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Sergio Cordova joined other volunteers in taking food and supplies to a group of asylum seeking immigrants in Matamoros, Mexico. At the Border Town That the News Cycle Has Left Behind BROWNSVILLE, Tex. After long hours at his day job, Sergio Cordova was driving home to pick up supplies and clothing for the tired and hungry asylum seekers who were camped out just a few miles away, in Matamoros, Mexico, waiting to be let in. It was cold and raining and miserable. "Zero tolerance" at the United States border meant they were stuck outside. From behind the wheel of his silver Honda Pilot, Mr. Cordova pointed to a squat, beige building called Casa Presidente. "That's where they house the kids," he said as we cruised down Ruben M. Torres Sr. Boulevard. He was referring to the babies and toddlers seized by border agents from the hundreds of migrant parents they arrested for illegal entry last spring under President Trump's "family separation" policy. Miles down the road, he gestured toward a converted Walmart housing the older children, Casa Padre. Lester Holt of NBC, too. Gayle King of CBS. Tom Llamas of ABC. And so many other correspondents and producers that the hotels were brimming with them. But that was when Brownsville was riding the crest of The Algorithm as the trending topic of the day. No matter how you got your news, all you heard or saw or read about was the human strife and suffering along this stretch of the Rio Grande. By now, the logic of The Algorithm the recommendation systems that Twitter and Facebook use to serve up content has made itself felt even outside social media. In a race for ratings or clicks, news organizations are feeding our increasing addiction to ever faster streams of fresh information. A dopamine hit for every screen refreshing swipe. The eyeballs go to the hottest, newest bit of news, which can block out everything else until the next viral hit comes along. It can be as simple as "Horseface" and "I like beer," or as complicated as the crisis at the border, so long as it sticks to the basic elements required by The Algorithm. "It's 'What is new, now,"' said Brian Rosenwald, a historian of media and politics at the University of Pennsylvania. "It's stories that fit into the soap opera every day and have compelling video and pictures and black and white story lines." Once a narrative stops refreshing its plot, it loses its sex appeal and "its ability to cut through," Mr. Rosenwald said. "That's how you get Donald Trump and Kanye West in the Oval Office instead of Brownsville," he added. President Trump understands as well as anyone else that the news spoils go to whoever controls The Algorithm. Its rules aren't really so different from what drove the New York City tabloids that gave Mr. Trump a crash course in media manipulation back in the '80s and '90s, when he was hyping his next development, be it personal or business. It was Mr. Trump who brought The Algorithm to Brownsville in the first place when he pushed a "zero tolerance" policy that included separating children from their parents. The story had all the elements it needed to trend for a couple of weeks. There were photographs of children in cages, and the especially powerful shot by John Moore of Getty of a little girl sobbing as agents searched her mother at the border. The president poured on the gasoline of outrage by tweeting that his policy was the Democrats' fault, and his oldest son liked a post suggesting the children were crisis actors. Scores of them are still in American facilities as the authorities look for their parents, many of them deported. There are new worries that some may be put up for adoption, as The Associated Press reported. I had come to Brownsville to see what a crisis looks like when The Algorithm leaves it behind. It looks like Mr. Cordova's garage a makeshift relief center with racks of clothing and plastic bins containing over the counter medicines and canned goods. He and Mr. Benavides put it together on their own because, though they have full time jobs, they saw a humanitarian need going unfulfilled. Mr. Cordova said he has been able to keep the donations coming through Facebook and GoFundMe enough to maintain a tiny apartment with a kitchen near the bridge, where another volunteer, Brendon Tucker, cooks the meals. That night, there had been requests for ponchos, pants, feminine hygiene products all of which they loaded into bags and food, always food. We drove to the apartment to pick up the dinner Mr. Tucker had prepared roasted chicken with rice and took it, along with the supplies, across the Brownsville Matamoros bridge in a handcart as a cold drizzle fell. When we arrived in Matamoros, about a dozen migrants stood shivering beneath the overhang of an abandoned guard post. These groups have gathered here since the Trump administration installed guards midway across the bridge the very line of the border earlier this year to slow the influx of asylum seekers, who are legally entitled to a hearing at ports of entry. The tactic is being challenged in court. The group cheered and hugged Mr. Cordova, Mr. Benavides and Mr. Tucker, as they laid out the food and handed out the supplies. We stayed to chat and trade intel. Two sisters from Mexico ages 17 and 24 said they had left home because of "politics." Men who murdered their uncle had threatened the rest of their family, they said, and their parents urged them to flee. Wearing donated gray sweats and white sneakers, they told us that, on the way here by bus and on foot, they were stopped by men in black masks, who molested them. Later on, Mr. Cordova said he didn't have the heart to tell the sisters that they would be separated if they made it into the United States system. As the would be asylum seekers ate, there was talk of the caravan of thousands of Hondurans making their way toward the United States. What we didn't know was that, at around the same time, Newt Gingrich was on Fox News, saying the caravan would help the Republicans win in November. Once again, the border was good politics for the president's party. The next morning, President Trump tweeted that the caravan included "many criminals" and spoke about sending the United States military to "CLOSE OUR SOUTHERN BORDER!" It seemed The Algorithm was heading back this way. But for how long?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
On "Jeopardy!" he is all business, but James Holzhauer was laid back when he graduated from the University of Illinois in 2005. James Holzhauer Was Told to Smile to Get on 'Jeopardy!' He's Smiling Now James Holzhauer had been taking the online tryout for "Jeopardy!" for about six years before he was finally asked to audition in person. Determined to reach the "Jeopardy!" stage, Holzhauer solicited tips in an online poker forum: What could he do to get a spot on the show? "The number one piece of advice he got was just, 'Smile, look like you're having a good time,'" said Ben Yu, a longtime friend and fellow professional gambler. Yu imagined Holzhauer thinking: "I am going to do whatever it takes. I am going to smile as forcefully as I can to make sure these producers put me on." What is a spoiler? This story about "Jeopardy!" phenom James Holzhauer. The country has seen a lot of that strained toothy smile over the past month, but these days, Holzhauer, 34, doesn't need to put on a happy face to prove he belongs on "Jeopardy!" Since early April, he has been raking in cash at a faster rate than any other contestant in the show's history, making 1.7 million so far. He holds the top 12 spots for the show's highest single game winnings. His winning streak, now at 22 games, has fueled speculation that he could surpass the reigning all time "Jeopardy!" champ Ken Jennings, who won 2.5 million over 74 episodes in 2004. A "Jeopardy!" contestant wrote about what it was like to go up against Holzhauer. His run has become a welcome diversion for a country that could use one, and at a time when viral characters are created and forgotten in mere hours, the public's fascination with Holzhauer has lasted for weeks. That may be because his game show appearances, which are prerecorded, are parceled out in 30 minute chunks each day. (The show is currently airing its teachers tournament; Holzhauer returns on May 20.) He's also remarkably open to giving interviews, to journalists from mainstream news organizations, niche sports betting websites and everything in between. Modest in dress, spare with his words on camera and dispassionate each time he breaks records, he is the anti Kardashian of TV stars. "It's just a regular slacker story," said his 36 year old brother, Ian Holzhauer. "Except it's somebody who has a lot of really exceptional gifts." As a child growing up in Naperville, Ill., a western suburb of Chicago, James known as Jamie into adulthood was a math whiz. In 1989, when he was 4, The Chicago Tribune featured him in an article about gifted children, writing that his teacher was astounded by his arithmetic abilities and developed advanced classwork just for him. At 7, he was moved up to a fifth grade math class, and at his mother's urging he skipped second grade altogether, he said. A friend from the neighborhood, Laura Gaskill, said she remembered his quizzing her on square roots while walking home from school. In an interview, Holzhauer said that working with numbers made him feel the way book lovers do when they get lost in a fictional world. He said it made sense that he would gravitate toward the grid of numbers on "Jeopardy!" which he often watched with his grandmother, who immigrated from Japan to help take care of her daughter's family. He consistently got A's on math tests, and he was a star on his high school math team, his family and friends said. But he was a C student even in math because he often skipped doing his homework or going to class, reasoning he could use the time more productively. "There were times in school where I would say, 'I should go to class,'" Holzhauer said in an interview. "But I could make 100 playing online poker if I didn't go." What is life like for Ken Jennings and other former "Jeopardy!" stars? After graduating from the University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, Holzhauer said, he spent a year applying for jobs as an actuary, even though it was the exact sort of desk job he loathed. He played online poker to pay the bills, but as legal restrictions tightened around the game, it began to lose its allure, he said. He decided to focus on sports betting. His father, Juergen Holzhauer, a German immigrant who worked as an engineer for a chemical company for 32 years, didn't approve at first. "I always had a steady job, always worked for 'the man' from 8 to 5," his father, now 77, said in an interview. "So did my dad and most everybody I knew." In 2008, James Holzhauer moved with some friends into a house in Las Vegas where the living room sometimes had three television screens showing different sports games at the same time. That living room was as messy as one would expect from four internet obsessed young men. While visiting his son, Juergen Holzhauer remembered, he saw shoes all over the floor and empty food containers littering the surfaces. A housekeeper was hired to come every few weeks. On Tuesdays, James and a group of friends would play trivia at Quinn's, an Irish pub in Henderson, Nev. During one outing, said Jameson Painter, 35, one of those friends, Holzhauer vehemently disagreed with the rest of the team on the answer to a question. So he got up from his seat, asked for a new sheet of paper from the moderator and seceded from his friends to form a one person team he named "The Confederacy," Painter said. Holzhauer sat in a corner of the bar, nursed a diet soda and won by two points. Around 2011, Holzhauer said, he was feeling that he needed a break from gambling when he met his future wife on a summer program teaching English in Thailand. (Melissa Holzhauer, a classical literature scholar, had her own moment in the game show spotlight, taking home 28,800 on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" in 2014.) "His transition to adulthood was a slow one," his brother said. "When he got married and had a kid was where you really saw him grow up a lot." Around that time, Holzhauer said he got serious about his "Jeopardy!" dream. He read children's books to vacuum up bits of trivia and fashioned a practice buzzer out of a mechanical pencil. He made it to two auditions and got the call after the second one. When the time came, he deployed his strategy in front of the cameras: He went for the high value clues first, hunted for the Daily Doubles, and when he found them, bet everything he had. Contestants without a gambling background do not usually have the stomach for those kinds of high stakes bets, Holzhauer has said, but he did. Although he has gained a reputation for betting large amounts without flinching, Yu, the professional poker player and friend of Holzhauer's, said that big time sports betting was often stressful for Holzhauer. Some days, when he was living as a bachelor, he couldn't stand to watch games he had bet on and would ask a roommate to check whether he had won or lost. "If we were at dinner and a baseball game was on he would take the seat facing away from the TV," Yu said. "He just didn't want to deal with the stress." Yu, 33, said he and Holzhauer often discussed needing to take a break from gambling, but it kept drawing Holzhauer back because it was so profitable and he missed the action. So in 2016, he moved his family from Illinois to Las Vegas so he could get back to betting.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Marlon James's novel "Black Leopard, Red Wolf," an epic fantasy about a bounty hunter on the trail of a mysterious boy, on Tuesday was named one of the five fiction finalists for the National Book Award. James, who won the Man Booker Prize in 2015 for his novel "A Brief History of Seven Killings," is up against two debut authors, Kali Fajardo Anstine, for her story collection "Sabrina Corina," and Julia Phillips, for her novel "Disappearing Earth," about two sisters who are lured into a stranger's car and disappear in Russia's remote Kamchatka Peninsula. The two others, both of them previously Pulitzer finalists, are Susan Choi, for "Trust Exercise," and Laila Lalami, for "The Other Americans." The nonfiction finalists include "Solitary," the memoir of Albert Woodfox, a man who served more than four decades in solitary confinement, and "The Yellow House," Sarah M. Broom's memoir of her New Orleans family and how its members were scattered after Hurricane Katrina. They will compete with Tressie McMillan Cottom's "Thick: And Other Essays," Carolyn Forche's "What You Have Heard Is True: A Memoir of Witness and Resistance" and David Treuer's "The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present." The finalists in translated literature include works originally written in Arabic, Finnish, French, Hungarian and Japanese.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
This year, the cable channel Turner Classic Movies celebrated its 25th anniversary as the home where movie lovers can indulge in cinematic nostalgia. In some ways the network has kept many facets the same all movie presentations remain commercial free, for one, and fans continue to look forward to programming staples such as Summer Under the Stars (daylong marathons spotlighting movie stars) and "TCM Remembers" (an end of year in memoriam montage). But TCM has not been resistant to change over the years, and on Monday, it announced a historic one: Beginning Sunday, the film historian and preservationist Jacqueline Stewart will step in to introduce the long running weekly programming series Silent Sunday Nights. While in the past prominent figures such as Ava DuVernay and Spike Lee have served as guest programmers, Stewart will be the network's first black host. (From 2016 to 2018, Tiffany Vazquez appeared on TCM as the channel's first woman and person of color to host.) Stewart, a professor at the University of Chicago specializing in black cinema and silent film history, might already be a familiar name (and face) to some hard core TCM enthusiasts: In 2016 she appeared alongside the longtime host Ben Mankiewicz to introduce the companion series to "Pioneers of African American Cinema," a box set of short and feature films from the early 20th century that she helped curate. She was also a panelist at the TCM Film Festival in 2018 and 2019. During a recent phone conversation, Stewart discussed film preservation in the age of streaming and how she plans to bring her expertise to her new role. These are edited excerpts from that conversation. So much is happening in terms of film distribution and streaming services Filmstruck was short lived, and films can seemingly disappear from any platform at any time. In what ways do you see your own work in film research and preservation playing into your job as a host on TCM? A huge percentage of silent films and classic Hollywood films, the nitrate film stock is so unstable. It is incredibly important to show its worth. What we have has to be kept in the best physical condition, no question. But we also have to do work to preserve these films in our consciousness, and that happens through screening and presenting them. So for the last few years, I've been very fortunate to have spaces across the South Side of Chicago where I have done film screenings. I have a series now where we showcase films that are by and about women and people of color. And the presentation of film, the giving people a space not just to watch them, but then to have a dialogue about them afterward is incredibly important to me. And I see that as a real connector between the scholarship that I do. I did a course a couple of years ago, a seminar. I taught it with Miriam Petty, who is a professor at Northwestern University now, about "Birth of a Nation," to mark the 100th anniversary of that important and problematic film. And we made a number of the screenings public we realized, people really need a space to talk about some of these films that are difficult to talk about. They need a space to talk about "Gone With the Wind" or some of the Shirley Temple and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson films. Having the opportunity to present films on TCM, for me, is just this really powerful extension of that work creating platforms for people to watch films and to have dialogue about them. I've been talking with the TCM team a lot about using this as a space to really show the diversity of filmmaking during the silent period. This is a period when a huge percentage of the filmmakers were women, and yet this is a history that I think viewers may not be aware of. There were women directors and writers in huge numbers who were contributing to the development of the medium. And many of the women who appear onscreen, some of the actors, were not just taking instruction from male filmmakers; they were co creators of their stories and their images. For example, one of the first things that I'm going to be presenting is the film "Cleopatra" from 1912: It's one of the very first feature length films made in the United States, just three years before "The Birth of a Nation." And it was made by Helen Gardner Picture Players; Helen Gardner was an actress and she's the first actor, male or female, to create her own production company. She was really committed to elevating film to the level of a high art during a period when people still felt that film was just a low class business, not an art form. She wanted to bring stories and bring production values that would get people to recognize that there was real beauty and dynamism in filmmaking. Moving forward, we'll feature films by women, some pioneers like Lois Weber or Alice Guy Blache. Based on your previous collaborations with TCM, what is your impression of the network's audience in general, and how is that informing how you will discuss these films? This is a knowledgeable audience. Having the opportunity to interact with TCM viewers at the festivals, they're a really passionate group of viewers, no question. But they are also viewers who are really interested in learning more about the films that they care about. I was part of a panel at this year's festival that was on the complicated legacy of "Gone With the Wind." And I guess I thought we might have to be a little bit mindful of the fact that people love this film, and may not want to hear a lot of criticism of the film, even though it should be obvious to everyone now that the film presents a romantic vision of slavery, which was very popular at the time. But when we were doing the panel, what I saw was that the TCM viewers there really wanted to delve into these issues, and they wanted to understand what Hattie McDaniel' s experience was like making this film. And they were very interested to know more about how African American audiences and critics responded to the films, and what the film meant for the future possibilities for black talent in Hollywood. I think the audience is really familiar with this history and looking to complicate it and to learn more. What I say to my students all the time is that it's not a matter of rejecting these films or you know, refusing to engage with films that have content that we find to be problematic. We can't do that. In fact, the responsible thing to do and I think the rewarding thing to do is to really delve into their complexities and to look at them as mirrors of their time, but also as mirrors to us today.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
A secret congregation of politicians, religious officials and scientists gathered near midnight on April 14, 2014, in the Holy Cross Church in Warsaw to exhume the heart of Chopin. No press was invited and word of the event did not filter out until five months later. The visitors did not open the crystal jar contained in a coffin inscribed with the composer's name. But they examined and photographed the enlarged organ inside, which had been pickled, probably in cognac. Later, experts would say a whitish film coating the heart pointed to a death from tuberculosis with complications from pericarditis. The archbishop of Warsaw blessed the organ before it was reinterred in a stone pillar bearing a verse from Matthew: "For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." The posthumous reputation of Frederic Chopin (1810 49) stands in stark contrast to his music. A lifelong agnostic, he or at least his heart is venerated like a relic in Poland. He never wrote an opera, but in his afterlife he continues to throw up scenes of high drama. In his works almost all for piano he dispensed with the programmatic titles that many 19th century composers used to evoke fairy tale landscapes and picaresque quests. Yet almost from the moment Chopin died, in Paris, legends attached themselves to his name like ivy. Read about new biographies of the composers Claude Debussy and Robert Schumann that are also featured on the cover of The Times Book Review this Sunday For a biographer, there's a lot to untangle. Alan Walker does so brilliantly in "Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times," a magisterial portrait of a composer who fascinated and puzzled contemporaries and whose music came to define the Romantic piano. (Walker uses the Polish variant of the first name.) Drawing on a wealth of letters and fresh scholarship, Walker creates a polyphonic work that elegantly interweaves multiple strands. He sketches key events in the history of Poland and portrays the burgeoning society of Polish exiles in Paris in a way that lends depth to Chopin's oft cited patriotism. Chopin left Poland just before the Warsaw Uprising in 1830. The bittersweet pathos that would infuse so many of his compositions based on Polish dances the mazurkas and polonaises here appears as the musical expression of survivor's guilt. 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. Another thread that runs brightly through the book concerns virtuosity, and Chopin's place in a music scene dominated by stage animals. This was, after all, the age of the devilishly gifted violinist Paganini and of piano wizards with outsize egos that divided critics and fans. With the exception of Liszt their names Alkan, Dreyschock, Kalkbrenner, Thalberg and many others have long been forgotten. But it was in opposition to these acrobats of the keyboard that contemporaries experienced Chopin's playing. Although gifted with prodigious technique, Chopin stood outside the "flying trapeze school" of pianism. "I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find anywhere more asses and virtuosos," he wrote in a letter that makes his views on the matter clear. "Is there a difference?" Illness is a recurring motif that shaped Chopin's career before cutting it short. Squeamish readers may blanch at the amount of blood flecked sputum the tubercular Chopin coughs up on the page, and at the procession of doctors with their leeches and milk diets. Unintentional damage came from well meaning women. It was Sand who organized the creative retreat on an unexpectedly rain sodden Majorca that weakened Chopin. Years later in 1848, a wealthy amateur pianist, Jane Stirling, led Chopin on a tour of England and Scotland that so exhausted the composer ill and weighing some 95 pounds that servants had to carry him from room to room. There's romance, too or at least the suggestion of it. Curiously it is here that Walker seems the least confident. The problem begins early, with teenage letters Chopin wrote to a male friend who had been a boarder at the school Chopin's father ran in Warsaw. "Give me your lips, dearest lover. I'm convinced you still love me, and I am as scared of you as ever," one missive reads. And: "Today you will dream that you are embracing me! You have to pay for the nightmare you caused me last night!" This episode brings on a bout of hand wringing in Walker, who allows for the possibility of a "passing homosexual affair" between the two men but considers it "far more likely" that Chopin's fervent letters were the result of "psychological confusion." Around the same time Chopin had fallen under the spell of the mezzo soprano Konstancja Gladkowska feelings that Walker thinks Chopin transferred onto his best friend. Chopin would be romantically linked with other women but his only lasting relationship was with the trouser wearing, cigar smoking George Sand. For most of its nine years their relationship was conducted in separate bedrooms, their lack of relations an open secret. Walker is probably right when he speculates that the gaunt Chopin, who erupted in coughing fits at the slightest exertion, wasn't much fun in bed. But it surely seems plausible, too, that his relationship with Sand devolved into platonic companionship because Chopin just wasn't wired that way. Whatever its physical foundation, the odd symbiosis between Sand and Chopin makes for some of the most novelistic and colorful chapters in the book. Much of the time the two artists were like ships passing in the night, Sand emerging from her writing vigils "like a bat coming out of its cave blinking in the sunlight," as Balzac put it, just as Chopin had his morning cup of chocolate and prepared to get down to work. It seems as if many of their most meaningful interactions occurred in her salon in front of an audience of gossipmongers. Fastidious, aloof and touchy, Chopin kept even friends at arm's length. But he was also capable of reducing them to tears with comic impersonations at the piano and his letters show up his caustic wit. Walker offers insightful comments on some of his most important compositions with their pianistic innovations and expressive elegance. But while Chopin's music opens up emotional worlds it spells out nothing. The enduring fascination of Chopinian relics is also the subject of a shorter book by Paul Kildea. In his highly readable if disjointed CHOPIN'S PIANO: In Search of the Instrument That Transformed Music (Norton, 27.95), Kildea, a conductor and writer, takes on the fate of a humble upright piano on which Chopin composed many of his groundbreaking Preludes during his fateful sojourn on Majorca. As Walker shows in his biography, Chopin cared deeply about instruments to the point of identifying with them. (In a despondent letter from Scotland he compared himself to an old cembalo.) This piano, built by a Majorcan craftsman, gave Chopin "more vexation than consolation," according to George Sand. But it drew some of the most forward looking music from him. In 1911 the brilliant harpsichord pioneer Wanda Landowska discovered the piano languishing in the same drafty monastery where Chopin and Sand had stayed. Her effort to bring it to Berlin, its seizure by Nazi officers during World War II and its subsequent odyssey once again show the uncanny ability of Chopin to write operas posthumously.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Cancers of the colon and rectum have been declining in older adults in recent decades and have always been considered rare in young people. But scientists are reporting a sharp rise in colorectal cancers in adults as young as their 20s and 30s, an ominous trend. The vast majority of colorectal cancers are still found in older people, with nearly 90 percent of all cases diagnosed in people over 50. But a new study from the American Cancer Society that analyzed cancer incidence by birth year found that colorectal cancer rates, which had dropped steadily for people born between 1890 and 1950, have been increasing for every generation born since 1950. Experts aren't sure why. Rectal cancers are rising particularly sharply, far faster than cancers in other parts of the large intestine or colon. The American Cancer Society estimates about 13,500 new cases of colon and rectal cancers will be diagnosed in Americans under 50 this year, with more than 95,500 cases of colon cancer and nearly 40,000 cases of rectal cancer in all age groups. "People born in 1990, like my son, have double the risk of colon cancer and quadruple the risk of rectal cancer" compared to the risk someone born in 1950 faced at a comparable age, said Rebecca Siegel, an epidemiologist with the American Cancer Society and the lead author of the new report, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on Tuesday. And though the absolute risk is still small in younger people, she said, "They carry the risk forward with them as they age." It is the upward trend that is worrisome: The risk of colon cancer for individuals who were born in 1990 was five per million people in that birth group, up from three per million at the same stage of life for those born in 1950. And the risk of rectal cancer for those born in 1990 was four per million, up from 0.9 per million for those born in 1950. Dr. Thomas Weber, a professor of surgery at SUNY Downstate Medical Center who has served on the National Colorectal Cancer Roundtable and who was not involved in the new study, said the latest research confirms the problem is real and increasing. "There is no mistaking these dramatic increases, especially for rectal cancers," he said, noting that the number of new colorectal cancers among people under 50 each year exceeds the total number of new cases of less common cancers like Hodgkin's lymphoma. Young people with colorectal cancer run the added risk of getting a diagnosis later in the course of their disease, when the cancer may be less treatable, because doctors typically don't consider the diagnosis at such a young age. Kirsten Freiborg, who is now 27, complained to doctors repeatedly about having blood in her stool when she was in college, but was told she had internal hemorrhoids. She was finally given a diagnosis of advanced colon cancer a month before her graduation, when she was 22. "I still remember getting the phone call from the doctor who did the procedure, who was completely shocked, and said 'I would never have guessed that a 22 year old would have had cancer,'" said Ms. Freiborg, who was treated with surgery and chemotherapy and is now cancer free. Most colorectal cancers are considered a disease of aging, so any increase in young adults, especially when rates of the disease are on the wane in older people, is both baffling and worrisome, experts say. Colorectal cancer rates have declined over all in recent years thanks to widespread use of screening tests like colonoscopies, which can detect precancerous polyps that can be removed before cancer develops. These screening tests have not been considered practical for a younger population, and while other less invasive screening tests exist, doctors are hoping improved methods that will be easier to administer will be developed. Experts also attribute lowering cancer rates to changes in risk factors, particularly lifestyle changes like smoking cessation and healthier diets. Diets that include more fruits, vegetables and fiber and less red and processed meat are linked to lower colorectal cancer risk. Obesity and sedentary lifestyles are also associated with colorectal cancer, as are heavy alcohol use and chronic conditions like inflammatory bowel disease and Type 2 diabetes, all of which are on the rise. But experts are not entirely convinced these are the only reasons colorectal cancer is increasing among young people. While rates of cancers tied to human papillomavirus, or HPV, have been rising in recent years, that virus causes mainly cancers of the cervix, anus or the back of the throat, and only a small number of cases of rectal cancer. "The honest truth is nobody knows 100 percent why there is an increase," said Dr. Mohamed E. Salem, an assistant professor at Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center at Georgetown University. He said that he is older than about 60 percent of his patients and he is 42. "It's hard to blame it on obesity alone. We suspect there is also something else going on." Dr. Jason A. Zell, an associate professor of oncology at the University of California, Irvine, who did a study in 2014 that found increasing rates of colorectal cancer among adults ages 20 to 39 in California, said the big challenge is how to shape health policy. "By now we know the rates are going up, it's been reported several times," Dr. Zell said. "Now the question is, what do we do?" It found that in adults ages 20 to 39, colon cancer rates have increased by 1 percent to 2.4 percent a year since the mid 1980s, while rates declined over all among those 55 and older. Rates among adults 40 to 54 increased by 0.5 percent to 1.3 percent a year since the mid 1990s. Rectal cancer incidence rates among adults in their 20s increased even more sharply, rising by 3.2 percent a year from 1974 to 2013. And while rectal cancer rates have declined over all among people 55 and older since 1974, rates in people 50 to 54 increased between 1989 90 and 2012 13. By 2012 13, nearly 30 percent of all rectal cancers were being diagnosed in people under age 55, compared with 15 percent of all rectal cancers being found in this age group in 1989 90, the study reported. Many patients are so young at the time of diagnosis that they have not been screened by colonoscopy, which is recommended beginning at age 50 for people who are at average risk. The risk is higher among African Americans, and the American College of Gastroenterology recommends they start screening at 45. Those with colorectal cancer may experience warning signs, but the symptoms are typically vague, including general digestive complaints like diarrhea or constipation, cramping and abdominal pain. Tara Anderson, a 40 year old mother of four from Bowie, Md., had chronic constipation for years before seeking help at a free standing emergency room clinic in 2015 because she was in so much pain. There, a scan detected a tumor in her colon "the size of a tennis ball," she said. A gastroenterologist who examined her a year earlier merely told her to increase her intake of dietary fiber to ease her constipation, she said. Fortunately, she said, her disease had not spread. For Chris Roberts, who was 29 when he found out he had colon cancer, the first symptoms were weight loss and loss of appetite. "I lost about 20 pounds and I wasn't really trying to lose weight, but I just didn't enjoy eating," said Mr. Roberts, now 30. He had just moved to New York City and did not have a regular doctor, but was fortunate enough to find a doctor who was determined to make a diagnosis quickly and ordered several blood tests and an ultrasound scan that found tumors that had already spread to Mr. Roberts's liver. He has been treated with chemotherapy and had surgery in January to remove parts of his colon and liver. "I definitely want to get the word out: If you have symptoms that may be linked to cancer, colorectal cancer or any kind, get it checked out," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Hollywood tried to resuscitate two bygone series this weekend. Only one came fully back to life. Sony's "Bad Boys for Life" was far and away the top movie at domestic theaters this weekend, leaving Universal's "Dolittle" in the dust as it collected an estimated 59.2 million in tickets Friday through Sunday. That's just a bit less than the opening weekend "Bad Boys II" had in 2003, adjusting for inflation a remarkable start for a sequel being released more than 15 years later. "Bad Boys for Life" picked up an additional 38.6 million overseas this weekend, according to the studio. In the new movie, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence reprise their roles as Miami buddy cops, careening through a plot that has something to do with a drug cartel. The sequel offers a plethora of jokes about aging and a great many explosions though conspicuously absent is the director Michael Bay, who helmed the first two "Bad Boys" movies. "Bad Boys for Life" was instead directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. It received generally favorable reviews from critics, and currently holds a 76 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. (The new directors "blow things up real good," Glenn Kenny noted in his review for The New York Times.) Read our critic's review of "Bad Boys for Life." "Bad Boys for Life" is expected to net about 8.9 million more in ticket sales during the Monday holiday according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Already, the sales have been "particularly good in what continues to be an unsettled environment for sequels and remakes," David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a film consultancy, wrote in a weekend report. That movie, which casts Robert Downey Jr. as the titular animal whispering veterinarian, made an estimated 22.5 million in ticket sales Friday through Sunday. It's expected to sell around 7.5 million more in tickets during the Monday holiday, but it will be a very long road to profitability: "Dolittle" cost at least 200 million to make and market.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
This six story office building in Getty Square has 70,072 square feet, and space in it can be leased from five to 15 years. The property, built for Homes for America in 2005, has been newly renovated. Three floors are 12,273 square feet each, and another is 11,139 square feet. There is also a partial floor with 2,580 square feet, and a retail space with 3,000 square feet is available on the first floor. Brokers: Norman Bobrow, Johnathan Kershner and David Badner of Norman Bobrow and Company	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Starting in 2018, all eight "Harry Potter" films, and the coming films of the spinoff series "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them," will be seen on the NBCUniversal stations Syfy and USA, the company announced on Monday. NBC will also acquire the rights to additional Harry Potter source material to use at its Universal theme parks, an increasingly important source of income that NBCUniversal's parent, Comcast, has invested in heavily. The movies will also be available to run on NBC's broadcast network. Warner Bros., which owns the rights to the films, will move the basic cable TV rights to NBC from Disney, which played the movies on its network, Freeform. "J.K. Rowling's Wizarding World has captured the imagination of fans of all ages, from all walks of life, all over the world," said Bonnie Hammer, the chairwoman of NBCUniversal's cable empire. "I'm thrilled that our networks will be the home for this brilliant storyteller's magical creations for years to come."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Sara Bareilles Sang 'She Used to Be Mine.' Now Fans Are Making It Theirs. Sometimes, a song takes on a life of its own. Sara Bareilles says that when she wrote "She Used to Be Mine," the 11 o'clock number from her Broadway musical "Waitress," it seemed so insanely specific ("she is all of this mixed up and baked in a beautiful pie") that she felt self conscious performing it in concert. But audiences have a way of making decisions for themselves. The song, written for a pregnant, abused waitress, reflecting back on the dreams she did not achieve, has been claimed, unexpectedly, by men, by children, by singers of all sorts. "The range of who this song speaks to is much broader than I could have anticipated," Ms. Bareilles said. "The chasm between who we are, and who we thought we would be, is always something we're negotiating." Covers of the song caught my attention when a video of a gut punching version by a 14 year old boy from western Pennsylvania went viral in the fall. Then I started to notice it popping up on set lists. Heather Headley, a Tony winner for "Aida," put her version on a new album alongside standards like "Over the Rainbow." Just last week, Kathryn Gallagher, an actress in the cast of the Broadway bound "Jagged Little Pill," performed her own take, accompanied by a cello, at a Midtown bar, encouraged to do so, she said, by fans online. I asked my colleague, Jesse Green, the co chief theater critic for The Times, what makes the song so coverable. Its emotional content, he said: "It has a classic arc from sadness and self criticism to acceptance and triumph." And the music offers singers a chance to show off their voices. "You get breathy confessional head voice moments building to a belty chest voice climax," he added. Ms. Bareilles, who just finished her third stint leading the "Waitress" cast, clearly pays attention to the way the song has traveled since the musical opened nearly three years ago. "I think of my songs as my little children, and I want them to have big lives," she said. "This one is having a big life." Here are five of her favorite versions: Adrian Matthew, the 14 year old ninth grader from Blairsville, Pa., was working on the song with his voice teacher, when his mother pulled out her phone and started taping; she put the video on Facebook, and it caught fire it has now been viewed more than 3 million times. Ms. Bareilles said she had been in tears watching the video of Adrian sing. "Sometimes with children, we take for granted that they're not able to process a certain level of depth, but I think they are," she said. "I love that he was so free in his interpretation." How it is possible for a teenage boy to connect with the life experience described in the song? It's a question Adrian has been thinking about. "You don't have to be a middle aged woman who is pregnant and abused you can still feel it," he told me. "The way I relate to it there's been school bullies, or people making fun of me. I thought going from middle school to high school was going to be so easy, and I'd make so many friends, and then you get there and it's the opposite. The song made me feel that." Like many New York performers, Tiffany Mann wasn't making enough money acting, so for four years she had a survival job at Ellen's Stardust Diner, the Times Square tourist destination where the servers sing. It was there that she performed a version of "She Used to Be Mine" that a friend recorded and put on social media. "It's such an awesome story," Ms. Bareilles said of Ms. Mann. "She's singing, and people are busing tables around her it's so indicative of what is beautiful and unwieldy about New York City, where there is all this talent tucked into every corner." The first time Alba Reche was able to choose her own song on "Operacion Triunfo," a televised singing competition in Spain, she picked "She Used to Be Mine." "It was easy to see myself reflected in her words," she said in a telephone interview. "We all have stories in our past, and this song connects to some parts of my life." Ms. Reche, a painter from southeastern Spain, wound up becoming the runner up on the show; her version of the song was released in a collection of her performances; and she is about to tour Spain with her castmates. Among those who saw her interpretation online was Ms. Bareilles. His take is just an excerpt, but for Ms. Bareilles, it symbolizes something about the theater world she long idolized and is now part of. "I love the generosity of someone who is so beloved in this community singing a song from a different show," she said, adding, "It was incredible to be so embraced." Once a month at "Waitress," there is a post show karaoke night, when audience members put their names in a tote bag for a chance to sing a number from the cast album. The name drawn one night in September was Matthew Darren, who, it turned out, is no stranger to singing in front of audiences he was a contestant on Season 10 of "American Idol," then using the name Matthew Darren Nuss. He knew one song from the show "She Used to Be Mine" and felt it spoke to him. "That feeling of having lost myself in the routine of each day is all too familiar," he said. "Getting caught up in the unexpected curveballs life throws at us is so easy."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
JERICHO, N.Y. In a St. John's University English class the other day, 10 students tackled George Orwell's "1984" like generations of collegians before them. But while there was plenty of higher order thinking, the class and the students were technically still in high school. The college class is one of 16 being taught at Jericho High School here on Long Island, half of them added in the past two years through new partnerships with St. John's in Queens, Molloy College in Rockville Centre and the Rochester Institute of Technology. The Jericho students simultaneously fulfill their high school graduation requirements and, for a reduced fee, earn college credit. These so called dual enrollment courses have long been used in urban schools to provide some higher education to poor and minority students and encourage them to go on to college. But now many top suburban high schools are embracing dual enrollment as a way to challenge their brightest students and ward off senioritis once college applications are done. They say the college courses offer an alternative to the high pressure AP program, in which students receive college credits or advanced placement based on their performance on an exam at the end of the year. The courses are also attractive in the current economy because they award college credit for a fraction of the normal tuition cost. (At Jericho, for example, students pay 250 for a three credit course, while the cost for a St. John's student would be 2,934.) But in some suburban circles, parents worry that the rapidly expanding college courses could cause their high schools' rankings to drop in surveys, many of which factor in AP enrollment. Some students say the courses are looked down upon because they are run by local or community colleges, and the credits are often worthless at elite private campuses like the Ivy League's. "It's frustrating because people say, 'Oh, I thought you were smarter than that,' " said Neal Marshall, 17, a Jericho senior who chose the St. John's English course over AP literature because he wanted to analyze texts in depth (his class spent two weeks on "1984," which was assigned as summer reading for the AP class). "I don't learn in the way the AP test is formatted. I need time, and I like to look at things deeper." Nationally, there is growing interest in dual enrollment, as many states are overhauling their academic standards and exploring more learning options for top students, including research projects and internships. The colleges generally do not charge high schools to participate the courses are usually taught by high school faculty members and the programs have also helped strapped school officials tap into resources like college libraries and laboratories, and expand professional development for their teachers. The National Alliance of Concurrent Enrollment Partnerships, which has established national standards for dual enrollment programs, has accredited 48 programs since 2004, about half in the past two years. One of the oldest and best known programs, UConn Early College Experience, which started in 1955, has doubled enrollment to 7,306 students this year from 3,609 in 2005, in part as more suburban schools look beyond AP courses. "It's a sign of the times with everyone looking more closely at the transition from high school to college and how to get more students ready for college," said Gillian B. Thorne, the executive director. In New Jersey, Bergen Community College started a dual enrollment program in 2005 that now serves more than 800 students in 13 high schools, including Ridgewood and Glen Rock. "It's really taken off," said G. Jeremiah Ryan, the college's president. "I think some academically talented kids are just bored with senior year the prom, the football games, the yearbook and they're interested in getting an early start on their college year." At Jericho High School on Long Island, creative writing is one of the college credit courses offered. Glen Rock High School introduced its first college course this year in honors chemistry for those who did not want or need the grueling pace of AP chemistry; 24 juniors and seniors signed up. The school is now looking to add college classes in Mandarin and forensic science. "It's not to interest students in going to college the foregone conclusion here is that you're going to college," said James McCarthy, the principal. "It's: 'What are you going to do there?' " Jericho High School, with 1,224 students, offered a handful of college courses in the past through Syracuse University, Adelphi University and Long Island University's C.W. Post campus for students who had finished the entire sequence in, say, math or a foreign language, or who wanted to specialize in business. But beginning last year, the district made dual enrollment a priority, adding classes in engineering, architecture and creative writing. The goal is to develop a joint program with St. John's that would lead to an associate's degree and include study abroad and community service options. "Our kids far exceed the minimum high school requirements, and we're looking for ways to enrich their high school experience," said Henry L. Grishman, the superintendent. He said Jericho was in the process of contacting about 30 colleges popular with its students to learn if they accept local college credits. Meanwhile, the district has no plans to cut back on its 25 AP courses; a recent district survey found that 84 percent of students take at least one before they graduate. While the college courses are taught in Jericho's classrooms by its own faculty, the instructors and syllabuses are approved by the sponsoring college. Some, like St. John's, also set strict attendance requirements, and award credits only to students earning A's, B's or C's. Ken Darr, who teaches St. John's English and is now listed as an adjunct professor there as a result said the class emphasized analytical thinking and problem solving more than typical English classes at Jericho. He decided to assign "1984" after a free wheeling class discussion on where information comes from and how it shapes what people believe. "This is the real deal," he said. "I'll ask questions until they're sick of me, and then they'll start asking questions." Down the hallway, two dozen students in a Molloy College creative writing class were studying Norman Rockwell's work online for inspiration. Derek Hakim, a senior with a 3.2 grade point average who is also taking AP environmental science, said he signed up for the class to show college admissions officers that he could handle college work. "I didn't want it to look like I was taking joke classes my entire high school career," he said. "Everybody comes out of here with five, six, seven AP classes. It's very competitive, and I'm not always good at handling the most work." Brittany Grimaldi, a senior planning to major in English, is taking both Molloy's creative writing class and AP literature. "I love having all these different options," she said. "It gets you prepared, so when you go to college you're not blown away." Nathan Skurnik, who is headed to Emory University in Atlanta in the fall, said that between the AP and college courses he has taken at Jericho, he could start his freshman year with two dozen credits. "It makes it a lot easier," he said. "I won't have to cram as many courses in my first year, which is a tough year, a transitional year."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
Latest Project Mr. Karjakin recently started a chess school at Moscow State University, where he is a frequent lecturer and host of public lessons. "I tell people of all ages that if you're ready to spend five or six or more hours a day on chess, you will have a good future," he said. Next Thing After winning the Candidates Tournament in Moscow last March, Mr. Karjakin became a challenger to Magnus Carlsen of Norway, the reigning 25 year old world champion. The World Chess Championship match with Mr. Carlsen takes place in New York, starting Nov. 11, at the newly revamped Fulton Market building at the South Street Seaport. "I always have it in the back of my mind that I want to beat my opponent, but he is not my enemy," he said. Power Player Perhaps surprisingly, being an international chess superstar comes with many of the same perks as Hollywood A listers, including flashy sports cars and parties like the championship gala on Nov. 10 at the Plaza hotel, for which the actor Adrian Grenier will be the host. "Recently in Moscow it became a trend to add some intellectual chess flavor to V.I.P. social events," he said. "I like being part of it, but mainly to promote the game among different audiences."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Dr. Scott Gottlieb became commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration in 2017 with an ambitious plan to reduce cigarette smoking, a habit that kills nearly half a million Americans each year, by shifting smokers to less harmful alternatives like e cigarettes. But he was quickly embroiled in an unexpected crisis: the explosion of vaping among millions of middle and high school students, many of whom were getting addicted to nicotine. Dr. Gottlieb will depart at the end of this month, following his sudden announcement last week that he would resign, with his plans to toughen regulation of both vaping and smoking unfinished and powerful lobbying forces quietly celebrating the exit of a politically canny administrator who aggressively wielded his regulatory powers. Opponents are already swooping in, making their case to Congress and reaching out to the White House. A coalition of conservative organizations that oppose government intervention in the marketplace has harshly criticized Dr. Gottlieb's crackdown on e cigarettes. Retailers, including convenience store and gas station owners, are on Capitol Hill lobbying against guidelines Dr. Gottlieb proposed on Wednesday to restrict sales of most flavored e cigarettes to separate adult only areas and to require age verification of customers. And major tobacco companies are likely to seize on his departure to try to scuttle his long term plans to lower nicotine levels in cigarettes to nonaddictive levels and to ban menthol cigarettes, which make up more than a third of the cigarette market and dominate sales to African Americans. Some longtime officials inside the F.D.A. said privately that they fear these ideas could be delayed indefinitely. "There have been well intentioned commissioners before Gottlieb," said Jonathan Havens, a former F.D.A. tobacco lawyer now in private practice. "But they were not as good at capturing the attention of the nation, of the stakeholders. I think that momentum could very well stall on some of these products, or be lost completely." This pivotal moment in regulation of smoking and vaping comes just months after Altria, maker of Marlboro cigarettes and the nation's largest tobacco company, with a market value of 100 billion, bought a 35 percent stake in Juul, the nation's dominant vaping company whose valuation soared on the investment to 38 billion. Juul's alliance with Altria has given it access to a far more muscular, experienced political player. Altria gave 500,000 to Mr. Trump's inaugural committee, and spent more than 10 million on lobbying last year, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Dr. Gottlieb has expressed anger that Juul and Altria were negotiating their financial deal in secret, while each was making promises to the F.D.A. that he believes the deal broke. The investment in Juul means that Altria, with net sales of cigarettes and other products last year amounting to 25.4 billion, is now selling flavored e cigarettes, which it had told the F.D.A. it would stop doing, he said. "Proponents of vaping, who support these companies," he said in an interview, "ought to realize just how much these companies are putting their short term business objectives ahead of any long term goals for these technologies to be effective tools for adult smokers." The question is whether Dr. Gottlieb's successor will continue his policies and enforce them. On Tuesday, Dr. Norman E. "Ned" Sharpless, director of the National Cancer Institute, was named to replace him in an acting capacity and is in the running to succeed him permanently. Dr. Gottlieb supports Dr. Sharpless, who said he would continue his predecessor's policies. Alex M. Azar II, secretary of health and human services, said in a statement Wednesday that the administration backs closing off children's access to e cigarettes, while making them available to adult smokers trying to quit. "I'm hearing from people who are gleeful that he's gone," Liz Mair, a Republican political consultant who founded Vapers United, a group that supports vaping as a tool to stop smoking, said of Dr. Gottlieb. "I think people who are doing a victory lap right now better watch and see what direction things are moving in. It's not, 'Oh, the vaper wars have been won.' I wouldn't bank on that." Dr. Gottlieb's decision to leave just as his regulatory efforts on e cigarettes were coming to fruition has set off speculation that he had lost favor within the administration. Dr. Gottlieb denied that, noting that the administration's budget includes his request for the e cigarette industry to pay fees, estimated at 100 million, that would primarily go toward enforcing limits on flavored e cigarettes to protect teenagers. "What that tells you is I got broad buy in into that," he said in an interview. When he became commissioner in May 2017, his goal was to move smokers to less harmful alternatives, such as e cigarettes. That July, he allowed e cigarette companies to keep their vaping devices and nicotine pods on the market for an extra four years before they would have to prove their products would benefit public health. During that time, the F.D.A. also sought to limit nicotine in cigarettes to encourage smokers to switch to vaping. But his original plan grew untenable as evidence of Juul's popularity with teenagers mounted. In an interview, he recalled the morning in August 2018 when Mitch Zeller, the director of the agency's tobacco control unit, brought him the bad news: Vaping was up 78 percent among high school students and 48 percent among middle school students, with 3.6 million youths reporting they had used e cigarettes, according to the 2018 National Tobacco Youth Survey. A few weeks later, Dr. Gottlieb called youth vaping an epidemic, and gave e cigarette makers 60 days to show how they would curb youth vaping, or risk having their products pulled from the shelves. Juul pulled mango, creme and other flavors off the shelves but continued to sell them on line. The conservative leaders now fighting restrictions on flavored e cigarettes include Grover Norquist's anti tax group, Americans for Tax Reform, the R Street Institute and the American Legislative Exchange Council Action, a nonprofit. In a letter dated Feb. 4, a coalition of these and 13 other groups urged President Trump to "halt the Food and Drug Administration's aggressive regulatory assault on businesses who sell and consumers who rely on less harmful alternatives to cigarettes in the United States." Both Juul and Altria say they had nothing to do with this message to the president. But in recent years, both companies have donated to Mr. Norquist's group and to some of the other groups that signed the letter. In 2017, Altria made contributions to the Goldwater Institute, the Rio Grande Foundation, the R Street Institute, and the Independent Women's Forum, as well as Mr. Norquist's group, according to an Altria annual philanthropy report that did not specify the amounts. And Juul confirmed its contributions to Mr. Norquist's group, the R Street Institute, where Tevi Troy, Juul's vice president of public policy, and a friend of Dr. Gottlieb's, was once a board member, and to ALEC Action. Juul declined to disclose the size of its donations. Joshua Raffel, a spokesman for Juul, said the company had not asked the conservative coalition to write to the White House, but he acknowledged that one of the company's lobbyists or consultants might have discussed it with the organizations involved. Juul spokesman, Matt David, said the company backs the restrictions on sales in convenience stores. "We need category wide action to further combat youth usage of all e vapor products," he said. That includes, Juul said, requiring the age restriction for tobacco and e cigarette sales to be raised nationwide to 21, a legislative proposal that Dr. Gottlieb has supported. Public heath advocates remain dubious about Juul's commitment to curbing teenage use, with some saying the company wants to have it both ways: supporting groups that oppose restrictions on teenage access, while waging a public relations campaign that it never intended youths to use its product. Juul has also been ramping up its lobbying operation and political contributions. In 2018, it reported donations to the Democratic and Republican attorneys general associations, the Democratic and Republican governors associations, and other federal and state political committees. Juul's political action committee and affiliated individuals also gave a total of 215,000 to federal candidates and their committees, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Juul spent more than 1.6 million on lobbying last year, the center noted. Juul has also announced a partnership with the Black Mental Health Alliance, although it declined to give details, as did the alliance. The vaping company said its 35,000 donation to the black caucus' foundation involved buying a table at an event. Taking another page from the Big Tobacco playbook, Juul also started JLI Science, a website showcasing Juul funded research on electronic nicotine delivery system products. The Centre for Substance Use Research, based in Glasgow, Scotland, conducted several studies now listed on the site, including one that says adolescents who had never used an e cigarette had very low interest in using one in any of Juul's eight flavors, and another that concluded most adolescents had never heard of Juul. Representative Diana DeGette, a Democrat from Colorado who now heads a House subcommittee that oversees the F.D.A., said she favors banning the sale of all flavored e cigarettes. She also said in an interview that she plans to demand marketing documents that Juul submitted to the F.D.A., which has been investigating whether the company deliberately targeted youths. Senator Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, said on Sunday in an interview that he would press Dr. Gottlieb's replacement to follow through on restricting sales of flavored e cigarettes. Dr. Gottlieb had planned to ultimately force tobacco companies to cut nicotine to nonaddictive levels, and said in interviews that he believed he had the authority as F.D.A. commissioner to issue such a policy, despite profound cigarette industry opposition to cutting the ingredient that makes smokers crave their next smoke. Altria last year told the F.D.A. that it would oppose any effort to reduce nicotine levels in cigarettes, and disputed the agency's authority to do so. And it maintains two websites that cranked out thousands of virtually identical letters to the F.D.A. against nicotine reduction, signed by smokers. Dr. Gottlieb had also suggested pursuing a ban on menthol cigarettes, and said that the F.D.A. is now developing that rule, which would need to win White House approval. In comments on its website, Altria contends that a ban on menthol would damage public tax revenues generated by cigarette sales and lead to illegal black markets. The American Lung Association often cites a study indicating that more than three quarters of African American cigarette smokers said they prefer menthol cigarettes, compared to less than a quarter of white smokers. Menthol cigarettes make up 35 to 40 percent of the market in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Asked if this effort would continue without Dr. Gottlieb's leadership, a spokeswoman for H.H.S. declined to comment, but sent links to previous statements in support of the F.D.A.'s tobacco plans. Dr. Gottlieb has acknowledged it would take years to move a proposed menthol ban forward. "Big tobacco companies will want to educate whoever takes that position," said Marc Scheineson, a lawyer who works with smaller tobacco companies. He said that these groups would inevitably try to reverse any move toward a menthol ban, which he called "a Scott Gottlieb priority." "He was definitely running this train," Mr. Scheineson said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
It's possible, obviously, that he did so believing that McConnell would make sure the Senate never issued one. But Bolton's new position makes it easier for the House to compel him to testify. "By stating that he would testify if the Senate subpoenas him, Bolton has effectively waived any argument against testifying should the House subpoena him," the legal scholar Heidi Kitrosser told The Washington Post. Benjamin Wittes of Lawfare called Bolton's new position "a strategic opening for Pelosi." As Wittes explained, "A subpoena from the Senate is not, after all, legally different from a subpoena from the House." Even though the House has already approved two impeachment articles, there is nothing preventing it from calling a new hearing and then issuing a subpoena to Bolton. If he does appear, House Democrats could choose to amend the articles or leave them as they are. Either way, Democrats would know that the political case for impeaching and removing Trump had become even stronger than it already is. Impeachment, as I've written before, is an inherently political process. Democrats have little ability to influence Senate Republicans, at least in the short term. But they can and should do everything in their power to influence public opinion, which may well influence the makeup of the Senate and the occupant of the White House in the longer term. None Kurt Bardella, a former Republican congressional aide, for NBC News Think: There are two broad reasons why Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee should subpoena Bolton. First, because the House should continue its investigation into President Donald Trump's potential abuses of power if new and relevant information becomes available. And second, because symbolically, the House cannot allow the president or Republicans to dictate Congress's constitutional duties. None Byron York of The Washington Examiner argued that House Democrats could have done more during the impeachment hearings to make Bolton appear: In the end, Democratic leaders, who had characterized Bolton, Mulvaney, and others as critical witnesses, did not lift as much as a finger to compel their testimony. Pelosi and Schumer held strategy sessions, and, after the House passed impeachment articles, Schumer demanded that witnesses whom the House did not even try to compel to testify absolutely must testify before the Senate. None Lawfare's Susan Hennessey, on the idea that the House would continue to delay sending the articles of impeachment to the Senate until Bolton testifies: I'm generally really suspicious of procedural gamesmanship. But this strikes me as substantive and logical. Bolton was refusing to testify before, now he isn't, so go ahead and call him and find out what he knows and then send over the articles. If McConnell agrees to call Bolton in the Senate then the House can send the articles once they have reassurance the testimony will be heard. Withholding the articles was a risk, but the benefit was to preserve control as circumstances change. And now, circumstances have changed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
To the rippling sound of an aquarium pump, a small crab comes around the corner. It moves sideways, sticking close to the walls. But when it catches sight of a mussel laid as a reward at the end of the maze it has just walked the crab breaks into a skipping run, throwing itself on the treat with abandon. This crustacean, one of many shore crabs scooped by researchers from under a pier in Swansea, Wales, had just completed an intriguing feat: Without any guidance from researchers, it found its way to the end of a small maze. According to a paper in Biology Letters on Wednesday, shore crabs can learn to navigate a lab rat style maze and remember it weeks later. While crabs that have never seen the maze before bump around aimlessly, experienced crabs race to the finish line with no wrong turns. The study, one of the few to look at whether crustaceans can perform such feats, suggests that crabs are quite capable of remembering routes. Maze running could also be a way to measure the effects of changes in the sea, like ocean acidification and warming, on crabs' cognitive abilities. Crabs often clamber through complex landscapes in their daily lives, says Edward Pope , a marine biologist at Swansea University who is an author of the new study. So, it is not particularly surprising that crabs would be able to find their way through a maze and even be able to remember it later. What was surprising, however, was just how clear the results of the study were. During the first week of the experiment, no crabs got to the end of the maze without taking wrong turns, some of them detouring six or seven times. By week four, some could race to the end flawlessly. Even the worst performing crab took no more than three wrong turns. To see how the crabs would perform when there was no food in the maze, and thus no trace in the water of a snack to guide them, the researchers waited a couple of weeks and put the crabs back in the maze. They also tested crabs that had never seen the maze. "The conditioned animals all ran to the end of the maze expecting there to be food," Dr. Pope said. In less than eight minutes, they scurried to the maze's end. The inexperienced crabs, on the other hand, wandered around for up to an hour. Many never made it to the end. The study shows that even in as little time as one exposure to the maze per week, crabs can learn the way through, and furthermore, that they remember it as much as two weeks later. The fact that the ability seems consistent across individual crabs in other words, that it is something they can all readily do means that could be used in future studies about how their environment affects their behavior, a focus of Dr. Pope's work. It's unclear how crustaceans' behavior may change as the oceans grow warmer and more acidic. By having crabs run a maze in water that mimics predictions for the conditions in the year 2100, for instance, the researchers hope to gain insight into whether the changes will make them slower, more confused or different in some other way from contemporary crabs. The researchers are also considering building a more complex maze, to see what the crabs are capable of and there is of course the question of whether a crab will remember the route through a maze beyond the two weeks tested in these experiments. The crabs in the study, after their sojourn in the laboratory, were released where the researchers found them. Who knows? They could be scurrying around the ocean bottom off Swansea today, dreaming of mussels at the ends of mazes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
When Paige Anderson was 20 years old, she made a pact with her best friend, Grant Lowe: If the two remained single by age 30, they would get married. On June 8, 2014, the day after graduating from Knox College in Galesburg, Ill., Ms. Anderson (now Ms. Lowe) and Mr. Lowe wed. At 22, eight years before the deadline, their wedding was held on campus at Alumni Hall among friends, family and faculty. Their initial informal promise was a safe way to flirt, because the two were afraid to reveal their mutual feelings. "You can back out of it if no one believes it; you can tell yourself it was just a joke," said Ms. Lowe, noting that her husband once agreed to a similar arrangement with a friend from high school. (Mr. Lowe has no previous marriages.) The verbal contract between Mr. and Ms. Lowe was a conversation opener to their progression beyond friendship. But, often, small talk marriage pacts are not binding. They are guided by the fear of being alone, according to Lynn Saladino, a clinical psychologist in Manhattan who focuses on relationships. "It's one of people's biggest fears in dating," Dr. Saladino said. "They want to know they're not going to be by themselves long term that someone's going to be there." John FitzPatrick, 50, an owner of Anthony Bruttaniti Architecture and Design in Philadelphia, almost married his best friend, Moira Appicelli, 50, of New Brunswick, N.J. They met in ninth grade at Spotswood High School in Spotswood N.J. "I saw her walking down the hallway, and I knew that we were going to be friends forever," Mr. FitzPatrick said. Although neither party was ever romantically interested, when they were in their 20s, the two devised a solution to being perpetually single, Ms. Appicelli said. "If we're not married by 40, we should just get married." The pact resurfaced when Mr. FitzPatrick, then 36, suffered from sciatica. He considered back surgery but didn't have health insurance. Ms. Appicelli offered to marry him, so he could utilize her benefits. "At that point, I was already with my now husband," whom, Mr. FitzPatrick added, he legally married three years ago. Beyond hidden feelings or inheriting job perks, marriage pacts are also forged for emotional support. "People are looking for a sense of security and having backup in case something doesn't work out," said Dr. Saladino. "People like to know that they're going to end up with someone, and also someone that they like." Dawn Maia Simmons, 40, a registered nurse in Garland, Tex., met her husband, Jason Simmons, when they were 17. "I was actually dating a good friend of his," said Ms. Simmons, who simultaneously swore to marry Mr. Simmons if they were single at 33. "In our heads, that was right at the starting point where you were almost too old to have kids." The relationship didn't evolve until Mr. Simmons suggested they move in together. In 2000, at 21, they decided to marry, validating their marriage pact on Valentine's Day. "Through all the things that we've been through, our friendship has saved us every single time," said Ms. Simmons, who has been married 18 years and also has a daughter with Mr. Simmons. "It's not been the kids. It's not been financial. We still enjoy the things we did as teenagers: going to concerts, sitting around laughing at dumb TV shows and watching movies. Our time together after all these years has been the most valuable thing." Deep friendships and commitments are necessary for successful relationships, according to Angelica Magana Rossin, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Manhattan. "Overcoming the challenges is a lot easier when there is that base. There ends up being an implicit contract to work on something: even if it feels hard, even if it doesn't feel magnetic or intoxicating anymore; to work toward creating these dynamics." Arranged marriages, in some aspects, are similar to marriage pacts between friends that aren't induced by passion. Some lead to falling in love, anyway. "There is an agreement, first and foremost. People agree to show up in the relationship and make the best of it," said Ms. Magana Rossin. "When there are fewer options and more direct focus, that really can help make the relationship a lot more intentional." There can be some confusion, though, about pacts themselves. Dr. Saladino advises both parties of the agreement be transparent about their realistic objectives when verbalizing the future. "It depends how seriously each person is taking the pact. If they are restricting themselves from putting themselves out there, that could potentially hold them back from some very good partners." Alissa Jacob, 32, a founder of Reservoir, a retail store in Los Angeles, made a marriage pact with her childhood best friend, Joey Kuhn of Boston. "It was always pretty clear that he was going to be coming out of the closet," said Ms. Jacob, who refers to Kuhn as "hubby," even though she is engaged to someone else. "We talked about having a kid together or living together like 'Will Grace.' It was never going to be a sexual marriage." Ms. Jacob does, however, plan to wear a white wedding dress down the aisle at Mr. Kuhn's wedding, should he get married. "I still call Alissa 'wifey'," said Mr. Kuhn, 33 and a filmmaker, who has a long term boyfriend. "She's like, 'You will be his husband, but I will always be his wife.'" Despite the duo's strong ties Mr. Kuhn is officiating Ms. Jacob's wedding in October he admits Ms. Jacob wasn't the only person he casually promised 'til death do they part. "I was a closeted gay guy in middle and high school and was friends with a ton of girls."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
LATEST PROJECT Her first solo museum show in New York, "Dead Treez," which opened at the Museum of Arts and Design on Nov. 10. It features 10 ornately dressed mannequins, representations of Jamaican men in dance hall culture, set against tapestries embellished with rhinestones, glitter and silk flowers. NEXT THING A show opening in March at the Studio Museum in Harlem. It includes a new series that Ms. Patterson says focuses on the popular perception of black children. "I'm particularly interested in the way black children are depicted within the media," she said. "They're often depicted as adults, not as children." ARTISTS MATTER One of the subjects of her coming exhibition is Tamir Rice, a 12 year old African American boy who was shot by the Cleveland police in 2014. "I'm hoping to present six to eight large scale works that explore children as subjects," she said. The works, she said, "create a moment of confrontation" for viewers when they realize they are looking at black children.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Credit...Andrew White for The New York Times Usually at this time of year, Mikaela Shiffrin, the seven time Olympic and world ski champion, is building the mental fortitude to dominate another ski racing season. But the last several months have staggered and changed Shiffrin, 25. In February, while she was competing in Europe, her father, Jeff, died in an accident at home in Colorado. After taking a six week break from competition, Shiffrin decided to return to racing only to have the season's final events canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic, denying her a last chance to defend her multiple World Cup titles. Returning to Colorado, Shiffrin in a first found a more potent voice on social media in support of calls for racial justice. Many of her followers, used to cheerful workout or dance videos, mounted a bitter backlash. Shiffrin's response: "Wanna 'Unfollow?' I'll see you to the door." Then, in August, she and her mother, Eileen, hurriedly packed their belongings preparing to evacuate as wildfires threatened the Colorado home Shiffrin built just a year ago. "People ask, 'How are you doing?'" Shiffrin said last week in a telephone interview. "I don't really know how to answer that." Since she became the youngest Olympic slalom champion at 18, Shiffrin has been known for peerless racing precision, an unprecedented haul of Alpine victories and a periodic vulnerability to moments of debilitating anxiety before races. But the past seven months, specifically the ordeal of having to dash home on a flight from Germany upon hearing the news of her father's accident, may have permanently reordered Shiffrin's approach to career and life. Mikaela will leave late this month for Europe, where each of her upcoming races this season will take place since the three usual North American World Cup races were canceled. For years, she has been a medal contender in multiple events from the technical slalom, her specialty, to the daredevil downhill, but this winter's World Cup race calendar is not yet complete so Shiffrin is undecided about her entire competitive schedule. For the first time in three years, Shiffrin will not be defending a World Cup overall title and it will be the last full season of preparation before the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing. "I feel pretty strong and have had some good training," said Shiffrin, whose on snow sessions have been limited to what was available in the Western United States, since customary off season sites in New Zealand and South America were off limits. "I'm ready to go but I don't really know what to expect once we get there." The Jeff Shiffrin Athlete Resiliency Fund, launched by U.S. Ski and Snowboard, the governing body for several Olympic winter sports, is meant to assist athletes in multiple sports whose training was cut short this year or whose travel expenses have skyrocketed in the pandemic. The fund was started by six families with a history of making winter sports donations who offered to match contributions raised through the website up to 1.5 million. New safety guidelines and travel restrictions have ballooned the cost of transporting roughly 175 American winter sports athletes around the globe. Tiger Shaw, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard president and chief executive, said coronavirus testing protocols alone would add 1 million to his budget. A mandated quarantine for a single team arriving in Europe from the United States might mean the added expense of housing and feeding 45 athletes and staff for 14 additional days. Adding to the fiscal strain, the organization's biggest fund raising events cannot be held as usual because of social distancing practices. "We don't want any of our athletes to feel at a disadvantage heading to the Olympics, which are coming up fast," Shiffrin said. "We want the fund to bring awareness to how much resiliency is out there right now because everybody has conquered so much this year. Obviously, on a personal level, I feel that." Her newfound willingness to take a stand on social issues, Shiffrin said, came from both the unrest across the country and the chance to educate herself more fully during a spring and summer with more idle time. "I didn't feel it was OK to be silent or to just say, 'Oh, I don't really know enough,'" Shiffrin said. "I did some research and I wanted to be on the side of people who are going to insist on change." About to embark on another tour of the World Cup circuit, where her first victory was eight eventful years ago, Shiffrin insisted the one thing she is not overly focused on was reclaiming her place atop the sport. "The motivation is there because I want to continue to earn my place, not because I want to get something back," she said. "I don't want to taint my passion for skiing with that kind of attitude. I want to enjoy it, the way I have enjoyed it in the past. I want that to remain real and pure as much as possible."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
A 36 year old man born without testicles received one transplanted from his identical twin brother in a six hour operation performed on Tuesday in Belgrade, Serbia, by an international team of surgeons. The surgery was intended to give the recipient more stable levels of the male hormone testosterone than injections could provide, to make his genitals more natural and more comfortable, and to enable him to father children, said Dr. Dicken Ko, a transplant surgeon and urology professor at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, who flew to Belgrade to help with the procedure. The operation was only the third known transplant of this type. The first two were performed 40 years ago in St. Louis, also for identical twins, each pair with a brother lacking testicles. The absence of testicles is an exceedingly rare condition, but doctors say that the surgery may have broader applications for transgender people, accident victims, wounded soldiers and cancer patients. But the procedure raises questions about the ethics of transplants that are not lifesaving, and about the possibility of recipients' someday fathering children with sperm from donors who may not even be related to them. The surgery was performed at the University Children's Clinic in Tirsova, a section of Belgrade. The Serbian brothers are doing well, doctors said. By Friday, the recipient already had normal testosterone levels. "He's good, he looks good, his brother looks good," Dr. Ko said in a telephone interview on Friday. The donor, who already has children, should remain as fertile as he was before, despite giving up a testicle. Dr. Ko said the brothers, who have been sharing a hospital room, were expected to go home this weekend. They preferred not to be identified or interviewed, the doctors said. Because the patients are identical twins with the same genetic makeup, there is no concern that the recipient's body will reject the transplant, so he does not have to take the immune suppressing drugs that most transplant patients need. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Surgeons operated on the brothers simultaneously, in adjoining rooms. The procedure was challenging because it required sewing together two arteries and two veins that were less than 2 millimeters wide. "Once you remove the testicle from the donor, the clock starts ticking very fast," said Dr. Branko Bojovic, an expert in microsurgery at Harvard Medical School and part of the team in Belgrade. "Within two to four hours, you have to have it re perfused and working again," Dr. Bojovic said. Without a blood supply, a testicle is viable for only four to six hours. It can take 30 to 60 minutes to make each of the four blood vessel connections. But the team managed to complete them all in less than two hours, he said. The team did not connect a structure called the vas deferens, which carries sperm out of the testicles. The surgeons could not find the tissue in the recipient needed for the connection, which means that for now, he cannot father children in the usual way. Another operation to make the connection may be possible. Otherwise, if the recipient wants children, he might undergo a procedure to extract sperm from the testicle for in vitro fertilization. Or his twin brother's sperm could be used. Dr. Ko and Dr. Bojovic were both part of the surgical team that performed the first penis transplant in the United States, in 2016, on a man whose penis had been removed because of cancer. Dr. Bojovic said that after the penis transplant, the surgical team received inquiries from people undergoing female to male sex reassignment who wondered if they might receive transplants instead of the usual surgery, which creates a penis from the patient's own tissue. But a transplant from any donor other than an identical twin would require immune suppressing drugs to prevent rejection. The drugs have side effects that lead some experts to argue that the bar for such transplants must be very high. "It's becoming more of a popular topic for these patients," Dr. Bojovic said. "They say, 'If immunosuppression is getting safer, I don't want to use a big piece of tissue from my forearm or thigh or back for something that looks like phallus but isn't.'" He added that in patients having male to female reassignment surgery, the penis and testicles that were surgically removed are discarded, but in theory could be used for transplants. The lead surgeon, Dr. Djordjevic, said that he had developed a surgical plan for transplanting a penis onto a body that is anatomically female, and that he hoped to begin performing that surgery within the next year or so. "We have to do this as soon as possible, to stop putting healthy organs in the garbage," he said. But he would not transplant testicles as part of transgender surgery, he said. Doing so would open up the thorny possibility that the recipient could have children produced by the donor's sperm. If the idea were extended to deceased organ donors, special permission would be required from them before death, or from their families. Dr. Silber said that the donor was gay and the recipient straight, and that the brothers told him they wondered if the transplanted testicle might somehow alter the recipient's sexual orientation. There is no scientific reason for such an effect, and none occurred. The transplant was a success, and the recipient eventually had five children, Dr. Silber said. A year or so later, he performed the surgery again for another pair of identical twin brothers, though he did not write up their case in a journal. Regarding the operation in Belgrade, Dr. Silber said, "I imagine these surgeons must be pretty good, because most people wouldn't dare to try this."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Amber Marlow doesn't know what to tell her clients. "Several of them have reached out and asked if I have any ideas," said Ms. Marlow, a wedding photographer who built her business shooting New York City elopements. "All I can tell them is that, as far as I know, City Hall is completely shut down," she said. "It feels like a violation of some inalienable right." "Thousands of people are getting laid off, or they're freelancers like me, and they need health insurance," said Ms. Marlow of Park Slope, Brooklyn. For many, the solution is to get married and join their partner's health plan. Other scenarios creating a sense of urgency around marriage include visas that are about to expire, adoption plans that could disintegrate without a marriage certificate in hand and concerns among front line health care workers and members of the military about catching the virus without legal protections in place for loved ones. Philadelphia is still issuing licenses to county residents in those situations; officials there are considering such cases emergencies. "We've heard a lot of difficult stories," said Mustafa Rashed, a spokesman for Philadelphia Register of Wills. "We know some people need an accelerated timeline, and we want to help." New Yorkers are not alone in their struggle to marry during the crisis. Las Vegas, the country's quickie wedding capitol, is also not issuing licenses. "We cannot issue them online or through the mail," according to a statement on the county clerk's website, which notes that services are suspended through the end of April. But couples who intended to marry in either city can get married elsewhere, if they have access to transportation. Though most municipal offices are closed across the country, some cities are still issuing licenses to nonresident couples who plan to marry within city or state limits. Yonkers, N.Y., is one. "What we've done is set up a tent outside City Hall," said Vincent Spano, the city clerk. That tent is open to couples by appointment only on Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. until the virus subsides. Licenses from Yonkers allow couples to marry anywhere in the state, but New York City residents without a compelling reason to marry shouldn't rush to email him through the City of Yonkers website for a slot during tent hours. "We're trying really hard to keep it only to Yonkers residents," Mr. Spano said. He has been making exceptions for some struggling with the municipal closures in Manhattan and Westchester County. "If somebody writes with a story, we want to help," he said. "I'm getting a lot of emails from New York City people who need health coverage, or somebody is pregnant and they need to be married. One guy is going back into the military. I don't want anybody to be put at risk. But to put it bluntly, if you don't have a good excuse I'm not going to do it." Molly Gregor, the editor of New Jersey Bride Magazine, is fielding calls daily from as yet unlicensed brides desperate to keep their original wedding dates. Their predicaments are not always emergencies. "The date may be their anniversary and they're sentimental about it, or they may have a relative who's sick and they want to make sure that person sees them married," she said. "I tell them, 'Call your town.' Some are setting up picnic tables outside in the sun and letting couples come and sign the paperwork outdoors on tables six feet away." Those towns then offer curbside pickup of the license 72 hours later, the waiting period in New Jersey between obtaining a license and making use of it, she said. New Jersey residency is not necessary to legally marry in the state. But New Yorkers and all out of state couples must say their "I do's" in the town in which their permit was issued. Ms. Gregor said the legality of New Jersey weddings in general has been tripping people up since the coronavirus hit. "Governor Murphy said, 'There will be no weddings,' and that got people confused," she said. "But it's a matter of semantics. He hasn't said marriages are illegal." The point is to keep people from gathering, not to prevent them from being wed, Ms. Gregor said. Still, finding a picnic table setup like the one Ms. Gregor described may require stamina. She said Hoboken, Woodbridge and Jersey City were among the cities still issuing licenses as of the first week of April. But rules may be changing daily. On April 7, a representative in the Hoboken Department of Birth, Death and Marriage Certificates said licenses were being issued only to Hoboken residents. For New Yorkers who don't need to be married in New York state for reasons including pending visa applications, traveling farther afield is also an option. Gatlinburg, Tenn., is a city in which ceremonies may be performed the same day the marriage license is secured, and it is still filling license applications. Elkton, Md., a city with a rich history of accommodating speedy marriages, is issuing licenses to resident and nonresident couples with emergencies. Technology is also easing the strain for couples, desperate and otherwise. Linda Bobrin, the Register of Wills in Bucks County, Pa., started a pilot program last week to issue licenses through videoconference.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
VAIL, Colo. Since the two galalike signature events of the annual Vail Dance Festival were star studded, it's tempting to survey them just by dropping names. After all, on Friday here, Misty Copeland (never more mettlesome) and Marcelo Gomes (richly smoldering) danced Twyla Tharp's "Sinatra Suite," followed by Misa Kuranaga (lightly brilliant) and Herman Cornejo (panache itself) in the war horse "Don Quixote" pas de deux. Saturday's program ended with Tiler Peck dancing George Balanchine's "Tschaikovsky Pas de Deux" with Jeffrey Cirio. Dazzling and charming artists both, they reached fresh peaks here; Ms. Peck (of New York City Ballet), in particular, has reached new zones of subtle artistry and breathtaking speed. This meeting of artists from different companies Ms. Kuranaga represented Boston Ballet; Mr. Cirio, Ms. Copeland, Mr. Cornejo and Mr. Gomes are all American Ballet Theater members has been a well established Vail tradition since Damian Woetzel became artistic director in 2005. But what good performing artist wants to perform in one genre alone? Another Vail/Woetzel tradition has been to extend established artists far beyond their specialties. The "Don Quixote" pas de deux is actually the biggest cliche in Mr. Cornejo's repertory. Though he does it with boundless eclat, its bravura is what audiences in both Vail (where he and Ms. Kuranaga danced it in 2010 and 2012) and New York know he can do perfectly well. No surprises there. On Saturday night, however, he made his first venture into material by the modern dance choreographer Merce Cunningham a duet from "Scenario" (1997). His partner here was Melissa Toogood, who danced with Cunningham's company from 2007 to 2011, its final five years. Mr. Cornejo, bringing exceptional spring to his jumps, seemed to relish its slow falls off balance and upper body complexities, too. The intricacy of each dance phrase became newly fascinating. Ms. Toogood luscious, sharp, powerful displayed all her role's physical self contradictions. Best of all, both of them kept everything suspenseful; the duet seemed far too short. Adventures of this kind are what has made Vail legendary in today's dance world. These two evenings, presented in the open air Gerald R. Ford Amphitheater, demonstrate an even larger achievement. The festival, running through Saturday, shows every stage of a dancer's career. Stars are merely one part of it. Friday began, as has often happened in previous years, with dozens of children moving in elaborate formations in a "Celebrate the Beat" number. (This time their ensemble was joined by the master clown Bill Irwin.) And each year, some of the most remarkable Vail performances come from junior dancers. Roman Mejia, who graduated from the School of American Ballet in June, is still only 17; later this month he starts as an apprentice at New York City Ballet. On Friday night, however, he became a name on many Vail lips as he danced Edward Villella's exuberant role in Balanchine's 1964 "Tarantella" pas de deux. On Saturday, creating a role in the world premiere of Matthew Neenan's "Farewell" (to Leonard Bernstein music), he did an unanticipated multiple pirouette of bewildering velocity before bouncing blithely into brilliant jumps. Mr. Mejia is already a character he has sweetness, attack, elevation, courtesy, all to a high degree as well as a technician. It's wonderful to see him given these important breaks so soon in his career. Likewise Unity Phelan, a City Ballet dancer of startling watch me allure, danced on Friday the pas de deux from Balanchine's "Agon" with the coolly authoritative Calvin Royal III of Ballet Theater. (Both of them have recently become soloists in their companies.) On Saturday she febrile, vulnerable, decisive performed the "Liberty Bell" pas de deux from Balanchine's "Stars and Stripes" with Cory Stearns, an established Ballet Theater principal. She delivered its witty eccentricities with glowing elegance; Mr. Stearns, gorgeously understated throughout, wound up one multiple turn with a marvelously slow final revolution that ended as if hovering. Making Vail debuts were two appealing and bright eyed young luminaries of Britain's Royal Ballet, Francesca Hayward and Marcelino Sambe. On Saturday, while a near full moon shone above the pine clad peaks behind the outdoor stage, they brought all the right headlong rapture to the balcony scene from Kenneth MacMillan's "Romeo and Juliet"; on Friday, they danced a short suite of richly fragrant dances from Frederick Ashton's pure dance "Rhapsody." Mr. Sambe is a lovable little powerhouse; Ms. Hayward has the ballerina's secret of seeming to take the audience into her heart. Most music was live. The pianists Cameron Grant and Kurt Crowley, the singer Kate Davis, the Brooklyn Rider string quartet and the guitarist Gabe Schnider made it all sound newly minted. Michelle Dorrance, this year's artist in residence, makes her own music as she taps, tough and delicious. Throughout "8000 Feet on the Ground," her solo improvisation on Saturday, she superbly changed meter and dynamics. Whenever the audience applauded one of her feats, she coolly changed tack.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
If you miss NASA's space shuttles, you might like the Dream Chaser. The compact space plane carries no crew, but will transport cargo to the International Space Station in the years ahead and conduct other missions in orbit around the Earth. On Saturday, the vehicle completed an important milestone in its development. A helicopter lifted Dream Chaser more than 2.3 miles off the ground, then dropped it. Over the course of one minute, the craft accelerated to 330 miles per hour, made a couple of turns and glided 10 miles to a runway at Edwards Air Force Base in California. It touched down at a speed of 191 miles per hour, rolling 4,200 feet before coming to a stop. "The vehicle is in perfect shape, no issues," Mark N. Sirangelo, the head of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, the maker of the Dream Chaser, said in an interview. Mr. Sirangelo said he thought no more glide tests would be needed. If NASA agrees, the very next flight of the Dream Chaser might be a return from orbit two or three years from now at the end of a mission taking cargo to and from the space station. It is to land on the same runway at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida that the space shuttles once used. Last year, NASA awarded Sierra Nevada a contract for at least six cargo flights. The Dream Chaser is an autonomous, self flying spacecraft, and this iteration will not carry any people. Saturday's test demonstrated that the software that guides the vehicle worked as designed. There was no problem with the landing gear, unlike the glide test four years ago when the left wheel never lowered and the Dream Chaser skidded off the runway. That mishap proved beneficial in retrospect. "One of the cool things actually was that we proved how strong the vehicle was," Mr. Sirangelo said. "The entire interior of the vehicle in the previous flight was undamaged." Sierra Nevada fixed the dings on its exterior, upgraded the landing gear and used the same vehicle for Saturday's test. If NASA agrees that this test was sufficient, the test vehicle will go into storage. The company will then focus on an update, already under construction, that will launch on top of an Atlas 5 rocket en route to the space station. NASA has not yet chosen a date for that flight, but Mr. Sirangelo said that it would likely be in the second quarter of 2020. Winged spacecraft offer some advantages over traditional capsules like the Russian Soyuz, which astronauts currently use to get to and from the space station, and the SpaceX Dragon, which is used to return experimental cargo to Earth The ride back to Earth on Dream Chaser would be gentler, less jarring to delicate scientific payloads like protein crystals grown in experiments aboard the space station. Dream Chaser can, in principle, land at any airport that can handle a 737 jet, and the returning cargo can be unloaded much more quickly. Sierra Nevada also hopes to use the Dream Chaser for non NASA flights. The company has an agreement with the United Nations to carry 20 to 30 experiments from around the world to space aboard a Dream Chaser flight in 2021. Other missions could include repairing satellites in orbit and clearing out space debris. What remains on the back burner is a people carrying version of Dream Chaser. Sierra Nevada originally developed the spacecraft hoping to win a contract to take astronauts to the space station. SpaceX and Boeing won the NASA contracts in 2014. Sierra Nevada came in third and was left out.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
James Murdoch, the former chief executive of 21st Century Fox, has taken a small stake in Vice Media, the irreverent media brand focused on millennials and entertainment. Mr. Murdoch, who already sits on Vice's board, made the investment as part of Vice's recent acquisition of Refinery29, a women's lifestyle publisher, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because the deal is meant to be private. The investment, which was first reported by The Financial Times, is through Mr. Murdoch's holding company, Lupa Systems. He formed Lupa after leaving 21st Century Fox, the media giant founded by his father, Rupert Murdoch. Last year, the family sold off the majority of Fox's assets to the Walt Disney Company for more than 70 billion. The younger Murdoch, who personally netted about 2 billion from that sale, has invested in a diverse group of media businesses that looks very different from the one his father founded. He is also less interested in traditional news ventures, the person who is familiar with the matter said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Whether someone bitten by a sandfly goes on to develop the most lethal form of leishmaniasis is determined partly by the victim's own genes, a new study suggests. Leishmaniasis, caused by parasites injected by sandfly bites, has two forms: painful skin sores (known to American troops in Iraq as "Baghdad boils") or, in less than 20 percent of cases, the visceral form, sometimes called "kala azar," that attacks the organs and is fatal if untreated. About 400,000 visceral cases develop annually, 90 percent of them in three places far from one another and with different parasite subspecies: northeastern Brazil, the India Bangladesh border and the Horn of Africa. Because the disease hits some families harder, a genetic propensity to get it has been long suspected. The study, published in Nature Genetics last week, compared DNA in almost 6,000 blood samples from India and Brazil. Both Indians and Brazilians who got visceral leishmaniasis had similar DNA variations. Researchers are not sure what those mutations do, but the nearest stretch of DNA determines how white blood cells "grab" invaders to trigger immune responses, said Peter J. Donnelly, an Oxford statistics professor who also heads the Wellcome Trust Center for Human Genetics and was one of the paper's authors.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Joseph Otting came into his job overseeing the nation's biggest banks in late 2017 determined to rewrite the rules governing how financial institutions invest in poor communities. A former banker appointed by President Trump, Mr. Otting had long chafed at the rules. So as Comptroller of the Currency, he wasted little time seeking the support of banks, which stood to benefit from the revision, as well as the industry's two other primary regulators, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and community groups. Everyone agreed that an overhaul was needed. But last week, when Mr. Otting introduced a revised rule his signature accomplishment as comptroller he cut a lonely figure. Banking trade groups said it had been put together hastily without enough testing. The Fed and F.D.I.C. refused to sign on. And community groups fear that the revision would ultimately hurt the poor. Mr. Otting, who is stepping down on Friday, is leaving behind a fractured landscape around a vital piece of banking legislation: the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which requires banks to invest in poor communities and lend to low income individuals in the areas where they do business. Critics say that the revised rules have the potential to defang the C.R.A. by making it easier for banks to meet their obligations for example, by letting them get credit for financing a few big projects in low income neighborhoods that they would have done anyway, rather than offering banking services, which can be less lucrative but more important to the broader community. It will also cause regulatory disarray, perhaps for years. Banks with different overseers must figure out if the new rules apply to them and spend millions of dollars to comply. Even then, the rules could change again if a Democrat is elected president in November. "I told him: This is a legacy opportunity. If you do this right, no one will touch it for 15 or 20 years," said David Dworkin, the chief executive of the National Housing Conference, who worked as a senior policy adviser at the Treasury Department from 2012 until 2018. "There are many people who believe that he wanted to gut C.R.A.," Mr. Dworkin said. "I can't make that judgment, but I can say that what he has done will gut it." Mr. Otting does not see it that way. "I believe the rule finalized by the O.C.C. will make a positive difference for all low and moderate income communities across the nation many of which were ignored under the previous rule," he said in a statement to The Times last week. "I fully support a stronger C.R.A.." A spokesman for Mr. Otting's office said that even though the other regulators did not sign on, the banks that conduct 70 percent of the activities that are assessed under the reinvestment act are subject to the new rules. (Banks with assets below 2.5 billion can choose not to submit to the regulations.) The reinvestment act was established to prevent redlining a practice in which banks refused to lend in certain neighborhoods based on race, ethnicity or income and ensure that less affluent communities had fair access to financial services. Compliance is crucial for banks: Mergers and other regulatory approvals are contingent on it. Currently, banks are required to carry out a certain amount of economic activity either lending, philanthropy, or other banking business in low income areas that usually align with their physical locations. But the law has become somewhat outdated in the era of online banking, because banks can attract customers and do business in areas far afield of their branch networks. Years before he was comptroller, Mr. Otting collided with the C.R.A. as chief executive of a California bank called OneWest then owned by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. In 2014, OneWest and another bank, CIT, agreed to a 3.4 billion merger. Community groups nearly scuttled the deal by arguing that both banks had dismal records of complying with the reinvestment act. One such group, the Greenlining Institute, alleged that Mr. Otting had created the illusion of grass roots support for the merger using a form email that could be personalized and sent in with a few clicks. According to the Fed, 2,093 of the 2,177 comments ultimately submitted in favor of the merger were identical form letters. 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. Regulators approved the merger after both banks pledged to increase their activity in poor communities, but Mr. Otting has said the experience left him with a sour taste. "I went through a very difficult period with some community groups that didn't support our community, who came in at the bottom of the ninth inning, that tried to change the direction of our merger," he said at a banking conference in April 2018, The Wall Street Journal reported. "And so I have very strong viewpoints." Even before Mr. Otting arrived in Washington in November 2017, Treasury officials were working on a plan to update the rules. A group of policymakers held more than 90 meetings with banks, community groups and trade organizations to determine the best way to reshape the requirements. They created a blueprint and presented it to Mr. Mnuchin, who signed off and sent it to the White House, and then to regulators. Mr. Otting decided to do his own research. Last year, he toured multiple cities to talk about the law and listen to community feedback. He wanted to redo the rules based on his experience as a banker, he said, making them clearer and easier to follow. In December, he proposed a sweeping rewrite, and initially secured support from the F.D.I.C. His plan specified which products, services and projects banks could undertake to fulfill their duties and boiled down the evaluation of their work in poor communities to a single metric. But it took away the most important tool that regulators and community groups had to hold banks to account the discretion to argue that even if banks' activities looked good on paper, they weren't significant enough to help communities. Officials at the Fed felt that Mr. Otting's proposal was poorly designed and began working on an alternative. When the central bank asked to include its own proposal for comment from stakeholders, Mr. Otting shot the idea down, according to two people familiar with the process. The Fed, led by Chair Jerome H. Powell, decided to let the O.C.C. go its own way. "We worked to try to get fully aligned with the proposal we weren't able to get there," Mr. Powell later told lawmakers. "They weren't able to get to our proposal either." Negative reaction to the proposal was swift. Representative Maxine Waters, chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee, called it "misguided" and said any changes to the law must not be rushed through. Community groups also attacked the plan, saying it could deprive poor and minority communities of access to credit. Banks, despite wanting a C.R.A. revamp, were also unhappy with Mr. Otting's rewrite. The American Bankers Association, the largest of the bank trade groups, warned against finalizing the rule without extensive improvements, followed by testing of its measurement methods and a pilot program.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
When we look up at the night sky, we see twinkling stars. When a satellite orbiting a million miles away looks down upon Earth, it sees twinkles, too. For years NASA scientists, including the renowned astronomer Carl Sagan, wondered what the mysterious glints of light appearing on satellite images were. Now, a team of researchers thinks it has uncovered what causes the unexpected flashes. "These glints are from ice crystals," said Alexander Marshak, a research scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland and the lead author of a study published Monday in Geophysical Research Letters. When oriented just right, he said, the tiny ice particles floating high within clouds reflect sunlight in dazzling fashion. And our ability to spot them on Earth could one day help us study the atmospheres of planets that orbit distant stars. Dr. Marshak is the deputy project scientist for the Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite, or Dscovr, which is operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The satellite, which was launched in June 2015, uses instruments that study the sun and also some focused on Earth, which helps with studies of the planet's climate and how it is changing. A Trump administration budget blueprint for NASA proposed discontinuing its Earth focused instruments.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The grown up kids have gathered at their childhood home, where a white haired man is puttering around behind them. His name is George, and he is their dad. Just a little bit ago, in the first scene of Sarah Ruhl's play "For Peter Pan on her 70th birthday," we watched him die in a hospital bed. Then he sat up, swung his legs over the side and walked away unnoticed, a freshly minted ghost. Now, at the house, his children still can't tell he's there, which is all right with George. He has his grapefruit to eat, and the family dog, who is also dead, to keep him company. When I saw "For Peter Pan" at Playwrights Horizons, where it wraps up its run on Sunday, Oct. 1, these were the characters I couldn't take my eyes off: the ghost dog because dogs onstage are automatically riveting, the ghost man because he reminded me of my own dad, also named George, who died on the last day of summer two years ago. The play, which Ms. Ruhl wrote for her mother, is less about George than about his firstborn, Ann, and her siblings. Yet it is also in a sense a father daughter play, about getting one last chance to be in the presence of a parent who isn't around anymore. In my mind it is twinned with "Eurydice," Ms. Ruhl's devastatingly poignant adaptation of the Orpheus myth, in which a young woman prematurely follows her dead father into the underworld. The playwright dedicated that one to her own father, who died when she was in college. "When a beloved person dies, a whole world dies with that person," Ms. Ruhl wrote in a piece called "Theater as a preparation for death," included in her collection "100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write" from 2014. "A world of relation of not knowing how the beloved will respond. What is left is memory knowing how the beloved did respond." On my father's last Christmas, in 2014, I got him a book that it turned out he already had. When I asked if I could exchange it for something he wanted, he named a new title he'd just read about, Atul Gawande's "Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End." For my dad, a retired doctor being slowly killed by Parkinson's disease, this was a perfect match: a physician author's book about dying, and about what makes a worthwhile existence even as your life is coming to a close. My dad loved "Being Mortal," and urged me to read it. I stayed away from it as if it were kryptonite. Never did it occur to me that it might tell me something about my father's experience that would be valuable to know while he was still here that I would regret not knowing when he was gone. It was only a few weeks ago, after I realized that the paperback was staring me down every time I popped into my favorite bookstore, that I finally screwed up my courage, got a copy for myself and dived in. It was slow going, mainly because of the flashbacks. They were most powerful where Dr. Gawande writes about the excruciating decline of his own father, also a doctor, who was taken aback, just as my dad was, when his body turned on him. I hear my father's voice in my head all the time. In any number of situations, I know exactly what he would say, which (possibly off color) joke he would crack. But all the questions that "Being Mortal" sparked in me I don't know what he'd have answered to them. I completely blew my chance to ask. "Tell me a story of when you were little," Eurydice says to her father, and he complies with tale after tale. "There was something I always wanted to ask you," she says then. "A story or someone's name I forget." "Don't worry," her father assures her. "You'll remember. There's plenty of time." There isn't, but that's always the fantasy: that we can hang on forever to the people we love, keep tapping their memories. When they die, one of the first ways we know to grieve is to tell stories about them, as Ann and her siblings do in "For Peter Pan." Their father, by the way, is listed in the program as The Father. In the version of the script I have, though, Ms. Ruhl calls him George. That's the name I prefer for him, this benevolent specter she has contributed to the canon of stage ghosts. One of the best known of them is Hamlet's murdered father, and much has been made of the grief of his son. Daughters mourning their fathers are less present in our plays; Ophelia, also in "Hamlet," is often written off as merely nuts. But Shakespeare gave us Cordelia, too King Lear's daughter, who grieves for her living father when she sees how diminished he has become. A decade or so ago, my dad went to a production of "King Lear" by himself. When he told me this, I found it unbearably moving. It wasn't like him to go to the theater solo, but his wife was busy and he really wanted to see the play. He was only in his 60s then, but Parkinson's was aging him fast. Ever since, every "Lear" I go to, I see my father in that poor ravaged king. As much as I avoided "Being Mortal," though, I don't stay away from "Lear." Theater is where I go to confront the hard stuff; to have my heart shredded there is O.K. The reason, I think, is something Ms. Ruhl gets at in another essay. "Theater in its most basic form is a kind of reading aloud," she notes, adding that grown ups customarily take in the written word silently and alone. "In the theater, we ask adults to be children again, to sit in a circle and be read to." I believe there is safety in that circle solace in the company of other people that makes it all right for ghosts to enter the room, and our grief to well up inside us. "Didn't you already mourn for your father, young lady?" a heartless creature asks Eurydice, but that of course is beside the point. She has mourned her dead father and she mourns him still, and she will mourn him until memory stops.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
PARIS Serena Williams's poker face revealed nothing about the lousy card that would almost certainly doom her chances at securing a fourth French Open singles title. In her opening victory against Kristie Ahn, she disguised her gait, too. Williams's tell came after the match, when she arrived early for her virtual news conference. She is so often fashionably late to meet with the media, the running joke in press rooms is that deadlines are no match for Serena time. Williams, a 23 time Grand Slam champion in singles, entered the tournament with pain from an injured left Achilles' tendon. When she said offhandedly that she needed to get the virtual interrogation over with so she could resume her treatment, including laser therapy, ice application and "a ton of prayer," it was a neon sign that she was not holding a winning hand. On Wednesday, around the time she should have been preparing to step on Philippe Chatrier Court for her second round match against Tsvetana Pironkova, she instead returned to the interview room to explain her decision to withdraw from the tournament. Williams arrived in pain. She came to Paris because she believed she could contend for another major title. Both statements, however incongruous, are true. Athletes become greats through their willingness to keep going, with the foot on the accelerator, when their bodies are flashing red lights. Like the American golfer Tiger Woods at the 2008 United States Open and Spain's Rafael Nadal here four years ago, Williams wants to win so much that not trying was not an option. Woods's gamble paid off; he won his 14th major championship in 2008 in a playoff. Nadal's did not; he withdrew in 2016 before his third round match because he feared doing irreparable harm by continuing his French Open run. Nadal recovered and added five more major titles to his brilliant and still building resume. Likewise, Williams sees no reason she cannot come back better than ever from this latest injury, which she aggravated three weeks ago during her United States Open semifinal loss to Victoria Azarenka. "If it was my knee it would be really more devastating for me," Williams said. She added: "This is something that just happened. It is super acute. I feel like my body is actually doing really, really well. I just ran into, for lack of a better word, bad timing and bad luck, really, in New York." Williams, 39, Woods, 44, and Nadal, 34, are pals in pursuit of perpetuity, their bonds strengthened by the history each is chasing. Williams and Nadal are one championship from equaling the major victories records, held by Margaret Court with 24 and Roger Federer with 20; Woods is three from tying Jack Nicklaus at 18. "It gets harder to win as we all age," said Woods, who will defend his 15th major title at the rescheduled Masters in November. He added: "I think that whether it's Rafa or Fed or Serena, they've been so consistent and so dominant for such a long period of time, that's how you can have those all time marks. Consistency over a long period of time is the hallmark of those records." A competitiveness that feeds a disdain for pain makes that consistency possible. When asked why he never said anything about his injured leg in 2008, Woods said: "You never want to let any of the guys know you're hurt in any sport. Doesn't matter, ever." Williams echoed that sentiment when she said, referring to her match against Ahn, "I had to focus on walking straight so I wasn't limping." Nadal understood completely. Of course he did. "Well, you don't want to show that if you really believe that you can keep going," Nadal said Wednesday after he advanced to the third round. Expounding on the mind set that molds the greats, Nadal added: "You really believe that maybe you win that match, then you can improve a little bit for the next couple of matches with the doctor or the staff after that victory, then it is normal that you are not showing anything to the world. Then if you can't keep going, that is the moment to go and say: 'You know, guys, I can't anymore. That's it.'" Williams's moment of truth came after her brief prematch hitting session. After consulting with her coach, Patrick Mouratoglou, Williams decided it was better to withdraw than risk making the injury worse.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Item by luminous, brain zapping item, "Drawn to Greatness: Master Drawings From the Thaw Collection" at the Morgan Library Museum has to be one of the paramount group drawing shows of the era. It is also a grand summing up of a career, an art form and an institution's holdings. During the past 60 years, the New York art dealer Eugene V. Thaw and his wife, Clare Eddy Thaw, gradually amassed a phenomenal drawing collection, notable not just for visual charisma, but also for chronological breadth, running from the early Renaissance to the near present, with lingering stops en route. In 1975, the couple promised the still growing collection to the Morgan. Earlier this year, they formally gave it more than 400 items, as a gift outright, one that the museum is calling transformative. The present show, a celebration of proprietary welcome and thanks, coincides with Mr. Thaw's 90th birthday. (Clare Thaw died, at 93, this past summer.) The exhibition of some 150 choice items fills both of the Morgan's large ground floor galleries, which for the occasion have been divided into cabinet size nooks sequenced roughly by date. Mr. Thaw started out selling new art (in the 1950s he had a gallery bookstore in the Algonquin Hotel, where he gave the painter Joan Mitchell her first New York solo), and the bulk of his collection is in 18th and 19th century material, but some of the show's most arresting images are from Renaissance Europe. An undisputed centerpiece is "Three Standing Saints," a 1455 60 sketch in brown ink on paper by Andrea Mantegna. A committed, even doctrinaire classicist, Mantegna learned to paint by studying antique marbles. Some of his figures have the crisp perfection of 3 D printed sculpture, and he is thought to have used artificially stiffened fabric as a model for draped clothing. (A 15th century German drapery study in the exhibition, of a shaped white mantle with no visible wearer, suggests how this might have worked.) The Thaw drawing, though, looks hands on and in progress. The three saints don't have distinguishable personalities. (They may, in fact, represent three variations on one saint.) But, with their dense networks of ink lines, they give living pillars of sanctity an organic softness. And they convey some sense of the experimental effort that lay behind the Mantegna effect of precision tooled poise. Other Renaissance drawings on view feel comparatively relaxed and personable. From the workshop of the 15th century painter Pisanello comes a sheet with five drawn of heads of young boys, each with a distinctive coiffure, and each ready to be, basically, Photoshopped into a painting. A Venetian born 16th century artist, Domenico Campagnola, who studied with Titian (and whose work is sometimes attributed to his teacher) has a very strange landscape drawing here, of a city reduced, as if by earthquake, to rubble. The drawing is one of a series he did on the Apocalypse. Whether this particular picture was a sketch for a print or was meant to stand on its own, we don't know, but it's a shock and awe startler for sure. It's also entirely fanciful, which was an alternative direction for drawing. The haircuts on the Pisanello boys bowl cuts, buzz cuts, frohawks, fades may well accurately document Northern Italian styles of the day. But more and more drawing was becoming a medium for inventing, or altering reality, rather than recording it. And sometimes even lifelike drawings reflect, not life, but other art. Three heartbreaking Rembrandt sketches, on a single sheet, of Christ lifted down from the cross, give every indication of having been worked out with live models. How else to explain the intimate, gawky tenderness with which the heads of the dead Christ and the man supporting him touch, almost in a kiss? Yet the image has easily locatable sources in older art, one being a 16th century engraving of "The Deposition" by the Italian printmaker Marcantonio Raimondi, which was itself based on a painting by Raphael. The Tiepolo family targeted their images to urbane collectors. Francisco de Goya, in Spain, kept his darkest drawings to himself while he day jobbed as court artist to one Spanish king or another. Goya wasn't a front line revolutionary; he was a drawn line revolutionary, generating images that became formally more compressed and philosophically more anarchic as he grew older. They're graphic time bombs, still ticking. The Thaws invested deeply in Goya there are seven drawings on view as they did in Rembrandt, and in the penumbral, still underrated late 19th century isolate Odilon Redon. Technically or not, all these artists are Romantics. So are two beyond superb landscapists, Samuel Palmer in England and Caspar David Friedrich in Germany. For them, Nature was the only realness and they went for that ultra realness in their art. In his "Pear Tree on a Walled Garden" from around 1829, Palmer dabs opaque watercolor on so thickly that the flower laden tree appears to bloom right out from the paper's surface. And to bring Nature to life, Friedrich, in his "Moonlit Landscape," treated drawing as theater: He cut the moon out of the sheet, inserted a circle of pure white paper, and displayed the piece illuminated by a lamp from behind. These people, who can come across as space cases, were seriously in love with the world, and shaped by that love. So was van Gogh, another Thaw favorite. There are several drawings in the collection, and four in the show, including an 1888 letter to Paul Gauguin in which van Gogh depicts, in words and a drawing, his own famous bedroom at Arles or maybe the painting he's done of it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Diana Brainard is nowhere near close to celebrating. Dr. Brainard is the head of antiviral clinical research at Gilead Sciences, the Bay Area biotech giant whose drug portfolio includes the antiviral medicine remdesivir. On Thursday, Stat, the superb medical news website, reported some of the leaked results of a pair of Phase 3 clinical trials of the drug at the University of Chicago. Of 113 patients with severe cases of Covid 19 who were treated with daily infusions of remdesivir, most were discharged from the hospital in under a week, and only two died. That sounds like fantastically good news, but Dr. Brainard has caveats and cautions. The Chicago story, she told me in a phone interview this week, is still anecdotal. The trial did not include a control group. Hard data, once it comes, can be hard to interpret. "We have to assess whether the drug is working without having a clear picture of what is typical with this disease," she says. But whether remdesivir turns out to be effective or not and it's always wise to curb one's enthusiasm about supposed miracle cures the remarkable thing is that it's available at all. It began life in 2009 as a potential treatment for hepatitis C, but didn't work as hoped. It got a second chance during an Ebola outbreak in Congo. It showed limited effects but proved safe to use on people. Lab tests, however, suggested it might have potent effects against coronaviruses such as those that cause SARS and MERS. As it became clear that Covid 19 was also caused by a coronavirus, remdesivir was one of the few potentially helpful drugs ready to be in clinical trials. Gilead began distributing it on a compassionate use basis on Jan. 25.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Jermaine Goupall, 15, was killed in an attack that a judge in London said was foreshadowed by violent rap lyrics. Jermaine's father keeps a memorial in his house. LONDON Dean Pascal Modeste, a 22 year old music producer, was on his way to a recording session one day last year when a group of men approached him on mopeds, brandishing a handgun. He tried to escape through a side street. But the group caught up, ambushing him "like a pack of wolves," a witness said, before they stabbed Mr. Pascal Modeste 14 times in broad daylight and left him for dead. When two young men were convicted of his murder last month, the judge, Nicholas Cooke, called it "yet another dreadful example of London's knife crime." Then he named another culprit: a series of taunting videos by rival "drill" music groups that included threats about stabbing. "There is legitimate concern about the glamorization of violence in some of the material we hear in these cases," Judge Cooke said. Violent crime has been surging in London, with homicides up by 44 percent in the annual report released by the city's police department in April. And a chorus of law enforcement officials, legislators and violence experts are laying part of the blame on drill, a bleak, nihilistic style of rap music that is thriving in British cities, especially among young people in London's public housing projects. In music videos available with a couple of phone taps, masked drill rappers are brandishing weapons and promising to "ching," "chef," "splash," "wet" or "dip" their rivals, leaving them "dripping in sauce" or "swimming" evocative bits of slang that all describe stabbing or bleeding. "When we study the content of these music videos, we see young people talking about killing, shooting and stabbing," said Craig Pinkney, a criminologist who recently published a study about the potential dangers of drill music. "The arguments, conflicts and violence that take place in these videos are quickly being acted out and amplified in the real world." The London police, who maintain a database of 1,400 videos to gather intelligence on potential dangers, have asked YouTube to take down dozens of videos, and this week the website said that it had removed more than 30. But the focus on drill music has led to a debate over the extent to which the music is a reflection of desperate conditions rather than a creator of them, and about the line between public safety and censorship. The link between the music and the crime has been largely circumstantial, and Amnesty International, for one, has criticized the police database as "stigmatizing young black men for the type of music they listen to or their social media behavior." Fears about popular culture, like violent video games and gangster rap, are not new. But the way music is now distributed allows drill to be especially personal and ominous. Rather than waiting months for a record company to release their music, drill groups are quickly writing songs that directly threaten specific people or groups and disseminating them on YouTube. Their rivals respond likewise or on social media platforms like Snapchat, Instagram and Twitter, in an escalating contest of bravado that sometimes crosses over to the real world. Drill music originated in Chicago, which has endured an epidemic of violence and where one rapper in a drill feud, Joseph Campbell, known as Lil JoJo, was shot dead in 2012. The motive for the killing was unclear. The music is not always menacing, and some groups have achieved commercial recognition. Other groups are considered by the authorities to be barely distinguishable from gangs. Dean Pascal Modeste, 22, was killed as part of a rivalry between rap groups that played out over YouTube. The two men recently convicted in Mr. Pascal Modeste's death, Devone Pusey, 20, and Kai Stewart, 18, had appeared in a YouTube drill video that mocked and threatened a rival gang. "Dip splash till the splash is done," the group rapped in one video. Prosecutors said that Mr. Pascal Modeste was targeted because he was friendly with members of the rival gang, but he was not in the gang himself. In another case, the drill artist Junior Simpson, 17, was among a group of people convicted in February of murdering a 15 year old, Jermaine Goupall, in South London. Among the evidence presented were lyrics of his music about knives that the judge said foreshadowed the violent attack on Jermaine, who investigators said was not in a gang. "I saw man run/He got poked up" one of the lyrics says, using a slang term for stabbing. "He had his poke," or knife, the lyrics continue, "and he still got touched," or stabbed. As he sentenced Mr. Simpson to life in prison, Judge Anthony Leonard said, "You wrote lyrics in your phone that predicted the exact type of crime that took place." The victim's father, Stanley Goupall, said that he listens to other forms of rap, and that drill is distinctive through its negative and fierce tone. "It's not everyone, but a lot of drill music stands for violence and it's obvious from the lyrics that these artists have either been stabbed or shot, or are stabbing and shooting people," Mr. Goupall said in an interview. While only a handful of recent murders in London have direct connections to drill videos, some experts have argued that the violent imagery and lyrics are contributing more broadly to an environment that normalizes the use of knives and even guns, despite strict gun controls in Britain. Knife crimes, including illegal possession, rose 21 percent in the Metropolitan Police's recent annual report, and there were 157 homicides, compared with 109 the previous year. The rise in homicides for a couple of months, more people were killed in London than in New York City, which no one could remember happening before was one reason the police commissioner, Cressida Dick, began calling on YouTube and other sites to take down videos that the police believed could incite violence. "There's a whole counterargument about freedom of expression," the commissioner told the London radio station LBC. "'This is just music,' people will say. But I think it has a terrible effect." As Nina Degrads, an activist against youth violence, put it in an interview: "We don't tolerate teenagers threatening each other face to face, yet we allow these artists to do it publicly." In a statement on Tuesday, the Metropolitan Police said that "over 30 videos have been taken down as a result of our requests," which YouTube said represented more than half of the videos the police had asked to be blocked. YouTube said that because many videos used coded language and slang, it was often unclear which contained specific threats, and that the website would continue to work with the police to identify which videos ought to be deleted. "Take It There," a song by 67, features the lyrics "I dip, dip, dip man's face," and a reference to "doing drive bys." But Bempah, 21, who plays the backing music during live shows and does not write the words, said it was wrong to attribute lyrics like these to a rise in violence. The reasons behind it were complex, he said. "To try and narrow it down to one thing, it makes no sense." But to Mr. Pascal Modeste's friends and family, the music and the violence were inseparable. Some were in the courtroom last month as Judge Cooke sentenced the killers, who had appeared in a video by the drill group B Side, to 37 years in prison between them. "Sure, I'm relieved, but I can't be happy," said Joanna Williamson, a close friend of Mr. Pascal Modeste, as she cried outside the courtroom. "This whole culture is a tragic curse."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
A subject that can be as fraught as politics and religion has arrived just in time for Thanksgiving debates: The College Football Playoff selection committee said Tuesday night that Alabama, Notre Dame, Clemson and Ohio State are the country's best teams. Texas A M, Florida, Cincinnati, Northwestern, Georgia and Miami reached the top 10 of the committee's initial rankings but were not slotted into the potential playoff quartet. Cue the arguments of fans who can be prone to surrendering reason in favor of fervor. The rankings, delayed because of the coronavirus pandemic, are the first glimpse of how the 13 member panel is evaluating the records and talents of the teams in the mix to be selected for one of two playoff semifinals. Here's a look at how the process is working in a year in which more than 90 games have been canceled or postponed. The A.C.C. and the SEC are sure to be pleased. Two leagues. Seven teams in the top 10 and three of the top four. The Atlantic Coast and Southeastern Conferences have largely dominated college football in recent years, winning the national title in 13 of the last 14 seasons. Tuesday's rankings give them favorable opening odds of extending that reign. But December's league championship games, which could slot Alabama against Florida and pit Clemson against Notre Dame, will almost certainly reorder the rankings.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
It's baffling to think that the 1981 Hungarian film "Son of the White Mare" is just now making its U.S. debut. This should be classic, with its kaleidoscopic animation and vibrant mythos, is a unique contribution to the animated canon. Based on Hungarian folk tales, "Son of the White Mare," directed by Marcell Jankovics, is about the human child (a resplendent boy with flame like tufts of hair) of a horse who lives in a cosmic tree. Once grown, the son, called Treeshaker for his herculean strength, finds his two long lost brothers and journeys to the underworld to save three princesses from formidable, multiheaded dragons. Comparative mythology fans will catch some trusty tropes: the questing hero, a la Joseph Campbell; the fairy tale rule of threes; the Yggdrasil esque universal tree.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
A niece of President Trump will divulge a series of damaging stories about him in an upcoming book, the first time that the president could be forced to grapple with unflattering revelations by a member of his own family. The niece, Mary Trump, will release the book, "Too Much and Never Enough: How My Family Created the World's Most Dangerous Man," on July 28, according to Ms. Trump's publisher, Simon Schuster. The Daily Beast first reported on the book on Sunday. In the book, Ms. Trump, 55, will say she was a primary source for The New York Times's coverage of Mr. Trump's finances and provided the newspaper with confidential tax documents. A spokeswoman for The Times declined to comment on Sunday. The White House did not respond to a request for comment. Three journalists from The Times received the Pulitzer Prize for explanatory reporting last year for their work providing an unprecedented look at the Trump family's finances and contradicting Mr. Trump's image as a self made billionaire. This summer, Simon Schuster is also publishing a memoir by John Bolton, Mr. Trump's former national security adviser. The book's release has been complicated by disputes over what the Trump administration contends is classified information. The White House is expected to give Mr. Bolton a redacted version of his manuscript by Friday, which would be four days before the book's current publication date. In his memoir, Mr. Bolton recounts how the president held up security assistance to Ukraine as leverage to get officials there to take up investigations into Democrats, including the Bidens a scandal that led to the president's impeachment. A book by a member of the president's own family is likely to be a lightning rod. Mr. Trump is facing criticism for his handling of the pandemic and the nationwide protests against police brutality, and his niece's book is scheduled to come out just a few months before the election. Mary Trump has largely stayed out of the spotlight during the Trump presidency, but she has criticized her uncle in the past, after she and her brother filed a lawsuit over the will of Fred Trump Sr., the president's father. In the suit, Mary and her brother claimed that Donald Trump and his siblings had exercised "undue influence" over the distribution of Fred Trump's estate, which was worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In a rare interview with The New York Daily News in 2000, Mary Trump blasted her uncle and his siblings. "My aunt and uncles should be ashamed of themselves," she said. "I'm sure they are not."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Our weekday morning digest that includes consumer news, deals, tips and anything else that travelers may want to know. Wildsam, the guidebook series that features punchy narratives by famous as well as lesser known locals, has just published a guide to Brooklyn. It joins five cities the series is covering: New Orleans; San Francisco; Detroit; Austin, Tex.; and Nashville. Residents who share stories about the borough include the actress Rosie Perez, who offers memories about growing up in North Bushwick, and Jo Firestone, a comedian who talks about her apartment and career. There are also three long form essays including one by the author Emma Straub on the Cobble Hill bookstore BookCourt. As in other Wildsam books, there are whimsical illustrations (Lauren Tamaki did them for this volume). 18 The Toronto based active adventure company Butterfield Robinson has a new summer family biking trip through the Netherlands and Belgium. The five night itinerary, from July 12 to 17, is meant for children at least 8 years old and begins in Amsterdam and ends in Bruges, Belgium. It includes 11 to 25 miles a day of easy biking and activities such as a tour of the Dutch city of Leiden; a visit to Kinderdijk, a Unesco World Heritage site in the Netherlands famous for its windmills; and a chocolate making demonstration and tasting in Bruges. There are also dates available for 2016. Prices from 4,995.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Danny Meyer, who has opened several restaurants in New York this summer, talks about some memorable trips and where he would like to go next. Danny Meyer, the restaurateur and chief executive of the Union Square Hospitality Group, is well known for creating Shake Shack, the popular burger chain that started in New York City in 2004. This summer, he opened three dining destinations in the city, including Tacocina, an outdoor taco stand in Domino Park, o n the East River in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. "For Tacocina, we wanted a simple menu, with basically tacos and drinks," Mr. Meyer said. "The tortillas are made from a corn variety sourced in Mexico." The company, which includes the Union Square Cafe and Blue Smoke, operates 15 stand alone restaurant brands in the city , with additional eateries in airports, museums and professional sports stadiums. Shake Shack has become a global phenomenon, with 180 locations from Chicago to Kuwait. Below are edited excerpts from an interview with Mr. Meyer. You grew up in St. Louis. What are some of your fondest memories of living there? I loved the simplicity of life: falling asleep each night with my transistor radio on my pillow and then running down the driveway each morning, as soon as the morning paper was delivered, to find out whether or not the Cardinals or Blues had won last night's game. During your college years, you worked for your father's travel company as a tour guide in Rome. What were some of your favorite haunts? Back then, my budget was spent largely at pizzerias, coffee bars and gelaterie . My favorites were Da Ivo and Ai Marmi in Trastevere, and Da Baffetto near the Piazza Navona. For coffee, I loved Sant'Eustacchio and Tazza d'Oro, and for gelato, Giolitti. What first attracted you to New York? As an undergrad at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., I made frequent weekend pilgrimages to New York. I found the energy intoxicating. Each weekend typically involved seeing a play, going to a couple of restaurants, hearing jazz one night, going to the Museum of Modern Art or the Whitney Museum of American Art and maybe even running out to Belmont Park on Sunday to play the ponies. For Tacocina, we were presented a spectacular new riverfront park, formerly the front yard of the Domino Sugar factory. It is the perfect place to spend a sunny day or mild evening with friends, and it felt like a great atmosphere for something accessible and fun. Likewise, it dawned on us that New York hadn't really experienced a high altitude 60th floor restaurant and bar whose attitude was down to earth . That is Manhatta. We took the same approach with Bay Room, which we hope will become a classic venue for New Yorkers to celebrate and host important events in their life. What was one of your most memorable vacations? The memory that first comes to mind was a family vacation to France, when I was seven years old. My brother, sister and I each kept a diary, a parental trip requirement, so those first tastes of quiche Lorraine, fraises des bois and creme fraiche have been forever cemented. Another memory was crossing the Atlantic Ocean on the S.S. France. Where is a place in the world where you are most eager to travel, and what makes it so appealing? I'm having a tough time choosing between Vietnam and India. In each case, I'm fascinated by some combination of history, people and food. Is there a restaurant that you really admire? One that comes to mind is the River Cafe in London. I'm always happy when I'm there. The pristine, yet simple food, sophisticated drink, intelligent service and warm hospitality are second to none.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
LONDON "Celestial Bodies," a family saga set against Oman's transition from slave trading center to oil producer, became on Tuesday the first novel originally written in Arabic to win the Man Booker International Prize. The book's author, Jokha Alharthi of Oman, shares the award of 50,000 pounds, about 63,000, with its translator, Marilyn Booth. The prize, given each year to the best book translated into English and published in Britain, is widely seen as the world's most significant award for translated fiction. It is distinct from the more well known Booker Prize, for fiction originally published in English. Bettany Hughes, the chairwoman of the judging panel, called "Celestial Bodies" "a book to win over the head and the heart in equal measure." Five of the six authors, and all the translators, on this year's shortlist were women, an unusually high number for a book prize. Female authors accounted for 31 percent of new works translated into English and published in the United States in 2017, Meytal Radzinski, the founder of Women In Translation month said in an email. The Booker International shortlist showed that things were changing, Helen Vassallo, an academic at the University of Exeter who studies translation and gender, said in a telephone interview. Translators are commissioned for works, but have also recently pushed some female authors, Ms. Vassallo added. "They're these really passionate people championing works that have changed their lives," she said. "They're doing massive amounts of work behind the scenes." Ms. Booth, the translator of "Celestial Bodies," said in an interview for the prize's website that the "vivid use" of local expressions and classical Arabic poetry made translating the novel an "enormous challenge." But the book shows what imaginative writing is happening across the Arab world, she said, even in a country "that is less literarily mapped" like Oman. These books are art that is "pushing the boundaries of what can be thought and said," she added.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Claim to Fame: Awkwafina, whose real name is Nora Lum, is a rapper turned actress who will be known "till the day I die," she said, for a YouTube video response to a bawdy 2006 Mickey Avalon song. (Her parody has nearly 2.5 million views to date.) She came up with the stage name for her rap persona in high school and is surprised it stuck. "In retrospect, it was a horrible name," she said. Big Break: After appearing in bit parts in films like "Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising," and a recurring role on Hulu's "Future Man," Ms. Lum nabbed big roles in two projected summer blockbusters: "Ocean's 8" (June 8) and "Crazy Rich Asians" (Aug. 15). She was shooting another film in Spain this spring when the trailers for both movies came out, and upon returning, she realized things were going to be different. "I was rummaging around New York today, and three people knew who I was," she said in a recent interview. "That has never happened to me before."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
FOR a time, Claudia Aguirre and Joel Feazell lived happily in a two bedroom one bath co op on the Upper West Side with their two daughters. But as the children grew, the space became increasingly cramped. In particular, they needed another bathroom. They began to hunt for a larger apartment, which eventually led them north of 110th Street. There, they spent months researching condominiums, co ops and, finally, brownstones. "It dawned on us that the price we would pay for one more bathroom on the Upper West Side would get us an entire brownstone in Harlem," said Ms. Aguirre, the principal of M247 Dual Language Middle School on West 92nd Street. So last fall, the couple bought an abandoned 17 foot wide four story row house on West 120th Street for 920,000. They are now midway through a gut renovation. Ms. Aguirre and Mr. Feazell, who is a managing director at BNY Mellon, have joined a long list of middle and upper middle class New Yorkers who moved to Harlem over the years in search of space and relative affordability. When real estate slumped in 2008, stories like theirs became less common, as glamorous new developments in a still gentrifying Harlem suddenly seemed a risky bet. The median sales price in Harlem fell by nearly 16 percent between 2007 and last year, to 456,061, compared with less than 3 percent in Manhattan as a whole in the same period. But in recent months, there have been signs of a resurgence, brokers and residents said. Inventory has fallen, with the number of apartments and brownstones for sale in Central Harlem, for example, decreasing by nearly 5 percent in 2011 compared with the previous year, versus less than 2 percent for all of Manhattan. During the same period, the median price in Central Harlem the area from Morningside Avenue to the west and Fifth Avenue to the east, and from 110th Street north to 125th Street jumped by nearly 18 percent, to 536,635. In East Harlem, from 97th Street to 125th Street east of Fifth Avenue, the median price increased by nearly 5 percent, to 440,000, in 2011. This compares with an increase of just over 1 percent for all of Manhattan, according to Streeteasy data. Sofia Song, the vice president for research of Streeteasy, said that increase could be attributed to a strong rental market and low interest rates a combination that makes buying more attractive. "We have a flower shop, a cute cafe down the street and a ton of hip new restaurants that have opened," said Melody Rollins Downes, who with her husband, Quintano Downes, recently spent 1.95 million on a renovated brownstone on West 120th Street, a few doors down from Ms. Aguirre and Mr. Feazell. Before the building was renovated, "it was a crack house and the basement level was a gambling spot," she said. "But now, this whole block has been transformed and there is really a great vibe up here." Norman Horowitz, an executive vice president of Halstead Property who has sold several hundred properties over the last decade in Harlem, said, "Harlem was gentrifying before the recession, then there was a pause, and now the trend is picking up again." Some experts caution, however, that a Harlem recovery could be destabilized if a backlog of foreclosed or distressed properties went on the market. While figures are hard to come by, "there is a lot of hidden inventory, where banks are just holding on to these units, but have yet to put them up for sale," said Willie Suggs, a well known Harlem broker. The supply of properties for sale has tightened for several reasons, brokers say. For one, condos built in the boom were more affordable to start with usually around 1,000 per square foot and under so deep price cuts on top of that ensured that many of the units were steadily, if slowly, bought up. Low interest rates and federal incentives also helped bolster sales. The recession nearly turned off the financing spigot for new projects, and even now, with banks starting to lend again, developers are thinking twice before jumping back in the ring. Finally, when the market collapsed, some condominiums were converted to rentals. At the Sedona, an 11 unit condominium at 346 East 119th Street, for example, just one apartment remains for sale. Three recent sales had multiple bids, said David Daniels, a vice president of Corcoran who represents the building. Unit 3A sold for 365,000, just 5,000 shy of the asking price, and 4A closed at 382,00, only 3,000 below asking. Unit 5A is now in contract for close to its asking price of 425,000 even after a 15,000 increase in February. Some developers are raising prices. This month, for example, Fifth on the Park, a 28 story brick and glass condominium at 120th Street and Fifth Avenue at Marcus Garvey Park, increased the price on many of its units, including No. 13C, a three bedroom two bath, by 10,000, to 953,000; and No. 19C, also a three bedroom two bath, by 16,000, to 959,000. Hoping to buy an apartment in Harlem before prices rose precipitously, Molly Glenn and her boyfriend, Daniel Truax, searched for four months before they closed in December on an 800 square foot two bedroom on West 148th Street for 265,000. "It is everything we wanted," said Mr. Truax, 26, who is the athletics ticket manager at Columbia University. "While most of our friends are in Brooklyn," said Ms. Glenn, also 26, a mechanical engineer at ThomasNet, "the parts of Brooklyn we really like are more expensive than here. I just didn't see the point in spending more money to leave Manhattan and put a river between me and everything I do." Brownstones have also been selling at a clip, with the number of sales in Harlem up nearly 24 percent since 2008, to 47 sales last year, according to data from the appraisal firm Miller Samuel. A five bedroom five bath at 329 Convent Avenue on the western border of Harlem sold for 2.3 million, a 100,000 increase over its asking price. Nearby, 319 Convent Avenue sold for 1.97 million, far above the 1.6 million asking price. "Normally, between Thanksgiving and Valentine's Day we brokers go on vacation," said Ms. Suggs, who is preparing to list two brownstones this spring for around 3 million each, a price tag not seen since the market crashed. "But not this year. People are willing to pay close to what they were paying prior to the market tanking, so we are doing our happy dance." Sensing that the market is turning, some developers are moving to bring new condos to the market. At 5 West 127th Street, a 13 unit condominium will go on the market in May. Mostly two bedrooms, the apartments will have washers and dryers and granite countertops; some will have balconies. There will also a gym. Priced under 600 a square foot, the apartments range from 379,000, for a 698 square foot one bedroom with one bath, to 689,000, for a penthouse of 1,027 square feet with two bedrooms and two baths. "Inventory is very low and the market is rebounding," said Yoni Bak, the vice president for real estate development at Kane Ventures, the developer of the West 127th Street condos. Kane is preparing to break ground on a similar 15 unit project at 56 58 West 129th Street. "We are doubling down on Harlem right now," Mr. Bak said, "because the prices for land are still reasonable up here." On West 116th Street, between Lenox Avenue and Fifth Avenue, L M Development Partners is breaking ground on 85 market rate condominiums. The project, still unnamed, is across from the Kalahari, a 249 unit condominium, now sold out, that the developers built in 2009. Like the Kalahari, the new development will include a gym and a community room, with prices somewhere in the 600 a square foot range. "The finishes won't be over the top," said Lisa Gomez, the executive vice president for development at L M. "We will be using wide plank floors and stone countertops, but we don't think people are moving to Harlem for a fancy toilet bowl. They are moving to Harlem because they like the neighborhood or because they can afford more space for their money." But though prices are rising, they are still well below their peak. At the Sedona on East 119th Street, for example, 3A and 4A, the two units that recently sold, were listed for 445,000 each in 2010, and their recent sales prices represented an 18 percent and 14.2 percent discount respectively. And even after the price increases at Fifth on the Park, No. 13C is listed at a 24.4 percent discount from its original asking price of 1.26 million in 2008, while No. 19C is 27.3 percent below its original 1.32 million price. Some builders contend that prices are still too low to justify new development. "At 500 to 600 a square foot," said Michael K. Shah, the chief executive of DelShah Capital, a developer, "condo projects just don't pencil out yet." Prerecession condominium prices in Harlem were around 850 a square foot, he said, and until prices climb further, "there is just too slim a profit margin after factoring in the cost of construction and land I don't think you will see a lot of new development for at least another two to three years." Still, some brokers and residents insist that this market rebound is meaningful. The Downeses had been living in a three bedroom condominium on West 119th Street for six years before their growing family created a need for more space. "We looked all over the city," said Ms. Downes, an executive vice president of Pacific Investment Management Company, "but it was really hard to find any four bedrooms for under 3 million." When they found the five bedroom house around the corner on West 120th Street, they began a slow negotiation with the developer over the 2 million price tag. "Then one weekend morning I was out walking my dog, and saw two couples looking at the house, talking about making offers come Monday," she said. "I went up to them and said, 'Oh, we are already in contract, that is my house.' " She and her husband, who works on Wall Street, quickly closed the deal and moved in earlier this year. "The market is very competitive right now," she said. "We were told by our broker we could probably relist this house today and get 2.7 million for it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
WASHINGTON The Treasury Department moved on Thursday to block states from circumventing new federal limits on state and local tax deductions. A proposed Treasury Department rule, certain to face legal challenges from several states, would limit the type of charitable contributions that Americans are allowed to deduct on their federal taxes. The rule would effectively exclude donations that are rewarded with state tax credits. The regulation would affect only taxpayers who currently deduct more than 10,000 in state and local taxes. And its effect would most likely be concentrated among high earners in high tax states, some of which created credits to help residents reduce the federal take. But it could also adversely affect taxpayers in other states, where such credits were already being given for contributions made to certain private or charter schools and universities, land donated for conservation purposes and donations to housing assistance programs. The proposed rule involves a provision of the new Republican tax law that set a 10,000 a year cap on deductions for state and local taxes. The cap helped Republicans keep the estimated cost of the tax law, which centers on a sharp reduction in the corporate tax rate, under 1.5 trillion, to comply with a budget procedure that allowed the bill to pass without the support of any Democrats. Angered by the move, New York and New Jersey passed laws that set up charitable funds for state services, such as schools, and awarded state tax credits based on donations to those funds. Taxpayers making the donations would reduce their state taxes by the amount of the credit, but the state's revenue would not fall. The idea was to create a roundabout way of funding state services that preserves a higher federal tax deduction for residents because the charitable deduction is not subject to the same cap as the state and local tax deduction. The Treasury rule would render those credits effectively useless for taxpayers. They would still be paying the same amount to the state, but receive no additional tax deduction from the federal government for their trouble. Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, who has denounced the Republican tax law as "an economic missile" aimed at his state, threatened Thursday to take legal action against the proposed rule, calling it "an abuse of government power." More than 90 percent of households earning at least 200,000 in 2015 took the state and local deduction, writing off 269 billion in taxes, according to Internal Revenue Service data. Those households accounted for less than 5 percent of all filers in 2015, but took nearly 50 percent of the total deduction that year. In New York, more than a third of taxpayers took the state and local tax break in 2015, deducting more than 20,000 on average from their federal taxes. In Alabama, just over a quarter of taxpayers took the deduction, and claimed less than 6,000 on average. Capping the deduction effectively increases the advantage that low tax states have over high tax states, which could make it harder for states to attract and retain high earning residents and businesses. Trump administration officials signaled months ago that they would seek to stop state workarounds, which would deprive the federal government of revenue. Officials said the regulation could affect an estimated 5 percent of American taxpayers who currently claim the state and local tax deduction on their federal taxes, and 1 percent who claim other credits. The rule does not apply to state tax deductions, only to credits, and it does not affect taxpayers who receive a credit worth 15 percent or less of the amount they donate a loophole that could exempt landowners who donate large tracts for conservation purposes. 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 Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and other officials acknowledged Thursday that the proposed rule could hurt beneficiaries of tax credits that predate the new law, such as an Alabama law that provides tax credits to donors who contribute to private school scholarship funds. "We appreciate the value of state tax credit programs, particularly school choice initiatives," Mr. Mnuchin said, "and we believe the proposed rule will have no impact on federal tax benefits for donations to school choice programs for about 99 percent of taxpayers compared to prior law." Some analysts had expected the Trump administration to try to carve out an exemption for pre existing programs like Alabama's, which are more common in Republican leaning states. But by choosing not to do so, the administration may have made the new policy easier to defend. Darien Shanske, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, said the government had "taken the more principled approach" by going after all the programs, not just newly adopted ones like New York's. Still, Mr. Shanske said the government would need to explain why it was moving to block state efforts now when it hadn't acted earlier. "I think states will have the grounds to challenge it," he said. "You need to explain why you're turning practice on its head." But Jared Walczak, a policy analyst for the Tax Foundation, said the new tax law changed the stakes for the I.R.S. For one thing, the previously unlimited deduction for state and local taxes meant that for most taxpayers, the state level charitable credits had no effect on taxpayers' federal tax liability. With the deduction capped, that will no longer be true. A wealthy taxpayer who contributes 10,000 to a private school scholarship fund in Iowa, for example, receives a 6,500 tax credit from the state, under Iowa law. Previously, the taxpayer could deduct that entire 10,000 contribution from her federal taxes. Under the new regulation, she would only be allowed to deduct 3,500. And the newly adopted programs are on a much larger scale. "The simple answer is it just never rose to the level of importance where the I.R.S. chose to weigh in," Mr. Walczak said. Treasury officials said the rule would stand up to challenges because it applies a longstanding principle of taxation, known as "quid pro quo" doctrine. That principle prevents taxpayers from deducting contributions to charity that pay for a good or service. For example, someone who pays 1,000 at a charity auction for a painting valued at 750 may only deduct 250 from her federal taxes. Even if the regulation is upheld, most New York residents will receive a tax cut under the new law, albeit a smaller one than they would have gotten if the state and local deduction had survived unscathed. In a report in March, analysts at the Tax Policy Center estimated that 63.5 percent of New Yorkers would pay less under the individual provisions of the law, versus only 5.6 percent who would pay more. The analysis reached similar estimates for residents of California, New Jersey and Connecticut. Even among the richest New Yorkers those in the top 1 percent of earners less than 30 percent will see their taxes go up under the law, according to the report.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Konstantin Batygin did not set out to solve one of the solar system's most puzzling mysteries when he went for a run up a hill in Nice, France. Dr. Batygin, a Caltech researcher, best known for his contributions to the search for the solar system's missing "Planet Nine," spotted a beer bottle. At a steep, 20 degree grade, he wondered why it wasn't rolling down the hill. He realized there was a breeze at his back holding the bottle in place. Then he had a thought that would only pop into the mind of a theoretical astrophysicist: "Oh! This is how Europa formed." Europa is one of Jupiter's four large Galilean moons. And in a paper published Monday in the Astrophysical Journal, Dr. Batygin and a co author, Alessandro Morbidelli, a planetary scientist at the Cote d'Azur Observatory in France, present a theory explaining how some moons form around gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, suggesting that millimeter sized grains of hail produced during the solar system's formation became trapped around these massive worlds, taking shape one at a time into the potentially habitable moons we know today. Dr. Batygin and Dr. Morbidelli say earlier theories explain only a part of how the solar system's many objects formed. The two researchers set out to present the rest of the story with equations explaining how a new planet transitions from being surrounded by its disk of matter, to creating satellite building blocks, all the way to the formation of moons like Europa.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Amid the annual discussion of whether a dynasty is good or bad for women's college basketball, Connecticut's No. 2 seeding in the N.C.A.A. tournament qualifies as a sign of parity. With four No. 1 seeds Baylor, Notre Dame, Louisville and Mississippi State and three No. 2 seeds UConn, Stanford and Oregon that are strong contenders for the national title, the tournament appears to be more open than in the past. When the brackets were announced, the Huskies' seeding was considered shocking, which speaks to the ridiculously high standard to which the program is held. The last time the Huskies plummeted to such depths was in 2006. After all, this is a team that has advanced to the region semifinals in each of the last 24 seasons, making 19 Final Four appearances and winning 11 national titles. Read our live coverage of the men's tournament here. In seven of the previous 10 years, there was at least one team that entered the tournament unbeaten and favored to make a dominant run. This season, every team in The Associated Press Top 25 poll has lost, and all but one of the top 10, Baylor, has lost multiple times, another sign of the game's competitive growth. "I mean, we did lose two games," UConn Coach Geno Auriemma told reporters, sarcasm in full bloom. The losses came against the No. 1 seeds Baylor and Louisville, each on the road. "I'm surprised we're a No. 2," he continued. "I thought we'd be a four or five. We're not in one of those conferences that perennially wins national championships. We can't be expected to lose two games and not drop. I'm just happy they kept us a two and not a four."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
In 1997, Charles Barbee and three co defendants were convicted of robbing two banks in Spokane, Wash., and setting off bombs in the office of a local newspaper and a Planned Parenthood clinic. One key piece of evidence from the trial was a security camera photo that showed an alternating dark and light pattern along a seam of one of the robber's bluejeans. Richard Vorder Bruegge, an F.B.I. forensic scientist, told the jury that the visual features of the jeans in the photograph, particularly the dark and light "bar code" pattern, matched a pair that had been seized from the house of one of the suspects: Charles Barbee. The next year, Dr. Vorder Bruegge published a study on the Barbee case in the Journal of Forensic Sciences, which was used to set a legal precedent for how analysis of patterns in photographs could be used as evidence. Analysis of visual elements in photographs, such as facial markings, design features on clothing and jeans bar codes, is used in hundreds of cases a year, F.B.I. officials have said. But a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences raises questions about the trustworthiness of matching jeans by their patterns of wear. "Even under ideal conditions, trying to get an exact match is difficult," said Hany Farid, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, and the senior author of the study. "This technique should be used with extreme caution, if at all." Dr. Farid has spent most of his career studying the forensics of digital images, and has testified in court about whether images were digitally altered. After reading an investigation by Ryan Gabrielson of ProPublica last year, he was inspired to look into photo analysis techniques used by the F.B.I. Much of the scientific heft undergirding those techniques stemmed from the one study on jeans bar codes, Mr. Gabrielson wrote. Dr. Farid set out to test the technique. He and Sophie Nightingale, a postdoctoral researcher, bought 100 pairs of jeans from thrift stores in Berkeley and took a photo of each long, vertical seam. They also had 111 workers, found through the crowdsourcing site Amazon Mechanical Turk, send in similar pictures of their own jeans. These images would be used to measure the range of differences between different jeans. To simulate the variation that arises when photographing the same jeans, they chose 10 pairs whose seams all had pronounced dark and light patterns and took 10 photos of each seam under varied conditions: in different rooms in their lab, with different lighting, using different cameras and placing the jeans on different surfaces. Dr. Farid and Dr. Nightingale plotted each dark and light pattern on a line graph; the light portions of the seam were represented by peaks, and the dark portions were represented by valleys. They then sought to compare the graphs to each other. Ideally, this comparison would show that two images of the same seam are much more similar than two images of different seams. This, in turn, would support the idea that the bar code for each seam is truly unique, and that a photo reliably captures that uniqueness. To make the comparison easier, they adapted a mathematical tool that neuroscientists use to measure the similarity between different "spike trains," a phenomenon in which brain cells are mostly silent, then fire suddenly. Dr. Farid and Dr. Nightingale transformed the jeans graphs to look more like spike trains, with narrow, pointy peaks and valleys, and then used the spike train tool to compare them. The data showed that two images of the same seam often looked quite different so much so that it was often impossible to tell whether a pair of images were of the same seam or different ones. Much of the problem, the researchers concluded, comes down to the fact that cloth is flexible: it stretches, folds and drapes in complicated ways, which changes how it looks in photos. The lack of distinctiveness in images of seams significantly limits the accuracy of jeans identification, according to the study. The algorithm made a significant number of false matches between different pairs of jeans. The authors found that if they made the algorithm more discriminating, limiting the odds of making a false match to one in a million 0.0001 percent then the chances of making a correct match were only about 20 percent. The rest of the time, the algorithm would not make any match. If they were less picky about accuracy, they could obtain correct matches about 80 percent of the time but they would also get about 20 percent false matches. Alicia Carriquiry, a statistician at Iowa State University and director of a program on forensic science, who was not involved with the study, said the most important goal for any forensic technique is to have a low likelihood of false matches. False matches can lead to innocent people being convicted of crimes that they did not commit. "In the jeans study, that probability was huge, meaning that the chance of making a false identification using that evidence is high," she said. Dr. Farid said the study actually represented a best case scenario, in which the jeans were photographed from up close, under bright lighting and with good cameras. In real investigations, suspects are often photographed at distance, with low resolution CCTV cameras. Researchers outside the F.B.I. posit that the Journal of Forensic Sciences article also failed to show that jeans bar codes were a reliable method of identification. The major problem, they say, was that the article did not include an objective statistical model of how likely it was for the method to make mistakes to gauge the possibility that two different pairs of jeans might look the same because of manufacturing similarities or just by coincidence, for instance. Instead the study leaned on the analyst's judgment of markings on jeans. Dr. Vorder Bruegge pointed this out himself in the study: "It should be remembered that in this and other cases, the overall significance of wear marks is not necessarily based on a quantitative assessment, but on a qualitative assessment." During the trial of Mr. Barbee, Dr. Vorder Bruegge demonstrated the accuracy of the technique by explaining that one pair of jeans seized from Mr. Barbee matched the pair worn by the bank robber, while 34 other pairs of jeans offered up by the defense did not. But outside researchers say that method does not substitute for having a statistical model describing the method's accuracy. In fact, at four points in the article, Dr. Vorder Bruegge noted that the technique had yet to be statistically validated. "Although a validation study has yet to be performed to test the theory that all denim trouser bar code seam patterns are unique," he wrote, "it has been observed in numerous examinations that it is possible to distinguish pairs of jeans from one another based solely on differences in the patterns along the seams." No such validation study has been published since then. The F.B.I. declined to answer questions about the bureau's use of jeans bar codes or about Dr. Vorder Bruegge's research. Independent researchers say that with many other kinds of pattern analysis, as with jeans bar codes, prosecution witnesses rely too much on subjective judgments rather than rigorous statistics. "Forensic scientists will say, 'Yeah, I'm sure, based on my 20 years of experience, that these prints were made by that same finger,'" said Anil Jain, a computer scientist who studies pattern recognition and biometrics. "They say that's a subjective decision. We want to get away from that." F.B.I. investigators sometimes present the methods in court as being near infallible, often citing levels of accuracy that researchers find implausible. In a 2003 case, Dr. Vorder Bruegge claimed that the plaid shirt worn by a bank robber and captured by a security camera made a definitive match with one seized from the home of a suspect. He testified that only one in 650 billion shirts would match so well a claim that "makes about as much sense as the statement two plus two equals five," Karen Kafadar, a statistician at the University of Virginia, told ProPublica.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
For the past year and a half I've been buying a medical device from Italy that has improved my life immeasurably. It wasn't easy: I roped in a good friend who had moved to Milan to buy the device and ship it to me because it wasn't yet available in the States. And it was expensive: over 1,600 a year. But my black market purchase helps me manage my Type 1 diabetes without the need to draw blood from my callused fingers 10 plus times a day to track my glucose level, a ritual that had been an unpleasant part of my life for decades. The FreeStyle Libre, made by Abbott, is a flash glucose sensor that allows people with diabetes to view our blood sugar every minute of the day without a single finger prick. While there are similar devices on the market called continuous glucose monitors, or CGMs the Libre is the least invasive one I've seen. It takes readings from a sensor under the skin but doesn't require finger sticks for calibration, and is about the size of a quarter and as thick as two. And it's helping me keep my diabetes under better control. There have been some challenges: The Milanese UPS store wanted a letter detailing exactly what was in the box. My credit card's fraud department called ("Yes, the charge for 365 from Milan is mine"). So I was thrilled to learn that the Food and Drug Administration recently approved the sale of the Libre in the United States, a decision that may help some of the 29 million Americans with diabetes. The Libre I buy from Italy has a self adhesive, waterproof white sensor that sticks to my arm for 14 days. It took some trial and error to get used to it. One sensor flipped off from over aggressive toweling at the gym; another came loose after a backpack strap nicked it. Finally, rather than the spot on my outer arm that the manufacturer recommends, I tried putting the sensor on the inside of my arm, which is where it rests right now. It's barely noticeable, although occasionally a small child will demand to know what it is. I can see real time results on a small digital reader (or an Android phone app): an arrow going up, down or level alongside my blood glucose number. The resulting data set averages, trends and patterns monitors my glucose status 24/7. At first, scanning the Libre to check my results after breakfast, lunch or dinner was like bingeing on my favorite Netflix show. I'd show the readout, a blue line with peaks and valleys, to friends and family: Look how I stayed in the normal range all day! Or the flip side: Look what happened after an intense workout. Even without food in my stomach, my blood sugar often, but not always, rose during exercise, which made planning tricky. The device gives me a window to the impact of cortisol, a stress hormone, which prompts a rush of glucose into my bloodstream. After a year and a half of paying well over 2,000 out of pocket six sensors every three months along with shipping fees my condition has improved. My hemoglobin A1C now clocks in around 6.3 to 6.5, down from 7.0, and my doctor is thrilled. (An A1C level of 5.7 percent is considered normal in people without diabetes.) Jeffrey Brewer, the chief executive of Bigfoot Biomedical, got his hands on a Libre early (on eBay) and plans to use it as a component of the artificial pancreas his company is working to develop. Mr. Brewer, who has a son with Type 1 diabetes and is a former president of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, said it's the first glucose monitor "that people really love." Dr. David Lam, associate director of the Mount Sinai Diabetes Center in New York, currently prescribes a Dexcom CGM, a device similar to the Libre but which requires calibrating with a finger stick twice a day, to his patients with Type 1 diabetes. (Insurance companies typically cover the cost of these devices for people with Type 1 but not Type 2 diabetes) Dr. Lam sees potential benefits in using the Libre or similar devices for anyone with diabetes. "It's not only a diagnostic tool, it's an educational tool. You learn how foods affect your body, you can see trends, and you can predict lows and highs," he said. Dr. Pratik Choudhary, a senior lecturer and consultant at the diabetes center at King's College London who previewed the Libre early on, said there are limits to its usefulness. "It is just not cost effective at current prices," he said. Dozens of studies have shown that continuous glucose monitoring leads to lower hemoglobin A1C results but for someone with tight control (like me), a half point percent change in A1C is a "minimal improvement to quality of life." Still, how do we quantify peace of mind? The treasure trove of data I get from the Libre days, weeks and months of data has made it easier for me to manage my life. Learning that it would be available by prescription at major pharmacies in the States late this year seemed like great news. But the model sold here will have a 10 day sensor, rather than the 14 day sensors used worldwide, along with an extended warm up time 12 hours for the F.D.A. approved version versus one hour for my Italian model. That seems like a step backward. I also don't know how expensive it will be, or whether my insurance under the increasingly shaky Affordable Care Act will cover it. Until those questions are answered, I may stick with my Milan to Manhattan route.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
"Waitress," the long running Broadway show about a despondent waitress in a small town diner who finds solace in making pies, will close on Jan. 5, 2020, producers announced on Tuesday. The final curtain will come down after 1,544 performances and 33 previews at the Brooks Atkinson Theater in New York, making it that theater's longest running musical. The production's box office earnings were also significant: After opening on Broadway in 2016, "Waitress" earned its 12 million investment back in less than 10 months. It was one of only three new musicals from that Broadway season to go into the black the others being "School of Rock" and "Hamilton." Adapted from a 2007 film by Adrienne Shelly and with a book by Jessie Nelson, the show focuses on Jenna, a waitress mired in an unhappy marriage and who sees the prize money from a local baking contest as a potential means to escape her circumstances.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
For Some Skiers, It's Uphill All the Way In a DIY precursor to downhill skiing, the latest on slope trend is to go uphill. Called skinning, the activity of walking up a downhill slope on skis to schuss back down exemplifies a no pain, no gain ethos among skiers determined to earn their turns for the sheer challenge (or to burn calories). Skinning falls under the family of activities known as uphilling, which includes snowboarders using special split boards, snowshoers and hikers. "Skinning is one part aerobic hill workout, one part downhill skiing," said Ted Mahon, an avid uphill skier and a 20 year veteran ski instructor with the Aspen Skiing Company who teaches uphill touring. "It's more than just exercise. You're climbing a mountain." He added that it can be "meditative" with "an almost Zen like winter stillness where all you hear is your breath and the sound of the skis sliding on the snow." What was once strictly a backcountry practice, used to explore ungroomed, off piste terrain, is becoming more common in the front country. Fifty percent of ski resorts in the country now allow uphill skiing on their slopes, according to the National Ski Areas Association, an industry resort group. Several are adding new uphill ski races this year. In addition to physical fitness, skinning requires special ski boots and bindings that free the heel to march up a mountain. Non slip "skins," special coverings that prevent the skis from sliding backwards, go on the bottom of the skis for the vertical trip. Sales of alpine touring equipment used to go up and down hills rose 13 percent last year, according to Snowsports Industries America, a nonprofit trade association representing ski manufacturers and retailers, and the trend has led to lighter downhill skis. "You can hike up before the lifts open and get first tracks down," said Nick Sargent, the president of Snowsports Industries America. "The weekend warrior is getting the most out of the day by hiking up in the morning." As uphilling has increased in popularity it has forced ski resorts to reckon with safety issues related to two way traffic. Resorts that allow vertical ascents often have a designated uphill zone that is sometimes cordoned off from the rest of a run to prevent downhillers from entering uphill territory and vice versa. Some allow it at specific times or only on specific trails. For skiers, the practice offers a new way to explore the mountain, especially if downhill conditions are marginal, as in the case of warm weather or light snow cover. Beginners may try it, according to Mr. Mahon, as long as they climb a run they can handle going downhill or take the ski lift or gondola back down. "If you're just getting started and you're building your skills and confidence, embarking on a ski run with tired legs after a large physical effort isn't something most beginner skiers get excited about," he said. At resorts, uphill access policies vary. Sometimes a lift ticket is required, other times it is discounted or free. Windham Mountain in the Catskills Mountains of New York offers an uphill ticket for 10 a day or 25 for the season and Killington Resort in Vermont offers an uphill season pass for 20. Arapahoe Basin in Colorado normally offers free uphill access, pending avalanche mitigation work. Because it requires special gear and different skills, some ski resorts are adding skinning to their ski school menus or holding special events related to it. Other outfitters offer guided trips in the backcountry. The following are some ways to circumvent the chairlift before pointing your skis downslope. Aspen Skiing Company, which operates Snowmass, Aspen Mountain, Aspen Highlands and Buttermilk in Colorado, has embraced uphilling, adding Dynafit uphill skis to its rental inventory this year. Aspen Snowmass offers both private and group full day lessons (group lessons start at 164 a person and private lessons cost 795 a day for up to five guests). Near Lake Tahoe, Calif., Kirkwood offers an extensive backcountry education program for experienced skiers that includes workshops on Jan. 20 and Feb. 3 ( 200), and regularly available private guides ( 465 for a half day). In the Canadian Rockies, Lake Louise Ski Resort and Yamnuska Mountain Adventures have teamed to offer guided tours for intermediate and advanced skiers just outside of the ski resort boundary ( 210 Canadian dollars, or about 165). In Utah, Utah Ski Mountaineering, a nonprofit group, compiles uphill policies at ski areas throughout the state. Brighton Resort operates a stoplight system to indicate whether its designated uphill routes are open. Monarch Mountain near Salida, Colo., added a dedicated uphill lane last year, joining other Colorado ski areas, including Crested Butte Mountain Resort, Sunlight, Breckenridge and Steamboat, in offering uphill access. Visitors to Las Vegas can take a winter break at nearby Lee Canyon where uphill traffic tripled last year. Uphill skiing passes are complimentary, but skiers must check in at the base lodge before ascending. Even ski areas that don't regularly offer uphill access are adding special events that cater to enthusiasts. Solitude Mountain Resort in Utah does not allow uphill travel regularly "due to the tremendous amount of avalanche mitigation work that is frequently conducted throughout the winter season," Sherri Harkin, a spokeswoman for the resort, wrote in an email. Nonetheless, it plans to allow uphilling at the resort on two days this season during its Utah Skimo Race series. Events take place after the regular ski day ends on Jan. 30 and Feb. 13. Skiers must bring their own gear and rentals are available at Wasatch Touring in Salt Lake City.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
LONDON On the day a paler, thinner, notably less boisterous Boris Johnson returned to work after his near death coronavirus experience, a Tory member of Parliament tweeted a GIF of a magnificent lion perched on a mountaintop, his mane blowing in the wind. "Good to see BorisJohnson back at the helm!" he wrote. This fawning sycophancy is not the norm in British politics. We haven't, on the whole, run Trumpian courts, or implied that our prime ministers are kings among men. And yet, unusual and unwelcome as the adulation was, the tweeter had a point. Mr. Johnson's cabinet is so markedly weak, with so few politicians of intellect and experience, that the prime minister's absence for nearly a month left an alarming void. A shifting cast of ministers stood in for him at the daily pandemic press briefings, with performances ranging from mortifying to faltering or defensive to occasionally, thankfully, competent. The lack of depth in the cast around this cabinet table was mercilessly displayed, as was the nervousness of many of those obliged to face public interrogation at such a critical time. Some, like the new chancellor, Rishi Sunak, could handle their own briefs, but not one felt able or authorized to even begin to address the big questions Britain now wants answered: What is the route out of lockdown, and how should deaths be balanced against isolation, loneliness, futures and jobs? All those queries were diverted, with evident relief, to the stock response: We'll have to wait until the boss gets back. Against that background of anxious, stalling stand ins, Mr. Johnson's reappearance has, indeed, felt like the welcome return of a big beast. The country needs a leader. But his dominance is no accident. It's the consequence of the deliberate choice he made after he became Conservative Party leader last year to expel principled opponents within the party and to surround himself with smaller characters, ones who will neither threaten nor challenge him, politicians chosen on the whole more for their malleability and their loyalty to Mr. Johnson's Brexit project than for their talent. Mr. Johnson's calculation then was that the quality of his cabinet was pretty much immaterial. His priority was to deliver Brexit and economic policies that the Conservatives' new Brexit supporting voters were demanding. That would be driven by Mr. Johnson's small team of political advisers in No. 10 Downing Street, led by his ruthless, controlling, Machiavellian chief adviser, Dominic Cummings. In this centralization of power, a core group of insiders and allies would decide the government's agenda and come up with the ideas and the strategies for carrying it out. The job of cabinet ministers would be to do, meekly, as they were told. No opposition was permitted. Senior, able Tory politicians of independent spirit were passed over and exiled to the backbenches. Any cabinet ministers who imagined they were strong enough to subvert the new system had a harsh lesson in January, when its second most senior member, Sajid Javid, then the country's finance minister and a Johnson ally, was ordered to fire all his advisers and replace them with those appointed by Mr. Cummings. He refused and was forced to resign. A fear of breaching the line has haunted the remaining ministers and encouraged timidity ever since. The onslaught of the coronavirus has revealed how dangerous it is to deliberately weaken the cabinet in this way. In Mr. Johnson's absence, his alternative power center at No. 10 could not hold. Not only did its principal members, including Mr. Cummings, fall sick themselves, but in this emergency, political advisers couldn't take the place of an absent prime minister. Britain needed and wanted to see powerful public figures in the lead. What we got were politicians anxious about the future verdict of their puppeteers. Britain needs better than this as it faces the most petrifying, unpredictable, multifaceted calamity in three generations. The breadth of the problem demands as much wisdom, competence and insight as can be brought into Downing Street. Last week, Mr. Johnson promised to consult widely, even with the opposition. He should extend that to where it counts, to a temporary cabinet and government of all the best and tested Tory talents. Instead of contriving an obedient cabinet, he should model himself on those previous prime ministers who included rivals and ex leaders in their governments, knowing that the vexations of resistance, argument and persuasion were a price worth paying for averting errors, clarifying problems, and learning from those who had been scalded by earlier crises. Many ex ministers would respond to a call to serve for a short time in the national interest. Jeremy Hunt, the former health secretary, could help expand the National Health Service. The former chancellors Kenneth Clarke and Philip Hammond and former prime ministers John Major and David Cameron could deploy their knowledge of financial crises and banks that won't lend. Mr. Javid would be an infinitely better home secretary than the inadequate Priti Patel, and the critical backbencher Tom Tugendhat could run the Foreign Office. Mr. Johnson's predecessor as prime minister, Theresa May, could use her best quality, her famed attention to detail, to oversee food and support for the shielded and vulnerable or the delivery of personal protective equipment. Would this even be legal? Yes, easily: Technically, a member of the cabinet must be in the Parliament. Those who aren't currently M.P.s could be appointed to the House of Lords, a step the prime minister is empowered to take. If the most anonymous and mediocre half of the cabinet were replaced by names like these, the caliber of the executive would soar overnight. Notable former politicians who didn't wish to join or were from other parties say, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown or William Hague could form an advisory panel. If Mr. Johnson worried that his temporary coronavirus cabinet would impede Brexit, its members could agree not to interfere with that. None of this, of course, is likely to happen. Mr. Johnson dislikes sharing the limelight. That's one reason the most experienced member of his cabinet, Michael Gove, wasn't picked to deputize for him while he was out sick. But it is in Mr. Johnson's self interest, as well as the country's, to act, for one notable reason. His path to the top has been based on a simple strategy: He's not a knowledgeable, able, policy driven leader. He's an optimistic figurehead who prefers an easy life and gets competent people beneath him to do the actual work. That strategy risks falling apart now because neither Mr. Johnson's narrow group of advisers nor the ministers he appointed for their loyalty are the people best qualified to handle the grave perils ahead. He should broaden his base and stop his chief adviser, Mr. Cummings, ruling by fear. Britain doesn't require a lion in this moment; it needs a leader with the humility and confidence to recruit every necessary talent to this fight. Jenni Russell ( jennirsl) is a columnist for The Times of London and a contributing Opinion writer.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
About two thirds of the way into this English language remake of the 2015 German drama "We Monsters," Jay, a divorced dad who has the pinging cellphone of a (presumed) murder victim in his possession, screams to his ex wife Rebecca, "What do you want from me? I made one mistake!" This line provides the only (inadvertent, to be sure) laugh in this humorless, woebegone, overwrought exercise in bourgeois cinematic misery mongering. Because boy, oh boy, up to this point Jay has made a busload of mistakes, and really dumb ones at that. Jay and Rebecca, played by Peter Sarsgaard and Mireille Enos, are discontented in divorce (he's a hipster musician, she a buttoned up and down lawyer), with a problem child, Kayla. Joey King, considerably less bubbly here than in "The Kissing Booth," the 2018 release that made her a sensation, plays Kayla.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
" The Two Popes " is really three movies: a behind the scenes tale of Vatican politics, a mini biopic about the current pontiff, and a two man study of friendship, rivalry and major British acting. The first, though intriguing, is more puzzling than illuminating. The second feels a bit like a Wikipedia page, albeit one with first rate cinematography. The third is absolutely riveting, a subtle and engaging double portrait that touches on complicated matters of faith, ambition and moral responsibility. Directed by Fernando Meirelles ("City of God," "The Constant Gardener") from a screenplay by Anthony McCarten ("Darkest Hour," "Bohemian Rhapsody"), the film begins in 2005, after the death of Pope John Paul II. The cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church gather at St. Peter's to elect a successor, settling on Joseph Ratzinger (Anthony Hopkins), who becomes Pope Benedict XVI. The runner up is Jorge Bergoglio (Jonathan Pryce), an Argentine priest who will replace Benedict eight years later, becoming Pope Francis in a highly unusual transfer of ecclesiastical authority. That's hardly a spoiler, but "The Two Popes" observes the transition with an attention to detail that produces a surprising degree of suspense. In 2013, Bergoglio, who seems more at home on the motley streets of Buenos Aires than in the hushed baroque chambers of the Vatican, travels to Rome to ask the pope's permission to retire. Benedict, receiving his visitor at the papal summer residence in Castel Gandolfo, has other plans, though they aren't clear at first. What is clear is that the two men, who may be brothers in Christ, are not friends. "I disagree with everything you say," Benedict snaps at one point, and while their conversation is marked by deference and decorum, the temperamental and ideological gulf between them seems unbridgeable.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
The writer director Sofia Coppola, fortune's child, is blessed and cursed for reasons beyond her control. Is it an advantage or disadvantage to have a supportive, larger than life father who is a world famous filmmaker? While it's no stretch to rank Coppola alongside Kathryn Bigelow as the two women with the most longevity on the movie industry's A list, it should be noted that on the basis of six features she's directed since 1999, she's also the most celebrated American filmmaker under 50. (Paul Thomas Anderson is the only other contender.) She won an Oscar for writing "Lost in Translation" and a New York Film Critics Circle award for directing it. She received the Gold Lion award at the 2010 Venice Film Festival for "Somewhere" and was named best director at Cannes for her 2017 remake of "The Beguiled," the dark comedy of manners she fashioned from Don Siegel's overwrought male gothic. Coppola is a true auteur a filmmaker with a distinct worldview and sensibility and a personal set of quasi autobiographical interests. Where Bigelow works in genres that have up to now been dominated by men, Coppola's are, to use her own term, "girlie." Her protagonists are generally strong willed women, whether as individuals ("Marie Antoinette") or in groups ("The Virgin Suicides," "The Bling Ring," "The Beguiled") or as part of an older man younger woman pairing ("Lost in Translation," "Somewhere"). Drawn to father daughter situations, she is at work on another her current project, "On the Rocks," is about a young mother (Rashida Jones, daughter of Quincy Jones) reconnecting with her playboy father (Bill Murray). Her characters are typically and blithely privileged, often afflicted with ennui, if not affluenza. Her movies are usually set in protective, even rarefied surroundings: comfortable suburbs in "The Virgin Suicides" and "The Bling Ring," exclusive hotels in "Lost in Translation" and "Somewhere," a boarding school for young women in "The Beguiled," and Versailles in "Marie Antoinette." Coppola's fondness for cosseted milieus is reinforced by a propensity to sanitize the past. "The Beguiled" not only evokes a bubble, it is one a movie set in Virginia during the Civil War that seems oblivious to the state's slave driven economy. Similarly, "Marie Antoinette" shows as little interest in the social forces that ignited the French Revolution as it does in the hygienic practices of the royal court. Having grown up as Hollywood royalty, Coppola, 47, takes these insular worlds for granted. The prologue to her oeuvre is the script she contributed to a short directed by her father in the 1989 anthology film "New York Stories"; its star, an adorable, doted upon schoolgirl (Heather McComb), lives with her often absent parents at the Sherry Netherland hotel and rewards a homeless man with chocolate kisses. (The prevailing message, Janet Maslin wrote in her New York Times review, is "more or less Marie Antoinette's.") On the other hand, no director has greater access, emotionally or physically, to the rich and famous. It's hard to say which is more remarkable, Coppola's ability to do extensive filming at Versailles for "Marie Antoinette" or Paris Hilton's mad narcissism in letting Coppola use her home as a major location for "The Bling Ring," a movie about the actual burglarizing of Hilton's home by a gang of well off, star struck teenagers who used online gossip sites to track the whereabouts of celebrities and plot their schemes. Coppola's veteran male protagonists, Bill Murray in "Lost in Translation" and Stephen Dorff in "Somewhere," are sympathetically portrayed celebrities adrift in their own stardom. (Dorff's character, stricken with toxic superficiality, floats through a nervous breakdown.) But while "Lost in Translation" is Coppola's sweetest film and "Somewhere" the saddest, her strongest movies are those whose characters have stardom imposed upon them or set out to steal it: "Marie Antoinette," a costume movie whose worked out choreography is the equivalent of an action extravaganza, and "The Bling Ring," a deadpan satire. Scrumptious colors, magnificent sets and upbeat modern music aside, what's impressive about "Marie Antoinette" is Coppola's attitude a bold refusal to Frenchify or even periodize her knockout cast, which stars Kirsten Dunst in the title role and Jason Schwartzman as her husband, the future Louis XVI. As a parody of monarchist protocol, "Marie Antoinette" anticipates "The Favourite" but loses its edge once Marie and Louis become adults. (The falloff is as drastic as the last 45 minutes of dad's "Apocalypse Now" another attempt to make history.) By contrast, "The Bling Ring," a deceptively blase, both sides now view of celebrity, never breaks character. More of an expose than a narrative, Coppola's account of the so called Hollywood Hills Burglars is based on a true story (or rather its account in Vanity Fair). With everything refracted through the news media, "The Bling Ring" is both a critique and celebration. Strutting five abreast down Rodeo Drive, as though posing for an album cover, the members of the ring imagine themselves as stars in their own movie (too bad for them that a surveillance camera provided their onscreen debuts). "We don't know how (or if) they think, and we don't know quite what to think of them," A.O. Scott wrote in his Times review. The two standout performances Leslie Mann's new age airhead and, cast against type, Emma Watson as her bratty, stubbornly self justifying daughter are gutsy portrayals of appalling characters one loves to hate (or simply hates). But any moral satisfaction derived when the kids are busted is transitory. Onscreen and off, most of the real life kids were rewarded with friend requests and fan pages, as well as with Coppola's phlegmatic glamorizing film. Had Andy Warhol lived to see "Marie Antoinette" or "The Bling Ring," he might have considered Coppola his favorite Hollywood director. (The significance paid to footwear in both films could not have failed to impress an artist who was, in his commercial phase, the acknowledged master of drawing shoes.) Coppola's blankly comic dialogue cascades of "Omigod!" punctuated by cries of "That's so ill!" are juxtaposed with pop images worthy of painters Ed Ruscha or David Hockney. "The Bling Ring" is uncompromising in its portrayal of banality and shallowness. In a certain sense there hasn't been anything quite like it since Warhol filmed Edie Sedgwick in "Poor Little Rich Girl." All six of Sofia Coppola's films, as well as "New York Stories," can be streamed via Amazon Prime, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. "The Virgin Suicides" is also available from Hulu and "Marie Antoinette" from Netflix.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
This is a pity because, as Kamaly demonstrates, women have been crucial players in some of the most defining moments of the faith. There is the Prophet Muhammad's daughter, Fatima, who chastised his feuding followers after his death: "You have left the body of the Apostle of God with us and you have decided among yourselves, without consulting us, without respecting our rights." It turned out to be a consequential sidelining; the schism between those who believed the Prophet's male heirs should inherit leadership of the faith (Shia) and those who believed that the successor should be selected from the Prophet's associates (Sunni) remains pivotal to this day. Similarly, the Prophet's wife Aisha, nicknamed the "ruddy cheeked one," was instrumental in questioning patriarchal sayings attributed to the Prophet. In later life, it was Aisha's rising power that prompted a man named Abu Bakra to recount that he had heard the Prophet say, "Those who entrust power to a woman will never know prosperity." It is a saying that has haunted Muslim women and Muslim feminists including Fatima Mernissi, a Moroccan sociologist, who points out that "Abu Bakra must have had a fabulous memory" because he didn't recall this line until a quarter century after the Prophet Muhammad died. Still, it has been a handy tool for the patriarchy. Hundreds of years after Abu Bakra's revelation, the 16th century Safavid queen Pari Khanum was removed from power because the new king believed that a woman handling the affairs of state is "demeaning to the king's honor." As recently as 1986, Islamists who opposed the rise of Pakistan's prime minister Benazir Bhutto trotted out these possibly apocryphal words as a rationale. "A History of Islam in 21 Women" is an act of reclamation on several fronts. For Muslim women, it provides an empowering and exhilarating genealogy of strong forebears whom they can connect to their contemporary journeys of empowerment. For Western readers, it exposes the untruths that have characterized Muslim women as deferential beings in need of rescue. There is still more work to be done. "A History of Islam in 21 Women" provides the substance of a feminist narrative that has always existed within Islam. The question remains: Will Kamaly's book will be relegated to the margins, shelved away under "other" feminisms, or will it be integrated into the larger history of feminism, now dominated by white and Western women?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
A cold war is being waged across the world's most advanced industries. And it just got a lot chillier. Recent tit for tat trade actions could deepen what has become a global contest for technological dominance between the United States and China, home to the planet's largest population of internet users and a flourishing community of start ups and innovative companies. The Trump administration this week accused Beijing of stealing valuable technological know how from American companies as it proposed tariffs on 60 billion in Chinese goods and curbs on Chinese investments. China responded with its own set of penalties aimed at American products. The fight between the two countries is cleaving the high tech realm. The world's two biggest economies have each become increasingly protective of their own leading edge industries, and mistrustful of the other's. Reconciliation looks difficult. And the rising tensions could further undercut American influence in a huge and fast changing market. Both sides have been putting up defensive walls for years. To stay in business in China, Apple has had to set up a data center there to store Chinese customers' personal information. Amazon recently had to sell equipment to its Chinese cloud services partner to comply with new Chinese rules. Facebook and Twitter are blocked in the country; newer American players, such as Snap, are not even trying to enter anymore. In the United States, regulators have repeatedly thwarted attempts by Chinese tech groups to acquire American firms. And espionage concerns have for years kept Huawei one of the world's biggest suppliers of telecom gear, and a powerhouse of China's tech scene largely out of the American market. The Trump administration says it wants to level the playing field, dishing out to Chinese companies the kind of treatment that American ones have been receiving in China for some time. "China's abilities and ambitions have shifted much further up the value added chain, to tech that represents our crown jewels economically and that is relevant for national security," said Scott Kennedy, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "So there's no way to kick this can down the road anymore." Still, as much as American companies complain about how they are treated in China, it could get even worse if Beijing amplifies its retaliation beyond the tariffs, announced Friday, on 3 billion worth of goods. China could require that foreign tech companies undergo costly additional tests for new products, or simply make it more difficult to operate in the country. Apple, whose iPhones remain coveted among well off Chinese, made nearly 18 billion in the country in the last quarter of 2017. Qualcomm, the San Diego microchip maker, has earned half its revenue in China in recent years. It could also devise new regulatory hoops for foreign companies to jump through. China's Ministry of Commerce has not yet approved Qualcomm's proposed, 44 billion purchase of NXP Semiconductors, a Dutch chip maker. The deal, more than a year in the making, needs a signoff from Chinese antitrust authorities because the two companies count a large number of electronics makers in China as customers. Both countries' efforts to kneecap each other's tech champions are as much about national security as economic might. Likewise with the race to dominate frontier fields such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and next generation wireless internet. Mr. Trump recently blocked a hostile bid by Broadcom to buy Qualcomm. He did so not because the bidder was Chinese Broadcom is headquartered in Singapore but because the administration said the deal would weaken Qualcomm, leaving Huawei with a stronger hand to shape 5G, or fifth generation mobile technology. This is why the present tensions are so difficult to resolve. In a previous era, Japan was a technological rival but a military ally. The Soviet Union was a tech rival in defense, though a laggard in the commercial sphere. For most of the past decade, Beijing has blocked many American internet services, including Facebook's and Google's, to control the flow of information and head off social media fueled movements such as the Arab Spring. Another great paroxysm of worry came in 2013, when Edward J. Snowden leaked documents showing ties between American technology providers and the National Security Agency's vast surveillance program. For China, "one of the major takeaways was, 'We are overly reliant on American technology over which we have very little control,'" said Rogier Creemers, a scholar of Chinese tech policy at Leiden University in the Netherlands. A Communist Party linked newsmagazine singled out the American companies that it said had penetrated most deeply into China's information infrastructure. The "Eight Guardian Warriors," as they were called Apple, Cisco, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle and Qualcomm had been able to "drive right into China," the article said, whereas Huawei and another Chinese equipment maker, ZTE, had been kept out of the United States. Beijing swung into action. It banned government offices from installing the most recent version of Microsoft Windows, and antitrust investigators raided Microsoft's offices. Cisco, Apple and Intel products were removed from state lists that officials use as guides when buying equipment. Qualcomm got slapped with a 975 million fine for anticompetitive behavior. The political pressure sent American companies scrambling to link up with Chinese partners, leading to joint ventures of the sort that the Trump administration, and some in the American business community, have decried as unfair. Despite the boost from America's giants, and hefty doses of state funding, China's semiconductor push is still in its early days. But most observers believe that it is only a matter of time before Chinese factories catch up to those at industry leaders in the United States, South Korea and Taiwan. "They are very conscious that they still have a long way to go," said Dieter Ernst, a senior fellow at the East West Center, a research and educational organization based in Honolulu. "But they also know that in semiconductors, they are by far the most important market for American companies." One stumbling block for China: Attempts to scoop up foreign chip makers mostly have not worked out. State owned Tsinghua Unigroup tried to buy Micron Technology, a memory chip maker based in Idaho, for 23 billion in 2015, but regulatory worries scuttled the deal. The Trump administration last year blocked a China backed investor from buying Lattice Semiconductor, an Oregon based manufacturer. And regulatory concerns scotched a Chinese investment group's plan to buy Xcerra, even though the Massachusetts based company makes chip testing equipment and not chips themselves. In Washington, concern about the emerging rivalry with China has been reflected in a number of recent reports, from the likes of the Pentagon and the Department of Energy, that warn about the country's growing tech capabilities. Still, shorter term considerations could mean that Washington would back down before Beijing in an all out trade war. "If the markets take a nose dive as we move closer to the midterm elections," Mr. Kennedy of the Center for Strategic and International Studies said, "that would put some pressure on Trump to look for face saving solutions, even if final problems haven't been addressed."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Since the composer Claude Vivier's death in 1983, at just 34, his work has hardly been obscure. His music, shimmering with the spacey solemnity of childhood games, was taken up by influential figures like the impresario Pierre Audi, the composer Gyorgy Ligeti and the conductor Reinbert de Leeuw. In 2005, the publisher Boosey Hawkes began overseeing and promoting his scores. Read more about Vivier's "death obsessed search for connection." Yet he remains a figure more referred to than heard in performance. So it still counts as news that two major Vivier pieces were played in New York on back to back evenings this week, Tuesday and Wednesday. The juxtaposition was a coincidence given Vivier's celestial leanings, we might say the planets were in alignment but it was still a little landmark. "Listen to the throbbing of the stars," the singers chant in his only opera, "Kopernikus," which had its New York premiere at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn on Wednesday. We're listening, more and more. Once you have that image in your mind, in fact, it can be hard to let it go: Vivier's music does often seem to evoke a starry throb. Close, mystical harmonies are tinged with microtonal dissonances that vibrate almost visibly. Waves of passion are cloaked in a shining, medieval purity and a use of babbling invented languages that feels otherworldly; the effect is simultaneously in and out of body.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
SAN FRANCISCO Uber has fired 20 employees over harassment, discrimination and inappropriate behavior, as the ride hailing company tries to contain the fallout from a series of toxic revelations about its workplace. Uber disclosed the terminations on Tuesday at a staff meeting at its San Francisco headquarters, according to an employee who attended the event but was not authorized to speak publicly about the matter. The firings, which occurred in the last few months, stem from an internal investigation into Uber's workplace, the employee said. The company did not name the people who were fired, but some were senior executives, the employee said. The firings were aimed at tackling what many at Uber say are deep seated management and cultural issues, which have made the company a cautionary tale for what can go wrong with Silicon Valley's often freewheeling corporate culture. Uber has been a lightning rod because of its aggressive chief executive, Travis Kalanick, who has flouted rules and regulations to turn the company into a nearly 70 billion behemoth. Uber's difficulties have revived questions about how the tech industry treats women and employees in general and whether start ups can recover from such stumbles. "You only terminate 20 people after you've determined after an investigation that there is something very, very wrong at the company," said Deborah Weinstein, the president of the Weinstein Firm, which deals with employment and workplace law issues. "Most places don't have this level of things going wrong." Uber's workplace troubles began in February when Susan Fowler, a former Uber engineer, said in a blog post that she was sexually harassed by her supervisor there and that the human resources department ignored the claims. Other employees have since reported systemic issues in the company, saying that a premium was placed on workers who delivered strong performance and aggressive growth, and that their behavioral transgressions were often overlooked. Those disclosures plunged Uber into crisis, putting Mr. Kalanick and his lieutenants under scrutiny and raising concerns about how far is too far when it comes to the behavior of the company's 12,000 full time employees. (Uber's drivers are contractors, not employees.) Uber has since faced more problems. It is embroiled in a lawsuit with Waymo, the self driving car business that operates under Google's parent company, over autonomous vehicle technology, leading Uber to last week dismiss a top engineer, Anthony Levandowski, who was named in the suit. The Justice Department has also opened an inquiry into Uber's use of a tool to evade authorities who were trying to shut down the ride hailing service. After Ms. Fowler's claims, Uber hired Eric H. Holder Jr., former attorney general, and his law firm, Covington Burling, to conduct an independent investigation of the claims and to assess the ride hailing company's culture. Mr. Holder's report has been delivered to Uber's board, and the company plans to make some of it public next week, as well as to discuss the findings with employees. The terminations announced to employees on Tuesday, which were earlier reported by Bloomberg, are the result of a separate investigation by Perkins Coie, another law firm Uber hired. Lawyers from Perkins Coie consulted with Uber on the internal investigation, and the company acted on the firm's recommendations. Bobbie Wilson, a partner at Perkins Coie, said the firm was focused on "specific" allegations raised from a hotline that Uber set up so employees could send information in confidence. Mr. Holder's investigation is more broad and focused on Uber's overall culture. Some companies strategically choose to divide an investigation between two investigators to protect lawyer client privilege, said Liz Rita, an employment lawyer and owner of Investigations Law Group based in Denver. In such a scenario, one investigator may handle elements involving more sensitive or higher litigation risk, and a second investigator may handle findings that may be disclosed more publicly. This is done to protect a company from inadvertently waiving lawyer client privilege if they publicly reveal parts of an investigation without disclosing all the findings. Ms. Wilson, the partner at Perkins Coie, said the firm was tapped almost immediately after Ms. Fowler's blog post was made public. The lawyers combed through thousands of internal documents and emails, and interviewed current and former employees to corroborate claims by Ms. Fowler and others. "We were given unfettered access," Ms. Wilson said in an interview. "We did a thorough and painstaking investigation into all of Ms. Fowler's allegations. We spoke to people anybody frankly who wanted to give us information on the company's issues." Some tips came in through the internal hotline that Uber created. Other information came through Liane Hornsey, Uber's chief human resources officer, as well as to Arianna Huffington, a member of the company's board of directors. In a CNN interview in March, Ms. Huffington said of what she had been hearing from Uber employees that "yes, there were some bad apples, unquestionably." "But this is not a systemic problem," she added. In total, Ms. Wilson said that more than 215 cases of workplace violations were investigated at Uber, of which roughly 100 resulted in no action being taken. Forty seven of the cases were related to sexual harassment, and 54 involved some form of discrimination. Others fell under the categories of unprofessional behavior, including bullying, retaliation, physical security and other nonsexual forms of harassment. Thirty one employees are now undergoing some form of workplace training, and seven others have been given final warnings, Uber said. There are 57 complaints still under review. "If there was something serious, we didn't wait to tell Uber," Ms. Wilson said. "The company wasn't going to wait for some future point in time to take action." She declined to comment on who was fired and declined to be specific about the episodes for which people were let go. Uber has been making a series of other personnel changes, separate from the firings, in the wake of the harassment claims. Since February, there have been a string of executive departures. Amit Singhal, a former Google executive named as Uber's senior vice president for engineering, left abruptly after he failed to disclose sexual harassment charges against him from his tenure at Google. Ed Baker, a vice president, also left in March. More recently, Uber has hired several new executives. On Monday, the company said it was bringing on Frances Frei, a Harvard Business School professor and management consultant, as its first senior vice president for leadership and strategy. The company confirmed another hire on Tuesday, that of Bozoma St. John, a former Apple executive, who will come aboard in the newly created position of chief brand officer. Uber is still searching for a chief operating officer to assist Mr. Kalanick, who said this year that he needed more leadership help, after being caught on video berating an Uber driver.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
At first glance, the recent drone strike ordered by President Trump against an Iranian general would seem to return Republican foreign policy to the George W. Bush era. Several elements of the attack reflected the approach to the world defined by Mr. Bush's vice president, Dick Cheney: a belief in the efficacy of military force, the validity of pre emptive attack and the determination to avoid seeking approval from congressional leaders. But on closer examination, such comparisons fail. In his foreign policy, Mr. Trump represents something wholly new. The president's recent actions underscore the fact that the Republican Party has no guiding principles; it has only Mr. Trump, who demands loyalty to himself as its leader. Nor does the party leadership have senior figures with long experience in foreign policy who might challenge Mr. Trump's thinking. The Republican Party, which once served as home for a variety of clashing philosophies about foreign policy, has lost its moorings. Consider the party's history in recent decades and the contrast with where the party stands today. Over the past half century, the Republicans had been loosely split between two approaches for dealing with the world. One was the traditional, alliance centered internationalism that had held sway, for example, under President George H.W. Bush. The other was the hawkish unilateralism of the party's neoconservatives, who had gathered strength during the Reagan administration. During the George W. Bush administration, Secretary of State Colin Powell carried forward, if imperfectly, the ideas of internationalism; Vice President Cheney embraced many of the views of the neoconservatives. These two schools of thought came into acrimonious conflict over Iraq, Israel, North Korea and other issues. Now, under Mr. Trump, the Republican Party has been transformed in such a way that neither internationalists nor neoconservatives hold influence in the White House. Mr. Trump has weaved, wavered and reversed course on foreign policy based on his views of the moment, and as he has, the Republicans have followed. The factional disputes that characterized the Bush years have been replaced by a single question: Are you loyal to President Trump or not? There is no one to challenge Mr. Trump now. In contrast, consider the era of Mr. Cheney and Mr. Powell. Those two men were the most durable figures at the top of America's foreign policy apparatus from 1988 to 2008, encompassing the end of the Cold War and its aftermath. During those 20 years, Mr. Powell served for nine years under four American presidents as national security adviser, chairman of the Joint Chiefs and secretary of state. Mr. Cheney served for a total of 12 years as secretary of defense and vice president. The Trump administration has nothing comparable; indeed, not one of the senior leaders in the current administration, including the vice president, secretary of state and defense or national security adviser, has been involved at the top ranks in any previous administration. Even the more experienced officials Mr. Trump initially appointed to senior foreign policy jobs, like former Defense Secretary James Mattis and the former national security adviser H.R. McMaster, had spent less previous time in senior Washington positions than veterans of previous Republican administrations (who also included figures such as Brent Scowcroft and Robert Gates). And even these older hands the "adults in the room," as they were often called left the Trump administration within two years. Determined, experienced advisers can sometimes deflect a president's worst instincts and ideas. While doing book research in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, I ran across the astonishing fact that in the fall of 1988, well after the Iran contra scandal was behind him, President Reagan secretly tried to revive efforts to pay Iran for the release of American hostages in Lebanon, and to forge a new relationship with Iran. "We have billions," Mr. Reagan told Mr. Powell, his national security adviser. But Mr. Powell was adamantly opposed to the idea and made sure it didn't happen. (In the early 2000s, he was less strongly opposed to the idea of going to war in Iraq, the venture strongly supported by Mr. Cheney.) It is tempting for liberals to assume that all their opponents on the political right are alike, or stem from the same source and that therefore, Dick Cheney somehow led to Donald Trump. But that's not correct; Mr. Trump's origins, outlook and style are quite different from those of Mr. Cheney. Mr. Cheney's rise to power indeed, his very persona was based on a preoccupation with government processes and a familiarity with the national security bureaucracies (call them the "deep state") that Mr. Trump so often disdains. Mr. Cheney has at times voiced disapproval of some of the linchpins of Mr. Trump's foreign policy, such as his dealings with Russia and North Korea. John Bolton, Mr. Trump's former national security adviser, represented the last link in the top ranks of the Trump administration to the determinedly hawkish policies advocated by Mr. Cheney. As for Mr. Powell, it is at this point hard even to recall how or why he identified himself as a Republican. Yet at the time the Cold War was ending, the Democrats were calling for a "peace dividend" that included substantial cuts in the defense budget, and Mr. Powell, working closely with Mr. Cheney, labored hard, and for the most part successfully, to resist those efforts. Mr. Powell's eventual alienation from the Republican Party was a result of the same forces and dynamics that would eventually propel the rise of Mr. Trump: nativism and hostility toward immigrants and racial minorities. When Mr. Powell appeared before the Republican National Convention in 1996, he made a plea for diversity and tolerance. "The Hispanic immigrant who became a citizen yesterday must be as precious as a Mayflower descendant," he told the delegates then. That speech was greeted by a smattering of boos. In 2008, when Mr. Powell announced he could not support the Republican presidential nominee (even though it was his old friend John McCain), Mr. Powell specifically cited the mood of Republicans who had claimed that Senator McCain's opponent, Barack Obama, was a Muslim. The Trump Republicans long ago abandoned Mr. Powell and virtually everything he stood for and while it may seem less obvious right now, they have cut loose from Cheneyism, too. We can see the party's absence of ideas or strategy in the current policies on the Middle East and North Korea. The drone strike came alongside Mr. Trump's purported effort to lessen America's involvement in the Middle East. His personal diplomacy with Kim Jong un of North Korea and President Vladimir Putin of Russia might appear to be in line with Mr. Powell's emphasis on diplomacy but under Mr. Trump, what has counted so far is only the word "personal," not the diplomacy. As a result, the Republicans are left with no past and no ideas, merely a single man and his vagaries. James Mann is the author of the forthcoming book "The Great Rift: Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and the Broken Friendship That Defined an Era." 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
Four years ago, when many Republicans believed that Hillary Clinton was about to be elected president, conservatives plotted to stop her from reshaping the Supreme Court. "The Senate should decline to confirm any nominee, regardless of who is elected," Michael Stokes Paulsen wrote in National Review. "More than that, it is time to shrink the size of the Supreme Court." Paulsen proposed that Congress reduce the court to six justices, its original size. "It is entirely proper for Congress to adjust the size of the court either to check judicial power or to check executive appointments," he wrote. This was not, at the time, an outre position on the right. In October 2016, Senator Ted Cruz suggested that the Senate, which had refused to even consider Barack Obama's nominee to fill Antonin Scalia's seat, wouldn't move on a Clinton nominee either, essentially reducing the court to eight judges. "There is certainly long historical precedent for a Supreme Court with fewer justices," he said. Senator John McCain, now remembered as an icon of bipartisan institutionalism, said that if Republicans held the Senate, they might not let Hillary Clinton fill any Supreme Court seats, though he later tempered his stance. Say this for Republicans: They are very good at umbrage. It might even be sincere; from Reconstruction to the New Deal to the civil rights revolution, conservatives have long felt genuinely victimized by the prospect of equality. That doesn't mean, however, that bad faith right wing arguments about the courts merit a respectful hearing. Throughout Obama's administration, Republicans went to extraordinary lengths to stop the president from appointing federal judges, describing his ordinary attempts to fill vacant seats as "court packing." Senator Tom Cotton, then in the House, even sponsored a bill, the Stop Court Packing Act, that would have shrunk the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit from 11 judges to eight. The Republican blockade of Obama's picks eventually led the Senate majority leader at the time, Harry Reid, to abolish the filibuster for most federal court nominees in 2013. But Reid didn't do it in time; Republicans won back the Senate in 2014 and essentially shut down the confirmation process for lower court judges. One of the nominations Republicans scuttled was that of Myra Selby, whom Obama chose for the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2017, Republicans installed Barrett in that seat. Meanwhile, Republicans tried to expand top level courts in several states they controlled, succeeding in Arizona and Georgia. As Politico reported, even as Arizona trends away from the Republican Party, "thanks to the Republican led expansion, the conservative makeup of Arizona's Supreme Court likely will stay in place for more than a decade." Republicans did all this because they could. Now that Democrats might respond in kind, diluting conservative control of the courts and thus depriving Republicans of their prize for enabling Trump, Republicans have the audacity to pose as scandalized norm protectors. Should they win control of Congress and the presidency, Democrats really do hope to restore some of the checks and balances immolated by Trumpism. Consider the Protecting Our Democracy Act, an omnibus reform bill introduced by Democratic leaders in the House that would, among other things, strengthen Congress's subpoena power, limit presidents' use of emergency declarations, and make it harder for them to use acting appointments to circumvent the Senate confirmation process. Democrats fully understand that this bill would constrain Joe Biden's power, particularly if Republicans won back control of Congress in the 2022 midterms. Last month Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, told me that that's why he expects some Republicans to vote for it. "Republicans would never want a Democratic president to do half the things that Donald Trump has done," he said. This bill exists because Democrats don't either. There's a difference, however, between trying to re establish normal constitutional governance and unilaterally disarming. On Monday, the first day of hearings for Barrett, Senator Sasse delivered a sanctimonious lecture about "eighth grade civics," denouncing proposals to "change the outcome of what courts do in the future by trying to change the size and composition of the court." It was hard to tell if he's really that pompously oblivious to Republican hypocrisy, or if he was just trolling. Maybe it doesn't matter. Republicans once insisted that Merrick Garland, Obama's final Supreme Court nominee, didn't deserve a hearing because the election was only eight months away. They should be taken exactly as seriously when they claim, after nearly four years of Trumpism, to care about the unwritten rules of American governance.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Yet it was largely snubbed by the Tony Awards nominators. Ms. Jackson, who had triumphantly returned to the Broadway stage last season with a Tony winning performance in "Three Tall Women," was not nominated; neither was the production as best revival. Ruth Wilson got the only nod as best featured actress for her portrayals of two roles, Cordelia and Lear's fool. The play, one of five this season with Scott Rudin as its lead producer, cost up to 4.95 million to capitalize, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and it has not recouped those costs. Its grosses have been softening it brought in 285,108 at the box office during the week ending June 2, which is 32 percent of its potential, according to the Broadway League. And the audiences have been getting smaller over the course of its run for seven weeks the theater was over 80 percent full, but last week it was at just 60 percent capacity. The revival began performances at the Cort Theater on Feb. 28 and was scheduled to run until July 7. Instead, it will now close on June 9. At the time of its closing, it will have had 34 previews and 76 regular performances.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
President Trump's public statements about using disinfectants to potentially treat the coronavirus have put him in the company of pseudoscientists and purveyors of phony elixirs who promote and sell industrial bleach as a "miracle cure" for autism, malaria and a long list of medical conditions. The president's comments, at a White House briefing last week, have already prompted widespread incredulity, warnings from health experts and a spike in calls to poison control centers around the country. The makers of Clorox and Lysol urged Americans not to inject or ingest their products. But some scientists fear Mr. Trump's remarks could breathe life into a fringe movement that embraces the medicinal powers of a powerful industrial bleach known as chlorine dioxide. Among its adherents are Alan Keyes, the conservative activist and former presidential candidate who has promoted a chlorine dioxide based product called Miracle Mineral Solution on his online television show. The impact of Trump's words "is going to be huge, especially among people who are desperate," said Myles Power, a British chemist who works to debunk quack medical remedies. "My fear is it will cause widespread harm to people who think that drinking bleach can prevent or cure Covid 19." Mark Grenon, the self described archbishop of a Florida church that sells Miracle Mineral Solution as "a wonderful detox that can kill 99% of the pathogens in the body," took credit for Mr. Trump's comments in a Facebook post on Friday. In an online radio show earlier this month, he said that he and his supporters had sent letters to the president about the product he peddles. The White House did not respond to an email seeking comment after Mr. Grenon's letter was reported by The Guardian last week. A person with knowledge of senior administration officials said they were not familiar with him or his letter. It is unclear what inspired Mr. Trump to suggest disinfectants as a cure for Covid 19 and he did not mention chlorine dioxide or bleach specifically in his comments during the White House briefing. But promoters of such solutions have seized on his remarks with vigor. "Do you realize how freaking cheap and easy it would be to mass produce chlorine dioxide for 100,000's of people?" Jordan Sather, a follower of the pro Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, wrote on Twitter. "We could wipe out COVID quick!" In a statement earlier this month, the Food and Drug Administration reiterated its warnings about ingesting chlorine dioxide, which it described as "dangerous and unapproved." Chlorine dioxide is widely used in paper processing, by water treatment plants and as a disinfectant in hospitals. "We will not stand for this, and the FDA remains fully committed to taking strong enforcement action against any sellers who place unsuspecting American consumers at risk by offering their unproven products to treat serious diseases," the administration's commissioner, Stephen M. Hahn, said in the statement. Mr. Grenon and his son, Jonathan, who helps run the church, did not respond to interview requests sent via Facebook. Chlorine dioxide has also been embraced by vaccine opponents who say the toxic substance treats autism. Emma Dalmayne, a mother of five autistic children who maintains a website about the dangers of so called bleach cures, said the treatments have left some children with skin burns, seizures, damaged digestive tracts and other injuries. "The harm done to these kids has been unconscionable," she said. Melissa Eaton, a mother of an autistic child in North Carolina who campaigns against phony cures, said she sees overlaps between those who embrace chlorine dioxide as a curative, conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, and the strident protesters who have clamored for loosening social distancing measures across the country. "It's like a Venn diagram," she said. "What they all have in common is the idea that the government is hiding something from you. These people are not interested in what scientists, doctors or the mainstream media has to say. " Dr. Alan Levinovitz, a professor at James Madison University who studies the relationship between science and religion, said Mr. Trump's comments about disinfectants were in keeping with his previous support for conspiracy theorists, agitators against the deep state and his promotion of two antimalarial drugs to fight the coronavirus, despite warnings from medical experts about their possible dangerous side effects. "For a lot of people, Trump represents an alternative to pointy headed experts in white lab coats who speak a language we can't understand," he said. "When you feel existentially threatened by a deadly virus, and the president says you can take control of your health with a product in your kitchen cabinet, that's incredibly empowering."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The shuttering of theaters has caused the dance world untold damage, yet there has been an upshot: the increased accessibility of high end dance, as productions stream online, free. In a way, the moment harkens back to an earlier time, when the kind of dance you could see in the fancy theaters of Lincoln Center was regularly broadcast on public television. Or at least, that's a historical connection suggested by Lincoln Center at Home's upcoming week of online dance programming. To be sure, the series, which runs May 30 to June 4, is book ended by two recent programs from Lincoln Center at the Movies, a halfhearted 2015 endeavor that filmed stage productions for broadcast in movie theaters: one of Ballet Hispanico (Saturday at 2 p.m. Eastern) and a stronger one, repertory wise, of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater (June 4 at 8 p.m. Eastern). But the real gems here are older, an amazing haul of time capsule treasures from "Live at Lincoln Center" TV broadcasts of the 1970s and '80s. Most feature New York City Ballet. First, on Saturday at 8 p.m. Eastern, comes a 1986 performance of George Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," with a terrific cast led by Maria Calegari and Ib Andersen. Then, June 2 at 8 p.m., there's a 1978 performance of Balanchine and Alexandra Danilova's version of the classic doll comes to life ballet "Coppelia," starring the sparkling Patricia McBride and Helgi Tomasson. Finally, on June 3 at 8 p.m. Eastern, we get "Tribute to Balanchine," recorded shortly after his death in 1983, featuring three great works: "Vienna Waltzes," "Mozartiana" (with the unsurpassable Suzanne Farrell and Mr. Andersen) and "Who Cares?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Instagram announced Tuesday that it would add a mute feature to its service, allowing users to ignore certain accounts without unfollowing (and potentially alienating) friends who take the same picture of their breakfast every day. (We like avocado toast too, but enough is enough!) The platform had previously allowed users to mute stories, the photos and videos that appear at the top of their feeds and disappear within 24 hours. But before Tuesday, it was impossible to avoid the photos of frequent posters unless you stopped following their accounts. "The new feature lets you hide posts in feed from certain accounts, without unfollowing them," Instagram said in a statement. "With this change, you can make your feed even more personalized to what matters to you." The feature, familiar from platforms like Twitter, had long been requested by Instagram's users. It will become available to users "over the coming weeks," the statement said. A spokeswoman for Instagram, Seine Kim, declined to provide specifics about the new feature, saying only that it was part of a larger effort to give users more control over their feeds. "We're always looking at ways to make the feed a better experience for people," she said in a statement. Some power users including those for whom Instagram is a source of income have complained that the platform is not responsive enough to their feedback. A sticking point for many of those users is the algorithm introduced in 2016: It scrambles the order in which posts appear in user feeds. "Of course, we use data to inform product decisions, but we also get feedback in more low tech ways," Ms. Kim said. "We do some qualitative research and keep our ear on the ground for feedback from our community." The mute feature represents the kind of concession to that user base that the app, which is owned by Facebook, has begun to make more frequently. In March, Instagram announced that it was testing a "new posts" button that allowed users more power over when their feeds refreshed. "I think it's something people wanted for a very long time," Natalie Franke, a power user with about 60,000 followers, said of the feature. "Because there are apps that allow people to see who has unfollowed them, there is this fear that by unfollowing someone you could upset them and create an uncomfortable situation, whether that is personal or professional." Ms. Franke, 27, runs Rising Tide, a network that helps influencers and influencers in the making cultivate followings. She said that the mute feature was in line with Instagram's stated goals in that it would incentivize higher quality posts. "I think this puts an emphasis on creating content that truly resonates with your audience because its easier than ever for them to block you out," she said. Maintaining a captive audience is particularly important for users who make money from the platform. Tyler McCall, an independent consultant who advises entrepreneurs and small businesses on their Instagram strategy, said that for influencers especially, the mute feature would be "a huge deal."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Full reviews of recent dance performances: nytimes.com/dance. A searchable guide to these and other performances is at nytimes.com/events. American Ballet Theater (Tuesday through July 2) The company's spring season opens with "Sylvia," Frederick Ashton's elegant tale of the titular chaste huntress who dismisses love until shot by the arrow of Eros. Ashton made the work for the Royal Ballet in 1952; it came to Ballet Theater in 2005 and has become a gem of the company's repertoire. Leo Delibes's gorgeous score is often compared to Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" and Tchaikovsky himself was an admirer. Mondays through Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 8 p.m., with additional performances at 2 p.m. on Wednesdays and Saturdays, Metropolitan Opera House, Lincoln Center, 212 362 6000, abt.org, metopera.org. (Brian Schaefer) Flamenco Vivo Carlota Santana (through Sunday) This veteran company returns to BAM Fisher with "Voces de Andalucia," a program honoring flamenco's roots in southern Spain and the Andalucian born artists Pablo Picasso and Federico Garcia Lorca. The performances include three new pieces inspired by their paintings and poetry, as well as the return of "Angeles II" by the guest artist Angel Munoz. Friday at 7:30 p.m.; Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m.; Sunday at 2 p.m., Fishman Space, Brooklyn Academy of Music, 321 Ashland Place, Fort Greene, 718 636 4100, bam.org. (Siobhan Burke) Colin Gee and Angie Smalis (Friday through Sunday) The longtime dance impresario Laurie Uprichard ran the Dublin Dance Festival for several years. Now, as part of her Travelogue Series, she brings a bit of Ireland to New York through the work of Colin Gee and Angie Smalis. "Chaplet of Roses" incorporates video and live performance as Mr. Gee and Ms. Smalis portray four characters found in a 15th century tapestry. "They Go Out in Joy," performed to music by Erin Gee, brings to life photographs of Irish emigrants in the 1920s. Friday and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., Abrons Arts Center, 466 Grand Street, Manhattan, 212 352 3101, abronsartscenter.org. (Schaefer)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Cheers erupt on New York City streets after President elect Joe Biden's victory is declared. Twitter stepped up its actions against misleading tweets ahead of Election Day. So how are the moves working out? A tweet by President Trump late on Monday provides a case study. In his tweet, Mr. Trump claimed without evidence that the Supreme Court's recent decision to allow Pennsylvania absentee ballots to be received up to three days after Nov. 3 would "allow rampant and unchecked cheating" and "induce violence in the streets." Thirty six minutes after the tweet was posted, Twitter labeled it as containing disputed or misleading content about the election. It was the second time Twitter had used that label on one of Mr. Trump's tweets since updating its policies to clamp down on election misinformation on Oct. 9. It had also used the label on Oct. 26 when Mr. Trump tweeted without evidence that there were "big problems and discrepancies" with mail in ballots. Twitter's act of labeling Mr. Trump's tweet on Monday also meant that people could not easily share the post, unless they posted their own message with his tweet quoted underneath. That quickly slowed the tweet's overall spread, according to an analysis by the Election Integrity Partnership, a coalition of misinformation researchers.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
A "Covid 19 response mural" decorates the boarded up Sur La Table store in Santa Monica, Calif. A technology company called Beautify is matching artists offering images of hope with businesses. On Wilshire Boulevard in Santa Monica, five artists gathered recently, with appropriate social distancing. They painted "Togetherness" in huge letters vibrantly embellished across the plywood panels protecting the windows of the shuttered kitchenware store Sur La Table. Far from being a renegade action or unlawful act of graffiti, the team was working under the auspices of Beautify, a technology company created last year to facilitate mural paintings on blighted city walls. The Sur La Table painting was commissioned by Downtown Santa Monica, Inc., after its chief executive, Kathleen Rawson, disheartened by the closed businesses in her district, contacted Evan Meyer, the chief executive of Beautify and a street artist himself. "Can we do something that can give people some hope?" she asked him. Ms. Rawson pulled together a small budget for several "Covid 19 response murals," as she called them, on the city's newest canvases. "It really adds a layer of color and inspiration in these grim times," she said. Museums and galleries around the world have locked their doors as people wait out the coronavirus pandemic in isolation. But works of street art, cropping up on bare walls and boarded up storefronts across urban landscapes, are offering images of beauty and hope to those venturing out for exercise. Now Beautify wants to help ease the economic impact of the crisis on artists and on city streets. It is taking its community minded approach nationwide with a new campaign enlisting corporate brands to sponsor public artworks at 10,000 apiece. Called "Back to the Streets," the effort goes "live" Friday on Beautify's website, where artists, wall owners and sponsors can sign up directly. Its creators are aiming for 1,000 murals by 1,000 artists in 100 cities to be painted as neighborhoods begin to open up in the coming weeks and months. "This is an opportunity to keep the streets alive and reduce recovery time," said Mr. Meyer, envisioning the murals anchoring block party celebrations. "Brands can save our communities." Beautify was founded as a sister company to Beautify Earth, a nonprofit based in Santa Monica and conceived by Mr. Meyer seven years ago to clean up Lincoln Boulevard, a commercial street in Santa Monica referred to at the time as 'stinkin' Lincoln'. "I got some friends and we started getting approvals to paint the walls," he said. "It was all volunteer in the beginning." Sgt. Scott McGee of the Santa Monica Police Department recalls driving past a gigantic mural spelling "Gratitude" and parking his car. "It really made an impact on me," said the officer, who joined the board of Beautify Earth last year. (To date Beautify Earth has placed more than 120 murals in Santa Monica.) "This type of art has the tendency to reduce vandalism, break ins, looting and all forms of crimes that may result from abandoned, neglected or boarded up buildings," Sgt. McGee said, referring to a best practices approach called Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design. "Evan's nonprofit had all the ingredients to create a street art explosion, but no technology," said Paul Shustak, a software entrepreneur. He joined forces last year with Mr. Meyer to build the Beautify platform that now can match all the various players with a few clicks. Property owners and businesses interested in having a mural painted can upload images of their walls to the site and attach their guidelines and budgets. Artists, in turn, can create free accounts to upload their work, browse available walls and express interest in projects. When selected, they are paid 70 percent of the budget, with the rest going to Beautify, which handles the logistics of approvals, contracting, insurance and payment. The net proceeds of Beautify's 30 percent for the murals in the "Back to the Streets" campaign will flow back to the nonprofit for its work in schools and underserved communities, according to Mr. Shustak. Mr. Meyer estimates that his two organizations together have helped create 9,000 works of street art in at least 50 cities worldwide. "The best part of their platform is they get the walls for you," said Gino Burman Loffredo, a Los Angeles artist who's created some 15 murals since 2015 through the organization and just collaborated with Mr. Meyer, Ruben Rojas, Katarzyna Sciezka and Marcel Blanco painting "Togetherness" for Sur La Table. Corie Mattie, another Los Angeles artist, was keen to paint an image of herself as a dealer in a trench coat parceling out symbols of hope (rather than something illicit) during this crisis. She found an available wall at a shopping mall in West Hollywood through Beautify. Within 24 hours of contacting the owner, Matthew Lavi, in late March, Ms. Mattie completed her mural "Cancel Plans Not Humanity." "If you're marketing it properly and using social media, it could bring a ton of traffic to the business that's inside," Mr. Lavi said of the murals. Part of the impetus for "Back to the Streets" is putting artists back to work. The recent Covid 19 Impact Survey for Artists and Creative Workers showed that 95 percent of artists have lost income and 62 percent have become fully unemployed since the crisis began. Each mural is an opportunity for artists to earn 7,000, 70 percent of the sponsorship. The Beautify team has studied President Franklin D. Roosevelt's 1930s New Deal initiative, begun in another era of economic despair. The Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project paid a generation of artists to make public works, including roughly 2,500 murals. "We've talked about 'Back to the Streets' as a modern version of the W.P.A.," Mr. Shustak said. "It's definitely something that inspires us, looking at what artists did to bring the country out of the Depression."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Amazon's new warehouse in Baltimore is a rare economic bright spot there, employing 3,000 people full time in a city ravaged by poverty and a lack of opportunities for less educated workers. And with Amazon's announcement Thursday that it plans to hire 100,000 new employees in the next 18 months, the Baltimore facility and at least 70 other Amazon fulfillment centers across the country stand to be among the biggest beneficiaries. Fifteen miles away in the suburbs, all that is left of Owings Mills Mall is rubble, demolition having started in the fall, after the last anchor stores, Macy's and J. C. Penney, closed within months of each other. The contrast between the two scenes is an example of what the economist Joseph Schumpeter termed "creative destruction," the inevitable process in which new industries rise and replace old ones. But creation tends to get more press than destruction, and the announcement from Amazon is no exception. The company's hiring plans are certainly good news. But to understand the forces roiling the American economy, it's key to remember that online retailing has destroyed many times that number of positions at malls and shopping centers across America. That's not necessarily a bad thing over the long term. Greater productivity is essential for economic growth, and, according to the company, the 100,000 figure includes highly paid engineers and software developers in addition to hourly warehouse workers. But for people caught on the wrong side of that transition in the short term, it's the equivalent of an economic hurricane. "There are huge benefits to consumers from Amazon," said Lawrence Katz, an economics professor at Harvard who studies labor and technological change. "But the workers they are hiring aren't the same ones being laid off." Even since New Year's Day, the traditional retail sector has absorbed more blows. Macy's said last week that it would eliminate 10,000 positions, and the Limited announced this week that it would close all 250 of its stores, eliminating 4,000 jobs. The Amazon announcement comes as the company is introducing automation that could one day cost jobs. It uses robots in many of its warehouses, though it says they work in conjunction with people instead of replacing them. Moreover, with the rise of automation, the future of once solid trades like truck driver and delivery worker is in doubt, threatened by the likes of driverless cars and drones. And that has prompted an intense debate among economists and some policy makers about just what society and especially government owes these workers. One place to start, Mr. Katz said, would be for the government to provide more funding for retraining and also develop a wage insurance program to cover differences in salaries as workers migrate to new, lower paid jobs from disappearing, higher paid ones. "The economy as a whole gains from creative destruction, but we don't put many resources into training displaced workers," he added. "That's a real problem, and in practice, we need to do much more." 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. The half full glass in all of this is greater productivity an economic force that has been otherwise lacking during the recovery from the Great Recession, said Michael Feroli, chief United States economist at J. P. Morgan. Along with making online retailers much more efficient, that difference also helps explain why Amazon is a stock market darling while Macy's and J. C. Penney are laggards. "You can't complain about low productivity and then complain about job reallocation in the same breath," Mr. Feroli said. Still, a lot of jobs are being reallocated in a fairly short time, in an economy that has only begun to pick up speed recently for many Americans. Mr. Feroli calculates that if it were not for online retailers, of which Amazon is by far the biggest, there would be 1.2 million more retailing jobs in the United States. There are 16 million retail workers in the United States, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a figure that includes online sellers like Amazon and traditional stores. In the last four years, traditional retailers have cut more than 200,000 jobs, according to Challenger, Gray Christmas, a Chicago outplacement firm. The seasonal bump in store hiring, a familiar economic story each fall, is also ebbing, according to Challenger. During the holiday shopping season last year, stores added 100,000 fewer temporary workers than in 2013. "The number of jobs we are losing in retail outpaces the number being created in the sectors that are taking their place," said Andrew Challenger, vice president of the firm. For example, transportation firms and warehouses are hiring, but not as quickly as bricks and mortar stores are laying off workers, he said. Many of the jobs included in the figure Amazon announced on Thursday had already been disclosed by the company, which routinely reveals how many people it plans to hire in different localities when it opens new fulfillment centers. The company has become far more vocal about telling its employment story over the past half decade, which is partly a reflection of the rapid expansion of its network of warehouses devoted to packaging and shipping products to customers. The expansion began in earnest around 2011, when Amazon began hammering out agreements with state governments to collect sales tax from Amazon customers in those states. At the same time, Amazon decided to make fast shipping a priority, something possible only if it opened more warehouses closer to where customers live. The 100,000 hires it plans for the next 18 months represent a 56 percent increase in the 180,000 full time United States employees it had at the end of 2016. Amazon has more than 300,000 full and part time employees globally. That attention could be politically beneficial for Amazon as Donald J. Trump assumes the presidency. Last year during the presidential campaign, Mr. Trump singled out Amazon and its founder, Jeff Bezos, as having a "huge antitrust problem." Mr. Trump suggested that Mr. Bezos was using his ownership of The Washington Post to discourage political scrutiny of Amazon. But Mr. Bezos was among a group of technology sector executives who met with Mr. Trump last month, and after Amazon's announcement of its hiring plans on Thursday, Mr. Trump's press secretary said "the president elect was pleased to have played a role in that decision." Amazon has said that its employment figures alone do not capture its full effect on jobs. On Thursday, the company said its marketplace business, through which independent merchants sell goods on the company's site, sustained 300,000 additional jobs in the United States. In the meantime, a new open air shopping center is planned for the vast rubble strewn site in Owings Mills, Md., where shoppers once flocked to Macy's and J. C. Penney. The demolition should wrap up by spring, although no date has been set for the opening of the new mall, nor have tenants been announced.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
SEVERAL years ago, a large European company asked Thomas M. DiBiagio to run an internal audit on its South African operations. The company suspected that something might be amiss. And it was right. In the course of the audit, he discovered about 12 million that might best be described as ill gotten gains. Mr. DiBiagio, now a partner at the law firm Baker Botts in Washington, reported what he found to the company's management and suggested something novel: Since the money had been earned "from aggressive business practices" a euphemism for a crime he would not name the company should give it to charity. The company, which he described as a 35 billion to 40 billion business listed on a United States stock exchange, agreed. "It was sock drawer money to them," said Mr. DiBiagio, a former federal prosecutor for Maryland. The company gave him two years to give away the money and agreed it would have no control over who received the grants. Mr. DiBiagio was put in charge of giving away the money and embarked on the project with a team, including Jeffrey A. Silk, a special investigator at the firm who had spent decades at the Drug Enforcement Administration. "There was a recognition very early on that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity for us to really impact the community," Mr. DiBiagio said. "And to do that you need to do it right. And if we didn't, we'd regret this for a very long time." The project, while rewarding, turned out to be far more complicated and time consuming than he, with no experience giving away this kind of money, had imagined. It was chock full of lessons for wealthy donors and recipients and it could even be the seed of a new line of business for law firms with corporate clients that find their own wrongdoing before federal prosecutors get wind of it. The project also elicited surprising responses from charities themselves. Some recipients, like Providence House, a shelter for women coming out of prison or who find themselves homeless, and Dr. Eduardo D. Rodriguez, a professor of reconstructive plastic surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center and a doctor who performed the most comprehensive face transplant to date in the United States, made peace with the fact that the money was tainted. Others, like the Travis Manion Foundation, which helps veterans with jobs and the families of veterans killed in combat cope with the loss, and Harlem Academy, an independent school for bright students living in poverty, were skeptical at first that the grants weren't real or worried they could embroil their organizations in scandal. After Mr. Silk hinted at a six figure gift, he said: "One guy said, 'Give me the phone number you're calling from. I'm going to call you back.' " But before any of that, it was odd. How, exactly, does a lawyer come to legally give away ill gotten gains on behalf of an international company that does not want to be named and surely does not want to face prosecution for what one division did? "It's a novel but not unjust solution to, What do you do with ill gotten gains?" said John C. Coffee Jr., a law professor at Columbia University and an expert on corporate governance. "A payment has been made to you that is arguably unlawful and you want to purge the ill gotten gains. It's reasonable. But it's not the same as telling the government, 'We did it and won't do it again.' " Mr. Coffee said that detailed Securities and Exchange Commission rules apply to a lawyer who uncovers a legal violation during an audit. They require the lawyer to report the violation to a company's senior level officials. If they do not respond, the lawyer has to go to the board. But it is still all internal reporting, Mr. Coffee said, with no obligation on the lawyer's part to turn his client in. Then the company has to decide what to do with the money. If there are clear cut victims, the money must be returned to them. "If a bribe is paid or they got a contract through a bribe, there may not be any victim," Mr. Coffee said. "Or they decide the best way to cure the bribe is to give it off to charity. All of that could be a responsible action." Mr. DiBiagio would not comment on the nature of the violation. What Mr. Coffee thought was unusual was that the lawyer gave the money away. The company should have given the money away. Mr. DiBiagio said the company wanted him to find the charities so it would not appear to be benefiting from the gifts. (In one instance, though, a Baker Botts partner was asked to join the board of the Boys Girls Clubs of The Peninsula, in Silicon Valley, after it received a 100,000 grant from this project.) As for whether charity often comes from malfeasance in similar cases, Mr. Coffee said it was hard to know but he suspected it was rare. Companies may disclose illegal payments and stop the practice. But often it is not until a federal investigation is underway that the extent of the wrongdoing is known, at which point the company is probably going to pay a fine. Mr. DiBiagio said the nature of this case made giving the money away easier. "In the past, the other internal investigations, it was not that clear that this practice resulted in X," he said. "Here it was a pretty clear connection." His firm did not do this for free, and Mr. DiBiagio would not disclose the fee. But 10.7 million was distributed out of about 12 million in question. As for the process itself, the reality of giving away so much money in two years and in relatively small amounts the average gift was 180,000, the median 100,000 forced the project to adapt. At the start, the team had a plan that seemed reasonable. It would identify charities either through news articles or from recommendations from friends. It would conduct more research, contact the charities and visit. The amount would vary depending on the size of the organization, with the goal of a gift that did not exceed 5 percent of the annual budget. There was a system, just not a usual one. Mr. Silk said that if the team showed up for a visit, the grant was the organization's to lose. So, Dr. Rodriguez of N.Y.U. Langone received a seven figure grant to hire researchers and rebuild his reconstructive surgery laboratory after equipment was destroyed in Hurricane Sandy. And the Travis Manion Foundation received 50,000, double its average gift, said Courtney Spencer Mitchell, director of development. "We thought this could be a really good scam or a really great opportunity for us," she said. Karen Campbell, program director of Students Run Philly Style, an organization that mentors and aims to improve the fitness of children in Philadelphia through running, felt a similar sense of disbelief that persisted even after the organization, with an annual budget of 1 million, received 100,000. But her board reassured her. The money will allow that organization to extend its SAT tutoring program and also give it an opportunity to plan more for the future. Yet what was remarkable was that only 15 to 20 percent of the organizations that went through this unusual process and received grants early on followed up with Mr. DiBiagio even though he and Mr. Silk had hinted that letting them know how the money was being used could lead to another grant. All seven of the recipients who followed up received more money, Mr. DiBiagio said. Sister Janet Kinney, executive director of Providence House, took them at their word. She said the first grant in the fall of 2013 was for 250,000, and it went to a program that helps women released from prison. After sending regular updates, she received another 100,000 in May 2014. At that point, she said, Mr. DiBiagio and Mr. Silk told her that would probably be the last donation. But in December, as they were scrambling to finish the project, she received another 50,000, which she put toward mental health programs. "They re funded us because we believe very strongly in accounting for it, even if they don't ask for it," Sister Janet said. "We just follow up."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
5 Shows to See in New York When You Have Only an Hour Crunched for time but still want to see a show in New York? Here are five productions this month that will take about a "Homeland" episode of your time, with room enough for dinner or a "Walking Dead" binge afterward. I don't know about you, but I'm way too busy to spend more than an hour a day contemplating my own death. That's where this show fits in nicely. Written by the Pulitzer Prize nominated playwright Will Eno, "Wakey, Wakey" stars Michael Emerson as a man in a wheelchair who reflects on his life knowing that death is around the corner. There are existential echoes of Beckett and Albee in this contemplative work that's part TED talk, part show and tell. Our critic praised it as a "glowingly dark, profoundly moving new play." Read the review Yeah, yeah, yeah: You want to see "Hamilton." But you don't have A) the time, B) the connections or C) the tickets. This take no prisoners "Hamilton" parody, from Gerard Alessandrini, the creator of the spoof fest "Forbidden Broadway," is the next best thing. (O.K., maybe more like the next available thing.) If the lyric "In New York, you can be a real ham" sounds like a sidesplitter, this one's for you. (If not, stay far away.) Our critic called it a "smart, silly and often convulsively funny thesis, performed by a motor mouthed cast that is fluent in many tongues." At Stage 72, the Triad, through May 14; spamilton.com Marin Ireland, of Amazon's "Sneaky Pete," stars in Martin Zimmerman's drama about a university professor whose child is killed. Inspired by the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings of 2012, it's a solo show on a bare stage, with a story that takes a surprising direction. The play "approaches the subject of American gun violence from a startlingly original perspective," according to our critic. Read the review. Watch our Facebook Live chat. At the Black Box Theater, Harold and Miriam Steinberg Center for Theater, through April 2 For parents of small children, this one's a win win. Based on Oliver Jeffers's book of the same title, "The Way Back Home" is about an adventurous boy who makes an unexpected landing on the moon and has to summon the courage to find his way home. Told with puppets, it's a great way to introduce children as young as 3 to the visual treats of the theater. And tired parents can do it in less time than it might take to put their kids to bed. Ok, so the reviews for David Mamet's new play weren't great. "Cynical and morose" is how our critic put it. But if you've never seen the dark work of this provocative American playwright ("Glengarry Glen Ross"), now's your chance. This one's about a psychiatrist who refuses to testify on behalf of a gay client accused of a horrific crime. If you don't like it, soothe yourself with a killer cupcake from Billy's Bakery around the corner from the theater. At the Atlantic Theater through March 26	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Sean Penn is fighting. But not with his fists repeat, not with his fists. Last September, the two time Oscar winning actor, humanitarian and occasional journalist filed a 10 million complaint in New York State Supreme Court against Lee Daniels, the movie director and co creator of the television hit "Empire," for defamation and "wanton and reckless disregard of the truth." This was after Mr. Daniels suggested in passing to The Hollywood Reporter that Mr. Penn had been physically abusive of his first wife, Madonna. Because such rumors have existed since their turbulent four year marriage in the 1980s, one could be forgiven for wondering: Why challenge them now? Through his lawyer, Mathew S. Rosengart, Mr. Penn declined to be interviewed. But Douglas Brinkley, the historian and a friend, thinks Mr. Penn, 55, has become more conscious of his legacy, which includes a charity to assist survivors of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti and a women's health clinic there. "You start thinking about your mortality when you turn 50," Mr. Brinkley said, adding that Mr. Penn doesn't "want to go down in history as the guy who beat up Madonna." And the making of history, as we all know, has changed in the 30 odd years since the couple was, as quaintly reported by the weekly, then print only version of People, nicknamed S M. Hints and allegations that may have once faded to mere footnotes in a biography can now be instantly retrieved, mashed together and Ping Ponged around the Internet with the tap of a finger. "There is no question this has been one of the pernicious effects of the information revolution," said Allan Mayer, who heads the strategic communications division at 42West and does not represent Mr. Penn. A news release isn't what it used to be, in other words. "If you want to be taken seriously, you have to take some legal action," Mr. Mayer said. Even if the outcome of such action is predictable: a settlement or outright dismissal. "There is a good chance this is going to get bounced," said Bert Fields, a veteran entertainment lawyer who represented Tom Cruise when the actor sued two tabloids after they claimed he had abandoned the relationship with his daughter, Suri. "Charges are tough to prove." Mr. Daniels, 56, had compared Mr. Penn with Terrence Howard, the flamboyant star of "Empire" who was arrested in 2001 for hitting his wife at the time, Lori McCommas, and, last summer, was battling with another former wife over the terms of their divorce settlement. Mr. Howard, who acknowledged hitting Ms. McCommas, "ain't done nothing different than Marlon Brando or Sean Penn," said Mr. Daniels, who was pointing out what he believed was race based criticism of the "Empire" star. Mr. Daniels's legal team is hoping the case will be dismissed, contending in court filings that Mr. Daniels's comments did not say Mr. Penn was "guilty of ongoing, continuous violence against women," but instead stated an opinion not subject to the standards of defamation. They argue too that Mr. Daniels's statement "could not have tarnished Penn's reputation for domestic abuse any further than a quarter century of explicit media coverage already has." James Sammataro, the lawyer representing Mr. Daniels, said, "Sean is not the first person to want to rewrite the narrative of his life." (Indeed, "online reputation manager" is now a job description.) Court documents filed by Mr. Sammataro show that a Google search with the phrase "Sean Penn and domestic violence" produced hundreds of thousands of results, including excerpts from Christopher Andersen's 1991 book, "Madonna Unauthorized," which has been cited liberally since it was published. "Responding to Domestic Violence," a 2015 textbook that explores domestic violence and society, states that Mr. Penn hit Madonna with a baseball bat in 1987. Eve Buzawa, one of the authors and the chairwoman of the school of criminology and justice studies at the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, said she did not contact Mr. Penn or Madonna for comment, but instead used "media sources for those stories." "When there are so many articles and so much press," she said, "there has to be something." In December, Gawker, currently embroiled in a legal battle of its own, sought to track down the genesis of the rumors about the couple's marital discord and obtained a copy of an article from January 1989 in a British tabloid called The People. Getting more specific than the American magazine to which it bears no relation, the tabloid said that Madonna had been "beaten, gagged" and "strapped to an armchair." (Picking up the story soon after in 1989, the gossip columnist Liz Smith said she had "no evidence that this happened," though "some particularly violent episode" was suspected.) Months later, Madonna said the reports were untrue but declined to elaborate. In 1991, Mr. Penn told Playboy that the day the couple split, Madonna had left their home in Malibu, Calif., and returned with a SWAT team to pick up some personal effects, fearing Mr. Penn would give her "a very severe haircut." He said she warned the authorities about a cache of weapons stored in the house. "There's no charges," Mr. Penn told Playboy, noting that he was eating cereal when they arrived. "I was never arrested." But he has had his share of run ins with the law, mostly a result of outbursts at paparazzi or others who have waved a camera near his face. In 1987, when clandestine TwitPics were just a glimmer in our collective eye, he was sentenced to 60 days in jail for, among other things, punching an extra on a movie set taking his photograph. But Mr. Penn, who, after Madonna, married and divorced Robin Wright Penn and had been abortively engaged to Charlize Theron, had never been arrested for domestic violence, according to his lawsuit. And in October of last year, Madonna signed a declaration stating that she was aware of allegations of domestic abuse against her by Mr. Penn, and they were false, including the part about the baseball bat. "While we certainly had more than one heated argument during our marriage," Madonna stated, "Sean has never struck me, 'tied me up' or physically assaulted me, and any report to the contrary is completely outrageous, malicious, reckless and false." (For good measure, she posed with Mr. Penn at a fund raiser for his Haitian nonprofit in January, later serenading him during a performance involving a ukulele.) With this statement on record, "anyone who repeats those lies does so at their peril," Mr. Penn's lawyer, Mr. Rosengart, said in a statement. For now, both Mr. Penn and Mr. Daniels seem unwilling to back down. Art Linson, who was a producer of the 1982 hit "Fast Times at Ridgemont High" and who has known Mr. Penn for decades, summed up their standoff this way: "This lawsuit isn't just about Lee, but Lee is unfortunately on the receiving end because he said something reckless and untrue about Sean."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
WHEN it comes to investing money, most people want to be smart about it. So an increasingly popular strategy with smart in its name has intrigued certain investors, while turning off others who see it as little more than a marketing gimmick. I'm talking about so called smart beta strategies. Many different strategies fall under this label, but what unites them is their rejection of market capitalization the value of a company's publicly traded stock as a benchmark for creating a passive investment fund. A fund based on the Standard Poor's 500 stock index, for instance, is a passive fund that uses market capitalization. But some fund managers seeking higher returns without having to pick stocks actively have created investment portfolios based on other measures, such as a stock's volatility, or a company's dividends, sales or cash flow. Interest in these alternative strategies is rising. According to a Morningstar report in May, assets in smart beta strategies increased by 59 percent last year, and over half of that growth came from new money. This spring, Russell Investments introduced a suite of smart beta indexes. These include indexes to measure stock characteristics like value, quality, momentum and low volatility, and others focused on different ways to weight stocks in an index. Yet smart beta is still an investing niche, despite all the attention it has garnered. Morningstar said that at the end of last year 291 billion was in smart beta strategies. And in its current incarnation, smart beta has been around for only about 10 years. Its very name is confusing to many. In investing jargon, beta is the market return, like the 30 percent or so the S. P. 500 returned for an investor last year who owned the index from Jan. 1 to Dec. 31. Alpha measures what a fund returns above a market benchmark. The first is passive, the second requires active selection. Smart beta is more passive than active. Once the investment criteria are chosen, the strategy passively follows the rules that have been set, like investment in low volatility stocks that are part of the S. P. 500. Rob Arnott, chairman of Research Affiliates, considered to be the pioneer of indexes that do not weight market capitalization, said one secret of the sauce was not buying stocks just because their price was rising. "Why would we want something to be part of our portfolio just because it went up in value?" he asked. "If something is twice as expensive, why should we have twice as much exposure to it?" What his firm calls fundamental indexing looks at a company's sales, cash flow, book value and dividends paid to shareholders. "We make the supposition that those four measures are a very different economic footprint of a business," he said. They also make a company like Apple, with its sky high market capitalization, a lot less important to an index. Other smart beta strategies have fewer variables. Stephen Sachs, head of capital markets for ProShares, said one of his firm's most popular smart beta exchange traded funds, the S. P. 500 Aristocrats E.T.F., consisted of the companies in the index that had increased their dividends for at least 25 years in a row. There are 54 and the E.T.F. holds the same amount of all of them. "The index itself is simple," he said. "The idea is you're looking for S. P. exposure but you like the concept of dividend growth because we know over the long term, dividends make up a lot of the return." Investors are interested in these strategies for different reasons. Tom Goodwin, senior research director at Russell Investments, said the firm surveyed 181 big investors in Europe and North America and found that the top two motivations were reducing risk and increasing returns. Costs, which are lower with E.T.F. strategies, were at the bottom of the list, he said. Yet the rationale for smart beta, at least what Russell found, is fairly anodyne. What investor wouldn't want higher, less volatile returns? Like many things today, the increase in interest for smart beta over the last few years has come from a shift in mentality after the recession. "Smart beta strategies are gaining ground now because they're marketed and perceived as quasi passive strategies," said Paul Bouchey, managing director for research at Parametric, a firm that specializes in creating customized portfolios for high net worth clients. "People feel they're back tested and can just put a lot of money into it. It's different than if an active manager comes to you and says, 'I have an idea.' " Mr. Arnott said it took Research Affiliates, which licenses its strategy to managers like Pimco, from 2004 to 2012 to reach 75 billion in assets managed with its strategy. From 2013 to today, those assets have risen to 130 billion. "Before, these were viewed as a kind of niche strategy peculiar, mildly interesting," he said. "Now people realize that if you link the weight to the price, you're going to load up on overvalued companies. When you sever that link you do better." But some investment managers seem to have almost an antipathy toward the very notion of smart beta. James Montier, a member of the asset allocation team at GMO, an influential investment management firm, wrote in a white paper titled "No Silver Bullets in Investing" that smart beta was "dumb beta plus smart marketing." He challenged the basis for the claims made by Mr. Arnott and others of better returns when an index is not weighted by market capitalization. Mr. Montier says the alternative weighting replaces large capitalization companies with small capitalization companies and those considered to be value stocks, not growth stocks both of which are established ways to invest. "When these strategies are corrected for their exposure to 'value' and 'small,' they exhibit no statistically significant outperformance compared to the cap weighted benchmark." He pointed out that even the smart beta screens for quality companies could be flawed. Such companies are good investments only at the right price, as investors learned with the Nifty 50 bubble in the 1970s. "No asset (or strategy) is so good that you should invest irrespective of the price paid," Mr. Montier said. Even for people who believe smart beta has many great attributes, there are caveats. Michael Arone, chief investment strategist for the intermediary business at State Street Global Advisers, pointed to four. The first revolves around measuring how well a particular smart beta strategy performs. "When you choose different risk premiums and different types of things, it's important to understand exactly what exposure you're getting and the likely payoff you're getting," he said. He was also concerned about whether investors understood what smart beta actually was, and how well the strategies would hold up in different types of markets. And as interest in smart beta grows, there is a fourth risk: the race to create more strategies will increase their complexity. "Keeping the strategy straightforward and all the components about traditional passive investing is incredibly important," Mr. Arone said. Putting aside the high minded talk about the strategies behind smart beta, there is the obvious question of what its opposite would be, dumb beta. It would not be people who invested in a passive index fund but those who bought stocks that were rising because they believed they would continue to rise, Mr. Arnott said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
The Pulitzer Prize Board said on Tuesday that it would no longer recognize the New York Times podcast "Caliphate" and a related article as a 2019 Pulitzer finalist. The board stripped The Times of its finalist status four days after the news organization announced that the 2018 audio series did not meet its standards for accuracy. "Caliphate" and the related report, "The ISIS Files," by the podcast's co host Rukmini Callimachi, had been named finalists in the Pulitzer Prize's international category last year. After an internal investigation that ended on Friday, The Times contacted the Pulitzer board and offered to give up the finalist citation. "Upon review, the Pulitzer Prize Board has accepted The Times's action and rescinded its designation as a 2019 Pulitzer finalist," the Pulitzer board said in a statement on Tuesday. A statement from The Times on Tuesday said, "Given our conclusion that core portions of 'Caliphate' did not live up to our editorial standards, we felt the right thing to do was to offer to return the Pulitzer finalist citation."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Many medical experts including members of his own staff worry about whether Dr. Hahn has the fortitude and political savvy to protect the scientific integrity of the F.D.A. from Mr. Trump. As the coronavirus surged across the Sunbelt, President Trump told a crowd gathered at the White House on July 4 that 99 percent of virus cases are "totally harmless." The next morning on CNN, the host Dana Bash asked Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and one of the nation's most powerful health officials: "Is the president wrong?" Dr. Hahn, an oncologist and former hospital executive, certainly understood the deadly toll of the virus, and the danger posed by the president's false statements. But he ducked the journalist's question. "I'm not going to get into who's right and who's wrong," he said. The exchange illustrates the predicament that Dr. Hahn and other doctors face working for a president who often disregards scientific evidence. But as head of the agency that will decide what treatments are approved for Covid 19 and whether a new vaccine is safe enough to be given to millions of Americans, Dr. Hahn may be pressured like no one else. Unlike Dr. Anthony S. Fauci or Dr. Francis S. Collins, leaders at the National Institutes of Health who have decades of experience operating under Republican and Democratic administrations, Dr. Hahn was a Washington outsider. Now seven months into his tenure, with the virus surging in parts of the country and schools debating whether to reopen, the push for a vaccine is intensifying. The government has committed more than 9 billion to vaccine makers to speed development, and last week Mr. Trump speculated that one could be ready by Election Day a timeline that is unrealistic, according to scientists, and shows the strain Dr. Hahn may be under. Many medical experts including members of his own staff worry about whether Dr. Hahn, despite his good intentions, has the fortitude and political savvy to protect the scientific integrity of the F.D.A. from the president. Critics point to a series of worrisome responses to the coronavirus epidemic under Dr. Hahn's leadership, most notably the emergency authorization the agency gave to the president's favorite drug, hydroxychloroquine, a decision it reversed three months later because the treatment did not work and harmed some people. "When you've got a White House that is not interested in science, it's important to have a strong counterweight," said Dr. Peter Lurie, a former associate commissioner at the F.D.A. who now runs the Center for Science in the Public Interest. Dr. Hahn, he said, "is not a powerful presence." In an interview, Dr. Hahn, 60, defended his record as F.D.A. chief. All of his decisions have been guided by the data, he said, and sometimes, rapidly evolving science has led to policy changes. On the line as he spoke was Michael Caputo, a deputy to Dr. Hahn's boss, Alex M. Azar II, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. Since working for the consulting firm of the longtime Trump adviser Roger J. Stone Jr. in the 1980s, Mr. Caputo has been a cheerleader and even, once, a driver for the president. Dr. Hahn is not allowed to speak to the press without Mr. Caputo or another official on the phone a marked contrast to the practice under the last F.D.A. commissioner, Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a powerful force in Washington who came to the job with years of experience at the F.D.A. and political think tanks. He called reporters whenever he felt like it, which was often. Dr. Hahn said he didn't mind the restriction on his press calls. "I'm going to tell you how I feel and the truth as I know it, regardless of who is listening on the line," Dr. Hahn said. But people close to the commissioner point out that if he is too honest, he could be out of a job. "The president has shown if you disagree with him too much, he fires you," said Dr. Hahn's longtime friend and former colleague Kevin B. Mahoney, chief executive of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. In late July, Mr. Mahoney noted, the president retweeted a viral video of fringe doctors praising hydroxychloroquine that social media platforms later removed for its misleading claims. One of those doctors had given sermons warning that women having sex with demonic spirits in their dreams can cause certain gynecological ailments. "To say that any public health official can control what is going on right now is expecting too much for that person," Mr. Mahoney said. The job of F.D.A. commissioner is a lightning rod in the best of circumstances. Every White House and every Congress has its agendas, from Ronald Reagan's broad mission to deregulate, to the Obama administration's specific order not to ban flavored e cigarettes. But the F.D.A. has never been pushed as hard as it is being pushed now, when it must vet every new treatment and vaccine for a disease that has already killed more than 160,000 Americans, under a president who downplays the severity of the pandemic and recommends unproven treatments. "Given when he started, this level of intrusion is all that Steve Hahn has really known, but it is not normal," said Dr. Margaret Hamburg, who was F.D.A. commissioner for six years under President Barack Obama. "There's no doubt that the president believes he can massage F.D.A. decisions." Before joining the Trump administration, Dr. Hahn had climbed the ranks of academic medicine, spending 18 years at the University of Pennsylvania followed by five years at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, where his last role was chief medical executive. A wine aficionado who studies Italian (his rescue dog is named Baci), Dr. Hahn is known for being affable, perhaps to a fault. Virginia's new lieutenant governor elect says she won't force vaccines. It did not take long for Dr. Hahn to discover the intense scrutiny that came along with his new job. In late January, when only a handful of coronavirus cases had been recorded in the United States, Dr. Hahn planned to reach out to the chief executives of private companies about developing diagnostic tests, according to four current and former senior administration officials who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. Dr. Gottlieb had made the suggestion to Dr. Hahn. According to two of the officials, Dr. Hahn told them that he had been informed that the Health and Human Services department did not want him reaching out to the companies. Dr. Hahn declined to comment on any communication regarding the companies, but one of the officials said Dr. Hahn expressed disappointment over the situation. In a statement, Mr. Azar denied giving any such order. "There is not a shred of truth to this. In fact, I encouraged F.D.A. to reach out to industry from the earliest days of the response," he said. Asked whether someone else in the agency might have conveyed the message, Caitlin Oakley, a spokeswoman for Health and Human Services, said: "H.H.S. has 80,000 employees and I can't speak for all of them." The F.D.A. soon discovered serious problems with the country's first coronavirus tests issued by its sister agency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The F.D.A. discovered that there was contamination in two C.D.C. labs, leading to significant delays. But it took about three more weeks after the F.D.A. confirmed these problems before it allowed state and commercial labs to more easily use their own validated tests. State labs had been stuck with the C.D.C.'s flawed version losing critical time when hospitals across the country were desperate to isolate infected people. "This was a catastrophic delay that was a major part of why we had to shut down," said Dr. Ashish Jha, director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. In an effort to respond to public demand for more coronavirus tests, the agency then changed course, permitting scores of companies to sell tests that detect coronavirus antibodies, which show whether someone has been exposed to the virus in the past. Many of the tests failed and few companies bothered to alert the F.D.A., as required. The agency has taken some off the market, but many shoddy tests are still being sold. While his administration's testing missteps were fueling the early pandemic, Mr. Trump began a crusade for what were then chiefly known as malaria and lupus drugs, hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine. At a March 19 news conference, Mr. Trump said that the drugs would be approved for Covid 19 as well, thanks to the quick work of the F.D.A. and Dr. Hahn, in particular. "I'd shake his hand, but I'm not supposed to do that," Mr. Trump said. "But he's been fantastic." It was startling news, given that scant data had shown that the drugs could treat the disease. Speaking immediately after the president, Dr. Hahn tried to hedge, saying that clinical trials were needed. But he also acknowledged Mr. Trump's personal role in the matter, noting, "that's a drug that the president has directed us to take a closer look at." Nine days later, the F.D.A. issued an emergency authorization for the drugs in patients hospitalized with Covid 19. "The science they had wasn't sufficient to make that decision," said Dr. Luciana Borio, who worked as a top F.D.A. scientist during the Ebola and Zika outbreaks and was also director for medical and biodefense preparedness at the National Security Council under the Trump administration. "I don't know how they say it's not politics." More than 30 experimental coronavirus vaccines are now in clinical trials, with several companies racing to have the first product in the U.S. ready by the end of the year. With the public highly skeptical of these new vaccines, the F.D.A.'s vetting process will be Dr. Hahn's biggest test yet. In June, the F.D.A. issued guidelines saying that, in order to be approved, a coronavirus vaccine must be at least 50 percent more effective than a placebo, on par with most flu vaccines. Worried that an ineffective or unsafe vaccine would fan fears about immunizations, a bipartisan trio of senators introduced legislation last week to improve oversight of the vaccine approval process, and nearly 400 health experts sent a letter urging Dr. Hahn to use the agency's vaccine advisory group. On Friday, the commissioner and two of his deputies wrote in JAMA that "transparent discussion" by the advisory panel would be needed before any vaccine authorization or approval. The president, for now, appears to be pleased with the commissioner. Dr. Hahn was "really speeding up the process of therapeutics and vaccines," Mr. Trump said at a recent news conference on drug pricing. "It's very important, Stephen. Can you move it faster, please, OK? Thank you, great job."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Whether or not you believe the allegations, the jaw dropping dossier of sins that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau accuses the nation's largest student loan servicer of committing is useful for two crucial reasons. First, it's a reminder of just how much can go wrong when we force inexperienced young adults, especially, to navigate a complex financial services offering. We shouldn't be surprised, but we should be ashamed: Elected representatives cut support for higher education; sticker prices rose; teenagers and others applied for admission, signed up for debt and, in many cases, finished their degrees. Then came the bombardment of confusing loan and repayment options. Nobody stitched this crazy quilt on purpose, but most clear thinking humans who approach the system for the first time conclude that we are insane for allowing it to evolve this way. Second, the bureau's complaint offers a road map of sorts. For every major infraction that it accuses Navient, the servicer in question, of committing, there is at least one defensive move that borrowers can make to sniff out problems or keep them from happening in the first place. Let's take them in order: KNOW YOUR LOANS Staying out of trouble with a student loan servicer starts with two questions: How much do you owe, and to whom? Answering those questions is confusing to newcomers for a couple of reasons. First, the servicer of the loan the entity that collects payments and takes requests for any adjustments is often not the original lender. You can usually answer both questions at once for federal loans (those that come from the Education Department) through the National Student Loan Data System, where you'll need to set up an online account. Sorting out your private loans (those that come from banks and other similar entities) can be harder. Check copies of your credit report from the three major credit bureaus via annualcreditreport.com if you think you may have lost track of a loan, as lenders will almost always report the existence of the loan to the bureaus. INCOME DRIVEN PAYMENTS If you've got federal loans, you may be eligible for a payment plan that allows you to submit information on your income and family size and then reduce monthly payments to amounts that are affordable. Sometimes you don't have to make any payments at all. Not everyone knows that these programs exist. Savvy lawyers with big loans often do, but plenty of destitute people do not. And, the consumer bureau argues, Navient didn't do a good enough job of explaining to borrowers that they might be eligible. So all borrowers ought to educate themselves on the topic, just in case. And parents may want to check in with their college seniors and recent graduates, too. The Education Department's repayment estimator tool can tell you whether you're eligible. Elsewhere on the department's website is a list of all the income driven plans and some frequently asked questions. You'll need your loan servicer's cooperation to enroll in an income driven plan, and you may have questions for that servicer before you start. Here, Rohit Chopra offers a true pro tip: Don't call. Instead, send your questions through your servicer's messaging system. "This gives you a paper trail," said Mr. Chopra, who was the student loan ombudsman for the consumer agency before leaving for the Education Department and, later, the Consumer Federation of America, where he is now a senior fellow. Servicers often evaluate call center employees by how quickly they can get borrowers off the phone. When customers send messages, however, they often get standardized responses that are accurate because someone senior has vetted them. STAY ENROLLED Signing up for an income driven plan isn't enough. You have to requalify each year with updated financial information, and the consumer bureau accused Navient of not properly informing borrowers of this fact or of the deadlines. As a result, many borrowers saw their payments jump, leading to budget chaos and a cascade of late payments and additional interest. Don't count on your servicer to inform you in large capital letters that THIS DEADLINE WILL COME EVERY YEAR. And don't count on yourself to remember, either. Put it on your calendar for the month before your deadline and the week before your deadline, and on your spouse's calendar, too, if you're married. Tim Ranzetta, a financial literacy educator and advocate who once ran a business analyzing student lending data, also suggests using the FutureMe site to send yourself reminder emails that will arrive on the right days. Yes, this should all be automated. There is bipartisan support for making it more so. So cross your fingers, but set up a flurry of redundant reminders in the meantime. NO FORBEARANCE (IF POSSIBLE) If you run into trouble repaying your loan and you call your servicer to beg for help, it may offer you something called forbearance, which allows you to reduce or eliminate payments for a period of time. The interest, however, keeps adding up. The consumer agency charged Navient with steering borrowers into forbearance when they may have had other, better options, including income driven repayment plans. Why would it do that? Mr. Ranzetta believes that it may have something to do with how lenders pay servicers and whether the right incentives were in place to give the very best advice. He blogged about it in 2009 and 2010. The bureau, which also nodded to that possibility in its complaint and noted how much more time it can take to service borrowers who need hand holding for income driven repayment plans believes that Navient may have cost consumers up to 4 billion in interest after putting people in multiple consecutive forbearances. In a statement on its website, Navient said that it collects 60 percent less in compensation for borrowers it services who are in forbearance. It also disputed many other aspects of the bureau's complaint. If you have a private loan, your servicer probably doesn't have any income driven plans. But there still may be other options short of forbearance, like extending the term of a loan to lower payments. Here again, Mr. Chopra believes that you'll have more success getting a list of all available possibilities if you make your inquiry in writing. Back when he was still at the consumer bureau, he posted a sample letter on its site for consumers to use. DROPPING A CO SIGNER Perhaps you had an older, more creditworthy relative co sign your loan to qualify for a lower interest rate. And maybe you're earning more as you get older, so you want to release that person from the legal obligation of repaying the loan if you can't do it yourself. Servicers will often allow this if you make on time payments for a certain number of consecutive months. But, according to the consumer agency, Navient punished borrowers who had prepaid their loans and then skipped payments in subsequent months (with the company's permission) by resetting the clock to zero on their consecutive monthly payment count. "It's appalling," said Lauren Asher, president of the nonprofit Institute for College Access Success. This gets to a larger, pervasive challenge that exists across lending land: How can you be absolutely sure that a bank or a servicer is crediting your payments exactly as you intend? Mr. Chopra suggests using the servicer's own online interface, preferably with auto debit if you're sure you won't bounce payments for lack of bank funds. That way, you can set things as you wish, check that it's working for a few months and not have to write checks or push buttons in later months. You may get an interest rate discount for using auto debit, too. Don't use your bank's bill pay system, Mr. Chopra added, since the servicer may ignore any instructions you write on the check or in an attached memo. And if you just send a check through the mail yourself with nothing else in the envelope, beware. He said that in some big processing facilities, envelopes end up on conveyors that weigh them. If they sense there is nothing inside but a check, the envelope may undergo automatic processing where your instructions will be, you guessed it, ignored. CHECK YOUR CREDIT (AGAIN) You can get a free copy of your credit report each year from the three major credit bureaus. One way to check up on your servicer is to grab a report every four months and then look for any late payments or other signs that things are amiss. The consumer bureau also accused Navient of potentially tarnishing the credit of disabled veterans and others who had received legal discharges of their loans. If this all feels like yet another multi item checklist for your checklist of multi item checklists from all over your financial life, well, it is. I'm sorry. And the financial services industry isn't, for the most part. Any of the consumer bureau's complaints sound familiar? If so, file a complaint with the bureau. Do it while you still can, since there's a chance that our newly empowered elected officials will attempt to fire the bureau's director, or strip the bureau of its power at the very least. "This is a reminder why it is so important that there is an independent consumer watchdog in Washington," Ms. Asher said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
NASA's New Horizons Spacecraft Takes First Picture of Distant Rock It Will Visit NASA's New Horizons spacecraft still has 100 million miles to go, but it has taken its first snapshot of the space rock that will be its date for New Year's Day 2019. Mission scientists said they were a bit surprised that the camera on New Horizons was able to make out the tiny object, no more than 20 miles wide, so soon and from so far away. The image shows a dim dot amid a background of distant stars. Over the coming months, the dot, which has the designation 2014 MU69, will become brighter and larger as New Horizons approaches. Calculations originally indicated that the spacecraft would not be able to reliably spot the target until at least mid September. "We thought it's worth giving it a shot a month early," said Harold A. Weaver Jr., a scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory and the principal investigator of the long distance camera aboard New Horizons. At first glance at any one image, all that can be seen are stars. But in 48 images taken by New Horizons, the scientists were able to subtract the starlight, leaving behind a speck of MU69 right where they expected it to be, at the edge of a much brighter star. "The whole team is jazzed now," Dr. Weaver said. In an email, S. Alan Stern, the principal investigator of New Horizons, said, "This is good news because it helps our navigators better plan trajectory corrections." Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar. On Jan. 1, 33 minutes after the ball drops in Times Square, the spacecraft is to zip within 2,200 miles of MU69. It will be the first close up observation of a small Kuiper belt object, one of the clumps of ice and rock beyond the orbit of Neptune. Three years ago, New Horizons visited the largest Kuiper belt object: Pluto. That revealed a complex and dynamic world with towering mountains of ice, flat as a sheet plains and possibly even a subsurface ocean. Until now, scientists have only seen MU69 through images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope. They gathered more data last summer by chasing shadows. By fortuitous circumstance, MU69 passed in front of three stars within a two month period, causing the stars to momentarily blink out. The duration of those blinks, as the shadow of MU69 moved across Earth's surface, would give clues about the size and shape. On the first two tries, the scientists were not quite in the right place and missed the shadow. On the third, they succeeded. The results suggested that MU69 is long and thin in shape or actually two objects in orbit around each other. Later, they suggested MU69, as small as it is, might have a tiny moon. This month, MU69 again passed in front of a star, and New Horizons dispatched observers to Senegal and Colombia. The team again reported success and is in the middle of analyzing the data. But that means that the predictions of MU69's orbit appear to be spot on. For now, "That's really all we can say," Dr. Stern said. In March the mission scientists gave the MU69 an unofficial nickname: Ultima Thule, which in medieval times meant "beyond the known world."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Stuart Graham, left, and Paddy Considine in "The Ferryman," which both critics expect to win the best play prize. Tony Awards 2019: Who Will Win (and Who Should) Ben Brantley and Jesse Green, the chief theater critics for The New York Times, make their Tony Award choices. For the Should Have Been Nominated category, they were allowed to expand the potential nominees to productions ineligible for the Tonys, including those Off Broadway, which are designated by an asterisk. SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: "Fairview," "Slave Play" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: "The Cher Show," "Girl From the North Country" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: "Uncle Vanya" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Anika Noni Rose, "Carmen Jones" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: John Lithgow, "Hillary and Clinton," Mike Iveson, "What the Constitution Means to Me" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Dearbhla Molloy, "The Ferryman" SHOULD WIN: Ephraim Sykes, "Ain't Too Proud The Life and Times of the Temptations" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Patrick Vaill, "Oklahoma!" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Mare Winningham, "Girl From the North Country" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Joe Mantello, "Hillary and Clinton"; Richard Nelson, "Uncle Vanya" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: John Doyle, "Carmen Jones" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Rick Elice, "The Cher Show" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Alex Bechtel, "The Appointment" SHOULD WIN: "The Boys in the Band" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: "Uncle Vanya," "Boesman and Lena" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: "Carmen Jones," "Fiddler on the Roof (in Yiddish)" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Zainab Jah, "Boesman and Lena" ; Quincy Tyler Bernstine, "Marys Seacole" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Steven Skybell, "Fiddler on the Roof" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Rebecca Naomi Jones, "Oklahoma!"; Anika Noni Rose, "Carmen Jones" SHOULD WIN: Robin de Jesus, "The Boys in the Band" SHOULD HAVE BEEN NOMINATED: Paul Alexander Nolan, "Slave Play"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
In her recent article, "Is This Dog Dangerous? Shelters Struggle With Live or Die Tests," Jan Hoffman examined the behavior tests shelters use when evaluating aggression in dogs. Researchers found that some tests, like removing a food bowl while a dog is eating, are unreliable predictors of aggression in homes. Yet dogs may be euthanized if they fail. The article illustrated how shelters grapple with how to save the lives of dogs while keeping the public safe. Sometimes, this struggle is made public: Recently, Lena Dunham tussled with the shelter where she got her dog, Lamby, who was relocated to a new home because of behavior issues for which the shelter denied having previous knowledge. Readers were drawn into the debate in over 600 comments on nytimes.com, The New York Times's Facebook post and a Times Insider piece Ms. Hoffman wrote about Elsey, a dog who was euthanized for being aggressive to other dogs but whose affection toward humans was unmistakable. Some readers agreed that tests were flawed, citing their own cuddly rescue dogs who failed the shelter's behavior exam. Others said that tests were necessary to protect adopters, especially vulnerable family members like small children. Here is a selection of responses, which have been edited for length and clarity. Before my dog friend came to live with me, the supervisor of the local animal control shelter tried very hard to convince me that he was "unadoptable." When he arrived at the shelter, after escaping a scandalously neglectful situation only to be caught by the cops, he was given the "food aggression" test described in the article. He failed, biting the plastic "hand" that was pulling away the first food he'd seen in a while. A little research on my part showed that the test was well known by experts to be bogus, bearing no relation to how a dog would respond in a normal household setting. Finally, after a month of arguing with them and signing all manner of waiver forms and the supervisor warning me that the dog would "tear my hand off" if I touched his food dish, I was able to bring him home. The first thing I did was give him some food, then slowly pull his dish away. All he did was follow the food. He didn't bite; he didn't even growl. So much for his "food aggression" and the test that nearly led to his being killed by the county shelter. Your story brought me to tears because we adopted a pit/boxer mix (Glenda) through a rescue group that looks just like Elsey, scars and all. She is a gentle, loving, obedient girl with humans (of any age), but aggressive with dogs. Glenda would have passed the human test and shown the same hackles up, fighting stance behavior with dogs. We know how to handle her and we avoid other dogs. Elsey should not have been euthanized. Someone could have given her a home. 'We wouldn't euthanize a mentally ill person, but we do it to dogs' My own rescue dog Archer was one of these. He was rescued as a newborn puppy by a local rescue organization and well cared for until he was adopted by us. He was sweet and loving, but it was evident even then that he had severe anxiety. Over the next year, his anxiety increased and he became aggressive toward anything or anyone that frightened him. It got so bad that every time we went out in public we had to keep him in a muzzle. Anxiety medication and months of training did not help. Still, we were never willing to give up until he bit me on the face unprovoked. I bent down to pet him and when I stood up he lunged and got my lip. It was only then, and after much consultation with our trainer and vets, that we made the decision to euthanize. He was only 2 years old. It was the worst day of my life. While I know we made the right decision, I only wish there were more ways to help Archer and other dogs like him. We wouldn't euthanize a mentally ill person, but we do it to dogs all the time. 'I don't think this test is fair' We had a dog from the Humane Society. He was so sweet. Never showed any signs of aggression except once: I tried to pick a few pieces of kibble from his bowl. He didn't bite me, but it was the only time he ever snapped at anyone. I have a kind and generous sister, but if you tried to take a French fry from her plate she might stab you with a fork. I don't think this test is fair. 'No dog with bite history should ever be taken into rescue' I have fostered more than 130 dogs in my home (one at a time) over the last eight years, mostly Labrador retrievers. I have had to evaluate many at shelters. Yes, the shelter is a stressful, chaotic environment, but I do believe in attempting as much evaluation as possible at the shelter. Rescue groups must evaluate dogs as thoroughly as possible and have the backbone to turn down dogs that show signs of aggression. For starters, no dog with bite history should ever be taken into rescue. And when mistakes are made, rescues also must have the courage to euthanize dogs that are unsafe or take them off the adoptable list for good. 'I pulled him out of the shelter the night before he was due to be euthanized' I understand why shelters have to euthanize animals, but the behavior tests are very, very flawed. I adopted a cat last year, and his behavioral assessment of "tense, nervous, hisses when approached" landed him on the kill list. I pulled him out of the shelter the night before he was due to be euthanized. Clearly the nervousness was due to his confusion at suddenly being in the shelter with other frightened, and sometimes sick, cats. One year on you could not ask for a sweeter kitty (though he is still a bit shy!). 'The survival of the shelter is more important than the survival of any individual dog' I was on the board of a small animal shelter for a number of years. The shelter that I served had one incident in which a large dog pinned a woman to the couch in an act of vicious aggression that was not anticipated by the shelter. In response, the shelter determined that it had to take reasonable effort to screen for aggression. We were a "no kill" shelter, but dogs and cats determined to be aggressive were regretfully put down. Those who opposed any euthanasia were unable to offer alternative solutions for animals identified as aggressive. The testing was imprecise and the staff was not perfectly skilled. Undoubtedly, some dogs and cats were put down unnecessarily. But the shelter could hardly afford its liability insurance. Risk management was an essential part of legal claim reduction. The regretful truth is that the survival of the shelter is more important than the survival of any individual dog. As a lover of rescue dogs, I say this with sadness.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
WHEN the 2012 Nascar season roars to life in Florida next February, racecars in the Sprint Cup series will have undergone one of their biggest changes in decades. But the difference won't be visible to spectators in the stands or fans watching on TV. Starting with the cars in the premier Sprint Cup series, Nascar is turning its back on the venerable carburetor, a straightforward mechanical device that has fueled its engines since the competition began six decades ago. Instead, the Sprint Cup engines will be fed by electronic fuel injection. The change will nudge Nascar closer to the realities of today's passenger cars, most of which switched to fuel injection in the 1980s. But it also holds the potential to let Nascar match the cars more closely, because the system's digital controls regulate a number of engine functions. Nascar goes to great lengths to ensure a level playing field in its various series. For instance, on Sunday the playoffs for the 2011 championship, the Chase for the Sprint Cup, get under way at Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet, Ill., with a resetting of the drivers' accumulated points totals. The goal is to tighten the field, giving the top dozen drivers a better chance at winning the season title over the final 10 races. Similar thinking applies to equalizing all aspects of competition, with a mandated Car of Tomorrow used by all teams, rigid specifications for components and engine rules that render the pushrod V 8s of participating automakers nearly identical. For races at superspeedway tracks, today's cars must use a restrictor that limits engine power, holding speeds down, and, often, causing the cars to bunch in tight packs. Close competition is a critical part of Nascar's formula, in part because it emphasizes the drivers, rather than the cars and brands, as the stars. While some Nascar followers cheer for one of the series' four vehicle manufacturers, fans seem more inclined to cheer for a favorite driver emphatically at times. But for the teams that build and race the cars, and for the automakers that sponsor them, gaining a performance advantage is an obvious goal a goal that has become difficult to achieve on a playing field leveled by mandate. Nascar officials say they do not see the change to fuel injection as part of a plan to further equalize the cars. "All our makes seem to be fairly close right now," said Robin Pemberton, Nascar's vice president of competition, in a telephone interview. "They're not far apart. We don't think that this will further level the playing field." Almost as an afterthought, he added: "Maybe it will make it a little closer." Doug Yates, chief executive of Roush Yates Engines, a supplier to many teams, said he did not think that the change to fuel injection would make it harder to gain a performance edge. "The switch to fuel injection gives the teams a little more freedom to innovate," he said in a telephone interview. "Any rule change gives teams a chance to gain an advantage. I'm definitely in favor." Among other benefits, the team engineers will be able to collect data from the racetrack they never had before. "We'll be able to study how the engine is responding throughout the race and make adjustments based on science," Mr. Yates said. "Today, the crew chief and driver get together and try to figure out what's happening on the track. Now, we'll know." The teams will also be able to do a better job of preparing engines back in the shop. Because the workings of a carburetor are greatly affected by weather conditions and cornering forces, a carbureted engine that runs well at the team's home base will not necessarily shine on the track. But a fuel injection system can compensate for changes in conditions, and because fuel is delivered to each cylinder individually, cornering forces will not affect distribution. Tests done in the shop should prove a more accurate gauge of on track performance. Nascar makes the point that fuel injection can improve the series' environmental image. Mr. Pemberton has called the change a positive step that will provide greater fuel efficiency and a greener footprint while maintaining the caliber of the competition. Mr. Yates explained that the fuel injection system more effectively cuts back fuel flow when the driver's foot lifts off the gas pedal, unlike a carburetor, which continues to dump fuel. A significant reduction in both emissions and fuel use should result from the switch. "My dad has been pushing for cleaner racecars for years," Mr. Yates said, referring to Robert Yates, a successful Nascar engine builder and team owner of long standing. "He's very pleased." In a test at Kentucky Speedway, about 60 miles northeast of Louisville, in July, five cars fitted with fuel injection systems two Chevrolets, a Dodge, a Ford and a Toyota ran laps with the carburetor equipped racecars. Speeds for the injected cars were respectable, ranging from 170 to 174 m.p.h. "The crew wanted to run it in the race," Mr. Yates said. "They were getting a bit ahead of themselves." Mr. Yates also said that he hoped the computerized engine control systems would enable a more interactive experience for fans. Data transmitted by a telemetry system in the racecar could be incorporated into broadcasts and might even be accessible on home computers. The switch to fuel injection is a step forward, but for old time shade tree mechanics, who miss the days when a factory team could show up at Daytona and blow everyone away with some clever modification, fears must linger. While fuel injection adds technical sophistication and daily driver relevance, it also affords an opportunity for external control, so the potential for more enforced equality is there in the form of a mandated engine calibration for every car essentially today's carburetor restrictor plate gone high tech.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
As ballet companies across the country struggle to build audiences, especially young audiences, the troupe with one of the youngest, most adoring fan bases is closing. Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet was founded 12 years ago by Nancy Laurie, a Walmart heiress who, through an unusual single patron model, financed most of the enterprise until recently, when she decided to stop. Suddenly, the company was preparing to vacate its Chelsea theater; its next New York show would be its last. That farewell engagement opened on Wednesday at the Brooklyn Academy Music, with the first of two programs featuring a world premiere by Richard Siegal (commissioned before the announcement in March of the impending closing); Crystal Pite's "Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue" (2008); and the New York premiere of "Rain Dogs" (2014), by the Swedish choreographer Johan Inger. The lineup flaunted the sleek, seductive, dancer as powerhouse aesthetic that has made Cedar Lake so popular and that its fans, cheering wildly on Wednesday, will surely miss. Mr. Siegal's "My Generation," a bolt of electricity, makes the dancers look as fabulous as possible for the grand finale. The work is part fashion show, with fringe laden costumes by the German designer Bernhard Willhelm and styling by Edda Gudmun. To a mash up of driving club music, by Atom (Uwe Schmidt), the clothes competed for loudness with the dancing, which began with the spitfire Navarra Novy Williams being tossed among several strapping men.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
John Macurdy, an American bass who belonged to a select group of solo singers who have tallied more than 1,000 performances at the Metropolitan Opera, died on May 7 in Stamford, Conn. He was 91. His death was confirmed by his wife, Justine Macurdy. She did not specify the cause. During a career that spanned 38 years and encompassed 1,001 appearances at the Met, Mr. Macurdy was admired for his rich, firm voice and poised, dignified stage presence. He sang 62 roles in works of wide stylistic diversity, including notable world premieres. Though he achieved success in key roles like Gurnemanz in Wagner's "Parsifal," King Marke in Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde" and Sarastro in Mozart's "The Magic Flute," Mr. Macurdy proved essential to the house for his standout performances of supporting roles, including the Commendatore in Mozart's "Don Giovanni," which he sang 75 times at the Met; Daland in Wagner's "Der Fliegender Hollander"; the King of Egypt in Verdi's "Aida"; and many more. Mr. Macurdy said in a 2005 interview with Opera News that these small parts would be "added to your contract, even though you might be singing so called leading roles at the time." But his willingness to take them on, his skill at learning a new role quickly and his vocal consistently made him indispensable to the Met for years. Critics often singled out his performances even when his stage time was limited. The New York Herald Tribune critic Alan Rich, reviewing a 1964 production of Saint Saens's "Samson et Dalila," wrote that Mr. Macurdy "sang the few lines of the Old Hebrew with powerful resonance." In Mr. McCurdy's 1976 performance as the jailer Rocco in Beethoven's "Fidelio," a meaty role, his intonation was "rock firm," the critic Andrew Porter wrote in The New Yorker. A "magnificent voice," Mr. Porter commented, "was kept within the bounds of character." Mr. Macurdy took part in some historic evenings at the Met, including the gala farewell to the old house in April of 1966 and the inauguration of its Lincoln Center home five months later, at which he sang Agrippa in the world premiere of Barber's "Antony and Cleopatra," starring Leontyne Price. He created the role of Ezra Mannon in Marvin David Levy's "Mourning Becomes Electra," the company's second world premiere of that inaugural season. He gained attention beyond the opera world for portraying the Commendatore in Joseph Losey's 1979 film of "Don Giovanni," which drew international audiences but received mostly poor reviews. During his prime years he appeared with the Paris Opera, La Scala in Milan and other international houses. John Edward McCurdy was born on March 18, 1929, in Detroit. (He changed the spelling of his last name at the recommendation of his first manager.) He was the oldest of three children of Blanchard Archibald McCurdy, who came from a prominent Canadian family of financiers and ministers and worked as an engineer, and Dorathea (Radtke) McCurdy. His musicality and vocal gifts were apparent when, as a small boy, he earned a quarter from his German maternal grandfather for singing "O Tannenbaum" beautifully. He studied engineering at Wayne State University for a year before transferring to an apprenticeship program at General Motors in Detroit, where he made patterns for die models. During these years he studied voice privately with Avery Crew, whom he credited as his one and only voice teacher, and who provided the grounding for his solid technique. With the outbreak of the Korean War, Mr. Macurdy joined the Air Force. While stationed at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Miss., he took vocal coaching sessions in New Orleans and was noticed by the conductor Walter Herbert, the general director of the New Orleans Opera. When Mr. Macurdy auditioned for the company, it was the first time he had stepped on a stage, his wife said in an interview. He was cast as the Old Hebrew in "Samson et Dalila," making his debut on opening night of the season in 1952 in a cast headed by two Met Opera luminaries, Blanche Thebom and Ramon Vinay, and conducted by Mr. Herbert. He continued to sing with that company and elsewhere, including the Santa Fe Opera, where in 1958 he appeared as Mr. Earnshaw in the world premiere of Carlisle Floyd's "Wuthering Heights." While participating in an opera workshop in Wheeling, W.Va., he met a pianist who was working there as a coach, Justine Votypka. They married three years later. Besides her, Mr. Macurdy is survived by a son, John B. Macurdy; a daughter, Allison Hays; two grandchildren; and a sister, Elisabeth Andrews. A major break came in 1959 when he made his New York City Opera debut as Dr. Wilson in the company's first performance of Kurt Weill's "Street Scene." He appeared with City Opera regularly for three years in familiar roles like Colline in Puccini's "La Boheme," as well as in contemporary works, notably the 1959 premiere of Hugo Weisgall's "Six Characters in Search of an Author." He took part the next year in a live television broadcast of "Don Giovanni," singing the Commendatore in a cast including Leontyne Price and Cesare Siepi. His Met debut came in 1962 with the small role of Tom in Verdi's "Un Ballo in Maschera." His final performance, in 2000, was as Hagen in Wagner's "Gotterdammerung," conducted by James Levine. Others like him in the 1,000 plus Met solo singer performance club include the bass Paul Plishka (more than 1,600), the bass baritone James Morris (1,100 and counting) and the tenor Charles Anthony, the record holder at 2,928. Mr. Macurdy always emphasized that while many of the bass parts he sang involved limited stage time, parts like Hunding, Fafner and Hagen in Wagner's "Ring" were vocally substantive and dramatically crucial. These old roles felt "like a good suit of clothes," he said in a 1980 interview with Bruce Duffie for the Chicago radio station WNIB. "The ones that fit, fit very, very well," he said, "and the other ones just hang in the closet." "I look at how Wagner wrote," he added, "and every one of the bass roles fits my voice like the day it was made."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Naomi Long Madgett in 1943. Her poems addressed a breadth of themes from social justice to romantic love, women's histories, religious devotion and the craft of poetry itself. Naomi Long Madgett was 17 when her first book of poetry was published, and just 26 when her work appeared in an anthology co edited by Langston Hughes, an early mentor, that covered 200 years of Black poetry a new name among the greats. Her elegant, exacting and lyrical poems which invited comparisons to Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson addressed a breadth of themes: social justice, romantic love, women's histories, religious devotion and the craft of poetry itself. Yet she was almost as well known as a publisher and editor of poetry, an accidental career that began in her Detroit basement when she couldn't find the right press for her fourth book and decided to put it out herself. Lotus Press, her imprint, would go on to present, often for the first time, the work of Black writers like Herbert Woodward Martin, Dolores Kendrick, James A. Emmanuel and Toi Derricotte. Despite its literary prestige, Lotus Press stayed in Ms. Madgett's basement, and for decades she ran it mostly by herself. (In its first years, she invented an editorial assistant and named her Connie Withers a nod to her middle name, Cornelia, and her first married name, Witherspoon to give the imprint corporate heft.) Ms. Madgett, who had been the poet laureate of Detroit since 2001, died on Nov. 5 at 97 at her home in West Bloomfield, Mich., her daughter, Jill Witherspoon Boyer, said. "I felt that publishing other poets was more important than the work of one poet," Ms. Madgett said in "Star by Star," a 2001 documentary about her life directed by David Schock. Still, she managed to write 11 books of her own; her most recent, "You Are My Joy and Pain," its title taken from a line in the Billie Holiday song "Don't Explain," came out in January. "You Are My Joy and Pain" is a collection of love poems that describe the rich contours of a well seasoned heart. In the poem "Packrat," she writes: My trouble is I always try to save everything old clocks and calendars expired words buried in open graves But hoarded grains of sand keep shifting as rivers redefine boundaries and seasons Ms. Madgett's most recent collection, "You Are My Joy and Pain," its title taken from a line in a Billie Holiday song, was published in January. "I found it masterful and extremely daring," Ms. Derricotte said of Ms. Madgett's last collection. "I often wondered if what she did for others was taking away from her own work. Sometimes poets have to be very selfish, and she was always saying, when I'd ask her about her own writing, 'I'll get to it when this book is done.'" Her most famous poem, "Midway," written in 1959, was a response to Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 Supreme Court ruling that found racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional. Taking its rhythms from spirituals, its three stanzas note the terrible histories of African Americans and celebrate the milestone of social progress, while acknowledging how much more still needed to be accomplished. It concludes with these lines: I've seen the daylight breaking high above the bough. I've found my destination and I've made my vow; So whether you abhor me Or deride me or ignore me Mighty mountains loom before me and I won't stop now. "Midway," as Ms. Madgett often said, lived a life of its own. It has been set to music, anthologized over and over, reproduced without permission, misquoted and published anonymously. It was also Ms. Madgett's least favorite poem. She deemed it of "dubious literary merit," and "seriously flawed." "I know what's wrong with it," she said on more than one occasion, "but I don't know how to fix it." No one seemed to agree with her. "I don't think it's flawed at all," Melba Joyce Boyd, a Detroit based poet, essayist and editor and distinguished professor of African American studies at Wayne State University, said in a phone interview. "I can see why people connect to it. I'm writing a chapter on Detroit for a book about policing, and I keep thinking about that poem. It seems like you're always midway. "Naomi is presenting the idea that the struggle is eternal," she added. "It's not a race you can win. You just have to keep moving." Naomi Cornelia Long was born on July 5, 1923, in Norfolk, Va. Her father, Clarence Marcellus Long, was a noted Baptist minister; her mother, Maude Selena (Hilton) Long, had been a teacher before her marriage. Naomi grew up in East Orange, N.J., a deeply segregated city where the school she and her two brothers attended was marked by entrenched racial prejudice. She recalled being the only Black child in the A section of her grade, in a school that relegated most Black children to the C section. When her father accepted a post as minister of a church in St. Louis and she entered the all Black Sumner High School there, her life was irrevocably changed. She remembered arriving during the hush of an induction ceremony for the National Honor Society and being transfixed. "Here is a place you can be anything you are good enough to be," she recalled thinking, "and I took off running." Naomi had been writing poetry since she was 7 and had her first poem printed in a local newspaper when she was 13. Her father, whom she adored, thought her poems were good enough to be published as a book, and he submitted them to a publishing house when she was 17, guaranteeing that he could persuade a certain number of people to buy it. She had met Langston Hughes when she was 15 and attended a reading of his in St. Louis. When Mr. Hughes later gave a reading at her college, Virginia State University, she gave him her work, and he read it along with his, after which he became a lifelong mentor. She earned a bachelor's degree in English from Virginia State and a master's of education from Wayne State University. She worked briefly at a newspaper and for the phone company while working toward her teaching degree all while writing poetry and publishing two collections. Her marriage to Julian Witherspoon, a lawyer and activist she had met in high school, ended in divorce. So did her marriage to William Harold Madgett, a postal worker. After that, she later said, she was determined not to marry again, because she didn't trust her own judgment. But Leonard Andrews, an educator and school principal, was a man too good to pass up, she said in "Star by Star," and "that was the marriage that worked."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Think of It This Way: Stairs Are an Amenity Having visited Manhattan on several occasions, Sofia and Christian Hasselberg of Stockholm knew New York was one place they wished to live. So they were excited when Ms. Hasselberg received a temporary transfer to her company's New York office. She is a management consultant, primarily in the health care field, as well as a physician. The couple were referred last fall to Shannon Aalai of Citi Habitats, who was tasked with finding them a one bedroom with a monthly rent in the mid 3,000s. A friend had lived on the Upper East Side, in a cute apartment that seemed to them quintessentially New York. "Our picture of a New York apartment is an exposed brick wall," said Mr. Hasselberg, who is 29, as is his wife. And they liked the neighborhood. But they also adored the West Village, with its tree lined residential streets, some of them cobbled with Belgian block. So they asked specifically to see apartments in both areas. Their agent, Ms. Aalai, was perplexed but game. "It is seldom that I get somebody who wants the Upper East Side or the West Village," she said. "They are two completely different neighborhoods. You have one of the most expensive neighborhoods as compared with one of the most affordable." Sure enough, the West Village seemed too expensive, with rents for one bedrooms in many buildings starting in the high 3,000s. Many of the apartments they viewed were newly renovated, with nice kitchens and bathrooms. But they saw a walk up building there that they loved. It had been completely redone, with lovely finishes, a small gym and a landscaped roof deck. Two identical one bedrooms, smaller than many others they had seen, with back courtyard views and all in one kitchens and living rooms, were available. One, on the fourth floor, rented for 4,495 a month, while the other, on the sixth, was 3,995. "It was very modern, and different from anything else," Ms. Aalai said. "The other buildings had doormen, more space, amenities. You virtually never find a walk up building that has a legal, planted roof deck." But the Hasselbergs were eager to see options on the Upper East Side, where their money would go further. They went to several newly renovated apartments, renting in the low 3,000s, in Stonehenge 63, a seven story 1949 apartment house on East 63rd Street. Across the street they visited the 17 story Kenton Place, built in 1929 and also newly renovated. Rents there were in the low to mid 3,000s. They loved the interiors of both buildings, but not the block, congested with traffic exiting the 59th Street Bridge. "We didn't think the neighborhood was very cozy," Ms. Hasselberg said. The West Village apartment was "so much in our minds; we compared everything with it." At every place they saw, they asked themselves, "Do we think this is better? And we always said no." They knew they had a choice between space and charm. And charm, even at a premium, won out. The West Village walk up building it would be, despite its lack of a brick wall. They decided on the sixth floor apartment and negotiated a rent of 3,700 a month. "We had no problem with a walk up," Ms. Hasselberg said. In Stockholm, they own an apartment on the third floor of a four story walk up. "People don't enjoy walking up," Ms. Hasselberg continued, meaning other people. "We felt that if we can save those 300 a month, that is not a bad deal, so for us this is just perfect." According to Ms. Aalai, "Sixth floor apartments are very hard to rent. I have people who will go up to four, and maybe five, but this is six." The apartment had little storage space, so the landlord built a bed frame with drawers underneath. The couple appreciate having a washing machine but requested the removal of the dryer, preferring to use the space for storage. But removing the dryer wasn't that easy, so it remains. It functions as a linen closet the Hasselbergs keep their towels there. A drying rack is perfectly sufficient. The couple were initially kept awake by loudly clanking radiators. "We understand that is very common in New York," Ms. Hasselberg said. "We had never heard about it before." And they saw mice near the trash area. Both problems were rectified. Just one more flight gets them to the building's roof deck. They often eat breakfast outside, with the roof deck all to themselves. "We are used to cold weather," Mr. Hasselberg said. "Maybe that is why we are the only ones using the rooftop. It is cold to other people, but fine for us." As for the stairs, "we see these stairs as your everyday exercise," Mr. Hasselberg said. A physical therapist in Sweden, he is working as a men's clothing salesman while he is in New York. "We walk up with the groceries and down with the trash, and that adds a little bit of weight." The neighborhood remains their favorite. "Every time we enter and exit the building," Ms. Hasselberg said, "we say we are so fortunate to live in this neighborhood."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
When out of town patients used to travel to NewYork Presbyterian Hospital, some would find that their best option for staying close to the hospital for early morning surgery involved a trip over the George Washington Bridge from New Jersey. Enter the Edge Hotel, a 54 room property that opened in the fall of 2015 in Upper Manhattan, an area with few other lodgings. As patients increasingly travel to and across the United States for medical treatment, developers are seizing on the benefits of situating hotels near major medical centers, many of which are in hotel starved outskirts. About eight miles from Times Square, the Edge has exceeded expectations, said Ari Sherizen, the operating partner of Edge Property Group, its developer. The hotel has had a steady occupancy rate of more than 80 percent since it opened a block and a half from the hospital, Mr. Sherizen said. And NewYork Presbyterian, which has ties to Columbia and Cornell Universities, has proved to be a valuable partner by referring people to stay there. About 90 percent of the Edge's customers have had ties to the hospital, including potential medical students, visiting professors and pharmaceutical sales representatives, Mr. Sherizen said. The Edge, which cost 20 million to develop and is operated by Trust Hospitality, has had to meet challenges many hotels might never face. On a recent afternoon, when Mr. Sherizen was in the lobby waiting to meet a contractor, he observed a guest from the Midwest sobbing because her son had died, prompting a hug from the receptionist. "Our staff has to be really attuned to what people are going through emotionally," he said. While so called medical tourists have been around for years, seeking out treatment at specialized hospitals far from their homes, their numbers have increased in recent years as baby boomers age, creating more customers. "Medical procedures that used to require multiple stays are now being done in much less invasive ways, and they require a lot less recovery than they used to," said Daniel C. Peek, a senior managing director at HFF, a commercial real estate firm. "And if a recovering patient needs to go back just twice a week, it's probably better for the hospitals if they stay in a hotel." While the Edge's rates of 100 to 300 a night may appeal to a range of travel budgets, the InterContinental Houston Medical Center luxury hotel, which is under construction across the street from the Texas Medical Center, is targeting a higher end clientele in an area where a handful of midmarket options already exist. Rising on a former parking lot between an existing Wyndham hotel and a Best Western property, the 353 room, 21 story InterContinental is the creation of a partnership of Greystar and TRC Capital Partners, and Medistar Corporation, a development firm that typically builds medical facilities but is branching into hospital hotels. "The American health care system has more international appeal than ever," said Kelly Lindig, the vice president for development and acquisitions at Medistar. And a place like the MD Anderson Cancer Center, one of several facilities clustered at the sprawling Texas Medical Center, is a huge draw globally, Mr. Lindig said. Selecting InterContinental Hotels and Resorts, a British company with hotels in dozens of countries, to run the place was a logical choice. "It is a brand that is uniquely perceived overseas," he said. And InterContinental owner of brands like Holiday Inn and Candlewood Suites, which offers extended stay properties is capitalizing on the medical tourism market. Seven of its properties, including in Irvine, Calif.; Kansas City, Kan.; and Phoenix, have opened on hospital campuses or right next to them in the last 16 years, said Ada Hatzios, a spokeswoman. At the Houston hotel that is under construction, amenities under consideration include an on site lab where guests can get their blood drawn in advance of checkups at the hospital, which is across the street. Medistar is also looking to provide options for patients who need to stay in Houston for many months, for, say, chemotherapy treatments. For them, it is constructing a 375 unit, 34 story apartment building that will share a lobby with the coming hotel. Rooms, with washers and dryers, will be rentable by the month, and studios will start at about 1,300, Mr. Lindig said. Three bedroom apartments for families will also be available. The 200 million combined project is set to open in late 2018. The needs of patients also factored prominently into the design of the Holiday Inn Cleveland Clinic, a 276 room, nine story property that opened in May at the hospital, a few miles from the city's downtown. Developed and owned by Murphy Development Group, based in Chicago, the 50 million hotel sits on land leased from the hospital that used to contain a church. Its rooms replace those lost when the clinic's Guesthouse, a dated brown brick structure, was demolished to make way for Case Western Reserve University educational buildings. Tables in a lobby level cafe are positioned at different heights, to accommodate those who might be in wheelchairs, said John T. Murphy, the company's chief executive. Rooms have more electrical outlets than usual in case people need to plug in respirators or other equipment, he said. In 2016, about 60 percent of hotel customers were patients or family members of patients, he added. For hospitals, the economics to get patients out from under their roofs is compelling, Mr. Murphy said. Housing some patients can cost up to 2,500 a night; the Cleveland's new Holiday Inn is around 250. And patients are often more comfortable outside a hospital's walls, too. "It's very rewarding to see this stuff work," said Mr. Murphy, whose firm has historically been focused on traditional condos and rentals, but which is switching gears to construct more hospital hotels. "What appears to be a pioneering trend for the few will soon become a 'minimum must have' for many" hospitals, he said. While other hospital hotel projects are planned or underway in Baltimore, Pittsburgh and Rochester, Minn., home to the Mayo Clinic, the Cleveland Clinic seemed to grasp the trend's potential early on. In 1974, during a major expansion, its campus welcomed the Park Plaza Hotel, which had 450 rooms, many of them tiny, and a medieval themed restaurant. Later known as the Omni International Hotel, it was demolished in 2000 to make way for the 294 room InterContinental Cleveland, which the clinic owns. It offers a 500 seat amphitheater and is connected to the hospital by an enclosed bridge. In 1998, the hospital added the 152 room InterContinental Suites Hotel Cleveland, also on the property. At a hospital where the average length of stay for inpatients is seven days, the hotels "are a very nice complement," said William M. Peacock III, the chief of operations for the clinic, which is known for its cardiology care and organ transplants. "We treat some of the sickest of the sick, and they travel far and wide," he added. Many of those stay over patients hail from overseas. While foreign patients make up less than 1 percent of the total at the hospital, their numbers are growing. In 2015, there were 4,700 international patients, up 6 percent from 2014; 51 percent came from the Middle East, according to the hospital. And the clinic, which employs staff members who can speak some 18 languages, lifted its global profile last year when it opened an outpost in Abu Dhabi, Mr. Peacock said. Long term guests at that hospital? Perhaps unsurprisingly, they are encouraged to stay at a 189 room Rosewood hotel, which has a corridor that connects to the facility and is dedicated for use by hospital patients.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
L'Otel at Doce 18 Concept House is far from a traditional hotel guests enter rooms from the second level of an open air building that overlooks a contemporary restaurant and a sort of modern day mini mall, featuring boutiques and food stalls from local independent businesses. Opened in November 2016 in what was once a metals factory called Casa Cohen, the hotel has a fresh vibe from zigzag floor tiles to floral wall murals with shared spaces that include an outdoor patio and pool; a sitting room with a grand piano; and a library stocked with books like "Imperfect Utopia," by the artist Carlos Betancourt. In February, the hotel began offering in room spa treatments and plans to open a dedicated spa space and rooftop restaurant later this year. In the center of San Miguel de Allende, a colonial era city recognized by Unesco as a world heritage site and just over an hour's drive from Guanajuato International Airport. The hotel is within walking distance of the pedestrian plaza El Jardin and various art galleries and restaurants. We checked into our deluxe double room at night and were immediately warmed by the electric fire place "roaring" under the Sony flat screen TV opposite the two queen size beds. Brightly patterned pillowcases stood out against the otherwise all cotton colored room (sheets, floors, chairs everything) decorated with mod furnishings like wooden armchairs, marble shelves and a linen covered, lantern light fixture overhead. Artwork, such as striking photographs of the Mexican desert taken by Edgardo Trujillo, gave life to an otherwise dreamy setting. The plump mattress covered in 400 thread count sheets provided one of the best nights sleep I'd had in a while and it was hard to leave the daybed, where we'd wrap ourselves in the cashmere blanket knit in Ixmul, a small town in the Yucatan. It's available to purchase for 560. Separated from the sleeping area by the TV and the fireplace, there was a marble vanity with a deep square sink, bronze faucet and lighting from two hanging Edison bulbs that flanked an oval mirror. Steps away, in a separate room with a door, the toilet and glassed in shower got illumination from a skylight. (The room did not have a bathtub but others do.) Between the natural rays and the fresh flowers it felt like an oasis. The misleadingly thin towels made of bamboo fibers (to reduce energy during laundry) were absorbent and all the toiletries from the hotel's own natural Ablu Botanica line were in large dispensers so we didn't have to worry about squeezing out any last drops. Plus there was a welcome pot of lip butter, which was ours to keep. Beyond the bevy of options in the concept house, the private hotel spaces feel like one's own living room if one's own living room resembled Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" as reimagined by Architectural Digest. Until the dedicated spa space with steam and sauna rooms opens, a range of body massages from Swedish and Thai to Deep Tissue and Watsu are offered in room or by the solar heated dipping pool. Wi Fi is available throughout the property and each night for turndown, housekeeping left a lavender and sage spray on our pillows for what the bottle says would be "a calming, tranquil " sleep, and a mini dessert by the bedside. (Our favorite was the citron meringue tart.) Breakfast is served in the courtyard area on glass tables lining the balcony. Fresh juices (from watermelon to orange) as well as yogurt, cereal and cheeses are available buffet style from the bar, while made to order dishes include a mix of Mexican and American favorites such as oatmeal with toasted pistachios, scrambled eggs topped with mole, and chilaquiles with green or red sauce and melted cheese. Downstairs, we tried Jacinto 1930, where cocktails like the Dragon Breath with tequila, habanero extract and agave honey wowed us from the first sip, while the fried panela cheese starter had us wiping the plate with our warm corn tortillas. A unique accommodation that's artfully designed as a one stop shop with offerings and comfort that won't leave guests wanting for anything.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Michelangelo Pistoletto, 87, the Arte Povera master, recovered from Covid 19 and designed a retrospective at the Levy Gorvy gallery in New York.Credit...Marta Giaccone for The New York Times Michelangelo Pistoletto, 87, the Arte Povera master, recovered from Covid 19 and designed a retrospective at the Levy Gorvy gallery in New York. For someone who is 87 and who survived a severe bout of Covid 19 that put him in the hospital for a month, the Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto was steadily upbeat on the phone, speaking from a respite on the Ligurian coast. "I'm still alive," he said, sounding defiant, as if it had been a close call. "It was very, very hard to retake life," Mr. Pistoletto added of his long recovery. He spoke in imperfect English, but with the forceful current of someone who has worked for a lifetime to make himself understood, in his case through his art. "After this lockdown time I am feeling revitalized, and life is very good," he said. One engagement he has retaken is the exhibition of his work at Levy Gorvy gallery in New York, through Jan 9. The show, organized with Galleria Continua of San Gimignano, Italy, was designed by Mr. Pistoletto himself. It features 19 works made over more than 50 years by a man who gained early fame in Pop Art, then became a star of the Arte Povera movement meaning poor or plain art in Italy. "As I go on, there are more and more branches on my tree," Mr. Pistoletto said, and the natural metaphor is apt, given that ecological and environmental concerns have become paramount for him in the last few years. In the interview at the end of the summer, Mr. Pistoletto, gave the impression he could talk for hours, which only makes sense because, constitutionally, he has always been focused on engaging with the wider world, and pushing art ever outward from its cloistered confines. "Art," he told me, "is an engine of connection." Beginning in 1966, Mr. Pistoletto has been presenting a work called "Sfera di giornali" "Newspaper Sphere" by rolling the big ball of print through the streets and gathering followers like the Pied Piper. "Newspapers are something you throw away, but this reactivates them," said Mr. Pistoletto, who connected the idea to his "Stracci" series, sculptures made of rags, which came to symbolize the overall Arte Povera movement for their use of a humble material. "It's a regeneration." Mr. Pistoletto is perhaps most famous for his "Mirror Paintings," begun in the early 1960s, which incorporate a reflective background. The very act of looking at one puts the viewer in the picture, or, as the Italian artist Francesco Vezzoli, put it, "Pistoletto anticipated the selfie." A new suite of Mirror Paintings is on view at Galleria Continua until Oct. 1 of next year. Much of the income from the sales of his art goes into Cittadellarte, which focuses on sustainable architecture and sustainable fashion. In 2014, the foundation held a conference on sustainable fibers and forests, complete with a fashion show. Carlos Basualdo, who curated a 2010 retrospective of Mr. Pistoletto's work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, called the foundation "the love of his life." "It's expensive," Mr. Pistoletto admitted. But he said it fits his idea that "making art doesn't mean just making products, something to be sold." Although Mr. Pistoletto's art is "very accessible," in Ms. Olnick's words, it's also hard to categorize, and that may help explain why exhibitions of his work have been scarce in the United States since that Philadelphia show. His career stands out for another reason, too. Mr. Vezzoli said, "I envy him that he has been able to merge being recognizable and being credible." Perhaps the most old fashionedly European part of Mr. Pistoletto's practice is that he likes to produce theoretical manifestoes, in the tradition of the Dada and Surrealist artists of a century ago. The Levy Gorvy exhibition features "Third Paradise," a wrapped fabric work shaped like an infinity symbol. When an artist from the country of Dante invokes paradise, it certainly sounds religious; Mr. Pistoletto also mentions the Bible from time to time. But he waved me off a literal religious reading of his work. "No, no, no," he said. "We have to reorganize our vision in a spiritual way." Early on, Mr. Pistoletto was steeped in the practical details of art making. At 14, he went to work in the Turin studio of his father, a painter and restorer. "He was my teacher, for the techniques of art and its history." Mr. Pistoletto said. In the 1970s, when his father was still alive, Mr. Pistoletto put on a father son show of their works, and then recreated it years after his father's death. "My father was very happy to see what I was doing," Mr. Pistoletto said of the reaction to his more radical turns. "He was not against it. He was very curious." He then studied graphic and advertising design, fields that were as important to his development as they were for other budding Pop artists in the 1950s. "It was through that that I discovered the incredible freedom offered by modern art," Mr. Pistoletto said. "It was probably the opportunity to connect my school of the past and my school of the future." Francis Bacon impressed him early on, and Mr. Pistoletto started as a figurative painter by making self portraits, as he continues to do. The Levy Gorvy show features the Mirror Painting "Autoritratto con quaderno (Self portrait with notebook)" from 2008. He began the Mirror Paintings in 1962, and they found a savvy audience right away. The pioneering dealer Ileana Sonnabend saw them at a show a year later at the Galleria Galatea in Turin and bought out the entire exhibition. He started showing with her in Paris, and then with Ms. Sonnabend's ex husband, the influential gallerist Leo Castelli, in New York. "For a while, I was the only non American artist included in Pop," Mr. Pistoletto said, recalling that the period included a friendship with the artist Roy Lichtenstein. "I'm very proud of Pop Art because it was about representing the objectivity of life." Arte Povera's materials may have been plain, but the ideas were rich. In their work, the artists registered dissent about the direction of society, putting issues like nationality, immigration and identity front and center. Those subjects are still percolating in Mr. Pistoletto's art. "The Free Space" (1976 2020), which dominates the second floor of the Levy Gorvy show, is a large steel cage. He has said of the piece, "We assume that there is freedom outside the jail. I created for them a free space within the jail." The show's third floor is devoted to "Porte Uffizi" (1994 2020), a series of symbolic rooms divided by open timber architecture. Each represents an abstract concept like the economy, politics or spirituality, and other artworks are placed inside the rooms. "It's about the connection between the rooms," Mr. Pistoletto said. "In between them, you must find the solution." It seems like further proof that a passion for synthesis explicit attempts to reconcile the traditional and the modern, nature and civilization drives much of what he does, and what he will continue to do. "Arte Povera came at a certain moment," he said. "It was, for me, an important step. Just not the final step."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Despite this nation's rise as a technology titan with some of the world's best engineering minds, India's full economic potential is stifled by potholed roadways, collapsing bridges, rickety railroads and a power grid so unreliable that many modern office buildings run their own diesel generators to make sure the lights and computers stay on. It is not for want of money. The Indian government aims to spend 500 billion on infrastructure by 2012 and twice that amount in the following five years. The problem is a dearth of engineers or at least the civil engineers with the skill and expertise to make sure those ambitious projects are done on time and up to specifications. Civil engineering was once an elite occupation in India, not only during the British colonial era of carving roads and laying train tracks, but also long after independence as part of the civil service. These days, though, India's best and brightest know there is more money and prestige in writing software for foreign customers than in building roadways for their nation. And so it is that 26 year old Vishal Mandvekar, despite his bachelor's degree in civil engineering, now writes software code for a Japanese automaker. Mr. Mandvekar works in an air conditioned building with Silicon Valley amenities here in Pune, a boomtown about 100 miles east of Mumbai. But getting to and from work requires him to spend a vexing hour on his motorcycle, navigating the crowded, cratered roads between home and his office a mere nine miles away. During the monsoon season, the many potholes "are filled with water and you can't tell how deep they are until you hit one," he said. Fixing all that, though, will remain some other engineer's problem. Mr. Mandvekar earns a salary of about 765 a month. That is more than three times what he made during his short stint for a commercial contractor, supervising construction of lodging for a Sikh religious group, after he earned his degree in 2006. "It was fun doing that," he said of the construction job. "My only dissatisfaction was the pay package." Young Indians' preference for software over steel and concrete poses an economic conundrum for India. Its much envied information technology industry generates tens of thousands of relatively well paying jobs every year. But that lure also continues the exodus of people qualified to build the infrastructure it desperately needs to improve living conditions for the rest of its one billion people and to bolster the sort of industries that require good highways and railroads more than high speed Internet links to the West. In 1990, civil engineering programs had the capacity to enroll 13,500 students, while computer science and information technology departments could accept but 12,100. Yet by 2007, after a period of incredible growth in India's software outsourcing business, computer science and other information technology programs ballooned to 193,500; civil engineering climbed to only 22,700. Often, those admitted to civil engineering programs were applicants passed over for highly competitive computer science tracks. There are various other reasons that India has struggled to build a modern infrastructure, including poor planning, political meddling and outright corruption. But the shortage of civil engineers is an important factor. In 2008, the World Bank estimated that India would need to train three times as many civil engineers as it does now to meet its infrastructure needs. The head of Instagram agrees to testify as Congress probes the app's effects on young people. Today in On Tech: A fix it job for government tech. The government has "kick started a massive infrastructure development program without checking on the manpower supply," said Atul Bhobe, managing director of S. N. Bhobe Associates, a civil engineering design company. "The government is willing to spend 1 trillion," he said, "but you don't have the wherewithal to spend that kind of money." "If we need 10 good quality civil engineers, we may get four or five," Mr. Kalele said. Beyond construction delays and potholes, experts say, the engineering shortfall poses outright dangers. Last year, for example, an elevated span that was part of New Delhi's much lauded metro rail system collapsed, killing six people and injuring more than a dozen workers. A government report partly blamed faulty design for the accident; metro officials said they would now require an additional review of all designs by independent engineers. Acknowledging India's chronic shortage of civil engineers and other specialists, the national government is building 30 universities and considering letting foreign institutions set up campuses in the country. "India has embarked on its largest education expansion program since independence," the prime minister, Manmohan Singh, said in a speech last year in Washington. But the government may have only so much influence on what students study. And while the Indian government runs or finances some of the country's most prestigious universities, like the Indian Institutes of Technology, fast growing private institutions now train more students. About three quarters of engineering students study at private colleges. Moreover, many civil engineers who earn degrees in the discipline never work in the profession or like Mr. Mandvekar leave it soon after they graduate to take better paying jobs in information technology, management consulting or financial services. Industry experts say a big obstacle to attracting more civil engineers is the paltry entry level pay. The field was considered relatively lucrative until the 1990s, when it was eclipsed by the pay in commercial software engineering. Kainaz Amaria for The New York Times Ravi Sinha, a civil engineering professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, says professionals in his field with five years of experience make about as much as their counterparts at information technology companies. But those starting can make as little as half the pay of their technology peers. That is partly because of the lead set by government departments, where salaries for civil engineers are often fixed according to nearly immutable civil service formulas. And in the private sector, developers and construction companies have often been reluctant to pay more and invest in the training of young engineers, because executives believe that new graduates do not contribute enough to merit more money or that they will leave for other jobs anyway. "If companies take a holistic view," Mr. Sinha said, "they have the opportunity to develop the next generation's leaders." In fact, a construction boom in recent years has led to higher salaries in private industry. Kolte Patil now pays junior engineers 425 a month, nearly twice the level of five years ago. Larsen Toubro, a Mumbai based engineering company that builds airports, power projects and other infrastructure, offers Build India Scholarships for students who want to pursue a master's degree in construction technology and management. The program produces 50 to 60 graduates a year, who are hired by the company. "You don't get the best quality in civil engineers, because today the first choice for students is other branches" of engineering, said K. P. Raghavan, an executive vice president in L. T.'s construction division. "We are compensating with lots of training."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
It's impossible not to recognize the moment you pass into Dubai's Al Quoz Industrial Area. Instead of the immense spires of gunmetal gray and glass that populate neighborhoods on either side, the buildings are two or three story warehouses in a Creamsicle orange that matches the sand that spills onto the road. It's an abrupt transition; the area is the unpolished opposite to the glamorous, glossy image that springs to mind when thinking of this part of the United Arab Emirates. In addition to its topography, Al Quoz is unique among neighborhoods of Dubai in that it has developed an identity, rather than having been assigned one. Dubai's neighborhoods have names like Media City, Knowledge Village and the International Financial Center: functional, polished campuses that attract denizens of their namesake industries with special economic regulations, jurisdictions and foreign ownership allowances. Alserkal Avenue (alserkalavenue.ae), a gated compound of warehouses veneered in gray corrugated metal, was an early addition to the neighborhood in 2007, and now plays host to many of the creative initiatives that come to Al Quoz. The center's galleries and cafes are a natural habitat for international fashion types, bored looking beauties sporting man buns and diaphanous separates. It's the brainchild of Abdelmonem Alserkal, 47, a good natured, gray haired real estate heir who created the arts hub from a disused marble processing factory owned by his family. Mr. Alserkal, elegant in his traditional white robes, met me in a space that was clearly once sleek but is now overflowing with clutter (including his extensive collection of Tintin figurines). His team has recently moved to new offices as the complex completes an expansion that will double its size. For the 50 new spaces, "we had more than 400 applications," including galleries, shops and start ups, he said. Alserkal Avenue's expansion mirrors the rising international profile of the artists who call Al Quoz home. Last year, the Iranian sculptor Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, represented by the Third Line gallery (thethirdline.com), headquartered at Alserkal, had a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim in New York. Artists and galleries began to decamp to the area in the mid 2000s. The cheap rents helped, of course, but so has the versatility of the structures. "Art spaces need to build walls, break them down, change things all the time to suit their programming," said Ms. Pawani of thejamjar, which established itself in Al Quoz in 2007 (and moved to Alserkal Avenue earlier this year). "If a gallery wants to set up in one of Dubai's prime areas, they will have to rent a shop space, which limits this kind of flexibility." A symbiosis emerged between the new tenants and old. The area's manufacturing and construction industries were convenient for both the raw material and skilled tradesmanship necessary to make art at scale. "You also have neighbors where you can buy light fittings, glass and who can do carpentry, whatever you need," she said. Warehouses aren't the artists' only neighbors. As the city boomed in the 1990s, property developers bought up the inexpensive desert tracts in Al Quoz, inland from the Persian Gulf coast, to erect living quarters for their workers, most of them migrants from South Asia. These two story barracks are rectangles of cinder block and concrete, built around a central courtyard and enclosed by high fences topped with barbed wire. Al Quoz is one of the only points in Dubai where the elite fashion set and these low paid migrant workers cross paths. The chasm between these groups remains vast, but tentative connections are being established. Last year, the Palestinian artist Hazem Harb exhibited a video and sculpture installation focusing on the laborers building Alserkal Avenue's expansion; thejamjar has hosted a singing competition for construction workers as part of an "American Idol" style initiative, Champ of the Camp. For now, the man with perhaps the most insight into the changing neighborhood, and surely its most popular, is the Chai Guy, a Pakistani entrepreneur who cycles from labor camps to galleries with a samovar of spiced milky tea. At every stop he is met by throngs looking to trade 1 dirham (about 25 cents) for a sugary fix and a chat, if you happen to speak Punjabi.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Alana Newhouse of Tablet Magazine. "My editor's instinct just kicked in and I thought, 'I think this is going to be an important story for us,'" she said of her decision to dispatch staff members to Pittsburgh. PITTSBURGH Within 45 minutes of hearing about the shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue last Saturday and before it was known that 11 people had been killed in what is being described as among the deadliest attacks against the Jewish community in the United States Alana Newhouse had booked an Airbnb in this city's Squirrel Hill neighborhood. "My editor's instinct just kicked in and I thought, 'I think this is going to be an important story for us,'" said Ms. Newhouse, the editor in chief of the online publication Tablet Magazine, which focuses on Jewish news and culture. She emailed the six members of her editorial staff, telling them that she wanted to cover the shooting aggressively but that none of them were obligated to travel here and could decline if they wanted. Tablet was founded in 2009 and is based in New York. It is supported by the Nextbook foundation, which assists Jewish literacy efforts and promotes Jewish culture. As the magnitude of the shooting became clear the police have said the alleged gunman, Robert Bowers, spewed anti Semitic slurs while he was firing Ms. Newhouse had to decide how to mobilize her small staff. The Pittsburgh project was the first time the Tablet had dispatched a team for a breaking news event. (The editorial team did travel to Poland together once to cover the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, but that trip had been planned well in advance.) Ms. Newhouse said the site augmented its servers to handle any additional traffic. It also was the editorial team's first time staying together in one house. "We've gotten to know each other really, really well," Ms. Butnick said dryly. Readers' response to the Pittsburgh project has been overwhelmingly positive. "Like, a Jew in Cleveland does feel connected to whatever's going on here," Ms. Butnick said. "They don't know how to be, they may not know anybody here personally, but they feel attached and concerned. We're a conduit for them." During a brief lull on Tuesday, Ms. Newhouse gathered with the Tablet staff members Yair Rosenberg, Jacob Siegel, Armin Rosen and Ms. Butnick at the kosher vegetarian Milky Way restaurant in Squirrel Hill. It would be one of their last meetings before many in the group returned to New York, and it was a time to reflect on what the experience of covering the shooting and its aftermath had been like. Ms. Butnick remarked on how impressed she had been with the kindness that people had shown them. "We did a podcast, and we're sticking our recorder in the faces of individuals at the vigil and saying, 'Tell us about this community,' and then at the end of interviews people were asking us, 'Do you have a place to stay?'" she said. Asked to describe her impression of Pittsburgh, a city to which she had no previous connection, Ms. Newhouse paused for a moment. "The reception we've gotten here has been a lot like the reception you get at a shiva house," she said. "That is to say that people are incredibly grateful you're there but wish you were there for a different reason."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
On Feb. 7, during a taped interview with Bob Woodward, President Trump acknowledged that the coronavirus could be transmitted through the air, that it was very dangerous and that it would be difficult to contain. "This is deadly stuff," he told the investigative journalist. "You just breathe the air, and that's how it's passed," the president warned. Despite his apparent understanding of the severity of the disease and its method of transmission, over the next month, in five cities around the country, Mr. Trump held large indoor rallies, which were attended by thousands of his supporters. Mr. Trump spent weeks insisting in public that the coronavirus was no worse than a seasonal flu. It would "disappear" when the seasons changed, he promised in late February. "We're doing a great job," he said in early March. Why lie to the American people? Why as the administration accuses the Chinese government of doing lie to the world about the severity of what was declared a pandemic only days later?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Christopher Rouse, a Pulitzer and Grammy winning composer known for vibrantly orchestrated works that explore extremes of expression, from kinetic vehemence to elegiac reflection , died on Saturday in hospice care in Towson, Md. He was 70. The cause was complications of renal cancer, his family said. Mr. Rouse was one of the most commissioned composers in America, a favorite of major orchestras, which gave him extended residencies. The sheer intensity and sometimes frenetic tempos of his music, with evocatively titled pieces like "The Infernal Machine" and "Bump," came in part from his excitement over rock as a young man, especially the band Led Zeppelin. "Bonham," Mr. Rouse's bruising 1988 work for eight percussionists, was an ode to the group's drummer, John Bonham. Yet, from the works that first brought him wide attention including his Symphony No. 1 in 1986, an elegiac yet nightmarish score written for the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra that quotes from Bruckner and Shostakovich Mr. Rouse drew on myriad sources and styles to create his distinctive musical voice. Elements of atonality and sturdy diatonic harmony and moments of fleeting lyricism and blazing sonorities often merge or clash. He spent two formative years after college studying privately with the composer George Crumb, whose work with experimental instrumental sounds and colors left a lasting impression on him. The loss of friends and family often motivated the severity, rage and mournfulness in many of Mr. Rouse's earlier works. "I am known for writing a very dark, disturbing music," he told The Pittsburgh Post Gazette in 2000. "It just happened that every time I had a piece to write, somebody died whose death had a big effect on me." He won the Pulitzer Prize for music in 1993, for the Trombone Concerto, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, which gave the premiere with Leonard Slatkin conducting and Joseph Alessi, the Philharmonic's principal trombone, as soloist. Written in three connected movements, the concerto was a memorial to Leonard Bernstein, who died in 1990; in it Mr. Rouse quotes from Bernstein's "Kaddish" Symphony, named after the Jewish prayer of mourning. Reviewing the performance in The New York Times, Edward Rothstein wrote that the trombone, an instrument usually associated with "slides and energy and swing," turned introspective in this work, "lyrically mourning, then raging, and mourning again." Yet the "deliberately grotesque, aggressive" middle movement grew so loud, he added, that "some of the string players even put their fingers in their ears." A shift in Mr. Rouse's approach seemed to take place starting in the mid 1990s, with works featuring episodes of delicacy and humor touched with brittleness. His Cello Concerto, written for Yo Yo Ma, who gave the 1994 premiere with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by David Zinman, is an extended elegy, in part a response to the deaths of two admired composers: Andrzej Panufnik and Stephen Albert. The concerto quotes their works while also borrowing from William Schuman's "Orpheus With His Lute" and a haunting lullaby from Monteverdi's opera "The Coronation of Poppea." In 2007, in a review for The Los Angeles Times headlined "At long last, a fitting American Requiem," the critic Mark Swed hailed the premiere of Mr. Rouse's 90 minute Requiem, performed by the Los Angeles Master Chorale and Orchestra, with baritone Sanford Sylvan as soloist. Inspired by Berlioz, the piece has moments when "God is described in all His majestic glory," Mr. Swed wrote, "with percussion storming the land and the chorus describing the indescribable." Alan Gilbert, the New York Philharmonic's music director, chose the requiem for the New York Philharmonic's Spring for Music program at Carnegie Hall in 2014. Mr. Gilbert appointed Mr. Rouse composer in residence from 2012 to 2015 and led the orchestra in a recording of Rouse works (including the Third and Fourth Symphonies) that was nominated for the 2017 Grammy Award for best orchestral performance. Just weeks before his death, Mr. Rouse was putting the finishing touches on his Symphony No. 6. The work will receive its premiere performance on Oct. 18 in Cincinnati by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Louis Langree. Christopher Chapman Rouse III was born in Baltimore on Feb. 15, 1949. His father worked in sales at Pitney Bowes, the office machines company; his mother, Margery Rouse, was a secretary for a radiologist. When the young Mr. Rouse started listening avidly to Little Richard and Elvis Presley, his mother, who appreciated classical music, put on a recording of Beethoven's Fifth. It proved a revelation to him. Before long he was also listening to Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring." Mr. Rouse's enthusiasm for rock never translated into playing it himself. "I could play what I called Grace Slick piano, the pianistic equivalent of rhythm guitar," he said in the NewMusicBox interview, referring to the Jefferson Airplane singer, adding that he also wrote a "bunch of songs" that "mercifully" he soon forgot. He attended Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, graduating in 1971. After his private lessons with Mr. Crumb, he entered Cornell, studying with the composer Karel Husa, among others. After completing the doctoral program there in 1978 he began teaching at the University of Michigan. He left in 1981 to join the composition faculty at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester. Among the courses he offered at Eastman was a history of rock, which raised eyebrows among some colleagues, Mr. Rouse said in The Post Gazette interview. At the time, students "didn't really have terribly much memory of rock before, say, the Eagles, so the idea of plunking down the Byrds was a real revelatory experience for them," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
If you're an author who specializes in, say, writing about science for general readers, then your first book will be regarded by most people as . . . the book you wrote first. That it was your inaugural effort will have no special significance; your work will be judged the way books are typically judged: as interesting or dull. But if your goal is to write about the imaginary lives of imaginary people or particularly to write poems, then your first book may be another matter entirely. Because now it's not merely the book of yours that happened to have the earliest publication date. Now it is the start of your career. "Career" is a fraught word where literature is concerned. On one hand, literary artists are expected to develop (or at least to change), and "career" is generally the word we associate with that process. On the other hand, we don't like to think of writers as advancing within their occupation the way most people do filling out forms, going to conferences, interviewing, politicking, buffing a resume and so forth. We prefer artistic careers to seem more like the blossoming of a chestnut tree than the expansion of a LinkedIn profile. This is especially true for poets. As the scholar Jesse Zuba sharply observes in his study "The First Book: Twentieth Century Poetic Careers in America," for poets "success both corroborates and corrodes artistic legitimacy," such that the career of a poet is often enhanced by looking as if one has tried to avoid a career in the first place (although that, in turn, may be viewed as a careerist maneuver). This twisty state of affairs emerges, as Zuba puts it, from "the conflicting imperatives of professionalism and romanticism." Essentially, modern poets are caught between the historical image of the poet as "untutored genius" and the contemporary reality of the poet as faculty lounge aspirant. First books are therefore particularly significant and delicate projects, since they need to suggest the writer has potential to develop along established lines ("have a career . . .") while also possibly calling those very standards into question (" . . . that isn't a career"). It calls for an acrobat's balance and occasionally a diplomat's patience. 's new and first book is called BESTIARY (Graywolf, paper, 16), and it is in many respects a typical poetic debut. It's a prizewinner, for one thing: In any given year, more than 25 first collections will appear as the result of contests, the black hole around which the galaxy of American poetry now rotates. And like most prizewinners, it was selected by a more senior poet (in this case Nikky Finney) and sports an introduction that seems to have been fueled by at least a gallon of coffee. "Keep reading," Finney advises, "and you realize this poet rests her alphabets in the mythology of fire and the resurrection of ecstasy." There is a method to this gonzo prose, believe it or not. If you're committed to the idea that poetry deranges the senses, but you're also routinely asked to introduce books conforming to the thoroughly mundane strictures of the average writing contest ("Manuscript must be paginated, with a font size of 11 or 12. . . ."), then it may be tempting to use your preface to deposit some alphabets in the fire of ecstasy or whatever. It's a way of resolving, or at least obscuring, those "conflicting imperatives." Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. But the framing of a book isn't the book itself, nor is the launching of a career merely a matter of being paraded across the stage. There are also the poems, those balky players, which remain what they are (or aren't) regardless of the scenery that encompasses them. Kelly's writing in "Bestiary," fortunately, is striking enough to weather the spotlight. Kelly is a descendant of Sylvia Plath by way of the wintry Louise Gluck her poems are animated by roiling, mostly dark emotion, but they're spare, composed and often quite short (of the more than 40 poems here, only three stretch to a second page). The tone ranges from guardedly tender ("I play a little song in the key / of your name") to self critical ("My ashen body / and untrimmed nails") to almost clinically brutal (in a poem about Pegasus: "Foaled, fully grown, from my mother's neck, / her severed head, the silenced snakes"). Her diction is just formal enough to give her lines an appealing unnaturalness: Words like "cur," "apportioned" and "perpendicularity" buttress conventionally poetic mainstays like "body," "love" and "light." There aren't many jokes here (notwithstanding the wink in a title like "Sonnet in Which Only One Bird Appears"), there are relatively few nods to popular culture, and there's not a single reference to philosophy or theory. What appears in abundance, as you might gather from the title, are beasts albeit symbolic ones. That is, of course, in the nature of a bestiary, which in its medieval incarnation joined animals real and fantastical with the moral qualities they supposedly represented. (From the entry for the elephant in the 12th century "Aberdeen Bestiary": "They never fight over female elephants, for they know nothing of adultery.") In Kelly's hands, the concept becomes a way of thinking about construction of a self, a life, a story of a life and the potential failure that always haunts such projects. "Bower," for example, is one of three poems here about the bowerbird, that diligent engineer: Consider the bowerbird and his obsession of blue, and then the island light, the acacia, the grounded beasts. Here, the iron smell of blood, the sweet marrow, fields of grass and bone. And there, the bowerbird. Watch as he manicures his lawn, puts in all places a bit of blue, a turning leaf. And then, how the female finds him, lacking. All that blue for nothing. But the bowerbird will keep building, just as Kelly will return to him only two pages later in another poem with the same title. The fantastical creatures in "Bestiary" are almost all hybrids mermaids, minotaurs, griffins as opposed to mere monsters, and their in betweenness calls attention equally to the danger of dissolution and the possibility of unity. Kelly is drawn to both outcomes, and her uncertainty gives her writing its peculiar magnetism. If a few poems here seem slight, or too willfully autobiographical, that is a small price to pay for the possibilities her work suggests. Because possibility, perhaps even more than accomplishment, is what we want from first books; it is the foundation from which a career begins its brick by brick rise. And there is something potentially sad about that. If the first book is constructed partly with an idea of the future in which uncertainties are resolved in which mermaids become women, or simply become comfortable as mermaids what happens when that book is all there is? Max Ritvo died of cancer last year at age 25; his first book, FOUR REINCARNATIONS (Milkweed, 22), is therefore also his only book. It is good humored ("My genes are in mice, and not in the banal way / that Man's old genes are in the Beasts"), appealingly sly ("Enoch has written / We are made in His image / but God may have many images./ He may want even more") and at times surprisingly whimsical ("Every day a chicken dies so that my mom may live"). Nor does Ritvo shy away from the possibility that the start of his career will be the entirety of his career. From the end of "The Hanging Gardens": Babylon before Eden, orchard before garden, our variety before variety, shame before shame knowledge: When shame was an entity wandering even from the body into the tea, into the brass doves, into this autobiographical moment. I must take full responsibility. Quite right. I will move on. This is very fine, and if it acquires a sheen of sentiment because of what it suggests will never emerge that is, more poems from Ritvo this doesn't change the fact that a reader knowing nothing of poetry or this author might find it worth rereading. This is the life poetry leads beyond the confines of the poetic career; the life in which lines exist for what they are, not for future lines they might suggest. The life in which an early poem is also a poem, and a first book is also a book.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
"Made in Bangladesh" opens with a close up of a woman threading a sewing machine. As the closing credits begin, the sounds of a sewing machine return from that initial sequence; it may not be until that moment that you realize just how much the movie has taken you minutely, step by step through an arduous process. The film, directed by Rubaiyat Hossain, follows a group of garment factory workers in Dhaka, Bangladesh, as they take steps to form a union after one of their own is killed in a fire. Shimu (Rikita Nandini Shimu) becomes the leader of the effort, obtaining signatures, furtively capturing images of her workplace and pressing bureaucrats not to stall on the paperwork.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
SAN FRANCISCO Roughly an hour into a dinner party for Wired magazine's 25th birthday on Sunday, two of the night's biggest stars arrived: Serena Williams and Stewart Brand. Ms. Williams is the global tennis superstar. Mr. Brand is the 79 year old founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, the influential counterculture magazine published mostly between 1968 and 1971 that Steve Jobs once called "Google in paperback form." For many guests, Mr. Brand was the bigger idol. Stewart Brand, 79, who founded the Whole Earth Catalog, looking for his name card on a table. Jason Henry for The New York Times "Stewart certainly is the grandfather of what's going on" in Silicon Valley, said Louis Rossetto, Wired's co founder and first editor. "They don't even know who she is," he added, half jokingly, about Ms. Williams. While partygoers in New York and Los Angeles are used to socializing with celebrities, the Wired dinner, at the Tartine Manufactory in the city's Mission District, was quintessential Silicon Valley: about 75 computer scientists, tech entrepreneurs, biologists, astronomers, writers and thinkers. "Status depends a lot on I.Q. in Silicon Valley," said Nicholas Thompson, the lanky editor in chief of Wired and the party's co host. Of course, there were a few New York types, too, causing some of the brainiacs to gawk. Several guests asked aloud why Anna Wintour, the Vogue editor and artistic director of Conde Nast (which owns Wired), wore sunglasses indoors. Ms. Wintour, the other co host, spent much of the cocktail hour chatting with Kim Jones, the British fashion designer, and Jony Ive, the design chief of Apple. How does a Silicon Valley party compare with one in New York? "Very relaxing," Ms. Wintour said. The three Wojcicki sisters seemed to be having more fun than anyone. Susan Wojcicki, who runs YouTube, and Anne Wojcicki, the chief executive of 23andMe, were joined by their lesser known but similarly accomplished sister, Janet Wojcicki, an epidemiologist, medical anthropologist, professor and Fulbright scholar. "There are five others," Janet said, straight faced. (She was kidding.) For dinner, there were hunks of fresh bread, yogurt marinated lamb and halibut. Mr. Brand sat next to Adam Savage, the host of "Mythbusters." Ms. Williams sat between Ms. Wintour and Kevin Systrom, a founder of Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
The recession slowed commercial real estate development everywhere, but it was particularly hard on Harlem, which had only recently begun to attract national retailers after decades of disinvestment. A number of projects had to be shelved when the financial markets dried up. Financing is still hard to come by in Harlem, but these days, 125th Street, the neighborhood's main shopping street, is beginning to hum with activity. Two new developments are currently under construction, each featuring the kind of chain restaurant that was rare in the neighborhood not so long ago. A third project that will bring Upper Manhattan its first Whole Foods supermarket is also expected to get started later this year. "Retailers are seeking new neighborhoods in Manhattan where they can achieve great revenue," said Jared L. Epstein, a principal of Aurora Capital Associates, a New York development company that is the Adjmi family's partner in a four story 100,000 square foot shopping center rising at the corner of 125th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard. "This is one of the last neighborhoods that has the density of foot traffic that can support their business model." Anchored by a 30,000 square foot Designer Shoe Warehouse, the new development at 301 West 125th Street is directly opposite Harlem U.S.A., the pioneering retail and entertainment center that opened in 2000, giving the neighborhood its first movie theater in many years now called the AMC Magic Johnson Theater Harlem 9 as well as national retailers like a 35,000 square foot Old Navy store. The Adjmi development will include the city's first Joe's Crab Shack, as well as a health club under Equinox's lower priced Blink brand and a party supplies store. (Mr. Epstein declined to say how much his project would cost.) Half a block to the east, the developers of Harlem U.S.A., Grid Properties and the Gotham Organization, are putting up a 14 million, three story retail building at 269 West 125th Street, next to the Apollo Theater, which will include a Red Lobster restaurant, also new to the neighborhood. In the early days of Harlem U.S.A.'s existence, shoppers and moviegoers had few places to eat within easy reach, but first local restaurants and then chain restaurants have provided more choices, said Grid's president, Drew Greenwald. He said he expected to lease the shopping mall's only current vacancy an 11,000 square foot space that was previously occupied by a bookstore and the Hip Hop Culture Center to a casual sit down restaurant whose name he was not ready to disclose. "This corner is becoming a little bit of a food hub," he said in an interview in his office at Harlem U.S.A. The two new developments have more in common than seafood, however. Both are being financed by their developers. "The capital markets are still circumspect across the board, and in Harlem, where things are almost always more difficult, that's true as well," said Kenneth J. Knuckles, chief executive of the Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone, an economic development program. Financing is also not expected to be a problem for a development intended for a large, weedy lot at the southwest corner of Lenox Avenue and 125th Street. The site was acquired several years ago by the retail specialist Jeff Sutton, who is planning a five story glassy building that will include two creditworthy tenants: a 40,000 square foot Whole Foods supermarket and a 75,000 square foot Burlington Coat Factory. The site is opposite the Harlem Center, whose tenants include Marshall's, Staples and other national retailers. But the Whole Foods lease came as a surprise to many people in Harlem. "It was a shock, because of the price point," said Barbara Askins, president of the 125th Street Business Improvement District. In 2010, one quarter of the families in Central Harlem had incomes below the poverty level. But the neighborhood has been attracting more affluent residents, and many of them go out of their way to shop at Whole Foods, Ms. Askins said. And then there is the foot traffic: some 900,000 people walk along 125th Street each month, she said. Chase Welles, an executive vice president at SCG Retail, an Atlanta company that represents the upscale supermarket chain, based in Austin, Tex., said that opening on 125th Street was not a tough call. "There's real density there," he said "The people meet the general Whole Foods demographic of income and education." Developers of other projects on 125th Street, however, have yet to pin down the financing they need to begin construction. Janus Partners, a company with a long track record in Harlem, and Monadnock Construction hope to start work this year on the redevelopment of the long dormant Taystee Bakery complex. They were awarded development rights in 2011 after a previous plan involving the food market Citarella did not work out. The site was rezoned in November to permit a mixture of uses. Jerry Salama, a principal at Janus, said the 100 million, 330,000 square foot project, called Create Harlem Green, hopes to attract the type of nonprofit, technology and creative industries that have been flocking to Midtown South, the office district between 42nd Street and Canal Street, in recent years. "Lots of leases are expiring in Midtown South, where rents have doubled since tenants first signed leases," he said. "We want to be the alternative that is affordable." Prospective tenants include the Harlem Brewery Company, which would move production there from Brewster, N.Y.; a biotechnology firm; some nonprofits and, appropriately enough, a bakery. The site is close to where Columbia University is building its new Manhattanville campus. "The proximity to the Columbia expansion makes this project more feasible and exciting," said Blondel Pinnock, a senior vice president at the Harlem based Carver Federal Savings Bank and the chairwoman of the 125th Street Business Improvement District. Danforth Development Partners and Exact Capital say they also plan to break ground this year on the redevelopment of the Victoria Theater, a long closed former vaudeville house just east of the Apollo Theater. Like several other projects in Harlem that have yet to materialize, the Victoria complex, which has been in the works since 2007, is challenging. It would include 229 rental apartments, half of them income restricted; a 210 room Cambria Suites hotel with a ballroom; retail stores; and a cultural arts center with two theaters. Zoning regulations encourage developers to include cultural uses to give the street more character and prevent it from turning into a big box strip. Craig Livingston, a managing partner of Exact Capital, which joined the project in 2011, said lenders had been wary of committing to a new hotel in what was considered an untested market. The Cambria Suites would be only the second hotel built in Harlem since 1913, when the Hotel Teresa opened. The other new hotel is a 124 room Aloft, which lacks a restaurant and other amenities. "You can't point to 20 other successful hotels in Harlem, but the economics are there to support a new hotel in Harlem definitely," Mr. Livingston said. He cited the popularity of 125th Street as a tourist destination and the pricing advantages of being outside Midtown. Deborah C. Wright, the chief executive of Carver Federal, said some developments on 125th Street had probably been harder to achieve because officials had imposed requirements to foster job growth like including a hotel. But she expressed confidence that all the projects would eventually get done. "We may have over engineered the protection so it's taking a little longer than we like, but it's going to happen," said Ms. Wright, who first began working on Harlem development in the 1980s. "It's zigging and zagging, and not following a straight line, but it's inevitable that sites will get developed and complete the circle that began 30 years ago."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
"Our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith," Dwight Eisenhower said in 1952, "and I don't care what it is." I've always appreciated that line, even though it's usually quoted somewhat unfairly: If you read the rest of the speech, it's clear Eisenhower was trying to make an ecumenical point about how multiple faiths might sustain the doctrine of human equality, not an indifferentist point about the irrelevance of theology to faith. Still, taken on its own it's like a koan of the American civic religion, the faith in faith that reached a zenith under the Eisenhower presidency: In God We Trust, and don't sweat the theological details. We've been having a lively debate lately about what the sudden social justice ascendancy in American institutions represents, and whether the new iconoclastic progressivism is just an organic development in liberalism or a post liberal successor. But Ike's koan suggests a different way to think about these arguments: Instead of seeing today's perturbations as being mostly about what might come after liberalism, you could see them as a struggle over what religious worldview should inhabit it, and whether Eisenhower was right that lots of different faiths could fill the void. By "inhabit" I mean play the role that for most of our history was played by Mainline Protestantism the whole collage of respectable denominations, Methodists and Lutherans and Episcopalians and Presbyterians and Baptists, their churches sharing town greens and their ministers hobnobbing, divided by mild class distinctions as much as by theological debates, competing amiably for congregants, eyeing Catholics and Jews and Mormons uneasily and looking down on fundamentalists, preaching liberty and middle class morality and assimilation, secure in their Christianity and their Americanism. This sketch is all cliche, but the cliches reflect an important, underremembered reality: For most of our history, American liberal democracy was a Protestant project, its principles undergirded by Protestant theological assumptions and its norms shaped and reshaped by currents in the Mainline churches. To push a metaphor for a moment if the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were the bones of the house that all Americans inhabited, then the Protestant Mainline was a combination interior decorator, building inspector, homeowners' association and zoning committee. Any question that the liberal order didn't answer, across most of our history, was answered by Protestant consensus or litigated by intra Protestant debate. (What were the limits of religious liberty? Should society regulate sex, and how? Should society regulate alcohol consumption, and how? What values should be taught in schools and universities?) And when the Mainline couldn't come to an agreement, as in the long theological dispute over slavery and racial equality well, then part of the house burned down and had to be repeatedly reconstructed. But all that belongs to the past, because in the decades after Eisenhower, the Mainline suddenly collapsed declining numerically and losing overt influence in all the institutions, elite and local alike, that it once animated and defined. What took its place, in the upper echelons on the meritocracy, was an assumption that liberalism didn't need a religious ghost in its machine, that you could just have a liberal culture instead of a Protestant culture, and all the important questions could be worked out through reasoned arguments that required no theological priors, no Bible bothering, no authority higher than the Supreme Court or capital S Science. This was a naive view, and to the extent it was actually operationalized it generated an arid, soulless liberalism, a meritocracy short on wisdom and memory, animated by unhappy status seeking and aspiring only to its own perpetuation. But there have also been attempts to replace the Mainline, to infuse a different deeply felt religious faith into the architecture of American society. The first was the alliance between conservative Catholics and evangelicals, the ecumenical "religious right" that rose with Ronald Reagan and peaked with George W. Bush. Its more sophisticated leaders were very conscious about their ambitions: They imagined themselves to be forging, through revival and alliance and conversion, a new religious center while the old Mainline drifted left. And they were successful enough to inspire periodic panics among their adversaries, dark warnings of an incipient theocracy. In the end, though, they failed: Because they didn't win enough converts or allies in the elite, because they didn't hold enough of their own younger generation, because the legacy of racism divided them from African American and Hispanic churches, because their opposition to the sexual revolution placed them too far from the political center, because the Bush presidency ended in disaster. And in the aftermath of that failure, it appeared that American religion would be defined by fragmentation and polarization, by potent heresies and weakened orthodoxies, with the only meaningful spiritual center occupied by pop gurus like Oprah and Joel Osteen. Or at least it appeared that way to me; in 2012 I wrote an entire book on the subject. And my analysis applies pretty well to conservatism in the age of Trump, where prosperity theology and religious nationalism have gained at Christian orthodoxy's expense, the official religious right is a client of a heathen president, and the evangelical Catholic alliance is rived into countless warring cliques. But I may have underestimated a different religious tribe the direct heirs of the Protestant Mainline, the "post Protestant" subjects of Joseph Bottum's "An Anxious Age: The Post Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of America," a book I commend to anyone interested in understanding what is happening to liberalism right now. Bottum makes two points of particular relevance to our moment. First, he argues that the Mainline moral sensibility has survived even as Mainline metaphysical belief has ebbed, and that you can draw a clear line from the Social Gospel of the late 19th century to the preoccupations of social justice movements today. Second, Bottum stresses that it's more useful to think of the post Protestants the "poster children," he sometimes calls them as an elect rather than an elite, defined more by their education and their moral sensibility than by their overt wealth or power. They are not identical to the managerial elite discerned by other theorists of late modern class hierarchy; instead, they stand adjacent and somewhat underneath, as adjuncts, consultants, bureaucrats and activists advisers and petitioners and critics rather than formal leaders, with more economic precarity and moral zeal than those they criticize or serve. This point, too, is particularly useful to understanding the new power struggle within the liberal upper class. In theological terms, we're watching the post Protestant elect wrestle power away from the more secular elite, which long paid lip service to the creed of social justice but never really evinced true faith. And that power, once claimed, could be used the way the old Mainline used its power: not to replace liberal political forms but to infuse them with a specific set of moral commitments and to establish the terms on which important cultural debates are held and settled. Who should have sex with whom, and under what conditions and constraints? Which religious ideas should be favored, and which dismissed with prejudice? What conceptions of the country's past should be promoted? Which visions of the good life taught in schools? What titles or pronouns should respectable people use? Just as the old denominations once answered these questions for Americans, their post Protestant heirs aspire to answer them today. If they succeed where the religious right failed, it will be because post Protestantism enjoys an intimate relationship with the American establishment rather than representing an insurgency of outsider groups, because centrist failures and Trumpian moral squalor removed rivals from its path, and because its moral message is better suited to what younger Americans already believe. If they fail, it will probably be because of three weaknesses: the absence of a convincing metaphysics to ground post Protestantism's zealous moralism; the difficulty of drawing coherence out of its multiplicity of causes; and the absence of institutional embodiments that make for deep loyalty and intergenerational transmission. My guess right now is that these problems will be fatal in the long run that post Protestantism will burn brighter than the religious right as a moralistic flame within the liberal order, but then pretty rapidly burn out. But whether that guess is right, or whether the last 50 years were just an interregnum between two very different forms of Protestant establishment well, as to that, God knows.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
THE WEAPON WIZARDS How Israel Became a High Tech Military Superpower By Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot Illustrated. 288 pp. St. Martin's Press. 27.99. Seventy years ago, the state of Israel was still just a gleam in Zionists' eyes, and the future state's military was hardly more than a ragtag group of irregulars, forced to manufacture bullets in a secret facility built underneath a kibbutz. Today, Israel's military is widely viewed as one of the most effective in the world. Once compelled to arm itself with surplus equipment purchased from more powerful states (and sometimes obtained by stealth), Israel is now one of the world's six largest arms exporters, earning billions each year through the sale of military equipment to buyers from China and India to Colombia and Russia. "The Weapon Wizards: How Israel Became a High Tech Military Superpower" tells the story of this transformation. Written by the Israeli journalists Yaakov Katz and Amir Bohbot, "The Weapon Wizards" offers a lively account of Israel's evolving military prowess, from the early days of Jewish paramilitaries operating within the British Mandate to Israel's recent emergence as exporter of 60 percent of the world's drones. From satellites and missile defense systems to adaptive armor and cyber weapons, Israel has consistently found ways to circumvent or leapfrog financial and technological barriers. But Katz and Bohbot aspire to do more than just offer a journalistic history of the Israeli military's technological advances: They aim to explain just how the tiny Jewish state managed to become such a military innovator. "How did Israel do it?" Katz and Bohbot ask. "What was the secret to Israel's success?" Their answer: brains, pluck and the bracing prospect of imminent annihilation. If "The Weapon Wizards" were a novel, it would be one written by Horatio Alger; if it were a biblical allegory, it would be the story of David and Goliath. Katz and Bohbot highlight several interconnected cultural drivers of Israel's military innovations. Surrounded by enemies at its inception, Israel came to view itself as a nation that could, as Arieh Herzog, a former head of Israel's missile defense agency, put it, "either innovate or disappear." Meanwhile, "the Jewish tradition of education and scholarship" led Israel to place a high value on investments in research and development. 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. Today, Israel devotes a higher percentage of its G.D.P. to research and development than any other country, and Katz and Bohbot note that roughly 30 percent of Israeli R D goes toward military technologies. Israel also invests in its human resources, with numerous specialized educational programs designed to bring top talent into the military and to send soldiers back to school. (Katz and Bohbot quote Shimon Peres: "We need to invest in soldiers' brains, not just their muscles.") Israel's small size, combined with its tradition of universal military service, also helps, by ensuring that there's rarely more than one degree of separation between military officials, scientists and entrepreneurs; as a result, military needs and challenges are quickly and easily communicated to policy makers, academics and financiers. Finally, Kahn and Bohbot argue, Israel's culture of informality offers an underappreciated advantage: "What makes Israel unique is the complete lack of structure." The absence of "social hierarchy . . . helps spur innovation." In Israel, junior soldiers feel free to argue with high ranking officers, and "a keen sense of chutzpah" encourages creativity and protects against groupthink. "The Weapon Wizards" offers plenty of good stories about fascinating people. There's the young Shimon Peres, negotiating weapons deals in Havana nightclubs. There's Danny Shapira, the legendary Israeli pilot testing French Mirages. There's the Israeli official who helps start Israel's drone program in the late 1960s by buying remote control airplanes at a Manhattan toy store and sending them back to Israel in the embassy's diplomatic pouch. What "The Weapon Wizards" doesn't offer is any meditation on the political context or implications of Israel's rise to military superpower status. Katz and Bohbot are cheerleaders, not critics, and there's little room for introspection in this breathless tale of triumph over adversity. Left largely unmentioned, for instance, is the role of the United States. American security guarantees over the last few decades have kept Israel's neighbors relatively docile, if not precisely friendly, and nearly a quarter of Israel's annual defense budget is effectively paid for by the United States. Israel receives more American military aid than every other country in the world combined. A more complete answer to "How did Israel do it?" might be: pluck, brains and billions of dollars of American aid each year. "The Weapon Wizards" is also largely silent on how Israel uses its military might. Absent is any reflection on the role of the Israeli armed forces in paving the way for the contentious expansion of Jewish settlements into Palestinian territory, for instance, or the Israeli practice of destroying homes occupied by the families of suspected militants, though both have been condemned by the international community. Katz and Bohbot are similarly uninterested in the brave new world Israel is helping to create. Israel, they note with pride, has "become the first country to master the art of targeted killings," which have now become "the global standard in the war on terror." Some might consider this a dubious honor. To Katz and Bohbot, however, targeted killings are interesting only because they showcase the combination of "cutting edge technology, high quality intelligence, and Israel's best and brightest minds." Israel, Katz and Bohbot note, is "changing the way wars are being fought around the globe." Readers will have to decide for themselves if this is something to cheer or mourn.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
New York comes with a beat that certain people, like the choreographer Alexei Ratmansky, can instantly follow. "It welcomes you," he said in a recent interview at American Ballet Theater's studios on lower Broadway. "You don't feel like an outsider." Since 2006, when he choreographed "The Russian Seasons" for New York City Ballet, Mr. Ratmansky, now 47, has been beguiling audiences in the city with dances that hint, loosely and not, at Russia or rather his Russia, with its wealth of pageantry, theatricality and history. But there is an American sensibility in the mix as well. Why do his dances, even those with a Russian tone, feel so free, so American? George Balanchine, another St. Petersburg transplant, introduced a jazz sensibility to the classical form in dances like "The Four Temperaments" and "Agon." What Mr. Ratmansky brings to ballet is a singular voice, unpredictable yet recognizable; he uses classical technique, but allows it to breathe in the joints it's loose, rangy, forthright. This season at Ballet Theater, where he has been the artist in residence since 2009, that mingling of the Russian and American spirit will be on display in heavy rotation with programming that includes his masterly "Shostakovich Trilogy"; "Firebird," the Stravinsky vehicle that put Misty Copeland on the map; and "Seven Sonatas," a subtle, luminous ballet set to Scarlatti. In June, he will present his take on Pushkin's "The Golden Cockerel," inspired by Michel Fokine's 1914 Ballets Russes production. And the season closes with his staging of "The Sleeping Beauty," which brings the spirit of Marius Petipa's 1890 choreography to life. But first comes a new ballet to be unveiled at Ballet Theater's gala on Monday, May 16: an exploration of love set to and named after Leonard Bernstein's "Serenade After Plato's Symposium." For Mr. Ratmansky, creating a ballet to Bernstein it's not his first; he has choreographed two versions of "The Dybbuk" is a chance to pair his choreography not only with an American composer but also one who is synonymous with New York City. "I was looking for American music," he said. "When I discovered it, I fell in love." The 1954 score, according to Bernstein's notes, is not a literal rendering of Plato's text but rather "a series of related statements in praise of love." As Mr. Ratmansky said, "I don't believe that philosophy can be translated into dance; but it's about love, which is very much part of our field for ballet." In "Symposium," seven men, or speakers, ruminate on aspects of love; a woman, Diotima, about whom Socrates speaks, appears near the end of the ballet. Each of the men, the dancer Calvin Royal III said, has an individual voice. His, he explained, is "more pensive and lyrical very introspective. It's not in any way showy, but it's expressive and definitely has something deeper and important to say." He added: "I think it's unlocked many things in me." And, as usual, it is physically taxing. "It's a little too ambitious to only have eight dancers for a half an hour of big symphonic music," Mr. Ratmansky said. "So I think they're all going to die at once." He laughed and added: "Which they always do in my ballets, I'm afraid." At the time of this conversation, Mr. Ratmansky was half finished with the dance. It's not his favorite place to be as a choreographer. "I call it mid process crisis," he said. "I can't say more about it, because it hasn't taken shape yet." Developing his choreographic vision was a process itself. Born in St. Petersburg and raised in Ukraine, he trained at the school of the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow. He performed with the National Ballet of Ukraine before moving to Canada to dance with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. It was there, under its artistic director, John Meehan, that he transformed as a dancer, performing works by George Balanchine, Frederick Ashton, Jerome Robbins and Twyla Tharp. He acquired speed and, he said, more turnout in the hips. He also learned how to push more from the floor for jumps. "I did change quite fast I think," he said. "It took a year, and then I was completely opposed to the Russian school, which was not right of course, but it was my reaction. And then I learned how to see balance: good things and less good things on both sides." Mr. Royal, who has worked extensively with Mr. Ratmansky over the years, described his style as composed of many elements. "Expressive, dramatic, demanding," he said. "Quick feet, a very lush port de bras. He's always asking us to make his movements look more organic. To look more natural, but not necessarily at ease. It's organic in making it seamlessly fit with the music and the people you're dancing with onstage." Dancers in a Ratmansky piece form a society. There is an insistence that they must work together performing with and for each other to immerse themselves into the perfume of each particular world. And it's not only the dancers of Ballet Theater who get to live inside such realms this spring. New York City Ballet continues performances of his "Concerto DSCH" this month. And Miami City Ballet brought his "Symphonic Dances," set to Rachmaninoff, to Lincoln Center in April. As he considers the season and the prospect of all of his ballets coming at once, Mr. Ratmansky is uneasy. "I'm scared," he said. "But I'll survive." That fear comes, in part, because of the hours required to prepare his ballets for the stage. "It's a lot of work, and it needs to be done precisely with a lot of details," he said. "The commitment is there, but details, the polish." And also, he said: "I worry about the sales maybe the audience will say it's too much of this guy." But the lineup demonstrates the versatility of what Mr. Ratmansky, who received his citizenship this year, has created while living in the United States. He said that he doesn't see himself as any more American now: "I don't feel I've changed much. Of course, my understanding of ballet is completely different from when I was at school." The loosening of the Iron Curtain, as he put it, changed much for Mr. Ratmansky. "We started to get information, and that really made a big impact on me," he said. Even now, he added, "I love Google Books." Mr. Ratmansky may make his home in America, but he has something that can't be taken away: a kind of Russian poetry, and a reverence for ballet history. His reconstructions of "The Sleeping Beauty" and, more recently, "Swan Lake," performed in February by the Zurich Ballet, are just as important in advancing the classical form as his new productions. (Of all his reconstructions, he said, he has a soft spot for "Swan Lake.") Mastering the Stepanov notation a system of recording dance that dates to the turn of the 20th century took time, but, he said, "It opened the treasury room for me." He has inserted vintage steps into recent ballets; there will be some in his Bernstein premiere. "When I run out of steps, that gives me steps," he said, laughing. "But I know that Petipa did a lot of that, and I know Balanchine did a lot of that. I believe that all choreographers do that. Petipa presented the works of his predecessors like Balanchine did with Petipa's ballets. I don't feel like I'm stealing something. There is a good side to it: You have the hand of someone behind you that supports you. It's a good feeling."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The change began during pregnancy. I started breaking all of life down into units of weeks, first out of anxiety that the newcomer wouldn't stay put, and then out of desperation that it would never come out. But only once the baby emerged did I truly begin to understand a motherly aphorism popular on parenting message boards: "The hours are long but the days are short." The minutes crawled by, but I'd find that a week had passed and all I had to show for it was a slightly fatter baby. There was never a question that I would return to work after this baby was born: My family needed the income, and working for a wage was fundamental to my sense of self. I was ambitious, albeit in a somewhat vague way, and I had better parental leave than most Americans get six weeks partially paid, six unpaid. As with my paid leave, my choice to go back to work was an enormous privilege; my income, at that time, exceeded the astronomical cost of child care. There was no real obstacle, as I saw it, to going back to my 9 to 5 administrative job. The topics new parents are talking about. Evidence based guidance. Personal stories that matter. Visit NYT Parenting for everything you need to raise thriving babies and kids. Two weeks of leave were squandered while the baby hung around in utero longer than anticipated. When she finally arrived, I watched the minutes of my maternity leave slip by like a time lapse video. I developed a tic: Sleep deprived, I would count on my fingers the days until I had to surrender this tiny creature to day care. I was lucky because it had all gone well, and the baby was healthy and cried what I was told is a normal amount for a baby. I, on the other hand, cried all the time. I was also the happiest I'd ever been. Let me reiterate that I know I had it good. I returned to work when she was 10 weeks old and spent a few months doing a dance I've seen performed by many mothers I know: dallying too long at meetings until I thought my breasts would explode, taking my shirt off in a freezing server closet to pump, looking at pictures of the baby on the phone and crying, dropping and losing tiny pump pieces and crying more. I gave up pumping and eventually gave up the job not because I didn't want to work, but because, in part, the flexibility that parenting requires did not seem to align with the (objectively good) working life my husband and I had. Like male politicians who experience sudden, embarrassingly late revelations about misogyny once they have daughters, I developed new, strong opinions about how work and home are conceived of in America. I have two children now, one in preschool and the other scrambling inexorably out of babyhood. I can still see a younger, thinner version of myself running up the street, desperate to get home in time to spend a few minutes with my firstborn before she was put to bed, but it's harder now to call up the particularly painful urgency of that bereft, desolate feeling. I spend more time, to be honest, thinking about time in relation to money, and the amount of money required to be away from them so that I can do the work I want to do now. I'm a freelance writer now. I earn less money but, with two children, pay even more for day care and preschool . Sometimes, when I run into them on the street or at the cafe where I work from time to time, my neighbors ask, "Where are the babies?," surprised to see me in or near the home without my usual sidekicks. Sometimes people congratulate me on my ability to publish a book while having children in a way that leads me to believe they don't know I pay for the privilege. I don't find these kinds of remarks offensive so much as informative. I am too lucky to be offended to have child care my earnings alone can't always cover, to work from home in a sweatshirt that says "I love cats," to procrastinate on paid work with housework, to cook dinner before the children are underfoot, to have a choice about all of these things. Because I have a choice, and because the math doesn't work, we are moving away from our too expensive city. Continuing to pay for time away from the children I would cheerfully die for is, apparently, more important to me than trying to set down roots in the place they were born. Sometimes I scroll through Twitter to read reactions to proposals about universal child care, which has become one of my primary political hopes. "Raise your own kids" is one response I've seen to calls for an improvement to our current, deeply inequitable and unsatisfactory system. "Can't feed 'em don't breed 'em," is another maybe my least favorite saying of all time. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that these hit a nerve. My brain holds a set of competing beliefs within it: first, that these people are jerks, and second, I don't have what it takes to be home with my children every day, and am thus unsuited to the solemn work of motherhood. It is hard not to absorb, on vulnerable days, the voices that tell us that voluntarily putting your kids in someone else's care is a moral failing; sometimes the call is coming from inside the house. I have a friend, also a working writer with young children in preschool and day care, and we text one another, in our low moments, that one of our greatest motivations for working is to forestall the possibility of spending all day, every day with our children. One of my other friends with children tells me that she tries to remember that she is presently living in the golden years, the good old days, and to enjoy them while they are here. I think about this a lot. What are the things that I want to keep with me? A memory of my older daughter saying "bracenip" instead of "bracelet." The three seconds, never enough, when the little one, who is always moving, always doing her comic run waddle through the house, stops to be picked up and puts her head on my shoulder. I hope I can keep forever the feeling of holding them when they were small, a feeling of overwhelming physical happiness that I pray will get us through whatever familial struggles are sure to come. So many moments of their childhood are already gone and lost to memory, and I've mostly made peace with the fact that I don't get to retain them all. I'm working on making peace with something else, too: that being the mother I want to be means being away from them for many of those long hours and those short, swiftly fleeting days.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Forget black. As awards season began, it was back to business. And then there was Timothee Chalamet. Thus does the promise of red carpet change that hovered over the Golden Globes only a year ago when women took back their wardrobes for the night get squandered. The co host Sandra Oh, in an emotional moment during the opening set of the awards show on Sunday, said she could see "change" by looking around the ballroom. But during the dress parade that is the celebrity entrances, it was mostly back to business on the fashion front. And I mean that literally. The red carpet is a marketing machine, pairing stars and brands to optimum mutually beneficial effect. Last year, the collective decision by women to wear black in honor of the Time's Up movement, which aims to address systemic inequality and injustice in the workplace, changed the equation if not the players. It had power because it felt personal, a quality that has been largely leeched from the contemporary red carpet, where what to wear that most close to the body decision has generally been transformed into a business arrangement. It raised the stakes beyond advertising to advocacy, suggesting the moment could be used for more than just moneymaking. Yet 12 months later, it's still a promise, not a reality. Unlike last year, there was no mention in the post appearance news releases sent out by the brands of any dress related donations to nonprofits or other causes. Indeed, the endorsement machine is apparently back in full force, from the jewels (now among the most lucrative deals to be had) to the bags, shoes and this is a new one skin care. Really. Aren't you glad to know that Laura Dern used Skyn Iceland to "prep her skin before the red carpet," as an email that I received shortly after said? Despite some rousing speeches from the podium (see Regina King and Glenn Close), most of the messaging TimesUpx2 was relegated to the usual pins and bracelets. While it's a good thing the movement was there at all, it's also impossible not to see that as a retreat. To be sure, there were some positive trends. Julia Roberts wore the pants, in black Stella McCartney cigarette trousers under a nude tulle top with train. White was the biggest color of the night, whether Ms. Oh's Winged Victory Versace gown (she later changed twice), Julianne Moore's Givenchy, or the tuxes of Bradley Cooper (in Gucci) and Chadwick Boseman (also Versace). Ever since Hillary Clinton wore a white pantsuit at the Democratic National Convention in 2016, that color generally has been taken as a sign of suffragist solidarity at pretty much every event that isn't a wedding. In case anyone forgot, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez brought it up again last week when she was sworn in to the House of Representatives. So it's hard not to think some of that symbolism went into these choices. But it was implicit, rather than explicit. More provocative were the bondage straps that wound around the exposed waists of Rosamund Pike in Givenchy and Thandie Newton in Michael Kors, as if to suggest all stars are at the mercy of the red carpet rules. Well, not all: Neither Dolce Gabbana, recently under fire for marketing videos that were widely interpreted as racist in China, nor Marchesa, the brand of Harvey Weinstein's former wife, benefited from the night. Yet as they chafe against the demands of the carpet, they still seem conflicted about fighting it which may explain the fantasy Valkyrie armor donned by Emily Blunt (actually Alexander McQueen), the frumpy Egyptian royalty look of Janelle Monae (Chanel) and the I am woman hear me roar leopard of Anne Hathaway (Elie Saab). Animal prints aren't usually a red carpet thing for years, conventional wisdom suggested prints didn't play well on TV which made Ms. Hathaway's choice a pretty unexpected one. Along with Lady Gaga's decision to match her hair to her periwinkle cloud of a Valentino ball gown, complete with matching detachable sleeves, it was one of few fashion surprises of the night. If Ms. Hathaway also seemed as if she had wandered in from some other awards show on the Nature Channel, at least it livened things up.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Rehearsing Jennifer Monson's "bend the even": Ms. Monson (on the floor), Mauriah Kraker and Zeena Parkins on harp. The piece comes to the Chocolate Factory this week. From the Prairie to the City, Dancing to Invoke the Dawn Wake up before sunrise, head to the prairie and start moving. No, this was not your ordinary rehearsal process. But nothing's ordinary when it comes to the contemporary choreographer and improviser Jennifer Monson who has been creating daring works in New York's experimental downtown dance scene since the 1980s. Ms. Monson, 56, has long been drawn to the natural world, too. In 2000, she changed her choreographic course and began exploring the relationship between movement and the environment. For her five year "Bird Brain" project, for instance, she and her dancers performing outside followed the migrational path of birds and gray whales. For her latest project, she resumed outdoor dancing at dawn in preparation for her new work, "bend the even," which is at the Chocolate Factory this week. That process opened up a new universe of movement, sound and light. In the finished production, all three elements are treated equally with the hope that, together, they will produce an otherworldly, sensorial fourth element. Ms. Monson's dancing partner is Mauriah Kraker, a graduate student at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. Ms. Monson is on the faculty there, splitting her time between New York and Illinois, where she started outdoor rehearsals a year ago. Ms. Monson wants to hold on to the feeling of being outdoors, but also to give it a concrete base. "It's researching the basics of the physics of sight and sound and movement," she said in an interview at the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City, Queens. "I've had to question a lot of my own assumptions about what development is or what composition is, and this piece has let me resist some of my patterns and just let something emerge out of the way we're working together." It was through those morning rehearsals that she and her collaborators began to shape their experiences into a production that doesn't recreate dawn, but offers a different sense of time and place. It's in the title: When something's bent, Ms. Monson said, it creates a tension. "It's like being a pervert," she said with a smile. "Not straight. A friction against what's obvious." Here are edited excepts from the interview with Ms. Monson and several of her collaborators. Could you describe what you and your collaborators do on the prairie? JENNIFER MONSON We ride our bikes to Barnhart Prairie in Urbana, but if it's snowing we drive. We try to get there 15 minutes before any light comes into the sky, and then we stay and dance as our research process. One of our movement scores is "walking backward in a prairie" where we go out to the edge of the prairie and walk backward, so there's this real peripheral sense of the world enveloping you from behind. We also had a residency at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in Florida. How did being at the beach change things? JEFF KOLAR Experiencing the sun rising over the water is very different than on the prairie where it's sort of dark and dank for a long time. It felt like we had more space or that time was different. What was it like on the prairie? KOLAR The first time I went it was snowing and super cold. It's sort of like readjusting your eyes and ears, or like sensory deprivation with a long pause of waiting for something to happen. We're usually out there for two hours. MONSON More like an hour and 20 minutes. It feels like eight hours to me sometimes. Time just totally stops. MONSON That period of time is very vibrational. Like Jeff was saying, you're kind of uncomfortable, it's cold, you're not warmed up. So I have to kind of deal with myself in order to be available to this larger thing that's out there. It's not about the movement over time, you stop watching that and something else is arriving into the space. How do you choreograph that? MONSON My work's very process based, so it's very much about the way we listen to each other and the way we keep a conversation going about defining the ways that we're listening together. In working with Mauriah we can't really rely on vision as a way of seeing each other. MAURIAH KRAKER I think it's a really interesting way to get to know someone, too: waking up and stumbling through this other environment and doing our own very personal solo practice on the prairie and at the same time being aware that as my presence recedes, other things can come in. How does the lighting play into this? ELLIOTT CENNETOGLU In Florida, there was a sort of ambient streetlight lighting so you could see each little texture in the sand, each little ripple and then over time, the light coming from the opposite way over the water, sort of flopping the shadow. That's an inspiration. MONSON There's something very humbling about putting yourself in relationship to things that are so big that you can't know them. Or the way that you know them is through just being alive. It feels like a strategy to be alongside other things that I don't understand or that are different. Why is important that you are all onstage together? MONSON The presence that each body holds is where those decisions are coming from, so I think it's really important to see it. I didn't want to make a piece and have it be lit. I didn't want to make a dance and have music come to it. I wanted everything.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The Supreme Court decision striking down mandatory union fees for government workers was not only a blow to unions. It will also hit hard at a vast network of groups dedicated to advancing liberal policies and candidates. Some of these groups work for immigrants and civil rights; others produce economic research; still others turn out voters or run ads in Democratic campaigns. Together, they have benefited from tens of millions of dollars a year from public sector unions funding now in jeopardy because of the prospective decline in union revenue. Liberal activists argue that closing that pipeline was a crucial goal of the conservative groups that helped bring the case, known as Janus v. American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. "If the progressive movement is a navy, they're trying to take out our aircraft carriers," said Ben Wikler, Washington director of the liberal activist group MoveOn.org. Conservatives have acknowledged as much. In a fund raising solicitation in December, John Tillman, the chief executive of the free market group that found the plaintiff in the case, cited the objective of depriving unions of revenue by helping workers abandon them. "The union bosses would use that money to advance their big government agenda," Mr. Tillman wrote. Even President Trump took notice of the justices' ruling, declaring on Twitter that it was a "big loss for the coffers of the Democrats!" In the 5 to 4 decision on Wednesday, the court's majority ruled that requiring nonmembers to make union payments violated their First Amendment rights, since much of what unions do could be considered political activity at odds with their beliefs. The unions' ability to spend on progressive causes and candidates was already diminishing. As conservative groups escalated their campaign to rein in labor over the past decade or two, unions have had to divert more and more of their budgets to defensive battles, leaving less to spend elsewhere. But the multipronged effort that culminated in the Janus decision whose likely effect will be a loss of at least hundreds of thousands of members and tens of millions in revenue has forced many public unions, among the most powerful in the labor movement, to fundamentally rethink their spending. Mary Kay Henry, the president of the Service Employees International Union, said that her union had cut its budget by about 30 percent in anticipation of the decision, and that the service employees had been talking with leaders of liberal groups for two years about how to offset the loss. She said the union, with about two million members, would provide a range of nonmonetary support, from in kind staff assistance to help with fund raising. Brad Woodhouse, a former communications director for the Democratic National Committee, until recently ran a group called Americans United for Change, whose budget was heavily dependent on contributions from public sector unions when it campaigned for health care reform and the Obama stimulus plan a decade ago. Mr. Woodhouse said unions gave less in 2015 and 2016, when the Supreme Court considered a predecessor to the Janus case. (The court deadlocked in that case after Justice Antonin Scalia died.) Partly as a result, the group shut down after the 2016 election. The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington based think tank producing research on worker rights, wages and employment, has relied on the four biggest public sector unions for about 10 to 15 percent of its roughly 6 million in annual revenue in recent years. "We aren't seeing it as an existential threat," said Thea Lee, the institute's president, "but we have been trying to be conservative in what projects we pursue." A group called Mi Familia Vota, which advocates on behalf of Latino voters and immigrants, had received about 1 million a year directly from the Service Employees International Union since 2012 a significant portion of its annual revenue, which has ranged from about 1.5 million to 5 million during that time. 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. Last year, the union gave just 25,000. "We've been adjusting," said Ben Monterroso, director of Mi Familia Vota, which focuses on issues including education, health care, workers' rights and voting rights. "Some of the programs we've needed to scale back. Demonstrations, activities, actions, we've scaled back." Other groups that register and mobilize voters may be vulnerable, too. America Votes, a group with a permanent staff in more than 20 states that turns out voters on Election Day and rallies them around causes like reproductive rights and the environment, received more than one fifth of its nearly 10 million budget from the four biggest public sector unions in 2016. The major public sector unions are also major backers of ballot measure campaigns, having spent more than 7 million on such efforts in 2015 and 2016. Some of the measures involved increasing taxes to fund services like education and health care, and raising the minimum wage. Unions funded opposition to a measure allowing an expansion of charter schools in Massachusetts. In some arenas, the loss of union money will almost certainly be offset by other liberal donors both the wealthy and ordinary citizens. Few party operatives worry, for example, that the Democrats will lack resources for their next presidential nominee, or candidates in high profile Senate and House races. A newly formed political action committee called End Citizens United, named for the Supreme Court decision that opened the door to more corporate money in elections, raised about 25 million, largely from small donors, during the 2016 campaign, and is on pace to exceed that amount this election cycle. Most of its spending supports House and Senate Democratic candidates favoring campaign finance reform. In other cases, the loss of union money may be offset by grass roots activism. In 2016, the four major public sector unions gave nearly 15 percent of the 17 million raised by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, which funds state legislative races nationwide. But the group is optimistic that any loss of union revenue can be offset by what it calls the "people power" of union members and other voters. Jessica Post, the committee's executive director, cited these efforts in flipping 44 state legislative seats from Republican to Democratic control since Mr. Trump's inauguration: "Retired teachers, Afscme members, union members they were out knocking on doors, flooding campaign offices with support." Activists and party operatives said union cash would be more difficult to replace in other areas. Mr. Wikler said MoveOn's monthly donor base had quadrupled since Mr. Trump was elected, allowing it to increase support for groups working on immigrants' rights, workers' rights and racial justice causes. "But the scale of what we can kick in to efforts like that are dwarfed by what the public sector unions can muster," he said. Mr. Woodhouse said labor money could be especially critical to groups that must form quickly for a specific policy fight. He cited the example of Americans United, founded in 2005 to block President George W. Bush's attempt to partly privatize Social Security. "It was a lot easier to go to labor to do that than it is to kind of try to do this through other means low dollar or individual donors," he said. "Speed was essential, and we were caught a little flat footed." (Labor has funded some of these efforts through super PACs in recent years.) In the end, the loss of union money may be less detrimental to Democrats and progressive causes than the loss of union members. In the 2000 presidential election, noted Steve Rosenthal, a former political director of the A.F.L. C.I.O., 43 percent of the votes cast in Michigan came from union households, which tend to vote Democratic by a large margin. In the 2016 presidential election, the first after the state passed a "right to work" law ending mandatory union fees, only 28 percent of votes came from union households. That drop off accounts for Hillary Clinton's margin of defeat in the state many times over. The key to unions' importance, said John D. Podesta, who was chairman of Mrs. Clinton's campaign and is a founder of liberal advocacy and research groups, is "their ability to change outcomes through educational efforts of their own members." "They do a very good job of communicating with their own members and getting them out to vote," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
The surreal and the commercial come together in "Walking Legs," a series of advertisements Bourdin did for the shoe company Charles Jourdan, which besides Vogue Paris was his most frequent and longstanding client. Bourdin dispensed with a model in favor of a set of disembodied mannequin legs, cut off just below the knee, which he packed along with a Super 8 camera and an assistant into a Cadillac for a full tour around Britain in 1979. (The accompanying film is seen here for the first time.) The legs take seaside walks and star in domestic scenes, and seem, over the course of many photos, almost to take on personality and character as a hazy narrative emerges. Though not an outright sexual provocateur along the lines of Helmut Newton, a vein of seamy licentiousness runs throughout Bourdin's work. (Artist and subject have rarely met as well as when Bloomingdale's commissioned him to shoot a 1976 lingerie catalog, called "Sighs and Whispers," which is now a collector's item, with eBay auction prices starting at more than 400.) The suggestion of the sensual endures even in photos absent actual humans. In one shot, two pairs of legs stand by two upholstered armchairs in a sitting room, perfectly innocuous except for the suggestive bunch of bananas sitting just behind them on a fireplace mantel. In later galleries, the suggestions become more explicit: a row of women assembled, nude except for anthurium flowers between their legs, or two women on a bed sharing a plate of frankfurters and sauerkraut. "You couldn't be resistant to his ideas if you worked with Guy," Nicolle Meyer, the baby faced model Bourdin used almost exclusively between 1977 and 1980, is quoted as saying in an exhibition text. "You needed to be open to every suggestion."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Europe's love affair with Facebook may be coming to an end. On Thursday, the European Union's powerful antitrust chief fined the social network 110 million euros, or about 122 million, for giving misleading statements during the company's 19 billion acquisition of the internet messaging service WhatsApp in 2014. The fine one of the largest regulatory penalties against Facebook comes days after Dutch and French privacy watchdogs ruled that the company had broken strict data protection rules. Other European countries, notably Germany, are clamping down on social media companies, including issuing potentially hefty penalties for failing to sufficiently police hate speech and misinformation. The European Union's antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager, said that Facebook had told the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, that the social network would not combine the company's data with that of WhatsApp, which has more than one billion users. Yet last August, Facebook announced that it would begin sharing WhatsApp data with the rest of the company. That could allow it to gain an unfair advantage over rivals, by giving it access to greater amounts of data to help support its online advertising business. "Today's decision sends a clear signal to companies that they must comply with all aspects of E.U. merger rules," Ms. Vestager said in a statement. "And it imposes a proportionate and deterrent fine on Facebook. The commission must be able to take decisions about mergers' effects on competition in full knowledge of accurate facts." In response, Facebook said that it had acted in good faith in its deliberations with Europe's antitrust officials, and that it would not appeal the financial penalty. "The errors we made in our 2014 filings were not intentional," Facebook said in a statement. "The commission has confirmed that they did not impact the outcome of the merger review." The overall penalty amounted to a slap on the wrist it pales in comparison with the tens of billions of dollars the company earns in online advertising every year, and Europe's antitrust officials stopped short of voiding the deal completely. But the fine signals that European officials are increasing their scrutiny of Facebook just as it becomes one of the largest technology companies on the planet. Increased oversight has become something of a rite of passage for American technology companies operating in Europe. During the past two decades, Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, among others, have become targets of long antitrust investigations by the European authorities. That has often led to claims by tech executives that the region has an anti American bias, accusations that European policy makers deny. Facebook, experts say, is only the latest in a long line of Silicon Valley companies to face European regulatory anger, though this time, the focus is likely to be on the reams of online data gathered, including information that Facebook collects on both its users and nonusers through third party websites. On Tuesday, French officials fined the social network EUR150,000 another relatively small penalty for failing to give the company's users in that country sufficient control over how their data is collected and used. Dutch regulators also ruled that the company had broken privacy rules, but so far they have not imposed a fine. While Facebook started in the United States and has expanded aggressively across the developing world, its actions in Europe and the response to those acts by local officials are likely to have implications on its global operations. The company's international headquarters are in Dublin. Though that is mostly for tax purposes, it gives European data protection and antitrust officials wide scope to monitor and police Facebook activities involving its more than 1.5 billion users outside North America. In the past, for instance, Facebook has been forced to alter its privacy settings for all of its users worldwide after European privacy campaigners brought legal challenges to how the social network collected and used people's data. The changes come as policy makers worldwide vie for influence over how people use digital services, including potentially putting limits on how companies like Facebook operate so as to exert some control over the internet. "It was inevitable that there would be this type of struggle," Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, said in an interview last year. "The internet is not used to national borders." On Tuesday, Thailand pressured Facebook to remove dozens of pages from its servers that broke the country's laws about disparaging the monarchy. In Vietnam, Facebook agreed last month to take down some local content, including misleading articles and false accounts about senior government officials. Countries like Indonesia and the Philippines have also made demands against the company's role in spreading potential misinformation. While Facebook has come under scrutiny in the United States for allowing so called fake news to spread on its network, including before the American presidential election in November, federal lawmakers and policy makers have so far used a relatively light touch with the social network. After Facebook announced last year that it would use WhatsApp data to bolster its wider advertising business, American privacy campaigners filed complaints with the Federal Trade Commission, putting forward similar arguments to those made against the partnership in Europe. But whereas European privacy regulators forced Facebook to stop collecting WhatsApp data for its wider purposes just a few months after the agreement was made public, American privacy campaigners say that they have yet to receive an answer from the Federal Trade Commission about their concerns. Facebook continues to collect and use WhatsApp data from people in the United States who use the service. "U.S. antitrust law has failed to keep up with the digital economy and the emergence of monopoly services," Marc Rotenberg, president of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, an advocacy group in Washington, said in an email. "There is far too much 'lock in' with a dominant provider, and far too much consolidation of personal data."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology

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