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With the coronavirus, a new Supreme Court case and a blistering election debate, the Affordable Care Act is facing challenges as never before. We looked at how it's held up to its promise. A pandemic. A Supreme Court challenge (again). A presidential election campaign this time with attacks from the left as well as the right. Ever since President Barack Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law 10 years ago Monday, it has faced legislative, legal and political assaults. The landmark health law, nicknamed Obamacare, has withstood more than 60 votes to repeal it from Republican controlled Congresses, two Supreme Court decisions, the gutting of one of its main provisions (the tax penalty for not having insurance) and a president who campaigned on promises to get rid of it. But for all the challenges the law has weathered, no moment has seemed as existential as now. As the coronavirus pandemic tests the American health system in ways few could have imagined, an increasingly conservative Supreme Court is preparing to hear another case, backed by the Trump administration, challenging the law's constitutionality. At the same time, the left wing of the Democratic Party, a major force behind the law's passage, has grown impatient with it and is demanding more radical change, to a single payer, government run health insurance system. On the anniversary of the law, veteran health policy reporters at The New York Times looked beyond the political and legal debate to try to answer one question: How has the law worked in its first decade? Still, all but 14 states have now expanded the program, and the results have been significant: Medicaid enrollment increased by about 13 million, or 34 percent, in the so called expansion states between 2013 and 2019, according to federal data. The uninsured rate for poor adult citizens with no dependent children a group that had often been ineligible for Medicaid plummeted, dropping to 16.5 percent in 2015 from 45.4 percent in 2013, according to the Urban Institute. Over all, the largest coverage gains under the A.C.A. have been among Hispanic, black and Asian patients many of the groups that had the highest uninsured rates before the law, the Kaiser Family Foundation found. For some, the coverage has changed their lives profoundly. Jean Jackson, 64, of Danville, Va., had to retire early from her job as a cooling inspector in 2017 because she had cataracts that made it impossible for her to drive at night, when her shift took place. That left her uninsured until January 2019, when Virginia expanded Medicaid. By then her cataracts had grown large enough to require surgery. She had them removed within months of getting Medicaid and now can again see well enough to drive after dark, allowing her to volunteer and attend community meetings, activities she said were vital to her well being. "It was stressful, yes it was," Ms. Jackson, who is black, said of not having health insurance. "It was very frightening, not being able to see." The slippage has especially hurt children a recent analysis of new census data by The Times found that the number of children without insurance rose by more than 400,000 between 2016 and 2018. Now, as the coronavirus sweeps through the country, many state officials are relying on the Affordable Care Act to provide health coverage for residents who have none. On Friday, California became one of the latest states to set up a special enrollment period so people can sign up for insurance on their state run marketplaces, and the Trump administration is considering reopening enrollment in the larger federal marketplace, which serves most states, for a limited period. For many Americans, the "Affordable" part of the Affordable Care Act has seemed like an empty promise, as premiums, deductibles and other out of pocket costs continue to be an extraordinary burden on millions of households. But the law has made health care far more affordable in a number of less conspicuous ways. For Marque Dailey of Dallas, 35, who has multiple sclerosis, the Affordable Care Act was the only way to get private insurance. Before the law, insurance companies were allowed to deny coverage to people like him who had expensive medical conditions, or to charge such a high price that many could not afford the premiums. About half of all Americans had such pre existing conditions, including high blood pressure or lung disease, that resulted in their being denied or potentially priced out of coverage, according to one federal estimate. After the law passed forcing insurers to accept anyone without raising premiums, Mr. Dailey was able to enroll in a Blue Cross plan in Texas, which covered his medical care that at times approached 200,000 a year. His income was low enough that he also qualified for generous federal subsidies under the law that kept his monthly premiums at no more than 235, and his out of pocket costs capped at around 1,000 a year. The law has also played an important role in keeping care affordable for the 160 million Americans who get coverage from an employer, including by requiring those plans to cover the children of beneficiaries until age 26. Before the law, employer provided plans often set strict limits on what they would pay toward medical bills during a single year and over a lifetime. An estimated 105 million Americans had some sort of lifetime cap before the passage of the health care law. The second study used an even stronger methodology. Employees at the Treasury Department used tax records to identify Americans who were uninsured, then mailed a letter about health insurance options to a random sample of them. Researchers found less insurance and more deaths in the group that didn't get a letter. Because that study cut across every state, and because the experiment used a random method of selection, several scholars who had previously been unsure say they are now convinced that the law's expanded health insurance coverage is making a meaningful difference in physical health. The new mortality studies measure only death rates. They don't track the medical care or the health status of the people in the studies, so it's still unclear precisely how that health insurance matters. After all, even people without health insurance can go to an emergency room and receive treatment for their most acute problems. And existing networks of free and low cost clinics have always helped some uninsured people get less urgent care. One theory is that health insurance makes it easier to get prescription drugs, particularly drugs shown to reduce deaths from cardiac problems. A study from Dr. Somers and his co authors found that Medicaid expansion led to big increases in prescriptions for this class of drugs. Another theory is that, even though uninsured people can use the emergency room, insured people are still quicker to seek care there. The difference between waiting hours or days to seek care after showing signs of a heart attack or a stroke could be the difference between life and death. Jacob Goldin, an associate professor at Stanford, who was one of the authors of the Treasury paper, said he had been surprised by how quickly his paper showed changes from health insurance. They started being able to measure reductions in deaths after just one year, he said, a timeline that may be explained by the emergency room theory. The health care industry supported the law a decade ago because it offered them tens of millions more in paying customers. "These guys supported the A.C.A. for very good and very self interested reasons," said Dr. Len Nichols, a health policy professor at George Mason University. In the early years though, it wasn't clear that the insurance market created under the law was going to work. Healthcare.gov, the federal online marketplace, got off to a shaky start, with technical issues keeping people from enrolling in plans. Insurers also had difficulty pricing their plans. After decades of carefully selecting whom they insured, insurers were forced to operate under the new requirement to offer anyone a policy, even if that person had a potentially expensive medical condition, without charging a much higher price. Many insurers suffered heavy losses at first. Some of the biggest players in health insurance abandoned the market. UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation's largest insurers, bowed out in 2016, citing losses of 1 billion. Lawmakers worried about so called bare counties, places where insurers would simply refuse to offer coverage because there weren't enough customers or prices were too high to stay in business. But while the learning curve was steep, insurers discovered how to prosper. They raised premiums enough to make money and narrowed their networks of hospitals and doctors to reduce their costs. Insurers also latched on to the government's Medicaid program, which is run by private insurers in most states. "The individual market remains profitable and stable," concluded a recent analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which tracked the financial performance of the insurers. Companies, which were once spending nearly every cent of each dollar they collected in premiums on medical claims, were now taking in enough money to have 25 cents left over in the most recent period of 2019. When the Affordable Care Act's architects think about what they wish they had done differently, they often focus on one issue: the deductibles. Most health insurance plans have deductibles, an amount that patients need to pay before coverage kicks in. The Affordable Care Act, however, allowed insurers to set deductibles significantly higher than those typically faced by Americans who get health insurance at work. Individual deductibles can go as high as 8,150. For families, the limit rises to 16,300. The White House and Congress wrote those amounts into the law when they drafted it in order to keep the law's overall price tag down. Looking back, they question that decision. "Because of my experience of being uninsured, I know that my coverage has value even if I never use it," said Elizabeth Meyer, a contract lawyer in Chicago who has purchased health law coverage since the program began in 2014. "At the same time, any health care I want is still me paying for it on my own." Ms. Meyer currently buys a health plan with a 6,650 deductible. She says she now goes to the doctor less than when she was uninsured, because she can no longer ask for a discount her providers typically gave to patients lacking coverage. Jeremy Kridel, 43, lives in the Baltimore suburbs and buys coverage for his family through the health law marketplace. A federal subsidy brings the premium he pays down to 275 a month, but the plan's 13,000 family deductible means that the family frequently skips recommended care, including for his son who has autism. "I feel guilty," Mr. Kridel, a rabbi, said. "My wife has a lot of damage to cartilage in her knees, but goes as long as she can between sets of shots even when her knees hurt. We know we're just kicking the can down the road, but we couldn't afford surgery right now." Some of those who worked on the Affordable Care Act say they saw this issue coming, as they were writing the legislation. "There was an acknowledgment at the time that affordability was likely going to be a concern," said Frederick Isai, who worked on the law as a congressional staffer in 2009 and 2010. He is now the executive director of the nonprofit Families USA, which advocates affordable health coverage. Some expected that the health law's subsidies would be enhanced over time, as legislators often return to make tweaks and adjustments to major legislation. Instead, Republican legislation focused primarily on attempting to repeal the health law and replace it with something else. The health law's architects say there is an easy way to address the health law's large deductibles: pass new legislation that puts more money toward subsidies. Right now, the Affordable Care Act offers premium subsidies to Americans who earn up to 400 percent of the poverty line, about 48,500 for an individual and 100,000 for a family of four. Subsidies for deductibles go up only to 250 percent of the poverty line, meaning that families like Mr. Kridel's are excluded. But more generous subsidies require more government spending at a time when deficits are already ballooning. So there's another, harder, way to fix the Affordable Care Act deductible problem: rein in America's high medical prices. If each doctor visit and hospital stay costs less, then insurers would be able to cover more without asking patients to pay a large share.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Across the country, as hospitals confront a harrowing surge in coronavirus cases, they are also beginning to report shortages of critical medications especially those desperately needed to ease the disease's assault on patients' respiratory systems. The most commonly reported shortages include drugs that are used to keep patients' airways open, antibiotics, antivirals and sedatives. They are all part of a standard cocktail of medications that help patients on mechanical ventilators, control secondary lung infections, reduce fevers, manage pain and resuscitate those who go into cardiac arrest. Demand for these drugs significantly increased in March as the pandemic took hold in the United States. Orders for antibiotics like azithromycin and antiviral medicines like ribavirin nearly tripled. Medicines used for sedation and pain management, including fentanyl, midazolam and propofol, increased by 100 percent, 70 percent and 60 percent respectively. Demand for albuterol, a common asthma inhaler medication, has also risen significantly, given its importance in easing the breathing of patients with severe infection. At the same time, the rate at which these prescriptions are filled and shipped to hospitals has dropped considerably, down by half to more than three fourths in the last month, according to data collected by Premier Inc., a health care improvement company that provides group purchasing, analytics, consulting and various services to more than 4,000 hospitals and approximately 175,000 other providers in the United States. "Just like we're seeing shortages of other materials, like masks and ventilators, medications are right there in the mix of things that we don't always have enough of on hand," said Erin Fox, a drug shortage expert at the University of Utah. "So we were not prepared for this kind of surge." Hospitals in particular are feeling the pinch in supplies. In a recent survey of 377 hospitals and 100 long term care, home infusion and retail pharmacies, Premier found that drug shortages were pervasive in acute care settings, where 70 percent of respondents reported at least one shortage for coronavirus drugs. Among long term care facilities, home care settings and retail pharmacies, 48 percent reported shortages. Demand is even higher in coronavirus hot spots like New York, California and Washington. A senior doctor at one large New York City hospital said the institution, like some others, was running low on the drugs they commonly use to induce anesthesia and then paralysis in patients on ventilators. "We're running out of all the drugs," the doctor said. "So we're on second line, third line, fourth line medications. We've run out of the ability to monitor these people the way we conventionally monitor them. So we're just sort of flying blind a little bit." Doctors at several hospitals have been using a combination of midazolam, hydromorphone and ketamine. Under normal circumstances, they would use propofol and fentanyl because they are short acting, the doctor said. The others have a longer duration and that makes it harder for patients to emerge from sedation later. And with the peak in cases and resource use still projected to be several weeks away, the run on these drugs only highlights weaknesses in the current supply chain. "The pharmaceutical supply chain is one of just in time production," Ms. Fox said. "Manufacturers tend to make just enough product, and they forecast out their manufacturing cycles based on how much they sold in the past. Nobody expects to sell, you know, 10 times the amount of something, and so nobody has that on hand." Even before this crisis emerged, the Food and Drug Administration noted shortages of well over 100 drugs in the United States. And factory shutdowns in China, India and other countries may have exacerbated the shortage of some ingredients and generic drugs during the pandemic. "Out of 21 antibiotics that would be critical for treating secondary infections in Covid 19 patients, 18 antibiotics have greater than 80 percent of their supply coming out of either China, India or Italy all places that have had production disruptions," said Stephen Schondelmeyer, a professor at the University of Minnesota's College of Pharmacy who is a co leader of the Resilient Drug Supply Project, which aims to provide a detailed map of the supply chain for important drugs used in the United States. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. Another factor that can affect the global supply chain is when countries ban export of certain drugs, either because of trade wars or because they want to ensure supply for their own citizens, Mr. Schondelmeyer said. India, for example, has put a ban on the exports of 26 drugs and drug ingredients, including hydroxychloroquine, an old malaria drug that is being used around the world as a potential treatment. Increasing production is also dependent on quotas for controlled substances and ingredients that are set by the Drug Enforcement Administration. On Tuesday, the American Hospital Association and four other medical groups sent a letter requesting that the D.E.A. temporarily increase quotas to add flexibility for domestic manufacturing, but the agency has not done so yet, Ms. Fox said. Hospitals have to start looking for alternatives that work almost as well as the current standard treatments. "Many places are already shifting to using medications that we tried to avoid," said Dr. Lewis J. Kaplan, president of the Society of Critical Care Medicine, a nonprofit involved in research and advocacy for patients. "We had cut down tremendously on the amount of benzodiazepines, which you may be familiar with as Ativan or Valium, because they may induce delirium, especially in people who are having trouble sleeping. But we're now using those medications where our standard sedatives are running low." Some hospitals are purchasing alternative antibiotics, crushing up pills instead of using IV fluids, and reducing nonessential surgeries and treatments to prioritize patients with coronavirus infections, Dr. Kaplan said. "There isn't a hard and fast rule," he said. "It is, what do I have? Can this work for this patient? And do I need to ask someone about whether or not the drugs that are mixing are reasonably safe?" One change that has further strained drug supplies is a switch to buying albuterol inhalers for individual patients rather than using nebulizers, a shift that doctors hope will decrease the spread of the virus through the air. But that move heightens the problem of depleting supplies for people with asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, who routinely rely on the inhalers and have been encouraged to buy 90 day supplies of their medicine. "In general, that's good advice up front," Mr. Schondelmeyer said. "But with drugs like albuterol, we're not going to be able to sustain that because we're already on short supply." Two pharmaceutical companies that make albuterol inhalers GlaxoSmithKline and Teva Pharmaceuticals have said they are facing unprecedented demand but did not have any supply chain issues at the moment. Kelley Dougherty, a spokeswoman for Teva Pharmaceuticals, said the company was "producing as much albuterol as possible as quickly as possible." Pfizer, which makes several versions of the sedative midazolam, also noted that its distribution network continues to operate without significant disruption. "For many of these critical medicines, we have ample supply. For some, the unprecedented surge in demand for these products is limiting our ability to fully satisfy customer orders in the short term," said Kimberly Bencker, a spokeswoman for the company. Pharmacy benefit managers, such as CVS Caremark, are also trying to balance the growing interest in prescription medications for the coronavirus response with the needs of patients who take them for chronic conditions like asthma, H.I.V., rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. "Our goal is to limit stockpiling of medication that could result in future shortages and gaps in care," said Mike DeAngelis, a spokesman for CVS. Retail pharmacies are following state dispensing guidelines, and limiting the dispensing for coronavirus treatments to a 10 day supply in states without set recommendations, Mr. DeAngelis said. People who already take these medications for approved uses will be able to bypass any new quantity limits agreed to by their plan sponsor. Experts still advise that patients avoid hoarding medications because the regional shortages could soon turn into national shortages as coronavirus infections continue to spread. While the pandemic has sparked innovations in mechanical breathing machines, and some medical supplies can be sourced from the national stockpile, drugs are not as easy to replace. "If you get past a peak in a certain area, you could move resources like ventilators somewhere else, but drugs are consumables," Mr. Schondelmeyer said. "They're gone once they're used." Transparency in the available supply chain data could help prevent drug shortages in the future. Pharmaceutical companies, wholesalers and suppliers typically know where the raw materials for drugs are sourced and which countries manufacture which parts of a drug, as well as which factories could take over if production needs to be scaled up. But each company keeps this data confidential, and even the F.D.A. does not have a systematic way to look across drug production and supply chain capabilities. "We need to make this at least somewhat more transparent and begin to look for ways to plan for and identify where we have vulnerabilities and where we should be changing policy," Mr. Schondelmeyer said. "Right now, we're trying to build that bridge as we're walking across it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
SAN FRANCISCO Hackers are discovering that it is far more profitable to hold your data hostage than it is to steal it. A decade old internet scourge called ransomware went mainstream on Friday when cybercriminals seized control of computers around the world, from the delivery giant FedEx in the United States to Britain's public health system, universities in China and even Russia's powerful Interior Ministry. On Saturday, investigators could not yet tell who was behind the attack as security experts around the world raced to contain it. Across Asia, several universities and organizations said they had been affected. Renault, the European automaker, said on Saturday that its French operations had been hit, while one of its plants in Slovakia was shut down because of the digital outbreak. Computer users in the United States so far were less affected after a 22 year old British cybersecurity researcher inadvertently stopped the ransomware attack from spreading more widely. Ransomware is nothing new. For years, there have been stories of individuals or companies horrified that they have been locked out of their computers and that the only way back in is to pay a ransom to someone, somewhere who has managed to take control. But computer criminals are discovering that ransomware is the most effective way to make money in the shortest amount of time. The advent of new tools that wrap victims' data with tough encryption technology, hard to trace digital currency like Bitcoin, and even online sites that offer to do the data ransoming in return for a piece of the action, have made this method of cybertheft much easier. "You don't even need to have any skills to do this anymore," said Jason Rebholz, a senior director at the Crypsis Group who has helped dozens of victims of ransomware. Ransomware has allowed people who are not computer experts to become computer thieves. It used to be that hackers had to be a little creative and skilled to get money out of people. There were fake antivirus scams that promised to clean up your computer for a fee. Sometimes they resorted to so called Trojan horse programs that lay in wait on e commerce or banking sites, ready to get your credit card numbers. And there was old fashioned hacking, grabbing all sorts of personal credentials that could be sold on the so called dark web. Four years ago, investigators were pursuing roughly 16 variants of ransomware that were predominantly being used on victims in Eastern Europe. Now there are dozens of types of ransomware, and they are supported by an entire underground industry. And catching and convicting the people responsible is difficult. Friday's attacks were a powerful escalation of earlier, much smaller episodes. Hackers exploited a vulnerability in Microsoft servers that was first discovered by the National Security Agency and then leaked online by a group of unknown hackers last month. It allowed the ransomware to spread from server to server, encrypting as many files as it could, and holding more than 70,000 organizations victim in the process. As of Saturday afternoon, several Bitcoin accounts associated with the ransomware had received the equivalent of 33,000, according to Elliptic, a firm that tracks online financial transactions involving virtual currencies. And the number could grow. The attack should not have been a shock. As data has become our lifeline, cybercriminals have elevated their game and their demands. Just five years ago, attackers in Eastern Europe were locking up victims' computers and demanding ransoms of 100 to 400 to unlock them. Back then, the idea of paying a criminal on the internet was still foreign, and most important, technicians and security experts could find ways to unlock computers without caving on the ransom. In 2012, security experts estimated that less than 3 percent of victims paid. These days, it's a 50 50 split between those who pay the ransom and those who refuse, either because they have adequate backups, are philosophically opposed or simply cannot afford to pay. Bitcoin has given cybercriminals an easy and anonymous way to get their profits, and it is much harder to track than credit cards or wire transfers. There is even now a concept of "ransomware as a service" a play on the Silicon Valley jargon "software as a service," which describes the delivery of software over the internet. Now anyone can visit a web page, generate a ransomware file with the click of a mouse, encrypt someone's systems and demand a ransom to restore access to the files. If the victim pays, the ransomware provider takes a cut of the payment. Ransomware criminals also have customer service lines that victims can call to get help paying a ransom. There are even live chat options. And while some amateur ransomware attackers may not restore victims' data once the ransom is paid, the more professional outfits worry that if they do not decrypt a victim's data, their reputation and "business" may suffer as a result, Mr. Rebholz said. The most notorious of these attackers, a group called SamSam after its type of ransomware, is known for demanding the highest ransoms, 25 to 30 Bitcoin. But they reliably decrypt a victim's data after being paid. Most small to medium size businesses pay the ransoms because they do not have backups of their data and feel they have no other option, Mr. Rebholz said. "That data is the bloodline of their business in many cases," he said. "They can either go out of business or pay the ransom." Cybercriminals have also found a soft target in universities, which usually have more open systems that allow for the free flow of information. More recently, they have found a niche in health care, where ransomware attacks take on a new level of urgency as doctors and emergency rooms in Britain discovered on Friday when hackers blocked their access to patient records, and patients had to be turned away. Imperial College Healthcare in London, for example, was hit with ransomware 19 times over 12 months, according to freedom of information requests submitted by SentinelOne, a security firm. In the United States, the number of reported ransomware attacks rose fourfold between 2015 and 2016, as did the ransom payments to hackers, to 1 billion, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Last year hospitals in California, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland and Texas were hit with ransomware. And in February, a Los Angeles hospital paid 17,000 to hackers to regain access to its computers. On Wednesday, Dr. Krishna Chinthapalli published an article in the British Medical Journal warning that such an attack was imminent. Dr. Chinthapalli cited a report that one out of every three British National Health Service trusts, the health care providers that serve specific geographic regions or offer specialized mental health or ambulance services, were hit by ransomware last year. "In the past three months, health care providers have been preparing themselves for these attacks, either with Bitcoin at the ready or with professional incident responders," said Chris Camacho, the chief strategy officer at Flashpoint, a New York company that tracked Friday's attacks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Seven months after abruptly abandoning its longtime TriBeCa home, a small but prestigious Off Broadway theater said on Monday that it was moving back. Soho Rep had pulled out of its rented Walker Street theater, where it had been performing for 25 years, in September, saying that it unexpectedly discovered that it had for years been violating previously unknown restrictions on the building's use and that it would be too costly to resolve the zoning issues. That dramatic move got the attention of City Hall, where officials reluctant to see a performing arts organization vacate Lower Manhattan said they would help the company overcome the bureaucratic hurdles to legally using the space. "It would have been a travesty if Soho Rep would have had to leave that location after 25 years," said Julie Menin, commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Media and Entertainment. "They are a downtown beacon, and to have them believe they have to close because they can't address city rules and regulations that's something we never want to see." Ms. Menin persuaded the city's buildings commissioner, Rick Chandler, to visit the theater, and together they resolved the compliance issues. The theater company needs to do some renovations among other issues, upgrade the sprinkler system and should then be able to move back next spring.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
A quarter of a billion years ago nearly all life on Earth vanished in a cataclysmic event known today as "the Great Dying." This small skull with serrated teeth belongs to an ancient reptile that survived the extermination and colonized a nearly empty world. Its relatives evolved into the dinosaurs, crocodiles and birds that dominated the land for the next 180 million years. Called Teyujagua paradoxa, or "fierce lizard," this species was recently discovered in Rio Grande do Sul, in southern Brazil. The researchers who unearthed the skull published their findings Friday in the journal Scientific Reports.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
AMSTERDAM "Oh, this is a new opera?" a friend said as we made our way to the Dutch National Opera here for the European premiere of John Adams's "Girls of the Golden West" on Thursday night. "I thought it was Puccini." It's an easy mistake: Mr. Adams's opera, with a libretto by Peter Sellars, playfully nods to "La Fanciulla del West," or "The Girl of the Golden West." And, like Puccini's treacly western, it takes place in the heart of the California Gold Rush. But the similarities end there. "Girls" is an outright rejection of the romantic West of Puccini, of the hubris of Manifest Destiny, of all the rosy myths you've heard about the Golden State. It is revisionist or, rather, corrective American history, a tale of men turning feral as they swarmed California like an invasive species. In many ways, it is also an opera about the present. "Girls," which had its premiere at San Francisco Opera a year after President Trump was elected, depicts California circa 1850 as a true melting pot: not just forty niners, but also Mexican aristocracy, Native Americans, former slaves and immigrants from China and South America. And when white men's fortunes took a turn for the worse, you can guess who bore the brunt. Miners down on their luck force themselves on women, lynch for sport and spend one long, frightening Fourth of July hunting as many people of color as possible. These horrors aren't imagined; Mr. Sellars assembled the libretto from historical texts, including journals, poems and folk song lyrics of the time. For anyone worried about today, this opera seems to say, don't be surprised: America has always been this way. If only "Girls of the Golden West" lived up to its meaning to the American moment, or to the promise of its eminent creators. Its premiere, in 2017, received mixed reviews. I was torn, attracted to the score and singers especially the soprano Julia Bullock and the mezzo soprano J'Nai Bridges, two "Girls" of the title but unable to get over a libretto that was sleepy, dramatically awkward and overly long. Clearly aware of the opera's problems, Mr. Adams spent last summer revising the score before it traveled to the Dutch National Opera with the same production, cast and conductor, Grant Gershon, this week. (A third stop is planned for a future season of the Dallas Opera.) The first act got much needed trims, and a new ending that links it to the opening of Act II. (Previously, the two acts felt as independent as a double bill.) Mr. Adams also cut the "Spider Dance," an amusing diversion that should have an afterlife as a short orchestral work, like "The Chairman Dances" from his "Nixon in China." In San Francisco, Act I ended quietly, almost unexpectedly. Now, a tense finale heightens the opera's politics. The miners celebrate the hanging of a Native American while minorities huddle indoors for safety. It's a powerful image: Of the opera's seven principal singers, five are people of color. Yet the white men are the only ones with weapons. But don't expect any more improvements to the libretto. It remains the opera's glaring fault, a confusing assemblage of found text that keeps characters from truly interacting as dialogues become little more than simultaneous monologues. Mr. Sellars used a similar approach in his and Mr. Adams's 2005 opera "Doctor Atomic"; it wasn't entirely successful in that work, either, but it benefited from a streamlined story you won't find in "Girls" until Act II. Mr. Sellars's solution, with a slightly altered staging in this revival, is to put more bodies onstage, to have characters spend less time addressing the audience and more time interacting with one another. But by turning to naturalism, he undercuts his original, still present concept of a California history pageant a la Brecht especially because the Brechtian set design, by David Gropman, is nearly unchanged. Backstage workings are clearly visible; period costumes are juxtaposed with red Solo cups inside a bar with the appearance of a roadside dive somewhere in the Sierra Nevada. Close listeners may also hear some Brecht in Mr. Adams's score, played with exactitude and enthusiasm by the Rotterdam Philharmonic. It has the propulsive momentum that runs through most of his music, and playful touches of Americana like galloping rhythms and expansive fifths. But, with an accordion and a delightful taste of the lowbrow, Mr. Adams also suggests Weill and Brecht's "Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny," a similar opera about money, rowdiness and savagery. Mr. Adams has written some of the most sophisticated and stirring choral music in modern opera; here, he most often saves it for new settings of old folk songs that take a chilling turn from boisterous to sinister. The Dutch National Opera chorus, which sang with unfortunate imprecision all night, may still be settling into these passages. (It's not promising, though, that it was also limp and lazy in acting out Mr. Sellars's staging and John Heginbotham's choreography.) But elsewhere, this score brings out some of the most inspired performances you'll find among its cast of young stars. The tenor Paul Appleby, smooth and tender in fare like Mozart, has immersed himself in the role of Joe Cannon with a Missouri twang and desperate fury. (Genuinely tender is the baritone Elliot Madore, as Ramon.) Ryan McKinny's bass baritone is terrifyingly masculine, and Hye Jung Lee, as the sympathetic prostitute Ah Sing, has an enchantingly delicate soprano voice capable of shocking power. The most bitter music of the evening is reserved for the bass baritone Davone Tines, as the doomed former slave Ned Peters. With a penetrating bite, he delivers the setting of text from Frederick Douglass's "What to a Slave Is the Fourth of July?": "The Fourth of July is yours not mine," Mr. Tines sings before being walked offstage with a gun to his back. Ms. Bridges's Josefa, a Mexican woman who receives a death sentence from a kangaroo court, is fiercely dignified, and entrancing in the lullaby "Ven esta noche amado, querido."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Nearly 40 years after the world was jolted by the birth of the first test tube baby, a new revolution in reproductive technology is on the horizon and it promises to be far more controversial than in vitro fertilization ever was. Within a decade or two, researchers say, scientists will likely be able to create a baby from human skin cells that have been coaxed to grow into eggs and sperm and used to create embryos to implant in a womb. The process, in vitro gametogenesis, or I.V.G., so far has been used only in mice. But stem cell biologists say it is only a matter of time before it could be used in human reproduction opening up mind boggling possibilities. With I.V.G., two men could have a baby that was biologically related to both of them, by using skin cells from one to make an egg that would be fertilized by sperm from the other. Women with fertility problems could have eggs made from their skin cells, rather than go through the lengthy and expensive process of stimulating their ovaries to retrieve their eggs. "It gives me an unsettled feeling because we don't know what this could lead to," said Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell researcher at the University of California, Davis. "You can imagine one man providing both the eggs and the sperm, almost like cloning himself. You can imagine that eggs becoming so easily available would lead to designer babies." Some scientists even talk about what they call the "Brad Pitt scenario" when someone retrieves a celebrity's skin cells from a hotel bed or bathtub. Or a baby might have what one law professor called "multiplex" parents. "There are groups out there that want to reproduce among themselves," said Sonia Suter, a George Washington University law professor who began writing about I.V.G. even before it had been achieved in mice. "You could have two pairs who would each create an embryo, and then take an egg from one embryo and sperm from the other, and create a baby with four parents." Three prominent academics in medicine and law sounded an alarm about the possible consequences in a paper published this year. "I.V.G. may raise the specter of 'embryo farming' on a scale currently unimagined, which might exacerbate concerns about the devaluation of human life," Dr. Eli Y. Adashi, a medical science professor at Brown; I. Glenn Cohen, a Harvard Law School professor; and Dr. George Q. Daley, dean of Harvard Medical School, wrote in the journal Science Translational Medicine. Still, how soon I.V.G. might become a reality in human reproduction is open to debate. "I wouldn't be surprised if it was five years, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was 25 years," said Jeanne Loring, a researcher at the Scripps Research Institute, who, with the San Diego Zoo, hopes to use I.V.G. to increase the population of the nearly extinct northern white rhino. Dr. Loring said that when she discussed I.V.G. with colleagues who initially said it would never be used with humans, their skepticism often melted away as the talk continued. But not everyone is convinced that I.V.G. will ever become a regularly used process in human reproduction even if the ethical issues are resolved. "People are a lot more complicated than mice," said Susan Solomon, chief executive of the New York Stem Cell Foundation. "And we've often seen that the closer you get to something, the more obstacles you discover." I.V.G. is not the first reproductive technology to challenge the basic paradigm of baby making. Back when in vitro fertilization was beginning, many people were horrified by the idea of creating babies outside the human body. And yet, I.V.F. and related procedures have become so commonplace that they now account for about 70,000, or almost 2 percent, of the babies born in the United States each year. According to the latest estimate, there have been more than 6.5 million babies born worldwide through I.V.F. and related technologies. Of course, even I.V.F. is not universally accepted. The Catholic Church remains firm in its opposition to in vitro fertilization, in part because it so often leads to the creation of extra embryos that are frozen or discarded. Then, the same kind of signaling factors that occur in nature are used to guide those stem cells to become eggs or sperm. (Cells taken from women could be made to produce sperm, the researchers say, but the sperm, lacking a Y chromosome, would produce only female babies.) Last year, researchers in Japan, led by Katsuhiko Hayashi, used I.V.G. to make viable eggs from the skin cells of adult female mice, and produced embryos that were implanted into female mice, who then gave birth to healthy babies. The process strikes some people as inherently repugnant. "There is a yuck factor here," said Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist at New York University. "It strikes many people as intuitively yucky to have three parents, or to make a baby without starting from an egg and sperm. But then again, it used to be that people thought blood transfusions were yucky, or putting pig valves in human hearts." Whatever the social norms, there are questions about the wisdom of tinkering with basic biological processes. And there is general agreement that reproductive technology is progressing faster than consideration of the legal and ethical questions it raises. "We have come to realize that scientific developments are outpacing our ability to think them through," Dr. Adashi said. "It's a challenge for which we are not fully prepared. It would be good to be having the conversation before we are actually confronting the challenges." Some bioethicists take the position that while research on early stages of human life can deepen the understanding of our genetic code, tinkering with biological mechanisms that have evolved over thousands of years is inherently wrongheaded. "Basic research is paramount, but it's not clear that we need new methods for creating viable embryos," said David Lemberg, a bioethicist at National University in California. "Attempting to apply what we've learned to create a human zygote is dangerous, because we have no idea what we're doing, we have no idea what the outcomes are going to be."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
On a recent Monday afternoon, Sarah Dunnavant, a 27 year old actress and guide with the tour company Museum Hack, gathered her group of eight at the entrance of the Art Institute of Chicago, promising to reveal the "salacious, sexy and scary" parts of the museum in an animated two hour "un highlights" trip through the museum. She led the way to American folk art whirligigs, a fake Caravaggio and the arsenic laced green paint favored by Vincent van Gogh. She passed out candy to keep spirits from flagging, discussed Beyonce's references in video and photography to the Yoruba goddess Osun in the African gallery, and photographed the group posing as the characters in Georges Seurat's "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte" in front of the pointillist masterpiece. "If you were expecting to stroke your chin and consider the brush strokes of the great masters," she said, stroking her chin, and breaking out into laughter, "this is not that tour." This tour, like a spate of others that are newly redefining museum going, aims to reinvigorate a tourism staple: the must see museum. Museum Hack's approach is to use humor, pop cultural references and games to make the trip more fun and less dutiful. "We're obsessed with attracting a whole new audience," said Nick Gray, who founded Museum Hack in 2013. "Museums aren't competing with other museums," he added. "They're competing with Netflix, Facebook and iPhones." It's not that museums haven't been innovative on their own in efforts to engage in the age of distraction. The Neon Museum in Las Vegas, devoted to castoff signage from around the Las Vegas Strip, recently introduced Brilliant, a sound and light show that animates the nonfunctioning signs. The Toledo Museum of Art in Toledo, Ohio, conducts flashlight tours of its galleries periodically throughout the year. In St. Petersburg, Fla., the Dali Museum offers a virtual reality tour of Salvador Dali's 1935 painting "Archeological Reminiscence of Millet's Angelus" that puts viewers in the Surrealist landscape, including atop its human shaped towers. Others offer tours that filter their collections through special lenses. In Sarasota, Fla., the Ringling Museum of Art recently introduced tours led by a drag queen. The Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg offers the Mikinak Keya Spirit Tour, featuring indigenous guides that use drumming, singing and ceremony to introduce the seven sacred teachings of First Nations peoples. But third party tour companies, especially those working in fine art museums, bring more external filters, from the comedic to the academic. Their tours range from special themes, like feminism or gay culture, to museum highlights designed for time pressed or attention deficit travelers. "You take a tour like ours to break down what might otherwise be a million piece collection like at the Louvre or the Met," said Stephen Oddo, a co founder of Take Walks, a walking tour company that operates in New York and San Francisco as well as eight European cities, including London and Rome. "You could go with a guidebook or an article, but that's very passive. With historic places, it's always better to get context and richness delivered in person by someone who specializes in it." Mr. Oddo and his co founder, Jason Spiehler, met while working in Rome, where Mr. Spiehler was a guiding tours at the Vatican. Together they founded Walks in Italy in 2010; in other countries the company now goes by Take Walks. The company offers tours like the Louvre in Paris at closing time, when traffic around the "Mona Lisa" dies down, and a full day trip to three sites by the architect Antoni Gaudi, two of them museums, in Barcelona. "In the last 10 years, we've seen a shift from larger group, checklist style, in a bus itineraries to smaller tours with guides that have a specific knowledge on a subject and can speak to that nuance," Mr. Oddo said of the Take Walks tours, which are designed for 12 to 15 people. (Most museum itineraries run two to four hours and range 42 to 107; register at takewalks.com.) For those seeking a more intimate excursion with an expert, Context Travel recruits archaeologists, art historians and professors to lead its tours, limited to six guests. In 2017, the private equity firm Active Partners invested over 5 million in the company, founded in 2003 by Lani Bevacqua and Paul Bennett, with the goal of expanding the company's reach. It now operates in nearly 50 cities. The company's tours are not exclusively museum based, but where they are, "themes range from connoisseurship, the currency of art, art theft (alleged or not), and generally the ostentatiously wealthy and conspicuous consumption," wrote Nick Stropko, a marketing associate at Context, in an email. In London, the British Museum tour explores the ethics surrounding the Elgin marbles sculptures, originally taken from Greece, which has requested their return. In Madrid, the Spanish Civil War tour visits historic sites related to the war, then goes to the Reina Sofia Museum to explore artists' reactions to it, including Pablo Picasso's "Guernica." Context tours cost between 60 and 130 a person on contexttravel.com. Covering more salacious ground, Shady Ladies Tours, which originated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 2016, focuses on the courtesans, mistresses and beauties commonly depicted in art ( 59 at shadyladiestours.com). The company has since expanded to cover "nasty women," or women of power from ancient Egypt to American suffragists, and fashion and beauty across cultures, including scarification and nose rings, at the Met and other museums in Boston and Philadelphia ( 28 to 54). "It's a less leaden way of looking at art," said Andrew Lear, the founder of Shady Ladies, an art historian and classicist who has taught at New York University. He also runs the gay travel company runs Oscar Wilde Tours. "We are taught to look at art in an almost disorienting and intimidating way, that art is about distinct styles and theoretical concerns," he added. "I don't think that's a great place to start. People like to know context, and, of course, this is a fun side of context." Museum Hack, in contrast, was founded by Mr. Gray who had no background in art or history, but said he fell in love with the wonders of the Metropolitan Museum, where themed tours now range from the "un highlights" to an "unofficial and definitely unlicensed boy wizard tour." Now in five cities, Museum Hack tends to hire actors, comics and engaging teachers to guide its tours including feminist tours at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, the Getty Center in Los Angeles and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. A drag queen guides another itinerary at the Art Institute of Chicago. Most tours cost 49 to 69 a person; participants must sign up in advance at museumhack.com. "We hire first for storytelling ability and prioritize that above art history knowledge or expertise," said Mr. Gray, who calls the Met his "third space" and aims to make infrequent museum visitors comfortable in places they might find intimidating. "We think that audiences have to be entertained before they can be educated," he added.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Tony Tanner as the ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev in the 1998 New York production of "Charlatan," a one man show he wrote. Tony Tanner, a versatile actor, writer and director whose biggest Broadway success was directing "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" in 1982, a production that helped make that musical a staple of American community and high school theater, died on Sept. 8 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 88. His husband and only immediate survivor, Henry Selvitelle, confirmed the death but did not specify the cause. "Joseph" was perhaps the high point of Mr. Tanner's respectable if not flashy career in both his native Britain and the United States. A colorful telling of the biblical story of Joseph, it had started out in the 1960s as a school project by Andrew Lloyd Webber (music) and Tim Rice (lyrics) and had been performed in Britain and the United States over the years. But Mr. Tanner's Broadway version elevated its profile considerably. The show started Off Broadway at the Entermedia Theater in the East Village before transferring to Broadway, where it ran for more than a year and a half and earned Mr. Tanner two Tony Award nominations, for best direction of a musical and best choreography. Its most lasting effect vital to high school and college theater departments everywhere was its casting a woman in the part of the Narrator, a role as important as that of Joseph himself; it's now standard practice. Most, though not all, previous productions had made the Narrator male. Mr. Tanner, in an essay on his website, said that that had originally been his concept as well. "Someone did it in Brooklyn with a Black man playing the Narrator, so that's what we looked for," he wrote. "Believe it or not, could not find the right one in New York City. 'Bring in the girls,' I said." The role went to Laurie Beechman, who would in 1984, as a replacement player, step into another Lloyd Webber musical, "Cats," in the role of Grizabella. (The character sings the famous "Memory.") Her work in "Joseph" earned her a Tony nomination for best featured actress in a musical. "We found Laurie Beechman with the soaring, searing voice and we had it made," Mr. Tanner wrote. Despite claims to the contrary, Mr. Tanner maintained that casting a woman was his idea. "Later the producer of the show claimed the idea, since adopted by all subsequent producers of the show, was his," he wrote, without naming the person (the show had several producers). "It wasn't." Anthony Roy Tanner was born on July 27, 1932, in Hillingdon, England, west of London, to Herbert and Frances Tanner. He attended the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art in London. In the 1950s, he worked in British repertory companies, playing, as he put it, "Saint Peter, Jimmy Porter in 'Look Back in Anger,' a cigar smoking American Air Force colonel (at age 21) and the front end of a cow in 'Jack and the Beanstalk,'" among other roles. In the early 1960s, he replaced Anthony Newley as Littlechap, Mr. Newley's signature role, in "Stop the World, I Want to Get Off" at the Queen's Theater in London. He also played the part in a 1966 film version. A chance to replace Tommy Steele in the lead role of the 1965 Broadway production of "Half a Sixpence" took Mr. Tanner to the United States. His next turn on Broadway was in 1973, in a leading role in "No Sex Please, We're British," a play that didn't last long but gave him a chance to use everything in his comedic bag of tricks. "Tony Tanner," Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times, "in the leading role of the absurd friend, pulls faces with vigor, whines in a nasal, distorted and effeminate cockney, has a funny trick trying to get from a chair while loaded down with a pile of books, and jumps through windows with a pleasing disregard for personal safety." Mr. Tanner directed and choreographed "Something's Afoot" on Broadway in 1976, then returned two years later as director of "Gorey Stories," a work by the writer and artist Edward Gorey. The piece had received a strong review in The Times when it opened the previous year Off Broadway under Mr. Tanner's direction: Mel Gussow called it "a merrily sinister musical collage of Goreyana." The review, Mr. Tanner wrote on his website, led the producers to move the show to the Booth Theater on Broadway.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
It's a question I've been asked many times since I moved here from New York some 20 years ago. Sometimes I sense envy behind the question, sometimes pity. Do I live in bucolic bliss? Have I found solace in nature, a simplified, Thoreau like existence? Or perhaps my inquisitors imagine me in one of those paintings of a lonely lighthouse, furious waves breaching the rocks, while the lighthouse keeper stoically rides the storm. Or perhaps they see a marooned Tom Hanks with only a volleyball face for a friend. The choice to live year round on an island seven miles off Cape Cod is an unconventional one. But of course, life here in the off season has the routines we all juggle: Take the kids to school, walk the dog, shop for dinner. A musician by trade, I've managed to carve out a living on Martha's Vineyard as a bandleader, and my wife runs an after school dance program. Years ago, we purchased the Old Martha's Vineyard Co op Dairy in Edgartown. "Heck of a wreck," the ad read; 30 plus years of neglect had left the rambling old farm building and its Ma 'n' Pa style additions in disrepair: toppled chimney, leaky roof, caving walls, rotted windows. But we managed to renovate the property to include summer rental cottages and have raised two children here. People are sometimes surprised to learn that Martha's Vineyard is approximately four times the size of Manhattan, with six towns and four distinct villages within them. Oak Bluffs, Edgartown and Vineyard Haven are referred to as "down island," and Chilmark, West Tisbury and Aquinnah are "up island." The "up" and "down" do not refer to north and south but to the westerly latitude/longitude coordinates. (When whaling ships sailed the globe, heading "up," in nautical terms, actually took you west.) Down island is more densely populated, and Edgartown, particularly, retains the flavor of the whaling industry, with its sea captains' homes and bustling mercantile feel. Up island is more bucolic, with spectacular beaches, farms and wooded trails. Fall is the prize; the thick, hazy air of summer is gone, yet it is still warm enough for a swim well into October. The summer crowds presidential guests, Hollywood stars and their entourages, seasonal residents and vacationers have mostly vanished. The pace slows gracefully. Locked gates to private beaches swing open, restaurants like Offshore Ale, Martha's Vineyard Chowder Company and the Wharf Pub fill with locals. Ample time to linger now for a chat. Winter dulls the landscape as green meadows turn beige and amber, and the ubiquitous twisted scrub oaks, leafless, appear stark and naked, hunched over like weathered old witches clutching broomstick and cane. Edgartown's overflowing flower boxes are empty, cedar beach houses shuttered. The ferry is our lifeline to the mainland, to goods, supplies, mail, just about everything. Off season it runs from 6 a.m. till 8:30 p.m., 9:45 on weekends. But when the winds kick up past 50 miles per hour, the ferries shut down. News of canceled boats quickly disseminates at coffee shops and checkout lines. Bar talk of a pending storm prompts the question: "Think they'll be canceling boats tomorrow?" There are few cocktail parties and no beach cookouts in winter, but plenty of potluck dinners with friends and neighbors, many of them teachers, police officers, artists, writers, musicians, restaurant workers and tradespeople fueled by the never ending cycle of build, renovate, paint and restore. Commercial fishermen still ply the waters for lobster, bay scallops, conch and fin fish. However, their numbers have dwindled because of diminishing fish stocks, regulatory issues and the rising cost of living on the island, which is about 70 percent above the national average, according to a study by the Martha's Vineyard Commission. Roughly 20 percent of the year round population is Brazilian immigrants. Portuguese is, in fact, a second language on the island. Each year as the season comes to an end I keep a close eye on the weather, watchful for a fair day to haul my boat out of the water. One early December morning, the sun created a crisp, presolstice light; blues were a bit bluer, and what greenery remained seemed greener. It had been such a mild fall that I'd left the boat in the water longer than usual, but winter was approaching, and I knew that hauling even my 20 footer and its 200 pound mooring and chain would only become harder. From Edgartown I steered my pickup toward Oak Bluffs via Beach Road, empty boat trailer in tow, my golden retriever, Bella, riding shotgun. Beach Road is a narrow, five mile long strip across the dunes. State Beach was on my right, the 745 acre tidal pond named Sengekontacket on my left. (The Wampanoag name means "at the bursting forth of the tidal stream.") The Beach Road and its two bridges deliver a different view from day to day, hour to hour. In summer, the bridge's rail is lined with bathers poised for a 15 foot jump into the channel between tidal pond and sea. In the fall, fishermen cast in the moving waters of the channel below for striped bass or bluefish; others rake for clams in the adjacent shallow pond. In the heart of the winter, the half frozen sea is gray, sluggish waves too heavy to crest, whitecaps crashing against the pilings and jetties. The first stop that December morning was Mocha Mott's coffee shop in Oak Bluffs. The former owner, Mott Hinckley, arrived in 1994 and opened this premium coffee shop, determined to operate it 365 days a year. A second shop soon opened in Vineyard Haven. Holiday lights were strung around chalkboard menus offering soups, sandwiches and breakfast items, and the heart pine floor cast a warm glow. No Starbucks to compete with here. In fact, you won't find many chain stores; islanders have successfully fought them off. McDonald's tried to brandish its golden arches back in 1978, but that Goliath was chased away. While many shops, restaurants and bars are closed for the winter, a few remain open. Other winter breakfast spots are Linda Jean's in Oak Bluffs (classic eggs, toast and home fries) and the venerable Black Dog Tavern, whose tables face Vineyard Haven Harbor, where one can watch for the ferry. Night life, too, is an off season option. In the winter live music, from jazz to blues to singer songwriter to a weekend dance band play on at the Newes From America pub in Edgartown and, in Oak Bluffs, Park Corner, Offshore Ale Company, and most notably the Ritz Cafe, with live music five nights a week. Coffee in its holder, I headed up island toward Chilmark, on Edgartown West Tisbury Road. On the right was the state forest and its wooded bike path. (An extensive bike path now covers most of the island.) At the triangle at the end of the road, I took a left and drove past Alley's General Store, where you'll find a bit of everything, from snacks and hardware to novelty items like emergency underpants in a can and rubber band racecars. Beyond Alley's, I took a right on Music Street, then a left onto Middle Road, where I twisted and turned under the gnarled tree canopy that filtered the crisp winter light. There is a farm stand on that road with amazing cheese, bread and yogurt drinks. A tin can acts as cash register; the honor system prevails here. Three quarters of the way down Middle Road I slowed to take in a breathtaking view that hasn't changed since I was a teenager: vivid green rolling hills stretching for miles, past a small pond then down to the south shore. It could be Ireland or Scotland. This 48 acre parcel known as Keith Farm has been preserved through the efforts of Vineyard Open Land Foundation. Other conservation groups are engaged in preservation, perhaps most notably the Martha's Vineyard Land Bank, which has acquired more than 3,000 acres. I continued past the Chilmark Store, closed for the winter, where locals and Hollywood's best provision their August beach excursions. A mile up the road I backed my trailer down the ramp to Quitsa Pond's town landing, where I've moored my boat for two decades. After a quick kayak trip to my boat's mooring, I cranked the engine and was off, cruising through the meandering tidal ponds to Menemsha, where I would top off the boat's gas tank. Menemsha, still an active fishing hamlet, has a New England coastal feel from days long past. One glance in the right direction and time warps back to the 1940s. Weatherworn cedar shingle shacks, perched on the exposed strip of Dutcher's Dock, house the gear and tackle of what remains of Menemsha's once bustling fishing fleet. Summer's wooden sailboats and small yachts flee for warmer climates in the fall; in winter, Menemsha is still home port to a dozen weathered lobster boats and a small fleet of draggers and scallop boats. I filled my tank at the gas dock, then navigated toward Quitsa Pond's town landing, my final trip for the season. I hauled my boat with little fuss, and steered the truck back down island on South Road with a boat on my tail and lunch on my mind. Adjacent to Alley's is a breakfast and lunch spot called 7a; its name is derived from Martha's Vineyard's position on the Department of Agriculture's plant hardiness zone map. The porch here is a social gathering spot, and I often sit down for lunch and end up having company. The Liz Lemon sandwich (named for Tina Fey's character on "30 Rock") is a Reubenesque fantasy in which pastrami, turkey, Swiss, coleslaw, Russian dressing and crumbled potato chips somehow fuse seamlessly between slices of toasted rye. I finished my lunch and headed back down island with the afternoon sun in my rearview mirror. I set my boat in its winter resting place next to an old twisted pear tree in our backyard, its bent branches a reminder of winter winds to come. I've become accustomed to the seasonal pace on Martha's Vineyard. Though I can't claim to have achieved bucolic bliss, I have enjoyed solace in nature. When winter storms rage, I am sometimes reminded of that stalwart light keeper, but in my 20 years here I've never felt marooned. Like the ebb and flow of the tidal ponds, my final cruise marks the flow from fall to winter. And winter's low tide anticipates the flood tide of spring, with the promise of summer on its heels.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Anyone nostalgic for the Budapest underground club scene circa 1990 will be in their element at Basement, a subterranean nightclub in industrial Queens dedicated to techno music . Drawing inspiration from Berghain in Berlin and the vibrant raves of former Eastern bloc countries, Basement is a conscious (some might say self conscious) throwback to the pre iPhone, pre bottle service era of clubbing (minus the reek of stale booze and cigarettes). The newest addition to the sprawling Knockdown Center in the Maspeth section of Queens, the club, which opened in May, lives up to its name: The dungeonlike interior is a warren of nooks and narrow alleyways. The sense of disorientation is reinforced by flickering lights and fog machines. Restrooms are well lit, unisex and spacious enough for more than one person. Smokers gather outside at incongruous picnic tables. The focus of the club is the dance floor, which is the size of a large living room with concrete pillars, old factory doors and arched brick windows. On a recent Friday, the club hosted a queer B.D.S.M. party called Bound: Blackout. Fetish gear was mandatory, and partygoers were instructed not to wear street clothing or "culturally appropriative costumes." Pudgy, middle aged men were led around the dance floor on leashes by gothic dominatrixes in their 20s. Many patrons were topless and some bottomless. No photos were allowed (masking tape was placed over phone cameras) so patrons would feel comfortable in whatever clothing they wore, or didn't. Other nights draw a disparate crowd that might include straight bros in their 20s, queer club kids and die hard techno fans. The Funktion One sound system provides an all encompassing and clean sound. The caliber of D.J.s is very high and includes European avant gardists with large followings who might play E.B.M. (electric body music), industrial techno and Italo house.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
is not just a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright. He has been testing out his chops in different media: He made a cameo in "Birdman," and wrote for the Netflix series "The Get Down." Now, he is returning to the stage to act in David Mamet's "American Buffalo," at the Dorset Theater Festival in Vermont this summer. "American Buffalo" will run Aug. 24 through Sept 2 and will star Mr. Guirgis as Don, alongside Treat Williams as Teach. John Gould Rubin will direct. The play was written by Mr. Mamet in 1975, and Al Pacino starred in a 1983 revival. Mr. Guirgis is rarely seen onstage: he took on many acting roles in the early 2000s, but shifted his focus to playwriting, with "The With the Hat" on Broadway, and "Between Riverside and Crazy" in 2014 Off Broadway. ("Between Riverside" won him the Pulitzer for drama in 2015, while the other play has a title unprintable in this publication.) The Dorset Theater Festival will also include the world premiere of Theresa Rebeck's "Downstairs" directed by Adrienne Campbell Holt and starring the siblings Tyne and Tim Daly in what is billed as their first stage appearance together running from June 22 through July 8. And "Baskerville: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery," by Ken Ludwig, will run July 13 through July 29. More information about the festival is at dorsettheatrefestival.org.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
During strolls along its quiet, tree lined boulevards, there is a decidedly intimate, rustic feel that pervades Kobe, Japan, despite its population of nearly 1.5 million. But there is also a distinctly cosmopolitan air one that comes partly from its history as one of the first cities to be forced to open trade following Japan's centuries long policy of sakoku, or isolation from the rest of the world, until the mid 19th century. The result is a city that is a fascinating mix of both tradition and adopted customs, a mostly seamless amalgam of different cultures. I visited sake breweries dating back to the 1700s; that same night, I watched a jazz trio burn through standards at a swank Kobe club. I relaxed with locals at a Japanese onsen, or hot spring, on a hilltop on a nearby island, Awaji. I also went on a walking tour of Kitano cho, a neighborhood that contains foreign residences like the Weathercock house, a red brick structure with an Art Nouveau interior that feels as though it wouldn't look out of place in the hills of Bavaria. And, naturally, I went in search of a thrifty way to enjoy Kobe beef, the expensive and much sought after product of Tajima cattle raised in Hyogo prefecture, where Kobe lies. Kobe is a long city, positioned on the coast between mountains, to the north, and Osaka Bay to the south. (Kobe is just 40 minutes from Osaka by train; you can read more about Osaka's great food here.) I exited the train at the Hyogo station on the JR Tokaido Sanyo line (using my same Suica card I purchased when I was in Tokyo; see more details about train logistics in Japan in my Tokyo article) and made the short walk to the Kobe Luminous Hotel, where I'd found a room for 79 per night on Hotels.com. It wasn't grand or inspired by any means, but my single was clean and sufficient for the solo traveler. Best of all, I was only a few stops less than 10 minutes from Kobe Sannomiya station, in the heart of downtown. I was in the mood for some of the above mentioned Kobe beef one afternoon, and so I strategically targeted the lunch hour. As any good bargain hunter knows, lunch is when many expensive restaurants offer deals, serving similar (or exactly the same) meals as during dinnertime, but for a fraction of the price. I ducked into a small street and looked at the lunch menu for a restaurant called Ishida. The Kobe beef lunch options there ranged from 3,300 to 8,800 yen (about 31.40 to 83.85) a bit more than I was looking to pay. I went around the corner and found one of a small restaurant chain called Nishimuraya, which had a menu more in my price range: 1,980 yen for a serving of Kobe beef, rice, soup, salad and pickles. The restaurant had no English signage outside, and I discovered it purely by accident. I slid open the outside door and headed up a quiet, narrow staircase. Everything was done in wood and there was some music playing I had originally noticed; I could pick out a few notes here and there from the melody of a jazz song. I entered and was greeted by the host and the chef, who was in the back, and was shown to a table booth with a large charcoal burner in the middle. I ordered my lunch, and a man with a pan of glowing hot charcoal fed the burner on my table, then placed a metal grate on the top. The beef came out quickly, as did the accompaniments (the mushroom and tofu soup was outstanding). I took the small slices, reddish pink and streaked with white fat, and placed them on the grill. The fat sizzled, droplets hitting the coal, and each piece quickly turned a beautiful shade of brown. Per my server's suggestion, I dressed each piece with only a small amount of a salt and pepper mixture that was on the table. The taste of the beef was sensational: each piece was a flavor bomb of protein and fat. The simple salt dressing was a perfect complement, highlighting the sweetness of the fat but not obscuring the taste of the beef. Working off the beef would prove easy enough: Kobe is a delightful and interesting place to walk around. I followed a suggestion that came from a follower of the Frugal Traveler Twitter account and went in search of the Kobe Mosque, opened in 1935, the first mosque in Japan. When I saw two minarets peeking out from some pink cherry blossoms, I knew I had arrived. I removed my shoes and went inside. An elderly man greeted me and offered me a date, which I took. There weren't any worshipers when I was there, but I went inside the musalla (prayer hall) for a few minutes before looking at some old pictures that illustrated the history of the mosque, including how it survived Allied bombings during World War II. From the mosque it was an easy and meandering walk toward the mountains and up through Kitano cho, or foreign residence neighborhood. You can wind up passing through some quiet streets and alleys and glimpse old houses, built in a European style, which used to house merchants and foreign residents of Japan. There are roughly 20 houses that can be toured you may not want to see all of them, but it's an interesting bit of history. Two particularly notable houses are the Weathercock house, built in 1909 and the Moegi house, built in 1903. You can purchase tickets to tour each house individually for 350 yen; I bought a dual ticket for 650 yen that allowed me to walk through both Weathercock and Moegi. At the nearby tourist information center, I had a nice, if slightly labored conversation (due to my lack of Japanese) with some lovely old women who worked there. They patiently recommended that I visit one of Kobe's onsen. I set out late one afternoon in search of one I'd randomly decided on based on poring over the area Google Maps. I began the journey at the foot of the Akashi Kaikyo Bridge, a massive piece of construction that has the longest central span of any suspension bridge in the world. From Maiko station (about 20 minutes west of downtown Kobe), it's a separate 410 yen bus ride across the bridge to Awaji Island. The bus is not the easiest thing to find it requires walking up four or five flights of stairs and meeting the bus directly on the bridge itself. I asked a local woman for help (a good habit if you don't read Japanese) and was led to the correct bus. From where I exited the bus to my destination seemed a reasonable 18 minute walk. There was just one problem: I couldn't find it. I looked and looked; I asked around, hunted for signs, but there was nothing. Finally, as it was getting dark, I imposed upon a group of university students who were studying in a nearby building. They informed me that my destination was, in fact, another 3 kilometers away. So I started walking. I did it so you don't have to, but my recommendation is: Don't make that walk. It's dangerous. Call a taxi, if possible. There are too many areas with no sidewalk and at night, it's a bad idea. I did make it to my onsen, though, and once there, managed to let my ire toward the bad maps experience melt away as I looked out over Akashi Strait from an outdoor bubbling pool of soothing hot water. Admission to the springs is 700 yen; a very thin towel costs 200 yen, and you'll need additional 100 yen coins to use as deposits for the lockers. There are separate male and female sides once you're in your section, check any Puritanism you may have at the door and be prepared to hang out with a large number of naked people. Relaxing in the outdoor pool, while looking out over the mammoth bridge I'd crossed a couple of hours before, was one of the best moments of the trip. But it wasn't the only good moment. I spent one afternoon walking around the Nada district, one of the top sake producing areas of the country. It's said by many in Japan that Kobe is a perfect place to brew sake, with the availability of quality rice, a good water supply, conducive weather and proximity to the harbor for exporting. I took the train to Mikage station and walked to the Hakutsuru Brewery Museum. Over two levels, the sake making process from centuries past is illustrated, from rice preparation to fermentation to storage in giant wooden casks. I then made the brief walk about 15 minutes to another brewery/museum called Shu Shin Kan. They have a full on sake bar at Shu Shin Kan, and I got a very nice (and free) sake tasting from one of the employees. One sake I tried, Daiginjo, tasted smooth, clean and floral. Another, called Junmai shu, was subtle and mellow. Drinking always goes better with music, however, and I remedied that with a visit to the legendary Sone jazz club. Established in 1969 and considered by some to be the birthplace of the Japanese jazz scene, Sone is all wood, polished brass, whiskey and sharply dressed waiters. The place emanates cool, the way a jazz club should. When I went in, the jazz trio was midway through their set. I paid the 1,140 yen cover, took a seat alone at a table, and ordered a beer for 790 yen. After a few songs, a singer, Junko Koyanagi, joined the trio and made some introductions in Japanese. Then, as if someone flipped a switch, she began singing jazz standards in perfect English. "Just squeeze me, but please don't tease me," she crooned over the trio, belting the 1941 Duke Ellington classic. She went through a few other standards, including a flawless "Route 66" no mean feat, as "Kingman, Barstow, San Bernardino" doesn't exactly roll off the tongue. The set ended far too soon and the group took their bows. It's often said that music has no language or, rather, that it is its own language. That proved to be true that evening in Kobe, as I was reminded that even halfway across the world, it's possible to feel entirely at home.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
In recent years a remarkably high number of British choreographers have been working internationally: Richard Alston, David Bintley, Christopher Bruce, Michael Clark, David Dawson, Wayne McGregor, Ashley Page, Liam Scarlett, Christopher Wheeldon, Matthew Bourne. I've even heard New Yorkers suggest that there should be a British choreography festival here. Instead, the Royal Ballet has brought us a season comprised almost entirely of British choreography. Even its sole non British work, the "Beau Gosse" solo from Bronislava Nijinska's 1924 ballet "Le Train Bleu," has a strongly British connection: It was created for the Anglo Irish dancer Anton Dolin (born Patrick Kay), who in the 1980s reconstructed it and another Nijinska solo for the Royal British soloist Stephen Beagley. That and dances by no fewer than seven British choreographers composed the company's closing program, which played four performances at the David H. Koch Theater. There's just one snag: The dances by the five living choreographers are all bad. When the Sadler's Wells Ballet (today's Royal) presented one triple bill of minor British choreography here in 1949, Lincoln Kirstein wrote to the British critic Richard Buckle "The Gorbals program. Well, mother. All is forgiven, but NEVER do it again." Those words rang in my ears on Saturday whenever we were watching dances made in the 21st century. The program opens with Mr. McGregor's "Infra" (2008) and ends with Mr. Scarlett's "The Age of Anxiety" (2014), with "Beau Gosse" and five other divertissements in between. In "Infra" despite some cartoon video imagery of modern pedestrians there is no parity between men and women; instead, the men, who seldom dance, support and manipulate the women, who evidently like things that way. At one point, we're given six simultaneous, but different, duets left to right across the stage, each flashy. As a portrayal of human behavior, "Infra" gives us the cult of showy mannerism, narcissistic acrobatics, quasi pornographic sexiness without serious sexuality. Legs are often hoisted above heads, shoulders above ears, heads bump forward, pelvises bump any which way (often into other pelvises), and everyone behaves as if striking poses at the mirror. One woman does a silent scream as she sinks to the floor: that's a bad cliche, but who can blame her? The music (another synthetic collage of disparate effects ranging from taped distortion to easy listening sub Romantic piano) is by Max Richter. Mr. McGregor has been the Royal Ballet's resident choreographer since 2006. Mr. Scarlett, a former dancer for the Royal before becoming its artist in residence in 2012, made three ballets for New York companies last year, none of them much good remember the one in which Misty Copeland twerked at the audience? and then went home to make one about how life changing New York can be. He set this to Leonard Bernstein's Symphony No. 2 "The Age of Anxiety," (1949), which the composer named after (and based closely on) the 1947 book length poem of that name by W.H. Auden. (The score has been choreographed before, by Jerome Robbins, in 1950, and John Neumeier.) Mr. Scarlett's ballet, also called "The Age of Anxiety," has only seven characters but no fewer than three sets. Royal Ballet Ryoichi Hirano and Natalia Osipova perform "Infra" during the company's program at Lincoln Center on Friday. An Englishwoman picks up three English male bisexuals in a New York bar (though they're dressed as Americans, this fools nobody) and invites them back to her place (probably in Brooklyn Heights) for a spot of anxiety. Or maybe she invites three anxious Englishmen back for some bisexuality. Two of the men eventually leave together. The most emphatically bisexual one, who remains, falls asleep. His hostess's anxiety grows apace. The final scene starts with the two other men. One kisses the other, who accepts without reciprocating and is left alone and hey, it's dawn with what looks like the view on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade and isn't New York (or perhaps life) simply wonderful? The End. While this life changing kind of bisexuality happens to us English in New York all the time, it makes weak theater. Of Auden's original verse, the poet Randall Jarrell wrote, "A poet has turned into a sack of reflexes: Auden no longer has to struggle against standard ticks, set idiosyncrasies, behavior adjustments aged into obsessive behavior it is these that write his poem." Auden in turn hated both Bernstein's symphony and Robbins's ballet; he would have surely hated Mr. Scarlett's potpourri for its sheer harmlessness. (At the Royal Ballet, by the way, male male kissing onstage goes back to a 1984 Michael Corder work, "Party Game.") Christopher Wheeldon's "Aeternum," set to Benjamin Britten's "Sinfonia da Requiem," was not good when I saw its world premiere in 2013; its central pas de deux, out of context, is worse. Mr. Wheeldon's women (Marianela Nunez or Claire Calvert in this case) make prettier shapes than Mr. McGregor's when manipulated by their men (Federico Bonelli or Ryoichi Hirano), but the dances do not make a better case for male female relations. The way his choreography ignores the climax of the dance unfriendly music is unpleasing. "Borrowed Light," a male solo by Alastair Marriott, looks like an outtake from any bad Soviet ballet (Yuri Grigorovich's "Spartacus" came to mind): a straggly array of male moodiness punctuated by routine bravura steps. It's set to Philip Glass, but its heart is pure Khachaturian. We also saw the dullest of the innumerable modern versions of Saint Saens's piano cello "Le Cygne" in which the dancer is a man. (It's Swan's Lib.) Calvin Richardson's break dancing isolations of arm muscles in "The Dying Swan" suggested that he's been looking at the celebrated 2011 video of the more musically attentive Lil Buck solo to the same music; I'm afraid his is another of the current Royal studies in narcissism. Though it was fun to see Vadim Muntagirov dance the Nijinska "Beau Gosse" solo it uses the acrobatic effects for which the young Dolin was famous it's too slight to amount to much. Choreographic substance was therefore left to duets by the two choreographers most central to Royal Ballet history, Frederick Ashton (1904 88) and Kenneth MacMillan (1929 92). In both cases, with a modernity that should put the younger choreographers to shame, man and woman were seen to dance as if in dialogue, and music sprang to life. In Ashton's 1977 "Voices of Spring" pas de deux, anybody could learn from the compositional wit with which he ends a female solo just as the man starts his; both dance the same phrase (the Ashton talisman known in Royal Ballet circles as the "Fred Step") but in opposite directions. In MacMillan's "Carousel" pas de deux, made at the end of MacMillan's life for Nicholas Hytner's 1992 National Theater production of the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, the woman's and man's lively changes of impulse serve the music's drama excitingly. Most not all Royal dancers were otherwise as delectable as their choreography allowed. Natalia Osipova, though invisible in the "Infra" choreography, was a shimmering Titania in midweek performances of "The Dream" (Ashton); Lauren Cuthbertson, admirably partnered by Mr. Hirano, was a riveting, eloquent heroine in Friday's "Song of the Earth" (MacMillan); "Carousel" was an excellent vehicle for both Ms. Cuthbertson and Matthew Golding (Saturday afternoon) and Sarah Lamb and Carlos Acosta (Saturday evening). Steven McRae and Alexander Campbell especially distinguished themselves. Despite its modern choreography, the company left a bright and engaging impression. May it return soon, with better chosen repertory.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Harvard graduates on Thursday at John Harvard's statue. The university has struggled to meet demands for engineering courses. To Young Minds of Today, Harvard Is the Stanford of the East CAMBRIDGE, Mass. In academia, where brand reputation is everything, one university holds an especially enviable place these days when it comes to attracting students and money. To find it from this center of learning, turn west and go about 2,700 miles. Riding a wave of interest in technology, Stanford University has become America's "it" school, by measures that Harvard once dominated. Stanford has had the nation's lowest undergraduate acceptance rate for two years in a row; in five of the last six years, it has topped the Princeton Review survey asking high school seniors to name their "dream college"; and year in and year out, it raises more money from donors than any other university. No one calls Duke "the Stanford of the South," or the University of Michigan "the public Stanford," at least not yet. But, for now at least, there is reason to doubt the long held wisdom that the consensus gold standard in American higher education is Harvard, founded 378 years ago, which held its commencement on Thursday. "There's no question that right now, Stanford is seen as the place to be," said Robert Franek, who oversees the Princeton Review's college guidebooks and student surveys. Of course, that is more a measure of popularity than of quality, he said, and whether it will last is anyone's guess. Professors, administrators and students here insist that on the whole, they are not afraid that Harvard will be knocked off its perch, in substance or reputation. But some concede, now that you mention it, that in particularly contemporary measures, like excellence in computer science, engineering and technology, Harvard could find much to emulate in that place out in California. "Harvard for a long time had sort of an ambiguous relationship to applied science and engineering," said Harry R. Lewis, a computer science professor here and a former dean of Harvard College. "It wasn't considered the sort of thing gentlemen did." People in academia tend to roll their eyes at the incessant effort to rank colleges and universities, insisting that they pay little attention to the ratings that their institutions spend so much time and energy chasing. Stanford's reputation is far more than buzz, of course it is a recognized leader in many disciplines besides the applied sciences, and its sparkling facilities and entrepreneurial culture are widely envied. But in particular, it basks in its image as the hub of Silicon Valley, alma mater to a string of technology moguls and incubator of giants like Google, Yahoo and Cisco. In fact, while the university declined to comment for this article, administrators and professors there have voiced concerns that too much of its appeal is based on students' hopes of striking it rich in Silicon Valley. Other colleges would love to have such problems. "There has been an explosion of interest in engineering and related areas," said Alan M. Garber, Harvard's provost. "We simply have had a hard time keeping up with that demand." At the same time, he said, Harvard has a number of joint projects with its neighbor the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and "it doesn't make sense for us to duplicate a lot of what M.I.T. does within Harvard." Undergraduates here are aware of the contrasts with Stanford (and others), but they vary widely in how seriously they take the topic. "I'm a bio major, and within that field at least, it's not spoken about at all, whether or not one school is superior to the other," said Michelle Choi, who just finished her second year. "I don't think Harvard students at all feel threatened." But for students more attuned to technology, "there's a sense that they have a direct pipeline to Silicon Valley and money that doesn't exist here," said Nicholas P. Fandos, the managing editor of The Harvard Crimson, who just finished his junior year. Max Shayer, a senior from Alaska, graduated on Thursday after studying engineering and plans to work for a big oil company. But his younger brother has chosen Stanford over Harvard, and is likely to study engineering. Mr. Shayer said that he was pleased with his own education, but that big industrial companies, like Boeing, recruited more heavily at Stanford. "I would like to see Harvard build relationships with these long established industries," he said. And, noting the incremental and inscrutable annual changes in the U.S. News World Report rankings, others were skeptical about putting any particular university at the top. "It really depends on what you're looking to do," said Patrick Galvin, a graduating Harvard senior from California. "The top 10 schools are so incredible they're separated by very little." Last year, 26 percent of Stanford's undergraduate degrees were awarded in computer science or engineering, about three times as many as at Harvard. At Stanford, about 90 percent of undergraduates take at least one computer programming class, compared with about half at Harvard. The disparity has deep cultural roots at many liberal arts institutions: Anything that looked like practical career preparation was seen as something less than real undergraduate education. Stanford was never like that. In fact, it has become one of many universities that worry about how far the pendulum has swung away from the humanities. Harvard administrators have worked for years to expand offerings in computer science and engineering, but the going has been slow. It is planning a new campus in the Allston neighborhood of Boston, largely for those studies. Harvard professors in a variety of fields said that a little fear of a competitor was healthy, and that the university was less complacent about its leadership than it once was. "I think there's a halo effect that doesn't do Harvard any good, because Harvard has, at times, had pockets of mediocrity that it could get away with," said Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology and a noted author on that field and linguistics. Harvard also has an image, reinforced in college guides and student surveys, as a less than happy place for undergraduates, while people swoon over the quality of life at most of its peers. Its students have a reputation for being intensely competitive, working hard and getting by with little hand holding, at least by today's standards. Dr. Garber, the Harvard provost, said that "reputation lags reality" the university has, among other things, recently beefed up undergraduate advising and that people may not have a clear view of their college experiences until years later. Students interviewed here said they considered the sink or swim image overblown. The norm at Harvard, they said, is to tell everyone how hard you work and how intense the place is. Students at Stanford say the prevailing ethos there is the opposite: work hard, but in public appear utterly laid back. Jill Lepore, the noted historian and Harvard professor, said there has always been a gap between perceptions of Harvard and the reality, citing examples like Benjamin Franklin's lampooning of the school under the pseudonym Silence Dogood and the film "The Social Network," with its Stanford like depiction of Facebook's origins. "The Harvard in that film," she said "is utterly unfamiliar to me."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
THE quirks of residential layout dictate that any measurement of square footage in a house will be debatable at best, agents and other experts say. Assessors, who measure living space as one of many variables in computing home value, follow guidelines set by the state's Department of Taxation and Finance. These guidelines, to take just one example, automatically exclude the basement from any calculation of living space. No matter how spectacularly well remodeled that basement may be lavishly enough, perhaps, to increase the assessor's ultimate determination of property value its location in the house makes it irrelevant as square footage. This may come as a surprise to buyers relying on real estate Web sites like Zillow and Trulia that make a feature of the "price per square foot" calculation. Trulia, especially, considers price per square foot so significant that it highlights it right alongside the number of baths and bedrooms. "We believe it's great for consumers to have as much data at their fingertips as possible," said Ken Shuman, head of communications at Trulia. He called price per square foot "one of many factors in determining how to price a home, if you're a seller, and something that buyers look at to get a better understanding of whether a house is a good value." But some buyers these days may be inferring too much from the statistic's prominence on the site. Take for example two single family colonials in New Rochelle, each recently listed for 419,000. In a synopsis of the houses' main features, Trulia notes that one of them, with three bedrooms and one bath, costs 262 per square foot, while the other, with five bedrooms and two and a half baths, costs 206. Similarly, in Larchmont, two houses were recently on the market for 1.195 million: a four bedroom three and a half bath Tudor, described as costing 477 a square foot; and a six bedroom three and a half bath Victorian, said to cost 324. Does that mean that the five bedroom house in New Rochelle and the six bedroom in Larchmont are better deals? Not necessarily, brokers say. Unmeasured areas like a renovated basement or a garage in law unit or even a superior location may account for the higher price the sellers are asking. And that higher price inevitably increases the price per square foot. . Only in large lookalike housing developments or in homogeneous neighborhoods like the Highlands in White Plains, where the vast majority of the houses are small prewar colonials and Tudors on similarly sized lots is price per square foot a relatively reliable measure of value. "Of course, buyers initially gravitate to what on the surface appears to be a better buy," said Clayton Jeffrey, the sales manager of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in New Rochelle. "But the statistic taken out of context tells only part of the story." Still, as a bargaining tool, price per square foot has been getting a lot of play in recent months. Though often employed in commercial real estate, and in less idiosyncratic residential real estate like condominiums and co ops, it has of late become "a hot topic in the single family home market," said Chris Meyers, the chief operating officer of Houlihan Lawrence, who described it as "a big driver in many buyers' decision making process." As a result, some assessors are being besieged by homeowners demanding to know why their price per square foot figures are so high why upgrades like their finished basement or the heated and fully furnished family room in what was once a garage have been left out of the equation. "This is driving me crazy," Michele Casandra, Pelham's assessor, said recently from under a growing mound of paperwork. "Even if I wanted to change something, I couldn't, because we follow state regulations and appraisal guidelines. We don't invent them." In Ms. Casandra's opinion, price per square foot should not even apply to single family homes in the suburbs because there are too many variables involved. "Maybe in a city when you're dealing with specifically defined living units without basements or attics," she said, "but certainly not somewhere like Pelham with such a variety of homes Victorians, colonials, Tudors that weren't meant to have basements used as family rooms." Even though fully finished, renovated space increases the value of a house, she said, the rules are written in such a way that it cannot be factored into the square footage. Susan Reddy, a sales agent for McClellan Sotheby's International Realty in Pelham, cited a colonial that came on the market last year for 1.699 million. The town's records put its square footage at 3,373, not including 380 square feet in a garage that had been converted to a media room with high end finishes and heating and air conditioning, or 816 square feet in a basement that had been similarly finished and had windows and a sliding glass door leading to the yard. "People only looked at what the town's records showed for price per square foot and rejected it out of hand," Ms. Reddy said. The house has since been taken off the market. The square footage of raised ranches and splits is closer to actuality. Because they were designed to employ below grade space as living quarters, the state formula allows such space to be factored into total square footage. The emphasis on square footage is placing the onus on brokers to explain to both buyers and sellers its actual significance in understanding value. As Donna McElwee, a sales agent for Houlihan Lawrence in Rye, said: "Buyers need to be educated. They come armed with data they got from the Internet, but those are just numbers." "I tell them that price per square foot taken out of context doesn't mean that much, because you have to really be inside a house, in a sense, to 'feel' the square footage and relate to it personally to see if it fits your family," she added. "You can do a lot on the Internet these days, but you still can't do that."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
"I believe I owe a great deal of who I am to this island" Lin Manuel Miranda, at a coffee farm in Jayuya, P.R.Credit...Christopher Gregory for The New York Times "I believe I owe a great deal of who I am to this island" Lin Manuel Miranda, at a coffee farm in Jayuya, P.R. VEGA ALTA, P.R. The road to Vega Alta is lined with Lin Manuel Miranda. Literally. Just next to the arched stone welcome sign is a billboard with a large photo of the "Hamilton" creator, and a hashtag YoSoyVegaAlta meaning "I am Vega Alta." This is the town where his father is from, where he and his sister spent summers as kids, where their aunt and uncle still live. It's also a community that has seen better days challenged by joblessness and crime and a town center dotted with vacancies. Now, at the heart of the commercial district, in a space that once housed a disco called the Pink Panther, is La Placita de Guisin, an arcade built by Luis Miranda, Lin Manuel's father, who left for New York when he was 18, but never stopped coming back. It features a bakery, a barista and a cafe; there is a gift shop selling Lin Manuel Miranda merchandise (yes, he has a merchandise line), as well as a mosaic mural depicting him and his grandfather. Mr. Miranda was born and raised in New York, but he spent a month each summer in Puerto Rico throughout his childhood. Mr. Miranda, preparing to reassume the title role of "Hamilton" for a three week run that begins in San Juan on Jan. 11, arrived in Vega Alta one rainy Tuesday night this fall like the celebrity he has become. He and his father, accompanied by publicists and staffers and a documentary film crew, took a private plane to the island and then a black S.U.V. to Vega Alta, where they were celebrating local arts organizations the family is assisting as part of their intensified philanthropic efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, which slammed into Puerto Rico last year. "It's a tactile thing. It's a tempo thing. It's the pace of life here," he said when I asked what about Puerto Rico he would want to pass along to his own children two sons, both very young. "It's the way the world sounds at night. It's seeing the stars. It's this oneness with nature that is very natural and real. It is all the things you cannot get in New York City. And it is its culture, because the kindest people I know are here." "It's a bat signal to your countrymen," Mr. Miranda said of his decision to wave a Puerto Rican flag at the 2008 Tony Awards. His identification with this United States commonwealth 1,600 miles south of New York has informed his biggest successes "In the Heights," about a Caribbean American community formed around a bodega in Northern Manhattan, and "Hamilton," whose title character is a Caribbean immigrant who becomes an American founding father. "This idea of who you are in one place, and how different or similar that is to who you are in another place, has been present from the first conversation I had with him," said Thomas Kail, one of Mr. Miranda's closest creative collaborators, a fellow Wesleyan University alumnus who directed both "Heights" and "Hamilton." "It's something Lin writes about in all of his shows 'Who am I?', 'Where am I from?' and 'Have I done enough'?" Mr. Kail said. "Those are the questions he's always thinking about." Mr. Miranda first visited Vega Alta, which is about 20 miles west of San Juan, as an 8 week old infant, and later he started spending a month in the town every summer, accompanied by his sister. Days were occupied with his grandmother, who ran a travel agency, and his grandfather, a manager at the credit union. There were hours exploring trying to catch lizards; marveling at the morivivi, a plant that shrinks from human touch; savoring quenepas, a tropical fruit (as well as Chef Boyardee and McDonald's French fries). He was witty, worrying aloud about the safety of a bush when a slip sliding journalist reached out to steady himself. He was revealing, rolling up his jeans to show off a new coffee cup tattoo on his ankle. He was sweating in his gray Puerto Rican scholarship fund T shirt, but he turned on the charm embracing farmers, thanking donors, listening attentively to discussion of fungus infestation and seed regulation. And he was relentlessly on message: Puerto Rico needs help. "A year ago, this island changed forever," he said at the small family owned coffee farm in Jayuya. "We're going to have their backs." "Hamilton" has given him both resources he's making millions of dollars a year and renown access to princes and presidents, magazine covers and movie deals. Mr. Miranda's philanthropy, which he conducts in collaboration with his family, is still taking shape but is growing fast. Over the last two years, the Mirandas have given more than 4.6 million to nonprofits and have raised another 8 million, after expenses, through sweepstakes campaigns for a variety of causes, according to Sara Elisa Miller, the family's director of philanthropy. Their interests are varied, including developing artists of color; encouraging political involvement by Latinos; and supporting voting rights, immigrants, women's health and education. And in the wake of Hurricane Maria, which killed about 3,000 people and caused damage to the island's infrastructure and economy, they have been especially focused on helping Puerto Rico. "It needs help, and it needs attention," Mr. Miranda said, "and one of the weird side effects of 'Hamilton' is this megaphone that I didn't really know what to do with in the beginning." That megaphone means that Mr. Miranda is a signal booster, able to use his visibility and his huge social media following to call attention to issues and causes. After the hurricane, the Mirandas helped raised 43 million for the Hispanic Federation's hurricane relief fund an effort that was inadvertently boosted when Mr. Miranda, in an uncharacteristic outburst, said on Twitter that President Trump would go to hell for criticizing the San Juan mayor and also helped with a toy drive that delivered 40,000 Three Kings' Day gifts to Puerto Rican children. More recently, the family has turned to shoring up Puerto Rican artists, setting up a fund through the Flamboyan Foundation through which they hope to raise and distribute 15 million. That money is to come largely from the Puerto Rico "Hamilton" production, in part through the sale of premium tickets (about 3,000 at 5,000 apiece), corporate sponsorships, and any profits from the San Juan run. (There are also cheap tickets 10,000 seats, about one fourth of the total, are being sold for 10 each and pricey tour packages.) Mr. Miranda is using the event to promote tourism, too. He lured Jimmy Fallon's "Tonight Show" to broadcast from Puerto Rico during the "Hamilton" run, with a promise that it will be a celebration of the island and its people. For Mr. Miranda, figuring out how his heritage would influence his art, and his activism, started early, and took some time. He grew up in the words of Quiara Alegria Hudes, his co author on "In the Heights" "a Nuyorican hip hop raised whiz kid," and has often described "code switching" from an early age, as he shuttled between his predominantly Hispanic childhood neighborhood (Inwood) and the overwhelmingly white precincts surrounding his schools on the Upper East Side. (He attended Hunter elementary and high schools, public schools for gifted students.) Characters in the musicals he wrote in high school "would have Latino surnames, but there wasn't anything particularly Latino about them," he said. But at Wesleyan, he moved into La Casa de Albizu Campos, a house for Latino students named for a Puerto Rican nationalist, and honed his voice. "In that house, I really met other kids who were like me who were first generation, very driven, but could speak to every side of pop culture to Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin and J. Lo, along with the American culture we all grew up with," he said. He started writing "In the Heights" as an undergraduate, and in 2008, the night he won a Tony Award for that show's score, he rapped his acceptance speech and then, holding the statuette aloft in his left hand, reached into the pocket of his tuxedo, pulled out a small Puerto Rican flag and waved it in the air. But there was really never a question that "Hamilton" would come to Puerto Rico. "In the Heights" had played San Juan for a week in 2010, with Mr. Miranda, who had played the leading role on Broadway, jumping into the cast of the touring production so he could perform on the island that shaped him. "It was the most satisfying creative experience of my life," he said. "It closed a circle I didn't know was open I didn't realize how important it was to me that this island I love so much support my work." So "Hamilton" would come, too. The run in Puerto Rico would kick off the sixth production of "Hamilton." Mr. Miranda would play Alexander Hamilton only in San Juan; then when the rest of the cast heads to California for a long run in San Francisco, another actor would play the title character. Luis Miranda, a graduate of the University of Puerto Rico, was eager for "Hamilton" to play at his alma mater, hoping to burnish its reputation and show that its theater could host touring Broadway shows. But the university has long been a hotbed of protest Luis Miranda himself participated in protests when he was a student and in recent years, it has been convulsed by a budget crisis that has led to proposals for rising student fees and declining staff benefits. A union representing university staffers is at loggerheads with the administration, and late last month its leadership sent Mr. Miranda a letter warning that "large scale conflict" could affect the musical production. At the same time, Mr. Miranda's 2016 support for the controversial debt plan, known as Promesa, has made him a target for criticism from some Puerto Ricans. Last year, five students stormed the stage, shouting slogans, during a question and answer session with him on campus. "Lin Manuel, our lives are not your theater," read one of their handmade signs. "The only artists and people that benefit from 'Hamilton' are the elite, white North American settlers, the rich bourgeoise and those who actively participate and aspire to become oppressors," said Ruth Figueroa, a student of comparative literature and one of the protesters. She was critical of Mr. Miranda's stands on fiscal issues, worried that accommodating "Hamilton" would drain resources needed elsewhere and unimpressed by the choice of Alexander Hamilton as the subject for a biomusical by a Latino artist. Mr. Miranda, who now advocates debt forgiveness for Puerto Rico, said he understands the concerns about Promesa and had no problem with the protesters. "I believe the criticisms of everything that came after are valid, but I also, in that moment, didn't see other options," he said. I met with 14 theater and music students while visiting the university, and they expressed a swirl of conflicting emotions about "Hamilton" enthusiasm for the artistry, gratitude for Mr. Miranda, but also resentment that "Hamilton" appeared to be showered with resources when their academic departments were being cut back, and disappointment that more of them were not given opportunities to work on the show. None of them expressed an intention to protest; all of them said they were hoping to see the show, and four were later offered unpaid internships with the production. The campus's acting chancellor, Luis A. Ferrao, thought the concern about protest was overblown. "Anything that would have arisen could have been taken care of," he said. "No one dies because someone yells or carries a sign against whatever." But the Mirandas and the producers of "Hamilton" were rattled. Even though union leaders told Luis Miranda they would not protest during the production, the "Hamilton" team was not sure union members would follow suit, and there were rumblings of possible student action. There is also a longstanding practice in Puerto Rico restricting police access to college campuses, which created a concern about how long it would take to get law enforcement assistance if needed. "We all felt 99.99 percent sure that all we were going to get were protests, and that's fine, but there's always that .01 percent possibility that a handful of people escalate something, and that's a risk we were not going to run," Luis Miranda said. So on Dec. 21 after the Flamboyan Arts Fund spent 1 million to repair the university theater's storm damaged roof and upgrade its systems, and "Hamilton" loaded in its set the show's lead producer announced that he was relocating the production to the Centro de Bellas Artes Luis A. Ferre, the San Juan theater where "In the Heights" had run. Students are stunned and upset. "I'm certainly in shock and deeply disappointed," said Alondra Llompart. Then on Dec. 23, the presidents of student organizations at the university's many campuses released a statement asking the production to reconsider. Mr. Miranda is left making peace with the contradictions melding his pride in this place, and its pride in him, with the messy realities of a politically charged island that is struggling to recover from hurts both recent and historic. For the moment, he is far from the tumult. Having wrapped up promotional duties for "Mary Poppins Returns" that took him around the world, he has been practicing the "Hamilton" role in his Manhattan laundry room. "I have no agenda for Puerto Rico other than I want it to be proud of me," he said. "All my efforts here are just to help the island in the best way I know how."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
It happens every 405,000 years. The Earth's orbit gradually changes shape from almost circular to slightly elliptical over a period of 202,500 years, and then starts returning to form over the next 202,500 years like a metronome swinging side to side. Right now, we are in an almost perfectly circular orbit around the sun, and soon within some thousands of years, that is we will start moving toward the elliptical. This happens because of the Earth's gravitational interactions with other planets, especially Jupiter and Venus Jupiter because it is very large, and Venus because it is very near. In new research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, scientists tracked the orbital cycle by analyzing a 1,700 foot long rock core drilled in the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
SEATTLE The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, with its 1.4 million truck drivers, warehouse workers and other transportation laborers, does not represent any Amazon workers, nor is it organizing them. But the union keeps butting into the e commerce giant, which ships billions of packages a year. The Teamsters joined several other major labor unions in filing a petition Thursday asking the Federal Trade Commission to open a wide ranging study into Amazon's business practices. The unions, which represent more than five million American workers, hope to sic the antitrust regulator on a company increasingly reaching into the industries they represent. "We wanted to demonstrate that there is a real desire to see them take this on," said Michael Zucker, director of Change to Win, a federation of labor unions that led the effort. The petition asks the F.T.C. to use its broad powers to gather nonpublic information about a company's or industry's effects on commerce. In a 28 page document with 149 footnotes, the unions lay out areas they think the F.T.C. should explore, including whether Amazon requires companies to use more of its services to succeed on its marketplace. The petition, which took several months to prepare, is a greatest hits of concerns reported in the press, but the unions said it should just be a starting point. "You could just say to the F.T.C., 'Look into this company,'" Mr. Zucker said. "The reason why we laid out a detailed case for why was because we were trying to convince the F.T.C. in the request that they look at the company in all of its manifestations and all of its systems." Amazon said it had created more than 500,000 jobs domestically for people with various education levels, training and skills. In an Op Ed published in The New York Times this month, Jay Carney, who runs the company's communications and policy teams, argued that Amazon used its scale for good. "Because Amazon is a large company with hundreds of thousands of employees, as well as contractual relationships with hundreds of thousands of other businesses of all sizes, what we do can generate positive ripple effects across the country," he wrote. Mr. Carney said the company's minimum wage of 15 an hour had pushed other employers to increase pay, and "in keeping with what political leaders say they want to see from companies, Amazon has plowed 270 billion into the domestic economy since 2010." That sum includes money Amazon has spent on payroll, buildings, equipment and other business investments. Various liberal groups have gone after Amazon for its impact on workers, competition and communities around the country. Last year, many of the groups formed a coalition called Athena to coordinate their criticism of the company. Competitors like Walmart have funded research into negative impacts of Amazon. The company has also become a target for elected officials, including candidates vying to be the Democratic nominee for president. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has pressured it over the wages and working conditions for its warehouse employees. Senator Elizabeth Warren has said it should be broken up. And former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said last year that he had "nothing against Amazon, but no company pulling in billions of dollars of profits should pay a lower tax rate than firefighters and teachers." Amazon has yet to disclose receiving requests for information from antitrust investigators at the Justice Department or F.T.C., and it has not been publicly targeted by state attorneys general, unlike Google and Facebook. The company has continued its push into even faster deliveries and recently announced it was building a warehouse dedicated to the kind of house brand products that critics say push smaller competitors out of the market. While Amazon's workers are not unionized, those at some suppliers and competitors are, and they feel pressure to adapt to Amazon's business. For the Teamsters, Amazon is a major customer of the transportation companies where they work, and the company is building its own delivery network through a series of small contractors and gig economy drivers, who aren't unionized. In their 2018 contract negotiations, UPS and the Teamsters agreed to create a new job type, with lower pay, to service demand for weekend e commerce deliveries, a trade off that some union members resisted. In their petition, the unions ask the F.T.C. to study whether Amazon forces its third party merchants to buy its delivery fulfillment services if they want to rank high and succeed on the site, a move that they say could harm competing shipping and logistics providers. Amazon said its fulfillment services were optional, but many sellers loved them "because it gives them peace of mind knowing that shipping logistics and customer service are taken care of 24 7, year round," a spokesman, Jack Evans, said in a statement. A spokeswoman for the F.T.C., Betsy Lordan, said the agency had received the labor groups' petition. In 2000, the Communications Workers of America tried to organize Amazon's customer service workers, as an outgrowth of its work with the telecom industry. The company pushed back, and the unionization effort failed. The union has since followed how the company affects its industries. It represents workers in AT T's retail stores, which compete with Amazon for phone sales, for example, and the union in January announced plans to organize tech workers, starting with people in the gaming industry. Tom Smith, head organizer at the communication workers' union, said it turned to the F.T.C. because much about Amazon's business is still a mystery, even to a union that has followed it for two decades. "We see a company that we know very little about, that is very secretive, that there are just tons of unknowns," Mr. Smith said. The grocery workers' union was particularly interested in a question the petition asks the F.T.C. to study: whether Amazon depresses wages in areas where it is a major employer. The petition estimated that half of all warehouse workers in Mercer County, N.J., were employed by Amazon. Federal data shows that warehouse wages in the county have fallen 18 percent since 2014, when Amazon opened its largest fulfillment center in the state there, according to the petition. A look inside Amazon. An examination by The New York Times into how the pandemic unfolded inside Amazon's only fulfillment center in New York City, known as JFK8, found that the Covid crisis exposed the power and peril of Amazon's employment system. Here are our major takeaways: Employee churn is high. The company conducted a hiring surge in 2020, signing up 350,000 workers in three months offering a minimum wage of 15 an hour and good benefits. But even before the pandemic, Amazon was losing about 3 percent of its hourly associates each week meaning its turnover was roughly 150 percent a year. Buggy systems caused awful mistakes. Amazon's disability and leave system was a source of frustration and panic. Workers who had applied for leaves were penalized for missing work, triggering job abandonment notices and then terminations. Strict monitoring has created a culture of fear. The company tracks workers' every movement inside its warehouses. Employees who work too slowly, or are idle for too long, risk being fired. The system was designed to identify impediments for workers. Though such firings are rare, some executives worry that the metrics are creating an anxious, negative environment. There is rising concern over racial inequity. The retail giant is largely powered by employees of color. According to internal records from 2019, more than 60 percent of associates at JFK8 are Black or Latino. The records show Black associates at the warehouse were almost 50 percent more likely to be fired than their white peers. Read more: The Amazon That Customers Don't See. Mr. Evans said that Whole Foods represented just 4 percent of grocery sales domestically, and that Walmart and Kroger sell far more. "This competition ultimately leads to innovation for consumers, as you can see across the grocery industry right now," he said. The Service Employees International Union, with two million members in health care, the public sector and other industries, also joined the petition. The labor groups are making a novel use of the F.T.C.'s right to conduct research into how a market or industry works, using its legal authority to compel companies to provide private information. The results of these studies can influence policy changes at the agency or inform its efforts to police an industry. In the past, these studies have been used to look at other industries, as varied as data brokers and pharmaceuticals. One study into hospital mergers bolstered the agency's ability to successfully challenge new deals, while others have led to legislative changes. This year, the agency said it would research smaller acquisitions by major tech companies, including Amazon. It is far less common for the agency to do what the unions are requesting: begin an inquiry explicitly into a single company. "Generally, if you want to investigate a company you open up an investigation and you investigate them using the normal enforcement authority," said Michael Kades, the director of markets and competition policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth and a former F.T.C. lawyer. While these types of studies are separate from the agency's enforcement investigations into specific alleged legal violations, information they unearth can be used to advance cases against the companies in question. Tim Wu, a professor at Columbia Law School and an advocate for greater antitrust enforcement, said the approach made sense because the F.T.C. has struggled to find a single route into an investigation of Amazon where low consumer prices provide a shield against antitrust action. (Mr. Wu is on the advisory board of the Open Markets Institute, an influential group that has called for the breakup of Amazon. He is also a New York Times contributing opinion writer.) "I think the unions here are thinking, 'There's a lot of concerns raised by Amazon and the F.T.C. kind of has a blind spot,'" said Mr. Wu, who reviewed a draft of the groups' petition. Karen Weise reported from Seattle, and David McCabe from Washington.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Representative Christopher Collins once said that the success of an obscure Australian company's drug would be carved on his tombstone. Instead, its failure has upended his congressional career. The three term congressman's infectious enthusiasm for Innate Immunotherapeutics, the tiny biotech firm, led to his indictment on Wednesday, when he and several other investors were accused of insider trading. Prosecutors said that he tipped off his son to the poor results of the company's clinical drug trial for a notoriously intractable form of multiple sclerosis before they were public, allowing the son and others to dump their stock and save hundreds of thousands of dollars. Mr. Collins sat on the company's board until May, and at one point was its largest shareholder. The stock scandal has rippled through Congress, where his favorite stock tip had enticed at least seven former or current House Republicans into investing along with him, his two grown children and other friends. It provided new ammunition for Democrats seeking to take back the House, and forced Mr. Collins to announce on Saturday that he would not seek re election to a fourth term. In his statement, Mr. Collins called the insider trading charges "meritless" and vowed to fight them to have his "good name cleared of any wrongdoing." While the other congressmen who invested in Innate were not implicated in the indictment, the allegations against Mr. Collins have revived calls for stricter rules about financial investments or corporate board seats held by members of Congress while they are sitting on committees with oversight into those businesses. Mr. Collins may have been the largest investor in health companies on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, but one third of its members also bought and sold biotech, pharmaceutical and medical device stocks, an analysis by The New York Times has found. Republican Representatives William Long II and Markwayne Mullin served with Mr. Collins on the panel's health subcommittee and invested in Innate. The subcommittee weighed in on topics ranging from the Food and Drug Administration's authority over speeding up approval of new drugs to the Affordable Care Act. Beyond Innate Immunotherapeutics, Mr. Collins, among the wealthiest members of Congress, has held leadership roles in other biotech companies that were little known or mentioned on Capitol Hill. Until this past week, he was chairman of the board of directors of ZeptoMetrix, a private lab company based in Buffalo that he co founded and that has received millions of dollars in federal contracts, according to government records. He also reported owning between 25 million and 50 million in shares of the company, but has since transferred an unknown amount into his wife's name, a company spokesman said. In June, he sold as much as 1 million of stock in Chembio Diagnostics, a medical tests and equipment manufacturer, according to his ethics disclosure forms. Mr. Collins did not disclose these ties in committee hearings when topics overlapped with his business interests, including the development of a test for the Zika virus and whether the F.D.A. should more closely regulate some types of lab tests. Earlier, in 2013, he brought up the experimental drug that Innate was developing in a hearing about brain research, but did not mention his financial stake in the company. "Mr. Collins had no business serving on this publicly traded company from the get go," said Meredith McGehee, executive director of Issue One, a Washington ethics watchdog organization, who noted that such a practice was not permitted in the Senate. "The House needs to update its rules." Since 2012, a federal law has prevented members of Congress from trading stocks based on confidential information they receive as lawmakers. Members of both chambers are permitted to hold stocks and members of the House of Representatives may serve on boards as long as they disclose it. Generally, lawmakers don't have to recuse themselves from a vote or other action that might affect their holdings unless they are virtually the only investor who would benefit. While many lawmakers have opted to invest using broad mutual funds to avoid potential conflicts on individual holdings, some like Mr. Collins have not. In July of last year, a congressional ethics office found that Mr. Collins may have violated ethics rules by asking the National Institutes of Health for help with the design of Innate's now failed clinical trial. This week, the speaker of the House, Paul Ryan, stripped Mr. Collins of his seat on the energy and commerce committee and asked the House Ethics Committee to investigate the allegations of insider trading. Mr. Collins's involvement with Innate dates back to 2005, when he leveraged his wealthy circle of friends and neighbors many of whom would become political donors to help bail out the struggling company. One local investor was Lindy Ruff, the former coach of the Buffalo Sabres, the congressman told federal ethics investigators last year. "I live in an upscale neighborhood with people that have means," he explained in the interview. He became acquainted with Innate's chief executive, Simon Wilkinson, because ZeptoMetrix, his other company, was supplying H.I.V. to Innate, then called Virionyx, which was developing a treatment for the disease using antibodies harvested from a herd of New Zealand goats. Mr. Collins won election to Congress in 2012, in part on his reputation as a businessman who could turn around failing companies. He cleared his financial entanglements with House ethics officials, he told investigators, and was allowed to remain on the boards although he could not accept any compensation. In some cases, he said, he switched his company ownerships to his wife's name. Last year, however, the Office of Congressional Ethics, a quasi independent, bipartisan entity, not only concluded that Mr. Collins may have improperly used his position to benefit Innate but also said that he might have shared nonpublic information which is illegal about the company when he frequently talked to friends and family about developments. Mr. Collins said Mr. Wilkinson would visit Buffalo on his trips to the United States. "I'd call all my friends in," he said in his interview with ethics investigators. "We'd have wine and some hors d'oeuvres and he'd update everybody on what was going on." Mr. Wilkinson said in an email Wednesday that the company considers the indictment case against Mr. Collins to be a private matter, and declined to comment. Mr. Collins has denied any wrongdoing, saying that his interest in multiple sclerosis stems from high rates of the disease in his district in western New York and that his visit to the N.I.H. was "just nosy fun." One of his aides also indicated that a family member had suffered from the disease. His involvement with Innate surfaced in December of 2015, and came up again during the confirmation of Tom Price for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Mr. Price's active investment in pharmaceutical and health care stocks drew scrutiny and calls for an investigation from Democrats. Mr. Price divested from his stock in Innate before becoming secretary, and later resigned from his Cabinet post after his use of expensive charter flights on government trips became public. By comparison, little attention has been paid to Mr. Collins's connection to ZeptoMetrix, a company he helped found in 1999 that supplies viruses, bacteria and other products to laboratories around the country. Mr. Collins has said that his 50 percent holdings in ZeptoMetrix are in the name of his wife and daughter. The family's interest in the company ranges from 25 million to 50 million, according to Mr. Collins's financial disclosure forms. They earned 1 million to 5 million in interest from ZeptoMetrix. His wife, Mary Collins, receives a salary from the company, according to the disclosure. Mr. Collins resigned from the board this past week, according to ZeptoMetrix's chief executive, Shawn R. Smith. ZeptoMetrix has received more than 3 million in federal contracts since 2004, according to public records, and Mr. Collins has described the connection between the N.I.H. and ZeptoMetrix as "a very longstanding relationship." In an interview on Friday, Mr. Smith said most of the federal contracts occurred years ago, before Mr. Collins took office, and mainly involved sales of products like viruses and bacteria to government scientists. At two congressional hearings in 2016 and 2017, Mr. Collins asked detailed questions about development of a test for the Zika virus, not revealing his connection to ZeptoMetrix, which was selling the virus to laboratories that were developing tests for the disease. He also did not disclose his ties when he grilled an official with the F.D.A. in 2015 about his concerns over more closely regulating certain laboratory tests. Some ethics experts said that even if rules don't formally prohibit it, close affiliations with a company like serving on its board are imprudent. "The advice I would give people is don't serve on a corporate board because you will be suspect as a conduit for inside information even if in fact you are not," said Stanley Brand, a former House general counsel and longtime criminal defense lawyer. A spokeswoman for Mr. Collins on Friday pointed to statements that he made during a hearing in 2016 about bioresearch labs that disclosed that he founded and led a lab company. However, Mr. Collins did not reveal during the hearing that he remained on its board, nor his ongoing financial stake. In January, the outgoing chief executive of ZeptoMetrix, Gregory R. Chiklis, sued the company in New York State Supreme Court, accusing the company of financial irregularities, including paying "phantom employees" annual salaries of 500,000. Mr. Chiklis also said that Mr. Collins "unilaterally" made most decisions. The case was later settled, and Mr. Chiklis did not return calls for comment. But Mr. Smith, who replaced Mr. Chiklis, said Mr. Collins rarely weighed in on company business. Mr. Collins had an estimated net worth of 43.5 million in 2017, according to Roll Call. When the company's stock plunged last year, federal prosecutors have said Mr. Collins did not sell his own shares because he knew he was under investigation. He likely lost millions. According to his 2017 disclosure form, filed in April, Mr. Collins owned between 1 million and 5 million in Innate Immunotherapeutics stock. In June of this year, financial disclosure records show he sold between 15,000 and 50,000 in stock in Innate, his only reported sale of the stock since it lost most of its value. Oddly enough, some of the other Republican congressmen or their spouses who invested in Innate did so in January 2017, the same month that Mr. Price's investments came under public scrutiny. Representative John Culberson of Texas bought 13,982 in shares, and lost 9,194 when he sold it in June of last year, two weeks before the company announced that the drug trial had failed. Mr. Mullin of Oklahoma made the largest investment; between 100,001 and 250,000, according to his financial disclosure form. He did not list a sale, nor did Mr. Long of Missouri, who invested between 15,001 and 50,000, according to his report. Colorado Representative Doug Lamborn, whose wife had purchased between 15,001 and 50,000, reported a sale on June 27, of less than 1,000, suggesting that the couple lost most of the investment. Representative K. Michael Conaway of Texas reported making two investments of between 1,000 and 15,000 in Innate, around the same time last year. Since its drug trial failed, Innate Immunotherapeutics has abandoned its multiple sclerosis treatment and announced it had acquired a company that is studying cancer drugs. Its stock is currently trading at less than 20 cents per share. In his interview last year with ethics investigators after the M.S. drug trial failed, Mr. Collins sounded a note of regret over his proselytizing for the stock. Of his friends, he said, "everyone heard the presentation," and, he added, "ultimately, it failed, so obviously they should've asked more questions than they did."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
If you're lucky, you can spot a gray wolf in Yellowstone National Park. But a century ago, you'd have been hard pressed to find any there. Poisonings and unregulated hunting obliterated nearly all of these majestic canines from Canada to Mexico, their original home range. Since their reintroduction to Yellowstone and Idaho in the 1990s, gray wolves have done so well that they're reclaiming other parts of the northern Rockies. In the places where they returned, wolves tidied up explosive deer and elk populations, which had eaten valleys barren. That helped bring back trees and shrubs. Birds and beavers, as well as the animals that live in dams, also returned. The wolves ate coyotes, freeing up their prey for others. Bears and raptors came back for carrion. With more trees controlling erosion, the flows of some rivers were less chaotic, forming pools that became new habitats. "We're just uncovering these effects of large carnivores at the same time their populations are declining and are at risk," said William Ripple, an ecologist at Oregon State University. He's found that if you rewild some carnivores, or return them back to lost ranges, a cascade of ecological bounty may follow.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Greenwich Village may no longer be a predominantly L.G.B.T. neighborhood, but it remains a vibrant center of gay night life. In December, the owners of Pieces on Christopher Street and Hardware in Hell's Kitchen took over the former Boots Saddle space a block south of the Stonewall National Monument and reopened it as Playhouse Bar, a drag filled and dance happy nightclub that appeals to New Yorkers and tourists alike. "The historical significance of this neighborhood is something that you can't match anywhere else," said Justin Buchanan, 35, who owns the bar with Eric Einstein, 46. "That's really why we wanted another venue in the Village, because it's very important to preserve that history. And the Village hasn't really had anything new in a very long time." The building once housed the Actors Playhouse, where "Naked Boys Singing" and "Torch Song Trilogy" were staged. Double doors lead down to a rectangular room with loft style windows and an arched proscenium with a velvety red curtain. A long bar runs along an exposed brick wall where the word "Playhouse" has been spray painted with a rainbow of colors.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Adam Castillejo, known in the scientific literature as the London Patient, in London's East End. "I don't want people to think, 'Oh, you've been chosen.' No, it just happened. I was in the right place, probably at the right time, when it happened."Credit...Andrew Testa for The New York Times Adam Castillejo, known in the scientific literature as the London Patient, in London's East End. "I don't want people to think, 'Oh, you've been chosen.' No, it just happened. I was in the right place, probably at the right time, when it happened." A year after the "London Patient" was introduced to the world as only the second person to be cured of H.I.V., he is stepping out of the shadows to reveal his identity: He is Adam Castillejo. Six feet tall and sturdy, with long, dark hair and an easy smile, Mr. Castillejo, 40, exudes good health and cheer. But his journey to the cure has been arduous and agonizing, involving nearly a decade of grueling treatments and moments of pure despair. He wrestled with whether and when to go public, given the attention and scrutiny that might follow. Ultimately, he said, he realized that his story carried a powerful message of optimism. "This is a unique position to be in, a unique and very humbling position," he said. "I want to be an ambassador of hope." Only one other individual with H.I.V. Timothy Ray Brown, the so called Berlin Patient, in 2008 has been successfully cured, and there have been many failed attempts. In fact, Mr. Castillejo's doctors could not be sure last spring that he was truly rid of H.I.V., and they tiptoed around the word "cure," instead referring to it as a "remission." Still, the news grabbed the world's attention, even that of President Trump. And by confirming that a cure is possible, it galvanized researchers. "It's really important that it wasn't a one off, it wasn't a fluke," said Richard Jefferys, a director at Treatment Action Group, an advocacy organization. "That's been an important step for the field." For Mr. Castillejo, the experience was surreal. He watched as millions of people reacted to the news of his cure and speculated about his identity. "I was watching TV, and it's, like, 'OK, they're talking about me,'" he said. "It was very strange, a very weird place to be." But he remained resolute in his decision to remain private until a few weeks ago. For one, his doctors are more certain now that he is virus free. "We think this is a cure now, because it's been another year and we've done a few more tests," said his virologist, Dr. Ravindra Gupta of the University of Cambridge. Mr. Castillejo also tested his own readiness in small ways. He set up a separate email address and telephone number for his life as "LP," as he refers to himself, and opened a Twitter account. He began talking weekly with Mr. Brown, the only other person who could truly understand what he had been through. In December, Mr. Castillejo prepared a statement to be read aloud by a producer on BBC Radio 4. After talking through his decision with his doctors, friends and mother, he decided the time was right to tell his story. "I don't want people to think, 'Oh, you've been chosen,'" he said. "No, it just happened. I was in the right place, probably at the right time, when it happened." Mr. Castillejo grew up in Caracas, Venezuela. His father was of Spanish and Dutch descent which later turned out to be crucial and served as a pilot for an ecotourism company. Mr. Castillejo speaks reverently of his father, who died 20 years ago, and bears a strong resemblance to him. But his parents divorced when he was young, so he was primarily raised by his industrious mother, who now lives in London with him. "She taught me to be the best I could be, no matter what," he said. As a young man, Mr. Castillejo made his way first to Copenhagen and then to London in 2002. He was found to have H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, in 2003. With the support of his partner at the time, Mr. Castillejo persevered. He turned the passion for cooking he had inherited from his grandmother into a job as a sous chef at a fashionable fusion restaurant. He adopted an unfailingly healthy lifestyle: He ate well, exercised often, went cycling, running and swimming. Then, in 2011, came the second blow. Mr. Castillejo was in New York City, visiting friends and brunching on the Upper East Side, when a nurse from the clinic where he went for regular checkups called him. "Where are you?" she asked. When Mr. Castillejo told her, she would say only that they had some concerns about his health and that he should come in for more tests when he returned to London. He had been experiencing fevers, and the tests showed that they were the result of a Stage 4 lymphoma. "I will never forget my reaction as once again my world changed forever," he said. "Once again, another death sentence." Years of harsh chemotherapy followed. Mr. Castillejo's H.I.V. status complicated matters. Each time his oncologists adjusted his cancer treatment, the infectious disease doctors had to recalibrate his H.I.V. medications, said Dr. Simon Edwards, who acted as a liaison between the two teams. There is little information about how to treat people with both diseases, and H.I.V. positive people are not allowed to enter clinical trials. So with each new chemotherapy combination, Mr. Castillejo's doctors were venturing further into uncharted territory, Dr. Edwards said. With each treatment that seemed to work and then didn't, Mr. Castillejo fell into a deeper low. He saw fellow patients at the clinic die and others get better, while he kept returning, his body weakening with each round. "I was struggling mentally," he said. "I try to look at the bright side, but the brightness was fading." In late 2014, the extreme physical and emotional toll of the past few years caught up to Mr. Castillejo, and two weeks before that Christmas he disappeared. His friends and family imagined the worst, and filed a missing person's report. Mr. Castillejo turned up four days later outside London, with no memory of how he had ended up there or what he had done in the interim. He described it as "switching off" from his life. Around that same time, he said, he felt so defeated that he also contemplated going to Dignitas, the Swiss company that helps terminally ill people take their own lives: "I felt powerless. I needed control, to end my life on my own terms." He made it through that dark period, and emerged with a determination to spend whatever was left of his life fighting. Still, in the spring of 2015, his doctors told him he would not live to see Christmas. A bone marrow transplant from a donor is sometimes offered to people with lymphoma who have exhausted their other options, but Mr. Castillejo's doctors did not have the expertise to try that, especially for someone with H.I.V. His close friend, Peter, was not ready to give up, and together they searched online for alternatives. (Peter declined to reveal his last name because of privacy concerns.) They discovered that at a hospital in London was Dr. Ian Gabriel, an expert in bone marrow transplants for treating cancer, including in people with H.I.V. Because of their last ditch effort, Mr. Castillejo said, "We're here today. You never, never know." Within a week, he met with Dr. Gabriel, who tried a third and final time to tap Mr. Castillejo's own stem cells for a transplant. When that failed, Dr. Gabriel explained that Mr. Castillejo's Latin background might complicate the search for a bone marrow donor who matched the genetic profile of his immune system. To everyone's surprise, however, Mr. Castillejo quickly matched with several donors, including a German one perhaps a legacy from his half Dutch father who carried a crucial mutation called delta 32 that hinders H.I.V. infection. A transplant from this donor offered the tantalizing possibility of curing both Mr. Castillejo's cancer and the H.I.V. When Dr. Gabriel called with the news in the fall of 2015, Mr. Castillejo was on the top deck of one of London's iconic red buses, on his way to see his general practitioner for a checkup. His thoughts raced alongside the scenery: He had only recently been told he was going to die, and now he was being told he might be cured of both cancer and H.I.V. "I was trying to digest what just happened," he recalled. "But after that call, I had a big smile on my face. That's where the journey began as LP." With the possibility of an H.I.V. cure, the case immediately took on intense importance for everyone involved. Dr. Edwards, who had cared for Mr. Castillejo since 2012, had, as a young doctor in the early 1990s, seen many men his age die of H.I.V. "What a privilege it would be to go from no therapy to a complete cure in my lifetime," he recalled telling Mr. Castillejo. "So you have to get better no pressure." Dr. Edwards involved Dr. Gupta, his former colleague and one of the few virologists in London he knew to be doing H.I.V. research. Dr. Gupta initially was skeptical; the approach had worked only once, 12 years earlier, with Mr. Brown. But Dr. Gupta also knew that the payoff could be huge. Antiretroviral drugs can suppress the virus to undetectable levels, but any interruption in the treatment can bring the virus roaring back, so a cure for H.I.V. is still the ultimate goal. Dr. Gupta began carefully monitoring Mr. Castillejo's H.I.V. status. In late 2015, Mr. Castillejo was preparing to receive the transplant when another major setback arose. His viral load shot back up with H.I.V. that appeared to be resistant to the drugs he had been taking. Even after he left the hospital, the only exercise he initially was allowed to do was walking, so he walked for hours around the trendy Shoreditch neighborhood. He went to the flower market there every Sunday, treated himself to salted beef "beigels" to celebrate small successes and admired the colorful murals and vintage clothes. A year on, as he became stronger, he slowly began thinking about forgoing the H.I.V. medications to see if he was rid of the virus. He took his last set of antiretroviral drugs in October 2017. Seventeen months later, in March 2019, Dr. Gupta announced the news of his cure. Neither he nor Mr. Castillejo was prepared for what came next. Dr. Gupta found himself presenting the single case to a standing room only crowd at a conference, and shaking hands afterward with dozens of people. Mr. Castillejo was overwhelmed by the nearly 150 media requests to reveal his identity, and began to see a role he might play in raising awareness of cancer, bone marrow transplants and H.I.V. He has enrolled in several studies to help Dr. Gupta and others understand both diseases. So far, his body has shown no evidence of the virus apart from fragments the doctors call "fossils" and what seems to be a long term biological memory of having once been infected. Others in the H.I.V. community are reassured by this news, but expressed concern for Mr. Castillejo's privacy and mental health. "It can be very important for people to have these kinds of beacons of hope," Mr. Jefferys, the Treatment Action Group director, said. "At the same time, that's a lot of weight for someone to carry." Mr. Castillejo's friends have similar worries. But he is as ready as he will ever be, he said. He sees LP as his "work" identity and is determined to live his private life to its fullest. Having lost his lustrous dark hair several times over, he has now grown it to shoulder length. He has always enjoyed adventures, and with careful preparation he has begun traveling again, describing himself to fellow travelers only as a cancer survivor. He celebrated his 40th birthday with a trip to Machu Picchu, in Peru. But in conversations about his status as the second person ever to be cured of H.I.V., Mr. Castillejo still adamantly refers to himself as LP, not Adam. "When you call me LP, it calms me down," he said. "LP to my name, that is kind of a big step." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
As one of the conservators working at the Penn Museum's Artifact Lab, Molly Gleeson takes questions from visitors twice a day. Where to Go to Watch the Paint Dry In the never ending quest for engagement in a short attention span world, museums around the world have long looked for ways to spice up visitor experiences. But as after hours gatherings and dedicated Instagram experiences continue to take off, a time honored practice has surprisingly gained traction, and become a destination worthy draw: conservation, or art restoration, done in the public eye. "Open conservation," or art restoration labs set up to be viewed, and sometimes, interacted with, have increasingly become a part of museums' offerings. Promising transparency in practices, open conservation ideally engages museumgoers on a deeper level. Higher profile conservation projects are gaining attention, from the live, multimedia supported restoration of Rembandt's "The Night Watch" at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam to this year's new, open conservation lab at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. It might be worth working into your next travel itinerary, whether you're a dedicated conservation nerd or a casual art appreciator, one of these four stateside spots to watch conservation in action. The Lunder Conservation Center at the Smithsonian American Art Museum was one of the first to open a visible conservation center, just over 13 years ago. "It's not just the painting on the wall or the sculpture you can't touch," explains Amber Kerr, the chief of conservation at the museum. "It's an inlet into the complexity of the art world. We talk about x rays, unique gadgets that look at art in a unique way. It's not something you need a higher art knowledge to appreciate." Since then, their programming has grown to include conservation workshops, focusing on topics like the effects of climate change on cultural heritage, and tours and activities targeting families across five laboratories and studios. "We're getting this heightened awareness that these things are fragile and that they can disappear," Ms. Kerr said. "People are seeing the responsibility of preserving cultural heritage. They want to know what goes into it." Dedicated conservation buffs would do well to book a visit at The Conservation Center in Chicago, where 40 expert conservators work on everything from paintings and paper to furniture in a 35,000 square foot facility housed in a 19th century warehouse in Chicago's West Town. "A lot of our conservators have been here for a very long time, and are incredibly passionate about what they do," says Heather Becker, chief executive officer of The Conservation Center. "They're able to share and express what it means to be in the field, and speak to the mission of saving and preserving cultural items that are precious to people." The Conservation Center welcomes groups large and small for free tours, and request that appointments be made in advance (a few days or a week's notice should suffice, Ms. Becker says); the subsequent tour will move through the Center's different departments, and will likely take your interests into account. Works change regularly, and can range from ancient masterpieces to family heirlooms (recent highlights included a focus on Chicago based artists and a seventeenth century screen from Chinese Emperor Quianlong). "Every time you come to visit the facility, you'll see something completely different." The Artifact Lab at the Penn Museum The Penn Museum, home to archeological and anthropological centered collections from around the world, puts conservation efforts on display through The Artifact Lab. Opened in 2012, the glass enclosed space allows visitors to view the conservators at work and, twice a day, converse with them about their projects. "Our conservators interact with the public for half hour periods twice each day, when we literally open a window between the lab and the visitor area," explains Lynn Grant, head conservator at the museum. "We tend to try to make it more of a dialogue with the visitors than a lecture!"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
A major Christian group is being sued by former customers in at least three states who claim it sold them an alternative to health insurance that misled them about protections against large medical bills. Numerous insurance regulators, including in New York, are trying to stop the group from offering the plans in their states. The most recent lawsuit, filed last week in federal court in Missouri, accuses Trinity Healthshare, the Christian group, and Aliera, the for profit company that markets the plans, for having "sold inherently unfair and deceptive health care plans to Missouri residents, and failed to provide them with the coverage the purchasers believed they would receive." The plans were developed "to look and feel like health insurance that would provide meaningful coverage for the purchasers' health care needs," according to the lawsuit. Earlier this month, New York State wrote a cease and desist letter to the companies. Nearly 8,000 New Yorkers are currently enrolled in the group's plans, and regulators are concerned that the coronavirus crisis could lead people who recently lost insurance when they lost their job to pick one of these plans rather than find one through the state insurance marketplace or enroll in Medicaid. "Trinity, Aliera and its subsidiaries continue to operate in New York without a license, depriving New Yorkers of important benefits when they are most needed," said Linda A. Lacewell, the state's superintendent of financial services, in a statement. "The department will use all the tools at its disposal to crack down on those who mislead or deceive New Yorkers, especially during a pandemic." Both Trinity and Aliera say there is no confusion about what they are offering. Trinity says its Christian health sharing ministry programs "are not insurance, and prospective and current members are advised expressly and repeatedly that Trinity neither provides insurance nor guarantees payments." Aliera says its marketing materials "make a point of stating very clearly that these programs are absolutely not insurance." "With health insurance premiums and unemployment skyrocketing, as well as the ever present threat of Covid 19, it's deeply disturbing and disappointing to see any state regulator working to deny their residents access to the affordable health care options that health care sharing ministries offer," the company said in a statement. More than one million Americans have joined Christian groups in which they agree to share their medical expenses with other members. People are attracted by prices that are far lower than the cost of traditional insurance policies, which must meet strict requirements set by the Affordable Care Act, like guaranteed coverage for pre existing conditions. The Christian groups can offer low rates because they are not classified as insurance, and are under no legal obligation to pay medical claims. Some people have paid hundreds of dollars a month, and then have been left with hundreds of thousands in unpaid medical bills in several states where the ministries, which are not subject to regulation as insurers, failed to follow through on pooling members' expenses. With millions of Americans now without health insurance because they lost their jobs, critics of these plans worry they will turn to these alternatives without realizing they do not provide adequate protection. In the current environment, "people will be desperate for health coverage, and they might sign up for things that look at first blush like a cheap deal," said Eleanor Hamburger whose firm, Sirianni Youtz Spoonemore Hamburger, brought the three lawsuits and is seeking class action status for them. "We've fielded calls about Aliera from all over the country," she said. In an interview, George T. Kelly III, the Missouri man bringing the suit against Trinity and Aliera, said he and his wife were looking for plans when an insurance agent told them he "had a good deal for us." In 2018, he signed up for the plan and paid "contributions" of 344 a month. But he discovered that the plan would not pay for any of his medical claims, including hernia surgery. "They were just denying it," he said. Mr. Kelly eventually went to an out of state surgery center where he could pay cash. Jay Angoff, a former federal health official and state insurance regulator who is one of the lawyers representing Mr. Kelly, said people are being misled by Aliera and Trinity. "On the one hand, they state, sometimes in small print, that they're not insurance," he said. "On the other hand, they convey the impression they are insurance." "They avoid any kind of state insurance department regulation," which would make sure they have enough money to pay members' claims, he said. Unlike an A.C.A. plan that must spend 80 cents of every dollar collected in premiums on medical expenses, these plans spend a much smaller fraction, Mr. Angoff said. In its 2019 final investigative report, Washington State found less than 20 cents per dollar was being reserved for members' medical expenses, with the overwhelming portion of the money going to Aliera. Aliera says members are responsible for sharing one another's costs and share much more than 20 percent of the expenses. "The vast majority of Trinity members are very satisfied with Trinity's ministry, and continue to choose Trinity as a cost effective means for sharing medical expenses," the Christian group said. Like Washington, numerous states have taken action against Aliera. The company, which is based in Georgia, was the subject of an investigation by The Houston Chronicle. The Texas attorney general sued Aliera last year to stop it from offering "unregulated insurance products to the public," and several regulators, including those in Colorado, Connecticut and Washington, followed suit. Trinity says it has stopped offering its plans in New York, and is working with state regulators to address their concerns. "Several state departments of insurance have raised matters with Trinity based on the unsubstantiated and incorrect conclusion that Trinity is engaged in the unauthorized business of insurance in their states," the group said in a statement, adding that "it is prepared to defend its compliance with the various state laws."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
FARMER CITY, Illinois In a research field off Highway 54 last autumn, corn stalks shimmered in rows 40 feet deep. Girish Chowdhary, an agricultural engineer at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, bent to place a small white robot at the edge of a row marked 103. The robot, named TerraSentia, resembled a souped up version of a lawn mower, with all terrain wheels and a high resolution camera on each side. In much the same way that self driving cars "see" their surroundings, TerraSentia navigates a field by sending out thousands of laser pulses to scan its environment. A few clicks on a tablet were all that were needed to orient the robot at the start of the row before it took off, squeaking slightly as it drove over ruts in the field. "It's going to measure the height of each plant," Dr. Chowdhary said. It would do that and more. The robot is designed to generate the most detailed portrait possible of a field, from the size and health of the plants, to the number and quality of ears each corn plant will produce by the end of the season, so that agronomists can breed even better crops in the future. In addition to plant height, TerraSentia can measure stem diameter, leaf area index and "stand count" the number of live grain or fruit producing plants or all of those traits at once. And Dr. Chowdhary is working on adding even more traits, or phenotypes, to the list with the help of colleagues at EarthSense, a spinoff company that he created to manufacture more robots. Traditionally, plant breeders have measured these phenotypes by hand, and used them to select plants with the very best characteristics for creating hybrids. The advent of DNA sequencing has helped, enabling breeders to isolate genes for some desirable traits, but it still takes a human to assess whether the genes isolated from the previous generation actually led to improvements in the next one. "The idea is that robots can automate the phenotyping process and make these measurements more reliable," Dr. Chowdhary said. In doing so, the TerraSentia and others like it can help optimize the yield of farms far beyond what humans alone have been able to accomplish. Automation has always been a big part of agriculture, from the first seed drills to modern combine harvesters. Farm equipment is now regularly outfitted with sensors that use machine learning and robotics to identify weeds and calculate the amount of herbicide that needs to sprayed, for instance, or to learn to detect and pick strawberries. Lately, smaller, more dexterous robots have emerged in droves. In 2014, the French company Naio released 10 prototypes of a robot named Oz that is just three feet long and weighs roughly 300 pounds. It assembles phenotypes of vegetable crops even as it gobbles up weeds. EcoRobotix, based in Switzerland, makes a solar powered robot that rapidly identifies crops and weeds; the device resembles an end table on wheels. The household appliance maker Bosch has also tested a robot called BoniRob for analyzing soil and plants. "All of a sudden, people are starting to realize that data collection and analysis tools developed during the 90s technology boom can be applied to agriculture," said George A. Kantor, a senior systems scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, who is using his own research to develop tools for estimating crop yields. The data collected by the TerraSentia is changing breeding from a reactionary process into a more predictive one. Using the robot's advanced machine learning skills, scientists can collate the influence of hundreds, even thousands, of factors on a plant's future traits, much like doctors utilize genetic tests to understand the likelihood of a patient developing breast cancer or Type 2 diabetes. "Using phenotyping robots, we can identify the best yielding plants before they even shed pollen," said Mike Gore, a plant biologist at Cornell University. He added that doing so can potentially cut in half the time needed to breed a new cultivar a plant variety produced by selective breeding from roughly eight years to just four. The demands on agriculture are rising globally. The human population is expected to climb to 9.8 billion by 2050 and 11.2 billion by 2100, according to the United Nations. To feed the world with less land, fewer resources and in the face of climate change farmers will need to augment their technological intelligence. The agricultural giants are interested. Corteva, which spun off from the merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont in 2016, has been testing the TerraSentia in fields across the United States. "There's definitely a niche for this kind of robot," said Neil Hausmann, who oversees research and development at Corteva. "It provides standardized, objective data that we use to make a lot of our decisions. We use it in breeding and product advancement, in deciding which product is the best, which ones to move forward and which ones will have the right characteristics for growers in different parts of the country." Dr. Chowdhary and his colleagues hope that partnerships with big agribusinesses and academic institutions will help subsidize the robots for smallholder farmers. "Our goal is to eventually get the cost of the robots under 1,000," he said. Farmers don't need special expertise to operate the TerraSentia, either, Dr. Chowdhary said. The robot is almost fully autonomous. Growers with thousands of acres of land can have several units survey their crops, but a farmer in a developing country with only five acres of land could use one just as easily. The TerraSentia has already been tested in a wide variety of fields, including corn, soybean, sorghum, cotton, wheat, tomatoes, strawberries, citrus crops, apple orchards, almond farms and vineyards. But some experts question whether such robots will ever truly be targeted to small farms, or a sufficiently affordable option. "For the kind of agriculture that smallholders tend to engage in, particularly in sub Saharan Africa, South Asia and parts of Latin America, there are a lot of barriers to the adoption of new technologies," said Kyle Murphy, a policy and agricultural development analyst at the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at M.I.T. He added that robots like the TerraSentia may be more likely to help smallholder farmers indirectly, by promoting the development of better or more suitable crops. Before the TerraSentia can advance crop breeding for a wide swath of farmers, it must perfect a few more skills. Occasionally, it trips over branches and debris on the ground, or its wheels get stuck in muddy soil, requiring the user to walk behind the rover and right its course as needed. "Hopefully, by next year we'll be able to train the TerraSentia so even more so users won't have to be anywhere in the field," Dr. Chowdhary said. For the moment, the TerraSentia keeps a leisurely pace, less than one mile an hour. This allows its cameras to capture slight changes in pixels to measure the plants' leaf area index and recognize signs of disease. Dr. Chowdhary and his colleagues at EarthSense are hoping that advancements in camera technology will eventually add to the robot's speed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Like the young people in the entertainingly gooey 2008 horror movie "The Ruins," the group of college friends in "Blumhouse's Truth or Dare" discover too late that their Mexican vacation has left them with a nasty infection. This time, though, the contagion isn't a flesh eating plant, but a demon driven game that doubles as a death trap. Snared after unwisely accepting a stranger's invitation to play, the friends (led by the TV stars Lucy Hale and Tyler Posey) are sequentially forced to tell a truth or accept a dare. But even if they spill every shameful secret and enact every vile instruction, their turn will eventually come around again. The game ends, presumably, when the director, Jeff Wadlow or one of his likely successors runs out of ways to wipe his victims out.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Know the song right. In a little while from now, if I'm not feel it any less. So I promised myself to treat myself and visit a nearby tower. Yeah, so it's a kind of a sweet lovely song about somebody thinking of committing suicide. I don't know. I like the idea of a loan again naturally because we're all alone, but it's not exactly. It's not exactly the feel good song of 1972, I don't even know if there was. What was the feel good song of 1972 even though let's see Steven t. Hardy said that he was listening to the chimes of freedom by Bob Dylan. That is a great tune. It was covered by Bruce Springsteen of course. It was a very powerful song, and it's a song I think that is still speaking to us. One of the things I wrote about in the column yesterday is. And the thing. I guess it started me thinking about music is that new Bob Dylan song murder most foul. And it was. I mean, it's a long song. Have you listened to it. Have you listened to murder most foul. So it starts off talking about the Kennedy assassination. But it winds up really as this kind of inventory of all of the songs that are helping us survive all the songs that are getting us through and that playlist of that. I mean, the song ends with a kind of an incantation of songs that he's saying to Wolfman jack that they're going to open our hearts and help us survive. So it's a very wide playlist, but that's you know there's everything in there from Fats Waller to the old rugged cross. And that's what got me thinking about what are. So what are the songs that I would listen to. And one of the songs that I have been listening to. I've been listening to a lot of Irish music, music that basically took me back to a happier time in our lives back when our family lived in Ireland and we did not know what the future would be. So this is Jenny Boylan for the New York Times opinion page. And we're talking today about the music that's helping you get through. It's helping. It work. We're talking about actually whatever the coping strategies are that you're using to help you get through this time, it's funny. I'm hearing of those of us who are safe, which is obviously, the category of people that you hope to belong to. But those of us who are in isolation those of us who are staying at home. I've really heard of two different stories and one of which is people who are alone who are just by themselves in their houses in their apartments. And the how difficult it is to just be lonely. The other thing that I'm hearing is people who are the opposite of loan people who are hunkered down with a very big family. So in our house. We're here with we have there are five of us, right now there's me there's my wife Dede there's my brother in law whom I call uncle Todd. It's my daughter as I and her fiance say his name is Ezra. So there's five of us here. And it death everyday feels a little bit like a Thanksgiving dinner although on the whole, we are we're doing the best we can. I'm seeing a note from NBA 32 music who notes that the pup and I are doing. So that means I think that means you're hunkered down with your dogs. How are your dogs doing. Are your dogs feeling a little bit. Do they know something weird is happening. Tell you what. Our dog started doing a thing. It's probably more than you want to know. But the dog started peeing on the couch. Like what's that about. Well, we took the dog to the vet and that was weird too, because how do you get to the vet when you're isolating. Well, we made an appointment we went to the vet. We open the door that came out, took the dog. So we kept six feet away from each other even while taking the dog off. And it turns out that the dog. We think has is the thing that happens to older dogs that have the that have been spayed or fixed as the saying goes older female dogs. They get incontinent. And the answer is estrogen. Wait a minute. So we're now being given estrogen pills. Can I just say this dog of mine is going to go through the same thing I went through 20 years ago when I went through transition. It is. It's a little it's a little strange. I'm just you know I mean, does this mean that the dog is you is now going to ask for directions when it's lost. OK I don't know. Here's the note from xBFeh. I can't even get the last name is correct. The note is I've been having a hard time focusing while reading. I have had a hard time focusing too. It is really hard to think about anything right now. And it's really even harder to write. So my column for the New York Times appears every other Wednesday. And I have a lot to say. I have a lot of feelings, but I also have very little motivation to get down and do the work. I'm writing a novel with Jody Picco and we're. I mean, originally, we hope to put our heads together and do it together. But instead, we have these Zoom conversations. And it just the idea of talking to one more talking rectangle on my computer is just exhausting and a little bit depressing. In my column yesterday I wrote that the feeling that we're experiencing is grief that the thing we're experiencing is that life has changed. And this was the moment that life changed. And it is OK. How do we focus better. I'm not entirely sure. I think it might be that we have to just accept where we are. If you have a roof over your head and you have food to eat. I think you just have to be grateful and accept the fact that we're not going to get as much done as we used to be able to do. So I saw a commoner just noted that he's been listening a lot to the blues. So have I and then the other night I put on lightnin Hopkins, who was someone who I really, really loved in the 70s. I listened to a lot of lightnin Hopkins but I hadn't seen him for a long time. Somebody just come in and more wine and say. I'm trying not to drink too much because I'm aware one, it's probably not in La and the best thing for me, but also this is more pragmatically I'm just afraid I'm going to wait 10,000 pounds when this whole when this whole nightmare is over. Of course worrying about how much you weigh is probably the last thing that we need to worry about right now in so many people's lives are at risk so much is at stake. I said in the column yesterday that I'm acutely aware that my life has only been made possible by the fact that there is a whole army of people who were not given the option as I was to work from home. And those are the people who are keeping me alive. Those are the people who are keeping my family alive. Everyone from u.p.s. drivers to grocery store clerks to farmers. And I'm just so incredibly grateful to you for your work. I see my friend Kate Bornstein is going to join us. Hi Kate Bornstein. I miss you Kate. I hope. I hope I get to see you soon. Here's a reader's question. Do I think we'll ever get back to normal or close. I don't think so. I think that the world is fundamentally changed and it will. And it was in the process of changing beforehand anyway due to this presidency due to the way. So many norms would be kind of ripped up and destroyed forever. But now more than ever, I think what I hope is that we'll learn a little bit more about what's necessary both economically as well as emotionally that will value our connection with each other a little bit better. This is Jenny Boylan in case you've just joined us. And I'm doing this live Twitter event for the New York Times opinion page. This is part of the series that the times is doing of writers for the times. Having events like this. And if you were to tune in tomorrow at 1 o'clock Eastern the redoubtable Farhad manjoo we'll be doing a lot of Twitter event. Here's some folks that you can hear next week, it'll be Jennifer Senior on Monday wajahat Ali on Tuesday. Kara Swisher who is actually just on yesterday who was awesome and amazing. Kara Swisher will be on a week from yesterday. This coming Wednesday. Nick Kristaps with that next Thursday. And David Brooks we'll be doing the live Twitter thing one week from tomorrow. So as for me. We're talking about writing we're talking about the music that is helping the survive. We're talking about men, women transgender advocacy and we're talking about dogs. And here is a note from Terry Ellen who says it is my own songs that helped me most ones I've written from pain loneliness and heartbreak. I sing and play them for myself to remind me. I made it through this once before as a transition is a form of quarantine I will do so again. You remind me of that line from an old Grateful Dead song. Let's see if I can remember. Sometimes we visit your country and live in your home. Sometimes sorry. Sorry Jerry. Sometimes we ride on our horses sometimes we walk alone. Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own. I think that's an important thing to mention that we are. So when we talk about what are the songs that are getting us through. So often. So often we go to our own comfort music or music of rage. But don't forget that some of the other music that's helping us survive right now is the music that we write ourselves. Even if it's a song that nobody else has heard it makes perfect sense. I am. I have a piano downstairs. Maybe at the end of this at the end of this piece, I should carry this whole device downstairs to the piano and try to Sing Sing a few songs for you. That's just what the world needs right. Is that is a writer playing the piano. Well, anyway do you sing your own songs in this hard time. K.j. from Tennessee is saying that they felt they liked the column yesterday but k.j. says music works differently. For me it's an outlet outlet for rage. The louder the better. You know, I have to say, when I was young, I really I really felt that way too. I really liked music that was loud. I like playing music that was loud, but the older I get, the more I don't know my soul's really jangled. And right now, I don't. I guess I don't want to be more jangled. I feel like what I need is a little more love flow more comforting. On the other hand, I hate I hate ending up like you know listening to music. Is that what it's going to be. I'm going to end up. I don't know. It's going to be. It's all going to be one I mean, my I was like my parents music taste music was kind of pathetic. They had good taste in classical music but I'm having a lot of fun. I'm having a lot of requests here to play the piano. Really is that really what you want out of me. OK I'll play the piano, but you have to tell me what you want me to play for you. I will play a request. It's not it's not going to be very good. I do have a little song I could sing for you about the New York Times columnist. Would you like to hear that. This is a song I wrote. There was a there was a there was a cocktail party of New York Times columnists a couple of years ago. And I wasn't sure I was going to go. I ended up going. But before I went I wrote the song, which was to the tune of a pink elephants on parade from Dumbo. They're here times columns on parade. Here they come typically happy times columnists on parade. I can read their endless books and suffer Mo those dirty looks. But drinking gin with David Brooks is really too much for me. I am front knee your eight times columnists on parade haha. OK Yeah. Well, let's see. We are just about coming up to the end of this. All right, let's take on what to do. I'm going to try to take the phone downstairs and I'll try to play something for you on the piano. I don't know what that's going to be. I'll remind you once again, that we are going to be doing this We're doing this every day. Tomorrow it's going to be Farhad manjoo here and on Monday Jennifer Senior next Tuesday wajahat Ali. And coming up next Wednesday. It Wednesday as Kara Swisher so oh here someone says Pennsylvania loves you. Thanks so much. Let's take you out now. I've got this whole monstrosity duct taped to the front of my computer. All right. So let's go downstairs and if I lose you now that'll just be the end of this whole thing. But let's go downstairs and maybe play the piano for you a little bit. So what's going to make it better. Here's the piano what's going to make you feel better right now. I tell you what, it's going to make you feel better. Probably not me playing again. Because that's not my main skill. What's the scoop. We can put the phone there about this shredding you don't really want me to sing you. Here comes the sun. Here comes some icing. I messed it up. See this is a problem with doing it live isn't it. Well and that, my friends, is proof why I'm a writer instead of a musician. I think that said, everybody sending you love from Maine please join us tomorrow at 1 o'clock when you will hear Farhad manjoo for the New York Times op Ed page. This is Jenny Boylan. Stay safe. Wash your hands and above all protect your heart. Sending your love.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
In a recording studio in Williamsburg, Brooklyn last month, where wood paneling on the walls and ceiling gave off the faint scent of pine, Charlie Rosen stood in front of 17 fellow musicians, smiling. Chiefly known for his work on Broadway, Mr. Rosen bopped along to the music, baton comfortably in hand, while the ensemble played the score of a Nintendo racecar game. With a TV on mute providing cues, he and his 8 Bit Big Band were recording the music from Mario Kart 64, blown way out with 36 instruments, including saxophones, trumpets, trombones, 11 violins, three cellos and a harp. "You got everything we need for that section?" he asked his engineer. "Great. Let's move on to Level 3." At 28, Mr. Rosen is an orchestrator, composer and arranger with his hands in many musical cookie jars. Mr. Rosen also produces commercial soundtracks for the skin care company Olay out of his tiny home office in Harlem, where he stashes 52 instruments in a 9 foot by 10 foot room that overlooks a quiet side street. There's a melodica, a flugelbone, a zither and a theremin, which makes the ooo oo ooo sound from old sci fi movies and is played by waving your hands around in the air. If you count what he calls his "toys" like harmonicas, tambourines and a kalimba Mr. Rosen has 70 instruments at home. He can play them all. "That's insane," he said after counting. "I'm insane." This collection represents more than a nifty party trick. Indeed, while he considers himself primarily a bass player, his facility with so many instruments is part of what makes him such a valuable orchestrator. "It's kind of like cooking," he added. "The more spices you're familiar with, the more you can combine them to create new flavors in places you might not expect." Once a year, he estimates, he'll be working on piece of music and think, "You know what this needs? A bass melodica." Mr. Rosen exists as a sort of bridge between genres and generations, embracing Broadway standards, pop songs and the music of Tetris. And all of it funnels into his work. Marc Shaiman, a Tony winning theater and Oscar nominated film composer, described Mr. Rosen as a big talent, but without the eccentricities that sometimes come along for the ride. "It's the kind of talent where I almost want to hate him," Mr. Shaiman said. "But I can't." Jennifer Ashley Tepper, a producer on "Be More Chill" and the creative and programming director of Feinstein's/54 Below, described him as a hub for young Broadway musicians, since, between his bands and the shows for which he hires, he employs so many of them. "He's an unbelievably calm and steadying source," Ms. Tepper said. "When you find out that a big press person is coming, or that something has fallen apart and we can't put it back together, he's the first person to be like, 'O.K., let's come up with a plan.'" Mr. Rosen, an easy to smile bundle of bearded energy, has lived in the same six bedroom Harlem apartment since he was 22, with a rotating cast of roommates. His girlfriend, Danielle Gimbal, does the copy work for his music and is a frequent presence in his home and at recording sessions. Raised in Los Angeles, Mr. Rosen is the son of a classical bassoonist (his mother, who also plays flute, clarinet, piccolo and sax) and an organist (his father, who also plays guitar, banjo and accordion). A full sized Wurlitzer pipe organ, the kind from silent movie houses, sat in his childhood home. What's new onstage and off: Sign up for our Theater Update newsletter When he was 3, his parents noticed he could tell if a note played on the piano was white or black he had perfect pitch. So he started on the piano, with his mother as his first teacher. He didn't set out to work on Broadway. But as a 15 year old jazz student at a performing arts high school, he auditioned to play in the pit for a regional production of the musical "13" and off he went. He attended Berklee College of Music in Boston for four semesters, on and off between Broadway shows. He gravitated to courses he felt would help him professionally, like music production, arranging and Afro Caribbean percussion. His main gigs now are playing guitar for "Be More Chill" his instrument, dressed for the occasion, wears a brown hair bow on its headstock and co orchestrating the production of "Moulin Rouge!" scheduled to open on Broadway in July. (On the first day of performances for "Be More Chill," he was told by his union's new leadership that contract rules prohibited him, as the show's orchestrator, from playing in the band, but he was put back in while the contract is being renegotiated.) Thanks to Mr. Rosen, "Be More Chill" features a theremin, which does its electronic ooo oo ooo thing when a mind controlling super computer dies. There is also a flugelbone, which he described as his "orchestrating secret weapon": It's a horn that can be managed by a trumpet player but can sound sort of like a French horn or a trombone, which allows one musician to produce a variety of timbres for a small orchestra. Joe Iconis, who wrote the music and lyrics for "Be More Chill," said Mr. Rosen's ability to have so many instruments in his head, but also so many different kinds of music, both old and new, can give his work an air of "magic." "His breadth of knowledge of music of all types is just intimidating," Mr. Iconis said. "As much as he knows the synth sound that was used on the latest Ariana Grande record, he knows the model of trombone used in orchestration for 'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.'" Mr. Rosen has lots of plans he'd like to write music for video games, score a film, be commissioned by a major symphony orchestra to write a piece but no particular endgame in mind, he said. He just wants to keep going. "You don't get to be Charlie without being insanely ambitious," said Jason Robert Brown, who was the composer and lyricist for "13" and has worked with Mr. Rosen on several concerts and shows since. "But I think it's really an ambition to have as much music in his life and in his head and in his mouth as he possibly can. He just loves making music."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. The game, the series and one team's season were essentially over by the time Jamal Murray stared in the vicinity of the opposing bench as he bounced a no look, behind the back pass to Nikola Jokic, the other half of the Denver Nuggets' fearsome duo. Jokic collected the pass and calmly sank one of his hallmark 12 foot floaters, to the dismay of the Los Angeles Clippers, who responded by pushing the ball upcourt so that Kawhi Leonard and Paul George could brick a pair of 3 pointers. There, in a tidy 30 second sequence, was the full feel of a series that surprised nearly everyone but the Nuggets, who engineered a triumph in the midst of their opponents' collapse. Let the post mortems begin on the Clippers, whose season ended on Tuesday night with a 104 89 loss to the Nuggets in Game 7 of their Western Conference semifinal series. A year ago, the Clippers went all in on a grand experiment to lure Leonard and George to Los Angeles, where there were hopes no, expectations of a championship run. Instead, the Nuggets will face the Los Angeles Lakers in the conference finals after staging one comeback after another. "So proud," said Nuggets Coach Michael Malone, whose team will open its series against the Lakers on Friday night. "All the guys committed, never got down, believed in each other and believed in themselves. In light of all the noise outside of this series that we had no chance we had people guaranteeing it we found a way to beat a really good team." And the Nuggets did it in record breaking style. Never before had a playoff team overcome a 3 1 deficit in two consecutive series. After coming back against the Utah Jazz in the first round, the Nuggets did it against the Clippers in the conference semifinals, and they did it the hard way. The Nuggets trailed by 16 points in Game 5, by 19 points in Game 6 and by 12 points in Game 7. They won all three. "We are just not accepting that somebody's better than us," Jokic said. On Tuesday, Murray scored 40 points while shooting 15 of 26 from the field, and no shot was more crushing than the fadeaway 3 pointer he drilled over the outstretched arms of Leonard late in the fourth quarter to push the Nuggets' lead to 18. And there was Jokic, a center who pirouettes with the ball as if he were playing water polo back home in Serbia. He had 16 points, 13 assists and 22 rebounds, toying with the Clippers throughout. If they threw multiple defenders at him, he dumped the ball to cutting teammates for dunks. If they sagged off him, he flicked high arcing jumpers. Last off season, the Clippers mortgaged much of their immediate future to trade for George at Leonard's behest, sending five future first round draft picks and two good players, Shai Gilgeous Alexander and Danilo Gallinari, to the Oklahoma City Thunder. It is worth remembering that deal now more than ever: The Clippers gave up a ton. The expectation was that the Clippers would immediately vie for a title. But even before the league suspended play in March because of the coronavirus pandemic, they were struggling to find chemistry and string together long stretches of cohesive basketball. Those issues were only amplified once they arrived at Walt Disney World for the restart. Rivers rattled off the chunks of time in the league's so called bubble that he said several of his players had missed for different reasons: 30 days for Montrezl Harrell, 16 days for Patrick Beverley, 14 days for Lou Williams. "Some of that came back and haunted us," Rivers said. On Tuesday, the Clippers looked lifeless as the Nuggets eviscerated them in the second half. Leonard and George combined for 24 points while shooting 10 of 38 from the field. "Just chemistry, being together," George said when asked how the team could improve. "The more we can be together, the better we'll be." The Nuggets understand that better than most. In the afterglow of the franchise's most significant win in a decade, Malone reflected on how some of the seeds were sown late in the 2017 18 season. The Nuggets were scrambling to make the playoffs when they stumbled that March, losing consecutive games to the Philadelphia 76ers and Toronto Raptors. Malone organized a team meeting so he could ask his players important questions: Who still believed they could make the postseason? Who wanted to pack their bags for the summer? The Nuggets responded by winning six straight before their regular season finale against the Minnesota Timberwolves, who were tied with the Nuggets for the eighth and final playoff spot in the West. The Timberwolves had acquired veterans like Jimmy Butler, Jamal Crawford and Taj Gibson. "They were going for it," Malone said, and that might sound painfully familiar to Clippers fans. In any case, Minnesota won that game in overtime Denver narrowly missed the playoffs but Murray and Jokic showed plenty of toughness. "We all said, 'We have something special here,'" Malone said. "'Let's stay with this. Let's see this grow.' And now you're starting to see the payoff."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada, whose emphasis on welcoming refugees has been at odds with the harsher stance of the Trump administration, on Wednesday night brought Ivanka Trump to a Broadway show that celebrates generosity toward foreigners in need. The surprise pairing at the new musical "Come From Away" was rich with symbolism, as Mr. Trudeau tries to maintain his country's close relationship with the United States despite substantial differences in public policy. Ms. Trump, the president's daughter and a close adviser, sat in Row F between Mr. Trudeau and Nikki R. Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, and directly behind a former Canadian prime minister, Jean Chretien. In brief remarks from the stage before the performance, Mr. Trudeau did not discuss government policy explicitly. Instead he focused on praising the show's story, about a small town in Newfoundland that fed and housed thousands of air travelers from around the world, diverted when North American airspace was closed during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. "The world gets to see what it is to lean on each other and be there for each other through the darkest times," he said. Mr. Trudeau, who was seeing the musical for the first time, said he also saw it as a demonstration of the importance of close relations between Canada and the United States. "There is no relationship quite like the friendship between Canada and the United States," he said. "This story, this amazing show, is very much about that, and it's about friendship as well." Mr. Trudeau's celebration of a show about Canadians opening their borders and homes to foreigners in need comes at a complex moment for his country's relationship with its southern neighbor. Beyond the Trump administration's demands for reworking the North American Free Trade Agreement, its ban on immigrants from six predominantly Muslim countries, blocked on Wednesday by a federal judge, has set off a surge in asylum seekers fleeing from the United States to Canada, where they have largely been welcomed. Mr. Trudeau, who was greeted at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater with a sustained standing ovation, led a delegation of 600 people including more than 125 ambassadors to the United Nations brought to the show on Wednesday by the Canadian consulate general in New York. The audience was filled with exuberant Canadians, some bearing flags or wearing clothing decorated with the maple leaf. "Come From Away" is written by a married Canadian couple, Irene Sankoff and David Hein, and tells a distinctly Canadian story. The show also depicts the shame that Muslim air travelers feel at being singled out for scrutiny; cheers the welcome given a gay couple in Newfoundland; and features a black passenger worried about being mistaken for a thief and being shot all issues that have deep resonance during the Trump era, with critics of the new administration skeptical of the president's understanding of those concerns. The show opened on March 12 and received a positive review in The New York Times. The critic Ben Brantley called it a "big bearhug of a musical."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
MEMPHIS In the end, it was a pink baseball cap that revealed an audacious test cheating scheme in three Southern states that spanned at least 15 years. Test proctors at Arkansas State University spotted a woman wearing the cap while taking a national teacher certification exam under one name on a morning in June 2009 and then under another name that afternoon. A supervisor soon discovered that at least two other impersonators had registered for tests that day. Ensuing investigations ultimately led to Clarence D. Mumford Sr., 59, who pleaded guilty on Friday to charges that accused him of being the cheating ring's mastermind during a 23 year career in Memphis as a teacher, assistant principal and guidance counselor. Federal prosecutors had indicted him on 63 counts, including mail and wire fraud and identify theft. They said he doctored driver's licenses, pressured teachers to lie to the authorities and collected at least 125,000 from teachers and prospective teachers in Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee who feared that they could not pass the certification exams on their own. Mr. Mumford pleaded guilty to two counts of the indictment, just a week after he rejected a settlement offer. At the time, he said that its recommended sentence of 9 to 11 years was "too long a time and too severe"; the new settlement carries a maximum sentence of 7 years. Mr. Mumford appeared in Federal District Court here on Friday wearing a dark suit and a matching yellow tie and pocket handkerchief. He said little more than "Yes, sir" in answer to questions from Judge John T. Fowlkes. Another 36 people, most of them teachers from Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee, have been swept up in the federal dragnet, including Clarence Mumford Jr., Mr. Mumford's son, and Cedrick Wilson, a former wide receiver for the Pittsburgh Steelers. (Mr. Wilson paid 2,500 for someone to take a certification exam for physical education teachers, according to court documents.) In addition to the senior Mr. Mumford, eight people have pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the investigation into the ring, and on Friday, a federal prosecutor, John Fabian, announced that 18 people who confessed to paying Mr. Mumford to arrange test takers for them had been barred from teaching for five years. The case has rattled Memphis at a tumultuous time. The city's schools are merging with the suburban district in surrounding Shelby County, exposing simmering tensions over race and economic disparity. The state has also designated 68 schools in the city as among the lowest performing campuses in Tennessee, and is gradually handing control of some of them to charter operators and other groups. And with a 90 million grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the district is overhauling how it recruits, evaluates and pays teachers. District officials say that the test scandal does not reflect broader problems, and that none of the indicted teachers still work in the Memphis schools. (At least one teacher is working in Mississippi.) "It would be unfair to let what may be 50, 60 or 100 teachers who did some wrong stain the good work of the large number of teachers and administrators who get up every day and go by the book," said Dorsey Hopson, the general counsel for Memphis City Schools who this week was named the district's interim superintendent. "A teacher's job is very hard. I know it is," said Threeshea Robinson, a mother who waited last week to pick up her son, a fourth grader at Raleigh Bartlett Meadows Elementary School, where a teacher who has pleaded guilty taught until last fall. "But I would not want a doctor who did not pass all his tests operating on me." The tests involved are known as Praxis exams, and more than 300,000 were administered last year by the nonprofit Educational Testing Service for people pursuing teaching licenses or new credentials in specific subjects like biology or history. By and large, they are considered easy hurdles to clear. In Tennessee, for example, 97 percent of those who took the exams in the 2010 11 school year passed. Robert Schaeffer, the public education director of FairTest, the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, said that the testing service had had problems with cheating before. Ray Nicosia, the executive director of the testing service's Office of Testing Integrity, said episodes of impersonation were rare. "More than 99 percent of the people take the test honestly with no problems at all," he said. According to court documents, Mr. Mumford began soliciting teachers to take the Praxis exams for others in 1995, and continued to do so until at least 2010, when he retired from the Memphis schools and went to work as a guidance counselor at a small district in Arkansas. He paid the teachers from 200 to 1,000 per test. In Friday's hearing, Mr. Fabian said one client who paid Mr. Mumford 6,000 for multiple exams never got a successful result. Mr. Mumford's personnel file in Memphis, which was reviewed by The New York Times, shows that he received above average performance ratings. Not long after he began hiring the test takers, a mother accused him of abusing her son with a paddle. (Corporal punishment is legal in Tennessee.) Mr. Mumford was suspended without pay for two years until a judge cleared him of the abuse charges, and he returned to Memphis as a guidance counselor in 1999. He applied for several jobs as a principal describing himself in cover letters, misspellings and all, as an "experienced school administerator" but he never rose any higher in the ranks. Yet he continued to recruit teachers to take the Praxis exams, according to court documents. Felippia Turner Kellogg, who until recently was an elementary school teacher in Memphis, made about 4,000 for taking tests over an 18 month period, according to the documents. Ms. Turner Kellogg, who describes herself on her Twitter account as "on my way to millionaire status," told federal prosecutors that Mr. Mumford urged her to tell the authorities that he worked with test candidates because "he was tutoring teachers." Ms. Turner Kellogg, who has entered a guilty plea and awaits sentencing, declined to comment. In some instances, Mr. Mumford recruited teachers with troubled track records. Carlos Shaw, who has pleaded guilty to taking tests for others, received a string of weak performance evaluations and resigned in 2007 after he was reprimanded for writing inappropriate notes to a 17 year old female student. Mr. Shaw did not respond to an e mail seeking comment, and his lawyer did not return telephone calls. Court papers portray Mr. Mumford as a con man who persuaded reluctant teachers to join his scheme. Shantell Shaw, a Memphis high school science teacher, told federal investigators that she initially turned down Mr. Mumford's offer, then agreed once he introduced her to another teacher who he said had failed a Praxis exam 11 times and needed help "so she could keep her job."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
Now Lives In a four bedroom apartment in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn that he shares with three roommates. Claim to Fame In 2016, Tommy Pico released his first novel, "IRL," an epic poem in the form of an extended text message that was awarded the Brooklyn Public Library Literary Prize. Inspired by A. R. Ammons's "Tape for the Turn of the Year" and Beyonce's self titled album, the 98 page book was written over the course of three and a half months in 2014, and encompasses topics as broad as the oppression of Native Americans, pop culture and the dating rituals of gay men. "I found a way to not only sew those ideas together but also show that they were never separate in the first place," Mr. Pico said. Big Break A lifelong book lover, Mr. Pico published his first title, a comic, when he was 5, eventually graduating to zines and books. Some of these came through Birdsong, his Brooklyn based anti racist, queer positive collective and micropress. In 2011 Mr. Pico became an inaugural fellow with Queer/Art/Mentors, an organization founded by the filmmaker Ira Sachs, and was paired with Pamela Sneed, a performance poet and activist. "She really helped me ferry the work from what had been mostly zines into something more polished," Mr. Pico said. "She also directly influenced my performance acumen."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Hurricanes in Florida, Texas and the Caribbean; record high temperatures in San Francisco; and wildfires in the Pacific Northwest. And last night, a 3.6 magnitude earthquake a few miles away from Westwood, Calif., a neighborhood in Los Angeles near Bel Air, Calabasas, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. "Earthquakes like this happen several times a year, so it's not uncommon at all," said John Bellini, a geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey's National Earthquake Information Center. You wouldn't know it from the reactions on social media. After the earthquake struck at 11:20 p.m. local time, tremors erupted across Los Angeles Twitter.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Daniel Snyder, the owner of the Washington Football Team, has accused a disgruntled former team employee of taking money and assisting in a campaign to spread damaging information against him, his latest effort to fight back attacks on his ownership of the N.F.L. club. In a filing on Monday in Federal District Court in Alexandria, Va., Snyder asked for access to documents that the former employee, Mary Ellen Blair, who was an executive assistant in the front office, has, including confidential team records, that might bolster his defamation case against an Indian media company that he contends published defamatory rumors about him. "We are aggressively pursuing Mary Ellen Blair, a disgruntled former employee who is clearly in the pocket of another and complicit in this scheme to defame Mr. Snyder, in order to ensure that the full weight of the law comes down heavily on all those responsible for these heinous acts," one of Snyder's lawyers, Joe Tacopina, said in a statement. The filing, known as a request for discovery, was made three days after Snyder filed a defamation lawsuit in New Delhi against Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide, whose parent company is in India. Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide published articles on its website in July that Snyder considered slanderous and that have since been taken down. Snyder accused the company of accepting money to publish the articles. He wants to identify who paid for them. Nirnay Chowdhary, a founder of M.E.A. WorldWide, admitted errors were made in the publication of the articles, but he denied that his company accepted money in exchange for their publication. 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. The case comes amid a growing battle between Snyder and three of his largest minority shareholders, who have been seeking to sell their stakes, which amount to roughly 40 percent of the team. The minority shareholders, including Frederick W. Smith, the chairman of FedEx, hired an investment banker to broker a sale. Snyder has shown no interest in selling his majority stake in the team, which he has owned since 1999. While Snyder pursues the source of the articles, he has also hired an investigator to look into accusations, detailed in a Washington Post report, of widespread sexual harassment in the team's front office, which he has not denied. In July, he agreed to drop the team's name and logo after many years of protests by Native American groups and others who considered it racist. Snyder was pressured by several sponsors, most notably FedEx, which threatened to sever its multimillion dollar stadium naming rights deal if the team name was not changed. According to the filing on Monday, Blair, starting in late May or early June, started reaching out to current and former team employees seeking information that would discredit the team owner. In July, she called someone that the filing describes as a team employee who works daily with Snyder and said the person could "probably make a lot of money" by providing damaging information about Snyder, the filing said. Reached briefly by phone on Monday, Blair said she was unaware of the filing. "That's funny," she said when told of some of the details included in it. She didn't respond to further request for comment. In an emailed statement, Lisa J. Banks, Blair's lawyer, said that Snyder's naming of her in the filing is "an obvious and inappropriate attempt to silence Ms. Blair and others who may wish to communicate with legitimate news organizations about the culture of sexism, harassment and abuse that has existed at the highest levels of the Washington Football Team." The filing also said Blair told a personal employee of Snyder's and two other team employees that "she was in contact with and working in coordination with a third party" and that she and that third party were involved in preparing articles that were going to be damaging to Snyder. The third party, she told them, was not a journalist, but was "well known to each of the involved persons." According to the filing, Blair also told a team employee who has frequent contact with Snyder that she had been told by someone not employed by The Washington Post, but well known to this employee, that an article would be published in the newspaper in approximately a week that would not be "good for Dan." This was weeks before rumors about the subject of the article began circulating on social media. According to the filing, Blair also told a "longtime personal employee" of Snyder's before the social media whispering about the publication of damaging stories that "something big was going to happen." Blair also told this employee that "several of the team's minority owners did not want to do business" with Snyder any longer. In the filing, Snyder said Blair left the team on bad terms and "has since admitted to having absconded with confidential information" belonging to the team. The filing also describes what it says are Blair's financial difficulties and says that while she worked for the team, her wages were garnished. Snyder contended that she has an unidentified "financial benefactor" who has provided discounted rent in luxury apartment buildings in Virginia that are connected to a minority shareholder who is seeking to sell his stake. Tracy Schar, the daughter of Dwight Schar, one of the team's minority shareholders seeking to sell, is senior vice president for marketing and brand management at Comstock Holding Companies, the real estate development company that manages the building where Blair lives. Two other members of Comstock's board worked for Red Zone Capital, which is co owned by Dwight Schar and Snyder, according to a 2018 government filing.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Lindsey Wilkerson was given a tour when she first began working in the event and patient liaison department at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital in Memphis more than 14 years ago. As she made her initial rounds through the pediatric treatment and research facility that day, a staff member said to her, "There's someone here we would like you to see." Ms. Wilkerson, who had been married for less than a year at the time, was led to a small conference room where she was thrilled to be reintroduced to Joel Alsup, a friend she first met in 1993, when she was 12 and he was 13. They hadn't seen each other since high school. "I remember having a huge crush on him as kids," she said. He liked her as well, but had trouble expressing his feelings. "She was very pretty," said Mr. Alsup, who had been hired in January 2003 as the hospital's information and technology coordinator, "but I was an extremely shy 13 year old who was afraid to talk to her." It was indeed a rather impromptu reunion, the kind of get together that would not have been promised to either of them two decades earlier, when Ms. Wilkerson and Mr. Alsup were childhood cancer patients receiving treatments at what is now their current place of employment. "St. Jude saved both of our lives," said Ms. Wilkerson, who is still in the event and patient liaison department. She learned in 1991 she had acute lymphoblastic leukemia. "I remember the terrified family," said Dr. Melissa M. Hudson, the pediatric oncologist who first treated Ms. Wilkerson and is now a member of the St. Jude faculty and the director of its Cancer Survivorship Division. "She had lots of ups and downs in her treatment and she struggled with toxicity," Dr. Hudson said. "She was a strong little girl." "Joel was 7 years old, and he was having a hard time buckling his seatbelt, and I thought he was just messing around," said his father, Bob Alsup. "We used to play catch with a tennis ball in the den, and I saw he was reaching for the ball with his left hand. I knew something wasn't right." Ms. Wilkerson, now 37 and Mr. Alsup, 38, said they are cancer free, but are required to submit to medical exams every five years to monitor their health. In the meantime, they said, there's a lot of work to be done. "Joel and I desire to give these patients the love and care that was given to us at their age," Ms. Wilkerson said. Mr. Alsup, now a supervisor in the creative media services division of the hospital, said, "Coming back to a place that's so dear to our hearts has been one of the greatest honors of my life." Ms. Wilkerson, who grew up in Crane, Mo., and Mr. Alsup, born and raised in Chattanooga, Tenn., first met at a St. Jude fund raising event in 1993. "When I became a mom, I began looking at these young patients as if they were my own children," Ms. Wilkerson said. "I used to think, 'I know what they're going through, I've been there,' but having children of my own shook me like an earthquake, it really changed my perspective." Mr. Alsup said that "being super close," to Ms. Wilkerson's children also allows him to see things from a parental perspective. "Lindsey's kids are the same ages as we were when we received our cancer treatments," he said. "Seeing them live normal lives means so much to us, and gives us a greater appreciation of our own parents, and all parents of children with cancer who deal with such difficult circumstances." Mr. Alsup also said that the day Ms. Wilkerson "walked back through the door at St. Jude," was the day a friendship was reignited. "For the better part of 12 years, we became the best of friends," he said. Their relationship remained platonic until two and a half years ago, when they began to turn a romantic corner. "We connected on the complexities of our situations, and how it changed the way we see the world," Ms. Wilkerson said. "We have this almost sense of urgency about living life, this gratitude, this desire to give back." Ms. Wilkerson swiftly returned an "I love you" of her own. "Remember, I liked him first," she said, laughing. "So the ball had been in his court for nearly 25 years." Ms. Wilkerson's mother, Ginny Cook, said that her family was delighted when her daughter began dating Mr. Alsup. "We've known Joel's family as long as we've known him," she said. "We were so pleased when they started seeing each other. He's wonderful to our grandchildren." They were married Sept. 1 at the golden domed Danny Thomas/Alsac Pavilion, named for the comedian who founded St. Jude in 1962. (Mr. Thomas, who died in 1991, and his wife, Rose Marie, who died in 2000, are buried in the pavilion's garden space.) Brent Powell, an Episcopal deacon and the head chaplain at St. Jude, stood beneath decorative bouquets of white hydrangeas and white roses as he and the groom watched the bride walk down the aisle. She was flanked by her father, Bob Cook, and Richard Shadyac Jr., the chief executive of Alsac. Both men kissed her and went to their seats. "During your youth, a cancer diagnosis invaded your life, but you endured and defeated it," said Mr. Powell, who has known the couple for more than 30 years. "Now you are giving back, paying it forward," he said. "You are two of the most loving people I know." "It only took you 20 years to confess your love," Mr. Powell added to laughter from the approximately 150 guests, "right after you watched the movie 'Alien.'" During their exchange of vows, the bride's daughter, Audrey, who served as maid of honor, cried, and then laughed while brushing aside her tears. Later in the ceremony, she and her brother each lit one of four unity candles, as did the bride and groom, in honor of the family they are forming. After they were officially married, the newlyweds hopped into the back of a 1959 white Ford Fairlane convertible en route to the reception at Old Dominick, a distillery and event space in downtown Memphis. As they began to drive away, many of their guests, including a number of cancer survivors, began tossing navy and white heart shaped confetti, the kind that is used when a young cancer patient at St. Jude finishes chemotherapy treatments and is celebrated by what is known as a 'no mo chemo' party. The bride's daughter was one of those tossing confetti. "During the wedding, I was crying happy tears because they both mean so much to me," Audrey Wilkerson said. The Mighty Souls Brass Band greeted those arriving at the reception, and played intermittently throughout the evening before a D.J. took control of the music. The father of the groom, who knew that his son's wedding day was not promised, broke down in tears when discussing the difficult journey his son, his new daughter in law and both their families had been on the past three decades. "I told a friend one day at lunch that I thought I'd maybe see my son graduate from high school," the elder Mr. Alsup said. "A dad's dreams are wrapped up in his children. So now it's 30 years later, and Joel has Lindsey, Jacob and Audrey, he has a family. My dreams have come true for my son," he said. Then speaking of Ms. Wilkerson's children, he added: "They gave him a Father's Day card. He called me and said, 'I never thought I'd get a Father's Day card.'" So too has the dreams for her daughter come true for Ms. Cook, who could be seen at the reception locked in a long, emotional embrace with Dr. Hudson. "When we arrived at St. Jude, we were told that the bonds we would form with the other families would be the strongest we'd ever know," Ms. Cook said. "And it was true." Mr. Shadyac said of the newly married couple, "they've loved each other forever. I've seen Lindsey grow up and I've seen the birth of her first child, so that's a double miracle." Which led to another, Ms. Wilkerson said. "Thanks to St. Jude, I was lucky enough to marry the love of my life, my best friend."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
1. Stir together olive oil, lemon juice, garlic, rosemary, and salt and pepper in a large bowl. Cut each chicken breast into 2 equal pieces (3 if they're 12 ounces or more) and place in the bowl. Stir together and refrigerate for 15 to 30 minutes. 2. Remove chicken from marinade and pat dry (discard marinade). Place two sheets of plastic wrap (1 large sheet if you have extra wide wrap) on your work surface, overlapping slightly, to make 1 wide sheet, and brush lightly with olive oil. Place a piece of chicken in the middle of plastic sheet and brush lightly with oil. Cover the chicken with another wide layer of plastic wrap. Working from the center to the outside, pound chicken breast with the flat side of a meat tenderizer until about 1/4 inch thick. (Don't pound too hard or you'll tear the meat. If that happens it won't be the end of the world, you'll just have a few pieces to cook.) Repeat with the remaining chicken breast pieces. 3. Season the pounded chicken breasts with salt and pepper on one side only. Dredge lightly in the flour (you will not use all of it) and tap the breasts to remove excess. 4. Turn oven on low. Heat a wide, heavy skillet over high heat and add oil. When oil is hot, place one or two pieces of chicken in the pan however many will fit without crowding. Cook for 1 1/2 minutes, until bottom is browned in spots. Turn over and brown other side, about 1 1/2 minutes. (Do not overcook or the chicken will be dry.) Transfer to the platter or sheet pan and keep warm in the oven. If there is more than a tablespoon of fat in the pan, pour some (but not all)off into a jar or bowl.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The title of Alexandra Bachzetsis's "A to B via C" suggests a series of scrambled steps, a beginning and an end linked by a roundabout middle. On Sunday at the Swiss Institute, in its United States premiere, this coolly disarming work revealed many such convoluted structures, favoring switchbacks, detours and double exposures over any linear route. Ms. Bachzetsis, a choreographer based in Switzerland, is interested in all kinds of gestures colloquial, codified, pop cultural and the collisions among them. "A to B via C," part of Performance Space 122's Coil Festival, shuffles through references to aerobics routines, music videos, sports, ballet class, physical therapy and the Velazquez painting "Venus at Her Mirror." It ultimately invites us to ask: If the body can express itself in so many ways, what good are words? Just how necessary or arbitrary is the alphabet? Designed for various spaces a theater, a gallery, the Internet "A to B via C," in this iteration, occupies a white cube dotted with black equipment. Ms. Bachzetsis and her marvelous dancers, Anne Pajunen and Gabriel Schenker, introduce some color as they arrive in Cosima Gadient's workout ready costumes: pink sweatshirts, tan leggings, white sneakers. Those layers will eventually come off to reveal bodysuits silk screened with anatomy textbook renderings of the musculoskeletal system, insides turned out. The piece begins with a kind of call and response tutorial issued by the cherubic Ms. Pajunen as a manic exercise guru. Standing behind a camera, her exaggerated expressions projected onto a small flat screen, she promises to deliver time honored wisdom "used to give any woman a strong and beautiful dancer's physique." Ms. Bachzetsis and Mr. Schenker, at side by side microphones, echo her, until the order somehow reverses, and she is echoing them. Scripts in hand, they discard a page after each militant line, scattering the written word at our feet.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
JENNIFER GOEBEL arranged her freshman year around "Glee," the hit show about a high school show choir. On "Glee" nights, five classmates would huddle around the TV set in her dorm room at Millsaps College, in Jackson, Miss. Somewhere along the line she began to wonder why Millsaps didn't have its own version of the fictional song and dance troupe. Soon enough, there was Major Melodies, a club of 15 students performing to standing room only crowds. "We started this club so the whole school could have a musical outlet to channel what was being shown on 'Glee,' " Ms. Goebel says. "Our school has a classical choir for professional singers but we didn't have a group that sings songs that we hear on the radio, like Top 40 stuff." Such groups are cropping up around the country and, taking a page from the "Glee" script, proving that joining a "Glee" club is not only cool but incredibly popular. Around the time Major Melodies began, Jose Coira, a senior at the University of North Texas, envisioned the same. After putting up fliers, more than 100 students auditioned for 30 slots in the group. Mr. Coira and others say they frequently field calls from students who hope to bring glee clubs to their campuses.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
How to Keep on Top of Technology When You Write About It How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Nick Wingfield, a technology reporter based in Seattle, discussed the tech he is using. You cover Amazon and Microsoft. Do you use their technology? The one technology constant in my career as a journalist seems to be Microsoft Word. I take notes for all of my stories in it on a MacBook Pro. I've tried Google Docs and OneNote, but can't stick with them for reasons I can't explain. I have a feeling I might be cremated with a copy of Microsoft Word. Like most people, I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, and I've tried most of their gadgets. I used an Echo for a while. My family mainly used it to turn on a lamp through a WeMo light switch with our voices. My kids enjoyed asking Alexa to play scatological sound effects. I enjoyed that too, if I'm being honest. What do or don't you like about their tech products that you use? I find some of the things you can do on the Echo pretty silly and much easier on a smartphone app. I'll give you an example. A while back I was installing a sprinkler system in my garden that was connected to a wireless control unit. I found out I could use the control unit with Alexa to turn on the sprinklers with my voice. When I told Alexa to turn the sprinklers on, a geyser of water shot up six feet in the air from a pipe I hadn't properly secured. I yelled every Alexa command I could think of to turn it off, but apparently she didn't like my syntax, and the water kept gushing. I finally just opened the app for the sprinkler unit and turned it off. Also, most people have their sprinklers on timers so they don't need voice control. What are your favorite websites, apps or other tech tools for keeping on top of technology news? I get so much of my news diet, technology or otherwise, through Twitter and, to a lesser extent, Facebook. I have configured my phone to send me a text message every time Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, tweets because he'll occasionally make news that way. What tech gadgets or apps are you or your family currently obsessed with and why? Another reason I'm not the most avid Echo user is that I like the sound from my Sonos speaker system better. Roughly 70 percent of the time I'm using Sonos to stream KCRW's Eclectic24 music mix. The rest of the time, it's Spotify and KUOW, my local NPR station. I pay for a Spotify family plan, which keeps my daughter's playlists from contaminating my own and vice versa. I am a contrarian on the Apple Watch, which I believe has been unfairly maligned by tech pundits. I love mine, and I get pretty frustrated by a lot of Apple products. I'm a runner and cyclist and track all of my workouts with it. I use Siri on the watch to respond to text messages. Apple somehow managed to create a wearable device versatile enough that you can wear it on a run and with a suit. That's impressive. Are there technologies that you're not crazy about? I've never cared for reading books on screens, even though I almost exclusively read newspapers and magazines on my phone and computer. I'm also skeptical of most kitchen gadgetry. I bought an Anova sous vide wand, which cooks meat and other proteins at precise, low temperatures in water baths. In most cases, I feel the results aren't worth the effort. A cast iron pan is much cheaper, will never break and steaks taste better when prepared in one. You once wrote about taking your kids to a video game little league. What video games are you, or they, now heavily into? I don't play video games. My son does. I'm embarrassed to say he spent a decent chunk of the summer wasting bad guys in Call of Duty. He also read a big stack of books and is a sweet, sensitive kid, which is how he got away with it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once a week blast of our pop music coverage. A song the Rolling Stones had worked on last year, "Living in a Ghost Town" turned out to be unexpectedly timely. It's a muscular, minor key reggae rocker that harks back to "Miss You" (along with the Specials' 1981 "Ghost Town" and a brief nod to Jimi Hendrix's "Crosstown Traffic"). The video has studio shots of the Stones together pre pandemic, but the lyrics were revised in isolation, and Mick Jagger yowls them with commitment. "Life was so beautiful then we all got locked down," he sings, and concludes, annoyed and rueful, "If I wanna party, it's a party of one." JON PARELES The first song from the first new Evanescence album of original music in nine years is cathartic and familiar. There is Amy Lee's voice, somewhere between ferocious and hymnal. And there is the arrangement, part understated hard rock and part power soul ballad. And there is the rendering of melodramatic subject matter with power and quasi Christian grace: "I don't need drugs/I'm already six feet low/wasted on you." JON CARAMANICA Juice WRLD was 21 when he died in December from an accidental overdose of oxycodone and codeine. In his first posthumous single, he sings about pills and codeine, "Takin' medicine to fix all of the damage/my anxiety the size of a planet," over the kind of minor key guitar picking he also used in his megahit "Lucid Dreams." (He adds, "We may die this evening.") Although it may be a studio illusion, the song sounds like it was largely finished; Juice WRLD saw his self destructive path. PARELES Jonsi, whose androgynous voice was at the center of the sustained, endless horizon soundscapes of Sigur Ros, chose an unlikely co producer for his first solo release in a decade: A.G. Cook from the PC Music circle, who tends to prize brittle, glitchy sounds. For its first minutes, "Exhale" lingers at a near motionless tempo over open ended piano chords, disrupted at times by taps, thuds and electronic stutters, intrusions from a more chaotic realm. Near the end, a beat appears and the song starts to suggest some abstract gospel, with a message of absolution. "This is the way it is/It isn't your fault." PARELES The Onyx Collective is less concerned with doing something startlingly new than they are with mixing their nostalgias; the result is a hybrid that feels as jumbled and personal as memory. Onyx's proclivities run from funk to free jazz; their centering obsession is Manhattan. Even before the coronavirus threw the world into stark disarray, the collective's music seemed to ask what would become of their beloved island as a repository of myth and memory now that everything feels digitized, capitalized, ephemeral. On "Manhattan Special," their newest LP, the group revisits jazz standards and other songs from the past 100 years of American music, flipping through styles like pages in a picture album. On Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart's "Glad to Be Unhappy," over a bed of groggy digital synths, the young vocalist duendita sings in a quietly disarming alto, sometimes deadpanning like Nico, sometimes confiding like a classic jazz crooner. GIOVANNI RUSSONELLO iLe, from Puerto Rico, and Natalia Lafourcade, from Mexico, trade verses about a "crazy" infatuation. First, they're accompanied mostly by harmonized humming. But behind them, a rhythm gathers, mixing traditional drums and programmed beats as the lust comes to a serious simmer. PARELES The foundational Los Angeles punk band X has suddenly reunited to release "Alphabetland," its first new album in 35 years after decades of solo projects and partial regroupings. It fully reclaims the sound it had in 1977, with a rowdy punkabilly rhythm section carrying the voices of John Doe and Exene Cervenka, sometimes in harmony and sometimes in collision. "Free" is a slamming rumba rocker with slicing, twanging guitar leads from Billy Zoom, as Doe and Cervenka warn, "My words are fire, my fist is raised." PARELES If you've heard the doom jazz of Harriet Tubman or the sludge metal of Harvey Milk, maybe you think you're ready for GRID, a trio of young, experimental improvisers who make music as if kneading waves of acid. Nominally, Matt Nelson plays the saxophone in this group, Tim Dahl handles the bass and Nick Podgurski is on drums, but in practice what you hear is a heaving, thundering squall, with distortions of differing frequency and depth rising and combining. More than in other bands with a similar method, the drummer falls right into the flow: Far from serving as a steady shoreline against which those waves can crash, Podgurski can roll and fold along with them, protean and unsettled as ever. RUSSONELLO	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Kellie Harper, now the Tennessee women's basketball coach, played for the school and the late Pat Summitt when she saw the rivalry with Connecticut and its coach, Geno Auriemma. It would have been difficult to predict more than two decades ago that Kellie Harper would one day carry on the famous but erstwhile college basketball rivalry that Pat Summitt, her late mentor at Tennessee, unceremoniously canceled. Yet in hindsight, it made perfect sense that when Tennessee arrived in Hartford to play Connecticut on Thursday night for the first time in 13 years, it was with Harper as the sideline counterpart to UConn Coach Geno Auriemma, whose contention with Summitt had fueled the rivalry. In the early spring of 1997, there was no higher women's basketball authority and achiever than Summitt. At the Midwest regional final that season in Iowa City, no Tennessee player better embodied her steely temperament and tenacity than Harper, then a sophomore point guard whose birth surname was Jolly. Obscured by the stardom of Chamique Holdsclaw, Jolly's 19 points and deft ball handling helped take down Auriemma and UConn, when medical logic dictated that she should not have played. Six months earlier, she had torn the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee for a second time, but ignored the advice from her doctors to write off the season with a redshirt. Instead, she was back on the court within four months. "Wanna see my scar?" she drawled after the game, pointing to the ice pack on her knee, when I asked about her near miracle recovery. No male player had ever made such an offer. Jolly was not finished with her weekend's work. In the final against Old Dominion, she had 11 assists, five steals and three slick late assists to Holdsclaw to secure Summitt's seventh title (of eight over all). I wondered in a column that night why Wendy Larry, Old Dominion's coach, had not directly challenged Jolly at the point of attack with her aggressive, all American guard, Ticha Penicheiro. Could it have been that Jolly didn't appear all that formidable, with her braided blond hair, average speed and old school push shot? In an emerging era of improved athletes, was she too easy to underestimate? Connecticut (17 1) blitzed Tennessee (15 4) with suffocating second half defense for a 60 45 victory on Thursday. But Auriemma won't make the mistake Larry did if the renewal of the Tennessee Connecticut series, which once highlighted and practically defined the women's college season, is extended beyond the current two year deal. That's also a mighty big "if" given that Auriemma launched a verbal grenade at the Lady Vols' program in November, a kind of retrograde taunt of the kind that had contributed to the rivalry's discontinuation in the first place. Summitt was never comfortable verbally jousting with the ever needling Auriemma. She also became wary of the recruiting tactics by UConn, reportedly related to Maya Moore during the 2006 7 season, and promptly ended the regular season series. Tennessee won titles that season and next, but Summitt retired at 59 years old in 2012 with early onset Alzheimer's, and died in 2016. Not playing UConn didn't help the women's game or Tennessee, but the loss of Summitt was crushing. Her storied program, under the leadership of Holly Warlick, a longtime Summitt assistant, declined in national and even Southeastern Conference prominence. Auriemma continued hauling national championship trophies, 11 in all, back to Storrs, Conn. though none since the graduation of Breanna Stewart in 2016, when he also nabbed his first recruit from Tennessee, the now senior point guard, Crystal Dangerfield. As if losing a homegrown high school star wasn't humbling enough, Tennessee also watched Evina Westbrook one of its two best players last season transfer to UConn after a first round defeat in the N.C.A.A. tournament. That loss resulted in the firing of Warlick, who in 2018 had agreed to the two year resumption of the UConn series. The main attraction, she explained, was that proceeds, in part, would benefit the Alzheimer's foundation that carried Summitt's name. But it was Auriemma who fumed in November after Westbrook's bid for a waiver of the one season ineligibility rule was denied by the N.C.A.A. He also lashed out at Tennessee, alleging that it hadn't been forthcoming enough with the N.C.A.A. about the environment for Westbrook in Warlick's program last season, describing it as one "you would not want your kid in." Phillip Fulmer, Tennessee's athletic director, took issue with the vague but piercing charge, as did Warlick, who admitted to problems but called Auriemma's assertion that Tennessee was to blame for Westbrook's failure to get a waiver "kind of crazy." But with the rivalry seemingly reignited, on cue for a homecoming, Auriemma wondered out loud why everyone was making "such a big deal" about UConn playing Tennessee again. "You know, everything's like a Broadway show," he recently told reporters. "It has its run, and then it's got to end. And it ended, and I don't know that you're going to get that back, and I think college basketball is doing pretty damn good without it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Chee leavens his heaviest topics the decimation of the gay community in the late 1980s and early '90s, the repressed memory of sexual abuse that inspired "Edinburgh" with charming episodes like his stint as a waiter at William and Pat Buckley's Park Avenue maisonette, a job that prompted a crisis of conscience given Buckley's infamous proposal to brand AIDS patients on their wrists and buttocks. (On another catering assignment, this one at the Buckleys' home in Connecticut, he glimpses Buckley heading to the pool to skinny dip with a male staffer.) There is also an account of his worshipful, nigh religious encounter with Chloe Sevigny in the elevator of a building both are subletting; a chummy reminiscence of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, which he attends against his better judgment only to wind up a convert who readily defends M.F.A. programs against their critics ("It is not an escape from the real world, to my mind, but a confrontation with it"); and an essay about planting a rose garden outside his Brooklyn apartment that affords him the opportunity to discuss the writing process under the guise of horticulturist. Other essays have the kind of grandiose titles you'd expect from a more traditional book on craft: "The Writing Life," "The Autobiography of My Novel," "On Becoming an American Writer." And, really, why write a book about writing if you can't occasionally hold forth with such injunctions as "Think of a dream with the outer surface of a storm"? Yet even at his most mystical, Chee is generous; these pieces are personal, never pedagogical. They bespeak an unguarded sincerity and curiosity. Chee is refreshingly open about his sometimes liberating, sometimes claustrophobic sense of exceptionality. As a child he reads X Men comics and wishes for psychic powers; as an adult he finds his ambitious first efforts as a writer at odds with prevailing literary trends. Throughout, Chee endeavors to catch himself at a distance and reckon, ever humble and bracingly honest, with the slippery terrain of memory, identity and love. "We are not what we think we are," he writes. "The stories we tell of ourselves are like thin trails across something that is more like the ocean. A mask afloat on the open sea." Of the stories Chee tells, one deserves special attention: "After Peter," a memorialization of a lover and mentor who died of AIDS in 1994. Chee chronicles their involvement with activist organizations like Act Up/SF and Queer Nation in the long years before the advent of protease inhibitors. "Why am I telling this story?" he asks rhetorically. "The men I wanted to follow into the future are dead. ... I feel I owe them my survival." He reminds us that whomever a writer pictures as his audience, he is also writing into absence, standing in testimony for the sake of the dead. Like most of the essays here, "After Peter" pulses with urgency, one piece from a life in restless motion. It is not necessary to agree that "How to Write an Autobiographical Novel" is itself a kind of novel in order to appreciate that Chee has written a moving and personal tribute to impermanence, a wise and transgressive meditation on a life lived both because of and in spite of America, a place where, he writes, "you are allowed to speak the truth as long as nothing changes."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
In a joint statement on Monday, the jurors who voted to convict Bill Cosby of sexual assault last week said that they believed his accuser's account and were persuaded of his guilt by the facts, not the momentum of social change captured in the MeToo movement. "Not once were race or the metoo movement ever discussed, nor did either factor into our decision, as implied in various media outlets," the jurors, whose names have not been released, said in the statement. In particular, the jurors said they found the testimony of Andrea Constand, the former Temple University employee who said Mr. Cosby had drugged and molested her, to be believable. "Each one of us found her account credible and compelling," the statement said. The joint statement was released after an interview surfaced with the only one of the 12 jurors to come forward after the verdict to discuss the deliberations. The juror, Harrison Snyder, said in a television interview with ABC News that the most damning evidence was not Ms. Constand's testimony or statements by five other women who said he had also assaulted them, but Mr. Cosby's own comments. Mr. Snyder said that Mr. Cosby's remarks in a deposition in a 2005 lawsuit saying that he had given quaaludes to women in an effort to have sex with them proved that he was guilty of drugging and sexually assaulting Ms. Constand at his Pennsylvania home 14 years ago. That deposition was for a lawsuit filed by Ms. Constand, who had said he gave her three blue pills before assaulting her. Mr. Cosby has said they were Benadryl. "It was his deposition, really," Mr. Snyder, 22, the youngest of the 12 jurors, said in an interview that aired on Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America." "Mr. Cosby admitted to giving these quaaludes to women, young women, in order to have sex with them." The conviction on Thursday of Mr. Cosby, who was found guilty on three counts of aggravated indecent assault, was immediately viewed by many as a turning point in the MeToo movement, which would tilt the balance of power and influence in courtrooms for female accusers. But Mr. Snyder said, as the broader panel said in its statement, that MeToo did not weigh on his mind during the two days of deliberations last week at the Montgomery County Courthouse outside Philadelphia. In fact, he said he had not heard of the movement until after he left the courthouse on Thursday and read up on the news coverage of the trial. "I really only found out about it after I got home," Mr. Snyder, who also said he had only a vague understanding of Mr. Cosby's career before the trial, told ABC News. "Then I looked online to see what everything was." Mr. Snyder said he believed the account of Ms. Constand, who testified on April 13 about the night in 2004 she said she was assaulted at Mr. Cosby's house. He said he also believed the testimony of five other women who said that Mr. Cosby had drugged and sexually assaulted them. Prosecutors in the case had successfully pushed Judge Steven T. O'Neill to allow the women to speak during the trial, allowing them to add their stories to the account of Ms. Constand. Mr. Cosby had faced only one other accuser in his first trial, which ended last summer in a hung jury. That trial had also presented Mr. Cosby's deposition. Mr. Snyder said he still would have found Mr. Cosby guilty even if the five women had been barred from testifying in the retrial. "In the deposition, he stated that he gave these drugs to other women," he said. "I don't think it really necessarily mattered that these other five women were here, because he said it himself, that he used these drugs on other women." The anonymous jury was sequestered at a local hotel during the trial. Judge O'Neill, who has yet to release the names of the men and women who sat on the jury, scheduled a hearing for Tuesday to discuss a request by several news organizations for the identities of the jurors. After the first trial, Judge O'Neill only reluctantly released the names of jurors to the news media after a similar hearing. He ruled that he had had little choice, under a 2007 State Supreme Court ruling. Even then he sharply limited what jurors were allowed to discuss about the protracted deliberations, leaving them free only to reveal their own views and actions. Mr. Cosby's lawyers have said the entertainer, 80, will appeal the conviction. On Monday, the jurors in their statement were direct in asserting that they had taken great care in their deliberations, and recognized during the discussions the magnitude of what they had been asked to decide. "Each of us spoke of the weight of our responsibility," the statement said. "We understood the consequences to human lives, to an American icon, and to all who are victims and we knew we needed to be comfortable with our decisions in order to be able to sleep at night with clear consciences. Each of us is walking away with that sense of peace, knowing we performed our duty in the manner it deserved."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
It's still early on Election Day, but the internet's misinformation peddlers are already hard at work. As millions of voters head to the polls, social media posts with false or misleading claims began to emerge early Tuesday morning from battleground states, including Pennsylvania and Michigan. Many of these claims followed the familiar misinformation narratives we've come to expect on Election Day: viral videos of broken voting machines, allegations of fishy polling place behavior and fake or exaggerated claims of attempted voter suppression. In Philadelphia, election officials debunked a misleading claim from a Twitter user who posted a photo of a sign promoting Democrats at a polling station. The original, misleading tweet, which came from a reporter at the right wing website Newsmax, was shared more than 7,000 times.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
She played a central part in that as well, but "Varda by Agnes" is above all a testament to her individualism. Not that she minimizes her political commitments, which are matter of factly feminist and bluntly democratic. She follows her younger self from France to California, where she made a documentary on the Black Panthers and a handful of hard to classify films. The distinction between documentary and fiction isn't always relevant to her work. Her best known narrative features "Cleo," "One Sings, the Other Doesn't" (1977) and "Vagabond" (1985) have the sting of reality, and a compassionate clarity about the freedom, danger and pleasure that women face in their lives. "Varda by Agnes" divides Varda's career into two major periods. The second begins in 2000, with "The Gleaners and I," the first of a series of personal, cerebral, altogether uncategorizable projects (encompassing still photography and multimedia installations as well as cinema) in which she turns the camera on herself. She is a playful, charming and quizzical presence, but also a rigorous investigator, a questioner of her social systems, collective memory and her own assumptions. If she comes across as a grandmotherly figure in those movies, she is less the kind of grandmother who spoils you rotten than the kind who sees through all your nonsense and loves you anyway. She was also, as "Varda by Agnes" makes wonderfully clear, an enthusiastic mentor and an inspiring teacher, with a natural interest in and affinity for young people. Her discussion of her philosophy and her methods the why and the how of her movies is incisive and instructive. She helps you think about her art, which in turn helps you think about everything else. Not rated. In French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 55 minutes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
FINDING someone to care for an ill or aged relative at home can be challenging. Sorting through the options can be time consuming, and the need to find help may arise during a crisis, when decisions must be made quickly. Hoping to help consumers make those choices and to help themselves stand out in a competitive field some home health agencies are seeking voluntary accreditation by independent organizations. "This market is crowded," said Margherita C. Labson, executive director of the home care program at the Joint Commission, one of the major health care accreditation organizations. "These companies had no credible way of distinguishing themselves as better than others in the marketplace." The nonprofit Joint Commission, which accredits hospitals and other health providers, is one of three groups recognized by the federal government as accreditors of a variety of home health agencies. Its seal of approval is one route toward the certification a provider needs to receive payment from Medicare, the federal health program for those over 65. The other two groups are the Community Health Accreditation Program and the Accreditation Commission for Health Care. Medicare pays for home care only in limited circumstances, such as when a person needs temporary nursing care after a hospitalization. Still, companies that provide longer term home care, including for people needing help with daily tasks like bathing and dressing, also may seek accreditation even if they don't accept Medicare and rely mostly on private payments or other insurance. (Medicaid, the state federal program for the poor, does cover longer term home health services, but eligibility and services vary by state.) "We wanted some measure of quality beyond our own internal measures," said Sharon Roth Maguire, the chief clinical quality officer at BrightStar Care, a Chicago based home care franchiser with 261 locations nationally that does not accept Medicare. "It's one thing to say we're committed to quality, but another to demonstrate it to another third party." BrightStar is one of two large home care operators recognized by the Joint Commission for having at least 95 percent of its franchise locations accredited. The second is CareMinders, based near Atlanta. To become accredited by the Joint Commission, an agency must undergo detailed reviews and on site visits, including direct observation of patient caregiving, every three years. Roughly 7,000 home health providers are accredited by the Joint Commission, and an estimated 35 percent of them provide either skilled nursing care or personal care, Ms. Labson said. (The others provide services like physical therapy, medical equipment and special pharmacy services.) According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, there were roughly 14,500 home health and hospice agencies in the country in 2007. A lack of accreditation does not necessarily mean the agency is not offering quality care, but it offers one way to gauge its commitment to high standards. "An agency is probably not going to be accredited if they aren't at least striving to be a cut above," said Amy Goyer, an adviser to the AARP on family caregiving issues as well as a caregiver for her father, who has Alzheimer's disease. Agencies, however, pay fees to be evaluated for accreditation, she noted, so that can add to the costs especially if you are seeking someone to provide personal care like help with bathing or eating, rather than nursing care, which might involve cleaning and dressing wounds or administering medication. Smaller operators may offer quality care, but may not yet be able to afford the accreditation process. "You may be paying more than you otherwise might be," Ms. Goyer said. The National Association for Home Care and Hospice, an industry group, suggests that consumers check first to see whether their state requires home health agencies to be licensed; you can usually find this on your state health department's website. If it does, the site will often list licensed providers, and will often have information about inspections, surveys and complaints. While accreditation is usually voluntary, at least one state, Florida, requires home health providers to be accredited by one of the three major groups to be licensed. Here are some questions to consider: Where should I start looking for a home health agency? Your local Area Agency on Aging is often a good place to start. You can go to the website of the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging to find one serving your area. Does the federal government offer any home health care search tools? The federal government maintains the Home Health Compare site, which lets you search by ZIP code for a Medicare certified agency and see quality reports as well as client comments. Medicare doesn't cover personal care or long term care, but some certified agencies may offer those services and accept other insurance or private payments instead; make sure to ask.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Five lead women, three lead men: this odd formula as seen in this photograph is the nucleus of George Balanchine's "Divertimento No. 15" (1956), a classic set to Mozart that returns to the New York City Ballet repertory on Thursday after more than five years. Three men to partner five women! This also gives a clue to one aspect of how Balanchine prepared a work: arithmetic as drama. His "Serenade" (1934) begins with 17 women, facing front in a lattice pattern; the first man only arrives at the end of the first movement. His "Agon" (1957) begins with four men, at the back, their backs to us; eight women will soon arrive, yet the ballet will end with the men just where they began. "Mozartiana" (1981) begins with a prima ballerina amid four girl student dancers. The formula is always different, always pregnant with suspense, so that we ask, "What's going on here?" In this case, I've often wondered if the name "Divertimento No. 15" gave him the idea: 15 5 x 3, a kind of numerical pun. Having eight principals (5 3), he matches them with a corps of eight women. As you watch the changing corps patterns, Balanchine shows how neatly divisible the number eight can be two fours, four twos: symmetries abound. But then you see those eight principals. Eight, after all, can contain an imbalance. At one point, the men and women face each other across the stage, both in diagonal lines. They bow with perfect courtesy. No problem. Still, we can't help asking the basic question: How on earth do three men partner five women?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
It's all Byron's fault. Before James Dean and Gary Cooper and Heathcliff and Rochester all the real and fictional men lounging at the center of the Venn diagram of "bad boys" and "sad boys" Byron made such a career of drinking, lusting and gallivanting that he became a type. The Byronic hero: temperamental, hedonistic and romantic. "I am such a strange melange of good and evil," the poet once wrote of himself, "that it would be difficult to describe me." Save it for your Tinder profile, bro. Byron also embodied a masculine ideal defined by paradoxes. A man of society who scorns status. A virile lover made impotent by ennui. A dreamer plagued by disillusionment. These contradictions sit at the heart of Eugene O'Neill's 1942 play "A Touch of the Poet." Irish Repertory Theater's new online production, with its cunning use of technology and design each actor filmed separately but sharing the same virtually rendered set provides a hearty serving of digital theater that nearly matches the real thing. But first, back to the sad boys. O'Neill wasn't exactly known for happy plays, and "A Touch of the Poet," one of his later works, bears that signature. A lengthy domestic tragedy about toxic pride and futile posturing in an American society that won't validate delusions of grandeur, the play makes Byron its patron saint, heralded and prayed to and emulated as the "poet and nobleman who made of disdain immortal music." Beautiful, isn't it? But the man with Byron on the brain, Major Cornelius "Con" Melody (Robert Cuccioli), can't make anything but a dissonant racket of his disdain. So he borrows the words of Byron, quoting the poet in front of the mirror as though he's trying to enchant himself: "I stood among them but not of them," he says grimly, considering his environs. It's 1828, and he's the owner of a pub in Massachusetts but has no money; he freely dips into the inventory. He resents his life, maintaining that he was tricked into buying the pub, weaseled out of his fortune and status in Ireland by the damn Yankees here in the United States. His steadfast wife Nora (Kate Forbes) dotes on him despite the ire he shoots her way. Their daughter Sara (Belle Aykroyd), however, taunts her Byron quoting father, who boasts of the one valiant battle he fought Talavera, he declares again and again, with a loving roll of the tongue. Meanwhile Sara nurses an unseen sick guest upstairs, a gentleman Yankee who is also afflicted with the touch of the poet, though more of the transcendentalist variety. She is in love with her Thoreau, who scribbles poems in a cabin by a lake, but their courtship is complicated by her father and their families' difference in status. Ciaran O'Reilly's assiduous direction of the lengthy production effectively captures how egos clash over one day in this tight setting. The lead roles are challenging; Cuccioli has the pretentious, stiff backed pageantry and the distant look of nostalgia in his eyes, but occasionally labors through Con's lightning fast changes in temperament. Aykroyd's Sara matches Con's boasts with scathing ridicule and her own highhanded sense of self worth, but Aykroyd is not always as effective conveying her character's veiled affections. Forbes's Nora is the rock of the play loyal to a fault but also kicked aside. She slouches through the virtual bar, fussing and tending to Con while he spits vitriol; still, she delivers O'Neill's language in a singing Irish brogue that's its own poetry. Admirably, O'Reilly has mounted a production with such chemistry and pep that it stands as a reminder of those pre pandemic theater days of yore. It is a marvel to see actors not in Zoom boxes but seeming to share the same space, with a gaggle of Irishmen loudly getting sloshed in the background. And it's not just pixelated heads floating against a digital backdrop. We see the actors' full bodies as they enter and exit the family pub. All the better to take in Charlie Corcoran's beautifully detailed bar setting and Alejo Vietti's handsome costume design, from Nora's peasant attire to Con's foppish threads. Sarah Nichols's video editing, however, sometimes does a disservice to the proceedings. The abrupt cuts especially during scenes depicting conversations between two characters, which rapidly switch between landscape and speaker views can be distracting. O'Neill, the verbose old devil, gets too gabby in the last two acts, over explaining through the dialogue, with the self righteous Sara his particular mouthpiece. But it's forgivable given how well Cuccioli handles Con's final scenes, after a confrontation leaves him irrevocably changed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
I had to wear a back brace for over a year and finally got some loose tank shirts that would fit over the brace. Now, the medication I am on causes extreme hot sweats throughout the day and night and I can no longer wear anything tight, so I discovered little lightweight swing dresses on Zulily, and they are great, especially the ones with pockets. Yesterday, during the infusion I noticed how well one of those little dresses worked to be able to access the chemo port. The neck stretches easily but bounces back when the IV comes out. Great! I have to wear compression stockings because of the edema and as of now cannot even wear leggings or any kind of pants. I live in Florida where it is especially hot and humid in the summer, so maybe this will get better in the winter. The stockings don't look very good, but I've decided to change my attitude about that and say they are chic. The little dresses over the stockings look fine. And by the way, I am now cancer free or No Evidence of Disease, as they say so that is great. But I am still in treatment and still have side effects and will probably have to make more adaptive clothing choices. I am too much for convenience to go through the trouble of hiding things, but at times put on the wig and dressed up like I wasn't sick so I didn't have to talk about it much. Mostly for three plus years I went into comfy mode and played with scarves and slippers. Layers of complementary (or not LOL) clothes and colors insulated me from changing temps (I still often wear leggings under short dresses), but I keep thinking of designs that might provide a gentle, elegant, practical comfort through this extremely challenging experience. I lost my right breast to cancer and absolutely hated the available "mastectomy bras." Fortunately I found a brand of regular bras made by Coobie. It's quite easy to insert a prosthesis (either one or two, as needed) into Coobies. They come in lots of colors, with or without lace trimming, and they are comfortable. They need to be pulled on over the head, which stops seeming weird after a while. Also, I bought a couple of pairs of loose linen pants at Chico's. They had an elastic waist and patch pockets on the back. As they were kind of shapeless, they looked fine when worn backward. Doing this put the pockets in the front, a more convenient place for a drainage bag. Topping this with a long loose blouse gave me comfort; I looked fine and nobody was the wiser. I live in baggy cotton knit. My port is just under my collar bone, and my chemo outfit a cotton sleeveless top worn under a two sizes too big zippered hoodie. I can pull the hood up to sleep. My issue is minor. Fourteen years ago, at 53, I had a hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo oophorectomy for uterine cancer. My gynecological oncologist wanted to make a small horizontal incision, but when he found a mess (and I mean mess!) of large fibroids, he had to make a vertical incision that started two inches above my belly button and stretched to an inch below the beginning of my pubic area. It divided my abdomen in half, and since then the left half holds more fat than the right half. I have invested in an extensive wardrobe of leotards that serve as my underwear. To a certain degree, they smooth out the area, but not completely. When I look at myself naked in the mirror, all I can do is laugh. It looks so silly!	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Bite size berry tarts, cheesecakes and cupcakes were being passed to the 70 plus guests who had gathered for Lauren Pienkowski and Corey Chavers's engagement party at the SKY Armory, in Syracuse. By 8 p.m., the party was in full swing when the couple took to the stage, the front of a sign pressed up against Ms. Pienkowski's chest. The crowd quieted. Bridesmaids and groomsmen were asked to stand behind them, for a photo op, they were told. A videographer and photographer started to capture the moment. Ms. Pienkowski, 30, scanned the group to make sure everyone had arrived. The D.J. took a musical pause. "You've been so patient about the date of our wedding," she said. "We promised we would tell you tonight when it will be. I hope people are ready to pack their bags and get excited, because ..." She then paused to turn over the sign, which read, "Surprise! Welcome to the wedding of Lauren Corey, March 18, 2017." "It's today." Shh, don't tell anyone, but surprise weddings are having a moment. No longer the sole domain of celebrity couples looking for privacy, such weddings are becoming popular among couples who can't pin down a date months in advance, are overwhelmed by the prospect of planning a huge gala, or want to save a bundle on doing an out of season event (sometimes without having to provide dinner). The here and now philosophy offers many positives. "As soon as we got engaged, we were asked repeatedly when the big day was, what kind of wedding we wanted, where the wedding would be; we got overwhelmed," said the newly married Ms. Chavers. "And Corey's schedule makes it nearly impossible to plan past six months in advance. It was all too much pressure." The faux engagement/real wedding was planned within four months. Only their parents and one person from each side of the bridal party knew. Mr. Chavers, 31, found humor in watching people's reaction and their attempts to up the amount of their gifts. "I overhead someone screaming to their date: 'Put more money in the card, it's a wedding. It's. A. Wedding!'" he said. "People were screaming: 'Oh my God! Oh my God!' We really nailed this." For Lauren Mabry and Sam Petner, both 33, their goal was to do something unusual. "We wanted our guests to experience the flood of emotions and happiness that we assumed we would experience on that day," Ms. Mabry said. The couple were married in Houston on April 25, 2015, at the McGovern Centennial Gardens. As far as their 200 guests knew, it was a surprise proposal where Mr. Petner would ask for an unsuspecting Ms. Mabry's hand in marriage. (Unbeknown to everyone, Mr. Petner had proposed five months earlier.) Before calling anyone or snapping photos to post on social media, they discussed the surprise wedding idea. "We thought it was a good bluff," the recently wed Ms. Petner said. "Who doesn't want to watch a proposal? After knowing each other for 19 years and dating for the past four, we thought people would enjoy watching Sam ask. Now looking back, I realize there were so many things that could have gone terribly wrong. I'm not sure it was tremendous luck or meticulous planning, but somehow everything turned out truly magical. I can't imagine our day any other way." Cocktails in the garden were interrupted when Ms. Petner's father gave a welcome speech and then revealed the truth. Ms. Petner, who had spent the night before in the nearby Hotel ZaZa, was hiding in a car behind a big wall of shrubbery, in full makeup and dress. Before emerging into the crowd, she heard the joyous eruption from her attendees. "The video was really important because I wanted to relive the moments I missed," she said. "We're very spontaneous people," she added. "The surprise made it exciting, and that's what we were going for." While having sealed lips may bring some couples closer together, it can disappoint relatives and best friends who, once the surprised is unveiled, can have hurt feelings or feel left out or duped. "We had to keep the truth from best friends; that was really hard," admitted Ms. Petner, who said that only a handful of people were disappointed, but that the disappointment lasted only 24 hours. "If the roles were reversed, I'd probably be hurt, too, so I get it. It's not for everybody, but it's the most special thing we've ever done." Ms. Chavers spoke similarly about hating to fib or be unusually secretive to those closest to her. "My maid of honor didn't know; that posed an issue," she said. "I couldn't share it with her, and she felt left out that she missed certain moments with me." For brides choosing to surprise, they lose out on group wedding fittings and a bridal shower. Bachelorette party? Not this time. Registry? What registry? And, as Mr. Chavers witnessed, envelopes contain less money and smaller checks. "Lauren did feel shortchanged and cheated," Mr. Chavers said. To make up for a lack of shower and bachelorette party, her friends took her on a post wedding getaway in June. Still, for many couples, they'd rather have less than more. Which is what they did. Their 130 guests arrived at 7 p.m., some dressed elegantly, others in ripped jeans and T shirts. ("If you'd only told us this was a wedding," claimed her two friends from Brooklyn.) The caterer, Sweet Chili, passed spicy lamb chops and fried chicken sliders. The band, 45 Riots, played jazz off to the side. For the first hour, Ms. Levenstien wore a pretty skirt and top. Attendees slurped oysters, sipped cocktails and mingled. Then her mother was handed a microphone. Everyone was asked to grab a glass of Champagne and head to the roof for a group toast. Ms. Levenstien jumped into her dress; her father zipped her up. Mr. North added a fancy jacket to his understated tuxedo shirt and slacks. He went upstairs to stand at the end of an aisle, which had been lined with candles. Plants doubled as an altar. Guests sat on benches. The Empire State Building was their backdrop. "I was so nervous when I entered I grabbed someone's Champagne and drank it because my throat was so dry," Ms. Levenstien said. "We didn't take into consideration that Fletcher would be standing there for 10 or 15 minutes while people came up the stairs. But once they realized what was happening, they started laughing and clapping, hooting and hollering. It made the ceremony my favorite part. That energy lasted through the evening. One friend suspected and brought popping confetti and shot that off." For the parents, many of whom have been made co conspirators, knowing about plans alleviates some concerns while creating others. "I was relieved when Kate told us because they had gone around and around for a month not knowing what to do," said Robert Levenstien, Kate's father. "But my wife and I were concerned people might not go out of their way for an engagement party like they would for a wedding." Like the Chavers, the Norths chose not to have a cake. Instead, mini Key lime pies and a variety of desserts were served. "My fear was people would go home early because they were mentally prepared for a short engagement party," the newly wed Ms. North admitted. Her concern was nullified. Guests stayed until 7 the next morning at the loft. Like Ms. Chavers, a handful of girlfriends are whisking Ms. North to Vermont for a post wedding party weekend. Gifts are still tricking in. "Having a surprise wedding allowed the planning process to be an intimate affair between Corey and I," Ms. Chavers said. "It was a secret for just us, until we let everyone else in on it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Dr. Dennis Sinar remembers when it dawned on him: He was ready for a break from work. A gastroenterologist and professor of medicine at East Carolina University in Greenville, N.C., Dr. Sinar was working on a research paper in the university library when it happened. "I just said to myself, 'I'm really sick of doing this stuff,'" he said. This was 10 years ago, when he was 59. Dr. Sinar explored the possibility of a sabbatical, but the university would have required him to do something related to his work during the break which was just what he didn't want to do. Then he ran across a newspaper article on companies that arrange gap year adventures, though most of them catered to high school and college students. "They didn't talk about anything for mature people," he recalled. "But I just picked up the phone and called one of them." In short order, Dr. Sinar found himself with a summer apprenticeship to an expert on stonemasonry in Alaska. "My wife and I were renovating and selling houses at the time," he said, "and I thought I might learn some things that would help me with those projects." In exchange for room and board, he studied how to create stone facings for houses; the work entailed learning how to collect appropriate rocks and then fit them into the available spaces. "It was like a big jigsaw puzzle," he said. For midcareer and older workers like Dr. Sinar who have the financial means and job flexibility to take time off, gap experiences can help answer questions about what they want to do in retirement or simply recharge their batteries. Gap years are especially helpful for older people working through career transitions. The explorations can be longer or shorter than a year, of course, and they need not be prohibitively expensive, said Holly Bull, president of the Center for Interim Programs in Princeton, N.J., which helped Dr. Sinar arrange his gap experience. "We mainly work with students," Ms. Bull said. "But we see an increasing number of older adults who aren't completely retired. They're looking for a new direction and asking themselves what they want to do for the rest of their lives." Gap experiences that involve travel are common, according to Catherine Allen, an author of a 2011 book, "Reboot Your Life: Energize Your Career Life by Taking a Break." Many people use the time to go back to school, reconnect with families or friends, or follow a passion. "We call it giving yourself the gift of time," Ms. Allen said. Few employers offer workers the opportunity to take breaks and return to their jobs, so sometimes the "gap year" is actually more of a gap between work and retirement. Unpaid sabbatical leave is offered by only 12 percent of employers, according to the Society for Human Resource Management, and only 4 percent of employers offered paid leave programs last year. As a result, most adult gap experiences require quitting a job. Dr. Sinar was one of the lucky few who could return to the same position. After he learned about stonemasonry, he traveled to Kathmandu in Nepal for back to back internships in Tibetan and ayurvedic medicine. "At the time, Western doctors were wary of this kind of homeopathic medicine," he said, "but I was interested in bringing some of it home for my patients." Then he was off to Romania, where he worked with a team of archaeologists who were restoring a castle. The final stop was an apprenticeship to a master restorer of antique furniture in Pennsylvania. In all, he was away from his job for a year, and then retired five years later. His retirement, he said, has been shaped by the gap experiences. "Before this, I thought of myself as a left brain person, but now I'm much more right brained," Dr. Sinar said. A hobby writing fiction has blossomed in retirement, and he has published two collections of short stories. "I never would have thought of making that kind of stretch before," he said. Dr. Sinar says he spent roughly 10,000 on his gap experiences during his unpaid leave from the university money he said was well spent: "How can you put a price on something that changes your life?" Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' Kathleen Baskin was a 55 year old empty nester when she left her job last summer as director of water policy for the state of Massachusetts to enroll in a one year master's program for midcareer professionals at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. "I knew my job too well I wasn't learning anything new," said Ms. Baskin, who was trained as a civil engineer. "I could have kicked back and cruised 10 or 15 years to retirement, but that didn't sound fun to me." Her classes at the Kennedy School, in areas like finance, international negotiation and diplomacy, were "mind benders," she said. And studying with students in their mid to late 30s was enlightening. "In addition to learning how to be a student again," Ms. Baskin said, "I have had to keep up with technology, and make sure that I don't climb the stairs too slowly." She graduated in May and is looking for a leadership role at a nonprofit organization that works on environmental or climate change issues. The Harvard program represented a considerable investment: Ms. Baskin paid 50,000 in tuition, and left a position where she had earned 100,000 annually. She converted unused vacation time into pay that covered about a quarter of her expenses for the year, and funded the rest from savings and a loan and by reducing expenses. For Kathy Thomas, who is 63 and lives in suburban Philadelphia, paid or subsidized jobs have kept down the cost of gap experiences. She has had a succession of them also arranged through Ms. Bull's firm since retiring two years ago from Bank of America, where she was a senior vice president overseeing commercial banking in Pennsylvania and Delaware. "You'll always pay for your airfare that is the biggest cost," Ms. Thomas said. So far, she has worked two weeks at an elephant sanctuary in Thailand (run by the nonprofit Save Elephant Foundation), volunteered for six weeks at a home for abused and neglected girls in South Africa, attended a weeklong writing retreat in North Carolina, and tended the fields for two weeks at an organic farm in Scotland. The elephant sanctuary provided room and board for 335 a week. "It was very basic accommodation with running water and flushing toilets," Ms. Thomas said. "There was no heat or air conditioning, but they served three really wonderful vegetarian meals a day." And the organic farm in Scotland provided room and board in a castle. Ms. Thomas had not been eager to retire, but she also worried about early mortality because no one in her mother's family had lived past 69. "I had so much I wanted to see and do, and I knew I couldn't wait another moment to retire and get to it," she said. One day at work, a light bulb went on. "A colleague was telling me about his son's preparation for a gap year before starting college," Ms. Thomas said. "I thought, 'Why couldn't I do that for my retirement?'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
PORTLAND, Ore. At the revamped athletic offices in Matthew Knight Arena, a trophy case has a small platform that has deliberately been left empty as one tribute to a celebration that never happened. Would the Oregon Ducks who were ranked No. 2 nationally and had the star guard Sabrina Ionescu plus two other players eventually selected near the top of the W.N.B.A. draft have won the women's N.C.A.A. basketball tournament last season? The team never got the chance to find out as the hoops bonanza known as March Madness became one of the first major sporting events in the United States canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. "We'll never get over that. That left a hole in our heart forever," Kelly Graves, the Oregon coach, said before the season began. The case near others that contain Nike team sneakers and signed basketballs, among other memorabilia has room for a trophy but only a small white platform inside, with a team photo on one side and the slogan "Unfinished Business" on another with a summary of the season. Ionescu, who was selected first over all by the Liberty in the W.N.B.A. draft, used the motto before the start of her senior season and it took on new meaning once the tournament was canceled, which the summary said ended "possibly the greatest season in program history." Said Graves: "It's something that we will keep blank until one day we are fortunate enough to win a national championship." That feeling of missed opportunity is an undercurrent for some teams as college basketball returns for a new season, a beginning that is already rife with problems that have led to coaches openly questioning the wisdom of playing with the virus surging around the United States. "It was really difficult for the returners to let go of last season. It took a long time, it was a big transition," Oregon forward Erin Boley said after scoring 25 points and grabbing nine rebounds against Portland on Monday. "We are so excited to have this new team, and it's a great opportunity for us to create something special." "We worked so hard to put ourselves in a position to make the N.C.A.A. tournament and possibly make a run in the Big Ten tournament," Garza said after scoring 41 points against Southern on Friday. He added: "In the off season, I just went into the gym and started working out again. It hit me later, like a month later, that the season was finally over and I took a break." Dayton could have had a top seed in the N.C.A.A. men's tournament last season and was primed for a deep run with Obi Toppin, the consensus national player of the year who was drafted by the Knicks last month. Dayton's coach, Anthony Grant, said he has been telling his players to "be where your feet are" and not focus on last year, even though it's easy to speculate. Grant's approach makes sense in a sport where much changes season to season and this team's goals are its own. The same rings true for the Oregon women, even as this season carries its own uncertainty as the coronavirus cases increase. "Everyone that gets recruited here is a winner here, I don't think that changes," said Oregon guard Taylor Chavez, who won the Pac 12 Conference's Sixth Player of the Year Award last season. "The path to that will look different, but the goal is to win as many games as you can and have fun doing it. Nothing has changed with the goals." Those ambitions are clearly visible at Oregon's practice courts, where signs on the walls have empty spaces for future accomplishments and a listing of N.C.A.A. tournament appearances include an interesting notation: "2020." When the N.C.A.A. tournaments were canceled, there were no official brackets released (though Oregon certainly would have earned a No. 1 seed and automatically qualified for the women's tournament because it had won the Pac 12 final). Outside expectations for Oregon have lowered somewhat this season, with three teams in the Pac 12 ranked ahead of the Ducks in The Associated Press Top 25 poll. Besides losing Ionescu, who in April won the John R. Wooden Award as college basketball's best player for the second straight season and finished as the N.C.A.A. leader in triple doubles, Oregon also said farewell to Satou Sabally, who was drafted No. 2 over all by the Dallas Wings, and Ruthy Hebard, who went No. 8 to the Chicago Sky.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The policy being delayed by the Department of Homeland Security, known as the International Entrepreneur Rule, was to go into effect next week, after being approved by President Obama in January during his final days in office. The rule was enacted to give foreign entrepreneurs who received significant financial backing for new business ventures the ability to come temporarily to the United States to build their companies. Silicon Valley leaders had praised the rule as a kind of "start up visa." The department said it would delay the start date of the rule until March 14 of next year, during which time it will seek public comments on a plan to rescind the rule. The department said it decided to delay the rule after President Trump signed an executive order on improvements to border security and immigration enforcement on Jan. 25, shortly after taking office. The order required the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security to take action to ensure that "parole authority" through which the department can temporarily allow individuals into the country without being formally admitted with a visa be used only on a case by case basis and "when an individual demonstrates urgent humanitarian reasons or a significant public benefit derived from such parole." The International Entrepreneur Rule was designed to use that authority to effectively give a lift to start ups. Under the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security estimated that nearly 3,000 entrepreneurs would be eligible to come to the United States annually under the rule. They were to be granted stays of up to 30 months, with the chance of extending the stays another 30 months if the entrepreneurs met certain criteria.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
In the 1970s and early '80s, a fledgling art movement called Pattern and Decoration arose, thanks to the work of artists like Miriam Schapiro , Kim MacConnel , Robert Kushner and Faith Ringgold. And then it faded overshadowed by the onslaught of American and European Neo Expressionist painting. But P D , as it was called, a reaction to the austerities of Minimalism and the limits of high art, never really went away. Most of the artists kept working, and the questions they raised about decoration, craft, function and (even) beauty and the frequently pejorative connotations of those words hung around. These issues also mutated in the work of artists as various as Jean Lowe (who is married to Mr. MacConnel), Philip Taaffe , Rudolf Stingel and Laurel Sparks. The exhibition "With Pleasure: Pattern and Decoration in American Art 1972 1985," at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, may facilitate a reassessment of P D, the original phenomenon, as well as its outliers and its continuing influence. Art lovers in New York, however, can savor some sense of the movement's vitality in "Garden," a site specific installation of paintings, drawings, ceramic vessels and usable objects at Gordon Robichaux by the artists Elisabeth Kley and Tabboo! (less well known by his given name, Stephen Tashjian), who have been friends and collaborators for around 15 years. Early on, their joint endeavors included set designs and props for Tabboo!'s stage productions and videos. Ms. Kley also photographed his impromptu performances, using the images as sources for drawings. With "Garden," the two achieve a dazzling parity, transforming Gordon Robichaux into an ostentatiously low tech art menagerie inspired by the one that Tabboo! maintains in his East Village studio. Their efforts create a dense environment of plants, birds, interiors and fountains that together conjure Persian courts, Roman wall paintings, the Wiener Werkstatte and much more. The fountains are real, made in glazed terra cotta by Ms. Kley. So are the stools and planters, featuring mostly her savvy black and white patterns motifs that she has also transfer red to the walls of one room. Tabboo!, an incredibly talented if undervalued painter, has added colorful tropical scenes and abstract patterns to the walls of a second room. Paintings on canvas by both artists recur throughout the installation. Tabboo!'s drawings of imaginary plants imaginatively named set the whole show slightly on edge, highlighting the sharp contemporaneity of the artists' sense of touch and pattern and their quotations of design. It's always a good day when the so called decorative takes no prisoners. Among the extraordinary assemblages here, fashioned with wooden frames and brown bags from Whole Foods, and festooned with belts and bits of fake fur and leather, are paintings dedicated to the one time Playboy playmate Dorothy Stratton, the chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain, the Japanese TV idol Miyu Uehara and a Chilean murder victim , Maria Jose Reyes . Mr. Cloud scribbles the addresses of informational websites along the frames and adds thick impasto brush strokes as well as his signature, inserted on a piece of cardboard. The paradox is that Mr. Cloud's paintings are so captivating and inventive that they feel anything but morbid. He transgresses all sorts of formal boundaries, binding together cheap materials with craft and precision. The paintings might serve as memorials and reminders of horrific events or, as Mr. Cloud says in the gallery's news release, how "we hurt the Other, the Opposite Number, the Opposition." But these vigorous, rigorous works virtually and metaphorically raise the dead. "My stock in trade has always been working harder than everyone else, and showing them how irrelevant they are," Karl Lagerfeld said of his competitors, and that was one of his kinder bons mots. If Lagerfeld, the German designer for Chanel and Fendi, who died in February at 85, was never a couturier on the level of his great rival, Yves Saint Laurent, he prevailed through sheer diligence. He drew constantly, read voraciously and lavished a designer's eye on his own persona, which was as sturdy as his high collared shirts. Lagerfeld was fashion's most assiduous mythmaker , and those myths extended to his later furniture design which, like his clothes, could fall very flat yet still take you in. At Carpenters Workshop, a design gallery in a Fifth Avenue penthouse, you'll find "Architectures," a selection of Lagerfeld's consoles, occasional tables, lamps and mirrors, all made of white or black marble, which recycle Greco Roman motifs in assorted goofy manners (misaligned legs, columns with half finished fluting). The redeployment of classical forms echoes, very slightly, the playful juggling of historical motifs by the designers of the Memphis Group. But here, the vapid contraction of ancient and modern, and the gross lunges for sex appeal through the striated marble, feel more suitable for a money launderer's powder room than for Lagerfeld's own Memphis soaked, frequently photographed Monaco apartment. If you have a summer house to remodel, I advise Brazilian antiques or just Restoration Hardware. And yet, with Kaiser Karl gone, I find myself unexpectedly protective of this garish furniture, which even in its inadequacy expresses the freedom of a designer who worked, worked, worked without regard to bottom lines or social likes. He was, I'm afraid, one of the last. Over several decades, Ms. Antoni has become known for her body centered, often performative works; in "Loving Care" (1993), she mopped a gallery floor with her dye soaked hair. The Green Wood installation builds on her more recent artistic interests in bones, as well as in the emotional power of religious objects and imagery. It consists of nine photographic works of gestures made with her own and her parents' bodies feet, ears, torsos. They're displayed in gilded frames incorporating casts and impressions of bones. "I open the gates" (2019) shows hands grabbing a pair of breasts, bisected by a shimmering spinal column; in "My waters rest" (2019), weathered hands fold in prayer against a marine blue background. These icon like pictures stand in vaults illuminated only by skylights. The effect is simultaneously thrilling and haunting, a dichotomy that gets to the very heart of being human: We're both sturdy enough to live and frail enough to die.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Another Story opened in 1987 and is now located in Toronto's Roncesvalles Village. TORONTO Before you walk inside Another Story Bookshop, you will see a poster featuring the John Lennon lyric "A Working Class Hero Is Something to Be" in the window. During a visit in the spring, the books on display included "Policing Indigenous Movements" and "Peaceful Fights for Equal Rights." The guiding principle of the bookstore, located in Toronto's Roncesvalles Village neighborhood, is social justice, and it makes itself known right away . That was a goal of its founder, Sheila Koffman, who opened Another Story in 1987 in an effort to place, as she put it, "diverse books into diverse hands." "She wanted to give a platform for those voices," said Eric McCall, a longtime employee, "to really champion new authors that were people of color and queer authors." The store was originally located in the basement of a building on Danforth and Broadview, and employees remember Koffman, who died of cancer two years ago, helping customers with children carry their strollers up and down the stairs. Her brother, Joel Koffman , now owns the store with McCall and another employee, Laura Ash . Together with Anjula Gogia, who serves as the events coordinator, the four of them see themselves as continuing her legacy. "'Ownership' doesn't mean much to us, but the responsibility and workload does," McCall said. "The work never really stops, so it just feels like a continuation of what our jobs were before in a lot of ways." 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. Children's books are a major draw, and half of the store is devoted to them. It also operates a wholesale business, supplying children's titles to schools and libraries. For adults, there is a mix of fiction and nonfiction, with a focus on Canadian authors, who represent about two thirds of the selection. The owners also look for writers of color, queer authors and indigenous writers. "We don't really worry about best sellers. That can be acquired elsewhere. We really want to promote those marginalized voices," McCall said. Readings and other bookstore events typically begin with "land acknowledgment," identifying the indigenous people who lived there first. In Another Story's case, that includes the nations of Huron Wendat, Petun, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy and the Mississaugas of the Credit River . The Porcupine Warriors, a local indigenous collective, held a teach in in January at the store to raise money for the Wet'suwet'en First Nation, whose members have fought the TransCanada pipeline expansion.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
BOXBOROUGH, Mass. Six eBay employees mounted a cyberstalking campaign including sending boxes of live cockroaches and a Halloween mask of a bloody pig's face against a couple who ran an online e commerce newsletter, according to charges filed by federal prosecutors on Monday. Unhappy with the newsletter's coverage of eBay, the employees, none of whom now work at the company, barraged the couple with threatening emails and sent disturbing deliveries, including a funeral wreath and a book on how to survive the death of a spouse, said Andrew E. Lelling, the United States attorney for Massachusetts, in a news conference on Monday. Several of the employees drove to the couple's home to spy on them, he said. "They were not merely unhappy, they were enraged," Mr. Lelling said, describing how one former eBay executive told a fellow executive in a text message that he wanted to "crush" the woman in the couple, who live in Natick, Mass., a Boston suburb. The result, Mr. Lelling said, "was a systematic campaign, fueled by the resources of a Fortune 500 company, to emotionally and psychologically terrorize this middle aged couple in Natick with the goal of deterring them from writing bad things online about eBay." Prosecutors charged the six people with conspiracy to commit cyberstalking and conspiracy to tamper with witnesses. Among them, two former eBay officers James Baugh, the company's former senior director of safety and security, and David Harville, the company's former director of global resiliency were arrested on Monday morning. Also charged in the case was a former senior manager of special operations for eBay's global security team, who is a former police captain, according to the complaint. In a company post on Monday, eBay said it had fired all the involved employees last year, including the company's former chief communications officer. EBay also said that an internal investigation had examined whether the company's chief executive at the time, Devin Wenig, had played any role in the cyberstalking campaign. "The internal investigation found that, while Mr. Wenig's communications were inappropriate, there was no evidence that he knew in advance about or authorized the actions that were later directed toward the blogger and her husband," the statement said. It added: "However, as the company previously announced, there were a number of considerations leading to his departure" from eBay. In a statement emailed to The New York Times, Mr. Wenig said: "As confirmed by the company following a thorough, independent investigation, I did not direct or know anything about the acts that have been charged in Boston. I have spent my career defending press freedoms. What these charges allege is unconscionable." Lawyers representing Mr. Baugh and Mr. Harville did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The prosecutors did not name the couple or their newsletter. The stalking campaign began in the summer of 2019 after the newsletter published an article about a lawsuit involving eBay, prosecutors said. EBay executives followed the newsletter's posts closely, often "taking issue with the content" as well as anonymous reader comments disparaging eBay executives as "liars" and "delusional," the complaint said. In response, one company executive wrote to another saying the newsletter editor was "out with a hot piece on the litigation. If you are ever going to take her down ... now is the time," according to text messages included in the complaint. The other executive responded: "Let me ask you this. Do we need to shut her entire site down?" A few messages later, the first executive commented: "She is biased troll who needs to get BURNED DOWN." Prosecutors said the executives behind those messages who were not named or charged in the case pressured other employees to do something about the newsletter's editor. The people charged in the case then began a three pronged campaign. Several eBay employees sent "unwanted and disturbing deliveries" to the couple's home, the complaint said, including a preserved fetal pig, fly larvae, live spiders, a sympathy funeral wreath and pornography that was addressed to the couple by name, but sent to two of their neighbors. The employees also sent a series of increasingly aggressive direct messages on Twitter, asking the newsletter editor what her problem was with eBay, the complaint said. The court filing said they followed up with threatening messages, culminating with publishing the couple's home address. As an excuse to covertly surveil the couple in the home, the complaint said, two employees also registered for a software conference in Boston in August, and, lest they were stopped by the police, went to the couple's house carrying false documents purporting to show that they were investigating the publishers for threatening eBay executives.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Employees of Kaspersky Lab at the company's offices in Moscow. Intelligence officials in the United States believe Kaspersky's antivirus software was turned into a tool for spying. It has been a secret, long known to intelligence agencies but rarely to consumers, that security software can be a powerful spy tool. Security software runs closest to the bare metal of a computer, with privileged access to nearly every program, application, web browser, email and file. There's good reason for this: Security products are intended to evaluate everything that touches your machine in search of anything malicious, or even vaguely suspicious. By downloading security software, consumers also run the risk that an untrustworthy antivirus maker or hacker or spy with a foothold in its systems could abuse that deep access to track customers' every digital movement. "In the battle against malicious code, antivirus products are a staple," said Patrick Wardle, chief research officer at Digita Security, a security company. "Ironically, though, these products share many characteristics with the advanced cyberespionage collection implants they seek to detect." Mr. Wardle would know. A former hacker at the National Security Agency, Mr. Wardle recently succeeded in subverting antivirus software sold by Kaspersky Lab, turning it into a powerful search tool for classified documents. Mr. Wardle's curiosity was piqued by recent news that Russian spies had used Kaspersky antivirus products to siphon classified documents off the home computer of an N.S.A. developer, and may have played a critical role in broader Russian intelligence gathering. "I wanted to know if this was a feasible attack mechanism," Mr. Wardle said. "I didn't want to get into the complex accusations. But from a technical point of view, if an antivirus maker wanted to, was coerced to, or was hacked or somehow subverted, could it create a signature to flag classified documents?" That question has taken on renewed importance over the last three months in the wake of United States officials' accusations that Kaspersky's antivirus software was used for Russian intelligence gathering, an accusation that Kaspersky has rigorously denied. Last month, Kaspersky Lab sued the Trump administration after a Department of Homeland Security directive banning its software from federal computer networks. Kaspersky claimed in an open letter that "D.H.S. has harmed Kaspersky Lab's reputation and its commercial operations without any evidence of wrongdoing by the company." For years, intelligence agencies suspected that Kaspersky Lab's security products provided a back door for Russian intelligence. A draft of a top secret report leaked by Edward J. Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor, described a top secret, N.S.A. effort in 2008 that concluded that Kaspersky's software collected sensitive information off customers' machines. The documents showed Kaspersky was not the N.S.A.'s only target. Future targets included nearly two dozen other foreign antivirus makers, including Checkpoint in Israel and Avast in the Czech Republic. At the N.S.A., analysts were barred from using Kaspersky antivirus software because of the risk it would give the Kremlin broad access to their machines and data. But excluding N.S.A. headquarters at Fort Meade, Kaspersky still managed to secure contracts with nearly two dozen American government agencies over the last few years. Last September, the Department of Homeland Security ordered all federal agencies to cease using Kaspersky products because of the threat that Kaspersky's products could "provide access to files." A month later, The New York Times reported that the Homeland Security directive was based, in large part, on intelligence shared by Israeli intelligence officials who successfully hacked Kaspersky Lab in 2014. They looked on for months as Russian government hackers scanned computers belonging to Kaspersky customers around the world for top secret American government classified programs. In at least one case, United States officials claimed Russian intelligence officials were successful in using Kaspersky's software to pull classified documents off a home computer belonging to Nghia H. Pho, an N.S.A. developer who had installed Kaspersky's antivirus software on his home computer. Mr. Pho pleaded guilty last year to bringing home classified documents and writings, and has said he brought the files home only in an attempt to expand his resume. The company also said in November that in the course of investigating a surveillance operation known as TeamSpy in 2015, it had tweaked its antivirus program to scan files containing the word "secret." The company said it had done this because the TeamSpy attackers were known to automatically scan for files that included the words "secret," "pass" and "saidumlo," the Georgian translation for the word secret. Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life None With Apple's latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here's what to know. A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties' unwanted attempts to access your data. Here's a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online. Ever considered a password manager? You should. There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet. Kaspersky continues to deny that it knew about the scanning for classified United States programs or allowed its antivirus products to be used by Russian intelligence. Eugene Kaspersky, the company's chief executive, has said he would allow the United States government to inspect his company's source code to allay distrust of its antivirus and cybersecurity products. But Mr. Wardle discovered, in reverse engineering Kaspersky antivirus software, that a simple review of its source code would do nothing to prove its products had not been used as a Russian intelligence gathering tool. (Watch how he reverse engineered the software.) Mr. Wardle found that Kaspersky's antivirus software is incredibly complex. Unlike traditional antivirus software, which uses digital "signatures" to look for malicious code and patterns of activity, Kaspersky's signatures are easily updated, can be automatically pushed out to certain clients, and contain code that can be tweaked to do things like automatically scanning for and siphoning off classified documents. In short, Mr. Wardle found, "antivirus could be the ultimate cyberespionage spying tool." He then edited a document on his computer containing text from the Winnie the Pooh children's book series to include the marking "TS/SCI" and waited to see whether Kaspersky's tweaked antivirus product would catch it. Sure enough, as soon as the Winnie the Pooh text was saved to his machine, Kaspersky's antivirus software flagged and quarantined the document. When he added the same TS/SCI marker to another document containing the text "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog," it, too, was flagged and quarantined by Kaspersky's tweaked antivirus program. "Not a whole lot of surprise that this worked," Mr. Wardle said, "but still neat to confirm that an antivirus product can be trivially, yet surreptitiously, used to detect classified documents." The next question was: What happens to these files once they are flagged? Mr. Wardle stopped short of hacking into Kaspersky's cloud servers, where suspicious files are routinely uploaded. However, he noted that antivirus customers, including Kaspersky's, agreed by default to allow security vendors to send anything from their machine back to vendors' servers for further investigation. There are legitimate reasons for this: By uploading these items to Kaspersky's cloud, security analysts can evaluate whether they pose a threat, and update their signatures as a result.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Clockwise from left, mini cabins at the Riverside Resort; the Green River; Whistler Village, of a maze of winding pedestrian lanes lined with restaurants, shops and hotels at the base of Whistler Mountain. Seven little words sure to warm any frugal heart: "Sir, you've been upgraded from your yurt." A few weeks back, in a bid to cut costs on a ski trip to Whistler, the ritzy Canadian resort town near Vancouver, I had booked one of the cheapest options I could find: a yurt. For the uninitiated, a yurt is kind of like a big tent, but with a wood floor and actual beds. This one, at a private campground and R.V. park outside town, was going for 99 Canadian dollars a night ( 80 at 1.23 Canadian dollars to the U.S. dollar), not exactly dirt cheap but a relative steal considering hotel rooms were starting at twice as much. I'd bring a sleeping bag, I told myself. There was a little stove inside to keep warm. It would be just like camping glamping even. But as I stepped out of my car in Whistler to a light snow and chilly breeze, I was having second thoughts about spending a weekend of subzero nights sleeping, for all intents and purposes, in the great outdoors. So when the front desk at the Riverside Resort campground explained that my yurt wasn't ready and I'd been upgraded at no cost to a mini cabin a handsome little red cedar number with a bathroom, queen bed, electricity and heat I didn't protest. There's a point when frugality yields diminishing returns, and I was starting to think a yurt in winter might be past that point. But, for travelers on a tight budget, Whistler does demand some extreme measures. Most ski towns are pricey. Whistler is in a league of its own, a likely consequence of being named North America's top resort for most of the last 20 years by a bevy of glossy ski magazines, not to mention hosting an Olympics a few years back. (It was also the subject of a recent 36 Hours column by The Times, which highlighted some of its less frugal charms.) Yes, the skiing is extraordinary: two separate mountains (Whistler and Blackcomb); 8,000 odd acres of skiable terrain; a mile long vertical drop on the longest of runs. But none of that comes cheap. (I should note, however, that the recent free fall of the Canadian loonie means international visitors do get substantial savings in the exchange.) An adult, full day lift ticket, which just gets you on the slopes, is 119 Canadian dollars (15 dollars less if you buy in advance online). On my budget, that meant I'd be able to afford one day of skiing, at most, over the weekend, and I'd need to scrimp and save to manage even that. Whistler Village is a planned community, laid out in the late '70s at the base of its namesake mountain, and as such has all the faux Old World charm and convenience of, say, a really nice outlet mall. I wandered along a maze of winding brick pedestrian lanes lined with ski and snowboard shops, soaring chalet style hotels and art galleries selling 5,000 dollar carved polar bears, before ducking into the Longhorn Saloon, a popular apres ski spot with loud music and a pleasant dive bar feel. "When you're making minimum wage, you make every dollar count," explained my drinking companion, Jonny, a 19 year old Justin Bieber look alike who came to Whistler two years ago from England to teach skiing and snowboarding. His shirt read, "All I care about is snowboarding ... and maybe 3 people and beer," a claim confirmed by our conversation. In quick succession, I learned his views on where to find the cheapest pitchers of beer (Creekbread, a pizza joint outside the village), the cheapest shots (Three Below, a bar under a movie theater) and which clubs hosted discounted "locals' nights" during the week. Eventually, I pressed Jonny for a non alcohol related tip. "Well, there's nature," he said and gave me directions to the Whistler Interpretive Forest, a 7,500 acre spread with plenty of trails, just a short drive south of town. A few minutes later, I was hiking my way through a thick swath of towering Douglas fir and Western red cedar trees, boughs draped with hanging moss. A mile on, the trail opened to a wobbly suspension bridge strung above the Cheakamus River, a ribbon of bright turquoise that luminous glacial hue you get only in mountain country threading through a frosty white canyon. It was something straight out of an enchanted forest, and I had the scene all to myself. Chilled from the walk, I set my sights on getting into a hot tub, one way or another. My little cabin backed onto a gorgeous outdoor spa a complex of hot and cold pools, Finnish saunas and steam rooms set on manicured grounds. Unfortunately, the price of admission turned out to be 58 dollars. But across the street at the municipal Meadow Park Sports Center, run by the local park board, I discovered that access to a hot tub, sauna and steam room would cost me just 8.25 dollars. I happily shelled out an extra 3 dollars for a towel and a locker token. Being a Canadian community center, Meadow Park was actually nicer than a lot of private clubs I'd been to. I made my way past the indoor hockey rink and the squash courts to the pool area, which, as promised, had a nice big hot tub in the corner. When it got a little too crowded with 12 year olds, I retreated to the steam room, where I made friends with a young snowboarder convalescing for the season after suffering a broken leg. "Mind if I add a little eucalyptus?" he asked, then sprinkled a few drops of his own oil onto the steam vent a frugal spa trick worth remembering. Remy Scalza for The New York Times The next day dawned rainy, so I decided to defer hitting the slopes and explore instead. To get a sense of Whistler's past before the resort, before even the first trappers and prospectors set up shop in the late 1800s I drove to the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Center, a museum dedicated to the history of the region's indigenous population, tucked among a cluster of five star hotels on the village edge (at 18 dollars, a modest splurge but a worthwhile one). Heavy carved wooden doors opened to a big open room filled with full size totem poles and cedar canoes. On a guided tour, I learned that the Squamish and Lil'wat peoples had inhabited the areas around Whistler for thousands of years. We popped into full scale models of an underground pit house and a huge cedar timbered longhouse. Exhibits showed off traditional goat's wool blankets and nifty waterproof hats woven from cedar bark, essential accessories back in the day. My favorite piece was a giant, menacing mask of Kalkalalh, the wild witch woman of the woods, who ate children and had a serious case of bed head, wild hair splaying everywhere. The rain hadn't let up, so I decided to go for a drive. While Whistler is a slickly manufactured ski resort masquerading as a quaint mountain town, the nearby community of Pemberton really is a quaint mountain town, home to a few thousand back to the land types, hard core adventure seekers, farmers and retirees. After a harrowing ride freezing rain had turned the winding Sea to Sky Highway into a bobsled run I eased down to a grid of streets set in the shadow of some dizzying peaks. Just off the main drag, a line of cars was snaking its way up to the local high school. I pulled off to investigate. Inside the gym home of the Pemberton Red Devils a craft fair was in progress, evidently the event of the season. I worked my way through the masses, past rows of folding tables packed with homemade preserves, church bake sale cookies, local alpaca blankets and cure all salves sold by members of the nearby Mount Currie Indian Band. I ended up buying a few jars of homemade salsa for 4 dollars each from a local canning enthusiast, who upsold me on a wool cap with ear flaps that had been knit by her mother. "Perfect for wearing underneath a hardhat," she said. Farther up the road, in an unlikely spot in an industrial park, I found what just might be the country's only certified organic potato vodka distillery. "Pemberton's known for potatoes, and we go through at least 100,000 pounds a year," said Tyler Schramm, the distiller, pouring me a sample of his trademark spirit inside the tasting room, essentially a cinder block and sheet metal shack. Afterward, we poked into the distillery itself, where a batch of organic potato absinthe was being bottled, and sprigs of wormwood, the spirit's key ingredient, were spread out to dry. With a long drive ahead of me, I decided against a taste, but I couldn't resist picking up a handsome, hand labeled bottle of potato gin on the way out (45 dollars, which is in no way frugal, but it was worth every penny). Back in Whistler, the lifts had closed for the day, sending a flood of skiers onto the streets for apres ski sustenance. On a tip, I skipped the usual bars and pubs and headed to the kind of place budget travelers rarely dare to tread, a fine dining fixture called Bearfoot Bistro. Inside, there's a grand piano in the dining room, a walk in 20,000 bottle wine cellar and prix fixe menu pushing 100 dollars a head. But from 3 to 7 p.m. daily, they also have one of the best apres ski deals in town: a half dozen local Vancouver Island oysters, served with fresh horseradish and red wine mignonette, for 10 dollars. I felt a bit underdressed in my muddy boots and ski jacket, but I found a seat at the bar and started happily slurping away. Alas, one cannot live on oysters alone. Whistler is sorely lacking the kind of homey hole in the walls where budget travelers usually find their best meals. But back along the main pedestrian stroll, a sandwich board outside a place called El Furniture Warehouse caught my eye: "All Food 4.95." It was a risk, but I was hungry. Inside, the Warehouse was much as advertised: dark and low ceilinged with young ski and snowboard bums packed into every possible corner. But my "Works Burger" (Alberta beef, maple bacon and Cheddar for the promised price of 4.95 dollars) held its own against pub burgers that cost three times as much, and 5 dollar Kokanee drafts (British Columbia's equivalent of Budweiser or Coors) made the pounding club mix inside easier to bear. To cap off the night, I stopped in at the Dubh Linn Gate, a nearby pub with a bit more atmosphere than the standard Irish knockoff. No cover charge and a foot stomping fiddle band called Team Hewitt meant the place was packed. I squeezed onto the dance floor, a sea of swirling flannels, just in time for the start of a Celtic treatment of "Folsom Prison Blues." The next morning, the skies were still threatening rain, but it was now or never for skiing. I ponied up for the lift ticket, shuffled into the Village Gondola the main route up Whistler Mountain and hoped for the best. Inside, two snowboarders from Washington were literally fidgeting in their seats "super stoked," they said, for their first runs of the year. Then, just as I was reconciling myself to a damp day on the slopes, the gondola broke through the low clouds, emerging on the other side to an unexpectedly gorgeous vista. Row after row of jagged, snowcapped mountains hidden from sight all weekend spiked upward against a backdrop of blue sky and puffy white clouds. Above it all glowered the fang of Blackcomb Mountain 8,010 feet high and sheathed in glacier. I got out of the gondola a half hour later, the better part of a mile above Whistler. While the snow up top wasn't exactly fresh powder (uncommonly warm temperatures this season have made for challenging skiing conditions), the sun was shining, and the uninterrupted panorama of peaks and bowls was enough to banish any buyer's remorse over my ticket. Whistler isn't a beginner's mountain, which meant I spent most of the afternoon on the easiest, green runs. Still in fear induced adrenaline alone I got my money's worth. Next time I think I'd even make the sacrifice and stay in that yurt, if it meant an extra day on the mountain.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
The albums that earned Blake Mills a Grammy nomination for producer of the year, nonclassical, are all by singer songwriters. That's about the only thing they have in common. Among them are John Legend's "Darkness and Light," R B songs informed by blues, jazz and social consciousness; the English songwriter Laura Marling's sparse, thoughtful "Semper Femina"; and "No Shape" by Perfume Genius (the songwriter Mike Hadreas), a cinematic excursion that encompasses electronics, orchestral strings, desolately hushed ballads and bursts of pop euphoria. "We just kept trying to push it," Mr. Blake said about the Perfume Genius sessions. "What if we try this? What if we try this?" Mr. Mills, 31, doesn't impose a formula or pay attention to current hits. Instead, he said, he listens. Yet from there, he added, "The goal is always to make this better than all the other records the artist has done." Mr. Mills hasn't been a producer that long; his first production credits appeared in 2012. He got started as a guitarist and songwriter with high school friends in a band named Simon Dawes, which became Dawes after he left it; they reconnected when he produced its 2016 album, "We're All Gonna Die." He has made albums of his own as a rootsy singer songwriter, and he became a session and touring guitarist, working with Jenny Lewis, Bright Eyes, Lucinda Williams and Fiona Apple, among many others. As a producer, Mr. Mills cultivates larger ambitions. He's eager to make the kind of album that becomes a career turning point: a stretch for the musicians and a pivot away from audience expectations. For Mr. Legend on "Darkness and Light," that meant defying the programmed sound of much current R B and hip hop to work with a small band in the studio, finding grooves; it also meant allowing lyrics to dip into politics as well as romance. By telephone from the Sundance Festival in Utah, Mr. Legend said he chose Mr. Mills because he wanted a "more organic album." Mr. Mills, he added, "loves music and I love music, and that makes it so we're talking the same language. When your goal is to make the best thing you can make, and the most beautiful thing, and the most honest thing, you have the same North Star." Mr. Legend discovered Mr. Mills after hearing "Sound Color," the second album by Alabama Shakes. For its 2012 debut album, "Boys Girls," Alabama Shakes stayed close to 1960s soul. But its 2015 follow up, which Mr. Mills produced with the band, used a far broader and more unpredictable sonic palette, from punk to shoegaze; it won a Grammy for best alternative music album. Alabama Shakes "didn't stay beholden to their fanbase's interpretation of who they were," Mr. Mills said. "I think they were trying to challenge it. I resonate with that spirit. I respect that. And if somebody is feeling like making that kind of record, I want to protect it from any of the outside influences that might come in and say, 'You have a decision to make. You can either make your creative record or your commercially viable record.' "That conversation of art versus commerce is so ignorant," he added. "The good albums are the ones that do both. And in order to do both, you have to check the artistic envelope pushing box first before you can find that it's also a commercial success. You have to go out on a limb a little bit." Getting some recognition from the Grammys doesn't hurt. It's "really given me some ammunition when I'm in the studio," he said, "and the label or outside influences come in and say, 'What about the single?' It's earned me some trust." Mr. Mills's methods vary with every project. But he's fond of recording in old school studios with rooms that "allow you to get a sense of size." He then does extensive overdubs at home and in small home studios. "You get something spacious in the peripheral background and something up close that's intimate," he said. He also happily combines naturalistic sounds with surreal ones, which he compares to realist filmmaking meeting Technicolor fantasies. "Both of those elicit an emotional response," he said. "I don't think one is inherently better than the other." Mr. Mills said he doesn't have time to listen to pop radio or study current hits; he's not interested in the trends of the moment. "There's a strange, blissful ignorance," he said. "But I think more about an idea of the radio. Do I want this track to sound like it's exploding out of the speakers? Most of the time, the answer is yes."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
"Opus 19/The Dreamer," a Jerome Robbins ballet choreographed in 1979 for Mikhail Baryshnikov and Patricia McBride, exists in a moody place where mystery and anxiety walk a delicate line. Is this strange, fitful landscape meant to evoke a dream or a nightmare? Performed by New York City Ballet on Thursday at the David H. Koch Theater, "Opus 19" explores the virtuosity of stage presence, in which a male protagonist shifts between stillness and agitation. Set to Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1 in D, the ballet begins with Gonzalo Garcia at center stage; every few seconds he changes direction and extends his arms as if he is pushing away air. But "Opus 19" is not a gentle ballet. It tingles with nervous energy, and Mr. Garcia, frequently understated, is its stream of consciousness. "Opus 19" always struck me as a ballet more profound for dancers to interpret than for audiences to watch, but this time it was an even swap, affording one of the last chances to see Janie Taylor before she retires at the end of the season. Unbridled and darkly seductive as the enigmatic female lead, she flung herself at Mr. Garcia with a vigorous kick, clawed at the air or slumped over with limp, wiggling arms. There may be better technical dancers in the world, but who cares? Ms. Taylor's spooky abandon her wildness and vivid imagination engulfs her roles.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Chris Pine played the love interest in Patty Jenkins's 2017 film "Wonder Woman," and the two have reunited for the TNT limited TV series "I Am the Night." LOS ANGELES "Do you know what today is?" asked Patty Jenkins on a rainy Tuesday in January. Chris Pine shook his head. It was a morbid anniversary: Seventy two years before, Elizabeth Short, an aspiring actress known later as the Black Dahlia, was brutally murdered and dismembered, possibly in the bowels of the mansion where they sat the Sowden House, built by Lloyd Wright (a son of Frank's). It was home briefly to George Hodel, a prominent gynecologist who was widely suspected of the murder. Mr. Pine was familiar with the story. Fresh off their success with "Wonder Woman," in which Mr. Pine starred under Ms. Jenkins's direction, the two of them had filmed a TV project here in 2017 tied to the Black Dahlia murder of 1947. "I got a little nauseous," she said about visiting the house's basement. "And dizzy." A dizzying setting, perhaps, but appropriate for the project she was filming, which debuts Monday: "I Am the Night," a six episode limited series on TNT starring Mr. Pine that is loosely based on the 2008 memoir "One Day She'll Darken" by Mr. Hodel's granddaughter, Fauna Hodel. A noir soaked mystery set in 1965, the series is a return to TV for Ms. Jenkins and the realization of a passion project over a decade in the making. A white girl raised by her adoptive black mother to believe she was of mixed racial origins, Ms. Hodel had a difficult upbringing in Nevada, unaware of her true background. In search of her biological mother, she traveled to Los Angeles only then to discover her family's shadowy past. Vanity Fair later called her memoir "the stuff of which movies are made." Ms. Jenkins agreed, originally conceiving of the project as a film at one point, Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions was attached. But the material proved ultimately too dense for a feature, and the project sat in limbo. The idea of the limited series wasn't as "chic," she said, before the success in 2014 of HBO's "True Detective." With the blockbuster success of "Wonder Woman" in 2017, which earned nearly 822 million, Ms. Jenkins's career reached new heights. "Wonder Woman" gave her leverage, but that achievement also made it somewhat surprising that "Night" landed at a basic cable network better known for sitcoms and procedurals. "I don't see anything as too minor or too major," said Ms. Jenkins, who followed up her Oscar winning debut feature, "Monster," by directing episodes of "Arrested Development" on Fox. "I like to do things I believe could be great. Not only did TNT get it, but they were excited about it." The network happily accommodated the short window she had at the end of 2017 to direct the first two episodes. She then handed the directorial reins over to Victoria Mahoney ("Seven Seconds") and Carl Franklin ("Devil in a Blue Dress") and left to begin preproduction on "Wonder Woman 1984," scheduled for release in 2020. The episodes this team created for "I Am the Night" are heavily fictionalized, though based on Ms. Hodel's gripping memoir. In the pilot, a teenage version of Ms. Hodel (India Eisley) is presented as a Little Red Riding Hood in search of her grandfather. As all manner of wolves close in, she befriends Mr. Pine's character, Jay Singletary, a once promising journalist whose career has been destroyed by George Hodel (Jefferson Mays). Mr. Pine, who played the love interest in "Wonder Woman," jumped at the chance to work again with Ms. Jenkins, who first told him about the project on the set of "Wonder Woman" in 2016. "She always has myriad ideas that she's bandying about that she'll see if I respond to," said Mr. Pine, who has spent nearly half of the past three years working on projects with Ms. Jenkins. "But this particular one she got really excited about." Mr. Pine got excited, too. Like Ms. Jenkins, he is an executive producer on the series. And his character, a drug addicted Korean War veteran who's been reduced to the tabloid hustle, presented new challenges. "Jay is freakishly, fascinatingly, delightfully strange," he said. "I have a greater compassion for him than I have for many of the characters I've played because he's so tragic." Shot on location around Los Angeles, the series examines issues of identity, corruption and truth, as focused through a noir lens appropriate to its themes. As Fauna tracks her family, she also unearths the suspicions about her grandfather's possible role in the Dahlia and other murders. Ms. Jenkins felt that the Black Dahlia mystery which remains unsolved, possibly because of George Hodel's powerful connections was the show's "Trojan Horse": The killer's identity was reportedly one of Hollywood's best kept secrets, and it became just one of Fauna's both real and fictional many painful discoveries. "I Am the Night" is the first proper collaboration between Ms. Jenkins and her husband, the author Sam Sheridan ("A Fighter's Heart"). It was Mr. Sheridan, a noir fan and the series's showrunner, who thought to cast Mr. Pine, who had played the comely Captain Kirk in "Star Trek," as the troubled journalist. The suggestion appealed to Ms. Jenkins, who saw Jay's desperation and gallows humor as a refreshing change for her friend. "This character had shades of Chris that I hadn't gotten to see him express," said Ms. Jenkins. "It's getting into that vibe of somebody who really doesn't like themselves and their place in the world. When he was super young, he always had to play the handsome leading man." Seated together in a small windowless room of the Sowden House, Mr. Pine and Ms. Jenkins exuded unmistakable chemistry. ("You end up with a shorthand," Ms. Jenkins observed. "That's why we were able to work so fast.") He teasingly wondered if the built in aquarium reminded her of her deceased pet Fishtopher. "Patty has a relationship to fish that one would have with a dog or a cat," he joked. She waggled her fingers around her face to illustrate how the Japanese fighting fish used to greet her. They erupted with laughter. "Imagine if Lois Lane was dull as dishwater?" she said. "We're making a movie for women, as well, this time. I was looking for someone hilarious and cool, but who also had a funny dynamic with emasculation, in a way that made it a two hander." Mr. Pine had turned down the "Wonder Woman" role in 2015 when another director was attached. But within five minutes of meeting with Ms. Jenkins, who acted out an abridged version of the film as part of her pitch, he was sold. (He is reprising the role in the sequel.) "Long story short, I like Patty," he said. "She sees me the way I want to be seen." Ms. Jenkins has become a dependable teller of gruesome tales about women and violence. In addition to "Monster," based on the life of the serial killer Aileen Wuornos, she also directed the somber pilot for AMC's whodunit drama "The Killing." What captivated her most about Ms. Hodel's story, though, was not its sordid nature, but Ms. Hodel's resilience and joy. "I'm a filmmaker because I'm interested in people and what is possible in this world," she said. Ms. Hodel, who had breast cancer, did not get to see the project completed: She died in September 2017, having read only the pilot script. Her daughters, however, Rasha Pecoraro and Yvette Gentile, were granted generous access to the set during production. "It brought mom back to life for us," said Ms. Gentile. Their podcast, "Root of Evil," debuts Feb. 13 and will further explore events from the family's perspective. The podcast will feature tape recorded interviews with family members conducted by Ms. Hodel, who continued to search for answers all her life. Ms. Jenkins said she wanted to believe her friend would have liked the series. "It's always the thing I am most nervous about, with anybody's true story," she said. "We tried to honor the truth of her character as much as we could. Hopefully her wonderful spirit permeated everything."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Liu He at the National People's Congress on Monday. His closeness to China's president, Xi Jinping, is likely to enhance his influence. HONG KONG China's president, Xi Jinping, has handed the reins of the country's financial system to a close ally, strengthening his hold over the world's second largest economy and sending a clear signal that companies must reduce risky borrowing. Liu He, an economic adviser to Mr. Xi and previous leaders, was appointed on Monday as vice premier overseeing financial and industrial policy after a ritual vote by China's legislature, the National People's Congress. His title comes with greater powers after a move by Mr. Xi to centralize control over the financial sector by consolidating banking and insurance regulators. Mr. Liu's closeness to Mr. Xi appears likely to enhance his influence. Mr. Liu's elevation was another step toward cementing Mr. Xi's control over nearly every facet of Chinese political and economic life. The congress, which is holding its annual meeting in Beijing, voted last week to eliminate a presidential term limit on Mr. Xi, potentially extending his rule deep into the next decade and maybe much longer. But Mr. Liu's appointment also signals that Mr. Xi has grown more serious about fixing a financial system groaning under the weight of a decade long borrowing spree that has left it riddled with shadowy risks, economists said. "The leaders are clearly concerned about getting China's financial house in order," said Xu Sitao, the chief China economist in the Beijing office of Deloitte. "He's really got quite a big portfolio," he added. Mr. Liu, a Harvard educated technocrat, is widely seen as a driving force behind China's efforts to rein in high flying entrepreneurs who have borrowed heavily to pay for global expansion. His job as vice premier is likely to include oversight of a recently formed financial stability committee. China is grappling with a surge in debt that has begun to threaten its growth. The International Monetary Fund has warned about the problem, and two credit rating firms downgraded China's rating last year. But global growth has picked up, offering Chinese officials a window of opportunity to reduce debt without slowing the economy too much. With his background, Mr. Liu, 66, seems to respect market forces, while also sharing Mr. Xi's goal of maintaining the Communist Party's grip on Chinese society, and particularly the economy. He also appears to see the dangers of failing to tackle the long festering debt problem. He has studied the long term risks to China's economic ascent and oversaw a study about the lessons of the Great Depression and the global financial crisis of 2008. Myron Brilliant, executive vice president and head of international affairs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said Mr. Liu "wants market liberalization with Chinese characteristics." "He's an architect in a system that has more than one view," said Mr. Brilliant, who has met Mr. Liu. "He is driven in part by his learnings from Harvard he certainly understands the value of the market and private sector." That understanding was apparent during the current session of the National People's Congress, when Mr. Liu lectured officials from the northern province of Shanxi, which has struggled with a slowdown and corruption, to spur growth by better protecting the property rights of investors. 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. "It's crucial for a business environment to have good protection of property rights under transparent rule of law," Mr. Liu said, according to Chinese news reports. "This is a fundamental issue." Ultimately, Mr. Liu's ability to reduce financial risk may depend on Mr. Xi and how much of an appetite the Chinese leader has for a painful overhaul that could slow growth. Mr. Xi has made moves toward such changes, promising to open China's economy even further. Last month, China's Banking Regulatory Commission announced that it had cut red tape for foreign banks, after a government announcement in November that it would relax and possibly remove limits on foreign ownership of Chinese banks. But those expecting a sweeping opening of China's economy are likely to be disappointed, some experts warn. While Mr. Liu is considered an able policymaker, his main mission will be to carry out Mr. Xi's vision of an economy that serves the interest of the party and the Chinese state, and not the other way around. Mr. Liu is "a steady pair of hands who has apparently managed many economic issues competently over the past couple of years," said Arthur Kroeber, managing director of Gavekal Dragonomics, an independent economic research firm. But, Mr. Kroeber added, "the direction of economic policy under Xi has become quite clear over the past few years: state capitalism, with a large role for strengthened or consolidated state owned enterprises, co optation of private companies to serve state agendas." Mr. Liu's appointment helps advance a push by Mr. Xi to consolidate the regulatory bodies that oversee the world's No. 2 economy. This goal was apparent last week, when the congress approved a sweeping reshuffling of government that merged many separate agencies into a smaller number of superministries. A failure by a tangle of competing regulatory agencies to communicate is widely blamed for causing a 2015 crash by China's stock markets. In addition to his promotion, Mr. Liu is likely to remain office director of the Central Leading Group for Financial and Economic Affairs, the Communist Party's back room committee for steering policy. Spanning the major government and party posts may help Mr. Liu to better calibrate and communicate policy and avoid stumbles like the one in 2015. His promotion also threatens to marginalize China's prime minister and Mr. Liu's nominal superior, Li Keqiang. Previous occupants of that job have claimed a big say over the economy, but Mr. Li may be overshadowed by Mr. Liu, who has closer ties to the real center of policy, Mr. Xi. Mr. Liu will work with Yi Gang, China's newly appointed central bank chief, who succeeds Zhou Xiaochuan. Mr. Yi, also American educated, will play a big role in the economy, ensuring that the credit taps are open just enough to help the economy without allowing runaway borrowing. Mr. Liu's promotion will thrust him into international prominence after a career mostly spent whispering advice into the ears of China's leaders. Mr. Liu also drafted economic policies for Mr. Xi's two predecessors, Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin. Mr. Liu spent years in the United States as a student and is a confident English speaker. He studied business at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and went on to receive a master's degree in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Even before his promotion on Monday, Mr. Liu was gaining a higher profile. In January, he traveled to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland with a message that China would surprise the world with moves that would make China's economy more open. Mr. Xi has so much confidence in Mr. Liu that he sent him to Washington in February on a mission to ease trade tensions with the Trump administration. During the trip, Mr. Liu also met with Wall Street executives, including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, Laurence D. Fink of BlackRock and David M. Solomon of Goldman Sachs. But Wall Street may not find Mr. Liu all to its liking. "What we're seeing now is a pretty decisive turn away from Western style market liberalization," said Andrew Gilholm, director of analysis for China and North Asia at Control Risks, a consulting firm. "Now what we're seeing is that centralization and rule by directives. Discipline inspection is being seen as the cure all."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
With her dainty features eerily detached from her silicone skull, Alicia Vikander, as Ava, the alluring fembot in the sci fi fantasy "Ex Machina," is a wonder of radical engineering. So it may have been apt, if not downright predictable, that during her stay in New York last week she would visit an exhibition of experimental design at the Museum of Modern Art. Whether the MoMA show, "This Is for Everyone," was in fact her choice or that of her ever present handlers, who seemed intent on positioning Ms. Vikander as a thinking man's Blake Lively, it brought out a ruminative streak. Ms. Vikander, a 26 year old Swedish born actress, nimbly slipped into character. "I'm all about interior design," she said in the British accented English she picked up in London, where she lives. Her fawn eyes swept the exhibition space, settling moments later on "Imaginary Being" ("Arachne"), a shiny winged breastplate with a latticework of "veins." The actress didn't linger. "It reminds me of all the roles I played in corsets," she explained with a perceptible shudder. For sure, she's spent plenty of time in period costume, having taken on roles including that of Kitty in "Anna Karenina" and playing opposite Eddie Redmayne in the forthcoming "The Danish Girl," about the first woman to have had gender reassignment surgery in the 1920s.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
But as soon as the group arrives on Eagle Island, "Angry Birds 2" mostly tosses story, character and sense aside, and opts for a go for broke style of humor. The hoops our heroes jump through become increasingly surreal and hilarious. Highlights include a bit involving an attempt to steal an eagle's ID card at a urinal, and a breakdance battle that comes out of nowhere and is resolved in even stranger fashion. Those hoping for a sharply scripted, well proportioned work may be disappointed, but one might ask them why they're seeing a film called "The Angry Birds Movie 2" in the first place. Rated PG for mild animated violence and one terrifying scene involving crabs raining from the skies. Running time: 1 hour 36 minutes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Once upon a time, in the Great Before, I'd spend my Sundays dragging my younger daughter to open houses. We weren't moving, I would reassure her. I just liked to see how people live, to check out their plants and their furniture and see if I could pick up some home decorating inspiration. That wasn't the only reason I was there. Maybe it's because I'm a novelist, or maybe I'm just curious (and by "curious" I mean "nosy"), but I wanted to tell myself a story, to construct the residents' lives in my head, from the raw material of their throw pillows, their area rugs, the products in their bathrooms. Even though some of the homes I visited had been staged, and all of them had at least been straightened up, the real stuff would always peek through. One sprawling house had a library with coffered ceilings, inlaid floors and a wall hung floor to ceiling with diplomas and photographs of the man of the house with various dignitaries; around the corner was a drab, dark kitchen that hadn't been renovated since the 1980s surely there had to be a story there. Another house's bookshelves boasted leather bound, clearly never opened Great Works of the Western Canon, and, hidden inside a cabinet, a stack of well thumbed Agatha Christie paperbacks. I'd stroll through bedrooms and peer into closets and ask about school zones, all the while inventing lives for the people who lived in those homes. This pleasure, like so many others, is gone, at least for now. Safer at home orders mean that I can't go looking at other people's houses. But the virus gives, even as it takes away, and, while the voyeuristic frisson of looking at someone else's clothes and furniture is gone, it's been replaced, kind of, by the way we've been digitally invited into the private spaces of some public figures, from comedians to news anchors to eager N.F.L. draftees. I am not a regular viewer of the draft, but normally I think? some of the draftees are picked from home, while others put on suits and assemble in an auditorium to await the teams' decisions. This year was different. This year there were hardly any suits and no auditorium, and the coaches and the general managers, as well as the players, were all showing up the way many of us are these days from home, by video, in their native environs. There was the predictable "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous" luxury: The Arizona Cardinals' head coach, Kliff Kingsbury, dialed in from a hideaway that appeared worthy of a Bond villain; the Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones was sheltering in place on a yacht. And there was Coach Bill Belichick of the Patriots at his dining room table, with minimal football swag on display and a framed map of Cape Cod and Nantucket on the wall behind him the kind of details I live for. Sports is not the only venue where the virus has blurred the public/private divide. A few weeks ago, Adam Sandler shot a "Saturday Night Live" video from his home. I saw Adam Sandler's more or less normal looking hallway! And Adam Sandler's kitchen! And Adam Sandler's front door, with Rob Schneider begging to be let in! There's my shrink, who's been Zooming with me from a desk set up in front of a wall hung with a row of expensive looking electric guitars. "Oh, my husband collects them," she said airily. Which kind of derailed the session as I wondered: Who is her husband? Is he a musician? A famous one? Am I allowed to ask? We're all looking forward to some semblance of normalcy. But this is one piece of quarantine life we should hold on to. Because the behind the curtain access has been delightful. Sure, ESPN can give us a produced and polished piece about some young athlete's moving back story, but it's not as intimate or revealing as seeing that athlete with his sisters celebrating in a living room that actually looks lived in, with snacks on the table and art on the walls. Yes, there are apps that can tell us the weather, but are they as fun as watching a meteorologist pleading with his cat to stop swishing its tail through the high pressure system? And nothing says We're all in this together like a news anchor with an inch of gray roots on proud display.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Kristen Pride recently moved back to Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where she grew up. But she hasn't told her family what she pays in rent. Her dad, she said, "is super passionate about gentrification. He gets so mad and is like, 'This is crazy, people shouldn't be paying this much in Bed Stuy!'" Of the many new arrivals who pour into New York City each spring with new degrees, new jobs, or simply new life plans, Patrick Laflamme thought that he would be in a fairly good position to find an apartment. A graduate student in cognitive psychology moving from Vancouver, British Columbia, to take a job with an investment bank, Mr. Laflamme had experience with competitive housing markets "the Vancouver rental market is pretty aggressive: you go to see a listing and there are 40 people lined up outside" and he was accustomed to spending a large percentage of his income on rent. "And I wasn't too picky. I just didn't want to be more than a half hour from the financial district," said Mr. Laflamme, 24, who set what seemed a reasonable budget of about 2,000 a month for a one bedroom or large studio in Manhattan. "Rental agents don't really exist in Vancouver; you just kind of make it work. I figured that's what I would do in New York, too." But several weeks of looking on Craigslist turned up only bait and switch scenarios, studios sneakily shot from angles that made them look like one bedrooms and suspiciously beautiful apartments in Midtown managed by out of state companies without a New York address. "I'd read on some blogs that you should get an agent if you're not from New York, but I had been a skeptic," Mr. Laflamme said. "Finally, I got one. Unless you have connections in the city, the barrier to entry is high." Even for renters accustomed to complex housing markets, finding an apartment in New York can be daunting. Many first time renters arrive in the city braced for small, expensive apartments, but few are prepared for just how small and expensive. In April, the average rent for a Manhattan studio was 2,355, according to the real estate company Citi Habitats. In Brooklyn, long seen as a less expensive alternative, it was 2,320. And while there are less costly apartments to be found and room shares to be had for those who don't know New York City well, finding a deal, or even recognizing a deal when it comes along, can be difficult. "People think they can apply what they learned about renting elsewhere to Manhattan, with a little bit of a premium," said Gary Malin, president of Citi Habitats. "But there are a lot of qualifying requirements." Most landlords, for example, expect renters to earn 40 times the monthly rent that means 94,200 a year to qualify for that average Manhattan studio that costs 2,355 a month, significantly more than the borough's median per capita income of 66,522, according to the United States Census Bureau. Those with incomes that do not qualify will need a guarantor who makes 80 times the rent, or 188,400 a year. Some landlords require even more for guarantors who live outside the tristate area. And while there are many ways to work around those requirements paying six months or a year of rent up front, for example, or working with a company like Rhino or Jetty, which can act as a guarantor or front a security deposit not every landlord is flexible. And those with the most desirable apartments don't need to be. Rental real estate brokers a rarity in many other cities are not only common in New York, but often unavoidable. First time renters determined to go it alone may be surprised to discover that even if they find an apartment on a listings site like StreetEasy, PadMapper or Naked Apartments and wind up speaking to a broker at an open house for all of two minutes before submitting an application they may still have to pay a full broker's fee of 15 percent of the annual rent, which, for a 2,500 a month apartment, comes to 4,500. No fee apartments exist, of course, and in a sluggish rental market like the one the city has been in for the past year or so, landlords are more likely to pick up the broker's fee. But looking at only no fee listings knocks out a lot of options, and no fee apartments are more commonly found in luxury high rises or large complexes with their own leasing offices, like Stuyvesant Town. For those unfamiliar with the city, a good agent can be invaluable for maximizing the number of apartments a potential renter sees and then guiding that renter through the application process, and helping determine whether the renter's budget and expectations are reasonable. Now a real estate agent with Triplemint, Ms. Gladysz said she would never show renters grim listings to convince them to give in to higher prices. Instead, she tempers expectations at the outset. "If it's their first time moving to the city and they're a new college grad with not much money, I have to politely tell them to drop things off their must have list," she said. One of the most common requests she gets from first time renters is a commute under 20 minutes, a tall order given that the average New York City commute is 36 minutes. Many newcomers aren't being intentionally demanding, she added, they just don't understand how New York works. When she explains that it is not that unusual for people to send their laundry out or have packages delivered to their workplaces, many are happy to forgo the in unit washer dryer or the doorman. And factors that, to the uninitiated, may not seem worth mentioning can sometimes derail or at least drastically change a New York apartment hunt. Kim Bloomfield, an agent at Citi Habitats, recalled showing a man moving from Washington one bedrooms on the Upper East Side in the 2,300 range, which limited him primarily to walk ups. "On the sixth or seventh apartment, he tells me he has a king size bed that he's not willing to give up," said Ms. Bloomfield, who had to explain to the man that not only were the layouts of the older walk ups in his price range not ideal for a king size bed, she was not even sure he would be able to get it up the stairs. The man held firm and ended up finding an apartment in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. "At the end of the day, he was willing to move pretty far away from where he was looking to keep his bed," she said. Deciding what to sacrifice can be difficult, however, especially as financial necessity compels most recent college grads to live with roommates who may not all be on the same page. It is not uncommon, brokers say, for one roommate to get stuck on a specific neighborhood or amenity that the other roommates are more than willing to do without. Several brokers recalled watching would be roommates break up in the middle of showings. Though the last few years have seen rents in the city level out, the breather came only after a relentless, yearslong climb, and rents remain prohibitively high for many New Yorkers in their 20s and 30s. Student loan debt is another big factor, Mr. Malin said: "Incomes haven't gone up that dramatically, but rents have gone up and student loan debt has gone up." After college and law school, Kristen Pride recently moved back to Bedford Stuyvesant, where she grew up. She wanted to find a one bedroom, but couldn't afford the 2,300 and 2,400 rents she was seeing, "not even on an attorney's salary," she said. "Not with student loans." Finally, she found something on StreetEasy in her price range an older, unrenovated one bedroom for 1,750 a month and the broker was eager to put her application through. But she was reluctant. Rationally, she knew that the apartment was a good deal, but it felt like a lot to pay, especially for an older building. In the end, she signed the lease, but she hasn't been able to bring herself to tell anyone in her family how much she pays. "My dad doesn't know," she said. "He is super passionate about gentrification. He gets so mad and is like, 'This is crazy, people shouldn't be paying this much in Bed Stuy!'" To help those who simply cannot afford to live on their own, or don't want to, a number of options for finding a room or a roommate have sprung up in the last decade. They run the gamut from upscale co living purveyors like WeLive, Common and Ollie, which offer furnished suites with housekeeping and access to other amenities, to cheaper options like Craigslist and increasingly popular Facebook groups like Gypsy Housing and NYC Housing, Rooms, Sublets Apartments. For the many people who move to New York without a full time job or a well paid one finding a sublet or pre existing share are among the few available options. In most cases, going one of these routes means the renter can avoid having to submit pay stubs and bank records, or signing a yearlong lease. But the process can be grueling in other ways. Matt Gelman, a 23 year old copywriter and coder freelancing at a tech company in Dumbo, Brooklyn, recently moved into his second Williamsburg sublet, a 1,300 a month room he found on Gypsy Housing. On the night he went to see the room, he was told that seven other people were interested, and because of a scheduling glitch, one of them would be touring it at the same time. "The other guy was clearly interested, so I had to prove I wanted it more," Mr. Gelman said. "I emailed right away and said I wanted to meet the other roommates." Actually, Mr. Gelman clarified, he Facebook messaged using Google translator, because the roommates, who were French, do not speak much English, and he does not speak French. Fortunately, they have since discovered that they all speak Spanish. But while terrible first apartment tales tend to get passed around like scary stories at a campfire, it is important to remember that not every first time renting experience is harrowing. As a senior at Emory University in 2016, Rifat Mursalin attended a presentation by a New York brokerage, but blanched at the prices of their listings. "It was like 3,800 for a two bedroom in Hell's Kitchen," he said. Neither he nor his roommate felt the need to live in Manhattan, "and we could care less about having a doorman or a gym." A friend suggested he try StreetEasy, where he found a no fee two bedroom in East Williamsburg for 2,200 a month. "It was quite daunting before I came here, but not when I arrived," said Mr. Mursalin, who also used the site to find his current apartment, a 2,200 two bedroom in Long Island City. The neighborhood is known for its lushly amenitized new construction, but his building is a bare bones walk up. The only upgrade he insisted on, he said, was better transit. And for all those put off by the price of New York apartments, there are some recent arrivals who find them comparatively reasonable. When Madeleine Goldsmith moved to the city from San Francisco last summer to start a new career as a theater producer, she was delighted to see her rent plummet from 1,500 a month to 1,075. "I was like, 'That's a steal!'" said Ms. Goldsmith, who currently shares a Harlem three bedroom with two roommates. "It's so much cheaper here. In San Francisco, there are no pockets of cheapness. And that apartment was rent regulated my roommate had lived there since 2012!" But she plans to move again this summer, in part because she realized she could be paying a lot less in some areas of Brooklyn or Queens. "I'm aiming lower for the next one," she said. "Now I don't want to pay more than 800." As for Mr. Laflamme, his story has a happy ending, too. He decided to up his budget. "I realized I had to increase to find anything that wasn't a 200 square foot studio," he said. And he started working with Barbara Satine, an agent at Triplemint who found him a spacious one bedroom on the Upper West Side for 2,775 a month. It's charming, he said, and the landlord accepted both his Chihuahua and his Canadian credit score. "Honestly, it's more than I was expecting," he said. Of course, like everything in New York, there is a catch: It is a fifth floor walk up.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Nearly 60 million people around the world were displaced from their homes because of war, conflict or persecution last year, a level not seen since World War II. And Syrian people accounted for roughly 11 million of them. It is hard to process numbers that large, and the many tragic stories behind them. But a single photograph of a 3 year old Syrian boy who drowned and lay lifeless on a Turkish beach in September humanized the refugee crisis for many people. The boy's father also lost his wife and another son, as the family crossed the Mediterranean into Greece for a chance at an ordinary life. After more than four years of civil war, the Syrians face a plight that is far from over. And many charitable individuals, particularly during the holiday season, may be moved to find the most effective ways to help. Donors who want to help face questions familiar to aid organizations: How does one most effectively deploy limited sums of money to help the most people? Where is the need most dire? While many refugees are trying to migrate to Europe, Syria's neighboring countries are under the greatest strain since they are hosting the largest numbers of refugees. In Lebanon, for instance, Syrian refugees now account for between a quarter and a third of the population, according to the International Rescue Committee. Jordan is hosting 630,000 registered refugees, which, the group says, would be the equivalent of the United States' absorbing the population of Britain. "To help the greatest number of refugees, you need first to understand where those refugees are located, and second, to support the organizations addressing refugee needs on the ground," said Katherina M. Rosqueta, founding executive director of the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at the University of Pennsylvania. Meeting refugees' day to day needs is vital, but aid workers also urge donors to think about supporting charities trying to solve problems that will help families over the longer term. "It's easy to get people who will write a check to help people in immediate need," said Emily E. Arnold Fernandez, executive director at Asylum Access, a nonprofit advocacy group that focuses on refugees' human and legal rights. "But if you are willing to be a little more strategic with your philanthropic dollars, they can go a lot further." For instance, many refugees half of whom are under the age of 18 are not permitted to work or go to school in the countries where they are living. That makes it impossible to rebuild their lives, and often tempts families to take dangerous journeys abroad. But some organizations provide schooling for children in the neighboring countries, for instance, or help refugees with legal advice and job skills. And letting a charity decide how to use donors' dollars instead of asking it, say, to use the money for food or blankets is also helpful because needs often shift rapidly. "You are making a gift to a crisis that is changing moment to moment," Ms. Arnold Fernandez added. There are about 4.4 million Syrian refugees outside Syria, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, and an additional 6.5 million Syrians who have been uprooted inside their country. Resettling a small number of them in the United States has become a political issue in recent months, as several Republican governors, presidential candidates and members of Congress opposed plans to accommodate 10,000 refugees. But some charity workers said that opposition spurred others to give. Several tools below provide guidance on where to donate, as well as a sampling of well regarded organizations to which donors can give directly: Hope for Syria is a one stop shop of sorts, since it will evenly divide donations among nine well regarded nonprofits including Catholic Relief Services, HIAS and Islamic Relief USA. These groups focus on several aspects of the crisis, including helping those inside Syria and resettlements in the United States. "If you wanted to give to one place where it meets all of the points, that is the group," said Sam Worthington, chief executive of InterAction, an alliance of 195 American nongovernmental organizations working overseas. InterAction, whose nonprofit members must meet certain governance standards, also has a dedicated page on its website that lists several of its members that are helping Syrian refugees. Filters on the site can help donors locate charities that focus on a specific issue, like refugee camp management, helping children or education. Charity Navigator has a list of its top 19 charities involved in the Syrian crisis, which all have been granted at least three of four possible stars using its rating system. The stars are awarded based on a charity's financial health and efficiency, accountability and transparency. Charity Navigator is working on adding another component that will include charities' results and outcomes, which are challenging to measure but more illuminating, said Michael Thatcher, the group's president. He suggests that donors vetting charities look at an organization's website to see if it publishes any evidence of results. The International Rescue Committee is a group highly rated by charity trackers and professionals that helps refugees at every juncture. The group is now working to set up a reception center on the Greek island of Lesbos, where many Syrians seeking refuge in Europe land after traversing the dangerous route often on rubber dinghies from Turkey. Roughly 2,000 of its workers are providing aid to displaced people inside Syria, as well as those in neighboring countries and in Greece. Beyond food and shelter, they also provide health care and protection services for vulnerable women and children, and programs to help develop long term job skills. The group, which aims to raise 33 million over the next year for these programs, also helps resettle refugees in 26 cities across the United States. Oxfam America is helping Syrians in their home country as well as in Jordan and Lebanon with clean water, sanitation and other vital items. That might include cash and supplies like blankets and stoves, or vouchers for hygiene supplies. They are also helping families get the information about their rights, while connecting them to medical and legal services. Individuals can earmark donations for the crises in the Middle East, though the organization said it is often best to give to its general fund, which enables it to be more nimble. Doctors Without Borders has a limited presence in Syria, particularly after the abduction of some staff members last year and the partial destruction of a medical facility in November that killed seven people. But it still operates six medical facilities in northern Syria which provide vaccinations, maternity care and burn treatment and directly supports 150 health posts and field hospitals in the country. The doctors also help refugees in neighboring countries including Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, and have operated search and rescue ships in the Mediterranean, which, to date, have rescued more than 18,000 people attempting the voyage to Europe. Save the Children helps refugees in several ways, by providing emergency aid and health care and rebuilding damaged classrooms and supporting schools, inside Syria and in neighboring countries. The organization supports 55 schools in northern Syria. It also supports six health care facilities that provide medical services and 24 hour emergency care for pregnant women inside Syria. It runs child friendly spaces for children affected by the conflict as well, which provide a sense of normalcy.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
IT'S not news that health care costs are increasing. Yet several recent studies show that few people factor those rising costs into their retirement plans. Consider this example from an annual report from Fidelity Investments: For a 65 year old couple retiring this year, the cost of health care in retirement will be 240,000, 6 percent more than that same couple retiring in 2011 would pay. The report assumes that the man will live 17 years and the woman 20. "Most people don't realize Medicare covers much less than traditional employer plans," Sunit Patel, senior vice president in Fidelity's benefits consulting group. "The 240,000 number captures the Part B premium for physician services, Part D for prescription drugs. Then there are deductibles and coinsurance, and benefits that are not covered like vision exams, hearing aids." Another study, this one from Nationwide Financial, found that people who were near retirement routinely and wildly overestimated the percentage of health care costs covered by Medicare. It covers only 51 percent of health care services, according to the Employee Benefit Research Institute. Robert L. Reynolds, president and chief executive of Putnam Investments, which has its own study, bluntly summed up the situation at a recent news briefing. "It makes no sense at all to talk about retirement savings or lifetime replacement income without talking about health care expenses," he said. A calculator developed by Putnam, called the Lifetime Income Analysis Tool, shows people not only how much they have saved but also, starting next year, how much they need to save depending on their health (cigarette smokers with diabetes need to save the least because their life expectancy is the shortest) and where they plan to retire (Louisiana is the cheapest, Alaska the most expensive) so they can live at their same income in retirement. Moving to cheaper and possibly warmer climates is something many retirees naturally do. But while someone may be willing to move to Florida to reduce state taxes and avoid the ice and snow of the north, most people have so little awareness about the costs of health care in retirement that those costs are probably not a driving factor. Carol and Richard Bechtel had worked in the San Jose, Calif., area, she for Stanford University and he at various technology companies. When it came time to retire in 2006, they put a lot of thought into where they wanted to live. They picked a community in Fairfield Glade, Tenn. Cost of living was a factor. They were able to sell their home of 37 years in San Jose, pay cash for a house on a golf course, and still have money left over to put in their retirement account. Quality of life also mattered. By their account, the Bechtels are thoroughly enjoying their new community and friends. Mr. Bechtel found a hangar close to their home for his airplane, and they are closer to their son and three granddaughters in Wisconsin. But when it came to knowing their health care expenses in retirement, they were pretty typical: they had to check on what the exact costs were. Their premiums, between Medicare, a supplementary policy through Stanford and a dental plan, will cost them 9,058.80 this year. That is a whopping 14 percent increase from the same policies in 2011. And that number does not include any out of pocket medical expenses, like co payments or the costs of over the counter medications. "Health premiums are probably one of our biggest expenses," Mrs. Bechtel said. Yet Mrs. Bechtel was not complaining. She said her Stanford sponsored plan was excellent and it had given them freedom to choose the doctors they wanted, particularly for her husband, who had some health problems recently. "Our premiums are small compared to what our bills would be," she said. "It really makes us realize how great my Stanford benefit is. It covers everything. I worry a little bit how Medicare may change." While most retirees pay for insurance that supplements what Medicare pays, how comprehensive and open each plan is varies. But the fear that they will not be able to choose the doctors or care they want drives some wealthier people to set up separate accounts for health costs. Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' Faith Xenos, chief investment officer for Singer Xenos Wealth Management near Miami, said she counseled clients to set aside 5 percent of their annual budget for health related costs and deductibles. (If they don't spend it, she tells clients to use the money to do something healthy.) "Let's all acknowledge insurance doesn't cover everything," she said. "We have this idea from years back that once you get your Medicare or your retirement benefits package that everything is covered." That is not the case. She added: "Everyone wants the best drugs, and those might not be the ones your policy covers. They might cover a drug but that might not be the one you want." For people wanting to retire before Medicare starts at 65, she advises buying a high deductible plan and using a health savings account to cover some of the out of pocket expenses. Then there's the issue of long term care insurance. Various studies estimate that the percentage of people who reach 65 and will need long term care is 30 to 50 percent. A separate study done by Fidelity in 2008 put the cost of one year of care at 76,000 and said that 50 percent of couples retiring in 2008 would need at least one year of long term care, and 20 percent would need up to five. "The question is, 'Are you going to pay for that out of your current assets or are you going to get a long term care policy?' " said John L. Hillis, president of Hillis Financial Services in San Jose, Calif. "These policies can be very expensive, and a lot of companies are getting out of the product because the insurance companies aren't making any money off of it." Mr. Hillis speaks from experience: his stepmother lived to be 99 1/2 and ended her days in a nursing home. He said her health care expenses were about 10,000 a month. But even when he tells clients this story, few are inclined to buy the insurance. "It's really what's important to you," Mr. Hillis said. "Do you want to protect a portion of that money or is it, 'I accumulated this money and part of it is to take care of me in my later years.' " In the case of the Bechtels, who are Mr. Hillis's clients, Mrs. Bechtel said they did not buy long term care insurance because of the high cost. She plans to take care of her husband, who is 81 years old. She is 68.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
For nearly two years, Eilat Lieber, director and chief curator of the Tower of David Museum in Jerusalem's Old City, has been excited for this April, when Passover, Easter and Ramadan touchstone holidays of three major religions would collide for the first time in nearly two decades. To prepare for the 400,000 or so tourists who had been projected to visit Jerusalem this April, the Tower of David Museum began collaborating with two virtual reality production houses Blimey, based in Israel, and OccupiedVR, based in Canada to create an immersive augmented reality experience for the crowds expected at its medieval stone citadel. And then coronavirus shut everything down. Israel closed its borders to foreign visitors; all nonresidents are now banned from the Old City. So Ms. Lieber made the decision to put "The Holy City," a virtual reality experience that lets viewers drop in on Jerusalem's holiest sites and festivals, online for free starting April 9. Her move came as virtual reality experiences of holy sites across the globe are more readily available, allowing shut in pilgrims of multiple religions a window into virtual worship in an unprecedented time. "We thought about the people from all over the world who won't be able to come here this year, and how we can bring the spirit of Jerusalem to them," Ms. Lieber said in a phone interview from Jerusalem. "This year, all the festivals are canceled, but we can still show the beauty of Jerusalem to the world." "The Holy City," a documentary shot in stereoscopic, 360 degree virtual reality, takes viewers to some of Jerusalem's most important religious events: the Holy Fire ceremony (the Orthodox Easter celebrations at the Holy Sepulchre); Ramadan prayers at Al Aqsa Mosque, and the priestly blessings for Passover at the Western Wall. The documentary consists of footage from the 2019 ceremonies as well as sweeping shots of Jerusalem's archaeology and architecture. One thousand miles south of Jerusalem, in Saudi Arabia, the annual Hajj pilgrimage which traditionally brings some two million or more Muslim faithful to Mecca has also been banned this year. Ehab Fares, the chief executive of BSocial, a digital agency in Cairo, said he could never have imagined that Mecca would be closed when he began working on an updated version of Experience Mecca, an app that offers a virtual walk through of the Kaaba, Islam's holiest site. He is aware that the timing will likely mean a spike in downloads. First released in 2017 through OculusVR, Experience Mecca uses 3 D modeling to give viewers a firsthand walk through of Islam's holiest city and the rhythmic circumambulation of the Tawaf ritual that bookends each annual Hajj. The application is built by Vhorus, BSocial's production arm, and its 2.0 version will be available for Google Cardboard, the technology giant's virtual reality platform, before Ramadan begins on April 23. "The timing was purely coincidence," Mr. Fares said in a phone interview from Cairo. "We were planning to release the updated version in June or July for the Hajj pilgrimage, but when the epidemic hit the world, the mosque and all the landmarks were locked and no one can enter. So I asked our team, please accelerate." Mr. Fares says that Experience Mecca was not designed as a substitute for the Hajj, but in a time of lockdown, it does offer an opportunity to connect to the ritual. "It's not a replacement for the real experience. But it's educational and inspiring, and it gets you closer to the experience," he said. And in Rome, where Holy Week usually sees crowds of tens of thousands, this year the Pope will preach to an empty pulpit. Catholics who would have otherwise attended Easter services, including Palm Sunday Mass, Good Friday commemoration and the Easter Vigil, have all been banned because of the coronavirus pandemic, but those who still wish to drop in to Vatican City virtually can do so via the Vatican's website, where a number of landmarks can be visited in 360 degree immersive panoramas, thanks to a 12 year collaboration between the Vatican and Villanova University. "If someone wanted to see these locations, or, better yet, if they wanted to get themselves into the spirit of their sacred season, they could set up a virtual pilgrimage to all the papal basilicas," said Dr. Frank Klassner, a computer science professor at Villanova who has helped oversee the project. "More than ever, these experiences are very valuable right now." For Nimrod Shanit, a Jewish Israeli who created "The Holy City" and co directed it alongside Timur Musabay, a Canadian Muslim, there's also a silver lining to this homebound holiday season. "Jerusalem is a holy ancient city for Jews, Christians and Muslims," Mr. Shanit said. "In times of crisis, people do look for guidance from something more powerful than they are. And if they are looking to connect virtually to their faith this year, I hope they won't see just their religion, they'll see how all three religions are sharing this moment, and this need for the power of spirituality."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
A WIDE OPEN BOOK "Full disclosure: I'm foiling my friend Denise's hair right now," Jonathan Van Ness said over speakerphone, upon being congratulated on the success of his memoir, "Over the Top," which is No. 7 on the nonfiction list. "So if you hear foil, that's what it is." It was kind of the perfect moment to catch him in: Before he was the "grooming expert" on Netflix's "Queer Eye," Van Ness had been styling hair in beauty schools and salons across the country for more than a decade. And despite the fame he's garnered on TV teaching Americans of all shapes, sizes, genders and sexual orientations how to look and feel their most "gorgeous" selves the 32 year old isn't yet too much of a celebrity ("it still feels weird to refer to myself as that") to color his clients' hair. Actually the book tackles pressures of celebrity head on. On the show (and on the Funny or Die parody series, "Gay of Thrones"), J.V.N. is beloved for his, well, over the top everything: from the outfits (crop tops, stilettos, mesh) to the eternal ebullience (he lives for a "gorgeous moment"). But as he reveals in the book, that's only one side of him. "I know people perceive me as this always very happy person, and that is absolutely a gorgeous part of my personality," he said. "I do love to talk about eyebrows and nontoxic beauty products and I'm literally highlighting hair as we speak. But I'm also someone who can get really upset about how people with H.I.V. are treated." He would know: Van Ness made headlines by coming out as H.I.V. positive in "Over the Top." Turns out, beneath the effervescence and the top knot is a darker story of sexual abuse, binge eating, drug addiction, grief. The book is an unsparing chronology of the private battles he's waged against everything from chronic disease to homophobic bullying to his own shame and how they shaped a "feminine" boy from the conservative, rural Midwest into one of the most recognizable advocates for L.G.B.T.Q. rights and H.I.V. destigmatization today.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
If baseball somehow reflects America, as romanticists like to believe, then it also shares in its blemishes. The National and American leagues were segregated until 1947, and the decades since have been marked by a halting kind of reckoning. On Wednesday, Major League Baseball took one of its biggest steps to redress past racial wrongs: It formally recognized several of the Negro leagues as on par with the American and National leagues, a distinction that will alter the official record books to acknowledge a quality of competition that the long excluded players never doubted. With the change, more than 3,400 players from seven distinct Negro leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948 will be recognized as major leaguers. And the statistical records will be updated. "All of us who love baseball have long known that the Negro Leagues produced many of our game's best players, innovations and triumphs against a backdrop of injustice," Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball, said in a statement. "We are now grateful to count the players of the Negro Leagues where they belong: as Major Leaguers within the official historical record." The adjustments to the statistics will almost assuredly result in a new single season record for batting average. But the impact on other records will be fairly small as a result of the shorter schedules played in the Negro leagues, most of which played only 80 to 100 games, as compared to the 154 per season that was standard in the other major leagues of the era. Records for some of the game's biggest stars will receive at least mild adjustments. The Hall of Famer Willie Mays, for example, is likely to be credited with 17 more hits, though no home runs, from his time with the Birmingham Black Barons in 1948. That would bring his career total, including hits from his time with the Giants and the Mets, to 3,300. The actual adjustments will be made after a review of available data by the Elias Sports Bureau, keeper of Major League Baseball's official statistics. The decision to recognize Negro league players as major leaguers was a welcome change for the people who have fought for years to keep the leagues' memory alive. But Bob Kendrick, the president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum, said that no announcement from Major League Baseball could validate leagues that earned their own legitimacy. "It gives greater context to the Negro leagues in a quantifiable way, as opposed to the lore and legend that sometimes drives this story," Kendrick said of the changes. "But I can tell you this: For those who called the Negro leagues home, they never questioned their own validity." "They knew that their league was as good as anybody's league," he added. Numerous leagues made up of Black players formed as early as the late 19th century as a result of the color line observed by the American and National leagues. The quality and organization of the leagues varied wildly, but Major League Baseball determined that from 1920 to 1948 seven distinct organizations met the standards of major leagues. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. "I think that's a good thing," Mays said on Wednesday in an interview with John Shea, his collaborator on a memoir, "24," released this May. "It recognizes guys who played way back. I'm talking a lot of good ballplayers." The group of seven leagues has already produced 35 Hall of Famers, including recognizable major league stars like Mays, Larry Doby and Jackie Robinson, as well as figures who made their names entirely in the Negro leagues, like Josh Gibson and Oscar Charleston. The leagues were dominated by champions like the Chicago American Giants and the Kansas City Monarchs. Negro league play continued during the early years of the integrated majors, but John Thorn, the official historian of Major League Baseball, said the landscape changed so profoundly after 1948 the year of the last Negro World Series that Major League Baseball used that season as the cutoff. Thorn attributed the changes to a bleeding of talent to the American and National leagues, and the dissolution of the second Negro National League. Recognizable stars like Hank Aaron and Ernie Banks came to the Negro leagues after 1948, and some leagues played as late as 1960. But extending the window to include them was not appropriate, he said. "We're trying not to honor individual players but the league experience, and the Black experience in baseball and America," Thorn said. The greatest challenge in incorporating Negro league statistics into the official record is the scattered nature of the various leagues, which led to somewhat inconsistent record keeping. The statistics are complicated by barnstorming exhibitions some against players from National and American league teams and other competitions that do not show up in the numbers soon to be added to the official record. The Hall of Fame plaque for Gibson, for example, says he "hit almost 800 home runs in league and independent baseball," a vague description that will not be sufficient to eclipse Barry Bonds's career record of 762. Gibson, though, will be at the center of the biggest change expected to happen as a result of Wednesday's announcement: Once Elias has completed its research, it is expected that Gibson will be awarded the single season record for batting average. The record currently belongs to Hugh Duffy, who hit .440 for the Boston Beaneaters in 1894. Gibson, a power hitting catcher who was sometimes called the Black Babe Ruth, batted .441 for multiple Negro league teams in 1943. This is not the first time that Major League Baseball has officially classified other leagues as major leagues. In 1969, a committee of five men (all white) representing the commissioner's office, the National League, the American League, the Hall of Fame and the Baseball Writers' Association granted such status to four defunct organizations: the American Association (1882 91), the Union Association (1884), the Players' League (1890) and the Federal League (1914 15). The Negro leagues were left out of that discussion, and Major League Baseball's announcement on Wednesday said that the omission by the 1969 committee was "clearly an error" and that years of research had uncovered more statistics and context.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
This article contains spoilers for the final episode of "Supernatural." "Supernatural," the CW's seemingly ageless monster hunting show, ended its 15 year run Thursday night on its own terms. It had taken care of business the week before, wrapping up its final story line the Winchester brothers staving off the apocalypse one last time and gifting its singularly devoted fans a snappy retrospective montage slyly set to "Running on Empty." Thursday's series finale was an earnestly sentimental coda that felt as if it were less about Sam and Dean Winchester than it was about Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, the actors who have spent much of their adult lives playing those demon slaying brothers, and the extensive "Supernatural" family producers, writers, cast and crew that revolves around them. Dispelling any hope offered in the penultimate episode that the brothers' long awaited takedown of God, also known as Chuck (Rob Benedict), had freed them of their hunting duties their goal through most of the series the finale sent them on a routine mission to clean out a nest of vampires. They took care of their bloody business, as always, and saved a Winchester like pair of young brothers in the bargain. But the warrior Dean died ignominiously, impaled on a nail, and woke up in heaven, formerly a viper's pit of scheming angels but now a sylvan wonderland. His old comrade in arms, Bobby (Jim Beaver), and his beloved muscle car, Baby, were waiting for him, and eventually Sam joined him. The hunt was finally over, though heaven's trout population was probably endangered. It was an odd, awkward, maudlin and, in keeping with the show's habits, self referential exercise. It honored the gorgeous British Columbia landscapes that had stood in for every corner of the United States and served as Jensen's and Padalecki's second home. The prominence of the Winchesters' Impala and the Kansas anthem "Carry On Wayward Son" (the episode's title was "Carry On") celebrated the iconography, visual and aural, that had been central to the show's texture. Cast, crew and car assembled for a final thank you to the fans, which was followed by the words "And cut," symbolizing the very thin line the show had always kept between fiction and fandom, art and audience. This willingness to go out with an idiosyncratic (and possibly divisive) flourish was in keeping with another notable aspect of the show: No one had expected it to last more than five seasons what had been planned as the series finale came and went and there was a palpable sense that the producers had been playing with the house's money for a decade. They were willing to throw things at the wall, and some of the things that stuck were highly entertaining. "Supernatural" was always comfortable poking fun at itself, and it had a relaxed, amusing touch with high concept episodes like an animated "Scooby Doo" crossover. After the Season 4 revelation that Sam and Dean had inspired a series of "Supernatural" comic books and were minor celebrities with a fanatical following among young women, clever stand alone episodes placed them at a fan convention and a production of a high school "Supernatural" musical. A similar audaciousness applied, with more mixed results, to the show's continuing story lines. "Supernatural" was created by Eric Kripke in 2005 with DNA from "The X Files" and "Route 66" and a tincture of "Twin Peaks" a horror road show with a strong dose of Americana, with powerful cars barreling down country roads at night and frequent stops for pie at retro diners. The paranoia was cut with nostalgia and the violence wrapped in sentimentality, and the whole package, with its sensitive beefcake leads, was calibrated for the young audience of what was then the WB network. It takes some guts to posit, even in metaphorical terms, that God is the writer of your long running broadcast network spook show, and then to cast him as your villain. At the same time, it's fair to say that for the past 10 years it's felt as if "Supernatural" were being made up as it went along that the story just had to make enough sense to make it to the end of the episode, or sometimes to the end of the scene. It's also fair, if a little unkind, to say that "Supernatural" was never really a very good show. But it was a likable show, and an honest show, and it was eager to please. It didn't demand much from its audience beyond a good memory for its large and shifting universe of characters. Its performances made up in sincerity what they lacked in polish. It had an agreeably ramshackle quality that fit with its retro, rural ambience. Watching it was like making a weekly visit to an antiques barn or one of those eccentric, warren like country stores where you never knew what you would find in the back room a book of binding spells or a demon killing six shooter. Loosely tying everything together, like slapped on baling wire, were the bonds of family father and sons, mother and sons, brother and brother that received a lot of lip service but mainly functioned as an organizing principle, or background hum. The real theme was survival, in a particularly American sense: Saving the world was the Winchesters' job, and their minds were constantly on the peaceful retirement it would someday earn them. It took 10 years longer than they planned, but they finally got there.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Credit...Rahman Roslan for The New York Times KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia Over the past three decades this increasingly prosperous nation has become the fattest country in Asia, with nearly half the adult population now overweight or obese. Several years ago, Dr. Tee E Siong, Malaysia's leading nutrition expert, decided to act, organizing a far reaching study of local diets and lifestyle habits. The research, conducted by scientists from the Nutrition Society of Malaysia, which Dr. Tee heads, has produced several articles for peer reviewed academic journals. But scientists weren't the only ones vetting the material. One of the reviewers was Nestle, the world's largest food company, which financed the research. Among the published articles was one that concluded that children who drank malted breakfast beverages a category dominated in Malaysia by Milo, a sugary powder drink made by Nestle were more likely to be physically active and spend less time in front of a computer or television. As they seek to expand their markets, big food companies are spending significant funds in developing countries, from India to Cameroon, in support of local nutrition scientists. The industry funds research projects, pays scholars consulting fees, and sponsors most major nutrition conferences at a time when sales of processed foods are soaring. In Malaysia sales have increased 105 percent over the past five years, according to Euromonitor, a market research company. Similar relationships have ignited a growing outcry in the United States and Europe, and a veritable civil war in the field between those who take food industry funding and those who argue that the money manipulates science and misleads policymakers and consumers. But in developing countries, where government research funding is scarce and there is less resistance to the practice, companies are doubling down in their efforts. Few examples of close ties between industry and science are as striking as those held by Dr. Tee, 70, a relationship that has deepened in recent years. "He's a God in the region," said Barry M. Popkin, a professor of nutrition at the University of North Carolina. "But at the same time, he's very linked to industry." When corporate money influences nutrition science, Dr. Popkin said, the evidence of what is healthy for people "gets obscured, gets confounded." In addition to Nestle, Dr. Tee's work has been funded by Kellogg's, PepsiCo and Tate Lyle, one of the world's biggest makers of high fructose corn syrup, among others. He said scientists need cooperation and financial support from companies, who can supply much needed resources. He noted that traditional Malaysian cuisine curries and other sugar laden street foods are key contributors to obesity but said that working with street vendors and mom and pop companies to make their food healthier is difficult. Working with multinational companies is easier and more productive, he said. Dr. Tee said he has used his position in the government to push for important steps to regulate companies, including a 2003 rule that required food companies to put nutritional information the levels of fat, sugars and protein on their packaging. Dr. Tee recently wandered with a reporter through brightly lit supermarket aisles in a suburb of the Malaysian capital. The shelves were packed with products now found across the globe: instant noodles, spaghetti sauce, soda and rows of sugary cereals, including Nestle's Stars, which is 28 percent sugar and has a bright red circle on the bottom right of the box that says "Selected Healthier Choice Malaysia Ministry of Health." "We have to stop blaming the multinationals," Dr. Tee said. The real problem, he continued, isn't the type of food people eat, but how much of it, and their lifestyle. "Malaysians are always eating. They don't exercise," he said. "But you don't need to go the gym. You need to walk outside. It's free. Get off your chair and move!" In 2014, he created the Southeast Asian Public Health Nutrition Network, or SEA PHN, with nutrition leaders from Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam. Much of the network's funding comes from Danone, Nestle, PepsiCo and other large food companies, whose logos are displayed prominently on the SEA PHN website and its annual reports. Dr. Tee says nearly all of the group's funding comes from corporate sponsorship and fees for attending conferences. The food companies are not only sponsors of the network, but also "associate members" who plan and participate in its activities, including the financing of scientific papers and launching nutrition education programs in schools throughout Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, Dr. Tee's nutrition society created an education pamphlet for parents that explained "the wonders of whole grains." The brochure includes ads for Nestle's Koko Krunch and Cookie Crisp cereals, which have a "whole grain" label but are more than a quarter sugar by weight. The nutrition society has promoted "Nestle Healthy Kids," a program that promotes the value of breakfast and exercise, reached 4,200 children in 77 schools in 2014, and that is marketed with a video promoting Nestle and quoting children. Nestle says the program itself does not include product brands, but the booklets and posters in the program are stamped with the company's name, the video shows. One girl in the video explains: "I eat cereal with milk for breakfast because it gives me energy and I don't feel sleepy in class." Two of Malaysia's top health officials recently sat down at the health ministry's offices to discuss obesity and Dr. Tee's role in the country's response to it. "I really admire him," said Zalma Abdul Razak, the head of nutrition at the ministry. "Nobody can replace him as the president of the Nutrition Society of Malaysia." According to their annual accounting reports, the nutrition society has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from industry, including at least 188,000 from Nestle and Cereal Partners Worldwide a joint venture between Nestle and General Mills for the breakfast study. It has also received at least 44,000 directly from Nestle for other projects and collaborations; about 11,000 from the dairy industry; 10,000 from the artificial sweetener company Ajinomoto, which makes aspartame; and at least 40,000 from Philips Avent, the baby and consumer products company, for projects related to infant and maternal nutrition. "It's more cooperation," he said. But some nutritionists say Malaysia's dietary guidelines, which Dr. Tee helped craft, are not as tough on sugar as they might otherwise be. They tell people to load up on grains and cereals, and to limit fat to less than 20 to 30 percent of daily calories, a recommendation that was removed from dietary guidelines in the United States in 2015 after evidence emerged that low fat diets don't curb obesity and may contribute to it. Corporate funding of nutrition science in Malaysia has weakened the case against sugar and processed foods, said Rohana Abdul Jalil, a Harvard trained diet expert based in the rural state of Kelantan, where obesity is as high as in the biggest cities. "There's never been an explicit, aggressive campaign against sugar," she said. She works in Kota Bharu, the state's capital, where vendors set up food stalls outside schools, dosing out cups of soda from big plastic bottles and hawking chocolates and puffed corn and rice snacks flavored with squid, shrimp and cheese. Dr. Rohana runs an obesity awareness class and was surprised to learn that many who attended it were not aware of the dangers of excess sugar consumption. Dr. David Ludwig, a Harvard nutrition expert, described the study on breakfast beverages as "wildly overstated." "There is no reason supplemental nutrients need to come in the form of a sugary beverage, especially for low income populations at risk of obesity," he said. Malaysian researchers involved in the breakfast study say in one instance Nestle requested a reference to their Healthy Kids Program, which the researchers agreed to. But Dr. Tee says he has final say over the research. The research findings have been useful in Nestle's marketing efforts. In one commercial, a child is falling asleep and having trouble concentrating in class, then drinks a Milo and springs to life with energy. For his part, Dr. Tee said the obesity risk in Malaysia would be worse without companies' help, and he couldn't accomplish his goals without their support. "There are some people who say that we should not accept money for projects, for research studies. I'm aware of that," Dr. Tee said. "I have two choices: Either I don't do anything or I work with companies."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
For centuries, skin color has held powerful social meaning a defining characteristic of race, and a starting point for racism. "If you ask somebody on the street, 'What are the main differences between races?,' they're going to say skin color," said Sarah A. Tishkoff, a geneticist at the University of Pennsylvania. On Thursday, Dr. Tishkoff and her colleagues showed this to be a profound error. In the journal Science, the researchers published the first large scale study of the genetics of skin color in Africans. The researchers pinpointed eight genetic variants in four narrow regions of the human genome that strongly influence pigmentation some making skin darker, and others making it lighter. These genes are shared across the globe, it turns out; one of them, for example, lightens skin in both Europeans and hunter gatherers in Botswana. The gene variants were present in humanity's distant ancestors, even before our species evolved in Africa 300,000 years ago. The widespread distribution of these genes and their persistence over millenniums show that the old color lines are essentially meaningless, the scientists said. The research "dispels a biological concept of race," Dr. Tishkoff said. Humans develop color much as other mammals do. Special cells in the skin contain pouches, called melanosomes, packed with pigment molecules. The more pigment, the darker the skin. Skin color also varies with the kind of pigments: Melanosomes may contain mixtures of a brown black called eumelanin and a yellow red called pheomelanin. "We knew quite a lot about why people have pale skin if they had European ancestry," said Nicholas G. Crawford, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania and a co author of the new study. "But there was very little known about why people have dark skin." Since the early 2000s, Dr. Tishkoff has studied genes in Africa, discovering variants important to everything from resistance to malaria to height. African populations vary tremendously in skin color, and Dr. Tishkoff reasoned that powerful genetic variants must be responsible. Studying 1,570 people in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Botswana, she and her colleagues discovered a set of genetic variants that account for 29 percent of the variation in skin color. (The remaining variation seems tied to genes yet to be discovered.) One variant, MFSD12, was particularly mysterious: No one knew what it did anywhere in the body. To investigate its function, the researchers altered the gene in reddish lab mice. Giving them the variant found in darker skinned Africans turned the mice gray. As it turned out, MFSD12 can affect the production of brown black eumelanin, producing a darker skin color. The eight gene variants that Dr. Tishkoff and her colleagues discovered in Africans turned out to be present in many populations outside the continent. By comparing the DNA of these people, the researchers were able to estimate how long ago the genes appeared. They turned out to be immensely old. A variant for light skin found in both Europeans and the San hunter gatherers of Botswana arose roughly 900,000 years ago, for example. Even before there were Homo sapiens, then, our distant forebears had a mix of genes for light and dark skin. Some populations may have been dark skinned and others light skinned; or maybe they were all the same color, produced by a blend of variants. Neanderthals split off from our own ancestors an estimated 600,000 years ago, spreading across Europe and eastern Asia. While they became extinct about 40,000 years ago, some of their DNA has survived. These hominins inherited the same combination of variants determining skin color, Dr. Tishkoff and her colleagues also discovered. It's possible that some populations of Neanderthals, too, were light skinned, and others dark skinned. Living humans come packaged in a wide range of hues from pale and freckly in Ireland to dark brown in southern India, Australia and New Guinea. Researchers have argued that these varying colors evolved partly in response to sunlight. The idea is that people who live with intense ultraviolet light benefited from dark color, pigments that shielded important molecules in their skin. In places with less sunlight, people needed lighter skin, because they were able to absorb more sunlight to make vitamin D. The new genetic evidence supports this explanation, but adds unexpected complexity. The dark skinned people of southern India, Australia and New Guinea, for example, did not independently evolve their color simply because evolution favored it. They inherited the ancestral dark variants Dr. Tishkoff's team found in Africans. "They had to be introduced from an African population," said Dr. Tishkoff. Yet the same is true for some genes that produce light skin in Asia and Europe. They also originated in Africa and were carried from the continent by migrants. As Africans moved into Europe and Asia, they interbred with Neanderthals on several occasions. Last week, Michael Dannemann and Janet Kelso of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany reported that people in Britain still carry a number of Neanderthal variants that color skin. Some of the newly discovered genes appeared relatively recently in our evolution. The pale skin variant of SLC24A5 that's overwhelmingly common in Europe, for example, is a recent addition to the genome, arising just 29,000 years ago, according to the new study. It became widespread only in the past few thousand years. Dr. Tishkoff and her colleagues found it frequently not just in Europe, but also in some populations of lighter skinned Africans in East Africa and Tanzania. Studies of ancient DNA recently discovered in Africa point to an explanation.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
In that second half, the cavalry kept coming, wandering off the bench and onto the field one after the other. As Atalanta's players blinked back the sweat, it must have felt as if Paris St. Germain could draw from a bottomless well of talent. First, the boy wonder, the next best player in the world, with his blistering speed and his glistening menace and his adhesive touch. That was bad enough. Then came the German winger who would walk into all but a handful of teams in the world, and the playmaker not long since regarded as Argentine soccer's coming star. True, there was a sliver of solace to be found in the desperation of it all. The clock was ticking on Thomas Tuchel, P.S.G.'s coach: 30 minutes until yet another humiliation in the Champions League; 20 minutes left to save his job; 10 minutes before all that talk of a curse came rumbling back. Sometimes, though, material resources trump mental ones. With scarcely more than a minute left to play, Atalanta was nearly there, in the semifinals of the Champions League, the grandest stage on which it had ever played, in the darkest year its Italian hometown, Bergamo, has ever experienced. The great fairy tale the sort of story that soccer's vulture economics are now specifically designed to prevent was on. And then, all of a sudden, it wasn't. Marquinhos bundled home an equalizer. Atalanta sagged. Neymar slid the ball into Kylian Mbappe's path and Eric Maxim Choupo Moting stabbed a winner past goalkeeper Marco Sportiello. Atalanta collapsed. Sportiello glared at the scoreboard, hanging from the roof of Lisbon's Estadio da Luz, as if he was accusing it of lying with its display: 2 1. Some of his teammates crumpled on the grass. Others seemed to freeze, their eyes locked in thousand yard stares. P.S.G., for the first time in a quarter of a century, had made it into a Champions League semifinal. The alternative was unthinkable. This competition has brought P.S.G. nothing but trouble in recent years. The club exists, effectively, solely to win it. Its backer, Qatar Sports Investments, does not regard strolling to yet another Ligue 1 title as a particularly effective way to win hearts and minds, or to express the global relevance of the Gulf state, or whatever the purpose of its multibillion dollar investment might be. The glory, the status, is in the Champions League. But so is the pain. P.S.G. thought it had its breakthrough moment in 2017, when it demolished Barcelona at the Parc des Princes; a few weeks later, it was humiliated at Camp Nou, its defeat orchestrated by Neymar. No matter; lesson learned. That summer, Neymar moved to Paris, his fee more than double the previous world transfer record, a figure unlikely to be beaten in a post pandemic world for some time, if at all. Just to be sure, not long after, the club added Mbappe to its ranks. Still, these things are not quite that simple. Real Madrid knocked P.S.G. out with ease in 2018. A late rally from Manchester United did the same a year later. Until the very last moment, Atalanta seemed set to add to that list. The fact that P.S.G. might have been able to point to genuine, and significant, mitigating circumstances an injury to Mbappe, as well as the absence of Marco Verratti and Angel Di Maria; the fact that France's decision not to resume play after the coronavirus induced hiatus meant it had played only two competitive games in five months would not have mattered. This would have been just another choke. That it is not is down, in part, to the fourth outfield reserve Tuchel called upon, the player who turned out to be the scorer of the goal that finally broke what seemed to be the French champion's glass ceiling, and a symbol of a lesson P.S.G. might finally be starting to heed. Choupo Moting, it is fair to say, is not the sort of player who fits P.S.G.'s typical transfer model. There was no line of fans snaking outside the Parc des Princes desperate to get their hands on his replica jersey when he signed from a Stoke City team that had just been relegated from the Premier League, in 2018. Indeed, over the spell of his time in Paris, he has been treated as something of a novelty act, as though he has not had a perfectly respectable career in the second tier of European soccer: Born in Germany, he spent his early years at Hamburg, before moving on to Mainz where he worked with Tuchel and then Schalke, making 55 appearances for Cameroon in the process. His every appearance has been greeted with something verging on incredulity: This guy? The one who scored five goals in 31 games for a team not good enough to stay in England's top flight? On the same field as Neymar and Mbappe? Remember that time that he managed not to score essentially from inside the goal during a league game against Strasbourg? Choupo Moting, of course, is not as richly gifted as some of his teammates. He is not rewarded quite so handsomely. He was not, even, the inspiration behind P.S.G.'s revival against Atalanta. That was very much Neymar, excellent in all but his finishing on Wednesday, and Mbappe, a burst of pure purpose after his injury delayed introduction. But there is a reason that Neymar, elected as the game's best player, handed his man of the match trophy to Choupo Moting afterward. P.S.G. must surely have learned by now that glamour alone will not deliver the Champions League title. The Galactico model, as honed by turn of the century Real Madrid, has its limits. That team, after all, did not win the trophy it craved after Ronaldo and David Beckham joined Luis Figo and Zinedine Zidane. Stardust alone is not enough. Workhorses and support acts and water carriers are needed, too, players who are not there to add moments of wonder but to do the one thing they are good at, to be in the right place at the right time. This is, of course, only the first step for P.S.G. Either RB Leipzig or Atletico Madrid awaits in the semifinal; the latter, certainly, would most likely be less daunted by the sight of Tuchel's marshaling his reserve troops on the sideline. Pass through that and there is the small matter of the final: Bayern Munich or Barcelona or Manchester City or Lyon. All of those teams with the respectful exception of Lyon can match P.S.G. for star power. They can stand toe to toe with Tuchel's side in terms of the depth of their squad, the wealth of their resources. What will make the difference, more than anything, is how those resources are deployed; whose squad is built most intelligently; who has the breadth, not the depth, of players at their disposal. Players like Neymar win tournaments. More often than you think, though, it is players like Choupo Moting who win games.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
During the academic year, school serves as child care for many families. But come summer, many parents find themselves cobbling together a mix of camps, sports and educational programs with babysitters to fill the gaps all of which can strain budgets and resources. How do you do it? I'd love to hear about the strategies you use to get through the summer. What did you do when you were a kid and how does it compare with what your kids are doing today? Send stories, ideas, photos! We may publish a selection of the responses.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Re "Missiles Fired by Iran Downed Passenger Jet, U.S. and Allies Believe" (front page, Jan. 10): Under the law, we are responsible for "accidental" consequences of our actions that a rational observer would anticipate. Knowing the tensions, animosities and distrust that cut across Iran and the region, a rational observer would have anticipated the possibility, even the likelihood, of such an accident as the Iranian downing of the Ukrainian jet following the turmoil that our president's assassination of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani unleashed and the belligerent posturing with which he continues to aggravate that turmoil. The deaths of the 176 passengers and crew are added to those of Kurds in Syria and Puerto Rican hurricane victims, for which our president's actions and cruel lack of interest in others' suffering are responsible. Through books, op eds, blogs, etc., hundreds of mental health professionals have warned of the danger represented by the president's self absorption, cruelty, recklessness, impulsivity and absence of empathy. That danger is now demonstrably and tragically real. Congress must act to limit his ability to continue killing. Edwin B. Fisher Chapel Hill, N.C. The writer is a clinical psychologist at the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and a contributor to "The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 37 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Ellie McKinley, 17, of Eau Claire, Wis., considered the Rhode Island School of Design or the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn to study graphic design. But the University of Wisconsin Stout offers the same course of study at a third of the cost. In this our quadrennial season of financial hope, we might wish that the major presidential candidates would reckon with one of the large and looming numbers in our lives. Maybe this particular pair of multimillionaires hears the parents and grandparents who are confounded by college price tags that seem to start at six figures. But the candidates' plans don't hold out much cause for hope. Hillary Clinton wants to make in state tuition for four year state universities free for families with less than 125,000 in income, but her plan would require the financial help of states that may not want to chip in. Donald Trump has mentioned refinancing student loans and forcing universities to spend more from their endowments to help students. His website, however, has no formal proposals. Perhaps the debate moderators will demand more details. So what we need right now is one college savings, paying and borrowing plan to rule them all. The best one I know of the one that visibly reduces anxiety in the faces of people I preach it to comes from Kevin McKinley, a financial adviser in Eau Claire, Wis. And you can sum it up in about 30 words: Save a quarter of the cost over a child's first 18 years. Pay another quarter out of current income over the next four years. Borrow the rest, split among the family. Let's break them down in order, for a family who has its sights on a state university and doesn't qualify for any grants or scholarships that they would not have to repay. SAVE A QUARTER Let's say you think an undergraduate degree from a state university will cost 160,000 in 18 years, including room and board. A quarter of that, per the McKinley plan, is 40,000. To save that much, you'd need to put aside about 115 each month for 18 years if it earns a 5 percent annual return. Where might it earn that kind of return? In one of those 529 college savings plans that your state probably offers, perhaps in a low cost mutual fund with a mix of stocks and bonds that gets less aggressive as your child gets closer to 18. The website savingforcollege.com is an excellent resource for anyone wanting to learn more about 529 plans. And where is that 115 supposed to come from? In his 2002 book, "Make Your Kid a Millionaire," Mr. McKinley suggested looking at the things on your credit or debit card statement and asking yourself this: Would I rather help my kid go to college or would I prefer to keep buying or doing those things on my bill that add up to the number I need to save each month? Harsh? He doesn't think so. "I don't judge what people choose to spend money on," he said. "But most people with kids going to college wish they could go back and change what they spent, because a lot of it was on things that didn't have any value in the long run." SPEND A QUARTER This step is harder. For parents sending a child to a college right now that costs 100,000 total, they'll need to find a bit over 500 a month to hit the four year number, 25,000, that equals a quarter of the total cost. So rice and beans instead of eating out. No more vacations, or much cheaper ones. If that's not enough or you already made those changes years ago, a side job may be in order. Doing that, too? Don't forget that your college age child is capable of earning 6,000 annually by working full time in the summer and part time during the school year. If your child earns that much, you're not responsible for this portion. Are there generous grandparents in the mix? This would be a good time for them to step in if they haven't already or weren't sure if they would be able to help until they had their own financial affairs sorted out. THE BORROWING Back when he wrote his book, Mr. McKinley said that he considered debt a last resort. These days, he's changed his tune. "You'd like to pay cash for your house, too, but it's just not realistic," he said. First, student loans. Though the terminology and process is (wildly, needlessly) complex, the advice is simple for anyone wanting to borrow 25,000: Take out federal student loans from the government, not private ones that come from a bank or similar institution. The advantage of federal loans is that if your child doesn't earn much after graduation, you can enroll in a program where you'll be eligible for lower payments. Then, parent borrowing. Mr. McKinley notes that we're at a rare economic moment where three things are happening at once: Home values are rising nicely in many parts of the country, interest rates are low and lenders are a bit looser than they were in the recent past. For people with children in college now, that means that borrowing money against your home may be a good way to come up with your 25,000 chunk. Mr. McKinley is bearish on the future of student loans and expects them to become generally less available over time. So he suggested a more aggressive way for the parents of younger children to pay for a quarter of college: Draw on home equity now while you can, put the money in certificates of deposit and treat your (often tax deductible) interest payments on the loan like an insurance policy, where you're paying a "premium" just to be sure you'll have access to the capital. After all, as we saw in 2009, banks that are loose now with home equity loans can change their minds in a heartbeat. If you do not own a home, or drawing on home equity seems too risky or needlessly expensive (or you're worried about how that money might affect any financial aid that you end up qualifying for), the federal government offers loans to parents, too. THE MANY CAVEATS Plenty of people don't make enough money to save anything for college, let alone save 500 a month while their child is in school. Others could have saved but didn't and are panicking now that the first tuition bill is close at hand. If you're in that situation, please read the two guides I wrote in 2014 for people in that spot. The McKinley plan is linear. Your financial life probably won't be, pockmarked as most of our lives are with unpaid parental leave or illness or unemployment or inopportune stock market declines or a bunch of these things all at once. But the plan is also flexible. You could borrow a bit more or save a bit more or consider a gap year between high school and college to put away additional funds. If there is more than one child, these numbers could double, and if private colleges are under consideration, they may double again or more. But at private colleges especially, paying tuition for two children at once will increase your chances of qualifying for need based financial aid (the kind you get after filling out the federal aid form and sometimes other application forms). Moreover, many colleges (private ones, in particular) offer a different kind of help, merit aid, to good students, even if their families don't qualify for need based aid. That can easily lop five figures off costs each year per student, even if it doesn't bring the private college price down to the level of a flagship state university. Which brings us to a couple of other challenges. How do you know when it's worth paying a whole lot more for one school than another? Mr. McKinley is facing this question right now with his 17 year old daughter, Ellie, a high school senior with an interest in web design. She was eyeing the Rhode Island School of Design or the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, but she can study the same things at the University of Wisconsin Stout for less than a third of the retail cost. The family is leaning hard toward the cheaper option. "If you're the kind of kid who can get into the more expensive school, then you'll usually have the talent and moxie to succeed even without their education," Mr. McKinley said. There is also the bizarre unpredictability of the process. The rack rates are high, and while many people get discounts based on need or merit, you have no way of knowing which, if any, you might qualify for many years from now. You'll probably get the answers some spring day in the future and then have a few weeks, at most, to make what may be among the biggest and most consequential financial decisions of your life. So good luck with that. But don't let the absurdity of what the system has become paralyze you into doing nothing. "You don't have to come up with a quarter of a million dollars for your kid," Mr. McKinley said. "Do what you can now, and just keep building off of it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Ford is recalling about 745,000 sedans and sport utility vehicles in the United States for a problem with an electronic module that could prevent the air bags from deploying in a crash, the automaker said Friday. The action covers 2013 14 Ford C Max, Fusion, Escape and Lincoln MKZ models. In addition, the recall covers about 82,000 vehicles in Canada and 20,000 in Mexico. Ford has now recalled about 3.9 million vehicles in the United States this year, more than three times what it recalled in 2013. The automaker said a short circuit in the restraints control module could disable the air bags, and possibly the electronic stability control, because the system receives information from the module. The electronic stability control is an important safety device that brings a vehicle under control during a skid. Ford said it was not aware of any accidents or injuries related to the problem. The automaker detected the problem as part of its "normal internal processes," such as warranty claims, Kelli Felker, a company spokeswoman, wrote in an email.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
PARIS A long, strange season it has been. One filled with ambiguity, rumor and infighting (Show now, sell now! Over my dead body!), that aside from some discernible trends an elongated silhouette; leopard; the continuing popularity of lingerie dresses; the haute puffa jacket has left most questions as yet unresolved. Who will run Dior? Don't know. What about Lanvin? The latest name whispered in the wings is Bouchra Jarrar. Is Hedi Slimane staying at Saint Laurent? Your guess is as good as mine. Do shows matter, or is it all about Instagram now? Ah, for that we have a response. "Social media makes people think everything is accessible" said Maria Grazia Chiuri, a creative director of Valentino, backstage before the show. She was standing next to Pierpaolo Piccioli, her co creative director, both wearing black trouser suits and white shirts (Mr. Piccioli also had on a black tie; Ms. Chiuri, a handful of rings) and talking about performance art. Which for them is a synonym for a show. "But what social media cannot provide is a sense of the emotion of a group experience," she continued. "We think our job is not just to do things you can consume, because you can see and love beauty without buying it. It is to give that shared happening." So they did.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Ann Crumb, the actress and singer who starred in Andrew Lloyd Webber's "Aspects of Love" in both London and New York, died on Thursday at her parents' home in Media, Pa., a suburb of Philadelphia. She was 69. Kevin McAnarney, her publicist, said the cause was ovarian cancer, which was diagnosed in 2015. Ms. Crumb starred in "Aspects of Love" when it opened in London in 1989. It was said that she was the first American cast in a lead role in an original production of a Lloyd Webber musical. She reprised the role in the Broadway production, which opened the next year. The musical's story, a three generational European saga, focused on a French actress, Rose Vibert, and her sexual attraction to her husband, her husband's young nephew and her husband's mistress . It was Ms Crumb's most visible role, but not her most lauded. Her most honored Broadway appearance was the title role in a 1992 musical adaptation of Tolstoy' s "Anna Karenina." Although Mel Gussow of The New York Times found Ms. Crumb too strident for the character , who throws away her reputation for the sake of a grand passion, Tony Awards insiders disagreed and nominated Ms. Crumb for best lead actress in a musical.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
BACK in the early 1970s, my parents' neighbors offered to pay my sister, who was 8 years old at the time, to take care of their cats for a weekend. My sister said she had to ask our mother. She returned shortly afterward and told the neighbors that she could feed the cats, but she could not accept money for helping a neighbor. Hearing that story recently elicited a twinge of guilt. My boys, 15 and 12, get paid all the time by neighbors for feeding pets and shoveling snow. It never occurred to me to tell them not to accept money from neighbors. Was I, gasp, wrong, and my mother right? Joline Godfrey, who wrote "Raising Financially Fit Kids," (Ten Speed Press, 2003) doesn't think either my mother or I was wrong. It's just that times are different. "We didn't have the same challenges about teaching children about money back then," she said. In addition, now, "so many jobs have been professionalized, that there are very few jobs left for children to develop a work ethic." When was the last time, for instance, you heard about a teenager who had a paper route? That means there aren't many opportunities to learn things like assessing the value of your time, asking adults who aren't your parents for money and following up if customers fail to pay. But we also don't want our children to become so mercenary that they won't help a neighbor unless it involves cash. "The family needs to teach when it is appropriate to get paid and when to go the extra distance," Ms. Godfrey said. If, for example, your son regularly gets paid to rake leaves for a neighbor, but that neighbor is suddenly ill, it would be right for him to help out without asking for more money. Or offer to work free until the neighbor gets back on her feet. "Teaching how to make that judgment, rather than simply laying down rules, is a subtle and complex message and is as important as the job itself," she said. We had a teachable moment during one of the recent snowstorms. My husband went over to help the older neighbors across the street with shoveling snow, and my older son, Ben, joined him. A few days later, Ben received a 20 gift card to a sports store with a note of gratitude from our neighbors. I thought it was awfully nice, but part of me wished that the incident could simply have been a lesson in how to help out neighbors without the bonus. Next snowstorm, same situation. This time, my 12 year old son went to help. Did he do it because he was feeling generous, because he hoped for a gift card or because he wanted to prove himself to his brother? Probably a combination of all three. Sure enough, another gift card appeared in the mailbox, and both sons were happy. I had mixed feelings. So when I decided to write this column, I went across the street and asked the neighbors, John and Mary Lee Bradley, whether they now feel obligated to dispense gift cards if my children ever volunteer to shovel their walk. "Not at all," John said. "We were just signaling to them that we appreciated their offer of help and such conduct should be rewarded." And I believe my children understand that if they assist the Bradleys in the next storm, it's not a precursor to another gift card. Of course, there is nothing wrong with a child's wanting to make some money by dog walking, baby sitting or, for that matter, snow shoveling. But they do need to understand how to approach the financial aspect of it. Do not, Ms. Godfrey advised, simply say, "Pay me what you want." There are several problems with this approach. This is a transaction, and children need to learn how to ask for their worth or else they grow into adults who are afraid to ask for raises, she said. In addition, most adults have no idea what the going rate is. When I researched this issue, I found questions like, "What should I pay the neighbor's kids for cat sitting?" all over the Web. (By the way, 5 a day was the consensus.) In an affluent community, like ours, another unlikely problem arises overpaying. I have felt the pressure myself. You don't know what to pay. You don't want to seem cheap. You don't want the child telling her parents you were cheap. You want to get the child to come back to tend to your cats. So you err on the side of offering too much money. Bad idea, said Janet Bodnar, editor of Kiplinger's Personal Finance. "If they've been overcompensated, then the financial lesson has been totally lost." Getting 40 for two hours of baby sitting (which my older son once received) does not teach your child about the relationship between work and pay. And it can also raise the bar for everyone else in the community. My neighbor Eliza once called up a mother who she felt had overpaid her son for baby sitting and asked her not to do it again. Another option, Ms. Godfrey suggested, is to discuss with your child that perhaps she can even things out by offering to do a few extra chores free or baby sit an additional hour. Now, what if your child is promised money and the neighbor forgets? I have been in this embarrassing position when I failed to bring over some promised money for baby sitting. Months later, the mother, a neighbor and friend, hesitantly mentioned it when our paths crossed. I was mortified and immediately took it over. My sons were recently in that situation and wanted me to follow up on their behalf. I hesitated. Should we really hit up neighbors for cash? Shouldn't we just let it slide? No, Ms. Godfrey said. "There was a covenant, and they should not feel embarrassed that they held up their part and she didn't." But, the person who did the work, not the parent, should be the one to ask for the payment. "They should just knock on the neighbor's door and respectfully say, 'I think you forgot.' They can decide to forgive the contract, but consciously, not because they're afraid to follow through." Naturally, children feel uncomfortable dealing with grown ups and talking about money, said Ms. Bodnar, who also writes a column called Money Smart Kids for Kiplinger.com. But that's exactly why they need to learn to do it. Finally, I find it interesting that our cultural norms accept that children should be paid for neighborly chores, while we adults would never consider offering or accepting payment for the same tasks. Back in 1993, two British professors, Paul Webley and Stephen E. G. Lea, published a study that asked people about the appropriateness of neighbors paying neighbors for small loans of food or tools or for help around the house. Most thought paying neighbors for such exchanges was unseemly. Some said they might offer money, particularly when borrowing food, but said they also did not expect it to be accepted. The authors guessed that "the precision of money payment, which means an exact value is set on an act of kindness, may well be at the heart of its inappropriateness." Therefore, reciprocation is often the answer you'll take in my mail when I'm gone, I'll take in yours. Or repaying with a small gift. While good fences make good neighbors, a nice bottle of wine, I've found, goes even further.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
NAUCALPAN DE JUAREZ, Mexico From where he stood on the fairway on the par 5 15th hole, all Tiger Woods could see on Saturday were the possibilities. He was eight under par for the tournament and stalking a final round, final threesome grouping in his Mexico Championship debut. Standing several yards from Woods, also in the fairway, John Sutcliffe, who is covering the tournament for ESPN and ESPN Deportes, could see all the way to Sunday night. Sutcliffe, who grew up in a house along the 10th hole of the course, Club de Golf Chapultepec, said, "I was thinking, when it gets to be the final hole of the tournament, maybe the Tiger roar will be in Spanish." But elsewhere on the course, Dustin Johnson was pulling away from the field, and No. 15 was about to undo Woods. His 54 hole total of six under left him tied for ninth in this World Golf Championships event, well out of the final group and 10 strokes behind Johnson, who carded a 66 for a four shot lead over his closest competitor, Rory McIlroy. Still the headliner is indisputably Woods, who took 24 years and 381 starts to make his first appearance as a professional in Mexico. He has drawn large, ardent crowds here, just outside Mexico City. After waiting so long to see Woods up close, the followers were not about to let a few errant swings or wayward putts ruin the festive mood. On Saturday, they shouted things like, "Tiger, Marry My Sister!" and serenaded him with cries of "Tiger" until he disappeared into the scoring room. Woods's caddie, Joe LaCava, described Woods as "like Michael Jordan down here" and said the fans were so excited to see him in person, "they didn't even care where the shots were going." At 15, his second shot found a greenside bunker, and he chunked his next shot out of the sand, leaving him a 25 footer for birdie. Woods's first putt rolled four feet past the hole, and he three putted from there for a double bogey 7. It was the 12th four putt of his career, and it killed momentum. He made bogey on the next hole also after his tee shot found the fairway before salvaging a 1 under 70 with a closing birdie. One of the fans who followed Woods for each of his first three rounds was Sebastian Mondragon, 13, who said he started playing golf when he was 9. He ran from spot to spot, positioning himself so he could try to draw Woods's attention to a handmade sign that featured the face of a tiger and the exhortation, "Let's Go, Tiger." As Woods walked from the eighth green to the ninth tee, Mondragon stood at the front of the rope line. He waved the sign and shouted Woods's name, but the 14 time major champion walked past, staring straight ahead. Mondragon said he hoped that watching Woods would offer some pointers. "What I've learned," Mondragon said, "is he has a very good focus." Woods had a lot to process as he headed to the ninth tee. He bent his 9 iron on the eighth hole when he hit a tree during his swing, so the club was out of commission for the rest of the round. He sorely missed it on the 14th hole, when he had the perfect distance for a 9 iron approach. Using his pitching wedge instead, Woods came up short but still managed par. On the 16th hole, LaCava said, Woods had to lay back off the tee to set up an 8 iron approach. After the round, Woods, 43, received therapy on his surgically repaired back, LaCava said that after that, his boss intended to meet with a club repairer in hopes of fixing his 9 iron in time for Sunday's round. Whatever happens in the final 18 holes, Woods's debut here will go down as an unqualified hit. In his gallery Saturday was a couple, originally from Portugal, who are living in Mexico City. This was their first time at a golf tournament, they said, and they stopped along the ninth fairway so the husband, Pedro Caixinha, could take a photograph of his wife, Anabela David, with Woods walking in the background. Caixinha described the photograph as "a souvenir." Before the tournament, Sutcliffe told Woods that his presence would make this the most important week in the golf course's nearly 100 year history. Then he presented Woods with his own souvenir: a bottle of tequila.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The last baseball postseason began with a stirring comeback and a sudsy celebration. Down to their last few outs in the National League wild card game, the Washington Nationals rallied to stun the Milwaukee Brewers on their way to a championship. The party was on in the bleachers. "The amount of beer that was thrown in the air in left field was unbelievable," Dave Martinez, the Nationals' manager, recalled a few days ago. "That will always stick in my mind. It was crazy. The players just fed off it, they loved it. Not having fans in the stands, it's going to be difficult." Indeed, when the pandemic postseason starts on Tuesday with four American League teams hosting openers of a new best of three series in the first round the only spectators will be cardboard cutouts. The division series, league championship series and World Series will be held at neutral sites in California and Texas, so even if Major League Baseball gets approval to sell tickets, no teams will play at their home ballparks in the weightiest rounds. This is a first for M.L.B., which is finishing its shortest schedule since 1878 this weekend. With no in stadium revenue for the regular season, the league staged a 60 game sprint to the lucrative playoffs, agreeing with the players' union on opening night to expand the field to 16 teams, from 10. Commissioner Rob Manfred hopes to keep a modified version of that structure for future seasons, with 14 teams instead of 16 and a first round bye for each league's top finisher. But for now, it will be a wide open, socially distanced postseason, with none of the communal joy that has always been part of October baseball. "This new thing that we're getting ready to embark on I don't know if anybody has a strong sense of what it's going to be like," said Tampa Bay Rays Manager Kevin Cash, whose team won the American League East. "It's going to be neutral for both teams once you get past the first wild card round." Here's a secret, though: It already is neutral. While no team will play in front of home crowds this fall, recent history shows that home field advantage is largely a myth. They were because those were the games started by their best pitchers, Max Scherzer and Stephen Strasburg, who outshone the Astros' aces. The World Series ended with a victory by the road team for the sixth season in a row, matching 1954 59 for the longest such streak in history. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. Similarly, in the eight seasons that M.L.B. has held winner take all wild card games, from 2012 through 2019, home teams had no special edge: the road team won nine times, the home team only seven. In 2018, eight of the nine clinching postseason games were won by the road team. "The good players are good players whether it's home field or not," said Jack McKeon, a senior adviser to Nationals General Manager Mike Rizzo. "If you're good, you're good. The determining factor is who's got the better pitcher out there. If the visitors got a better pitcher, they're going to win." Of course, there are famous examples of teams using their ballparks to manufacture an edge. The Minnesota Twins won all eight World Series games at the cacophonous Metrodome in 1987 and 1991; years later, a superintendent acknowledged to the Star Tribune that he adjusted the dome's ventilation to try to give extra lift to the Twins' fly balls. In 2017, when the Houston Astros used an electronic sign stealing scheme at Minute Maid Park, they won eight of nine postseason home games. Yet when M.L.B. formally tried to highlight home field advantage, the sport showed just how fickle that factor can be. In 2003, home field advantage for the World Series was awarded to the league that won the All Star Game, a gimmick to inject more meaning to that event. So what happened that October? The young Florida Marlins, managed by McKeon, stormed into the Bronx, edged a flat Yankees team in the opener, and took the Game 6 clincher with a Josh Beckett shutout a week later. So much for the perils of the road. "We go to Yankee Stadium, and the owner says to me, 'Hey, you want to have a meeting and talk about the monuments and being here at Yankee Stadium?'" McKeon said. "I said, 'Are you out of your mind? These guys don't know whether they're playing in New York or Hoboken. They're having fun. We don't need to distract them.'" Dontrelle Willis, who had never pitched above Class A before that season, said he actually did visit the monuments. He felt so nervous before his appearance in Game 1 that he worried he might trip while jogging to the mound from the bullpen. But Willis performed just fine, retiring October stalwarts like Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada while protecting a slim lead. "We were a very, very close team," said Willis, now an analyst for Fox Sports. "We were very tight knit and guys cared about each other, and we took on the role of being giant killers, not only for us, but also for the organization and the city. We wanted to earn some respect on a national scale." In doing so, the Marlins upended recent history. In the previous 20 World Series, eight teams had come home for Game 6 trailing three games to two. Seven of those teams (all but the 1992 Atlanta Braves, who lost in six to the Toronto Blue Jays) rallied to win Games 6 and 7, reinforcing the notion that home field advantage really counted. In reality as Yogi Berra might have said it only matters when it makes a difference. Joe Maddon coached for the Angels in 2002, when they clinched the title in Anaheim surrounded by three decks of raucous fans with inflatable noisemakers. Fourteen years later, as manager of the Chicago Cubs, Maddon's team won a championship in Cleveland, before a largely divided crowd in Ohio. "It is more exciting when you're in front of your fans," Maddon said. "But I don't know that, really, home court advantage exists that much in baseball anymore." According to the Elias Sports Bureau, home winning percentages have been strikingly consistent for the past two decades, hovering between 52 and 56 percent. In this strange season without crowds, teams have actually had a higher success rate than usual at home, at 55.4 percent, the majors' best mark since 2010, when home teams won 55.9 percent of the time. Maddon, who now manages the Angels, said some players thrive off negative energy of a hostile crowd. But the setting usually makes no difference to veterans, he added, and if young players make it all the way to October, they tend to follow that example. "You have to have the right players with the right kind of makeup," Maddon said, "and to get to the playoffs, you probably do." Teams will miss the passion of hometown crowds this postseason; there is no way to replicate the dizzying charm of exulting with your own fans, in your own city. But the impact on the field of all that noise and travel will not be missed because it hasn't been a big deal anyway. "Really, it's mostly about having the last at bat or not, the difference in that regard," said Mike Shildt, the manager of the St. Louis Cardinals. "Otherwise, it's just baseball."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
There's never been a time in Christy Turlington Burns's life that did not involve travel. "I was practically born into traveling," she said. Though the former model now lives in Manhattan, she grew up traveling the world with her parents, who worked for Pan American World Airways. Her subsequent career as a model, which made her famous, also involved frequent trips to far flung destinations, and today, her role as the founder and chief executive of Every Mother Counts, a nonprofit organization dedicated to making pregnancy and childbirth safe for every mother, still has her on the road: Ms. Burns, 47, said that she travels at least once a month, either visiting the nine countries including Haiti and Tanzania her charity does work in, speaking at conferences or running in half and full marathons to raise awareness about maternal health. It's a personal mission for Ms. Burns, who hemorrhaged while giving birth to her now 13 year old daughter, Grace (she also has son, Finn, who is 10). "I was fortunate to have access to quality health care, but many women don't, and through my experience, I learned that maternal mortality is a global crisis," she said. Below are edited excerpts from a recent interview with Ms. Burns. Q. Of the destinations you've traveled to for Every Mother Counts, is there one you've found most compelling? A. I love them all in their own way, but I am pretty fixated by Tanzania. I first went in 1989 or 1990 when I was modeling and went back a few years later to climb Kilimanjaro. Since then, I have been back seven times and am going again in February to run a race for Every Mother Counts. The country has so many national parks with incredible wildlife, and the people there are also incredible and so friendly. What are some sights you have enjoyed in countries that your charity does work in? A trip I took last June to Guatemala with my daughter stands out. We went to Lake Atitlan, which is in the western highlands of the country and absolutely majestic, and took a boat across the lake to meet Mayan midwives in the rural community of Santa Catarina Palopo. It is a place untouched by time where old traditions are still alive, and watching my daughter connect with these midwives and learn about their traditions around childbirth was very moving. I have also discovered Haiti through my work. I went to Jacmel, which is a beautiful city on the coast that's full of colonial architecture. It's not the Haiti that people see in the media, and I think it's important as a traveler to discover a destination as it really is and not the way it is portrayed to be. Your work also takes you around the United States. What experience stands out from your domestic trips? My trip in June to Chinle in Arizona is one. I spent time with Navajo midwives there and learned about the rich history of Navajo people and running they run for all sorts of reasons. There is a very sacred puberty ceremony, for example, of adolescent girls running in different directions to pay respect to nature. I was also quite taken with landscape in the area, especially the red rock mountains and the beautiful way the light hits them. How do you familiarize yourself with a new locale? I am old school and rely on travel guides that I have hung onto for years. And I am a big fan of word of mouth tips from friends. Where do you enjoy going when you're not working? I love discovering new places, but lately, I've been discovering New York City and the areas around it. We live downtown, and though I've been in the city for 30 years, there is so much going on in my neighborhood. There's 1 World Trade Center and the new Oculus, both of which have very cool architecture.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
The first job I had after moving to New York City, in November 1996, was building insanely complicated models for the artists Christo and Jeanne Claude. The models were for one of a number of large public art projects, "The Umbrellas," which the artists had installed five years earlier on two sites: In Japan they had arranged thousands of 19 foot high blue umbrellas in clusters or lines around a highway and stream. In California they had planted thousands of yellow umbrellas on the hills of Tejon Pass and along Interstate 5, 60 miles north of Los Angeles. On Oct. 9, 1991, the umbrellas were opened simultaneously and then closed abruptly two and a half weeks later after a windblown umbrella killed a woman in California. A few days later a worker was electrocuted and died while taking down the umbrellas in Japan. Even so, the artists wanted to include the project in several coming exhibitions and hired the architect George Ranalli to build two huge scale models, one of the California site and one of Japan's. George, a former professor of mine, hired me, along with three other former students Price Harrison, Mark Dixon and Julie Shurtz to do the fabrication work. That first morning in 1996, I eagerly set to work cutting dozens of little umbrellas out of colored paper, folding their edges and gluing them onto pins. They looked terrible and took forever to make. Price and I did this for about a week and then calculated that just making the umbrellas, at the rate we were going, would take about 25 years. And we still needed to build the extremely complicated plywood bases, four for each model, which when placed end to end would represent the sites in their entirety. We paused on the umbrellas and got to work on the bases, constructing a honeycomb of plywood fins to simulate the hilly topography of Tejon Pass. Just that part took over a month. Then came the news that Christo and Jeanne Claude were coming in to check on our progress. I had first seen their work on TV in 1983, when their wrapping of 11 islands in Biscayne Bay with pink fabric made the evening news. I didn't get it. What was the point? But gradually I began to appreciate their work. I grew to love the haunting inscrutability of their early installations, especially Christo's mock storefronts that seemed both a celebration of commerce and an elegy to cities lost in a spiral of decay. And now I'd meet them. I had never seen a photo of Christo or Jeanne Claude, and I imagined Christo as a tall, heavyset, pushy, hostile guy who was going to come in and order us around. I figured since he was someone who could convince governments to bow to his every artistic whim, he must be pretty intimidating. I was scared. Jeanne Claude breezed into our workroom, Christo that's Christo? trailing meekly behind. Jeanne Claude had long hair dyed fire hydrant red, wore a floor length down parka and waved a cigarette around, talking a mile a minute. She carried a metal object that I realized, after seeing her tap ash into it, was an old Band Aid box repurposed as a combination cigarette case ashtray. Christo was slightly built, wore an old army jacket and horn rimmed glasses and had a bemused smile on his face. He politely asked a few questions about the models and seemed satisfied. There was no drama. Both he and Jeanne Claude were persuasive, but Christo persuaded you gently. After 15 minutes they said goodbye and good luck, and we got back to work. Over the next month we ran into problems. We covered the plywood armature with cherry veneer that resembled in color the golden hills of California. To glue it down, we used a vile smelling contact cement, and had to wear large rubber respirator masks while we worked, which made communication difficult. "Pass me that brush," I'd say five times, and Price would hand me a Mott the Hoople cassette. The veneer was prone to cracking and the room wasn't climate controlled, so I'd nervously watch the weather for signs of fluctuations in humidity. It would rain over the weekend and the humidity would go up, and then it would get dry again and I'd come in on Monday morning to find disastrous fissures running all over the model. Then weekends went away. I rarely saw my apartment, and even less of New York. I was too busy patching cracks on the hills of California. Behind schedule, we farmed out the work of making the little umbrellas to an architect with a laser cutter. Then we glued the umbrellas to pins stuck into the base and we were done. Christo and Jeanne Claude came by and seemed pleased with the result, except that two of the bases bulged embarrassingly in the middle, creating a gap between those sections. Could we close the gap with wood filler, he wondered? No, probably not, we said. He didn't give us a hard time about it. The California model had taken three months to complete. The next day we began building Japan. This time we used veneer stained green, to simulate the lush Japanese landscape. Thousands of blue umbrellas arrived from the laser cutter guy. We glued them onto pins, and that was it. It had taken five months to build both models. Christo and Jeanne Claude came over for one last inspection, said they were happy with the result, thanked George and thanked us. Over the next few years, the models for "The Umbrellas" were shown in three exhibitions. The artists continued to create fantastical projects that required numerous workers and the cooperation and acquiescence of an untold number of officials and collaborators. Jeanne Claude died in 2009, Christo just this past Sunday. I wonder what happened to those two models, so difficult to build and so trivial in a way (umbrellas really?) but, like the rest of their work, so weirdly worthwhile in the long run. Life is temporary why not surround islands with fabric or open oversize umbrellas all over a landscape? Did those models of the umbrella project keep cracking until they were eventually thrown out? Or are they doing fine, stored in a climate controlled unit? Maybe they're sitting in sections on a shelf somewhere, two miniature worlds representing opposite sides of the Pacific. Perhaps for years the tiny umbrellas have been falling off their pins, one by one, gradually succumbing to time and gravity. Fran Leadon is an architect and author of "Broadway: A History of New York City in Thirteen Miles." He is an associate professor at the City College of New York. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Does this seem like a red flag? You visit a company's website, and when you click the "Executive Team" link, up pops "Oops, this page could not be found!" The photograph at the top of the page is of identical brown chairs around a conference table. All the chairs are empty. Maybe the executives at Global Efficient Energy are really shy. If that is the case, the Haggler strongly recommends that they delete the page. It leaves a less than ideal impression of a company that describes itself as a "major player in the solar roof marketing since 2011" (Yes, there is either an extraneous or missing word in that description.) Clearly, the Fort Worth based G.E.E. could use some help shaping its public image. Especially because in recent months, more than a few of its customers have contacted the Better Business Bureau with complaints like this one sent to the Haggler: Q. Global Efficient Energy promised to cut our energy bill in half with a solar power system that it would install at our house. The system cost 19,900, which we would pay off in monthly installments over the course of six or seven years. Once we owned the system outright, the company said, we'd pay next to nothing for energy. That sounded great. But after the company installed solar panels on our roof, solar powered fans in our attic and a bunch of energy saving foam and sealants, our electricity bill barely changed. We saved about 9 a month.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
It's not hard to see what drew two of the finest actors of their generation to play James R. Hoffa. Sure, the man spent decades in the public eye, led what was then the nation's largest labor union, sparred with the Kennedys and disappeared in one of the quintessential unsolved mysteries in recent history. But he's also a great character, a sizzle reel of big, boisterous speeches, roaring dressing downs and showy theatricality. It's the kind of role an actor can really sink his teeth into, especially if he's known for chewing a bit of scenery a delicacy frequently enjoyed by both Jack Nicholson, who played the title role in the 1992 "Hoffa," and Al Pacino, currently garnering awards buzz for his work as Hoffa in "The Irishman." It's frankly surprising it took so long for Hoffa to get the big screen treatment. "The Enemy Within," Robert F. Kennedy's 1960 book on his congressional mob investigations and dust ups with Hoffa, was optioned by 20th Century Fox shortly after its publication, with the "On the Waterfront" screenwriter Budd Schulberg penning the adaptation. But Ronald Goldfarb, one of Kennedy's colleagues, claimed that it was abandoned because of Teamster intimidation. So "Hoffa" didn't arrive in theaters until more than three decades later. Though early casting discussions centered, ironically enough, on "The Irishman's" Pacino and Robert De Niro, the director Danny DeVito had only one choice: Nicholson, a fellow Jersey boy with whom he'd first worked on "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." (Both men were also particularly bankable in 1992, thanks to their consecutive turns as Batman villains.) Fox had high hopes for the production, with Joe Roth telling The Los Angeles Times, "Want to hear the early morning line? Nicholson's 4 to 5 to win the Oscar on this one." Nicholson did not win the Oscar he wasn't even nominated, though he was up for supporting actor that year for "A Few Good Men," released two weeks earlier. "Hoffa" needed enthusiastic reviews and solid box office to gather awards momentum, and it found neither; notices were mixed and it barely earned back half of its nearly 50 million budget (about 90 million in today's dollars), which may have been a factor in all those "no"s from the major studios that led Martin Scorsese to take "The Irishman" to Netflix. There are, to be sure, some similarities between the films. Both start at the end of the story, near Hoffa's death, and flash back to the events that brought him there; both portray Hoffa as stubborn, combustible, casually anti Italian, vehemently anti Kennedy and utterly intolerant of lateness. (Alas, Nicholson's Hoffa indulges in no ice cream sundaes.) But Hoffa, while only a supporting character in "The Irishman," is the focus of "Hoffa," which covers a much larger span of his life, particularly his early, dirty work of making the Teamsters (and himself) a force to be reckoned with. The two actors diverge markedly in their portrayals. Nicholson immersed himself in the character, taking pains to physically transform himself into the union chief, via nose putty, eyebrow lifts and other makeup tricks: "Lips clamped, jaws screwed down, forehead willed into an unlikely cube, the kisser on Jack Nicholson's Jimmy Hoffa seems sculpted with a wrench," J. Hoberman wrote in The Village Voice. Nicholson further altered his most distinctive feature, his voice, twisting its devilish purr into Hoffa's stridently nasal Midwestern twang ("Dere's a lot more dere for us"). Though Pacino replicates the labor leader's unmistakable haircut, and his raspy voice occasionally finds its way around a Detroit Chicago dialect, the actor doesn't particularly look or sound like Hoffa in "The Irishman." This is by design. Though he's played several real historical figures in recent years (Roy Cohn, Jack Kevorkian, Phil Spector, Joe Paterno), he's steered clear of outright impersonation. "You have to find the fictionalization of it in some way," he explained to The New York Times. "You have to find the drama and the character. Because otherwise, do a documentary on someone." Which is not to say he doesn't do the work. "When you research Hoffa," he told Variety, "there's so much footage on everybody, so you watch it, you study it. You think about it, you engage in it, and you really devote your time to that, who this guy is, and try to absorb him." That last idea is key; Pacino "absorbs" Hoffa, but what comes out onscreen is a combination of both their qualities. This was not always the case. Pacino and his 1970s contemporaries De Niro and Dustin Hoffman were seen, perhaps oversimplistically, as Method mad chameleons, unrecognizable from role to role. Nicholson, who achieved stardom around the same time, was more in the mold of the classic movie stars, who honed and refined a persona over the course of a career and filtered characters through it; in the decades that followed, he mostly played variations on the madman or the charming rogue (or, sometimes, both simultaneously). Thus, because his face and (especially) his voice are so familiar, and so rarely vary from character to character, the contrast in "Hoffa" is jarring this feels less like a performance than an imitation. We're always keenly aware that we're looking at Jack, playing someone else. ("He winds up doing Nicholson shtick in Hoffa makeup," Terrence Rafferty wrote in The New Yorker.) It's somehow easier to accept Pacino as Hoffa, even though his interpretation is rife with his own vocal tics and physical mannerisms, which have become more consistently omnipresent in his performances since ... well, since 1992, when he won the Oscar for "Scent of a Woman," the Oscar that Joe Roth predicted was Nicholson's to lose. Pacino is, no doubt, aided by the fact that "The Irishman" is a far superior picture to "Hoffa." The latter is handsome and ambitious, but ultimately muddled; the film, and Nicholson's performance, is so focused on externals that it never gives us a sense of the man, or his inner life. Pacino's work may not boast the painstaking authenticity of Nicholson's, but it has something more valuable: the richness and humanity of an old pro, unafraid to see this flawed man's qualities in himself.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
A humanoid with a bird like head was among the eight therianthrope figures depicted in a cave painting on the island of Sulawesi. In December 2017, Hamrullah, an archaeologist on an Indonesian government survey, was exploring a cave system in Sulawesi, a large island in central Indonesia. He noticed a tantalizing opening in the ceiling above him. A skilled spelunker, Hamrullah (who only uses one name, like many Indonesians) climbed through the gap into an uncharted chamber. There, he laid eyes on a painting that is upending our understanding of prehistoric humans. The dramatic panel of art, dating back at least 43,900 years, is "the oldest pictorial record of storytelling and the earliest figurative artwork in the world," a group of scientists said in a paper published Wednesday in Nature, although additional research will be needed to confirm the age of every character in the painting. In the story told in the scene, eight figures approach wild pigs and anoas (dwarf buffaloes native to Sulawesi). For whoever painted these figures, they represented much more than ordinary human hunters. One appears to have a large beak while another has an appendage resembling a tail. In the language of archaeology, these are therianthropes, or characters that embody a mix of human and animal characteristics. The otherworldly nature of the therianthropes also raises the possibility that they are mythical beings, or manifestations of "animal spirit helpers" that are common in shamanic beliefs, according to the study. "This scene may not be a depiction of an actual hunting scene but could be about animistic beliefs and the relationship between people and animals, or even a shamanic ritual," said Sue O'Connor, an archaeologist at Australian National University who was not involved in the study. These interpretations are speculative, however, and the original inspiration for the painting, as well as its significance to the humans who created it, is likely to remain a mystery. The rock art predates the next oldest representation of a character with a mix of human and animal figures, found in a cave in Germany, by about 4,000 years. It is also more than 20,000 years older than a hunting scene on the walls of France's Lascaux Cave. Adam Brumm, an archaeologist at Griffith University in Australia and one of the study's authors, said his team was "completely blown away" by the painting. "We had never seen anything even remotely like this before in the hundreds of cave art sites we'd documented" on this Indonesian island, Dr. Brumm said. "I immediately knew it was special and that it would be a very important site to understand the cognitive evolution of our species," said Maxime Aubert, a co author also at Griffith. The scene is inside the Maros Pangkep limestone cave system on the island's southwestern end, which has been a hot spot for archaeologists since the 1950s. Local people in the region were likely aware of the paintings long before that time, however. A modern custom of marking wooden posts with a handprint may even have "some connection with local observations of prehistoric hand stencils in nearby caves," Dr. Brumm said. The scientists determined the painting's age by performing uranium series dating on "cave popcorn," or mineral deposits that hang over three of the animal motifs in the scene. That gave it an age of at least 43,900 years old, and possibly older. "This finding is very significant because it was previously thought that figurative painting dated to a time shortly after modern humans arrived in Europe, perhaps circa 40,000 years ago, but this result shows it has an origin outside Europe," said Alistair Pike, an archaeologist at the University of Southampton in England, who was not involved in the study. However, Dr. Pike considered it "very premature" to claim that the scene represents the earliest example of such storytelling, because only the animals in the scene have been definitively dated. It's possible that the therianthropes, a vital part of the narrative, were added later. Dr. Aubert said his team thinks the therianthropes were likely painted at the same time as the animal motifs because "they are of the same tone of red and are in a similar state of preservation." Very little is known about the people who originally decorated the walls of Maros Pangkep in red pigment, in part because none of their skeletal remains have been found in the caves. They may have been related to a group of modern humans that migrated to Australia more than 50,000 years ago. Despite these unresolved mysteries, it is now abundantly clear that these humans were storytellers whose abstract paintings shed light into the origins of human cognition and spirituality. "Images of therianthropes often have complex meanings in modern religions and folklore," said Dr. Brumm, who gave the examples of werewolves and the animal headed deities of ancient Egypt. "While we can't know if this was the case in Sulawesi at least 44,000 years ago, we can point to these enigmatic images of therianthropes as the world's earliest known evidence for our ability to conceive of the existence of supernatural beings," he said, which is "a cornerstone of religious belief and experience."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Also open to all is the market held on Fridays and Sundays from mid May through November at the Charles Hotel in Cambridge, Mass., where organic produce, cheeses and jams are among the foods for sale. The Peninsula Bangkok hosts the Thiptara Craft market on the last Saturday of every month for its guests and the public. In addition to selling handicrafts, vendors offer sustainably produced coconut water as well as fruits and vegetables. And the Ritz Carlton, Charlotte, has a stand set up daily in its lobby filled with vegetables and fruits from its rooftop garden as well as from 20 local farms; guests and locals can stop by to stock up. The free mini market is a way to engage nearby residents and give guests healthful food options, said Seamus Gallagher, the director sales and marketing for the property. "We welcome the surrounding community but also want guests to be able to grab an apple or pear picked that morning on their way in or out," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
POV: GRIT 10 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). In 2006 a "mud volcano" erupted in East Java, Indonesia, engulfing more than 10 villages in slimy sediment. And it hasn't stopped since. This documentary by Cynthia Wade and Sasha Friedlander chronicles the fight to end the flow , clean up the area and hold the drilling company that has been accused of causing the eruption accountable. It focuses on Dian, who was just 6 years old when the initial disaster occurred, as she develops an interest in politics and begins to take on a leadership position in her community . KICKING AND SCREAMING (1995) Stream on Hulu; Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Noah Baumbach's debut film about a group of hyper articulate recent college graduates who can't seem to leave student life behind is often held up as a classic celebration of Generation X cynicism and aimlessness. But it is Baumbach's ability to make his characters "emotionally engaging," which Janet Maslin identified in her review of the film for The Times, that elevates the movie. Several of his recent films, including "Frances Ha" (2012) and "Mistress America" (2015), demonstrate that he remains sensitive to the existential quandaries faced by the young and meandering but "Kicking and Screaming," made when Baumbach was only a little older than his characters, shows the roots of his interest in what Maslin called being "smart, promising and temporarily adrift."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
BRUSSELS European leaders, meeting until the early hours of Friday, agreed to sign an intergovernmental treaty that would require them to enforce stricter fiscal and financial discipline in their future budgets. But efforts to get unanimity among the 27 members of the European Union, as desired by Germany, failed as Britain and Hungary refused to go along for now. Importantly, all 17 member of the euro zone agreed to the new treaty, along with six other countries who wish to join the currency union one day. Two countries, the Czech Republic and Sweden, said they would want to talk to their parties and parliaments at home before deciding, said President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, but it seemed unlikely that Sweden would join. Hungary said it wanted to examine the detail, leaving Britain isolated. Though not a perfect solution, because it could be seen as institutionalizing a two speed Europe, the intergovernmental pact could be ratified much more quickly by parliaments than a full treaty amendment. Crucially, the deal was welcomed immediately by the new head of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi. "It is a very good outcome for euro area members and it's going to be the basis for a good fiscal compact and more disciplined economic policy in euro area countries," Mr. Draghi said early Friday morning. The support of Mr. Draghi and the bank to continue to buy the bonds of troubled large countries like Italy and Spain is crucial to buy time for their economic adjustment and restructuring, to reduce their debt and avoid a collapse of the euro. The outcome was a significant defeat for David Cameron, the British prime minister, who had sought assurances to protect Britain's financial services sector in exchange for doing a deal. Mr. Sarkozy said that "David Cameron requested something we all considered unacceptable, a protocol in the treaty allowing the U.K. to be exempted for a certain number of financial regulations." The European Council president, Herman Van Rompuy, said that in addition, the leaders agreed to provide an additional 200 billion euros to the International Monetary Fund to help increase a "firewall" of money in European bailout funds to help cover Italy and Spain. He also said a permanent 500 billion European Stability Mechanism would be put into effect a year early, by July 2012, and for a year, would run alongside the existing and temporary 440 billion euro European Financial Stability Facility, also increasing funds for the firewall. The leaders also agreed that private sector lenders to euro zone nations would not automatically face losses, as had been the plan in the event of another future bailout. When Greece's debt was finally restructured, the private sector suffered, making investors more anxious about other vulnerable economies. Mr. Sarkozy said that the institutions of the European Union would be able to police the new pact, though Britain may dispute that. After the agreement on the treaty was reached early on Friday morning in Europe, Asian markets remained noncommittal, with the Nikkei 225 down about 1.4 percent, about where they were before the news. On Thursday, the euro currency fell against the dollar, and the borrowing costs of the euro region's two most closely watched convalescents, Italy and Spain, shot higher in bond trading. President Obama said on Thursday that the European leaders' efforts to reach a long term "fiscal compact where everybody's playing by the same rules" were "all for the good." Yet he added, "But there's a short term crisis that has to be resolved to make sure that markets have confidence that Europe stands behind the euro." The Fed's preferred measure of inflation surged again in October amid rising food and energy prices. Stocks slip as interest rates rise, while jobless claims drop to their lowest point since 1969. The best hope for providing that shot of confidence has been seen as the European Central Bank. But the bank's president, Mr. Draghi, at a news conference in Frankfurt on Thursday, seemed to back away from signals he sent last week that a grand bailout bargain might be in the works a big infusion from the central bank in exchange for a commitment to greater fiscal discipline from the European heads of state. On Thursday, Mr. Draghi said that he was "surprised" that a speech he made last week had been widely interpreted as meaning the central bank stood ready to shore up weak European Union members like Italy and Spain by buying many more of their bonds or to possibly work in concert with the International Monetary Fund. He played down the I.M.F. idea Thursday as too "legally complicated" and said it might violate the spirit of the euro treaty. Many analysts were stunned by what appeared to be Mr. Draghi's turnaround, which they said would make it even more crucial for the European heads of state to forge a market calming master plan at their summit meeting as unlikely as such an outcome is starting to look. . "While Draghi had opened the door for more E.C.B. support last week, he closed it again today," Carsten Brzeski, an economist at the Dutch bank ING, wrote in a note to clients. "According to Draghi, it was up to politicians to solve the debt crisis." For now, Mr. Draghi appears to be leaving any government bailouts to the heads of state, while focusing the European Central Bank's efforts on the less controversial business of keeping money flowing through commercial banks. The main step the central bank took Thursday, which buoyed stock markets before Mr. Draghi held his news conference, was to cut its main interest rate to 1 percent, from 1.25 percent. That returned the rate to the record low level that had prevailed from 2009 until April. Mr. Draghi did not rule out the possibility that the rate could go even lower. The central bank also announced additional measures to aid euro zone banks suffering from a dearth of the short term lending and to avert a credit squeeze. The European Central Bank said it would start giving commercial banks loans for three years, compared with a maximum of about one year previously. Banks will be able to borrow as much as they want at the benchmark interest rate. They must provide collateral, but the central bank on Thursday also broadened the range of securities it accepts, which will help banks that have large amounts of assets that are hard to sell. The central bank also eased its requirements for reserves that banks must maintain, which frees more cash. In a sign of how badly banks need the money, 34 institutions took advantage of a new lower interest rate offered by the European Central Bank in conjunction with other central banks for three month loans denominated in dollars. Earlier Thursday, the Bank of England held its benchmark rate steady at a record low 0.5 percent, after the bank's governor warned of growing risks for Britain's economy from the euro area. Mr. Draghi, who took over at the European Central Bank from Jean Claude Trichet on Nov. 1, has wasted little time reversing rate increases that Mr. Trichet oversaw in April and July. Those increases were widely criticized as an overreaction to tentative signs of inflation and may have helped hasten a widespread economic slowdown in Europe. The economy of the 17 countries in the euro currency union is almost stagnant, growing just 0.2 percent in the third quarter, with unemployment at 10.3 percent. Economists expect the euro zone economy to slip into recession early next year if it has not happened already. Declining output makes the debt crisis even worse by cutting tax receipts. The E.C.B. lowered its growth projections Thursday, saying that output could fall as much as 0.4 percent next year.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
Q. How do you crop an image in the Mac Preview program? I don't see a cropping icon in the tool bar. Or do I need another program? A. You can crop photos, graphics and PDF files right in Preview, the Mac's built in image editing and viewer program. To crop a photo or graphic open on your screen, you must first select the area of the image you want to keep. Drag the mouse cursor over the part of the photo you want, which creates a dotted line around the area. Click and drag the blue dots on the corners and center of the outlined box on the screen to adjust the selected portion of the image and then press the Command and K keys to delete everything outside dotted lines. (As an alternative, you can also click on Tools in the Preview menu bar and choose Crop.) If you want to trim away parts of a PDF file in Preview, go to the Tools menu and choose Rectangular Selection (instead of Text Selection) and then drag the cursor around the area of the file you want to use. You can then press the Command and K keys (or choose Crop from the Tools menu) to trim away the unwanted parts.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. When Nationals catcher Raudy Read connected with a pitch in a game against the Mets on Field 2 last week, he watched it rocket out to left field. He believed it was a home run, and he trotted all the way to second base before realizing the ball had actually tailed foul. When he returned to home plate, teammates laughed. Mets catcher Travis d'Arnaud welcomed him. "Did you know it was foul?" d'Arnaud said. "Nobody told me it was foul," Read said. "You need some water?" d'Arnaud said. "We'll wait for you." D'Arnaud knew what it felt like to have others waiting on him. Nearly a year since he tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow and had Tommy John surgery, it was his first time catching a live game this spring. His employers were anxious to see him throw. Behind the backstop, in a grandstand composed of five aluminum bleachers, the Mets owner Fred Wilpon sat in the top row. General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen, the assistant G.M. Allard Baird and several team scouts eyed d'Arnaud's every move. It was the latest milestone for d'Arnaud in a long journey back, one that he hopes will lead to a position on the 25 man roster for Opening Day. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. "It felt so good to be finally back out there," d'Arnaud said. "To work with pitchers again, it was a lot of fun." Read more: For the Mets, It Could Get Crowded Behind Home Plate D'Arnaud was no stranger to rehabilitation. Since his major league debut in 2013, his injuries have included: a concussion, a broken hand, a rotator cuff strain, a hyperextended elbow and last April's elbow operation. For this most recent recovery, he did not start throwing again until August, and hitting did not start until December. He returned to the Grapefruit League lineup last week as a designated hitter for a pair of games, but he has yet to make the next step of catching in a regular stadium game rather than a side field. He was anxious in his first at bats of the spring last weekend, though his legs passed one test when he scored from first against the Cardinals. His lungs were another story: He was winded when he slid across the plate and looked for help from a teammate coming to bat. "I was definitely gassed," d'Arnaud said. "Took me a while to get up." As d'Arnaud has worked his way back since his injury last April, plenty has changed around him. Van Wagenen replaced Sandy Alderson as general manager, and in December the Mets signed Wilson Ramos to be the team's starting catcher. Just before spring training, the team also brought back Devin Mesoraco, a bulwark who was acquired by trade from the Reds last season and made an niche for himself by catching 21 starts made by pitcher Jacob deGrom during his Cy Young Award winning season. Manager Mickey Callaway asserted at the start of camp that he would not rule out carrying three catchers on the team's 25 man roster. He also made clear that despite d'Arnaud's athleticism and ability to play other positions like third base which he memorably did, sort of, in 2017 or the outfield, he would be limited to catcher and designated hitter so as not to risk a setback to his arm. It was false advertising on Saturday when the lineup posted on the wall inside the main entrance at Roger Dean Chevrolet Stadium in Jupiter, Fla., listed d'Arnaud at third base. He served as the designated hitter that afternoon. "I'm just happy to be playing today," he said. Beyond that, it's still not entirely clear where he'll fit in with the Mets when the regular season begins. Last April, d'Arnaud was splitting time at catcher with Kevin Plawecki, who has since moved on to the Cleveland Indians. D'Arnaud, who played all 14 postseason games during the Mets' run to the 2015 World Series, started four of the first 10 games last season, going 3 for 15 with a home run and three R.B.I. Still, there was concern about his arm when he allowed seven stolen bases without catching a single runner. He experienced elbow discomfort, alerted the team, and, after the tear was discovered in New York, his season was done. Support came in from family members, his wife and former teammates. He maintained that he stayed confident in his belief that he could come back to his position. "I had a good foundation," he said. "I never doubted it at all." There is evidence of that support here, too. On Thursday, when d'Arnaud completed his game duties, Van Wagenen went up to the dugout, and exchanged a fist bump with him through a black chain link fence.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
On Thursday, the Guangdong Song Dance Ensemble from southern China made its United States debut. But the experience of watching the company's "Dragon Boat Racing" at the David H. Koch Theater would have been familiar to anyone who has caught another of the state run Chinese troupes that have visited the Koch in recent years. What they bring are kitschy spectacles, melodramas told through broad acting and ballet conflated with acrobatics, all underlined by formulaic music, Chinese and Western. "Dragon Boat Racing" is distinct in being about music. It takes its title from a Cantonese song and tells a story (by Tang Dong) of that work's creation in the 1930s. The hero, Nian (Li Xing), spends a lot of time with musical manuscript paper in his hands, tapping it as he gets ideas. His efforts in composition are entwined with thwarted romance. He's in love with Ling (Li Yanchao, who is not related to Mr. Li), and she with him, but his father makes him marry someone else. Nian's younger male cousin and musical collaborator secretly loves Ling, too, yet by the end of the first act, they all have bigger problems: an invasion by the Japanese.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The "Peanuts" character, one of the most recognizable figures in American pop culture, is being retired after more than 30 years of appearing in print ads, TV commercials, marketing materials and on the sides of MetLife's blimps at sports events. No more big nosed beagle in the flight cap and goggles chasing the Red Baron on Metlife's airship. No more television commercials featuring a smiling Snoopy navigating life's treacherous waters to sell insurance. Cuddly Snoopy hitting a home run? Out. MetLife, one of the largest insurance companies with 100 million customers worldwide, said the move is part of an effort to update its corporate emblem for international competition. The global chief marketing officer for MetLife, Esther Lee, announced the change on Thursday, saying that Snoopy was adopted as a symbol in 1985 to make the company seem "more friendly and approachable during a time when insurance companies were seen as cold and distant." "We have great respect for these iconic characters," Ms. Lee said in the announcement. "However, as we focus on our future, it's important that we associate our brand directly with the work we do and the partnership we have with our customers." The company said it wanted a "clean, modern" design that included the colors blue and green to "represent life, renewal and energy." They form what it has called "the partnership M." The broader MetLife palette was expanded to include a range of vibrant secondary colors, reflecting "the diverse lives of its customers," a company statement said. There is also a new tagline, "MetLife: Navigating life together," replacing the old "Get Met. It Pays." Dean Crutchfield, an independent brand consultant in New York, said that Snoopy was relevant at the time that it was introduced, but that the change was a smart move that recognized the company's changing business. "Snoopy was brought in to connect emotionally with consumers," he said, but was no longer helping as a brand. "It is no longer relevant to its target audience." But now Snoopy and his Sopwith Camel are grounded, at least when it comes to selling life insurance. The company called the decision the "most significant change" to the brand in decades. Ms. Lee, who joined MetLife last year, conducted research among more than 55,000 customers worldwide and found them "overwhelmed" by the pace of global change. MetLife had to evolve, Ms. Lee said. "What we did want to figure out, as we started to become this more purpose built, modern company, is do those characters go beyond being friendly and approachable?" she said. The answer turned out to be no, MetLife discovered in its research. Consumers thought the "Peanuts" characters were friendly and approachable, Ms. Lee said, but did not associate them with traits like leadership and responsibility. Nor did the characters affect interest in buying insurance. The research also asked customers point blank if they would mind if MetLife stopped using Snoopy and the gang. "People are indifferent from us moving away from the characters," Ms. Lee said, adding that more than 1,000 other brands around the world use Peanuts characters in their marketing. "They basically don't care." The life insurance giant has over the years tried to find a way to make its business, overshadowed by the terms "death benefits" and "beneficiaries," more approachable, and for years Snoopy and other Peanuts characters provided the warm and fuzzy. There had already been changes afoot at MetLife in the era of social media. In 2014, the company introduced an online campaign to change perceptions of the life insurance industry, encouraging customers to share the ways they live for their loved ones by using WhoILiveFor. The campaign's centerpiece featured a collection of video clips not of the Peanuts characters, but of real people with diverse races, partnerships and backgrounds. Corporations are viewed as more approachable these days, Ms. Lee said, and consumers are no longer intimidated by them, she added. "So many companies are actually reaching them one on one, tweeting back and forth with them."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
SAN FRANCISCO Snap lost millions of users last year after an unpopular redesign of Snapchat, its ephemeral messaging app. Now that exodus appears to be slowing. The company said on Tuesday that it had stanched the flow of people leaving its platform. Snap's daily active users totaled 186 million in the fourth quarter, the same as in the previous quarter and down just one million compared with a year earlier, after two consecutive quarters of falling user numbers. In addition, Snap's revenue rose 36 percent to 390 million, while its net loss narrowed to 192 million. "Change is always difficult, and this past year was no exception," Evan Spiegel, Snap's chief executive, said in prepared remarks about the company's earnings. The financial report, which sent Snap's shares soaring more than 20 percent in after hours trading, follows months of turbulence for the company. Since going public in 2017, Snap has been dealing with increasing competition from Facebook, including its core social network and its other apps, such as Instagram and WhatsApp. Last year, Snap redesigned its app, effectively separating social and media into two sections. Its users soon revolted, with celebrities like Kylie Jenner criticizing the change. A long awaited update to Snapchat's Android app has also yet to be fully rolled out. More recently, Snap has endured a wave of executive departures. The company said in January that its chief financial officer, Tim Stone, would leave, less than a year after he was hired last May. Imran Khan, Snap's chief strategy officer, stepped down in September. That same month, the company lost Nick Bell, its vice president for content. Its head of hardware, Sahil Sharma, exited in December. On top of this, Snap is under scrutiny from the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department. The company said late last year that it had responded to subpoenas from those agencies regarding disclosures it made ahead of its initial public offering. In an earnings call on Tuesday, Mr. Spiegel said he planned to take time with the search for a new chief financial officer "and really get it right." He said Snapchat users on Apple devices were starting to return to the platform and daily active use had increased among those people. Snapchat's Android app update is also gradually being introduced to a small set of users, allowing them to open the app 20 percent faster, he said. Mr. Spiegel estimated that there were roughly two billion Android users who do not use Snapchat and that luring even a small percentage of them to the app would "make a real difference." Lara Sweet, Snap's interim chief financial officer, said the company was "cautiously optimistic" that user numbers would not decline in the current quarter. In total, Snap said that it anticipated revenue of 285 million to 310 million during the current quarter. Still, Snap remains small compared with Facebook's photo sharing app Instagram, which has been rapidly gaining new users. Facebook announced during its earnings call last week that Instagram had 500 million daily active users of Stories, a feature that lets people share photos and videos that have a life span of 24 hours. Snapchat had pioneered the Stories feature. Wall Street analysts said they were relieved at Snap's financial results. "This was by far the most hated stock of all of the internet, by 10 miles," Brent Thill, a managing director at Jefferies who follows tech companies, said of Snap. "What they did was a step in the right direction. They're not out of this yet, but this is step one."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
We may be in the clear when it comes to heat domes, but it's still really hot. More than half of the country has had temperatures in the 90s in the last week, prompting many people to find relief in the cool, crisp breeze of an air conditioner. But in the next few years, the way air conditioners work could change. Last month, representatives from nearly 200 countries worked on a new environment agreement to regulate the use of HFCs, or hydrofluorocarbons. These chemical compounds are responsible for keeping you cool on hot summer days, in air conditioners and refrigerators. And even though you might not have heard of them, environmentalists, government officials and scientists say an agreement to limit HFCs represents a significant step in the fight to stave off the worst effects of global warming. That's because like other greenhouse gases, HFCs contribute to global warming. But mostly, they're not coming from your air conditioner, though air conditioning poses other environmental problems. So we're here to answer some questions you might have about HFCs, air conditioning and this new treaty. HFCs represent a small portion of total greenhouse gas emissions, but they trap thousands of times as much heat in the atmosphere as carbon dioxide. Good news: If your air conditioner is working properly, it won't release HFCs into the atmosphere. Some HFCs are released during the manufacturing process, if your air conditioner or refrigerator has a leak, or when you throw a unit away, possibly causing some molecules to escape, especially if it's disposed of improperly (Here's some guidance on proper disposal). The United States has also put regulations in place to phase out the use of HFCs in other areas like aerosols and building foam. So can I use my air conditioner guilt free? Not quite. Air conditioning presents other problems: As of 2009, nearly 90 percent of American homes have air conditioners, which account for about 6 percent of all the country's residential energy use. All that air conditioning releases about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. And once developers could rely on heating and cooling technologies, they often built less energy efficient homes, which means that you have to use more air conditioning or heating to get to the temperature you want. What's being done about HFCs? Representatives from the same countries who negotiated the Paris agreement met in Vienna to discuss a plan for phasing out HFCs. Any deal reached in these talks would be an amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which phased out CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons) only a few years after scientists published results showing the harm those chemicals were doing to the ozone layer. The United States, which already has some regulations in place to limit HFCs, wants to begin phasing out production and use in 2019 in developed countries, and in 2021 in developing countries, though some developing countries, like India, would prefer a longer time frame beginning in 15 years. These restrictions, they say, would place an unfair economic burden on their citizens, especially as air conditioning use is expected to skyrocket there in the next few decades. However, the Environmental Protection Agency said that because another chemical compound, HCFCs (hydrochlorofluorocarbons), are still commonly used in the developing world, it would be better if they skipped ahead to the more environmentally friendly replacements, rather than setting up a whole economy based on HFCs and then making the switch. HCFCs are not currently widely used in the United States and production and import here were largely halted last year. But it's so hot. Will I have to give up my air conditioning? No, although some experts say that there may be a time in the future when the climate in some places will be so hot that air conditioning won't be able to maintain comfortable temperatures.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
MADRID Spain's borrowing costs approached record highs on Monday as investors fretted over how the government would find additional money to bail out Bankia, the country's largest mortgage lender, and other troubled banks. Shares in Bankia plunged almost 30 percent early Monday before recovering somewhat, closing down 13.4 percent. Trading had been suspended Friday before the bank's board called for an additional 19 billion euros, or almost 24 billion, of government money after reviewing the latest losses. Stocks were down broadly in Spain. That dragged down markets elsewhere in Europe, despite some optimism about weekend polls in Greece indicating that political parties might be able to form a government after June 17 elections. If that happened, the Greek parties favoring continued European aid might be less likely to exit the euro zone. In Spain, investors are increasingly worried about the banking industry, with 1 trillion euros in deposits, and whether it will need a bigger bailout, one that Europe cannot easily afford. The prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, sought to counter those concerns, vowing Monday that "there will be no Spanish banking rescue." Still, most analysts expect that ballooning loan defaults, coupled with dangerously high borrowing costs for the Spanish government, will eventually lead Madrid to seek emergency financing for its banks from the European Union. The so called risk premium demanded by investors for holding 10 year Spanish government bonds, instead of German bonds, reached 5.1 percentage points Monday, the biggest differential since the introduction of the euro. While the government could seek to raise cash on the bond markets, it now would have to pay interest rates near a record. On Monday, the yield on Spanish 10 year bonds rose as high as 6.5 percent, close to the 7 percent level that led to bailouts in Greece, Ireland and Portugal. "If Spain wants to calm the markets and reduce the risk premium, the only possibility seems to be to appeal for help to the European institutions," said Arturo Bris, a Spanish economist who teaches finance at the International Institute of Management Development, known as I.M.D., in Switzerland. "It's just too late for the government to make strong statements in order to appease the markets." Daragh Quinn, a banking analyst in London for Nomura, on Monday described the Bankia collapse as "grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre and unprecedented." The phrase was coined as the acronym G.U.B.U. in Ireland, where the economy was sunk by the collapse of its banking sector and received an 85 billion euro bailout in late 2010 from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund. As investors seek havens from the euro zone's troubles, Switzerland which is not part of the European Union and uses its own currency, the franc has begun considering new controls to stop a destabilizing inflow of foreign currency into the country. The Swiss National Bank worries that too much money rushing in would bid up the value of the franc so high that Switzerland's industries would have trouble competing on global markets. In Spain, Luis de Guindos, the economy minister, had forecast this month that the cost of rescuing Bankia and other Spanish banks would not exceed 15 billion euros. Mr. Quinn, however, estimated Monday that recapitalizing Spanish banks would cost up to an additional 60 billion euros. Madrid does not have that kind of money, having depleted the funds previously set aside to cover smaller banks. Bankia has already received a 4.5 billion euro emergency loan, bringing the total cost of its rescue to 23.5 billion euros, including the 19 billion euros requested Friday. Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. The Spanish government seized control of Bankia on May 9, two days after its executive chairman quit. On Friday, the bank's board revised its accounts, posting a 2011 loss of almost 3 billion euros instead of the 309 million euros in profit reported in February. The government could soon get saddled with three other banks CatalunyaCaixa, Novacaixagalicia and Banco de Valencia that have been put up for sale, so far unsuccessfully. The Spanish prime minister said on Monday that the government had not discussed its banking problems with the European Central Bank. That followed weekend news reports suggesting that because Spain hoped to avoid a European bailout in particular the conditions that creditors might set in return for emergency financing Madrid would instead try to rely on more central bank financing. The European Central Bank has already helped sustain ailing banks in Spain and across Europe by providing them with low cost, three year loans. But the idea that it would be willing to do much more on its own was dismissed by Edward Hugh, an economist in Barcelona who has been tracking the financial crisis. "The E.C.B. could be involved, but only as part of a broader European solution," he added. Failure to rescue Bankia could turn the trickle of domestic money leaving Spain into a full fledged flight. Bankia has also become a political liability for the government, partly because it failed to recognize earlier the extent of the banking problem. Investors have lost billions of euros in the shares of Bankia since they were publicly listed in July. The offering, which raised 3.1 billion euros, was strongly backed by the Socialist administration as part of its efforts to bolster the savings banks, or cajas, with more private capital. The Socialists, now the main opposition party, vowed over the weekend to oppose any further use of public money to head off Bankia's collapse until a full investigation could determine responsibility for the bank's misstated accounts. Still, the conservative government has a parliamentary majority, and Alberto Ruiz Gallardon, the justice minister, suggested that regulators should wait for "the opportune moment" to review Bankia's demise from a successful stock sale to the biggest bailout in Spanish banking history. "We have to handle these times thinking about what is best for Spain," Mr. Ruiz Gallardon said Sunday in a radio interview.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business

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