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Q. When I installed Windows 10 to replace the older system, I lost the desktop Recycle Bin. I have gone through steps to show the bin icon, but I was not successful. Do you have any additional advice? A. The hidden Recycle Bin issue also plagues users of Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 as well as those who have upgraded to Windows 10. Microsoft's support site has a guide to show or hide the Recycle Bin, but if you have already tried the Windows 10 advice (open the Settings app, go to Personalization, then Themes to Desktop Icon Settings and click the box next to Recycle Bin) there is another setting to check.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Tim Herrera, the editor of Smarter Living, at Kaffe 1668 South in Manhattan. "If nutrition and fitness are your goal," he said, "a food tracking app like Lose It! or MyFitnessPal can be really helpful." How do New York Times journalists use technology in their jobs and in their personal lives? Tim Herrera, editor of Smarter Living, an advice section of The Times, discussed the tech he's using. You give advice for people to live healthier, more fulfilling lives. What are the most important tech tools for doing your job? I'm a really big fan of tracking oneself to get a better view of the behaviors and habits we don't really think about, so a lot of the tech tools I use regularly at work or otherwise are software. For example, I religiously use a mix of Trello and Google Keep to organize my work life around lists that make sense for me and how I structure my days. (Here are some tips on prioritizing your to do lists.) I use LastPass to manage my passwords; Sleep Cycle to track my sleeping; Mint (and the apps for the banks I use) to track my finances; Lose It! to track my diet and exercise; Strava for when I run; Snapseed and Skitch to edit and annotate photos on the go; and Citi Bike to get around New York. The Voice Memos app on the iPhone is how I record interviews, and lately I've been using a Google Voice Typing trick to transcribe them. On the gear side, I keep things pretty light. I use a MacBook Air and an iPhone 8 Plus for pretty much everything. I keep a wireless charger at my desk. (It's amazing. I highly recommend getting one.) An external battery is mandatory, of course, as is a great lap desk for when you're working from home. What's so great about these tools, and what could be better? It's so easy to lie to ourselves or bury our heads in the sand about things we'd like to be better at; like how it's easy to ignore your bank account unless it's payday. But being forced to write down or track everything about something and put it in an app for example, every dollar you spend gives insight into those behaviors and habits you can't really get otherwise. This was so crucial for me when I started dieting and exercising in 2016 and ended up losing about 35 pounds. I relentlessly tracked and still mostly do everything I ate and every time I exercised. The act of writing these things down with 100 percent accuracy is less important than having a way to objectively look at the data and what it says, rather than having to rely on your memory or feelings. For me, it was eye opening to have a spot where I could see the nutritional information for the things I was putting into my body. It showed me that even though I thought I was doing an O.K. job at watching what I ate, I now had the written proof that said ... nope, still eating 30 Oreos a week. That same idea translates to finances, sleep schedules, productivity and time management at work, and so on. So what tech products do you think people need to live healthier, more fulfilling lives? Depends! What are you trying to be better at? I think most people could probably benefit from a budgeting system. (Here are a few ideas.) If nutrition and fitness are your goal, a food tracking app like Lose It! or MyFitnessPal can be really helpful (as long as you don't obsess over calories, which is a poor way to measure overall nutrition and health). The idea is that the hyper rapid motions of the buffer loosen tight muscles, reducing soreness and speeding up recovery. If that sounds vaguely familiar, you might have come across the 600 TheraGun, a power drill like device a bunch of professional athletes and fitness focused celebrities are using. Unlike the Black and Decker buffer, the TheraGun is designed for use on human muscles and not to wax the hood of your car. But save your money: The buffer is 30 on Amazon. Should people be using less tech to live smarter lives? I love this question because the default solution to "Is unplugging from technology the key to happiness?" has become such a vehement, unwavering yes. And I don't agree with that! I get a lot of happiness from scrolling through Instagram for 20 minutes when I first wake up, and I don't think it's inherently bad to rely on things like automation tools or virtual assistants. (Siri essentially replaced my short term memory years ago.) So when we talk about unplugging, I think what we're really talking about is structuring our lives in ways that allow technology to serve us, rather than the other way around. For example, an idea I hear from readers and other writers constantly is how to unplug when you're on vacation live in the moment rather than living on your smartphone. But there's research that says taking photos makes "people more engaged with experiences, leading them to enjoy positive events more than people who didn't take pictures." So here, the common wisdom enjoy your vacation more by completely unplugging! is, in a way, contradicted by the research. Should you plan for a less fun vacation because it would make for better Instagram stories? You do you! But the assumption that we can be truly happy only if we unplug is one that adds stress to our lives because it's yet another thing we have to worry about: "Did I unplug enough today?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
NORRISTOWN, Pa. Bill Cosby sat in a courtroom here on Monday. So too, in a way, did hundreds of women who have accused other powerful men of sexual assault in recent months as the MeToo movement swept across America. As jury selection got underway in Mr. Cosby's criminal trial, no one could ignore that the atmosphere surrounding the case was much different than it had been last summer, during Mr. Cosby's first trial, before one famous figure after another fell in the face of accusations of sexual misconduct or harassment. Judge Steven T. O'Neill made that clear as he questioned the 120 potential jurors gathered at the Montgomery County Courthouse on a variety of potential conflicts. "Do you have knowledge, have you read or seen anything about the MeToo movement or the allegations of sexual misconduct in the entertainment industry?" he asked. All of the potential jurors but one 119 people raised the cards they use to answer questions. Yes, they had heard of the MeToo movement. "This is very important," Judge O'Neill said. "This will help us." Mr. Cosby's second trial, scheduled to start next week, will be the first high profile sexual assault trial of the MeToo era. Experts are intrigued by the question of what effect, if any, it will have on jurors' attitudes toward sexual assault whether, for example, jurors will be more willing to believe women who come forward to bring complaints than they were in the past. "Since Cosby's first go round, all courtroom participants jurors, attorneys, judge have been immersed in an intensive course on sexual violation," Deborah Tuerkheimer, a law professor at Northwestern University and a former prosecutor who specialized in domestic violence cases, "including the kind of sexual assault inflicted by mentors." "The ways in which we evaluate the credibility of survivors has also shifted in important ways," she said, "from a default to doubt, to a greater willingness to believe. And we have been newly schooled in the importance of consent. It will be fascinating to see how this plays out in the courtroom." Mr. Cosby's interest in the question is far from academic. His first trial on charges that he drugged and sexually assaulted Andrea Constand in 2004 at his home outside Philadelphia, ended with a hung jury. At least one juror reported some problems with Ms. Constand's credibility and had a question about why the many women who accused him did not come forward sooner. Now the entertainer's lawyers say they are worried that the barrage of publicity surrounding bad behaving men will lead jurors to lump Mr. Cosby in with the others. Prosecutors contend that Mr. Cosby, 80, is also a sexual predator, one who abused dozens of women, though Ms. Constand's case is the only one to result in criminal charges. The prosecution will offer accounts from five other women during the trial who are expected to testify that Mr. Cosby tried to intoxicate them in some way before sexually abusing them. The very fact that Judge O'Neill is allowing five additional accusers to testify not one, as in the first trial is evidence of how the MeToo moment has influenced the case, said Paula Hannaford Agor, director of the Center for Jury Studies at the National Center for State Courts. The judge has not explained his reasoning for allowing more accusers to testify this time. "When I saw that, I said really, the ground has really shifted," Ms. Hannaford Agor said. "The judge has had to pay attention." The defense has been arguing, instead, that the prejudicial effect on the jury to have five additional women testify is too much for Mr. Cosby to receive a fair trial, that it will distract from a focus on the facts of the Constand case. He has said the sexual encounter was consensual. In the morning session, Judge O'Neill did some broad surveying of the jury pool and found that more than half of the potential jurors 68 said they had already formed an opinion about the case. They were disqualified. Reporters were barred from the room and relegated to another courtroom where they watched on closed circuit television, unable to see the jurors or grasp how they were answering the judge's questions. Judge O'Neil indicated that Mr. Cosby's lawyers had objected to allowing the media a broader view of the jury pool. "They would object to having every member of the media sitting in the courtroom," he said. But he seemed to condone it because it would help keep the jurors' identities anonymous, he said, as they were in the first trial. Several news organizations complained about the exclusion, but the judge never revealed his legal basis for the decision. The questioning of individual jurors intensified in the afternoon, and three were asked again about whether they had heard about MeToo incidents in the entertainment industry and whether they could remain impartial. All said they could. But the defense and the prosecution settled only on one juror Monday, a white man in his 20s wearing a navy T shirt who said he had heard about MeToo but that he would not be affected by it. All of the 12 jurors and six alternates will remain anonymous throughout the trial. Judge O'Neill said that the trial was likely to last a month and that the jury would be sequestered during that period. The selection process will continue Tuesday. Last time, the jury was drawn from Pittsburgh and bused here after Mr. Cosby said he was worried that potential jurors in Montgomery County had been affected by pretrial publicity. This time, however, he has made no objections to jurors from the county, where Mr. Cosby, a Philadelphia native, has long owned a home and was among the best known graduates of Temple University, where Ms. Constand worked as support staff for the women's basketball team.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Mike Storen in an undated photo. "We don't have any ballplayers, we don't have films on the top college prospects, we don't even have an office," he said on joining the Pacers in 1967. Mike Storen, a peripatetic sports executive who, during the brief life of the upstart American Basketball Association in the 1960s and '70s, ran three teams and was the league's commissioner, died on May 7 in Atlanta. He was 84. The cause was complications of a rare form of cancer, said his daughter, Hannah Storm, an anchor for ESPN's SportsCenter. When Mr. Storen was hired by the Indiana Pacers as its general manager in 1967, the A.B.A. was about to start its inaugural season as a flashy alternative to the older National Basketball Association. It used a patriotic red, white and blue ball and adopted the three point field goal, from at least 25 feet from the basket. He had no experience in talent evaluation but had some basketball experience, having held jobs in the N.B.A. with the Baltimore Bullets (now the Washington Wizards) and the Cincinnati Royals (now the Sacramento Kings). "Our biggest problem now is one of time," Mr. Storen said at a news conference to announce his hiring by the Pacers. "We don't have any ballplayers, we don't have films on the top college prospects, we don't even have an office." Operating at first from the back of a jewelry store in Indianapolis, he began to build the team. He signed Roger Brown, a high school sensation from Brooklyn who had been blacklisted by the N.B.A. for his ties to a notorious gambler and was working in an automobile plant in Dayton, Ohio; traded for the center Mel Daniels, a great rebounder, in 1968; and hired Bob Leonard, known as Slick, to be the coach. Mr. Storen displayed cunning as well. In 1969, both the A.B.A. and the N.B.A. coveted Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul Jabbar), the sensational center from U.C.L.A. To lure Alcindor (if not to the Pacers, then to another A.B.A. team) Mr. Storen concocted a scheme he called Operation Kingfish. It included developing a psychological profile of Alcindor, hiring a private detective to follow him and trying to get Howard Hughes to put up 1 million to sign him in exchange for syndicated TV rights. But Mr. Hughes never met with them, and Alcindor signed with the N.B.A.'s Milwaukee Bucks. Still, the Pacers improved under Mr. Storen and won the 1970 A.B.A. championship, but he left a week later for another A.B.A. team, the Kentucky Colonels, as their president and general manager. "I am not the least concerned about the ability of the A.B.A. to survive, no matter what," he said confidently on joining the Colonels. The Colonels became a dominant team as well, in part because Mr. Storen outbid other teams for the draft rights to the center Artis Gilmore, who, along with the forward Dan Issel, formed the nucleus of the team that won the 1975 A.B.A. title. But by then Mr. Storen had also left that team after a dispute with the owner, John Y. Brown. Mark Storen Jr. was born on Sept. 14, 1935, in Michigan City, Ind. His father was a lawyer and a judge. His mother, Marion Lois (Riley) Storen, was a teacher and a prison clerk. To distinguish Mark Jr. from his father, his family called him Mike. Mr. Storen graduated from the University of Notre Dame and then served five years in the Marines. After his discharge, he read a newspaper article reporting that a young N.B.A. team, the Chicago Zephyrs, had sold only 600 season tickets for the 1963 season. He called the team and got an appointment with one of its owners. "I guaranteed him that if he'd hire me, I'd sell 600 new ones by myself," Mr. Storen told Sports Illustrated in 1974. He got the job as promotion director and moved with the team to Baltimore, where it was renamed the Bullets. He joined the Cincinnati Royals two years later as promotion and ticket sales director After running the Pacers and the Colonels, he was named the league's fifth commissioner in six years in 1973. Like his predecessors, he was unable to secure a national TV deal that would have shored up the league's finances. But he did revive an antitrust lawsuit against the N.B.A., which became part of a legal battle that ultimately led to the league's merger in 1976.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
This has been a forgettable season for the Giants. But a victory over Washington's Football Team last week at least gave the team its first win, and Thursday's game against the Eagles in Philadelphia produced the kind of electrifying moment that brings hope for reinvigorating a season. Almost, anyway. Trailing the Eagles, 10 7, in the third quarter, and starting a drive at his 12 yard line, Giants quarterback Daniel Jones faked a handoff and rolled right. The fake fooled the Eagles' defense, and as Jones turned upfield there was nothing but green grass in front of him. So he sprinted into daylight. 20, 30, 40, 50, 40 ... the yards rolled away with no defender in sight. Jones was on his way to giving the Giants the lead and providing the kind of signature play replayed endlessly on highlight shows and viral clips and in the minds of Giants fans eager for a good memory from this year. And Jones was flying. At his 43 he hit 21.23 miles an hour, according to NextGen stats, the fastest top speed by a quarterback over the last three seasons. By the time Jones got to the 35 it was clear that he was going to score.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
THE 23RD CRITICS' CHOICE AWARDS 8 p.m. on the CW. In his Golden Globes monologue, Seth Meyers joked that future awards show hosts were watching him "like the first dog they shot into outer space." Well, next up is Olivia Munn, who will host this show, in which the best of television and movies are determined by a panel of critics. "The Shape of Water" leads with 14 nominations, including best picture, while "Feud: Bette Joan" received six on the TV side. And Gal Gadot will be honored with a SeeHer Award recognizing women who push boundaries. TRUTH AND LIES: THE TONYA HARDING STORY 9 p.m. on ABC. Two years ago, "The People v. O. J. Simpson" forged a path for the Marcia Clark Redemption Story, as the actress Sarah Paulson brought the real life Ms. Clark around the awards circuit. The next divisive '90s figure to have her legacy rehabilitated is Tonya Harding, who was depicted by Margot Robbie in "I, Tonya." (Don't you dare compare her to Monica Lewinsky, though.) She was acknowledged by Allison Janney onstage at the Golden Globes, and now is the subject of this investigative special. With current interviews and archival footage, "Truth and Lies" wades into Ms. Harding's traumatic childhood and tries to uncover how much she knew about the attack on her rival Nancy Kerrigan.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
It is one that Shanna Castillo has been using with precision since she started a neighborhood Facebook group, Love Trumps Hate Sunset Park Brooklyn, the week after Donald J. Trump was elected president. Every month, members invite undocumented immigrants from the neighborhood into their homes for dinner. With food, wine and child care, living rooms are transformed into havens where immigrants can speak freely with lawyers and advocates about their rights and risks. Planning sessions for the group, with about 300 members, take place in one member's rowhouse and in the basement of a co op in the neighborhood. Participants bring casseroles, desserts and their children. In the months since the election, millions of Americans have taken to the streets to protest President Trump's agenda, most notably at the Women's March on Jan. 21 and at airports after the president signed an executive order restricting immigration. While the public demonstrations have caught the nation's attention, a quieter movement is also happening in living rooms and at dining room tables in the city and around the country. People have opened their homes to neighbors and strangers in ways they have not done before. Some who have never been politically active and who may not have entertained much at home have found that a living room can be a valuable asset when looking for a place to organize and expand their community. And at a time when many people, particularly immigrants, feel vulnerable, a private home can provide refuge. In northern New Jersey, two women organize Syria Supper Club, weekly dinners where Syrian refugees break bread with people in the area who sign up online. Across the country, a feminist group called Solidarity Sundays encourages people to invite neighbors into their homes to drink cocktails and contact elected officials. Since the election, 11 Solidarity Sunday chapters have opened in New York City. Other gatherings have happened more spontaneously, as when Patrisse Khan Cullors and other Black Lives Matter activists gathered one night in a Santa Monica, Calif., house for an emergency meeting to discuss the ramifications of the executive order on immigration. At a recent Love Trumps Hate Sunset Park dinner, about a dozen immigrants and their children gathered in a two bedroom duplex apartment, along with representatives from the Immigrant Justice Corps, City Councilman Carlos Menchaca and two neighbors who work at a local nonprofit, the Center for Family Life. Attendees wanted to know what would happen if they were deported. Would they have access to their money in banks? Should they set up a power of attorney for their children? They also had questions about how to deal with subway harassment and school bullying. "The mood was a bit tense at first," said Ms. Meyer, 32. "It's a little awkward to go to a stranger's house. But as the evening went on, people relaxed." On the way out, some attendees hugged. The dinners have also helped forge closer bonds among neighbors, like the one that has blossomed between Ms. Meyer and her next door neighbor, Reba Frankel, 37, after the two hosted a December dinner with their spouses in their Sunset Park co op. "We had traded bread recipes and they cat sat for us when we went out of town," Ms. Meyer said. "Now we are going to protests together and organizing together and email every day." Even the youngest participants have noticed a change. "Our children are bonding," said Ms. Castillo, who has two young daughters. "My daughter said to me, 'The only good thing about Trump winning is that you formed Love Trumps Hate and I get to make all these new friends.'" In late January, Ms. Khan Cullors, a founder of Black Lives Matter, and about a dozen other activists held an emergency meeting in a two bedroom house in Santa Monica, after protesting the immigration executive order at Los Angeles International Airport all day. In a gathering that lasted until midnight and grew to 40 people, a legal adviser broke down the implications of the order for the guests. "I need to be with people right now," Ms. Khan Cullors, 33, said in a telephone interview. "I need to know that we have each other's back. We're not just going to live online in the social media world." For a younger generation that has come of age in an era of telecommuting, a living room makes for a more natural venue than a sterile office conference room or a church basement. In the early days of Black Lives Matter, Ms. Khan Cullors hosted many gatherings at her home in St. Elmo Village, an artists' community in Los Angeles, where she lived until 2015. "Many of us in this generation are not interested in having our thoughts, our intellectual property or our organization inside of traditional building spaces," she said. The home is "where we're generating a lot of ideas." "It's where we're producing the next iteration of where the movement is going," she said. There is also a long history of political organizing in the home. Fledgling groups often do not have the resources to rent office space, so living rooms make viable alternatives. At the consciousness raising groups of the late 1960s, for example, women gathered in one another's homes in New York and around the country to discuss feminism. "To the extent that women have power, it tends to be in the home," Gloria Steinem, a founder of Ms. magazine, said in a telephone interview. "The goddess of the hearth is a woman, for God's sake." Certainly, women have figured prominently in the months since Hillary Clinton lost what would have been a historic election of the first female president. The women's marches that took place around the country the day after the inauguration drew as many as five million protesters, by some estimates, making it among the largest marches in American history. "I think what you're seeing is that the resistance is being led by women," said Rebecca Traister, the author of "All the Single Ladies" (Simon and Schuster, 2016). Consider Solidarity Sundays. Three mothers in Alameda, Calif., started the Facebook group a year ago, rattled by the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., and the shooting in nearby San Bernardino, Calif. For a year, the group, with about 800 members, gathered monthly at two of the organizers' homes to eat, drink and contact elected officials about specific policy concerns, like police violence. Babysitters would watch the children. Most of the members are women or identify as women. And then the election happened. Three days later, the group held an emergency meeting at the home of Kate Schatz, one of the founders. The gathering, with 100 attendees crammed into a living room, was "super intense," said Ms. Schatz, 38, the author of "Rad American Women A Z" (City Lights, 2015). "We spent the whole time brainstorming." Now the group has 12,000 members, with about 100 chapters meeting in 27 states. Manhattan has four chapters, Queens one and Brooklyn six. On the second Sunday of every month, guests who have signed up through Facebook arrive at a neighbor's home. Last Sunday, Rachel Thieme hosted her third event in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. She held the first two in her railroad style apartment; the third one she co hosted at the apartment of Artineh Havan, also in Greenpoint. Many of the attendees have never been politically active before, she said. For Ms. Thieme, 36, these monthly gatherings have served as a political awakening, a chance to flex a long dormant political muscle. As her neighbors made phone calls, she refilled their cocktail glasses. "I don't even know what's going to be happening in the world," she said. "But what I can count on is that there is going to be a ton of rad women in my house who want to take action." Chapters have also opened in more conservative parts of the country, like at the home of Kathryn Mahaney in Bay Saint Louis, on the Gulf coast of Mississippi. Last Sunday, she hosted her first event, with around a dozen guests drinking bourbon and eating king cake, a traditional Mardi Gras dessert. While other chapters focused on political actions, Ms. Mahaney, 33, saw hers as a way for politically progressive neighbors to find allies in a deeply conservative community. By opening her home, Ms. Mahaney hopes to make liberals feel less isolated. "Many of them feel that they have to hide," she said. "They are afraid to signal their political beliefs because of the fear of retribution from friends and family, as well as from strangers." With a fire blazing in the living room, guests gathered around two large tables for dinner. Mohammed and Hamida sat alongside their friends, Rawda, 30, and Haian, 40, refugees from Homs who also requested that their last names be withheld. Rawda shared pictures on her iPhone of the couple's three children playing in the snow in front of their Elizabeth home. Without a translator present, guests struggled to communicate using translation apps they loaded on their smartphones. "Do you know Ikea?" one woman asked. Mohammed looked baffled until she showed him a photograph of the furniture store on her iPhone. "Yes! Ik ea," he said, pronouncing the name with a soft "I". "We have that in Jordan." Although a few people mentioned politics, the conversation mostly stayed light, by design. Sitting down to dinner "is normalizing in the best possible sense of the word," said Melina Macall, 53, a founder of the club. "It's not a conversation about something awful. They've had awfulness after awfulness. It just gives everyone a break." Ms. McCaffrey and Ms. Macall started the Syria Supper Club on Sept. 11, 2016, as a way to "reimagine the day," said Ms. McCaffrey, 50. Initially, the women organized two events a month. Since the election, demand has ballooned. In January, they organized 15 events held in various suburban homes in the area. "Not everyone wants to go to a demonstration," Ms. McCaffrey said. Dining together "is a concrete way of supporting refugees by showing hospitality. It's very calming and soothing just to share a meal together. You feel like you're living your values."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Finally scrambling out of the bush of New Zealand's South Island, I paused, surveying the alpine valley in the foreground. Then I saw it. Nestled against a slab of moss covered schist stood a modest structure, no larger than my 8 feet by 12 feet college dorm room. With excitement and relief, I clambered toward Cameron Hut. As a 10 year old, entranced by the cinematic landscapes of Peter Jackson's "The Fellowship of the Ring ," I wouldn't have guessed that backcountry huts would become a focal point of my travels in New Zealand. Sixteen years later, I had come for the forests of Lothlorien, the peaks of the Misty Mountains, the hills of the Shire. But it was in the huts that I immersed myself in the culture of those landscapes and spent time with the people who know and value them most. New Zealand's wild spaces deserve their fantastical reputation, but it is the country's commitment to this vast network of public huts that fosters something unique: a community of strangers even in the most remote backcountry. Approaching Cameron Hut, I wondered what I would find inside. No two huts are the same. Some are blaze orange, others beige. Some are over a century old, others less than a decade. Even if they look similar from the outside, each hut has its own quirks, stories and memories. They are a product of their environment, the people who use them, and their moment in history, all of which define a hut's character. Pushing open Cameron Hut's weathered door, I found four bunks on one wall with a potbelly stove braced against another. A metal countertop stretched beneath the window with a pair of water buckets and two stools stashed below. A wall shelf contained outdoor magazines, a copy of "The Girl on the Train," candles of assorted lengths and a jar of ear plugs. And there, over by the window in its familiar bracket on the wall, was the volume I had learned always to peruse when I arrived at one of these huts: The Intentions Book. Setting my pack down, I started scanning its pages. Emblazoned with the Maori greeting " Kia ora," the logbook serves as a guide to each hut and a registry for all visitors. Trampers use it to record details about their party and intended route hence the name of the book along with their comments and stories. While some of this information could prove useful in an emergency, it amounts to a beloved anthology of the shared experiences that define New Zealand's huts. One page might contain mountaintop epiphanies, off trail discoveries, weather and trail conditions, speculations about whether a bickering couple would survive the trail ahead and whimsical evaluations of the previous night's snoring. Together, the entries form a living document of hut culture itself, where stories, knowledge, advice and humor pass freely among strangers. It didn't take me long to find what I was seeking: the entry my new friends Joanna and Logan had made here a few weeks ago. Our paths had intersected on the Dart Track, a popular, multiday trek through the mountains north of Queenstown, where we had compared lists of must visit huts over dinner. I was here because they had told me not to miss it. Cameron Hut wasn't glamorous, but it felt perfectly suited to the needs of a solo traveler. There are four tiers of huts in the system. Basic Huts are any combination of walls and a roof that will pass for "very basic shelter," but not much more. Standard Huts are more robust but still spartan structures with a few added amenities like mattresses, water access, a toilet and a wood stove though if users of such huts want a fire, they must forage for downed branches to maintain the wood supply. Serviced Huts feel similar to their Standard brethren, but are generally in high traffic areas or above tree line, where the Department of Conservation must supply fuel and upkeep costs skyrocket. Great Walks Huts are the most heavily visited and expensive of the bunch, with gas stoves and resident hut wardens. No matter what its tier, I found every hut worth visiting. Putting away the Intentions Book, I took advantage of the warm afternoon sun to explore the area around Cameron Hut. Just outside the door, a small shed protected a wood pile and well worn ax. The "long drop," an outhouse over an abnormally deep hole, sat nestled in a thicket of silver beech 150 feet north of the hut. To the west, I followed the river until I discovered the series of deep pools beneath a pair of towering waterfalls that Joanna and Logan had told me to visit. Laying my towel on a rock, I braced myself for what would be an undoubtedly frigid but equally necessary bath. Not a bad place to call home for the night. When you arrive at a hut, any sense of urgency melts away and is replaced by the easy rhythms of hut life. When a predictably unpredictable New Zealand storm blows through, you close the windows and open your book. When your stomach rumbles, you start dinner. When the sun disappears behind the mountains, you light a candle or flick on your headlamp. In a hut, you face simple choices. As quaint as they may seem, huts also serve a very real need. They provide essential shelter in New Zealand's most extreme environments. Even hardened adventurers could be convinced to choose the protection of Iris Burn Hut over the characteristic downpours of Fiordlands or the warmth of Mueller Hut over the unpredictable snowfields of the Southern Alps. Huts are at their finest when weather is at its foulest. For me, this realization came on the Richmond Alpine Track as I tramped through storm clouds so dense that I could rarely see more than 30 feet ahead. Exhausted and borderline hypothermic, I kindled a fire at each hut, decorating the wood stove with my saturated layers of clothing As horizontal rain beat hard against the walls, I savored the fire and a steaming mug of soup. It was only after I emerged from the mountains that I learned I had hiked through the remnants of Cyclone Debbie, which had killed 14 people in Australia and caused widespread flooding throughout New Zealand. Without those huts, anyone on the route I had just hiked could have fallen victim to that storm's violence. But inclement weather was the furthest thing from my mind as I settled into Cameron Hut on this sunny autumn afternoon in mid March. The valley would protect me from the all too familiar winds that had threatened to peel Slaty Hut right off its exposed perch in the Richmond Range. Neither too big nor too small, Cameron Hut's modest footprint couldn't compete with the 32 bunk, multiroom huts with flush toilets on the Rees Dart Track in Mount Aspiring National Park. Yet it felt palatial compared to the tiny Sefton Bivvy I couldn't even stand completely nestled beneath the Tewaewae Glacier. The size and grandeur of backcountry huts are often linked to their popularity, and prices follow suit. Basic Huts are free, but most huts in New Zealand range from 3 to 10 per night. Bunks fill up on a first come, first serve basis, but there is always room on the floor. Great Walks Huts, on the other hand, can cost up to 35 per night and require reservations months in advance. For committed hut travelers, there are six month ( 65) and yearlong ( 85) passes, which grant you unlimited access to most Basic, Standard and Serviced Huts. With just a few visits to Serviced Huts, the pass more than pays for itself. At Cameron Hut, my dinnertime ritual began by fetching river water in the buckets. Almost every hut has some access to water, but that was the only time I used buckets. More established huts have well water pumped through interior sinks. Others have external rainwater catchment cisterns with an attached faucet. The Department of Conservation encourages all users to treat or boil their water before consumption. Huts provide water, but hut users pack their own food and stove. Meals are lightweight and calorie dense, ranging from prepackaged, dehydrated beef stroganoff to a ramen noodle and mashed potato slurry. I will never forget, however, the night when two Italians cooked me a gourmet pasta dinner, utilizing an entire pumpkin (and massive bottle of wine) that they had hauled to the hut. People cook alongside strangers, sharing their meals around communal tables. For dessert, someone almost always passed around a massive bar of Whittaker's chocolate. As I chopped veggies, I kept glancing down the trail running alongside Cameron Creek, wondering if anyone would be joining me for the night. I would welcome time with strangers, but I also relished solitude. You never know who is going to walk through the door of a hut, but you can be fairly confident that your time together will be marked by a trust and civility that Americans rarely expect from total strangers. Generosity and hospitality anchor the communitarian ethos that makes these backcountry huts so welcoming. More often than not, I shared huts with other travelers. On the Motatapu Track, I spent two nights playing euchre with a trio of Coloradans. I met a French Canadian couple on a sunny afternoon at Greenstone Hut, only to run into them again after a soggy and treacherous day on the Demon Trail. Weeks later, we ended up crammed together in the back seat of a car hitchhiking toward the Travers Sabine Circuit, an extended route through the mountains of Nelson Lakes National Park. Circumnavigating Mount Ruapehu, I synced up with a good natured Kiwi couple for four days. Each night, Jade and Steff kept me company, offering food and tips for the route ahead. Later, they even hosted me at their home in Taupo. Conversation always flowed freely, often focusing on the weather, trail conditions, hut recommendations and the inevitable foreign puzzlement about American politics. Every now and then, we would talk our way through less familiar territory. In the shadow of the Darran Mountains, an ensemble of Kiwis, Americans, Canadians, Aussies and Brits had a lively discussion about their respective relationships to British colonialism. During dinner at Mid Caples Hut, I confronted my own ignorance when I ate with a man from New Caledonia, a French territory in the South Pacific I hadn't previously known existed. I'll never forget these people. They turned out to be no less central to my New Zealand experience than the Tolkienesque landscapes I originally thought I had come to find. Local resident or foreign traveler, old or young, novice or expert, hut goers have spent their day exploring the wild. At night, their focus tightens to a small room filled with strangers. You share the experience of a common place, even if you come from opposite ends of the earth. The hut makes this happen. Over dehydrated dinners and morning coffee, people open themselves to their fellow travelers and write each other into their common story. As dusk fell on Cameron Hut, I paged through the Intentions Book again. Foreigners and Kiwis alike noted how they had underestimated the steep trail to the hut, but enjoyed the reward of swimming beneath the waterfalls. Some complained about nasty weather. Hunters documented the number of chamois and tahr, exotic species of mountain goat introduced to New Zealand in the early 20th century. Instructions on how to get above tree line covered an entire page, complete with a hand drawn map. This hut is remote enough that it often sits empty for days at a time, if not weeks during the winter, yet these entries recorded the enthusiasm of its infrequent visitors and their hope that others would experience some of what they themselves had found here. Wriggling into my sleeping bag, I opened "The Girl on the Train," knowing that sleep wasn't far off. In the morning, I would add my own story to the Intentions Book. Then I would tidy the hut, close the door behind me, and head down the trail toward my next night's shelter.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Taco Bell has, quite literally, found a new marketing vehicle, and its name is Lyft. The fast food chain is beginning a venture with the ride sharing company this week that will allow Lyft passengers to request rides that incorporate a stop at a Taco Bell drive through between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. The companies will test the option, which will appear as "Taco Mode" in the Lyft app, during the next two weeks around a Newport Beach, Calif., location, with plans to expand the program nationally next year. It's an attempt to tap into the trend of young people increasingly car pooling through apps like Lyft and its larger rival Uber, particularly on nights out with friends. While Taco Bell offers delivery to customers and advertises the locations of its restaurants through the navigation app Waze, partnering with a ride sharing company represents a new type of "experience innovation," said Marisa Thalberg, Taco Bell's chief marketing officer. "I kind of think of this like inverse delivery like we're delivering you to Taco Bell," she said in an interview. "You're being delivered to the food as opposed to having to get in your own car and drive." As it stands, Lyft and Uber do not have stated policies about how drivers should handle passenger requests to swing by fast food drive throughs, though the question regularly pops up in online discussion forums for drivers. "Several times I said no to food and they ask why and I explained what the last idiot did of making a mess and each time the present idiot would promise to not make a mess, spill, waste, etc. then they do it anyway!" one Uber driver wrote in an online forum. Ms. Thalberg said her company had seen "a bunch of funny tweets" and other social media posts from hungry passengers on the topic, which got them thinking about a potential partnership with Lyft. "Some people are either afraid to ask or don't know if they can ask," Ms. Thalberg said. "We're taking all those questions marks of, 'Would it be unseemly to ask my Lyft driver to go through the Taco Bell drive through?' And now we're not only going to make it permissible, we're going to celebrate this behavior." Taco Bell and Lyft's initial test will be limited to a "tight region" around the Newport Beach location and include taco logos inside the app, branded taco themed vehicles and in car menus, said Melissa Waters, Lyft's head of marketing. While Lyft has struck up partnerships with other companies like Starbucks and Delta, she said it was a first for it to be "actually fulfilling a ride experience for a brand." 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. "We will allow drivers to opt in to that so we can make sure we understand their full experience, and the customers can get the full delight of opting into 'Taco Mode,' " she said. "Then we can fully understand how everything works before we roll out more broadly in Southern California, then more broadly nationally." It is easy to see how a model like this, if successful, could be replicated by other fast food chains and ride sharing companies. "It's pretty obvious there's a lot of food delivery out there and lots of apps and services that allow you to take food to people," Ms. Waters said. "This is really turning this concept on its head of just delivering food to delivering you to food and extending the night." Taco Bell is not paying Lyft for the deal, which has been in the works for almost a year, Ms. Waters said. The companies are looking at the venture as "cocreating an experience together," which cannot be evaluated the way one might look at traditional marketing efforts like television commercials and billboards, she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
"War is a force that gives us meaning," wrote the veteran foreign correspondent Chris Hedges an adage he delivered with vicious irony. War can pick up the dull, lousy clay of your little human life, and refashion you into a hero or martyr. War muffles brute inequities of power and capital, and entrances you with blandishments of honor. War is a storyteller, with a tale so grand and corrupt that even death becomes beautiful. Five hundred years ago, at a moment of political rebellion and economic anxiety, a leader arose who understood the public allure of the martial imagination, and how war could turn a noble into something like a superman. He was Emperor Maximilian I of the Holy Roman Empire, and out of an iffy inheritance in Austria he emerged as one of the most powerful leaders in Renaissance Europe, presiding over territories from the modern day Netherlands all the way to Croatia. He had some successes on the battlefield, yet it was not principally his military prowess that made his name. It was images of the warrior emperor, and public spectacles of chivalric glory, that made Maximilian a legend. "The Last Knight: The Art, Armor, and Ambition of Maximilian I," an exhibition of grand scale and heavy metal at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, plots the relentless rise of this most elegant of Hapsburg propagandists . It's the largest exhibition of arms and armor the Met has presented in decades, and has been organized by Pierre Terjanian, who leads the museum's department. Though it's armed to the teeth with flashy military gear meant for both function and fashion, and for both men and horses you'll also find paintings, illustrated books and celebratory images made with the hottest new technology of the late 15th century: printmaking. The exhibition includes loans from nearly three dozen museums and libraries, including the stunning suit of armor in the first gallery here, a 20 piece knockout of ribbed and fluted steel that has traveled from the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. The waistline is tapered severely, and the gauntlets are trimmed with copper studs and piping. Check out the aggressively stylish boots, with foot long spikes so pointy even Michael Jackson would have found them unwearable. Maximilian would have appeared resplendent when he wore this field armor at the age of 20. He needed to. Two years previously, in 1477, he married Mary of Burgundy, who upon the death of her father became the sole heir to territories in modern France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Burgundy had a court of great sophistication, but it was nearly bankrupt, and with a woman on the throne it faced incursions from pretenders outside. Maximilian, who didn't speak French or Flemish, who couldn't even afford the initial travel expenses to Burgundy, liked Mary's lavish life and was ready to fight for it. And to convince his fellow nobles and subjects of his legitimacy to rule, this nonnative Burgundian had to put on a show. In battle, where other kings stood back, Maximilian raced in on foot, and showcased his fearlessness by challenging all comers to duels. Back in town, he staged sumptuous multiday tournaments, jousting with local noblemen and foreign champions in ritualized, but still dangerous, mock combat. The most engrossing galleries of "The Last Knight" look at these grand tournaments, which were nothing less than performance art five centuries before the genre got its name. Participants in the jousts wore specialized armor, some resembling wartime outfits and others meant only for peaceful bouts, and fought with pronged lances to unhorse their opponents or to split their own weapon (which meant you'd landed a solid blow). These jousting armors could be decidedly high tech , by 15th century standards. Three steel and copper breastplates here feature notches that held a shield, as well as mechanical springs that launched the shield skyward, with the humiliating finality of a game show buzzer, if an opponent struck with enough force. Mr. Terjanian speculates that Maximilian might have invented this style of combat, since it took place only at his court. Still, for all the niftiness of these gladiatorial outfits, the most beautiful works in "The Last Knight" are a sequence of small gouaches and drawings depicting jousters, which Maximilian commissioned to illustrate a lightly fictionalized epic of his own martial exploits. In these works on paper, an imperial alter ego called "Freydal" aims to win the hand of a princess by jousting with the very opponents Maximilian had defeated. Freydal and his competitors wear wild headgear tricked out with feathers or antlers, while their horses are draped with ritzy striped silks; the wooden lances splinter in the air like shrapnel. After a long day in the tiltyard, the jousters head to a dance party wearing women's dresses. Maximilian liked a good masquerade. He was hardly the richest client of the armories of Brussels, Nuremberg and Milan, and several letters and receipts in this show affirm that Maximilian struggled to pay the bills for his gauntlets and greaves. Sometimes, though, you have to spend money to make money and as several letters here from the emperor attest, armor had profounder uses than mere protection. Armor served to craft an image of courage, virtue and panache, which would make your subjects love you and your opponents think twice about invading. It also could function as an instrument of diplomacy. The engraved, heavy duty bard (or equine armor) that opens "The Last Knight" was a gift to the young Henry VIII, a fellow prince who loved jousting almost as much as Maximilian did. "He who makes no memory of himself during his lifetime will have none after his death, and will be forgotten with the tolling of the final knell," Maximilian intoned in another lightly fictionalized narrative . The emperor saw to his own immortalization by commissioning literary works and also prints above all the giant "Arch of Honor." This demented act of self glorification, more than 11 feet tall and spanning 36 sheets of paper, praises his ancestors, war victories and diplomatic alliances. (It took 195 woodblocks to print; Albrecht Durer and Albrecht Altdorfer were among the many artists who undertook the work.) Maximilian preens at the top, looking very young for his now advanced years, while beneath him lie acres of battle scenes, showcases of strength and poetic invocations of imperial grandeur. As a work of printmaking, the "Arch of Honor" is a landmark. As a work of political propaganda, even a North Korean dictator might have found it over the top. Maximilian died in 1519, reduced in a death portrait here to a simple old man in bed and, with an eye on Christian immortality, the penitent Kaiser left orders for attendants to whip his corpse , shave his head and take a club to knock out all his teeth. But he could not foresee how quickly his knightly exploits would seem antique. A new world had been discovered across the Atlantic, and in Saxony a professor named Martin Luther had nailed some thoughts on religion to a church door. Merchants from Lisbon to Venice were making fortunes, and chivalry became a hangup from an earlier age. Early modern Europe was dawning. Wars of religion were about to begin, and it was a bit late for jousting. Who would become the most famous knight errant of the century after Maximilian's? A fool from La Mancha, tilting at windmills. The Last Knight: The Art, Armor, and Ambition of Maximilian I Through Jan. 5 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan; 212 535 771, metmuseum.org.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Popular forms of entertainment can fade from view so thoroughly that they are almost never seen again. Masques. Commedia dell'arte. Decent Hollywood romantic comedy. But some eventually return. When William Christie and Les Arts Florissants bring Andre Campra's 1710 "Les Fetes Venitiennes" to the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Thursday, they will offer audiences a rare chance to see an opera ballet. The genre a frothy, sometimes louche amalgam of dance and singing was wildly popular in early 18th century France but then largely disappeared, arousing interest again only in recent decades. "It was probably one of the most successful pieces of the 18th century," Mr. Christie said of "Les Fetes Venitiennes," noting that it was much revived, often with new material added. (Casanova, who caught a late revival, described it as "the favorite amusement of the Parisians" in his memoir, musing on what undergarments the star ballerina wore and praising its droll intrigues, "whimsical and erroneous" costumes and scene changes "done like lightning.") So in the prologue, showing the triumph of folly over reason at the Carnival in Venice, the men and women of the Scapino Ballet Rotterdam company, dressed as stylized baroque courtesans and cross dressers, accent their lively dances with certain gestures sort of spanking themselves on occasion that were probably not commonly seen on the stage of the Academie Royale de Musique, where the work had its original premiere. ("It's a bit naughty," Mr. Wubbe said.) Opera ballet did away with the weightier themes of its five act tragic predecessors in French opera, and generally consisted of prologues followed by three or four brief acts known as entrees, each with self contained plots and plenty of dance that was not subservient to the music. For Mr. Carsen, this fast paced, varied quality makes them a natural fit for modern audiences. "Nobody can sit still for three minutes, or walk from here to there without looking at their iPhone," he said. "I think in all of these kinds of pieces, which have this celebratory and very fast changing sense, and are made for short attention spans, which is what you'd expect at the French court of the time somehow there's something in sync with us today." Mr. Christie, an American born conductor who has been credited with bringing many works of French Baroque music back into the repertoire, said that from the beginning of this project he and Mr. Carsen wanted to stage it in a way that would be "resolutely 21st century." "My idea is, essentially, to proclaim very loudly that old music is new music," Mr. Christie said. It seems new for two reasons. "People haven't heard as much as perhaps Beethoven or Brahms," he said, "but also it's new in the sense that it can accommodate itself, I think, to different interpretations. The rhythmic vitality of these dances and their forms, and what they say to someone who uses his or her body as a dancer, is very interesting." He said that in his collaborations with modern dance companies "they have found, over the years, that people like Rameau are absolutely as exciting as Stravinsky." The opera ballet was in many respects a product of its time, said Georgia J. Cowart, a professor of music at Case Western Reserve University who has written about the form. "The opera ballet was created when Louis XIV was old, ailing, withdrawn from public life, and had lost interest in music and spectacle," said Professor Cowart, who has written about "Les Fetes Venitiennes" but has never seen it performed on stage. "There was a lot of dancing and spectacle, and there was a sense of kind of being liberated from the heaviness of traditional opera. And the nobles and artists who were part of a more libertine faction of society went and enjoyed the kind of entertainment that had formally been performed at the court." Dance and music were much more closely integrated in opera ballets than in other operatic works. Mr. Wubbe said that "the dance parts were not like separate divertissements, but are merged into the scenes." At one point in "Les Fetes Venitiennes," a music master and a dance master engage in pitched battle over whose art form is superior. Some of those questions, about whether music or dance should predominate, persist. Catherine Turocy, who founded the New York Baroque Dance Company and has reconstructed 17th and 18th century dances and helped revive interest in opera ballet, noted that the term "opera ballet" only came into use much later. "Les Fetes Venitiennes," she noted, is described as a "ballet en musique" in early its scores. "Has the time come to call a ballet a ballet?" she asked, adding that describing it as opera deprived ballet of part of its legacy. In their production Mr. Carsen and Mr. Wubbe made efforts to blend the dancers and the singers, to the point where it is not always easy to tell them apart. Members of the chorus move. Dancers even sing to a point. "Some of them," Mr. Wubbe said, "are faking it a bit."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The Ending of This Louisa May Alcott Story May Disappoint You None A previously unpublished piece by Louisa May Alcott, the author best known for her novel "Little Women," is now available in print for the first time. The piece, "Aunt Nellie's Diary," is one of Alcott's earliest works. She hand wrote it in a journal in 1849, when she was only 17. The story offers a new glimpse into the imagination of a writer who was prolific even as a teenager. At the time, Alcott was living in a basement apartment in Boston with her family, and they were struggling to stay afloat. And even then, her prose was impressive, said Daniel Shealy, a professor of English at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and an Alcott scholar. "She already possessed the skills and the imagination that a professional writer would need," he said. "We can see her ability to give wonderful characterizations, and her ability to plot her story and pace it in a way that keeps the reader's interest." "Aunt Nellie's Diary" is in the newest issue of The Strand Magazine, a literary quarterly based in Birmingham, Mich. The magazine has previously unearthed pieces by Ernest Hemingway, Raymond Chandler and John Steinbeck. Andrew F. Gulli, the Strand's managing editor, said the Alcott manuscript came from Houghton Library, a repository for rare books and manuscripts at Harvard University. "When I read it, I was thinking, 'Wow, what maturity,'" Mr. Gulli said. The story takes the form of a diary written by Aunt Nellie, a 40 year old woman living in a place called Ferndale. She takes three young people under her wing: her orphaned niece, Annie; Annie's friend, Isabel; and a family friend, Edward. A modern illustration for the 1849 story shows Annie, Edward and Isabel, all of whom are under the care of the narrator, Aunt Nellie. The three young people fit neatly into archetypal roles. Edward is charming and kind. Annie is sweet and innocent. Isabel is witty and artful. Annie and Isabel seem to see Edward as a potential love interest. (This relationship structure a triangle of affection would be revisited in many of Alcott's later works.) At one point in the story, the girls attend a masquerade ball in costume as Night and Morning. "Isabel in a black robe and veil spangled with silver stars and a crescent in her dark hair made a splendid Night, a little too cold and haughty but very beautiful notwithstanding," Alcott, as Nellie, wrote. "Annie in snow white garments, pale rose coloured veil, and wreath of dewy half blown buds was as fair a Morning as ever dawned in Ferndale." Orphans like Annie, a sincere and quiet heroine, often appear in Alcott's work, said Harriet Reisen, the author of "The Woman Behind Little Women." "She had distinguished relatives and she was from an old, established family," Ms. Reisen said of Alcott. "I think this orphan thing had to do with having these wealthy relatives who couldn't give her what she needed." Alcott's work did not always borrow inspiration from her own life. She wrote poems, fairy tales, romances and dark, sensational thrillers. And then came "Little Women," a novel about four sisters that was published in two volumes, in 1868 and 1869. It has since become an American classic and has been adapted for the silver screen multiple times, most recently by Greta Gerwig last year. But Ms. Alcott seemed to have mixed feelings about the novel; she later quipped that she was tired of writing "moral pap for the young." At times she gravitated to darker themes like murder, scandal and drug addiction. "I think my natural ambition is for the lurid style," she once said in an interview. Mr. Gulli was thrilled to find the "Nellie" manuscript, but he was in for a slight disappointment. Alcott did not finish the story. The piece cuts off abruptly, midsentence: "I begged and prayed she would ..." But Mr. Gulli saw an opportunity in those ellipses. He said the magazine would have a contest, inviting aspiring writers to send in submissions to finish the story. The winner's version, he said, would be featured in a later issue. But even with the abrupt ending, the "Nellie" manuscript is valuable because so many of Alcott's other journals were destroyed, either by herself or by family members at her request, Professor Shealy said. "While it does leave us with questions, I think it's still important because it is a work that shows us the earlier stages of Alcott's career," Professor Shealy said. "We don't have all that much of that."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
SAN FRANCISCO The Silicon Valley venture capitalist Keith Rabois, onstage in January at a tech conference, said his first choice for president was a Democrat, Pete Buttigieg. And, sure, it would be a close call for Joseph R. Biden Jr. over President Trump. But Bernie Sanders? At that, Mr. Rabois, who has been a top executive at or invested in LinkedIn, Square, Yelp and PayPal, balked. Speaking to the crowd, he drew the line at democratic socialism. (Mr. Buttigieg ended his campaign on Sunday night.) "I would certainly vote for Trump over Sanders," Mr. Rabois declared. When it comes to the 2020 Democratic primaries, with California poised to allocate hundreds of delegates this week on Super Tuesday, many tech leaders in Silicon Valley have a plea: Anyone but Sanders. From venture capitalists to chief executives, the tech elite are favoring moderates like Mr. Buttigieg and Michael R. Bloomberg. And with Mr. Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, leading the field in California and looking like the front runner for the nomination, the tone among the leadership is growing more urgent. Few tech executives want to end up stuck choosing between Mr. Sanders and Mr. Trump. Meanwhile, tech company workers are gathering en masse for Mr. Sanders. While Silicon Valley has long leaned blue, the chasm between centrist Democrats and an animated left wing has created uncertainty. And now two other things are happening. California Republicans see an opportunity. And a new moderate party in the state the Common Sense Party is rising. "I'm trying to balance what socialism means versus four more years of Trump, and honestly it feels like which is the worse of two evils?" said Venky Ganesan, a partner at the venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, whose disaffection with the presidential field has led him toward the Common Sense Party. He said the vast majority of his venture capital industry colleagues had the same dilemma. "Eighty percent are thinking the same thing, but many do not speak out," Mr. Ganesan said. Mr. Sanders has said broadly that "billionaires should not exist" and in Silicon Valley, there are a lot of billionaires. He has also called for Google to be split up and criticized it for being anti worker. He has told Apple that it does not pay enough in taxes, and he has tapped Amazon employees to appear in a video criticizing the company's environmental record. Mr. Sanders also wants to raise the corporate tax to 35 percent. And in perhaps his most aggressive attack on the tech industry, he has proposed earlier taxation on stock options, the equity that has fueled the wealth of many in Silicon Valley. "If your goal was to destroy the Silicon Valley ecosystem of creating new companies, this would be an effective way to do it," Adam Nash, a tech investor and former executive at Dropbox, wrote on Twitter last week, referring to Mr. Sanders's stock options proposal. Ramesh Srinivasan, who is part of Mr. Sanders's campaign and is focused on tech issues, said the senator was "not the foe of tech entrepreneurs." He said that the policies would encourage job growth and support small businesses and that the campaign was about "just restoring balance." Among the donors to Mr. Buttigieg's campaign in the last year were Reed Hastings, the chief executive of Netflix; Ben Silbermann, the chief executive of Pinterest; Reid Hoffman, a co founder of LinkedIn; and John Doerr, a prominent venture capitalist, according to Federal Election Commission filings. Mr. Hoffman also donated to Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. And Eric Schmidt, Google's former chief executive, donated to Mr. Biden. Not only are Silicon Valley's leaders giving money to Mr. Sanders's competitors, they are lending their muscle to the campaigns. Mr. Buttigieg's national investment chair was Swati Mylavarapu, a former partner at the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. The Bloomberg campaign's digital ad firm, Hawkfish, is being run by a former chief marketing officer of Facebook, Gary Briggs. Chamath Palihapitiya, a former Facebook executive who is now a venture capitalist, said he would like to see Mr. Bloomberg at the top of the ticket, paired with Ms. Klobuchar or Ms. Warren. "Bernie is validation of an important wing in the party, but at the top of the ticket he would probably be McGovern 2.0 and Trump will win in a landslide," he said, referring to the liberal 1972 Democratic nominee, George McGovern. How Silicon Valley votes matters because it leans overwhelmingly Democratic and there is a tremendous amount of capital. What is striking about this primary cycle is the schism between the people who run the companies and their workers. Consider that employees of Alphabet gave 499,309 to Mr. Sanders for the 2020 cycle, his second largest total donations from one employer after University of California employees, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. By comparison, Mr. Buttigieg's 2020 run had raised 294,860 from Alphabet employees. Luis Zamora, a co president of the San Francisco Young Democrats, described the situation in the tech community and why industry leadership might be wary of a Sanders presidency. "There's a massive split between leadership and rank and file," he said. "Bernie wants employees to be able to take over some of the ownership of the company, and that's not going to fly." For a group of California technologists dismayed by what they see as the populist turn of both national parties, the solution albeit only a statewide one is to ditch the two party system altogether. On a cool evening in Palo Alto, at the Stanford University Faculty Club in September, those technologists and activists launched the Common Sense Party. It was a response, they said, to what they call the one party monopoly in the state. They hoped to carve out Democrats who feel isolated from their party's leftward lurch. "One party is the puppet of the public unions and wants government to run everything, and the other party is the puppet of the religious autocrats who want us all to act in a certain manner," said Tim Draper, a venture capitalist and a Common Sense supporter. "No party is supporting a moderate agenda of someone who wants freedom to prosper and freedom to act." The Faculty Club is a low slung building, popular for weddings on the manicured Stanford campus. "Many C.E.O.s are a little off put by some of the current crop of candidates for president," said Julie Meier Wright, one of the Common Sense Party organizers and formerly California's first secretary of trade and commerce. Common Sense has close to 20,000 signatures. To qualify as a new party on the ballot, they hope to get 67,000 by the summer. Republicans see a different way through this morass turning the disaffected moderates into full fledged members of the G.O.P. "California Democrats just really haven't been good friends to Silicon Valley," said Jessica Millan Patterson, chairwoman of the California Republican Party. "Darkness has turned into hope," she said. Republicans are making inroads in the tech world, Ms. Millan Patterson added. She cited state laws like A.B. 5, which went into effect on Jan. 1 and put strong regulations on freelancers, as another reason Republicans are gathering momentum. The goal behind the legislation was to push employers to hire full time workers instead of contractors, but many freelancers have lost work. Peter Thiel, the venture capitalist, has long been the tech industry's dissident Republican voice. He spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention to support Mr. Trump, but few tech executives held high profile fund raisers for the president in the last election cycle. That may be changing. In February, Larry Ellison, Oracle's chief executive, hosted a fund raiser for Mr. Trump in Palm Springs, Calif. Some Oracle employees wrote a petition, which garnered nearly 10,000 signatures online, asking Mr. Ellison to cancel the event. When he did not, about 300 walked out of the office or logged off from work, a protest organized by the Oracle group Employees for Ethics. Some tech employees are getting ready to be at odds with their bosses. In a crowded piano bar in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood recently, a few dozen young Democrats gathered to watch the candidates debate. Organizers tried to think if anyone in the room that night or in their group more broadly supported the two tech leader favorites at the time, Mr. Buttigieg or Mr. Bloomberg. It was hard.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
The coronavirus pandemic has inflicted an economic battering on state and local governments, shrinking tax receipts by hundreds of billions of dollars. Now devastating budget cuts loom, threatening to cripple public services and pare work forces far beyond the 1.3 million jobs lost in eight months. Governors, mayors and county executives have pleaded for federal aid before the end of the year. Congressional Republicans have scorned such assistance, with the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, calling it a "blue state bailout." But it turns out this budget crisis is colorblind. Six of the seven states that are expected to suffer the biggest revenue declines over the next two years are red states led by Republican governors and won by President Trump this year, according to a report from Moody's Analytics. Those on the front lines agree. "I don't think it's a red state, blue state issue," said Brian Sigritz, director of state fiscal studies at the National Association of State Budget Officers. The National Governors Association's top officials Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, a Democrat, and Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a Republican issued a statement this fall saying, "This is a national problem, and it demands a bipartisan and national solution." Efforts to forge a new stimulus bill gained momentum this week with a 900 billion proposal offered by a bipartisan group of legislators and endorsed by Democratic leaders that includes 160 billion for state, local and tribal governments. While short of plugging the widening fiscal gaps, such a sum would provide welcome relief. But the Republican leadership shows no sign of coming around on state and local aid. In reality, the degree of financial distress turns less on which party controls a statehouse or a city hall than on the number of Covid 19 cases, the kinds of businesses undergirding a state's economy, and its tax structure. Wyoming, Alaska and North Dakota, Republican led states that depend on energy related taxes, have been walloped by the sharp decline in oil prices. Places where tourism provides a large infusion of revenues, like Florida and Nevada, face revenue declines of 10 percent or more, as does Louisiana, which relies on both tourism and energy. Elsewhere, the steep falloff in sales and personal income taxes which on average account for roughly two thirds of a state's tax revenue, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts is forcing Republican and Democratic officials to consider laying off police officers, reducing childhood vaccinations and closing libraries, parks and drug treatment centers. The squeeze at the state level reverberates in urban, suburban and rural counties in nearly every corner of the United States, and officials are making piercing choices. In Casper, Wyo., someone from the district attorney's office walks around the block to the Circuit Court building each week and fetches a large plastic garbage bag full of discarded paper clips to reuse. The brief journey is just one way that the prosecutor, Dan Itzen, is cutting costs. He has also stopped prosecuting 17 types of misdemeanors including assault and battery, first time drunken driving, shoplifting, check fraud and property damage. "Something had to give," said Mr. Itzen, who handles about one third of Wyoming's criminal caseload and gets his funding from the state. "If I'm losing personnel, I cannot continue to prosecute as many cases." In Kansas City, Mo., with a municipal budget of 1.7 billion, the city manager has asked each department to draft a plan for cuts of more than 11 percent. That could mean laying off 200 police officers from the 1,300 member force and 180 firefighters and emergency medical technicians, said Dan Fowler, a City Council member. "This is one of the things that keeps me up at night," Mr. Fowler said, thinking about the impact on the city's half a million residents. Such cuts could end up closing one or two police stations, even though crime is rising, he said. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. Emergency response times are already slow, Mr. Fowler said, so even though he lives near a hospital, "if I have a heart attack, I'll just crawl over there." From collecting garbage to issuing building permits, maintaining parks to fixing potholes, "everything's going to slow down because we're not going to have the people to do it," he explained. A traffic study of a street in his district with a heavy accident toll has been delayed. In New Orleans, Democratic city leaders are going through a similarly painful process, shrinking next fiscal year's general fund by 92 million, down to 634 million. To avoid layoffs, the city is cutting the pay of higher level employees by 10 percent and requiring most other employees, including police officers, firefighters and emergency responders, to take 26 unpaid furlough days one every two weeks next year. The move amounts to a 10 percent pay cut, and comes on top of six furlough days imposed on the city's roughly 4,000 employees through the end of this year. On any given day, that will mean fewer people available to drive buses, respond to emergency calls or pick up trash. "We are at the marrow," said Gilbert Montano, the city's chief administrative officer. Every agency on average took a 21 percent cut on top of what they were already facing. State and local employees make up roughly 13 percent of the nation's work force. For women and Black workers, in particular, the public sector has historically offered more opportunities than the private sector for a stable income and reliable benefits. "These are folks that are providing essential public services every single day, risking their lives," said Lee Saunders, president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, "and now there's a good possibility that many are going to be faced with a pink slip." So far, an overwhelming majority of state and local job losses have been in education. Though many of the layoffs have been characterized as temporary, educators and parents worry that they could become permanent. In a new survey of mayors, 45 percent said they expected "dramatic" cuts for their school budgets. Public schools overwhelmingly rely on property taxes. States often provide additional funding, but many have cut their education budgets. Most states managed to hobble along until the summer, a typical endpoint to the fiscal year. There had been strong growth before the pandemic struck in March, and the 2.2 trillion CARES Act, which Congress passed in early spring, kept many households afloat. In spots, the extra federal money could be used to cover some state and local pandemic related expenses in health care and education. Jerome H. Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, and many economists have warned that reducing state and local spending will further drag down a weak recovery, as it did after the Great Recession. Spending by state and local governments accounted for about 15 percent of the nation's economic activity, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, part of the Commerce Department. While the federal government can run budget deficits to cover both regular and unexpected expenses, states generally cannot. In Wyoming, Mark Gordon, the Republican governor, acknowledged the fallout on the economy after announcing a new round of cuts for the coming fiscal year. He said 160 private sector jobs depended on every 100 state employees, who spend money on haircuts, children's sports and restaurants. Although Wyoming is facing one of the worst budget shocks, it also has one of the biggest rainy day funds, which states built up after the last recession to help weather downturns. Several states including Louisiana, Nevada, New York and Illinois have little or nothing left in reserve. Even so, Wyoming's governor has said he doesn't want to burn through the state's safety net with years of hard times potentially lying ahead. The fund may also be needed to plug an additional 300 million deficit related to the state's public schools. So Mr. Gordon has proposed cutting programs dealing with childhood vaccinations, substance abuse and mental health. Meg Wiehe, deputy executive director of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, said Wyoming at least was dealing with the painful reality. "The bigger kind of cuts that will resonate with people are all going to come to a head in the early part of next year," Ms. Wiehe said. "We're staring down some deep and very devastating cuts."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
BALLET VLAANDEREN at the Joyce Theater (March 3 5, 7:30 p.m.; March 5, 8 p.m.; through March 7). Also known as the Royal Ballet of Flanders, this Belgian company marks its 50th anniversary with a program by three top international choreographers flaunting its polished contemporary style. "Kaash," by Akram Khan, depicts a version of the goddess Shiva, with design by Anish Kapoor and a score by Nitin Sawhney, who also contributes music to Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's sensual duet, "Faun," with a modern take on Debussy's late 19th century symphonic poem "Prelude a l'apres midi d'un faune." Rounding out the program is "Ten Duets on a Theme of Rescue" by Crystal Pite. It exhibits her mix of sleek turbulence and shadowy elegance. 212 242 0800, joyce.org KIMBERLY BARTOSIK at New York Live Arts (March 4 7, 7:30 p.m.). For this choreographer, the body is a vessel for all the turmoil of our lives, which expresses itself through unbridled exertion. In her new work, "Through the Mirror of Their Eyes," the captivating performers Joanna Kotze, Dylan Crossman and Burr Johnson are a volatile trio swirling around the stage like a hurricane to a score by Sivan Jacobovitz. Then, in comes three young dancers Dahlia Bartosik Murray, Hunter Liss and Winter Willis who deftly navigate the tempest and ultimately lead the way. Like Bartosik's previous work, this one captures the chaos of the world and proposes a path forward. 212 691 6500, newyorklivearts.org Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. DANIEL LEVEILLE DANSE at the 92nd Street Y (Feb. 28, 8 p.m.; Feb. 29, 4 and 8 p.m.). This Montreal company is the latest participant in the 92Y's Harkness Dance Festival, in a performance of "The Fading of the Marvelous," by the Canadian choreographer Catherine Gaudet. In the work, five dancers men and women, all topless move together in unison under bright lights, then separate into spastic solos in which they explore competing sensations. They get sweatier and sweatier until they're grooving and glistening under moody lights, illustrating Gaudet's interest in how the body transforms individually and collectively. 212 415 5500, 92y.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
It was the street noise that made Crystal Wei want to leave her shared apartment in Park Slope, Brooklyn, where she paid a rent of around 1,100 a month. A bus stop was nearby, as was a rowdy bar. Ms. Wei made an uneasy truce with the racket, but her mother, when she visited, couldn't sleep. After her parents sold their house in Chappaqua, N.Y., and moved to a smaller place in California, they offered to buy her a condominium. She was grateful for the opportunity. "I was never going to have the money," said Ms. Wei, 30, a graduate of Williams College who works as a fund raiser for the Orchestra of St. Luke's. She was intrigued by the many buildings sprouting along busy Fourth Avenue. "All the things that were new and shiny really attracted me," she said. Her favorite was a one bedroom at a building called Harbor Hill on 15th Street near Fourth Avenue. The cost was around 425,000, with monthly charges of almost 400. Its location on the first floor started a discussion with her parents. They said they weren't picky, but they were. Her mother said ground floors were unsafe. Her father said top floors were trouble. But he never really explained why. Was it "because heat rises, or burglars can get there easier from the roof?" Ms. Wei said. "I just had no idea." And because so many Brooklyn buildings were three or four stories high, her options for middle floors were limited. "I got a little bit flustered," she said. "I said, O.K., now they are making this difficult." She decided against a new condominium. Once she got in to see some, they seemed small, and the amenities not quite right. There would be "a little Juliet balcony," she said, "but it's nothing you can actually stand on and it's not overlooking anything you would want to look at." New buildings also began to strike her as utilitarian. "Everything was the same. I lost interest." At a lovely converted school building on Clinton Street in Cobble Hill, a one bedroom had 12 foot ceilings and 9 foot windows. The price was 465,000, with monthly charges of almost 800. Then Ms. Wei thought about heating and air conditioning. How much would those cost? How do you even clean such big windows? She liked the uniqueness, but not the impracticality. The floor issue resolved itself. Ground floors and top floors all seemed to have something extra a yard or a rooftop raising them above her price. She moved on to an eight unit building on President Street in Park Slope. A one bedroom there had plenty of built in cabinetry and a large bay window. The price was 365,000, with monthly charges in the mid 600s. But a cash buyer was required, and that scared her off. She sought help from Mary Lowe of the Corcoran Group, an agent she had met at an open house. "I had read 'Home Buying for Dummies,' just to get some basic info," Ms. Wei said, "but decided that wasn't going to carry me through this. I honestly didn't know what to look for beyond turning on the water and opening the refrigerator. I was nervous about all the hidden things I didn't know about homeownership."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
A Delta flight attendant prevented a Georgia doctor from singing the national anthem in honor of a fallen soldier whose body was being carried on the flight, according to a video by the doctor that has been making the rounds on Facebook. Delta Air Lines said in a statement sent to The Times on Tuesday that it had contacted the passenger and was looking into what happened. The airline said it did not have a policy regarding the singing of the national anthem on its planes. The passenger, Dr. Pamela Gaudry, an obstetrician from Savannah, Ga., made the video directly after the flight landed in Atlanta, saying she hoped that it would attract attention and even reach President Trump. Dr. Gaudry, who said she was the wife of a Navy captain who died in the line of duty, said in the video that not singing was "the most uncourageous thing" she had done in her life. "I'm humiliated by my lack of courage to sing the national anthem in my own country, on American soil, with a deceased soldier on the plane," she said in the video. But the doctor did receive her second wish, as the video was viewed more than a million times on Facebook and picked up by news outlets around the country. Dr. Gaudry did not immediately return phone messages requesting an interview Tuesday morning. The attention her video received underscored the ongoing controversy around the national anthem following Mr. Trump's repeated criticism of N.F.L. players who have knelt during performances to call attention to police violence against black people. In response to questions about the doctor's video, the airline said that a Delta honor guard, a group of employees, many of whom are veterans, volunteer to greet every plane that carries a fallen soldier at the airport in Atlanta, as well as those in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles and Washington. "The ceremony is somber and dignified," said a Delta blog post from 2016, describing the tribute. "The coffin is pulled from the aircraft, while flags from all five military branches are displayed behind a military escort." Dr. Gaudry said that the plane's captain had announced that the flight from Philadelphia was carrying a fallen soldier, Army Staff Sgt. Dustin M. Wright, 29, who was one of three soldiers killed in an ambush in Niger earlier this month. A fourth soldier was later found dead. The captain asked that the other passengers remain seated while the coffin, which had been accompanied by another soldier on the flight, was taken off the plane by an honor guard. Dr. Gaudry said that she had been inspired to sing "The Star Spangled Banner" as the soldier left the plane and the coffin was carried out. She asked other passengers to do the same, and some agreed, she said. As the plane started to descend, she said on the video that a flight attendant told her that it was against company policy to proceed with the singing. A second announcement was made, asking that passengers be quiet as the soldier left the plane to accompany the coffin, Dr. Gaudry said. The announcement did not mention that singing the national anthem was against company policy. "We all sat in silence as the honor guard took the soldier off the plane," Dr. Gaudry said. Dr. Gaudry told Fox News that Delta had called her to apologize and that Sergeant Wright's family had also called, to thank her.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
As the sun sank below the New Jersey skyline on a warm Monday, the documentary filmmaker and photographer Elegance Bratton was strolling down Christopher Street in Manhattan. He was headed toward the Hudson River piers, a strip of gentrified urban greenway that still buzzes with the energy of the city's storied vogue ballroom scene. Wearing a baseball cap emblazoned with tiny images of Andy Warhol in drag, Mr. Bratton had the air of an affable tourist guide whose expertise just happened to be coffee shops that were once pornographic film stores and leather sex shops. "Whenever I come here, I do this walk 100 times just up and down," he said. "You always bump into people." And then, right on cue, he ran into DeSean Irby, who is a focus of Mr. Bratton's forthcoming documentary, "Pier Kids." Shot over the course of five years, the film follows the lives of three gay and transgender young people who frequent the waterfront park. "You trying to indoctrinate new arrivals into the lifestyle?" Mr. Bratton said playfully. Mr. Irby, 26 and formerly homeless, replied with a theatrical hand gesture of feigned modesty. Mr. Bratton, 39, feels a spiritual connection to his subjects. When he was 16, he was thrown out of his mother's home in New Jersey for being gay. "Home is where one is most deeply understood," he said, "and the pier on Christopher Street is home for me." The notion of home is also central to "My House," a 10 episode documentary series that he created, currently showing on Viceland. Following in the footsteps of Jennie Livingston's groundbreaking 1990 documentary "Paris Is Burning," the show explores the real life dramas of the house ball circuit, which has seen a resurgence in recent years, with its influence felt in fashion, pop music and television. But unlike the anthropological lens of Ms. Livingston, which some have called exploitative, Mr. Bratton's series offers an insider's view on the sociopolitical nuances of today's scene. In many ways, Mr. Bratton's highly personal approach to documenting his surrogate creative family is the modern ballroom equivalent of Nan Goldin's unfiltered images of friends and lovers during the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, or Ryan McGinley's early 2000s portraits of his photogenic downtown Manhattan crew. "Elegance knows the lingo, the lifestyle, the culture and the art form of how ballroom is," said Precious Ebony, 26, a well known M.C. in the ballroom world. "There's no edit to the show or added MSG. None of that." Starting with his memorable birth name ("I think my mother naming me Elegance may have predisposed me to become an artist and, you know, gay," he said, jokingly), Mr. Bratton's back story is as fascinating as the subjects he documents. After graduating from Seton Hall Preparatory School, an all boys' Catholic school in West Orange, N.J., he spent a decade homeless, bouncing "every place from my mother's home to parks, benches, the pier, lovers' beds and everything in between," he said. At 25, while staying at a shelter in Trenton, he phoned home for help. But since he was "still gay," his mother, a retired corrections officer, advised him to join the military. As fate would have it, he spotted a recruiter outside the shelter the next morning "looking so cute in his dress blues." He made up his mind to enlist right then and there, even though openly gay service members were then banned. Then, taking advantage of educational benefits available to service members, he ditched his uniform in 2010 and enrolled in Columbia University's School of General Studies, with a major in African American studies. While other undergraduates went to visit their families on breaks, Mr. Bratton retreated to Christopher Street to photograph the baby faced drag performers. He first drew notice in 2015, when he published "Bound by Night," a photography book that captured the house ballroom scene in Harlem. He took a fly on the wall approach, shooting performers applying makeup in the bathroom, wigs in hand, and the book was nominated for an award at the prestigious Fotobook Festival in Kassel, Germany. It sold out at art book shops like Bookmarc and Printed Matter. The next year, he released a 12 minute film, "Walk for Me," about the maternal role that transgender women play at balls. It garnered attention at film festivals including Outfest. If Mr. Bratton's biography from homeless youth to closeted military brat to Ivy League educated filmmaker sounds like a Hollywood screenplay, that's because he is writing it, as part of a script lab at the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University. He calls it "'Full Metal Jacket' meets 'Moonlight.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Lauren Yee and Jaclyn Backhaus are this year's winners of the Horton Foote Prize, a biennial award that recognizes new American plays, one recently staged and one unproduced. The winners will both receive 25,000 and a limited edition photograph of Horton Foote, the Pulitzer Prize winning playwright of "The Young Man From Atlanta." Ms. Yee won the outstanding new American play award for "Cambodian Rock Band," her music infused piece about a Cambodian American woman working to prosecute a Khmer Rouge prison warden. The woman's father is a former guitarist who survived imprisonment under the regime and emigrated to the United States. "One of the best things about putting this piece on stage is having people fall in love with the music and fall in love with these characters, such that after seeing the show they go down a rabbit hole to listen to the music and really celebrate who these real artists were and learn a little bit about this history," said Ms. Yee in an interview.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
On the night of the vote, I went to a high school on the edge of Des Moines to watch Iowans caucus. The caucuses have always been screwy under the rubric of quaint, with people offering chocolates for votes and doing coin tosses to make final decisions. But after I watched a kerfuffle, where a woman in a pajama outfit threw a fit when her vote somehow got moved from Biden to Buttigieg, things seemed sketchier than ever. That was just the start of Iowa's auto da fe. Candidates jumped on planes to get out of dodgy Dodge, leaving lower level staffers and the press corps in a cocktail party of confusion at the lobby bar at the Des Moines Marriott. As one campaign staffer told New York magazine's Olivia Nuzzi as he disappeared into the freezing cold Iowa night, the only thing left was to get soused and give himself over to concupiscence. By the time I got to New Hampshire, the Democratic hysteria was rising and a faltering Joe Biden disappeared in a crisis cloud while internecine class war was intensifying. Pete Buttigieg was pre declaring victory, spurring Sanders supporters to dub him "Mayor Cheat" on Twitter. Bernie Sanders spoke on Friday morning, tying Buttigieg to Wall Street and urging Democrats to decide if they were on the side of the working class or greed, "where billionaires control not only our economy, but our political life." PetesBillionaires began trending on Twitter. James Carville, en route to New Hampshire with his Mardi Gras beads to campaign for Michael Bennet, went on viral rants about being "scared to death" for his party as it lurched toward the far left. "Let's get relevant here, people, for sure," he said on MSNBC, adding, "Do we want to be an ideological cult?" As the Republicans stuck together, ruled by fear and self interest, the Democrats shattered apart. "Donald Trump is narrowcasting to African Americans and Latinos with his Super Bowl ad and at the State of the Union, and the economy's doing well, and meanwhile we're fiddling around with a Socialist and Encyclopedia Brown," moaned one top Democrat on the Hill. Democrats from Congress to Los Angeles began whispering hopefully about Michael Bloomberg. "There seems to be a groundswell of support, mostly based on the fact that he'll spend whatever it takes and fight just as dirty as Trump with more resources," said David Israel, a writer in Hollywood.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Looking at the new international series that have arrived on American television and streaming services over the last few months, so many of the standouts were crime shows that we gave in and made this an all crime international roundup. From murder in London to regicide in medieval Korea to fraud on the Cote d'Azur, here are five series presented in order of quality, starting with the very best, that should satisfy your needs for both deduction and exploration. The hit of the year in Britain so far (and the ITV network's highest rated new show since "Broadchurch" in 2013) is this low key, straightforward and economical (2 hours 15 minutes) mini series about the hunt for a serial killer. Based on an actual case in the London suburbs, the story is heavily procedural it takes place almost entirely within the investigation, and nearly all the major characters are police officers and if you like that kind of story, it's tremendously satisfying. Martin Clunes, as the detective assigned to manage the case, plays a variation on his long running role in the medical dramedy "Doc Martin": highly capable but awkward, quarrelsome and unsure of his position at the Met (better known to Americans as Scotland Yard). Expanding the borders of the true crime documentary, this chilling two part series re examines the disappearance of 43 young men in southern Mexico in 2014. (The Spanish langugage title translates as "The Days of Ayotzinapa," referring to the teachers college the victims attended.) Part 1 recreates the night of the disappearance, carefully delineating a chaotic and terrifyingly violent series of events spread across the small city of Iguala. Part 2 recounts the investigations and cover ups that followed, weighs the different theories and offers a thorough indictment of the Mexican state the federal and local governments, the military and the police. The series is presided over by the writer Paco Ignacio Taibo II and features passionate testimony from the journalists Paula Monaco and Anabel Hernandez. Its most indelible characters, though, are the parents of the 43 missing no bodies have ever been found tirelessly protesting, advocating and chanting, "They took them alive, we want them back alive." This rousing South Korean series covers a lot of bases zombie horror, contagion thriller, palace intrigue, horseback action, social satire but it starts with a crime, or the question of whether a crime has been committed. Is the king alive, dead or somewhere in between? And how does that play into his young second wife's attempt to steal the throne from his first son? A Netflix original adapted by Kim Eun hee from her web comic "The Kingdom of the Gods" and directed by Kim Seong hun ("Tunnel"), "Kingdom" has the rich production values you expect from a South Korean historical drama (episodes reportedly cost close to 1.8 million each) but in many ways it feels as if it were made with an international audience in mind. The humor is less broad than usual, the acting more naturalistic, the flashbacks fewer and easier to follow, the family relationships less complicated. Most noticeably, the episode count is kept to six. (That's a bit of a bait and switch, though the season ends on a precipitous cliffhanger and a second season is already in production.) As the crown prince (Ju Ji hoon) leads a small band of allies (including a doctor played by the international star Bae Doo na) trying to keep vampiric zombies from overrunning the country, Korea's traditional class stratification comes in for a strong comedic critique. It's hard to keep all the corpses from reawakening, for example, when the rules allow you to burn peasants but not the nobility. In Season 1 of this elaborate mystery series, five Israelis all apparently civilians, with no connections to one another were accused of working together to kidnap an Iranian official. Season 2, added to Hulu last month, distills the formula: This time three seemingly unconnected, unexceptional Israelis are charged with sabotaging a pipeline. "False Flag" exercises the license provided by Middle Eastern reality to combine the most extreme elements of the police procedural and the conspiracy thriller, and its hairpin turns give "Homeland" a run for its money. The cast of Shin Bet officers who must uncover the missing connections and find the real culprits carries over to the new season, led by Mickey Leon as the sad faced Eitan. The new group of suspects, and their bewildered family and friends, include Hanna Azoulay Hasfari and Moran Rosenblatt, excellent (and funny) as an Orthodox woman and her unorthodox daughter. Like other Israeli thrillers, "False Flag" has learned a lot of its moves from American models (the better to perfect them and send them back), but it can be distinctively different in its details. When was the last time an American bad guy managed to escape by grabbing an assault rifle, sitting down next to a schoolboy on a minibus and pretending to be the hired security guard? Money laundering and art forgery. Nicoise villas and "To Catch a Thief" corniches. A relentless assassin who claws a microchip out of her chest with her fingernails. "Riviera," currently halfway through its American cable run, has all the ingredients of the international melo thriller, and because it's a Neil Jordan project, it's more voluptuous than most (if no more coherent or plausible). Julia Stiles stars as a Midwestern expat whose billionaire art collector husband (Anthony LaPaglia) is blown up on a Russian yacht; the great Swedish actress Lena Olin livens things up as the formidable first wife.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Xerox became synonymous with photocopying and printing. HP's business today is built, in large part, on its printers. Now Xerox wants to combine the two companies. On Wednesday night, HP announced that the previous day it had received a takeover offer from Xerox, after conversations "from time to time about a potential business combination." "We have a record of taking action if there is a better path forward and will continue to act with deliberation, discipline and an eye towards what is in the best interest of all our shareholders," the statement said. A merger would combine two once formidable companies that have faced business difficulties in recent years as demand for printed documents and ink has waned.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
new video loaded: U.S. China relations are bound to change Conversations with luxury and fashion CEOs, celebrities and policymakers about global challenges and changing consumer behavior. Conversations with luxury and fashion CEOs, celebrities and policymakers about global challenges and changing consumer behavior. International Luxury Conference Conversations with luxury and fashion CEOs, celebrities and policymakers about global challenges and changing consumer behavior. Interviews at a New York Times conference with C.E.O.s, policymakers, entrepreneurs and celebrities on the challenges that will transform the luxury industry from rapid technological evolution to growing nationalism to new patterns of consumer behavior. Interviews at a New York Times conference with C.E.O.s, policymakers, entrepreneurs and celebrities on the challenges that will transform the luxury industry from rapid technological evolution to growing nationalism to new patterns of consumer behavior.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
For two months, many Mets fans have looked forward to seeing their beloved team under new ownership. On Thursday night, however, Steve Cohen, the billionaire hedge fund manager who was negotiating to buy the team, confirmed the deal was dead. "I'm very disappointed we couldn't work out a deal," Cohen said in a statement. He added, "I gave it my best shot." Sterling Partners, the entity that owns the Mets, called the transaction "highly complicated" and said in a statement that it became clear the deal "would have been too difficult to execute." Sterling said it now "intends now to pursue a new transaction." Cohen had been negotiating with the Wilpon family, which controls the Mets through Sterling Partners, since the middle of last year. The Mets and Cohen announced in December they were negotiating a deal in which Cohen, who currently has an 8 percent stake in the team, would become the majority owner. The deal included an unusual provision that allowed Fred Wilpon, the managing owner of the Mets, and his son Jeff, the team's chief operating officer, to remain in their roles for five years after the completion of the sale. It was that provision that largely resulted in the talks falling apart, according to four people who were familiar with the discussions and who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to comment publicly. Cohen believed the Wilpons would play largely ceremonial roles, while the Wilpons wanted to continue to be active in the operation of the franchise, according to the people. Reacting to multiple reports that blamed the Wilpons for the failing negotiations, Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred pushed back earlier on Thursday. "Based on conversations with the buyer and seller on an ongoing basis," Manfred said at an owners' meeting in Orlando, Fla., "the assertion that the transaction fell apart because of something that the Wilpons did is completely and utterly unfair." None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. The Wilpons and the owners of each baseball team are among Manfred's 30 bosses. Manfred has a long history with the Wilpon family. He was part of the M.L.B. hierarchy when his predecessor, Bud Selig, helped the Wilpons remain in control of the team by having the league loan them money during the crippling scandal of the financier Bernard Madoff, with whom the Wilpons had invested hundreds of millions of dollars. With a deal involving Cohen now off the table, the question remains of who will own the Mets down the road. Cohen wasn't the only potential buyer the Wilpons talked to during the second half of 2019, but he emerged as the favorite because of his apparent willingness to agree to the unique provision, according to two of the people familiar with the process. In some ways, the floor price for the Mets has been set. Anyone willing to buy a majority stake at a valuation of around 2.5 billion the amount Cohen and the Wilpons were negotiating over and allow Fred and Jeff Wilpon to remain in their roles for a number of years can come forward. The identities of Fred and his eldest son, Jeff, are closely tied to the Mets. They are intimately involved with all of the team's operations, so few were surprised they wanted to maintain some level of control over the franchise despite selling a majority stake. As the Mets return to the market, the conditions that caused the Wilpons to agree to sell the team in the first place endure. The potential sale to Cohen, according to interviews with a dozen people who are directly involved with the Mets and the Wilpon family, was driven by family members who are wary of having Jeff Wilpon in charge of such a valuable asset as his father and uncle step back from the franchise. They would rather take the huge profit from a sale. Fred Wilpon is 83 and his brother in law Saul Katz, who is also involved with the Mets, is 80. Whether a deep pocketed buyer who would accede to the Wilpons' terms with Cohen exists or whether someone would end up paying more than Cohen offered to gain immediate control remains to be seen. The sale talks broke down over the exact issue that most buyers wouldn't even consider entertaining: There are not many willing to spend billions for a franchise while letting other people run it for five years. The Wilpon family became co owners of the Mets in 1986, and became controlling owners in 2002. While the team has reached the World Series twice under their stewardship, they have been largely unsuccessful, qualifying for the playoffs just six times in the past 33 seasons. For years Mets fans have clamored for a sale, frustrated that the team plays in the country's largest market yet often has a payroll more befitting a mid market club. As spring training approaches some players have already reported to the team's facility in Port St. Lucie, Fla. the Mets have the league's eighth highest payroll, according to Spotrac. In 2019 the team's opening day payroll of nearly 155 million was the 10th largest in M.L.B. the first time the Mets had been in the top 10 since 2011. Not too long ago, it was easy to imagine the Mets emerging from spring training with a newfound sense of hope and optimism. They were going to be led by a new manager, Carlos Beltran, a well liked and respected former player. They would have a new owner, Cohen, who as one of the richest men in America could easily increase payroll while covering the team's financial shortfalls, which resulted in the team's losing 50 million last season, according to a person familiar with the team's finances. Fans seemed largely unconcerned by Cohen's brushes with the law in his investment business, including his agreement to pay a 1.2 billion fine in 2013 to to settle charges related to insider trading at his firm. Instead, the franchise is now in turmoil. Beltran was fired last month, before managing a single game, after he was the only player personally named in M.L.B.'s blistering report on the Astros' sign stealing scandal. And as a new sales process begins, the Mets will continue to be dogged by ownership uncertainty. Not everyone is concerned. Asked about the questions surrounding the team's management, General Manager Brodie Van Wagenen said late last month that it was business as usual for the franchise. "Our goals are to win now and win in the future," Van Wagenen said at a Mets town hall meeting in January. "We've been very, very direct and we haven't shied away from that, from that mission statement and we won't as we go forward. The day to day operations of our club have been consistent in which I started, I would anticipate that being the same going forward."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
There are so many upsetting things about the assault Lacy Crawford suffered in 1990, when she was 15 and a junior at St. Paul's School in New Hampshire, but one of the most upsetting is how commonplace she believes it was. "This may sound disingenuous, but I don't think my assault is particularly interesting," she said in an interview earlier this month. She speaks deliberately, calmly, as if observing her feelings at a remove. "There are so many stories of abuse and assault. Mine is one of just a dime a dozen." Crawford has had 30 years to grapple with what happened that day. But her memoir, "Notes on a Silencing," out next Tuesday from Little, Brown, focuses much more on what came afterward. For her, St. Paul's response only compounded the attack, piling a second trauma on top of the first. "The way they came to their own conclusions about what happened," Crawford, now 45, said by phone from Southern California, where she lives with her husband and three sons, "that was breathtaking to me and remains breathtaking to me." She added: "The edge has not come off that." Lacy Crawford's book "Notes on a Silencing" comes out on July 7. The details are horrible to repeat and horrible to read: how two senior boys pinned Crawford down, grabbed her breasts, unzipped her jeans and penetrated her with their fingers; how they jammed their penises deep into her mouth; how they bragged about it afterward. The attack left her feverish and with a chronically raw, bleeding throat that made talking and eating painful, she writes. It turned out that she had been infected with herpes. The school's story at least the story officials told Crawford's devastated parents was that the encounter was consensual, that their daughter brought it on herself, that she was promiscuous and hardly a victim. They never asked Lacy for her own account, she writes, and they made it clear that unless she dropped the matter she would not be able to return to school. "Trust me," one official told her father. "She's not a good girl." As far as St. Paul's was concerned, the issue was then closed. The boys who attacked her weren't accused of wrongdoing, and Crawford doesn't name them in her book. She returned to school, graduating in 1992, but she felt like a ghost of a person, shrouded in private misery, rendered voiceless even as her throat healed. Her friends drifted away; other students whispered about her; someone threw things at her from a dorm window as she walked by. She made herself "as silent and slender as I could," she writes. "I was diseased; I was disgraced; I was alone." St. Paul's, like a number of other private boarding schools, including Phillips Academy, Choate Rosemary Hall, Phillips Exeter Academy, the Hotchkiss School and St. George's School, has in recent years had to face up to and answer for decades of sexual abuse and misconduct. In 2017, a report commissioned by St. Paul's found substantiated abuse reports by faculty members of students stretching back as far as 1948. In 2018, the school reached a settlement with the New Hampshire attorney general that put the institution under the state's oversight for five years and installed a compliance officer on campus to ensure that it followed basic protocols about protecting students and investigating complaints. Crawford was interviewed as part of the attorney general's investigation. A spokesman for the attorney general's office said her participation had helped provide the basis for "what we continue to believe is an unprecedented settlement with the school." Kathy Giles, who last year became St. Paul's rector, as the principal is called, said in an interview that the school did not dispute Crawford's account. "We respect Lacy's courage and we admire her voice," Giles said. "There's a truth to her experience that's powerful and important." The school is committed to doing better by its students, she added. "Who would want that experience for anyone for Lacy, for her family, for her friends?" she said. "If there's anything we've learned, it's that we have to receive the stories and respect the experience and then take what steps we need to address the hurt and pain." Read our review of "Notes on a Silencing." After Giles read an advance copy of the book, she requested a meeting with Crawford. The two had lunch in California last winter. "She apologized six different ways to Wednesday," Crawford said. "I said thank you, and I thought that that and my Starbucks card could get me a latte. But so far, the quality of our discourse makes me hopeful." For years, Crawford kept her story private. She went to Princeton, volunteered as a rape crisis counselor, wrote her master's thesis on the use of rape testimony in legal cases, and worked as a high school teacher and environmental campaigner, among other jobs. Before "Notes on a Silencing," she wrote "Early Decision," a satirical novel about the college admissions process based on her work as a private admissions counselor. She never planned to write a book about her attack. It was only after she learned about Chessy Prout, a St. Paul's student who was sexually assaulted in 2014, when she was 15, and who waived her anonymity to discuss the case publicly, that Crawford began to think afresh about telling her story. (Owen Labrie, the St. Paul's student convicted of Prout's assault, served six months in jail.) Crawford started writing her book in the fall of 2017, working while her three young sons were at school, and on weekends, when her husband took them on daylong outings. By March 2018, she had most of a first draft. "The thing about assault is that it devastates so many people," she said. "Not just the victim, but also the people who are told and who share the pain; and the people who are told and don't know how to respond; and the people who aren't told but feel that something really bad has entered the room but can't put it into words." Therapy, a loving marriage, raising her children and writing the book all helped Crawford come through to the other side of her experience to redress the balance of power between herself and the boys who assaulted her, between herself and the school that betrayed her. The thing about a book is that you get to have the last word. "I felt utterly exposed and shamed," she said of her younger self. "It was a very small community, and it was all I had at that age. But for me now, I'm not going to hold on to it any more. I'm done with shame." Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Gaptoothed and gorgeous, the title character of "Goldie" (played by the fashion model Slick Woods) wears a carpet of tangerine fuzz on her head and avocado sneakers on her ever moving feet. Barely 18, Goldie doesn't have much, but she does have dreams, chief among them to dance in an upcoming hip hop video. A canary yellow faux fur coat she spies in a store window would be perfect for that performance, and not incidentally for the woman she fiercely wants to become. Whatever the cost, she's gotta have it. Colorful as a box of Skittles, "Goldie" (written and directed by the Dutch filmmaker Sam de Jong) turns its section of the Bronx into a world of pizza slices and hand to mouth cash deals. In part a commentary on how monetizing one's image has become a viable economic lifeline, the movie constructs an obstacle course of hardships between Goldie and her aspirations. When her mother (Marsha Stephanie Blake) is arrested for unspecified reasons, Goldie, terrified that her two preteen half sisters will be put into care, grabs them up and takes to the streets. But people on the margins rarely have rich friends, and the cash Goldie has swiped from her mother's shifty, live in boyfriend (Danny Hoch) won't go very far. So for the next while, Goldie hustles the girls from one possible savior to another a former teacher, a variety of sketchy acquaintances while trying to sell her mother's pain medication. With every put down, her can do energy ramps up; and as the three traverse the city's streets, bounced along by Nathan Halpern's encouraging score, de Jong outlines their bodies in neon bright squiggles of color protective shields against desperate circumstances.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Reece Shearsmith, left, and Johnny Flynn in "Hangmen," which arrives at the Atlantic Theater Company after a London run. Please allow him to introduce himself, not that he's remotely shy about doing so. He's a man of stealth and taste, a smooth talker out of 1960s London who dresses like a Teddy boy and seduces with buttery brashness. The name of this spiffy young devil, whose contemptuous charm is dripping from the stage of the Linda Gross Theater, is Mooney. He's a dab hand at misdirection, the sort of fellow who sets even stolid minds spinning in paranoia and perplexity. Mooney, it must be said, has a lot in common with the artful playwright who created him. That would be Martin McDonagh, whose criminally enjoyable "Hangmen," a juicy tale of capital punishment and other forms of retribution, opened on Monday night. And aren't we happy that Mr. McDonagh, who of late has mostly been otherwise engaged with movies (including the serious Oscar contender "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"), has reclaimed his mantle as the great deceiver of contemporary theater? Mooney, portrayed with fabulous insinuating swagger by Johnny Flynn, is the chief troublemaker in this sly throat gripping mystery, which originated at London's Royal Court Theater and arrives here courtesy (thank you!) of the Atlantic Theater Company. And though it might be an overstatement to call Mooney Mr. McDonagh's alter ego, you must admit that their methods of grabbing and holding our attention are not dissimilar. Planting false information, taking advantage of our willingness to believe the worst, diverting our focus with left field wordplay, investing everyday details with ominous import, making sick jokes that may not be jokes at all. Such tools are part of both Mooney's and Mr. McDonagh's modus operandi in this dark tale of Northern England, set largely in a pub owned by a man whose life's work has just been made illegal. That profession provides the title of "Hangmen," which is directed with gleaming precision and grinning relish by Matthew Dunster. And before we settle in for a cozy, chilly chat with some loquacious drinkers at their local, we get to see our leading executioner in action. His name is Harry (Mark Addy, first rate), who has the complacent, well fed look of an eater of beef and death dealing servant of the crown. In the opening scene, set in 1963, Harry, aided by his stuttering assistant, Syd (a creature of Dickensian furtiveness, as played by Reece Shearsmith), secures the noose around the neck of a convicted young murderer who dies protesting his innocence. Played with blazing desperation by Gilles Geary, the doomed man gasps out a last minute promise to haunt his assassins. ("Well, that's not a nice thing to say, is it?" says a peeved Syd.) Remember his name: Hennessy. Harry and Syd certainly will. Two years later, Hennessy inevitably comes up in the conversation at the pub that Harry now owns. It is, as Harry puts it "a momentous bloody day," the date on which capital punishment has been made obsolete. A young reporter (Owen Campbell) is there, asking for a few commemorative words from Harry, and if Harry is smart (which he ain't) he'll say nothing. In the meantime, our Mr. Mooney slithers into the pub, bringing the disharmonious vibe of a swinging, sexed up London into this frozen outpost of the middle class 1950s. That's about all you need in the way of setup, though I suppose you should know that Harry has a very bored wife, Alice (Sally Rogers), and a restless, terminally naive 15 year old daughter, Shirley (Gaby French). The denizens at Harry's bar a sheeplike herd of enjoyably varied bleats include an ineffectual policeman (David Lansbury), and three wilting barflies (Billy Carter, Richard Hollis and John Horton) who are drawn to the place by its owner's notoriety. Lurking at the plot's edges is Harry's archrival from his hanging days, Albert (Maxwell Caulfield). The big subject of "Hangmen" is the uses and abuses of vengeance, a theme evidently much on Mr. McDonagh's mind. "Three Billboards" traces the wayward forms taken by the urge to get even in a small American town. Since "Three Billboards" is a Hollywood movie, there is sunlight, real and metaphoric, throughout, including glimmers of that audience pleasing essential known as Redemption. "Hangmen," in contrast, is every bit as dark as Mr. McDonagh's early, bloody plays set in rural Ireland (including "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" and "The Lieutenant of Inishmore"). As for redemption, forget about it. People are either foolish or dangerously flawed in the world of "Hangmen." For a writer of Mr. McDonagh's scalpel edged gifts, these unadmirable qualities are joyous opportunities, allowing for the sort of conversation in which stupidity and pettiness achieve the sparkle of wit. "Hangmen" is often very funny. But as you laugh, you may feel the walls of Anna Fleischle's clammy pub set closing in on you. Replacing the estimable David Morrissey, whom I saw in London two years ago, Mr. Addy brings an extra layer of fatuity and vanity to Harry, which makes you suspect that any comeuppance he receives won't seriously dent this thick skin. The excellent Ms. Rogers returns as Harry's frowzy helpmeet, a woman narcotized by monotony, who can still put on the dog for a handsome stranger. An affectingly awkward Ms. French, new to the cast, and Mr. Flynn work up a thrilling fly meets spider chemistry in their scenes together. And though the play features two simulated deaths (though without the usual McDonagh carnage quotient), its most viscerally disturbing moment finds Mooney slowly, slowly tracing an arc in the air with his hand, to show Shirley he knows what a curve is. If that doesn't sound scary to you, then you don't know Mr. McDonagh, who understands that the most profound shock effects are often rooted in life's most mundane elements. (Interestingly, he registers as more of a shrewd disciple of Alfred Hitchcock in his plays than he does in his movies.) That's a lesson that's perfectly grasped by the sensational Mooney of Mr. Flynn, an original cast member whose resume includes Shakespeare with Mark Rylance and his own folk rock band. Mooney revels in scrambling notions of what's funny and what's frightening. Niggling arguments about words abound in Mr. McDonagh's world. "Hanged" versus "hung" as a past tense crops up at the darnedest times here. And Mooney is given to earnestly weighing the adjectives that best suit him, as if they were neckties: creepy (no!), funny (well, not really) and menacing (absolutely). He's wrong, though. Mooney is hilariously menacing, or do I mean menacingly hilarious? In any case, he's a happy creepy reminder that Mr. McDonagh can still work his double edged, sinister magic on a stage, making breathless, alarmed and deeply satisfied dupes of us all.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
From Herman Melville to Mae West, pinball machines to a slave ship, Robert Indiana drew inspiration for his art from American sources that had deeply personal meanings. Perhaps no one has a better understanding of those associations than Barbara Haskell, a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art who organized the retrospective of Mr. Indiana's work, "Beyond Love," in 2013 14, that rediscovered his career. These are her appraisals of some of her favorite works by the artist. Robert Indiana obituary A sense of isolation near the end Another view of his work The origins of "LOVE" Mr. Indiana linked this painting with the performance of Mae West, his favorite movie star from childhood, as Tira the lion tamer in "I'm No Angel" (1933). But the words "law," "cat," "men," and "sex" in the piece alluded equally to the perils of homosexuality in an age when sodomy was illegal, and served as a coded reference to the gay community, of which Mr. Indiana was a part. More than any other artist of his generation, Mr. Indiana identified himself as an American. To this end, he worked in what he felt was a quintessentially American style hard edge and polychromatic and allied himself with American writers and painters from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In 1961 62, he declared his bond with his literary past by stenciling sentences onto his paintings from canonical novels and poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman and Herman Melville. This painting, his first literary work, drew from the opening chapter of Longfellow's "The Song of Hiawatha" (1855), in which warriors from Native American tribes are called together and urged to forgo war in favor of peace. This work is the first in a series of paintings in which Mr. Indiana addressed the ambiguities of the American dream. By situating ideas associated with gambling, such as "take all" and "tilt," alongside kinetic imagery suggestive of the flashing lights and neon glare of pinball and slot machines, Mr. Indiana celebrates the promise and fantasy of American prosperity while also acknowledging the failures of American ethics. Here Mr. Indiana harnessed the cheerful and reassuring language of mass advertising and the visual cacophony of roadside gambling establishments to communicate a message that was simultaneously dark and celebratory. With its flat, high keyed color and hard edge, staccato forms, the painting evoked both the pains and joys of American life, openly acknowledging what Mr. Indiana called "all the meaner aspects of life" while testifying to America as "the best of all possible worlds." In this painting, Mr. Indiana allied himself with both America's literary and visual past by paying dual homage to Charles Demuth and William Carlos Williams, whose poem "The Great Figure" (1921) Demuth had memorialized in his painting "I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold" (1928). Mr. Indiana saw Demuth as a precursor an artist who had worked in a crisp Precisionist style and used words and numbers symbolically. Drawing his image of the figure five directly from Demuth's composition, Mr. Indiana inscribed "1928" and "1963" in his painting's center panel to indicate the years in which Demuth and he completed their respective works. He placed the four other panels in the shape of a cross to symbolize the head, arms and feet of the human body, as well as the division of the world into four elements: existence, love, survival and sin, as conveyed by the words "die," "hug," "eat" and "err." Throughout his career, Mr. Indiana used his art to address political and ethical issues, particularly those involving civil rights and peace. This painting calls attention to the legacy of racial injustice in America, as epitomized by the slave ship Rebecca. After depositing African slaves in Cuba in the 19th century, the ship loaded provisions near what would become Mr. Indiana's neighborhood, Coenties Slip in Lower Manhattan. The words "eat" and "die" held deeply personal meanings for Mr. Indiana from the ubiquitous "EAT" signs that adorned diners in the Midwest to his mother's last words to him before dying: "Have you had enough to eat?" Yet the two words also express something so fundamental about the life cycle that they need no interpretation. Their declarations of rage, triumph, fear and warning possess a directness and universality that Mr. Indiana likened to the Ten Commandments. Mr. Indiana first created this now famous design as a Christmas card for the Museum of Modern Art in 1965. He submitted the design in four different color combinations, and the museum chose the most chromatically intense: red, blue and green. Mr. Indiana's associations with the word "love" were ambiguous. His family had never used it, and, from all accounts, his adult relationships had made him wary of the fragility and precariousness of love. "Love is a dangerous commodity fraught with peril," he said. LOVE's tilted "O," which threatens to fall off the otherwise stable design, implicitly critiqued the often hollow sentimentality associated with the word, metaphorically suggesting unrequited longing and disappointment rather than saccharine affection. Yet what ultimately makes the image so powerful and resilient is its ability to contain multiple, even contradictory, meanings simultaneously.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Entering Ben Pederson's solo exhibition, "Some Stuff You Forgot About," at Ortega y Gasset Projects, feels like stepping into a dream world: You see familiar forms, but they don't adhere to a logic you understand. There's a pair of jean shorts (part of a work called "Jorts," from 2017) dangling upside dow n and fitted on painted cardboard stumps that look like cactuses. In another work, "Sup?" (2017), a short, speckled ladder hangs in midair. Recurring rectangles covered with bright streaks and blobs of color look like miniature abstract paintings or clay tablets or even photo frames. Many of these objects are sculptural remnants from Mr. Pederson's studio. They're connected by hooks, chains and strands of beads in a series of dazzling mobiles that fill the hallway leading to the gallery's main space. Hanging floor to ceiling and obstructing the path, the mobiles form a kind of web that seems to evoke Mr. Pederson's wacky artistic subconscious. Visitors are both invited and forced to navigate it . The tone in the main gallery is more sober. A book displays 28 watercolors, each one a distinct shape awash in pattern and color. Mr. Pederson, who says ideas often come to him from an "Alien Platonic Realm," created the forms while in a meditative state. They reappear in three dimensions in a set of sculptures suspended from the ceiling and a line of "Shape Trees" (2018) displayed on pedestals, where they seem to sprout from artificial branches. Mr. Pederson's work can seem purely playful but at his best, he mines the limits of recognizability to challenge our perception. His shapes and sculptural scraps are like pictographs in an artistic language that's still unfolding. JILLIAN STEINHAUER Every piece in the Japanese artist Tatsuo Miyajima's "Innumerable Life/Buddha" is a square grid of red LED numerals counting down from nine to one. They descend at various speeds, and occasionally, apparently at random, wink out entirely. (According to the show's news release, Mr. Miyajima leaves out the zero because it stands for death, but I'd prefer to imagine that he does it as a sort of double wink to the empty circles of traditional Zen ink painting.) The smallest grid is 30 inches by 30 inches , or 30 digits by 30, and the largest, 100 by 100, giving it a total of 10,000 searingly bright digital counters. That number is no coincidence. In East Asia, "ten thousand" is a proverbial stand in for the myriad things of the phenomenal world. And Mr. Miyajima's wall pieces, whatever their incidental similarity to electronic or minimal art, are very traditional Buddhist portraits of the world as an apparently fleeting, essentially changeless realm that can be both heaven and hell. The constant red flicker of what looks like urgent information conjures a mood of existential emergency: They look like control panels at Norad on a terrible day. But the pattern of scattered lights going off evokes the serenely weightless beauty of a gentle snowfall on a hidden pond. WILL HEINRICH History and place are treated like fantasies in Sophie von Hellermann's group of new paintings at Greene Naftali, "Ileden," which takes its title from a bucolic hamlet in Kent, England. Working in a new studio there, Ms. von Hellermann was motivated by Ileden's natural surroundings as well as by stories that reached her ears while she was there. "Ileden Woods" (all works are from 2018), "Buzzard," "Pheasant" and "Moonrise" seem painted from life experience albeit in bright acid colors and in a flat, illustrative style. "Viking Sword" relates the story, which Ms. von Hellermann heard while working in Ileden , about a girl finding a 3,000 year old pre Viking sword in a Swedish lake. Other works were inspired by a local World War II plane crash in which the Polish pilot miraculously survived, a fire that burned down Ileden Manor, or people dancing the night away in discos somewhere in the world. Ms. von Hellermann's quick, immediate looking approach has the breathlessness and dynamism of an old Disney animation film, but she draws from a panoply of historical painting styles, from old masters to Marc Chagall. (Similarly, Tyrus Wong, who helped create Disney's recognizable style in the 1940s, based his work partly on Song dynasty landscape paintings.) Ms. von Hellermann, who is based in London, remains self deprecating about her process, saying in an accompanying gallery release that she is always aware "that being a painter is ridiculous." That sense of play, of unserious seriousness, translates into joyous, ecstatic compositions, and turns painting into a fantasy space, supported by stories that sound like modern fairy tales. MARTHA SCHWENDENER More than 80 artworks, by as many artists, use erasure and deletion as positive techniques in "Under Erasure," curated by Heather and Raphael Rubinstein at Pierogi Gallery. Text pieces range from Tom Phillips's "A Humument," an elaborately painted over found novel that the artist has been reworking since 1966, to Jen Bervin's "Nets" (2004), which grays out most of the words in Shakespeare's sonnets to create spare new poems like this one, from Sonnet 14: "Pointing to each/ constant/ from/ this/ date." Visual art analogues, many of which also use text, include Samuel Jablon's scribbly red painting "Half Destroyed," in which the piece's title is reduced to a set of free form wavery lines, and a small abstraction by Charline von Heyl that finds a muddy new color in a hasty smear. Erasure is protest in Ariana Boussard Reifel's "Between the Lines," for which the artist individually excised every word from a white supremacist book called "RaHoWa," and it stands for gentrification in Loren Munk's "An Attempted Documentation of Williamsburg 1981 2008." But the piece that best captures this encyclopedic show's central insight that creation is inseparable from destruction, because you can't get one thing without losing another is Ms. Rubinstein's canvas "Painting as a Non Professional Experiment." In it, she repurposes Mr. Rubinstein's similarly titled poem about the solitude of writing by painting over the word "poetry," whenever it appears, with "painting." WILL HEINRICH	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Monday's momentous Supreme Court decision protecting L.G.B.T.Q. people against workplace discrimination was so big that it crashed the court's computer system. For nearly half an hour, those of us at home, anxiously refreshing our browsers, knew that the decision had come down but could download only the first page of the headnote, the official summary: "Held: An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender violates Title VII." But who wrote the opinion? And what was the vote? Eventually, of course, the surprises were revealed: Justice Neil Gorsuch and 6 to 3. In the few days since then, I've been pondering: What do people need to know about Bostock v. Clayton County beyond its bottom line? And where, in this mammoth set of opinions a modest 33 pages for Justice Gorsuch but an indigestible 135 pages for the dissents does the decision's beating heart lie? The legal academic blogs are full of vigorous debate over who, in this dispute over statutory meaning, was the more authentic "textualist": Justice Gorsuch, who called his conclusion the "necessary consequence" of the "starkly broad" language Congress chose 56 years ago when it prohibited employment discrimination "because of sex"? Or Justice Samuel Alito, whose reasoning boils down to two sentences in his long opinion's second paragraph: "Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination on any of five specified grounds: 'race, color, religion, sex and national origin,'" Justice Alito wrote. "Neither 'sexual orientation' nor 'gender identity' appears on that list." I'll leave the textualism debate to my academic colleagues. I want to talk about the sharply contrasting vantage points from which the majority and the dissent (and here I refer to Justice Alito, since Justice Kavanaugh's opinion added nothing of moment) viewed the issue, whether from the past, present or future. These clashing perspectives, more than a debate over the canons of statutory interpretation, help explain the decision and may even help in understanding a court that defied most expectations with its decision and might do so again. Justice Gorsuch anchored his opinion in the world of today; the past and the future are not the majority's concerns. "These cases involve no more than the straightforward application of legal terms with plain and settled meanings," he said. That those who wrote those terms into law might not have expected them to apply as the court was now applying them made no difference: The language they wrote is the language they wrote, and "the limits of the drafters' imagination supply no reason to ignore the law's demands." As for the future, Justice Gorsuch said, "whether other policies and practices might or might not qualify as unlawful discrimination or find justifications under other provisions of Title VII are questions for future cases, not these." Justice Alito's dissenting opinion, by contrast, was all about the past, of which he appeared almost willfully ignorant, and the future, of which he seemed terrified. First, the past: "Statutes consist of communications between members of a particular linguistic community, one that existed in a particular place and at a particular time, and these communications must therefore be interpreted as they were understood by that community at that time," Justice Alito wrote. "In 1964, ordinary Americans reading the text of Title VII would not have dreamed that discrimination because of sex meant discrimination because of sexual orientation, much less gender identity." He added that "these exotic understandings of sex discrimination would not have crossed their minds," and he further observed that in 1964, homosexuality was regarded as a mental disorder and transgender was "a concept that was essentially unknown to the public at that time." My suggestion of willful ignorance stems from this passage in Justice Alito's opinion: "Title VII prohibits discrimination because of sex itself, not everything that is related to, based on, or defined with reference to, 'sex.' Many things are related to sex. Think of all the nouns other than 'orientation' that are commonly modified by the adjective 'sexual.' Some examples yielded by a quick computer search are 'sexual harassment,' 'sexual assault,' 'sexual violence,' 'sexual intercourse,' and 'sexual content.'" Does the court really think that Title VII prohibits discrimination on all these grounds?" Justice Alito's computer evidently didn't inform him that in 1986, 24 years after the passage of Title VII, the Supreme Court recognized sexual harassment as a form of sex discrimination. The case was Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson. The opinion was by William Rehnquist, at the time an associate justice and the court's most conservative member, and the vote was 9 to 0. Sexual harassment had not entered the lexicon until 1979, when a law professor, Catharine MacKinnon, published a pathbreaking book, "Sexual Harassment of Working Women." Years of feminist activism followed in an effort to incorporate the concept into existing law. In fact, the Supreme Court has consistently read Title VII generously to cover situations that were surely not on the screen of the statute's sponsors. A unanimous opinion by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor in 1993 adopted a broad definition of a workplace atmosphere so hostile or abusive as to amount to sex discrimination. And in 1998, another unanimous opinion, this time by Justice Antonin Scalia, the patron saint of judicial textualism, held that Title VII covers sexual harassment when both perpetrator and victim are of the same sex. Forced by the majority opinion's highlighting of that precedent, Oncale v. Sundowner Offshore Services, to acknowledge its existence, Justice Alito dismissed it as "thoroughly unremarkable." Given his omission of the Meritor Savings Bank precedent 23 pages earlier in his opinion, Justice Alito's explanation for why the Oncale case proved nothing was remarkable indeed: that after all, the court had already established that sexual harassment was covered by Title VII. So much for the past. And what of the future? The man is not lacking in imagination. Justice Alito offered a 10 page checklist of what to fear from the Bostock decision. Among them, bathrooms! Citing a brief filed by an organization called Defend My Privacy, he warned that "for women who have been victimized by sexual assault or abuse, the experience of seeing an unclothed person with the anatomy of a male in a confined and sensitive location such as a bathroom or locker room can cause serious psychological harm." And then there is free speech! ("The court's decision may also pressure employers to suppress any statements by employees expressing disapproval of same sex relationships and sex reassignment procedures.") And of course, Justice Alito worried about its impact on freedom of religion, a subject that deeply engages the court in any event. Within the next few weeks, the court will decide two cases on the scope of the so called ministerial exception, a judicially created concept that exempts churches and religious institutions from having to abide by federal anti discrimination laws for some categories of employees. Which categories? Ministers, obviously, but football coaches at religious schools? Lay classroom teachers? Receptionists? That's what the court will tell us shortly. Without doubt, this week's decision heightens the significance of those imminent rulings, given the receptivity justices showed during oral arguments to very broad application of the exception. Based on last month's arguments in the two cases, I don't expect to be cheering the result. But Monday's decision is something to cheer, even if there prove to be holes in the web of legal protection that six justices have cast over a group of people who not very long ago were, to paraphrase the retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, strangers to the law. We are all made better off by the court's insistence that Title VII protects individuals. "Title VII liability is not limited to employers who, through the sum of all of their employment actions, treat the class of men differently than the class of women," Justice Gorsuch wrote. "Instead, the law makes each instance of discriminating against an individual employee because of that individual's sex an independent violation of Title VII." What does it mean to say that the Bostock decision is anchored in today's world? More than 200 major employers told the justices in a brief they filed on behalf of the gay and transgender plaintiffs that a quiet revolution is taking place with the stamp of approval of the establishment of which they are a part. As the court was considering the case following last October's argument, a gay man was running a credible campaign for a major party's presidential nomination. In the next few weeks, we will learn, among other things, whether the court will abide by its precedents on abortion. But a series of suprise decisions have dominated the past week. On Monday, over the dissenting votes of Justices Thomas and Alito, the court refused to hear the Trump administration's challenge to California's "sanctuary city" policy, which protects immigrants in state detention from being turned over to federal officers. The court had the administration's petition under active consideration since January before denying it without explanation. And in other action on Monday, only Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh were left to complain when the court, to the surprise of nearly everyone, turned down 10 Second Amendment petitions that would have given what once looked like an eager majority a chance to further expand individual gun rights. Then, on Thursday, the court blocked the Trump administration's effort to end the Obama administration's program that protects hundreds of thousands of young immigrants known as Dreamers from deportation. The 5 to 4 decision, with a majority opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, offered the White House a chance to justify the termination on firmer legal grounds. But at the same time, the chief justice appeared to doom such an effort to failure by stressing the need to take into account the "reliance interests" of the young people who have used the opportunity to deepen their roots in the only country they have known by finishing school, building families and contributing to the economy. Random events, or straws in the wind evidence that the justices have decided to do their part to cool the culture wars rather than inflame them? We'll see soon enough. Reading Justice Gorsuch's Bostock opinion, I was thrown back to the summer of 2017, when I found myself in a social gathering of a half dozen fellow progressives and one prominent conservative lawyer with whom we were all friendly. It was a civil but increasingly pointed conversation as we pressed the lawyer, first gently and then more firmly, on whether he actually supported the Muslim travel ban and other actions of the Trump administration's opening months that troubled the rest of us. He took the bait in good humor but finally, all but throwing up his hands, he cut the conversation off. "Look," he said. "We got Gorsuch." The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Poriferans, better known as sponges, are squishy, stationary and filled with holes. Ctenophores, also called comb jellies, are soft blobs wreathed by feathery cilia. For the past decade, the two groups have been caught up in a raging battle, at least in the pages of scientific journals. At stake is a noble place in evolutionary history: closest living analogue of the first ever animal. A new analysis, published Wednesday in Royal Society Open Science, hands victory back to the sponges , although more bouts are sure to come. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. All animals, from sponges and comb jellies to humans and other mammals, have particular characteristics in common: We're multicellular, our cells have nuclei and we consume food rather than make it. We also all have a common ancestor, which inhabited the oceans at least 550 million years ago and shared those traits. But no one knows for sure what that first animal looked like, or how it lived. That's why scientists look at existing species to shed light on the founder of the animal kingdom. "By comparing modern animals, we're trying to infer what the ancestor was like," said Antonis Rokas, an evolutionary biologist at Vanderbilt University. "How complex was it? What kind of genes did it have, and what kinds of traits?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Writing in The Lancet Infectious Diseases, the researchers say their findings need to be verified by other studies, but meanwhile, detailed case histories should be taken of people who have had MERS to find out if they had been exposed to camels or their milk or meat. Some researchers praised the study. Dr. W. Ian Lipkin, a virus expert at Columbia University who has been studying MERS, said, "I think it's compelling evidence that dromedaries are infected with MERS or a related coronavirus." The study does not prove that the animals have infected humans, he added, but he said it was plausible because people in the Middle East have a great deal of contact with camels as racing animals, pets and sources of food. William Karesh, a veterinarian and executive vice president of EcoHealth Alliance, a group also studying MERS, said that finding the virus itself in an animal would be stronger and more convincing evidence. But he said the new research was well done and added, "All the clues in a mystery are valuable."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
MILLBURN, N.J. If good tunes were all you needed for a good musical, there would be many more outstanding jukebox shows by now. Exhibit umpteenth of how tough it is to master the genre is the limp "My Very Own British Invasion" at the Paper Mill Playhouse. As its title suggests, this world premiere production superimposes a biographical angle (think "Beautiful") onto a snapshot of a hip and happening period (think "Motown" for a far worse example). In this case we are in mid 1960s London, where a milquetoast teenager named Peter Noone (the appropriately affable, sweet voiced Jonny Amies) is conquering the charts with his band, Herman's Hermits. Following the path forged by the Beatles, Peter eventually sets his sights on America. Back to back earworms popular on both sides of the Atlantic make up the show's set list, from the Fab Four's "I Saw Her Standing There" to Dusty Springfield's "I Only Want to Be With You," the Animals' "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" and, of course, Herman's Hermits' own "Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter" and "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
SAN FRANCISCO First American Financial Corporation, a provider of title insurance, said Friday that it had fixed a vulnerability in its website that exposed 885 million records related to mortgage deals going back 16 years. The vulnerability would have allowed anyone to gain access to Social Security numbers, bank account details, drivers license and mortgage and tax records. The security failure was first reported by Brian Krebs, the cybersecurity writer who last year reported a flaw in the way Facebook was storing hundreds of millions of user passwords. First American, based in Santa Ana, Calif., said in a statement Friday afternoon that it addressed the security gap after it was notified by Mr. Krebs. "We are currently evaluating what effect, if any, this had on the security of customer information," the company's statement said. "We will have no further comment until our internal review is completed." The incident was the latest example of an under the radar company that retained enormous amounts of sensitive personal and financial data but was not effectively protecting that information. In 2017, Equifax, one of the three major consumer credit reporting agencies, said the information for more than 145 million consumers including Social Security numbers was stolen. Two years before that, the network of the Office of Personnel Management, which houses sensitive data like the fingerprints and medical histories of United States government employees, was also breached. Organizations have paid little price for their security mishaps. Last year, a study found that credit agencies actually profited after the Equifax breach, by charging fees to customers who subsequently chose to freeze their credit. The study, from Wakefield Research, found that 10 freezing fees had added up to about 1.4 billion in revenue for the credit agencies, including Equifax. But that liability has started to shift. On May 17, Moody's, the ratings agency, cut its outlook on Equifax because of the cybersecurity incident. The move is a signal to companies that losing customers' data may lead to real costs. Equifax said this month that it had spent 1.35 billion so far responding to its breach, including 690 million that it recently earmarked to cover some of its anticipated legal settlements. Thieves are constantly scanning the internet for weaknesses that can be exploited for access to personal data, or financial records, that can be used for identity theft and financial fraud. First American's shares fell 2 percent on Friday in after hours trading. In a presentation to investors in 2015, Dennis Gilmore, First American's chief executive, was asked about cybersecurity. Get the Bits newsletter for the latest from Silicon Valley and the technology industry. "We take it very, very serious and first of all, we structure our databases and our operating systems," Mr. Gilmore said. "It's an issue that we continue to spend a lot of time on both operating at the board level and at the committee level, something we take very serious and we watch very, very closely." Mr. Krebs said he learned of the vulnerability in First American's website after getting tipped off by Ben Shoval, a real estate developer in Washington State. Mr. Shoval contacted Mr. Krebs, who maintains a well respected security news site, after getting little response from the company. Mr. Krebs notified First American and waited for the company to fix the flaw before publicizing it. All that was needed to exploit the vulnerability was tweaking a single digit in the address of a file reached through the site. No password or other login credentials were required. Most of the 885 million exposed files were wire transactions with bank account numbers, data that First American collects because it is a widely used seller of real estate title insurance. "This is the kind of weakness that should have been found in a basic security assessment of the company's website," Mr. Krebs said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
For more than a century, the placement of dinosaurs on the branches of their family tree has been based on the shape of their hips. This classification has now been radically challenged by proponents of a new tree which, if accepted, swaps large subfamilies around, sheds new light on dinosaurs' evolution and suggests they may have originated not in South America, as widely assumed, but perhaps in some Northern Hemisphere locality such as Scotland. A Victorian paleontologist, Harry Seeley, declared in 1888 that dinosaurs should be divided into the bird hipped (Ornithischia) and the lizard hipped (Saurischia) categories that have been accepted ever since. Under this system, the heavily armored stegosaurs and ankylosaurs are placed on the Ornithischian branch of the family tree. The Saurischian branch includes both sauropods like the herbivorous diplodocus, and theropods like the meat eating tyrannosaurs. This longstanding classification has now been disputed by Matthew G. Baron of the University of Cambridge. Mr. Baron is a graduate student and his rewriting of the dinosaur family tree is a project to attain his Ph.D. But his ideas are supported by his two supervisors and co authors, David B. Norman of the University of Cambridge, and Paul M. Barrett of the Natural History Museum in London, and by a prodigious database he has constructed of dinosaur anatomical features. Mr. Baron started his work on the Ornithischian dinosaurs but came to feel they did not fit well in their place on the accepted family tree. With his supervisors' encouragement, he set out to reconsider the entire dinosaur classification system. More than 1,000 species have already been identified, most of them dating from between 200 million and 66 million years ago. Dinosaurs became the dominant terrestrial species after the first date, and perished, all save the lineage leading to birds, at the second. Mr. Baron spent three years visiting museums throughout the world and assessed important dinosaur fossils for the presence of 457 diagnostic anatomical features. Based on this information, a computer program called TNT arranged the dinosaur specimens in possible family trees. After analyzing 32 billion trees, the computer spat out the best possible arrangement of Mr. Baron's three years' worth of data collection. The run took just five minutes. The new family tree of dinosaurs, published on Wednesday in the journal Nature, is quite unlike the old. "The results of this study challenge more than a century of dogma and recover an unexpected tree topology that necessitates fundamental reassessment of early dinosaur evolution," Mr. Baron and his supervisors write. Essentially they have found that the Ornithischian dinosaurs have many similarities with the theropods and so probably shared a common ancestor. As it happens, Thomas Huxley, the celebrated 19th century champion of Darwin's theory of evolution, also thought Ornithischia and theropods belonged together in the same group, which he called Ornithoscelida. Mr. Baron says this name should be revived, with the two main branches of the new family tree being the Ornithoscelida and the Saurischia. Mr. Baron's revolutionary new family tree may not be immediately accepted but experts seem likely to give it a serious hearing because of its database, the largest ever assembled, and its use of a standard tree drawing program. "It will be interesting to see how paleontologists receive this original and provocative reassessment of dinosaur origins and relationships," Kevin Padian, a dinosaur expert at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote in an accompanying commentary in Nature. "It's a radical proposal with a reasonable basis but no one expects it will be the last word," Dr. Padian said in an interview. Given that such a sudden shift in the dinosaur family tree might even be possible, people could wonder if dinosaur experts know what they're doing, he said. His answer is that they do, but they have been faced with an unusual problem. There has been an explosion of new discoveries in the last 30 years, showing that new dinosaur groups evolved with a mix of old features inherited from their ancestors and new ones shaped by natural selection. But the new features are the same in many cases, an instance of what biologists call convergent evolution, making it very hard to assign each group to its right place on the dinosaur family tree. Paul Sereno, a dinosaur specialist the University of Chicago who laid the basis for the modern version of Seeley's classification, said the new paper would certainly stir the pot but he couldn't see what new features or scoring system had contributed to the new result. Mr. Baron said his work was not based on any new diagnostic features but on more data and the absence of any prior assumptions about what the tree should look like. Having a correctly drawn family tree allows paleontologists to peer more deeply into the origins of the dinosaurs, because the species that lie close to the root of the major families may carry the same traits as the first dinosaur. Based on his tree, Mr. Baron believes that the original dinosaurs were small, two footed animals with large grasping hands, as others have said before, but also omnivorous. Early dinosaurs had both knifelike teeth for eating meat and flatter teeth for chewing plants. "In the very harsh climates of the late Triassic, being a generalist is probably a clever strategy," Mr. Baron said. "The ability to run fast and eat anything and grasp with the hands is what gave dinosaurs their advantage." A critical stage in human evolution was walking upright, which freed the hands for grasping tools and weapons. "The parallels with human evolution are very noticeable and make you wonder what they could have achieved," Mr. Baron said. "Toward the end, certain groups like the velociraptors were starting to get intelligent." The new tree implies that dinosaurs emerged some 247 million years ago, a little earlier than previous estimates, and that their origin may not have been in South America, where several very early dinosaurs have been found. Some species that could have shared a common ancestor with the first dinosaur have been found in places now part of the Northern Hemisphere, such as Saltopus elginensis, a small dinosaurlike creature found in Scotland. But Dr. Norman said present sampling did not allow any region to be identified as the dinosaurs' place of origin, only that the Northern Hemisphere was just as likely as the Southern. The proposed new family tree of dinosaurs has a lot of statistical support, Dr. Norman said. "That doesn't mean it's right, just that it's the best we can do with the data we've got at the moment," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
"My God," Bruce Chatwin once averred, "is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably don't need any other god." We know that walking is good for us, that "if undertaken in regular doses," as Shane O'Mara writes in "In Praise of Walking: A New Scientific Exploration," "it provides the small, cumulative and significant positive changes for lung, heart and especially brain health." What interests me, however, is less physiological, more elusive: walking as a way of life. I am a city walker, which is to say I walk to root myself. I define my neighborhood by walking, both its boundaries and my place within them, my connection to community. Even in the middle of a lockdown, I am out most mornings, to get exercise, yes, but also to remind myself of where I am. This is the hard part to pay attention, to remain in the present, to look outward as well as inward, now from behind the forbidding filter of my face mask, while recognizing, as Torbjorn Ekelund reflects in "In Praise of Paths: Walking Through Time and Nature," that "the path is order in chaos." Despite their echoed titles, "In Praise of Walking" and "In Praise of Paths" offer two very different approaches. The first is clinical and the second experiential; to move between them is like going back and forth from laboratory to street. This is perhaps unsurprising, given that O'Mara is a professor of experimental brain research at Trinity College Dublin, and Ekelund is a founder of the Norwegian nature journal Harvest. But the contrast also reflects starkly different responses to the questions of how and why we walk what walking means. For O'Mara, the answers are practical. "The emerging science," he insists, "is giving us a clear picture: Regular walking confers enduring and substantial benefits on individuals, and on society at large." It improves our "moods, clarity of thought, our creativity," as well as "our connectedness to our social, urban and natural worlds." 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. Ekelund is more concerned with myth and memory, which is why he builds his book around the notion of the path. "The world's largest religions," he reminds us, "all make use of path metaphors. ... The metaphorical implications of the path are obvious and easy to understand because, in a way, life is all about choosing the right way." What he's addressing is the intention to walk one's way to meaning: the walk as spiritual exercise, a kind of vision quest in which the answers we arrive at are less important than the impulse to seek them. A key strategy for finding ourselves, then, is to first get lost. Ekelund makes this point throughout "In Praise of Paths," describing a series of walks, through both urban and natural landscapes, in which he willfully seeks to lose himself. With his friend John and their respective children, he searches out the Nordmannsslepene, or the Nordic tracks, a set of mountain paths dating back millenniums. To do so requires leaving the marked trail and watching the literal lay of the land. "The crack in the cliff was a sign," Ekelund tells us, after observing a variation in the landscape. "We heightened our attention and fixed our eyes on the ground ahead of us." He is describing the art of walking hard, which is not merely a matter of exertion but of presence as well. Out there, off the beaten track, he and John have nothing to guide them but intuition, their ability to read the land and persevere. Walking becomes a mechanism for engagement, a direct connection to the world. Later in the book, the two take another trip, this time to the Nordmarka, a vast forest in northern Oslo, to try to walk a straight line for two days without instruments. "A sense of direction and the ability to orient oneself and to judge distances were all vital skills for humans of the Stone Age," Ekelund writes. But on the evening of the second day, when he and John connect to GPS to chart their progress, they are stunned to discover that they have serpentined for nearly 14 miles while traveling a point to point distance of less than four. "We had danced our way through the forest," Ekelund acknowledges. "One step forward, four to the left. One step forward, four to the right." And yet, the implication is, this was precisely the idea. If walking, for Ekelund, is a process necessary in its own right, O'Mara's concerns are more prosaic and hidebound. He is a walker also, although he doesn't reveal a lot about his journeys. An account, for instance, of the tetrapod trackway on Valentia Island, off the coast of Ireland (tetrapods, which lived some 380 million years ago, were the first four limbed vertebrates in existence), ends just as it's getting started. His study of city walking is marked by such analytics as the "walkability index" and "aggregation effects" pragmatic rubrics perhaps, but also undifferentiated, homogenizing, suggesting that all cities are, or should be, walked the same. O'Mara's reliance on statistics and scientific data makes his investigation come off as abstract. His account of a 2011 experiment to recreate the journey of Otzi the Iceman a 5,000 year old mummy found in the Alps on the Austrian Italian border eschews what Otzi might have seen in favor of the physiological response of his stand in, an unnamed 62 year old Italian man. "There were positive changes in virtually every single measured area of his functioning," O'Mara informs us. "His body mass index often used to determine obesity declined by about 10 percent." Similarly, O'Mara's sense that streets need to be "welcoming, with entertainment, seating, refreshment and diversion available," minimizes their equally necessary serendipity. It's not that O'Mara is wrong about the utility of streetscapes but that he takes too narrow, too systematic, a view. As a contrast, consider Virginia Woolf, who in her 1927 essay "Street Haunting" recalls the city at dusk in winter: "How beautiful a London street is then, with its islands of light, and its long groves of darkness, and on one side of it perhaps some tree sprinkled, grass grown space where night is folding herself to sleep." Woolf is mapping internal as much as external space, the way who we are, and what we're thinking, inevitably influences what we see. There is no point to her walk except for the walk itself, through streets that are themselves mutable and ever changing, depending on the perspective of the walker, who must do the hard work of remaining conscious in the world. The issue with "In Praise of Walking" is O'Mara's assumption that how good an activity may be for us is the most essential measure of its worth. If no one disputes the benefits of walking, I'd argue that they're more difficult to quantify. "We have an inherent urge to wander that we seldom think about," Ekelund notes, "but that we are reminded of every time we follow a path." In that sense, he walks as I do even now, in this time of social distance to be connected, not least to himself. "We think of a path as the way to somewhere else," Ekelund continues, "toward the future and what lies ahead. But a path also points backward, to the time and the place we came from." Each stage of the journey, in other words, has value on its own terms which means it is the journeying rather than the arriving that offers the most necessary right of way.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
It is earnings season, and for much of corporate America it is a time of trouble. Publicly traded companies have been revealing their profits and losses for the third quarter of the year and signaling some of their expectations for the future. While a few big companies like Amazon, Google and Microsoft posted strong earnings last week, many of the report cards have been dreary. Factors like global interest rates, politics and the national mood affect the stock market, but earnings are crucial, and how investors interpret this deluge of information may well determine whether share prices keep rising in the months ahead. Some of the mediocre earnings data has already been baked into share prices, which rose sharply last week and have just about recovered from the summer's sharp decline. But even in an era of seemingly limitless online information and nanosecond trading, quarterly earnings reports and conference calls retain their ability to move markets, a new study has found. "Earnings reports are still affecting the markets in a big way even more than they did five or 10 or 20 years ago," said Maureen McNichols, an accounting professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. During the three days surrounding quarterly reports, share prices are four times as likely to have big moves as they typically do, said Ms. McNichols, a co author of the study, which examined data from 1971 to 2011. It found that the impact of earnings reports on stock prices has increased since a series of Wall Street scandals led to regulatory reforms that appear to have improved the reliability of the reports, Ms. McNichols said. "We've confirmed that the markets are deriving a great deal of information from these reports." This season, much of the information has been gloomy, and it may take some mental gymnastics to see a silver lining in it. The global economy has slowed, the energy sector has been battered, and the strength of the dollar has reduced sales and profits overseas. When all of the data is in, Wall Street is expecting that for the third quarter of 2015, overall earnings for the companies in the Standard Poor's 500 stock index will have declined, perhaps by as much as 3 percent. This follows a weak second quarter one that, depending on which numbers you use, was flat or slightly negative. What's more, based on corporate disclosures and Wall Street expectations, the decline in profits is projected to continue for the rest of this year. But bad as this litany may seem, it may not be the end of the downward trajectory in earnings. While the consensus on Wall Street is that 2016 will be better for big corporations, things are not expected to improve significantly until the end of next year a distant and relatively opaque period, as far as such analysis goes. "Wall Street analysts are usually more optimistic in their projections for a year down the road and become more realistic when the time for earnings draws closer," said John Butters, a senior research analyst at FactSet. "That's happening again this year." That said, it may well be realistic to expect an improvement in an important sector: energy, which accounts for the biggest drag on earnings. While third quarter earnings for the S. P. 500 are expected to drop 2.8 percent over all compared with the same period a year earlier, the drop for energy companies is estimated to be 65 percent, according to Wall Street consensus figures compiled by Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Companies like Halliburton, which reported a 36 percent drop in revenue and a 54 million loss for the third quarter on Monday, have been hit hard by the decline in oil, coal and natural gas prices of the last year. But by the end of 2016, energy companies will be comparing their earnings with this year's dismal results, a much easier contest. It is also quite possible that energy prices will rise from the doldrums by then, bolstering the sector and statistics for the entire stock market. That's hardly the only earnings problem. Other sectors, like technology, have turned in weak overall performances. IBM said on Monday that, partly because of the effects of the strong dollar overseas, its sales and profits had dropped sharply, even as it worked to shift toward high growth areas like cloud computing. And some important retail companies are hurting. Walmart said this month that sales would flatten this year and that the outlook for earnings was poor. Its stock price promptly fell 10 percent, the biggest one day decline in more than a decade. With reports like these, it may seem difficult to derive a positive message from this season's information. Yet many investors habitually discount bad news and highlight the bright side. Are reports of declining profits or outright losses really good? Perhaps not, but they are often not perceived as devastating. When losses are disclosed, they are often seen as "unsustainable, often one time events," Ms. McNichols said. The logic is that for profit corporations exist only for that purpose: to make a profit. Executives must stem losses, if they hope to keep their jobs. Wall Street analysts therefore sometimes assume that the disclosure of a loss implies that corrective measures are being taken. On the other hand, disclosure of rising profit prospects is often taken as a sign of sustainable prosperity and may be enough to bolster share prices, she said. That is because when you buy a share of a company's stock, you are buying a portion of that company's long term earnings stream. If you pay a reasonable price, you should have a good chance of profiting. That is the theory, at least. And it helps explain why many investors focus on earnings next year and the year after that, even when current earnings are miserable. Of course, some of this may be just be based on hope. For the market to rise much more this year, investors may just have to trust that the earnings downturn is an aberration.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Our guide to new art shows and some that will be closing soon. 'BLACK POWER!' at Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture (through Dec. 30). Given the economic, environmental and social policies emanating from the White House, the United States could be headed for its most dynamic era of public resistance since the 1960s. And if you're searching for cultural models from the past, even flawed ones, that effectively brought a message of social change into the street, the schools and the workplace, you'll do well to check out this vivid documentary show about a cultural movement that broadened activist art to embrace public murals, fashion and poetry; and protest demonstrations that had the visual allure, choreographic rigor and emotional weight of theater. (Holland Cotter) 917 275 6975, schomburgcenter.org 'CALDER: HYPERMOBILITY' at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through Oct. 23). The Whitney has the world's largest holdings of the American sculptor who invented the mobile, but this rejuvenating presentation of works in motion is a different sort of Calder show, and never the same twice. Before he hit upon his elegantly suspended plates of cut sheet metal, Calder first created kinetic sculptures with small, hidden motors. Motorized mobiles and ones activated only by air hang together in a single, beautiful gallery, and several times a day attendants come through to make the sculptures boogie. The Calder Foundation will also be updating this witty, wily retrospective with one day presentations of more fragile kinetic works. (Jason Farago) 212 570 3600, whitney.org 'JAPANESE BAMBOO ART: THE ABBEY COLLECTION' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Feb. 4). This fabulous show celebrates Diane and Arthur Abbey's gift of some 70 bamboo baskets and sculptures, which nearly doubles the Met's already outstanding holdings in this genre and brings them into the 20th and 21st centuries. The curator has embedded this trove within what is essentially a second exhibition that traces bamboo's presence through folding screens, ink paintings, porcelain, netsuke, kimonos and more. (Roberta Smith) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'ROBERT RAUSCHENBERG: AMONG FRIENDS' at the Museum of Modern Art (through Sept. 17). Rauschenberg's career was so long and staggeringly productive that even this enormous retrospective can offer it only in representative slivers. At the same time, the show adds something missing in the last survey here, at the Guggenheim Museum in 1997: evidence of the social nature of his gregarious work, indicating how much it was stoked by the multidisciplinary company colleagues, teachers, assistants, lovers that he gathered around him. (Cotter) 212 708 9400, moma.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
KIDDING 10 p.m. on Showtime. When a show is granted a second run, it faces the pressure of matching the success of its first and proving it has promise for more to come. This poignant tragicomedy, about a beloved children's television host (Jim Carrey) who strains to keep his brand intact as his personal life crumbles, has plenty of life left in it. Last week's episode walked us through the past, before Jeff's son Phil died in a car accident. Season 2 wraps up on Sunday with a two part finale, in which Jeff realizes he would be better off on his own for a while. If you have yet to give the show a try, it's never too late to delve into the dark, imaginative world of Puppet Time and Carrey puts on an emotional, layered performance. FAMILY KARMA 9 p.m. on Bravo. If you've been following "Shahs of Sunset," the Bravo reality show about a group of Iranian Americans living in Los Angeles, this new series is right up your alley. "Family Karma" centers on seven Indian American friends in Miami whose lives have been intertwined since childhood. The cast members grew up partaking in the same cultural traditions and now face that familiar (sometimes overly emphasized) dichotomy between Eastern and Western lifestyles. First generation Americans may relate to the daily struggles that come up here, such as living with a big family under a single roof or facing the pressure to marry on a regular basis. Another draw is the inevitable tension that surfaces among lifelong friends who know each other's deepest fears and secrets.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
The mice were eating their usual chow and exercising normally, but they were getting fat anyway. The reason: researchers had deleted a gene that acts in the brain and controls how quickly calories are burned. Even though they were consuming exactly the same number of calories as lean mice, they were gaining weight. So far, only one person a severely obese child has been found to have a disabling mutation in the same gene. But the discovery of the same effect in mice and in the child a finding published Wednesday in the journal Science may help explain why some people put on weight easily while others eat all they want and seem never to gain an ounce. It may also offer clues to a puzzle in the field of obesity: Why do studies find that people gain different amounts of weight while overeating by the same amount? Scientists have long thought explanations for why some people get fat might lie in their genes. They knew body weight was strongly inherited. Years ago, for example, they found that twins reared apart tended to have similar weights and adoptees tended to have weights like their biological parents, not the ones who reared them. As researchers developed tools to look for the actual genes, they found evidence that many maybe even hundreds of genes may be involved, stoking appetites, making people voraciously hungry. This rare gene disabling mutation, though, is intriguing because it seems to explain something different, a propensity to pile on pounds even while eating what should be a normal amount of food. Investigators are now searching for other mutations of the same gene in fat people that may have a similar, but less extreme effect. The hope is that in the long term, understanding how this gene affects weight gain might lead to treatments for obesity that alter the rate at which calories are burned. "The history of obesity for many many years has been one of blaming people for lack of self control," said Dr. Joseph Majzoub, chief of endocrinology at Boston Children's Hospital and lead author of the new paper. "If some of it is due to a slow metabolism, that would completely change the perspectives of parents and patients. It really would change the way we think of the disease." In their paper, Dr. Majzoub and his colleagues describe figuring out how the gene they deleted, known as MRAP2, acts in the brain to control weight. They discovered that it is a helper gene. It normally acts in the brain to signal another gene already known to be involved in controlling appetite. So they developed a hypothesis. If the helper gene was deleted, the brakes should come off the gene that controls appetite. Animals should eat voraciously. The first thing they noticed was that the mice got fat, ending up weighing twice as much as their normal siblings, with most of that extra weight due to fat accumulation. "During the mouse equivalent of childhood and adolescence they were becoming rapidly obese," Dr. Majzoub said. The surprise came when the researchers figured out why. When the mice were young, they had normal appetites. The researchers measured what they and their normal siblings ate and determined they were eating the same amount of food. Yet the mice with the deleted gene still gained weight. The only way the obesity prone mice could be kept slim was to be fed 10 to 15 percent less than their siblings. But as adults, the mice with the missing gene developed monstrous appetites. Given a chance, they ate much more than their siblings, exacerbating the effects of their tendency to turn food into fat. That led the researchers to ask if the same genetic phenomenon could be making people obese. They contacted Dr. Sadaf Farooqui of the University of Cambridge, whose group has been mapping the genes of massively obese children, and studied the data on 500 of the children, searching for mutations that disabled the same gene they had deleted in mice. One child clearly had a gene disabling mutation and three others had mutations that the investigators suspect might render the gene nonfunctional. None of the normal weight children who served as controls had a mutation in the helper gene. "From a basic science point of view, this is really interesting and exciting," said David Allison, an obesity researcher at the University of Alabama in Birmingham who was not involved in the study. Any discovery that helps fill in the details of how the brain controls eating and weight gain is important, he added. Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at Rockefeller University, who also was not involved in the study, said, "It is another piece in a very important puzzle." The work fascinates Claude Bouchard, a genetics researcher at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, La., because it might offer insight into an intriguing finding: there are genetic controls not just of how much people want to eat but also how much of what they eat turns into fat or is burned off and not used by the body. Although the common mantra is that a calorie is a calorie and 3,500 extra calories eaten equals a pound of fat on the body, that is not what happens in real life, he found. For example, in one of his studies, Dr. Bouchard enlisted 12 pairs of lean identical twins to live in an enclosed area for 120 days so their food and exercise could be monitored while they ate 1,000 calories a day more than needed to maintain their weight. The twins in each pair gained about the same amount of weight, but the amount gained varied threefold among the pairs. Those who gained the most put on as much as 29 pounds while those who gained the least put on 9 1/2 pounds.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Lunar Eclipse Seen Around the World Nobel Prize in Chemistry Awarded for New Tool to Build Molecules	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Credit...Jesse Dittmar for The New York Times The son of Orthodox Jews who immigrated from Poland to New York and ran luncheonettes, Steven Rosenberg was about 6 years old when his family learned that many relatives, including six of his father's nine siblings, had been murdered in the Holocaust. "I saw so much evil in the world that early on I decided I wanted to do something that would help people, not hurt people," he said in an interview here. He received a medical degree from Johns Hopkins and a doctorate in biophysics from Harvard. From the start, he was a workaholic. At one point he tried to call off his relationship with Alice O'Connell, whom he would later marry, because he was afraid it would distract him from research. "I loved the night," Dr. Rosenberg wrote in his book, "The Transformed Cell," published in 1992. "I remember the exhilaration of working through the night in the lab, drinking thick pasty coffee that had been on the burner for hours, walking out into the sunrise." He added: "To be alone and out on the edge like that, there was no feeling like it in the world." When Dr. Rosenberg arrived at the National Cancer Institute in 1974, his first attempt at immunotherapy was to give patients T cells harvested from pigs. That failed. He then began giving patients interleukin 2, or IL 2, a protein made by the body that spurs T cells to proliferate. In some cases he treated patients with their own white blood cells that had been incubated in IL 2. The treatments sometimes set off such a violent immune system reaction that patients had to be placed in intensive care. From 1980 to 1984, he treated 66 patients without success. Then, in late 1984, he encountered patient No. 67, Linda Taylor, a Navy officer with melanoma whose personnel file carried the stamp "death imminent." The Navy was not Carl June's desired career choice. Accepted at Stanford in 1971, he instead chose the Naval Academy to avoid the draft and Vietnam. The Navy sent him to medical school and for training in bone marrow transplantation, geared toward treating people irradiated by nuclear weapons. When the Cold War ended, the Navy lost interest. Dr. June turned to working with T cells at the Naval Medical Research Institute in the mid 1980s. He and a colleague, Dr. Bruce Levine, found a way to multiply T cells in huge numbers outside the body, a method still used today. And in the mid 1990s, working with Cell Genesys, a gene therapy company, Dr. June began trying to genetically modify patients' T cells to kill H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS. But when his wife, Cindy, the mother of the couple's three children, developed ovarian cancer in 1996, Dr. June's research turned personal. Dr. June had tried everything to save her, including the primitive immune therapies under development. But Ms. June died in 2001. "A lot of other scientists would have been disillusioned by the failure, in his case the personal tragedy," said Sean Parker, the internet billionaire who is funding some of Dr. June's work. Instead, Dr. June, who had moved to the University of Pennsylvania, stopped treating patients, and devoted himself to creating cell therapies for cancer. "Things that were back burner on cell therapy became front burner," he said. In the 1980s, scientists began experimenting with gene therapy, putting new genes into cells of the body to treat disease. Michel Sadelain, while still a graduate student studying immunology at the University of Alberta, told colleagues that he thought the technique could be used to supercharge T cells to fight cancer. The new claws came from another part of the immune system known as antibodies. Drug companies already knew how to make antibodies with claws that bind to specific proteins in the body. But the claw was not enough. Once a claw binds to a target protein, it needs a molecule to signal the T cell to go into killing mode. Yet another signal helps sustain the killing. The DNA instructions for all three components are inserted into the patient's T cells. Since this concoction is part antibody and part T cell, it is a chimera, like the monster of Greek mythology that is part lion, part goat and part serpent. The claw is called a receptor and the protein it binds to on the cancer cell, the target, is called an antigen. So the whole construct is called a chimeric antigen receptor, or CAR, and the use of it to treat cancer is called CAR T cell therapy, or CAR T. Dr. Sadelain was not alone in this work. Zelig Eshhar, an Israeli scientist, is credited with developing one of the first crude CARs around 1989. Dr. Rosenberg, always on the lookout for new types of immunotherapy, invited Dr. Eshhar to be a visiting scientist in his laboratory at the National Cancer Institute. Another early developer was Dr. Dario Campana of St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. As scientists worked to perfect the formula in the 1990s and early 2000s, there was quite a bit of sharing. Cancer cell therapy was still mostly an academic exercise; it was highly uncertain whether it would ever really work. Dr. June, after hearing a presentation by Dr. Campana at a conference in 2003, requested a sample of Dr. Campana's CAR. Dr. Sadelain shared his design with both Dr. June and Dr. Rosenberg. The most prominent CAR developed at the National Cancer Institute owes a lot to Dr. Sadelain, Dr. Rosenberg said. But the science proved difficult and the research money scarce. Pharmaceutical companies showed little interest, preferring mass produced drugs, one size fits all, rather than a treatment that would be made separately for each patient. Bill Ludwig, a retired captain in the New Jersey Department of Corrections, had already paid for his funeral when he started treatment in August 2010. Once his genetically engineered T cells were unleashed in his system, Mr. Ludwig's lungs started to fail, his legs ballooned to twice their size, his blood pressure dropped and he began hallucinating. When he emerged from the ordeal, doctors searched for cancer. Detecting none, they ordered another test, certain of error. But there was no mistake. Five pounds of tumor had been destroyed. Mr. Ludwig, now 71, and his wife bought an R.V. "We're trying to make up for lost time," he said. He has celebrated the high school graduations of five grandchildren and welcomed his first great grandchild. As for Dr. June, Mr. Ludwig said: "It's hard to describe someone who basically saved your life. He lost the one he loved, and turned around and saved me years later." The 2011 publication of Dr. June's results transformed the field. Novartis, the big Swiss pharmaceutical company, licensed the rights to the therapies created in Dr. June's lab at the University of Pennsylvania, throwing aside concerns that treatments manufactured for individual patients would not be good business. That set off a commercial rush, flooding the field with cash after years of doubt. While various companies are in pursuit, three are in the lead. They hope to win approval from the Food and Drug Administration to bring the first CAR treatments to market as early as 2017 or 2018, although it is not yet clear how easy it will be to get regulatory approval for such a novel therapy. The companies are teamed with academic pioneers: Novartis with Penn; Kite Pharma with the National Cancer Institute; and Juno Therapeutics with Sloan Kettering, the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and Seattle Children's Hospital. Patrick M. Coughlin, who teaches anatomy at the Commonwealth Medical College in Scranton, Pa., now explains the immune system to his classes by telling how one man overcame cancer. Only gradually does it become clear that he is referring to himself. Now 63, Mr. Coughlin noticed a mass the size of a softball in his abdomen in summer 2013. It was a form of non Hodgkin's lymphoma. Three different types of chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant all failed to help him. Desperate, he came to the National Institutes of Health campus here last year for the cell therapy developed by Dr. Rosenberg's team. The battle between Mr. Coughlin's genetically engineered immune cells and the cancer was brutal. For four days he had a fever as high as 105, chills and bed soaking sweats. Even his brain malfunctioned at one point he could not count to 10 or write his wife's name. But when the battle ended, the cancer was no longer there. "If I had gotten this thing five years ago," he said of his disease, "I'd be dead." Yet for all the excitement, there are reasons for caution. The CAR therapy works now only for patients with some B cell lymphomas and leukemias, which account for only about 80,000 of the 1.7 million cases of cancer diagnosed in the United States each year. It has not been successfully used to treat malignancies of the lungs, breast, prostate, colon or other organs. "The solid tumors that kill over 90 percent of people do not respond to anything we have now," Dr. Rosenberg said. Because it is personalized, cell therapy is likely to be frightfully expensive probably hundreds of thousands of dollars per patient, though the companies bringing these treatments to market have not yet said how much they would charge. Producing the re engineered cells is lengthy and complex. Some patients have died during the two to four weeks it took to genetically modify and multiply their cells. And the therapy itself can be arduous. First, patients get chemotherapy to wipe out many of their existing T cells to make room for the engineered ones. Once those enter the body, they can set off a ferocious immune response as well as temporary neurological problems like memory loss, seizures and hallucinations. Recently Juno Therapeutics had to temporarily halt its clinical trial after three patients died from brain swelling. The problem arose when the company added a second chemotherapy drug to the regimen preparing the patients for the cell infusion. The authorities allowed the trial to resume without that chemotherapy drug. Still, some patients find themselves hoping they get violently ill, since that is a sign the treatment is working. "Every morning my wife would ask me how I'm feeling," said Myles Stiefvater, a copier salesman from Newark, Del., who had the treatment in 2014. When he said he felt O.K., they were disappointed. Researchers are also finding, to their dismay, that remissions do not always last. The therapy has had its biggest success in acute lymphoblastic leukemia, producing complete remissions for 60 percent to more than 90 percent of patients. Yet up to half of those patients eventually suffer a relapse. In some cases, the tumor evolves so that it no longer displays on its surface what the claw binds to, making it invisible to the engineered cells. In other cases, the engineered cells might not last long enough in the body, giving the cancer a chance to resurge. "T cells are very powerful," said Dr. Campana, formerly of St. Jude and now at the National University of Singapore. "In the same way they can eliminate cancer, they can also kill you." A protein called HER2, for instance, is found on many breast and other tumors, making it a seemingly good target. But it is also found in tiny amounts in the lungs. When Dr. Rosenberg's team infused killer T cells aimed at HER2 into a patient, she went into respiratory distress within 15 minutes and died five days later. The treatments work for the blood cancers because there is a good target. But finding these for the most common cancers has been difficult. One problem is that CARs, because of how they are made, can bind only to proteins on the surface of cancer cells. But most proteins made by these cells, or by any cell for that matter, are inside the cell, out of reach. There is an alternative approach that is gaining interest. Patients' immune cells can be engineered to make what are called T cell receptors, or TCRs. These can recognize proteins inside the cancer cells. Some experts say TCRs, which have a far wider array of potential targets, represent the best hope of using cell therapy to treat solid tumors. There have been hints of effectiveness already in treating one of those, a type of sarcoma. It might turn out that the best target for each patient will be unique to that person. Scientists are now experimenting with using DNA sequencing and other techniques to find the best mutated protein in each person's tumor at which to aim the claw. In the last two years he has visited more than 150 cities in more than 20 countries. This year alone he has accumulated more than 200,000 airline miles. Despite that schedule, he runs ultramarathons and participated in July in the Death Ride, a grueling bicycle race in California. Dr. Rosenberg still arrives at the National Cancer Institute nearly seven days a week. The walls outside his office are covered with signed photographs of the hundreds of fellows who have trained under him, many of them now leaders in immunotherapy. Every five years, they gather for a reunion, to reminisce and honor their mentor. Arie Belldegrun, who was a fellow in the 1980s, now runs Kite, the company commercializing the National Cancer Institute's CAR technology. He recounted what happened when he tried to get Dr. Rosenberg to join the company. "He sits quietly, quietly, quietly, and then he asks, 'Arie, why don't you ask me what I want to do?' "He said: 'Every day that I go to work, I'm as excited as a kid coming to a new place for the first time. If you ask me what I want to do, I want to die on this desk one day.'" But not before he conquers cancer. "I want to end this holocaust," Dr. Rosenberg said in the interview. "I think I'm finally getting the hang of what it will take to widely apply this to cancers."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Jason Jones bounded down the stairs of an Upper West Side public elementary school on a recent Wednesday night, having just finished a parent teacher conference. "I'm sorry I'm late," the actor said. Mr. Jones was slightly annoyed, a lot like a wisecracking correspondent on "The Daily Show," where he worked for nearly a decade. Two of his three children were enrolled at the school, but Mr. Jones was forced to stagger his meetings over two days. "This deal is rigged," he said with a deep sigh. Mr. Jones, 42, and his wife, Samantha Bee, the host of TBS's "Full Frontal," who worked with him at "The Daily Show," live a few blocks away. He is a creature of habit, preferring the quiet of his neighborhood to the cacophony of downtown. He and Ms. Bee frequent RedFarm on Broadway, a popular Chinese restaurant, and shop at Fairway. "She'll probably text me tonight to go get bread," he said of his wife. For that, he would have to go to Maison Kayser, an outpost of the famous French bakery a block away. Mr. Jones was taking a rare night off, and he wanted to do what he had little time for with three children and a busy acting career: go out for drinks. For the last 18 months, he has been shepherding "The Detour," a TBS comedy he created with his wife and which he stars in. He crossed West End Avenue and arrived at Burke Wills, an Australian restaurant on West 79th Street that serves kangaroo pie and triple fried chips. A striking woman greeted him and pointed toward a green padded door. It led upstairs to the Manhattan Cricket Club, a speakeasy style bar he frequents with a friend whose children go to the same school. He waved hello to another parent from school he saw eating at the bar. "I just got out of my conference," the man said. "I was just there, too," Mr. Jones told him. Mr. Jones is gentler in person than he appeared on "The Daily Show." There, he skewered political targets like Sarah Palin and covered international affairs, going to Iran in 2009 to report on everyday life. He laughed when a guest suggested he could be a little cocky. "I will take that," he said, smiling. He was perplexed by the political ascendance of Donald J. Trump and the difficulty journalists have had covering the presidential candidate. "If they say something, they get kicked off the bus," Mr. Jones said. "Everyone is afraid of losing access. Everyone is afraid. And the truth is, the access comes by being harder on people. You are going to be more respected. And the people who truly want to talk will talk." If "Detour" "crashes and burns and goes nowhere," he added; he might consider becoming a journalist. For now, he's staying put the show was picked up for a second season. Mr. Jones sipped his bourbon drink. "Oh, you have to taste this," he said. "That is the best drink." He offered the guest his glass. "Here, taste it I don't have any diseases," he said, looking slightly annoyed again. "The Detour," which premieres on TBS on Monday, is a comedy about a family road trip that is partly based on his life with Ms. Bee and their children. "We always made it our mandate to be forthcoming and honest with our kids, so we use truth as a cool factor," he said. "It's worked so far." The family has frank talks about Santa Claus and sex. (Not at the same time.) When his daughter described in detail one day how babies were born, he told her, "That's not far off." That conversation ended up in "The Detour," he said, "but we go further than what we told our kids."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
While trying to avoid alarmism, global health agencies are steadily ratcheting up concern about bird flu in Asia. Bird viruses that can infect humans particularly those of the H7N9 strain continue to spread to new cities there. Since October 2016, China has seen a "fifth wave" of H7N9 infections. Nearly 1,600 people have tested positive, almost 40 percent of whom have died. Most had been exposed to live poultry, but a small number of clusters suggest that the virus could be passing from person to person. In September, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention summarized some disturbing developments. The H7N9 virus had become lethal to birds, which made it potentially more dangerous to people but also easier to spot.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
While undressing for bed one night in 2009, Susan Spencer Wendel noticed that the muscles in her left palm had disappeared, leaving a scrawny pile of tendons and bones. Her right hand was fine. She let out a yelp and showed the hand to her husband, who told her to go to the doctor. She was 42. Ms. Spencer Wendel then entered a protracted period of denial. Adopted as an infant in Florida, she traveled from her home in West Palm Beach to find blood relatives living in Cyprus, who confirmed that there was no family history of her worst fear: amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., the relentless disease that lays waste to muscles while leaving the mind intact. In June 2011, a doctor in Miami gave her a definitive diagnosis of A.L.S., smiling "like he was inviting me to a birthday party," she writes in "Until I Say Goodbye: My Year of Living With Joy." Patients with A.L.S., which is also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, typically live no more than four years after the onset of symptoms. There is no cure. Ms. Spencer Wendel thought she had prepared herself fully that she would burst off the starting block like a sprinter to greet her fate. Instead, when she heard the news, "I dropped my head for the start ... and began to cry." Her heart ripping book chronicles what she did immediately after her diagnosis: she decided to embrace life while death chased her down. Instead of letting the world close in on her, she resolved to travel as far and as wide for as long as she could. She went to the Yukon with her best friend, Budapest with her husband, and the Bahamas with her sister. Each exertion robbed her of muscle. When muscles break down in healthy people, she writes, they grow stronger as they repair. When muscle breaks down in an A.L.S. patient, it is starved of the tonic effect of neuronal stimulation and does not recover. Not long after her diagnosis, Ms. Spencer Wendel climbed down then up a steep bank of stairs at a beach in British Columbia. "I left a lot of muscle on those stairs," she writes. Her physical therapist told her to stop the strenuous travel. But Ms. Spencer Wendel, a woman of incalculable inner strength, was not to be dissuaded. Each of her three children chose a trip. She and her 14 year old daughter, Marina, traveled to New York so that Marina could try on dresses for the wedding her mother would not live to see. Ms. Spencer Wendel kept notes and wrote articles about her trips for The Palm Beach Post, where she had been a reporter before she grew too weak to do her job. A book contract gave her incentive to keep writing. Lacking the strength to use a regular keyboard, she began typing on an iPad. When dragging her hand across the screen became too difficult, she turned to her iPhone. "Its tiny touch screen keyboard was perfect, because I still had one helluva right thumb," she writes. And this is how she wrote 89,000 words. Let me repeat: The woman produced a full length book manuscript on her cellphone. She was assisted by Bret Witter, her collaborator, who helped her turn the iPhone manuscript into the endearing and all too human story that is "Until I Say Goodbye." An experienced reporter, Ms. Spencer Wendel has a fine eye for detail, which she uses to extraordinary effect. She tells a harrowing story of hearing her 8 year old son, Wesley, who was briefly trapped in an elevator, wailing with fear while she lay nearby, unable to shout loudly enough to summon help, or to move to comfort him. And her hilarious description of her "stink pickle" is likely to disarm even the most squeamish of readers. It is a given that darkness lurks everywhere in this book. But Ms. Spencer Wendel would rather keep the reader in a well lighted place. Can she really remain this sunny in the face of death, and death so soon? Did she not also sob for hours at a time? Probably. But her refusal to dwell on her darkest moments is her choice to make. What she does offer the reader, without a drop of self pity, adds up to much more. A.L.S. is also the focus of "Running for Jim," a documentary directed by Robin Hauser Reynolds and Dan Noyes that opens in the United States on Tuesday at the SoHo International Film Festival. The film pivots on Jim Tracy, a gifted runner and the beloved cross country coach at a small private high school in San Francisco who learned that he had the disease at age 59. His story received widespread attention in late 2010, when, shortly after his diagnosis, his best runner collapsed within a few yards of the finish line, then crawled her way across, helping her team win a state championship. Interviewed at length in the film, Mr. Tracy is pragmatic about his illness. Like Ms. Spencer Wendel, he has achieved a truce with it. He prefers confined spaces, he says, because there's "less space to fall." "Running for Jim" is a grab bag of a film, too easily distracted by side excursions, like the story of an A.L.S. specialist who develops the disease himself. The film is at its best when it stops trying to be an A.L.S. primer and relaxes into the story of Mr. Tracy and his team. The scenes that show him in action as a coach are priceless. "This is a stopwatch, not a sundial!" he yells during a practice. "This is real training, not pretend time!" The students clearly adore him. And the film shines with the gripping images of Holland Reynolds, 16, on her hands and knees, inching her way for her team and her ailing coach across the finish line.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Artists held a demonstration in London on Thursday after the Design Museum hosted an event for a defense contractor. LONDON Just after 11 a.m. on Thursday, a group of about 20 artists, many wearing black despite the searing sun, arrived at the Design Museum in London with an unusual aim: to remove their art from an exhibition. Their works appeared in "Hope to Nope: Graphics and Politics 2008 18," a show that traces the recent history of activist art and design, starting with Shepard Fairey's "Hope" poster from Barack Obama's first presidential election campaign, through to a "Make America Great Again" baseball cap. The artists were upset that the Design Museum had rented its atrium to Leonardo, one of the world's largest aerospace and defense companies, for a drinks reception in July. Many of the artists in "Hope to Nope," including Mr. Fairey and Milton Glaser, the designer behind the "I NY" logo, expressed shock when they learned about the reception, and asked for their works to be removed from the museum. On Thursday, the group arrived to check that this had happened, or to do it themselves if necessary. Charlie Waterhouse, creative director of This Ain't Rock 'n' Roll, a design agency with work in the show, said, "It's a quite wonderful irony that it's blown up with an exhibition like this." The museum had criticized the activists for making a fuss, he added. "That's also ironic," he said, "criticizing us for being the very thing we were only a minute ago being celebrated for." When the artists entered the museum, their works were already neatly packed and waiting for them. They spent several minutes unwrapping them to hold them up for waiting photographers. The museum said it had removed 29 works, a third of those on display. They were replaced with signs reading, "This artwork was removed at the request of the lender who has objected to a private event by an aerospace and defense company that was held at the Design Museum." Cultural institutions are regularly the target of protests in Britain if they accept sponsorship or funding from companies seen as unethical. Tate and the British Museum have been targeted for exhibitions sponsored by the oil company BP. In March, the defense contractor BAE Systems withdrew its sponsorship from an arts festival, the Great Exhibition of the North, after several musicians pulled out. In the United States, protests have been seen recently at museums that have taken money from members of the Sackler family whom protesters link to the opioid crisis. But it is rare for artists to withdraw their work from an exhibition. "I've been working in the sector for 20 years and I've never had this happen to me," Alice Black, one of the Design Museum's directors, said in a telephone interview. The protest was coordinated by Jess Worth, co founder of BP or Not BP?, an activist group set up to target cultural events that receive sponsorship from the oil company. Members of her group had work in the exhibition, and she said she had been shocked when she learned about the reception. "I was absolutely horrified, because it feels very personal when it's your work on display," she said. Ms. Worth first asked the museum to apologize and to promise not to hold events by "unethical" firms, then requested the work to be removed when the museum did not meet the demands in full. In an open letter on its website, the museum said that it would review its policy on who could rent its spaces, but added, "we are in the midst of an argument not of our making." "We will not be seen as an easy target and a surrogate for the real target of these campaigners," the letter added. "We do not want our programs to be co opted by the agenda of others, and we stand by our curatorial independence." The letter did not ease tensions. Mr. Fairey, in an emailed statement, said that he understood the museum's need to make money. But that did not mean it should work with a defense firm, he added. "I've had to make hard choices in my past," he said, "but it's always been important for me to put my belief system first and my financial needs second." Mr. Fairey once turned down a commission from the cigarette firm Marlboro, his spokeswoman said in a telephone interview. Ms. Black, the museum director, stressed that holding the reception did not mean that the museum endorsed Leonardo's business. "This is how we exist," she said, pointing out that the museum only got 2 percent of its funding from the government. "It's not easy in the current context to continue to operate." "I am saddened by the whole situation," she added, saying that she was concerned about what the episode could mean for future exhibitions looking to cover activist art. At the museum on Thursday, Ms. Worth said that the artists' actions could be "a turning point for the ethical funding in the cultural sector. If you don't do your due diligence on the money you take, it can have serious consequences."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
ASPEN SANTA FE BALLET at the Joyce Theater (April 26, 7:30 p.m.; April 27 29, 8 p.m.; through April 30). Aspen Santa Fe Ballet returns to the Joyce with three New York premieres and its usual penchant for contemporary ballet. Formed in Aspen in 1996 with just seven dancers, the company under the artistic direction of the former Joffrey dancer Tom Mossbrucker and the executive direction of Jean Philippe Malaty shows off its sleek, athletic sensibility. Along with Cayetano Soto's "Huma Rojo," a humorous homage to the women in Mr. Soto's life, the company performs Alejandro Cerrudo's "Silent Ghost" and Cherice Barton's "Eudaemonia." 212 242 0800, joyce.org DANCING THE GODS at Symphony Space (April 22, 8 p.m.; April 23, 7 p.m.). World Music Institute presents the sixth season of this Indian classical dance festival, which focuses, in part, on the Mohiniyattam form. On Saturday, Neena Prasad presents a program of original pieces accompanied by the composer and vocalist Madhavan Nampoothiri, the percussionist K. P. Ramesh Babu and the violinist Padmanabha. On Sunday, the Kathak artist Sanjukta Sinha embraces traditional and contemporary aspects of the form in "Angika, Journeys in Love," a suite of dances that explores the love of the divine. One hour before each curtain, Rajika Puri, one of the festival's curators, hosts a lecture and demonstration. 212 864 5400, worldmusicinstitute.org THE EQUUS PROJECTS at Gibney Dance: Agnes Varis Performing Arts Center (April 23 and 26, 7:30 p.m.). Performances by the Equus Projects, led by the artistic director JoAnna Mendl Shaw, rarely make it to New York City. Her casts include dancers and horses, which understandably makes touring difficult. But there are no horses in "The Breaking Ring," which takes place inside a 16 by 22 foot space framed by a white picket fence, designed by Ali Akbarian. Audience members watch from behind as four performers Meredith Clemmons, Deb Maciel, Audrey Rachelle and Ellie van Bever explore the space through a practice of listening and response, which is inspired by the company's work with animals. jmsnyc aol.com FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH at the 14th Street Y (April 27 29, 8 p.m.; through April 30). This installment of From the Horse's Mouth which blends performance and storytelling explores the history and breadth of Indian dance in America. Conceived and directed by Tina Croll and Jamie Cunningham, and curated by Rajika Puri, the program investigates American choreographers, like Ruth St. Denis, Ted Shawn and Jack Cole, as well as early Indian dancers in America, including Balasaraswati, Ragini Devi and Indrani. Live music? Of course. The engagement also features a special presentation on Wednesday at 6:30 p.m., "A Century of Indian Dance in America 1906 2017," which will include live demonstrations and photos of Indian dance pioneers since 1906. 212 780 0800, 14streety.org/celebrationofindiandance	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
As my colleague Ian Johnson put it, the column aimed to explain "the disconnect one feels in talking to Chinese people it's not about different cultures, but different ways of perceiving reality due to different sources of information." I'm especially surprised that the column went viral on the Chinese internet. Censorship is a tired topic to many Chinese, who live it everyday. Since both The Times and its Chinese website are blocked in China, people made screenshots or PDF versions of the column, then posted it on social media timelines or shared it in chat groups. I posted the links on my Weibo account but the tweet got blocked quickly. "After reading your article, I'm very worried about China's future," a lawyer in Beijing messaged me. Her family has been using tools to bypass the Great Firewall for years. She said her son was considered "weird" by his high school classmates because he shared information he learned from some blocked foreign websites. Now he's studying at a college in the United States. "He had to leave," she said. "He was too different." There were some discussions about how representative the young people in my column were. Some readers, especially expats, said they know plenty of Chinese who scale the Great Firewall. Some of my closest Chinese friends also said they will have to send themselves into exile if the government blocks all censorship bypassing tools. It will be the last straw for them. But outside of these circles, it's often a different picture. Some people even those who have many ways to get out of the Great Firewall decide to stay in and defend it. That leads me to a book that touched me deeply because it depicts in great detail the effects of brainwashing. Educated, a memoir by Tara Westover, tells the tale of a young woman escaping her survivalist Mormon family in the mountains of Idaho. Her parents home schooled her and her siblings and taught them their versions of the world and humanity. When I read about her struggle to unlearn what her parents had taught her, I kept thinking of my own struggle to undo all the brainwashing I grew up with in China. So my column wasn't just about the young generation of Chinese. It was about all Chinese who grew up without access to uncensored information. Once inside the wall, it's hard to escape because often you don't even know what you don't know.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
If Episode 1 of "Trust" was an introduction to J. Paul Getty his disappointment in his children, his emotional repression, his lavish yet frugal life Episode 2 is a showcase of James Fletcher Chace (Brendan Fraser), the security specialist and former C.I.A. operative Getty sends to Rome to solve the kidnapping of his grandson in the summer of 1973. There's hardly a moment when Chace is not onscreen, so if you liked this episode, it's probably because you fell for Fraser's quirky depiction of him. Chace speaks with a Texas drawl, wears a cowboy hat, quotes fire and brimstone Bible verse and talks directly at the camera. The shift in tone between episodes is slightly jarring; Getty's Sutton Place was humorless and formal. Here, Chace is chatty as can be, very comfortable in his skin, and he slips in and out of being the omniscient narrator. It almost feels as if we're watching a whole different show. Luckily, it's so enjoyable to watch Fraser's fluid, goofy and sharp Chace as he butters up Roman bellboys, smooth talks a police chief and cracks jokes with old men playing cards in a piazza that the transition is relatively painless, and it isn't long before you've forgotten about Sutton Place altogether. The brash American meeting the old world Europe isn't a new conceit, but with Chace at the center of it, it's entertaining. This week's episode also introduces us to Paul's mom, Gail Getty (Hilary Swank), who learns from a gaggle of paparazzi and journalists waiting for her outside her home what ostensibly happened to her son. She has freshly returned from a camping trip with her other children, wearing sunglasses and a head scarf, but her visitors quickly yank her back into a harsher reality, which includes a sniveling husband, the actor Lang Jeffries (played by John Schwab). Gail is a straightforward, concerned mom, but she also shows an abundance of empathy for a son who doesn't have a great track record of staying out of trouble. "Paul, he's been having a difficult time of late," Gail explains to Chace, who has just arrived in Rome on Getty's orders. "But he's a gentle, kind kid. He's a bit of an idealist, you know?" She's defending him against Lang, who displays no likable qualities and blames Paul's predicament on Paul himself. "He's been kicked out of every school he's ever been to," Lang complains. "Drinks, takes drugs, lives in a squat with God knows who." (The answer is Paul's girlfriend, her twin sister and another drifter friend, Marcello.) Chace, noticing that Lang is critical of Paul's general existence, asks Gail if Lang might be behind Paul's disappearance. No, she responds: "For one thing, he's not clever enough." That's sufficient for Chace. They share a knowing look, and it's a nice little moment of candor and trust building between them. But ultimately, Gail and Chace will diverge on how, exactly, the kidnapping did go down. In the final moments of Episode 1, it seemed very possible that the kidnapping was a hoax. (Paul places a sack over his own head as the men behind him wait, almost patiently.) The central line of inquiry in Episode 2 is whether the ploy was Paul's or he was really taken against his will. The investigation certainly seems to start under the assumption that the kidnapping was real, and rumor has it that the mob is involved. Through a tip from a bellboy whom Chace has a humorous relationship with, and plies with immense bribes Chace finds his way to a man we see in the very first scene, in Paul's squat, watching porn and trying to have Paul's girlfriend and her twin sister raped. He turns out to run a restaurant, where Paul's paintings hang all over the walls payment for meals when Paul didn't have money, the man tells Chace. "He owed a lot of people money around here," says the man. "I tell you one thing, Mr. Texas, if I saw him now, I'd kidnap the little bastard." But when Chace offers him the briefcase stuffed with money in exchange for Paul's return, the man's cronies ultimately refuse it, telling Chace they're out of "stock" (Paul). Chace is back to Square 1. The situation appears to be a little more complicated than a mafia kidnapping. Chace eventually arrives at the same conclusion we've seen hinted at by the abduction scene in Episode 1: He discovers that Paul has been writing a movie involving a faked kidnapping, likely inspired by a scene in the 1972 movie "Travels With My Aunt," which Paul had recently watched. He combines this clue with some further fishy details (the ransom note was plopped directly on Paul's bed, not delivered to the police; the timeline between the ransom note's appearance and Paul's last sighting don't line up; Paul's girlfriend and her sister show a surprising lack of concern) and becomes convinced that Paul has fixed the whole thing. Gail begs to differ. Her idealist son would not be capable of something like this. In a moment of desperation, before Chace leaves, she asks him what to do. "Well, the good lord preaches forgiveness," he begins. "But what that boy done to his mama? I'd whoop his ass." This is peak Chace: Very Texan, Christian, straight to the point, and hard not to like. For the time being, Gail has to continue the investigation on her own. In the end, Chace morphs back into the omniscient narrator to close things out, reminding us what's at the root of this whole mess: money. "Turns out a rich life is just as messed up as a poor life, just a different kind of messed up," he tells the camera. And this particular mess, he adds, is just getting started. The last image we see is of Paul, whimpering, chained up at the bottom of a pit. Paul's father, J. Paul Getty II (Michael Esper), who hadn't had much of a chance to shine yet, has one of the better emotional performances of Episode 2 as he sits at a bar, drunk, watching his dad explain in a news conference that he won't pay a single cent to the kidnappers. Talking to a woman he's hitting on, Paul Jr. says his father is the meanest man he's ever met. "When you have everything you could ever dream of, what do you value?" he asks her rhetorically, addressing the central crux of the show. "Nothing," he whispers. It's the first time you have pity for him and the plague that is money in his own life. One of the episode's strangest scenes is a conversation between Gail and a live statue, who tells Gail near the show's end that he witnessed Paul being hooded and whisked away by men. This feels like a narrative stretch, but it's no more jarring than Fraser's breaking of the fourth wall.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Don't Waste Money on Premium Gas if Your Car Is Made for Regular With the typical new passenger vehicle costing more than 33,000, American drivers understandably want to do everything they can to preserve their investments. And what better way to do that than by spending a few extra cents per gallon and occasionally treating your car to a tank of premium fuel? Don't do it. Unless one likes to unnecessarily enrich the oil companies, there is no reason to buy premium gasoline for a vehicle that needs only regular. According to a report this week from AAA, 16.5 million drivers used premium fuel on average at least once a month over the last year, although their cars required only regular grade gasoline, accomplishing nothing positive and wasting 2.1 billion. There are advantages to using brand name fuels, whose detergents and additives can help engines run cleaner and last longer. (More on that below.) But using a higher octane fuel than a vehicle's owner's manual specifies "provides no increase in fuel economy, horsepower or a reduction in emissions," said Greg Brannon, the AAA's director of automotive engineering. Unless you have a high performance car like a BMW M3 or a Jaguar XF whose engine is designed to require the use of higher octane gasoline, so called premium gasoline, your engine will let you know if regular gas isn't good enough. How? By making a metallic pinging or knocking sound when you accelerate. If that doesn't happen, feel free to fill your tank with the cheaper stuff. As the Federal Trade Commission's website so succinctly states: "Unless your engine is knocking, buying higher octane gasoline is a waste of money.'' Gasoline sold in the United States usually is available in three octane ratings: Regular gas is typically 87 octane, midgrade is 89 and premium might be 91 to 93. The difference is not mere marketing. The higher the octane number, the greater the fuel's resistance to detonation. Decades ago, that mattered. Using a lower octane fuel could often result in pinging or knocking because the fuel was igniting prematurely. Knocking is not good because it can cause premature engine wear. In the 1960s, vehicle engines were so sensitive to knocking that one fuel company, Sunoco, offered eight octane grades at the pump. And the company produced a chart, second only to the periodic table of elements in complexity, to help drivers figure out which blend their make and model car required. (It being the '60s, the only cars listed came from Detroit.) Back then, too, gasoline also contained tetraethyl lead to dampen knocking and increase octane. But leaded gasoline, a neurotoxin and environmental hazard, was eventually outlawed. Modern engines not only don't need lead but have sophisticated antiknock technologies that sense a fuel's octane rating and adjust their ignition timing to prevent damage. A vehicle's owner's manual specifies the type of fuel required for proper performance, although it might also say that premium fuel is ''recommended.'' When premium fuel is merely recommended, there is no reason to use it instead of regular, according to Jake Fisher, Consumer Reports' director of auto testing. In its own experiments, Consumer Reports found that vehicles that "recommended" premium did not increase acceleration or fuel economy compared with regular gasoline. At Ford Motor, all vehicles are designed to run on regular fuel, with the exception of high performance models like the Mustang Shelby GT350 and the Focus RS, which have high compression engines that burn hotter, said Steve Russ, the senior technical leader for internal combustion engines at Ford Global. And at General Motors, premium gas is required only in vehicles like the Chevrolet Camaro ZL1 and the Corvette Z06, with their supercharged 6.2 liter V8 engines. Even the big Cadillac Escalade recommends, but does not require, premium fuel. In fact, more than 90 percent of the company's products are calibrated for regular gasoline, according to Bill Studzinski, G.M.'s engineering group manager for fuels. "We have always said, 'Don't put more octane in your tank than the owner's manual requires,'" he said. Ford and G.M. agreed that there was one exception: If a vehicle was used to pull a heavy load or operate in extremely dry conditions, "you might gain a little in performance" from premium, Mr. Studzinski said. "Generally, there's not a big benefit." Right now, the best way to ensure that your car is getting its best fuel economy is to use gasoline that helps keep the engine clean. To maintain an engine's life and performance, it is important to prevent deposits from building. Deposits can reduce fuel economy, cause hesitant starts and increase emissions. But it is the quality of the fuel, not its octane rating, that matters. That is why the brand of gasoline you buy could make more of a difference than the octane grade. While most gasoline is refined by a handful of major players, the quality depends on what ingredients are added to the fuel before it arrives at the service station.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Just five short years ago Jared and Ivanka were dinner party royalty here in Manhattan. It's that kind of place. They had money, they had youth, they had celebrity. They were thin. I'm told that their manners were impeccable, so you'd never know that his father was an actual felon and her father a de facto one. Besides, you can't hold family against someone, can you? We don't choose how we're born. But from then on, we do make choices, and we're accountable for those. Jared and Ivanka are about to be held accountable. They chose to tether their fortunes to her father's, chose to go along for the ride, chose to see how far it could take them, because what if it took them all the way? What if Ivanka became the first female president, something that Manhattan acquaintances of hers assured me that she fantasized about, a giddy possibility that her father floated out loud. With that crowning adventure that climactic branding opportunity dangling before her, she and Jared rationalized her father's tantrums, fed his delusions, laundered his cruelty and kept her Instagram aglow with images from their fabulous new Washington life. Down there, near the border: migrant children in cages. Over here, near the Potomac: Javanka in their gilded tableaux. They are the Faustian poster couple of the Trump presidency, the king and queen of the principle torching prom at which so many danced alongside them, although in less exquisitely tailored attire. They are Mitch McConnell after a makeover, Ted Cruz gone to charm school, Mike Pompeo with a more rigorous fitness regimen, Lindsey Graham with less time on the links. They are Mike Pence and Nikki Haley and scores of others in and out of office, so entranced by power, so enchanted by perks, so primed for future prizes that they junked values that they once supposedly held and downgraded decency to something ornamental, a sprig of parsley on a fish fillet. Tell me, Jared. Be honest, Ivanka. Was it worth it? It's a question for the whole shockingly populous court of collaborators around President Trump. Time will tell. Trumpism isn't ending. Trump himself isn't going away. He'll have his PAC, maybe he'll have his new media venture, there's that rumor I'd call it a threat that he's eyeing 2024. A wagon hitched to his may not be veering into the ditch just yet. But the wagon that belonged to Jared and Ivanka was different from the others. It didn't fit neatly into the Trump administration's motley caravan of expedience and ambition: They were glossier grifters. That dissonance brought them special derision, because it was a particularly unsettling illustration of the tradeoffs that people are willing to make, the compromises that they can talk themselves into. How big a leap was it, really, for Don Jr. to go from hunting big game in Africa to haranguing the political bigwigs whom Daddy dubbed RINOs? No one in Junior's old crowd was going to be surprised or appalled. Same old menace, new prey. Pence's and Pompeo's fellow evangelicals didn't and won't begrudge them their worship of Trump, because all of them found that twisted religion together. And no serious observer is disillusioned by McConnell, because no serious observer had any illusions about him in the first place. He does what he must to maximize his impact. But what of Jared and Ivanka? They epitomized the very entitled, elite class of Ivy groomed, Davos bound Americans that her father mocked. They were sanctioning the savaging of their soon to be former friends. You could say that they defected. But are they really going to be content in their new social homeland, now that 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. is no longer its clubhouse? Where, geographically, will they alight? That was a question prominently explored over recent days in Vanity Fair and CNN, which portrayed them more or less as Vuitton vagabonds. Washington won't work, not even a suite at the Trump International Hotel, because there's nothing more pathetic than lingering at a party once the music has stopped. Mar a Loco makes questionable sense. It's Melania's sandbox, and she and Ivanka play together about as sweetly as Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio do. New Jersey is where the Kushners have their roots, but Javanka is accustomed to more glitz than that. At this point they're Aspen, not Asbury Park. I have suggestions. North Korea, for one. Ivanka has met its ruler and been to the Demilitarized Zone. She wouldn't have to ask for directions. Saudi Arabia. Jared and Prince Mohammed bin Salman are spiritual twins, conjoined by their sense of superiority. Russia. Yes, Russia! It would be the poetic choice, bringing the Trump family's presidential adventure full circle. But it's New York City, where Javanka still own an apartment, that's surely drawing their gaze. And that's, well, awkward. The Trump administration did label it an "anarchic jurisdiction" as part of an attempt to deny it as much as 12 billion in federal funds. Javanka would have some explaining to do. They might not find many people willing to listen. "Everyone with self respect, a career, morals, respect for democracy, or who doesn't want their friends to shame them both in private and public, will steer clear," one unidentified former acquaintance of theirs told Emily Jane Fox for her Vanity Fair article. Another said: "Ivanka is no Princess Margaret and Jared is not the Duke of Windsor regaling guests with amusing bon mots to a captive audience. No one wants to hear about Sarah Huckabee's pies or Steve Bannon's shirts." A snob like that actually deserves a dynamic duo like them (and may shed light on how President Trump found the traction in the heartland that he did). Javanka can't protest that they moderated the president, not after his past immoderate weeks of raging against democracy and conniving to subvert it. They can't retroactively claim some profound but strangled ambivalence about his reign, not after her fangirl phantasmagoria at the Republican convention. No, they have made their bed. Lucky for them, the sheets have a serious thread count. I invite you to sign up for my free weekly email newsletter. You can follow me on Twitter ( FrankBruni).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
LONDON The stillness spoke volumes. There were 12 minutes left to play, but the game was over. Manchester United's players were swarming around Marcus Rashford, scorer of his team's third goal, the one that had settled matters. West Ham's were staring blankly at the turf, unsure of quite how things had slipped away from them. In the Billy Bonds stand, though, nobody moved. In ordinary circumstances, more than a handful would have picked themselves up with a shake of the head and a flash of anger, and made their way to the exits. A bitterly cold evening, a long trudge away from the stadium ahead, most reasonable hope extinguished. Why put yourself through any more? But, of course, this was not an ordinary circumstance. It has been 271 days since fans were allowed to watch a Premier League game in the flesh. The 2,000 West Ham supporters inside the London Stadium were the first to attend a game since March 9: another season, another world. These were the lucky few. Their reward was to sit and endure seeing their team beaten, 3 1. There is a fairly brutal metaphor there, a reminder that sports is not a game of guarantees. There is no guarantee you will leave satisfied. There is no guarantee that your support will have any effect. As this game proved for at least half an hour before West Ham came to life and scored the opening goal and before Manchester United, belatedly, decided to join in there is no guarantee that this form of entertainment will even be entertaining. Perhaps, though, there is one exception. Soccer's past nine months have been marked, indelibly, by absence: first, for two months, of the sport as a whole, and then, for far longer, of the sport as it ought to be, not just a game but a spectacle, a conduit for contact and community and family and all those other things that have been lost, have been sacrificed, in far more significant ways over the course of this year. Soccer has found a way through, to its credit, playing games in empty stadiums with vast banners draped over vacant seats and artificial soundtracks piped onto television feeds. It has made it work, as it had to do. But every goal that has been scored has brought a sense of regret, too, a sense that something was missing, a sense that nothing was the same. To witness the return of fans, though, was to realize how much deeper the absence ran. Fans are, in a sincere but intangible way, the meaning of soccer, the meaning of sports. It is fans who define and determine what all of this means. In a more immediate sense, though, they provide the texture of the occasion that bring all of this to life in vivid Technicolor. The roar after a goal, of course, is the clearest example, but the soundscape is far richer, far more diverse than that, and often not necessarily especially logical. The loudest cheer here on Saturday was not, for example, the one that greeted Tomas Soucek's goal that put West Ham ahead. It was for a tackle by Declan Rice on Rashford. Then there are all the sounds that are so much a part of the tableau that they are easily forgotten the ripple of applause after a well executed cross field pass; the mocking jeer that accompanies a wayward touch; the raucous applause for a throw in and the noises that no algorithm or soundboard could hope to capture: the ebb and flow of excitement as a player dallies on the ball and an attack breaks down; the switch from cheer to groan as the referee halts a counterattack because of a supposed injury. It is only when you hear them all again that you realize how much has been missing. This is not the end of the journey, of course. Two thousand fans in a stadium that can hold 30 times that number can still be easily lost; the noise they generate is less a thunderclap and more a rain squall. The Premier League has been lobbying the British government for months, insisting it has protocols in place that can safeguard far more fans than this. (It might, if it wishes to strengthen its case, point out that the vast mall that sits adjacent to the London Stadium was packed with Christmas shoppers on Saturday evening, making the most of the capital's exit from the country's most onerous lockdown restrictions this week.) Those who had been allocated tickets to United's visit in West Ham's random lottery were greeted outside the stadium by staff members handing out free face masks adorned with an antiracism message and welcoming them back to the club. There were temperature checks on the way in, one way systems in place to move around the arena, all those things that might once have been so alien but are now ruefully familiar. Only four of this weekend's nine Premier League fixtures will be played in front of any fans at all; the fact that the 10th game, Newcastle's trip to Aston Villa, was postponed after an outbreak of the coronavirus among Newcastle's players and staff members offers a warning that the road ahead is not a straight one. That at least one game this weekend at Millwall, not too far from this part of east London was marred by fans' booing the sight of players taking the knee, part of soccer's continuing response to the Black Lives Matter movement, is a troubling reminder that every silver lining risks attracting a cloud. But this is, without question, a start. After 271 days, fans are finally back in Premier League stadiums. The game feels just a little more real, a little more like its old self again. It has missed them and they, in turn, have missed it. Nobody moved when Rashford scored Manchester United's third. That is the lot of the fan: There are no guarantees that you will like what you see. But sometimes, just seeing it is enough.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Thousands of College Kids Paid to Work for a Viral Party Kingpin. What Could Go Wrong? For eight years, a digital media company called I'm Shmacked has posted viral videos of the college party scene. Beer bongs, booze, marijuana and scantily clad women are all featured prominently, in scenes set to upbeat party music. Cinematic shots of college campuses and university landmarks are interspersed with flip cup games and keg stands. High schoolers love it. While university tours and campus promo reels can give them an idea of the academic environment at a college, I'm Shmacked gives them an inside look at what really matters, in a social sense: the parties. "I used to look at the I'm Shmacked party videos of the colleges I was looking at," said Darius Myers, 24, who was a student at Snow College in Utah. "The schools that had the coolest recap videos, it made me really want to go there." The business model of I'm Shmacked is to recruit undergraduates as content creators, often with promises of thousands of dollars a month in compensation and online fame. By simply posting videos of parties and other viral antics, many were told, they could gain experience in online marketing and make cash from ads and by selling custom merchandise. Instead, many students sank hundreds of dollars into I'm Shmacked and ran Instagram accounts without pay. In interviews with The New York Times, students said that after they confronted the company over false promises, they were threatened with lawsuits and intimidated into silence. Many who interned for the company fared no better. I'm Shmacked was founded in 2011 by Jeffrie Ray, an amateur filmmaker, then 19, and Arya Toufanian, a student at George Washington University, then 20. The two began traveling across the country, filming college parties and uploading the footage to YouTube. The videos were a hit and often incriminating. One, filmed at West Virginia University, featured students smashing car windows interspersed with footage of them guzzling beer bongs during a St. Patrick's Day charity party. In 2012, it had more than half a million views. (It has since been removed from the web; the original YouTube channel for I'm Shmacked has been deactivated for violating terms, but there is a new one.) In order to keep up with demand, Mr. Ray and Mr. Toufanian started enlisting small groups of people to travel to different colleges, hosting wild parties for the sole purpose of content creation. This was one of the first widespread digital efforts to capture booze soaked party culture and package it for the web. I'm Shmacked, along with companies like Barstool and Total Frat Move, grew by churning out content that sold a fantasy of what college life could be like, racking up followers and view counts by the millions. For many students, being affiliated with I'm Shmacked was a status indicator. "I thought getting the company name out there with my name would be a good networking opportunity for other things down the line in my life," said Jerry Shukes, 21, who ran an I'm Shmacked Instagram account at East Carolina University, in North Carolina. After all, it was an I'm Shmacked YouTube video of a party at East Carolina that influenced his decision to attend that school. In the fall of 2018, Mr. Shukes paid 300 to I'm Shmacked, thinking it would be "a decent investment" and became part of what Mr. Toufanian called his "college ambassador program." That program, which officially started in 2016, was pitched to students simply: pay 45 to 500 and become the designated representative of the company at your school. The designation meant running an I'm Shmacked Instagram account that was school specific imshmackedpurdue, say, or imshmackedcornell and if a post or video went viral, it would often be reposted to the main I'm Shmacked handle, which had 1.2 million followers. Students were told they could make money through online merchandise stores, ad placements and by charging other students to be featured on the accounts. According to a company spreadsheet from 2017 and interviews with several people who used to work with Mr. Toufanian, at least 3,600 college kids took the company up on this offer. (Mr. Toufanian did not respond to an email sent requesting comments for this article. Mr. Ray, who left the company by 2016, could not be reached.) There were some red flags. In 2013, after I'm Shmacked sold hundreds of tickets to University of Delaware students for a party it failed to reserve a site for, police had to be called in to quell the disturbance. In 2016, students at Santa Clara University demanded refunds from the company after it raised more than 30,000 for a concert and party that never took place. In 2017, I'm Shmacked created confusion around a planned Halloween party scheduled to take place in Utah by announcing its cancelation on social media the night before the event, leaving the events company it had teamed with on the hook for thousands of dollars. (The event eventually took place, but not before sponsors had withdrawn and students had demanded refunds.) Mr. Toufanian had also proved to be a loose cannon. In 2014 he threatened a Business Insider reporter with petitions to fire and deport her, and tweeted that she should be "prepping her anus" for an attack. Many of the I'm Shmacked Instagram accounts grew quickly, and students were excited to be working with what they considered a mainstream brand. Some planned to add their ambassadorships to their resumes. "I thought the page was going to be something," said Jorge Flores, a 20 year old at the University of Kansas, who paid 300 to become an I'm Shmacked ambassador. "I thought it would be a good way to build a community at school." "I'm Shmacked did tours on YouTube," he said, referring to the company's tendency to sweep through college towns like a rock band. "So I was like, maybe they'd bring the tour to K.U. or expose me to other opportunities and help me make connections." Many students who signed up did notice the company's disorganization from the start. It quickly became clear that some schools had multiple I'm Shmacked ambassadors and Instagram accounts. Penn State, for instance, had four I'm Shmacked pages. In interviews, several students said that Mr. Toufanian promised them that competing accounts were frauds, and that he would have Instagram remove them. In reality, multiple Instagram accounts meant that students could be pitted against their peers to source the most viral content. Mr. Toufanian had also told students that they would receive a cut of any items sold through college specific merchandise shops that they could promote on their Instagram accounts; this, many believed, would allow them to quickly recoup the money they had given I'm Shmacked up front. But online storefronts were rarely created, according to someone who consulted with Mr. Toufanian on business matters, and student ambassadors never received a cut of any sales. "I worked at a sub shop on campus for 9.25 an hour. I was just expecting to make the money I gave them back in a month or so," said Arun Singh, a 22 year old who paid I'm Shmacked to become an ambassador at Penn State in September 2018. "But none of that happened." In many cases, students said, once they paid the fee, they stopped hearing from the company. When Mr. Shukes tried to speak out about what happened to him, Mr. Toufanian sent him repeated messages on Instagram and an email. One reads: "You'll be sued personally and I'm listing your individual name if your website isn't down in 24 hours. I will pursue you for damages. It is beyond illegal." When another person set up an Instagram account on which he reposted screen shots from students who said they had been taken advantage of, Mr. Toufanian messaged him that he would soon be sued. "It's criminal and slander," the message said. "Reporting harassment to police they'll deal with you." There are no records of lawsuits filed by Mr. Toufanian against students, but many reported being bullied by him and said they feared retribution. And he has a history of threatening legal action against those who cross him. In 2016, a lawyer acting on behalf of Mr. Toufanian sent a letter to Univision (by then, the owner of Gawker Media's assets) demanding that it take down two negative articles about him, calling them libelous. (The same lawyer represented Peter Thiel in his legal attacks against Gawker.) In December 2018, after the website 5orry published an article that was suspicious of another of Mr. Toufanian's ventures a stock trading scheme, operating under the Instagram handle stocks 5orry's owner received many emails from Mr. Toufanian threatening legal action if the articles were not removed. "After today I will pursue a lawsuit against you with cooperation of police," Mr. Toufanian wrote in an email in April. "You don't want to give me your name, your internet service provider and the host will tell me who paid for it when I sue them and press criminal charges. You can't hide forever. Last chance." More recently, Mr. Toufanian filed a lawsuit against Kyle Oreffice, a stock trader, for defamation after Mr. Oreffice published an article on his website calling Mr. Toufanian a "scammer" and "The Douche of Wall Street." (Mr. Toufanian also contacted Mr. Oreffice's mother, she said, and posted her full name to his Instagram Stories.) Mr. Toufanian has also had legal trouble come the other way. According to court records, he was sued in 2015 for breach of contract and in 2014 for transferring 120,000 from I'm Shmacked into his personal bank account, among other claims. In 2018, Madison Louch, a D.J. and Instagram influencer with whom Mr. Toufanian had a personal relationship, filed a restraining order against him. Some students who believe they will never recoup their money are still running I'm Shmacked accounts. Not long after Bradley Gasparovich, the 21 year old administrator of ImShmacked MSU (Michigan State University), paid Mr. Toufanian 300 to be a college ambassador, Mr. Toufanian unfollowed him and blocked all communication. Mr. Gasparovich was frustrated, feeling he had been taken advantage of, but decided to keep the handle active. He is interested in marketing and had amassed more than 7,000 followers, so now he is just posting for fun. "I keep it because everyone knows the name," he said. He also uses the account to warn other students. In September, after I'm Shmacked put out a new call for college ambassadors on Instagram Stories, Mr. Gasparovich got messages from students who wanted to know how much money he was making, before they signed up for the program themselves. "Arya told them they will generate revenue right away," Mr. Gasparovich said. "I said no! I did this last year, just don't do it." Dakota Verrico, an 18 year old freshman at Rutgers, in New Jersey, almost fell for it. After Mr. Verrico responded to the call out, he was told that in order to learn more about the "business opportunity," he would have to pay 500. Mr. Toufanian told him that he could "make up to 10,000 to 30,000 a month," Mr. Verrico said. "I kept asking him, how would I make money from this? How does this work?" (Mr. Verrico said that Mr. Toufanian ultimately left him a voice memo that explained that money was made through charging women to be featured on the I'm Shmacked Instagram accounts in addition to other methods.) In early October, the primary I'm Shmacked verified Instagram handle disappeared. Instagram confirmed that the account was removed for multiple violations. Mr. Toufanian was distraught. "I have been desperate for 3 weeks now for our future. Our verified business Instagram imshmacked was taken down," he tweeted at the C.E.O. of Instagram. (The tweet has since been deleted.) Students who lost money to I'm Shmacked were relieved. But a new account could always pop up. Mr. Toufanian's personal Instagram account, which is verified with almost 175,000 followers, is still active. Mr. Verrico said he would urge all students to research any companies approaching them on Instagram, especially if the offer seems too good to be true. Still, he understood how someone falls prey to it. "They see a guy with one million followers and is verified," Mr. Verrico said. "That's how I was at first. I was like, 'Whoa.' You just never would think someone with that much power would do that."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell last week, but employers continue to lay off workers at an extraordinarily high pace that exceeds the worst levels of past recessions. Initial claims for state benefits totaled 790,000 before adjustments for seasonal factors, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The tally, down from 866,000 the previous week, is roughly four times what it was before the coronavirus pandemic shut down many businesses in March. The latest data suggests that jobless claims have flattened since the big gains in hiring recorded last spring as the economy bounced back, economists said. And layoffs continue on Wednesday, for example, Raytheon said it would eliminate 15,000 commercial aerospace and corporate jobs. "I'm concerned about a plateau," said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. "It suggests we are entering the second phase of the recovery, one that is slower and more susceptible to downside risk." Other economic data has been mixed. The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that retail sales rose 0.6 percent in August, compared with a 0.9 percent gain in July, as consumers grew more cautious. And in a sign of how guarded the long term economic view remains, the Federal Reserve indicated that it would keep interest rates near zero at least through 2023. "The labor market continues to heal from the viral recession, but unemployment remains extremely elevated and will remain a problem for at least a couple of years," said Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC Financial Services. Federal data suggests that the program now has more beneficiaries than regular unemployment insurance. But there is evidence that both overcounting and fraud may have contributed to a jump in claims. The largest surge by far last week was in Arizona, where the Labor Department reported more than 165,000 initial claims under the program, an increase from 101,000 the week before. Both weeks, only California which has also reported widespread fraud had a higher tally. "We are reviewing over one million P.U.A. claims for likely fraudulent activity," Brett Bezio, deputy press secretary of the Arizona Department of Economic Security, said in an email. To give a sense of the scale of the attempted abuse, he pointed out that the state had received nearly 2.7 million jobless claims during the pandemic, which represents 80 percent of Arizona's work force. While Pandemic Unemployment Assistance has been hit with allegations of fraud, another new program, Lost Wages Assistance, has struggled to pay any money at all. President Trump created it last month with federal disaster funds after Republicans and Democrats in Congress deadlocked on a relief bill. The payments of 300 per week half the amount of a federal supplement that expired at the end of July are retroactive to the week that ended Aug. 1. But officials said there was money for no more than six weeks, so states have been told that the coverage ended Sept. 5. More than 30 states have begun paying benefits, but "it's kind of a zombie program," said Michele Evermore, senior researcher and policy analyst at the National Employment Law Project, a worker advocacy group. "Every state seems to be doing it differently," she added, with some paying a lump sum of 1,800 to cover six weeks after getting off to a late start. As with the earlier supplement, overwhelmed computer systems have added to delays. Colorado was set to begin making payments this week, but its certification process briefly froze because of demand, news reports said. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. As programs like Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Lost Wages Assistance expire or run out of funds, job searches might be expected to increase. But they haven't a sign some unemployed workers are giving up on finding a new position for now. "Job seeker numbers are pretty flat," said Julia Pollak, labor economist at ZipRecruiter, an online employment marketplace. "People still expect to get their old jobs back." Ms. Pollak said she was surprised because 36 percent of those surveyed in July by ZipRecruiter said they would spend more time searching for work if the 600 weekly supplement ended. Just over 40 percent said they would be willing to take a less appealing position. Instead, people aren't budging. "We see a level of stasis in the economy," Ms. Pollak said. "The uncertainty causes people to sit and wait. The whole economy is in a bit of a freeze." In some cases, workers have dropped out of the labor market. Labor Department data showed that 125,000 women ages 25 to 54 left the work force in August. "This is a situation where many people are choosing to delay re entering the labor force or to withdraw," Ms. Pollak said. "In some cases, it makes more sense for workers to wait for conditions to improve in their industry. It's costly for people to switch." He started receiving 200 a week in state unemployment benefits, as well as a 600 boost from the federal government. When the 600 program expired in late July and his state unemployment benefits ran out, he was left with 230 a week from Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation, a federal program for those whose state benefits have expired. Mr. Quintana lived with his girlfriend, who lost her job as a hairstylist in March when salons closed. She filed for unemployment benefits but never received them, so Mr. Quintana supported them, paying the 935 in rent and as much as 300 in utilities for their apartment. To avoid falling behind on his 357 car payment and 185 car insurance bill, he cut off cable television and borrowed from his father. Then Mr. Quintana found that he was eligible for Lost Wages Assistance. He was certified to receive the payments on Sept. 15, but he's not sure when they will arrive. Regardless, the money will be too late to avoid upheaval in Mr. Quintana's life. His relationship with his girlfriend soured as the financial stress mounted. And Mr. Quintana couldn't afford their bills. When the federal supplement ended, she didn't have enough to cover September's 2,262 mortgage payment on their four bedroom house in Burlington, northwest of Boston. Her husband pulled 6,000 out of his 401(k) savings to make the mortgage payment and to have money on hand for October and November in case Ms. Costanzo hasn't found work by then. This month, she stopped receiving the state benefits, too. The unemployment office told her that she needed to refile her claim. She did so, but no benefits have materialized. Lost Wages Assistance produced a lump sum of 1,200 this week. Ms. Costanzo doesn't know if she will receive any more from the program. She does know that if she doesn't get a job soon, she and her husband will keep draining their retirement savings. After months of fruitless searching, Ms. Costanzo had her first job interview this week. If she gets the job, she will start on Monday. She will be relieved if she is hired, but she will also be concerned, because the job requires working in an office. She had wanted a job she could do remotely, because she fears bringing the coronavirus home to her sons, 27 and 31, who have cystic fibrosis and are prone to lung infections. "At this point, I don't have a choice," she said. "I need to work to pay the mortgage."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
A roundup of motoring news from the web: According to a report from Automotive News Europe, Alfa Romeo will become more independent soon, joining the other standalone brands of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles. Sergio Marchionne, chief executive of Fiat Chrysler, has not commented on the possibility, but Automotive News sources told the publication he would announce the Alfa plan in May, along with a broader strategy for the recently merged company. (Automotive News Europe, subscription required) In other Chrysler news, Automotive News says that Mr. Marchionne's plan to rebuild Chrysler when he took over the company's leadership nearly five years ago has worked. The publication's analysis of the rebuilt automaker looked at Chrysler's improved products, profitability, growing sales and the divestiture of government and United Autoworkers union ownership. (Automotive News, subscription required) Transportation legislation supported by President Obama's administration is making its way through Congress. If passed, the bill would pour more than 300 billion into road and transit projects by the end of 2018. There are no specific projects on the table yet. (Bloomberg) Classic Chevrolet, a dealership in Grapevine, Tex., opened a natural gas fueling station last month to help sell natural gas powered vehicles. The natural gas filling equipment the station will also sell natural gas, gasoline, diesel and E85 fuels cost about 1 million to install. (Automotive News, subscription required)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Left, Taron Egerton as Elton John in "Rocketman." Right, Renee Zellweger as Judy Garland in "Judy." Of all the films that competed for best drama at the Golden Globes, four are currently streaming. But the odd one out also happened to be the surprise winner, Sam Mendes's World War I thriller "1917," which is only just beginning its theatrical run. And while prominent Netflix nominees like "The Irishman," "The Two Popes" and "Dolemite is My Name" got blanked, most of the other winners on the film side are either on Netflix or available on other streaming services now, with Bong Joon Ho's foreign language champ "Parasite" coming next week. On the television side, the awards were spread out across cable networks and subscription services, with HBO having a particularly good night with "Succession" and "Chernobyl" winning multiple prizes, including best drama and best limited series or TV movie, and Phoebe Waller Bridge picking up best comedy and actress in a comedy for her Amazon series "Fleabag." Though a couple of shows are exclusive to one provider, most can be picked up from a variety of different services. Here's a guide to the major category winners that are currently a click away, along with excerpts from their New York Times reviews. Won for: Best musical or comedy; best actress, musical or comedy "It helps, no doubt, that Phoebe Waller Bridge writes her own dialogue. She's like a composer whose pieces are best written for her own instrument; she knows just the spaces to add a riff or shoot a disarming, conspiratorial glance. But she can also play plangent solos, and the first season as Fleabag realized she couldn't laugh or fornicate her bad memories away built to an ending of catharsis." (Read the full Times review by James Poniewozik.) Where to watch: Stream it on Amazon. Won for: Best drama; best actor, drama "The problem with 'Succession' is that the drama, while proficiently made and well acted, doesn't have enough of a charge. The stakes don't feel high enough, partly because the strong element of satire leaves us with the nagging feeling that everyone involved (except Brian Cox's Logan) is a lightweight or an idiot." (Read the full Times review by Mike Hale.) Won for: Best limited series or TV movie; best actor, limited series or TV movie "'Chernobyl' takes what you could call a Soviet approach to telling the tale. This is incongruous, since one of the messages of the program is that Soviet approaches don't work. But there it is: the imposition of a simple narrative on history, the twisting of events to create one dimensional heroes and villains, the broad brush symbolism." (Read the full Times review by Mike Hale.) Where to watch: Stream it on HBO. Rent it on iTunes, Amazon, Vudu, Google Play and YouTube. "'The Crown' the scintillating Netflix drama, improving with age is not at all shy about putting on a show, doling out all the pageantry and suds necessary. Season 3 delivers 10 entertaining episodes of personal history that are equal parts political, poignant and juicy." (Read the full Times review by James Poniewozik.) Where to watch: Stream on Netflix.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
"The Greatest Showman," a musical about the circus impresario P.T. Barnum, was dismissed by many critics when it arrived in theaters just before Christmas. Uncool. Old fashioned. Mawkish. And when initial ticket sales were poor, most box office analysts decided "The Greatest Showman" was a prime example of Hollywood being unable to pry people away from their Netflix accounts. Better stick to the superheroes and sequels. Over the past four weeks, however, "The Greatest Showman" (20th Century Fox) has become a rare sleeper hit, lifted by positive word of mouth, stunt marketing (singalong screenings) and a popular soundtrack album. Ticket sales in the United States and Canada now stand at 113.5 million, including an 11 million haul between Friday and Sunday, good for fifth place over the weekend. The movie stars Hugh Jackman and Zendaya and was produced by a team that included Peter Chernin and Laurence Mark. Similarly underappreciated movies dominated the weekend box office, with "Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle" (Sony) leading the charge. Derided by most of Hollywood before its release as an act of desperation by a franchise starved Sony, "Jumanji" was No. 1 for a third consecutive weekend, collecting about 20 million, for a new domestic total of 317 million. That astounding result is roughly in line with "Skyfall," the 2012 James Bond hit, after adjusting for inflation.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
PRESIDENT OBAMA and the Republican Congress gave the wealthiest Americans an enormous gift at the end of 2010. They increased the exemption on a series of estate related taxes and lowered the tax rate on any amount over those limits. The catch is it lasts only two years. But five months into the tax break, the people able to fully exploit it are more tentative than wealth advisers had expected. That could be a problem because this exemption, which will most likely be used to give money to children and grandchildren, is done through complicated structures that take up to a year to set up. (The exception, of course, is if someone simply dies. Then, the new estate tax exemptions of 5 million per person and a rate of 35 percent above that kick in.) So why are the richest Americans hesitating to take advantage of this tax break? It comes down to two fears that bedevil everyone: they don't want to put too much aside now in case they need it later, and they don't want to take away their children's incentive to work. "Everyone is trying to capitalize on this two year window because there is this 'use it or lose it' mentality and a need to plan wisely," said Coventry Edwards Pitt, senior wealth adviser at Ballentine Partners. "But the ideal answer from a tax mitigation standpoint is probably different from what most families can handle." While the changes to the estate tax might not produce a revenue windfall for the United States Treasury from people opting to pay the 35 percent gift tax, they could lead to a conversation that families at all levels of wealth rarely have: how do they want their lives, and by extension their wealth, to influence their children? MONEY MAKING OPPORTUNITIES By the end of 2010, many very wealthy couples had already given as much as 2 million in tax free gifts, the previous limit. But the estimates of a gift of another 8 million, to hit the new 10 million limit, could be a windfall to heirs. Lisa Featherngill, director of wealth planning at Wells Fargo Family Wealth, said an 8 million gift made to a "grantor dynasty trust" a structure that allows the people making the gift to pay taxes on the capital gains during their lifetime could grow to as much as 140 million over 40 years. This potential growth is one of the reasons advisers say that few people are looking to exceed the exemption level. The other is that some feel the economy could weaken again and they might need their money. Milo Zidek, who made his money in the reinsurance business, said he and his wife, both 76 and living in south Florida, would use the additional 8 million gift tax exemption to transfer money to their children and grandchildren. "I doubt we'll do more than that," he said. "We've got to live. And you don't want to overwhelm them." To that end, Mr. Zidek said, they would put the money in trust "because we don't want them to become wild and crazy guys." That, he said, was "improbable but nonetheless we want to keep their noses to the grindstone." DETERMINING STRATEGY Mr. Zidek's concern is typical of what this window has prompted: will the rush to take advantage of a tax break turn heirs into trust fund brats? Advisers are counseling clients to spend significant time determining their intentions before they even think about the amount of the gift. "As a C.P.A., I can run through the numbers, but that doesn't take into account the angst over the giving," Ms. Featherngill said. Once they have decided the family philosophy for their money, there is no shortage of ways to give far more than the 10 million a couple is now allowed to provide tax free. Any private banker will reel off a list of obscurely named financial vehicles that will multiply the value of the gift. Samuel V. Petrucci, director at Credit Suisse Private Bank, said he was working with an investment banker worth 75 million who was hesitant to put securities or cash into a trust for his children. Instead, he and his wife have decided to put a vacation home worth about 9 million into a trust that allows them to use the home until it passes on to their children. "This client 100 percent understands why they should give 10 million," Mr. Petrucci said. "To go from 75 million to 65 million doesn't work for him. But in his mind, he is willing to part with the vacation home that he wants to keep in the family for a very long time." The mental dodge here is not that unusual, the advisers said. Even someone with more than enough money may have trouble parting with it. Still, the banker has to hope that his children do not sell the home in his golden years and that any squabbling over the property when he is gone does not destroy his family. INCENTIVES TO WORK So how do parents keep this tax break from creating a disincentive for children to do anything with their lives? Steven D. Hayworth, chief executive of Gibraltar Private Bank and Trust, said the wealthy needed to be aware of the potential size of the minimum payments from the trusts they set up. Consider a trust that grew to 30 million and then paid out a relatively low 3 percent distribution each year. "That's 75,000 a month hitting their bank account," Mr. Hayworth said. "You have the tax motivation to do this. But it's every bit as important to think, 'What does success look like for my family?' " This fear of giving too much is motivating a California entrepreneur who owns several real estate related companies. He asked not to be named because his family did not know his plans. At 66, he has five children from two marriages and a net worth around 80 million. He said he intended to use his additional gift tax exemption, but was struggling with how to build incentives into the trusts. "I'm more worried about ruining my kids and grandkids," he said. "What I'm planning on doing is trying to keep incentivizing the kids to do well. I want them to believe that from the time they get out of college until they're 45, they have to swim in the big business ocean, and I want to reward them with some sort of matching program." But how can this be done effectively? Incentives are put into trusts all the time, but they do not always have the desired effect. An income matching incentive could persuade a child who wants to be a teacher to become an investment banker instead.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
The elbow bump might not be as graceful and familiar as shaking hands but it's one way to prevent the spread of the virus. 11 Supposedly Fun Things We'll Never Do the Same Way Again Early in the pandemic, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said something that grabbed a lot of attention: Handshakes should become a thing of the past. But as the outbreak drags on, and we've become more conscious of germs and hygiene, "some of the changes we made are likely to be really durable," said Malia Jones, who researches social environments and infectious disease exposure at the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin Madison. If you still smoke tobacco, you already know you should quit, but now there's an added risk in a shared vape or cigarette. As for marijuana, more users are turning to edibles during the pandemic. Legal sales of edibles increased by 32.1 percent the week of July 20 compared with the week of Jan. 6 in California, Colorado, Nevada and Washington, according to data from Headset, a cannabis market research firm, and inhaled items like pre rolled joints and vapor pens underperformed compared with the marijuana market as a whole. Swimming around in a pool of plastic a material cited by experts to be especially good at harboring germs could become a thing of the past. McDonald's had already phased them out of its Playplaces. "I don't know if we've got ball pits in our future," the company's chief executive, Chris Kempczinski, recently told Time. "There's probably some good public health reasons not for us to be doing a lot of ball pits." Once upon a time, if you wanted to try new makeup or give yourself a free makeover between the office and after work drinks you could head for the testers or samples at Sephora, Ulta or department stores. Just don't think too hard about who used the brush or lipstick sample before you. Saks Fifth Avenue is one store making changes. Reusable samples have been replaced with single use, disposable items, its chief executive told The New York Post. After months of distancing, mask wearing and nixing small talk in public, will we be shouting in one another's faces at bars or clubs again? Experts hope not. "Social distancing is going to become a common norm at this point," Dr. Nolan said. Having a conversation with someone up close, especially when people are talking loudly or excitedly in a setting where alcohol is flowing and music blaring, is risky, Dr. Nolan said, advising that calm, low volume, conversation is safer. Your behavior in social situations will be shaped by how people around you act, said Jeanine Skorinko, a social psychology professor at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts. If your group keeps social distancing rules, talks quietly and avoids sharing drinks, you're likely to follow suit. This Georgia Tech website will assess the risk of attending an event based on the county it's in and the number of people who are going. You know those comically large shared alcoholic drinks? Sometimes they are called scorpion bowls. They might feature plastic fish swimming around in a plastic fish bowl. Or the drink might be a Moscow Mule fit for an actual mule, served in a copper mug the size of a flower pot. Those giant party cocktails are backwash buckets, epidemiologists said. Dr. Nolan said the alcohol could potentially kill whatever comes through the straw, though Dr. Hassig warned that some germs and viruses "could survive a dunk into a drink." If these drinks ever come back, share them only with close roommates. Having friends over to your place might be better than going out, because at least you can control whom you're in close contact with. But hosts should consider inviting "individuals of a similar kind of risk tolerance," Dr. Hassig said. And you might want to have those gatherings outside, if possible, experts said. Dealing and shuffling cards, or leaning over a board to manipulate tiles, cards, dice and other pieces may be risky. Dr. Nolan suggested playing games that do not require contact with other players. Charades, anyone? But there's good news about hugging: It's less risky than a peck on the cheek and even a handshake, Dr. Nolan said, because we normally turn our faces away from each other while hugging. Even so, all these greetings bring people in close contact when it's often unnecessary. "There are greetings that have worked for centuries" that don't involve touching one another, Dr. Hassig said, citing the wai in Thailand, which involves putting your hands together in a prayer like fashion and bowing slightly. She also suggested waving from a distance.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
The film's Ivan (voiced by Sam Rockwell) acts like a fierce silverback in circus performances, but offstage he is a gentle soul with a knack for painting. The ringmaster, Mack (Bryan Cranston, in corporeal form), will eventually put Ivan's eye to work, dubbing him the "primate Picasso" and "the artistic ape from exit 8." But mostly "The One and Only Ivan" consists of fairly standard Disney lessons, about the hardships of losing parents (real and surrogate) and how difficult it is to embrace change. Ruby (Brooklynn Prince, from "The Florida Project") is a baby elephant whose adorability threatens to the steal the spotlight from Ivan, but the Jolie elephant, Stella, brings out the simian's parenting temperament. When the chips are down when Mack wants to get rid of a rascally stray pooch (Danny DeVito) or when the firetruck driving rabbit (Ron Funches) is nearly flattened in traffic Ivan proves capable of protecting his troupe of performers, despite not having protected a troop of gorillas the wild. (A flashback provides the obligatory "Bambi" death scene.) That's some gorilla the one and only of his kind, you might say. But the movie itself doesn't reach that level of distinction. The One and Only Ivan Rated PG for "mild thematic elements." Beware of themes, kids. Running time: 1 hour 34 minutes. Watch on Disney .	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
As she prepared for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the United States triathlete Gwen Jorgensen knew that she faced one particularly daunting liability. "I was afraid of going fast on a bicycle," she says, "and I really did not like descending." An accomplished runner and swimmer in college, Ms. Jorgensen had little experience with cycling before she became a triathlete in 2010. So Red Bull, one of her sponsors, asked several longtime bike racers to work with Ms. Jorgensen on descending. Over the course of three intense days in California, these two wheel tutors radically changed Ms. Jorgensen's positioning on and attitude toward her bike. The result was gold in Rio, where Ms. Jorgensen crushed the field, even during the bike leg of the race, previously her weakest event. Because many of the rest of us likewise wonder how we can descend more safely and rapidly, whether we ride bicycles in races or to the grocery store, I spoke recently with one of Ms. Jorgensen's coaches, Tim Johnson, a six time national champion in cyclocross racing and expert bike handler, about what it takes to be an adept downhill racer. What follows are his top 10 tips on going downhill fast. Have your brakes checked, Mr. Johnson says. "It's surprising how few people take their bikes in" to a shop for a general checkup each year, he said. Tires matter, too. "Don't overinflate them," he said. For road tires, a pressure of 110 pounds per square inch is the maximum he recommends, since it leaves them very slightly squishy, so that they make better contact with the road, providing more stability. Mountain bike tires and hybrid tires, which are wider, require less pressure. Sit correctly. Inexperienced riders frequently straighten and lock their elbows during descents, he said, moving backward on the seat and "practically levitating off of the bike" as they gain speed. This stiff, upright positioning makes you unstable, he said. Instead, "you should carry most of your body weight on your feet," with your shoes firmly pressing against the pedals and hindquarters centered on the seat. Keep your elbows bent and relax your shoulders. Avoid tensely clutching the handlebars and brakes. It's better, he said, to lightly rest your palms on the bars, with the brake hoods "nestled in the crook of your thumb," and one finger on the brake lever itself. On a flat stretch of road, practice opening and closing your hands, he said, squeezing the bars for a moment and letting go, so you become comfortable with having very little of your body weight on the handlebars, and with operating the brakes with a single finger. Then practice the same maneuver on your next downhill ride. Curve ahead? As you approach a bend in the road, position the pedal on the outside of the curve down, toward the pavement. "You really want your weight on that outside foot," Mr. Johnson said. "I tell novice riders to exaggerate the motion, to stomp on the pedal, and turn their heel down." The more weight situated on that outside pedal, "the better the bike will steer," he said. Look down the road. "This is the most important tool" for safe descending, he said, and for safe bike riding, period. "When we started working with Gwen, she was staring down at the ground right in front of her front tire." He and the other riders encouraged her to lift her head and continuously scan the road far ahead of her. "You want to know that there is a pothole or a curve coming up," he said. "Then you can respond somewhat gradually and not jerk your bike out of the way." But don't stare. "If you fixate on something," like a stone or bump in the road, he said, "you will steer right into it. The bike follows your vision." Look instead where you wish to go, which would be around the obstacle. If you have been scanning the road, he pointed out, you will have had time to prepare and should be able to glide calmly past the obstruction. Start smallish. To put these tips into practice, find a hill with which you are already familiar or that has a relatively gentle slope, he said. Descend at a comfortable speed, incorporating one tip at a time, and then attempt to ride a little faster with each descent. "As you build confidence, the speed will come," he said. Obey traffic laws. "Never cross the yellow line" while going around a curve, he said, because you may be unaware of cars climbing the hill. In general, "ride your bike like you would drive a car," he said. "That keeps you and everyone around you safe." Seek advice. "It can help to watch and talk to good riders," Mr. Johnson said. Ask your local bike shop if they offer rides or clinics catering to cyclists of different abilities and if you can, find a willing, experienced cyclist who is a little faster than you. Follow her down the next hill, imitating how she rides. Improvement can be rapid. "When we started with Gwen," Mr. Johnson said, "she was really timid." But after a few days of listening to and imitating the experts, he said, "she became a beast on the bike."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
MILAN The chief executive of a regional Italian bank embroiled in a scandal with political and even Europe wide implications said Monday that recent revelations of past mismanagement and questionable deals would not impede efforts to turn around the beleaguered institution. "This is still a solid bank," Fabrizio Viola, chief executive of Monte dei Paschi di Siena, said Monday at a news conference in Milan. In the past week revelations of transactions that may have disguised the extent of the bank's losses during the global financial crisis have become political fodder ahead of Italy's national elections next month. And the disclosures have raised questions about the degree of scrutiny given Monte dei Paschi di Siena by Mario Draghi, who was still head of Italy's central bank when the problems developed. Mr. Draghi, of course, is now president of the European Central Bank. At issue is whether Monte dei Paschi di Siena, or M.P.S. as it is known, hid losses it incurred after acquiring the Italian bank Antonveneta in 2008, for EUR9 billion a price that even at the time was widely derided as far too high. Now under scrutiny are two complex transactions M.P.S. conducted with Deutsche Bank and Nomura that critics say enabled M.P.S. to mask some of its losses. Mr. Viola, part of the new management that came to the bank last year, said Monday that an investigation now under way would produce findings by mid February, ahead of national elections scheduled for Feb. 24 and 25. With M.P.S. based in Siena, in a part of northern Italy that is a stronghold of the leftist Democratic Party, the conservative former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is trying to be a spoiler in next month's elections, has been trying to lay blame for the scandal at the Democratic Party's doorstep. Meanwhile, the current prime minister, Mario Monti, has had to defend his government's decision to bail out the banks with loans granted last year. More broadly, though, the problems at M.P.S. provide an extreme example of an old line banking pattern that analysts say is still disturbingly commonplace in Europe. As with most Italian banks, M.P.S.'s primary shareholder is a local foundation, which receives dividends that are to be used to pay for social projects as well as cultural and charitable enterprises. That gives M.P.S. an extensive veil of political relationships that can be hard for any national overseer to peer through. The same combination of local political influence and lax control has also afflicted many banks in Germany and Spain, with taxpayers left suffering the consequences. Indeed, grave lapses by national regulators are among the main reasons European leaders have decided to put the European Central Bank in charge of bank regulation. But now there is a possible snag in the plan: Mr. Draghi, who is expected to lead that overhaul, was at least nominally the overseer of M.P.S. while it was digging itself into a deep hole. Many analysts, though, question whether Mr. Draghi or any Italian regulators would have had enough information to recognize the bank's problems, since there appears to have been a deliberate attempt to conceal losses. And in any case, the Bank of Italy may not have had legal power to prevent M.P.S. from making bad decisions. But at the very least Mr. Draghi's proximity to the scandal is untimely as the E.C.B. and euro zone leaders finally seemed to be rebuilding credibility in the common currency. The decision to create a centralized banking supervisor at the E.C.B. is a big part of the effort to restore confidence in the euro zone. "Italy is a country where even national regulators can have a trouble getting a grip on what is happening at the local level," said Nicolas Veron, a senior fellow at Bruegel, a research organization in Brussels. Mr. Veron stressed that there was no evidence Mr. Draghi deserved any blame for the Monti dei Paschi scandal. But Mr. Veron said, "It clearly does create perception problems, because there's a question mark about the appropriateness of the Bank of Italy's response at the time." Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. "At this point it's only a question mark," Mr. Veron said. "We don't have any facts." A spokesman for the E.C.B. declined to comment Monday. Several of Germany's landesbanks, regional institutions typically owned jointly by state governments and local savings banks, have also gotten into serious trouble in recent years and required bailouts which cost taxpayers billions of euros. Like M.P.S., many landesbanks got in over their heads when they tried to respond to the increasing dominance of big investment banks by getting into investment banking themselves. M.P.S.'s problems stem partly from its attempts, starting in the 1990s, to avoid being acquired by larger rivals, said Filippo Ippolito, an assistant professor in finance at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona. Mr. Ippolito is from Siena and worked for several years at Monti dei Paschi more than a decade ago. The city foundation that owned a majority of the bank wanted to keep its headquarters in Siena. But attempts by bank management to join the major leagues turned out badly, including an abortive attempt to get into investment banking and, in 2007, the ill fated EUR9 billion acquisition of Antonveneta. In retrospect, Mr. Ippolito said, Siena would be much better off if it had allowed M.P.S. to be acquired years ago. "The great fear of the Sienese in the 90s was in losing control of the bank," Mr. Ippolito said. "Now they are losing control anyway and it's not worth anything. The worst outcome is coming true." The scandal may also have implications for two of the largest banks operating in Europe. Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and Nomura, a Japanese bank which has a large presence in London, were involved in transactions that may have allowed Monti dei Paschi to conceal losses. A spokesman for Nomura said the bank would not comment. Deutsche Bank issued a statement Monday saying said the financing transaction with Monti dei Paschi in 2008 "was subject to our rigorous internal approval processes and also received the requisite approvals of the client who was independently advised." "There will be polemics and rhetoric about evil foreign bankers," said Federico Fubini, an economics reporter at the Milan daily Corriere della Sera. "But upon closer look, the M.P.S. affair reflects the Italian way of doing things, one that has contributed to the current crisis of competitiveness." Bank board members appointed by foundations have more political than financial competence, said Tito Boeri, who teaches economics at Bocconi University in Milan, which can lead to bad judgment, like the "crazy idea to buy Antonveneta to maximize power," he said. Italian newspapers on Monday said that investigators were looking into the possibility that a bribe had been paid as part of the acquisition of Antonveneta, which was bought from the Spanish bank Santander. But Mr. Viola, the M.P.S. chief executive, said Monday that no evidence had emerged that illicit money had passed hands. Should any evidence emerge, he said, the bank would present itself as an injured party in court. Though Mr. Berlusconi, of the People of Liberty Party, and Mr. Monti, who leads a centrist coalition, have not failed to underscore the links between M.P.S. and the Democratic Party, political analysts say it is unlikely that the revelations will have much effect on national elections next month. Opinion polls in the past week tend to support that view. But the murkiness may have thwarted the Democratic Party's ability to lure fresh voters, said Stefano Folli, a political analyst for economic daily Il Sole 24 Ore, limiting their overall numbers and making it more difficult for the party to control both houses of Parliament. "Right now the Democratic Party hovers between 29 and 32 percent, after Monte dei Paschi, I doubt it will go any higher," but it will not go any lower either, he said, as long as "no further scandals emerge." Current polls show that because of the way the Italian parliamentary seats are allotted, the center left will win the lower house but may not have control of the senate. Mr. Viola said Monday that the political brouhaha over the bank was distorting the issue at stake, "out of line with respect to the problem. Speaking on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, the current Bank of Italy governor, Ignazio Visco, said: "M.P.S. is a sound bank. The Bank of Italy does not act as a police force, but promotes sound and prudent management."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
WOMAN OF WORDS The last thing Stacey Abrams, who is a Democrat, wanted to do was write a memoir about losing the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial race to the Republican, Brian Kemp. She says the idea came up, but "it was not appealing to me. As someone who has spent my adult life working on issues of access, justice and voting rights, I wanted to figure out, what could I say that was necessary? That told readers, here's what we have to know, so history doesn't repeat itself. I come from a family where our parents told us, if you see a problem, your job is to fix it. Writing is how I work through how to fix it." "Our Time Is Now," which appeared at No. 7 on last week's hardcover nonfiction list, is, according to our reviewer, "a striking manifesto, a stirring indictment and a straightforward road map to victory." Abrams's last work of nonfiction, "Lead From the Outside," was also a best seller; in addition, she is the author of several romance novels published under the pseudonym Selena Montgomery. She started writing when she was at Yale Law School: "My first novel was published at the same time I published an article on the operational dissonance of the unrelated income tax exemption." Abrams is now the driving force behind multiple national organizations including Fair Fight Action and Fair Fight 2020, which defend voting rights, and Fair Count, working to ensure the accuracy of the 2020 census but she still finds time to read. At the moment, she's working her way through "Black Leopard, Red Wolf," by Marlon James, the latest pick in her siblings' book club. She says, "I'm the second of six kids, all voracious readers. Our mother was a librarian before she became a minister, so we grew up steeped in reading and storytelling as a part of who we are." Here's how the club works: A sibling chooses a book. If the others don't like it, "We have the right to decide after a few weeks that you either pick a new one or we move on to the next person on the list. We're very egalitarian in that way. The beauty is, we know if you didn't read and we can call you out." (Abrams's most recent selection was "Zone One," by Colson Whitehead.) So what do the next six months look like for Abrams, who has been discussed as a potential running mate for Joe Biden? She will continue her crusades for fair elections, accurate census data and Covid recovery for marginalized communities. And, Abrams says, "I need to help make sure Joe Biden becomes president of the United States."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
When the choreographer Martha Graham added men to her company, it struck many as a contradiction in terms. Her all female troupe, founded in 1926, had powerfully demonstrated women's independence. The only men with whom Graham regularly collaborated were designers and composers: above all, the composer Louis Horst and the sculptor designer Isamu Noguchi. She introduced a male dancer, Erick Hawkins, to this troupe in 1937, causing dismay among several of her dancers, colleagues and devotees. But Graham was not to be stopped. Further complications soon arose: Hawkins, 15 years her junior, became her partner, her lover and, eventually, her husband. How is it for a woman with a younger man? What challenges are involved in marriage? How is it for an original female artist in a male dominated society? These were now among her themes. She added a second man to the company in 1939, Merce Cunningham. A series of her most remarkable works followed notably "Deaths and Entrances" (1943), "Appalachian Spring" (1944) and "Cave of the Heart" (1946) several with the Graham Hawkins relationship at their center. In just one exceptional work, "El Penitente" (1940), she worked with all four: Horst, Noguchi, Hawkins, Cunningham. "Penitente," a 20 minute masterpiece of neo primitivist dance drama at its most ambiguously layered, returns to the Martha Graham Dance Company's repertory this year. Newly coached by Marni Thomas Wood (who joined the Graham troupe in 1958), it will be part of the company's season at the Joyce Theater (April 2 April 14). Horst composed its sparse, often percussive, score, his last for Graham. Noguchi, without any of the sculptural decor that he often used to define stage space, designed the props. The three dancers are touring players, arriving with a cart to enact scenes from the Bible; those scenes are filtered through Spanish colonial traditions of the American Southwest, in which believers expiate sins by mortifying the flesh. You think you know how the Bible's central stories go? Think again. Hawkins danced the challenging title role, the penitent who flagellates himself to attain fuller belief and enlightenment. (Mikhail Baryshnikov sometimes performed this part in the late 1980s and early '90s.) Graham's role as Mary combined the Virgin Mother, the Magdalene and the Mater Dolorosa who laments her dead son. In a dance with an apple, she also becomes Eve, tempting Adam with the fruit of the tree. Cunningham, his face mainly covered, played Christ, an often stiff figure whose gestures indicate blessing or rebuke; He was, Ms. Wood said in an email, "The avenging Angel, the forgiving Angel, the supporting Angel. (But we never called him God.)" There's much to unpack here; but "Penitente" moves fast. "It embodies a kind of innocence not often explored in the Graham rep," Ms. Wood said of "El Penitente." That innocence lies in its seemingly naive, antiheroic simplicity of style. Ms. Wood learned it in 1964 from Hawkins and from the Graham veteran Pearl Lang, and then received further direction from Graham herself. In January she taught it to the current company. "It requires investing a degree of naturalness that alternates with the dramatic (which can get 'over done' if you don't watch out)," she said. How do other Graham Hawkins roles compare to those in "Penitente"? "In most other dances, their relationship represents a clearly dramatic build that brings a message explored and developed throughout the entire work," Ms. Wood said. "But 'Penitente' creates the spark of quickly dared transitions in and out of a different situation every few minutes. Martha did talk about telling the various stories as if you were peeling them off a chapel wall and your audience needed to know the difference between sinners and saints. She and Erick clearly enjoyed going back and forth between both those extremes." It's a tough piece, expressively knotty, marked by the intense and rapid repetition of certain steps (explosive small, rapid jumps in particular, taking off from both feet and landing on one). And its Horst score heightens the tough atmosphere. Janet Eilber, artistic director of the Graham company since 2005, told me in January that Horst was opposed to strings in modern dance music. In a recent email, she elaborated: Horst "told Martha that she should develop her ideas for the dance first, and the music should be added later," as opposed to what choreographers like Isadora Duncan and St. Denis were doing by choosing the score first and drawing inspiration from it. "As part of this idea," Ms. Eilber wrote, "he felt that strings were too emotionally instructive telling the audience what to feel." Yet within a few years Graham would be commissioning scores with plentiful strings: "Appalachian Spring" (1944) is the most celebrated. The advent of Hawkins changed many aspects of Martha Graham dance theater: even its very sound.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
THERE are 383 aspirational keys in circulation in the Big City, each of them numbered and coded, all of them equipped to unlock any of four wrought iron gates offering privileged access to undisturbed siestas or tranquil ambulation inside the tree lined boundaries of Gramercy Park. At age 181, the only truly private park in Manhattan is lovelier and more ornamental than ever; yes, the colorful Calder sculpture swaying blithely in the breeze inside the fence is "Janey Waney," on indefinite loan from the Calder Foundation. Alexander Rower, a grandson of Mr. Calder, lives on Gramercy Park, as does Samuel G. White, whose great grandfather was Stanford White, and who has taken on an advisory role in a major redesign of its landscaping. Both are key holders who, validated by an impressive heritage, are exerting a significant influence on Gramercy Park's 21st century profile. Because Gramercy is fenced, not walled in, the Calder and the rest of the evolving interior scenery are visible in all seasons to passers by and the legions of dog walkers who daily patrol the perimeter. Parkside residents rationalize that their communal front yard is privatized for its own protection. Besides, they, not the city it enhances, have footed its bills for nearly two centuries. Any of the 39 buildings on the park that fails to pay the yearly assessment fee of 7,500 per lot, which grants it two keys fees and keys multiply accordingly for buildings on multiple lots will have its key privileges rescinded. The penalty is so painful that it has never had to be applied. For connection challenged mortals, though, the park is increasingly problematic to appreciate from within, particularly now that Arthur W. and William Lie Zeckendorf, and Robert A. M. Stern, the architect of their 15 Central Park West project, are recalibrating property values in a stratospheric direction by bringing the neighborhood its first ever 42 million duplex penthouse, at 18 Gramercy Park South, formerly a Salvation Army residence for single women. And the reason the Zeckendorfs selected a dilapidated 17 story brick building (the tallest on the park, and a designated city landmark) for their encore to 15 Central Park West? "It was because of the park," said Will Zeckendorf, who with his brother paid 60 million for the Parkside Evangeline Residence, built in 1927. "We wanted to find a special address. Giving a park key to each buyer seemed like a nice closing gift." The good will gift is worth far more than its 350 cost. "Being able to say that the apartments come with a free key to the park is certainly an enticement," Arthur Zeckendorf added. Samuel B. Ruggles, the urban visionary who in 1831 deeded two acres of his property to be used as an ornamental park surrounded and maintained by a residential neighborhood of discreetly proportioned mansions, would definitely not be unhappy with this development. It was always his intention that Gramercy Park's exclusivity would help protect it from the ravages of time, progress and interlopers. The park has been fenced since the mid 1830s, and locked since 1844, the same year its trustees held their first formal meeting at the home of James W. Gerard at No. 17 Gramercy. Unlike several heirloom mansions still owned by the original families, his residence was demolished in 1938. The neighborhood was recognized as a historic district in 1966; also in 1966, properties on the east, west and south sides of the park were designated as landmarks. Lexington Avenue, named by Mr. Ruggles, terminates at Gramercy Park North (East 21st Street); Irving Place, which he also named, begins below Gramercy Park South (East 20th Street). So unless you are among the fortunate few to rent or own property directly on Gramercy Park; are a member in very good standing of the National Arts Club, the Players club, the Brotherhood Synagogue, or Calvary St. George's Church; or can splurge on a stay at the aggressively hip Gramercy Park Hotel, these coveted keys and the verdant two acre jewel box they unlock are off limits to you, period. No exceptions are made. (Key holders can be accompanied by as many as five guests.) The locks and keys are changed every year, and the four gates are, for further safekeeping, self locking: the key is required for exiting as well as entering. "In a way it's kind of a priceless amenity," said Maurice Mann, the landlord who restored 36 Gramercy Park East, "because everyone is so enamored with the park, and owning a key still holds a certain amount of bragging rights and prestige. Not everybody can have one, so it's like, if there's something I can't have, I want it." Mr. Mann confirmed a similar marketing strategy already in place at 36 Gramercy Park East, a 1908 Gothic confection where the actor John Barrymore once lived and a golden key is now the logo on the building's Web site. After a 7 million restoration, 60 units went on the market in 2010 with the enhancement of a park key paid for by the sponsor, Mann Realty, for two years. "These keys, frankly, are not cheap," Mr. Mann said. "But our thinking was, if someone is willing to spend millions on an apartment, let's give them a key to the park." The gift key is accompanied by a personalized key chain. "We included a brass plate with the buyer's name on it, which cost another 125," he said. "But people seem to love them." The evidently popular amenity (36 Gramercy is nearly sold out and owned now by its residents, not Mr. Mann) affords unlimited park access, except of course after dusk, when the park is technically closed. It's a rule, and as of 2003, when the Gramercy Park Trustees drafted a formal, legal and binding list of dos and (mostly) don'ts, the rules are as golden as the keys used to be back in Mr. Ruggles's day. Wedding party photo sessions used to be, but not anymore: too many intoxicated wedding guests, often from parties catered by the hotel or the National Arts Club, overstayed their welcome. Too many begonias in the park's four formal flower beds were trampled by revelers. "The hotel's whole marketing campaign was access to Gramercy Park," complained Arlene Harrison, a park trustee who also heads the formidable Gramercy Park Block Association, which has 2,000 members and has pledged to uphold the preservation, philanthropic tradition and quality of life of the neighborhood. Ms. Harrison, the unofficial mayor/gendarme of Gramercy, wears her park key around her wrist on a coiled rubber bracelet that resembles a traditional telephone cord. It's the ultimate in unfashionable accessories, flexible and indestructible; anyone with the audacity to try and steal her key would probably end up taking her arm along with it. Manufactured especially for the Gramercy Park shareholders by Medeco, the key is distinguished by an interesting intangible: It is virtually impossible to duplicate. A blond whippet of a woman with a metabolism permanently stuck in fifth gear, Ms. Harrison has championed the practice of key control since becoming a park trustee in 2002. A crackdown commenced. "Up until 10 years ago, keys were showing up all over town," she said. "The doorman at 201 East 21st had keys, and so did 130 East 18th. Then there were squabbles with owners of some nearby town houses who claimed the park key had been in their families for more than a century." There was a period when keys were rented out, and in the 1980s they were bestowed on civic minded neighbors as a reward. "We even found out about a locksmith in Europe who was duplicating keys," Ms. Harrison said. Not anymore. That's the beauty of yearly lock changes. One hundred and fifty years ago, the first keys to the two acre park, an iffy parcel of swampland that gained its real estate cachet after it was filled in, landscaped and enclosed by a six foot high wrought iron fence, were actually made of solid gold. Nowadays they are made from a commonplace nickel alloy, but that is the extent of their mundanity. Were Ms. Harrison to lose her personal key and request a replacement, she would have to play by the voluminous Gramercy Park rule book she was instrumental in writing and charge herself 1,000. Lose it twice, and the replacement fee doubles. The Rev. Thomas Pike, the retired rector of Calvary St. George's Church and a park trustee, took time to appreciate his key. "When I first came here from Yonkers in 1971," said Mr. Pike, a former member of the Landmarks Preservation Commission, "I told myself I wasn't going to use my key, that a locked park was elitist, so I'd walk over to Stuyvesant to eat my lunch. But there was never anyone there! "Everyone was sitting on the benches outside Gramercy Park, or along the edge of the fence," he continued, "and I know that doesn't sound egalitarian, but people choose to come here just for the peace and quiet and serenity. It's a Ralph Waldo Emerson sort of world; the fence is there to protect the plants, not keep people out." But the key residences with park access are valued 10 percent higher than Gramercy area properties without it remains a powerful persuader. When the trustees became immersed recently in a battle over a proposed nightclub at 38 Gramercy Park North, the unthinkable prospect sparked the exploration of a precedent setting punishment: if 38 Gramercy's board persisted in bringing a bar to the park, a direct affront to the 1831 Ruggles indenture, perhaps the building deserved to forfeit its park keys.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
THE generation now entering the work force, people in their late teens and early 20s, are consistently panned by many employers as not ready for the workplace. But while there are real differences, their behavior on the job might not be so different from that of previous generations. In surveys, middle aged business owners and hiring managers say the new workers lack the attitudes and behaviors needed for job success. They don't have a strong work ethic, these reports say. They're not motivated and don't take the initiative. They're undependable and not committed to their employers. They need constant affirmation and expect rapid advancement. A recent report by Bentley University for example, found more than half of corporate recruiters rated recent college graduates with a grade of C or lower for preparedness; nearly seven in 10 said young workers were difficult for their organization to manage. The Pew Research Center found that more than half of college presidents thought today's students were less prepared, and studied less, than students did a decade ago. But complaining about youth on the cusp of adulthood isn't novel. In the Middle Ages, masters complained about their apprentices' work habits. "You can find these complaints in ancient Greek literature, in the Bible," said Peter Cappelli, director of the Center for Human Resources at the Wharton School. "It reflects the way old people see young people." Professor Cappelli said that young peoples' attitudes toward work and career had not changed significantly since the baby boomers came of age in the 1960s. "There's no evidence millennials are different," he said. "They're just younger." Adam Tratt, 42, manages several employees in their 20s. From a work standpoint, he and his friends looked a bit aimless at that age too, he said. "I remember very explicitly when I was graduating from college, this stereotype of Gen Xers as slackers," he said, referring to those born from roughly 1965 to 1982, and who are now in their mid 30s and 40s. Mr. Tratt, who runs a software start up in Seattle, said his generation gained a reputation in middle age as entrepreneurial and hard working. Professor Cappelli challenged middle aged managers to remember when they were 22. "You probably wanted to get out of the office in a hurry you were interested in what was going on after work," he said. "You had these bursts of energy and great enthusiasm about something, but you also didn't have a lot of resilience." Many people who supervise young workers, though, do echo the prevailing view that millennials have some troublesome work habits. Robert Boggs is an administrator at Corinthian Colleges in Southern California and has managed several people under 30 on his staff. "They tend to be very self absorbed; they value fun in their personal and their work life," said Mr. Boggs. "Because they've grown up multitasking on their mobile, iPad and computer, I can't expect them to work on one project for any amount of time without getting bored." Thomas Gallagher has hired several young athletes over the years in his sporting equipment business in Wilmington, Del. He says he thinks many young workers lack perseverance. "I worry that if I give someone a long term task, if things don't work out in the short term, I'm going to get an email or phone call saying, 'You know what? This isn't for me. I give up, I can't do this,' " Mr. Gallagher said. Some of these negative views are even shared by many in the generation in question. "I see a lot of students cheating their way through, just sliding by," said Claire Koerner, 21, a student at the University of Washington in Seattle. Ms. Koerner is finishing a B.A. in business administration while working at a wedding planning start up, OneWed. She does social media for the company while in class, she admitted. But she said many of her peers had not held a job at all. (According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, teenage labor force participation is at record lows.) "They just aren't going to have the skills to work as hard as they're expected to," she said. Camille Perry, 26, of Portland, Ore., said her generation had a poor work ethic, although her own schedule was filled with labor. She holds two jobs: bartending at a neighborhood karaoke lounge and serving at a downtown lunch restaurant. "We are a generation that spent a lot of time in front of the television or playing video games," she said. "There's just a prevalent laziness." Academics who study this generation said its members did differ from Generation X and baby boomers, those born from 1946 to 1964, and the differences may persist through their work lives. "This is the most affirmed generation in history," said Cliff Zukin, a senior faculty fellow at the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University, where he is also a professor of public policy. "They were raised believing they could do whatever they wanted to, that they have skills and talents to bring to a job setting. "And when they're lucky enough to get a job they're basically told, 'Be quiet, you don't really know anything yet.' For a lot of them, this is a tremendous clash between their expectations and the reality of the job." The generation may be shaped more by the Great Recession than by their overprotected, tech saturated upbringing. If they lack the loyalty and commitment that employers want in entry level workers, is that really such a surprise? "I think it has less to do with lack of conscientiousness it's more a recognition that no company is going to bury you when you die," said Scott Ruthfield, 39, who runs Rooster Park, a recruitment firm in Seattle. "You've seen your parents go through large companies that don't take care of them, and you realize that you're responsible for your own well being." In a potential plus for employers, young people have learned at home, at school, through their shared online networks to value collaboration and teamwork over competition, so everyone can win, said Paul Taylor, executive vice president of special projects at the Pew Research Center.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
new video loaded: 36 Hours on the Left Bank, Paris	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
You could watch Jordan Peele's "Us" a dozen times and still not catch all of the symbolism, references and ideas tucked in it. Yes, scissors are clearly a thing, but what's with that tuxedo T shirt? The movie, ostensibly about a family, the Wilsons, hunted by its doppelgangers, is something of an awards contender. Its star, Lupita Nyong'o, is up for a Screen Actors Guild Award on Jan. 19 for her haunting portrayal of a mother with a painful past and a demented double speaking in a creepy voice. But performance is only one piece in this cinematic puzzle (now streaming on HBO). If you look closely, you'll see that some of the narrative threads are woven right into the costumes the tops in particular. In an interview, Peele, who wrote and directed "Us," said the choice of T shirts "represents one of the central themes, which is the identity, the outward facing branding that we present to the world." But he also said the shirts were an opportunity to incorporate "little Easter eggs and coincidences, which are a major theme for the movie as well." The Wilsons' son, Jason (played by Evan Alex), is seen in a long sleeve shirt with a tuxedo print on the front. It's a fun look for a character who is a bit of a performer and enjoys magic tricks, but there's more to the boy. "I always thought of him as the mage of the group," Peele said. "He's young, but he has a wisdom. He sees and understands things that other people in his family don't." Visually, Peele wanted a shirt for him that would contrast with the "Jaws" top Jason also wears. It's like an arrow facing downward, as opposed to "Jaws," an arrow facing upward. "This reflects the central battle between the monster rising up and those going down," he said. "It could always be an argument for the best movie ever made," he said. "One of the reasons it resonates is because it's able to scare us, with this great feeling. It doesn't bum you out, but it's terrifying. To find that combination is special." He wanted to conjure that emotion for a beach sequence while paying tribute to the earlier film in several ways throughout "Us." Peele said that the shirt is a perfect representation of the theme of darkness rising from below, a shadow that can't be seen at first but is imminent. He had to get Spielberg's permission to use the image. "He gave me his blessing and specified the design that he wanted for it," Peele said. "The revolution against the country that the Black Flag iconography suggests was appropriate," Peele said. "But also the logo is four lines in a row that make this flag. That contributed to the recurring theme of 11:11 in my film" a reference to the Bible verse Jeremiah 11:11, about a reckoning from God "as well as the image of four shadowy figures." "It's this idea that all these pieces of the puzzle are on this strange line between coincidence and fate." Rabbits keep popping (hopping?) up in the movie. The opening credits play over a shot of cages full of rabbits against the wall of what looks like a classroom. And rabbit motifs adorn the apparel of the Wilsons' daughter, Zora, played by Shahadi Wright Joseph. Why? Partly because she's a competitive runner, but that's not the only reason. "There's something about this movie I always thought of as an Easter story, sort of an Easter horror story," Peele said. "It's a return from the cave of a messiah, of sorts." Zora also wears a green short sleeve hoodie that just says "tho" on it. "There's something about the word 'tho' as it translates into our culture that has a sort of teenage text connotation," Peele said. But he also said "tho" can be used to mean rabbit in Vietnamese. "I just figured that anyone who speaks Vietnamese is getting an extra little Easter egg."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Zagster provided the bicycles, and residents began to use them. "I definitely got to know the city in a much more intimate way," said Lindsey O'Neill, 32, who lives in One Back Bay. After a few months of riding, she found that she enjoyed having a bike so much that she bought her own. "It gives you flexibility," said Daria Salusbury, a senior vice president of Related. Last month, Zagster and Related rolled out the service in New York, installing two to four bikes in some of Related's rental properties, several of which are near the Hudson River or Central Park prime cycling territory. Ernie and Inge Popke reside in one such building, the Westport near Columbus Circle. They have lived there for about four years and have their own bicycles. "We have guests quite frequently that come into town," Mrs. Popke said, and she and her husband are "thrilled" with the bright blue Zagster bikes in the building garage. "Getting decent bikes from rentals isn't the easiest," Mr. Popke added. This, however, was "very easy." To use the amenity, residents sign up online, providing a phone number and credit card information. They can either reserve a bike on the Zagster Web site or select one in person. Then they text the number listed on the bike to Zagster, which responds with a code for the lockbox attached to the back of each bike. They enter the code, remove the key, unlock the frame and off they go. Once they've taken the bike back to the original location, they simply text the word "end." The lockbox code changes after every use. "It's a whole James Bond thing," Ms. Crabtree said. Residents can use the Zagster bikes at no cost for up to two hours, after which they pay 5 for the remainder of the day. The price structure reinforces the idea that the share is meant for recreational purposes, rather than commuting, which would make the bikes unavailable to others for most of the day. (Citi Bike, therefore, could serve as a supplement, rather than a replacement.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Meet the Overcompensators, Plants That Get Tougher and Meaner When Attacked If plants could be stars in a cowboy film, the scarlet gilia would be one of the meanest wildflowers west of the Mississippi. You can find it standing tall among the sagebrush on mountainsides, its red flowers blazing. Drought can't always stop it. Shade won't faze it. And when mule deer and elk start grazing on it early in the season, it comes back bigger and stronger, with more defenses and a posse of new plants. Biologists call outlaw plants like this the overcompensators. "It's a little counterintuitive," said Miles Mesa, a graduate student at The University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign who led a new study into these types of plants. "After some animal comes by and eats it, the plant actually does better." In the study published this month in the journal Ecology, scientists showed for the first time that in an experiment, damaging some plants set off a molecular chain of events that caused them to grow back bigger, and produce more seeds and chemical defenses simultaneously. At the genetic level, the two tactics for plant survival worked hand in hand at least in Arabidopsis thaliana, a kind of mustard plant often used for research. Ken Paige, an evolutionary ecologist also at he University of Illinois and principal investigator of the study, first observed overcompensation in the scarlet gilia in 1987. He described plants that would make more flowers, stems and seeds when their main stems were cut off or eaten. At the time, being eaten was believed to be bad for plants always. It took a decade's worth of seeing the contrary for other biologists to believe it. Dr. Paige started looking for a molecular mechanism behind overcompensation in some versions of Arabidopsis. As he damaged their main stems, he started seeing indications that not only did they get bushier and produce more seeds, but they also ramped up their chemical defenses. At one point in time, theory pitted regrowth, also known as tolerance, against defense: with limited energy, a plant had to pick one or the other. Most plants respond to damage with a process called endoreduplication, in which a cell can copy its DNA over and over without splitting into two cells. This gives the plant bigger cells with multiple energy factories to accomplish a variety of tasks. Many damaged plants only show minimal levels of endoreduplication. But the overcompensators go into overdrive with the process. In the case of the study's mustard plants, they were able to grow bigger and also produce glucosinolate, the sulfurish, bitter chemical compound in mustard, kale, cabbage and horseradish. And the new research finds that when it comes to building up tolerance or defenses, for at least some plants, you can't have one without the other. "What this paper shows is that, in practice, defense and regrowth actually go hand in hand because the genetics of defense and regrowth are similar," Josh Banta a biologist at The University of Texas at Tyler, who was not involved in the study. "Like it or not, theory be darned."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Aware of the artist Alison S. M. Kobayashi's interest in "lost, discarded and donated objects," as she put it, friends of friends of hers passed along a wire recorder a clunky predecessor to the tape recorder that came with two reels' worth of chitchat. Nobody had any idea of where or when these recordings had been made, or by whom. Slowly she started identifying distinct speakers and figured out they were related. "Listening to the tape, I was immediately in love with the family and knew I wanted to do something," said Ms. Kobayashi, 33, the special projects director at UnionDocs, a hub for documentary arts in Brooklyn. She conducted extensive research in archives, both online and physical, but instead of presenting a video or a gallery installation, as she had done with earlier pieces based on found objects, she created an Off Off Broadway solo show. Now she is performing the gently humorous, enchantingly quirky "Say Something Bunny!" to 24 people at a time in a nondescript room in Chelsea. After months of sleuthing, Ms. Kobayashi figured out she had been listening in on the Newburges from Woodmere, N.Y., captured on two separate occasions in the 1950s. The older son in the Long Island family, a teenager named David, was the recorder's owner he held onto it until his death in 2007. Turning her investigation into a live performance was partly a result of the fact that David went on to dabble in songwriting and theater: One of his main achievements, to use the term loosely, was penning the book and lyrics for the 1971 "nudie" Off Broadway musical "Stag Movie" ("I cannot imagine a more dispiriting and dismal evening in the theater," Clive Barnes wrote in The New York Times). With the "Bunny" audience sitting around a large table custom built to evoke a wire reel, the show intentionally feels like a play reading. Ms. Kobayashi also wanted to make theatergoers feel part of the discovery process. "I had the opportunity to listen to the wire hundreds of times, but I wanted a person coming at it for the first time to be able to connect to it in the same way I did," she said. "That's why we went with the format of listening with a transcription. That was the greatest pleasure I had researching it: I just loved listening to it. The voices had so much personality and character." Written by Ms. Kobayashi and her husband, the UnionDocs co founder Christopher Allen, "Say Something Bunny!" falls somewhere between a less invasive version of Sophie Calle's conceptual forays into personal relationships and obsessive, forensic minded podcasts and documentaries like "Making a Murderer" or "Serial." Except there is no unsolved crime to be dissected here, only utterly banal everyday conversations that become strangely entrancing as Ms. Kobayashi illustrates their cultural context with videos, slides, audio clips and even costumed re enactments. "Alison should really be working for the F.B.I.," said Larry Newburge, David's younger brother. Now 78, he is the only person from the recordings still alive. The creative team located Mr. Newburge in March, after the 2016 premiere of their show in Toronto. "A journalist would have started with, 'I'm going to find who this person is and get the story from them,'" said Mr. Allen, 37. "But Alison got the story from everything else she could find and put it together." Theorizing that Mr. Newburge wasn't dead only because they had found everybody else's grave but his, they were keen to get his permission before reopening in New York. So they got on the horn. Mr. Newburge was nonplused. "My reaction at first was, 'This is a scam,'" he said over the phone. "But they were very forthcoming. They're just sweet, thoughtful kids." He and his wife, Idelle, gave their blessing and later attended the production. Mr. Newburge recalled that "the thing that got to me was" he paused, choking up a bit "when they showed my father's grave site. That was tough for me."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Bryan Lee struggled recently to remember when exactly he had first arrived in Dunedin, Fla. After some prodding, he placed it: Feb. 4, an eon ago in the brain bending timeline of the pandemic. For the past three years, Lee has worked as the interpreter for the South Korean left hander Hyun jin Ryu, who this winter signed a four year, 80 million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays after seven years with the Los Angeles Dodgers. The two were eager to get to spring training. They had work to do. What Lee could not have anticipated upon arriving in Florida in February that he would still be there in early July, living in a hotel room, subsisting off delivery and drive through meals, awaiting any hint that the baseball season might one day begin. Lee, 28, moves easily between American and Korean culture. Born in Iowa, he attended elementary school in Virginia, middle and high school in Seoul and college at N.Y.U., where he studied sports management. His first job after graduation was as a translator in the Yankees' minor league system. Months later, the Dodgers asked him to come work with Ryu. There was some whiplash, and anxiety, as Lee traded bumpy bus rides in the anonymity of Class A for a job in the majors as the right hand man of one of the world's best left handers. But Lee now describes Ryu, 33, as "an older brother," and sees it as his job to help him attain success, in ways obvious and subtle. Beyond interpreting for coaches and the news media, Lee also translates written data, analytics and scouting reports into Korean for Ryu, who continues to improve his English. The two remain in Dunedin with other Blue Jays staff members and players, working, awaiting updates from the team and wondering, like everyone else, what baseball will look and feel like this year. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. This interview has been lightly edited for clarity and condensed. What's a normal day for you like these days? Ryu's been throwing like two times per week, but whether he's throwing or not, I'll be at the stadium . Right now I'm just trying to be a good buddy, being with him as he's working out, helping him with anything. There will be updates from the organization and players, and I try to make sure he understands everything. I've found some silver lining, which was getting a chance to reconnect with some of my friends from college and high school, spending time on Zoom calls and whatnot, as well as a bunch of binge watching and other things I'd never have a chance to do. I think I'm on a first name basis with all the Uber Eats drivers here. What is your relationship with Ryu away from the field? I tell Ryu we spend too much time together, especially on the road. I got some heat when I was with the Dodgers about my lack of dating game. My excuse always was, "I have to spend time with Ryu." I've been hanging out at his place. His wife is a really good cook, and she invites me over to eat. Ryu also has a personal trainer he works with, and we go over to his house and watch Korean TV shows variety shows, singing competitions, "The Voice of Korea." How difficult has it been to learn all the intricacies of the game? Your biggest fear is screwing something up in terms of not relaying the game plan properly. One example I can give is, like, Ryu would say, 'I want to throw a fastball up,' and then I'd say that to the catcher. But if you dig deeper, that can mean anywhere from up in the zone or letter high to get a swing and a miss or almost at a shoulder level, as a show pitch. When I started, I didn't realize how detail oriented you had to be, even if you're delivering something as little as that. I remember an at bat with Christian Yelich, when he was with the Marlins. Former Dodgers pitching coach Rick Honeycutt said, 'Let's be up and away in the zone, fastball. He might get to it, but he won't hit it out of the park.' And I said it to Ryu, but it actually had to be more up than how I made it sound. So Ryu went out and executed, and then Yelich hit it out the other way. They say these things expecting me to know what the underlying meaning is, and sometimes I couldn't catch that cue. It can mean wins and losses, differences in E.R.A. Do you really feel stuff like that is your fault? It sounds like you're being hard on yourself. Being in a major league clubhouse, you see how all these talented people work their butt off on a daily basis. You realize if you want to be that good, or great, you have to have that mentality. You have to be nit picky because the devil's in the details. You look at a guy like Clayton Kershaw. He's one of the best in the history of baseball, and then you always see him trying to see how he can get better. So if a guy like that is working that hard, it's not that hard for a guy like me to at least to try to get better. What are some memorable moments from the past few years? I remember a mound visit in the 2018 World Series against the Red Sox in Fenway Park, just the noise and the crowd. There were runners on, and we had to go over the game plan so his pitch sequencing was optimized. I remember thinking, This is crazy. Most of the time you don't feel it. But the World Series one, it was just so loud. But Ryu was so calm, doing his usual digging the mound with his left foot, and I was like, OK, this is just another mound visit. I remember a game Ryu was pitching, and Kershaw sat down right next to me in the dugout. Ryu was facing David Peralta, and Kersh was telling me what he would do in that situation, how he would attack the hitter, and how he thinks Ryu should attack the hitter. It's a conversation Clayton probably doesn't even remember. But I thought to myself, If I was a little kid, I would love to be in this situation. A lot of people in baseball have superstitions. Do you? Only with Ryu. When he pitches well, he shows up in the same clothing he wore the day he pitched well. But in 2018, 2019, he basically pitched well every game. So, if you ever saw me, I was wearing the same gray T shirt, and he was wearing the same black shirt. I couldn't deviate from it. At one point, we weren't getting haircuts either, because we thought that was helping him.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
This article contains spoilers for Season 8, Episode 4 of "Game of Thrones." Now that the supernatural Battle of Winterfell is over and the very human war is about to resume in "Game of Thrones," how will the two sides stack up against each other? Midway through Sunday's episode, Varys assessed the war map and decided the balance between Team Targaryen and Team Lannister had grown "distressingly even." And yet, both queens have asked for the other's unconditional surrender; both assume they have the better odds. So who does? On the face of it, Team Lannister is in a strong position: Cersei has fresh troops, and a lot of them. The Golden Company (despite not bringing the war elephants we all hoped to see) offers at least 20,000 men, including infantry, archers and cavalry. Euron Greyjoy has given Cersei an Ironborn fleet. The only thing she lacks besides a moral compass is an air force. Even when Cersei doesn't possess superior firepower, she retains a distinct advantage over her foes in the area of strategy. Look back at all the battles against Team Targaryen in Season 7: Cersei won most of them because she was able to anticipate her enemy's actions, and to surprise them. Yara Greyjoy's fleet was taken unawares and the Dornish rebels were killed and taken captive before reaching the Dornish army in Sunspear. Cersei also surprised the Unsullied by emptying Casterly Rock and relocating her forces to Highgarden, where she wiped out the Tyrell army. And now she's celebrating another successful ambush, thanks to the Greyjoy fleet and its dragon and ship destroying crossbows. House Glover's men, for example, who did not join the Battle of Winterfell but remain in the North. House Reed, which also sat out the battle but remains a close ally thanks to Lord Howland's friendship with Ned Stark. And the Starks' uncle, Edmure Tully (should anyone remember to free him), and the Tully army, which is presumably still at large in the Riverlands and well rested after the siege of Riverrun in Season 6. (Those were the troops Sansa had dispatched Brienne to procure from her great uncle Brynden "the Blackfish" Tully.) Tyrion might even have some good will left with Shagga and the various Hill Tribe folks in the Vale, if any of them survived the War of the Five Kings. Davos could call upon his mercenary old pirate friend Salladhor Saan, who might be persuaded (for the right price) to lend his ships once again. And as they realize during the war council, they could resume from where they left off earlier in Season 7, reclaiming both the Dornish army that never got picked up from Sunspear (since the new prince of Dorne has pledged his support) and the remainder of Yara Greyjoy's rebel Ironborn fleet. Dany's ex Daario Naharis, in Meereen, also still commands the Second Sons, and with enough naval support could ferry them over to Westeros. All in all, Team Targaryen has support from most of the Seven Kingdoms, in one form or another. If the Starks and Targaryens think of this "last war" as all hands on deck, and make use of all the avenues that are open to them, they could have the fresh ground and naval forces necessary to surround King's Landing from multiple angles. As Sansa Stark suggested, now is the time to regroup, recover and rethink, which means that strategy is more important than ever. Just about everyone (well, except for Team Living) recognizes that planning for the Battle of Winterfell was a mess going in and became even messier as the conflict progressed. Preparing for a siege, however, is very different from preparing to attack, and Team Targaryen shouldn't assume that the other side hasn't been preparing for their arrival, or that Dragonstone has been unoccupied all this time. This isn't the first time they've had a surprise naval attack by Euron Greyjoy, nor the first time a scorpion bolt or other projectile has taken down a dragon. Dany should remember Drogon getting grounded during the loot train attack, losing Viserion beyond the Wall, and nearly losing Rhaegal in the Battle of Winterfell. She should remember losing the rebel Greyjoy fleet en route to Sunspear, and the Targaryen fleet outside Casterly Rock. But she still doesn't treat her dragons or her ships as precious resources, she continues to underestimate her enemies, and she fails to do basic reconnaissance or take safety precautions. What happened to Dany's spy network? Why does Qyburn consistently have better intelligence than Varys, when Team Targaryen has the Three Eyed Raven to consult? How long has Varys been phoning it in, and what does the spymaster possibly jumping ship to support another claimant to the throne portend for Dany's authority over the allies? As Varys suggested, if enough powerful people want Jon to sit on the Iron Throne instead of Dany, the fact he doesn't want to be king may not end up mattering. Even when Dany is better prepared and has greater numbers, she fails, because she doesn't think ahead. She still has a chance to succeed if she can rally her forces and come up with a new way to surprise her enemies. And us. Perhaps that is the true meaning of Missandei's last words, "Dracarys." A reminder to seek a better choice, one only Dany can see.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
This is an article from Turning Points, a special section that explores what critical moments from this year might mean for the year ahead. Turning Point: Amid a worsening pandemic, a record number of voters in the United States elected Joseph R. Biden Jr. president, marking an end to the administration of Donald J. Trump. But President Trump had refused to commit himself to a peaceful transfer of presidential power even before he lost his bid for re election. Like many of my fellow Americans, I was aghast when President Trump refused to commit himself to a peaceful transfer of presidential power if he were to lose in the Nov. 3 election. And he revealed this in October, while consistently trailing the eventual victor, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., in the polls. Then, to make matters worse, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, a Republican who sits on the Senate Judiciary Committee, followed that up with this tweet: "Democracy isn't the objective; liberty, peace, and prosperity are. We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that." Rank democracy? The only saving grace for such a pronouncement is that, at last, a Republican politician was being honest about his or her intentions, and this could well be a turning point in the narrative of our country and our national discourse. Over a year ago, in my book "People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent," I mused over the quandary facing the Republican Party. It has supported a set of policies that are opposed by the majority of Americans, who have expressed their belief in universal access to health care, better access to education, higher minimum wages, tighter gun control and so on. The only way the Republican Party can hold on to its power is through anti democratic policies disenfranchisement (voter suppression), disempowerment (gerrymandering voting districts) and packing the Supreme Court in order to constrain what a Democratic majority Congress or president might have the ability to do. We've watched what the Republicans have actually been doing, as incongruous as it might be, with their flag waving and constant appeals to the U.S. Constitution. Now they have begun to speak more openly about their intentions. Now, perhaps, we can have a real conversation about what kind of country we want America to be. Do we agree with Senator Lee on the ends? Do the ends justify the means? Are we willing to give up on our democracy to get them? And would giving up on democracy really get us there? Certainly, history provides us with many warnings. The past four years have made us aware of just how exquisitely fragile our institutions such as those ensuring equality, political freedom, a quality Civil Service, a free and active press and the rule of law are. When I was chief economist of the World Bank some 20 years ago, we would lecture countries about creating good institutions, and at the time we looked to the United States as a model and paragon. We weren't certain how you created good institutions, we couldn't even define what the term meant precisely, but you knew it when you saw it. It involved norms as well as laws. Well performing societies had both the rule of law was necessary, but norms respected by all citizens had greater flexibility. One couldn't encode in laws everything implied by "good behavior." The world was just too complex and ever changing. A little while later, I was chair of an international group called the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. Our objective was to assess healthy economies, where citizens enjoyed a high level of well being, and discern what went into the making and sustaining of these societies. One ingredient we focused on, often left out in earlier analyses, was trust the trust of citizens in one another and in their common institutions. When I was growing up in Gary, Ind., we learned in school about the strengths of America's democracy, about our systems of checks and balances, and the rule of law. We talked about a democracy in which the voice of the majority was heard clearly, but the rights of the minority were respected, too. We didn't talk about trust it was taken for granted or institutional fragility, which was the sort of thing that afflicted banana republics. We looked down at other countries where money stained the political process. We hadn't yet had Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission, which enshrined the role of corporate dollars in our politics. And we couldn't even have conceived of an America permanently dominated by a political minority that paid no respect to the rights of the majority. Well, for the past few years we've had a norm shattering president. He has taught us not to take our norms for granted, and made it clear that we may have to translate long established behaviors such as respect for the role of inspectors general, avoidance of conflicts of interest and disclosure of tax returns into laws. I hope this pivotal juncture in our national discourse will not be a turning point in the course of the nation. If those who disdain democracy like President Trump and Senator Lee continue to call the tune, history tells us where it will lead, and we have already seen hints. The abduction of peaceful protesters by inadequately identified security personnel in unmarked cars in Portland, Ore., last summer instills in us an ugly sense of foreboding, and carries with it the sour odor of Hitler's Brownshirts as do the claims of a president that he is, quite simply, above the law, or the results of a free and fair election. Assuming, however, that our democracy survives, this pivot point may turn us in quite a different direction: We will now face the even more daunting yet invigorating task of reinforcing our democracy. We've seen the weaknesses, the fragility in its structure. We've seen the destructive dynamic of money in our politics, how it undermines trust and creates conditions that exacerbate societal inequalities. We've seen how this process leads to greater polarization, transforming a virtuous system of checks and balances into one of gridlock and confrontation. We won't succeed in restoring trust and a sense of social cohesion until we confront, head on, our intertwined racial, ethnic and economic inequalities. These schisms inevitably divide us and undermine the solidarity democracy demands.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
A 111 year old company has turned to a 5,000 year old medium to assert its relevance in an ever changing workplace culture. Xerox and the 92nd Street Y in New York have gathered a few boldface creative names for a book showcasing the tech company's tools and the Y's cultural cachet. The anthology, "Speaking of Work: A Story of Love, Suspense and Paperclips," is being released Monday and can be downloaded free. Featuring 12 essays, short stories and even a song, the book includes new work by writers including Joyce Carol Oates, Gary Shteyngart and Lee Child; the poet Billy Collins; and the musicians Aimee Mann and Jonathan Coulton. Each of the works focuses on the workplace. The book is part of Xerox's "Set the Page Free" project, which benefits the 92nd Street Y and Worldreader, a nonprofit that promotes global literacy. The company's name appears in only a couple of works in the book, but some writers used Xerox equipment as they worked. Xerox spent decades as the Google of its generation ("I'm going to go Xerox this document"). A Xerox copier was ubiquitous in office settings. "They had a cultural footprint as a brand that was pretty big and vivid," said Kevin O'Neill, an advertising professor at Syracuse University. "Speaking of Work," which includes essays, short stories and a song, is a Xerox collaboration with the 92nd Street Y in New York. But the company has had to reinvent itself as other tech companies have caught up. Xerox was looking for a way to reinforce its longtime role as an essential part of office life while producing something culturally significant. The book, which will also be handed out in printed form to customers and clients, was the perfect tool for bridging the goals, said Toni Clayton Hine, the company's chief marketing officer. "It was a logical connection to what you knew of Xerox so far," she said. The company still provides copiers, printers and scanners, but it has branched out into cloud computing and translation software as well. "We wanted to show how Xerox is relevant to the workplace today." Xerox gave the writers little guidance, Ms. Clayton Hine said. "We took a leap of faith," she said. "In many respects, we weren't sure what we were going to get. What we got back was really fantastic." Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. The works include the humorous (Mr. Shteyngart recalls his first job, advertising piano lessons on a sandwich board in Union Square, surrounded by drug dealers) and the musical (Ms. Mann and Mr. Coulton muse on working from home: "Tried to Skype with the background clutter / Printer, mug and comb"). In his poem, Mr. Collins, a former national poet laureate, remembers his father's downtown Manhattan office, calling it "an Avalon of supplies" with an "oasis of the water cooler." The 92nd Street Y, which hosts speakers, concerts and other events on the Upper East Side, recruited the artists. The writing was shepherded by Bernard Schwartz, director of the Y's Unterberg Poetry Center. "There is a unique thrill to coming to work and having in one's inbox new work from artists such as these," Mr. Schwartz said. In 2014, the fast food chain Chipotle announced that top writers, including Toni Morrison and George Saunders, would produce work for its cups and bags. That project was produced by the novelist Jonathan Safran Foer, whose work also appears in the Xerox book. Classic literature has occasionally provided marketing opportunities as well. A 2012 Audi commercial, for example, adopted a "Moby Dick" theme to appeal to literary types. Leaning on literature as a marketing tool shows that companies are eager to attract "the influentials," Mr. O'Neill said. Commissioning works of art is far more significant than simply slapping a corporate name on someone else's event, he said. "A key thing with managing a corporate reputation is not what you say, but what you do," said Mr. O'Neill, whose fiction has appeared in The New Yorker. "I'm always much more impressed when I see a corporation doing something like this." Nostalgia was one of the reasons Mr. Shteyngart was drawn to the project. "I always loved office equipment, even though I could never get it to work right," said Mr. Shteyngart, who used a voice activated Xerox printer while writing his essay. But, he added, the Y's involvement in the anthology was crucial to his participation. "I probably would have been a little more skeptical if it had been the corporation that approached me rather than the Y," he said. The corporate ties didn't bother Ms. Oates, who said she viewed the book as just another anthology. "I like to write," said Ms. Oates, a Princeton University professor, whose short story explores an awkward relationship between teacher and student. "The opportunity to write about work was inviting."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
A billboard depicting the death of George Floyd went up in Times Square on Tuesday, placed there by a group called the George Floyd Justice Billboard Committee that hopes to expand with more billboards across the country. With "FLOYD," a painting by Donald Perlis, above a quote from the Dalai Lama, the 26 by 24 foot billboard at Seventh Avenue between 47th and 48th Streets is meant to spark discussions about human rights, regardless of how jarring the scene may be, Corinne Basabe, the chairwoman of the committee, said in an interview. "We wouldn't have the movement that we have today if that video wasn't so graphic," Ms. Basabe said, referring to this year's Black Lives Matter protests, which began after a bystander video of Mr. Floyd's death surfaced, showing a white police officer handcuffing and pinning Mr. Floyd to the ground with his knee. That officer, Derek Chauvin, has since been charged with second degree murder, and three other officers involved were charged with aiding and abetting second degree murder. The billboard's placement is somewhat symbolic, as Times Square has been virtually empty since March, but it is joining others that are filling empty advertising spaces in different U.S. cities: some, aimed at lawmakers, are calling for reparations using the hashtag cutthecheck. The artist Carrie Mae Weems recently installed a new project called "RESIST COVID TAKE 6!" on billboards and posters around the country, in a message about social distancing.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
HONG KONG When top tech minds sat down to set the global standards underpinning today's cellphone networks, China was left largely on the sidelines. Companies in the West owned much of the crucial technology, and they prospered. Now, as the world prepares for a new generation of mobile internet that could let you download a feature length movie in mere seconds, a Chinese company is determined to lead, putting it at the center of an international fight over the technology's future. Huawei, the giant maker of telecommunications equipment, has been pouring money into research on 5G, or fifth generation, wireless networks and patenting key technologies. It has hired experts from foreign rivals and pushed them to guide international groups that are deciding the technical standards for tomorrow's wireless gear. But the company has also been a top concern of Washington officials. It was effectively shut out of the United States after a 2012 congressional report said Beijing could use Huawei's equipment to spy on Americans. And this week, a United States Treasury official flagged Huawei's 5G push as the American government investigates the proposed takeover of Qualcomm, a San Diego based chip maker, by Broadcom, a rival based in Singapore. In a letter, the official, Aimen N. Mir, deputy assistant secretary for investment security, said that being bought by Broadcom would sap Qualcomm's ability to influence worldwide standards for 5G. Broadcom's statements suggest that it would slash investment in research and development, Mr. Mir wrote, and focus instead on short term profitability. As a result, he wrote, Chinese companies such as Huawei could get the technological edge. "A shift to Chinese dominance in 5G would have substantial negative national security consequences for the United States," Mr. Mir wrote. Broadcom sought to assuage the concerns on Wednesday by pledging to increase research spending. With the first phase of 5G standards due to be completed this year, the outcome of the Broadcom deal may not affect the complicated protocols themselves much. One major set of standards was already delivered in December. It is clear, though, that Huawei, which is not state run, wants to drive the global charge toward 5G and that Washington would rather it didn't. "It's part of China's technological coming of age," said Chris Lane, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein in Hong Kong. "They're saying: 'We're a technological powerhouse. We should be sitting at the table with the Germans, the British, the Americans, the Japanese and the Koreans and doing our part.'" The United States government has pushed back before. In 2011, Washington blocked Huawei from buying a California tech start up, 3Leaf Systems. Huawei is also under investigation by the Treasury and Commerce Departments over whether it broke American trade sanctions in countries including Iran and North Korea. Officials in Washington have also watched with trepidation as Huawei has become a major international smartphone brand. In January, after lawmakers wrote to the Federal Communications Commission to reiterate the security worries, AT T ended a deal to sell Huawei's new flagship phones in the United States. A Huawei spokesman on Wednesday called the company "an early driver and leader in 5G research and development," as well as "a key architect and contributor" to 5G standards. The company has previously said it complies with the law wherever it operates. It has denied that its products carry security risks. For China, taking a top role in 5G is no mere matter of national pride. The new technology will not only permit ultrafast video streaming and communication between, say, a self driving car and a traffic control system. It is also meant to accommodate simultaneous connections with large numbers of devices everything from consumer wearables to industrial sensors. That dovetails with China's aim, outlined in its most recent five year plan, to transform its cities and upgrade its manufacturing capabilities using the so called internet of things. As of early 2017, 10 percent of the 1,450 patents essential for 5G networks were in Chinese hands, according to analysts with Jefferies, who wrote that they expected the figure to rise. That number includes intellectual property rights held by Huawei; another Chinese equipment maker, ZTE; and others. Qualcomm alone owned 15 percent of 5G patents, Nokia 11 percent and Ericsson 8 percent. As of 2011, Huawei and ZTE owned a combined 7 percent of 4G patents, according to Jefferies's estimates. Qualcomm, at the time, owned 21 percent. Chinese companies have also been increasing their influence at 3GPP, or the Third Generation Partnership Project, the international body that decides wireless standards and includes representatives from telecom operators, equipment makers and more. The work of deciding technical matters at 3GPP is divided among different groups and subgroups, and Chinese organizations have expanded their presence in the top ranks. The number of Chinese representatives serving as chair or vice chair of a group or subgroup was 10 last year, up from eight in 2013, according to Jefferies. There are almost 60 leadership positions in total. Huawei holds five top spots among the different groups; China Mobile has three. The chair and vice chair are elected by each group's members.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
It didn't take much thought for Stephanie Budijono and Jean Francois Kagy to decide to settle in New York. They met in Princeton, N.J., as graduate students at Princeton University, where she studied chemical engineering and he economics. Ms. Budijono, 28, now works in Princeton as a scientist, while Mr. Kagy, 31, works in Midtown East for an economic consulting firm. The two toyed with the idea of living in New Jersey, but both prefer city life. As grad students, they often visited New York, sometimes just for dinner. When they returned to Princeton in the wee hours, "we imagined living in the city and being just 10 minutes away from home," Mr. Kagy said. And they never agreed with friends who cited the difficulty they might eventually face rearing children in the city. "For us, the home is really important," said Ms. Budijono, who is from Indonesia. "It's not only a place for us to sleep and shower, but a place for us to relax and hang out, and food is a very important part in our relationship. I like to cook and like to try out new recipes. People say New Yorkers don't eat at home a lot, but I do. I need to eat at home to be able to enjoy eating out." They also wanted a real dining area with room for a "floating dining table," she said, so nobody would face a wall while eating. Last year, Mr. Kagy, who is from Montreal, went to his first open house, in Carnegie Hill, to suss out what kind of co op their budget would allow. As he left, Sabrina Kleier Morgenstern, an executive vice president of Kleier Residential, waved him into her open house on the same floor. Recognizing her from the HGTV show, "Selling New York," he pocketed her card. He started walking the cross streets of the Upper East Side, back and forth, becoming familiar with the neighborhood. "Maybe we can get more data points," he thought, referring to such information as liquidity requirements for co ops. He contacted Ms. Kleier Morgenstern. Sometimes couples disagree on what they want, she said, "but they really seemed to be in sync and have similar sorts of tastes." Often, places they saw were perfectly nice but had tiny second bedrooms or lacked dining space. A lovely prewar co op in the Sutton Place neighborhood had a layout issue: with six steps up to the living room and down to the bedroom, the couple feared problems with reselling. The location was a bit off, too: Though the apartment was across East 59th Street from the Bridgemarket, and though the view of the Roosevelt Island tramway was delightful, the couple didn't relish walking on First Avenue beneath the dark and noisy Queensboro Bridge overpass. The apartment, listed for 875,000, with maintenance of around 2,300 a month, later sold for 872,500. The couple decided they would rather be nearer Central Park and farther north. They hunted efficiently, kept to a schedule by Daniel Kerin, an agent at Kleier Residential. "I say it took a minute a block and two minutes an avenue, and we planned an itinerary," Mr. Kerin said. "We are not time wasters." The couple fell in love with a prewar co op in the mid 80s near Park Avenue, listed at 832,000, with monthly maintenance in the 1,800s. It was well located, near the 86th Street subway, and in a coveted school district. But they didn't like the brick wall just outside the living room and master bedroom. They returned again and again. "Each time we would go back and stare out the window and think, 'Does it really make sense, because the view is close to zero?' " Mr. Kagy said. They turned the lights off and on, gauging the dimness or brightness. "We thought maybe we could live with this, because we loved the apartment so much," Ms. Budijono said. "We loved the kitchen, the lobby, the feel. Sometimes you cannot explain that." They agonized, and decided against it. The place is now in contract. In the end, they returned to an apartment they had seen earlier, in the low 90s near Park Avenue a 1,000 square foot two bedroom, just at treetop level, with quaint row houses across the street. The kitchen, though long and skinny, had a counter with seats by the window; the living room was large enough for a floating table. The bathroom had a tub as well as a separate shower stall. The master bedroom faces the street; the second bedroom looks over a ventilation system, but still gets sun and sky which is better than having a brick wall a few feet away. The unit was listed at 829,000, with monthly maintenance of around 1,900. The couple purchased it in March for 800,000.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
PARIS Mona Lisa's lingering smile remains the same, but she is getting a first of its kind virtual makeover from the Louvre Museum, which has struggled this year with the popularity of Leonardo da Vinci's masterpiece and the throngs of selfie snapping tourists. With a blockbuster Leonardo exhibition fast approaching, the Louvre and its production partners are fine tuning a virtual reality tour with three dimensional views of the portrait that look beyond the jostling crowds, the shatterproof glass case and the layers of varnish from restorations and the fading green patina. The real oil on wood "Mona Lisa" was returned last week to the skylit Salle des Etats, to coincide with the Oct. 24 opening of an exhibition marking the quincentennial of the death in 1519 of Leonardo, master of the Italian Renaissance. During the summer, while the Salle des Etats was being renovated, the portrait was moved to the Galerie Medicis, which resulted in severe overcrowding because of limited access. Disappointed tourists complained about fleeting glimpses and barriers that kept them about 15 feet from the 30 inch tall painting. The gallery, equipped with 11 headset stations, will offer seven minute virtual tours that begin in a familiar crush of visitors with mobile phones aloft. They lead through a gallery of paintings to the portrait of Mona Lisa, the wife of an Italian silk merchant. "She is seated, and spectators will be facing her like a conversation, face to face," said Dominique de Font Reaulx, the Louvre's director of mediation and cultural programming. In this virtual land of Leonardo, spectators eventually fly over a valley and jagged hills aboard a wing flapping glider he sketched (and which appears in the traditional exhibition). Ms. de Font Reaulx noted that the two curators of the main exhibition have researched all the historical information for the virtual tour narration, including the visual details of Mona Lisa and her surroundings from the gentle wave of her hair to her velvet dress to the clay tiles of the loggias of 16th century Florence. The digital experiment is part of an ongoing effort to broaden the Louvre's appeal, with France laying new plans to promote its art treasures with virtual reality tours and some lower tech alternatives. In September, Franck Riester, France's minister of culture , unveiled a project to develop a thousand "micro follies," or digital pop up museums, over the next three years in rural and suburban locations including movie theaters, libraries, social centers and even hair salons. France intends to spend 3 million euros to offer virtual reality and 2D digital tours to show off the masterworks of a dozen major Paris museums, including, potentially, the Louvre's "Mona Lisa" tour. Not everyone is thrilled with this campaign to make virtual reality a more fundamental part of the museum experience. "I would prefer the Louvre to be involved with reality," said Didier Rykner, a French art critic and founder of the website La Tribune de l'Art, who argues that the state's money is better spent on art acquisitions and that the museum should concentrate on organizational issues to reduce crowding. "It's patronizing. It's disdain," Mr. Rykner said. Everywhere in France, he added, there were "churches and monuments where you can find big art like a Velazquez or a Caravaggio." "With 3 million euros, you could buy three masterpieces that you could give to the museums in France, so it would be real art for real people," he said. But other major museums are already experimenting with VR and are pushing forward based on the results. Earlier this year, the Musee de l'Orangerie in Paris tried out a virtual reality tour inspired by Monet's Water Lily series that plunged spectators into the artist's virtual pond in his Giverny garden through animated snowfall and summer days. The reactions of visitors impressed Louvre officials. "Not only young people were using it. There were people over 65, including my father, who is 83," said Ms. de Font Reaulx, of the Louvre. "It's very interesting, and we are open to new displays. But it will not replace the works. The content is first. That's very important to the Louvre." HTC Vive Arts, which is donating its services to develop the Louvre's "Mona Lisa" project, also coordinated the production of the Monet tour along with a VR program last year at the Tate Modern in London, created to accompany an exhibition devoted to Amedeo Modigliani. There the curators used historical research to reimagine the interior of Modigliani's 1919 Paris studio in vivid detail, down to a cigarette smoldering on the table and rain from a roof leak dripping into a bucket. "What was wonderful was that many people spent more time looking at the Modigliani self portrait in the last room of the exhibition," said Nancy Ireson, a curator of the Modigliani exhibition. "They understood what they were going to see. They stayed longer and had conversations about the portrait." Paris museum officials are optimistic that the Louvre's experiment will open the museum "to a new public, which is maybe not interested in artworks, but is interested in the experience of VR," according to Ms. de Font Reaulx, who notes that viewers will be able to download the tour from home and that it could also travel in the future as a pop up exhibition for symposiums and salons. In preparation for the October debut, the Louvre is taking steps to minimize lines to glimpse its virtual Mona Lisa. Reservations are required.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Every summer in Vermont, emerging and established writers gather for lectures, readings, workshops and the occasional barn dance at Bread Loaf, one of the oldest and most prestigious writers' conferences in the United States. To offset the fees, which this year are set at 3,631, the conference has for decades admitted about 20 "wait scholars" a year, who receive free tuition in exchange for waiting tables and doing other kitchen and dining hall tasks. At least three of 2019's National Book Award finalists worked as waiters at Bread Loaf, and dozens of other authors have taken up the job over the years. (I attended this year, though not as a wait scholar.) But the conference's new director, Jennifer Grotz, said this month that she was ending the wait scholar program and that the conference would instead direct the program's funds to scholarships with no work requirements. In an interview, Grotz, a former Bread Loaf waiter herself, cited concerns raised by waiters in 2016 ranging from sexual harassment to racism to the work cutting into the seminars they came for in the first place. She also noticed that waiters were often young writers of color, serving fellow writers who were mostly older and white. "The optics in the dining hall were troubling, and very different from what the conference goals were," she said. Members of the class of 2016 said their concerns were captured in a stinging essay by Jean Ho, who worked as a waiter that year. "Women waiters commiserated in the kitchen about certain male conference attendees whose stares lingered too long on our bodies, who put their hands on us to get our attention, called us 'Baby' or 'Sweetheart,'" Ho wrote. "The worst stories I heard from the black writers: a white faculty member curiously touching a black student's braids; a waiter who was asked by a white dining room guest to bring her a cup of coffee 'hot and black like you.'" Ho declined to comment, but another person who attended that year and worked as a waiter, Benjamin Aleshire, corroborated what she wrote. "It was very apparent to me that the whole Bread Loaf waiter system was this outdated, classist dinosaur in need of a meteor," he said. During the 2016 conference, Grotz, then the assistant director, and the conference's director at the time, the poet Michael Collier, met with the waiters. "All of us wept as we told stories of our working class backgrounds and stories of racism and sexism and how this experience brought up those issues," Aleshire said. Bread Loaf, which Middlebury College operates, began in 1926. The editor John Farrar started it with the encouragement of Robert Frost as a way for writers to meet and learn from one another. The conference typically breaks even, Grotz said, though that could change with the elimination of the waiter program. "I'm going to have to pay dining services for the work the waiters did," she said. "We're going to be losing money this year, but I feel like it's a triumph." Though 2016 marked a turning point, the attendees that year weren't the first to express frustrations about how they were treated. The poet Major Jackson was a waiter in 1996 and is grateful that he was able to attend Bread Loaf. He said he could not have afforded the tuition without the scholarship, which led him to an M.F.A. program and a career as a poet and a teacher. But the experience was a complex one. Toward the end of the conference that year, he kicked over a tea station in the dining hall and stormed out a story that has become Bread Loaf lore, though Jackson no longer remembers what prompted it. "Now, we have a language to talk about microaggressions, but they were there all along, no doubt," he said. This year, two novelists who had previously attended as waiters, Ingrid Rojas Contreras and R.O. Kwon, returned to Bread Loaf . It brought back some uncomfortable memories. Rojas Contreras recalled having to perform a song and dance for the other attendees one evening. "At one time it would have been more like a gentle hazing, when the conference was made up mostly of men, mostly of people of means, mostly white," she said. "When the population changes, when women are waiters, people of color are waiters, queer people are waiters, then it is no longer a light hazing." She and Kwon told Grotz and the other conference organizers that they wanted writing institutions like Bread Loaf to be more supportive of people from marginalized identities. "I knew in my heart exactly what to do," Grotz said. "Once I wrapped my head around that, I tried to make it happen." Follow New York Times Books on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, sign up for our newsletter or our literary calendar. And listen to us on the Book Review podcast.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Parker Curry is just 2 years old, but she already has an online following and has met Michelle Obama. On Tuesday morning, the toddler who captivated the internet with her reaction to Mrs. Obama's official portrait got together with the former first lady for a dance session to Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off." Parker's rise to internet fame began after Ben Hines, a museum patron, posted a photograph of her staring open mouthed at Amy Sherald's portrait of Mrs. Obama at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. The image was shared thousands of times across different platforms, and soon enough, an acquaintance tagged Parker's mom, Jessica, in the comments. "I was trying to get her to turn around so I could take a picture, but she wouldn't cooperate," Ms. Curry told BuzzFeed. "She just wanted to stare at it. She was fascinated." According to the Washington Post, Parker thinks Mrs. Obama is a queen. Ms. Curry is not sure whether Parker knows who Barack Obama is. Online, people shared the image over and over, commenting on the importance of representation and the hopefulness captured in the girl's expression. "This is such a powerful moment," Tabitha Yvette wrote on Facebook. "The look of awe on her face, mouth agape, whether she knows it or not, she has been changed." Ms. Sherald weighed in as well. "When I look at this picture I think back to my first field trip in elementary school to a museum," she wrote on Instagram. "There was a show up of work by painter thebobartlett whose work still inspires me to this day. There was a painting of a black man standing in front of a house. I don't remember a lot about my childhood, but I do have a few emotional memories etched into my mind forever and seeing that painting of a man that looked like he could be my father stopped me dead in my tracks. This was my first time seeing real paintings that weren't in a book and also weren't painted in another century. I didn't realize that none of them had me in them until I saw that painting of Bo's." Ms. Curry couldn't have known that the image would have an effect on so many people, including, as it turned out, Mrs. Obama, who addressed Parker in her Twitter and Instagram posts: "maybe one day I'll proudly look up at a portrait of you!" The words harked back to her comments at the portrait's unveiling last month. "I'm also thinking about all the young people particularly girls and girls of color who in years ahead will come to this place and they will look up and they will see an image of someone who looks like them hanging on the wall of this great American institution," Mrs. Obama said on Feb. 12 at the National Portrait Gallery. "I know the kind of impact that will have on their lives, because I was one of those girls." And who knows? Parker could be one of those familiar faces for a little girl someday, too.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Even as sports go dark around the world, one high profile event remains on the schedule. No, not Belarusian soccer. The Ultimate Fighting Championship insists that its card for April 18 will proceed as scheduled despite the coronavirus pandemic. It was originally scheduled to be held in Brooklyn, but the New York State Athletic Commission nixed the card last month because of the health crisis. At one point, the U.F.C.'s own Las Vegas studios seemed the most likely location, until the state suspended combat sports. More recently, various American states and Middle Eastern countries with looser rules have been suggested as alternatives. Dana White, the president of the U.F.C., said that the card was on, but that the lightweight champion Khabib Nurmagomedov was out of the headline bout. Nurmagomedov is in Russia and had gone back and forth about his availability. "Sixteen days before fight, and I don't know location," he told ESPN last week. "This is not professional." He did add that he was still in shape. For fight fans who have been waiting for a Nurmagomedov Ferguson bout for years, the loss of the main event was a blow. That star crossed matchup has been scheduled five separate times, as far back as 2015, but was always canceled because of an injury or an illness to one fighter or the other. The most recent previous attempt, in April 2018, was scuttled after Ferguson was hurt falling over some cords before a television interview. Now the coronavirus has tripped up the fight. The bout was much anticipated because Nurmagomedov is perhaps the biggest star in the U.F.C. right now, with a 28 0 record and ranked behind only Jon Jones as the top pound for pound fighter. (And Jones is back in legal trouble.) Ferguson, the No. 1 contender, is 25 3 with 12 consecutive wins, a streak that dates to 2012. If the card does come off, there is also a bout scheduled between Jessica Andrade and Rose Namajunas, the top two contenders in the women's strawweight class. The U.F.C. last put on a card on March 14 in Brazil, with no fans in attendance. Since then, two cards, scheduled for London and Columbus, Ohio, were canceled, and a card for this coming weekend in Portland, Ore., has also been scrapped. There is one more event scheduled after U.F.C. 249 in April and three more in May that for now are on. As a league ban on soccer practice expired in Germany, Bayern Munich and other teams returned to training on Monday, carefully. German soccer remains suspended until at least May, but first team players were on hand for Bayern's practice. They stayed five feet apart on the field and 12 feet apart in the locker room; players also arrived at staggered times and did not eat or shower at the training grounds. "It was a very unusual feeling to hold a training session in small groups today, but it was also nice to see the boys live again," Manuel Neuer, the team captain, told the German site Sport Buzzer. "I would also like to thank the club and all the helpers that we have the opportunity to complete football specific training sessions on the pitch in these difficult times." For the record, Sport Buzzer focused more on the return to training of the star striker Robert Lewandowski than on the unusual circumstances of the return to practice. Remember when an injury or a big trade was the biggest sports story of the day? What About Fistball and Korfball? Yes, maybe baseball, basketball, hockey, tennis and golf have shut up shop, but there must be some fistball still on? Or maybe korfball? Guess again. The European fistball championship and under 18 world championship have been postponed, and the World Tour final has been canceled. Just about all major international korfball events have also been postponed or canceled. The floor is lava, the popular schoolyard game where players have to avoid touching the ground, is being taken to a new level. With professional climbers stuck at home, many are finding creative ways to get through their houses, without putting their feet down.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Bernard Gersten, right, and Andre Bishop outside the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center in 1999. The two were key players in the revival of theater at Lincoln Center. Bernard Gersten, a canny executive who helped turn two of New York's nonprofit theater companies into powerhouse producers and presenters of award winning plays and musicals, died on Monday at his home in Manhattan. He was 97. The cause was pancreatic cancer, his daughter Jenny Gersten said. Mr. Gersten was Joseph Papp's top deputy at the New York Shakespeare Festival for 18 years in the 1960s and '70s, a time when the two worked together to build the Delacorte Theater in Central Park for free summer productions of Shakespeare, and to turn the old Astor Library on Lafayette Street in the East Village into the Public Theater, the original home of such notable plays as David Rabe's Vietnam drama "Sticks and Bones" and Jason Miller's Pulitzer Prize winner, "That Championship Season," as well as the landmark musicals "Hair" and "A Chorus Line." The two men championed the work of Mr. Rabe, Vaclav Havel, Ntozake Shange, John Guare and other playwrights and helped propel the careers of actors like James Earl Jones, Meryl Streep, Martin Sheen and Raul Julia. Working first with Gregory Mosher as artistic director and then with Andre Bishop, Mr. Gersten took a theater that had almost been completely dark for eight years and a failure for 20 and helped turn it into one of the nation's leading nonprofit stage organizations. Its successes have included Mr. Guare's "Six Degrees of Separation"; "The Sisters Rosensweig," by Wendy Wasserstein; Tom Stoppard's vivid intellectual dramas "The Invention of Love" and "The Coast of Utopia"; Tony winning revivals of "Carousel" and "South Pacific"; the Tony winning best musical "Contact"; and the Tony winning play "War Horse." Though Mr. Papp was the driven public face of the Shakespeare Festival, many theater people have said that Mr. Gersten was an almost equal partner. The two men were complementary, to be sure, with Mr. Gersten willing to take on the tasks that Mr. Papp hated accounting, advertising, dealing with agents and mending the fences that the quick to anger Mr. Papp was prone to tear down. In 1971, after pleading with New York City to help solve the Public Theater's financial crisis, Mr. Papp stormed out of a meeting with the all powerful Board of Estimate rather than respond to criticism about the way he ran his theater. Only Mr. Gersten's swift apology, witnesses said, persuaded the board to approve the city's purchase of the theater's building, giving Mr. Papp the relief he had sought. It was Mr. Gersten who brought the work of the director and choreographer Michael Bennett to Mr. Papp's attention. Mr. Gersten had seen Mr. Bennett's work in the Broadway musicals "Follies" and "Seesaw," and when a musical about Vietnam, "More Than You Deserve," was struggling in previews at the Public in 1973, Mr. Gersten recommended that Mr. Bennett be brought in to help. Mr. Papp rejected the idea, but not long afterward Mr. Bennett said there was something else he wanted to talk to Mr. Papp about: He had been making some tapes, and he had a crazy idea for a musical. "And the next day he came down to the theater with the tapes," Mr. Gersten recalled. "He had been a gypsy, a chorus dancer, and he had taped hours and hours of interviews with dancers just like himself, the kind who would journey from show to show, never become stars, never even get speaking roles. They talked about their lives, their careers, their doubts, their hopes, their frustrations, their desires, their fears, their love of the theater. He played some of the tapes for Joe and said he thought they could be the basis for a musical. He said he needed time to create it and shape it, and wanted to use the Public Theater as a home for a workshop to make it work." Mr. Gersten urged his boss to go along with the idea, and Mr. Papp was won over. The musical, "A Chorus Line," opened to ebullient reviews on May 21, 1975, and with its move to the Shubert Theater on Broadway, it eventually grossed almost 150 million for the New York Shakespeare Festival. Its 6,137 performances the last one was on April 28, 1990 made it the longest running show in Broadway history until "Cats" surpassed it. During the run Mr. Bennett died of AIDS related lymphoma, in 1987. "The overwhelming point is the shadow that AIDS cast on the show,'' Mr. Gersten said after its closing night performance. "It's so painful to sit there and think of the innocence of the show 15 years ago, when there was no shadow of AIDS, and to the think of the number of people connected with the show who have fallen to AIDS, Michael most notably.'' Mr. Gersten was born on Jan. 30, 1923, in Newark, N.J., to Jacob and Henrietta (Henig) Gersten. His father was a garment maker and active in his neighborhood synagogue, and his mother was a homemaker. Bernard graduated from West Side High School in Newark, spent two years at Rutgers University and went into the Army, passing much of World War II in a special services entertainment unit in Hawaii. There he became friendly with a fellow soldier, an actor named Robert Karnes, who after the war invited Mr. Gersten to join his troupe, the Actors Laboratory in Los Angeles, as technical director. Mr. Papp had joined the company a year earlier and become managing director. Ten years later, in 1958, Mr. Gersten and Mr. Papp appeared before a subcommittee of the House Un American Activities Committee. Questioned about past Communist Party membership, they invoked the Fifth Amendment. Mr. Papp was fired from his production job at CBS, although he was later reinstated by an arbitrator. Mr. Gersten, by then working as a stage manager at the American Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Conn., did not lose his job, because Katharine Hepburn, a member of the festival's board, and the director John Houseman said that if Mr. Gersten were ousted, they would quit. Two years later, Mr. Gersten joined Mr. Papp as associate producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival, beginning an 18 year tenure in which he also helped Mr. Papp run Lincoln Center's theater company from 1973 to 1977. In 1978, their partnership ended abruptly in a dispute over whether the Public Theater should co produce Mr. Bennett's follow up to "A Chorus Line," the musical "Ballroom," a bittersweet tale of a late in life romance. Mr. Papp didn't like it. But Mr. Gersten felt that they owed it to Mr. Bennett to be involved because of all the money "A Chorus Line" had made for the festival. Mr. Papp fired him, and even removed Mr. Gersten's name from the "Chorus Line" credits, restoring it only several years later, when the two men reconciled. Mr. Papp died in 1991. (Mr. Gersten co produced "Ballroom," which opened on Broadway in December 1978 and closed in barely four months.) Mr. Gersten subsequently worked for Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Studios and the Radio City Music Hall. Then, in 1985, Lincoln Center's board, seeking to revive its moribund theater program, chose Mr. Mosher, formerly of the Goodman Theater in Chicago, as artistic director and Mr. Gersten as executive producer. To attract audiences to the center's two theaters the Mitzi E. Newhouse, for Off Broadway work, and the Vivian Beaumont, for Broadway they offered a 25 season membership that allowed members to buy a ticket to any production for 10. In the first three years, they oversaw more than 20 plays and 2,100 performances, including a smash revival of Mr. Guare's "House of Blue Leaves," and took in 35 million. Mr. Bishop replaced Mr. Mosher in 1992. Over all, during Mr. Gersten's tenure, Lincoln Center Theater produced more than 120 shows, many winning Tony and Drama Desk awards. In addition to his daughter Jenny, Mr. Gersten is survived by another daughter, Jilian Cahan Gersten; his wife, Cora Cahan, a former dancer who became the founding president of the nonprofit development agency the New 42nd Street and is now the president and chief executive of the Baryshnikov Arts Center; and four grandchildren. In 2010, on the 25th anniversary of his joining Lincoln Center Theater, Mr. Gersten reflected on the nature of theater as having four elements: a building, artists, money and an audience. "How you mix them, how you adjust them, how you administer them is the secret of success or failure," he said. "We have taken a place that was considered to be an impossible theater," he added, "and made it into the most likely theater one could want for, long for, hope to have."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The rappers Farid Bang, left, and Kollegah receiving the award for best hip hop album at Germany's Echo Music Awards. The prize for the album, which contains lyrics referring to the Holocaust and Auschwitz, has set off an uproar in Germany. BERLIN In Germany's hugely popular hip hop music scene, one of the biggest albums of the past year was from two trash talking rappers who rhymed about their prowess in bed and in the weight room and about violently dominating their opponents. The album has racked up sales, but has also attracted a different sort of attention. In one song, the pair boast about how their bodies are "more defined than Auschwitz prisoners." In another, they vow to "make another Holocaust, show up with a Molotov." Widespread condemnation turned into an uproar in the last week since the rappers, Farid Bang and Kollegah, won the Echo award for best hip hop album at Germany's equivalent of the Grammys on April 12. The lead singer of the country's pre eminent punk rock band objected to the award from the same stage that night. "In principle I consider provocation is a good thing," Campino, the lead singer of Die Toten Hosen, said. "But we need to differentiate between art as a stylistic device, or a form of provocation that only serves to destroy and ostracize others." Other winners have said they are returning their prizes. Posting on Twitter in German, the foreign minister, Heiko Maas, wrote: "Anti Semitic provocations do not deserve awards, they are simply disgusting." He also noted the unfortunate timing of the ceremony. April 12 is a day of worldwide solemnity. "That such a prize was handed out on Holocaust Remembrance Day is shameful," he wrote. The country's recording industry association had criticized the lyrics but defended its choice in the name of artistic freedom. Nominations are based on popularity and rankings on music charts, not artistic quality a process the association has pledged to re examine after the outcry. But beyond the resentment over the award, the episode has also provoked soul searching about incitement in art, and the extent of anti Jewish sentiment in German hip hop in particular. And most troubling, many believe, is what it says about the rise in anti Semitism among young people, and the millions of impressionable rap fans who are generations removed from the horrors of Nazi rule. Germany's attempts to atone for the evils of its past, while confronting the troubles of its present, is its never ending preoccupation. On Wednesday, in response to a video showing a man in Berlin wearing a Jewish skullcap being attacked by a group of young men speaking Arabic, Chancellor Angela Merkel vowed to commit her government to fighting anti Semitism "relentlessly and with resolve." "This fight against such anti Semitic excesses must be won," Ms. Merkel said. (The victim in the video turned out not to be Jewish he was an Arab Israeli who said he was trying to prove to a friend that he could wear a skullcap in Germany without being hassled.) The objectionable lyrics in the winning album, titled "Young, Brutal, Good Looking 3," do not explicitly deny the mass slaughter of some six million Jews by the Nazis, nor do they specifically incite hatred of Jews, both of which would have made them illegal under Germany's strict laws banning Holocaust denial. Kollegah and Farid Bang did not respond to requests for comment. On the night of the ceremony, Kollegah replied to criticism by saying, "I don't want to make a political debate out of this," and invited anyone who wanted to discuss it to approach him at the after party. In the past, they have defended their lyrics as art and exaggeration. On Facebook last month, Farid Bang apologized to Esther Bejarano, a 93 year old singer and Auschwitz survivor who had spoken out about the lyrics. Both men have offered to let Jews come to their concerts for free forever as proof, they said, that they bore no hatred. In the music video for his track "Apocalypse," a banker in a London office tower is shown controlling the evil forces in the world, and wearing a Star of David ring. After a final showdown between good and evil, Kollegah a 33 year old convert to Islam whose real name is Felix Blume raps, "Muslims, Christians and Buddhists lived together in peace," pointedly not mentioning Jews. Allegations of anti Semitism have dogged German hip hop for years and were even the subject of a recent documentary, "The Dark Side of German Rap." One song by the rapper Haftbefehl mentions a conspiracy theory about the Rothschilds, a Jewish banking family, and the video for another features images of Orthodox Jews carrying suitcases of money and diamonds over the lyrics "money, money rich." Many lyrics are also homophobic and degrading to women issues in rap music that transcend Germany's borders. In one song, the rapper Shindy says that his openness to having sex described in an obscene way with Jewish women is proof he is not an anti Semite. The scene's politics lean heavily anti Israel. Bushido, another best selling German rapper, once used a map of the Middle East, without Israel, as his Facebook profile picture. In an interview on Wednesday, he said that he had done it in solidarity with Palestinians because of his own Arabic roots. "It's not just about Israel, it's about injustice everywhere," he said. "But no one listens when you're calm and polite, and so you have to use more drastic means." Nevertheless, he faulted Kollegah's and Farid Bang's lyrics. Words that conjure images like "concentration camps, Auschwitz, Jews, people who were gassed those shouldn't be used," Bushido said. With surveys increasingly showing that the Holocaust is receding from memory, many are concerned that downplaying the gravity of what happened under the Nazis can open the door for a return of discrimination against Jews. This comes amid a rise of far right populism across Europe, and the arrival of some 1.4 million migrants and refugees in Germany, many from Middle Eastern countries where hatred for Israel is taught in schools. Some popular hip hop artists hail from Germany's inner cities and are of Turkish or Arabic descent. (Farid Bang, whose real name is Farid El Abdellaoui, has North African roots.) Ms. Merkel's government has for the first time appointed a commissioner to combat anti Semitism in response to reports that incidents are increasing, especially among the young. According to the Research and Information Center in Berlin, which records incidents of anti Semitism in the German capital, 947 occurred last year, a 60 percent increase from 2016. Children in German schoolyards casually toss about "You Jew," as an insult, and reinforce stereotypes about Jews, such as saying "Don't be such a Jew" when trying to convince someone to lend some change. "At a time when hate against Jews is increasing around the world and a flood of anti Jewish sentiment can be seen online, especially among young people," said Monika Schwarz Friesel, a professor of linguistics at Berlin's Technical University, "to declare anti Semitic and fantastical, conspiratorial song texts as 'artistic freedom,' and award them prizes is viewed by researchers of anti Semitism as particularly irresponsible."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
A roundup of motor news from the web: Hyundai announced on Thursday that it would offer a version of its 2015 Sonata sedan called the Eco. The model features the third powertrain available in the Sonata a 177 horsepower turbocharged 1.6 liter four cylinder engine paired with a seven speed dual clutch automatic transmission. Hyundai says the Sonata Eco will have a combined fuel economy of 32 miles per gallon. (Hyundai) Nissan announced on Thursday that it would offer a five year, 100,000 mile bumper to bumper basic limited warranty for its light commercial vehicles. The warranty will cover Nissan's 2014 and newer commercial vehicles, including the Nissan NV Cargo Van, the NV Passenger Van and the NV200 Compact Cargo van. (Edmunds) Ford also had new technology to announce this week, introducing a new air bag design for the 2015 Mustang. The system includes a small air bladder mounted in the glove box door to protect the knees of front seat passengers. Ford says the new Mustang has twice the number of high tech safety features like crash avoidance as the previous model. (Ford) Although it did not specify numbers, Daimler, the parent company of Mercedes Benz, said on Wednesday that it would significantly increase production of vehicles at its plant in Tuscaloosa, Ala. The factory, which produces M Class and GL Class sport utility vehicles, made 185,000 vehicles in 2013. (Reuters)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
A Manhattan institution is getting ready to honor one of Brooklyn's foremost exports . Film at Lincoln Center, the nonprofit organization focused on movie programming, will give its latest Chaplin Award to the director Spike Lee, the organization announced Thursday . It will be the 46th edition of award, and the first the group has bestowed since it changed its name from Film Society of Lincoln Center to Film at Lincoln Center earlier this year. For decades, Lee " has been making challenging films that speak to our vibrant city and to the larger world, and his work remains as vital as ever," Lesli Klainberg, the executive director of Film at Lincoln Center, said in a statement. "We feel lucky to have had a special relationship with Lee at Film at Lincoln Center, showing his very first film" that would be "Joe's Bed Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads" "at the 1983 New Directors/New Films festival, and welcoming his films to our theaters in the years since." The award will be presented at a fund raising gala in April that will pay tribute to Lee's career. Film at Lincoln Center will also present a retrospective of Lee's movies this spring. He joins a distinguished roster of movie industry figures who have been given the Chaplin Award: Alfred Hitchcock, Elizabeth Taylor, Martin Scorsese and Meryl Streep are among past recipients. The honor dates to 1972 with a gala that recognized the award's namesake. It is typically given annually, though Film at Lincoln Center did not give out an award this year; it instead held a gala celebrating the organization's 50th anniversary. The most recent three winners are Helen Mirren, Robert De Niro and Morgan Freeman.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Settling allegations of discrimination filed by the Massachusetts attorney general's office, Mutual of Omaha has agreed not to deny insurance to people who use medications to prevent H.I.V. infection. The insurer also has settled a lawsuit brought by an unidentified gay man in Massachusetts who was turned down for long term care insurance after acknowledging that he took an H.I.V. prevention drug called Truvada. "Consumers looking to protect themselves from H.I.V. transmission should not be excluded from buying insurance," Maura Healey, the attorney general of Massachusetts, said in a prepared statement. The company admitted no wrongdoing in the settlements and will make a 25,000 payment to the state. Mutual of Omaha became the focus of discrimination complaints after applicants, mostly gay men, said they were denied disability, long term care or life insurance solely because they were taking Truvada to protect themselves from H.I.V., a practice called PrEP (short for pre exposure prophylaxis).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Times journalists around the world bring you a new 360 video every day. Times journalists around the world bring you a new 360 video every day.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
In that exhilarating and sleep deprived first year of parenthood, one of my fondest memories is the summer afternoon my husband and I spent with our then six month old son touring Melford Hall in the countryside dotted by farms in Suffolk, roughly two hours northeast of London. We visited the 16th century stately home on the advice of my English in laws who thought it would be a manageable trip for parents recovering from our son's first international flight. What we did not expect was how welcomed we would feel at this home where Beatrix Potter, the creator of "Peter Rabbit" and other beloved children's book characters, used to visit her relatives. When we walked up the long stone driveway, stepped through the home's imposing front entrance and hallway, a bearish volunteer enveloped our son in his arms and offered to show him the nursery toys. As we left the house to tour the gardens, we were lent a canvas bag filled with a tartan printed blanket, one of Ms. Potter's books and a stuffed bunny. Since that trip three years ago, I have learned that what felt like an invisible parent was a well developed strategy by the National Trust, the 125 year old charity that manages properties and land that wealthy Britons often bequeathed when they no longer could afford them. Many homes now feature museums, use their spare rooms for film shoots and rent some parts of the properties as holiday cottages also to families. With every annual trip, the National Trust has continued to impress me with their family friendly programs. At Snowshill Manor in Gloucestershire, I discovered a spotless changing table and rocking chair. During a tour of Basildon Park, which "Downton Abbey" fans will recognize as the family's London residence, we were offered a baby carrier if we wanted to explore the stroller unfriendly upper floors of the 18th century home. At Barrington Court in Somerset, where parts of the television series "Wolf Hall" had been filmed, volunteers didn't mind as our son endlessly toddled up and down a wood paneled hallway. On our most recent trip in August to Winston Churchill's family home Chartwell, our son was delighted by the play kitchen in the child sized playhouse that Churchill built for his own daughters and that the National Trust recently stocked with toys. As the mother of a now inquisitive preschooler with ninja like skills at leaping onto antique chairs and fast fingers eager to touch everything new that reaches him, I appreciate even more the risks involved with welcoming children into these homes. Denise Foster, a manager on a National Trust team to improve visitors' experiences and a self described "history nerd," spent the past seven years working on ways to offer better services for families. She recognizes that when parents work, these visits are "precious family time where you are building memories together." Ms. Foster has made sure the cafes have child sized cutlery and high chairs that pull up to tables, well conceived playgrounds, step stools in bathrooms and extra events during school vacations. Volunteers who used to act as guards protecting artifacts are now encouraged to welcome families. We have an annual family membership that covers more than 500 properties (114.60 pounds, or about 151). Royal Oak Foundation, the U.S. arm of the National Trust, lets visitors buy memberships before their trip. We even use National Trust properties as rest stops on long car trips. We broke up one journey and had lunch at The Vyne a 16th century Tudor Palace in Hampshire, less than an hour's drive from Heathrow Airport. There our son ran around the grounds and sized up the playground. The grounds we strolled around Dyrham Park, just north of Bath, let our son marvel at herds of deer. Ms. Foster recognizes that there are limits to how child friendly she can make homes filled with priceless paintings and furniture. So at homes like at Avebury in Wiltshire, better known as the home of Stonehenge and where the National Trust had produced a television show with the BBC called "The Manor Reborn," the National Trust kept the replicas after filming finished and welcomed children to play. There my son played peekaboo behind the curtains of a Tudor era bed. Then he ground coffee in a grinder dating from a 1912 kitchen and asked why it lacked batteries. Just as Ms. Foster had hoped, Avebury, along with all of these homes, gave us more memories to add to our own family history.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Helene Renault Dingli with a portrait of her father, Jean Louis Renault, and a bust of Louis Renault in the background, is one of seven family members seeking to overturn the nationalization of the car company. PARIS Nearly 70 years after the pioneering automaker Louis Renault died in a French prison, accused of collaborating with the Nazis, his grandchildren are seeking to restore his reputation and gain compensation for what they say was the illegal confiscation of his car company by the state. Family members, whose efforts at legal redress had been stymied since the de Gaulle provisional government nationalized Renault on Jan. 16, 1945, have seized on a new law that allows individuals to challenge the constitutionality of government actions in the courts. If they win, they could receive well over 100 million euros, or 143 million, from the state, their lawyer said. The family insists, however, that cash is not the motivating factor. "It's not my priority to monetize this," said Helene Renault Dingli, one of the seven grandchildren seeking to overturn the nationalization. "We're fighting to win back his place, but no amount of compensation could make up for this violence that has been experienced by our family." No one disputes that Renault worked for the Germans; virtually all of France's big industrial groups did. What has been contested since the liberation of the country is whether what happened to the company soon afterward was legal. Renault, like the other major French automakers Citroen, Peugeot and the truck maker Berliet produced vehicles for the Third Reich. Renault's tank unit was directly controlled by the Germans, while its auto and aircraft units, as with the other companies, were under French management, supervised by executives from Daimler Benz. Yet Citroen and Peugeot were not nationalized after the war; their owners were deemed to have been patriots, and Berliet eventually won back its private status. Mr. Renault died in prison on Oct. 24, 1944, before he could face trial. He had aphasia, and the official report lists uremia as the cause of death. His family contends that he was murdered, although they have no proof. The case illustrates the continued sensitivity here about the German occupation, in which Hitler imposed his will on the French nation from 1940 to 1944, turning the country into an appendage of the Nazi war machine. The Germans depended in large measure on the willingness of the French police, industrialists and managers to carry out their bidding. On a more fundamental basis, millions of people faced regular choices about whether or how far to compromise with the occupiers to survive. That makes black and white assessments of many actions difficult. "It's extremely difficult to say to what extent Louis Renault should be considered a collaborator," said Patrick Fridenson, a professor of business history at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the author of a book on Renault. Mr. Renault, he said, "ran the risk of complete dispossession if he resisted the Germans." Monika Ostler Riess, a German scholar who investigated French and German sources while researching a book on Renault's history during the occupation, said she had found no evidence that Mr. Renault collaborated any more than his peers. "He just tried to save what he had, what he had built," she said. The alternative to cooperating with the occupiers was to see the Germans take over his company, she added. Mr. Renault, along with two brothers, founded the auto company in 1899. After traveling to the United States and seeing the revolutionary production techniques of Henry Ford, he introduced American management methods in France. During World War I, he led the development of battle tanks, including the Renault FT17, the first tank to employ a rotating turret, and was lauded as a patriot afterward. By the time World War II began in Europe in 1939, Renault was a highly diversified conglomerate, the biggest industrial group in France, employing about 40,000 people. Mr. Renault held 96 percent of the capital, with family members and top managers holding the rest. While no one has produced evidence that he was sympathetic to the Third Reich's ideological goals, there is no evidence that he ever aided the resistance or de Gaulle's forces, either. (Mr. Fridenson said more research was needed into related archives, especially in Germany.) Such actions left him without political allies in the first hectic days of the liberation, as the United States and British armies began driving the Germans out of France and the Gaullists and Communists were taking control. Several photos of Mr. Renault with Hitler, including one at the Berlin Auto Show before the war broke out, also helped to cement his image in France as a Nazi tool. Of all the companies nationalized from 1944 to 1948, only Renault was not indemnified, although the minority shareholders were eventually compensated. Mr. Fridenson said the nationalization policy of de Gaulle's government was partly a means of speeding the modernization of the French economy after the war. As a result, "the Renault nationalization wasn't a pure sanction," he said. "About half of the argument made by the government at the time hinges on modernization. One rationale was that Renault wasn't making 'people's cars' like Germany and the United States." Twice before, the family has sought to overturn the ruling and obtain compensation. In 1954, Mr. Renault's son and wife were told by a judge that he could not examine the validity of the ruling by the de Gaulle government. The State Council, the country's highest administrative court, reached the same conclusion in a 1961 appeal. The descendants' current legal case against the state was made possible by a groundbreaking law enacted in March 2010 that allows citizens to challenge the conformity of legislation with the French Constitution. Supported by President Nicolas Sarkozy as a means of modernizing the French legal system, the law has had several unintended consequences, not least of which has been a flood of cases in the appeals courts. It has already been employed in hundreds of cases, including the trial of Jacques Chirac, the former French president, who is charged with creating fictitious jobs as mayor of Paris. Thierry Levy, a lawyer representing the Renault family, filed the case with a high level civil court in Paris last week. He estimated the family could receive compensation of more than 100 million euros if the courts find the 1945 nationalization order illegal. The legal question, he said, is not whether Mr. Renault was a collaborator but how his heirs were treated. "If the government decides to confiscate someone's property," Mr. Levy said, "this person must be judged and declared guilty of something. Otherwise, the confiscation is illegal." Renault has a market value of about 11.7 billion euros, and the French state maintains a 15.01 percent stake. The company has not discussed the case with the family, said Caroline de Gezelle, a Renault spokeswoman. She declined to comment further. Mrs. Renault Dingli said the family had no designs on the company but was saddened that her grandfather appeared to have been discredited by a "small but active minority" inside the company. Despite the confiscation of Mr. Renault's company, she said, the family has lived comfortably on its inheritance of Mr. Renault's personal fortune. The family won a small victory last July when it used the courts to force a historical museum the Memorial Center of Oradour to remove from display a photograph of Mr. Renault with Hitler at the Berlin Auto Show in the late 1930s. The photograph had been exhibited alongside a caption that said Renault had built tanks for the German Army.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
What 7 Book Lovers Wore to the Antiquarian Fair What brings you here today? I'm an antique, a walking antique among the antiques. I grew up with the printed word and I'm still part of the printed word. I don't own a cellphone. I don't do anything in the digital realm. I'm in the spirit of this place. This suit was made in Paris. My father was an Italian tailor. He trained under a famous uncle of his. This is a Cristiani suit: Rue de la Paix. I must have a hundred suits. It's distinguished by the pinstripe. If you were standing on my head, you'd see these lines go perfect. I like the precision. From Addison on Madison. The store is not there, but they have a factory. I know the guy. Is that an old or new hat? I have about 50 of these hats. It's a fedora made for me in Colombia. In the wintertime I don't like to wear darker colors. I bought this many years ago in Florence at a market and it's been a running joke in my family, because I never wear it. I had something else planned, but it was quite cold and I went into the closet and thought, This is perfect. I can put it over my blue dress. What are you thinking when you dress up to sell books? Well, for this fair I dress up a little more than usual. I want to appear professional and elegant, like most women do. I'm a recovering attorney. I sell what I broadly refer to as esoterica. I do a considerable amount of work in occultism, demonology, fetishism challenging material. What do you call glasses that attach like that at the nose? These are from a company called Clic. When you were young, did your mother ever knit you mittens on a string? These are the "I'm getting old and feeble" equivalent to mittens on a string. This particular kilt is a utilikilt, which in my not remotely humble opinion is the best of the nontraditional kilts. I am not a small man. I started wearing kilts years ago when flying long distance, because it's orders of magnitude more comfortable. Those are some colorful Dr. Martens. Dr. Martens began teaming up with museums. This is their most recent: William Blake, Satan Smiting Job. What are you looking for? The idea is to see what books are here to enrich my own endeavors in street style photography. No. The blazer and sweater, from J. Crew, are different shades of navy blue. Funny you should say that. It's from Timbuk2, actually. You're quite a bit younger than most of the collectors here. It's a new collection. I feel as if having a collection is very important. I'm starting a wine collection as well. You joked that it's hard to find well dressed people at a book fair. Was a little bit of a tease. Most of the people coming in, their priority is different. Your blazer really stands out. There used to be this French tailor and fabric maker, Dormeuil, and they had a boutique here. He was a book collector. We were friends and wanted some custom made jackets, and we asked him to create it for me. How do you dress for something like this? But you're still in a jacket and bow tie. Thank you. This came from a store in San Francisco called the Hound. Are you loyal to a particular brand of oxford shirt? I just bought this yesterday from J. Press here in New York. I'd call your look library chic. Is that fair? Interviews have been condensed and edited.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Offenbach's "Orpheus in the Underworld" is a parody of opera's founding myth; a satire of 19th century Parisian society (particularly its marriages); and a journey to music's most famous cancan. Instead of the traditional story of the musician Orpheus, who loses his wife Eurydice then attempts to win her back from death through the power of song, Offenbach offers a cutting alternative. His Eurydice is irritated with Orpheus's incessant violin playing and has an affair with the shepherd next door, who turns out to be Pluto, god of the underworld. She is only too happy to die and join him in Hades. The character of Public Opinion demands that Orpheus descend there to rescue Eurydice not out of love, but merely in the interest of bourgeois morality. In an interview in Munich, Mr. Kosky pointed to Offenbach's "incredibly sophisticated idea of sexual politics and gender." But, he added, "what I absolutely can't get enough of is the sheer brilliance of much of the music, the wonderful play with irony, with melancholy. The Dionysian life force is fantastic." Mr. Kosky has become a crucial advocate for the modern revival of operetta. He was first introduced to the genre as a child, courtesy of his Hungarian grandmother. At the Komische Oper in Berlin, where he has been in charge since 2012, he has directed a series of productions of forgotten works from the 1920s and '30s, like Paul Abraham's " Ball at the Savoy ." While other German and Austrian theaters often stage operetta as cozy nostalgia, Mr. Kosky's work is more snazzy musical theater less Johann Strauss II than Cole Porter. That means drag, jazz and physical comedy; in their mixture of contemporary and period details, his productions have suggested an unsettling affinity between the rapacious capitalism of the Weimar Republic and contemporary society. Offenbach, from an earlier era, is a different flavor of operetta. But Mr. Kosky sees a similar showbiz sparkle, pointing to the composer's roots in variety and vaudeville theater. Written in 1858, "Orpheus" was Offenbach's first large scale operetta; the genre had been enabled, by a change in theatrical regulations, to expand to multiple acts and larger casts. Mr. Kosky described Offenbach as "a wonderful miasma of different theatrical styles." The key, he added, is variety: the sincere parts need to be taken seriously, and the funny parts need to be funny. "I think the mistake most directors make is to attempt to play one thing in the production," he said. "It doesn't work." This year marks the 200th anniversary of Offenbach's birth, a landmark which has passed without much fanfare in the United States, where he is probably best known as the composer of "Les Contes d'Hoffmann," his only full fledged opera. But in Europe, productions have proliferated. In an interview, the American musicologist Jacek Blaszkiewicz called Offenbach "the prototypical European satirist. I think European audiences still, to an extent, kind of get the joke." For 20th century theorists like Theodor Adorno and Siegfried Kracauer, Offenbach was a political figure; they claimed his satire deconstructed the decadence of Second Empire Parisian society and unmasked hypocrisy. More recent writers have taken a milder tack, casting Offenbach as an entertainer with satirical tendencies. "This is not like a didactic political polemic theater here," Mr. Kosky said. "This is half naked dances. There were political strands in it, but he was above all the entertainer, you know; he was writing music that was influenced by vaudeville and variety." Massively popular, Offenbach was both a Second Empire insider and not: a German Jew living in Paris, but one who had acclimated to local culture and whose works allowed the social elite to gently laugh at themselves. In "Orpheus," he allowed the assembled society to see themselves as the work's gods and goddesses but those deities spend the evening lying, cheating, whining and otherwise misbehaving. Mr. Kosky's production combines past and present, recalling Offenbach's own mixture of mythological characters and contemporary language. "We're playing with images and ideas from some of my favorite time periods," Mr. Kosky said. "It's not set in the 19th century, it's not set in the 21st century. It's an entirely constructed fantasy world. "We're not interested in any form of naturalism here," he added, "and I think that that liberates." That lack of naturalism includes the production's most radical conceit: All the characters' speaking voices during dialogue scenes are provided by a single actor, Max Hopp, who is cast as John Styx, the operetta's equivalent to the underworld ferryman Charon. The idea was initially born of expediency; clarity in the dialogue, in a single language, was difficult for the international, multilingual cast. But going further and making Styx a kind of ventriloquist for an ensemble that mouths the words as he speaks them came to Mr. Kosky one night while he was watching "RuPaul's Drag Race." (Think "lip sync for your life.")	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Re "I Love My Twin. How Did We End Up So Far Apart?," by Jeneen Interlandi (Opinion, nytimes.com, Nov. 4): I am a 72 year old fraternal triplet with two identical twin sisters. We are all lifelong Democrats. I do have some relatives who are Trump supporters with whom I have had to limit contact because of our irreparable differences. I can simply not imagine facing that dilemma with my sisters. But for me the bottom line is that anyone who can support a man who thinks that white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Va., and shouting "Jews will not replace us!" are some "very fine people" is simply racist. The same can be said of those who support a president who did not try to heal the country after the death of George Floyd in police custody. This holds true despite any other reason they might support him. Ms. Interlandi, of course you love your twin brother. A twin bond can be a very special bond that is difficult to explain to others. I cannot even imagine what I would do in your situation. Remember the Civil War and the American Revolution; these were times that produced many familial disruptions over differences in ideas.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
STEVEN A. COHEN, the billionaire hedge fund manager, has been in the news for a string of insider trading convictions of current or former portfolio managers at his SAC Capital Advisors. But less attention has been given to his decision to convert his hedge fund into a family office to free himself from Securities and Exchange Commission regulations. To do so, he has to return all the money that does not belong to him or to key employees although many of those outside investors have already asked for it back. He'll be left with about 9 billion and 800 employees to pay without the revenue from hefty management fees from outside investors. While this may sound like the realm of billionaires and it is, for sure the purpose of family offices is broader than just avoiding oversight. Real ones do much more than just manage money, as a hedge fund does: They have to take into account family relationships, taxes and, of course, employees who can be privy to personal information. How family offices work well and sometimes not so well is also instructive for people whose wealth wouldn't even cover the annual expenses of a family office. Family offices date to the 19th century in the United States with John D. Rockefeller's being the most famous but few family office advisers can agree on a precise definition of the services a family office should provide or how much money a person even needs to start one. (The range is 100 million to closer to 1 billion for it to be worth the associated costs.) They can operate as a premium concierge service booking vacations to far flung locales and scheduling dog grooming appointments or be purely financial in focus, with rows of analysts poring over a family's every possible investment option. They are just as likely to be used to find outside managers for the family's wealth, pay bills and taxes and coordinate meetings among generations of family members. Jon Carroll, president and chief executive of Family Office Metrics, a business consultant to family offices, said the best ones act like multidisciplinary professional services firms with experts in investments, auditing, legal services, tax preparation and compliance all under one roof, with the family as the only point of concern. Not all of them are so complex. Some family offices have only an accountant and an assistant to keep track of statements and help the family. Either way, they can be costly. Charlie Grace, managing director at the Family Office Exchange, said the annual costs could run from 400,000 for a couple of employees for a 100 million family office which would be on top of investment management fees up to 8 million to 12 million per year for 30 or 40 employees at a multibillion dollar office. "That's a significant operation to be running," Mr. Grace said. "Compared to that single accountant, you have to think about real managers, compliance officers, a technology group, something more sophisticated than Excel to do some of the reporting." Mr. Cohen's decision to set up his own family office makes sense given his wealth, and it has precedent. In 2011, George Soros converted his hedge fund to a family office, and other investment managers have done the same to take advantage of a provision in the Dodd Frank Wall Street reform bill, said David S. Guin, a partner at Withers Bergman. The provision allows true family offices to protect their privacy by being exempt from having to file certain financial documents with the S.E.C. But it also narrows the definition to prevent people from taking advantage of the system, like hedge funds that become family offices in name only. While privacy is certainly important for any family, particularly in a time of online breaches, there are other ways that family offices are better than having various advisers performing financial tasks independently. A good family office will think beyond the present, both in terms of investments and the family itself. "The best family offices are really getting to know that family and thinking broadly and holistically on a multigenerational level," Mr. Grace said. "Their ultimate test is the transition from one generation to the next." Mr. Carroll said that when family offices work well they give a family three things: control, security and quality. Control comes from knowing that the people in the office are working only on the family's behalf and not for another firm that is paying them to offer advice. Security means that only the family members know what they have and what they're doing. And quality refers to having people who can devote their days to finding the best there is, from investments to legal counsel to vacations. But family offices have their limits. While family offices need to be run like companies, they are still a collection of individuals related by blood who may not always get along. To manage that, there needs to be a system of governance and a plan for how the family office will function for future generations. George Soros, the billionaire founder of Soros Fund Management, also has a family office to manage his wealth. "As the family gets larger, family office members have less wealth or there is an imbalance of wealth, since someone was more entrepreneurial or someone had five children and someone else had one," said Mindy Rosenthal, president of the Institute for Private Investors, a membership organization of wealthy investors. "You're going to find different levels of wealth in a family and it gets harder to hold everything together." Another problem comes when the person setting up the family office thinks he still needs a large staff, as he had at the company that created his wealth. "Most family offices are way overstaffed unless they have functional activities, like investing or managing real estate," said Paul Comstock, chairman and chief executive of Paul Comstock Partners, which acts as a chief investment officer to smaller family offices. "They should really treat it as an investment partnership and should look at the services you would need in a partnership." But finding that number is more art than science. Having too few employees with too much authority can also be problematic. "The family needs to understand how to govern and supervise management," Mr. Comstock said. Few people have the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to justify having a family office, but there are still lessons to be learned from those who can. For one, a family office at its core is looking out for the family first. "A family office is a concrete symbol that there is no one responsible for your affairs but you," Mr. Carroll said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
For Gearoid Mannion and his wife, Michelle, who live in County Clare, Ireland, air travel with their two autistic sons, Conor, 9, and Darragh, 7, is usually nothing short of a nightmare. The noise level, crowds and announcements at airports overwhelm the boys, and waiting in security and boarding lines is a concept that they don't understand, Mr. Mannion said. "They get red in the face and start running around and crying and screaming or run toward the exit, because they want to go back home," he said. The family's recent experience at Shannon Airport in Ireland, when they were en route to a vacation in Malaga, Spain, however, gave them hope that flying didn't have to be so stressful. Mr. Mannion had heard about the airport's recent initiative to ease the journey for individuals with autism spectrum disorder the name for a group of developmental disorders that include autism and called its customer service desk before their trip to relay that he would be traveling with autistic children. Upon check in, the foursome were given wristbands and orange baseball caps that identified them as a family with passengers with autism spectrum disorder and allowed them to jump to the front of the security line. Then they headed to the airport's new Sensory Room, meant to soothe those with sensory issues, similar to those of Conor and Darragh; the room was shielded from outside noise and had a wavy wall, color changing LED lights, bean bags and other items that kept them calm and happily occupied. And to avoid the challenge of waiting in a boarding line, the Mannions were able to board last. "Unlike the past, our trip was actually manageable," Mr. Mannion said. Shannon Airport isn't alone in its efforts to ease air travel for those with autism spectrum disorder: Some airlines and other airports around the world are also part of the movement, and in the United States, the Arc, a group in Washington representing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, including autism, is a major player. Part of the reason for this recent support may be the rise in autism spectrum disorder. In the United States alone, one in 68 children has autism spectrum disorder, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the prevalence of autism in children increased 6 percent to 15 percent each year between 2002 and 2010. Shannon Airport opened the sensory room and started the autism identification system, because autistic fliers were coming through the airport daily and having a hard time while they were there, said Nandi O'Sullivan, a spokeswoman for the airport. "We saw that people with autism would get agitated and wanted to make them and their families more comfortable," she said. Delta Air Lines, in partnership with Hartsfield Jackson Atlanta International Airport and the Arc, opened a similar sensory room in the airport last year and filled it with toys and items commonly used to soothe those with autism spectrum disorder, such as a mini ball pit and a water sculpture. Airports are difficult settings for people with autism spectrum diso rder, because they can be hypersensitive to noise and crowds, said Dr. Wendy Moyal, a psychiatrist at the Child Mind Institute in New York City who is an autism spectrum disorder specialist. "For a person who is easily overstimulated, like an autistic individual can be, the commotion of an airport can elicit tremendous anxiety," she said. "Also, since such individuals have limitations understanding social contexts and low frustration tolerance, security might feel unfair and lines challenging to wait in." Vancouver International Airport is part of a group of airports offering mock flight experiences for people with autism spectrum disorder and their families to help acclimate them to flying. On Vancouver's annual tours, participants get to check in, go through security and board an aircraft. Bristol Airport, in the United Kingdom, also offers practice runs but upon request participants don't actually board a plane but go through all the other steps of the flying process. At the Atlanta airport, Delta has monthly mock flights, called Taking Flight, for people with autism spectrum disorder and their families. They're led by two Delta employees, Sandy Smith, a customer service agent, and Eric Ries, a lead pilot, who have children with autism spectrum disorder. (Both volunteer their time.) As a part of Taking Flight, Mr. Ries, whose son, Drew, 10, has autism spectrum disorder, shares his advice on how parents should manage flying with their children. His top tip: Let your children fill a backpack with their favorite items, such as headphones or a book, so that a sense of comfort is always close. "I didn't want to deny Drew the opportunity to travel just because he was overwhelmed at airports," he said. "So I learned all the ways possible to make flying smoother for him. To date,Mr. Ries and Drew have flown together more than 45 times Elsewhere in the United States, the Arc runs practice flights through an event called Wings for Autism, in which one of its local chapters teams with an airport, an airline and the Transportation Security Administration. In some instances, the planes even taxi with participants on board. La Guardia Airport, in New York City, and Washington Dulles International Airport are two of the 30 airports around the country collaborating with the Arc on the event this year.These trial runs, Dr. Moyal said, are incredibly effective in helping people with autism spectrum disorder become more comfortable with flying. "Being prepared and familiar with the setting is key for individuals with autism to have an easier travel experience," she said. Families said the practice flights give them confidence. Nicole and Jason Beitzel, of Watkinsville, Ga., have only taken road trips with their daughter, Abby, 4, who is autistic and nonverbal, because they were afraid she couldn't handle flying. Their perspective changed after attending a Wings for Autism event at Hartsfield Jackson airport in April. "Getting a dress rehearsal of the flying process with Abby has made us open to the idea of air travel with her," Ms. Beitzel said. "Our dream destination is Hawaii, and, instead of thinking that we would never get to go, we have hope that we can take the trip later this year."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
For some, it's one year, for others, more than 20, but it looks as if they've been performing together forever. They make a formidable tribe, equal parts exuberance and introspection, youth and experience. After an arresting premiere at the Brooklyn Academy of Music and a recent reimagining at the River to River Festival, "Moses(es)" migrates north to the Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival. Its sources are many: Mr. Wilson's travels in Israel, Egypt and Turkey, his reading of Zora Neale Hurston's "Moses, Man of the Mountain"; and what it means to lead and follow. In their soulful, nearly nonstop dance and song, leaders and followers continuously trade places, and no single story prevails.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Buddy comedies, odd couple comedies, will they won't they comedies, us against the world comedies. All well worn territory. So props to "Alone Together" for finding a new kind of pairing, even though that pairing is more of a listless inertia than an actual bond. Esther Povitsky and Benji Aflalo created this single camera comedy and star as Esther and Benji, two aspiring comedians and purported friends. But they don't seem like friends and not because they seem like a romantic couple, which they don't. They've confused complaining for companionship. "I know trivia about your life and feel comfortable constantly insulting you" is not friendship. Well, maybe for some people it is. But you'd hope that those people enjoyed that aspect of their lives, which Benji and Esther do not seem to, at all. "Alone Together," starting on Wednesday on Freeform, is the latest in an awfully long line of autobiographical comedies about comedy, and it embodies some of the genre's major misconceptions: that comics make good actors, that stand up comedy is somehow inherently interesting or virtuous, that only comics experience youthful ennui. Esther and Benji are both fractionally employed and complain frequently about their miserable finances, their singledom and their lousy lots in life. What they mostly do, though, is compulsively talk about food and shame. Esther mentions a need to feel "skinny and pretty" twice in the first two minutes of the show, and throughout the five episodes made available for review, both she and Benji have strict rituals around binge eating and strategies for food hoarding.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
In the parlance of Youth America Grand Prix, a ballet convention and competition now in its 15th year, one purpose of its gala shows is for its young participants, the "stars of tomorrow," to be inspired by "the stars of today," the ballet luminaries who perform. The young dancers watching the closing night celebration at the David H. Koch Theater on Friday, an affair more than three hours long, could be inspired without being dispirited by flawlessness. Which is to say that the show was a bag both full and mixed. There were 10 duets, two solos and one pas de trois, and so the New York premiere of Justin Peck's 2012 "Distractions" would have been refreshing simply by virtue of its being a quartet. But Mr. Peck's choreography, combining three of his New York City Ballet colleagues (Jared Angle, Taylor Stanley and Daniel Ulbricht) with American Ballet Theater's James Whiteside, was also dynamic, invigorating and playful, sensitive to the shifting moods of a piano piece by the contemporary composer Alexander Rosenblatt played by Susan Walters. For the premiere of Andrea Schermoly's "Kubler Ross," City Ballet's Joaquin de Luz joined San Francisco Ballet's Maria Kochetkova for an impassioned rendering of a less than clear study of the stages of grief. Evan McKie's " 'Wiegenlied' Pas de Deux," a new work he danced with the Bolshoi Ballet's Olga Smirnova, was merely anodyne. "OnVelvet," the ridiculously overwrought Marco Goecke solo that Mr. McKie danced later, was embarrassing. "I don't normally choreograph," Mr. McKie said in one of the unilluminating and sometimes unintentionally comic videos that introduced each piece. Then he dedicated "Wiegenlied" to his mother and to all mothers. In another video, Beckanne Sisk of Ballet West revealed that "Light Rain," the fake sexy, fake exotic Gerald Arpino duet she danced with Joffrey Ballet's Fabrice Calmels, was one of her favorites. Good taste was not much in evidence during the evening as a whole, though "Tuu," a Momix duet similar in tone to "Light Rain," at least featured truly impressive acrobatics.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
I've also been listening to a lot of the Brittany Howard "Jaime" record. That came out a year ago, but I didn't really hear it until around like maybe four months ago. Every song is cool; the production is super cool; her voice is crazy. It's kind of all over the place stylistically, but she does it so seamlessly. There's this one called "Short and Sweet" that's like the most beautiful ballad ever. I've always thought highly of Alabama Shakes, but it wasn't until I heard this record that I realized she's a national treasure. I already have enough anxiety, so the idea of watching something super dark is ... I usually don't. I don't like true crime, I don't like horror films. The first actual panic attack which I've had many in my life but the first one I really remember having was watching "Requiem for a Dream." I was like, I'm going to die. Why would anyone do this? But "Knives Out," that's one of the best movies I've seen in a long time. Obviously, it's basically "Clue" incarnate, but I always appreciate when I can't tell where the twists are going to go, and I definitely didn't predict the ending. "Killing Eve" is kind of like "Knives Out," where it's suspenseful, it's exciting, but it's not overly dark; it has a comic edge to it. I've always been a fan of Phoebe Waller Bridge, and that's how I started watching it because I had liked "Fleabag." And I'm not at all a sports fan, but I did watch "The Last Dance." I remember being a kid and when I'd watch Michael Jordan play, even I could recognize there was something different about the guy. He could basically fly. Anybody that achieves that level of international fame is kind of a fascinating character because he wasn't just a basketball player he was the most famous guy in the world for a long time. We did a couple of radio performances up in the studio, which is right up the hill. I usually have three or four things in the afternoon, as far as interviews, so since I've been here I get my little call sheet from the managers, and then I just click onto the Zooms. I do that for a few hours. I've literally done, estimated, 10,000 interviews in my life. Once in a while, someone will surprise you; you'll think they're cool and then they'll write something expletive or whatever, but nine times out of 10 I have a pretty accurate radar for this dynamic. But I'm not scared of anybody. I've been through the worst expletive you could ever be through, so somebody telling me they don't like my record or something like that is completely irrelevant to me. I'm pretty up front all of my emotions, all of my feelings, all of my thoughts and if they don't get it at this point, it's not even worth my time to try to explain. My whole 20s, and my whole early part of my life, was people trying to mold me and trying to make me want to be more famous or more successful or make more money, and I never succumbed to it. I just never did. Everything they told me to do, I did the expletive opposite. Laughs When I was 22, I had my first Lasik surgery, and I went from being able not to see anything to 20/20 vision. Well, turns out that they had to do it to me every six or seven years, and the last time, which was like a year and half ago, they were like, "We've cut your eyeball basically too many times, and it's not safe to do anymore." But they can give you this other laser surgery called EBK. It was honestly, one of the most painful things ever. I was almost completely blind for like two weeks while it healed. It didn't help that at the time I was in Omaha, and it was the dead of winter; I survived it, but it was very traumatizing. Long story short, reading for pleasure has been really hard, but I still listen to a lot of audiobooks. My qualifications for an audiobook to listen to at night: It's just got to be long because I don't want to wake up. But I'm telling you, if you've never expletive with it: "Moby Dick," man. It's not like anything I've experienced with the English language. Maybe the Bible or something like that, but I'd totally take "Moby Dick" over the Bible. I've taken my swing at James Joyce, "Gravity's Rainbow," some of the ones that they're supposed to have remade language, but to me, they don't really hold a candle to "Moby Dick." I was asleep for a lot of these hours, but I've probably listened to it 50 times.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The Genes That Make Parrots Into the Humans of the Bird World None A macaw named Poncho starred in movies like "102 Dalmatians," "Dr. Doolittle" and "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" before retiring in England. She recently celebrated her 90th birthday. Alex, an African grey parrot who lived to 31, knew colors, shapes and numbers, and communicated using basic expressions. He could do what toddlers only do after a certain stage of development know when something is hidden from view. And they're just two of the many parrots in the world who have surprised us with their intelligence, skills and longevity. "Nature does these experiments for us, and then we have to go and ask, how did this happen?" said Dr. Claudio Mello, a neuroscientist at Oregon Health and Science University. So he and a team of nearly two dozen scientists looked for clues in the genome of the blue fronted Amazon parrot in Brazil, his home country. After comparing its genome with those of dozens of other birds, the researchers' findings suggest that evolution may have made parrots something like the humans of the avian world. In some ways, the long lived feathered friends are as genetically different from other birds as humans are from other primates. Their analysis, published Thursday in Current Biology, also highlights how two very different animals parrots and humans can wind up finding similar solutions to problems through evolution. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. A general rule of life span in birds and other animals is the bigger or heavier you are, the longer you live. A small bird like a finch may live five to eight years, while bigger ones like eagles or cranes can live decades. The blue fronted Amazon and some other parrots are even more exceptional, in that they can live up to 66 years in some cases outliving their human companions. In their analysis, Dr. Mello and his colleagues found that these parrots and some other long lived birds shared changes in a set of 344 genes that seem to be involved in various processes that influence life span, like how an animal's body repairs DNA, manages cancer or controls cell growth. While about 20 of these genetic changes have been implicated in aging in other animals, the rest of the genes' direct role in life span has not been investigated. Future studies may reveal that they're not just important to aging in parrots or other long lived birds, but in other animals as well. Parrots are distinguished not only by their longevity, but also by their cognitive abilities. "They're really, really smart animals, and the brains are particularly big. We seem to see a parallel in humans that have bigger brains and enhanced capacities, compared to other animals," he said. "We think parrots are the parallel in the avian world." The team found changes in parts of the parrot genome remarkably similar to those that set humans apart from other primates. This intrigued Dr. Mello. The similar changes found in parrots and humans aren't to the genes themselves, but occur along regions of the genome that regulate the expression of nearby genes that seem to play a role in brain development and intelligence. Could these changes explain the parrot's large, complex brain and diverse set of talents? Only by looking at specifics can we find out. While it's relatively simpler to quantify age and see how various genetic changes might alter it, it's harder to assess how tiny switches turning on and off at certain times might alter the size of a parrot's brain or how well it can impersonate Matthew McConaughey. By looking at specifics in the genetic changes of parrots and humans, researchers in the future may develop a better understanding of the powers of convergent evolution. Perhaps there is only one path that leads complex brain structures and advanced cognitive abilities like those of parrots and humans. Or it could be that there is more than one evolutionary route capable of producing such complex creatures in different parts of the animal kingdom.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science

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