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Re "Ask Not What Trump Can Do for You" (Opinion, June 16): I appreciate the sentiments expressed in Michelle Cottle's incisive piece about the Trump rally in Tulsa planned for Saturday. She writes: "The president is not content simply to endanger the lives of his supporters. He is demanding they sign away their rights for the privilege." I would add, "The president is allowing his supporters to endanger all of us." The spread of the virus will not be confined to those who choose to attend the rally. This is knowingly placing many Americans in harm's way and will likely lead to additional deaths. Officials of the city of Tulsa have asked the president to cancel the rally or hold it outdoors. I would urge the city to forbid the use of the indoor venue, or any venue in which the C.D.C. guidelines for social distancing were not enforced, on the basis of public endangerment. What are we to make of President Trump's pronouncement "If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any"? For the president, ignorance is bliss. In essence, if we do not have the facts, he can believe whatever he wants.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Stefan Weisman and his partner, Sean Mills, each have a rent stabilized apartment in New York. Together they bought a house in Big Indian, N.Y., in the Catskills. Some New York City renters are skipping the typical first rung on the urban homeownership ladder: Instead of investing in an apartment, they are buying a country house. Disappointed by what their budget will buy in the city, they are still living the American dream of having a place of their own, if only on the weekends, in the Catskills, at the Jersey Shore or in Connecticut. For less than 350,000 an amount that barely buys a studio in brownstone Brooklyn these days they are finding that they can afford homes with three bedrooms or more on several acres of land, sometimes on lakefront property, or with a pool. For those with as much as 2 million to spend, the options range from turn of the century mansions to sprawling estates. Graeme Sibirsky and China Aroh Sibirsky are both artists and educators who live in a three bedroom apartment they rent in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. With a 600,000 budget, they initially searched for a house of a similar size to buy deeper in Brooklyn, looking as far as Mill Basin, Canarsie and East New York. But within their budget, they found that the places they could afford were smaller than their current apartment. "If we are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars, we need to feel we upgraded, not downgraded, our living space," Mr. Sibirsky said. Switching gears, they cut their budget in half and began searching for vacation houses upstate, in Sullivan County and Orange County, N.Y., and the Poconos in Pennsylvania. "We wanted to start investing in real estate, so we decided to start with a vacation home that was more affordable, can be rented on Airbnb and would be fun to enjoy ourselves, and with family and friends," he said. No one tracks the number of second home buyers who continue to rent in the city. But real estate agents in weekend destinations throughout the Hudson Valley and other second home markets within an easy drive of New York City, including Bucks County, Pa., Litchfield County, Conn., and the Jersey Shore, report an uptick in sales from urbanites eager to get into the market while interest rates remain low. "We're seeing this now more than ever before because prices are historically high in the city," said Kathy Braddock, a managing director of the New York City office of William Raveis, which also has offices in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Maine and Vermont. While there always have been New York City renters looking to buy weekend homes, she noted, demand has been so strong that the company is introducing a new division this month called Raveis Escapes, to cater to New Yorkers shopping for their second home first. "A lot of hard working young people can't amass a down payment that's substantial enough" to purchase something in the city, she said, noting that many co op boards require sizable liquid assets in addition to hefty down payments and closing costs. "But they still want the benefits of homeownership." Gary DiMauro's real estate agency upstate caters to city dwellers in search of a bucolic escape, with offices in Tivoli, Hudson, Catskill and Rhinebeck. "The city has boom and bust periods in which people feel locked out," he said. This time around, he said, the heated New York City market is sending not only first time home buyers with tight budgets his way; it is also sending people who can afford multimillion dollar apartments in the city but are simply discouraged by their options. One client that he works with "could spend 3 or 4 million for an apartment in the city," he said. But for what he and his family need, "they would have to spend 6 or 7 million." Instead, they are renting in the city and looking for a second home upstate in the 2 million range. "I asked him, 'Do you have any reservations about buying a second home first instead of making what would traditionally be the typical purchase of your primary residence first and then look to a second home?' " Mr. DiMauro said. "He said, 'If I feel that I find what I want up here, at a price that is fair market value, I'm fine with the math.' " From left, Mr. Mills and Mr. Weisman at their New York apartments. Photographs by Preston Schlebusch for The New York Times Last year, Chris and Aileen Bruner, who rent a three bedroom on the Upper West Side but had previously owned homes when they lived in other cities, decided to buy a weekend house in the village of Tuxedo Park, N.Y., a gated community. Less than 40 miles from Midtown in a rural corner of Orange County, it has houses ranging from 550,000 five bedrooms to multimillion dollar mansions situated around three lakes, according to Robert Silvay, a salesman at Tuxedo Park Fine Homes. In Manhattan, said Mr. Bruner, who works in the financial industry, "We can afford the cash outlay to rent a nice apartment but not necessarily the capital and long term commitment to buy a similar sized apartment." The couple bought a 1.75 million lakefront three bedroom on nearly two and a half acres that came with an electric powered boat. Now, on weekends and summer breaks, they kayak, swim and play tennis or golf with their 10 year old son at the local country club. "Buying there has been a great value from a lifestyle perspective," Mr. Bruner said. Mr. Silvay of Tuxedo Park Fine Homes said he is seeing a lot more people like the Bruners coming up to shop for weekend homes. "Half of them are renters, which is more than we've seen before," Mr. Silvay said. "Most people are in the market to find a place to take the kids away from their two bedroom apartment in Manhattan." Down at the Jersey Shore, Diane Turton Realtors, with offices up and down the coast, reports a 10 percent increase in New York City buyers this season. "These are folks who are renters in Manhattan and are buying at the Jersey Shore for weekend getaways," said Perry Beneduce, the firm's marketing director. "They find it easier to get to than the Hamptons, and more affordable. They want to be able to jump in their cars at a moment's notice and get to the beach in an hour." "You have many consumers that really have a drive to purchase their primary residence, but it seems so far away," said Jonathan J. Miller, the author of Douglas Elliman's market reports and the president of the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. Even though plenty of urban professionals are making good money, he said, "they're relegated to their lot in housing life for the moment, because they can't necessarily compete with more affluent consumers." Outside the city, these renters are finding not only that their budgets will go a lot farther, but also that less cash is required upfront, and there is less pressure to rush into a purchase. And though real estate prices in some second home markets have risen, they are still a relative bargain compared to the city. "It sounds crazy; you don't own but you're already planning a vacation house," said Adam Friedman, 35, who sells medical devices and has rented in Manhattan for 12 years. "But let's be honest. What I can afford in the city would be through a co op, and the requirements are tough. They want more liquidity than I have right now." Mr. Friedman decided to begin searching for a weekend home after visiting some friends upstate who had made a similar move. Recently, he has been eyeing property along Connecticut's southeastern coast. "Eight rooms. Four bed, two and a half bath ranch style, with a one car garage, for a whopping 309,000," he said, reading from a listing in Groton, Conn., he had jotted down recently. "Come on. Where's my checkbook?" For that price in Manhattan, he said, you would be lucky to get two parking spots. They had all but given up on the idea of formally moving in together when Mr. Mills visited a friend near Woodstock, N.Y., and persuaded Mr. Weisman to start looking for a home to buy upstate. "When we found out interest rates were really low and the Catskills was a good deal, I kind of pushed forth and we went for it," said Mr. Mills. In February, the couple bought a 188,000 two bedroom, log sided cabin on eight wooded acres in Big Indian, N.Y. There are fruit trees in the front yard and a creek in the back. Nearby are a lake for swimming and boating in the summer, and a ski area for the winter. When they are not there, the couple said, they rent the cabin out on Airbnb, which helps them cover the mortgage. "It was the solution to our stalemate about moving in together," said Mr. Mills. "He loves Hell's Kitchen. I love Brooklyn. We both love our house in the Catskills even more." First time home buyers shopping for a weekend getaway need to consider repairs and general upkeep, including keeping the lawn cut during the summer and the driveway cleared when it snows in the winter. "When you rent, or have been in an apartment, for years, there's that 'Oh my gosh' wake up call," said Anne Loftus, an executive recruiter based in Manhattan. " 'Where's my super?' " Ms. Loftus and her husband, Michael, an investment professional, both in their early 50s, sold their Upper East Side two bedroom of 14 years in 2007, downsizing to a one bedroom rental. Five years ago they bought a four bedroom with a pool and privet hedges on an acre in Bridgehampton, N.Y., for less than 2 million. Though it wasn't the first time they owned a home, maintaining a weekend house was an adjustment after years of apartment living. "The first couple of years, if the alarm went off, I'd drive out there," said Ms. Loftus. But over the years, they've developed ties with neighbors who keep an eye on the house for them during the workweek, as well as a list of contractors they can call if something goes awry. City folk should also be prepared for up close encounters with country creatures. A few weeks ago, after a meteor shower lit up the sky with trails of light, Mr. Weisman heard a commotion outside the sun porch in the Catskills. "I turned on the light and it was a big black bear pulling at the bird feeder," he said. "It was scary. I had not seen a bear in my life. I was literally two or three feet away from it." After spotting evidence around the fruit trees in the front yard that the bear had been back, he decided to call the town hall and ask for advice. "The lady basically laughed at me. She said, 'It's the Catskills, everybody has bears in their front yard.' "	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
All ornate appearances to the contrary, the gothic is a thrifty form. Its first, and essential, ingredients, according to the scholar Mary Ann Doane, are simply "woman plus habitation." No special effects needed; the horror of a woman finding fear where she expected safety is enough to power an entire genre. Variations abound. Add a deranged, possibly homicidal house and you have Shirley Jackson's "The Haunting of Hill House." Throw in some fey, freaky children and you get "The Turn of the Screw." Merge the house and the woman watch the woman experience her own body as a haunted house, a place of sudden, inexplicable terrors and you are reading the blazingly talented Carmen Maria Machado. Machado's previous book, the short story collection "Her Body and Other Parties" (2017), a finalist for the National Book Award, is one of the most original and exuberantly celebrated debuts of recent years. The stories are louche, mischievous and very queer fairy tales scrambled with fan fiction and body horror. In "Difficult at Parties," a woman attends a housewarming. She pokes around the house, exploring, until her host stops her. "That room is being renovated," she is warned. "There's no floor. You could go in there, but you'd go straight down to the cellar." Welcome to the House of Machado. Proceed directly into the forbidden room; enjoy the view as the floor gives way. Her new book, "In the Dream House," is a memoir of her frightening and abusive relationship with another woman while in graduate school. It is a book in shards. Each chapter hews to the conventions of a different genre: road trip, romance novel, creature feature, lesbian pulp novel, stoner comedy. The technique borrows a bit from Raymond Queneau's 1947 "Exercises in Style," 99 retellings of the same story in different genres. What could seem gimmicky I confess I braced myself at first quickly feels like the only natural way to tell the story of a couple. What relationship exists in purely one genre? What life? 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. This book was one of our most anticipated titles of November. See the full list. Machado has described herself as a "form vampire," obsessed with structures, real and narrative, and with mingling techniques from fiction and nonfiction. This book is a hive of frenetic experimentation, tactics and tricks; nested essays on film scholarship, queer villains in Disney films, "Star Trek," the campaigns addressing domestic violence in lesbian relationships in the early '80s. It's narrated in the second person, with Machado addressing her younger self, tenderly and severely. Each section comes heavily footnoted, indicating the appearance of traditional folk tale motifs taboos, odd coincidences. There is something anxious, and very intriguing, in the degree of experimentation in this memoir, in its elaborately titivated sentences, its thicket of citations. The flurry the excess feels deliberate, and summons up the image of the writer holding a ring of keys, trying each of them in turn to unlock a resistant story, to open a door she might be hesitant to enter. ("There's no floor. You could go in there, but you'd go straight down to the cellar.") In the beginning, of course, Machado cannot believe her good fortune. The woman she falls for (who remains unnamed) has white blonde hair and is "that mix of butch and femme that drives you crazy." She is not Machado's first female lover, but it's the first time Machado has been loved in that way, with ravenous, mutual obsession. "Sometimes when you look at your phone, she has sent you something stunningly filthy, and there is a kick of want between your legs. Sometimes when you catch her looking at you, you feel like the luckiest person in the whole world." The look of love turns quickly to scrutiny, and then to blame. "Sometimes when you look at your phone, she has sent you something stunningly cruel, and there is a kick of fear between your shoulder blades. Sometimes when you catch her looking at you, you feel like she's determining the best way to take you apart." The woman reveals herself in all her paranoia, possessiveness and fury. She rages, calls Machado names, throws things at her shoes, a suitcase forces her to barricade herself in a bathroom. The woman retreats and returns later, undressed, warm and seductive, to ask, "Why are you crying?" Her voice is so concerned, so sweet that "your heart splits open like a peach." There will be an end to all this even a happy ending. Machado lets her younger self glimpse into the future, at love again, marriage to a beautiful woman, "a sun soaked apartment." But she remains bedeviled by her questions. "Was she trained to find you, or were you trained to be found? Was it the fact that you'd already been tenderized like a pork chop by: never having been properly in love, being told you should be grateful for anything you get as a fat woman, getting weird messages that relationships are about fighting and being at odds with each other?" This is to say nothing of the questions she imagines others might ask: "Maybe it was rough, but was it really abusive? What does that mean, anyway?" "In the Dream House" is written into the silence surrounding violence in queer relationships, the silences around emotional and psychological abuse. Did lesbians of the past "hurl inkwells and figurines?" Machado asks. "Did any of them wonder if what had happened to them had any name at all?" She begins to cobble together a language for what she has experienced. What queer abuse feels most like, she realizes, is homophobia, the same way abuse in heterosexual relationships can feel like sexism: "I am doing this because I can get away with it; I can get away with it because you exist on some cultural margin, some societal periphery." Machado repeatedly returns to the idea of the archive the places where stories are enshrined, entered into an official record. The word itself refers to a kind of structure; "archive" derives from the ancient Greek arkheion, "house of the ruler." There was no such record for Machado to draw on. "I toss the stone of my story into a vast crevice; measure the emptiness by its small sound," she writes. That is, of course, how she begins the book. At its conclusion, what does she leave us but a library in miniature those long invisible, long suppressed stories now culled from every quarter of history, and explored in every conceivable genre a living archive of her own loving, idiosyncratic design.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
THE Nissan Leaf, a mildly futuristic four door hatchback, arrives as so much a pioneer that the systems necessary to keep it moving down the road are still being put in place. The process is a bit like the progression of the first transcontinental railroad: tracks are being laid as a locomotive sits steaming impatiently behind. Here comes the people's electric car, America, ready or not. The Leaf's equivalent of those unfinished tracks is a public charging infrastructure, the lack of which is probably the most serious limitation of all purely electric cars. For owners whose trips are within 30 or 40 miles of home (or who can use a charging station at the workplace), this presents no problem. Fast charging stations, a necessity for longer treks, are few and far between now, but a network of them are planned to begin operating within the next year or so. Leaf buyers who buy the optional 700 Quick Charge Port will be able to use a direct current fast charger to replenish their batteries to 80 percent of capacity within 30 minutes and continue on their way. The next quickest solution, Nissan's 220 volt home charging units, cost 2,200 installed and can give a full charge in eight hours, the company says. The majority of public charging stations planned will also use this so called Level II charging protocol. With the battery topped off, the Leaf a midsize car as defined by the E.P.A. has a range of 100 miles, Nissan says. In my testing, I never dared to drive the car that far, mostly because its dashboard range meter said it would not be possible. After charging overnight in my garage on a conventional 110 volt household circuit, the Leaf's meter never showed more than 88 miles of possible range; once, it promised as little as 66 miles. Nissan specifies a 21 hour recharge time using house current. Still, I was able to take short trips and confidently return home. A 40 mile trip to the airport, however, used up more than 50 miles of battery capacity leaving too little predicted range to chance driving back home. The car had to be left for a delivery service to pick up, and I found another way home. A lesson learned. At a starting price of 33,630, the Leaf is by far the least expensive battery electric car produced in significant numbers; with a 24 kilowatt hour battery, it qualifies for a 7,500 federal tax credit as well as incentives offered by various states. The Leaf will be sold initially in Arizona, California, Hawaii, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas and Washington; by the end of 2011 it will be offered in all states. Nissan's determination to keep the price within reach the lithium ion battery pack is a major part of the car's cost was one factor in the Leaf's modest range. Building in a battery pack big enough to drive 245 miles on a charge helps push the price of the two seat Tesla Roadster past 100,000. Without the usual sounds of a conventional car, you hear different things while driving a Leaf mainly the cacophony produced by other vehicles. At speeds under 16 m.p.h., a beeping sound alerts those outside the car; inside, the tone cannot be heard. The tendency is to drive gingerly, to save precious energy, but the Leaf can be driven vigorously. Its electric motor just 107 horsepower, but with 207 pound feet of torque accelerates the 3,400 pound car to 60 m.p.h. in 9.4 seconds, according to Road Track. That requires taking it out of Eco mode, where the greatest efficiency is achieved. Generally, I tried to be conservative in my use of the accelerator. I stayed at or slightly under the speed limit. I tried to time traffic lights. I braked gradually, keeping some drag on the pedal to draw the maximum energy recapture from the regenerative braking system. And I coasted whenever I could, especially downhill. All that helped bring the range back up, offsetting the drain of scooting away from traffic lights or chugging up a hill. In truth, the details of the Leaf's operation may be less remarkable than the fact that it is on the road at all. Carlos Ghosn, the chief executive of Nissan and its French partner, Renault, was not a fan of early efforts to electrify the automobile; he had been publicly dismissive of hybrid vehicles from Toyota, Honda, Ford and even Nissan's own Altima Hybrid, which used technology licensed from Toyota. So Mr. Ghosn's announcement at the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show came as a surprise: Nissan would take world leadership in bringing electric cars to market. He laid out an ambitious timetable, though at the time electric car technology seemed far from mature. "I think Mr. Ghosn's position was misunderstood at that time," Nissan's North American director of product planning and strategy, Mark Perry, said in a recent interview. "He saw hybrids as more of a bridge technology, and he was anxious to jump over that bridge and go directly to full electrification of the vehicle, which he saw as the true goal." That goal, or at least the first stage of it Nissan has said it plans to produce a range of E.V.'s has been fulfilled with the arrival of the Leaf in showrooms, where it is billed as the first modern day mass produced battery electric vehicle to go on sale in America. Tesla Motors may quibble with that, as it began deliveries of its all electric Roadster more than a year earlier. But Tesla volumes have only recently topped 1,500 vehicles; Mr. Ghosn has said that Nissan expects to sell at least one million Leafs in its first six years. The range meter that created so much anxiety for me, it turns out, just takes some getting used to. The system reads the user's history, mixing the previous 30 miles of driving and the immediate history of the past five to six miles of driving, Mr. Perry says, to arrive at its calculations for remaining range. A state of charge indicator in the gauge cluster gives a more accurate picture of the remaining miles, Mr. Perry said. The most readily available source of replenishment for the battery and kindest to the battery pack is a standard household plug. But fully recharging a Leaf that way takes a painfully long 21 hours, according to the specifications provided by Nissan. Consider the trade off: That's almost a day of down time, hooked to a charger, in exchange for about two hours of driving. This is not so much a design deficiency as a natural result of the chemical processes involved. The Tesla Roadster needs 37 hours hooked to a 110 outlet to complete a full charging regimen. Like the batteries in a laptop computer, which use similar chemistry, the Leaf's lithium ion cells will lose some capacity over time. Nissan calculates that the Leaf's battery pack, which carries an eight year, 100,000 mile warranty, will lose 20 percent (30 percent, if fast charging is used often) of its power over the next decade of use. During the testing done as part of the car's development process, Mr. Perry said he found the possible range to be from 60 miles to 140 miles, depending on weather conditions and the completeness of the charge. The E.P.A.'s official rating of range is 73 miles, with a fuel economy equivalent of 106 m.p.g. in town and 92 on the highway (based on a conversion of one gallon of gasoline being equal to 33.7 kilowatt hours). Yes, that's significantly less than 100. "You would be averaging about 3.4 3.5 miles per kilowatt hour," Mr. Perry said of the 73 mile range calculation. "I can easily average 4 5 miles per kilowatt hour." In my original test drive of a preproduction Leaf, under optimum conditions last summer a mild, windless Southern California afternoon I was able to achieve similar averages. But in my recent test, under appalling conditions (cold, rainy, windy nights), the Leaf fell well short of its promise. At least part of the problem was that I needed to use nearly all of the power hungry accessories: the heater and defroster, wipers and lights (though they are low draw LEDs). The radio performed well enough, but the defroster was on par with one from a VW Beetle of the 1960s. Unlike the Volt, which has a gasoline powered onboard generator G.M. calls it a range extender the Leaf has no backup system to keep the car going once the batteries are depleted. And if you run out of juice in the Leaf, you cannot call AAA to bring a five gallon can of electricity. So the Leaf seems best suited for short commutes, as a second car or as a thrifty errand runner. Determined to try something more ambitious, say the 280 or so miles from Los Angeles to Las Vegas? Until fast charging kiosks are widespread, you'll need to set aside about three days for the trip. Mr. Perry says the Leaf can travel up to five miles per kilowatt hour of electricity; at an estimated average cost of 12 cents per kilowatt hour, according to the Energy Department, the Leaf can cover 100 miles for about 3, taking into consideration the losses in the recharging process. Because the heavy battery pack is positioned under the seats, the Leaf has a low center of gravity. That, in turn, helps to minimize body roll in cornering. The Leaf emptied rain puddles, splashing rather than aquaplaning through them. The low rolling resistance Bridgestone Ecopia tires gave the car more agility than I had expected. But the amount of actual grip was disappointing, diminishing the possibility of really spirited driving. The steering effort is relatively high and feedback is low; in highway cruising, it just felt numb. The real entertainment was provided by the instrument panel, with its helpful displays to coach a driver toward more efficient energy use. Conservative driving makes digital pine trees grow in the upper left corner of the panel. And how many potential buyers are willing to wait four to seven months for delivery of their vehicle? That was the expected waiting time as the first Leaf was delivered to a San Francisco buyer in the first week of December. The ability to buy a Leaf outright is somewhat novel in the E.V. world, as many past electric cars like the G.M. EV1 had to be leased. Lessees were then obliged to return their vehicles to the manufacturer at lease end. Such vehicles were often destroyed; the destruction of the EV1 spawned a documentary film, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" In that context, the Leaf marks the electric car's resurrection from the dead at least so far as a major manufacturer is concerned. Will the E.V. genus blossom and proliferate as a result of the Leaf's introduction? No single model from any automaker will answer that question, of course. If anything, the Leaf demonstrates how much the widespread acceptance of vehicles that produce zero tailpipe emissions will depend on external factors like a charging infrastructure.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
As a result, delivery app companies have circled one another, aiming to make deals to gain scale. Postmates previously discussed possible deals with DoorDash, the largest service in the United States, and another rival, Grubhub, according to two people with knowledge of the talks. In recent months, Uber also discussed buying Grubhub. But last month, Grubhub was instead sold to Just Eat Takeaway, a European delivery company, for 7.3 billion. Together, Postmates and Uber Eats would have a 37 percent share of food delivery sales in the United States, according to Edison Trends, which tracks credit card spending. DoorDash would remain the largest player with 45 percent, while Grubhub would have 17 percent. Uber is looking for growth as people stay home during the pandemic and its ride hailing business struggles. In May, Uber posted a 2.9 billion loss for the first three months of the year and announced that it was laying off 14 percent of its work force. But revenue for its Uber Eats division rose 53 percent. From April to June, Uber said, bookings through Uber Eats more than doubled compared from a year earlier. Daniel Ives, an industry analyst with Wedbush Securities, said in a note to clients that the deal was a "defensive and offensive acquisition in the food delivery space for Uber at a time with its core ride sharing business seeing massive headwinds in this Covid 19 pandemic."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Brandon Deese lives just a few blocks from where he grew up, but it might as well be another world. Mr. Deese, 23, spent his childhood at the Chelsea Elliott Houses, a public housing project in the West 20's. But last year, thanks to a housing lottery, he beat out thousands of others for an affordable apartment at the Chelsea Park, a luxury rental at 260 West 26th Street. "I used to go downstairs and see crack heads and drug dealers, and now when I go downstairs I see doormen," said Mr. Deese, who himself works as a night doorman on the Upper West Side. He pays 540 a month for a studio, a discount of about 83 percent from the market rate rent, which is around 3,200 a month, according to listings on StreetEasy. Private developers have taken advantage of various programs to construct more than 100 mixed income buildings like the Chelsea Park over the past two decades, mostly in Manhattan and gentrified parts of Brooklyn. In these buildings, the majority of apartments are market rate, with set asides, typically 20 percent, for low and moderate income New Yorkers. In return for including these units, developers can receive lucrative tax abatements, permission to construct larger buildings and bond financing. The competition for these units in these buildings, often called 80/20s, is fierce. Thousands of New Yorkers apply, but the stipulations are strict. There are income requirements and applicants must provide extensive documentation, such as pay stubs, telephone bills and bank statements. Good credit is also a necessity, typically a score of 650 or more. Making even one mistake, such as mailing an application express rather than by regular mail, can disqualify you from a lottery. Developers are generally required to give preference to those who live in the area. Last October, Mr. Omar was walking to Public School 41 in the West Village, where he works part time as a teacher's aide, when he saw a woman handing out fliers. "I went right by her and thought nothing of it," he said. "But then, when I was halfway down the block, I thought better of it and went back and took one." On the flier was information for a housing lottery for the AVA High Line, a sprawling development at 525 West 28th Street. The rental building is adjacent to the elevated park and features a backyard fire pit, a fitness center and an enormous lobby resembling a furniture showroom, with artfully hung mirrors, scattered seating areas and bookshelves stocked playfully with board games like Monopoly. The building, which has 710 market rate apartments, offered 142 affordable spaces 50 studios, 69 one bedrooms and 23 two bedrooms. Mr. Omar entered the lottery, setting his sights on a studio, which required applicants to earn between 19,749 and 36,120 a year. Mr. Omar, who earns 22,000 a year, won a spot, and in June moved into a 520 a month studio; for a market rate apartment in the building, rent starts at 3,065 a month, according to the building's website. Like some but not all mixed income buildings, the AVA High Line allows all residents to use amenities such as the backyard and the lounge, although the fitness center costs an additional 500 a year, a fee Mr. Omar says he is unlikely to pay. Though under the same roof, low income and market rate apartments are not identical. "There are significant differences between affordable and market rate rents," said Martin Piazzola, a senior vice president of AvalonBay, the building's developer. "There are of course some differences between the units in finishes stainless steel versus solid colors in kitchens but appliances are similar and of the same size." Mr. Omar, who was living with his mother when the lottery wheel actually a computer spun his way, said renting the studio has made him more mature; he's now keeping a budget and shopping for himself, for example. "Since moving in, I've become more independent," Mr. Omar said recently, standing among a group of summer campers as he organized a game of kickball. In addition to working as a part time teacher's aide, Mr. Omar is also an activities coordinator at the Hudson Guild, a neighborhood community center. "I don't really know exactly what I want to do, if I want to continue working two jobs. But moving out on my own has forced me to become more responsible and to think about those things." Ray Bell, 24, is Mr. Deese's neighbor at the Chelsea Park. Mr. Bell works in finance and moved to the building from Murray Hill last month with two roommates. He did not know, until a reporter told him, that interspersed among the luxury apartments were low income units. "I had no idea, no one ever told us," Mr. Bell said. "If someone asks, I'm perfectly happy to explain it," said Adam Disick, the chief executive of the Triumph Property Group, which leases out the Chelsea Park with the Heller Organization. "I would not disclose it without being asked because I don't think it is material to leasing the apartment. It isn't like I would say, 'Hey, the person next door to you is a banker and makes 3 million,' or 'The person on the other side won a housing lottery.' It is a delicate balance, but if they ask, I'm fully transparent." Building policies vary. For instance, the AVA High Line website notes at the bottom of a list of "social features": "Affordable housing available." And some market rate residents are well aware that there are lower incomes under the same roof. "It is pretty obvious," said Matt Amico, a real estate broker at Urban Compass and a market rate tenant of the Westminster, a luxury rental at 180 West 20th Street. Some residents of the building's affordable units spend a lot of time in the lobby with their laptops, making use of the free Wi Fi service, said Mr. Amico, who knows some of them. "It is a rental building, and you know going into it that it's an 80/20, so it isn't a big deal," he said. "And if it is a big deal, then you won't go there." Like most New Yorkers who live in close quarters, tenants in mixed income buildings rarely socialize beyond a polite nod of the head or a brief wave. And while they may live in the same neighborhood, they tend to patronize different stores Mr. Omar, for example, does his food shopping at Western Beef, a grocery store on West 16th, where prices are a far cry from the 5 iced coffees at the Chelsea Market across the street. Yet while they may not overlap often, there is occasional friction between the two groups. At the Westminster, for example, Mr. Amico said he has heard some grumbling about the tenants hanging out in the lobby, and notices have been posted reminding residents of proper lobby etiquette, although a spokeswoman for the building's owner, the Related Companies, said she knew of no complaints. For Mr. Deese, who is African American and stands at an imposing 6 foot 1, there have been some uncomfortable moments. He and a friend were walking out of Mr. Deese's apartment and down the hallway when a white neighbor, seeing them approach, "slammed her front door, locking all the locks," he said. "It was ridiculous, because the door locks automatically when you close it, so no one ever uses the extra locks." Mr. Omar, who only just moved into the AVA High Line, is still a bit self conscious of his status. "If there was a building wide social event, like drinks or something, I would go, but I would want to bring a friend," he said. "I wouldn't want to show up and stand out, like, 'Oh, there goes the low income guy.' " In most of these 80/20s, the affordable and market rate units are interspersed throughout the same building, and the two groups of tenants live cheek by jowl. At some mixed income developments, however, the affordable apartments and the market rate units are in separate buildings. And then there is the so called poor door, a separate entrance for nonmarket rate tenants. That setup has come under fire in recent months, and the city says it is working to revamp a 2009 change in the zoning regulations that allowed 40 Riverside Boulevard, for example, to have the separate entrances. "It reminds you of who you are," said Daisy Fermin, 34, of her living situation in the affordable low rise component of the high rise Edge in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her building, at 34 North Sixth Street, has neither a doorman nor amenities, and its small lobby is painted an institutional green, with just a few wilting houseplants and an ATM machine. It is a far cry from its sister building, a market rate luxury tower just a few doors down, where residents enjoy unimpeded views of the water, numerous amenities and a soaring lobby with a fireplace, glossy tiles and a concierge. Douglaston Development, which declined to comment, constructed both buildings as part of a mixed income project. "These people have an amazing building with a pool, all kinds of amenities. I can see it through my window, but it isn't like I can go in there myself," said Ms. Fermin, who works as an eligibility specialist at the New York City Human Resources Administration. She earns 31,500 a year, and her rent is 976 a month. Her take home pay, she said, is 1,600 a month, "and rent is almost a thousand, so it doesn't leave me much." Because of the rising rents, and an apartment that she says features vinyl countertops that buckle when they get wet and tile floors that chip, Ms. Fermin is looking to re enter the housing lottery and move. But the housing lottery is a formidable process. "They tell you to submit the application by regular mail not express, not registered mail and you have to follow every direction perfectly or you will be disqualified," said Natalia Padilla, an agent at Citi Habitats, who has applied to the housing lottery herself and has helped clients with their applications. When Ms. Fermin was applying for the studio on North Sixth Street, for example, she was rejected twice and appealed both times. "At one point they said I made too much, then they said I made too little, then finally they said I made the right amount. I was like Goldilocks." With the number of mixed income developments expected to jump about 1,100 new affordable apartments are to come online in Downtown Brooklyn alone over the next three years, according to the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership housing advocates, often in conjunction with developers, have begun holding tutorials to help applicants through the process. Some are also pushing to soften the strict income cap requirements, which dictate that applicants must earn a certain amount and not a dollar less or a dollar more while still having strong credit and the ability to cover the rent. Another concern is that many mixed income developments exclude very low income New Yorkers in favor of higher earners, and that many of the buildings have studio and one bedroom apartments, with few larger units for families. "The perception is that developers are happy to have singles and couples, young professional types who may be income eligible, rather than larger low income families," said Brad Lander, a member of the New York City Council, representing the 39th District in Brooklyn. "You don't get more subsidy for larger units, but they are more expensive to build, so there is an economic incentive to build smaller apartments." Developers also struggle with the lottery, including the painstaking process of wading through thousands of applications to find those that meet all the criteria. At the Chelsea Park, for example, 15,000 applicants made a bid for just 51 apartments. For those who make it through the sieve, the effect can be profound. "It has changed my life," Mr. Deese said. "Some people may look at me and see this minority guy, and maybe put their head down, but I don't mind," he said. "I can't believe I'm there, that I'm 23 with my own place. I always thought I would live good, but just not this soon."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Summer is normally the domain of baseball, and weeks ago there was talk of the sport triumphantly returning on July 4. But instead of a symbolic replanting of the flag on the sports landscape after a coronavirus hiatus, Major League Baseball on Tuesday settled for a severely abridged, 60 game season starting in late July. But that plan only came after protracted posturing by team owners and the players' union threatened to derail the season and damage the reputation of a sport wrestling with declining attendance and bruises left by one of the worst cheating scandals in the sport's history. "The virus has hurt a vast number of people, companies and institutions," said Marc Ganis, a professional sports consultant. "Was baseball hurt more than it otherwise needed to be? The answer is absolutely yes." Much of that pain was self inflicted, the result of a frayed relationship between the league's 30 team owners and the players' union. Talks between the two sides about when and how to restart the season broke down repeatedly after they began in March. At the heart of the disagreement was how much players would be paid in a shortened season: The union was willing to accept prorated pay for fewer games, but balked at further cuts when it became clear that games would be played in empty stadiums. On Monday, the league exercised its right to impose a 60 game season, which is expected to begin on July 23 or 24. Late Tuesday, the union announced its concerns about the players' health and safety during the pandemic had been settled, clearing the way for the athletes to report to training camps. The negotiations that led to the agreement were haunted by memories of a 1994 strike that canceled that year's World Series and devastated the sport for years. A canceled season and a 17 month gap without games could have brought an even bigger calamity for the sport. "It's absolute death for this industry to keep acting as it has been," Trevor Bauer, the outspoken Cincinnati Reds pitcher, wrote on Twitter on Monday night. "Both sides. We're driving the bus straight off a cliff. How is this good for anyone involved? Covid 19 already presented a lose lose lose situation and we've somehow found a way to make it worse. Incredible." The reasons for the breakdown, Ganis said, included a "terrible relationship" between the league and the players' union, an open ended agreement in March between the sides, the upcoming labor fight after the 2021 season, and "greed, when the rest of the country is hurting so badly." 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. Making matters worse, he said, baseball was already dealing with cable cord cutting that had damaged teams' broadcast revenues, an aging fan base and an inability to speed up the game's pace of play. Over the winter, the emergence of a scandal in which the Houston Astros were found to have illegally used live video feeds to steal opposing catchers' signs during their 2017 championship season further damaged the sport's reputation. "It's amazing they couldn't even get together during an international pandemic," Ganis said of the players and owners. Still, completing any sort of plan to play this year was a victory, even if the public back and forth between wealthy players and even wealthier owners during a deadly pandemic made for poor optics. But the drawn out process might look worse in retrospect if a feared second wave of infections in the fall comes to fruition, when the season could have started sooner. While many players and the thousands of employees whose livelihoods depend on games were thankful that a conclusion of the dispute was imminent, some remained concerned that even if a season began, it might not be completed because of the unpredictable virus. Under the plan imposed by Commissioner Rob Manfred on Monday, a second spring training will begin next week, with opening day in late July about four months after the originally scheduled season opener. A normal season is 162 games; this one would be the shortest since the early years of the National League in the late 1870s. An asterisk may always hover over the 2020 season because of its length after 60 games last year, the eventual champion Washington Nationals held a feeble 27 33 record and the unusual rules that likely will be enacted, including a designated hitter for both the American and National Leagues, larger rosters and starting extra innings with a runner on second base to end games sooner. The extended disagreement between M.L.B. owners and the players' union began in March, after the two sides quickly negotiated a return to play pact that they interpreted in vastly different ways in the following months. In that deal, the players agreed to be paid on a per game basis, but M.L.B. later expected further salary concessions for a season played without fans in the stands. Long skeptical of owners crying poor, the union did not budge, wary of setting a precedent that could weaken them in negotiations for a new collective bargaining agreement when the current one ends after next season. Given the mistrust and animosity exhibited by the sides during these negotiations, a lockout ahead of the 2022 season feels just as likely if not more. In April, M.L.B. and the union debated ideas about how to eventually begin the season safely during the pandemic, even considering a sequestered environment similar to what the N.B.A. and Major League Soccer are planning near Orlando, Fla., this summer. But the logistical hurdles were many, and players largely opposed that proposal. When it became increasingly clear there would be no fans at baseball games this summer, M.L.B. repeatedly proposed further pay cuts and a shorter season, while players held firm on receiving full prorated pay and pushed for more games. The rhetoric between the sides grew more acrimonious with each statement released and each letter exchanged. Soon after the union cut off negotiations earlier this month and called for M.L.B. to set the schedule per the March agreement, Manfred went on national television to say he was "not confident" a season would be played at all this year. He eventually rekindled talks with the union's executive director, Tony Clark, but even then the sides couldn't agree on the framework they had discussed during a meeting in Arizona. The owners last week proposed a 60 game season that included expanded playoffs, a universal designated hitter, 104 percent of prorated salaries, 25 million from a playoff pool and 33 million in forgiven salary advances. The union countered with a 70 game season, and other sweeteners, but the owners refused to even consider that proposal. An agreement would have called for both sides to waive their right for a grievance, which the union had threatened to pursue for substantial payouts on the claims that the league had negotiated in bad faith. After the union resoundingly rejected the owners' offer on Monday, a move that preserved the players' grievance option, the owners moved to implement a 60 game season without expanded playoffs or the additional financial incentives for players. Manfred then exercised the option bestowed to him by the March agreement to set a schedule on his own. The final holdup, finalizing the health and safety protocols, was resolved Tuesday night. M.L.B. had given the players a 67 page manual on health and safety provisions, which detailed coronavirus testing multiple times per week, new social distancing rules for clubhouses and dugouts, and criteria for which at risk players could opt out of playing. The manual grew, and the sides signed off on it Tuesday night. Because of a spike in cases in Arizona and Florida, the two hubs for spring training and where players had been working out informally, several teams, including the Mets and Yankees, reversed course and instead decided to return to their regular season homes for preseason practices. M.L.B. shut down all 30 teams' spring training complexes over the weekend for extensive cleaning after players and employees on several teams including the Philadelphia Phillies and Yankees tested positive for the virus. "Baseball has had two great advantages: A great volume of games and a calendar in the summer that was effectively unencroached upon," Ganis said. "That could perhaps change forever." He speculated that the N.B.A. might see a boost in ratings this summer, and it may have to shift the start of its 2020 21 season back two months, as well moving it further away from the popular N.F.L. and college football seasons and deeper into baseball's summer territory. Fans have gone since March 12 without baseball. After spring training games in Florida that day, M.L.B. put its operations on hold and delayed its scheduled March 26 opening day at least two weeks because of the virus's spread. At the time, some hoped baseball would return in April an idea that seems naive now. Unlike the N.H.L. and N.B.A., which had played the majority of their regular seasons by the time the pandemic struck North America, M.L.B. had not begun its own. And despite a meandering route to an unfamiliar season, M.L.B. is still set to beat them to action by a week.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
A skier descends Grizzly, where the men's 2002 Olympic downhill competition was run, at the Snowbasin resort. During a quick swing through Utah last spring, I texted my husband a photo from a ski area of rock and tree lined steeps. "Is that Snowbird or Alta?" he responded. His guess was good, but he was about 70 miles off. I was at Snowbasin in northern Utah, a 45 minute drive from Salt Lake City. Most skiers from out of state head to one of the resort clusters on the city's eastern edge, to Snowbird and Alta, or Brighton and Solitude, or Park City and Deer Valley, which draw thousands of skiers on weekends and powder days. Snowbasin, with 3,000 acres of varied terrain, efficient lifts and luxurious on mountain facilities, stands apart and has yet to see the crowds descend. The city of Ogden, emerging as a destination on its own, serves as a convenient base camp for visiting Snowbasin and Powder Mountain, each about a half hour drive away. Closer yet is Huntsville, one of several small towns in the Ogden Valley, where a 15 room boutique property, the Compass Rose Lodge, opened last winter. In early January, I returned to Snowbasin for another visit and to explore Powder Mountain. I stayed the first night in Ogden. Long a feisty counterpart to Salt Lake City, this one time railroad hub now trumpets its proximity to outdoor recreation. After checking into the Bigelow, the grand but aging dame of Ogden hotels, dating from 1891, I wandered next door to the Monarch, an arts incubator and event space that is part of what is being called the Nine Rails Creative District. A former garage for the Bigelow and now on the National Register of Historic Places, the industrial chic building houses 40 working artist studios, a cafe, gift shop and more. On this First Friday evening, the place buzzed as locals wandered in and out of studios, wine in hand, and an alt rock band played in the entryway. At Thomas Printers, a letterpress studio with a vintage Heidelberg press, cheeky notecards riffed on the city's ongoing transformation: "Greetings from Ogden. Utah's Foremost 'It Used to Be Waaay Worse City.'" That morning, I arced big turns down long, groomed cruisers and tucked through trees and around boulders, charting my own course off piste. It didn't take long to find fresh tracks on low angle slopes in Cobabe Canyon, even though the last storm was more than two days ago. PowMow earns its moniker by receiving an average of 500 inches annually of Utah's dry, light fluff the area doesn't even have snow making. Of the six chairlifts that ferry skiers up the mountain, only one is high speed, which helps preserve the powder from getting too tracked up between storms. Not that there's much danger of that happening anyway. As of 2016, the resort preemptively instituted a daily skier cap of 4,500 that has yet to be reached. Belying the area's adventurous feel, 40 percent of PowMow's runs are rated intermediate. That rolling terrain also makes the slopes popular among snowboarders, who enjoy the surfy feel. I found steeper runs off the Paradise lift and in Powder Country, but some of the resort's best expert trails require a bit longer to access. I bought a 25 ticket to take a 15 minute snowcat ride up Lightning Ridge (an additional cat serves an area on the resort's opposite side on weekends). From the drop off spot, I traversed and sidestepped for several minutes to ski Hook Chute, which funnels into a long tongue of snow between two rock walls. Had I wanted to boot pack up another 500 vertical feet for 30 minutes to the summit of James Peak, I could have skied PowMow's longest inbounds descent, some 2,500 feet down to the bottom of Paradise. But I chose to explore more of the mountain instead. For even more adventuring, PowMow offers full and half day guided out of bounds trips. And last year the resort partnered with Whisper Ridge, an adjacent heli and cat skiing outfit that operates on 70,000 acres; book a trip directly at the resort. For a late lunch, I ducked into the Powder Keg in the lower level of the 1980s era Timberline Lodge. It was packed with people enjoying three kinds of ramen (including a sinus clearing green curry), huge banh mi sandwiches, and burgers, along with nine local brews on tap and free popcorn from the machine by the entrance. When I left, a band from Salt Lake was already starting to set up on the small stage for apres ski. Upstairs in the lodge, the wooden tabletops are burnished to a glossy finish from years of use. A large banner by the fireplace bears a quote from Alvin Cobabe, a rancher turned medical doctor and the resort's founder, about Powder Mountain's bewitching spell. Dr. Cobabe opened the resort on his family's land in February 1972 and ran it until 2006. More recently, in 2013, a group of young entrepreneurs behind a networking enterprise known as Summit teamed up with two venture capitalists with local ties to purchase the resort; they have big plans. From Powder Mountain, I headed south, passing farmhouses and ranchland while driving from the small town of Eden to the equally small town of Huntsville, where I checked into the Compass Rose Lodge. Opened in January 2019 by Jeff and Bonnie Hyde, both of whom have long ties to the ski world, the hotel has creatively repurposed industrial farmhouse decor, large guest rooms and a coffee shop. Moreover, its size and setup encourage the type of casual socializing I associate with old time ski lodges. That evening over the daily complimentary wine and snacks, I chatted about skiing and auto racing with a couple from Alabama. There's also an observatory, cleverly built to look like a silo from the outside. I toured it one night (access is half price for hotel guests) with a student from Weber State University as my guide. Clouds obscured most of the stars, good for the next day's skiing, though we did get some glimpses of the moon through one of the three telescopes. Compass Rose adds a much needed new option to Ogden Valley. Until Powder Mountain's village is built, skier lodging for both ski resorts consists primarily of off site condos and a few bed and breakfasts. The resort's lift system enables skiers to access much of the mountain via two gondolas and a tram (there are six other chairlifts), meaning one can ride in warmth and comfort when the weather turns blustery. The grooming is thoughtful, too. As the snowcats rake perfect corduroy overnight, they'll often leave some ungroomed snow on one side, allowing skiers of different ability levels or preferences moguls versus packed down snow to descend the same run. The day began sunny and cold. Even though it was a weekend (and Snowbasin now accepts the Epic Pass, which allows skiers to visit multiple resorts for one fee), the slopes were relatively uncrowded. After riding the Needles Gondola up the mountain, I skied a series of top to bottom, flowy cruisers served by the Strawberry Gondola that is, after pausing near the top to view the Great Salt Lake's Antelope Island. On clear days, those in the know begin on the Strawberry side of the mountain and work their way across to follow the sun. Late morning, I decided it was time to hit one of the resort's classic steep runs. From the top of the Strawberry Gondola, I traversed right and slightly uphill to Lone Tree, a svelte chute with a precipitous drop. Some 610 vertical feet of short radius turns later, I was back on flat ground by the Needles on mountain lodge. As clouds started to roll in, I zigzagged my way across Snowbasin's vast expanse, dipping into the trees between runs and even trying out Bear Hollow Woods, a new this year children's zone that wends it way among gladed aspens. The trail map lists 106 runs but there could easily be twice as many skiable lines exist all over the mountain. I made it a point to stop for lunch at the John Paul Lodge, a window lined circular aerie that looks out on the improbably steep start of the Olympic men's downhill course. With a new executive chef at the resort this year, the lodge has added Bavarian fare like schnitzel and giant pretzels, as well as an all day waffle bar. Munching on a pretzel, I took a closer look at the massive gold plated chandelier overhead; two tiers of winged dragons encircle it, one dragon per each electric candle. At what other ski resort could you see fixtures this ornate and still enjoy some serious terrain, without having to fight the crowds, to boot? By then, the clouds had begun to unleash swirls of snow and visibility was low, so a post lunch foray up No Name Peak no longer seemed like a good idea. It's the site of some of Snowbasin's most technical terrain and a five minute hike from the top of the Allen Peak tram. Instead, I navigated the trees under the John Paul Express lift, finishing up in a gully that guided my skis side to side, up and down, like a natural halfpipe. The blizzard had set in. If I had snapped a photo at that moment, not even I would have been able to figure out later where I'd been. Whisper Ridge (4776 East 2600 North, Eden, 801 876 4664) runs daylong cat skiing trips for 795 per person, and day heli skiing trips for 1,440 per person on terrain next to Powder Mountain. Backcountry yurt overnights are 380 per person. Rooms at the Compass Rose Lodge (198 South 7400 East, Huntsville, 385 279 4460) start at 209 for a room with a king bed. Two rooms with two queen beds and two bunks are also available, starting at 279. The 20 observatory tours ( 15 for children 5 to 12) are half price for hotel guests. Dining options in the Ogden Valley are still limited. Kuna Bistro (2429 North Highway 158, Eden, 801 500 2335), new this winter, serves dinner Tuesday through Saturday. The Brazilian inflected dishes include coffee roast short ribs, vegetarian ceviche and cassava fries (entrees 15 to 29). Powder Mountain also offers weekly Tuesday community dinners at its mountaintop Skylodge ( 50 per person) and, on Thursdays, "Pizza and Pints" ( 20 for unlimited food; alcohol not included) at a lodge the resort owns in the valley. At Snowbasin (3925 East Snowbasin Road, Huntsville, 888 437 5448), daily adult lift tickets are 125 on weekdays and 139 on weekends, with discounts for advance purchase online. Lunch dishes at the John Paul Lodge range from 10 to 16. A longtime New York Times contributor, Cindy Hirschfeld writes about skiing and other outdoor adventures from her home in Basalt, Colo. Follow her on Twitter: cloverdog4 Twitter handle is cloverdog452 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE Discover the best places to go in 2020, and find more Travel coverage by following us on Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you'll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
It was in Calcutta, 40 years ago, a steaming hot Friday monsoon morning, and I had come down from my newspaper's office in Delhi to write about the industrial tea trade. I was at the headquarters of Macneill and Magor, a tea giant of the time, whose red brick godowns lined the banks of the Hooghly River. I had a breakfast time appointment with the company spokesman, a genial Anglo Indian named Pearson Surita, a man possessed of an accent so plummy that on the side he did cricket commentaries for All India Radio. The elevator creaked us up to the penthouse, with its fine view of the Maidan. Pearson sat me down by his desk, then promptly called the bearer and demanded two pink gins. But it wasn't even 8 o'clock, I protested. "Don't worry, old boy," Pearson replied. "It's Poets Day." Puzzled, I sipped timidly at my gin while Pearson threw his down in one gulp, then called the departing bearer. Another two, he demanded. I yowled still more forcefully. It was early morning. Pink gin? "Don't be silly," he repeated. "It's Poets Day." To Pearson, tea was merely a commodity, something that came in large chests, consisting in the main of dried black twigs, crushed by brass engine rollers after being picked in goodness knows how many dozens of estates far away in Assam and Meghalaya and Upper Burma, where the pickers lived in execrable conditions and were paid a pittance. And the customers at the other end: philistine Britons, mainly, who drank the stuff with sugar and milk and let it stew in the pot for hours. No, tea was just a job, and a job that paid nicely, though Pearson would rather have gin. He really didn't care about tea. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. But Henrietta Lovell most certainly does, and these days publicly decries those people, and those industries, whose cavalier attitude to this most divine of nectars and the Camellia strains from which it is made is, in her view, little short of sacrilege. So she is now on a holy mission to educate us all so that we can know the difference between a pu'er and an oolong, between a rooibos and a Darjeeling, and why it matters, greatly. Lovell is a hearty, galumphing Briton of good pedigree and even better connections who once worked in corporate finance in New York. But on a whim, 15 years ago, she chucked that career to start the Rare Tea Company in London and has since devoted her life to advancing the cause of leaf tea (and to denouncing that epitome of foulness known as the tea bag). More important, she busies herself promoting those farmers around the world who grow tea and tend to it with the care and compassion that so ancient and elemental a beverage deserves and rightly demands. Her visits over a decade and a half to these faraway rural geniuses are what "Infused: Adventures in Tea" is about. I had initially thought the book might be little more than an extended advertisement for Lovell's business. But then I found myself quite caught up in her infectious enthusiasm as she ventured twice defeating her own cancer, which tried in vain to slow her down out into the world in search of the green tea hills in China, Japan and India, of course, but also in Malawi, Nepal and South Africa. On occasion, her style can be a little exhausting, with her bursts of Pete Wells ian polychrome, but one can excuse her. This is a love letter, after all. I read the book in one contented go on a flight from Sydney to Hong Kong, where I had a few hours' wait before moving on to New York. Nowadays, it's surprisingly tricky to find a good loose tea store in Hong Kong's vast Starbucksian airport. But it was a long layover and eventually I winkled out the shoe box of Fook Ming Tong, tucked away on an upper floor, and handed over a not insubstantial wad of folding money for a package of Lovell's most highly recommended ambrosia: white silver tip tea from Fujian Province in southeastern China. Once home, I found myself a graduated temperature electric kettle, as also suggested, heated fresh water to 75 degrees Celsius and infused three grams of the unprocessed leaves for 90 seconds flat. I then poured the pale and steaming liquid into two fine china cups and took them upstairs. One careful sip, then two, then a bold draining whereupon my wife and I declared this tea to be quite sublime, perfect, entirely unlike anything we'd ever tasted before. An impeccably caffeine loaded, faintly perfumed start to the day. And far, far better and more efficacious in inducing wakefulness and good cheer than ever was gin, pink or otherwise, most especially when taken before breakfast.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
In France last year, thousands took to the streets to protest a sharp rise in anti Semitic incidents. How beautiful would it be to see thousands of people, Jews and non Jews alike, walking arm in arm through the streets of Brooklyn? Such an effort is planned for Sunday. Marchers will gather at 11 a.m. at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan, just north of Chambers Street near City Hall, then walk across the Brooklyn Bridge. The event was organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and the UJA Federation of New York, along with other groups. This is a chance for people of all faiths and backgrounds to show critical support for New York's Jewish communities. Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio can help by joining in, coming together in unity to march against anti Semitism alongside New Yorkers. Both men, along with many other New York public officials, have already responded with moral seriousness to the rise in anti Semitic attacks. Mr. Cuomo rightly described the Monsey attack as "domestic terrorism," and said he would propose a state law to help address the scourge when the Legislature returns to work in Albany this month. Jersey City, N.J., where a man and a woman killed three people in an anti Semitic attack at a kosher supermarket last month, is also grappling with how to respond. In New York, Mr. de Blasio over the weekend said the city would increase police presence in heavily Jewish areas. That's a sensible step in the short term, given the palpable fear in New York's Orthodox communities especially. But longer term, flooding Brooklyn communities with police officers is not the solution, particularly given the history of overly aggressive policing tactics in minority neighborhoods. The mayor announced a broader initiative in which community groups would meet regularly to help prevent hate crimes. A similar model has shown promise in fighting gun violence in New York. Improving New York's mental health system should also help. A vast majority of those struggling with mental illness will never become dangerous to others, let alone carry out hate crimes. But some close to Grafton Thomas, the man charged in the Monsey attack, have said he has long struggled to find treatment for serious mental illness, statements that shouldn't be ignored. Other incidents appear to have been carried out by young people, sometimes in neighborhoods with long histories of tensions between Jewish and black and Hispanic New Yorkers. Mr. de Blasio has also committed to including anti hate crime curriculums in the city's schools, with a strong focus on middle and high schools in communities adjoining Orthodox neighborhoods.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Randal K. Quarles, the Federal Reserve's vice chair for supervision, suggested that the central bank wouldn't raise capital requirements for banks despite an uncertain economic path. WASHINGTON Federal Reserve officials warned on Friday that the U.S. economic outlook remained wildly uncertain, as parts of the country see a new surge in coronavirus infections. "So far, in the United States efforts to contain the virus have not been particularly successful," Eric Rosengren, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said in a speech on Friday. With the spread of the disease continuing "and the acceleration of new cases in many states, I expect the economic rebound in the second half of the year to be less than was hoped for at the outset of the pandemic." But while the downturn could persist or worsen the central bank's vice chair for supervision, Randal K. Quarles, said the Fed would determine capital requirements essentially the financial cushions that banks must keep to withstand losses based on economic scenarios developed before the pandemic took hold. While the Fed is testing the strength of banks against multiple dire scenarios that reflect how the virus might play out, the central bank will not publish bank specific results. "We don't know about the pace of reopening, how consumers will behave or the prospects for a new round of containment," Mr. Quarles said. "There's probably never been more uncertainty about the economic outlook." Given the serious risks, the Fed's annual "stress tests," the results of which will be released next week, will include three sensitivity analysis scenarios. These would look at how the banking system would fare in the case of a V shaped recovery, in which output and employment bounce back quickly; a U shaped rebound, in which jobs and growth take a long time to recover; or a W shaped trajectory, in which a second wave of the coronavirus forces activity to collapse again, Mr. Quarles said. Those scenarios could influence whether individual banks are allowed to pay out shareholder dividends down the road. But they will not result in different capital requirements for the supervised banks, even if the Fed finds a bank would not be able to withstand losses and continue to lend under one of the more dramatic scenarios. The Fed will "provide results aggregated across banks that will compare how the banking system as a whole would fare under the three distinct views of the future," Mr. Quarles said. He noted that given time constraints, the central bank did not pre publish the three scenarios or run full stress tests with them. Mr. Quarles noted that the Fed had generally seen "value" in "not increasing capital requirements under stress and thus exacerbating a downturn" when it approached stress testing. Even so, the decisions to stick with the pre pandemic scenario, and to release the sensitivity tests only in aggregate, struck some as potentially irresponsible. Banks are expected to play a critical role in the downturn, and there is a complete lack of clarity about how the economy will fare over the next several months. The Fed's originally published scenario in February upon which the "stress capital buffer" requirement will be based is similar in "overall severity" to the most optimistic, V shaped sensitivity analysis, Mr. Quarles said. 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. "You're likely to get a smaller stress capital buffer using the February scenario," said Jeremy Kress, a former Fed regulator who is now at the University of Michigan. He also said the fact that bank by bank results from the scenarios would not be released "makes me nervous about what they found." Banks went into this crisis with much higher levels of capital than they had heading into the 2007 9 downturn, and in better positions than many of their counterparts overseas. Despite that, the pandemic is an economic emergency without precedent, making it difficult to predict exactly how the financial system will fare. The Fed has taken a number of actions to ensure that lending continues and credit does not become prohibitively expensive, relaxing some regulations while rolling out a variety of emergency programs, including several that buy loans to qualifying small and medium size businesses from bank balance sheets. Even so, central bank officials have repeatedly warned that they and Congress might need to do more to make sure the economy can recover as huge risks persist. "Lives and livelihoods have been lost, and uncertainty looms large," the Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, said in remarks prepared for delivery Friday afternoon. "We will make our way back from this, but it will take time and work," he said, noting that "the path ahead is likely to be challenging." Mr. Rosengren was even starker in his warnings. He pointed out that coronavirus cases in South Carolina and Florida were rising, and offered a glum outlook for unemployment, which he said was likely to remain "in double digits" through 2020. It stood at 13.3 percent in May, higher than at any point in the Great Recession.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Gustav Metzger, a German born artist and political radical whose entire career consisted of pointed attacks on the capitalist system, the commodification of art and organized power, died on March 1 at his home in London. He was 90. The death was confirmed by his publicist, Erica Bolton. Mr. Metzger, who went to England in 1939 as a young refugee from Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport train, first became known as the theorist of "auto destructive art." In one of the manifestoes he began issuing in 1959, he described it as "an art that re enacts the obsession with destruction, the pummeling to which individuals and masses are subjected." At the Temple Galley in London in 1960, he demonstrated the concept by applying hydrochloric acid to a nylon canvas with a special paintbrush, causing it to shred. "I was very aggressive putting the acid onto that nylon," he told Julia Peyton Jones, the director of the Serpentine Gallery in London, which organized a five decade retrospective of his work in 2009. "It was partly me attacking the system of capitalism, but inevitably also the systems of war, the warmongers, and destroying them in a sense symbolically." Mr. Metzger later conceived of several large scale self destructive works, such as a sculpture of five walls, each consisting of 10,000 geometrical forms, that would disappear as a computer randomly ejected the forms, one by one, over a period of 10 years. In the 1970s, for an exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, he outlined a project he called "The Years Without Art 1977 1980." It called for a three year cessation of all art activity everywhere, by artists, art magazines and art galleries, to bring the commercial art system to a halt. He managed to recruit only himself. Mr. Metzger's ideas made a big impression on the rock guitarist and singer Pete Townshend, who attended one of the artist's lectures in 1962 when he was a student at Ealing School of Art in London. He later applied the concept of destructive art during concerts by his band, the Who, smashing his guitar and amplifiers onstage. "I was doing my first gig with the Who," Mr. Townshend told The Guardian in 1998. "I took it as an excuse to smash my new Rickenbacker that I had just hocked myself to the eyebrows to buy. I really believed it was my responsibility to start a rock band that would only last three months, an auto destructive rock group. The Who would have been the first punk band except that we had a hit." Gustav Metzger was born on April 10, 1926, in Nuremberg, Germany. He was the youngest child of Juda and Fanny Metzger, Jewish immigrants from Poland, who, like many of his family members, were deported to Poland after 1938 and perished in concentration camps. He and his brother Max were taken to England, where two of his sisters, Klara and Erna, also made their way via Scandinavia after escaping from Poland. He leaves no immediate survivors. Mr. Metzger was a committed radical by his teens and for a time lived in an anarchist commune near Bristol. "In the early 1940s I planned to be a full time revolutionary who would move around like they did in Russia," he told Arts Monthly in 1999. "I really meant this and was preparing myself for a kind of martyrdom possibly even death by firing squad." Instead, he studied cabinetmaking at a technical school in Leeds and found work in a furniture factory. He then attended art schools in England and Belgium, most notably the Borough Polytechnic (now London South Bank University), where he studied with the avant gardist David Bomberg. Mr. Metzger worked for several years as a junk dealer in King's Lynn, Norfolk, where he became involved in the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and developed his theory of auto destructive art. In 1961, he helped found the Committee of 100, an antiwar group that favored nonviolent resistance and civil disobedience. He was among the 32 members of the group, including Bertrand Russell, who were arrested and imprisoned before a demonstration in September 1961. In the mid 1960s, he experimented with heat sensitive gels to produce some of the first psychedelic light shows, which he staged at a concert by Cream, the Who and the Move in 1966. That year he organized the Destruction in Art Symposium (DIAS) in London, which attracted Viennese Actionists and members of the Fluxus movement, including Yoko Ono, and planted the seed for kinetic art, happenings and performance art in Britain. "I wanted to be as close to the machine as possible," he told Arts Monthly. "I didn't want to become a machine, but to feel the machine in me, to intuitively grasp the meaning and the potential of electronics, cybernetics, even atomic power." He later shifted his interests to a more direct, documentary style confrontation with political realities, most dramatically in the series "Historic Photographs," which presented photojournalistic images of death and destruction in intentionally off putting installations an approach he called "the aesthetic of revulsion." Several of his later works also dealt with looming environmental catastrophe. He did not abandon technology entirely. In 2012, working with the London Fieldworks collaborative for the exhibition "Null Object: Gustav Metzger Thinks About Nothing," he supplied copies of EEG recordings that had been made as he tried to rid his brain of all activity. A robot, programmed with the data to make shapes, then excavated the interior of a block of Portland stone. After Mr. Metzger completed his three year artistic strike in 1980, he devoted most of his time to historical research and to curatorial projects in Europe. In 1998, the Museum of Modern Art in Oxford organized the first British retrospective of his work, which politically minded younger artists began rediscovering. In 2004, Tate Britain recreated Mr. Metzger's 1960 Temple Gallery show in "Art and the '60s: This Was Tomorrow." The exhibition suffered a well publicized mishap when a cleaner came across a clear plastic bag filled with crumpled paper and cardboard part of the installation and, assuming it was trash, threw it into a compactor. The gesture seemed very much in the spirit of Mr. Metzger's work, an act of self destruction commenting on the larger destructive forces at work in the world. "I don't destroy; I create ideas that can go beyond the present chaos," Mr. Metzger told Art Monthly. "I have always seen auto destructive art as a constructive force. I still do."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Carrie Mathison's very first words on "Homeland" are: "I don't care where he is. Find him. It's urgent." They are shouted in a tone of unvarnished scorn at her colleague's slowness, lack of insight and imagination. Carrie Mathison, a C.I.A. agent played by Claire Danes, does not mince words. She does not avoid conflict or difficult feelings. In fact, she has bipolar disorder (sometimes untreated, according to story line needs), so difficult feelings are actually her thing. Many (dudes, mostly) are put off by her dogged, sawing pursuit of truth, and distrust the instincts born behind her beautiful spinning eyes. They are always institutionalizing her, always wrong, and she is always getting out of the institution to prove it. She is also a single mother. Bottom line: Carrie Mathison has her hands full, and never goes anywhere without her cross body bag. You see, I like a nice solid shoulder bag, a hobo, a doctor bag, a tote, like the deep green Prada Issa Rae carries in her first scene in "The Photograph." That's a bag, people. Good bags elevate the beauty of women onscreen and in person, whereas cross body bags erase, with their placement on the body, all beauty, all sexuality, all sensuality, all grace, all style, all life. Cross body bags cut the form in a half, and the purse itself is so silly looking, so flimsy. Also, if all you need to carry are your phone and your debit card, why don't you just put them in your pocket? And if you haven't taken the trouble to wear something with pockets, but you have taken the trouble to go out and purchase this ridiculous little body pendant, then what, exactly, is your problem? When I told this to Katina LaKerr, the costumer designer who created Carrie's look on "Homeland," she just laughed. "Carrie is a superhero," Ms. LaKerr said. "A cross body bag is the only choice." I didn't argue. But that doesn't mean I will let this go. The series finale of "Homeland" airs on April 26, after eight seasons. If you rewatch the show purely for bag spotting (it happened to me), you will start to recognize the main players. Carrie starts out with a nondescript black one with a flap, but Ms. LaKerr refined this look into a Marc by Marc Jacobs cross body with subtle but sturdy gold hardware that became, by the middle of Season 3 and onward, a Carrie staple. A gray cross body, its provenance sadly lost to the sands of time, accompanies Carrie through much of Season 5, in Berlin. Now, in Kabul, Afghanistan, for Season 8, she carries a black Le Donne, and as Carrie ends the show's run, she'll be back in the United States, carrying a more sophisticated Rag Bone. "We always keep track of which bags might no longer exist, due to events in the story line," said Debra Beebe, the show's current costume designer. When I told Ms. Beebe that I don't like cross body bags, she also said that Carrie's job demands them, a point that I'm willing to concede. But many women who are not Carrie Mathison, who never hit people over the head with bricks, who don't get repeatedly kidnapped, wear cross body bags, and what, exactly, is their problem? "They are just everywhere," said Maria Sherman, a writer, whose 2019 Jezebel piece "Why Are All Bags Crossbody Bags Now?" chronicles her fruitless search for a not cross body bag and is the "Howl" of purse shopping. "Cross body bags are supposed to be cool but I feel like they lack dignity," she added. "Carrie might as well be wearing a backpack, or a fanny pack." I told her how uncomfortable it makes me to have a drink or coffee with someone who leaves hers on the entire time (it happens more than you'd think); I can never shake the feeling that this person is always on the verge of getting up and walking out. Clare Vivier is the founder and C.E.O. of Clare V, a high end purse company. Though she has unfettered access to some of the most beautiful bags in the world, she voluntarily owns nine of the cross body variety, and said they're extremely popular with her customers. She does have one cross body bone to pick: "Carrie wears hers too long. It actually drives me crazy." Carrie Mathison probably didn't make the cross body bag popular, Ms. Vivier said, but her look dovetails with how modern women are dressing now. Now, I have watched every single episode of "Homeland," not only in spite of Carrie's bags, but in spite of something infinitely more troubling: It centers the 20 year long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on American angst. It's as if, with the hundreds of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis who died in these wars, the real battles were in the American intelligence community. I thought about how Carrie Mathison working mom and terrorism fighter loved the convenient hands free cross body bag. And I had to wonder (to invoke another television Carrie, of "Sex and the City"), could the bags and the show's politics be related? I talked to Stephen Shapiro, a professor of English at the University of Warwick, in England, who has written on "Homeland," prestige television and its messages about culture and class relationships. He suggested that the cross body bag is about a lot more than convenience. "The bag seems to be taking its cue from military uniforms, and it's evocative, the same way that the prevalence of S.U.V.s are, of the way that the Forever War let us copy the military in our everyday lives," Mr. Shapiro said. Obviously, S.U.V.s aren't military vehicles, but they have the same shape and heft. "When you see someone driving one," Mr. Shapiro said, "you wonder if they are worried about running over an I.E.D. in the Target parking lot." I have the same sensation looking at people wearing cross body purses: What, exactly, do you feel you need to be prepared for? "To me, cross body bags are so Elizabeth Warren feminist," said Amy Westervelt, a climate writer, and a friend of mine. "They say to me: 'We're going to solve climate change by greening the military.'" Then there's the whole hands free thing, particularly notable since there's a major story line around Carrie ordering a drone strike, and drone strikes are how Americans themselves have been able to be involved in this war, while often never touching or being touched by it. "The costume of a hands free bag presents Mathison as innocent of dirty deeds," Mr. Shapiro said. "These bags say, 'My hands are clean.'". Of course, I myself am not innocent. I saw every single episode the moment it came out, for all nine years. I just loved watching Carrie show all those sane, yawningly left brained people how much better she, an electrically right brained person, was than they were. Despite the casualties, I couldn't stop watching. You could say it was out of my hands. And I will be watching all the way to the end, partly because I want to, partly because what else am I going to do, and partly because Ms. Beebe promised me that in one of the last episodes, Carrie goes to an event carrying a Tissa Fontaneda evening not cross body bag. I can't wait to see this bag. The spoils of empire are so beautiful, and never more so as they dwindle away.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. What do you think of it? What else are you interested in? Let us know: thearts nytimes.com. Impressed by the Bastille Day parade during a visit to France last year, President Trump is urging the Pentagon to organize a grand military parade in the United States. But many lawmakers including Republicans have quickly raised objections, calling the event unnecessary. For his part, Trevor Noah just wishes Trump had brought home a different lesson from France. He did his Trump impersonation, but added a Parisian accent. "Why couldn't Trump have gone to France and come back with a bit of their culture instead? Think about it: He could have developed a taste for French cuisine, or come back with a sophisticated opinion about art or life. Just imagine Trump all French y: 'I think the only way to survive the emotional massacre that is life, is to treat your heart like Hillary Clinton, and lock it up!' " TREVOR NOAH "The world knows America has a military. It's in their countries right now. If you really want a parade, every time there's a drone strike just fly another drone behind it playing marching music." TREVOR NOAH John Oliver, the host of HBO's "Last Week Tonight," was a guest on "The Late Show." He offered a bleak prediction about Trump's marriage based on his fascination with the Bastille Day celebration. OLIVER: It's an odd thing: For a man who seems incurious about everything, that really stuck in his head, that French parade. He obviously thought, 'I want one of those.' COLBERT: Well, I think the ceremonial aspect of being president is what he thought the entire job was. OLIVER: I think that's his favorite part of a job that he has otherwise no interest in. COLBERT: Right. He thought the president was basically an inflated version of cutting a ribbon at a strip mall. OLIVER: Yeah, he's going to watch the royal wedding and think, 'I want one of those. Sorry, Melania, it's time.' " How Woke Is Too Woke? Noah led "The Daily Show" with a video clip showing the Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, correcting a woman for using the word "mankind." "Wow, that's over wokeness. I mean, come on, people man. Just to get this straight: That woman was giving the prime minister credit for being woke. And in the middle of her doing that, he corrected her for not being woke. Which may not have been woke." TREVOR NOAH "I feel like I just watched a cop pull over a black guy, just to tell him black lives matter." TREVOR NOAH Trudeau later said his comment had been "a dumb joke." "Children love parades, why wouldn't he want one?" JIMMY KIMMEL, on Trump "A Girl Scout in San Diego is being investigated for selling cookies outside a marijuana dispensary. If it's true, she'll be given the badge for smartest Girl Scout ever." JIMMY FALLON On "Full Frontal," Ashley Nicole Black told the story of John Robinson, the pre World War II aviator whom she called the first American to join an army in the fight against fascism.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Pronghorn antelope along a fence northwest of Casper, Wyo. A study has found that wildlife move far less in regions where humans are present, ultimately threatening the viability of a species. HELENA, Mont. Snow comes early to the Teton mountain range, and when it does the white bottomed pronghorn that live here get the urge to move. Following an ancient rhythm, they migrate more than 200 miles to the south, where the elevation is lower, winter is milder and grass is easier to find. Come the spring green up, they make the second half of the round trip, returning to the Grand Teton National Park. After thousands of years, biologists are concerned about the future of this migration pattern. While there have been efforts to protect the journey, such as highway overpasses and antelope friendly fences, some new barriers are looming. Most immediate is the prospect of 3,500 new gas wells planned on federal land at the southern end of the pronghorn's migratory path. And then there's the nearby Jonah Natural Gas Field, which is already intensively developed. "The challenge is understanding how many holes you can punch in the landscape," said Matthew Kauffman, a professor of wildlife biology at the University of Wyoming, "before a migration is lost." Room to move is critical for a wide range of species, but it has long been difficult for researchers to capture where and when they travel. But a new and growing field called "movement ecology" is casting light on the secretive movements of wildlife and how those habits are changing. A global study of 57 species of mammals, published in the journal Science, has found that wildlife move far less in landscapes that have been altered by humans, a finding that could have implications for a range of issues, from how well natural systems function to finding ways to protect migratory species. The large study brought together 114 researchers from across the globe who had gathered information from 803 individual animals. They ranged from the smallest animals that can be collared pocket mice to the largest, elephants. Using the GPS collars that updated an animal's location regularly and other data, the project found that vagility the ability of an organism to move declines in areas with human footprints by as much as half to two thirds the distance than in places where there is little or no human activity. "It is important that animals move, because in moving they carry out important ecological functions like transporting nutrients and seeds between different areas," said Marlee Tucker, a biologist at Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center and Goethe University, Frankfurt and the study's lead author. The ability to move and find food helps keep some imperiled species viable. There has been exponential growth in data on wildlife movement as technology has evolved, opening new windows into the secret lives of animals. "We used to have one dot on a map twice a day," said Roland Kays, a biologist at North Carolina State University who participated in the study. "Now we have a point as much as every second and know exactly where they are going, how they are avoiding people, how they are crossing the road and catching prey. It's big for determining how animals die or where they die and how that affects populations." In fact the science has advanced so much, it's clear that the protection of these critical corridors is lagging. Ryan Zinke, secretary of the Interior Department, just announced a new effort to account for long distance migrations that cross federal lands. "We all know that animals go where animals want to go, and more often than not that's dependent upon natural features like watersheds," Mr. Zinke said, rather than whether the land is publicly or privately owned. He signed an order to foster cooperation on migrations, "working with ranchers to modify their fences, working with states to collaborate on sage brush restoration, or working with scientists to better understand migration routes," he said. The new migration study was made possible by Movebank, a global repository of scientific research on animal movement that has cast much new light on vagility. Records of where animals move can be shared with other researchers, and combined with data on vegetative cover, elevations and temperature, anywhere on the globe, from NASA and other sources. "It's an example of open data and data sharing that allows you to answer new questions and give data a second life," said Dr. Kays, who is also a director of Movebank. Development threats led to the creation of the Wyoming Migration Initiative, which seeks to identify, study and protect pronghorn, mule deer and other animals' migrations, which are increasingly at risk on the high plains because of new housing tracts, oil and gas development, roads and other barriers. Blocked or hampered migrations can mean animals can't access food sources they need. In 2011, researchers discovered that mule deer in Wyoming make a 150 mile long, twice yearly journey following a wave of green, nutritious grasses from the Red Desert to Hoback. "It's like a spring salad mix," said Dr. Kauffman, founder and director of the migration initiative and an author on the new paper. "They go to the first patch of green up, but as those plants dry up they move to the next spot and keep doing that." In the West, the acceleration of oil and gas and other development on public lands under the Trump administration could increase the loss of migration. Many wildlife routes have disappeared. Development in Jackson Hole, Wyo. and Pierre's Hole in Idaho, has deprived a bighorn sheep herd of their traditional winter range, and now they live solely in the Teton mountains, where they have less food in the winter and are threatened by avalanches. Less movement among an animal population may also be caused by new food sources created by humans that animals can take advantage of. A study of fishers, a member of the weasel family, looked at movement of the animals in a variety of habitat scenarios near Albany, N.Y., from fragmented to intact areas. "The animals in suburban Albany have tiny home ranges, while the animals in state parks and forests had larger home ranges," Dr. Kays said. "Animals in cities were more likely to get hit by cars, but also seemed to have a lot more food in terms of the rabbits and squirrels in suburbia."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Upwardly Mobile, but Not in Any Hurry to Get There It's logical that the less money you spend on a car, the less car you should expect. But as I've heard repeatedly from automakers, small car customers in this country have the same lofty expectations as other types of shoppers. That partly explains why so many cars at the bottom of the price ladder now offer leather interiors, fancy navigation systems and turbocharged engines. Even denuded of options, most economy cars on the dealer's lot will give you air conditioning, power windows and power locks features that, in many parts of the world, would qualify a car as a luxury model. The 2014 Nissan Versa Note, the four door hatchback version of the second generation Versa, offers options like heated seats, keyless ignition and Around View, a monitor that uses four wide angle cameras to stitch together a bird's eye view of the car all items you'd find on a 50,000 Infiniti. The Versa Note's base price is 14,780. With the makeover for the Versa's new generation, Nissan decided to call the hatchback version the Versa Note, which is what it's called in the rest of the world. Here's a simple way to remember the difference: If you're comparing the Versa Note versus the Versa sedan, note that the first Versa is more versatile. This Versa hatchback is, to my eyes, much better looking than the angular first generation car. Nissan, champion of the creatively tortured styling explanation (describing the original Infiniti FX as a "bionic cheetah" is still tops in my book), now bequeaths us the term "squash line." That refers not to a row of gourds, but to the plunging crease stamped into the side of the Versa Note's body panels. Nissan says that the shape of this line is inspired by the trajectory of a squash ball hitting a wall, bouncing on the floor and returning to the player. Hey, sure! I think it would be fun to sit in a field someday with Nissan designers and look at clouds. Among a number of thoughtful interior touches that the Note can be ordered with is Divide N Hide, which is not a combat tactic but a clever multiposition rear floor setup with hidden cargo compartments. There seems to be a trend here: the Dodge Dart has a passenger seat hidey hole, and behind certain Chevy navigation screens are covert dashboard cubbies. I want to know what everyone has taken to stashing in their cars. I drove a Versa with an automatic transmission, which in a Nissan usually means a continuously variable transmission, or C.V.T. The C.V.T. does not have conventional fixed gear ratios, instead using a belt and pulley system to constantly vary the drive ratio according to the demands of your right foot. If you're not in a rush, C.V.T.'s are smooth and can keep the engine from ever reaching high r.p.m. C.V.T.'s also tend to deliver great fuel economy, which in the case of the Note is an E.P.A. rated 31 miles per gallon in the city and 40 on the highway. The downside: C.V.T.'s are never very much fun. Try to hustle the car and the poor little 4 cylinder under the hood is obliged to rev until you let off the gas the engine just wails its anguished drone until you reach the desired speed or let off the throttle in an act of mercy. The least expensive Versa Note, the S model, comes with a 5 speed manual transmission. Getting more fun for less money sounds like a good call to me, although the old school transmission has a fuel economy drawback: 30 m.p.g. on the E.P.A. combined cycle, down 5 m.p.g. from the C.V.T. models. Whichever transmission you specify, the Versa Note accelerates with the urgency of a placid Pacific sunset, a limitation imposed by a 1.6 liter 4 cylinder engine that squeaks out 109 horsepower at 6,000 r.p.m. The second generation Versa did drop about 300 pounds compared with its predecessor, but you still might wear a hole in the carpet under the gas pedal. Perhaps Versa buyers aren't out to set records at the local dragstrip, but the little Nissan's rivals offer substantially more power for about the same money. The Note SV I drove included the 540 Convenience Package (backup camera, Divide N Hide floor and XM stereo), for a total of 17,320. So let's say our price bogie is about 17,000. A Hyundai Accent GS hatchback with a 6 speed automatic and 138 horsepower starts at 16,790. A Chevy Sonic hatch LS also with 138 horses and a 6 speed automatic goes for 16,690. With roughly a fourth more horsepower and conventional automatic transmissions, either car offers a significantly more satisfying driving experience. True, a C.V.T. equipped Versa gets better mileage, but you'll have to drive a long way to take advantage of the difference between the Versa's 35 m.p.g. combined rating and the Accent's 31. Among all the other expectations efficiency, spaciousness, comfort should I also demand that a 17,000 car be moderately quick and entertaining to drive? Speaking for the spoiled American new car buyer, I'm afraid so.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
The restaurant Lamill sits on a stretch of Silver Lake Boulevard that cuts in between two hills, each summit teeming with the mansions of multimillionaires. On any given weekday, the restaurant is mostly populated by strivers who gaze up at those houses, then back down at their laptops. They're trying to crack a code that consumed David Robert Mitchell when he first moved to Hollywood to be a director. "After several years, I realized that if I didn't make something happen myself, I was never going to do what I wanted to do in my life," Mitchell said on a recent afternoon at Lamill. "No one's going to just hand me the keys." Mitchell has now directed three films, including the recently released "Under the Silver Lake," a sun soaked, subversive noir that stars Andrew Garfield as Sam, a young man on the margins of Hollywood who tries to unravel the mystery of what happened to his missing neighbor (Riley Keough). Sam's path isn't easy, and the journey of "Under the Silver Lake" has been just as circuitous. Delayed twice after a planned bow last summer, the film emerged in a handful of theaters last weekend, then was rushed onto digital platforms this week. Rumors flew that Mitchell and his studio, A24, were at loggerheads over recutting the two hour, 20 minute film, which had gotten a mixed reception when it debuted at Cannes. Mitchell rebuts those rumors: The version released this month is the same one he turned in last year. "I'm sure there's some people who might like the movie a little bit more if it were such and such length or a little shorter, but that's not the point of this film," Mitchell said. "This is it, and there's no changing it." (The mixed reception continued with the reviews this month: In The New York Times, A.O. Scott called it "an example of intellectual timidity"; Owen Gleiberman of Variety said it was "full of hypnotic and arresting sequences." If there had been an easier way forward for "Under the Silver Lake," perhaps that would have gone against Mitchell's own tendencies. "I'm often somewhat worried about myself that I tend to be drawn to situations that are going to be incredibly difficult," he said, smiling sheepishly. "I'd like to find some level of moderation with that, just for my own sanity." The boyish Mitchell is 44 but looks younger, and when I first met him five years ago after the debut of his horror hit, "It Follows," he was wearing braces. It isn't difficult to imagine him in his early 20s, when Mitchell graduated from Florida State University and moved west with stars in his eyes. "I thought I would be able to make a feature immediately. I was so foolish," he said. "I had to find work and figure out how to survive and it was hard." It's remained hard ever since, even as Mitchell finally saved up enough money to work his way behind the camera. His first feature, "The Myth of the American Sleepover" (2011), was made for only 30,000 with an unknown cast of teenagers, and "it was terrifying," he said. "We didn't know, is our crew going to show up? Is there anyone that's just going to walk away from this? I don't know of any other way to say it other than the feeling I had was fear." The film debuted at South by Southwest to upbeat notices, but Mitchell and his collaborators returned to Los Angeles, where little had changed for them. "After we had made 'Myth,' we were all basically really broke," Mitchell said. "If we had a good review, we would joke, 'My God, can we exchange that for some cash somewhere?'" His next film, the artsy, low budget "It Follows" in 2014, was a more unqualified success: rave reviews in Cannes and more than 20 million worldwide at the box office. Still, Mitchell remained inclined to reject the easiest path forward: Though producers were interested in turning "It Follows" into a lucrative horror franchise, Mitchell had no interest in repeating himself. "I just want to push in a different direction, always," he said. Instead, Mitchell put his muscle behind "Under the Silver Lake," a sprawling, 160 page script he'd written before "It Follows" had given him any chits to cash. Once animated by similar dreams of success in the film business, the lead character, Sam, now floats listlessly but finds renewed purpose as an amateur detective. After all, a sleuth and a Hollywood wannabe have a lot in common: Each is searching for his big break. An oddball prone to flashes of creepy behavior, Sam cuts a poignant figure as his dashed Hollywood dreams come to light. "That's where it moves away from anything that I ever felt, which is that feeling of what happens if someone really, truly, gives up?" Mitchell said. "What happens if somebody really is unable to find the desire to try?" For Garfield, who had spent several years playing virtuous heroes, like those in "Hacksaw Ridge" and the "Spider Man" films, "Under the Silver Lake" presented a new challenge: Could he channel the carrot on a stick anxiety that hangs over Hollywood like a layer of smog? "Even I feel it, and I'm obviously a very privileged person in the opportunities I've had," Garfield said in a phone interview. "You can feel your position on the hierarchy very acutely here." Mitchell started shooting "Under the Silver Lake" in fall 2016 for more money than his prior two films put together, but that didn't make the production any easier. The script was long with a large cast and many locations. And the director could be exacting. "There were days when we had to hold off on filming because a specific prop wasn't exactly right," Garfield said. "In my experience on a set, it doesn't often happen that you hold the scene because a cereal box isn't exactly the patina you imagined it to be when you were writing the script." Still, Mitchell's stubbornness didn't deter Garfield. "Anyone who has that specificity of vision and uncompromising nature, I'm turned on by it," he said. "There's a small handful of directors who get to create their vision and not compromise, and what I love about David as a young filmmaker is that he's vying to be one of those directors." When "Under the Silver Lake" premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May, Mitchell's movie proved polarizing. "In all honesty, the Cannes experience was wonderful and terrible," he said. "But it was always intended to be a kind of a bold film, so for me to shy away from that and to be hurt by some negativity, I think it would probably be a little bit silly." That mixed reception contributed to a series of delays, but now, long after "Under the Silver Lake" has been released in other countries, it can finally be watched by the Hollywood dreamers it sends up. Might the film's reputation be burnished by the people here, who are better able to connect with Sam's cracked quest than critics at Cannes? "I've talked about this with a couple of friends," Mitchell said. "Maybe this will grow on people, and they'll appreciate it more years from now." He paused, then shrugged. "Or maybe not." At least the harder path would be more familiar.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
YouTube videos of police beatings on American streets. A widely circulated internet hoax about Muslim men in Michigan collecting welfare for multiple wives. A local news story about two veterans brutally mugged on a freezing winter night. All of these were recorded, posted or written by Americans. Yet all ended up becoming grist for a network of Facebook pages linked to a shadowy Russian company that has carried out propaganda campaigns for the Kremlin, and which is now believed to be at the center of a far reaching Russian program to influence the 2016 presidential election. A New York Times examination of hundreds of those posts shows that one of the most powerful weapons that Russian agents used to reshape American politics was the anger, passion and misinformation that real Americans were broadcasting across social media platforms. The Russian pages with names like "Being Patriotic," "Secured Borders" and "Blacktivist" cribbed complaints about federal agents from one conservative website, and a gauzy article about a veteran who became an entrepreneur from People magazine. They took descriptions and videos of police beatings from genuine YouTube and Facebook accounts and reposted them, sometimes lightly edited for maximum effect. Other posts on the Russian pages used stilted language or phrases rarely found in American English. Yet their use of borrowed ideas and arguments from Americans, which were already resonating among conservatives and liberals, demonstrated a deft understanding of the political terrain. The Russians also paid Facebook to promote their posts in the feeds of American Facebook users, helping them test what content would circulate most widely, and among which audiences. "This is cultural hacking," said Jonathan Albright, research director at Columbia University's Tow Center for Digital Journalism. "They are using systems that were already set up by these platforms to increase engagement. They're feeding outrage and it's easy to do, because outrage and emotion is how people share." All of the pages were shut down by Facebook in recent weeks, as the company conducts an internal review of Russian penetration of its social network. But content and engagement metrics for hundreds of posts were captured by CrowdTangle, a common social analytics tool, and gathered by Mr. Albright. The video ends with Mr. Shah pointing out New York's hypocrisy: The city claims to be a "melting pot," but no one intervened while he was getting harassed. Mr. Shah's original video, posted on YouTube in June 2016, was a viral hit that attracted more than three million views. A week after he posted it, United Muslims of America copied the video to its group page without the original YouTube link, a process known as ripping. There, Mr. Shah's video become the Russian page's most popular post, earning more than 150,000 interactions. Mr. Shah said when he noticed the ripped video, he wrote to the administrator of the United Muslims account, asking them to add the link to his original YouTube video. His main concern, Mr. Shah said, was that the page was stealing his views. Told that his video had been used by Russian accounts to sow division in the United States, Mr. Shah said there wasn't anything he could do about it. "There are always going to be people who manipulate things to their agenda," he said. When Being Patriotic posted a brief message last year rallying Americans against proposals to expand refugee settlements in the United States, it was liked, shared or otherwise engaged with by more than 750,000 Facebook users. Eventually, it came across the feed of Len Swanson, 64, a Republican activist from Houston and an avid Trump supporter. Mr. Swanson, who frequently posts long commentaries on LinkedIn and Facebook, then used the message and photo to open one of his own posts, attacking Hillary Clinton and the Democrats. The message Mr. Swanson borrowed also appears on a conservative meme website, with a photo that at least one newspaper has credited to the United States Navy. "I usually publish an article several times a week, to keep driving the narrative," Mr. Swanson said in an interview. He was not bothered, he said, by becoming an unwitting cog in the Russian propaganda machine. "You know we do the same damn thing over there," Mr. Swanson said. "What do you think we're saints?" In early 2016, Being Patriotic copied and pasted a story from the conspiracy site InfoWars, saying that federal employees had taken "land from private property owners at pennies on the dollar." The Russian page added some original text: "The nation can't trust the federal government anymore. What a disgrace!" A Russia linked Facebook page, Being Patriotic, posted a version of a message rallying Americans against proposals to expand refugee settlements in the United States. The message was reposted by American Facebook users. This past March, another of the Russian pages, Secured Borders, reposted a video that it attributed to Conservative Tribune, part of the conservative and pro Trump sites run by Patrick Brown. The video, which falsely claims that Michigan allows Muslim immigrants to collect welfare checks and other benefits for four wives, originated on a YouTube channel called CleanTV. The Facebook post has been removed, but a version remains up on the meme site Me.Me. Mr. Brown did not respond to an email seeking comment. But Gerald McGlothlin, the president of CleanTV and a contributor to other sites run by Mr. Brown confirmed in an email that his company had created the original YouTube video. The Blacktivist Facebook page appears to have specialized in passionate denunciations of the criminal justice system and viral videos of police violence, many of them gathered from Facebook and YouTube. In May, Blacktivist also posted a message drawn from news stories about the death of Jayson Negron, a teenager in Bridgeport, Conn., during a confrontation with police. Such posts soon found an authentic audience: The Negron post was reposted by a verified Facebook account belonging to Black Lives Matter Chicago, according to a cached copy. As lawmakers debate tighter regulation for companies like Facebook, the trail of Russian digital bread crumbs underscores how difficult it will be to purge social media networks of foreign influence, or even to hamper the covert propaganda campaigns carried out on social platforms by Russia, China and other countries. Copying other people's content without proper attribution can be a violation of the social networks' rules. But the content itself the videos, posts and Instagram memes borrowed and shared on the Russian pages are not explicitly violent or discriminatory, so they do not violate the rules of those services. Instead, they are precisely the type of engaging content these platforms are hungry for. The Russian campaign also appears to have been tailored to exploit the companies' own strategies for keeping users engaged. Facebook, for example, pushed people to interact more in Groups like the ones set up by the Russians, where users can "share their common interests and express their opinion" around a common cause. LinkedIn, the professional social network owned by Microsoft, is geared toward encouraging users like Mr. Swanson to create articles and other content. "The strategies are no mystery," said Michael Strangelove, a lecturer on internet culture at the University of Ottawa. "Foreign powers are playing within the rules of the game that we wrote." A spokesman for Facebook declined to comment. LinkedIn said Mr. Swanson's post did not violate the site's terms of service. "The challenges posed by the dissemination of fake news and other harmful content through technology platforms are serious," said Nicole Leverich, a spokeswoman for LinkedIn. "We actively address suspected violations of LinkedIn's terms of service such as harassment, fake profiles, and misinformation on our platform." The Russians appear to have insinuated themselves across American social media platforms and used the same promotional tools that people employ to share cat videos, airline complaints and personal rants. Many of the posts on Being Patriotic also match pre made, shareable graphics on sites like ConservativeMemes.com, nestled alongside other conservative content made for sharing on social media. Boosted by Russian accounts, the material was quickly picked up by other American users of Facebook, spreading the posts to an even bigger audience. The Russian presence appeared to be layered throughout different platforms: Some of the Facebook accounts, including Being Patriotic, had linked accounts on Instagram and Twitter, according to deleted content captured in Google's cache. John W. Kelly, the founder of Graphika, a commercial analytics company in New York, said the Russians appeared to have a consistent strategy across different platforms. Graphika has tracked thousands of social media accounts whose content closely tracks Russian information operations, promoting articles and videos about WikiLeaks dumps of stolen emails and "false flag" conspiracies about Syrian chemical weapons. The Russian accounts intermingle with real groups of Facebook or Twitter users from white nationalists to Bernie Sanders supporters and seek to manipulate and radicalize them, Mr. Kelly said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
If you throw out your contact lenses every day or so, you're not alone more than 45 million people in the United States wear contacts, and many of them use disposable versions of the little plastic hemispheres. But if they are not tossed out correctly, contact lenses may have a dark side. Research presented Sunday at the American Chemical Society's meeting in Boston showed that 20 percent of more than 400 contact wearers who were randomly recruited in an online survey flushed used contacts down the toilet or washed them down the sink, rather than putting them in the garbage. When the lenses make their way to a wastewater treatment facility, they do not biodegrade easily, the researchers report, and they may fragment and make their way into surface water. There, they can cause environmental damage and may add to the growing problem of microplastic pollution. A 2015 study found that there were 93,000 to 236,000 metric tons of microplastic swirling in the ocean. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Filters keep some nonbiological waste out of wastewater treatment plants, said Rolf Halden, the director of the Center for Environmental Health Engineering at Arizona State University, and Charles Rolsky, a graduate student and the study's lead author. (Dr. Halden uses contact lenses; Mr. Rolsky wears glasses.) But contacts are so flexible that they can fold up and make their way through. The researchers interviewed workers at such facilities, who confirmed that they had spotted lenses in the waste.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
"Isn't It Romantic" is the second comedy in less than a week, after "What Men Want," in which a woman gains the power to improve her life following a concussion. Natalie (Rebel Wilson), an architect whose colleagues treat her as a doormat, disdains romance and hates it in movies. Her appearance is played for laughs. (A halal vendor implores her to stop his runaway cart with her body.) Then, in the process of foiling a mugger, she smacks into a metal beam in a subway station and wakes up to find herself in a romantic comedy version of New York, filled with clean air, flowers and cupcakes. She has a meet cute with a Hemsworth (Liam). Her dog is suddenly obedient. Her newly capacious apartment looks like the 21st century equivalent of a Doris Day pad. (The title's nod to Rodgers and Hart notwithstanding, "Isn't It Romantic" mostly operates on the assumption that rom coms were invented in 1990 with "Pretty Woman.") And her mousy best friend, Josh (Adam Devine), who was always encouraging her to be confident, has his own meet cute with a woman who is both a yoga ambassador and swimsuit model (Priyanka Chopra).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Few deaths in movies are handled with the contempt that some filmmakers show murdered sex workers. It's one reason that the true crime drama "Lost Girls" feels so bracing: It humanizes women often represented as disposable, more props than people. When a mother in the movie laments that her missing daughter, a sex worker, has been forgotten along with other women, her words feel like an accusation. When "our girls" are remembered, she says, it's never as "friend, sister, mother, daughter." That condemnation runs like a pulsating current through "Lost Girls," which centers on Mari Gilbert, a flinty heartbreaker played by Amy Ryan. A sober chronicle of victimization and empowerment, the movie tracks Mari's search for her daughter Shannan, who vanished after meeting a client. The world sees a missing prostitute as an inevitability rather than a tragedy or outrage; Mari sees a beloved child and, in time, a cause that's as political as it is personal. It's a good, righteous fit for the director Liz Garbus, a documentarian drawn to stories about social justice, here making her fiction feature debut. (Her docs include "What Happened, Miss Simone?") The real story is grim and shrouded in mystery. Early on May 1, 2010, Shannan Gilbert, a 24 year old sex worker who advertised on Craigslist, called 911 screaming, "They're trying to kill me." She then disappeared. Late that same year, a police dog sniffed out the corpse of a different woman in the same Long Island area where Shannan was last seen. Other bodies and body parts were recovered; one victim traced back to the mid 1990s. When most of the victims were identified as prostitutes, a detective said it was a "consolation" that the killer didn't seem to be "selecting citizens at large." It's easy to imagine Garbus reading that comment and becoming incensed. (The line appears in Robert Kolker's "Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery," the sympathetic book on which the movie is based.) There are different ways to describe Garbus's telling of this mystery: it's serious, respectful, gravely melancholic. Yet anger best describes the movie's atmosphere, its overall mood and its authorial tone. In some scenes, anger seems to hover over characters, as threatening as the movie's permanently dark skies; at other times, it erupts, flushing faces and distorting voices. It ebbs and flows; every so often, it spills over until you feel it seeping into you.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
On a cool October evening, in a Brooklyn studio crowded with canvases, some still wet, Diane Foley stood before an oil painting of two solemn grade school boys in the Libyan civil war. One of the boys held aloft a photo of a middle aged man, a relative, who was missing. "I like this one," Mrs. Foley said to the artist, Bradley McCallum. "I particularly like the ones that show the victims because it's not just destroyed buildings. Jim wanted to inspire us to reflect on what really happens in a war." Mrs. Foley has a desperately keen understanding of what happens in a conflict zone. "Jim" was her son, the freelance photojournalist James W. Foley. He was kidnapped in 2012 while covering the Syrian civil war, held hostage for 21 months and brutally murdered in 2014 by members of the Islamic State in an execution filmed by his captors and released online. Many remember his death, but his mother and Mr. McCallum, who is painting a series based on Mr. Foley's work, want people to remember his chronicle of war, its human cost and his humanity. Three years ago, Mr. McCallum, 52, approached Mrs. Foley with an idea for a project that would play the role of a memorial, reframe the collective memory of Mr. Foley and make tangible the quality of empathy in his work. After teaching a graduate seminar at Columbia University that examined the way ISIS used visual imagery, including its violent online propaganda videos, to spread cyberterrorism, Mr. McCallum said, "The memory of seeing it when it was first on television, and the kind of trauma, and the sophistication in the way that video was framed, I wondered, would it be possible for me, in making art, to change the way we see Jim when we search his name?" From the start, Mr. McCallum conceived of the project as a collaboration with Mrs. Foley. And after a year of conversations, she agreed to license her son's work to him. Mr. McCallum was interested in unpublished source material, the workaday backdrop to the war. Mrs. Foley provided some of her son's external hard drives she hadn't opened, which he had left behind during his last visit home. That archive contained some of Mr. Foley's freelance work for GlobalPost and Agence France Presse, including footage from the early stages of the Syrian civil war and the downfall of the dictator Muammar el Qaddafi in Libya, where Mr. Foley was held for 44 days in his first kidnapping. From them Mr. McCallum is close to completing 23 paintings and has prepared canvases for 10 more. The paintings include collages of images from Mr. Foley's video or photographic stills, a process that Nicholas Mirzoeff, a professor of media, culture, and communication at New York University, described as "a physical manifestation of the photoshop process." Photorealist in style, the paintings are oil on linen. Most also include a silk overlay, like a theatrical scrim, with text from Mr. Foley's journal entries. As he worked on the paintings, Mr. McCallum sometimes shared with Mrs. Foley the text he was printing. They discussed titles for the paintings and at times, struggled to walk the line between consultation and collaboration. "I'd say to Diane, 'Just trust me because if you try to make the selections, try to be curator of this image or that one, this isn't going to work,'" Mr. McCallum said. But taking charge and speaking her mind come easily to Mrs. Foley, a flinty New Englander with a model's frame who raised five children and worked as a nurse practitioner. "It's nice but I don't think it really captures him," she said as she stood in the studio before Mr. McCallum's large scale portrait of her son. She added: "I like the ones with the children. Jim loved children." With its reliance on photojournalism, Mr. McCallum's project stands on the shoulders of artists like Andy Warhol, whose visceral Death and Disaster paintings appropriated newspaper headlines and images, like the 1962 Air France crash, one Warhol created the day after it appeared on the cover of the New York Daily Mirror, or his use of Charles Moore's 1963 photographs for Life magazine of dogs tugging at civil rights protesters in Birmingham, Ala. The Foley series is still underway, with the artist seeking a gallery or museum showing. But the collaborative process of memorializing a loved one with a non artist is already precedent setting. According to Dr. Mirzoeff, it encourages "persistent looking," raising questions about the ethics of appropriating imagery, of war and conflict, memory and mourning, the refugee crisis, and the varieties of terrorism. The paintings telegraph literal and figurative loss. In one, a soldier rests a gun on the sill of a broken window that overlooks a street gutted by explosions. "Mother's Lament" captures six different video frames and features a woman in a double layered veil and abaya, her face tight with anguish. In "Fallen" men snap pictures of the bloodied corpse of Mutassim el Qaddafi, the son of the former Libyan strongman. The painting draws its images from 20 video stills stitched together from Mr. Foley's raw video footage. Other paintings, of sky or desert, function as pauses between conflict photography. "Bradley is not just giving us the most disturbing images that's certainly there but also paying attention to what is the banality of war, its everydayness, little moments where you are just looking up, at a beautiful arrangement of light," Dr. Mirzoeff said. Since his graduate art student days at Yale, Mr. McCallum has spotlighted themes of justice and accountability in his work, including a stint as artist in residence for the New York Civil Liberties Union. His projects comprise collective portraits of women who lost children to gun violence, homeless teenagers and defendants in war crimes trials at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Mr. McCallum received a 10,000 grant from the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation with an agreement to return some profits. The family established the foundation in 2014 to provide hostage advocacy services, education and journalist safety guides. During Mr. Foley's captivity, his family said it experienced frustrating and fruitless attempts to work with the Obama administration and were instrumental in that administration establishing a new hostage recovery protocol involving families whose relatives were kidnapped abroad. As the president of the Foley foundation, Mrs. Foley is practiced in being a public figure. Strangers send paintings and drawings of her son to the family's New Hampshire home. The Foleys participated in Brian Oakes's 2016 documentary, "Jim: The James Foley Story." Sting wrote and recorded a song about Mr. Foley that was nominated for a 2017 Academy Award. Reporters phone the Foleys for reaction after a journalist is killed, most recently after the October murder of the Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey. Earlier this year, when Mrs. Foley learned that a feature film was being made about a mother's efforts to free her kidnapped son, a reporter in the Middle East, she asked whether it might harm conflict journalists. In September, that film, Viper Club, written and directed by Maryam Keshavarz, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival. Ms. Keshavarz said her characters are fictional and drawn from news reports of many kidnapped journalists. But after Mrs. Foley and her husband, John, a family physician, saw the movie, she contacted a producer, J.C. Chandor (the writer and director of "Margin Call" and "A Most Violent Year"), to share her concerns, foremost the film's depiction of journalists ferrying ransom money. After meeting with Mrs. Foley and Nicole Tung, a conflict photojournalist and colleague of Mr. Foley, the scenes were changed and other things, "personal and too close," Mr. Chandor said, were removed. "The last thing we wanted to do is cause her any more hardship and emotional turmoil." Ms. Keshavarz said she focused the narrative of the film around the "emotional anguish of a parent not having control, having to wait, and doing it alone," while their child is a hostage. The film is dedicated to conflict journalists, specifically Mr. Foley and four other reporters killed in the Middle East. Google made a small donation to the Foley Foundation. Produced by Google's YouTube Premium, the film will be available via subscription next year. "I think the film is much safer," Mrs. Foley said of the subsequent changes. Family and friends describe Mr. Foley as warm and outgoing, with a fierce intelligence yet self effacing and humble. Ms. Tung thinks he would have been "a little embarrassed" by the spotlight. "For him, it was about the people he documented and whose stories were being amplified and not about him on the other hand he would have been very honored," she said by email from her current post, in the Central African Republic. In the studio, Mrs. Foley and Mr. McCallum fanned through family photographs. There were also prints of the video stills Mr. Foley took in Libya and Syria, in his slivers of ordinary time, between the bombing victims and ruined cities. In one, a flock of dark birds appears in a corner of blue sky, their upturned wings flashing white. His mother studied the images, leaning in closely, and lingering on one that a colleague took of Mr. Foley, his lanky frame curled up with a notebook. "I love this photo of Jim in the desert, trying to write in the desert," she said, her fingertips touching the small cross on her necklace. She pointed out two other images, of the sun rising and setting. "It was very important when Jim was in captivity, the sound of the birds and of children playing, the sound of prayer, the call to prayer," Mrs. Foley said. "Jim would pray with them." Mr. McCallum held up a photo of Jim as a teenager at a national park, on a family trip. In it, Mr. Foley is very near a sign that says "Danger. Keep Off Rocks." His mother looked at it and shook her head. "That was where he liked to be," she said. "Right at the edge."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Our guide to plays and musicals coming to New York stages and a few last chance picks of shows that are about to close. Our reviews of open shows are at nytimes.com/reviews/theater. 'AMERICAN UTOPIA' at the Hudson Theater (in previews; opens on Oct. 20). Heaven, David Byrne once sang, is a place where nothing happens. But Broadway is not. And it is hosting the latest theatrical experiment from Byrne ("Here Lies Love," "Joan of Arc: Into the Fire"). Byrne and 11 barefoot collaborators sing and discuss music and justice. Annie B Parson does the choreography. 855 801 5876, americanutopiabroadway.com 'BELLA BELLA' at City Center Stage I (in previews; opens on Oct. 22). Bella Abzug, the radical lawyer and politician, had a signature style jaunty hats, vibrant blouses, the occasional strand of pearls. Harvey Fierstein might not dress the same (well, he may don a hat), but he will channel her spirit in his affectionate tribute to Battling Bella, set at the close of a hard fought senate campaign. Kimberly Senior directs. 212 581 1212, nycitycenter.org 'DR. RIDE'S AMERICAN BEACH HOUSE' at Ars Nova at Greenwich House (previews start on Oct. 21; opens on Nov. 5). Blasting into space, doable. Navigating gender and sexuality on Earth, harder. Liza Birkenmeier's play, set in 1983, invites itself over as four friends (Susan Blommaert, Marga Gomez, Erin Markey and Kristen Sieh) enjoy a rooftop party the night before Sally Ride's spaceflight. Katie Brook directs for Ars Nova. arsnovanyc.com	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
James Daunt, who has run Waterstones since 2011, is the new chief executive of Barnes Noble. Credit...Suzie Howell for The New York Times James Daunt, who has run Waterstones since 2011, is the new chief executive of Barnes Noble. James Daunt, the man who will soon try to revive Barnes Noble, once spent weeks in a noisy, arm waving debate about the ideal angle of tilt for bookstore shelving. His opponent was an Italian showroom designer who argued, in a series of otherwise congenial meals in some of London's best restaurants, that the shelf should be tilted four degrees. Wrong, countered Mr. Daunt. The right answer is three degrees. Yes, the cover of a book catches a bit more light, and attention, if tilted at four degrees, especially on shelves below eye level. But the spine of a book starts to bend, ever so slightly. "He prioritized presentation. I prioritized the condition of the book," Mr. Daunt said, grinning to acknowledge just how wonky this discussion was. "These are my stores, so I went with three degrees." Mr. Daunt is talking about Waterstones, Britain's largest bookstore chain, which he began to run in 2011, when it was on the verge of bankruptcy. A soft spoken 55 year old with a puckish smile and iron resolve, Mr. Daunt steered Waterstones out of a death spiral by rethinking every cranny of the company, from small (those shelves) to large (the business model). The changes have filled Waterstones' 289 shops, mostly in Britain, with books that customers actually want to buy, as opposed to the ones that publishers are eager to sell. And store managers have been given plenty of leeway to transform their shops into places that feel personally curated and decidedly uncorporate. "He's essentially created a series of independent bookstores," said Tom Weldon, the chief executive of Penguin Random House Books U.K., "with the buying power of a chain." Some Waterstones locations, like tiny Southwold Books in Suffolk, aren't called Waterstones. Others, like the shop on Gower Street in London, have cafes with added electrical sockets and are swarmed day and night with laptop toting college students, most of them consuming more electricity than coffee. "We're playing the long game," Mr. Daunt said. "When those students are rich and famous, they'll buy books from us and the cost of the electricity will be paid back in spades." Defying predictions that chain bookstores were doomed in an Amazon world, the privately held Waterstones returned to profitability in 2015, Mr. Daunt said, and earns a steady 10 percent margin on sales of roughly 500 million. Barnes Noble has been sliding toward oblivion for years. Nearly 400 stores have closed since 1997 there are 627 now operating and 1 billion in market value has evaporated in the last five years. This week, Elliott Advisors, the private equity firm that owns Waterstones, closed its deal to buy Barnes Noble for 683 million. Mr. Daunt will move to New York City this month and serve as the new chief executive. He has said little about his plans, but his playbook at Waterstones offers clues about what's coming. His guiding assumption is that the only point of a bookstore is to provide a rich experience in contrast to a quick online transaction. And for now, the experience at Barnes Noble isn't good enough. "Frankly, at the moment you want to love Barnes Noble, but when you leave the store you feel mildly betrayed," Mr. Daunt said over lunch at a Japanese restaurant near his office in Piccadilly Circus. "Not massively, but mildly. It's a bit ugly there's piles of crap around the place. It all feels a bit unloved, the booksellers look a bit miserable, it's all a bit run down. "And every year, fewer people come in, or people come in less often. That has to turn around. Otherwise ..." Mr. Daunt will still have a hand in running Waterstones, which means he will soon become one of the publishing industry's most powerful figures, and a literary tastemaker whose sway is exceeded only by Oprah Winfrey's. If that sounds like hype, consider what has happened in Britain. Though Waterstones doesn't take money from publishers to push specific titles, its headquarters still chooses books to promote, and it anoints a book of the month and a book of the year. Those selections almost always become best sellers. "That is something Amazon doesn't do, because its algorithm is passive," said Andrew Franklin of Profile Books, the London publisher of Alan Bennett, Francis Fukuyama and others. 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. Amazon can tell you what you might like based on what you've already purchased, but it doesn't spotlight unknown books that deserve a wide audience. It can't make a literary star, something Waterstones now does with regularity. "James really liked 'The Essex Serpent,'" Mr. Franklin recalled, referring to the 2016 novel by Sarah Perry, "and he made it book of the year. It sold 100,000 copies." There are other ways that Mr. Daunt distinguishes Waterstones from what he calls "our friends in Seattle." In January, during a speech before a group of booksellers in Venice, he likened Amazon to the boy devouring lion in "Jim," a poem by Hilaire Belloc. "Nothing happens quickly, but it happens remorselessly," he told the audience, in the methodical tone of a man telling a ghost story. "It never stops. It gets worse and it gets worse, and if you're not careful, you end up being entirely eaten." He paused, allowed a small grin and added, "But we haven't been entirely eaten." Barnes Noble flailed, in part, because it contested Amazon's turf, investing heavily in e commerce and losing more than 1 billion on the Nook, a competitor to the Kindle. Waterstones has spruced up its website "on a shoestring," Mr. Daunt said, and it now accounts for 5 percent of sales. But the company has largely persisted by selling the pleasure of bookstores first and books second. Because if a store is charming and addictive enough, goes Mr. Daunt's theory, buying a book there isn't just more pleasant. The book itself is better than the same book bought online. "It just is," he said. "You'll enjoy it more. You'll read it quicker. You chose it with your own eyes, your hands, your ears. Now it's all about anticipation. If you buy a book from Amazon, there's a little anticipation as you rip the tag off the envelope. But it's generally slightly flat and disappointing." When Mr. Daunt took over at Waterstones, there was plenty of skepticism about him among publishers. His only previous bookselling experience was running what was then a chain of six stores that he had founded, Daunt Books. He had managed about 50 people. Waterstones employed 3,000. Maybe he was in over his head. Plus, he seemed a bit too erudite for a mass market retailer; his style was more sommelier than salesman. And he had some radical ideas. He wanted Waterstones to forswear 38 million a year in "co op fees" paid by publishers. The fees gave publishers the power to dictate which books would be stocked and where they would be displayed, in every single Waterstones. Although best sellers in Truro, near the southern coast of England, are different from best sellers in, say, Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, these Waterstones were essentially interchangeable. To Mr. Daunt, this was manifestly insane. He likened co op fees to crack, an easy high that comes with an intolerable price. Achilles James Daunt is the son of an ambassador and has a diplomat's gift for the art of ingratiation. He is formal and not very cuddly, as several friends put it, but when he discusses his favorite subjects great novels, the Hebrides he glows with almost adolescent joy. At other times, there is a wink embedded in his voice, a tone that suggests he is letting you into a conspiracy of sane people. It's evident when he talks about his brief, early stint as a banker. He joined the corporate finance department of J.P. Morgan in Manhattan, shortly after graduating from Cambridge University in 1984. He loved the work and the money, but his wife, Katy Steward, recoiled at the prospect of 40 years of dinnertime stories about stock swaps and high yield bonds. "Have you ever talked to a banker?" Mr. Daunt asked. "Banker to banker, they have a lovely time. But for the rest of humanity, it's just tiresome." Looking for a new career, he decided he'd need to work for himself, possibly in the travel business. Mr. Daunt has always taken an unusual approach to vacations, at least for a wealthy adult with a wife and two daughters, now 16 and 22. He and his family have backpacked through Ethiopia, Romania, Cuba and many other countries, for days at a time, bedding down when they find a resident with extra space, which is often a sofa or a floor. On yearly trips to Jura, an island off the west coast of Scotland, they stay in a cave that usually shelters goats and deer. ("The aroma leaves something to be desired," he said.) In worst case scenarios, they sleep outdoors. "If you don't get out of the weather, then it's really, really unpleasant," he said with a grin. "Then you don't sleep. You just huddle." It's a style of holiday that prizes singular experiences above all else. In 1988, he dreamed up a bookstore that he hoped would be every bit as memorable one that was organized by country. The section on Brazil, for instance, would offer not just guidebooks but Brazilian fiction, nonfiction and history. The first Daunt Books, which opened in 1990, dazzled patrons the moment they walked in, though not because of its country centric arrangement. It was the store itself, the long shuttered home of an antiquarian bookseller, constructed in the Edwardian age, its oak shelves, galleries, balcony and skylight all gloriously intact. "The Picture Perfect Bookshop That's Designed for Travelers," reads a headline on the website Secret London. While Mr. Daunt now speaks at conferences on the art of bookselling, he learned it on the fly, without taking a class or even reading up on the subject. "Trial and error," he said. By 2010, one of the biggest threats to Daunt Books was the imminent demise of Waterstones. The infrastructure of British bookselling depended on its survival. As much as Mr. Daunt loathed the uniformity and soullessness of chain bookstores, he thought he might have the only medicine that could save the company. Waterstones' previous owner, HMV, best known as a music retailer, would never countenance this quirky brand of enthusiasm. For years, Ms. Atfield would receive weekly planograms from company headquarters, a visual layout that determined nearly every square foot of the store which books were placed on tables, where those tables stood and so on. The planogram was enforced by occasional visits from HMV managers. Deviations were noted, and scoldings were delivered in follow up emails. As HMV foundered, the company was in too much disarray for spot checks. So Ms. Atfield, for the first time, configured the store exactly as she wanted. She ditched the pink cardboard lining that was supposed to cover the shelves of promoted books. She and her staff didn't wear the black polo shirt with the Waterstones insignia. And she stocked the most prominent shelves with the titles that were selling well in Horsham, rather than the ones mandated by HMV. Like "Bloody Southerners," a book about a soccer team in the south of England, written by Spencer Vignes. The 2018 release is precisely the kind of area favorite that she once was forbidden to feature. "In the HMV days," she said, pointing to a table with nothing on it except copies of that book, "there's no way I could have gotten away with that." Soon after she had laid out the store to her tastes, Mr. Daunt came to visit. It was not long after he had been put in charge of Waterstones, and the scuttlebutt was that he would give store managers unprecedented freedom. Mr. Daunt toured the store by himself, quietly scribbling notes. Then he left. For days Ms. Atfield braced herself for a reprimand and a long list of corrections. It never came. Barnes Noble's staff needs to feel a sense of agency, Mr. Daunt said. And from past experience, he has a surprisingly simple test to determine when that has occurred: Employees start to answer the phone. "If I can get the phones to stop ringing and ringing at Barnes Noble, it will be a miracle, a stunning miracle of life," he said with a laugh. "If I pull that off, everything else will be working. It means employees have a sense of absolute mastery over everything they do." At Waterstones, phone answering mastery can be found at just 120 stores, Mr. Daunt said, which are fewer than half. And that is nine years after he took over. "I can guarantee that if you call the Piccadilly store," he said, "no one will pick up the phone." He was right. Five calls were made to the store the next day. Five times, no one answered.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Khalidi's core thesis is that the Israeli Palestinian conflict is best understood as a war of colonial conquest, one that closely hews to the pattern and mind set of other national colonial movements of the 19th century. As he points out, an early Zionist slogan calling for a Jewish homeland in Palestine "a land without people for a people without a land" not only discounted the presence of the estimated 700,000 Palestinians already there, but echoed a great body of settler lore that required conquered lands to be void of people, or at least inhabited only by lesser ones: Think of the expansion onto Indian lands in the American West, or white Australia's long denigration of the Aborigines. Zionism had the added advantage, Khalidi argues, of adorning "itself with a biblical coat that was powerfully attractive to Bible reading Protestants in Great Britain and the United States." Consolidating this colonial settler paradigm, in Khalidi's telling, was the 1948 Israeli War of Independence or the "Nakba" (Catastrophe), as the Palestinians call it. By seizing control of nearly 80 percent of the land that constituted the British Palestine Mandate, and overseeing the expulsion or flight of a similar percentage of its native Arab population, the Israeli pioneers were emulating the model of earlier victorious settlers. Once outside actors became involved, Khalidi contends, matters only turned worse for the Palestinians. After the 1967 war, for example, the United Nations passed Resolution 242, demanding Israel return to its prewar borders. As Khalidi astutely points out, while SC 242 is generally regarded as the foundational basis for future Arab Israeli peace talks, for the Palestinians it represented a one two punch: Nowhere in the resolution are they referred to by name they are merely "refugees" while a return to the 1967 borders meant the outside world was now legitimating their 1948 expulsion. In Khalidi's view, each subsequent diplomatic "breakthrough" in the region has served only to further negate or marginalize the Palestinians. The 1979 Camp David peace treaty between Israel and Egypt meant that the Palestinians had lost a cornerstone ally in the region, while the much heralded 1993 Oslo Accords served to co opt the Palestinian leadership and maroon their followers into tiny enclaves under ultimate Israeli control. While many of Khalidi's insights are thought provoking, their persuasiveness is undermined at times by a tendency to shave the rhetorical corner. He quite justifiably labels the Irgun, an early Jewish paramilitary organization, as a "terror group," but is markedly more charitable when similar tactics were used by armed Palestinian factions. There is also a slipperiness to some of his formulations. To cite one particularly stark example, Khalidi contends that vital to the "settler colonial enterprise" has been an Israeli campaign to sever the link displaced Palestinians feel for their homeland. "The comforting idea," he writes, "that 'the old will die and the young will forget' a remark attributed to David Ben Gurion, probably mistakenly expresses one of the deepest aspirations of Israeli leaders after 1948." Well, if the writer himself notes that the source of a quote is probably wrong, then it's deeply problematic to use that quote. But the bigger weakness of this book, to my mind, can be distilled to a simple question: Where does it get you? Even if one fully accepts Khalidi's colonialist thesis, does that move us any closer to some kind of resolution? This may seem an unfair criticism. After all, it is not incumbent on a historian to offer up possible remedies except this is the closing task Khalidi sets for himself. It is also where his insights become noticeably threadbare. His most intriguing suggestion is that the Palestinians stop regarding the United States as an honest broker in negotiations with Israel, but recognize that Washington will always ultimately side with Israel. He further suggests that with American influence in the region waning, it might be one of the new powers emerging on the scene China or India or Russia that could more honorably fulfill the arbiter role. While Khalidi's first point has considerable merit, it's exceedingly hard to see the United States, waning influence or no, ever taking a diplomatic back seat in the region to another external power, or forcing Israel to make the sorts of concessions that a new intermediary would surely demand. And with the possible exception of the current occupant of the White House, it's even harder to imagine anyone thinking a solution to their problems can be found in the tender embrace of Vladimir Putin.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Time Warner announced on Wednesday that it had joined forces with several rival media companies to chart a new future for the streaming television service Hulu, acquiring a 10 percent stake in it and committing programming for its new live TV offering. Time Warner paid 583 million in cash for the stake, valuing Hulu at 5.8 billion, an executive said during a conference call on Wednesday. Hulu's other corporate owners are 21st Century Fox, Comcast and the Walt Disney Company. The development makes Time Warner "an official member of the 'cool kids' club,'" Todd Juenger, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein, said in a research note. It comes as Hulu, which got its start primarily as a rerun service for broadcast shows, prepares a new offering of both live and recorded programming from a streamlined bundle of broadcast and cable channels. The initiative is expected to start early next year and is part of a broader evolution at Hulu. Over the last year, the service introduced an advertising free option and also continued to invest in original programming and secure exclusive streaming rights. The new Hulu service is an attempt by its traditional entertainment company owners to secure their footing in television's digital future, where streaming has become the norm and competition from deep pocketed rivals like Netflix and Amazon has intensified. Hulu has more than 10 million subscribers, compared with Netflix's 46 million paid subscribers in the United States. "This investment from Time Warner marks a major step for Hulu as we continue to redefine television for both consumers and advertisers," Mike Hopkins, Hulu's chief executive, said in a statement. The transaction came at a crucial time for Hulu. The service was "facing rapidly mounting losses approaching 500 million" a year, according to Richard Greenfield, an analyst with BTIG Research. The investment from Time Warner reduces the amount of funding needed from its existing owners, he added. "Hulu is locked in a fierce battle for content with far larger Netflix and a far better funded Amazon, with Hulu's subbase not scaling as rapidly as we would expect based on its content investments," Mr. Greenfield said in a research note. "In turn, the Hulu partnership is eager to find additional partner(s) to enter the joint venture to help fund the losses, which are likely to increase meaningfully" with the start of the new live service. Time Warner said that its TNT, TBS, CNN and other Turner cable networks would be available live and on demand on Hulu's new live streaming service. Jeffrey L. Bewkes, chief executive of Time Warner, said the Hulu deal was part of the company's broader commitment to allowing viewers to watch the programming they wanted to watch, where and how they wanted to watch it. Time Warner has made its offerings available across a range of new streaming services, including those operated by Dish, Sony and Verizon. It also operates stand alone streaming services for some of its networks, including HBO. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. "Our investment in Hulu underscores Time Warner's commitment to supporting and developing new platforms for the delivery of high quality content and great consumer experiences to audiences around the globe," Mr. Bewkes said. The transaction includes no representation on the board of Hulu, which gives Time Warner less say in dictating Hulu's destiny but also reduces the complicated ownership structure of the venture. Time Warner previously was in discussions about coming in as an equal partner in the venture, according to a person briefed on the discussions. "We don't have an active role, and coming in as the 10 percent investor without a board seat, we think it reduces complications around governance," Mr. Bewkes said during a conference call. He added that the transaction would infuse Hulu with more resources to "fostering competition and innovation" among streaming services as well as traditional cable and satellite distributors. One big concern about the new streamlined bundle from Hulu is that traditional cable and satellite distributors view it as a threat. That could put at risk the billions of dollars that the TV networks receive each year from those traditional distributors. Both Hulu and its corporate owners have downplayed those concerns, stating that it is designed for people who don't subscribe to a traditional pay television service.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Plotting their escape from the Upper East Side, Elizabeth Greenfield Estersohn and Matthew Estersohn pored over test score data and Google Maps images of train stations. Their quest for a suburb with good schools and a reasonable commute led them, in 2014, to a brick colonial in Radburn, a historic planned community at the heart of Fair Lawn, N.J. "When we went to look at the house, it was bright and sunny, the birds were chirping and the air literally smelled of cookies," said Ms. Greenfield Estersohn, 31. "It all made Fair Lawn seem surreally perfect." Fair Lawn, which is about 12 miles west of the George Washington Bridge, has a population of 34,000 including robust Russian Jewish, Hispanic and Asian communities a growing public school district, more than a dozen parks and nearly 500 commercial and industrial properties. There is even a hint of Queens: Most addresses in Fair Lawn are hyphenated, some with numbers as bizarre as 0 01. "We're not one of those sleepy, up north Bergen County towns," said Kurt Peluso, the mayor. "There's a lot of stuff going on here." Ms. Greenfield Estersohn, a native of rural Sussex County, N.J., serves on Fair Lawn's Green Team Advisory Committee, and sees the town as a balance between leafy and busy. "It's comfortable for people coming from either the country or the city," she said. "There isn't culture shock from any direction." Mr. Ventura, 41, is an operations manager at a hospital in Westchester County, and Ms. Ventura, 38, is a program manager at a nonprofit in Newark, about 15 miles south. In July, they bought the house they were renting, paying 340,000. "Is it our forever home? Probably not," Ms. Ventura said. "But it's a great starter home." For now, though, she is fairly certain the family is staying put, because "our kids would kill us if we moved out of Fair Lawn." Their 11 year old son plays on multiple sports teams, and their 8 year old daughter participates in arts programs at the recreation center. The sand bottom municipal pool at Memorial Park costs 200 per family for the summer. And the neighborhood streets are easy to bicycle. "You feel a sense of community here right away," Ms. Ventura said. Fair Lawn occupies five square miles between the shopping malls of Paramus and the city of Paterson, to the west across the Passaic River. Route 208, a state highway, bisects Fair Lawn diagonally, and Route 4 runs through the southern portion as Broadway, in the largest of the borough's three principal commercial districts. The others are in Radburn which Mr. Peluso said will be rehabilitated and made more pedestrian friendly in the coming year and along River Road. Cape Cods, split levels and bi levels abound, with newly constructed colonials mixed in. "Fair Lawn has a lot of midcentury houses with good bones," said Paula Royak, a Fair Lawn native who works as a sales associate with Terrie O'Connor Realtors, in Ridgewood. "They're solid, with features like brick exteriors, plaster walls, hardwood floors and steel beam construction, and distinctive finishing touches certain builders were known for." What Fair Lawn lacks is Victorian architecture, so those looking for wraparound porches and other 19th century flourishes will be disappointed. But there is charm to Radburn, created in 1928 as "a town for the motor age." The community's 680 homes, most single family, are set amid cul de sacs, pedestrian pathways, parkland and gardens. The association fees Radburn homeowners pay on top of municipal, county and school taxes 2,000 a year is a typical assessment afford them the use of tennis courts, two swimming pools and summer recreation programs for children. But to maintain Radburn's ambience, homeowners must abide by architectural rules that include restrictions on things like fence heights (not to exceed 36 inches). "Homes in Radburn are definitely on the quainter side and not for everybody," Ms. Greenfield Estersohn said. "Those who want a large house or a large, private yard won't find it in Radburn, but will find it elsewhere in Fair Lawn." Radburn is the site of the borough's largest new housing development, Crossings at Radburn, 132 three story luxury townhouses under construction at the edge of the community. Fair Lawn also has 1,600 rentals in complexes ranging from red brick garden apartments to Fair Lawn Promenade, a mixed use project on a former Route 208 industrial site. With single family home prices starting in the 300,000s, Fair Lawn is affordable for many first time buyers and young families, said Zohar Zamir, founder of the Zamir Group, a local real estate agency. "The sweet spot is 450,000 to 600,000," Mr. Zamir said. "In that range, you can get an updated split or Cape with three or four bedrooms." (The units at Crossings at Radburn start in the mid 500,000s.) In 2018, through Nov. 30, 318 single family houses sold in Fair Lawn at a median price of 440,500, compared with 410,000 during the same period in 2017, according to the New Jersey Multiple Listing Service. Fair Lawn is more than Oreos. The borough supports five bagel shops, three diners, a Texas wiener joint, a pork store, a luncheonette that makes its own ice cream and a kosher bakery known for its challah. A popular spot for burgers and drinks is the Dutch House Tavern, in a sandstone structure that predates the American Revolution. Fine dining can be found at Oceanos (seafood) and River Palm Terrace (steak). Public school enrollment stands at 5,200 and is projected to rise by some 100 students a year in the near future. To address crowding, voters recently approved a 25 million middle school expansion and renovation that will shift fifth graders from the six elementary schools to the two middle schools, which currently serve grades six through eight. The realignment is planned for 2020 21, said Nick Norcia, the schools superintendent. "The fact the referendum passed overwhelmingly shows how much the residents of Fair Lawn value education," Mr. Norcia said. Fair Lawn's two rail stations, Radburn and Broadway, are on New Jersey Transit's Bergen County Line. Traveling to Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan takes about 50 minutes, including the transfer at Secaucus. The fare is 7.75 one way or 270 monthly. New Jersey Transit buses reach the Port Authority terminal in 40 minutes to an hour; the fare is 6 one way or 167 monthly. The Dutch farming community took its name from Fair Lawn, the hilltop house David DePeyster Acker built in the 1860s, which had a broad, sheep grazed lawn bordered by a semicircular carriage drive. The railroad appropriated the name for its station, and residents created the borough of Fair Lawn in 1924, after breaking off from the Saddle River township. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Volkswagen said on Wednesday that about 25,000 of its 2014 models may leak transmission fluid, and that it had told dealers to stop selling them while it discusses a possible recall with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The action covers Jetta, Beetle, Beetle Convertible and Passat cars equipped with 1.8 liter engines and automatic transmissions, Mark Gillies, a spokesman for VW, said. The problem is a defective O ring in the transmission oil cooler on vehicles assembled after Feb. 1, he said. Mr. Gillies said Volkswagen was not aware of any accidents or fires related to the problem. A fire hazard such as that posed by leaking transmission fluid would typically require a recall.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Each week, the Open Thread newsletter will offer a look from across The New York Times at the forces that shape the dress codes we share, with Vanessa Friedman as your personal shopper. The latest newsletter appears here. To receive it in your inbox, register here. One down, three to go. Fashion weeks, that is. New York has finally come to a close for the highlights, read this and I am off to London, Milan and Paris with the rest of the fashion flock. You know what that means: packing time! How to plan for two seasons, three countries, 18 days away and dawn to dinner (and beyond) events is just the beginning of the issue. Then there's comfort, cobblestones and climate to consider. But while this is a fashion itinerary, it's not a fashion specific challenge, so I thought I would let you in on what I call my cheater's guide to a travel wardrobe: no tissue paper or ironing involved. Remember when Donna Karan came up with her seven easy pieces? Well, these are my six: 1. Black pants. They are the equivalent of furniture. No one remembers them, so one pair with different tops can get you very far. I have a neoprene version by Schumacher that feels as comfortable as leggings, so they are good for the plane, but have enough give so they can fake it as a tux with a black jacket if necessary. 2. A sleeveless knit dress or three. They do not wrinkle, so ironing isn't an issue, and you can layer a bodysuit beneath if it gets cold. (When I am trying to use up time in the airport I go to Duty Free and buy Wolford bodies.) 3. A vest. Ideally, a shearling one. For years, I did not understand the point of that garment. Now I don't leave home in september without it. It's more versatile than a jacket, and takes up less space. 4. Ankle boots. They give you the support you need to walk all over city streets, keep your feet warm and work equally well with jeans and cocktail dresses. The Tod's version is expensive, but I think the investment is worth it, because even though the heels are high, the rubber sole means that they are weirdly comfortable. 5. A few small, zippable pouches. During the year I have one that houses all my foreign plugs and one that I use for invites and notebooks, and when I have to pack I just throw them into my suitcase. On the road I use them to keep stuff organized in my otherwise totally disorganized giant handbag, and then if I have to go to a party, I use one as a pretend clutch. 6. An extra bag. After years of trying to fit everything into one suitcase, I decided that having the room to add a few extra items in order to lessen my preflight decision making stress, as well as to accommodate the presents I know I will end up buying my family, is worth the money it costs for the extra bag. Plus you will never be in that embarrassing position of having to unpack your suitcase in front of the entire check in desk in order to transfer its contents to your carry on and avoid overweight charges. Meanwhile, to get you in the mood for what's to come, spend some time listening in on this hysterical conversation between the shoe guru Manolo Blahnik and the journalist, illustrator and director Michael Roberts, who just made a documentary together; find out how Gucci made nice with Dapper Dan; and spend 48 hours with Carolina Herrera. Talk to you from across the pond! Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader's fashion related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed. Q: Why has the cost of clothes, accessories, handbags and shoes increased so much, considerably out of proportion to other items we consume? I started buying designer clothing in the '90s and got hooked on the workmanship, the fabrics, the fit, the feel and the compliments that came my way, but I am astounded at prices that now force me to buy rarely and always at a discount. Does this strategy really pay off? Jennifer Brooks Morris A: First, it's important to realize that a designer item and a consumer good are actually two entirely different things (they are even differentiated on the stock market), so you can't judge the former by the standards of the latter. More specifically, the answer depends on who you ask. Brands would say the increases reflect the cost of the raw materials, which are often rare; the handiwork that goes into the products and the value of the artisans; the cost of currency hedging; import/export duties; and so on. That may be true, but the price structure also reflects the completely unquantifiable aura necessary for a product to qualify as "luxury" and the age old theory that you always want what you cannot get. As for whether the strategy works, I think the answer, judging by the recent annual results of giant groups such as LVMH and Kering, which reported record profits, would be: unfortunately, yes. VANESSA FRIEDMAN	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
"If only we had the down payment" may be one of the most frequent complaints among aspiring home buyers in cities across the country. Yifan Zhang, a 29 year old entrepreneur who often hears this lament among her friends, has come up with a service that tries to help. When she bought a townhouse in Seattle with her husband last summer, she knew that the spare bedroom could generate extra income on Airbnb. But when she learned just how much they could collect each month enough to cover the mortgage, and sometimes more her entrepreneurial instincts kicked in: Why not front would be home buyers money for a down payment, and then collect a share of their Airbnb rental income in return? That was how Loftium, a service in Seattle, came about: It will provide prospective home buyers with up to 50,000 for a down payment, as long as they are willing to continuously list an extra bedroom on Airbnb for one to three years and share most of the income with Loftium over that time. "It's for the people who don't have the parents to help, or the high income to save while paying rent," said Ms. Zhang, who founded Loftium with Adam Stelle, another entrepreneur, and who has already had about 200 Airbnb guests in her townhouse. "They are just stuck trying to save for a decade or more before they give up." Executives at Fannie Mae, the government controlled mortgage finance giant, also noticed that some young people perceived homeownership as an impossibility, said Jonathan Lawless, vice president of customer solutions at Fannie Mae. In response, Fannie considered creative ways to make it easier for aspiring homeowners to buy when burdened by student debt. This year, for example, it said it would look more forgivingly on prospective home buyers whose employers or parents were helping pay down their student loans. "Many renters struggle to generate savings in the current environment of high rental rates and student debts," Mr. Lawless said. "As opposed to what happened in previous generations, there is almost a fear associated with it because they have this really big debt." Loftium expects to appeal to young workers and families who are looking to buy their first home for roughly 600,000 or less. The program is being introduced on a small scale in Seattle, but Loftium said it believed there were about 40 other cities where it could give prospective buyers the boost they needed. It hopes to branch out to four more cities perhaps Chicago, Denver or Raleigh, N.C. within a year. Using Loftium may allow buyers to borrow less or simply get a foot in the door, but it does require an unwavering commitment. As hosts, they must list their extra room year round, with only eight "freebie" days reserved for their own use and dozens of strangers are likely to walk through their door for up to three years. "A lot of the people who like this idea are already living with roommates or their parents, so this is a better situation for them," said Ms. Zhang, who, with her husband, lived with roommates in San Francisco before leaving for Seattle. Hosts will have the right to cancel up to three guests per year, should they feel uncomfortable with them for any reason. Loftium will determine the size of the down payment it is willing to put up using an algorithm that predicts how much income a room can generate. Generally speaking, the homeowners pay back Loftium through a revenue sharing agreement it is not structured as a traditional loan in which the company collects roughly two thirds of the monthly income. If the room isn't booked nearly enough to generate the expected income, that's Loftium's problem, not the homeowner's. "We are trying to put as little risk on the homeowner as possible," Ms. Zhang said. "That money up front is yours as long as you abide by the contract." Should a baby arrive or the homeowners want to stop renting the room for any reason before the contract ends they must pay their share of the nights remaining, plus 15 percent of that amount, within a week, the 16 page contract says. If the homeowner doesn't pay what's owed, Loftium reserves the right to put a second lien against the property, which means the company would be second in line to be paid back (behind the mortgage lender) after the home is sold, refinanced or foreclosed on. So who is eligible for such an arrangement? Loftium is relying on the mortgage company to vet borrowers' ability to repay their loans, but it will run its own background checks. Buyers will also need to qualify for a mortgage that meets standards put out by Fannie Mae, which finances nearly a third of all new mortgages in the United States, according to Inside Finance. To start, buyers using the program in Seattle will be able to apply down payments only to mortgages financed by Umpqua Bank, though Loftium said it eventually intended to work with a broader range of lenders (and rental services beyond Airbnb). While Fannie hopes to work with Loftium in several more cities, it first needs to ensure that demand is strong enough, homeowners are abiding by their contracts and they are paying their mortgages. Changes in local laws, which could place new restrictions on Airbnb esque arrangements, might also dim the program's prospects. Ms. Zhang's extra room, which includes a private bathroom, fits just a queen bed and a chair, and is sparsely decorated with art from a thrift shop. The description on Airbnb highlights its convenient location and shows the view of the Seattle skyline from the kitchen. "We didn't buy it because of its looks," Ms. Zhang said of her property. "We were thinking about budget and location."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Andrew Litton, New York City Ballet's music director, says his favorite page from the score of "The Nutcracker" is the opening of "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy." The enchanting melody of "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" from Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker," which returns to New York City Ballet on Friday for its annual run through Dec. 30, has transcended ballet to become shorthand for Christmas itself. Despite the tune's ubiquity, it never gets old for Andrew Litton, City Ballet's music director, who will lead the company's orchestra in some of the "Nutcracker" performances this season. Asked about his favorite page from the ballet's score, he chose the Sugar Plum Fairy's solo. "I'm actually in love with the whole two hours," he said in an interview this week at Lincoln Center. "I'm only conducting seven of the performances, but the seventh will feel just as great as the first." For all the magic of the Sugar Plum Fairy on the page, Mr. Litton said, her dance is made even better by George Balanchine's choreography for City Ballet. The ballet may be a yuletide standard for theaters around the world, but its premiere in 1892 was a flop. Balanchine was among the choreographers who led a "Nutcracker" resurgence in the mid 20th century. His version, which has been performed at City Ballet every year since 1954, is famous for its magical sets and stage effects, like the Christmas tree that grows several stories tall. But beyond that, Mr. Litton said, Balanchine elevated "The Nutcracker" beyond its musical greatness. "He makes Stravinsky better than Stravinsky," Mr. Litton said, referring to the long relationship Balanchine had with that composer. "So many of the pieces we do are just enhanced and made better by Balanchine." Mr. Litton spent decades in the world of symphony orchestras before he became City Ballet's music director fittingly, during "Nutcracker" season in 2015. But it's one thing to conduct in a concert hall, and quite another to lead a ballet orchestra. The City Ballet players are valued for their attention and agility: Tempos change from night to night, from dancer to dancer. "I always tell them, 'Don't assume,'" Mr. Litton said. "Sometimes I warn the front desk strings that the next night is going to be much slower. When I say that, I mean two clicks of the metronome, but that's a lot to a musician." The orchestra typically has just one rehearsal, and often not with the dancers onstage. "It's not like opera," Mr. Litton said. "We only have the luxury of that when it's something new or unusual that requires a lot of stage orchestra cuing, like 'Fancy Free.'" "The Nutcracker" is one of those ballets that requires time in the auditorium, because the dozens of children in the cast require more rehearsal time. Mr. Litton has a soft spot for them, and for the youngest members of the audience. But I get the biggest kick out of it. It's so amazing because Tchaikovsky just had this brilliant idea to get the effect that the choreographer Marius Petipa wanted with the celesta. Can you describe the character of this instrument? For centuries, people had been looking for a keyboard instrument that would hit bells. With harpsichord, it was plucking strings; piano, it was hammers hitting strings. The celesta uses felt hammers to hit the bells. It's a much more smooth and beautiful sound. The inventor called it celesta because "celestial" heaven. He thought it sounded heavenly. Tchaikovsky discovered the celesta, which had been invented in the 1880s, on a trip to France. He wasn't the first composer to use it in an orchestral piece, but he was the first person to give it a massive solo. It proved to be such an influential move. From that moment on, the floodgates opened. Everyone wrote for celesta. How does this dance and the rest of "The Nutracker" compare with Tchaikovsky's other ballet scores? It's his last ballet. He didn't really like the idea of the project, but he obliged. And it ended up being one of his most successful pieces. It's ironic that it was approached with such reluctance. So often that seems to happen in history. "The Sleeping Beauty" is the ultimate dancer's ballet. But musically, it perhaps doesn't have the inventiveness that "The Nutcracker" does. It's also an hour longer. When a composer has a smaller template, it forces an inventiveness. "Waltz of the Flowers" may be the longest number, and it's under six minutes. I put the "Waltz of the Flowers" up against any waltz written by anybody. It's certainly one of the top five waltzes of all time, and I include all of the Strauss family in that sweeping statement. And the great theme of the pas de deux, which might be lost on the children, was written on a dare. Someone said, "I bet you can't write a melody that's just a scale." But there it is; it's incredible. We also have his Russianness coming out in the Trepak. And the overture is not for the whole orchestra; it's for the upper strings. By doing that, he takes us into this world of tiny tots. A total lightness, which is a brilliant idea. Then, as soon as the curtain's up, we see grown ups the parents, the grandparents. So it's back to normal orchestration. It's a genius stroke. How is it different to play to a younger audience? There are hazards. There was a performance last year where a little child sat on his grandfather's lap right behind me. He had this huge bag of M Ms. The whole time I could hear this chomping. You can't say, "Please stop eating those." Then I kept thinking: "Surely, that's enough. He's going to be sick. Oh no, he's going to be sick on me." So, it's a little distracting. The ballerinas look at the conductor, and they were all distracted, too. Normally that just doesn't happen. There's crying, but this is the piece for it. You don't bring kids to Mahler's Ninth. One of the mantras of classical music is that there's no new audience. Well, we get one every season with this piece. Every child from New York, every child who visits, experiences this if they're lucky. It's so fun to go out every night and know you're going to reach some of these little kids. Some of them will squirm through it. But some will be transformed by it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Works by Shakespeare aren't counted. But works about Shakespeare are. A survey by American Theater magazine shows that "Shakespeare in Love," the 2014 play about young Will's formative years, adapted by Lee Hall from the wildly successful 1998 film version, will be the most produced play in the United States during the 2017 18 theatrical season. The play, first staged in London, will have 15 productions across the country, including in Atlanta, Boston and Cleveland. It has not yet made it to New York City. The survey, which covered 1,917 productions planned by 380 theaters, also showed that Lauren Gunderson, the author of "I and You" and "The Book of Will," will be the most produced playwright, with 27 productions, including 8 co writing credits. In a statement, Ms. Gunderson said that she hoped it would be an "encouraging and motivating moment for women in theater." She added: "Stories by and about women can and must be produced across the country to complete the deep generational narrative that our art form so uniquely puts forth."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
BEHIND the wheel of a 1928 Mercedes Benz S 26/180 Boattail Speedster, the road comes alive. The wind, like the scenery, rushes past. I aim the car down the road using the tristar emblem at the far end of the hood like a gunsight. With no fenders to block my view the big Mercedes looks just as it did in 1932 after being stripped down for a race I can see the front wheels rolling over the asphalt, the suspension flexing up and down. On a sharp left turn I lean against the cornering forces, my head outside the cockpit; I feel like a dog on a road trip. This brute of a Mercedes Benz, once owned by Chico and Zeppo Marx, was one of three mind bogglingly valuable cars the presale estimate for the trio, provided by the Gooding Company auction house, starts at 13 million I had the opportunity to drive recently. The cars are to be offered for sale after the Pebble Beach Concours d'Elegance on Aug. 15. The Mercedes Benz is expected to be one of the stars of the auction blocks. It is largely in the same trim it was in 1932 when Chico Marx, the oldest of the comedic siblings, issued a challenge for a high stakes match race against a Model J Duesenberg owned by a prominent Hollywood agent. Clark Gable, Carole Lombard, Gary Cooper and Mae West were among silver screen luminaries who turned out in four busloads to watch the showdown at Muroc Dry Lake in the desert north of Los Angeles. My drive in the Mercedes here was relaxed by comparison, but still I was able to transport myself back to that time and context, aided perhaps by my own fuzzy memories of zooming across the same dry lake in an old roadster as a 3 year old, sitting on my father's lap. I imagined myself at the wheel eight decades ago, taking part in an event immortalized in photographs that distort the car's wheels into ellipses, an effect caused by the idiosyncrasies of the era's cameras. (Sorry to say, the Mercedes lost the race.) Controlling the big car is a delicate dance; the accelerator is not a pedal but a peg and it is placed between the clutch and brake pedals. It takes a fine choreography of clutch, shifter and accelerator to shift the 4 speed manual transmission without grinding its unsynchronized gears. Botched, the shifter will buck like a rented mule and the gears will clatter like a garbage disposal trying to digest ball bearings. The pressure is on: this is a 4 million automobile. Do the shifting successfully, however, and the 180 horsepower supercharged in line 6 cylinder engine will pull and sound like a locomotive. The 140 m.p.h. Mercedes, and an even faster 1933 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Monza that I also drove, were created by people in awe of, and with a reverence for, the automobile people who had been born in the horse and buggy era. Powered by unimaginable numbers of mechanical horses, these were the chariots of mortals. Like the Mercedes, the Alfa 8C is supercharged. The engine currently installed produces 192 horsepower. It is a 2,866 cc in line 8 cylinder with less than half the displacement of the 6,789 cc in line 6 that powers the Mercedes. At speed, the Alfa's straight 8 howls like a World War II fighter plane. It was not surprising to learn that Alfa did, in fact, produce aircraft engines. Yet as loud as it is and as startling as a rifle fusillade the engine sings with symphonic precision. The throttle response, like the steering response, is almost instantaneous; power delivery is linear and precise. But even in hard driving, we never got the Alfa's marvelously strong engine over 3,500 r.p.m. It almost seemed to be mocking us: "Is that all you've got?" Its skinny tires stay glued to the road despite the rather primitive looking suspension. It has semi elliptical leaf springs with friction shock absorbers; damping can be adjusted by turning thumbscrews that put pressure on small discs of leather. The 8C is finished with a degree of polish and detail that reminded me of the fine workmanship of prewar cars. Little wonder that an 8C this example is expected to command a price in excess of 6 million is one of the motoring world's most coveted collectibles. "Every time I drive one of these," Mr. Gooding said, "I tell people they make me feel like a Greek god. Like I can throw lightning bolts from my fingers. They are pure magic." While this 8C has an extensive racing history, it cannot match the competition provenance of the 1956 Maserati 200SI that I also drove the same car once raced by Stirling Moss and Jean Behra. Unlike the Mercedes and the Alfa, which were street driven, the lithe, curvaceous Maserati is an unadulterated, no frills racing machine. It leaps off the line with the energy of a greyhound bursting from the starting gate. And like a greyhound, it never seems to pause for a breath. Weighing only 1,500 pounds, and with 195 horsepower pumping out of its compact 1,993 cc 4 cylinder motor, this car has a power to weight ratio that made it a fierce competitor.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
CROWNING a perfectly manicured front lawn, the rose colored hydrangeas are in full bloom, as are the potted petunias and geraniums that grace the patio and steps of a 9,800 square foot beachfront home here owned by the Archdiocese of Philadelphia. But the priests who frequently used to be seen on the porch, rocking in the wicker chairs, are missing. The last of the elderly clergymen packed their bags at the end of June, after the archdiocese which faces an operating deficit in excess of 17 million this year announced plans to sell the house, Villa St. Joseph by the Sea, as one of several cost cutting measures. Other cutbacks included eliminating 45 archdiocesan positions, consolidating 19 offices, and ceasing publication of the archdiocese's newspaper. Legal costs accrued by the archdiocese in the recent priest sex abuse investigations, and the trial and ultimate conviction of one of its leaders, Msgr. William J. Lynn, on child endangerment charges, amounted to 11.6 million. But while describing the expenses as "burdensome," Donna Farrell, the director of communications for the Philadelphia Archdiocese, said in an e mail that they had "played little role in the current budget decisions." Assessed at 6.25 million, the 19 room Ventnor house was built in 1905 and became a vacation home for retired priests in 1963, when Hannah Hogan, a local real estate investor, donated it for a nominal 1,000 fee in memory of her brother, the Rev. Edward Hogan. Operating the house at 114 South Princeton Avenue has proved costly. Last year it generated a property tax bill of 114,562; with maintenance costs and salary for staff members among them caretakers, nurses and landscapers total expenses have been much higher. Ms. Farrell said the church had made no final decision on when the house would be put on the market or which agency would get the listing. But that hasn't quelled discussion in Ventnor, a city of 10,650 residents south of Atlantic City, on the fate of this property on a blocklong lot with 175 feet of boardwalk frontage. Ashley Franchini, a broker with Soleil Sotheby's International Realty in Margate, currently has a 10.3 million listing in Ocean City and a 12.4 million oceanfront listing in Longport. "There might be somebody who would really enjoy restoring it and creating a modern day version," she said of the property, though she acknowledged that dividing it up would be a more profitable way to go. Two doors north on the boardwalk, Ms. Franchini has a 3.1 million listing for a 3,000 square foot house on less than a tenth of an acre. Using that math, she estimated that the archdiocese's half acre site could yield four or more building lots, which would push the value of the property over 12 million. Still, like other area residents, she hoped the estate might remain intact. "Properties like this, that are so unique and come with so much land, only come up once in a lifetime," she said. "People who can afford this understand they may never get this opportunity again." She noted that the house abutting the estate on South Portland Avenue was also for sale; if bought together, the two might make an exceptional property. Like Ms. Franchini, Mary Lou Ferry, who owns Farley Ferry Realty in Ventnor and grew up in the house next to the estate, is hoping to get the listing. She said that her firm had contacted the archdiocese over the years to gauge interest in selling the house, and that it had reached out again recently. "There's a great curiosity as to what will happen and what its real value is," Ms. Ferry said. "A beachfront parcel is a completely different species than just being in a beach block." She has childhood memories of climbing over a brick wall to check out the latest additions to the priests' fishpond. This is not the first time a religious order facing economic hardship has decided to sell valuable shore property in the vicinity. The Sisters of Charity of New York sold their Ventnor home more than 10 years ago, because they could no longer afford the property taxes, according to Elena Miranda, the director of communications for the order. At the time, the sisters requested that the house, declared a landmark, not be sold to developers, so it was sold to an individual who in turn sold it to a developer, she said. It was eventually demolished to make way for multiple building lots. Other orders have been more successful at holding onto their beachfront properties, in part by inviting the public in. In the 1970s, as the size of their novitiate shrank over the years, the Sisters of St. Joseph of Peace in Englewood Cliffs opened up their Long Branch retreat house, Stella Maris, to nonclergy. Today the sisters welcome nonprofit groups and individuals seeking guided or self directed retreats to use one of the 42 rooms in the oceanfront house. The summer room rate is 90 a night, and also covers three meals, according to Sister Lois, the administrator at Stella Maris. St. Mary by the Sea in Cape May Point, owned by the Sisters of St. Joseph Philadelphia, has a similar program, though two thirds of those who stay there belong either to their order or another one. The remaining third are laypeople, coming for one of the numerous silent retreats that the Sisters of St. Joseph organize throughout the summer, said Joan Dollinger, the retreat's administrator. The 135 room house and its property, which cost the order 9,000 in 1909, benefit from the work of volunteers. "In the course of a summer we get hundreds of volunteers," Ms. Dollinger said. "Sisters, laypeople, people who want to give back for what they received when they were here. It's a sight to behold." As for Villa St. Joseph by the Sea, it played host to several dignitaries, and more recently was available for group retreats. Its limited use, combined with the scandals that have enveloped the Philadelphia Archdiocese of late, has some feeling that the sale of the Ventnor house is overdue. Nancy Mortimer O'Brien, an officer with the Philadelphia chapter of the Voice of the Faithful, a national group that started in 2002 in response to reports of child sex abuse by priests, said such luxuries were inappropriate, particularly when the church was closing schools. "They're entitled to a vacation," she said of the clergy. "I don't begrudge them that, but we don't have to provide it. Not the good people who are putting money in the collection plates."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Credit...Ryan Pfluger for The New York Times BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. "We will start this interview at some point," I insisted to Renee Zellweger. It was mid August, and I had gone to the Beverly Wilshire Hotel to ask Zellweger about "Judy," the new drama that casts her as Judy Garland in the last year of her life, when the singer actress was at her most down and out. It's a transformative role played with so much gusto that the 50 year old Zellweger will be hard to beat for this year's best actress Oscar, a major coup considering her recent six year break from the screen. But it took us a while to get to all that. First, there was the matter of coaxing Zellweger to the interview in the first place: As a publicist kept emailing me to push her arrival back, our lunch date crept closer to happy hour. I wondered whether Zellweger, who's sometimes had a rough go of it in the media, might be stalling for time. For nearly two hours in the hotel lobby, I watched a series of well dressed women and underdressed men emerge from the elevator, and then Zellweger appeared, small and inconspicuous in workout clothes, her blond hair tucked beneath a weathered Texas Longhorns ball cap. "Thank you for sticking around," she said shyly. "Everything kept spilling over." Zellweger told me she was getting reacclimated to the schedule of stardom, including a photo shoot, endless dress fittings, film festival appearances, and our interview. If "Judy" goes the distance this award season, she'll have to do a lot of talking about herself and that's fine, she supposes, but isn't it more fun to have a conversation about something else? I think that's why she seized on a bit of small talk offered as we walked to the restaurant: My boyfriend had moved away that morning, and we were about to embark on a long distance relationship. Suddenly, Zellweger was the one grilling me: What did he do for a living, how long had we been dating, and wasn't it Rilke who once said that love is being the guardian of one another's solitude? "It's going to be fine, I know it!" she said, her squeaky, Texas accented voice now so determined that it brought to mind old fashioned words like "pluck" and "moxie." Forget all the fears I might be harboring, she told me: "People are cynical and they'll say this kind of thing doesn't work and I totally disagree. Look at Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon, for cryin' out loud!" S he said the distance would teach us never to take each other for granted, and recommended meditation and frequent FaceTim e sessions. It was all so compelling that after 20 minutes of earnestly proffered advice, I had to remind Zellweger that she was the one meant to be answering questions today. Her face fell just a bit. "First of all, are you starving?" she asked, coolly opening the menu. "You must be, honey." The waiter came over and Zellweger placed an order for me: "He'll have a triple martini," she said, cackling. ONCE ZELLWEGER RESIGNED herself to the interview, she started to enjoy it. "Judy" happened much the same way: The director Rupert Goold coaxed Zellweger carefully toward the project, aware that an early offer might prove too daunting. "Someone was asking, when was that moment you knew you were in?" Zellweger told me. "And I don't think it ever arrived!" She was sent the script in 2017. "At first, I didn't understand why they thought of me for it," Zellweger said. The movie would require a great deal of live singing, because it follows a near destitute Garland after she accepts a five week engagement to warble at a London nightspot , and despite earning an Oscar nomination for the musical "Chicago," Zellweger didn't consider herself much of a vocalist. But Goold felt that the vulnerability Zellweger showed in "Jerry Maguire" and the chutzpah that won her an Academy Award for "Cold Mountain" made her exactly right for the role. "Garland had such incredible emotional immediacy," Goold told me by phone. "You feel like you're getting a spirit that has this innate innocence and hopefulness in it, and I wanted someone who had that kind of fragility." He also said that Zellweger's own Hollywood experience, which has drawn scrutiny about her romances and tabloid speculation about cosmetic surgery, could help inform a lead character who must constantly fight damaging rumors. The most dramatic sequences in "Judy" come whenever Garland is forced to sing despite a voice ravaged by time and addiction. Goold leaned into that suspense: "I told Renee, 'I'm going to structure the script so that it's not only building up to "Can Judy Garland deliver what she needs to in this moment?" but also, "Can Renee Zellweger?"'" She performed those numbers live in front of an audience, and Zellweger recalls the scenes now with the excitement of someone who went skydiving and didn't die . "I was elated. I was so high. Talk about things you've never done before!" she said. "I didn't allow myself to think about it too much it was in the back of my mind, terrifying, and I kept pushing it back, back, back. Luckily, it was such a whirlwind that I didn't have time to pause and think, 'I'd rather not do that thing tomorrow.'" Still, Zellweger has become wary of projects that ask her to take on too much without the time to properly metabolize it all. Garland was exploited by a Hollywood machine that rarely allowed her time to rest, and Zellweger said she understood what it's like to reach "a certain place where you just don't know if your skin is thick enough, and then having to go anyway." In 2010, after working nearly nonstop for her entire film career, Zellweger withdrew from Hollywood for a hiatus that lasted six years , until she re emerged in the sequel "Bridget Jones's Baby." "I was lying to myself, and I don't know why," she said. "I didn't see the exhaustion side of it. There was a moment where I stopped recognizing that I had to take care of myself." She doesn't regret having taken on several major projects per year, but all that time off helped get her priorities in order. "Instead of saying, 'Boy, I sure hope I can make that special person's birthday party,' I needed to say, 'I'm going to the birthday party,' and I didn't feel like I had the right to make that decision because of the blessing of this work," Zellweger said. Freed from that duty, Zellweger entered therapy, traveled, took classes at the University of California, Los Angeles, and even wrote a pilot for Lifetime (the channel ultimately passed): "I took time off so I wasn't regurgitating the same old emotional experiences to tell stories. I lived some new ones, and all of it is informative." And without that perspective, she couldn't have played Judy Garland. "It made me appreciate my little bit of experience with having to navigate your way around a public persona that's a ball hog in your life," she said. "Where is Renee?" I heard a publicist ask. "Does anyone have eyes on her?" Finally, it was confirmed: Renee was about to enter the building. I caught Zellweger walking very deliberately up the stairs in a powder blue dress and sky high white heels. Flanked by two representatives, she was lost in focus, as though willing herself to enter the first of many parties this season where she would be the center of attention. Then she looked up and squealed. "I'm so excited to see you again!" she said, rushing up the stairs to pepper me with questions. Would I see my boyfriend soon? Oh, next week? How wonderful! "This is a very special time for him," she told a publicist. The publicist tried to usher her into the party as I asked her about the standing ovation. Zellweger steadfastly resisted both of us. "I heard the premiere went amazing," I said. "Not as amazing as you seeing your boyfriend next week!" she replied, jabbing a finger into my chest. It went on like that until it couldn't anymore. After all the work she had put into this role, she had just gotten a three minute standing ovation. What did that feel like? "I don't know how to take it," she finally said. How to take what? That kind of adoration? "Yeah," she said, scrunching up her face. "What do you say to that? 'Congrats on being lucky?'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
WASHINGTON Many of the country's largest tech companies, including Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce, on Tuesday pledged a total of 300 million for computer science education, part of a partnership with the Trump administration meant to prepare students for careers in technology. The corporate donations follow a White House effort to direct federal money toward teacher training and resources that bolster science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, education. President Trump on Monday directed the Education Department to put 200 million in grant money toward computer science education. The partnership between tech companies and the Trump administration comes at a fraught time for Silicon Valley firms, several of which have been criticized by members of Congress who are calling for more regulation of the industry. Many of the companies involved in the computer science initiative have been pushing to increase computer training in schools. Tech companies see the STEM fields, and computer science in particular, as a weakness in American education and have pressed for coding and other classes to be bolstered to keep the United States competitive with nations that are pulling ahead in those areas. Several of the companies participating in the effort announced on Tuesday have pushed their own technology into American classrooms, potentially giving them a stronger foothold to market their own devices and software in schools as coding classes spread. The companies have said that donating money, technology and volunteers to schools is often the only way to fill gaps in American school systems' STEM offerings. Half of all schools in the country with students in kindergarten through 12th grade, where the money announced on Tuesday is to go, offer computer science education. In rural areas, the percentage is even smaller. "It's essential that the public and private sectors work together to ensure all American students have the opportunity to learn computer science and take part in the fastest growing sector of our economy," Michael Beckerman, chief executive of the Internet Association, a trade group that announced the new donations, said in a statement. The money will be disbursed over a five year period, with Amazon, Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce contributing 50 million each. Lockheed Martin said it would donate 25 million and Accenture, General Motors and Pluralsight, an online education company, said they would give 10 million apiece. Some companies will also donate software and other technology as part of the initiative. Salesforce.org, Salesforce's philanthropy arm, said it would give 10 software subscriptions to every school in the country. Ivanka Trump, Mr. Trump's eldest daughter and one of his senior advisers, began organizing the effort about two months ago. She said the 500 million in combined federal and corporate money would be directed to all schools with the goal of trying to bridge a skills divide that she said was hurting the American economy. Ms. Trump said that six million jobs in the United States were going unfilled largely because not enough students were being educated in computer science and other STEM related skills. And nine out of every 10 software related jobs in the country are outside Silicon Valley, according to Code.org, an organization working on the initiative with the Trump administration, and two thirds of the companies that employ computer science professionals are banks, hospitals and other firms not strictly considered part of the tech industry. "It's easy to classify computer science as tech to enable getting a job in Silicon Valley or New York," Ms. Trump said in an interview, "but the reality is that computer skills and coding is relevant and foundational for every sector and every industry across the economy and tech is increasingly the way we work." Ms. Trump said the Education Department would focus its attention on grant applications related to computer science and to proposals that catered to computer science education for girls and students from minority backgrounds. Mr. Trump's memorandum on the financing did not guarantee that 200 million in annual grants would go entirely toward computer science education. In a news release, the Education Department said it had a "goal of devoting" that sum each year toward STEM and computer science education. On Monday, Ms. Trump called 20 state governors and dozens of school superintendents to encourage them to submit grant applications. Mr. Trump's order could take effect more quickly than an initiative the Obama administration announced last year to spend 4 billion on STEM and computer science education over several years, experts said. Congress did not approve that plan.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
U.S. Job Growth Picks Up the Pace, but Wages Lag Behind Automobile sales may be slowing, e commerce is putting the squeeze on bricks and mortar stores, and overall economic growth is limp. But the labor market has nevertheless managed to charge ahead. Employers added an impressive 222,000 jobs in June, the government reported on Friday. Although the jobless rate ticked up slightly to 4.4 percent, it was because some people who had dropped out of the labor force were lured back. But the hunger for workers and mounting complaints of labor shortages have raised a vexing question: Why isn't the heightened demand for workers driving up pay? The Federal Reserve pointed to that conundrum in the updated report on the American economy it sent to Congress on Friday. "Despite the broad based strength in measures of employment," it said, "wage growth has been only modest, possibly held down by the weak pace of productivity growth in recent years." The Fed's report reflected its overall confidence in the country's economic direction, which has led it to begin raising interest rates for businesses and consumers after years of holding them near zero to encourage investment and risk taking. After increasing its benchmark rate last month, the Fed is expected to do so at least once more before the year's end. One of its aims is to head off any inflation that might result from a tight job market that prompts employers to offer higher pay to get the workers they need. Yet prices have been rising at a slow pace, and sluggish wage growth suggests that the fear may be premature. "The payroll number is well above expectations," said Jim O'Sullivan, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics. "It's pretty clear that the trend in employment growth is strong enough to keep the unemployment rate trending down." Revisions to earlier estimates brought the monthly average gain since April to 194,000. But year over year wage growth plodded along at 2.5 percent. "The wage numbers are certainly weaker than expected," Mr. O'Sullivan said, "so it keeps alive the whole debate about the relationship between slack and inflation, and how far the Federal Reserve should allow the unemployment rate to fall." "This is not a market we have typically seen," said Michael Stull, senior vice president at the staffing company Manpower North America. "We have not before seen unemployment drop, low participation rates and wages not move. That tells you something's not right in the labor market." Employers are very aware that the pool of workers is shrinking and they are rethinking traditional qualifications like length of experience, Mr. Stull said. "Employers will take on hard working, reliable workers even if they don't have an opening," he said. At the same time, he said that workers were "pushing back a little bit about driving an hour for a 10 an hour job at a distribution center on the outer rim of the city." Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. "You need a car for that," Mr. Stull said, "and you can't have a car on 10 an hour." That's a familiar problem to Tom Thompson, owner of Star Cleaning Systems in Columbus, Ohio. He is looking to add two or three part time workers to his 20 member staff. "Very few people show up for interviews, and if they do, they don't show up for the job," Mr. Thompson said. "I'm spending 80 to 90 percent of my time recruiting. I triple book appointments for interviews, and I'm lucky if I get one person to show up." He is offering 9.25 an hour to start, with bonuses and increases for workers who stick around. Running a new company, he said, he cannot afford to pay significantly more. Nearby distribution centers for big companies like Amazon are sucking up most of the available labor, Mr. Thompson said. "I sometimes wish there was actually a higher unemployment rate," he said. Like Star Cleaning, Rooforia Home Exteriors in Omaha often finds customers through Thumbtack, an online marketplace for hiring people to complete tasks. These days it is the workers who are tougher to find. "We did everything we could to recruit people and had not one application," said Rooforia's owner, Sarah M. Smith. She is depending on guest worker visas to fill openings for the season, which runs from the spring through November. "It's hard work in Nebraska," Ms. Smith said. "We have hot summers, and you're on a black asphalt roof." "We had one person we recruited," she said. "He didn't even show up the next day." Patrick Bass, chief executive of Thyssenkrupp North America, part of a German multinational conglomerate, said his company was increasingly relying on methods common in Germany like apprenticeships, partnerships with colleges, and internships. "We're willing to invest in the people and bring them in and train them," Mr. Bass said. "But for the basic skill job, we're seeing a higher turnover rate than normal. People are job shopping a bit, because they can. They're trying different things to see what they like." While the government's statistics offer a bird's eye perspective, hiring is essentially local. "Even in an era of low national unemployment, with recent jobs reports showing the national unemployment rate ticking down close to 4 percent, jobs are not always available and not everyone who wants work can find it," Martha Ross, a fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution, noted in her blog. "There is no one size fits all approach to help people prepare for and find jobs." Professional services showed a healthy gain in jobs last month, possibly reflecting the hiring of new college graduates. Other sectors that showed substantial gains included health care, social assistance and food services. Reviews of the economy tend to reflect political affiliations, with Republicans more optimistic since the election than Democrats. Ideology aside, however, uncertainty about federal policy may be weighing on the economy. Businesses reported a burst of optimism after President Trump's election, in part because of expectations that the new administration would enact fiscal measures like tax cuts. But that buoyant outlook is fading. "This cautious approach to investment may in part reflect uncertainty about the policy environment," Stanley Fischer, the Fed's vice chairman, told an audience in Vineyard Haven, Mass., on Thursday. "Providing more clarity on the future direction of government policy is highly desirable." Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement,"This new report shows positive gains: Job creation came in higher than expected and the labor force grew," but he added, "We have a lot more work to do."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Start Stop Technology Is Spreading (Like It or Not) Dr. Keith Tao, a radiologist in Danville, Calif., owns three late model Mercedeses, each equipped with a fuel saving technology called start stop. The system saves fuel and reduces emissions by cutting the engine when the car comes to a full stop and restarting when the foot is taken off the brake. One of the first things Dr. Tao does after starting the engine: He turns off the feature. The problem, Dr. Tao says, is that the stopping and restarting is rather intrusive. "You actually feel it restarting," he said. "In terrible stop and go traffic this thing comes on and off constantly. In 20 minutes you can have 50 stop and start cycles. It can drive you totally insane." Mercedes defends its technology, known as ECO Start/Stop, calling it "one of the most seamless systems," according to Christian Bokich, a company spokesman. "Customers with any concerns always have the option of defeating the system each time they enter and start the vehicle." While start stop technology may make some people crazy, the technology is here to stay. That's because manufacturers are under intense pressure to meet strict fuel economy standards by 2025 and they are using ever more creative ways to wring out every last bit of fuel efficiency from conventional gasoline and diesel engines. Other approaches include increasing transmissions from six speeds to nine or 10; using electric rather than mechanical power steering systems; decreasing tire rolling resistance; and directly injecting fuel at high pressure into the cylinders. The fuel savings with start stop can add up. Under average driving conditions, savings are 3 percent to 5 percent. But with a lot of stops and traffic lights that stay red for extended periods, that can rise to 10 percent, said Robert Fascetti, vice president for powertrains at Ford. "Start stop clearly helps use less gas," Mr. Fascetti said. "There's no debate. You save fuel when the engine is off." Dr. Tao said he had not experienced that level of savings; he estimates the cut in fuel use to be about one mile per gallon. Regardless, start stop is destined to be on the majority of cars in the next few years. Ford now has it as a standard feature on its Escape and Focus vehicles, and on some engines in its top selling F 150 pickup trucks. Eventually, 70 percent of Ford's models will offer it, Mr. Fascetti said. By the 2018 model year, all Buicks will come equipped with the technology. Currently Buick's Encore and Envision offer it. In addition, it is available on several models from Cadillac and Chevrolet, including the ATS, Cruze, Impala and Malibu. At Fiat Chrysler, the Pacifica offers the technology, and "the majority of our vehicles will have it over time," said Mike Duhaime, a Fiat Chrysler powertrain director. Still, not many Americans have yet experienced the technology. And despite its environmental and fuel saving benefits, many who do have it, like Dr. Tao, don't like it. "Our primary research says almost to a person, people say they turn off their stop start systems," said Tim Barnes, a director of product planning for Mazda in the United States. That's one of the reasons that Mazda has no plans to introduce the technology in the United States, even though Mazda has been offering it in Japan since 2010. For the technology to work for consumers, the experience needs to be seamless, manufacturers say. "Restarts must be fast, smooth, with no noise and little vibration," said Ulrich Muehleisen, head of marketing and product development for Robert Bosch, a company that has sold 15 million start stop units in Europe since 2007. Most manufacturers use similar technologies to create and manage their own systems. Heavy duty batteries provide the juice necessary for 10 times the number of starts of standard vehicles. Rugged starter motors last longer. Engine mounts are designed to be placed to minimize vibration. Regardless of technique, vehicles with the technology are meant to start instantaneously. "Take your foot off the brake and the car will start by the time you hit the accelerator," Mr. Muehleisen said. "It's just a couple of a hundred milliseconds," compared to the several seconds it typically takes to start a vehicle using a key. Engines in the vehicles with the systems will not always stop when the vehicle does. A sophisticated set of sensors monitors the engine and cabin temperatures. If the air conditioning needs to run continually to cool the interior, the engine will restart or stay on. In stop and go freeway traffic, the engine will most likely remain running to avoid repetitious, annoying restarts. And if the battery is getting close to the end of its life, the vehicle's engine will not shut off, no matter how perfect the other road conditions are. In addition to customer resistance, the technology faces other obstacles to consumer acceptance. A vehicle's official mileage estimates as seen in a new car's window sticker reflect the existence of a start stop system. But in calculating those numbers, the Environmental Protection Agency assumes that half the people who have the technology disable it, reducing the sticker appeal to fuel economy minded car buyers. And typical fuel savings also won't save a consumer that much money. With today's gas prices, a 5 percent savings in fuel may amount to around 40 a year, or about 80 cents a week. But minor cost savings and consumer disinterest are not dissuading manufacturers from introducing the technology. "At some point, virtually every vehicle will have stop start," Mr. Muehleisen of Bosch said. "Once you get used to it, you'll wonder why the engine is running when you're stopped. It's like brushing your teeth with the water on."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
The Yankees tried to beat the Tampa Bay Rays at their own game in their American League division series on Tuesday. But they failed to grasp how that game is played. The Rays who won by 7 5 to even the best of five series at one game apiece pioneered the opener strategy in 2018. The idea was to use a reliever in the first inning to limit their opponents' run expectancy, then replace him with a young starter who would begin against a weaker part of the order. It made sense for the Rays, whose low payroll keeps them from signing many veteran starters. The Yankees attempted this on Tuesday as a surprise to counter a lineup the Rays constructed to face right handed Deivi Garcia. After one inning, Yankees Manager Aaron Boone switched to a lefty, J.A. Happ, who worked two and two thirds innings, gave up four runs and lost. The problem was choosing Happ, a 14 year veteran, for a role that did not suit him. Happ, 37, broke into the majors with a Philadelphia team that cultivated veterans like Jamie Moyer, Cliff Lee, Pedro Martinez and Roy Halladay, mentors with hundreds of wins and thousands of innings who likely would have sneered at the concept of an opener. When the Rays came up with the concept, they understood that not all pitchers would like it. In explaining it at the time, Chaim Bloom then a top baseball officer for the Rays and now Boston's president of baseball operations emphasized the importance of buy in. "You can think that you're putting your players in a good spot to succeed all you want," Bloom said in May 2018, "but if they don't think that, then it's got to mitigate some of that effect." Happ did not seem to agree with his bosses on Tuesday. He measured his words carefully after the game "If I've made an excuse for my performance in the last two years, anybody can speak up; that hasn't happened," he said but left no doubt about his feelings. He deferred all strategic questions to Boone, and said Boone and the coaches knew he preferred to start. "They know how I felt about it, but ultimately when I pitch, you've got me there was no hesitation and no dwelling on what was going on," Happ said. "I was focused on trying to perform. I wish I would have done a better job." Then Happ was asked, simply, if he had been put in a position to succeed. He did not say yes. "That's not a question for me to answer," Happ said. "Again, when I'm out there, I'm trying to do the best I can, and that's what I tried to do tonight." Yet instead of just letting him start Game 2, the Yankees effectively insulted Happ by trying to trick the Rays into using a suboptimal lineup. As it turned out, two right handed hitters in the starting lineup Mike Zunino and Manuel Margot homered off Happ, anyway. "You're playing a unique team that does a real good job of building their roster to create platoon advantages," Boone said. "Just trying to counter that a little bit and force their hand a little bit early in the game. Unfortunately, it didn't work tonight." Boone added that he wanted to separate the starters likely to pitch the most innings the Game 1 starter, Gerrit Cole, and the Game 3 starter, Masahiro Tanaka so he could use more relievers in the other games. Unlike in normal postseasons, there are no days off in this round or the next because of the expanded playoff format. Yet Boone rarely lets Tanaka pitch very long in the playoffs. In four of his five playoff starts under Boone, Tanaka has lasted no more than five innings. If something in the data suggests a better matchup, expect the Yankees to follow the data. That is how baseball is run these days especially in October but sometimes the unconventional just feels disruptive. Every pitcher will say that if he does not truly believe in the pitch he is throwing, it will not be a good pitch. Likewise, if a pitcher disagrees with the team's strategy, he will seem less likely to execute it well. The Yankees' ruse has been tried in past Octobers, most recently by the 2018 Milwaukee Brewers, who lost, as well as the 1924 Washington Senators, who won. The Senators' player manager, Bucky Harris, started a righty named Curly Ogden against the New York Giants in Game 7 of the World Series, but pulled him for a lefty in the first inning. Harris wanted to induce the Giants' manager, John McGraw, to start left handed Bill Terry at first base but remove him later in the game. McGraw fell for it, and the Senators won. Of course, there is no way of knowing how that game, or Tuesday's, would have unfolded without the switcheroo. And maybe Garcia, having thrown only 27 pitches, will stay fresh enough to make an impact later in the series. But it sure seems as if the Yankees tried to outsmart the Rays, which is kind of like the Rays trying to outspend the Yankees. The Rays do unusual things better than anyone, because that is their only lifeline. The Yankees can be smart and edgy, too, but they separate themselves with 300 million players like Cole and Giancarlo Stanton. The Yankees can and probably should win this series. But they need to do it their way. Let the Rays be the Rays.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The National Asian American Theater Company is starting a partnership with regional theaters across the country, aiming to foster inclusion of more Asian American theater artists, technicians, administrators and community members through productions, outreach and other programming. The first partner theaters will be New York Theater Workshop, Soho Rep, Long Wharf Theater in New Haven, Conn., and Two River Theater in Red Bank, N.J. The hope is to expand the partnership to theaters across the country. "I have a habit of getting on a subway train to see the demographics of the train, and I don't see this reflected on our stages, where we're supposed to be so imaginative," Mia Katigbak, the co founder and artistic producing director of the National Asian American Theater Company, said in a phone interview. "We work very hard to support our fellow Asian American theater practitioners. But I thought it might be a good thing to look at partnerships with other non Asian American theater companies." The company was founded in 1989, with a mission to grow Asian American theater in the United States. As part of the partnership, regional theaters will collaborate with the National Asian American Theater Company to put on a production in one of four categories: a European or American classic with an all Asian American cast; the adaptation of a classic by an Asian American playwright; a new work by a non Asian American realized by an all Asian American cast; or a new work by an Asian American playwright that incorporates other performance arts or media.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Adults who regularly buy children's gifts will recognize the denizens of the movie "UglyDolls," the plush toys of the same name. Milder in design than old school troll dolls, these figures have a message: Idiosyncrasies of appearance and personality are not "ugly," but rather emblems of awesome individuality. The relentless positivity of this fable is put across with such bounce house energy that children in the audience may be bludgeoned into submission instantly. (It made this adult's teeth hurt.) Here, Moxy, the most cheerful doll in Uglyville, wakes each morning just knowing there's a child for her in "the big world." Moxy and some of her misfit pals set out to find said big world, only to be obstructed by the Institute of Perfection, a land of pretty dolls presided over by a pert nosed, golden haired paragon, creatively named Lou. He and some mean girl dolls in his thrall will stop at nothing to thwart Moxy and her dream. These characters are voiced by some of the most prominent names in pop music: Kelly Clarkson, Janelle Monae, Blake Shelton, Charli XCX, Pitbull and Nick Jonas, to name but a few. Comic talents such as Wanda Sykes and Gabriel Iglesias also feature. Yet every aspect of this computer animated movie directed by Kelly Asbury seems equally overdetermined and tossed off, as if it were a caffeinated weekend project for everyone involved.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Peacock has taken wing, and NBCUniversal's streaming service distinguishes itself from fellow newcomers Disney and HBO Max by offering 15,000 hours of film and TV for free, if viewers are willing to tolerate ad breaks. With enough entertainment to stretch to March 2022 without sleeping, where to begin? The Universal monsters, like the Mummy and the Wolf Man, are an obvious start. Other self celebratory categories on the home page include movies starring "S.N.L." alums and a salute to Alfred Hitchcock, who was loyal to the studio for 43 years. Build your own double feature of the 1957 sci fi movie "The Incredible Shrinking Man" and Lily Tomlin's 1981 rejoinder, "The Incredible Shrinking Woman," or pair two fast paced flicks set amid the chaos of a daily newspaper: "The Front Page" (1974), starring Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon, and Ron Howard's "The Paper" (1994), in which Michael Keaton and Glenn Close battle for control of a story that could send two Black teenagers to jail. Eclectic to a fault, the service has a film for every mood. Here are nine of our favorites. When Fab 5 Freddy spray painted soup cans on a subway train, it was an announcement that the guardians of fine art had to shove over for a generation of kids from Brooklyn and the South Bronx. The director Charlie Ahearn grabbed his camera to capture the scene, and his loose limbed, ad libbed feature would become hip hop's first (and arguably, best) film. "Wild Style" is as authentic in sound in one scene, Grandmaster Flash D.J.s in his own kitchen as it is in spirit. The climactic concert at the East River Park Amphitheater was shot without a permit, twice. As the star Lee Quinones, whose bright pieces are now in the Whitney's permanent collection, once scribbled, "Graffiti is art and if art is a crime, please God, forgive me." At the height of '90s heroin chic, Lisa Cholodenko wowed Sundance with this erotic drama about an ambitious young magazine editor named Syd (Radha Mitchell) and her neighbor, Lucy, a dissolute photographer (a phenomenal Ally Sheedy). Lucy is the grande dame of the upstairs drug den where her German girlfriend (Patricia Clarkson), hair in a slovenly Bardot bouffant, glowers at her love rival in a haze. Mesmerizing and intelligent, Cholodenko's debut is about the need to see and be seen, from Syd's power struggle against her demeaning male boss to Lucy's efforts to sober up and shoot her comeback cover story. Consider the screenwriters Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett's criminally underseen picture a hard luck counterpart to "Casablanca." While Bogey and Bergman cooled their heels in a swanky nightclub, other European war refugees assembled on the Mexican border, where Charles Boyer's Romanian gigolo lucks into a room at the crowded Hotel Esperanza only because its occupant committed suicide that morning. When an immigration agent who misquotes the text on the Statue of Liberty predicts a five to eight year wait, the playboy schemes to marry an American. Once he slides a borrowed ring on the finger of an innocent tourist (Olivia de Havilland, luminous as ever), the callous groom is caught in his own squeeze. Can he cross legally into the States before the ring's rightful owner, a showgirl played by Paulette Goddard, exposes his ruse? Sick of staring at the same walls? Find catharsis in the claustrophobic infatuation between a lonely hearts barmaid, Agnes (Ashley Judd), and the conspiracy theorist (Michael Shannon) who moves into her motel room and promptly plasters it in tinfoil. "Bug" has the lean energy of a debut feature. Yet the director William Friedkin, in his 70s at the time, and the screenwriter Tracy Letts, adapting his own play, had nothing to prove except the thrill of a small story viciously told. Shannon, who originated the role onstage, turns in a barnstorming performance. The culture wars were never fought with more cheer than in this 1982 musical in which a tinpot TV moralizer (Dom DeLuise) crusades to close down the Chicken Ranch, a brothel headed by Mona Stangley (Dolly Parton), a madam who makes entertaining the A M football team seem as wholesome as pouring lemonade at the library. (She's even dating the sheriff, played by Burt Reynolds.) DeLuise lampoons a now familiar cable news type, a hypocrite who rages about liars and sinners in a phony Texan accent. At the same time, the lily livered governor (Charles Durning, who scored an Oscar nomination for the part) is beholden only to polls. The director Colin Higgins's take on the Broadway hit is a charm offensive perhaps offensively so for those doing a double take at its ecstatically content prostitutes. Still, no one can resist Parton serenading Reynolds with her showstopping hit, "I Will Always Love You." Six years after their clench in "Morocco," the oil and vinegar combo of a slithery Marlene Dietrich and a straight shooting Gary Cooper was revived for a fizzy caper flick about a scammer who slips purloined pearls into a stranger's pocket and stalks him through Spain conniving how to swipe them back. "The only film I need not be ashamed of is 'Desire,'" declared Dietrich, who slinks through the movie outlined in feathers and furs. As for Cooper, he speaks for her fans when he swoons, "First you throw mud in my face, then you want me to kiss your hand. Continental." Fans of Lee Daniels's Southern fried gothic are committed, in the sense that the gatekeepers of good taste might pinion them in a straitjacket. As pulpy as its title, "The Paperboy" is a sweathouse of pheromones set in the Florida swamps where the death row convict Hillary Van Wetter (John Cusack) has lured two reporters (Matthew McConaughey and David Oyelowo), one besotted pen pal (Nicole Kidman) and a college kid (Zac Efron) who lusts after Kidman's character while the camera drools over him. Little that follows is suitable for print, which is part of the fun. Kidman's bravura performance makes audiences feel like they pressed play on a fugue state and, afterward, can't quite believe certain scenes were real until someone else watches the film and confirms that, yes, Kidman did straddle Efron and bellow, "If anyone's going to pee on him, it's going to be me!" Tag, you're it. It's October 1962 in Key West and the brothers Gene and Dennis are scared of everything. The Cuban Missile Crisis is unfolding 90 miles away and, closer to home, the gleeful schlockmeister Lawrence Woolsey (John Goodman) has rolled into town to promote his new chiller, "Mant!" The boys can't tell which is their more immediate threat: a classmate warning that duck and cover won't save them from the atomic bomb, or the local bully wearing a promotional rubber ant suit. "It takes a lot more to scare people these days," sighs Woolsey. "Too much competition." But when Woolsey traces his line of work back to the first cave man chased by a mammoth, this nostalgic comedy blooms into the director Joe Dante's love letter to the movies in all their mutations.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
On a mid February afternoon, dozens of women, mostly in their 20s and 30s, ascended to a hotel rooftop in Manhattan, dressed for brunch in pink blazers, pink tank tops, pink eye shadow, even pink hair. Heart streamers cascaded from the doorway. Sangria flowed freely, the mimosa bar was stocked, and the waffles were limitless. There was just one noted absence: boys. They weren't allowed. This wasn't a Valentine's celebration, after all. It was a Galentine's party for "ladies celebrating ladies." Feb. 14 is still reserved for romantic relationships. But, if you're not in one, the week of Feb. 13 is all about sisterhood and increasingly, as corporations take note of this trend, commercialization. Galentine festivities originated on "Parks and Recreation," the seven season NBC sitcom that chronicled the relationships between Leslie Knope (played by Amy Poehler) and her local public sector colleagues. In an episode of Season 2 that first aired 10 years ago, Leslie gathers her female pals for brunch and showers them with gifts hand crocheted flower pens, mosaic portraits of each guest made from the crushed bottles of their favorite diet soda, and personalized 5,000 word essays of why they're awesome. "It's like Lilith Fair, minus the angst," she said, "plus frittatas." Where Valentine's focuses on romance a holiday that can feel alienating or exclusionary for some Galentine's festivities offer a more welcoming vibe. Over the last decade, fans of the show have been crafting Galentine's celebrations, pulling some elements from the show and creating some of their own. At the Monarch Rooftop in Midtown Manhattan, where tickets for the event cost 40, the brunch menu featured the classic essentials, frittatas and waffles Leslie's favorite food but added "avo cuddle" toast, "bae gals" and fries "B4 guys." Some guests exchanged gifts, but dialed down the Leslie level intensity to sparkly heart rings and hair clips. And although tabletop drinking games were never part of the "Parks and Rec" Galentine's checklist, the prosecco pong was a fun (albeit boozy) touch. "I just like to be around girls and have no guys here," said Tiffany Alves, 25, a student at New York Law School in Manhattan who brought two law school girlfriends along this past Sunday. "I feel like you can take pictures and drink and eat and dance, and they're not going to judge you." But as more women adopt Galentine's as an annual tradition undoubtedly helped by the availability of "Parks and Recreation" through streaming companies are cashing in. Hallmark now offers Galentine's trinkets and greeting cards "Hey lady," one reads, "How are you so awesome?" Party City sells glittery Galentine's balloons and banners, along with "fries not guys" paper cups. On Etsy, handmade Galentine's crafts abound, including cards, balloons, buttons, hair ties and uterus shaped confetti. Bars, coffee shops, boutiques and fitness studios are also hosting their own Galentine's promotions and events. "It's sort of impossible in America for anything to enter the culture and then not be commodified, you know?" said Michael Schur, the creator and an executive producer of "Parks and Recreation." "I wish it weren't being used the way it's used sometimes, but I'm happy that it's being used at all because that means that it struck a chord with people." Mr. Schur first noticed the extension of Galentine's Day years ago, with ads on Twitter and signs around Los Angeles offering customers free Galentine's margaritas in honor of the unofficial holiday. "Anytime anything you write sort of penetrates this disparate culture that we're in and catches on and sort of is echoed back to you, that's delightful," he said. "But it also was odd to see it sort of warped a little bit and converted into this thing that's being used by brands and websites and corporations in order to have a sale on whatever it is they're hawking. Because obviously, that wasn't the point of it." Mr. Schur, whose other series include "The Office," "Brooklyn Nine Nine" and "The Good Place," hasn't seen a lot of other details from his shows take hold the way Galentine's has. "Treat Yo Self," another "Parks and Rec" ism, has somewhat entered the public lexicon and other holidays with sitcom origins, like Festivus of "Seinfeld" fame, are recognizable but no longer widely celebrated. But Galentine's seems to have broken through the screen, perhaps because it gives women like Ms. Alves and her friends the chance to dress up and celebrate being together. For a group obsessed with the show, they say it's "becoming our tradition." Continue following our fashion and lifestyle coverage on Facebook (Styles and Modern Love), Twitter (Styles, Fashion and Weddings) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Unlike many of her friends, Bridget Biederman doesn't commute to an office. As a saleswoman for a biotech company, she uses her car as her office. And when she isn't on the road, she works from home. Nearly five years ago, she moved from Florida to Manhattan, where she shared a two bedroom rental in Stuyvesant Town with two roommates. Parking was always a problem, so she paid to park in a garage a few blocks away. But that meant she had to call an hour before she needed the car. And even so, she often had to wait in line behind fellow motorists. "I always had to allot more time," she said. "A lot of my stress wasn't my job. It was just maneuvering in the city or the parking situation." After two and a half years of that, she moved to Hoboken, N.J. Parking on the street wasn't any easier, so she still paid for a garage. But at least "I had the control to get out when I needed to," she said. Still, it was tough to run errands when street parking was so hard to come by. By the time she decided to move once again, she had received two promotions at work and was a regional sales manager. Her job required her to drive throughout the five boroughs and lower New York State. Even so, "I didn't know if I wanted to go back to city life," said Ms. Biederman, 28, who grew up in Sarasota, Fla., and graduated from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. She had enjoyed the atmosphere of what she called "slight suburbia" in Hoboken. But after meeting a friend in Greenwich, she found herself falling for Connecticut. "All of the towns are very close together," she said, "and they all have different charms." What's more, she knew that the kind of home she wanted a two bedroom apartment with a washer and dryer, in a building with an attached indoor parking garage would be all but impossible to find in Manhattan on a budget of 3,000 a month. But in Connecticut, it seemed feasible. "There was a huge part of me that was ready for more space," Ms. Biederman said. In particular, she craved a home office with a door she could shut on her work. "When your printer/scanner is next to your bed, it is constantly looking at you," she said, and "coffee shops are not quiet enough for a conference call." Stamford, Ms. Biederman decided, was well situated for her, and had even more of the suburban vibe she had liked in Hoboken. Through a friend of a friend, she met Jarah Tuttle, an associate broker at NewBridge International Realty in Stamford. Ms. Biederman was glad to have the help of someone familiar with the area, and was happily surprised to discover that she wouldn't have to pay a broker's fee the way most people in New York City did. That wasn't the only pleasant surprise. On her budget, it turned out, she could find exactly what she was looking for. As Ms. Tuttle put it, "There's not a lot of compromise: If you are paying between 2,700 and 3,000, you are getting a beautiful two bed two bath." But most of Stamford's rental buildings, Ms. Biederman learned, do charge additional fees: application fees, amenity fees, trash fees, pet fees. And most require renters' insurance. The Postmark Apartments, which opened a year and a half ago, had interiors she liked, and the price was right; two bedrooms there range from the high 2,000s to the low 4,000s. The main problem was the location: the former Pitney Bowes site in Harbor Point, south of Interstate 95. Ms. Biederman didn't relish the thought of having to rely on the trolley service to the Metro North Railroad station whenever she took the train to New York, or having to drive to and park at the station. Worse still, the unit that was available had a view of Dumpsters. Her preference was to be in downtown Stamford, north of the highway. Parallel 41, a three year old building there, had two bedrooms in the high 2,000s. But the building charged extra for parking ( 50 or 100 a month, for open or covered parking), and it was a little too far from the train station for her liking. Passing over some of the older apartment houses in the area, she zeroed in on 75 Tresser, a five story building that opened a little more than a year ago in a prime downtown location, the former site of the Stamford Advocate. There, she was able to find a two bedroom two bathroom apartment on the top floor for 3,010. And when she signed a 12 month lease last spring, she got two months free. (Two bedrooms now rent for slightly more around 3,100 a month Ms. Tuttle said, something she attributed to the seasonal influx of recent college graduates, many of whom share two bedrooms with roommates.) An early order of business was getting a dog, Ms. Biederman said, "after five years of talking about it." Now she is exploring the charming surrounding towns with Daphne Blake, a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. And she doesn't ever have to think about parking, she added, so "my stress level has gone down." If she wants to meet friends in New York for brunch, she can be there in almost no time often less than an hour, according to the train schedule although dinner requires a little more planning. She might stay over with a friend or catch a late train home from Grand Central Terminal. "It's almost like that FOMO, fear of missing out," she said. "I am over here with the dog, and it makes it more difficult to get into the city. But part of me wanted a little bit more balance and self discipline, where before I felt there was always something going on. You can wear yourself out." So is she happy she made the move to Connecticut? "I am 90 percent happy," Ms. Biederman said. "With that 10 percent of certain things I miss out on."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
To make a cult, it takes a failure. On that count, "The Golden Apple," a musical retelling of "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey" set in Washington State around 1900, certainly qualifies. Though it opened to positive reviews at the Phoenix Theater in 1954, and was the first Off Broadway musical ever to transfer to Broadway, it flopped almost as soon as it arrived. But failure alone does not suffice. A cult musical must also plummet directly into obscurity; if too many people know about it, how can it be the exclusive delight of connoisseurs? Then, too, there must be something of great quality that justifies the delight, and also something that doesn't. The best such musicals are a bit outre, a bit funky, a bit too fey or fine to survive in their own time, and maybe even in ours. This is why we have the Encores! series, whose mission to glorify the peculiar treasures in America's musical theater attic has brought us such otherwise unproducible works as the Gershwins' "Pardon My English" and, earlier this season, Cole Porter's "The New Yorkers." The revival of "The Golden Apple" that opened Wednesday night at City Center tops them all, not only in being the cultiest cult musical Encores! has ever attempted, but also in making a marvelous if last ditch case for it. That case does not depend much on the story, which moves the mythic figures to a rural village called Angel's Roost and a slick nearby city called Rhododendron. Those names should give you a feel for the level of satire involved, although it is fascinating, and a bit depressing, to realize that in 1954 the show's creators the composer Jerome Moross and the librettist John Latouche could count on an audience's familiarity with ancient epics to make the jokes pay off. Helen is the local easy gal; Paris a slick traveling salesman who arrives by balloon. Ulysses has just returned to Penelope from the Spanish American War full of big stick enthusiasm: "Oh Theodore Oh Theodore," he and his hearty mates sing, "the Roosevelt that we adore." (Latouche's lyrics are nothing if not assertively rhymed.) The beauty contest that foments the crisis is, here, a bake off. These are the ingredients of a camp Americana operetta, which is what "The Golden Apple" could so easily have been. But oh, the music: 135 glorious minutes of it, unsullied by dialogue. Moross, best known for his film scores to westerns including "The Big Country," was a member of Aaron Copland's coterie and brings the familiar sound we call American, with its modal harmonies and widely spaced voicings, to a work of astonishing breadth and beauty. There are, of course, plenty of genre pastiches in it: soft shoe, jazz, ragtime, hoedowns. These are highly effective, but the glory of "The Golden Apple" is a series of complex musical scenes and let's call them arias that define their own territory. "Lazy Afternoon," Helen's ripe plum of a blues, is the most obvious winner, having been recorded by singers as diverse as Kaye Ballard (the original Helen), Tony Bennett and Barbra Streisand. Here Lindsay Mendez sings it like it's a brand new thought. Among other highlights, a duet for Penelope and Ulysses ("It's the Going Home Together") and a solo for Penelope ("Windflowers") extend well beyond musical theater formulas to the realm of art song. Hearing them beautifully rendered by Ryan Silverman (as Ulysses) and the newcomer Mikaela Bennett (as Penelope) feels like getting out from under the clouds on a night flight over water. And there are clouds. As a story, "The Golden Apple" is not the emotional experience its authors presumably intended. No one would mistake it for Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma!" or "Carousel," with which it shares some dark folkloric aspects. The winking allusions to Homer, and the mania to fulfill certain midcentury entertainment expectations, ensure that pressing matters of love and fidelity, pride and temptation, are, except in those arias, too blandly packaged to sting. You can hardly expect a work that collapses the Trojan War into one number (a boxing bout) and the whole of "The Odyssey" into a longish vaudeville scene, to engage feelings of pity and terror the way the source material can. It is both too abstract and too synthetic for that. In its hasty fidelity, the production, directed by Michael Berresse, emphasizes those ersatz upbeat traits. Though the simple setting by Allen Moyer comes complete with a just right backdrop in the style of Grandma Moses, the overall tone is, as in many Encores! productions, generically cheerful and cute. There is way too much mimed jollity. And because "The Golden Apple" is such a large undertaking, with a cast of 40 and lots of choreography (by Joshua Bergasse), there is also, in this case, a winded feeling, not surprising after just 10 days of rehearsal. Six weeks would not have been too many for such a complicated undertaking. There's nothing Encores! can do about that under its current financing, and there are some compensatory charms in the production's make do spirit. But those raggedy charms are shown up by the high professional gloss of its music, which is delivered by a luxurious orchestra of 31, much larger than the original. The orchestrations, by Mr. Moross and Hershy Kay, are among the best ever heard in the series, and are given their full due. The singing, under Rob Berman's musical direction, is stellar. All of which raises the Encores! paradox. Since the series began in 1994, staged concerts have gradually given way to very full productions. Rarely nowadays do you see an actor carrying, let alone consulting, a script. A dancer as stylish as the Lar Lubovitch alumnus Barton Cowperthwaite, as Paris, can expect real bravura opportunities. But the nature of musicals is such that high caliber performances of sung material can be achieved much more quickly than satisfying stagings, and as the productions have grown more ambitious, the achievement has sometimes felt shallower. I offer no solution, and am not even sure this is a problem. I, too, am a cultist and want the full cult experience. If that includes a bit of funk in the ambrosia, as it does in "The Golden Apple," so be it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Ms. Hemmer is the author of "Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics." If you tuned in to Fox News to watch the opening arguments of the impeachment trial on Wednesday night, you were out of luck. Oh, the trial was still technically being broadcast on the network, but it had been reduced to a muted box on the side of the screen, while Sean Hannity assured viewers, "None of this will matter." This was the purest representation so far of conservative media's efforts to minimize not just impeachment but the full array of President Trump's misconduct. But minimization is only half the strategy to protect Republican control of the White House. The other half is scandalization: an effort to create an air of nonstop scandal around previous Democratic presidents and presidential hopefuls. In a recent op ed for The Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove argued that Democrats were hypocrites for impeaching Donald Trump. After all, he wrote, President Barack Obama once asked for "flexibility" from Russian leaders during the 2012 campaign and Democrats neither censured nor impeached him for it. (And, he mused, they likely wouldn't have impeached a President Hillary Clinton for using an opposition research firm that relied on Russian sources either.) These twin tactics are not inventions of the Trump era. They are part of a decades long strategy by the right to secure political power a strategy originating in conservative media. In that sense, right wing media have been laying the groundwork for Trump's acquittal for half a century. Conservative media have been scandal mongering about Democratic presidents ever since modern conservative media began taking shape in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Some of the earliest books from conservative publishing houses blamed President Franklin Roosevelt for the attack on Pearl Harbor: George Morgenstern's "Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War" and Robert A. Theobald's "The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor," both put out by the conservative publishing house Devin Adair, as well as "Admiral Kimmel's Story" from Regnery Publishing. President Harry Truman received the same treatment. In 1956, Regnery published Jules Abels's "The Truman Scandals," which claimed to reveal "the record of the most corrupt Administration in American history." A review of the book in National Review concluded, "Compared with the moral degeneracy of the Truman regime, the scandals of the Grant and Harding Administrations are reduced to the semblance of quaint and venal peccadilloes." But it was President Lyndon Johnson who came in for the most brutal attacks, primarily for the sin of running against the conservative darling Senator Barry Goldwater. Books that centered on Johnson's advisers like Bobby Baker, caught up in a series of bribery and tax evasion charges had trouble gaining traction, even though Mr. Goldwater brought it up regularly on the campaign trail. One book, though, found an avid conservative audience: "A Texan Looks at Lyndon." J. Evetts Haley, a Texas rancher, self published the book in 1964. In it, he offered unsubstantiated accounts of bribery, stolen elections and even convenient deaths that helped pave Johnson's road to the White House. As I wrote in The Atlantic in 2014, Mr. Haley's conspiracy theories could have easily been pulled from a 1990s anti Clinton screed. He called Johnson an "inordinately vain, egotistical, ambitious extrovert" and claimed that Lady Bird Johnson mirrored "Lady Macbeth's consuming ambition for the growth of her husband's power." About the presidential assassination that put Johnson in the Oval Office, he hinted darkly, "What a strange coincidence." Johnson won the election in one of the largest landslides in American presidential history. But the scandal mongering mattered. In the early 1970s, when the next Republican president was under investigation for corruption and abuse of power, the monstrous image of Johnson that conservative media helped to paint became part of President Richard Nixon's defense. Conservative media figures did their best to downplay Nixon's crimes, especially in relation to Johnson's. Nixon himself called Watergate "a crappy little thing" in his private (but secretly recorded) Oval Office conversations. Henry Regnery dismissed the accounts of Watergate, writing, "I can see no grounds for impeachment, or even to get worked up about." National Review called the crimes "objectively trivial" and dismissed "the media's daily spasms of moral indignation" as "a gleeful put on." Even after Nixon had resigned, the magazine still argued that he had been persecuted for actions far less serious than Johnson's. Hedging even as they accused, the magazine's editors pointed to "the belief, though not the proof, that Lyndon Johnson greatly surpassed Nixon in venality." After running through the litany of Johnson's sins, the editors expressed hope that one day people would look more kindly on Nixon "as the shady deals of previous presidents become known." In the 1960s and 1970s, the conservative media sphere was quite small: a handful of publishers, magazines and radio programs. The activists behind those outlets could influence politics, but they did not have the totalizing power that would allow them to ignore the world outside of the conservative movement. They could not persuade the vast majority of Americans that Johnson was notoriously corrupt, nor shrink Watergate hearings into a small box on the screen and propagandize over it. The rapid expansion of conservative media in the 1990s and 2000s, and the conservative scandal machine that powered it, transformed American politics. During the Bill Clinton era, new scandal mongering magazines and websites made up what Hillary Clinton accurately called a "vast right wing conspiracy." What followed was a cynical, partisan impeachment that treated the serious constitutional remedy as just another political game. In so doing, Republicans diminished the significance of impeachment, making it less likely the public would take the current impeachment crisis seriously. The Clinton impeachment showed that the Republican Party was fully on board with the conservative media's scandalization project. The whole thing was tawdry, and yet two years later the Republicans controlled the presidency and both houses of Congress. Scandalization worked, so they returned to it again and again. Even Republican presidential candidates got in on the act, as when President Trump led rallygoers in chants of "Lock her up." Thrilled with the success of that book, Mr. Corsi followed it in 2008 with "The Obama Nation," a mash up of anti Obama conspiracy theories. "The goal is to defeat Obama," he told The Times in an interview that year. But even before that book hit the shelves, conspiracy theories about Senator Obama had already taken flight. Conservative media treated everything from his birthplace to his religion to his work as a community organizer as a career ending scandal. The pace rapidly escalated once he took office, as shown by the endless, expensive Benghazi investigations (which, as a bonus, also damaged the likely Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton). Even as right wing media tried to brand the Obama presidency as the most corrupt administration in the history of the United States, a cottage industry of scandalmongers had already popped up to attack future Democratic nominees. Dinesh D'Souza followed his book "The Roots of Obama's Rage" with a documentary called "Hillary's America," which depicted Mrs. Clinton as radical, racist and corrupt. The Breitbart contributor Peter Schweizer followed "Clinton Cash," a book that helped spread the Uranium One conspiracy, with "Secret Empires," which targeted Vice President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden. Mr. Schweizer's most recent book, "Profiles in Corruption," provides building blocks for scandals involving a number of 2020 Democratic hopefuls, like the daft tidbit that Senator Elizabeth Warren's son in law produced a film with support from two Iranian organizations. The investors, Mr. Schweizer wrote, "might appear at first glance to be innocuous cultural organizations but they are not. Both are funded and controlled by the Islamist Iranian government." It may not seem like much, but as the birtherism conspiracy shows, scandals have been rooted in less. These ginned up scandals have real implications for Donald Trump's impeachment. Evidence abounds that the president and his team not only attempted to solicit Russian interference in the 2016 election but sought to coerce Ukraine into interfering in 2020. But if every politician is indelibly corrupt, then Mr. Trump deserves no real punishment. To write off Mr. Trump's wrongdoing as run of the mill politics, then, requires both minimizing what he has done and scandalizing what other politicians do. As an added bonus, the strategy damages Americans' faith in government and public service, bolstering the Republican Party's anti government agenda. As such, it's a powerful, effective political strategy and a deeply nihilistic one. Nicole Hemmer ( pastpunditry) is an associate research scholar at Columbia University and the author of "Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Leagues that have restarted, or are planning to restart, are adopting severe hygiene protocols to ensure games can be played again safely while the virus continues to be a danger. UEFA is certain to adopt similar strategies, meaning that the games are being planned to take place in empty stadiums and that the players involved will face regular tests. With European travel limited, and ongoing quarantine laws in some countries, it is also likely that most of the remaining games will take place in the place picked to host the final. The Spanish news media reported that UEFA was planning to host this year's Champions League final, an event that draws more viewers globally than the Super Bowl, in Lisbon. There are a small number of other candidates, according to the person with knowledge of the matter. "A working group has been set up with the participation of representatives from the leagues and clubs to examine calendar solutions and format options that would allow for the completion of the current season," said a UEFA spokesman. "A variety of options is being looked at and no decisions have been made at this stage." What's certain is the competition is unlikely to look like anything that has gone before, with calendar constraints necessitating it be completed in as short a time possible to allow players to rest before starting next season in September. The original date for the final at Ataturk Olympic Stadium in Istanbul was May 30. "A working group has been set up with the participation of representatives from the leagues and clubs to examine calendar solutions and format options that would allow for the completion of the current season," said a UEFA spokesman. "A variety of options is being looked at and no decisions have been made at this stage."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The vicious battle over the future of Sumner M. Redstone's 40 billion media empire boiled over from the public stage into courtrooms on both coasts Monday. With sharp rhetoric, directors from Viacom, Mr. Redstone's entertainment company, charged in a lawsuit that the media mogul had been manipulated by his daughter, Shari Redstone, into changing the terms of the trust that controls his companies. Philippe P. Dauman, the chairman and chief executive of Viacom, who was removed from the trust, called it an "unlawful corporate takeover." Mr. Redstone's legal team fired back with a petition in Los Angeles, asking that a court confirm the validity of the changes he made. Mr. Redstone's lawyer said his client was "saddened that Mr. Dauman is trying to make this dispute" about Mr. Redstone's daughter. The dueling legal actions represent a bitter new fissure in Mr. Redstone's corporate empire, which he built into an entertainment conglomerate after wresting control of Viacom in 1987. They also feature a reversal of fortunes for some of the key principals involved. Ms. Redstone, long estranged from her father, is now reconciled with him, and his actions over the weekend align with her view of how his companies should be managed. Mr. Dauman and George Abrams, a Viacom director who was also removed from the trust, are longtime confidants of Mr. Redstone who now find themselves pushed aside and forced to challenge his mental capacity. The legal war erupted after Mr. Redstone on Friday unexpectedly ousted Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams from the trust, which will gain control of Mr. Redstone's companies when he dies or is declared incompetent. Mr. Redstone also ejected them from their positions on the board of the theater chain company National Amusements, through which Mr. Redstone controls his companies. After a weekend of caustic accusations, Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams filed a lawsuit Monday morning in the probate court in Canton, Mass., seeking to immediately block the moves. The 24 page suit depicts Mr. Redstone, 92, as suffering "profound physical and mental illness" and being subject to the undue influence of his daughter. It also claims that the changes will allow Ms. Redstone to "illegitimately tip the balance of power to her." In a four page petition filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, lawyers for Mr. Redstone asserted that because "there is no evidence" that Mr. Redstone was incapacitated or unable to manage his business affairs, he still had the power to remove or add trustees. A determination of Mr. Redstone's incapacity, the petition said, depends on a court ruling or a document signed by three doctors, stating that he lacks the competency to manage his affairs. Neither occurred before Mr. Redstone changed the trust, making the decisions valid, the petition states. "Mr. Redstone has been clear and unequivocal in his desire to remove Philippe Dauman and George Abrams as trustees," Robert N. Klieger, a lawyer with Hueston Hennigan who is representing Mr. Redstone, said in a statement. The trust, intended to benefit Mr. Redstone's five grandchildren, wields enormous power. The seven voting members could move to dismiss the boards and leadership of Viacom and CBS and also make plans to merge or sell the companies. John C. Coffee Jr., a professor and the director of the Center on Corporate Governance at Columbia Law School, said that "the burden of proof lies with the plaintiff," in this case, the ousted trustees and Viacom. But he added, "At some point, given the debate over his condition, there will need to be something: a signed document or a videotape demonstrating that they are hearing from him and not from his daughter, Shari." The dispute puts a renewed focus on the question of Mr. Redstone's mental capacity. In November, a former companion of Mr. Redstone filed suit alleging that he was not competent and was under the influence of his daughter when he removed the companion, Manuela Herzer, from a directive that would have given her supervision of his health care. That suit was dismissed two weeks ago. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. While the judge sided with Mr. Redstone, he did not make a decision on Mr. Redstone's competency. According to the lawsuit filed by Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams, Mr. Redstone's physical and mental health has diminished significantly since Ms. Herzer's suit was filed in November. Mr. Klieger sought to use Mr. Dauman's own words from the Herzer lawsuit against him. "It is telling that Mr. Dauman is raising the question of mental capacity for the first time after he's been removed when, just months ago in court documents, he pronounced Mr. Redstone 'engaged, attentive, and as opinionated as ever,'" Mr. Klieger said in the statement. The suit from Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams details how Mr. Redstone, who has not been seen publicly for nearly a year, can no longer stand, walk, read, write or speak coherently. It asserts that he cannot swallow and requires a feeding tube to eat and drink and the suctioning of phlegm and saliva throughout the day and night to avoid breathing complications. That description is strikingly similar to the one Ms. Herzer provided in her lawsuit. Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams claim that Mr. Redstone's ability to "understand and assess the consequences of his actions is limited." The suit also says that Ms. Redstone made changes to Mr. Redstone's last will and testament. "After years of estrangement, she has inserted herself into his home, taken over his life and isolated him from anyone not under her control, including longtime business colleagues," Mr. Dauman said in a statement on Monday. "Shari's actions amount to an unlawful corporate takeover, and if effectuated, could have far reaching consequences for thousands of shareholders and employees of Viacom." In a statement issued on Monday, Nancy Sterling, a spokeswoman for Ms. Redstone, said it was "absurd for anyone to accuse Shari of manipulating her father." "Sumner makes his own decisions regarding whom he wants to see, both in his home and elsewhere," Ms. Sterling said. The weekend's developments were considered a major victory for Ms. Redstone in her quest to shape the future of her father's media companies. She has publicly opposed Mr. Dauman's leadership of Viacom; when her father ceded the title in February, she was the sole Viacom director to vote against Mr. Dauman's elevation to chairman. In their suit, Mr. Dauman and Mr. Abrams claimed that the people put forward to replace them on the trust and the board are under the influence and control of Ms. Redstone.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
The other, Jeanne Michele Charbonnet, told The Post that Mr. Gatti had tried something similar with her four years later when she was singing in Wagner's "The Flying Dutchman" in Bologna, Italy. After she pushed him off, she said, the company never rehired her. The Concertgebouw Orchestra said in a statement that "since the publication of the article in The Washington Post, a number of female colleagues of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra reported experiences with Gatti, which are inappropriate considering his position as chief conductor" and added that "this has irreparably damaged the relationship of trust between the orchestra and the chief conductor." It said it would find replacements to conduct his planned concerts. A lawyer for Mr. Gatti, Alberto Borbon, said in a statement after the firing was announced Thursday that Mr. Gatti had asked him to inform the media "that he is extremely surprised and that he firmly denies all sorts of allegations." "The Maestro has asked his lawyers to protect his reputation and to take all needed actions should this smear campaign continue," Mr. Borbon said. Mr. Gatti was considered a rising star. In 2013 he conducted a new production of Wagner's "Parsifal" at the Metropolitan Opera, starring the tenor Jonas Kaufmann, from memory. In his review in The New York Times, Anthony Tommasini said that Mr. Gatti drew diaphanous, if sometimes slow playing from the orchestra, writing that "at his best he was inspired, and his immersion in the piece is palpable."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Kaneisha begs Mista Jim, her overseer on the MacGregor plantation, to call her a "nasty Negress" as he forces himself upon her. Mistress Alana, the lady of the manor, lustily wields her mother's hand me down dildo to penetrate Phillip, her violin playing house slave. The best theater of 2018 Elsewhere on the Virginia plantation, Gary, who is black, makes a white indentured servant named Dustin bring him to orgasm by licking his boots. That's how "Slave Play," which opened on Sunday at New York Theater Workshop, begins and then it gets really outrageous. Saying much more would mean giving away at least one huge surprise that this willfully provocative, gaudily transgressive and altogether staggering new play by Jeremy O. Harris has in store. And yet its urgency and sheer cultural heft, deployed like weapons in a furiously entertaining production directed by Robert O'Hara, don't leave much choice. It all but demands to be in its own terminology processed. So proceed with caution, and let's make "spoiler" our safe word, shall we? Not that there's much pretense to narrative normalcy. You will know something's askew even before you get to the end of the first of those quasi pornographic playlets. Kaneisha (Teyonah Parris) is more assertive and Mista Jim (Paul Alexander Nolan) more nervous than you would expect in a real antebellum encounter. Then, too, Kaneisha is occasionally overtaken by musical fits in which Rihanna's song "Work" causes her to twerk. Music plays a role in the other sex scenes as well. Mistress Alana (Annie McNamara) can't stand the "new" tunes by Beethoven that Phillip (Sullivan Jones) prefers to play; she instead demands a spiritual, or whatever it is that makes "the ladies down at y'all's cabin" swoon. And as Gary (Ato Blankson Wood) starts to dominate Dustin (James Cusati Moyer), he is suddenly overcome by the song "Multi Love," a 2015 hit from Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Though Mr. Harris is still in drama school, and "Slave Play" is his first professional New York production, he writes as if he's known all his life how to twist audiences into all kinds of pretzels. In particular I can say as a white person that he manipulates white discomfort expertly to the advantage of his storytelling. Until I encountered his potent brew of minstrelsy and melodrama I hadn't known it was possible except perhaps in plays like "Bootycandy," by Mr. O'Hara to cringe and laugh and blush at the same time. So it comes as a relief, at first, when the play completely changes course about a quarter of the way through its intermissionless two hours. The six characters now reappear spoiler! as contemporary interracial couples in sex therapy. What's new onstage and off: Sign up for our Theater Update newsletter It seems that the MacGregor plantation has become a resort and conference center; the couples are there as part of a weeklong program run by the social scientists Tea (Chalia La Tour) and Patricia (Irene Sofia Lucio), late of Smith and Yale. Their program focuses primarily on helping the black participants, who are no longer able to receive pleasure from their white or whiter partners. The scenes we saw at the beginning of the play were their therapeutic fantasies, spun out in role play. Mr. Harris does not squander the satirical opportunities this setup offers. Words like "positionality," "minoritarian" and "heteropatriarchal" get quite a workout as Ms. La Tour and Ms. Lucio mine characters whose intelligence has been co opted by cant. And though some of this material could use pruning, Mr. O'Hara proves the perfect collaborator in staging it, playing the comedy so bright and dense that you don't have the bandwidth to grow bored. Nor do you notice, until you're too far along, that comedy is not all it is. Because the thing about this therapy perhaps like the play is that it works not despite but because of its absurdity. Tea and Patricia's "processing" of the black participants' fantasies gives them access to insight that their social conditioning had previously obscured. None of that insight is welcome news for their partners. If Dustin, Alana and especially Jim a Brit who finds the whole concept insane and traumatizing are unable to see what their whiteness has to do with it, we in the audience see it all too clearly. Gary, Phillip and Kaneisha exist "squarely in the blind spot of their nonblack partner," a phrase that is no less damning for being clinical. Though all of the black participants have psychological cofactors, including obsessive compulsive disorders, it misses the point to say the deck has been stacked. Mr. Harris isn't making a universal statement about individuals in interracial partnerships; he's aiming at the interracial partnership of America as a whole. By the time the play, which has a classical form much like a sonata, reaches a final scene involving just one of the couples, its sharp narrowing in feels like a vast broadening out. In plantation America, which in Mr. Harris's cosmology is both antebellum and post , can white people learn to love black people not just their music and their plays as actual black people, on black people's terms? "Slave Play" is extreme, both in the way it poses that question through sex and in posing the question at all. It asks a lot of its superior cast, whose portrayal of arousal and fury and shame feels terrifyingly real even within a very artificial reality. The designers Clint Ramos (scenery), Dede Ayite (costumes), Jiyoun Chang (lighting) and Lindsay Jones (sound) create that artificial world with great theatrical wit and intelligence. The intimacy director, Claire Warden, has been kept very busy. "Slave Play" asks a lot of the audience, too but let me speak just of myself. It's hard for a critic to heed what seems to be its general instruction, at least to white people, to shut up for once and listen. If you are in the reviewing trade, you wonder whether that's just a feint at foiling criticism. So be it. But I find myself unable to resist "processing," and grateful to hear so plainly, the idea that Mr. Harris puts forward in the silent space his play insists on clearing: that one race lives with history each day while another pretends not to. In late 2018, I fear that's still a spoiler.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Late last month, the 26 year old Chicago rapper King Von released his debut studio album, "Welcome to O'Block," and it landed at No. 13 on the Billboard 200 chart a modest but impressive showing for a young performer still making his way up. But just a week after his album came out, King Von, whose real name is Dayvon Bennett, was shot and killed in a brawl outside an Atlanta nightclub. As tributes poured in on social media, streams for "Welcome to O'Block" grew, and in its second week out the album has climbed to No. 5 with the equivalent of 44,000 sales in the United States, including nearly 64 million streams, according to Nielsen Music. Its total sales number is up 69 percent from the album's first week. Ariana Grande's latest release, "Positions," holds at No. 1 for a second week, with the equivalent of 82,000 sales, down 53 percent. Pop Smoke's posthumous "Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon" a steady hit since July rose one spot to No. 2 in its 19th week out. The Kid Laroi, an Australian rapper, landed at No. 3 with an expanded reissue of his mixtape " Love," which first came out in July. The country star Luke Combs's "What You See Ain't Always What You Get" (a deluxe version of his year old album "What You See Is What You Get") is No. 4.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Jessica Mendoza, the ESPN analyst and special adviser to the Mets who was heavily criticized last month for her comments on the Astros sign stealing scandal, has resigned from her job with the Mets. The resignation is tied to a change in her job responsibilities with ESPN. "We are happy for Jessica Mendoza who will be expanding her role at ESPN," Brodie Van Wagenen, the Mets general manager, who hired Mendoza, tweeted. "To focus more on those new responsibilities she will no longer be a Special Advisor to the Mets." When the Mets hired Mendoza a former Olympic gold medalist in softball who has been a full time analyst on ESPN's flagship "Sunday Night Baseball" telecasts since 2016 they touted her as an outside the box hire who would bring a fresh perspective to the team. But working for two different employers soon caused headaches. She was asked how she could objectively analyze the Mets, or their division opponents, while she was a Mets employee. Some players were reluctant to speak with her in her role as an ESPN employee, worried they would be giving insight to the Mets. The Los Angeles Dodgers went so far as to ban Mendoza from their clubhouse, as well as David Ross, who was also an adviser to the Chicago Cubs while working as an ESPN analyst. He was hired as the Cubs' manager in October.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Whenever you withdraw money from an automated teller machine, the A.T.M. deposits microbes onto you. That shouldn't be surprising because germs and bacteria are everywhere: on doorknobs, subway seats, staircases, your cat, your dog, your face. You can't avoid them, especially when you're punching in your pin. Researchers in New York City swabbed the keypads of 66 A.T.M.s at banks, bodegas and other places across Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens. They found that A.T.M.s are mostly covered in microbes from human skin, similar to the ones found in bathrooms, on pillowcases and on televisions. They also found that in addition to leaving bits of ourselves behind whenever we touch the keypads, we also litter the machines with leftovers. Traces of chicken, fish and other seafood were among the most commonly found microbes. In Manhattan they found a mold called Xeromyces bisporus, which is associated with spoiled cakes and other baked goods.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
As high school seniors this week make final decisions about college by the May deadline, many are making whirlwind campus visits with the goal of finding the best fit. The college tour has become a seemingly compulsory step in the college application process, particularly for students interested in competitive four year schools. According to US News World Report: "Before choosing the best college to attend, it is important for students to test the waters. Making a college visit and touring the campus can be pivotal in a student's decision." Of course, as anyone who has been on a guided campus tour knows, they tend to highlight aspects of the college experience that are peripheral to education, such as tasty meal plans, state of the art athletic facilities and cozy dorms. But insights from research in psychology and behavioral economics suggest a counterintuitive reason to skip them: College tours may hinder students' ability to pick a college that will further their interests and goals. This has to do with the difference between our present selves (the self making the decision in this case, where to attend college) and our future selves (the self experiencing the outcome of this decision). As Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University and Timothy Wilson of the University of Virginia have argued, our present selves believe we are good at making decisions for our future selves, but in fact we all do a relatively poor job of predicting what our future selves will actually value and enjoy. For example, if you try a new restaurant, would you prefer to select your meal from the menu, or let someone who had already eaten at that restaurant choose for you? Most people unquestionably prefer to choose their own meal. But research in Dr. Gilbert's book "Stumbling on Happiness" shows that while people expect that they will be happier with the meal of their own choosing, they actually enjoy more the meal selected for them by an experienced stranger. How can this be? Because if we are making a decision we haven't made before (such as where to go to college) then our present selves must rely on imagination, instead of experience. It's challenging to imagine attending a college we haven't seen yet, so visiting the campus to take a tour, meet students, get the lay of the land seems like a prerequisite to making a good decision. But visiting a college is not the same as being a student there, and this distinction matters a lot, because of the many ways in which our imagination misleads us. As a decision making tool, imagination is inherently flawed. It necessarily omits significant details, while filling in gaps and leaving out other features in such a way that we don't notice what we've made up or what is missing. Our imagination is also biased by the here and now, using details borrowed from the present to fill in our view of the future. So if we happen to meet a group of fun loving students on our visit, we'll be inclined to imagine the college as a fun loving place, forgetting that there are many other students with different temperaments we are likely to encounter if we enroll. Similarly, a run in with an unfriendly professor will also color our view. This tendency to focus on what is in front of us without considering what is less visible is also known as saliency bias. As the Nobel Prize winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman wrote in his book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow," "What you see is all there is." So whatever students see or experience during a brief campus visit whether it's a sunny day or an ill prepared tour guide will inevitably stand out and have a disproportionate effect on their decision making. Since we ourselves are such poor predictors of what will make us happy, who is better positioned to guide our decisions? Other people. Specifically, other people who have recently had the experience we are contemplating. Dr. Gilbert calls them "experience surrogates." In the case of choosing a college, that would mean talking to current students or recent graduates. Experience surrogates are best used as proxies for our future selves. So instead of asking surrogates for information as inputs to our imagination, we instead ask questions about their goals and actual experience, such as "Why did you consider attending this school? Are you happy to be here? Knowing what you know now, would you make the same choice? Would someone like me be happy at this school?" If the surrogates' goals and values are aligned with ours, and they report a positive experience, this body of research suggests that we should make the same choice and move on. In a sense, the experience surrogate decides for us. This runs counter to our strong impulse to "test drive" or preview a possible future in the cinema of our imagination. But if imagination is such a poor tool for making decisions, then why do so many people depend on it? Partly because we believe we are different from most people, and not prone to the same biases and pitfalls. Even after learning about the reliability and effectiveness of using "experience surrogates" instead of imagination, few people do it. The myth of individuality is strong. So why isn't there an epidemic of students who find themselves in the wrong place and either transfer or drop out? Maybe there is. The only way to know would be to compare transfer and dropout rates between incoming students who used imagination to inform their decision, and those who relied on experience surrogates instead. Such data is lacking.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
SOPHISTICATED GIANT The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon By Maxine Gordon Illustrated. 279 pp. University of California Press. 29.95. Dexter Gordon, the lusty virtuoso of bebop saxophone probably best known now for his Oscar nominated, starring performance in the movie "Round Midnight," embodied no fewer than four jazz cliches. He made his reputation as the very image of the big, bold, tenor sax man, blaring rattling solos from the depths of his 6 foot 5 frame. He seemed for years to be a stereotype of the jazz musician as self destructive hedonist, arrested and imprisoned on narcotics charges and crimes related to drug use. He became a symbol of the black expat demimonde in mid 20th century Europe, where musicians joined writers, painters and other African American artists seeking refuge from maltreatment and underappreciation in their homeland. And he ended up an emblem of survival and redemption, weathered but still standing and still blowing, a veteran of a lifetime of battle with the world and himself. That Gordon embodied those cliches because he invented or crystallized them in the public imagination is largely forgotten today, nearly 30 years after his death, at 67, in 1990, from kidney failure following treatment for cancer of the larynx. In his final years, Gordon set out to tell his own story, hoping to correct some misconceptions and complicate some simplifications about his life and music. He wrote notes and drafts of biographical vignettes in longhand on yellow legal pads, and for a time tried to collaborate with the novelist Wesley Brown, before deciding to work largely on his own with help from his wife and former manager, Maxine Gordon. When his health began to fail precipitately, he asked her to promise to complete the book if he died before finishing it. "Sophisticated Giant: The Life and Legacy of Dexter Gordon" is the fulfillment of that promise. Although fairly short passages from Dexter Gordon's notepads appear here and there, the book is mainly Maxine Gordon's, and that's to its benefit. She learned about jazz from the inside herself, working in various back room roles for the composer Gil Evans, the organist Shirley Scott and others before she met her future husband in France in 1975. She worked with him, overseeing his much ballyhooed return to America in 1976, with chief responsibility for the ballyhoo, and she was with him, living quietly (half the time in Mexico), during his late period of reflection, retired from music. It helps, too, that she went back to school after Dexter Gordon's death, studied oral history for a summer at Columbia and got a master's degree in Africana studies at N.Y.U. "Sophisticated Giant" is a work of considerable sophistication, the first person testimony of its subject employed with affectionate discipline, smartly contextualized and augmented by material from interviews Maxine Gordon conducted with the tenor saxophone masters Sonny Rollins and Jimmy Heath, the record producers Bruce Lundvall and Michael Cucsuna, and others. Born into a line of high achieving African Americans, Dexter Gordon took pride in being part of what, in his notes, he called an "Uncommon Family." His maternal grandfather, an officer in the United States Cavalry, was awarded the Medal of Honor during the Spanish American War. His paternal grandfather, a barber who may have included dentistry among his services, was called "Professor" for his air of erudition. Dexter Gordon's own father was a physician in Los Angeles, among the first black doctors to practice in the city. Dexter Gordon himself was precociously creative. Mentored as a teenager by the same African American music teacher who taught Frank Morgan, Art Farmer, Marshal Royal and Don Cherry, among others, he proved to be so gifted on the tenor saxophone that he was offered a chair in the Lionel Hampton Orchestra while still in high school. Gordon entered a world that, like many spheres of popular music in every era, was populated by scores of young artists entertaining other young people with work that spoke pointedly to their age and time. When he joined the Hampton group, at 17, Gordon began playing with Joe Newman and Ernie Royal, both nearly as young as he was. A few years later, he was honored to be hired by one of his lifelong idols, Louis Armstrong (whom he called "Pops"), but he grew restless playing the mainstream swing in the elder bandleader's repertoire. He quit for an opportunity to join a radical group of young players in the Billy Eckstine Orchestra who were inventing a new music not yet called bebop. "Pops asked me if I wanted more money," Gordon recalls in "Sophisticated Giant." "I told him that wasn't the problem. It was that we young guys wanted to play some new music." With Eckstine, surrounded by itchy, bursting, brilliant adventurers, all African American and nearly all young Gene Ammons, Leo Parker, Sonny Stitt, Sarah Vaughan, Fats Navarro Gordon found his musical voice and broke out as a must hear jazz phenomenon. He began to play in the style that would define him until his late years: saxophone jazz as a firestorm of melodic invention, harmonic surprise and charismatic energy. Maxine Gordon astutely frames the fiery daring of Dexter Gordon's generation of bebop innovators in the context of rising black consciousness and creative agency in midcentury America: "At the same time that the war was coming to an end, black culture exploded with unprecedented exuberance and innovation. For musicians like Dexter, that meant breaking out from the constraints of the traditional dance bands and allowing improvisations to extend into unknown places. Dexter said that the 'Young Turks' wanted to express a social statement through their music. They were developing their own lifestyles around the new music at a time when things were moving very fast for them and for the world." In addition to his autobiographical jottings, Dexter Gordon was working late in his life on a treatment for a screenplay about the rise of bebop in the 1940s. For the section of "Sophisticated Giant" dealing with this period, Maxine Gordon quotes his treatment notes at some length, and they read like a summing up of his views on jazz as an art form and a way of life. The setting is the band bus for the Eckstine Orchestra. "These boys become men at 17 or 18," Dexter Gordon wrote. "They have a mission." He explained that mission his purpose, as he saw it in a series of questions and declarations. Among them: "A life that improvises music cannot run by another's rules. This may bring problems if based on an ordinary observer's rules for behavior in a society that does not always understand what art is, or what an artist is or why there is nothing without music. "Even after a death of one of the members, they continue to speak of him in the present tense." After 14 years of semi exile, living in Copenhagen and Paris with occasional visits to the United States for recording sessions, Gordon came home for good and signed with Columbia Records, which released an acclaimed album documenting his hot ticket return to the New York jazz scene, "Homecoming: Live at the Village Vanguard." Ten years later, when Gordon was 63 and not performing much, the French director Bertrand Tavernier cast him as the lead in "Round Midnight," a drama with music about a fictional, aging, African American jazz saxophonist struggling with addiction who settles in Paris, returns to New York and (spoiler alert) dies. Gordon was duly praised for his subtle, knowing portrayal of an elder whose spirit survives the ravages of time and bodily abuse. Without data, I have to assume that most people who still picture Dexter Gordon imagine the fading shadow of a once great artist that he portrayed in "Round Midnight." With "Sophisticated Giant," Maxine Gordon has produced a homecoming even more dramatic, and perhaps more important, than the one she helped arrange for him in 1976: She has brought back the restive teenage fireball who wanted only to play some new music.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
It's been called "one of the most powerful radicalizing instruments of the 21st century," "a petri dish of divisive, conspiratorial and sometimes hateful content," and a tool that "drives people to the internet's darkest corners." I'm talking, of course, about YouTube and, specifically, the recommendation algorithm that determines which videos the site plays after the one you're watching. That algorithm is YouTube's beating heart, keeping users hooked to the platform for hours on end. (The company has said recommendations are responsible for about 70 percent of the total time users spend on the site.) The recommendation engine is also a growing liability for YouTube , which has been accused of steering users toward increasingly extreme content. After the recent mass shooting in Christchurch, New Zealand the work of a gunman who showed signs of having been radicalized online critics asked whether YouTube and other platforms were not just allowing hateful and violent content to exist but actively promoting it to their users. YouTube's biggest competitor, Facebook, said last week that it would ban white nationalism and white separatism on its platforms. I recently spoke with Neal Mohan, YouTube's chief product officer, about criticism of the company's algorithms and what it is doing to address radicalization and violent extremism on the platform. We spoke about the things YouTube has already done to rein in extreme content hiring additional reviewers, introducing a "breaking news shelf" that kicks in after major news events, altering the recommendation algorithm to reduce the distribution of conspiracy theories and other "borderline content" and about the company's plans for the future. The conversation was edited for length and clarity. I'm wondering what you think about the conversation happening around radicalization on YouTube. I think some of it has to do with the fact that, as you know and as you've written about, YouTube was started as, and remains, an open platform for content and voices and opinions and thoughts. Many of them being, you know, really across the entire spectrum, many of which you or I or others may or may not agree with. I wouldn't be at YouTube, working on what I work on, if I didn't believe in the power of diversity of voices and opinions. Having said that, we do take this notion of dissemination of harmful misinformation, hate filled content, content that in some cases is inciting violence, extremely seriously. I hear a lot about the "rabbit hole" effect, where you start watching one video and you get nudged with recommendations toward a slightly more sort of extreme video, and so on, and all of a sudden you're watching something really extreme. Is that a real phenomenon? Yeah, so I've heard this before, and I think that there are some myths that go into that description that I think it would be useful for me to debunk. The first is this notion that it's somehow in our interests for the recommendations to shift people in this direction because it boosts watch time or what have you. I can say categorically that's not the way that our recommendation systems are designed. Watch time is one signal that they use, but they use a number of other engagement and satisfaction signals from the user. It is not the case that "extreme" content drives a higher version of engagement or watch time than content of other types. I can also say that it's not in our business interest to promote any of this sort of content. It's not something that has a disproportionate effect in terms of watch time. Just as importantly, the watch time that it does generate doesn't monetize, because advertisers many times don't want to be associated with this sort of content. And so the idea that it has anything to do with our business interests, I think it's just purely a myth. So, why do people talk about this rabbit hole effect you know, I went to watch one video about President Trump and now I'm just getting a stream of recommendations of increasingly more partisan content. Why do you think there's this perception that this is what happens on YouTube? This is one of the things that we looked at closely as we were developing the technology that went into that recommendation change that I described to you from a few weeks back. We really looked at this to see what was happening on those "watch next" panels, in terms of the videos that were being recommended. And the first thing that I should say is that when we make recommendations after a video has been consumed, we don't take into account any notion of whether that's less or more extreme. So when we looked at the data, we saw that a lot of the videos that were being recommended, as you would expect, had to do with the context of the video that was being consumed. That's obviously no surprise, but the videos that you saw on the panel, there were videos that you might consider to be maybe a little bit more extreme than what you had just consumed. But you'll also see videos that were less extreme, or that you could call more toward the quote unquote mainstream. It's equally depending on a user's behavior likely that you could have started on a more extreme video and actually moved in the other direction. That's what our research showed when we were looking at this more closely. Now, that doesn't mean that we don't want to address what we talked about, which is just Sorry, can I just interrupt you there for a second? Just let me be clear: You're saying that there is no rabbit hole effect on YouTube? What I'm saying is that when a video is watched, you will see a number of videos that are then recommended. Some of those videos might have the perception of skewing in one direction or, you know, call it more extreme. There are other videos that skew in the opposite direction. And again, our systems are not doing this, because that's not a signal that feeds into the recommendations. That's just the observation that you see in the panel. I'm not saying that a user couldn't click on one of those videos that are quote unquote more extreme, consume that and then get another set of recommendations and sort of keep moving in one path or the other. All I'm saying is that it's not inevitable. In the case of breaking news, you guys made a decision that showing authoritative information to people who were looking for it was important enough to radically shift the way recommendations and search results work, by moving to an approved or "authoritative sources" model rather than using the regular recommendation algorithm. Why not do that for everything? Let me say a few things about that. The first is that using a combination of those tools of authoritative content and promoting authoritative content is something that can apply to other information verticals, not just breaking news. Having said that, as you continue to broaden the application of something like that, it's quite a blunt hammer. And so it does come with trade offs. For example, how do you define something authoritative across the broad swath of YouTube when many of the use cases, as you know, are outside of the information seeking realm? They're entertainment, they're oftentimes driven by people's personal tastes, like music and comedy and the like. Right, but you could do it just for politics, hypothetically, and say that for any political video, we're going to move to this "authoritative sources" model. I think that even when you go to something that broad, it comes with real trade offs. And I'm just raising the fact that there are considerations there, which is that you are then limiting political discourse to a set of preordained voices and outlets and publications. And I think that especially when it comes to something as charged and societally impactful as politics, there needs to be room for new voices to be heard. Since the New Zealand shooting, we've heard this question about "Well, the platforms worked together to take down ISIS content. Why haven't they done the same for white supremacy or violent right wing extremism?" What's the answer there? The first thing that I would say, just as a matter of fact, is that there were two sets of challenges when it came to the New Zealand shooting. One was everything that we just talked about in terms of surfacing authoritative, high quality information not showing, you know, conspiracies or harmful misinformation. That was one bucket. The other bucket had to do with the velocity at which re uploads were coming to these various platforms, and that is an area where we collaborated. We worked closely with other platforms in terms of making sure we had fingerprints of these videos, just like they did, and we shared those. The other thing I would say, just more generally, in the case of violent extremism and limiting those videos on the platform, the reason it's different than what we're talking about here is that those ISIS videos took on a particular form. They were often designed for propaganda purposes and recruitment purposes. So they had things like branding and logos, both visually and in terms of the music they might use. Those formed a set of finite clues we could use to bring that content down. And, of course, we collaborated with other platforms to do that. In the case of something like this, the challenges are harder because the line, as you can imagine, is sometimes blurry between what clearly might be hate speech versus what might be political speech that we might find distasteful and disagree with, but nonetheless is coming from, you know, candidates that are in elections and the like. So much of what YouTube has become over the years is this kind of alternative form of media. People don't go to YouTube because they want the same stuff they would see on TV. They go because they've built relationships with creators that they trust, and when Logan Paul puts out a flat earth documentary or Shane Dawson questions whether 9/11 happened, there's a sense that YouTube is the place where these "real" explanations are being offered, and maybe that makes this all very hard to undo. There's nearly two billion people that come to our platform every month. Every one of them is coming for some unique reason, whether it's the latest and greatest music video or a YouTube original, or their favorite creators. I think when people come to YouTube looking for information, it has resulted in a shift in the way that we think about the responsibility of our platform. As a result of that shift, our product teams here are thinking of all of these solutions, many of which we've talked about here, as a means of addressing that responsibility for making sure that when users are looking for information, YouTube is putting its best foot forward in terms of serving that information to them. But YouTube is also still keeping users in power, in terms of their intent and the information that they're looking for. It's an ongoing effort. I think we've made great strides here. But clearly there's more work to be done.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
While hotels have long focused on giving adults a good night's sleep, a few are creatively enabling their youngest guests to tuck in peacefully. Hilton Waikoloa Village on the Big Island, Hawaii, for example, recently introduced a children's turndown service with a cultural dimension: Parents can read stories of Pele, the goddess of volcanoes and the creator of the Hawaiian Islands, to their children from flashcards (free to Lagoon Tower guests). The Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island in Florida has a "Pirate Tuck In" bedtime story option with costumed actors as well as a real blue and gold macaw, homemade cookies and milk, and a faux treasure chest that is brought to the room to familiarize children with the island's buccaneer history. Available Fridays and Saturdays from 6 to 9 p.m.; 65. Great Wolf Lodges offer pajama stories by the fireplace at 8 p.m. (free to guests). At the RiverPlace hotel in Portland, Ore., "Bedtime Butlers" pay visits at random, bringing surprises that include books, robes, hot chocolate and stuffed animals from 6 to 9 p.m. four nights a week. The Lorien Hotel Spa in Alexandria, Va., has a "Dream Service Menu" that includes a library stocked with children's titles like Eric Carle's "The Very Hungry Caterpillar"; guests are free to borrow books along with night lights and humidifiers.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
In June, Lauren Warren bought a sauna after monitoring a sale on Wayfair.com and installed it in her living room. "With the winter coming I really loathe winter especially with the pandemic, I knew I wasn't going to be able to get away to get warm," she said. Ms. Warren, 54, an exercise therapist who lives in Tillson, N.Y. has competed in Ironman triathlons. She eats organic raw food, intermittently fasts and leads a "holistic lifestyle all the way that's the sauna!" she said. Spending a lot of money in an uncertain economy concerned her, but the price kept dropping, from 5,100 to 1,500. When only two of her preferred four person, infrared models remained, she pounced. "Next thing I know, I'm typing in my info and here goes! I hit the button. I was jumping all over, excited," she said. The myriad benefits of saunas have been documented in numerous studies. Sitting in one is said to, among other things, improve insomnia, inflammation, pain, blood pressure and brain function. Near infrared has been touted to help heal skin ailments from acne to psoriasis to surgical scars, and, particularly in Japan, as therapy for heart patients. Heat increases blood circulation. "I'm a pasty white Dutch guy," said Rick Mouw, 59, the president of Almost Heaven in Holland, Mich., which mainly sells traditional saunas including trendy barrel shaped ones electric, wood burning and steam. "People ask if I'm tanning! You get a healthy glow." Some liken sweating in a sauna to passive cardiovascular conditioning, which may interest anyone who has packed on pounds in quarantine. But maybe the best way to approach the overwhelming barrage of health claims lobbed at sauna shoppers trying to justify a four figure purchase to get through winter is a study out of the University of Eastern Finland, which suggests frequent sauna use reduced risks of "all cause mortality." There is also the simple sensual aspect. "As an athlete, I saw in quite a few journals that it can build blood volume, almost like training at altitude," said Ms. Warren, who said she uses her sauna almost daily. "I do a lot of research, then I use myself as a guinea pig. You do feel it the next day wow, that was good!" And therein lies the sauna's current appeal, up there with Peloton bikes, fire pits and outdoor heat lamps. Here we all are, facing climbing coronavirus rates and, in many parts of the country, declining temperatures. All we want is to feel good. "More people are at home, they aren't spending money like they used to going to shows or on vacation or at movies," said Corey Smee, 30, manager at Health Mate Sauna. "They are cooking more home meals. They can't go to the gym and sweat. So people are investing in health more than ever." Amortizing the cost helped Ms. Warren make her investment. She used to go frequently to a sauna spa, which charge about 40 for 30 minutes. Like gyms, such studios Perspire, HigherDose, SaunaBar, Glow have had to restrict customers, or close altogether, during the pandemic. In August, Ksenia Avdulova, 32, did similar math. The ClassPass points she had been using for sauna time pre Covid were "pretty expensive." With no other social activities, and after months of being tempted by photos of infrared saunas on Instagram, she installed one at her tiny cabin near Callicoon, N.Y. Yes, saunaselfie is now a hashtag. Instagrammers including Gwyneth Paltrow and Lady Gaga, who uses hers for chronic pain relief, have posed in the structures. For those with less space, Sunlighten sells a portable "Solo" sauna, which looks a little like a fancy human pet bed. Sales of this unit are currently up 140 percent, according to Connie Zack, a founder of the company, adding that overall sales rose significantly in July compared with last year, mostly thanks to buyers in California, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Florida. Ms. Zack calls infrared sauna "part of my lifestyle, it's what I do to keep myself healthy." Sunlighten has been able to meet increased demand at its factory in Vietnam. So has Health Mate at its Canadian facility. But other companies have sold out of certain models. "We are back ordered two to four months depending on the sauna right now," said Andy Kaps, 58, the president of Clearlight Infrared. (Ms. Paltrow has posted its "Sanctuary" unit, with a half glass roof and a glass front, on social media.) Clearlight's Chinese manufacturing facility closed for six weeks early on. "People are looking for things to enhance house and health so wellness exploded," Mr. Kaps said. Almost Heaven is also experiencing "extended lead times in many cases," said Mr. Mouw, who said the company has expanded production at its factory in West Virginia. "With Covid, it's a busy market on steroids. No one can say sauna helps with Covid, but it does provide people who want to live a healthier lifestyle overall with another activity you can experience at home at the moment." Can't afford a sauna of your own? Rental is an option. Henning Grentz, 47, runs Spa Fleet, a mobile sauna rental based in High Falls, N.Y. Over the summer, he had several long term bookings, a warm weather rarity. "The first, for six weeks, was a family that fled New York City," he said. "They had a beautiful piece of property in Saugerties with a creek." Mr. Grentz built his dry Finnish sauna, the type he grew up using in the north of Germany, from scratch. "It was a happy time a hobby with the intention of bringing the goodness out there," he said. He even named it after Scandinavian fruit: Cloudberry. Renting Cloudberry, a large barrel sauna designed for off grid use, with a changing room, a wood stove and sauna rocks, costs 650 for one or two nights, and there are weekly prices, too. A group of young Finns booked it for their yearly crayfish event and then Thanksgiving; there are winter dates available. Mr. Grentz delivers Cloudberry and enough firewood for at least 15 hours burning time on a 14 foot trailer anywhere within a two hour radius. Those outside this range can seek rentals on SaunaShare.com, or rationalize the splurge as one might a car. Mr. Kaps of Clearlight, whose saunas cost 5,500 on average, swears his product is worth it: "It's not like that piece of equipment you buy and don't use; if you sit in it, it's going to make you feel great." Maybe too great. Ms. Avdulova has a 30 foot walk from her sauna to her tiny cabin, which she considers her "cold therapy" post heat. She stargazes, recently saw a 22 degree halo on an almost full moon, has heard coyotes and once even found the remains of their prey, a baby deer.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
PARIS From behind a glass divider with frosted patterns, the French Open players bare their souls to voices seated on the other side. It is Roland Garros's version of the confessional, and in the first week of the French Open, players paid more than 158 visits to the boxy phosphorescent rooms and fielded more than 1,083 questions, many from reporters on the other side of the divider, as close to the athletes as the baseline is from the net. "It's obviously a very strange situation," said Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria, who is seeded 18th. In accordance with coronavirus induced self distancing protocols, players' face to face interviews with most reporters have moved online. Like videoconferencing desk workers everywhere, the participants are adjusting to the new normal while gaining a new appreciation for what is lost in the transaction. "I miss you guys," Dimitrov said on Saturday night as he sat behind a desk and stared at a checkerboard of faces on a flat screen mounted to a post in the middle of an otherwise empty room. Dimitrov, 29, added that he "feeds off" the "vibes" of a full house of reporters, even when the sentiments they express give him pause, as happened last week when a reporter from a remote location confessed that he was jealous of Dimitrov for dating Maria Sharapova and asked if he had kept in touch with her since their 2015 breakup and her 2020 retirement. Dimitrov gracefully volleyed back the wild lob with a playful reply: "You can still be jealous." Dimitrov still loves the old fashioned news conference, perhaps no surprise given that his arsenal includes a classic one hand backhand. "Whatever insight I can give, it's not only for me, not only for the audience, but also for the fans," he said before losing Monday to Stefanos Tsitsipas in the fourth round. "One of the things our sport needs a lot more, I would say, is just get closer to the fans." Tsitsipas, the fifth seed from Greece, appreciates the value of the news media maybe more than most. Tsitsipas, a fan who dabbled in journalism before he became a professional athlete, sat up straighter in his seat when he was asked what he got out of news conferences. "I have something interesting to say," said Tsitsipas, who went on to describe at some length the Facebook page that he set up before he was a teenager. Ten years later, Tsitsipas, 22, remembers vividly the details of the page he named "Tenniscore ITN," where he posted news about top players like Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic. He said he updated the information regularly after poring over the latest tennis results and news of interest. It was the daily assignment he gave himself before he started in on his schoolwork. "I was really into it," said Tsitsipas, who took great pains not to let his personal biases seep into his coverage. "That is the most challenging part of journalism, isn't it?" Tsitsipas said with a mischievousness that perforated all the barriers between him and his audience. "I think you all know that Roger Federer was my favorite player growing up, but I didn't necessarily make him a god in my Facebook page," he said. A beatific smile lit his face. "Everyone was treated the same," he added. Because he was a novice journalist striving to find a unique way to present his information long before he became a seasoned competitor answering the same old questions, Tsitsipas said he recognized how challenging it could be to give an interview a different spin or present a novel angle. "I do appreciate journalists that come out a little bit more, I would say, unexpected," Tsitsipas said. "Ask me some other things that don't relate or don't have to do with my tennis match, but in a way, in a deeper sense, and kind of unlock something within me in which I can express myself a little bit more open, provide more information. That's what it is all about: information; getting the best, the most, out of the player." The virtual news conference, while better than nothing, is not the best vehicle for steering athletes down interesting paths. Interviews are constructed like points in a match. Participants often start out with a planned course of action, but the best will nimbly adjust depending on what is thrown at them. There is a flow, a spontaneity, to a verbal rally that is hard to achieve when there is an audio delay on one end or reporters are fumbling to unmute their microphones or are cut off by the moderator midsyllable as they try to to nail down an answer with a second question. Then there are the questions so convoluted they require multiple clarifications just so the player can make sense of what is being asked. At 114 words, the fifth of eight questions in the English portion of the Spaniard Nadal's news conference on Sunday took longer than some of the rallies in his straight sets victory over the American qualifier Sebastian Korda. It began: "Can you sympathize with us a little because you keep winning so it's often tough for us to ask you new questions," and devolved from there. It was nominally about a nifty return that Nadal made on a windswept ball, but pivoted to include whether Nadal had ever lost something that was important to him and did he like dancing off the court. Nadal gamely answered the question about the shot, explaining that in the windy conditions it is important to stay focused and accept that you're going to make mistakes. "And have you ever lost anything that you have found?" the reporter persisted. The virtual news conference, featuring reporters logging in from all over the world, is revealing in its own way, as was demonstrated by the shirtless reporter in one tennis news conference in August. Or by the former world No. 1 Andy Murray at the United States Open when he commented on the plush Pikachu toys on a shelf in one reporter's video background. On Saturday night, after he stepped down from his news conference, Tsitsipas recorded an audio text to explain the difference in the dynamics now compared with before the pandemic. "The absence of reporters can be felt," Tsitsipas said, adding: "First of all, the energy you get from each one of them when asking the question, having them in person, it can give you a good or a bad impression. And it can also impact your answer." Like so much else that used to be taken for granted, the live news conference is a casualty of the health crisis that is appreciated a lot more now that it is gone.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
PARIS It was both a new beginning and a return to the past for the designer Jason Basmajian, who presented his first collection for Cerruti 1881 on a dark, rainy Friday afternoon in a showroom off the Place Vendome. "At least it's not snowing," said one of the attendees as he shook the rain from his expensive looking blazer, a reference to the snowstorm working its way up the East Coast that many of the Americans here for men's fashion week seem to be obsessing over. Mr. Basmajian, appointed to the creative director's post in October after three years at the venerable British house Gieves Hawkes, said that with his initial collection he wanted to stay faithful to the vision of the company's founder, Nino Cerruti. "The idea was to go back to the philosophy of Mr. Cerruti, which was always about cut, fabric and texture," Mr. Basmajian said, as models in herringbone and Prince of Wales overcoats and sleekly tailored suits in various shades of black, brown and gray stood on raised platforms around him. "Very masculine clothing a bridge between sport and tailoring." Mr. Basmajian, who succeeded Aldo Maria Camillo, a former designer for Valentino men's wear, said, "I wanted to bring the brand firmly back to its heritage," adding, somewhat reluctantly when pressed to explain how that heritage might have wavered in recent years, that he felt "the house had gone away from what Nino was all about. He was always about wearable fashion, never fashion for fashion's sake." As for the speed in which he put the fall 2016 collection together, he said it was a "very American" way of doing things, a reference to the fact that, although he has designed for both classic British and Italian brands (Mr. Basmajian also did a stint at Brioni), he is actually from Boston. Has being an American influenced his approach to European fashion? "I think it has," he said. "I think the way I work is very American. Very organized and merchandise driven." And, Mr. Basmajian added, having worked at both European and American fashion houses (he is also one of the legion of designers who have worked at Ralph Lauren at one point in their careers), he was well prepared for Cerruti. "This is really a combination of all my experiences," he said before being coaxed away by another attendee, chatting in fluent Italian as he disappeared into the crowd.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
After months of enduring a dearth of protective medical gear and staggering death tolls from the coronavirus pandemic, nursing home operators and employees across the United States experienced something close to elation as rapid result test machines paid for by the federal government began arriving last month at 14,000 residential facilities that serve the elderly. The hand held testing devices, which spit out results in as little as 15 minutes, were intended to quickly diagnose and isolate patients, and alter the deadly calculus of a contagion that has taken the lives of 77,000 nursing home residents and workers, more than 40 percent of the nation's fatalities from Covid 19. But the initial sense of relief has been overtaken by frustration as nursing homes have discovered that they must pay for test kits on their own, and that the machines are markedly less accurate than lab based diagnostics. Because the devices come with a modest starter set of test supplies that only last a few weeks, facilities, many of them buffeted by financial losses from the pandemic, must pay roughly 32 for each additional test. In communities with high rates of infection, a typical nursing home can churn through hundreds of tests a week. Many nursing home operators also say they have been overwhelmed by new federal reporting rules, fines and financial incentives that are associated with the program. "My initial happiness over the machines has quickly turned to disillusionment," said Ben Unkle, the chief executive of Westminster Canterbury on Chesapeake Bay, which operates a skilled nursing center in coastal Virginia. "At the moment we're in testing hell." The machine his company received, made by the medical device manufacturer BD, came with 300 tests but the new rules require Westminster Canterbury to conduct weekly tests on its 280 nursing employees and residents. BD's distributors have said it would be weeks before they could send out additional testing supplies. The shortages have forced Mr. Unkle to rely on an outside lab that charges 100 a test, an expense that he estimates will add 875,000 to the 1 million in pandemic related losses that the nonprofit provider expects this year. Rather than the 15 minute turnaround, the lab results take up to four days to arrive, complicating efforts at infection control. Federal health officials acknowledged problems with the testing initiative, and they have asked for patience as they carry out a herculean effort to provide nursing homes with the diagnostic tools needed to identify infections among their employees and residents and to tamp down outbreaks. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the nation's nursing homes, said the agency would exercise discretion before imposing fines on facilities that make a good faith effort to meet federal testing mandates. "We understand that some facilities may experience challenges to meet the new requirements," the agency said in a statement. The importance of frequent testing is expected to become more critical following a recent decision by C.M.S. to lift restrictions on nursing home visitors. On Tuesday, President Trump announced a plan to supply nursing homes with 18 million rapid test kits manufactured by the medical device company Abbott. The tests do not require a separate reader, but some experts have voiced concern over their accuracy, and a typical nursing home testing its employees twice weekly would likely run through those supplies in a few weeks. Even as they expressed appreciation for the free machines, which cost about 300, many nursing home operators said they are overwhelmed by the financial and bureaucratic demands of the testing program, which include up 10,000 in fines for facilities that fail to meet daily reporting rules that sometimes conflict with those from state or local heath agencies. Health departments in some states said they were still trying to figure out how to gather what they described as a tidal wave of new testing data. "There's no mechanism in place for reporting," said Kim Schilling, the vice president of health services at Friendship Haven, which runs a nursing home in rural Iowa. "We were on the phone yesterday trying to figure this out with the department of public health and it was very overwhelming for them too." Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. Katie Smith Sloan, the president of LeadingAge, an association of nonprofit providers of aging services, said the Trump administration's focus on fines and stringent reporting requirements were the wrong approach to addressing a crisis that was aggravated by federal inaction in the early months of the pandemic. "For seven months, nursing homes have been saving and protecting lives while dealing with staffing shortages, testing and personal protective equipment challenges and growing unexpected costs," she said. David Grabowski, a health care policy expert at Harvard Medical School, described the federal rapid test program as "a positive step but late in the game," and said Washington should do more to address the systemic financial and staffing problems that have long bedeviled the industry's efforts to shield vulnerable residents from infectious pathogens. Because federal reimbursements do not cover the full cost of care in much of the country, nursing home operators who serve predominantly Medicaid patients say they often lack the money to hire enough skilled workers willing to take on a grueling job that the pandemic has made increasingly stressful and fraught with risk. "I don't have a problem penalizing nursing homes guilty of gross negligence, but my sense is that most of the facilities out there have been doing their best despite dealing with sick workers, a lack of resources and poor guidance from the federal government," Mr. Grabowski said. "Putting efforts into training workers on infection control, boosting wages and offering paid sick leave would be a better approach." The new testing requirements are governed by a complex set of guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that are pegged to the positivity rate of tests for coronavirus infections in the county where facilities are situated. When community positivity rates surpass 10 percent, nursing homes must test their residents and personnel twice a week. The testing requirements drop to once a week when the community positivity rate is between five and 10 percent, and once a month when it is below 5 percent. As of Sept. 13, more than 3,100 counties across the country reported positivity rates greater than 5 percent, according to CMS data. St. John's United, which received a BD Veritor for its 186 bed nursing home in Billings, Mont., is instead planning to use a state lab for weekly surveillance testing. The tests are free, but the results can take as long as five days. "You can't make meaningful decisions when results are so delayed," said David Trost, the president of St. John's United. He estimates that test kits for the BD Veritor would cost 19,000 a week for twice a week surveillance at the nursing home money he said would be better spent on an in house lab that the nonprofit is building for the half dozen facilities it operates for older adults. Mr. Trost said that nursing home providers have felt whiplash from new fines and federal rules that land every few days, and it often seems like the government is seeking to blame providers for soaring infections in surrounding communities that often refuse to adopt basic measures like wearing masks. "When you are forced to do something with absolutely no way to respond, that is oppression," he said. "Federal agencies were late to provide attention to long term care even though the pandemic started in a nursing home, and now they're trying to shift the blame to us for future deaths."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The pilgrims have been coming to Nashville for as long as the Grand Ole Opry has been on the radio. They come for Fan Fair and Taylor Swift concerts or just to walk down Lower Broad in cowboy boots. Parents visit their children in college. Conventioneers deplane by the thousands. Nashville is a hip city now, with a food scene, an art scene and two poorly performing professional sports teams. With all the reasons to travel to Nashville, one might be surprised to learn that some people come just to see a small independent bookstore. It's true. The Book Faithful journey to Music City because they still like their novels printed on paper. They come because they've heard about the shop dogs, or because someone told them years ago that bookstores were moving onto the endangered species list and they wanted to see one that was thriving in its natural habitat: in a strip mall, behind Fox's Donut Den, beside Sherwin Williams Paint Store. Some come in hopes of seeing a favorite author read, or catching a glimpse of the author who co owns the store. Karen Hayes and I opened Parnassus Books in November 2011. This summer, when Pickles and Ice Cream Maternity went out of business, we took down the adjoining wall and doubled our space. Business is good, which, by bookstore standards, means we spring for employee health insurance and pay the rent. Karen and I are vocal supporters of the Shop Local movement, while at the same time benefiting from the Destination Bookstore travelers. It seems as if every time I'm in the back room signing special orders or meeting with staffers to pick a book for our First Editions Club, Bill, the tall Englishman who works the front, comes to tell me a book club has just arrived from Omaha or Bangor or Sweden. I go out and pose for group pictures, recommend books, give an impromptu tour. I always ask the same question, "What made you think I'd be here?" because seriously, I'm gone a lot. They always give me the same answer: I'm not why they came. They came to see the store. With its high wooden shelves and rolling ladders and dangling stars, Parnassus is if I may say so myself worth a visit, a reminder that a strip mall need not be judged by its parking lot. But there are many bookstores that could stand as the centerpiece of a vacation. Here are some categories to consider when searching for one. Before we opened Parnassus, I made a fact finding tour of American bookstores. The best advice I got was this: If you want customers, you have to raise them yourself. That means a strong children's section. If e books have taken a bite out of the adult market, they've done very little damage to children's books, maybe because even the most tech savvy parents understand that reading "Goodnight Moon" off your phone doesn't create the same occasion for bonding. I'm not sure why you'd be going to Greenwood, Miss., except for a mad desire to see TurnRow Book Company. It's one of the most beautiful bookstores I know, and the sheer unlikelihood of its presence makes a traveler feel she's stumbled into an oasis in the Mississippi Delta. Thanks to the Viking Range plant, the town also has a few top notch restaurants and a very pretty inn, but the bookstore is the reason to go. And since you're in Greenwood, you've got to go to Oxford, a town defined by its writers. You can visit Faulkner's home as well as the bookstore, or make that bookstores. Richard Howorth, the former mayor of Oxford, has three locations on the downtown square: the original Square Books; Square Books, Jr., the children's store; and Off Square, which sells discount books and provides space for author events. Despite the enormousness of Ole Miss, these three stores are the backbone of Oxford. When was the last time you strolled around downtown Los Angeles near Skid Row? Never? I'm from Los Angeles and it took the Last Bookstore to get me there. The store's tagline, "What are you waiting for? We won't be here forever," has a suitably apocalyptic ring to it, but the place is so monumental that it's hard to imagine it going anywhere: 22,000 square feet on three floors with new and used books, vinyl records and gallery space. The whole thing appears to have been made out of books, books that are folded and fanned and stacked into towering sculptures. The clientele is as eclectic and fascinating as the reading selection. It did my heart good to see so many tattooed kids with black nail polish and nose rings sprawled out in chairs reading books. As long as you're going to places you never thought you'd go, head to Plainville, Mass., to see An Unlikely Story Bookstore Cafe, which I hope will soon replace Disney World as the place all parents feel duty bound to take their children. Jeff Kinney took part of the proceeds from his juggernaut series "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and built his hometown a four story bookstore the ultimate fulfillment of literary civic duty. The building contains a dazzling bookshop, event space and cafe, and the top floor will soon be a Wimpy Kid museum, complete with movie props and the model for the Wimpy Kid Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. (How do you know that your character is reaching the heights of Snoopy? You get your own parade balloon.) I'm a sucker for a little bookstore. In the right hands, the limited space can set off an explosion of personality and innovation. It's like going to a French bistro with five tables and five things on the menu: You discover they're exactly the right five things. New York City, land of skyrocketing rents and ubiquitous nail salons, has some of the best tiny bookstores in the world, including the Corner Bookstore, 192 Books and my favorite, Three Lives Company. Sometimes what's lost in square footage is made up for by a brilliant staff, or maybe it's just that the people who work in tiny stores really do know exactly where every book is located. And they've read them. Little bookstores give off that same warm, snug feeling one gets from reading a novel in a comfy chair. Go look at the light in Newtonville Books outside Boston, or drive down the cape to Provincetown Bookshop, that essential last stop before hitting the beach. The novelist Louise Erdrich owns the tiny Birchbark Books in Minneapolis, a store that uses a chunk of its limited space to display an elaborately carved confessional box. You'll wish every bookstore had one. In Washington you see the Vietnam Memorial, the new National Museum of African American History Culture and Politics Prose Bookstore. It's where the Obamas shop, and it's where the movers and shakers of our nation's capital come to see what's really going on. It also happens to be where I eat lunch, as they have the best bookstore cafe I know. Doesn't everyone who visits Harvard go across the street to the Harvard Book Store, a shop as esteemed as the university? When you're finished there (it will take all day), walk down Plympton Street to Grolier Poetry Book Shop. In Cambridge a store that sells nothing but poetry seems indispensable. But if you're interested in Grolier's aesthetic opposite, go to the fabulous Books Books. It's everything I love about Miami without any of the things I don't love about Miami, a store where books are elevated to new heights of gorgeousness. Just walking in the door of either the Coral Gables or South Beach location makes me feel like an automatic hipster, a book hipster. I always leave with armloads of art books and travel books, things I never knew I needed but I do need desperately. And then, of course, there's Powell's: an entire block, a dizzying, self proclaimed City of Books. The fact that Portland, Ore., celebrates being defined by its independent bookstore is really all you need to know about Portland. I went on my first book tour in 1992 when I was 28, and I have been going on book tours ever since. I have made it a point to go to bookstores in every town I've ever driven through. I go both as a writer and a reader, for business and for pleasure, and I have been in love with too many to make a comprehensive list here. Still, I have to call out some of my favorites, like Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee, lit by the internal fire of one Daniel Goldin, a stupendously great bookseller. And since you're in Milwaukee, you won't be that far from McLean Eakin Booksellers in Petoskey, Mich., a personal favorite that proves Northern Michigan has a lot more to offer than cherries and apples. Malaprop's was the heart and soul of Asheville, N.C., when Asheville was a sleepy little hippie town, and it's still its heart and soul now that the city is cool and overcrowded, a position Malaprop's maintained by being unabashedly true to itself. No bookstore ever made a strip mall look better than Book Passage in Corte Madera, Calif. Every author you could hope to see comes to read at Book Passage. And then there's Explore Booksellers in Aspen, Colo., a town that's gotten so expensive that the bookstore would have to sell Chanel bags alongside Michael Chabon novels in order to make the rent, so a group of people got together and bought it so that the town could have a bookstore All these bookstores will welcome you, as will those I failed to mention. They're delicate little ecosystems based on a passion for books and a belief in community. They're here for you, but they need your attention and support to thrive. Of course we'd love to see you at Parnassus. The shop dogs are lazy. They pile up in the office and sleep beneath the desks, but if you ask, we'll wake them up and send them out on the floor. When you've gotten your recommendations from our brilliant staff, and listened to story time in the children's section, and seen a couple of authors (and country music stars) shopping themselves, we'll give you advice on where to go to dinner and hear music. Or maybe you just want to sit in a quiet chair and read your new book. Go ahead, that's what we're here for.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Did You Know There Are College Junior Varsity Basketball Teams? North Carolina Has One Robbie O'Han was supposed to spend his last year of organized basketball playing mostly against prep schools and junior colleges. Instead he got called up to one of the most storied teams in college hoops, the North Carolina Tar Heels, after spending three seasons with its junior varsity team, whose very existence is unknown to a majority of fans. The Tar Heels are one of only a few universities to maintain a J.V. team, a hierarchy far more common in American high schools than in Division I, where the best programs mostly run single teams made up of scholarship recruits, top players with N.B.A. aspirations and a few walk ons. In September, O'Han got an irresistible offer to move up the chain from Hubert Davis, an assistant coach with the Tar Heels. The main team was down to one healthy point guard, Cole Anthony, and needed another before the season started in November. "I was going to have three weeks to practice with the team and then they were going to decide if they wanted me to stay on the team or go back down to J.V.," O'Han said. "And they decided to keep me." Since being called up, O'Han, who is 6 feet 3 inches tall and 21 years old, has played in eight games, albeit in a down season for one of the blue bloods of college basketball. In eight games, he has a total stat line of one rebound, one steal, one turnover, and one foul, with eight minutes played. When he entered a 94 71 victory over Miami on Jan. 25, O'Han was greeted with a raucous round of applause from the home crowd and a mention from the ESPN announcers on the television broadcast. Though rare in college basketball, the junior varsity team has been something of a pipeline for North Carolina. O'Han is one of two former junior varsity players on the current roster, along with Caleb Ellis, a graduate student who played in 19 games last season for the school's primary team. The N.C.A.A. does not keep track of junior varsity teams nationally, and North Carolina is the only school in the Atlantic Coast Conference with one. Only a handful of Division I universities have a J.V. team. The junior varsity team at North Carolina began as a freshman team, at a time when scholarship freshmen were not allowed to play during their first year in college under N.C.A.A. rules. That changed in 1972, but North Carolina coach Dean Smith kept the junior varsity team in place to give regular students a chance to be around North Carolina basketball while also letting potential walk ons learn the varsity system. The current coach of the Tar Heels, Roy Williams, coached North Carolina's junior varsity team for eight seasons. When the rules changed, most other universities across the nation disbanded their freshman teams. Kansas once had a junior varsity team, and its previous coaches included current Kentucky Coach John Calipari and Maryland Coach Mark Turgeon. "More teams used to have J.V.s," said Tom Konchalski, a longtime New York City basketball historian and recruiting expert. "But there really aren't that many that have it any longer." O'Han said most of the J.V. players stopped playing after two years. He said that Davis, the J.V. coach the previous three seasons, "made exceptions for guys that he believed had a chance at making varsity." "When I was in high school, I was getting looked at by mainly DII and DIII schools," O'Han said. "I grew up in Raleigh, so I knew about the J.V. program at U.N.C. and I knew some guys who had gone through it. From what I heard, it was a tryout and any college student could go and try out. So I chose to go to U.N.C. instead of playing basketball elsewhere just as a general college student." The junior varsity team plays nearly all of its games in the Dean Smith Center, attracting maybe a few hundred fans about three hours before the varsity team packs the nearly 22,000 seat arena. "You got great seats, everybody's at center floor," said O'Han's father, Rob O'Han Sr. "You can hear everything." The team plays a mix of teams from community colleges and other junior varsity programs, and prep schools filled with players who are just out of high school and looking to focus their development in the sport. Under current head coach Brad Frederick, an assistant coach for Williams, the North Carolina junior varsity team is 7 4, with a game scheduled Saturday against Central Carolina Community College before the varsity team plays Virginia. "We play the prep schools and we try to keep it close but we usually get beat," O'Han said after watching a recent game that was part of a three game losing streak to prep schools. "But those are always the most fun games because we get to compete at a higher level." Lee Martin, the coach at Hargrave Military Academy in Chatham, Va., said his team plays the North Carolina junior varsity squad every season (their game is scheduled for Feb. 25). "It's one of my favorites games of the year," Martin said. "It gives our guys an invaluable experience." "I was guarding Cole every day, which was definitely a challenge," he said. "That was another really cool part about being on the team." Anthony had knee surgery in December and missed 11 games, one of many players who has missed time for North Carolina. Those injuries, one of several factors that make it highly likely for North Carolina to miss the N.C.A.A. tournament this year for the first time since 2010, give O'Han more opportunities to play. O'Han will most likely be finished with basketball after this season. He is majoring in business and after interning last summer at SunTrust Bank, plans to work as an investment banker after graduation.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
By now you have probably heard of influencers, that group of internet famous people who have more than a million social media followers and can make big money by plugging various brands. And you may have even heard of microinfluencers, who do the same thing for a still sizable but somewhat smaller social media audience from the tens to low hundreds of thousands. Now get ready for the nanoinfluencers. That is the term ("nanos" for short) used by companies to describe people who have as few as 1,000 followers and are willing to advertise products on social media. Their lack of fame is one of the qualities that make them approachable. When they recommend a shampoo or a lotion or a furniture brand on Instagram, their word seems as genuine as advice from a friend. Brands enjoy working with them partly because they are easy to deal with. In exchange for free products or a small commission, nanos typically say whatever companies tell them to. With roughly 2,700 Instagram followers, Alexis Baker, 25, had a relatively ordinary social media presence, with photos of fashionable outfits and tropical vacation spots filling her feed. But her online persona changed when she started posting in praise of products like Suave Professionals Rose Oil Infusion shampoo, Clinique Beyond Perfecting foundation and concealer, and Loco Coffee, a mix of cold brew and coconut water. People who know Ms. Baker were surprised when the hashtags used to denote advertisements sponsored and ad started popping up on her account. They were also a little impressed that she was Instagramming like an influencer. "My friends were like: 'Wait a minute you don't have tens of thousands of followers. How did you get contacted about this?'" Ms. Baker said in an interview. "I didn't really have an answer for them." Ms. Baker, a leasing manager in Alexandria, Va., said she had stumbled into the hobby slash gig after being scouted by Obviously, which describes itself as "a full service influencer marketing agency." To Mae Karwowski, the chief executive of Obviously, nanoinfluencers are a largely untapped and inexpensive opportunity. "If it does happen to blow up and take off full time, then great," Ms. Baker said. "But that is not what I'm looking for at all. It's just something I love doing. "I love taking really, really great quality photos," she continued. "I love challenging myself with how I can advertise and market something, and seeing the impact it has on people is really rewarding." Kelsey Rosenberg, a 26 year old in Columbus, Ohio, with 1,900 Instagram followers, saw an opportunity when influencer marketing took off. She contacted companies, including bars and restaurants in her area, and now regularly incorporates advertising into her Instagram feed. "It's like one of your friends telling you a new skin care product is amazing, but instead of me telling my friends at happy hour, it's me telling them on Instagram," she said. There are strings attached, though. "You have to keep it on your feed for a certain amount of weeks," Ms. Rosenberg said, "and they want you to say certain keywords, like something is 'cruelty free' or something 'smells good,' or whatever their marketing says. They want you to mimic that." Haley Stutzman, a 22 year old in Bentonville, Ark., who has around 5,500 Instagram followers, said most advertisers approved her work before it went up. Ms. Stutzman, a product specialist at Better Homes Gardens, said her co workers didn't quite understand what she was up to on social media, even as her account has grown into a "part time side hustle kind of thing." Her parents were also mystified until she snagged a couch from Burrow, a start up, and a trip to Myrtle Beach, S.C., through Kate Somerville, a beauty brand. Sarah Stovold, a managing director at NextWave, a consultancy with a focus on youth marketing, said younger consumers, especially the 13 to 21 year old cohort known as Gen Z, had a different relationship with companies than their elders. "There's a strong entrepreneurial spirit in this group," Ms. Stovold said. "They've seen friends and people they see as friends developing some prosperity from doing this type of engagement with brands." Krishna Subramanian, a founder of Captiv8, another influencer marketing firm, said he was skeptical about brands' marketing their wares through people with unremarkable social media followings. "Are they able to actually measure something out of it and say, 'This is successful, we want to do more of it'?" he asked. But Ms. Karwowski, of Obviously, said she was confident in the strategy. Her firm has 7,500 nanoinfluencers in its database, she said, and it plans to double that number by March. "The youngest generation has grown up with this technology, so they're very accustomed to seeing people talk about products they like and are recommending, so now there is a new willingness for them to participate in that," Ms. Karwowski said. She added, "You're able to place a lot of really small bets rather than, 'We're going to work with Kim Kardashian.'" Some nanoinfluencers are still grappling with allowing brands into their social media accounts. Erin Gee, a 34 year old government worker and spin class instructor in Ottawa with just over 1,200 Instagram followers, started promoting the Fre skin care brand after getting a direct message from the company. "They said: 'We like your Instagram page and what you're posting. Would you be interested in testing out our products to see if they work for you?'" Ms. Gee said. Along with the free stuff, the company sent her instructions. "They gave specific strict guidelines, like 'Here's the possible text you could use, here's the hashtag, and we expect a post within this amount of time,'" she said. "I feel kind of like an infomercial, and I'm generally kind of uncomfortable pushing things on people," she said. "But I've seen a return on that, albeit small."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
SAN FRANCISCO For sale: one billion Yahoo accounts, 200,000 or best offer. The passwords don't work, but the dates of birth, telephone numbers and security questions could still be useful to an adept cyberthief. After federal prosecutors unsealed indictments this week against four men they say were responsible for a 2014 intrusion into Yahoo's systems that affected 500 million user accounts, data on one billion accounts stolen in another attack on the company a year earlier appeared to remain available on underground hacker forums on Friday. The authorities were tight lipped about their investigation of the 2013 attack, which is the largest known breach of a private company's computer systems. The 2014 hacking of Yahoo's servers is the second largest. "We're not willing to comment right now if there is a connection between the two investigations," Malcolm Palmore, who oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation's cybersecurity division in San Francisco, said on Wednesday in a brief interview after the government unveiled the indictments. But the two attacks share some common characteristics and may be linked in some fashion. Both of them involved highly skilled Russian hackers, according to cybersecurity experts who have studied the attacks. In both cases, the hackers had links to the Russian government. And in both cases, at least some of the data was used to send spam to Yahoo users. Alexsey Belan, the technical expert who was charged with breaking into Yahoo's systems in 2014 at the behest of two Russian intelligence officers, has a long record of cybercrime. In 2012, he was indicted on three felony charges for hacking the computer systems of Zappos, the online shoe retailer owned by Amazon, and stealing information on as many as 24 million customers. In 2013, Mr. Belan struck again, hacking into Evernote and Scribd, two digital document storage services, according to a federal indictment filed against him that June. Law enforcement authorities arrested him in Greece later that year, but he posted bail and fled to Russia. Cybersecurity experts who have studied the incidents say the 2013 attack on Yahoo was most likely carried out by a different person. InfoArmor, an Arizona cybersecurity firm, has attributed it to a group of cyberthieves it calls Group E. That group sold the entire database at least three times, including once to an entity that InfoArmor believes was connected to the Russian government. The indictment against Mr. Belan filed this week is vague about how he and his three co conspirators gained access to Yahoo's systems. 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. Alex Holden, founder of Hold Security, a cybersecurity firm, said one prevailing theory in the industry was that Mr. Belan capitalized on the earlier breach. He said the person or people behind the 2013 intrusion probably sold, traded or were forced to share their access to Yahoo's systems with Russian intelligence services. The two Russian intelligence agents indicted in the 2014 breach are accused of using that access to conduct their own spying operation with the assistance of Mr. Belan and another conspirator in Canada. The Russian government has strenuously denied any involvement in any hacking of Yahoo's systems. Yahoo declined to comment on Friday, but pointed a reporter to a December statement about the 2013 attack. In that statement, the company said it had not been able to find the intrusion but that it was "likely distinct" from the 2014 one. A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. declined to comment on Friday. But during a briefing with reporters in San Francisco on Wednesday, F.B.I. officials said the intrusion into Yahoo's systems appeared to have begun with a spear phishing attack, in which a Yahoo employee was tricked into disclosing information that allowed the attackers in. Although Yahoo security officials noticed a breach in 2014, they initially believed it was limited in scope, according to securities filings made by the company. Senior executives were aware of the attack in 2014 but failed to recognize its significance, the company said. Yahoo publicly disclosed the 2014 breach in September. It disclosed the larger, 2013 attack in December and forced all affected users who had not already done so to change their passwords. The database of one billion accounts was on offer for 200,000, which Mr. Holden, the Hold Security founder, called "an exorbitant amount of money." The asking price for a single address is 10,000.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
DONALD TRUMP V. THE UNITED STATES Inside the Struggle to Stop a President By Michael S. Schmidt When a Republican led Senate committee issued a nearly 1,000 page report in mid August that detailed the prodigious extent of the contacts between Russian officials and members of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign team, it felt a bit like a dispatch from a vaguely familiar reality a prepandemic realm when we could mostly agree to focus on foreign interference in American democracy, and when the Trump presidency felt as if it were hanging in the balance while it awaited word from Robert S. Mueller III. This is the world that forged Michael S. Schmidt's "Donald Trump v. the United States." It vividly resurrects that actually not so distant era by unspooling the occasionally staggering stories of two administration figures who were central to the investigative sagas that dominated the early Trump years, largely thanks to their attempts to constrain him. The subjects are both all too familiar and, Schmidt implies, underappreciated in their significance in shaping Trump's presidency. Schmidt recounts with unsparing intimacy James Comey's arc from the 2016 election to his 2017 firing from the F.B.I. directorship, and he documents the relentlessly uncomfortable White House tenure of the former general counsel Donald F. McGahn II, who, he points out, "was in charge of Trump's greatest political accomplishment, and he found himself caught up as the chief witness against Trump." The result is a revelatory portrait of the events that led to the investigation of Trump for obstruction of justice, and his repeated attempts to control the Department of Justice. It is not about the alleged collusion with Moscow, and in fact Schmidt reports that Mueller's investigators "never undertook a significant examination of Trump's personal and business ties to Russia," largely thanks to the deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein's intervention. Schmidt, a New York Times correspondent in Washington who was part of two teams that won Pulitzer Prizes in 2018, including one for coverage of Trump's Russian inflected scandals, portrays an administration in which all aides may as well always have a resignation letter ready as a safeguard against an angry, flailing president detached from commonly accepted reality. This is a meticulously reported volume that clearly benefits from the author's extraordinary access to many of the relevant characters, but also from his subjects' tendency to record, in detail, their time around Trump. Whereas recent years have been packed with high impact reported books about Trump's erratic behavior and his administration's backbiting Bob Woodward's "Fear," Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig's "A Very Stable Genius" and Jonathan Karl's "Front Row at the Trump Show" come to mind "Donald Trump v. the United States" is more closely tailored to the efforts to rein Trump in. As such, it may be unlikely to become a go to for general conclusions about Trump's character. But it adds significantly to the public understanding of the Mueller investigation and Trump's war against it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
TOKYO The nominee to become the next Bank of Japan governor said Monday that he would do "whatever is needed" to finally end deflation in the world's third largest economy. Haruhiko Kuroda, the nominee, who announced last week that he would resign as president of the Asian Development Bank, also called on the government to put its finances on a sounder footing to maintain investor confidence in the country's long term solvency. "If I am confirmed as governor, I will clearly communicate to markets that I am prepared to do whatever it takes to beat deflation," Mr. Kuroda told a confirmation hearing in Parliament. "The Japanese economy has suffered from deflation for over 10, almost 15 years, which is a global anomaly of the most extreme. As prices have fallen, corporate profits and wages have shrunk, depressing consumption and investment and triggering even lower prices in a vicious cycle," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
TUCSON When you buy a box of Girl Scout cookies and devour 10 in a single sitting, as untold numbers of people will in the next month, you are propping up a pretty sizable enterprise. During last year's sales season, scouts sold 785 million worth of Thin Mints, Samoas and all the rest, about 215 million boxes in all. Our collective annual binge may well represent the greatest continuing marketing bonanza an American nonprofit group has ever created. But for the 1.5 million or so girls who do the selling, it also represents an opportunity. They handle more money than they might have ever seen in one place, build sales skills long before they have their first part time jobs and earn prizes commissions, in effect that their parents might not be able to afford or wouldn't buy for them. Which is how 10 year old Mary Ruiz managed to stock her small bedroom here with an iPad, laptop and Nintendo DS. Last year, her customers bought 5,007 boxes of cookies. While the national organization does not collect individual rankings, it's doubtful that more than a tiny handful of girls outsold her. To her mother, Pilar, who is also her troop leader, this is a source of pride. To other parents, sales season is a source of dread, when work schedules conspire to keep them from chaperoning their children for after school sales calls while boxes and order forms consume the weekends. Still, it's hard to imagine a better way for children to learn to pitch, and keep pitching, than this. And so I trailed the younger Ms. Ruiz this week as she politely knocked on the door of a pink house on East 19th Street with a "No Soliciting" sign (a friend had tipped her off that it was all right to try), provided reinforcements to University of Arizona freshmen outside Safeway who had already consumed multiple boxes in the preceding days and tried to close another deal in Spanish. She pulls an oversize wagon stuffed with meticulously organized boxes and nestles an American flag in between. A sign explains what's known in the Girl Scout world as her "gift of caring." For her, it's an effort to persuade customers to donate change from their purchase toward more cookies or to buy extra boxes outright for soldiers abroad and firefighters and police officers nearby. This can work more than half the time, particularly when customers are already expecting just a small amount of change from a 20 bill. Last year, she delivered 504 boxes to local police officers and arranged donations of 192 boxes to soldiers. This has had particular resonance in the area in the wake of the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords and several others two years ago. At the South Tucson Police Department, where Ms. Ruiz volunteers regularly and brings officers gifts on their birthdays, she has her own mailbox. All of this hand to hand selling takes time. She took just two days off, including weekends, during the six week selling season last year and put in about 28 hours each week, on average. In exchange for her efforts, she earned all manner of goodies from her local scouting council. This year, Ms. Ruiz stands to earn a trip to a local water park, a visit to Disneyland, a "V.I.P. Club" experience (no parents allowed), a beach bike and another iPad or laptop. There comes a point at which all of this may begin to seem less like an educational activity and fund raising mechanism and more like trying to land in the leader's circle for commissioned sales representatives at Pfizer or someplace similar. But Pilar Ruiz believes it does not cross the line. "She doesn't have a lot of the other things that other kids have unless she's earned them," she said. "And I think she gets much more satisfaction out of that and takes great pride in owning them when she has worked for them." Cookie sales don't just benefit the individual girls. Some of the money goes to the local Girl Scout council, which often uses it to provide scholarships for lower income scouts to attend summer camp. Each troop also retains some money, and Ms. Ruiz's troop, which sold over 12,000 boxes total last year, has retained 13,000 over the years, which it has earmarked for group travel. Mary Ruiz was once quite shy and is still prone to occasional bouts of nervousness, ringing doorbells and then tapping out a few steps that she's picked up in her baile folklorico dance classes. "When I first started selling cookies, I was kind of scared to talk to people I didn't know," she said. "You just get warmed up to it." This sort of thing warms the heart of Daniel H. Pink, whose new book, "To Sell Is Human" was an instant best seller when it came out last month. "Quieter kids can get a little bit more comfortable with asking for stuff," he said. "And the more voluble and extroverted can learn to listen." Mr. Pink, a former colleague of mine at Fast Company magazine, first realized he had a bright future in sales while going door to door in the commercial district of his town peddling ads for his high school newspaper, The Bexley Torch. "If you've created something you truly believe in, then your obligation is to bring it to other people," he said. "There's nothing seamy about it." Besides the age old question about whether the Girl Scouts should rely so heavily on pushing mini sugar bombs, there is an inevitable one about overaggressive stage parenting. After all, there are strict rules about the number of adults who must be present when scouts are selling at booths or door to door. Just how much are they helping anyway? Pilar Ruiz isn't crazy about all of the time that parents need to put in either. "It was a logistical nightmare," she said. Still, last year she managed to get enough paid time off to spend many hours with Mary as she dragged her wagon around town. This wasn't the first year either, and people have noticed. "When she was little, some of the other adults in Girl Scouts actually sat me down, and they were worried about the kids in my troop, particularly Mary, because they thought she was working too much," she said. "I guess my parenting skills were questioned." Ms. Ruiz said that she did push her daughter to do her best, the same way she did in any activity and the same way any other parent would for a bright child. "I want her to have, which I believe she's acquired, good work ethics, good values and to really understand that if you want something in this life, you have to work for it," she said. "I don't want her to be one of those kids that spends 20 hours a week playing video games and saying, 'Give me, give me, give me.'" Mary's father died last year. According to Mary, whom I interviewed before her mother uttered the words above, no more than a gentle shove to get some momentum going was necessary anyway. "I have a goal," she said. "I do not not reach my goals, because I'm a perfectionist. It makes me feel happy." For any parent, the oversight in this kind of situation is a tricky line to walk. We want to push our children, while making sure that any activity remains theirs, but it's always tempting to go past the point where the activity starts to become yours, too. And because they're your offspring, in some ways the project is always a little bit yours, isn't it? As Mary Ruiz has become more tuned in to the world of commerce and money, she's now rooting around in her mother's financial affairs. Over the menudo course at a restaurant Thursday night, in the midst of a discussion about travel, Mary had many highly specific questions about exactly what a timeshare is. Her mother has been on the receiving end of this heightened curiosity about how the world of personal finance works for a while now, including questions about their mortgage and various forms of insurance. "I know I didn't get those kinds of questions from my older daughter," she said. "But she didn't participate in Girl Scouts the way that Mary does."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
"Not to be dramatic," said Audra McDonald, fluttering her hands around her face in a comic pantomime of theatricality, "But it is our work." She had just tracked whether a tornado watch that was in effect in New York City posed any threat to her teenage daughter, enrolled in a summer program in Connecticut. Meanwhile, several blocks away, Zachary Quinto was ditching his taxi in the gridlocked traffic of Friday afternoon before the long Fourth of July weekend. He jogged the rest of the way to the Lambs Club and bounded into the private Stanford White Studio. Count on actors to bring the drama. But Ms. McDonald, 46, is no mere actress. She is a Broadway legend, having won six Tony Awards, more than any other actor in history and at least one in every category for which an actor is eligible. ZACHARY QUINTO: I don't know if it was divine intervention, but it was bigger than any decision on my part. My father died when I was 7. And I had a music teacher in the third grade who recognized how damaged my family had become. She sent me home one day with an article clipped out of the local newspaper and said, "Give this to your mother." It was about auditions for a performing group for kids at the Civic Light Opera in Pittsburgh. I had never performed in my life. But my mom took me. She knew I needed something. It was like an immediate epiphany. From then on, there was no turning back. AUDRA McDONALD: My story is similar not born out of tragedy, but a crisis. I was severely hyperactive and having a terrible time in school. My parents were struggling with what to do with me. They were being told that medication was the way to go. But they happened to go to a local dinner theater in Fresno to see a show, and there was a kids' group that performed beforehand. A light went off. ZQ: I think my traumas as a child became my greatest reserves of strength as an adult. For me to recognize that in other young people, to try to help them see it, is a huge motivator. I was more fortunate than kids struggling for survival on a basic level, but emotionally, I felt serious threats as a young person. ZQ: It started there and evolved into my sexual identity. I was bullied all through junior high and high school. I went to an all boys Catholic school, so it was really magnified. But for some reason, the bullying fortified me. My reaction was not to cave into myself. I expanded. I don't know why. Maybe it was just the luck of the draw or my father's hand reaching down from above. I'm a big believer in spiritual connections. And when I talk to kids now who are in a similar position, I see how much people like us can help. AM: With just the tiniest bit of attention. It takes next to nothing. And I often feel like I'm getting more out of it than they are. When I first went to Covenant House, I wanted to make a donation for the opening night of "Lady Day at Emerson's Bar and Grill," a play about Billie Holiday . They were doing an intake, welcoming a kid who came in and really needed help. They were trying to get me to the person who could take my money, but they were more focused on this kid in crisis. Something inside me went, "Oh, this is where you belong." I couldn't get it out of my mind and threw myself into the place. I've been so lucky, with incredible mentors along the way, that now I need to be that for someone else. When you see the brilliance and light in these kids, and how circumstances nearly squashed it, how can you walk away from that? You can't. PG: I watched your "It Gets Better" videos. You both made me weep. ZQ: I had so much fear in me back then. I was doing "Angels in America" and pulled director Michael Greif and playwright Tony Kushner aside and said, "Doing this play is possibly going to facilitate my public coming out." They were very supportive. And that summer, all these bullied kids started killing themselves. That's what motivated me. But I was still so afraid. The one thing I hadn't said "I'm gay, too. It gets better. Trust me" is the one thing I couldn't say. PG: You weren't out when you made the video? ZQ: No, I came out the next year after another boy killed himself, just months after he made an "It Gets Better" video. I felt slammed by my hypocrisy. Here I was, hedging my bets. What was I protecting? I had already arrived at the point of being able to work consistently. There was no way around my fear, except through it. And in the same way Audra got involved with Covenant House, I got involved with the Trevor Project. I did the training and had all these amazing conversations. I was someone there to help. And the freedom I feel now, I would never give that up for anything. AM: It had to have deepened you as an actor, too. ZQ: When I came back to the theater, as Tom in "The Glass Menagerie," I had that sense of what you have to sacrifice in yourself to set yourself free. AM: And a sense of surrender in your roles because you have that in your life. This is it: This is who I am. You can get all the way to the bottom because you're not blocked. PG: That's exactly what comes through in your video, Audra: this luminous clarity. AM: Well, for me, there is clarity and absolute honesty about how I participated in that video. Because I did try to kill myself. I was at the end of my rope. And I attempted suicide when I was at Juilliard. But what was waiting for me on the other side was this entire life. It was waiting for me even during that darkest time. You only have to look in my eyes to know it gets better because here I am. I was where you are, but here I am now. So that's where the clarity came from. AM: About 20 years ago, I had a friend who was just starting to make it big, and she was chatting with another friend and said, "Yeah, I have a photo shoot, and I have to go here, and I have to go there." And her really good friend said to her: "No! You need to go to a soup kitchen." That has never left my mind. ZQ: When I was in the middle of the first "Star Trek" movie, I started getting caught up in the things that might come along with it: the press opportunities, what a franchise might do for my career. And I had that same awakening: I need to do something for someone else. So I went to this retirement community in my neighborhood once a week and spent a couple of hours visiting with people. AM: I love talking with elderly people. Anyone who's made it to that age has a story. PG: Let's end with diversity. You've both achieved great success. Do you still feel boxes around you: African American woman, gay man? AM: I've spent my whole career trying to stay out of any box that anyone could put me in. "I'm going to do a play now." "Now I'll do a musical." That was my instinct. So I don't feel boxed in. But African American woman is part of my identity. I don't want to relinquish that especially as a mother, helping my daughter find her identity. She's biracial, so she's just as much African American as she is Caucasian. I want her to embrace herself in her entirety. ZQ: After I came out in 2011, I gave a lot of interviews saying I've never worked more and how it hadn't adversely affected my career. And I believe that. But I also believe that I would have had more mainstream Hollywood opportunities if I were straight or didn't come out. I haven't allowed it to limit me, but I think there's an inherent resistance to gay men in Hollywood. Which isn't to take anything away from the mind blowing progress since I got out of school. ZQ: It's not explicit. It's more a matter of opportunities. Lists of actors being considered for roles that I have to fight to get onto or that I won't be on altogether. This isn't a complaint. I've come to accept my journey. It's just an observation. But what can you do? You keep doing the work. AM: What I always say to students, especially African American women or girls who ask, "How do I have the career you have?" I say: "First of all, you have to be you. You can't be me. There's already one of me. You're what's unique." But I also say: Never say no to yourself. Because there are plenty of people who are going to say no to you. Don't you be one of them. Don't put yourself in a box. You knock down barriers wherever you can, even if it's in a tiny way. ZQ: And don't forget the joy. It's in the work, whether in a tiny Off Broadway play or giant 200 million film. And then you can unplug your expectations and go: I got this. And other things will come either for me or someone else. We're all part of the same continuum and seeing where we fit in, that's our privilege and our responsibility.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
SHANGHAI Chinese investigators said Thursday that executives from GlaxoSmithKline, the British drug giant, had admitted to using bribes, kickbacks and other fraudulent means to bolster drug sales in China. The Ministry of Public Security said people working for the drug maker had bribed doctors, hospitals and government officials and funneled illicit payoffs through travel agencies, pharmaceutical industry associations and project financing. The government did not name any executives or detailed figures. But it said the case involved "huge amounts of money." The investigation appears to be part of a broad government crackdown on fraud and corruption involving foreign companies. The announcement came about a week after the authorities raided offices and detained people working for GlaxoSmithKline in three different cities, including Shanghai, according to the state run news media. The government findings released Thursday were unexpected because executives at GlaxoSmithKline had said just last week that an internal investigation of its China operations found no evidence of bribery or corrupt activities. A spokesman for the company said last week that the company had initiated its own investigation after a whistle blower at the company came forward this year with accusations of wrongdoing in the China operation. On Thursday, a spokesman for GlaxoSmithKline said that the company was willing to cooperate with the investigation and that the Chinese announcement represented the first details of the case the company had been informed about. The company also released a statement saying: "We take all allegations of bribery and corruption seriously. We continuously monitor our businesses to ensure they meet our strict compliance procedures. We have done this in China and found no evidence of bribery or corruption of doctors or government officials. However, if evidence of such activity is provided we will act swiftly on it." Like many other large pharmaceutical companies, Glaxo has been investing significantly in China and other emerging markets, seeking to capitalize on a growing middle class that can increasingly afford to pay for prescription drugs. Although China still accounts for a small fraction of Glaxo's business, sales in the country grew 17 percent in 2012, to 1.2 billion. Sales in emerging markets accounted for about a quarter of the company's business in 2012. Earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported that a whistle blower had shared some information with the newspaper and claimed that executives at the company had bribed doctors and hospitals. It is unclear whether the investigation by the Ministry of Public Security is linked to the whistle blower. "Economic crimes, including commercial bribery and kickbacks, are one of the negative results generated in the transitional period in China," he said in a telephone interview. "In the midst of a transition from a planned economy to a market economy, laws and regulations are not fully in place, and medical institutions have no perfect operational mechanisms." China is one of the world's fastest growing markets for pharmaceutical products, but the government has long held tight control over pricing of certain drugs. Still, in a country where kickbacks are common and the sales channels for many products are swayed by bribery, travel vouchers and payoffs, it is not unusual for major corporations to come under scrutiny from Chinese or Western regulators. In 2012, the American drug maker Eli Lilly agreed to pay 29 million to settle accusations of making improper payments to government officials and physicians in Brazil, China, Poland and Russia. In the Eli Lilly case, the United States government said employees from the company's China subsidiary had "falsified expense reports in order to provide gifts and cash payments to government employed physicians." Among other things, the company's sales representatives used reimbursements to provide doctors with meals, card games and "visits to bath houses." In recent years, the United States Department of Justice has scrutinized the world's biggest drug companies to determine whether they have made improper payments to doctors and hospitals around the world in an effort to increase sales of their drugs.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
Growing up on the Upper West Side in the 1970s, the artist Julia Jacquette saw plenty of the urban decay for which that era is known. Vacant lots filled stretches of Columbus Avenue near her family's apartment, she recalled. But that gritty atmosphere was less influential for her than what was being built a block to the east, in Central Park. The city, teetering on the verge of bankruptcy, was somewhat improbably in the midst of a playground renaissance one that informed Ms. Jacquette's art in ways that she explores in a new autobiographical book, "Playground of My Mind." The typical city playground of that time was built as an afterthought, a corral for children, made of asphalt and chain link fencing. The play equipment was sparse and isolated: a slide here, a seesaw there, a jungle gym. Nothing connected. The concrete structures referred to ancient architectural forms: amphitheaters, pyramids and sunken gardens. And there was no one correct way for children to interact with them. "Nothing was dictated," Ms. Jacquette said. "There was nothing literal about them." Only recently did she make a connection between her childhood experience and her work, as she was completing "Playground of My Mind," a project she's pursued for 10 years. The book was published in concert with "Unrequited and Acts of Play," a survey of her career that opened in February at the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. Ms. Jacquette, 52, who is known for her paintings of commercial products and media images, is showing her paintings as well as the gouache originals that she made for the book. Tracy L. Adler, the director of the Wellin Museum, who curated the exhibition, said that when taken together, the work prompts a question: "How does the play of our childhood inform who we are as adults?" At a glance, it is hard to connect Ms. Jacquette's paintings with the story of her book and the comics inspired images that fill it. But it's not the subject matter of her art that was affected, she said. The playgrounds gave her a way of working that she recognized only as she completed the book. The playgrounds' use of repetition and grids taught her a vocabulary, she said. "As soon as I was an adult making artwork, I gravitated toward those systems." Ms. Adler said: "In her paintings, she's looking at media images, advertising, and how they present this idea of perfection. Whereas in the book she's looking back." The book is her first narrative project, completed at Ms. Adler's suggestion, and published by the Wellin. Ms. Jacquette, who teaches art at the Fashion Institute of Technology, developed an early interest in these issues, in part because of her parents. Her father, William Jacquette, is an architect who collaborated on adventure playground designs. When she was 8, she joined him at the opening of the playground at Central Park West and West 100th Street. Her mother, Janet Jacquette, worked as a librarian but held distinct views about design that left an impression. In the book, Ms. Jacquette recalls her mother's dismissive response to a Christmas tree in the lobby of their building: "I believe less is more." The rise of the adventure playground, which is outlined in the book, was driven by the landscape architect M. Paul Friedberg and the architect Richard Dattner, who were the subject of a New York Times Magazine article in 1966 headlined "Putting the Play in Playgrounds." This movement, sparked by the parks commissioner Thomas Hoving, faced some resistance from traditionalists and defenders of the sanctity of Central Park's green spaces. The whole saga was notable enough to provide the focus of at least a dozen other articles in The Times. (A 1967 editorial acknowledged that not all of the changes to Central Park then in progress were undesirable: "But it is essential that this new approach not get out of hand.")	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
WASHINGTON Cancer researchers say there has been a substantial increase in women under the age of 26 who have received a diagnosis of early stage cervical cancer, a pattern that they say is most likely an effect of the Affordable Care Act. Starting in 2010, a provision of the health law allowed dependents to stay on their parents' health insurance until age 26. The number of uninsured young adults fell substantially in the years that followed. The share of 19 to 25 year olds without health insurance declined to 21 percent in the first quarter of 2014 from 34 percent in 2010 a decrease of about four million people, federal data show. Researchers from the American Cancer Society wanted to examine whether the expansion of health insurance among young American women was leading to more early stage diagnoses. Early diagnosis improves the prospects for survival because treatment is more effective and the chance of remission is higher. It also bolsters women's chances for preserving their fertility during treatment. And women with health insurance are far more likely to get a screening that can identify cancer early. Researchers used the National Cancer Data Base, a hospital based registry of about 70 percent of all cancer cases in the United States. They compared diagnoses for women ages 21 to 25 who had cervical cancer with those for women ages 26 to 34, before and after the health law provision began in 2010. Early stage diagnoses rose substantially among the younger group the one covered by the law and stayed flat among the older group.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Credit...Jake Michaels for The New York Times The most repeated story about the career of Alden Ehrenreich, an actor whose name is worth committing to memory now, is a story of discovery, a miracle of luck and circumstance not unlike Lana Turner's at the soda fountain. But because Mr. Ehrenreich, 26, is a young Jewish prince of the Palisades and our story begins in the early aughts, the soda fountain is a Los Angeles bat mitzvah and the discoverer is Steven Spielberg. Mr. Ehrenreich is used to retelling the details, he said, though over the years, people have become more and more apologetic about asking for them again. The broad strokes are these: At the age of 13, noodling around with a video camera, he and a friend made a funny video for the bat mitzvah of a friend of a friend. It was a surreal and haphazardly plotted love story, which began in the present and eventually cut to 20 or 30 years later, with Mr. Ehrenreich, in a kimono, screaming to stop a wedding. He was not even at the bat mitzvah where it was screened, but Mr. Spielberg was. A call from DreamWorks, the studio Mr. Spielberg helped found, and a meeting with its casting director followed. Mr. Ehrenreich's progress has been slower than that overnight sensation story would suggest. After the video, he spent years auditioning, bagging stray cameos on procedurals and in teen friendly TV shows. He built himself up by gradual persistence, and though his name is not yet immediately familiar to you, it is to a handful of Hollywood heavyweights: Francis Ford Coppola, Woody Allen, the Coen Brothers, Warren Beatty. "I think you've chosen a good person to be writing about," Mr. Beatty said when a reporter called, citing Mr. Ehrenreich's "unusual combination of sensitivity and intelligence and humor." "My feeling is that he is going to be a major player in movies." That may happen sooner than later. Mr. Ehrenreich is suddenly being discussed all over Hollywood, as trade papers and gossip columns on both coasts trumpeted this week that he has landed the role of Star Wars' Han Solo in the coming Solo standalone movie, scheduled for 2018, rumors of which have circulated for weeks. When asked, Mr. Ehrenreich said he could not say anything about it, though he did cop to being a Star Wars fan. ("Who isn't?" he said. Star Wars vs. Star Trek? "Probably both.") A representative for Disney, which distributes the Star Wars films and owns Lucasfilm, which produces them, declined to comment. Before then most likely Mr. Ehrenreich will star in Mr. Beatty's long gestating film about two young strivers who arrive in Hollywood to work for the mogul Howard Hughes. (Mr. Beatty has had it in mind since the 1970s.) In April it was reported that the film would be released this fall, though Mr. Beatty said that a date had not been chosen. He went nose to nose with Ralph Fiennes in what may be the film's most endearing bit of shtick: a painstaking elocution lesson in which a country boy butchers a line ("Would that it were so simple!") in attempted mid Atlantic English. "Hail, Caesar!" the Coen brothers' film, rather than the Capitol Pictures one was met with mixed response (though it was a hit with many critics, wise to the countless Hollywood in jokes). But Mr. Ehrenreich in particular, who took lessons in rope tricks (with both lasso and spaghetti), horseback riding, guitar and gun slinging to prepare, earned raves. "Alden is the kind of actor that steals every scene he's in," Mr. Clooney wrote in an email. "It's so much fun to watch how hard he works and how effortless it seems." Hobie Doyle would seem an odd choice for Mr. Ehrenreich, a kid from Los Angeles (he attended the Crossroads School for Arts Sciences, in Santa Monica, Calif., where Jonah Hill and Jack Black were also students). He campaigned for an audition and won the role in part, one suspects, because he has such an affinity with old Hollywood himself. Unlike many of his contemporaries vying to be X Men or rom com heartthrobs, Mr. Ehrenreich resembles the stars of an earlier era. At 26, his hair is already silvering, as if by force of will. Raised by movie buff parents, Mr. Ehrenreich speaks worshipfully of Paul Newman and Jimmy Stewart, Frank Capra and Elia Kazan. "When you watch a lot of movies as a kid, the stories do shape a little bit how you view the world," he said. Mr. Ehrenreich spent a few years at New York University but left in 2011, without completing a degree. Film was always the goal. "I just had a feeling of 'I know what I want to do, and I want to start doing it again,'" he said. In effect, he put himself through his own film school with Mr. Coppola, with whom he lived for weeks while preparing for "Tetro." "I was young enough that I didn't know not to pepper him with questions all day long, so that's all I did," Mr. Ehrenreich said. "All day long, I'm like, 'What was Robert Duvall like? What was Pacino like?' It was the greatest mentorship I could have ever imagined from essentially my favorite director of all time." Mr. Ehrenreich walks to work. The paparazzi have not yet noticed. "Things changed a little bit, maybe, professionally, but I'm learning how much you are always ignorant of what the life of something is outside of it," he said. "It starts from zero every time. Every time you finish, you're unemployed." But whether he is aware of it, people are watching, inside the industry and outside of it. He has already shot the Iraq war drama "The Yellow Birds," and Mr. Beatty's film, whenever it arrives, will likely bring Mr. Ehrenreich even more attention. "I think it'll be a real step up for him, as far as things being offered to him," said Mr. Roos, who saw it in a private screening. So for now, he is adjusting to life on the cusp of stardom. "You get used to it, though I don't think you ever really get used to it," he said of seeing himself onscreen. "I remember the first time with 'Tetro.' It's like when you look in the mirror at the end of a long day: That's who I was all day? And it's that, times 10."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
WASHINGTON A government retirement fund on Wednesday halted plans to invest in Chinese stocks this year, after growing criticism that the move would channel the savings of government workers to companies that are working against the national security goals of the United States. In a statement, the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, which manages the retirement savings plan, said it had "deferred the transition" of the fund as a result of "a meaningfully different economic environment" related to the pandemic, as well as the nomination of three new board members to oversee the fund. The fund, part of the Thrift Savings Plan, which is similar to a 401(k), is not well known outside Washington policy circles. But the plan's effort to diversify the international stock portion of the 593.7 billion it has in assets under management has become a flash point in an increasingly contentious relationship between the United States and China. The decision comes as President Trump and members of his administration adopt a sharper tone toward China. They have blamed China for concealing the origins of the coronavirus epidemic, and criticized its efforts to buy up global supplies of masks and medical products earlier this year, before the global scale of the pandemic was clear. In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has also grown more critical of the trade deal he signed with China in January, amid mounting evidence that Chinese purchases of American products are falling short of what the pact required. "As I have said for a long time, dealing with China is a very expensive thing to do," Mr. Trump tweeted Wednesday morning. "We just made a great Trade Deal, the ink was barely dry, and the World was hit by the Plague from China. 100 Trade Deals wouldn't make up the difference and all those innocent lives lost!" It remains to be seen whether the decision by the retirement plan is an isolated action, or will presage more efforts to delink the American and Chinese financial systems. Such efforts could roil financial markets in both the United States and China, as well as cross border investment. Politicians of both parties, but particularly some in the Trump administration, have called for decoupling the Chinese and American economies, arguing that American efforts to work closely with China have strengthened its authoritarian government, to the detriment of the United States. Others have criticized a lack of transparency in the Chinese financial system that could be putting American investors at risk of fraud. Chinese law restricts the company documentation that auditors can transfer out of the country, limiting their visibility to American regulators. 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. Clete Willems, a former Trump administration official who is now a partner at the law firm Akin Gump, said the decision "may just be the start of a broader reassessment about the risks of investing in China." "It will be difficult for China to address the national security concerns for all of its companies, but China should at the very least open up the books and records of its companies to U.S. regulators to alleviate the financial ones," Mr. Willems said. The board that controls the fund had for months defended its plans to increase its exposure to China, saying that it was simply seeking to diversify its investments and provide better returns for its savers. But members of Congress, the Trump administration and outside advisers have criticized the move, saying that it would pump funds into some companies that work with the Chinese military or have been the subject of sanctions by the U.S. government. The Thrift Savings Plan manages the retirement savings for more than 5.9 million current and former government employees, including members of the military. Marco Rubio, a Republican senator from Florida who was one of the most vocal critics of the China investment, had threatened bipartisan legislation to block the move. And some Trump administration officials had discussed an executive order to accomplish the same goal. In the end, the administration took a less drastic course. Trump administration officials sent a letter to the board on Monday asking them to halt their plans. The administration also moved ahead with plans to appoint new officials to the board overseeing the plan. The terms of all five of the current board members have expired, though they can continue to serve until they are replaced. In a statement Wednesday, Eugene Scalia, the secretary of labor, said he was "pleased" with the board's decision. "The millions of federal employees, retirees and service members participating in the plan should not be placed in the untenable position of choosing between forgoing any investment in international equities, or placing billions of dollars in retirement savings in risky companies that pose a threat to U.S. national security," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
It's on the opening pages of "Moby Dick." "Yes, as everyone knows," Ishmael declares, "meditation and water are wedded forever." He calls our attention to the crowds of dreamy water gazers gathered along the shores of Manhattan on a Sabbath afternoon. They prove him right: The ocean's liquid fingers have a way of transfixing us in thought. Ishmael points out that the ancient Persians call the sea holy, that the Greeks give it a powerful deity of its very own. A maiden voyage sings with a kind of "mystical vibration." But what exactly is the magic of water, and what does it do to us? It's a mystery. When we peer into a lake, river or ocean, we find that water encourages a particular kind of reverie. Perhaps its depths can enhance our consciousness even more if instead of just looking, we get in and swim. We jump into that water and find ourselves in a curious liminal space. Here we are, suspended, yet moving; floating, yet ever in danger of sinking. And if we swim with the current, instead of fighting against it, we find a momentary state, one of motion and yet paradoxical stillness that is flow. There's a poignancy to being a swimmer now, in that we're not able to do it just when we need it most. But even though public pools are closed and we are limited in the wild places where we can swim, thinking about immersion in our favorite watering holes is still a balm. As the writer Heather Hansman pointed out to me recently, there is value in those places even (and especially) when we're not in them it's what Wallace Stegner called "the geography of hope." The focused immediacy of swimming encourages a mind set that reminds me of how my young children think: It's an ever presentness. Every past moment is immediately replaced by a new one: a constant stream of now, and now and now that doesn't allow much room to dwell too long on things past or what's to come. Living in the now is a state of being that my busy brain finds challenging but I desire it. Swimming is an antidote for the existential anxiety from which I suffer. In "Waterlog," his celebrated chronicle of swimming through Britain's waterways, the naturalist Roger Deakin described swimming as having a transformative, Alice in Wonderland quality; it was an activity that had power over his perception of self and of time. "When you enter the water, something like metamorphosis happens," he wrote. "Leaving behind the land, you go through the looking glass surface and enter a new world." You've crossed a boundary, and the experience of life while swimming is intensely different from any other. Your sense of the present, he added, "is overwhelming." In its power to produce an altered state, the legendary long distance swimmer Lynne Cox explained to me, swimming is like a drug. Sometimes we zero in on something with unparalleled lucidity, and we gain the ability to tune out the extraneous stuff; other times the focus is fuzzy, and one thought leads to another, without interruption. "Who needs psychedelics," she said, "when you can just go for a swim in the ocean?" What is it like inside Ms. Cox's head when she's swimming? "It's a state between a dream state and an awake state," she told me. Maybe, she said, we can call it "sea dreaming." The rhythm of swimming lulls your body which, well trained, seems to keep moving on its own and your brain is allowed to go wherever it wants. "Maybe you smell the coffee someone is drinking on the pier," Ms. Cox told me. "There's this awareness of the ripples of water, the pelicans sliding right by. Maybe your heart stops as you see a wave of silvery anchovies swimming below you." In the hushed oceanic roar, you can choose to filter some things out and to focus on others. Cognitive scientists have shown that water sounds the rhythmic hum of the ocean, the rush of a waterfall are calming to the human brain. We experience a drop in heart rate and blood pressure and an increase in alpha wave activity those brain wavelengths associated with relaxation and boosted serotonin as well as creative thinking. While tooling around on the Spotify music streaming service one day, I found that white noise water sounds are some of the biggest hits there; a track called "Rolling Ocean Waves" has been played nearly 60 million times. Walks in the woods are all well and good, as Thoreau illustrated in his transcendentalist classic, "Walden." But during the two years, two months and two days that he spent living in that cabin at Walden Pond, he also got up early every morning to swim; he described it as "a religious exercise, and one of the best things which I did." Each of his swims stimulated body and mind. Each day's routine of rousing early to do so was a way to enact his desire to "live deliberately" in the New England forest. Much has been made of the walk as the instrument for big thinkers: Charles Darwin; Albert Einstein; Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, who famously rambled together and revolutionized our understanding of the psychology of decision making. Less has been explicitly made of swimming a similar kind of aid, more medium than tool for channeling the inner life and improving the flow of thoughts. The physical action matters just as much as the environment does. "The way we move our bodies further changes the nature of our thoughts, and vice versa," the science journalist Ferris Jabr notes in an essay titled "Why Walking Helps Us Think." It follows that the pace of swimming, because of its fluid continuity, encourages a specific kind of thinking. There are the same changes to our body chemistry in swimming as there are in land exercise: faster heartbeat, increased circulation, more blood and oxygen to muscles and brain. Mr. Jabr invokes the peripatetics of Clarissa Dalloway, Virginia Woolf's famously musing, ambulatory character, as someone who "does not merely perceive the city around her. Rather, she dips in and out of her past." Woolf herself, writing in her diary about the stimulating energy of walking through London, used energetic, aquatic language to describe the immersive experience as "being on the highest crest of the biggest wave, right in the centre swim of things." In his detailing of Stanford University research experiments on the relationship between walking and creativity, Mr. Jabr writes that walking set "the mind adrift on a frothing sea of thought." For Mr. Jabr, Woolf and others, the choice of words betrays them. They talk of "ideas bubbling up," the tumbling of them, the "wrinkling water" in a current of thought. Walking is conducive to thinking, but swimming is just as true a conduit. As human swimmers, we can never really be the fish. You and I, we know that. We don't have to remind ourselves that it's water around us. But we get glimpses of what it's like to be the fish. We get flashes of forgetting the water. In the forgetting, we can drift. Daydreaming is critical to problem solving and creativity. Scientists now know that when our minds are wandering without any particular external focus, the brain's "default mode network" is active. It's what makes fresh, unexpected connections possible. And it's the reason you get some of your best ideas in the shower. The marine biologist and author Wallace J. Nichols is an evangelist for achieving what he calls "blue mind," which emphasizes the importance of drifting to discovery, and water as a way to enable that process. "Being around water provides a sensory rich environment with enough 'soft fascination' to let our focused attention rest and the default mode network to kick in," he writes. In these times of stress and social distancing, he emphasizes that water is essential medicine more than ever. "Use your wild waters if you can safely and legally," he told me. "Make sure you have a daily ritual involving domesticated waters" pools, tubs, baths, spas, showers "and embrace all types of virtual waters." Even looking at water will take you to a better, calmer place. To live deliberately as a swimmer means that you are a seeker: a chaser of the ocean's blue corduroy, a follower of river veins. The science writer Florence Williams notes that "place matters" something that poets and philosophers from Aristotle to Wordsworth have been telling us for ages. "Our nervous systems are built to resonate with set points in the environment," Ms. Williams writes in her book "The Nature Fix." "Science is now bearing out what the Romantics knew to be true." And because "our brains especially love water," we seek out blue spaces. The Romantic poet Lord Byron knew it; he swam after this feeling and wrote about it whenever he could. We want to be near the ocean, the lake, the river. We build houses on the beach despite hurricane warnings and sea level rise because that view does something to us. In a fast moving world that encourages hyperconnectivity without meaning, we dare to risk for the reward of regaining moments of self fading, water stained postcards from the solitary, slow paced thinkers we once were and dearly miss. In doing so, we hold on to Stegner's geography of hope the idea that we will one day find our way back.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
"Chance can give you a gift," said Pat Steir, offering a preview of 11 just completed paintings in her studio in Chelsea. The petite, monastically dressed, 78 year old artist stood before a monumental black painting, with a row of broad white strokes from which rivulets of pigment spilled down the dark ground. Ms. Steir allowed the random shower from each brush stroke to determine the composition without further intervention. "In some way, the paintings paint themselves," she said. The works are titled "Silent Secret Waterfalls" and are all seven feet high and as wide as 17 feet, part of an ongoing series that goes back 30 years and traverses the artist's engagement with abstract expressionism and Eastern philosophy. "Pat's 'Waterfall' paintings have this performative, gestural, meditative activity," said Thom Collins, executive director and president of the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. He commissioned the new works for the serene, naturally lit central Annenberg Court in the collection's home, designed by Tod Williams and Billie Tsien. It is the first time a painter has been invited to make something site specific for the Barnes since the collector Albert Barnes commissioned his Matisse mural, "The Dance," in the early 1930s. Ms. Steir's first black and white "Waterfall" painting from 1990 is now hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She made it by pouring buckets of pigment, thinned with turpentine, down the canvas in many diaphanous layers. "I was thinking a drippy brush stroke is the symbol of an abstract painting and I was going to make it paint a picture by itself," Ms. Steir (pronounced Steer) said. Ever since, she has set up basic parameters about the palette and shape of her canvases and then embraced the serendipitous results of throwing, drizzling and streaming paint from vertiginous heights. "It's chance within limitations," said Ms. Steir, liberated from decisions about imagery she had faced early in her career. "Being more attached to the process than the conclusion, it's an incredible freedom." Ms. Steir commented wryly that she's been "forgotten and rediscovered many times" in a career stretching over five decades. Yet she has been a mainstay of the art world. She broke through with the first generation of feminist artists in the early 1970s, including Mary Heilmann, Joan Snyder and Elizabeth Murray. "That was a good start," Ms. Steir laughed. As one of the founders of the 1970s feminist collective Heresies she was nevertheless at odds with the movement's emphasis on making feminist imagery. "I became an artist against all odds and nobody was going to tell me what imagery is good for me," she said, describing her early work as "intimate conceptual art" blending words and pictographs with expressive brushwork. Ms. Steir's change in representation from Cheim Read to Dominique Levy in 2016 (now Levy Gorvy) was a turning point, putting her work on a high profile stage. Last year, she joined the small group of female artists commanding seven figures at auction when "Elective Affinity Waterfall" (1992) sold for more than 2.2 million, with fees, at Phillips New York. Its high estimate was 800,000. "I was happy that the people bidding on it didn't demean it because it came from a female," said the artist, who tells her life story in an intimate, ruminative documentary by Veronica Gonzalez Pena, "Pat Steir: Artist," premiering at Lincoln Center in the Jewish Film Festival on Jan. 19. Next month, she will have a solo show in St. Moritz at the Vito Schnabel Gallery, and she is creating projections of her "Waterfall" paintings as the sets for the centennial celebration of the choreographer Merce Cunningham on April 16, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. This project feels special to her because Cunningham's longtime partner, the composer John Cage, was a close friend (he joined Ms. Steir and her husband, Joost Elffers, on their honeymoon in 1984). Mr. Cage's ideas about chance profoundly influenced her dramatic change in working method five years later, when she began to explore the incident and accident of pouring paint. The significance of chance occurrences was driven home a year ago on New Year's Day, when the artist had a bad fall. It didn't involve the 10 foot tall ladder in the painting studio, from which she had done a high wire balancing act for decades, but a slip in the kitchen. During her arduous, five month recovery, she was largely immobile and worried about her ability to walk (she still uses a cane). Facing the biggest commissions of her life, she began to analyze the components that made her original "Waterfall" paintings successful. (She had bragged to Mr. Elffers at that time that she had the "hot hand" of a basketball player "who couldn't miss.") "I figured out the 'hot hand' is not in the hand, it's in the head," she said. She now uses an automated lift to reach the top of her paintings. And though she is moving more slowly, she still paces off her canvases and flings paint from her loaded brush so that it lands in calligraphic arcs. The tennis champion Billie Jean King, who once visited her studio, commented on the strength of Ms. Steir's backhand. "I kept in my head the idea that I'm going to do this, and it's going to mean something maybe not to everybody but to somebody," she said. With the Barnes paintings completed, Ms. Steir is diving into her largest site specific commission yet, to open in October at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington. She is painting 28 large canvases with the spectrum of colors in gradation, turning the museum's inner circular gallery into a monumental color wheel. Asked what drives her to keep working, Ms. Steir noted that Ruth Bader Ginsburg had shown up to work at the Supreme Court with three broken ribs and that the House Speaker Nancy Pelosi "is as smart as ever and looks as good as ever." "If you feel that you have to do what you do, for whatever reason, either political, public or private reasons," she said, "you just go on doing it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
None DeAndre Hopkins is magic. Buffalo had just scored a gut punch of a touchdown to take a 30 26 lead in the final minute of the fourth quarter and Arizona, after the ensuing kickoff, had just 34 seconds to go 75 yards to score a winning touchdown. Undeterred, Kyler Murray and the Cardinals were methodical. Murray, the second year quarterback. completed passes of 14, 9 and 9 yards to put Arizona at Buffalo's 43 yard line, and that was all the space he needed. On his fourth pass of the drive, Murray launched a Hail Mary into triple coverage in the end zone and Hopkins, acquired in a trade this off season to unlock Murray's potential, managed to outjump and outmuscle all three Buffalo defenders for the ball. The remarkable catch is the type of highlight that will be replayed for years, and it gave Arizona a thrilling end to a 32 30 win. Thanks to a Seattle loss to the Rams, it also gave the Cardinals a share of the division lead in the ultracompetitive N.F.C. West. None Ronald Jones II had a point to prove. After Tampa Bay set an N.F.L. record by running the ball just five times in a humiliating loss to New Orleans last week, the Buccaneers remembered Jones existed and the running back helped carry them to a laughable 46 23 win over Carolina. Jones ran for 192 yards on 23 carries, but one play stood out above the rest. In the third quarter, with Tampa Bay clinging to a 3 point lead, Jones took a handoff at his team's 2 yard line, sliced right through a pack of Carolina defenders, and raced 98 yards for a touchdown, securing just the fourth rushing touchdown of 98 or more yards in N.F.L. history, according to Pro Football Reference. According to the N.F.L.'s Next Gen Stats database, Jones hit 21.19 miles per hour on the run, gaining 94 more yards than expected on the play the highest mark in that statistic all season. It is hard to tell by the final score, but this was a closely contested 17 17 game at halftime, and the second half had a slow start as well. Jones's wild 98 yard run came on the first play of Tampa Bay's second drive of the third quarter, and from there the Buccaneers were off to the races. Needless to say, the 192 yards rushing were a personal best for Jones, who came into the day with a career high of 113. He had just 9 last week. Detroit's Matt Prater got most of the attention for a three field goal game that included a 59 yard game winner as time expired, but he was far from alone. With one game remaining in Week 10, the league's kickers have already connected for 11 field goals of 50 or more yards, tying a record set in Week 13 of the 2012 season. The longest field goal on Sunday belonged to Seattle's Jason Myers, who hit a 61 yarder in the Seahawks' loss to Los Angeles. But the best day, beyond Prater's, belonged to Buffalo's Tyler Bass who connected on field goals of 54, 55 and 58 yards, setting a new career long on three consecutive kicks. Cardinals 32, Bills 30 The photo above this item is of a Cardinals touchdown. Buccaneers 46, Panthers 23 Tom Brady had more than 300 yards passing for the third time this season he topped that mark only once in his final 10 games with New England and he once again split up his touchdown passes, with one each to Rob Gronkowski, Mike Evans and Cameron Brate. Steelers 36, Bengals 10 Pittsburgh's big day on offense saw Diontae Johnson, a second year wide receiver, contribute six catches for 116 yards and a touchdown while the rookie sensation Chase Claypool scored two more touchdowns, bringing his total over his last six games to eight. Browns 10, Texans 7 In his first action since Week 4, Nick Chubb ran for 126 yards and a touchdown while Kareem Hunt, seeming happy to share the load, had 132 yards from scrimmage. Lions 30, Footballers 27 In his first start in nearly two years following a devastating leg break, Alex Smith threw for 390 yards and rallied his team all the way back from a 24 3 deficit to a 27 27 tie before a mistake by his team's defense handed Detroit the victory. Raiders 37, Broncos 12 When asked about a game in which his team's defense forced five turnovers and running backs Josh Jacobs and Devontae Booker combined for 193 yards rushing and four touchdowns, quarterback Derek Carr just seemed happy to be there. "It's kind of awesome," Carr said in his postgame news conference. "As I get older, I let the young guys do more of the work."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
A Food and Drug Administration panel opened a new era in medicine on Wednesday, unanimously recommending that the agency approve the first ever treatment that genetically alters a patient's own cells to fight cancer, transforming them into what scientists call "a living drug" that powerfully bolsters the immune system to shut down the disease. If the F.D.A. accepts the recommendation, which is likely, the treatment will be the first gene therapy ever to reach the market in the United States. Others are expected: Researchers and drug companies have been engaged in intense competition for decades to reach this milestone. Novartis is now poised to be the first. Its treatment is for a type of leukemia, and it is working on similar types of treatments in hundreds of patients for another form of the disease, as well as multiple myeloma and an aggressive brain tumor. To use the technique, a separate treatment must be created for each patient their cells removed at an approved medical center, frozen, shipped to a Novartis plant for thawing and processing, frozen again and shipped back to the treatment center. A single dose of the resulting product has brought long remissions, and possibly cures, to scores of patients in studies who were facing death because every other treatment had failed. The panel recommended approving the treatment for B cell acute lymphoblastic leukemia that has resisted treatment, or relapsed, in children and young adults aged 3 to 25. One of those patients, Emily Whitehead, now 12 and the first child ever given the altered cells, was at the meeting of the panel with her parents to advocate for approval of the drug that saved her life. In 2012, as a 6 year old, she was treated in a study at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. Severe side effects raging fever, crashing blood pressure, lung congestion nearly killed her. But she emerged cancer free, and has remained so. "We believe that when this treatment is approved it will save thousands of children's lives around the world," Emily's father, Tom Whitehead, told the panel. "I hope that someday all of you on the advisory committee can tell your families for generations that you were part of the process that ended the use of toxic treatments like chemotherapy and radiation as standard treatment, and turned blood cancers into a treatable disease that even after relapse most people survive." The main evidence that Novartis presented to the F.D.A. came from a study of 63 patients who received the treatment from April 2015 to August 2016. Fifty two of them, or 82.5 percent, went into remission a high rate for such a severe disease. Eleven others died. "It's a new world, an exciting therapy," said Dr. Gwen Nichols, the chief medical officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, which paid for some of the research that led to the treatment. The next step, she said, will be to determine "what we can combine it with and is there a way to use it in the future to treat patients with less disease, so that the immune system is in better shape and really able to fight." She added, "This is the beginning of something big." At the meeting, the panel of experts did not question the lifesaving potential of the treatment in hopeless cases. But they raised concerns about potentially life threatening side effects short term worries about acute reactions like those Emily experienced, and longer term worries about whether the infused cells could, years later, cause secondary cancers or other problems. Oncologists have learned how to treat the acute reactions, and so far, no long term problems have been detected, but not enough time has passed to rule them out. Patients who receive the treatment will be entered in a registry and tracked for 15 years. Treatments involving live cells, known as "biologics" are generally far more difficult to manufacture than standard drugs, and the panelists also expressed concerns about whether Novartis would be able to produce consistent treatments and maintain quality control as it scaled up its operation. Another parent at the meeting, Don McMahon, described his son Connor's grueling 12 years with severe and relapsing leukemia, which started when he was 3. Mr. McMahon displayed painful photographs of Connor, bald and intubated during treatment. And he added that chemotherapy had left his son infertile. A year ago, the family was preparing for a bone marrow transplant when they learned about the cell treatment, which Connor then underwent at Duke University. He has since returned to playing hockey. Compared with standard treatment, which required dozens of spinal taps and painful bone marrow tests, the T cell treatment was far easier to tolerate, Mr. McMahon said, and he urged the panel to vote for approval. A third parent, Amy Kappen, also recommended approval, even though her daughter, Sophia, 5, had died despite receiving the cell treatment. But it did relieve her symptoms and give her a few extra months. Sophia's disease was far advanced, and Ms. Kappen thought that if the treatment could have been given sooner, Sophia might have survived. The treatment was developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and licensed to Novartis. Use will not be widespread at first because the disease is not common. It affects only 5,000 people a year, about 60 percent of them children and young adults. Most children are cured with standard treatments, but in 15 percent of cases like Emily's and Connor's the disease does not respond, or it relapses. Analysts predict that these individualized treatments could cost more than 300,000, but a spokeswoman for Novartis, Julie Masow, declined to specify a price. Although the figure may seem high, people with cancer often endure years of expensive treatment and repeat hospital stays that can ultimately cost even more. Because the treatment is complex and patients need expert care to manage the side effects, Novartis will initially limit its use to 30 or 35 medical centers where employees will be trained and approved to administer it, the company said. As to whether the treatment, known as CTL019 or tisagenlecleucel (pronounced tis a gen LEK loo sell), will be available in other countries, Ms. Masow said by email: "Should CTL019 receive approval in the U.S., it will be the decision of the centers whether to receive international patients. We are working on bringing CTL019 to other countries around the world." She added that the company would file for approvals in the European Union later this year. By late November 2016, 11 of the 52 patients in the study who went into remission relapsed. Twenty nine were still in remission. Eleven others had further treatments, like bone marrow transplants. One patient was not available for assessment. Three who had relapses died, and one who did not relapse died from a new treatment given during remission. The median duration of remission is not known because it has not been reached: Some patients were still well when last checked. Researchers are still debating about which patients can safely forgo further treatment, and which might need a bone marrow treatment to give the best chance of a cure. The treatment requires removing millions of a patient's T cells a type of white blood cell often called soldiers of the immune system and genetically engineering them to kill cancer cells. The technique employs a disabled form of H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS, to carry new genetic material into the T cells to reprogram them. The process turbocharges the T cells to attack B cells, a normal part of the immune system that turn malignant in leukemia. The T cells home in on a protein called CD 19 that is found on the surface of most B cells. The altered T cells are then dripped back into the patient's veins, where they multiply and start fighting the cancer. Dr. Carl H. June, a leader of the University of Pennsylvania team that developed the treatment, calls the turbocharged cells "serial killers." A single one can destroy up to 100,000 cancer cells. Because the treatment destroys not only leukemic B cells but also healthy ones, which help fight germs, patients need treatment to protect them from infection. So every few months they receive infusions of immune globulins. In studies, the process of re engineering T cells for treatment sometimes took four months, and some patients were so sick that they died before their cells came back. At the meeting, Novartis said the turnaround time was now down to 22 days. The company also described bar coding and other procedures used to keep from mixing up samples once the treatment is conducted on a bigger scale.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
How Much Watching Time Do You Have This Weekend? None No matter how much free time you have this weekend, we have TV recommendations for you. Come back every week for new suggestions on what to watch. This Weekend I Have ... a Half Hour, and I Want Sketch 'Baroness von Sketch Show' When to watch: Wednesdays at midnight, on IFC; now, on IFC.com. The fourth season of this Canadian sketch series is as smart and irreverent as ever, focused on strange social conventions and goofy clashes of context. "Baroness" has terrific premises and an impressive variety of formats, but its biggest strength is how quickly it moves from sketch to sketch, happy to let something be a two second sight gag if that's the funniest version of the joke. As some stand up is moving toward a more flowing, storytelling state, it's nice to have the bold staccatos of sketch in the mix, too. (Episodes debut two at a time each Wednesday at midnight; the first two are already streaming on IFC's website and app.) ... a Few Hours, and I Want to Sob 'Queer Eye: We're in Japan' When to watch: Starting Friday, on Netflix. Every episode of "Queer Eye" gets emotional, but this four episode mini season in Japan is another level; I'm not sure I've ever seen more open sobbing on any TV show ever. This is a feel good show, and the episodes do ultimately all feel good. But there's also a moment when Karamo just thoughtfully and silently hugs a man through his profound, weeping catharsis. It's among the most moving TV moments of the year. 'Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan' When to watch: Now, on Amazon. John Krasinski et al. head to Venezuela on the new season of "Jack Ryan," where explosions, danger and yearning abound. There's a familiarity to some of the proceedings and not just because there are so many iterations of the Jack Ryan character, but also because "Homeland" exists but it is also energetic and exciting. It's umami TV, so meaty and pleasurable you want to gobble it down, regardless of nutritional content. (Season 2 was released in full on Thursday, a day early.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
MASTERPIECE: WORLD ON FIRE 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). If you have the appetite for an epic war drama during these tough times, give this new series a try. It centers on several people in five countries navigating life during the first year of World War II. Helen Hunt plays an American journalist; Jonah Hauer King is a British interpreter working in Poland and Sean Bean ("Game of Thrones") takes on the role of a pacifist bus driver. ACM PRESENTS: OUR COUNTRY 8 p.m. on CBS. Last month the Academy of Country Music postponed its annual awards show, planned for April 5, because of the coronavirus outbreak. To fill that gap and keep fans entertained, the academy has put together this two hour special. A list artists, including Kelsea Ballerini, Dierks Bentley and Brandi Carlile, will hold conversations and perform acoustic versions of their hits straight from their homes. The special will also feature tribute performances in honor of Kenny Rogers, who died on March 20.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
ALAMEDA, Calif. A few years ago, Thushan and Megan Amarasiriwardena considered buying a home in Alamo Square, their neighborhood in San Francisco, but found that even one bedroom condos were way too expensive. Then they looked at Alameda, a place that Bay Area residents often forget. One of the best things about Alameda is the most obvious: It's an island in the San Francisco Bay (another part is attached to Oakland) with spectacular water and city views. It also exudes character and charm barbershops display old fashioned barber poles on nearly every downtown block, and politely aggressive Girl Scouts sell Thin Mints. The speed limit is mostly 25 miles an hour. The city evokes a Norman Rockwell vision of America, but with more diversity. By August, they had become Alamedans. They could afford to buy because in 2015, Mr. Amarasiriwardena, 38, sold his start up, Launchpad Toys, which created apps for children, to Google, where he also works developing the company's robot personality. "We could finally buy a place," he said. Their search was analytical. "There's speed, quality and cost," Mr. Amarasiriwardena said. They were not in a hurry, so they focused on quality and cost. Their spreadsheet listed local asking prices and sale prices. "We just waited," said Ms. Amarasiriwardena, 36. Three times they bid over the asking price; they lost all three. Then something different came on the market: a five bedroom Victorian between two small apartment buildings, with a towering turret built in 1894, on a main street. At 1.4 million, it was too big and expensive, but when the owner reduced the price to 1.3 million, they attended an open house. "What struck us was how loved the house was," Mr. Amarasiriwardena said, although it needed a new foundation, which could cost 200,000. The first weekend they went to a pizza parlor and found "a family crowd, something we didn't realize we didn't have in the city," Ms. Amarasiriwardena said. "I felt we were home." The couple's enthusiasm has now led to a chain migration: Mr. Amarasiriwardena coaxed two high school friends from his hometown of Amherst, Mass., to settle in Alameda. After Jason Hill, a Washington D.C., health care lobbyist, took a job with the California based managed health care consortium Kaiser Permanente, he and his wife, Ann Rhodes, a community organizer, looked for a friendly community with a short commute, good schools for their young daughters, and diversity. Guided by a relocation specialist, Mr. Hill spent a day looking for a town to call home. He considered Oakland, Berkeley and Point Richmond before he saw Alameda. It seemed family friendly and felt like a quaint small town. "It met a lot of our criteria," he said. It wasn't perfect. The family was coming from a neighborhood in Washington that was about 80 percent African American. Mr. Hill, 47, is African American, and Ms. Rhodes, 40, is white. And while Alameda prides itself on its diversity, Mr. Hill observed that, compared with their previous experience, there weren't many black residents. The town is 50 percent white, 31 percent Asian, 11 percent Latino and 6 percent African American, according to U.S. census figures. In 2018, they rented a house in Alameda and began their hunt. They looked at about 10 houses, settling on a beautiful, refurbished four bedroom Craftsman from 1920 with a yard on a quiet street, close to Oakland. They paid 1.4 million. Neighbors brought cookies and welcoming cards. When their oldest daughter attended an Alameda public school, she was the only black child in her class. "That was problematic for us," Mr. Hill said. She now attends a Montessori charter school in Oakland, where there are many more children who look like her. Mr. Hill and Ms. Rhodes sold their individual condos in Washington, for 410,000 and 290,000. "That was the only way we could do it," Mr. Hill said. The couple kept the condo they had bought together in Washington and now rent it out. Alameda, home to almost 80,000 residents, is a jigsaw puzzle of a city comprising two main sections Alameda Island and Bay Farm Island, which isn't an island but a peninsula attached to Oakland. 1421 SAN ANTONIO AVENUE A six bedroom, three and two half bath house, built in 1898, on 0.25 acres, listed for 2,690,000. 415 787 3450. Jason Henry for The New York Times There are resort like townhouses and newer houses in planned communities on Bay Farm Island, with kitchens that have islands of their own. On Alameda Island you'll find renovated Craftsman, Tudor, colonial style and Mediterranean houses, small apartment buildings and regal Victorians. Some houses come without a garage, but street parking in residential areas is abundant. A drive into town from the mainland quickly reduces stress. Children ride bikes with no helicopter parents in sight. Half the town watches the blowout Fourth of July parade; the other half is in it. On warm days, parents take small children to the beach. Windsurfers scrape the sky and there are spectacular views of San Francisco and the Bay. Neighborhoods have block parties, and book clubs are not exclusive. 390 TRALEE LANE A five bedroom, three bath house, built in 1990 on 0.11 acres, listed for 1,495,000. 510 343 7093. Jason Henry for The New York Times At Alameda Point, on the western end of the island, where the Alameda Naval Air Station once stood, tumbledown buildings look like Hollywood stage sets, which they sometimes are. With 900 acres of city owned land on the Point, new neighborhoods are being built. Spirits Alley, a cluster of distilleries along Monarch Street at Alameda Point, offers wine, spirits and craft beer tasting rooms in old hangars. Elsewhere, local industry includes pharmaceutical firms, Peet's Coffee roasting plant and Saildrone, which makes wind powered ocean drones used for scientific research. Before the Naval base closed in 1997, Alameda was a middle class community with housing for military families. Today, it's tough for a teacher or a ferry worker to find affordable housing in the city. A townhouse built in the 1960s may sell for 800,000, while a 19th century Victorian can go for 2 million. 817 PARK STREET A two bedroom, one bath house, built in 1916 on 0.6 acres, listed for 850,000. 925 570 5330. Jason Henry for The New York Times In 2017, 493 single family homes sold for a median price of 980,000. Prices rose in 2018, with 502 houses selling for a median price of 1.02 million, and again in 2019, with 469 houses selling for a median of 1.11 million, according to Patrick Carlisle, the Bay Area's chief market analyst for Compass, the real estate company. Still, said Marilyn Ezzy Ashcraft, Alameda's mayor, "We're working to house people at all levels of income." At Alameda Point, old military housing is used to house formerly homeless families, individuals and veterans, as well as victims of domestic violence. In the next decade, 1,425 new housing units are planned, with 75 percent designated as market rate housing and the remainder as affordable housing. The city has about 230 homeless residents, Ms. Ashcraft said, and is "establishing an emergency fund, because the most effective way to address homelessness is not to let it happen." 1001 SHORELINE DRIVE, NO. 408 A two bedroom, two bath condo, built in 1970 with 1,360 square feet, listed for 775,000. 510 331 0963 Jason Henry for The New York Times Families that move to Alameda often stay. Joey Pucci, owner of JP Seafood Co., is a second generation Alamedan. Kate McCaffrey, a Compass agent, is a fifth generation resident. Her great grandmother's wedding dress is at the Alameda Museum. On the main commercial block there are two toy stores, a local ice cream shop whose motto is "Life Is Uncertain, Eat Dessert First," a bookstore, a high end watch repair shop and a newspaper store (which also sells mobile phones). Beautifully maintained parks are scattered throughout town, luring young parents with strollers. Much of Alameda is flat, making biking easy for all ages. And residents are, mostly, nice. "People thank the bus driver when they get off the bus," Ms. Ashcraft said. The Alameda Unified School District operates nine elementary schools, including the Maya Lin School, an arts institute named for the artist best known for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. There are four middle schools and four high schools, including the neoclassical, blocklong Alameda High. Of the students who took the SAT exam during the 2017 18 school year, 85 percent met or exceeded benchmarks for English, compared with 71 percent statewide; 89 percent met or exceeded the benchmarks for math, compared with 51 percent statewide. Gail Payne, Alameda's senior transportation coordinator, said that most residents drive to work. An average of 18,000 ride the bus every day; fares are 3.50 one way or 86.40 for a monthly pass. On a typical workday, 5,200 people take the passenger ferry to the San Francisco Ferry Building, which costs between 3.60 and 7.20 one way. Alameda has two ferry terminals one on Main Street, where there are 20 daily trips, and another on Bay Farm Island, which makes eight daily trips. A third terminal is set to open this summer at the Seaplane Lagoon, and will become the main terminal for trips to San Francisco. Others drive to a nearby BART station and pay 4.20 for a 16 minute ride to San Francisco. Tech buses from Silicon Valley pick up and drop off employees in Alameda. During commuting hours, the drive to Silicon Valley can take one to two hours.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
This review of "The Great Hack" is the first article that I've felt mildly concerned about emailing to my editors. Why am I even using the internet? Why is Twitter open on another tab? Wouldn't it be smarter to disconnect, move to the woods and live off the land? These are some of the questions inspired by the movie, an eye opening new documentary from Jehane Noujaim ("Control Room") and Karim Amer that explores how our personal data has become a commodity that is collected, analyzed and then spit back at us in the form of targeted messaging, with the hope of changing our behavior, as one of the movie's subjects puts it. You can see the movie in theaters or watch it on Netflix, but if you watch it on Netflix, Netflix might know and then direct you to other alarming documentaries. If that seems harmless enough, the film explores how such tactics might have played a role in the 2016 presidential election. The target is squarely on Cambridge Analytica, the defunct political data firm backed by the Republican donor Robert Mercer. According to Brittany Kaiser, a former Cambridge Analytica executive turned turncoat who emerges as the documentary's principal figure, the firm's strategy was to target voters whom it called "persuadables" in swing states and then to bombard them with content supposedly pushing them to vote for Donald J. Trump. That assertion is one of several unsubstantiated claims in the film. In 2017, The New York Times reported that the "psychographics" technology that ostensibly set Cambridge apart from other firms remains unproved, and that Cambridge executives admitted that the technology had not been used in the Trump campaign.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Tazhiana Gordon, describes herself as a messy, mixed media kind of scrapbooker. She uses brightly colored inks and stamps and stickers to layer compositions on paper for personal albums, photos of which she shares with a close knit online community of fellow crafters. In early June, in response to the killing of George Floyd by the police and the national protests that followed, she broke from her usual social media posts of scrapbook pages filled with cheerful phrases and family photos. Instead, Ms. Gordon, 29, who is a nurse, wrote about joining the crowds in New York and her thoughts about the reckoning with Blackness the country must face. She lost 30 followers on her Instagram account a sting that gave her pause. Though some of the loss could be attributed to the normal fluctuations of follower counts, she said, she suspects it was because she had simply said that Black Lives Matter. Certain hobbies conjure a certain stereotype. Scrapbooking is one of those for which it is hard to shed the mental image of a white, middle aged woman. But as the industry and community that is built around this craft has learned in the last few months, whiteness in scrapbooking is not a given. Scrapbooking "feels like a radical act of self care, to write the words of my own life," said Ms. Gordon, who is Black. "No one can take this from me, even if they burn all my albums 20 years from now." The anti racism protests this year have had well known brands including Nike and Gushers Fruit Snacks scrambling to signal their support for Black consumers. A similar response is coming from small scrapbooking companies and individual designers. Ali Edwards, a designer and scrapbooking workshop star in Oregon, shared the books she was reading to learn more about racial inequality, and invited her followers to join her. One of them was Studio Calico, which is beloved for its monthly kits packed with trendier scrapbooking tools, like washi tape patterned with rose gold moons or leopard spots. When Azzari Jarrett, a photographer and designer in Wilmington, N.C., noticed that Studio Calico had been silent about the anti racism protests, she commented on one of the company's Instagram posts, asking why there was no message of solidarity for the company's Black customers, no commitment to work with Black designers, or anything else about standing with Black employees. (Ms. Jarrett, 41, was featured on the Studio Calico blog in 2018, and said that she has been a customer for seven years.) Her comment went unaddressed. Then, it was deleted by the Studio Calico account. "By the next morning, I had so many other women in scrapbooking supporting me and saying, 'Hey, Studio Calico, you're silencing your customers. It's not right,'" Ms. Jarrett said. "I did get an apology, but then I responded with, 'If you do feel this way, then what? What are you going to do to change it? Do you know how many Black employees you have? How many Black designers do you have?'" "They probably don't even know how many Black customers they have," she said. Ms. Gordon saw all of this unfold and "called them out, like, immediately," she said. "If you don't want to post anything that says Black Lives Matter on your feed, or anything about what you're doing to commit to diversity, that's your prerogative. But when you start actively silencing Black voices that have been marginalized, that's where you get called out." April Foster, the C.E.O. of Studio Calico, said in a statement that "the conversations happening in our communities right now are important and impactful, and we're listening and learning." The company, she said, was re evaluating its processes and products. "We're intentionally featuring inspiration that lifts up diverse creators, intentionally reaching out to even more diverse designers and creators for our creative team and product designer," she said. Ms. Jarrett and Ms. Gordon said they found support from others in scrapbooking communities, but the disappointment the two women shared felt squarely within the experience of being a Black person in a space deemed "white." Ms. Jarrett, who is Black, said she began scrapbooking about seven years ago because she wanted to document the birth of her third daughter, and a traditional baby book wasn't quite her style. She discovered a style of documenting called pocket scrapbooking and, she said, she "hasn't looked back." (Pocket scrapbooking involves using plastic protectors that are divided into segments to showcase cards, photos and ephemera of different sizes.) Ms. Jarrett's profile in the scrapbooking world began to rise as she posted some of her spreads onto Instagram, where albums, layouts, process videos and tutorials proliferate. "I just wanted to share a different perspective," Ms. Jarrett said. "You know, someone brown." Ms. Jarrett became known for her minimalist style, but she said that was partly out of necessity. A page from her scrapbook was recently shared by someone else on Instagram to highlight Black scrapbookers; on that page, she'd used a stamp depicting women's faces and had colored the faces brown herself. Seeing her own work again, Ms. Jarrett said, made her realize: "I didn't think twice about having to paint a brown face, because that's how I move through the world." "I want something that's reflective of me," she said. So she recently released her own Black Lives Matter stamps and cards for pocket scrapbooking. One depicts a woman with curly hair; another says, simply, "melanin." Scrapbooking design teams for the big crafting companies are often made up of a handful of high profile customers who, for a period of a few months or a year, receive products before the general public. In exchange, they are typically encouraged to post layouts on social media or on their blogs, if they still have those. In early July, American Crafts, a Utah company that oversees about a dozen scrapbooking brands, announced its newest design team about a dozen women, all seemingly white. "When it comes to how ignored and how invisible we can feel as Black people in America, and the crafting community is one small slice of the pie, and even there, we're not represented," she said on Instagram. "There are so many amazingly talented and creative Black people thinking outside the box, doing big things in this community, and you wouldn't know it if you were looking at some of these large crafting brands. You wouldn't see our work, you wouldn't see our hands on the table holding a craft we just made, you wouldn't see our faces smiling in one of their online courses, you wouldn't see us on the ambassador team." American Crafts apologized and removed the post, adding that it would soon add more Black women to its team. In late July, Ms. Gordon and a longtime scrapbooker named Victoria Calvin were added, as well as several other women of color and a man. The company did not respond to a request for comment. Throughout generations, all types of people have kept photo albums, commonplace books and scrapbooks, including free Black people and former slaves who documented the Civil War and their postwar lives. Today, social media plays a significant role in fueling the idea of who scrapbookers are, but status is signaled by which customers are chosen to be on the rotating company design teams. It's rare to see a design team with more than one person of color on it. "There are some days where that's a lot to carry, being a visible person of color in a community that" doesn't seem diverse, "like, at all," Ms. Gordon said. "And then there's some days where it just feels like a badge of honor, because if I can get women who didn't think that this community was open to them, or if I could just get somebody else to tell their own story, then I feel like I did my job that day." Before starting her own company, Ms. Purkey had been on a number of design teams. When she broke out on her own, she said she wasn't specifically thinking about guaranteeing diversity as a cornerstone in building her own teams, but it happened organically. "I didn't think about, necessarily, diversity, but I knew I wanted people represented. Like I knew I had Asian customers. I knew I had, you know, moms of boys," Ms. Purkey said. "It wasn't specifically about race. It was just like making sure that we were kind of showing examples for everybody that shopped in my store." After Ms. Jarrett (who has been on one of Ms. Purkey's design teams) released her own Black Lives Matter themed scrapbooking cards and stamps this summer, she said she was surprised when so many people voiced their support.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Buying art can be intimidating. The thought of striking up a conversation with a gallery owner can seem daunting. And the alternative scrolling through countless paintings and prints online isn't much easier. Even if you find something you like at a price you can afford, trying to figure out what it would look like hanging over your living room sofa may be enough to relegate the purchase to the bottom of your wish list. To eliminate that last hurdle and help you visualize a limited edition print or an abstract painting on your wall, online art sellers like Art.com and Saatchi Art have been developing apps that allow you to try out works at home using virtual and augmented reality. Other new apps let you tap into your phone's camera roll to see what your own photos would look like hanging in your hallway. Most of the apps, which can be downloaded for free on iTunes, build on the augmented reality development platform that Apple released last year, allowing you to shop from a particular collection of art and use your cellphone camera to virtually hang a three dimensional rendering of pieces you like on your wall. With the release of Apple's iOS 11.3 this spring, more apps that can stick things on walls are expected in the coming months. In the meantime, we tried out a few that are available now. HOW IT WORKS Once you select an artwork you like from the more than two million posters, prints and fine art photographs offered by Art.com, tapping "view in room" starts the augmented reality experience. After a simple calibration step in which you align a green line with the base of your wall, a correctly sized 3 D image of the art will appear on your wall, giving a surprisingly realistic idea of how that Joan Miro print would look in your bathroom. You can also swipe through a selection of frames from "wood mount" to "Chelsea Black" to see what goes best with your blue velvet sofa, or move the print with a touch of your finger to a different spot on your wall. Want to create a gallery wall? Tap the frame icon at the bottom of the app, choose your style (contemporary, midcentury modern or rustic) and select a layout (two symmetrical artworks hung side by side or an asymmetrical collection of three or five). Then tap on each frame to browse through recommended pieces of art or pick from favorites you have saved. Prices adjust based on the artwork you select. Once you have a grouping you like, tap "view in room" to see how that gallery wall would look in your space. A framed trio of "midcentury modern" prints seemed reasonable at about 300 and fit nicely above my streamlined sofa with tapered legs. If you decide to buy, Art.com will send you a full size paper wall template for easy hanging as of March 1. BEST FOR Shoppers looking for a paint by number guide to hanging art on the wall who won't mind if they see the same piece of art in an office hallway or a neighbor's apartment. (While Art.com offers a selection of exclusive prints through licensing deals and partnerships, many of its posters and fine art giclees are reprints.) HOW IT WORKS If you're looking for something unique, Saatchi Art has more than 500,000 original paintings, drawings, sculptures and photographs from thousands of emerging artists around the world. You can sort by medium, size and price, or browse curated selections like "artists of the week" or "new abstract expressionist paintings." Tapping on an artist's name brings up more works by that person. Filtering by price ( 100 to 500) and size (large) produced a wide selection, from limited edition prints like a poster of Wes Anderson's "The Grand Budapest Hotel" by Robotic Ewe, recreated using the film script ( 210), to acrylic paintings like "Amazonia," a bright abstract by Rashna Hackett, inspired by rain forest parrots ( 490). Tapping "view in a room" displays the art on your wall and allows you to save a photo on your phone. But judging size is a bit tricky, as users must estimate their distance from the wall. When I tried to view "Woods II by Dimitar Hinkov" on my wall, the app pulled up the 500 painting, showing its dimensions (20 inches long by 28 inches high) with the directions "please stand 5.1 feet from wall." The company plans to introduce an update in coming weeks that eliminates this step by automatically sizing the artwork to scale. Unlike Art.com's app, this one has no self serve feature for viewing your art in frames. But if you have a budget of 1,000 or more, Saatchi Art will connect you with a curator who will put together a selection of art for you to peruse based on your space and style, and work closely with you to produce a mock up of what that art would look like in your living space. BEST FOR Beginning and longtime collectors alike with budgets starting at 150, as well as those interested in emerging artists. After selecting an image you want to hang, place the phone against the wall and tap "Hang photo." Then step back to superimpose the image on your wall. You can adjust the size with a pinch of your finger or add more images to the wall with a tap of your screen, then save the collection to your photo archive or share on social media. Tapping on your superimposed image pulls up its dimensions along with the option to buy a digital print ranging from 36 for a 4 by 6 inch photo to 84 for a 24 by 36 inch one. The app also allows you to save an image to your camera roll from any website to view on your wall later by using the Action button (that little square icon with the upward pointing arrow) on your iPhone. While the app attempts to solve many of the challenges involved with trying to visualize art on a wall, the execution still has a ways to go. During a trial run in my light deprived apartment, my attempts to virtually hang photos elicited the following response: "Not enough surface detail. Try moving camera or find better lighting." Though I was able to view the photos on my wall, the images occasionally drifted off the screen. Michael Yagudaev, the chief executive of Nano 3 Labs, a mobile and web development company in Vancouver, British Columbia, which developed the app, acknowledged the issue and said he expects the app to improve as the technology evolves. Because this app allows you to upload any image from your camera roll onto your wall, it helped with a longstanding issue of my own that the others did not address: All the framed posters and rice paper prints I bought on vacation in Vietnam years ago that are now stashed at the back of my closet. By taking photos of them, I was able to virtually hang them on the wall to see where I might eventually put them. BEST FOR Getting an idea of how those skiing shots from your Tahoe vacation would look on your wall or as a way to view art from websites without a 3 D option.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
KANSAS CITY, Mo. On one of the hottest days of the year in mid July, Michael Knight, a real estate developer, made note of the torn up street outside Commerce Tower, which opened in 1965 as this region's first modern high rise office structure with a glass curtain wall. Workers were preparing the road for Kansas City's 100 million streetcar starter line, which will begin running in 2015. It will include a stop right outside the 30 story office building, and the streetcar is one reason among many that the Commerce Tower Group, of which Mr. Knight is a partner, acquired the property just 70 days after he walked through it for the first time a year ago. In October, the company plans to begin converting the 500,000 square foot tower into a 90 million vertical city of residential and office space, and retailing and restaurants. The renovation will also include a Park University satellite location, which already operates in the building, and an early childhood school, among other amenities like a fitness center and a rooftop gathering spot. "The best plan really doesn't matter if timing isn't on your side, and in Kansas City, the timing couldn't be better," Mr. Knight said. "It's like all the tumblers on a safe door lining up. Click you've got a winner." Twenty years ago, that was hardly the prevailing attitude about downtown, which suffered from a yearslong exodus of residents, workers and shoppers to the suburbs. But over the last decade, Kansas City's urban core has become known as a cool place to live instead of a dreary place to drive immediately away from after eight hours at the office. The shift has coincided with 5.5 billion in public and private projects, including the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts, the Sprint Center arena and the Power Light District entertainment area, which features clubs, restaurants and possibly the holy grail of all downtown additions a full service grocery store. The number of people living in the central business district has increased about 50 percent, to 20,000, since 2000, according to the Downtown Council of Kansas City. Apartment developers added more than 6,130 units from 2002 through 2012, and occupancy is above 95 percent, according to the Kansas City office of Cassidy Turley, a real estate brokerage firm. Dan Gill for The New York Times Officials would like to see the current number of downtown residents double. "We've got the infrastructure now to support 40,000 residents, and there's pent up demand for housing," said Sean O'Byrne, vice president for business development at the Downtown Council. "I think the next 10 years are going to be spectacular for downtown because the groundwork has been laid to make development happen." The average rental rates for the most desirable units, rated Class A, have increased to more than 1.30 a square foot from 1.24 a square foot 18 months ago, according to Cassidy Turley, and luxury residential developers are seeking rents over 1.60 a square foot. Cassidy Turley also projects that 715 new downtown apartment units will open this year, and as many as 2,700 units are expected over the next two years. Like other urban centers, downtown Kansas City owes a large share of its residential revitalization to the millennial generation's penchant for city living. This demographic group, ages 25 to 34, makes up 25 percent of downtown's population, according to Cassidy Turley. Employers, however, remain in short supply in the district. The number of workers downtown and in its immediate vicinity dropped to 61,400 in 2011 from 79,200 in 2000, according to the latest data available from the Mid America Regional Council, a research and planning organization. That is acutely evident in office vacancy rates, which average 23 percent for the district, according to commercial real estate brokers. Yet observers are quick to point out that much of the empty stock is obsolete and that apartment conversions are taking a lot of that space off the market. What's more, the growing base of young workers living downtown is attracting creative office users like technology, advertising and architecture companies, said Gibson Kerr, vice president for capital markets with Cassidy Turley. The office market has been gravitating toward competing submarkets like the Country Club Plaza district and Johnson County in Kansas at the expense of downtown, Mr. Kerr said. "But I think that trend is coming to an end," he added. Bob Berkebile, an architect and partner in the Commerce Tower Group, observed that office users left downtown en masse years ago, but only after residents and services moved out. Now the pattern is reversing: Employers are following workers and services back into the core, he explained. "We're seeing a cycle here," Mr. Berkebile said, "and we're catching that cycle." In addition to the Commerce Tower conversion, apartment projects under construction include One Light, a 79 million 25 story luxury tower being developed by Cordish Companies of Baltimore, a major landlord in the Power Light District. It represents the first high rise residential development downtown in nearly 40 years, and its 315 units are expected to command rents upward of 1.80 a square foot. A few blocks up the street, NorthPoint Development of Riverside, Mo., is pursuing a 63 million redevelopment of the Art Deco Power Light Building, an 81 year old limestone office tower that outlived its usefulness years ago. The company plans to put 275 units in the 34 story building, 60 of which will be housed in an expansion. It anticipates a rental rate of about 1.65 a square foot, said Mark Pomerenke, vice president for operations at NorthPoint. "We set our sights on downtown a year ago," he said. "The apartment market is very strong, but there's not a lot of Class A product that will support a full amenity package." New construction also is planned on the north end of downtown near the Missouri River and adjacent to a park and activity trail where the Port Authority of Kansas City has set aside 55 acres for commercial development. In June, Flaherty Collins Properties of Indianapolis began negotiations for a long term ground lease with the Port Authority of Kansas City to build a 63 million project of 389 apartments and 12,000 square feet of retailing on five acres.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
This five bedroom, four and a half bath villa sits on a verdant strip of land inside the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve, a protected area in the municipality of Tulum, on the east coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula. Elevated on pillars atop a sand dune, the beachfront home overlooks the Caribbean Sea on one side and a large lagoon and mangrove forest on the other. The 1.5 acre property is about three miles from the entrance of Sian Ka'an, along an unpaved road marked by a Mayan arch. There are no power lines in the 1.3 million acre reserve; instead, the house is powered by solar and wind, and has a backup generator, said Sara Plaga, a luxury property specialist with Riviera Maya Sotheby's International Realty, which has the listing. All homes there must be built from natural materials, and there are restrictions on what residents and visitors may bring in to the area, including certain pets. Built in 2005, the 3,282 square foot, cement house was inspired by Mayan architecture, with a traditional palapa roof with two peaks rising above the tree line. Palapa roofs, made from dried palm leaves, are effective for keeping interiors cool, and this one was built with wind vents to make it storm resistant, Ms. Plaga said. "Every year, you have these amazing guys with the knowledge of how to build these roofs come and maintain it, so there's no water leakage and there's no sun passing through," she said. To the right of the living area are a dining room with shuttered windows and a small kitchen with a breakfast bar and a commercial grade stove. An outdoor terrace leads to a bedroom that originally served as the master suite, with a king size bed and a bath. The current owners created a new master suite in a space beneath the house, from which you can walk outside "and have your feet in the sand," Ms. Plaga said. A terrace off the dining area leads to two more bedrooms with a shared bath, and a ladder from the central living area climbs to a fifth bedroom in the attic, with a king size bed and a bath. The central living area does not have air conditioning, but all of the bedrooms do, Ms. Plaga said. Additional rooms under the house serve as staff quarters and storage areas. Furnished, shaded terraces surround the house at varying levels, and a wood staircase leads down to the beach. Sian Ka'an, the largest protected area in the Mexican Caribbean, is a Unesco World Heritage Site, with tropical forests, a rich array of wildlife and birds, and a barrier reef popular with snorkelers. The Tulum beachfront, which is lined with boutique hotels, beach clubs, spas and restaurants, is about a 15 minute drive to the north. Downtown Tulum, for groceries and other necessities, is at least a half hour, depending on traffic along the frequently clogged beach road, Ms. Plaga said. Cancun International Airport is about two hours away. Located in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo on the Riviera Maya coastline (also home to destination cities Cancun and Playa del Carmen), the town of Tulum has undergone explosive development during the past decade, literally building on its reputation as a trendy mecca for eco minded travelers. Home prices have risen along with demand. According to Mexico's Federal Mortgage Society, prices in Quintana Roo were up almost 12 percent during the second quarter of 2019, compared to the same period in 2018. Prices in Mexico as a whole were up about 9 percent during that period. Two or three years ago, Americans looking for homes in Tulum could find a small two bedroom apartment for under 150,000, said Rob Kinnon, an owner broker of Buy Playa, a real estate agency based in Playa del Carmen. "Now," he said, "it's much closer to 200,000 as the starting point." Tulum's highest priced properties are in Sian Ka'an, which has very few houses, and only about 20 of the size of this listing, Ms. Plaga said. Prices typically range between 2 million and 5 million, she said. Most new developments are in downtown Tulum, as there is no residential development on the beachfront. Between the town and the beach, a master planned community known as Aldea Zama is being built to cover some 1,500 acres. New units offered on the Top Mexico Real Estate website are priced from 170,000 for a one bedroom up to 680,000 for a penthouse. "This is reasonably close to the ocean, with a bicycle path in front of the development so you can go right down to the beach," Ms. Plaga said. The influx of money and newcomers has been accompanied by rising violence in Tulum and other parts of Quintana Roo. The 774 intentional homicides in the state in 2018 were more than double the total in 2017, in what was the country's deadliest year on record, according to a report from Mexico's Secretariat of Security and Citizen Protection. A U.S. State Department travel advisory for Quintana Roo urges visitors to "exercise increased caution" because "criminal organization assassinations and turf battles between criminal groups have resulted in violent crime in areas frequented by U.S. citizens." Most foreign buyers in Tulum are from Canada and the U.S., Mr. Kinnon said, noting that the town's "hippy chic" vibe has made it particularly popular with New Yorkers, who can catch a 6 a.m. flight to Cancun and be on the beach in Tulum by 2 p.m. "The bulk of my buyers are looking for vacation rentals," he said. "They want to cover their expenses by renting it out, and then have a place to come to whenever they want for free." Ivan Castillo, a real estate attorney and general manager of Secure Title Riviera Maya, said 80 percent of his foreign clients are from Canada and the U.S., with the rest coming from Italy, Spain and Australia. Foreign buyers either buy through a Mexican bank trust or a Mexican corporation, though the trust is more convenient and less expensive, Mr. Castillo said. Because the trust agreement can identify a substitute beneficiary in the event of the buyer's death, it also has the potential to save a lot of money in probate costs, he said. Mr. Castillo advises buyers to hire a real estate lawyer to look into a property's ownership history before signing any purchase agreements. A notary public, appointed by the government, formalizes the transaction. Mortgages are not available to foreigners. "Foreign buyers usually acquire financing in their own countries, and there are some who are using their IRA accounts to purchase," Mr. Castillo said. Most deals are done in U.S. dollars, but can of course be done in pesos as well, Ms. Plaga said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
This article is part of a series aimed at helping you navigate life's opportunities and challenges. What else should we write about? Contact us: smarterliving nytimes.com. Ask people in the working world what they miss most about college, and many will say something similar: They'll mention the intellectual stimulation of living near hundreds or thousands of potential friends, studying physics, psychology and literature, with the time to talk over a meal or some drinks late into the night. But our panel of experts, excellent conversationalists all, say there are some ways to keep that spirit alive after college. Dana Trader, 41, is the director of community experience at Meetup, an app with 28 million members that brings strangers together around a common interest. Noah Rinsky, 27, frequents coffee shops during the day while working on a novel about jazz. At night, he tends bar at a Manhattan jazz club called Zinc Bar. (I should disclose that Noah is a friend of mine. I decided to interview him because it seems like every time I visit him at a coffee shop or at the club, he's talking to someone interesting whom I've never seen before.) Ava Coleman, 23, lives in Los Angeles and works in the music industry, on the management side. She graduated from the University of Southern California last year. Joshua Somers, 33, is the founder of Indoor Hoops, a pickup basketball network. He splits time between Boca Raton, Fla., and New York City. "What we've seen at Meetup is that it really helps for people to come together around a shared interest or something they know they have in common," Dana said. "Going for a run with a group of people isn't so threatening. But then over the course of that run, you get to know people, you get talking." Noah noted that it doesn't take participation in an organized networking group to understand why people might find themselves in the same environment. "It's easy to engage somebody when they're at a place that you're enthusiastic about and know what's going on," he said. "For example, if they come in the club, they're obviously in the club because they want to hear about jazz. I can immediately engage them about jazz and we can have a conversation about that." Ava, who described herself as an introvert, agreed that having common interests was helpful, but said she used other points of commonality to jump start conversations. "If I'm in a room and there's no way to gauge what they might do for their profession, or anything about them other than what they look like, I usually gravitate toward people who look like me other people of color, other women or are closer to my age," she said. "We can have a nice convo." And Joshua echoed the idea that conversation comes naturally when people are participating in the same activity, noting that the effect is particularly obvious at one of the locations in Williamsburg where Indoor Hoops members meet. "These guys have become so close just from playing together for the last five years," he said. "Everybody knows each other's name and each other's game and how they play. You walk into this feeling like I might not know anyone at first, but after a while there's a real sense of community." "On any particular Monday or Wednesday night, you walk in there and it's almost like a fraternity," he added. Manners may seem like a weird thing to emphasize, but Dana pointed out that they're a social construct that exists for a reason. She recalled a conversation on the same topic she'd had with her 15 year old daughter. "I'll talk to her about manners and she'll say, 'Social construct!'" she said, laughing. "And I'll say, 'Absolutely. We need those understandings of how to treat each other with respect and dignity to be able to navigate the complexities of interacting with all these thousands of people every single day.'" Related: The 8 health habits experts say you need in your 20s When I asked Josh how to get from basketball to conversation, he said it often came naturally. Breaking the ice with basketball helps, he said, because members can talk about "the Knicks, or bring up any sort of any relevant N.B.A. or college basketball pop culture," he said. "And then kind of segueing from there into feeling out, 'Are you guys doing anything after the game?' A lot of the guys might go out for a beer afterward. It doesn't have to be any more complicated than that." When asked whether he worried that he might be bothering people by starting conversations with them, Noah was similarly nonchalant. "Generally, people are always bored," he said. "I think that rule pretty much applies to bars and coffee shops. You can pretty much rest assured that most people are willing to risk losing a moment or even 30 minutes of work to engage in a conversation with somebody who will listen to them." And he pointed out if they weren't interested in speaking, or if you started a conversation with someone you decided you weren't that interested in, there was always an "easy out."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
"Night Light Bright Light," the latest work by the performance artist Jack Ferver, has been advertised as drawing inspiration from the dancer Fred Herko, best known for having committed suicide in 1964 by jumping out of a window in a grand jete. But it's foolish to expect a Jack Ferver piece to be about anyone other than Jack Ferver. His previous work, "Chambre," may have been an exception. I missed that one, but Mr. Ferver discusses it in "Night Light," which had its premiere at the Abrons Arts Center on Wednesday as part of the American Realness festival. Sarcastically, he stresses how much time and effort he put into "Chambre," in contrast to how little he devoted to "Night Light," which he says he created for the anniversary of Mr. Herko's death. When he can't remember the date, the moment is funny, and it isn't. "Night Light" is as lazy as it pretends to be. A couple of times, Mr. Ferver refers to Mr. Herko and his work, but this piece is mainly a collection of Ferver shtick, amusing and comforting if you're a Ferver fan. He dances and sings with deliberate ineptitude. He recites both sides of conversations with his therapist. He acts out, with his signature cartoonishness, a childhood fantasy of being tortured via the force feeding of pudding. He shifts abruptly between such comedy and maudlin disclosures from his traumatic past, as if his jaded persona were breaking down, but this, too, is just more shtick. He underlines how his manic performing might be a cover for suicidal tendencies and pain, yet in leaning so heavily on his old habits, he exposes them as defense mechanisms that have outlived their usefulness, even as theater.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
It's not yet the same as hopping on commuter flight from New York to Washington or renting a car from Avis, but Sunday's launch of four astronauts to the International Space Station in a capsule built by SpaceX was a momentous step toward making space travel commonplace and mundane. In the future, instead of relying on government operated spacecraft, NASA astronauts and anyone else with enough money can buy a ticket on a commercial rocket. "This is truly a commercial launch vehicle," Jim Bridenstine, the NASA administrator, said during a post launch news conference, "and we're grateful to our partners at SpaceX for providing it." NASA designated Sunday night's launch as the first operational flight of the Crew Dragon spacecraft built and operated by SpaceX, the rocket company started by Elon Musk. The four astronauts aboard three from NASA, one from JAXA, the Japanese space agency left Earth from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Despite iffy weather forecasts gave only a 50 50 chance of favorable conditions at the launchpad the skies remained clear enough. At 7:27 p.m. Eastern time, the nine engines of the Falcon 9 rocket roared to life and brightened the night sky as the rocket arced over the Atlantic Ocean. After dropping away from the second stage, which continued to orbit, the Falcon 9 booster turned around and landed on a floating platform. SpaceX now, as a matter of course, recovers and reuses the boosters. This same rocket stage will be used to launch the next quartet of astronauts to the space station next spring. The Crew Dragon, named Resilience, is scheduled to dock on Monday at about 11 p.m. after a 27.5 hour trip as the capsule caught up with space station, which is traveling at more than 17,000 miles per hour. When Mr. Glover arrives, he will become the first Black astronaut to serve as a member of the station's crew in the 20 some years that people have been living aboard the International Space Station. Other Black astronauts have previously been aboard the space station, but they were there for briefer stays during space shuttle missions that helped assemble the orbiting outpost. When asked during a news conference on Monday about his thoughts on making history, Mr. Glover modestly nodded to the significance. "It is something to be celebrated once we accomplish it, and I am honored to be in this position and to be a part of this great and experienced crew," he said. "And I look forward to getting up there and doing my best to make sure, you know, we are worthy of all the work that's been put into setting us up for this mission. You know, unlike the election that is in the past or receding in the past this mission is still ahead of me. So, let's get there, and I'll talk to you after I get on board." He also said last week in an interview with The Christian Chronicle, a publication of the Churches of Christ, that the milestone was "bittersweet." "I've had some amazing colleagues before me that really could have done it, and there are some amazing folks that will go behind me," Mr. Glover said. "I wish it would have already been done, but I try not to draw too much attention to it." Charles F. Bolden Jr., who served as NASA administrator under President Barack Obama, said that while Mr. Glover was making history, he should not feel burdened. "Several of us have had an opportunity to try to talk with him regularly and try to help put him at ease and help him understand he's not carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders," said Mr. Bolden, who is also Black and spent almost 700 hours in space as a NASA astronaut. "He shouldn't feel unusual responsibility because he's Black. He should just go and be another crew member and have a good time." On Sunday afternoon, as the astronauts prepared for the launch, they were visited by Mr. Bridenstine and Gwynne Shotwell, the president and chief operating officer of SpaceX. Mr. Musk, the chief executive of SpaceX, remained out of sight after he said he "most likely" had a "moderate case" of Covid 19. At the space station, the four astronauts who lifted off on Sunday will join three others already there: Kate Rubins of NASA and two Russians, Sergey Ryzhikov and Sergey Kud Sverchkov. They will be doing what astronauts have been doing for the past two decades on the space station: overseeing scientific experiments, performing maintenance tasks, talking to students on the ground. The astronauts, for example, will be collecting their own biological samples to help scientists on the ground study how dietary changes affect the body. The astronauts will also be growing radishes, the latest experiment to explore whether food can be grown in space. (Red lettuce and mizuna mustard greens are among earlier foods that the astronauts have studied.) They will also test whether fungi can break apart asteroid rock and help extract useful metals a scientific prelude to extraterrestrial mining operations, and a follow up to a similar, successful experiment that used bacteria. With Crew Dragon entering operational status, the crew of the space station can be increased to seven. Since the retirement of the space shuttles, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft was the only means for astronauts traveling to and from the space station. The Soyuz only has three seats, and they also serve as lifeboats in case of an emergency there with two Soyuzes docked there, the maximum size of the crew was six. But for now, there are not places for seven astronauts to sleep there. "We are currently short one crew quarters on board station," Mr. Hopkins said during a news conference on Monday. "There are plans to to have a temporary station that will be up there. Not sure when it's going to arrive. It could arrive mid mission, or it may not get up there while we're still on board." Mr. Hopkins, the commander of the SpaceX crew, said that he might sleep in the Crew Dragon instead. During the post launch news conference, Ms. Shotwell said SpaceX would be launching about seven Dragon missions, some to launch astronauts, some to carry cargo, during the next 15 months. Those would almost all be for NASA, she said, but it was possible that it could include one for a private customer. A couple of companies have announced that they are buying flights on the Crew Dragon to take wealthy private citizens for out of this world vacations. One company, Axiom Space, will take three tourists to the space station, perhaps as soon as late 2021. One passenger could be the actor Tom Cruise. Mr. Bridenstine confirmed in May that NASA was working with Mr. Cruise to help make a movie at the space station.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN and the former executive producer of the "Today'' show, said Thursday that reports of sexual misconduct by Matt Lauer were "incredibly disturbing'' and that some of the behavior being described was "deviant" and "predatory." He said he had no knowledge of inappropriate actions by Mr. Lauer when he was a top executive at NBC. Mr. Zucker made the remarks at Business Insider's Ignition conference in Manhattan during an interview with Mike Shields, the advertising editor of Business Insider. Mr. Shields opened the discussion with a question on many people's minds: How much did Mr. Zucker know about Mr. Lauer, the longstanding host of the "Today" show, who was fired on Wednesday after a woman accused him of sexual misconduct? "No one ever brought to me, or to my knowledge, there was never, there was never a complaint about Matt," Mr. Zucker said. "There was never a suggestion of that kind of deviant, predatory behavior. Not even a whisper of it, nothing like that." Mr. Lauer's firing was announced by Andrew Lack, the NBC News chairman, who told staff members that until Monday the network had never received a complaint about Mr. Lauer in his more than 20 years at the network. That span covered part of Mr. Zucker's tenure at the network, both as an executive producer of "Today" from 1992 to 2000 and through his rise to become the president and chief executive officer of NBCUniversal.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Mirriad, a digital product placement company, incorporated Pepsi into an episode of Univision's "El Dragon" after it was filmed. First came product placement. In exchange for a payment, whether in cash, supplies or services, a TV show or a film would prominently display a brand name product. Then there was virtual product placement. Products or logos would be inserted into a show during editing, thanks to computer generated imagery. Now, with the rise of Netflix and other streaming platforms, the practice of working brands into shows and films is likely to get more sophisticated. In the near future, according to marketing executives who have had discussions with streaming companies, the products that appear onscreen may depend on who is watching. In other words, a viewer known to be a whiskey drinker could see a billboard for a liquor brand in the background of a scene, while a teetotaler watching the same scene might see a billboard for a fizzy water company. Streaming services could also drop in brand name products based on when a show is being watched. Someone who watches a streaming show in the morning could see a carton of orange juice within a character's reach, while a different viewer watching the same thing in the afternoon could see a can of soda. It could start within a year, said Stephan Beringer, the chief executive of Mirriad, a virtual product placement company that has worked brands including Pepsi, Geico and Sherwin Williams into ABC's "Modern Family," CBS's "How I Met Your Mother" and the Univision program "El Dragon." Streaming services are more likely than traditional TV companies to pull off this specially targeted version of product placement because they have direct access to far more information on their customers. With every click of the remote, viewers tell the services something about themselves, information that can be used to determine which products might appeal to them. This supercharged version of digital product placement is being developed at a time when the marketing business which bet big on TV commercials for decades needs new tricks to grab the attention of ad hating cord cutters. Mr. Beringer, the head of Mirriad, said the current digital product placement technology has been successful enough to suggest that a bespoke version is a logical next step. Through digital video services like Hulu and YouTube, companies are already able to target viewers based on information about their ages, their locations, where they like to shop and other details. Some of the data is collected by the platforms themselves, others by outside data companies. And now streaming services are mulling how to make use of that information to create tailored product placements. "Just like there's no reason that all viewers of a program need to see the same advertisement, there's no reason that they all need see the same brand integration or crossover campaign," said David A. Schweidel, a marketing professor at Emory University. 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. Streaming platforms are trying out other advertising innovations, too. Hulu, a platform controlled by the Walt Disney Company, has ads that appear when a viewer hits the pause button. Last week, it rolled out specialized ads for people who are bingeing on three or more episodes of a show, with commercials for Kellogg's, Maker's Mark and Georgia Pacific. This year, the Walmart owned streaming service Vudu enabled so called shoppable ads on internet connected televisions. With a click of the remote on the words "Add to Cart," customers are able to drop an advertised product into their Walmart.com queue. "Consumers are so much more empowered today to flip the dial, to change the channel, and many of the things they could switch to don't have advertising at all," said Scott Rosenberg, a senior vice president at Roku. "It's incumbent on platforms and apps that are ad supported to work harder at how they put ads in front of the consumer." Virtual product placement companies like Mirriad and its rival Ryff said they are talking with streaming services about using data to customize product placements to viewers. Mirriad and Ryff would not name their potential partners. Product placement is appealing to streaming services because it allows them to work with companies without interrupting a show with commercials. Hulu, which comes in a low cost ad supported version and also has a commercial free option for subscribers willing to pay more, said that so called brand integrations on its platform have been far more effective than 30 second commercials at raising viewers' interest in products. Some skeptics say virtual product placements based on viewer preferences may turn out to be one of those innovations that does not catch on. A few well placed TV commercials and billboards are likely to reach the same number of people with less trouble, said Joe Maceda, an executive at the media agency Mindshare. "It's hard to know if the juice is worth the squeeze," he said. "Bandersnatch" was interactive. Viewers determined how the story, set in 1980s Britain, unfolded by clicking on choices presented to them at various forks in the narrative road. Early on, the film asked viewers to choose between two breakfast cereals, Quaker Sugar Puffs or Kellogg's Frosties. Their selection determined which one would appear in a commercial shown on a TV set in the background of a scene later in the film. Sugar Puffs and Frosties were not included as part of an ad, Netflix said, but rather as a way for the "Black Mirror" creators to enhance the film's 1980s setting. Netflix was not paid by the cereal companies. But all those remotes clicking on one cereal or the other provided Netflix with data on its subscribers' preferences. Reed Hastings, the Netflix chief executive, cited "Bandersnatch" during a webcast timed to an earnings report this year. Holding up two boxes of cereal, he announced that 73 percent of "Bandersnatch" viewers had selected Kellogg's Frosties. The other executives on the webcast chuckled. "The most critical data point of the quarter!" joked Spencer Wang, a vice president. Netflix, which does not run commercials, said it would not use the information it had gleaned from "Bandersnatch," saying in a statement that "the privacy of our members is a top priority." But marketing executives like Ricky Ray Butler, the chief executive of the product placement company Branded Entertainment Network, are enthusiastic about the possibility of inserting brand name products into streaming shows based on data generated by interactive programming. Actually being able to do so, he said, may still be a long way off. "The world's not ready for it yet," he said. "We're just at the tip of the iceberg."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
ON a recent Saturday, Blaine Benson sifted through a folder of documents, the remains of a road trip taken 40 years ago. Among the ephemera were Pan Am airline tickets, ferry receipts, invoices for car repairs and a mileage log, handwritten on white notepad pages. "It's the family story," Mr. Benson, a computer systems engineer, said of the archive. It is the chronicle of a continent crossing journey, stretching nearly equator to pole, that his parents once made in a 1962 MGB roadster. "My dad had a thing for sports cars," Mr. Benson, 41, said. "He had a Triumph TR3. He was a bit of a car freak." Mr. Benson's father, Skip, bought the MGB in 1967 for about 1,000 in Puerto Rico, where he and his wife, Barbara, were training Peace Corps volunteers. When their work contract expired later that year, the family Joel, Blaine's older brother, was born during that time headed to Nome, Alaska, where Skip was going to work for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. The MGB sailed by ferry to Miami, where Skip and Barbara rejoined the car and drove up the East Coast. Built in Britain from 1962 to 1980, the MGB was an everyman's sports car, not as costly or as rare as an Austin Healey. It was lightweight and sprightly. Of the 1.8 liter engine, Mr. Benson said, "It's loud." Later MGB models came with a back seat, but the Bensons' car was a two seater. To accommodate Joel, Skip made a little plywood box that just fit on the parcel shelf behind the seats, and Barbara padded it. Most of the ride, however, Joel sat on his mother's lap, pulling her hair so insistently that she eventually cut it. The Bensons drove through Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. They visited family in Iowa. They passed through Texas and went west through Roswell, N.M., and Phoenix, Ariz., before reaching California. They drove north, through San Francisco and Oregon, until they reached Seattle. "I don't think the Interstates were fully there yet at that time," Mr. Benson said (he's right). Checking his mother's gas log they were being reimbursed for travel expenses he recreated the route as best he could. "I was looking at the roads, and seeing where they went and some of the towns where they stopped for gas," he said. "And they're podunk towns." From Seattle, the car went by ferry to Alaska. Skip and Barbara picked it up in Skagway and drove on to Anchorage. That's where the road ended; the MG eventually flew to Nome in a cargo plane. "I figured it was 800 miles along the Alaskan highway in January," Mr. Benson said. "My mom said they packed the car all around with moving blankets in order to make it warmer. I don't know what they were thinking." "We were young and foolish," she said, in a phone call from her and Skip's home in Alameda, Calif. "We were coming out of the Peace Corps, Outward Bound training and all that. We didn't think this was bad." As long as the car was moving and the heater was on, the drive was comfortable, she said. But "as soon as the sun went down, it dropped to 30 to 40 below, just like that." The Bensons arrived in Anchorage three days after they left Skagway. "Skip got out of his side of the car and went to open the door for me and the handle fell off it was so cold," she said. "I don't know why we thought we could do that in the middle of winter," she said. "But we had the car, and it fit us. And we drove." The Bensons spent two years in Nome Blaine was born there before they'd had enough of the cold and isolation. Skip decided he would go to graduate school at the Rochester Institute of Technology, and they set off for Phoenix, now with 2 year old Joel and 2 month old Blaine in back, where Skip sold the car to his brother in law. The MGB stayed there for the next 40 years. "I don't think he drove it much," Mr. Benson said, referring to his uncle. "It was sort of a toy car for him. He had two kids. They drove it through high school and college. And then one of his grandkids drove it around for a while. Eventually, they stopped registering it. The last registration was in '94, and it was non use." When Mr. Benson's uncle died in 2006, his family asked Mr. Benson to take the MG. Mr. Benson had the car shipped to Brooklyn. "It changed colors at least twice," he said. "It was originally black. At one point it was sort of a disco gold, in the '70s, and then it was painted white." Mr. Benson is much as he described his father a bit of a car freak. On this sunny afternoon, he wore a striped shirt, olive shorts and slim Piloti driving shoes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
This article is part of our latest Design special report, which is about taking creative leaps in challenging times. The design magazine Nest brought readers on a rollicking ride from 1997 to 2004. While better mannered shelter books were worshiping white space, Joseph Holtzman, the quarterly's owner and mastermind, carved up his pages and spattered them with glitter. Dizzying, layered patterns formed borders around photo essays about the domains of robber barons, moviemakers, prisoners, hospital patients, orphans and star struck teenagers. Satan was portrayed as a devoted subscriber. Mr. Holtzman at times felt as if "I was behaving like a free form skater out on the ice for all to see," he writes in a new book, "The Best of Nest" (Phaidon), edited by the designer Todd Oldham, who also photographed for the magazine. In brief essays, Mr. Holtzman recounts the roots and evolution of each issue. An unclothed young couple posed for one cover's photographs while living in a Manhattan hotel room, "amid plastic fauna and flora in a garden folly I'd commissioned from landscape architect Ken Smith," he explains. Near the end of the magazine's run, he scalloped the page edges while "living on the edge," spending weeks in a suburban psychiatric facility "where the doctors performed a miracle switchover of my psych meds." Nest, which is also the subject of a commemorative essay in a 2020 issue of Aperture magazine, still inspires nostalgia among subscribers. "It really transcended its indie ness and retained it as well," said the design historian Steven Heller. Grace Lees Maffei, a professor of design history at the University of Hertfordshire in England, described Nest as tactile, refreshingly messy and "a really very rich step away from what the rest of the shelter publications were doing." She added that given its varied subject matter, "It is a kind of peep show, not so different from Zoom in a way." EVE M. KAHN On Oct. 17, a tribute to Enzo Mari, a leader of contemporary Italian design and its most notorious iconoclast takes over the first floor of the Triennale design museum in Milan. The show, "Enzo Mari Curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist" (with Francesca Giacomelli), will include not only the 88 year old visionary's 250 plus product designs, but also exhibitions, graphics and speculative research projects. You'll find his graphic perpetual calendars, snugly fitted wood animal puzzles and aluminum chairs with half moon backs and skinny, insectlike legs. There will also be artworks, created as homages by admirers as diverse as Louis Vuitton's fashion director Virgil Abloh and the retro futuristic designer Nanda Vigo, who died in May of Covid 19 at 83. Mr. Mari, a renowned curmudgeon, frequently lashes out at his peers. (He once declared the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas a pornographic window dresser.) But Stefano Boeri, the Triennale's president, interprets him holistically. In the exhibition catalog, Mr. Boeri explains that while Mr. Mari displays scorn for the superficial mediocrity that he sees in the fields of design and criticism, it is offset by the profundity of his work and his enthusiastic exploration of the world around him. Through April 18; triennale.org. ARLENE HIRST Jerald Cooper has spent the last 15 years living in cities with serious architectural bona fides, but it wasn't until he moved to Los Angeles in 2017 that his design radar picked up on something irresistible: Pann's restaurant, a prime example of the Googie style popularized in the 1950s. While Pann's is recognizable far beyond South Los Angeles, thanks to its appearances in movies like "Bewitched" and TV series like "Insecure," Mr. Cooper, who is in his mid 30s, became equally enamored of the neighborhood's less lauded buildings of the same period. Six months ago, he began posting them to an Instagram account he called Hood Century. Hood Century relishes buildings with midcentury flair that tend to be overlooked: gas stations, carwashes, pharmacies, dry cleaners. The coverage is enthusiastic, and, at times, personal: a meme pairing a 1964 Pontiac Tempest with a Craig Ellwood designed house in Malibu; a primer on John Chase, the first African American licensed as an architect in Texas; a history lesson on the style Streamline Moderne; and an homage to the Superdome in New Orleans. Cataloging these buildings is less about respecting neighborhood architecture in a Jane Jacobs sense than in preserving Black identity. "Historic preservation is such a loaded term" that it messes up the whole vibe, Mr. Cooper said. "I just want knowledge about their neighborhoods to be in people's DNA." KELSEY KEITH	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
When Alexander Lim was promoted to a new job that required a move from Beijing to Washington D.C., he was thrilled. The 40 year old international bank employee started plans to move his entire family, including his English bulldog, Bua Loy. "Giving up the dog never crossed my mind," he said. But he quickly realized that the easiest trip available, taking a nonstop flight from Beijing to Washington D.C., was impossible with his dog. Only two airlines, United Airlines and Air China, offer nonstop service, and both now ban snub nosed breeds like Bua Loy from the cargo hold. Knowing that his dog was also too large for the airplane's cabin, Mr. Lim researched going by boat ("difficult transit") and by private jet ("beyond my means!"). Annually, some four million dogs and cats are moved worldwide, according to estimates from the International Pet and Animal Transportation Association, a professional body of pet relocators. But while governments have made mandatory quarantine periods shorter or nonexistent (if you have the correct paperwork, that is), airline rules have become increasingly restrictive, not to mention confusing. Overseas expats particularly have been left scrambling. United officially stopped flying brachycephalic breeds (more commonly known as snub nosed dogs or cats) last June, as the dogs' compressed facial structure can compromise their ability to breathe. United also no longer accepts dogs that require crates taller than 30 inches. In March, Delta Air Lines stopped transporting large dogs requiring crates taller than 24 inches, which effectively grounds large breeds like Labrador retrievers. American Airlines still ships large dogs, but much of their fleet cannot actually handle the larger crates, says Jeni Redmond of petsfly.com, a Phoenix based pet relocator. Mr. Lim turned to Globy, a Beijing based pet relocation company, to help him book a flight through Lufthansa, one of the few international airlines that still accept snub nosed pets in the cargo hold. This meant Mr. Lim flew alone to Washington while his spouse accompanied Bua Loy flying through Europe, with a lengthy layover in Frankfurt. The transport fee for the dog was 450 and a 12 hour journey was stretched to 42 hours. "The last couple of years has seen all of the airlines ... putting more restrictions on pets flown as cargo to alleviate their risk," Ms. Redmond said. When the case of a pet tragically dying during air transport makes headlines, as recently happened when a husky died in the cargo hold of an Air France KLM flight, airlines are tempted to further restrict animal travel. The recent and not so recent restrictions are confusing, as there are different rules for different airlines. Traveling with your pet as carry on or checked baggage is usually the most convenient option, and it is relatively inexpensive, with carry on generally starting at about 100 for a pet on a domestic flight. And breed bans typically do not apply to pets that can be carried onto the cabin and fit inside a soft carrier that slides under the seat ahead. Animals can also be sent alone as air cargo, and air cargo usually (but not always) accepts a broader range of animal breeds and sizes. This is more expensive, and can run into the tens of thousands for particularly large breeds. "Unfortunately, what this does is put more stress on the pet, because they are typically forced to take a longer route," Ms. Redmond said. For example, she said the only way to transport large dogs between South America and the United States, excluding a cruise ship or private charter, is via Europe on either Lufthansa or KLM. While Lufthansa, Korea Air and KLM are options for international fliers, Hawaiian Airlines is the only domestic carrier without a banned breed list for their cargo holds. Many airlines, including Delta and United, now require international pet travel be booked with an IPATA certified pet relocator. An experienced relocator can suggest creative routes or identify loopholes in airline policy. "We keep up to date on what airlines do and don't allow, and what airline is best for your pet," says Bridget Monrad, president of Happy Tails Travel. "Know which countries you might relocate to," advises Mary Peng of the Beijing based International Center for Veterinary Services. Expats are often required to move with little notice, so researching and planning with a set of future destinations in mind can smooth the relocation process. Mrs. Ryder had to cobble together a new reservation with Japan Airlines and ANA, and she ended up spending 7,000 out of her own pocket to get her Great Dane to San Francisco. There was no affordable option to get the dog any further, so she and her husband rented a pickup truck and drove the rest of the way to Spokane. "Pets are members of the family," she said. "My Great Danes are rescues. Abandoning them, giving them away that's not an option." 52 PLACES AND MUCH, MUCH MORE Follow our 52 Places traveler, Sebastian Modak, on Instagram as he travels the world, and discover more Travel coverage by following us on Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our Travel Dispatch newsletter: Each week you'll receive tips on traveling smarter, stories on hot destinations and access to photos from all over the world.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
The Buzz in Stockholm Is Craft Beer With Less Buzz To understand the rigidity and some would say absurdity of Sweden's alcohol laws, step inside a Systembolaget, a government run liquor store, on a Saturday afternoon. It's predictable chaos because these shops are the only retailers permitted to sell beverages containing more than 3.5 percent alcohol by volume (ABV). At precisely 3 p.m., the doors will shut until Monday morning, and anyone hoping to buy a bottle of wine for a spontaneous dinner party or a few beers for a Sunday cookout will be out of luck. But increasingly, Stockholmers have other palatable options. Grocery stores are allowed to sell what is known as folkol ("people's beer"), containing 2.8 percent to 3.5 percent ABV. Long maligned as tasteless, watered down pilsners, these low ABV beers are now getting a reboot by craft brewers seeking to shake up the Swedish market. At the same time, a wave of new folkol focused bars and bottle shops all opened in the last two years is fueling interest in this formerly low prestige beverage. First up was Bottl3.5hop, which opened in June 2016 as a low alcohol bottle shop, a designation that necessitates neither a liquor license nor a kitchen (Swedish regulations require that bars also serve food). Located in a trendsetting neighborhood in the Sodermalm district, the shop doubles as a bar with low ABV beers on tap and a rotating assortment of about 120 different bottles from around the world, including the occasional collaboration beer with small Stockholm breweries. "When people find out that good beer doesn't have to be high ABV, I think we will see a difference in the drinking patterns," said co owner Martin Jamtlid, who noted that the number of producers brewing low ABV beers has grown exponentially in recent years. "It's all about the talent of the brewer," he said. At the forefront of the trend in Stockholm is Omnipollo, a beer producer founded here in 2011 by Henok Fentie and Karl Grandin. "For us, it's always been about getting as good beer as possible into as many hands as possible, to be frank," Mr. Fentie said. "We want to replace your average beer for something that's more unique." One of the top folkol options available right now is Omnipollo's Bianca Mango Lassi Gose "an Indian beverage inspired German style sour beer, which sounds quite far fetched but it worked really well," he said. "I shied away from low ABV beers for a very long time because part of the truth is that flavor does go hand in hand with higher ABVs," continued Mr. Fentie, who has a reputation for brewing potent I.P.A.s and sublime stouts with double digit ABVs. "But as we progressed as brewers and also as consumers, it's become more of an enticing challenge to try to create a lower ABV beer that has a lot of flavor," he said. "The other part of it is that we're parents," he said, and lower ABVs make early mornings easier. The ability to enjoy a beer without the attendant side effects was also part of the appeal for Alli McCleary Olin, a Tennessee native who in December 2016 opened Folk Friends, a dog friendly folkol cafe on Kungsholmen, with her husband, Victor. A second location is scheduled to open later this winter in western Sodermalm. "I think everybody has this mind set that they want to drink for pleasure, not for effect," she said, echoing the sentiment that folkol is well suited to Swedes' increasingly active and health conscious lifestyle. The couple, both former homebrewers, had noticed an uptick in quality of low ABV beers, especially among Swedish craft brewers such as Poppels, Oppigards, Brekeriet and Omnipollo.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Laouli Houzeinatou, 20, and her son, Hanissa Moustaphe, took part in the clinical study of the new vaccine. Laouli was monitored throughout her pregnancy. A new vaccine against a diarrheal disease that kills about 600 children a day worked well in a large trial in Africa and appears to be a practical way to protect millions of children, scientists said on Wednesday. The new vaccine against rotavirus, the most common cause of death from diarrhea in children under age 5, is made by an Indian company and was tested in Niger by Doctors Without Borders. The vaccine is expected to be as cheap as or cheaper than current alternatives. More important, it can last for months without refrigeration, which makes it far easier to use in remote villages with no electricity. It must be approved by the World Health Organization before it can be widely distributed, a process that is underway. Still, experts hailed the new vaccine as a leap forward. "This is great news," said Dr. Paul A. Offit, an infectious disease specialist at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and one of the inventors of another rotavirus vaccine, Rotateq, which was launched in 2006. "I wish there were 10 companies making rotavirus vaccine," Dr. Offit said, "because thousands of children are dying of this." About 215,000 children under 5 die each year of rotavirus, almost half of them in just four countries: India, Pakistan, Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of Congo, according to the W.H.O. A major 2013 study sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation found that rotavirus was the leading cause of fatal diarrhea in children under age 2 and the only major one not caused by bacteria or parasites, which are treatable with antibiotic and antiparasitic drugs. One of that study's conclusions was that more rotavirus vaccine should be available. Repeated bouts of diarrhea can rob children of nutrients and leave them permanently stunted. The new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, found that the vaccine, made by the Serum Institute of India, was 67 percent effective in preventing severe episodes of rotavirus related diarrhea. There were only 31 cases among the 1,780 children who got three doses of the vaccine, while there were 87 among the 1,728 children who got a placebo. There were no cases of intussusception, a rare but potentially lethal bowel obstruction. In 1999, the first American rotavirus vaccine, Rotashield, was withdrawn from the market because of fears that it triggered intussusception. More than 300 medical personnel were involved in the trial in Niger, one of the world's poorest countries. A trained health worker spent 24 hours a day in each of the 132 villages that the 3,500 children in the study live in. While 67 percent protection is imperfect, it is greater than that provided by Merck's Rotateq or Rotarix, a vaccine made by GSK, when tested in Africa. "Would we want a perfect vaccine? Definitely and I also want a pony," said Rebecca F. Grais, who directed the trial for Doctors Without Borders. "But a vaccine that prevents two thirds of the deaths and hospitalizations that rotavirus causes is definitely worth considering." "This provides hope in environments where there wasn't any," she said, "so our level of enthusiasm is very high." Even a moderately effective vaccine combined with the herd protection that builds up once most children in an area are vaccinated and immune "can have a huge public health impact," said Dr. Anita Zaidi, an expert in diarrheal diseases at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which helped underwrite the initial development and testing of the new vaccine. Rotavirus vaccines are normally 80 to 90 percent effective in wealthy and middle income countries. But among previously available vaccines, Rotarix was only 61 percent effective in a trial in Africa, while Rotateq was only 39 percent effective. Infants in poor countries with open sewers and polluted water have more viruses and bacterial toxins in their intestines, blocking access to the gut cells where the vaccines would normally attach, Dr. Offit explained. And because mothers also get rotavirus, he added, they develop antibodies to it. Their babies get the antibodies in breast milk, and these may neutralize some of the vaccine. Vaccines also may be less effective in poor countries because they may imperfectly match the circulating rotavirus strains, experts said, or because poor diets cause frequent diarrhea, removing protective gut bacteria. The new vaccine is known as BRV PV, and will be called Rotasiil, said Rajeev M. Dhere, the executive director of the Serum Institute. Forty two poor or lower middle income countries are now using rotavirus vaccine, said Dr. Seth Berkley, the chief executive of Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance, which buys billions of dollars of vaccines for poorer countries. The market remains huge, especially since Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and other countries with great needs have yet to start immunizing against rotavirus. How useful Rotasiil will be for them will depend on many factors, Dr. Berkley said. The vaccine must have W.H.O. approval before Gavi and United Nations agencies can buy it. Then, ideally, the price will drop well below that of existing vaccines. Rotarix costs Gavi 5 for two doses, while Rotateq is 10.50 for three. The initial price for Rotasiil will be about 6 for three doses, but could be lower if large amounts are ordered, Dr. Dhere said. The Serum Institute is ready to make about 60 million doses a year initially. The fact that the new vaccine can stay unrefrigerated for up to six months at 104 degrees is a big advantage, Dr. Berkley said. Rotateq and Rotarix need refrigeration, and another new vaccine, Rotavac, from Bharat Biotech, another Indian company, must be stored frozen a great challenge in rural areas with power failures. But Rotasiil must be reconstituted with liquid, which might be a hindrance, he said. That adds an extra step where mistakes could happen. Normally, Dr. Berkley said, a national health ministry will buy only one brand for the entire country, since thousands of vaccinators must be retrained each time a protocol changes. The space needed to store three doses of Rotasiil plus diluent could be a problem, he added. But Dr. Grais, who led the Niger trial, noted that other vaccines used in Africa, such as the one against measles, are reconstituted, "so this is nothing out of the ordinary." Rotasiil is much easier to store, because refrigerator space is at such a premium in clinics in the developing world, she said. Other rotavirus vaccines take up as much space as all other commonly used refrigerated vaccines combined. The real prices to poor countries should start low and then rise, Dr. Berkley said. At first, the poorest normally reimburse Gavi as little as 20 cents a dose, then slowly "graduate" and are eventually expected to pay the full Gavi price. As these countries become richer, they inch closer to paying private market prices. The goal is to get vaccine companies to expect enough profit that they enter the field, but to foster enough competition to keep prices reasonable. In any case, getting more rotavirus vaccine into more babies "is really important," Dr. Berkley said. "As we've rolled it out in different countries, I've seen whole pediatric wards empty out."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
To that great floating map of unreal estate the one where you find Shangri La, Brigadoon and Emerald City you can add the village of Ballyturk. That's the title of the dark and enigmatic cosmic farce by Enda Walsh that opened on Sunday night at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn. And it's quite a place to spend and, if possible, stall time. To be clear (or as clear as it's possible to be in discussing a chimera), Ballyturk is not quite the setting of "Ballyturk," which is directed with rabid verve by Mr. Walsh and features a highly expressive cast of three. That quaint, gossip clotted town doesn't really exist, except in the imaginations of a fraternal pair identified only as One and Two. One (Tadhg Murphy) is the younger of them, a reedy and anxious being prone to seizures and terrors. Two (Mikel Murfi) is of a heartier constitution, and steadier on his feet, at least marginally. There's a touch of both Laurel and Hardy and Cain and Abel to these overgrown boys, who sometimes dream of fratricide. By and large, though, they get along. They have to. For all intents and purposes, they're the sole inhabitants of their very limited universe. Which would appear to be a single warehouse cum bunker (Jamie Vartan is the designer) that looks uncompromisingly bleak, though it has a few tricks up its walls. Aside from some unexplained red balloons on the floor when the show begins, the room's main decorative accents are wall filling, smudged scribbles and drawings of half formed faces. Such is the lads' own portrait gallery, which depicts the townsfolk of Ballyturk, whose doings Mr. Murphy and Mr. Murfi's One and Two act out again and again, with jaw dropping virtuosity, in what feels like an eternal soap opera. What sounds like an intricate radio drama from the world beyond (Helen Atkinson is the sound designer) occasionally penetrates their activities, as do shards of crazy pop hits and tidal waves of somber, romantic music (by Teho Teardo). But One and Two are so removed from what we think of as reality, that when a buzzing housefly invades their precincts, One doesn't have a clue as to what it is. People familiar with other work by Mr. Walsh, whose early "Disco Pigs" opened recently in a revival at the Irish Repertory Theater, may sense that they've been here before. A dramatist of ferociously specific imagination, Mr. Walsh revels in placing bewildered but feisty characters in hermetically sealed environments, creating what might be described as ontological equivalents of the locked room mystery. His "The Walworth Farce," in which an Irish family of men repeatedly acts out the same play in a crumbling London flat, is the most obvious forebear of "Ballyturk." Seen at St. Ann's Warehouse in 2008, "Walworth" was a wild ride of a play, for sure, with its author's distinctive cocktail (Molotov) of madcap stagecraft and verbal fireworks. I mean the point or pointlessness of life in the face of death, and how we avoid and embrace our ultimate ends. And, particularly, how people block the view of mortality with small talk and its physical equivalents. As Two observes toward the play's conclusion, all he and One have been doing with their elaborate fantasies of their fantasy village has been "filling a room with words." By that time, One and Two have been forced into a reckoning of sorts by the arrival of a suave stranger in a trench coat. Call her Three; the script does. Embodied with the silken swagger of a film noir villain by Olwen Fouere, Three makes one hell of an entrance. She also talks like an infernal angel, shifting to song (the nightclub standard "Time After Time," with good reason) when a microphone drops from the skies. What she has to say about giving "life purpose by reaching its edge" is pure poetry and oh so alarming to a pair of chaps who have been doing their best to sustain their daily rituals of make believe. "Ballyturk" is so verbally dense that it's possible to be hypnotized, if not numbed, by some of its lush spoken arias. Even at 90 minutes, it would be better shorter. Fortunately, Mr. Walsh's plays by no means live exclusively by the words he so adores and reviles. As a director, he knows how to weave a web of images that defy language. And he infuses them with a kinetic charge that equally brings to mind the mayhem of Mack Sennett and the shadows of Ingmar Bergman. (The crucial lighting is by Adam Silverman.) For a spirited summing up of the frantic emptiness of our daily routines, it's hard to match the sight of Mr. Murphy and Mr. Murfi (even the actors' names match the vaudevillian sensibility) going through the morning motions of getting dressed, having breakfast, cleaning up and exercising. This is all conducted at a fast forward tempo with the 1982 ABC pop hit "The Look of Love," and it is pure, moronic bliss. It's hard to imagine a successful version of "Ballyturk" without Mr. Walsh presiding, obsessively, as director. As it is, the line between his characters marking time and a writer filling space can feel irritatingly thin. But no matter your immediate response to "Ballyturk," it is likely to take up residence in your thoughts after you've seen it. I've been finding it hard to banish that first, icy image of Three, seen as if at the end of an airless and light stripped tunnel. For all the teetering towers of language that the boys of "Ballyturk" build for themselves, the last word here, as it is in life, is beyond words.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Health officials are warning doctors to more closely monitor patients with severe lung damage caused by vaping, because some have relapsed or died shortly after being sent home from the hospital. The recommendations are part of four new reports about the nationwide outbreak of severe illnesses from vaping, which has hospitalized 2,506 people and killed 54 as of Dec. 17. The reports were published on Friday, two by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and two by The New England Journal of Medicine. In the new reports, researchers pinpointed the beginning of the outbreak to early June, and said that evidence was mounting to connect the illness to vitamin E acetate an additive to the illicit THC based products that most patients have vaped. The C.D.C. is confident that vitamin E acetate was "strongly linked" to an explosive increase in cases last summer, Dr. Anne Schuchat, principal deputy director of the agency, said at a news briefing on Friday. Separately, the Food and Drug Administration announced on Friday that 44 websites had been seized by the agency and the Drug Enforcement Administration for marketing illicit THC vaping cartridges. By seizing the sites, the agencies basically shut them down. The F.D.A., which has been investigating the supply chain involved in the outbreak, said it did not have evidence directly connecting the lung illnesses to the sites, but had obtained information about some of them from patients and their families. Although most of the lung injuries this year have been attributed to vaping products containing THC, the high inducing ingredient in marijuana, the new research also suggests that nicotine vaping may be causing health problems in young people. One of the studies found that starting in 2017, long before the outbreak of severe illness, there was a gradual increase in emergency room visits for lung trouble by people using e cigarettes, especially patients 10 to 19 years old. The scientists said that the growing use of e cigarettes by teenagers may have caused the increase in those visits to the emergency room. But Dr. Shuchat emphasized that the evidence was not clear and needed more study. In the outbreak of severe lung damage, cases peaked in September. But new ones are still being reported every week nearly 100 occurred from Dec. 10 to Dec. 17 and more deaths are being investigated. One of the new reports found that among 2,409 cases reported to the C.D.C. by early December, 31 patients had to be rehospitalized and seven others died after being sent home. Their median time to winding up back in the hospital was four days, and the median time to death after hospital discharge was three days. Those rehospitalized were more likely than others to have a history of chronic conditions like heart disease, respiratory problems and diabetes. The ones who died after being sent home were more likely to be age 50 or older. It is not clear whether any of the patients who relapsed or died had started vaping again when they got home, Dr. Schuchat said, but she said that it was important for addiction counseling to start before patients leave the hospital. She added: "I think it's likely that there are a variety of factors here, and the medical conditions were particularly important." Another study addressed the lingering question of whether the outbreak, first widely recognized in August, was really a new illness, or actually something that had been going on for a long time without being detected. The illness appears to be new: Cases spiked in early June, the researchers found, based on analyzing emergency room visits reported to a database called the National Syndromic Surveillance Program, which was created to detect bioterrorism after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. They examined the reasons for visits, looking for mention of e cigarettes, along with lung symptoms like shortness of breath and chest pain. Why the surge occurred in June is not known, though researchers suspect it was because of increased use of vitamin E acetate, and other potentially toxic additives, by suppliers of illicit THC vaping products. Minnesota authorities who seized illicit THC vapes found that in 2018, 10 of 10 products contained no vitamin E, whereas 20 of 20 seized in September 2019 did contain it. "I believe the practice of diluting THC vaping products with vitamin E really took off this past year," Dr. Schuchat said, adding that the idea of using the vitamin additive had been promoted on YouTube and other social media platforms. But how to explain the gradual increase in emergency room visits by young patients 10 to 19 years old starting in January 2017, well ahead of the outbreak? Though some cases could be linked to whatever later caused the severe illnesses, the researchers said the problems could also have been the result of the increasing use of nicotine e cigarettes. Among high school students, the proportion who said they had vaped nicotine in the previous 30 days rose to 27.5 percent in 2019, from 11.7 percent in 2017. A few years earlier, in 2015, the e cigarette maker Juul had introduced nicotine salts, which make inhaled nicotine feel gentler on the throat and are more potent because they allow people to inhale higher concentrations of nicotine without discomfort. The ease of vaping with Juul's wildly popular, sleek devices, and the addictiveness of high levels of nicotine could have led some people to vape more and more, exposing them to higher amounts of potential toxins like flavorings and to overdoses of nicotine, which can make people feel quite sick. A study published in 2017 found increased rates of chronic cough and other respiratory problems in teenagers who vaped nicotine, including those who had never smoked cigarettes. Research published last week on adults found that while e cigarette users were better off than smokers, they were more likely than nonsmokers to develop respiratory disease. The risk was greatest among those who both vaped and smoked, which was common. One of the new articles, published on Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine, strengthens the case against vitamin E acetate, reporting that it was found in lung fluid from 48 of 51 people with the vaping illness 94 percent. Earlier research had made the same finding, but in a smaller number of patients. The 51 patients came from 16 states, indicating that vitamin E acetate was in widespread use, and not from "just a single, local supplier of tainted products," Dr. Schuchat said. The new study compared the patients with 99 healthy people who had previously given samples of lung fluid as part of other research on smoking that involved nonsmokers, smokers and vapers. None of the healthy people had the vitamin E additive in their lungs.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
To be fair, Louis Vuitton's strong performance on Instagram could have had more to do with the label's nearly 18 million followers than with any particular stroke of marketing genius. Instagram users handed second place to Balmain (which has a formidable following of seven million), a Kardashian Jenner favorite designed by Olivier Rousteing, an Instagram royal in his own right, with 4.6 million fans. Mr. Rousteing's latest collection was a love letter to the France of Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot. The Frenchman had previously expressed concern that his compatriots believe him to be American, and he seemed to be setting the record straight. Demna Gvasalia's Vetements came in third on the list, a surprise given its comparatively modest Instagram following (1.8 million, as opposed to the 3.8 million followers of Balenciaga, which was fourth in terms of interactions, and the nine million of Valentino, which came in fifth). The social media buzz surrounding Vetements could have had something to do with the devotion of Mr. Gvasalia's followers or his counterintuitive decision to stage what he called a "No Show" in lieu of the usual fashion show. Instead of having young models on the runway, Mr. Gvasalia set up shop in a parking lot in the northwest of Paris, where he showed a series of photographs of people of various ages, sizes and ethnicities posing in the label's new collection around Zurich. The labels that failed to make the cut do not have to wait until next season to impress: Instagram is a 24/7 operation, where the next viral thing is just a tap away.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
"Please join me in taking a collective breath to acknowledge that we're all in this together." That solicitous invitation, issued by a cast member from the stage, is part of the preperformance ritual at "Good Friday," a drama about rape culture and gun violence, at the Flea Theater. Warned that the play evokes strong reactions, spectators are assured that it's O.K. to leave mid show if they have to. It's all very supportive, in keeping with requirements that the playwright, Kristiana Rae Colon, outlines in a note in her script. Set in a college classroom during a campus shooting, "Good Friday" is activist theater, and it's meant to unsettle and provoke. Ms. Colon just wants to do that responsibly. But if a drama is really going to get under your skin, it needs to pulse with life. Sherri Eden Barber's production starring the Bats, the Flea's resident company of young actors does that only fitfully. The show begins promisingly enough, with a video montage of young women getting ready for the day. The music is upbeat, the images animated yet ordinary. Then comes a tight shot of a torso, purpled with bruises. Some serious trauma has happened here.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater

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