers and won't be talking to the public anymore."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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Late last season, the New England Patriots were 10 1 and considered a favorite to win a seventh Super Bowl. The team's downfall since then has been beyond striking, and not just because the Patriots have won only four of their last 12 games after Sunday's 33 6 thumping at the hands of the San Francisco 49ers. Consider this: After New England takes its 2 4 record to Buffalo this coming weekend, Patriots Coach Bill Belichick might be in the mood for a roster fire sale on the eve of the N.F.L.'s Nov. 3 trade deadline. Giving up might not be the Patriot Way, but neither is pigheaded determination when sagacious rebuilding would be more shrewd. Belichick has player assets, like the All Pro cornerback Stephon Gilmore, that could fetch a first round pick. It would be an uncomfortable act of desperation, but it could not be more humiliating than what the Patriots lived through Sunday when a 27 point loss was not the only indignity. On Sunday, one quarterback that the Patriots traded, San Francisco's Jimmy Garoppolo, came back to Foxborough, Mass., and thoroughly trounced his former team. Nearly 3,000 miles away, in Las Vegas, another quarterback the Patriots let get away, Tom Brady, threw four touchdown passes to keep his Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Super Bowl hunt at 43 years old. Oh, and Brady was heaving passes to the former Patriots tight end Rob Gronkowski, who caught five of them, one for a touchdown on a nifty Brady throw. Meanwhile, Cam Newton, who replaced Brady this year and seemed to rejuvenate the Patriots' fandom last month, was intercepted three times. Worse, there was more than the obvious symbolism at work. New England's defense, ranked No. 1 in the league late in 2019, is in tatters and gave up 467 yards of offense to the 49ers. Imagine how that felt for Belichick, who may be the best defensive coach in N.F.L. history. Sunday's rout was also the largest home defeat in Belichick's New England tenure and the first time since 2002 that the Patriots lost a third consecutive game. "We didn't perform well enough in any area offense, defense, special teams, running, passing, defending the run, defending the pass, ball security, tackling, blocking," said Belichick, who is often most frank when he is most upset. "None of it was good enough. Maybe I left something out." No, that would seem to pretty much sum it up. Belichick, however, continued: "We were clearly outcoached, outplayed. Just out everything." None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. After the game, Newton said he knew what was ailing the Patriots. A reporter asked, "What is the issue?" Later, Newton, who continued to take the blame for the loss, elaborated: "The energy has definitely been off for me, and at times it's not rewarding when you're just going out there with this aura about yourself that's not you." He added: "I have fun playing this football game, but the performances here hasn't been somewhat delightful for me to have fun in doing so. So I just got to be better." If the Patriots were understandably morose, the 49ers (4 3) were delirious about reviving their season with successive victories. A smiling Garoppolo conceded that returning to play in Foxborough was more than just another road game for him. "Coming back here, seeing the same stadium, hearing the same songs they used to play a lot of memories came back," he said. "A lot of emotions out there. But it was a fun night." Garoppolo, who was twice intercepted but completed 20 of 25 passes for 277 yards, also likes the way San Francisco has earned its last two victories. "We're in a good spot right now," he said. "It's just a mind set that we have as a group. You could feel it I felt it in the locker room today from the guys." Meanwhile, 49ers Coach Kyle Shanahan, while professing his utmost respect for Belichick, said he felt like it was an easy night for him, especially since his team had 197 rushing yards on 43 carries. "The way our O line was playing," Shanahan said. "It's a pretty easy game for me to just sit back and watch our guys." If the 49ers seem to be heading in a positive direction in the talented N.F.C. West, how the Patriots will proceed from here is anyone's guess. Might an unforeseen resurrection begin this weekend at Buffalo? Perhaps. Countless times in previous seasons it has been a mistake to underestimate Belichick's resourcefulness as a coach. Newton is a former league M.V.P. and could certainly rebound. The Patriots, who have had to weather the departure of several veterans who chose not to play this season because of the coronavirus pandemic, might develop the cohesion and consistency they currently lack with more time together.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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THE New York auto show opens for press previews on Wednesday with spring in the air and not just because of the weather. The North American automobile market is experiencing a springlike rebirth this year, with sales up significantly in the first quarter at Chrysler, Ford, Honda, Hyundai, Kia, Nissan and Toyota. The renewed optimism will be evident at the show: more high profile vehicles will be introduced in New York than in recent memory. These include important sedans like the 2014 Chevrolet Impala, the upgraded 2013 Lincoln MKZ, a redesigned Nissan Altima, an all new Toyota Avalon and a revamped Lexus ES. The auto industry's near collapse of 2009 is now a grim memory. Sales in early 2012 picked up smartly, surpassing the estimates of most analysts. Estimates made in January have recently been revised upward. "We have added a few hundred thousand units to our original estimate," Rebecca Lindland, director of research at IHS Global Insight, said in an interview last week. "We are now estimating about 14 million sales in 2012, and that is a very good number." That would be the best sales total in the United States since 2008, she added, when sales topped 13 million. One cause for concern is the recent increase in fuel prices. "At least they are rising gradually, not spiking and creating a crisis, as they did before," Ms. Lindland said. Also, the industry is offering a new generation of more fuel efficient cars, with more due for introduction. "There are more 40 mile per gallon cars available now than ever before, and some of these are quite good cars," Ms. Lindland said. These include the Chevrolet Cruze, the new Ford Focus and the 2013 Dodge Dart, which will make its first New York appearance. "It wasn't that long ago that the Detroit Three were irrelevant in the small car segment," she said. In general, cars are making a comeback. Light trucks, including S.U.V.'s, minivans and crossovers, captured 52 percent of the North American market last year, but so far in 2012 cars are taking a similar share, Ms. Lindland said. Truck sellers are not waving white flags. Chrysler's Ram division will show a freshened full size pickup, and New York's debutantes will include the next Chevy Traverse, the fourth generation Nissan Pathfinder, a restyled Hyundai Santa Fe and an Acura MDX concept. For decades, flying cars have fueled the imaginations of auto buffs and inventors, and one such model is headed to New York. The Terrafugia, a drivable airplane with fold up wings, is likely to draw the curious, but the price of nearly a quarter of a million dollars may temper the enthusiasm of aero mobilists. Analysts expect the New York show to be an especially strong showcase for the resurgent American auto industry. An IHS Global Insight report focusing on sales in January and February called Chrysler's 42 percent sales gains over 2011 "truly astonishing." Ken Czubay, Ford's vice president for United States marketing and sales, told IHS that the key to Ford's 14 percent sales gains in the first two months of 2012 was the revamped Focus, which accounted for 40 percent of the growth. Japanese automakers continue to recover from the earthquake and tsunami a year ago, as well as floods in Thailand that devastated suppliers. One sales all star was Toyota's growing Prius family, which showed a 46 percent increase from the first two months of 2012. "But over all, we are still not seeing great results in hybrid sales," Ms. Lindland said. "While consumers are buying many of the new generation of gas powered 40 m.p.g. cars, they have not yet gravitated toward the most fuel efficient hybrid offerings."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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A linen dress stitched by seamstresses of the collective, many of them from couture houses like Chanel and Dior. There are disposable masks bought in bulk: light blue, three ply, fastened with white elastic hoops. There are D.I.Y. masks, stitched at home, and designer masks, sold for 10 or 100. Then there are masks made by a collective of the world's most elite couturieres: the seamstresses of Chanel, Dior and Saint Laurent, among others, who spent lockdown making more than 3,000 of them a limited edition of sorts. But these masks are not for sale, and the people wearing them are not influencers or celebrities. They are not the sort who, pre pandemic, sat in the front row at Paris Fashion Week, wearing a mask plastered with bright white Chanel camellias. They are the city's nurses, bakers and firefighters. And that distinction is important to the masks' makers. This was early on in the pandemic, a few days before American designers like Christian Siriano began sewing masks from home. Ms. Boyer, 36, had heard from a midwife friend that a hospital in Grenoble was using fabric coverings to preserve its surgical masks. She enlisted a few fellow Chanel seamstresses, and they began developing prototypes. On March 18, the day after Paris's lockdown began, Ms. Boyer bought the domain name. Since then, the collective has grown to more than 100 members, according to Ms. Boyer. Many are haute couture seamstresses; in addition to Chanel, Dior and Saint Laurent, they come from Jean Paul Gaultier, Schiaparelli and the Paris Opera. They made their masks from personal fabric supplies, and when those were depleted, used old curtains, pillowcases and clothes. They donated the masks to hospital workers, but also to law enforcement and Paris's "front line": cashiers, delivery people, taxi drivers. Demand grew beyond the collective's capabilities. "Sometimes we received more than 200 requests per day," Ms. Boyer said. The collective was adamant about not charging for the masks (though some recipients would offer payment as thanks). As the lockdown continued, Ms. Boyer watched as mask making shifted from a good, neighborly deed into a "commercial initiative." "What offends us is to see luxury brands selling fabric masks for more than 100, and to advertise them," she said. Her desire for more accessible couture was channeled into 's next offering, in mid May: an open source design for a dress pattern. It was a summer dress, with a high neck, cap sleeves and drop waist, made with linen from northern France. It was white, but called it the "little green dress," winking at the sustainability inherent in making one's own clothes at home. It was an experiment in so called slow fashion, a movement aiming to reduce waste. More recently, though, Ms. Boyer has returned to work, focused on the next Chanel collection, which will be presented in a digital show on July 7. In the weeks leading up to the couture shows, the petites mains of the Paris couture houses, like Ms. Boyer, can spend hundreds of hours of hunched over labor on a single dress. They're renowned for their skill in making intricate garments, tapping into what Ms. Boyer called "ancestral know how, passed down from generation to generation of seamstresses." Yet making masks gave her an entirely new perspective on fashion. "You realize that a simple piece of fabric, well cut, can have a direct impact on people's lives," she said. "We will never see a more beautiful collection than that of all the masks made and distributed free of charge by all the seamstresses and dressmakers from all houses and all regions."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Meteor Crater near Winslow, Ariz., one of just 190 confirmed craters on Earth. The pace of space rocks pummeling Earth and the moon was relatively infrequent, but then doubled or tripled for unknown reasons , a new study finds. Where have Earth's craters gone? Certainly we have the striking Meteor Crater in Arizona, and Chicxulub, which lies beneath Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, the 100 mile wide scar of the meteor that likely killed off the dinosaurs. Some of the cosmic battering, from the space rocks that landed in the oceans, did not carve out craters. Others have been erased by erosion and plate tectonics. Still, there do not seem to be enough craters on our planet, especially from the older eras just 190 confirmed examples worldwide. A new study suggests that geologists cannot find more big de nts i n Earth's surface because they were never there. On Thursday, researchers presented results of a new technique suggesting that the pace of space rocks pummeling Earth and the moon used to be less frequent than it is now, but then doubled or tripled for reasons not yet explained. "I think we've got a good story," said William F. Bottke, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colo., and one of the authors of a paper published in the journal Science. "We're changing the impact rate on the Earth by a factor of 2 to 3. That happened 290 million years ago." Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar. That finding was unexpected, because there is no obvious explanation for why the number of asteroids or comets would jump. This period, which came before the rise of the dinosaurs, was long past the chaotic early days of the solar system. Other scientists are skeptical, because the research draws its conclusions from only a small number of terrestrial and lunar craters. H. Jay Melosh, a Purdue University professor who is an expert on meteors and impacts, described the new paper as "an intriguing idea," but added that he was unconvinced. "With statistics of small numbers, that doesn't give me confidence that they're right," he said. "You can't say it's wrong, either. It's just not convincing." But the age of any particular lunar crater has often been uncertain. Dating of radioactive elements in the moon rocks brought back by the Apollo astronauts nearly 50 years ago has pinned down the ages of about 10 craters, said Rebecca R. Ghent, a professor of earth sciences at the University of Toronto and an author of the new paper. Another method used to date some craters is more imprecise. When a crater is new, its inside is usually smooth and pristine. Over time, smaller meteors strike the surface of this interior. But no one knows the precise impact rate, and counting craters is not straightforward. One impact could scatter smaller rocks across the landscape, resulting in what wrongly appear to be separate, additional impacts. "Then you're going to get the wrong age," Dr. Ghent said. She came up with a novel, clever alternative: taking the temperature of a crater. A fresh lunar crater tends to be surrounded by large boulders that were excavated by the meteor impact. The boulders retain heat when the crater rotates into darkness during the moon's nights, which last for two weeks at a time. In older craters, the boulders, battered by micrometeorites for millions of years, turn to dust, which cools quickly at night. Dr. Bottke said anyone can observe this phenomenon with a walk on a beach at night: The sand is cool, while a rock in the sand is still warm. A heat measuring instrument on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was able to differentiate warm craters from cooler ones, and the pattern seemed to hold. A 53 mile wide crater known as Tycho, known to be young, retained warmth during nighttime, while other craters known to be much older did not. "It became very clear you could see the rocks in the nighttime data," said Dr. Ghent. She and her colleagues calibrated the technique using the known ages of craters from the Apollo data. The correlation between the temperatures and the ages were "a tight, tight fit," she said. The team then looked at 111 moon craters that were more than six miles wide and less than a billion years old. What they found was that there were fewer older craters. The data suggested that the rate of impacts on the moon increased 290 million years ago. This is not the first time that scientists have suggested an uptick in lunar impacts. In 2000, scientists at University of California, Berkeley, came to a similar conclusion based on the dating of glass spheres embedded in the Apollo moon soil. The spheres formed when rocks melted then cooled after an impact. "Their conclusions are broadly consistent with ours," Paul R. Renne, director of the Berkeley Geochronology Center, who was an author of the earlier paper, wrote in an email .
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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The 2014 New York International Auto Show is billed, rightly so, as a showcase for dozens of new and significantly changed automobiles. But more than that, it is also a showcase for the quickening pace of change in the auto industry. Organizers have designated more than five dozen vehicles as world or North American premieres, among the hundreds on display at this year's show, which opens Wednesday for two days of press previews at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. Models expected to draw large crowds include the 2015 Chevrolet Corvette Z06 convertible; the 2015 Jeep Renegade, a smaller addition to the Jeep line that made its debut earlier this year in Geneva; and the much anticipated Alfa Romeo 4C sports car. Among those debutantes are a large number, including the Ford Fusion, Chevrolet Cruze, Toyota Camry, Dodge Charger and Challenger and Volkswagen Jetta, that may seem like little more than familiar faces with freshened facades and fancier features. But the changes run more than skin deep. "This year's show will feature a wide range of both all new and heavily refreshed vehicles," Karl Brauer, a senior automotive analyst for Kelley Blue Book, said in an email. "The automotive market is more competitive than it has ever been, which puts increased pressure on manufacturers to keep product fresh." Product cycles are shortening. Where seven to eight years might have been the norm in the life cycle of an automaker's core products in the past, now it seems at least a significant refresh or face lift is in order every three to four years. "We'll see this in the high number of significantly updated models like the Camry, Focus and Challenger," Mr. Brauer continued. "At the same time we'll see plenty of all new models from luxury brands like Acura and BMW. The show reflects the need to keep innovating and revising models at a much faster rate than automakers had to just a few years ago." As the competition among automakers intensifies, technological advances are happening faster, and likewise, obsolescence now seems to be lurking just around the corner. A timely example can be found at McLaren, the British racing legend and supercar builder, which is showing its new 650S model to the press at a location near the convention center. The 650S is so advanced compared with the 12C, a still handsome model it has been making for just three years, that McLaren felt compelled to cancel the 12C. Also in New York, Ford is ready to introduce its sixth generation Mustang, even though its outgoing fifth generation model has been subjected to a series of updates almost yearly since at least 2009 and still looks fresh. To gain an extra measure of attention, Ford is disassembling a new Mustang and putting it back together on the observation deck of the Empire State Building. Although Toyota introduced an all new Camry in 2012, a heavily revised version will be unveiled at New York for the 2015 model year. The company said, "The refreshed Camry will challenge conventional expectations of a midcycle model change." New styling, new engines and transmissions and better fuel economy are among the changes promised. Honda provided one of the more radical examples of the need to move fast when it rolled out a much changed Civic last year, little more than 18 months after a tepidly received new version had made its debut in 2012. This year, Honda is updating its Fit compact. Chrysler is carrying out what are called speed to market initiatives in which "we are not waiting until all new, next generation vehicles come out to make significant changes," Rick Deneau, a Fiat Chrysler Automobiles spokesman, said. Prime examples, he added, include running changes to Ram pickups, the Jeep Grand Cherokee and the Dodge Challenger and Charger. He says such initiatives "get us closer to the customer." Mark Schirmer, a Ford spokesman, said the pace of change might be a bit faster, "or perhaps people are noticing it more because of the amount of change." "Back in the 1950s, they made minor styling changes year after year, right? And then for a while through the dark days, it seemed we never changed the darn things," he said. "If you consider that a typical vehicle cycle is seven to eight years, which I think it still is all new to all new the midcycle is more aggressive and often includes new engines and updates throughout and lots of added technology and new features." Logistically speaking, Mr. Schirmer said, a major change still requires about 36 months to put into effect. There is also the staggered, year round nature of new car introductions; gone are the fall "new car season" introductions of the past. Ford is mixing in a significant midcycle update to the Focus, with a sneak peek of the next Edge crossover, a new Skyliner adaptation of the Transit van and a complete redesign of the Mustang. The net effect may appear more transformative, to Ford's overall lineup, than is actually the case. But to an untrained eye, even a new palette of colors on a line of existing models can seem brand new, especially under the bright lights of an auto show display. The show opens to the public Friday morning at the Javits center on 11th Avenue between 34th and 40th Streets and continues through April 27. Admission is 15 for adults, 5 for children 12 and younger.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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In the 1950s , women across the country wore practical, button down housedresses with tight waists and deep pockets. In the '80s, shoulder pads were a symbol of power in the workplace, but also up and down supermarket aisles. In the aughts, moms (and their daughters) wore a whole lot of Juicy Couture velour sweatsuits. For years, black Lululemon yoga pants and Uggs were the axis of the mom uniform, until the media cruelly shamed women out of them. Then last year, a pair of deliberately beaten up looking 500 Golden Goose sneakers and what is known as simply the "Amazon jacket," a 130 parka, was seen on moms in Chappaqua and Short Hills alike. But in Brooklyn recently, a decidedly more bohemian expression of middle aged fashion has emerged. This ensemble is made up of two accessories: Part 1 is the No. 6 clog, which has become ubiquitous in upscale Brooklyn neighborhoods and on celebrities like Keri Russell, Julianne Moore and Claire Danes. Part 2 is the Salt strap, a thick, detachable handbag strap woven from bright colors, made to hook onto luxury bags, as Salt's Instagram account promotes vividly, like the 2,500 Gucci, the 3,300 Hermes, a 2,600 Celine or a 1,700 Chloe. Zora Ginsburg, a mother of two and a sales specialist for Rebecca Taylor who lives in the Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn, has been wearing her No. 6 clogs for about eight years. She owns them in a variety of colors the shearling, the slides, the zip up boots and never deviates from the brand. When she's not wearing No. 6 clogs, she's wearing Isabel Marant bootees and Dr. Martens. Ms. Ginsburg was introduced to the strap by her friend Kacy Lubell, an owner of Salt, and rotates multiple straps between her Balenciaga, Fendi and Proenza Schouler PS1 bags. (Ms. Ginsburg once helped style a Salt shoot and in return received a strap; the rest, she paid for.) Ms. Ginsburg was glad to see the strap taking off around Brooklyn and didn't think that an army of look alike moms was impeding her look. "It's like we're matching," she said, noting that the strap reminded her of the woven friendship bracelets she used to make in camp. "It's a unique way of styling yourself. When I see someone in a strap or a clog I don't have, I think, 'That looks good. I want that.'" Yet sometimes it seems that choosing to wear the same clothing as the people around us is a lot less about our materialistic desires than it is about our evolutionary development as humans. That women in the same area are drawn to similar styles makes sense. Our evolutionary prehistory shows that we needed many people to help us raise our offspring, so we surrounded ourselves with those who had similar values or who looked like us. We can still see an echo of that today, said Wednesday Martin, a social researcher whose most recent book is "Untrue," a study of female infidelity. Ms. Martin owns four pairs of No. 6 clogs; she keeps two in her Manhattan apartment, the other two she keeps at her house in Sag Harbor. She does not own a strap, but she is familiar with them. Ms. Martin compares the woman who dresses like her peer group to the bonobo ape: a female dominant species that leaves its kin behind and bands together to form new communities to fend off male aggression. "You can see how important it is for mothers to do this particularly when you consider how strange and isolating and depleting we have made motherhood in our culture," she said. "Through very canny social strategizing, we survived as a species through affiliating with others and by making others feel like kin." Like the man in the gray flannel suit showed, or the Pink Ladies with their embroidered pink jackets in "Grease," or the Teddy Girls of London with their rolled up dungarees and blazers, or sure, mom jeans, wearing the same clothing sends a signal: On the one hand, it links you to people you want to resemble, and on the other it separates you from people you don't want to resemble. The idea that fashion has these conflicting sides was first theorized by the sociologist Georg Simmel at the turn of the 20th century, according to Valerie Steele, the director and chief curator of the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. "It's like a double edged knife," she said. "It made you part of a group, and it also made you an individual away from another group." "So you always had that 'Oh the horror,' of women in the '50s when they went to a party and someone was wearing the same dress," she said. "But I think that overlooks the fact that in many other ways, women wanted other women in their group to be wearing very similar clothes." She bought the strap because her children and Ms. Lubell's children attend school together and she wanted to support a "mom owned business." Recently, she has seen a number of women around town wearing the strap/clog combo, which she gets a kick out of. "There's a pretty affluent population of parents here, without question, which will help define whether or not people are buying certain things," Ms. Odunsi said. "Because we all know these things cost money. And sometimes when a trend is outrageously expensive, I look around and think, 'Ooh, there's a lot of people who can afford a lot of those things.'" She lives in Park Slope, after all, where the average home goes for about 1.2 million. Earth mother message aside, a pair of No. 6 clogs can cost upward of about 450, and the strap, at 140, is marketed with bags that 99 percent of women can't afford. Yet because of its straight out of Laurel Canyon circa 1969 look, combined with a charitable element (Salt has a partnership with artisans from the La Guajira region of Colombia, according to its website, and donates a portion of its proceeds to the Wayuu Taya Foundation, a Colombian nonprofit), the strap, in a way, "counters or at least reduces the extravagance of the bag," said Carolyn Mair, a psychologist and founder of a consultancy firm, Psychology.fashion. "I think it's less acceptable now, at least in some circles, to be totally oblivious to the problems in the world," Ms. Mair said. "So perhaps by wearing the strap, these women want to be seen as acknowledging issues elsewhere by supporting a social cause." Same goes for the clogs, which in many ways can't be separated from their working class present (clogs show up in the workplace on cooks, nurses, farmers and gardeners) and past. (They originated among Dutch dairy farmers and later became a common work shoe in Europe during the Industrial Revolution.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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That pinch you're feeling when it comes to housing may be real. The average price of an apartment in New York City has surpassed its last peak, 2008, before the recession hit and the housing market collapsed. And that new high, about 1.7 million in Manhattan, may cause potential buyers to draw in a sharp and painful breath. Even median prices, which better reflect what's going on outside the luxury market in buildings that aren't snazzy Midtown spires, may prompt shock. According to the Corcoran Group, the real estate brokerage, the median price of all apartments in Manhattan is now 916,000. The median price of a one bedroom apartment in Manhattan is 710,000. But median doesn't have to mean mundane. Surprising results can be achieved if, say, 750,000 is deployed creatively in the resale marketplace, whether in Manhattan or the outer boroughs. After all, many prospective buyers prefer to stay in New York City rather than decamp to the suburbs. "It's so much cheaper here, and you get so much more for your money," said Cosimo Tacopino, a salesman with Neuhaus Realty in Staten Island, making a pitch for a house facing a leafy park in Tottenville. But Mr. Tacopino's words could easily apply to several other listings in the city. If Manhattan is indeed becoming a moated retreat for gazillionaires, the most affluent neighborhoods would seem to be a no go zone. But if prospective buyers are willing to give up the luxury of simply turning a key and moving right in, and able to commit to a renovation, they could come away with an address in a coveted neighborhood. In early January, a prewar studio requiring a kitchen renovation, for instance, was for sale in the West Village for 725,000. At 99 Bank Street, a brick printing plant turned residential co op, the apartment, No. 5 S, offers wood floors, 10 foot ceilings and ample light, courtesy of views to the west along Greenwich Street. The windowless kitchen, though, is dingy, with few counters. A tiny dishwasher sat atop one of them. But for views over meticulously maintained rowhouses in a landmark district, on a street paved with stones, and proximity to trendy restaurants and Hudson River Park, the extra cost of putting the kitchen to rights might be worth it, said Katherine Salyi, the saleswoman at Nest Seekers International who is listing the apartment. "It's a fairly small apartment that needs some work in an amazing location," Ms. Salyi said, adding that "there's not a lot on the market, and what is, is very expensive." In the past 12 months in the West Village, the median sale price of all co ops and condos was 1.5 million, according to StreetEasy.com, the real estate website. Buyers might benefit from considering other properties at 99 Bank. Since apartments in the 126 unit six story building don't turn over that often, Ms. Salyi said, some have dated kitchens and baths, possibly qualifying them and pricing them as fixer uppers. For 750,000, buyers expect a one bedroom to have certain things, including distinct places to cook and shower; and a door separating the living area and the bed. The veteran apartment hunter also might tend to assume a one bedroom will have less than 1,000 square feet. The apartment has two full baths, several closets and original details like sunken floors edged with metal railings. No. 3E F is actually a pair of combined units, a studio and a two bedroom, which in some ways has produced an awkward layout. Earlier this month, the studio's former kitchen, still tiled, sat empty, awaiting a use. But the space, which features lots of curves ceiling beams, arches over doorways seemed roomy enough to allow for a redesign project without dislodging the residents. Striking out away from the heart of Manhattan is a time tested strategy for finding more space, and it still works. Of the 165 co ops and condos in a StreetEasy search that provided square footage, the 12 with 1,000 feet or more were in Harlem, or north of it. But while some outlying areas are isolated or low on stores and services, Inwood is a well established residential enclave, with block after block of grand apartment buildings, and lively retail areas along Broadway and on Dyckman Street. Yet the most endearing feature of the neighborhood, many residents say, is its generous park acreage, an example of which looms out of 115 Payson's windows. Across the street from the building is a steep rock strewn slope that is part of Inwood Hill Park, which had the look of a Currier and Ives print on a recent snowy afternoon. Steve Stampleman, a salesman at New Heights Realty, the brokerage that has the Payson Avenue listing, said there's nothing quite like the park in Manhattan. "I call it my private Central Park," said Mr. Stampleman, who has lived in Inwood since the early 1970s, "without the mass of humanity." If you really want to stretch your money, of course, you could do what people have done for years, at least until Brooklyn got so fashionable: Head for the other boroughs. These days it's not as easy as taking a subway one stop from the old neighborhood, entering a new ZIP code and finding a discounted apartment, brokers say. Close in neighborhoods, including Long Island City in Queens, have crept close to some parts of Manhattan in terms of price. Another consideration: Some areas are dominated by rentals, particularly in the Bronx. Although affluent sections like Riverdale, in the northwestern corner, offer co ops, condos and single family houses, opportunities elsewhere favor the purchase of, say, three family semidetached brick houses. A search of the Bronx on The New York Times real estate website earlier this month produced 23 listings between 650,000 and 750,000, mostly for co ops, condos and single family houses, and most, or 19, were in Riverdale or neighborhoods often considered to be part of it, like Fieldston. Listed at 719,000, a two family house there at 3258 Giegerich Place has three bedrooms in each apartment. It is actually an expansion of a single story bungalow, examples of which still dot its densely packed street. Wood floors and flowing rooms are tucked behind bland siding; so are washers and dryers, in both units. What little backyard there is on the tiny property had been covered by a deck, though that also allowed for a pool, a hot tub and a granite topped bar. To be fair, the area is remote. A single road leads in and out, past a hanging wood sign adorned with a dinghy, though an express bus, the BxM9, stops a few blocks away and makes the run to Fifth Avenue in Midtown in about 40 minutes. But that faraway feel has upsides. Positioned where the East River spills into Long Island Sound, Locust Point offers views of glittering waves, as well as less organic though still enchanting sights, like the tall towers that suspend the Throgs Neck Bridge. "They can have space here, they can have storage, they can have kids," said Clarissa Rosado, a saleswoman with Re/Max Prime Properties in Scarsdale, who added that the unit on the ground floor of 3258 Giegerich Place now rents for 1,500 a month but could command 1,800. "There's no more space in Brooklyn," she said. "There's no more space in Queens." Suburbia in the city? The phrase gets thrown around a lot, whether referring to the colorful colonials of Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, the Tudors of Jamaica Estates, Queens, or even, oddly, the ranch houses of Crotona Park East, in the Bronx, which rose from the rubble of burned out buildings. But block for block, the subdivided vibe of Staten Island, with its modest midcentury homes with driveways and garages, easily recalls a bedroom community in New Jersey or Connecticut. Just don't expect to go clubbing. "Young people don't really want to come out here, because there's no action," said Mr. Tacopino, the Neuhaus agent. But, he added, "when you are finally willing to settle down, and still be in the city, but apart from the hustle and bustle, then this is the place." His listing, No. 149 Satterlee Street, that house in Tottenville, is an aluminum sided raised ranch on a quiet block. Listed at 739,900, the early 1980s house has three bedrooms, two baths and a breakfast nook with a skylight, as well as a wood burning fireplace in its family room. The ranch faces Conference House Park, a 265 acre waterside spread that was the site of peace talks during the Revolutionary War. The park, which has beaches and winding trails, and views to Perth Amboy, N.J., also includes a post marking New York State's southernmost point. Being so close to the water, though, carries risks. Many blocks in Tottenville and Staten Island's south shore were slammed by Hurricane Sandy in 2012, resulting in deaths, though No. 149 Satterlee was spared by its perch on high ground. For buyers whose impression of the housing stock in Queens is based on what they have seen from the window of a speeding cab en route to or from La Guardia Airport, Douglas Manor will come as an eye opener. And from the living room, French doors open to a wide stone patio that seems to have replaced part of a driveway. Families might find the cottage a tight fit; older people may not like the stairs leading to the sole bathroom upstairs. Also, the building nuzzles the Tudor mansion, so a harmonious relationship with the neighbors is probably required. Unless, of course, the buyer is crabby and rich, and also snaps up the big house, for sale for 2,998,000, as well as the lot on the other side of it, No. 300; the three properties altogether cost about 4.7 million. Much ink has been spilled in recent months about how Kings County has pulled even, in terms of price, with Manhattan, and even raced ahead in some places. And measured a certain way, either looking at monthly rents or sale prices, there are recent examples of an apartment in popular Dumbo, say, trading for more than a similar one across the East River. But over all, Brooklyn still seems to offer discounts. The median price of a resale condo there in the fourth quarter of last year was 690,000, according to a Douglas Elliman market report. Even though that figure was up 7 percent from a year ago, it still trailed Manhattan, where the median in the fourth quarter was 1.4 million. A less official analysis of one bedroom listings suggested the same: For a similar amount of money, buyers can snap up more square footage in prime neighborhoods in Brooklyn than in most of Manhattan. And increasingly, Brooklyn provides the types of condos that Manhattan has constructed for years. So if a buyer has a heart set on recent construction loaded with amenities, this goal might be satisfied in Brooklyn for a little less cash. Among the options was a one bedroom one bath unit at Clermont Greene, a 74 unit condo at 181 Clermont Avenue in the Fort Greene neighborhood. This apartment's 750 square feet includes nine and a half foot tall ceilings and a walk in master closet; there's also a narrow balcony. The unit, No. 204, was listed earlier this month at 750,000, or about 1,000 a square foot. Clad in gray metal panels, the 2007 condo, which actually consists of two buildings wrapping a landscaped courtyard, stands in sharp contrast to the historic brick and brownstone structures across the street. "This is kind of unique," said Diny Ajamian, a saleswoman with Douglas Elliman, on a recent tour. "It's juxtaposed against all these turn of the century rowhouses." Those differences extend to the lobby, which offers a video screen that alerts residents if they have waiting packages or dry cleaning. There's also a gym, a seasonal rooftop garden and a parking garage, though it has a waiting list. If the desired object is a condo in Fort Greene, whose namesake park is three blocks away, there aren't many choices. A search in early January revealed just six active listings, with two of them at 1 Hanson Place, the converted Williamsburgh Savings Bank Tower. A two bedroom there was 1.65 million, or about 1,300 a foot. A studio in the same building was 599,000, or 1,200 a foot. Although that building is considered top notch for the borough, another two of the resale condo listings were also slightly higher, on a square foot basis, than 181 Clermont, making it a deal. And versus Manhattan? Still a bargain: The average per square foot price for similar apartments there last quarter was about 1,550.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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PARIS Crowds form wherever Olivier Rousteing of Balmain decides to hold his show. The solid odds that one of his famous friends ideally a Kardashian, Jenner or West might attend are a powerful lure. There were no Kardashians in the audience for his men's wear show at the Hotel Potocki in Paris on Saturday afternoon, but several others were there: The basketball player Nick Young, the N.F.L. wide receivers Victor Cruz and Brice Butler, and the pop singer Ricky Martin all came to see what Mr. Rousteing had planned. It turned out to be a typically brazen collection of denim and mesh, stone encrusted and mirror stitched beachwear for the international playboy, not unlike themselves, whose exploits in turn inspired the collection. (Mr. Rousteing said that while he may not be able to escape the design studio to hit the beach, he could at least scroll through the Instagram feeds of those who could.) After the show, Mr. Martin, whose European tour resumes in September, called Balmain's maximalist grandeur "the future." (He is the father of twin 7 year olds, so he has a vested interest in the bedazzled sportswear of tomorrow.) On his way out the door, he shared a few thoughts on the collection.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Just months after they started dating more than two years ago, Ally Jane Grossan and Nabil Ayers felt certain they were headed for marriage, and it was with as much surety that they didn't want their wedding to feel formulaic and familiar. "We wanted to get married somewhere that's isn't a wedding factory," said Ms. Grossan, a founder of Brooklyn FI, a financial planning firm geared to creatives and tech entrepreneurs in New York. "It's always the same: a beautiful space, flowers and salmon or chicken, and we just wanted to do something that wasn't that." By many markers, the couple's evening wedding on Thursday, Dec. 20, in the Masonic Lodge at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery could not be typecast. "I don't know why, I've always loved cemeteries," said Ms. Grossan, 30, "Pere Lachaise in Paris is one of my favorite places; Green Wood in Brooklyn. I don't think they're morbid. I think they're beautiful." Mr. Ayers, 46, agreed: "It's like a beautiful park." It was at another wedding reception in June 2016 at House of Yes, an events space in Bushwick, Brooklyn, where Mr. Ayers first spotted Ms. Grossan. "I remember thinking, who is that beautiful woman standing there?" he said. The two were in attendance to celebrate the marriage of respective co workers: Anna Bond with whom Mr. Ayers worked at 4AD, an independent record label where he is currently the United States label manager, and the groom, J. Edward Keyes, who was Ms. Grossan's then boss at Bandcamp, a self publishing music platform where she was a senior editor. Mr. Ayers waited to make his move until he saw Ms. Grossan chatting with Joan LeMay, a friend from Seattle, where from 1997 to 2008, he ran Sonic Boom Records and was a drummer in indie rock bands like the Long Winters. Mr. Ayers greeted his friend, who introduced him to Ms. Grossan. "My first impression was that he was wearing this fabulous suit with cool glasses," she said of Mr. Ayers's signature oversize frames. The pair spoke for a few minutes before rejoining the party, and then found each other again, talking for an hour against the backdrop of karaoke. They spoke about music. At 24, Ms. Grossan had been appointed the series editor of the publisher Bloomsbury's 33 1/3 Series, a collection of biographies about individual music albums and artists. "I, and anyone else who had ever heard about it, was impressed by that," Mr. Ayers said. Mr. Ayers is the son of the noted jazz composer and vibraphonist, Roy Ayers, with whom he has had a distant relationship. He was given a drum set at age 2 by his uncle, the jazz musician Alan Braufman, and has made music his lifeblood since. "I remember someone telling me that night: 'Oh that's Nabil Ayers from 4AD, that guy's a big shot,'" Ms. Grossan said. After the two parted ways, Ms. Grossan followed Mr. Ayers on Twitter in the Uber ride back to her home in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. The next day, Mr. Ayers reached out to Ms. LeMay with a request: Could she ask Ms. Grossan to pass along her email address? Once in hand, Mr. Ayers sent Ms. Grossan a casual message mentioning Skee Ball, which Grossan had revealed was a talent. Two days later, Mr. Ayers was surprised he hadn't heard back. "I thought it was weird. We'd gotten along well, and my friend had asked her if it was O.K. to get in touch." After giving the go ahead, Ms. Grossan thought it was odd that she hadn't heard from Mr. Ayers. "I checked the spam folder and was like, 'No way, this doesn't happen.'" There was Mr. Ayers's email from his 4AD address. Ms. Grossan responded immediately and the two made plans to meet the following Sunday for a drink. On the Thursday evening beforehand, however, Ms. Grossan was seated at a table in the Hammerstein Ballroom at the Libera Awards a ceremony honoring the indie music community and heard Mr. Ayers's name announced. She looked up to see him walking on stage to accept an award on behalf of the singer/songwriter Grimes for the video "Kill V. Maim." Ms. Grossan emailed him: "Short and sweet great speech." They found each other after the program and Ms. Grossan invited Mr. Ayers to join a group heading to a karaoke bar (note: for how much karaoke appears in this story, the groom does not particularly enjoy it). There, jammed into a bench with industry peers, Mr. Ayers was enchanted as Ms. Grossan sang the grim, rapid fire lyrics to System of a Down's "Chop Suey" with perfect elocution. "She took her shoes off for the song, and I was like, 'Woah, she's really going to do it,'" Mr. Ayers said. "I was really impressed." The group dispersed and Ms. Grossan and Mr. Ayers wound up at New Wonjo in Koreatown, talking over cold noodles late into the night. That night the couple kissed for the first time. Like the tongue twisting lyrics to "Chop Suey," the relationship moved at a heady clip. On an early date, Ms. Grossan mentioned that her favorite album was Hole's "Celebrity Skin;" several weeks later, on her birthday in July, Mr. Ayers gave her a copy in vinyl. That month, the pair decided on impulse that Ms. Grossan would be Mr. Ayers's date to a September wedding in Paris. And in October, Mr. Ayers met Ms. Grossan's father, the television producer Mark Grossan, in a hot tub during Orange County's Beach Goth music festival. By Christmas, they had plans for Ms. Grossan to move into Mr. Ayers's Brooklyn Heights apartment when her lease was up in May. In early 2018, Mr. Ayers began looking for rings to propose to Ms. Grossan. Once he found one a vintage emerald cut diamond with two baguettes that reminded him of the Art Deco angles of the Chrysler Building he put his plan in motion. He had arranged to have Julien Baker, Ms. Grossan's favorite musician, perform a private serenade during the Sasquatch Music Festival in George, Wash., on May 25, 2018. But the couple was running late that day. Ms. Grossan got her first speeding ticket while they were en route to the Gorge Ampitheater from Seattle. She was frazzled as Mr. Ayers hurried her through security, texting with Ms. Baker's manager about the mere minutes they had before the musician was due on stage. Telling Ms. Grossan they were hurrying to meet a friend at a backstage video shoot, Mr. Ayers wove them through the 20,000 person crowd, past the tour buses, and around a bend behind the stage. There, they found Ms. Baker and her violinist on a cliff overlooking the gorge. She started playing "Love Me Tender" by Elvis. When the violin solo began, Mr. Ayers dropped to one knee and asked Ms. Grossan to marry him. "Each of you are glowing tonight, and the love of life that you are share with each other helps to light this world around us," said the officiant, Rabbi Michele Ellise Lenke, under a white huppah in the temple room, which was a vision in crimson, from carpet to walls, with a Masonic Eastern Star hanging in the center. "Julien Baker may sing about turning the lights out," the rabbi said, "but my wish for you is to keep shining bright." In his vows, Mr. Ayers spoke of his respect for Ms. Grossan's drive and ambition, and called her his motivation in life. "I've always been a happy person," he said. "It's become clear to me that you've always been a happy person. So it's hard to believe that I would meet someone who has made me infinitely happier, but you've done that." Ms. Grossan, who is taking her husband's last name, praised his accomplishments and his "infectious warmth." "Waiters, bartenders, shopkeepers and strangers we meet are immediately drawn to you," she said. "It's like the whole world is completely in love with you, but not as much as me. I vow to protect and cherish that feeling." In toasts over dinner in the building's Eastern Star Room, where guests drank sparkling Topo Chico water, natural libations from Silverlake's Psychic Wines, and ate a Mediterranean buffet feast, Mr. Ayers was referred to by a co worker, Gabe Spierer, as "the nicest guy in rock." ("Not only rock, but one of the nicest guys in earth, wind and water," Matt Berninger, the frontman for the rock band the National amended later in the evening). Mr. Ayers's mother Louise Vesper, a former ballet dancer, recalled seeing the body language between the couple for the first time, and praised the fact that "in their busy lives, they still make time for their parents." The party moved back across the hall to the Masonic Temple for dancing, and then onto an after party at Brass Monkey for karaoke, of course.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Tom Kennedy, who earnestly shook the hands of losers and bestowed gee whiz jollity on winners during a nearly 30 year career hosting television game shows, died on Oct. 7 at his home in Oxnard, Calif. He was 93. Mr. Kennedy's longest reign as quizmaster was on "Name That Tune," which was syndicated from 1974 to 1981. On that show, contestants guessed the titles of pop hits and American standards based on snippets played by a live band, or, more challengingly, a pianist hitting a handful of notes. While the music played, Mr. Kennedy performed an avuncular dance, twisting his wrists and tapping his feet. Then, index cards in hand, he rendered the verdict on contestants' answers. In one segment of the show, he ceremonially gave winners 100 bills one by one. Prizes might also include a new Datsun car or an 11 day trip to Hawaii to "discover the aloha spirit." Contestants would shriek, and Mr. Kennedy would gently encourage them. His characteristic remarks included "Isn't that something?" and "She likes this game as much as I do."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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Jessica Brown Findlay, left, and Kylie Bunbury in "Brave New World," a new TV adaptation of the novel, unfolding in a society that seems to have cured all social ills. On Wednesday, Peacock premieres an adaptation of Aldous Huxley's 1932 science fiction novel. The world the book anticipated designer drugs, casual sex, near instant gratification is already here. Imagine a society that has solved the problems of overpopulation and environmental collapse. Crime is a nonissue, as are homelessness and hunger. Racism? Sexism? Homophobia? Sorted. Science has conquered disease and disability. Everyone has useful work, perfect skin, total emotional equilibrium. Every day is a pleasure. Every night is a party. Pop quiz: Is this a paradise? Or a prison? Answer: It's the social science backdrop for "Brave New World," the flagship drama from Peacock, NBC's streaming service. All nine episodes are available on Wednesday. Based on Aldous Huxley's alarmingly prescient 1932 novel of free love and social control, it's a dystopia dressed up as a utopia. Or vice versa. "It seems perfect," said Jessica Brown Findlay, who plays the geneticist Lenina Crowne. "But the minute you scratch the surface, you start to discover stuff." "But yeah, a couple of days there?" she added. "That would be great." Prestige television likes its glimpses of the future and those futures usually skew dark: "Westworld," "Black Mirror," "The Handmaid's Tale." But "Brave New World," which most viewers will remember vaguely if at all from some high school or college syllabus, presents a more ambivalent prospect and particular challenges. Here's one: How do you take a nearly 90 year old novel, a literary crystal ball so dead on that many of its predictions (chemical birth control, mood stabilizers, genetic engineering) have already come true, and still make it feel like the future? A collaboration between Universal Content Productions, which acquired the rights to the novel, and Amblin Entertainment, brought on for their world building chops, "Brave New World" began at Syfy, then moved to USA, before landing at Peacock, shedding story and concept and the occasional writer along the way. "What often happens when you have big IP, you keep swinging until you get it right," said Dawn Olmstead, the president of Universal Content Productions. The showrunner David Wiener ("Homecoming," "Fear the Walking Dead") apparently had the solution, situating the social theory within a love triangle. The theory part he explained this way: "Huxley," he said, "was very afraid of a world in which people would become so sexually stimulated, so pharmacologically numb and so distracted by entertainment and media, that they would fail to look within and beyond themselves in uncomfortable ways." So the future is now? Eager for a holiday, Lenina accompanies Bernard Marx (Harry Lloyd), an administrator with a thing for turtlenecks, on a pleasure tour of the Savage Lands. A living history park for the upper classes, the Savage Lands offer playlets based on antiquated customs marriage, consumerism. Did I mention that everyone in New London speaks in clipped British accents while the Savage Lands dialect is strictly American? When the holiday goes wrong the Savage Lands has a sedition issue Bernard and Lenina escape with the help of a sweaty, stubbly John (Alden Ehrenreich) and his raspy, bottle blond mom (Demi Moore). John returns with them to New London and he, Lenina and Bernard, each of them grasping for greater human connection, form the basic geometry. (No prize for guessing who she chooses, but here's a hint: His genes still encode body hair.) To envision New London and the Savage Lands and optical interfaces between (in New London, everyone plugs into the internet via biomorphic contact lenses), the show hired the production designer David Lee ("Watchmen"). "Huxley's world, I mean, it's a design opportunity beyond belief," Lee said. He and his team wanted to avoid the look of other films and series, though they did reference "Blade Runner" for its scale, he said, and "Gattaca" for its sleek modernism. Mostly, Lee looked to Brutalism Oscar Niemeyer's Brasilia, Carlo Scarpa's elegant interiors, Soviet monuments that stretch heavenward. Built of gently curved concrete, which can glow warm or cool depending on the lighting, New London's buildings look both seductive and unyielding, as though Le Corbusier's studio had taken on a commission for a high end spa (in a good way). The visual references for the Savage Lands: trailer parks and decayed Walmarts. The costumes, at least a thousand of them, also split the difference between modernism and futurism. Huxley had an obsession with zippers, and the costume designer Susie Coulthard honored it. But she embedded those zippers in vanguard materials, partnering with the Swiss textile innovators Jakob Schlaepfer on fabrics that have an oily or glassine appearance. A few outfits are made of balloon latex. "I felt so immersed in what I was doing by what I was wearing," Brown Findlay, a veteran of period shows like "Downton Abbey" and "Harlots" said. "That's saying something when you've worn a lot of huge giant corseted dresses." Huxley's technology needed updates even beyond textiles, mostly because a lot of what he imagined (videoconferencing, television, test tube babies) has already come to pass. Even his self driving aircraft are in the works. The novel's utopian vision, with its ugly flares of racism and misogyny, also required renovation. "The book's hugely problematic," Wiener said. So the show pivoted toward equality, race bending and gender flipping several of the supporting characters. "It turns out there's nothing about those characters that necessarily needed to be white or male," Wiener said. The main characters have undergone some changes, too. Lenina, a cheerful sex bunny in the book, has been granted interiority. Pompous Bernard has softened. In the novel, John is prissy and deeply neurotic, anti sex and anti fun. "It'd be a little like taking Mike Pence to New London," Wiener quipped. "No one would want to watch that." So Ehrenreich's John has loosened up and muscled up, though he remains extremely emo. Ehrenreich, best known as the titular swashbuckler in "Solo," prefers to describe John as romantic. "The only thing he has to hold onto in is his ardent belief in a deep, emotional love," he said. If the novel traffics mostly in satire, the tone here is more ambivalent. It gets to have its promiscuity what is prestige TV, after all, without the occasional orgy? and moralize about it, too. Maybe you will share that ambivalence. After all, a society organized around pleasure consequence free sex, party drugs, renewable fashion doesn't sound terrible. "There were definitely moments on set where we were like, this is pretty good," Ehrenreich said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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Renovation is often blamed for breaking up relationships. But for one new couple, it offered a crash course in how to compromise especially after their home was destroyed. For Edward and Sally Yedid, designing a home was an essential part of building their relationship. In May 2015, when they happened to meet at a friend's dinner party in Paris, he was a partner at the architecture and design firm Grade and was living in New York, and she was working as a product designer in London. "We sat next to each other," said Ms. Yedid, 32, and discovered a shared passion for art and design. "That was that." Edward and Sally Yedid bought and renovated their duplex apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan during the early months of their relationship. They quickly found themselves in a delirious long distance relationship, continually crossing the Atlantic to visit each other. "It was a lot of air miles," Ms. Yedid said. As the weeks turned into months, they began dreaming of living together in Manhattan. That meant thinking about real estate. "We realized we were going to make this work," said Mr. Yedid, 41. "So we started looking at apartments." Mr. Yedid, a native New Yorker, was living in a one bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side. But the couple wanted more space: They had already started talking about having children together and, as designers, they both relished the idea of a gut renovation. Five months after they met, they found a 2,100 square foot duplex in a co op building a block from Central Park, on the Upper East Side. "It hadn't been touched since 1968, the year the building was built," Mr. Yedid said, and it seemed to be crying out for an overhaul. They closed on the apartment in early 2016 for 2.3 million, a month after getting engaged. Then they got to work on the design. Although they agreed on a lot, they also discovered they had some stylistic differences. "She's more arty and quirky," Mr. Yedid said. "I'm more streamlined and elegant in what I like." After long conversations about the design details down to the location and color of the light switches they found the middle ground: a calm, pared down design scheme awash in light grays and textural materials that could be combined with eye catching furniture and art. They began construction that June and completely changed the layout of the space. On the first floor, they created an entrance gallery with a powder room behind a mirrored door; a large living and dining room; and a kitchen open to a family room with custom millwork panels and cabinetry, which can be closed off with hidden pocket and panel doors. A new sculptural staircase leads upstairs, where there is a master suite and a second bedroom with an en suite bathroom. Throughout, the Yedids sought to make the relatively low ceilings, which are just over eight feet, appear taller by using full height doors and doorways. "We wanted to make it feel as tall as possible, so we didn't use any crown or base molding," Mr. Yedid said. Instead, "we used these three quarter inch reveals," where the walls meet the ceiling, floor and millwork elements. The total cost was about 1.5 million, and the Yedids moved into their completed apartment that December. "Sally's mom was staying with us," Mr. Yedid recalled, and one night "she heard water running." There was no visible leak in their apartment, so Ms. Yedid went out to the hallway. "There was the old mail chute," she said, "and there was literally a waterfall coming down it." A pipe had burst above them, but the shut off valve was in the retail store on the ground floor, which was closed. By the time the water was turned off, hours later, it was too late. The Yedids moved out for nine months as their apartment was demolished and then rebuilt with insurance money. While living in temporary rentals, they got married and continued to focus on the positives. For instance, after their three month trial run in the apartment, they now had the opportunity to tweak some of the finishes. They adjusted the color of some woodwork and wrapped the family room desk and upper kitchen cabinets in cream colored polyurethane leather, and the gallery closet doors in Ultrasuede for a softer look and feel. They also used the time to round out their collection of furniture and art. "We wanted an accumulation from our travels," Ms. Yedid said, "so that each piece reminded us of a place we've visited or good times we've had" at flea markets, galleries and art fairs in cities like London, Paris, Venice and Miami.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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But not all banks report property tax payments on the form they generate, Form 1098. Wells Fargo and Quicken Loans say they do report property tax payments on the form. And no, alas, you cannot call them up and ask them to add whatever you are paying on your own to what was already sent from the escrow account this year. They will not adjust the figure. Apparently, though, there is no legal requirement for a bank to report property taxes paid from an escrow account at all. Bank of America and Chase do not report it. Bank of America was fulfilling requests for additional property tax payments from people who already had property tax bills in hand, but it stopped doing so on Tuesday. Also, here's an alert for a possible future headache: If you do prepay and have a mortgage and an escrow account, it may be a hassle (or impossible) to get the bank to adjust the original 2018 property tax payment schedule that it set on your behalf. You will want to let the bank know what you did and ask it to make whatever adjustments it can. So people who want to prepay before Sunday but avoid trouble with the I.R.S. are faced with an interesting set of questions. If you're sure that your jurisdiction has officially assessed taxes that you can prepay and deduct this year, but you have a mortgage with Wells Fargo or Quicken Loans, you will probably have no problem if the I.R.S. hassles you about differing amounts on different forms. But would the agency also then help itself to a look at other parts of your tax return? And have you toed the line on some of those other parts, or stepped over it? People who have mortgages with Bank of America and Chase and may feel they are in the clear because of a lack of conflicting tax forms, even if their local taxing authority has not been precise on whether prepayments fall in line with the guidance that the I.R.S. issued this week. But beware: If your property tax deduction is much higher in 2017 than it was in 2016 without your having changed residences, that could be its own flag for some line of audit sniffing code that the I.R.S. has written or will write in the next few weeks.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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In 2020, wild fluctuations in the stock market caused by the pandemic turned millions of people into opportunistic investors. After stocks plunged in March, experienced traders and Nasdaq novices poured their dollars into buzzy tech companies like Tesla and Zoom, as well as businesses bludgeoned by Covid restrictions, including airlines, restaurants and cruises. To reflect a year of volatility and impulsive investments, Robinhood, the popular trading app that has spurred controversy by marketing itself to young people, released a year end data dump for its users. A news release promised that the Robinhood Recap would be a "special personalized experience that will take you through your investing journey this year from views to trades, your most memorable investing moments, large or small, and other milestones along the way." Robinhood's wrap up available to anyone who had an active account before Dec. 15 showed the stocks users purchased, dividends and interest earned, which stock in their portfolio they clicked on the most and other data. Some people praised the recap's aesthetic and said they enjoyed finding out how early they were to adopt Robinhood. "We've been delighted to hear from many customers who enjoyed taking a look back at their year in investing, from saving screenshots of their recaps to sharing on social media," a company spokesman wrote in an email. But for most people, personal financial decisions aren't as readily shareable as, say, their most played artist of the year. They're inherently private. Kareem Rahma, 34, a comedian and entrepreneur, wrote in an email that he would "never share this information publicly as it is much more sensitive than my listening habits on Spotify." "Tesla just in general has been growing like crazy, and obviously their stock has taken off, so it was kind of funny how apparently often I checked up with it," said Eric Milligan, an information technologist. Jordan Bishop, 29, was also surprised by that slide in his recap. "Before you know it, you've checked it 10 times in a day, and it's giving you a little dopamine boost every time," he said. "Robinhood wrapped made me realize I was very obsessed over every dollar up or down in the market and it was just very unhealthy," Rajat Kamboj, a 20 year old college student, wrote in an email. His recap told him that he'd checked the value of his Tesla stock 18,656 times in 2020, averaging more than 50 times per day. ("You're just a little attached," his recap read.) "As a self directed brokerage, we do not give investment advice," a Robinhood spokesman said in a statement. "The goal with Robinhood Recap was to celebrate milestones and give people a broader view on their activity over the year, helping them frame their behavior over the long term." The recap became a meme on the acerbic finance focused subreddit WallStreetBets; one user created a parodic version of a recap post, revealing extensive losses. ("You made some risky calls...") "This year included an unprecedented surge in retail investing," the Robinhood spokesman wrote. "We welcomed millions of new customers to Robinhood, about half of whom were investing for the first time. With Robinhood Recap, we sought to remind both new and longtime customers about their investing journey." Robinhood added three million users this year, bringing its total to 13 million. The app has become a favorite of young and inexperienced investors, enticed by no fee trading, offers of free stocks and an engaging user interface that uses what a New York Times report in July described as the "Silicon Valley playbook of behavioral nudges and push notifications." The Times article stated that Robinhood's users trade risky products at a faster pace than clients of major brokerage firms; for example, Robinhood users bought and sold 88 times as many risky options contracts as Charles Schwab clients did. Several people said that the recap seems to fit into the company's broader strategy of positioning itself as a lifestyle experience, rather than just another boring trading platform, in order to appeal to investors who are less sophisticated. "Their bright and colorful U.I., the ease of access to opening margin accounts and access to options, and now Robinhood Recap give me an idea that they're trying to appeal to younger people," Luke Thornburg, 19, wrote in an email. "These younger people who are generally inexperienced and more risk tolerant might choose Robinhood because of these things." He said that he had lost money on risky options trading when he first began using the app. "Spotify seems to be the clear kind of comparison there," said Mr. Bishop, the founder of a personal finance website focused on air travel. "I just find it fascinating, and a little dangerous, how, you know, personal finance and social media are blending together in this way."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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The Staatsballett Berlin rehearsing "Swan Lake" in February. Chloe Lopes Gomes, in the right foreground, has said that she was told to apply white makeup before the rehearsal. Chloe Lopes Gomes had done her hair and makeup and fixed the feathered swan headdress in place before the rehearsal in February. Then, she later recounted, she repeatedly dipped a wet sponge into a pot of white pancake makeup, applying it carefully to her face, neck and upper body. Ms. Lopes Gomes, who is French, is the only Black female dancer at the Staatsballett Berlin, and just a few days earlier, she said in an interview, one of the company's ballet mistresses had told her to use the white makeup to color her skin for "Swan Lake." "I felt humiliated," Ms. Lopes Gomes said in an interview. "But what could I say? Until fairly recently, it has been common practice in ballet companies for the female dancers in ballets like "Swan Lake," "Giselle" and "La Bayadere" to apply a whitening makeup in order to look like beings from another world, be they swans, sylphides, spirits or Shades. Since most ballet companies until relatively recently included few Black dancers in their ranks, little thought was given to this; it was simply part of the creation of a uniform aesthetic effect. But as companies have become both more diverse and more sensitive to racial issues, most have stopped the practice, or left it up to individual dancers. The Dutch National Ballet, American Ballet Theater and the Royal Ballet dispensed with the practice more than a decade ago. Ms. Lopes Gomes reported the incident to Johannes Ohman, at that time the co artistic director, who issued a strict directive that she was not to use the makeup. But after he left the company in January, Ms. Lopes Gomes said she was told to use it again. This is one of many racially insensitive incidents that Ms. Lopes Gomes said she experienced during her two years at the Staatsballett Berlin. She said she had been too afraid of losing her job to speak out earlier, but has decided to now after being told in September that she was one of 12 dancers whose contracts are not being renewed at the end of this season. "I really hesitated about this because the ballet world is so small, and I'm scared I will never get another job," said Ms. Lopes Gomes. "But I want things to change; there are so few Black ballet dancers, and I don't want small Black girls to think, ballet isn't for me." Christiane Theobald, the ballet's artistic director, said in an interview that while she believes Ms. Lopes Gomes, she has been unable to corroborate her account. (Ms. Lopes Gomes said that Ms. Theobald, the deputy artistic director at the time, saw her wearing the whitening makeup after the February rehearsal and asked her why she was using it; Ms. Theobald said she has no memory of this encounter.) But several people affiliated with the company confirm they either saw Ms. Lopes Gomes with the makeup applied, or that she told them at the time about the ballet mistress's directive. All asked to remain anonymous, saying they were afraid they would lose their jobs if they commented publicly. The practice of female dancers powdering or painting their bodies to look whiter probably dates from the mid 19th century, when romantic ballets like "Giselle" or "La Sylphide" popularized ethereal creatures who were variously ghosts, spirits or enchanted beings like women who were turned into swans. Behind the idea is another one that has long been fundamental to classical dance; the idea of aesthetic and stylistic uniformity. The female ensemble in many ballets is a multiplied image of the ballerina the Swan Princess and the swans, Giselle and the Wilis and the idea of conformity to a specific physical ideal is ingrained in the art form. For those who believe in this historical ideal, the act of applying whitening body makeup is simply part of an overall aesthetic and theatrical effect, as much part of the costume as the tutu. Benjamin Millepied, who stopped the practice of using either whitening paint or blackface during his tenure as director of the Paris Opera Ballet, said that defenders of these traditions always said that the dancer was simply playing a character. But it was not a valid argument in a context in which one race had oppressed another, he said. "This armylike idea of everyone in unison, everyone looking identical, is a major problem with ballet," he said. "It is an incorrect view; what makes the scenes work in 'Swan Lake' or 'La Bayadere' is great dancing, a sum of everyone's energy and individuality, not a display of pancaked white people." The Paris Opera is waiting for the results of an external inquiry into racial diversity, commissioned by its new director, Alexander Neef, before setting a firm policy. But Aurelie Dupont, the current director of the Paris Opera Ballet, has told dancers not to use whitening makeup in the company's upcoming production of "La Bayadere." Both Ted Brandsen, the director of Dutch National, and Kevin O'Hare, the director of the Royal Ballet, said they felt it was more important for their dancers to feel accepted than to adhere to a traditional idea of uniformity. "It's really important to recognize that we're in the 21st century," Mr. Brandsen said, "and that ballet is an art form performed and enjoyed by people from many cultural backgrounds." It is still difficult to be a Black ballerina, said several dancers of color who were interviewed for this article. Most said they often felt they had to work harder than their white peers to prove their capabilities, or to change stereotyped ideas about what they could dance. But none had been asked to use body makeup, and each dancer praised her company's current efforts to be more conscious of the issues around diversity and inclusiveness. (Several dancers mentioned that their companies now encouraged them to use tights and pointe shoes that matched their skin tones, rather than the standard pink.) Ms. Lopes Gomes said that, in her case, from the moment she joined the company, she was picked on in rehearsals by one of the company's ballet mistresses. "She would say, when you're not in line or not on the music, we see only you because you're Black," she said. "It was upsetting." Several of Ms. Lopes Gomes's colleagues said they had heard similar remarks directed at her. Mr. Ohman, the former co artistic director, confirmed that Ms. Lopes Gomes had approached him in 2018 to report that a ballet mistress had told her to apply white makeup before performing. The choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, who staged his version of "La Bayadere" for the Staatsballett in 2018, said that he had not witnessed any discriminatory behavior. The company said the ballet mistress had declined a request for an interview. Ms. Lopes Gomes said that she believes her dismissal to be racially motivated. Ms. Theobald, who expressed her dismay and regret at Ms. Lopes Gomes's account during an interview, denied this, saying the contracts of the 12 dancers had not been renewed for "artistic reasons." But Ms. Theobald said that, on the basis of Ms. Lopes Gomes's account, the ballet mistress had been subject to "disciplinary measures." For legal reasons, she said, she was unable to specify what these are. On Monday, the company issued a statement on its website that did not refer explicitly to Ms. Lopes Gomes's assertions, but stated that "the racist and discriminatory behavior that was brought to light in our company deeply moves us and shows that the necessary skills and tools to deal with issues of discrimination need to be worked on thoroughly to instigate profound change."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Credit...Brad Torchia for The New York Times Isabelle Huppert: 'The Best Way to Please Is Not to Please' BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. As she made for her booth, tucked into a remote corner of the Blvd Lounge at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel here, Isabelle Huppert expertly dodged the furtive stares of a roomful of diners. She had arrived on the arm of her publicist, who vanished as discreetly as he had arrived, leaving Ms. Huppert on her own to sit with a reporter, sip her cappuccino and ponder a question: Is she vain? Brusquely, she picked up a knife, inspecting her reflection in its blade. "Is this what you mean?" she asked lightly, brushing aside a stray wisp of hair. Was she being coy? Hard to say. Ambiguity, after all, is Ms. Huppert's stock in trade. It is part of the screen arsenal she has deployed in more than 100 films during the course of a four decade career, and it is central to her role in "Elle," a French language psychological thriller in which she, as the victim of a vicious rape, responds with an eerie admixture of horror and calm. Her performance, which earned her a best actress award at the Golden Globes in January, drew fresh waves of attention when she was nominated this month for an Academy Award, an honor she seems to regard with a mix of anxiety and cool entitlement. Would she bring home Oscar gold on Sunday night? "Yeah, it's possible," she ventured, adding definitively after a pause, "Yes, for me it's time." That near boast, tempered by a flicker of amusement, hinted at the wickedly subversive streak that has made Ms. Huppert a muse to an international roster of directors, including Claude Chabrol, Otto Preminger, Bertrand Tavernier and Paul Verhoeven. Mr. Verhoeven, of "Basic Instinct" and "Showgirls" notoriety, directed Ms. Huppert in "Elle." Combined with an apparently uncontrived chic, that subversiveness has lately transformed Ms. Huppert, who is mostly known in the United States to an art house crowd, into a red carpet diva and the unlikely darling of the fashion set. Never mind that Ms. Huppert, 63, long married and the mother of three, plays a grandmother in "Elle." Or that in her native Paris she has long been a front row fixture at Dior, Chanel and Armani. When the cameras closed in on her as she claimed her Globe, writers breathlessly anatomized every facet of her look. As the popular Who What Wear website effusively reported, "Her incredibly chic midriff baring top and skirt along with an earful of edgy Repossi ear cuffs have landed the actress on a number of best dressed lists and left the internet buzzing." The Fashion Law, another widely read blog, posted, "It is difficult not to notice that Huppert is becoming a favorite not only of critics and fashion industry insiders but of those on the periphery, as well." Adding her voice to the mix, Vanessa Friedman, the New York Times fashion critic, posted on Twitter on the night of the Globes, "Whoever made Isabelle Huppert's dress should take credit ASAP." Ms. Huppert had selected that dress, Armani Prive, with care. "It's important how personal and singular you feel in what you wear," she said. "It's important that you keep your own identity." Would she turn up again in Armani on Oscar night? "I might," she offered playfully. Whether she is captured on camera in a cream colored trouser suit, as she was at the Los Angeles Film Critics Association awards in January; in a full sleeve high neck Chloe gown at the British Academy Film Awards this month; or in a pale blue trouser suit, snapped alongside Nicole Kidman on the day they received their Oscar nominations, Ms. Huppert projects a singular authority. "She has what the French used to call chien," said Simon Doonan, the creative ambassador for Barneys New York. He was alluding to the blend of tough chic and barely concealed sensuality that, Mr. Doonan maintains, defines Ms. Huppert's allure. And in viewing her image on Instagram, Ryan Lobo, a designer of the New York label Tome, responded with a single word: "Queen." On Instagram, Ms. Huppert is followed by no less a fashion personage than Nicolas Ghesquiere, the creative director of Louis Vuitton. Still, the style world's renewed devotion has left Ms. Huppert nonplused. "After all," she said, a bit disingenuously, "I'm not a fashion person." She had dressed for breakfast at the Beverly Wilshire in a crisply tailored jacket, its deep green and coral pattern setting off her shoulder length russet hair. Who designed the jacket? Her features furrowed briefly as she removed it to check the label, exclaiming with what seemed genuine surprise: "It's J. Crew. Can you imagine?" The jacket, which she wore over a pale coral Chloe blouse and slim trousers, was consistent with a style Ms. Huppert has refined over time, a look that is mostly defined by slim trousers, tailored jackets and coats, understated evening wear, and the occasional provocative accent (those tiny Repossi cuffs snaking up her ear). Immaculately assembled as they may be, her ensembles are "worn with the effortlessness that Frenchwomen seem to naturally possess," Allyson Payer of Who What Wear posted. It is the kind of assessment that Ms. Huppert is apt to greet with one of her ironic smiles. "Because I'm French, people have a certain idea of my style," she said. "I'm not quite sure what that means. And not quite sure what it is that I'm supposed to represent." There are times, it seems, when Ms. Huppert is all potential, her aloof, sometimes opaque, expression "resting bitch face," as the fashion tribes would have it acting as a potent draw. "It's intrinsic to her, that certain enigmatic je ne sais quoi," Mr. Doonan said. If her mystery tends to mesmerize devout fashionistas, it's not for the first time. Ms. Huppert herself is well aware that she has long fascinated fashion photographers, among them Richard Avedon, Guy Bourdin, Helmut Newton, Hedi Slimane and their illustrious like. "Her face is like a window, it's so transparent," said Peter Lindbergh, who has shot her many times. "When you photograph people, often that window is closed. Some people let you in, but there is a limit. But Isabelle, she is like glass." She also has a chameleonlike quality that was captured in 2005 in a show of her portraits at MoMA PS1, subsequently gathered in book form, that volume, like the show, aptly titled, "Isabelle Huppert: Woman of Many Faces." Perhaps most famously, she posed, freckle faced, for Newton wearing a white bathrobe that opened to expose a sliver of nipple, her expression in that instant a disconcerting blend of innocence and insolence. Her face, she knows, can be a difficult read. "Most of the time it is more like a white canvas on which you can project many things," she said. "I wouldn't say it's inexpressive, but it is undefined enough that it can be shaped and defined by whoever looks at you." She laughed. "In the end something that could be seen as a fault turns out to be an advantage," she said. However malleable her features, however vulnerable she may seem onscreen, Ms. Huppert wants you to know that ultimately she is the one in charge. "I play a role, but I don't transform myself entirely," she said. "The irony you see, the humor, the way of being cool, it's me more than anyone else, I have to say." Some take it for perversity, a trait that has marked her since she appeared onscreen in the early 2000s as the self mutilating, sadomasochistic antiheroine of the erotic thriller "The Piano Teacher." "What people call perverse and outside the margins, it has nothing to do with perversity," Ms. Huppert said. "It's more about doing one thing and maybe thinking another. That's what we all do, and that's what you see in me on film." Nor does she, in her acting, make an effort to seduce. "I'm not really interested in pleasing," she said in her teasing contralto. "I think the best way to please is not to please." That refusal is one source of a sexual charisma that can defy analysis. "I don't use the usual seductive tools," Ms. Huppert said. "My sexuality is almost cerebral. It's never, 'Look at me, see how sexy I am.'" On the screen she is permitted an erotic latitude not generally available to her contemporaries, in particular Meryl Streep, with whom she is often, if misguidedly, compared. As Michele in "Elle," Ms. Huppert pursues her own sexual agenda, whatever the cost. In a recent fashion feature in The Reporter, she comes off as a steamy, self obsessed vixen, aptly costumed in form fitting black leather. She is also permitted a display of self possession that doesn't quite square with the sexual hunger she is sometimes asked to portray on film. Some call it coldness a Brechtian detachment, as Mr. Verhoeven remarked or a chilly reflection of self regard. Does that translate to vanity? Ms. Huppert wondered, returning to a topic that she clearly finds absorbing. "If it does, I don't care."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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LONDON On the Thursday before Easter, Prime Minister Boris Johnson was discharged from the intensive care unit after three days there with Covid 19. "Boris is out (now that really is a Good Friday)" cheered The Sun newspaper the next morning. Other outlets lingered on his "good spirits." The same day, Britain's death toll from the coronavirus pandemic had soared to some 8,000, with nearly 900 fatalities in the previous 24 hours. Throughout Easter weekend, gushy details of Mr. Johnson's get well messages from his pregnant fiancee and the films he watched in the hospital jangled against the avalanche of misery and grief that rocked the country: lives lost, the trauma and exhaustion of treating the afflicted and the cruelty of people dying alone. Everyone including his critics was relieved that Mr. Johnson was out of the danger zone. But thousands were dying across the country, most likely as a consequence of mismanagement under his watch. The dissonance became too much for me. Of course, many people were rightly concerned about Mr. Johnson's health: A national leader in critical condition is an unsettling jolt, especially in the midst of an anxiety drenched pandemic. But in Britain's news media, the prime minister's condition seemed to crowd out concern for others, and the exaltations of Mr. Johnson dampened scrutiny of his government's failures. High among these was the government's inability to source enough essential protective equipment for National Health Service staff, in part because it missed three opportunities to take part in a European Union bulk buying scheme. The government had made bold promises to test 100,000 people a day for the coronavirus by the end of the month, but was struggling to hit a tenth of that and was not ramping up testing for front line health staff or care workers, much less other essential workers. And a month after pleading with British manufacturers to plug a vast gap in the supply of ventilators used to treat severe coronavirus cases, there had been little headway. In the days after Mr. Johnson's hospitalization, right wing commentators wrote fawningly of his noble, selfless attributes, claiming him truly loved by the people. Then there was the social media campaign: clapforBoris was boosted by journalists and politicians on Twitter. But it felt off key. It was an imitation of the national claps of appreciation for the N.H.S., a now weekly ritual in which people across the country step out of their self isolated homes and cheer on the people saving lives and caring for the sick. But while Britons would readily applaud the health service, a national treasure even in normal times, doing so for a leader was out of character. A Sun front page pronounced, "He stayed at work for you ... now pray at home for him." a play on the slogan used by health workers around the world treating coronavirus patients around the clock: "We stayed at work for you, you stay at home for us." But Mr. Johnson had set a terrible example at work, breezily claiming he'd shaken hands with Covid 19 patients, crowding into Parliament and undermining health messages with his joshing delivery. Meanwhile, dozens of doctors and nurses were dying of the virus, among them several of the thousands who had answered the government call to come out of retirement to work in the N.H.S. during the pandemic. Reports emerged of staff members "bullied and shamed" into treating Covid 19 patients without the equipment needed to protect themselves, which the World Health Organization had warned in early February would be needed in vast supply. When he left the hospital, Mr. Johnson praised the N.H.S. for saving his life, naming two nurses in particular both migrant workers. It jarred against his party's recent pledge to increase the annual surcharge non E.U. migrant workers pay to use the N.H.S. and extend it to E.U. arrivals after Brexit. Announcing the change last November, Matt Hancock, the health secretary, had tweeted, "It's the National Health Service not the International Health Service." The Conservatives had chronically underfunded the N.H.S. and made the migrants who work for it and were now dying for it feel like an unwelcome burden. But now, the party was loudly embracing the institution. The past week has seen claims that Mr. Johnson's illness spawned national cohesion after the messy divisions of the Brexit years. The Economist noted that the illness of a man who once divided the nation has united it. But amid unity in wishing him well, there is despair at a death toll now surpassing 12,000. And even that is an underestimate since it does not include deaths in the community or in care homes. The elderly, a group the government had promised to shield, have been exposed to risk and left painfully anxious about their situation some 4,000 may be dead. There are now fears that Britain may have Europe's worst death toll from the coronavirus, despite having had longer to prepare after watching the tragedies unfold in Italy and Spain. Experts cite an earlier lockdown, better planning, and strategies around community testing and contact tracing as some of the vital measures needed to manage the crisis. Some of these can and should still be put in place. But rather than focus laserlike on these urgent matters, Mr. Johnson's spinners and supporters in the press filled airtime by casting his health as a metaphor for the country's well being, his recovery as national resilience writ large. His leadership left Britain vulnerable and shamefully ill prepared, yet his popularity is rising. Thanks to cheering chunks of the national media, any blame will likely bounce off the prime minister as his terrifying brush with the virus is crafted into his comic hero superpower. 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.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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Each week, technology reporters and columnists from The New York Times review the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here. Greetings, carbon based lifeforms! I'm David Streitfeld, here in San Francisco to fill you in on a busy week in tech. I got umpteen dozen press releases, all of them about how new tech products and new tech people and new tech services will make you a better, happier, more successful person. To be honest, every week in tech is exactly like this. The future is full of promise, or at least promises. The present, however, can be brutal. To my mind, the week's most important tech story was the slaying of an 18 year old woman at a BART station in San Francisco's East Bay, just a few miles from Silicon Valley, as she was getting off a train. Nia Wilson was traveling with her older sisters Lahtifa and Nishiya when, in a shocking act of terror, a man slashed her neck. She died at the scene. Lahtifa Wilson was wounded. A transient with a history of violence has been arrested. How does this relate to tech? The murder happened in one of our most public spaces, the transportation system used by all but the wealthiest. And it's decaying visibly, rapidly, painfully. Every commute is an ordeal for BART's two million weekly users, with cars jammed beyond capacity. Trains are filled with trash, the homeless sprawl over the seats, and the system is increasingly unsafe. Right before Ms. Wilson's killing, there was another homicide. Right before that, there was an attack that might have prompted a death. (An investigation is ongoing.) Violent crime on BART is up 69 percent over the decade. Like New York's and Washington's subway systems, BART is falling apart. But even as public transit stumbles, another transportation story is playing out. Start ups are deploying motorized scooters across the country Charlotte, Baltimore, Cambridge generally on the principle that it is better to ask forgiveness than permission. They dump them on sidewalks, and people turn them on with an app. Bird, the leading scooter company, now has a valuation of 2 billion. It is less than a year old, but investors are convinced that sidewalks are the next road to riches. Supporters say the scooters are fun and sensible, and will help relieve congestion. Critics say that once again the public infrastructure is being carved up for private gain, and it's dangerous besides. Beverly Hills just banned scooters for six months, but that is an option that very few communities seem willing to take. All of this poses a fundamental question for Silicon Valley: As real life BART, traffic, the cost of living deteriorates, will people turn to tech in relief or in anger? Economic inequality stokes powerful emotions, especially when your nose is rubbed in it. There has already been one significant demonstration in San Francisco against the scooters. The scooter companies are part of Silicon Valley's push for driverless cars, which advocates say are on the verge of happening in a major way. As a result, my colleague Emily Badger reported, they advise holding off on big mass transit projects that may soon be unnecessary. Some futurists go further. Brad Templeton, a software architect, argues the subway should be paved over to transport autonomous vehicles instead. Readers commenting on the story smelled a rat. "Autonomous cars are the new mechanism to kick the can down the road further instead of dealing with current realities," wrote JeffB of Plano, Texas. "A reality where federal, state, and city governments are so dysfunctional and uncoordinated that they no longer have the political will to fund large infrastructure projects." San Francisco still has some political will left. A law was recently proposed to ban new corporate cafeterias in the city. The measure stems from the tax break that Twitter and other companies got for moving into a struggling part of town. Restaurants followed them, hoping to capitalize on the generous tech salaries and refined tech palates. But the employees generally ate in the cafeterias, and the restaurants failed. Aaron Peskin, the city supervisor who co sponsored the legislation, said he recognized it may be controversial, but that he wanted the tech companies to be more outward facing. He received the usual criticism on Twitter and in story comments, although I also saw one interesting counterproposal: Force the companies to open up their cafeterias to outsiders. If Twitter insists on supplying us with bile, the least it could do is subsidize our lunch. I have to get back to the press releases now, although I don't even understand the subject headings on announcements like this: "Hitachi Vantara Named a Leader in 2018 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Solid State Arrays." But that's my problem. For you, I've got more compelling reading: Facebook stock lost 120 billion in value on Wednesday afternoon after chief executive Mark Zuckerberg said its two billion users really needed to get a life. Kidding! All that really happened was its quarterly numbers came in a little short and Facebook said that they would not immediately get better, but Wall Street thought it was the end of the world. For those who can't get enough of tech's favorite whipping boy, Casey Newton of the Verge has an excellent daily newsletter discussing the day's social media tribulations.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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The New Eviction Moratorium: What You Need to Know The Trump administration has announced an order to suspend the possibility of eviction for millions of renters who have suffered financially because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the order was an emergency action, which it is entitled to take under the law. Here are the answers to questions that renters may have about the order, which is more expansive than the now expired moratorium that was part of the virus relief package this spring. We will add to this list as we learn more. Please email your questions to hubforhelp nytimes.com. None You need to have used your "best efforts" to obtain any and all forms of government rental assistance. None You can't "expect" to earn more than 99,000 in 2020, or 198,000 if you're married and filing a joint tax return. If you don't qualify that way, you could still be eligible if you did not need to report any income at all to the federal government in 2019 or if you received a stimulus check this year. None You must be experiencing a "substantial" loss of household income, a layoff or "extraordinary" out of pocket medical expenses (which the order defines as any unreimbursed expense likely to exceed 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income this year). None You have to be making your best efforts to make "timely" partial payments that are as close to the full amount due as "circumstances may permit," taking into account other nondiscretionary expenses. None Eviction would "likely" lead to either homelessness or your having to move to a place that was more expensive or where you could get sick from being close to others. A lot of that is pretty subjective. If it's a close call, who decides? Landlords who disagree with renters' self assessments could try to evict nonpaying tenants by arguing that they are not a "covered person" within the order's scope and dare them to fight back legally. Then it could be up to a housing court judge to decide if a renter is eligible or if the landlord can, in fact, evict. How do I prove to my landlord that I'm eligible? You can use the declaration form that the C.D.C. published on its website. Soon after the order appeared, the Legal Innovation and Technology lab at Suffolk University Law School created an interactive tool that can help people determine if they are eligible. It can also generate a declaration to give to a landlord. The sample declaration form does not say anything about whether I need to prove my hardship to my landlord. Should I attach bank statements or other documents? No, not to the declaration at least not at first. The way the order is written means you need not lay out specifics in your declaration, said Emily Benfer, a visiting professor of law at Wake Forest University. If the landlord challenges your initial assessment, however, you should provide "reasonable" specifics to prove your eligibility, according to senior administration officials who helped write the order. The order says every adult who is on the lease should draft and sign a separate declaration. I have a roommate. How do the rules work for us? The order does not deal with roommates directly, but the officials clarified that the income cap was 99,000 per roommate. As for who should pay what if just one person can't pay in full, the specifics may depend on the terms of the lease, any written agreement between you and your roommate, and applicable state or local law. Eric Dunn, director of litigation for the National Housing Law Project, said it was possible that housing court judges would interpret the order expansively in this context. For example, consider a scenario where one roommate would become homeless if evicted but the other could move in with parents in an uncrowded home. In that instance, he said, the second roommate could not truthfully sign the declaration. So would only the first roommate receive protection from the moratorium? "This would be an absurd result, and regulations should be interpreted to avoid absurd results," Mr. Dunn said. He predicted that courts would dismiss eviction cases filed against tenant households where at least one member has signed a declaration. I'm in a pretty bad way. Can I stretch the truth some? You shouldn't. The order makes a point of noting that the declaration "is sworn testimony, meaning that you can be prosecuted, go to jail or pay a fine if you lie, mislead or omit important information." What do I do with the declarations once they are done? Email, send or hand them to the landlord in a way that allows you to get proof that the landlord received them. That way, there will be no question as to whether you did what you were supposed to do. Make sure you keep a copy for yourself. Keep paying as much as you can. Otherwise, you risk failing the eligibility test, which says you should be trying to make partial payments to the best of your ability. Can the landlord still evict me for reasons other than nonpayment? Yes. All the usual rules about criminal behavior or disruptions or destruction of property still apply. And it's possible that a landlord will look hard for some other reason to start the eviction process, so it's wise to follow every term of the lease, as well as any other building or property rule. Amy Woolard, a lawyer and policy coordinator for the Legal Aid Justice Center in Charlottesville, Va., warned of one issue that she and her colleagues frequently see cited in eviction cases: people not on the lease who are living at the property. This could be an issue if you're hosting guests like a family member who has already been evicted elsewhere. Will interest or penalties accrue if I don't pay the rent in full? The order does not prevent landlords from charging fees, penalties or interest "under the terms of any applicable contract." Nor does it place any restrictions on how high they can go. Check your lease to see if there is any mention of such charges. Will I have to pay everything I owe all at once in January? You might. The order specifically mentions this possibility. And the National Rental Home Council, a trade group for landlords who own single family properties, said in a statement Wednesday that "once the moratorium expires, renters will owe back rent for several months." Does the order halt evictions that are already in process? Yes, according to administration officials. Does the order apply to every landlord and every residential renter in the country? No. Aside from the income caps, your local rules may apply instead. If you're in a state, territory or tribal area that already has a moratorium in place that provides the same or better level of protection, then that more local action will take its place. Local jurisdictions are also still free to impose stronger restrictions than the federal order. California's moratorium goes through the end of January, for example. The federal moratorium doesn't apply in American Samoa, though it will if it reports its first coronavirus cases. I'm living in a motel right now. Does the order apply to those properties? No. The order specifically excludes hotels and motels. What about Airbnb rentals and other similar properties? The order excludes any "guesthouse rented to a temporary guest or seasonal tenant as defined under the laws of the state, territorial, tribal or local jurisdiction." What if my landlord sends me an eviction notice anyway? Seek counsel. You can search for a low or no cost legal assistance office near you via the Legal Services Corporation's online map. Just Shelter, a tenant advocacy group, also offers information on local organizations that can help renters. A lawyer can also help if a landlord tries a different approach. For instance, a landlord might try to sue in small claims court over partial payments, without filing an eviction notice that might be illegal under the order, Mr. Dunn said. Does the order specify the size of the penalties that landlords may be subject to? Yes. An individual landlord could be subject to a fine up to 100,000 if no death (say from someone getting sick after eviction) results from the violation, or one year in jail, or both. If a death occurs, the fine rises to no more than 250,000. If it's an organization in violation, the fines are 200,000 or 500,000. The White House and the C.D.C. think so. It is possible that landlord industry groups or others will sue to stop it, in which case it will be up to the courts to decide. On Sept. 8, the New Civil Liberties Alliance challenged the moratorium in federal court in Atlanta. Could some local housing judges simply ignore the order? Lawyers on the ground say they would not be surprised to see that in smaller jurisdictions. "Then it would be up to the tenant to scrape together enough resources to try to file in federal court or seek an injunction from another authority in their state's judicial system," said Rebecca Maurer, a lawyer in Cleveland. Already, officials are issuing guidance that could lead to different paths for tenants. As my colleague Matthew Goldstein reported, in Missouri, some courts are allowing landlords to file for eviction but only if they state that the tenant has not handed over a declaration. In Michigan, administrators said some issues remained a matter of "judicial interpretation." When does the order take effect, and how long does it last? It takes effect as soon as it is published in the Federal Register. The order says that will happen on Sept. 4. The order applies through Dec. 31, and it's possible that it could be extended. I'm dizzy from all of the various local, state and federal orders. Is this the last of them? Maybe not. Congress could pass a new relief package that would supersede this order.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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WASHINGTON Facebook on Tuesday replaced its head of policy in the United States, Erin Egan, as the social network scrambles to respond to intense scrutiny from federal regulators and lawmakers. Ms. Egan, who is also Facebook's chief privacy officer, was responsible for lobbying and government relations as head of policy for the last two years. She will be replaced by Kevin Martin on an interim basis, the company said. Mr. Martin has been Facebook's vice president of mobile and global access policy and is a former Republican chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Ms. Egan will remain chief privacy officer and focus on privacy policies across the globe, Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesman, said. Elliot Schrage, Facebook's vice president of communications and public policy, said in a statement on Wednesday: "We need to focus our best people on our most important priorities. We are committed to rebuilding people's trust in how we handle their information, and Erin is the best person to partner with our product teams on that task."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Chadwick Boseman embodied a James Baldwin dictum: "History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history." Boseman carried our history insistently, imbuing titans of the real and imagined worlds with the best parts of himself. He recognized that they, too, make metaphors out of history even as it is being rewritten with every breath. He understood how exhausting it is to be made accountable minute by minute, how small almost all of us become inside that kind of accounting. What does it mean to be a cinematic citizen of the mind cheekbones writ large, smiling like a big idea? There's self possession in that understanding, broad shouldered chin to the sun. Restorer, re historicizer of the Black backdrop in America and elsewhere. What about masculinity and isolation? What about the unrelenting gravity of community expectations and aspirations? Right in the nexus of need, trying to Mashed Potato between expression, obligation, light bills and wonder. How does history render the heavy load of itself unto itself? In lead roles, Boseman mostly played the outlier: the one with conviction, the one with enough crust and wherewithal to understand that everybody from the high steppers to the low downs is made of antiquity, sunlight and iron. What happens with that mix is the real alchemy, and he used it to re dimension their largess and redefine their rough multitudes. The human capacity to harm other humans is as inexhaustible as gravity but not as inevitable. During the week I'm writing this, Jacob Blake was paralyzed when Kenosha, Wis., police officers shot him in the back seven times in front of his three children. And in the aftermath the W.N.B.A. and the N.B.A. and the M.L.S. and even the M.L.B. all refused to practice or play. And on the same day Jacob Blake was shot, Chadwick Boseman was dying from an illness that was nobody else's business.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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For only 45,000, you and a guest can scale giant sequoia and coast redwood trees during peak foliage season.Credit...Pelorus Searching for Fall Colors? Let Me Get the Llama for You For only 45,000, you and a guest can scale giant sequoia and coast redwood trees during peak foliage season. "Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower," wrote the French philosopher Albert Camus. In North America, most experts agree that the peak time of those "flowers" occurs around mid October, depending on the latitude, altitude and proximity to the coast. David Angotti, co founder of the SmokeyMountains foliage prediction map, said that the peak may be slightly delayed this year because of rising temperatures in general. He also warned that in most years, "fall comes sooner at higher elevations than lower elevations." Key regions to gaze at fiery red maple trees, hickory, poplars and oaks include the Blue Ridge Mountains; the Rocky Mountains; many parts of New England, notably Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire; and several provinces in Canada, including Saskatchewan and Ontario. Many travelers take leisurely drives to spot or post the range of brilliant colors on Instagram. But here are five more unusual ways to enjoy leaf peeping season this year: New York Zipline Adventures at Hunter Mountain, in the Catskills region, runs the SkyRider tour, a 4.6 mile long multiple cable adventure that takes guests 600 feet high at speeds of up to 60 miles per hour. The zip line is considered the longest, fastest and highest of its kind in North America. "People specifically call ahead to book the zip line to see the foliage," says Alex Cavaliere, office manager for the company. "On these tours, you zip from mountaintop to mountaintop to where the valleys meet so you are hundreds of feet above the forest canopy," she said. The guided tour lasts up to three hours; guides often point out tree foliage species. " Catskill s forests, with predominately oak, beech, birch and maple with some cottonwood, aspen, hickory, cherry and sycamore, provide interesting color contrasts," said Jerry Carlson, chief of forest health and protection at New York State's department of environmental conservation. "The uniqueness of this region lies in the density: some parts are heavy maple and some parts are heavy oak." Zipline rates are 119 during the weekdays, 129 per person during the weekends. Tours are limited to 12 people. Take In the View From the Water The Foundry Hotel in Asheville, N.C., offers a "leaf peeping by land, air and sea" package that starts with a guided Blue Ridge Parkway tour in a Tesla Model X, a hot air balloon ride over the Pisgah National Forest and a paddle boat ride on the French Broad River. The boat tour takes around two hours and lets guests leisurely take in the colors of red and white oak trees, as well as the Appalachian terrain filled with black gum and sour woods. The Mayflower Inn Spa in Connecticut offers a guided two hour kayaking excursion on the nearby Bantam River. The river tour meanders past a nature conservancy in Litchfield, with a naturalist educating visitors about the surrounding Canadian hemlocks (the tallest trees in the northeast), as well as the American sycamore s, sugar maples, oak trees, white pine and birch. Want to do it yourself? The DiscoverBoating site lets you find boat rentals in your ZIP code and recommends the Columbia River Gorge in the Pacific Northwest, Lake Tahoe in California and Acadia National Park in Maine as some top areas to take in the fall foliage from the water. The "Eco friendly Leaf Peeping by Land, Air and Sea" package is 500 per person; rates at The Foundry start from 400 per night. The guided kayak excursion offered by the Mayflower Inn Spa is 170 per couple (a picnic is extra); rates at the hotel start from 800 per night. Paragon Guides in Vail, Colo., introduced llama treks in the region in 2013. Since then, the outfitter says they've been extremely popular with children in the summer and during peak foliage season. Visitors get to hike with a llama or two in a small group; a red checkered picnic lunch is provided. Most of these hikes occur at around 9,000 feet and the guides select the best foliage trails from more than 300 options, including Big Horn, Gore and Grouse Creeks, and Missouri and Nancy Passes where a lot of aspen clusters are found. Nate Goldberg, a lead guide with the outfitter said visitors see "a lot of underbrush, red and yellow aspen leaves, scrub oak, berries and willows which turn a bright yellow." A four hour, three mile long hike starts at 450 for two people, and 95 for each additional guest. The bespoke travel operator, Pelorus, organizes climbs up giant sequoia trees and coast redwoods, considered the largest and oldest living trees on Earth. Spots are limited to two people who assist scientists examining the drought effect on trees. The expedition occurs at Yosemite National Park, specifically at the Freeman Creek giant sequoia grove in the Sierra Nevada mountains. Scaled trees can attain a height of 278 feet and can be as old as 2,000 years. "You have a different perspective of fall foliage and one that relates back to many people's childhood memories of climbing trees," said Jimmy Carroll, co founder of Pelorus. "And you can watch the sunset and sunrise while sleeping on a portaledge ," he said, adding that this niche expedition takes care not to harm the trees. Camp in the Thick of it The peer to peer R.V. rental site, RVshare, reported a sharp increase in motor home rentals during foliage season in certain cities in the United States over the past two years, with even more bookings anticipated this year. The site has an inventory of more than 100,000 units including those with full functioning kitchens and outdoor awnings so guests can "stay right in the middle of the foliage," said Megan Buemi, senior manager of customer experience. Renters also get recommendations for top foliage drives. Rental rates start from 200 per night on average. Each motor home comes with various amenities determined by the owner. 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.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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"How did I meet Larry? He called me a murderer and an incompetent idiot on the front page of the San Francisco Examiner magazine." Speaking as he passed through a fever check on his way into the White House, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, recalled some of his fondest memories of his friend Larry Kramer, who died early Wednesday morning. Nearly every anecdote in our brief interview had the same plot: the country's best known AIDS activist publicly abusing the country's best known AIDS doctor and then privately apologizing afterward, saying he hadn't meant it, that it was just how to get things done. "It was an extraordinary 33 year relationship," Dr. Fauci said. "We loved each other. We would have dinner. I would go see him in the West Village, he would come down to Washington. "But even recently, when he got pissed at me about something, he said to some paper, 'Fauci's gone over to the dark side again.' I called him up and said, 'Larry? What the....' And he'd say, 'Oh, I didn't really mean it. I just wanted to get some attention.'" Nobody stirred up attention for a cause quite like Mr. Kramer did. An open letter to the San Francisco Examiner in 1988, Dr. Fauci said, was the first time he'd heard of Mr. Kramer, a playwright who had founded two activist groups: the Gay Men's Health Crisis; and Act Up, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power. Addressing Dr. Fauci in the letter, Mr. Kramer wrote: "Your refusal to hear the screams of AIDS activists early in the crisis resulted in the deaths of thousands of Queers. Your present inaction is causing today's increase in HIV infection outside of the Queer community." "I thought, 'This guy, I need to reach out to him,'" Dr. Fauci recalled. "So I did, and we started talking. We realized we had things in common." "I was the face of the federal government. I was the one out there trying to warn the public, and he was, too. That was his way of saying, 'Hello? Wake up!' That was his style. He was iconoclastic, he was theatrical he wanted to make his point." Over the years, they were often asked to appear together, often on television news programs. "We were on ABC's 'Nightline' and Ted Koppel asked me about AZT," Dr. Fauci said, referring to the first anti H.I.V. drug. "And Larry said, 'You guys in the government don't know anything. You've got it all wrong!'" Dr. Fauci would get in a cab to go home, and later the phone would ring. "It would be Larry saying, 'How do you think we did?' I'd say, 'Larry, you just trashed me in front of 10 million people.' "And he'd say, 'Oh, I was just trying to get some attention.'" As they became friends, Mr. Kramer tried to push Dr. Fauci into joining him in activism. "During the administration of George H.W. Bush, he told me, 'Tony, you should chain yourself to the gates of the White House,'" Dr. Fauci said. "I said, 'Larry, how would that help? I can go talk to President Bush any time. He's a friend.' "He said, 'You should still do it.'" In 2001, with Mr. Kramer suffering from both hepatitis B and side effects of his H.I.V. medication he had the disease for at least six years before effective triple drug cocktails became standard practice Dr. Fauci became his doctor. Mr. Kramer had told him he was not doing well, and doctors were baffled. "I said, 'Come to the N.I.H. We'll work you up.'" Dr. Fauci recalled. "He was really at death's door. We realized he needed a liver transplant." Mr. Kramer went on a transplant list. But there was a public debate over whether he should get a scarce donor organ, because patients with H.I.V. had long been considered less likely to survive, despite the introduction of effective medications. And at 66, Mr. Kramer was older than a typical transplant candidate. Nonetheless, he got a new liver that December at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. That not only set a precedent for H.I.V. patients and older patients, but also abruptly reversed the decline in Mr. Kramer's health. "He really bounced back," Dr. Fauci said. "It gave him multiple more years of life." The relationship between the two men played out in Mr. Kramer's literary works as well as in his political activism. Mr. Kramer's autobiographical play in 1992, "The Destiny of Me," includes a character based on Dr. Fauci. "He's named Anthony Della Vida Tony Of Life," Dr. Fauci said. "He told me he wanted the actor who was playing me to come down to Bethesda and go on hospital rounds with me and learn my mannerisms. "He made the character a mix of goodness and rigidity. To him, that's the federal government rigid."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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In the seedy shadow world of HBO's "The Deuce," home to the flophouses, brothels, nightclubs and peep shows that once littered 42nd Street in Manhattan, an illicit subculture operates with its own rules and vicious hierarchies. The actions of the powerful reverberate down the chain, from the mobsters who control the area to the sex workers at the bottom . Along the way, the pornographers and dealers and pimps take their cut. And that's before City Hall has its say. The show's creators, David Simon and George Pelecanos , specialize in dissecting these urban organisms. Before coming to television, Simon and Pelecanos covered crime from different angles Simon as a reporter for The Baltimore Sun and Pelecanos as the well regarded author of D.C. based detective fiction. The two have since collaborated on the tough and sprawling HBO dramas "The Wire" and "Treme." The porn era Times Square of "The Deuce," with all its degradation and struggles for dignity, seems right in their wheelhouse and also timely. "It's a labor story first and foremost, and not a lot has changed," Pelecanos said, pointing to the "Access Hollywood" tape, in which President Trump admitted to grabbing women by the genitals. "If that can happen now, and all of these things can happen now, we want to tell the story of how we got here." Each season of "The Deuce" has jumped forward in time: The first, set in 1971 and '72, is about mobsters wrangling neighborhood sex workers into a network of peeps and parlors; the second covers the height of "porn chic" in 1977; the third, premiering Monday on HBO, opens on New Year's Eve in 198 4, as the neighborhood is about to undergo a sweeping transformation. Speaking in a joint telephone interview recently, Simon and Pelecanos talked about the legacy of the Times Square porn palaces and the limits of giving an audience what it wants. These are edited excerpts from that conversation. Every season of "The Deuce" jumps forward in time, but the jump from the second to the third season seems particularly brutal. Can you describe where we are when the season opens? DAVID SIMON We're bouncing toward the beginning of the end of what the Deuce was when it was New York's Tenderloin, the center of the sex trade in New York. So we chose that year with some care. There are obviously some things that are going to happen in 1985 that are indicative of the changes to come. What would happen to Times Square would happen over time, and it's still happening. But we're at least at a place where we can imply the future. GEORGE PELECANOS The AIDS crisis was full blown in New York and in other places around the country, which we knew was going to impact our characters. And as far as the business went, pornography had moved west primarily, and videocassettes had overtaken theatrical porn. When you can digest pornography in a different kind of dose rather than sitting in a theater, the actual presentation of it changed. When we started out, we had people who actually aspired to be artists within the pornography realm, and they thought they'd be making features in the same way that Hollywood was making features, with real stories, and production values. "The Deuce" also spends time in California this season, where Lori Madison (Emily Meade) is making her way in the adult film business. What went into the decision to leave the world of 42nd Street for the West Coast, if only for that subplot? SIMON That's what happened, which is that porn production gravitated to the San Fernando Valley. A great percentage of all film is coming out of Southern California; not only are they more adept at making it, they treat people better. You go to a porn shoot, they've set up craft services. They're used to making movies and standing around on a set for 12 hours. And guess what? The mafia and the people who were the money people behind New York, they're not really good at employee relations. It's much less of a labor environment. Laughs. The mafia is very good at busting out businesses. They're not really great at running them. In the first episode of the new season, there's a scene when Candy (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and Harvey (David Krumholtz) go see Akira Kurosawa's "Drunken Angel" at Film Forum, and it leads to this conversation about working under a budget. Harvey says, "There's something about not having everything you need that brings out its own greatness." How do you see that applying to "The Deuce"? SIMON That was a little embedded love note to my longtime producing partner Nina Noble, who never gets enough credit for always putting the money we do have onscreen. I've been with her 20 years now, since "The Corner," and it's something she said a long time ago, which was, "If you had everything in the world, and it doesn't matter how much you spend, where's the fun in that?" PELECANOS He's also telling her that you can use the poverty to make art. When people look at the early film noirs, they say, "Wow, look at those shadows." It's not because they were really making shadows but because they didn't have fill lights. That story line, with Harvey and Candy, has given you a lot of opportunities to comment on the tension between art and commerce. SIMON Somebody much smarter than me described the audience as a child. It sounds like I'm being arrogant, but if you give the audience what they say they want, they'll always want ice cream. They'll want exactly what they've seen in the past and more of it. Well, in pornography, that was incredibly destructive because pornography is effectively a vehicle for male gratification in the most basic way. So if you ask men what they want from porn, the last thing they're going to say is, "I want character, I want story, I want it to have a point." Of course not. So in some ways, porn is this hyperbolic metaphor for what happens anytime the audience dictates terms and the storyteller is not left to their own devices. The show has been so much about women fighting for leverage in a business where they're the attraction but have no power. What do you see as the legacy of this time in this industry for women? PELECANOS I'm not anti porn, but I do feel like it influenced a whole generation of boys who became men and formed the way they think of women, and it's not in a positive light. There's a scene this season where Harvey and Candy are talking and they wonder, "When did we come to a point where ejaculating on a woman's face is the proper way to finish sex?" Porn taught us that. That wasn't a notion until pornography. SIMON It doesn't matter if you're consuming porn directly. The subtext of porn is in every beer commercial and every car commercial. We've internalized it in the most basic ways, and we've commodified sex in the most purely profitable ways and done so as only Americans can when it comes to a commodity. Your shows are about how these little urban hierarchies work and how decisions can have devastating consequences down the chain. That's a difficult thing for a television show, or a film, to accomplish. SIMON I know what you're trying to get at, I think, which is it doesn't build the perfect narrative. The perfect narrative is ... you go up the mountain and you come back down the other side, and you make the mountain as tall as it can be. And that's not reflective of the real world. It's not the world that I reported on, and it's not the world of George's novels. If, at the end of the day, all we're doing is just building a perfect storytelling cheat and not really addressing ourselves to what we wanted to say in the beginning about gender and about sexuality and money and power, then we're not doing our jobs. Much like the world of "The Deuce," your industry is undergoing a transformation. Streaming is changing everything, including HBO, which stands to be a much different operation under AT T. Where do you see your place in this new world? SIMON We have projects planned. We're going to go back into the writers room this fall on a couple of them. What happens to those under the new regime of AT T and all the changes that seem to be underway, that will be the tale. Everybody that I worked with when I started at HBO on "The Corner," in 1999, is gone. So I'm working for people who not to disrespect any of them; my dealings have been good so far but if you're asking me what HBO's going to be in a year or two, your guess is as good as mine. PELECANOS I've got a list of things I want to do, and I'm 62 years old. And the one thing I'm not going to do is go to a network and do a cop show, or a lawyer show, you know what I mean? Just because there's more outlets doesn't mean that they want our stories. And we're going to have to fight for it.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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"The thing that really interested me is that he doesn't look like a gym body," Mr. Edmonds said of his model in "Anatolli Collection," from 2019. "He looks like he rose out of the earth." The works are from the photographer's collection. The young photographer John Edmonds traveled to Ghana last January, searching for something he couldn't name. Having recently begun collecting and photographing African sculpture, he thought the trip would lead to a greater self knowledge. "I'm an African American using African objects, so it was important to me to understand the source," he said during an interview in Brooklyn. The pieces he'd been studying were masks and figurines crafted for the tourist market, raising questions of authenticity that were linked in a complicated way to racial consciousness. He was also navigating the minefield of cultural appropriation: Would such decorative art assume a different significance when used by an African, African American or white photographer in a shoot? These are some of the socially resonant issues that Mr. Edmonds investigates in "A Sidelong Glance" at the Brooklyn Museum, his first solo museum show, which accompanies the award of the inaugural UOVO Prize for an emerging Brooklyn artist. To add a wrinkle, his photographs also explore his queer identity. In the exhibition, several portraits depict handsome, shirtless Black men alongside an array of African objects. "He's really interested in the connection between collecting and photography as acts of possession and desire," said Drew Sawyer, curator of photography at the Brooklyn Museum. In the early 20th century, avant garde artists in Europe and the United States embraced sculpture from Africa (and later Oceania) that they classified as "primitive." The 1907 painting "Demoiselles d'Avignon," which manifested Picasso's fascination with the African masks at the Palais du Trocadero ethnographic museum, is the revolutionary exemplar, but a 1926 photograph by Man Ray, "Noire et Blanche," presents the premise more directly. Man Ray posed his lover, Kiki de Montparnasse, holding a Baule style mask next to her head. Her eyes are closed, as if she is dreaming, and the curves of her eyebrows, eyelids and lips as well as the flatness of her hair and the oval of her face are as stylized as the features on the mask. Along with his fellow Surrealists, Man Ray believed that women have a profound connection to the irrational and the primal, qualities that he associated with African art. Mr. Edmonds composed a photograph in the current show that constitutes a response. Called "Tete de Femme," it shows a Black woman who, like Kiki, is holding a decorative African mask on a table. But this woman keeps her head upright and her eyes open, gazing confidently at the camera (and the viewer). It is one of a small series by the artist that reimagines Man Ray's iconic photograph. "I made three pictures one person who identifies as a woman, one as a man and one as gender nonconforming," he explains. "A lot of my work has to do with unlearning gender." Made in 2018 (the masculine version appeared in the 2019 Whitney Biennial), the series inaugurated Mr. Edmonds's inclusion of African objects in his photographs, using tourist pieces that belonged to the Brooklyn family of a friend. The objects he later began collecting himself derive from the crafts market, too. He relates to these pieces not as an art historian, but as someone who uses and shares them which, indeed, more closely approximates the role that rare sculptures served in their original environments. When Mr. Sawyer and the co curator, Ashley James (now an associate curator at the Guggenheim Museum), asked Mr. Edmonds if he would be interested in photographing the museum's recently acquired collection of African sculptures, the artist relished the opportunity. The collection had been formed by the eminent African American novelist Ralph Ellison. "I found it to be quite beautiful," he said. "It's a collection that's been largely not seen. Photographing these objects was assigning life to them." Continuing a tradition that dates to Man Ray, Walker Evans and Charles Sheeler, he photographed the sculptures frontally and from the rear, evoking a mood rather than simply documenting an archive. "I'm interested in these objects as little presences that are looking at and looking away from the viewer," he said. Instead of conventional white and gray modernist backdrops, Mr. Edmonds photographed the objects against shimmering gold cloth. He also carefully varied the scale of his prints in the exhibition, combining small images of the Ellison objects with larger portraits of friends. "He works in black and white and in color, and at different scales, and sometimes as portraits, sometimes as still life, and sometimes as combinations," said Jane Panetta, director of the Whitney Museum collection, who co curated the 2019 Whitney Biennial. "He's disrupting expectations about photographic seriality." He is also subverting a tradition of white gay photographers, from Carl Van Vechten to Robert Mapplethorpe, who eroticize Black male bodies. Mr. Edmonds's models are subjects as well as objects. A muscular shirtless man with dreadlocks is sitting on a table that supports a cluster of African statuettes. They are all objects of desire. If a white artist made this portrait today, he would be open to charges of objectifying Black bodies in an act of post colonial fetishism. However, it is Mr. Edmonds's humanizing of his subjects that, even more than his race, exonerates him of that accusation. He is not presenting his model simply as a body to lust after but as a man absorbed in contemplation of the African art with what Mr. Edmonds describes as a "look of discernment." The engagement of African American artists with African art gained momentum during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s. In the exhibition, Mr. Edmonds includes a portrait of a man in a fedora who seems entranced by a Senufo sculpture of a woman. This photograph breaks stylistically from other pictures in the show. The sepia undertones as well as the retro clothing evoke the Harlem Renaissance, especially the photographs of James L. Allen, whose portrait from about 1930 of the graphic designer James Lesesne Wells examining a Kuba vessel is a direct ancestor of Mr. Edmonds's picture. The earliest photograph in the exhibition is a 2017 portrait of three young Black men wearing durags. (The connection to Africa, which otherwise unifies the exhibition, is subtle here: the headgear is green, red or black, the colors Marcus Garvey chose for the Pan African Black liberation flag.) Mr. Edmonds has also produced several series of photographs based on fashion styles, including hoodies and hairdos. (A generous sampling is contained in "Higher," his 2018 monograph.) He associates these portraits with Renaissance paintings he saw as a boy on visits to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, where he was raised by a mother who worked at the Environmental Protection Agency as an office administrator and a stepfather who is an engineer. After graduating from the Corcoran College of Art and Design, Mr. Edmonds earned an M.F.A. at Yale and moved to Brooklyn. His photographs make wide ranging art historical allusions from Titian and Michelangelo to Rotimi Fani Kayode, a photographer who was born into an eminent Yoruba family in Nigeria and employed ritual objects in homoerotic images. Mr. Fani Kayode died in London of an AIDS related illness in 1989. "He's somebody that I have a huge amount of admiration for," Mr. Edmonds said. He relies on artistic precedents, as he does on the friends whom he enlists as models, to further a process of self awareness. "In life, at times we run away from ourselves," he said. "I've gotten closer to the people I want to photograph and in doing so, I've gotten closer to myself. That is something art can do." On his journey to Ghana, Mr. Edmonds attended traditional religious ceremonies. Raised as a Baptist, he regarded with fascination the old African beliefs that exist like a palimpsest behind the Christian institutions there. On the last day of his stay, Mr. Edmonds was initiated into the Akan religion. The ceremony ratified a cultural bond with Africa that his photography had been exploring. He wears a wire metal ring on the ring finger of his left hand to commemorate it. "I have religion you don't have to call it religion to have religion but I think in my time there, it was supposed to happen," he said. "In a way, that is what I went to Africa for, without knowing it."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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BLAENAU FFESTINIOG, Wales This could have been Britain's Greece. For decades, Wales, like Greece, has been plagued by persistent deficits and uncompetitive industries. Yet unlike Greece, which teeters on the edge of bankruptcy and faces a possible exit from the euro zone the 17 European Union members that use the euro this semi autonomous country suffers no threat of running out of cash or being forced to abandon the British pound, which it shares with other members of Britain's own political and monetary union: Scotland, Northern Ireland and England. This year Wales, including this fading slate mining town in one of Britain's poorest counties, is expected to receive about PS14.6 billion, or 22.6 billion, from the central government. The money is used to cover what Wales cannot raise itself from taxes and borrowing. Most people do not think of Britain home to many of Europe's most outspoken euro skeptics as having a monetary union. But it does, and these money transfers are the essence of what makes Britain's common currency a success in knitting together a collection of regions and historically separate countries with different languages, cultures and economic profiles. As a sovereign nation, Greece has had free rein to recklessly spend and borrow, the result of which is its near bankrupt condition. Wales, by comparison, has limited tax and borrowing capabilities, and the money it gets each year to fulfill its spending needs comes automatically from the British treasury. And therein lies the lesson for the euro zone: until it can find a way to ensure that its poorer nations can manage their fiscal affairs, countries like Greece and Portugal that run constant budget deficits will become increasingly dependent on transfers from richer countries like Germany. For Britain, such a transfer is accepted as the cost of keeping the union together. By contrast, Europe's richer nations, led by Germany, resist institutionalizing any substantial flow of money toward Greece apart from a modest amount of development aid long made available to Europe's poorer regions for specific projects. In Germany, the notion of a so called transfer union, which many economists see as essential to any enduring common currency, is still firmly resisted. Infusions in the billions of pounds keep fading towns like Blaenau Ffestiniog alive. As a result, Greece, along with Portugal and Ireland, is dependent on negotiating individual bailouts with the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in a torturous process that risks collapse at almost any turn. "Wales is part of a fiscal union, a nation state in which the political culture is cohesive enough to legitimize these fiscal transfers," said Kevin Morgan, an economist at Cardiff University who is an expert on Britain's north/south divide. "But what works at the national level breaks down at the supranational level." As in the euro zone, there are questions even within Britain about the value of its union. But they are driven more by political and cultural divisions than monetary ones. The Scottish national leader Alex Salmond is pushing for a vote that might provide Scotland independence from Britain, while remaining vague on whether the Scots should then abandon the pound to adopt the euro. In terms of economic contribution to their respective monetary unions, both Wales and Greece are roughly equal, packing a fairly weak punch of about 3 percent. Both are heavily dependent on public spending. Wales is even poorer than Greece, generating a gross domestic product equal to 23,100 per person, compared with Greece's G.D.P. of 26,900 per person. Despite the similar economic profiles, Britain is far more generous with Wales than the European Union is with Greece. Compared with the nearly 23 billion in funds London sends to Wales every year, which is used to bolster local tax revenue and pay for services like health care and education, Greece receives on average about 2.9 billion euros a year in structural funds, or 3.7 billion, devoted mostly at specific development projects. It is not just Wales that benefits from British transfers. In 2011, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland together received PS54 billion, or 83.7 billion, a sum that is almost twice the level of British military spending. The yearly transfer payments total about 3.5 percent of Britain's G.D.P. Robert A. Mundell, the Nobel Prize winning Canadian economist whom many see as the intellectual father of the euro, cited a willingness to move money from richer areas to poorer ones as a crucial component of any nation or group of nations bound together by a successful monetary union, pointing to Britain and the United States as examples. The other central requirements of an effective currency zone, he argued, were free trade in goods and services, the ability of workers to move easily from one place to another, and roughly similar economic cycles. More than a century ago, Blaenau was a thriving industrial town of more than 10,000 people, churning out slate slabs that roofed houses the world over. The residue now covers the hills that surround the town, casting a pall that mirrors its economic condition. Since undercut by cheaper slate varieties from Spain and China, the mines no longer provide many jobs, and the town's steadily shrinking population is now below 5,000. It is a proud settlement where virtually everyone is bilingual. Conversation at work and in and around town is mostly in Welsh rather than English. While more people are leaving Greece as the economy worsens, greater language and cultural barriers make it harder for Greeks to move easily to Germany or Italy than for a resident of Blaenau to settle in Birmingham or London, perhaps never to return. A quarter of the town's population receives unemployment benefits and the average income is a mere PS10,600, half the national average. The town lost its last dentist five years ago. "There are just too few people chasing too few jobs," Phil Rogers, a slate mason, said one evening recently as he sipped a pint of ale on the town's threadbare main street. Mr. Rogers says he is earning no more today than he did 10 years ago, but while times are hard and he often traps squirrels and rabbits to supplement his diet, he says he manages to get by. "The welfare state it's pretty good, isn't it?" he said with a wink. But such a safety net does not come cheap. Of the money flowing to Wales this year, 42 percent is destined to pay for health and social services, including free prescription drugs and home day care for the elderly, a critical support for towns with a rapidly aging population like Blaenau's. "People see themselves in a declining town," said Bob Cole, the chairman of the local group here that has pushed for the project. "We are saying, 'Look, we are now on the up.' " While the European Union contributes substantially to such projects, the transfer payments from Britain's more prosperous south keep the town alive as its tax base shrivels and demand for welfare services increases. For some here, that dependence is galling especially now as Scotland's bid for independence gathers steam. "We have a better understanding of what to do with our money than a bunch of millionaires in London," said Paul Thomas, the town official who represents Blaenau at the local county seat and who is also a member of Wales's nationalist party, Plaid Cymru. But as the bite of the recession grows worse and the need for help from the south becomes more acute, such a view is distinctly a minority one. "It's good to be part of the United Kingdom," said Glenys Lloyd, a local inn owner. "I was born in Wales, but in the end I'm British, aren't I?"
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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Hail, dancegoers. Here is another installment of our weekly dance column, in which we draw attention to highlights in the field. This weekend, New York dance fans have important events uptown and downtown. If you time things right, you can see choreography by Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown and Twyla Tharp in three (or even two) consecutive days, and catch American Ballet Theater's "Romeo and Juliet," which involves both debuts and departures. Please use the comments section to let us know what you think. After revivals of Merce Cunningham's "RainForest," "Doubles," "BIPED" and other dances this winter and spring, will New York look back on 2015 as an annus mirabilis for his work? The first four dance performances of "Crises" at the new Whitney Museum occur this weekend two on Friday (2 p.m. and 7 p.m.) and two on Saturday (2 p.m. and 4 p.m.). The cast is one of seasoned Cunningham dancers, and they bring a revival of his 1960 work "Crises" one of his most haunting dramas. Its opening image shows us a woman seemingly controlled by opposed impulses. Standing on one leg, she slowly extends a leg with apparent fluency, and yet her upper body churns, uneasily wracked by spasms. In this work, Cunningham made his women strong (even wild, perhaps witchlike) and independent. The score is by Conlon Nancarrow, and these performances are part of a Whitney festival of his work. Cunningham died in 2009. His company (at his behest) closed in 2011. Twyla Tharp's "The One Hundreds" and "Trisha Brown: In Plain Sight" in the open air Twyla Tharp to my mind one of the three living choreographers who have achieved true greatness (the others are Paul Taylor and Mark Morris) this year celebrates her 50th anniversary as a choreographer. On Saturday, as part of the River to River Festival, she revives her rare 1970 dance "The One Hundreds" in the open air at Nelson A. Rockefeller Park (Battery Park City). This piece comes from a different Tharp era when she was working without music (or, she later said, not letting audiences hear the music to which the dance was made), often in nontheatrical spaces and in the same experimental way as the dance postmoderns.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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BOSTON "I wanted to go because I have a cat," Jack Maloney, 9, said, gnawing a sour gummy. Last Saturday, Maloney sat between his parents at the Citizens Bank Opera House in Boston, just before a matinee performance of "Cats," the unlikely Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that made a scratching post of Broadway throughout the 1980s and 1990s. A riot of marble and gilt, the Opera House had filled to near capacity. The ushers wore cat ears; so did many in the audience. I saw a grandmother and her teenage grandson arrayed in matching spotted onesies. The bar did a brisk champagne trade. This tour, based on the 2016 Broadway revival, had already been on the road for a year. Nick Scandalios, an executive vice president at the Nederlander Organization, which presents the tour, estimates booking for at least two more. Another "Cats" may have a shorter run. The movie musical, directed by Tom Hooper, once seen as an award season contender, had already disappeared from many theaters. The New York Times called it a "kitschapalooza," the Los Angeles Times, "Les Meowserables." Still, it has its fans, like Michaela Vlassopoulus, 8, whom I met at the Opera House. She had enjoyed the movie, she said, clutching a black stuffed cat. "Well, I saw half of it, the rest I was asleep," she qualified. The stage show, which she had never seen, had a lot to live up to, she thought. I last saw "Cats," Lloyd Webber's song cycle adaptation of T. S. Eliot's bizarro light verse collection, "Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats," in the mid to late 1980s at the Santa Monica Civic Center. (I thought it was at the Hollywood Pantages, but let's trust my mother on this one.) It wasn't my first experience of live theater, but like a lot of women and a few men I know, it obsessed me. I wore out the cassette tape. I learned all the lyrics. I may have choreographed a gymnastics routine to the song "Jellicle Cats," even though I still can't tell you just what a Jellicle cat is. If I write about theater today, it's because back then some overworked actors in leg warmers and spandex unitards ran down the aisles, petting me and my little sister in ways that were probably appropriate. Some neuron fired or some chromosomal code activated and I knew, even if I couldn't articulate it, that I wanted to do whatever I could to experience an event like that again. But when the show came back to Broadway a few years ago, I didn't try to see it. Hadn't we all grown up and decided that "Cats" was terrible? Was Andrew Lloyd Webber ever O.K.? In truth, the snub owed as much to shame as to snobbery. I suspected I wouldn't care for it, which would mean dismissing not only "Cats" itself but the 8 or 9 or 10 year old who had adored those tie on tails, too. We don't get to choose the art that shapes us and a lot of us, if we're honest, will know that formative art isn't necessarily good art. But sometimes we can choose to avoid reinterrogating it. "Cats" was the hero I knew I shouldn't meet. But there I was at the Opera House. The lights were dimming, the overture was starting the choked crash cymbal, the kick drum, the keyboard imitating electric piano and glockenspiel. The eye masks lit up and the hair on my arms horripilated. Jellicles could. Jellicles did. Here, if you are not a "Cats" initiate, is what we will kindly call the plot. Every year, at the Jellicle Ball, the cats' leader, Old Deuteronomy, chooses one cat to ascend to the "heaviside layer" and be reborn. The cats audition for this apotheosis (because Eliot's poems are often written in the third person, cat narrators sometimes sing on their behalf), and the honor this year ultimately goes to Grizabella, a former glamour dam (read: prostitute). She belts "Memory" still a banger! and then rises into the flies on an outsize tire that looks a lot like an alien spacecraft. At intermission, I asked Jack for his thoughts. "I like it," he said. He thought that Emma, his Maine coon, would like it, too. "I'm not really sure what's happening," said his father, Tim Maloney, who was on his second Coors and wondering if he should have bought a third. Maybe this is just the toxoplasmosis talking, but I was with Jack. The story remained as shaky as ever, and if the dramaturgy never troubled me as a kid, I now didn't understand why the action yowls to a stop toward the end of Act I for a dance sequence. As Act II began, I saw that they had cut "Growltiger's Last Stand" (wise) and retained a rejiggered version of "The Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles"(less wise). The lyrics to "Memory" a contribution by the original director Trevor Nunn now confuse. ("If you touch me, you'll understand what happiness is"?) The finale is a bore. But the dancing Gillian Lynne's choreography, goosed by Andy Blankenbuehler is as thrilling as ever. And I had never appreciated what a workout the show is ("A soggy mess is what I feel like afterward," Emma Hearn, a cast member who fell in love with the show as a toddler, would tell me) and what a party. The music and dance rarely rest, and the immersion into the cats' world is complete helped, I'd argue, by the shameless theatricality of these obviously bipedal and very clearly human cats. And if you can hear a song as irresistible as "Skimbleshanks the Railway Cat" and not feel your soul elate, you may be a stranger to joy. Now and forever? That's tricky. Earlier that morning, I had spoken to Scandalios about whether or not the movie's flop had imperiled the show's brand. It was doing as well as ever, he assured me. "It was selling out without the film, and it's still selling out now with the film," he told me. "'Cats' is 'Cats.'" Patrons entered, a few of them in costume, and a woman, Mary Freed, handed out Amazon purchased glitter cat ears to anyone who wanted them. "I went to 'Rocky Horror' in the early '80s," she said, mentioning the cult classic movie, as she gave me a pair. "And here it comes again." I would hazard that if you are going to see "Cats" the movie, you should see it like this, with a hundred or so people around to share in your fascination and horror. (Marijuana is legal in Massachusetts. So that's an option, too.) The visual effects, as have often been reported, plunge the movie into an uncanny valley of cat human hybrids. It never claws its way free. Why did no one warn me about the human cockroaches, the human hands? The scale seems all wrong, the scenes underpopulated, the dance numbers apparently shot by someone who doesn't get or like dance. "Imagine if you couldn't scream," Eliza Malecky, a ticket holder who had arrived in a leopard print, told me later. Perversely, the expensive CGI achieves the opposite effect of those spandex and leg warmer outfits it trades real theatricality for slipshod illusionism, pushing you out instead of pulling you in. "A cat is not a dog," Judi Dench says in the finale. Or is it? If I'd seen the movie as a kid I might have liked it, because children have terrible taste, but I know it wouldn't have worked on me in the same way that the show did. I also know that if the stage musical comes through New York again, I'll ask for a ticket this time. I still don't know if "Cats" is good, but I know why I love it, then and now. Because it gives me what I want from any show, an invitation to a new and comprehensive world. I'll buy a couple more for my kids, even though I did try to show the three year old "Magical Mister Mistoffelees" today, only to have him say, "This is weird" and walk away. I'll pass down some love, some trauma. Let the memory live again.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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The "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Va., that exploded into chaos and violence that culminated in the death of a 32 year old woman, ended in a matter of hours. The onslaught of media reports about Saturday's demonstration by white nationalists and its fallout, however, has stretched on for days. And there are few signs it will stop anytime soon. Indeed, some of the coverage itself has become news or at least commanded the internet's fleeting attention. There was a horrifying still photograph of the violence, a chilling documentary video, and of course, a series of defiant tweets from President Trump that continued into Thursday. And then there was Tuesday's news conference a combative give and take between the news media and Mr. Trump, which Kyle Pope, the editor and publisher of the Columbia Journalism Review, described as "a moment that's going to have a legacy." "Trump has already forced several moments of reckoning on journalists," Mr. Pope said. "What happened this weekend is another one of these seminal moments, another step in this very odd progression." Taken together, the frenetic, disjointed ways the most striking media moments from Charlottesville and its aftermath unfolded and went viral across many mediums and at lightning speed seems emblematic of the way we consume news today. So, in case you missed them amid the week's many stories, we've compiled a few of the most memorable: The photo that 'will define this moment' "Out of instinct, I began taking photos," Mr. Kelly wrote in an account for the Columbia Journalism Review. "I just brought the camera to my eye and just mashed the shutter down." The image he captured of a man frozen in midair before a fall, of the Challenger barreling through more victims in its path, of shoes having been knocked off their wearers' feet was republished widely by news outlets across the country. Other indelible images would emerge throughout the weekend. Then, for the next 20 minutes or so, Elle Reeve, correspondent for "Vice News Tonight," guides viewers through the weekend's events including from her place embedded among the white nationalist leaders who helped organize the demonstration. "I think that a lot more people are going to die before we're done here, frankly," Christopher Cantwell, a man identified in the episode as a white nationalist, said Sunday after the rally had resulted in three fatalities. His opponents, he said, "want violence, and the right is just meeting market demand." The unvarnished look at the alt right and its leaders, which aired Monday on HBO, struck a chord with the public. By Thursday afternoon, a Vice News spokeswoman said that the episode had received more than 36 million views across all platforms including HBO, Facebook and YouTube. In a telephone interview Wednesday night, Mr. Drago said he had been taking photos of the president with different lenses when he looked to his left and saw Mr. Kelly with his arms crossed, staring intently at Mr. Trump. "I started shooting a couple photos of him and he started to look down a little more," Mr. Drago said of Mr. Kelly. "It was a pensive stare that helped show the mood of the news event we were in." People can draw their own conclusions about what Mr. Kelly was thinking, the photographer said, but "when you see his body language like that, you know something's up." During what The Times described as a "wild, street corner shouting match of a news conference," Mr. Trump defended those who had gathered to protest the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, criticized "alt left" groups that he claimed were "very, very violent" and questioned whether the movement to pull down Confederate statues would lead to the desecration of memorials to George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. CNN, meanwhile, has not shied away from labeling Mr. Trump's remarks as "off the rails" in banners that stretch across the television screen. As the network cut away from Mr. Trump's news conference on Tuesday, the anchor Jake Tapper reacted simply by saying: "Wow." Even some right leaning television hosts could not hide their surprise. On Fox News, Kat Timpf said, "I'm still in the phase where I'm wondering if it was actually real life." Co hosts of the network's show "The Specialists" shook their heads. And later on Fox News, the commentator Charles Krauthammer said, "What Trump did today was a moral disgrace." On his Fox News show, Tucker Carlson came to the president's defense, arguing that Mr. Trump had "fired back at the media" before discussing famous historical figures, including Jefferson and Plato, who owned slaves. And by Tuesday night, any of Mr. Trump's other supporters looking for guidance on how to react were in luck. A copy of the talking points the White House sent out to Republicans in Congress was leaked.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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One of the most important issues that educators in institutions of higher learning must face is skepticism about the efficacy of liberal arts education in an era that seems to be pushing what educators call STEM science, technology, engineering and math as the answer to everything. This is not just happening in the United States, of course. Calls to cut support for students who want to study literature, history or other so called soft disciplines are also made in Europe and Asia. But on our own shores, just recently, the governor of Connecticut used his line item veto power to cut support for the humanities in the state. While not directly aimed at higher education, this creates a climate in which people who want to study the humanities are told that their interests are worthless. We seem to be rejecting the idea that it is essential for the good health of any society to have people who are broadly educated, who learn to investigate, analyze and present their findings in a logical and clear fashion even without the aid of numbers or code. I was a member of the Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences, put together by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The report we produced, The Heart of the Matter, discussed this issue in depth, outlining three goals that America's educational institutions should advance: Educating Americans in the knowledge, skills and understanding that they need to thrive in a 21st century democracy; fostering a society that is innovative, competitive and strong; and equipping the nation for leadership in an interconnected world. The commission took the position and I agree wholeheartedly that "these goals cannot be achieved by science alone."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Education
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Last year, on a Thursday in June, long before live events and large gatherings bore the threat of contagion, the ballroom of the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn, Mich., was in full pageant form. Pink mini cupcakes filled the dessert table. A disco ball hung from the ceiling, spinning subtly as the D.J. set the mood with music. Seats for guests were draped in shiny gold fabric. Wine however, was swapped for Welch's sparkling red grape juice. The talent portion of the evening was made up entirely of readings from the Quran. A magician performed what he jokingly called "halal magic." The musical act performed Muslim hip hop. The pageant has given Muslim women, particularly those who wear the hijab, the chance to participate in an American rite on their own terms, without having to compromise their faith. (Its motto: "promoting modesty and inner beauty.") It was created by Maghrib Shahid, a 39 year old Black Muslim mother and modest clothing designer from Columbus, Ohio. As a hijabi, a Muslim woman who wears a head scarf, Ms. Shahid felt that she and other women like her bore the brunt of discrimination against Muslims, a diverse population estimated to number more than three million in the United States. President Trump a former pageant world figure himself has inflamed Islamophobia in the nation, through his rhetoric and by banning migration from several majority Muslim countries. "We're visibly Muslim, it's us who will be attacked first," Ms. Shahid said. "I wanted to give Muslim women the opportunity to change misconceptions about themselves." Halima Yasin Abdullahi, 23, who was crowned in the first Miss Muslimah pageant in 2017, said that two years on, she still feels its impact. "I've gained a really strong and consistent confidence in myself, and learned to appreciate my flaws," she said. "This is me. This is how I was born." To enter Miss Muslimah USA, contestants must be practicing Muslims aged 17 to 30, a range established after the first pageant, which accepted contestants up to 40 years of age. There's a 250 registration fee and a screening process. Once they are enrolled, they can prepare to compete in five categories: abayah (a loose, robelike dress), burkini (a swimsuit that covers the whole body), modest special occasion dress (dresses that are too tight could lead to disqualification) and talent, which may be a spoken word poem or a Quran recitation. Contestants must also answer this question: "If you were crowned Miss Muslimah USA, how would you use that title to change misconceptions about Muslim women in the world?" The winner holds the Miss Muslimah USA title for a year, signs a contract to abide by certain codes of conduct, is managed by the organization and walks in a show at an annual fashion convention hosted by Perfect for Her, a modest wear brand. Ms. Shahid helps the winner navigate sponsorships and fashion bookings. The first pageant was advertised to include a 5,000 prize for the winner. Subsequent pageants have not offered monetary rewards, though Ms. Shahid's hope is to offer scholarships in the future. Running the pageant on a shoestring budget by herself, Ms. Shahid dipped into her savings to bring Halima Aden, a Somali American model, to Columbus for the first Miss Muslimah USA. Ms. Aden was the first contestant to wear a hijab in the Miss Minnesota pageant in 2016, and went on to become the first woman to wear a hijab and burkini in Sports Illustrated, in 2019. Backstage last July, the contestants strapped on heels, adjusted the gowns they had modified with sleeves and high necklines, and helped one another tuck in their scarves before being called onstage. Andrea Rahal, 30, whose sister Amanda and cousin Amal were helping her into a silver sequined gown and white hijab, was one of them. Born to Lebanese parents and raised in Dearborn, home to one of the largest Arab American populations in the country, Ms. Rahal has worn a hijab since she was 8., She now works as a phlebotomist and medical assistant, and is a single mother of two. Ms. Rahal rallied her community around last year's pageant. She found 30 sponsors for the event and convinced Ms. Shahid to move the event from Columbus to Dearborn. "When I found Miss Muslimah, I never thought an opportunity like that would pop up," Ms. Rahal said. "It was always a dream for me to be part of a pageant, so when something comes your way, always take the risk and take the chance." The contestants strutted down the catwalk in their gowns one by one. Karter Zaher, a former member of Deen Squad, a popular Muslim hip hop group, sang the hit song "Cover Girl" (which includes lines such as "she represents peace and got her own voice, she's not forced to wear it cos' she made her own choice" and "she rocks the head scarf like the mother of Jesus"). Wearing their gowns, the women moved on to recite their speeches, which touched on Islamophobia, feminism, self care and the desire to be seen as multidimensional people in American society. Dr. Ismael, a dentist, went on to create Women of Wellness of New Jersey, an organization that produces the Miss Glitz, Glamour, and Brains USA in S.T.E.M pageant, which "showcases the beauty of the mind." She and Ms. Shahid are now on good terms. "I thank the organization for being the catalyst for me and many other women to do many productive things in the community and beyond," Dr. Ishmael said. Ms. Shahid said she has received backlash from fellow Muslims who thought the premise of the pageant defied the very definition of modesty by putting women in the spotlight. She remained undeterred. "We're living in the real world. We have to make noise. If we want to change we have to make change," she said. "I found myself trying to show Muslims it's OK to come out of your comfort zone, it's OK to be part of a pageant. I understand that this opportunity was never provided to you, but it's OK now." Ms. Shahid thinks there's still so much work to do to reach the pageant's full potential. She pointed to the rise of the Miss USA pageant, which grew out of the Miss America pageant after the winner Yolande Betbeze Fox refused to pose for publicity shots while wearing a swimsuit in 1950. "It took time for them to build," Ms. Shahid said. "If you support Miss Muslimah, in the next 10 years we'll also have that great momentum." The Look is a column that examines identity through a visual first lens. This year, the column is focused on the relationship between American culture and politics in the run up to the 2020 presidential election, produced by Eve Lyons and Tanner Curtis.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Fans of The Walking Dead comic book are in for a shock: The newest issue, arriving on Wednesday, is also the final one. Robert Kirkman, the creator and writer of The Walking Dead, has been known to throw his readers curveballs, but this one is the biggest and presumably the last for this comic. Last month, Kirkman shocked fans with the death of Rick Grimes, who had been the lead character since the very first issue was published in October 2003. And Kirkman previously surprised comic book stores last year with free copies of his Die!Die!Die! Comic, which was written with Scott M. Gimple. At the time, in a letter to retailers, Kirkman said he was trying to recapture the experience of visiting a comic store and not knowing what you would find. But surprises like this one can be difficult to pull off. There is a monthly catalog from Diamond Comic Distributors that contains blurbs for comics scheduled to arrive in future months. (There are also inevitable leaks, when retailers receive their comics a day or two ahead of the Wednesday sale date.) The description for the issue, No. 193, made it seem as if it were just another chapter in the series with the blurb "out in the countryside, trouble is brewing for a certain someone." There were also fake descriptions and covers released for issues No. 194 and No. 195 for August and September, which we now know will not be released.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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I'm a fairly big guy 6 foot 3 with plenty of mass to soak up alcohol but I was being particularly careful as I hopped (no pun intended) from brewery to brewery in San Diego. Touring the dozens of worthy beer options in the sprawling, beautiful city requires a car, and I was being conservative with my intake. But this Electric Youth coffee pale ale from Thunderhawk Alements was just too good. I'd never had a coffee beer that tasted so intensely and convincingly of coffee. There was a sweetness to the coffee component that tasted of berries and flowers, juxtaposed with the hoppy, bitter malt of the ale. Even better? A small pour was only 3. Delicious drinks played a significant role during my trip to San Diego, but they certainly weren't the only thing I enjoyed. You may have already heard of A list attractions like Balboa Park and the San Diego Zoo, but the city also has great nightlife, scenic cliffside hikes, and boardwalks and beaches as welcoming as you will find anywhere in the country. My challenge: to take it all in as inexpensively as possible. Today, San Diego is the eighth largest city in the country, but at the turn of the 20th century, its population stood at under 20,000. That changed after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, when the military expanded San Diego's naval operations, and the city hasn't stopped growing since. People know about San Diego's surf breaks, but fewer know that it has the largest concentration of military personnel in the nation, with around 100,000 active duty members. I drove into town from the Salton Sea in my 30 a day rental from Hertz as the last leg of a fun Southern California road trip. I headed to the Lafayette Hotel, on El Cajon Boulevard a good location, right near the border of University Heights and North Park. My room on the second floor of the well loved 1946 building was adequate, and a good deal for the 85 per night I paid through Hotels.com room rates on the hotel's website range from 109 to 289 per night. My experience was marred only by the fact that I left my coat in the room completely my fault, but my attempts to get assistance by calling and emailing were met with rather strong indifference by the staff. The Red Fox Steakhouse and Piano Bar, parts of which supposedly date back to a 1600s English inn, was a stone's throw from my room. I arrived to the strains of live music and sat in a booth, eyes adjusting to the dim light and taking in the cozy, homey atmosphere. I would pass on the slightly mealy crab cakes ( 9.95), but the dinner salad with garlic toast ( 5.75) was a winner. Two men were loudly discussing politics at the bar (this was my first post inauguration trip) and I got roped into the conversation. "I didn't vote," Chuck Hogan, 33, said. "But I'm a conservative. If I had, I would have voted for Trump." I asked him why, and he replied: "Hillary would have just been more of the same. At least this will be different." Our waitress, a middle aged immigrant from Russia, chimed in. She said that she, too, supported President Trump. She spent years legally going through the immigration process, she said, and didn't like that others didn't play by the rules. Not all of my encounters were quite so political most were just friendly and transactional. I stopped by the Home Brewing Co. one evening right as they were closing (many small breweries with tasting rooms close early as early as 6 p.m.), but a very nice guy named Scott gave me a couple of tastes on the house. One, a 10 percent alcohol porter, was heady and chocolate y. The other, an American pale ale called Pun Killer, tasted wonderfully of citrus and mango. I stopped for a decent plate of pulled pork ( 9.99) at the BBQ Pit on University Avenue before continuing on to ChuckAlek Biergarten, a spot in North Park with a great outdoor area. I tried the caramel y 1850 Runner brown porter and the Moonstomper Oat IPA (the names of these beers, like race horses, are half the fun). The five ounce tasters cost only 2. The glut of beer and breweries is almost overwhelming seemingly every other storefront in North Park is an independent microbrewery or a brewing supply store. And that's to say nothing of the Miramar neighborhood, or the famed "hops highway," a stretch of Route 78 just north of the city with a large concentration of brewers. San Diego is considered by some to be the beer capital of America, and is "clearly one of the best brewing communities in the world," said Paul Gatza, director of the Brewers Association. "The city came on board with a tourism grant for the San Diego Brewers Guild that helped with promotion," Mr. Gatza added, offering a theory as to why the beer community in San Diego, in particular, was able to take hold and flourish. And there is something for everyone: Bottlecraft is a self described curator of bottled craft brews. Young Hickory combines the ethoses of a coffee shop and brewery a room of people on laptops, half consuming caffeine, half enjoying one of 30 something varieties of craft beer. Even the most casual of burger joints, like Crazee Burger, have a healthy selection of craft beer on tap. One does not live by drink alone, however, and so I headed to Pacific Beach on a different day to walk along the ocean and take in the sea air. After enjoying a brisk walk and inhaling an unreasonably large breakfast burrito stuffed with egg, bacon, cheese, potato and hot sauce from Kono's Cafe, I struck up a conversation with Dennis Miller, who has lived in Pacific Beach for over 50 years. I first noticed his parrot, actually a yellow naped Amazon named Dry Rot, which was rescued from an abandoned ship. "See that place right there?" Mr. Miller asked me, pointing to the 710 Beach Club, a live music venue next to Kono's. "I used to have a card room right there." He explained that gambling and "card rooms" were once popular in San Diego but that few now remained. We walked out toward the ocean on Crystal Pier, a structure dating back nearly 100 years that now holds vacation cottages. The day was gorgeous, and a light breeze ruffled Dry Rot's thinning feathers (the parrot is over 30 years old). Mr. Miller told me stories about rabbit hunting in the Clairemont neighborhood and how local kids used to go abalone fishing off the coast. The natural beauty and casual atmosphere of San Diego isn't strictly relegated to the beaches. Point Loma extends down like an elephant's trunk from Sunset Cliffs and stretches south, hugging San Diego Bay and a large naval supply center. At the tip of the appendage is the Cabrillo National Monument ( 10 admission per car, or 5 for bicycles) and Old Point Loma Lighthouse, built in 1854. I recommend walking around and taking in the incredible views of downtown and other sights, like nearby Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery, which is magnificent. The real treat, though, is heading down to the Point Loma tide pools and exploring these mini universes, hiking along the cliffs and taking in the Pacific vistas. Entire ecosystems flourish in the tide pools and you can get right up next to them. You might see kelp, mussels, abalone, chitons and sandcastle worms. (It's a great activity if you have curious children in tow.) After a semirigorous cliffside walk, it was time to make up those expended calories with more drinks. I met up with my cousin Adrienne, a fashion designer who grew up in the area. We headed to the downtown tasting room of Stone Brewing, an Escondido brewery that may not have invented the craft IPA, but has done has much as anyone to promulgate the bitter, hop heavy West Coast style. We shared a flight of four beers at 3 apiece; the Tangerine Express IPA was particularly good. We walked up through the Gaslamp Quarter, a popular nightlife district if not my cousin's favorite, owing to "aggressive men who don't respect women." We settled on Resident Brewing, inside of the restaurant the Local, for 2 pours of a tasty blonde ale and a nice saison before grabbing an Aero Mule (a take on a Moscow Mule, 6.50) at the charming and divey Aero Club in Middletown. One of my favorite beer selections was at Border X Brewing, a Mexican craft beer specialist in Barrio Logan. Driving down Logan Avenue toward the brewery, you will see huge colorful murals in Chicano Park; one, from the 1970s, reads, "Varrio si, yonkes no!" (Neighborhood yes, junkyards no!) Border X has four ounce pours for a mere 1.50 and an all day happy hour on Tuesday with discounts on some pints. I recommend the deep red Blood Saison, made with hibiscus and agave it's sweet, tart and refreshing. The Abuelita's chocolate stout, vaguely spicy and tasting of cinnamon, is good, too. A perfect chaser (or appetizer) is an order of tacos al vapor (steamed tacos) from the restaurant Salud across the street (three for 6 on Thursdays). Believe it or not, I haven't been able to account for all of the excellent beers I sampled on this trip. Mikkeller, Alesmith, the list goes on and on. I recommend heading to San Diego to experience it yourself taking occasional breaks now and then to enjoy the natural beauty and a pristine ocean view or two, of course.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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As an astronomer at Chicago's Adler Planetarium, Lucianne Walkowicz usually has to stretch to connect the peculiarities of space physics with things that people experience on Earth. Then came the email about whales. Sonke Johnsen, a biologist at Duke University, told Dr. Walkowicz that his team had stumbled upon a bizarre correlation: When the surface of the sun was pocked with dark sunspots, an indicator of solar storms, gray whales and other cetacean species seemed more likely to strand themselves on beaches. The team just needed an astronomer's help wrangling the data. "This was like a dream request," Dr. Walkowicz said. "And I finally got to do something in marine biology, even though I didn't study it." With that assistance, there is some evidence of this peculiar correlation, the researchers said in a paper published Monday in Current Biology. "The study convinced me there is a relationship between solar activity and whale strandings," said Kenneth Lohmann, a biologist at the University of North Carolina who did not participate in the research. This coincidence across 93 million miles of space is more plausible than it might seem. Sunspots are a harbinger of heightened solar weather, marking times when the tangled plasma of the sun's atmosphere coughs out more photons and charged particles than usual. These disturbances sail outward and smash into our planet's magnetic field, creating colorful light shows like the aurora borealis and sometimes disrupting communications. Biologists have already demonstrated that many animals can navigate by somehow sensing Earth's magnetic field lines. Gray whales, which migrate over 10,000 miles a year through a featureless expanse of blue, might be relying on a similar hidden sense. But unlike a migrating bird, a whale is not easily placed in a magnetized box for controlled experiments. Instead, Jesse Granger, a Duke graduate student, looked at whale strandings, which previous studies had suggested seemed to track with sunspot activity. She narrowed a list of gray whale strandings kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to highlight the percentage of whales that were stranded alive, as well as whales that were released back to sea and seemed to recover. In theory, those cases were examples of healthy whales that had merely taken a wrong turn. Sunspot activity waxes and wanes, oscillating over an 11 year period. These strandings followed the same pattern. "They showed the exact same cycle as the sunspots," Ms. Granger said. Other researchers expressed concerns about the team's focus on lost whales. Their method included cases that "were almost certainly not" live strandings, said John Calambokidis, a biologist at the nonprofit Cascadia Research who works with NOAA and helped gather the data the team used. He also said that the correlation might come from a major stranding episode from 1999 to 2000 involving starving whales that coincided with a high period of solar activity. Ms. Granger noted that the research won't help stop whale strandings. Last year, an unusually high number of gray whales 123 washed up dead in the United States. Many were emaciated, unlike the examples in the current study. Investigations are ongoing, but naval sonar, disease and other factors can cause gray whale strandings. "I'm really trying to make sure that I don't get someone who hears this story and is like, 'Oh, I can start blasting sonar wherever I want, because it's only the sunspots,'" Ms. Granger said. Instead, she hopes to unlock the secrets of magnetic navigation. Aside from sunspot counts, the team also compared strandings with two other markers that also accompany solar squalls. One measure, of how much Earth's magnetic field was distorted on a given day as it was buffeted by particles from the sun, didn't seem to matter. But whales appeared to be most sensitive to solar radio frequency noise that intensified during solar storms. That correlation, if confirmed, suggests that the radio noise is jamming the gray whales' hypothesized magnetic sensors. Alternatively, Dr. Lohmann said, solar activity might also be affecting some other part of whale physiology.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper have a smash on their hands with the soundtrack to "A Star Is Born," which is spending its second straight week atop the Billboard chart. The album, which features songs by Lady Gaga and her fictional pop star counterpart Ally, plus Cooper (as Jackson Maine) singing compositions by Jason Isbell and Lukas Nelson, is riding the film's box office success to real world reach. "A Star Is Born" earned another 86,000 in sales and had 48 million song streams, according to Nielsen Music, for a total of 143,000 album equivalent units by the industry's math. Also firming up the soundtrack's No. 1 spot: 196,000 in digital song sales, a declining format in the post iTunes age. Never miss a pop music story: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Louder. The week's streaming champion, with 121 million plays, was Quavo of Migos, with his solo debut, "Quavo Huncho." The album, with cameos by Drake, 21 Savage and more, reached No. 2 with full album sales of 6,000 a typically low number for streaming dependent rap releases and a total of 99,000 units. (Because the album was technically released on a Thursday evening, before the sales week turned over at midnight, it debuted on last week's Billboard chart at No. 66, with 11,000 additional units.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Don't be fooled by the title the action takes place over the course of one night, when a rural town is covered in deep snow. That means no rest for the snowplow, whose driver jumps inside, his dog by his side, to get to work. Written in punchy, succinct rhymes, Bruss's text captures the primal appeal of both snow and snowplowing, while Fancher and Johnson's dazzling art makes the book feel special, a celebration of winter nighttime beauty and the people and machines who cheerfully rise to the occasion when the going gets snowy. LITTLE OWL'S SNOW Written and illustrated by Divya Srinivasan. This lovely third picture book featuring the tiny, giant eyed Little Owl begins in late autumn and quickly plunges into winter, when many of Little Owl's friends are unavailable thanks to hibernation or migration, and life begins to seem a little dull. Even the thrill of the first snowfall wears off. But with help from Mama Owl's wise advice, Little Owl adjusts to the quiet and solitude and learns to appreciate the snow. Srinivasan paces her gentle story perfectly, and her simple digital art is appealing, with cute, watchful creatures and soft edged shapes. A WHISPER IN THE SNOW By Kate Westerlund. Illustrated by Feridun Oral. Three rabbits and two mice (twins) hear a whisper under the snow. They dig and find a wet, sad stuffed bear, so they pack him in a little wagon and cart him to a friend's house. There they fix him up, get him dressed and enlist some bird friends to find the child who has lost him. Even the truly jaded may melt a bit over this charming, exquisitely illustrated Beatrix Potter esque Christmas tale, which wears its holiday message and its life lessons (teamwork, compassion, critical thinking) as lightly as the season's first dusting of snow. 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. What if the candy studded cookie in the classic "Gingerbread Man" tale actually tasted terrible because he was (spoiler alert) really a tree ornament, baked with glue and salt? That's the clever premise of this entertaining story about a sugar cookie and a fox who spits him out ("Blech! You taste awful. ... plus, I think I just broke my tooth"). The book delivers a parable of self acceptance, as well as recipes for sugar cookies both the edible and ornamental varieties. LITTLE FOX IN THE SNOW By Jonathan London. Illustrated by Daniel Miyares. Foxes and snow are a picture book staple, but this one is different: It's both winter cozy and a realistic hunting story. "Hunger draws you like a bow," the book's narrator says to the little fox. "You must hunt!" A white hare "no match for a fleet footed fox" soon fills his belly. Miyares, whose watercolor art is as stunning as always, shows a bit of red staining the stream as the fox takes a cold drink of water after his meal. I GOT THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT By Connie Schofield Morrison. Illustrated by Frank Morrison. This refreshing ode to the Christmas spirit does not (as so many do) lament the lack of it these days. Instead, an ebullient girl with pompom pigtails and a purple parka tells how she feels and shares it: caroling, eating hot candied nuts from a street vendor, donating coins, ice skating: "I twirled and swirled around the spirit." Morrison's felicitous art bursts off each page with a pop of energy. THE BROKEN ORNAMENT Written and illustrated by Tony DiTerlizzi. Jack is a kid who sees Christmas as a bottomless goody bag. When he shatters an ornament that meant a lot to his mom, she's crushed, but Jack is clueless until a fairy grants him all his wishes for more, more, more. Then she shows him the moving story behind the ornament, and he changes his Christmas tune. The story can seem as jarringly jam packed as Jack's Christmas list, but it drives home its message heartily, with a maximalist retro visual style.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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Did you hear the scoop about Chris Evans? When the 39 year old actor goes to the local sandwich shop in his Massachusetts hometown, he always orders the same thing: a ham sandwich. Allegedly. An anonymous source recently claimed that Mr. Evans asks for "pickles, tomatoes, a little mustard, and extra mayo" on wheat, with salt and vinegar chips on the side, and he "always puts money in the tip jar." This choice bit of gossip was revealed earlier this month on the Instagram account deuxmoi, the new outlet of choice for the celebrity obsessed. Run by an anonymous New York City woman, Deuxmoi has exploded in popularity this year by sharing both scandalous and shockingly mundane updates about the A list on the platform's Stories feature. This user submitted gossip disappears after 24 hours, making it all the more important for interested parties to click through on a daily basis. In addition to Mr. Evans's sandwich preferences, Deuxmoi has posted anonymous tips in recent weeks about 's coffee order, Lionel Richie's tipping habits and Jennifer Lopez's preferred dessert (one bite of creme brulee). The account also breaks news: When Carl Lentz, the Hillsong pastor famous for ministering to Justin Bieber, was fired on Nov. 4 for "moral failures," Deuxmoi was the first to post a statement from church leadership. Perhaps it would surprise you to learn, then, that the woman behind the account is not a tabloid obsessive. She previously used Deuxmoi to promote a lifestyle site that she started with a friend in 2013. When the pair stopped publishing content to the site ("around 2015"), she kept the account, which had about 45,000 followers. Then, in March, she got bored. "It was the day that I got sent home from work and knew that we were going to be quarantined for an indefinite amount of time," she said. "I think it was March 18. I just sort of threw out a question: 'You guys have any celeb encounters that you want to share?' And that's literally how it started." The first tip that came in was about Leonardo DiCaprio. Then there was one about Jonah Hill. Then, she said, one of Mr. Hill's ex girlfriends started DMing her. She started posting screenshots of the messages from her followers, and the account took off. The account's administrator said she gets hundreds of submissions a week through her Instagram DMs and a form on her website. (The New York Times agreed to grant the administrator anonymity due to her concerns for privacy and safety.) Given that volume, she said, she does not have any personal photos stored on her phone. "All screenshots." Sometimes, if the information is particularly sensitive, she will alter the text to make it a blind item. But she is clear that she does not spend time attempting to verify each story. Or any story. This hasn't stopped other celebrity news and gossip outlets, like The Daily Mail and LaineyGossip, from citing her account. "I've always stayed true to what I said from day one, which is that this information is not proven to be based in fact," she said. "I don't do any additional research. I'm not a reporter." She simply takes a screenshot of a source's message and reposts it, sometimes blurring out identifying details. "I feel like my content is as truthful as the person who's sending it in," she said. "Like, I don't edit. I will censor, but I don't edit. So you're seeing exactly what somebody is writing to me." "I just ask the reader to be discerning and, you know, decide for themselves if they think it's true or not," she added. As a result, tapping through Deuxmoi's dozens of daily stories feels a bit like reading the menu at the Cheesecake Factory: There's a lot there, and it's not immediately clear where any of it came from or how it fits together. Though she does not necessarily see herself as one of them, the woman behind Deuxmoi follows a long line of gossip reporters who have used blind items to reveal potentially damaging information about the rich and powerful. The tradition dates back to the post Civil War society pages, was revitalized in the 1980s by reporters like Richard Johnson at Page Six, and is currently employed on dedicated blind item sites like Crazy Days and Nights and Blind Gossip. What Deuxmoi tends to post and what readers seem to gravitate toward are anodyne stories that usually go unreported by magazines like People and Us Weekly. How does an actor respond when someone asks him for a picture? What does a pop star say to a flight attendant on a trans Atlantic flight? Who's wearing a mask, and who's not? This kind of idle gossip proved especially engrossing during the beginning of the pandemic, when most celebrities were locked in their multimillion dollar homes, not doing anything, and the traditional tabloids had little to report. "I love to know, like, J. Lo's restaurant order or what brand shampoo Jennifer Aniston really uses," the woman behind Deuxmoi said. "I feel like you're not really getting that information anywhere, and this is coming straight from the people who have served them or worked with them. Like, if it's celebrity shopping at a boutique I don't know if this is too invasive but I've asked, 'What size jeans did they buy?'" Though she also posts more dramatic updates about celebrity divorces and general misbehavior, they don't spark the same kind of joy for her. "Somebody's going to message me and say like, so and so was caught doing drugs at a party or having a threesome or whatever," she said. "It's just not as exciting as it sounds anymore," she sighed. "I don't know, maybe it's the state of the world." Mundane celebrity gossip has become popular across social media: On TikTok, restaurant workers share their run ins with celebrity patrons. (After user juliacarolann, a Manhattan restaurant hostess, accused Hailey Bieber of being "not nice" during a handful of visits to the unidentified hot spot, Ms. Bieber apologized in the comments.) Other celebrity focused Instagram accounts have started to pump their followers for celebrity anecdotes, too. Emma Diamond and Julie Kramer, the founders of the account commentsbycelebs, which catalogs social media exchanges involving celebrities, teamed up with Jesse Margolis, the founder of overheardla, which posts overheard snippets of conversations between young Los Angeles residents, to create overheardcelebs. This new account highlights user submitted stories of almost uniformly positive celebrity encounters. The posts are so inoffensive that celebrities themselves respond to them. (On a post detailing a time when Jennifer Garner was allegedly nice to someone backstage at a Broadway play, Ms. Garner commented that she remembered the encounter.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Lewis Hamilton, the 29 year old Englishman who won it, called it "a racer's race," perhaps the best ever of his 24 victories, and by the measure of how many others in the sport described it, that was no boast. For many who follow Formula One, the Bahrain Grand Prix last weekend was the best in a decade, more spectacular for being staged at night under floodlights. Comparisons have been drawn with some of the great duels in the history of grand prix racing, evoking Nuvolari, Fangio, Clark and Senna in their prime. In the desert setting, the Silver Arrows of Mercedes Benz, driven by Hamilton and Nico Rosberg of Germany, drove wheel to wheel to the checkered flag, swapping the lead back and forth and finishing barely a second apart to give Mercedes its second 1 2 finish in grand prix racing since it re entered the series in 2010. The team's 1 2 finish a week earlier in Maylasia was its first such result since Fangio's heyday in 1955. "Twinvincible!" Mercedes shouted from full page ads in British newspapers on Monday. The success in Bahrain, after opening the season with victories in Australia and Malaysia, seemed to have satisfied executives in Stuttgart that Formula One was doing for the company what was intended when it re entered the series as a factory team five seasons ago: building on success in the highest technology form of motorsport to lend a contemporary edge to a traditionally stolid image. The heroics of the Mercedes drivers were replicated throughout the field, with passing and repassing lap after lap. It was as if Formula One had determined, at last, to mock those who have dismissed it in recent years as a stage for tedious lights to flag processions. Some might say that grand prix racing had never been in more desperate need of a showcase event. The immediate challenge in Bahrain was to continue demonstrating the viability of the new hybrid power units that made their debut this year. In place of the 750 horsepower naturally aspirated V8 engines that were used in recent years, the 2014 power units combine 1.6 liter turbocharged V6 engines with two generator units that harvest energy from the braking and engine's exhaust to provide an electrically powered boost of up to 30 percent of the piston engine's output. The total horsepower is close to what was available from last year's V8s. Highly complex and costing millions to develop, the new hybrid powertrains are the sport's response to demands by major manufacturers Mercedes and Renault, already competing, and Honda, pledged to return in 2015 for engine technologies that are relevant to production cars and to the efficiency mandates that guide them. The new rules also impose a fuel limit that represents about a 35 percent reduction from the consumption of the V8 era. Though wary of the seeming oxymoron mating flat out, pinnacle of the sport racing to a culture that prizes low carbon technologies Formula One has crossed a Rubicon of sorts. But, until Bahrain at least, the compact had proved highly vexed, and possibly doomed. Preseason testing featured such a rash of breakdowns, with teams like the Renault powered Red Bulls barely able to complete a handful of laps at a stretch, that disaster seemed inevitable. Concerns arose that only a handful of cars would reach the finish at the race in Melbourne last month, and that the racing would assume the nature of an economy run. Major figures in the sport were in open rebellion, with Ferrari's chairman, Luca di Montezemolo, warning of a new era of "taxi cab driving." He was joined by Bernie Ecclestone, the sport's commercial rights holder, in predicting "boring" races that would further alienate a global TV audience, estimated by Formula One's own figures at about 450 million, that shrunk by at least 20 percent in the last years of the old engine formula. Sebastian Vettel, the Formula One champion for the Red Bull team for the past four years, joined a chorus of contempt for the new engines and their subdued exhaust noise. With a low pitched growl and a turbo's whistle, the hybrid powertrains lack the adrenaline punch of the screaming 18,000 r.p.m. V8s. The situation is worse when cast in the context of Formula One's other woes. A sport where top teams can spend the best part of 500 million a year to field a two car team over 19 races the ballpark figure for Ferrari and Mercedes, with others like McLaren and Red Bull not far behind was always at risk of becoming an anomaly in an era of economic malaise. Teams fielding at least half of the 22 cars that start each race have been teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, and efforts to persuade the wealthier teams to forgo their advantage by accepting budget caps have failed. Some second tier teams have been unable to pay their drivers, and others have resorted to fielding only drivers, some unproven in Formula One, who can bring big sponsorship deals. Compounding this, Ecclestone faces trial on fraud, bribery and embezzlement charges relating to the series' 2006 change of ownership maneuvered to keep him in charge. The trial is scheduled for later this month. And then there was Bahrain. Ahead of the race, much attention was focused on a meeting that brought together Ecclestone, di Montezemolo and Jean Todt, the former Ferrari team manager who is now president of the sport's regulatory authority, the Federation Internationale de l'Automobile, and a prime mover behind the move to hybrid power. Their discussions were quickly widened to include Niki Lauda of Mercedes, Christian Horner of Red Bull and Ron Dennis of McLaren. What transpired was an impasse between the haves in this case, Mercedes, and the teams that use its engines and the have nots. With Ferrari and Red Bull trailing in the new era races, the paddock talk was of a private deal that would use Todt's powers to cut race distances, ease fuel limits and approve changes to the Pirelli tires to even out the racing. "To have drivers who save fuel and tires, this is not Formula One," di Montezemolo declared on arrival in Bahrain. But Lauda and Dennis took a stand in favor of sticking with the rules as they are, at least for the 2014 season. What followed on the track was more than a matter of compelling racing. The speeds seemed to quash any argument about taxi cab driving. The fastest straight line speed of 204 m.p.h., by the Mercedes powered Force India car of Sergio Perez, was 9 m.p.h. hour faster than the best of last year's V8s. Pointedly, Ecclestone and di Montezemolo left the track for their executive jets before the race ended, taking with them a solitary concession: that Todt's officials would work with the teams to seek ways of changing the V6's exhaust systems to generate more of the noise that many see as essential to spectator appeal. The aim is get the engineering done in time for tests after the Spanish Grand Prix on May 11. "I think the noise matters," said Lauda, who was a three time Formula One champion with Ferrari and McLaren and had the task of persuading Mercedes to stick with its program in the years when its cars were frequently uncompetitive. While speaking with an indulgent tone on the issue of engine noise, Lauda managed to convey the sense that nothing now was likely to deny Mercedes the Formula One championship or cut the advantage that rivals said gives the team an advantage of as much as two seconds a lap. "It gets in our head that the more noise you get the quicker you go," he said. "It's an emotional thing."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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The composer Noah Creshevsky in 1985 with the tools of his trade, including a Moog synthesizer. "We live in a hyperrealist world," he said, and he wrote music to match it. Noah Creshevsky, a composer of sophisticated, variegated electroacoustic works that mingled scraps of vocal and instrumental music, speech, outside noise, television snippets and other bits of sound, died on Dec. 3 at his home in Manhattan. He was 75. His husband, David Sachs, said the cause was cancer. Mr. Creshevsky studied composition with some of the most prominent figures in modern music, including the French pedagogue Nadia Boulanger and the Italian composer Luciano Berio. Rather than pursuing a career that might have resulted in concert hall celebrity, Mr. Creshevsky found his calling in the studio bound world of electronic music. Using the prevailing technologies of the day at first cutting and splicing magnetic tape, later using samplers and digital audio workstations he made music that was dizzyingly complex in its conception and construction. But because he built his works from everyday sounds as well as voices and instruments, his compositions felt accessible, engaging and witty. The term he used to describe his music, and the philosophy that animated it, was "hyperrealism." The "realism" comes from what we hear in our shared environment, and the "hyper" from the "exaggerated or excessive" ways those sounds are handled, Mr. Creshevsky wrote in "Hyperrealism, Hyperdrama, Superperformers and Open Palette," an influential 2005 essay. "Contemporary reality is so densely layered and information rich and so far removed from a hypothetical state of 'naturalness' that hyperrealism is an accurate term for identifying the fabric of daily life," he continued. "We live in a hyperrealist world." Mr. Creshevsky conveyed those qualities through his music with wild juxtapositions and fantastical distortions. He used recordings of John Cage's speaking voice to create "In Other Words" (1976), a leisurely whirlpool of disembodied chatter. In "Great Performances" (1978), clips of classical music performances and deadpan announcers poke gentle fun at highbrow culture. "Strategic Defense Initiative" (1978) mashes up martial arts movie sound bites, funk beats and inexplicable noises in an exuberant tour de force of tape manipulation. The same energy and wit animate Mr. Creshevsky's digital creations. In "Ossi di Morte" (1997), tiny scraps of recorded opera are stitched into a vignette that never existed. Similarly, "Gotterdammerung" (2009) infuses samples of the Klez Dispensers, a local klezmer ensemble, with superhuman energy and speed. Mr. Creshevsky was also a much admired teacher. He joined the faculty of Brooklyn College in 1969 and served as director of the college's trailblazing Center for Computer Music from 1994 to 1999. He also taught at the Juilliard School and Hunter College in New York and spent the 1984 academic year at Princeton University. Over the years Mr. Creshevsky documented much of his music on record labels that specialized in classical or experimental music. This album was released by the Mutable Music label in 2003. Noah Creshevsky was born Gary Cohen on Jan. 31, 1945, in Rochester, N.Y., to Joseph and Sylvia Cohen. His father worked in his family's dry cleaning business, and his mother was a homemaker. He changed his surname to Creshevsky, according to Mr. Sachs, "to honor his grandparents, whose name it was." At the same time he also changed his first name, because, he said, "I never felt like a Gary." The Cohen household was not especially musical, but young Gary was drawn to a piano that had been bought for his older brother. His parents, Mr. Sachs said, "were surprised to see toddler Noah his legs too short to reach the pedals picking out pop melodies he had heard and retained." He began his formal musical training at 6, in the preparatory division of the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. "Since my nature is that of a composer rather than a performer, I never liked spending much time practicing someone else's composition," Mr. Creshevsky said in an interview published by Tokafi, a music website. "Instead of working on the music that had been assigned by my teachers at Eastman, I spent many hours improvising at the piano." He made money, he said, working as a cocktail pianist at bars and restaurants. After finishing at Eastman in 1961, he earned a bachelor of fine arts degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo, now known as the University at Buffalo, in 1966. There he studied with the noted composer Lukas Foss. He also spent a year with Boulanger at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, in 1963 and 1964, a rite of passage for many prominent American composers. After graduating he moved to New York City, where he founded a new music group, the New York Improvisation Ensemble. He studied with Berio at Juilliard and earned his master's degree in 1968. Not long afterward, Mr. Creshevsky gave up composing music meant to be performed live. In espousing hyperrealism, he identified two chief threads in his own work. Beginning with "Circuit," a 1971 work for harpsichord and tape, he used sounds derived from familiar instruments, including the voice, to evoke "superperformers," a term he applied to artificial performances of inhuman dexterity and exactitude. The idea had many precedents, Mr. Creshevsky wrote in 2005, including the violin music of Paganini, the piano music of Liszt and the player piano works of Conlon Nancarrow. He also sought to radically expand the sonic palette available to a composer, a venture aided by affordable personal computers and the advent of sampling. Composers could now "incorporate the sounds of the entire world into their music," he wrote. The result, he proposed, would be "an inclusive, limitless sonic compendium, free of ethnic and national particularity." Mr. Creshevsky's view of music education balanced a healthy respect for classical music's lineage and literature with an open minded approach to global culture and emerging technologies. "It seems probable that the next Mozart will not play the piano, but will be a terrific player of computer games," he predicted in the Tokafi interview. "A senior generation needs to educate itself by understanding that digital technologies are creative instruments of quality." He retired from Brooklyn College in 2000, and in 2015 he delivered his personal archives of recordings, papers and ephemera to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts. Over the years he had documented much of his music on record labels that specialized in classical or experimental music. He found a kindred spirit and fervent advocate in the composer and saxophonist John Zorn, whose Tzadik label issued compelling discs of Mr. Creshevsky's compositions in 2007, 2010 and 2013.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Thanks to temporary bans on new natural gas hookups in parts of New York, the market for single family geothermal energy systems, which use underground pipes to harness the earth's energy for heating and cooling buildings, is finally starting to make some inroads. Geothermal energy systems use a network of underground pipes, commonly referred to as ground loops, which circulate water and propylene glycol, a type of nontoxic alcohol, all year. During the winter, the ground loops absorb the heat from the earth, which stays steady at about 50 degrees Fahrenheit. The heated liquid circulating in the loop is pushed into a pump system inside the house that then produces warm air. In the summer, the pump sucks out the warm air in the home and pushes it back into the cooler ground. A convergence of factors, including a recently enacted state carbon emissions law, natural gas delivery constraints, and the availability of tax incentives and rebates, has persuaded some homeowners to replace their oil burning furnaces or boilers with electric geothermal systems, instead of heating and cooling systems that run on natural gas. "Geothermal is at a groundswell point," for single family homes, said David Logsdon, a section manager in Consolidated Edison's Energy Efficiency and Demand Management department. "And it's all part of the electrification of the industry." Westchester County, which includes some of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the state, has become a de facto testing ground for the state and the industry to persuade homeowners to adopt these air and ground source pump systems. Con Ed, which announced its ban on new gas hookups in the county this spring because demand is outpacing gas availability, currently provides a 5,000 rebate for customers who buy a geothermal system from their partner Dandelion Energy. Combined with a rebate from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and a 30 percent federal tax credit, about 10,000 to 12,000 can be shaved off a system that can cost anywhere between 25,000 to 40,000 to purchase and install. Adam Tucker, a Chappaqua, N.Y. resident, recently took advantage of the available savings to replace his oil burning boiler that was over 30 years old. Mr. Tucker, an accountant, said he was floored when Con Ed gave him a 200,000 to 250,000 estimate (before the moratorium began) for him to switch over to natural gas. The hefty price tag included the cost for the digging and infrastructure work required to connect his home to the existing network. "Who in the world would say yes to that?" Mr. Tucker said. To look for a cheaper alternative, he started researching his options and came across Dandelion. With the available incentives, a 34,000 system was pared down to about 23,000. Last winter, Dandelion and its partner companies took a few days to drill a hole about five inches in diameter and 500 feet deep right in front of his front steps to place the ground loops into the earth. Mr. Tucker's system kicked in this January and he estimated that he has saved anywhere between 1,000 to 1,500 this year on his heating bill. "Yes, you do have to pay a chunk of money upfront, but you save money in the long term and it's so efficient," he said, who jokingly referred to himself as the "pied piper" of geothermal since he has told many of his friends and neighbors about his new system. "It's really a neat option because it gets you off of oil." According to the Environmental Protection Agency, geothermal systems are about 48 percent more efficient than gas furnaces and 75 percent more efficient than oil furnaces. The U.S. Energy Department says consumers can cut their energy bills by up to 65 percent when compared to traditional heating and cooling systems. For its part, Con Ed plans to spend more than 175 million over the next six years on programs and incentives for air and ground source heat pumps. "If you're going to have renewable energy be a primary source, then customers need choices," Mr. Logsdon said. Meanwhile, National Grid, which serves energy consumers on Long Island and in parts of Brooklyn and Queens, said its residential geothermal energy demonstration program in Riverhead, N.Y., has been so successful, that the utility is looking to expand its program. Pending regulatory approval, it seeks to install geothermal systems totaling 2,700 tons of capacity for a mix of residential and commercial properties. (Each single family home typically requires the installation of a three to five ton capacity system.) National Grid announced its temporary natural gas moratorium in May largely because the state denied permits for the construction of the 23 mile Williams Pipeline, a new natural gas pipe from Middlesex County, N.J., to Rockaway, Queens. Natural gas now comes from an existing pipeline that runs essentially the same route. The utility in late 2017 installed a large shared geothermal system that was tapped by 10 homes in Glenwood Village, a retirement community in Riverhead. For the January to May 2018 heating season, each home saved about 283, or 38 percent, when compared to using propane or kerosene the previous year. Owen Brady, manager of the Future of Heat program at National Grid, said the ground loops were as easy to install as the utility's gas pipes and the savings each homeowner saw was compelling enough to seek an expansion. "The system definitely does more with less," he said. Since starting her business in 2017, Kathy Hannun, the chief executive of Dandelion, said the firm has installed hundreds of systems throughout the state. Sales in Westchester County have grown by 20 percent every month since its deal with ConEd was announced in April. "We're now at the point where we need to invest more money into staff training to keep up with demand," Ms. Hannun said. Zachary Fink, owner of ZBF Geothermal in Commack, N.Y., echoed Ms. Hannun's desire for additional skilled trade labor, noting that he's on track to install 85 geothermal systems in homes on Long Island and Queens, twice the number compared to last year.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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The four biggest tournaments in tennis, known as the Grand Slams, so clearly reflect the cities in which they take place. January offers the Australian Open, a free and easy party in Melbourne. The French Open, in springtime in Paris, leads with the beauty and elegance of Roland Garros and its red clay. Wimbledon, in July in London, with its hallowed grass, is tradition and history, with a box reserved for the royal family. And the late summer finale is the United States Open in New York, a tournament every bit as noisy and chaotic and nonstop as the city itself, with matches that sometimes start near midnight and stretch well past it, with fans carousing into the night. Except of course, when the U.S. Open takes place amid a pandemic. Through this spring, New York became more quiet and empty, with atypically bare pavement in Times Square and silence on the streets broken only by the citywide cheers each night at 7 o'clock from the windows to herald doctors, nurses and other essential workers. Gone, seemingly, was everything that made the city the city. That contrarian version of life arrived Monday at the U.S.T.A. Billie Jean King National Tennis Center, a bow to the safety precautions required to limit the spread of the coronavirus. To be here during the opening day of the U.S. Open was to experience something nearly impossible to envision. The Adidas and U.S. Open stores were filled only with people stringing rackets, six feet apart, instead of fans swiping plastic for souvenirs. Metal shutters were pulled down on every stand in the food court. No Franks and Fries or Neapolitan Pizza or Ben Jerry's. As Angelique Kerber of Germany and Ajla Tomljanovic of Australia got underway at Louis Armstrong Stadium with the first match in a big, nearly empty venue Armstrong can hold some 14,000 people the loudest sounds were the screeching trains from the Long Island Rail Road yard just beyond the tennis center's walls, and of course the planes flying low out of nearby La Guardia Airport. Tomljanovic, who lost 6 4, 6 4, described the bizarre sensation of slugging through the most intense points only to have all that effort met with the sound of one coach clapping. "That's usually when the crowd would erupt," said Tomljanovic, who likes to people watch during her changeovers but had nothing to look at but empty seats covered by tarps. "Nothing really happens. It has to come from you." Players marched onto their courts after an announcer introduced them over the public address system with brief highlights of their careers, even though no one was really there who didn't know the information already. Then came some brief piped in crowd noise. Big screens that surround the court at Arthur Ashe Stadium showed a grid view of fans cheering remotely in small boxes, looking a bit like they were being held hostage and told to cheer on command. Karolina Pliskova of the Czech Republic, the No. 1 seed in the women's draw with Ashleigh Barty and Simona Halep not playing, opened play in the 22,000 seat Ashe Stadium and imagined that she was, in fact, being watched. The top 32 seeds each get a luxury suite in Ashe to use as a lounge. Surely a few of them saw her dismantle Anhelina Kalinina of Ukraine, 6 4, 6 0. "It's super huge and it still feels super empty," Pliskova said of Ashe, "but I feel like there is at least the player boxes where they stay, so I felt like there is at least a couple people watching." The artists call it "negative space" the area around and between the subjects. At the U.S. Open, it is usually a sea of people, with the occasional player navigating through on the way to a match or a practice court like a commuter racing for a train at Grand Central at rush hour. There are no tunnels or hidden walkways here. You march with the people. There was a cracker of a match of Court 5, where Cameron Norrie of Britain came back from two sets down to upset the No. 9 seed Diego Schwartzman of Argentina, 3 6, 4 6, 6 2, 6 1, 7 5. It was not beautiful tennis.There were 58 break points and 146 unforced errors, but it was knotted at 3 3 and 5 5 in the fifth set. Schwartzman hit the deck twice in the last set while scrambling desperately for points. Norrie saved match points and took advantage of a cramping Schwartzman in the final games. "Sometimes you got to win ugly," Norrie, 25, said when he had completed one of the great comebacks of his career, a match that would have packed the bleachers of the court in any other year. Instead, about two dozen people watched his fifth set, including several of his fellow Britons, among them Jamie Murray. "All the Brits have become a little closer," Norrie said. With no paying spectators to worry about, Murray dropped his racket bag on one side of the bleachers then left it unattended for the bulk of the nearly four hour match. "It's actually nice to get a chance to watch some of the matches," he said, pointing out one the rare silver linings of this strange and empty event. "Kind of stress free." Sure, Norrie allowed, he would have loved to have put on the show in front of a squealing, overflow crowd. He tried, instead, to focus instead on all the people watching at home in England, maybe even more than usual, given the continuing resistance to large social activities.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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The 34th annual edition of South by Southwest, the sprawling festival of music, technology and film in Austin, Texas, that has become a highlight on the global cultural calendar, was canceled by city officials on Friday over fears about the rapid spread of coronavirus. Festival organizers and government officials had come under intense pressure in recent days to pull the plug on South by Southwest, with more than 50,000 people signing an online petition and a growing list of tech companies among them Apple, Facebook, Twitter and TikTok announcing their withdrawal. The decision was announced at a news conference by city and county officials who declared a "local disaster," even as they stressed that Austin has not had an outbreak and that the number of confirmed cases in Texas was relatively small. Yet they noted that South by Southwest tends to draw many thousands of attendees from all over the world, including from areas affected by coronavirus. "After careful deliberation, there was no acceptable path forward that would mitigate the risk enough to protect our community," said Dr. Mark Escott, the city's interim health authority and public health medical director. No one representing South by Southwest spoke. In a statement, festival organizers said: "We are devastated to share this news with you. 'The show must go on' is in our DNA, and this is the first time in 34 years that the March event will not take place. We are now working through the ramifications of this unprecedented situation." "As recently as Wednesday," the statement continued, "Austin Public Health stated that 'there's no evidence that closing SXSW or any other gatherings will make the community safer.' However, this situation evolved rapidly, and we honor and respect the city of Austin's decision." The festival was to have run from March 13 to 22, with events planned throughout bars and party spaces across Austin, and at a crowded convention center. In their statement, organizers said they were working to reschedule the events, but the complex planning and tour routing that goes into putting on the music festival may make that very difficult. Globally, more than 100,000 people have been infected by the coronavirus and more than 3,000 have died in an epidemic that began in China but has spread widely, including in South Korea, Italy, Iran and the United States, where more than 300 people have caught the virus and 17 have died. On Friday, organizers of Emerald City Comic Con in Seattle, a city in the midst of an outbreak, announced they were postponing the event, which was to begin next Thursday; and Miami officials said that this month's Ultra Music Festival, a long running dance event with an international audience, had been canceled. Other events are still going on if perhaps with more hand sanitizer flowing including this weekend's Armory Show art fair in New York. Originally a scrappy showcase for new bands, South by Southwest or "South By," as it is widely known has long since morphed into a vast mix of media, marketing and pop culture, where major brands intermingle with tech start ups and independent musicians to mutually drum up buzz. The dozens of scheduled events this year included the premiere of the "Beastie Boys Story" documentary and an appearance by its director, Spike Jonze; the comedy writer and director Judd Apatow interviewing Stephen Colbert; and Kim Kardashian West discussing her criminal justice work. Among the big musical names were the producers Pharrell Williams and Benny Blanco; Kim Gordon, formerly of Sonic Youth; and a keynote speech by Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. Last year, South by Southwest's various events had a combined attendance of 417,000, including 159,000 who came to the music portion, according to festival figures. The cancellation of the festival now raises questions about reimbursements for festival tickets, which can cost upward of 1,700, as well as travel reservations. The festival's statement did not address whether refunds or exchanges would be offered for tickets. Several hotels, including the Holiday Inn Express in downtown Austin, the Fairmont Austin and the Driskill, said that they would give refunds to anyone whose reservations were affected by the cancellation. Southwest Airlines said it had a standard policy of letting passengers exchange tickets, and other airlines have instituted more flexible exchange rules since the beginning of the outbreak. Many performers and presenters had already sunk money into the event. As news of the cancellation spread on Friday, musicians and others planning to attend were left to wonder whether they could recover any lost costs. Prentice Robertson, the lead singer of the Scottish indie rock band Vistas, which was going to be making its United States debut at South by Southwest, said in an interview this week, before the event was canceled, that his band was eager to go but also nervously considering the safety risks of travel. It had spent more than 6,000 pounds (about 7,800) on travel and other expenses in anticipation of going to the festival. Mr. Robertson said on Friday that when the news arrived, he was looking over a payment invoice from the band's equipment rental in Austin. "I was just about to click 'pay,'" he said. The cancellation also raises questions about the many ancillary events, like brand sponsored parties, that are not part of the official festival calendar but are a vital and inseparable part of the spectacle and attraction of South by Southwest. These take place in bars and restaurants around Austin, as well as in seemingly every open spot available parking lots, yards, industrial buildings. Alan Miller, the owner of the marketing company Collide, which produces a series of such events each year, said that his company was planning on moving forward unless "told by the rule of law that we are not allowed to be there anymore." "South by Southwest is not like any other festival, any other conference," Mr. Miller said. "This entire festival grew because of people taking chances. We are brave people and we need to represent culture and stand strong in this time." Local officials said events with 2,500 or more people would need "mitigation plans for infectious diseases" in order to proceed, a rule that would appear to include sporting events. The University of Texas men's and women's basketball teams are playing their final home games of the season this weekend; a statement from the university said the games would be played as scheduled. The lost festival traffic is sure to be a blow to local businesses that have long seen South by Southwest as the high point of the year. Michael Graham, the co founder of the brewery Austin Beerworks, said the cancellation was "inevitable and unimaginable all at the same time." He said that the brewery could typically expect orders of hundreds of cases of cans for the festival, orders that will no longer come in. A large company had already ordered 100 kegs, worth about 10,000, but he assumed the order would be canceled. Last year, the various events associated with South by Southwest which also include programs on gaming, comedy and education contributed 356 million to the Austin economy, according to figures circulated by the festival. As South by Southwest has grown, it has helped elevate Austin's reputation worldwide as not only a music destination but also a home for technology and innovation. Addressing the economic effects, Mayor Steve Adler said: "All ramifications are secondary to helping to ensure we are safe as a community. We will deal with and work our way through all the other ramifications." For the larger concert industry a primary source of income for many artists what happens at South by Southwest may be an indicator of the year to come. Some major acts, like Green Day and Avril Lavigne, have canceled Asian tour dates. But the rest of the business has, at least so far, been little affected, with major tours by Lady Gaga and Enrique Iglesias and Ricky Martin being announced in recent days. The live music industry's next major event is the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, set to run April 10 to 19. The promoters of the festival one of the music world's biggest, which also tends to draw an international audience have not commented on whether any changes are expected.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Aaron Posner and Halley Feiffer at the MCC Theater in Manhattan. Each has adapted a Chekhov play running this summer. Ms. Feiffer styled her take on "Three Sisters" as "Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow," and Mr. Posner has reworked and retitled"Uncle Vanya" as "Life Sucks." Halley Feiffer was a lonely high school student when she fell hard for a tall, dark and long dead Russian. Aaron Posner met the same man in college and it was really more of a love/hate situation. "It ended up being kind of the ultimate frustration," he said. "Almost like a tease." That special guy: Anton Chekhov, a father of modern drama and one of the most acute chroniclers of the human condition in its brilliant, broken, awkward variety. This summer Ms. Feiffer and Mr. Posner adapt, with more or less fidelity, two Chekhov plays, "Three Sisters," which Ms. Feiffer styles as "Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow" and which opens at MCC on July 18, and "Uncle Vanya," which Mr. Posner has retitled "Life Sucks." and which reopened on Theater Row in June. Both plays argue, often forcefully and sometimes obscenely, that Chekhov's characters, habitues of 1890s Russia, speak to our lives with such clarity that they must have purchased really excellent phone plans. "The only difference between these characters and the people I surround myself with today is basically that we drink cold brew, they drink tea out of samovars," Ms. Feiffer said. "Nothing has really changed." Recently, Mr. Posner, a director and the author of a previous Chekhov reworking, "Stupid Bird," and Ms. Feiffer, an actress and a writer for the Jim Carrey comedy "Kidding," saw each other's plays. Last week, they met on Google Docs to discuss inspiration, exasperation and why Chekhov's endings need work. These are excerpts from the conversation. How did you come to adapt Chekhov? HALLEY FEIFFER: In "Three Sisters," there was something so inherently millennial about the way these three women behave. They are so entitled, so obsessed with their own unhappiness, so unwilling to take any actions to overcome said unhappiness, so cruel, judgmental and petty and at the same time, so capable of love, compassion and growth. I thought it would be fun and funny to translate the play into millennial speak and then start to strip away that stylized syntax. AARON POSNER: When I wanted to start writing about my own life, I turned to Chekhov. He has never been my favorite playwright, but he gave me the structure and the permission, maybe? to write about things that were deeply personal to me. Did you do much research? Did you use a particular translation? POSNER: I worked from the worst, most unspeakable translation I could find online. Any research was internal. Internal excavation. FEIFFER: I used several translations and had them open in front of me on my desk and would literally read each of them a line at a time and then filter the words through my demented warped brain. POSNER: I don't find his world distant at all. That's why I find it so funny when people say my plays are totally "Chekhovian" when that is not what I am trying to do. They really just mean "human," I think. Aaron, you've seen Halley's play, what does she get unrepentantly wrong? And Halley, in which ways is Aaron tragically mistaken? FEIFFER: I didn't feel Aaron got anything "wrong." I will say that what he sees in "Vanya" is different. Your play ends on a much more hopeful note than the original (mine does, too), so it makes sense to extract some of the devastation from the story. POSNER: So yeah, there are things in "Three Sisters" that I see quite differently, but that's the point. Our projects are actually really different. Halley is translating the play to her own language and world. I'm using it more as a jumping off place. We are both filtering the plays through our own sensibilities. The plays are both finally really idiosyncratic and connected to who we are more than to Chekhov. FEIFFER: For me, this play is not more personal than it is Chekhovian: I wanted to make Chekhov proud ( daddyissues). I know that might sound insane. For me, it's about a manic insistence on escaping pain by relying on humor. And also the human tendency to careen between elation and despair in the span of a nanosecond. The dichotomy between love and cruelty. The obsession with finding meaningful connection and the terror of intimacy. Chekhov captures it so perfectly. POSNER: Trying to get through each day while living in deep relation to your own flaws, I guess. Oh, God, that sounds so bleak. Chekhov has a quote about how "Any fool can stand a crisis; it's this day to day living that wears you out." I've always loved that. FEIFFER: I'm so good in a crisis. Buying a weekly MetroCard still baffles me. In adapting, what did you think you could and couldn't change? Did anything feel sacred? POSNER: Not for me. I was not worried about Chekhov or Chekhov purists, ever. Expletive Chekhov in the most respectful and grateful way possible, of course. FEIFFER To be very honest I feel slightly horrified reading the words " Expletive Chekhov" that's how much I revere him! So I had a very different approach. Unlike Aaron, I didn't use the play as a jumping off point; I wanted to tell its exact story. That said, I brought a lot of the subtext to the forefront in an effort to heighten the pathos and catharsis in the storytelling. POSNER: Watching you dance between his version and yours was really fun. I hardly know you, but knowing "Three Sisters" as well as I do and seeing what you did with it, I feel that I actually know you pretty well. Halley, do you feel like you know Aaron from his play? FEIFFER: I don't feel as clear on it. Hearing you share about how life is a struggle and how we make it worse for ourselves is helpful. I see that clearly in your play. I also see a light touch, an insistence on mordant humor, a compulsion to forge bonds albeit imperfectly that makes me feel like I know you. Both plays mess with the endings? Why? FEIFFER: I changed the ending, because it's very important to me to tell this story in a way that feels truthful to my experience of life. In my experience, life isn't bleak it isn't a vale of tears, and it isn't existentially meaningless. It's the opposite: devastatingly painful and unbearably gorgeous. The play has enough devastating pain in it; I wanted to point toward some of that unbearable beauty that awaits these women, if only they are willing to push through their fears and take some action. POSNER: Where you varied from Chekhov and brought your own sensibility more fully to bear was my favorite part of the whole production. FEIFFER: Thank you. I appreciated the ways in which you did the same, especially the ways in which the characters relate directly to the audience. That felt very Chekhovian to me: They're so lonely and desperate, they're even trying to get these strangers to understand them. Chekhov's characters, as written, are white and seemingly straight. Both of you have complicated that, writing and casting in a way that expands how the plays depict race, gender and sexuality. FEIFFER: It's a question we dealt with of course very early on in casting the production at Williamstown Theater Festival in Williamstown, Mass. two years ago. We wanted to cast a diverse group of people for this play, not only because representation is, of course, important, but also because if we want to illuminate how universal this story is, it only makes sense that we have an inclusive ensemble so that everyone can see someone to whom they relate. And Aaron, you made some interventions. I don't think Vanya had a lesbian character originally. POSNER: No, right, I don't think so. The character Waffles became Pickles. My wife's idea, actually. FEIFFER: I love Pickles. I love that she's queer. I love that her queerness is never commented on. I love her monologue about lost love. I related to her deeply, felt frustrated by her and uplifted by her all at once. Were you nervous about how audiences would respond to your plays? FEIFFER: No. I don't care about that. I knew certain people would not respond to this take, would misinterpret it as irreverent, would find it offensive. They're allowed to. I literally held the door open at Williamstown for people as they walked out. In a way it's sort of exciting to piss people off it means we may be doing something right. Tom Sadoski, who played Andrey in Williamstown, said to me, "We're like the Sex Pistols!" POSNER: One thing I am very proud of is that I have been writing the plays I believe in, saying the things I want to say and not worrying too much what people think. It's why I kept the title "Stupid Bird" and chose "Life Sucks." I didn't want people thinking it was going to be quiet and Chekhovian.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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It could be a key to the secret of the universe. Or just annoying background noise, another item to be calibrated in future experiments. A team of scientists hunting dark matter has recorded suspicious pings coming from a vat of liquid xenon underneath a mountain in Italy. They are not claiming to have discovered dark matter or anything, for that matter yet. But these pings, they say, could be tapping out a new view of the universe. If the signal is real and persists, the scientists say, it may be evidence of a species of subatomic particles called axions long theorized to play a crucial role in keeping nature symmetrical but never seen streaming from the sun. "It's not dark matter but discovering a new particle would be phenomenal," said Elena Aprile of Columbia University, who leads the Xenon Collaboration, the project that made the detection. In a statement, the collaboration said that detecting the axions would have "a large impact on our understanding of fundamental physics, but also on astrophysical phenomena." But there are other explanations for the finding. Instead of axions, the scientists may have detected a new, unexpected property of the slippery ghostly particles called neutrinos. Yet another equally likely explanation is that their detector has been contaminated by vanishingly tiny amounts of tritium, a rare radioactive form of hydrogen. The collaboration posted a paper describing the results to its website on Wednesday. Or it could all just be a statistical fluctuation that will go away with more data. Members of Dr. Aprile's team conceded that the best explanation they had right now that axions were to blame has two chances in 10,000 of being a fluke, a far cry from the "5 sigma" criterion of less than one chance in a million needed in particle physics to certify a "discovery." "We want to be very clear that all we are reporting is observation of an excess (a fairly significant one) and not a discovery of any kind," said Evan Shockley of the University of Chicago in an email. Other scientists responded with cautious excitement, or excited caution. "I'm trying to be calm here, but it's hard not to be hyperbolic," said Neal Weiner, a particle theorist at New York University. "If this is real, calling it a game changer would be an understatement." Michael Turner, a cosmologist with the Kavli Foundation in Los Angeles, called the Xenon collaboration "a beautiful experiment." "I really want to believe it, but I think it will probably break my heart," he said. "But for now, I am excited that it could be something new and important that cheers us all up." Dr. Aprile's Xenon experiment is currently the largest and most sensitive in an alphabet soup of efforts aimed at detecting and identifying dark matter, the mysterious substance that astronomers have concluded swamps the universe, outweighing ordinary atomic matter by a factor of five to one. In modern cosmology, dark matter is the secret sauce of the universe. It collects in invisible clouds, attracting ordinary atomic matter into lumps that eventually light up as stars and galaxies. The best guess is that this dark matter consists of clouds of exotic subatomic particles left over from the Big Bang and known generically as WIMPs, for weakly interacting massive particles, hundreds or thousands of times more massive than a hydrogen atom. The Xenon Collaboration is a multinational team of 163 scientists from 28 institutions and 11 countries. In a tunnel a mile under the rock at the Gran Sasso National Laboratory in Italy, Dr. Aprile and her colleagues have wired a succession of vats containing liquid xenon with photomultipliers and other sensors. The hope is that her team's device far underground to shield it from cosmic rays and other worldly forms of interference would spot the rare collision between a WIMP and a xenon atom. The collision should result in a flash of light and a cloud of electrical charge. So far, it hasn't happened. The latest version, called Xenon1T, ran from 2016 to 2018 with two tons of xenon as the target. Luca Grandi of the University of Chicago explained that in its most recent analysis of that experiment, the team had looked for electrons, rather than the heavier xenon nuclei, recoiling from collisions. Among other things, that could be the signature of particles much lighter than the putative WIMPs striking the xenon. Simulations and calculations suggested that random events should have produced about 232 such recoils over the course of a year. But from February 2017 to February 2018, the detector recorded 285, an excess of 53 recoils. Dr. Grandi said, "We have seen the excess more than a year ago, and we have tried in any way to destroy it," referring to the measurements. The collaboration is in the final stages of preparing a bigger, more sensitive version of its experiment. It was delayed by the coronavirus lockdown in Italy but could now start up by the end of this year. If the excess is real, it should show up within a month or two after it starts running, Dr. Grandi said. So for now, all three possibilities axions, neutrinos or tritium are still alive, he said. And so axions could be about to enter onto the main stage of cosmology. The story of axions begins in 1977, when Roberto Peccei, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who died on June 1, and Helen Quinn, emerita professor at Stanford, suggested a slight modification to the theory that governs strong nuclear forces, making sure that it is invariant to the direction of time, a feature that physicists consider a necessity for the universe. Both Dr. Wilczek and Steven Weinberg of the University of Texas at Austin independently realized that this modification implied the existence of a new subatomic particle. Dr. Wilczek called it the axion, and the name stuck. "A few years before, a supermarket display of brightly colored boxes of a laundry detergent named Axion had caught my eye," he related in a recent essay in Quanta. "It occurred to me that 'axion' sounded like the name of a particle and really ought to be one." When he realized that the Peccei Quinn theory implied a particle, he saw his chance. Axions have never been detected either directly or indirectly. And the theory does not predict their mass, which makes it hard to look for them. It only predicts that they would be weird and would barely interact with regular matter. Theorists have imagined many versions of axions that could play different roles in the universe, including being the dark matter that, rather than WIMPS, fills the universe and binds galaxies. And although they are not WIMPS, they share some of those particles' imagined weird abilities, such as being able to float through Earth and our bodies like smoke through a screen door. In order to fulfill the requirements of cosmologists, however, such dark matter axions would need to have a mass of less than a thousandth of an electron volt in the units of mass and energy preferred by physicists, according to Dr. Turner. (By comparison, the electrons that dance around in your smartphone weigh in at half a million electron volts each.) What they lack in heft they would more than make up for in numbers. That would make individual cosmic dark matter axions too slow and ethereal to be detected by the Xenon experiment. But axions could also be produced by nuclear reactions in the sun, and those "solar axions" would have enough energy to ping the Xenon detector right where it is most sensitive, Dr. Grandi said. Solar axions would not be dark matter, but verifying that they actually exist would be a major step toward opening up the possibility that another kind of axion could be dark matter, according to Dr. Wilczek. Other experiments are underway to try to detect cosmic dark matter axions directly. Among them are the Axion Dark Matter Experiment at the University of Washington, which uses a strong magnetic field to detect the axions by watching them turn into microwaves. And an experiment at CERN in Switzerland, CAST for CERN Axion Solar Telescope, has also looked for axions from the sun. The other exciting, though slightly less likely, possibility is that the Xenon collaboration's excess signals come from the wispy particles known as neutrinos, which are real, and weird, and zipping through our bodies by the trillions every second. Ordinarily, these neutrinos would not contribute much to the excess of events the detector read. But they would do so if they had an intrinsic magnetism that physicists call a magnetic moment. That would give them a higher probability of interacting with the xenon and tripping the detector. According to the standard lore, neutrinos, which are electrically neutral, do not carry magnetism. The discovery that they did would require rewriting the rules as they apply to neutrinos. That, said Dr. Weiner, would be "a very very big deal," because it would imply that there are new fundamental particles out there to look for new physics. However, Dr. Weiner and others, including the Xenon authors themselves, cautioned that both the axion and the magnetic neutrino hypotheses conflict with astronomical observations. Dead stars, like white dwarfs, that have used up their nuclear fuel fade and cool off over time as they radiate their energy away. If they were emitting axions or these magnetic neutrinos like the sun, Dr. Weiner pointed out, they would be losing energy and fading faster than what astronomers see. He called this problem "a big tension" that he and other theorists will be brainstorming. Tritium remains another fly in the ointment. Hydrogen is the lightest and most abundant element in the universe. Tritium is one of its isotopes, radioactive with a half life of 12.3 years. It is mostly produced by cosmic rays interacting with the atmosphere and is used in hydrogen bombs to help increase their explosive power. If the isotope is the cause of the excess, the amount that would cause the readings is about "3 tritium atoms per kilogram of xenon, really an insanely low number," Dr. Grandi said. That is almost impossible to measure except with an instrument as sensitive as the Xenon detector, he said. It may turn out, he admitted, that tritium explains the excess and that tritium contamination will just be one more detail that has to be considered or calibrated in future detectors. "But of course we are really excited about the possibility that these are actual signals," Dr. Grandi said. He added: "It's pointing towards physics beyond the standard model, so it's a big deal. So I think it would be an important discovery." Dr. Grandi is now in Northern Italy and is anxious to get back to Gran Sasso and start the work of getting the next phase of the Xenon experiment online. Dr. Aprile, who is leaving New York for Italy in a few weeks, said, "I am mostly excited, but the really the excitement is it makes you feel so good that you have a new detector coming up." The universe is waiting for an answer. "We need to push," Dr. Grandi said, "And now I think that, you know, we might be sitting on something that might be really exciting."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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BEIJING The United States has reached a set of trade deals with China covering areas like electronic payment services, beef and poultry, compromising on some Obama administration stances but leaving untouched bigger issues that could still complicate relations between the two major trading partners. The disclosure of the deals on Thursday evening which included an announcement that the United States would be represented at a forum in Beijing devoted to President Xi Jinping's ambitious "One Belt, One Road" international investment initiative suggests that the Trump administration is trying to smooth relations with Beijing despite President Trump's harsh anti China language on the campaign trail. Under the newly announced deals, China set a deadline for fulfilling its promises to allow American beef and said it would speed up consideration of pending American applications to offer bioengineered seeds in China. It will also allow foreign owned firms to provide credit rating services in China, publish guidelines to let American firms offer electronic payment services there, and issue licenses to two American financial institutions to underwrite bonds. The United States, in turn, said that Matthew Pottinger, a National Security Council official who plays a central role in White House policy making on Asia, would travel to Beijing with one or more Commerce Department officials for the forum this weekend. Sending a delegation recognizes the importance of Mr. Xi's signature foreign policy to build China's economic, financial and political ties across Asia, the Mideast, Eastern Europe and East Africa. The Obama administration had advanced its own regional plan in the form of the Trans Pacific Partnership, a trade deal that included 12 Pacific Rim nations but left out China. The two plans were widely seen as offering competing visions of Asia's future. But Mr. Trump withdrew the United States from the partnership in January, effectively killing the deal. The trade deal announced Thursday will also allow Chinese companies to export cooked poultry products and offered reassurance to China that it could buy liquefied natural gas from America. The trade agreements did not address areas such as steel, aluminum or auto parts areas where Chinese exports have a deep, industrywide impact. Mr. Trump criticized China's trade practices both before and after the election, saying China was benefiting at the expense of American workers. The Trump administration has since moderated its language, with Mr. Trump suggesting that China could strike better trade terms if it helped the United States contain North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Yu Jianhua, China's deputy commerce minister, said the trade deals "have changed others' anticipation on a potential trade war between China and the United States." Many of these deals actually consisted of adding new deadlines or details to agreements reached during the Obama administration. Trade officials in both countries had previously agreed that China would resume accepting American beef exports, which China has limited for more than a decade over worries about mad cow disease, but this week's beef pact set a deadline of July 16. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. Other deals were a shift from the positions of the Obama administration. It had long refused to allow imports of Chinese poultry, as the Agriculture Department had broad safety concerns about it, including the chemicals the animals are fed and the hygiene at farms and slaughterhouses. Salmonella and bird flu are also widespread problems in China, although the germs that cause them should be killed if poultry is properly cooked. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross praised the deals for providing specific dates for China to act on trade pledges it has made repeatedly but not fulfilled. He predicted that Trump administration policies would start to narrow the United States' trade deficit with China, which is equal to more than half of the nation's overall trade deficit. "By the latter part of the year," he said, "you should see something." Mr. Ross and his negotiators were not able to obtain a deadline for when China would issue approvals for eight kinds of American seeds that have been bioengineered to produce hardier and more productive crops. On electronic payment services, which have become a popular alternative to cash in China, both sides appeared to make compromises. The Chinese side set a date, July 16, for permitting foreign providers of these services but would issue further guidelines for how they could be offered. The Obama administration had said China should allow foreign electronic payment services without issuing further guidelines. The United States had already fought and won a World Trade Organization case against China over payment processing. In another American concession, the Trump administration agreed that it would not restrict United States exports of liquefied natural gas to China, except to include them in an overall daily cap on American gas exports. Some American manufacturers, particularly in the energy hungry chemicals industry, fear China might buy so much American natural gas that the purchases would push up American natural gas prices. The first shipment of American liquefied natural gas to China arrived in China's southern province of Guangdong last August. On credit rating services, Joerg Wuttke, the president of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, said on Tuesday in Shanghai that foreign companies were increasingly concerned about such services that are being developed within China. These services appear likely to measure the extent to which companies as well as individuals meet the social and political goals of the Chinese state, he said, and not just whether companies and individuals pay their bills on time. Jeremie Waterman, the executive director for greater China at the United States Chamber of Commerce, cautiously welcomed the trade deals, while noting that he did not yet have the details. "The administration deserves credit for hopefully ensuring full and timely implementation of commitments China has already made in the areas of beef, biotech and electronic payments," he said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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The economic news has been terrible. Never mind Wednesday's G.D.P. report for the first quarter. An economy contracting at an annual rate of almost 5 percent would have been considered very bad in normal times, but this report only captured the first few drops of a torrential downpour. More timely data show an economy falling off a cliff. The Congressional Budget Office is projecting an unemployment rate of 16 percent later this year, and that may well be an underestimate. Yet stock prices, which fell in the first few weeks of the Covid 19 crisis, have made up much of those losses. They're currently more or less back to where they were last fall, when all the talk was about how well the economy was doing. What's going on? Well, whenever you consider the economic implications of stock prices, you want to remember three rules. First, the stock market is not the economy. Second, the stock market is not the economy. Third, the stock market is not the economy. That is, the relationship between stock performance largely driven by the oscillation between greed and fear and real economic growth has always been somewhere between loose and nonexistent. Back in the 1960s the great economist Paul Samuelson famously quipped that the market had predicted nine of the past five recessions. But I'd argue that there are deeper reasons for the current stock market real economy disconnect: Investors are buying stocks in part because they have nowhere else to go. In fact, there's a sense in which stocks are strong precisely because the economy as a whole is so weak. What, after all, is the main alternative to investing in stocks? Buying bonds. Yet these days bonds offer incredibly low returns. The interest rate on 10 year U.S. government bonds is only 0.6 percent, down from more than 3 percent in late 2018. If you want bonds that are protected against future inflation, their yield is minus half a percent. So buying stock in companies that are still profitable despite the Covid 19 recession looks pretty attractive. And why are interest rates so low? Because the bond market expects the economy to be depressed for years to come, and believes that the Federal Reserve will continue pursuing easy money policies for the foreseeable future. As I said, there's a sense in which stocks are strong precisely because the real economy is weak. Now, one question you might ask is why, if economic weakness is if anything good for stocks, the market briefly plunged earlier this year. The answer is that for a few weeks in March the world teetered on the edge of a 2008 type financial crisis, which caused investors to flee everything with the slightest hint of risk. That crisis was, however, averted thanks to extremely aggressive actions by the Fed, which stepped in to buy an unprecedented volume and range of assets. Without those actions, we would be facing an even bigger economic catastrophe. Which is, by the way, one reason you should be concerned about Donald Trump's attempts to appoint unqualified loyalists, with a history of supporting crank economic doctrines, to the Federal Reserve Board. Imagine where we'd be now if the Fed had responded to a looming financial crisis the way the Trump administration responded to a looming pandemic. But back to the disconnect between stocks and economic reality. It turns out that this is a long term phenomenon, dating back at least to the mid 2000s. Think about all the negative things we've learned about the modern economy since, say, 2007. We've learned that advanced economies are much less stable, much more subject to periodic crises, than almost anyone believed possible. Productivity growth has slumped, showing that the information technology fueled boom of the 1990s and early 2000s was a one shot affair. Overall economic performance has been much worse than most observers expected around 15 years ago. Stocks, however, have done very well. On the eve of the Covid crisis, the ratio of market capitalization to G.D.P. Warren Buffett's favorite measure was well above its 2007 level, and a bit higher than its peak during the dot com bubble. Why? The main answer, surely, is to consider the alternative. While employment eventually recovered from the Great Recession, that recovery was achieved only thanks to historically low interest rates. The need for low rates was an indication of underlying economic weakness: businesses seemed reluctant to invest despite high profits, often preferring to buy back their own stock. But low rates were good for stock prices. Did I mention that the stock market is not the economy? None of this should be taken as a statement that current market valuations are exactly right. My gut sense is that investors are too eager to seize on good news; but the truth is that I have no idea where the market is headed. The point, instead, is that the market's resilience does, in fact, make some sense despite the terrible economic news and by the same token does nothing to make that news less terrible. Pay no attention to the Dow; keep your eyes on those disappearing jobs. 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.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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Jaquelin Taylor Robertson, an architect who grew up on a grand classical estate in Virginia before becoming one of New York's most prominent and impassioned advocates of urban design, died on Saturday at his home in East Hampton, N.Y. He was 87. The cause was Alzheimer's disease, his wife, Anya Robertson, said. The scion of an aristocratic Virginia family, Mr. Robertson designed a wide range of buildings in multiple styles, but he never lost his love of classicism, which he called "the symbolic hard currency of architecture." "It's gold in the bank," he said in a 1996 interview with Town Country magazine. "The other stuff is leveraged buyouts and soybean futures." Mr. Robertson first came to public notice not as an architect of individual buildings, however, but as one of the eager and ambitious young designers who clustered around John V. Lindsay when he was elected mayor of New York in 1965. Mr. Robertson later served as the first director of the Mayor's Office of Midtown Planning and Development, whose projects included devising zoning provisions that allowed new skyscrapers to house a mix of offices, apartments, retail stores and, in the case of the theater district, new Broadway theaters. To Mr. Robertson, there was no inconsistency between his love of grand classical architecture and his passionate belief in cities: It was all about finding ways to turn time tested ideas to the benefit of modern life, and he would spend much of the rest of his career promoting better urban design. "I think architects, having abrogated the role of designing cities, are to blame for the cities that we have, which are a real mess," he said at a conference at the University of Virginia in 1982. "Architects must have in front of them some notion about the order of the whole, not just the parts." After a stint with the New York City Planning Commission, Mr. Robertson worked briefly for Arlen Realty in New York, helping to develop Olympic Tower in Midtown, one of the first mixed use skyscrapers to emerge from the regulations he had shaped. In 1975, he accepted an invitation from the shah of Iran to move to Tehran to design a new city, Shahestan Pahlavi, in which he sought to integrate elements of traditional Persian design into modern architecture. The project was never built it was cut short with the fall of the shah in 1979 and Mr. Robertson returned to the United States. Over the next decade he divided his time between New York, where he established a practice in partnership with the architect Peter Eisenman, and Charlottesville, Va., where he served as dean of the architecture school at the University of Virginia. For years he resided on the university's campus, which was designed by one of his heroes, Thomas Jefferson. When he stepped down as dean in 1988 and returned to New York full time, he and Mr. Eisenman, a confirmed modernist, parted ways, and Mr. Robertson formed a new partnership with Alexander Cooper, his fellow Lindsay alumnus, to form Cooper Robertson and Partners. Now called Cooper Robertson, the firm continues to have a large national presence as a designer of schools, university buildings, civic structures and museums. He also maintained a popular practice as an architect of private residences. He was known for designing houses for prominent clients that were both elaborate and understated and evocative of older structures without being directly imitative of them. His clients included the financiers Henry Kravis and Leon Black, both of whom commissioned him to design multiple houses; the record producer Ahmet Ertegun and his wife, Mica Ertegun; Alfred Taubman, the shopping center builder and owner of Sotheby's; Don Hewitt, the CBS News producer; and Marshall Rose, the New York developer and philanthropist. The house he designed for Mr. Rose in East Hampton won a national design award in 1991 from the American Institute of Architects; at the same time, another of Cooper Robertson's projects, the design for Battery Park City in Lower Manhattan, won one of the institute's urban design awards. Cooper Robertson was the first architecture firm to win national awards for both architecture and urban design in the same year. Mr. Robertson was awarded the Thomas Jefferson Medal in Architecture in 1998 and the Driehaus Prize, an international award for distinction in traditional architecture, in 2007. Jaquelin Taylor Robertson was born in Richmond, Va., on March 20, 1933. He was named for his grandfather Jaquelin Taylor, who founded Universal Leaf Tobacco, now the Universal Corporation. His father, Walter S. Robertson, a diplomat, was John Foster Dulles's assistant secretary of state in the 1950s and played a central role in shaping the Eisenhower administration's anti Communist China policy. His mother was Mary Dade (Taylor) Robertson. The year Jaquelin was born, his father commissioned the prominent architect William Bottomley to design a 20th century version of a great classical mansion for the family. The house, Milburne, which was completed when the boy was 2, would become one of Richmond's most prominent estates, and growing up in the house gave him not only a lifelong admiration for traditional architecture, but also a sense that classical buildings were compatible with modern life and not just relics of the past. Jaquelin's childhood years were divided between Virginia and China, where his father served as a special envoy in the Foreign Service in the 1940s. The sprawling urbanity of Beijing would come to have as great an influence on Mr. Robertson as his family's genteel estate in Virginia had. "I am a child of two architectural settings," he said years later, "one a provincial, rural, Anglo American, Georgian Palladian one, the other an exotic, foreign, imperial and highly cosmopolitan one." He graduated from Yale in 1955, and spent two years at Magdalen College at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. Back in the United States, he returned to Yale and enrolled in its school of architecture, from which he graduated with a master's degree in 1961. He moved to New York and started his career working for the architect Edward Larrabee Barnes, where he remained until his encounter with Mr. Lindsay led him to think about architecture in terms of public service. In his Southern drawl, which he never lost, he would lecture real estate developers on their responsibility to build structures that would enrich the city and not just their own pocketbooks. As dean of the architecture school at the University of Virginia, he convened in 1982 a private meeting of 25 of the world's leading architects in the Jefferson designed campus Rotunda, where they presented their work and engaged in sharp criticism. The event, which was recorded and transcribed into a book called "The Charlottesville Tapes," was attended by Philip Johnson, Frank Gehry, Robert A.M. Stern, Tadao Ando, Kevin Roche, Rem Koolhaas and Cesar Pelli, among others. Mr. Robertson took issue with what he saw as his colleagues' obsession with parochial concerns. He was struck, he wrote later, "by how cut off we as architects are from the world around us." "This seems particularly true of the 'thinking architects,'" he wrote. "We don't seem to understand very well yet how our society works or what our people want or need, and we are continually caught up in a kind of Alice in Wonderland situation of either giving answers to questions no one is asking or ignoring completely some of the more pressing and obvious problems." Jefferson remained a touchstone for him. "On the Sunday after the conference a small group of us made an early morning pilgrimage up to the 'little mountain,' Monticello," he wrote, "and there, in the clear, cold air of the November morning, we were able to look out over what had been the wilderness promise of the New World and to experience again the mystery and power of the architectural statement of the 'built idea.'"
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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The last afternoon I spent at New York Theater Ballet was for a rehearsal in February. Now I was back again, and it was surreal not just because the space, a quaint studio theater with airy ceilings and stained glass windows, has the quality of being in another century. It was more to do with the occasion, something that wouldn't have seemed the least bit groundbreaking back then: an actual performance. Inside. On Wednesday, the company hosted LIFT Lab Live, the first of two programs running through Nov. 14. The audience was limited to 10. (For context, the dancers added up to six, including the guest artist Miki Orihara.) This intimate chamber group, led by the artistic director and founder, Diana Byer, presented nine short works in a program that seemed to be more about nourishing the dancers and choreographers than offering inventive dance. Programs are tighter now out of necessity, but shouldn't a series of short dances add up to something? Live performance has become exceedingly rare, and you take what you can get. Watching dancers express themselves with their bodies is an act of faith on our part, too; it's an exchange of energy. At the start of the program, Ms. Byer read a quote from Stella Adler: "Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one." With the windows and doors flung open in the company's second floor space at St. Marks's Church in the Bowery, the sound of birds occasionally accompanied the musicians, Alice Hargrove on piano and Amy Kang on cello. The new rules of performance not only let the outside in but also enhanced the program, which began with Jean Volpe's "Speranza" for Monica Lima, whose filigree footwork filled the stage with a loveliness that matched her gentle look. Head to toe in pink including her mask she could have stepped out of a jewelry box.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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A social and philosophical investigation disguised as a gleefully barbed satire, "The Plagiarists," directed by Peter Parlow from a script by James N. Kienitz Wilkins and Robin Schavoir, deserves to be the summer's art house conversation starter. The movie opens with Tyler and Anna (Eamon Monaghan and Lucy Kaminsky) stalled in their car on a snowy road a few miles from their friend Allison's place in upstate New York. Tyler immediately establishes himself as an insufferable tetchy mansplainer; Anna's deference to him is inexplicable. An older man approaches, offering help. He later tells them to call him Clip. (He is played by William Michael Payne, who went by the nickname Clip in the musical outfit Parliament Funkadelic). He offers to put them up for the night. The couple flee to their car to call Allison for a vetting (she's not in) and debate whether Clip is "sketchy." Later in the evening Clip shares a childhood memory with Anna that blows her away.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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This article is part of our November Design special section, which focuses on style, function and form in the workplace. The biggest news in the world of co working has been the turmoil at WeWork. But a quieter development has been happening behind the scenes for some time, and it has to do with design. While co working companies have long sought space in historic, architecturally significant buildings believing that a marquee address will help attract occupants they are now paying more attention to their interiors as well. Take Pittsburgh based Beauty Shoppe (from 125 per month), which opened in 2011 in a century old red brick building and borrowed its name from the sign left by a previous tenant. Beauty Shoppe, which has eight locations and next year will expand into a former automotive parts plant in Pittsburgh and a cold storage facility in Detroit, is inspired by the buildings it occupies. In Cleveland, its co working space in a former tavern has an almost residential feel, with peach colored curtains, brushed brass lighting and even a black painted Windsor chair under the pressed tin ceiling. And in a Brutalist bunker of a 1970s concrete building that once served the Pittsburgh police department, vintage steel tanker desks that the detectives left behind were refurbished and used anew. In Detroit, an old iron spiral staircase in the former industrial building will be repurposed. "This is not a blank canvas," said Morgan Stewart, an interior designer who leads the company's in house design team. "There is already a story, so why not remember it?" Canopy (from 275 per month) sprang on the co working scene armed with impressive design credentials: One of the company's three founders is Yves Behar, the innovative Swiss born chief executive of the design studio Fuseproject. Mr. Behar has designed workstations and chairs for Herman Miller for more than a decade and has been thinking about office design for longer than that. In 2016, he teamed up with Amir Mortazavi, a developer, and Steve Mohebi, an entrepreneur, to open a co working office in the Pacific Heights neighborhood of San Francisco. There is a surprising amount of color, too: The Jackson Square office, for instance, is done up in pinks and greens, which, Mr. Behar admitted, "initially sounds like a challenging idea." It was inspired by the verdigris tones of a historic building across the street and the pale blush of another local landmark. As for furnishings, ergonomics rule. Mr. Behar's own Public Office Landscape desks and Sayl chairs make an appearance. Firm modular sofas by Don Chadwick supportive and not too deep are found in common areas, so it is easy to take notes while meeting with colleagues, Mr. Behar explained. An organic look prevails at Second Home (from 400 per month), a London based company with five co working locations in Europe and a sixth that just opened in East Hollywood. Its design comes courtesy of SelgasCano, husband and wife architects in Madrid known for integrating nature and employing a breadth of materials. In East Hollywood, they have transformed a once barren parking lot into a hothouse landscape of more than 6,000 plants, including 30 foot palm trees. Sixty oval shaped clear acrylic work pods under yellow lilypad like roofs are scattered about. At the center of it all is a restored 1963 building designed by the architect Paul Williams. It houses more workspaces, an auditorium, a bookstore and a restaurant the last opening this month. In the early days of the company, all the chairs were midcentury modern or the work of Bauhaus school designers, said Rohan Silva, the co founder and co chief executive. "But people complained about their backs." Now, there is comfortable seating from Howe in the pods. Vintage pieces handpicked by the architects at furniture fairs in Belgium fill the common areas. Some co working operators appeal to specific subcultures, slicing and dicing the flex space market into ever narrower segments. These days, cannabis entrepreneurs have their own workplace. A flex space that caters to indie game developers is open around the clock. And there's a shared office environment for dog owners who can't bear to leave their pooches at home. The Wing (from 185 per month) was founded in 2016 as a co working and networking company for women. It has three locations in New York and five elsewhere in the United States, and a just opened offshoot in London. At one time, the company was reported to have a waiting list of 300 applicants. The design is handled in house, and much has been made of the millennial pink on the walls and the color coded arrangement of books all written by women or about women on shelves billed as lending libraries. On the main level of the SoHo flagship in New York, an enfilade of Roman arches a signature design element stretches from the entry area through a spacious, skylit, bamboo paneled cafe to a vast common area with a sea of seats. There, a pink upholstered tub chair from the Spanish company Munna, with long boudoir ish silk fringe, catches the eye, as does a vintage semicircular sofa by Adrian Pearsall. Other furniture is custom. The interior doubles as an art gallery, with the paintings on the walls done by women and all for sale. At least some of the inspiration goes back to WeWork, of course which emerged as the front runner in co working space. The company's look began evolving in 2017, when the men's wear designer Adam Kimmel was appointed chief creative officer. Under Mr. Kimmel, common spaces began to take on the feel of high end interiors, furnished with pieces by 20th century masters. Mr. Kimmel resigned from the company last month, one of several high level executives to depart after its recent financial turmoil. In the absence of Mr. Kimmel, and amid the general belt tightening at WeWork, design watchers will have to wait and see if the sophisticated new look survives.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Over the past decade, the Denisova Cave in Siberia has yielded some of the most fascinating fossils ever found. To the naked eye, they are not much to look at a few teeth, bits of bone. But the fossils contain DNA dating back tens of thousands of years. That genetic material shows that Denisovans were a distinct branch of human evolution, a lost lineage. At some point in the distant past, the Denisovans disappeared but not before interbreeding with modern humans. Today, people in places like East Asia and New Guinea still carry fragments of Denisovan DNA. One of the biggest obstacles to understanding the Denisovans is their age. Standard methods for dating these fossils have left scientists perplexed. "Everyone said, 'These Denisovans, we have no idea how old they are,'" said Katerina Douka, an archaeologist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany. Over the past six years, Dr. Douka and other experts have been creating a sort of history of the Denisova Cave. They have dated 103 layers of sediment on the cave floor, as well as 50 items found in them , including bones, pieces of charcoal and tools. The scientists unveiled this chronology in a pair of papers published on Wednesday. That timeline shows that humans occupied the cave for perhaps as long as 300,000 years. And it raises some intriguing hints that Denisovans may have been capable of sophisticated thought, on par with modern humans. In an accompanying commentary, Robin Dennell of the University of Exeter in England wrote that Dr. Douka and her colleagues have created "a rigorous and compelling timeline." In the 1970s, Russian scientists began digging into that sediment, finding fossils of animals like hyenas and bears, fragments of humanlike bones and thousands of stone tools, as well as bracelets, beads and other ornaments. In 2010, researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology announced they had found DNA in teeth and bones from the cave. In addition to Denisovan DNA, they found a few bone fragments that contained Neanderthal DNA. By comparing the mutations in this DNA, the scientists got a better sense of how Denisovans and Neanderthals fit into the human family tree. As it turned out, modern humans share a common ancestor with Denisovans and Neanderthals that lived roughly 600,000 years ago. Later approximately 400,000 years ago the Neanderthal and Denisovan lineages split. Ever since the digging began, Russian researchers have carefully mapped the sedimentary layers in which they found bones and tools. They tried to estimate the ages of the layers, but "the dates were all over the place," said Dr. Douka. She and her colleagues at the University of Oxford are experts on determining the age of carbon. Researchers from the University of Wollongong in Australia tried an alternate method called optical dating. The researchers combined results from the two methods to assemble a single chronology of the cave. The findings are largely in agreement: "It's definitely a unified story," said Zenobia Jacobs, an archaeologist at the University of Wollongong. The earliest signs of human life in the cave simple stone tools are more than 287,000 years old. The tools alone cannot tell us if those first people were Denisovans or Neanderthals. But they are not the style known to be made by Neanderthals, suggesting Denisovans may have been the creators. It's not until about 200,000 years ago that the oldest Denisovan DNA comes to light. The researchers estimated it to be between 217,000 and 185,000 years old. A Neanderthal DNA sample comes from a layer that formed between 205,000 and 172,000 years ago. In the millenniums that followed, both Denisovans and Neanderthals left more genetic evidence in the cave. It may have been continually occupied for thousands of years by one group, then abandoned and reoccupied by others. But Neanderthals and Denisovans must have overlapped at least once during those tens of thousands of years. In August, researchers reported a bone fragment from a girl whose mother was a Neanderthal and father was a Denisovan. In the new study, researchers estimate that this hybrid child lived between 79,100 and 118,100 years ago. The researchers found no Neanderthal remains in more recent layers of the cave floor only Denisovan. A Denisovan tooth dates back to between 55,300 and 84,100 years ago; a Denisovan chip of bone is 51,600 to 76,200 years old. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Paradoxically, the most recent parts of the cave have yielded some of its biggest mysteries. Starting around 45,000 years ago, new kinds of artifacts begin showing up in the cave floor. They include pointed pieces of bone, as well as ornaments like stone bracelets and beads. One possibility is that these new tools were made by newly arrived modern humans. Modern humans evolved in Africa and then expanded out to other continents. They may have made it to what is now Siberia: One human fossil discovered there dates to about 45,000 years ago. But Michael Shunkov, a co author of the new studies and the director of Institute of Archaeology and Ethnography at the Russian Academy of Sciences, disagrees with that interpretation. The sophisticated tools in the Denisova Cave show "no clear indications for outside influences," he said in an email. Instead, Dr. Shunkov believes that the Denisovans who occupied the cave for perhaps 250,000 years developed this technology on their own.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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WASHINGTON More people will be exposed to floods, droughts, heat waves and other extreme weather associated with climate change over the next century than previously thought, according to a new report in the British medical journal The Lancet. The report, published online Monday, analyzes the health effects of recent episodes of severe weather that scientists have linked to climate change. It provides estimates of the number of people who are likely to experience the effects of climate change in coming decades, based on projections of population and demographic changes. The report estimates that the exposure of people to extreme rainfall will more than quadruple and the exposure of people to drought will triple compared to the 1990s. In the same time span, the exposure of the older people to heat waves is expected to go up by a factor of 12, according to Peter Cox, one of the authors, who is a professor of climate system dynamics at the University of Exeter in Britain. Climate projections typically are expressed as averages over large areas, including vast expanses, like oceans, where people do not live. The report calculates the risk to people by overlaying areas of the highest risk for climate events with expected human population increases. It also takes into account aging populations for example, heat waves pose a greater health risk to old people.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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The celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti faces charges in what prosecutors have described as a scheme to extort millions of dollars from Nike.Credit...Cheryl Senter/Associated Press The celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti faces charges in what prosecutors have described as a scheme to extort millions of dollars from Nike. Just after making bail last Monday, the celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti did what he had always done in the swirl of a hot story. He called a reporter. It did not seem to matter that he was now facing criminal charges in what federal prosecutors in Manhattan described as a scheme to extort millions of dollars from Nike, or that federal prosecutors in California had just filed unrelated charges that he had defrauded a former client and a bank. Mr. Avenatti, the lawyer who represented the pornographic film actress Stormy Daniels in her lawsuits against President Trump, walked into a cellphone store last Monday night and used the landline to call a reporter for The New York Times, beginning a campaign to deny all allegations against him and defend himself in the court of public opinion. "I'm the most well known attorney in the United States right now, for better or worse," he said on Thursday in an interview. "And that's been true for a long time now. For a year." It has been a long year. The man who many on the left predicted would take down Mr. Trump, who had become a fixture on cable news networks, orbited in celebrity circles and even flirted with a presidential run himself, could now face years in federal prison, a turnabout the Trump camp noted with glee. "It went from Avenatti 2020 to Avenatti 20 to 25," Donald Trump Jr. said last week at a political rally for his father in Michigan. On inspection, some of the same qualities that brought Mr. Avenatti fame now appear to be contributing to his potential fall. Grasping for big wins, the brash lawyer often promised more than he delivered. And his cocksure public image masked disarray, now evident in a trail of civil disputes, bankruptcy filings and alleged financial crimes going back several years, according to court papers and interviews. Late last year, he was accused of domestic violence by a former girlfriend, though Los Angeles prosecutors have declined to file charges while leaving the case open. Such troubles would drive many people underground. Yet Mr. Avenatti has never relented. He has kept pushing stories. Two weeks ago, he contacted reporters, including two from The Times, suggesting he had a story related to a sportswear company and promising it would be big. It was only a year ago that Mr. Avenatti, 48, burst onto the scene, trumpeting a salacious case he had taken on that could bring down the president. A coalition of online anti Trump figures from the left and right was rising, calling itself TheResistance, and Mr. Avenatti was seen as one of its most vocal leaders. He used tough, crude language and gambling metaphors. He told Time magazine that the person who could best beat Trump was "a white male," though he later said he was misquoted. He called himself a fighter, and looked the part. His hashtag was basta, meaning "enough." As he battled on behalf of Ms. Daniels who received hush money before the 2016 election to keep quiet about a sexual encounter she said she had with Mr. Trump he raised his own profile in more than 300 television appearances and countless interviews, some with The Times. Everything about him became news, from his Tom Ford suits to his low body fat percentage. He regarded the media as a cudgel for his cases, maximizing exposure, inviting new evidence from would be whistle blowers and sometimes inciting responses from the White House. As often as he provoked eye rolling, his claims frequently flitted over airwaves and onto news sites with little scrutiny. He appeared to relish rationing out bits of real news to reporters, whom he was quick to cut out if he found their coverage unfavorable. Along the way, the right wing press claimed that much of the response to him was credulous, and that he was inserting himself in legal battles beyond his expertise. "I was and am a real lawyer," he said on Thursday. "I'm not just some TV lawyer." Last summer, after Christine Blasey Ford said that Judge Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were in high school, Mr. Avenatti came forward with another accuser, Julie Swetnick. With little detail, Ms. Swetnick escalated the allegations, describing parties attended by the judge's circle of friends, where she said girls had been gang raped. On the eve of Dr. Blasey and Judge Kavanaugh's testimony to Congress, some felt the claims brought by Mr. Avenatti's client were gasoline on a fire, intensifying the political frenzy around what was widely considered a test for the MeToo movement. Noting inconsistencies in Ms. Swetnick's account, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned whether Mr. Avenatti had deliberately misled Congress and referred him and his client for criminal investigation. In his push against the judge, Mr. Avenatti said he had witnesses who could corroborate his client's claims, but he never brought any forward publicly. (Last week, he said he still believed his client, and he reiterated that he had called for an F.B.I. inquiry to interview witnesses.) And at the peak of the Stormy Daniels case, he said he had more women alleging hush money payments tied to Mr. Trump, but he produced none. Mr. Avenatti denied that he had chased the cases for attention. "I haven't repositioned myself to remain in the spotlight," he said, claiming he had received 50 to 200 unsolicited requests for representation daily over the last year. "In many instances, the cases that I've gotten involved in have changed the spotlight." Though he never held political office, when Mr. Avenatti hinted at a run for president, he was taken somewhat seriously. "We must be a party that fights fire with fire," Mr. Avenatti said at a Democratic fund raiser in Iowa in August, sounding like a candidate. "When they go low, I say hit back harder." He bristled at the idea that he had emerged out of nowhere. "I don't feel like I get enough credit for my track record of success relating to cases," Mr. Avenatti said, raising his voice with exasperation. "People act like I was a nobody before Stormy Daniels, and it's ridiculous." As a plaintiff's lawyer, Mr. Avenatti had won some big settlements. He sued KPMG for audit malpractice, and the company settled for 22 million. He won 80 million from a cemetery accused of overstuffing its plots, and half a billion from the makers of defective surgical gowns. Two of his cases before Ms. Daniels had landed him on "60 Minutes," he pointed out. But his former law firm, Eagan Avenatti, which in recent years had eight to 10 lawyers, had also filed for bankruptcy. It did so again this past month, estimating liabilities of up to 50 million. (Mr. Avenatti still operates under a different firm, Avenatti Associates.) A former Eagan Avenatti partner, Jason Frank, claimed in federal court this year that Mr. Avenatti had committed bankruptcy fraud in a previous filing, hiding millions of dollars from the government. Last fall, a California court ordered Mr. Avenatti to pay millions to Mr. Frank for legal work. After Mr. Avenatti failed to produce the financial records required of him in that case this year, he gave up control of the firm, which is now in the hands of a court appointed receiver. The federal charging documents in California, unsealed last week as part of the criminal case against him, provided new details about past financial trouble. In 2014, Mr. Avenatti submitted fake tax returns in loan applications to a Mississippi bank, prosecutors said, claiming to have paid the Internal Revenue Service millions of dollars in years when he had filed no returns at all. He owed the I.R.S. more than 850,000 in unpaid personal income taxes at the time. Mr. Avenatti said on Thursday that the bank loans had been repaid. Meanwhile, prosecutors said, he used his firm for personal spending and to conceal his income. From 2011 to 2017, his law firm paid more than 216,000 to Neiman Marcus, according to the federal charges filed in California. The firm is also accused of spending 68,500 at a luxury watch store; putting almost half a million dollars toward Mr. Avenatti's mortgage; and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to Porsche and a car dealership. At one point, prosecutors said, Mr. Avenatti directed employees at a coffee company he owned Global Baristas, which ran Tully's coffee stores to deposit cash receipts into a bank account associated with his car racing business. Other money from Tully's went toward his rent and shopping expenses, according to the filings. But even as criminal charges loom, Mr. Avenatti wants a little more credit for what he has done. He claimed that his aggressive tactics had won the government its guilty plea from Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump's former lawyer, who last year was convicted of campaign finance crimes connected to the hush money payment to Ms. Daniels. Mr. Avenatti and Ms. Daniels officially parted ways this year, Ms. Daniels announced on Twitter weeks ago. He fired back with his own statement in minutes, framing it as his decision: "On February 19, we informed Stormy Daniels in writing that we were terminating our legal representation of her for various reasons that we cannot disclose publicly due to the attorney client privilege." Both cases Mr. Avenatti brought on Ms. Daniels's behalf were dismissed in federal court. In a defamation claim against the president, she was ordered to pay Mr. Trump nearly 300,000 in legal fees. And in a lawsuit seeking to invalidate the silencing agreement, the judge found there was nothing to litigate because Ms. Daniels was already speaking openly without consequence. Mr. Avenatti declared victory. Mr. Avenatti was arrested last Monday afternoon in New York's new Hudson Yards development, outside the offices of Nike's law firm, Boies Schiller Flexner, with which he had talked repeatedly in preceding days. He was accused of trying to extort more than 15 million from the apparel giant, which had in turn contacted the authorities. In earlier meetings, he had told Nike's lawyers that he represented a youth basketball coach who once had a contract with the company, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said. Through the coach, Gary Franklin Sr., Mr. Avenatti said he had gathered information showing Nike had made payments to high school basketball players an N.C.A.A. violation and, in certain circumstances, a possible fraud. He then requested 1.5 million for Mr. Franklin, according to the complaint unsealed in New York last week. He also demanded that Nike hire him to conduct an internal investigation into its criminal exposure, for which he and another lawyer would receive a minimum of 15 million to 25 million. Alternatively, according to the complaint, Mr. Avenatti demanded 22.5 million to buy his silence and resolve Mr. Franklin's potential claims. Mr. Franklin could not be reached for comment. According to the Justice Department, Mr. Avenatti had issued a threat: "Every time we got more information, that's going to be The Washington Post, The New York Times, ESPN, a press conference, and the company will die not die, but they are going to incur cut after cut after cut after cut, and that's what's going to happen as soon as this thing becomes public." Mr. Avenatti has maintained he was simply doing what he is known for: lawyering aggressively. He had sought to establish a media strategy from the start. On March 16, he began contacting two Times reporters about potential news related to the Justice Department's investigation of recruiting in college basketball, which had already implicated Adidas. On March 19, prosecutors said, he met with Nike's lawyers. Last Monday, Mr. Avenatti asked that Times reporters meet him that afternoon at the Fifth Avenue offices of Mark Geragos, a celebrity lawyer with whom he said he was working. Within minutes of the call, Mr. Avenatti telegraphed on Twitter that he planned to hold a news conference the next day to release explosive details on crimes "reaching the highest level of Nike." He was arrested within the hour. In the days since, Mr. Avenatti has again gone on the offensive on Twitter and in interviews, claiming that he is a victim of Nike's "dishonest" lawyers. Before limiting public access to his tweets this week, he posted a screenshot of alleged text messages between Mr. Franklin, the coach, and a Nike employee, making broad reference to money changing hands. Mr. Avenatti insisted that he simply wanted to clean up what he called corruption within Nike and conduct an internal inquiry to ensure things improved. "This was a complete hit job by Nike. It was designed to do damage to me and inoculate themselves," he said by phone from California. He had flown back to his home state, preparing to answer to the charges filed there. The charges include not just that he defrauded a bank through false tax returns, but also that he diverted 1.6 million in settlement proceeds in January 2018 to pay his own debts, instead of passing on the share owed to a client. The complaint said Mr. Avenatti lied to the client, Gregory Barela, telling him the settlement from a dispute with an out of state corporation had never been paid. Mr. Avenatti on Thursday questioned the credibility of Mr. Barela, who had provided prosecutors with documents to inform their complaint, which also cited bank records. Mr. Barela could not be reached for comment. For all the attention the Nike case is getting, the charges filed in California may be Mr. Avenatti's bigger problem, said Peter Johnson, who teaches at the law school at the University of California, Los Angeles. The Nike allegations hinge on Mr. Avenatti's intent whether it was extortion or zealous advocacy which is harder to determine. But the charges in California draw on a paper trail that could make it clearer to establish fraud. "It's about whether in fact he committed fraud on paper, and for the prosecution that's an easier case to prove," Mr. Johnson said. As his star falls, some now question how he managed to stir so much enthusiasm in the first place. David Karpf, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington University, viewed Mr. Avenatti as part of a larger phenomenon of "resistance grifters," or people harnessing anti Trump outrage for financial gain. "People face this overwhelming flow of information, and they lack context and understanding," Dr. Karpf said. "So anybody who can speak with a confident tone offering some explanation can find an audience."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Nominees for the New York Dance and Performance Awards, known as the Bessies, were announced on Wednesday evening. The awards, the dance world's equivalent of the Tonys, will be presented on Oct. 18 at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House a change for the ceremony, which has taken place at the Apollo Theater for the last five years. Twelve works were nominated for outstanding production, among them Justin Peck's "Heatscape," for Miami City Ballet; Dada Masilo's postmodern take on "Swan Lake"; and Camille A. Brown's "Black Girl: Linguistic Play," which is being revived on July 21 at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn. Other nominees for the category included dances that leaned toward performance art, like Jack Ferver and Marc Swanson's "Chambre" an adaptation of Genet's "The Maids," at the Crossing the Line Festival last year and Maria Hassabi's "Plastic," in which performers were more like sluggish sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Q. I have my account set up in the Mail app, but how do I find my Gmail contacts list on my iPad? A. If you cannot find the address book you use with your Gmail on the web, it may be because your Gmail contacts are not set to sync with your iPad. Once you configure the settings, you should see your Gmail connections listed when you open the iPad's standard Contacts app. To sync Gmail contacts to an iOS device running iOS 11, go to the iPad's home screen and tap open the Settings icon. Select Accounts Passwords. On the next screen, under Accounts, tap Gmail, Google or whatever you nicknamed the mail account when you first set it up on the iPad.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We're all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. Late night hosts took great pleasure in Republicans like the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, finally acknowledging Joe Biden's election win on Tuesday. Stephen Colbert echoed his sentiments, saying that with the Electoral College result, "some Republicans have been forced to face their biggest fear: reality." "McConnell said, 'As of this morning, our country officially has a president elect,' as if we hadn't had one for the 40 more days before that." JIMMY KIMMEL "And you know Trump's luck has run out now that Mitch McConnell has conceded the election, because forget Putin if Mitch can't find a way to subvert American democracy, then it just can't be done." TREVOR NOAH "Wow, no hurry, Mitch. What else did you formally recognize, Alaskan statehood?" SETH MEYERS "Yeah, McConnell told Biden and Harris congrats, and then said, 'I'm looking forward to making your next four years a living nightmare.'" JIMMY FALLON Bill Barr's resignation as attorney general was also big news on the late night shows, and Seth Meyers was a tad verklempt. "Attorney General Bill Barr resigned yesterday, and I didn't expect this, but I'm a little I'm a little emotional about it. No, wait, nope. That was tear gas." SETH MEYERS "President Trump tweeted yesterday, 'Just had a very nice meeting with Attorney General Bill Barr at the White House. Our relationship has been a very good one. He has done an outstanding job,' which Twitter immediately flagged." SETH MEYERS "Bill Barr has resigned as attorney general, as opposed to before, when Barr was simply resigned to his fate of defending every stupid thing that Donald Trump has ever said." JAMES CORDEN "Seriously, Barr is quitting now? That's like waiting until the last five minutes of 'The Emoji Movie' to walk out of the theater." JIMMY FALLON "Maybe now he'll have time to finally read that Mueller Report." JAMES CORDEN "That's right, Barr is leaving before Christmas to spend holidays with his family. Americans heard and were like, 'Yeah, we all do that, but then we come back to work.'" JIMMY FALLON "Barr and Trump they couldn't have been that close. They couldn't have been close because otherwise Barr would have gotten coronavirus." JAMES CORDEN "Yes, Bill Barr has officially resigned, which surprised some people because for a long time, it seemed like he was ride or die with Trump. He whitewashed the Mueller Report, he protected Trump's cronies, he even reportedly ordered peaceful protesters to be tear gassed just so that Trump could walk over to a church and wave a Bible next to it. And when the White House chef prepared brussels sprouts, Barr would hide under the table so Trump could feed them to him." TREVOR NOAH "But Trump also wanted Barr to overturn the election results, and Barr wouldn't do that. So one of two things has happened here: Either Barr quit because Trump became too bat expletive crazy even for him, or Trump fired Barr because he's not bat expletive crazy enough to roll in this White House. Either way, this works out the best for Barr, because everyone is heading out on January 20, so this way, at least Bill Barr's beating the traffic." TREVOR NOAH "This must have been a punch in the McRib. Joe Biden got a congratulatory message from Trump's KGBFF. Sugar Vladi Putin put out a statement acknowledging Biden's victory. He said, 'For my part I'm ready for cooperation and contacts with you,' which will be easy because Russia just hacked all of our contacts." JIMMY KIMMEL "But wait, if Putin's offering a congratulatory handshake to Joe Biden, then what is Trump eating pellets out of?" JIMMY KIMMEL "'I am ready for interaction and contacts with you'? Putin doesn't sound human; he sounds like a self checkout at CVS: 'Ready for interaction. Please to place item in the bag.'" TREVOR NOAH "And, hey, even Vladimir Putin knows it's over. And if someone who has had that much Botox can accept reality, you can, too." SETH MEYERS "'I am ready for interaction and contacts with you.' That's actually what Mike Pence said on his honeymoon." JIMMY FALLON "Seriously, guys, what a weird phrase: 'I am ready for interaction and contacts with you.' Sounds like Mike Pence getting frisky." TREVOR NOAH "Putin reached out to Biden. He was, like, 'Send me everyone's contact info. Oops, I already have. Heh, heh, heh.' Then he said, 'Send me everyone's Netflix passwords. Oops, I already have, too.'" JIMMY FALLON "Not a great look for Senate Republicans when the guy who interfered in our election is like imitating Putin : 'Come on, he won. At a certain point, you guys are poisoning democracy, and not in the right way with poison.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "Even Putin recognized Biden's win. That's a tough break for Trump. In just a few days, his Supreme Court and his supreme leader went against him." JIMMY FALLON "I think Putin is relieved Trump is out. All day long he's been singing, 'Since you've been gone, I can breathe for the first time.'" JIMMY FALLON "As if the news wasn't bad enough for Trump, moments later, Rudy Giuliani popped into the Oval Office like, 'Don't worry boss, you still got me.'" JIMMY FALLON
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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FOR top luxury cars, there's an old saw about prices: if you have to ask, you can't afford it. Hyundai clearly feels there's no harm in asking, especially in a shaky economy. How else to explain the Equus, its new priced to sell luxury sedan? This 60,000 Lexus baiting limo will look like an alien battleship at Hyundai dealerships, hovering over the Elantras and Tucsons. But to owners of the Lexus LS 460, the better sci fi reference is "Invasion of the Body Snatchers": from its design to its powertrain to its features, the Hyundai seems a virtual copy of the Lexus, such a crib that it might hail from Shanghai, not South Korea. Of course, that's how Lexus began its Trojan horse conquest of America in 1990, by imitating a Mercedes but selling the impostor for 35,000 seemingly a lot at the time for a social climbing Toyota, but some 27,000 less than a Benz 420SEL. Today, cars in this league can top 100,000, but the idea is the same. Coming from the 21st century discount king, the Equus looks to kick Lexus and the Germans in the shins while cutting their prices off at the knees. The Equus starts at 58,900 for the Signature model, compared with nearly 73,000 for the long wheelbase version of the Lexus. But the de facto price spread is wider, because the feature stuffed Hyundai doesn't offer a single extra cost option. Choose the Ultimate edition at 65,400, and the Equus goes feature to feature with a loaded LS 460 L that tops 97,000 right down to the Lexus's plush rear quarters with its right side reclining chair, which not only heats, cools and massages a pampered passenger, but comes with a power footrest, DVD entertainment and a refrigerator in the center console that awaits a bottle of bubbly or Capri Suns for your coddled children. Clearly, big spenders can feel like big savers if they choose the Hyundai. Automotive Lease Guide, whose resale estimates help automakers set lease rates, figures the Equus will lose 50 percent of its value after three years, which ties it with the Lexus for the least depreciation in the class. So toast the Equus buyer for financial intelligence. And if you limit driving expectations to what the Lexus does so well it's still one of the world's most tranquil cruisers the Hyundai acquits itself with surprising grace. Remember, too, that the Equus enters a luxury market that's vastly more crowded and sophisticated than when Lexus saw its big chance. In 1990, Mercedes was the complacent benchmark, Jaguar was in steep decline and Audi was a blip on the radar. Today, the Lexus LS the target at which Hyundai has taken dead aim is hardly the benchmark, but the oldest car in a class overflowing with superb choices. Personally, if I traded a BMW 7 Series, Audi A8, Mercedes S Class or Jaguar XJ for this Hyundai, I'd cry myself to sleep at night. The tears would have less to do with brand prestige than with the Equus's amorphous styling, unpersuasive interior and mild performance. My wife, Carmen, spent about 20 minutes in the Equus before the atmosphere turned chilly, and it wasn't because of the body cooling seats. "This is the knockoff Louis Vuitton bag you bought in Chinatown," she said. "It looks cheap, and you're not fooling anyone." Like those street corner goods, the Equus's styling rings bells. But there's something a bit off about the materials, textures and execution. What's missing is the craftsmanship and design brio that characterize the real deal. Most cars in this class look big yet graceful; the Hyundai just looks big. The grille is so generic it recalls those hastily drawn Taiwanese news animations of Tiger Woods's crashed S.U.V. There's no pride in that face. The Lexus's best feature remains its pharaoh worthy tomb of a cabin, still one of the best places to spend an afterlife of long distance travel. But aside from the dizzying features list, the Hyundai's cabin seems on par with 50,000 luxury cars, not six figure heads of state. Passengers especially noted the mediocre leather. The alcantara headliner feels coarse; some switches look plasticky and lack precision. And there's no trace of a designer's signature, as in the haute couture Audi or the swinging London Jag. Yet every good student begins by mimicking his masters. The Lexus's 4.6 liter V 8 produces 380 horsepower and 367 pound feet of torque. The Hyundai's 4.6 liter V 8 makes 385 horsepower and 333 pound feet. According to Car and Driver, the Lexus and Hyundai ran neck and neck in a quarter mile sprint, at 14.5 seconds. The Lexus reached 60 m.p.h. in 6.0 seconds, the Equus in 6.1. Stopping distance from 70 m.p.h.? It was 171 feet for the Lexus, 170 for the Equus. Late this summer, the 2012 Equus will adopt a 5 liter V 8 with 429 horsepower giving the Equus the most standard horses in its class. An 8 speed transmission will replace the current 6 speed. One wonders why Hyundai didn't offer the Equus from the get go with that stronger powertrain. And if the Hyundai doesn't quite waft over the road like the Lexus the Rolls Royce of Japan, only quieter it comes comfortably close. For this type of cocooning sedan, I prefer the Lexus's creamier steering, but the Hyundai actually felt more connected to the road, especially after switching its air suspension to Sport mode. My aesthetic opposition to the Equus began to fade on a four hour highway cruise, when the car's power, solid structure and impeccable quiet gave me less and less to complain about. Chalking up miles in the Hyundai soothed by its 608 watt, 17 speaker Lexicon audio system, admiring that big back seat I kept thinking of Cadillac and Lincoln. These American brands virtually patented this type of conservative, cavernous sedan. Yet today neither offers a rear drive V 8 luxo barge, let alone one this comfy and lavish. If you miss your old Caddy or Town Car and have 60 grand to spend, the Equus may seem like a long lost friend. The Hyundai scores again with first rate interfaces, including its central control knob and sharp looking display screen for navigation, iPods and other functions. You'll barely need to consult the manual installed on the iPad that comes free with the car. But if you put the fancy pants German and British cars into the mix, the comparisons are less kind. The BMW, Jaguar, Audi and Mercedes raise performance, technology and sophistication to levels you won't find here. Yet those cars cost 20,000 to 35,000 more when similarly equipped. With its rear center console, the Ultimate seats just four passengers, and the single reclining rear seat is a mild head scratcher: while in Korea the Equus may be chauffeur driven, Americans and their significant others are unlikely to ride much in that catbird seat.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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Too leaden for farce and too bland for satire, Lisa Addario and Joe Syracuse's "Dear Dictator" wastes a potential gold mine of culture clashing silliness on worn, high school movie cliches. Paralleling two revolutions one social, the other political the story makes unlikely allies of Tatiana (Odeya Rush), a misfit American teenager, and Gen. Anton Vincent (Michael Caine), a newly ousted Caribbean despot. Initially pen pals as a result of an innocent social studies assignment, the two become unexpected roommates when a coup sends Anton fleeing to the suburban home where Tatiana lives with her vacuous single mother, Darlene (Katie Holmes). I wish I could say that wackiness ensues.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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From about 150 euros, or 158 at 1.05 to the euro. The NH Collection Torino Piazza Carlina opened last winter in a 17th century palazzo that was, in the early 1900s, the home of Antonio Gramsci, the politician who co founded the Communist Party of Italy. The 160 room hotel is part of the NH Hotel Group but offers slightly more luxurious lodging than is typical for the Spanish based brand, known for its basic rooms and moderate prices. The historic five story property has been given some modern touches, like the futuristic light installation and artistic photo collage that greet guests at reception. But many period details have been preserved, including beautiful stone mosaics in a large central courtyard surrounded by arcades, which are suggestive of the covered walkways called portici that hug miles of boulevards and vast piazzas around the city. Conveniently located in central Turin on the southeastern corner of Piazza Carlo Emanuele II, the hotel is equidistant from the Po River and the grand Piazza San Carlo. It's a short walk to the train station, most museums and tourist attractions, as well as to the historic quarter's many restaurants and aperitivo bars.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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SAN FRANCISCO Two weeks ago, Facebook declined to remove a doctored video in which the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, seemed to drunkenly slur her speech. Over the weekend, two British artists released a doctored video of Facebook's chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, as a sly comment on the spread of false information online. Posted to the Facebook owned social network Instagram, the video shows Mr. Zuckerberg speaking directly into the camera, boasting of nefarious motives behind his online empire. "Imagine this for a second: one man, with total control of billions of people's stolen data, all their secrets, their lives, their futures," he appears to say. "I owe it all to Spectre. Spectre showed me that whoever controls the data controls the future." The video is easily recognizable as a fake, in part because the voice paired with the image sounds only marginally like Mr. Zuckerberg. And Spectre is a reference to a fictional, evil organization in James Bond lore. But it serves both as a piece of digital commentary and as a test of the way Facebook handles the spread of false information on its social network.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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The two teams have been vocal opponents of returning to play, threatening earlier in the month to boycott the resumed season, before backing down. After Liverpool clinched its inevitable but long delayed Premier League title, Manager Jurgen Klopp shared his delight with fans in a heartfelt letter published in The Liverpool Echo. "I have never before written a letter to a newspaper," he said. "The actions and achievements of the players speak for themselves. All of the tributes that they have received are so deserved, and as their manager I could not be more proud." But amid the joy, Klopp also felt the need to admonish some Liverpool fans. A celebration on Friday night included thousands of fans, despite the urging of the authorities for them to stay home. A teenager was arrested, accused of throwing a firework and starting a small fire at the Royal Liver Building, a Liverpudlian landmark at the waterfront, possibly because it was lit up in blue, the colors of Liverpool's rival, Everton, which has offices there. "What I did not love and I have to say this was the scenes that took place at the Pier Head on Friday," Klopp wrote. "I am a human being, and your passion is also my passion, but right now the most important thing is that we do not have these kind of public gatherings. We owe it to the most vulnerable in our community, to the health workers who have given so much and whom we have applauded and to the police and local authorities who help us as a club not to do this. Please celebrate, but celebrate in a safe way and in private settings, whereby we do not risk spreading this awful disease further in our community."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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The 1966 Fitch Phoenix will be auctioned by Bonhams on Sunday at the Greenwich Concours d'Elegance in Connecticut. The town of Greenwich, Conn., seems proud that its annual Town Party has drawn some top talent during the four years it's been held in Roger Sherman Baldwin Park, which overlooks the harbor. Paul Simon and James Taylor have performed in the past; last Saturday, it was Carlos Santana. This weekend more legends are heading to the park, as classics including Ferraris, Maseratis, Auburns and Packards arrive for an automotive town party with a longer pedigree, the 19th annual Greenwich Concours d'Elegance. "We are one of three concours listed in the North American edition of "1,000 Places to See Before You Die,"' said Bruce Wennerstrom, the event's founder. "I'm very proud of that." Mr. Wennerstrom and his wife, Genia, who died in 2011, created the event in 1996, and it continues to be run by the Wennerstrom family, with children and in laws helping out. The concours is split into two days, with American cars on the field on Saturday and foreign cars on Sunday, with about 125 vehicles shown each day. Scheduled to be among them are a 1929 Bugatti Type 40 Roadster, a 1948 Packard Deluxe 8 sedan, a 1959 Ferrari 250 GT LWB and a Hennessey Venom GT, which has been called the world's fastest production car. Maria Jannace, a spokeswoman for the concours, says Skip Barber, the racecar driver who runs a racing school at Lime Rock Park in northwestern Connecticut, called on Tuesday and said he was bringing his 1958 Cadillac Eldorado. He and the car are expected to be on the field on Saturday. On Sunday, Bonhams will hold an auction of more than 100 vehicles, including the 1966 Fitch Phoenix, a prototype that never went into production. The late racecar driver and inventor John Fitch, who helped to develop the Lime Rock track, created the car. The show will also have displays marking the 100th anniversary of Bugatti and the 50th anniversary of the Ford Mustang, including the Shelby GT350R raced by Mark Donohue. The event occasionally has its oddities, like the World War I tank last year, the Tupolev 007 Russian amphibious craft in 2012 and the vintage airplanes that turn up from time to time. This year, the Terrafugia Transition flying car, a version of which was at the 2009 concours, will return, and there will be two former America's Cup yachts on display in the harbor. The concours is also known for its tight parking in the lot across the street. So here's a tip: There's a public parking garage just on the other side of Interstate 95 that offers free parking on the street level (and only on the street level.) The concours is an easy walk from the garage, under the highway. The event will be held Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are 30 for one day, 45 for both. Children 12 and under are free if with an adult. Roger Sherman Baldwin Park is off Exit 3 of I 95 and near the Greenwich Metro North station.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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Anthony Price was editor of The Oxford Times for most of the 1970s and '80s. During that time, he wrote a series of spy thrillers that often featured an analyst for the British secret service as a main character. Anthony Price, whose string of espionage novels, rich in historical references and complex characters, drew comparisons to the work of John le Carre, died on May 30 in South East London. He was 90. His daughter, Katherine James, said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Mr. Price, whose first spy novel, "The Labyrinth Makers," came out in 1970, was among several thriller writers who moved the espionage genre beyond the slick shenanigans of early period James Bond as the Cold War calcified. "The Labyrinth Makers" was the first of 19 novels featuring David Audley, an analyst for the British secret service, who was often the protagonist but sometimes a secondary figure. Mr. Price was not content with simple linear plots; he loved to burden his characters with ghosts from the past and explore how long ago actions influenced events years or even centuries later. In "Sion Crossing" (1984), a character named Oliver Latimer, a sort of rival of Audley's, travels to the United States and gets involved in a mystery in Georgia related to the Civil War. "A New Kind of War" (1988) begins in Greece in 1945, then shifts to the Teutoburg Forest in Germany and makes reference to a battle the Romans fought there 2,000 years earlier. If Mr. Price's books never became blockbusters, they did garner critical praise. "He does not yet enjoy the same degree of fame as John le Carre, Len Deighton or Frederick Forsyth," John Gross wrote in The New York Times in 1986, reviewing "Here Be Monsters," "but he can more than survive comparison with any of them. He is far more subtle than Mr. Forsyth and much less gimmicky than Mr. Deighton, and if he can't quite match Mr. le Carre's doomy intensity, he has the compensating virtues of (relatively speaking) greater directness and solid good sense." Anthony Price was born on Aug. 16, 1928, in Hertfordshire, north of London, where his mother, Kathleen (Lawrence) Price, a commercial artist, had returned from India during her pregnancy while his father, Walter, remained there, working as an accountant. Anthony rarely saw his father during childhood, and after his mother died when he was a boy, he was raised by an aunt in Canterbury. After doing his national service from 1947 to 1949, first in the Royal Signals and then in the Royal Army Educational Corps, he attended Merton College, Oxford, studying history and earning a master of arts. In 1953 he married Ann Stone. About the same time, he took a job at The Oxford Times; by 1972 he had worked his way up to editor, a position he held until he retired in 1988. Early in his career at the paper, he began writing book reviews for its sister publication, The Mail, to supplement his income. In a 2011 interview with Nick Jones for the blog Existential Ennui, Mr. Price recalled receiving what turned out to be a particularly memorable assignment from his editor, Hartford Thomas, to write about the first volume of a little known author's trilogy. "He said, 'I've got this book, which has been rejected by my children's reviewer as being boring,' " Mr. Price said. " 'But it's written by a local author, and I think we ought to review it. So would you like it?' So I said, 'Yes, sir' you called editors 'sir' then, you see. And Hartford said: 'Well, off you go. Four hundred words.' " "I was the first journalist he'd ever seen," Mr. Price said, "so he lent me the proof copy of the second volume, and the galley proofs of the third, annotated in his own hand. And so I reviewed 'The Fellowship of the Ring.' " He gave the book and the author, J. R. R. Tolkien, a positive notice. Mr. Price settled into a niche of reviewing crime fiction and military history, two areas of interest to him. After 10 or 12 years of this, an editor at the Victor Gollancz publishing house asked if he'd write a book about crime fiction. He declined, but asked if he might try writing a thriller instead, and that was how he became a novelist. Mr. Price's books were the basis of a 1983 British television series, "Chessgame," with Terence Stamp as Audley. His feeling about the series? Mr. Price's wife died in 2012. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by two sons, James and Simon, and five grandchildren. Mr. Price's last novel, "The Memory Trap," appeared in 1989, as the Soviet Union and Communist systems in Eastern Europe were beginning to unravel taking away the villain, essentially, in many of his books. He was, he admitted, surprised that the Soviet Union fell "with a whimper, not a bang," as he put it; he had feared the Cold War would end cataclysmically. "I always felt that the past is lying in wait for the present," he said. "I'm not sure whether I'm right, ever since the Soviet Union collapsed in a way that I never expected. That was another thing that made me decide to retire, along with my health and other factors: It made me think that it was time to quit while I was ahead, because Audley was no longer as clever as he thought."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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Noah Trotter, 21, on the roof of his parents' home, in a costume inspired by the film "Black Panther." "The cosplay world may not be ready for this. It's going to be lit," he said of the soundtrack by Kendrick Lamar. Black characters are rarely central to the imaginary worlds that fill the pages of comic books, which often depict them as sidekicks or villains rather than the superheroes. That means the cosplay community, made up of fans who dress in character at conventions, movies and just for fun on weekends , is overwhelmingly white. That is perhaps why black cosplayers in particular have been excited about the "Black Panther" film since Marvel Comics announced its release in 2014 and Ta Nehisi Coates wrote a new series of the comic in 2016. Its hero, T'Challa , the Black Panther, lives in a fictional advanced nation called Wakanda. There, black characters can be both the hero and the villain, a three dimensional portrait of people of African descent often left out of comic books and movies. There is a strong sense of African pride for the nation set in East Africa, one that is permeating black American culture. The Black Panther character first appeared in Marvel Comics in 1966, but this film is Marvel's first featuring a leading black superhero and a predominantly black cast , including Lupita Nyong'o and Chadwick Boseman, directed by an African American, Ryan Coogler, with a soundtrack by an African American, Kendrick Lamar. Since the superhero's introduction, there have been other black superheroes including the Falcon (1969), Blade (1973) and Storm, the first black female superhero, who appeared in 1975. They are not celebrated everywhere. Many African American cosplayers believe that Instagram and Facebook cosplay groups tend to isolate nonwhite cosplayers. As a result, black cosplayers have used their own social media accounts to create inclusive spaces. Instagram pages like Cosplay of Color and Facebook groups like The Extraordinary Journey of a Black Nerd were created to promote the celebration of black cosplay and nerd culture in America and beyond. The goal, many cosplayers interviewed said, is to disrupt popular ideas of what cosplay can and should look like and to help create a more racially tolerant environment through cosplay, both in Black Panther costumes and outside of them. For more Surfacing pieces, like one on a Jamaican synchronized swimming team, click here. She said that being an African American cosplayer helps create a more open world both within the world of cosplay and outside it. "We're helping people see us as heroes," said Ms. Lewis, who lives in Los Angeles. "And I think black cosplayers are changing cosplay because we are now opening up a conversation about inclusion. We're a subculture within a subculture, and we're hoping the nerd community can be more inclusive toward us." Black cosplayers are also helping to challenge limitations on what African American cosplayers can be. "Black people want to be the characters that we love and they might not necessarily look like us and if we want to look like them, we get a lot of backlash and ridicule and get made fun of," she said. "The hypocrisy happens when nobody says anything about white characters portraying Asian characters or others." She hopes that she and other African American cosplayers can help change that double standard. She also engages in cosplay for other reasons. Mr. Trotter's cosplay journey began as a young teenager with the release of one of the films in the "Spider Man" series. This self described "Marvel geek" is usually the only person in cosplay among his friends, and on the field of his California State University Long Beach college rugby team , where he frequently plays while dressed as the Black Panther. "This film is a chance to help change the mind set of the comic and Marvel world that are sometimes racist toward black people," he said, citing online backlash that he has experienced , including people photoshopping and posting racially charged words and stereotypical imagery about the Black Panther. Mr. Trotter is looking forward to the film's soundtrack by Kendrick Lamar. "The cosplay world may not be ready for this," he said of the album. "It's going to be lit ." Ms. Walker said that the film stood out for its positive portrayal of Wakanda, an African nation that was never colonized by European nations. "It's the first time in America cinema narrative where you have a country full of noncolonized black people that are all science prodigies and geniuses," she explained. "This film is about autonomy, especially the film's interest in science and technology, which I didn't see when I was growing up." Ms. Walker said that she and other black cosplayers had faced harassment by white cosplayers, who used racial epithets in online communities and forums. She feels that black cosplayers are improving the aesthetic of the broader community. "I've seen some messed up wigs and some unrealistic hairlines and curl patterns in cosplay and that's not sexy," she said. "We make it sexy." Mr. Shaw, a Los Angeles native and yearly comic convention attendee, remembers the first time he put on a Black Panther costume, almost five years ago. "I went to the San Diego Comic Con and a little white kid who walked up to me and said, 'You're the Black Panther!'" he said. "He couldn't see me, but I was tearing up inside of my mask," he added. "It was powerful." Mr. Shaw, a father of two, believes that he and other African American cosplayers demonstrate why the comics world needs more characters like T'Challa, the Black Panther. "It's going to be great for people of color once they start seeing that there is a black superhero who is a king and graduated with honors from four different schools," he said. "When I don the costume, I feel like I embody the character. I am no longer Sean, I become the king of Wakanda." "I've always been into anime, and then one day I fell in love with comics," he said while gripping two metal rods that he often uses as props for his Black Panther outfit. "It feels great to see other people at conventions and getting hyped over the same characters." Though he is happy about the film, he does and will keep dressing as characters who are not black. "It's harder for you to be seen when you don't look like some of the characters that we see in the comic world," he said. "You take it in stride, but we always put our own black twist on it when we perform and dress up." When Ms. Kaufman and Mr. Okafor met online, they bonded over enjoying cosplay. "I engaged with it a bit more because of my theater background," she said. "Together, our interest and excitement increased. Chuk saw how happy it made me to be in my element." "I feel extremely comfortable in costume, and cosplaying has allowed me to envision myself as a character," Ms. Kaufman said. "I like to use my imagination and interpret characters based on whatever is inspiring me at the time, and when those inspirations, whether they're based on music, historical events, feelings, couple nicely with the identity of a character who I can relate to, I feel accomplished." "I really liked when I heard Gil Scott Heron's 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' in the film's trailer," said Ms. Kaufman, who regularly attends cosplay events with Mr. Okafor throughout Southern California. "That happened in the 1970s when there was a revolution and people were upset. That's happening again today." Mr. Okafor, a Black Panther enthusiast whose interest in cosplay can be traced to elaborate Halloween costumes in his youth, believes that Marvel's decision to hire a black director and a predominantly black cast conveys a strong message. "Without saying it they are taking a political stance," he explained. "It's directed and the actors are mostly black and it's for the people ."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Clemson got the ball first but the Tigers went absolutely nowhere, gaining 3 yards before settling for a punt. Trevor Lawrence, Clemson's freshman quarterback, threw a pair of incompletions on the drive, with his attempt to Hunter Renfrow on 3rd and 7 sailing well out of the wide receiver's reach. Alabama now takes over looking to get something started. In a shocking turn of events, Alabama looked to be moving the ball early in its first drive but A.J. Terrell stepped in front of Tua Tagovailoa's third pass of the game, intercepting and returning it 44 yards for a touchdown. Before the interception, Tagovailoa had started the game 2 for 2 for 20 yards with a picture perfect 12 yard pass to DeVonta Smith that had gotten the Crimson Tide a first down. Clemson started its second offensive drive with Trevor Lawrence's third incompletion of the game. On second down he connected with Justin Ross, but had that completion wiped away by a tripping penalty on John Simpson, an offensive lineman. An 8 yard pass to Trevion Thompson served as Lawrence's first official completion of the day, but it was the follow up that showed how special Lawrence can be. On 3rd and 14, with a punt seeming likely, Lawrence found Tee Higgins for a 62 yard catch and run that put Alabama squarely on its heels. On the next play Etienne, who finished seventh in Heisman voting, got his team the lead, rushing to his left and bowling his way into the end zone. Unfortunately for the Crimson Tide, who have struggled with extra points all season, Joseph Bulovas had his attempt hit the upright and fall back onto the field, which left Alabama trailing 14 13. Alabama had started its drive with a 7 yard run by Josh Jacobs and then lost a yard on a screen pass to Irv Smith thanks to a terrific tackle by K'von Wallace. Once again, Tagovailoa responded well to pressure, with his third down pass to DeVonta Smith connecting for 15 yards and a first down. An 11 yard pass to DeVonta Smith gave Alabama another first down and that let Tagovailoa be aggressive, throwing deep to Irv Smith for a 21 yard gain. Alabama gave the ball to Najee Harris, a sophomore who averaged 6.7 yards a carry this season, and let the speedster take them 20 yards on three runs, with the third one initially being ruled a touchdown before it was determined that he was down at the one half yard line. Tagovailoa then faked a handoff and found Hentges wide open in the end zone for the score. Marc Tracy: Clemson's Dabo Swinney ran way out onto the field yelling for a holding call on that 9 yard Alabama run that set up the touchdown, and then kept yelling at the sideline judge nearest him. He's a passionate guy but we rarely see him that irate. Trevor Lawrence had his first pass of the drive broken up with a nice defensive play, and then Travis Etienne, on a run up the middle, was wrapped up by a pack led by Quinnen Williams for a 4 yard loss. Another pass attempt to Hunter Renfrow fell incomplete and Clemson was forced to punt. Just 42 seconds into the second quarter, Alabama took a 16 14 lead with a 25 yard field goal from Joseph Bulovas. Alabama had started the drive on its own 48 yard line and immediately began picking up yardage in huge chunks. Tua Tagovailoa connected with Jerry Jeudy for a 12 yard reception, Najee Harris raced up the middle for 13 yards and then Tagovailoa found Jeudy again, once again for 12 yards. Damien Harris ran three times for 9 yards, and then on 4th and 1 from Clemson's 6 yard line, Alabama rolled the dice by having Joshua Jacobs come in at running back. Their top touchdown scorer on the ground plowed his way to the 2 yard line. Williams then returned, running it up the middle, but was swallowed up at the 1 yard line. A false start penalty backed the Crimson Tide up to the 6 yard line, and while Tagovailoa got them back to the 3 with a short pass to Henry Ruggs, a shovel pass to Williams proved fruitless when Clemson sniffed it out immediately, with Austin Bryant wrapping Williams up for a loss. That sent out Bulovas for the field goal attempt and his kick, which was low and to the right, did just make it through the uprights, helping make up for his failed extra point. Clemson needed just six plays to take the lead back, with Travis Etienne running the ball in from the 1 yard line. Clemson started the drive by getting a quick 15 yards thanks to a pass interference call against Alabama's Saivion Smith. A screen pass to Tavien Feaster looked like it might go for negative yardage, but Feaster made a few nice moves and then raced for a 26 yard gain. Trevor Lawrence tried to scramble on first down and while he got 1 yard, he paid for it by being wrenched awkwardly to the ground by his shoulders and head. Feaster ran the ball for 4 yards and then Lawrence recovered nicely from the big hit with a 14 yard connection with Tee Higgins. With a 1st and goal from Alabama's 5 yard line, Etienne got the Tigers to the 1 with a nice second effort on a run in which he used a second effort to nearly power his way through a crowd and into the end zone. Alabama was rewarded for boldness on a 4th down run, but a deep pass by Tua Tagovailoa later in the drive proved too large of a risk, as the quarterback threw his second interception of the day. Alabama's offense had started things off with three runs by Josh Jacobs for a combined 9 yards, with the big running back just barely falling shy of picking up a first down. Despite being at their own 35 yard line, the Crimson Tide went for it on 4th and 1 and Jacobs fought his way through the line for a 3 yard gain and a first down. Jacobs ran two more times for a combined 19 yards, and the new set of downs may have emboldened Tagovailoa, who threw deep, but well beyond the reach of any of his receivers, with the ball settling easily into Trayvon Mullen's hands for the interception. Clemson's offense is out of control. After Trevor Lawrence hit Tee Higgins in the end zone for a 5 yard score, the Tigers are up 44 16 with 21 seconds left in the third quarter. Clemson's first few plays of the drive had been fairly conservative, but on 3rd and 12, Lawrence opened things up, throwing deep over the shoulder of Justyn Ross for a 37 yard gain and a first down. It briefly looked like Alabama had recovered a fumble later in the drive, but a review by the officials gave the ball back to Clemson with a 3rd and 9 from Alabama's 37 yard line. Lawrence took full advantage, picking up a first down with a nice 17 yard pass to Ross which the receiver pulled in with just his right hand before finding a way to get a foot down before falling out of bounds. Alabama simply does not have what it takes to compete with Clemson today. Tua Tagovailoa repeatedly threw aggressively downfield, and he connected with Jerry Jeudy for an impressive 48 yard completion, and the team found itself in the red zone, but they couldn't do anything with it. A series of runs left them with a 4th and goal from the 2 yard line and a planned run for Tagovailoa was knocked back for a 7 yard loss and a turnover on downs. After the quarterback hit the turf, Clemson players immediately began celebrating on the field, knowing they have likely clinched a championship despite the game still having 12 minutes left to play. John Branch: With so much worry in the Bay Area over whether the game would sell out (it did, officials said), no one could have predicted what the stands at Levi's Stadium would look like midway through the fourth quarter. Clemson fans, bedecked in orange, did not move, cheering and anticipating the trophy presentation. But Alabama fans flooded out, having seen enough. They left behind a bit of a camouflaged disguise, because the seats at Levi's Stadium are crimson, too.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Innovative design and other features that channel the destination unify the following coming and just opened hotels, which are among the most promising debuts of the new year. When a new reservoir threatened their destruction, an entire camphor forest and 50 Ming and Qing dynasty era houses were moved 400 miles from the Jiangxi province to the outskirts of Shanghai and refashioned into Amanyangyun. After 15 years of conservation work, the 25 acre resort will open Jan. 8, with 13 villas in the reconstructed houses featuring modern interiors and 24 additional suites. A cultural pavilion offers guests opportunities to practice calligraphy, watch an opera or partake in a tea ceremony. Rooms from CNY 6,900, or about 1,062; aman.com. Formerly home to Hong Kong government offices, the iconic 1969 white high rise known as the Murray Building will reopen this month as The Murray hotel. The British architectural firm Foster Partners has undertaken its transformation to a 336 room hotel spanning 25 floors. Among five restaurants and lounges, the rooftop bar will overlook the city's business district and Hong Kong Park. Rooms from 3,850 Hong Kong dollars, or about 493; niccolohotels.hotels.com. Already a member of Design Hotels, the 153 room Hotel St. George will open in the spring in a historic building largely designed by the architect Onni Tarjanne and formerly home to the Finnish Literature Society. A ground floor gallery will exhibit a large scale sculpture of a dragon by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei and an 18 foot long brass bird by the sculptor Pekka Jyllha will hang from the glass ceiling of the winter garden. Expect two restaurants, a swimming pool and, of course, a sauna in the spa. Rooms from 220 euros, or about 265; stgeorgehelsinki.com. The former Wall Street trader Angelos Michalopoulos has acquired about a quarter of the island of Ios in the Aegean Sea where his new 30 suite Calilo resort is expected to open next summer with solar power, geothermal cooling and building materials such as marble and granite quarried at the beachfront site. The 1,000 acre property will host six miles of trails, an open air cinema and an organic garden providing food for the restaurant. Rooms from EUR680; calilo.gr. The designer Bill Bensley, whose extensive resume includes the Four Seasons Golden Triangle Tented Camp in Thailand, brings his romantic colonial style to the Capella Ubud in the upland rice growing region of Bali. Opening in early 2018, its 22 tents and a two bedroom lodge come with plunge pools on a jungle property where even the gym, library and restaurants are tented. Activities range from guided walks to chocolate bar making. Rooms from 838; capellahotels.com/ubud. In the town of Como, at the southwestern end of the villa ringed Lago di Como, the new Vista Palazzo Lago di Como, set to open in June, will retrofit one of the lake's 19th century palaces, using marble, wood and fabrics all sourced in Italy, to hold 18 suites and the town's first rooftop restaurant and bar. Guests can tour the lake by Riva speedboat or seaplane. Rates from EUR695; vistalagodicomo.com. The eco focused Cayuga Collection, which runs Lapa Rios in Costa Rica among others, plans to open Isla Palenque Island Resort in the summer. The 400 acre island in the Pacific already has a six room villa and will add eight beachfront rooms. Guests can hike on land and explore the marine park off shore via kayak and paddleboard. Rooms from 600, including breakfast; cayugaonline.com. Illa Experience Hotel, opened in December by the Ecuador based tour operator Latin Trails, aims to immerse guests in the culture of Quito with daily activities such as coffee tastings, watercolor classes and lessons in making local sweets. Its 10 rooms occupy a former 18th century house in the historic San Marcos neighborhood with a bar on the roof and the city's acclaimed Nuema restaurant on the premises. Rooms from 459; illaexperiencehotel.com. This summer, two shipping containers that have been remodeled with glass walls will open on four acres of private land adjacent to Eagle Creek Park in Indianapolis as getaway cabins called Tiny Urban Escapes. Poised to draw nature loving city dwellers, the 160 square foot rooms will each come with two bikes for exploring the nearby trails. Rooms from 179; tinyurbanescapes.com. Coming this spring to the Source food market in Denver's booming River North Art District, the Source Hotel will have its own microbrewery from New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins and a rooftop space called the Woods after the 50 oak barrels stationed there to age its craft beer. Guests of the 100 room hotel will get a brew at check in. Besides drinking, there will be a cantilevered pool and a barbecue restaurant. Rooms from 250; thesourcehotel.com. One might argue that any shelter in the Alaska wilderness is a luxury. But travelers to the Denali region will have a true luxury lodging option when the Sheldon Chalet opens in February. The five bedroom lodge, 10 miles from Denali in a summit ringed basin known as the Don Sheldon Amphitheater, promises running water and fine dining along with aurora viewing, skiing and guided glacier trekking. Rooms from 2,300; sheldonchalet.com. Long closed and its future in limbo, the landmark Miramar By the Sea Hotel has been redeveloped and will open in summer as the Rosewood Miramar Beach Montecito in the affluent Montecito enclave near Santa Barbara. The 16 acre property, which its owners say has the only private beach in Southern California, encompasses some 161 rooms (many in cottages and bungalows), two swimming pools, six restaurants and bars, and a spa. (Because of the Jan. 9 mudslide, Highway 101 near the resort is closed. The hotel itself was not in its path and it remains on track to begin operations in the summer.) Rooms from 825; rosewoodhotels.com. In the first half of 2018 on the Las Vegas Strip, MGM Resorts International aims to replace the mundane Monte Carlo Resort and Casino with two flashier hotels in one tower: the 2,700 room Park MGM with an Eataly food market and the relatively boutique 292 room NoMad Las Vegas from the Sydell Group. With the latter comes a NoMad restaurant from the chef Daniel Humm and the restaurateur Will Guidara. Rates to be determined; parkmgm.com. The hotelier Adrian Zecha, who created Aman resorts, founded a new hotel group called Azerai that made its debut in Luang Prabang, Laos, in 2017. Its second property, Azerai Can Tho, is slated to open by year end on the Hau River, a Mekong tributary, in Vietnam's fourth largest city. The 60 room resort features a spa, tennis court and two restaurants. Excursions include visits to the city's famous floating markets, bike trips and sampan boat tours. Rooms from 250; azerai.com.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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PARIS Words from a decades old Motown antiwar song are not the most obvious reference for a show of men's wear from the couture house Valentino. But the lyrics of Edwin Starr's "War," released in 1970 and considered one of the most popular protest songs ever recorded it's been covered by artists as disparate as Bruce Springsteen and Boys II Men nagged one observer as models paraded through the gilded chambers of the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild on a stuffy Wednesday afternoon in Paris. "War, huh, yeah, what is it good for?" ask the lyrics of the Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong song, which, sung by Mr. Starr as a form of grunting, wailing exhortation, went to the top of the Billboard charts. The answer follows: "Absolutely nothing. Say it again!" Yet, as we all know, that is anything but the case. Plenty of people benefit from war except, inevitably, the cannon fodder. War has been exceptionally useful to fashion. Without it, we might never have seen a wool cashmere Valentino field jacket in camo, a military concealment pattern that Maria Grazia Chiuri and Pierpaolo Piccioli have made a staple at the house. Here, the designers fused a familiar camouflage pattern with an altogether different motif: an embroidered silk panther couture dress designed by Valentino Garavani at the height of the Vietnam War, which, as a reference, is probably as obscure to most contemporary readers as Edwin Starr is. Backstage, the duo traced the collection's origins to a visit to "Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible," which runs through Sept. 4 at the Met Breuer in New York. In that show of artworks from the Renaissance to the present, artists are shown stopping their production for any number of reasons, leaving works in intriguingly unfinished states. "We were thinking about the freeze point in the creative process," Ms. Chiuri said, that signifying moment when an artist lays down a brush in satisfaction, steps away from a canvas in dismay or hands the work off to an assistant to complete. If that tension is something the designers aimed to transmit to the privileged consumers who have clamored for Valentino in recent years, it remains to be seen whether the man who eagerly adds himself to a waiting list for 640 camouflage sneakers, a 1,800 camouflage tote bag or some other stratospherically priced couture camouflage item will have the wit, the patience or the desire to indulge the designers as they subtly dismantle the label's now familiar codes. "If you show all the parts of a process, you are communicating with the man who's going to buy the clothes, then the conversation is not just about fashion, it's about human process, the hand that made the garment, about culture," Mr. Piccioli said, by way of explaining Derby shoes whose construction staples are left exposed; intarsia sweaters, the stray threads of which, customarily trimmed after weaving, are left dangling; and woven cuffs on bomber jackets normally turned under, yet here left long enough to drift over a wearer's hands. "Things are more beautiful when they're left unfinished," Ms. Chiuri asserted. And yet, appealing as the thought is in the abstract, it seems commercially counterintuitive. Isn't finish, above all, what consumers expect from luxury goods? The question takes on added urgency if, as has been reported by Reuters, Ms. Chiuri is picked to assume the design helm at Dior. Each is old enough, though barely, to have knowledge and experience of the loaded Cold War tension between the West and the Soviet Union; each gives the sense of being in the process of evaluating the aftereffects of growing up in the long shadow of militarized totalitarian regimes. Of course, Mr. Gvasalia made an obligatory nod to the founder of the house, Cristobal Balenciaga, the pathologically shy and dictatorial dressmaking genius whose works sometimes appear less like items of clothing than works of soft sculpture. Naturally, Mr. Gvasalia genuflected (Balenciaga himself was an ostentatiously devout Catholic) to the heritage, discovering in the archives a coat that the founder of a house that opened in 1919 designed for himself and never completed. Mr. Gvasalia made it the basis of his collection. That's the official version. In whatever way you considered the items that the new Balenciaga designer sent onto the runway for an audience with Mr. Rubchinskiy in a front row seat the radical tailoring proposition, contrasting architectonic suits proportioned to exaggerate the body in an almost cartoon way with others tight enough to straitjacket it, was above all about control. That nothing looked comfortable was surely the designer's intention. Jackets with scarecrow shoulders were worn over trousers tight enough to inhibit reproduction. Suits were cut so tight the models looked unable to fill their lungs. Shod in knee boots of leather or python with stacked heels, the models gloomily stomped up and down between seats installed in what, during normal school days, is a mesh tented area for free play. Like Balenciaga, Mr. Owens is as much sculptor as dressmaker, one whose work is represented by a blue chip fine arts gallery. Like Balenciaga, his main design concerns are with volume, displacement, concealment. Like Balenciaga, he is a master recognized as such in his day. Thursday's show was held, as was Mr. Owens's previous men's wear presentation, in the bowels of the Palais de Tokyo. Lately, much has been made about heightened security in Paris, and yet, to my knowledge, no one has uttered a peep about the safety hazards to which designers routinely subject those who happen to follow them or write about them or buy from them. Reached by a series of dimly lit spiral stairways, the space beneath this contemporary art museum had no clearly marked exits: I looked. To be fair, the problem did not originate with Mr. Owens and is by no means unique to him. Designers in Paris somehow judge it part of their creative duty to stage shows under bridges, in abattoirs, everywhere but in an oubliette. The custom would be troubling under the best of circumstances; in a city where, only last year, terrorists ambushed and killed 129 at a concert hall, open air cafes and other public places, the idea of penning people up in spaces difficult to exit borders on the irresponsible. For all that, Mr. Owens's show was as resplendent as one has come to expect. Huge trousers in matte or shimmering cloth, and with pockets whose silhouettes were so extended that they looked like panniers, were paired with torso hugging tops or the taut leather Perfecto jackets that are among the most commercially reliable elements in Mr. Owens's repertoire. That the shoulders and sleeves of some were inset with sequins lent them a resemblance to rank marks on military uniforms. Tunics with hawser scale twists and knots extended Mr. Owens's continuing improvisations on classical draperies. Except for a few strokes of mustard or cocoa, the paneled garments were, also like those of the ancients, predominantly monochrome. Mr. Owens's devotees are seldom seen wearing anything but black, almost always unadorned, except for as in the case of his wife, Michele Lamy perhaps a pair of antlers worn as a sprightly crown.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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If you step back far enough, there is no outside to war. Or so suggests An My Le, whose harrowingly quiet, wide angled photographs highlight battle re enactors, active military personnel and sites of conflicts, both real and simulated. They are featured in "On Contested Terrain," a revelatory career survey at the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh, through July 26. (While the museum is temporarily closed because of the coronavirus, a video tour and selected images are online at cmoa.org.) Ms. Le's photographic terrain spans the Vietnamese countryside, shown in intimate black and white images of the early 1990s, and, in recent color photos, a deceptively placid rural stretch of the Rio Grande, one side indistinguishable from the other, bathers midstream visible in the distance. "This work is really very selfish," Ms. Le said of her recent images in a conversation at the museum before the virus crisis. "I've been making it to relieve anxiety about what's been going on in the past few years division, chaos, racial tensions, all stuff I would not have felt so deeply five years ago. What makes America America? The wilderness, the vastness, our sense of history you can't just erase everything with a few years of craziness. So, landscape is a comfort." And never, perhaps, more welcome than now. The border photos are part of a diverse series, "Silent General," its title borrowed and applied very broadly from a late essay by Walt Whitman. The reference is to Ulysses Grant, commended by Whitman as a simple man who triumphed as a Union general, served ably as peacetime president and, in retirement, traveled the world: a figure, it would seem, of universal veneration. And yet the country remains bitterly divided over the war's legacy: Witness a photograph by Ms. Le of two bronze memorials commemorating the Confederate generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard, that were recently removed from public display in New Orleans and crammed into a makeshift shed built by the Department of Homeland Security. Ms. Le shows them hapless and hulking, touched here and there with wayward sunlight. Their abjection is stated without fuss or any hint of vindictiveness. In her compact, tidy Brooklyn studio, Ms. Le, thoughtful and forthright, said she was drawn to Whitman's reminiscences because they are journalistic yet lyrical, attentive to the landscape, brimming with human sympathy that transcends political schism and, not least, autobiographical. All are impulses she shares. Born in Saigon in 1960, the artist left for Paris after the 1968 Tet offensive with her mother who had a scholarship at the Sorbonne and two brothers. They returned after the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. But their absence didn't spare Ms. Le intimate exposure at an early age to devastating nightly bombardment, nor to intractable social conflict. The American crusade against Communism was of course also a civil war, and Ms. Le's Francophile family reflected its divisions. She, her Buddhist father and her brothers were evacuated by the Americans in 1975. Her Roman Catholic mother followed several anxious months later; she'd been one of the last evacuees, lifted by helicopter from the roof of the American Embassy. All wound up in Southern California and thrived there. Ms. Le completed graduate programs in biology at Stanford and was headed for medical school when she took a single, fateful course in photography. By 1986 she'd been hired, in Paris, as staff photographer for a guild dating to the Middle Ages that was once responsible for building churches and chateaus, and now tends to their restoration and documentation. Ms. Le embarked with them on a four year tour of France not for the last time, she was the only woman in the group teaching herself to use a view camera and learning "about things that are well made." Several of the brooding black and white photographs are in the Carnegie show, organized by Dan Leers. (It will travel to the Milwaukee Museum of Art in the fall, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in spring 2021.) Back in the States, she enrolled in the graduate art program at Yale, where fellow students included John Pilson, who became her husband; they now have two teenage children. Ms. Le didn't expect to see Vietnam again, but when relations with the United States resumed in 1994 she returned, eager to resolve differences between childhood recollections, popular culture she'd absorbed since (especially Hollywood movies), and living reality. In rural areas and cities alike, she sought the complexity she'd missed "by having a truncated perspective of the country when I was young." "I'm interested in topics that are larger than myself," she added. "In things we can't control." That doesn't mean she favors visual chaos. Tonally delicate, emotionally reticent but sharply detailed, her Vietnam photos, Mr. Leers said, show how "landscape brings history into the present." The old fashioned, hood and bellows cameras Ms. Le uses give her a certain authority, while assuring subjects that she is an artist not, more threateningly, a journalist. Her fellow photographer Mitch Epstein explains that such cumbersome cameras "lead to a way of working that is more introspective. It slows you down." But, Mr. Epstein also observes, "There's a kind of adrenaline that kicks in with the kind of work that she's doing. It becomes performative." That was especially true with Ms. Le's next series, "Small Wars" (1999 2002), which features Vietnam War re enactors in Virginia and North Carolina. Access depended on her participation, and so, for weekends over three summers, she signed on as an enemy combatant. Terrified at first, she found that the men embraced her for the authenticity she contributed, allowing her to explore a world of "male fantasy, full of psychosexual tensions tough, creepy, weird." Few of the participants had been in the military, and fewer in combat, and while violent words were sometimes directed at her in the heat of the action, the photos show quieter moments: men deep in the simmering woods, mopping a forehead, setting off blasts, and each trying as was Ms. Le herself, she concedes to "make sense of personal baggage." In doing so, she says, they replicated real life economic differences: "The kids who had more money would play Americans because the American gear was more expensive." Fudging lines between performing, directing and documenting, as well as between civilian and military, places Ms. Le in the company of such artists as Jeremy Deller, who in 2001 restaged a 1980s Yorkshire miners' strike, and Dread Scott, who last year directed a re enactment of a historical slave rebellion in Louisiana. Omer Fast, Jeff Wall and Harun Farocki are also media artists who have considered the same blurry boundaries. With "29 Palms" (2003), named for a Marine training site in the California desert, Ms. Le deepened her exploration of these gray areas. The site was being used to simulate conditions in Afghanistan when Ms. Le arrived. She had hoped to embed with troops leaving for Iraq, but she was too late a blessing in disguise. "I'm not so masochistic as to look for actual violence," she explained. "It's important to have the mental and physical space to feel safe, and to be able to look at conflicts obliquely." But again, she experienced a level of fear not apparent in the photos. Of three that show innocent looking trails of smoke, she pointed out, "that's live fire. Where I'm standing, the land is trembling." Her next series, and her first in color, took Ms. Le around the world echoes of the aging Grant on naval vessels ranging from aircraft carriers to nuclear powered subs. These images, of peacetime activities, owe as much to canonical painters as to the war photographers Mathew Brady, Robert Capa, Tyler Hicks who influenced her previous work. One crisp, wistful photo shows sailors at attention topside, an Indonesian harbor beyond washed in milky light and dotted with dozens of ships. It is, she says, with a deprecating laugh, her Canaletto. With the "Silent General" series, Ms. Le returned to the conflicted terrain of her adopted homeland, newly determined to defy expectations, "at a time when I felt secure enough as an American," she explained, as with an image of several white cowboy hatted men idling on horseback, a setting sun in the distance. Ms. Le confirms an inevitable association to old Marlboro Man ads, but the subjects are Mexican. Such challenges are welcomed by the Carnegie director Eric Crosby. "Museums have to embrace politics because people bring their politics across the threshold," he said. And they are buffered by the poise of Ms. Le's compositions, which pay homage, in a photo of migrant farmworkers, to Jean Francois Millet's sanctified "The Gleaners," and, in another, an amiably picnicking interracial group of Louisiana teenagers, to both Manet and Kerry James Marshall. Precise enough so that you can see the field workers' shoelaces and the asparagus stalks they're cutting, these photographs also give us the space to reflect on their historical reach. With her attention to manual labor, Ms. Le comes full circle, to her work as guild photographer. In fact she has lately taken up handicraft herself, with hand embroidered images reproducing stills from an old porn film set in wartime Vietnam. Much of the stitching is done in Vietnam; the most sexually explicit parts are embroidered in Brooklyn, partly by assistants, although Ms. Le does more now that she is shut in by virus restrictions. Elegant yet provocative, this work, for Ms. Le, is something of a retort to people who accuse her of fetishizing conflict, or of being too cozy with the military. Without visible rancor, she points out that her history has long been other people's entertainment. If anyone has the license to embrace political contradiction, it is she. That she does so with such unfailing grace is a wonder.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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In South Sudan, street photography is essentially illegal . It is another casualty of the civil war. Young, fit, twitchy soldiers are everywhere, ready to crack down on anyone who pulls out a camera. No reasons are ever given and no laws are on the books specifically banning photography, but security services across the country have arrested photographers and roughed them up for taking even the most innocent pictures, like a shot of women baking bread. It wasn't always like this, but in the four years since the war broke out, scattering millions of people and unleashing unspeakable horrors, the South Sudanese government has become incredibly suspicious. In a country that has ripped itself apart by internecine conflict, anyone can be the enemy. Stepping off a plane in Juba, the capital, you feel this tight shouldered tension immediately. Sara Hylton, a Canadian documentary photographer who came here on assignment in August, had anticipated the hostility. What surprised her was the city's bold style. Amid all the shot up buildings, fear and danger, she was struck by the great pride many South Sudanese take in how they look. She saw women in bright print dresses and chunky brass jewelry; some wore purple hair extensions. Men sported bleached dreads and sharply cut suits. There was a fearless sense of style that the war had not managed to kill off. It wasn't easy for Ms. Hylton to capture it because she couldn't take pictures in public. She had to work off the streets, in safe spaces, in people's homes, their backyards, their tiny, tidy shops. Sometimes, Ms. Hylton found, the nicer the space, the sadder the experience. Many South Sudanese carry their trauma quietly, and those who were trying to will away all the brutality and destruction around them seemed the most vulnerable. They were emotionally exposed in a place where so many dreams have been crushed. Winnie, who runs a small boutique that sells dresses, purses and one or two paintings, seemed to be swimming upstream. The war has sunk Juba's economy, and for the two hours Ms. Hylton spent in Winnie's immaculate shop, where so much thought had been invested into every detail, not a single customer walked in. "If I was living in this environment, I would have given up," Ms. Hylton said. "That was the biggest surprise that people here hadn't given up, there was still so much hope." But there was also still so much sadness. It wasn't always obvious, but it was there. As Ms. Hylton said: When you interview people, they often put on a brave face and tell you what you want to hear. But when you take out a camera and ask someone to stare into the lens, it's different. An honesty is revealed. She especially felt this when making a portrait of Wokil, a comedian. "His posture was very cool, he was trying to be very cool," she said. "But you could tell he lived through some of the worst stuff." "Loss, I recognized loss," she said. "It was in his gaze." Just about everyone Ms. Hylton approached in Juba (she stayed away from soldiers) was willing to be photographed, including a group of young men playing basketball behind a primary school. If South Sudan has anything, it has height ; the Dinka and the Nuer, South Sudan's two largest ethnic groups, are considered among the tallest people on Earth. And basketball is the sport here, maybe even a ticket out. The former N.B.A. player Manute Bol, who died in 2010, grew up herding cattle in South Sudan and then made millions. Most of it he gave away, to South Sudanese rebels fighting for freedom. For as long as anyone can remember, life in South Sudan has revolved around war. That's as true today as ever. The endless military checkpoints across Juba and the marauding soldiers who prowl around every neighborhood make it impossible to go out at night. So young South Sudanese have found a way to do what young people do the world over, just slightly differently. They pack into dark buildings during the bright, hot hours to groove to hip hop and rap. These places are called "day clubs" (as opposed to nightclubs), and they allow Juba's youth to hang out, meet strangers, dance, drink and forget for a moment what lies outside the club's doors. Crazy Fox, a popular dancehall artist, fled South Sudan for Uganda as a refugee. But after four years, he was "tired of running" and recently came home. It may be hard to believe that a country where the per capita income is around three dollars a day, where three quarters of adults can't read and a 15 year old girl has a higher chance of dying in childbirth than she does of finishing primary school, has any fashion or beauty industry at all. But it beats on, fragilely, in packed little houses and tin walled kiosks lit by a single bulb. "We don't have something distinguishing us," said Juana, a fashion designer. Her patterns are intensely colorful, and she hopes fashion can bridge the poisonous divides between ethnic groups. Akuja de Garang is, after the model Alex Wek, one of the best known names in South Sudanese fashion. Large brass jewelry and black nail polish are her signatures. Before the war, she used to organize fashion shows. "Culturally people take pride in how they look," she said. War or not, the South Sudanese are like anyone else.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Along the jagged Mediterranean coast of Spain, from Barcelona south to Malaga, along bone white barren hills and lush olive groves, from the shimmery gardens of Andalusia and the grandeur of the Alhambra, I made my way to the homeland of my ancestors for the first time . It took much of my life to get to Spain. But I've known it the Spain of blood and sand, flamenco, theater and poetry since I was a child in Puerto Rico. Madrid evoked marvel and dreams for us, and my mother longed for the crimson geraniums of Seville and the dirges of Granada, reciting Garcia Lorca's lines, "Verde, que te quiero verde. Verde viento. Verde ramas." My mother, whose ancestors came from Catalonia and Madrid in the late 1700s and early 1800s, wasn't the only source of my dreams of Spain. Few places have been romanced as passionately as the 1,500 year old city of Barcelona, capital of the autonomous region of Catalonia. The Catalan poet Joan Maragall called it la gran encisera, the great enchantress. Devastated in the 1936 39 Spanish Civil War and immortalized in George Orwell's classic "Homage to Catalonia," Barcelona houses celebrated museums and architecture and was home to the great artists Joan Miro, Antoni Gaudi, Salvador Dali and the young Pablo Picasso. It has inflamed the passions of visitors the world over: it is the most popular tourist destination in Spain. Las Ramblas, flanked by narrow car lanes and lined by cafes, galleries and souvenir stands, is packed tight night and day, a convivial rendezvous for foreigners and locals alike. The boulevard, which follows the course of a stream that was eventually diverted, was home to convents and monasteries before the anticlerical riots of 1835 destroyed many of them. The promenade, whose name comes from the Arabic word ramla, was rebuilt in the late 19th century and is lined with historic sights: the Teatre Poliorama, where Orwell hid for three days during the Spanish Civil War, and the Mercat de la Boqueria, where the seafood, ham and sausage counters draw hungry denizens. And then there are buskers and backpackers, hawkers and mimes, live human statues in glittering silver makeup, Gypsy troubadours, and, on a second floor balcony, a Marilyn Monroe look alike, in a white pleated skirt wafting up to her bare thighs, a takeoff of the steam vent shot in "The Seven Year Itch." The evening was heavy with human heat and humidity, reminiscent of the Caribbean. But I pushed on. To the sea. Finally I reached the Mirador de Colom, an austere 1888 monument to Columbus that looks out toward the Mediterranean. Merchant ships, tourist cruisers, yachts, sailing and fishing motorboats jammed the marinas. I slowed down to study gallery posters and sculptures along the 2.7 mile long boardwalk. I turned toward a row of open air fisheries set along the pebbled waterfront, in sight of the crisscrossing steel beams and blue glass of the 44 story Hotel Arts Barcelona soaring over Barceloneta beach. Now, at last, the Mediterranean. It conjures images of the voyage my ancestors took on the way to America. Framed by hills and sea, Barcelona used to be walled off from the Mediterranean by old textile factories and a grimy industrial port. The beaches were filthy with factory waste, railroad tracks and garbage dumps. But after the death of Generalissimo Francisco Franco in 1975 and the birth of constitutional democracy in Spain, which lifted Barcelona as much as the rest of Spain, artists, engineers and architects set about to remake the city, restoring the century old street grid and redesigning hotels, discos, bars and even food in time for the 1992 Olympic Games. The Games introduced this design obsessed city to a global television audience. From then on, Barcelona has reigned as a dazzling object of tourism. Now Barcelona is Spain's most powerful economic engine, a bastion of manufacturing, trade, winemaking, fashion and the arts. With 18 million international visitors in 2016, it is Spain's premier tourist destination. (The Spanish islands of Mallorca and Ibiza and the Canary Islands off northwest Africa rank second and third, Andalusia is fourth and Madrid sixth.) Today Spain itself is a top international travel destination, with 75.6 million tourists in 2016, nearly double the nation's population of 46.5 million. Its popularity in Western Europe is nothing short of phenomenal. It ranks third among the most popular travel spots in the world, preceded by France and the United States, according to the United Nations World Travel Organization. Britain, France and Germany provide Spain with nearly 50 percent of its total tourism numbers. American visitors totaled 2 million in 2016. (So far, the rising Catalonia Madrid political tensions and the Aug. 17 terrorist attack in Barcelona seem to have made little impact on tourism.) Over 2.8 million people a year visit Barcelona's Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's unfinished cathedral, the most popular monument in all of Spain. On the steamy afternoon that I visited it, I felt that all 2.8 million were there with me, the crowd was that large, unmanageable and distracting. Misdirected from one side to another, I walked outside the monument looking for my guide. I finally found the right group, and we shuffled up the steps to the entrance and were held up by other groups. Our guide, wearing the red jacket that identifies Sagrada Familia doyennes, could barely be heard above the cacophony of voices and scuffling feet. I couldn't take in the immensity of the church, its iconoclastic design, the inscriptions etched on walls and wooden doors, the towers built like dripping candles, the sweeps of curving walls and statues of odd shapes and faces. On the outdoor steps, tourists plopped down, worn out, sweating, but still dazzled, their eyes raised to the spirals that have become the stuff of souvenirs, fridge magnets and postcards. Pressed by complaints, Spain's Consulate for Tourism Affairs is moving to redefine international tourism, which made up 11.2 percent of Spain's 2016 revenue. No one wants the tacky beach and booze crowd or the debauchery of the 1980s 2000s when narco traffickers and drug cartels controlled the flow of money, cocaine and hash along the Costa del Sol. "We want tourists who are interested in culture, gastronomy, cosmopolitan travelers," says the tourism affairs consul in New York, Elisa Sainz Ruiz. In advertisements and promotions, the consulate emphasizes Spain's diverse culture, gastronomy, ecology, and, of course, art, museums and epic sights. The Costa del Sol's richest towns are shedding their rogue reputation. On a day trip, I traveled past Marbella's private clubs and around a Saudi palace compound, and had lunch with a Marbella expert, Natalia Lopez Epin, at a bustling seafront restaurant on a day when the wind off the Mediterranean was sending sunbathers scuttling inside. Founded by a pair of German princes and Spanish aristocrats, Marbella became a splashy and scandal rich playground for royals, multimillionaires and celebrities in the 1980s, the golden era of Arab tourism. Malaga, too, has cleaned up and revived its fortunes with Michelin ranked gastronomy, a modern port and maritime walk, and the Museo Picasso, where 204 of his works hang in a restored mansion in the casco antiguo, the old quarter where I got lost more than once. Passenger cruise ships and emerald green palm fronds at the Paseo del Parque along the bay evoked for me a tropical idyll, and so did evenings around the buzzing streets and paths around the Marques de Lario entrance to the casco antiguo, where I stopped late in the evening at an outdoor bar whose name I cannot remember. It was in Malaga, and in Moorish Granada, where I noticed the ubiquitous presence of Arab culture. I wondered if some of my ancestors had come from that culture, but nothing I found in my family's history suggested that. But Islamic civilization left a deep mark in Andalusia during seven centuries of domination that ended when Christian forces expelled the Moors with the fall of Granada in 1492. But the Moorish legacy is evident everywhere, in the shadowy tearooms called teterias and back street markets, in Arab names, the baths called hammams and food. While the teterias I visited in Granada and Malaga had few customers, Arab influenced cuisine is found everywhere. In Cordoba, a 36 year old chef, Paco Morales, has opened Noor, an expensive restaurant reinventing Al Andalus dishes ( 83 to 155 per person). But Mr. Morales is neither Muslim nor Arab; he's Spanish. Some food critics have balked at his quixotic ambition to re create Al Andalus kitchen traditions, but he is unfazed, telling me: "People are fascinated with the splendor of the cuisine and the architecture and design of the space." Over half a million Muslims, mainly from Morocco, which is only eight miles from Spain at the nearest point, have settled in Catalonia, the largest Muslim concentration in Spain. Altogether, 1.9 million Muslims live in Spain, a smaller number than in France, Germany, and Britain. Until recently, relations between Muslims and Spaniards were relatively cordial, quietly strained, or nonexistent. Islamic terrorists killed 192 people in train bomb explosions in 2004, but there had been no attacks in 13 years, unlike the mass killings in the past few years in Paris, Nice, Brussels and London. But in August in Barcelona, a young, homegrown Muslim terrorist drove a van on Las Ramblas, crushing pedestrians, killing 14 and wounding more than 80. The attack revived fears of a Muslim resurgence in Spain and stirred the debate on the role of Muslims in the country's culture today. Reflecting the complexity of the Muslim issue, some academicians and Arab scholars insist that Muslims are gaining recognition in mainstream culture, but Catalans and Spaniards with whom I spoke dismissed their importance. "Muslims have no influence in the cultural world of this country, and none in our political world," said Rosa Surinach, an executive with United Nations Habitat in Barcelona, while emphasizing that there's no friction between most Muslims and Catalans. Over at the Fundacion de Tres Culturas in Seville, which promotes Muslim and Arab culture, Olga Cuadrado, the institution's librarian, blamed prejudice for keeping Muslims outside the mainstream. "We need to break stereotypes," she said. Days later, at Casa Arabe in Madrid, Nuria Medina, an Arab scholar, defended Muslim influence, saying, "That it isn't in the mainstream doesn't mean it doesn't have importance." Nadia Hotait, a 34 year old Lebanese multimedia artist and filmmaker who lives in Spain, said that being an Arab was not a problem for her, telling me that she "faced the same obstacles as any young woman artist in Spain, which is to say that there are still more hurdles in just being a woman than there are from my nationality. Much of my work and study has been supported by Spanish institutions and awards, even if the topic I was dealing with was Arabic." But the Madrid writer Muhsin Al Ramli saw it differently. "The biggest obstacles and difficulties are due to lack of state support, lack of courage and daring on the part of Spain's publishing houses, the nepotism in the cultural media and favoritism in the culture in general." One way or another, rich or poor, artist or farmhand, Muslims are a growing factor in Spain. The poor settle in the job rich cities, remote towns and agricultural fields along the Mediterranean. The rich own homes in Marbella and park their yachts in Puerto Banus, the glitziest marina on the Costa del Sol. The village of Torregrossa lies flat in the farm country of Catalonia, a nine century old town of about 2,200 people. For some time, I had assumed that a branch of my family originated there, given the similarity in the town name and my family name. One day, shortly after my arrival in Barcelona, I traveled the 90 minutes to Torregrossa to find out. An acquaintance in Barcelona had arranged for me to meet Josep M. Puig Vall, the amiable 50ish town mayor. We met in his office in the Ajuntament, which, like most of Torregrossa, was ancient, with shuttered windows, dark stairs and stone walls. He offered coffee and spoke quickly and proudly about his town, where he'd lived all his life. Then, somewhat apologetically, he said that there had never been a Torregrosa in Torregrossa. He could confirm that Torregrosa, my mother's paternal name, is Catalan but found in many parts of Spain. Perhaps it was my mother's passion for carnations, flamenco and jamon Iberico. I imagined her maternal bloodlines came from southern Spain, from Seville, or Cordoba, or maybe Madrid and bordering provinces. I arrived in Seville late one night on the train from Malaga. I had been traveling by ferry, autobus and train for over 18 hours after a short overnight visit to Tangier, Morocco, onetime international center of espionage and cinematic setting of forbidden sex and Dionysian poetry. The international jet set, fashion designers, royals, movie stars and writers made their appearances in Tangier. But it has fallen on hard times. The spotlight has turned off. After that trip, Seville seemed miraculous. I checked in at my hotel shortly before midnight, walked down the boulevard Reyes Catolicos, past open restaurants and bars, turned on a side street and spotted a small neighborhood tapas bar called La Azotea, clearly a place that tourists don't find by chance. I took up a stool at the bar, ordered a glass of dry red, and asked for whatever the kitchen wanted to make me. I looked around the room, an everyday tapas bar on Zaragoza Street with a blackboard listing wines and patrons laughing and sharing plates. Shortly a small bowl was placed in front of me. A delicate piece of delicious grilled or sauteed cod rested on a bed of mashed or pureed potato like vegetable. The wine was excellent. When I finished, I asked to meet the owner chef but didn't have the presence of mind to ask for the recipe. I wrote down the name of the place and paid my bill: eight euros ( 9.50). Instantly, from the first hour, Seville for me was all like that, a feast of the senses, the simplicity of daily life. Walking one morning in the Parque de Maria Luisa, I thought of my mother, who loved it, who had its name. Another day, I found the romantic Art Deco bar in the opulent Alfonso XIII hotel, and chatted with new acquaintances while sipping a perfect Negroni. Spain has been a haven for writers and dreamers and wanderers, expats from colder lands. Unlike Mexico, where expatriate Americans tend to concentrate in San Miguel Allende, Mexico City and the Riviera Maya, Americans in Spain are scattered through the peninsula. Sarah Gemba, a Bostonian who fell in love with a Spaniard, moved to Seville years ago and started a travel agency. A fellow New Englander, Lauren Aloise, transplanted herself to Madrid and established food tours. My mother had wanted to move to Madrid and lived with that dream for years but never managed to do it. As a child, I didn't understand her passion for Spain, why she felt so at home there. But now I know. That came to me again while seated at the outdoor restaurant Mariatrifulca, off the Triana Bridge over the Guadalquivir River in Seville. I noticed a face at a nearby table. It was the image of my grandmother, my mother's mother, her aquiline nose, large deep set dark eyes, thin lips, high cheekbones, dark hair pulled back in a bun. It was startling, but over the days I spent in Seville, I picked out other familiar faces, and I wondered if way back we had been related. One evening after dinner at Duo Tapas, an outdoor spot on a busy plaza, a couple of acquaintances and I walked leisurely around the Barrio Santa Cruz, the gem of Seville's intricate casco antiguo, a nest of elegant two story homes of pale colors and decorative grillwork butting cobblestone streets. It was near midnight, not late by Spanish standards. Strollers lolled under the soft lights of street lamps, bars spilled over with patrons. Minutes later we were climbing the three flights of stairs to the rooftop bar of the EME hotel. It was packed. Taped music blared from speakers. I found myself bouncing to an old hit whose name escaped me. More friends of friends joined in. There were drinks, introductions, stories. Beams of pinkish light bathed the majestic 16th century Catedral de Santa Maria de la Sede, the world's largest Gothic church, built on the site of the 12th century Almohad mosque with its minaret, La Giralda, towering beside it, symbol of the interlocked cultures of Spain. I couldn't take my eyes off the great Catedral and La Giralda, images I had carried in my mind much of my life. Days later I was on the fast train to Madrid, and as we rolled past olive groves and barren hills, the land getting dryer, the hills more stark, the landscape harder, I was thinking about the whitewashed towns of Andalusia. For a long time I had wanted to live in a place where the sun was broiling and the sea came limpid and soft to the shore. I wanted that blanched earth, those bleached buildings, and the geraniums blooming crimson in the sun.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Kobe Bryant leads one of the most highly anticipated player classes ever for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame alongside three other superstars from the N.B.A. and W.N.B.A. who defined the sport over the first two decades of this century. Bryant, the former Los Angeles Lakers star who died on Jan. 26 in a helicopter crash at 41 years old, was chosen for induction with two N.B.A. greats who repeatedly faced off against him in the playoffs as his career blossomed: Tim Duncan and Kevin Garnett. The three N.B.A. All Stars helped shaped one another's legacies and were among the signature faces of the league as it transitioned out of the Michael Jordan era. They will be joined in the Basketball Hall of Fame by Tamika Catchings, who was named rookie of the year in 2002 with the Indiana Fever and never looked back, becoming one of the best players in W.N.B.A. history over 15 seasons. Each of the three N.B.A. inductees transformed the landscape of basketball in his own way. Bryant became the biggest international basketball star in the world because he had business savvy and was a winner who mimicked Jordan's game more so than anyone else ever has, making him Jordan's heir apparent for much of his career.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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A truism of our times is that media hysteria quickly envelops every major story, with social media virality and cable news imperatives combining to make any domestic controversy feel like Watergate, if not Fort Sumter, and any international incident feel like the assassination of Franz Ferdinand until the next story rolls around and last week's crisis is forgotten. So it's been striking to watch media coverage of the coronavirus, which has now officially shaken free of its Chinese origins with outbreaks in Italy, South Korea and the Middle East, take a somewhat more muted tack these last few weeks. Of course there has been terrific reporting, much of it from my colleagues at this newspaper, on the surreal developments in the illness's Wuhan epicenter. But there has also been a strange lack of urgency in the arenas best known for their hysteria. Cable news has remained fixated on the presidential campaign, social media has been paranoid at the fringes but otherwise calm or even oblivious, our president (not typically one for threat deflation) expressed confidence that Chinese containment and spring warmth would suffice to halt the virus's spread, and respectable opinion has circulated stern warnings about overreaction, xenophobia and panic. Liberals have partisan incentives that run the other way, toward emphasizing the White House's unpreparedness in the face of a clear and present threat. But these incentives have so far been outweighed by liberalism's ideological bias toward global openness, its anxiety about saying or doing anything that might give aid and comfort to anti globalization forces, its fear of ever sounding too, well, Trump y in the face of foreign threats. Thus the liberal instinct toward minimization: It's not much worse than the flu, panicking makes things only worse, don't spread conspiracy theories about its origins, racism toward Chinese people is the real danger here. ... As of this week, with the virus finally infecting the stock market, this bipartisan minimization looks like a serious mistake. The coronavirus is not a civilization ender, not Stephen King's Captain Trips come for us at last, but it's increasingly obvious that we do have a lot to fear from it, both medically and economically and the American response seems to lag substantially behind where we should want to be right now. The reasonable medical fears center on what is unknown as much as what is known. Because this disease broke out in a totalitarian regime, under circumstances that even China's government now admits are more uncertain than the pious certainty offered for weeks, our knowledge of infection rates and death rates has likely been corrupted from the beginning, by misinformation and ignorance alike. We know enough to know that most people who get it will survive it, which is good news. But we don't know how many people get infected, how long it incubates, whether spring or summer weather will actually impede its spread. We also don't know how many people are carriers without knowing it, and thus how easily it might move along vectors that don't require a chain of clearly sick people running back to its point of origin. (The outbreaks outside China, in Italy especially, suggest a longer incubation period and a lot more silent contagion than had been previously hoped.) The extreme measures that have been taken to contain the disease inside China promise all kinds of global breakdowns if they endure there and spread around the world. The supply chains that now bind our world system have never been tested in a severe pandemic, and one can extrapolate forward from China's developing economic slowdown, and from slow building delays and shortages worldwide, to a scenario where the coronavirus finally brings the post 2008 expansion to a grinding, deglobalizing halt. Perhaps the worst can be averted, but these scenarios have been obvious from early in the epidemic and so has the possibility that underreaction could make things worse, that a bias toward stability and reassurance could lead to darker outcomes in the end. It wouldn't be the first time: As Ari Schulman wrote in The New Atlantis in 2015, during the previous year's Ebola outbreak, the C.D.C.'s determination to reassure the public led to messaging "based on fragmentary evidence" that other evidence qualified or contradicted and left nurses caring for Ebola patients wearing only surgical masks instead of respirators; only after two nurses were infected were the guidelines changed. The World Health Organization's response to the Ebola outbreak was delayed by fears that declaring an emergency "could anger the African countries involved, hurt their economies, or interfere with the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca." From what we can tell, the coronavirus outbreak in China followed a similar pattern of "all is well" folly and insufficient first response. But in the United States, too, the "we have nothing to fear but fear itself" messaging seems inapt, given that America's slow internal response, our apparent failure so far to expand testing beyond those who seem most obviously exposed, means that we have no way of knowing whether and how many cases are already circulating here. We may have an Italian scenario on our hands already, disguised as normal flu cases, normal flu deaths; given the still limited scale of United States testing, there is no way to be sure, and if we escape a major outbreak, it will be more from luck than prudence. So already, the virus has exposed a clear weak spot in what you might call the liberal globalist imagination: an overzealous "remain calm" spirit in the face of the real risks of a hyper connected world. Listen to "The Argument" podcast every Thursday morning, with Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and David Leonhardt. And behind that weakness lurks a structural danger for the globalist project. For the last few years there's been a lively policy debate about the wisdom of exporting so much of the American industrial base to Asia, but it's mostly revolved around national security questions what would it mean in a war with China, etc. But it turns out that you don't need a conflict in the Taiwan straits to make the entire China United States economic arrangement look reckless or vulnerable or unwise; you could just need one significant mutation, of one novel flu like sickness. But before populists crow their vindication, we need to see how our populist president handles any of this. If globalism's weakness is technocratic naivete, populism's faults are ignorance, incompetence and paranoia. Nothing about President Trump's response so far instills confidence that he's ready for the kind of crisis that Candidate Trump would have been quick to recognize and politically exploit. And the fact that Rush Limbaugh spent yesterday declaring that the coronavirus is no worse than the common cold, and that it's "being weaponized" by the press "to bring down Donald Trump" well, that doesn't instill confidence that pressure from the right will force Trump to take the outbreak seriously. By coincidence I'm writing this column from an airport, about to embark (hand sanitizer in my pocket) on a small tour for a new book whose argument, in part, is that the Western world may be sustainably decadent meaning that for all our gridlock, stagnation and decay, the cushion of our wealth, the weakness of our rivals and the tranquilizing effect of virtual entertainments make continued stagnation much more likely than true crisis or collapse. I wasn't expecting to have my thesis tested this directly while I'm literally out expounding on it. But make no mistake: The coronavirus is a test, targeted precisely to the globalized order's points of fracture and the mix of misgovernment and mistrust associated with the populist establishment stalemate in the West. I believe in my own thesis enough to assume that we'll muddle through, in the end, with (God willing) not too much damage, not too many deaths. But for better or worse we may know a lot more about the resilience of our world system, the sustainability of our decadence, by the time the paperback comes out.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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THE NOTORIOUS BEN HECHT Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist By Julien Gorbach For understandable reasons, biographies about Ben Hecht have focused almost exclusively on his screenwriting career in Hollywood. And why wouldn't they? Consider a few of his credits: "Underworld," directed by Josef von Sternberg, for which Hecht won the first Academy Award. (Not his first Academy Award, the first Academy Award ever given for best story. The year was 1927.) "Scarface," "The Front Page," "Twentieth Century," "Design for Living," "Wuthering Heights," "His Girl Friday," "Spellbound," "Notorious." And that's just films with his name on them. Uncredited, he script doctored countless others, including "Stagecoach," "Gone With the Wind," "A Star Is Born" (1937) and "Roman Holiday." Across four decades, Hecht worked on about 200 movies. He helped establish the ground rules for entire genres, including the gangster film, the newspaper picture, the screwball comedy and postwar film noir. Jean Luc Godard said "he invented 80 percent of what is used in Hollywood movies today." However, what gets repeatedly overlooked, when historians and film buffs consider Hecht's life, are his politics. That's understandable too, given that he hated politics. Thanks to his early days as a Chicago newspaperman, he came to believe that all politicians were hopelessly corrupt. He was deeply cynical about the human condition, and didn't take do gooders seriously. He dismissed the fashionable leftism among Hollywood's screenwriting elite as group therapy for intellectuals. Two new books finally give this chapter of his life the emphasis it deserves. "Ben Hecht: Fighting Words, Moving Pictures," by Adina Hoffman, an accomplished literary biographer, and "The Notorious Ben Hecht: Iconoclastic Writer and Militant Zionist," by the first time author Julien Gorbach, a crime reporter turned journalism professor, both play down Hecht's screenwriting in order to dig more deeply into his relatively unexplored Jewish side. 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 as these biographies clearly show, Hecht's Jewish American identity runs like a soundtrack through his entire life. He once joked that he became a Jew only in 1939, yet in fact he was pickled in Yiddishkeit from the beginning. Born on the Lower East Side, raised in the Midwest, he wrote novels, short stories and newspaper columns about Jews throughout his life; Sholom Aleichem was an enduring inspiration. Hoffman's book is part of the Yale Jewish Lives series of brief in this case too brief biographies. She condenses his film and theater career into a mere 50 pages or so, eager to get to the metamorphosis Hecht underwent on the eve of World War II. And that's where she starts to draw closer to the man than any previous attempt. What follows is a brisk, readable tour through Hecht's wartime alliance with the right wing of the Zionist movement the Revisionists led by Ze'ev Jabotinsky and his support for the Irgun, their clandestine paramilitary affiliate, led by Jabotinsky's young lieutenant Menachem Begin. She describes Hecht's awkward lunch at the "21" Club in New York with a young Irgunist, a Palestinian Jew named Peter Bergson, who persuaded Hecht to help him create a Jewish army to fight against Hitler. Later, galvanized by news of the mass exterminations taking place in Europe, the team mounted a bold campaign to pressure the United States government to make the rescue of European Jewry a wartime priority. Their efforts were fought not only by Roosevelt and the State Department, but also by establishment Jewish groups, fearful that Judaizing the war would trigger more anti Semitism. Jewish owned newspapers like The New York Times and The Washington Post agreed, burying news of Hitler's Final Solution.. Hecht wrote furious columns for the short lived liberal newspaper PM, excoriating the passivity of American Jews. (His friend Groucho Marx congratulated him after one particularly angry screed. "That's what we need," Groucho wrote, "a little more belligerency, professor, and not quite so much cringing.") Hecht also wrote a long expose in The American Mercury called "The Extermination of the Jews," later excerpted in Reader's Digest. These were, Gorbach says, "the only substantive coverage" of the Holocaust "to appear in mass circulation magazines." In order to make an end run around the political and media establishment and bring the story directly to the American people, the Bergson group bought full page ads in major newspapers, usually written by Hecht himself. "Action Not Pity Can Save Millions Now!" was a typical headline. Hecht also coaxed his famous actor, producer and musician friends to join him in mounting "We Will Never Die," a large scale pageant essentially a supersize Broadway musical, written by Hecht, with a cast of hundreds. The production sold out Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl and venues across the country. Tens of thousands saw it. Hecht also wrote a pro Irgun Broadway play, "A Flag Is Born," with an unknown Marlon Brando playing a Jewish refugee. The box office receipts helped pay for a ship, rechristened the S.S. Ben Hecht, meant to smuggle displaced Jews into Palestine. Every step of the way, the brashness of Hecht and Bergson was met with spectacular resistance from the more timid leaders of established Jewish organizations: Rabbi Stephen Wise even compared Bergson to Hitler. It didn't matter. Public opinion was on their side and the campaign attracted the support of senators, congressmen and Supreme Court justices. Hoffman ably synthesizes an unwieldy amount of material. But she is hamstrung by her dislike of Bergson and Hecht's affiliation with the Revisionist movement, which evolved, after Israel's founding, into the right wing Likud party of Begin and Netanyahu. She unfairly treats Hecht as a bit of a crank in this regard, ignoring the fact that at the crucial moment, Bergson and the Revisionists were the only ones persistently raising the alarm and demanding a more aggressive American response to the tragedy. Gorbach may be the weaker stylist, at times insightful while at other times too reliant on academic jargon and theory, but his is the deeper dive, and he comes up with a surprising amount of fresh material on Hecht's activism. By focusing on his politics, both biographies create a richer portrait, yet still struggle to fully explain Hecht. Gorbach comes closest, sensing that the cynicism that saturated his screenplays also somehow fueled his wartime politics. It wasn't idealism. "Morality was a farce," Hecht wrote. The criminal underworld he encountered as a city reporter struck him as the truest representation of humanity. The Holocaust didn't surprise him. He had already predicted it in a prewar novella. Hecht didn't become a Jew in 1939; he became a Zionist. The genocide in Europe, Gorbach points out, along with the world's failure to prevent it, "made the logic of Zionism real to him." The world couldn't be counted on. Jews had to defend themselves. "Today there are only two Jewish parties left in the field," Hecht said after the war, during the Irgun's campaign to drive the British out of Palestine, "the Terrorists and the Terrified." He was always spoiling for a fight. Gorbach calls him a romantic. Hoffman calls him a defiant Jewish American. I'd call him a lifelong rebel who finally found his cause. Menachem Begin said it best: "Ben Hecht wielded his pen like a drawn sword."
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For years now, Ariana Grande, the former child star, has had Top 40 hits, sold out tours, more social media followers than almost anyone and, of course, that voice. Why, then, does it feel like she's only really arrived in the mainstream consciousness this summer? The obvious answer is "Sweetener," the singer's fourth album, which sits atop the Billboard chart this week with the best first week sales of Ms. Grande's career. But in the lead up to her blockbuster release, which centers on pop and R B production from Pharrell Williams and Max Martin, Ms. Grande, 25, has united the disparate threads of her talent and celebrity from tabloid relationship travails to the tragic bombing at her Manchester concert last year into a tidy package of pop professionalism.
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Based on measurements of short term temperature responses in this study and others, the scientists expected that the plants would increase their respiration by nearly five times that much. At two forest research sites in Minnesota, scientists tested how the respiration rates of 10 different species of trees from boreal and temperate forests were affected by increases in temperature over a period of three to five years, using heating cables to warm some of the trees. The trees were monitored in two conditions: ambient, and about 6 degrees warmer than that. To demonstrate how the plants adapted to long term temperature increases, the scientists compared three things: how much carbon dioxide the trees released in ambient conditions; how much the trees released in the warmer conditions; and how much carbon dioxide the trees released when they were exposed to the warmer temperature for a short period of time (minutes or hours). When the scientists compared the results, they found that the trees that were acclimated to the warmer temperatures increased their carbon dioxide release by a much smaller amount than the trees that were only exposed to a short term temperature increase of the same magnitude.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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" How about no devils?" Lana Wood said on the phone recently, recounting a presentation she gave at CrimeCon in June. Her sister, Natalie Wood, had left her first husband, Robert Wagner, after a marital betrayal, Lana says she told her . But Natalie decided, in 1972, to go back to him because "sometimes the devil you know is better than the devil you don't." Nine years later, Natalie would die under suspicious circumstances. Her body was found floating off Catalina Island in California near a boat on which she, Mr. Wagner and Christopher Walken had spent the evening. Also on board was the skipper, Dennis Davern. At the time, Ms. Wood's death was ruled an accident and the case was closed. But in 2011, the investigation was reopened by the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department after Mr. Davern said he heard Ms. Wood and Mr. Wagner arguing earlier in the evening. After re evaluating the case details, the coroner changed the cause of Ms. Wood's death to "drowning and other undetermined factors." Since then, more witnesses have emerged that have led the police to reclassify Ms. Wood's death as "suspicious" and to consider Mr. Wagner, now 89, as "a person of interest." The Los Angeles Sheriff's Department did not offer specifics about the witnesses' identities or statements. According to Ralph Hernandez, the lead homicide detective, Mr. Wagner has not talked to the police since 1981 . "I think that Wagner holds the key ," Detective Hernandez said in a phone interview. "It's really only up to him at this point." Whether Mr. Wagner can be charged with a crime isn't clear. Because of the statute of limitations on lesser crimes, murder is the only one that could be considered, Detective Hernandez said . At the CrimeCon presentation, in New Orleans, Ms. Wood stressed that though "there may be a statute of limitations on a crime, there is not one on the truth." Detective Hernandez said that the revised coroner's report states that Natalie appeared to be a victim of assault and battery, and that the coroner could not rule out that she was unconscious before she hit the water. "Robert Wagner maintains her death was an accident. How was she accidentally assaulted?" Ms. Wood asked the crowd at CrimeCon. A few months before, she sat for a steak salad and a long talk at a restaurant in Los Angeles, where she lives with her three grandchildren, whom she is raising with her son in law. (Her daughter, Evan, died in 2017 of heart failure.) "Natalie was always very careful to present herself as a movie star," she said. "I simply didn't care. I wore what I liked to." Natalie also left behind the suspicious circumstances surrounding her death, however, and now their roles are reversed. As Lana fielded texts from her granddaughter during lunch ("I always want to correct her grammar"), she continued: "Protecting Natalie, that's what I really feel I have to do now. If it's not me, it's not going to happen. "As far as the difference between us," Lana said, "Natalie was very cautious about what she said. I never thought about that. It isn't that I didn't have a filter I did but if things go wrong, I tell someone about it." Her eyes welled when she described her sister's terror before a rare unscripted interview on "The Merv Griffin Show." Lana told her to just be herself. Natalie replied, "'I'm just going to pretend I'm you!'" According to Detective Hernandez, Lana has been indispensable and credible. "She is the one family member willing to cooperate in the investigation," he said . "We work for the victim's family. So we consider Lana Natalie Wood's family and that's who we're working for, to try and find out the truth about what happened to her sister. The case is going to stay open until we find out the truth of what happened." Mr. Wagner's publicist, Alan Nierob, declined to make his client available for comment on his relationship with Lana, or the case. In 1954, after Natalie had starred in "Rebel Without a Cause," with Lana spending many nights on the set sleeping with a pillow and a blanket that Maria had packed as shoots ran late; after the terror of watching Natalie's character raise her arms to signal the beginning of the race that would almost send James Dean's character over the cliff; after all that, Natalie was summoned one night to an audition at a Los Angeles hotel. She was 16 years old. When Natalie finally emerged, she was in hysterics, destroyed. She had been raped by another actor over twice her age, she told her mother and sister. From her pillow and blanket in the back seat of the family car, Lana witnessed her mother hushing Natalie into secrecy. They filed no report. Instead, Lana, said, Maria nudged Lana forward. Within the year, John Ford cast her along with Natalie and John Wayne in "The Searchers.'" From there Lana was rushed from role to role, her screen fathers flickering past her Jack Lemmon, Charlton Heston, Walter Matthau. Maria waited in the wings just as she had done for Natalie: to be educated by tutors on set, provided by the studio, taught to bathe, dress and comport herself by studio wardrobe women, attending school only when it didn't interfere. But at 14, Lana ran away from home. She didn't want to be groomed by Maria to follow Natalie's yellow brick road, she said now, but rather to be a normal unscripted teenager. She turned to her sister for protection. Natalie was fierce. She threatened to never speak to Maria again if Lana was dragged to one more audition. And thus Lana was excused from Hollywood. But her time there taught her a few lessons. Along with Natalie, Lana had come to feel the sheer joy of being a glorious clotheshorse out and about: trying this on and that, stepping through doors exhilarated by a drape of sumptuous fabric caressing her shoulders, encircling her hips. "I love a terrific jacket," Lana said. "I just counted how many I have two weeks ago. I have 79 of them!" Her favorite designers are Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen. "Because there's always something lovely there, but then there's a little edge too." In 1962, Lana was 16, living on her own in an apartment in Westwood, spending her weekends at Natalie's, where her older sister was living with Warren Beatty. If Mr. Beatty stepped out of line , Lana would call him on it pronto, she said. In the afternoons after school, Lana got a job as a model and shop girl at the clothing boutique Jax, where she was surrounded not only by smart clothing but also a women's wear credo so forward thinking it might as well have been another planet. Jax was owned by the former Los Angeles Angels shortstop Jack Hanson. He left baseball to reinvent sportswear for women, advancing the cigarette pant by moving the zipper from the side to the back not just for comfort but to flatter the rear end. The garment became a staple for Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe and Jackie Kennedy. Mr. Hanson teamed up with the avant garde designer Rudi Gernreich, who had removed the boning in women's bathing suits in the 1950s to free the body, because, as he wrote in his design manifesto, "the only respect you can give to a woman is to make her a human being, a totally emancipated women." Mr. Gernreich was out to "to cure society of its sexual hangups," designing clothing for women to "take our minds off how we look and concentrate on really important matters in the world." Lana was enthralled. She modeled for a year at Jax, while picking clothes up off the floor for clients like Susan Hayward. Then one day Steve McQueen's wife, Neile, popped in to the store and convinced Lana it was time to get back to acting. But Lana feared the burdens of celebrity. "I wasn't acting to become anything other than an actor," she said. "That was it! I love getting the script. I love doing the part, but when they say 'it's a wrap' at the end of the day, I want to just go wherever it is I want to go." She recalled marching downtown and getting herself "informally deputized' by the county's animal commissioner, "so I could keep an eye on the shelters and come up with a plan to improve them." Another thing Lana loved to do was go home and write. (Putnam published her memoir, "Natalie," in 1984. In his own memoir, Mr. Wagner called it "ridiculous.") At 18 Lana took a different tack, becoming one of Judy Garland's protectors while the star was on tour in Australia. "It was a major responsibility," she writes in "Natalie": "I was the only other female in her entourage of six. I was pretty much left to handle Judy alone. They would send me to her room when she wasn't there and say go through all her clothing, anything that's sharp, that she could hurt herself with remove! All the things I'd heard about her, that she was pathologically insecure, unstable and one of the most delightful people you'd ever want to know were absolutely true." And yet, she writes:" "I had never seen her perform and was captured by her magic." That magical motion of singing, that lifting of the spirit, was something Lana had always loved to do herself and still does. "I sing all the time, everywhere," she said during lunch. "When I was in high school, I remember singing an entire song in a classroom unbidden. I walked in singing it. The bell rang. I didn't care. I wasn't done, so I completed the song." She later opened a condolence note from Donfeld: a sketch of a dress he had designed for Natalie for her final film, "Brainstorm." On the back Donfeld had written, "Natalie thought you hung the moon." After lunch, outside the restaurant, with a light rain misting the air, Lana appeared petite even in her black high heeled boots. Her grandson texted to ask if she was on her way home yet and why she had picked a restaurant the Palm so far from the house. "No matter what it is. I talk to my grandkids all the time when they say they don't want to do this or that, that it's not important. I say, 'You don't understand that even though you feel like a pebble, you're leaving ripples and you don't know where those ripples will go and you at least must try and do something!'" Lana said she has started a new memoir. "I want to leave behind something that helps something," she said. "I don't care how small it is as long as I've accomplished something that might someday make a difference. I don't want to be thought of as, 'Oh my, wasn't she pretty.' No. No."
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LOS ANGELES "Were you following me?" said Pete Holmes, a 38 year old actor and comedian, as he stood near the front gate of his bungalow in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles last month. "Sorry, I was just sitting in traffic and am literally just getting back from a week in Hawaii," Mr. Holmes said, explaining his momentary bout of paranoia. "Things are a bit chaotic." Tall and gangly, with a cartoonish quality to his movement, Mr. Holmes then opened the front door to the humble four bedroom home that he shares with his wife of one month, Valerie. Dressed in a navy blue hoodie and gray khakis, he petted his rescue dog, Brody, and plopped down a heap of unopened mail on the dining room table. "Please excuse me," Mr. Holmes said as he hurried off to use the bathroom. He returned, sat down on the living room couch and let out a sigh. "O.K.," he said. "Now where were we?" Mr. Holmes said that he had spent the previous week in Maui at a meditation and yoga retreat with the spiritual leader Ram Dass. But the "spiritual cleansing," as he called it, was apparently no match for the stresses of Los Angeles traffic. He was also facing a pile of deadlines. He needed to finish editing "Crashing," the HBO show he created and stars in, and which returns for a second season on Jan. 14. And there was a mountain of emails in his inbox. The prospect of having to reply to each one seemed to overwhelm him. "There's a subtlety to the 'nonresponse response,'" Mr. Holmes said. "Sometimes these offers come in and I say, 'I'll think about it.' And 'I'll think about it' means 'Let me think about it.'" He continued: "But if it's a no, I'm not going to write and say, 'It's a no.' When you're really hungry or desperate, a nonreply is a really mean thing. And you might hold that against somebody for years. And yet I do it with people who work for me." One is left to imagine how much more frazzled Mr. Holmes would be if it weren't for his meditation retreats. "I find spirituality so much more essential in a world like the one I live in now," he said, as he moved to the front porch, where he sank into a love seat, crossed his legs and, for the first time that afternoon, offered his undivided attention. "It's not just a Sunday only thing for me. It's something I'm constantly reading and thinking about." Spirituality is in his blood. Raised in the Boston suburb of Lexington, Mr. Holmes attended Gordon College, an evangelical Christian liberal arts school. He married his first girlfriend, at 22, less than a year after graduating, and began performing stand up comedy. His early material was PG rated, but getting divorced six years later forced him to re evaluate his life. And his comedy. He began making a name for himself as a slightly goofy but confessional voice on the stand up circuit, culminating in an appearance on "Late Night With Jimmy Fallon" in 2010. The next year, he appeared on "Conan." A TBS network executive took notice of his skill set a relatable brand of comedy with cross generational appeal and, in 2013, gave Mr. Holmes his own late night series. "The Pete Holmes Show" combined sketch comedy, live performance and in studio interviews, but ran for only two seasons. Since then, Mr. Holmes has mined his own history for a popular podcast, "You Made It Weird." "Crashing," which started as a self deprecating joke on his TBS show, came to fruition in the hands of the comedy bigwig Judd Apatow. While Mr. Holmes still embraces his Christian upbringing, he has begun to explore Buddhism. In Hollywood, where he has lived for seven years, "the pitfall of buying and believing your own hype is a deep, echoing, wet, cold sadness," he said. "For me, religion and spirituality is about reintegrating with people, with community, with connection, with union." It's also why he enjoys getting out in his neighborhood. "Want to grab a coffee?" he said suddenly, unfurling his 6 foot 5 frame from the gray couch. Mr. Holmes placed a leash on Brody, opened the front gate and walked down a restaurant filled stretch of Vermont Avenue. Three blocks away, he arrived at Bru Coffeebar, a third wave coffee shop that brews its free trade beans proudly. Mr. Holmes exchanged pleasantries with a barista and ordered a double espresso. Before he could sit down, however, his phone rang. It was his publicist. She had arrived at his house and was wondering where he was. He told her he'd be back in 10 minutes. "I always forget they're coming," he said with a look of disgust. When he signed a deal for "Crashing," Mr. Holmes decided it was time to hire publicists. Still, he questions their utility. "It's like still somebody who is just there trying not to be there," he said, as he exited the coffee shop. "Crashing" draws extensively from Mr. Holmes's life: It follows Pete, a religious Christian comedian whose wife cheats on him, forcing him to question his faith and dedicate all his efforts to a stand up career. Not that success has made Mr. Holmes feel like any less of a grinder.
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Despite growing unease in the financial markets, the American economy is gathering steam, adding an unexpectedly large number of jobs last month. The Labor Department's monthly snapshot of the job market, released on Friday, showed that employers added 290,000 jobs in April the largest gain in four years and that they did so across a broad swath of industries. The United States has now added jobs for four consecutive months. The unemployment rate, however, crept up to 9.9 percent, from 9.7 percent in March, mostly because of a significant increase in the number of people who had previously given up deciding to look for work again. Major stock gauges in the United States rose briefly on the unexpectedly strong job growth report before gyrating in a trading day marked by continuing fears about spreading European debt woes and concern about structural weaknesses in the stock markets that may have contributed to a terrifying sell off on Thursday. European leaders were meeting in Brussels over the weekend on ways to reassure investors that the heavily indebted countries within the euro zone would not face debt defaults and to restore confidence in European banks. The stock market has raced higher this year, before retrenching the last few days, and some American companies have posted record profits. But stock investors increasingly fret that the economic recovery in the United States could be threatened by a European led debt crisis. Economists suggest that as long as the debt crisis is primarily contained to Greece, or even a few other countries, the effect on the United States will be minor. A full blown financial crisis across Europe, however, could affect banks in the United States, and in turn, how much credit they offer American companies or consumers. Another potential risk for the American economy is foreign investors fleeing to the dollar and abandoning the euro. That would strengthen the dollar, making it difficult for American companies to sell their goods abroad. "I think at this point the U.S. economy has a very good chance of being able to continue its recovery despite the uncertainty in Europe," said Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group. "But the threat is real, and we have to be vigilant and very nimble." President Obama called April's job report "particularly heartening." He noted that "this week's job numbers come as a relief to Americans who've found a job, but it offers, obviously, little comfort to those who are still out of work." All manner of businesses were hiring, including those in manufacturing, leisure and hospitality and health care. One of the strongest gains occurred in manufacturing, which added 44,000 jobs, the largest increase since 1998. Yet, in a sign that many people will struggle to find a job even as the economy improves, the number of people who have been out of work for more than six months hit 6.7 million, nearly 46 percent of the unemployed. "The economic recovery and expansion is entrenched, sustained and sustainable," Allen L. Sinai, chief global economist at Decision Economics, said. But he warned that the economy faced numerous challenges, including the need for the United States to deal with its own domestic debt and a possible downturn in exports to Europe. "It's like having symptoms of a heart attack," Mr. Sinai said, "either you ignore them or take preventive action to make sure there will be no heart attack." The increase in April was accompanied by a revised gain for March of 230,000 jobs, up from 162,000. While the levels of the last two months exceeded the 150,000 jobs a month that many economists say is necessary to accommodate new entrants to the job market, they were still not nearly as high as the average after previous recessions. The number of unemployed people actually rose slightly from March, to 15.3 million. And the so called underemployment rate which includes people whose hours have been cut as well as those working part time because they cannot find full time jobs rose to 17.1 percent, from 16.9 percent in March. At the current rate, the economy will take years to absorb the more than eight million people who lost their jobs during the recent downturn. Thomas J. Duesterberg, president and chief executive of the Manufacturers Alliance/MAPI, a trade association, said that increases in exports as well as consumer demand for automobiles and computers were driving part of the rebound. But he pointed out that 16 percent of all manufacturing jobs were lost during what has come to be known as the Great Recession and that a tiny portion of those had been added back so far. Mr. Duesterberg said the alliance was forecasting that slightly more than half of all manufacturing jobs lost during the recession would return but not until 2014. On the home front, he said consumers were only cautiously returning to the market, battered by declines in housing and personal savings. Leisure and hospitality added 45,000 jobs, and the health care industry, which has shown growth throughout the recession, added 20,100. Economists were of two minds about whether to be worried about the rise in the unemployment rate. Some suggested that it was a temporary move associated with transitions in the labor market, while others saw extended pain for the unemployed. The rise in the unemployment rate was associated with a growing willingness by people who sat on the sidelines during the recession to once again look for work as the economy picked up. The government figures showed that 195,000 people returned to the work force in April. "The unemployment number went up for the right reasons," said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist for MFR. "It was a sign of strength, because you just had more people reentering the labor force, which is typically what happens in turning points." As expected, state and local governments lost 6,000 jobs in April. Their budget cuts probably foreshadow further job losses in the public sector. Labor market experts also focused on wages and average hours worked in a week. Although the average workweek inched up to 34.1 hours, suggesting that workers are taking home slightly bigger paychecks, actual hourly wages were up only 1 cent, to 22.47, in April. Average hourly earnings were up 1.6 percent over the last 12 months. Economists suggested that such anemic wage increases, if they were to slow any further, could contribute to a deflationary environment. And labor market specialists said they were concerned about what would happen as the effects of the government stimulus package wound down and unemployment benefits began to run out. Such fears confront Antoinette F. Vitacco, a 53 year old Queens woman who worked as the supervisor at a New York call center in 2007 when her company downsized. In early 2008, she found herself unemployed and, for the first time in her life, receiving unemployment benefits. "I went from making 65,000 a year to making 430 a week," said Ms. Vitacco.
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Economy
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It's basically my life story up until I got the commutation, from my birth to my time in school and going to the army and going to prison and the court martial process. It's a personal narrative of what was going on in my life surrounding that time and what led to the leaks, what led to prison, and how this whole ordeal has really shaped me and changed me. I view this book as a coming of age story. For instance, how my colleagues in the intelligence field really were the driving force behind my questioning of assumptions that I had come into the military with how jaded they were, some of them having done two three four deployments previously. And then also there is a lot of stuff about how prisons are awful, and how prisoners survive and get through being in confinement. There is no title yet. I am trying very hard to have some control over that, but none has been decided yet. Noreen Malone from New York magazine worked on it with me. She did a lot of the groundwork in terms of the research, and I did the storytelling, so it was a collaborative effort. I'm still going through and editing where she has taken independent sources to help refine my story, fact check, verify things and provide a third person perspective in shaping things. Is it written in first person or third person? It is written in first person, but there are parts of the book that reference material that are independent of me. I'm still under obligation under the court rules and the Classified Information Procedures Act of 1980 to not disclose closed court martial testimony or verify evidence that was put in the record. Things like that. So I can't talk about that stuff and I'm not going to, and so I'm trying to keep this and maintain this as more of a personal story. There are parts of it that might reference reports or whatnot but I'm just going to say, "the media reported this, but I'm not confirming or denying it." Are you going to submit the manuscript to the government for a classified information review? We're trying our best to avoid the review process. There is a lot of stuff that is not going to be in the book that people would expect to be in there, but rules are rules and we can't get around it. It's more about personal experiences I had rather than anything specific. I'm not trying to relitigate the case, just tell my personal story. So if it ends with you getting out of military prison, you're not going to address your current situation with the grand jury investigating WikiLeaks? No, we're not planning on including that in this current stage. If there is a book that gets into the more juicy details about that stuff, then we'll probably get around to that after going through a review process, several years down the road from now, whenever the dust settles. But I think this is more about trying to contextualize my story from my perspective rather than get into the weeds of what is in the record of trial, what is in the documents, what the investigation focused on, because we're just not able to get into that area. It sounds like you are a lot freer to talk about your gender identity than the WikiLeaks issue. Yeah. This is less a book about the case and more a book about trials, tribunals, struggles, difficulties, and overcoming them and surviving. If people are expecting to learn a lot more about the court martial and a lot more about the case, then they probably shouldn't be interested in this book. But if they want to know more about what it's like to be me and survive, then there are reams of information in here. It's much more autobiographical than it is a narrative thriller or crime story or anything like that. I have always pitched this to being very similar to "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed. I'm really opening myself up to some really intimate things in this book, some really very personal moments and much more intimate points of my life that I've never disclosed before. You're probably going to learn more about my love life than about the disclosures.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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As the presidential inauguration drew near in January, something bordering on panic was taking hold among some scientists who rely on the vast oceans of data housed on government servers, which encompass information on everything from social demographics to satellite photographs of polar ice. In a Trump administration that has made clear its disdain for the copious evidence that human activity is warming the planet, researchers feared a broad crusade against the scientific information provided to the public. Reports last week that the administration is proposing deep budget cuts for government agencies including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency have fueled new fears of databases being axed, if only as a cost saving measure. "We'll probably be saying goodbye to much of the invaluable data housed at the NCEI," Anne Jefferson, a water hydrology professor at Kent State University, wrote on Twitter Saturday, referring to the National Centers for Environmental Information. "Hope it gets rescued in time." It is illegal to destroy government data, but agencies can make it more difficult to find by revising websites and creating other barriers to the underlying information. Already there have been a handful of changes to the websites of federal science agencies, according to the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, a new organization with researchers monitoring the content. On the E.P.A.'s website, for instance, the science and technology office had described as its mission the development of "scientific and technological foundations to achieve clean water." Now the office says the goal is to develop "economically and technologically achievable performance standards." Pie charts on a Department of Energy website illustrating the link between coal and greenhouse gas emissions also have disappeared. So has the description on an Interior Department page of the potential environmental effects of hydraulic fracturing on federal land. Changes like these appear only to reflect the publicly stated priorities of the new administration and there have been few signs as yet that federal databases are being systematically manipulated or restricted. As thousands of academics, librarians, coders and science minded citizens have gathered at what are called "data rescue" events in recent weeks there were at least six this past weekend alone the enormousness of extracting government data that is easily found has become apparent, as has the difficulty in tracking down the rest. Some open data activists refer to it as "dark data" and they are not talking about classified information or data the government might release only if compelled by a Freedom of Information Act request. "It's like dark matter; we know it must be there but we don't know where to find it to verify," said Maxwell Ogden, the director of Code for Science and Society, a nonprofit that began a government data archiving project in collaboration with the research libraries in the University of California system. "If they're going to delete something, how will we even know it's deleted if we didn't know it was there?" he asked. The obstacles have spurred debate among open data activists over how to build an archiving system for the government's science data that ensures that the public does not lose access to it, regardless of who is in power. "No one would advocate for a system where the government stores all scientific data and we just trust them to give it to us," said Laurie Allen, a digital librarian at the University of Pennsylvania who helped found Data Refuge. "We didn't used to have that system, yet that is the system we have landed with." At the moment, the closest thing to a central repository is Data.gov, which, under a 2013 Obama administration directive, is supposed to link to all of the public databases within the government. But it relies on agencies to self report, and the total size of all the data linked to by the directory, Mr. Ogden recently found, comes to just 40 terabytes about as much as would fit on 1,000 worth of hard drives. The transition to digital distribution that made government documents more accessible, librarians say, has also left them more at risk. Sam Hodgson for The New York Times NASA alone provides access to more than 17.5 petabytes of archived data, according to its website (a petabyte is 1,000 times bigger than a terabyte), over dozens of different data portal systems. And one third of the links on Data.gov, Mr. Ogden found, take users to a website rather than the actual data, which makes it hard to devise software that can automatically copy it. Even databases that are listed on Data.gov and there are more than two million, according to Mr. Ogden's published logs often sit behind an interface designed for ease of use but built with proprietary code almost impossible to reproduce. The need to write custom code to extract data from, say, the E.P.A.'s discharge monitoring reports is one reason that, despite having hosted more than two dozen "data rescue" events since January, the activist group Data Refuge lists only 158 data sets in its public directory. Andrew Bergman, a graduate student in applied physics at Harvard, along with two physics department colleagues, suspended his studies to help found the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, which has also helped to organize the events. "We have things that are considered really important from NASA, E.P.A., NOAA," Mr. Bergman said. "But in terms of finalized, completed data sets that are actually useful, it's a very small number compared to the total." At the archiving events, participants are typically divided into groups. One uses a web browser extension to flag government web addresses for the Internet Archive, an existing service that operates an automated "web crawler" that can make copies of federal websites but typically not the databases that store information in more exotic formats. Another group is tasked with scrutinizing data sets that researchers have identified as particularly useful or vulnerable. Those are "tagged" with a description of where they came from and what they are. At one of last month's events, at New York University, many marveled at the breadth and depth of the research they were sorting through, even as they worried about its future. "Look, you can get temperature and salinity readings from any one of these buoys,'' said Barbara Thiers, the vice president for science at the New York Botanical Garden, another participant. "This is the raw data for tracking ocean warming.''
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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"If you can't guarantee safety," Dr. Anthony S. Fauci said, "then unfortunately you're going to have to bite the bullet and say, 'We may have to go without this sport for this season.'" Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the leading public health expert on President Trump's coronavirus task force, said this week that it might be very difficult for major sports in the United States to return to action this year. Various leagues have considered a number of options for restarting play that came to a halt in mid March, as the extent of the coronavirus outbreak became increasingly apparent. A key variable, Dr. Fauci said in an interview on Tuesday, will be whether the country can gain broad access to testing that quickly yields results. He said that manufacturers had made strides in developing such tests, but not enough for major sports competitions to resume. "Safety, for the players and for the fans, trumps everything," he said. "If you can't guarantee safety, then unfortunately you're going to have to bite the bullet and say, 'We may have to go without this sport for this season.'" Dr. Fauci's remarks came as Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association and other leagues were scrambling to find ways to safely bring their players together to train and to play games, with or without fans in the seats. The president has urged sports commissioners to return to play as soon as is feasible, and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York has trumpeted the feasibility of playing major league baseball in empty ballparks in the state this summer. Some governors, such as Gavin Newsom of California, have been more cautious. Dr. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, said that although the rate of confirmed cases of the virus had decreased in most of the country, there would probably be a surge in cases again. "If we let our desire to prematurely get back to normal, we can only get ourselves right back in the same hole we were in a few weeks ago," Dr. Fauci said. He said that any resumption of play must happen gradually and with great care and added that the authorities had to be prepared to respond if the number of cases began to grow again. Dr. Fauci, an avid runner who grew up playing basketball and baseball, is a fan of the Washington Nationals and the New York Yankees. He says he will feel comfortable returning to a stadium when the level of infection is far lower than it is now. "I would love to be able to have all sports back," Dr. Fauci said. "But as a health official and a physician and a scientist, I have to say, right now, when you look at the country, we're not ready for that yet." The following interview with Dr. Fauci was condensed and edited for clarity. Wagner and Belson: When and how can sports return? Dr. Fauci: What we need to do is get it, as a country and as individual locations, under control. That sometimes takes longer than you would like, and if we let our desire to prematurely get back to normal, we can only get ourselves right back in the same hole we were in a few weeks ago. We've got to make sure that when we try to get back to normal, including being able to play baseball in the summer and football in the fall and basketball in the winter, that when we do come back to some form of normality, we do it gradually and carefully. And when cases do start to rebound which they will, no doubt that we have the capability of identifying, isolating and contact tracing. Sports are a business, and they have a financial imperative to get back as soon as possible. Some governors and mayors have discussed the possibility of sports' returning without fans. But there are still hundreds of staff members who have to run the stadium, the clubhouse, etc. What needs to be done to make sure they're also safe? The things we need to do to the best of our ability are try and keep the six foot distance and wear face coverings. And do the kind of pure hygiene things you do to prevent the spread of respiratory infections: washing hands frequently; wearing gloves, particularly food service, and they do that anyway; changing gloves frequently. And if you are in a stadium, make sure that if there are people there, they maintain that physical distance because the virus doesn't travel that much farther than that. If you can do that, it isn't completely free of risk, but you diminish the risk substantially. The density of the infection in the community will dictate the degree to which you can loosen up. I've said that many times, and I'm quoted as saying that the virus decides how quickly you're going to get back to normal. You can try and influence the virus by your mitigation programs, but at the end of the day, you've got to get the virus under some sort of control before you start resuming normal activity. All sports aren't created equal. Golf might be more suited to maintaining distance, but it would be harder in basketball or hockey. What can be done? More Asian countries slowly reopen their borders and welcome vaccinated travelers. You've got to be really creative. That's going to be more difficult and more problematic. But you know, there have been some suggestions that if you want to have a situation where players are going to have to come into contact, like basketball, there are certain things you can do. It may not work. I'm not saying this is the way to go, but you want to at least consider having players, if they're going to play, play in front of a TV camera without people in the audience. And then test all the players and make sure they're negative and keep them in a place where they don't have contact with anybody on the outside who you don't know whether they're positive or negative. That's going to be logistically difficult, but there's at least the possibility of doing that. In other words, we said that for baseball, get the players in Major League Baseball, get a couple of cities and a couple of hotels, get them tested and keep them segregated. I know it's going to be difficult for them not to be out in society, but that may be the price you pay if you want to play ball. I don't think you should put a number on it. I think it depends on the level of outbreak and how many people you're going to have to contact trace. Then when you have things under control, then you can start doing surveillance studies and getting out there looking for antibodies. Is it even fair to think about sports leagues and teams getting broad access to testing if the general public or other industries aren't getting the same? I hope when we get to that point, when we're going to try and get the sports figures tested, then we will have enough tests so that anybody who needs a test can get a test. How far away are we to that? I can't give you a date, but I know that tests are rapidly scaling up in numbers over the next several weeks and months. How much have you talked to sports leagues about their ideas for resuming play? I have spoken to the sports world through interviews with people like yourselves, if they can read what I say. But I'm always open to try and help in any way I can with Major League Baseball, the N.F.L. I've spoken to some sports executives, but I don't want to say who they are. Have you given your blessing to any of their proposals? I don't think it's appropriate for me to do. That would have to be their decision. Sports are an unusual business because athletes are in close quarters for many months. What kind of runway do leagues need to start up again? That's the reason I stress the idea of testing everybody and having available for them tests from which you can get a result immediately. And then you'll know whether or not someone is infected and have to get them out for a while, 14 days or whatever it is until they pass the incubation period. I don't want to make this conversation sound like it's going to be an easy thing. We may not be able to pull this off. We're going to have to see: Is it doable? Do we have the capability of doing it safely? Because safety, for the players and for the fans, trumps everything. If you can't guarantee safety, then unfortunately you're going to have to bite the bullet and say, "We may have to go without this sport for this season." Some people are clamoring for sports to resume, including Mr. Trump. Do you think that is the correct impulse? There's a difference between an impulse and what you're going to do. You don't have to act on every impulse. I would love to be able to have all sports back. But as a health official and a physician and a scientist, I have to say, right now, when you look at the country, we're not ready for that yet. We might be ready, depending upon what the sport is. But right now, we're not. Could there be a progression from opening without fans and gradually phasing in the number of fans in attendance? That's certainly possible, but no guarantee. Cleaning companies have said they will not only have to keep stadiums clean, but also give fans confidence that they are clean. In other words, there's reality and there's fear. Unless we completely knock this out with a vaccine which I hope we will, but that's not going to be for a while I think you're going to see some form of a tension to the possibility of transmissibility of a respiratory agent. People are not going to readily be shaking hands or hugging. I think people will continue to wear masks no matter what you say, because they're afraid. I think people still will do physical distancing. People are going to act on their own until they feel perfectly comfortable that we are really back to normal. Sports, in the end, are entertainment. How far down the line should they be in the country's reopening? Do more essential businesses need to come first? I don't think it's either or. I think, clearly, essentially services are a high priority. No doubt about it. You don't want the economy to completely crumble. But sports are important also for the well being and the mental health of the country. So I don't think you can say, "You go before I." I think you can do some things simultaneously and you can do prioritizing some ahead of the other. Obviously professional sports are more equipped financially to come back. But there's also high school sports and youth sports. How can they monitor all of the things you're talking about? It's still going to be the physical separation, where you might have teams playing essentially with no, or very physically separated, spectators. You could have a lottery. Instead of allowing 5,000 people into a high school or into a college gym if it holds 20,000 or 30,000, you do a considerably lower number if they're physically separated. You wouldn't do that now. You have to do that when the infection rate gets so low that when somebody does come up with infection, you can stop it from turning into an outbreak. Sorry that your Nationals' world championship celebration has been deferred. The Nationals general manager said the team wouldn't do a banner ceremony unless fans were there.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Instead of celebrating Mother's Day, on May 14, with the usual brunch, why not go for tea instead? Several hotels in the United States are hosting teas for the occasion, many of which are substantial enough to qualify as meals and more creative than the traditional scone and finger sandwich affairs; they are also open to both hotel guests and nonguests. The Danforth Inn in Portland, Me., has an Asian inspired tea at its restaurant, Tempo Dulu. Guests will choose a tea from among 24 Asian varieties, such as jasmine lily, and will also be served a cocktail made with jasmine infused gin and rose liqueur. The food menu comprises six small plates, including scallop and asparagus dumplings, five spice rubbed beef skewers and an Indonesian style cake with coffee and chile crumble. Moms will receive a take home gift of a house made lollipop and the menu personalized with their name. Cost is 89 a person. Reserve at 207 879 8755. This is the first year the inn is having a Mother's Day tea, an owner, Raymond Brunyanszki, said. "We've always had a brunch for the holiday, but since we have a collection of Asian teas that we wanted to show off, we decided to do something different this year," he said. A number of hotels in New York City are also offering Mother's Day teas. One option is the Brooklyn High Tea at the Williamsburg Hotel: A live jazz band will entertain guests, and the menu includes single origin teas from the Brooklyn company Tea Dealers, a tea cocktail and bites such as a mascarpone quiche and sweet potato doughnuts. Tea guests will be treated to manicures and chair massages on a first come first served basis, and mothers will receive fresh flowers. Cost is 30 a person. The tea is free for hotel guests; nightly rates begin at 285. Reserve at brooker thewilliamsburghotel.com.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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On Thursday evening, protesters in New York signaled their resistance to President Trump by standing outside the Intrepid Sea, Air Space Museum, awaiting his first homecoming since taking office, with many wearing white in honor of the suffragist movement. Meanwhile, another form of dissent in a different shade was underway downtown. The nonprofit organization Everytown for Gun Safety had invited a mix of celebrities, designers and survivors of gun violence to a dinner for the start of its 2017 Wear Orange campaign, which encourages people to don the bold hue for National Gun Violence Awareness Day on June 2. But not everyone in the room was sporting the color. Ms. Rowley, who became involved with gun safety after the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut also the galvanizing event for Ms. Moore and who had earlier created a white cotton T shirt with a small gold safety pin sold in her stores with a portion of the proceeds going to Everytown, made a special orange bandanna for guests at the dinner that read "Wear Orange" in bright pink letters. "People communicate through how they dress," she said. So if "a little part of that messaging can influence people to be more aware," she felt she had done her part. Other designers on the creative council include Tom Ford and Donna Karan. For the second year, Zac Posen has aligned himself with the Wear Orange campaign. Their advocacy is part of a larger designer activist movement that has only gotten louder in the wake of the presidential election. Indeed, the alignment of the fashion world with forces opposing Mr. Trump dates to the 2016 presidential campaigns. Michael Kors, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and even the streetwear brand Supreme supported Hillary Clinton by dressing her for public appearances, referring to her on their runways and endorsing her presidency. After the election, designers showed their dissent on the runway with slogans and other sartorial statements during fashion month, and have continued to align themselves with causes that they consider at risk in the current administration. Like orange. Why this particular hue? "It's the color hunters wear when they go hunting," said Nza Ari Khepra, the founder of the youth led violence awareness organization Project Orange Tree. "We wanted to take that and flip that meaning on its head and basically say, we're wearing orange because we don't want to be the victims of the next gun violence incident." Ms. Khepra's friend Hadiya Pendleton was shot and killed on the South Side of Chicago, less than two weeks after performing as a drum majorette at President Barack Obama's inauguration in January 2013. She was 15. "I don't think it hit so close to home until it was someone who was so exemplary of an amazing student, daughter, friend for everyone around her," said Ms. Khepra, who appeared with Ms. Moore on Vogue's recent list of noteworthy activists. Wear Orange started in 2015, on what would have been Hadiya's 18th birthday. Since its inception, Kim Kardashian, Mrs. Clinton, Stephen Curry, Amy Schumer and the Obamas have all lent their star power to the campaign. Last year, 225,000 people showed solidarity at the event through the color of their attire. Presumably they will do so again when Everytown follows up the dinner on Thursday with its annual Brooklyn Bridge march on June 3. Expect the streets to become a tangerine dream.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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NEW BLOOD On Nov. 25, Chloe Gong tweeted, "My heart is going so fast I can't even type!! THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS is a New York Times Best Seller!!! THANK YOU FOR READING AND PICKING UP THIS BOOK I NEED TO LIE DOWN." It's not every day that a 21 year old debut author lands near the top of the young adult hardcover list, even for a week; if there was ever an occasion that called for abundant exclamation points, this was the one. Gong, a Shanghai native who grew up in Auckland, New Zealand, is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania, where she is double majoring in English and international relations. She says she was in her "tiny college apartment" in Philadelphia, working on "something that was due very soon," when she heard the "surreal but amazing" news: "My editor called me, and my agent was already on the line, and I was trembling. I'm still trembling. The New York Times best seller list is. ... Whoa. Big thing." "These Violent Delights" a reimagining of "Romeo and Juliet" set in 1920s Shanghai is Gong's first published novel, and the ninth one she's written. She started tapping out stories on the Notes app on her iPad when she was 13. Gong explains: "New Zealand has a much more chill atmosphere than what I imagine American high schools are like. I watch American TV and everyone has extracurriculars and all that. That's less of a norm in New Zealand. I would have so much free time, and I would be like, 'Hmm. I might work on my book.' I would crank out a manuscript every year." Gong wrote the first draft of "These Violent Delights" during the summer after her first year of college. Up until that point, she had been under the impression that she couldn't get published because she was from New Zealand. "But that was completely untrue," Gong laughs. "The major American publishers are open to everyone." She learned the ropes by "hesitantly Googling 'how do you publish a book.'" She says, "I had no starting place or way to even know how to begin. But there are so many resources that people just put online for free and they all popped up, one after the other. It was the world at my fingertips, telling me how to do it."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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Kristen Marx of Morgan Stanley, lower left, Andrea Chermayeff and Hope Tully of JPMorgan and Arlene Houston of Goldman Sachs all utilized work force re entry programs offered by their companies. Erica Fitzgerald, lower right, of Littman Krooks participated in a program geared to attorneys offered through Pace Law School. Andrea Chermayeff planned to go back to work when the youngest of her four children enrolled in school last fall. With a Harvard M.B.A. and experience at a private equity firm, she had the credentials to return to Wall Street. The only problem was explaining a 15 year gap on her resume. To help get started, Ms. Chermayeff attended a program at Harvard Business School for professional women looking to return to work after taking a career break. She picked up tips on how to prepare a resume and handle interview questions about her absence. But the big break in her job search came while sitting next to another mother at her son's baseball game near her home in Rowayton, Conn. "I told her that I was thinking about going back to work," Ms. Chermayeff, 43, said. "We had never spoken about business before. She was a high ranking executive at JPMorgan Chase and she told me about a new program at JPMorgan that she thought would suit my needs." Ms. Chermayeff applied and was selected from among 200 applicants for the first class of 10 women in JPMorgan's work force re entry program last September. After completing a 10 week internship, she landed a full time job as a business manager for JPMorgan's U.S. Private Bank. "I told my part time babysitter, congratulations," Ms. Chermayeff said. "You also now have a full time job. " Many women trying to return to work after a break have found it difficult to figure out how to navigate their way back in. JPMorgan's effort is one of several small but growing programs started within the last year to help highly educated and accomplished women, like Ms. Chermayeff, return to jobs they left in finance and at law firms to care for children or aging parents. At least four big law firms, including Baker Botts and Sidley Austin, are offering one year paid internships starting this summer, with an opportunity for full time work. On Wall Street, Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse have also started similar efforts in recent months; Goldman Sachs in 2008 was the first bank to offer such a program. Now more than 120 graduates work in full time positions at the bank. The reason is simple, said Peg Sullivan, global head of talent management at Morgan Stanley: "We are always looking for great talent, top talent wherever we can find it." At Morgan Stanley, 15 women selected from more than 500 applicants started last month in the firm's first 12 week re entry program in New York. Before receiving their work assignments, they attended an intensive orientation program. "We were pretty flexible about how long people have been out," Ms. Sullivan said. "They needed to be ready to come to work, ready to engage. And they are. They are ready to give it 100 percent." While companies are offering flexible schedules, backup child care and other accommodations, the demanding work schedules for people in the financial services industry and big law firms are daunting for even the most committed employees. A study of high achieving women found that 31 percent voluntarily left the work force between 2004 and 2009, primarily for child care reasons, according to an analysis by the Center for Work Life Policy, now known as the Center for Talent Innovation. After career breaks averaging two and a half years, 89 percent said they wanted to return, the study found. But only 40 percent managed to find what they regarded as a good full time job in the sector of their choice. "There is no easy way to access the opportunities as a returnee," said Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an author of the study and chairman and chief executive of the Center for Talent Innovation. "These are very bright women and the business of reskilling is quick and seamless." "You get really overwhelmed by all the issues about returning to work," said Ms. Cohen, who left her job in finance to focus on raising four children during her 11 years out of the work force. "It is hard to separate the real ones that are emotional versus the actual conversations that you might have." Of course, not all new parents or people in need of a leave to care for children or aging parents can afford a timeout. Most women in the workplace see little or no choice about returning to full time work after their maternity leave ends, with so many families today relying on two incomes to get by. In 40 percent of households with children under the age of 18, married and single mothers are either the sole or primary source of income for the family, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center analysis. Betsy Myers, the founding director of the Center for Women and Business at Bentley University, said women filled about half of the middle management ranks in many companies today. "Then there is a drop off," she said. "They go from 50 percent to 10 percent to 15 percent of women in their C suite jobs." She said companies were recognizing they had to do more to retain women managers to get balanced leadership at the top. One of the most important ways, she said, is to show how much company leaders value employees considering a hiatus. Ms. Myers, author of the book "Take The Lead," also said that both men and women needed to be involved in figuring how to create a work force with gender balance. So do different generations, she said, given the rise of millennials in the workplace and their expectations of living a more balanced life. In a reflection of this, the women's employee affinity network at the bank HSBC changed its name, she said. "They call it the Balance Affinity Network," she said. "They want to invite men to the table and the different generations. They want to create a culture where it is not just, 'How do we keep women?' but 'How do we harness the best talent in our company where people will want to stay?' " For experienced lawyers with a career gap, Caren Ulrich Stacy has created the OnRamp Fellowship. Four big law firms have joined the program and more than a dozen others have expressed interest recently, she said. Applications for the first group of fellows were due in early March. Ms. Stacy, who has hired thousands of lawyers as a recruitment expert over nearly two decades, said she found it difficult to find firms willing to hire experienced lawyers with career gaps. "These are women with very impressive backgrounds," Ms. Stacy said. Under the program, the one year fellowships pay 125,000. While the salary is lower than the typical 160,000 paid to associates just out of law school, the hope is that fellows will be offered permanent positions at the end of a year. Several applicants were women who recently completed the New Directions for Attorneys program that Pace Law School started in 2007 to help people return to the legal profession. The program, which costs about 7,000, is offered twice a year, according to Amy Gewirtz McGahan, the director. Students spend two and a half months in the classroom, polishing their legal research, technology and writing skills. Then they get an internship, expand their network and eventually return to work. "It was a tremendously successful experience for me," said Erica Fitzgerald, 39, of Mamaroneck, N.Y., who enrolled in the program last September. A former assistant district attorney in the Bronx, she took off 12 years to raise two sons. She is now working at Littman Krooks, a law firm in nearby White Plains. But the program, while useful, has not helped Lisa Peterson, 52, of Larchmont, N.Y., land a full time job, she said. She has been focusing her search on the nonprofit sector. "I am finding it very challenging to find paid employment," said Ms. Peterson, a graduate of Brown University and New York University Law School who worked eight years at Paul Weiss before leaving after her second child was born in 1994. "I met with someone a month ago, and she read a list of questions. One was, 'What is your five year plan?' Well, I want to do something. I want an encore career that has purpose and meaning." For Ms. Chermayeff, now at JPMorgan, the transition has gone smoothly at work and at home. "It is a new normal that we are trying to get to," she said about her family. "They are at home. They are at school. I am at work. I have not disappeared. I took a job." The experiences of the women following are similar. In 2004, Arlene Houston was working in leveraged finance for a private equity firm in Manhattan when her father died, leaving her ill mother alone in Oklahoma City. "I was the only child, and I lived 1,500 miles away," Ms. Houston said. "I was working 80 hours a week. It was not easy." After working as a freelance business consultant for more than three years, Ms. Houston was ready to return to Wall Street. In 2008, a friend had told her about a new re entry program at Goldman Sachs starting in September for about a dozen people. She was accepted and after completing the 10 week program, she took a full time position as a vice president. Now, Ms. Houston is a vice president in equity derivatives operations and says she has struck a good balance for her life. She has since moved her mother to Manhattan. "I still have the flexibility to maintain my mother's care," she said. "That's important." Virginia Ryan continued to work part time at a law firm for about six months after her first child was born. She left in 1996. She had two more children. "I got very busy," she said. "I was in the thick of it." Then, a couple of years ago, she woke up one morning with a great sense of urgency. "I felt the clock ticking, and I felt that I had to get a job right now or I would never get one." Ms. Ryan spent a year trying to figure out what to do, with little success. "I was stuck. I was completely stuck." She signed up for Pace Law School's New Directions program, which helps experienced lawyers refresh their skills and find internships. She landed one at Barnard College, where she had received her B.A. Now, Ms. Ryan is working there part time and also has a part time job at Columbia University, not far from her Upper West Side home. "Dinner conversation is now, 'What did you do at work?' " she said. "I think I see glimmers of pride. A little bit of amusement. It has been extremely gratifying to have that with my children." Born and raised in the Philippines, Hope Tully was determined to earn an M.B.A. in the United States. She did, at Harvard, graduating in 1992. She then went to work on Citibank's derivatives desk, spending seven years until she left in 1999 after her second child. "I was going to take two years off and then come back," she said. But then she learned that one of her daughters has a rare disease. "With this sort of challenge thrown to our family, my husband and I decided to focus our energy on this area." Four months later, they organized an international medical conference on the disease, the first of several she would organize even as her husband's job took the family to London. In 2011, the Tullys returned to New York. Two independent drug trials had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. "The stars were kind of aligned. This was really the right time for me to go back to work," she said. She learned about the JPMorgan program last year through the Harvard Business School alumni organization. She now works in the global strategy group. "To be honest with you, I thought there would be more of an adjustment than there has been," she said. "It is like learning how to ride a bike. Once you get back on it, you can ride it. And that is what I felt coming back." Nine months ago, Kristen Marx began applying online for jobs at various Wall Street firms but nothing came from that. She had loved her job as a vice president in asset management at Goldman Sachs. But after the birth of her second son in 2002, she gave up the long hours and commute from Westchester. "I always knew that I wanted to come back," said Ms. Marx, who began working in financial services in 1994 after graduating from Providence College. Her boys are now 14, 11 and 8. "I never thought I would be out that long." She reached out to former colleagues for advice. Last fall, she attended the iRelaunch.com conference at New York University and learned about re entry programs at firms including Morgan Stanley. "It took me a minute to send a resume," she said. In February, Ms. Marx began Morgan Stanley's 12 week program. She is focused on landing a full time position at the end of it. "It is a good feeling to know there's a force behind you that wants you to succeed," she said. "I wanted to come back. I just didn't have a natural path to get back to the work force."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Education
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THE SPY Stream on Netflix. Sacha Baron Cohen, the actor best known for assuming false identities as the title characters of the satires "Borat" and "Bruno," plays a man who himself is assuming a false identity in this six part mini series. That man would be Eli Cohen, the real life Mossad spy who in the 1960s went undercover in Syria and gathered intelligence that is credited with being crucial to Israel's victory in the Six Day War. The series, directed by the Israeli filmmaker Gideon Raff, follows Eli Cohen (who is not related to the actor who portrays him) in the early 1960s as he poses as a Syrian shipping magnate. "I saw Eli Cohen, as he was written in the show, as an extreme version of myself," Baron Cohen said in a recent interview with The New York Times. "The stakes were higher for him, because the price of failure is imprisonment and execution. Eli Cohen was, in that sense, the greatest method actor of the last century." GAMEFACE Stream on Hulu. "I'm not codependent," the English comic Roisin Conaty says in the second season of this sitcom. "I'm old fashioned needy." The series stars Conaty as Marcella, a struggling actor who spent the first season searching for parts, taking advice from her life coach and recovering from a breakup. The second season, which aired in Britain earlier this year, sees Marcella continuing to pursue both her career and a potential romance with her driving instructor, Jon (Damien Molony).
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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On a recent Thursday at my neighborhood farmers' market, one farmer had three different varieties of kale on offer black kale (also known as cavolo nero, dinosaur kale, dragon tongue, lacinato or Tuscan kale), curly gray green kale and red Russian kale, another ruffled variety that has red veins and a purplish color. I bought all three and had a lot of fun turning them into dinners over the next 6 days. Kale is a member of the cruciferous family of vegetables (genus Brassica), so named because their flowers have four petals in the shape of a cross. A nutritional powerhouse that tastes wonderful when properly cooked, kale is one of nature's best sources of vitamins A, C and K and a very good source of copper, potassium, iron, manganese and phosphorus. The flavonoids and sulfur containing compounds called glucosinolates are believed to have antioxidant properties, as are two other compounds that kale delivers, zeaxanthin and lutein, both thought to play a role in protecting the eyes. These greens are hearty, and they maintain about 50 percent of their volume when you cook them, unlike spinach, which cooks down to a fraction of its volume. The various types of kale also maintain a lot of texture, which makes them perfect for stir fries. Make sure to remove the ropy stems and wash the leaves in at least two changes of water, as organic kale can be very attractive to aphids. Aphids won't hurt you, but it might take a few rinses to clean them off the leaves. Kale is a good choice of greens for a stir fry because it retains its texture.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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Dancers are only some of the performers in the River to River Festival, which inhabits public spaces in Lower Manhattan for 11 days each summer. A dance in a plaza or park is also the dance of pedestrians walking by, of joggers, sightseers and other unwitting extras. On Friday afternoon at Pier 15, where Souleymane Badolo presented his new "Dance My Life" against a glistening East River backdrop, those accidental participants included two men sauntering through the performance space, unaware of their role, and a woman eating lunch on the periphery. These seemed more appropriate than intrusive, given Mr. Badolo's inspiration for the work, as described in a program note: the shared experiences of people everywhere, despite cultural differences and contrasting paces of life. Here we all were, audience and passersby, in the same place, if for unrelated reasons. While that theme may sound sweepingly general, Mr. Badolo's work is anything but. Born in Burkina Faso, where he founded his own dance company in 1993, he moved to New York six years ago. His cross pollinations of traditional African and contemporary dance produce a rippling, precise idiom very much his own, capable of telling many stories in the same instant. In "Dance My Life" he is joined by the dancer Sylvestre Akakpo and the percussionist Mamoudou Konate, who sits in the center of the stage a rectangular patch of pier with a hand held drum, curved mallet and microphone. Mr. Badolo began with his own subtle, small, twitching and flicking dance, as a harsh crackling sound blared from two speakers. That noise and the hot midday sun, along with the seating arrangement an awkward smattering of reclining wooden chairs made for a disorienting start.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Half a century ago, harvesting California's 2.2 million tons of tomatoes for ketchup required as many as 45,000 workers. In the 1960s, though, scientists and engineers at the University of California, Davis, developed an oblong tomato that lent itself to being machine picked and an efficient mechanical harvester to do the job in one pass through a field. The battle to save jobs was on. How could a publicly funded university invest in research that cut farmworker jobs only to help large scale growers? That was the question raised in a lawsuit filed by a farmworker advocacy group against U.C. Davis in 1979. Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers union made stopping mechanization its No. 1 legislative priority. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter's agriculture secretary, Robert Bergland, declared that the federal government would no longer finance research that could lead to the "replacing of an adequate and willing work force with machines." Its outcome, however, will probably be similar. The freeze on research may have slowed the mechanization of California's harvests, but by the year 2000, only 5,000 harvest workers were employed in California to pick and sort what was by then a 12 million ton crop of tomatoes. In America's factories, jobs are inevitably disappearing, too. But despite the political rhetoric, the problem is not mainly globalization. Manufacturing jobs are on the decline in factories around the world. "The observation is uncontroversial," said Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel winning economist at Columbia University. "Global employment in manufacturing is going down because productivity increases are exceeding increases in demand for manufactured products by a significant amount." The consequences of this dynamic are often misunderstood, not least by politicians offering slogans to fix them. "The likelihood that we will get a manufacturing recovery is close to nil," Professor Stiglitz said. "We are more likely to have a smaller share of a shrinking pie." Look at it this way: Over the course of the 20th century, farm employment in the United States dropped to 2 percent of the work force from 41 percent, even as output soared. Since 1950, manufacturing's share has shrunk to 8.5 percent of nonfarm jobs, from 24 percent. It still has a ways to go. The shrinking of manufacturing employment is global. In other words, strategies to restore manufacturing jobs in one country will amount to destroying them in another, in a worldwide zero sum game. The loss of such jobs has created plenty of problems in the United States. For the countless workers living in less developed reaches of the world, though, it adds up to a potential disaster. 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. Japan's long stagnation can be read as a consequence of a decades long development strategy that left the nation overly dependent on manufacturing. "They are focused on a dead end business," said Bruce Greenwald, an expert on investment strategy at Columbia Business School. "They are not eliminating hours of work in manufacturing fast enough to keep pace with the reduction in work needed." The richest countries today started deindustrializing when they were already well off and benefited from fairly skilled and productive work forces that could make the transition into well paid service jobs, as increasingly affluent consumers devoted less of their incomes to physical goods and more to leisure, advanced health care and other services. Poorer countries have more limited options. If the demise of manufacturing jobs in the United States forced many workers into low paid retail jobs and the like, imagine the challenge in a country like India, where factory employment has already topped out, yet income per person is only one twenty fifth of what it was in the United States at its peak. "Developing countries are suffering premature deindustrialization," said Dani Rodrik, a leading expert on the international economy who teaches at Harvard's Kennedy School. "Both employment and output deindustrialization is setting in at much lower levels of income." This is even happening in a manufacturing behemoth like China which appears to have maxed out the industrial export strategy at a much lower income level than its successful Asian predecessors, like Japan and Taiwan. For poorer countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America, the decline of manufacturing as a bountiful source of jobs puts an end to the prime path to riches that the modern world has followed. Manufacturing, Professor Rodrik points out, has unique advantages. For one thing, it can quickly employ lots of unskilled workers. "Setting up a factory to make toys puts you on a productivity escalator in a way that traditional agriculture and services didn't do," he said. Moreover, production isn't constrained by a small domestic market: Exports of goods can easily flow around the world, allowing industry room to grow and giving developing countries time to ride up the ladder of income, skills and sophistication. The natural resources that dominate the exports of many poor countries don't have these features. They employ few workers and offer little added value. They do not encourage acquiring skills, and they expose countries to violent swings in commodity prices. High end services such as finance and programming do pay well. But these aren't the service sectors most poor countries build. A majority of service jobs in most poor countries are generally limited to housework, mom and pop retail and the like. Since these sectors offer little productivity growth and are generally isolated from foreign competition, they cannot pull a nation out of poverty. The first large transition from agriculture to industry in the early 20th century well lubricated by public spending on world wars liberated workers from their chains far more effectively than Karl Marx's revolution ever did. The current transition, from manufacturing to services, is more problematic. In poor countries, Mr. Rodrik says, workers may have to pare back their aspirations of development. Who knows "how will political systems manage?" he asks.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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A 36 year old man in Brazil may be the first to experience long term remission from H.I.V. after treatment with only a specially designed cocktail of antiviral drugs, researchers said on Tuesday. Just two people have been confirmed cured of H.I.V. so far, both after risky treatments involving bone marrow transplants for their cancers. The Brazilian patient, who was not identified, has not shown signs of lingering H.I.V. infection in blood tests that detect the virus, according to investigators at the Federal University of Sao Paulo, a prestigious research institution. He also does not seem to have detectable antibodies to the virus. "Although still an isolated case, this might represent the first long term H.I.V. remission" without a bone marrow transplant, the scientists said. They presented the results at AIDS 2020, an annual medical conference held virtually this week because of the coronavirus pandemic. But outside experts greeted the report with skepticism. The absence of antibodies to H.I.V. is the most interesting thing about the case, said Dr. Steve Deeks, an H.I.V. researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the work. "There will be a lot of buzz, a lot of controversy about this part everyone's going to be skeptical," he said. "Am I skeptical? Of course. Am I intrigued? Absolutely." It is too soon to say whether the Brazilian patient is truly virus free, Dr. Deeks said, until independent labs have confirmed the test results. Even if they do, he added, it is unclear whether the man's status is the result of the treatment combination he has received. One in 20 people who start traditional antiretroviral treatment soon after they are infected also suppress the virus to undetectable levels. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The patient was diagnosed with H.I.V. in October 2012, and started taking antiretroviral drugs two months later. In 2016, he was one of five people to join a clinical trial in which, in addition to standard cocktail therapy, they received three antiretroviral drugs for 48 weeks. Two of the drugs, maraviroc and nicotinamide, are thought to lure H.I.V. out of its hiding spots in the body, allowing the other drugs to kill the virus. H.I.V. lurks in many so called reservoirs, and previous studies have suggested that any strategy to rid the body of the virus must include a way to flush it out. Nicotinamide may also boost the immune system, said Dr. Ricardo Diaz, a member of the research team. The patient returned to standard antiretroviral therapy after the trial ended. He stopped taking all antiretroviral drugs in March 2019. His blood has been tested every three weeks since then, and has shown no signs of the infection, according to the researchers. "These are exciting findings, but they're very preliminary," said Dr. Monica Gandhi, an H.I.V. expert at U.C.S.F. and one of the conference organizers. Nicotinamide has been used in many other studies without these results, she noted. And no drug "has worked so far in terms of long term remission," she said. "I'm not even sure this has worked. It's one patient, so I think we can't say we can achieve remission this way." The scientists in Brazil have offered to send samples for confirmatory tests to other labs. The researchers should repeat the negative antibody tests, and they plan to do so, Dr. Deeks said. The researchers also must test the patient's blood for antiretroviral drugs, he added: "The data raises the possibility that the participant continued his antiretroviral drugs without informing the study team. This would not be unprecedented." People in Brazil receive antiretroviral drugs through the public health system, and the transaction is registered, Dr. Diaz said at a press briefing on Tuesday.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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ANAHEIM, Calif. The Texas Tech men's basketball team carries around a mantra like a chip on its shoulder: The secret's in the dirt. It is a particularly appealing message that success is usually found by getting your hands in the muck especially to the ears of basketball mutts and vagabonds, and a star whose own father questioned why he would want to stay home in Lubbock. So when a moment of truth arrived on Saturday, and top seeded Gonzaga with its free flowing offense and shotmakers all over the court readied for a final charge, the Red Raiders found success by doing what they do best: digging in. The Red Raiders, leaning on their defense as they have all season, clamped down on Gonzaga and rode a pair of ice cold 3 pointers from Davide Moretti and some cool free throw shooting to a 75 69 victory in the West Region final of the N.C.A.A. tournament. The win sends No. 3 Texas Tech to the Final Four in Minneapolis, the first trip in team history. "We did it, baby," Jarrett Culver said as he embraced his doubting father, Hiawatha, before cutting down the nets with his teammates and retreating to the locker room where the players danced to Lil Yachty's "Minnesota."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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