Split (2)

train · 585k rows

text stringlengths 1 39.7k	original_task stringclasses 8 values	original_label stringclasses 35 values
Deirdre Bair, right, with the author Simone de Beauvoir in 1984. Ms. Bair's biography of Beauvoir, like her earlier biography of Samuel Beckett, was years in the making and written with its subject's cooperation. Deirdre Bair, who as an unknown writer a half century ago scored a coup by getting the reclusive Samuel Beckett to agree to let her write his biography, then secured the same permission from another towering literary figure, Simone de Beauvoir, died on Friday at her home in New Haven, Conn. She was 84. Her daughter, Katney Bair, said the cause was heart failure. Ms. Bair called herself "an accidental biographer, one who had never read a biography before she decided that Samuel Beckett needed one and she was the person to write it." She came to that decision serendipitously. Having received a fellowship to do graduate study at Columbia University, she needed a research subject. After making too slow progress on a medieval studies topic, she decided to turn to a 20th century author instead. She wrote the names of some possibilities on index cards. "Without thinking about which name might present the best opportunity for original research," she said years later, "or even which I liked the most, I shuffled them into alphabetical order. There were no A's, and Beckett came first, before Joseph Conrad and E.M. Forster. Beckett it shall be, I said to myself, and that was how my life in biography began." She dived into a study of his novels ("Molloy," "Malone Dies") and plays ("Waiting for Godot," "Happy Days"). "Reading Beckett's work made me want answers to a lot of questions," she said, "all of which were based on the life from which the work sprang." Deciding to attempt a biography, she wrote to Beckett in Paris from her home in Connecticut in July 1971. "The mail between New Haven and Paris was probably never again as swift as it was during that exchange," she said. "A week to the day after I mailed my letter, I received his reply." To her shock, Beckett was amenable. "Any biographical information I possess is at your disposal," he wrote. "If you come to Paris," he added, "I will see you." Years of interviews and research followed before "Samuel Beckett: A Biography" appeared in 1978. The paperback release won a National Book Award in 1981. Her biography of Simone de Beauvoir (author of "The Second Sex," among other books) was also years in the making and written with its subject's cooperation. It was published in 1990. "To Ms. Bair's credit," Herbert Mitgang wrote in a review in The New York Times, "her book isn't just a love letter but a fair minded and often skeptical appraisal of de Beauvoir's life. At the end, I found myself respecting but not always liking de Beauvoir and her circle because of the heavy cloak of arrogance they wove around themselves." The Times Book Review named it one of the best books of the year. Ms. Bair later wrote biographies of the writer Anais Nin (1995), the psychiatrist Carl Jung (2003), the illustrator Saul Steinberg (2012) and the gangster Al Capone (2016), but her first two books remained her calling cards. People asked her about Beckett and de Beauvoir so often that she wrote a book about her experiences as their biographer: "Parisian Lives: Samuel Beckett, Simone deBeauvoir, and Me," published last year. "The original idea was to write something primarily for scholars and writers that would cover all my biographies," Ms. Bair wrote in that book, "to concentrate on the decisions I made when dealing with structure and content, or how I worked in foreign archives and languages, or how I dealt with reluctant heirs and troublesome estates. Each time I suggested this possible project, even to fellow biographers or academics, the response was always, 'That's all very nice, but please just tell us what Beckett and de Beauvoir were really like.'" Deirdre Bartolotta was born on June 21, 1935, in Pittsburgh to Vincent and Helen (Kruki) Bartolotta. She grew up in nearby Monongahela. In "One Extraordinary Street," a documentary video about the unusual number of prominent people who grew up on or near Park Avenue there, she spoke of being an enthusiastic reader as a girl, so much so that by fifth grade she had become bored with books for young readers. She tried to check out adult fare from the local library, but the librarian would not let her, prompting her to complain to her father. "He went down to the library, and he said, 'You let my daughter read anything she wants,'" she said in the film. "So the next week I came home with 'Forever Amber,' which was that generation's dirty book." She graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1957 with a degree in English and set her sights on a career in journalism. While her husband, Lavon Bair, whom she had married during her senior year, was serving with the Sixth Fleet, she followed him around the globe and worked as a stringer for Newsweek. When they settled in New Haven, she was a reporter for The New Haven Register, raising their two young children and supporting her husband while he was in graduate school. In 1968 it was her turn to go to graduate school; she applied for a writing fellowship, but rather than take it at nearby Yale University, she chose an institution two hours away. "I thought, 'I'd better go to Columbia, because what if I fail?'" she said in a recent talk at the Free Library of Philadelphia. "'I can always say commuting got to be too much for me.'" She did not fail; she earned a Ph.D. in comparative literature at Columbia in 1972. By then she had already had her first meeting with Beckett. His first words to her, she wrote in "Parisian Lives," were, "So you are the one who is going to reveal me for the charlatan that I am." They talked for two hours, the first of many interviews. Beckett, she wrote, told her near the end of that first session: "I will neither help nor hinder you. My friends and family will assist you and my enemies will find you soon enough." In the 1980s she was back in Paris interviewing de Beauvoir, who, she said, could be mercurial, especially if Ms. Bair's questions ventured into areas that de Beauvoir didn't want scrutinized. Once, when they had been working together for three years, de Beauvoir abruptly stopped the interview and told her to leave.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Shari Redstone, the CBS Corporation's main shareholder, moved on Tuesday to quell a rebellion at the media company, filing a lawsuit that accused the CBS board of directors of improperly trying to strip her of control. The suit, filed in Delaware's Court of Chancery by CBS's parent company, National Amusements, came in response to a surprise legal offensive by Leslie Moonves, CBS's chief executive, on May 14. Lawyers for National Amusements argued in its suit that Ms. Redstone had not tried to undermine CBS or Mr. Moonves as she pressed the company to consider a merger with its corporate sibling, Viacom. Although Mr. Moonves may at one point have been open to the possibility of exploring a reunification of the two companies, which were combined from 2000 to 2005, he has resisted the idea lately. National Amusements the entertainment company founded by Ms. Redstone's father, the 95 year old mogul Sumner M. Redstone asked in its suit that the court rule on what took place during a meeting at CBS headquarters on May 17. At the meeting, Mr. Moonves and his fellow CBS board members voted 11 3 to dilute the Redstone family's voting share, which amounts to roughly 80 percent of the company. National Amusements argued that CBS's bid to shrink Ms. Redstone's influence over the company was "invalid" and a violation of its bylaws. The day before the meeting, Ms. Redstone amended the rules so that any vote required a "supermajority" of at least 90 percent. It is now up to the Delaware court to interpret the meaning of the board's vote. If the court chancellor sides with CBS, Ms. Redstone's voting share will be reduced to less than 20 percent. If the ruling favors her, she will remain firmly in control of a company known for shows like "Survivor" and "60 Minutes." The National Amusements complaint also includes interesting tidbits from the company's recent history, chronicling from Ms. Redstone's perspective the stop start efforts by National Amusements to combine CBS and Viacom, a company whose properties include Paramount Pictures and MTV. Deep within the pages of argument and legal hairsplitting, the complaint describes a Jan. 16 meeting between Ms. Redstone and Mr. Moonves on the "long term plans for CBS." The two executives, who were allies until recently, discussed a "two step process starting with a merger with Viacom that would strengthen both entities," according to the suit. After the merger, "the stronger combined entity" would then be put up for sale or merged with a third company. In that case, according to the suit, National Amusements would be "open to the possibility of relinquishing its voting control." The suit also spills a corporate secret concerning potential compensation for Mr. Moonves, asserting that the recent CBS board meeting occurred after Mr. Moonves "apparently" threatened to resign if the Redstone family's voting stake was not reduced. 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. "This ultimatum came against the backdrop of a 180 million 'golden parachute' in Mr. Moonves's employment agreement that had been adopted without discussion or approval of the full board, with the intended purpose of entrenching Mr. Moonves in his position as C.E.O.," the lawsuit says. The suit also describes Ms. Redstone's discomfort with one member of the CBS board, the banker Charles K. Gifford. On two occasions, according to the complaint, Mr. Gifford "acted in an intimidating and bullying manner, including on one occasion by grabbing her face and directing her to listen to him." When Mr. Gifford later said that he had meant no offense, and that he had treated Ms. Redstone the same way he treated his daughters when he wanted their attention, the complaint says, Ms. Redstone reminded him that she was not his daughter but the vice chairwoman of CBS. CBS denied that account of Ms. Redstone's interactions with Mr. Gifford, calling them "baseless personal attacks." Ms. Redstone has said she has no interest in forcing a merger of CBS and Viacom, and she denies interfering with the CBS board's independence. In a statement, a National Amusements spokeswoman said, "As N.A.I.'s complaint makes clear, there was no 'threat' or 'interference,' and indeed there was no action that could possibly warrant the CBS directors' unprecedented, unjustified and unlawful efforts to unilaterally dilute N.A.I.'s voting rights."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
LONDON Sandra Oh scrabbled through the heaped up trash in a dumpster, then suddenly let out a piercing scream. "Wow, excellent," said her fellow actor Turlough Convery as the filming stopped. It was a gray, damp day in mid December, and Oh and Convery were on the set of the BBC America espionage drama "Killing Eve" outside a shabby, institutional office building in East London. They were shooting Season 3, and the moment seemed to capture some essence of what Oh has always brought to her role as Eve Polastri a quirky and passionate MI6 agent "whose instincts and resolve have to make up for her inexperience," as Mike Hale wrote in The Times, "and her tendency to scream like a terrified child in the face of danger." But this time, Oh hadn't been acting. "That was genuine," she said, her expression panicked. "Something moved in there!" Oh's surprising, idiosyncratic performance, as well as that of her Emmy winning co star, Jodie Comer pretty as a picture as the assassin Villanelle, and far more volatile were two reasons "Killing Eve" surged in popularity after a relatively modest, if critically heralded, debut in 2018. Another was its creator, Phoebe Waller Bridge ("Fleabag"), whose razor sharp adaptation of the novellas of Luke Jennings was a genre mash up of mordant comedy and tense thriller, infused with the whisper of dark, unspoken desires. By the end of that first season, the series had doubled its audience, going on to win a Golden Globe. Season 2 built on those feats under a new lead writer, Emerald Fennell, earning the series an Emmy and multiple BAFTA awards, the British version of the Emmys. Now "Killing Eve" is back again, returning April 12 yes, two weeks earlier than originally scheduled ("to put a bit of good news out there for the fans," explained Sarah Barnett, the president of AMC Networks Entertainment Group.) Once again, it returns with a new lead writer (the British equivalent of a showrunner), this time Suzanne Heathcote, a playwright and screenwriter best known for her work on "Fear the Walking Dead." Once again, its producers are gambling with an already winning formula. Can the series repeat its success? Can it sustain its unique alchemy, which has made it a favorite among critics and awards juries? Perhaps, as Heathcote suggested, repetition is not the point. Barnett elaborated. "It's the antithesis of the ego driven male showrunner thing," she said. "Both Emerald and Suzanne are extraordinarily accomplished but had never had the opportunity to be a lead writer on a show. I love the fact that the show has given these women the chance to show what they are made of." And, as she noted, they are all British. "I think there is something uniquely British in that mix of elegance and black humor," she said. Across the first two seasons, that mix sustained a plot that was harrowing, gruesome and hilarious in turn. In Season 1, Eve, an American working in British intelligence, has her life upended by her growing obsession with the terrifying but seductive Villanelle, who leaves a trail of bodies wherever she goes. In Season 2 (spoilers ahead), the two become unlikely collaborators in pursuit of a megalomaniacal tech billionaire. It ends as a thwarted Villanelle shoots Eve and leaves her for dead a neat parallel with the end of Season 1, when Eve stabbed Villanelle. Heathcote's approach to Season 3, she said, had been "to go deeper with each of the main characters." "I felt it was important to see the consequences of what had happened in 1 and 2, personally and professionally for them," she continued. "By a third season, we've earned that, we want to know what makes them tick." Nor will it rest for Carolyn (Fiona Shaw), the steely MI6 operative who again draws Eve into an investigative web. "There has been a considerable evolution in Eve's character," Oh said in a makeshift dressing room inside the appropriated East London office building. "At the start of Season 1 you had a person with a wonderful naivete about the world and her place in it. By Season 3 she is aware of the darker parts of herself, but she also has a certain weight, an understanding of life that she was craving at the beginning." Heathcote's emphasis on the characters' psychology doesn't come at the expense of the thriller elements that have infused the series with both horror and high jinks part of the template set by Waller Bridge, which the creative team says it has worked hard to preserve. "What Phoebe managed to do in the very first script is to take away that spy genre trope where people are very serious and talk in a rather urgent way," said Damon Thomas, who has directed episodes of each season and is an executive producer of the show. "She made everyone very real and brought out the absurdity of real life, and both Emerald and Suzanne have continued that." Central to that subversion was Waller Bridge's original conception of Villanelle a woman who is irresistible but might also shove a decorative hairpin through your eye. Waller Bridge "had a vision about Villanelle, but she was never precious about it," Comer said by phone. "I think people connect with her because she lives out our fantasies of saying what she thinks and doing what she likes. She has a confidence I admire." In the new season, Comer said, the past rears up for Villanelle, who "is having to face her demons and emotions." "She has suppressed a lot," she continued. "I think she is fearful of herself in a way, and the season takes that in a very interesting direction." Villanelle's former trainer, Dasha (Harriet Walter), a hard bitten onetime Olympic athlete turned spy, is one of those elements from the past, adding yet another formidable female character to the show. "Phoebe's vision of a woman at the heart of badness is quite complex, and more about the bad girls we want to be, transgressive for ourselves, not to attract anybody else," Walter said in a phone interview. "She is a great character, with a kind of fanatical patriotism about Russia that Villanelle doesn't have." "But she trained Villanelle," Walter added. "There is a certain anarchy about both, and about it all; I think people love that outrageous daring." "Killing Eve" is often described as female centric, but it also has important male characters, like Villanelle's handler Konstantin (Kim Bodnia); Eve's husband, Niko (Owen McDonnell); and Carolyn's son, Kenny (Sean Delaney). Shaw, who plays Eve's boss, Carolyn, said that while she didn't think the preponderance of major female characters and writers made any difference in the day to day experience of working on the show, she did appreciate the opportunities given to female writers. "There is no doubt that some of the humor is spun from female minds, but it's not the female equivalent of male humor, it's just good," Shaw said by phone. "All humor has to have jeopardy in it, and maybe that's what women haven't been allowed. It's dangerous, it's sexy, but it's not crude, even if it's miles from Jane Austen." Shaw, whose character is seen from a more personal perspective this season, said that Heathcote's background as a playwright had been a boon for Season 3, which takes some interesting formal risks. "She has the skills and surety to bring together themes and threads that are set up early on, and she can really play with comedy and tragedy," Shaw said. "It all swerves completely and you are no longer in the places you were." It was odd, Shaw observed, to be talking about TV during a pandemic, which seemed to reframe so many aspects of daily living. But Oh, who made a similar observation during a recent follow up conversation, said the current environment had made her think about the characters' experiences in a new light. "This third season really picks up on a more nihilistic tone," Oh said, "where both the central characters wake up to an understanding of their lack of choice, of the oppression of having been controlled by an outside force. We can relate it to this time, when we are all isolated and forced to think of the systems we live under."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Stephane and Frouwkje Pagani in their studio at the Brooklyn Navy Yard.Credit...Vincent Tullo for The New York Times Stephane and Frouwkje Pagani in their studio at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. This article is part of our latest special report on Design, which is about getting personal with customization. The Brooklyn Navy Yard once echoed with the sounds of hammering and welding as workers built battleships and aircraft carriers on the 300 acre campus bordering the East River. Today, the Navy and its single minded mission are long gone. In its place are hundreds of artisans, artists and manufacturers doing their own things. At a time when real estate developers are adding "maker spaces" to apartment buildings so that residents can flex their fingers after sitting in front of a computer screen all day, the Yard is a maker empire. The Brooklyn Navy Yard Development Corporation, the not for profit entity that manages the city owned campus, has renovated most of the 70 odd buildings and rents them out at reduced rates, favoring tenants who employ local workers, supply local clients and, increasingly, embrace cutting edge technology. "The point is not to nostalgically re create manufacturing of the past," said David Ehrenberg, the development corporation's chief executive. Frouwkje and Stephane Pagani and their team of 10 get alabaster from Italy and rock crystal from Brazil, and they combine these and other stones with bronze and wood to produce light fixtures that have ended up at the Obama White House and the just opened Tavern by WS in Hudson Yards. Their standard fixture, the Aquila chandelier, hangs near the entry to their 5,000 square foot studio, which has rooms for fabricating, finishing and assembly. A gallery had commissioned a series of vases for an upcoming event, and seven of the one of a kind pieces had been completed on a recent afternoon in Gaetano Pesce's studio. Each fantastical creation was made by pouring resin a favorite material of the designer's over an egg shaped wooden mold held upside down and then righting the mold as the viscous material began to harden. Mr. Pesce took a slate blue vase with a bulbous base and a thin, translucent top edge and tossed it on the concrete floor, where it bobbed around before settling, unharmed. "Something like this in glass would be impossible," he said. Now 80, the Italian born Mr. Pesce has spent decades toying with the wobbly boundary between art and design. In the 1970s, he radicalized mass manufacturing by encouraging factory workers to customize pieces on the assembly line. His studio is crammed with chairs with insect inspired backs, an enormous candy colored chandelier with long spaghetti arms and dozens of framed sketches for dreamed up products, including one for a pair of sunglasses with a sunburst encircling one lens and a moon the other. Multiple works in progress keep him and several studio assistants busy into the evenings. That very day, he had brought from home a plywood form he had just made a "positive" for a mold for the first in a series of vases based on the flags of different countries. After the thick bark has been harvested from Portugal's oak forests and wine stoppers have been punched out of the slabs, what happens to the leftover cork? This 20 year old firm uses that "postindustrial waste," as the co chief executive Jennifer Biscoe put it, to make custom floor tiles in practically any color and pattern, including optical illusory designs that could give a room a fun house feel. It is a 20 step process that starts with flat sheets of cork obtained from a Portuguese partner. Using a sliding table saw, the sheets are cut into squares, hexagons and other shapes. Harry Louis, Ms. Biscoe's fellow chief executive, makes the water based stains, wearing a white coverall to protect his street clothes. (The design firm Spacesmith specified pea green, gray blue and off white for the children's playroom at the Halletts Point development in Astoria.) Mr. Louis's concoctions are rolled on, then the tiles dry on large custom made racks like loaves of bread at a bakery. A blackened steel staircase spirals upward in a massive shed once used as an engine and pump house, now home to Ferra Designs. The staircase and two others like it are destined for duplexes at 130 William Street, a luxury high rise in Lower Manhattan designed by the British architect David Adjaye. The 40 person metalwork firm fabricates such staircases, along with feature walls and other large scale works. Architects and designers arrive with renderings of the pieces they envision. "It is up to us," said Robert Ferraroni, the company's owner, "to figure out how to build the thing." "I can't say I'm a fringe y kind of girl," said Brit Kleinman, the founder and creative director of AVO, a leather company, standing in stockinged feet in her cozy, sun brightened workshop, showing a visitor a swatch of woven leather bordered with four inch long fringe. "But I'm fascinated with how it's been used for adornment in different cultures." She and an employee spend most days wearing leggings and kneepads and no shoes as they crawl around tanned hides stretched out on the floor. They create custom colors for clients and apply patterns using traditional textile techniques such as block printing and batik. The leather sits for 24 hours, until the dye cures, then is topped by a clear protective coating. It can be used for everything from wall tiles to pillow coverings. The architect Peter Marino recently placed a large order that includes leather for chair upholstery that is dyed a warm yellow and enlivened with whimsical hand drawn spirals. When a crumbling 19th century building was dismantled as part of a Steiner NYC development in a corner of the Yard, John Randall, the owner of the woodworking company Bien Hecho, was called in to see if there was anything worth salvaging. There was. In fact, Bien Hecho was able to use the shed's pine timber and beams for paneling and tables in the new Wegmans supermarket on the Steiner site part of the development corporation's effort to open up portions of the Yard to the public. In Mr. Randall's own workshop, the sound of a sander was nearly deafening. Propped on sawhorses were white oak double doors that had been made for Le Crocodile, the new restaurant at the Wythe Hotel in Williamsburg. Twelve foot ribbons of elm veneer were looped on a table, awaiting application on furnishings for a Delta Hotels project in Manhattan. An outer room is used for woodworking classes. In the walnut slab workshop, students are able to do their own customization of benches and coffee tables they can take home at the end of the class.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
An urgent bulletin (well, email) came in the other day from Madeline Weeks, the fashion director of GQ. While in Los Angeles for a shoot, Ms. Weeks had dropped into Barneys New York in Beverly Hills for some occupational reconnaissance and got a jolt when she stepped off the escalator at the third floor shoe department only to find that it had disappeared. Where once she could count on spotting the latest spiked Venetian slippers from Christian Louboutin or taper toe mules from Tomas Maier, Ms. Weeks wrote, suddenly there was a sea of "uber cool designer small leather goods." Uber cool or otherwise, "designer small leather goods" is euphemistic retail speak for handbags. And the allocation of prime real estate to a category once relegated to a sad corner of department store basements points to shift in the way men consume. Don't take my word for it. Ask the retail analysts at the NPD Group, which this year reported that, just as sales of women's handbags slumped 5 percent in 2014, growth among bags for men leapt by double digits. Among men, sales of tote bags increased by 11 percent. "Male or female, consumers are carrying a lot of things around with them," said Marshal Cohen, the NPD Group's chief industry analyst, "and they want a bag that looks good while also meeting their multifunctional needs." Multifunctional needs were very much on my mind the other day as I rooted around for a pen at the bottom of my tote bag. I knew it was in there somewhere, hidden beneath the gym shorts, the T shirt, the No. 16 Rhodia notepad, the two iPhones, the ThinkPad and the battered Filofax I'm surely among the last holdouts to employ, down in one of those crevices where mysterious lint accumulates. Surely if I had a properly designed tote bag (or else were not so resolutely analog as to use a pen for writing), I wouldn't face this issue. But I don't. I have, instead, a cruddy canvas tote from some nameless maker that I was forced into buying when the perfectly proportioned bag I had used for years became too disreputably battered for me to be seen with it anymore. I'd purchased it for a fraction of its original price when Lambertson Truex announced it was going out of business. Now, of course, I wish I had sprung for a lifetime supply. Leather bottomed and with sturdy leather handles, the bag struck just the proper proportional balance: not so small as to look ladylike or so large as to make me look as if I were running away from home. You may think that getting a tote bag right is a simple matter. You would, anyway, if you had never checked out the confounding array of designer satchels or obscenely expensive "shopping" totes to be found on e tailing sites like Farfetch, or if you had road tested some of those selfsame designer items and found them lacking in almost every conceivable way. Never mind the embarrassing verse embossed on a 1,519 leather "poem tote" from Ann Demeulemeester. How would you ever find your keys at the bottom of a sack as deep as your arm is long? I don't mean to pick on Ms. Demeulemeester, who is far from alone in having designed a tote that fails at tests of both utility and aesthetics. Hardly a designer alive has missed the opportunity to get in on the 2.3 billion men's bag market. Yet the shock (at least to this male consumer's mind) is how few of those people have troubled to consider a tote bag's basic brief. Reached in Detroit, where he and John Truex have assumed the title of co designers of leather accessories for Shinola, Richard Lambertson got to the root of it. "The problem is that a lot of designers make the totes a little too girlie or slick and fashiony," he said. They fail to do as he and Mr. Truex always have, which is to design the totes from the inside out.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Spotify announced it would no longer promote artists it finds to be out of line with its values, and removed R. Kelly's songs from official playlists and recommendation features. Spotify, the music industry's leading streaming service, said on Thursday that it would stop promoting or recommending music by artists whose content or conduct it deemed to be offensive, hoping to quell a furor over the singer R. Kelly but immediately starting another debate over who qualified for the ban. The company, which was valued at 26.5 billion after an initial public offering last month, introduced its new policy regarding "hate content and hateful conduct" by citing two artists R. Kelly, the multiplatinum R B singer, and XXXTentacion, the troubled young rapper and singer who Spotify said had been removed from all official playlists and recommendation features on the service. While their music will remain available for streaming by choice, it will no longer appear in Spotify's influential curated packages, which often appear on the service's front page. "We don't censor content because of an artist's or creator's behavior, but we want our editorial decisions what we choose to program to reflect our values," Spotify said in a statement. "When an artist or creator does something that is especially harmful or hateful, it may affect the ways we work with or support that artist or creator." In the case of R. Kelly, Spotify added its voice to the growing chorus attempting to hold the singer responsible after decades of accusations of sexual misconduct. Last week, the Time's Up organization, which formed around the MeToo movement to support victims of sexual abuse, joined a grass roots MuteRKelly campaign that has called on his record label and concert promoter, as well as local venues, radio stations and streaming services, to cease its support of the singer. Oronike Odeleye, a founder of the MuteRKelly campaign, said she was "just dumbfounded and awe struck" that Spotify had "decided to take this moral stance against R. Kelly's amoral behavior." She added, "Hopefully it's a domino effect with the other streaming services." But by wading into the discussion about what responsibility digital platforms have to police content, Spotify also risked being seen as hypocritical or insufficiently thorough. Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter have faced increased scrutiny since the presidential election about how they monitor and censor hate speech, and how their imperfect policies break down along ideological lines. Never miss a pop music story: Sign up for our weekly newsletter, Louder. R. Kelly, who for years has faced lawsuits and news reports alleging sexual coercion and abuse of young girls and women, has denied each of the accusations against him. He is not currently facing any criminal charges and was acquitted in 2008 in a child pornography case that took six years to bring to trial. His management team has called the recent Time's Up campaign an "attempted public lynching of a black man." In a statement on Thursday, representatives for R. Kelly denounced what they called an "ongoing smear campaign against him, waged by enemies seeking a payoff," and called Spotify's decision "unfortunate and shortsighted." "Spotify has the right to promote whatever music it chooses, and in this case its actions are without merit," R. Kelly's management team said. "It is acting based on false and unproven allegations. It is bowing to social media fads and picking sides in a fame seeking dispute over matters that have nothing to do with serving customers." R. Kelly currently has one publicly scheduled tour date, on Friday in Greensboro, N.C. A representative for the venue, the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, said on Thursday that the show had not been affected by the protest effort, and tickets are still available via Ticketmaster. In its new rules, Spotify defined hateful content as any that "expressly and principally promotes, advocates, or incites hatred or violence against a group or individual based on characteristics, including, race, religion, gender identity, sex, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, veteran status, or disability." The streaming service also noted that it has "thought long and hard about how to handle content that is not hate content itself, but is principally made by artists or other creators who have demonstrated hateful conduct personally." The chart topping XXXTentacion, the other artist targeted by the new policy, is facing charges in Florida that include aggravated battery of a pregnant woman and witness tampering. As recently as Wednesday, XXXTentacion was featured on the popular Rap Caviar playlist. Aishah White, a spokeswoman for XXXTentacion, said via email on Thursday: "I don't have a comment, just a question. Will Spotify remove all the artists listed below from playlists?" She included the names of 19 musicians, including Gene Simmons, Michael Jackson, Ozzy Osbourne and Dr. Dre, who have been accused over the years of sexual misconduct or physical violence. Universal Music, which oversees XXXTentacion's distributor, Caroline, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. R. Kelly's label, RCA Records, a division of Sony Music, did not immediately comment either. "As you can imagine this is a complicated process with room for debate and disagreement, so we can't get into an artist by artist discussion," a spokesman for Spotify said in response to follow up questions. "In general we work with our partners and try to make decisions on a case by case basis." Official playlists can be a huge platform, especially for developing artists, on streaming services such as Spotify, which counts more than 70 million paying subscribers worldwide, and on competitors like Apple Music and Amazon Music. Streaming has become the dominant mode for music consumption in the United States with hip hop/R B representing the most popular genre and digital plays are directly correlated to royalty payouts from the services. While R. Kelly, who has not had a Top 40 hit in more than a decade, was unlikely to have appeared recently on a flagship Spotify playlist like Rap Caviar (9.5 million subscribers) or Today's Top Hits (nearly 20 million), a young artist like XXXTentacion may stand to lose more. His song "Sad!," which had been a popular playlist staple since its release in March, is currently No. 15 on Spotify's United States Top 50 chart. As of Thursday afternoon, the track still appeared on Apple Music's premiere rap playlist, "The A List: Hip Hop." Apple declined to comment on its editorial decisions. Observers on social media were quick to question where exactly Spotify was drawing the line on conduct. The singer Chris Brown, who was convicted in the 2009 felony assault of his then girlfriend Rihanna and is the subject of a restraining order by a subsequent ex girlfriend, currently appears on Today's Top Hits as a featured artist on Lil Dicky's "Freaky Friday." Other artists who have been accused (but not convicted in court) of violence against women, including Rich the Kid, Famous Dex and YoungBoy Never Broke Again, remained on influential playlists like Rap Caviar on Thursday. And the question remained whether Spotify would confront the reputations of less popular artists, including rock bands like Brand New, PWR BTTM and Hedley, whose members have been accused in recent months of sexual misconduct, but have not been charged criminally. Legacy acts with checkered pasts Jackson, for instance, or Jerry Lee Lewis with his marriage to his 13 year old third cousin could present their own challenges, though older or more obscure musicians are less likely to be actively promoted in general. Don Gorder, the chairman of the music business and management department at Berklee College of Music, called Spotify's decision "a big deal" given the influence of its playlists, but warned that "it is a slippery slope." "There are lots of bands in history that have been accused of bad behavior, but they're not taking the pummeling that R. Kelly is taking," he said in an interview, adding that while he found R. Kelly's reported behavior "deplorable," the singer had not been convicted in court. Spotify "created this new moral standard what is it? Where is the line?" Spotify said the decision to no longer promote an artist would be made by an internal committee led by Jonathan Prince, Spotify's vice president of content and marketplace policy. The company said it had also partnered with advocacy groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center, Glaad and the Anti Defamation League to help identify hateful content. Though Spotify has previously removed songs from white supremacist acts, its new policy represents a more hands on approach to editorial decisions such as the content of playlists and the algorithmic recommendations of features like Discover Weekly. Asked last August about its policy regarding artists charged with violent crimes, Spotify said: "As a general matter, Spotify does not alter its content library based on the actions of the individuals behind the content. We hope that Spotify's users will use their own discretion to determine exactly what music they listen to." In its announcement on Thursday, Spotify acknowledged that it was now entering thorny territory when it came to monitoring lyrics and artist behavior. "It's important to remember that cultural standards and sensitivities vary widely," the company said. "That means there will always be content that is acceptable in some circumstances, but is offensive in others, and we will always look at the entire context."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
I paid 390,000 for my medallion. I had saved 10,000 but I had to put another 10,000 on credit cards for my 20,000 down payment. For an immigrant like me who arrived penniless, it was a promising investment: New Yorkers needed help getting around, the city was growing. I had an asset that was increasing in value, year by year, that let me earn a stable income. At one point, my medallion was valued at over a million dollars. But the city's medallion brokers middlemen who arrange sales and loans of the permits kept pushing me to refinance. They told me not to worry about all of the fees or the surcharges and just to think about the money I could get to support my family. They'd call and say: "You know, you have some equity here. Why don't you come and get it? You owe only 330,000 but your medallion is worth 600,000. You can come and get 100,000 today. Just come in and sign the papers and you can walk out with the money. We can give you cash right now." I had to pay for their lawyers, and other fees, including a 25,000 fee one time just to refinance. It still made sense to me because the city kept auctioning off medallions at higher and higher prices. The taxi commission repeatedly assured us drivers that the medallions were a solid asset. The city ran ads bragging that an investment in medallions was "better than the stock market." As Attorney General Letitia James said in her announcement of the accusations, "The very government that was supposed to ensure fair practices in the marketplace engaged in a scheme that defrauded hundreds of medallion owners." By 2013 I owed 775,000. Then came Uber and Lyft. I don't mind competition so long as it's fair. But how can I compete against a company with billions of dollars, fewer regulations to follow and tens of thousands of vehicles on the road? Before Uber and Lyft came to New York, I was doing over 4,500 trips a year. Since 2017, I have been doing fewer than 2,000 trips a year. I've lost 60 percent of my income. As of this week, I owe 632,000; my medallion is worth no more than 100,000. Seven days a week, I go to work from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., but I often come home poorer than I was when I left because I haven't earned enough in fares to cover both gas and my medallion payments. I have four kids and a wonderful wife, and I support my 95 year old mother. My dream is to secure college funds for my kids. I want to give them chances I didn't have. Now I don't know what will happen.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
FORT WORTH, Tex. The dinner crowd was sparse for a downtown steakhouse, a handful of families and couples lost in conversations. Ryan Lundeby, 32, an Army Ranger with five deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, took in the scene from his table, seemingly meditative beneath his shaved head and long beard. "He watches, he's always watching; he notices everything," said his wife, Mary. "Superman noticing skills, that's what I call it. Look, he's doing it now Ryan?" "That table over there," Mr. Lundeby said, his voice soft, his eyes holding a line. "The guy threw his straw wrapper on the ground. I'm waiting to see if he picks it up." He did not. Mr. Lundeby's breathing slowed. After 14 years of war, the number of veterans with multiple tours of combat duty is the largest in modern American history more than 90,000 soldiers and Marines, many of them elite fighters who deployed four or more times. New evidence suggests that these veterans are not like most others when it comes to adjusting to civilian life. An analysis of Army data shows that, unlike most of the military, these soldiers' risk of committing suicide actually drops when they are deployed and soars after they return home. For the 85 percent of soldiers who make up the rest of the service and were deployed, the reverse is true. "It's exactly the opposite of what you see in the trauma literature, where more exposure predicts more problems," said Ronald Kessler of Harvard, who led the study. The findings may shed a clearer light on the need of this important group of veterans, whose experience is largely unparalleled in American history, in their numerous exposures to insurgent warfare, without clear fronts or predictable local populations. Researchers are finding that these elite fighters do not easily fit into the classic mold of veterans traumatized by their experience in war. As psychologists and others grow to understand this, they are starting to rethink some approaches to their treatment. The idea that these elite fighters can adapt solely by addressing emotional trauma, some experts said, is badly misplaced. Their primary difficulty is not necessarily one of healing emotional wounds; they thrived in combat. It is rather a matter of unlearning the very skills that have kept them alive: unceasing vigilance; snap decision making; intolerance for carelessness; the urge to act fast and decisively. "I don't even leave my house much," said Jeff Ewert, who served with the Marines in Iraq and now lives in Utah. "I'm scared not because I'm an uber killer or anything. I just minimize my exposure because I know how easy it is to cross that line, to act without thinking." Alan Peterson, an Air Force veteran who oversees two large research consortiums studying combat stress at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio, is sharply aware of the challenges. "Turning off this hyper hardwiring after returning from a deployment is not an automatic function of the brain," he said. "We have virtually no science to guide us in managing these instincts. We need to figure that out, or we're going to end up with a generation that struggles for much of their lives." Mr. Lundeby's Ranger battalion specialized in extractions surprise raids on high ranking insurgents. The soldiers usually struck at night vampire work, some called it and often the missions were over within a couple of hours. It is one thing to train for such work. It is another to perform well when something goes sideways. In a 2007 raid in Baghdad, the team blew the front door off a house, leaving a screen door half attached. The first man inside the point man and team leader tripped on the screen and fell down. Mr. Lundeby was behind him. "You want to help him, you feel this almost tidal pull," he said. "But that's someone else's job; yours is to keep the momentum going." He next remembers being in the house, the green haze of the night vision gear, going room to room, watching for anything amiss. And then, a few doors down, "We pulled the guy out, put him in the truck, and were gone, done." The military is very good at identifying and amplifying the psychological factors that make a high performing fighter. The Pentagon has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on testing and analyzing these elements, but its researchers publish very few of their findings and refuse to speak in specifics on the record. Psychiatrists and psychologists who have worked with the military say the sought after mental profile is based largely on two well known kinds of testing. One is a 44 item questionnaire that assesses personality. The other test is intended to gauge performance. People who excel in combat tend to be assertive, active, excitement seeking and enthusiastic. "I hate to use the cliche, but these are guys who love to be at the tip of the spear," said a psychologist who works with the military; he asked that his name be omitted to protect that relationship. "It's more than the camaraderie; there's a need to protect life, directly and if necessary, to take life." With the departure of the U.S. military on Aug. 30, Afghanistan quickly fell back under control of the Taliban. Across the country, there is widespread anxiety about the future. None Vanishing Rights: The Taliban's decision to restrict women's freedom may be a political choice as much as it is a matter of ideology. Far From Home: Some Afghans who were abroad when the country collapsed are desperate to return, but have no clear route home. Can Afghan Art Survive? The Taliban have not banned art outright. But many artists have fled, fearing for their work and their lives. A Growing Threat: A local affiliate of the Islamic State group is upending security and putting the Taliban government in a precarious position. The performance measure has more to do with attention and decision making. It is based in part on a theory of concentration "styles," developed by researchers studying athletes. "The classic analyst takes in the information and then retreats into their head and wants to think about it, then maybe checks the environment again and thinks some more," said Dr. Charles A. Morgan III, a psychiatrist at the University of New Haven who has worked extensively with Special Operations forces. The elite combat troops operate much differently, he said. "They immediately take in their surroundings; they have a high degree of external focus. But they're able to switch internally, make a quick decision then act and adjust as they go." In training and in combat, this intense awareness and decision making become much sharper. "Essentially the decision making and acting become second nature," said Bret Moore, the deputy director of the Army's Warrior Resiliency Program of the Regional Health Command Central in San Antonio. "You do not want these guys thinking too much." That may help explain the recent suicide findings. The research team, led by Dr. Kessler of Harvard and Dr. Robert Ursano of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, analyzed 496 suicides among men in the Army from 2004 to 2009. The risks for two jobs infantryman and combat engineer were higher across the board, at 37 per 100,000 each year. But the rate was 30 per 100,000 while deployed, compared with 40 per 100,000 when back home. The rate across the rest of the Army was much lower at home, 15 per 100,000, compared with during deployment, where it was 22 per 100,000. The combat veterans in this category form "a pretty closed club," said Ford Sypher, a friend of Mr. Lundeby's and a fellow Ranger, who deployed five times and, after leaving the Army, has returned to the Middle East, now as a documentary filmmaker. "We don't talk about this stuff much with anyone. But we're all trying to figure out ways to manage it." For now, there is no therapy that reliably reverses or dials down the instincts acquired in multiple combat tours. Military backed researchers are experimenting with a variety of approaches for these veterans, including virtual reality and biofeedback techniques, in effect to train new instincts that overwrite the old ones. There are psychologists who argue that vigilance, snap decision making and other combat attributes can be helpful in some aspects of civilian life. "You begin by letting people know that they're not crazy, it's not at all abnormal to have these reactions it's normal," said Richard Tedeschi, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, who works with veterans. And those skills, he added, "can be turned to a future mission, whether that's related to family, or helping other vets, or to a job." Mr. Lundeby has been lucky. He has a supportive family and group of friends, and a wife who understands his quirks and helps him manage them. She was the one who demanded he visit a veterans clinic, which led to therapy with a former Marine who understood how to get him to think before acting even if the urge was strong.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The Brooklyn Academy of Music on Monday unveiled the lineup of the final Next Wave Festival to be overseen by Joseph V. Melillo, the institution's executive producer and a vital connection to its reputation as a home of cutting edge music, theater and dance. Mr. Melillo, who was hired by the visionary BAM leader Harvey Lichtenstein in 1983 and eventually succeeded him, announced in 2017 that he would step down from his leadership role at the end of this year, after more than three decades as a pathbreaking impresario. (Still to come is Mr. Melillo's final winter spring season, which will be announced in the fall.) "The original Next Wave concept, envisioned by Harvey Lichtenstein, remains vital and dynamic," Mr. Melillo, who was the festival's founding director, said in a statement. "The season comprises a broad array of wondrous personal expression and unique artistic perspectives." Among the world premieres is "Place" (Oct. 11 13), a staged oratorio by the Pulitzer Prize finalist Ted Hearne, which was meant to have its premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic in April. (The performance was canceled because of "unforeseen delays in the creative process.") The work, for 18 instrumentalists and six singers, explores themes around gentrification, ownership and the American experience.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The female Cape bee is a renegade. She breaks all kinds of rules and disregards orders. In this isolated subspecies of honey bees from South Africa, female worker bees can escape their queen's control, take over other colonies and reproduce asexually with no need for males. Scientists identified the genes most likely to have instigated this unusually powerful worker bee behavior, according to a study published Thursday in PLOS Genetics. The typical story of reproduction is that males and females of an animal species do it sexually. Generally, that's what honeybees do, too. Sperm from a male drone fertilizes a queen's eggs, and she sends out a chemical signal, or pheromone, that renders worker bees, which are all female, sterile when they detect it. But the Cape honeybee, a subspecies that lives in the Fynbos ecoregion, a unique area of incredible diversity along the southwestern tip of South Africa, evolved a workaround where, in some cases, female workers can become something like a queen and produce offspring of their own. Like all honeybees, some Cape bee colonies also have male drones. But female workers can start laying their own eggs in their home colony when a queen dies. These females will also invade colonies of other honeybee subspecies and lay eggs in some cases, and they can enter undetected by bees that would normally kick them out. "The Cape bees will take over the foreign colonies and start eating up all the honey," said Matthew Webster, a geneticist at Uppsala University in Sweden, who led the study. This behavior is called social parasitism. To understand what was driving this behavior, researchers compared the whole genomes of 100 honeybee subspecies with those of 10 Cape honeybees. Unsurprisingly, the genomes were very similar: The bees look and act the same in every way except for the egg laying quirk. But a few select areas of the genome were unique on the Cape honeybee genome. "Normally that doesn't cause really big differences," said Dr. Webster. But in this particular bee, the workers lay eggs that self fertilize and become female workers in their home colonies or the hives they invade. Genetic differences likely made social parasitism possible by selecting for bees that could develop ovaries to a greater extent than other worker bees, lay eggs prepackaged with two sets of chromosomes, and possibly emit a chemical signal to mask their presence while laying eggs, said Dr. Webster. This asexual tendency may sound weird, but it's not unheard of in biology. A variety of species of ants, wasps and bees can switch between sexual and asexual reproduction. And scientists have documented virgin births in turkeys, chickens, sharks and reptiles. During a process called thelytoky, two of the Cape bee's daughter cells fuse together to make a single cell with both sets of chromosomes just like Thelma the snake, a reticulated python known for her virgin births. Normally, honeybee eggs split during meiosis into four daughter cells with just one set of chromosomes. Those turn into male drones without a father to contribute the other set to make them female. What scientists haven't sorted out is why there might be an evolutionary advantage for a female being able to reproduce without a male. In extreme situations with no males, it could mean the survival of her species. But then again, self fertilization, the epitome of inbreeding, could leave her offspring more vulnerable to disease and other threats. Dr. Webster hopes to elucidate why this adaptation on the Cape honeybee genome survived. "Why doesn't it take over the whole world, and why doesn't it die out?" wondered Dr. Webster. "There's no really good answer to that."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The idea was born in an instant. A curator attending an opening at the Baltimore Museum of Art was immediately captivated by a painting from an artist she had barely heard of, Mary Lovelace O'Neal. Three months later, a five decade retrospective opened at the Mnuchin Gallery in Manhattan, Ms. Lovelace O'Neal's first solo show in New York since 1993, and a chronicle of a career that started with social activist art at the heart of the civil rights movement. The painting that caught the curator's eye was"Running Freed More Slaves Than Lincoln Ever Did" (1995), part of the exhibition "Generations: A History of Black Abstract Art," which opened last September. "Her handling in that painting the dripping and drawing alongside the expressionist strokes struck me as so unapologetically bold that I wanted to meet her," the curator, Sukanya Rajaratnam, recalls. "And lo and behold, she just appeared that evening in front of that painting, and we immediately hit it off." Ms. Rajaratnam traveled to Ms. Lovelace O'Neal's studio in Oakland, Calif., where she scoured warehouses of artwork to assemble the show, "Chasing Down the Image," which is on view at Mnuchin through March 14. Ms. Lovelace O'Neal, raised in Jackson, Miss., joined in civil rights marches and became involved with the Black Arts Movement. She earned an M.F.A. at Columbia University, and went on to become a professor of art at the University of California at Berkeley in 1979 and later chair of the department of art practice there. She has been professor emerita since 2006. At the gallery, she discussed making art in the deserts of Chile, in Paris, and in North and West Africa. Her works reflect her activism, with titles including "Running With My Black Panthers and White Doves"; her love of music, "Thelonious Searching Those Familiar Keys"; and her appreciation of nature the whale mating series from the 1980s which will be the focus of an exhibition opening March 24 the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco. I didn't want to go to college but I was expected to. I grew up on a college campus, where my father was a music professor. At Howard, I met Stokely Carmichael whom she dated and other folks important to the movement. We formed the Non Violent Action Group, modeled on SNCC, the Student Non Violent Coordinating Committee, pronounced "snick" . We brought in Bayard Rustin and Sidney Poitier to give lectures. James Baldwin became a mentor and personal friend. Themes of racial and social justice were always there in my art. I saw that the Cuban printmakers were good at propaganda, but I wasn't. I couldn't paint black women jumping out of fields with guns. Still, I grew up as a black woman in a segregated society, and my work always reflects that. It was a dangerous time in the movement. The chairman of the art department would call me to say, "Your time spent in jail is not contributing to your time in class." During the summer of 1963, I was a resident at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where I had the freedom to do nothing but eat and paint. It was an important experience, to see how ideas succeed and fail and learn how to solve problems associated with that failure. You started out doing social activist art and changed when you came to New York. Why? I immediately butted heads with the chairman of Columbia's art department. I was using real fast brush strokes in a de Kooningesque way. When you looked at it, you wanted to lick it. I gave up my expressionist style. I starting applying layers of pure powdered black pigment on unstretched, unprimed canvas on the ground to engage with the dialogues around "flatness" then exemplified by the soak staining methods of the Color Field painters. The black pigment paintings were as black as they could be. They can also be seen as my response to my friends in the Black Arts Movement. I'm reluctant to call myself an abstract expressionist or a minimalist. I call myself a painter. What I can do is paint and make things that are powerful. Galleries want to codify you. Every time you move away from the doctrine, you get questioned. Being unruly is my nature. As for doctrinaire, I had to blow it up. I fell in love with the work of Donald Judd. No matter how ego involved he was, he came off as a sweet man. His work seemed to have a different edge from what the others were doing, which seemed so cold and uninteresting. The beauty for me as an artist was using Manhattan as my teacher. On weekends we would go to bars, galleries and happenings. Amiri Baraka the poet and activist came to my studio and wanted me to do more images of the movement. I told him "Look at what Africans did with abstraction; talk about spirit!" My black paintings also spoke to the issues of blackness. I became friends with Sam Gilliam the black Color Field painter . He supported me and my ideas as I fought the others. They were contemporaries, and I had to fight them for my own space. Male painters got a different kind of respect than women artists did. Today I was amazed how much I learned as a young girl of 27, kicking and screaming to make my own place in a white male bastion. Why did you leave New York? Because it got scary. I was living at 116th Street and Seventh Avenue, and the junkies had taken over my block. There were a lot of changes going on in the movement. Our leaders were being killed in horrific ways. Harlem was on fire at one point. I got a job teaching at the San Francisco Institute of Art. I needed a studio. My husband divorced me. Wherever I lived, I worked. It was wonderful to set your own issues, problems, and the way you felt about them. I went to the aquarium once and saw whales mating. Then I saw them swimming in the bay. It was magic. God's work. It was transformative. I painted it. Was 1993, when you went to Paris, transformative? I'd gotten a French government prize to work there for six months. My friend Carrie Mae Weems was there, too. One of the highlights was the night the American Embassy gave a party for Toni Morrison after she won a prize, just as "Song of Solomon" was coming out. I went with Carrie. When we walked in, in that sea of white faces, Toni leapt up, she was so happy to see us. Then we went to see Nina Simone, and after her show she spent the evening with us. Later on, I had a show in Paris and Nina spent more time looking at my work than anyone else ever had, including my parents, friends and husbands. Do you think, at 78, that you have achieved success? In New York the tension in the run up to the show was overwhelming. But for me, every day that I can get up and go to my studio is a success. For decades I had to teach and lecture. For my father, who I'm sure is looking down from heaven, success is that I am able to be a painter. He is the one who let me do what I was supposed to do.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
WASHINGTON Facing mounting government pressure and a public backlash over an epidemic of teenage vaping, Juul Labs announced on Tuesday that it would suspend sales of most of its flavored e cigarette pods in retail stores and would discontinue its social media promotions. The decision by the San Francisco based company, which has more than 70 percent of the e cigarette market share in the United States, is the most significant sign of retrenchment by an industry that set out to offer devices to help smokers quit but now shoulders blame for a new public health problem: nicotine addiction among nonsmoking teens. Juul's announcement effectively undercut the Food and Drug Administration's plan to unveil a series of measures aimed at curbing teenage vaping. The agency is expected later this week to announce a ban on sales of flavored e cigarettes in convenience stores and gas stations and strengthen the requirements for age verification of online sales of e cigarettes. To prevent some users from reverting to menthol cigarettes, Juul said it would keep mint, tobacco and menthol flavors for its devices in retail stores. In recent months, the F.D.A. has mounted an increasingly aggressive campaign against the major manufacturers of vaping products that appeal to young people, focusing particularly on Juul. The company's sleek device (nicknamed the iPhone of e cigarettes) resembles a flash drive and comes with flavor pods like creme and mango, leading public health officials to criticize the company and others for appearing to market directly to teenagers, who are especially vulnerable to nicotine addiction. E cigarettes were originally developed to help smokers quit by giving them a way to satisfy their nicotine cravings without the tar and deadly carcinogens that come with burning tobacco. "Our intent was never to have youth use Juul," said Kevin Burns, chief executive of Juul Labs in a statement emailed to reporters. "But intent is not enough. The numbers are what matter and the numbers tell us underage use of e cigarettes is a problem." But critics and public health advocates said the company had no choice, especially after the F.D.A. seized documents related to marketing strategies from the company's headquarters last month, and while some states were investigating whether its tactics were directly aimed at minors. Caroline Renzulli, a spokeswoman for the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, called Juul's announcement too little too late. "Juul's social media marketing fueled its popularity with kids," she said. "Now that it has captured 75 percent of the e cigarette market, Juul no longer needs to do social media marketing because its young customers are doing it for them." Maura Healey, the attorney general for Massachusetts, echoed that sentiment. "Unfortunately, much of the damage has already been done," she said. "Our investigation into Juul's practices, including if it was knowingly selling and marketing its products to young people, will continue." In a tweet Tuesday afternoon, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the F.D.A. said: "Voluntary action is no substitute for regulatory steps FDA will soon take. But we want to recognize actions by Juul today and urge all manufacturers to immediately implement steps to start reversing these trends." The F.D.A. acknowledged earlier this year that it had been caught off guard by the soaring popularity of vaping among minors, and also began targeting retail outlets that were selling them the products. In September, it gave Juul and manufacturers of a few other flavored e cigarettes and vaping products 60 days to submit plans to prove they could keep them away from minors. That deadline passed this past weekend. More than three million middle and high school students reported using e cigarettes, according to preliminary, unpublished government data, with about one third of them saying the flavors were a big factor in their choice. Mr. Burns, the Juul executive, said that as of Tuesday, the company would stop accepting retail orders for mango, fruit, creme and cucumber Juul pods. Those account for about 45 percent of retail sales for the 16 billion company, according to some estimates. Lower in the announcement, the company said it would renew sales of those products at retail outlets that invested in age verification technology. A timetable for resuming those sales was not announced. In addition, Juul said it would shut down its Facebook and Instagram accounts in the United States that promoted use of the flavored pods. According to its release, the company said it would ask the major social media companies, including Twitter and Snapchat, to help them "police" posts that promote the use of e cigarettes or cigarettes by underage users. Dr. Gottlieb said earlier that officials had met with several e cigarette and tobacco companies to discuss ways to reduce youth vaping after threatening to take e cigarettes off the market if the companies could not curb teenage sales. Some companies have indicated they would heed the F.D.A.'s warnings. In October, Altria said it would discontinue most of its flavored e cigarettes and stop selling some brands entirely. For the first time, the tobacco giant also said it would support a law raising the age to 21 for the purchase of all tobacco and vaping products, a proposal it had previously resisted. R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, a subsidiary of British American Tobacco, also submitted plans to the F.D.A. on Friday that backed the higher age limit. Michael Shannon, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds, said it also agreed not to market products through social media influencers and would also require age verification for access to the website where it sells the e cigarette Vuse. The tobacco company stopped short of promising to take Vuse, which comes in berry and other flavors, out of retail stores, but Mr. Shannon said the company would enforce contractual penalties for retailers that sell tobacco products to youths. In addition, it plans to start a mystery shopping program to check compliance. On Tuesday, CNBC reported that Fontem Ventures, a unit of Imperial Tobacco Group, would raise the minimum age to buy pods on its website to 21. The company sells blu e cigarettes, which come in various fruity flavors. Since it came on the market in 2015, Juul has become all but irresistible to teenagers, who had been drilled since preschool days on the perils of cigarette smoking. The name itself sounded like a mash up of "jewel" and "cool." Unlike the clunky older vapes, the compact device could readily evade detection from parents and teachers. It not only looked like a flash drive, it could be recharged in a computer's USB port. The flavors were both alluring and sophisticated. And it offered a way for teenagers to rebel and appear hip, seemingly without causing cancer. And so Juul became a fast, furious hit among high school and even middle school students. A comprehensive report on e cigarettes in January by National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine noted that 11 percent of all high school students, or nearly 1.7 million, had vaped within the last month. Preliminary unpublished federal data estimates that number is now at least three million. By now, students have their own vocabulary built around Juul "juuling" has become a verb. Schools around the country were caught unaware. The aerosol mist from Juul is nearly odorless and dissipates within seconds. Students began juuling as teachers' backs were turned. They filled school bathrooms for juuling breaks. And for all that school officials knew, students were just diligently recharging flash drives on laptops. Within 18 months of Juul's release, school officials began confiscating them and providing information sessions to parents. They had two paramount concerns: the increasing use of Juul and other vapes for marijuana and the amount of nicotine in Juul's pods. Nicotine, the naturally occurring chemical in tobacco, is the addictive element that binds smokers to cigarettes and vapers to Juul and other e cigarettes. Teenagers, whose brains are still developing, need less exposure to nicotine than adults in order to become addicted. But perhaps most worrisome was a conclusion reached by the National Academies: that teenagers who use the devices may be at higher risk for cigarette smoking. In its announcement on Tuesday, Juul emphasized its product's use among adults as an alternative to cigarette smoking and said it would continue to post testimonials on YouTube of adults who had switched to Juul from traditional cigarettes. Later this week, the F.D.A. is expected to propose a ban on sales of flavored e cigarettes, with a few exceptions; a pursuit of a ban on menthol cigarettes, which could take years to go into effect; and stricter controls of online sales to prohibit minors from accessing the products.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The lingering flavor of dance in 2014 is bittersweet. It wasn't much of a year for budding voices or surprising developments. What stays brightest in my memory are mainly instances of established artists delivering more of what they were already known for, several of them for the last time. Here are six highlights. PAM TANOWITZ Ms. Tanowitz is the wittiest choreographer since Mark Morris. Or that's what I felt under the vivifying influence of her program at the Joyce Theater in February. The tone is impersonal, formal, as modernist as the spiky music she prefers. The wit is in the steps and their sequencing, the unpredictable rhythms, the eccentric coordinations. The Mozartean complexity of the mirrored octet in her new "Heaven on One's Head" produced a buzz that lasted for days. COMPANHIA URBANA DE DANcA The best thing in the festival of Brazilian dance presented by the Joyce in February and March wasn't a surprise. Companhia Urbana de Danca, from Rio, brought its signature work, the 2009 "ID: Entidades," which reshapes hip hop moves in wonderfully subtle ways. The newer, less original work sharing the program suggested that the signature might be singular, but miracles often are. THE TREY MCINTYRE PROJECT At the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival in June, the Trey McIntyre Project went out with a blast. Whatever broader and possibly dispiriting implications might be read into the disbanding of this successful, 10 year old troupe, to see its crackerjack dancers tear into cleverly constructed choreography set to the greatest hits of Queen was to see champions fighting till the end. MARK MORRIS When Mr. Morris stages Baroque vocal works, he is principally competing against himself. His version of Handel's "Acis and Galatea," which had its New York debut during the Mostly Mozart Festival in August, isn't quite on the level of his "Dido and Aeneas" or "L'Allegro, il Penseroso ed il Moderato," but its artistry and charm would count as breakthroughs for almost any other choreographer. NEW YORK CITY BALLET At New York City Ballet this year, many young lion choreographers were given a shot, and then Alexei Ratmansky reminded everyone why he is king. His take on Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" was many sided in its originality. The hallmarks of musicality and warmth were there, but the mode was bewilderingly new.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Gordievsky was born in Moscow in 1938, fraught times, even by Soviet standards. But Gordievsky actually had little to complain of. As the son of a K.G.B. agent and loyal party member, he led a privileged life nice apartment, enough food, no members of his immediate family executed in the basement of the Lubyanka, or sent to a Siberian gulag. In time, his father's status and his own obvious intelligence ensured his admission to Moscow's most prestigious university. By the early 1960s, he had been recruited by the K.G.B. and embarked on a career he had reason to hope would give him access to foreign places. So it happened that Gordievsky's first cultural shock took place in East Berlin in 1961. The Wall was going up, and he was amazed to realize, as he later wrote, that "only a physical barrier, reinforced by armed guards in their watchtowers, could keep the East Germans in their socialist paradise." A few years later he was assigned to Copenhagen, where the shock lay in the plenitude of the West, its material riches and cultural openness. The Soviet Union began to seem to him a "vast, sterile concentration camp ... a form of hell." And finally, in 1968, when Russian tanks rolled into Prague to crush Czechoslovakia's attempts at liberalization, Gordievsky arrived at his "Kronstadt" moment so named for the crisis of faith that came to the Russian anarchist Alexander Berkman in 1921 when the infant Bolshevik Army brutally suppressed a rebellion by sailors in the port of Kronstadt, and later, to the American journalist and Soviet sympathizer Louis Fischer in 1939, with the signing of the Hitler Stalin Pact. "Kronstadt" has entered history as a term for the moment when the ideological scales fall from the eyes of a believer, and the true nature of the Soviet regime is revealed. The crackdown following the Prague Spring was that moment for Gordievsky. Now completely alienated from the Soviet system, he was vulnerable to an approach by the proper stranger. British intelligence sources had been keeping an eye on him. In 1974 he offered his allegiance to the British, and gave over his life to the constant threat of exposure. Enter Aldrich Ames. "Deep inside Rick Ames was a canker of cynicism, hard and inflamed," Macintyre writes, a metaphor that is, perhaps, itself a little inflamed. Nevertheless, it's possible to view Ames as Gordievsky's evil twin. The men were close in age; Ames, too, had followed in his father's footsteps, in his case into the C.I.A. And, at the very moment that Gordievsky experienced his Kronstadt crisis, Ames, then working in Ankara, was assigned to paper the city with hundreds of posters bearing the slogan Remember '68 "to give the impression that the Turkish population was outraged by the Soviet invasion. He dumped the posters in a bin and went for a drink." Ames was a dissatisfied man, a heavy drinker whose career was going nowhere. He felt underpaid and unappreciated. He had a wife whose extravagance was far beyond his means to gratify. He was desperate for money. On May 15, 1985, he met with a K.G.B. officer at the Soviet Embassy in Washington. In return he received a shopping bag containing 50,000, the first of many payments. It is still unclear whether Ames revealed Gordievsky's name at that initial meeting, but over the course of nine years, he turned over reams of confidential material to the K.G.B., including the names of 25 C.I.A. assets whom he considered a threat to his personal safety. Gordievsky's name was very likely among them. Most were executed by the Russians.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Jules Latimer as Emmie and Christopher Dylan White as her co worker Logan in "Paris" at the Atlantic Theater Company. Christmas in Paris is a cheerless occasion. Or at least that's how the Yuletide season is experienced by those working at a big box store in the mid 1990s in the Vermont town of Paris, which gives Eboni Booth's coolly observant new play its title. True, the employees of Berry's (which is likely to have you thinking of discount retailers with Mart in their names) may wear festive sweatshirts with their regulation lanyards and uniforms. And canned carols are piped, relentlessly, throughout the store. But this aural wallpaper only underscores the bleakness of the lives unraveling in the staff rooms and loading docks of the non unionized Berry's, where a typical salary is 5 an hour. In the world of "Paris," which opened on Tuesday at the Atlantic Theater Company's Stage 2, there's no expectation of comfort and joy. Like Samuel D. Hunter's "Greater Clements," which recently ended its run at Lincoln Center, "Paris" is a solid addition to the expanding genre of sociologically detailed working class American dramas. Booth, a playwriting fellow at the Juilliard School who is best known in New York as an actress in adventurous plays ("Dance Nation," "Fulfillment Center"), shares with Hunter a rigorous economic fatalism. But while "Greater Clements" deploys the grinding gears of melodrama to wear down its doomed characters, "Paris" takes an almost flatline approach to the unhappy existences it portrays. Yes, these people explode in fits of temper on a regular basis; they taunt and insult and scrap with one another; and at least one of them is involved in dangerously illegal activities. Yet suspense rarely makes an appearance in this realistically acted, astutely written play, which is directed with a very even hand by Knud Adams. An ever corrosive anxiety the kind that comes from never knowing if this week's paycheck will cover this week's living expenses is in the oxygen of Berry's. And it leaves those working in its airless confines (evoked mercilessly by David Zinn's gloomy set) in a state of depleted resignation. This includes the store's newest staff member, Emmie. As embodied by the appealing newcomer Jules Latimer, in a bravely affectless performance, Emmie (birth name: Emaani) has the self effacing mien of someone who aspires to invisibility. As it turns out, this is a not a state she has to work hard to achieve. Emmie is black. And though she has lived most of her life in Paris, a small and insular town, and also works at a popular local bar (called Blonde Jovi), none of her fellow employees can remember having seen her before. Racism is seldom openly acknowledged in "Paris"; it is instead a stealthy, insistent part of its general climate. Gar (Eddie K. Robinson), the store manager who hires Emmie in the play's first scene, is also black. But that doesn't necessarily mean he's her ally. He treats everyone badly, especially when he's in a bad mood. And as a boss, he has a secret weapon he holds over his employees. He knows how much and why they need their jobs. "You want to quit?" he typically says to one of them with the confidence of a fully briefed henchman. "No, you can't quit. You have your grandmother to think about." There is little rousing esprit de corps among Emmie's fellow workers, though they can usually be relied upon to inventively cover up one another's mistakes. Logan (Christopher Dylan White) performs pathetically, one presumes in a local rap group. Wendy (a spot on Ann McDonough), a former nurse and a not so secret on site drinker, is married to Dev (James Murtaugh), who fruitlessly peddles the gospel of success books. The most outspoken of the lot is the misanthropic Maxine (Danielle Skraastad), who lives with her four children in a motel room behind the local Costco and snarls at pretty much everyone. Wendy winningly offers an explanation for such behavior: "Her children are very bad people." Lines like that simple yet startling come along with welcome frequency in "Paris." Yet while the play holds the attention, it seldom clutches it. Ultimately, the wage slaves of Berry's register as the sums of their financial problems, fitted out with eccentricities that might show up in anecdotes of someone who had worked there for a summer. It is part of Booth's point, I think, that when money is as elusive as it is for these people, character is indeed primarily defined by privation. Only Emmie who has spent an aborted year in college and is working to earn money to return would seem to have any chance of escaping this flattening destiny. Her status as a newcomer and an outsider makes her an effective, and increasingly dispirited, proxy for the audience's initiation into the Berry's universe. She has also reached a nadir in her own life when she starts work there. Her mother has recently died, and her face is badly bruised her mouth intermittently bleeds without warning from a recent, drunken fall. Berry's seems like the next and natural circle of hell for her to enter. In the show's most unsettling scene, Emmie encounters a visitor to the store named Carlisle, who's looking for her boss, and a whole other, deeper vista of darkness opens up behind him. Played with creepy, compelling understatement by Bruce McKenzie, Carlisle a soft spoken man who runs his own mysterious and illicit business might have been teleported from a David Lynch movie.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
This afternoon, Jake Gyllenhaal pulled off a rare feat: He earned his first Tony nomination for his role as Abe in the second half of "Sea Wall/A Life," a pair of monologues narrated by young fathers, and served as a producer on two shows nominated for best play ("Sea Wall/A Life" and "Slave Play"). Tom Sturridge, who performs the show's first half, "Sea Wall," also earned a nod for best leading actor in a play. In an interview on Thursday evening, the actor discussed overcoming his initial terror at being alone onstage for an hour, how his performance evolved over the course of the show's run and what it was like to have his father in the audience. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. How does it feel to receive your first nomination? I'm so deeply moved. At a time where so much is uncertain, it's nice to have a tiny bit of certainty. "Sea Wall/A Life" was something that was just cooked up between a couple of friends and became something that was such a deep, profound journey for all of us. How is it different performing in and producing shows on and Off Broadway? I knew I was seeing something extraordinary when I saw "Slave Play" for the first time, and I knew I wanted to help bring it to as many people as possible. And then when we brought "Sea Wall/A Life" to Broadway, I felt like I was in sort of a rock show doing a monologue. The Hudson Theater is such a vertical theater, and the audience feels so close to you. I remember walking off drenched in sweat after the first Broadway preview, and I thought, "Wow, this is going to take a lot of hydration."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
How Much Does a Play Change During Previews? Just Ask 'The Perplexed' The final sound cue for "The Perplexed," Richard Greenberg's new comedy about two estranged, wealthy families brought together by their children's impending nuptials, is offstage laughter. Heralding the arrival of long awaited guests, it's supposed to be jubilant. Instead, at the first preview of the show last month at New York City Center, the laugh track rang like a witch's cackle. "It felt too sardonic to me," Lynne Meadow, the longtime artistic director of Manhattan Theater Club who's helming the production, said afterward. It took at least seven more tries to finally capture the ideal sound effect. Now it was just a matter of solidifying dozens of other decisions before the play's official premiere on Tuesday. Previews are a unique, enduring feature of the theater world: Kicking off a show's run, they are a period of public performances before opening night, which can last anywhere from several days to, in the notorious case of 2011's "Spider Man: Turn Off the Dark," 180 some performances. (More recently, previews for "West Side Story" were extended by two weeks while Isaac Powell, who plays Tony, recovered from a knee injury.) As such, previews are as much a part of a play's creative process as its closed rehearsals. While the intimacy of a studio is a safe space for experimentation and development, only once an audience of strangers enters the theater can a director, playwright and actors know for sure what's landing and what's falling flat. Changes to dialogue, costumes, lighting cues come daily until the show is "frozen," when the script and blocking are set. Critics are then invited to previews, and their reviews are traditionally published opening night. The process can result in a whole character sent packing, an intermission axed or pages of script inserted, only to be chucked out days later. Rehearsals can often be called during previews, which means a cast could go over new lines at a morning practice, only to perform an old script that night. Nothing so extreme was required for "The Perplexed." Still, over the course of three weeks and 23 previews, monologues were scrapped, blocking was restaged, 50 cent words were replaced with accessible synonyms and a final bow featuring the actors holding champagne glasses was tried once then promptly trashed. "For me, it's all about figuring out what people are getting," said Greenberg, whose Tony Award winning play "Take Me Out" is being revived by Second Stage Theater in April. "Until you get into rehearsal, you're talking to yourself," he explained. In the studio with a director and actors, a playwright has the benefit of clarifying his intentions, but all that changes in previews. "Then you get in front of a bunch of strangers, and you can hear when something is mystifying." Greenberg is as versed in the city's educated, upper middle class as a sommelier who knows his wine list, its undertones, its hints and everything else that gives nuance. His most recent works, "Our Mother's Brief Affair" (2016) and the Tony nominated "The Assembled Parties" (2013), were both directed by Meadow. "The Perplexed" is a drawing room play, literally it is set in a lavish home library of an unseen, Jewish billionaire host, Berland Stahl and figuratively. Like some characters from Greenberg's previous works, the members of the wedding party here belong to a privileged, insular world, yet feel adrift amid changing cultural tides. While the countdown to a midnight ceremony ticks on, they hash out drama old and new. We meet the bride (Tess Frazer) and her parents, City Councilwoman Evy Arlen Stahl (Margaret Colin) and Joseph Stahl (Frank Wood), who is the billionaire's disinherited son. Evy goes way back, both in business and pleasure, with the lawyer Ted Resnik (Gregg Edelman), the father of the groom (JD Taylor). Ted's self righteous, do gooder wife is Natalie Hochberg Resnik (Ilana Levine). Also in the mix are Evy's son, Micah (Zane Pais), a medical student who stars in gay adult films on the side; her writer brother (Patrick Breen); a former rabbi from South Carolina (Eric William Morris) dealing with some meshugas of his own; and one working class character, Berland's Guyanese aide Patricia Persaud (Anna Itty). "The Perplexed" is a social issue casserole, a tumble of ingredients culled from the zeitgeist porn, feminism, 1 percent level wealth that could each warrant its own entree. Instead, they are tossed into a single Pyrex to roast among the other flavors; audiences will decide whether this style is adept or clumsy. "This is a play that has political references and issues about morality and your politics and your reaction to change," says Meadow. "But this is not a piece of agitprop." In an explosive Act II scene, Evy finds herself alone with Ted for the first time in 20 years. She expresses fear that her son's extracurricular activities have put her campaign for City Council Speaker in jeopardy. And they needle her sense of irrelevance now that her breed of progressive Jewish female is no longer as revolutionary as it once was. In the first preview, she explains to Ted, "Pornography, statistics tell us, is used by an overwhelming majority of the adult population, and to consider yourself superior to an enterprise people of your ilk enjoy is the grossest hypocrisy, and to approve of its existence as I, with significant reservations, do, while stipulating that it be the work of other people's children, is of course, insupportable." By the end of the first week of previews, that monologue was gone, leaving an extended tender silence in its place. "Now it's an emotional moment," Colin said. "It's not the conflict of her politics." For all script changes, no matter how minute, Greenberg gets the final say. Even something as seemingly imperceptible as adding "then" to combine two sentences into one warranted a conversation. "For us, the opinion of the playwright is god," said Meadow during the February 21 rehearsal. "We don't run cuts or changes that the playwright doesn't want to do."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
There's nothing like a vigorous sea to summit hike up the Rock of Gibraltar to clear the jet lagged mind, especially when you're trying to solve a nearly 2,500 year old mystery. Following the zigzagging lines on the colorful paper place mat I'd been handed at the Gibraltar welcome center when I'd asked for a map, I climbed a steep set of concrete and stone stairs high into the green solitude of the Upper Rock Nature Preserve. As the path cut through a thick tangle of scrub, the southern coast of Spain appeared to the west, far below. A little farther on, the view widened to take in the cinched waist of the Strait of Gibraltar. A few steps later, the northern shore of Africa emerged through the last of the morning's light mist. If I stared hard in the direction of Morocco and held my hands to the sides of my head like horse blinders to block out the cargo ships and condo towers, I could imagine why the ancient Greeks considered this spot the limit of the known world. And perhaps why one Athenian, arguably the wisest Greek of all, had hinted that the solution to one of antiquity's greatest mysteries might be visible from this very spot. Most visitors come to the Mediterranean looking for sun, seafood and relaxation. While those were on my to do list, I was primarily hoping to find something slightly more elusive: the lost city of Atlantis. That might sound like a fool's errand. But modern searches for lost cities have often unearthed before you die travel destinations; Machu Picchu and Angkor Wat, after all, were both once jungle ruins hidden to the outside world. For archaeology fanatics like myself, raised on Indiana Jones movies and basement stacks of old National Geographic magazines, nothing could top finding Atlantis. Contrary to what you may remember from reading comic books, the original Atlantis wasn't a technologically advanced underwater city populated by Aquaman and mermaids. The first mentions of it were by none other than Plato, in his dialogues "Timaeus" and "Critias," around 360 B.C. "Now in this island of Atlantis," he wrote, "there was a great and wonderful empire" that "endeavored to subdue the whole of the region within the straits." While philosophy scholars are still debating the exact meanings of Plato's cryptic account, one leading interpretation of the Atlantis tale is that it was intended to illustrate political ideas put forth in the "Republic," widely considered to be the most important book in the Western canon. But Plato's account (which its narrator repeatedly insists is true) is also filled with vivid particulars beautiful mountains, circular canals, monumental works of architecture, lush flora, bountiful fields and fruit trees that wouldn't be out of place in a modern travel guide. Plato piles on so much detail, in fact, that people have been arguing ever since his death whether he intended the story to be taken as truth or fiction. In his own writings, Plato's prize pupil Aristotle seems to confirm some elements of his master's story while casting doubt on others. In recent years, a group of mostly amateur researchers has emerged who treat the search for Atlantis as a serious topic. Surprisingly, almost none of them think it sank to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean; indeed, most believe the original Atlantis was hit by a tsunami or other cataclysm and therefore might still be found on solid ground somewhere around the Mediterranean. (According to Plato's account, "there occurred violent earthquakes and floods; and in a single day and night of misfortune the island of Atlantis in like manner disappeared in the depths of the sea.") One: The Pillars of Hercules The Rock of Gibraltar is part of Plato's most tantalizing clue: that Atlantis was an island that once sat "in front of the mouth" of the Pillars of Hercules. Ancient accounts place these columns at Gibraltar and Jebel Musa, a peak across the straits in Morocco, or Monte Hacho, a smaller mountain slightly farther east. To get to Gibraltar, I took the high speed train from Madrid to Seville, then drove a leisurely three hours south through the kaleidoscope of Andalusia: forests of gigantic white windmills like upturned boat propellers; rocky bluffs dotted with arthritic looking cork trees; empty medieval towns dominated by hulking churches, with plazas papered in fliers for flamenco lessons. At a 9 a.m. roadside coffee stop, the cafe was filled with middle aged men drinking large brandies on ice, while the proprietor's wife sold freshly picked asparagus in bunches as thick as my thigh. When I arrived in La Linea de la Concepcion, just before the border of Gibraltar, I circled the majestic bullring, parked on the street, dropped a few euros in a meter, wished the traffic matron a buen dia and walked through border control into British territory. Gibraltar, ceded by Spain to Britain 300 years ago under the Treaty of Utrecht, is essentially a 1950s London theme park red phone boxes, helmeted bobbies, fish 'n' chips specials all set amid palm trees and overshadowed by the photogenic 1,400 foot slab of limestone familiar to Prudential customers. According to Greek myth, the Rock (as everyone in Gibraltar calls it) had been hurled there by Hercules (Heracles in the original Greek) as part of the strongman's 12 labors. In the spirit of herculean tasks, I decided to skip the cable car ride and ascend on foot. The residential area of Gibraltar squeezes most of its 30,000 residents into a claustrophobic two and a half square miles. Walking along the road to the top, however, I could peek over walls to see homes with tidy tropical gardens, one of which had yet to clean up from a party in the Queen's honor. A few signs tempted tourists to peek at the 32 miles of defense tunnels carved inside the Rock over the centuries. (In one secret passage, rediscovered only in 1997, the British planned to sequester spies if Gibraltar fell to the Nazis.) Farther along I was greeted by the wild Barbary apes that inhabit the Rock, the only free roaming primates in Europe. After frisking me for snacks, and finding none, they deserted me for a promising vanload of sunburned Britons. Upon reaching the viewing terrace, I tried to ignore the cheesy two columned Pillars of Hercules monument evidently modeled on a Soviet bowling trophy and focus my attention on the infinite green Atlantic, scanning the horizon in vain for signs of Atlantis. Even if the island had sunk, it would be tough to miss; Plato described it as "larger than Libya and Asia put together" which in his time probably meant North Africa and Asia Minor "and was the way to other islands," which could mean anything from the Canaries to Iceland. My next stop was a short jaunt up through Spain, along the southwestern coast: Donana National Park. Plato wrote that Atlantis was located near Gades, the ancient name for the city of Cadiz, about 60 miles northwest of Gibraltar. Just to the north sits the national park, a former royal hunting ground where the Guadalquivir River splits to form a delta along the Atlantic coast. That marshy delta, with its winding, twisting landmasses and estuaries, turns out to be another possible candidate for the lost city: A German researcher caused a stir a decade ago when he published an article in the archaeological journal Antiquity, claiming that satellite photos seemed to show evidence that a city with structures similar to those in Plato's Atlantis had once occupied that very spot. Today, Donana is a peaceful nature reserve beloved by bird watchers, but as Jose Maria Galan, a park ecologist, pointed out as we drove through the choppy surf, it has a violent history. The offshore Azores Gibraltar Transform Fault shifts roughly every 350 to 450 years, unleashing huge earthquakes and tsunamis that obliterate anything built along the coast. (The last such quake, in 1755, leveled Lisbon.) Mr. Galan, who was wearing a Yellowstone Park cap he'd picked up on a recent trip, compared the regularity of seismological disasters here to the clockwork spurts of Old Faithful. It's geologically impossible for a city to sink to the bottom of the ocean, but an ancient cataclysm might account for Plato's famous description of an island vanishing in "a single day and night of misfortune." Donana's wetlands flood for six months annually, which is great for birds migrating to and from Africa and not so great for amateur Atlantis seekers. But the graceful, sloping dunes that overlook the water have clearly been occupied by multiple civilizations over the years; their small, identical mounds of sand have revealed pottery shards and other artifacts dating back thousands of years. Every year during the winter rainy season, the Guadalquivir River soaks Donana's plain and leaves behind a new layer of sediment. If Atlantis really had been located in Donana, it might now be buried under 20 feet of silt and clay. As Mr. Galan knelt down to show me a Morse code line of scorpion tracks, a gust of ocean wind blew up and the trail vanished in a cloud of sand. "See, in the end nature erases everything," he said. Plato depicted Atlantis as a well guarded island city, rich in temples. Which is also an excellent description of Malta. Valletta, its capital, built in the 16th century out of local yellow limestone that resembles unbaked pastry crust, was designed as a fortress by the Knights of St. John, a still extant military order loyal to the Vatican and often cited by conspiracy theorists as geopolitical puppetmasters. While their secret society is more akin to the Shriners than the Bilderberg Group these days, Malta is perhaps the most devoutly Catholic country in the world, the sort of place where no one raises an eyebrow at the huge Caravaggio masterpieces hanging in the oratory at St. John's Co Cathedral and parents complain about the skyrocketing costs of made to measure first communion attire. Malta is not well known to Americans, which is a shame, because its waters are crystal clear and the food, heavily influenced by proximity to Italy, is excellent. Over a plate of fenkata, the country's ubiquitous rabbit stew, my local guide, Dr. Anton Mifsud (a pediatrician, amateur historian and all around Malta booster), explained his theory that Plato's Pillars of Hercules were actually in the center of the Mediterranean. "If there was an Atlantis, then Malta has to be it," he told me excitedly. Dr. Mifsud had extraordinary energy for someone who spends 12 hour days battling Malta's horrendous traffic to make house calls to screaming toddlers. On his day off, he drove me to the ancient temples of Mnajdra and Hagar Qim, the oldest free standing structures in the Mediterranean they predate the Great Pyramids of Egypt by a thousand years, and Plato's "Timaeus" by almost three millenniums and the likeliest (or perhaps least improbable) candidates for Plato's Atlantean temples. The temples were stunning, clusters of oval rooms built from giant slabs of cut yellow limestone and set on a desolate bluff overlooking the water. Each looked as if Stonehenge had undergone cell division and then developed jaundice. At sunrise on the solstice, Dr. Mifsud told me as we stood in a doorway at Mnajdra, "the sunlight shoots down here onto the altar!" Later, studying the exhibits at the excellent National Museum of Archaeology, housed in a former Knights of St. John auberge in Valletta, I learned that whatever culture constructed these monoliths had vanished suddenly around 2500 B.C. Dr. Mifsud believed that accounts of this collapse, probably the result of a natural disaster, had been passed down through the generations until Plato recorded them in the story of Atlantis. On my last afternoon in Malta, Dr. Mifsud drove me to Clapham Junction, also known as Misrah Ghar il Kbir, a limestone field crosshatched with the island's most famous unexplained phenomenon, its stone cart ruts. The explanation I'd seen at the archaeological museum, that the ruts had been worn into the soft rock by hauling sleds, was more banal than other theories: They were the large grid of irrigation canals that Plato wrote about. Or that they are the work of extraterrestrials, as Erich von Daniken suggests in his crypto archaeology classic "Chariots of the Gods." I did see one sign of intelligent life while bending down to examine the grooves, however. A family of clever rabbits, avoiding a certain fate as fenkata, was making its burrow beneath the limestone maze. Like many island dwellers, George Nomikos, a gregarious restaurateur who agreed to serve as my guide, saw his home as the center of the universe and wanted me to see every inch of it. From the town of Fira we followed winding roads cut through the thick volcanic tephra that covers Santorini's ring like frosting on a Bundt cake. We visited red, white and black sand beaches which echoed Plato's description of Atlantis's buildings constructed from red, white and black stone and dormant vineyards and fields, where the island's volcanic soil nurtures its famous white wine grapes and cherry tomatoes. After crossing twice through Mr. Nomikos's adorable home village, Megalochori, where he enthusiastically slowed down to shout "Kalimera!" ("Good morning!") to assorted friends and cousins, we turned north and traced the upper curve of the island's ring to the town of Oia, with its whitewashed homes and glorious blue domed roofs perched on the rim of the caldera. It's one of the most photographed spots in the world and, incredibly, even more beautiful in person. Mr. Nomikos, who seemed to know every single person on Santorini, had arranged for his friend Dimitris Chamalidis to circle us around the caldera in his speedboat. As we approached Nea Kameni, the young (and still growing) volcanic island at the caldera's center, the deep blue waters turned Kelly green from sulfur. "You can smell now, like a bad egg," Mr. Chamalidis said, biting down on a cigarette and scrunching his nose. We returned to port and waited for what I'd been told was the world's greatest sunset. It did not disappoint. Perhaps the most interesting piece of Atlantis evidence on Santorini is Akrotiri, an archaeological site that reopened to visitors in 2012 after several years following a roof collapse. Akrotiri had been a thriving port town until the explosion 3,600 years ago. Today, it's like a smaller Pompeii, but better maintained. One extraordinary fresco, in which a fleet of ships voyage between two prosperous maritime cities, has been interpreted by some as a snapshot of Plato's Atlantis. I mentioned the idea to Christos Doumas, chief archaeologist at Akrotiri since 1974, seven years after its discovery, when Mr. Nomikos and I met him for a late dinner at the Cave of Nikolas, a restaurant outside the ruins that overlooks the Sea of Crete. Mr. Doumas had hardly sat down when the chef, a white haired matron in a black dress, came out to smother him with affection. "She was the cook on our famous dig here in 1967," he explained after the hugs and kisses. "She was 14 years old." I was eager to ply Mr. Doumas with my theories about Atlantis, but as Mr. Nomikos ordered glasses of the local pink hued vin santo, the archaeologist shook his head dismissively and told me I was, indeed, on a fool's errand. "Atlantis is a utopia," he said. "A word that in Greek means 'no place.' It's a dream." Was it, though? After a few weeks of detective work, I wasn't so sure. Everything Plato wrote including the story of Atlantis underscored his conviction that the purpose of life was to search for truth. I'd just have to keep looking, no matter how many beaches I needed to visit, no matter how much grilled octopus I needed to eat. I told Mr. Nomikos I was headed to Athens next to examine possible Atlantis clues at the Acropolis. "Mark, this is very serious, you need a plan," he said, taking my pen. "Let me give you the name of a good souvlaki place," he continued, and motioned for the waiter to bring another round of wine.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
, who brought Typhoid Mary to life in her last novel, "Fever," was researching another historical novel when, she says, "real life kept intervening in the form of one crisis after another, either in my own family or those of my friends, so it began feeling more and more odd to turn away from the drama of real life just to step into made up drama of the past." She explains, "It was as if I reached 40 and everyone started losing it a little, and I began 'Ask Again, Yes'" a contemporary saga of two suburban New York families, which debuts this week at No. 5 "as a way to write through that." Keane says that her parents "were aging and talking about their regrets, couples I thought of as solid were splitting up, people were drinking far too much, losing jobs, risking things we'd all worked so hard to get." She was particularly affected by her husband's long estrangement from his parents and began to look for a way to explain that break to their children. "I wanted to help them understand that even people who are decent in their hearts might get lost, might fail to live up to the contract of parenthood or marriage. No one ever plans to become estranged. It happens day by day, year by year, until next thing oops! 20 years have gone by. Is it possible for a parent and child to become true strangers to one another? Or is there always some connection? I began writing this book to figure out how I might answer that question." Some of the main characters in "Ask Again, Yes" are New York City cops. "I don't have police officers in my family, which is unusual for an Irish family, I suppose, but growing up in Pearl River, New York, the fathers of many of my friends were cops," Keane says. "I knew them as sweet, kind men, but I also knew they often wore guns under their clothes. I knew these men sometimes saw violence at work, or even participated in that violence. I think I became a little obsessed with reconciling that contradiction."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The new Duke and Duchess of Sussex, surrounded by members of the royal family, Ms. Markel's mother, Doria Ragland, and a group of page boys and bridesmaids. How the Royal Wedding Might Influence Weddings to Come Simplicity and informality joined hands with pomp and circumstance when Meghan Markle, 36, married Prince Harry, 33, Saturday in St. George's Chapel at Windsor Castle. She looked a bit Audrey Hepburn ish (or was it more Jennifer Lopez in "The Wedding Planner"?), and he as uniformed as a man could look. The world witnessed a transformative moment for the Royal House of Windsor, but will the couple's personalized, multicultural wedding affect bridal trends to come? Here are a few ways it might. Will divorced women take Ms. Markle's lead and have big weddings, even bigger than the first, and wear white gowns? Both have been no no's in the past for American weddings. And will green be the new complementary color for mothers and the rest of the bridal party? There was no ostentatious bling on the unadorned bridal dress Ms. Markle wore, designed by Clare Waight Keller for Givenchy. In 2011, when Kate Middleton married Prince William, owners of American bridal emporiums assumed they would sell high neck, long sleeve lace dresses, similar to the one Ms. Middleton wore. After all, doesn't every bride want to look like a princess? Designers and store buyers were so certain that they quickly stocked their showrooms with similar designs in many price points, low and high. Brides to be here admired the royal gown from afar, but then searched out the barest, strapless, most embellished dresses available for themselves. Let's just say many American brides preferred to look more Kardashian than Middleton. "We probably still have a few left," said Ronnie Rothstein, an owner of Kleinfeld in New York, a store that was well stocked in dresses that looked like Kate's and now has at least a half dozen that resemble Meghan's. "Remember, women want to dance at the reception, and you can't move in a dress with sleeves. They are too restrictive," he added, trying to come up with a polite reason for the unsold goods. Darcy Miller, an editor at large for the magazine Martha Stewart Weddings, said she was noticing more classic, simpler bridal dresses paired with dramatic veils. Just like Ms. Markle's (although her veil was 16 feet long probably not in the future for American brides). Ms. Markle wore a simple diamond tiara once worn by Queen Mary; of course, that was a royal privilege a loan from Queen Elizabeth but stores do sell simple tiaras and embellished veils. The Rev. Michael Bruce Curry, an African American from Chicago and the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, gave a spirited homily alongside Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, who was the officiant. Bishop Curry's sermon spoke of love and inclusion and took the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to invigorate and surprise the royal family and other guests. Natalie Neilson Edwards, who owns Broomstick Weddings, a company that specializes in organizing interfaith, interracial and mixed cultural events, said it was more and more common to see two clergy members at weddings today because many couples have different backgrounds. And that is a trend very likely to continue. "I was blown away by the inclusion of the bride's culture," Ms. Neilson Edwards said. "There were many African American guests and an African American bishop. It was very empowering to see how clear the bride was about her culture." Ms. Neilson Edwards added, "According to the 2010 census here, one sixth of weddings in the U.S. are mixed racial." And with more modern vows like the newly minted duke and duchess chose there was no mention of "man and wife" (they said "husband and wife") and no mention of obeying places of worship might seem more inviting for couples who want to personalize. Move over, bridesmaids and groomsmen and make room for the children. The weekend's royal wedding might have finally changed some longstanding bridal traditions like who makes up the bridal party. Enlist the little ones! They are much cuter anyway! (And you can only hope as well behaved as the royal children were for the duke and duchess.) Forget asking your best friend to be a bridesmaid or groomsman. Let them save (lots of) money, take a seat and watch your happy day. Don't make your best friends buy dresses they'll never wear again. Another advantage to skipping the bridesmaids and groomsmen? Nobody's feelings are hurt when they don't make the cut. Walk Down the Aisle: I've Got This Ms. Neilson Edwards said couples were moving away from traditional wedding rules. "Brides are escorting themselves down the aisle, like Ms. Markle did, for example. Now we are getting married our way," she said. Yes, Ms. Markle ended up walking alone most of the way down the aisle after her father bowed out, but now, can you imagine her wedding any other way? Vishal Joshi, the chief executive of Joy, a wedding planning website and app, said: "I think brides should do what they feel like doing. Literally, brides used to be given away by their father to their husband, like property. There was a negotiation before a wedding. There is some cuteness to tradition, but not all traditions have good origins, and some have to be taken down." Now many couples live together before marrying, he said, adding, "Our generation should create new traditions." Out With the Old. A Fresh and Local Cake. Americans, it may be time to deconstruct those towering, tiered (or do we mean tired?), sugary wedding cakes that most people don't eat anyway and get creative with flavor and design. Ms. Markle and Prince Harry went a very different direction with sponge cake, skipping the traditional, no expiration date English fruitcake. They chose the flavors of lemon and elderberry flower baked and heavily decorated with fresh flowers by Claire Ptak, a London based baker who owns Violet Cakes and uses local organic and seasonal ingredients. Instead of the towering tier, it was presented as four cakes on three separate resting places (one golden plate and two golden goblets) situated at varying heights. There were 600 at the reception. We don't know if they all ate cake. But here is what it was made of: 200 Amalfi lemons, 500 organic eggs from Sussex, about 44 pounds each of butter, flour and sugar, and 10 bottles of Sandringham elderflower cordial.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. President Trump continues to address America's growing coronavirus crisis, at one point saying that he disagreed with the decision to bring infected passengers on the Grand Princess cruise ship ashore for quarantine. The late night hosts thought that was misguided, verging on cruel and unusual. "Trump is saying that he doesn't want the passengers off the ship, because their illness might make him look bad. Imitating Trump 'Look, if they come ashore, then we're responsible for them, but if we send them to international waters, then they're Aquaman's problem.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "I'm sorry, but keeping people trapped on a cruise ship even if they don't have coronavirus should be an impeachable offense, because nothing good ever happens on a cruise ship. You never never once have heard a positive news story about a cruise ship. You never read the headline, 'Cruise ship's toilets work great.'" SETH MEYERS In that same news conference, on Friday, Trump claimed he had such a good handle on the coronavirus that, instead of running for president, he could have been a "supergenius" like his uncle, John Trump, who was a professor at M.I.T. "So you think you know about science because your uncle was a doctor? People don't just automatically know what their uncles know, otherwise we would all know the lyrics to every Steely Dan song." SETH MEYERS "By the way, I'm not sure Trump has a natural ability for science, especially considering that he thinks scientific knowledge can be passed down through his uncle." TREVOR NOAH "I don't care how smart your uncle was epidemiology is not genetic. You don't get your mother's eyes and your father's Ph.D. Knowledge does not get passed down. That's why, no matter how much we all know it now, future generations are going to have to learn for themselves that you're an idiot." STEPHEN COLBERT "Senator Ted Cruz announced yesterday he's placed himself under self quarantine because of the virus, so every cloud has a silver lining, I guess. Ted calls it a self quarantine, others call it having no friends." JIMMY KIMMEL "After being near someone who had the coronavirus, Texas Senator Ted Cruz said he will now work from home. Yeah. Yeah. When asked for comment, Ted's wife and two children said, 'What a expletive .'" CONAN O'BRIEN "Yeah, because coronavirus was at CPAC, four Republican lawmakers are quarantined and can have no human contact. And Ted Cruz is like, 'What's human contact?'" TREVOR NOAH "What's really concerning is if it turns out multiple people in Congress have that corona contact, they might have to send all of Congress home, which would be a disaster, because if there's no one in Congress, then who would be left to not pass any laws?" TREVOR NOAH "And once again, we've learned it's never good when the words 'coronavirus' and 'Cruz' are in the same sentence." JIMMY FALLON "Cruz has no symptoms, but just to be safe, he has said that he will be self isolating. Yes, adding, as Cruz 'In fact, just to be safe, I've been self isolating for years. That's why I eat alone in the Senate cafeteria, I had no friends in college, and no one came to my birthday party when I was 6.'" STEPHEN COLBERT "The Daily Show" correspondent Jaboukie Young White explains how to not catch the coronavirus.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
For three brilliant summers running, starred in Shakespearean dramas in Central Park. He played Ulysses in "Troilus and Cressida"; Brutus in "Julius Caesar"; and, just last year, the treacherous Iago in "Othello." Each time, Mr. Stoll was so uncommonly unaffected, so at home inside the language, that it made you exhale just to watch him. You knew you were in excellent hands. All of which is a strong enticement to the more intimate, indoor experience that will be Classic Stage Company's "Macbeth," with Mr. Stoll ("House of Cards") in the title role of the Scottish thane who would be king. Mr. Stoll's wife, Nadia Bowers terrific recently in Aaron Posner's Chekhov adaptation "Life Sucks" Off Broadway will play the tactically ruthless Lady Macbeth; while Mary Beth Peil ("The Good Wife") has been cast, intriguingly, as Duncan. Directed by John Doyle, the production starts previews on Thursday, Oct. 10, in Greenwich Village. LAURA COLLINS HUGHES Alas, Bess (Tea Leoni, with whom we'd gladly drink a beer) didn't breeze into office, and she's not about to escape unscathed when "Madam Secretary" returns on Oct. 6 to CBS for its sixth and final season. The opener jumps ahead to Bess's 100th day in office, when it is revealed that Iran had leaked salacious information about her former presidential rival. It caused his campaign to crash and burn while it might have bolstered hers and undermined the legitimacy of the election. But it's not all war games. When the first gentleman (Tim Daly) alludes to the couple's waning sex life on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," Bess is forced to address the imbalance within their relationship. Turns out that power really is the ultimate aphrodisiac. KATHRYN SHATTUCK When a choreographer like William Forsythe names a production "A Quiet Evening of Dance," he means it. The innovative artist is back with a program at the Shed in Manhattan, which strips movement from ornamentation and, to a great extent, music. A combination of new and existing works, Forsythe's latest features seven of his most experienced dancers who use the sound of their breath to guide them through his intricate, slippery and virtuosic though never conventionally showy choreography. Nicolas Moufarrege was ahead of his time. Born in Egypt to Lebanese parents, he played a brief but pivotal role as critic, curator and artist in New York's 1980s East Village art scene before dying of AIDS related complications in 1985, at the age of 36. His hand embroidered mash ups of found and invented imagery presaged our post Internet comfort with appropriation, as well as the strange courtship between digital and traditional crafts that's dominated so much art in the last two decades. A memorable example in "Nicolas Moufarrege: Recognize My Sign," which travels this week from the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston to the Queens Museum, is a canvas on which Hokusai's "The Great Wave" threatens to drown a crying cartoon woman borrowed from Roy Lichtenstein. WILL HEINRICH Around 4.5 billion years ago, fungi climbed out of the sea to create the Earth's soil and set the stage for all of life. And now they're everywhere, with some 300 miles of fungi's underground threadlike network beneath each step we take. Those massive organisms, called mycelia, both decompose matter that would otherwise choke the planet and help trees exchange nutrients and communicate. "Mushrooms represent rebirth, rejuvenation, regeneration," says the mycologist Paul Stamets, noting how fungi based technology can even decontaminate the environment. Beautifully shot with dazzling time lapse, mushroom sprouting images, expert opinions from Michael Pollan, Eugenia Bone and Dr. Andrew Weil, and narration by Brie Larson, "Fantastic Fungi" is a mind trip unto itself. "Fantastic Fungi" opens in New York on Oct. 11, and across the country this fall. KATHRYN SHATTUCK For more than two decades, the Sphinx Organization has advocated for the work of underrepresented musicians of color. And its touring string ensemble, the Sphinx Virtuosi, continues to bring necessary diversity to major concert halls. On Friday, the Virtuosi perform at Carnegie Hall, with a program that highlights the work of four black composers: Michael Abels, Philip Herbert, Xavier Foley and Damien Sneed. Tied to the "400 Years of Inequality" nationwide initiative which raises awareness about the arrival of the first enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619 the concert includes a new work by Foley titled "For Justice and Peace" as well as the world premiere of a vocal suite by Sneed that explores the legacy of slavery in the Americas. WILLIAM ROBIN For many artists, winning a Grammy is a career highlight. For Paula Cole, the Best New Artist award she won in 1997 and the press she received because of it made clear just how little her artistry was understood by the public. Her satirical hit, "Where Have All the Cowboys Gone," was misread as anti feminist, and as she became a target of misogynistic gibes, Cole briefly considered leaving the industry altogether. In the decades since, she has continued making music, but adopted a lower profile. Though she's still known for early pop chart toppers, including "I Don't Want to Wait" (the theme song of "Dawson's Creek"), Cole's heart has always been in the less radio friendly sections of her catalog. Her recent work includes a collection of jazz covers, and her latest album, "Revolution," tackles a range of sociopolitical topics. On Thursday, she will perform at Manhattan's Le Poisson Rouge in support of the record. OLIVIA HORN	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Three to 10 year leases are available for two newly renovated full floor commercial loft spaces the penthouse with access to the roof, as well as the third floor each 2,600 square feet in this five story walk up built in 1910, which is now being renovated. The spaces, wired for high speed internet service, have new hardwood floors, exposed brick walls and pantries.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
MANCHESTER, England "This is our help," Trajal Harrell said, introducing each of the 10 dancers in his ensemble at the start of his new "Maggie the Cat" at the Manchester International Festival, now in full swing here. The statement wasn't a casual one. "Maggie the Cat," a Manchester commission, is inspired by Tennessee Williams's "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" (1955), that hot blooded Southern drama of family mendacity centered on the determined, vital Maggie. But Mr. Harrell's account doesn't offer the narrative of the play, or specifically evoke its main characters. Instead, the servants, nearly invisible in Williams's work, claim center stage, getting a flamboyant, sashaying, vogueing turn in the spotlight, where they glitter like newly minted stars. Dance has never been a particular focus at the Manchester festival, dedicated to producing new work since it was founded in 2007. Its first director, Alex Poots, emphasized imaginative, often unlikely, high octane collaborations that fell mostly in the domain of theater, music and visual art. John McGrath, who took over in 2015 when Mr. Poots left to run the Shed in New York, has continued in a similar vein. Dance, though, has played a stronger role this year, as an important component in two flagship shows ("Tree" and "Invisible Cities"), and in commissions from Mr. Harrell, FlexN Young Identity and the Scottish choreographer Claire Cunningham. Mr. Harrell, an American choreographer whose work has been embraced in Europe, has long been interested in how identity sexual, racial, gender is performed, how choices of clothing, attitude and presentation are constructs in life and onstage. In "Maggie," as in his 2018 "Caen Amour," heaps of dress up materials are arrayed on tables and stands at the back of the stage. One by one, the dancers select pieces, holding them across their bodies as they proceed through slanted body catwalk marches, teetering high on imaginary heels. (Perhaps they are all Maggie; perhaps they just want to be Maggie, who has moved from poverty to wealth.) At first the idea seems limited. But the repetitive, ritualized walks soon focus attention on difference as the performers fabulously diverse in every way offer individual kinetic embellishments on the stylized, affectless runway walk. Christopher Matthews, plump and attention seeking, whirls a ruffled skirt; Songhay Toldon, in lime green trousers, is inscrutably opaque; Nasheeka Nedsreal is cool, offering feminine tropes of seduction as she poses with knowing grace. Mr. Harrell, who early on tells us he is Big Mama, remains mostly at the front and sides of the stage with Perle Palombe (Big Daddy), occasionally rapping and singing, offering riffs on the word "Maggie" and on her doings. Late in the work, Mr. Harrell places a cardboard box near the front of the stage. One by one, the dancers step into it on the balls of their feet, then walk away, leaving soft smears of brown paint on the white surface. Perhaps it's an allusion to blackface (the program notes refer to "brownfeeting"), but the gesture is made with such delicacy that it registers primarily as a moment of joy and playfulness, of the pleasure of making your mark. In many ways, "Maggie the Cat" recalls the work of Pina Bausch: the stylized dress up; the knowing, yet unironic complicity with the audience; the pleasure of entertaining; the transformed rites of daily life. (A sequence in which cushions are strapped to three performers, who become beds or chairs for others to recline upon, is particularly Bausch like in its transformation of absurdity into metaphor.) The straightforward ideas that animate "Maggie" the catwalk procession, the exuberant self expression, the transformation of ordinary household objects are handled by Mr. Harrell with masterly timing and aesthetic flair. Through rhythmic juxtaposition and perfect pacing, he creates alternating states of chaos and calm, of joy and excitement, bewilderment and bathos. And he keeps it tight at 50 minutes, ending with an impeccably choreographed series of bows as each performer passes a little black dress from one to the other. They are all Maggie, and they are all superb.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Deported and 9,000 Miles Apart, but 'You Stay With the Person You Love' When Chuh A first laid eyes on Rex Ny nearly two decades ago, he just knew it was love at first sight. He was a 14 year old who had arrived in the United States just a year earlier, transplanted from Kontum, Vietnam, to Greensboro, N.C. Ms. Ny, who was 12, was a fellow immigrant from Kontum; she had arrived at the age of 4. "I got my eye fascinated," he said. The two shared a very special bond: They're both Montagnards, the indigenous people of Vietnam's Central Highlands, and the children of those who had aided American troops during the Vietnam War before emigrating to the United States. Vietnam has long discriminated against Montagnards for their ethnicity and Christian religion, according to human rights groups, and their American alliance during the war only intensified this persecution. Tony Ngiu, Mr. A's 73 year old father, spent nine years in hard labor at a Communist re education camp after the war before making it to the United States. Tens of thousands of Montagnards assisted American soldiers. An estimated 3,000 took refuge in the United States, according to the government funded Voice of America, settling largely in North Carolina. Ms. Ny, who is now 31, did not match Mr. A's immediate affection when they first met. "It was just playing to me," she said of their initial shared moments. "We would go play tag, climb the trees, we would go swimming." She would decline his first three date invitations. "She didn't pay attention to me," recalled Mr. A, who is now 33. After not speaking for a year, Mr. A started politely peppering her with "corny" e cards and messages from AOL Instant Messenger. She was amused and agreed to go out with him when he eventually asked again. He was now 16; she was 14. And they have remained committed to each other ever since. In 2005, Ms. Ny, then a high school senior, became pregnant with their first daughter, Nya, now 13. The couple got engaged that same year. Mr. A supported the family by working service jobs for companies including Golden State Foods and Ross Stores. Ms. Ny works intermittently as a manicurist. Sustaining their family at home and sending money back to relatives in Vietnam forced them to put off a wedding. It also motivated Mr. A to make an ill advised and life altering decision. In 2013, he opted to "do something quick, a quick drop" and was subsequently convicted of trafficking ecstasy. He spent more than three years in state prison. The conviction, although his first, was an aggravated felony and invalidated his green card, which granted permanent residency in the United States, rendering him eligible for deportation. Because Montagnards had long been unofficially exempt from deportation, Mr. A believed he would return to his American life after serving his prison sentence. But Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, detained him in June 2016. After a 13 month detention, ICE deported him in July 2017 to Vietnam. Ms. Ny and the couple's four children are American citizens and stayed in North Carolina. But Ms. Ny remained committed to the couple's engagement, despite suggestions from friends and family that maybe she shouldn't. On Jan. 26, the couple finally married in a 4:30 a.m. Roman Catholic Mass in Kontum. The ceremony was at the Immaculate Conception Cathedral, a century old building known as the Wooden Church. As cool winds whipped through the city's streets, more than 200 worshipers braved the dawn, packing the church's pews for a quietly joyful ceremony. The couple later hosted a raucous afternoon reception at Ms. Ny's cousin's home in a Montagnard village on Kontum's outskirts. The couple has fought for their relationship since Mr. A's deportation, pushing back against vast physical separation and 12 hour time difference. They FaceTime as much as possible, aiming to ensure that Mr. A's children "don't miss out," as he put it. The couple had never expected to be separated. They both grew up in a Montagnard heavy community in North Carolina, where deportation was unheard of. Citizenship, Mr. A figured, wouldn't have provided anything more for him than a green card. And by the time his parents were pursuing and achieved citizenship, he already was working full time. Ms. Ny became pregnant around this time as well. Before President Trump took office, Vietnam refused to repatriate Montagnards. Mr. A, when detained by ICE, expected like all those Montagnards before him to be released after six months, in line with a 2001 Supreme Court ruling. But amid the Trump administration's increase of Southeast Asian deportations, Vietnam acquiesced to American pressure and, in 2017, began to accept Montagnard deportees. Mr. A is one of the first to return to Vietnam. When asked why he didn't pursue citizenship as his parents did, he said: "I was trying. At that time I don't have money; I wasn't thinking. I was distracted by other things that I had done, like working and trying to support my family." After his deportation, Ms. Ny recalled a conversation with Mr. A's parents. "His mom and dad told me: 'Our son messed up. You don't have to stay with him. You can move on with your life.' But how can I just do that?" she said. "If I love someone, I stay with that person, even through wrong or right, though life and death, even through sickness or health. You still stay with the person you love. That's what I believe." In January, Ms. Ny and the couple's four daughters made their way to Vietnam for a monthlong visit culminating in the wedding ceremony. Mr. A's mother, Chok Y, 72, traveled from North Carolina for the wedding. His father, Tony Ngiu, 73, stayed behind, unable to muster the necessary funds. Ms. Ny's father, Antone Thinh, 71, attended, but her mother, Die Y, 68, stayed in the United States, preferring not to return to Kontum. "It makes me very happy, of course," said the groom's mother, who dotes on everyone in her orbit, plying them with food and warmth. She is optimistic and grateful, despite her son's deportation. "I love everything that God give my son and daughter in law." The bride and groom are similarly aware of their good fortune relative to that of the impoverished Montagnard community. They invited the entire village to their reception, hoping to not only celebrate with but also give back to their ethnic kin. "In America, people can get food easily," Ms. Ny said. "If you want to compare to Vietnam, there are kids on the street." Their guests feasted on freshly slaughtered and prepared pork and beef, along with an array of vegetables. The couple, in a Montagnard tradition, greeted every guest at the home of Ms. Ny's cousin. Soon after another tradition of mandatory intoxication began. Friends and family positioned themselves throughout the home's porch, sitting around jugs filled to the brim with homemade rice wine. The couple made the rounds, stopping repeatedly at each jug, whose guardians forced the newlyweds to guzzle wine through a straw. When the couple said they'd had enough, they enlisted the help of friends and family. Mr. A and Ms. Ny, despite spending a majority of their lives in the United States, speak various Montagnard languages, along with English and Vietnamese, and care deeply about their increasingly threatened community. (He speaks Xe Dang, Bahnar, and Ro Ngao; she speaks Ro Ngao and Bahnar.) Nya, 13, and Ly Yhang, 12, the couple's two oldest daughters, don't speak any Montagnard languages, but nonetheless, appreciate their parents' union and their own heritage. "I'm happy for them, but not for me," Nya said semi jokingly of her parents. Neither she nor Ly Yhang like wearing dresses let alone boxy Montagnard dresses or crowds, both of which are forced upon them for the wedding. ("They're introverts," Ms. Ny explained.) But Ly Yhang, when speaking of her parents, momentarily allows the veneer of matrimonial normality to slip. "I'm excited for Mommy and Daddy to get to live together," she said before realizing and correcting her error: "To get to be together forever." Evangeline, the pair's 6 year old daughter, seemed to intuitively know to make the most of the fleeting moments with her father, rarely venturing from his side. When she pulled on his clothes, hoping for an embrace, he leaned down, smiled and picked her up, gently cautioning: "A few kisses, and then you go with your sisters, O.K.?" Ms. Ny, looking on, sighed and spoke not only for her daughter but seemingly for herself, yearning for a time when normality was anything besides familial separation: "She doesn't want to leave." On Jan. 31, Ms. Ny and the couple's daughters returned to their home in North Carolina. Mr. A remained in Ho Chi Minh City, the former South Vietnamese capital that was known as Saigon, where he lives and works at a restaurant. It is unlikely that Mr. A will ever again step foot in the United States, the country that his wife, daughters and parents all call home. "Chuh has a slim chance of returning to the United States," said Tin Thanh Nguyen, his pro bono lawyer in North Carolina. "Chuh's only option is pursuing post conviction relief in Wake County, North Carolina, to challenge the criminal conviction for which he was deported." Mr. Nguyen says he is pursuing this strategy. For now, the longtime partners and newlyweds remain physically separated. "It's all right," Ms. Ny said later of life in North Carolina after returning there. "I miss my husband."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Did you catch the Trump Kelly bout Friday night? What a show. It had Donald J. Trump, The Likely Republican Presidential Nominee, throwing the first punch (of that day) at the star Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly by composing a Twitter post describing her as "overrated" and calling for a boycott of her show. Then Fox News Channel counterpunched, accusing the candidate of having a sexist and "sick obsession" with its popular journalist. Boom. Another Trump News avalanche! The Trump Kelly feud once again became a focal point of the presidential campaign coverage, cascading across Twitter, cable news and digital news outlets, including this one. As in any good prizefight, everybody came out the richer Friday, putting aside the potentially severe internal injuries. Mr. Trump riled up his fans against a recurring villain in his running campaign narrative and ensured the news was once again all about him. Fox News, the cable news ratings leader that is so often impugned as an arm of the Republican Party, got to ring a bell for journalistic independence. Ms. Kelly got the sort of support from the network that she has described as lacking from her colleague Bill O'Reilly; guaranteed big ratings to come; and got more fodder for the book she sold for many millions of dollars after the Trump feud began. Newspapers and online news organizations got a click worthy story line tailor made for a fast read on the iPhone. And, finally, there were the viewers and the readers, who are benefiting from a transitioning media industry's desire to give them what they want, where they want it, as fast as possible. As the people have made clear, they want Trump. It was the perfect boil down of the disturbing symbiosis between Mr. Trump and the news media. There is always a mutually beneficial relationship between candidates and news organizations during presidential years. But in my lifetime it's never seemed so singularly focused on a single candidacy. And the financial stakes have never been so intertwined with the journalistic and political stakes. Here are more fascinating tales you can't help but read all the way to the end. None Getting Personal With Iman. The supermodel talks about life after David Bowie, their Catskills refuge and the perfume inspired by their love. A Resilient Team for a Broken Nation. With the Taliban in control, what, and whom, is Afghanistan's national soccer team playing for? The Fight of This Old Boxer's Life Was With His Own Family. A battle among Marvin Stein's family over his fortune broke out, and he suddenly found himself powerless to fight for himself. Of course, the situation is unique because Mr. Trump is unique. His pedigree, his demagoguery and his inscrutable platform including the proposed mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants make him a giant story. But he is also taking advantage of a momentous and insecure time in American media. News organizations old and new are jockeying for survival in a changing order, awash in information and content but absent the pillars they could always rely upon, like reliable advertising models, secure places on the cable dial or old fashioned newsstand sales. I've been struck by just how much uncertainty there is as I've talked to people across the mediasphere in preparation for lacing up the size 12s that are so closely associated with this space, last worn so smartly by our departed colleague David Carr (P.S., they feel O.K., will take a little getting used to). Things are changing so fast that no news organization knows whether the assumptions it's making to secure its future will prove correct. In that environment, Mr. Trump brings a welcome, if temporary, salve. He delivers ratings and clicks, and therefore revenue, which makes him the seller in a seller's market. "I go on one of these shows and the ratings double, they triple," Mr. Trump accurately told Time a few weeks ago. "And that gives you power." And Mr. Trump knows how to wield power. Just as his success at the polls is pushing the Republican Party to reassess its very identity and break with long held traditions, he is using his ratings power to push the news media to break from its mission of holding the powerful, or really just him, accountable. In other words, to loosen its standards. We take those standards as a given, but they were established during more economically secure times, when the traditional media was flush and could dictate the terms of news coverage to advertisers, the people it covered and its audience. That leverage is slipping away. Once you understand that, you can understand why Fox News which has gleefully broken with traditional journalistic values since its founding by Roger Ailes and Rupert Murdoch appears to be taking the lead in resisting Mr. Trump's demands. 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. Fox News has its business challenges like anyone else. But it stands securely atop the news ratings, knows its mission, painstakingly maintains its special relationship with conservative audiences, and is therefore a revenue driver for its parent company, 21st Century Fox. It still plays to win and knows where the ratings are. So plenty of its shows feature Mr. Trump, and enjoy cozy relations with him (lookin' at you, Sean Hannity), contributing to a roughly 40 percent prime time ratings spike over last year. But Fox was not desperate for those ratings. CNN entered the campaign season in a very different position. Some 18 months ago Wall Street analysts were questioning whether the network, then sinking near 20 year ratings lows, had a place in the new ecosystem of "unlimited real time information," as my colleague Emily Steel wrote at the time. With CNN's debates and heavy coverage of Mr. Trump, the network's ratings have increased about 170 percent in prime time this year. That's more than a reason to boast; it's an adrenaline shot to the heart. Understandably, Jeff Zucker, the president of CNN Worldwide, was beaming when I saw him at a lunch with other reporters last week. "These numbers are crazy crazy," he said, referring to the ratings. How crazy? Two hundred thousand dollars per 30 second spot crazy on debate nights, 40 times what CNN makes on an average night, according to Advertising Age. That's found money. It certainly has to take the sting out of the criticism that CNN has handed its schedule over to Mr. Trump, which is a little unfair in that it is hardly alone. The New York Times's Upshot team, using data from mediaQuant, reported last week that Mr. Trump had received nearly 1.9 billion worth of news coverage; his next closest Republican competitor, Ted Cruz, received a little more than 300 million. Hillary Clinton has received less than 750 million. True, plenty of Mr. Trump's "free media" has included some good, tough reporting on him, if belatedly. That reporting has had no noticeable effect on his rise (not that it's the job of the news media to stop him). The imbalance in coverage has, though, led to spectacles like the one on March 8, when all of the cable news networks showed Mr. Trump's 45 minute long primary night news conference in full. While Mrs. Clinton's victory speech went uncovered, Mr. Trump used the time to hawk Trump Steaks and Trump Wine. That was new. One imagines that if CBS and ABC had 24 hour news channels, they would have gone along for the embarrassing ride, too. Because, surprisingly, the broadcast networks, fighting for relevance, have appeared to make some of the most fundamental compromises. Where Fox News refused Mr. Trump's demand this year that it remove Ms. Kelly as a debate moderator, and lost his participation, ABC News appeared to accede to Mr. Trump's request that it break its debate partnership with The New Hampshire Union Leader, which had harshly editorialized against him. The network said it made the decision because of its own strained relations with the newspaper, but Mr. Trump took credit, leaving the dangerous impression that he had the power to muzzle uncooperative journalists. Then there are the Sunday morning public affairs programs. For decades they have served as proving grounds where candidates must show up on camera, ideally in person, to handle questions without aides slipping them notes, their facial reactions and body language on full display. It's why the programs were named "Face the Nation" and "Meet the Press" not "Call the Nation" or "Phone the Press." And yet, as the campaign began in earnest, all of the shows went along with Mr. Trump's insistence that he "appear" by phone all except one, "Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace." "I just thought even if we took a ratings hit and to some degree we did it was a line worth holding," Mr. Wallace told me. On Friday, Chuck Todd, the moderator of "Meet the Press," told me he had only grudgingly allowed Mr. Trump to call in to his show earlier in the campaign, determining that he would rather have Mr. Trump take questions via phone than not at all. Now, Mr. Todd said, he will no longer allow Mr. Trump to do prescheduled interviews by phone on the NBC program. And CNN told me it would think twice before giving full coverage to a Trump news conference that devolves into an infomercial. I thought I might be witnessing a midcampaign course correction. But then I tuned in to "This Week With George Stephanopoulos" on ABC and there was Mr. Trump, or, that is, his disembodied voice. None of this is meant to let newspapers off the hook. In our rush to find new digital readers via iPhones and tablets, we are adding to the Trumpian churn. When Mr. Trump called Ms. Kelly "Crazy Megyn" on Twitter last week, for instance, it was just another in a long stream of derogatory posts about her. Not really news. Yet The New York Times, The Washington Post, Politico and others did separate news reports on it giving Mr. Trump an audience well beyond his own seven million Twitter followers and contributing to what ultimately became Friday night's big fight. (Even Mr. Trump believes it is "the craziest thing" how "I do a tweet on something, something not even significant, and they break into their news within seconds," he told my colleague Maureen Dowd last week.) On her show on Friday, Ms. Kelly made an oblique call for solidarity. "I'm the second highest rated show in all of cable news and I haven't had Trump on in seven months," she said. "It can be done without him too." Sure, given her ratings, Ms. Kelly can afford to take a stand for journalistic independence. Can everybody else afford not to?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
NORRISTOWN, Pa. In a major victory for Bill Cosby, the judge in his sexual assault trial ruled Tuesday to admit testimony from a Temple University academic adviser who says that Mr. Cosby's central accuser, Andrea Constand, told her she could make money by falsely claiming that she had been molested by a prominent person. Judge Steven T. O'Neill of the Montgomery County Court of Common Pleas had barred the testimony of the administrator, Marguerite Jackson, 56, an adviser in Temple's Boyer College of Music and Dance, during Mr. Cosby's first trial, which ended with a hung jury last summer. That ruling came after Ms. Constand, a former staff member for the Temple women's basketball program, testified in the first trial that she did not know Ms. Jackson. But in recent weeks, Mr. Cosby's defense had brought forward two former colleagues of Ms. Constand's at Temple who said she knew Ms. Jackson. Ms. Constand's credibility is expected to be a prime focus of the defense, as it was at the first trial, where she testified at length that Mr. Cosby had drugged and then assaulted her at his home outside Philadelphia in 2004. Mr. Cosby, 80, and among the best known graduates of Temple, has said the sexual contact was consensual. Prosecutors say Ms. Constand is just one in a line of women who Mr. Cosby assaulted after giving them some kind of intoxicant. Dozens of women have come forward in recent years with such accounts, and Judge O'Neill agreed last month to allow five of them to testify. Prosecutors say the testimony will buttress their contention that the encounter with Ms. Constand was part of a pattern of predatory behavior by Mr. Cosby. At the first trial, only one other woman was allowed to testify alongside Ms. Constand. Mr. Cosby's lawyers have said they intend to show that Mr. Cosby was the victim of someone who hatched a plot to siphon money from a rich entertainer. Prosecutors are expected to question Ms. Jackson's credibility, and spoke in court papers of "the rather suspicious circumstances surrounding the revelation of Ms. Jackson's proffered testimony," without elaborating. In another ruling Tuesday, Judge O'Neill said jurors would be able to hear about the lawsuit filed by Ms. Constand against Mr. Cosby that ended with a financial settlement in 2006. The payment amount has been kept confidential for more than a decade but can now be revealed at trial. But Judge O'Neill said that the negotiations that led to the settlement would not be disclosed. Prosecutors had wanted to include what they said were Mr. Cosby's demands that he be released from criminal liability and that Ms. Constand be barred from cooperating with the police a stance, prosecutors said, that was inconsistent with a person saying he was innocent. The rulings came on the second day of jury selection for the trial, scheduled to start next week. Seven jurors have been selected so far. In a sign of the challenge in finding an impartial jury, 82 of 119 potential jurors questioned by the judge Tuesday said they already had an opinion about Mr. Cosby's guilt or innocence. As to his decision regarding Ms. Jackson, Judge O'Neill said it was "subject to further rulings by this court in the context of trial, specifically, following the testimony of Andrea Constand" suggesting the decision could be reversed depending on Ms. Constand's testimony. Ms. Jackson has worked for more than 30 years at Temple, and said in an affidavit filed with the court that she traveled with its women's basketball team as an adviser in the early 2000s, sometimes sharing a room with Ms. Constand, who was the team's operations manager. Ms. Jackson said on a trip to Rhode Island during that time they watched a TV news report together about a prominent person who had drugged and sexually assaulted women. Ms. Constand responded to the TV report, Ms. Jackson said, by saying at first that something similar had happened to her. Then she said she had not actually been assaulted but that she could make a lot of money if she told the authorities that she had been, according to the affidavit. "I could say it happened, file charges and get money to go to school and open a business," Ms. Constand said, according to Ms. Jackson's account. Prosecutors and defense lawyers had fought over the inclusion of Ms. Jackson's testimony. "The commonwealth has made a lot of arguments about the reliability of Ms. Jackson," a lawyer for Mr. Cosby, Becky S. James, had said at a pretrial hearing, "but she has no reason to lie." Although the defense has argued in court papers that Ms. Constand now acknowledges knowing Ms. Jackson, the basis for that contention has not been made public. Prosecutors have questioned why Ms. Jackson did not speak up on this matter until a decade after Ms. Constand first went to the police. Kristen Feden, a lawyer for the prosecution, had said Ms. Jackson's testimony should not be admitted because it does not mention Mr. Cosby or specify a time when the statement was made. She said the statement did not qualify as an exception to the rule banning hearsay because it does not establish the defendant's state of mind. "When you are talking about state of mind, you are not talking about broad statements," Ms. Feden said. "She didn't talk about Bill Cosby."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
"It has nothing to do with stopping others from using the ter m," a spokesman for the basketball star said. It's an undisputed fact that LeBron James loves tacos, especially on Tuesdays. And this Tuesday night, for seemingly the thousandth time, the millennial N.B.A. superstar went on Instagram and announced to his tens of millions of followers: "You know what it is! Taco Tuesdayyyyyy!" This is how he lets people know it is his family's taco night. Mr. James's custom usually includes the addition of a howl delivered in an exaggerated Spanish or Mexican ish accent. His fans love it. And now the 34 year old forward for the Los Angeles Lakers is making a move to formalize a claim on the phrase. On Aug. 15, a company called LBJ Trademarks LLC filed a request with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office on behalf of Mr. James to trademark "Taco Tuesday." The company seeks protection for use of the phrase in a host of forums, including "downloadable audio/visual works," podcasts, social media, online marketing and "entertainment services." USA Today first reported on the request this weekend. "The filing was to protect the company from potential lawsuits should we decide to pursue any ideas, nothing of which is in development," a spokesman for Mr. James said this week on (taco) Tuesday. "It has nothing to do with stopping others from using the term ." Trouble is, the phrase is already a federal trademark for a company in Wyoming. That trademark is itself a source of dispute and grumbling. At issue, for taco lovers far and wide, is the question: Should anyone hold a trademark for a phrase in liberal usage at Mexican restaurants across the country? A Brief and Shady History of Taco Tuesday Gustavo Arellano, a longtime taco chronicler and author of the book "Taco U.S.A.," has found references to American businesses highlighting tacos or other Mexican foods on Tuesdays as far back as 1933. Now a features writer for The Los Angeles Times, Mr. Arellano chalked up Mr. James's move to a newcomer's naivete. After all, Mr. James is only entering his second season playing for Los Angeles, after playing for teams in other cities. "In LeBron's defense, he was in Cleveland, he was in Miami hardly capitals of Mexican food," he said. Mr. Arellano argued that the current trademark for "Taco Tuesday," which has been held since 1989 by the franchise restaurant chain Taco John's, based in Cheyenne, Wyo., is a classic case of "Columbusing." Mr. James's effort to claim the term now, he said, could be an opportunity to "free" it for use by all. Currently, the U.S. patent office recognizes four trademarks related to tacos and Tuesdays: "Techno Taco Tuesday," for an entertainment company in Las Vegas; "Tuesdays Were Made for Tacos at Rosa's!" for a restaurant in Fort Worth; "Taco Tuesday," for the Gregory Hotel in Somers Point, N.J. (applicable only in the state of New Jersey); and the 1989 trademark held by Taco John's (applicable throughout the United States, except in New Jersey). Twenty five other filings, including the request by LBJ Trademarks LLC, are pending or dead. Taco John's, which did not respond to a request for comment, has been known to aggressively protect its claim on the term. But policing the use of "Taco Tuesday" is likely a futile endeavor: just Google "Taco Tuesday" and the name of any medium sized or larger big city. Hundreds of restaurants, bars, and cantinas use the alliterative phrase to promote taco and drink specials on their menus, flagrantly ignoring a federal trademark. In Los Angeles, which may be the taco capital of the U.S., the news of the N.B.A. champ's filing was met with frowns, guffaws or shrugs. At Trejo's Tacos on La Brea Avenue, it was just another Tuesday on a hot September afternoon. Customers lined up at the taqueria founded by the actor and hometown hero Danny Trejo to have mini tacos of carnitas, cauliflower or spicy shrimp, for around 2.75 apiece. There's a special Tuesdays only menu at Trejo's. "It's a national slogan. To patent it? Come on, give me a break," said Valerie Bracamontes, 53, who was dining at Trejo's with three members of her family. "He definitely doesn't know L.A.," she said. For some, Mr. James's affected accent with the "Taco Tuesday" gag is a separate source of discomfort. It's been described as cringe worthy, and possibly a play on the Looney Tunes character Speedy Gonzales. "If you're going to do a 'grito,'" or traditional Mexican 'yell,' Mr. Arellano said, "at least do a good one." Still, tacos are "so ingrained in our cultural milieu as Californians that it doesn't even strike people who are non Mexican necessarily that it is not indigenous to us," said Alison Rose Jefferson, a third generation L.A. native and an independent historian of the African American experience in Southern California. That was the vibe on Tuesday afternoon at Worldwide Tacos, a taco shack in South Los Angeles that is legendary for what are often described as soul food tacos . There are more than 150 possible tacos or burritos on the menu, usually a frightening prospect for taco purists from other parts of L.A. The business got a boost last year with a scene on the HBO series "Insecure" the show's star Issa Rae orders, and then sings to, the B.B.Q. salmon taco but wait times are long, and even its operating hours remain elusive. Customers arrive, leave their order and phone number, and go somewhere else to wait for an hour or more to get pinged when their food is ready. Faithful customers say the waits are worth it. The lamb and blueberry taco is another surprising standout. Al Sennie, who was preparing tacos on Tuesday at Worldwide, said Mr. James should not be faulted for his business acumen, "if he can get away with it." L.A. will always love the Lakers, he said. But he paused when asked if the trademark request was ill advised. "Before he came over here it was already 'Taco Tuesday'" in Los Angeles, Mr. Sennie said. "He should come down to Worldwide and really know what Taco Tuesday is all about, and bring the whole team." Mr. Sennie, making his own potentially exaggerated claim, added: "These are the best tacos in L.A."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
If a Manolo Blahnik pump with a three inch heel was the definitive "It" shoe for a generation of urban professionals raised on a diet of "Sex and the City,'' its jewelry equivalent was a sexy gold earring known as the Stella. Roberto Faraone Mennella, the creator of that iconic parabolic hoop, died on June 4 in Torre del Greco, near Naples, Italy. The cause was cancer. He was 48. News of his death was first communicated through the social media accounts of Amedeo Scognamiglio, his partner in business and in life. "Robu is finally free," Mr. Scognamiglio wrote on Instagram, "sketching jewels and interiors in his new home in Heaven." Raised in Torre del Greco, Mr. Faraone Mennella was attending a private Jesuit high school when he met Mr. Scognamiglio at a friend's birthday party. "It was difficult at that time in the south of Italy, and within our very conservative circle, even to admit to ourselves we were gay," Mr. Scognamiglio said in an interview. The two men went on to study law at the University of Naples, although neither would ever practice. Instead, fleeing anachronistic social strictures that still held sway in the southern Italy of the late 1990s, they quit Naples for New York City, where Mr. Faraone Mennella enrolled in the Parsons School of Design to study design marketing, while Mr. Scognamiglio hawked the cameos that had been his family stock in trade for generations. "I sold to Macy's, the jewelry center on West 47th Street, Chinatown jewelry exchanges, anywhere" while awaiting a commercial break, Mr. Scognamiglio said. Good fortune, when it struck in the otherwise ill omened year of 2001, took a series of turns so improbable that they might have been lifted from Italo Calvino's "Italian Folktales.'' There was a late night call, a woman identifying herself as Sarah Jessica Parker, an exchange of numbers almost immediately misplaced and, later, a midnight stroll on the Upper East Side that led Mr. Scognamiglio and Mr. Faraone Mennella to a block where a "Sex and the City'' shoot happened to be underway. "We knocked on the door of the wardrobe trailer," Mr. Scognamiglio said. In the doorway appeared a flame haired apparition in cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, a cigarette dangling from her lips. It was the show's influential stylist, Patricia Field. "She said, 'Where have you been?'" Mr. Scognamiglio recalled. "'We've been trying to track you two down for months.'" Eventually, Ms. Field chose one of Mr. Scognamiglio's cameos to use as an accessory for Ms. Parker's character, Carrie Bradshaw, and called in the entire first collection of samples from Mr. Faraone Mennella's fledgling label, Faraone Mennella. Elegant and yet offhand, these were a natural fit for the show's principal characters, a shiny cohort of professional women with messy love lives and closets full of shoes. Even before the first store had placed an order, Faraone Mennella jewels were appearing onscreen, emblems of what in the jewelry trade was being pitched to female consumers as "the self purchase." "The secret power of those hoops we all saw on 'Sex and the City' was how effortless the design seemed," Stellene Volandes, the editor in chief of Town Country and the editorial director of Elle Decor, said. They were the sort of thing Kim Cattrall's character, Samantha Jones, might wear to a party on a yacht anchored off Capri lustrous enough to register as fine jewelry and yet nothing so fusty as mummy's pearls or stuff pulled from a vault. And while, at roughly 450 a pair, they were far from cheap, the Stella earrings 18 carat gold with beaded pendant loops of tiger's eye, aquamarine, turquoise or diamonds were nevertheless priced to appeal to a generation that no longer looked to men to provide their baubles. Propelled by that early success, Faraone Mennella designs would find their way into couture collections by Carolina Herrera, with whom the designers embarked on a five year collaboration in 2004, and onto the sales floors of Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Bloomingdale's and Saks in what may turn out to have been the twilight of the great department stores. "Roberto and Amedeo loved their clients, loved women, were inspired by them," said Linda Fargo, director of women's fashion for Bergdorf Goodman. "Their clients became their muses." Those clients, almost inevitably, came to include fast living aristocrats from London's smart set; Hollywood A listers like Jennifer Aniston, Hilary Swank and Cameron Diaz; and members of a freshly minted caste of American plutocrats. In 2015, Mr. Faraone Mennella was commissioned to create a suite of jewelry for the lavish Amalfi Coast wedding of Hope Dworaczyk, a former Playboy Playmate of the Year, and Robert F. Smith, a billionaire investor and philanthropist. "Roberto's refined sense of style accentuated the beauty of the women with the beauty of the stone," Mr. Smith said by email. "When he designed the pieces I requested for my wife, he was focused on enhancing her beauty and not promoting his style." Roberto Faraone Mennella was born on Sept. 25, 1971, in Torre del Greco for centuries a center of cameo and coral jewelry production to Renato Faraone Mennella, an agronomist, and Hannelore (Czermak) Faraone Mennella. In addition to Mr. Scognamiglio, they and a sister, Anoushka De Falco, survive him.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
MOSCOW Having tried and failed to become a major financial center, Moscow is trying yet again only this time it finds itself competing for business with Warsaw, not London, Tokyo and New York. Moscow wants companies to list on the Moscow stock exchange. It wants money center banks to expand here, as well as insurance companies and law firms that deal with securities, to make Moscow the hub for the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe. To do all that, city leaders are inviting business to glittering new skyscrapers, including the Mercury City Tower, which at 75 stories is the tallest building in Europe. "The idea is to upgrade the position of Moscow in ratings, to become closer to the leaders of innovation and to the big boys of international financial centers," Andrei V. Sharonov, the deputy mayor for economic affairs, who led a roadshow tour promoting the city in Asia, said in an interview. This spring, the city government sent deputy mayors to Tokyo, Singapore, Frankfurt, London, Boston and New York to tell banks and other financial companies they should take a closer look at Moscow. The trip was the first concerted effort by the city government to woo investors as tenants for the new high rise financial district called Moscow City. Certainly Moscow has a lot of wooing to do. A city of traffic clogged highways and sprawling concrete apartment blocks, Moscow is widely known as a singularly difficult place to do business. It did attract the big banking houses from New York and London after the fall of Communism. But cronyism, the lack of transparency and shady accounting gave companies pause. Weak courts and selective enforcement encouraged companies to conduct business outside Russia. Political change in Russia further sapped enthusiasm. Vladimir V. Putin, a skeptic regarding greater integration with the West, succeeded Dmitri A. Medvedev, who was seen as a modernizing figure, as president in a switch known as "the castling" for its resemblance to the chess move. Mr. Medvedev had named senior Western bank executives to an advisory council for transforming Moscow's financial sector. They included Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase; Vikram S. Pandit, the former chief executive of Citigroup; and Lloyd C. Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs. But the Global Financial Center Index, published in March by Z/Yen, a consulting agency, placed Moscow 65th out of 79 cities studied. London was first, followed by New York and Hong Kong. The ranking placed Moscow between Bahrain and Mumbai. A survey by the World Bank and the International Finance Corporation even ranked Moscow No. 30 out of 30 Russian cities for ease of doing business. "Moscow was never going to be an international financial center," a Western banker working here, who was not authorized to speak for his employer on the matter, said of the effort. "That was a joke." Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. So Moscow is setting its sights a little lower. Its biggest problem is to be taken seriously even as a regional center. The midsize companies in neighboring Ukraine or other former Soviet republics are choosing to go public in Warsaw. They are hardly bothering to look at the carefully laid out welcome mat in Russia. Kernel, a Ukrainian corporate farming enterprise, and Coal Energy, a Ukrainian producer of steam coal, listed in Poland, where a policy of investing pensions in the stock market helps the local exchange. The Warsaw stock exchange, in fact, has so many Ukrainian company listings it has a Ukraine index. Micex, the Russian stock exchange, has no such index because it has so few listings. Moscow must compete, said Mr. Sharonov, the deputy mayor, because "there are a lot of other opportunities and competitors all over the world." Moscow's roadshow was intended to illustrate the city's efforts to become more livable for foreign executives and residents, Mr. Sharonov said. A new interchange links the financial district to nearby roads, for example, easing congestion. Also, under the federal program to promote banking here, Russian financial regulators tied up loose ends in ways that pleased stock traders and other financial professionals, but have not been widely noticed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
ATHENS The Greek government on Wednesday appointed the deputy finance minister to run the ministry temporarily after his boss resigned to lead the country's Socialist party. Filippos Sachinidis, 48, a Canadian born economist, worked closely with the former finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos, who resigned Monday, in negotiating Greece's second financial bailout, which was approved early this month. He is to be finance minister until general elections, which are expected in late April or early May, the prime minister's office said. Mr. Sachinidis was widely expected to get the job. He was deputy finance minister in the previous Socialist government of George A. Papandreou and an adviser in the office of another Socialist premier, Costas Simitis, from 2000 through 2004.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
But this rule, which was meant to register fan purchases during an album's all important opening week and also prevent double counting has a host of complications, including undercounting physical product. Last year, Nielsen counted just 73.5 million physical album sales in the United States. How much higher is the real number, if many delayed vinyl and CDs were categorized as digital instead? Effective last Friday, Billboard changed how it accounts for physical albums that are bundled with digital versions. Those sales will now be counted as physical copies but only once the album is shipped to a fan. That may be a blow to the opening week numbers for an artist like Swift, as collectible items make their way to fans later on. And it will further advantage streaming activity. In the second week out for "Folklore," Swift still offered her fans lots of merch deals. But of the 135,000 sales that Billboard and Nielsen recorded for the album down 84 percent from its opening the majority were attributed to streaming. Songs from the album were streamed 134 million times, while 30,000 copies of it were sold as a complete package. Also this week, two posthumous albums Pop Smoke's "Shoot for the Stars Aim for the Moon" and Juice WRLD's "Legends Never Die" are No. 2 and 3. The "Hamilton" Broadway cast album is No. 4, and Lil Baby's "My Turn" is No. 5. Beyonce's album "The Lion King: The Gift," a companion to Disney's 2019 film, re entered the chart at No. 10, after she put out a deluxe version of the LP with the release of "Black Is King," her new visual album on Disney .	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
When locals in Belfast, in Northern Ireland, want to go shopping, they head to the lively city center, a compact pedestrian friendly area with modern buildings and stately structures from mostly the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Although there are international retail chains such as Zara and H M , the neighborhood's gems are the independently owned establishments. Visitors can discover these shops selling goods from the United Kingdom and Irish brands as they stroll along the wide lanes and often charming side streets. The owner of this more than two decade old tiny jewelry store, Sean Harden, named it after his niece and sources his pieces which are made mostly of semiprecious materials from United Kingdom designers. He favors an aesthetic that's simple yet chic such as a trio of sterling silver bangles and a rose gold plated ring with a swirl pattern. And for men, there are cuff links, rings, bracelets and necklaces, too. Prices from 10 pounds (about 14) .	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Plants need carbon dioxide to grow, and we are now emitting 40 billion tons of it into the atmosphere each year. A number of small studies have suggested that humans actually are contributing to an increase in photosynthesis across the globe. Elliott Campbell, an environmental scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and his colleagues last year published a study that put a number to it. Their conclusion: plants are now converting 31 percent more carbon dioxide into organic matter than they were before the Industrial Revolution. Climate change denialists were quick to jump on Dr. Campbell's research as proof that increased carbon dioxide is making the world a better place. "So called carbon pollution has done much more to expand and invigorate the planet's greenery than all the climate policies of all the world's governments combined," the Competitive Enterprise Institute declared shortly after the study came out. "The best messages are positive: CO2 increases crop yields, the earth is greening," wrote Joseph Bast, the chief executive officer of the Heartland Institute, in an October 2017 email obtained by EE News. In June, Mr. Bast co authored an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal in which he cited Dr. Campbell's work as evidence of the benefits of fossil fuels. Our unleashing of carbon dioxide contributes "to the greening of the Earth," he said. Recently I talked Dr. Campbell, and as it turns out, he feels people like Mr. Bast are drawing the wrong lessons from his research. Here are four reasons he believes nobody should be celebrating "global greening." More Photosynthesis Doesn't Mean More Food Yes, we now get far more food from each acre of farmland than we did a century ago. But extra carbon dioxide only accounts for a small fraction of the increase. "A 30 percent increase in photosynthesis does not translate into a 30 percent increase in strawberries off the land," said Dr. Campbell. While photosynthesis does pull carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, much of that gas goes right back into the air. The reason: At night, the chemical reactions in plants essentially run backward. In a process known as respiration, plants pump out carbon dioxide instead of pulling it in. "Part of the story is that photosynthesis is going up, and part of the story is that so is respiration," said Dr. Campbell. While the increase in photosynthesis is greater than that of respiration, the ultimate benefit to crops has been small and it doesn't explain our modern agricultural revolution. "The driving factor has to be the fertilizers, the seed varieties, the irrigation," Dr. Campbell said. A number of studies indicate that plants that grow in extra carbon dioxide often end up containing lower concentrations of nutrients such as nitrogen, copper and potassium. As more carbon dioxide gets into the atmosphere, the problem will grow. "There's definitely strong evidence that quality will be affected," said Dr. Campbell. It's not clear why this happens. In a paper published in the journal Current Opinion in Plant Biology in June, Johan Uddling of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and his colleagues speculated that microbes are to blame. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Just as carbon dioxide speeds up photosynthesis, it may also increase the rate at which soil microbes take up nutrients, leaving less for plants to suck in through their roots. If we eat food that lacks nutrients, we become more vulnerable to a host of diseases. Recently, a team of researchers at Stanford University studied how future changes to crops could affect the world's health. The findings were grim. In Southeast Asia, for example, the researchers estimated that the rate of iron deficiency may rise from 21.8 percent to 27.9 percent by 2050. Deficiencies in iron and other nutrients could make millions of people more vulnerable to diseases including malaria and pneumonia, leading to many premature deaths. It's not just strawberries and other crops that are taking in extra carbon dioxide. So are the forests, grasslands and other wild ecosystems of the world. When scientists take into account both extra photosynthesis and respiration, they estimate that plants remove a quarter of the carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere. "That's on par with what China emits," said Dr. Campbell. "And China is the biggest global polluter." There's still a lot that Dr. Campbell and his colleagues don't understand about global greening. Most importantly, they don't know how long it will last. As temperatures rise and rainfall patterns change, plants may stop soaking up extra carbon dioxide. "Plants are quietly scrubbing the air of one China's worth of carbon. What frightens me is knowing this can't go on forever," said Dr. Campbell. "If respiration catches up with photosynthesis, this huge carbon reservoir could spill back into our air."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The Chinese government detected Covid 19 in December 2019. On the afternoon of March 13, 2020, President Trump announced a state of emergency. After months of near complete inaction, finger pointing and lies, testing is just starting to ramp up. The states have taken more action than the federal government. Whose job is it to identify threats to the American people? Whose job is it to take action in the face of those threats? If anyone thinks it's partisan to denounce the government for its disgraceful handling of this crisis, I would beg to differ. It's partisan not to. It has failed us. As a big time sports fan, I am saddened that many major sporting events and seasons have been canceled or put on hold because of the coronavirus. But there is one sport that I would actually like to see suspended for the duration of this crisis the sport of American politics. I am sick and tired of our leaders treating the people of this country as an audience for their own political battles. One side says it's doing a wonderful job and looks to score points on its decisions. The other side calls its opponents incompetent and says they have no idea what they are doing. To quote the famous line from "Gone With the Wind," "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Leave the politics at the doorstep. We've got a problem facing us right now. If there were ever a time that we needed them to stop fighting and forcefully focus on the problem, this is it. Re "Trump and Pence Won't Be Tested After Meeting With Infected Brazilian Official" (nytimes.com, March 12): Despite having contact with at least two people (and possibly more) who have the coronavirus, the White House issued a statement that President Trump does not need to be tested though he later said it was likely he would be. He continues to regularly meet with cabinet officials and military personnel, who then meet with others. Apart from setting a poor example for our nation by not following recommended isolation guidelines, is he not aware he could be inadvertently infecting the whole upper level chain of command of our government, including the military? This is neither leadership nor genius. Ronald Reagan famously said, "Government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Here we are, 40 years later, finally confronting the reality that a robust, government backed social safety net is not the same thing as government bloat. Sensible social policies are necessary to protect the lives, livelihoods and safety of all Americans. This need not be labeled "socialism." In fact, it can be argued that the main purpose of safety net protections (like paid sick time or universal health care) is to safeguard capitalism, not to destroy it. Deborah Mullin Pound Ridge, N.Y. The writer is an adjunct professor of social welfare policy at Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, CUNY. Now that sporting events have been canceled or postponed, there's an opportunity to set up field hospitals in Yankee Stadium, Madison Square Garden and other such venues. Predictions from the C.D.C. and others indicate that the Covid 19 virus will infect a significant percentage of the population. It has been proven in South Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong that early isolation of infected individuals can reduce spread of the virus and decrease mortality. Our hospitals may be overwhelmed if the numbers are as large as some experts predict. Keeping the infected less sick patients out of the hospitals and isolated for a period of time in temporary field hospitals saves space for critically ill patients in the regular hospitals and decreases risk of exposure to staff and patients. Andrew R. Marks New York The writer, a doctor, is chairman of the Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics at Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University. To all New Yorkers and visitors who care about the survival and longevity of our wonderful cultural organizations: May I suggest that you use your ticket credit from canceled performances to either order tickets for a future performance or to make a donation to nonprofit organizations? Let's show that we can pull together unselfishly to keep this most important part of urban life alive. Why is no one writing about how to keep this virus travesty from happening again? What is it going to take to permanently close China's live animal markets? Now is the time for intense and sustained international pressure while the Chinese government is embarrassed and defensive about causing this pandemic. Yes, the Chinese have put market restrictions in place, but those restrictions will likely disappear once the crisis passes. The animal markets are the origin story here. Let's keep a light beaming on them. Now is the perfect time to encourage restaurant managers to deal with an oft overlooked practice waiters delivering beverages to a table with the waiters hands' touching the part of the glass that I am going to touch with my mouth. How to assist with curbing the spread of the coronavirus? Train your waiters.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Barbra Streisand Cloned Her Dog. For 50,000, You Can Clone Yours. It was basically an aside an odd and interesting nugget in an interview with Barbra Streisand that otherwise dealt with heavy topics like sexism and politics. Indeed, most of the 2,800 word article about Ms. Streisand in Variety is devoted to detailing the actress's decades long efforts to break up Hollywood's boys' club, as the 90th Academy Awards ceremony approaches with the MeToo movement as the backdrop. But it was that one nugget a brief comment about her dogs that drew the most attention on Tuesday night. In her interview with Variety, Ms. Streisand revealed that two of her three Coton de Tulear dogs were clones. Specifically, the magazine reported that the dogs Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett had been cloned from cells taken from the mouth and stomach of Ms. Streisand's late dog Samantha, who was 14 when she died last year. Miss Violet and Miss Scarlett "have different personalities," Ms. Streisand told Variety. "I'm waiting for them to get older so I can see if they have her brown eyes and her seriousness." Ms. Streisand's third dog, Miss Fanny, is a distant cousin of Samantha's, the magazine said. (Miss Fanny's mother, the story noted, had been named Funny Girl.) The dogs were cloned using cells taken from Samantha's mouth and stomach. Ms. Streisand made the revelation in an interview with Variety. If the possibility of cloning your dog intrigues you, there is good news: You do not have to be an incredibly famous and highly acclaimed actor, director, producer and writer to have it done. You do, however, need at least 50,000. But first, a little context. We can clone dogs? Since when? Even if you are not a close follower of clones, you may recall Dolly the Sheep, who was born in 1996. Since then, researchers have cloned about two dozen other mammal species, including cattle, deer, horses, rabbits, cats, rats and yes, dogs. South Korean researchers announced that they had cloned a dog for the first time in 2005, after almost three years of work and more than 1,000 eggs. With help from a yellow Labrador retriever who served as the surrogate mother, a cloned male Afghan hound named Snuppy was born. (Snuppy, of course, stood for "Seoul National University puppy.") By 2008, a California company had partnered with a South Korean laboratory and made plans to auction off chances to clone five dogs. Later that year, The New York Times reported that the first three puppies from the group had been born in South Korea. Two 2015 reports from Business Insider and NPR detail the work of Sooam Biotech, a lab in South Korea, and said the lab, on its own, had cloned more than 600 dogs. How much does it cost? Both articles say Sooam Biotech charged about 100,000 to attempt the process. ViaGen Pets, a company based in Texas, says it charges 50,000 for the cloning or 1,600 to merely preserve your pet's genes. Reports and information on ViaGen's website suggest that the cloning process specifically a dog's pregnancy usually takes about 60 days. It was not clear which company Ms. Streisand used to create her clones. A publicist for Ms. Streisand did not immediately respond to an email or phone message on Tuesday night. Researchers at the South Korean lab told the station that the dogs it had cloned have been healthy and had almost always looked and acted like the dogs they were cloned from. "Cats and dogs delivered by cloning have the same genes as their donor pets and will be the closest match possible to the donor," ViaGen said on its website. "This is best described as identical twins born at a later date." "The environment does interact with genetics to impact many traits such as personality and behavior," the company continued. That also depends mostly on how you define "safe." In essence, the process involves getting a genetic sample from your dog, sending the sample to the lab, and letting the scientists put the sample through a process that fuses it with an egg. Eventually, the egg develops into an embryo; and that embryo is then transferred to the surrogate, who surgeons hope will give birth.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
A pastoral and historic 3.7 acre piece of prime residential and agricultural property on James Lane near Town Pond, the idyllic gateway to the Village of East Hampton, is about to enter the market for the first time in more than three centuries. Known as the Gardiner Home Lot, it was claimed in 1648 by Lion G. Gardiner, the adventurer who boldly put down roots on the 33,000 acre Gardiners Island in 1640. It is one of the last family owned pieces of the original lots arranged around a mile long common settled by private owners who made up the colony's sole voting populace when East Hampton Village was established 365 years ago. The asking price is 12.95 million, the taxes are 10,604 a year, and several small structures, including two houses, remain on the land. The classic windmill on the southwestern border, the Gardiner Windmill, was commissioned in 1804 (possibly earlier) by James Lyon Gardiner, the seventh proprietor of Gardiners Island, and in 1996 was deeded to the village, which undertook a restoration costing nearly 1 million. According to village lore, the property also produced a resident ghost, the daughter of a former windmill operator, who haunts the adjacent South End Cemetery where Lion Gardiner and other original colonists are buried. This is the only lot from the original settlement still owned by descendants of the family that settled on it, which renders it a bittersweet divestiture: the seller is 71 year old Olney Mairs Gardiner, a retired patent lawyer who inherited the parcel at 36 James Lane from his uncle, Winthrop Gardiner Jr., a test pilot who worked with Howard Hughes and had been married to Sonja Henie, the Olympic figure skater and movie star. (She supervised the landscaping around the main house, which has more than doubled in size since it was first built in the 18th century.) Mr. Gardiner, known as Bill, and his wife, Karie, relocated to East Hampton from Florida, and from 1994 to 2007 moved into and planned the renovation of both homes first the front house, where the kitchen and bathrooms date to the 1920s, and then the back house, which was originally a garage and servants' quarters. They now live nearby at 48 James Lane, in a smaller house that his grandfather had moved to that address from the family's Hog Creek Farm in Three Mile Harbor. After trying to subdivide the property into three equal lots, one for each of his children, only to be dissuaded by village preservationists, Mr. Gardiner decided to sell the remainder of the parcel as is, to assure their inheritance. "I'm 71 and the clock is ticking," he said. "I certainly had reservations about parting with it, but it's time to put my house in order and let it go to create a fund for my children; I didn't want to have a fire sale at my death." The 1.7 acre residential portion of the lot contains two homes, the so called front house a 2,700 square foot five bedroom three bath shingled saltbox that dates to 1750 and can't be radically renovated or demolished and a second, more modern 3,500 square foot home that is probably expandable or expendable. As part of an agreement with the village to create a scenic easement for the windmill, Mr. Gardiner moved the back house to its current location; he did extensive foundation and exterior work, but never completed the interior. There is room for a tennis court and a pool and, on the agrarian acres, the potential for horses or artisanal farming, he said. The listing brokers are Brian Buckhout and Tyler Mattson of Douglas Elliman Real Estate's East Hampton office. "You can't find a lot this open and with this amount of history attached," Mr. Buckhout said. "Another unique aspect is that there are two house on the property, giving you a guesthouse." The ghost of the miller's daughter apparently does not haunt either house, confining herself instead to the historic cemetery during her nocturnal rambles. "As a kid growing up in the village, I always heard her story," Mr. Gardiner said, "but when I lived there, I never saw her."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The choreographer's "The Philadelphia Matter 1972/2020" is a video work for a virtual company of more than 30 performers. That's a lot of Dropbox. David Gordon knows his way around a rectangle. This choreographer and director has stared at them and filled the spaces inside of them with his imaginative arrangements of words and movement for ages. He is, after all, 84. There has been the rectangle of the stage, the rectangle of the page on which he writes or draws and even the rectangle of a store window; for years he designed the displays at Azuma, a much beloved New York City shop. Now he is faced with another rectangle: the screen. Mr. Gordon, an Obie Award winning director and founding member of the 1960s collective Judson Dance Theater, may not grasp the ins and outs of TikTok, but it seems as though he's been preparing for digital dance one of the few ways to present the art form during the coronavirus pandemic his entire career. Mr. Gordon's latest choreographic collage, "The Philadelphia Matter 1972/2020," features more than 30 Philadelphia dance artists performing material from three of Mr. Gordon's works on video. For it, he worked closely with the designer and artist Jorge Cousineau. Commissioned by Christ Church Neighborhood House and presented with the 2020 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, the video continues Mr. Gordon's exploration of "The Matter," first presented in 1972 and most recently reinvented for MoMA in 2018. Streaming will occur on the website of Christ Church from Sept. 10. through Oct. 4. Dancers from MoMA will appear in the new work as well: Wally Cardona, along with the Pick Up Performance Co(s) members Karen Graham and Valda Setterfield, Mr. Gordon's wife. Both Mr. Gordon and Ms. Setterfield narrate throughout, giving context for dances by excavating the events of their lives and the world. As usual, everything blurs. "Chair" was created after Ms. Setterfield was hit by a Long Island Railroad train while in a car. They speak a line together: "Valda goes partially through the windshield." "Chair" originally used two blue metal folding chairs that Mr. Gordon found in a studio; they belonged to the choreographer Lucinda Childs. The object was not a prop, but a partner. The choreography allowed Ms. Setterfield to regain her strength, balance and confidence. In "The Philadelphia Matter," the pair are shown performing side by side in grainy, black and white footage: stepping onto a seat and swinging a free leg around the top, or sitting while crossing a leg and folding to the floor. Gradually, like a symphony of bodies, dancers from the Philadelphia group fill in the screen with their own renditions of "Chair." As images scroll across the screen, the layering effect is mesmerizing; there is foreground and background as Mr. Gordon's collage effect makes the image dance in three dimensional glory. "One of the things I said to Jorge is that it's important to me that there are not a lot of static moments in which I am looking at or reading something," Mr. Gordon said. "The reading of something has to come in like movement." Mr. Cousineau said the process of creating the video was like "a thousand piece puzzle game, where you really just go: 'There's a piece right here. It looks interesting. I don't know where it belongs.'" "And not only is it a piece of many, but it's also a piece that changes throughout itself," he added. "So it's this weird time based puzzle." Mr. Gordon who lives in a loft on Lower Broadway with Ms. Setterfield, spoke about the experience of creating "The Philadelphia Matter" and how, during this time of social isolation, he often thinks about Trisha Brown, another founding choreographer of Judson, who died in 2017. She was who "made me buy this joint," he said referring to the loft. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation. What was it like to watch the dancers' auditions? I looked at all of it and began to wonder about how to deal with the differences between how they saw what I did and how I think I did what I did. Merce Cunningham is quoted somewhere as saying he wanted a company that danced the way he danced. I kept doing the same thing. And I began to wonder why I was insisting that they be as limited as I am. By the time I had Dean Moss, who could walk in and out of triple pirouettes without preparation, I thought, OK, what he can do is very good. And so I began to add to my work the abilities of the people who were there. How does that relate to the Philadelphia dancers? Now I had to deal with long distance communication with total strangers in specific and peculiar spaces. I began to make adjustments to the material that came to be about the people doing it. I realized that we could miraculously build a company of individual soloists in their own living rooms. We could figure out ways to make a group dance. How do you see your role? I become the person not unlike the guy who used to be the choreographer in the studio who's looking at the whole piece. Somebody has to be deciding what is the stylistic circumstance that gets followed from each of these events to the other. Because the audience with their computers or televisions at home can take their own intermissions, but I am programming: How do we enter this world for an hour that will let us come out the end of it having determined that we have seen the kind of thing I make in the theater? I now have a great deal of cable on my TV. I'm watching episodes of everything in the order I want to watch them in. Why don't I consider making this the possibility of streamed episodes? So it just lasts an hour, but it's about 20 minutes a thing. All of these decisions were being made in relation to the fact that if I didn't say that I was going to do this all, it would be canceled economically canceled as well as professionally canceled. Originally this was supposed to be a live performance. Why didn't you want to cancel it? They were talking about doing it in 2021 or 2022. Now then, I am 84 years old. I'm not making a whole lot of plans in 2021 and '22 and what's more, I'm living in a world where if I go out, I'll die. Laughs So it seemed to me that if I could do something now, that would be a better idea than if I said, "OK, 2022." And that's why this is all happening. I have had enormous help from Wally Cardona and from Jorge and my stage manager people have been dealing with the astonishing amount of stuff that comes in Dropbox world. I get to look at what these people think they're doing in relation to what they think I did. And it actually is interesting. I've been having a very sort of rewarding time during an unrewarding period.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
"Once those voices begin," said Hilary Mantel, who has been fascinated by the life of Thomas Cromwell since she was a child, "it's like having the radio on in the background for 15 years. It never actually fades." BUDLEIGH SALTERTON, England Hilary Mantel has a recurring anxiety dream that takes place in a library. She finds a book with some scrap of historical information she's been seeking, but when she tries to read it, the words disintegrate before her eyes. "And then when you wake up," she said, "you've got the rhythm of a sentence in your head, but you don't know what the sentence was." As deflated as she feels upon waking, the dreams have been instructive, Mantel said. "There's always going to be something slightly beyond your comprehension, but you must go reaching for it," she told me last month. "If you thought the record was the whole story, the dream is teaching you how fragile the record is." To an unusual degree for a novelist, Mantel feels bound by facts. That approach has made her latest project a nearly 1,800 page trilogy about the 16th century lawyer and fixer Thomas Cromwell more complicated than anything she's undertaken in her four decades of writing. The trilogy, which began in 2009 with "Wolf Hall," traces Cromwell's unlikely rise, from his origins as a blacksmith's son to the court of King Henry VIII. It concludes with Mantel's next book, "The Mirror and the Light," an account of the last four years of Cromwell's life, as he amasses more wealth, influence and power but loses the king's favor and later, his head. The Cromwell series has turned Mantel into a literary celebrity and something of a national icon. The first two books collectively sold more than five million copies and have been translated into more than 30 languages. Both "Wolf Hall" and its 2012 sequel, "Bring Up the Bodies," won the Booker Prize, making Mantel the first woman to win twice, and the first author ever to win for a sequel. The books were adapted into an award winning pair of plays by the Royal Shakespeare Company and a BBC mini series. In 2015, Prince Charles anointed Mantel with the title of Dame Commander, Order of the British Empire, the equivalent of knighthood, prompting some in the press to sneeringly draw comparisons between the modern day royals and the louche, back stabbing behavior of the Tudors. "She was imprisoned in her own home for a week while the press went absolutely bonkers," said her literary agent Bill Hamilton, who called the episode "incredibly funny, if inconvenient for her." More recently, Mantel has been hounded by the British press over the delayed publication of "The Mirror and the Light," which is due out next month but was originally planned for release in 2018. The lag set off speculation that Mantel suffered from writer's block, or was distracted by the stage and television adaptations, or was procrastinating because she couldn't bear to kill Cromwell. Expectations for the novel, which were high to begin with, are now stratospheric, and Mantel felt pressure to deliver a worthy ending. 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. "The reason it took so long is that it's difficult, and that is a totally sufficient explanation," Mantel said, sounding bewildered and slightly irritated. "But that's not an explanation that has any news value, so people are looking for a dramatic story of the whole process breaking down." Writing "The Mirror and the Light," which at nearly 800 pages is the longest and most intricately plotted book in the trilogy, was at times a grueling undertaking. In the final months of writing, Mantel, who is now 67 and has endured chronic pain and illness throughout her adult life, kept herself on a punishing schedule. She didn't realize what a toll the project had taken on her until she was done. Read our review of "The Mirror and the Light." Now that she's finished the grim final chapter of Cromwell's story, Mantel says she's done with historical fiction and plans to focus on writing plays, an entirely new medium for her. She's abandoning the genre in part because she feels she doesn't have the stamina to take on a big research project, and because she can't imagine finding another historical figure as appealing as Cromwell. "I'm not going to meet another Thomas Cromwell, if you think how long he's been around in my consciousness," she said. 'They're more real and solid to you than actual people.' Mantel and I met over two wet, windy days in Budleigh Salterton, where she lives with McEwen. Their apartment looks out on a stretch of rocky beach, and the choppy waves were gray and a dull red, stained from the eroding sandstone cliffs. Apart from a few knickknacks a stuffed lion and dog perched in a window seat, as if guarding the premises and a robust library full of classics by Jane Austen, T.S. Eliot, Gustave Flaubert and Fyodor Dostoyevsky, their apartment felt like a secular shrine to Tudor England, with shelves of books on Cromwell and his contemporaries, and titles about medieval fashion, food and metallurgy. Hanging in the hallway was a photograph of Mantel standing in front of the famous Hans Holbein oil painting of Cromwell: stout, beady eyed, vaguely threatening. (In "Wolf Hall," when Cromwell worries that the portrait makes him look like a murderer, his son replies, "Did you not know?") With her pale skin, wispy graying blond hair and wide, arresting light blue eyes that are ringed with a deeper blue, Mantel has an almost ethereal appearance. She moves deliberately, a habit she acquired after living for decades with chronic pain, and seems to glide rather than walk. She spoke slowly and so softly at times that I worried my recorder wouldn't pick up her voice over the rumble of the waves and rain. Talking about the book feels surreal after years in near isolation, she said. "I've been like someone in a religious order who's taken a vow of silence. It's strange, because all that time I was listening to the past, and now I'm almost talking for a living, and it feels very frivolous and empty compared to the stillness that there used to be in every day." Though I expected to find her in mourning, it became clear as Mantel began to talk about Cromwell that for her, he isn't really gone. She writes and speaks about him in the present tense. After finishing the final novel, she began working on a stage adaptation of "The Mirror and the Light," so Cromwell is still very much in her head. They've become such close collaborators that when Mantel decided to adapt "The Mirror and the Light" herself, rather than handing it off to a playwright, she chose Miles to co write it with her. Mantel has never written for the theater before, and she is taking an unorthodox approach, using her source material to develop something almost entirely new. "If you're an adapter, you feel so bound to the original text, but I don't have to put in a single word from the book if I don't want to," she said. "Most of what I've written now is completely fresh. It's not obliged to the book." Mantel's work on the play has also kept Cromwell and his contemporaries vivid in her imagination. Even when she's not at her desk writing, she can still hear them chattering away. "Once those voices begin, it's like having the radio on in the background for 15 years. It never actually fades. It runs continuously with whatever else you're doing, and that means you're never off duty to the book, you never stop working on it. You fall asleep with it, you wake up with it," she said. "There's a point where you're living with these people and only with them. They're more real and solid to you than actual people in your life." 'I am used to "seeing" things that aren't there.' Mantel in many ways is perfectly suited to the task of excavating and reanimating the past. Ever since she was a child, she's been prone to visions of ghosts and spirits. "I am used to 'seeing' things that aren't there," she writes in her memoir, "Giving Up the Ghost." Growing up in an Irish Catholic family in Hadfield, a village in Derbyshire, Mantel was obsessed with myths, folklore and the supernatural. Before she was old enough to read, she insisted that relatives read to her tales from King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. "I had a head stuffed full of chivalric epigrams, and the self confidence that comes from a thorough knowledge of horsemanship and swordplay," she writes. At 18, she went to the London School of Economics to study law, with the hope of becoming a barrister, but she couldn't afford to continue with professional training. By then, she'd met McEwen. They married when they were 20 and moved to Manchester, where he found a teaching position and she worked various jobs and started writing. Around that time, Mantel's health began to deteriorate. A doctor dismissed her symptoms as a bid for attention and referred her to a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist gave her tranquilizers and an antipsychotic drug and told her to stop writing. Years later, when Mantel and McEwen were living in Botswana, she researched her symptoms and diagnosed herself with endometriosis. Doctors confirmed her suspicions, and when she was 27, she had surgery to remove her uterus and ovaries. The pain didn't abate, and Mantel suffered from complications that still afflict her: her weight increased, her legs swelled, she felt exhausted and alien to herself. Her illness made a normal day job impossible: "It narrowed my options in life, and it narrowed them to writing," she said. Mantel finished her first book, a novel about the French Revolution titled "A Place of Greater Safety," in 1979, and sent it to publishers and agents, but no one wanted a 700 plus page historical novel by an unknown writer. She wrote a second book, a brisk, darkly comic contemporary novel, "Every Day Is Mother's Day," which became a critical success when it was published in 1985. Over the next two decades, she published seven other novels and developed a cult following. Though her books vary in their subject matter, style and tone, they are bound by recurring themes: her fascination with transformation and the unseen realm, with myths and archetypes. When she was writing her novel "Beyond Black," about a medium who channels the voices of the dead, Mantel realized she was creating a road map for the Cromwell trilogy. "I was thinking, this isn't just about a medium," she said, "it's about how to induce the necessary frame of mind to let the past enact itself." 'The real story is better than anything I can come up with.' When she began writing "Wolf Hall" in 2005, Mantel was still relatively obscure. She was also entering a saturated marketplace for Tudor historical fiction, territory that had already been mined by novelists like Philippa Gregory, Antonia Fraser and Alison Weir. There was never any question how Cromwell's story would end. Not long after she wrote the opening of "Wolf Hall" a young Thomas Cromwell lies bleeding on the cobblestones, beaten by his abusive father she wrote about his beheading. "All I had to do was fill in the middle," Mantel said, then laughed. "There wasn't a day when I woke up and thought, 'Today I have to kill Cromwell,' because I'd already killed him and brought him back to life so many times." As Mantel spoke about Cromwell and how he endures for her, it reminded me of a moment in "The Mirror and the Light" when Cromwell realizes that he's losing the king's confidence, and thinks of his beloved master, Cardinal Wolsey, who still speaks to him from the grave. "The dead are more faithful than the living," Cromwell thinks. "For better or worse, they do not leave you. They last out the longest night." Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The miracle treatment that should have saved Becka Boscarino's baby boy almost killed him. Doctors diagnosed her newborn son, Magglio, with Pompe disease, a rare and deadly genetic disorder that leads to a buildup of glycogen in the body. Left untreated, the baby would probably die before his first birthday. There is just one treatment: a series of infusions. But after the boy received his fifth dose, he turned blue, stopped breathing and slipped into anaphylactic shock. The problem? Eventually doctors discovered that Magglio's body was producing antibodies to the very drug saving his life. It is a problem few patients and doctors have ever heard of; indeed, the phenomenon has not been systematically studied. But experts say what happened to Magglio has happened to many other patients taking many other drugs. The body's immune system produces antibodies, blood proteins, in order to attack molecules the body recognizes as alien, often carried on viruses and bacteria. But antibodies also are deployed against other foreign substances, and this may include drugs given to patients. Antibodies directed against a particular drug can attach to the drug and completely neutralize its effects in the body. But there is no way to know in advance which patient is most likely to make them, or which drug is likely to trigger such a reaction in a large number of patients. "Once a drug is approved and out in the market, it is pretty rare that a clinician would measure antibodies," said Dr. Mary Crow, a rheumatologist and physician in chief at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York City. "There is no commercially available test." In a paper published in March by The New England Journal of Medicine, Pfizer reported that in the final phase of testing a new drug to lower cholesterol, many of the 30,000 patients taking it had stopped responding to it. Pfizer was forced to stop the trial and pull the drug after investing billions of dollars. (Similar drugs, made by Amgen and Sanofi Regeneron did not elicit such antibodies and are now being sold.) The problem seems almost intractable. Drugs containing proteins can provoke these immune system reactions. Steve Danehy, a Pfizer spokesman, said that up to 87 percent of patients taking drugs known as monoclonal antibodies, for instance, will develop antibodies of their own that block the drug. (Pifzer's experimental drug was a monoclonal.) Patients and their doctors often have no idea what has happened; patients notice only that a drug they take has stopped working. Doctors will switch them to a similar drug and hope for the best. But that strategy only works when there are alternatives. For some diseases, there are none. For the small subset of gout patients whose disease is extremely severe, for example, antibodies are "really a huge problem," said Dr. Robert Terkeltaub, a gout specialist at the University of California, San Diego. There is only one drug that can help, and most patients develop antibodies that eventually block it. For patients like Magglio Boscarino, finding a way to tamp down the immune system's response to these drugs is a matter of life or death. He had seemed fine at birth, but soon developed what looked like a bad cold and congestion. When he did not get better, his doctors X rayed his chest and discovered a very large heart. By the time Magglio was 6 months old, he was weak and lacked muscle tone. Then came the diagnosis of Pompe disease and the beginning of his treatments, infusions with an enzyme his body was failing to make. At first, Magglio improved. Within a few months, he was learning to sit up and to use his arms. His enlarged heart was shrinking. But his fifth treatment was a disaster. He fell into anaphylactic shock and stopped breathing. The doctors gave him oxygen and epinephrine, and eventually he recovered. They did not realize the drug was at fault, however, and two weeks later Magglio received another infusion with the same result. Then doctors realized what the problem was. But because Magglio's disease would worsen and kill him if he did not get the drug, his doctors kept hoping he might be able to tolerate repeated infusions. For a year and a half, the treatments continued, and Magglio suffered severe reactions even as his disease was progressing. Soon he could not breathe on his own, and a tube was inserted in his trachea. He could not sit up. At 2 years old, he had heart failure. "He was dying," Ms. Boscarino said. "It was awful, so awful," Magglio was hardly alone: Most babies with Pompe disease who received the only available treatment soon produced antibodies that rendered it useless. "We tried everything, but these babies did not make it," said Dr. Priya Kishnani, a professor of pediatrics at Duke University. Dr. Kishnani realized she had to find a way to trick the immune system so it would leave the infused protein alone. Her idea was to give the babies a chemotherapy drug, rituximab, that wipes out cells that develop into antibody producers. Along with it, she tried giving the children methotrexate, which destroys many of the body's white blood cells, and infusions of antibodies from pooled donors' serum so the children would have a way to fight off infections. And for babies like Magglio, who already were making antibodies that blocked the drug they need, she added another drug bortezomib to eliminate those antibody producing cells. As the children's immune systems were brought under control, the treatments began to work again. "It was breathtaking," Dr. Kishnani said. "We were able to rescue these babies." The principles tried in children with this rare genetic condition may soon be applied to a wide range of patients. "I feel that Pompe opened up the field," Dr. Kishnani said. "The more we talked about it, the more awareness there was of the role of antibodies." Already, scientists have begun clinical trials testing ways to help patients with very severe gout who make antibodies blocking their treatment. In one, investigators are altering the dose of the drug used to treat the disease and how often it is given. In another trial, researchers at Selecta Biosciences are testing an antibody suppressing drug packaged in a biodegradable nanoparticle to be taken along with the drug the patient needs. At Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, cardiologist Dr. Paul Ridker, who directed the Pfizer study, is taking a different tack. He wants to do a large genetic study to see if he can predict which patients will develop antibodies to the Pfizer drug and perhaps to other drugs that the immune system might see as foreign. "We probably have the best opportunity ever afforded to understand the cause of these antibodies," Dr. Ridker said. "That would be very valuable for the development of future drugs if you could say, 'This one patient out of 20 should not take this drug.'" It would mean, too, that drugs that might have been abandoned could be developed for the patients who can tolerate them. Magglio received the treatment to tamp down his immune system developed in Dr. Kishnani's lab, and it seems to have worked. "The good news is that he is still alive," his mother said. "But he is a complete rag doll. He mouths words a lot. He does not have a voice so he uses his eyes to use a computer screen to talk for him." Magglio needs a ventilator to breathe, as he has since he was 9 months old. But he has his own sign language, using his tongue, his mother said. Still, he goes to school general education, 4th grade and even plays on a baseball team for children with disabilities. His mother helps him bat.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The writers faced discrimination and harassment from their fellow staff members. They remained in the same lowly jobs as their counterparts were promoted. They watched their pitches get ignored or rejected, only to see the same ideas warmly embraced when another writer pitched them. Such workplace woes have long been experienced by television writers who are women or people of color, and who remain minorities in an industry overwhelmingly dominated by white men. Now a new survey, "Behind the Scenes: The State of Inclusion and Equity in TV Writers Rooms," of nearly 300 women, people of color, members of the L.G.B.T.Q. community, and people with disabilities writing for television has captured in numbers the bias they report. 64 percent of respondents said they had experienced discrimination or harassment by fellow writers, be it about their appearance or their inability to "take a joke." 73 percent said they had remained in the same job for at least two seasons while white male staff members received two or even three promotions. For writers of color, the figure jumped to 82 percent. 78 percent of writers of color said they were the only person of color on their staffs. 53 percent said their pitches had been rejected, but when a white male writer made the same pitch, it was accepted. 58 percent said they had experienced microaggressions after pitching non stereotypical content. 61 percent said they had worked with showrunners who were resistant to diversifying story lines. The survey singled out shows that succeeded with diverse writing staffs, including "Queen Sugar," "black ish," "Pose" and "One Day at a Time."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
From left, Jack McGuire, Alley Scott and Asa Wember, who all participate as "operators" in the interactive piece "temping." At "temping," a solo theater experience that begins performances at the Wild Project on Friday, there is only one seat in the house. That seat is an ergonomic office chair, facing an office cubicle. Jiggle the knob to adjust it. "Theater is all about being in the room with human beings," Asa Wember, the show's co creator and sound designer, said in a recent Zoom meeting. "Can you remove that quality and have it still feel like theater?" Sit down, boot up, find out. Produced by Dutch Kills Theater and created by Wolf 359, "temping" amalgamates the categories of immersive theater, performance art, installation art and gaming. At each contactless performance, a sole audience member enters the otherwise deserted space (here the lobby, because the Wild Project can legally open as a gallery, not as a theater) and finds a work space outfitted with the everyday detritus of office life computer, printer, landline phone. The production casts each participant as a vacation fill in at a pension actuarial firm, tasked with estimating how long workers will live. During the show, which runs about 45 minutes, emails, voice mail messages and printouts are received, revealing the inner workings of the office. A lot of those messages also demand the completion of various administrative tasks. Your co star? Microsoft Office Suite. There are more somber messages, too, which demand that you think more concretely about what an individual life is worth. Go ahead and think of "temping" as live action role play, with a role that mostly involves data entry. Or an escape room with Excel spreadsheets in place of puzzles. And remember that this firm tracks when and how people die. So good luck escaping mortality. The director Michael Rau and the playwright Michael Yates Crowley conceived the piece, along with Wember, in 2014, partly to explore digital mediation, partly to see if they could make a show without actors. Rau's first idea: "Harold Printer," a Harold Pinter play delivered via laser printer. His colleagues shut that one down fast. Then they hit on the cubicle idea. Crowley wrote the script emails and spreadsheets, mostly in a couple of weeks. In college, Crowley had interned as a pension actuary, updating spreadsheets to reflect the major life events birth, marriage, divorce, death. He remembered feeling weird about the contrast between these big events and the dispassion with which he keyed them in. Years later, at a subsequent office job, he received a phone call informing him of the death of a close friend and experienced that same disconnect. "Walking around with this weird emotional secret that you can't really talk about in an office setting is a profoundly alienating experience," he said. So he wanted to juxtapose the monotony of office work with a reflection on death and grief. "That's where the heat is," he said. After several trial runs, the production debuted at the 54th New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center. It had subsequent runs at the Future of Storytelling Festival and the American Repertory Theater. During early performances, Wember and Rau, sitting at tables behind the scenes, manually sent every email and clicked on every cue. "Asa and I were just sweating backstage, as we tried to send emails at roughly the right times," Rau said. Eventually he used his coding skills to write a program that automates some aspects, such as when emails come through. "Technology can be just as finicky and demanding and complicated as actors," Wember said. Rau agreed. "These computers are dumb as rocks; you have to tell them literally everything to do," he said. You can't always tell audience members what to do, and the creators learned, over 200 or so performances, that many participants couldn't or wouldn't comply. One did yoga. One Googled shirtless soccer stars. One tried to pry a bookshelf off the wall in search of secrets. (Are there secrets hidden in and around the cubicle? Maybe.) One refused to do the data entry, a la Bartleby the Scrivener. Others tried to ace it, flying through emails and spreadsheets. Two left. Many cried. One contacted the production the next day. The show had moved her to quit her job, she said. In Boston, a group of actuaries came and played through. "They were like, 'This is pretty much our job,'" Rau said. What's a workplace without workplace surveillance? During each performance, two operators spy on the participant via a mirrored monitor and a GoPro camera. This helps the operators redirect and reinforce the performance, altering the pace to keep participants on task, drafting new emails when necessary, like a two button mouse tutorial, written in the voice of the office's I.T. person. "Temping" had a run at the University of Ottawa in the spring of 2019 and a few months later, Wember began to chat with Alley Scott, the artistic director of Dutch Kills Theater, about bringing it to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe the following summer. But of course there was no Fringe this summer, and Dutch Kills's last production, "The Antelope Party," had to shut down in March, just before technical rehearsals began at the Wild Project. Anticipating a quick reopening an optimism those early, uncertain weeks allowed Scott pushed that production to the fall. When it became clear that a traditional play couldn't open now, she remembered "temping." "We need to be as careful as possible," Scott said. "And that is also not just for us, but so that we can keep the show running, really. Because I can't function without making art." But what does it mean to make art about a workplace when many offices remain shuttered? And why stage a piece that prompts the meditation on one's own mortality when few people in New York City need that nudge? The creators argued that "temping," despite its mortality calculations, isn't really about death. "It's a piece about life," Rau said, "about the ways in which you are spending your time." Is an hour in an office chair, completing tasks both menial and meaningful, how you want to spend it? Possibly. Those hand sanitized minutes of answering emails and updating spreadsheets are just trying to shove you toward the philosophical contemplation of being and time and your choices. Think of that as your severance package.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
DELRAY BEACH, Fla. As Radu Albot became the first player from Moldova to win an ATP title on Sunday, his small home country in Eastern Europe was holding parliamentary elections. Unlike four years ago, when he was in France for a tennis tournament and spent about 200 on a taxi to the Moldovan Embassy so he could cast a ballot, Albot said he could not make his way to a voting booth on Sunday. This time, he was busy in the Delray Beach Open final, where he held off Dan Evans to capture the title, 3 6, 6 3, 7 6 (7), and earn 97,490, the biggest payday of his career. Albot, 29, has been on tour for more than a decade but is only now hitting his stride. Entering the Delray Beach Open he was ranked No. 82 in the world, just off his career high of No. 81, set nearly two years ago. With the win over Evans, in which he saved three match points, Albot moved to a new career high of No. 52. Albot is the first player, man or woman, from Moldova to be ranked within the world's top 100. Most have never broken the top 300. Moldova, a former Soviet republic with a population of 3.55 million, is better known for producing wine than tennis players. It has, however, had its share of Olympic wrestlers, Nordic skiers and soccer players. Natalia Levchenkova placed eighth in biathlon at the 2006 Winter Olympics. At the 2016 Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro, 23 Moldovan athletes competed, including Albot, the country's first Olympic tennis player. He beat Teymuraz Gabashvili of Russia in the first round before losing to Marin Cilic of Croatia. In those Games, one Moldovan, a flat water canoeist named Oleg Tarnovschi, won the country's only medal, a bronze that was later stripped because he violated antidoping rules. The next highest ranked male player from Moldova, the 36 year old Roman Borvanov, reached No. 200 back in 2011. Now a teaching pro near Miami, he was in Albot's players' box cheering for his countryman on Sunday. "In a way, coming from this country, the results I've had, it's a miracle," Albot said. Unlike players in countries that host a Grand Slam and have a history of producing star players, he said, he had no Pete Sampras or Andre Agassi in front of him as role models and challenges. "Then you have a goal, you want to be as them," Albot said. "Me, growing up, I had nobody ahead of me except the guy ranked 200. I wanted to be as him, better than him. But as soon as I got to 190, then what? I didn't know how to go higher. I didn't have someone to ask how to get there, to go to for advice. I had to build my game by myself." When Albot was 6, his father, Vladimir, saw a tennis match on television and decided he wanted his only child to play the sport. Vladimir Albot was able to arrange for his son to train at a school that specialized in tennis a government funded academy near the family's home in Chisinau, the Moldovan capital. The club has eight outdoor red clay courts and two indoor courts. Until recently, those courts were made of wooden planks, but they have been converted to a hardcourt surface. Though his parents were of modest means Radu still lives with them in the two room apartment they own Vladimir traveled with Radu to junior tournaments while his mother, Svetlana, stayed home to work in her dental therapy practice. Vladimir sold some property he owned to fund his son's travel. Rather than spend money on hotel rooms, the pair would often sleep on mattresses inside gyms connected to the clubs where Radu competed, Albot said. Whenever Radu was offered a chance to share a room with another competitor, his father would pitch a tent for himself in the tournament parking lot. Moldova's tennis federation generates little sponsorship money for its players, Albot said. "It's a little disappointing because in some countries, like the U.S. and France, they get so much help, like sponsors and wild cards," said Albot, who has a German manager and one sponsorship deal, with Yonex for rackets, clothing and shoes. "I was not the spoiled kid who got millions at 19 years old," he said, "but, on the other hand, maybe that's what makes me stronger." Albot had a 12 23 record in tour level matches last year, including a semifinal finish in Metz, France. This year he has a 10 4 record in five tournaments, including a semifinal finish in Montpellier, France, and the title in Delray Beach. He will next play the Masters 1000 events in Indian Wells, Calif., and in Miami. When his playing career is over, Albot would like to return to Moldova and help build the next generation of tennis players. He knows it won't be easy. The country is among the poorest in Europe, and Sunday's election has not delivered a conclusive result. There have been accusations of fraud that further threaten the country's efforts to stabilize. "I don't want to finish my career and see that tennis is dead in my country," he said, adding, "I want to walk into every tournament and see the Moldovan flag flying."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Brooke Stuard and Harley Ellis Stumbaugh were married May 5 in a gallery at the Clyfford Still Museum in downtown Denver. You Could Write a Country Song About Them. (He Probably Will.) As a tour manager and sound engineer for country bands like the Black Lillies and the Band of Heathens, Harley Ellis Stumbaugh used to spend most of his time on the road, crammed on buses with musicians. "It's very, very difficult to match that camaraderie and also the magic, that first note of the first song and the show coming to life," he said. In the summer of 2014, Mr. Stumbaugh, 35, was matched with Brooke Stuard, a single mom who also lived in Austin but grew up in a small farming community just outside San Angelo, Tex. She could name every Patsy Cline song by the time she was 6. "We used to go driving in the car in the country and listen to Patsy Cline songs," said Pam Blair, her mother. Before they met, Mr. Stumbaugh checked out her Instagram photos. "I could see she had a really great group of friends, could see she had a son," he said. "I could see she was really into art. I could see her laughing a lot." Ms. Stuard, who got pregnant in high school and broke up with the father soon after, hadn't dated in a long time. She went on Tinder after her son, Gavin Schniers, now 17, moved back to San Angelo to live with his father. "That was tough because it was always the two of us," said Ms. Stuard, who is also 35. "If I went out to dinner with friends, Gavin came with me. If I had friends over, he was there." Ms. Stuard and Mr. Stumbaugh first got together over Labor Day weekend. "She had Starbucks in her hand and this great vintage linen romper on," he recalled. "I came around the corner and here's this rad chick with a really cool style." (She designs and sews most of her own clothes.) Days later, he left for a monthlong tour but they stayed in touch via long phone conversations, FaceTime and texts. "She'd be in Austin working 9 to 5 and I'd be in Chicago or New York sending pictures about what we ate or what band we got to meet that night," Mr. Stumbaugh said. "I had so much fun finally having someone to share it with." Unlike other women he had dated, Ms. Stuard did not move on when he was out of town. Also, he said, she understood his need for downtime when he arrived home with ringing ears. They watched movies together, cooked meals (homemade ramen would be an example) and worked on creative projects songwriting for him, pencil drawings or yarn sculptures for her. "Sometimes, just a quiet room and each other is so great," she said. Eventually, she introduced him to Gavin. "The first thing I remember is Harley making jokes and just being hilarious," Gavin said, noting that he never thought his mother would find someone as funny, artistic and unconventional as she is. "They are just perfect," he said. Unwilling to give up on their relationship, she also moved to Denver and tried to keep their friendship going while also keeping a distance. "I just kind of sat back and waited a little bit because I was like, 'This is my person,'" she said. Although they didn't get back together right away, her move impressed him. "She's a sensitive person," he said, "but she's taken these stands in her life that were incredibly brave and bold." Over the next several months, they had plenty of long, painful conversations. "We cried at like four different restaurants in Denver talking about our feelings," she said. "It was like, 'O.K., we can't come back here anymore.'" One of their biggest issues was Ms. Stuard's reluctance to have more children. "I'd always say, 'Nope, I have my one and he's amazing,'" she said. "'I'm done having kids.'" She moved back to Austin in May 2016. But the couple traveled regularly to see each other and knitted their relationship back together, visit by visit. In the summer of 2017, he hid an engagement ring in her dessert a chocolate cup with a white chocolate lid while they were having dinner at the Way Back restaurant in Denver. Not long after that, he surprised her again with another present: a periwinkle Triumph motorcycle. In September, they moved into an apartment in Denver's gritty River North Art District, a.k.a. RiNo neighborhood, and filled their place with guitars and Ms. Stuard's artwork (one of her yarn sculptures hangs above their bed). Ms. Stuard, who now works remotely for Goosehead Insurance, recently posted a message on Instagram describing Mr. Stumbaugh as, "My person, My fellow weirdo, My PIC, My support, My love." Mr. Stumbaugh, who has devoted himself to Ellis Entertainment and is in the beginning stages of making a record of his own songs, posted: "I can't wait to watch my Brooke walk down that aisle toward me. Her big beautiful smile and her kind eyes." Their wedding showcased what the couple love the most: music, art, coffee, mountains, family, Denver and each other. On Friday, May 4, the rehearsal dinner took place at their favorite coffee shop, Black Eye Coffee, in Denver's historic and hip Lower Highland, or LoHi, neighborhood. On May 5, they were married in a gallery at the Clyfford Still Museum, a stark concrete building in downtown Denver. The bridegroom wore a blue suit while his groomsmen wore snug concrete gray ones and colorful socks. They looked like a boy band from the '60s, surrounded by Still's large abstract paintings. The couple self solemnized their marriage, which is legal in Colorado, but asked Richard Millsap, the drummer for the Band of Heathens, to lead them through their vows. The bridegroom reworded a few on the spot. When asked to repeat the line, "I promise to fill our lives with adventure and our home with laughter," he instead said, "I promise to fill our lives with adventure and our garage with motorcycles." Later, 120 guests gathered at the Wayward restaurant, which has since closed permanently, for dinner and a more raucous concert by The Band of Heathens. At one point, the bridegroom's father, Harley Stumbaugh, a musician who lives in El Jebel, Colo., got up on stage and sang a family favorite, the Rolling Stones classic, "You Can't Always Get What You Want." Actually, the feeling at this particular wedding was that you can.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Prune Nourry working on her sculpture "The Amazon" at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. She created it in response to her treatment for breast cancer. For the last two years or so, the artist Prune Nourry has thought of herself as a sculpture. Ms. Nourry, who is French and splits her time between Brooklyn and Paris, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2016. As she went through treatment, including chemotherapy and reconstructive surgery, she thought of her doctors as the sculptors and herself as the material they were fashioning. Now, Ms. Nourry, 33, has created her own work in response to that experience, as a tribute to breast cancer survivors everywhere. "The Amazon" is a 13 foot tall cement sculpture of a female warrior, with bared breasts, her torso and head pierced by thousands of joss sticks, jutting out like arrow shafts. It was modeled after the life size marble statue of a wounded Amazon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Ms. Nourry's version weighs nearly two tons, and has lifelike hazel brown eyes, crafted from handblown glass. It made a public debut last week, in a plaza outside the Standard Hotel in Manhattan's meatpacking district, where it will be on view into July. (The hotel owns the space and offers it to artists; the painter Jose Parla and the pop artist KAWS have exhibited there before.) In a private performance, Ms. Nourry will eventually chisel away one of the Amazon's breasts. "It's really, for me, a catharsis sculpture," she said, in a recent interview at a studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where she and a few helpers created the work. She added that the artwork, and the medical process that led to it, also re contextualized all her projects that came before, among them "Terracotta Daughters," a riff on the famous sculpted Chinese army from the 3rd century B.C. In Ms. Nourry's 2012 version, her 108 clay soldiers are girls, based on real life orphans, as a commentary on the gender imbalance in China's culture, where boys are traditionally more prized. It has been exhibited in North America, Europe and China. Ms. Nourry had planned to remove one of her Amazon's breasts in public, but at the last moment decided that was best done in a more intimate setting. She also wanted to extend the timeline of the project, because "healing is a long process too," she said. So when her sculpture first went on display, she focused on another performance that connected both her earlier work and her life as a patient: She covered her statue with about 6,000 red Chinese incense sticks, symbolic of the acupuncture treatment she underwent as part of her medical care. (Her series "Imbalance," which she prepared and exhibited while undergoing chemo, also uses acupuncture needles.) Ms. Nourry, who is now in remission, managed to keep up her exhibition schedule, which included a show at Musee National des Arts Asiatiques in Paris, through her hospital stays. "I felt lucky that I had all the work that I was passionate about," she said. "I didn't want to stop. But also the fact of being able to create something out of it is helpful, too." As he sat down to play keys, Ms. Nourry's assistants, clad in medical white, joined the artist, who was in a lab coat. Slowly, methodically, they lit the incense; soon the sturdy warrior, with her sheath of protective quills, had a halo of wispy, fragrant smoke. Ash began to cover the ground as Mr. Batiste played his closing song, requested by Ms. Nourry, called "Don't Stop." "It's a very uplifting song, but it's also a song about death and mortality," he said. "She really knows how to tap into the human experience in the most immediate way," Mr. Batiste added of Ms. Nourry, a longtime friend and, more recently, a collaborator on projects that unite his music and her visuals. "It's like a musician who knows how to play one note to make you cry," he said. "And you can't explain why. It's just when you look at the sculpture, you feel something, whoever you are." The story of Amazon women that they were a tribe of powerful and skilled fighters who, it was sometimes said, cut off their right breasts to better their archery remains mostly the domain of Greek myth, although some research by Jeannine Davis Kimball, an archaeologist from the University of California, Berkeley, found evidence of a class of warrior women in the Eurasian steppe. Ms. Nourry did not delve deeply into what was fact or legend. "I like this gray area," she said. As the incense on her sculpture burned, it left in its place seeping red dots. "It looks like she is bleeding," Ms. Nourry said, contentedly. Passers by snapped photos from atop the Highline. The sculpture will remain on view for several weeks, at least, and will later be sold, with some proceeds going to cancer charities.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
In a frank and public act of self examination, a group of doctors at Massachusetts General Hospital published an article Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine detailing the missteps that led to the death of a cancer patient who received a fecal transplant as part of an experimental trial. The man who died, and another who became severely ill, had received fecal matter from a donor whose stool turned out to contain a type of E. coli bacteria that was resistant to multiple antibiotics. The death shook the emerging field of fecal microbiota transplants, or F.M.T., a revolutionary procedure that transfers feces from healthy donors to the bowels of sick patients in an effort to restore their microbiome, the community of beneficial bacteria and other organisms that dwell in the intestines. Fecal microbiota transplants remain unapproved by the Food and Drug Administration, but the treatment has proved highly effective in combating a deadly bacterial infection known as Clostridium difficile, which kills thousands of Americans annually. Researchers have also been exploring its use for conditions ranging from Alzheimers to autism. Dr. Elizabeth L. Hohmann, the lead author of the article and an infectious disease specialist who oversees fecal transplant trials at Mass General, expressed remorse over her lab's failure to test stool from a donor that had been stored in a freezer for several months. "It's been professionally very challenging," she said in an interview. "But this is a cautionary tale about the risks of cutting edge projects." After doctors reported the incidents to the F.D.A., the agency issued a nationwide alert to health care providers and patients about the risks of the procedure and urged researchers to suspend fecal transplants until labs could safely screen for drug resistant microbes. Many projects have since resumed. The patients at Mass General fell ill from E. coli bacteria that produced an enzyme called extended spectrum beta lactamase, which made the bacteria resistant to multiple antibiotics. The bacteria are often harmless in healthy people but can wreak havoc on those with compromised immune systems. The New England Journal article provided a detailed, up close look at how doctors at Mass General administered encapsulated stool from a donor whose feces had been successfully used to treat scores of patients with C. diff, a debilitating bacterial infection that tends to strike hospitalized patients who have been treated with multiple rounds of antibiotics. Doctors at Mass General had been testing stool donations for a multitude of infectious bugs, following F.D.A. protocols. In January, the agency tightened the screening standards to include a number of emergent organisms like the drug resistant strain of E. coli. The problem, Dr. Hohmann said, was that the F.D.A. did not instruct doctors to test or destroy older material kept in storage. "It wasn't obvious to a lot of smart people here," she said. "We didn't think to go back in time." The patients sickened by the compromised feces were participating in two separate experimental trials last spring. One patient, a 69 year old man with end stage liver disease, received capsules over the course of three weeks. The other, a 73 year old man with a rare blood cancer, was given the capsules before undergoing a bone marrow transplant. Both men had also been administered antibiotics. The men turned feverish soon afterward. The liver patient developed pneumonia that tests later determined was caused by the drug resistant E. coli strain. He was treated with a powerful antibiotic and eventually recovered. The cancer patient, who had taken drugs to suppress his immune system as part of the bone marrow transplant, declined more precipitously. Eight days after his last F.M.T. dose, he was placed on a ventilator. He died two days later from a severe bloodstream infection. Genomic sequencing tests later confirmed that the organisms came from the same donor. Looking back at their actions, the doctors acknowledged in the article that the decision to give both men antibiotics before their fecal transplants might have provided an opportunity for the drug resistant E. coli strain to thrive. "We've been going through a lot of 20 20 hindsight here," Dr. Hohmann said. The incident prompted widespread angst among patients and practitioners in the rapidly evolving field of fecal microbiota transplantation. Dr. Ari Grinspan, a gastroenterologist at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York who helped pioneer fecal transplants for C. diff, said he received a flood of panicked calls and emails from former patients who thought they might have received compromised stool. "What happened was horrific, but it's reminded us that we have to be vigilant about screening protocols," he said. The cases have also heightened tensions that have pitted doctors who perform fecal transplants against drug companies that are developing new microbiota therapies derived from human stool. Those companies have been pressing the F.D.A. to more tightly regulate the procedure as a new drug, which some doctors and patient advocates fear would give companies proprietary control over the active ingredients in transplanted feces. The F.D.A. will hold a public hearing next week in Washington to better understand the risks and benefits of the therapy. For now, the agency allows fecal transplants for C. diff patients who have not responded to standard therapies, an approach known as enforcement discretion. In a statement yesterday, the agency said: "The F.D.A. would like to clarify that the use of FMT to treat C. difficile remains investigational at this time and the efficacy and safety of this intervention have not yet been established." Unlike Mass General, which produces its own fecal transplant material, most of the treatments used by doctors in the United States come from OpenBiome, a nonprofit stool bank in Cambridge, Mass., that has provided 50,000 doses in recent years without any reported serious adverse events related to the material, according to Carolyn Edelstein, the executive director. OpenBiome has been testing donors for the drug resistant strain of E. coli since 2016, she said, adding that fewer than three percent of prospective donors make it through the rigorous screening.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
LONDON Two British cinema chains have faced widespread criticism after they pulled a film about gang violence from their screens. On Sunday, Vue, one of Britain's largest theater chains, canceled screenings of "Blue Story," a feature about rival London gangs, after a brawl at one of its theaters on Saturday. Showcase, another chain, also pulled the movie, while Odeon, another group, said in an emailed statement that it would continue to screen "Blue Story" but had put "a number of security measures in place." The fight, at one of Vue's theaters in Birmingham, England, started in a concourse, according to Birmingham Live, a local news service. It eventually spread outside and escalated to involve up to 100 people, the West Midlands Police said in a statement. Two machetes were seized and seven police officers injured, the statement added. Six people, aged between 13 and 19, have been arrested on suspicion of violent disorder, the statement said. Vue and Showcase's decisions to cancel further screenings of "Blue Story" led to immediate criticism on social media. Jackie Burkhart, a Twitter user, called Vue's decision "racist" in a post that has been liked more than 4,000 times. "I'm really angry about it," said Ronan Bennett, the creator of "Top Boy," an acclaimed TV series about British gang life that is shown on Netflix, in a telephone interview. The movie theaters' actions were "cowardly," he added. "You make a film about the problems in the community and the problems with gang violence, and someone pulls it after this?" he said. "What's the logic behind that?" "It's hard enough to get a film made at the best of times, but to get one made about this subject is really hard and needs support," Mr. Bennett added. A spokeswoman for the West Midlands Police said they had not asked theaters to stop showing the film by Andrew Onwubolu, better known as Rapman . Mr. Onwubolu, who declined through his publicist to be interviewed for this article, is a rapper from south London who found YouTube fame last year with "Shiro's Story" a three part musical drama that has drawn millions of views. "Blue Story is a film about love not violence," Mr. Onwubolu wrote on Twitter. "It's truly unfortunately that a small group of people can ruin things for everybody," he added. "This decision is not, as some have alleged, based on biased assumptions or concern about the content of the film itself," Vue said in an emailed statement on Monday. "During the first 24 hours of the film, over 25 significant incidents were reported and escalated to senior management in 16 separate cinemas," the statement added. "This is the biggest number we have ever seen for any film in a such a short time frame." Paramount Pictures , which funded the movie along with BBC Films, said in a statement that the movie had screened in over 300 theaters on the weekend . "While we are disappointed that these are the actions we have had to take," Vue's statement said, "we hope it is understandable that we cannot, and will not, take any risks with regard to the welfare and safety of our staff and our customers." The movie theater chains' moves come as gang violence and especially knife crime is a source of anxiety in Britain and a talking point in the country's coming general election. Culture has often been at the center of debates about its causes, and some law enforcement officials have blamed drill, a bleak style of rap music that sometimes features references to gang violence. B ritish courts have handed down orders that prohibit some drill rappers from using words associated with rival gangs in their songs, prompting complaints from human rights groups that the rulings infringe on free speech. The flap around "Blue Story" and its removal from British movie theaters comes as a movie dealing with similar themes in France has prompted different reactions. "Les Miserables," about life and police brutality on a tough housing project outside Paris, is one of the most talked about films in the country this fall . President Emmanuel Macron was so shocked by the film after a viewing, according to Le Journal du Dimanche, a French newspaper, that he asked advisers to speed up actions to tackle conditions in poor suburbs. There have been occasional fights at French cinemas in poor suburbs, said Thomas Sotinel, a film critic for Le Monde, in a telephone interview. But he said he could only think of it happening at horror films , not movies depicting urban life. Some theaters had stopped showing horror movies in poor areas, he added. "It's a shame," he said, "then again, I know it's a tough job running a cinema in some suburbs in France." He had read reports of the news in England and had been surprised, he said. But not because of the film being canceled. "I was shocked reading there were so many knives in Britain," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
"I'm hungry for new points of view and longing to see more than that one type of protagonist," said Sera Gamble, the showrunner of "You." This article contains spoilers for the Netflix series "You." Netflix's first hit new show of 2019 isn't new at all: The first season of "You," a witty thriller that problematizes both social media and our affection for a man who will do anything to get the girl, began on Lifetime last September. But despite turning up on critics' year end Top 10 lists, the show made minimal impact on a packed TV landscape. Then, in the middle of the holiday season, it arrived on Netflix, and suddenly it felt as if all of the internet were talking about "You." And in an unusual move, the streaming service released its own viewing data for the show, tweeting that the show was on track to be viewed by 40 million people by the end of January. Season 2 of "You" will be released as a Netflix Original show. "The handshake between streaming and cable has been around for a long time," said Sera Gamble, one of the show's creators (alongside Greg Berlanti). "We expected something of a lift, but we didn't expect it to be like this." Adapted from the novel by Caroline Kepnes, the series is well suited for a Netflix binge, staying refreshingly unpredictable as its central nightmare plays out: Beck (Elizabeth Lail) has a charming new boyfriend, Joe (Penn Badgley), who turns out to be a serial killer. Joe believes he is helping Beck to flourish, even as he murders the people closest to her. It should come as no surprise that Gamble is so skillful at handling millennial fears given her work as a showrunner for "The Magicians," a dark, grown up show about students at a university of magic. (Its fourth season starts Wednesday on Syfy.) In a phone conversation Friday, Gamble discussed what drawing 40 million viewers means to a writer, an insidious kind of mansplaining by woke men and what we should expect from Season 4 of "The Magicians." These are edited excerpts from the conversation. How do you feel about the fact that Netflix counts as a viewer anyone who watches 70 percent of a single episode? Does that change the way you think about the number? No. To be honest, I haven't dug into it at a more granular level. I heard the number and was delighted. As a writer and showrunner, the priority for me is to make a great show, and worrying about numbers isn't that helpful. Now that you're with Netflix, has anything changed about the way you're approaching Season 2? Certain things are changing in the way we are thinking about Season 2 of "You." We have a little more flexibility around timing, since we don't have commercial ads, and also we can say the word expletive a lot more. As someone who swears a lot, that's a great thing. Netflix lets you give as many expletive as you want. Laughs Read more about how "You" became a Netflix hit. "You" and "The Magicians" don't seem to be chasing "prestige TV" viewers. How do you think about your audience? Technology is making the world smaller, and to me that's one of the greatest things about it. There's a natural demand for new stories that are reflective of what's important to these viewers. It's a huge opportunity. There are just so many other stories to tell besides the ones we're used to, where essentially the cisgender, straight white guy runs in and saves the day for everyone else. "Cisgender" refers to someone whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth. I've enjoyed watching a thousand iterations of that story, and they were great, but now I'm kind of tired of them. I'm hungry for new points of view, and longing to see more than that one type of protagonist. I don't believe that shows made with an audience of young women in mind should be any less ambitious than what we think of as "prestige" television. It's funny, "You" has an archetype at the center of the story: Joe is fashioned in the image of the classic male romantic hero. But in this case, we've erected this image so that we can burn it to the ground. So that's fun. Well, on the one hand it's a little creepy, isn't it? To know that so many people can relate to a show that's really about the bloodiest worst case scenario of modern dating. One thing we were all excited to do was get in the writers' room and share our own stories. Accidentally dating potential actual serial killers aside, which is a fear I've always walked around with, we've all got horrible yet amusing stories, and we are all committed to grounding this story in some personal truth about how difficult this stuff can be to navigate. We put a lot of ourselves into the cringey details. I'm a horror writer in my heart, in that I always like to ask myself what scares me and what scares us universally when I'm approaching a story. To me there's just about nothing scarier than the truth that we can never really know another person. And nowhere is that writ larger than in romance. We're auditioning people to be the primary person in our lives, basically, and hoping that we somehow see into their true selves before we're in too deep. It seems more or less impossible, right? And part of what makes Joe Goldberg so terrifying and resonant is that he sees himself as the good guy. For me, the most irksome phenomenon I've been observing lately isn't that old fashioned central casting misogynist who says sexist, blatant stuff. There's also a more insidious type of mansplaining that comes from men who declare themselves progressive and allies, who are, effectively, wearing a "this is what a feminist looks like" T shirt. Maybe the intention is good one could argue that Joe's intentions are good but we all have to be careful anytime we think we know better than the person we're talking to, especially about what that person needs or how they should act or behave as a member of whatever group they're a part of. It's a red flag. That's what we get to explore through Joe, who genuinely believes he's a feminist and a good man. His actions come from a deep place of entitlement because he's confident that he should be helping Beck, though he hasn't asked her if she wants help. And he, in fact, believes he knows better than she does what she actually needs. Right. He's not killing for the thrill of killing. He thinks all his behavior is justifiable in the pursuit of love. He hates violence, and he finds it distasteful. He is a hot blooded romantic with a determination to find love, rather than a man who loves killing. From a technical perspective, that show has already been made: "Dexter." Has the way you think about your job and the industry changed in these post MeToo times? The essence of my job as a showrunner hasn't changed because the essence of the job isn't about your gender. I always say I don't get our budget in lady dollars or get to shoot our show in lady hours the pressure and expectation is the same for any showrunner. But there's also truth in what people are discussing now, about how women face a different or additional set of challenges, how the workplace can be made tricky and hostile for women. I'm glad this is a conversation right now, and I think there's room for improvement throughout our industry. And by the way, being a woman doesn't exempt me from the learning curve. I was raised in the same society as everyone else. We know it isn't only men who internalize all manner of harmful messaging, and no one is born knowing how to be perfect at leading a team. So the best I can do is commit to learning and staying accountable.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
5% of U.S. Pregnant Women With Zika Had Baby With a Birth Defect Five percent of pregnant women with a confirmed Zika infection in the United States territories, including Puerto Rico, went on to have a baby with a related birth defect, according to the most comprehensive report to date from federal officials. Previously, there were not enough births following exposure to the Zika virus to make such estimates. This new report reviewed nearly 2,550 cases of women with possible Zika virus infection who completed pregnancies meaning they gave birth, miscarried or experienced stillbirth from Jan. 1, 2016 to April 25, 2017. Roughly 1,500 of those women had Zika infection actually confirmed by laboratory testing. Eight percent of offspring of pregnant women in U.S. territories with a positive nucleic acid test for Zika infection in the first trimester had birth defects linked to the virus. By contrast, 5 percent of these infants did when infection occurred in the second trimester, and 4 percent in the third trimester. "It's incredibly useful," said Dr. Laura Riley, a specialist in high risk pregnancies and infectious disease at Massachusetts General Hospital. "Patients want to know what is the likelihood their baby could be damaged. At least now, I feel like I had some numbers I can utilize in counseling." C.D.C. researchers classified cases by the trimester in which the laboratory test was conducted or symptoms were reported, said Peggy Honein, the chief of the birth defects branch at the C.D.C. That "may not represent the precise timing of infection." The data reported to C.D.C. came from the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Marshall Islands, American Samoa, and the United States Virgin Islands. In total, the agency counted 122 babies with possible Zika related birth defects, such as neural tube defects, eye abnormalities or microcephaly, an unusually small head. Previously, Puerto Rico's department of health had only reported about 35 cases in which a fetus was lost or baby was born with Zika related birth defects, raising concerns that the extent of damage to infants has been underplayed on the island. On a call with reporters, Dr. Anne Schuchat, the acting director of the C.D.C., replied, "We do believe that Puerto Rico authorities are doing a very good job right now in evaluating babies whose mothers had Zika infection, and characterizing them and reporting in." On Monday, Puerto Rico declared that its Zika epidemic had ended, based on data showing the number of new cases had fallen. Regardless, C.D.C. officials said today that they still advised pregnant women to avoid traveling to Puerto Rico and to protect themselves against mosquito bites, if they do. "We do agree that the disease went up and it's come down, but that the risk is ongoing and that's why they are continuing intensive surveillance and outreach," Dr. Schuchat said. Dr. Tom Frieden, the former director of the C.D.C., said of Zika, "It may not be epidemic anymore, but it's endemic" in Puerto Rico. "What we often see with this type of infection, it's really bad in the first year and less bad in future years," he added. "That's why C.D.C. has retained its travel guidance." Dr. Frieden also cautioned that this report "is a minimum estimate of the number of infants who may be Zika affected," in Puerto Rico, because not all women whose infections were confirmed in the first trimester have given birth yet. "The report mentions that only 18 percent of pregnancies they identified were in the first trimester, while you'd expect it to be a third," he said. Testing pregnant women for Zika will be routine in Puerto Rico, Dr. Schuchat said. Women who do not have any symptoms of Zika virus still may give birth to a baby with Zika related birth defects, research has shown. The only way to catch those infections is to screen women because they may have been exposed to Zika infected mosquitoes or may have had sexual contact with an infected partner. In this new report, "The presence or absence of symptoms was not predictive of whether a baby would be damaged," Dr. Riley said. "There were women who had asymptomatic Zika whose babies were damaged." Currently, only about 60 percent of babies born alive in United States territories had results of Zika laboratory testing reported to pregnancy and infant registries. It's important that all babies who may have been affected are monitored, as early intervention can help. For instance, some babies who appear normal at birth later develop an unusually shrunken head. Only with long term tracking can health officials get an accurate estimate of the scope of the problem. Even now, Puerto Ricans often do not take every precaution to avoid Zika infection. In another C.D.C. report released on Thursday, roughly 88 percent of residents with a recent birth said they had used screens on doors to keep mosquitoes at bay. But 56 percent of roughly 1,800 sexually active pregnant women reported never using condoms to protect themselves from getting Zika from a sexual partner.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Counting its viewership in the millions, The Wrong just might be the world's largest art biennale the digital world's answer to Venice. To visit, art lovers needn't purchase a plane ticket, book a hotel or queue outside galleries: Admission requires only internet access. Now in its third edition, running through Jan. 31, The Wrong presents the work of some 1,500 creators who show across more than 100 online exhibition pavilions, with the field's boldfaced names such as Carla Gannis, a multimedia artist alongside upstart talents like Pieter Jossa, a 3 D animator. The Wrong's founder, David Quiles Guillo, runs the festival from an off grid home in Alicante, Spain, far from traditional art centers. Though intended as an alternative to the often elitist system of biennials and fairs, The Wrong seemingly operates by the tenets of older internet culture: It's decentralized, accessible and democratic anyone who wants to participate, as artist or curator, can apply. Its organizers practice "instant radical inclusion," a phrase coined by Mr. Quiles Guillo and The Wrong's council member Patrick Lichty. "If you believe your art or your curating talent must be part of The Wrong," Mr. Quiles Guillo said in a FaceTime interview, "then for us, it's a must." The festival accepts submissions of artwork and proposals for pavilions until its final day. "I'm not a specialist in digital art," Mr. Quiles Guillo added. "I'm a specialist in making structures to support art." Christiane Paul, the adjunct curator of digital art at the Whitney Museum of American Art, has watched The Wrong since its birth in 2013 and worked with a number of its organizers and participants. (Some, including Elisa Giardina Papa, Marisa Olson and Lorna Mills, are in the Whitney's collection.) Inclusive doesn't mean unimportant. "Anyone interested in the field of digital art," she said, "ought to pay attention to The Wrong." Envisioned as an open and unlimited forum, Homeostasis Lab is the only exhibition pavilion that has appeared in each of The Wrong's three incarnations. Its growing collection includes the work of Santa France, a 24 year old Latvian artist. "Leftovers," her series of digital illustrations, depicts the stray objects that remain after a breakup. The works are thoroughly contemporary still lifes, showing familiar and banal objects that form the detritus of a relationship. Composed digitally, they bear the brush strokes or idiosyncrasies of the 3 D computer graphics software that created them. Finding an exhibition venue is a challenge for young digital artists, Ms. France explained. Social media platforms are fickle, and offline galleries are difficult to penetrate. "It's hard to find a nice community where you can post your work," she said. Ms. France applied to The Wrong which enjoys a smaller viewership than, say, Instagram because it attracts an audience that actively wants to engage with digital art. "When you publish your work on Instagram or Tumblr, there's an accidental audience," she explained. "People who look up your work but don't recognize it as art." Mr. Quiles Guillo calls The Wrong "a website of websites" and "an exhibition of exhibitions." Michael Borras a.k.a. Systaime is a Valencia based artist, curator and founder of the virtual outpost Super Modern Art Museum, known as SPAMM. Created with Francoise Apter (known by her screen name Ellectra Radikal), Mr. Borras's new catalog of artworks is called SPAMM Power. It offers a snapshot of the moment in net art, evidencing some of its various aesthetics and techniques, through the work of more than 140 artists and artist teams. Stocked with hours of content, the pavilion is basically a festival within the festival. As a typology, however, it is subjective and incomplete, Mr. Borras said. "SPAMM has to be so big because there are so many artists on the internet." It's the mission of the Super Modern Art Museum to continue documenting those ever emerging art practices. In the pavilion Lucky Charms for Dinner, the Italian artist and curator Kamilia Kard explores the theme of acceleration: how technology has sped up and increased demands on our time. Sometimes, we're so crushed, she said, that we're forced to eat Lucky Charms for dinner. One month before The Wrong opened, she invited artists to show new or recent work that considers hyper connectivity and the ever present rush. In Kate Durbin's performance video, "Hello Selfie Miami," for example, a group of performers, costumed as what Ms. Kard calls "Hello Kitty mermaids," mug for their smartphone cameras, heedless to the crowd of real life onlookers. The institutional art world, where budgets and programming calendars cover years at a time, and the digital art world, with its relative lack of hierarchies and logistical restraints, move at different tempos. This makes The Wrong nimble, responsive and fast. "But fast doesn't mean shallow," Ms. Kard said. "Online initiatives are often based on low production costs, quick communication within networks of friends and followers, and a strong motivation that makes artists participative and makes them believe in your project." Adjacent to its pavilions, The Wrong also has a number of offline gallery events called "embassies." The Canadian artist and curator Erica Lapadat Janzen gathered the work of what she calls "the world's best GIF artists" for a two day exhibition, GIF Fest 3000, projected on the walls of a Vancouver warehouse. (The show is cataloged online.) Ms. Lapadat Janzen, who has participated in every version of The Wrong, said "it shows just how many people are doing this weird thing we like to call net art." Sure, it's unwieldy, she admitted. "It would do well with more organization, easier ways to access things, more spotlights on certain projects. You'll find really good work, but there's also a lot of noise." But it continues to inspire her to seek out interesting projects, including work by Carla Gannis, whose "Nasty Woman" GIF extends the resistance into virtual space. Her avatar protests from its cyber bedroom, surrounded by other Gannis artworks, reflecting how her personal and private creative thoughts "are increasingly impacted by the politics and inequities of the outer world."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
SIDES OF A HORN (2019) Stream on YouTube. This 17 minute short film shows the devastations of the poaching war in Africa, which not only drives certain species to near extinction, but imperils the cultures and livelihoods of local villages. Written and directed by Toby Wosskow and executive produced by Sir Richard Branson, the film is backed by Virgin, WildAid and African Wildlife Foundation and has been screened around the world before landing on streaming services. The dramatic short, based on actual events, provides an inescapable and visceral portrayal of how poaching can drive an entire ecosystem humans included into turmoil. THE CHOSEN ONE (2019) Stream on Netflix. Amid the storm of anti vaccine activism within the United States, this suspenseful drama delves into the debate of whether personal beliefs should overrule social welfare. This story, however, is set in Brazil during a Zika outbreak. Three doctors who head into the remote Pantanal region with the mission of administering vaccinations are met with hostility from a community led by a faith healer, called the Chosen One. Even as the doctors escalate their efforts to vaccinate the villagers, the local cult becomes more oppressive and dangerous.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
The Los Angeles Clippers are hiring Tyronn Lue as their new head coach, according to two people with knowledge of the deal. The Clippers on Wednesday were finalizing a five year contract with Lue to install him as the successor to Doc Rivers, according to the people, who were not authorized to discuss the deal publicly. Lue was en route to Los Angeles, one of the people said, after spending the past three days in Houston interviewing for the Rockets' coaching vacancy. Lue spent the past season as the top assistant on Rivers's staff after negotiations for him to become the Los Angeles Lakers' head coach collapsed in May 2019. The Lakers and Lue were closing in on a three year deal worth about 20 million when Lue walked away from the negotiations, dismayed both by the relatively short term that the Lakers had offered and their insistence on choosing the assistant coaches for Lue's staff.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Starting Jan. 26, the Brooklyn born graffiti artist Jean Michel Basquiat's 1982 skull painting "Untitled" will be on view at the Brooklyn Museum through March 11. The work caused something of a stir when the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa paid 110.5 million for it at Sotheby's last year, making the painting the sixth most expensive work ever sold at auction at the time. "As I explained when I successfully bought the work, my hope is that art becomes more accessible to a wider audience, and not just enjoyed by a select few," Mr. Maezawa said in a statement to The New York Times. "Therefore, it is with great excitement that I begin the journey of sharing this masterpiece particularly with young people who will carry us forward into the future." Mr. Maezawa is supporting the show, "One Basquiat" billed as the first museum exhibition of the painting as well as public programming around it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
As Debt Rises, the Government Will Soon Spend More on Interest Than on the Military The federal government could soon pay more in interest on its debt than it spends on the military, Medicaid or children's programs. The run up in borrowing costs is a one two punch brought on by the need to finance a fast growing budget deficit, worsened by tax cuts and steadily rising interest rates that will make the debt more expensive. With less money coming in and more going toward interest, political leaders will find it harder to address pressing needs like fixing crumbling roads and bridges or to make emergency moves like pulling the economy out of future recessions. Within a decade, more than 900 billion in interest payments will be due annually, easily outpacing spending on myriad other programs. Already the fastest growing major government expense, the cost of interest is on track to hit 390 billion next year, nearly 50 percent more than in 2017, according to the Congressional Budget Office. "It's very much something to worry about," said C. Eugene Steuerle, a fellow at the Urban Institute and a co founder of the Urban Brookings Tax Policy Center in Washington. "Everything else is getting squeezed." Gradually rising interest rates would have made borrowing more expensive even without additional debt. But the tax cuts passed late last year have created a deeper hole, with the deficit increasing faster than expected. A budget bill approved in February that raised spending by 300 billion over two years will add to the financial pressure. The deficit is expected to total nearly 1 trillion next year the first time it has been that big since 2012 , when the economy was still struggling to recover from the financial crisis and interest rates were near zero. Aside from wartime or a deep downturn like the 1930s or 2008 9, "this sort of aggressive fiscal stimulus is unprecedented in U.S. history," said Jeffrey Frankel, an economist at Harvard. Pouring gasoline on an already hot economy has resulted in faster growth the economy expanded at an annualized rate of 4.2 percent in the second quarter. But Mr. Frankel warns that when the economy weakens, the government will find it more difficult to cut taxes or increase spending. Lawmakers might, in fact, feel compelled to cut spending as tax revenue falls, further depressing the economy. "There will eventually be another recession, and this increases the chances we will have to slam on the brakes when the car is already going too slowly," Mr. Frankel said. Finding the money to pay investors who hold government debt will crimp other parts of the budget. In a decade, interest on the debt will eat up 13 percent of government spending, up from 6.6 percent in 2017. "By 2020, we will spend more on interest than we do on kids, including education, food stamps and aid to families," said Marc Goldwein, senior policy director at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a research and advocacy organization. Interest costs already dwarf spending on many popular programs. For example, grants to students from low income families for college total roughly 30 billion about one tenth of what the government will pay in interest this year. Interest payments will overtake Medicaid in 2020 and the Department of Defense budget in 2023. What's more, the heavy burden of interest payments could make it harder for the government to repair aging infrastructure or take on other big new projects. 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. Mr. Trump has called for spending 1 trillion on infrastructure, but Congress has not taken up that idea. Since the beginning of the year, the yield on the 10 year Treasury note has risen by more than half a percentage point, to 3.1 percent . The Congressional Budget Office estimates that the yield will climb to 4.2 percent in 2021. Given that the total public debt of the United States stands at nearly 16 trillion, even a small uptick in rates can cost the government billions. There's no guarantee that these forecasts will prove accurate. If the economy weakens, rates might fall or rise only slightly, reducing interest payments. But rates could also overshoot the budget office forecast. Some members of Congress want to set the stage for even more red ink. Republicans in the House want to make last year's tax cuts permanent, instead of letting some of them expire at the end of 2025. That would reduce federal revenue by an additional 631 billion over 10 year s, according to the Tax Policy Center. Deficit hawks have warned for years that a day of reckoning is coming, exposing the United States to the kind of economic crisis that overtook profligate borrowers in the past like Greece or Argentina. But most experts say that isn't likely because the dollar is the world's reserve currency. As a result, the United States still has plenty of borrowing capacity left because the Fed can print money with fewer consequences than other central banks. And interest rates plunged over the last decade, even as the government turned to the market for trillions each year after the recession. That's because Treasury bonds are still the favored port of international investors in any economic storm. "We exported a financial crisis a decade ago, and the world responded by sending us money," said William G. Gale, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. But that privileged position has allowed politicians in both parties to avoid politically painful steps like cutting spending or raising taxes. That doesn't mean rapidly rising interest costs and a bigger deficit won't eventually catch up with us. Charles Schultze, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Carter administration, once summed up the danger of deficits with a metaphor. "It's not so much a question of the wolf at the door, but termites in the woodwork." But Washington doesn't want to hear about the potential problems Rather than simply splitting along party lines, lawmakers' attitudes toward the deficit also depend on which party is in power. Republicans pilloried the Obama administration for proposing a large stimulus in the depths of the recession in 2009 and complained about the deficit for years. In 2013, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called the debt and deficit "the transcendent issue of our era." By 2017, as Senate majority leader, he quickly shepherded the tax cut through Congress. Senator James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican who warned of the deficit's dangers in the past, nevertheless played down that threat on the Senate floor as the tax billed neared passage. "I understand it's a risk, but I think it's an appropriate risk to be able to say let's allow Americans to keep more of their own money to invest in this economy," he said. He also claimed the tax cuts would pay for themselves even as the Congressional Budget Office estimated that they would add 250 billion to the deficit on average from 2019 to 2024. In an interview, Mr. Lankford insisted that the jury was still out on whether the tax cuts would generate additional revenue, citing the strong economic growth recently. While the Republican about face has been much more striking, Democrats have adjusted their position, too. Mr. Warner, the Virginia Democrat, called last year's tax bill "the worst piece of legislation we have passed since I arrived in the Senate." In 2009, however, when Congress passed an 800 billion stimulus bill backed by the Obama administration, he called it "a responsible mix of tax cuts and investments that will create jobs." The difference, Mr. Warner said, was that the economy was near the precipice then. "There was virtual unanimity among economists that we needed a stimulus," he said. "But a 2 trillion tax cut at the end of a business cycle with borrowed money won't end well."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
I wish I had Bobby Goldman's faith that New York is filled with attractive, charming, emotionally stable older men looking for relationships. In "Curvy Widow," Ms. Goldman and Drew Brody's energetic one act musical, which opened on Thursday at the Westside Theater, there's a guy like that around every corner right next to some enormous idiots. Otherwise the title character, Bobby (Nancy Opel), would have no story. Ms. Opel, a personable Broadway veteran (and a Tony Award nominee for "Urinetown"), plays an affluent, confident 50 ish New Yorker whose husband dies at the beginning of the show in the middle of the first number, in fact. He was a famous writer, and she owns a construction company, which is the sort of uncommented upon oddity you get when you base a script on real life. (Ms. Goldman's biography lists her as a "contractor," and her husband was James Goldman, the stage and screenwriter "Follies," "The Lion in Winter" who died in 1998.) Bobby charges the funeral to a credit card ("You mean I could get miles?" she says in wonder), then, calling herself Curvy Widow on dating websites, rejoins the singles world. She finds contemporary photography (a flurry of off putting penis close ups), timeless truisms (married men aren't available on holidays) and biological complications (painful postmenopausal intercourse, which inadvisedly receives a lengthy musical number, "Gynecologist Tango").	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Snapchat has long thumbed its nose at social media conventions. The messaging app initially emphasized posts that disappeared rather than remained permanent. It encouraged users to connect with just a few friends instead of many. And it prized human editing and curation instead of encouraging anybody to post anything. On Wednesday, its parent company, Snap, continued that unconventional approach, unveiling a redesign that effectively separates social and media into two parts of the Snapchat app. Where users of Facebook see one giant news feed of information, typically determined by what they have liked and what their friends post, Snapchat users will now see a left side of the app that includes chats and stories shared with, or by, their friends. That's the social part. On the right side, there will be content from publishers, amateur creators, celebrities and stories that Snap curates from user generated videos and photos. That's the media part. "While blurring the lines between professional content creators and your friends has been an interesting internet experiment, it has also produced some strange side effects (like fake news) and made us feel like we have to perform for our friends rather than just express ourselves," Evan Spiegel, Snap's chief executive, said in a blog post about the redesign, which is to begin rolling out on Wednesday and continue through the end of the week.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
After Hurricane Irma, tourist attractions and hotels in Orlando and Savannah are once again open for business and welcoming visitors for the most part, at least. Orlando's tourism districts sustained minimal damage from the storm, according to Becca Bides, the vice president of communications for Visit Orlando, the official tourism association for the Orlando region. "We mostly had debris from trees, which was quickly cleared, and also had some power outages, but recovered within a day," she said. According to Ms. Bides, Visit Orlando's staff contacted several hundred tourism businesses this week, including hotels, restaurants and attractions and determined that the vast majority of them are open. "Our destination is as vibrant as ever," she said. The organization's site has a link, VisitOrlando.com/hurricane, where travelers can see exactly which attractions are up and running and which ones aren't.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Beach hair: It sounds achievable simply by going to the beach while having hair. Or, at most, a result of mixing said hair with salty sea air. But the endeavor isn't quite so simple. After all, there are social media posts to consider. A great selfie doesn't make itself; cool hair certainly helps. But if pre beach styling sounds too contrived (reminiscent of achingly thematic Coachella "festival fashion"), there are practical benefits to styling, too. The sun's UV light damages hair, especially with extended exposure. "Treat hair like you do your skin," said Jeannette Graf, a dermatologist in Manhattan and Great Neck, N.Y. "The sun compromises the cuticle, the outer protective layer of the hair, and over time, can make it brittle and dull." Pre sun styling is time etched out to incorporate hair protection that you may otherwise overlook. Hats and scarves help block the sun (even better if they're sprayed with a sun protective fabric coating). But most important is using leave in conditioners, styling sprays or oils with UV block. Also, woven hairstyles, like braids, hide at least some sections of the hair from the sun.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Artistically, the orchestra has punched above its weight in recent years. But financial pressures have convinced its management that major cuts are needed. BALTIMORE When violent unrest spread through the streets of Baltimore in 2015 after the death of Freddie Gray, an African American man who suffered a spinal injury while in police custody, the Baltimore Orioles took the extraordinary step of playing in an empty stadium, barring fans because of safety concerns. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra sent a different message: Its musicians gathered on the sidewalk in front of their concert hall to perform Handel, Bach and Beethoven to a crowd of hundreds seeking solace at a scarring moment. The musicians are now back on that same stretch of sidewalk walking a picket line. On June 17, the orchestra's management, citing fiscal pressures, locked the players out without pay to try to pressure them to agree to a contract guaranteeing fewer weeks of work. The sounds at the hall last week were of protesters' drums, bullhorn chants and passing cars honking support. The showdown raises all too familiar questions about how venerable ensembles will survive, let alone thrive, in an era when classical music faces stiff financial headwinds. But the labor strife has been especially dispiriting in Baltimore, a city whose woes need no recitation but which had always seen its orchestra as an embodiment of its pluck. Founded in 1916 by the city itself, as a branch of its municipal government, the orchestra later reorganized along more traditional lines. Since 1982 it has played at Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, a rounded, red brown brick building a short walk from Pennsylvania Station that was constructed during an era of expanding ambitions. Mr. Meyerhoff was once the orchestra's biggest benefactor, and his family remains a major supporter. But much of the area's philanthropy today is directed to education, health and economic issues, in a city that faces deep pockets of poverty and problems including lack of heat in some schools last year and a water main break last month that left public housing residents without water for days. "For the small donor, there are so many other crying needs," said Heather Joslyn, a former senior editor at The Chronicle of Philanthropy who lives in Baltimore. Even with inadequate support, the Baltimore Symphony has managed to punch above its weight in recent years. Under the musical leadership of Marin Alsop, the only female music director of a major American orchestra, it has embraced more daring programming, made acclaimed recordings, and, last year, toured Europe. And it has creatively reached out to its community, starting OrchKids, which offers music instruction, homework tutors, after school snacks and dinner to more than 1,300 children in neighborhoods that struggle with poverty and violence. Read about how OrchKids has adopted the city, one child at a time. "It's horrible," lamented Marge Penhallegon, 76, a retired elementary school music teacher who began taking her students to hear the orchestra more than 50 years ago and later became an active supporter and volunteer, as she watched the musicians march outside the hall. "This city needs the culture it can provide. It fills your soul." The players warn that the proposed cuts which would lower their base pay to less than half of what it is at the National Symphony Orchestra, in neighboring Washington would weaken their ties to the community and make it harder for them to attract and retain talent. "We're losing musicians to better paying orchestras," Greg Mulligan, a violinist who is one of the two chairmen of the orchestra's negotiating committee, said. But management has said the cuts are desperately needed. It said that the orchestra faced such a cash crunch in May that it had to borrow 2.3 million from its endowment, in part to make its May 31 payroll its second large borrowing from the endowment in recent years. Peter T. Kjome, the orchestra's president and chief executive officer, said in an interview that a recent strategic planning process had determined that "our current financial model could not support the mission and vision of the Baltimore Symphony as currently conceived." In recent years orchestras around the country have argued that they must curb their rising costs if they are to survive in a new era, in which they now rely on philanthropic donations for more of their annual revenue than ticket sales. Some orchestras have gotten smaller. Others, including the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and, this year, the storied Chicago Symphony Orchestra, have shifted from pensions to plans similar to a 401(k). And some, including the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and the St. Louis Symphony, have moved away from 52 week contracts, saying that there was not enough demand for year round concerts. The length of the season has become a flash point in Baltimore: Management wants to reduce the musicians' paid weeks of work to 40, from the current 52. The musicians pointed out that their current year round base salary in Baltimore, nearly 83,000, is already lower than the base salaries at those orchestras in Detroit and St. Louis, which have shorter seasons. The reduction in weeks, coupled with a demand that they contribute more for health coverage, would cut their pay by roughly a fifth, making it harder, they say, to attract top talent. Jesse Rosen, the president of the League of American Orchestras, said that the trouble in Baltimore was especially dispiriting given how forward looking the ensemble has been. "It's one thing if you look at an orchestra that's kind of treading water artistically," he said in an interview. "But that's not the case with Baltimore. They've really been at the forefront." Joseph Meyerhoff II, a trustee of the orchestra's endowment, recounted last week how Baltimore had changed since the years when his grandfather, a wealthy developer, was chairman of the board. He rattled off a list of corporations and local banks that were lost to mergers, sales, closures and headquarters relocations the disappearance of a network of institutions that used to pitch in to cover the orchestra's deficits or extend credit. "They understood the civic responsibility that corporations have," he said. There is new wealth in the region, and plenty of philanthropy, though it is mostly aimed elsewhere. Last year Johns Hopkins University received a 1.8 billion donation from one alumnus, Michael Bloomberg, to support financial aid, including 50 million for students at the university's music school. When Mr. Meyerhoff's family recently offered a 4 million challenge grant to match large donations to the orchestra's endowment, he said, they met with many of the area's wealthiest citizens and foundations. But they got no offers for any single gifts of more than 250,000. Now they are trying again, offering a 5 million challenge grant, on the condition that 45 million is raised for the endowment. The lockout is a major hardship for many of the musicians, who face mortgage payments, student loan payments for younger players, and children's tuition payments for older ones. Lisa Steltenpohl, 35, its principal violist, said that she had been looking into taking out a home equity loan to make ends meet. Schuyler Jackson, a 27 year old bassoonist, said that he had monthly payments of 450 on the 32,000 instrument he bought to play in the orchestra, on top of steep student loans. "It's really scary," he said. Music directors generally try to stay above the fray in labor disputes. But when asked about the lockout, Ms. Alsop sounded a note of caution. "We need to invest in the world class institutions we do have in Baltimore rather than cutting the things that make our city great," she said in an email. "I urge all sides to engage in constructive dialogue to ensure that Baltimore continues to have the great orchestra it needs and deserves."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Potential perils are in plain sight: An intense and unpredictable tariff battle is alarming businesses across the country. The annual federal deficit is heading toward 1 trillion. Credit card debt is soaring. And the synchronous wave that lifted every world economy at the year's start has dissipated. Such risks have done little to puncture the exuberant optimism that is encouraging American businesses to ramp up hiring and consider new investment. The confidence is rooted only partly in hard nosed data, like the rapid pace of growth expected for the second quarter and record low jobless rates. It is also a sign of harder to measure sentiment. "Animal spirits are high," said Tim Ryan, United States chairman of the global accounting and consulting firm PwC, referring to the gut feelings and impulses that can drive economies to elation or despair. Business leaders who complained that they sometimes felt vilified as engineers of inequality or greedy exploiters now say they are pleased to be viewed as part of the solution, creating jobs and wealth. "They feel good about themselves, like they are the good guys," Mr. Ryan said, describing comments from hundreds of chief executives to his firm over the past quarter. "They are sitting up a little straighter in the chair." The optimism index of the National Federation of Independent Business is in the 99th percentile, an "astounding" number, according to the group's president, Juanita Duggan. At the start of this week, nearly nine out of 10 companies in the Standard Poor's 500 stock index reporting earnings so far had beat expectations. "I'm bullish," Mike Ferretti, chief executive of Great Harvest Bread Company in Dillon, Mont., declared. At the beginning of 2016, sales were so slow that the company sharply discounted the initial franchise fee for its bakery cafes, from 35,000 to 20,000. This month, Mr. Ferretti restored the 35,000 price. "We're confident that the economy is strong enough to not need the discount." Such exhilaration is not evenly spread throughout every sector or region. Soybean and pork farmers, automakers and some manufacturers are profoundly worried about rising raw material costs, sinking sales in export markets abroad, broken supply chains and shipment delays. A survey of metal stampers and fabricators, found that the share of companies looking forward to improved business conditions swooned to 31 percent in June from 97 percent in February. And uncertainty about the future is at heartburn levels. Still, many business leaders are shrugging off otherwise troubling developments like a nasty trade war, labor shortages fueled by restrictive immigration policies, and cracks in the postwar order and America's touchstone alliances with remarkable ease. Mr. Ferretti says he understands that an all out trade war will hurt the economy, and that immigration restrictions are making it tougher to find workers. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. But at the moment, what seem to be more distant risks are being far outrun by immediate enthusiasms. Steep tax cuts for corporations and other enterprises have heaped plump windfalls on many investors and chief executives. After tax corporate profits account for 9.6 percent of the nation's total domestic output, roughly 50 percent above the historical average. Environmental, financial and safety regulations decried as cumbersome by businesses are being rolled back. And the stream of foreign investment in the United States is continuing. "My entire career, we've all been screaming over the deficit," said Mr. Ferretti, recalling lectures he heard in business school. "I'm pushing 40 years into my career, and the deficit fears just never happened. At some point it feels like worrying about the sky falling." While the anxieties are speculative, "the tax reform package truly does put more money in our pockets now," Mr. Ferretti said, "so we have more money to grow the business." Mark Liston, president of Glass Doctor, a company in Waco, Tex., that replaces and repairs commercial, automotive and residential glass, says he hasn't seen this much optimism in his 37 years in business. "Those of us who are outside the Beltway, we ask, 'How is my checkbook, how are my investments, how's my job security?'" Mr. Liston said. "And if all those are positive, I feel O.K. spending money." Midterm elections have tended to result in a loss of seats for the party in the White House, with the president's popularity working to amplify or blunt the impact. The economy generally plays a supporting role. Among Republicans, Mr. Trump's overall approval rating is near 90 percent, although across the public as a whole, it has lingered around the 40 percent mark. The question is whether a roaring economy can soothe voters unsettled by the president's policies or temperament, and offset any inclination to check his power. Mr. Trump has argued that the United States has long been taken advantage of by its trading partners and that punishing tariffs will force them to adjust their practices. Those comforted by the buoyant economy may be more likely to give Mr. Trump's negotiating style the benefit of the doubt. Although the second quarter's heady growth pace estimated at more than 4 percent is expected to slow markedly in the second half of the year, a drop off that showed up after the election would have less impact. At the same time, for many smaller businesses, sensitive political topics can often seem removed from day to day business life. "They're not worried about China tariffs and trade fights with Germany," said Mark Hemmeter, the founder of Office Evolution in Broomfield, Colo., which franchises office space for small businesses to rent. "Our clients are focused on developing business in their communities." What does attract notice is the perception of a pro business mind set in Washington. "I think, psychologically, it's fantastic when you have a business cheerleader in the White House; small businesses feel more comfortable with the direction," said Mr. Hemmeter, who said he expected to double the number of franchises to 60 by the end of the year, and then double again by the end of 2019. Whatever the political winds, Bonnie Micheli and Tracy Roemer, founders of the boutique fitness studios Shred 415 in Chicago, are enjoying the open wallets. "We feel the economy is really strong right now, especially in health and wellness," Ms. Micheli said. "Politics are just irrelevant to our business."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Hertmans's task in reconstructing the life of Hamoutal is formidable, as he knows better than anyone. One salient document, a letter Hamoutal carried with her from France, was recovered in 1864 from the genizah of a Cairo synagogue. This faded and torn page of 11th century parchment is now preserved between sheets of plastic in a binder in the university library at Cambridge. Hertmans makes an appointment to examine it. Beyond that, his research methods are primitive; his plan is to go to the places where he thinks she might have gone. He sets out in his car for Rouen, intending to view the remains of the yeshiva where David studied. One of the great challenges of writing historical fiction is deploying the research without calling attention to it. Hertmans dismisses this obligation with a bold announcement: Hey, I did research! We see Vigdis in her daily life, praying in her chapel, buttering her hair, walking with her chaperone, flirting with a Jewish boy outside the yeshiva wall, and then wait, here's Hertmans again, doing his research. Wherever he looks, he sees her and, knowing her fate, he fears for her. "Does this girl know what she's getting into?" he cries out with paternal outrage. "Of course not, how could she? She is the one who will have to learn to live on a different planet, in a different calendar. She vaults into terra incognita, blind and overexcited, reckless and naive. She does it for those eyes and that little beard, for that smile and that strange excitement, for that yellow cap perched on the crown of his head, for the unknown and the adventure that draws her in, for that cloud of dazzling brightness in her muddled head. She has seen the white unicorn and wanders delirious through a wood of ancient prohibitions." My first inclination was to balk at this authorial intrusion, but Hertmans is so honestly frustrated and miserable in the modern world that I felt sorry for him. His sources contradict one another; he keeps trying to touch something David or Hamoutal touched; he gets lost in time; thinks he sees her on the street; he strives. In the 10th century crypt of a church in Clermont Ferrand, he imagines Vigdis in prayer, bidding farewell to her Christian god. Sadly, he knows what she couldn't have known: that in a few years, in a field outside this same church, Pope Urban II will call on the faithful to undertake the First Crusade, and that "this will have the incidental, irreversible effect of ruining her life in the distant village in Vaucluse." History: You just can't see it coming.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
President Trump believes he represents the "silent majority" of the country against a dangerous, radical minority. He says as much on Twitter, frequently yelling "SILENT MAJORITY" at his followers. Accordingly, his campaign for re election has tried to appeal to this "majority" with displays tailored to its perceived interests. Because Trump believes that this silent majority is protective of Confederate statues and other monuments, he marked Independence Day with a speech on July 3 denouncing "angry mobs" for "defacing our most sacred memorials" and "unleashing a wave of violent crime in our cities." Because he also believes that this silent majority fears integration and diversity, he has issued constant warnings to the "suburban housewives of America" that Joe Biden, the former vice president who is his opponent in the election, will destroy their neighborhoods with affordable housing. "People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they're going to watch it go to hell," he said last week. And because he believes that this silent majority is hostile to protests against police brutality, he has deployed federal law enforcement officers to Portland and other cities to suppress "anarchists" and generate "law and order" images for his campaign. Unfortunately for Trump, there's quite a bit of distance between his perception and our reality. Most Americans support efforts to remove Confederate statues and monuments; most Americans welcome racial and ethnic diversity and few believe their communities should be less diverse; and most Americans are supportive of the Black Lives Matter movement and protests against police brutality 67 percent, according to the Pew Research Center. There is a silent majority in this country, and it is arrayed against a radical, extremist minority. But it stands against Trump, not the other away around. He and his allies are and always have been in the minority, acting in ways that frighten and disturb the broad middle of the electorate. And as long as Trump cannot see this as long as he holds to his belief in a secret, silent pro Trump majority he and his campaign will continue to act in ways that diminish his chance of any legitimate victory in the 2020 presidential election. It's worth unpacking the phrase "silent majority." It dates back to a speech given in late 1969 by Richard Nixon defending the Vietnam War at a moment when antiwar sentiment was on the rise. "As president of the United States," Nixon said, "I would be untrue to my oath of office if I allowed the policy of this nation to be dictated by the minority who holds that point of view and who try to impose it on the nation by mounting demonstrations on the street." He continued: "And so tonight, to you, the great silent majority, my fellow Americans, I ask for your support." Nixon's basic view of American politics was that the country was divided between a disruptive, countercultural left (enabled by feckless, liberal elites) and a broad middle of Americans who craved order and stability. Less than a month before that speech, he convened a secret group he called the "Middle America Committee," tasked with reaching a "large and politically powerful white middle class" that is "deeply troubled, primarily over the erosion of what they consider to be their values." These Americans, in the view of the committee, felt that they had "lost control of a complicated and impersonal society which oppresses them with high taxes, spiraling inflation and enforced integration." Nixon identified with that middle he spoke directly to its fears and anxieties about race, crime and rapid cultural change, as well as its resentments toward those groups (like the Black Power or women's liberation movement) that might try to overturn the existing social order. And he could do this, in part, because the "the great silent majority" within Middle America shared a similar position in the social and economic landscape of the country. They were nearly all white (of varying ethnic origins); some were college educated but the vast majority were not; they had left the cities for the suburbs, part of the "white flight" that transformed the built environment of the country. The silent majority of 1969 was a singular grouping of Americans. The silent majority of 2020 is not. It is diverse, made up of many millions of Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans as well as whites. It is still largely working and middle class, and it still lives in the suburbs, but those suburbs are also more diverse and heterogeneous. This "silent majority" isn't as worried about crime and disorder violent crime is still near a 30 year low but it is concerned with economic security and the rising cost of housing, health care and education. Faced with protests against police brutality, this "silent majority" wants reform and sees racism as a serious problem for the country. And in the midst of a deadly pandemic, it wants the federal government to take control and manage the crisis as best as it can, rather than try to wish it away. What the silent majority doesn't want are spectacles like the crackdown in Lafayette Square or the current operation in Portland. What it doesn't want are endless displays of cruelty for its own sake. Although this silent majority has no uniform view of how to handle issues like immigration, it stands against the hostile rhetoric and draconian policies of the present administration. To Trump and his allies, the country is filled with "shy" supporters just waiting for the right time to reveal themselves; they think they can rally this public to their side with a violent demonstration of "law and order." They think they can run the Nixon playbook again, not realizing that to the broad middle of the country, they are the ones who represent the politics of division, disruption and disorder. Or maybe they do realize it. Earlier this week, Trump issued a memorandum directing Wilbur Ross, the Commerce Secretary, who oversees the Census Bureau, to exclude unauthorized immigrants from the final report for the purposes of apportionment in the House of Representatives. Like last year's blocked attempt to add a citizenship question to the census, this would reduce representation for states and localities with heavy immigrant populations legal or otherwise shifting power to more rural, more white, more Republican areas of the country. This is not the move of a president who believes his party holds a majority of the country. It is the move of a president who knows he is in the minority, who knows his coalition cannot win a fair fight for future political power. The silent majority of the country is against Trump, his allies and his would be successors. He is trying to build a world where that doesn't actually matter.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
A GENERATION or so ago, a parsonage was the accepted way to provide members of the clergy with housing, typically in lieu of a higher salary. Particularly for younger pastors on Long Island, the parsonage was often nicer than what they could have otherwise afforded. But these days many clerics are opting to receive a housing stipend if their congregation allows it and with it, the freedom to choose a place of their own to rent or buy. They say they want the chance to build equity and help secure their financial future. Like ministers before him at the Congregational Church of Huntington, Mark Bigelow lives in the three bedroom two bath 1955 split level that serves as the parsonage for the church, in Centerport. But after living there for 21 years, Mr. Bigelow, 52, may be the last clergyman to reside there. The parsonage, which is about a mile from the church, at 66 Little Neck Road, was listed in February by Katharine Aguilar of Prudential Douglas Elliman, which put a price range of 399,000 to 458,876 on the house, to encourage bidding. (A previous listing at 560,000 by another agent expired in January.) Mr. Bigelow said that to jump start his retirement plans, he wants to reap the tax benefits of owning a home, build equity, and also have the freedom to fix it up exactly as he wants. "We are basically renters but we don't pay rent," said Mr. Bigelow, who will be paying for a new home with the help of a housing allowance and his wife's income. The congregation will put proceeds from the sale into an endowment to cover housing costs for future ministers. Living in a parsonage becomes a problem for ministers if they stay until retirement age, without the funds to buy a home, Mr. Bigelow said. "Where do they go?" he asked. "They don't have much. They haven't had a chance to build equity." He and his wife, Veronica Todaro, plan to buy a similar style home in the neighborhood so their daughter can remain in the Harborfields school district. The Rev. Tom Goodhue, the executive director of the Long Island Council of Churches, said that years ago many Protestant churches "bought a parsonage for a great big parsonage family. Now the clergy often don't need or want four bedrooms." Some clergy members are part of two career couples and already own a home. But smaller churches and synagogues that do not own a parsonage or rectory may find it difficult to attract clergy members to Long Island, which even with slumping housing prices is an expensive place to live. Mr. Goodhue advises that "every congregation should own a house if they can," but once a year ask the pastors or rabbis whether they want to live there or designate a part of their salary as a housing allowance. The parsonage system was created because many churches moved around their ministers every few years; having a parsonage close to the house of worship meant the ministers didn't have to look for housing or concern themselves with selling later on. Still, Mr. Goodhue recalled having to worry about things like home maintenance. Years ago, he said, when he was a pastor in Bay Shore, it took him three hours to mow the lawn around his four bedroom parsonage. "We could never have afforded to buy it ourselves nor could we have paid the income tax," Mr. Goodhue said of the house, which he described as "enormous." Clergy members pay taxes on the housing allowance, he noted, but they "don't have to pay income tax on the value of the parsonage." Forty of the 57 Presbyterian congregations on the Island have "manses," as Presbyterian parsonages are known, said the Rev. Mark Tammen, the Island's general presbyter. He said the trend has been to keep them rather than sell, renovating between pastors. Sky high housing costs "price pastors out of the market except for the largest congregations," Mr. Tammen said. "If the person from God you want to call is in Minneapolis, if you don't have a manse, you can't call them." Another benefit to having a manse, he said, is that it allows members of the clergy to live in the community they are serving, sometimes on or right next to church property. Congregants "want to see them at the grocery store," he said. Episcopal churches with rectories are likely to keep them, said the Rev. Canon Shawn Duncan, the chief information officer for the Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, counting 29 out of 40 Nassau churches and 26 out of 43 Suffolk churches with rectories. "Nationally the trend is to have rectories in those areas that are expensive to live," he said. The church contributes to an equity allowance for priests living in the rectory, with the goal that when they retire they will have a down payment for a house. Those that sell are typically shrinking congregations that no longer have full time clergy, he said. Rabbi Susan Heneson Moskowitz, the president of the Long Island Board of Rabbis, said Reform rabbis tended to own homes. "Clergy's salaries have changed commensurate to the fact," she said, noting that instead of receiving housing in a parsonage, rabbis were encouraged to buy homes. She said most Conservative rabbis lived in parsonages close to the synagogue to give them more options for observing the Sabbath. But living in a parsonage can have drawbacks. "If the wife of a rabbi became widowed, she had to leave her house because a new rabbi came in," even after 25 years, Rabbi Moskowitz said. Until last year, Rabbi Sholom Stern, the senior rabbi of the Conservative Temple Beth El of Cedarhurst, lived with his family in a five bedroom colonial that belonged to the synagogue. But with his two grown children out of the house, the parsonage was simply too big. He and his wife bought a two bedroom co op nearby, and Temple Beth El put the colonial on the market. "The temple decided that since the maintenance of the home was very costly and the rabbi did not need such a large home," Rabbi Stern said, "it would serve their interest to sell it." According to a congregant, the house sold for about 650,000. The temple is using the "much needed" proceeds from the sale for synagogue programming, Rabbi Stern said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Therese Kelly, a longtime Amazon employee, said many safety measures were not followed at the warehouse in Hazle Township, Pa. She tested positive for Covid 19. Therese Kelly arrived for her shift at an Amazon warehouse on March 27 to find her co workers standing clustered in the cavernous space. They were awaiting a buildingwide announcement, a rarity at the complex known as AVP1. Over a loudspeaker, a manager told them what they had feared: For the first time, an employee had tested positive for the coronavirus. Some of the workers cut short their shifts and went home. Ms. Kelly, 63, got to work, one of the hundreds of thousands of Amazon employees dealing with the spike in online orders from millions of Americans quarantined at home. In the less than two months since then, the warehouse in the foothills of the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania has become Amazon's biggest Covid 19 hot spot. More employees at AVP1 have been infected by the coronavirus than at any of Amazon's roughly 500 other facilities in the United States. Local lawmakers believe that more than 100 workers have tested positive for the virus, but the exact number is unknown. At first, Amazon told workers about each new case. But when the total reached about 60, the announcements stopped giving specific numbers. The disclosures also stopped at other Amazon warehouses. The best estimate is that more than 900 of the company's 400,000 blue collar workers have had the disease. But that number, crowdsourced by Jana Jumpp, an Amazon worker, almost certainly understates the spread of the illness among Amazon's employees. Amazon saw the pandemic up close before many American companies. In early February, it fretted about its global supply chain and consulted an infectious disease specialist. Based in Seattle, an early epicenter of the outbreak, the company told its 50,000 employees there to work from home starting March 5. About that time, Amazon was hit by a massive wave of orders, a surprise surge the likes of which it had never experienced. Jeff Bezos, the company's founder and chief executive, called it "the hardest time we've ever faced." The company paid workers extra to stay on the job and announced that it would hire 175,000 more to fill orders. Mr. Bezos told investors that pay increases, safety measures and testing efforts would cost more than 4 billion this quarter. Still, toilet paper and jigsaw puzzles almost vanished from the site, and the 100 million American households that are Prime members watched Amazon struggle. Finding a balance between meeting the promise of one or two day delivery and keeping employees safe has been a challenge for the company ever since. At the 600,000 square foot warehouse where Ms. Kelly worked, in Hazle Township, products shipped from China and elsewhere are removed from trucks and broken down into smaller packages that are trucked to Amazon's other facilities for shipment to shoppers. Safety measures began arriving at the warehouse in mid March, but they were introduced without rigor. When a team that oversaw safety protocols posed for a photo on March 17, wearing green for St. Patrick's Day, its members stood right next to one another, without social distancing. Yellow tape marked off six foot increments on a main walkway, but many people worked much closer together, Ms. Kelly said, "just like every other day." On April 1, Ms. Kelly, who had worked at the warehouse for nine years, noticed that four hand sanitizer pumps affixed to a pole were empty. Later that day, feeling ill with a scratchy throat, she left work early. She tested positive for Covid 19 a few days later. Dave Clark, who runs Amazon's global operations, said in a statement that "we were earlier than most when rolling out broad protective measures for our teams, and we've adapted every day to make improvements." He pointed out that the warehouse is in a region with a high community infection rate and said he didn't think employees had caught the virus at work. "We believe our efforts are working," Mr. Clark said. But workers and local leaders began worrying early on that Amazon wasn't doing enough. The company in February began consulting with Dr. Ian Lipkin, an infectious disease specialist at Columbia University, who advised introducing checks for fever, social distancing and other measures. "They wanted to stay ahead of the science as best they could," Dr. Lipkin said. Still, some standard safety advice didn't become common practice at AVP1 for almost two months, according to interviews with six workers, local leaders and elected officials, some of whom asked that their names not be used for fear of retribution. It wasn't until the first week in April, about a month after white collar workers in Seattle were sent home, that fever checks were instituted at the Hazle Township warehouse. Masks were available to those who asked for them, but weren't required. Tables in the break room were moved apart, but as employees who had stayed home returned to work, lunch became crowded; Amazon added an extra break time on April 21 after workers complained. In social media posts and interviews, workers argued that the plant should be temporarily closed for deep cleaning. By the end of March, State Representative Tarah Toohil, a Republican whose district includes the warehouse, was hearing from workers. A relative of an employee called to say Amazon's cleaning crew had not shown up for work the previous day. Two days later, the mother of a contract worker told her to say not enough had changed at the warehouse. "Now they are up to about nine cases, and it's still running the same," the woman wrote in an email. Amazon kept alerting workers to new infections. April 4: four cases. April 6: nine cases. April 8: eight cases. That day, a worker complained to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, reporting that "there's no disinfectant we bring our own," and that employees awaiting Covid 19 test results were still going to work. "The richest company in the world can afford to close for a few days with pay for their people," the employee wrote. OSHA, which asked employers to investigate themselves during the outbreak, closed the complaint after Amazon provided documentation of its efforts. As neighboring Hazleton, at the intersection of two interstates, became a hot spot for the virus, there was increasing pressure on the area's big employers to shut down. In a few days, more than 1,500 people signed a Change.org petition calling for Amazon to close AVP1. The petition said social distancing at the facility was nearly impossible. The local congressman, Matt Cartwright, a Democrat, held an online press conference and announced that he had asked OSHA to investigate three of the area's major employers, because he had heard about problems with social distancing and the lack of protective gear. He later confirmed that one was Amazon. Ms. Toohil called on large industrial employers, including Amazon, to close and pay employees. "I believe it actually saved lives," said Wendell Young IV, who heads the region's United Food and Commercial Workers union. "Any spread related to the plant stopped immediately." On April 10, Amazon announced 11 new cases. On April 13, it was four new infections, and on April 15 the company told employees that another 11 people were infected. After that, no specifics were forthcoming, just announcements that there had been additional cases. On a whiteboard in the warehouse, several employees asked managers why the number of infections was no longer shared. They were told that it made no difference and that the company didn't want to make employees fearful. In the dark early morning of April 11, trucks from a pest control company pulled into the facility's parking lot. A team in hazmat suits wearing respirators sprayed disinfectant fog in the building between shifts. There were other safety improvements. Where two people once had moved a stack of 10 empty pallets, one person instead moved five at a time. Managers told workers to tip and slide heavy items instead of lifting them with another person. Masks were required. Since Ms. Kelly returned to work in late April, she has often worked almost 11 hour shifts overtime to make up for the time she was out sick beyond the two weeks that Amazon pays workers with Covid 19. She said she was glad to see some work stations had been removed while she was away, because they had been too close together. And some workers had been hired just to refill all the sanitizer bottles. "It's just way too late," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
So it's all about helping the economic victims of the coronavirus lockdown. How are we doing? The good news is that thanks to Democratic pressure, the CARES Act, the 2 trillion not a stimulus bill that became law less than three weeks after Trump dismissed the notion that Covid 19 might pose an economic problem, is mostly focused on the right things. The core provisions of the legislation are aid to hospitals, the unemployed and small businesses that maintain their payrolls; these are exactly the kinds of things we should be doing. What's especially remarkable is that we got mostly sensible legislation even though the president was talking nonsense, pushing for what else? tax cuts as the solution for the economy's problems. Actually, I can't think of any other recent example in which Republicans agreed to major fiscal legislation that mainly involved spending to benefit the needy, without any tax cuts for the rich. The bad news comes in two parts. First, the bill falls far short of what's needed on one crucial dimension: aid to state governments, which are on the front line of dealing with the pandemic. Unlike the federal government, states have to balance their budgets each year. Now they're facing a surge in costs and huge revenue losses; unless they get a lot more aid, they'll be forced to cut spending sharply, which will directly undermine essential services and indirectly deepen the overall slump. And it's not clear when or whether that hole will be filled. Senate Republicans are hostile to the idea of another rescue package; White House officials are reportedly still talking about tax cuts. Second, decades of hostility to government have left us poorly positioned to deliver even the aid Congress has voted. State unemployment offices have been underfunded for a long time, and red states have deliberately made it hard to apply for benefits. So the surge in unemployment is overwhelming the benefits system; Congress may have voted disaster relief, but the money isn't flowing. The loan program for small businesses is also, by all accounts, off to a shambolic start. And those 1,200 checks everyone is supposed to get? Many Americans won't get them for weeks or months. It doesn't have to be like this. Canada has already set up a special web portal and phone system to provide emergency unemployment benefits. Germans have been pleasantly surprised by how quickly aid is flowing to the self employed and small businesses.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
The onetime '80s mass market cheapie has gotten an artisanal upgrade just in time for quarantine home manicures. Yewande Moore used to get an acrylic overlay with a gel polish manicure every couple of weeks before coronavirus hit. But when Ohio, where she lives in Kent, shut down salons, she went to Walmart to get tools to take her nails off, not knowing when she could get them done again. There, taking a look at the press on nails in the beauty aisle, Ms. Moore, 32, who works with student leaders at a nearby university, had an idea. "I love doing my nails so much," she said. "I'm going to offer it to other people." Ms. Moore took her stimulus check and invested in supplies to start a press on nail business. After painting some sets and building a website, she introduced Nail Candy to the world on June 2 and said she has sold about 125 nail sets. While some customers seem to be pros at putting on press ons, she gets plenty of questions about how to put them on correctly. "There are a lot of people trying it for the first time who probably never would have tried it before," she said. Along with other nonessential businesses, nail salons closed across the country when the first stay at home orders came down in March. It left nail salon workers out of work and people that are used to having their nails done without access to a cherished grooming ritual. Press on nails last had a big moment in the clickety clack typewriter 1980s, with ads from a brand called Lee ("easy on, easy off"). Even as states open back up, safety is still a concern for some costumers. Charlotte Brubeck, a laid off restaurant worker in Boynton Beach, Fla., was getting her nails done regularly in a salon, with press ons something she'd do for specific outfits on occasions like Halloween. Ms. Brubeck, 26, turned to press ons while the salons were closed but doesn't plan to go back, even though her local spot has been open for a few weeks. Despite the fact that press ons aren't as durable as her normal style, she said it's worth it. "I spend about 7 to 8 on a box of press ons versus 35 plus on a fresh manicure, and I don't have to leave my house," Ms. Brubeck said. "During a health pandemic when most people are out of work and need to stay home, that to me is all the info you need to see how much better press ons are than a salon manicure." Vanity Projects, which has salons in New York and Miami, hadn't sold press ons before the pandemic until its owner Rita Pinto started paying her workers to paint sets in May. The salons advertised them on Instagram and has sold 200 sets, also called tips, which Ms. Pinto, 45, said has helped keep the company in business. "The tips have been a saving grace," she said. During previous periods of economic uncertainty, the beauty sector has historically seen an increase in sales of small luxury purchases in what was named by Leonard Lauder the "lipstick effect." These little indulgences can make people feel better without blowing a budget. Fortunately, press on nails have gotten nicer in the last decade, with most sets lasting two to three weeks and coming in different shapes and lengths. Before the pandemic, Jennifer Lopez and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez had worn press ons, with Ariana Grande and Chrissy Teigen joining them over the last few months. Influencers are also getting attached, with Whitney Simmons, a YouTube fitness influencer, singing press ons' praises. "I am a full blown convert to press on nails, I never saw this day coming," Ms. Simmons says in a YouTube video posted in June. "My nail salon opened back up on May 1, and I have not gone back."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
AT NIGHT ALL BLOOD IS BLACK By David Diop From the very first pages, there is something beguiling about "At Night All Blood Is Black," a slim, delicate novel by the Senegalese French writer David Diop. The narrator, Alfa Ndiaye, is an African legionnaire fighting for the French in the trenches of World War I, who tells the story sometimes in the form of sordid confession, other times in the form of sobering testimony. Ndiaye's tale is fueled by guilt and a singed conscience. The novel begins after he has helplessly watched his friend Mademba suffer a slow and agonizing death, unable to put an end to his misery despite the man's pleas that Ndiaye slit his throat. This transgression against the dead or the delusion of such fills the story with a mythic affliction that recalls the old sailor's in Samuel Coleridge's epic poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner." The narrative voice brims with innuendoes and habitual repetitions like "I know, I understand" and "God's truth," which imbue the character with an edgy eccentricity. But this book is about more than a lone man's spiritual burden. Diop realizes the full nature of war that theater of macabre and violent drama on the page. He takes his character into the depths of hell and lets him thrive there. In the trenches, Ndiaye's affliction soon becomes a sort of psychological self flagellation. It is manifested in a brutal ritual: Each night, Ndiaye sneaks away under darkness to kill a "blue eyed enemy" soldier from the German line and brings back his severed hand.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
BROCKMIRE 10 p.m. on IFC. There are inspirational, family friendly baseball movies like "Angels in the Outfield" and "Field of Dreams" and then there's "Brockmire," about an alcoholic announcer who ends up in the minor leagues after a caustic, profane on air tirade. The show's bawdiness and provincial scope didn't stop it from having a successful first season with strong reviews and ratings; the show was subsequently renewed through Season 4. In this episode, the title character (played by Hank Azaria) goes on an epic bender with the wizened ballplayer Pedro Uribe (Hemky Madera). IRON CHEF GAUNTLET 9 p.m. on the Food Network. David LeFevre is the last chef standing on this competition show. But if he wants to be crowned Iron Chef, he has to cook his way through a three round competition against experts who already possess the title: Alex Guarnaschelli, Stephanie Izard and Michael Symon. The judges Donatella Arpaia and Marcus Samuelsson decide whether Mr. LeFevre will leave or join their ranks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
GUANGZHOU, China With China's domestic economy stumbling badly this spring as construction and retail sales slow, this country is unleashing a fresh surge of exports that is preserving millions of jobs in Chinese factories but could fan trade tensions with the West. China's General Administration of Customs announced on Sunday that exports had surged 15.3 percent in May from a year earlier, twice as fast as economists had expected and vaulting May past last December as the biggest month ever for Chinese exports. China's trade surplus has expanded in each of the last three months. As indebted European economies slip into recession and unemployment inches back up in the United States, Chinese factories are outcompeting rivals in developing countries and the West to claim larger market shares even as global demand is barely rising. "Our sales have picked up significantly and we're now overbooked," said Roger Lee, chief executive of the TAL Group in Hong Kong, one of the biggest suppliers of high end dress shirts to department stores and luxury brands in the United States. China's renewed success relies heavily on the American market, with Chinese exports to the United States soaring 23 percent in May from a year earlier, the data on Sunday showed. Chinese exports to the European Union rose only 3.2 percent. But resurgent Chinese exports also have the potential to become a political issue in the American elections in November. Mitt Romney, who has clinched the Republican nomination for president, has already promised in campaign ads to stand up to China more vigorously on currency issues. President Obama has set up an interagency group to investigate trade law violations, particularly by China. Underpinning China's export success is a combination of long term investments in automation and short term depreciation of the currency. Manufacturers across China are investing in labor saving equipment, reorganizing shop floor management and taking other measures to control labor costs, which have been rising steeply as the country grows in prosperity. Here in southern China, a manufacturer of home saunas has installed a 25,000 computer controlled drill that does the work of up to eight people. A garment company in Wenxi, in eastern China, is buying machinery to manufacture buttons more cheaply. And a printer in Wuhan, in central China, is fully automating paper cutting and plans further investments in printing and binding, so that workers will only be required to package the finished product. "We are investing in additional machinery so as to improve productivity," said Jessica Meng, the sales director at the printer, Maxleaf Stationery. "Labor costs are too high these days." The move to automation, consistent across many industries, is a central reason that Chinese imports in the United States are becoming cheaper. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the United States show that average prices for goods imported from China edged down in April for the first time in almost two years, despite double digit increases in labor costs. Rising Chinese labor costs have not yet meant relief for China's rivals in other developing countries, Japan and the West, partly because automation is offsetting an erosion in Chinese competitiveness. Beijing officials have strongly endorsed stepped up equipment investments by exporters. Labor shortages in export zones have meant that workers have not tended to protest the introduction of more machinery. Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. As the domestic Chinese economy slows, the government is also counteracting some of the pain by taking currency actions to help exporters. The Chinese government allowed the country's tightly managed currency, the renminbi, to fall nearly 1 percent against the dollar last month, its largest drop since Beijing officials unpegged the currency from the dollar in July 2005. A weaker renminbi makes Chinese goods less expensive in foreign markets, and makes imports less affordable in China. But producer prices in China have been falling this year. They were down 1.7 percent in May from a year earlier, as the popping of China's real estate bubble over the past year depressed demand for steel, cement and other materials. Producer prices have kept rising in the United States, so the inflation adjusted exchange rate has moved about 2 percent in favor of China's exporters this year. At the same time, weakness in China's domestic economy has resulted in more workers seeking jobs in export factories. "It is easier to find workers this year, much easier," said James Jian, the general manager of Hongyuan Furniture here, a 200 employee manufacturer of home saunas that use infrared lights instead of hot rocks. Demand for the saunas, which cost 1,500 to 4,000, is particularly strong from affluent households in the United States, he added. Chinese officials have also urged the country's state owned banks to lend more to small and medium size manufacturers, many of which are exporters. The country's 70 financial institutions, all state controlled, have been lending heavily to state owned enterprises; some are exporters, but many are engaged more in domestic activities like real estate development and infrastructure. In antisubsidy trade cases, however, the United States Commerce Department typically regards loans from state owned banks as carrying subsidized interest rates. Loans are widely issued at fairly low interest rates through a system that allocates credit based partly on the Five Year Plan and other national policies, as opposed to who can pay the highest risk adjusted interest rate. The strong Chinese exports in May came after a much weaker month in April, when shipments to Europe actually shrank. But American demand for Chinese goods has been consistently strong. May had an extra workday this year and April had one fewer day because of the timing of Chinese holidays. But this has a limited effect on exports because manufacturers schedule enough shifts to meet demand. The biggest question mark is the extent to which manufacturers can continue to offset rising labor costs with investments in automation and the reorganization of often inefficient work practices. China's current Five Year Plan calls for industrial wages to rise 13 percent a year through 2015, and some cities have been raising their minimum wages even faster. Mr. Lee of the TAL Group said that his company's labor costs were already rising at least 15 percent a year. By contrast, productivity per worker is rising only half as fast as wages, he said, as the manufacture of woven shirts is hard to automate. The TAL Group has found some efficiencies through reorganizing its employees into smaller work teams. If Foxconn, which makes iPhones and other electronic products for Apple and many other manufacturers, fully carries out all of the pay and overtime policy changes that it announced in February, then its labor costs per worker could rise as much as 40 percent, Mr. Lee said, adding that this would put heavy pressure on other manufacturers like TAL to raise wages even faster. Many mainland Chinese and Hong Kong companies have started diversifying production by opening factories in Southeast Asia, where wages are now lower than in China. The TAL Group has diversified by setting up operations in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam. But many other Chinese companies compare Southeast Asia's infrastructure and bureaucracies unfavorably to China's and are staying close to home. Hongyuan has just faced a choice of whether to send senior managers late this summer to a conference in Vietnam promoting factory investments there or to a trade fair in Las Vegas, said Rachel Wang, the sales manager. After deciding that China was still a competitive base for exports, through use of equipment like the computer controlled drill, and that the United States would keep importing, the company chose Las Vegas.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
We are in the middle of a pandemic, but we are also in the middle of a presidential campaign, and I shudder to think how much "earned media" the media is simply shoveling Trump's way by airing these briefings, which can last up to two hours a day. Let me be clear: Under no circumstance should these briefings be carried live. Doing so is a mistake bordering on journalistic malpractice. Everything a president does or says should be documented but airing all of it, unfiltered, is lazy and irresponsible. As the veteran anchor Ted Koppel told The New York Times last month, "Training a camera on a live event, and just letting it play out, is technology, not journalism; journalism requires editing and context." He continued, "The question, clearly, is whether his status as president of the United States obliges us to broadcast his every briefing live." His answer was "no." We have trained the American television audience to understand that regular programs are only interrupted for live events when they are truly important, things that the viewers need to see now, in real time. These briefings simply don't reach that threshold. In fact, some of what Trump has said has been dangerous, like when he pushed an unproven and potentially harmful drug as a treatment for the virus. No amount of fact checkers, balancing with the briefings of governors, or even occasionally cutting away, can justify carrying these briefings live. The scant amount of new information that these rallies produce could be edited into a short segment for a show. The major headlines from these briefings are often Trump's clashes with reporters, the differences he has with scientists and the lies he tells. Just like in 2016, it's all theater. Donald Trump doesn't care about being caught in a lie. Donald Trump doesn't care about the truth. Donald Trump is a bare knuckled politician with imperial impulses, falsely claiming that, "When somebody's the president of the U.S., the authority is total," encouraging protesters bristling about social distancing policies to "liberate" swings states, and saying that Speaker Nancy Pelosi will be "overthrown, either by inside or out." Trump has completely politicized this pandemic and the briefings have become a tool of that politicization. He is standing on top of nearly 40,000 dead bodies and using the media to distract attention away from them and instead brag about what a great job he's done.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
As evening falls, it will be time for Versace, where no doubt Donatella will dish out her usual dose of barely there va va voom on some of the starriest models of the moment. Log on to the NYT Styles Facebook page; we'll be backstage and on Facebook Live with the beauty doyenne Pat McGrath pre show, before peeking at the latest beauty looks for the season. Accessories labels staging catwalk shows appears to be a big trend of the season. The latest to jump onto the bandwagon is Sergio Rossi. The company is staging 15 minute performances at the Teatro Gerolamo, putting the latest collection in the spotlight. Across town, hotfoot it to the second generation shoe guru Gianvito Rossi's 10th anniversary party for a glass of prosecco or three. In the real world, it is Friday, after all. And in case you missed it: Rebelling Against Insta Everything at Fendi and Roberto Cavalli. Our reviewer weighs in. In the Studio With Silvia Fendi	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
On a Tuesday in December, from the dark corridors of the Delhi Metro, we climbed the staircase of the Chawri Bazar station single file, me last, since I had no idea where we were going. We emerged on the fringes of a traffic circle, into a thick, hazy smog that clung to our skin and throat and nostrils, and formed a film that for the next three weeks, would never really go away. Around us, on a chaotic street that used to anchor a 19th century hardware bazaar, a million negotiations were taking place: chai vendors negotiating the ratio of tea to milk, tailors negotiating the price of stitching a blouse, drivers negotiating traffic, pedestrians negotiating drivers. My soon to be father in law, a New Delhi native and the Magellan of this city, brokered a deal of his own. He hailed two rickshaws the three wheel kind powered by people, not motors told each where to go, the price he would pay no motors, no meters and motioned for his son and me, borderline millennials more accustomed to ride sharing than rickshaws, to hoist ourselves into one, while he and my mother in law expertly climbed into the other. The seats faced backward, offering an uninterrupted view of Old Delhi's traffic thronged streets, crumbling facades and canopy of power lines. "How is this legal?" I asked, staring up at a lethal looking knot of electrical wires, not really expecting an answer. The driver started pedaling. I clutched onto the bar in front of me like a child on a roller coaster. We hit a bump in the road; I screamed. Indian weddings bring to mind a riot of colors, glittering gold jewels and swingy skirts studded with rhinestones and tiny mirrors that refract light like roving disco balls. But my future husband and I would be getting married in California's wine country, and sought a different aesthetic: a celebration to reflect our distinctly American way of life, while nodding to our heritage. Both sets of our parents emigrated from India to the United States before we were born, mine from South India, his from the north. Growing up, I visited India with my parents every three or four years; he went back yearly, without fail, always to Delhi, where his 97 year old grandfather, a world renowned archaeologist, still lives. Shopping for our wedding in both Delhis, New and Old the latter worth exploring with the aid of a traditional tour guide if you don't have a personal Magellan would root us back to our cultural homeland, this cacophonous place of silk hawkers and honking horns and a deal around every corner, where heavy velvet lehengas hang from shop windows like so many skinned chickens. I first got acquainted with his part of India in December 2016, when we got engaged at Lake Palace, a majestic hotel and former royal residence in the middle of a lake in Udaipur, 400 miles southwest of Delhi. At the time, I was so besotted by the romantic, five star version of India that my fiance had shown me that we considered returning there for our wedding. Back in Los Angeles, where we live and much of our extended family does too, reality set in: It would be prohibitively expensive. A lot of our loved ones wouldn't be able to make the trip, what with the cost, their kids, their jobs. We'd have so little control over the final product, planning a wedding from half a world away. But a "pro" had always been that it would be easier to find outfits and accouterments for our multiday Hindu wedding we're culturally Hindu, if not the most religiously observant in India than in the United States, where the selection along strips like Oak Tree Road (Edison and Iselin, N.J.) and Pioneer Boulevard (Artesia, Calif.) pales in comparison to that of shops in the motherland, where clothing rods sag with the weight of ornately beaded outfits, and proprietors pull ever more options from the back, loath to lose out on a potential sale. It's like an airport bookstore versus Amazon. (Thanks to the internet, I lusted after a devastatingly elegant gown of embroidered roses by the designer Sabyasachi Mukherjee; to try it on, I would have to visit one of his India boutiques.) While online shops exist, it seemed unwise to measure an outfit that I wouldn't be able to try on before buying, and also, not fun. I knew from experience. I had been married before and purchased a gorgeous, peacock feather festooned lehenga, the two piece bridal gown native to North India, online. But I failed to diet or exercise enough to be comfortable showing a six inch swath of my midriff, as the outfit did, and six weeks before my wedding in New York, panicked and bought a less revealing lehenga from a store in Jackson Heights, Queens. The photos make me cringe. There were other reasons to return to India: my fiance's aforementioned grandfather, along with many relatives that we rarely see. My in laws, whom I referred to with the reverential Auntie and Uncle, go back every December. If we went with them, I'd have an opportunity to bond with the tight knit family I was marrying into before I walked down the aisle again, something I knew was more important than the "wow" factor of the centerpieces. The memories banked during this trip could carry us through Thanksgivings and Christmases to come. My fiance and I would have an army to help us wade through the sea of bridal gowns, lehengas and achkans, the knee length jacket worn by North Indian grooms, and we could also get wedding invitations made for less than we'd pay in the United States. The caveat: since we were in his parents' old stomping grounds, they would dictate the order of operations, which is why, within 12 hours of landing, we were barreling through the streets of Old Delhi in bicycle rickshaws, trying to find an alley that my father in law promised was lined with wedding invitation makers (many of whom also printed ornate business cards and stationery). Our goal: design the invitations and get them into production as soon as possible, so they'd arrive in Los Angeles by early January. After 10 minutes that felt like much more than that, our rickshaws pulled to a stop near a stand of pomegranates. "Let's check out a few shops, see the selection," my father in law said. (As the founder of a Los Angeles clothing manufacturing company, he's always on the hunt for a good deal.) If I was looking for Amazon, here it was: hole in the wall after hole in the wall, hundreds of them, hawking invitations as thick as hardcover books, some the size of shoe boxes. On we went, my bladder slowly expanding. Starbucks has yet to invade Old Delhi and indoor plumbing remains a luxury. In the putrid smelling, blue tiled bathroom of a second floor card shop, I decided the search had gone on long enough. I pulled my fiance aside: "I think we should just do that one with the tree," I said, eyes pleading. We hopscotched back to R.K. Cards, put a down payment on the order and tore into potato and green pea samosas at Haldiram's, a vegetarian, cafeteria style joint that specializes in snack foods. Mindful of the bathroom situation, I washed them down with nothing. Clothes shopping came with other obstacles. Dressing room photos provide crucial points of comparison between outfits, but many stores prohibit photo taking for fear that shrewd shoppers will take the images to a tailor and have the garment recreated for less. Some confiscate phones before letting you try anything on. In Shahpur Jat, a New Delhi district packed with independent boutiques, my fiance and I figured out a workaround. I emerged from the dressing room of Inchee Tape in a drapey, silk gown with a crochet bodice and ambled around the couch where he sat with his phone, pretending to check ESPN but actually snapping half a dozen photos, only one of which was serviceable. No matter. It wasn't until his younger sister arrived in India that I tried on an outfit that made my heart swell. The three of us took an Uber to the chicest mall in New Delhi, DLF Emporio, ostensibly to browse the bridal collections of India's high fashion designers but also to get some space from the apartment we were sharing with five more members of their family. The mall might have been airdropped in from Beverly Hills: all marble corridors and surfaces of mirrored gold, redolent of musk and masala. At Monisha Jaising, I tried on a 5,000 gown appropriate for J. Lo plunging mesh V neck, gold beads, figure hugging skirt. A poofy pink train framed the hips in a manner that recalled Marie Antoinette. It was the type of gown that, worn to the Oscars, would turn heads; worn to our wedding, it would turn my mother against me. Across the hall, a lehenga in the window of Falguni Shane Peacock caught my eye: the palest hue of lavender, with a blouse covered in tubular silver beads and a skirt splattered with silver appliques. It slipped on easier than expected. I had heard women wax poetic about trying on a wedding dress and instantly knowing it was "the one;" I assumed they were being overly romantic. Nope. Never had I felt so bridal so quickly. My fiance's praise was succinct: "I love it." (Having done this once before, I figured that the groom seeing the bride in her regalia before the wedding had no bearing on the outcome of the marriage. He works in apparel; I wanted his opinion.) My sister in law gushed. I wasn't ready to make a decision, yet I had plans to meet the designers behind Falguni Shane Peacock in Mumbai, India's fashion capital, and wanted to browse shops there but it was reassuring to know that there existed an option in Delhi that happened to be on sale for half the price. Hungry, we rode the mall escalators up to Set'z, a white tableclothed place with an incongruous hodgepodge of cuisine, ordered pepperoni pizza, Sichuan chicken and sticky toffee pudding and toasted our find with a bottle of Fratelli chenin blanc, a relative steal at 1,500 rupees, or about 22. The wedding diet would start back home. Food and drink tided us over when shopping got tedious, as it did in Jaipur, the city of pink walled palaces and ancient forts that serves as the capital of the northern, desert draped state of Rajasthan. Six of us attended a reunion of my mother in law's family there and shopped, unsuccessfully, for my fiance. After six hours of tramping through stores, tired and parched, we gave ourselves over to flimsy plastic stools in the parking lot of a Pizza Hut, where a crowd milled about a chai stand. Served in conical tumblers, rife with cinnamon and cardamom, the tea felt like a hug for the insides and restored us to the degree that we were able to make a decision about bridesmaids outfits, which my sister in law gamely modeled at the multilevel Indian clothing superstore Pratap Sons. (What we didn't realize until later: once tailored, the off the shoulder blouses prevented my bridesmaids from raising their arms above their heads. Freedom of movement trumps photos; they all changed after the ceremony.) My fiance would find his wedding outfit back in Delhi, thanks to reconnaissance trips his parents conducted while he and I went on a three night jaunt to Mumbai, where I bought a blush pink Falguni Shane Peacock bridal lehenga that outshone the one from the mall. We returned to a more crowded Delhi than the one we left. Two weeks into our trip, my cousin in law, his parents and his girlfriend arrived, which meant there were now 11 people sharing a three bedroom apartment. The teakettle in the kitchen started whistling at 5:30 each morning; showers ran cold after the first three. Family breakfasts of samosas, masala scrambled eggs and many, many cups of coffee got us to laugh about whatever funny thing had happened the day before like me telling an Uber driver, "no habla Hindi." There remained the matter of the invitations, whose production my fiance and father in law insisted we check on in person. "We can't just have them email us a proof?" I asked, dreading a trip back to Old Delhi. But in addition to invitation savants, that ancient part of the city also contained the Chandni Chowk district, where I could find an outfit for our sangeet the night of music and dancing that precedes a Hindu wedding similar to those at the fancy mall but for a lot less. Four of us Ubered from the apartment to Sabyasachi's New Delhi flagship, in a gated colonial mansion shielded from the road by a row of tall hedges. On the second floor, in a low lit room perfumed by dozens of fresh roses, there it was: the gown I'd been eyeing on Instagram for months, that I had envisioned getting married in before even knowing how to pronounce the designer's name (Saab yah saa chee). It was even more stunning in person, yards of velvet studded netting and beads that folded and draped into a robe of epic effect. An attendant helped me into it; my fiance and soon to be family oohed and ahhed. But standing on a pedestal, in front of a panel of full length mirrors, I realized the gown would be perfect for the type of wedding and marriage that I wasn't going to have. The dress inhibited movement and revelry. It was for standing on stage and posing for photographs, not dancing to Cardi B. I had done right to go with outfits that reflected my lifestyle, not that ephemeral "wow" factor. Our invitations would arrive a month late owing to a fire and subsequent strike that derailed business in Old Delhi; they'd cost more to mail than they had to produce. I'd have second thoughts about the Chandni Chowk gown because it required heels that made me an inch taller than my husband to be. But a funny thing happened abroad that continued back home: After years of calling my fiance's parents Uncle and Auntie, I started calling them Chacha and Chachi, which I thought meant "uncle" and "aunt" in Hindi. I was so proud of myself. The day before my May wedding, my best friend from college, who's more versed in Hindi than I, pointed out that "Chachi" is actually a term reserved for your dad's younger brother's wife. My usage was incorrect on so many levels. I was horrified. The day after the wedding, I apologized to my mother in law (I avoided family titles in the interim). She laughed and said, "I thought it was kind of funny, but then you kept doing it and it sounded nice!" She didn't want to hurt my feelings. I didn't want to be inaccurate. I asked her what I should call her, now that I was officially her daughter in law. Her answer: mom.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
On Saturday, the Brooklyn Museum is opening an exhibition of art and artifacts from Syria meant to recount the country's refugee history. Days later, the Guggenheim will host a conversation with a Palestinian artist, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art will hold a seminar on how museums curate art from the Middle East. These programs along with similar ones at the Museum of Modern Art, Asia Society and other New York institutions are part of a coordinated effort to display artwork from the Middle East and "build greater understanding between the United States and the Arab world." They also happen to be coordinated by organizations closely tied to or generously funded by the Saudi government, which is now accused of the gruesome killing of a dissident journalist. For years, nonprofits from museums to major universities have been strengthening ties with the oil kingdoms of the Middle East as a way to broaden their offerings, foster cross cultural dialogue and obtain access to those countries' considerable riches. Now they are having to answer the same question as the one confronting the American government: whether the possible murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi is a reason to shun Saudi Arabia, or if the country is simply too wealthy and important to walk away from. "As a global cultural institution, a core activity of our museum is to engage with representatives from museums and governments around the world," said Daniel Weiss, the Met's president and chief executive. Asked about Turkey's accusation that the Saudis killed Mr. Khashoggi at their consulate in Istanbul, Mr. Weiss said, "We are in process of learning more, and our engagement will reflect additional information." On Friday, one organization involved in coordinating the New York exhibits, the Middle East Institute, a Washington based think tank, said it no longer wanted to be party to them. Most of the organizations said that they intended to proceed with their plans, or that they were still evaluating their relationships. And since Saudi Arabia's record on human rights has never been a secret, it would most likely surprise no one if the museums ultimately decided not to back away. "If you're doing business with the Saudis whether it be a museum or extracting oil you're accepting that this is who your partner is," said Daniel Pipes, president of the Middle East Forum, a conservative think tank based in Philadelphia. He said an episode like the Khashoggi disappearance should give pause: "A regime like this is one that should be held at arm's length." But the ties between nonprofit institutions and the oil kingdoms are extensive and growing. American universities have thrown open their doors to wealthy Saudi students who pay full price. Among them is Harvard, which Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited this year during his whirlwind tour of the United States. In 2005, it accepted 20 million from another member of the Saudi royal family, Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who was detained at the Ritz Carlton in Riyadh this year as part of what the crown prince called a crackdown on corruption. The Clinton Foundation has accepted at least 10 million from the Saudi government for its global anti poverty work, which raised questions of possible influence peddling during Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. The sticky relationships are not limited to Saudi Arabia. New York University and the Louvre have opulent outposts in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, where labor abuse has been endemic. Stephen Stapleton, a London based artist who runs Edge of Arabia, one of the organizations coordinating the New York exhibits, and which is partially funded by the Saudi government and its state run oil company, said on Friday: "We're all really shocked" by the accusation of murder. Mr. Stapleton declined to say whether Khashoggi's death Turkey says it has evidence he was killed and dismembered, which the Saudi government denies would make the group rethink its funding stream. "We are not going to shy away from the fact that we raise money for our projects from everywhere we can, but of course, this current story makes you take a step back, obviously, which is what everybody seems to be doing," he said. Asked if he had any concern about Saudi Arabia's record on human rights, Mr. Stapleton said the issue was "difficult." "I'd frame it like this," he said. "I think our work is a positive contribution to that challenge." Even fleeting relationships are now drawing scrutiny. On Thursday, a handful of protesters, urged on by a columnist from The Guardian, lined up outside of the Natural History Museum in London, which the Saudi Embassy had rented for a nighttime function. The museum said that none of its staff were in attendance and that such events are "an important source of external funding." One of the newest Saudi efforts is the Misk Foundation, which the crown prince has used as a vehicle to spread Saudi culture and advance his image as a reformer open to more freedom of expression, including in the arts. In the past year alone its affiliated Misk Art Institute, which did not respond to requests for comment, has organized shows in the United States, announced plans to open an outpost in Paris and helped coordinate the New York City exhibits this month. "It is a pleasure for us to welcome Misk Art Institute as it inaugurates an ambitious roster of international programs," the museum's director, Glenn Lowry, said, according to Misk's website. "This exciting new venture holds out the promise of a deepened and enriched artistic and scholarly exchange across traditions and cultures, in which MoMA is proud to play a role." In addition to the exhibitions in New York City in the coming days, organizations partially or wholly supported by the Saudi government have been involved with other recent exhibits, including a celebration of Saudi art at the Kennedy Center in Washington last March. The King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture has brought representatives of major American museums, including MoMA, the Met, the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the de Young Museum in San Francisco, to Saudi Arabia to visit artist studios, art spaces and cultural institutions in Jeddah, Riyadh, Abha, and Al Khobar. MoMA, which is participating this month in the "Arab Art and Education Initiative," said that it had not accepted any money for its portion of the program, which consists of a show of works and a conversation with a Kuwaiti film artist on Monday. "We joined the initiative hoping it will spark cultural exchange and experimentation and open dialogue on important issues in the region," MoMA said in a statement. Other museums involved in the program, including the Brooklyn Museum and the Guggenheim which has faced protests over its plans to build a satellite museum in Abu Dhabi also said they had no intention of dropping out. In terse responses, they made a case for maintaining relationships with the Middle East, an important source of historical and contemporary art, while acknowledging the difficult circumstances they now found themselves in.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Where 'Yes! To Affordable Groceries' Really Means No to a Soda Tax SEATTLE Standing in a supermarket produce aisle, her face shadowed with dread, the middle aged woman speaks directly to the camera and makes a plea for common decency. "We should not be taxed on what we eat," she says in a commercial that is being broadcast across Washington State. "We need to eat to survive, and if we have to cut back on what we eat, that's not going to be good especially for the elderly." But what most voters don't know is that Coca Cola, PepsiCo and other American beverage companies are largely financing the initiatives not to block taxes on staples like milk and vegetables but to choke off a growing movement to tax sugary drinks. At a time of soaring childhood obesity, and with more than one in three adults overweight, health advocates say that soda taxes are an effective way to dampen consumption of sugar sweetened beverages. Nearly 40 countries now have them, along with seven cities in the United States, including Philadelphia, San Francisco and Boulder, Colo. Towns and cities across the country have been mulling similar moves as a way to reduce sugary drink sales while raising revenue for programs that aim to blunt the public health impact of heart disease, hypertension and Type 2 diabetes, conditions that have been linked to diets heavy in sugar. Opponents of the measures say they are fundamentally misleading because neither Washington nor Oregon has a plan to tax groceries. "No one is even talking about taxing food," said Jim Krieger, a professor of medicine and health services at the University of Washington. "This is simply the soda industry trying to protect its profits at the expense of public health and local democracy." The industry has momentum and money on its side. Here in Washington, the industry has spent over 20 million to promote Initiative 1634, according to state finance filings. Those fighting the ballot measure have raised 100,000. Starting last year, legislatures in Michigan, Arizona and California passed laws that pre emptively bar local governments from imposing such taxes in the future. The outcome in Oregon and Washington, political analysts say, could determine the future of the country's soda tax movement by encouraging soda companies to embrace ballot measures in states across the country. "It's a pivotal moment," said Mark Pertschuk, director of the advocacy group Grassroots Change. "It's hard to overstate the chilling effect of having soda taxes barred from the whole West Coast, where so many progressive policies are born." Opponents of the approach criticize it as overreach. The Oregon initiative, for example, takes the form of a constitutional amendment and critics say it is so vaguely worded that it could be used to block future taxes on restaurant meals, electronic cigarettes, catering halls and trucking companies that transport McDonald's Happy Meals. "These pre emptive measures undermine democracy and completely take away a local government's ability to do what's best for their communities," said Jennifer L. Pomeranz, a professor of public health at New York University. "It's a true corporate takeover of America." Public health studies that have assessed the impact of soda taxes have found a significant drop in soda consumption, including 21 percent in Berkeley, Calif., and 40 percent in Philadelphia. "We know that even modest soda taxes work," said Laura MacCleery, policy director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest. "Because they work, soda companies fight the taxes tooth and nail." But critics say such taxes hurt small businesses and have an outsize impact on the poor. "Thousands of good wage jobs are tied to the food and beverage industry, and the taxes are regressive because they take money out of the pockets of folks least able to afford them," said Peter Lamb, a senior official for Teamsters Local 174 in Tukwila, Wash., which is championing the ballot measure. The strategy of pushing pre emptive laws and ballot measures was pioneered four decades ago by the tobacco industry and the National Rifle Association as a way to stop localities from passing antismoking ordinances or limitations on gun ownership. The N.R.A. has been wildly successful, with 43 states now barring enactment of any restrictions on firearms. Although nearly all of Washington's major newspapers have come out against the grocery tax ballot measure, neither side has a decisive lead, according to polling. But interviews with voters suggest the soda industry's efforts to conceal its involvement are working. At a Safeway supermarket in Burien, a Seattle suburb, most shoppers expressed enthusiasm for the initiative. "For those of us who are struggling to get by, the last thing we need is a tax on food," Mallory Brumfield, 31, a preschool aide, said as she shopped for groceries at a Safeway supermarket with her two children in tow. Like many shoppers, Ms. Brumfield was surprised to learn that Coca Cola, Pepsi and the Dr Pepper Snapple Group have provided the lion share of money to promote the measure. "Knowing that kind of gives me pause about whether I should support it," she said. In Oregon, the grocery tax ballot, known as Measure 103, has been met with more public skepticism, largely because it involves a change to the state constitution. Opponents of the measure have raised more money than in Washington, around 2.6 million, including an infusion of 1.5 million last week from former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York. The group backing the measure, Yes! Keep Our Groceries Tax Free!, has raised over twice that amount, with donations evenly split between soda companies and supermarket chains. Critics accuse the Yes on 103 campaign of spreading misinformation, citing a television ad that claimed the initiative would prevent levies on food pantries. "There is no universe in which food banks are going to be taxed," said Matt Newell Ching, public affairs director at Partners for a Hunger Free Oregon, an advocacy group. "It's like saying, 'Vote for this measure and the sky will continue to be blue.'" Last year, Seattle became the first city in the Pacific Northwest to enact a tax on sugary beverages, and it would be allowed to remain in place should the ballot measure pass. The tax is expected to generate 20.6 million this year, money that will go toward early education and a raft of programs that give the working poor better access to healthier foods. Sarah Wandler, a social worker at the Odessa Brown Children's Clinic, said soda tax revenues have provided 300 families at the clinic with vouchers to buy fresh produce at farmers' markets and corner stores. "Our clients all report having healthier foods in the house, and they are trying fruits and vegetables they never had before," she said. State Senator Reuven Carlyle, a Democrat, is pessimistic about the prospects for defeating the proposal, but he takes the long view, citing the decades long fight against Big Tobacco that eventually changed national attitudes. "At the end of the day," he said, "you can't bury the truth, because let's be honest: No one on the planet believes that soda is groceries."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Claire Jarvis recently reviewed a biography of Virginia Woolf by Gillian Gill. In 1990, John Mortimer wrote for the Book Review about "Agatha Christie: The Woman and Her Mysteries," Gill's biography of Christie. Crime stories have always been greatly undervalued by the literary establishment. And yet most of the finest works of fiction have been concerned with murder. Suspense, often thought of as the specialty of the thriller, is the essential tool of all storytellers. It could be said that the novelist's business is much like that of the detective, searching eagerly for clues to provide some explanation of the chaotic and mysterious world we inhabit. For these reasons serious critical appraisal of detective writers is to be welcomed, although Dame Agatha Christie, were she still alive in this centennial year of her birth, writing her annual novel, gardening and collecting recipes, might have been somewhat startled by the biographical study of her life and work undertaken by Gillian Gill, a British scholar who teaches at Harvard and is a specialist in modern fiction and feminist theory. Ms. Gill argues not only that Christie's novels are first class detective stories, but that they strike some sort of blow for feminism in that they contain women characters who are as independent and ambitious as Christie herself.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
What to See in New York Art Galleries This Week Eccentric installations are nothing new, and the one in "Woe men keep going," at Mary Boone Gallery, initially feels just irritating, but in short order its possible meanings and perceptual demands muster a definite, valuable force. It has been conjured by the artist Fia Backstrom and the independent curator Piper Marshall, and presents photographs by nine artists, including Ms. Backstrom, that hang, with two exceptions, from six spindly aluminum stands. This method of hanging, called the "flexible image arrangement system," mostly ignores the gallery's traditional white cube. The images resemble leaves on trees, or photographs on drying racks. A refusal of order prevails: Photographs hang at different heights and face different directions, without sequence. Our memories and our bodies are tasked in unusual ways. As you move among the stands, similar images recur. Laura Aguilar's photographs capture a heavyset woman partly visible in a desert landscape; Lee Miller's images capture wartime loss. Emila Medkova shows natural details evocative of human bodies or faces. Ms. Backstrom also finds nature in the details some mold in full bloom, for example. And Simryn Gill's "Channel" images feature nature absorbing human interference with mournful grace. On the wall, a large color photograph by Deana Lawson goes to the bloody center of a Haitian Voodoo rite. In the show's small free catalog, Ms. Backstrom goes deeper into her subject and explains the titles "somatic/energy/spirit" and "slit/texture/scar" that define each grouping. One of Barbara Kruger's word image mash ups puts it more succinctly: "Your Body Is a Battleground." Body, battle and ground resonate throughout this delicate, insightful show. We are all woe men, all people of sorrow, and we must go on. Peter Dreher has spent much of his career producing thousands of high concept but technically exacting oil portraits of an empty water glass. This 84 year old German painter's latest show at Koenig Clinton collects seven decades' worth of his treatment of skulls, instead. The works range from a 1947 watercolor with an upward gaze of doomed innocence to six 10 foot wide black and gray gouaches, made between 2005 and 2007, that manage to look equally like punk chic bedspreads and coolly abstract reckonings with wartime atrocity. They have a strange, motion activated flicker, their more or less reflective skulls passing in and out of view as you shift your position. This subtle formal paradox a suggestion that black and white, as equal partners in a singular action of contrast, are essentially interchangeable is a good lead in to the back room, which holds 15 recent head on views. Painted in thin, overlapping layers of white gouache, these skulls look like X rays printed on celluloid. They vary widely in their particulars: One has a jackal's grimace and a cleft chin, another a severe underbite and eight separately articulated lower teeth. But hanging them all in a line makes those details read as passing accidents, like the constantly mutating patterns of a tide pool. Standing in front of them, I had what felt like a Buddhist revelation: For a moment, I could see that impermanence was inextricable from form. A few decades ago, referring to universal human consciousness was often viewed with suspicion: a form of colonial domination masquerading as "equality," in which certain identities and localities were erased. This has shifted in the current era, with millennial artists like Korakrit Arunanondchai, who was born and raised in Bangkok and has degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design and Columbia University, serving as bellwethers. The nearly 24 minute video in Mr. Arunanondchai's show, titled "with history in a room filled with people with funny names 4," at Clearing, ruminates on life, death, the past, images and technology. The middle room in the gallery features an elaborate installation with lights, fountains flowing with water and traces of indigo a plant linked to Thailand, colonialism and slavery and a floor made of dirt, crushed shells, resin and epoxy. The final room in the show includes some of the simple possessions of Mr. Arunanondchai's grandmother. Moving between East and West, human and nonhuman, science and speculative fiction, the exhibition considers how we are all connected, not just by global art, climate change and political upheaval, but also in ancient concepts like Buddhist reincarnation, which suggests life as a river of spirits where the past, present and future commingle.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The last dinner Wendy Dolin had with her husband, Stewart, he was so agitated that he was jiggling his leg under the table and could barely sit still. He had recently started a new antidepressant but still felt very anxious. "I don't get it, Wen," he said. The next day, Mr. Dolin, a 57 year old Chicago lawyer, paced up and down a train platform for several minutes and then threw himself in front of an oncoming train. Ms. Dolin soon became convinced that the drug her husband had started taking five days before his death paroxetine, the generic form of Paxil played a role in his suicide by triggering a side effect called akathisia, a state of acute physical and psychological agitation. Sufferers have described feeling as if they were "jumping out of their skin." The distress of akathisia may explain the heightened risk of suicide in some patients, some psychiatrists believe. The symptoms are so distressing, a drug company scientist wrote in the Journal of Psychopharmacology, that patients may feel "death is a welcome result." Ms. Dolin sued the original manufacturer of Paxil, GlaxoSmithKline, claiming the company had not sufficiently warned of the risks associated with the drug. In April, a jury awarded Ms. Dolin 3 million in damages. The case is a rare instance in which a lawsuit over a suicide involving antidepressants actually went to trial; many such cases are either dismissed or settled out of court, said Brent Wisner, of the law firm Baum Hedlund Aristei Goldman, which represented Ms. Dolin. The verdict is also unusual because Glaxo, which has asked the court to overturn the verdict or to grant a new trial, no longer sells Paxil in the United States and did not manufacture the generic form of the medication Mr. Dolin was taking. The company argues that it should not be held liable for a pill it did not make. Concerns about safety have long dogged antidepressants, though many doctors and patients consider the medications lifesavers. Ever since they were linked to an increase in suicidal behaviors in young people more than a decade ago, all antidepressants, including Paxil, have carried a "black box" warning label, reviewed and approved by the Food and Drug Administration, saying that they increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior in children, teens and young adults under age 25. "The scientific evidence does not establish that paroxetine causes suicide, suicide attempts, self harm or suicidal thinking in adult populations," Frances DeFranco, a company spokeswoman, said in an email. "Any suicide is a tragedy, and a reminder that depression and other mental illnesses can be fatal." Ms. Dolin's lawsuit, however, has lifted the curtain on data from early clinical trials of Paxil, renewing concerns that older adults, who use antidepressants in far greater numbers than young people, may also be at greater risk of self harm when taking the drugs. The documents indicate that several suicides and suicide attempts in early clinical trials that were attributed to patients on a placebo and which made Paxil look safer by comparison should not have been counted, and that an F.D.A. reviewer later told the company as much. Glaxo eventually reanalyzed its data, and in 2006 enhanced the warning on Paxil, cautioning that among adults of all ages with major depressive disorder, "the frequency of suicidal behavior was higher in patients treated with paroxetine compared with placebo" 6.7 times higher. But that label was replaced a year later, in June 2007, by the F.D.A. mandated warning now carried on all antidepressants, which says only that the increased risk has been seen among people under age 25. Some 325 million prescriptions for antidepressants were filled last year in the United States, including 15 million for Paxil and paroxetine, according to IMS Health, a health care information company. But while one in 10 Americans aged 12 and older has filled an antidepressant prescription, one in seven adults aged 40 and over has done so, including nearly one in five middle aged women, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. Many psychiatrists say the benefits of antidepressants far outweigh the risks, even for younger patients, and that the drugs are highly effective and generally well tolerated. Several prominent experts have been critical of what they say is excessive attention to the dangers, which they say could potentially dissuade people who could benefit from treatment from accessing care. The issue is complicated by the fact that depression and other mental illnesses can themselves lead to suicide. "Antidepressants prevent more suicides than they cause, probably by a large multiple," said Dr. Peter Kramer, a psychiatrist and clinical professor emeritus at Brown University and the author of several books about antidepressants, including "Listening to Prozac." Dr. Kramer, who was not involved in the Dolin litigation, said he urges patients to contact him right away if they have a bad reaction during the first weeks after starting treatment with the drugs and especially in the first five days. The prescribing information on antidepressants specifically warns that patients should be monitored for symptoms like anxiety, agitation, panic attacks, mania and akathisia. "There is concern that such symptoms may represent precursors to emerging suicidality," the labels say, especially if they were "abrupt in onset" or "not part of the patient's presenting symptoms." Akathisia is, by definition, a drug induced syndrome. The word comes from Greek and means "not to sit," referring to an inability to sit still. Akathisia is characterized by anxiety, restlessness and a compulsion to move or walk about; patients may pace back and forth, or fidget endlessly in their chairs. It may develop when a patient, adult or younger, begins treatment, but it can also emerge when the dosage of the drug is increased, decreased or discontinued. Patients who have tolerated a drug in the past may develop akathisia when they start a new course of treatment, experts say. Akathisia is a fairly common and well known side effect of antipsychotic medications, commonly used to treat disorders like schizophrenia but increasingly given for a variety of mental health complaints, including depression. But the association with antidepressants is not as well recognized, experts say, and incidence rates are hard to pin down. A group of psychopharmacologists who reviewed over 100 studies found the reported rate of what they broadly called "jitteriness/anxiety syndrome" which they defined as a worsening of anxiety, agitation and irritability ranged from 4 percent to 65 percent among patients initiating treatment with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or S.S.R.I.s, the popular class of antidepressants to which Paxil belongs. Psychiatrists linked S.S.R.I. induced akathisia to suicidal behavior in a 1991 paper describing three patients who survived violent suicidal attempts including jumping off the roofs of buildings and off a cliff shortly after they had started fluoxetine or had the dose increased. The patients were removed from the drug, but then agreed to try another course of treatment with fluoxetine under close observation. All three became extremely agitated and had a recurrence of suicidal thoughts. "This is exactly what happened the last time I was on fluoxetine, and I feel like jumping off a cliff again," one of the patients reportedly said. Another said she had tried to kill herself "because of these anxiety symptoms. It was not so much the depression." Dr. Anthony J. Rothschild, one of the study's co authors, has since disavowed the paper, saying it was an observation that has been disproved by subsequent drug company clinical trials. He testified as an expert witness for Glaxo in the Dolin trial. Akathisia symptoms so closely resemble symptoms of anxiety and depression that it may be hard for a doctor to distinguish between the underlying illness and what could be a side effect of the drug used to treat it, said Dr. Joanna Gedzior, an assistant clinical professor of psychiatry at the Fresno Medical Education Program of the University of California, San Francisco. If a doctor thinks the patient's condition is deteriorating, he or she may increase the dose of the medication, which could be disastrous if the drug itself is causing the problem. "We have to be very careful about this and ask, 'Is it something I'm giving the patient that's causing this?'" said Dr. Gedzior, who wrote a paper on akathisia. Doctors at Southern Illinois University School of Medicine last year described the case of a 45 year old man who developed akathisia just days after he was put on an antidepressant but was misdiagnosed as having panic attacks. When doctors doubled his dose, he attempted suicide. The doctors warn that akathisia "can be one of the most ambiguous clinical diagnostic presentations in all of psychiatry" and is "often underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed." "We know that anxiety and akathisia create a sense of hopelessness, especially if the feelings are not validated," Dr. Gedzior said, and hopelessness can lead to suicidal thoughts. The combination of akathisia, anxiety and depression puts patients at risk of suicide, she believes. Explaining to patients that their emotional turmoil may be caused by a drug side effect can alleviate their distress, she said. Doctors can reduce the patient's discomfort by discontinuing the drug, or adding another prescription, such as an anti anxiety medication. During the Dolin trial, a therapist testified that Mr. Dolin had called to schedule a same day session on July 14, the day before his suicide. But Mr. Dolin was unable to sit still during their meeting, shifted nervously in his chair, and could not calm down. The therapist was so worried that she called him at work the next day the day of his suicide to urge him to ask his doctor for anti anxiety medication. Ms. Dolin is convinced her husband was not suicidal until he developed akathisia as a side effect to paroxetine. Her husband was having "one of his best years ever," she said. The couple were high school sweethearts who had been married for 36 years, and had adult children who were thriving and a large circle of friends. "Stewart occasionally had stress and anxiety associated with being a high powered attorney, but he had great coping skills, and he would seek counseling and move on," said Ms. Dolin, who has started an organization called Missd to raise awareness about the warning signs of akathisia. "The only thing different this time was that he had started Paxil."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Ever since the news arrived that Franca Sozzani had died at age 66, I have been wondering what the longtime editor of Italian Vogue would have made of this particular geopolitical not fashion moment. What she would have made, for example, of the election of Donald J. Trump and his beauty pageant of administration appointees, the fall of Matteo Renzi in Italy, the rise of the far right in France and the attack in Berlin. What she would have made, literally, of it all: what special issue or narrative photo shoot, what brands (Versace, Gucci, Dior) might have been involved, what photographers (Weber, Roversi, Meisel, Lindbergh) and what kind of outcry would have ensued. How inappropriate for fashion to comment on such serious matters! You are trivializing major issues by giving them a veneer of glamour! Get back in your glossy box! How dare you! How... Because she would have dared. She always did. It was her thing. In the 28 years that Ms. Sozzani reigned at Italian Vogue, she redefined the job of editor as one of activist, grappling with topics like race, domestic violence, plastic surgery, drug addiction and the BP oil spill. People didn't always like it. Advertisers were skittish; her boss, Jonathan Newhouse, the chief executive of Conde Nast International, once considered firing her; and she was often criticized by various talking heads. But she believed that fashion an industry often dismissed as frivolous and one whose value is traditionally considered its "escapism" not only should have a place at the political table, but also deserved one. That it did not have to settle for being "the dream," but that it could be more. That it could be as relevant to the dominant social and cultural and economic conversation as any other discipline. That it could use its pretty cover to sneak up on readers and force them to confront subjects they might otherwise choose to ignore. She expected more out of fashion, and she wanted fashion to expect more out of itself. As a result, while she didn't look like a revolutionary, a provocateur or a towering figure in the fashion landscape she was small, often among the smallest people on any front row, with the kind of romantic beauty that inspired the British fashion critic and historian Colin McDowell to compare her to a Modigliani and the French philosopher Bernard Henri Levy to a Botticelli she was, ultimately, all of those things. Like another seminal style character who died this week, China Machado, the first nonwhite model to appear in Harper's Bazaar, Ms. Sozzani did not fit into any traditional mold and she did not play by the rules. She rewrote them. She did it in her personal life, and she did it in her professional life. She was a single mother who had a child out of wedlock and always supported herself at a time when such atypical family arrangements were rare in Italy. She was never particularly interested in fashion or even magazines (she studied philosophy), but her first job was at Vogue Bambini. And when she finally got to the top of Italian Vogue in 1988, she refused to think her reach was limited by language, geography or the way things used to be. Instead, she built her arguments out of photography, understanding that in an increasingly visual world, it would take her beyond the parochial and into the global debate. She made her magazine matter in a way it never had before. As she told me during an interview I did in 2013 for The Financial Times, "Here's what I think: Fashion isn't really about clothes. It's about life. Everyone can afford fashion on some level, everyone can talk about it. So what else can we say? We can't always be writing about flowers and lace and aquamarine." So she didn't. She had a blog she wrote herself, though she never claimed to be a writer, in which she discussed a range of topics, such as Kanye West, carbon emissions and her work in Africa as a good will ambassador for Fashion 4 Development. When cranky comments were posted, she left them up. She wasn't immune to criticism, but she also never let it force her to back down from something she believed. It is worth noting that, along with Botticelli, Mr. Levy also compared Ms. Sozzani to a character out of Stendhal. In September, a documentary on her life by her son, Francesco Carrozzini, had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival, and she told me that she had been nervous about it. She hadn't wanted to appear on film, talking about herself, but she agreed because her child asked her. Then, when she saw a cut, she thought, "I was crazy to do it." She was worried about the way viewers would judge her choices. "But it's O.K.," she said finally. "What's the worst thing that can happen? They say, 'I don't like it?'" At a time when so much of what designers and magazines and stores do has become a numbers game calculated by market research and page views and what sold well last season, her example argues for the opposite. She took risks. They didn't always end well. But more often than not, she was proved right. The "black" issue of 2008 (designed, not coincidentally, at a time when the United States was preparing to elect its first black president), which featured only models of color, sold out twice the first time in the United States and Britain in 72 hours and has become a collector's item. In 2012, she got the implicit endorsement of Secretary General Ban Ki moon of the United Nations when he appeared on the cover of an issue of L'Uomo Vogue entitled "Rebranding Africa." All of which is why I would have loved to have seen how she would have addressed the current state of things. How she would have challenged our eyes and our minds. It is doubtful that whoever replaces her at Italian Vogue will feel quite the same impetus to provoke. But that person shouldn't have to. If Franca taught us anything, it was that it isn't the responsibility of one magazine or one editor to address or dress the world. The onus of comment, written in pictures or on the page, belongs to us all.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
This has been an uneven season. On top of the usual demands two time periods, two countries, two major couples, a villain, an ever expanding supporting cast there were the racial issues of colonial America, Brianna's rape, and the fracturing of the Frasers. No wonder this week's episode struggled to weave things back together as we near the season finale. It's so busy that we get only one glimpse of Jamie, Claire and Ian. There just isn't time for more, given everything else. Fergus and Marsali stage a jailbreak to get Murtagh out of enemy hands. Brianna and Lord John take a road trip to confront Stephen Bonnet. And Roger has a rotten time in the Mohawk village, meets two new friends and ends up lighting one of them on fire. Busy week. The most satisfying subplot is Brianna's. Not the actual encounter with Bonnet that's a real casualty of this episode's rush. Bonnet races from the season's monster to tearful fatherhood, and Brianna practically pingpongs back and forth from the cell door as they battle for the last word. Sophie Skelton and Ed Speleers do their best to give weight to the rapid fire confrontation, but given how long Brianna has suffered, there's just not enough time for her to settle all those ghosts. No, the most satisfying thing about Brianna's journey is watching her navigate it with Lord John, who turns out to be a dream co pilot. He tells her immediately that Bonnet has been caught. When she says she wants to see him, Lord John expresses concern, but he respects her wishes and offers his help. And in the jail, he honors her choice to go in alone but promises he is nearby if she needs him. "You are impossible not to like," Brianna marvels. That's by design. The show is determined to make you love Lord John. He is shot in endlessly warm light and is endlessly accommodating. Even his sharp edges are getting smoothed over. (He has been a champion of British order against the regulators, but he happily covers for Murtagh.) And he's quickly building a rapport with Brianna. It might not be passionate, but it is respectful, which is a nice counterpoint to how other men in her life have treated her. Even Jamie's loving letter warns her how important it is that she forgive Bonnet and try not to take revenge. That may be well intentioned, but it is also a little rich coming from a man currently on a road trip to rescue the guy he nearly killed for revenge. And speaking of that guy, Roger resents his life so much right now that it's weird she can't feel it 600 miles south. This episode seems to delight in comparing Brianna's two marriage options, as the camera cuts from the considerate, informative, respectful Lord John to Roger, getting more grizzled by the minute as he mutters about his heartbreak: "I've learned something from my pain ... look out for No. 1. Well, from now on, that's me." He's so cynical that he manages to alienate a priest (Yan Tual) who had been in solitary confinement. It's hard to fault Roger for being bitter as he sits in prison impossibly far from home. And yet he has been driven to this despair not by any awareness of his own faults, but by the machinations of a subplot that has encapsulated a lot of this season's problems with race. The Mohawk were cruel slavedrivers as they brought Roger north, and now they're cruel villagers beating Roger, imprisoning the priest and quickly resorting to murder by torture. (There is also the implication that the torture order comes from the jealous suitor (Braeden Clarke) of a Mohawk woman in love with the white priest, which does not help.) And Roger, who veered back and forth frequently from protagonist to antihero this season, gets to play hero at the expense of the Mohawk. As the Mohawk slowly roast the tragic and handsome priest, Roger barrels through the village, tossing accelerant onto the pyre to end it faster. A tearful Johiehon (Sera Lys McArthur) sets aside her baby and races into the flames, as Roger and the Mohawk villagers stand aghast at the spectacle. And all the while, "Adagio for Strings" plays a musical shortcut to suggest tragedy, scoring a scene that doesn't have the groundwork to be tragic on its own. And though Roger's time with the Mohawk isn't quite over, it's hard to imagine this subplot will develop much nuance from here. With one episode left in the season, there are plenty of loose ends to tie up. Circumstances increasingly point to dramatic reunions, rather than engaging with the wider historical issues of this season's narrative. It will be telling to see what things "Outlander" wraps next episode, and what it leaves out in the cold. I appreciate Fergus's face as he realizes that of all the jails in all the cities in all the colonies in all the world, Lord John and Brianna Fraser end up in his jailbreak. The Mohawk story is deeply disappointing, but it's good to hear Mohawk spoken in the village scenes, and Sera Lys McArthur is memorable with very little as Johiehon. You know John's a keeper when he asks permission before touching a pregnant woman. The lingering question of this episode is whether Bonnet's speedy contrition is enough that we don't mind if he survived that explosion. Guess we'll find out.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
THE UNWINDING OF THE MIRACLE A Memoir of Life, Death, and Everything That Comes After By When we meet at the beginning of "The Unwinding of the Miracle," her eloquent, gutting and at times disarmingly funny memoir, she has already died, having succumbed to colon cancer in March 2018 at the age of 42, leaving behind her husband and two young daughters. And so she joins the recent spate of debuts from dead authors, including Paul Kalanithi and Nina Riggs, who also documented their early demises. We might be tempted to assume that these books were written mostly for the writers themselves, as a way to make sense of a frightening diagnosis and uncertain future; or for their families, as a legacy of sorts, in order to be known more fully while alive and kept in mind once they were gone. By dint of being published, though, they were also written for us strangers looking in from the outside. From our seemingly safe vantage point, we're granted the privilege of witnessing a life altering experience while knowing that we have the luxury of time. We can set the book down and mindlessly scroll through Twitter, defer our dreams for another year or worry about repairing a rift later, because our paths are different. Except that's not entirely true. Life has a 100 percent mortality rate; each of us will die, and most of us have no idea when. Therefore, Yip Williams tells us, she has set out to write an "exhortation" to us in our complacency: "Live while you're living, friends." Before her diagnosis in 2013, Yip Williams had done more than her share of living. It was, indeed, something of a miracle that she was alive at age 37 when she traveled to a family wedding and ended up in the hospital where she received her cancer diagnosis. Born poor and blind to Chinese parents in postwar Vietnam, she was sentenced to death by her paternal grandmother, who believed that her disability would bring shame to the family and render her an unmarriageable burden. But when her parents brought her to an herbalist and asked him to euthanize her, he refused. The family would eventually survive a dangerous escape on a sinking boat to Hong Kong, and less than a year later make their way to the United States, where at 4 years old, Yip Williams had a surgery that granted her some vision, if not enough to drive or read a menu without a magnifying glass. She would go on to defy her family's expectations, eventually graduating from Harvard Law School, traveling the world solo and working at a prestigious law firm where she meets Josh, the love of her life. She becomes a mother and, soon after, a cancer patient, and soon after that, because of this unfortunate circumstance, a magnificent writer. During the five years from her diagnosis to her death, we enter her world in the most intimate way as she cycles through Elisabeth Kubler Ross's famous stages of grieving: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Describing the ways in which terminally ill patients cope with their own deaths, these stages weren't meant to delineate a neat sequential progression but rather the various emotional states a dying person might visit, leave and visit again. Yip Williams toggles between optimism and despair, between believing she'll defy the statistics as she had so many times in her life "odds are not prophecy" and trying to persuade her husband to confront their harrowing reality. She makes bargains with God, just as she did as a young girl when, in exchange for her poor vision, she asked for a soul mate one day. ("God accepted my deal!") She posts pictures of contented normalcy on Facebook of meals cooked, a car purchased but rages at her husband, healthy people, the universe and, silently, at the moms at a birthday party who ask how she's doing. "Oh, fine. Just hanging in there," she replies, while wanting to scream: "I didn't deserve this! My children didn't deserve this!" She frets about the "Slutty Second Wife" her husband will one day marry and the pain her daughters will experience in her absence. And, near the end, she oscillates between being game to try every possible treatment and accepting that nothing will keep her alive. "Paradoxes abound in life," Yip Williams writes in a heart rending letter to her daughters; she asks us to confront these paradoxes with her head on. One of the paradoxes of this book is that Yip Williams writes with such vibrancy and electricity even as she is dying. She moves seamlessly from an incisive description of her mother as "the type of woman who sucks blame and guilt into herself through a giant straw," to the gallows humor of "Nothing says 'commitment to living' quite like taking out a mortgage," to the keen observation "Health is wasted on the healthy, and life is wasted on the living." Unlike the woman in her support group who, after being given a terminal prognosis, defiantly declares, "Dying is not an option," Yip Williams prepares meticulously for her death while paying close attention to the life she will one day miss: "the simple ritual of loading and unloading the dishwasher. ... making Costco runs. ... watching TV with Josh. ... taking my kids to school." This memoir is so many things a triumphant tale of a blind immigrant, a remarkable philosophical treatise and a call to arms to pay attention to the limited time we have on this earth. But at its core, it's an exquisitely moving portrait of the daily stuff of life: family secrets and family ties, marriage and its limitlessness and limitations, wild and unbounded parental love and, ultimately, the graceful recognition of what we can't and can control. "We control the effort we have put into living," Yip Williams writes, and the effort she has put into it is palpable. Of all the reasons we're drawn to these memoirs, perhaps we read them most for this: They remind us to put in our own effort. It would be nearly impossible to read this book and not take her exhortation seriously.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
On a gray Wednesday afternoon in Southeast Portland, Ore., someone flicked on the lights in Tango Berretin, a dance studio devoted entirely to Argentine tango. Alex Krebs, the owner, teacher and acclaimed dancer, pressed play on traditional music from the 1930s and 1940s, as students drifted in, tossing aside street shoes for strappy stilettos. Against a backdrop of tango sheet music on the walls, the dancers didn't wait for a formal invitation to the timeworn hardwood floor. One look with sustained eye contact ("cabeceo") was a mutual agreement to dance. Within moments of arrival, dancers were locked in a cheek to cheek embrace, gliding to the music. Tango took off in Portland in the late 1990s. The city is now a renowned destination for Argentine tango in North America, attracting dancers from around the globe with two annual festivals (Portland Tango Festival in October and ValenTango last month) and a thriving social dance scene. "Baking was just a cover for tango," Tissa Stein, the owner of Tabor Bread, said with a smile about the conception of her bakery in 2012. Even before it opened, tango was very much a part of the design. Instead of concrete floors, Ms. Stein chose honey colored hickory, a smooth surface ideal for tango's gliding steps. The countertops where bread is made by day are on wheels to open up space for dancing by night. "Tango and baking are both deeply nourishing," Ms. Stein said. "To me, tango is another type of nutrition for the body." After hours, Tabor Bread hosts sultry tango soirees, attracting up to 50 dancers a night. Tables are cleared away and dancers spin around the floor, often to live music, against the backdrop of the bakery's wood burning oven. Ms. Stein, 67, who began dancing about nine years ago, is planning a sunset, or happy hour, milonga for dancers whose schedules don't allow them to dance into the wee hours (or as a warm up for those who do). "The warm embraces of tango compensate for the lack of sunshine in Portland," said Antje Kalinauskas, one of the hosts of several past milongas there, including Chispa (Spanish for spark) at Tabor Bread. Originally from Germany, Ms. Kalinauskas, 40, found a welcoming tango community in Portland. "Tango can be like speaking another language," she said. "Think about how fun it can be to meet someone new and chat in their language." The community has spread beyond the boundaries of the dance studio, too, with organized group bike rides. Jeff Mandel, a shoemaker, runs Tango by Bike, where free group rides are announced, gathering dancers to bike into the heart of the city to tango. What began as organized social rides in 2007 during tango festivals has grown exponentially to include all sorts of tango gatherings including ballroom milongas. They draw locals and often rope out of town visitors into the community before dancing begins. Tango al fresco especially flourishes in the summer. " 'Tango in the Park' began as a flash mob type thing," said Jim Labbe, organizer of the community group. "At first we danced on cement, then began looking for suitable surfaces in Portland, and we'd travel there by bike." One that they found is the hardwood boardwalk at Jamison Fountain in the Pearl District, a central landmark that often draws crowds who watch the dancers. Tango in the Park has grown to include a portable dance floor that can be put on top of most surfaces, from a concrete path along the Willamette River to a patch of grass in the abundant parks. A devotion to tango in Portland is fed by two prime factors: Dancing is affordable and gatherings are easy to reach in this compact, mostly flat city. A milonga is held weekly on Thursdays at Norse Hall, a community center with a ballroom ( 10), drawing up to 125 dancers a night. Wednesdays at Norse Hall attract a somewhat younger crowd for an alternative milonga ( 8), a modern approach with nontraditional music. The weekday Guided Practica at Tango Berretin ( 8) is regularly full on Wednesday afternoons. Since Alex Krebs, 38, began teaching in 1997, his email list has grown to 1,200 students ranging from age 18 to 80. According to Mr. Krebs, "on any weekend in Portland, you could fly in on a Thursday or Friday and dance Argentine tango all weekend long."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
On March 1, which feels about 20 years ago, NBC News published an essay by a congressional candidate, Jamaal Bowman, about the scars he bore from life in New York under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who was then still running for president. "As a working class black male educator during the entirety of Bloomberg's tenure, I got to experience the horrors and the trauma of how his police department treated people like me," wrote Bowman. He described an inexplicable arrest following a routine traffic stop, and another after he was accused of stealing his own car. He wrote about Eric Garner and Sean Bell, two black men killed by N.Y.P.D. cops, and about the growing police presence in the city schools where Bowman had made his career. At the time, I was only half aware of Bowman's primary campaign against the high ranking Democrat Eliot Engel, and didn't think he had much of a chance. In 2018, the Democratic insurgents Alexandria Ocasio Cortez and Ayanna Pressley won surprising victories over longtime Democratic incumbents. But since then, the only progressive primary challenger who's ousted a sitting member of Congress has been Marie Newman in Illinois. Engel's district, New York's 16th, encompasses parts of Westchester, some quite wealthy, and of the Bronx. As Bowman told me, if it were a country it would be one of the most unequal in the world. Though it's majority minority, affluent white people tend to vote in primaries at higher rates than poorer people of color, and the suburbanites in the New York 16th are probably not as left leaning as the young gentrifiers who helped elect Ocasio Cortez. Engel seemed safe.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Free O.C.R. software for Hebrew, mobile O.C.R. apps and online conversion sites can be found around the web, too. You may want to try uploading a few sample photos of your text or use one of the free (or free trial) programs to see if you are satisfied with the character recognition results. Some O.C.R. programs may have trouble recognizing characters in stylized fonts or in photographs that are not in sharp focus. With Hebrew, the nikud diacritical marks used to represent vowels or alternate pronunciations may also cause some programs to incorrectly recognize certain characters. Once you have created text files you can edit, you can translate them by hand or try computer translation from some of the various sites like Google Translate, or with a dedicated translation program. Depending on the software, the quality of the translation may vary. You should also note whether the program is designed to convert classical/biblical or modern Hebrew. It is important to get the right version for your source material because the dictionaries used by the translation software can differ. For those interested in Hebrew texts from around the world, the National Library of Israel recently unveiled its Ktiv site, a huge collection of digitized manuscripts that can be freely searched and studied online.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
The first thing Brian H. noticed was that he could grow a real beard. It had been years since that had been possible, years he spent bedeviled by hair loss on his head, face, arms and legs. Brian, 34, who asked that his last name be withheld to protect his privacy, suffers from alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease afflicting about 1 percent of men and women, causing hair to fall out, often all over the body. He believes that the "mangy patches" of baldness that have plagued him since his 20s have cost him jobs and relationships. After trying various treatments, Brian enrolled this year in a study at Columbia University Medical Center testing whether a drug approved for a bone marrow disorder could help people with alopecia. One of the study's leaders, Angela Christiano, is a dermatology professor and geneticist who herself has alopecia areata. After successfully testing on mice two drugs from a new class of medicines called JAK inhibitors, which suppress immune system activity by blocking certain enzymes, the researchers began testing one of the drugs, ruxolitinib, on seven women and five men. Some of their findings were published Sunday in the journal Nature Medicine. The results for Brian and several other participants have been significant. "Pretty quickly, there were sort of fringes," Brian said. Then "three or four large areas started to show hair growth," and by five months, he had plenty of hair on his head, arms, and even his back. "I was blown away," he said. The disease differs from other types of hair loss, including male pattern baldness, and there is no evidence the drug will work for those conditions. Experts caution that even for alopecia areata, it is too early to know if the treatment will work for most patients and if there are significant side effects or safety concerns. The study is continuing, but so far a few participants did not regrow hair, said Dr. Julian Mackay Wiggan, director of Columbia's dermatology clinical research unit and an author of the study. "It appears to work not in everyone, but in the majority," she said. "We need a lot more data on the long term risks in healthy individuals. But it's certainly very exciting in terms of hair growth. It was surprising how quickly and impressively the growth occurred." Dr. Luis Garza, a dermatologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital who was not involved in the research, said the results were encouraging enough that he would consider prescribing ruxolitinib to patients who could not be treated with other methods and who understood potential side effects. Cortisone injections often work for patients with isolated patches of baldness, but they must be done regularly and are painful. For patients with severe baldness, "it's impossible to inject their whole scalp," he said. "There's a major need for improving the treatment," he added. "It's not ludicrous to try on a patient." But Dr. George Cotsarelis, a dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, urged caution until further research is conducted. He said it makes sense that drugs suppressing immune system activity would work for a disorder caused by an overly active immune reaction. But because patients in the study received twice daily pills that circulated ruxolitinib throughout their bodies, rather than topical cream, he said they were "treated systemically with a very toxic drug" that can cause liver and blood problems, infections and other ailments. Although the patients have experienced few side effects, the study is small and not a randomized trial comparing ruxolitinib to other treatments. There is a long history of "cures" for baldness many of which have proved disappointing. If ruxolitinib could be applied topically, Dr. Cotsarelis said, "this would be an amazing breakthrough." Until then, "patients are going to rush in demanding this treatment, and I would not give it." Dr. Raphael Clynes, a co leader of the research while he was a Columbia professor (he now works for Bristol Myers Squibb), said the team tested cream and pills on mice, and planned to test a cream on people. So far, he considered ruxolitinib "an expensive therapy that's probably effective based on the small number of patients that we've treated, and it's likely to have a reasonable safety profile. But there's no way that I can endorse it fully unless we do larger trial." The team also plans to test on people another JAK inhibitor, tofacitinib, which is approved for rheumatoid arthritis and grew hair on mice. In June, Dr. Brett King, a dermatologist at Yale, reported that tofacitinib caused full hair growth and no negative effects for a man with alopecia universalis, a variant involving almost total hair loss. The idea to use JAK inhibitors grew out of a genome analysis Dr. Christiano conducted, which found that in alopecia areata, hair follicles emit a signal that draws immune cells to attack. Her team identified specific cells involved and found genetic similarities to unrelated autoimmune diseases, like rheumatoid arthritis. Several of the 12 patients are still completing the study, taking ruxolitinib for three to six months. Dr. Christiano has not tried it because, she said, her alopecia has been dormant, although "I have an eyebrow that comes and goes." For Brian, five months on the drug yielded a full head of hair. For unknown reasons, the new hair is white instead of black, its original color. Still, "It's a lot easier to shrug that off than to pass the silent judgment of people" who he said he felt were staring at his bald splotches. He said side effects, including slight anemia, were minor.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
LONDON Watching Elizabeth McGorian and Thomas Whitehead performing the Queen and Cattalabutte in "The Sleeping Beauty" at the Royal Opera House, it's easy to think, "Only with the Royal Ballet." The Queen is the loving, solicitous mother of Princess Aurora, the heroine whose finger prick casts the court into a hundred year sleep; Cattalabutte is the fussy, officious master of ceremonies, whose oversight enrages the fairy Carabosse, causing all the trouble. These are supporting roles, with no dancing, but they're part of the ballet's complex tapestry. Well played, as here, they help us care about a world of details. Ms. McGorian, who gives the Queen exceptional warmth and graciousness, has been one of the world's greatest ballet mimes all this century, but Mr. Whitehead, though a Royal dancer since 1994, is still emerging as an actor. He could open the closing act with more warmth, but already his Cattalabutte is an adorable cartoon character: The stuffy angle at which he holds his nose in the air and the speed at which he struts are as expressive as the showy turnout of his feet. Actually, other companies do have fine interpreters of this ballet's mime roles. I watched two performances on Saturday; as the King, neither Gary Avis nor Christopher Saunders can hold a candle to American Ballet Theater's Roman Zhurbin, so vivid in temper and so authoritative in his decrees. But it is the Royal that long ago established a tradition in this ballet that was hailed worldwide; Ms. McGorian and Mr. Whitehead are among those who keep it alive. It remains true that no other ballet company not even the foremost Russian troupes demonstrates a greater wealth of detailed tradition in the 19th century classics than the Royal. Throughout these performances, I marveled as I recognized again hundreds of tiny details that have been passed on, like so many heirlooms. Bits of phrasing and staging can be variously dated to Fyodor Lopukhov and Vera Trefilova in the early 1900s, Serge Diaghilev and Bronislava Nijinska in 1921, Margot Fonteyn between 1939 and 1955, Frederick Ashton between 1946 and 1968 as well as, above all, the original 1890 production by Marius Petipa. The current production, new in 2006, was always all about the company's heritage, anyway. Monica Mason, then artistic director, set out to restore most aspects of the world conquering 1946 67 production by Ninette de Valois (director), Oliver Messel (designer), Ashton (coach and supplementary choreographer) and Fonteyn (prima ballerina). But Ms. Mason also included items fashioned in 1968 (by Ashton) and 1994 (by Anthony Dowell) for subsequent productions. She also commissioned a new Act I Garland Dance from Christopher Wheeldon, which is regrettably bland. It's good to see that Ms. Mason, who supervises this production, and her colleagues are still making small corrections to the ballet's text and still raising standards. The eight Lilac Fairy attendants and eight friends of Princess Aurora all yardsticks of Royal excellence up to the early 1980s were dancing with finer style and precision on Saturday than I have seen all century, and the female corps de ballet in the Vision Scene, though still imperfect, has much improved in stylistic rigor since the performances I observed in 2006 8. At the matinee, a junior cast of Prologue fairies Olivia Cowley, Beatriz Stix Brunell, Yasmine Naghdi, Francesca Hayward, Claudia Dean and, as the Lilac Fairy, Melissa Hamilton showed an individuality and finesse long missing. As Aurora, both Lauren Cuthbertson and Sarah Lamb, in a slow diagonal of the heroine's Act III solo variation, phrase a sequence of 16 wrist circlings as a single series (something that dates to at least Trefilova, whose dancing of Aurora in Diaghilev's 1921 production struck Londoners as a revelation of pure classical style), whereas, for years, the fashion has been to chop them into two groups. In one passage of the famous Rose Adagio of Act I, Ms. Cuthbertson and Ms. Lamb took different textual options, both valid: Ms. Cuthbertson, higher energy, did quick, low sauts de basque (turning jumps) before arriving on point in the arms of each princely suitor, whereas Ms. Lamb's lower key approach stressed the moment of arrival. At myriad points with each ballerina, you could analyze the preparatory care that had been taken. But the Royal's coaching tends now to turn the role of Aurora, and too many others, into lists of effects. This isn't a new development at the company; it's been evident with multiple dancers over more than 30 years. But I was sad that the American Ms. Lamb so elegant, discerning and physically ravishing a dancer has allowed her formerly distinguished Aurora to become a simpering array of little prettinesses. Individual moments (the slow side developpes at the start of the Rose Adagio) take the breath away, but nothing accumulates. She and the company dance a live HD broadcast performance that will be shown in movie theaters worldwide on March 19 (on March 20 in the United States); I hope to see more luster by then. Ms. Cuthbertson brings to the role a real English rose bloom, and throughout the Act II Vision variation, despite too slow a tempo, she achieves serious beauty. But even her musicality keeps changing in emphasis; the overall result is tentative. You want to remind each of these women that Aurora is the heartbeat of this ballet. The same has happened to the most important mime role of all, Carabosse. Always played by a woman these days (it was conceived as a grotesque role for a man en travesti, with the malice given a more comic glee), it is spoiled by bad makeup and costume, but the problem goes deeper. Even Ms. McGorian gives it no originality Kristen McNally, though coarser in gesture, adds some welcome touches of mystery but, in general, the role's rage and venom have just turned to old thespian ham. Nothing holds back the incisive energy of the flame haired Australian Steven McRae, the Prince to Ms. Lamb's Princess (though he chooses a less elegant dance text for the Act III solo, without the piquees arabesques that Mr. Dowell made so poetic a part of this choreography); his assertiveness is like nobody else's. At the matinee, Matthew Golding, Canadian born, made his debut as a member of the Royal in the same role, partnering Ms. Cuthbertson; at present, he has one facial expression, an indistinct one, but his basic power, style and good looks may eventually make him a welcome interpreter. In April performances, he partners Natalia Osipova in this "Beauty." How will this production suit her? (She danced it with American Ballet Theater in 2010, but only once.) Will he have developed? Like this "Beauty," dancers are works in progress.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
When Manhattanites Matt Rappoport and Beno Varela began looking for a new home in Connecticut, they had mixed feelings about making the move. Mr. Rappoport, an attorney, was ready to leave his job at a large law firm, and Dr. Varela, a gastroenterologist, had found a practice he planned to join in Hamden, Conn. But their friends and social lives were in New York, even though Mr. Rappoport had grown up in Fairfield, Conn. "We were moving out of the city to a neighborhood where we had no social ties, other than Matt's family," said Dr. Varela, 35. "There were nerves, as a gay couple, without kids, moving to the suburbs," said Mr. Rappoport, 31, who is now the chief executive of a finance start up. Matt Rappoport and Beno Varela bought and renovated a 19th century house in Fairfield, Conn., with help from J.P. Franzen Associates Architects and RC Studio. But they had an idea about how to calm those nerves: Find a charming house and transform it into a destination so compelling that it would lure their friends for regular visits. "It was really important to us to create a beautiful space," Dr. Varela said. "I wanted to feel like we could host and welcome people from the city." When they began hunting for a house in late 2016, they realized there was another issue: Most homes on lots with the leafy, country feeling they wanted were far too large between 4,000 and 6,000 square feet. "Coming from a 1,200 square foot apartment, which was really big for the city, to a house that was 4,000 square feet seemed crazy to us," Mr. Rappoport said. Finally, they found a 2,500 square foot, three bedroom home in Fairfield, dating to the 1830s. It was far from perfect: The main entrance opened directly into the kitchen; it didn't have the home office Mr. Rappoport needed; and an oddly placed powder room made the ground floor seem dark and chopped up. But they bought it for 937,500 in March 2017 with the intention of making some changes. The house had originally been built a short distance away, serving as a general store in the 19th century. It was moved to its present location and converted into a home in 1929. A renovation in 2011 produced the kitchen that Mr. Rappoport and Dr. Varela liked and planned to keep. To overhaul the rest, they turned to Jack Franzen, of J.P. Franzen Associates Architects, and Rena Cherny, an interior designer who owns RC Studio, who developed plans to reconfigure the ground floor by demolishing the powder room which sat at one end of the living room, blocking light from two windows and create a single, bright living and dining area. Then they used the footprint of the old formal dining room to create a new powder room and home office. The objective was "to clean it up, but to keep the charm of it, while making better use of the spaces," Mr. Franzen said. "We wanted it to be cozy for entertaining, but definitely modern and fresh, while maintaining all the elements of an old home: the original windows, doors, hardware and shutters," Ms. Cherny said. "The vibe of a country home, but with fresh furnishings." Achieving that took about a year and 250,000, as Ms. Cherny delicately negotiated the purchase of furniture and accessories that suited Mr. Rappoport's preference for midcentury modern design and Dr. Varela's desire for softness and a touch of the traditional. "Part of what we needed her for was to mediate between us," Mr. Rappoport said. "To understand both of us, and find things that worked." Added Dr. Varela, "She was really our therapist for that entire year." Ms. Cherny furnished the living room with a carefully chosen mix of clean lined, comfortable furniture, including a cushy Montauk sectional sofa, a corduroy wool Tibetano rug and a large custom upholstered ottoman. The dining area has harder, more angular elements, including steel and wood Standard chairs from Vitra, an Agnes chandelier from Roll Hill and a slender concrete dining table from ABC Carpet Home, as well as a moody Jenny Boot photograph that the couple bought at the New York Affordable Art Fair.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
They Hid From the Mob for Decades. Now They Will Surface in a Film. In 2015, Roberto Buscetta had been hiding for decades under assumed names and 11 of his closest relatives had been slaughtered by Mafia assassins when two filmmakers tracked him down in Florida, looking to chat. His father, Tommaso Buscetta, had been a soldier in the Sicilian Mafia, the first high ranking Mafioso to break the code of silence in the 1980s at a time when the Sicilians took omerta far more seriously than their American brethren. His father's testimony at trials in Italy and New York had figured in the convictions of more than 400 members of the mob. Now the filmmakers wanted Roberto Buscetta to appear on camera and talk about his father. "Killing Tommaso Buscetta's son would be a perfect trophy," Roberto said, explaining his reluctance. "Going after the seemingly impossible finding her and the family and getting them to talk was always the tantalizing prize," Franchetti said. Finding the Buscettas was indeed a challenge. It took nearly two years. The immediate family had been living under adopted names in a string of different locations for more than three decades. Roberto's stepsister Lisa, who also appears in the documentary, says she uttered the Buscetta name for the first time in her life in the film. Meier said he contacted prosecutors, F.B.I. agents and the Drug Enforcement Administration, which oversaw Buscetta's security and safe house. The D.E.A. was wary. Several agents who had protected Buscetta had died. Some were uninterested. Two agents who had guarded Buscetta, John Huber and Tony Petrucci, were helpful. Still, they had not been in touch with Cristina for a decade. Meier finally sent a note in 2015 to an old email address that he was told members of the Buscetta family had used in the past. Weeks passed with no response. Cristina was Tommaso Buscetta's third wife. They met in Rio de Janeiro in 1971. He returned there in the early 1980s after a serving a prison term for drug trafficking. By his own account, he wanted no part of the bloody war being waged in Sicily at the time among factions of the Mafia, or the Cosa Nostra. Buscetta, who grew up in Palermo, the youngest of 17 children, was the only sibling to join the Mafia. He became an influential figure who commanded respect that went beyond his rank as a soldier. Mob bosses sought his advice. He was intelligent and worldly, having lived in Brazil and Brooklyn, where he worked with the Gambino crime family. But in 1982, Mafia hit men killed two of his sons, a son in law, his closest brother and a nephew in separate incidents in Palermo. The following year, after being arrested in Brazil, he agreed to cooperate with Italian and American law enforcement and signed what became a 3,000 page confession. "For him, breaking omerta was really the hardest decision of his life because he had this sensation that he broke something that was sacred," Cristina says in "Our Godfather." He testified in Palermo during the "Maxi Trial," the largest anti mob prosecution in history, which culminated in 1987 with the conviction of 342 Mafiosi. Since Italy did not have a witness protection program, American authorities hid him in a safe house in New Jersey and shuttled him back and forth across the Atlantic. "It has to be understood that during that period Buscetta was the most important, the most wanted and most endangered witness in American criminal history," Huber, the D.E.A. agent, said in an interview. In New York, Buscetta testified in 1985 at the "pizza connection case," brought by Rudolph W. Giuliani, who was the United States attorney in Manhattan at the time. Seventeen people were convicted for their roles in an international drug ring. "There was no other witness in the case who was able to describe the enterprise, identify the hierarchy and describe the goals of the organization," said Louis Freeh, the lead prosecutor who went on to become director of the F.B.I. Fourteen years later, still in hiding, Buscetta died of cancer at the age of 71. He was buried under an alias in North Miami, Fla. But his story, his place in history as the Mafia's first high ranking informer, and the ravages he brought to the mob, and his own family, still resonated years later with Franchetti, a foreign correspondent in Moscow for The Sunday Times of London, and Meier, a journalist and nonfiction author. Franchetti had been the producer of a 2013 documentary, "The Condemned," about a remote Russian prison exclusively for murderers. Now he and Meier wanted to provide a compelling, but straightforward account of Buscetta's life, stripped of romance and populated with interviews with family members who had not spoken publicly since they disappeared in 1986. Cristina and her son Roberto agreed to meet the filmmakers in Florida in May 2015. Roberto asked Petrucci, the D.E.A. agent who had once protected the family, to join them. Hours before they were supposed to meet, Cristina changed the meeting spot to the Ritz Carlton, overlooking the beach in Fort Lauderdale. "At the first meeting, Mark and Andrew gave us all kinds of assurances," Roberto said. "When you've been in this business for a long time, there are certain words you want to hear. The guys came across as incredibly sincere. They were willing to bargain about everything, including whether to show our faces on camera." The filmmakers told Cristina and Roberto that it was difficult to make a film about a dead man with only a handful of photographs available. Might they have any family photographs, home movies, diaries? Cristina said she had a trunk full of photos, while Roberto said he had lots of video. At a subsequent meeting, he handed them 13 DVDs, including one that showed Buscetta in a Santa Claus hat dishing out Christmas presents to the family. "That's when we realized we definitely had a film, a unique and intimate insight into a Mafia don and his family," Franchetti said. "Security for them and us was the main issue," Meier said. "Cristina said, 'This is my last son.'" The logistics were key. Meetings with family members had to be discreet and at carefully chosen locations. Filming was done at spots where the backgrounds were visually interesting, but nondescript, without identifying landmarks that would reveal the Buscettas' location. Still many relatives rebuffed the filmmakers. Others agreed to help but would not appear on camera. Even Roberto, who in the film describes serving combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan under his assumed name, asked for precautions. He would not allow that name to be used in the film. He asked that his face never appear in full view. Cristina, however, looked straight into the camera, ready to remember the man she had loved. "We found her at the right time in her life," Meier said. "She felt she hadn't told the story. As she said in the film, 'It was now or never.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
In 1987, Robert Bork was denied confirmation to the Supreme Court because his originalist beliefs were deemed a serious threat to constitutional rights. Originalism is no less dangerous for those rights today, yet Judge Amy Coney Barrett's repeated statements professing her belief in originalism have been met with little objection. Originalists believe that the meaning of a constitutional provision is fixed when it was adopted and that it can change only by constitutional amendment. Under this view, the First Amendment means the same thing as when it was adopted in 1791 and the 14th Amendment means the same thing as when it was ratified in 1868. But rights in the 21st century should not be determined by the understandings and views of centuries ago. This would lead to terrible results. The same Congress that voted to ratify the 14th Amendment, which assures equal protection of the laws, also voted to segregate the District of Columbia public schools. Following originalism would mean that Brown v. Board of Education was wrongly decided in declaring laws requiring segregation of schools unconstitutional. In fact, under the original public meaning of the Constitution, it would be unconstitutional to elect a woman as president or vice president until the Constitution is amended. Article II refers to them with the pronoun "he," and there is no doubt that original understanding was that only men could hold these offices. Throughout American history, the Supreme Court has rejected originalism and protected countless rights that cannot possibly be justified under that theory. For example, the court has interpreted the word "liberty" in the Constitution to protect the right to marry, to procreate, to custody of one's children, to keep the family together, to control the upbringing of one's children, to purchase and use contraceptives, to obtain an abortion, to engage in private adult consensual same sex sexual activity, and to refuse medical treatment. Judge Barrett doesn't need to explicitly say that she would vote to overrule Roe v. Wade because she has left no doubt by saying that she is an originalist in the mold of Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom she clerked. "His judicial philosophy is mine too," she told the Senate Judiciary Committee. Justice Scalia, who died in 2016, repeatedly and unequivocally urged that Roe be overruled, arguing that the Constitution says nothing about abortion and states should be allowed to decide the question for themselves. Judge Barrett's scholarly writings suggest she would have no hesitation in overruling Roe, either, nor those "liberty" decisions. She wrote, "I tend to agree with those who say that a justice's duty is to the Constitution and that it is thus more legitimate for her to enforce her best understanding of the Constitution rather than a precedent she thinks clearly in conflict with it." The rejection of originalism is not new. Early in the 19th century, Chief Justice John Marshall wrote that "we must never forget that it is a Constitution we are expounding," a Constitution "meant to be adapted and endure for ages to come." It is a myth to say that an "original public understanding" can be identified for most constitutional provisions because so many people were involved in drafting and ratifying them. In teaching constitutional law, I point to the many instances where James Madison and Alexander Hamilton disagreed about such fundamental questions as whether the president possesses any inherent powers. Moreover, it is a myth to think that even identifying an originalist understanding can solve most modern constitutional issues. Can original public meaning really provide useful insights about the meaning of the Fourth Amendment and whether the police can take DNA from a suspect to see if it matches evidence in unsolved crimes or obtain stored cellular phone location information without a warrant? Also, what often is overlooked is that conservative justices ignore original meaning when it does not serve their purpose. One of the worst decisions in recent years was Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, which struck down key provisions of the Voting Rights Act that required states with a history of race discrimination in voting to obtain approval from the attorney general or a panel of judges before making significant changes in their election systems. The court, voting 5 4, said that this violated the principle that Congress must treat all states alike. But no such requirement is found in the Constitution. Moreover, the Congress that ratified the 14th Amendment imposed Reconstruction on Southern states, showing that it did not mean to treat all states alike. In fact, Congress after the Civil War adopted many race conscious programs that today would be regarded as affirmative action. Yet Justice Scalia and his originalist colleague Clarence Thomas ignored this original understanding in repeatedly declaring that all forms of affirmative action are unconstitutional. If Hillary Clinton had won the presidency in 2016 and replaced Justices Scalia, Anthony Kennedy and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, originalism would have faded in importance. Justice Thomas would have been the only originalist on the court and the theory would have been kept alive only by some conservative law professors. But now, with the confirmation of Judge Barrett, it will be a dominant theory on the Supreme Court. Make no mistake, it is just as much a threat to all of our rights as when Robert Bork espoused it more than 30 years ago. Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of the law school at the University of California, Berkeley, is the author, with Howard Gillman, of "The Religion Clauses: The Case for Separating Church and State." The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
HONG KONG The Chinese government has begun making it much easier for foreign investors to put money into China's stock market and other financial investments, in a slight relaxing of more than a decade of tight capital controls. The move, not publicly announced but disclosed by some private money managers, indicates that Chinese officials are eager to counter a rising flight of capital from the country, a worsening slump in real estate prices, a weak stock market and at least a temporary trade deficit caused by a steep bill for oil imports. Those concerns have evidently started to offset fears of the potentially inflationary effects of big inflows of foreign cash. Chinese securities officials made a series of phone calls to top fund managers outside China late last week telling them of the relaxation of the capital restrictions, according to several money managers. But if the fund managers wanted to increase their requested allotments for investing in China, they were told they would have to answer almost immediately a sign of the government's haste to come up with a plan to reassure financial markets. "It literally was phone calls coming in at 4 and you had to give an answer by 5:30," said the chairman of a financial company heavily invested in China. He insisted on anonymity to avoid offending regulators. Easing the path of foreign money into China could help offset a nascent exodus of investment money there and stem the recent weakness of China's currency, the renminbi. The renminbi's weakness is making Chinese manufacturers even more competitive in foreign markets. Investment executives say officials at the China Securities Regulatory Commission, in coordination with foreign exchange officials, informed them in the phone calls last week that the government would approve all of their past requests to increase certain types of foreign investments and would even let them double their total invested. Regulators indicated that they would roughly double the overall cap on all foreign investments to about 60 billion, one money manager said; the cap has been 30 billion for several years. Until now, Chinese regulators have dribbled out each increase in authorized foreign investment, a few hundred million dollars at a time. While still a tiny amount, compared with the combined value of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets or relative to the volume of China's international trade, raising the foreign investment cap is the latest signal that Beijing is worried about a potentially prolonged weakness in the renminbi. The issue is politically volatile in Washington, where Democrats and Republicans alike have been calling for a stronger Chinese currency as a way to limit China's large bilateral trade surplus with the United States. Today in On Tech: Imagine not living in Big Tech's world. Dollar Tree will raise prices to 1.25 by the end of April. The American Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, complained at a Congressional hearing on Tuesday that China still had "some ways to go" in allowing its currency to appreciate against the currencies of China's main trading partners. Allowing more foreign money into China could help stabilize its stock market and real estate markets when the country's political environment is unsettled over the dismissal last week of Bo Xilai as the Communist Party secretary of Chongqing and over the approach next autumn of a once in a decade change in the country's top leadership. The Shanghai stock market dropped 1.4 percent on Tuesday and is down 22.2 percent from its high in mid April last year, although up slightly from its lows in early January. The government has deliberately engineered a fall in real estate prices to address widespread concerns about housing affordability, and has used mostly administrative tools to do so, like banning most purchases of second or third homes. But real estate developers and investors say the plunge in prices has taken on its own momentum. China's securities regulators and a separate government agency, the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, had long been leery of the inflationary effects of being swamped with foreign cash. But that view has reversed in the last several weeks, as the renminbi's value has slipped in currency markets on very heavy selling in Asian financial centers like Hong Kong. The renminbi was down 0.5 percent against the dollar from the start of January through the middle of last week. The weakness was initially attributed to weakening performance of the Chinese economy, but investors increasingly see it as a sign of capital flight as well. The renminbi has recovered in the last few days of trading and is now virtually unchanged against the dollar this year evidently as word has circulated among top fund managers that more foreign money could soon begin washing ashore in China. But until now, investment opportunities for foreign capital in China have been so scarce that some investment companies have paid to rent other companies' rights to invest in China. The going rate on these investment rents until recently was about 0.6 percent of the value of the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor rights. So an international company or mutual fund that wanted to hold 100 million worth of stocks on the Shanghai stock exchange would have to pay about 600,000 a year to rent the necessary investor rights. But the value of those rents has begun to decline as international worries about the Chinese economy have increased in recent weeks. The new doubling of financial investment rights is likely to depress the rents further. The doubling of rights could help offset a slowdown in foreign investment into factories and other fixed assets in China, as well as a deterioration in China's trade balance. Slowing foreign direct investment and weaker exports, together with some capital flight from China, has upset the balance of foreign exchange inflows and outflows in China, weakening the Chinese currency. With more than 3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, China has more than enough financial firepower to defend its currency against serious attacks on its value by speculators in financial markets. China also controls the spot market for renminbi within China through heavy regulations. But so many renminbi are now circulating offshore that spot and forward trading have expanded rapidly in Hong Kong and Singapore, posing a challenge for Chinese regulators. The financial company chairman said that as recently as early last year, it could take him a couple of days to move 500 million into forward renminbi contracts without causing the price to change. Now this can be done in just 15 minutes, he said, indicating it was a sign of how liquid the market has become and hard it now is for the Chinese government to control it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
AUGUSTA, Ga. The men met for dinner at Augusta National Golf Club on Tuesday night. They donned their green jackets, asked after grandchildren, cracked wise, drank wine and thought back to the long ago shots that were their meal tickets now. They gathered because that is what most men who won the Masters do during tournament week. And despite the coronavirus pandemic, it was unfathomable to many of golf's princes that they would miss a meeting of one of the most hallowed fraternities in sports. "I'm going to put my mask on and drive over there," Tommy Aaron, the 83 year old champion from 1973, said by telephone last week, his voice as soft as his intentions were firm. "You never know when your last trip to Augusta is going to be," observed Charles Coody, 83, who won in 1971. "I don't get to see the guys too often anymore," said Bob Goalby, the 1968 champion who is now 91. "What brings you back is your friendship with the guys. Even though you don't play anymore, you get kind of enthused about seeing the place and seeing the young guys practice on the range." No other golf tournament attracts its most cherished alumni quite like the Masters, and many former champions submitted to nasal swabs to be able to gaze upon the greens again. Some older winners more than half of the 33 living Masters winners are at least 60 years old considered walking part of the course, free of dense crowds because of the pandemic, for the first time in years. Still, seven winners are absent this week, with at least some missing for pandemic related reasons, including misgivings about travel. Sergio Garcia, the 2017 victor, withdrew from the tournament after he tested positive for the virus. "It's always sad when some people are not there, but to look at it in a positive light, so many were there," said Gary Player, 85, who won the Masters three times and spoke at Tuesday's dinner. Indeed, the pandemic hardly seemed to rattle most of the winners, many of whom saw the golf and Augusta's traditions as too great to ignore, even in 2020. Sixteen past champions are playing this week and even though Player and Jack Nicklaus are not, they started the tournament with a ceremonial tee shot around daybreak on Thursday. Nicklaus and his wife, Barbara, tested positive for coronavirus in March. "I just played three months in a row, so why wouldn't I come here?" asked Bernhard Langer, who turned 63 in August and won in 1985 and 1993. "I can social distance. I don't have to hug anybody or whatever or do high fives." Others who are competing had feared that they would not make it because of travel restrictions. "It seemed very hard because I was marooned in Scotland for seven months, eight months," said Sandy Lyle, the 1988 champion. But there he was at sunset on Monday, practicing putts and hoping to string together sufficiently low scores to make the Masters cut, set this year at the low 50s, for the first time since 2014. "We're still getting through this," Lyle, 62, added about the pandemic. "We've got to be very happy that we're even playing golf for prize money right now." So to look around Augusta National this week was still to spot winners, an exercise made easier than usual because of this year's ban on spectators. Fred Couples, the 1992 winner, and Tiger Woods practiced together, as did Langer and Lyle. A few minutes after Vijay Singh, the champion in 2000, started hitting at No. 1 on Tuesday morning, Patrick Reed, who won 18 years after Singh, started a round from nearby No. 10. More came for the Champions Dinner, a closed door rite of the tournament for past winners and the club chairman. "Once I found out that I knew a lot of the players were going, some of the older ones, I was all in," said Mark O'Meara, who won in 1998 and was among those who flew to Georgia this week. "To be fortunate enough to be a Masters champion, it's probably the right thing to do, even though I'm not going to play."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Beethoven had to present his only opera three times before it won success. It was premiered as "Fidelio" in 1805, revised as "Leonore" in 1806 and revised again in 1814 as the "Fidelio" we know today. Everyone now calls the first two versions "Leonore" to distinguish them from the famous one but they are far from identical, because Beethoven was under intense pressure to shorten and simplify after the mixed reception in 1805. What he originally wrote, though, was not some kind of student effort; we're talking about a composer who already had the "Eroica" Symphony behind him. The conductor Rene Jacobs has recently asserted backed by a recording that the 1805 version is the best overall, and he is not alone. It is the version Opera Lafayette will revive in Washington on Feb. 26 and New York on March 2 and 4, conducted by Ryan Brown. But this time, it will be performed with a tenor aria nobody has heard since the year it was written. The scene in question is the first appearance of Florestan, a political prisoner wasting away in a dungeon when his brave wife, Leonore, takes a job at his prison in hopes of getting him out. His soliloquy consists of a grim prelude, a spacious recitative and a grand aria in the standard two part (slow fast) form. That outline applies to all three versions of the opera, but every section is musically different in each. The first time around, Beethoven had tenor troubles. A reviewer wrote that Carl Demmer, the 1805 Florestan, was "almost always" singing flat. Looking toward the 1806 revival, the composer made a revision of the slow movement almost certainly a simplification and he at least considered dropping the fast movement altogether. But then a replacement tenor was found in Johann August Rockel the only change in the original cast. Beethoven was happy with him, but he still had to shorten the opera. Two sections got lost on the cutting room floor. One was the original slow movement; the shorter, revised one was kept. The other was the whole first section of the fast movement, a solo in F major with obbligato flute, in which Florestan recalls happier days with Leonore at his side. This was followed by an agitated section in F minor, in which he hopes his wife will realize he did the right thing. In 1806, that second part was left to stand by itself after the rewritten Adagio. All previous revivals of the 1805 opera have had to content themselves with the 1806 aria, because the music had vanished. How do we know it was ever there? Partly from a few surviving pages: Under time pressure, you weren't going to throw out a sheet if one side had music still needed for the new score, or if you could update it by overwriting a few lines. But for the music on the missing pages, our only clues come from the multiple drafts preserved in the "Leonore Sketchbook," 346 pages of scrawls and chicken scratches now bound together into a forbiddingly vast volume in the State Library of Berlin. Beethoven's sketches are impossible to read in any ordinary sense of the word reading, but a whole scholarly industry has grown up around decrypting them. The drafts for the lost aria have been thoroughly examined, some of them provisionally transcribed. The original notebook can now be studied online through high resolution digitizations. But deciphering the sketches, and deciding which to use, is just step one. Beethoven drafted mostly "top line" melodic ideas, and the elements that make his music sound like itself are hardly concentrated on the top line. To make a performable score, you have to imagine how he might have supplied those elements. My nomination for that job was not due to any special expertise on Beethoven, but to my long experience with filling gaps. In revivals or editions of obscure operas, it's often necessary to compose missing bits, ranging from a couple of bars accidentally skipped by a copyist back in the day to whole accompaniments for arias whose orchestral scores got lost. Or even, in a few cases, fresh invention based on nothing but a libretto, for necessary continuity in an opera that's come down to us incomplete. An Opera Lafayette board member had heard one of my reconstructions an unfinished movement from Donizetti's Symphony in E minor, played last summer by the Teatro Nuovo orchestra and liked it. Would I dare try Beethoven? I answered that I would study the sketches and give it a shot if they suggested something to my imagination. They did. In the earlier revivals of "Leonore" I had heard, the Florestan aria always seemed a bit lackluster: noble resignation followed by a brief expression of anxiety. What quickly became clear from the sketches is that the part Beethoven cut out had been the heart of the scene. And Beethoven left a clue to the kind of music that was on his mind. There is a phrase in the flute part, sketched over and over in slightly different ways, that stops just short of being a direct quote from Mozart's "The Magic Flute." It is the excited orchestral buildup just before Tamino, gazing enraptured at the likeness of a maiden he has never seen, sings, "Oh, if only I could find her!" Florestan, gazing at the likeness of a wife he is sure he will never see again, might have sung a lament. But this theme is charged instead with the jubilation of hopeful young love. Mozart was never far from Beethoven's thoughts as he confronted the opera stage for the first time. The parallel between Leonore's big E major aria and Fiordiligi's in "Cosi Fan Tutte" has long been noted, and it was a thrill to see another such link practically leaping off the pages of the sketchbook. There are also bits of melody that either hark back to the Adagio or look forward to the known conclusion. These helped too: I could at least get started by borrowing the harmony and orchestral figuration that goes with them. Bit by bit, the ideas piled up. In the Adagio, several clues convinced me that the missing 1805 version was probably closer to the sketches than to the 1806 revision. That's a guess we can only ever guess but the sketches have some dramatic gestures and a soaring final melody that Beethoven did not keep in the more serene versions of 1806 and '14. Less resignation, more protest, more yearning. From one sketch or another, it's possible to assemble a near complete draft of vocal and instrumental melody straight through the aria. The top line Opera Lafayette's audiences will hear is at least 95 percent Beethoven. Inventing the missing orchestral score is another matter. The process goes something like this: You first write down the notes Beethoven definitely used, from those surviving pages. Next, the ones you're fairly certain about in this case, a short quotation in the 1805 overture. Third, the melodic lines you've chosen from his sketches; you're not sure they're the ones he chose, but at least you know they're his. Fourth, the ideas you've found by analogy with similar passages elsewhere, or in some other score you think Beethoven was hearing in his head. With each step of this sequence you're getting farther from certainty, but you're not yet exactly inventing. When all that is done, though, you're still staring at a lot of blank music paper. Except where you found one to borrow, there's no bass line. Harmony and orchestration are up to you. You feel like an understudy subbing for a star in a rehearsal: It's not your show, so there's a certain appropriate caution, and yet whatever talent you have is going to be needed, so you had better let yourself go and do the best you can. This is, of course, risky. You're no Beethoven, to say the least. Somebody else might have picked better hints from his other pieces. But you have to take the risk. Beethoven had a clear idea of how this scene should play, and the only way to hear it is to fill in the blanks. I may be making this sound like a bigger deal than it is. My contribution amounts to about four and a half minutes, barely a third of what Franco Alfano provided for Puccini's "Turandot." But it was exciting to feel, for a little while, like Beethoven's long distance assistant. What I hope is that the result can at least allow his original concept of the aria and some beautiful musical ideas to speak again after more than two centuries of silence. Will Crutchfield is the artistic director of Teatro Nuovo. He has reconstructed or edited works including Donizetti's "Elisabeth, ou la fille de l'exile" and Rossini's "Aureliano in Palmira."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Only construction at "essential projects" has been allowed since late March, but many developers have sought exemptions to keep their projects going. Work continued here on East 59th Street on Saturday. Development has ground to a halt across New York City. Or has it? After initially deeming all construction workers essential employees as coronavirus inundated the city, New York State reversed course on March 27 and ordered work stopped at most construction sites until at least the end of April. Included in the order were several important exceptions. "Essential" projects like hospitals and homeless shelters were allowed to go forward, according to rules established by an executive order from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. But in a city where construction projects often fall into several different categories, and where the real estate industry still has clout despite its struggles, the stop work order has been met with confusion and resistance. On Friday, the city's Department of Buildings, which is responsible for implementing the governor's directive, released an interactive map showing all of the ongoing "essential" projects around the city in an effort to help distinguish the essential from the nonessential, and warned that "noncompliance will lead to a violation and fines of up to 10,000." But even as developers publicly say that keeping contractors healthy and curbing the coronavirus's spread is the priority, some are privately complaining that the patchwork of new rules is a mess. And many are busily trying to make their case to officials that their projects, whether condos or rentals, serve a vital interest and should be exempt from the shutdown. A day after the order took effect, the buildings department had received more than 900 such appeals, a spokesman said. "There's a feeling that not everybody is being treated the same," said Steve Kliegerman, the president of Halstead Property Development Marketing, which works with many developers. "You're hearing, 'Why is it fair that they can continue and I can't?'" One building type included on the "essential" list, for example, is affordable housing a much broader category than it appears. Since most large rental projects offer at least some below market rate units, which allow them to win tax abatements, luxury developments that may not seem like affordable housing are greenlighted, too. All told, more than 300 affordable projects can continue, according to the buildings department. Condos, which tend to be market rate, don't appear as able to exploit loopholes. Over the past few days, workers at condo sites have been tying down lumber and checking water pumps to prepare for extended closures that could hurt a floundering residential sector. But developers are testing out exceptions for them as well. Some condo sites squeeze rental units, including affordable ones, among their for sale apartments. One such project, Waterline Square, a three towered project from GID Development Group on Manhattan's Far West Side, is still moving forward, according to the new buildings department map. Developers of rental housing may be best positioned to maintain business as usual during the shutdown, because many large rental projects under construction had plans to offer some affordable housing units. The units allow the developers to take advantage of property tax abatements created by 2017's Affordable New York state housing program. Under the program, tax breaks are typically awarded when 30 percent of the units in a building are made available for below market rate rents. At Rose Hill, a 123 unit condo from Rockefeller Group in Manhattan's NoMad neighborhood, contractors continued to mill behind dark green fences this week, tackling a punch list of tasks before walking away, including the dismantling of a tower crane, a previously scheduled task that had taken on new urgency. "Aside from folks working to oversee the safe shutdown of the site, we've followed orders and ceased construction," said Meg Brod, a Rockefeller senior vice president. The 300 million project, at 30 East 29th Street, is supposed to open this fall. At the XI, a two towered condo complex with 236 apartments near the High Line, where 800 construction workers are employed, work continued last week despite the order from Albany. Questions remain about whether construction should stop at the full block site, even though it contains a 137 room hotel. Hotels have been deemed an essential construction type because they can serve as housing for medical workers. None Testing the Limits: Only three of New York's 25 tallest residential buildings have completed safety tasks required by the city. The Downside to Life in a Supertall: 432 Park faces some significant design problems, and other luxury high rises may share its fate. Luxury Developers' Loophole: Soaring towers are able to push high into the sky because of a loophole in the city's labyrinthine zoning laws. An Evolving Skyline: The high rise building boom has transformed the city's skyline in recent years. Its impact will echo for years to come. Hidden Feats: Our critic looks at some supertall N.Y.C. buildings and how the ingenuity of engineers helped build landmarks. "We are in dialogue with agencies about what work can continue past this week," said Ziel Feldman, chairman of HFZ Capital Group, the XI'S developer. "It's all about the health of the individual worker. If the powers that be think it's unsafe for people to continue working, then of course, that's everybody's priority." Regular patrols of construction sites, to prevent fires and other safety hazards, are also permitted, lawyers say. But if developers of nonessential projects are caught, for example, hoisting I beams into place, they face fines and a stop work order that police could enforce. Under state order, construction sites are urged to enforce social distancing in elevators and during lunch breaks. One developer who spoke anonymously to discuss a sensitive issue, said he was uncomfortable requiring construction workers to leave their homes and come to sites that can be crowded and unsanitary. Others are trying to strike a balance between business interests, housing needs and public health. "We are hopeful that we will be able to keep construction in motion at key projects that have an affordable component, but only if it's in the best interest of the city and the safety of its citizens," said Mitchell Moinian, a principal of the development firm Moinian Group, in a statement. Mr. Moinian is currently codeveloping PLG, a 467 unit rental in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Brooklyn, where 141 units in the building, about 30 percent, are affordable. Also hanging over the shutdown are questions about whether projects which are still on the hook for taxes, insurance and loan interest payments can financially sustain a long pause. Banks typically don't release construction funds until developers complete certain elements, like the foundation or steel structure, and missing deadlines can endanger loans, lawyers say. "Force majeure" clauses in lending agreements, usually invoked when materials run late, can protect developers against delays, said Eric Orenstein, a lawyer with Rosenberg and Estis. But those clauses often allow for only 90 day breaks, he said, and developers have probably used up some of those days already. If New York's shutdown, which followed similar orders in San Francisco and Boston, does end soon, projects should be able to absorb the setbacks, Mr. Kliegerman of Halstead said. But that is far from assured. "Spirits are reasonably high," he added, "but everyone is nervous about how long this will last." 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
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. Live From Wherever They Live On Monday night, late night hosts returned to broadcast versions of their shows from their kitchens, dens, offices and children's playrooms. Most went more casual in dress, too, but Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert both stuck with their typical suits. "A: It gives a sense that I'm at a job," Colbert said on what he called "A Late Show." "And B: I do not have a physique that lends itself to casual clothing." While James Corden hosted a one night special, "Homefest," and Conan O'Brien promised absolutely no information or news, Colbert, Kimmel, Trevor Noah and Seth Meyers all stuck to more formulaic monologue musings, with jokes on President Trump's bragging about the recent high ratings of his White House press briefings. "Wow, OK Firstly, the ratings aren't high because of Trump. People are watching TV because of the virus. That's why they're watching the briefings. This will be like the guy on 'Friends' who owns the coffee shop taking credit for the success of the show: 'It's all because of my lattes, you know? That's why people watched.' No, you just happened to be there, dude." TREVOR NOAH "And by the way, just because people are watching you doesn't mean it's good. Have you heard of 'The Masked Singer'? Right now half of this country is watching a show about a bunch of toothless meth heads abusing tigers." JIMMY KIMMEL "A hundred and fifty thousand Americans are infected, 2,500 Americans have died, and he's excited about his ratings. You know, it reminds me of the Hindenburg coverage." STEPHEN COLBERT "Also, we're only trapped inside watching because you kept ignoring the crisis and pretending it would go away until it was too late. We're forced to stay inside and watch you because you screwed up. More people than ever are playing Scrabble right now, but it sure as hell isn't because Scrabble is fun." SETH MEYERS It was during some of these media briefings that Trump has made statements he has later pulled back from, including extending social distancing guidelines through April 30 after previously suggesting they could be relaxed by Easter. "Trump is flip flopping so much, if the Olympics weren't canceled he would be competing against Simone Biles." TREVOR NOAH "The positive news is the president for once appears to have listened to someone. Despite originally saying everybody be back to work by Easter, he announced he that will extend social distancing guidelines through April 30 so Purell has frozen over. I'm honestly surprised he didn't just say he's moving Easter." JIMMY KIMMEL "On the plus side, you can still spend Easter the way you always do by completely forgetting about it until your mom calls and you lie about going to church." SETH MEYERS "Think about how grotesque this is health care professionals are courageously putting their lives on the line and Trump is baselessly accusing them of stealing masks and lying about how many ventilators they need, while bragging about his TV ratings. He's either a sociopath or he's been stealing from Jeanine Pirro's liquor cabinet, which would explain why he often slurs his words like a drunk." SETH MEYERS "Trump thinks they might be stealing masks because he would definitely steal masks. Trump is so deeply and completely corrupt he can't even imagine someone having a legitimate motivation. I'm surprised he hasn't opened a press conference saying, 'Bad news, ventilators went missing. Good news, you guys, we found a corresponding amount of Trump o lators, which are very affordable.'" SETH MEYERS "All of a sudden hospitals need way more ventilators than usual. What's that about, huh? It's the same way I've noticed that sometimes people on the streets have a lot of umbrellas, and then sometimes nobody has an umbrella. Something isn't adding up here." TREVOR NOAH "Is he implying that after work these nurses get off their 12 hour shift and steal masks so they can go sand a deck in their backyard?" JIMMY KIMMEL "Really? Accusing medical workers of stealing masks? That's like frisking Mother Teresa on the way out of the orphanage. 'Check her pockets! Check her pockets! She could be smuggling out some gruel!'" STEPHEN COLBERT On "Desus Mero," the titular co hosts asked Dr. Anthony Fauci what it feels like to be the smartest guy in the room.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Wendi Aarons stood in her kitchen in Austin, Tex., and looked at her iPhone. She felt a sudden rush of tears. She glanced at her husband and children, who were eating breakfast. She wasn't sure she could articulate her sadness to them, so she turned to the place where she knew others would understand. "It is hard to explain to your family why you're crying over the loss of someone you've never even had a cup of coffee with," she posted to her Facebook page. Ms. Aarons, 47, was sharing her reaction to the news that had whipsawed around the Internet on the morning of March 7. The prolific writer Lisa Adams best known to thousands as AdamsLisa had died the night before at age 45, at her home in Darien, Conn., of complications from metastatic breast cancer. It wasn't just Ms. Aarons who struggled last week to justify her sadness. Throughout the socialsphere, legions of women and men stood in their kitchens, iPhones in hand, trying to make sense of a new age in mourning: the deep, personal loss felt upon the death of a stranger who had become a friend across the transom of the Internet. After arrangements were announced for the memorial service, to be held this coming Monday, people began to engage in public and private messaging on Twitter and Facebook: Are you going? Can I catch a ride? On Tuesday evening, Delia Cabe, a freelance writer in North Reading, Mass., posted on Facebook to invite others to join in a "virtual memorial service" at 4 p.m. Eastern time this Monday. "Like all of you, Lisa's loss has hit me hard," Ms. Cabe wrote to those seized by this complicated e grief. Lisa was an epic connector; she didn't make friends online as much as she absorbed them whole. She let people into her world and joined theirs as well, making herself a source of comfort and advice to untold numbers who burrowed into the isolation of their computers only to find a confidante. I saw this process begin to take root in 2009, as Twitter was gaining traction beyond the early adopting crowd. Lisa joined in February of that year. She was in remission from breast cancer and developing her voice on her blog as a writer focused on a range of topics connected to motherhood, cancer, loss and nature (she was an avid, gifted gardener). On the social network, she showed a particular interest in writers whom she would engage in chatter on Twitter and then suggest, at least among those in the New York area (since Lisa lived in a Manhattan bedroom community), a coffee or lunch get together. Both to these local friends, and those who lived farther afield or even abroad, she would send letters in the mail. The letters took note of holidays, birthdays and new jobs. They sometimes transmitted information, often were funny (she had a wicked sense of humor and a throaty laugh) and always conveyed admiration and support. The letters bore the hallmark of her gorgeous penmanship perfectly slanted cursive T's and uniformly looped L's. She loved beautiful stationery and Sharpies, and she wielded them well. In the fall of 2012, Lisa learned that her cancer had returned, metastasized to the bones that she knew would provide transport to her vital organs. By now, she had noticeably gained confidence in her considerable gifts as a writer and took to her preferred media with gusto. She wrote at length on her blog and in quick snippets on Twitter about the details of her medical treatment, her long held but growing frustration with what she and others have called the "pinkwashing" of breast cancer awareness, which painted a pretty picture of early detection while ignoring the ugliness of deadly metastasis, and her unconditional love for the three children she sought to raise in a normal household even as she focused on preparing them for her death. She wrote, sometimes with anger but always with moral clarity, about the disservice to the cancer stricken fostered by "fought to the end" battle metaphors as well as the concepts that a positive outlook or religious devotion could outwit cellular biology. In a 2012 piece titled "When I Die," she said: "Give my children a kind word. Let them know what they meant to me. That I would have stayed forever if I could. Don't try to comfort my children by telling them I'm an angel watching over them from heaven or that I'm in a better place: There is no better place to me than being here with them." Even toward the very end, you never knew what you were going to get from Lisa. Within the last month of her life, she tweeted: "Have a will. Update it. Discuss wishes with family. Financial planning impt and laws change all the time. Have control over things you can." And "I am obsessed with leaving as little unresolved as I can. As soon as diagnosed incurable I got personal organizer to help w/projects." But she continued to find her bits of beauty "Never underestimate the delicious simplicity of cheese and crackers. andpickles" and maintained her humor: "Gotta eye roll: started typing 'FYI' in subject line of email to friend. Autocorrect changes to 'dying.' (To be very clear, I wanted FYI!)" Her sharing the fullness of her experience is part of what kept rapt a large readership 15,000 Twitter followers at the time of her death; writers, cancer patients and caretakers, medical professionals among them. In the process, she harnessed the power and promise of social media such that a stay at home mom who pecked away at her iPhone and laptop from her suburban perch without the benefit of any mainstream media platform could force a national conversation about the marketing of cancer, dying and dying out loud. Her unvarnished reportage was not without its critics. I sat with her in a hospital over the course of a few terrible days in January 2014, and she told me she wouldn't be couldn't be silenced because her advocacy was the legacy she wanted to leave her husband, Clarke, and their children: Paige, 16; Colin, 13; and Tristan, 8. Lisa needed them to always know that, to paraphrase her Twitter bio, she did as much as she could for as long as she could. I became friends with Lisa in the summer of 2010, after she wrote an essay about her reaction to a memoir I had written about my late mother. But what started on Twitter blossomed in the real world: We had lunches and coffees and playdates with the children. There were marathon texting sessions about the banalities of motherhood and life: birthday parties, school pictures, finding time for Pilates, an appreciation for caffeine. We discussed books we loved and didn't, we gossiped about other people on Twitter, we talked about dying. She said she wasn't sad for herself; she was sad for and worried about her children. They guided every decision she made and informed each word she typed. Over the last week, I have spent hours rereading her work. Words that were always powerful are now achingly poignant. The day after she died, I clicked on her "About Me" page for the first time. She gave a one pager on the progression of her disease, and thanked her husband, children and doctors. She signed off: "I'm glad you are joining me. Everything is better with a friend."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Senator Amy Klobuchar's nascent campaign is fending off a stream of stories from former staffers that she was a volatile, highhanded boss who often demeaned and humiliated people who worked for her. She has one of the highest rates of turnover in the Senate. "Am I a tough boss sometimes? Yes," she said in a recent CNN forum. "Have I pushed people too hard? Yes." The presumption that tough bosses get results and fast compared with gentler leaders is widespread, and rooted partly in the published life stories of successful C.E.O.s. Bobby Knight, the Indiana University basketball coach and author of "The Power of Negative Thinking," was notoriously harsh, and enormously successful. So was Steve Jobs, the co founder of Apple. But researchers who study organizations, productivity and leadership styles attribute the achievements of such figures to exceptional ability. The research thus far has found no evidence to support the axiom that tougher bosses get better results. "We've been looking for it," said Rebecca Greenbaum, a professor in Rutgers University's school of management and labor relations, who formerly worked in the insurance industry. "We'd love to find out if there are good aspects of abusive leadership. There's been a lot of research. We just can't find any upside." The study of leadership style has blossomed in the last decade. Psychologists, business analysts and organization experts have conducted all kinds of investigations, from anonymous surveys of employees to studies of worker behavior over time. Various measures of productivity, performance and well being have been called upon. By nature, any study of group dynamics in a real world setting is plagued by design limitations, including the lack of a control group and the hidden personal grievances of the employees. But the vast majority of findings point to the same conclusion: Bullying bosses tend to undermine their own teams. Morale and company loyalty plunge, tardiness increases and sick days are more frequent. "Productivity may rise in the short term," Dr. Greenbaum said. "But over time the performance of the staff or team deteriorates, and people quit." In Ms. Klobuchar's case, any discussion of leadership style invites suspicion of a double standard based on gender. That double standard certainly exists; in many situations, male leaders are given greater leeway to be tough. Still, women are no less likely than men to be abusive as bosses, across all levels of management, although they are slightly more likely to be targets of workplace abuse, researchers find. If an abusive management style provides so little benefit, then why do so many abusive managers and bosses rise in organizations? One clue comes from social psychologists who have studied how teams of people behave and solve problems in the absence of a hierarchy. Leaders tend to emerge organically, and common traits of those who assume the role include boldness, a healthy ego and a sense of entitlement. Confidence, too: People who take charge in these simulations tend to be decisive, making calls from the gut, and quickly. A series of studies led by Jennifer Overbeck, an associate professor of management at Melbourne Business School, has found that, in simulated work groups, people gave high ratings to leaders who made quick decisions, particularly in moral dilemmas. It's not that snap decisions were correct more often than deliberate ones. Rather, they were perceived to be more correct, and the decision maker seemed more morally assured than other potential leaders. People tend to give individual leaders the benefit of the doubt, at least for a time. Dr. Overbeck calls this tendency the "leader's rosy halo." The presumption is strong enough that people in power "do not need to be transparent regarding their decision making processes to be seen as moral and to receive support from their subordinates," Dr. Overbeck wrote in a journal article. As these individuals rise through the ranks, they internalize the belief that they are natural, morally instinctual leaders. This belief, in turn, affects how they view the people under them. In a 2013 study, Dr. Overbeck and Vitaliya Droutman of the University of Southern California randomly assigned 50 students to groups, to be managers or team members. The researchers administered a series of standard tests to gauge how the participants judged their own traits and others'. The managers were aware of their own personal strengths and weaknesses, but also concluded that their staff members "shared their negative, but not their positive, traits and feelings." That is, managers often misread team members' emotions as being in line with their own "She's as frustrated with herself as I am" even though this often is not the case. "We argue that when someone powerful is in a group, they see themselves as representative of that group, and it can be difficult for them to disentangle what the group wants from what they want," Dr. Overbeck said in a phone interview. "They use themselves as a reference point." Abusive supervisors come in many flavors, including the insecure, the overmatched and the garden variety sadist who picks on underlings solely for the pleasure of exercising power. But even mini tantrums and put downs can be counterproductive, undermining the efforts of a normally civil person and an otherwise effective boss. "What our findings suggest is that this kind of behavior is typically not premeditated," Dr. Greenbaum said. "It comes out when people fail to control themselves, and it is worse when supervisors have a bottom line mentality that they'll do anything to achieve their goals." A boss who "demands" excellence is no more likely to produce it than the boss who requests or nurtures it, and likely less so, the research suggests. Demanding excellence often is just a handy excuse, said Bennett Tepper, a leading researcher of the effects of abusive leadership at Ohio State University's Fisher College of Business: "That kind of explanation, after the fact that I hold people accountable it's lame. Well, me too. A lot of us do. That doesn't mean we belittle people and scream at them."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Do You Want to Die in an I.C.U.? Pandemic Makes Question All Too Real Earlier this month, Cheryl Goldman, a retired high school teacher living on Long Island, called her son, Edo Banach, in Maryland. It seemed a routine chat until Ms. Goldman announced that if she became ill with Covid 19, she would decline a ventilator. "I'm her health care proxy," said Mr. Banach, who happens to be the president of the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization. "Her perspective was, what's the point? In all likelihood it's not going to help, and she'd be taking a vent away from someone else." At 69, Ms. Goldman has emphysema and already relies on supplemental oxygen. She told me that she'd been following the news, including the grim statistics for older adults with chronic illnesses who require ventilators during extended stays in intensive care. In such cases, "the number who leave the hospital is low, and it's lower for someone with health problems like me," she said. She also feared being separated from her family during a hospitalization and wanted, instead, to remain at home with hospice care. "It's a pragmatic decision." Mr. Banach, leading the response of about a thousand hospices nationwide that are facing heightened demand and bracing for worse, appreciated her forthrightness. "It's the kind of conversation everyone should be having with their loved ones," he said. In the best of times, it can be tough to get Americans to discuss and document their end of life wishes. Depending on the study, a third to two thirds of adults haven't drafted advance directives, the documents that outline which medical treatments they would accept or refuse and designate a decision maker to act on their behalf if they're incapacitated. "People think, I'll deal with it in the future," Mr. Banach said. But for thousands of older adults, the future may have arrived. To date, there's no clear evidence that older people are more apt to contract the new coronavirus, said Dr. Douglas White, a critical care specialist and the director of the Program on Ethics and Decision Making at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. "What we do know is that older individuals are more likely to experience very severe disease if they do become infected," he said. "The data are sobering." A decision making guide developed by the national hospice group, based on early data from China, points out that the Covid 19 mortality rate rises with age through the 60s and 70s; it tops 20 percent among people in their 80s who have tested positive. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, close to 80 percent of early coronavirus deaths occurred among those over 65. That's partly because most older adults have chronic conditions heart or lung disease, diabetes, high blood pressure known to intensify the virus's effects. And they have less physiologic reserve "less ability to rebound from an overwhelming illness," Dr. White explained. When seniors and their families engage in what's called advance care planning, they often focus on the D.N.R. question whether patients would want to be resuscitated after cardiac arrest. But because Covid 19 is a respiratory disease, the more pressing question will likely be whether a hospitalized patient who's seriously ill will accept intubation and ventilation. That initially involves a tube inserted down the throat, connected to a ventilator that pushes air into the lungs. When a patient has spent two weeks on a vent, doctors commonly perform a tracheostomy, creating a surgical opening in the windpipe that replaces the swallowed tube. Long before the virus erupted, among people over 66 who spent 14 days in an I.C.U. on a ventilator, 40 percent died within a year of discharge. Now, "those numbers are too rosy for Covid," Dr. White said, citing findings from Italy and Britain, where more than half of older patients on prolonged ventilation died. A just published JAMA article looked at coronavirus patients admitted to Northwell Health hospitals in and around New York City. Excluding those still hospitalized after the monthlong study, the mortality rate among patients over age 65 exceeded 26 percent, and almost all patients over 65 who needed mechanical ventilation during that period died. That data can prompt frank exchanges. "If a patient is elderly and has significant medical issues, I'll explain that a large proportion of people who become ill with Covid 19 and need a ventilator unfortunately will not survive," said Dr. Kosha Thakore, the director of palliative care at Newton Wellesley Hospital in Massachusetts. Moreover, longevity is not the only priority, and sometimes not the primary one, for older people considering medical options. What will life look like if they do survive? "After elderly people have been on a ventilator, they've often already developed physical debilitation, difficulty swallowing, bedsores," Dr. Thakore explained. They frequently cycle in and out of hospitals with complications. Their deficits can be physical or cognitive or both, and are often permanent. Even pre Covid, after 14 days on a ventilator in an I.C.U., only about one in five older discharged patients went home. "The others end up in nursing homes," Mr. Banach said. "Some may later go home, and some will die in the nursing home." Though older adults with Covid 19 may not require hospitalization or ventilation, the decisions they face if they do highlight the importance of reviewing advance directives. A new study in JAMA Internal Medicine questioned 180 patients over age 60 with serious illnesses; most said they would trade a year of life if that meant they could avoid dying in an I.C.U. on life support. But that kind of aggressive care is exactly what they might receive. "If you don't let the system know your wishes, the system takes over," Mr. Banach pointed out. Family members can feel lingering trauma if they're forced to make life or death decisions for loved ones who never discussed what they wanted. "Many older patients we've encountered with Covid 19 have opted not to undergo ventilation and an I.C.U.," Dr. White said. "No one should impose that on a patient, though if there's true scarcity, that may arise. But patients might choose it for themselves." If older people have paperwork stashed in a drawer or safe, now is the time to unearth it and see if their instructions still reflect their values. If so, scan the document and send it to family members and doctors, Mr. Banach advised. But for those who never got around to drawing up advance directives, appointing a decision maker and telling that person what's acceptable and what's not is ultimately more crucial. In emergencies, doctors probably won't flip through documents to learn patients' wishes; they'll ask family or friends. Mr. Banach's counsel: "Take out your phone and do a video selfie: 'This is who I am. This is the date. This is what I want.' Send it to your friends and relatives. That's enough." Many hospitals and health systems have developed workarounds when documents require signatures or witnesses; some are also doing palliative care visits via telemedicine. Dr. Gregg VandeKieft, a palliative care specialist with Providence Health on the West Coast, recently spent half an hour on Zoom talking with a patient's sons about her end of life care. Dr. VandeKieft and a nurse were in Olympia, Wash.; one son was in Alaska and two elsewhere in Washington. "It felt not all that different than if we'd been in the same room," Dr. VandeKieft said. The coronavirus pandemic may spur more such conversations. In Los Angeles recently, Brie Loskota and her husband contacted close family friends, a couple in their 70s, asking about their well being, offering to FaceTime, and then inquired: "If you got sick, is there anything we should know?" The older couple, one of whom has a neurodegenerative disease and has already experienced mechanical ventilation, responded that they both wanted to avoid hospitalization and to die at home. "It was a relief to be told," said Ms. Loskota. "It's not less heartbreaking, but it lets us make a decision with them in mind. It led my husband and me to talk about it for ourselves." They're in their 40s and have not yet drafted advance directives. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Matt Reeves in 2017. On "The Batman," he said, "My ambition is for it to be incredibly personal using the metaphors of that world." These are unusual times for everyone, including Matt Reeves. Best known as the director of sci fi action films like "Dawn of the Planet of the Apes" and as a creator of TV's "Felicity," he's returning to television as an executive producer of the Amazon series "Tales From the Loop." That show, which was created by Nathaniel Halpern and released on Friday, offers a blend of speculative fiction and character drama (featuring Jonathan Pryce) as it tells interlocking stories set in a town that is home to an immense and enigmatic science experiment. In an unconventional twist, "Tales From the Loop" is adapted from paintings by the Swedish artist Simon Stalenhag. Reeves is also the director and a writer of "The Batman," the latest reboot of that DC comic book vigilante, with Robert Pattinson in the title role. As with numerous other film productions, work on "The Batman" was suspended last month amid the coronavirus outbreak. Reeves, 53, has remained with his family in London, where they are sheltering in place. In a phone interview on Tuesday, he said he was eager to get back to work while remaining mindful of more immediate priorities: "There are certain moments where you realize, OK, what do we have to do to make our loved ones and the people that we care about safe?" Why did you decide to adapt a collection of paintings? There's something incredibly cinematic about Simon's vision. They're filled with not only a sense of wonder but also a sense of melancholy. That's exactly what we connected to. How did you then turn those paintings into a TV series? Nathaniel saw an opportunity to do something that was like a sci fi "Winesburg, Ohio," the Sherwood Anderson book, and that's one of my favorite books. The whole idea that each chapter is a beautiful, stand alone short story and when you read the whole thing together, there's a sweep of ideas, of the character George Willard's coming of age. We talked a lot about "Our Town." Jonathan Pryce is like the Stage Manager in "Our Town," and he's introducing you to these tales. Were you trying to avoid the tropes of other science fiction shows that are more pessimistic about humanity and technology? From the beginning, the intent was that it wouldn't be dystopian. It was never meant to be like "The Twilight Zone" "It's a cookbook!" where the big narrative twist is the thing. We don't have twists. There's narrative, but it provides opportunities to explore through a sci fi lens the mysteries of our lives. Did you always want to make science fiction and fantasy? I came to genre kind of late. When I first began filmmaking, I thought I wanted to make humanist, Hal Ashby type comedies. That opportunity didn't really present itself for me. But then I discovered how the surface of genre can be a way to use metaphors to do very personal work. Can you bring a Hal Ashby touch to your big budget tentpole movies? I've been incredibly lucky in each of the genre films I've done. The "Apes" films were very personal to me. When I came in on "Dawn," my son was about 1 1/2 , and just starting to speak, and there was an urgency with which I could see that he had the intelligence to speak but not the actual facility yet. That was the way Andy Serkis played Caesar, the intelligent chimpanzee , he was aching to speak. There was something there about human nature and animal nature and the war between them. That was the thing that I really connected to. Is that really possible on a film like "The Batman," where many masters have to be served? Of course these things have to be mined in a way that can make these companies money. You never know whether the people in charge of those I.P.s intellectual properties are going to be open to your vision. But if they weren't, I wouldn't have done "Batman." I was like, look, there have been some great "Batman" films and I don't want to just make a "Batman" film. I want to do something that has some emotional stakes. My ambition is for it to be incredibly personal using the metaphors of that world. It feels like this really odd throwback to the movies I came up on from the '70s, like "Klute" or "Chinatown." I'm not saying we're achieving anything like that. Those are masterpieces. But that's the ambition. What was it like to have a production of that size halted by a global pandemic? The whole thing is quite surreal. As much as we wanted to proceed, we wanted to make sure we were safe. We didn't want anyone on our crew to get sick. But there was a crew member who actually got it, an incredible dialect coach named Andrew Jack, and he passed away. We were all in utter shock and heartbroken. It's been weeks since we shut down, so I don't think it was passed among the crew. But it's very, very upsetting. When something like that happens, can you even begin to contemplate going back to work? Of course, I want to come back when the time is right. I've worked on a few things where, for various reasons, you have to stop for a moment a cast member gets sick, and you have to shut down for a week. You can take stock of what you've done and prepare for what's coming. I don't think it's a moment where I'm going, "Why aren't we shooting?" I'm thinking, "There are bigger things." Do you think the demand for this kind of escapism will be even greater when audiences are finally able to see it? I hope so. With "Tales," and what we're trying to do with "Batman," is create just enough distance so that you can have the fantasy of saying, wow, what if I could experience that one impossible thing? You have a level of wish fulfillment. But it connects to your life in a way that doesn't feel entirely like an escape. It can really touch you, but it gives you just enough distance that you don't have to feel the pain of it too much.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Fraternity members at Louisiana State University adhere to age old rituals, shrouded in secrecy, that dictate how they gather, greet each other and initiate their young pledges. But when they return to campus in the fall, one ritual will be drastically different: They will face much more severe consequences for dangerous hazing incidents. In May, eight months after the death of Maxwell Gruver, a freshman pledge at the university's now banished Phi Delta Theta fraternity chapter, Gov. John Bel Edwards of Louisiana signed into law an anti hazing bill that would make it a felony for those involved in hazing that resulted in death, serious bodily harm, or life threatening levels of alcohol. And students found guilty could land in a Louisiana jail for up to five years. The new law represents an important departure for Louisiana, which once had some of the most lenient anti hazing laws in the nation. But it also reflects renewed efforts around the country in state legislatures, inside courthouses and on campuses to prevent the hazing injuries and deaths that have plagued college campuses for decades. "Realistically, the answer is regulation and reform," John Hechinger, the author of "True Gentlemen: The Broken Pledge of America's Fraternities," said during a panel on Greek life last week at The New York Times Higher Ed Leaders Forum. "That is really the only possibility." There has been at least one school related hazing death each year in the United States since 1961, according to Hank Nuwer, a Franklin College journalism professor and the author of multiple books on hazing. Most, but not all, have occurred during fraternity initiation events. But in 2017, four students, including Mr. Gruver at L.S.U., Tim Piazza, a 19 year old at Pennsylvania State University and Andrew Coffey, a 20 year old at Florida State University, lost their lives in hazing relating incidents. Mr. Coffey died on a fraternity house couch after drinking an entire bottle of bourbon during Big Brother Night. In each case, multiple students were charged. This fall, Penn State President Eric J. Barron, who appeared on the panel with Mr. Hechinger, said that the incident on his campus had been a "horrible tragedy," but one that had spurred new interest in reform. This past year, Dr. Barron banned 13 organizations from his campus and instituted 15 reforms, including switching disciplinary oversight of the institutions from a Greek governing council to university administrators, requiring newcomers to take a pledge about their actions inside their organizations and deferring the initiation process for freshmen until later on in the school year, so they can develop new friends and interests before being faced with hazing. College administrators are also beginning to look at the problem collectively. At a meeting in Chicago this spring, representatives from 31 colleges and universities explored ways to garner more cooperation from national Greek organizations, which can resist university oversight. Dr. Barron is pushing an online safety database that will record incidents at chapters around the country, indicate which institutions are doing exemplary work in their communities and which are experiencing alarming trends. Penn State and many other universities already have, or are instituting, their own report cards. The high profile nature of the cases is also impacting state capitals. Pennsylvania, like Louisiana, is expected to soon pass an anti hazing law that would make death by hazing a felony. New Mexico has also been exploring the idea. In Tennessee, state representative John DeBerry Jr. floated a bill that would ban fraternities altogether in the state. Mr. Hechinger says fighting to make fraternities safer is probably a better use of critics' energy, as it is unlikely that fraternities will be banned on public campuses where they are powerful. "If we were going to create a higher education system from scratch, would we have organizations that year after year kill a student? Probably not," he said at the conference. "But they are very ensconced in higher education, and if you try to do some kind of ban, which is often what people are asking, you run the risk of underground behavior."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
MALIBU, Calif. The stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway that slices through Malibu is America's premier automotive fashion catwalk. Gaggles of exotics Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Bentleys regularly strut this pavement. Now, electric cars have become a new kind of status symbol on the highway. Few on this car crazed strip seemed to realize the white Porsche motoring silently between two Los Angeles County Sheriff cruisers last week. Maybe it's because 911s outnumber palm trees here, or wary drivers were focused on law enforcement. Pity. There's only one of its kind on the planet. To see the Porsche Mission E Cross Turismo concept driving in the wild is the equivalent of catching Bigfoot riding a unicorn at an In N Out Burger drive through. Porsche airfreighted its fully electric concept vehicle from Stuttgart, Germany, to Malibu for four American automotive journalists to experience on a cloudless California day. I drew a long straw. It is not a production car, although the production sport sedan version will arrive in late 2019. But driving the crossover like Cross Turismo offers a chance to read the tea leaves, and perhaps get an idea if the Mission E program will spawn true Porsches or merely Tesla wannabes. It is worth wondering about. Tesla's Model S sedan was introduced almost six years ago, and now with a fleet of models, the company will sell its 200,000th vehicle this year. When Porsche showed off the Mission E sport sedan concept at the 2015 Frankfurt auto show, it stunned the crowd, and the automotive press quickly called it "the Tesla slayer." To that, Porsche's Stefan Weckbach simply says "No." Mr. Weckbach, the vice president of Porsche's battery electric vehicle program, is adamant that the Mission E "must be a Porsche first." "It must have repeatable and sustained performance," he said. "It cannot sacrifice performance." For me, there would not be much time to test that performance. The ground rules said I would have no more than two hours, and the distance would be capped at 12 miles. And no damage could be done to the car. Fair enough. The equipment powering the Cross Turismo is certainly Porsche. Most concept cars have meager power sources to crawl across auto show stages, but the Cross Turismo's drivetrain employs early Mission E prototype motors and batteries, although they are governed by software to produce less than the production car's anticipated 600 horsepower. (Torque inquiries are politely but firmly dismissed, though Mr. Weckbach said, "You will be happy.") Charging ports grace both front fenders, and wireless charging is being discussed. Because Porsche built the concept without lightweight materials, it is about 1,100 pounds heavier than the undisclosed production weight of the Mission E sport sedan. The back seat is "optical" which is to say, it just looks like a seat, but isn't one yet. The 90 kWh lithium ion battery bigger than the base 75 kWh batteries in Tesla's Model S and Model X S.U.V., but smaller than their available 100 kWh options lies flat beneath the passenger compartment, yet a high console with storage divides the seats, front and rear. Porsche says it will be good for more than 300 miles of range. I would have only 12 to try it out. I have driven many deliriously expensive cars. Nothing is more exciting yet terrifying than driving a one off concept. My first task was backing up in tight quarters, with no rearview camera and fixed mirrors that were set poorly for me. Gulp. Fortunately, the deputies' cruisers (they would accompany me on my test drive, since the car wasn't licensed and met no safety regulations) brought traffic to a halt so I could glide silently onto the highway. There was no rock star reaction. Maybe the Cross Turismo looks too much like the offspring of Porsche's Panamera sport sedan and a Macan crossover. Or maybe the annoyed motorist in the Nissan Rogue was just late for brunch. Performance is often equated to sound, but of course the Mission E produces precious little noise. Stab the throttle and the dual motor system sings a lower note than a Tesla. Accelerating quietly into the hills above Malibu, Mr. Weckbach, riding shotgun, smiled. "Silence," he said, "is the new power." The car was electronically limited to 50 miles an hour, but I repeatedly dropped away from the lead patrol car and mashed the go pedal to assess power delivery. Despite the concept's porky build weight and the software leash on the powertrain, it pulled hard in the soul satisfying, torquey way of electric cars. The conclusion? The concept felt heavy, but minus 1,100 pounds, the production car should be lithe and wickedly fast. For optimal cornering, the all wheel drive system has the ability to vector torque to the wheel that needs it. Rear wheel steering is planned. Plenty of tight turns offered the chance to assess handling, though I'd be lying if I claimed to have four wheel drifted through them. (Who wants to be famous for wrecking a priceless automobile?) The battery pack under the floor provides a low center of gravity common to such electrics, even though the Cross Turismo rides a touch high, in proper crossover fashion. With less weight to carry into corners, the production car should always bring a smile. One request to the development team: Keep the hefty steering weight as is. I asked Mr. Weckbach if the electric lineup will maintain the Mission E name. "We are not discussing that right now," he said. I pressed him on pricing. It has been widely expected to run close to the Panamera, which begins at 85,000 about 10,000 more than the base price of a Tesla Model S 75D. "We are not discussing that now," he said. Whether Porsche likes to admit it, Tesla will be its measuring stick. Mr. Weckbach's team bought electric cars, including a Model S, to drive and study, even if the Porsche's particulars will differ from the Tesla's. Mission E models lack a third row of seating, something Model S and X offer. And semiautonomous driving technology like Tesla's Autopilot appears to be a lower priority, perhaps not surprising given Porsche's emphasis on the driving experience. And keeping that experience going over road trip distances will be another way that Porsche must contend with Tesla. Tesla has the head start, but Porsche, with its emphasis on performance and racing heritage, appears to be taking a different route. Perhaps it was no mistake Mr. Weckbach would name drop a certain famed 13 mile German track that has quickly sent Teslas into a performance sapping safe mode. Asked if a hard driven Mission E can avoid such a difficulty, he simply said, "Our cars are testing on the Nurburgring." Silence or at least brevity is powerful indeed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
The Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The New York Times. It covers the latest in pop music criticism, trends and news. On each of the last two weekends, Beyonce headlined the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, performing a set that was huge in ambition and historical scope and stunning in execution. Much has been made of the fact that the singer, 36, has yet to win an album of the year Grammy, but these performances established her on a higher plane of achievement.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.