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"I'm about to have a sugar rush, yo," Tiffany Haddish said. On a silver gray Sunday morning, Ms. Haddish, the irrepressible star of the movie "Girls Trip" and an audacious stand up comedian ("She Ready"), had click clacked into the back entrance of the International Culinary Center in downtown Manhattan. She rode a jerky freight elevator four flights up to the industrial kitchen where Jansen Chan, the director of pastry operations at the center, was waiting. A talented home chef ("I cooks good," Ms. Haddish said, stretching out the double vowels like pulled taffy), she likes to fit in a cooking class whenever she can. "I buy Groupons for them," she said. Though she lives in Los Angeles, she made time for a New York lesson. She was in between filming episodes of the television comedy "The Last O.G." and promoting her upcoming movie "Like a Boss," in which she plays a beauty entrepreneur, alongside Rose Byrne and Salma Hayek, and her recent comedy special, "Black Mitzvah." That special was released on the day of her actual bat mitzvah, the Jewish coming of age ceremony that she began preparing for after discovering her Jewish ethnicity. She doesn't bake often. "I have to watch my figure," Ms. Haddish, 40, said. "I ain't had no cookies in a while." But with Mr. Chan's guidance, she would bake and decorate holiday cookies, some of which she could use as ornaments. Not that she is big on trees. "There's a whole lot of vacuuming," she said. But she hangs ornaments on her trophies. She also keeps a menorah. In the kitchen, a large fluorescent lit room filled with refrigerators, freezers, burners and a marble counter, Mr. Chan had measured the ingredients and placed them in silver bowls. He instructed Ms. Haddish, who had traded her high heels for furry boots, to wash her hands, and then gave her the choice of a half or full apron. Ms. Haddish has an uncanny ability to turn even the most innocuous phrase sexual and chose a full one. Mr. Chan, immaculate in a white chef's coat, told her that they would begin with a technique called "creaming." "It's exactly what it sounds like," he said. Ms. Haddish thought it sounded like something else. "You don't know nothing about the woman's body, do you?" she said to Mr. Chan, teasingly. She tried to make it up to him by offering her womb to Mr. Chan and his boyfriend, Ted Uotani, who sat at the back of the room, shaking with laughter. "You got a baby mama between y'all?" she said. "I got a uterus." She even pledged to pay child support. "I think it's a good plan," she said. "That way I could still do my career. Y'all could have your kid." Mr. Chan tried to bring her attention back to the dry ingredients. "I'm not going to sexually harass you no more," she said. With the dry ingredients combined, she cracked an egg into the bowl with the butter and sugar, then added molasses. "Molasses is good for you, good for keeping your hair black," she said. "I have no idea what that means," Mr. Chan said. He then had her fold the dry ingredients into the wet ones. They spread the dough onto silicon mats, covered it in parchment paper and began to roll it smooth with wooden dowels. When Ms. Haddish observed that it looked like a soiled diaper, Mr. Chan reminded her about proper kitchen etiquette. "Oh damn," she said. "Behavior wise, I fail. But the final product is going to be fantastic. Because I'm making it with joy. "No, you don't need love," she said. "You need joy. Love can be hurtful, love can be painful." An hour later, she and Mr. Chan had decorated about two dozen cookies, hers messier than his: baubles ornamented with swirls and dots, gingerbread people in bow ties and jaunty yellow pants. Mr. Chan carefully arranged them in a cardboard box. Ms. Haddish, licking a finger, looked satisfied. "I feel like I can start a factory now," she said. "She Ready Cookies."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Alan Law volunteered to join the co op board of his building in Hell's Kitchen after other members dropped out at an annual meeting. So You Want to Join Your Co op Board? The people who sit on co op boards in New York City generally skew older than the rest of the shareholders in those buildings. One reason: Sitting on a board can be a thankless and all consuming task one that is definitely unpaid which makes the toil of running a building impractical for most people who are in the early stages of their careers or starting a family. "It's kind of like having a part time job on the side," said Melissa Leifer, a licensed real estate saleswoman for Keller Williams NYC TriBeCa. "It's easier if you're retired." But there are some young shareholders who are stepping forward and taking responsibility for their co op buildings and the work that needs to be done there. "Young people may want the amenities and structure of the building to reflect their lifestyle," said Stewart E. Wurtzel, a partner of Tane Waterman Wurtzel, P.C., a law firm that counsels about 150 local co ops. "They may be more budget conscious. If they're new parents, their interest in the building's common areas may be to be more family friendly. And they may be happier with a virtual doorman, or more concerned about package and food delivery capability." Carol J. Ott, the publisher and editor of Habitat, a magazine for co op and condo board members, said people usually join their boards to address maintenance fees: whether they are rising too fast or remaining artificially low (and the building is consequently being neglected). In smaller buildings, she said, new buyers are often recruited: "You may have been flattered, and it's hard to say no when you're the new kid in town." Regardless of the reason, new shareholders should take a few months or a few years to learn about the building and its inhabitants before taking a seat on the board, said Arthur Weinstein, a lawyer who represents about 100 co ops in the New York City area. Mr. Weinstein, a founder and board member of the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums, also recommended scrutinizing the proprietary lease and bylaws, the documents that govern the co op's existence. "It's very sad to see someone who's not familiar with the basics, the very landlord tenant relationship that exists between the co op and its owners," he said. "Without knowledge of the proprietary lease, a board can easily make an incorrect decision with potentially expensive, detrimental consequences." Still, the necessary training can sometimes occur on the job, said Phyllis H. Weisberg, a partner at Armstrong Teasdale and a leader of the firm's cooperative and condominium law practice area. A newer resident, she pointed out, may have expertise in a field like engineering, finance or law that would prove useful in co op deliberations. While longtime residents "may have a better understanding of the culture of the building," she added, "they do not necessarily have a monopoly on good ideas." For those who are intimidated by the complex skill set required for building oversight, the Council of New York Cooperatives and Condominiums offers seminars for new board members, and Habitat has an online platform called Habitat U. Some law firms, including Armstrong Teasdale, also offer their own classes. These programs focus on the governing documents, the board's responsibilities, legal matters and finance and insurance basics. Mr. Wurtzel's advice to new directors is simple: "Listen and learn and then speak your mind." We talked to five shareholders who recently joined their co op boards and asked them to share their experiences. (Their responses have been edited and condensed for clarity.) When she joined: May 2018 I'm into politics and community activism, and I liked the idea of participating in this little micro democracy. Did you have to campaign? It was between me and one other person. It was scary for me because I don't like public speaking, and two days before the election I was informed that we would have to stand up in front of the shareholders' meeting and present ourselves. How much of a time commitment has it been? Last year, it was a lot of time. We were inspecting the facade, and I needed to understand building ventilation and how the exterior walls were constructed. And because the facade repair coincided with the terrace restoration, I had to call the roofing company to learn about waterproof membranes, and paver companies to learn about how much heat is retained and reflected by different materials. The biggest challenge for me has been getting up to speed on the complexities of running a building in New York City, and becoming conversant in real estate issues, as we have several street level commercial spaces. Also tax issues and a number of complex financial issues. You have to wear so many hats. A lot of it has been trial by fire. What was shocking and eye opening was the annual shareholders' meeting. That was much more contentious than I'd anticipated. What advice do you have for others? In the beginning, my impulse was to think, "I'm the youngest and newest to the building ... is it even acceptable to put myself forward and say I'd like to help?" It's a little bit compounded by being a woman. I think you have to override that feeling. I really mean this: Everyone's perspective is really valuable, including your own. There would be sudden water shutdowns and other inconveniences, and I had no idea why these things were happening or when they would happen. I joined and realized that everything was going on in these meetings. Did you have to campaign? Because it's a small building, anyone can join. What kinds of decisions do you make? It is an older historic building, built in the mid 1800s, that needs a lot of specific attention and upkeep. It's not just, "Who can do this for the right price?" but "Who is qualified to work with something so old?" How have your ideas been received? I'm the youngest by far, and I feel like I'm picking up everything as I go along. Everyone else has much more experience. But they take me seriously. Has it been a good experience? I like it a lot more than I thought I would. As a fiction writer, I love listening to people's stories. It's a constant revolving door of the tiny fascinating issues of this microenvironment that I live in. I was surprised by just how long things really do take, the process of selecting new companies to provide services to us and getting things rolling. I always found it frustrating, but now that I'm on the board I can see why the process has so much inertia. What advice do you have for others? Even if things have been done one way for decades, it won't help to assume that they can't change radically, even faster than you think. The change you can effect may be bigger than what you can imagine. The board approached me about it. One reason I agreed was that I wasn't happy that they raised the maintenance fee. I wanted to be part of that conversation. How have your ideas been received? They expect me to have opinions on these conversations that I've never been a part of before: whether this unit can be combined with that unit, what are the laws involved. It's empowering that they value my opinion so much, but I definitely have had to be like, "I have to look this up and get back to you." How much of a time commitment has it been? Everyone has very busy lives, and our president lives out of state, so we don't actually meet that often just two or three times since I joined. We have a group text that is always buzzing, an email thread that is a little bit less active and a few conference calls. We are self managed to save money, and I didn't think there would be quite so many decisions happening all the time. I knew that we would have to interview potential tenants, but I wasn't quite sure how much detail went into it. Once, a mattress had been left outside, and we had to figure out what to do with it because it was disposed of illegally. Even getting paint colors picked for the doors, it's a big discussion. What advice do you have for others? Maybe talk to a few members of the current board to really understand what you're getting into. I'm happy that I've done it, but I really didn't know what I was getting into. I'd just moved in and was interested in learning more about how a building is operated and taken care of. I also liked the idea of being able to contribute to my community. Did you have to campaign? Seven of us ran on a slate. I got up at the annual meeting and gave a little speech. I wasn't kissing babies and shaking hands; I wasn't debating. What kinds of decisions do you make? For the past few years, we've had a spate of young families moving in, and their needs or wants may be different from somebody who doesn't have kids. Should we have more toys so the kids can play? Should we have a whole play area? How do we make that happen while staying within the constraints of our budget? Has it been a good experience? When you're looking to buy an apartment in New York City, you hear all kinds of horror stories about boards, how they're cloaked in mystery and you don't know whether they'll let you into the building. I've found it to be a very rewarding experience. What advice do you have for others? You have to be prepared to do research, get quotes from vendors, run numbers and talk to people. Nothing is going to change unless you pick up the ball and move it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
OXFORD, Miss. I'm a proud Mississippian, and our state's poet laureate, but I don't fly the state flag. Neither do my friends and neighbors, white or black (I'm white). The reason is simple: Mississippi, which has the country's highest percentage of black residents, is the last state in the nation to have a flag that incorporates the Confederate symbol. Few businesses or institutions, beyond the Capitol building, fly the state flag. The University of Mississippi, where I teach literature, took it down in 2015, after the Charleston church shooting. The Mississippi Business Journal pointed out that the flag also "negatively impacts outside investment." But the flag's removal has only recently become a battle cry for Mississippians. In April, Gov. Tate Reeves, a Republican, triggered anger and incredulity by declaring "Confederate Heritage Month." After the death of George Floyd, the hashtag TakeItDown has been trending on social media. A petition created five years ago to "remove the Confederate emblem from the Mississippi state flag" has begun recirculating, approaching its goal of 200,000 signatures by Sunday, Flag Day. Last Monday, bipartisan Mississippi lawmakers conducted a closed door conversation to draft legislation to change the flag. The momentum shows no sign of, well, flagging. And protests from black athletes will yield results our leaders listen to football players more readily than literature professors. On May 29, Kenny Yeboah, a tight end recruit at the University of Mississippi, tweeted, "It's crazy that as an African American student athlete I play for a team in a state that still has the Confederate flag incorporated into their flag." Even Governor Reeves won't be able to dig in his good ole boy heels if football players threaten to walk. But the flag's removal introduces a new quandary: What comes after we TakeItDown? Mississippi, with three million people, has the fourth largest rural population in the country. For that population, particularly its older, white, non college educated adults, the Confederate flag represents "heritage," not "racism," according to a survey conducted by YouGov.com. These Mississippians will view the removal of the flag as a stripping of their heritage. But what if there were a way to move forward without causing further alienation? What if we could create a new heritage? Enter the Stennis flag, designed by a Mississippi artist named Laurin Stennis. Her grandfather, John C. Stennis, was a U.S. senator for 41 years, and a staunch segregationist. That the granddaughter of a racist politician is battling for a positive symbol for all citizens seems significant. White people must fix white people. That's a lesson the Black Lives Matter protests made clear to those who didn't already know it. The Stennis family, like all white Mississippi families, profited from privilege. But Ms. Stennis won't profit from flag sales our two new excellent museums, the Museum of Mississippi History and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, receive the proceeds. Capturing the flag is a high stakes game. Failure means a doubling down on the current flag, as it did almost 20 years ago, when Mississippians rejected the proposed alternative, an unappealing circle of stars that was derided as the "pizza flag." Governor Reeves likes to cite that referendum when letting new flag legislation die: "The people of Mississippi voted in 2001 to keep the current flag," he's stated more than once. To create what's now referred to as the "Stennis flag," the artist married her training in woodblock printmaking with a study of flag design. She consulted with Ted Kaye, the author of "Good Flag, Bad Flag," whose five principles of vexillology are: 1. Keep it simple. 2. Use meaningful symbolism. 3. Use two or three basic colors. 4. No lettering or seals. 5. Be distinctive or be related. Ms. Stennis's design features a big blue star surrounded by 19 small stars on a white background, with red bars on either end. Its symbols draw from Mississippi history, as detailed on the Stennis Flag website. The central star, for example, represents Mississippi as the 20th state to join the nation. The Stennis flag succeeds on design principles. But can it succeed in uniting Mississippi? As the poet laureate of this troubled, contentious state, I should have a handle on symbolism. Yet I'm unsure how heritage is created from scratch, how flapping nylon can be invested with resonance. Nevertheless, I fly the Stennis flag in order to normalize it. To my three children, it's worked. It's the only Mississippi flag they've ever known. But what about the rest of Mississippi's children? Every day, there are fewer Mississippians for whom the flag symbolizes heritage, and more for whom it symbolizes the heritage of racial terror. Flag Day has come, Governor Reeves. Let us send this new banner up our empty poles. Stop battling the winds of change.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Dr. Simon Barquera, the director of nutrition policy at Mexico's National Institute of Public Health, received disturbing text messages, as did others who were vocal proponents of Mexico's 2014 soda tax. SAN FRANCISCO Last summer, Dr. Simon Barquera's phone started buzzing with a series of disturbing text messages from unknown numbers. One said his daughter had been in a serious accident. Another claimed to be from a friend whose father had died with a link to funeral details. Yet another message informed Dr. Barquera, the director of nutrition policy at Mexico's National Institute of Public Health, that a Mexican news outlet had accused him of negligence, again with a link. And in more menacing messages, someone claimed to be sleeping with Dr. Barquera's wife. That included a link to what the sender claimed was photo evidence of their affair. That same week, Luis Manuel Encarnacion, then the director at Fundacion Midete, a foundation in Mexico City that battles obesity, also started receiving strange messages with links. When he clicked, Mr. Encarnacion was ominously redirected to Gayosso, Mexico's largest funeral service. The messages Mr. Encarnacion received were identical to a series of texts sent to Alejandro Calvillo, a mild mannered activist and founder of El Poder del Consumidor, yet another Mexico City organization that has been at the forefront of battling childhood obesity in the country. What the men had in common was this: All were vocal proponents of Mexico's 2014 soda tax, the first national soda tax of its kind. It is aimed at reducing consumption of sugary drinks in Mexico, where weight related diseases kill more people every year than violent crime. The links sent to the men were laced with an invasive form of spyware developed by NSO Group, an Israeli cyberarms dealer that sells its digital spy tools exclusively to governments and that has contracts with multiple agencies inside Mexico, according to company emails leaked to The New York Times last year. NSO Group and the dozens of other commercial spyware outfits that have cropped up around the globe over the past decade operate in a largely unregulated market. Spyware makers like NSO Group, Hacking Team in Italy and Gamma Group in Britain insist they sell tools only to governments for criminal and terrorism investigations. But it is left to government agents to decide whom they will and will not hack with spying tools that can trace a target's every phone call, text message, email, keystroke, location, sound and sight. The discovery of NSO's spyware on the phones of Mexican nutrition policy makers, activists and even government employees, like Dr. Barquera, raises new questions about whether NSO's tools are being used to advance the soda industry's commercial interests in Mexico. The soda industry has poured over 67 million into defeating state and local efforts to regulate soft drink sales in the United States since 2009, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. But the tax in Mexico Coca Cola's biggest consumer market by per capita consumption posed an exceptional threat. After the tax passed in 2014, Coca Cola pledged 8.2 billion worth of investments in Mexico through 2020. And soda giants have lobbied against the tax through various industry groups, like ConMexico, which represents Coca Cola and PepsiCo. Lorena Cerdan, director of ConMexico, said the group had no knowledge of, or part in, the mobile hacking. "This is the first we're hearing of it," Ms. Cerdan said. "And frankly, it scares us, too." The timing of the hacking coincided with a planned effort by advocacy organizations and health researchers including Dr. Barquera, Mr. Calvillo and Mr. Encarnacion to coordinate a mass media campaign to build support for doubling the soda tax, an effort that stalled in Mexico's Congress in November. The three men also opposed a failed effort by Mexican legislators and soda lobbyists in 2015 to cut the tax in half. One week after health researchers and advocates announced their campaign in a news conference last summer, their phones began to buzz with the spyware laced messages. NSO Group's motto is "Make the World a Safer Place." But its spyware is increasingly turning up on the phones of journalists, dissidents and human rights activists. NSO spyware was discovered on the phone of a human rights activist in the United Arab Emirates and a prominent Mexican journalist in August. Researchers at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School of Global Affairs discovered NSO had exploited flaws in Apple software since patched to infiltrate the phones of the Emirati activist and the Mexican journalist, Rafael Cabrera. In 2015, Mr. Cabrera reported that a luxury home that had been custom built for President Enrique Pena Nieto of Mexico and his wife was owned by the subsidiary of a Chinese company that had been awarded hundreds of millions of dollars in government contracts. Mr. Cabrera's report forced the presidential couple to forgo its stake in the home and the government to rescind contracts. The discovery of spyware on Mr. Cabrera's phone prompted digital rights activists to warn more journalists and activists in Mexico to look out for similarly suspicious text messages. In the process, they uncovered a new class of targets: nutrition policy makers and activists, some of whom were government employees. Each had been targeted by NSO's main product, a tracking system called Pegasus, that could extract their text messages, contact lists, calendar records, emails, instant messages and location. It turned their phones into recording devices and secretly captured live footage off their cameras. Its full range of capabilities was detailed in an NSO Group marketing proposal leaked to The Times last year. In interviews and statements, NSO Group whose headquarters are in Herzliya, Israel, but which sold a controlling stake in 2014 to Francisco Partners, a San Francisco based private equity firm claims to sell its spyware only to law enforcement agencies to track terrorists, criminals and drug lords. NSO executives point to technical safeguards that prevent clients from sharing its spy tools. It is not clear why any Mexican government agency would deploy the spyware to track those on the front lines of the fight to battle obesity in Mexico where diabetes was recently declared a national emergency nor is it clear which Mexican government agency could be behind the surveillance. "Mexico's intelligence systems are subject to federal relevant legislation and have legal authorization," Ricardo Alday, a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, said in a statement. "They are not used against journalists or activists. All contracts with the federal government are done in accordance with the law." The NSO emails leaked to The Times referred to multimillion dollar, continuing NSO Group contracts with several government agencies inside Mexico, and the Mexican government has been an enthusiastic buyer of foreign spy tools. Mexico was listed as the biggest client of Hacking Team, the Italian cyber surveillance firm, which was itself hacked in 2015. Hacked internal documents published online showed that at least 14 Mexican states and government agencies had paid 6.3 million to Hacking Team for its spy tools since 2010. Mexico's Interior Ministry, which operates Cisen, the civil national security intelligence service, was listed as Hacking Team's highest paying client. Other clients included the Mexican Navy, federal police and attorney general's office, as well as several Mexican states. The leaked Hacking Team emails also revealed that the firm was increasingly facing competition from NSO Group to procure contracts with Cisen, the Mexican attorney general's office and Sedena, an acronym for the office of Mexico's secretary of national defense. In interviews, Dr. Barquera, Mr. Encarnacion and Mr. Calvillo all said they were not sure which government agency could be behind the hacking. Each said he was wary of using his phone for sensitive communications. And yet they insist they are undeterred. "Suddenly, you are aware of everything you say," Dr. Barquera said. "Everything you say feels like a potential threat, that it could come back to haunt you."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
With 3 D printing, lab grown organs and lifelike prosthetic limbs, science creeps ever nearer to replicating the parts and functions of the human body. But not pregnancy: Despite several attempts over the past 20 years, researchers have been largely unsuccessful at encouraging human gestation outside the womb, and important elements of the interaction between mother and fetus remain a profound mystery. Recently, however, scientists announced that they had created an artificial womb in which lambs born prematurely grew for a month. Human testing is not expected for three to five years, if it is done at all. But should an artificial womb succeed for premature infants, it could have far reaching legal and ethical consequences. The term "artificial womb" evokes a scene from "Brave New World": external artificial uteri capable of the entire gestation process, from implantation to delivery. But that's not what the recent animal trial accomplished, nor was that its goal. Today, incubators sustain the life of a premature infant without continuing the gestation process. Dr. Alan Flake, a fetal surgeon at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, and his team used incubator technology to encourage continued development and growth in the premature lambs. Dr. Flake emphasized that the goal of their work was "physiologic support" that is, to replicate conditions in the uterus as closely as possible, keeping more premature babies alive and able to develop in better health. People often hear about miracle babies who, despite being born prematurely and at an extremely low birth weight, overcome the odds to survive. In fact, negative outcomes are very likely among infants born before 23 weeks, the point of viability. The mortality rate is greater than 50 percent, and they have a 70 to 90 percent likelihood of experiencing major complications, like cerebral palsy, mental impairment and blindness. Because survival rates are higher, there are now more children with health problems like these than there were a decade ago. Even if extremely premature babies survive their time in the incubator, they may have lifelong impairments or conditions that require support, including physical therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. "The ethical dilemma arises with, I think, inappropriate application of the technology to extend the limits of viability," Dr. Flake said. Candidates for an artificial womb, he said, would be "infants that would currently not be resuscitated." He added, "The problem is that there would likely be additional complications in these infants that would outweigh the benefit of the therapy." An infant nurtured in an artificial womb would not be comparable to "the healthy, happy fetus in the womb," Dr. Flake said, but rather the extremely premature infant born today and sustained using existing incubator technology, which often results in life threatening complications. Right now, 23 weeks is the magic milestone: Infants born after that point have a good chance of survival, while those born before 22 to 23 weeks have shorter, though not insignificant odds, said Dr. James Fritzell Jr., the clinical director of the Small Baby Program at Miller Children's Women's Hospital in Long Beach, Calif. Extremely premature infants face an uphill battle as they adjust to life outside the uterus, including undeveloped lungs, specific nutritional needs (they can require 30 to 50 percent more calories for growth and development than full term infants), neurodevelopmental challenges and a constant risk of infection. Ideally, an artificial womb could address all of those complications and more by providing a controlled environment to minimize energy loss and support growth, limiting exposure to bacteria and fungi and minimizing infection risks, Dr. Fritzell said. In addition to all the internal complications that come with a premature birth, the infant's skin is extremely fragile, tearing easily and causing rapid dehydration, said Trish Ringley, a neonatal intensive care nurse in San Luis Obispo, Calif. "Extremely premature infants endure vast numbers of painful procedures, and it's impossible to truly know what that exposure to pain means in the long term," she said. "It would be a wonderful benefit of this artificial womb to decrease the amount of pain preemies have to endure." Based on her 20 years of experience in the N.I.C.U., Ms. Ringley said that it might be difficult for parents who currently can touch and interact with their premature babies to a certain extent, at least to forgo those early days of bonding if the infants were placed in an artificial womb. Although it might be helpful for a baby's physical development, it could "take an emotional toll on the parents, and possibly even the babies themselves," she said. Multiple studies have shown interaction with parents brings improved development in premature infants, too. A baby in an artificial womb may not "benefit from the maternal influences of labor, placental influence of hormones and biochemical signals" that allow the fetus to sleep, grow and develop, said Dr. Sanjay Chawla, a neonatologist at Detroit Medical Center. While Dr. Fritzell said he saw the potential in this new technology to push back the limits of viability, he believes that the artificial womb technology is a long time away from clinical use "and does not take into account the great strides we currently have in care of a premature infant." Dr. Flake agreed that what the field did not need was another intervention for premature infants that creates more problems than it solves. "This system will either work and work very well, or I won't apply it," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Satellite images and a drone discovered about 1.5 million Adelie penguins living in the Danger Islands, one of two species whose habitats require ice. A new colony of Adelie penguins has been discovered near Antarctica, substantially increasing the known populations of the knee high creatures. "It's always good news when you find new penguins," said P. Dee Boersma, director of the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels at the University of Washington, who was not involved in the new study. "The trends have not been good for so many of these species." Previous censuses of penguins had come close to these animals, living on the Danger Islands just off the end of the "thumb" of Antarctica, below South America. But satellite images of the islands revealed the pinkish red stain of penguin guano, suggesting larger colonies than expected, said Heather Lynch, one of the five primary investigators on the new study, published Friday in Scientific Reports. After several years of preparation, a team of researchers traveled in 2015 to the Danger Islands near the Weddell Sea to do a more precise count on the nine island archipelago. Using a drone doctored to work in the extreme climate of the region, the researchers were able to get a precise estimate of the numbers of breeding pairs of Adelie penguins in the region: about 750,000 (or 1.5 million individuals). "The drone imagery is of a quality that just blows everything else away," said Dr. Lynch, a quantitative ecologist at Stony Brook University. "You can see each penguin on the landscape." Dr. Lynch said researchers had already known about a population on Heroina Island, at the northeast end of the Danger Islands chain. Now they've found that sizable populations live on other islands near Heroina. "These new colonies totally change our appreciation of the Danger Islands as a penguin hot spot," she said. The greater numbers will help ensure that conservation efforts focus on keeping them safe, she said. "This area falls between two marine protected areas that are being planned right now," she said. And until this discovery, the Danger Islands "wasn't considered a high priority for protection." Dr. Boersma, also co chairwoman of the Penguin Specialist Group for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, agreed that finding penguins in some of the more remote spots on earth is crucial. Now, she said, researchers need to watch them over time to track how they're faring. "We expect many of these species are going to be severely harmed and some already have," said Dr. Boersma, noting that half the known population of Magellanic penguin chicks were wiped out in one storm. Continued government funding for satellites and other technology to track the animals is essential, she said. One of the surprises of the study, Dr. Lynch said, was that the Danger Islands penguins don't nest in a circular pattern, as would be expected, to provide the best protection from predators. Instead, they seem to be faithful to individual nesting spots, prizing habit over safety, she said. The Adelie are not recent migrants to the Danger Islands. Photos taken in 1957 by seaplane show colony boundaries in virtually the same locations now that researchers know what they're looking for. The discovery of so many new animals has raised questions about how they're finding enough food. "What it is about the ocean right in that region that makes it so productive, is something we'd like to figure out," Dr. Lynch said. The penguins feed mostly on shrimplike krill, giving their guano a distinctive pinkish color that can be more easily seen from a satellite. The black and white animals tend to blend into the rocks and are harder to spot, she said. There were plenty of challenges working in one of the coldest places on the planet, said Hanumant Singh, another study co author. The batteries for the drones kept freezing and losing their power, until the researchers began keeping them warm inside their jackets, said Dr. Singh, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston. "If you warm them, they'll keep flying," he said. They also had to manipulate the drones to operate at such a southern latitude, where the change in the earth's magnetic field close to the poles makes navigation more difficult, said Dr. Singh, who is also an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Woods Hole, Mass. The global Adelie penguin population now numbers about 4 million pairs and has nearly doubled over the last four decades, for unknown reasons, Dr. Lynch said. But the population along the Western Antarctic Peninsula one of the most rapidly warming places on the planet has dropped substantially in recent years, she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
GAINESVILLE, Fla. Science is trying to build a better supermarket tomato. At a laboratory here at the University of Florida's Institute for Plant Innovation, researchers chop tomatoes from nearby greenhouses and plop them into glass tubes to extract flavor compounds the essence of tomato, so to speak. These flavor compounds are identified and quantified by machine. People taste and rate the hybrid tomatoes grown in the university's fields. "I'm 98 percent confident we can make a tomato that tastes substantially better," said Harry J. Klee, a professor of horticultural sciences. He hopes that the fruits of his labor will be available to commercial growers within four or five years and in supermarkets a couple of years after that. He thinks he can make seeds for better tomatoes available to home gardeners even sooner, within a year or two. The insipid tomato problem is well known both to salad lovers and scientists. For example, a gene mutation that tomato breeders love because it turns the fruit a luscious red also happens to make it blander. Refrigeration, transportation and other factors also take their toll. Over the decades, the average tomato has become not only less tasty but less nutritious. Enter Dr. Klee, who helped found the Institute for Plant Innovation a decade ago and has been in a quest for a more flavorful and nutritious mass market tomato ever since. As growers are paid by the pound, a better tasting but less productive tomato holds little economic appeal, and thus was the supermarket tomato doomed to blandness. Dr. Klee's goal is to tweak the tomato DNA through traditional breeding, not genetic engineering to add desired flavors while not compromising the traits needed for it to thrive commercially. "I figure that with approximately five key genes we could very significantly improve flavor," he said. He said three genes that control the production of key flavor compounds have already been located. The next step is to identify versions of the genes that lead the tomato plant to produce more of them. The chemistry of tomato flavor has three primary components: sugars, acids and what are known as volatile chemicals the flavor compounds that waft into the air carrying the fruit's aroma. There are more than 400 volatiles in a tomato, and Dr. Klee and his collaborators set out to first determine which ones are the most important in making a tasty tomato. This involved grinding up a lot of tomatoes, looking at what was in them, and asking a lot of people to taste them (unpulverized), gathering comments like "a bland firm watermelon," "soft and sloppy," and "Sweet! Finally a sample with some sweetness." From there, Dr. Klee and his collaborators, who include Linda Bartoshuk, director of human research at the university's Center for Smell and Taste, used statistics to correlate people's preferences with the presence, or absence, of particular flavor compounds, to devise a chemical recipe for the ideal tomato. The supermarket tomato even when grown with care and picked ripe did not excel. "The best it will do is middle of the pack," Dr. Klee said. Cherry Roma tomatoes were at the top of the charts, followed by heirloom varieties like Matina, Ailsa Craig and Bloody Butcher. Other heirlooms like Marmande and Oaxacan Pink ranked at the bottom, below the supermarket tomatoes, though perhaps these particular types just do not grow well in Florida. The taste analysis produced several surprises. Some compounds, abundant in many tomato varieties and thus thought to be major contributors to flavor, turned out to be irrelevant, while others, in scant quantities, had major influences. With the new knowledge, "you can't help but get a better tomato," Dr. Bartoshuk said. The most important attribute was sweetness. The sweeter the tomato, the higher the rating. The biggest surprise, though, was that it was not just sugar that made a tomato sweet. Some of the flavor compounds enhanced the perception of sweetness. That is the key to Dr. Klee's plans. Tomato breeders have already tried to maximize sugar, but the plants are bred to produce a lot of big tomatoes all at once, and then do not have energy and sunlight through photosynthesis to make enough sugar to go around. The sweetness enhancing compounds, however, are present in much smaller quantities, so getting a plant to produce more of those is a much more achievable goal, Dr. Klee said. (The compounds also offer promise for sweetening other foods without adding the calories of sugar.) "His work is really groundbreaking," said James Giovannoni, a professor of plant biology at Cornell who studies the ripening of fruit and was one of the leaders in the sequencing of the tomato genome published last year. He said Dr. Klee has been deciphering the molecular machineries in tomatoes that produce the flavor compounds, and that is not an easy task. "One, there is a lot of them," Dr. Giovannoni said, "and two, a lot of them are really not understood, how some of these produce these compounds hasn't been known." Modern genetic engineering has provided tools to study that, and tomatoes are one of the most common plants that plant geneticists study, much in the same way that animal geneticists focus on mice, and now researchers can knock out particular compounds and see if they played a key role in flavor or not. There has been one genetically engineered tomato in the supermarket. In the 1980s, plant geneticists at the University of California, Davis, just as frustrated by bland tasting tomatoes, also tried to make a better tomato. That led to a biotechnology company, Calgene, in 1994, developing the Flavr Savr tomato, the first genetically engineered food of any kind in the supermarket, its DNA tweaked to inhibit a protein that turns a tomato mushy over time. While it sold well, Calgene foundered in the logistics of industrial agriculture and was bought by Monsanto, which discontinued selling the seeds. The Florida team is not repeating the Flavr Savr game plan. Although Dr. Klee experiments with genetically engineered tomatoes to test and confirm findings, he said that none of the ones eventually destined for supermarkets will be partly to avoid potential consumer backlash and partly because his university cannot afford the estimated 15 million that would be needed to obtain regulatory approval to sell a genetically engineered tomato. Instead, the tomato would be created through traditional breeding techniques, but using genetic tests to determine which of the plants possess the desired genes. The quest for year round produce at the supermarket has also led to tomatoes being grown in less than ideal places like Florida, where the soil is too sandy and there are plenty of pests when the traditional tomato growing areas farther north are too chilly. Tomatoes aren't the only focus of the Institute for Plant Innovation. Researchers are working on a more fragrant rose, a project that involves the genetic engineering feat of inserting yes a tomato gene in a rose plant. They are also trying to grow tastier strawberries and blueberries. One new blueberry variety could be described as positively crispy, almost apple like in its texture. Consumers who tasted these blueberries liked their firmness, and the quality is also a boon to growers, because the fruit lasts longer. "It's a blueprint," Dr. Klee said of his tomato quest, "for a much bigger program of bringing back flavor."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
A roundup of motoring news from the web: General Motors announced pricing for its new for 2015 midsize pickup trucks, the Chevrolet Colorado and the GMC Canyon. The extended cab Colorado, which comes standard with a 200 horsepower 2.5 liter 4 cylinder engine, a 6 speed manual transmission and power windows, will start at 20,995, including the 875 destination charge. The Canyon, which features the same powertrain options,will start at 21,880, including the 925 destination charge. Fuel economy numbers have not yet been announced for either model. (General Motors) Charlie Miller and Chris Valasek, computer security researchers, said at the Black Hat hacker conference in Las Vegas this week that vehicles from Chrysler, Nissan and General Motors were the "most hackable." Chrysler and Nissan responded, saying they were looking into the claim, which was made in a report released this week. (Reuters) A new head up display device called the Navdy brings iPhone and Android features into the car, allowing drivers to respond with voice commands to messaging, social media and phone functions while maintaining a fighter jet style turn by turn navigation screen projected onto the inside of the windshield. Equipped with an ambient light sensor and an e compass, the Navdy is scheduled to begin shipping in 2015. (PC Magazine) As part of the Chinese government's investigation of foreign automakers, Audi and Chrysler have been accused of "monopoly" behavior there and will be "punished accordingly in the near future," China said in a statement Wednesday. The government regulator did not go into detail about what constituted monopoly behavior. (Globalpost)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Among health care workers, nurses in particular have been at significant risk of contracting Covid 19, according to a new analysis of hospitalized patients by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The findings were released Monday as a surge of new hospitalizations swept the country, with several states hitting record levels of cases. About 6 percent of adults hospitalized from March through May were health care workers, according to the researchers, with more than a third either nurses or nursing assistants. Roughly a quarter, or 27 percent, of those hospitalized workers were admitted to the intensive care unit, and 4 percent died during their hospital stay. The study looked at 6,760 hospitalizations across 13 states, including California, New York, Ohio and Tennessee.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The streaming wars are about to get a lot more interesting. It has been roughly five years since services like Netflix and Hulu started making original programming. So far, Netflix has been the clear winner. It spends billions of dollars a year and has seen subscriptions soar, especially internationally, with the critical and popular success of shows like "Stranger Things" and "The Crown." But Disney's deal to buy most of 21st Century Fox changes things. Even before the deal was announced on Thursday, Disney had already announced plans to unveil two streaming services: one focused on sports that will begin next year and one focused on entertainment that will become available in 2019. The second service, fueled by Disney's existing content and now 21st Century Fox's TV shows and movies, promises to be a formidable entrant into the streaming world. Here's a look at some of the leading streaming services. NETFLIX Partly as a result of rivals like Disney being reluctant to sell content to a service they increasingly see as a competitor, Netflix has recently shifted its focus to creating original content including scripted dramas, documentaries, children's programming and movies. Netflix is planning on spending between 7 billion and 8 billion on content next year, up from 6 billion this year. Over the final three months of this year, Netflix has released eight original movies. Next year it plans on making 80.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
For Cyril Phan, the French graffiti artist known professionally as Kongo, a recent project posed a less predictable obstacle than, say, staying dry while painting on the side of a building in the rain. Instead, he decorated the delicate parts of a stainless steel tourbillon for the Swiss watch brand Richard Mille; the watch, which became available in June, retails for 800,000. "It was a fantastic technical challenge, because we sometimes work with elements that are a tenth or a hundredth of a millimeter," said Mr. Mille, the watch brand's founder. "Our objective was to produce the precision of painting in a very, very small scale." To create the timepieces, the company first spent six months creating a special airbrush that would control the distribution of minute amounts of brightly hued paint. The watch Mr. Phan created with the Swiss brand Richard Mille, produced using a specially made airbrush. The project might seem unlikely, considering the sensibility of street art: edgy, youthful and more immediately suggestive of trendy bohemian surroundings than heritage Swiss craftsmanship. But other brands are working with artists whose usual medium is graffiti or even tattoos in an effort to expand their reach to a younger generation with sensibilities very different from those of its elders. This month, the Big Bang Sang Bleu watch by Hublot reaches stores, designed in collaboration with Maxime Buchi, the London based tattoo artist whose clients have included Kanye West. Retailing at slightly less than 19,000, the timepiece is available in a limited edition of 200. To help promote its release, Mr. Buchi will be setting up a temporary tattoo studio next month in Miami, timed to coincide with Art Basel Miami Beach. And earlier this year, Romain Jerome introduced a timepiece with hands designed to resemble tattoo needles and straps featuring a flourish design by the French tattoo artist Xoil, priced at 24,500. The trend is resonating at lower price points and in other ways. Next month Shinola, whose watches range from 475 to 1,500, is opening a boutique in downtown Los Angeles that will include a a place to get tattoos. It will be overseen by Scott Campbell, a tattoo artist whose work adorns the skin of high profile figures including the designer Marc Jacobs. The British brand Mr. Jones Watches is introducing two styles with a design inspired by 1980s era graffiti, each priced at 1,000 pounds, or 1,120. And the designer Philipp Plein's recent collaboration with Filfury the British artist Phil Robson, who is known for creating artwork using images of sneakers included a chunky chronograph priced at a little more than 700. These partnerships target, at least in part, the coveted market of millennials, many of whom who might be more inclined to buy a smartwatch or simply check the time on the phone. "Part of the future is the people that are 15, 20, 25 or 30 years old today," said Jean Claude Biver, president of the watch division at LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton, which includes Hublot. "We found that next to a certain way of wearing clothes or a certain way of listening to music, they are interested in the tattoos. Therefore, I said, 'If the tattoo is, or is becoming, an art of the 21st century, we cannot just let this go.' Tom Jamieson for The New York Times "If we partner with an art of the 21st century," he continued, "that's a way for us to be connected to the 21st century." Collaborations with trendy artists also are a way for some brands to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace. "Since we are a newcomer and a new player in the industry," said Manuel Emch, chief executive of RJ Watches, which produces Romain Jerome, "for us it was essential to give a different and more innovative and contemporary message to our watches. We noticed that most of our customers are in their late 20s, 30s and early 40s so a rather younger customer base and we also noticed that most of them share the same cultural references, if it comes to contemporary art or video games, for instance. Tattoo is one of these specific expressions of art of this generation." In the case of graffiti art, rising prices of work by artists like Banksy have led to an increasingly affluent clientele of collectors, many of whom also buy expensive timepieces. "High net worth people are the people that are buying street art; they buy vintage cars, and they buy very high level luxury watches," said Sebastien Laboureau, an art adviser who specializes in graffiti. "When you're a watch company and you want to open up new marketing means, it makes sense to target what is very relevant in the art world today, which is street art and urban art." Some critics have called such collaborations a bit forced, but the artists involved don't feel that way. "The watch world has a lot of similarities with the tattoo world when you're a tattoo artist," Mr. Buchi said in a recent interview at his studio in the London neighborhood of Dalston, with tattoo needles whirring loudly on clients' skin in the background. "There's something about the really small space in which you work that's the same when you're tattooing." The limited edition timepiece from Romain Jerome, Tattoo DNA by Xoil. Reto Albertalli for The New York Times In July, Mr. Buchi established an Instagram account, labeled watchesandtattoos, to showcase images of high end brand watches on heavily inked wrists. Recent posts have included a chunky Audemars Piguet timepiece over a hand covered by lion's head image and a stainless steel Rolex Explorer juxtaposed with an ornate tattoo of a large black skull. Commenters on the posts frequently use the hashtag wristporn. The official collaborations between brands and unconventional artists aren't the only kind of experimentation going on. Unauthorized, street smart tweaks of luxury timepieces also are popping up. Bamford Watch Department, a customizing company based in London whose work is sold at tastemaker stores like Dover Street Market and Colette, has been adding new faces and matte black bands to new Rolex watches; it also has collaborated with street savvy artists like Jose Parla of Brooklyn and Wes Lang, the Los Angeles artist whose Deepsea Rolex with an image of the grim reaper retails for PS19,000. And late last year, a stainless steel Rolex Submariner with the logo of the skateboard and clothing company Supreme sold for 50,000 at Stadium Goods, a consignment store in Manhattan that specializes in collectible sneakers, according to John McPheters, the store's co founder. For watch collectors, the long term investment value of such timepieces isn't as reliable as that of a more traditional design. "The question is how impactful is tattoo and graffiti culture going to be several generations from now," said Ariel Adams, founder of the watch website aBlogtoWatch. "All these artists, they may have some popularity within niche groups, but in the future they'll only have popularity within niche groups, and that's going to prevent the watches from being truly collectible." Ruediger Albers, president of the American Wempe Corporation, a luxury watch retailer, had a similar observation. "It gets a lot of attention that doesn't mean that it translates into a whole lot of sales, but there is a market out there," he said. "I can't say that we have customers coming in saying, 'I have seen this artist and therefore I'm interested in the brand.' It hasn't translated to that, but at the same time, it opens up the brand." Most of the watch houses say that in the end, sales volume isn't the main priority. "I want the young generation to dream about my brand," Mr. Biver of LVMH said. "If they can buy it or not is not my concern now. It's my concern later: later they will do their own buying with their own money. They will remember their dream and later they will say, 'I have dreamt so much about this watch, now I want to buy one.' That's my strategy."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
New York buyers who venture across the river to this Rockland County area often find a more creative community than in Westchester and lower prices. Like migrating birds, buyers interested in leaving New York City often find their way with the help of water. Indeed, many explorations of the suburbs begin by nosing north along the Hudson River. But not all waterfront is equal. Most buyers flock, at least initially, to the Hudson's eastern edge to Westchester Rivertowns like Hastings on Hudson, Irvington and Tarrytown bypassing the western side, which includes Nyack, a string of villages that are part of the towns of Orangetown and Clarkstown, in Rockland County. That's shortsighted, say residents, business owners and brokers, as Nyack has as many antique houses, restaurants and live music showcases as its peers. "We realized it was really artsy, and really fun," said Maureen Aiad, 34, a doctor who lives in the area, recalling the house hunting trips she took in the fall of 2018, which included a stop at a lively street fair. Ms. Aiad, who was sharing a two bedroom rental on the Upper West Side with her husband, Jakub Bartnik, a doctor who is 33, their infant daughter and a black Labrador, initially heeded the call of Westchester. She thought it might offer a roomy house with a spacious yard. But she found the yards too small and the prices too steep. And Nyack, more than many places in the area, seemed to defy the stereotype of suburbs as politically conservative, said Ms. Aiad, who works at a hospital on Long Island. "I didn't realize how blue it is," she said of the village, where some of the lawns have signs proclaiming "Love Your Neighbor." "It's easy to feel welcome here." In January, Ms. Aiad and her husband closed on a four bedroom, four and a half bathroom, ranch style house, with a bluestone patio and a finished basement and, most important, about an acre of land in the village of Upper Nyack. They paid 929,000, she said, noting that if it had been across the river, it might have cost 1.3 million. What has helped to raise Nyack's profile is its location at the base of a prominent bridge. The busy, 3.1 mile Governor Mario M. Cuomo Bridge, which replaced the Tappan Zee last year, carries I 287 between Rockland and Westchester counties. Travelers on the highway, which hugs Nyack's southern border, whiz past some of the area's most attractive blocks. Also key in promoting Nyack, in ways obvious and subtle, is the artist Edward Hopper, who lived there for almost three decades. His childhood home, which now houses galleries, enjoys a prominent berth on North Broadway. Known for his street scenes, Hopper also painted local buildings, like Pretty Penny, the cupola topped house that once belonged to the actress Helen Hayes. Other creative types who have called Nyack home include the writer Carson McCullers, the director Jonathan Demme and the actress Rosie O'Donnell. Musicians are also numerous, said Jerry Grossman, 68, the principal cellist with the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra in New York. Mr. Grossman, a former Upper West Side resident, bought his first place in Nyack in 1996. He now owns a three bedroom, two and a half bathroom house for which he paid 850,000 in 2001. He likes the area's walkability. For the most part, blocks are flat and lined with sidewalks, although the terrain is hillier to the west. "Walking around, chatting with friends and neighbors," he said, as he headed to a performance of "Don Giovanni." "I love that." Nyack is also impressively diverse, Mr. Grossman noted. Immigrants who live there, according to census records, hail from Haiti, El Salvador and Brazil. "This is not some lily white suburb," he said. Nyack is often used as shorthand to refer to several places with similar names. Of them, the three villages along the Hudson Upper Nyack, Nyack and South Nyack have the most in common in terms of style, history and popularity with renters and buyers. 251 NORTH BROADWAY A six bedroom, five bathroom house, built in 1890, with river views, gardens and a renovated carriage house, on an acre in the village of Nyack, listed for 2.9 million. 914 772 5858 Together, they encompass about seven square miles and 12,400 people, according to the census. Upper Nyack has the leafiest lots and the largest houses, particularly along the river, which is dotted with estates that evoke the grandeur of France's Loire Valley. Clustered around East Castle Heights Avenue is Van Houten's Landing, a compact National Register historic district. Its Italianate houses once belonged to shipbuilders whose vessels hauled vegetables, iron and red sandstone to New York. (Departing from the same spot later were steamships loaded with passengers.) Newer homes, in Cape Cod and colonial styles, are inland. Open space is to the north, courtesy of Nyack Beach State Park and Hook Mountain, a National Natural Landmark because of the 200 million year old rocks. 646 NORTH BROADWAY A four bedroom, three and a half bathroom ranch house in Upper Nyack, built in 1961 on 1.2 acres, listed for 1.29 million. 914 772 5858 Whimsical Victorians, with curlicue carvings, fish scale shingles and gingerbread trim in colors like lemon, olive and pink, can be found in South Nyack, where streets dead end at private docks. Nyack College has a large campus there, although the Christian school is planning to eventually close the 600 student facility and sell it. Squeezed between the two is the village of Nyack, with its dense mix of houses, apartments, bars, cafes and restaurants. Several large scale luxury housing developments are rising there, including Pavion Apartments, a low slung complex on South Franklin Street with 135 units, from studios to two bedrooms. Also underway is TideWater, a 128 unit, three building waterfront condo complex with a public esplanade on a former Standard Oil site. Controversy dogged the project over the height of its buildings, now at 52 feet. The area has previously known conflict: Next door is the Clermont condo complex, whose tall, stucco sided tower drew flak when it was built in the 1980s. 260 PIERMONT AVENUE A four bedroom house with two full and two half bathrooms in South Nyack, built in 1910 on 0.34 acres, listed for 835,000. 914 263 3403 Nyack also has co ops, like the Salisbury Point complex, a red brick, postwar property with 120 apartments next to the bridge in South Nyack. In late February, there were 50 homes listed for sale in the three villages, according to the real estate site Zillow. The least expensive was a one bedroom at the Ivanhoe co op, a 1960s complex in Nyack, for 198,000, while the priciest was a Queen Anne style house with six bedrooms, six bathrooms and eight fireplaces, on 1.42 riverfront acres, for 4.995 million. Activity has slowed in step with that of the surrounding region, although prices seem healthy. In 2017, 97 single family homes sold, at an average of 575,000, according to William Raveis Baer McIntosh Real Estate, a local agency; in 2018, 76 single family homes sold, at an average of 713,000. (Brokers said the average was boosted by a seven bedroom Dutch colonial built in 1906 that sold for 5.1 million.) Rents run the gamut. In February, one bedrooms listed on Zillow, many in houses, ranged from 1,300 to 2,300 a month. Some of the village of Nyack's downtown was considered seedy in the 1980s, but antiques stores led a turnaround, residents said. Now, on blocks with few vacancies, night life beckons. Alternately, there are Rockland Coaches buses that travel to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in Manhattan, by way of the Lincoln Tunnel, in around an hour and 10 minutes. A 20 trip pass costs about 185. Historians say Nyack popularized yoga, thanks to Pierre Bernard, who ran an ashram style resort in the early 20th century called the Clarkstown Country Club. Not so much a place to swing clubs as a retreat for downward dogs, the organization catered to society women, including some Vanderbilts. It was described as a "Sanskrit sect" by The New York Times, while critics derided it as a cult. The Omnipotent Oom, as Mr. Bernard was known, eventually sold his sprawling estate. Eagle's Nest, his Tudor style house, is now Shuman Hall, an administrative building at Nyack College. Other estate buildings became dorms. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
SAN FRANCISCO In 1998, Google paid 1,700 a month to rent its first office half a home, including the garage, in Silicon Valley. What a deal. After two decades of extraordinary growth by tech companies like Google, real estate prices in the area have skyrocketed, fueling a shortage of affordable housing and exacerbating inequality. A small one bedroom apartment near the company's current headquarters costs about 3,500 a month. Now Google, saying it wants to be a "good neighbor," has plans to provide some relief. On Tuesday, it pledged to invest 1 billion in land and money to build homes. The company plans to repurpose at least 750 million worth of commercially zoned land it owns over the next 10 years, Google's chief executive, Sundar Pichai, said. Google would work with local governments to allow developers to lease the land to build homes. In addition, Google plans to create a 250 million investment fund to provide incentives for developers to create more affordable homes in the area, Mr. Pichai said. Although the details are not final, Google said the fund might provide loans or make investments in projects that were geared toward building affordable housing. The announcement is the latest attempt by tech industry leaders to tackle a problem they helped create but until recently had left largely unaddressed. Google, Facebook, Apple and a host of start ups have concentrated wealth in and around San Francisco and Seattle, attracting workers to those areas from across the world. But the housing supply has not kept pace. As a result, buying or renting a home in those regions has become prohibitive for people outside the technology industry. In January, Microsoft announced that it would allocate 500 million to help provide affordable housing in the Seattle area. That same month, a group of Bay Area philanthropists, including Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, also committed 500 million to protect and expand affordable housing in the area. Google's 1 billion is not a donation, since the company will likely still make money off leases to developers or low interest loans. Mr. Pichai referred to them as a " 1 billion investment." But Google may make far less money from the investments than if executives put the money in its core business. The shortage of available land in Silicon Valley has made it difficult to increase the supply of housing. Google estimates the fund and the repurposed land could spur the building of at least 20,000 homes in the Bay Area. "We hope this plays a role in addressing the chronic shortage of affordable housing options for longtime middle and low income residents," Mr. Pichai wrote in a blog post Want to stay up to date on California's housing crisis and other issues affecting the Golden State? Sign up for California Today. Google made its announcement a day before the annual shareholder meeting for its parent company, Alphabet. In the past, the company has been criticized at those meetings for not doing enough to ease the housing problems in the area. Google recently proposed plans to add new offices in Mountain View, where it has its headquarters, and in nearby San Jose. In those development projects, the company has pushed for a mix of office and retail space along with residential properties, a departure from the sprawling office parks that are common throughout Silicon Valley. Since 2005, California has added 308 housing units for every 1,000 new residents, about half the level of New York, according to the McKinsey Global Institute. That long term shortage has only been worsened by the growth of tech: Over the past eight years, the Bay Area has added about 676,000 jobs and 176,000 housing units. The result has been punishing rent increases, rising homelessness and campers parked on Silicon Valley sides streets. California now has not only some of the highest wages in the country but also the nation's highest poverty rate once the cost of living is figured in. Just a few hours before Google's announcement, the National Low Income Housing Coalition put out a report that showed Bay Area counties account for five of the six most expensive places to live in the country. In Santa Clara County, which includes Mountain View, a worker would have to make 54.60 an hour to afford a two bedroom apartment. Despite its obvious and longstanding housing shortage, the state has struggled to find a political solution. Gavin Newsom, the new governor, campaigned on an audacious promise to push policies that would lead to the construction of 3.5 million new homes by 2025 California is on a pace to build about one million but nothing that has happened in the Legislature suggests that goal will be even close to met. Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator from San Francisco, has proposed a bill each of the past two years that would force cities to allow more dense housing near transit stops. His efforts have been met with fierce opposition from suburban homeowners who consider low density living sacrosanct, and has yet to move his bills beyond legislative committees. Cities start to question an American ideal: a house with a yard on every lot. Lenny Siegel, a former city councilman in Mountain View, said Google's pledge to repurpose the land was especially important given the shortage of land for new residential property in the area. He praised Google for its actions, but said the imbalance between new jobs and homes meant that unless Google stops hiring, the housing shortages would not be resolved. Alphabet, its parent company, has continued to hire aggressively. It had 98,771 employees at the end of 2018, compared with 80,110 a year earlier. "As long as Google keeps hiring, we won't solve our housing crisis. We'll just keep it from getting worse," Mr. Siegel said. "In most parts of the country, they don't blame job creators for housing costs, but they do here."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
How Much Watching Time Do You Have This Weekend? None No matter how much free time you have this weekend, we have TV recommendations for you. Come back every week for new suggestions on what to watch. This Weekend I Have ... a Half Hour, and I Like Clones When to watch: Sunday, at 11:30 p.m., on Adult Swim. TV's brashest grandfather grandson pair return for more universe bending adventures, with Morty secretly stashing a crystal that foretells the many possible circumstances of his death g iven his status as the sidekick to a reckless genius, there are endless ways for him to go. "Rick and Morty" is bold and imaginative, but it can also be winkingly self conscious, as here when the duo claim that Morty's sister, Summer, "ruined the Season 4 premiere." ... an Hour, and the Ocean Is Good When to watch: Saturday, at 9 p.m., on BBC America. The latest installment in the "Blue Planet" series returns to the oceans, educating viewers on the thrilling beauty and also literal garbage therein. Marvel at the tiger sharks; recoil at the lost shipping container that dumped hundreds of appliances on the ocean floor. If you can't love a baby turtle hatching on the beach and windmilling its way to the water, I can't help you, but maybe the description of whale spray as tasting like "weak cabbage soup" is more your speed. ... Six Hours, and I Need Extra Strength TV When to watch: Now, on Acorn TV. This Canadian series, which premiered in 2003 , comes and goes from streaming pretty often, but trust that I will write about it whenever it does it's one of my favorite shows ever, and one that gets better and better the more you watch it. The series is set within a Shakespearean theater company that gets a much needed creative jolt when its former star returns to direct "Hamlet," with a Hollywood actor (played by Luke Kirby) as the melancholy Dane. Season 2, about staging "Macbeth," is available starting Nov. 25, and Season 3, in which they do "King Lear," is available starting Dec. 16. There is nothing I wouldn't do for a Season 4.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
When Kurimanzutto opened in Mexico City in 1999, Monica Manzutto and her husband, Jose Kuri, along with the artist Gabriel Orozco, wanted to create something different from an ordinary commercial gallery. Ideas like participation, art spaces as "platforms" or "laboratories," and "provisional" projects were popular at the time. During its history, Kurimanzutto has achieved international stature by following that anti model. Instead of settling on a fixed location for the gallery, sites and spaces were chosen, based on the nature and requirements of each project. The gallery has been turned into a convenience store by Mr. Orozco, an installation with cars by Thomas Hirschhorn and exhibitions have appeared in the Mexico City International Airport, a local restaurant and a shipping container. The gallery has a permanent home in the Condesa section of Mexico City, a gorgeously sprawling spread in a former lumberyard and industrial bakery redesigned by the architect Alberto Kalach. There are open wood trusses and stone courtyards with vegetation chosen to attract butterflies. When Kurimanzutto New York debuts officially on May 3 at 22 East 65th Street (it's also open this Saturday) it will be something of a homecoming, since the idea for the original gallery was hatched here. But it will still be fluid, adapting to the ideas of artists it shows both Mexican and international by moving around the city. It will be run by Lissa McClure and Bree Zucker. (Ms. McClure started at the Marian Goodman Gallery in New York and Ms. Zucker at Kurimanzutto in Mexico City.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The New York Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist, 34, joined the team for the 2005 6 season at age 23. Back then, the native of Are, Sweden, was teased for his skinny jeans, skinny ties and European flair. He stuck with his look and is now known as perhaps the most stylish guy in the National Hockey League. 1 Jacket I've been wearing this navy blue wool coat with a fur collar from Ferragamo. I got it from the Ferragamo store in New York City almost a year ago. I like the way it fits, which is slim, and it's a little fun with the collar. You can also take off the collar, and then you get a different look. It works well with jeans and also with suits. 2 Suit We have to wear suits when we travel and go to games, so four to five days a week, you're in a suit. I remember my first couple of years in the league, there were a lot of comments about how I dressed, because I guess it was more European. I was wearing skinny ties this was 11 years ago and they were not used to that. But then two years later, skinny ties started to pick up in the U.S., especially in New York. But I've found it doesn't really matter what people say. If you feel comfortable, stick with it. The last couple of years, I've been starting to wear more and more double breasted styles. It's kind of a little bit more old school. I like one by this Swedish brand Stephen F. 3 Shoes Ferragamo makes the best shoes. My favorite is probably a pair of black velvet ones, although I don't wear them all the time. 4 Watch I picked up a new TAG Heuer watch a few months ago. It's in rose gold, and I've been wearing that the most lately. When it comes to clothes, I wear a lot of blue, black and gray, and also, of course, white shirts. The watch has a gray face and gray band, but then it looks really good with the rose gold. The contrast is what made it stand out. But it's still a very clean look, which is what I like. 5 Jeans If I'm not in suits, I'll wear jeans, boots and a leather jacket. I love music and I like a little bit of that rock 'n' roll look. I wear a lot of black jeans. My favorites are by Tiger of Sweden. They're skinny but not too tight. Again, that was something I got a lot of comments on in the early days, but it's pretty common here now. And now the younger guys in the league dress better and care more about clothes. But even if someone teases you, just laugh it off. Have fun with it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
THE BACHELOR 8 p.m. on ABC. Peter Weber or Pilot Pete, as he's known to some fans, prepares to land the 24th season of the dating show in this two hour episode. It's difficult to forecast what this finale installment will entail. A post finale wrap up episode, which in past seasons has updated the audience on the aftermath of the Bachelor's final decision, will close out the season for good on Tuesday. THE NEW POPE 9 p.m. on HBO. Paolo Sorrentino's follow up to the new "The Young Pope" has included not one, but two, new pontiffs. After Pius XIII (Jude Law) suffered a heart attack and slipped into a coma at the end of the first series, he was first replaced by Pope Francis II, whose radical reforms earned him the enmity of his brethren before he died of a heart attack, and then by John Paul III (John Malkovich), a reluctant leader whose tenure has been marred by blackmail, terrorism and his addiction to drugs. But it hasn't only featured new faces. In the seventh episode, Pius awoke in Venice. After a moving attempt to help his doctor's family there, the relatively young, but no longer new, pope returned to Rome to re establish himself at the heart of the Catholic Church. How he and John Paul III will coexist remains to be seen. STALKER (1979) Stream on the Criterion Channel; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Andrei Tarkovsky's loose adaptation of Boris and Arkady Strugatsky's science fiction novel "Roadside Picnic" lends itself to allegorical interpretation. Some say it's about the Soviet Union's gulag prison camp system, others that its real subject is nuclear disaster. There is much to suggest that this film is about more than the zigzagging journey of three men through the Zone, a mysterious, government guarded wasteland, in search of a room that may grant the deepest desire of successful pilgrims. But its meaning turns out to be as elusive as its strange setting. The motivation of the main characters, a writer, a scientist and a guide who specializes in traversing the area, are all called into question over the course of the movie and its ambiguous ending only heightens its central mysteries. MUTE FIRE (2019) Stream on Mubi. Federico Atehortua Arteaga's essay film connects the 1906 execution of four men charged with attempting to kill the president of Colombia, his mother's mutism and the origins of Colombian cinema. Filmmaking, the director shows, potentially has much in common with how political violence is staged and portrayed. Both can manipulate their audience members while giving the impression of verisimilitude. The film's more personal dimension reflects the ways in which larger political and aesthetic issues reverberate in the lives of individuals.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
The couple wanted a baby boy, but the male embryo they had chosen the only one available after an expensive round of in vitro fertilization received a troubling test result. A handful of cells from the five day old embryo were deemed abnormal, apparently missing Chromosome 21, an absence that can lead to developmental defects. Many couples having IVF would have reconsidered their choices. But the two women, aged 48 and 45, had the embryo implanted anyway. And despite the initial test findings, their baby was born healthy in 2014. "The whole pregnancy was an emotional roller coaster," said one of the mothers. (The women were granted anonymity because no one knows the child is not biologically related to either one, and they would like to explain it to him once he is older.) "Even when the baby was born, it took me a good five to 10 minutes to even look at him," she said. "Finally I peeked over, and he looked normal." The test used on their embryo is called preimplantation genetic screening, or P.G.S., a biopsy performed by plucking a few cells from the developing embryo. Just a few years ago, P.G.S. was precise enough only to ascertain whether an embryo was normal or abnormal. Now high resolution, next generation sequencing has sharpened the view, and researchers are finding something surprising: About 20 percent of embryos have both normal and abnormal cells, and the percentage increases with maternal age. These so called mosaic embryos have long been known, but they have been detectable during an active IVF cycle only in the last year. At least some of these embryos seem to mature into healthy children. The women's son is one of 10 healthy infants recently born from mosaic embryos, as reported by separate research groups in New York and Italy, representing a success rate of roughly 40 percent. The births are now provoking controversy among fertility experts about what to do if mosaics are the only viable embryos a couple has left after IVF. Should would be parents discard them because they contain abnormalities? Or transfer them in the hopes of achieving a normal pregnancy? "Every research program is fearful of throwing away a healthy embryo, but on the other hand, mosaicism is not always a benign thing," said Richard Scott, founder and laboratory director at Reproductive Medicine Associates of New Jersey. "Now we are paying attention to these mosaics, but we don't know exactly what to do with them." As an embryo rapidly divides after fertilization, mistakes in cell division sometimes produce abnormal cell lines. If those cells die off and the embryo manages to self correct, or if the abnormal cells wind up segregated in the placenta, the embryo may develop into a normal baby. But if abnormal cells proliferate in the embryo, it will probably fail to implant, result in a miscarriage or, more rarely, the birth of a child with serious defects. Dr. Norbert Gleicher, the director of the Center for Human Reproduction in New York, decided to transfer seemingly abnormal embryos in an experiment after growing doubtful about P.G.S. He questioned whether a biopsy that examines five to 10 random cells from the outer shell of a 200 cell embryo can reliably represent the inner cell mass, the crucial core from which the fetus develops. "I think the biological hypothesis that you can, from a single biopsy, determine whether an embryo is normal or chromosomally abnormal that is flawed," he said. During last fall's annual meeting of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, Dr. Gleicher reported three normal births after the transfer of embryos with both normal and abnormal cells. He has since reported one more normal birth and a normal current pregnancy. But many IVF doctors are reluctant to implant these embryos and stand by the reliability of P.G.S. A study from the New York University School of Medicine, yet to be released, has found that the error rate in detecting normal embryos is just 1 percent. And at least three randomized, controlled studies have concluded that P.G.S. is an effective way to improve pregnancy rates and reduce the frequency of miscarriages. "I can tell you I have not seen a medical test that has had more of an impact on clinical outcomes in reproductive medicine than this," said Mark Hughes, a clinical scientist who has performed pioneering research on the genetics of embryonic development. What experts do not yet know is where in the embryo abnormal cells may end up; there is no way to track them as they proliferate. Until more data emerges, many fertility doctors remain unwilling to transfer mosaics. "We are not reassured that a small subset of normal, as characterized in babies not children, not adults warrants a complete change in policy and standard of practice," said Dr. Mark Sauer, the chief of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Columbia University Medical Center. Others, like Dr. James Grifo, the director of the Langone Fertility Center at New York University and an author of the new study on P.G.S.'s accuracy, are cautiously willing to transfer mosaic embryos if a patient has no normal embryos and has genetic counseling first. "A mosaic embryo does have potential for reproduction," he said, "but it could be anywhere on the spectrum from a healthy to a damaged baby, and we don't know where."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Duane Michals, the pioneer of still image, multiframe sequences that introduced storytelling to modern photography, stood in the conservation lab of the Morgan Library Museum one recent autumn day discussing his two year treasure hunt through the institution's vast collection of works, and their relevance to his own. For Mr. Michals, whose roving mind at age 87 still sprints from the philosophical to the paradoxical to the playful, foraging through the museum's vaults was tantamount to an Odyssean journey through some of the finest examples of what civilized man hath wrought. "Imagine all Christmases and birthdays combined into a single event," he said about the pleasure of discovering a trove of drawings by William Blake, or the original score of the Haffner symphony by Mozart, or a Gutenberg Bible from 1455. He picked up a panel of gouache drawings from around 1900 by the French illustrator James Jacques Joseph Tissot titled "God Creating the World," a biblical morality tale in a series of lighthearted scenes depicting the creation of Adam; then Eve; the two of them frolicking; Eve eating the apple; and their banishment from paradise. The Tissot sequence is among nearly 60 works in his final selection for the current exhibition "Illusions of the Photographer: Duane Michals at the Morgan," through Feb. 2. His pick of drawings, paintings and artifacts resides in dialogue with 38 of Mr. Michals's photographic works his narrative sequences as well as stand alone prints, projected images from a series titled "Empty New York," and several of his recent short films. "I had been looking at a lot of Rousseau paintings when I made the sequence," Mr. Michals said, referring to the jungle scenes of the French Post Impressionist. While he loves the Tissot panel, he admitted, "I'm a raging atheist," distancing himself from its religious message. "I was a pretend Catholic and then I stopped pretending." The spiritual dimension of "Paradise Regained" is balanced by the artist's tongue in cheek view of urban life, where men and women only return to a natural state indoors, where everything is unnatural. "The things we chose from the collection were so close to what my instincts are," he said to Joel Smith, the curator of photography at the Morgan, who organized the show with Mr. Michals. The photographer was referring to the kinship between things he chose and the irreverent nature of his own work. "I'm completely overwhelmed by the nature of our reality," he is quoted as saying in the exhibition catalog about human evolution. "We've been working on this version of man for a thousand years. He lives longer, he's healthier, but he's still an unproven product. Still the same greedy little bastard." To illustrate the point, he reached for Voltaire's briefcase among the holdings in the Morgan's collection. It dates from the 1700s and is decorated with gold leaf filigree on its red leather casing. Mr. Smith recalled that Mr. Michals was so "wowed at the thought of Voltaire's ideas living inside it and amused by the showbiz of its provenance" that he went home and painted a portrait of Candide on an old tintype, adding Voltaire's bitterly ironic refrain in white block letters: "This Is the Best of All Possible Worlds." The briefcase and "Candide, 2019" are both in the show. Yet, Mr. Michals doesn't share Voltaire's bleak view of existence. His own work is often characterized by an iconoclastic wit, imbued with serious metaphysical inquiry a "curiosity about the nature of reality, in a much more profound sense than just a bunch of atoms." When Mr. Michals arrived in New York from Pittsburgh in the early 1950s, the city provided not only freedom from the strict conventions of his Catholic upbringing, but an opening to worlds of ideas and experiences that extended in all directions. By the early 1960s, he was living with his life partner, the architect Frederick Gorree (who passed away in 2017) and experimenting with the photographic image beyond the single frame, often including handwritten texts. "Duane cut photography's umbilical cord," Mr. Smith said about the photographer's contributions to the medium. "He saw there's no reason to limit the camera to what you find in the world; it should be part of the history of expressing ideas." Mr. Michals's 1970 one man show at the Museum of Modern Art confirmed his significance in establishing a new genre. In the 1960s, he became interested in Buddhism and meditation, further expanding his artistic concerns. At the Morgan, Mr. Michals walked over to a large, eye popping ink drawing by Henry Pearson, an abstract artist loosely associated with the Op Art movement. Pearson's "128th Psalm (Study for 'Five Psalms')" from 1968, is a light bulb shaped form with lines emanating from the center like electrified nerve endings and pulsating out beyond the frame. "This drawing is pure energy," he said. That same year, Mr. Michals who had not known Mr. Pearson's work made "The Illuminated Man," a photograph of a male figure facing the camera, his head emanating light, suggesting enlightenment. "The Illuminated Man" and "128th Psalm" share the theme of spiritual radiance. Mr. Michals cited a 1937 painting by Rene Magritte not in the Morgan Collection called "The Pleasure Principle." It is a portrait of the poet Edward James, a patron of Surrealist art, his head a glowing light bulb. "I only discovered the painting later," he said, after he had made his own photographic homage, in 1965, in which Magritte appears ghostlike in double exposure, against a canvas on an easel, behind an empty chair. "I was very proud to have had a similar idea to one of my deities," he said. "The nature of consciousness is always the central question," he asserted. In "The Human Condition," his panel of six photographs from 1969 begins with a man standing on the 14th Street subway platform; the train arrives and he is bathed in a halo of light; the light becomes a swirl and in the last frame he is swept into a white disc the size of a galaxy passing through the night sky. From the immediate to the universal in six frames. Mr. Michals was admittedly intimidated photographing another of his deities, Giorgio de Chirico, in Rome in 1968, at the end of the painter's life. So when he came upon a portrait of de Chirico by Irving Penn in the Morgan's collection, he included it in the show, along with his own portrait of the artist. He considered de Chirico at the height of his powers as a Surrealist, before he turned to more classical painting. "Like a god controlling lightning bolts, he could throw ideas," he said of de Chirico in his metaphysical period. "He presented a private vocabulary that I had to learn to speak. We always have to come to great poets and artists; it's not their responsibility to come to us. Now I can speak de Chiricoean with a New York accent."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The former N.F.L. player Ed O'Neil, 67, left, will see an estimated 1,400 increase to his monthly pension, but his son, Keith, also a former pro, will lose 2,339 in benefit payments. "Where is the thought process of taking away from guys who can't work?" Ed O'Neil said. Ed O'Neil left the N.F.L. four decades ago, and over the years he has spent less and less time following professional football. He joined the league in 1974 as a first round draft pick of the Detroit Lions, and he learned last week that as part of the new, 10 year collective bargaining agreement, he and thousands of other former players will get bumps in their pensions. For O'Neil, who is 67 and began drawing on his pension three years ago, that could mean about 1,400 more per month. But O'Neil, a retired football coach, is not celebrating. His son, Keith, a former linebacker who played four years with the Dallas Cowboys and the Indianapolis Colts, will see his N.F.L. disability payments decline, another provision of the new labor deal that stipulates that next year about 400 former players on total and permanent disability will see the amount they receive decline by the value of their Social Security disability benefits. Keith O'Neil, who received a diagnosis of bipolar disorder with psychotic episodes in 2010, will get 2,339 less per month. "It makes me bittersweet because I'm thankful for what I'm getting but I can't in the pit of my stomach see how they can take away from players who are permanently disabled," Ed O'Neil said from his home in Pendleton, N.Y., about 20 miles east of Niagara Falls. "Where is the thought process of taking away from guys who can't work?" Every negotiation particularly sprawling labor agreements between a 15 billion league and more than 2,000 players is a give and take. This deal, which was approved by just 60 votes on March 15, had plenty of trade offs, too, most notably the players agreeing to add a 17th regular season game in return for an additional percentage point, up to 48 percent, of the league's revenue. "These players signed contracts that they would have total and permanent disability payments, and now they're going back and changing it," said the free agent safety Eric Reid, who called the decision unjust and unconscionable. "For the N.F.L.P.A. to say it was a concession that has to be given back, that's disgraceful." DeMaurice Smith, the executive director of the players' union, said in a letter last weekend that the union agreed to cuts in the disability benefits to win increases in pension benefits, which will help more players. "It is not a decision we wanted to make or took lightly, but in totality we believe that a system that will ultimately allow more men to qualify for disability payments was better, and that securing pensions for another decade was vitally important during an era when most Americans are losing any economic security retirement from their former employers," he said. In a significant victory, roughly 700 players who played at least three seasons and retired before 1993 will secure pensions worth 1,650 a month for the first time. When they left the N.F.L., players needed four seasons of service to qualify for a pension. The new agreement brings these players in line with the requirements for those who retired after 1993. "In those days, our salaries weren't so high so we needed a pension," said Larry Mallory, 67, who played three years for the Giants in the 1970s. "Right now, a lot of older players are going through a lot of tests for their health, and I'm sure this allotment will help them and their families out." "Did we make everyone rich? No," said Lisa Marie Riggins, the president of Fairness for Athletes in Retirement, who, with her husband, the Hall of Fame running back John Riggins, pushed the owners and the players' union to increase pensions for players who played before 1993. "I just wanted to make sure these guys get a bigger check and not have to fill out forms to get it." She added that all former players should receive the same increase regardless of whether they took their pensions before the conventional age of 55. (Thousands of players took payments at 45 years old and have received substantially smaller pensions ever since.) While the N.F.L. owners agreed to expand pension benefits, they persuaded the N.F.L. Players Association to agree to cut disability costs. The trade off did not sit well with some union leaders. Lorenzo Alexander, a linebacker for 13 years and a member of the union's executive committee, which oversaw the negotiations, said that the cut in disability payments was one reason he voted against the agreement. "This was probably our biggest mistake in this deal," he said. "Over all, we've impacted a lot of players. But when you individualize it, for someone who gets up to 30,000 from Social Security, it's a significant cut." Alexander said the N.F.L. was willing to expand pension benefits because there was a fixed number of former players with a fixed number of years of service, so the costs were easier to calculate. The league was more concerned about disability benefits, he said, because the number of players who may qualify for disability benefits is unknown. "The risk and uncertainty scared them significantly," he said. Brian McCarthy, a league spokesman, said in a statement: "Both the N.F.L. and N.F.L.P.A. assessed the relative risks and equity in how we distribute the benefit allocations in the Cap and concluded that we wanted to focus on the method by which all retired players shared in the increases." For decades, former players struggled to persuade current players to incorporate their concerns into labor negotiations. In a league in which the average tenure is a little longer than three years, players often prioritize increasing their pay even though they will spend many more years as a former player than as an active one. Smith's predecessor, the former Raiders offensive lineman Gene Upshaw, was criticized by other former players for not doing enough to protect their interests. "The bottom line is, I don't work for them," Upshaw told The Charlotte Observer in 2006. "They don't hire me and they can't fire me. They can complain about me all day long. They can have their opinion. But the active players have the vote. That's who pays my salary." Since Smith took over the union in 2009, former players' benefits have expanded, though players say that obtaining these benefits can be difficult. Keith O'Neil hired a lawyer to help him apply for N.F.L. disability benefits. He said he learned about the offset of his disability payment only a week before the agreement was ratified, when his lawyer sent him an email. Now, the N.F.L., with the union's assent, has rewritten those rules. "With all the revenues the league can make in a year, you're going to take it away from guys who can't work?" Ed O'Neil said. "It's sinful."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
With baggage fees and flight delays on the rise, carry on travel has become more survival tactic than lifestyle choice. Beyond saving money, flying with only a carry on prevents bags from getting lost in handling, and gives you more flexibility in case of cancellation, as planes are frequently grounded by weather that poses no threat to a train, bus, or car. Here are a few suggestions to help. If you're comfortable carrying loads, a travel backpack fits about 33 percent more stuff into the same external dimensions as a four wheeled carry on suitcase.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Snapchat and Twitter, two social media services that seemed to be struggling just months ago, posted better than anticipated earnings this past week. Google, which is facing down employee protests and regulatory scrutiny in the United States and Europe, posted a 22 percent increase in revenue. Our Google beat reporter, Daisuke Wakabayashi, wrote why it's possible for tech firms to continue earning record profits even as the public's perception of them sours. Google, he said, is the "internet's ultimate beachfront property." If you want to swim in the ocean, you need to walk across Google's private beach first. Even if you don't like the way a tech company behaves, boycotting may be an impossible challenge. I've been fascinated by Kashmir Hill's series at Gizmodo about her struggles to extricate herself from the so called Big Five: Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Facebook. She recounted all the missed texts and wrong turns she made as she tried to get through her day without the technology that I take for granted. The series is a warning about the uphill battle we'd all face if we decided to limit our collective tech addiction. And as long as it remains difficult to quit, tech's profits will continue to soar. Newsrooms are increasingly relying on artificial intelligence to churn out quick news pieces about earthquakes, sports scores and of course earnings. "Robot reporters" are on the rise at Bloomberg, The Washington Post and other publications. Here at The Times, our A.I. experimentation has been limited to newsletter personalization, Jaclyn Peiser reports. Maybe someday soon, a robot reporter will be picking these stories to share with you. Did you know the North Pole could move? I learned that the magnetic north pole is heading toward Siberia at a surprising pace, thanks to a fascinating report from Shannon Hall. The pole, which I'd always assumed was a fixed point, is on the move thanks to the "sloshing" of liquid iron in the outer core of the Earth, and we have to continually track it so that navigation systems remain reliable. But we're a bit behind because of the government shutdown. Instacart revised its tipping policy this past week after backlash from the delivery people who pick up items for shoppers and deliver them to their doorsteps. Late last year, Instacart started counting tips against payments to its delivery people, essentially stripping them of their tips. "It's offensive, it's unethical, and in this climate it's a very dumb thing to do," one Instacart courier told Kevin Roose. Now, Instacart has reversed course and will include tips on top of the delivery fee it pays its shoppers.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
The baton is (finally) passing at the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra: Lahav Shani, a 29 year old Israeli conductor and pianist, will become the orchestra's next music director in 2020, succeeding Zubin Mehta, 81, who is stepping down after half a century. It will be a rare changing of the guard at the orchestra, which Mr. Mehta has shaped for decades; he joined the ensemble in 1969 and was appointed music director in 1977 before being named "music director for life" in 1981. Mr. Mehta announced in 2016 that he would step down in 2019, when Mr. Shani will become music director designate. In turning to Mr. Shani, the orchestra opted for a rising star who is well known to its players: He performed with the group as the soloist in a Tchaikovsky piano concerto with Mr. Mehta in 2007, and by 2013 was invited to conduct its season opening concert. Mr. Shani was elected to the position by "a large majority" of the orchestra's musicians, Yoel Abadi, the Philharmonic's chairman, said in a statement. Mr. Shani will become the chief conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra this September (succeeding Yannick Nezet Seguin) and recently became the principal guest conductor of the Vienna Symphony Orchestra. In 2013, he won first prize at the Gustav Mahler International Conducting Competition in Bamberg, Germany.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Johnny Alf has always been revered by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Joao Gilberto, but his legacy remains obscure, even among Brazilians. Joao Gilberto's landmark "Chega de Saudade" is widely considered bossa nova's first album. But about seven years before its 1959 release, a Brazilian musician known as Johnny Alf composed "Rapaz de Bem." The song incorporated several elements that became hallmarks of the genre: a linear melody, a gentle way of singing, a series of unconventional key changes, a rhythmic dissociation of drums and bass. Alf, a pianist, composer and singer, dared to blend classical, popular, foreign and local music references into his own creative process. The source of his inspiration lies in the music of Chopin, Debussy, Nat King Cole, Stan Kenton, and the Brazilian notables Custodio Mesquita and Francisco Alves. His music attracted the most avant garde ears to the piano bars of the Copacabana neighborhood in Rio, where he regularly performed in the early '50s. Antonio Carlos Jobim, who was also known as Tom, and Gilberto now known as two of the most famous names in bossa nova were among the faithful habitues who were stunned by songs like "Rapaz de Bem," one of Alf's first professional compositions and, the radio host and music producer Ramalho Neto argues in the 1965 book "Historinha do Desafinado," the actual first bossa nova song. Like his music, Alf's story was complex. He was born Alfredo Jose da Silva to a poor Black housemaid. His father died when he was 3, and he owed much of his musical education to his mother's employers an upper middle class family who paid for his piano lessons and helped raise him, though they later strongly disapproved of his nightclub career. (They expected Alf to become an accountant or an English teacher.) But music was intrinsic to Alf's life long before his debut in the clubs of Copacabana. When he was only a high school student, he was invited to play the piano at the Brazilian United States Institute (IBEU), in Rio's downtown. Sessions there earned him his first radio gig and generated his artist name: "Johnny" was suggested by a fellow student for being a popular name in America, and "Alf" was his nickname at the school. The Latin Grammy Awards, whose 22nd edition was held in Las Vegas at the MGM Grand Garden Arena on Nov. 18, is a yearly celebration of Latin music. Learn more about the artists and songs that were honored this year: None Who Won? Here is the complete list of winners. Song of the Year: "Patria y Vida," a Cuban rap song that became a protest anthem, won the prestigious award. Leading Man: Find out what's behind the indelibly catchy songs of the Colombian singer Camilo, who tied for most awards with Juan Luis Guerra. Chilean Songwriter: Mon Laferte, who won for best singer songwriter album, wants her art to transmit all the feelings. In 1949, Alf, a connoisseur of American music, joined the Sinatra Farney Fan Club, a place to appreciate, discuss and play the music of Frank Sinatra and Dick Farney, a Brazilian pianist and singer inspired by the American star. It was here that Alf's music began to flourish, and his sound developed a striking modernity. According to Jose Domingos Raffaelli, a music critic and former Sinatra Farney attendee, Alf used to perform for hours as listeners begged him to play on. In 1952, thanks to a recommendation from Farney himself, Alf got his first job at a Copacabana piano bar called Cantina do Cesar. Three years later, Alf moved to Sao Paulo with the promise of making a better living. By then he was an independent musician in his mid 20s with no family support. In 1958, when bossa nova was gaining momentum in Rio, Alf was 270 miles away far enough to miss out on the movement. But distance wasn't the only barrier Alf faced. Joao Carlos Rodrigues, the author of "Johnny Alf: Duas ou Tres Coisas Que Voce Nao Sabe" ("Johnny Alf: Two or Three Things You Don't Know"), believes the sophistication of Alf's music was a significant obstacle, because the radio and record companies preferred a more "easily digestible" music. Marcos Napolitano, a social history professor at the University of Sao Paulo who researches music movements in Brazil, agreed. "It is undeniable that Alf's work was more subtle, intimate and sophisticated," he said in an email interview, "apart from him being a timid, standoffish performer." Alf's personality offstage where he boldly insisted on creative freedom also limited him. "No one called me to record because I only did what I wanted," he told Rodrigues. Nelson Valencia, who managed Alf's career for over 20 years, said in a phone interview that Alf didn't naturally chase opportunities, but rather waited for them to appear. He added that his client also could have pushed harder to explore the growing Japanese and American markets. In 1963, Alf did record an album in English (with Jobim's compositions) that has never been released. In the late '70s, when Sarah Vaughan, one of his greatest idols, invited him to tour the United States, Alf was warned to refuse it by his mae de santo the priestess of Umbanda, the Afro Brazilian religion to which he was devoted and he didn't go. Alf was also Black, poor and gay in an industry aiming to attract affluent white audiences to the genre. Napolitano said that in the late '50s, the music business saw in bossa nova a chance to compete with American rock 'n' roll, and Valencia acknowledged that race and class inequalities restricted Alf's rise: "There was a movement to promote Tom Jobim, who was rich, white, young, good looking," he said, and added that with Alf's abilities, "maybe he was someone who could overshadow Tom Jobim." Alf's talent, Rodrigues said, could also have been a problem for Aloysio de Oliveira, an influential bossa nova producer who was particularly interested in promoting Jobim and Gilberto in the United States. Alf was excluded from the landmark "Bossa Nova at Carnegie Hall" concert, organized by Sidney Frey (with Oliveira acting as a mediator between artists and the production) and held in New York in 1962. Alaide Costa, Alf's favorite singer, said that racism in bossa nova has always been veiled, to the point where Black people, like her and Alf, didn't even realize they were facing discrimination. "When the movement began, I was already a professional. I used to be invited to the meetings because I could help the movement somehow," she said in a phone interview. "But when the bossa nova boomed, I felt I was no longer necessary." She added that she regrets not having been part of the movement in a larger way. While Alf never achieved stardom, the genre's legends always saw him as a musical guru. Jobim not only used to call him Genialf (a combination of "genius" and "Alf"), but was so inspired by "Rapaz de Bem" that he composed "Desafinado (Off Key)," one of bossa nova's most famous songs. When Gilberto realized that Alf's unusual syncopations reminded him of the beat of the tamborim (a samba percussion instrument), he said he had finally found what he was looking for. Alf, however, has remained a few steps removed from fame. He was, Valencia, said, "his own hero and own villain."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
A sprawling apartment with abundant outdoor space at 150 Charles Street, the Witkoff Group's 91 unit brick and glass condominium in the West Village that sold out just a few weeks after sales opened three years ago, officially closed for 16,843,386.05, city property records show, and was the most expensive sale of the week. The 3,629 square foot sponsor apartment, No. 8A S, with monthly carrying costs of 7,253, has five bedrooms, five and a half baths, a chef's kitchen with a breakfast room and a 26 by 19 foot great room. There are also two large landscaped terraces, encompassing the width of the apartment and totaling 1,178 square feet, that provide stunning panoramic views of the Hudson River and the cityscape. The larger of the terraces, on the apartment's west side, has the river views. It can be reached through several rooms, including the master suite, which offers a study, a walk in closet and a lavish bathroom with a deep soaking tub, radiant heated floors and a shower stall surrounded by custom slabs of white Alabama marble, according to the listing with Douglas Elliman Real Estate. The residence also has a private elevator landing. There are additional building amenities among them, private green space, a 75 foot lap pool, a fitness center, a lounge and a children's playroom. And the new owner may even run into the rocker Jon Bon Jovi, who reportedly paid 12.9 million for a four bedroom apartment in the building last summer after selling a penthouse at 158 Mercer Street for 34 million.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
As a graduate student at Teachers College, Columbia University, Victoria Porpora commuted to school from her parents' home in Scarsdale, N.Y., where she grew up. The trip by Metro North train to New York City took nearly an hour each way, because her arrival and departure point was the Harlem 125th Street Station on the East Side, and Columbia is on the West Side. "The crosstown bus was the killer," she said. "It stops at almost every corner." Ms. Porpora, 23, who is known as Tori, wanted to move to Manhattan, and the pieces fell into place when a friend connected her with Emma Murphy. Ms. Murphy, 22, who was living with her family in Mamaroneck, N.Y., had attended the University of Vermont for a year, but was starting at Columbia's School of General Studies. She would have a similar commute, and was glad to team up with a roommate. Ms. Porpora's graduate school friends, many of whom commuted themselves or rented rooms in Upper Manhattan, suggested she could easily hunt on her own, but she believed otherwise. "I am the queen of efficiency, and that sounded like a horrible idea," she said. So she contacted her childhood friend Claire Marshall, a saleswoman at Citi Habitats. Ms. Murphy felt overwhelmed. "I honestly didn't even understand what a no fee apartment rental was," she said. Ms. Marshall explained it to her. They spent a snowy day looking, starting a bit south of Columbia at a walk up building on West 109th Street in Manhattan Valley. The apartment, a two bedroom with a washer dryer, for 2,795 a month, was on the ground floor, with windows facing the street. They flinched. "Everything that was installed every appliance, every counter everything was crooked," Ms. Porpora said. "It felt like somebody threw together a two bedroom out of something that was meant to be a studio or one bedroom." Both felt claustrophobic in the tiny rooms. "I am 5 9 and that added to the level of tininess I was experiencing," Ms. Murphy said. They passed. Farther south, on Amsterdam Avenue near 102nd Street, a two bedroom in a small walk up building was renting for 2,550 a month. This one was above a restaurant. Ms. Murphy, having discussed her housing search with friends at her retail job at the Westchester mall, was wary. "My boss told me a horror story about living above a restaurant with insects and rats and a lot of loud noise," she said. "That was looming in the back of my head." Also a problem was the railroad layout, which would require one to walk through the other's bedroom to get to the bathroom. The apartment seemed fine for a couple, Ms. Porpora said, but "it was so not conducive to any way we would want to live." They soldiered on, wondering whether every place in their price range would have a drawback. "I trusted it was going to get better," Ms. Murphy said. "I noticed right away the apartment building smells nice, or at least it doesn't smell bad, which was important for me," Ms. Murphy said. The living area was an odd six sided shape. The bathroom was minuscule. But each bedroom had a closet, and there was plenty of overhead storage, thanks to the high ceilings. The long, skinny layout seemed ideal for roommates. "The bedrooms were split so it didn't feel they were on top of each other," Ms. Marshall said. She told the two women that they needed to apply quickly if they were interested. They were. Ms. Murphy's lesson about no fee rental apartments was reinforced: This wasn't one. The roommates split the broker fee of one month's rent, and arrived just after Christmas in time for the new semester. Now, Columbia is an easy 20 minutes away via the No. 1 train. "I like having a home neighborhood and a school neighborhood," Ms. Porpora said. She pays 1,250 a month for the smaller bedroom, which holds a bed and a dresser. "You couldn't come in here with your Pottery Barn bedroom set," she said, but it's all she needs. Her room, and the living room, face a back alley.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new songs and videos. Just want the music? Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes). Like what you hear? Let us know at theplaylist nytimes.com and sign up for our Louder newsletter, a once a week blast of our pop music coverage. The more famous Cardi B becomes, the more aggrieved her music sounds. "Press" is her first solo single since the bruising "Money," and it's paranoid and terse. Over frenzied creepy true crime show production, Cardi barks her rhymes densely and at a quick clip, emphasizing raw energy over clarity. She's still feisty, and sometimes funny: "Ding donggggg/must be that whip that I ordered/and a new crib for my daughter." But there's none of that signature Cardi cackling, no joy at all. "Cardi don't need more press," she insists over and again. Let her breathe. JON CARAMANICA Desire drives "Hurry on Home," the first Sleater Kinney song to emerge from the band's new album produced by Annie Clark (a.k.a. St. Vincent). The track amps up both bluntness and artifice for the band. The chords and beat are more conventional than usual for Sleater Kinney, as if the band is embracing Joan Jett fandom. Meanwhile, the recording is a welter of overdubbed voices popping in and out with electronic precision and massed instruments, but it ends with a lone voice, sing chanting, "You got me used to loving you." How it will fit into an album still a crucial question for Sleater Kinney is unknown. In the meantime, a canny video clip by Miranda July turns the song into a text dialogue that ends in a prospective tryst. JON PARELES The "Thoughts" Sasha Sloan is trying to control are ones that constantly undermine her: "All I think about is everything I'm not." Echoey U2 guitars suspend her in insecurity; the beat that arrives, but later disappears, tries to push her toward self acceptance. Not yet, but there's hope. And the video clip makes clear that she is performing, not succumbing. PARELES Matt Mitchell writes music to challenge himself and his fellow musicians, forcing them onto their toes and keeping them there. By his telling, it took years for his quintet, Phalanx Ambassadors, to master the shifting time signatures, oddly overlain harmonies and dyspeptic, misdirected melodies that define its debut album. So what goals should a listener set when taking in something so complex? Follow along as closely as possible, attuned to every ricocheting unison between Patricia Brennan's vibraphone and Miles Okazaki's guitar, parsing every mind defying displacement between Mitchell's right hand and his left? Or simply revel in the glistening textural play between these instruments (a bassist and drummer round out the group), and the fervor of the improvisers? On "Stretch Goal" as on the album's other six tracks both options work, and there's nothing mutually exclusive about them. RUSSONELLO Kokoko is the musical core electronics, singers, dancers, percussion, a homemade electric guitar of an arts collective from Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, collaborating with the French electronic musician Debruit. "Buka Dansa" can be translated as "dance till it breaks" or "break the dance," and this track lives up to both choices. The guitar twangs little riffs, voices whoop and sing and shout, a smooth synthesizer bass line comes and goes; the perky central beat is disrupted from left and right, and sudden key changes add a few more swerves. It's hyperactive and unstoppable. A full album, "Fongola," is due in July. PARELES Dodie doesn't detail what "trauma" she was exposed to when "You opened a door that a kid shouldn't walk through," and that just makes "Guiltless" even creepier. She realizes that the culprit feels no guilt, so she decides she'll keep it to herself: "I'll carry your burden till the day that you die." With plucked acoustic chords and elfin backup voices, the music stays airy and whisper light; the implications are anything but. PARELES Sufjan Stevens offers benevolent sentiments while revealing a musician's choices on the EP he has released for Pride Month. It includes "Love Yourself" in both a current production echoey keyboard tones, a looped beat, hovering backup vocal and a 1996 demo that he built from layered guitars and voices, more physical but still otherworldly. A new, purposefully unambivalent song, "With My Whole Heart," looks more directly toward pop, with a danceable stop start beat, evolving synth pop constructions and vocals that invite call and response. Both songs are kindly promises, with Stevens deliberating over how to illuminate them. PARELES Four and a half minutes of chorus less rapping from NF, an Eminemesque white rapper who had an unexpected pop hit two years ago with the pointed "Let You Down." If "The Search" is to be believed, rapid fame has been nothing but trouble for NF, who raps tartly and with compelling angst about how public validation is no match for private suffering: Yeah, the sales can rise Doesn't mean much though when your health declines See, we've all got something that we trapped inside That we try to suffocate, you know, hoping it dies Try to hold it underwater but it always survives Then it comes up out of nowhere like an evil surprise Then it hovers over you to tell you millions of lies You don't relate to that? Must not be as crazy as I am Meza sings from the mountaintop and the riverbed on "Kallfu," which this vocalist, guitarist and composer wrote after visiting Patagonia, in her native Chile. Its name is the word for "blue" in Mapudungun, the language of southern Chile's native Mapuche people. And the lyrics proudly belted, then joyfully sighed tell of the restoration and clarity to be found en plein air. Over the crossing and twirling strings of the Nectar Orchestra, Meza repeats a refrain of liberation and conviction: "Vuelve la calma" (calmness returns). The song comes from Meza's latest album, "Ambar," which features the orchestra throughout. RUSSONELLO	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Victoria Toline would hunch over the kitchen table, steady her hands and draw a bead of liquid from a vial with a small dropper. It was a delicate operation that had become a daily routine extracting ever tinier doses of the antidepressant she had taken for three years, on and off, and was desperately trying to quit. "Basically that's all I have been doing dealing with the dizziness, the confusion, the fatigue, all the symptoms of withdrawal," said Ms. Toline, 27, of Tacoma, Wash. It took nine months to wean herself from the drug, Zoloft, by taking increasingly smaller doses. "I couldn't finish my college degree," she said. "Only now am I feeling well enough to try to re enter society and go back to work." Long term use of antidepressants is surging in the United States, according to a new analysis of federal data by The New York Times. Some 15.5 million Americans have been taking the medications for at least five years. The rate has almost doubled since 2010, and more than tripled since 2000. Nearly 25 million adults, like Ms. Toline, have been on antidepressants for at least two years, a 60 percent increase since 2010. The drugs have helped millions of people ease depression and anxiety, and are widely regarded as milestones in psychiatric treatment. Many, perhaps most, people stop the medications without significant trouble. But the rise in longtime use is also the result of an unanticipated and growing problem: Many who try to quit say they cannot because of withdrawal symptoms they were never warned about. Some scientists long ago anticipated that a few patients might experience withdrawal symptoms if they tried to stop they called it "discontinuation syndrome." Yet withdrawal has never been a focus of drug makers or government regulators, who felt antidepressants could not be addictive and did far more good than harm. The drugs initially were approved for short term use, following studies typically lasting about two months. Even today, there is little data about their effects on people taking them for years, although there are now millions of such users. Expanding use of antidepressants is not just an issue in the United States. Across much of the developed world, long term prescriptions are on the rise. Prescription rates have doubled over the past decade in Britain, where health officials in January began a nationwide review of prescription drug dependence and withdrawal. In New Zealand, where prescriptions are also at historic highs, a survey of long term users found that withdrawal was the most common complaint, cited by three quarters of long term users. Yet the medical profession has no good answer for people struggling to stop taking the drugs no scientifically backed guidelines, no means to determine who's at highest risk, no way to tailor appropriate strategies to individuals. "Some people are essentially being parked on these drugs for convenience's sake because it's difficult to tackle the issue of taking them off," said Dr. Anthony Kendrick, a professor of primary care at the University of Southampton in Britain. With government funding, he is developing online and telephone support to help practitioners and patients. "Should we really be putting so many people on antidepressants long term when we don't know if it's good for them, or whether they'll be able to come off?" he said. Antidepressants were originally considered a short term treatment for episodic mood problems, to be taken for six to nine months: enough to get through a crisis, and no more. Later studies suggested that "maintenance therapy" longer term and often open ended use could prevent a return of depression in some patients, but those trials very rarely lasted more than two years. Once a drug is approved, physicians in the United States have wide latitude to prescribe it as they see fit. The lack of long term data did not prevent doctors from placing tens of millions of Americans on antidepressants indefinitely. "What you see is the number of long term users just piling up year after year," said Dr. Dr. Mark Olfson, a professor of psychiatry at Columbia University. Dr. Olfson and Dr. Ramin Mojtabai, a professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, assisted The Times with the analysis. Still, it is not at all clear that everyone on an open ended prescription should come off it. Most doctors agree that a subset of users benefit from a lifetime prescription, but disagree over how large the group is. Dr. Peter Kramer, a psychiatrist and author of several books about antidepressants, said that while he generally works to wean patients with mild to moderate depression off medication, some report that they do better on it. "There is a cultural question here, which is how much depression should people have to live with when we have these treatments that give so many a better quality of life," Dr. Kramer said. "I don't think that's a question that should be decided in advance." Antidepressants are not harmless; they commonly cause emotional numbing, sexual problems like a lack of desire or erectile dysfunction and weight gain. Long term users report in interviews a creeping unease that is hard to measure: Daily pill popping leaves them doubting their own resilience, they say. "We've come to a place, at least in the West, where it seems every other person is depressed and on medication," said Edward Shorter, a historian of psychiatry at the University of Toronto. "You do have to wonder what that says about our culture." Patients who try to stop taking the drugs often say they cannot. In a recent survey of 250 long term users of psychiatric drugs most commonly antidepressants about half who wound down their prescriptions rated the withdrawal as severe. Nearly half who tried to quit could not do so because of these symptoms. In another study of 180 longtime antidepressant users, withdrawal symptoms were reported by more than 130. Almost half said they felt addicted to antidepressants. "Many were critical of the lack of information given by prescribers with regard to withdrawal," the authors concluded. "And many also expressed disappointment or frustration with the lack of support available in managing withdrawal." Drug manufacturers do not deny that some patients suffer harsh symptoms when trying to wean themselves from antidepressants. "The likelihood of developing discontinuation syndrome varies by individuals, the treatment and dosage prescribed," said Thomas Biegi, a spokesman for Pfizer, maker of antidepressants like Zoloft and Effexor. He urged that patients work with their doctors to "taper off" to wean themselves by taking shrinking doses and said the company could not provide specific withdrawal rates because it did not have them. Drugmaker Eli Lilly, referring to two popular antidepressants, said in a statement the company "remains committed to Prozac and Cymbalta and their safety and benefits, which have been repeatedly affirmed by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration." The company declined to say how common withdrawal symptoms are. As far back as the mid 1990s, leading psychiatrists recognized withdrawal as a potential problem for patients taking modern antidepressants. The few studies of antidepressant withdrawal that have been published suggest that it is harder to get off some medications than others. This is due to differences in the drugs' half life the time it takes the body to clear the medication once the pills are stopped. Brands with a relatively short half life, like Effexor and Paxil, appear to cause more withdrawal symptoms more quickly than those that stay in the system longer, like Prozac. In one of the earliest published withdrawal studies, researchers at Eli Lilly had people taking Zoloft, Paxil or Prozac stop the pills abruptly, for about a week. Half of those on Paxil experienced serious dizziness; 42 percent suffered confusion; and 39 percent, insomnia. Among patients who stopped taking Zoloft, 38 percent had severe irritability; 29 percent experienced dizziness; and 23 percent, fatigue. The symptoms appeared soon after people were taken off the drugs and resolved once they resumed taking the pills. Those on Prozac, by contrast, experienced no initial spike in symptoms when they stopped, but this result was not surprising. It takes Prozac several weeks to wash out of the body entirely, so one week's interruption is not a test of withdrawal. In a study of Cymbalta, another Eli Lilly drug, people in withdrawal experienced two to three symptoms on average. The most common were dizziness, nausea, headache and paresthesia electric shock sensations in the brain that many people call brain zaps. Most of these symptoms lasted longer than two weeks. "The truth is that the state of the science is absolutely inadequate," said Dr. Derelie Mangin, a professor in the department of family medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. The team randomly assigned the participants to one of two regimens. Half tapered slowly, receiving a capsule each day that, over a period of a month or longer, contained progressively lower amounts of the active drug. The other half believed they were tapering but got capsules that in fact maintained their regular dosage. The researchers followed both groups for a year and a half. They are still working through the data, and their findings will be published in the coming months. But one thing is already clear from this effort and other clinical experience, Dr. Mangin said: Some people's symptoms were so severe that they could not bear to stop taking the drug. "Even with a slow taper from a drug with a relatively long half life, these people had significant withdrawal symptoms such that they had to restart the drug," she said. For now, people who haven't been able to quit just by following a doctor's advice are turning to a method called microtapering: making tiny reductions over a long period of time, nine months, a year, two years whatever it takes. "The tapering rates given by doctors are often way, way too fast," said Laura Delano, who had severe symptoms while trying to get off several psychiatric drugs. She has created a website, The Withdrawal Project, that provides resources on psychiatric drug withdrawal, including a guide to tapering off. She is hardly the only one bewildered by the scarcity of good medical advice about unwinding prescriptions that have become so common. "It has taken a long, long time to get anyone to pay attention to this issue and take it seriously," said Luke Montagu, a media entrepreneur and co founder of the London based Council for Evidence Based Psychiatry, which pushed for Britain's review of prescription drug addiction and dependence. "You've got this huge parallel community that's emerged, largely online, in which people are supporting each other though withdrawal and developing best practices largely without the help of doctors," he said. Dr. Stockmann, the psychiatrist in East London, wasn't entirely convinced withdrawal was a serious issue before he went through it himself. His microtapering strategy finally worked. "There was a really significant moment," he recalled. "I was walking down near my house, past a forest, and I suddenly realized I could feel the full range of emotions again. The birds were louder, the colors more vivid I was happy." "I have seen lots of people patients not being believed, not taken seriously when they complained about this," he added. "That has to stop."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
It's bad enough that Marom Unger needs a squirt of Botox under his armpits every six months to help curb excessive perspiration. Even more humiliating, though, is sitting in his doctor's office surrounded by women. Mr. Unger, a restaurateur in New York, knows that his waiting room companions are probably so consumed by their own cosmetic injustices that they barely notice the XY chromosomes in their midst. Still, he feels as if he's parading around with a wad of toilet paper Velcroed to his heel. Naked. "As a man, I'm a little self conscious," Mr. Unger, 35, said. "I know it's in your head. But it's the same reason guys go smoke in a cigar bar: to have that camaraderie." Mr. Unger's unease is something his plastic surgeon, Norman Rowe, has often heard from his male patients, who make up about 22 percent of his practice. And he has listened. On Dec. 26, Dr. Rowe is opening the Club House, a medical man cave on the Upper East Side where men can gather for Poker Brotox Nights, Cognac and Chemical Peels, hair transplants, microneedling, liposuction and, yes, penis enlargement procedures. "A lot of men tell me they don't like to come in and have a woman sitting next to them," Dr. Rowe said in his Kentucky drawl. "They don't want to call up and have a woman answer the phone and say, 'Hi, what would you like to come in for?'" He paused and lowered his voice. "'I want to come in for a penis augmentation,'" he whispered. "They want a man to answer the phone," he said. "They want to sit next to a guy, they want to watch sports on TV and not listen to Michael Buble on the radio." Possibly he's on to something. About 8 to 10 percent of plastic surgery procedures across the country are performed on men, according to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. Liposuction and tummy tucks are the top two procedures. While "men only" spas have been in existence for a while, they often have female employees and offer facials, massages and manicures. They usually don't do surgical procedures, and there is no medical professional on the premises. In 2014, Grant Stevens, a plastic surgeon, opened Marina ManLand next to his main office in Marina del Rey, Calif. It has a private entrance, reception area and treatment rooms with names like the Dog House, the Bear's Lair and the Lion's Den. The scent of new car leather and freshly cut green grass wafts through the rooms. The bathroom has a urinal and a 24 inch flat screen TV with the making of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue playing on a loop. "It's very male friendly, but it's not female unfriendly," said Dr. Stevens, the president elect of American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery. "It's not a strip club. It's kind of a cross between a sports bar and maybe a smoker's lounge." There are also "attractive female attendants," he said, which his patients want. That isn't a desire, Dr. Rowe said, that his own patients have expressed. One of Dr. Rowe's signatures is a noninvasive penile enlargement, in which he injects dermal filler into the penis. (It typically lasts about two years and costs around 6,000, depending on the amount of filler required). He also does anal tightening procedures, "which is exactly as it sounds," he said. (It can be a laser treatment or done surgically.) For obvious reasons, most men don't like to discuss these sorts of things in polite company. To prove his point, Dr. Rowe notes that almost 80 percent of the inquiries he receives for such procedures come between 2 and 4 a.m. through voice mail or online submissions. Those are the hours when men are searching, thinking about it, he said. But it's not something they want to broadcast. Joseph, a 31 year old sales executive in New Jersey who asked that his last name not be used to protect his privacy, saw Dr. Rowe two years ago for Botox in his forehead. Recently, he decided he wanted more girth in his penis. When he phoned Dr. Rowe's office, a female voice answered the phone. This, he said, unnerved him. Garrett Munce, the grooming director at GQ, understands the sentiment. "Talking about things like thinning hair and aging and penis enlargement treatments are very hard for men in a public or semipublic setting, much less mixed company," Mr. Munce wrote in an email. "It's the same reason, when you book a massage, you are often asked if you have a preference for a male or female therapist. Some people are just more comfortable interacting with their own gender in such an intimate setting, and spas are all about being comfortable." The vibe at the Club House is decidedly comfortable. All of the office attendants the front desk staff to the patient coordinators to the nurses are male. There is no sign over the entrance, but rather a brass plaque with an insignia resembling the adult Simba. Instead of fluffy robes, patients will wear navy cotton jackets with the embossed emblem over the left breast. There is also a poker table, a fireplace, a wide screen television tuned to C Span or ESPN and a private entrance and exit. Run DMC jams on the overhead radio. Dr. Rowe's concern now is what to do about his female clients, some of whom have expressed interest in seeing him in the new location. (It seems worth noting that most of them are single.) Clearly, it would be discriminatory to turn them away, but the idea is to create a space for men. "As far as plastic surgery goes, men are kind of an underserved population," Dr. Rowe said. "They want a place where they can be a little bit more themselves. Straight or gay, they want to do something to better themselves." "There's nothing wrong with a man maintaining," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
IN the face of the yelling, B. J. Perlmutt hesitated, then took the plunge. After all, this was boot camp, and wasn't the point to break you down and make you a man? He was sweating a little but competently finished the task. The shrieking stopped. Mr. Perlmutt had changed his first diaper. His analysis? "I forgot the diaper cream at first, and I was worried the diaper was too tight, but it was nice to see her stop crying." This is Boot Camp for New Dads, a workshop for expectant fathers in Manhattan's Tribeca neighborhood. This boot camp 65 for three hours in an air conditioned basement watching the antics of adorable 3 month old Isold has little in common with brutally exhausting military basic training, but it's far from the only business to latch onto that term. First camps for troubled teenagers adopted the name. Now there are boot camps for computer programming, physical fitness, meditation and executive leadership. Need to clean up your house or work on your marriage? There's a boot camp for you. The costs range from free to more than 10,000. Some boot camps don't even take place in the real world, but online or in print. They may be less hands on, but they also are cheaper. A 21 day online meditation boot camp is 67. The book "Buddhist Boot Camp" which features on its cover the author dressed in camouflage, eyes closed, hands tented in meditation, sells for 12.99. Few of these activities have much in common, but they all use the term boot camp to sell a concept: transformation. The common idea behind the military model is that if you push your physical limits, persevere and bond with your comrades, your body and soul will be forever changed. But does any of this really work? Despite the proliferation of these programs, are people really being helped or simply had? Is there any way to determine if this approach submerging yourself in a subject matter is actually useful? "The appeal of boot camps is that they sound tough. You challenge yourself and come out with well earned learning," said Annie Murphy Paul, author of the coming book, "Brilliant: The Science of How We Get Smarter." "But the paradox of the boot camp style of learning is that it makes learning too easy. When we're engaged in long periods of practicing one thing, we get really good at it when it's fresh in our minds, and we have a feeling of fluency," she said. "We're persuaded we've really mastered something, which we haven't in any effective way." That's because, counterintuitively, cognitive science has repeatedly demonstrated that people learn better when they forget a little and then relearn, Ms. Paul said. "It's the struggle to relearn and reassimilate that makes learning more long lasting," she said. In fact, said Nate Kornell, a professor of psychology at Williams College, in most cases people will learn and remember things more efficiently and effectively if they do it, for example, in 40 hours over three months rather than for 40 consecutive hours. "You want to learn something and then wait awhile to do it again," he said. "Forgetting is the friend of learning." But Professor Kornell also noted that that held true only if people worked as hard in the spaced out lessons as in the intensive programs, which often wasn't the case. What can be beneficial about some of these boot camps, he said, is not the immersion process itself, but that the camps inspire and motivate people to learn. Jerry Colonna, an entrepreneurial coach, said that the boot camp term might be considered humorous when applied to his four day C.E.O. boot camp. But, "while we're not physically demanding we're not making people run up a hill with a hundred pound pack on their backs it's emotionally demanding," he said. In the program, three coaches an actor/psychotherapist, yoga instructor/art therapist and expert in meditation and organizational development offer experiential workshops for 8,500 to 10,000. Campers, as Mr. Colonna calls the participants, are not just sitting and listening to someone talk, "but talking among themselves about their fears and challenges. "Generally, people are crying on the first night," he said. There might be some crying also at computer programming boot camps, which tend to be intensive, monthslong experiences. Brandon Croke, a spokesman for Dev boot camp, said it was his company that pioneered the programming boot camp idea in 2012 in San Francisco. The demand is such that in the last two years, he said, 55 other computer programming boot camps have sprung up nationwide, and five of his graduates have started their own boot camps. The costs of these programming boot camps vary, but Dev is fairly average. For 12,200 for 18 weeks (nine weeks "virtual prep" and nine weeks in San Francisco, Chicago or Manhattan) classes of about 23 people learn coding. While that may indicate a lucrative business, Mr. Croke said much of the money was put into the facilities and maintaining the low teacher to student ratio. Would be programmers can work 70 80 hours a week during the on site classes, which include meditation and mindfulness, Mr. Croke said. The goal is to learn not just technical skills but also self awareness and empathy (the Dev in the name stands for development). About 650 students have graduated. Like military boot camp, the focus is on both mind and body. "It's transformational," he said. "You go in as one person and come out as another." Well, at least as a person with a lighter wallet. Perhaps the best known use of the term boot camp outside the military involves physical fitness. Generally, those are high intensity programs that don't require specialized equipment, said Walter R. Thompson, a professor of kinesiology and health at Georgia State University. The Warrior Fitness Boot Camp's website asks and answers a logical question: Why base a workout on the Marine Corps? Because "most people are curious about the training the U.S. Marines go through, but do not wish to enlist." So the gym, based in Manhattan, offers similar training, and "you will feel like you are part of a team and become bonded as a close knit team." Participants will be yelled at, but only in a nice way. Teachers won't "abuse, harass or degrade." But they may inadvertently hurt you. Such classes, 50 for an hour at Warrior Fitness, work "if you're already engaging in a good exercise program," Professor Thompson said. "If you're just starting out, not so much. It could get you injured or give you a heart attack." And while some physical fitness boot camps are responsible about weeding out those who aren't up to it, "others just want to separate you from your money," he said. Unlike the computer programming boot camps, the physical fitness boot camp fad seems to be diminishing, however. Professor Thompson said such camps burst on the scene when the economy collapsed around 2008, maybe because they don't require expensive equipment or clothing and sometimes not even a gym, as many are held outdoors. In his 2014 "Worldwide Survey of Fitness Trends," boot camp fitness programs didn't even break into the top 20. In 2011, such programs were No. 8. So back to our Boot Camp for New Dads, where no group could be more motivated to learn the basics of infant care than this one. Oscar Vasquez, 32, a staff sergeant in the Air Force, who attended the Tribeca class, is now a graduate of military boot camp and the New Dads one. He knows which he prefers. "I'll take a crying baby over real boot camp any day," he said. Actually, the Boot Camp for New Dads may be one of the few programs that actually has a connection to the Marines. When the program, which is now offered nationwide, started in California in 1990, it was next to El Toro Marine Base. Marines, who were regularly a part of the class, suggested the name, said Greg Bishop, founder of Boot Camp for New Dads. It was adopted because the men weren't crazy about the original name: Bootee Camp.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
THE KING (2019) Stream on Netflix. Falstaff looks as if he has cut down on the sack and sugar in this loose adaptation of Shakespeare's Henry plays. Falstaff, the usually rotund companion to Prince Hal (the future King Henry V), is played here by a relatively lean Joel Edgerton, opposite Timothee Chalamet as a stylish Hal Henry. The film focuses on Hal's evolution from sot to sovereign, ditching Shakespeare's language in favor of a modern English script by Edgerton and David Michod, who also directs. The story builds up to a climactic Battle of Agincourt, with help from a supporting cast that includes Ben Mendelsohn, who plays an ailing King Henry IV, and Robert Pattinson. "Michod has a gift for screen violence and is generally good with actors," Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The New York Times, "yet time and again your attention drifts from Hal Henry to the story's edges, where the supporting actors nibble at their tasty bits." CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT (1965) Stream on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. A scruffier Falstaff can be found in this variation on Shakespeare from Orson Welles. "Chimes at Midnight" stars Welles as Falstaff in a story cobbled together from several Shakespeare plays. In a 1975 article in The Times, Vincent Canby wrote that this "may be the greatest Shakespearean film ever made, bar none." Ownership disputes made the movie hard for potential audiences to track down for a long time; only in recent years did it become easily viewable.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Like anyone living in Boston in the spring of 2013, I remember where I was when I heard that bombs had gone off at the Boston Marathon finish line on Patriots' Day, April 15. Three people, including an 8 year old boy, were killed instantly. More than 260 were injured, many critically bodies crushed, limbs shattered, arteries severed. A medical student at the time, I was in awe of the speed, purpose and composure with which emergency workers and medical personnel operated. Scores of patients were transported to eight nearby hospitals. The median time from blast to hospital was 11 minutes, and the first patients were in the operating room within 35 minutes. Every patient who reached a hospital survived. The story of that day and its painful aftermath is recounted in a new H.B.O. documentary, "Marathon: The Patriots' Day Bombing," airing on Nov. 21. It follows several families as they piece together their lives: learning to live as amputees, struggling with post traumatic stress, undergoing surgery after surgery. One newlywed couple, Patrick Downes and Jessica Kensky, find their future together transformed after each loses a leg from the blast, and they are among the civilians transferred to Walter Reed Medical Center. Ms. Kensky, an oncology nurse, ultimately has to have her other leg amputated as well. A year later, after countless hours of rehab, she and her husband attend the wedding of one of their fellow survivors. "If I was going to try dancing on two high heeled prosthetic legs," Ms. Kensky says in the film, "I was going to be somewhere where there were seven other amputees to help scrape me up off the floor." But the survivors' continued physical and psychological struggles raise a broader and more complicated question: How can we, as a country, care for civilian victims of terrorism when the trauma they experience is typically seen only in war? Treating injuries caused by bombs and shrapnel is far from routine for most doctors. And while Boston was as prepared as any major city could be, the quality of trauma care across the United States varies substantially, with large differences in expertise, triage and best practices. After suffering a trauma like a car crash, fall or fire, a patient is twice as likely to die at the worst trauma centers compared to the best. So in many regions, unlucky trauma victims become unlucky trauma patients. Yet trauma remains something of a secret epidemic. Trauma is the leading cause of death for Americans under 45, and the fourth leading cause of death over all accounting for more than 670 billion in medical costs a year. There are nearly 150,000 trauma deaths annually 20 percent of which could be prevented with optimal trauma care, according to the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. A new report from the academies suggests that we could substantially reduce the health and economic burden of trauma in the United States if we integrated insights from military care into civilian hospitals. Even as weapons have grown more deadly, the fatality rate for wounded soldiers has fallen significantly over time, from nearly 25 percent in Vietnam to less than 10 percent in Afghanistan and Iraq. From just 2005 to 2013, the percentage of soldiers who died because of their injuries was cut nearly in half an extraordinary accomplishment of military trauma care. This didn't happen by chance. It's a result of years of battlefield leadership, systematic reflection and redesign of care delivery processes. New protocols to control bleeding and transfuse large quantities of blood have saved hemorrhaging patients, and more extensive use of tourniquets has improved survival rates. Telemedicine and web based applications allow treatment teams real time access to expert knowledge and critical information about patients before they arrive. Innovative surgical techniques have been designed to stabilize patients before they're transported. And strategic evacuation of injured soldiers, sometimes over thousands of miles, by trained transport teams allows patients to receive necessary care en route. Congresswoman Tammy Duckworth of Illinois, herself a combat veteran and blast survivor who lost both of her legs in the Iraq war, now wants those hard won insights to permeate civilian trauma care. With input from Mr. Downes, she recently introduced a bill to bridge the expertise and resources of military doctors with those in civilian hospitals. "There's this incredible brain trust and experience portfolio in the military," Mr. Downes told me recently. "But it's only available to military personnel. Most people can't access it. We need to make sure everyone who needs it can get it." Merging civilian and military trauma care would make it easier to consistently and uniformly collect information about treatments and outcomes, and allow for a central data registry that could lead to higher quality care. Another change would involve more seamless integration of the emergency services that patients receive before arriving at hospitals and the rehabilitation services they receive after their stay. And both systems would benefit if more military doctors practiced in civilian hospitals and more civilian patients received care in military hospitals, allowing military trauma teams to acquire and maintain the expertise needed to deliver specialized casualty care. "In Boston, we've shown what happens when we band together," Mr. Downes said. "We need to share this knowledge, and hopefully, that means injuries are prevented and lives are saved."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Donald Judd entered the pantheon of Minimalist art for works like his "Judd boxes," deceptively simple containers that stand on the floor or get stacked on walls. This fall, the Judd Foundation has started shoring up the walls themselves, specifically the cluster of buildings it owns in and around Marfa, Tex., where the artist lived and worked starting in the 1970s. Led by his children, Rainer and Flavin Judd, the foundation has embarked on a several year project that will eventually involve renovating six of its structures, out of the 21 total it owns in the area, to fulfill plans the artist wasn't able to complete in his lifetime. It will add 26,500 square feet of new program space and make open to the public for the first time another 16,000 square feet. (The project doesn't affect the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, the museum Judd founded, which features his own work as well as that of other artists.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Liz Smith, the grande dame of New York's gossip pages, played down the juiciest bit of information about herself when promoting her memoir, "Natural Blonde," in the pages of New York magazine in 2000. "All this crap about 'coming out'! Honey, I don't think I have ever really been in," she said. In truth, Ms. Smith, who died Sunday at 94, was private for years about her interest in women. (Even in the book, there was only one blatant confession of an intimate relationship with a woman, from 1946.) Iris Love, the classical archaeologist who was a romantic partner of Ms. Smith's between 1978 and 1996 and who lived with her between 2010 and 2016 said Tuesday that she was not sure why the gossip columnist, who was twice married to men and twice divorced, preferred to keep quiet about her relationships with women. "She had a huge following and maybe, I'm just hypothesizing, maybe she thought that this might turn some of her readers away," she said. At the height of her influence, in the 1980s and early '90s, Ms. Smith covered for still closeted celebrities like Malcolm Forbes and promoted conservative socialites like Pat Buckley, whose husband, William F. Buckley Jr., the editor of National Review, had written that people with AIDS should be tattooed. For those reasons, she came under fire by the columnist Michelangelo Signorile, who during the run of the magazine OutWeek named and shamed closeted gay celebrities whom he saw as hypocrites in the midst of a deadly pandemic. "My feeling was that at that point in time, we were in a national emergency, a health emergency, and government wasn't doing anything," Mr. Signorile said in an interview Monday. "All these people were in the world with the same people who were ignoring the crisis." At the time, he said, Ms. Smith was "promoting the people who were hurting us." In an era when few celebrities were openly gay, Mr. Signorile's columns created an uproar and led to the coining of the term "outing" in a 1990 Time magazine story. Though OutWeek's ire was directed toward public figures, the idea of being outed suddenly became even more stifling for an aging community already battered by AIDS and anti gay violence. "People were a combination not just afraid of being outed, but afraid of dying," said Michael Adams, the chief executive of SAGE, an advocacy organization for older lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender adults. Sandy Warshaw, 84, was a private citizen working for the city of New York during that time. She considered running for a City Council seat but decided not to, partly because she was concerned that she might be outed were she to become a public figure. She told her family that she dated women in 1993, after leaving the government. But she said Tuesday that, even now, coming out was a continual process, and that her privacy around it is related to her age. "I do know some people who are still estranged from their families," Ms. Warshaw said. "I do know some individuals who bear the scars of what they grew up with. I didn't. I just knew it wasn't safe." Coming out "remains very hard for older generations," Mr. Adams said. "The mantra of L.G.B.T. people and communities has been 'come out, come out,' and at the same time you have people who lived through generations where for the most part, the only way to survive was to hide and stay closeted. People for whom it was literally a matter of life and death." He said that the difficulty of coming out could be multiplied by where you were from; it was one thing to come out in San Francisco and another in Biloxi, Miss. And so it was for Ms. Smith, who was born Mary Elizabeth Smith in Fort Worth in 1923 to a strict Baptist mother. Ms. Love, 83, said that Ms. Smith had been less at ease with her sexual orientation than she was. She said her own family was open minded, and her studies had made her comfortable with a broader realm of human sexuality. Ms. Love, who was still grieving when reached on Tuesday, called Ms. Smith "an angelic, courageous, tough tiger," adding that "she carried on with her writing until recently she could not hold a pencil." Even after "Natural Blonde" came out, Ms. Smith kept relatively mum. Speaking to The New York Times at the age of 85, she said: "I don't think I owed gay people any explanation. I don't know that anybody ever wins discussing the most intimate part of their life." But in an interview in July, Ms. Smith said she regretted having waited so long to come out. "It sounded defensive to protest that I thought myself bisexual, like I wouldn't admit that I was a lesbian," she said. "I wasn't a happy convert to any particular sexual thing. But I eventually got tired of defending myself and said, 'Say whatever you like.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Since bursting onto the Los Angeles scene in 1978, the Go Go's have gone through the highs and lows common to rock bands: No. 1 hits and undervalued deep cuts, hard partying and rehab, splits and reunions. No wonder the all female new wave group's members have long fielded, and rejected, offers to dramatize their story. The writer and actor Jeff Whitty's idea for a Go Go's musical was decidedly different. As "Mamma Mia!" did for Abba, "Head Over Heels," now in previews at Broadway's Hudson Theater, fits songs pulled from the band's catalog into a new story. Well, sort of new: Bridging the 1580s and the 1980s, the show's plot is based on Sir Philip Sidney's 16th century prose poem "The Arcadia." The premise: An oracle (Peppermint, from "RuPaul's Drag Race") sends the royal court into a tizzy with the warning that Arcadia could lose its life sustaining beat if four prophecies come to pass. Add to the mix a shepherd in drag and princesses pining after unlikely suitors, and all hell joyfully breaks loose. "The Go Go's have a sense of humor, there is an edge and a twist to us that isn't always apparent, and to me the show captures that," the band's bassist, Kathy Valentine, said by telephone. All was not merry in the show's run up, however. Mr. Whitty departed after working on the 2015 premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and remains credited for concept and book; James Magruder adapted the book. (According to a statement from the producers: "Jeff Whitty's original book was tied to specific language and arrangements of the Go Go's music. Incoming director Michael Mayer had a different vision for 'Head Over Heels' and Mr. Whitty chose to leave the production. All concerned wish one another success in their future endeavors.") To illustrate the journey from Billboard to Broadway, we looked at how five Go Go's songs evolved into musical theater numbers; the tracks appear in their stage order. Anchoring the band's 1981 debut album, the chart topping "Beauty and the Beat," this song now opens the musical with an ebullient bang or rather the drummer Gina Schock's immediately identifiable intro. Kathy Valentine, 59, Go Go's bassist: There are a lot of great drummers but not a lot of them can make a song have a hook. Gina gave a hook to the song. Richard Gottehrer, 78, "Beauty and the Beat" co producer: I mixed the album with what I thought would serve the songs best and reach a wide audience. The girls hated it and it was months before I talked to any of them again. Eventually they said thank you laughs . Michael Mayer, 58, "Head Over Heels" director: The show used to start with talk but at a 2016 residency at Vassar we decided to open with "We Got the Beat." The way we have it now, it's a big opening number celebrating the summer solstice and the legacy of the beat that the gods gave. Tom Kitt, 44, "Head Over Heels" orchestrator/arranger: I'm a big fan of pop songs that begin with an energetic, iconic drum groove. Then you have the catchy chorus, the breakdown at the end of the song with the hand claps it's a galvanizing pop music statement. This cut from the 2001 reunion album "God Bless the Go Go's" the band's last has been fashioned into a duet where the vain Princess Pamela (Bonnie Milligan) and her lady in waiting, Mopsa (Taylor Iman Jones), turn into dueling divas. Gina Schock, 60, Go Go's drummer: That was a song I'd done with my writing partner at the time, Steve Plunkett. I played the demo and everyone in the band loved it. They just wanted a bit of a touch up lyrically to make it feel more Go Go ish so guitarist Jane Wiedlin came in. Kitt: The riff off came out of rehearsal. It was something I thought could work and the actors took it to the umpteenth level. I added glockenspiel in the choruses. Green Day used glockenspiel on "Wake Me Up When September Ends"; it's an instrument that's been used really well both in pop and in musical theater. The title track of the second album by the Go Go's, and its biggest hit, was released in 1982, with Mr. Gottehrer producing once again. Ms. Valentine had penned the bulk of the song before joining the band, then completed it with Ms. Caffey and Ms. Wiedlin. In the show, Mopsa takes off on a solo holiday only to realize someone's missing. Valentine: I wrote it when I was 21 years old, on an airplane napkin. Because we'd been working so hard we didn't have the opportunity to write as many songs for the second record as for the first, and I thought this seemed perfect for the Go Go's. Gottehrer: "Vacation" was an anomaly on the second album, which really wasn't as good as the first one. They were queens of the L.A. world and I'm sure they had boyfriends, girlfriends, whatever, along with people giving them substances, and that is reflected in the music. I wish it'd get to the chorus sooner but I guess you needed to set up the story; the song is very good, but the chorus is amazingly good. Kitt: I added the "Head Over Heels" motif at the beginning, which the Go Go's really liked. And then of course we deliver the exact feel you would hear on the record but with a new vocal arrangement. With that sort of tag we put on at the end, it feels like it has a traditional musical theater journey. Valentine: If I had to boil down the message, it would be: Learn who you are, accept who you are. It's the same lesson I would teach my daughter it's just a basic truth. Cowritten by Ms. Caffey and Ms. Valentine, the most famous track from the band's third album, "Talk Show" (1984), peaked at No. 11 and features a whirligig of a piano break, followed by a catchy bass and drum bridge. Belinda Carlisle, 59, Go Go's singer: That was the beginning of the end, that album. We were run ragged, we didn't know how to say no. The song has an upbeat, cheerful melody and lyrically it really captures the darker side of fame and fortune I had an appreciation for the lyrics then but not like I do now in hindsight. Mayer: The idea that love can turn you upside down is so much of what the show is about. "Head Over Heels" opens Act 2, and for me the opener of Act 2 in musical comedy brings the audience back to where they left off. Kitt: There's a little bit of a puzzle as to how I get to all the characters and they're singing in the right ranges for them. But it was important for me to keep the piano solo in the exact key and the exact feel from the album. I love the way we put the hand claps in the choreography. I didn't want a sample it's much more gratifying when the actors actually do it. Allen Kovac, 63, founder/owner of the Beyond label: There was a guy named Bruce Fairbairn he did Bryan Adams, he produced Aerosmith, a bunch of different bands and we called him up and said, "The Go Go's are an interesting group, had a lot of great records, but I need a ballad." Bruce and I connected the band with Jim Vallance. Sean Slade, 60, "God Bless the Go Go's" co producer: He got it in his head that the album needed a ballad. It was a typical record company kind of thing. When I heard the song I said, "Oh God, this is fine, I don't think it's a hit it's got a nice melody but it doesn't have enough going for it." But I didn't mind, it didn't really mar the album and it has a really nice, pretty chorus. Jane Wiedlin, 60, Go Go's guitarist: Charlotte and I were at a songwriting gathering at Miles Copeland's castle in France. On our record it's a good ballad I've never been a ballad person laughs , I tend to gravitate toward more punk rock songs but in the show it's spectacular. To me it's the best part of the musical as far as the songs go. Caffey: We'd never written a ballad with the Go Go's so the challenge for Jane and I was to write something that was true to us. With Jim Vallance it just came together. Kitt: I made the cello solo from the original track into a vocal arrangement so that line is actually being sung by the actors. Because of the very emotional moment the song is serving and its staging, it's a unique moment in the show. Wiedlin: I always really liked that song but it wasn't until they put it in the musical that I really fell in love with it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
TULSA, Okla. The teenager had pink cheeks from the cold and a matter of fact tone as she explained why she had started using methamphetamine after becoming homeless last year. "Having nowhere to sleep, nothing to eat that's where meth comes into play," said the girl, 17, who asked to be identified by her nickname, Rose. "Those things aren't a problem if you're using." She stopped two months ago, she said, after smoking so much meth over a 24 hour period that she hallucinated and nearly jumped off a bridge. Deaths associated with meth use are climbing here in Oklahoma and in many other states, an alarming trend for a nation battered by the opioid epidemic, and one that public health officials are struggling to fully explain. The meth problem has sneaked up on state and national leaders. In Oklahoma, meth and related drugs, including prescription stimulants, now play a role in more deaths than all opioids combined, including painkillers, heroin and fentanyl, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The spending package that lawmakers agreed on this week includes legislation from Senators Jeanne Shaheen, Democrat of New Hampshire, and Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, that would allow states to address the resurgence of meth and cocaine by using some of the billions of dollars that Congress had appropriated to combat opioid addiction. Meth use first ballooned in the United States from the 1990s into the early 2000s, when it was often made in small home labs with pseudoephedrine, the main ingredient in many drugstore cold medicines. But today's meth, largely imported from Mexico, is far more potent. "It's way different from the meth people were using 20 years ago," said Dr. Jason Beaman, the chairman of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Center for Health Sciences at Oklahoma State University. "It's like they were drinking Mountain Dew and now they are injecting Red Bull." Provisional data from the C.D.C. shows there were about 13,000 deaths involving meth nationwide in 2018, more than twice as many as in 2015. That is still far fewer than opioid deaths over all, which passed 47,000, but the pace is accelerating while opioid fatalities have flattened. The most recent federal data, for example, estimates that from May 2018 to May 2019 there were 24.6 percent more deaths involving meth and other drugs in its class than in the previous year, compared with 9.4 percent more deaths involving fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Deaths involving meth have been concentrated in the western United States but are moving eastward, even to regions that meth barely touched in the past, like New England. "This is the one thing that keeps me awake at night," said Dr. Brett P. Giroir, assistant secretary for health at the Health and Human Services Department, at a conference on stimulant abuse on Monday. "Within a few short months, and you can model it any way you want, methamphetamines will be secondary to fentanyl nationwide associated with overdose deaths." Unlike with opioids, there is no way to reverse the effects of a meth overdose, just as there is no medication approved to treat meth addiction and the cravings it creates. For now, treatment for meth addiction consists largely of behavioral therapies with "a much more moderate effect size compared with medication," said Dr. Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. For many here in Oklahoma, what treatments do exist are out of reach. Most poor adults in the state do not qualify for Medicaid coverage that would help those with meth addiction gain access to treatment, because the state has chosen not to expand the program under the Affordable Care Act. And while Oklahoma has won a windfall of money 355 million from lawsuits against opioid manufacturers, much of it is specifically for fighting opioid addiction. "We know there is funding coming in for the opioid problem," said Mimi Tarrasch, the chief officer of Women in Recovery, an alternative sentencing program in Tulsa. "But what I see, and what our community continues to see, is really a lot of addiction to methamphetamine." "Basically your blood pressure goes up so high that you can rupture your aorta or have a stroke," said Dr. Andrew Herring, an emergency medicine and addiction specialist in Oakland, Calif. In many cases, opioids are contributing to meth deaths, as people use both types of drugs together. Opioids were found to play a role in about half of the deaths involving meth in 2017, the most recent year for which detailed toxicology results are available. Some experts think the number is probably larger. Dr. Daniel Ciccarone, a professor at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies patterns of drug use, said he suspected some coroners and medical examiners were not checking the blood of overdose victims for dozens of fentanyl analogues, which have chemical structures similar to fentanyl but require specialized toxicology testing. Meth related deaths may also be rising simply because the number of users is rising, Dr. Ciccarone said, including those with underlying heart or other problems. "It's embarrassing that we don't have the answer at our fingertips and we should," Dr. Ciccarone said at the stimulant abuse conference. Research suggests that in some cases, fear of dying from fentanyl is compelling people to use meth instead. Others are using meth as an upper to rouse themselves after using opioids, which have a sedative effect, or to help with opioid withdrawal. Still others are turning to meth for a high even as they take anti craving medications to recover from opioid addiction. Dr. Giroir said combining meth and fentanyl could be the most dangerous move of all, although researchers are still trying to figure out how the drugs work together. "We definitely want to dissuade people from the notion that somehow a downer and an upper cancel each other out," he said. "Early data suggests the combination is probably more deadly than the sum of its parts." Some deaths involving meth are due to the risky or violent behavior it can cause, not the drug itself. Rose and her 19 year old boyfriend, stopping to talk to a reporter one morning on their way to a drop in center where they hoped to shower, said they knew of a man who had hanged himself after a meth fueled fight with his girlfriend. Last year in Tulsa, a 25 year old man with schizophrenia died after he shattered the glass door of a downtown bank while on meth and two police officers, who had been pursuing him, shot him with a Taser 27 times. His autopsy report said the likely cause of death was cardiac arrest "due to methamphetamine toxicity in the setting of physical exertion/restraint," with cardiovascular disease as a contributing factor. The man's relatives say excessive force by the police was to blame and are planning to sue, said Damario Solomon Simmons, a lawyer for the family. Many autopsies of Oklahoma residents whose deaths involved meth also found heart problems. In one typical case, a 48 year old receptionist was found dead in a hotel room in May, her body withered to 77 pounds, her heart diseased. The cause of death was found to be acute methamphetamine toxicity. "I can't treat people with schizophrenia," Dr. Beaman said, "because I'm spending all my time treating people who are using meth." Shayla Divelbiss, 29, of Glenpool, Okla., considers herself lucky to be in good health now after using meth for six years, during which she ignored a thyroid condition and went days at a time without sleep. After waiting two harrowing months for a bed at 12 12, a treatment center for the poor and uninsured, she was able to stop. "All the responsibilities of being a human just went out the window," she said of her time on meth. "I quit cooking and eating. I had real bad anxiety. I was skin and bones." Daniel Raymond, the director of policy at the national Harm Reduction Coalition, said it was imperative to figure out exactly how meth users were dying so that cities and states could build public health strategies based on that knowledge. For now, those strategies include warning users about the risks of "overamping," a word used to describe using too much meth, and the best ways to address it, like cooling down, drinking water and sleeping. Syringe exchanges have an important role for those who inject meth, he said, just as they do for opioid users. At 12 12, a former hotel on the outskirts of Tulsa, 64 percent of the clients are addicted to meth, said Bryan Day, the chief executive. State lawmakers have agreed to give the center more money next year to add beds for meth patients and increase their average stay, which is about 30 days. He estimated that 4,000 people in the state need treatment for meth addiction but are not receiving it. "My belief is that their judgment for a period of time is very, very skewed, leading to frightening choices and decisions and impulses," Mr. Day said. "The brain takes time to heal. We don't want to shortchange this population."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
For the realities of everyday traffic, Mercedes provides a subtler means of delivering momentary passing power: the kickdown. Push your foot about three quarters of the way through the accelerator pedal's travel and you'll feel a little click as the E mode level of power is increased by a third the electrical equivalent of a turbocharger's kick. When I engaged it on Interstate 280, the car zoomed right along with the fastest left lane traffic. That's appropriate, as all aspects of the car's handling, steering and braking were benchmarked against gas powered models in the Mercedes lineup and made ready for the fast lane. An electric car is a clever application for the kickdown, but the car's regenerative braking is even more ingenious. Steering wheel paddles are drafted not to shift gears but to control how much the regenerative system, rather than friction brakes, slows the vehicle. I used the paddles to jockey among braking levels, from D (for Drive) to a grabby D for maximum energy recovery to coasting in D . By toggling among the levels, I was able to mostly avoid using the brake pedal in busy traffic. This pedal paddle game is fun for E.V. loyalists, but Mercedes drivers will probably prefer something more seamless like the car's D Auto mode. In D Auto, the car's radar sensors, mostly there for a collision warning system, are enlisted to automatically set the level of regenerative braking on the fly. The radar locks onto the car ahead, and the precise amount of braking is then dialed in to maximize the amount of energy reclaimed, all the while working something like adaptive cruise control to regulate the car's speed. These tricks notwithstanding, this is a Mercedes first and an electric car second. In terms of the flow of exterior lines, interior fit and finish, the comfort of its seats and the tastefulness of its cabin, it will feel right at home in a Mercedes showroom. "A lot of Silicon Valley people don't want to scream, 'Hey, I'm driving an electric car,' " Mark A. Webster, Mercedes Benz USA's general manager for e mobility, said as we spun through Palo Alto. "They care about the environment, but they don't have to brag about their sustainability consciousness." For all the excesses of this high flying capital of software, not every well heeled executive wants a big, flashy and fast electric flagship or a small futuristic E.V. When the B Class electric goes on sale this summer in select states, mostly on the coasts, they will have a new choice.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. "It looks like winter and your in laws showed up earlier than you wanted," Jimmy Fallon said on Wednesday, as two major storms continued to affect holiday travel across America. "But check the weather, because a couple of big storms are expected to blast the West Coast and the Midwest, and key airport hubs could see major delays. But do not worry, because there's no reason you can't have a perfectly good Thanksgiving eating Hudson News almonds while charging your phone in the pet relief area." STEPHEN COLBERT "A record 31.5 million people are expected to be traveling for the Thanksgiving holiday and, no surprise, they're all taking your exit." SETH MEYERS "I love Thanksgiving. It's fun spending the day looking at passed out relatives and trying to guess, 'Full, high or drunk?'" JIMMY FALLON "Young people prefer Friendsgiving to Thanksgiving. In other words, they prefer fun drunk to angry drunk." JAMES CORDEN "Now, if you're packing, there's good news: according to the T.S.A., you can bring your Thanksgiving turkey on an airplane just tell them it's your emotional support meat." STEPHEN COLBERT "Tomorrow you'll be patting, rubbing, and stuffing your turkey, while today, the T.S.A. did all of that to you." JIMMY FALLON "As for other Thanksgiving foods, pies or cookies are allowed right in your carry on, gravy and cranberry sauce can go in your checked luggage, and corn pudding can go directly to hell." STEPHEN COLBERT "Even though it's Thanksgiving tomorrow, you can still go to Applebee's, Boston Market and Denny's. It's perfect if you just realized something's not working, like your oven, your stove or your marriage." JIMMY FALLON "Last night, President Trump held a rally in Sunrise, Florida, and he called the impeachment inquiry a scam, a terrible hoax and a witch hunt. People in the crowd were like, 'Looks like we're getting leftovers before Thanksgiving.'" JIMMY FALLON "President Trump this afternoon tweeted an image of his head on Sylvester Stallone's body from the movie poster for 'Rocky III.' So he's either trying to tell us how tough he is, or he's trying to explain his extensive brain damage." SETH MEYERS "Yeah, clap now, but you know that's going to be the new 20 bill." JIMMY FALLON "But Trump is currently at Mar a Lago to celebrate Thanksgiving. He's actually excited about the holiday because this year, Eric and Don Jr. are gonna pull the wishbone, and loser takes the fall for Ukraine." JIMMY FALLON On "The Tonight Show," John Boyega explained how his "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" script wound up on eBay.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
CAMDEN, N.J. In a city with a bleak history of crime and poverty, plans for real estate development suggest there is new hope for an economic revival, thanks in large part to tax credits from a state run program. In the last six months, six major development projects have been approved by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority for tax credits worth a total of 614 million, leading to the creation, retention or relocation of some 2,000 jobs in one of the country's poorest cities. The latest approvals, announced by the agency on Tuesday, are for 117.8 million in tax credits to Subaru of America to establish a new headquarters and training center in Camden, and for 39.9 million to Cooper Health, a health care provider already based in Camden, to consolidate its back office operations, with the retention of some 350 jobs. In addition, new market rate apartments are being built or renovated to meet growing demand from an expanding medical community, a supermarket operator has just opened a store, and city government has begun the bond financed demolition of about 600 abandoned houses in an effort to improve a blighted landscape. "We're working to rebuild Camden and restore a sense of hope and pride," Mayor Dana L. Redd said in an interview. "Our residents are starting to take pride in what they see happening in their city." Ms. Redd, a Camden native now in her second term, said she measured progress in terms of public safety, education and jobs, and predicted that gains on all three fronts, together with the tax incentives provided by the state, will encourage companies to relocate or expand in Camden. Recent additions include the Philadelphia 76ers, the basketball team announced in June that it would move the team headquarters and practice facility from Philadelphia, just across the Delaware River, to a new 120,000 square foot building in Camden, bringing 250 jobs to the city by June 2016. The move qualified the N.B.A. franchise for 82 million in tax credits, payable over 10 years, under New Jersey's Economic Opportunity Act of 2013. In July, the state approved 260 million in tax credits for Holtec International, a maker of parts for nuclear power plants, to build a 600,000 square foot plant in Camden's port area, with the addition of around 400 jobs. And on Nov. 10, the Economic Development Authority said it would provide 107 million in tax credits for the military contractor Lockheed Martin to move 250 jobs to Camden from its location in Moorestown, N.J. According to the Census Bureau, 38.6 percent of Camden residents lived below the federal poverty line from 2008 to 2012, more than twice the national average. This February, the city was named the most dangerous city of its size in America, according to a national ranking based on F.B.I. data. But crime in the city of about 77,000 residents has fallen since Camden County took over the city's police force in early 2013, putting more officers on the streets. The number of homicides dropped to 28 in 2014 so far from a peak of 58 in all of 2012, while all violent crime was 70 percent lower this summer than last, Ms. Redd said. Meanwhile, the official unemployment rate has dropped to 16 percent from 19 percent in 2010, Ms. Redd said, compared with the current national rate of 5.8 percent. Although a lower crime rate may encourage companies to add workers in Camden, it is less clear whether the new employees will also live there, said Michael Silverman, managing director in the Philadelphia office of Integra Realty Resources, a real estate valuation firm. Without new residents, the city will struggle to recover, he said. "People will go there to work but you still need people to live there," he said. "The recovery is still a long ways off." But in a sign of growing demand for unsubsidized housing, a downtown development of one and two bedroom apartments is set to become the city's first new development in more than 10 years to be rented at market rates. The Cooper Village development of 59 new and renovated units, scheduled for completion in June, is expected to be occupied largely by students and nurses from the adjacent Cooper Medical School of Rowan University, said Jason E. Friedland, a partner with Iron Stone Strategic Capital Partners, a Philadelphia company that is developing the complex. Mr. Friedland said the development qualified for tax credits equaling 40 percent of its 18 million cost, payable by the state at 10 percent a year for 10 years. The credit was the biggest incentive for Iron Stone to take on the project, he said, although the company was also motivated by additional historic tax credits for renovating the 100 year old buildings. The credits helped the company to overcome doubts about Camden that have deterred many other investors over the years, Mr. Friedland said. "They would say, 'I'm not taking that risk it's Camden,'" he said. But the prospect of market rate rentals suggests that the Camden market may finally be gathering enough strength to exist without government support, Mr. Friedland said. Robert Corrales, a spokesman for Mayor Redd, confirmed that Cooper Village would be the first new market rate development in Camden since the city's RCA Victor building, a former gramophone factory on the Delaware River waterfront, was converted into apartments by the developer Carl Dranoff in 2003. "To see this park utilized by the people, that is a great step for Camden," he said. "This without question is spiritually lifting." Mr. Mack said the site was once marked with crosses to commemorate people who had died from violence or drugs whose effect on the city is still shown by a methadone clinic across the street from the park. Mr. Mack, 41, a construction worker who was off for Veterans Day, said he came from Philadelphia but since 2011 has lived and worked in Camden, where housing is a lot cheaper. He said he was in the process of buying an abandoned building and planned to apply for a grant to renovate it. With more police on the streets, and an improving economy, Mr. Mack said he was feeling better all the time about living in Camden. "This stuff is turning around," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Some art fairs evolve; others have growth spurts. This year the Photography Show has moved to Pier 94 on the Hudson from the Park Avenue Armory, its home for the last decade, and more than doubled in size. Steroids may have been involved. Founded in 1980 by Aipad, or the Association of International Photography Art Dealers, the fair, in its latest incarnation, presents 130 participants from across the United States and around the globe, and initiates a new section for book publishers and magazines devoted to photography. Yet it has room to spare, with broad aisles and a general spaciousness enhanced by light gray carpets and walls. The displays have great contrapuntal rhythms, between past and present, between color and black and white, and among sensibilities guided by burning social consciences, the drive to experiment or a joyful embrace of the medium's idiosyncratic possibilities. Sometimes all of this can be found in one eclectic presentation. At Edwynn Houk, for example, one of Robert Frank's insightful images of Americans shares walls with Lillian Bassman's innovative fashion photography and Abelardo Morell's playful new still lifes, notably a scene of domestic catastrophe created for the camera from plywood, a ceramic pitcher and a plethora of flowers. In contrast, there's the tailored survey of recent photography at Steven Kasher titled "21 Artists, One Straight White Male." It begins with Phyllis Galembo's great "Los Americanos, Mexico" (2012), whose masked revelers mock Uncle Sam, and includes work by Mickalene Thomas, Marilyn Minter and Jimmy DeSana. Many booths are elegantly arranged and give works room to breathe, and others are jammed to the gills, sometimes fetchingly, sometimes with homey bins of photographs to browse through. Established dealers sometimes subdivide large booths into separate rooms, like the one that Contemporary Works/Vintage Works has devoted to 12 vintage prints by the versatile 19th century genius Gustave Le Gray, whose subjects here range from the great public vistas of Paris the Place de la Concorde in 1859 to modest harbor scenes. Next door, the Robert Koch Gallery has only one Le Gray, a stunning print of beach, ocean and sky in three simple, vibrant bands that is among the fair's highlights, as well as a luminous abstract "photogram" that Laszlo Moholy Nagy made in 1943 using one of his own Lucite sculptures. Another 19th century masterpiece can be seen at William L. Schaeffer/Photographs: Carleton E. Watkins's 1867 "Cape Horn Near Celilo" with its memorable progression from looming butte to curving railroad track and silken riverbed a print that is considered by many to be Watkins's best and priced accordingly. The challenge of a photo fair is that you can't zip down the aisle casting your eye left and right until something catches it. There is something worth seeing in every booth, but many images are small and comprehended only close up: a wall of images by the great Danny Lyon, tucked slightly out of sight at Etherton Gallery; the soft "Twilight, Yosemite Valley" from around 1907 by William Dassonville, a California pictorialist, at Barry Singer or Steve Schapiro's astounding "CORE 'Stall IN,' New York World's Fair 1964," at the Monroe Gallery of Photography, which documents a vehicular protest of racism. Photography's images are often small, but its reach is as big as life itself.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Percolator, French press, AeroPress, espresso, pour over, vacuum pot, automatic brew, tin can: People go to great lengths for a good cup of coffee. (A friend of mine filters his cold brew with pantyhose.) But to achieve consistent flavor you may just need to chill your beans before grinding them. Colder beans produce smaller, more consistently sized particles when ground, yielding more flavor from less coffee, according to a study published in Scientific Reports. In busy cafes, temperature matters. As room temperatures vary and grinders heat up with use, the consistency of the resulting grind changes. That's a problem, because water extracts flavor from smaller coffee grounds faster than bigger ones. An inconsistent grind means sour taste from the small grains, and a bitter one from the big, all at the same time. For a more flavor driven, sour and sweet cup, baristas adjust grinder settings for finer particles throughout the day. But Colonna and Smalls, a specialty coffee shop in Britain, used science instead. They got together with chemists at nearby University of Bath to see how temperature affected how coffee beans break. They started at room temperature and went down to that of liquid nitrogen ( 321 degrees Fahrenheit). It turned out, the colder the bean, the more uniform particles it produced, and the more even the flavor.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The new series takes an early turn away from naturalism, though. David (J. J. Feild), a childhood friend of Charlie's who's become a Hollywood star, returns to London with his wife, Sara (Piper Perabo), a famous D.J., so that their 11 year old daughter, Gabrielle (Frankie Hervey), can settle down and get the kind of British schooling her father too fondly remembers. David and Sara's commitment to full time parenting is only calf leather deep, however, which leads to the show's echt sitcom contrivance: They recruit the barely employed Charlie as nanny for their holy terror of a daughter. So: "Who's the Boss" with a washed up British D.J. instead of a washed up American baseball player. And there's a fair measure of the kind of embarrassing sitcommery this premise would lead you to expect. If you can live without seeing Idris Elba saying "I'm adorbs" to an 11 year old girl, you can live without "Turn Up Charlie." In addition to being regularly humiliated by the wiseacre child he has to chase around London and Ibiza, Charlie also has to endure the put downs of his saucy auntie, Lydia (Jocelyn Jee Esien), who dispenses wisdom about romance to him and parenting to his posh white friends. Elba is admirably committed to the drab, sentimental material (written by Georgia Lester, Victoria Asare Archer, Laura Neal and Femi Oyeniran), and his portrayal is unfailingly gracious and warm. He's a gung ho, grizzled straight man, readily playing against his superheroic image. (Although Charlie is still fought over by the ladies, and there are some oddly graphic discussions of the size of his cartridge.) One problem, though: He's just not funny. Elba's considerable skills in projecting menace and resolve don't come into play and he mostly just looks genial and a little lost. With the exception of a few supporting players, like Esien and Guz Khan as Charlie's stoner buddy, that's a problem up and down the call sheet reasonably talented performers with no aptitude for comedy.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Stephen Sondheim has been the composer and lyricist of 15 stage musicals and the lyricist for three others. Our chief critics weigh in on all of them, dated by the approximate year of their composition or first Broadway performance. The start of Sondheim's Broadway career was inauspicious. In his early 20s he wrote the songs for a musical with a book by Julius J. Epstein about a bunch of date starved Brooklyn bachelors hoping to make a killing in the stock market. Charming and small scale, with no chorus or other signs of Golden Age grandeur, "Saturday Night" exemplified the changing texture of musical theater or would have, had its lead producer not died. Though the show would not be staged in New York until 2000, two of its songs became cabaret standards in the meantime: "So Many People" (a lovely ballad) and "What More Do I Need?" (a left handed tribute to the city, where "even the falling snow looks used"). But it was the title song that introduced Sondheim's genius for compressing a worldview into a quatrain: "I like the Sunday Times all right,/But not in bed./Alive and alone on a Saturday night/Is dead." JESSE GREEN Though he thought of himself as a composer first, or at any rate liked writing music more than lyrics, Sondheim served a grudging apprenticeship as the word man to three musical geniuses: Leonard Bernstein on "West Side Story," Jule Styne on "Gypsy" and Richard Rodgers on "Do I Hear a Waltz?" His mixed emotions showed up in the mixed (if always exceptionally polished) results. For "West Side Story" he wrote "poetic" lyrics that Bernstein loved but that embarrassed their author yet also produced, as the collaboration matured, lacerating lines that never cloy. (One of his best came straight from Arthur Laurents's libretto: "A boy like that, who'd kill your brother.") More confident with Styne, he began to produce words that turned songs into complex scenes ("Rose's Turn"). Rodgers required a relapse into a Golden Age style that no longer suited the ambitious young Sondheim or the musical theater he was about to change forever. J.G. An oddball contribution to the burgeoning creed of 1960s individualism by two self defined nonconformists, Sondheim and Laurents (the show's book writer and director). Set in a financially strapped town in search of an economic (and literal) miracle, the plot traffics in the then fashionable blurring of boundaries between sanity and insanity, with characters who include a corrupt mayor (Angela Lansbury, in a smashing Broadway musical debut), a bogus doctor, and a repressed psychiatric nurse at an institution called the Cookie Jar. Audiences were allergic to its high whimsy, and the show closed after nine performances. It has some strange little jewels of songs, though, including a title number (performed by Lee Remick's nurse) that is pure Sondheim in its aching wistfulness. B.B. Phone rings, door chimes, in comes "Company." At the start of a decade that would see five astonishing new Sondheim shows on Broadway all directed by Harold Prince this one, with a book by George Furth, helped drag the musical into a new age. Part of that newness was the story: A toxic bachelor named Bobby, turning 35, is forced by the five couples who are his best friends, as well as three women he's dating, to rethink his reflexive antipathy toward marriage. And part of it was the sideways approach, which emphasized theme over plot and commentary over action. But most of it was the phenomenal score, the first in which Sondheim, writing about people he really knew, inhabited his natural style fully: a style as cosmopolitan as the busy signal that introduces the cast album but also stealthily passionate and, at its thrilling best, both. J.G. One of the great elegies in Broadway history, this portrait of a reunion of performers from a Ziegfeld style revue was a luxuriant farewell to a vanishing era of show business and to the American illusion of a happily ever after existence. Staged by Prince and Michael Bennett, with a book by James Goldman, "Follies" remains a prime example of Sondheim's peerless gifts for pastiche songwriting ("Beautiful Girls," "Broadway Baby") and the musical nervous breakdown, often combining elements of both. Designed with an extravagance that would be financially impossible today, it featured a cast that included vintage Hollywood stars like Alexis Smith and Yvonne de Carlo, who introduced the barbed evergreen "I'm Still Here." A once misunderstood show that looks more beautiful every time it's revived. B.B. Marriage was the open question in "Company" and definitely not the answer in "Follies." Finally, in "A Little Night Music," Sondheim, working with a book by Hugh Wheeler, wrote a musical in which the realignment of mismatched lovers made for a happy ending. Is it a coincidence that the result brought Sondheim the best reviews of his career to that point? Suddenly the snarky wit was a romantic, the angular composer a melodist. True, "A Little Night Music" is sumptuous, as befits its setting among the Swedish upper class in 1900. And Sondheim's spectacular all waltz time score (orchestrated, like all his '70s shows, by Jonathan Tunick) included a bona fide crossover hit: "Send in the Clowns." But as could be expected from a story based on an Ingmar Bergman film, "A Little Night Music" serves up more than whipped cream. It's about the uncomfortable proximity of maturity and mortality. Bergman loved it. J.G. In the midst of his Broadway triumphs, Sondheim went to Yale. There at the School of Drama, along with his "Forum" collaborator Shevelove, he revisited ancient comedy with "The Frogs," based on the Aristophanes play in which Dionysus moderates a contest in Hades between the playwriting giants Euripides and Aeschylus. (The winner comes back from the dead to save the theater.) Shevelove's larky hourlong production updated the debaters to Shakespeare and Shaw, and was staged at Yale's pool, with the swim team as the title characters and Meryl Streep in the ensemble. Despite acoustics that Sondheim compared to "putting on a show in a men's urinal," "The Frogs" was an eight performance hit, eventually spawning a Broadway version starring (and expanded by) Nathan Lane. The score represents Sondheim at both his funniest ("Invocation to the Gods and Instructions to the Audience") and his strangest but also, as in his setting of Shakespeare's "Fear No More," his most haunting. J.G. The concept was complicated: a show about the "opening" of Japan by Adm. Matthew Perry in 1853, told, Sondheim said, as if by "a Japanese who's seen a lot of American musicals." Perhaps that's why, by conventional measures, it was not a major success: It had the shortest run of his '70s shows and, despite Prince's jaw dropping production, was all but shut out at the Tony Awards. Yet in telling a cautionary tale about cultural imperialism, "Pacific Overtures," with a precision tooled book by John Weidman, pushed Sondheim to explore a harmonic and lyrical language that opened a new chapter in his artistic life. (We would soon hear more of it in "Sunday in the Park With George.") Characterized by extreme compression and allusiveness, that language allowed songs like "A Bowler Hat" and "Someone in a Tree" (his own favorite among his works) to offer the world in a phrase. J.G. The darkest, angriest and most improbably entertaining work in the Sondheim canon. Wheeler wrote the book for this "black operetta," in which revenge is a meat pie served piping hot, and made from the title character's dismembered victims. Sondheim gave transcendent musical voice to monomaniacal rage, with a shivery riff on the Dies Irae of the Catholic mass. But he also plied his signature wit with wicked word play on matters macabre (see: "A Little Priest"). First staged as a big picture indictment of the industrial revolution by Prince in a production memorably starring Len Cariou as the deranged barber and Lansbury as his pie making accomplice "Sweeney" has since proved itself ideally suited to more intimate interpretations, like John Doyle's 2005 revival, which invite audiences directly into the clammy confines of a madman's mind. B.B. The much loved problem child of Sondheim's musicals, and one that directors keep returning to in the hopes of finally getting it right. When this reversed chronology portrait about the intersecting roads to success and disillusionment in showbiz opened on Broadway with a young and untried cast, it not only crashed and burned; it also signaled the end of the long and fruitful years of collaboration between Sondheim and the show's director, Prince. (That sundering strangely echoed the musical's portrait of the unraveling of a longtime creative friendship.) Furth's cliche stoked script, adapted from a 1934 play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, has remained a stumbling block for subsequent revivals. But Sondheim's rueful score captured the sweep and sting of regretful memory and abandoned hopes, and introduced the cabaret standard "Not a Day Goes By." B.B. Sunday in the Park With George (1984) Sondheim's Pulitzer Prize winner and a show that breathtakingly expanded the possibilities for the form and subject of the genre. George is the 19th century French pointillist painter Georges Seurat and also his (fictional) 20th century great grandson, a conceptual artist. And "Sunday," with an inventive book by James Lapine (its original director), both portrays and embodies art's role in weaving form and order out of daily life. Sondheim's use of song as character study is at its most acute, with unforgettably idiosyncratic portraits of the obsessively focused Seurat and his neglected lover and model, Dot (originally portrayed by Mandy Patinkin and Bernadette Peters). The first act's final scene, a re creation of the painting of the title, is the stuff of legends; a 2017 revival, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, showed it had lost none of its magic. B.B. Built on familiar tropes and repeated melodic motifs, "Into the Woods" is deceptively welcoming; thanks to the 2014 movie and innumerable school performances, it is probably Sondheim's best known work. But Lapine's story about a witch's curse, a couple's quest, a girl's gluttony and a giant's revenge (among other elements of the densely woven plot) is far darker than its jaunty title song indicates. Act I, which sends the characters working toward their wishes, is followed in Act II by the dark consequences of their achievement: discord, separation, death. Likewise, the songs, many built from musical cells Sondheim flips and shuffles, darken into warnings, laments and lullabies. So don't let the fairy tale ending fool you: This is a sophisticated musical about sophistication about the dangers, for both parents and children, of growing up. "Isn't it nice to know a lot?" Red Riding Hood sings. "And a little bit not." J.G. Resounding proof that Sondheim, at 60, had lost none of his artistic daring or precision, or his willingness to defy convention. Set in a sort of purgatorial shooting gallery, "Assassins" presented an assortment of men and women who had killed or attempted to kill American presidents, including John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald and John Hinckley. Weidman wrote the connective, poker faced script. But it was Sondheim's score, inflected with regional accents of the American songbook through the ages, that gave the show its radiant chill, as its dispossessed characters sang longingly of a hunger for glory. "Assassins" opened Off Broadway at Playwrights Horizons just as the Persian Gulf war was beginning, and critics recoiled at its perceived glibness in a moment of national crisis. But when it finally arrived on Broadway in 2004, its depiction of the rabid lust of celebrity felt scaldingly relevant. A forthcoming Off Broadway incarnation, directed by Doyle, may well reveal it to be a sobering mirror for our own age of resentful populism. B.B. Why did audiences at the Plymouth Theater giggle and groan during previews of "Passion"? Certainly, it was an uncomfortable story: A sickly, unattractive woman named Fosca (actually the beautiful Donna Murphy, with a mole) falls in love with a handsome young captain then makes him fall in love with her. And though Lapine's book neatly theatricalized the film "Passione d'Amore" as well as "Fosca," the epistolary novel it was based on his staging could not solve the problem of the crazy lady popping up everywhere to torment that nice soldier. This was the audience's loss, as revivals, especially in smaller spaces, have since proved. "Passion," kept close to the eyes and ears, is overwhelmingly beautiful, filled with rhapsodic inquiries into the impossibility and ultimate necessity of love. If it contains some of Sondheim's most moving music and probing lyrics, perhaps that's because it was, unusually, his idea to do it. Very much like Fosca, he knew what he wanted. J.G. Since its buzz generating inception as a starry workshop production in 1999, this endlessly evolving collaboration with Weidman has undergone repeated changes of casts, dialogue, song lists and directors. It has remained Sondheim's most picaresque piece, a tale of two itinerant brothers, at odds with and reliant on each other (one of whom is the only gay leading character in a Sondheim musical). Inspired by the real life entrepreneurs (and flim flammers) extraordinaire Addison and Wilson Mizner, the show is a country crossing map of fortunes lost and made, in which unbounded success always looms as a tantalizing chimera. The brothers, like many Sondheim characters, may be casualties of unfulfilled American dreams. But he, and we, can't help admiring their determination in reinventing themselves. The show's last line: "Sooner or later, we're bound to get it right." B.B.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
It is likely no surprise to readers who love the novels of Charles Portis that everything delightful about his books was delightful about him as a person. The surprise, if anything, was how closely his personality tallied with his work. He was blunt and unpretentious, wholly without conceit. He was polite. He was kind. His puzzlement at the 21st century world in which he found himself was deep and unfeigned. And yet almost everything out of his mouth was dry, new and pungently funny. Portis died in February. I've loved his work all my life "The Dog of the South" is a family favorite, as is "Masters of Atlantis" though the work closest to me is "True Grit," which I recorded as an audiobook a number of years ago. I'm often asked how I came to record another author's book; most simply, the answer is voice. I grew up hearing "True Grit" read aloud to me by my mother and my grandmother and even my great grandmother. This was a tremendous gift, as Portis caught better than any writer then alive the complex and highly inflected regional vernacular I heard spoken as a child mannered and quaint, old fashioned and highly constructed but also blunt, roughshod, lawless, inflected by Shakespeare and Tennyson and King James but also by agricultural gazetteers and frilly old Christian pamphlets, by archaic dictionaries of phrase and fable, by the voices of mule drivers and lady newspaper poets and hanging judges and hellfire preachers. All readers who love Portis have lines they like to swap back and forth. Then too, the books are so funny that they cry to be read aloud. Pick up any novel by Portis and open it to any page and you will find something so devastatingly strange and fresh and hilarious that you will want to run into the next room and read it aloud to somebody. His language is precise but whimsical, understated but anarchic, and as with Barbara Pym or P.G. Wodehouse, it's tough to communicate the flavor of it without resorting to long quotes. All readers who love Portis have lines they like to swap back and forth; and a conversation among his admirers will mostly consist of such gems committed to memory exchanged and mutually admired. One thinks of Dr. Buddy Casey's lecture on the Siege of Vicksburg, which Raymond Midge, the narrator of "The Dog of the South," plays again and again on Sunday drives and at the shaving mirror, an action that, we are given to understand, has helped to drive away his wife, Norma. Ray explains: "I had heard the tape hundreds of times and yet each time I would be surprised and delighted anew by some bit of Casey genius, some description or insight or narrative passage or sound effect. The bird peals, for instance. Dr. Bud gives a couple of unexpected bird calls in the tense scene where Grant and Pemberton are discussing surrender terms under the oak tree. The call is a stylized one tu whit, tu whee and is not meant to represent that of any particular bird. It has never failed to catch me by surprise. But no one could hope to keep the whole of that lecture in his head at once, such are its riches." Comedy is the most ephemeral of the arts. There are very few comic novels that do not wither with time, and even fewer novels comic or otherwise that can be given to pretty much anyone, from an old person to a small child. Even more rare is a novel one can reliably turn to for cheer when one is sick or sad. But "True Grit" is this rare novel, and Mattie Ross, its narrator, is one of the greatest of Portis's innocents: a Presbyterian spinster who in old age relates the story of how, as a child, she struck out in the 1870s to avenge her father's murder. "People do not give it credence that a 14 year old girl could leave home and go off in the wintertime to avenge her father's blood but it did not seem so strange then, although I will say it did not happen every day." It's a serious book by any measure; Mattie's rage and grief are thunderous ("What a waste! Tom Chaney would pay for this! I would not rest easy until that Louisiana cur was roasting and screaming in hell!") and yet perhaps the greatest pleasure of the book is Mattie's speaking voice: rambling, deadpan, didactic, sprinkled with oddball opinions and facts, obstinate in its views and acute in its observations. Of Chaney, the hired man who murdered her father ("He was a short man with cruel features. I will tell more about his face later"), she has this to say: "He had no gun but he carried his rifle slung across his back on a piece of cotton plow line. There is trash for you. He could have taken an old piece of harness and made a nice leather strap for it. That would have been too much trouble." It's hard not to go on with the quotes; suffice it to say that I could hear my grandmother's voice and a bit of my own very clearly in this. But though I knew how wonderful a book it was to read aloud, I also felt there was very little chance of interesting Portis in an audiobook recording. After abruptly quitting his job as London bureau chief of The New York Herald Tribune in the early 1960s, he had gone back to live in his native Arkansas, and no one in New York had seen him for years. People liked to use the word "recluse," which, I suspected, spoke less to an abnormal way of life than to an ex newspaperman's natural distrust of the press. It seemed clear enough in any case that he didn't enjoy dealing with inquiries about his novels. But I drummed up my courage and asked anyway, and much to my surprise his number was passed along to me with the message: Call him. He wants to talk to you. How many times in life does one have the chance to speak to a writer revered from childhood? How many times in life does one have the chance to speak to a writer revered from childhood? In 2004, around noon on a weekday, I found myself standing in my kitchen in Virginia with Portis's telephone number in hand. I had been informed that he did not like to talk on the telephone and was bad about not picking up. But somewhat to my surprise he answered right away. A slow, rich Southern voice, reminiscent of the actor Randy Quaid. "Mr. Portis?" I said, but instead of the introduction I was ready to make, there followed instead a leisurely and highly surreal exchange that I am at a loss to replicate something to do with backfiring cars? and knocks on the door? which continued at cross purposes for some moments until, without missing a beat, he said pleasantly: "Oh I beg your pardon. I thought you were my crank caller." I held the line, not knowing what to say. There seemed no clear way to move forward. Had I offended him? "I'm sorry " 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. "Oh no. It is just that I have a regular crank caller and almost every day he telephones about this time. If I don't pick up he rings and rings." "No, it is just some prankster. Local, I think. Many people around here do not seem to have much to do." "No. To tell you the truth I am a little disappointed on the days he does not telephone. I have come to look forward to his calls." "I can get off the phone if you want me to," I offered. "No. There is no need to do that. He will call me back if he finds the line is busy." Then: "Where are you calling from?" "That's a curious accent. The Virginia accent. A lot of Virginians sound more or less like Canadians to me. You sound like you are from around here." I explained that I was from across the river, in Mississippi, and how my family and I knew his books practically by heart and how I hoped he might permit me to make an audio recording of "True Grit" I had his book beside me at the telephone, a reading prepared but the actual purpose of my call did not seem to interest him. "Are your people still in Mississippi?" he asked, reverting bewilderingly to the only fact that had caught his attention. I was impressed that he was able to pull all this stuff off the top of his head. A long, relaxed conversation ensued, which might as well have been taking place in 1890 between me and a veteran of the Civil War, for its utter lack of any reference whatsoever beyond the Reconstruction South: Appomattox, High Bridge, Gen. William "Billy" Mahone and his lively counterattack in the late war siege of Petersburg. The cotton trade. Dogs. Guns. Dogs. I noted particularly the fixed hum on his end of the line the same rotary phone hum I always heard when I called my grandmother in Mississippi. Although I didn't want the conversation to end, I still had my copy of "True Grit" by the phone, open to my place, and at some point, by way of Rooster Cogburn's Civil War service (Charlie's voice was not unlike what I imagined Rooster Cogburn's might be), I managed to work back around to it. "Would you like for me to read a line or two from the book?" I asked. "I have it right here." "Naw," he said, "you're a good Mattie, you'll do just fine," and then kept talking, as if we were riding for the sixth hour on horseback together on some country road. We corresponded after that, and spoke on the telephone my thought being that if he welcomed annoyance callers so warmly, he might not mind sometimes hearing from me. He was modest about his achievements and uninterested in talking about his life as a novelist or indeed about novels, period; though the diction of his books effortless as birdsong pervaded his every spoken sentence, from his conversation one would never suspect that he'd written a novel at all, much less several great ones. His preferred subjects were local history, his boyhood in Arkansas, his time in the military (a postscript to a 2006 letter informs me: "This stamp shows your fellow Virginian and legendary Marine hero Chesty Puller. He was my commanding officer years ago at Camp Lejeune, N.C.") and above all his life as a newspaperman (somewhat perplexingly to me, he regarded himself mainly as a former newspaperman instead of the major and singular American novelist he was). Thanks to his time on The Memphis Commercial Appeal, he knew very well the Memphis of my childhood, Memphis being the nearest city of any size to my little North Mississippi town. (Regarding Mississippi: "Why do you all like to write so much over there? The Arkansan novelist is a much rarer fowl.") As a young reporter he had attended the funeral of Elvis's mother a story in itself and we talked about the hysteria in Memphis after Elvis's death, nearly 20 years later, when weeping businessmen had taken to the airwaves in lieu of their regular commercials, wailing: "Sleep warm, Elvis!" We established that I was related to the fearsome Memphis judge Beverly Boushe, about whom Charlie had written when in 1958 Judge Beverly presided over a mock trial of a group of Indiana Jaycees, who for some unknown reason had chosen to re enact a flatboat trip that Abe Lincoln made down the Mississippi River at age 19. (When the Jaycees were removed from the flatboat and hauled before him by other Jaycees costumed as Rebs, Judge Boushe let them off by pronouncing them honorary Confederates and granting them miniature keys to the city.) I told him that my great grandfather, Judge Beverly's uncle, had spoken proudly all his life about his meeting in Memphis with the elderly outlaw Frank James, where Mattie herself had met Frank James at likely round about the same time. (Mattie, in the book, was less impressed than my great grandfather; though she is taken with "the courteous old outlaw" Cole Younger, when James rises to greet her she says: "Keep your seat, trash!") Then too there was my Boushe grandmother, who numbered among the many books she'd inherited from her father the works of 19th century author Ignatius L. Donnelly ("Atlantis: The Antediluvian World"), whose colorful ideas informed those of Mr. Jimmerson and Austin Popper in "Masters of Atlantis." These, like Mr. Jimmerson, she regarded as sound scientific fact, to the point of suggesting that I build a scale model of Atlantis for a ninth grade science fair. (It speaks to the academic standards of my school that I got a good grade for this project, my science teacher failing to recognize that even a very carefully constructed scale model of Atlantis in no way constituted Science.) My grandmother was the one who'd given me "True Grit" to read at age 10. Like Mattie herself, she had also been an indefatigable writer of historical articles for our town newspaper. "And I expect she was a pretty good writer herself, too," Charlie said generously. "That may not have been her fault. A lot of those old birds got the starch knocked out of them by heavy handed copy editors." "Not her. She would be writing about Grover Cleveland and go off on some rant about the danger of water fluoridization." "My point exactly. Those are just the kind of lively asides I enjoy." He was right, of course. If there's a guiding style of Portis's books, it's those tangents and lively asides. (When I asked him about the origins of "True Grit," he told me that after he left The Tribune and "didn't have much to do" he liked nothing better than to go to the library and read rambling "local color" pieces in the archives of rural newspapers.) Those homely old American voices by turns formal, tragicomic and haunting are crystallized on every page of his work, with the immediacy one sometimes sees in a daguerreotype 150 years old. One would have to return to the 19th century, and Twain, to find another author who captured those particular cadences as well as he. More than this, he understood at the highest level those same voices filtered through advertisements and film of the mid 20th century; hence the hilarious, incisive and equally pure diction of "Norwood" and "The Dog of the South" and his other books set in the '60s and '70s. Not long after this, Charlie, true to form, really did stop answering his phone. Had I done something to annoy him? Or had the prankster grown to be too much? The letters, never very many, stopped as well. (The postscript of his final letter, which makes me laugh even though it's the last line he ever wrote me: "When may we expect another lively Donna Tartt novel?") He never called me, I always called him, and not until much later did I learn the real reason for the halt in our conversation: He had Alzheimer's. This is hard to square with Charlie's minute and highly specific knowledge of (among many other things) firearms, geography and American history, and even harder to square with the deadpan, playful, low key wit that had seeped into my bloodstream via his novels long before I met him. I'd give a lot right now to hear what he had to say about the flu epidemic of 1918. The flu epidemic makes a brief appearance in "True Grit," and it's exactly the sort of historical subject upon which he could converse with the fluency and anecdote of someone who'd survived it personally. More than that, I wish I'd gone to Arkansas to see him; he'd asked me to and was perplexed to learn I did not drive. (This will be amusing to any reader of his novels, particularly "Gringos" and "The Dog of the South," in which automobiles and automotive maintenance form the basis of a stern and knightly code.) His pitch was pure. There was no meanness in him. He understood, and conveyed, the grain of America. As for the novels, they've gotten me through times of bleakness and uncertainty from fifth grade to now, and are a never ending source of amazement, gratitude and joy. All writers who attempt to convey their magic eventually knock into the problem: How to describe the indescribable? Probably the best description I can give of "True Grit" is that I've never given it to any reader male or female, of any age or sensibility who didn't enjoy it. As for the others, which I love just as much, they are if anything weirder and funnier, filled with some of the best and most particular American vernacular ever written, and even amid the scrape of Covid driven anxiety they've convulsed me with laughter and given me some of the few moments of escape that I've found. We never talked about publishing or the literary world; it was of no interest to him. The closest he ever came was a passing mention of "the quality lit game" (dutifully attributing the quote to Terry Southern) as if "quality lit" were a concern in which he himself had no part. But it was a game he played at the highest level, despite the fact that he had no inclination to play it in the conventional chest beating, ego driven way. His pitch was pure. There was no meanness in him. He understood, and conveyed, the grain of America, in ways that may prove valuable in future to historians trying to understand what was decent about us as a nation. And I can't help thinking that the novels he left us will continue to provide refuge and comfort for readers, perhaps in times even darker than our own. Donna Tartt is the author of three novels, most recently "The Goldfinch."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
No one will be criminally charged in the 2016 death of Prince by accidental fentanyl overdose, law enforcement authorities in Minnesota announced on Thursday, saying that they could not determine who had provided the powerful drug that killed him. The musician had been struggling with a dependence on painkillers and most likely believed he was taking Vicodin, which does not contain fentanyl, the Carver County attorney, Mark Metz, said in a news conference. Prince actually took a look alike, counterfeit version of the drug that was far more powerful and dangerous, Mr. Metz said. "We have no direct evidence that a specific person provided the fentanyl to Prince," he said, adding that the investigation uncovered "no sinister motive, intent or conspiracy to murder Prince." ALSO READ: How Prince Concealed His Addiction: Aspirin Bottles of Opiates Dr. Schulenberg admitted no liability as part of the settlement and has maintained he did not prescribe drugs to anyone with the intention they be redirected to Prince. His lawyer said in a statement that Dr. Schulenberg "is not a target in any criminal inquiry and there have been no allegations made by the government that Dr. Schulenberg had any role in Prince's death." Mr. Metz said on Thursday that the pills prescribed by Dr. Schulenberg did not lead to Prince's fatal overdose. "The bottom line is we simply do not have sufficient evidence to charge anyone with a crime in relation to Prince's death," he said. Members of Prince's family who attended the news conference declined to comment on the decision. A representative for the family, John Goetz, said of the investigators, "They certainly dug deep and tried hard." He added that the family had not ruled out filing a wrongful death lawsuit. In addition to Dr. Schulenberg, investigators had focused on doctors and medical personnel who were trying to treat Prince for an apparent painkiller addiction, as well as Mr. Johnson, an employee of the musician since the 1980s, according to court documents released last April. Though Prince had been a proponent of sober living, friends said after his overdose that the singer had suffered from chronic hip pain he was trying to manage and perform through. Following his death, dozens of pills were found at his Paisley Park home and studio in Chanhassen, a Twin Cities suburb, Mr. Metz said. They were almost entirely counterfeits of Vicodin, many of them kept in bottles marked Bayer and Aleve, Mr. Metz said. Born Prince Rogers Nelson, the musician was found dead, at 57, in a Paisley Park elevator on April 21, 2016, by Mr. Johnson and others. A toxicology report, obtained by The Associated Press in March, found high concentrations of fentanyl in the singer's stomach, liver and blood. Although fentanyl can be prescribed legally, frequently in the form of a patch, it is often used to manufacture counterfeit pills that are sold on the black market as oxycodone and other pain relievers. ALSO READ: Prince Overdosed on Fentanyl. What is it? In announcing the decision not to charge anyone in Prince's death, Mr. Metz said that the singer had been in "significant pain for a number of years" and had been treating himself with painkillers, although he had no known prescriptions for Vicodin or fentanyl in his name. "Because Prince was an intensely private person, he was certainly assisted and enabled by others to obtain some of these medications," Mr. Metz said. "Those individuals included, but are not limited to, Dr. Schulenberg and Kirk Johnson." But Mr. Metz said there was no evidence to tie any specific person to the fatal pills. In a statement, Mr. Johnson's lawyer, F. Clayton Tyler, said that Mr. Johnson was "relieved" that no charges had been filed against him. "He continues to deny that he had anything to do with the death of his close friend, Prince," the statement said. "Today's decision affirms his innocence." Mr. Johnson still works at Paisley Park as an estate manager, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has not been questioned since the initial interviews, Mr. Tyler said. Prince, notoriously discreet, did not even have a cellphone, which hindered the investigation, Mr. Metz said. Details of the singer's life remained shrouded in secrecy even after his unexpected death. Investigators said in court records that those who were present at the home that morning "provided inconsistent and, at times, contradictory statements." The musician also left no will, leading to complex and ongoing proceedings among his six heirs. ALSO READ: How Prince Invented Himself. Over and Over The incident prompted another examination of Prince by Dr. Schulenberg on April 20, during which the doctor prescribed Prince a medication used to treat opiate withdrawals. (An associate of Prince's also alerted a California based doctor who specializes in addiction, who put his son on a red eye flight to Minneapolis to treat the musician.) As part of the settlement, Dr. Schulenberg agreed to two years of "heightened compliance requirements for logging and reporting his prescriptions of controlled substances to the D.E.A.," the United States attorney's office in Minneapolis said in a statement. "Doctors are trusted medical professionals and, in the midst of our opioid crisis, they must be part of the solution," Greg Booker, the United States attorney for Minnesota, said in the statement. "As licensed professionals, doctors are held to a high level of accountability in their prescribing practices, especially when it comes to highly addictive painkillers." Deaths in the United States involving fentanyl more than doubled from 2015 to 2016, according to government data, amid a sharp rise in drug related fatalities overall. Prince's death coincided with a surge in fentanyl on the black market in Minnesota, and the case heightened the level of concern about opioids there. And his was not the only case involving a high profile musician: In January, Tom Petty was found to have died from an accidental drug overdose involving fentanyl, while Lil Peep, a 21 year old rapper who died of an overdose in November, had fentanyl, among other prescription drugs, in his system as well. Most fentanyl overdoses come from illegal versions of the drug bought on the street or on the "dark web" in pill form, said Ken Solek, an assistant special agent in charge of the Minneapolis office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Because it's cheap to produce, the drug is often smuggled into the country and sold as pricier prescription pain pills. "Most of it's being ordered from China and dealers encapsulate it or press it into pills in a basement," Mr. Solek said, adding that users may think they are buying pills such as oxycodone, but in reality, they are 100 times stronger.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The new year may have begun, but one old trend seems to be refusing to go out of fashion: luxury industry big hitters who run afoul of the law for alleged tax evasion. The latest high profile name in question is Karl Lagerfeld. The French authorities announced on Thursday that the Chanel designer was the subject of a major tax inquiry, after the newsmagazine L'Express said that Mr. Lagerfeld had used offshore tax havens in Ireland, the British Virgin Islands and the United States to hide as much as 20 million euros ( 21.7 million) from the French government. Caroline Lebar, a spokeswoman for the designer, said that Mr. Lagerfeld "had no wish to evade the law" and that he had trusted his financial advisers to work out the situation with the tax authorities. There is no suggestion that Chanel, where he has been since 1983, has been caught up in the scandal. Mr. Lagerfeld is the latest famous fashion name to face such charges. In October 2014, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana were cleared of tax evasion charges by Italy's highest court after a 10 year dispute with the government over unpaid income tax worth millions. At one point in the dispute, the two men had been given 18 month suspended prison sentences and a fine of half a billion euros.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
The Goalie Is a Hired Gun, and He's Yours for 50 a Game TORONTO Keith Hamilton carried himself like an N.H.L. goaltender even before he made his first save in a pickup game at Moss Park Arena. Standing 6 feet tall and looking much bigger in skates he made the net behind him appear to shrink. But this was hardly the N.H.L. Hamilton, 39, was guarding the cage against a team of middle age men from an Ontario public utility. He wore a replica Colorado Avalanche jersey. Every other player was differentiated by tones more than colors, turning the sessions into light versus dark, a hockey version of shirts and skins. After an hourlong scrimmage, Hamilton cut a lonely figure as he skated off the ice. There were no handshakes, no fist bumps. He collected the cash he was promised the going rate is about 50 Canadian dollars per game changed out of his gear and drove off to the next arena. This was his third game of the day. He had two to go. Hamilton is a hockey mercenary, one of the estimated 150 to 200 hired guns in Toronto's recreation leagues who are in demand as much for their position goaltender as for their skills. With 143 indoor publicly owned arenas in the Toronto metropolitan area, there are many more teams than there are available goalies. Teams can do without one of their skaters. There are plenty of them. But if the goalie can't make it, a game could be forfeited, which can feel like a puck to the mouth when ice time costs more than 400 dollars an hour. "It's not like soccer, where a player can just go in net," said Niki Sawni, 27, who runs a goalie rental service called Puck App. By various estimates, there are as many as 8,000 rental goalie orders every year in the Toronto area , which suggests there is a sizable marketplace for the kind of person willing to play the bull's eye in a game of target practice. "You'll run into some crazy ones," said John McLeod, 55, a film actor who picks up work as a rental goalie in his off hours. "Very unusual characters, and I worry that I may be one of them, too." In Toronto, rental goalies a cohort of mostly men and a few women generally range in age from 18 to 65 and come from all walks of life: engineering, acting, education, policing, the trades. Some even try to make itinerant goaltending their profession. Hamilton is one of those. A musician who plays the vibraphone in a six person folk band called Beams, Hamilton said he makes more money being a rental goalie than playing music in clubs. He averages 10 games a week and keeps 40 Canadian dollars per game, paying 10 dollars in commission to a rental agency. His cut works out to about 1,600 Canadian dollars, or 1,220 in United States currency, a month. By his estimate, he has made well over 100,000 dollars in eight years as a rental goalie. And, yes, he said, he declares all of his income on his taxes. "It's not enough for a mortgage and kids' education, but it's just enough to get by," he said. "There's certainly more taxing ways to make a living. But I sweat and I come home with bruises." The rent a goalie concept has been around since at least 1985, when Doug Cardy, a former top junior goalie for the Toronto Marlboros, got tired of people "bugging me" to fill in on teams five or six times a week while he juggled a full time job. "I started telling them, 'I want some money,'" said Cardy, a short haul trucker. "And I started with a little cardboard sign in one of the arenas with my phone number." Cardy set up a business in which his goalies used pagers to check in for work. The money he scratched out wasn't worth it, though, and Cardy, now 61, got out. Goalies Unlimited was one of the first agencies to match games with goalies, in the mid 1990s. Since then, online competitors have proliferated, with names like Book a Goalie, MyPuck, Goalies to Go, Puck App, Rent a Goalie and Get a Goalie, which serves Buffalo and Chicago. Most of the agencies are run by current or former goaltenders . Ian Peters, 44, started his operation in New York after growing tired of paying a 35 Uber fare each way to play goal in pickup games. He made a proposal three years ago to Ron Bursey, 37, who runs the Canadian operation Book a Goalie, and a New York tab was added to the Toronto based website. "It started like wildfire and the business blew up," said Peters, who has about 70 goalies serving New Jersey, Connecticut and New York. "I do it all from my phone. There was resistance in the beginning, because New Yorkers weren't used to paying for this service." Daniel Smith, 57, a former high level hockey player who became a jockey, runs Goalies Unlimited. He likes to play four times a week, and as a rental goalie, he collects the full 50 fee each time. Puck App, which Sawni founded three years ago, markets itself as the Uber of the goalie rental business. With a smartphone app, it can undercut other services by charging a top rate of 45 dollars in Toronto, and even less in other cities. Sawni has a database of 8,000 users across Canada, both goalies looking for paid work (about 5,000 so far) and clients looking for help in net. On Puck App, a team can specify the site, the game's starting time and the level of play. The offer is sent to all of the goalies in the database who match the criteria. Patrick Herman, the owner of the MyPuck agency, has a roster of over 300 goaltenders and fills orders for 15 to 20 games a day. The business can be cutthroat, he said, and he has little time for teams who try to play one service off another to get a better deal. "If you want a pizza tonight, it's not like you call Pizza Hut and Domino's and tell them, 'The first delivery driver that gets to my door gets my money,'" Herman said. Some teams try to make side deals with players they like, but the agencies discourage goalies from disclosing their personal contact information to clients. "I had moved to Toronto and I didn't know anybody," Altshuller said. "I was just doing it mostly to find somewhere to play hockey." Others enter the marketplace for decidedly less professional reasons. Dan Madeiros, a commercial airline pilot, advertises his services at 40 an hour in the online classified forum Kijiji because, he said, he just likes to play. "I have a job that pays me well," said Madeiros, 42. "So I look at it that it's paid exercise."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Dr. J. Michael Lane, right, in 1980, when he was director of the Centers for Disease Control's global smallpox eradication program. With him were two former directors of the program, Dr. J. Donald Millar, left, and Dr. William H. Foege. The World Health Organization had just declared that smallpox was dead after a global search had found no further evidence of it in nature more than two years after it had infected its last human being. J. Michael Lane, a globe trotting epidemiologist who waged a 13 year war against the scourge of smallpox and led the final drive for its global eradication in 1977, when the last known vestige of the disease was snuffed out in East Africa, died on Wednesday at his home in Atlanta. He was 84. His wife, Lila Elizabeth Summer, said the cause was colon cancer. In his years of writing and lecturing on smallpox, Dr. Lane drew a vivid portrait of that unseen enemy, one of humanity's oldest and most terrifying infectious diseases. Perhaps emerging from a rodent virus 10,000 years ago, it periodically swept around the world over the centuries, killing or blinding a third of its victims: hundreds of millions in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, 80 percent of the Native Americans who caught it from European invaders, and the multitudes and monarchs of many lands. Its traces were found in the 3,000 year old mummy of Pharaoh Ramses V of Egypt. Presidents George Washington, Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln survived it. And in the 20th century it was blamed for 300 million deaths before it was finally wiped out in an international campaign led by public health officials in the United States and the Soviet Union. Smallpox was declared dead by the World Health Organization in 1980 after a global search found no evidence of it in nature more than two years after it had infected its last human being in nature, a hospital cook in Somalia by the name of Ali Maow Maalin, in 1977. (Technically, its last victim, Janet Parker, was a medical photographer in a British hospital who had apparently become infected in a lab accident and died in 1978.) Today, four decades later, no verified smallpox case has surfaced anywhere, and historians call its extermination one of humanity's greatest public health achievements. As in any war, as Dr. Lane was quick to acknowledge, the campaign to obliterate smallpox had its generals. Besides himself, they included Drs. D.A. Henderson, William H. Foege and J. Donald Millar, all epidemiologists and former directors of the smallpox eradication program of what is now the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. But the war also had its army of thousands of foot soldiers who identified smallpox outbreaks, and who did the frontline work of quarantining contagious sufferers and vaccinating their contacts and other potential victims. He became an expert on the complications of smallpox vaccinations. And while he believed correctly that vaccinations would be the ultimate weapon against the disease, he co wrote a report, published in The New England Journal of Medicine in 1969, calling for the end of smallpox vaccinations in the United States because the side effects fatal in roughly one case per million outweighed the benefits. A ban on 13 million routine smallpox vaccinations in this country was imposed in 1972. (Newer, purportedly safer versions of the vaccine have been made in case of another outbreak, and an anti smallpox drug has since been licensed.) By 1973, when Dr. Lane became the last director of the C.D.C.'s smallpox eradication bureau, the disease had long since been eradicated in the United States. But it remained an urgent international concern, with outbreaks largely in the rural areas of many countries. The C.D.C.'s vaccine was not a breakthrough of modern chemistry but a variation on a discovery in 1796 by Dr. Edward Jenner, an English doctor, who experimentally infected a boy with cowpox from a blister on a milkmaid's hand. Cowpox, a mild disease, protected those who received it from contracting smallpox and the modern era of vaccines was born. Under the aegis of the World Health Organization, the C.D.C.'s eradication program, begun in 1967 when vaccines were in short supply, used the tactic of "ring vaccination," focusing on villages with known victims, who were quarantined, and vaccinating their families and recent contacts. Teams also vaccinated in market towns and at festival sites, where people gathered in large numbers. The caseloads fell dramatically. By 1969, 100 million people in Africa had been vaccinated. Verified smallpox infections thereafter dwindled rapidly, until the last case of naturally transmitted smallpox was recorded in Somalia in 1977. Under World Health Organization rules, a disease may be pronounced dead only after two years of investigation without further verified cases having been found. That goal was more than met on May 8, 1980, when the World Health Assembly, the health ministers of 190 countries, certified that smallpox had been extinguished globally. There were a few headlines, but the milestone went largely unheralded. Scientists toasted the occasion at the W.H.O. in Geneva and at the C.D.C. in Atlanta. But it was an anticlimax for Dr. Lane and his colleagues. "Obviously we were happy and elated," Dr. Lane said in July in a phone interview for this obituary from his home, where he was in hospice care. "But it was expected. We had watched the curve go down in the early '70s, and the official announcement wasn't a big deal. What was a big deal was successfully getting rid of the disease in 1977." Dr. Lane in 2014. He was, a colleague said, "extremely important to the success of the smallpox eradication program." John Michael Lane was born in Boston on Feb. 14, 1936, to Eileen O'Connor and Alfred Baker Lewis II. Their subsequent marriage was her first and his second, and the surname Lane was created by his mother and conferred upon John and an older brother, Roger. John had another brother, Stephen Lewis, as well as a half brother, Alfred Baker Lewis III, and two half sisters, Helena Lewis and Caroline Lewis, the children of Mr. Lewis II's first marriage. John's father, a Socialist with inherited wealth, was a treasurer of the national N.A.A.C.P. and spoke on racial equality at Black churches and colleges in the South in the 1940s. He and his wife sponsored Jewish refugees from Germany during World War II. She was a director of Planned Parenthood and the Y.W.C.A. When the boy, called Mike, was 6, the family moved to Greenwich, Conn., where he graduated from the private Brunswick School in 1952. He earned a bachelor's degree in English from Yale in 1957, a medical degree from Harvard in 1961 and a master's in public health epidemiology from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1967. After interning at Bellevue Hospital in New York, he joined the C.D.C. in 1963 and within a year was assigned to the smallpox fight. Dr. Lane's marriage to Carolina Hernandez, in 1969, ended in divorce in 1998. He and Ms. Summer were married that year. In addition to his wife, he is survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Cynthia Michelle Edward, and a stepdaughter, Annabel Moore, as well as his brother, his half brother and half sisters, and two grandchildren. After the smallpox triumph, Dr. Lane remained at the C.D.C. as director of the Center for Prevention Services from 1980 to 1987. He taught at Emory University in Atlanta from 1988 to 1991, at the Australian National University in Canberra from 1991 to 1993, and again at Emory from 1993 to 2001.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Creative Time is once again seeking a leader. Katie Hollander, who was appointed executive director of the prominent New York nonprofit arts organization in January 2016, will step down. Alyssa Nitchun, the current deputy director, will serve as acting director while a search committee looks for a replacement. "I'm immensely proud of the team and the lasting impact our projects have had on the cultural community," Ms. Hollander wrote in a statement. Suzanne Cochran, the board chairwoman of Creative Time, said Ms. Hollander was leaving to pursue other opportunities. "After nearly a decade of her service at Creative Time, it was just the right moment for her to pursue something else," Ms. Cochran said in an interview. "Her vision and my vision were the same." Ms. Hollander worked at Creative Time for eight years before assuming her directorial role; she helped oversee many of the organization's public art projects, including Kara Walker's "A Subtlety," which drew long lines to Brooklyn's Domino Sugar Factory in 2014. She succeeded Anne Pasternak, who spent two decades leading Creative Time before moving on to the Brooklyn Museum.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
WASHINGTON In a broad review of scientific literature, the nation's top doctor has concluded that cigarette smoking long known to cause lung cancer and heart disease also causes diabetes, colorectal and liver cancers, erectile dysfunction and ectopic pregnancy. In a report to the nation to be released on Friday, the acting surgeon general, Dr. Boris D. Lushniak, significantly expanded the list of illnesses that cigarette smoking has been scientifically proved to cause. The other health problems the report names are vision loss, tuberculosis, rheumatoid arthritis, impaired immune function and cleft palates in children of women who smoke. Smoking has been known to be associated with these illnesses, but the report was the first time the federal government concluded that smoking causes them. The finding does not mean that smoking causes all cases of the health problems and diseases listed in the report, but that some of the cases would not have happened without smoking. The surgeon general has added to the list of smoking related diseases before. Bladder cancer was added in 1990 and cervical cancer in 2004. The report is not legally binding, but is broadly held as a standard for scientific evidence among researchers and policy makers. Experts not involved in writing the report said the findings were a comprehensive summary of the most current scientific evidence, and while they might not be surprising to researchers, they were intended to inform the public as well as doctors and other medical professionals about the newest proven risks of smoking. "I thought the science was very well done and up to date," said Dr. Robert Wallace, a professor of epidemiology and internal medicine at the University of Iowa, who helped review the report. But that decline has slowed in recent years, and the new report calls for stronger action in combating smoking. Smoking is the largest cause of premature death in the country, killing more than 400,000 people a year. The report notes that far more Americans have died prematurely from cigarette smoking than in all the wars ever fought by the United States. The report concluded that the evidence was insufficient to say that smoking caused prostate cancer. The evidence was suggestive, but not definite, that smoking causes breast cancer. The document also celebrates the public health success of smoking's decline since Dr. Luther Terry, the surgeon general in 1964, released his landmark finding. Smoking was deeply embedded in American culture at the time. Half of adult men were smokers, and a third of women. Even doctors smoked. That report was so controversial that it was released on a Saturday when Congress was on recess to minimize the political repercussions, said Dr. Richard D. Hurt, a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic. Dr. Judith Fradkin, a diabetes scientist at the National Institutes of Health, who was not involved in the report, said the evidence that smoking increases the risk of Type 2 diabetes had been gathering for about 20 years. While smoking causes most cases of lung cancer, it causes only a small fraction of liver and colorectal cancers. A current smoker is 25 times as likely to develop lung cancer as someone who has never smoked, but only about 1.5 times as likely to develop liver cancer. "It's a fairly modest association, but because so many people smoke, it's still an important cause of these cancers," said Neal Freedman, an epidemiologist at the National Cancer Institute. He pointed out that the surgeon general last looked at the effect of smoking on liver cancer in 2004, and found the evidence only suggestive. Since then, 90 new studies have been published allowing the surgeon general to conclude smoking is a cause. The report also finds that the risks of lung cancer are far higher today than in past decades, even though smokers today consume fewer cigarettes. In 1959, women who smoked were 2.7 times as likely as women who never smoked to develop lung cancer, and by 2010, the additional risk had jumped nearly tenfold. For men, the risk doubled over the same period. The report said changes in cigarettes' design, namely to the filter, contributed to the increased deadliness. "It is stunning that the risk of a premature death from smoking is greater than it was 50 years ago," said Matthew Myers, head of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, an advocacy group.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Chief of Apple Stores Is Leaving After 5 Years in the Job Angela Ahrendts, the former Burberry chief hired by Apple five years ago to oversee its stores, said Tuesday that she would leave the company in April. The departure is an unusual move for a top executive at Apple, which is facing retail challenges as sales in China have dropped and iPhone sales have turned sluggish. Ms. Ahrendts, 58, was one of Apple's most prominent hires when the Silicon Valley company lured her from Burberry with an initial 73 million pay package in 2014. She had spent eight years as Burberry's chief executive and was credited with expanding it into an international fashion brand. Over five years, Ms. Ahrendts was among Apple's highest paid executives, earning more than 170 million, according to securities filings. Apple said in a news release that she was leaving "for new personal and professional pursuits." One of Ms. Ahrendts's primary goals was to improve Apple's online retail operation so it was as admired as its sleek, minimalist stores. She generally succeeded, allowing customers, for example, to order online and pick up items in a store, said Neil Cybart, an independent Apple analyst. Mr. Cybart said that Apple's stores remained among the most lucrative in the world by square foot, and that traffic to them had been steady. "I don't necessarily see any huge red flags," he said while discussing the circumstances of Ms. Ahrendts's exit. Under Ms. Ahrendts, Apple started offering more public talks, concerts and seminars at its stores in an attempt to draw in customers who weren't necessarily in the market for a new device. "It's funny. We actually don't call them stores anymore," Ms. Ahrendts said at an Apple event in 2017. "We call them town squares." She was later criticized for suggesting that a store with 1,000 products could be a community gathering place. Ms. Ahrendts said in a statement that "the last five years have been the most stimulating, challenging and fulfilling of my career." Deirdre O'Brien, Apple's human resources chief, will take over management of the retail operation in addition to her current duties, the company said. She has worked for Apple for three decades. Ms. O'Brien, 52, is a surprising choice as the new retail chief, given her already heavy load handling human resources for more than 100,000 employees. She will add responsibilities that include "strategy, real estate and development, and operations of Apple's physical stores, Apple's online store and contact centers," according to Apple's website. Apple was probably willing to give her such a large role to keep retail in the hands of a company veteran, Mr. Cybart said. Apple operates 506 stores on five continents, about a 25 percent increase since Ms. Ahrendts was hired. Mr. Cybart said Apple had recently increased its focus on adding stores in prominent locations in major cities like Chicago and Milan. Two Wedbush Securities analysts, Daniel Ives and Strecker Backe, said in a research note that one of Ms. O'Brien's focuses would be stimulating demand in China, where the retail experience is important. They said they were encouraged that Apple had chosen Ms. O'Brien over an outside hire, given the company's recent struggles. "While the timing of this departure is a head scratcher, change could be a good thing for Apple, as the last year has been nothing to write home about," they wrote.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Juana Gutierrez Contreras in her family's workshop in Teotitlan del Valle, known for its hand woven rugs and other textiles. The Gutierrez family works to preserve traditional plant and insect dyes.Credit...Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times Juana Gutierrez Contreras in her family's workshop in Teotitlan del Valle, known for its hand woven rugs and other textiles. The Gutierrez family works to preserve traditional plant and insect dyes. TEOTITLAN DEL VALLE, Mexico As a child, Porfirio Gutierrez hiked into the mountains above the village with his family each fall, collecting the plants they would use to make colorful dyes for blankets and other woven goods. They gathered pericon, a type of marigold that turned the woolen skeins a buttercream color; jarilla leaves that yielded a fresh green; and tree lichen known as old man's beard that dyed wool a yellow as pale as straw. "We'd talk about the stories of the plants," Mr. Gutierrez, 39, recalled. "Where they grew, the colors that they provide, what's the perfect timing to collect them." In this small village near Oaxaca, known for its hand woven rugs, he and his family are among a small group of textile artisans working to preserve the use of plant and insect dyes, techniques that stretch back more than 1,000 years in the indigenous Zapotec tradition. Textile artists in many countries are increasingly turning to natural dyes, both as an attempt to revive ancient traditions and out of concerns about the environmental and health risks of synthetic dyes. Natural dyes, though more expensive and harder to use than the chemical dyes that have largely supplanted them, produce more vivid colors and are safer and more environmentally friendly than their synthetic counterparts. To be sure, natural pigments are not always benign. The plants they are extracted from can be poisonous, and heavy metal salts are often used to fix the colors to the fabric. The dyes fade more quickly from sun exposure than chemically produced colors, arguably rendering the textiles less sustainable. But environmentalists have long worried about the damaging effects of the wide array of toxic chemicals from sulfur and formaldehyde, to arsenic, copper, lead and mercury routinely used in textile production. Runoff from textile factories pollutes waterways and disrupts ecosystems worldwide. And long term exposure to synthetic dyes first discovered in 1856 by an English chemist, William Henry Perkin has been linked to cancer and other illnesses. "They are very toxic," Mr. Gutierrez said. "The more awareness you raise, the more artists are going to use natural dyes and stay away from heavily chemically dyed yarn." Teotitlan del Valle has long been a center for weaving according to one estimate, there are 2,000 or more looms in the village. In his book, "Oaxaca Journal," Dr. Oliver Sacks, the writer, neurologist and amateur botanist, described the village as having "almost a hereditary artisan class." "Virtually everyone in Teotitlan del Valle has a deep and detailed knowledge of weaving and dyeing, and all that goes with it carding, combing the wool, spinning the yarn, raising the insects on their favorite cactuses, picking the right indigo plants," Dr. Sacks wrote. Most of the master weavers in the village are men. But until the Spanish arrived in the early 1500s, weaving in Teotitlan was done by women using back strap looms, said Norma Schafer, who writes the blog Oaxaca Cultural Navigator and has studied the history of indigenous arts and crafts in the region. The Spaniards, Ms. Schafer said, brought free standing, frame pedal looms and used them to reward villages that helped fight the Aztecs. Zapotec men in Teotitlan were taught how to use the devices. Woven blankets and wraps eventually became the village's main source of income. But it was Americans, traveling through the Oaxaca valley in the 1970s, who saw an opportunity to market the Teotitlan weavers' colorful hand woven throw rugs. "They brought Navajo designs to the village," Ms. Schafer said. "These then were sold at a lower cost to people decorating their houses in the Southwestern style." Increased demand led to higher production, with wholesalers distributing rug patterns and paying village weavers by the piece for rugs. Today, about 75 percent of Teotitlan's population of 5,600 is involved in some aspect of weaving. "Every family has their own recipe, and every family does their dye process differently," Ms. Schafer said. Thoroughly Americanized by that time, "it was a huge culture shock," he recalled. Leaning on the family loom while his father worked, he listened to stories about what life had been like in the village and how it had changed. Eventually he rediscovered a passion for weaving. And he realized that, just as he had forgotten the richness of his culture, the village, too, was slowly losing its age old traditions. "There was not much soul anymore," he said. "These natural dyes were absolutely on the brink of extinction." Mr. Gutierrez and his family decided to create their own weaving studio to create pieces using only natural dyes and to teach others how to do it. But Mr. Gutierrez's fluency in English and familiarity with the United States he still lives much of the time in Ventura have given him an opportunity to reach a wider audience. "I'm able to see my culture from an outsider's perspective and also from an insider's, as part of the community," he said. The family is compiling a book of dye recipes, formulas passed down for centuries by word of mouth. And Mr. Gutierrez has worked to expand traditional designs used by Zapotec weavers into new territory, for example, by combining wool with agave fiber, palm leaves used for thousands of years to make mats for sleeping or other natural materials. He has contributed samples of natural dyeing materials to the Harvard Art Museums' Forbes Pigment Collection. Last year, with a grant from the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian's Artists Leadership Program, he held a four day workshop in Teotitlan for 15 young weavers, teaching them the science and practice of natural dyes. "Their reaction was almost a, 'Wow, let me try it, let me do it,'" said Keevin Lewis, who ran the program and recently retired as the museum's outreach coordinator. "They got their hands on the wool, they got their hands in the dye, they were crushing up the cochineal bug. They were in it."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Your Spit Might Help You Learn to Eat Your Greens None Ramin Rahimian for The New York Times It is not uncommon for children to despise kale, broccoli or the bitter taste of brussels sprouts. By the time we become adults, many of us have learned to eat our greens. But it wasn't just willpower that helped you develop a taste for foods that once made you grimace. New research shows that proteins in our saliva may adapt and bind to bitter compounds, making them more palatable. The study, presented at an American Chemical Society meeting this week, found that when people were repeatedly exposed to bitter compounds in cocoa, their saliva changed to produce proteins that rendered the flavor of those compounds less bitter. "Bitter taste tends to be rejected," said Cordelia A. Running, an assistant professor in food and nutrition science at Purdue University in Indiana, and the study's lead researcher. But, "this is something you might actually be able to change about yourself biologically." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Over the course of six weeks, the researchers had 64 study participants drink three eight ounce glasses of almond or cow's milk with cocoa a day on alternate weeks, each time rating the drink's flavor. While chocolate milk might not sound like a bitter thing to swallow, it contained only four percent added sugar a fraction of the added sugar in most chocolatey drinks found at the grocery store. As the participants' bitterness ratings decreased, the researchers saw changes in their saliva "reasonably quickly," Dr. Running said. But those changes did not last; a person would need to continue eating bitter foods to maintain their tolerance, she added. The commonly accepted theory of why humans instinctively dislike bitter foods is evolutionary: Bitterness is often a sign of toxicity, and in some cases, extremely high quantities of otherwise healthy bitter foods, like leafy greens, may be harmful. But for similar reasons, bitter foods can also promote health, Dr. Running said. These in vogue plants "seem to stimulate systems in the body that help us respond to threats because they are themselves in really high doses threats," she said. She and her colleagues think that by binding to the bitter compounds, the salivary proteins may not only make the food taste better, but may also prevent your body from absorbing them fully whether this is protective or diminishes the foods' nutritional value, however, is unknown. John Glendinning, a professor of biology at Barnard College who was not involved in the study, said it was exciting to see the research which had previously only been conducted with rodents extended to humans. "This is a novel mechanism for adapting to a mildly aversive tasting substance," he said. But, he added, just because proteins bind to the bitter compounds in chocolate, for example, that does not necessarily mean the same will occur for cruciferous vegetables. While taste is often thought of as a psychological experience, Dr. Glendinning said, it is important to remember that our ability to develop tolerance for specific foods involves physical changes in both the mouth and brain. In that sense, he added, "all adaptations are probably biological." Dr. Running's study was exciting, he said, because it revealed a new tolerance mechanism. The researchers hope to try future studies with something even less tasty to drink. Eventually, Dr. Running said, the idea would be to study of whether the effect crosses over to other foods: could regular doses of cocoa, for example, "make a really bitter terrible tasting tea taste better? Could we use less sugar in cranberry juice?" While diet choice is complicated, with many social and economic factors, the researchers said they hoped their work might also help lead to some people making healthier eating choices.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Dr. Hilary Dale Bollman and Dr. Ian Wesley Folkert were married June 9 at Congress Hall in Cape May, N.J. Dr. Vaughn W. Folkert, the groom's father, became a Universal Life minister to officiate. The bride, 30, will take her husband's name. She is an internist at Jeanes Hospital in Philadelphia. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pittsburgh and received a medical degree from Temple University. She is a daughter of Julia M. Bollman and Percy D. Bollman of Schellsburg, Pa. The bride's father retired as the pricing administrator, in Bedford, Pa., for the mining and construction division of Kennametal, a supplier of tooling and industrial materials. Her mother retired as a first grade teacher at Shade Elementary School in Cairnbrook, Pa. The groom, 32, is a fifth year resident in general surgery at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. He graduated magna cum laude from N.Y.U. and received a medical degree from Penn. He is a candidate for a doctoral degree in cancer biology from Penn. His mother, Laurie P. Folkert of Yorktown Heights, N.Y., is a legal secretary at Welby, Brady Greenblatt, a law firm in White Plains. His father, who lives in New Rochelle, N.Y., is a nephrologist. He is the director of the Baumritter Kidney Center, a dialysis provider, and is a professor of medicine in the nephrology department at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, both in the Bronx. The groom is also the stepson of Valerie D. Barnett. The couple met in 2015, at Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia, where both were residents. She had a patient with peripheral vascular disease, and needed a surgical consultation on whether the patient would have to undergo a leg amputation. Dr. Folkert responded to the call. The patient, unfortunately, would need the surgery. After the professional matters had been dispensed with, Dr. Folkert, who said he was normally gruff in the role of surgical consult, as he might answer as many as 30 calls in the course of a shift, stayed to chat for more than 20 minutes. "He was very tall and handsome and friendly," Dr. Bollman said. (The bride is just 5 feet 2 inches, while the groom is 6 5.) Dr. Folkert was even more impressed. "As soon as I met, her I was totally enamored," he said. Over the course of the next several months, the two became friendly and found that they enjoyed each other's sense of humor. "He is hilarious, that was the first thing," Dr. Bollman said. "He cracked me up a lot, and I could tell he had a very similar personality. He's a genuinely good person." "She is extremely beautiful, and this super spunky, extremely short redhead," he said. "She's hard to miss. She fills up a room as soon as she enters it." He eventually asked her out, sending her an awkward Facebook message after her profile popped up as someone he might know, and the two planned to meet up. But then he got stuck doing a liver resection and didn't get out of the operating room until three or four hours after their date was supposed to happen. "I said, 'Please give me another chance,' and she was sending screen shots from at least one of her friends, who said, 'You should never go out with him again,'" he said. "I was not pleased, but it seemed like a reasonable excuse," she said. On New Year's Day, in 2016, the two had their not entirely conventional first date. "We were both kind of feeling under the weather, so I said why don't we just order Indian food and watch some zombie movies," Dr. Folkert said. They did, and the date went long. "Around three in the morning both of us had to go to work at six she just looked over at me," he said, "and said 'Are you going to kiss me or what?'" He did, and "enamored" became something more profound. "After the first date, I was that psychotic person going around telling my friends, I'm going to marry this person," he said. "But it was what it was."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
EPIDAURUS, Greece As dusk fell here on Saturday, a white robed chorus filed onto the sparse stage of a limestone amphitheater for the National Theater of Greece's production of "The Persians," the world's oldest surviving dramatic work. In 472 B.C., when Aeschylus's play was first performed, the actors would have been wearing masks. This time, it was the audience. The show, which was taking place as part of the Athens and Epidaurus Festival, was livestreamed to an audience around the world and was hailed as theater's return to the place where it all began after the coronavirus lockdown darkened stages across Greece. To abide by restrictions set by the health authorities, visitors wore masks to enter and leave the amphitheater, and ushers in plastic visors and surgical gloves enforced social distancing. The theater's usual 10,000 seat capacity was capped at 4,500. As Greece started to emerge from its financial crisis, in 2018, state funding started trickling back; the major state funded theaters edged up to three quarters of their pre crisis budgets, and the smaller theaters that survived recouped some of their losses. Then the pandemic came and threatens to wash all those gains away. On March 12, the government closed all theaters in the first wave of its response to the coronavirus. Since July 1, open air venues have been allowed to resume, but only at half capacity. The conditions under which indoor venues would be allowed to reopen have yet to be decided by the health authorities, according to Nicholas Yatromanolakis, the general secretary of the Greek Culture Ministry. "No one knows what will happen yet," he said. "We have to roll with the punches." Even if closed theaters reopen in the fall, the social distancing rules that they will most likely have to introduce will mean greatly reduced ticket sales and state subsidies on their own are not enough to keep most organizations going. Greece has so far weathered the pandemic much better than many of its neighbors, recording about 4,300 cases and just over 200 deaths from the virus, but many in the industry worry that a second wave of the illness would mean that venues have to remain shuttered for even longer. Dimitris Lignadis, the artistic director of the National Theater, which staged "The Persians" at the festival, said in an interview that he was bracing for losses. "I'm doing it to keep up appearances, to keep the theater alive," he said of this summer's reduced program. The Greek government has announced some measures to cushion the blow for arts organizations. In May, it set aside 100 million euros, about 120 million, to support businesses in the arts sector that were forced to close and to compensate workers left out of a job. But only EUR4 million was pledged for theaters, a pittance in comparison with the funds made available by other European nations. Dimitris Antoniadis, a former president of the Union of Greek Actors, said state compensation for performers only helped those who were working when the lockdown began. When the virus struck, about 80 percent of Greek actors in the austerity hit industry were unemployed, he said, noting that roles were now so scarce that many had now sought work in cafes and hotels to make ends meet during the pandemic. "It's not like the virus came along and ruined some sort of paradise," he said. "Things were already hard, now it's hell." During the lockdown, the Culture Ministry encouraged theaters to find ways to bring in revenue for themselves, such as by recording plays for paid digital distribution. It is also planning to help theaters present productions with English subtitles, in the hope of drawing in foreign visitors though tourism, too, has been battered by the pandemic. A program of more than 250 performances in archaeological sites around the country, organized by the ministry, will run through the summer. "We tried to expand the safety net, to protect jobs and to promote Greek theater," Mr. Yatromanolakis said. Distributing aid to theaters has been complicated by poor record keeping, however. One problem the authorities faced in dealing with thousands of requests was that there was no official record of theaters, or actors, in the country, and it was difficult to ascertain which claims were genuine. A register is only now being compiled, Mr. Yatromanolakis said. The chaotic state of the Greek arts sector has long been holding it back, said Lydia Koniordou, an actress who played the lead role in "The Persians" and who was Greece's culture minister from 2016 to 2018 in the left wing government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. Institutions frequently employed artists with contracts that offered little protection or without contracts at all, she said. This, along with widespread financial mismanagement, had turned Greece's cultural sector into a "bombed out landscape," she added. Ms. Koniordou said that during her years as culture minister, she had managed to curb wasteful spending by state funded theaters and secure an extra EUR3 million in annual subsidies for smaller venues. But, she added, the arts were generally viewed as a luxury, and were not a priority. "Culture is seen as something decorative, like a vase of flowers," she said. "If you don't have money, you won't buy a vase of flowers. But culture is our society's compass, our North Star. If we lose our compass, we lose our way."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
On a recent Thursday, Vani Hari, perhaps Public Enemy No. 1 of big food companies, sat at ABC Kitchen in the Flatiron district wearing a purple sweater with a giant pink heart and pink heart shaped crystal earrings. Ms. Hari, 35, who is better known as Food Babe, the name of her blog, flipped through photographs of her that her mother had recently unearthed, pausing at one taken immediately after college at a Mexican restaurant. "Look what I'm drinking," she said gleefully. "A Coke! I would never drink that now." In the last two years, first Ms. Hari, then her husband, who are based in Charlotte, N.C., quit lucrative jobs as consultants to make their living from Foodbabe.com, where Ms. Hari challenges companies like Coca Cola for using ingredients she says are harmful. (Metrics can vary, but according to her figures, Food Babe has more than three million readers a month; comScore shows 1.1 unique visitors for January, roughly double the traffic of a year ago.) Other Food Babe targets have included Starbucks (accusations of "hazardous chemicals" in pumpkin spice lattes), Chick fil A (which she called Chemical Fil A), Whole Foods (for genetically modified and hidden ingredients) and Subway. To protest the sandwich chain's use of azodicarbonamide in its bread, Ms. Hari posted a video of herself chewing another item in which the chemical is found: a yoga mat. In less than 24 hours, Ms. Hari's petition to the company to remove the dough conditioner had 50,000 signatures. The next day, Subway, which Ms. Hari said had not replied to any previous correspondence, emailed her to say it was already in the process of removing the chemical, which had been approved by the Food and Drug Administration. It's tough to argue with a crusade to help Americans eat better and to win more transparency from both food companies and the federal agency, but Ms. Hari, a former computer science major with no training as a food scientist, nutritionist or chef, has managed to become a flash point. Her click me headlines ("Do You Eat Beaver Butt?" for a post about what's in so called natural flavorings) and camera ready looks have won her a rabid Foodbabearmy, billings as an expert on television shows, a book ("The Food Babe Way") that made its debut at No. 4 on the New York Times best seller list last month, and a spot (along with Beyonce and Kim Kardashian) on Time Magazine's "30 Most Influential People on the Internet." But her statements often incorrect and faulty reasoning have produced numerous memes and parodies, not to mention aggressive reactions from doctors and scientists, who call her scientifically illiterate. Asked Ms. Hari's biggest sin, Joseph A. Schwarcz, the director of McGill University's Office of Science and Society exhaled loudly and said, "Where do I start?" Scientists splutter with frustration that to Ms. Hari, the word "chemical" is always a pejorative and that she yells fire about toxins but ignores that fruits and vegetables are full of naturally occurring toxins, and that the dose makes the poison. "Peach pits, for example, are very natural, but they contain cyanide," said Fergus M. Clydesdale, a professor of food science at the University of Massachusetts. "Oranges have methanol, which is very toxic. And we've been eating those for thousands of years." Professor Clydesdale also pointed out that the body is made of chemicals, and that we eat partly to replenish those chemicals with chemicals from food. But mostly, the biggest objection to Ms. Hari is the paranoia and fear she whips up. The blog Science Based Medicine calls her "the Jenny McCarthy of Food." Ms. Hari, however, dismissed this criticism as manufactured by "the processed food lobby" and "industry funded science." She sees herself as an activist and 21st century Upton Sinclair (her reference) who provides information that "could be a lifesaver," which is what she wrote in a widely mocked post, now deleted, that demonized the microwave oven for destroying nutrients and causing cancer. Ms. Hari, the daughter of Indian immigrants, grew up with a preference for Burger King and anything from the deep fryer over homemade Indian food. She had eczema, asthma, stomach problems and "severe" food allergies, the last of which critics (and at least one person who said she knew her growing up) dispute because Ms. Hari has advocated lying to servers about allergies to butter, dairy, corn and soy to avoid possible sources of genetically modified food. At age 23, she had appendicitis, something she said was caused by her "lifestyle of poor nutrition," though most experts say it is a random occurrence. She read books like "Spiritual Nutrition" and "Conscious Eating" and applied the skills she learned as an award winning debater in high school "we learned how to research, like find obscure books and look at microfiche," she said to food. She read labels, cleaned up her diet and saw results. Her eczema, asthma and allergies went away, and she said she was off all prescription drugs (up to eight or nine, depending on the season) within three to four years. In 2011, friends encouraged her to share her experiences and lessons. She asked her husband to register the domain name eathealthyliveforever.com, but he suggested Food Babe instead. In a picture on her blog, Ms. Hari wears a yellow bikini and does a backbend known as yoga's wheel pose, "Food Babe" written in the beach sand in front of her. Ms. Hari's posts follow one of a handful of simple but effective formulas. Sometimes she finds an ingredient, often an ugly sounding chemical (propylene glycol, which she said was in beer), and finds a secondary industrial use (antifreeze) for it. (In this case, Ms. Hari actually confused her chemicals. Dr. David H. Gorski, a surgical oncologist who also has a degree in chemistry, wrote on Science Based Medicine that the beer ingredient is propylene glycol alginate, which, despite its name, is not even close to propylene glycol, is not antifreeze and is derived from kelp.) Another of her approaches is to find an unappetizing sounding source of something (isinglass, for example, a colorless, tasteless collagen made from fish bladders that's been used for centuries to clarify beer without causing harm) and cry foul. In both cases, Ms. Hari usually profits, promoting expensive alternatives for which she receives Amazon affiliate commissions. (Making a percentage off referrals is a common moneymaker for blogs.) Ms. Hari, who also sells eating guides ( 17.99 a month) with "approved brands," said her methods were "bad business." "I talk about a ton of products pro bono because it's just the right thing to do," she said. "I probably should reach out before I write about some of these products." Kevin M. Folta, the chairman of the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida, described Ms. Hari's lecture at the university last October as a "corrupt message of bogus science and abject food terrorism." (Her fee was 6,000.) Dr. Folta added, "She found that a popular social media site was more powerful than science itself, more powerful than reason, more powerful than actually knowing what you're talking about." Even Ms. Hari's supporters concede that she is inflammatory. "Sometimes we may not share the same degree of concern about ingredients that she has or wouldn't express it the way she does," said Ken Cook, a founder of the Environmental Working Group, whom Ms. Hari calls a mentor. "But what we tend to have in common is this sense that there's been way too much leniency granted to the food industry when it comes to allowing ingredients into the marketplace." Perhaps because Ms. Hari inspires a measure of fear in companies, she is often neither mentioned nor credited with a change in practices. Asked about her role in Subway's decision to remove azodicarbonamide from its bread, a company spokesman said in an email that the process began "before the ingredient began generating headlines." Asked specifically about Ms. Hari, he repeated the same phrase. Like other outspoken women, Ms. Hari has her share of online attacks that are at times obscene, misogynistic and frightening. (Her brother requested anonymity to avoid these aggressive critics.) "My friends say, 'How are you going to get through it?' " she said. "And I just kind of laugh and say: 'I'll be like Taylor Swift. I'll just kind of shake it off.' " She does not often engage directly even with those offering thoughtful criticism, instead blocking them from her Facebook page, which has more than 930,000 likes. One "Banned by Food Babe" Facebook group has nearly 6,000 members; another has nearly 700. Ms. Hari said people are only blocked for obscenities, but Dr. Schwarcz, who is among the banned (though not a Facebook group member), said he merely questioned her credentials. As for those credentials, Ms. Hari said that chemistry shouldn't be necessary to decipher what to eat. She pointed out that her undergraduate major was actually in the College of Engineering at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte, so she took "hard science, oh my gosh, Physics 3, Calculus 3." Asked how she liked them, she said, "I mean, who likes those?" In another much mocked post, "Food Babe Travel Essentials No Reason to Panic on the Plane!" Ms. Hari criticized the air on an airplane. Because of cost concerns, the air "pumped in isn't pure oxygen, either, it's mixed with nitrogen, sometimes at almost 50 percent," she wrote. Except ambient air isn't pure oxygen, either. It's roughly 78 percent nitrogen. The widely discredited post, where Ms. Hari also complained about the flight attendants' stinginess with water in first class, was removed swiftly. In an interview, Ms. Hari said she didn't remember the post, which Mr. Cook brought up by name. She then said it would have disappeared from the blog because it was old. Weeks later, in an email, she admitted that it had been removed because of mistakes, and said that she planned to start noting when she clarified or corrected posts. Ms. Hari said the these particular posts (which she wouldn't acknowledge as having been discredited) were a feeble exercise in nit picking that detracted from her mission. "If you're going to pick apart every little sentence I've written ," she said, her voice trailing off. She added of her critics, "They have to dig so far and deep to find something to make me look crazy because what I'm saying now is so sane and is so real."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
In the story notes section of his new collection, "Full Throttle," Joe Hill muses that one of these days, he'll "learn how to write a story with a happy ending." I hope he never gets around to it. He's already so good at endings of the unhappy variety. Shocking, terrible, whoa, cover your mouth and gasp endings. Endings that are perfect and yet a page early, arriving before you're ready. Endings that tear off the story's edge, leaving it ragged and bloody, leaving you wanting more. So yes, Hill has a way with endings. Also beginnings. Often middles, too, his stories pushing you along with the intangible dread of a fable, pulling you forward with the inexorable logic of a mathematical proof. Lots of dead bodies, very few dead parts among Hill's many talents is his ability to braid together his strands: What the story is about and What the story is about. In each, the gruesome skin of horror the genre premise wraps around a darker psychological root: the horrors of everyday life. In "Dark Carousel," four teenagers on a double date taking "their final stand against adulthood" go for a ride on a demented merry go round. In "Faun," wealthy big game hunters pay extra for a chance at what's on the other side of the "little door." A number of the stories have, to some extent, a version of this framework: Characters make bad choices that come back to haunt them. And then the characters try to outrun the bad choices, for the next few minutes, or hours, or decades. Some of the monsters in this collection feel almost familiar almost, but not quite. Like old body parts salvaged and used to create an all new beast, terrifying not in spite of but because of our mutual recognition: mundane objects repurposed to much darker use.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
WASHINGTON President Trump signed the revised North American Free Trade Agreement into law on Wednesday, fulfilling a campaign promise to rewrite "one of the worst trade deals" in history. "Today we are finally ending the NAFTA nightmare," Mr. Trump said during a White House signing ceremony, calling the new trade deal a "colossal victory" for farmers, factory workers and other countries. Much of the new United States Mexico Canada Agreement simply updates the 25 year old North American Free Trade Agreement, with new laws on intellectual property protection, the internet, investment, state owned enterprises and currency. But the 2,082 page pact also includes significant changes in several key areas, including incentives to make cars in North America and open Canadian markets for American dairy farmers. It rolls back a special system of arbitration for corporations that has drawn bipartisan condemnation, and includes additional provisions designed to help identify and prevent labor violations, particularly in Mexico. Some of those changes were inserted at the insistence of Democrats, who used their control of the House to secure long desired policy changes. Here are highlights from the new U.S.M.C.A. Steering more car production to the United States NAFTA required automakers to produce 62.5 percent of a vehicle's content in North America to qualify for zero tariffs. The new agreement raises that threshold, over time, to 75 percent. That's meant to force automakers to source fewer parts for an "Assembled in Mexico" car from Germany, Japan, South Korea or China. The pact also requires 70 percent of a vehicle's steel and aluminum to originate in North America, with steel being both melted and poured on the continent. For the first time, the new agreement also mandates that 40 to 45 percent of the parts for any tariff free vehicle must come from a so called high wage factory. Those factories must pay a minimum of 16 an hour in average salaries for production workers. That's about triple the average wage in a Mexican factory right now, and administration officials hope the provision will either force automakers to buy more supplies from Canada or the United States or cause wages in Mexico to rise. However, critics caution that factories may be able to game the rules by including some high paid managers in their calculations. And there are risks to the changes. Automotive analysts have warned that the wage provision could raise costs for American car companies and car buyers, slowing the auto market and weighing on economic growth over all. The final provision, as written, could also prove relatively ineffective at shifting production, because it is not indexed to inflation. An average wage of 16 an hour will be less constraining in 2023 dollars than it is today. The U.S.M.C.A. includes expansive changes that, at least on paper, should help level the playing field among workers in the United States, Canada and Mexico. NAFTA's original provisions on labor and environment were added as side letters after the original agreement was signed, to win the support of Democrats and ensure the deal's passage during the Clinton administration. The U.S.M.C.A. moves these chapters into the main body of the trade agreement, meaning issues like the right to organize are now subject to the pact's normal procedures for settling disputes. The deal also expands those commitments, requiring more protections for workers, blocking imports of goods made with forced labor, and setting up mechanisms to ensure that those rules are enforced. Cryptocurrency group loses bid for copy of U.S. Constitution. The company that produced 'Parasite' is in talks to buy Endeavor's scripted content arm. Critic of Teamsters leader claims victory in race to succeed him. In response to the concerns of congressional Democrats, it sets up an independent panel that can investigate factories accused of violating labor rights and stop shipments of that factory's goods at the border. It establishes an interagency committee to monitor Mexico's labor reforms, as well as American attaches who will report to Congress on the progress. In an annex to the agreement, Mexico also committed to enact sweeping legal changes to combat forced labor and violence against workers, and allow for independent unions and labor courts. The International Trade Commission has estimated that, if the changes are made, they will increase wages for Mexico's unionized workers and decrease their pay gap with American workers. In a major concession to Democrats, the Trump administration agreed to pare back certain protections for an advanced and very expensive class of drugs called biologics. The final agreement removes a provision that had offered the drugs 10 years of protection from cheaper alternatives in both Canada and Mexico. The agreement expands other protections for intellectual property rights, for example, extending the 50 years of protection for copyrights in NAFTA to 70 years. It also includes new criminal penalties for theft of trade secrets, including cybertheft. In a major win for tech firms, it gives internet companies like Facebook and YouTube certain protections from lawsuits related to the user content posted on their platforms. It also sets new standards by prohibiting governments from asking tech companies to disclose their source code or put duties on electronic transmissions. The agreement gives American farmers some additional access to foreign markets, particularly in Canada. It does not dismantle Canada's "supply management system," which dictates how much Canadian farmers should produce so they can be profitable. But Canada did agree to eliminate a program that helps sellers of certain milk products, at home and abroad, and open its market to American milk, cream, butter, cheese and other products. In return, the United States expanded access to its market for Canadian dairy and sugar. It also creates a list of cheese names that Mexico and the United States agree can be marketed without restriction in their countries, and it forces grocery stores in British Columbia to stop their practice of selling British Columbia only wines on certain shelves, and stock American wines alongside them. In a major change, the U.S.M.C.A. rolls back a special system of arbitration that allowed companies to sue governments for unfair treatment. The provision was criticized both by the Trump administration, which said it encouraged outsourcing, and by Democrats, who said it gave corporations too much power to challenge environmental and consumer regulations. The system can no longer be used in disputes between the United States and Canada and is limited to disagreements between Mexico and the United States that involve a narrow range of industries, including petrochemicals, telecommunications, infrastructure and power generation. Other systems for settling disputes between governments were basically maintained. The Trump administration ultimately gave up on an effort to eliminate the so called Chapter 19 provision, which gives the three countries a neutral way to challenge one another's tariffs and other actions. The administration also gave in to Democratic demands for removal of a provision that would have allowed any country to block a case against it from moving forward, if it so wished. But the U.S.M.C.A. retains a more controversial addition by the Trump administration a sunset clause that requires the three countries to review, after six years, whether to remain in the agreement. If any country decides not to continue with the pact, the U.S.M.C.A. will expire 16 years later.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Citizen science travel, or trips where the traveler is encouraged to participate in scientific research through observation and data collection, is growing in popularity thanks in part to an increasing number of ecotourists who want to support research initiatives around the world. These travelers also want to contribute positively to the destinations they visit. The environmental charity Earthwatch has been sending volunteers on research trips for nearly fifty years, with tours focusing on climate change, ocean health, wildlife and ecosystems. Ecotourists collect and analyze environmental data that is used in the hope of advancing conservation efforts on a global scale. "We've seen a 20 percent rise in participation over the past five years," said Scott Kania, Earthwatch's chief executive. "Citizen science offers people the opportunity to own ecological problems and be a part of the solution." According to a 2017 Earthwatch report, scientists and participants have discovered new species and gathered data that have been influential in establishing nature reserves and protecting endangered wildlife, like leatherback sea turtles in Costa Rica. The firm's latest expedition takes citizen scientists to Peru on a weeklong journey to photograph, measure and collect genetic samples of giant manta rays with the goal to help halt overfishing. Earthwatch's Peruvian expedition is 2,750 per person, and includes room and board, research permits, scientific equipment, airport and land transfers, and medevac insurance for the duration of the expedition.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
They are streaming into New York from Calgary, Montreal and, of course, Newfoundland. Some wear red, stay warm in gloves adorned with the maple leaf, or carry a provincial flag. Canada is having a rare moment on Broadway "Come From Away," a musical written by a married Canadian couple, set in Newfoundland and celebrating Canadian decency, has just opened at the Schoenfeld Theater. The show was already drawing an unusually high number of Canadian ticket buyers, and an extraordinary amount of Canadian media attention, even before this week, when it hit the apotheosis of Canadianness: The country's charismatic and popular prime minister, Justin Trudeau, attended with a group of 600 allies and diplomats. On Wednesday night, Mr. Trudeau sat side by side with Ivanka Trump, the American president's daughter and close adviser, as the 100 minute musical celebrated the welcome extended by residents of Gander, a small town in Newfoundland, to thousands of air travelers diverted during the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The show is packed with distinctive local details; one scene, inevitably, is set in the ubiquitous doughnut chain Tim Hortons. The timing was rich: As Ms. Trump, joined by Nikki R. Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, and Mr. Trudeau, accompanied by his wife, Sophie, watched an artistic tribute to the virtues of embracing foreigners, President Trump was proposing to eliminate federal funding of the arts and to ban travel from parts of the Muslim world. Although the musical has been in development for years, it arrives on Broadway at a complex moment for Canada's relationship with its southern neighbor. The Trump administration is demanding to rework the North American Free Trade Agreement a pact strongly supported by Mr. Trudeau; the United States ban on immigrants from six predominantly Muslim countries, blocked on Wednesday by a federal judge, has set off a surge in asylum seekers fleeing from the United States to Canada, where they have largely been welcomed; and Mr. Trump's budget proposal would eliminate a federal program aimed at cleaning up the Great Lakes, which over 10 million Canadians rely on for their drinking water. "We're always going to have differences of approaches on certain issues, but the fundamental hopes for the future, the responsibilities of keeping people safe, and building a better future for our kids is something that we can always agree on," he told the CBC. Then, pressed by Tom Brokaw of NBC on differences about refugees, he said, "I know and I've always felt, for Canada that we recognize that diversity is a great source of strength, and that's something we're open to in the world." Canadians in the audience were more explicit in seeing the show as a moment to highlight how Canada's welcoming of refugees contrasts with America's harsher policy. "Canada understands these people are just looking for security and a safe place for their families,'' said Sophie de Caen, 57, who moved to New York from Montreal, where she works for the United Nations Development Program, which helps Syrian refugees, among others. "As we can see in this show, Canadians have a generosity of spirit. We accept diversity." Renee Beaumont, 48, who moved to New York from Vancouver years ago, showed up at the musical wearing a shirt emblazoned with the words, "I am an immigrant." "The contrast between the U.S. and Canada is so stark," Ms. Beaumont said. "Nothing is solved unless we have dialogue." Lee MacDougall, a native of Kirkland Lake, in northern Ontario, said he feels a particular pride that the show is resonating with Canadians. "Every night when we go sign autographs there are school groups from Alberta or somewhere else in Canada," he said. "This is a very Canada proud story, and people are excited to celebrate that." The musical is by Irene Sankoff and David Hein, and was nurtured by the Canadian Music Theater Project at Sheridan College near Toronto. But most of its pre Broadway development took place in the United States, and the vast majority of the show's 12 million capitalization was raised here, though there are a number of Canadian investors. The news media in Canada has covered the show's journey to Broadway exhaustively, including segments on the opening night party, The New York Times review, its cast and its financial prospects. "We love to see ourselves on the world stage, because it's not often," Ms. Sankoff said. The show had one pre Broadway run in Canada, an eight week stand at the Royal Alexandra Theater in Toronto, where standing room space and an extra performance were added to meet demand, and the show is returning to the same theater next year (this will be in addition to the Broadway production, assuming it's still running). Sue Frost, one of the show's lead producers, estimated that 14 percent of the audience is from Canada, a marked increase over the 2.6 percent average on Broadway, according to data collected by the Broadway League. One night, the mayor of Calgary showed up; the Newfoundland based Memorial University School of Music sent a group; on Wednesday night the audience included not only Mr. Trudeau but one of his predecessors, Jean Chretien, and on Thursday night the stars of "Republic of Doyle," a Canadian television comedy series, were expected to attend. "You can always tell the Canadians, because they respond so differently and vociferously, and if you're really lucky you have Newfoundlanders waving flags," said Ms. Frost, who is American. "There are days when you see 40 or 50 flags in the house." And the Canadian performers are taking particular pleasure at portraying their home country on the world's biggest stage. "You always imagine as a kid you want to do 'Annie,'" said Petrina Bromley, the lone Newfoundlander in the cast. "But to be here as a Newfoundlander, doing a show about Newfoundland, is beyond anything I could ever have imagined."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The 2020 Ryder Cup, a biennial international men's golf competition that dates to the 1920s, was postponed until next year on Wednesday because of the coronavirus pandemic. The P.G.A. of America, which conducts the team event contested between players from the United States and Europe, said the competition, scheduled for Sept. 25 to 27, would instead be held on Sept. 24 to Sept. 26, 2021, at Whistling Straits in Kohler, Wis., which was slated to host this year's competition. "Unlike other major sporting events that are played in existing stadiums, we had to make a decision now about building facilities to host the 2020 Ryder Cup at Whistling Straits," Seth Waugh, the P.G.A. of America's chief executive, said. "It became clear that as of today, our medical experts and the public authorities in Wisconsin could not give us certainty that conducting an event responsibly with thousands of spectators in September would be possible." The event, which alternates between sites in the United States and Europe, is famed for its boisterous, partisan crowds that create a raucous atmosphere distinctive in golf. With spectators being prohibited from golf tournaments around the world this summer, the prospect of a Ryder Cup without fans had moved virtually the entire golf community to call for the event to be delayed a year. Postponing this year's Ryder Cup will have a domino effect on golf's schedule of international competitions with the Presidents Cup, golf matches between golfers from the United States and a team of players representing the rest of the world minus Europe, moving to the fall of 2022. The 2022 Ryder Cup scheduled for Rome, will be held instead in 2023. Rearranging the events took cooperation from multiple golf entities, including the PGA Tour, which conducts the Presidents Cup.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Re "From the Boss: Sign a Waiver to Go to Work" (front page, June 13): What makes these liability waivers even more troubling is that workers often cannot know what safety precautions against the coronavirus the employer is taking at the job site. Workers are telling us: We have to sign waivers to return to work, but how can we tell if it is safe? If we don't sign, the company will say that we quit and will fight our unemployment benefits. If we push the issue, we might not even have the choice to go back. What are we supposed to do? No worker should be put in this position. Lisa J. Bernt Cambridge, Mass. The writer is project director and counsel for the Fair Employment Project.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Will they move in September or won't they? The confusion over exactly when the Federal Reserve will begin scaling back its huge economic stimulus efforts only deepened Wednesday, with the release of a summary of the deliberations at the central bank's last meeting in late July. There were hints that some members of the divided committee are comfortable with beginning to ease the Fed's program of buying 85 billion a month in government bonds and mortgage securities as soon as their next meeting in mid September. But there were also indications that another camp within the policy setting group favors waiting until December, or even later. The only thing that was clear is that the Fed intends to keep Wall Street and the rest of the world guessing. For one thing, a number of participants at the Federal Open Market Committee raised concerns that economic growth in the second half of the year would prove disappointing, which would tend to encourage them to delay any changes in their current policy, In June, the Fed's chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, indicated the stimulus program could be scaled back this year if economic data continued to be relatively positive. But he avoided setting any target dates to begin what many investors refer to as the Fed's coming "taper." The minutes of the meeting did little to clarify the issue. While "a few members emphasized the importance of being patient and evaluating additional information before deciding on any changes to the pace of asset purchases," a few others "suggested that it might soon be time to slow somewhat the pace of purchases," the summary of the July 30 31 meeting said. As a result, longtime Fed watchers came up with analyses so different from one another that it seemed as if they might be reading different documents. In a report issued shortly before the stock market closed, IHS Global Insight concluded that "the Fed is unlikely to taper at the mid September meeting," and predicted a move in December instead. Other institutions, like Goldman Sachs, hedged their bets. "Over all, we think this information is consistent with September tapering, but this is by no means certain," the firm said. With Mr. Bernanke all but certain to step down as Fed chairman early next year, most analysts expect the Fed to initiate the tapering process before he leaves office, and to do so at one of the meetings remaining this year either September or December where Mr. Bernanke is scheduled to conduct a news conference after the session. The committee will also meet in October, but Mr. Bernanke is not scheduled to address the media then. On Wall Street, investors were just as uncertain as economists. After selling off immediately after the minutes were released at 2 p.m., stocks briefly rallied, only to fall back more deeply into negative territory by the end of the trading day. The most widely followed measure of the stock market among professionals, the Standard Poor's 500 stock index, fell 9.55 points, or 0.58 percent, to 1,642.80. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 105.44 points, or 0.7 percent, to 14,897.55. The Nasdaq composite index declined 13.80 points, or 0.38 percent, to 3,599.79. 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. Bond prices also dropped after the release of the Fed's minutes, sending interest rates higher. The price of the Treasury's 10 year note fell 20/32, to 96 20/32, while its yield rose to 2.89 percent, its highest level since July 2011. It was at 2.82 percent late Tuesday. While the difference between a start to the tapering on bond purchases in September vs. December might not seem very significant to most people, the Fed's decision making is already affecting such things as the value of 401(k) retirement accounts, mortgage rates for home buyers and currency values in many emerging markets of the world. By pumping 85 billion a month into the economy through the bond purchases, the Fed has helped push up prices for many kinds of assets, especially stocks. The indications that the infusions might soon come to an end has generated increased volatility both on Wall Street and in stock exchanges around the world. The bond purchases also have helped push long term interest rates sharply lower, forcing mortgage rates to record lows. Since Mr. Bernanke first started signaling in the spring that tapering was on the horizon, those rates have increased significantly. One notable source of strength identified by the Fed policy makers is the housing sector, which helped lead the economy down before the Great Recession, but has led the way during a fitful recovery. Even if mortgages become slightly more costly, they said, the housing market should continue to improve. "While recent mortgage rate increases might serve to restrain housing activity, several participants expressed confidence that the housing recovery would be resilient in the face of the higher rates," the minutes said. Despite upbeat signs like the housing market, Ethan Harris, co head of global economics at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, said the minutes left him less convinced that the Fed would reverse course in September. "To me, the minutes nudge you away from an immediate tapering," he said. "It sounds like they are still in the middle of the debate."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Empty walkways in Shibuya, a major commercial and business center in Tokyo.Credit...Loulou d'Aki for The New York Times How Your Airbnb Host Is Feeling the Pain of the Coronavirus SAN FRANCISCO Livia De Felice, who owns two vacation rental properties and manages four others across Italy, has seen all of her bookings for March canceled, leaving her "extremely worried," she said. Austin Mao, who hosts 2,000 guests a month in his Las Vegas network of mansions, has slashed prices on the properties by 10 percent and plans to keep cutting as visitors dwindle. And Tracey Northcott and her husband, who manage 12 vacation apartments in Tokyo, said the occupancy rate had gone from 80 percent to zero since January. "I've got to keep paying my mortgage somehow," said Ms. Northcott, who employs three full time and five part time cleaners and administrators and has started dipping into her retirement savings to pay the bills. The toll that the virus is taking on the 688 billion online travel industry is shared by airlines and big hotel chains. But unlike the Marriotts and Hiltons or carriers like United and JetBlue, many online travel sites are underpinned by listings from individual homeowners and smaller hotel operators, who typically have fewer resources to withstand a prolonged slump. The pain is already widespread. Booking.com, which has 6.3 million listings for "alternative accommodations," including apartments and vacation homes, pulled its financial forecast on Monday. The company said worsening conditions made it impossible to "reliably quantify" the impact of the virus on its business, which also sells hotel stays and plane tickets. "The world has changed, and we have to adjust," Glenn Fogel, Booking.com's chief executive, said in a recent interview, adding that his company had also pulled back on advertising. "It truly is an unknown," Barry Diller, Expedia's chairman, said of the coronavirus on an investor call last month. "All we're trying to do is separate what we absolutely believe is the effect of the virus from our ongoing business, so we can prepare ourselves and make that ongoing business as strong as possible when this thing is over." One of the hardest hit may be Airbnb, where millions of hosts have listed their properties for short stays since the company was founded in 2008. (Airbnb takes a cut of their fee.) Over the years, Airbnb hosts have become increasingly sophisticated, with mini economies springing up to cater to the hosts' needs for cleaning and management of the properties. Competitors like Booking.com followed by moving into rentals of vacation homes. Now Airbnb finds itself on strategically tricky ground. The San Francisco company, valued at 31 billion by private investors, said in September that it planned to go public this year even though the initial public offering market for high profile, money losing start ups has been rocky. Airbnb has indicated that it planned to go public via an unusual method known as a direct listing, where no new shares are sold. And it is under pressure to complete a listing this year because some of its current and former employees' shares in the company will otherwise expire. The offering may now be in question. Nick Papas, an Airbnb spokesman, would only refer to the company's previous announcement that it planned to go public this year. But stock market volatility and a big blow to business from the virus may make it unthinkable for any company to go public soon. Last week, Brian Chesky, Airbnb's chief executive, sent an email to employees outlining the company's response to the virus. In the message, he said Airbnb would grant some refunds to customers and establish a 10 million fund to support Chinese rental operators while tourism to the country, where the outbreak started, has halted. Airbnb faces other coronavirus fallout, including a sponsorship of the Tokyo Olympics this summer that may be in peril if the event is canceled. The International Olympic Committee has said it is fully committed to holding the games, and will follow the advice of the World Health Organization. Most of all, Airbnb is dealing with a potential decline in revenue because travelers are canceling stays with their hosts. Jasper Ribbers, who runs a company called Get Paid for Your Pad in Sofia, Bulgaria, that provides coaching for Airbnb hosts, has advised those in regions affected by the virus to reduce nightly prices, cut costs and seek alternative uses for their spaces, like finding long term renters. "Some hosts are doing events or letting local artists use the apartments for photo shoots," he said. Mr. Mao, the Airbnb host in Las Vegas, began cutting prices on his properties last month and said he would continue doing so as bookings slowed. Each of his homes had been bringing around 10,000 a month, with fixed costs of just 3,500. While he saw only a slight dip in bookings in early March, he said, he expects that to deepen as fear of the coronavirus intensifies. Some customers who booked trips before the new program took effect are unhappy. Dr. Peter Shields, a cancer researcher at Ohio State University, booked a two week trip to Japan for this month with nearly 10,000 of reservations at two Airbnbs for his family. After the outbreak worsened and his employer restricted foreign travel, he canceled. But because Japan does not fall under Airbnb's extenuating circumstances policy, Dr. Shields struggled to secure refunds. He tussled with Airbnb's customer support, emailed Mr. Chesky directly and filed a Better Business Bureau complaint. He was eventually refunded for one reservation and 70 percent of the other but was then told that the first one had been done by mistake. "The answer I'm getting is: You're out of luck," he said. Airbnb said 60 percent of its reservations had policies that allowed for half or full refunds. It added of Dr. Shields, "We apologize for this error and have taken action to address this matter and help ensure these kinds of issues don't happen again in the future." In his memo to employees, Mr. Chesky tried to stay optimistic. "Travel always bounces back," he wrote. "It is one of the most resilient industries in the world."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Mike McCormick, who threw his first major league pitch at age 17 with the 1956 New York Giants, was a two time All Star with the Giants in San Francisco, and later overcame a sore arm to win the 1967 Cy Young Award as the National League's leading pitcher, died on June 13 at his home in Cornelius, N.C. He was 81. His family said the cause was complications of Parkinson's disease. McCormick, a left hander with an outstanding fastball, became an anchor of the Giants' pitching rotation in their early years in San Francisco, together with Johnny Antonelli, Jack Sanford, Sam Jones and later the Hall of Famer Juan Marichal. He posted the league's lowest earned run average, 2.70, in 1960. But he was hampered by a sore pitching shoulder in 1962. That year he won only five games and didn't pitch in the World Series, which the Giants lost to the Yankees in seven games. The Giants traded McCormick to Baltimore after that season. He continued to flounder with the Orioles, who sent him to the minors. But he began returning to form, with the aid of cortisone shots, while pitching for the second Washington Senators franchise in 1965 and 1966.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
As public school teachers, Tori Smith and her husband have careers that should survive the coronavirus economy, but their mortgage lender wasn't taking any chances. It told them that they would have to put down more money to keep the interest rate they wanted, then dialed back what it was willing to lend them. And Ms. Smith said it had checked their employment status several times during the approval process and again a few days before the couple closed on their home in Zebulon, N.C., last month. Ms. Smith said she had never gotten a straight answer about the new requirements, but she ventured a guess. "I felt like we had to bring more just because of Covid," she said. The economic crisis caused by the pandemic has driven interest rates to rock bottom levels, meaning there has hardly been a better time to borrow. But with tens of millions of people out of work and coronavirus infections surging in many parts of the country, qualifying for a loan from mortgages to auto loans has become more trying, even for well positioned borrowers. Lenders that have set aside billion of dollars for future defaults have also tightened their standards, often requiring higher credit scores, heftier down payments and more documentation. Some, such as Wells Fargo and Chase, have temporarily eliminated home equity lines of credit, while Wells Fargo also stopped cash out refinancing. It's not unusual for lenders to tighten the credit reins during a downturn, but the current situation has made it especially challenging for them to get an accurate read on consumers' financial health. Borrowers have been able to pause mortgages, halt student loan payments and delay paying their tax bills, while millions of households have received an extra 600 weekly in unemployment benefits. Those forms of government support could be masking an underlying condition. "It makes it hard for a lender to understand what the consumer's true state of credit quality is and their ability to pay back a loan," said Peter Maynard, senior vice president of global data and analytics at the Equifax credit bureau. Credit card companies, for example, mailed out 57 million offers to consumers in June, a historic low and down from 272 million a year earlier, according to Mintel, a research firm that has been tracking the offers since 1999. Some banks have stopped offering the types of cards that attract people who may be focused on paying down debt, such as BankAmericard, Mintel found. Issuers are also being careful with cards belonging to current customers, said Mark Miller, associate director of insights for payments at Mintel. "Some dormant accounts are being closed," he said. "So if they have a credit card sitting in a drawer, those accounts are at risk of being closed, and credit lines with a 10,000 limit may eventually be knocked down to 8,000." For auto loans, borrowers with lower credit scores and thin credit histories face more rigorous requirements and less generous terms, including shorter loan periods. "Subprime borrowers are not getting loans as readily as they were pre pandemic or a year ago," said Jonathan Smoke, chief economist at Cox Automotive, referring to consumers with credit scores below 620. Interest rates for new and used vehicles remain low below 4 percent at many banks and credit unions but only for more qualified borrowers, said Greg McBride, chief financial analyst at BankRate.com. "Good credit and a down payment are required to get the best rates, with weaker credit increasingly sidelined particularly for older model used car purchases," he said. Ford Motor said it hadn't tightened standards on loans through its financing unit, but last month it introduced a program to make wary borrowers more comfortable. Those who buy or lease a car through Ford's financing unit before Sept. 30 can return it within a year if they lose their jobs. Ford said it would reduce the customer's balance by the vehicle's book value, and then waive up to an additional 15,000. If that measure is meant to stoke demand, no such program is necessary for home buyers. For the first time in nearly half a century of tracking, 30 year fixed rate mortgages averaged about 2.98 percent, according to Freddie Mac. The mortgage industry made 865 billion in loans during the second quarter, the highest amount since 2003, when quarterly originations twice topped 1 trillion, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication. And that's with lenders being picky about their customers and particular about their requirements. JPMorgan Chase, for example, will make mortgages to new customers only with credit scores of 700 or more (up from 640) and down payments of 20 percent or higher. USAA has temporarily stopped writing jumbo loans, which are mortgages that are generally too large to be backed by the federal government, among other products. Bank of America said it had also tightened its underwriting, but declined to provide details. Ms. Smith and her husband, Philip Ellis, had hoped to go through a first time homebuyer program at Wells Fargo that would require them to put down 3 percent. They even sat through a required educational course. But two weeks before closing on their 205,000 home, their lending officer said they needed to put down 5 percent to keep their rate. A week later, Ms. Smith said, they learned their loan was for less than what they had been preapproved for and they needed to come up with an additional 4,000. In the end, their down payment and closing costs exceeded 14,000 about 45 percent more than they had anticipated. The couple, who had married in April, used money recovered from their canceled wedding reception. Ms. Smith said they were also lucky to have the support of their families, who fed and sheltered them so they could save every penny. But the stability of their jobs was also most likely a crucial factor. "I think our ability to secure the loan was due to us both being schoolteachers and having a contract for employment already for the following year," she said. Wells Fargo said it hadn't increased its credit score requirements, but it has raised down payment minimums on certain loans not backed by the government because it had to suspend most interior appraisals of homes during the pandemic. Even under normal circumstances, there are a variety of situations in which borrowers may be asked to raise their down payment or obtain a better rate by doing so, a company spokesman said. Some lenders also want to know more about borrowers' other possible sources of cash. When Chris Eberle, a technology executive, and his wife were locking in their jumbo mortgage for a new home in Palo Alto, Calif., their lender, a California mortgage bank, wanted to know not only how much they had in their retirement accounts but how easy it was to get at that money. "They wanted, account by account, details on the withdrawal and loan options," Mr. Eberle said. And they, too, had to put down more than they had planned. Before the crisis, a jumbo loan could be had with 10 percent down. Mr. Eberle said they had to put down 20 percent and found a cheaper house to make it easier. Other borrowers, including the self employed, are being asked to provide more detailed proof of their earnings at least when they're getting a loan that will be backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. "Employment and income verification for self employed borrowers is now multiple times more detailed as it previously was," said Ted Rood, a loan officer in St. Louis who lends nationally. Income verification is also more rigorous across the board, and Mr. Rood said he was required to do two verifications over the phone. It makes sense, he said: He had just prepared a loan for a married couple a gym owner whose income had suffered and his wife, a speech therapist with a seemingly more stable position because she was able to work with clients remotely. "We were set to close on a Monday in early June," said Mr. Rood, who was working at Bayshore Mortgage Funding, which is based in Timonium, Md., at the time. But when the loan processor called the wife's employer the Friday before, the processor learned that the woman had been laid off.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
THE BUYER Juliana Lopez put down roots in Queens, in a 480 square foot Jackson Heights studio she bought for 187,500. "I love having this whole space for myself," she says. When Juliana Lopez arrived in Queens, she was 16 years old. She and her mother and brother came from Ecuador, first settling in Jamaica and later moving a few neighborhoods over to Elmhurst. Ms. Lopez, 29, went on to earn a bachelor's degree from Hunter College and a master's from Baruch College. She now works at Hunter, in the Silberman School of Social Work, as an admissions coordinator. But as a renter, she said, she felt as if she "didn't have any roots." She was eager to change that by buying a place of her own. "That was something unexpected that you wouldn't think of having in New York," said Ms. Lopez, who anticipated the fun of having friends over in the summer. She loved the apartment which later sold for 160,000 but had no idea how to go about buying it. So she called her bank to ask about mortgages, and was advised to take a class for first time home buyers. Online, she found one that cost 100, run by the nonprofit Housing Partnership Development Corporation. "I think I was the youngest there," Ms. Lopez said. Several months later, with the help of the teacher, Emily C. McIntosh, Ms. Lopez settled on a budget of no more than 200,000 for a studio or one bedroom in a co op building, preferably close to the subway and to her family in Elmhurst. Housing prices in New York City, though, were a deterrent. Dreaming of warm weather, she considered moving to Southern California. "I thought, 'Why should I spend so much money to stay in New York?'" she said. "I knew what I could afford in New York, which were little apartments that needed renovation." She spent a few weeks in California and found several condominiums in San Diego that were in her price range, and were bigger and in better condition than what she had seen in New York. But she decided to return home. "I didn't love it when I went there," she said of her time in California. "And I do love it here. I wanted to stay in Queens. I have all my friends here and family here. Job opportunities are abundant. I thought staying would be better for me." She also doesn't drive, which forced her to think "more realistically," she said, about where she might move. At one apartment, the owner was present during the showing, and Ms. Lopez felt a bad vibe. "This is not it," she said. "Every place that I went, I imagined it to be my apartment: 'Do I imagine myself living here?'" She found a nicely renovated studio in Rego Park asking 172,500, with maintenance of a little more than 500. But then she discovered there was an additional monthly assessment of around 200, and "that made me think twice," she said. (The studio later sold for the asking price.) So Ms. Lopez focused on her other favorite, a studio in Jackson Heights asking 185,000, with maintenance in the mid 400s. The big windows were covered by brown curtains, one wall was green and the bathtub needed reglazing. In the kitchen, there were ugly floor tiles and old appliances. But it was on the top floor of a six story building, which would limit noise from the neighbors, and the nearest subway station was just three blocks away, as was Travers Park. "I thought about the possibilities," she recalled, "and said, 'This is it.'" The apartment, around 480 square feet, had been listed for only a few days. "I don't like having a lot of things," she said. "Every piece of furniture I have is well thought out. Everything is here because it has a purpose or is meaningful in some way." She often rides her bicycle which she stores neatly against a wall to see family and friends. Her next goal is to learn to drive. "I really enjoy my newfound independence," she said. "I love having this whole space for myself, I love decorating it, I love the neighborhood. I live alone now, and it's perfect just for me."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
AT T argues that it is an underdog against online giants like Facebook and Google. WASHINGTON Politics have been at the center of the public debate about the Justice Department's lawsuit to block AT T's 85 billion purchase of Time Warner. But the trial itself, starting later this month, is shaping up to be a fight focused on classic issues in antitrust law. In court filings on Friday, the Justice Department and AT T laid out the arguments that they plan to make in the trial. Regulators will argue that the deal will hurt competition and lead to higher prices. AT T and Time Warner will counter those arguments by saying that even with a merger, it is an underdog against online giants like Facebook and Google. "If TV program distributor AT T acquires TV program producer Time Warner, American consumers will end up paying hundreds of millions of dollars more than they do now to watch their favorite programs on TV," the Justice Department said in its brief submitted on Friday evening. In its brief, AT T countered by saying, "This merger has never been about making Time Warner programs less accessible or more expensive. Just the opposite: It is about making Time Warner and AT T more competitive during a revolutionary transformation that is occurring in the video programming marketplace." The trial, one of the biggest antitrust showdowns in decades, will begin March 19 in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. It is expected to last about three weeks. Noticeably absent in AT T's filing was an earlier argument it had made: that the government singled out the company's deal because of presidential politics. President Trump was a vocal critic of the deal during his presidential campaign, and while in office, he has consistently blamed CNN, a channel owned by Turner and part of Time Warner's television business, for unfair coverage of his administration. AT T originally argued to the court that the Justice Department's suit was a case of "selective enforcement" that the government was essentially blocking the deal because the president was against it. But late last month, Judge Richard J. Leon, who is overseeing the trial, rejected demands by AT T for detailed email and phone logs between the White House and the Justice Department related to the deal. AT T and Time Warner has dropped "selective enforcement" as a defense, according to the new filings. "This is the single most important decision this year" for technology, telecom and media firms, said Amy Yong, a research analyst at Macquarie Group in New York. "It will frame regulation and mergers and acquisitions going forward and raise questions about all the consolidation in the past, too." If the judge sides with AT T and Time Warner, he would usher in the creation of a new kind of corporate behemoth one with nationwide reach via wireless and satellite television service that would also have control over a movie studio and channels like HBO, CNN and TNT, which has valuable basketball sports rights. The company would have a leading position to negotiate licensing deals with rival telecom and media firms. It would also be in a stronger position against fast growing streaming video services like Netflix and Amazon Prime Video. If the Justice Department prevails in this suit, it would signal a new era of scrutiny for the media and telecom industries. In 2011, Comcast won approval for its purchase of NBCUniversal that also created an enormous telecom and media company. The Justice Department insisted on several conditions that restricted Comcast from anti competitive business practices. The trial will also reveal much about the state of the industry. Rivals such as Comcast, Dish and Sony are expected to be called as witnesses to reveal details about their business dealings with AT T and Time Warner in the past. The Justice Department is expected to argue that a combined AT T and Time Warner would have the incentive to make it harder for competing media companies to distribute their programming through AT T, and for Time Warner brands to limit their distribution outside of AT T. The Justice Department will also present economic analysis suggesting that the new company is likely to raise prices for consumers. "As will be shown at trial, the government is challenging this merger to address the real concerns of real people who populate the real marketplace today," the Justice Department said in its brief. AT T said it would challenge the government's arguments that the merger would increase consumer prices and hamper competition by raising licensing fees for Time Warner content. The company said it would argue that the merger of two companies that do not compete would be a stronger competitor in a market that had many new companies from Silicon Valley, like Facebook and Netflix. "As will be demonstrated at trial, the new video revolution is defined by the spectacular rise of Netflix, Amazon, Google, and other vertically integrated, direct to consumer technology companies as market leaders in both video programming and video distribution," AT T said in its brief.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Separate applications filed on Oct. 31 (by a man named Kevin Yen) and Nov. 14 (by the jewelry company Rust Belt Creations) described intentions to use the phrase on clothing items. Another application, filed on Nov. 12 (also by Rust Belt Creations), mentioned plans to sell decals and stickers. And an application filed on Nov. 13 (by William Grundfest, a TV producer known for "Mad About You") referred to plans to use "OK Boomer" for live stage performances and lectures. In a statement on Tuesday, Mr. Grundfest said he filed for the trademark as "in use" because he had already created a show with the title ("a scripted comedy focused on the current generational issues surrounding baby boomers") and was in the process of arranging bookings. He said his pursuit of the trademark began about three weeks ago, when his two teenage sons were teasing him with the phrase. Mr. Grundfest said they later bought him an "OK Boomer" T shirt, which they told him to wear "in good health." The other applicants did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday. In light of the phrase's popularity, it's not likely that any of the applications will be approved, said Josh Gerben, a trademark lawyer and founder of Gerben Law Firm, who noticed the filing by Fox Media on Monday. "I think they are all very likely to meet the same fate, which is the U.S.P.T.O. will issue what is called a widely used message refusal," Mr. Gerben said in an interview on Tuesday, adding that the definition of a trademark "has to identify a single company or individual as a source of a product or service."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
So many good intentions, so little joy. That's the state of live music as it adjusts to the Covid 19 pandemic. Social distancing tears apart the closeness that performers and listeners had always taken for granted at concerts: closeness onstage, in the crowd and in the shared moment. These early months have proved that musicians are more than eager to perform and that listeners still want the singular bond with music that a concert provides. Instead, all we have is the indifferent internet. Both musicians and fans were blindsided by the shutdown of concerts, and musicians have been forced into an awkward public learning curve. Finding themselves suddenly all alone, separated even from bandmates, many discovered they had traded sound checked P.A. systems and flattering stage lights for tinny laptop microphones and the cramped rectangular screens of smartphone cameras. Home alone livestreams have favored self contained solo acts who don't depend on theatricality or technological enhancement: the jazz musician at the piano, the country songwriter with an acoustic guitar, the Broadway troupers who paid tribute to Stephen Sondheim on his 90th birthday (often singing his stunningly complex songs to equally complex prerecorded accompaniment). Electronic dance music D.J.s have offered much better sound they play recordings but they tend to look wonky and diminished without club lighting and happy dancers to pump up their beat. For livestreamed concerts, mass popularity has provided no advantage. Performers with small scale careers, who are used to playing coffeehouses or indie clubs, have had to make fewer adjustments than musicians who had moved up to bigger venues and fancier productions. Quieter performers have adjusted much more gracefully than histrionic ones. Other musicians are reading and responding to the busy scroll of online comments; sometimes you can see their eyes darting to their screens as they sing. Perhaps musicians will develop new reflexes to handle chat window feedback as a substitute for applause, while lucky fans may find their favorites to be more immediately accessible. For now, when I watch an onscreen performance alongside the scroll, the chat reaction is quieter than being stuck near a talkative audience member. But it's nearly as distracting. If low tech, livestreamed performance has made anything clear, it's this: Intimacy is overrated. I hardly need to see any musician that closely. Yes, virtuosos can accomplish feats of physical dexterity and vocal purity in real time; occasionally, a solo close up can be revelatory. Sometimes all anyone needs to hear is a guitar and an emotive voice. But as a fan, I don't always want to stay in the mundane work space where a song originated. I also want to let that song move me in all the other ways that music can. After all, art isn't just the documentation of a physical feat. Artists also construct their own unreal worlds: strange, gorgeous, eccentric, sometimes overwhelming illusions. Musicians in the era of recording, amplification and synthesis concoct phantasms in the studio and figure out how to simulate them onstage, making music that feels larger than life. Meanwhile, too many livestreams are strictly earthbound. Livestreaming only reminds us that artists don't have to be regular people. For me, in the early weeks of the quarantine, all those livestreams of lone performers at home added up to claustrophobia instead of intimacy. The act of public performance, which once conveyed sharing and emotional communion, projected isolation and limitation instead. It's no wonder so many livestreams have been benefit shows with long lists of performers playing a song or two each not only because countless people and causes need help during this economic collapse, but because homebound musicians realize they can't hold a viewer's attention the way they could on a stage. Luckily for listeners, musicians online have been stretching and, frankly, cheating on both the definition of a live performance and social distancing strictures. Some have learned to treat the screen as a stage allowing some artifice, even in real time. It might be a plant crammed home setup, or a playfully changing video backdrop, or a digital light show. At least it's more than a feed from a grainy smartphone camera on a tripod. As musicians settled into livestreaming, physically separated bands started reuniting, virtually and then in person. Digital reunions are usually cheats. Latency the delay between a live action and when it's received barely affects an office meeting, but it can be deadly to the subtle, split second interactions of musicians working together. So called livestreams of physically separated bands are likely to be feats of editing: multiple tracks laid down as they are in a recording studio. The trickery may be obvious, as when Kevin Parker presents himself multitracking instruments to become Tame Impala, or Keith Urban suddenly multiplies himself in a supposedly livestreamed performance. Musicians may be bobbing their heads to the same beat in the now familiar video grids, but that simulated Zoom meeting isn't actually happening; it's a quiet tribute to musicianship that those patiently assembled, multitracked grids still find a groove. The grids take the "live" out of livestreaming face it, they're music videos but at least there's an image of cooperative effort: one thing we used to take for granted at concerts. Quarantine has also brought new formats: the disc jockey D Nice's online dance parties with chat scrolls full of A list names; the battle series Verzuz, concocted by the producers Timbaland and Swizz Beatz, that double as mutual appreciation sessions. Most have been streamed from isolation, but on June 19 Juneteenth Alicia Keys and John Legend shared a studio, playing back to back at pink and black pianos. Social distancing did not prevail; they hugged at the end. As stay at home guidelines have receded, musicians have been gathering in person at nearly empty clubs, at recording studios and in outdoor spaces. When I watch, I can't help calculating how far apart the players are standing, who's masked and who's not, the number of cameras and whether someone is carrying them, who set up the equipment and who will be loading it out. These venues, built for music, are mostly empty, and presumably the few workers on site take precautions. But there is still no vaccine, and every close personal encounter is a risk particularly indoors, particularly where breath is expended on singing and playing instruments. Hallowed music spaces like Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Red Rocks Amphitheater near Denver and Antone's in Austin, Texas, have opened their doors for streamed benefit performances. In Boston, Fenway Park opened the stadium to Dropkick Murphys plenty of open space. Jazz clubs where on the spot musical interaction is everything have been devising online survival strategies. The Village Vanguard, the venerable Greenwich Village basement club, has started weekly livestreams of top tier small groups that observe masking and social distancing guidelines, with studio quality miking and detailed camera work that illuminates the music. So have some concert halls, like the Grand Ole Opry, with Saturday night shows on its ample stage. The musicians are clearly happy to be making music in the same room together, even without an audience enjoying, as the pianist Vijay Iyer said before a spectacular Village Vanguard set, "the fact that we're all in the room and the same air molecules are vibrating." Perhaps it's not that different from playing a rehearsal or a radio appearance except that the players have been separated for so long, and their pleasure in reuniting comes through. Solo intimacy may be overrated, but group proximity is not. Music making simply isn't the same without it. The internet may yet remake what decades, even centuries of concert traditions have built up. Until there's a vaccine, maybe we can grow content with distant performers on flat screens, playing for us along with the rest of a virtual audience. For now, it's still a work in progress.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
A colored scanning electron micrograph of a bone marrow stem cell. Scientists have learned that an accumulation of mutated stem cells in bone marrow dramatically increases a person's risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke. It's been one of the vexing questions in medicine: Why is it that most people who have heart attacks or strokes have few or no conventional risk factors? These are patients with normal levels of cholesterol and blood pressure, no history of smoking or diabetes, and no family history of cardiovascular disease. Why aren't they spared? To some researchers, this hidden risk is the dark matter of cardiology: an invisible but omnipresent force that lands tens of thousands of patients in the hospital each year. But now scientists may have gotten a glimpse of part of it. They have learned that a bizarre accumulation of mutated stem cells in bone marrow increases a person's risk of dying within a decade, usually from a heart attack or stroke, by 40 or 50 percent. They named the condition with medical jargon: clonal hematopoiesis of indeterminate potential. CHIP has emerged as a risk for heart attack and stroke that is as powerful as high LDL or high blood pressure but it acts independently of them. And CHIP is not uncommon. The condition becomes more likely with age. Up to 20 percent of people in their 60s have it, and perhaps 50 percent of those in their 80s. "It is beginning to appear that there are only two types of people in the world: those that exhibit clonal hematopoiesis and those that are going to develop clonal hematopoiesis," said Kenneth Walsh, who directs the hematovascular biology center at the University of Virginia School of Medicine. The growing evidence has taken heart researchers aback. Dr. Peter Libby, a cardiologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital and professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, calls CHIP the most important discovery in cardiology since statins. "I'm turning part of my lab to work on this full time," Dr. Libby said. "It's really exciting." The mutations are acquired, not inherited most likely by bad luck or exposure to toxins like cigarette smoke. But there is little that patients can do. "It is almost like a Ph.D. in letting go of control," said Mr. Gear, who said he was in his mid 30s. "As much as you want to have a plan and a destiny, you also have this thing. It's scary and it's terrifying." "I don't want to use the word time bomb, but that's how it feels," he added. CHIP was discovered independently by several groups of researchers who were not even investigating heart disease. Mostly, they were looking at the genes of patients who might develop leukemia or, in one research project, schizophrenia. The scientists searched databases from genetic studies involving tens of thousands of people whose DNA had been obtained from their white blood cells. To their great surprise, the teams converged on the same phenomenon. Unexpectedly large numbers of study participants had blood cells with mutations linked to leukemia but they did not have the cancer. Instead, they had just one or two of the cluster of mutations. "This clearly wasn't happening by chance," said Steven McCarroll, a geneticist at the Broad Institute and Harvard Medical School. "We knew we were onto something, but what were we onto?" White blood cells, the attack dogs of the immune system, arise from stem cells in the bone marrow. Every day, a few hundred such stem cells spew out blood cells that begin dividing rapidly into the 10 billion needed to replace those that have died. Sometimes, by chance, one of those marrow stem cells acquires a mutation, and the white blood cells it produces carry the same mutation. "Some mutations are just markers of past events without any lasting consequence," said Dr. David Steensma, a blood cancer specialist at Harvard Medical School and Dana Farber Cancer Institute. But others, especially those linked to leukemia, seem to give stem cells a new ability to accumulate in the marrow. The result is a sort of survival of the fittest, or fastest growing, stem cells in the marrow. "Some mutations may alter the growth properties of the stem cell," said Dr. Steensma. "Some may just make the stem cell better at surviving in certain less hospitable parts of the bone marrow where other stem cells can't thrive." The mutated stem cells outlast normal stem cells in the marrow, and their progeny an increasing percentage of white blood cells show up in the blood with mutations. But the big surprise came when researchers looked at the medical records of people with these white blood cell mutations. They had 54 percent increase in the odds of dying within the next decade, compared to people without CHIP And the cause: heart attacks and strokes. Dr. Benjamin Ebert, chair of medical oncology a the Dana Farber Cancer Institute, was the first to see the link. He turned for help to Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, a cardiologist and genetics researcher at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute, who had genetic data from four more large studies. They confirmed that CHIP doubled the risk of a heart attack in typical patients and increased the risk fourfold in those who had heart attacks early in life. But how might mutated white blood cells cause heart disease? One clue intrigued scientists. Artery obstructing plaque is filled with white blood cells, smoldering with inflammation and subject to rupture. Perhaps mutated white cells were causing atherosclerosis or accelerating its development. In separate studies, Dr. Ebert and Dr. Walsh gave mice a bone marrow transplant containing stem cells with a CHIP mutation, along with stem cells that were not mutated. Mutated blood cells began proliferating in the mice, and they developed rapidly growing plaques that were burning with inflammation. "For decades people have worked on inflammation as a cause of atherosclerosis," Dr. Ebert said. "But it was not clear what initiated the inflammation." Now there is a possible explanation and, Dr. Ebert said, it raises the possibility that CHIP may be involved in other inflammatory diseases, like arthritis. For now, doctors advise against testing for CHIP, since there is nothing specific to be done to reduce the increased risks of cancer or heart disease that it confers. But, he said, if people really want to know if they have CHIP, they can get a blood test that costs a few thousand dollars. (If there is no particular reason for the test, insurance may not pay.) Dr. Steensma said that if he had CHIP, he would make sure he did his best to control all of his heart disease risks, like cholesterol and blood pressure, and that he had a healthy diet and exercised. Drugs may be developed to help stem the inflammation in arteries, he added. As for the cancer risk, Dr. Ross Levine at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center just opened a C.H.I.P clinic in part to explore whether some patients with CHIP have a greater risk of blood cancers, and if so, what to do about it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
One of the most widely used screenplay programs in Hollywood has a new tool to help with gender equality and inclusion. In an update announced Thursday, Final Draft software that writers use to format scripts said it will now include a proprietary "Inclusivity Analysis" feature, allowing filmmakers "to quickly assign and measure the ethnicity, gender, age, disability or any other definable trait of the characters," including race, the company said in a statement. It also will enable users to determine if a project passes the Bechdel Test, measuring whether two female characters speak to each other about anything other than a man. The Final Draft tool, a free add on, was developed in collaboration with the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media at Mount Saint Mary's University, which has been at the forefront of studying the underrepresentation of women on screen. In a statement, Geena Davis said the update "will make it easier for readers, writers and creative execs to more easily use a gender and intersectionality lens when evaluating scripts prior to greenlight, casting and production."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Based on Lofty Nathan's 2013 documentary "12 O'Clock Boys," the slice of life drama "Charm City Kings" is set in Baltimore, among a group of dirt bike enthusiasts who dodge the cops so that they can do daring tricks on downtown streets. Jahi Di'Allo Winston plays Mouse, a junior high schooler who has two goals over the summer: to impress Nicki (Chandler DuPont), the new girl in his neighborhood, and to join the city's most impressive biker club, the Midnight Clique. The director Angel Manuel Soto and the screenwriter Sherman Payne introduce more of a straightforward coming of age plot than the documentary had, coupled with a morality tale about Mouse's temptation toward a life of crime. This is a well acted and finely detailed film, demonstrating a rich understating of how kids crave status. The former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne has been at the center of two of the greatest concert films ever made: 1984's "Stop Making Sense," directed by Jonathan Demme, and now "American Utopia," directed by Spike Lee. The new film was shot during a limited Broadway engagement for the highly conceptual stage show Byrne put together for his 2018 album of the same name a record that's a meditation on what connects people during troublesome times. Lee captures the simplicity of the show's design, which has Byrne and a group of identically dressed dancers and percussionists moving in geometric patterns around a bare stage, while they sing songs from across the star's decades long career. The catchy polyrhythms, the impressively synchronized choreography and the pointed lyrics about anger, alienation and empathy combine to make this movie an emotional and uplifting experience. In this supernatural superhero series, Daimon (Tom Austen) and Ana Helstrom (Sydney Lemmon) are a brother and sister team of paranormal investigators. They're also deep cut characters from Marvel Comics, introduced in the early 1970s as "Son of Satan" and "Satana." The publisher later backed away from the idea that these two antiheroes are the literal Devil's spawn; in the TV version, their father is described as a notorious serial killer with occult ties. Still, much of what sets "Helstrom" apart from typical procedurals is all the arcane mythology propping up the back story of these skilled sibling sorcerers. The two may take different approaches to hunting demons, but they are bound by shared childhood traumas. The horror comedy "Bad Hair" has a snappy premise: What if a woman's hair weave were possessed by evil spirits and started murdering her enemies? The writer director Justin Simien doesn't stick with the obvious broad jokes or B movie scares here (although there's a little bit of both). Instead, his film is a thoughtful period piece, set at a hip hop focused cable channel circa 1989. Elle Lorraine plays Anna, an aspiring TV personality led to believe that changing her hairstyle might boost her career. This picture's genre elements work just fine, but this is really more of a wise and witty commentary about a particular moment in American popular culture and the compromises that showbiz executives demanded when rap and R B moved into the mainstream. The 1983 movie version of Tom Wolfe's 1979 nonfiction best seller "The Right Stuff" is one of its era's best films: a semi comic, semi mythic take on the macho culture of the space program in the early 1960s. The new "The Right Stuff," revived as a television series, has more modest aims, focusing on the interpersonal conflicts among NASA's first astronauts, later known as the "Mercury Seven." A cast filled with familiar faces including Patrick J. Adams as John Glenn, Colin O'Donoghue as Gordon Cooper and Jake McDorman as Alan Shepard convey the Mercury Seven's mixed feelings of pride and anxiety over this new adventure in a period drama combining the excitement of space travel with an up close and personal look at the flawed men who flew high. The first season of the "Star Wars" spinoff "The Mandalorian" was kept tightly under wraps by Lucasfilm and Disney. The result of all that secrecy was one of last year's most delightful television surprises. The creator Jon Favreau's story of a rogue bounty hunter and the super powerful young creature he protects brought an old fashioned spirit of fun to the science fiction/adventure genre, while also reminding fans of what a pleasure it can be to tune into a TV show each week and get a complete, self contained, entertaining story in each episode. Details about Season 2 of "The Mandalorian" have also been kept hush hush, but because the same creative team is returning, expectations are high. Sibil Fox Richardson and her husband, Robert, were convicted of armed robbery in the late '90s. She served three years in prison and came out determined to create a better life for their children, while also fighting for a reduction of Robert's much more severe 60 year sentence. Garrett Bradley's powerful documentary "Time" relies a lot on the home video footage Richardson shot over the decades: of her boys growing into impressive young men, of her own success as a self made entrepreneur and of her frustration in dealing with a criminal justice system that tends to be unresponsive and even cruel to prisoners' families. What emerges from Bradley's film is a tale of people holding onto hope against all odds, and of a life lived in the long shadow of an incarcerated loved one. The playwright and actress Heidi Schreck's "What the Constitution Means to Me" ended its Broadway run last year, but before it closed, the director Marielle Heller (best known for the movie "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood") filmed the production. Based on Schreck's own memories of competing in debates about the U.S. Constitution as a teenager, the play has Schreck talking to the audience about how her own family history and her subsequent life experiences led her to a different understanding as an adult about how the government does and doesn't protect its citizens. With Broadway still shut down and with calls for profound social change very much in the air this document of a new American classic should make for a thrilling night of theater at home. The writer director Sofia Coppola re teams with Bill Murray, the star of her film "Lost in Translation," for "On the Rocks," a light comedy that functions as both a New York City travelogue and a story about father daughter bonding. Murray plays Felix, dad to Laura (Rashida Jones), a married mom who thinks her husband may be having an affair. Laura enlists Felix to help her play private eye, but as they hop around the city looking for clues, they end up talking as much about their own relationship as about her marriage. As Coppola showed with "Lost in Translation" as well as with "Somewhere" and "Marie Antoinette" she has a knack for making worlds of wealth and privilege look both beautiful and stark, filled with lost and lonely people clinging tightly to what and who they love.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Can one become a historian merely by pressing a button? The documentary "Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project" says yes. It also demonstrates that pressing a button is not such a mere thing. The director Matt Wolf has in previous pictures considered some unique, and uniquely American, figures. His 2008 "Wild Combination" was about the avant garde dance music genius Arthur Russell. Other subjects include the unclassifiable artist Joe Brainard ("I Remember," 2012) and the gay civil rights activist Bayard Rustin ("Bayard and Me," 2017). Stokes's idiosyncrasies, and the nature of her project, make her a good fit in Wolf's gallery of meaningful outliers. Raised in poverty, Stokes became a librarian in Philadelphia. As a young African American woman in the 1950s, she was drawn to social activism; she met and married a like minded teacher, Melvin Metelits, with whom she had a son, Michael. The marriage broke up. She became involved with a local television program called "Input." While a producer and panelist on that show, she met John Stokes Jr., a wealthy philanthropist with whom she shared perspectives on many issues, including community and communication. When she watched the original "Star Trek" series, the diverse dynamics of the Enterprise seemed to her "televised socialism." As home videotape recorders went on the market, she bought one, then more. She taped local and national programs looking for cracks and contradictions in the official narrative .	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Rupert Murdoch, the media mogul who is executive chairman of 21st Century Fox, is one of President Trump's closest allies and advisers. Fox News has been the president's most reliable media champion. Mr. Murdoch and the president have each publicly described the other as "my good friend." Mr. Trump is also an avowed opponent of big media mergers. "It's too much concentration of power," he said of AT T's proposed acquisition of Time Warner. The government sued to block that deal on antitrust grounds. So what level of antitrust scrutiny will the Walt Disney Company's just announced deal to purchase much of 21st Century Fox receive, and will the government try to block that mega deal, too? Because AT T and Time Warner aren't direct competitors, and the suit was such a break with Justice Department tradition, it gave rise to speculation that the real motive was to punish CNN, the Time Warner owned Trump punching bag. The 52.4 billion Disney Fox deal, in which Disney is acquiring Fox's venerable movie studio and the bulk of its other entertainment assets, poses the opposite problem: 21st Century Fox is controlled by the Murdoch family. Even though antitrust decisions are supposed to be independent of political influence, Mr. Trump didn't hesitate to weigh in when the deal was announced. "I know that the president spoke with Rupert Murdoch earlier today, congratulated him on the deal and thinks that, to use one of the president's favorite words, that this could be a great thing for jobs," the White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders told reporters. "It looks bad to me," said Christopher L. Sagers, an antitrust professor at Cleveland Marshall College of Law. Larry Downes, an antitrust expert and a fellow at the Georgetown McDonough School of Business, agreed. "The government's theory in Time Warner very much applies to Fox and Disney," he said. If the government "doesn't challenge this, it will look very weird," he added. "But I'm not sure appearances matter to this administration." The Disney Fox deal is shaping up as another litmus test for President Trump's new antitrust enforcement chief, Makan Delrahim, who is already under fire for taking AT T and Time Warner to court. Mr. Delrahim has said repeatedly that antitrust decisions are independent from political interference. "I have never been instructed by the White House on this or any other transaction under review by the antitrust division," he said of the AT T case. That's unlikely to stop speculation about his division's handling of the latest blockbuster. Antitrust experts told me that in many ways the Disney Fox deal raises even more antitrust questions than does the combination of AT T and Time Warner. That's because it's both a merger of direct competitors a so called horizontal merger, which typically get close scrutiny and has some of the same vertical elements that caused the Justice Department to try to block the AT T Time Warner merger. Whether a combination of the Fox film and television studios with Disney's entertainment arm would raise red flags under Justice Department guidelines depends on how the government defines the market. The deal would reduce the number of Hollywood studios to five from six. Last year, Disney's studio accounted for 26.4 percent of the domestic theatrical box office, the largest share, and Fox was third, with 12.9 percent. Although the combined studios would have had close to 40 percent of the market in 2016, that's typically not enough to run afoul of the department's merger guidelines, Mr. Sagers pointed out, unless the government decides to define the market differently. If the market is as narrow as films about superheroes, and Disney gains control of Fox's "X Men" franchise, that would almost surely trigger concerns. If the Justice Department really wanted to be aggressive, it might also invoke the words of former Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, who wrote in a landmark opinion, "The widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public." Under terms of the proposed deal, Fox shareholders would own about 25 percent of Disney in an all stock transaction. Given the concentrated market for cable news, a combination of Fox News and Disney's ABC would most likely not have passed antitrust muster. But depending on how much influence the Murdochs are able to exert at Disney, the family might achieve much the same objective, perhaps with a board seat, or, as some have speculated, if James Murdoch joins Disney as an executive and even becomes a potential successor to the Disney chief executive, Robert Iger. Such speculation may not be all that far fetched. "Reports suggest that James Murdoch is apparently in line for a senior management role within Disney as part of the deal," said Doug Creutz, senior media and entertainment analyst for Cowen Co. in a note to clients Thursday. Mr. Iger said during a conference call Thursday that James Murdoch's future role, if any, hasn't been decided. Mr. Hemphill, the law professor and antitrust expert, pointed to an emerging antitrust doctrine called common ownership, which looks beyond the formality of separate companies to examine who actually exerts control. All those concerns are based on traditional antitrust review standards. But since the case against AT T and Time Warner was filed, those standards have been anything but traditional. Vertical mergers like that of AT T and Time Warner AT T buys content from Time Warner, but doesn't compete directly with it used to be approved almost routinely, albeit often with conditions. No longer. "We're in a topsy turvy antitrust world," Mr. Downes said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Moment by moment, Hofesh Shechter's "Grand Finale" looks masterly. All the imagery is attention grabbing; frequently the stage shows three or more different sequences at once. Though the dancing features no academic virtuosity, it's often forceful. The 10 performers seem driven by intense energies that combine folk dance with expressionism and they look impressively sincere. Everything in "Grand Finale," at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, looks and sounds doom laden, even the occasional outbursts of happiness. Bodies often look lifeless, sometimes while others lift or support them. In one section, silent screams abound. Tom Visser's apocalyptic lighting penetrating from above as if through clouds of smoke or dust is grimly picturesque. Tom Scutt's decor, with tall rectangular screens moving around the stage like silhouetted walls, makes the space dramatic. The dancers are dressed to look modern, everyday, devoid of artifice. This is plotless dance theater, a collage in different moods. At regular intervals, six musicians appear in various parts of the stage, playing calmly or sweetly despite the scenes of devastation elsewhere; they're the band on the Titanic. (When the audience returns from intermission, they're still blithely playing Franz Lehar's "Merry Widow" waltz and a corpselike figure remains unmoved beneath the curtain.) Taped music includes rhythmic thuds, fiercely percussive rock style beats, and fragments of classical music by Tchaikovsky and Vladimir Zaldwich. (The overall score is Mr. Shechter's own; the mixture of live music and taped sound, of familiar music and modern sonorities, characterizes much of his work.) You can see why Mr. Shechter has been a successful collaborator in many theatrical productions: He's good on the overlap between life's joys and doom, as seen in his atmospheric contributions in 2015 to both the Broadway production of "Fiddler on the Roof" and the Royal Opera staging of Gluck's "Orphee et Eurydice."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. Stephen Colbert is outraged that the Trump administration has not authorized the National Security Agency to fully investigate Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday, Mike Rogers, the head of the N.S.A., said he was still waiting for the president to give him the authority to look into Russian interference more deeply. Colbert took Trump to task, making a reference to his tweetstorm earlier that day, in which the president called the continuing Russia investigation a "witch hunt." "The president has not told the National Security Agency to secure the nation against Russian hacking that we know is still happening. It's like if your house is on fire, and the firemen are all there, and they agree that the flames are presently consuming your center hall colonial, but the fire chief keeps tweeting, 'Fake news. We don't know that that's a fire. Could be a very shiny flood. Point is, there's no proof of combustion. Witch hunt!'" STEPHEN COLBERT	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
A Chicago judge ruled this week in favor of a woman who accused the R B singer R. Kelly of having sexually abused her when she was a teenager in the 1990s, a decision that could lead to more financial woes for Mr. Kelly. The woman, Heather Williams, sued Mr. Kelly in February, the same month that he was arrested on charges of aggravated criminal sexual abuse involving four women, three of them underage at the time. Because Mr. Kelly, 52, and his lawyers did not respond to the lawsuit or schedule a court appearance, the judge granted Ms. Williams's request for a default judgment, her lawyer, Jeffrey Deutschman, said. If Mr. Kelly continues to be unresponsive, the judge will decide how much he must pay Ms. Williams after a court hearing next month, Mr. Deutschman said. Mr. Kelly's lawyer, Steve Greenberg, did not immediately return requests for comment. Mr. Kelly's publicist, Darrell Johnson, told The Chicago Sun Times: "We don't care about the lawsuit. The lawsuit means nothing to us." Ms. Williams is one of the four women Mr. Kelly, whose full name is Robert Kelly, is charged with abusing. In criminal court documents, she is referred to by her initials, but she used her full name in her lawsuit. Mr. Kelly has denied all accusations of abuse. The lawsuit said that on Ms. Williams's 16th birthday, in 1998, Mr. Kelly stopped in his car to speak with her while she was walking on a sidewalk in Chicago. Later that day, an associate of Mr. Kelly met Ms. Williams and her family at a restaurant and gave her Mr. Kelly's number, according to the lawsuit. She said he told her that Mr. Kelly wanted her to be in a music video he was making. In the criminal court documents, prosecutors said that she took a cab to Mr. Kelly's studio, where they had intercourse and she performed oral sex on him. They had sex about once a month for a year. The lawsuit said that Ms. Williams reckoned with those memories in therapy four years ago, realizing the psychological distress they had caused. "My client wants to be paid as a result of the terrible treatment she went through as a minor," Mr. Deutschman said in an interview. "All I'm able to do for her is get her money." Mr. Kelly came under intense scrutiny after the release of the Lifetime documentary "Surviving R. Kelly," which chronicled abuse allegations by girls and women. The public backlash led to his being dropped by his record label and a push to boycott his music, fueling speculation that Mr. Kelly no longer has the income to afford an expensive team of lawyers. He was briefly jailed in March for failure to pay child support. Last year, another woman sued Mr. Kelly in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, alleging that when she was 19, he initiated "nonconsensual oral and vaginal intercourse" and failed to tell her that he was infected with herpes. That lawsuit is still pending. Mr. Deutschman said that Ms. Williams will appear in court next month to detail her memory of her contact with Mr. Kelly when she was a teenager. He said that he plans to ask the judge to close that hearing to the public to protect his client's privacy.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
That "Ghost Stories," an homage of sorts to vintage British horror anthologies, is earning overwhelming raves on Rotten Tomatoes is more shocking than anything lurking within its frames. Managing to feel at once painfully slow and bafflingly truncated, this creaky triptych of not so scary tales is a tame curiosity of movie nostalgia. Written and directed by Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman, and based on their 2010 stage play, the movie slinks after Professor Goodman (Mr. Nyman), debunker of paranormal claims and scourge of charlatans. A mysterious tape directs him to investigate three victims of supposedly supernatural visitations: A night watchman at an abandoned former asylum (Paul Whitehouse); a twitchy young man (Alex Lawther) who believes he saw a demon; and a wealthy widower (Martin Freeman) troubled by a poltergeist.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
'HILMA AF KLINT: PAINTINGS FOR THE FUTURE' at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (through April 23). This rapturous exhibition upends Modernism's holiest genesis tale that the male trinity of Kandinsky, Malevich and Mondrian invented abstract painting starting in 1913. It demonstrates that a female Swedish artist got there first (1906 7), in great style and a radically bold scale with paintings that feel startlingly contemporary. The mother of all revisionist shows regarding Modernism. (Roberta Smith) 212 423 3500, guggenheim.org 'LUCIO FONTANA: ON THE THRESHOLD' at the Met Breuer (through April 14). The art of this Argentine Italian modernist looks a bit like it comes from another planet, and it might as well, given how seldom we see it in New York. The Met Breuer show, with single environments at the Met Fifth Avenue and El Museo del Barrio, is the artist's first museum survey here in over 40 years. This wouldn't be especially notable plenty of his Latin American peers never get seen at all were Fontana, who died in 1968, not so influential a figure. The "threshold" in the title refers not only to the early phase of his career, which the Met Breuer exhibition highlights, but also to his position as a forebear of contemporary art as we know it. Things we take for granted installation, new media and the poly disciplinary impulse that defines so many 21st century careers Fontana pioneered in the 1950s. (Holland Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION' at the Museum of the Moving Image. The rainbow connection has been established in Astoria, Queens, where this museum has opened a new permanent wing devoted to the career of America's great puppeteer, who was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died, too young, in 1990. Henson began presenting the short TV program "Sam and Friends" before he was out of his teens; one of its characters, the soft faced Kermit, was fashioned from his mother's old coat and would not mature into a frog for more than a decade. The influence of early variety television, with its succession of skits and songs, runs through "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show," though Henson also spent the late 1960s crafting peace and love documentaries and prototyping a psychedelic nightclub. Young visitors will delight in seeing Big Bird, Elmo, Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef; adults can dig deep into sketches and storyboards and rediscover some old friends. (Jason Farago) 718 784 0077, movingimage.us 'FRIDA KAHLO: APPEARANCES CAN BE DECEIVING' at the Brooklyn Museum (through May 12). This is not exactly an exhibition of Kahlo's art it contains just 11 paintings, from compelling self portraits to ghastly New Age kitsch but an evocation of an artistic life through her elegant Oaxacan blouses and skirts, not to mention the corsets and spinal braces she wore after a crippling traffic accident. Do her outfits have the weight of art, or are they just so much biographical flimflam? Your answer may vary depending on your degree of Fridamania, but the woven shawls and color saturated long skirts here, as well as gripping photographs of the artist by Carl Van Vechten, Imogen Cunningham, Manuel Alvarez Bravo and other great shutterbugs, suggest Kahlo's real accomplishment was a Duchampian extension of her art far beyond the easel, into her home, her fashion and her public relationships. (Farago) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.org 'THE LONG RUN' at the Museum of Modern Art. The museum upends its cherished Modern narrative of ceaseless progress by mostly young (white) men. Instead we see works by artists 45 and older who have just kept on keeping on, regardless of attention or reward, sometimes saving the best for last. Art here is an older person's game, a pursuit of a deepening personal vision over innovation. Winding through 17 galleries, the installation is alternatively visually or thematically acute and altogether inspiring. (Smith) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'MONUMENTAL JOURNEY: THE DAGUERREOTYPES OF GIRAULT DE PRANGEY' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through May 12). This exhibition is a buffed jewel. In 1842, just a couple of years after Louis Daguerre unveiled the world's first practical camera, Joseph Philibert Girault de Prangey, a French aristocrat with a yen for experimental technology, set off on a three year road trip, lugging a 100 pound kit as he took the world's first photographs of Athens, Cairo, Constantinople and Jerusalem. More than 100 of Girault de Prangey's precise daguerreotypes glisten here under pin lights, and his systematic photos of Islamic architecture, in particular, express how the new technology of photography could flit between art and science, and would soon become a tool of colonial rule. Girault de Prangey's daguerreotypes were little seen before 2003, when his descendants put them on the market; their discovery was a landmark in the history of early photography, and this show is too. (Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. 'R.H. QUAYTMAN: X, CHAPTER 34' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (through April 23). At the summit the Guggenheim's spiraling rotunda, this show appears as if the exhibition of the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint, on the floors below, had suddenly exploded into 28 fragments. Quaytman made this series of works in 2018 in response to af Klint's oeuvre from the last century, and Quaytman is the perfect artist to answer af Klint: Af Klint worked in series, and Quaytman works in what she calls "chapters." Where af Klint took orders from spirits she claimed to have contacted through seances, Quaytman, for this project, has adopted af Klint as her higher power, working in a more secular, channeled collaborative vein. And where af Klint offers a bright, dynamic symphony, Quaytman responds with a spare, restrained and slightly dissonant tone poem. (Martha Schwendener) 212 423 3575, guggenheim.org 'STERLING RUBY: CERAMICS' at the Museum of Art and Design (through March 17). Adept at most art mediums, this artist is at his best in ceramics, especially in the outsize, awkwardly hand built, resplendently glazed baskets, ashtrays and plates and the objects that verge on sculpture in this show. These works actively incorporate accident and aspects of the ready made, have precedents in the large scale ceramics of Peter Voulkos and Viola Frey, but may be closest in spirit to the Neo Expressionism of Julian Schnabel rehabilitated, of course. (Smith) 212 299 7777, madmuseum.org 'SCENES FROM THE COLLECTION' at the Jewish Museum. After a surgical renovation to its grand pile on Fifth Avenue, the Jewish Museum has reopened its third floor galleries with a rethought, refreshed display of its permanent collection, which intermingles 4,000 years of Judaica with modern and contemporary art by Jews and gentiles alike Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and the excellent young Nigerian draftswoman Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze. The works are shown in a nimble, nonchronological suite of galleries, and some of its century spanning juxtapositions are bracing; others feel reductive, even dilettantish. But always, the Jewish Museum conceives of art and religion as interlocking elements of a story of civilization, commendably open to new influences and new interpretations. (Farago) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org 'TOLKIEN: MAKER OF MIDDLE EARTH' at the Morgan Library Museum (through May 12). J. R. R. Tolkien did more than write books like "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy; he invented an alternate reality, complete with its own geography, languages, religion and an era spanning history. This exhibition of his artwork, letters, drafts and other material reminds visitors that the stories Tolkien wrote, however impressive, represent only a fraction of his efforts, and it highlights his unparalleled ability to create an immersive experience using only words and pictures. After a visit you, too, may find yourself believing in Middle earth and the hobbits, elves, dwarves, orcs and wizards that live there. (Peter Libbey) 212 685 0008, themorgan.org 'ANDY WARHOL FROM A TO B AND BACK AGAIN' at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through March 31). Although this is the artist's first full American retrospective in 31 years, he's been so much with us in museums, galleries, auctions as to make him, like wallpaper, like the atmosphere, only half noticed. The Whitney show restores him to a full, commanding view, but does so in a carefully shaped and edited way, with an emphasis on very early and late work. Despite the show's monumentalizing size, it's a human scale Warhol we see. Largely absent is the artist entrepreneur who is taken as a prophet of our market addled present. What we have instead is Warhol for whom art, whatever else it was, was an expression of personal hopes and fears. (Cotter) 212 570 3600, whitney.org 'ANSEL ADAMS IN OUR TIME' at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston (through Feb. 24). This far ranging, smartly and instructively installed show of more than 100 of Adams's photographs noble and challenging images of our country's heritage, most of them from the Lane Collection is not a mere retrospective; it also includes about 80 images by 23 contemporary photographers that the curator, Karen Haas, sees as a modern lens on his work. Although the connections are occasionally a bit tenuous, their addition highlights how Adams, who carried the 19th century's hymn to America into the 20th century, has remained an inescapable force. (Vicky Goldberg) 617 267 9300, mfa.org 'BLACK CITIZENSHIP IN THE AGE OF JIM CROW' at the New York Historical Society (through March 3). This exhibition about Reconstruction and its aftermath doesn't draw explicit parallels to today's politics. But perhaps it doesn't have to. Reconstruction can be a challenging story to tell, given how it cuts against deeply held American ideas about steady moral progress. It can also seem like a very abstract story, dominated by Constitutional amendments, legal battles and court decisions. "Black Citizenship," which fills three small upstairs galleries, covers the legal and political landmarks, but it also includes poignant artifacts that show how ordinary people fought the battle for and against racial equality on the ground. (Jennifer Schuessler) 212 872 3400, nyhistory.org 'ROCHELLE FEINSTEIN: IMAGE OF AN IMAGE' at the Bronx Museum of the Arts (through March 3). In her career survey, this wisecracking Bronx native proves that she can do just about anything with painting. She can chronicle history or tell a joke. She can alchemize linen, photographs, newspapers, cardboard and photocopies into art. She can teach you something about looking and life. A whiz with color, she sprays and squeezes paint, and stains with it. Several works feel like odes to color charts or to the color theory art students learn in school. A morbid strain runs through other works as Feinstein grapples with and battles the forces trying to shut down painting in favor of other media. (Schwendener) 718 681 6000, bronxmuseum.org 'JULIO LE PARC 1959' at the Met Breuer (through Feb. 24). Born in 1928 in Argentina, Le Parc was an art student in Buenos Aires in the late 1940s, where Lucio Fontana was his teacher. Master and pupil were on the same beam: Both were formally omnivorous, anti academic and futuristically minded. In 1958, Le Parc moved to France where, at 90, he still lives. There he met figures associated with what would be called Op Art and Kinetic Art, and pushed what they were doing in more directions. Although far from being the career survey he deserves, this show includes some 50 gouache studies on paper in which he makes an optical ballet from simple geometry and turns mirrors and light into a hypnotic event. (Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'BRUCE NAUMAN: DISAPPEARING ACTS' at MoMA PS1 (through Feb. 25). If art isn't basically about life and death, and the emotions and ethics they inspire, what is it about? Style? Taste? Auction results? The most interesting artists go right for the big, uncool existential stuff, which is what Bruce Nauman does in a transfixing half century retrospective that fills much of MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens. Nauman has changed the way we define what art is and what is art, and made work prescient of the morally wrenching American moment we're in. (Cotter) 718 784 2084, momaps1.org 'PAA JOE: GATES OF NO RETURN' at the American Folk Art Museum (through Feb. 24). Joseph Tetteh Ashong, better known as Paa Joe, is Ghana's pre eminent funerary carpenter, turning out thousands of brightly colored lions, soda bottles and automobiles for people to be buried in. Most of his exuberant pieces enjoy the light of day for only a few hours before they disappear into the ground. But in 2004, Paa Joe was commissioned by the art dealer and gallerist Claude Simard to make casket size hardwood models of 13 former Gold Coast slave forts, and seven of them are on view here. Thanks to Paa Joe's gift for transmuting even the most complex and brutal material into a cheerful expression of his own artistic temperament, the works' undeniable conceptual weight doesn't hamper the overwhelming visual pleasure. (Will Heinrich) 212 595 9533, folkartmuseum.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Mummy No. 30007, currently residing at the American Museum of Natural History, is a showstopper. She's known as the Gilded Lady, for good reason: Her coffin, intricately decorated with linen, a golden headdress and facial features, has an air of divinity. She's so well preserved that she looks exactly how the people of her time hoped she would appear for eternity. To contemporary scientists, however, it's what they don't see that is equally fascinating: Who was this ancient woman, and what did she look like when she was alive? This is one of the many mysteries examined in "Mummies," which opened at the museum on Monday and runs through Jan. 7. More than a dozen specimens are on display; some have not been on public view in more than 100 years, since the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The show, which originated at the Field Museum in Chicago, explores how and why two civilizations separated by about 7,500 miles ancient Egypt and pre Columbian Peru practiced mummification. With its somber lighting and music, the exhibition almost commands reverence; we are in the company of the dead, after all. But the show also includes virtual mummies that viewers can unwrap at interactive tables. The easy to navigate space reveals rare artifacts and three dimensional imaging of what lies beneath the cloth. The hero of modern mummy investigations, the CT scanner, is prominently displayed at the start of the exhibition. It gives archaeologists an inside look at the millenniums old specimens without damaging them. A century ago, scientists would unwrap their finds, often harming them in the process one of the real mummies in the show was decapitated when archaeologists removed its face covering. The Gilded Lady, though, was never unwrapped. Archaeologists used CT scanning to create a 3 D print of her skull, which helped a forensic artist reconstruct her facial features. They even determined her potential cause of death tuberculosis about 2,000 years ago. Dating to Roman era Egypt, she was probably in her 40s when she succumbed, had curly hair and an overbite. But way before visitors meet the Gilded Lady, they are taken to Peru, where about 7,000 years ago the Chinchorro people became the first known civilization to practice mummification, thousands of years before the Egyptians. They used stone knives to cut flesh from the bones of the dead. Then the preparers would dry or smoke the flesh, clean the bones and reinforce the skeleton using reeds and clay. Then they would reattach the skin to the body and paint it black or red. One of the final steps was to adorn their mummies with a clay mask, modeled from the person's face, and add a wig. Few of these fragile masks have survived, but a replica is on display encased in glass. Dozens of other societies in the region of what is now Peru also mummified their dead. It was a way to preserve family members and establish a dynasty. They would pack them into bundles of cloth or wool, shaped like a sitting person. Sometimes ceramics or personal items would be put in the bundles. The Chancay culture in Peru placed the bundles upright in pits, and retrieved them during festivals, or when they wanted to show off their ancestors. Mummification was a way to keep family members close, unlike the ancient Egyptians, who sought to set up the dead for an afterlife with the gods. A full size diorama shows what a pit looked like. In the Egypt section are the more familiar types of mummies. Egyptians began mummifying their dead around 3,500 B.C., preparing them much more extravagantly than the Peruvians did and using an early form of embalming. To prepare a body, the Egyptians made an incision in the abdomen and removed the intestines, kidneys and lungs, usually leaving the heart in place. They used hooked instruments to extract the brain through the nostrils. It was tossed. Ancient Egyptians placed little value on the brain, believing thoughts came from the heart, according to archaeologists. The organs were preserved and stored in jars, which would be placed in the mummy's tomb. The bodies were cleaned and soaked in a solution, and then left to dry for five or six weeks. After a mummy was dried, oils were rubbed on its skin, sometimes for days. Then, the body was wrapped, from each individual toe up to the head. The first Egyptian station features four canopic jars, which safeguarded the organs of the deceased. They are adorned with the faces of a jackal, a baboon, a human and a hawk, which represent different Egyptian gods Huddled in a fetal position nearby is the exhibition's oldest mummy, at between 5,000 and 6,000 years old and found in Egypt. Her dried feet and skull emerge from what appears to be a straw or cloth covering. This woman was preserved not by embalmers, like the Gilded Lady, but by natural causes a reminder that some mummies are accidents. The diversity of coffins in the Egyptian section reflects wealth disparity. Not everyone was a mighty pharaoh or prosperous merchant able to afford a fancy sarcophagus made of stone or a coffin made of imported wood that was painted with elaborate designs of Osiris, god of the underworld, and stored in a grandiose tomb. There are also coffins in the familiar curvy Egyptian shape made of cheap wood for those seeking an economy class ride to the afterlife. Many of the extravagant sarcophagi are damaged, victims of looting. What the mummies from Peru and Egypt have in common is the care that went into their preparation, and their placement in cloth bundles or elaborate sarcophagi, to be put on display for life after death, whether that meant for family members or for the gods. In witnessing them now, viewers become part of that afterlife.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Joining the rarefied 100 million plus club in a salesroom punctuated by periodic gasps from the crowd, Jean Michel Basquiat's powerful 1982 painting of a skull brought 110.5 million at Sotheby's, to become the sixth most expensive work ever sold at auction. Only 10 other works have broken the 100 million mark. "He's now in the same league as Francis Bacon and Pablo Picasso," said the dealer Jeffrey Deitch, an expert on Basquiat. The sale of the painting, "Untitled," made for a thrilling moment at Sotheby's postwar and contemporary auction as at least four bidders on the phones and in the room sailed past the 60 million level at which the work forged from oil stick and spray paint had been guaranteed to sell by a third party. Soon after the sustained applause had subsided, the Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa revealed himself to be the buyer through a post on his Instagram account. "I am happy to announce that I just won this masterpiece," he said in the post. "When I first encountered this painting, I was struck with so much excitement and gratitude for my love of art. I want to share that experience with as many people as possible." It was Mr. Maezawa, the 41 year old founder of Contemporary Art Foundation, who last year set the previous auction high for Basquiat, paying 57.3 million for the artist's large 1982 painting of a horned devil at Christie's. Mr. Maezawa is also the founder of Japan's large online fashion mall, Zozotown. Mr. Maezawa later told Sotheby's that he acquired his latest painting by the artist for a planned museum in his hometown, Chiba, Japan. "But before then I wish to loan this piece which has been unseen by the public for more than 30 years to institutions and exhibitions around the world," he said in a statement. "I hope it brings as much joy to others as it does to me, and that this masterpiece by the 21 year old Basquiat inspires our future generations." The winning bid was taken on the phone by Yuki Terase, who oversees Japanese business development for Sotheby's in Hong Kong, against the dealer Nicholas Maclean, who was hunched over in the room on the phone with a bidder. Whether one active collector makes a market remains to be seen. It will take another major Basquiat to test the sustainability of this 100 million level. In the meantime, however, Basquiat's vibrant painting set several records Thursday night: for a work by any American artist, for a work by an African American artist and as the first work created since 1980 to make over 100 million. "It's a really historical moment," said Larry Warsh, a longtime Basquiat collector. "It does cement this artist once again." The Brooklyn born Basquiat went from graffiti artist to an art collector darling in the span of a mere seven years. He died at 27 of a drug overdose in 1988. Last year, Basquiat became the highest grossing American artist at auction, generating 171.5 million from 80 works, according to Artprice, and his auction high has increased at least tenfold in the last 15 years. "Here he is, blazing a trail not only in terms of the market but also in terms of how his work is perceived more widely," said the artist Adam Pendleton, who is African American. "It speaks to the broader elements of American culture. And what a powerful moment to have that happen." Perhaps poignantly, the price exceeded the auction high of Basquiat's friend and mentor, Andy Warhol, whose "Silver Car Crash (Double Disaster) (in 2 Parts)" sold for an artist high of 105.4 million in 2013. Sotheby's sale, which brought a total of 319 million against a low estimate of 211 million with 96 percent of the 50 lots sold, was a contrast to Tuesday night's lower energy contemporary auction at Christie's. Sixty percent of the lots reached prices above their estimates. "There was more depth of bidding than last night," said Morgan Long, a senior director at the Fine Art Group, an advisory company based in London. "Sotheby's had a lot more works in the middle range around 5 million to 10 million that appealed to the market." Earlier in the evening, Phillips held its latest auction in its newer format of 20th century and contemporary art. At that sale over half the 37 lots carried guaranteed minimum prices, emphasizing sellers' reluctance to consign to auction without a definite sale. Peter Doig's 1991 canvas, "Rosedale," of a Toronto snowfall, which was guaranteed for 25 million, sold for 28.8 million to a telephone bidder, an auction high for the artist. As Phillips pointed out before the auction, the Scottish born Doig, whose grand, painterly landscapes are prized by collectors, is one of just five living artists who have sold for more than 25 million at auction. The estimate "was aggressive, but it was fresh to the market and had been in a major show," said Anthony McNerney, director of contemporary art at Gurr Johns, an art advisory and valuation company based in London. Mr. McNerney was referring to the inclusion of the painting in a one man show at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London in 1998.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Pete Carroll has heard the haters telling him what he can do with all his New Age banter, all that talk about self discovery and the Seattle Seahawks' culture of love. He knows there's a coach on the other side of the country with six Super Bowl rings the guy who replaced him in New England 20 years ago. That guy obsesses about down and distance and blitz packages, and has built the model 21st century football organization around three words: "Do your job." Carroll has one Super Bowl ring. Carroll swears that's not how he keeps score, even though he is paid to win football games. It's all process, he says. Don't believe him? "I do hear it from people, you know, 'Stick to your coaching,'" he said last month as the N.F.L. playoffs approached and the Seahawks tried to find their groove. "I don't care." As if to prove it, there Carroll is, suddenly in jeans and a sweater and sneakers, beamed into a digital course on human performance, leading a kind of corporate group therapy discussion about the process of creating a personal philosophy for your life. Tens of thousands of employees at Fortune 500 companies have participated in the training sessions Carroll and his partners have created to help people find purpose and perform better. Carroll, 68, talks later about creating a vision for yourself. A vision is different from a personal philosophy, you see. He can go deep on that, if you want. It's Carroll, the native Northern Californian, being as Carroll as he can be, asking you to think about what it really means to excel, whether it's winning a football game or just being a good person, and it goes a long way toward explaining what is going through his mind when he is galloping down the sideline in the middle of January, pumping his fists like a teenager. A few facts about Carroll, whose Seahawks are 4 point underdogs against the Green Bay Packers on the road at Lambeau Field on Sunday. He has seven grandchildren. He says that he thinks in five year increments and that he has no plans to leave coaching anytime soon. But no coach goes out on top, and there is this other, evolving life of his. None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. One of Carroll's biggest influences is his longtime business partner, Michael Gervais, the sports psychologist who guided Felix Baumgartner on his 2012 sky dive from space. Gervais has honed the minds of Olympians, and serves as the mind set guru for the Seahawks. Gervais, who hosts "Finding Mastery," a popular podcast, has a simple mantra about the Seahawks. "We are a relationship based organization, rather than having an outcome based approach," he said. The idea his and Carroll's is that strong, trusting relationships among people who are striving to be the best versions of themselves create something powerful. Football players aren't the only ones who have been listening. In 2013, just as the Seahawks were getting good, Carroll spoke for an hour to a group of executives at Microsoft, the company co founded by Paul G. Allen, who died in 2018 and was a Seahawks owner, about the culture he was trying to build, one that emphasized personal growth and taking risks. When it was over, the executives wanted more. So Carroll and Gervais got to work on a two day curriculum that was passed around at Microsoft. In 2014, Satya Nadella took over the company with a mission to make it a place where people felt empowered to push past their comfort zone. Soon he was listening to Gervais and Carroll, and having his 12 direct reports listen, too. Nadella, who prefers cricket to American football, wanted as many people as possible exposed to the gospel. At the same time, Carroll and Gervais wanted to figure out how to take their message beyond Microsoft. The result was Compete to Create an online learning course, with Carroll cameos, that includes everything from advice on sleeping and eating and hydration to techniques for discovering what you want to accomplish in your brief time on earth. This approach is not the standard fare, where the famous coach collects a five figure check for a one off leadership lecture packed with gridiron lore or a round of golf. There is a lot of homework. It is both wonky and plays into every stereotype of the Left Coast mindfulness movement. And yet tens of thousands of Microsoft employees have chosen to spend more than a quarter of a million hours doing the Compete to Create course work. So have employees at AT T, Salesforce, Kohl's, Amazon, Access Bank, Boeing and Zynga. Typically, the company leadership does in person training, then purchases course licenses for its employees. Individuals can enroll for 499. It's about the "deep commitment for the culture you are trying to create," Kathleen Hogan, Microsoft's executive vice president for human resources, said, explaining why the company has encouraged the curriculum to its workers. "Purpose and meaning matter." Carroll gets that, but he insists that coaching should be about something bigger than wins and losses helping people be better at life. "We have a real energy here," he said. "That is ultimately the most valuable part of the experience." Jed Hughes, an executive search consultant to the N.F.L., said creating a specific culture is now essential for success in the league. Players want to know the method behind the madness and that coaches care about them. "When you feel like the person you are working for cares about you, then you are going to run through a wall for them," Hughes said. Matt Hasselbeck, an ESPN analyst and former Seahawks quarterback, said he was skeptical of Carroll when he took over his team in 2010, seeing him as an annoying, rah rah college guy parachuting in from the University of Southern California. Hasselbeck was a veteran who had taken his team to the Super Bowl in the 2005 season. Then, at 35, he had to learn a new way of thinking about his profession. Carroll spoke to him often about his purpose, sometimes in meetings in his office, sometimes during one on one basketball games they played, often wearing flip flops. Competition, and its implicit push to be better, was constant. Home run derbies. Rock paper scissors tournaments. Basketball shooting contests.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
LONDON The social impact of the European economic crisis shows little sign of abating, with unemployment in Spain, Greece and other southern European economies expected to continue to rise through the end of next year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a study published Tuesday. Joblessness is expected to continue edging up, to about 28 percent in Spain and Greece, 12.5 percent in Italy and 11 percent in France by the end of 2014, the Paris based O.E.C.D. said in its forecast. Young people and the low skilled will be affected the most, according to the organization, which represents 34 of the world's largest economies. Two of the biggest exceptions to the trend are the United States and Germany, where the number of people out of work is expected to decline further next year, the study said. "The social scars of the crisis are far from being healed," the organization's secretary general, Angel Gurria, said. Unemployment in many developed economies around the world has been on a steady rise since the financial crisis started in 2008. People on short term contracts, especially the younger and lower skilled workers, were often the first to be fired at the beginning of the crisis and struggled to find a new job, the O.E.C.D. said. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany declared youth unemployment Europe's biggest challenge earlier this year. And some governments, including France, pledged new measures to try and reduce unemployment. But some economists said that some labor policies pushed through by governments to improve the employment situation, including apprenticeship programs, can do only so much to alleviate the unemployment burden. Government reforms can help a bit, said Jennifer McKeown, an economist at Capital Economics, but "it's more about boosting firms' confidence and easing access to credit and maybe further easing of austerity." The O.E.C.D. warned against trying to address youth unemployment by turning to early retirement programs or relaxing unemployment benefits for older workers, saying it would be "a costly mistake." New evidence cited by the O.E.C.D. showed that even though workers tend to retire later because of better health or financial needs, they did not stay in their jobs longer at the expense of younger workers. Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank, agreed with that assessment, saying that European demographics and the growing financial demands of pensions made it necessary to get people to work longer, not shorter. But Mr. Schmieding was less pessimistic than the O.E.C.D. He said that while more bad news on unemployment was already "baked into the cake," the labor markets should stabilize as the economic environment improves, probably over the summer. "Unemployment is a lagging economic indicator and even if the economies stabilize there may be pressure, but it doesn't have to get quite as bad as the O.E.C.D. forecasts," Mr. Schmieding said. In Europe's hardest hit job markets, the outlook remains grim. In Greece, where thousands walked off their jobs Tuesday in a 24 hour general strike against austerity measures, one university graduate at the protest in Athens said she had few hopes of finding a job in the fall. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. "I was top of my class and all my teachers said I should have a bright future, but I can't see it, can you?" said Aliki Tsavou, 24, an economics graduate who has been working part time and uninsured in a cafe for the past year as she looks for a full time job. "I've even applied to make coffee in an accountant's office but there's nothing, absolutely nothing." The O.E.C.D. also said that governments should spend more on helping the unemployed with their job search and training. Spending per job seeker fell on average by almost 20 percent among O.E.C.D. countries since the beginning of the crisis. In Italy, addressing youth unemployment is a stated priority of the 11 week old government of Enrico Letta, which at the end of June approved a series of programs to increase jobs. The measures include tax breaks for employers, as well as new training and internship programs. But concerns remain that Italy's overall economic situation limping through a two year recession will continue to act as a brake to new hires. "The real issue is one of demand," said Stefano Sacchi, assistant professor of political science at the University of Milan, who noted that work incentives were unsustainable in the long term. Calls for the government to relieve the tax load on companies and reduce labor costs to boost employment have also been widespread, but tax breaks in other areas have reduced the government's wriggle room. "The margins for this are tight in the current situation," Mr. Sacchi said. Flavio Vallone, 28, a Web developer and university graduate in Siena, Italy, has been struggling after a first job that ended when the company was taken over. Now that he has spare time, he has been teaching himself new skills in Web marketing and social media in the hope that it will help land new employment. "I'm taking advantage of being unemployed to learn what I didn't while I was at university," he said. But prospects look dim. "Companies want the compromise between a young person and a person who has experience, which is a paradox."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Before anything happens in Alain Buffard's "Baron Samedi," the set alone tells us a lot: a sloping, sleek white floor, like a barren hillside, curled up at two corners and slightly warped around the edges. There's great potential soon to be tapped in that simple design (the work of Nadia Lauro), for highs and lows, for climbing up and sliding down, for stumbling off balance, for falling off the edge. It's unstable terrain. The people who roam there, who sing and dance and fight there, are unstable, too, eight characters adrift in a multitude of shifting, often hierarchical roles: master and slave, prostitute and pimp, performer and spectator, colonizer and colonized. Sometimes they are just themselves, telling what could be their own fractured stories of exile or homecoming or how they came to be born. Or maybe they are ghosts. "Baron Samedi" takes its title from the Haitian voodoo mischief maker, the leader of the spirits of the dead. Created about two years before Mr. Buffard's death last December, the haunting work had its United States premiere on Thursday at New York Live Arts in Chelsea as part of "Danse: A French American Festival of Performance and Ideas." At first we hear only a deep, rich voice reverberating through darkness: Hlengiwe Lushaba, who sings of a "troubleman" and urges us to "listen to the blood in my bones here talking." A thin veil of light (designed by Yves Godin) reveals the contours of her face.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Coming but one day after Israeli media reports of warnings by Shin Bet (Israel's Internal Security Service) that a unilateral annexation might touch off a wave of violence, and of Israel Defense Forces' preparations for that threat, your editorial was most timely. Moreover, your comments regarding annexation's effect on Israel's security are shared by the 300 retired I.D.F. generals and heads of Mossad, Shin Bet and Police who are members of Commanders for Israel's Security. It is our collective judgment that in future negotiations, Israel should insist on the annexation of certain settlement "blocks" in the context of a territorial swap. But what is a legitimate demand in negotiations is bound to prove perilous to our country's security when done unilaterally. It would jeopardize the security coordination with the Palestinian Authority that has saved many lives, imperil the peace treaty with Jordan that provides Israel with invaluable strategic depth vis a vis Iran, and undermine the security cooperation with Egypt that has successfully checked destabilizing forces like ISIS. All are far too important to risk for the annexation of areas where the I.D.F. has had complete freedom of action for decades.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
The National Gallery of Art in Washington has announced the acquisition of 40 works from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation, a nonprofit organization that for the last decade has dedicated itself to promoting the contributions of African American artists from the South. The purchase adds the work of 21 Black painters, quilters and sculptors to the museum's art collection. "This is a significant acquisition for our department in terms of diversity," said Harry Cooper, senior curator and head of the modern art department at the museum. "These artists are out of the mainstream and don't have traditional training. They are Black and from the South, often facing hardships to create their work." Dr. Cooper said the museum has worked on the purchase for three years. The arrival of the museum's new director, Kaywin Feldman, in 2019 helped expedite the lengthy acquisitions process; she had previously overseen another Souls Grown Deep acquisition while leading the Minneapolis Institute of Art.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
WHO cares, one might reasonably ask, about the centennial of an automaker that stopped selling cars in the United States 15 years ago and didn't sell many in the decades before that? Yet if it is Alfa Romeo for whom the birthday cake has been baked, it seems a lot of Americans do care particularly the enthusiasts, collectors and racing fans who hold that Italian marque especially close to their hearts. Young people, whose Alfa exposure has mainly been to rusty 1980s convertibles on American streets, may not understand. But for baby boomers who remember the Duetto that Dustin Hoffman drove in the hit 1967 film "The Graduate," or hard core enthusiasts who know all about Alfa's win in the Mille Miglia in 1938, the mystique lives on. Who cares? It seems that the organizers of the year's top automotive concours events do. Alfa Romeo will be a featured marque at the prestigious Concours d'Elegance at Pebble Beach in California in August. Alfa will be celebrated at many other classic car events this summer, including the Concorso Italiano near Monterey, Calif.; the Fairfield County Concours in Westport, Conn., and the Concours of the Americas at Meadow Brook, near Detroit. Topping the birthday events is a gathering of Alfas in the company's hometown, Milan, on June 26 27. More than 1,500 historic Alfas are expected, and parades are planned for both days. Much of the passion that remains for Alfa stems from its firebreathing, race dominating cars of the 1930s cars that were the Ferraris of the era. (Indeed, Enzo Ferrari managed Alfa's racing team before setting out on his own). This performance heritage continued in the postwar years. Alfas of the '50s and '60s were nimble 4 cylinder screamers that, with their supple suspensions and superior brakes engineered to conquer the Italian Alps literally whipped around their English competitors on the track. But from the mid 1970s until 1995, when the company withdrew from the United States, the cars' sporting nature was often compromised by American smog and safety regulations. With tacked on bumpers and cobbled together emission controls, both styling and reliability suffered. Why then does Alfa still inspire such a following? "Alfa Romeos are distinctive both for their often striking and notably Italian design, and for their engineering, which makes them a joy to drive," said Brewster Thackeray, president of the Alfa Romeo Owners Club U.S.A. "Alfa owners have always been somewhat eccentric; we put up with the cars being demanding and sometimes temperamental in exchange for the joy they deliver." The company, known as A.L.F.A. in its early years, fell under the control of Nicola Romeo, a manufacturer of mining gear, before 1920. The name of the company and its cars was changed to Alfa Romeo. Sporting performance was always Alfa's forte. From 1924 to 1951, Alfa Romeo was a formidable participant in Grand Prix racing, with models like the P2, P3, Type 158 and Type 159 roaring to multiple victories and World Championships. In 1925, an Alfa P2 won the first Grand Prix World Championship. At the same time, Alfa continuously improved its sporting cars, which could be driven on the street as well as raced. In 1927 32, the 6 cylinder 6C 1500 and 6C 1750 won many races, including the grueling 1,000 mile Mille Miglia. In the 1930s, the supercharged 8 cylinder 8C 2300s and 8C 2900s were dominant; some enthusiasts consider these the ultimate prewar sports cars. An 8C 2900 Berlinetta with a body by Touring was selected as Best of Show at the 2008 Pebble Beach Concours. The car's owner, Jon Shirley, said his 1938 Alfa the winner of the inaugural Watkins Glen Grand Prix in 1948 in upstate New York was "almost as comfortable to drive as a modern car." Mr. Shirley, the former president of Microsoft, added, "It's fast, the brakes work well and it could run at 100 m.p.h. all day without issues." The 8C 2900 was, he said, "a supercar of the 1930s." In 1938, Alfa 8C 2900B models took first and second places in the Mille Miglia. During World War II, Allied bombing heavily damaged the Alfa factory in Portello, Italy, and production was slow to resume after 1945. The 6 cylinder passenger and sporting cars of the late 1940s and early 1950s were large and not particularly fast. But in 1951 Alfa introduced a smaller, less expensive 4 cylinder car called the 1900. Offered in coupe, convertible and four door versions, the 1900 represented the transition of Alfa from a low production specialty automaker to a more mainstream producer. Building on the company's successes in competition, the 1900 was marketed as "the family car that wins races." In 1954, a smaller car appeared that would establish Alfas' postwar reputation as credible alternatives to British sports cars like MG and Triumph but with superior technology and comfort. Called the Giulietta, it came as coupe, sedan or convertible (called spider) and had an advanced 1.3 liter aluminum engine with dual overhead cams. Lightweight versions of the coupes won their classes in the Mille Miglia. Giuliettas were the first Alfas to have a significant impact on the American racing scene. The high performance version, the Giulietta Veloce, won many Sports Car Club of America races in the 1950s and '60s. The Giuliettas evolved into Giulias, with larger 1.6 liter engines. A family favorite was the Giulia Super, a plain looking sedan that had high performance components unusual in any car of its time, including dual Weber carburetors, a 5 speed manual transmission and four wheel disc brakes. The Alfa Romeo that is perhaps best known to Americans is the svelte Duetto convertible of 1967. It was one of these that Benjamin Braddock, Mr. Hoffman's "Graduate" character, drove across the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge. A later version of the Duetto was rechristened with the name of the movie. The 1967 chassis was never substantially changed and provided the underpinnings for all convertibles sold in the United States through the final cars, the Spider Commemorative Edition of 1994. Alfa Romeo was not a hugely profitable company. In 1980, its factories were acquired by the state owned Finmeccanica, and Fiat took over the entire company in 1986. That was also Alfa's best year in the United States, with sales of 8,201 cars. The final new model to reach North America was the handsome 164 sport sedan of the early 1990s, designed by Pininfarina. A front drive car, the 164 shared its platform with three other European cars, including the Saab 9000. Despite its strong performance and comfort, the 164 was not a great sales success in the United States, a factor in Alfa's decision to abandon the market. American fans of Alfa Romeo known as the Alfisti had a brief moment of automotive joy when the highly exclusive 8C Competizione was introduced as a 2008 model. Only 500 coupes were built with a base price of 265,000, followed by an even more expensive Spider version. After years of rumors and vague promises that Alfa would return to the United States, the chief executive of Fiat and Chrysler, Sergio Marchionne, in late April confirmed that Alfa would return in a little more than two years with a full range of models. Ron Tonkin, a former Alfa dealer and past president of the National Automobile Dealers Association, says Alfas should be sold alongside Fiat's more exotic brands, Ferrari and Maserati. "Alfas are the perfect entry level exotic to introduce people to the world of Italian cars," he said. Many current Alfa owners would like a new one, suggested Alex Csank, chairman of the Alfa Century 2010 convention, set for this week in Frederick, Md. "However, Alfa must target the larger market and compete against other brands to attract a new generation of Alfa owners," he said. "And to do that, they must arrive with a strong lineup of great cars and marketing and dealer support." Used Alfas are readily available. An aspiring Alfista can find one to fit even a modest budget. A nationwide search of Craigslist recently turned up more than three dozen 164 models for sale, some for less than 2,000. At the other end of the scale, the market value of the 8C 2900 that won at Pebble Beach could easily exceed 10 million. There were none on Craigslist.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
"When you're culturally open and empathetic, you start to look at not just fashion, but the world differently," Prabal Gurung said. Prabal Gurung, a New York based fashion designer, was born in Singapore and raised in Nepal. He has also lived in India both Delhi and Bombay London and Australia. A life spent traveling to the far reaches of the globe has influenced not only his brand's philosophy but its aesthetics as well. Mr. Gurung's politics are woven into the fabric of his label. He consistently considers diversity when casting the models who appear in his fashion shows, in advertising campaigns and on his website. And though his luxury women's wear is a red carpet favorite, he has also collaborated on a collection with Lane Bryant, a plus size retailer. He makes statements with the clothes he sells, producing T shirts emblazoned with phrases like "I am an immigrant," "Girls just want to have fundamental rights," and "We will not be silenced." And he has been outspoken in what he sees as the need for the fashion industry to take sexual assault more seriously. In 2011, Mr. Gurung, 39, and his siblings started the Shikshya Foundation Nepal, which financially supports the efforts of local organizations providing education to underserved children. Ahead of Fashion Week in New York City this month, Mr. Gurung talked by telephone about his philosophy. The following is an edited version of the conversation. IMAN STEVENSON How much time do you spend in New York versus traveling? How do you manage your internal clock when you travel? I've abandoned the idea. Wherever I land I start to function. Sometimes I get weekends off, so I rest. Where I go I immediately follow that city's clock. The first thing I do is I try to swim if I'm in a hotel and there's a pool. Or work out for an hour or two. How does travel impact your creative process? It really opens my eyes. Though I've traveled extensively to different parts of the world, I've always been a curious traveler. When you're culturally open and empathetic, you start to look at not just fashion, but the world differently. If I were to just stay in America, I'd probably have boundaries about what is acceptable. How did you decide to use the embroidery of Nepalese artisans in your Spring 2019 collection? We were inspired by the Tharu tribe in Nepal. Whenever I'm drawing from a tribe or a group, I like to make sure we are honoring them in the right way. Part of that is trying to generate some kind of employment. When I went to Nepal there was this organization which works with these artisans, it's all sustainable and fair practice. So I was talking to them and we found these women who do that kind of work from that particular tribe and I decided to work with them. When things are done in hand done embroidery, there is so much love put into it. I think the world can do with more of that. Why do you make political statements with your brand? From day one, I've been about celebrating and empowering women, especially because I come from a single mother who brought us up. I, myself, am an immigrant. I came here to study, I got my work visa, then green card, then finally became a citizen. What I'm living is the American dream. From the collection that we do, to the casting that we do, we talk about the heritage of the models. I'm interested in and intrigued by their background, by their ethnicity, their experience. Is there a country or city you never get tired of visiting? Just one, I can't give you. I'll give you Nepal, India, Tokyo, Seoul, Paris and London. Do you have a go to plane outfit? I always change on the plane. We have this cashmere travel set that we do. We got it made in Nepal. A cashmere crew neck and cashmere sweatpants, so I change into that. Do you connect to the plane's Wi Fi or use that time to unplug? Some people dread long flights. I kind of enjoy it because it gives me time on my own, for myself. It's not even about movies. I don't connect on the Internet, I just disconnect. That's why sometimes 13 hour flights are really good because you get there, settle in, change, eat, read a book, sleep, wake up and be with your thoughts. It's just the most calming place for me. Do you check your luggage or carry on? Depends. If there are a lot of formal events, I have to check it. I'm going to Tokyo for six days and it's work and stuff, so most likely I won't check it. If I'm taking gifts for my friends and family then I have to check it. Follow NY Times Travel on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Get weekly updates from our Travel Dispatch newsletter, with tips on traveling smarter, destination coverage and photos from all over the world.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
LOS ANGELES This is why DreamWorks Animation needed to take shelter in the arms of a larger conglomerate: The boutique studio's "Kung Fu Panda 3" collected about 430 million at the global box office in the last quarter, but the company could put together only 13.8 million in profit, even with help from its television, toy and digital businesses. DreamWorks Animation's first quarter results, released on Thursday, nonetheless were an improvement from the year ago period, when the company lost 54.8 million. After years of efforts to escape a boom and bust cycle driven by sporadic film releases, Jeffrey Katzenberg, DreamWorks Animation's chief executive, last week sold his studio to Comcast's NBCUniversal for 3.8 billion. The deal, driven by Comcast's hunger for family oriented characters to fuel its theme park and licensing divisions, is expected to close by the end of the year; Mr. Katzenberg will ultimately hand over the reins to Christopher Meledandri, NBCUniversal's animation chief.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
In the town of Schitt's Creek, homophobia and racism don't exist, personal growth is in the air, and although the Rose family lost its millions, there's always enough money around. After being betrayed by their business manager, the Roses find themselves penniless, forced to live in the backwater town of Schitt's Creek, which Johnny (Eugene Levy) bought for his son, David (Dan Levy), as a joke. Currently airing its sixth and final season, this lovely comedy from a real life father and son team has been steadily gaining a cult following over the years (and a handful of Emmy nominations). The show takes a couple of seasons to settle into itself, so if you're new to town, consider starting at Season 2 and going back to the opening episodes once you've fallen in love with the Rose family and their new neighbors. This zippy show from Amy Sherman Palladino has won three Golden Globes, including two best actress awards for Rachel Brosnahan. She plays Midge, a 1950s Upper West Side housewife who discovers she has a flair for stand up comedy after her husband leaves her. With the help of a curmudgeonly downtown booking agent (Alex Borstein), she sets about turning her pain into punch lines, the raunchier the better. The stakes are pretty low here, and Brosnahan gives a great fish out of water performance. She also wears some really excellent coats. There are three seasons available. Such is the cultural influence of "The Simpsons" that Springfield and its residents can feel familiar even if you haven't watched the show religiously. Currently in its 31st season, it has aired more than 600 episodes, so it's a show you can really go to town on. With its sight gags, verbal wordplay, pop culture allusions and jokes about high art, the show has humor of every stripe. Where to stream: Disney Plus, FX Now and Hulu. Seeing the celebrity chef and octogenarian Mary Berry discuss a cake's "soggy bottom" is a beautiful thing. This show follows the basic TV contest format, with cheeky hosts and judges (like Mrs. Berry) who have extremely high standards. But the show is unusually gentle and kind, and extremely British. The show lost some of its simple goodness when it moved to Britain's Channel 4 from the BBC, and it now has different hosts and presenters from those of its early glory years. The "Baking Show" family also has several spinoff shows now, including "Masterclass," "The Beginnings" and "Holidays," so you never have to leave the tent. Even if you weren't lucky enough to have Daria Morgendorffer as a companion during your teenage years, this animated series is still a delight to experience. Daria and her best friend, Jane, struggle together through the absurdities and discomforts of high school and suburban life. While they are world weary and witty beyond their years, some of the show's most poignant moments are given to Daria's popular younger sister and to other secondary characters. Dark times can call for dark humor. Thankfully there's "Daria." To know the Gilmore girls is to be comforted by them. The fast talking, caffeine downing, mother and daughter BFFs returned in 2016 for a revival, and despite (or maybe because of?) the intense internet fanfare, the four new episodes fell a little flat. But don't let that put you off a first viewing: The original seven seasons are utterly charming and full of autumnal foliage. This Canadian series doesn't get the attention it deserves, but it's a gem. The show follows Erica, a 32 year old woman who is sent back in time by her therapist to try to make up for the mistakes of her past. The theme of a grown up learning to be a little more grown up is explored without clear cut "right" and "wrong" answers. And who doesn't fantasize about miraculously righting past wrongs? In this series from Michael Schur, the co creator of "Parks and Recreation," Kristen Bell plays a recently deceased "medium person" who is accidentally sent to "the good place," which is supposed to be reserved for only the saintliest of people. In the Good Place, there is an unlimited supply of frozen yogurt, everyone is partnered with his or her soul mate and you can't curse. (No forking way, to use the show's substitute word.) Ted Danson plays a daft administrator. If you like your sitcoms surreal, thought provoking and generally warm, this one's for you. When times are tough, sometimes you just want to be around family and sometimes, it's preferable when you're not related to that family. This comedy tells the story of an English man and a Welsh woman who fall in love. But it's really about their existing loved ones, who must learn to accept outsiders. The cast includes James Corden (who also co wrote the series) as Smithy, Gavin's fiercely loyal and lazy best friend. And Smithy is just one among many weird and wonderful supporting characters, including a sex crazed elderly woman next door neighbor and a goth best friend whose age is a mystery. The core of the show is love, in all its forms, and if you like silly, sweet shows, this one's for you.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
When the Wrong Singer for the Song Is Just So Right At home in Chicago, Heather Headley cleared the room no husband or children allowed. She had a show tune to record, and she knew it would get emotional. She kicked off her shoes. Then she got down to the business of singing somebody else's song. "I've always told people, songs are like dresses for me," Headley, a Tony Award winner for "Aida," said later by phone. "I see one in somebody's closet, and I want to try it on." That's what she and her cast mates get to do in this year's thrice delayed "Miscast," a benefit for the Off Broadway company MCC Theater. Since 2001, the show has been a goofy glamorous hot ticket on the theater calendar, matching up Broadway stars with roles they would never be cast to play. "It should be an asterisk and maybe an exclamation point and some dashes and stuff," she added, and laughed, "because it is born out of a virus and unrest and everything that's happening this year. And I do hope that it will bring joy, and a balm." I will tell you right now that I have seen Headley's performance, and it is a stunner. But I will also tell you that I have been sworn to secrecy about what the song is and which Broadway musical it's from. The same goes for the rest of the program the sort of condition that a journalist agrees to only when the element of surprise is one of a show's main pleasures. As is customary for "Miscast," even the performers don't know what the numbers other than their own will be. So we won't spoil that here. On the August day when Bernie Telsey one of MCC's three artistic directors and the founder of the casting powerhouse Telsey Company taped his scripted remarks for "Miscast," he stood on one of the organization's stages in Hell's Kitchen. Telsey had barely been at the theater since the final rehearsal studio run through of Jocelyn Bioh's "Nollywood Dreams," on March 12, just before everything stopped. The play's set was still onstage. For MCC, Telsey said in an interview, clinging to what he called "the habit of 'Miscast'" isn't only about the vital donations it might raise. It's also about enjoying for a while, through the busyness of planning and Zoom rehearsals, "the illusion, or the hope, that things are normal" at a time when they are absolutely not. Scott Galina, who produces "Miscast" with Telsey, said the current conversation in the industry about which roles are open to whom is a good thing. For years, he and Telsey had songs for the character Bobby, in "Company," on their list of material for women. Then came the gender swapped production. "And in two seconds, those are not miscast anymore," he said. "That's great. That's what it should be, in the service of theater. What happens when a different person sings this song?" This year's "Miscast" leads with lightheartedness. For anyone who has watched YouTube videos of performances from previous years like Jonathan Groff and a team of dancers tapping their way through "Anything Goes" (2.2 million views and counting) the 2020 version is recognizable. Galina said the tone will be just different enough to feel connected to the present. The challenge, as he sees it, is to make something akin to a musical comedy online, "but not a show that people watch and say, 'Were they not reading the news?' And how do you give people hope and joy, and celebrate what 'Miscast' is and, more broadly, what theater does for people and also play to the moment?" 'This feeling is not going to last forever' The solution, it seems, is partly in the choice of songs, and partly in the intensity that some performers bring to their interpretations in this volatile season. Joshua Henry, a three time Tony nominee, has been in two previous "Miscast" galas, performing a respectful "Natural Woman" (from "Beautiful") and a cheeky, all male "Cell Block Tango" (from "Chicago"). This year, he swapped out the number he had picked to do in April, replacing it shortly after George Floyd was killed with an emphatically uplifting anthem from another famous musical. (I can't tell you the one he decided against, either; he might perform it next year.) At times in recent months, Henry has found himself uncertain and in tears. "As an artist I'm missing things," he said. "As a Black man I'm feeling a lot of things." So he was soothed, momentarily, by the sanguine spirit of the song. "I think I needed it," he said. "It's about sitting in a really crummy, crappy place and having the hope the understanding, eventually that this crummy place, this feeling is not going to last forever." Giving it a soulfulness that he said is as natural to him as breathing, he recorded the song at home on the couch with his guitar. Putting that "Miscast" performance into the world in a video, which like the others will stay on YouTube after the gala, he wants in particular to reach young, Black recent graduates of theater programs, "because they're feeling things doubly" right now: the lack of employment in their chosen field and also the devaluing of Black lives. Mis performing for the first time Like Headley, Phillipa Soo had long wanted to be in "Miscast," but the scheduling never worked until this year, when so many schedules imploded. "I do miss the ability," she said, "to celebrate it in the room with a bunch of people." In a normal "Miscast," the performers would all be onstage together, watching one another as the audience watched them. Her co star Norbert Leo Butz, a two time Tony winner, has been in four previous "Miscast" shows. For this incarnation, he has fully embraced the music video aesthetic. In an online rehearsal on a sweltering afternoon, candles flickered in the background as he stood in his living room in South Orange, N.J., a guitar slung across his chest. His wife, the actor Michelle Federer, used a smartphone to record him in a folk rock interpretation of his chosen song, while Telsey watched over Zoom, requesting camera angles and a touch of home redecoration. With the air conditioning off for sound reasons, Butz joked about sweating like Iggy Pop, and wished Oliver Stone could take charge of the shoot, which had gotten more complex than expected. "You come face to face with your limited tech abilities, man," he said. "It's very humbling." The upbeat, classic show tune that she chose at Telsey's suggestion for "Miscast" is no mismatch for her high wattage talent, and at 33 she is arguably not too young for it. Warren noted, though, that "a woman that looks like me wouldn't necessarily be seen as a first choice in casting" the role in the show it comes from. Its overwhelmingly white casting history isn't the reason, though, that she considers it political for her to sing the song in this "very, very dark time." "This song brings me a lot of joy," she said, "and right now Black joy is a political act. Me choosing to perform right now is a statement, because I didn't want to sing for a minute." Asked when that ended, she said: "Oof. It's still kind of happening." Had she been on the fence about doing "Miscast"? "Yep," she answered, instantly. "The first people we go to when something goes wrong in our world are our artists," Warren said. "We go to them and say, 'Make us feel better.' And I wasn't feeling good. So many of us weren't feeling quite ourselves." Still, she is encouraged by the shift in consciousness that she sees taking place, and the conversations happening around race and identity. While she plans to hold the theater world accountable for its systemic issues, she said she is hopeful that when it comes back, casting agencies, too, will be "looking at things in a different way, widening their lenses." Headley, in Chicago, was still in what she called "complete lockdown" when she recorded her "Miscast" number, and she had plenty of emotional fodder the coronavirus, "what was going on in the streets," the place the song holds in her history. She sang it barefoot, "toes gripping the earth." She had never touched the song before except in her dressing room, singing along as a co star performed it onstage. When Telsey suggested it, she felt her stomach churn, thinking it could be a brilliant idea, or a really, really bad one. In her hands, it becomes a depth plumbing journey, rising out of desolation with the assurance of brighter days a message that she said she needs pumped into her "like air" when she wakes up in the morning in 2020. She imagines an essential worker getting home, stripping off their mask, putting their feet up, finding pleasure and maybe a moment of peace in a video she shot herself. "I'm just going to bring my house to your house," Headley said. "You can sit with no shoes, and I'll sit with no shoes, and we'll have a little 'Miscast' party."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Mary Abbott, who was at the heart of the Abstract Expressionist movement in New York in the 1940s and '50s but, like other women painting in that genre, received far less recognition than her male counterparts, died on Aug. 23 in Southampton, N.Y. She was 98 . Thomas McCormick of the McCormick Gallery in Chicago, which represented her, announced the death. Ms. Abbott painted bold, colorful works, often inspired by nature or music, and traveled in the same circle s as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and other artists who were redefining painting in the years after World War II. De Kooning in particular, 17 years her senior, became a friend, lover and protector, including from some of the other male artists. "I didn't like Pollock much," Ms. Abbott related in an interview for the biography "de Kooning: An American Master," by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan (2004). "When he was sober he didn't talk, and when he was drunk Bill had to keep pulling him off of me." That vivid description conveys what women trying to make a name for themselves in that world were facing. "Mary Abbott was an early participant in the development of Abstract Expressionism," said Gwen Chanzit , curator of the 2016 Denver Art Museum exhibition "Women of Abstract Expressionism," which included works by Ms. Abbott, "but like other women painters, she was mostly left out of historical accounts of this male dominated movement. Only now are the women of Abstract Expressionism beginning to be recognized for their contributions." Unlike some of her contemporaries among them Lee Krasner (1908 84), Pollock's wife, and Jay DeFeo (1929 89) Ms. Abbott lived to see a resurgence of interest in the work of female Abstract Expressionists. "To see this and other early works by Ms. Abbott together is a treat," Benjamin Genocchio, reviewing a 2008 show at the Spanierman Gallery in East Hampton, N.Y., featuring several of her paintings, wrote in The New York Times, "for most come from private collections and have rarely been publicly shown. Few of her works are on permanent display in New York area museums. That is a shame, for she is one of the last great Abstract Expressionist painters of her generation." Mary Lee Abbott was born on July 27, 1921, in New York City , and for her first two decades seemed headed for an entirely different sort of life. Her father, Henry, was a Navy captain and recipient of the Navy Cross, and her mother, Elizabeth , a poet and syndicated columnist, was a member of the socially prominent Grinnell family. Ms. Abbott was first singled out in The Times and other newspapers not as an artist but as a debutante, her high society activities documented in painstaking detail. "Debutantes of this season, headed by Miss Mary Lee Abbott, granddaughter of Mrs. William Morton Grinnell, were among the groups rehearsing this morning at Conscience Point for the Southampton tercentenary pageant, 'Founded for Freedom,'" The Times reported on Aug. 9, 1940, "which will be given next Wednesday and Thursday at North Sea, within sight of the landing place of the community's first settlers." By then, though, Ms. Abbott had already begun taking classes under George Grosz at the Art Students League in Manhattan. After a foray into modeling she appeared in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar and other magazines she moved in 1946 into a cold water flat at 88 East 10th Street, near Washington Square Park, and plunged into the artist life. De Kooning, according to "An American Master," used to bring her kerosene to make sure she had heat. They were romantically involved for some years. "There were no dinners," she was quoted as saying in that book. "There wasn't money for that. Then later we went to the Cedar Bar." That tavern was a famed gathering place for avant garde artists and writers. Pollock, Franz Kline, Robert Motherwell and other noted Abstract Expressionists congregated there. Ms. Abbott was by then separated from Lewis Teague, an artist she had married in 1943, and in 1949 she went to the Virgin Islands to obtain a divorce from him. There she met Tom Clyde, a retired investor, and they married the next year. They had a residence on Long Island, but because he had back problems, they spent winters in Haiti and St. Croix, and Ms. Abbott's paintings began to be influenced by the people and lush landscapes she found there. Later, when she had once again settled in Southampton, her garden inspired her work. "Mythology and religion were touchstones, but nature was Abbott's lifelong interest," Ms. Chanzit said by email. "Her free brushwork was particularly inspired by place and by the variations of color and light in the natural world. Her paintings were never documents of specific sites, but her personal responses to them." She and Mr. Clyde divorced in 1966, and she spent the 1970s teaching at the University of Minnesota. Then she returned to the East Coast, for some years dividing her time between a loft on West Broadway in Manhattan and a small house in Southampton. A decade ago she finally gave up the loft. In 2017 the online gallery IdeelArt wrote about Ms. Abbott, pondering why she was not better known. "How is it that an artist whose work is considered to have had a profound impact on one of the most important art movements of the past century is also somehow practically unknown to contemporary audiences?" the article asked. "Based on interviews Abbott has given, things like having her accomplishments touted, getting credit for her influence and being recognized for her contributions to art history are of little importance to her. Still active in her studio today in her mid 90s, Abbott seems content to focus on what she believes is most important: making art; and to let irrelevancies like reputation handle themselves."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
A historian, two poets, a presidential biographer and two celebrated novelists: They were among the National Book Award winners whose lives were chronicled by The New York Times in obituaries over the past two years. (This year's winners were announced Wednesday night in a ceremony in Manhattan.) Links to the obituaries are provided below.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
For as long as there have been babies, there have been debates over how to feed them. Wet nursing, which began as early as 2000 B.C., was once a widely accepted option for mothers who could not or did not want to breast feed, but it faced criticism during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The profession eventually declined with the introduction of the infant feeding bottle in the 19th century. Today, and throughout the 20th century, the benefits of infant formula vs. breast feeding have been examined from every angle. What was in vogue one decade became critiqued the next as cultural norms shifted, then shifted again. Earlier this week, it was revealed that the Trump administration opposed an international resolution to encourage breast feeding, stunning maternal health advocates and drawing swift criticism. But this isn't the first time the United States has rejected such a measure. Below, we chart America's complicated history of infant feeding, starting with the spread of formula. It may be hard to imagine now, but infant formula wasn't always a staple lining store shelves. It took many decades of advertising, legislation and scientific advances for it to become the 70 billion industry that it is today. Formula manufacturers began to advertise directly to physicians in the early 20th century, according to an overview of infant feeding published in The Journal of Perinatal Education. In 1929, the American Medical Association formed the Committee on Foods to approve formula safety, "forcing many infant food companies to seek AMA approval or the organization's 'Seal of Acceptance.'" By 1932, manufacturers were prohibited from advertising to anyone other than medical professionals, creating a "positive relationship between physicians and the formula companies," the overview states. Several years later, in 1937, The New York Times interviewed a pediatrician in Brooklyn who said that out of 400 newborns he encountered in the past year, only two were exclusively breast fed. "About half these mothers attempted breast feeding on my urgent advice at first, but most of them quit," he said. "They had heard that babies did as well on cow's milk nowadays and did not want to overeat, gain weight or lose their girlish figures." By the 1940s and '50s, formula was regarded by the public and much of the medical profession as safe and convenient, but even back then there were glimmers of dissent. In 1947, the United States Children's Bureau issued a manual advising women to breast feed, in an attempt "to get baby off a bottle and back to his mother." Rooming in, the practice of having a mother share a hospital room with her baby rather than housing the baby in a nursery, soon became a popular option. At one hospital in Connecticut, 75 percent of expectant mothers requested a rooming in plan, according to a New York Times article from 1950. And pediatricians urged mothers to breast feed. The American Academy of Pediatrics published a study suggesting that psychological factors can play a role in milk production, and that mothers with positive attitudes about breast feeding are more likely to be successful. But some women received the opposite advice from their own doctors. "In 1957, pregnant with my first child, I told my doctor that I planned to breast feed," Barbara Seaman, a writer and patients' rights advocate, recalled in an essay. Breast feeding rates rise in U.S., but not in developing countries In the 1970s, breast feeding became more widely accepted in the United States, not only in the privacy of one's home but in public, too. In 1977, a survey by a formula manufacturer indicated that nearly two out of five American mothers breast fed their babies, "double the percentage of 15 years ago." In other countries, it was a different story. The World Health Organization sounded the alarm about a worrisome trend: a decline in breast feeding in the developing world. The Western "fashion" of not breast feeding had "caught on with the better off classes in urban areas of developing countries and, even worse, continues to spread among the least well to do," a 1973 report said. "Not only is breast milk unique and impossible to imitate despite manufacturers' claims but the cost of cows' milk preparations remains beyond the means of the average family of the developing world." Critics said baby formula manufacturers were contributing to malnutrition and higher infant mortality rates, in part because the costly formula was being watered down to make it last longer, but also because the milk solids were being mixed with unclean water. In 1977, labor, religious and health organizations boycotted Nestle, one of the biggest producers of infant formula, in response to rising infant mortality rates in developing countries. Then, in 1979, at a conference sponsored by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children's Fund, the baby food industry agreed to ban the promotion of infant formulas that discouraged breast feeding. A couple of years later, in 1981, the W.H.O. voted 118 to 1 to adopt a nonbinding code restricting the promotion of infant formula products. The United States, under President Ronald Reagan, was the lone dissenting vote. The decision drew a chorus of critics, much like the Trump administration's recent stance on the marketing of powdered formula to women in developing countries. Elliott Abrams, then the assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, said in 1981 that it was a free speech issue. But now a new movement called Fed is Best has arisen because of the pressure placed on women to exclusively breast feed, sometimes to the detriment of their infants. The movement seeks to educate families about all of the safe feeding options available to them, and the complications that can arise when exclusively breast fed newborns don't receive enough breast milk. What is often missing from the debate over breast vs. bottle is the fact that so many women do both. Breast feeding is still considered the gold standard, but formula supplementation is commonplace, especially as women return to work after maternity leave. For many mothers, this is the best of both worlds. Even so, in developing countries, formula still presents a problem, just as it did decades ago. "Malnutrition and poverty are the precise settings where you absolutely do need to breast feed," Dr. Michele Barry, senior associate dean for global health and director of the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford School of Medicine, told The New York Times. "Because that's the setting where access to safe and clean water for reconstituting powdered formula is often impossible to find."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Twitter plans to start removing questionable accounts from users' follower numbers on Thursday, reducing the total follower count on the platform by about 6 percent. Twitter will begin removing tens of millions of suspicious accounts from users' followers on Thursday, signaling a major new effort to restore trust on the popular but embattled platform. The reform takes aim at a pervasive form of social media fraud. Many users have inflated their followers on Twitter or other services with automated or fake accounts, buying the appearance of social influence to bolster their political activism, business endeavors or entertainment careers. Twitter's decision will have an immediate impact: Beginning on Thursday, many users, including those who have bought fake followers and any others who are followed by suspicious accounts, will see their follower numbers fall. While Twitter declined to provide an exact number of affected users, the company said it would strip tens of millions of questionable accounts from users' followers. The move would reduce the total combined follower count on Twitter by about 6 percent a substantial drop. An investigation by The New York Times in January demonstrated that just one small Florida company sold fake followers and other social media engagement to hundreds of thousands of users around the world, including politicians, models, actors and authors. The revelations prompted investigations in at least two states and calls in Congress for intervention by the Federal Trade Commission. In interviews this week, Twitter executives said that The Times's reporting pushed them to look more closely at steps the company could take to clamp down on the market for fakes, which is fueled in part by the growing political and commercial value of a widely followed Twitter account. Officials at Twitter acknowledged that easy access to fake followers, and the company's slowness in responding to the problem, had devalued the influence accumulated by legitimate users, sowing suspicion around those who quickly attained a broad following. "We don't want to incentivize the purchase of followers and fake accounts to artificially inflate follower counts, because it's not an accurate measure of someone's influence on the platform or influence in the world," said Del Harvey, Twitter's vice president for trust and safety. "We think it's a really important and meaningful metric, and we want people to have confidence that these are engaged users that are following other accounts." The market for fakes was also hurting Twitter with advertisers, which increasingly rely on social media "influencers" mini celebrities who promote brands and products to their followers to reach customers. In recent months, advertising and marketing firms have put pressure on Twitter, YouTube and other platforms to help ensure that influencers have the reach they claim. Last month, the consumer goods giant Unilever, which spends billions of dollars a year on advertising, announced that it would no longer pay influencers who purchased followers and would prioritize spending advertising dollars on platforms that took steps to stamp out fraud. In an interview on Tuesday, Unilever's chief marketing officer, Keith Weed, praised Twitter for its decision. "People will believe more and read more on Twitter if they know there is less bot activity and more human activity," Mr. Weed said. "I would encourage and ask others to follow." For Twitter, the reform comes at a critical moment. Though it is a smaller company with far fewer users than Facebook or Google, Twitter has been sharply criticized for allowing abuse and hate speech to flourish on its platform. And along with other social networks, Twitter was a critical tool for Russian influence during the 2016 election, when tens of thousands of accounts were used to spread propaganda and disinformation. Those troubles dampened Twitter's prospects for acquisition by a bigger firm, and the company, which went public in 2013, did not turn a profit until the final quarter of last year. In recent months, Twitter has taken a number of steps to improve what Ms. Harvey and other company officials call "healthy conversation" on the platform, including rooting out fake and automated accounts. Last month, Twitter announced that as of May, its systems were "locking" almost 10 million suspicious accounts per week, far more than last year, and removing more for violating anti spam policies. Twitter locks an account blocking it from posting or interacting with other users when the company suspects that it is automated spam, or that it has been compromised, usually by having its password hacked or leaked. Most spam accounts are quickly removed. But until now, even after Twitter privately identified an account as suspicious and locked it, that account would still be included among the legitimate followers of a user. Most of the time, according to Twitter, the locked accounts are not included in the monthly active user count it reports to investors each quarter, a critical Wall Street metric for social media companies. But the locked accounts were nevertheless allowed to inflate the follower counts of a large swath of users. That choice helped propel a large market in fake followers. Dozens of websites openly sell followers and engagement on Twitter, as well as on YouTube, Instagram and other platforms. The Times revealed that one company, Devumi, sold over 200 million Twitter followers, drawing on an estimated stock of at least 3.5 million automated accounts, each sold many times over. Tens of thousands of automated accounts were created by stealing profile information from real users, including minors. One such victim, a teenager named Jessica Rychly, had her account information including her profile photo, biographical information and location copied and pasted onto a fake account that retweeted cryptocurrency advertisements and graphic pornography. Twitter officials believe that the new policy will disrupt the marketplace for fake followers and curb abusive practices used to create fake accounts: Since suspicious accounts will now be stripped from users' followers, the company hopes there will be less incentive to purchase fakes in the first place. Twitter has also begun to permanently remove more suspicious accounts. After The Times's investigation was published in January, Twitter removed over a million accounts from the followers of Devumi customers accounts that the company said violated its spam policies.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
About 650 feet from the buildings of a remote eco lodge in southern Costa Rica, an automatic camera last year shot a picture of a passing jaguar, a spectacular big cat that is one of the country's most endangered animals, and the focus of strenuous conservation efforts. The photograph is prized by conservationists who are collecting pictures of jaguars and four other big cats in an effort to monitor their populations and assess the health of the natural systems that support them in and around the biodiversity rich Osa Peninsula. Around 80 camera "traps" are now in operation on 13 Costa Rica properties belonging to eco lodges, ranches, conservation organizations and private individuals who are cooperating to create a more accurate picture of big cat populations in an area that draws eco tourists from around the world. In its first two years of operation, the camera trap network has helped conservationists understand that four of the big cats (puma, margay, jaguarundi and ocelot) are doing well in the dense tropical forests of Costa Rica's Pacific coastal region but that the jaguar remains critically endangered within the region, and in the country as a whole, according to Osa Conservation, a nonprofit organization that runs the camera trap program. The last formal estimate of the jaguar population was in 2005, when about 50 of the animals were believed be living on the peninsula, according to Inogo, a joint United States Costa Rica conservation program facilitated by Stanford University. Although there are no precise numbers for the current population, there is little doubt that there are fewer jaguars than there were a quarter century ago when biologists started monitoring them, said Juan Carlos Cruz Diaz, wild cat program coordinator for Osa Conservation. Even with the increased surveillance provided by the camera traps, there have been few sightings. "That tells you a lot about the population status of them," he said. "It has not been possible to do an estimation because we haven't had the minimum number of pictures needed to run the model." Guillermo Mulder, a guide at the Lapa Rios Eco Lodge at the southern end of the 700 square mile Osa Peninsula, said, "It's safe to say there are between 10 and 20 jaguars left on the peninsula." Mr. Mulder, whose cameras have shot only one picture of a jaguar at Lapa Rios since the program started, attributed the animal's decline mostly to hunting by local farmers whose livestock are sometimes killed by the cats, and who see the jaguar as a traditional enemy. "They just believe the jaguar is bad, they kill your animals, they could kill you," he said. "Their view is that the more you shoot, the better." Stress on big cats, especially the jaguar, is increased by human hunting of their natural prey such as the peccary (a wild pig) and the agouti (a rodent) for food, making it more likely that the cats will attack livestock, Mr. Mulder said. The rarity of the jaguar explains the excitement at Saladero Ecolodge, an isolated resort that can be reached only by boat from the eastern edge of the Osa Peninsula, when one of its own cameras photographed a passing jaguar on the evening of April 28, 2015. The presence of the top predator near the lodge's grounds indicates the overall health of the forest, and signals its proximity to a pristine natural environment, like that of many other lodges in the region. "The jaguar is critically endangered, so getting a picture in a year is something to celebrate," said Harvey Woodard, an American who owns Saladero with his English wife, Susan Rogers. "It's a sign of a very healthy rain forest." In recent weeks, the lodge has had a daytime visit from a puma, a more common predator, which wandered among the cabins and gardens that occupy part of the 480 acre property, but which has been seen more often on camera than in the flesh. The puma, a large male, may have been attracted by an increasing number of peccaries that come onto the lodge's grounds, or by a local population of great curassows, large ground feeding birds that are drawn by falling fruit from mango trees, and could become prey for the cats, Ms. Rogers said. "We've been seeing them more and more," she said, referring to the pumas. "That obviously indicates that there's plenty of food here." Guests at participating eco lodges are welcome to make financial donations to buy more cameras or maintain existing equipment, but they should not assume that they will see one of the big cats at lodges that participate in the camera trap program, Mr. Woodard said, because the animals remain mostly secretive and nocturnal. "The chances of seeing a cat are pretty slim," he said. "People will walk the trails and a lot of times they don't see that much, and then they see the presentation and they see how close these cats are and that they are out at 10 o'clock at night or 2 o'clock in the morning." At Saladero, a privately owned enclave within the seldom visited Piedras Blancas National Park, guests are more likely to learn about the big cats from a presentation by Alejandra Rojas Barrantes, the lodge's resident biologist, whose priority is to monitor and maintain the cameras, and to send their data to Mr. Cruz Diaz via the internet or by loading it on to a flash drive. Other participating eco lodges include Danta Corcovado Lodge near the east coast of the Osa Peninsula. The cameras are paid for by participating property owners. Visitors to the Osa's eco lodges have a better chance of seeing tropical birds like the fiery billed aracari, a type of toucan, or the scarlet macaw, a spectacular red, yellow and blue parrot, than they do the big cats. In the Golfo Dulce, which borders the east side of the peninsula, visitors may see leaping schools of dolphins or soaring frigate birds. As part of its effort to save the jaguar, Osa Conservation is trying to create a contiguous "corridor" of territory on the northern shore of Golfo Dulce between the Corcovado and Piedras Blancas National Parks, to increase the amount of undisturbed forest that is available for the animals to roam.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Major League Soccer is the first of North America's major men's professional sports leagues to return, with a makeshift mini tournament beginning on Wednesday night. Here are the hows, whys and wheres for the event, which is taking place in Florida, one of the country's coronavirus hot spots. The caveat is that the league's plans could easily change: In the last few days, a game has been postponed and a team has dropped out of the field. The opener is a match between Orlando City S.C. and Inter Miami C.F. on Wednesday evening at 8 p.m. Eastern. Games will continue daily until the end of the group stage on July 23, and, to combat the summer heat, some will be played at the eye opening hour of 9 a.m. Where did things stand when we left off? Each team in M.L.S. managed to play two games before the pandemic halted the season. Atlanta, Kansas City, Minnesota and Colorado were 2 0 in the early action. Cincinnati, New York City F.C. and the two expansion teams, Nashville and David Beckham's Inter Miami, had not earned a point. What's the format of the new tournament? The N.H.L. will head straight to the playoffs, the N.B.A. will briefly resume its regular season, and the N.W.S.L. is holding a short cup. M.L.S. plans to use a mix of these elements. Initially, teams will play in a newly created event, the suitably named "M.L.S. Is Back Tournament." Teams are divided into groups and will play three games each. The top two or three teams from each group, plus some of the best runners up, will advance to the round of 16. The group stage lasts until July 23, followed by a single elimination playoff, with the final on Aug. 11. M.L.S. has not announced a firm schedule, but the plan is to resume the regular season, preferably with teams back playing in their home stadiums. While there will be no fans at the Florida tournament games, the league hopes to begin reintroducing fans at some point this season. What's being done for safety? Players were tested for the virus before arriving, and testing, both exhaustive and expensive, will continue during the tournament. Players and staff on the bench for games must wear masks. Exchanging jerseys and kissing the ball will be forbidden. And "players, coaches and officials are asked to exercise care when spitting or clearing their nose," the league's protocols say. Will teams be motivated for the new event? There are several incentives for teams to do well in the new tournament. The three group stage games will count toward the regular season once it resumes. There will be prize money. And the winner of the tournament will earn a berth in next year's Concacaf Champions League. About a dozen M.L.S. players have tested positive for the Covid 19 virus so far. Unfortunately, 10 of them are on the same team, F.C. Dallas. Because of this, the league decided to remove Dallas from the tournament, although the team will presumably return when the regular season resumes. On Tuesday afternoon, the second scheduled game of opening day, Nashville Chicago, was postponed because five Nashville players had tested positive after arriving in Florida. Are all the players coming? The vast majority are, but a few have opted out. Like the N.W.S.L., which resumed without Megan Rapinoe, M.L.S. will be down one of its marquee players: Carlos Vela of L.A.F.C., the reigning most valuable player. "It is in the best interest of the health of my family to stay home and be with my wife during what is a risky pregnancy," he said in a statement. At least a few other players and coaches have gone to Disney World but expressed trepidation. Matt Lampson, a goalkeeper for the Columbus Crew who is a cancer survivor, tweeted last week: "For everyone in the 'These are pro athletes. There is no risk. Nothing happens to them if they get the virus' camp I am high risk. And I know for a fact there are multiple others at MLSisBack that are as well including other players on their way here. This is serious." Given the withdrawals, how concerned is the league? Commissioner Don Garber remained upbeat even after the news of F.C. Dallas's withdrawal. "We have 550 players that have already been tested, and 13 of them have tested positive," he told ESPN, before news of the further positive tests on Nashville's squad. "Right now it's an extremely low percentage. The players that are there are safe, they're comfortable, they're training, they're eating, they're recreating." He did also say, "We're going to have to keep a close eye on it." What else will be different? M.L.S. will not play the national anthem before games. The stated reason is that there would be no point without fans, but the anthem has also become a flash point for controversy amid the Black Lives Matter protests. Many athletes have said they plan to kneel rather than stand for the anthem, and others, including President Trump, have criticized those plans. Garber reiterated last month that "If a player is looking to express their right to kneel during the national anthem, they should have the right to do so." Are there financial concerns? At least four M.L.S. teams applied to receive money from the Paycheck Protection Program, a federal loan program designed to help small businesses. The four teams, D.C. United, Inter Miami, Orlando and Seattle, asked for loans of between 1 million and 5 million. What about the lower leagues? The U.S.L. Championship, which includes a number of M.L.S. farm teams, is to begin play on Saturday, with games at home stadiums. The next lower division, League One, is to being a week later. League Two has been canceled this year.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
For most travelers to Greenland, the capital city of Nuuk, like the rest of the country, brings to mind the northern lights, dog sledding, whale watching, and treks to dramatic glaciers and fjords. The city has been largely viewed as just a stopover on the way to the Greenland ice sheet. But lately, this small city of about 16,000 people has blossomed with a newfound energy and multiple creative ventures, such as the biennial Nuuk Nordic Culture Festival, which began in 2015 and returns in October 2019. Nuuk's walkable downtown and the adjacent Colonial Harbour neighborhood are now a destination for upscale Greenlandic cuisine, stylish fashion and contemporary art and design. Considered a national symbol of Greenlandic culture and the first of its kind in the country, Katuaq attracts locals and visitors for its wide ranging offerings: concerts, theater performances, art exhibitions and dining on reindeer carbonade and other seasonal local delicacies at its sunny Cafe Tuaq. Having celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2017, this stellar, modernist building with a new larch paneled facade evokes Greenland's icebergs, northern lights and local fjords, thanks to its sinuous features and triangular shape.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
The "Aeneid," Virgil's epic about the founding of Rome by the Trojan refugee Aeneas, is so influential that T.S. Eliot once described it as "the classic of all Europe." Shadi Bartsch, a classics scholar at the University of Chicago, thinks that for the past 2,000 years, we've been reading it wrong. Before Virgil wrote the "Aeneid," Bartsch said, Aeneas was considered a traitor who helped the Greeks take Troy. In recasting him as a hero, Virgil changed our understanding of Rome's history. What readers have historically missed, according to Bartsch, the author of a new translation of the "Aeneid" (Random House) coming out in October, is that Virgil's depiction was self consciously political, designed to frame Rome's expanding empire as just, virtuous and divinely mandated. "He's writing an epic that points to itself and says, 'Hey look, I'm in the process of creating a national myth,'" she said. Looked at closely, the "Aeneid" is really a story "about how you rewrite a character into history, turning him from someone who was criticized into someone who is praised." Bartsch's translation is one of several new books, including Maria Dahvana Headley's translation of "Beowulf" and Catherine Nicholson's "Reading and Not Reading 'The Faerie Queene,'" to re evaluate the lessons of epic poetry, a genre consisting of book length narrative poems that tend, in the words of the poet and critic Edward Hirsch, to be "exalted in style, heroic in theme." In addition to providing the underpinnings for world literature, epic poetry has for much of history been used to define social values and shape nations' political identities. The new books explore subjects ranging from Apollonius Rhodius's "Argonautica," a Greek epic from 300 B.C. that predates the "Aeneid" by three centuries, to Edmund Spenser's "The Faerie Queene," published in England at the end of the 16th century. The books, arriving in the politically turbulent landscape of 2020, suggest that it's time to take a hard second look at these tales, which have for so long shaped the West's understanding of the world. Those second looks have turned up several shared themes. One is a new skepticism regarding the relationship that has developed between the epic and prevailing ideas about male heroism. "A lot of toxic masculinity has been shaped by imperfect understandings of epic poetry," said Headley, whose "Beowulf" translation is due in August from Farrar, Straus Giroux. 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. That result, she and Bartsch agree, is a consequence of particular choices made in reading, not the substance of the epics themselves. Bartsch pointed to the story of Aeneas's love affair with the Carthaginian queen Dido, whose eventual suicide male scholars have historically framed as the act of a woman who has "deluded herself out of passion." But her suicide isn't just a matter of a broken heart, Bartsch said, it's a response to a position of unexpected political weakness. "To whom do you/abandon me to what sort of death?" Dido accuses Aeneas. "Should I await Pygmalion, my brother, who'll raze my city? Iarbas, who'll enslave me?" "I think we have the idea, as readers, 'I'm looking for the superheroes, and the superheroes are going to be presented as simplistically good guys,'" said Emily Wilson, whose 2017 translation of the "Odyssey," the first by a woman in English, helped set off the current trend of re evaluation, which has been led largely by women. In addition to Wilson, Headley and Bartsch's translations, novels like Pat Barker's "The Silence of the Girls," Madeline Miller's "Circe" and Headley's own "The Mere Wife," all published in 2018, have attempted to re envision the stories of epics the "Iliad," the "Odyssey" and "Beowulf," respectively through the eyes of secondary female characters. But the new focus on women's voices isn't just about a wish for greater equity in the epic. It's reflective of a sense of urgency about restoring nuance to the public's understanding of the genre. As a series of political crises have, in the West, posed fresh challenges to the stories that have shaped our norms and principles, those who study epics see critical readings as an increasingly vital endeavor. "Epic poetry has shaped the way that we perceive our universe. We've used these epics to justify ourselves," Headley said. "Now is the moment to open the doors." Why now? Nicholson's "Reading and Not Reading 'The Faerie Queene'" (Princeton University Press), published in May, notes that the word "crisis" was initially a medical term referring to "the decisive juncture in the course of a disease, after which a patient either dies or begins to recover." Spenser wrote "The Faerie Queene" in the 16th century "out of a protracted sense of crisis," Nicholson said. As she began work on her book in the 21st century, she found herself "thinking about what it would mean to read in crisis." Now, reflecting on the fraught period between her book's conception and publication, she said, "one of the things I've realized about the experience of crisis is it makes us prone to allegorize everything. Part of the experience of reading at a moment when you feel the world is changing into something you no longer recognize is the impulse to look to literature and say, 'Aah, it's like this.'" Spenser wrote "The Faerie Queene" while working as a high level British colonial administrator in Ireland, implementing brutal tactics of oppression against the native population. Virgil wrote the "Aeneid" in the first years of the Roman Empire, as Augustus attempted to reshape his image from that of a ruthless, warmongering autocrat to that of a beneficent leader. The "Odyssey" was composed around the end of the 8th century B.C., close to a century before Greek city states began to develop the first form of democracy. By "grappling with questions about the relationship of individual to community," Wilson said, Homer anticipated that shift. Perhaps because epic poems have so often originated in times of political upheaval, the lessons readers have taken from them have changed, sometimes radically, over the decades and centuries. The history of the "Aeneid," Bartsch said, shows how great the range of interpretations can be: Early Christian medievalists "chose to read the poem allegorically as a bildungsroman of the good Christian everyman"; Mussolini upheld it "as supportive of the resurgence of the Roman Empire"; and certain 19th century Americans saw it as a "poem about a group of refugees who head westward to found a new nation, defeat the natives in war, take over that land and call it God's will." Those interpretations aren't necessarily mistaken, Bartsch said; they're an understandable result of "people thinking their reading supports their set of enduring values." But what most unites this new set of books is that they seek, by embracing the neglected complexity of their source texts, to challenge existing values, not affirm them. As Tom Phillips, the author of "Untimely Epic: Apollonius Rhodius' 'Argonautica'" (Oxford University Press), put it: "You can't simply act as Homeric heroes did." Headley gave an example. Readers of "Beowulf," she said, often "have this understanding that we are essentially on the side of the human characters." But the monsters the humans battle are "described as canny, and brave, and intelligent," and given persuasive emotional back stories. "Beowulf," seen from their perspective, is a story about the human instinct to "create a situation in which your neighbor is the monster." The accepted value may be that humans are the heroes; the monsters, for their own good reasons, have a different idea.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books

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