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At the end of May, German police commandos arrived outside a rural home owned by a sergeant major in that country's most elite special forces unit, the KSK. Buried in the backyard they found a trove of weapons, explosives and Nazi memorabilia. In response, Germany's defense minister announced that she would disband one quarter of the unit because of the widespread infiltration of far right extremists into its ranks. But as several news reports have made clear, it is suspected that the infiltration extends far beyond a single segment of the KSK. Being a soldier in Germany has long been a fraught proposition given the stain of its Nazi past, a history that, like the explosives in the sergeant major's garden, the government has been attempting to bury for decades. Like the American military, the German Bundeswehr is an all volunteer force, with conscription having ended in 2011; that, combined with the public disapproval of Germany's participation in the war in Afghanistan and an increasing number of other commitments abroad, has created a widening civil military divide, much like the one that exists in the United States. Unlike the American military, though, the Bundeswehr is in many ways an ahistoric organization, officially cut off from its complicated past. The acceptable history of the German military is codified in the Bundeswehr by its "Traditionserlass" ("tradition decree"). In that document (first enacted in 1965; a new one was issued in 2018), the current army purges its Wehrmacht past and traces its lineage instead to dissident officers who attempted to assassinate Hitler in the failed July 1944 Stauffenberg plot. Given the enormity of the Nazis' crimes, Germany's disavowal as it attempted to reestablish its military after World War II is understandable. But the KSK revelations raise the possibility that in scrubbing its military's history, the government failed to confront its past, but rather buried it, and in doing so, left that history one easily weaponized vulnerable to co option by radicals, unchecked by the sort of moral framework that the full, open engagement of a society can provide. America's military is now reckoning with chapters of its own past from the genocide of Indigenous people that enabled the settling of the continent, to our Civil War and beyond and I believe that Germany now offers us a cautionary example of what can happen when a nation buries its past too deeply. I worry that if our own military sets itself too stridently against its complex history, it might unleash similarly malicious forces. I welcome many of the measures being taken to more fully render that history proposals to redesignate bases named after Confederate generals and, as the Marine Corps has done, banning the display of the Confederate flag on base. But I am convinced that a much broader erasure of controversial figures and chapters of American military history would be a mistake. Take Robert E. Lee, the Confederate general and former superintendent of West Point. Every young military officer learns about Lee. We learn about the Battle of Chancellorsville when, in May of 1863, Lee made the audacious decision to split his army and go on the offense against a force twice its size and subsequently routed the Union Army in a victory that became known as "Lee's Miracle." We also learn how two months later, at Gettysburg, Lee's same offensive spirit and blind faith in his soldiers' abilities led him to order Pickett's Charge, his greatest strategic blunder, one that cost him the battle and, some say, the war. Our instructors taught this history as an example of how a commander's attributes can be a strength in one case and a liability in another. We studied Lee to understand the human element that, with all its attendant complexity and contradictions, is omnipresent in war. You cannot understand war by understanding only its moral exemplars. Suppose we cast Lee's story outside the pantheon of American military history, following the German model? What if we focused solely on the military leaders who fought for causes of which we approved? That's a dangerous proposition in a profession where your job is to understand and anticipate your enemy's actions. Learning to think like a Confederate, a Nazi or a card carrying member of Al Qaeda requires a psychological empathy and academic rigor to which "safe spaces" and "trigger warnings" are anathema. Even if removed from military curriculums, Lee's story and many like it will continue to be sought out and learned. But future tactical disciples who find Lee outside of a structured education risk omitting his failings. We want future soldiers to learn Gettysburg and Chancellorsville. To learn the brilliance and the failure. That is what has happened in German military units like the KSK, where Nazis like the brash Otto Skorzeny who led one of the most audacious commando missions of all time, the rescue of Benito Mussolini, and an attempt to capture the Yugoslavian dictator Marshal Tito remain unclaimed by the Bundeswehr, and are venerated as spiritual fathers by the far right in unofficial, secretive meetings rife with Nazi symbolism, rather than studied with clear understandings of both tactical genius and ideological bigotry. Much of what I learned about Germany's military I learned in the context of our military. It should go without saying that this appreciation wasn't ideological but tactical. In various military schools and courses, my instructors assigned a range of military strategists: from the Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, who fought in the Napoleonic Wars and wrote the seminal text "On War" ("War is the continuation of politics by other means," he famously said), to U.S. Adm. William McRaven, whose first book featured the Wehrmacht's 1940 commando raid on the Belgian fort Eben Emael as a case study to demonstrate principles we'd later use on raids in Iraq and Afghanistan. The tactical influence of the German Army appears everywhere from the Marine Corps core doctrinal publication "MCDP 1 Warfighting" (spelled as one word, in the German way) to the design of the standard issue Kevlar helmets worn by soldiers in the U.S. military. Although Germany's airbrushed narrative has granted its military an acceptable place in society, some historians believe it has helped foster the current far right extremism in its ranks. I spoke with Klaus Schmider, a senior lecturer at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, who believes that the German government has "brought the current crisis on themselves by refusing to give German soldiers a positive self image as soldiers." To be a soldier in Germany, he said, one must "repeat a mantra how being a soldier isn't really being a warrior." This goes beyond the Nazi past: "Even units which are able to trace their lineage to the wars against Napoleon have recently been actively encouraged by the ministry to empty any display cases with mementos from that period, because of the eventual Prussian influence within the Wehrmacht," Dr. Schmider said. When I think of our nation's complicated past Confederate or otherwise I prefer to associate those symbols with our society's dead enders. I would much rather see the "Stars and Bars" flown in a backwater by one of those brittle souls being left behind by a pluralistic, inclusive America, rather than unfurled in a basement one night 10, 20 or 30 years in the future by a group of active duty, if disaffected, SEALs, Rangers or Marines who've appropriated it as their own. The former would be troublesome, but the latter would be a threat to our republic. History teaches us that civil military divides like those that exist in the United States and Germany can become fertile soil for grievance. The seeds of discontent exist in the pasts of both countries. But it is best to leave those seeds scattered on the surface, where they can be picked at and disregarded, instead of buried deep in the earth, where they can eventually take root, breaking ground in twisted, unexpected ways.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
"From the very beginning, music was what attracted me to tap" says Michela Marino Lerman. At the White Plains Jazz Festival earlier this month, the band Mwenso the Shakes was setting up, plugging in instruments and checking microphones. Michela Marino Lerman was among them. She set down a wooden board and hooked it up to the sound system. Then she changed out of her sandals into tap shoes. Ms. Lerman is a tap dancer, and she is also a member of the band. That she can be both at once may be surprising. But tap and jazz grew up together, and in the 1930s and '40s, it was assumed that the greatest jazz bands Duke Ellington's, Count Basie's would bring tap dancers with them on tour. After World War II, though, as jazz separated from dance, hoofers became much scarcer in jazz clubs and concerts never entirely absent but unusual, forgotten enough to be a novelty. Lately, that's been changing a little, and Ms. Lerman is at the forefront. You might say that Ms. Lerman, 33, has arrived. Quincy Jones, who helped choose her to perform in "Soundtrack of America," the African American music series that opened the Shed last April, hails her as "an absolute tap dancin g star" who "knows her roots." But finding, or making, a place for herself in the jazz world hasn't been easy. "Where does the tap dancer fit?" is a question she and a few other contemporaries have been trying to answer for years. "From the very beginning," she said in a recent interview, "music was what attracted me to tap." And from near the beginning, 20 years ago, as a teenage prodigy in New York improvising at the tap jam sessions led by the beloved elder Buster Brown, she has considered herself a musician. Mr. Brown and the likes of Gregory Hines encouraged her to be herself as an artist, but many others told her she wasn't doing it right. They advised her to smile more, to pay less attention to how she sounded and more to how she looked, to play the game or she wouldn't get hired, especially as a young woman. "Not just men but women told me that, which was always alarming," she said. Ms. Lerman stuck to her path. She started bringing her shoes to jazz jam sessions not Mr. Brown's inviting, tap centric events but the intimidating kind with a line of cutthroat horn players, mostly male, itching for a turn. "It was like a shootout," Ms. Lerman recalled. "Can you prove yourself? Do you belong?" She did and she didn't. She had the skills and talent but she had to learn the rules. The esteemed trumpeter Roy Hargrove took her under his wing. He explained her place in the jam format, the order of solo spots. After the all the horn players but before the drummer that's where she could have her brief say. "That really helped me find my way in," Ms. Lerman said. "And of course having someone like Roy be my shepherd helped, too. He made a space for me." "People starting seeing me as a musician and listening to me," she continued, "because I was fitting in the right place." After a while, she got her own jam session, at Small's jazz club in Greenwich Village. But the turning point was attending late night sessions at Dizzy's Club, uptown at Jazz at Lincoln Center. Michael Mwenso, the host, kept inviting her onstage because, he recalled, "there weren't many like her, a female tap dancer who can hear the music like that." Mr. Mwenso also had a hand in programming, and as he learned "how deep her musical understanding was," he began booking her projects for the club. After that, the world just opened up for her. "I couldn't do enough gigs with people," she said. "They were writing tunes and musical arrangements for me. They were including tap in their thing. It wasn't even a thought in their mind that it didn't belong." Out of these gatherings grew Mwenso the Shakes. At first, Ms. Lerman joined the band as a featured artist, tapping on one or two songs a set. But sometimes she stayed. Mr. Mwenso realized that "we might as well leave her onstage through the whole set, and now we can't do a gig without her," he said. "She's a member of the rhythm section," Mr. Mwenso continued, "improvising through all the songs, improvising just as deep as any other soloist. Her feet aren't her greatest talent. It's her ears." That can be what she looks like: someone listening. Although Ms. Lerman covers her small board with fancy footwork and participates happily in the Shakes's showmanship, she's not a performer who projects a big personality. Not everyone in a band needs to. Ms. Lerman's success in becoming part of the band (and not just after the horn players and before the drummer) makes her unusual, but not unique. Talk to the handful of young tap dancers who perform with top jazz bands Brinae Ali, Sarah Reich, Maurice Chestnut and Jumaane Taylor, among others and you hear similar stories. About the courage required to break into the jazz world. About the need to learn the rules and get someone to vouch for you. About facing skepticism, finding a place and meeting surprise. For the past few years, Ms. Ali has been dancing with the trumpeter Sean Jones, in their joint "Dizzy Spells" project and with the Baltimore Jazz Collective. "After a performance," she said, "people always come up to me and say, 'Amazing, it's like you're a musician.'" She and the others recount many of the same frustrations. High on the list are floors, half of a dancer's instrument. When first touring with the Shakes, Ms. Lerman encountered much warped, rotting wood and exposed nails ("even at the big festivals"). That's why she, and the others, travel with their own wooden boards, reliable if restrictive. (Ms. Lerman's board is supplied by a sponsor, O'Mara Sprung Floors.) Even more important is amplification and sound balance. Ms. Ali, who also sings, likens the tap dancer's problem to a vocalist's: Everyone else in the band is louder. But because tap dancers are uncommon in bands, the technology and techniques for isolating the tap sound are still rather do it yourself. And sound engineers are often unaware of how to make sure a tap dancer is heard. Above all, though, the challenge is to convince people that tap dancers can be musicians and bandleaders, not nostalgic throwbacks but on the vanguard. Mr. Chestnut has toured extensively as a member of Timeline, a jazz quartet led by the revered pianist Geri Allen. And yet when he appeared with someone else's band at a jazz festival recently and suggested to the festival director that he return with his own band, the director said that tap dancers were welcome only if "the artist" the headlining horn player or vocalist hired them. "That was the norm," Ms. Lerman said, when told that story. "But it's not my norm anymore." Next year, Ms. Lerman's band will perform at the august Newport Jazz Festival, where no tap dancer other than Savion Glover has led a band. Also in 2020, she'll be at the prestigious Umbria Jazz Festival as an artist in residence, a first for a tap dancer. At the festival in White Plains, it was sometimes hard to hear her. But in her featured spots, as when she and the keyboardist agilely jumped around a century of jazz history, the crowd went wild. Still, the rarer achievement was the more ordinary looking one: Ms. Lerman up there with the others, just another musician in the band.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Beneath the philosophical welter, a new world glitters with prelapsarian strangeness: Gangs of plump cats raid administrative lobbies, chamois goats prance along train tracks, ibexes graze hotel lawns. A sort of one man utopia seems possible. The phonies and strivers are gone. The city's churches, banks and military installations lie abandoned, an index of empire's ruin. "The world has never been so alive as it is since a certain breed of bipeds disappeared," the last man thinks. Then, almost giddily: "It's never been so clean, so sparkling, so good humored." One hates to weigh Morselli down with the leaden garland of prescience. Call him perceptive, then. Writing against the backdrop of Italy's postwar economic boom, he saw the disfigurements of runaway growth coming. While his countrymen gave in to the intoxication of televisions and sedans, Morselli worried they had lost "the reverential fear that vast, uncontaminated nature once inspired." The automated decadence of Chrysopolis the Golden City, Zurich like in its alpine industriousness stands in for a planet that may be better off without its failed stewards. Morselli finished "Dissipatio H.G." in the spring of 1973, just before taking his own life. (The book's title supposedly comes from an ancient text predicting the demise of our species, though Morselli's late translator, Frederika Randall, believes this to be pure invention.) It had been rejected by publishers, sharing the fate of several previous efforts, though his novels would be published posthumously to acclaim by Adelphi, the Milanese publishing house. Caustic, lonely and obsessive, the novel offers a richly speculative portrait of early Anthropocene resignation. "The market of markets will one day be countryside," the last man thinks. "With buttercups and chicory in flower." His relief is palpable and at this late hour, surely familiar.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Last week in a sprawling apartment overlooking the Hudson River in New York, about 10 women sat at a dining room table eating avocado toast and tasting baby food. With children on laps, latched to breasts or in utero, they had come together to discuss parenting and nutrition. The babies babbled. The adults bantered. ("Everyone I know imports their formula from Europe." "I know a lot of adults who swear by charcoal in juice, but I wouldn't recommend it for kids.") Everyone nibbled. "When you raise your kids, you want them to be like you but a better you," said Angela Sutherland, a mother of two, ages 4 and 2. She wants her children to value what she does about family, community and the environment. "I want them to have the same taste buds too," she said. Yumi purees are sent in weekly installments in 4.5 ounce jars filled with buckwheat infused kabocha squash and quinoa fortified kale and pears; they cost about 5 each. Started last year in Los Angeles, the company has become a darling of parents who take organic food and Instagram posts seriously. Yumi is now available to New York babies. To celebrate its new market, it hosted this breakfast at the home of Marissa Vosper, who has a 22 month old son. Luke Marano, 19 months, is one of Yumi's new East Coast eaters. His mother, Mari Agory, a model and entrepreneur, wasn't sure he would like it when she began to receive the jars gratis as part of a promotion. "Luke has always been a foodie and has never really liked puree," Ms. Agory said. "From the age of 4 months, we would give him the skin of smoked whitefish with the fat on it and he would just demolish it." Nash Neidich, 1, has been eating Yumi for more than a quarter of his life. Five months ago his mother, Alessandra Brawn, began having the baby food delivered to her in hotels in Los Angeles, a city she visits frequently. "I was very nervous he wouldn't like it," Ms. Brawn said. "There are very expansive flavors like cumin and chia seeds, things that are complicated for an adult palate, let alone an infant's." Strewn on the table were jars of Yumi products such as mulligatawny, made from carrots, coconut milk, apple, lentils, chickpeas, turmeric and curry powder. Ms. Brawn sat at the table feeding her son a berry mash and tiny forkfuls of avocado, but then Nash had to dash early for music class. Yumi is one of several companies trying to cultivate a new generation of foodies. Eat2explore is another. It was created by Rowena Scherer, 50, who had an aha moment after taking a family cooking class while traveling in Thailand. "I realized my kids couldn't even dice or chop vegetables, and I knew it was because I do everything for them," said Ms. Scherer, who used to work in finance. She suspected that if her children were more involved in the preparation of different dishes, they would be more likely to try them as well. As a child in Malaysia, Ms. Scherer said, she and her family would cook lunch together each Sunday, letting her also practice what she learned in home economics class. "Because I had a familiarity in the kitchen and good knife skills, I had a lot of independence as a teenager. Cooking is a life skill, and we are not longer preparing our own kids in this way." Her company sells country themed boxes (Brazil, Ethiopia, Lebanon). They cost about 20 to 25 and include nonperishable sauces and spices, three recipes that are local to the country, as well as maps and cards that explain why certain flavors and dishes are important to the particular culture. The meals are meant to be cooked by children with help from a parent. "If you make something with your own hands, you are much more likely to try it and over time you will develop your palate," Ms. Scherer said. In Brooklyn, two longtime food writers and editors who have long preached the importance of passing cooking skills to children are now putting their money where their mouths are. Last summer, she and Sara Kate Gillingham, 43, a James Beard Award winning writer, opened the Dynamite Shop. During weeklong summer sessions, children learned knife skills and about the cultural significance of foods in the kitchen before producing a pop up restaurant experience for their parents. This fall, students have signed up for weekly after school sessions that culminate in them bringing home dinner for their families after each class. Wilson Rumble, 12, started taking classes at the Dynamite Shop early this fall and now knows how to whip up guacamole and that vegetables "can be cooked with certain ingredients to make them taste less like vegetables," he said. Kristin Earhart, Wilson's mother, has a 15 month old daughter as well. Between work and taking care of the baby, Ms. Earhart has struggled to get dinner ready by the time Wilson gets hungry. She heard about the Dynamite Shop and was surprised by her son's enthusiasm. "I was excited," Wilson said. "I wanted to cook fine meals." He had always hated butter, but at the Dynamite Shop he was encouraged to make compound butter by adding spices to it that he likes. Then he slathered it all over a sweet potato that he baked and gobbled the whole thing. At home, he has been helping his mother in the kitchen. "It makes things go much smoother when you have a sous chef," Ms. Earhart said. "And one day, probably not too long from now, I'll be his."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
It was mid June, and relations between Donald J. Trump and the news media had taken another dreadful turn. He had already vowed to change the libel laws to make it easier to sue journalists, and his personal insults were becoming more vicious. (One news correspondent was a "sleaze"; another was "third rate.") Most troubling was that he was keeping a blacklist of news organizations he was banning from his rallies, and it was growing. I called him at the time, to see what this would look like in a Trump administration. Would he deny White House credentials to select reporters and news organizations? No, he said. "There, I'm taking something away, where I'm representing the nation." We can only hope he means it. Because if Mr. Trump keeps up the posture he displayed during the campaign all out war footing the future will hold some very grim days, not just for news reporters but also for the American constitutional system that relies on a free and strong press. It's one thing to wage a press war as a candidate, when the most you can do is enforce reporting bans at your rallies, hurl insults and deny interviews and access (all of which are plenty bad). It's another thing to do it from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, where you have control over what vital government information is made public, and where you have sway over the Justice Department, which under President Obama has shown an overexuberance in investigating journalists and the whistle blowers who leak to them. Imagine what somebody with a press vendetta and a dim view of the First Amendment would do with that kind of power. For their part, American newsrooms are conducting their own reassessments, vowing to do a better job covering the issues that animated his supporters, and acknowledging that Mr. Trump tapped into something in the national mood, the power of which they failed to grasp. They now know they underestimate him again at their own peril. Yet they also know that the need to continue with probing, unflinching reporting that promotes the truth in the face of whatever comes at them will be great. In the days immediately after Mr. Trump's victory, journalists that don't work at organizations with Breitbart in their names were preparing for potential reporting challenges, the likes of which they have never seen, while lawyers were gaming out possible legal strategies should Mr. Trump move against press freedoms. Right after his victory Mr. Trump was telegraphing a gentler tone, declaring to The Wall Street Journal, "It's different now." Perhaps he was making his long promised "pivot" to become "more presidential than anybody" save Abraham Lincoln. But then came the Saturday night release of his "60 Minutes" interview in which he said he would keep his Twitter account so that when any news organization gave him "a bad story," he would "have a method of fighting back." And he didn't skip a beat on Sunday morning, when he attacked The New York Times with a Twitter post that read, "Wow, the nytimes is losing thousands of subscribers because of their very poor and highly inaccurate coverage of the 'Trump phenomena.'" The statement was false. The paper said Sunday that postelection cancellations were so substantially outstripped by a surge of new subscriptions that its subscription growth rate in the period that followed Tuesday's result was four times the growth rate in the same period of last quarter. What happened on Day 2 of Elizabeth Holmes's testimony. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. In an atmosphere in which it's not shocking to hear about anti Semitic literature being sent to the home of a Jewish reporter the address having been published online by supporters of Mr. Trump it was hard to see any of this as very presidential, though the definition may be changing. The funny thing is that few major political figures have had a more codependent and at times friendly relationship with the press than Mr. Trump. Before he stopped doing news briefings in the later phase of the campaign, he was shaping up to be the most accessible major party nominee in modern history. But displeasing him could have an intensely personal cost, which the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly vividly recalls in her new book, "Settle for More." Ms. Kelly, who became Mr. Trump's leading television nemesis during the primary campaign, writes about how the candidate, unhappy with a segment she did in July 2015, threatened to unleash "my beautiful Twitter account against you." After enduring her tough questioning at the first presidential primary debate, he made good on his Twitter promise, which in turn led to death threats against her, she said. ("I would spend many days of the coming months accompanied by security," she writes.) It didn't help, she wrote, that Mr. Trump's special counsel, Michael Cohen, recirculated a Trump supporter's tweet that read "we can gut her." That was followed by what she took as another threat, from Mr. Trump's campaign manager at the time, Corey Lewandowski. As Mr. Lewandowski unsuccessfully lobbied a senior Fox News executive to remove Ms. Kelly from the next Fox debate, she writes, he said he would hate to see her go through such a "rough couple of days" again. (Fox News described the conversation the same way earlier this year.) Mr. Lewandowski had been the living embodiment of Mr. Trump's aggressive approach to the press. He was, after all, arrested on charges that he manhandled the former Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields. (Prosecutors in Florida ultimately dropped the charges.) After a paid stint at CNN, Mr. Lewandowski returned to the Trump fold last week, and could wind up in the administration or at the Republican Party headquarters. Another member of Mr. Trump's transition team, the Silicon Valley investor Peter Thiel, broke new ground this year by financing the "Hulk Hogan" lawsuit against Gawker, which resulted in Gawker's bankruptcy and sale to Univision. That's more important than ever, given how adept Mr. Trump and his allies have proved to be at promoting conspiracy theories that can spread faster than ever through social media. But if there is one thing we learned this year, it was the wisdom of the old mnemonic device for the spelling of "assume" (makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me"). Mr. Trump campaigned through surprise and may well govern through surprise. We'll know how this thing is going to go only when we know.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Every so often, a movie comes along that isn't particularly good, yet somehow gets to you even as your eyes start to roll, they can't look away. "Dirt Music" is one of those, a strangely fascinating delivery system for so much visual beauty that its flaws scrabble to gain a purchase. Rocky coves and marzipan beaches, glittering waves and pellucid shallows crowd the screen, at the center of which hulks a mostly shirtless Garrett Hedlund. "Dirt Music" may never be an award winner, but boy, does it know its audience. Based on Tim Winton's 2001 novel and directed by Gregor Jordan, the film is selling itself as a love story, but its heart isn't in it. For one thing, the putative lovers Lu (Hedlund) and Georgie (Kelly Macdonald) are only rarely permitted to share a scene, never mind a bed. And for another, Jordan's infatuation with his setting, the stunning coastline of Western Australia (adoringly photographed by Sam Chiplin), is by far the most resonant emotion onscreen.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Many Children Under 5 Are Left to Their Mobile Devices, Survey Finds A small survey of parents in Philadelphia found that three quarters of their children had been given tablets, smartphones or iPods of their own by age 4 and had used the devices without supervision, researchers reported on Monday. The survey was not nationally representative and relied on self reported data from parents. But experts say the surprising result adds to growing evidence that the use of electronic devices has become deeply woven into the experience of childhood. Dr. Michael Rich, the director of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children's Hospital, said he suspected that exposure to mobile devices among children elsewhere "is not all that different" from what was described by the parents in Philadelphia. "Based on my observations of families with whom I work, I would not be surprised if these levels of device ownership and use were similar in many families," he said. According to a nationwide survey by Common Sense Media, 72 percent of children 8 or younger used a mobile device in 2013, for example, compared with 38 percent in 2011. It was not clear how often the parents had bequeathed old devices as digital hand me downs or had bought new ones. "That's huge," said Kathy Hirsh Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple University in Philadelphia, who was not involved in the survey, which was published in the journal Pediatrics. "If children are sitting by themselves glued to digital candy, we simply don't know what the consequences are for their early social development." In the survey, 350 parents, who were largely low income African Americans, filled out a questionnaire while visiting Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. One third of the parents of 3 and 4 year olds said their children liked to use more than one device at the same time, noted Dr. Hilda Kabali, a pediatrician and the lead author of the survey. Seventy percent of the parents reported allowing their children, ages 6 months to 4 years old, to play with mobile devices while the parents did housework, and 65 percent said they had done so to placate a child in public. A quarter of the parents said they left children with devices at bedtime, although bright screens disrupt sleep. "They are putting their child to sleep in an environment that keeps them from going to sleep," Dr. Rich said. According to the parents, nearly half of the children younger than 1 used a mobile device daily to play games, watch videos or use apps. Most 2 year olds used a tablet or smartphone daily. The American Academy of Pediatrics had recommended total screen abstinence for children younger than 2, but lately has softened its stance. It now advises setting time limits, prioritizing what it calls unplugged play and not using devices as pacifiers to calm toddlers. A lack of parental supervision is more worrisome than the use of mobile devices by the very young, experts said. In this sample, "a lot of media time is reportedly alone," said Dr. Dimitri A. Christakis, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Washington. "It can't be overstated: Children need laps more than apps." Professor Hirsh Pasek lamented parents' laissez faire attitude about toddlers' play with tablets. "Who would leave the dessert on the table and leave their kid alone with it?" she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Alan Alda, who played Hawkeye on "M A S H," using a improvisational exercise to teach scientists how to better speak about their work to nonscientists. A program at Stony Brook is named for him. STONY BROOK, N.Y. Martha Furie stormed into the room and huffily sat down in a chair. "Well, you know, I've been working really hard, studying Lyme disease," she said, her voice tinged with disdain, to the woman sitting in the next chair. "It's been a long process. It's hard to talk about it." The other woman, Bernadette Holdener, was somewhat befuddled. "How does it make you feel?" she asked. "Lyme disease?" Dr. Furie sneered. "It can have all sorts of bad things." The two were participating in an improvisational acting exercise a couple of Fridays ago. But they are not aspiring actresses or comedians. Dr. Furie is a professor of pathology at Stony Brook University, Dr. Holdener a professor of biochemistry and cell biology. "Anyone have any inkling what is going on?" asked one of the instructors for the session Alan Alda, the actor who played Hawkeye in the television series "M A S H" more than three decades ago. The exercise, called "Who am I?," challenges one of the participants Dr. Furie, in this case to convey an unstated relationship with another, and everyone else must try to deduce the relationship. "She sounded very angry," Dr. Holdener said. People guessed variously that Dr. Furie was a Lyme researcher who had contracted the disease, that she just been denied tenure and was venting to the head of her department, that she was expressing passive aggressive anger toward her spouse. Dr. Furie explained that Dr. Holdener "was my long lost sister who stole my husband away." The other participants laughed at the convoluted, unlikely setup. Mr. Alda said that Dr. Furie, focusing on her role as a wronged sister, intently observed her audience Dr. Holdener and the effect of her words. "What I find interesting about this is you're suddenly talking about your work in a way you've never talked about it before," Mr. Alda said. The idea of teaching improv to scientists came from Mr. Alda, now a visiting professor. The objective is not to make them funny, but to help them talk about science to people who are not scientists. The exercises encourage them to pay attention to the audience's reaction and adjust. "Not jokes, not cleverness," Mr. Alda said. "It's the contact with the other person." Mr. Alda has long held a deep interest in science. In the 1990s, he collaborated on "QED," a play about the physicist Richard Feynman, with Mr. Alda playing Dr. Feynman. He also hosted 11 seasons of the PBS program "Scientific American Frontiers." In interviews with hundreds of scientists, he found that he could draw out engaging explanations. "I didn't go in with a list of questions," Mr. Alda said during a public lecture at Stony Brook the night before the workshop. "I just listened to what they had to say and asked them questions that would help me understand what their work was." But he recalled one scientist who would switch from conversing with Mr. Alda to lecturing to the camera. "And immediately, the tone of her voice changed," Mr. Alda said. "Her vocabulary changed. I couldn't understand what she was saying." Uli Seit for The New York Times Mr. Alda started suggesting to university presidents that they teach scientists how to present their research to the public. No one expressed interest until 2007, when Mr. Alda visited Stony Brook and met Shirley Strum Kenny, then the university's president. "I thought, here's my chance, I'll go into my pitch," Mr. Alda said. "I said, 'What do you think? Do you think both could be taught at the same time so you can graduate accomplished scientists who are also accomplished communicators?' And she was interested." The next year, he tested his improv idea at the University of Southern California on 20 graduate engineering students. The students first talked briefly about their work. "It was O.K.," Mr. Alda said. Then came three hours of improvisational acting exercises. At the end, the students talked about their work again. "The difference was striking," Mr. Alda said. "They came to life, and I thought, 'This is going to work.' " Stony Brook established the Center for Communicating Science in 2009 as part of its journalism school. In addition to classes, the center started the Flame Challenge, a contest seeking compelling explanations of seemingly simple phenomena. The first year, the question was "What is a flame?" Mr. Alda asked his teacher this when he was 11, and the answer "oxidation" was his first experience with confusing scientific jargon. This year, the question is "What is sleep?" The winners will be named at the World Science Festival in New York in May. In 2013, the Stony Brook program was officially named the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science. Howard Schneider, the dean of the journalism school, said science departments were initially skeptical, with many thinking improv would be a distraction. That has changed. Two graduate programs now require students to take the center's classes. All medical school students receive 10 hours of training. "This is a big cultural shift," Mr. Schneider said. In addition, four organizations Dartmouth College, the University of Vermont, the Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey and the American Chemical Society have become affiliates of the center. Other universities, inspired by Stony Brook, are considering setting up similar programs. The ability to describe science effectively could prove key to winning research financing in the future. Last year, Stony Brook ran a competition among its younger scientists for a 200,000 prize. The four finalists, who were coached at the Alan Alda Center, pitched to a panel of distinguished scientists. The winner was Laurie T. Krug, a professor of molecular genetics and microbiology, who proposed studying herpes viruses associated with cancer and using nanoparticles to deliver molecules that act as scissors to cut up viral DNA.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
A wheat field in Mouchamps, France. There are very few genetically modified crops grown in Europe compared to the United States. Mushrooms that don't brown. Wheat that fights off disease. Tomatoes with a longer growing season. All of these crops are made possible by a gene editing technology called Crispr cas9. But now its future has been clouded by the European Union's top court. This week, the court ruled that gene edited crops are genetically modified organisms, and therefore must comply with the tough regulations that apply to plants made with genes from other species. Many scientists responded to the decision with dismay, predicting that countries in the developing world would follow Europe's lead, blocking useful gene edited crops from reaching farms and marketplaces. The ruling may also curtail exports from the United States, which has taken a more lenient view of gene edited foods. "You're not just affecting Europe, you're affecting the world with this decision," said Matthew Willmann, the director of the Plant Transformation Facility at Cornell University. But the ruling also raises a more fundamental question: What does it actually mean for a crop to be genetically modified? In its decision, the European Union court exempted crops produced through older methods of altering DNA, saying they were not genetically modified organisms. That assertion left many scientists scratching their heads. "I don't know why they are doing that," said Jennifer Kuzma, an expert in genetic engineering at North Carolina State University. "I was thinking, 'Do they have the right science advice?'" Since the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, all crop breeding has come down to altering the genetic composition of plants. For centuries, farmers selected certain plants to breed, or crossed varieties, hoping to pass useful traits to future generations. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. In the early 20th century, scientists discovered genes and invented new ways to breed crops. Two lines of corn, for example, could be melded into hybrid plants that were superior to either parent. By the 1920s, researchers realized that they didn't have to content themselves with amplifying the genetic variations that already existed in plants. They could create new mutations. To do so, they fired X rays at plants or used chemicals that disrupted plant DNA. Mutagenesis, as this method came to be known, introduced random mutations into plants. Scientists inspected the mutants to find those that were improvements. Thousands of plant breeds in use today, from strawberries to barley, are the product of mutagenesis. In the 1970s, microbiologists figured out how to insert genes from humans and other species into bacteria. Plant scientists later used recombinant DNA, as the technology came to be known, to develop methods for inserting genes into plants to improve their growth. The plants might escape farmers' fields and spread through wild ecosystems, for instance, perhaps hybridizing with wild plants and introducing their genes into new species. Environmental groups also raised the possibility that genetically modified crops could harm human health. Genetically modified crops not only produce proteins from their own genes, but from the genes of other species, as well. On opposite sides of the Atlantic, the conflict has played out in very different ways. In the United States, the National Academy of Sciences has found no evidence to confirm that these crops are any more dangerous than conventionally bred ones. While the government has put in place a number of regulations governing genetically modified crops, the industry has boomed. Over 185 million acres of these crops were planted in the United States in 2017. In Europe, by contrast, concerns about genetically modified organisms led the European Union to issue a directive in 2001. From the early stages of research to the marketplace, these products would have to pass a series of tests for environmental risks and human safety. But the directive made it clear that crops made through older forms of mutagenesis were not genetically modified organisms because they were "conventional" and had "a long safety record." The result of the directive has been that Europe grows almost no genetically modified crops. In 2017, only 325,000 acres were planted across the continent. In the years after the E.U.'s directive came out, science advanced beyond recombinant DNA. Rather than inserting a gene from another species, researchers learned to snip out piece of a plant's DNA, or even rewrite short stretches of genetic material. Instead of inserting foreign genes, scientists were able to edit a plant's own DNA in new ways. They could create crops that make more, or fewer, proteins from their own genes, gaining advantageous traits. When scientists first started experimenting with gene editing on crops, the European Union offered no clear guidance. In 2015, a French agricultural union and allies such as Friends of the Earth went to court to have gene edited crops labeled as genetically modified organisms and regulated as such. And now the court has agreed. In a statement, the court said gene edited crops were GMOs "within the meaning of the G.M.O. Directive." Dana Perls, the senior food and agriculture campaigner at Friends of the Earth, praised the court for recognizing gene editing as genetic modification. "We need to call it what it is," she said. Ms. Perls said that Crispr and other new methods for tinkering with plant DNA raise concerns about safety, just as recombinant DNA did. "Gene editing technologies have unintended consequences," she said. Ms. Perls pointed to some scientific journal articles that describe how Crispr and other forms of gene editing can miss their targets, accidentally altering other stretches of DNA in an organism. Strictly speaking, however, the United States stance also is contradictory. Crops created with recombinant DNA are said to be genetically modified organisms, because genes have been inserted into their DNA. Yet tinkering with a plant's DNA with Crispr is apparently not genetic modification, because these crops "are indistinguishable from those developed through traditional breeding methods," according to a U.S.D.A. statement issued in March. Dr. Wolt said that the only way to escape these contradictions would be for government regulators to stop focusing on mutagenesis, recombinant DNA, Crispr and other methods for making new crops. "It's the products we should be concerned with," he said. "As soon as we solve this problem favorably or unfavorably for Crispr, there's going to be a new technology that comes along and we're going to have the same problem again."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Free Richardson, founder of The Compound gallery in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx, with Jonathan Mannion's portraits of, from left, the LOX, Trick Daddy, Yasiin Bey (formerly known as Mos Def), Kanye West and Ice T. For the past 11 years, Free Richardson has run The Compound, his creative advertising business, from a compact space off Bruckner Boulevard in the South Bronx, where he works on campaigns for Timberland, ESPN and EA Sports. Part agency, part clubhouse, The Compound refers to the physical footprint, a bunkerlike space where Mr. Richardson hosts clients, professional athletes and hip hop artists who come to use its recording booth, kibitz or admire Mr. Richardson's collection of KAWS figurines, hip hop ephemera and N.B.A. memorabilia. But the name also signifies Mr. Richardson's governing ethos: that combining creative disciplines usually yields something interesting. "Everyone who would come over would say, 'Yo, this is like your own art museum,'" Mr. Richardson said. "So I said, O.K. It was always in the back of my head but it was like, when is the time right to do it?" Mr. Richardson, who was born in the Bronx and grew up between Queens and Philadelphia, built it out in a matter of weeks into a polished white cube gallery, also called The Compound. With it, Mr. Richardson aims to correct what he perceives as certain imbalances in the gallery system. His goal is to present artists from marginalized backgrounds and highlight mediums given short shrift by blue chip galleries. He also hopes to restore context to art forms he sees as having been exploited, like graffiti. "I feel like what I'm doing is different from the standard gallery format," he said. "No galleries, to me, have accepted hip hop to be a part of their DNA." Mr. Bey, a Brooklyn native whose solo projects and collaborative work with Talib Kweli as Black Star made him a beloved figure among both mainstream hip hop fans and underground aficionados, has in recent years become one of the genre's more enigmatic entities. He announced his retirement from music two years ago (it's been intermittent), and effectively expatriated (he was living in South Africa for a time, and now lives in Paris). His retreat from public life he doesn't keep a cellphone and avoids speaking with media has, as these things tend to, stoked the mystique around him. That Mr. Bey would be returning to New York to help open an art gallery in the South Bronx might seem unexpected, but he and Mr. Richardson have been working together since they met over two decades ago, when Mr. Richardson created the influential AND1 Mixtape Tour, a giddy collision of street ball, streetwear and hip hop that featured early tracks from Mr. Bey, then a recent Rawkus Records signee. "He was the first person at the original Compound, when it was literally just four walls and a floor," Mr. Richardson recalled. "I showed him the space and told him my vision and he said, 'You gotta do it.'" Mr. Bey will help curate exhibitions and special programming. He already has one show to his credit, the gallery's soft opening, in August, of work by Christina Paik, a photographer who has produced imagery for Nike and Virgil Abloh's Off White line of streetwear. Mr. Richardson's and Mr. Bey's inaugural show is a survey of portraiture by the photographer Jonathan Mannion, titled "I Got a Gallery." "I Got a Show." Mr. Mannion has been something of hip hop's house photographer since the '90s, when he shot the cover of Jay Z's debut studio album, "Reasonable Doubt," and his imagery is considered to be some of the most indelible of the genre. The body of work on view (the gallery is open daily by appointment) spans the breadth of hip hop's compact but fertile history, from Run DMC, Rakim and Big Daddy Kane, to the LOX, Method Man and Aaliyah, to current stars like Drake, Nicki Minaj and Kendrick Lamar. The geography is appropriate: the Bronx is understood as the cradle of hip hop, and the gallery is a short ride from 1520 Sedgwick Avenue, the apartment building that DJ Kool Herc has referred to as "the Bethlehem of hip hop culture." Accordingly, the show leans toward New York's homegrown icons: a double exposure of Method Man in Polo Sport made in 1997; a wall size print of the Notorious B.I.G. holding an audience in thrall in 1995; a steely DMX holding back a pair of pitbulls from the same year; a black and white Polaroid of Slick Rick holding a bedazzled pendant over his damaged eye. The focus is a certain period of New York rap primacy, and the way its legacy continues to vibrate. An oversize image of Big Pun, made just a few blocks away in 1999, his face framed beatifically through a car sunroof, fills the gallery's street facing window. On a recent visit, Mr. Richardson said a frequent associate of Pun, the rapper Fat Joe, a Bronx native also represented in the show, had just stopped by. Somerset, which is developing other projects in the neighborhood, drew ire in 2015 after it threw a lavish one night art show and party in a warehouse that has since been razed on the 2401 site, and erected a billboard that referred to the area as "the Piano District." But Mr. Richardson sees the immediate area resisting gentrification. "There's a difference between forcing people to move out and tearing buildings down, and creating something where there's nothing," he said. "There are businesses opening up with minority owners. To me, that makes it a whole different conversation." New York's gallery scene is centralized in Chelsea, but the South Bronx has its own presence. A few blocks from The Compound is Wallworks, at 39 Bruckner Boulevard, which has exhibited work from graffiti progenitors Dondi and Futura since 2014, when John Matos, the graffiti star known as CRASH, helped open the place. Bronx Art Space (at 305 East 140th Street) and 6base (728 East 136th Street) are also nearby. These spaces have a forebear in Fashion Moda, which from the late '70s to the early '90s functioned in the South Bronx as community space as much as gallery, giving early credence to artists like Keith Haring, Jenny Holzer, Kenny Scharf and David Wojnarowicz. For his part, Mr. Richardson has said he hopes to find the next big name to transcend the boundary of street art and fine art. The Compound isn't necessarily a hip hop gallery, and that name might not be strictly tethered to hip hop. Upcoming shows include solo exhibitions of figurative painting by King Saladeen and work by Ron English as well as a sound installation curated by Mr. Bey. But hip hop culture tints its worldview. "The purpose of the gallery is to say all art is equal," Mr. Richardson said. "But we are in the borough that created hip hop, which is the biggest art form in the world, so it's always an extending arm. It's always present."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
How an Oil Price Surge Could Hurt the U.S. Economy For months, American consumers have kept the economy humming. While businesses pulled back, shoppers continued to spend. But a prolonged surge in gasoline prices after the attacks on oil production facilities in Saudi Arabia could undermine that phenomenon and increase the risk of a recession. "It's clearly not a positive, and it adds a negative to the outlook," said Steve Blitz, chief United States economist at T.S. Lombard, an independent research firm. "It's another straw on the camel's back." Monday's nearly 15 percent spike in oil prices to 62.90 a barrel isn't big enough to bring on a recession it only returns crude prices to where they were this spring. And the economy expanded from 2011 to 2014 even when prices were above 100 a barrel. Oil prices gave up some of those gains on Tuesday, with the United States benchmark contract settling at 59.34 a barrel. Saudi officials said Tuesday that they would fully restore oil production by the end of September, a lot sooner than many analysts had expected. Monday's jump is expected to add roughly 20 cents to gas prices, which now average 2.56 a gallon nationally, said Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis for the Oil Price Information Service. Those higher prices should be in place by the end of the month, he said. He estimates that the typical American family uses 90 gallons of gasoline every month, which means it would spend an extra 18 a month as a result of the attacks on Saudi Arabia. Read more: Oil markets are on edge after the attack on Saudi facilities. But a shock in the form of a rapid 20 or 30 a barrel jump in oil prices would have a bigger economic impact. "At that level, the consumer takes a significant hit," said Ethan Harris, head of global economics and research at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. A 25 a barrel increase in oil prices, the kind of move analysts cite as a potential threat to the economy, would add 50 cents to the cost of each gallon of gas. That would mean an extra 45 in monthly spending for the typical family. The Federal Reserve, whose policymakers were meeting in Washington on Tuesday and Wednesday, were keeping a close eye on energy prices. Most observers expected the Fed to reduce interest rates a quarter point. Worries about growth have been building over the last six weeks. If consumer spending faded, the economy wouldn't have much to fall back on. An important measure of manufacturing published this month showed that factory activity had contracted two months in a row. And in the second quarter, business and residential investment fell. The financial markets have been shaky, and short term bond yields have exceeded returns on longer termed notes, a sign a recession could lie ahead. Covid's impact on the supply chain continues. The pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of the global supply chain and made all kinds of products harder to find. In turn, scarcity has caused the prices of many things to go higher as inflation remains stubbornly high. Almost anything manufactured is in short supply. That includes everything from toilet paper to new cars. The disruptions go back to the beginning of the pandemic, when factories in Asia and Europe were forced to shut down and shipping companies cut their schedules. First, demand for home goods spiked. Money that Americans once spent on experiences were redirected to things for their homes. The surge clogged the system for transporting goods to the factories that needed them and finished products piled up because of a shortage of shipping containers. Now, ports are struggling to keep up. In North America and Europe, where containers are arriving, the heavy influx of ships is overwhelming ports. With warehouses full, containers are piling up. The chaos in global shipping is likely to persist as a result of the massive traffic jam. No one really knows when the crisis will end. Shortages and delays are likely to affect this year's Christmas and holiday shopping season, but what happens after that is unclear. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said he expects supply chain problems to persist "likely well into next year." Through all of that, consumers have appeared to be in fine shape. Retail sales rose 0.4 percent in August, after a 0.8 percent jump in July, the government reported Friday. Demand for automobiles, sporting goods and building materials all showed strength. And the University of Michigan reported Friday that its preliminary September reading for consumer confidence stood at 92, a bit better than expected and an improvement from August. Saudi Arabia's new energy minister is taking over in a crisis. Changes in energy prices can cause broader economic swings, including when prices drop sharply. A plunge in oil prices to 30 a barrel in February 2016, from 106 in June 2014, dealt a blow to manufacturing as demand for oil related products fell and, in turn, slowed overall economic growth. The effect of higher oil prices on businesses is complicated because oil's role in the economy has changed since the energy shocks of the 1970s. Buoyed by oil production from shale deposits in Texas, New Mexico and other states, America has slashed imports and has become a major exporter of oil and gas. Higher prices would help not only oil companies but also steel producers, which have become major suppliers of metal pipe and other goods to the energy industry. They would most likely see a pickup in demand as drilling activity increased, offsetting some of the damage a spike would cause to consumer spending. But other businesses, particularly those in the transportation sector, could suffer. Companies, including airlines and delivery firms, that rely on cheap fuel to make money distributing packages for online retailers could be big losers if oil prices soar. "Shale has shifted the paradigm," said Gregory Daco, chief United States economist at Oxford Economics. "On the one hand, with higher prices there is a hit to consumers. But there's an incentive for oil and gas companies to invest and produce more to reap the benefits." The biggest risk to consumers and the economy itself would be a significant military conflict between the United States and Iran. Businesses, already cautious about spending, would pull back further. Consumers would likewise retreat. "When these things happen, people stay home and watch the news," said Mr. Blitz of T.S. Lombard. "You'd see a dip in spending at the mall."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
SAN JOSE, Calif. Mark Zuckerberg has faced scandal after scandal in recent months. On Tuesday, he indicated he was ready to move on and continue Facebook's march of taking over people's online lives. At the social network's annual developer conference in San Jose, Mr. Zuckerberg, its chief executive, announced a slew of new products and technology features. They included a dating app for Facebook members, a group calling feature for the WhatsApp messaging service and photo filters on Instagram. Mr. Zuckerberg also said Facebook's cordless virtual reality headset, Oculus Go, was now available for 199. "The world would lose if Facebook went away," he said to a crowd of about 5,000 developers, tech executives and engineers the kind of Silicon Valley audience he is at ease with. "We have a responsibility to move forward on what everyone else expects from us, to keep building in meaningful ways." Mr. Zuckerberg has been dealing with an uproar over Facebook's handling of user data after revelations in March that the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica harvested the information of as many as 87 million Facebook users. Since then, he has been on an apology tour, testified in Congress and introduced changes to improve privacy measures for its members. This week, Mr. Zuckerberg has also been grappling with the departure of one of Facebook's board members, Jan Koum, a founder of WhatsApp. Mr. Zuckerberg nodded to the privacy controversy on Tuesday at the developer event, which is known as F8. Before the conference began, he announced a new privacy control called Clear History, which will give people the ability to clear their history on the social network, essentially erasing data describing what they had done and what sites they have visited on the service. In the opening minutes of his speech, Mr. Zuckerberg also told the audience that Facebook was refocusing on how to keep people's personal information private and how to ensure that its platform couldn't be abused. Facebook "will never be unprepared again" for attempts to undermine the democratic process, including elections, Mr. Zuckerberg promised. He also said Facebook was becoming more proactive in fighting false news and taking down fake accounts. When he introduced a feature called Watch Party, which lets people watch video and chat with their friends, he joked that his own friends had used Watch Party to discuss his recent appearances before Congress. "Let's never do that again," Mr. Zuckerberg said. But having dispensed with those preliminaries, he quickly moved on to a theme of "keep building." He began running through the list of new products and features. In particular, the announcement of the Facebook dating app quickly made waves, with the shares of Match Group, which runs dating apps like Tinder and OKCupid, plunging in response. Facebook's free dating app requires people to create a dating profile that is separate from their Facebook profile and that will be shown only to other users who have also opted in to the app. Mr. Zuckerberg's emphasis on keeping going was reminiscent of Facebook's announcement of its quarterly earnings last month, which showed that even with all the scandals, it was chugging along as a business. The Silicon Valley company reported a 63 increase in profit and a 49 percent jump in revenue from a year earlier. The Facebook chief executive's speech was also scrutinized by developers, many of whom have been hit hard by how the company has limited access to its users' information after the Cambridge Analytica revelations. In something of an olive branch to the crowd, Mr. Zuckerberg said: "I know it hasn't been easy being a developer these last few months. What I can assure you is that we are hard at work making sure people don't misuse this platform so that you can continue to build things on it." He added that Facebook's freeze on approving new apps, which it had imposed after the Cambridge Analytica reports, was being lifted as of Tuesday. The announcement got applause from the crowd, which had been lukewarm up till then.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
It's never truly fall until New York City Ballet reclaims Lincoln Center. Before the company hosts its fashion forward gala evening on Sept. 28 with designers and choreographers collaborating on new works there will be two weeks of Peter Martins's "Swan Lake." It's all about the dancers, and Sara Mearns, who is scheduled to perform opening night opposite Tyler Angle, should start the run off right: Her rendition of the dual role of Odette/Odile is extraordinary. As the season continues, there will be three premieres by company members, the principal Lauren Lovette and the soloists Troy Schumacher and Justin Peck, City Ballet's resident choreographer. There's one wild card in the mix: Gianna Reisen, a 2017 graduate of the City Ballet affiliated School of American Ballet, will create her first work for the company. Ms. Reisen, 18, and now an apprentice at Ballet Semperoper Dresden, is the youngest choreographer the company has ever featured. And the season bids farewell to a principal when, on Oct. 7, Rebecca Krohn takes her final bow. (Tuesday, Sept. 19, through Oct. 15 at the David H. Koch Theater; nycballet.com.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Michael Andersen, left, and Jeppe Christensen, founders of the design firm Reform, at their Brooklyn showroom. They saw a hole between basic and bank breaking kitchen options. When the designer Alsun Keogh began renovating a SoHo loft for a young bachelor last fall, she took him through Manhattan's temples of kitchen design, including the showrooms of Boffi, Poggenpohl and Bulthaup. They admired the silky glide of drawers; they caressed counters and studied every minute design detail. "He'd say 'I love this,' " recalled Ms. Keogh, who owns the firm Nusla Design. "And I'd be like, 'This is a 100,000 kitchen.' For a guy who doesn't cook, it was maybe a little much." When her client hesitated, Ms. Keogh began searching for other options. Online, she found Reform, a young Danish company with an ingenious money saving solution cabinet doors, panels and counters designed by some of the world's foremost architects that could be used to disguise economical innards from Ikea. It promised designer kitchens with premium finishes at a fraction of the usual cost. There were oak cabinet doors that had seatbeltlike pulls by Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), doors made of wood and thick strips of copper by Henning Larsen Architects and doors in smoked oak or patinated bronze by Norm Architects. Most cost about 100 to 300 per door or drawer front. Ms. Keogh designed the basic shape of the 130 square foot kitchen online with Ikea's Home Planner tool, and visited an Ikea store in Red Hook, Brooklyn, to ensure that she had all the necessary components. The order for the cabinet boxes and hardware, including motorized push openers and internal lights, cost about 1,600. She sent her kitchen drawing to Reform, and selected the company's most expensive option the bronze doors by Norm Architects, paired with concrete counters with waterfall edges and an integrated sink. The cabinet fronts, toe kicks and panels for integrated refrigerator drawers and a dishwasher cost about 5,000. Counters for a bank of cabinetry and an island cost about 8,500. The resulting look stands up to other high end designer kitchens, Ms. Keogh said, but in terms of price, "it was a massive difference." Estimates from the other companies had ranged from about 40,000 to 80,000. Reform is focused not only on Ikea hacking, the do it yourself repurposing of Ikea products to serve other functions, but on decidedly upscale upgrades call it Ikea bling. It is one of numerous companies now building businesses around the notion of giving Ikea products more aesthetic diversity and appeal. Others offering doors for Ikea kitchens, without Reform's big name collaborators, include Semihandmade, Dunsmuir Cabinets and Kokeena. For furniture, companies like Sweden's Bemz are making beautiful slipcovers with designer grade fabric for Ikea sofas and chairs. "When you do kitchens, you know the dilemma Ikea does good quality, and all the rest do design, but they're expensive," said Mr. Andersen, standing in Reform's New York showroom, which opened in May in a space near the Brooklyn Navy Yard painted in gray and white. Ikea uses the same Blum hinges, drawer slides and other hardware as many high end kitchen manufacturers, he added. Inevitably, Mr. Christensen said: "We would tell the client, 'You can save half if you use Ikea carcasses, and we just skin it.' That's where the initial idea started." Sensing that there was a bigger business opportunity than producing a few one off kitchens, they discussed the concept for Reform over a beer and soon compiled a list of three collaborators that represented their Danish design dream team: BIG, Henning Larsen and Norm. "We never imagined they would all say yes," Mr. Andersen said. But they did, and Reform introduced its first architect designed collection in August 2015. (The company also offers a kitchen designed in house). The company sold about 200 kitchens in 2015, 500 last year, and is on track to sell 1,000 this year, to homeowners in more than 20 countries, Mr. Christensen said. About 10 percent of Reform's sales have been in the United States. The company recently expanded into furniture, including a credenza designed by the Swedish firm Afteroom with fluted doors over Ikea guts. It has also introduced more kitchen designs, including one with full height ash handles and rails by the Danish designer Chris L. Halstrom, and another with aluminum fronts and integrated pulls by the Berlin based architect Sigurd Larsen. Yet another new kitchen design by the restaurateur Claus Meyer and his wife, Christina Meyer Bengtsson, is scheduled to be introduced this fall. So far, the founders have had little contact with Ikea, except for a letter from the company's lawyers. "It was the nicest letter ever from their lawyers, saying, 'It's fine, you can do whatever, just remember that we have a registered trademark,' " Mr. Christensen said. (There is now a disclaimer buried deep in Reform's website indicating that the company is not affiliated with Ikea). Indeed, Ikea appears to be actively encouraging the development of products from other companies that expand on its core collections. As Marty Marston, a public relations manager at Ikea, put it: "Other companies' building on our concept and range proves the strength of our offer and addresses our customers' wish for personalization. We welcome co creation as it makes the Ikea offer richer." In April, the company introduced Delaktig, its concept for a transformable bed sofa by the British designer Tom Dixon that invites outside companies to make add ons. For the prototype, Ikea partnered with Bemz to create an intensely shaggy slipcover from brownish black Icelandic longhaired sheepskin. Lesley Pennington, the founder of Bemz, likened the Delaktig cover to "haute couture." Her company carries more than 300 fabrics, including some used by professional interior designers, such as textiles from Designers Guild and Romo. They can be ordered as covers for more than 100 models of Ikea furniture, with sofa covers starting at 99 and running well past 1,000. "Our customers can take a piece of mass market furniture and create something that is personal and unique," said Ms. Pennington, noting that Bemz sells 3,000 to 5,000 covers a month to customers in 42 countries. "We have beautiful cottons, linens and velvets. Some people actually purchase an Ikea sofa for the first time because of the opportunity to purchase a cover from Bemz." Products from Ikea, which reported sales of more than 35 billion euros (about 42 billion) for its 2016 fiscal year, are becoming so ubiquitous that Ms. Pennington sees some parallels between the emergence of companies like Reform and Bemz and the developers of iPhone apps. "This whole ecosystem around Ikea products is something quite unique in the furniture industry, but we've seen it in the technology industry for a long time now," said Ms. Pennington, who worked at Apple before founding Bemz.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
It was during a 1966 concert in Paris when Little Richard, drenched in sweat, told a mostly white audience, "I'm ready, ready, ready teddy, I'm ready, ready, ready teddy!" He took off his soaked shirt and the men and women pleaded for it as he swung it over his head like a helicopter, carefully considering who he would bless with his dripping D.N.A. For those in the audience, it must have been fantastical to see, and a deeply erotic thing to witness. To think, in 1966, a black queer man over the course of his life he would identify himself as gay, bisexual and "omnisexual" could be a sex god. He was a symbol of brazen sensuality, three years before Jimi Hendrix would use his tongue and guitar to catapult a nation beyond their prudish sensibilities at Woodstock. Little Richard, who died Saturday, showed us what sexuality, queerness and passion looked like onstage. When he first rose to prominence in the 1950s, it was more common for popular performers such as Frank Sinatra or Ray Charles to don a suit and tie. Even in the 1960s, he was an anomaly James Brown may have matched him onstage in exuding sexual energy, but the Godfather of Soul's sartorial choices remained primarily urbane until the 1970s. Little Richard's style was a reckoning between the sweaty southern Baptist church revivals he witnessed as a child, and the raw sensuality that characterized jazz and blues. He bridged and made sense of the flamboyance and theatricality of the black church, and fed it to millions of hungry consumers. And he did it all while embracing a femininity that can be directly traced to his queerness. We often think about the history of rock 'n' roll through the lens of white artists and record executives profiting from black culture, but it's rare we recognize that the musicians being stolen from have often not only been black, but queer as well. Artists like Little Richard are often seen as separate from their sexuality and gender performance, even though those are the very things that informed their innovation. Josephine Baker, Ma Rainey, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Zora Neale Hurston and James Baldwin to name just a few it would not be a stretch to say that mainstream culture as we know it is a black queer project, often appropriated by others but birthed by black queer people. One of the primary ways we remember and memorialize our biggest stars is through onscreen dramatizations of their lives; often, these images play a huge part in the mythmaking of their personas. This format is also a common way to erase more complex facets of those figures. In the 2000 biopic "Little Richard," there is no mention of his queerness, no attempt to connect his gender performance to his brilliant artistry. Likewise, in the 1991 biopic "The Story of Josephine Baker," there is no reference to Baker's reported relationships with women. In 1989, Langston Hughes's estate threatened legal action against Isaac Julien, the director of "Looking For Langston," a fictional feature about gay relationships, and the coordinators of a film festival where it was to be shown, if they did not remove direct references to Hughes from the film. One of those coordinators, Ada Gay Griffin, told The Los Angeles Times she believed the estate opposed the film's L.G.B.T.Q. subject matter. (Hughes's sexuality has been a subject of dispute among scholars.) Removing black queer identities from our recorded histories, including film, makes it seem as though iconoclasticism happens by chance. More accurately, creative people who lived or are living in the tension of both queerness and blackness have brought forward brilliant worlds that we all benefit from. Not recognizing this leaves us with a series of horror stories, such as Whitney Houston and Luther Vandross, popular black figures who were never able to live their fullest truths. It has also led generations of black queer children to believe people like them haven't contributed anything to culture, when the opposite is true. At times, Little Richard himself would attempt to distance himself from facets of his queer identity, publicly denouncing homosexuality and his natural urges. Such denial can be its own form of admitting queerness. Yet it matters that despite these pronouncements and unlike Houston or Vandross his performance and aesthetic always remained overtly queer and transgressive, as if it was a second skin he couldn't wash off, no matter how much he attempted to reject it. In performance if not in his personal life, at least, he embraced what made him so special. The loss of Little Richard, the person, is sad. But he remains living through the work of so many artists who followed in his footsteps: Aretha Franklin, Prince, Marilyn Manson, Bjork, Beyonce, Lady Gaga and on and on. Now is an opportunity to show reverence to the artist. It's also the right time to remind ourselves that black queer contributions have changed the way we live, think and in the case of Little Richard, listen.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
PARIS In 1996 Andre Leon Talley, then a contributing editor at Vanity Fair and famously often the only black person on the front row at fashion shows, styled a shoot for the magazine titled "Scarlett 'n the Hood." It reimagined "Gone With the Wind" with the races reversed: Naomi Campbell, then one of the few black supermodels, played Scarlett; John Galliano, then at Givenchy, played a maid. "We wanted to temporarily turn the pages of history around," Mr. Talley told The New York Times afterward. On Wednesday in Paris, not quite 23 years later, Pierpaolo Piccioli, creative director of Valentino, echoed those words. "When it started, couture was made for white women," Mr. Piccioli said, standing before a mood board pinned with photographs of different versions of a Black Madonna , works by the contemporary artist Kerry James Marshall and the famous 1948 Cecil Beaton shoot for Vogue of nine white models in Charles James couture gowns, all juxtaposed with photos from Ebony and Franca Sozzani's 2008 "Black Issue" of Italian Vogue. "What if they had been in there?" he went on, gesturing to the women in the Ebony shoot and the Beaton array. "To me couture is about dream and fantasy and the expression of individuality, and that means diversity. It's not about a political message you put on a T shirt and it's not about streetwear or sportswear; it's about how you look at the world." On the penultimate day of the couture, Mr. Piccioli showed everyone how to look. He did it with his now signature combination of lavish ease and a garden of painterly shades; his ability to drain the grandeur from a ball gown so it can be worn with the insouciance of a T shirt; to toss a cropped neon yellow cashmere cape atop a blush vest and beige trousers , so its train trailed just so on the floor. He did it with elaborate embroideries in lace and sequins and tiered dresses with voluminous skirts that turned out to have been split into trousers, and filmy floral organzas sliced up the sides to reveal lace bodysuits and pants (complete with pockets). And he did it with 65 models, 45 of whom were black, all in outfits christened by the women who worked on them. Even in an industry that lately has exerted some effort toward acknowledging and rethinking its own past failings with regard to the definition of beauty, it made a statement both convincing and impossible to ignore. "As a designer I have a voice," he said. "Hopefully a loud one. I want to use it." That he could do so with such grace and clarity is a singular skill. Not all designers are quite so adept in using their platform for that's what a collection is these days, when you come down to it as became clear as the shows drew to an end. Viktor Horsting and Rolf Snoeren of Viktor Rolf, for example, decided to make a double entendre of the whole idea (wink wink, nudge nudge). They appliqued the kind of slogans found on dollar store coffee mugs onto candy colored ruffled mille feuilles, made from a total of five miles of tulle, to suggest no matter how sweet a woman looked, it was time to get the message. "I'm not shy; I just don't like you" read the big block letters on one enormous white baby doll gown. "Sorry I'm late, I didn't want to come" went the words on another. "Get mean" appeared on a pink heart in Valentine red and "Give a damn" on an angelic nightie. It was catchy, as their fashion jokes usually are, if not particularly subtle. At least it made sense, given the tenor of the times, unlike the mishmash of reference and line at Jean Paul Gaultier (mariniere stripes, pagoda shoulders, mermaid frocks, Asian fans and fabrics) that read, in the end, mostly as nonsense. Still, none of the them had the last word. That honor went to Olivier Rousteing at Balmain, whose debut couture was the last major show of the season. Once upon a time Balmain was a stalwart name on the schedule but it closed its atelier in 2002 when Oscar de la Renta left; this year Mr. Rousteing decided it was time to bring couture back as the jewel in brand's crown, and there was some anticipation about how that might look. Answer: bulbous leather "pearls" that encircled a model's thighs and shoulders. Jutting hip buttresses that stuck out from the side under enormous pink bows. Shredded "denim" dangling silver fringe and embroidered with crystals and pearls (there were more than a million pieces of Swarovski decoration used in all). Pastel prints in faded graffiti swirls pleated into face obscuring fans. A simple long white coat. Two topless models, one in a frilled ball skirt, one in white sweats with a giant silver belt. An effort to, seemingly, go through the motions of the old couture in a written note, Mr. Rousteing said he had "pored through the house's archives" without really being able to synthesize the point of the new.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Two thirds of women who have lumpectomies for breast cancer are receiving radiation treatment that lasts nearly twice as long as necessary, a new study reports. The conventional, longer treatment lasts five to seven weeks. But four rigorous studies and guidelines from a leading radiology society conclude that three to four weeks of more intense radiation is just as effective. Women overwhelmingly prefer the shorter course of radiation, studies have found. It is also less expensive. Even though 60 to 75 percent of women with breast cancer have lumpectomies a total of about 140,000 to 160,000 women doctors and health insurers say relatively few are receiving the shorter treatment because it takes time to change ingrained medical practices, especially when a procedure has been used for decades and the new one offers no additional medical benefit. Its advantages are saving time for patients, and money for the health care system and insurers. "If a physician is doing five to seven weeks of radiation for 25 years, particularly if the physician is not a specialist and not in an academic medical center, you will be a bit leery about going to something new," said Dr. Bruce G. Haffty, a professor and chairman of the department of radiation oncology at the Rutgers Cancer Institute of New Jersey. "You are comfortable with the outcomes, patients are satisfied. Now you've got something that perhaps costs a bit less, but you wonder: Is it as effective?" In the new study, published Wednesday in JAMA, The Journal of the American Medical Association, two University of Pennsylvania doctors, Ezekiel J. Emanuel and Justin E. Bekelman, and their colleagues analyzed data from 14 commercial insurance plans involving 15,643 women who had their breasts irradiated after lumpectomies. The researchers considered two groups of women who had radiation therapy and asked how many had received the shorter course. One group closely matched women in the previous randomized studies that evaluated the conventional treatment versus the shorter one. These women were older than 50 and had early stage cancers. Practice guidelines published in 2011 by the American Society for Radiation Oncology recommend the shorter radiation therapy for this group. The other group differed from participants in the previous studies because they were younger, had had prior chemotherapy or had cancer cells in their lymph nodes, indicating a more advanced cancer. The practice guidelines neither endorse nor discourage the shorter therapy for these women. Use of the shorter course of radiation increased in both groups of women from 2008 to 2013, but still only a minority received this treatment. In the group that should have received the shorter therapy under the guidelines, 10.6 percent received it in 2008 and 34.5 percent in 2013. In the group that received no recommendation for or against the shorter treatment, the percentage who used it rose from 8.1 percent to 21.2 percent over that time. In Canada and Britain, the statistics were far different. At least two thirds of women in both groups received the shorter therapy. In the United States, total medical expenses for the shorter therapy in women for whom it was endorsed were 28,747. For comparable women receiving the longer course of treatment, the cost was 31,641. For the second group of women for whom the shorter therapy was neither endorsed nor discouraged medical costs were 64,723, compared with 72,860 for conventional therapy. Health insurers pay for radiation in a piecemeal fashion, and the shorter course involves about 16 doses, compared with about 33 with the conventional therapy. Dr. Harold J. Burstein, a medical oncologist at Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, said that when the initial results of a Canadian trial on the shorter therapy were published in 2002, "there was real ambivalence about changing practice based on one study." Doctors wanted to see what would happen as the women were followed over a longer time, and they wanted to see the result confirmed. The results of that study contradicted years of practice in the field, said Dr. Gary M. Freedman, a breast radiation oncologist at the University of Pennsylvania and an author of the new study. In the 1970s and 1980s, when equipment was much less sophisticated, radiation oncologists found that shorter and more intense therapy burned women's skin and scarred their breasts, making them shrivel and shrink over the ensuing decade. "I started my residency in 1993," Dr. Freedman said. "That was drilled into us": Shorter and more intense radiation therapy "was a bad idea and would have a bad cosmetic result." But with improved equipment and methodology, he said, the clinical trials found that cosmetic results were just as good with the shorter treatment. "They did not just publish that the cure rates were the same, but they published very in depth cosmetic assessments, particularly the British, who took pictures that were graded by blinded observers," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
There is as much to love about the new Samsung Galaxy Note 8 as there is to hate. Let's get the bad stuff out of the way. For unlocking the phone, the eye scanner barely works and the fingerprint sensor is in a lousy place. Samsung's Bixby, which is included, is the most incompetent virtual assistant on the market. And need I remind you this phone line has a reputation for gadgets that spontaneously combust. If you are the forgiving type, you may love the Note 8 despite its flaws. It has the best smartphone display as bright and vivid as a screen on a high end television set that I have ever tested. The camera is fast and takes professional quality photos. Jotting down notes with the stylus feels almost as good as writing on a paper notepad. And most importantly, Samsung did extra safety checks to make sure this one doesn't explode. The positives outweigh the negatives to make the Note 8, which costs roughly 950 and is scheduled to arrive in stores on Sept. 15, the best big screen Android smartphone you can buy today. But that doesn't mean you should rush to buy one. With Apple set to unveil new iPhones next week and other competitors, including Google, also expected to release new devices soon, I recommend waiting a while to evaluate your options. The Note 8 uses a technology known as OLED, a type of display that can be made thinner, lighter and brighter with better color accuracy and contrast than its predecessor, LCD. In the coming years, all higher end smartphones will probably transition to OLED. On the Galaxy Note 8's 6.3 inch screen, the benefits of OLED are pronounced. Photos looked amazing. They popped out with vivid colors and nice shadow detail. For reading, web articles looked great, with crisp, clear text that was easy on the eyes a boon for anyone with less than perfect vision. The roomy screen, which has roughly the same dimensions as a pocket notepad, is a nice size for taking notes with the digital pen; I used it to outline this review in a coffee shop. Raymond Soneira, president of DisplayMate, a consulting firm that studies displays, also tested the Note 8 and gave it an A , his highest rating. He praised the screen for its exceptional brightness and wide color gamut, among other features. "It is the most innovative and high performance smartphone display that we have ever lab tested," he wrote in his review. The downside is that OLED is an expensive screen technology, which is reflected in the Note 8's price tag. Apple's next premium iPhone, which is also expected to have an OLED screen, will cost upward of 999. The Galaxy Note 8's top notch screen and fast camera would become moot if the phone is unsafe like last year's infamous Galaxy Note 7, which had to be discontinued because some burst into flames. There's no way to be certain that the Note 8 will not also explode, but Samsung has shown that people can reasonably expect these phones to be safe. For one, Samsung said the Galaxy Note 8's battery underwent a series of safety checks. The company also for the first time brought in a reputable product safety consultant, UL, to perform additional tests. And the Galaxy S8, the smaller version of the Note 8, has been on the market for a few months now, and so far there have been no similar reports of explosions. Long story short: You can buy the Galaxy Note 8 with a fair amount of confidence. Unlike its predecessor, the Galaxy Note 8 is unlikely to burn down your house, be banned from use on airplanes or explode in your ear. "What is important is they've done the right things," Carolina Milanesi, a consumer technology analyst for Creative Strategies, said about the safety checks. "But the proof will be in the pudding, which would be selling these and not having an issue of any kind." That brings us to what stinks about the Note 8. Some of the biometrics, including the ability to unlock your phone by scanning your face or irises, are so poorly executed that they feel like marketing gimmicks as opposed to actual security features. The iris scanner shines infrared light in your eyes to identify you and unlock the phone. That sounds futuristic, but when you set up the feature, it is laden with disclaimers from Samsung. The caveats include: Iris scanning might not work well if you are wearing glasses or contact lenses; it might not work in direct sunlight; it might not work if there is dirt on the sensor. I don't wear glasses or contact lenses and could only get the iris scanner to scan my eyes properly one out of five times I tried it. When you set up the face scanner, Samsung displays another disclaimer, including a warning that your phone could be unlocked by "someone or something" that looks like you. (Hopefully you don't have a doppelganger.) In addition, face recognition is less secure than using a passcode. So why would you even use it? As a result, you will probably continue to use the phone's fingerprint scanner, a feature that has been available on many smartphones for several years. Unfortunately, the fingerprint scanner is located on the back of the phone, adjacent to the camera flash, which is next to the lenses. In my tests, I accidentally touched the camera lenses multiple times, leaving smudges. If you eventually own a Note 8, make it a regular habit to wipe the camera lenses with a cloth. I'm not that fond of virtual assistants in general, but I especially do not like Bixby. Setting it up is awkward: You have to sign up for a Samsung account, agree to a long list of terms of service conditions and speak several sentences in order for Bixby to understand your pronunciation.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
A savanna elephant in Matusadona National Park in Zimbabwe. In some areas, including in Namibia and Zimbabwe, the proceeds from big game hunting have helped revive wildlife populations. In others, including in Tanzania, hunting has fed corruption and decimated species. Hunt Elephants to Save Them? Some Countries See No Other Choice The United States Fish and Wildlife Service last month moved to allow hunters to bring home trophies from elephants killed in Zimbabwe and Zambia. Safe to say, few conservationists saw it coming. In a 39 page report, the agency cited Zimbabwe's progress in creating a sound management plan for its 82,000 elephants and evidence that hunting revenue is in fact reinvested into conservation. Well managed trophy hunting "would not have an adverse effect on the species, but can further efforts to conserve the species in the wild," the agency concluded. The announcement, which would have turned back an elephant trophy prohibition instituted during the Obama administration, was met with praise from pro hunting groups, like the National Rifle Association and Safari Club International, and criticism from animal rights advocates on all sides of the political spectrum. Whether the proceeds from big game hunting should be used to protect threatened and endangered species is a difficult question to answer. In some areas, including in Namibia and Zimbabwe, the strategy has helped revive wildlife populations. In others, including Tanzania, hunting has fed corruption and decimated species. Among conservation biologists and advocacy groups, trophy hunting is the third rail: Their supporters largely are repulsed by the sanctioned shooting and butchering of elephants, lions and other big game. The killing of Cecil, a Zimbabwean lion, by an American hunter triggered a global social media storm. The killing of Cecil, a Zimbabwean lion, in 2015 by an American hunter triggered a global social media storm. Many conservationists "have been bullied into silence" on the subject of hunting, said Michael 't Sas Rolfes, a research fellow at Oxford University who studies wildlife trade. Yet many experts also believe that the proceeds from hunting are all that prevents many poor communities from turning against local wildlife. "While the noise in the press is all about morals and entitled white men killing innocent animals to hang obnoxiously on their wall all of which I agree with this actually has very little to do with pragmatic conservation," said Brian Child, an ecologist at the University of Florida. "Like everything else in life, it's all about the money money to combat illegal wildlife trade, and money to prevent the much more serious problem of wildlife's replacement by the cow or the plow." Critics of big game hunting seldom offer viable alternatives for the communities that rely on these funds to protect wildlife, Dr. Child said. Nor do the countries that issue trophy bans typically provide financial assistance sufficient to make up for the shortfall when hunting income goes away. Hunters pay 65,000 to 140,000 to hunt lions in Zimbabwe, for example; an elephant hunt can run 36,000 to 70,000. (The price would be higher were it not for the American trophy ban.) "Zimbabwe is on its knees because of economic downturn, yet the international community expects our poor country to look after elephants and lions when we can't even feed our nation," said Victor Muposhi, a zoologist at Chinhoyi University of Technology in Chinhoyi, Zimbabwe. "No one is coming to the table to say, 'Yes, we want you to stop this hunting, but here is a budget and an alternative plan you can follow instead.'" Calls for blanket bans, Dr. Muposhi continued, overlook the benefits that well managed hunting programs can bring and gloss over the complexities of the industry and of conservation itself. "I think one of the real problems in this whole debate is that people are looking for generalizations about trophy hunting, and there just are none," said Rosie Cooney, chair of the sustainable use and livelihoods specialist group at the International Union for Conservation of Nature. "There's great examples and terrible examples and ones we don't have a clue about and everything in between." Those looking for the terrible examples will find no shortage of them. A study by Craig Packer, director of the Lion Research Center at the University of Minnesota, found that sport hunting directly contributed to the decline of lions in most of Tanzania's hunting areas. Over the past dozen years, he also reported, 40 percent of these areas were abandoned because of declines in trophy species. Benefits from those hunts usually did not reach those on the ground. The Maasai people in Tanzania's Serengeti region have repeatedly reported eviction from their lands by a luxury hunting and safari company operating with a special "Presidential permit," Dr. Packer noted. The precise impacts of sport hunting in Tanzania have been almost impossible to measure, he pointed out, because independent scientists are frequently prevented from conducting research. In 2015, after 37 years of work, Dr. Packer himself was banned from Tanzania after he warned authorities in the United States about pervasive corruption in the hunting industry. In other countries, including Zimbabwe, authorities have simply seized hunting preserves and reaped the profits without reinvesting in conservation, according to Vanda Felbab Brown, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and author of "The Extinction Market." The trophy hunting business "becomes very commercialized, and the profits are captured by elites," she said. "You can also end up with trophy hunting serving as a cover for trafficking." But in places where hunting is strictly regulated and corruption is minimal, it can be an integral tool for conservation, Dr. Felbab Brown added. Ideally, science based quotas and age and gender limits ensure that wildlife populations are not decimated, while funds are channeled back to communities acting as custodians. Namibia's communal conservancies, for example, cover some 63,000 square miles and are often hailed for success in rebuilding and sustaining the country's wildlife. Hunting is integral to the conservancies' survival; without it, the majority of conservancies would not be able to cover operational costs, researchers at the World Wildlife Fund reported last year in the journal Conservation Biology. The Save Valley and Bubye Valley conservancies in Zimbabwe, which are primarily supported by hunting, are managed well enough that lion populations are growing. And in South Africa and Zimbabwe, Dr. Cooney said, hunting has pushed landowners into converting agricultural land into private wildlife reserves. Even where this conservation strategy seems to work, however, some critics question the contradiction inherent in hunting threatened and endangered species. "Any trophy hunting of an endangered species is by definition unsustainable, as it cannot sufficiently contribute to the survival of the species to justify removing individuals from the population," said Elly Pepper, a deputy director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. Indeed, savanna elephant populations across Africa declined by 30 percent from 2007 to 2014, primarily as a result of poaching. But the numbers were not evenly distributed. Most legal trophy hunting for elephants occurs in southern Africa, in countries like Namibia and South Africa. The region accounts for nearly 40 percent of the continent's 415,000 elephants, according to data presented last week at a meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora in Geneva. In a recent survey of elephants in Zimbabwe's hunting dependent areas, Mr. Pani found that the country could lose a quarter of its elephant population should hunting be completely halted. If managed well, Dr. Cooney said, hunting finances landholders and communities, providing a crucial incentive for people not only to tolerate potentially dangerous wildlife but to protect it. In Zimbabwe's Campfire communities which are equivalent in size to the country's strictly protected national parks, but reliant on trophy hunting elephants destroyed over 17,000 acres of crops from 2010 to 2015. Along with other animals, elephants have killed 139 community members since 2010. Lions, likewise, killed four people in Mozambique in 2016, not to mention 220 cows. Tolerance for wildlife quickly wanes if animals cease to bring benefits a growing threat in Zimbabwe, Dr. Muposhi said. Elephant hunts are still legal there, but leaving behind the animal's tusks is a deal breaker for most big game enthusiasts. After the 2014 trophy ban, 108 of 189 American hunters canceled their trips. The Campfire program's annual income dropped to 1.7 million from 2.2 million; private landowners reported similar losses. Zimbabwe's Parks and Wildlife Management Authority derives about 20 percent of its funding from hunting fees, over half of which traditionally comes from American hunters. "All of Zimbabwe's hunting areas are surrounded by communities who are hungry for agricultural land," Dr. Muposhi said. "If people see that elephants and lions no longer have value, they'll kill all the animals and let their cattle use the land currently set aside for wildlife." "My sense is the damage would be quite significant," he added. For Mr. 't Sas Rolfes and other experts, the trophy hunting debate remains a tiring distraction from the pivotal question of how to sustainably finance conservation in Africa, and how to deal with poaching and growing human populations. In a 2015 survey of 133 experts in 11 African countries, trophy hunting came in next to last in a ranking of 11 threats to wildlife. Poaching was at the top. "We're talking about the wrong thing right now," said Dan Ashe, president of the Association of Zoos and Aquariums and former director of the Fish and Wildlife Service. "Trophy hunting is not the issue. We should be focused on wildlife trafficking and the broader plight of elephants."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
TAMANA, Japan Two pedals, inches apart, one for gas and the other for brakes. For years, a Japanese inventor has argued that this most basic of car designs is dangerously flawed. The side by side pedal arrangement, the inventor says, can cause drivers mistakenly to floor the accelerator instead of the brakes, especially under stress. The solution? A single pedal that accelerates the car when pressed with the side of the foot. More to the point, when the pedal is pushed down, it always activates the brakes. "We have a natural tendency to stomp down when we panic," said the inventor, Masuyuki Naruse, who owns a small factory here in southwest Japan. "The automakers call it driver error. But what if their design's all wrong?" Mr. Naruse, 74, is one of a handful of people who have designed combined brake accelerator pedals in an effort to prevent accidents caused by unintended acceleration, which has come under a spotlight since charges that some Toyota vehicles accelerate without warning. Regulators in Sweden are testing a single pedal prototype by the inventor Sven Gustafsson. In Japan, about 130 cars equipped with Mr. Naruse's pedal, mostly owned by friends and acquaintances, have been declared street legal, including Mr. Naruse's own Mitsubishi Diamante sedan. He holds patents for the Naruse (pronounced NAH roo say) Pedal in Japan, the United States and six other countries. Yasuto Ohama, a security company executive whose Toyota Harrier has one of the pedals, said he switched after his foot hit the gas instead of the brakes and he almost struck a bicyclist. "I can never go back," Mr. Ohama said. "I now have peace of mind, because there's no mistaking when there's only one pedal." Toyota, which attributes reports of unintended acceleration to gas pedals that stick or get caught under floor mats, has recalled 8.5 million vehicles worldwide to address the problems. It has also gently suggested that in some cases the driver might have been at fault. Last month, it said that an internal investigation of 2,000 vehicles reported to have accelerated unintentionally found "pedal misapplication" in most cases, with drivers mistakenly pressing the accelerator instead of the brakes. Ririko Takeuchi, a Tokyo based spokeswoman for Toyota, said the company could not comment on Mr. Naruse's pedal design. But she said Toyota "listens to ideas we receive from the public, because we believe there's always room for improvement." "If you ask whether the current pedal design is the best we can do, the answer is no," Ms. Takeuchi said. Mr. Naruse's pedal, in various versions, has been around for two decades. But until recently his testimonials fell mostly on deaf ears despite many accidents linked to pedal confusion. In 2009, nearly 6,700 traffic accidents involving 37 deaths and more than 9,500 injuries were thought to have been caused by drivers in Japan mistakenly pushing the accelerator instead of the brakes, said the Institute for Traffic Accident Research and Data Analysis, a government affiliated group based in Tokyo. Car safety specialists say it is likely that tens of thousands of crashes in the United States have also been caused by pedal errors. In an accident in Santa Monica, Calif., in 2003, a driver believed to have hit the wrong pedal killed 10 people when his car plunged into an outdoor market. Since at least the 1980s, researchers have pointed to the propensity for drivers to press the accelerator instead of the brakes. In a 1989 study, Richard A. Schmidt, a psychologist now at the University of California, Los Angeles, described how disruptions to neuromuscular processes can cause the foot to deviate from the intended motion, even slipping from the brake to the accelerator. And when the car accelerates unexpectedly, Mr. Schmidt said, even experienced drivers can panic, "braking" even harder. In experiments in Japan by Katsuya Matsunaga, an engineering and psychology specialist at Kyushu Sangyo University in Fukuoka City, drivers were asked to switch feet from the accelerator to the brakes on cue, at times while accompanied by startling noises. Subjects under stress sometimes hesitated or found it difficult to switch from one pedal to the other, he said. The current standard pedal arrangement is a function of automotive evolution. Drivers of Ford's 1908 Model T maneuvered an accelerator lever on the steering column and three pedals: for shifting gears, reversing and braking. Over time, the advent of various manual and automatic transmissions has required different footwork. Mr. Naruse's design is a unified pedal, shaped to accommodate the entire foot. On the right side is an accelerator bar. At any point, the driver can push down on the pedal to activate the brakes, while automatically releasing the accelerator bar. In light of the recent Toyota recalls, the Obama administration has said it might require automakers to equip new cars with "smart pedals," systems already used in some cars, that deactivate the accelerator when the brake pedal is pressed. But the smart pedals would not prevent drivers from pressing the gas pedal instead of the brakes. "Simply speaking, the conventional pedal setup, which forces drivers to switch back and forth between pedals, is dangerous," Mr. Matsunaga said. "Mr. Naruse's pedal works because it takes into account how our bodies work," he said. "It makes sure that when we make a mistake, the car stops." Replacing standard pedals with the Naruse device requires no big changes to a car's braking or acceleration systems, Mr. Naruse said, and retrofitting costs about 100,000 yen ( 1,156) each. The biggest challenge of mass marketing the pedal, driving specialists said, would not be cost or technology, but the need to fundamentally change the way millions of people drive.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
SAN FRANCISCO For decades, the district south of downtown and alongside San Francisco Bay here was known as either Rincon Hill, South Beach or South of Market. This spring, it was suddenly rebranded on Google Maps to a name few had heard: the East Cut. The peculiar moniker immediately spread digitally, from hotel sites to dating apps to Uber, which all use Google's map data. The name soon spilled over into the physical world, too. Real estate listings beckoned prospective tenants to the East Cut. And news organizations referred to the vicinity by that term. "It's degrading to the reputation of our area," said Tad Bogdan, who has lived in the neighborhood for 14 years. In a survey of 271 neighbors that he organized recently, he said, 90 percent disliked the name. The swift rebranding of the roughly 170 year old district is just one example of how Google Maps has now become the primary arbiter of place names. With decisions made by a few Google cartographers, the identity of a city, town or neighborhood can be reshaped, illustrating the outsize influence that Silicon Valley increasingly has in the real world. Yet how Google arrives at its names in maps is often mysterious. The company declined to detail how some place names came about, though some appear to have resulted from mistakes by researchers, rebrandings by real estate agents or just outright fiction. In Los Angeles, Jeffrey Schneider, a longtime architect in the Silver Lake area, said he recently began calling the hill he lived on Silver Lake Heights in ads for his rental apartment downstairs, partly as a joke. Last year, Silver Lake Heights also appeared on Google Maps. Here's how navigation apps are turning quiet neighborhoods into traffic nightmares. "Now for every real estate listing in this neighborhood, they refer to it," he said. "You see a name like that on a map and you believe it." Before the internet era, neighborhood names developed via word of mouth, newspaper articles and physical maps that were released periodically. But Google Maps, which debuted in 2005, is updated continuously and delivered to more than one billion people on their devices. Google also feeds map data to thousands of websites and apps, magnifying its influence. In May, more than 63 percent of people who accessed a map on a smartphone or tablet used Google Maps, versus 19.4 percent for the Chinese internet giant Alibaba's maps and 5.5 percent for Apple Maps, according to comScore, which tracks web traffic. Google said it created its maps from third party data, public sources, satellites and, often most important, users. People can submit changes, which are reviewed by Google employees. A Google spokeswoman declined further comment. Yet some submissions are ruled upon by people with little local knowledge of a place, such as contractors in India, said one former Google Maps employee, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly. Other users with a history of accurate changes said their updates to maps take effect instantly. Many of Google's decisions have far reaching consequences, with the maps driving increased traffic to quiet neighborhoods and once almost provoking an international incident in 2010 after it misrepresented the boundary between Costa Rica and Nicaragua. The service has also disseminated place names that are just plain puzzling. In New York, Vinegar Hill Heights, Midtown South Central (now NoMad), BoCoCa (for the area between Boerum Hill, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens), and Rambo (Right Around the Manhattan Bridge Overpass) have appeared on and off in Google Maps. Matthew Hyland, co owner of New York's Emily and Emmy Squared pizzerias, who polices Google Maps in his spare time, said he considered those all made up names, some of which he deleted from the map. Other obscure neighborhood names gain traction because of Google's endorsement, he said. Someone once told him they lived in Stuyvesant Heights, "and then I looked at Google Maps and it was there. And I was like, 'What? No. Come on,'" he said. In Detroit, some residents have been baffled by Google's map of their city, which is blanketed with neighborhood monikers like NW Goldberg, Fishkorn and the Eye. Those names have been on Google Maps since at least 2012. Timothy Boscarino, a Detroit city planner, traced Google's use of those names to a map posted online around 2002 by a few locals. Google almost identically copied that map's neighborhoods and boundaries, he said down to its typos. One result was that Google transposed the k and h for the district known as Fiskhorn, making it Fishkorn. A former Detroit city planner, Arthur Mullen, said he created the 2002 map as a side project and was surprised his typos were now distributed widely. He said he used old books and his local knowledge to make the map, approximating boundaries at times and inserting names with tenuous connections to neighborhoods, hoping to draw feedback. "I shouldn't be making a mistake and 20 years later people are having to live with it," Mr. Mullen said. Now, local real estate listings, food delivery sites and locksmith ads use Fishkorn and the Eye. Erik Belcarz, an optometrist from nearby Novi, Mich., named his new publishing start up Fishkorn this year after seeing the name on Google Maps. "It rolls off the tongue," he said. Detroit officials recently canvassed the community to make an official map of neighborhoods. That exercise fixed some errors, like Fiskhorn (though Fishkorn remains on Google Maps). But for many districts where residents were unsure of the history, authorities relied largely on Google. The Eye and others are now part of that official map. In San Francisco, the East Cut name originated from a neighborhood nonprofit group that residents voted to create in 2015 to clean and secure the area. The nonprofit paid 68,000 to a "brand experience design company" to rebrand the district. Andrew Robinson, executive director of the nonprofit, now called the East Cut Community Benefit District (and previously the Greater Rincon Hill Community Benefit District), said the group's board rejected names like Grand Narrows and Central Hub. Instead they chose the East Cut, partly because it referenced an 1869 construction project to cut through nearby Rincon Hill. The nonprofit then paid for streetlight banners and outfitted street cleaners with East Cut apparel. But it wasn't until Google Maps adopted the name this spring that it got attention and mockery. "The East Cut sounds like a 17 dollar sandwich," Menotti Minutillo, an Uber engineer who works on the neighborhood's border, said on Twitter in May. Mr. Robinson said his team asked Google to add the East Cut to its maps. A Google spokeswoman said employees manually inserted the name after verifying it through public sources. The company's San Francisco offices are in the neighborhood (as is The New York Times bureau), and one of the East Cut nonprofit's board members is a Google employee.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Want more basketball in your inbox? Sign up for Marc Stein's weekly N.B.A. newsletter here. Even with that spotless 6 0 record in the N.B.A. finals, and 27 victories in the 29 playoff series he contested in the 1990s, Michael Jordan is unlikely to ever completely shut down the Greatest of All Time debate. There will always be someone out there who prefers Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul Jabbar or, yes, even LeBron James. Yet such rampant winning does engender tremendous privilege. No other luminary in league history could have managed what Jordan just pulled off: His Airness made the N.B.A. stash exclusive behind the scenes footage of his Chicago Bulls' sixth and final title run in 1997 98 for nearly 20 years, then watched the 10 part documentary series that he finally blessed attract an audience of 4.9 million to 6.3 million for each serving. As we got deeper and deeper into "The Last Dance," criticism about the unparalleled control that Jordan had with two of his closest business associates, Estee Portnoy and Curtis Polk, operating as executive producers grew louder and louder. Our own Sopan Deb was on this point from the start, but nothing amplified the noise like the two fisted blast to The Wall Street Journal from the noted documentarian Ken Burns, who asserted that Jordan's influence over the project is "not the way you do good journalism" nor "the way you do good history." Questions will persist about the glorification of Jordan's bullying of teammates, even when it so plainly crossed the line with Scott Burrell (and others), and why it went unchallenged for 10 hours of storytelling. The same holds for the dearth of voices speaking up for the late Bulls General Manager Jerry Krause while Jerry Reinsdorf completely dodged tough questions about why he, as the Bulls' owner, didn't assert his authority (or spend more freely) to keep a dynastic team together. The constantly shifting timeline, back and forth from the 1997 98 season to various chapters in Jordan's past that built up to his final season in Chicago, was an oft cited source of viewer consternation. The total avoidance of Jordan's own parenting, given the depths of his bond with his father, James, was another sizable hole. Ditto for Jordan's refusal to acknowledge his role in keeping Isiah Thomas off the United States Olympic team in 1992 something he had previously acknowledged in Jack McCallum's 2012 book about the Dream Team. Yet I can't co sign the notion that the production, as some say, is merely an infomercial for No. 23's legacy. It is not a definitive, balanced retelling from the Burns school, but Jordan's frankness, pouring out of three interviews conducted by the director Jason Hehir over roughly eight hours, will give it an everlasting gravitas. To convince Jordan to grant the requisite sitdowns, and ultimately to admit that he could be a tyrannical teammate, Michael Tollin of Mandalay Sports Media, an executive producer of "The Last Dance," made it a big part of his pitch in June 2016 that Jordan needed this documentary now. This would be Jordan's ideal opportunity, Tollin explained, to properly educate a new generation of consumers, namely those buying his sneakers who had never seen him play. I remain convinced that Jordan was motivated by LeBron's gains in the G.O.A.T. debate more than anything. James had just led the Cleveland Cavaliers to the championship by overturning a 3 1 series deficit to the 73 win Golden State Warriors when Jordan gave his blessing in June 2016. As Tollin also told us in an April 17 article previewing the docuseries, Jordan committed to the project on the same day that the Cavaliers were being feted in Cleveland with a championship parade. Your humble newsletter curator has never been a Jordan worshiper, but I delighted in the return of N.B.A. appointment television as much as anyone, especially since it was so caked in nostalgia. I loved the flashbacks to the 1980s, my favorite N.B.A. decade, and Chicago's old uniforms with the delicious script lettering and short sleeved sweat jackets. I got tingly every time I heard the Bulls' best of all time intro music: "Sirius" by The Alan Parsons Project. Most of all, I loved the unvaulted at last footage of interactions that we would have never otherwise seen: Jordan, Ron Harper and Burrell on the bench in Paris; Jordan and his Eastern Conference teammates speaking so openly (and critically) about a young Kobe Bryant "the little Laker boy" shortly before tipoff of the 1998 All Star Game at Madison Square Garden; Jordan crossing paths with then Pacers Coach Larry Bird after Chicago crushed Indiana's N.B.A. finals dreams in a taut Game 7. The way M.J. mercilessly ribbed Larry Legend like no one else could about having extra time to work on his golf game will stay with me. I wanted even more of that footage that has been locked away for so long, but Hehir was in an unenviable position. Before even getting to what second guessers like me craved, he had to answer to ESPN, Netflix and the N.B.A. on top of Jordan's camp. One more challenge: Moving the documentary up from its planned June release, to satiate desperate customers deprived of the N.B.A. playoffs, meant rushing to finish the final two episodes under duress. Episode 10 didn't get wrapped up until last week. The overwhelming commercial success of the series ensures that the door has been flung wide open for follow up projects. Brace yourself for documentaries, podcasts and books that promise to take a more exacting look at, say, Jordan's worrisome gambling habits or his reluctance to speak about political and societal issues with interview subjects willing to be more critical than the ones we saw. The trouble with forthcoming entries from what is bound to be billed as "The Real Last Dance" genre is that none of them will have anything close to this level of cooperation from Jordan. Hehir and Co. had to do so much on Jordan's terms to get that cooperation, but to deliver His Airness after years of virtual seclusion? Even Krause would have to concede that it was a trade anyone in the N.B.A. would have made. The N.B.A.'s answer to the Supporters' Shield in Major League Soccer, named after David Stern, could be awarded to the team with the best regular season record. Steve Shernicoff Give the David Stern Award to the premier foreign born player every season in honor of the game's growth globally under Stern's watch. Bob Purcell, Carlsbad, Calif. The N.B.A. draft could renamed as the David Stern N.B.A. draft because you can't think about draft night in the N.B.A. without thinking about him. Daniel Duignan Stein: As promised, I am sharing more suggestions from readers about the best way for the N.B.A. to pay tribute to David Stern, who died Jan. 1 at age 77. The last of the enclosed ideas which, frankly, was also on the recent list of proposals from my longtime ESPN college Bruce Bernstein is my favorite. But I'd say this roundup of submissions mostly reiterates the concern raised when I first addressed this topic in the April 14 newsletter. It still feels as though the bulk of the ideas presented simply aren't big enough to properly reflect the impact Stern had during his 30 year run as commissioner. The draft ideas come the closest, but it's a challenge that won't be easily solved for a league that has already dedicated major honors to Larry O'Brien (Stern's predecessor whose name is on the N.B.A.'s championship trophy), Maurice Podoloff (whose name is on the league's regular season Most Valuable Player Award), Bill Russell (N.B.A. finals M.V.P.) and Kobe Bryant (All Star Game M.V.P.). Q: I kept looking for a reference to Allen Iverson to explain the big photo of him in last week's newsletter but found none. Why was that picture included? Nancy Feve Stein: May 7 marked 18 years since Iverson's famed rant during the 2002 playoffs in which he responded to questions about his practice habits and used the word "practice" more than 20 times. Because the first answer in last week's Corner Three section was devoted to the subject of practice facilities and N.B.A. workout routines during the coronavirus crisis, we decided to connect the two in tribute to the recent Iverson anniversary. Perhaps it wasn't as obvious as we presumed, but even the newsletter team can't resist whimsy on occasion. Q: Are you complaining? Be happy we have something to watch and don't be ungrateful. changeyotune from Twitter Stein: You heard zero tweeted complaints from me Saturday about the live Bundesliga soccer on our screens. I have nothing but admiration for the players who had to generate their own intensity, without the help of a crowd, after such a long and disorienting layoff and with as much concern as hope in the air. But I did expect more from the broadcast of the Borussia Dortmund Schalke match, especially at halftime, because a good broadcast is even more important now without fans in attendance to generate atmosphere. The Bundesliga is in the final year of its current contract with Fox as its United States rights holder. The league has thus known since the fall, long before the coronavirus outbreak, that Fox was no longer producing its own pre or postgame shows or halftime content. I understand that Bundesliga officials had countless details to fret about in putting together Saturday's six match slate. I have also noted this insight from my former ESPN colleague Ian Darke, who was forced to call one of Saturday's games from his home in England for BT Sport and urged viewers to "cut all commentators a bit of slack" because the broadcasting conditions were so fraught with peril. When Germany's Bundesliga resumed play over the weekend, becoming the first top flight league for a contact team sport to restart its season during the coronavirus pandemic, only 213 people were allowed inside each stadium. At the nine games contested Saturday, Sunday and Monday, 98 people were permitted on and around the field including each 18 player squad, coaching staffs and ball kids and 115 in various sections of the stands (such as security and medical personnel and members of the news media). The N.B.A. is still planning detailed protocols that it would institute upon resuming the 2019 20 season and has not yet determined the specific number of people who would be granted entry to the closed door games. The N.B.A. completed 78.9 percent of its regular season schedule, or 971 of a possible 1,230 games, before play was suspended on March 11. Only 71 days elapsed between Michael Jordan's final N.B.A. game, with the Washington Wizards on April 16, 2003, and the Cleveland Cavaliers' selection of LeBron James with the first pick in the N.B.A. draft on June 26, 2003. Despite his initial fears that the coaching change from Doug Collins to Phil Jackson in 1989 would take the ball out of his hands more than he could stomach, Michael Jordan led the league in scoring in each of his seven full seasons under Jackson. Wednesday will mark 20 years since the death of Malik Sealy, the St. John's star who played for four N.B.A. teams. Sealy was 30 on May 20, 2000, when his vehicle was struck by a pickup truck traveling on the wrong side of the road as he rode home from a birthday celebration for Kevin Garnett, his Minnesota Timberwolves teammate and close friend. Garnett wore No. 2 in Sealy's honor when he played for the Nets in 2013 14 and for half of the 2014 15 season. Hit me up anytime on Twitter ( TheSteinLine) or Facebook ( MarcSteinNBA) or Instagram ( marcsteinnba). Send any other feedback to marcstein newsletter nytimes.com.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
A commission from a company is one way to make ballet; another is to strike out on your own. With its two week Ballet Festival (formerly Ballet v6.0), the Joyce Theater spotlights independent choreographers, presenting six ensembles for two days each. BalletX, from Philadelphia, and Amy Seiwert's Imagery, from San Francisco, are full time enterprises; others, like the Ashley Bouder Project, spring up intermittently. But all find ways to produce ballet on their own terms. The first week brings Joshua Beamish's MOVE: The Company, with guests from the Royal Ballet and American Ballet Theater; Chamber Dance Project, from Washington, D.C.; and Ms. Bouder's group in new works by Adriana Pierce, Andrea Schermoly and Mr. Beamish. Ms. Bouder, a New York City Ballet principal, will be joined by colleagues from that company. Week 2 delivers more City Ballet stardom, when Emery LeCrone unveils a duet for Russell Janzen and Sara Mearns.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
You will never believe how I grew up. My mother, truly out of nowhere, became religious when I was 12. Not just regular religious, lighting Shabbat candles and forgoing pork, but truly Orthodox. Mega Orthodox. Ultra Orthodox. She and my father had divorced six years before, and now we lived in Brooklyn, in what was called Flatbush at the time and has probably been renamed something fancy. My mother remarried when I was 14, to a newly Orthodox Israeli just like her, and suddenly nothing in my house now located in Canarsie, which retains its name made sense. Literally, it didn't. I didn't know Hebrew, and that's what they spoke. My sisters eagerly followed my mother's path to observance. I was sent to a yeshiva, and, with no friends outside this community , I began to grow concerned that I was not being prepared for the larger world. The TV, stored in the basement, was my gateway to mainstream society. I watched a very strange short lived show called "Tribes" to learn how teenagers should interact. I watched "A Different World" to see what college would be like. I watched the news to make sure I wasn't pronouncing words with a Yiddish or Israeli accent (so much so that I overcorrected; it wasn't until I registered for wedding gifts that I learned that the word "spatula" was not pronounced "spatuler"). I watched "Beverly Hills, 90210" so that I could understand what public school was like, as if religion makes school any more or less terrible than secularism does. This wasn't self loathing, I promise. (There was plenty of that, but this was not it.) This was self preservation. This was survival. I was going to leave my house and never wear a long skirt again. I was going to smoke cigarettes and dance with men. I was going to have sect choo uhl intercourse, despite being told several times over a health class in my yeshiva that good girls don't use condoms, stop writing down what the surgeon general is saying in this short film! I was going to date. I was going to marry someone who was not even a little religious. And my marriage would be normal and I would be a regular wife. But right then, I knew I didn't stand a chance. So, one Tuesday night at 10 p.m., I found my marital instruction guide: I found "Thirtysomething." "Thirtysomething" was a four season long ABC drama about a group of friends who live in Philadelphia and struggle with their marriages and relationships as they settled in for middle age. It debuted in 1987, when I was 11, but I didn't get wind of it until I was in 10th grade, just before it was canceled. But it soon aired late nights on Lifetime, and I watched it like the Phi Beta Kappa scholar of secular society I had become. Because here were characters who could teach me something. Here was a social class I could aspire toward. I wanted so badly to be just like them: middle class, comfortable, seen, loved, career driven, relationship driven, tortured by tiny things but overall a good, upstanding yuppie trying to navigate her place between her idealistic values and what the world demanded of her. This was my American dream . Recently, I've been thinking a lot about "Thirtysomething" again. All these years later, I am publishing my first novel t his month and it just so happens that it's about marriage and how it has changed as we inch closer to gender parity (actual or perceived). It is about this agreement we make, rooted in religious observance and in tax law, and trying to figure out if it's still a valid one, if it can ever be a fair one. Lately, as I've been discussing the book, I'm asked the same question over and over: People wanted to know when I started thinking critically about marriage. The answer is that I've been doing it for so long I can't remember . I began wondering just how much "Thirtysomething" did end up influencing me, how much I was affected by those late nights, watching in the darkness and silence of my childhood home. I decided to watch the series again, all the way through. Here I am, I thought. I made it to 13 years of marriage . I'm not young and impressionable anymore. I'm not even in my 30s anymore. I'm safe. I can evaluate this like a scientist, now that I'm safe. When finally you are set up in front of the show, prepare yourself for the fashion. On the endless late November day when "Thirtysomething" seems to take place, the characters, differentiated in personality and marital status, meet squarely in the same aisle of an L.L. Bean, where they have somehow all found that they have the exact same taste in Fair Isle sweaters, plaid scarves, elastic cuffed sweatpants, cozy woolen socks, tucked in sweatshirts, tucked in cardigans, jumper dresses, wide legged jeans, long, full skirts, Top Siders, suspenders. For outerwear, Hope, the same age as everyone else matriarch, wears a puffy, shoulder padded coat that looks like a burrito costume. Ellyn, Hope's childhood friend, has a black leather coat so angular that it makes her look like the commander of a space army from the future. But the flannel was the real star of the show. It is in the show's flannel as opposed to, say, its casting that "Thirtysomething" commits to diversity: Tartan, Scotch, Black Watch, Tattersall, Glen, you name it. When Nancy gets cancer, her sister, Deb, brings her a navy plaid flannel robe, whereas Deb has a red flannel one, almost the same model. There is so much flannel in this show that Hope even addresses it in Season 2. Packing for a camping trip, she speaks dreamily of her feelings for the fabric. She loves it so much, "especially," she says, "when it gets so worn it's about to rip." Once the shock of the show's fashion subsides, it is easy to relax into its pleats. The creators of "Thirtysomething" always said it was a show about the small moments of life, and it was this smallness, now in my second watching, that made me understand why I'd gotten so attached in the first place: close up expressions, close up emotion, tiny gestures, the recognition of each character as a sub archetype of the main yuppie archetype. Michael, the Jew in search of a way to accommodate his values and his hedonism; Hope, his conservative, judgmental stay at home wife; goofy Elliot, Michael's philandering business partner; insecure Nancy, Elliot's long suffering, squelched artist of a wife; ambitious, insecure, unmarried Ellyn; desperate Melissa, Michael's photographer cousin who delivers every joke about her therapist tinged in borscht belt; idealistic hippie Gary, Michael's friend from college, played by a Nordic wolf. The show is so much about small moments that when big moments arrive, you could lose your balance. Nancy's cancer, Gary's death hoo boy, Gary's death. I wasn't allowed to watch "Thirtysomething" as a 10th grader, and so the night Gary died, I was left alone in secret with no one to process it with. I called up my friend Pam and we sat quietly on the phone together . As I rewatched the show, I felt something I didn't expect, particularly since I'm generally so nostalgic I could think back on a mugging with affection. Something was leaving me hostile and withered , though I couldn't figure out what. I tried to remember what it felt like to love the show. I tried to remember whom I latched onto as an aspirational character. It's hard to imagine that I ever wanted to be a Hope or a Nancy, but I definitely would never have wanted to be an Ellyn or Melissa, out there in limbo, video dating for love while the cold Susannahs of the world got pregnant with upstanding (if doomed) guys like Gary. There was criticism at the time that the show fetishized stay at home mothers, and maybe back then I did, too, but the behavior (mine and the show's) was probably for lack of imagination of a future where being single didn't mean you were childless, or when childlessness didn't mean you were considered pathetic or lonely. There's an episode in Season 2 that ends with Ellyn reading a book on her couch, the point being that she can do that while the characters chasing babies and folding the endless laundry cannot. You'd have to be crazy to see that as pathetic, while Hope juggles her baby with her passive aggression. But Ellyn ends up married. Gary's ghost reassures Michael in the final season that Melissa and Lee eventually marry and have a baby. Back then, it was rare to convey to an audience that a person could wind up alone and still have a full life and a happy ending. No yuppie left behind. Early in the first season, Hope is dancing in the foyer with their baby, Jan ey, when Michael comes home from work to kiss them both on the lips. She waits at the window sometimes to see Michael's car pull in then races to the door so she can greet him. Hope is a good domestic partner. She listens. She knows exactly what is going on at every single stage of Michael's work drama (and you should have seen how resentful he became when she occasionally fell off her game because she had a miscarriage during his first day of work at a giant, menacing advertising firm), his friendship drama, his extended family drama, his spiritual drama, his aging drama, his existential drama. Did I miss anything? He eats the dinner she makes. She clears the table and sets it again for a dessert and coffee course. She is not conveying that her day was long, too that she wishes they could just be watching TV. I stayed home with my older son the first year after he was born. I'd left my job at a start up, and was going to return to writing as soon as he was in some kind of child care situation. I would wait for 4 p.m. each day, at which point I'd call my husband, Claude. I'd ask him first casually, then panicked when he thought he might be coming home. The only good answer was, "I'm on my way," and it was 4, so that was never the answer. But my skin was crawling with stagnancy. Do you know what it is to watch a baby grow up, day by day? It is a privilege and it is a drag. "It goes by so fast," women who happened upon me at the grocery store or park would tell me. "When does that start?" I wanted to say. "When does it start to go fast?" In my rewatching, I heard echoes of phrases I use when having a conflict with my husband or friends. I saw reactions from Hope and Nancy that mirror the same reactions I have today. But I don't see myself. I never danced in the foyer with the baby, waiting for my husband. I always sucked up all the oxygen in the room. I never waited for a better time to talk about something stressful. All that watching, all that training and I was never able to absorb the show's real lesson, which is that marriage is a thing that thrives not just on love but on self control and fortitude. That's where I failed. Having realized that Hope was an ideal I had already failed to reach, I turned my eyes to Nancy and Elliot, a couple I hadn't given a thought to when I was young. Elliot had left Nancy in Season 1. One day, after a school conference to discuss their son, Ethan, they pull into the driveway and he tells her that he needs some time. Eventually, they file for divorce. Nancy spends time getting her life in order, taking a writing class, finding a boyfriend. And just as she is about to sell her first children's book to a Fancy Publisher, Elliot realizes that he wants to be married to her again. There is a montage of him trying to win her back, scored to Fine Young Cannibals' "She Drives Me Crazy." She hesitates, but then she relents. They are fine. He has changed, or something. This was the show's greatest lie, that people who divorce get back together, and once they do, they are like horny newlyweds, that the past is forgiven, that people change that people even want to change, to be better for each other. Later, in one of the Thanksgiving episodes (sometimes they all felt like Thanksgiving episodes), Elliot has moved back in. Ethan visits a friend whose parents are divorced. The dad comes home with a new girlfriend to announce that he won't be able to make it for the holiday. The mother comes out in a bathrobe, angry that he brought his girlfriend into her house. He reminds the mother that it's his house, really, and that he can come and go as he pleases, and by the way, it's a pigsty. Ethan leaves and a few nights later, when he screams from his bedroom because he hears sirens in the distance, Elliot races in to show him that nothing's wrong, that he's here and he's not going to leave again. Before the episode was over, my husband called me down to dinner. But I couldn't move. I paused the show, frozen. I touched my face; it was wet. I'd been crying. I can't even tell you how staggering the pain was right t hen . I had entered into this rewatching because I thought that I was curious about my behavior in my own marriage, but I wasn't thinking about that. I was thinking about my parents' divorce. I was trying to understand what had happened to me, this definitional thing that was an event in my parents' lives, but a chronic condition for their daughters. I never understood my parents. I barely remember their fights. When I was first watching the show, it was to defend myself from their fate; now that I was watching it, it was to try to understand how that fate came to be. I'm 43. I am bewildered by the people I know who dredge up their childhoods all the time at our age. But look at me: I was backing into that the whole time. Just then, as my family waited for me downstairs, I knew that I didn't really get into this not the book, or the "Thirtysomething" experiment because of any insight I have about marriage. It was because of the trauma of my parents' divorce our divorce, my and my sisters' divorce, the horrible thing that happened to me and to us that I should be over and somehow I am not. God, how pathetic I am. How broken I am. How pathetic I am. At dinner, my children asked me what was wrong. I told them I had just watched something sad but that I was O.K. My husband reached across the table, took my hand and kissed it. My sons made kissy noises and my reaction was not jovial or light. I hissed at them, like a snake, something primal and reptilian and disgusted rising up in me. I never saw my parents kiss once. I never saw them hold hands. I don't remember a moment of sentiment over their daughters or our accomplishments that caused them to look at each other warmly. My children have seen us kiss. They've seen us fight, and make up. They have seen me seek my husband's arms for comfort. Usually my happiness that they don't have to endure what I did is greater than my jealousy of it. That night it was not. That night the pain of my childhood the pain that has informed my entire life was like the flannel Hope loved. That night it was so worn it was about to rip . Three years ago , as I looked into the future and saw the arc of my marriage shaped like a rainbow and not like a lightning bolt, I pulled up a Word document and got to work on the novel. It is called "Fleishman Is in Trouble," and just like this isn't the essay I set out to write, it is not the book I set out to write. It is not about marriage but about divorce. People ask me how Claude feels about this. I tell them that it would never occur to him that my obsession with divorce has anything to do with him. How did he know that before I did? The morning after I hissed at my poor children for delighting in their parents' affection for each other, Claude found me in bed, finishing Season 3. It was a new episode. Ethan had moved on. He was no longer worried about his parents. Claude sat down next to me and watched for a while. He said the show seemed miserable. I said it was. I was sorry I had decided to watch it. I was sorry I had written a book. In an hour, I had to do a phone interview about it. Maybe I would cancel the interview, I told Claude. Maybe I would just go back to sleep. The sadness is always there, I told him. It's never going away. It is not resolved, just shoved into the background until I do stupid things like this like write a novel that was supposed to be about marriage but ends up being about divorce, like look at my present through the prism of the past, like look at my success through the prism of failure, like watch all of "Thirtysomething" in what was supposed to be an academic exercise but ended up as part of a continuing , thorough inventory of how I got to be this messed up. Claude stood up and raised the shades in our bedroom. Sunlight illuminated the dust suspended in the air. He said that it was beautiful outside; we should take a walk. I said I hadn't showered in two days, that I was too disgusting to go out. The thing about small moments is that if you are trained to recognize them, they will kill you dead every time. Claude took the remote out of my hand and told me that this was New Jersey in the spring and we never know when nice weather will turn. I told him I had to do the interview. He said it wasn't for another hour. So I stood up, put on my shoes and we walked out the door. I turned my face to the sun. He was right. There was the past and there was the future, but right now it was beautiful, and I had been inside, missing it all this time. Taffy Brodesser Akner is a staff writer for the magazine, a contributor to Arts and the author of the novel "Fleishman Is in Trouble," to be published this month.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
With what seems a steady drumbeat of terrorist attacks targeting tourist attractions and events, travel today can be an anxiety provoking proposition. In the last two months alone, for example, Britain, often thought of as a safe bet for travel, has been hit by a number of attacks, including one at a concert in Manchester that left 22 people dead, another at London Bridge that killed six people and yet another this week outside a mosque, which killed one person and injured 11. Given the environment, is traveling safe and even worth it? Experts say yes, for the most part. "Terrorist attacks are a growing concern around the world, but that shouldn't deter people from traveling," said Matt Dumpert, a senior director at Kroll, a security consulting company in New York. "The reality is that a terrorist attack can happen anywhere in the world at any time, so staying at home isn't going to necessarily keep you safe." And, as Seth Kugel pointed out in a New York Times column last year, the statistics are on your side. Other causes of death while traveling, such as car accidents and suicide, far outweigh the chances of death by terrorism. Mike Ackerman, an expert in travel security and the founder and chairman of the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., security consulting firm Ackerman Group, agreed. "The likelihood of a terrorist attack happening when you're traveling is very slight," he said. Even so, he acknowledged, "the fear of one, for some people, is very intense." Here, some tips on how to travel in today's uncertain times. Determining a Destination's Safety and Staying Safe Once You're There Rely on the State Department: The single best way for travelers to find out if a particular destination is safe is to check the State Department website. Mr. Ackerman advised checking it when you are making your vacation plans, then again before your departure to see if the security status of that destination has changed. Also, Mr. Dumpert at Kroll said that travelers shouldn't assume that a destination is unsafe if a terrorist attack has recently happened there. "In general, the security in a destination where a terrorist attack has occurred is bolstered following the attack," he said. Avoid Tourist Magnets: Mr. Ackerman advised staying away from attractions popular with tourists because these are often targets. They include large museums, buildings offering city views and outdoor markets. "Any place that attracts large crowds is attractive for terrorists to hit," he said. He suggested visiting smaller museums, lesser known neighborhoods and other not so touristy sights. What to Do if a Terrorist Attack Happens Near You Assess What Happened and Seek Safety Immediately: If you hear an explosion or see an attack, Mr. Dumpert advised taking a few seconds to assess the situation. Once you have an idea of what's going on, get to safety as fast as possible. "You're more likely to run into trouble if you don't take quick and decisive action," he said. If you are in a mall, for example, head for the nearest exit or find a bathroom in which to hide. If you're in a hotel, consider all exits, such as a service door, and hiding places, such as the hotel's kitchen. If you are in a crowded area outdoors, run in the opposite direction from the commotion. Call for Help: Don't assume that help is on its way. "What we've seen from past incidences is that no help is called for several minutes after an attack because people think that the authorities have already been dispatched," Mr. Dumpert said. Once you are in a safe place, call the local emergency line. In the United States that's 911; in many parts of Europe it's 112; in Asia it varies by country always know what it is. When you reach a person on the emergency line, immediately relay your name and location so the dispatcher will know where to send help if you get disconnected. How to Have a Relaxing Vacation Take Care of Your Body: The times may seem frightening, but try to calm down. "Taking time out for yourself is restorative and helps you deal with your daily stresses more effectively," said Risa Neuwirth, a New York City psychotherapist who specializes in holistic psychotherapy. Wherever you are in the world, whether it's a big city, a beach resort or a mountain cabin, practice self care daily. Consider a massage, a yoga class, beginning your day with a 10 minute meditation or engaging in exercise such as a long walk or a scenic jog. "The idea is to release tension from your body, and all these ways help," Ms. Neuwirth said. And don't neglect nutrition. Ms. Neuwirth said that if you are not eating well, the balance of your body is off, and you're apt to be more anxious. Try a Digital Detox: Being bombarded by worrisome news can intensify anxiety. Miriam Geiser, a travel consultant with KK Travels Worldwide in Chicago who has planned self care getaways for clients and has taken several herself, recommends a digital detox, in which you take a complete break from using your cellphone, tablet and computer. "It will be challenging at first, but you'll feel freer and much calmer by the end of your trip," she said. She suggested a nature focused trip where you can go on hikes, bike rides and walks; a national park close to home is always a good and affordable bet. Alternatively, try a resort or hotel in a picturesque setting in a more far flung location. "Even a few days where you're not technologically connected will do the trick," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Credit...Heather Sten for The New York Times With two more high profile plays opening in New York this season and a huge movie deal in the works Theresa Rebeck's time may have come. Sarah Bernhardt ran her own theater. Correction: She owned her own theater, which she also ran. It had a dressing room that was actually five rooms, with a marble fireplace. Writers like Victor Hugo and Edmond Rostand lined up to create new works for her. And if Bernhardt preferred to perform a classic, she could put on tights and play Hamlet for an audience of 1,700. Flash forward to the writers' room of a television series, where Theresa Rebeck who has consistently toggled between theater and TV for the last 30 years was one of two women present. A male colleague was suggesting a plot point in a coming episode. "Two people walk into a bar," he said. "No, wait. Two people and a woman walk into a bar." Can you blame Ms. Rebeck for wanting to spend a bit of time in the imperious, world beating presence of the Divine Sarah? And so she has trained her love for robust storytelling and her fondness for strong women on Bernhardt's protracted mission to make sense of Hamlet. The result, the playful but pointed "Bernhardt/Hamlet," opens Sept. 25 at the American Airlines Theater, starring Janet McTeer in both title roles. "I've put in my 10,000 hours," she said during a break in "Bernhardt/Hamlet" rehearsals, alluding to the much cited road to mastery that Malcolm Gladwell described in his book "Outliers." "And I'm very curious about what my instrument can do at this point." That number seems low. "Bernhardt/Hamlet," "Seared" and "Downstairs" are among some two dozen full length plays she has written, including three others that have reached Broadway since 2007: "Mauritius," "Seminar" and "Dead Accounts." In addition, Ms. Rebeck has written three novels and the alternately soothing and scathing writing primer "Free Fire Zone." And this doesn't even touch upon her Hollywood experience, which includes screenplays ranging from "Harriet the Spy" to "Catwoman." (Up next is the Jessica Chastain/Lupita Nyong'o espionage drama "355," which became the talk of this year's Cannes Film Festival when Universal Pictures bought the rights.) Her TV credits go even deeper, running the gamut from an award winning run on "NYPD Blue" to blink and you missed them efforts like "Maximum Bob." One more recent television stint was a lot harder to miss: a tempestuous turn as the creator and showrunner of the Broadway themed "Smash," from which she was fired after one season. As much as any event in her 30 year career, the dismissal is held up by many of her peers as Exhibit A of the difficulties that women face in entertainment. Six years later, Ms. Rebeck's shoulders still tensed at the mention of the series. "I think it was a mistake," she said quietly of her "Smash" experience. "I was proud of that show." (She went into much more detail about it in an essay for the 2017 book "Double Bind: Women on Ambition," where she also recounted the above anecdote about the toxic atmosphere on another TV show, which she declined to name.) Ms. Rebeck said this quickness stemmed from her ability to go into what she called "character head." In other words, she can enter each of her creations' brains and come up with character specific dialogue on the fly, a process she says has been compared to channeling. Each of these four new works relies heavily on recognizable characters (even when they're legendary theatrical figures like Bernhardt and Rostand, the "Cyrano de Bergerac" playwright and her purported collaborator/lover) behaving in recognizable ways (even when they're shooting their own brother in the arm, which Anjelica Huston does to Bill Pullman in "Trouble"). Tyne Daly, who stars in "Downstairs" alongside her brother, Tim Daly, fears that Ms. Rebeck's facility for narrative has somewhat obscured her gifts. "She's skillful in a way that I don't think gets enough credit," Ms. Daly said. "She has learned how to construct, how to build and how to surprise and delight along the way." But there's another force at work in her plays: a mix of high moral standards and empathy. Looking to fictional characters for insight into their creator's psyche can be risky, but a line from Irene, the stultified housewife played by Ms. Daly in "Downstairs," feels unusually apt. "When you look at things with compassion," Irene says, "they don't seem so terrible, really." The playwright Tina Howe believes that Ms. Rebeck's Catholic upbringing she went to church six days a week as a child in Cincinnati has had a profound imprint on her work. "There's a moral heart to Theresa," said Ms. Howe, a longtime colleague and moviegoing pal. "She's a force of nature who always carries her altar with her." But Ms. Rebeck, who wrote about Victorian melodrama for her Ph.D. dissertation at Brandeis, questions the idea that her plays have a polemical streak. "Somebody came up to me after 'Seared' and said, 'Don't you come down on the side of capitalism?' I don't come down on the side of anybody or anything. I don't think you make arguments in plays. I think you tell stories." Her television background may have honed her ability to tell a story through character, but her success in Los Angeles at a time before every playwright with a flair for naturalism eyed a gig there arguably did her few favors in theater circles. Like virtually everyone interviewed for this piece, Ms. Daly believes that sexism also affected the reception of her work. "She should be revered, and she is not," Ms. Daly said. "She is resisted. And the resistance comes when you're not a member of the penis club." Ms. Rebeck is more circumspect about what she feels is a gap between her work and the way it is received. "Earlier in my career, I would get, 'Oh, she's a feminist,' with kind of a nasty spin to it," she said. But she feels this is only part of the equation. There's also the fact that she is a Midwesterner. "People in the Midwest feel morally superior to people on the coasts, and people on the coasts feel intellectually superior to people in the Midwest," she said. "And intellectual superiority is, de facto, moral superiority." Perhaps even more than her success writing for television, her plays have the gall to resonate for the people sitting next to, in front of and (mostly) behind the critics. "Mauritius" and "Bad Dates" are among her works that have made American Theater magazine's annual list of the most produced plays nationwide. "We all remember that vicious review she received in The New York Times for 'The Butterfly Collection,'" Ms. Howe said. "She called me up sobbing and said, 'How do I deal with this sort of thing?'" Ms. Rebeck described the aftermath in vivid detail albeit without naming the play or critic in "Free Fire Zone." It is as sobering a reminder as you will find that reviews have professional and personal consequences. Still, the intervening years have been vindicating ones for Ms. Rebeck as well as for her causes. Anjelica Huston, the co star of "Trouble," first worked with her on that troubled first season of "Smash." "Things have changed considerably for women in just the few years since then, and I think her experience might be a lot different now," Ms. Huston said. In addition to cofounding the Lilly Awards in 2010 to honor women in theater, Ms. Rebeck recently invited to her Park Slope brownstone the members of the Honor Roll, an advocacy group for female playwrights over the age of 40. "It feels like the fruits of a lot of people's hard work are going to a younger generation," she said. "And that's great, and women are good sports in general, but there's a lost generation out there." Despite her success, those years of condescension and worse are never far away. Just as she uses that "character head" to know intuitively what her characters will say and do next, Ms. Rebeck has no problem revisiting the prejudices of a different era, prejudices that muffled and contorted and at times snuffed out her own voice. "I'm in a good spot now," she said. "But I try not to forget that younger self and what she went through. It was really painful sometimes. I admire the sturdiness of her. And so I don't want to forget her."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
LOS ANGELES All year, Hollywood executives have been brushing aside worries about box office stagnation in the United States and Canada by pointing to strong ticket sales in China. Ticket sales for imported films in China are up 34 percent this year, to roughly 2.3 billion, according to the Beijing research firm EntGroup. Look at Paramount's "Transformers: The Last Knight." That sequel managed only 45 million in its opening weekend in North America, but it took in 120 million in China. On closer look, however, the rosy picture doesn't quite hold up, underscoring why Hollywood has recently been pushing so hard for film related concessions from the Chinese government. New data from comScore, a Virginia based analytics firm, indicates that Hollywood is having a tough time in China. From Jan. 1 to June 30, Chinese cinemas played 24 movies from Hollywood, generating 1.76 billion in ticket sales. In the same period a year earlier, the country let in 22 Hollywood movies, which collected about 1.73 billion. That is a 1.7 percent increase a far shot from 35 percent, the figure for all imported movies. Films from countries other than the United States made up the difference. One was "Dangal," a Bollywood drama (partly financed by an Indian subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company) that collected a runaway 191 million in China in May. Over all, box office revenue in China totaled 3.7 billion in the first six months of the year, up 2 percent, an alarmingly low growth rate compared with what the market has delivered in the recent past. The slowdown is one reason the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the six biggest Hollywood studios, recently hired an accounting firm to audit the box office figures reported by Chinese theaters. Any uptick is positive, of course, but Hollywood is counting on China to deliver box office gains that are substantially higher. In North America, ticket sales for the summer are down 8 percent, compared with the same period in 2016, according to comScore; box office revenue for the year to date is flat. Analysts have been downgrading multiplex stocks as a result; Cinemark got that treatment on Sunday from RBC Capital Markets. So as they scratch for growth, studios like 20th Century Fox and Universal have been scrambling to position themselves as bigger players in China, where the number of movie screens has increased to more than 40,600 from 12,407 in 2012. The accounting firm PwC recently estimated that China would have roughly 80,377 screens by 2021 double the number in the United States. Studios have even made minimal fuss over the censorship demands. China not only limits the number of foreign films that play in the country, but often asks for substantial cuts in those it does allow in. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Some Hollywood offerings have done very well in China this year. "A Dog's Purpose," made by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Partners, collected a strong 88.2 million; in comparison, it took in 64 million in North America, which remains the world's No. 1 movie market. Sony's "Resident Evil: The Final Chapter" collected about 160 million in China; it managed only about 26.8 million in North America. At the same time, however, Hollywood suffered a parade of duds in China, including "The Lego Batman Movie," "Sing," "Power Rangers" and "King Arthur: Legend of the Sword." Even "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story" did only so so. And after that initial box office pop, "Transformers: The Last Knight" fell off a cliff. Hollywood could always make a comeback in China in the second half of the year, particularly if Beijing relaxes its traditional late summer blackout period for foreign films, as some analysts predict. "Everything can be changed as the political needs dictate," said Stanley Rosen, a political scientist with the U.S. China Institute at the University of Southern California. He noted that Universal's "Despicable Me 3" had a strong arrival last week, taking in 66 million over its opening weekend there. But analysts say studios are facing systemic challenges in the country, including a slowing overall economy. Chinese moviegoers are also growing more discerning; film quality is increasingly important. Movie theaters in China may also be hurt as streaming services proliferate. More than 80 million people in the country now pay to watch video online, a 32 percent increase from last year, according to Analysys, a Beijing research firm. Difficulties at the Chinese box office come as Hollywood presses Beijing to loosen its restrictions on imported films. Under an expiring five year deal, China annually allows 34 new overseas movies to play in its theaters. Although Chinese regulators have quietly inched that number higher, Hollywood studios want an expanded quota formalized and have asked for at least 50 slots. American movie executives are also pushing for shorter blackout periods, which China uses to promote local films, and longer marketing windows; under the current setup, Hollywood studios are given only about a month to mount advertising campaigns for their movies. "That's probably going to happen," Mr. Rosen said, referring to more advance notice. (China controls the release dates.) Hollywood also wants to receive a bigger portion of ticket sales. Studios receive about 50 percent of box office revenue in the United States, but China allows foreign companies to receive only a 25 percent cut. Studios have asked for closer to 40 percent. Mr. Rosen said negotiations over revised film terms, taking place between Chinese officials and the Office of the United States Trade Representative, could drag into next year. He noted that the Communist Party's 19th Party Congress will take place in Beijing in the fall. "I would be very, very surprised if anything was in place related to Hollywood before that," Mr. Rosen said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
On Monday, Fox will formally announce its prime time TV schedule for the 2016 17 television season. Here's a look at some of the highlights. Fox lost "American Idol," so cue the reboots. The way Fox executives explain it, familiar titles do not require the same "marketing muscle" as new shows, Dana Walden, the co chief executive of the Fox television group, said Monday morning. Among the findings in the intellectual property drawer? "Lethal Weapon," "Prison Break," "The Exorcist" and ... The "24" reboot will debut after the network's broadcast of the Super Bowl. Last year, "The X Files" premiered after the National Football Conference championship game which was watched by 45 million people on Fox and that six episode limited series promptly turned into a hit. So, how about more than 100 million viewers? After the post Super Bowl debut, Fox plans to broadcast the second episode of "24: Legacy" the following night. Speaking of "The X Files," Fox won't be bringing it back any time soon, which is disappointing news for the network. Mr. Newman said that the earliest the show could possibly come back would be at least a year from now, if not longer. Apparently pulling together the schedules of David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson and the show's creator, Chris Carter, has not been that easy. Ms. Walden did say they were all "on board" for a return.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
When Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit in back to back succession last fall, they had a profound impact on high season traffic in a handful of the hardest hit Caribbean islands, including Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and St. Maarten /St. Martin. Tourist arrivals dropped 8.7 percent across the Caribbean from January through April this year compared to the same period in 2017, according to the Caribbean Tourism Organization. Now the organization is predicting a 4.3 percent increase in tourism to the region in 2019 as the affected islands recover. Shuttered resorts on the most damaged islands are working diligently to reopen in time for winter. Here's a look at those resorts, island by island. Zemi Beach House and the Four Seasons Resort and Residences Anguilla have already reopened on Anguilla. Joining them this month, the remodeled CuisinArt Golf Resort Spa features new Mediterranean channeling interiors in blue and white across 91 rooms and seven villas (rooms from 550 a night). The resort's hydroponic farm is growing a greater variety of ingredients for its five restaurants, including the new, small plate focused KazBar, as well as the botanical scrubs in its 16 treatment room spa. An 18 hole golf course has renovated bunkers and new golf carts. In December, the former luxury resort Cap Juluca will reopen as Belmond Cap Juluca. The whitewashed, Greek inspired hideaway on Maundays Bay will have a new infinity pool, beach bar, landscaping and 10 additional rooms for a total of 108, each with a balcony or terrace and direct access to the beach (from 725). After sunrise yoga, guests can have breakfast at tables placed in shallow water, go kite surfing or visit the oceanfront spa with its own swimming pool. Expect Malliouhana, Auberge Resorts Collection to reopen next month with 46 restored rooms, an expanded pool area and, in early 2019, a new beachfront bar, an additional villa, suites and an expanded spa with six treatment rooms (from 795). On Tortola, the popular Sugar Mill resort, set on a former sugar plantation, was extensively damaged. It reopens this month with 24 refurbished rooms and two restaurants, including its fine dining restaurant set inside a 400 year old former sugar boiling house (rooms from 295). Partially reopened in spring, Scrub Island Resort, Spa Marina, which solely occupies 230 acre Scrub Island, expects to have all 52 guest rooms and suites reopened by the end of December (rooms from 359). The spa added a beachfront treatment cabana. On Virgin Gorda, Oil Nut Bay reopened last December and by the end of this year plans to open four new one bedroom villas, a water sports center offering guided snorkeling trips and sailing lessons, a two treatment room spa and a new marina village with a restaurant and shops (rooms from 550). Among the handful of renewed hotels on Dominica, the secluded Secret Bay is reopening this month with six restored villas, each with a plunge pool (from 705). The property's first restaurant, Zing Zing, will also open along with a newly built yoga pavilion. On the island's east coast, Citrus Creek Plantation is expected to resume operations in early 2019 with nine restored cottages on 20 acres (from 115). Crops were replanted in the resort garden that grows much of the produce served at the riverside restaurant. In the capital of Roseau, the Fort Young Hotel currently has more than half of its 72 rooms as well as a new poolside bar open, with plans to complete its renovation in February (from 209). Puerto Rico is anticipating a tourism boost as some of its top hotels reopen, including Dorado Beach, a Ritz Carlton Reserve last month and St. Regis Bahia Beach Resort in December. Over 11,000 hotel rooms are currently available and tourism officials expect room inventory to reach 15,000, or pre Maria levels, by mid 2019. Among island classics, the El San Juan Hotel on Isla Verde Beach is expected to fully reopen in December. In early 2019, the 1949 vintage Caribe Hilton will be back with 652 remodeled rooms, new tennis courts, restaurants and bars. Airbnb reported 7,700 active home listings in Puerto Rico in September 2017. That figure shrank 11 percent after Hurricane Maria, but has rebounded to more than 8,300 listings today. The company also introduced its Puerto Rico version of Experiences, guided activities led by locals, in May. It now offers 80 of these tours, including a walking tour of old San Juan with an architect and paddle boarding lessons in a lagoon (each 25).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
'SIAH ARMAJANI: FOLLOW THIS LINE' at the Met Breuer (through June 2). Born in Iran, Armajani has been living in the United States since 1960. This retrospective ranges from work he did as a teenage activist in Tehran to models of the many public sculptures he has produced across America over the past five decades. It introduces us to a sharp social thinker, a wry (and increasingly melancholic) metaphysician, a plain style visual poet and, above all, an artist ethicist. "Bridge Over Tree," Armajani's wonderful large scale sculpture presented by Public Art Fund at Brooklyn Bridge Park (on the Empire Fulton Ferry Lawn through Sept. 29) to coincide with the Met show, is well timed for our present era of sundering moral confusion and offers ways forward from it. (Holland Cotter) 212 731 1675, metmuseum.org 'ARTISTS RESPOND: AMERICAN ART AND THE VIETNAM WAR, 1965 1975' (through Aug. 18) and 'TIFFANY CHUNG: VIETNAM, PAST IS PROLOGUE' (through Sept. 2) at Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. Everything in "Artists Respond," a big, inspiriting blast of a historical survey, dates from a time when the United States was losing its soul, and its artists some, anyway were trying to save theirs by denouncing a racist war. Figures well known for their politically hard hitting work Judith Bernstein, Leon Golub, Hans Haacke, Peter Saul, Nancy Spero are here in strength. But so are others, like Dan Flavin and Donald Judd and Barnett Newman, seldom associated with visual activism. Concurrent with the survey is a smaller, fine tuned show by a contemporary Vietnamese born artist, Tiffany Chung; it views the war through the eyes of people on the receiving end of aggression. (Cotter) 202 663 7970, americanart.si.edu 'MATTHEW BARNEY: REDOUBT' at Yale University Art Gallery in New Haven (through June 16). The wildly innovative sculptor and filmmaker, Yale class of 1989, heads back to the halls of ivy to present his first major project since the six hour excremental eruption of "River of Fundament." The exhibition shows Barney in a lighter, nimbler mode than he has displayed in years. The new film "Redoubt," shot in his home state of Idaho, riffs on the myth of Diana and Actaeon; the goddess, here, is an NRA approved sharpshooter, while the doomed voyeur is the artist himself, making plein air etchings of Diana and her attendants. Related copper etchings appear in the show, and Barney has electroplated them over varying times, encrusting them with weird metal nodules. "Redoubt" lacks the operatic grandeur some of Barney's fanboys prefer. But it's the most emancipated work of his career, and it should make a star of Eleanor Bauer, the dancer and choreographer whom he has entrusted with the film's most beautiful movement sequences. The film runs about two hours and screens on Saturday afternoons and on select weekdays; check the website for times. (Jason Farago) 203 432 0600, artgallery.yale.edu 'CAMP: NOTES ON FASHION' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 8). Inspired by Susan Sontag's famous 1964 essay, "Notes on 'Camp,'" the latest spectacular from the Met's Costume Institute attempts to define this elastic, constantly evolving concept, which leaves taste, seriousness and heteronormativity in the dust. The show researches camp's emergence in 18th century France and 19th century England, examines "Sontagian Camp" and culminates in an immense gallery of designer confectionaries from the 1980s to now that calls to mind a big, shiny Christmas tree barricaded with presents. (Roberta Smith) 212 535 7100, metmuseum.org 'THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION' at the Museum of the Moving Image (ongoing). The rainbow connection has been established in Astoria, Queens, where this museum has opened a new permanent wing devoted to the career of America's great puppeteer, who was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died, too young, in 1990. Henson began presenting the short TV program "Sam and Friends" before he was out of his teens; one of its characters, the soft faced Kermit, was fashioned from his mother's old coat and would not mature into a frog for more than a decade. The influence of early variety television, with its succession of skits and songs, runs through "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show," though Henson also spent the late 1960s crafting peace and love documentaries and prototyping a psychedelic nightclub. Young visitors will delight in seeing Big Bird, Elmo, Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef; adults can dig deep into sketches and storyboards and rediscover some old friends. (Farago) 718 784 0077, movingimage.us 'LINCOLN KIRSTEIN'S MODERN' at the Museum of Modern Art (through June 15). With George Balanchine, the indefatigable Kirstein (1907 96) founded the School of American Ballet and the New York City Ballet. But he was also an impassioned writer, collector, curator and devotee of photography who had much to do with MoMA in its early years. The museum commemorates his complex career with art, letters and ballet ephemera, drawn from its vast holdings. (Smith) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'ALICJA KWADE: PARAPIVOT' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 27). This shrewd and scientifically inclined artist, born in Poland and based in Berlin, has delivered the best edition in five years of the Met's hit or miss rooftop sculpture commission. Two tall armatures of interlocking steel rectangles, the taller of them rising more than 18 feet, support heavy orbs of different colored marble; some of the balls perch precariously on the steel frames, while others, head scratchingly, are squinched between them. Walk around these astral abstractions and the frames seem to become quotation marks for the transformed skyline of Midtown; the marbles might be planets, each just as precarious as the one from which they've been quarried. (Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. 'MORONI: THE RICHES OF RENAISSANCE PORTRAITURE' at the Frick Collection (through June 2). Moroni, among the best of underappreciated Renaissance painters, brought a new level of naturalism to his subjects, who included lavishly dressed aristocrats but also scholars and tradesmen. (See his depiction of an extraordinarily handsome, sensitive and contemporary looking tailor.) We seem to be looking at real people as they existed, unidealized, meticulously observed and psychologically present, especially in their direct appraising gazes. A thrilling show. (Smith) 212 288 0700, frick.org 'RADICALISM IN THE WILDERNESS: JAPANESE ARTISTS IN THE GLOBAL 1960S' at Japan Society (through June 9). This sturdy addition to our story of the global 1960s, organized by the respected art historian Reiko Tomii, introduces American audiences to three bold positions in Japanese art by one solo figure and two collectives who all worked far from the lights of Tokyo. Yutaka Matsuzawa, a Conceptualist with a Buddhist streak working in a forest near Nagano, made posters and mail art that aimed to imagine a world of total nothingness. The group GUN, in agrarian Niigata, produced breathtaking land art by filling pesticide sprayers with pigment and spewing color across fresh snow. And the Play, a collective in the Kansai region, sailed together on barges or built tree houses on hillsides to rediscover freedoms beyond social boundaries. The lesson: It's not just the opposition of East and West that needs rethinking, but that of the metropolis and the sticks. (Farago) 212 715 1258, japansociety.org 'SCENES FROM THE COLLECTION' at the Jewish Museum (ongoing). After a surgical renovation to its grand pile on Fifth Avenue, the Jewish Museum has reopened its third floor galleries with a rethought, refreshed display of its permanent collection, which intermingles 4,000 years of Judaica with modern and contemporary art by Jews and gentiles alike Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and the excellent young Nigerian draftswoman Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze. The works are shown in a nimble, nonchronological suite of galleries, and some of its century spanning juxtapositions are bracing; others feel reductive, even dilettantish. But always, the Jewish Museum conceives of art and religion as interlocking elements of a story of civilization, commendably open to new influences and new interpretations. (Farago) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org 'T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR' at the American Museum of Natural History (through Aug. 9, 2020). Everyone's favorite 18,000 pound prehistoric killer gets the star treatment in this eye opening exhibition, which presents the latest scientific research on T. rex and also introduces many other tyrannosaurs, some discovered only this century in China and Mongolia. T. rex evolved mainly during the Cretaceous period to have keen eyes, spindly arms and massive conical teeth, which could bear down on prey with the force of a U Haul truck; the dinosaur could even swallow whole bones, as affirmed here by a kid friendly display of fossilized excrement. The show mixes 66 million year old teeth with the latest 3 D prints of dino bones, and also presents new models of T. rex as a baby, a juvenile and a full grown annihilator. Turns out this most savage beast was covered with believe it! a soft coat of beige or white feathers. (Farago) 212 769 5100, amnh.org 'THE WORLD BETWEEN EMPIRES: ART AND IDENTITY IN THE ANCIENT MIDDLE EAST' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through June 23). The Met excels at epic scale archaeological exhibitions, and this is a prime example. It brings together work made between 100 B.C. and A.D. 250 in what we now know as Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. In the ancient world, all were in the sphere of two competing superpowers Rome to the west and Parthia to the east and though imperial influence was strong, it was far from all determining. Each of the subject territories selectively grafted it onto local traditions to create distinctive new grass roots cultural blends. Equally important, the show addresses the fate of art from the past in a politically fraught present. (Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'BETYE SAAR: KEEPIN' IT CLEAN' at the New York Historical Society (through May 27). Saar has been making important and influential work for nearly 60 years. Yet no big New York museum has given her a full retrospective, or even a significant one person show, since a 1975 solo at the Whitney Museum of American Art. As this exhibition demonstrates, the institutional oversight is baffling, as her primary themes racial justice and feminism (her 1972 breakthrough piece, "The Liberation of Aunt Jemima," merges the two by transforming the racist stereotype of the smiling black mammy into an armed freedom fighter) are exactly attuned to the present. (Cotter) 212 873 3400, nyhistory.org 'NARI WARD: WE THE PEOPLE' at the New Museum (through May 26). The persistent and liberating message in Ward's sculpture and room size installations is that art can be made from virtually anything. In this midcareer retrospective, anything means old carpets, plastic bags, bottles, zippers, bed springs, keys and furniture. Although the exhibition includes a number of large installations, Ward is best as a creator of curious and discrete sculptures, ones that remind us that our world is filled with potentially magical objects. We enter museums expecting to be transformed, but if we shift our perspective and look around us, we'll see that everyday life is really just art waiting to happen. (Martha Schwendener) 212 219 1222, newmuseum.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
For centuries, the wives of England's King Henry VIII have been remembered largely for the ways their marriages came to an end. Now comes a pair of young British theater makers, Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, with a revisionist take on those sorry stories: "Six," a pop musical in which each woman gets, at least for a few minutes, to reframe her fame. The show, long on wordplay ("Live in consort!") and short on running time (80 minutes), is coming to Broadway next year. "Six" will begin performances Feb. 13 and open March 12 at the Brooks Atkinson Theater, produced by Kenny Wax, Wendy and Andy Barnes , George Stiles and Kevin McCollum. "This is obviously the craziest thing that's ever happened to us," Ms. Moss, who is 25, said in an interview. She had never even seen a Broadway show until she visited New York earlier this year; Mr. Marlow, who is 24, had seen a few productions, starting with Cirque du Soleil's "Paramour," and came up with the idea for "Six" while daydreaming during a poetry class at Cambridge University.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
On most days, Facebook doesn't have much in common with President Trump. But at the moment, both are in the damage control business, as they try to get out from under the cloud of suspicion related to Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. Their goals collided in awkward fashion over the weekend when Rob Goldman, Facebook's vice president of advertising, posted a series of messages on Twitter that were meant to clear up misconceptions about Facebook's role in the election. Instead, he plunged the company deeper into controversy. "Most of the coverage of Russian meddling involves their attempt to effect the outcome of the 2016 US election," Mr. Goldman tweeted. "I have seen all of the Russian ads and I can say very definitively that swaying the election was NOT the main goal." Mr. Goldman was tweeting only for himself, but his comments, which drew praise from other Facebook executives on Twitter, were an unusually candid statement that flouted Facebook's well sculpted messaging strategy, which has generally been to stay as far away from partisan debates as possible. The tweets arrived soon after the blockbuster indictment of Russian nationals by the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, and they were noticed by right wing partisans, who saw them as supporting evidence for Mr. Trump's "no collusion" claims. Soon, Mr. Trump himself had retweeted them approvingly. Mr. Goldman eventually walked back some of his statements, but it was too late. Mr. Goldman had just given Mr. Trump something that looked like a Facebook stamped exoneration. Now, Facebook is in the uncomfortable position of reining in an off message executive, while clarifying that it didn't mean to bolster the president's position. Mr. Goldman did not respond to requests for comment, and the company declined to make him available for an interview. It is Facebook's right to defend itself, of course. The company has faced a raft of accusations of wrongdoing, some of which have indeed been overblown. Facebook was not the only social network manipulated by Russia's Internet Research Agency, the company at the heart of Mr. Mueller's indictment. And other companies, such as Twitter and YouTube, certainly share the blame for fostering a media ecosystem in which false news and propaganda can flourish. But Mr. Goldman's tweetstorm was unintentionally revealing. It showed that, years after hostile foreign actors first began using Facebook to wage an information war against the American public, some high ranking officials within the company still don't understand just how central Facebook was to Russia's misinformation campaign, and how consequential the company's mistakes have been. (Last year, in a tweet that fewer people saw, Andrew Bosworth, another Facebook vice president, claimed that the effects of Russian interference and fake news in 2016 were "marginal, even in a close election.") In real world terms, a part of Facebook still sees itself as the bank that got robbed, rather than the architect who designed a bank with no safes, and no alarms or locks on the doors, and then acted surprised when burglars struck. Even before Mr. Goldman's tweets were blasted along to Mr. Trump's 48 million followers, they lacked crucial context about what exactly Mr. Mueller's investigation had found. He made sweeping pronouncements about the misuse of Facebook's advertising products while neglecting to mention that most of Russia's exploitation took the form of nonadvertising posts. He claimed that swinging the election in Mr. Trump's favor was not a primary goal of Russia's Facebook campaign, when Mr. Mueller's indictment had just concluded that it was. He portrayed Facebook as having been eager to promote its findings on the Russia investigation, when in fact the company has made disclosures only under pressure from regulators, and has deliberately hidden data about Russia's interference from outside researchers. Some of Mr. Goldman's claims may have been narrowly true, but they were a prime example of misdirection. Why is educating citizens about digital literacy the solution to misinformation, as Mr. Goldman suggested, rather than fixing the tech platforms that make misinformation hard to distinguish from truth? Why should it reassure us that most of Russia's Facebook advertising was purchased after the election, rather than telling us that Facebook continued to drop the ball even after it knew it had a Russia problem? More than anything, the details contained in the indictment make clear how vulnerable Facebook still is to a hostile actor. None of the safeguards it has announced so far such as providing more transparency about political ads, or using snail mail postcards to verify the identities of certain political advertisers would stop a sophisticated and well funded foreign influence operation. And many of the tactics the Internet Research Agency used in 2016 including posing as American citizens to create large partisan Facebook pages and organizing offline rallies with the help of American co conspirators would be just as effective today. In a recent cover story, Wired detailed the soul searching journey that Facebook's executives have undertaken since the 2016 election. First, they denied that they'd done anything wrong. Then, after the scope of Russia's misinformation campaign became clear, they circled the wagons to protect the company's reputation and appease its critics. Only recently have certain executives, like Mark Zuckerberg, its chief executive, come to appreciate the scale and scope of Facebook's errors, and publicly accept responsibility for them. We may never get answers about what Facebook knew of the Russian interference campaign in 2016, and why it didn't act more forcefully to stop it. (Trust me, I've tried.) But it's deeply troubling that eight months before the 2018 midterms, as malicious forces continue to use social media to sow discord and meddle in elections all over the world, some at Facebook seem more interested in defending themselves from criticism than owning their mistakes, fixing their platform's problems and protecting our democracy.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Brown University in Providence, R.I., announced it will fully cover tuition for students in its master of fine arts program for acting and directing. The three year M.F.A. program is a partnership with Trinity Rep, a Providence theater, and provides students with professional acting and directing experience in addition to classes. Alumnae include Laura Kepley, the artistic director of the Cleveland Play House, and Taibi Magar, who is currently directing the Off Off Broadway production "Is God Is," a Times Critic's Pick. The university hopes that removing the financial barrier will lead to more racial and economic diversity and allow aspiring creators to enter their careers debt free. "I really think the key to diversifying the American theater is eliminating debt in arts education," Patricia Ybarra, the chairwoman of Brown's theater arts and performance studies department, said in a phone interview. The program's tuition for the 2017 18 academic year was 52,231. Brown will cover the tuition of all current and future students beginning next fall; in order to fully cover the costs, the next class size will be reduced slightly to 10 students. (The class of 2019 has 15.) Ms. Ybarra said the decision is part of the university's ongoing efforts involving the arts, diversity and eliminating loans: "It's the synergy between those things that made this a top priority," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The New York Philharmonic's declaration of its new music bona fides this season is so emphatic, it's being delivered with megaphones. In Ashley Fure's "Filament," which has its premiere on Thursday in the Philharmonic's season opening gala the first under its new music director, Jaap van Zweden singers are spread throughout David Geffen Hall, armed with bespoke megaphones that create body shaking sounds. It speaks volumes that the Philharmonic has handed such a prominent platform to Ms. Fure, a 36 year old composer making a brazen debut with the orchestra (and bringing in guest artists more often associated with the avant garde than with Lincoln Center). It says even more that another premiere comes just a week later, with Conrad Tao's "Everything Must Go." Mr. Tao, 24, has long been admired by Mr. van Zweden, who commissioned works from him as music director of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Hong Kong Philharmonic. ("It's actually how I kind of learned to write for orchestra," Mr. Tao said in an interview of those earlier pieces, which he worked on when he was as young as 17.) Mr. van Zweden hasn't worked with Ms. Fure before, but he has warmed to the idiosyncratic demands of her music. "I am really, really impressed by her," he said after a rehearsal on Monday, adding that she "knows exactly what she wants, and that's a very big joy for us to work with." Here are previews of "Filament" and "Everything Must Go." Ms. Fure thinks concerts are a little weird. If the music we hear is just sound waves traveling through the air, she said in an interview, then "we're coming together to let air bump up against us. It's a strange collective act." This perspective looking at music as something physical is at the heart of much of Ms. Fure's work, which deals in sound environments more than melodic lines. "Filament" is no exception. Mr. van Zweden leads the orchestra in its typical configuration. But there are also three amplified soloists on elevated platforms: a trumpet (Nate Wooley) at the back of the stage, a bass (Brandon Lopez) to one side of the front and a bassoon (Rebekah Heller) in the audience. Then there are so called "moving voices," members of the Constellation Chor holding megaphones, scattered throughout the concert hall. The soloists at times play with a credit card, a metal sheet or, in Ms. Heller's case, the slap of a tongue against the bassoon's bocal. Musicians in the orchestra sometimes use pencils and wooden skewers ("meat sticks," Mr. van Zweden called them in rehearsal). The sensory effects, particularly those created by the megaphones, are profound, not unlike the tingling feelings people get while watching online A.S.M.R. videos, which depict a phenomenon called autonomous sensory meridian response. This, Ms. Fure said, is what she's interested in: "a body listening." "Romantic music can let us get swept away in a melody, and there's something incredible about that," she added. "In my work, however, I'm trying to do something different, which is pull us into the present to feel our bodies, but also feel the strangeness and the beauty of this act of sitting in this room together." Pulling this off has required more resources than the Philharmonic's usual program opener. In addition to the guest artists, "Filament" has a team of light and costume designers, and each of the megaphones was custom made by Matter Design. "We had a lot of license to stretch this and ask for things," Ms. Fure said. "But I feel like everybody's stretching together and trying. It's been a deeply collaborative process." "Everything Must Go" is a curtain raiser for Bruckner's Eighth Symphony in fact, the symphony will follow the new piece without pause. That transition, or lack thereof, was decided before Mr. Tao got the commission. Indeed, he says he didn't really know Bruckner's music before the Philharmonic tapped him. "I learned to really appreciate Bruckner," Mr. Tao said, adding that living with the 19th century Austrian composer's notoriously divisive music changed the way he listens to it. Bruckner's massive orchestras have sheer sonic force. Mr. Tao nearly matches that with his largest scale orchestral work yet. "It could be bigger: I didn't include any Wagner tubas," he said with a laugh. "But the three harps push it over the edge." "Everything Must Go" isn't melodically entwined with the Bruckner; it could stand on its own. Mr. Tao said that the similarities between the two are less overt references and "more of a vibe." The clearer homage is to French overtures, with dotted note rhythms at the start. But the sound of those opening measures begins to change, continuing to transform throughout the rest of the piece. As Mr. Tao describes it in his program note, "The sound mass leaves behind tendrils and residue as it gains and loses appendages, writhes and delights in its own possibilities."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Late Night to Trump: Comparing Yourself to Lincoln Is a Bad Idea Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We're all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. Other Than That, Mr. Lincoln On Sunday night, President Trump was interviewed by Fox News hosts at the Lincoln Memorial, where Seth Meyers said "it kind of looked like Lincoln had been asked to join but was keeping his distance." Trump at one point compared himself to the 16th president, saying he got more hostile press coverage: "They always said Lincoln, nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse." "You have two unfiltered hours on national television to say whatever you want to millions of people without fact checking or follow ups. Lincoln couldn't even get through a play without being interrupted." SETH MEYERS "That's right, President Trump participated in a Fox News town hall at the Lincoln Memorial, though I think Fox was just excited to finally feature a competent Republican president." SETH MEYERS "Really? You're going to compare yourself to Abraham Lincoln? Well, I'd like to point out that none of his supporters carried Confederate flags." STEPHEN COLBERT "Just for the record, you're not allowed to say you're being treated worse than Lincoln if you are still alive." JIMMY KIMMEL "As if we didn't have enough to worry about, as if things weren't already insane, the country is now being invaded by something called murder hornets. These are hornets, they're two inches long, and they kill people and bees. So, looks like we're never leaving our houses again." JIMMY KIMMEL "Two murder hornets were spotted in Washington State driving a red Ford F 250 north on Interstate 5. An official from the Washington State Department of Agriculture said the hornets are probably not going to murder someone, so don't panic. OK, great. When I hear 'probably not going to murder,' I panic. It's just how I'm wired. " JIMMY KIMMEL "Murder hornets? I want to go back to the days when the craziest animal thing was Keyboard Cat." TREVOR NOAH "Right now, 2020 Mother Nature is out of control. A killer virus is one thing, but murder hornets? Sounds like someone is just combining the scariest words. I mean, what's next? Nunchuck wolves?" TREVOR NOAH "Honestly, these murder hornets just sound like psychos. They cut off the heads of bees and they mash up the thorax into a meatball and fly it back to feed their larvae. I thought only Rudy Giuliani fed his family that way." TREVOR NOAH "The Asian giant hornet hails from Japan, where 'the hornets kill as many as 50 people a year.' Fifty people! To put that into perspective, sharks killed two people in 2019. That explains why this summer's blockbuster is 'Buzz.'" STEPHEN COLBERT On Monday's "The Daily Social Distancing Show," Jaboukie Young White investigated how the pandemic is affecting the restrictions on blood donations from gay men.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Claudia Mo, one of the pro democracy members of Hong Kong's Legislative Council who resigned in protest earlier this month. With China now firmly in control of LegCo, the body will soon become another rubber stamping organ of the Chinese Communist Party. As of a couple of weeks ago, Hong Kong no longer has a formal political opposition. The entire pro democracy camp resigned from Hong Kong's Legislative Council in protest over a resolution by the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress in Beijing that legalized the removal of four opposition legislators a decision Carrie Lam, Hong Kong's chief executive, had essentially requested. Is that what Mrs. Lam had in mind on Wednesday when in her latest annual policy address, she claimed that she "seeks to restore Hong Kong's constitutional order"? Or when she reaffirmed a "steadfast determination to implement 'one country, two systems'" the governance system that is supposed to protect the city's semi autonomy from Beijing only then to chide that "some people's awareness of the 'one country' principle has yet to be enhanced"? Claudia Mo, one of the LegCo members who resigned recently (and a good friend of mine), said that the disqualifications were an attempt to sound a "death knell" for "Hong Kong's democracy fight." She was as defiant as ever, but for many of her colleagues and supporters, the government's move was downright painful. Yet to say that Hong Kong's democracy movement is now dead would be only half true. In fact, the movement is only half dead or only half of it is dead. The other part of it is here for the long haul. Claudia and her comrades are concerned about the survival of the Civic Party, which she co founded (but later resigned from), and the Democratic Party, the groups at the forefront of Hong Kong's pro democracy movement for 20 some years. The first threat they face is the prospect of a direct crackdown: The Civic Party and the Democratic Party could be outlawed and their members arrested, as has happened to smaller, more radical groups over the past several years. The second threat may be more serious still because it challenges the two parties' reason for being. The movement those groups represented was a legacy of British times. As the colonial authorities departed the city in 1997, they hoped that Hong Kong could achieve a basic degree of electoral democracy even after its return to China, under the 50 year special arrangement that Beijing had agreed to. The main vehicle for protecting rights and freedoms in the city was to be the Democratic Party, and later the Civic Party. The parties' leaders mostly barristers, professors and other elite professionals often regarded themselves as the loyal opposition: fighting for democracy even while accepting Chinese sovereignty. This legacy movement, commonly known in Hong Kong as the "pan dem" camp, followed a two prong strategy. First, it would mobilize residents to regularly join orderly, police approved mass gatherings in public places and point to the impressive head counts to pressure the government for concessions on electoral reforms. Second, the pan dems would try to get enough of their candidates elected to LegCo to block initiatives they opposed or gain some bargaining chips. With China now firmly in control of LegCo, the body will soon be indistinguishable from the National People's Congress in Beijing: another rubber stamping organ of the Chinese Communist Party. That was always the game plan. As I've written before, imperial China had a practice of incrementally absorbing recalcitrant peoples on its periphery before fully subjugating them. This ancient precedent is the prototype for what is happening in Hong Kong today: The "one country, two systems" principle supposedly meant to protect the city's semi autonomy until 2047 really was designed to bring about the seamless convergence of Hong Kong's system with China's. What took some dynasties several centuries to accomplish, the Chinese Communist Party hopes to achieve in just a few decades. But authoritarian repression only engenders more resistance, visible or not. A new wave of pro democracy activists who cut their teeth on the 2014 Umbrella Revolution have turned the legacy movement on its head. They junked the "loyal opposition" concept and, in particular after their demands for true universal suffrage went unanswered, many began to embrace various separatist stances, claiming that "Hong Kong Is Not China." As an ascendant movement, this new wave has borne the brunt of the government's crackdown in recent years. Members who clamored for outright independence for Hong Kong were the first to be barred from contesting LegCo elections; those who could run and were elected were then banned from taking office or later removed. Many of the more prominent activists have since been arrested, or have gone underground or into exile. This movement is not easy to recognize; it is too fluid for that (Bruce Lee's admonition, "Be water," is one of its mottos). It has no leader and no name. And it is resilient and combative, young but steely and already battle tested. What will this pro democracy vanguard do now that repression is both relentless and mundane? It will probably look like various opposition movements in other authoritarian states, such as Poland from 1939 to 1990 (first against fascism, then Communism) or Taiwan under Kuomintang rule (1945 87): An underground branch in Hong Kong will quietly bide its time while gaining strength; a more vocal overseas branch will canvass international support. Hong Kong's new pro democracy movement may be small, but it is critically important, fighting on the front lines against an aggressively expanding China. It is also full of life and ingenuity: Even with all those Chinese big guns trained on it, it will survive. Yi zheng Lian, a commentator on Hong Kong and Asian affairs, is a professor of economics and a contributing opinion writer.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
The first grandparent to arrive, Rohna Paskow, had taken the train from suburban Philadelphia. She saved seats for her daughter in law's parents, Charles and Michele Buchbauer, who were driving 50 miles from rural New Jersey to join her. Their grandson's birth was still two months away. But Ms. Paskow's daughter in law had asked everyone to sign up for this workshop, called "Now That You're a Grandparent ... Navigating Your Relationship With Your Adult Children," at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan. So here they all were. "Anything for him," Ms. Paskow said. "Already." Sally Tannen, the early childhood educator who directs the Y's parenting programs, began offering these 90 minute sessions two years ago. Ten people four solos, three couples had registered for the one Ms. Paskow was attending, in October. Ms. Tannen also leads support groups for young parents, mostly mothers, where for years she has heard them fretting about the way their expanding families can strain connections with their own parents and in laws. "They're feeling so vulnerable as new parents that they hear everything through the lens of criticism, no matter what we say," she told the group gathered around the table. "And they push us away. They want to be the bosses of their own lives and their own kids." Moreover, she cautioned, "grandparents can act wildly inappropriately in the beginning when they're getting used to their new roles." How wildly? At the Y, they're still talking about a grandfather at a previous workshop. Thrilled when his daughter in California became pregnant, he planned to hop on a plane with his second wife as soon as the baby arrived, paying the brand new family a surprise visit. Ms. Tannen, herself a grandmother of three, didn't have to tell the man that this seemed a dubious idea; an oh noooo chorus around the table did the trick. "Ask your children what they need. 'How can I help you?' is probably the best gift you can give them," Ms. Tannen counseled. "It will go very far toward allowing relationships to flourish if they feel supported in their role as parents." I can understand the grandpa's impulse, though. In the excitement over a new grandbaby which we all figure we'll know how to handle because, after all, we've already done this at least once it can take a while to recognize that nope, grandparenting is a whole different gig. True, much of it feels familiar. We're not likely to forget how to support a new baby's fragile neck when we pick her up, or why you don't burp her without a cloth on your shoulder. When I became Bubbe to my now 3 year old granddaughter, Bartola (a family nickname, a nod to the former Mets pitcher Bartolo Colon), I was startled by how much came flooding back: songs, diapering techniques, silly stuff that makes babies chortle. And the new parts, like how to manage those insanely complicated car seats and how you never ever put a baby to sleep on its stomach any more, aren't hard to learn. In fact, grandparenting classes have popped up across the country to instruct us on safety and support during an infant's first few months. You can sign up for them at hospitals in, among other places, Seattle, Palo Alto, Chicago and Plano, Texas, and at parenting centers in Houston and Santa Monica. You're negotiating not only with your kid b ut often with your kid in law, as well as with another set of grandparents, perhaps several. You may also be contending with distance. It's easy to screw up. None of these workshop participants several veteran grandparents, most new to the role wanted to be wildly inappropriate. How do you handle who goes where on holidays? At Thanksgiving, "there's this longing to be all together," confessed Ellen Birnbaum, grandmother to four boys, who plans dinner with her daughter's family but misses her son's because they travel to his wife's relatives in Florida. Ms. Birnbaum contents herself with more inclusive gatherings on the Jewish holidays. Eric and Ilise Lange practice "time shifting," assuring their children that celebrating Thanksgiving on Friday or Saturday will be just fine. Michele Buchbauer has a friend whose family get together occurs in late October when airfares to California are low. What about social media? The Langes and Joan and Marty Abramowitz, seated across the table, all lamented that their kids (who are married to one another) have forbidden them to post anything about their shared new grandson on Facebook. It's a pain to have to text dozens of friends instead, but "none of us have violated it," Mr. Lange said of the restrictive policy. "We'd be killed." "Has anyone run into trouble with gifts and how much to spend?" Ms. Buchbauer (whose grandson, remember, has yet to arrive) asked the group. "I think there's going to be a lot of limits."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Developers Sense the Time Is Right to Play Off the Aura of West Chelsea Frank Gehry's IAC building was a shot of glamour for West Chelsea when it was built in 2007, an almost ethereal assemblage of white, sail like forms at 18th Street and the West Side Highway. At 130,000 square feet, it is one of the largest commercial buildings in the neighborhood. Now, it may have a rival, at least in size. The Albanese Organization just closed on a deal for a nondescript warehouse abutting the High Line elevated park that was once intended to be a hotel built by the musician Jay Z. Albanese plans to replace it with a nine story 175,000 square foot office building. The 140 million project, at 510 West 22nd Street and 10th Avenue, a few blocks north of the IAC building, is to have 160 feet of frontage on the High Line, 14 to 20 foot high ceilings and floor plates of 15,000 to 20,000 square feet. "The IAC Building was ahead of its time," said Brian Gell, a vice chairman at CBRE, who with his partner Laurence Briody is leading the leasing for the Albanese development, "but there is demand for another corporate headquarters type development now in the neighborhood." Cook Fox Architects is designing the structure and is hoping to obtain LEED Platinum certification as a sign of its green credentials. "It will have entirely new infrastructure, and from the interior you will feel engaged with the High Line and with nature," said Richard A. Cook, a partner at the firm. There will be terraces on the north and south sides of the second floor, as well as a penthouse style setback on the ninth floor and a planted roof. The ground floor retail space will most likely be for a gallery or events, Mr. Cook said. To begin construction on the office building, the Albanese Organization is looking to secure an anchor tenant to occupy at least 75,000 square feet, with rents in the vicinity of 80 a square foot. Brokers and landlords in the area are keeping a close eye on the development. "The office market down here is relatively small when it comes to number of buildings," said Charles R. Bendit, a co chief executive at Taconic Investment Partners, which owns several buildings in the neighborhood. "I'm not sure what the demand is for 100,000 square feet signature properties like this, but I would say there are a lot of cool companies that want to plant their flag down here. It will be very interesting to see how they do." Mr. Gell said that with a vacancy rate of just 3.2 percent in the Chelsea office submarket, there was plenty of room for new construction. Tiffany Company made such a move last year, he said, when it relocated its corporate headquarters to 200 Fifth Avenue, at 23rd Street, from 600 Madison Avenue, at 57th Street. "We are targeting companies who are looking to change their corporate culture or make a statement about it, and are willing to pay to achieve that," Mr. Gell said. The West Chelsea neighborhood abuts the southern boundary of Hudson Yards development. In November, Coach announced it would be the first major tenant to commit to the Hudson Yards project, leasing 600,000 square feet for its global headquarters. Construction on the office tower, being developed by the Related Companies, is set to start later this year. The warehouse at 510 West 22nd Street, which also has the address of 511 West 21st Street, is zoned for commercial use and was originally considered as a site for a hotel. Jay Z, whose real name is Shawn Carter, acquired the site with partners in 2007, but after the partnership defaulted on the 52 million mortgage, Highland Capital Management of Dallas took ownership of the 88,000 square foot building. Last year, Albanese paid Highland 54.5 million for the building in an off market deal, before the property had been publicly listed. "We believe that we obtained the highest price per buildable square foot ever paid for a development site zoned for office or hotel in the West Chelsea submarket," said Ted Dameris, managing director at Highland Capital Management. "The purchase price exceeded the opinions of value received from multiple brokerage firms and allowed Highland to achieve a significant return on our investment." Christopher Albanese, a partner in the Albanese Organization, said: "We came in with an aggressive offer, because unlike most developers who had been looking at the site for a hotel development, we were focused on it as a Class A office building because we are so bullish on office rents in West Chelsea." The catalyst for Albanese's acquisition of 510 West 22nd Street was the recent lease to Hewlett Packard of the Chelsea Art Museum building, at the western end of 22nd Street, which the company bought in 2010 with BD Equities. "After buying the Chelsea Art Museum building," Mr. Albanese said, "we were amazed by the corporations who were interested in relocating to West Chelsea, who were looking for an edgy location for their offices as opposed to a typical Midtown building." But because of the high purchase price and the cost of construction, the Albanese Organization will need to secure a high rent for the area, brokers said. Rents at the Chelsea Market building, for example, are in the range of mid 50s to low 60s a square foot. While Chelsea Market is not new construction, new buildings, like 450 West 14th Street, have achieved rents of 80 to 100, said Brian S. Waterman, a vice chairman at Newmark Knight Frank who handled the leasing on the property. However, the floor plates at 450 West 14th Street are much smaller, at just 8,000 to 12,000 square feet, Mr. Waterman said, and it is in the meatpacking district, just south of Chelsea. Still, new developments regularly command a premium of 35 to 40 percent over rents at older buildings, and 510 West 22nd Street "is right on the High Line, so that is a very hot area," Mr. Waterman said. "It is plausible that they will be able to make the project work."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
When Liz Sender's daughter turned 8 in October, she requested a sleepover party. So Ms. Sender, a makeup artist in Los Angeles, did what any modern parent does: She looked on Instagram at slumber party photos. It was there that she spotted WonderTent Parties, which provides a professionalized sleepover experience. Instead of mismatched sleeping bags cluttering a living room, the company suggests renting its individual pastel colored tents stuffed with tiny mattresses, pillows and blankets, starting at 90 apiece. The tents are dotted with fairy lights, balloons and lanterns, and every child gets his or her own special space. Completing the look is a fluffy, inviting white (white!) blanket placed in the center of the tents, where the young guests can gather to play games. "They were exactly what my daughter wanted," Ms. Sender said of her 600 investment for seven children. Back in m y day (the 1980s), sleepovers consisted of prank telephone calls, games of truth or dare, sleeping bags tossed precariously on the floor and Blockbuster videos. The highlight was the pizza delivery. But with birthday parties of the rich moving from the home to hotel suites, spas and even high end yachts, it was only a matter of time, perhaps, before the old fashioned sleepover got a makeover. "It's not enough to have a sleepover," Sherry Kelly, a psychologist in Palm Beach, Fla ., wrote in an email. Dr. Kelly is the founder of PositiviTeens, a life coaching service, and she has observed the sleepover phenomenon. "It must also be an over the top experience," she said. While many if not most parents still make their own popcorn and organize the details of their sleepovers for their children, of course, businesses offering to help add a little polish to the process seem to be thriving. Today, there are about 20 companies in the United States alone. Trish Healy, the C.E.O. of WonderTent, said the idea for the company came after she and her husband, Andy, adopted their daughter, Celia, three years ago through the Los Angeles foster system, when she was 12. On Celia's Christmas list were two items: She wanted to be adopted, and she wanted to have her first ever sleepover. Tired of tossing and turning? There are some strategies you could try to improve your hours in bed. None Four out of five people say that they suffer from sleep problems at least once a week and wake up feeling exhausted. Here's a guide to becoming a more successful sleeper. Stretching and meditative movement like yoga before bed can improve the quality of your sleep and the amount you sleep. Try this short and calming routine of 11 stretches and exercises. Nearly 40 percent of people surveyed in a recent study reported having more or much more trouble than usual during the pandemic. Follow these seven simple steps for improving your shut eye. When it comes to gadgets that claim to solve your sleep problems, newer doesn't always mean better. Here are nine tools for better, longer sleep. "So I set about creating the most wonderful sleepover experience I could imagine, and in doing so, WonderTent Parties was born," Ms. Healy said. The company provides delivery, setup and styling of a choice of 15 themes, then collects the items the following day. "It's an elevated experience, that's really designed to get friends and families bonding together by sharing an experience that they'll remember forever," Ms. Healy said, adding that WonderTent has furnished more than 5,000 parties throughout Southern California. In Britain, there's the Spectacular Sleepover Company, started a little less than a year ago. It provides the tents, linens, invitations, games, photo props and a sleepover kit containing a toothbrush, sleep mask, bottle of water, candy and tissues for each child. (According to the company, it is averaging three sleepovers per weekend.) And Muddy Boots Sleepovers in London said it does almost a dozen slumber parties weekly in England that range from about 300 into the thousands, in total, depending on size and extras. "The fun of a sleepover party is still the same and will never go out of fashion," said CJ Hadlow, founder of Muddy Boots. Her company, she said, "has simply made it even more magical," thanks in part to "foam mattresses and organic cotton bedding."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
And in the Next Zoom Room, a Rat Doing a Striptease On a recent Saturday, I joined a few hundred people for a wild night at a singularly outrageous nightclub. Each room contained something different and unexpected. In one, a girl strummed a viola and told dirty jokes; next door, a giant rat performed a striptease to the soundtrack of a lecture on Taoism. There was a cooking tutorial, a magician doing card tricks, a burlesque performer contorting on a chaise longue. It was "Eschaton": part theater, part nightlife simulator, part Chatroulette, taking place Saturday nights on Zoom. It conveys the illusion of being a maze of interconnected rooms, even though all of its performers are livestreaming their disparate, usually solo contributions from their homes. Audience members, tuning in remotely, are encouraged to dress glamorously, dim the lights, and pour themselves a drink. (I gladly did two out of three.) You can keep your webcam on or off, though allowing yourself to be spied on feels truer to the show's air of cheeky voyeurism. For an hour, you can interact with performers, piece together a jigsaw puzzle of a story, and crack a "Clue" like whodunit, if you can even first figure out what they dun. By early March, the show had been in development for seven months. Whitehead had written five crisscrossing scripts, Blum was investigating real estate options, and the cast was raring to go, ready to play the tortured denizens of a purgatorial nightclub. The title, "Eschaton," a fancy theological term for the end of the world, fits the broad theme: the performer's existential need for an audience, and the precariousness of a life in the spotlight. Then the pandemic issued an all too real reminder of that precariousness. "We had to cancel our first table read, and for a week, as we watched 'Sleep No More' close and Broadway shut down, we weren't sure immersive theater would exist anymore," Whitehead said. "And if it did, what it would look like." But after a couple of weeks, while the creative team was quarantined on different coasts (Whitehead in Brooklyn, Blum in San Francisco), they began to wonder what a virtual version of the show might look like. Would it be possible to translate the spirit of immersive theater a form that gets an extra charge from its feeling of unboundedness and the proximity between performer and audience to the strict confines of a computer screen? "During quarantine, we felt that audiences needed that type of entertainment, a world they could get lost in and escape the reality they're in," Blum said. "We simply met the audience where they were: online." They enlisted the "Sleep No More" performer Taylor Myers as director and the tech studio BENBENBEN, which has lately been helping businesses pivot to virtual spaces. They created a digital lobby actually, a password protected website accessible only to ticket buyers and drew on additional inspirations, such as video games, alternate reality games and online escape rooms. "We had no idea how long quarantine was going to last," Whitehead said, "so we gave ourselves two weeks to put something together." They redirected what would have been their real estate budget into recruiting and paying as many performers, and as many kinds of performers, as possible. The cast grew from five to 26, with several alumni from "Sleep No More" and "Then She Fell" joining the ranks. For obvious reasons, the performers are also their own costumers, lighting and scenic designers, prop masters, makeup artists, musical directors and cinematographers. "It can feel lonely to set your own stage," said Mallory Gracenin, a fan favorite "Sleep No More" performer, who serves as one of the "Eschaton" hosts. "But for a while, I didn't believe that I could be a working artist. So I'm tickled to get to do this every week." Since "Eschaton" began weekly performances as a work in progress, Gracenin has perfected the art of making intimate "eye contact" with the audience in her Zoom room, peering meaningfully and batting her lashes at her camera lens rather than at her screen. On the night of my visit, an audience member in London confessed to Gracenin that life had been really difficult lately; the show has become a hub for devotees of immersive entertainment, some from as far away as Germany, Japan or Spain. "You might not feel the breath in the room," Gracenin said. "But you know when what you're doing is working. You can still feel connected within this virtual, immersive world." The world of "Eschaton" continues to morph and grow from week to week. It's sprawling enough now to get hopelessly lost in, with several rooms arranged across three floors and a basement. (Before specializing in immersive experiences, Jae Lee, the show's game designer and co producer, studied and worked as an architect.) A stage manager and a crew of assistants lurk in the margins, providing tech support as well as nudging guests toward secrets and surprises. And Whitehead has kept writing, weaving in more intricate narrative threads for the audience to either untangle or get tangled up in. At 10 a ticket, the creators hope some guests might even be inclined to come back for more, thinking of the experience as something like episodic appointment television. "Each week there's more to discover, more drama to be mined," Whitehead said. There have been one off delights, too. At least one audience member had a pizza delivery turn up on her real world doorstep. And there are still more ideas the creators want to experiment with. "It's almost like we've stumbled upon a new genre of live entertainment," Whitehead said. Gracenin hopes that, even when theaters open up again, "Eschaton" will carry on perhaps virtually as well as physically. But she's looking forward to a time when performers and audiences can coexist in the flesh. "It's going to be really nice to hug a fellow performer," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
"To be an African or to be a part of any group of people that has been colonized when you're researching in the archives," Maaza Mengiste said, "it's not just research it's detective work that you have to do." When Maaza Mengiste found out that she was a Booker Prize finalist for her novel "The Shadow King," "I went from screaming into the phone, when my editor told me, to just sitting down very quietly," she said in a phone interview. The book, about a young Ethiopian woman who becomes a soldier in the Second Italo Ethiopian War in 1935, features some of the characters Mengiste introduced in her debut novel, "Beneath the Lion's Gaze," including Haile Selassie, Ethiopia's emperor during that time. She spent years working on "The Shadow King," scrapping an early draft that didn't work out and delving into research about people on both sides of the conflict. "I wanted to make sure that I knew enough to develop a full history," she said. "I was trying new things, and I told myself to forget everything, forget the way you think you're supposed to write a novel and do what you really want to do." Mengiste spoke about the book, the difficulties of researching such a fraught period and the photography she found that helped inform her writing. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. Why did you choose the title "The Shadow King"? I wanted the title to represent several things. The obvious one there is a body double who takes the place of Emperor Haile Selassie, who fled to the United Kingdom. Emperors of Ethiopia have been called the "suns unto their people," and when the sun leaves, the country is in shadow. There is a Bible verse in Isaiah: "Woe to the country that shadows Ethiopia with wings." But it also felt to me like it wasn't just one king, and this is something that the book begins to develop that all these women that rose up replaced the king. Another layer I thought of is photography, and what does a photographer do but work with shadow and light? We have Ettore, the Italian photographer, who calls himself the archivist of atrocities, but he is also in a darker sense a king who lives in the shadows. Can we discuss photography and Ettore and what he represented in this story? I was really interested in the role of photography in colonizing wars. Italy's wars to subjugate human beings, to enact violence upon them the camera came first, and the photographs developed a narrative of those groups of people that would justify the violence. I started to wonder how to speak about this in the book, because I knew that there were photographs that the soldiers brought back with them. I wanted to make a character a photographer/soldier. What is it like to witness and participate and perpetuate violence all at the same time? Can the camera really be a shield for somebody or is it an instrument of complicity? Where is it that those lines start to blur? I wanted to explore through Ettore this act of looking, and also a blindness I think racism and bigotry enforces on human beings, that they cannot see what it is they are staring at. I wanted to explore the world of the visible and also the world of the invisible through photographs. Can you talk about your research, particularly with photography? The official archives that I was looking at in different places in Italy were helpful in some ways, but I quickly realized that in order for me to find history that had not been censored by the Fascists, I needed to become inventive. I started speaking with Italian friends who were the descendants of soldiers who had been in the war. I discovered that those soldiers who had been in the war often had a camera or they bought or traded photographs and postcards. They also had journals, diaries those things that were not censored. I decided to look for those artifacts, and I started going to flea markets. At almost every flea market across Italy there is at least one table that is selling Fascist paraphernalia. I would go to that table, and I would ask them if they had any photographs, anything dealing with the colonial period in East Africa. We see this with other books being written by Africans. For instance, Petina Gappah talked about research on the history of Zimbabwe for her book. I have really enjoyed talking to her over the years about our work, about this investigation. Because to be an African or to be a part of any group of people that has been colonized when you're researching in the archives, it's not just research it's detective work that you have to do. It's not a simple act of looking. It's complicated by so many erasures that if you don't know what's missing, you don't know what to ask.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
A rehearsal for "Parade" at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. Work on the theater, which is scheduled to reopen on Friday, cost 34.7 million. The Theatre du Chatelet is reopening after a two and a half year makeover, with a new artistic director and an inclusive new mission. PARIS The workmen were everywhere. Backstage and onstage, they were hammering, banging, gluing, carrying, laying tarpaulin, shimmying up ladders and shouting, "Attention!" In the auditorium, a team checked the red velvet seats, making sure that each was in the correct position. On the stage, performers rehearsed, apparently oblivious to the controlled chaos all around. "It's all going to be fine," said Ruth Mackenzie, the Chatelet's artistic director. "That's what I keep telling everyone." (She was proved right; the commission pronounced a "favorable verdict" at the end of the day.) Ms. Mackenzie, 62, is small, forthright and cheerful. When asked about her, everyone said the same thing: She is a powerhouse who doesn't take no for an answer. "She is artistically fearless, and an experienced and strategic political thinker," said Alex Poots, the British director of The Shed in New York, in a telephone interview. In fact, Ms. Mackenzie worked as an adviser on culture and media to two British governments, as well as running the Nottingham Playhouse and the Chichester Festival Theater, both in England, and Scottish Opera. After directing the London Cultural Olympiad, a program of arts events that accompanied the 2012 Olympics, she moved to the Holland Festival, which she ran from 2015 to 2018. "I hoped that would be a job forever," Ms. Mackenzie said. "But Jean Luc Choplin, who was running Chatelet, suggested I pitch for the job, and it was irresistible." Mr. Choplin, who had announced that he would leave when the theater closed for renovation, also suggested Ms. Mackenzie team up with Thomas Lauriot dit Prevost, his No. 2 at the Chatelet from 2006 to 2013. Although Mr. Lauriot dit Prevost's title is general director, he and Ms. Mackenzie said they shared all aspects of the theater's leadership, from budget planning to artistic choices. "We started by spending a complete day together in Brussels," Mr. Lauriot dit Prevost said in their shared, spacious office overlooking the Seine River. "We talked about our political vision of what a theater should be in society, what our values were, what we would stand for." Ms. Mackenzie is the first Briton to run a French national institution and the first female director at the Chatelet since it opened in 1862. But Christophe Girard, Paris's deputy mayor for culture, said that her nationality was never an issue during the hiring process. "I think the fact that she isn't French is useful," he said. France has its own cultural and institutional norms, he added, and Ms. Mackenzie " knows when she doesn't want to understand , and I think she solves a lot of problems that way. Ruth knows how to use what could be a weakness and make it a strength." It's hard to overstate the cultural importance of the Chatelet, designed by Jean Antoine Gabriel Davioud in 1862 as one of a pair of theaters facing each other across a square in the city center. (Its twin, the Theatre de la Ville, is also currently under renovation.) It was in the Chatelet where the artistic revolutions and innovations of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes were first seen; here where Mahler, Strauss and Tchaikovsky conducted; where Josephine Baker, Cole Porter and Juliette Greco all sang. Although the main purpose of the renovation was to get electrical circuits, fire safety and security up to code, the Chatelet has also had a makeover: freshly gilded moldings, restored paintings and ceilings, new wallpaper, restored statues on the facade, crumbling stone cleaned and repaired. A renovated building isn't the only change. Mr. Choplin transformed the Chatelet's identity previously linked to serious classical music and opera productions with long runs of American musicals like "42nd Street" and "Singin' in the Rain," and he brought in pop culture figures like Damon Albarn and David Cronenberg to direct their own work. Despite initial controversy over his choices, they proved extremely popular. Now, Ms. Mackenzie and Mr. Lauriot dit Prevost must place their own stamp on the theater. That's not an easy task, said Ariane Bavelier, the deputy culture editor of the French daily newspaper Le Figaro. "There is always drama around the Chatelet. Scandal and outcry are in its DNA," she said, citing the Jean Cocteau Erik Satie Pablo Picasso collaboration, "Parade," in 1917. (She could have added "DAU," the huge interactive art project by the filmmaker Ilya Khrzhanovsky, whose chaotic opening in January was poorly received by critics.) Ms. Mackenzie and Mr. Lauriot dit Prevost have deliberately alluded to that part of the theater's history by opening the theater and their season on Friday with a reworked version of "Parade," directed by Martin Duncan. Beginning with an outdoor procession featuring giant puppets created by Marionetas Gigantes, a company from Mozambique, the show continues with "Satie's World," a series of free, small scale installations throughout the theater that evoke some of the eccentric aspects of the French composer's life. Then comes the paying tickets part: high wire performances (literal and figurative) by Stephane Ricordel's Paris based circus ensemble Boite Noire and Streb Extreme Action, a daredevil dance troupe from New York. "I always knew I wanted three continents Africa, Europe, America and to open up the theater to as many people as possible," Ms. Mackenzie said. "The citizens of Paris have paid for this theater and will continue to pay, through taxes," she added. "What are we going to give them for their money?" Both "Parade" and "Les Justes" were partly created and scripted from yearlong workshops in different Paris suburbs, drawing on communities who might not otherwise be exposed to theater. "We start as we mean to go on," Ms. Mackenzie said. In France, she added, community engagement is not necessarily seen as a positive. Her observation was echoed by Ms. Bavelier of Le Figaro. "My worry is that when you start to mix up cultural education with artistic vision, you weaken the programming," she said. Ms. Mackenzie defended her position. "Nothing I am saying means we are delegating the choice of artists to the citizens of Paris, any more than we are asking them to focus the lights," she said. But, she added, the Chatelet was an imposing place, "full of gold leaf, and however much we love it, you have to think about how people can access what we offer, access the magic." She drew breath. "What would I like us to be famous for? That we said we were here to serve every citizen of Paris, and we did."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
I was at Yankee Stadium last Thursday night, which means I was there to see what sportswriters might call an epic slugfest game played out in what is often hyped as the greatest rivalry in sports, Yankees versus Red Sox. Or, to put it another way, I got to see the Red Sox turn it around and beat the Yankees, after losing the first two games in the series, and by beating them, clinch first place in the American League East division. Everyone was expecting Boston to win the division, but by winning the game on Thursday, they did it on the enemy's home ground; they got to have their victory party in the Bronx, in the highly corporate and self referential precincts of Yankee Stadium, under the big blown up photos of Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle and the Bambino himself, Babe Ruth. Here's looking at you, kids. Twelve years ago or so, when we told my youngest child that we would be moving from Cambridge to New York City, pulling him out of the school he had attended from kindergarten through fifth grade, out of the house he had lived in all his life, out of his soccer and Little League teams, what he asked us to promise was that we would never root for the Yankees. Of course not, we said, we'll never switch sports loyalties, we'll go to Yankee Stadium in Red Sox regalia and get beat up. We promise. So I was thinking of my son, as his father and I waited in the endless security line outside Yankee Stadium for 45 minutes or so, with the game already going on inside and all of us in line listening with interest and some sympathy to a furious season ticket holder raging at a security guard. I had made some private resolutions about good sportsmanship, but I couldn't resist saying to the spectacularly overwhelmed bag checkers, "They've got this down at Fenway Park." And actually, I wasn't wearing Red Sox regalia, though lots of people in the crowd were; partly that's just the self consciousness of the aging lady doctor (I don't generally wear anything with logos) but it's also one of the ways in which I fail in sportsmanship: if my team is losing, I don't really want everyone to be able to look at me and know what I'm feeling. My son would have been wearing a Red Sox shirt he was following the game 3,000 miles away, in California, and for all I know, he was wearing a Red Sox shirt, and it may even have been a particular lucky shirt. He wore a Red Sox shirt to school every day, that first year in New York, in his new school. He had an extensive collection and he wore them in rotation. It was his identity, coming into the sixth grade, or at least, that was how I understood it, as I watched him set out into New York City every morning, wrapped in a tangible souvenir of his childhood in Massachusetts. As I watched him navigate his new school and establish himself with a new group of friends, it was abundantly clear to me how valuable it was to have a subject that was at one and the same time profoundly close to his heart and also oddly impersonal. If the Red Sox had lost the night before, he wore his shirt to school and got grief about it; if they had won, he gloated. He cared deeply, but the emotion wasn't private or personal; he stepped out into that conversation every day, win or lose. In 2007, he got to win the World Series (well, you know what I mean), and then watch the Yankees win in 2009. And then, of course, we won again in 2013, but I'm not gloating or anything. From 3,000 miles away, my son rejoiced with us when the Red Sox went ahead 3 to nothing, then moaned in agony (well, he and his father were texting in agony) when Giancarlo Stanton hit a grand slam in the fourth inning, putting the Yankees ahead, 6 4. At that point, Yankee Stadium was partying, big time, and I was trying to stick to my good sportsmanship resolutions: Root for your team, groan when things go wrong, enjoy the game. My son's best friend in New York, all through middle school and high school, was a Yankee fanatic, and they negotiated listening to games together, even going to games together, sitting side by side, one cheering while the other groaned. Soon after we moved to New York City, my husband took the two of them to see a game at Yankee Stadium the old Yankee Stadium and they found themselves in a rough section of the bleachers the old bleachers practicing their private rivalry surrounded by a level of obscenity and aggression that had my husband worried that he had made a bad mistake. (My son would like me to point out that he had already learned his own juvenile obscene vocabulary at Fenway at Yankee games.) The new stadium is a far more courteous place. Don't get me started on the monitors who block people going in to sit down with their little signs that say "For the consideration and safety of seated guests, please wait until this at bat is complete, Thank you." (No, they don't do that at Fenway Park.) And actually, I realized, we were surrounded by friendly mixed groups there were three big guys standing near us, who had clearly consumed a fair amount of beer, two in Red Sox jerseys, one in a Yankees pinstripe shirt, companionably alternating loud advice to the coaches, far away down on the field. A couple walked by, holding hands, just as Jackie Bradley Jr. tied it up at 6 6 for the Red Sox with a home run in the seventh; the man (Red Sox shirt) grinned and the woman (Yankees) rolled her eyes. The Red Sox got two more runs in the seventh, and the Red Sox fans got noisier or, to be fair, the Yankees fans started to go home; it was a very long game. By the eighth inning, when the Sox got to the Yankees closer, Aroldis Chapman, and Mookie Betts hit a three run homer, the balance in the stadium had tipped heavily to Red Sox fans, all busy high fiving one another. In front of us was a father son duo, the father (who had grown up in the Bronx) a serious Yankees fan, the son Red Sox all the way, enjoying the game together, cheering and groaning in a familial alternation that reminded me of watching my son and his friend. It was a beautiful night for a game, slugfests are fun, and it was a blast to see the Red Sox clinch. Sinatra's version of "New York, New York" came on, and we headed for the subway. In California, our son was jubilant that we had been there, and in our haphazard parental way, we had kept our promise he loved growing up in New York City, but the Red Sox helped him, as Frank would say, do it his way. I felt euphorically grateful to baseball, which really does teach you about patience, and about curses and statistics and the capriciousness of fate, and of course, about losing and winning.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
When Lori Levine goes out for a night on the town, she is often in the company of famous men like George Clooney, Chris Noth or Adrien Brody. But that's her job. Ms. Levine, 46, is the owner of Flying Television (the name inspired by Keith Haring's artwork), a New York company that books celebrities for corporate events. Her talent for matching people and products has resulted in what she described as "a 'Sex and the City' existence" in Manhattan, complete with a duplex home in a Victorian townhouse and more than 50 pairs of designer shoes. But her matchmaking skills were disappointingly less effective when it came to her personal life. It wasn't that she didn't date. "I was having a lot of fun," Ms. Levine said, "but everything felt very hollow." She wasn't necessarily looking for marriage, having been divorced at 32 from someone she had been with for a decade, but she still yearned for something more fulfilling. She was on a dating moratorium in June 2013 when a friend introduced her to Tinder, the phone dating app. Unlike online dating sites such as Match.com or eHarmony, Tinder works more like a game, with users showing their approval or disapproval of other users' photographs by swiping right or left on their phone screen. Since "matches" are based solely on photogenic traits, it is perhaps unsurprising that the app is not known for contributing to long term relationships. "There were a ridiculous number of men with live tigers," said Ms. Levine, referring to questionable profile photographs, which both amused and mystified her. "One guy Photoshopped J. Lo into his photo." Ms. Levine was entertained online, but she had little interest in offline contact with fellow members. Until Jan van Arsdale came along. Mr. van Arsdale, 49, is a marathon running divorced dad, who grew up the son of a Presbyterian minister in Newark and can trace his family's Dutch heritage to the original settlers of New York. He flipped over Ms. Levine's photos. "This was a gorgeous girl who exuded confidence," said Mr. van Arsdale, a regional sales director in the New York office of Janney Montgomery Scott, the Philadelphia investment bank. He was newly single and also new to Tinder. But after the dissolution of his 16 year marriage in 2011 and a recent breakup with his girlfriend of two years, he was looking for only casual dating. "I was never again going to allow myself to get into that kind of serious relationship," he said. Instead, he scheduled half hour "speed dates" near Grand Central Terminal before catching his commuter train home to Fairfield, Conn. But Ms. Levine was different. He found her funny and engaging from the moment they started bantering via Tinder's chat function. "In one sentence she'd use the Queen's English, and the next she'd use some off color expression from Queens, New York," he said. And when he told her he had four children, it didn't scare her off, as it had with other women. "That's cool," she texted, "we all have family." If there was anyone who understood the concept of a modern family, it was Ms. Levine, whose mother and father were married to other people when her mother became pregnant with her. Her mother considered terminating the pregnancy, but there were medical complications. "It was not a secret that she tried to get rid of me," Ms. Levine said. "She thought it was a story of my defiance and sheer will to live. It showed I was tough, and I could handle anything." Ms. Levine's father died when she was 12, and she was financially on her own from the age of 17, putting herself through college and working her way up a ladder of television production jobs, until she became a talent booker in 1998 for "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," on NBC. Ms. Levine considered it a nice gesture, but history had taught her to keep her expectations low. That said, he made a good first impression when they met at an intimate lounge for predinner cocktails. "He's the best looking guy I've ever gone out with, and I haven't dated schlubs," she said. But more than that, she liked his sweet and genuine manner. "He had this sheepish, boyish grin on his face," she said. "He wasn't showing me any swagger." When they headed across the street for their dinner reservations, he was still grinning. She stopped and said to him, "You want to kiss me right now, don't you?" He was shocked, but not too shocked to respond in the affirmative. "So we kissed," he said. "It was electric." Their second date was three days later, followed quickly by a third. He was taken by small things about her, like the way she thanked taxi drivers and coat check attendants. And she, likewise, noted his gentlemanly way of holding doors for her and rising from his seat whenever she rose from hers. Within a month he asked her if she was willing to be exclusive. "Are you asking me to be your girlfriend?" she asked, before affirming she already was. As a sign of their commitment, they both deleted Tinder from their phones. But she feared they were moving too quickly. "I wanted to temper it," she said. "It's like making a custard. If you cook it too fast, you end up with scrambled eggs." She cut him off midsentence when he tried to use the "L" word, begging him not to say what he was feeling out loud. So he texted it to her in Mandarin. Ms. Levine was looking for more than words. She wanted proof he was willing to deal with the hard stuff. "I can't be with someone who is turned on by the sparkle and shine," she said. "Gwyneth Paltrow isn't coming over for coffee every day." The first test was on Halloween. The problem wasn't that Mr. van Arsdale preferred to spend it with his children. The problem was that he didn't tell Ms. Levine until she dragged it out of him. "I like honesty, even if it hurts," she said. She was asking him to trust her more than he was comfortable doing, and as her 45th birthday approached that November, she lost hope. "Imagine you're at a party, and you keep seeing someone walking by," she said. "You catch glimpses of him, but you can't get to him." He realized she was planning on breaking up with him, and he called her out on it the night of her birthday. "You're not getting rid of me," he said. Then he drew a line with his finger. "Here's where you want me to be, and here's where I am right now," he told her. "Can you meet me halfway?" She most definitely could. "Not only was he being totally honest, he was making a stand," she said. "It was one of the sexiest conversations I ever had." Mr. van Arsdale described being 100 percent honest as a liberating experience, and a life changing one. Within a week, he told Ms. Levine he intended to marry her. And a little more than a year later, on Jan. 1 of this year, he made good on the pledge at ABC Kitchen, one of Jean Georges Vongerichten's restaurants in New York. Plaid flannel attired servers contrasted with the sleek crowd in black tie and evening gowns, as 127 guests gathered amid the farmhouse chic decor before Mr. van Arsdale's four children, ranging in age from 12 to 18, led the bridal party down a rose petal strewn aisle. "I will kiss your bruises and rub your aches," Mr. van Arsdale vowed. Mr. van Arsdale asked Rabbi Zoe B. Zak if it would be O.K. to kiss his bride. And then he did. On her lips. On her fingers. And many more times once the rabbi declared them officially husband and wife. "I thought I knew every face, every expression my brother had," said the groom's sister, Peternelle van Arsdale, after the couple had wed. "Then I saw him with Lori, and I thought that's what my brother looks like when he's happy."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Dave Chappelle released a lacerating new special, "8:46" the length of time that a police officer held his knee on George Floyd's neck as Floyd pleaded for his life that has become among the first live shows in the Covid era to reckon with the protests gripping the nation. The show was taped in Ohio on June 6, and a title card explains that it was Chappelle's first performance in nearly three months. Dressed in black, he refers regularly to a notebook and smokes a cigarette onstage. Chappelle's performance isn't much of a comedy set, because, as he notes, there aren't really any jokes. Instead, it's a raw accounting of police brutality, punctuated with images of black men who died at the hands of officers, and deftly interweaving his own personal history. He covers a wide range of topics, including the media, the death of Kobe Bryant, and his family members, some of whom were in the audience. But three subjects, including a run in Chappelle had with an Ohio police officer who went on to kill a young black man, are not well known. Here's more context for the special. In 2014, days before the police killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., a 22 year old black man named John Crawford III was shot and killed in a Walmart in Beavercreek, Ohio Chappelle's community by a white police officer. The night before, Chappelle says in the special, the same officer pulled him over. He "let me off with a warning and the next day kills a kid." Walmart's security footage, as described in a report in The Guardian, showed Crawford walking around with a BB gun that was for sale in the store, available without a box. Another shopper called 911, reporting a black man waving around a weapon. The footage did not show Crawford waving anything, according to The Guardian. He was talking on his cellphone to his girlfriend when the police shot him, the footage shows. A grand jury declined to indict the officer or his partner. The Justice Department investigated, but no charges were filed. By 2019, the city of Beavercreek had spent nearly 600,000 on legal fees, according to the Dayton Daily News. And in May, the city agreed to a 1.7 million settlement with Crawford's family. The officer who shot him, Sean Williams, returned to active duty in 2017. He was reassigned as a detective, the Dayton Daily News reported. Chappelle and other comedians were referenced in the manifesto of Christopher Dorner, a former Los Angeles police officer who shot and killed four people, including colleagues, in 2013, before committing suicide as authorities closed in on him. In Chappelle's telling, Dorner, who also served in the Navy Reserves, was pushed out of the police department though he tried to do everything right, including pursuing legal avenues to appeal his dismissal. Chappelle connects Dorner, who was black, to another black former military man who killed five white police officers in Dallas in 2016. In the military, the comedian says, these men were trained "to fight acts of terror." That, he suggests, is what the police represented. Most personally, Chappelle brings up his great grandfather, William D. Chappelle, who was an A.M.E. Church bishop in South Carolina and president of Allen University, a historically black school that is now home to a landmarked building named for him. In his seminal 2016 appearance on "Saturday Night Live," just days after the election of Donald Trump, Chappelle closed his monologue by talking about how few black people had been welcomed to the White House throughout history. "To my knowledge, the first black person that was officially invited to the White House was Frederick Douglass," he said. "They stopped him at the gates; Abraham Lincoln had to walk out himself and escort Frederick Douglass into the White House. And it didn't happen again, as far as I know, until Roosevelt was president." He had made a mistake, he said in the special. There was another person who made it to the White House in those years: his great grandfather, who led a delegation there in March 1918, protesting violence against black people during the Great Migration, including, Chappelle said, the lynching of a South Carolina man over a fee at a grain elevator. The life and morality of the bishop, who died in 1925, seems to have new resonance for Chappelle, who first visited his namesake building at Allen University three years ago and gave a speech. He said there, "This idea that what you do in your lifetime informs the generations that come after you is something I keep thinking about." "My great grandfather built something more substantial than buildings, he built a community, and more importantly than a community, he built a way," he continued. Then Chappelle, in an uncharacteristic suit and tie, seems to notice someone over his shoulder. "Hello, police," he said. "He's standing over there, like, 'So this is what black people talk about.'" The audience laughs, and Chappelle goes back to his speech, a call for the ethical clarity that helped his family build its legacy. His great grandfather was born a slave, Chappelle says in the special, and crusaded then as people in the streets do now. "These things are not old, this is not a long time ago," he says. "It's today."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
The Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday night started an N.B.A. draft unlike any other by selecting Georgia guard Anthony Edwards with the first overall pick. James Wiseman, a center from the University of Memphis, went second to the Golden State Warriors, while LaMelo Ball, the popular guard from Chino Hills, Calif., was taken third by the Charlotte Hornets. In a draft that was staged virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic, with prospects watching from home and team executives making their selections from their practice facilities, N.B.A. Commissioner Adam Silver announced the picks from an ESPN television studio in Bristol, Conn. Unlike in previous drafts, there was no clear cut favorite at No. 1. Ultimately, after spending months weighing their options, the Timberwolves went with Edwards, a 6 foot 5 shooting guard. He was the Southeastern Conference's freshman of the year after averaging 19.1 points and 5.2 rebounds a game. Edwards was not the best perimeter shooter available in the draft he shot just 29.4 percent from the college 3 point line but he operated at Georgia with N.B.A. level athleticism, manufacturing production at the rim. "It's an indescribable feeling," Edwards said in a televised interview after he was selected. The Timberwolves already have two young stars around whom they plan to build Karl Anthony Towns, 25, and D'Angelo Russell, 24, have both been All Stars and Edwards could be a nice fit playing alongside Russell in the backcourt. As a part of its comprehensive draft research, Minnesota's front office conducted more than 1,000 telephone interviews in recent months and compiled reams of evaluations. At the end of the process, the Timberwolves came away from a wide pool of prospects convinced that Edwards was the best player for them. The event was overshadowed in part by an injury that the Warriors' Klay Thompson sustained to his lower right leg in a workout in Southern California a few hours before the draft. The severity of his injury was unknown, and the team said that Thompson would undergo additional testing. Thompson missed all of last season after tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee in the 2019 N.B.A. finals. While that news was still circulating, the Warriors selected Wiseman with the second pick. Regarded as the top big man in the draft, the 7 foot 1 Wiseman played in just three games as a freshman at Memphis before he ran into eligibility problems with the N.C.A.A. and eventually declared for the draft. He was a dominant force in those three games, averaging 19.7 points, 10.7 rebounds and 3 blocks while shooting 76.9 percent from the field. Though Wiseman's college career provided a small sample for N.B.A. scouts and executives to evaluate, there is little question that he has unusual skills for a player his size. Long, lean and explosive, he can run the floor and has a soft shooting touch. Ball's path to the N.B.A. was unconventional. Like his older brother Lonzo, who plays for the New Orleans Pelicans, LaMelo has been scrutinized from a young age in part because of his advanced skills (he once scored 92 points in a game as a high school sophomore), but also because of the promotional work done on his behalf by his father, LaVar Ball, a bombastic presence in basketball circles. Ball left high school early to play in Lithuania, then spent last season with the Illawarra Hawks of Australia's National Basketball League. In Australia, Ball began to reveal his potential, averaging 17 points, 7.5 rebounds and 7.0 assists in 12 games. He also showed room for improvement: His attention wandered on defense, and he shot just 37.3 percent from the field and 24 percent from 3 point range before his season was cut short by a foot injury. He is regarded as a gifted passer and has terrific length for a guard. But he is raw, with funky shooting mechanics. With the eighth pick, the Knicks selected Obi Toppin from Dayton. A 6 foot 9 forward, Toppin won virtually every national player of the year award after averaging 20 points and 7.5 rebounds per game while shooting 63.3 percent from the field as a sophomore. Toppin grew up in Brooklyn and attended Ossining High School in Westchester County. "Me repping my city, it's amazing," Toppin said through tears in a televised interview. "A lot of people pray to be in this position, and I'm not going to take it for granted." The Nets, who are gearing up for the debut of their superstar tandem, Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving, got some help along the perimeter by acquiring guard Landry Shamet from the Los Angeles Clippers in a three way trade with the Pistons, according to a person with knowledge of the deal who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. The Nets gave up the No. 19 pick as a part of the deal, and Luke Kennard was sent to the Clippers from the Pistons. The Philadelphia 76ers added some shooting skill, too, by acquiring Seth Curry from the Dallas Mavericks in exchange for Josh Richardson and a second round pick, according to a person with knowledge of the trade who was not authorized to discuss it publicly. In other notable picks, the Washington Wizards selected Deni Avdija, a forward from Israel, at No. 9. Cole Anthony, a point guard from North Carolina and the son of the former N.B.A. player Greg Anthony, was selected 15th by the Orlando Magic. And Kenyon Martin Jr., whose father also starred in the league, was drafted late in the second round by the Sacramento Kings. Before the pandemic wrought havoc on the league calendar, the draft had been scheduled for June 25 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Before it was finally staged, the draft was preceded by a flurry of trade activity. On Wednesday morning, the Knicks worked their way up the draft order by sending picks No. 27 and 38 to the Utah Jazz in exchange for the No. 23 pick and the rights to Ante Tomic, a 33 year old center who has spent his entire pro career overseas. They wound up trading that pick for two others: Nos. 25 and 33, a nifty maneuver for their new front office. The Knicks ultimately selected Immanuel Quickley, a shooting guard from Kentucky, at No. 25.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
In 2015, a group of flex dancers expert practitioners in contorting, pausing, snapping and gliding converged at the Park Avenue Armory for the evening length "Flexn," an ambitious show masterminded by Reggie Gray (who goes by Regg Roc) and Peter Sellars. Now, after two national and international tours, the collaborators return on Thursday, May 18, with "Flexn Evolution," which promises to be more intimate, but just as virtuosic, featuring a series of choreographed and improvisational pieces inspired in part by the need for social change. And it doesn't stop at the dancing: Each program will begin with "A New Vision for Justice in America," a moderated discussion organized with Common Justice that includes participants like Michelle Alexander, the author of "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness." For Mr. Gray, this street dance form, born in Brooklyn, is an art in which fostering activism is as important as showcasing spellbinding physicality. (Through May 21, armoryonpark.org.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
In 2016, the Musee d'Orsay in Paris received the largest foreign collection of art to be donated to France since World War II from two American art collectors, Marlene and Spencer Hays. Now the museum is making more room for all of that, as well as the rest of its collection and educational operations. On March 5, the museum announced "Orsay Grand Ouvert" (Orsay Wide Open), a project jump started by a gift of 22.3 million from an anonymous American donor, which was made through the American Friends of Musee d'Orsay. "This goes beyond the question of the display of the collection. We also want to fulfill our mission in a more modern and complete way," said Laurence des Cars, president of the museum and its sister institution, the Musee de l'Orangerie, which houses Monet's Water Lilies. "Visitors are no longer just expecting a museum to display works of art, but to offer a complete experience."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
"It got off to an interesting start, you know; they flipped a coin to determine who would get the first question, but when Trump saw the quarter in the air he said, 'Hey, that's how much I paid in taxes last year,' and it went downhill from there." JIMMY KIMMEL "We have emerged from the mad whirlwind where we gazed upon the forbidden countenance of God himself, and he said unto us, 'Jesus, stop interrupting him, you giant baby!'" STEPHEN COLBERT "Seriously, did anyone take anything away from tonight? Was that helpful to any American? The only person who enjoyed that was Vladimir Putin while he was stroking a cat." JIMMY FALLON "Yes, tonight saw the best minds of our generation destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked, dragging themselves through the streets at dawn, looking for the mute button." STEPHEN COLBERT "Honestly, sitting through that debate felt like getting a Covid test in both nostrils at once." JIMMY FALLON "Actually, tonight's debate made history. It was the first time Americans ever watched something on TV and wished there were commercials." JIMMY FALLON "You know it was a rough debate when the guy who told the president to shut up was seen as the classy candidate." JIMMY FALLON "Because of the pandemic, there's no opening handshake tonight; there's no physical contact. The candidates remained socially distant the whole time. It was like date night with Melania." JIMMY KIMMEL "I'd call it a nightmare, but at least during a nightmare you get some sleep." JIMMY KIMMEL	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Lee Phillip Bell, a co creator of two of daytime television's most successful and enduring soap operas, "The Young and the Restless" and "The Bold and the Beautiful," died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 91. Her death was confirmed by Eva Basler, a spokeswoman for the Bell family's company, Bell Phillip Television Productions. Ms. Bell also hosted a daytime talk show in Chicago for more than three decades and as a broadcast journalist produced and narrated award winning documentary specials. She teamed up with her husband, William J. Bell, in creating "The Young and the Restless," which has been on the air since 1973, and "The Bold and the Beautiful," which celebrates its 33rd anniversary in March. The dramas have attracted millions of viewers while tackling difficult topics like incest, alcoholism and teen pregnancy. "The Young and the Restless" centers on a pair of fractious Midwestern families and has been a springboard for up and coming stars like David Hasselhoff and Tom Selleck. "The Bold and the Beautiful," which premiered in 1987, is set in a ritzy Los Angeles fashion house. In 1975, Ms. Bell won a Daytime Emmy Award for outstanding drama series for "The Young and the Restless." She received a lifetime achievement award from the Daytime Emmys in 2007. Loreley June Phillip was born in Riverside, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, on June 9, 1928, to James and Helen (Novak) Phillip. As a girl she often helped out in her parents' floral shop. After graduating from Northwestern University in 1950 with a degree in microbiology, she returned to her family's shop, working alongside her brothers and soon appearing with one of them, Russell, on a local television talk show, on WBKB, to demonstrate flower arrangements. Her on camera presence impressed the station's managers, and Ms. Phillip was asked to fill in as an announcer, a weather girl and a kind of home economics correspondent. She got her big break when the station was looking for someone to fill in for one of its leading talk show hosts, Lucky North, while Ms. North went on vacation. "Young women from all over Chicago showed up and auditioned," Ms. Bell said at the Daytime Emmys ceremony in 2007. "Lucky thought they were all too good and didn't want to lose her job, so she convinced the station to hire me instead." The fill in role led to stints hosting five and 15 minute segments on weekdays and weeknights and ultimately to her own long running show, "The Lee Phillip Show" (the name was changed a handful of times), on which she explored social issues and interviewed prominent people like Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Ronald Reagan, Judy Garland, Clint Eastwood, Oprah Winfrey, Lucille Ball, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. Her documentary specials for WBBM covered topics like foster care, divorce and rape. One special, "The Rape of Paulette," in which she interviewed rape victims and examined a criminal justice system that often failed to bring rapists to justice, won a local Emmy and a DuPont Award from Columbia University after it aired in 1973. Her work for WBBM won 16 regional Emmys. She met William Bell while he was working as an account executive for an advertising agency in the same building as WBBM. They married in 1954, and Mr. Bell quit his advertising job to write for several soap operas, including the perennial "Days of Our Lives." Ms. Bell continued to host and produce daytime talk shows for WBBM, but with her husband she also developed "The Innocent Years!" for CBS in 1972, before changing the title to "The Young and the Restless," feeling it better fit the mood of the 1970s. The couple moved to Southern California in 1986 to work on "The Bold and the Beautiful," which became a kind of sister CBS show to "The Young and the Restless," with several actors appearing on both. Mr. Bell died from complications of Alzheimer's disease in 2005. Ms. Bell is survived by her sons, William and Bradley; her daughter, Lauralee Bell Martin, an actress who appears on "The Young and the Restless"; her brother Russell; and eight grandchildren. William Bell is president and chief executive of Bell Phillip Television Productions. Bradley Bell is executive producer and head writer for "The Bold and the Beautiful." A daughter in law, Colleen Bell, was ambassador to Hungary under President Barack Obama and is executive director of the California Film Commission. Another daughter in law, Maria Arena Bell, is a former head writer of "The Young and the Restless." Though her shows were known for being progressive and, at times, provocative, Ms. Bell believed her work was simple at its core. "We do the very same thing, don't we Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch and the daytime dramas," she said on receiving her lifetime achievement award at the Daytime Emmys. "We reach out to people through our stories, through our words and examples. And hopefully, at the end of the day, we've touched someone's life in a better way, and helped them."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
The elaborate "Palau Pledge" was stamped in Lynn Englum's passport when she visited the republic in February. When Lynn Englum of New York City visited the Republic of Palau in February as part of a travel project exploring places imperiled by climate change, she received an elaborate stamp in her passport. The full page stamp featured a 59 word promise, addressed to the "Children of Palau," to "tread lightly, act kindly and explore mindfully." She was required to sign the stamp, known as the Palau Pledge and adopted in December 2017, as a condition of entry designed to promote respect for the country's natural resources. Though the procedure was rushed, given the immigration lines, Ms. Englum, 37, later wrote in an email, that "it did make me aware that Palau is very concerned about its environment, especially for the sake of future generations, and they are asking me to be equally concerned as I visit their country." In recent years, tourism pledges have proliferated as destinations from Iceland to Hawaii seek to train travelers in sustainable practices and cultural awareness. Largely voluntary, these multipoint pledges cover a range of responsible travel vows, from not littering on trails to parking legally, minding safety cautions and respecting local communities. Iceland claims to be the first country to introduce one. In June 2017, the popular destination launched the Icelandic Pledge through an online portal, with vows including " I will take photos to die for, without dying for them. " and "When nature calls, I won't answer the call on nature." Tourists can sign the pledge online at InspiredbyIceland.com, a tourism site, after which they are encouraged to share it on Facebook. "Tourism is growing in the world and it is important that people understand how to behave in new and unfamiliar places," wrote Inga Hlin Palsdottir , the director of Visit Iceland, in an email. She also noted that destinations should make efforts to make this information accessible. Educating travelers in local ways isn't exactly new; in recent decades Americans were often advised to leave their baseball caps at home to better assimilate. But the rise of tourism globally growing at 3.9 percent and outpacing the global economy for the eighth consecutive year, according to a report this year by the World Travel Tourism Council has intensified efforts amid reports of overcrowding in popular destinations and risky behaviors for the sake of a selfie. Iceland inspired the central Oregon mountain town of Bend to create its tourism pledge in October 2017, a decision based in part on complaints by locals about a perceived shift in culture. The countywide population grew 16 percent, twice the state average, between 2010 and 2017. "Our geese honk, our cars don't," said Kevney Dugan, the president and chief executive of Visit Bend, where the pledge, directed at tourists as well as new residents, includes "I'll be friendly and courteous, because that's the Bend way." "The economic development provided by tourism is important to our destination, so in no way is this meant to deter visitors," Mr. Dugan said. "We all have things to learn when we go to a destination." Since Bend's 10 point pledge, a number of destinations across the United States have introduced them or plan to, often relying on humor to advance their messages on tourism websites. A draft of the forthcoming Visitors Pledge in Sedona says, "I won't get killed for a killer photo." The Aspen Pledge addresses responsible practices ("I will take awesome selfies, without endangering myself ie") and pokes fun, concluding with "I will not ski in jeans." "Preaching to people will not get the message across," said Debbie Braun, the president and chief executive of the Aspen Chamber Resort Association. The pledge can be found in restaurant bathroom stalls as well as in visitor centers. Introduced last November, New Zealand's Tiaki Promise tries to convey local norms, like being prepared for abruptly changing weather conditions and winding mountain roads. "There are cultural differences and understandings about how you behave in nature, so we needed to tell people what's normal here," said Rebecca Ingram, the general manager of New Zealand and government relations for Tourism New Zealand, explaining that national parks don't have garbage collectors. "In some parts of the world, if you drop rubbish, you're keeping someone employed. That doesn't happen in New Zealand." Where popular destinations have successfully marketed themselves to travelers, tourism pledges represent an attempt to manage their success. "You can see a locality setting a tone to signal to the market that this is what we care about and who we want to attract," said Mark B. Milstein, the director of the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell University. "It starts to raise awareness and get the tourist to think about how they impact the quality of a place and whether it will be there for future visitors." The Bend Pledge has more than 30,000 signers and the Palau Pledge more than 226,000. But whether these have changed behaviors is hard to track. "It's too new to know yet," said Jonathan Tourtellot, chief executive of the Destination Stewardship Center, a nonprofit devoted to sustainable tourism, who believes the advent of overtourism will likely inspire more powerful pledges. "A lot of people don't know it's bad to leave the hiking trail. If a lot of people leave the trail it carves a new trail and causes erosion. This requires a level of thoughtfulness they may not have considered." One group is advancing pledges from platitudes to fund raising. Visit Bend, along with four other mountain towns recently launched Pledge for the Wild, a program that encourages visitors to donate to local nonprofits that care for the wild places they visit in those communities. It suggests travelers donate one dollar for each hour spent in the wild on a trip and ensures the money goes to local conservation groups and land managers maintaining them. "A pledge falls short of creating resources and revenue to tackle real problems, which could be maintaining trails," Mr. Dugan said. "We celebrate wild places. The differentiator is, we give back."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
There is not much action, barely even a plot, in "The Persians." People just mill about, talking (admittedly rather intensely) about events (admittedly of the tragic kind) that happened far away. Yet this National Theater of Greece production unleashes gale force sound and fury. At its peak, the show hits like a blow to the solar plexus, taking your breath away the impact is only slightly dulled by watching online. First produced in 472 B.C., Aeschylus's "The Persians" is considered the oldest surviving Greek play. This Dimitris Lignadis staging was broadcast live on Saturday from the ancient amphitheater of Epidaurus; in the spirit of the theater, no recording exists online. The venue was originally conceived as part of the city's asclepeion (a healing center) because the Greeks considered the balance between body and soul essential to good health. Let's all wistfully ponder that philosophy. The show deals with the aftermath of Salamis, a naval battle in which the outnumbered Greeks routed the mighty Persian army 2,500 years ago. At a time when our horizons are closing in, it is downright vertigo inducing to virtually join a live audience in watching (subtitled) live actors all the way in Greece as they perform a millenniums old play.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
With their two sons grown and out of the house, Ruvin and Polina Itskovich found their neighborhood in Bergen Beach, Brooklyn, too calm for their liking. The couple, who met in their native Ukraine, immigrated to the United States in 1979, first stopping in Baltimore, where they had relatives. They then moved to an apartment in Kensington, Brooklyn, and later to a detached single family house in Bergen Beach. Mr. Itskovich, who started as a cabdriver, became a landlord, owning and managing apartment houses. Both sons are now lawyers in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. "We weren't looking for a sleepy place where it's nice and quiet, because nice and quiet is where we reside now," he said. "We were looking to be in the middle of all the action." The couple didn't mind a one bedroom but did want more than one bathroom. "To have a shower and a bathtub is important," said Mrs. Itskovich, 57. "One is taking a shower and another could take a bath, so you are not in each other's way." Their price was up to 1.5 million, though they also visited apartments listed for more, intending to negotiate. At the twin towered Century condominium on Central Park West, completed in 1931, they saw several one bedrooms priced from 1.265 million to 1.55 million. All overlooked the back courtyard. The couple decided against prewar apartment houses. "They're too old for us, those buildings," Mr. Itskovich said. On the Upper East Side, they visited a one bedroom two bathroom apartment with more than 900 square feet and a balcony at the Royale, a 1987 condominium tower on 64th Street near Third Avenue. It was listed at 1.59 million, with monthly maintenance charges of 1,760. The place was perfectly fine, though they weren't interested in its balcony. But the neighborhood was too family oriented for their taste. "That's not what we were looking for," Mr. Itskovich said. "We didn't even mind Times Square with all the craziness around." The place in the Royale sold for 1.375 million. On the East Side, their preferred housing stock didn't match up with their preferred area, close to Central Park. "All the newer buildings are farther east on the East Side," Ms. Berzon said. The couple liked the 78 story Metropolitan Tower, built in 1986, on West 57th Street, with its central location on a busy crosstown thoroughfare. They returned several times to see apartments there. A one bedroom of 1,050 square feet with one and a half bathrooms was fully renovated and on one of the highest floors, with a helicopter view of Central Park. At 1.925 million, with monthly charges of more than 2,407, it was far too pricey. Another, just a few floors down, was smaller, just over 800 square feet. It had one bedroom and one and a half bathrooms. The price was 1.22 million, with monthly charges of nearly 2,000. It was advertised as having city views facing southwest, but those city views were partly of the windows of a nearby tower. That one sold for 1.1 million. They continued hunting. At last they came to a glassy 2007 tower on West 48th Street, just south of Rockefeller Center, within easy walking distance of Central Park. There they saw a one bedroom apartment of around 950 square feet, with high ceilings, floor to ceiling windows, a walk in closet and even a washer dryer. The kitchen was hidden behind folding metal doors. The place had one and a half bathrooms, but the full bathroom included two sinks plus a tub and a separate shower. The asking price was 1.195 million, with monthly charges of a little less than 2,200. "Ruvin and I made a decision right there in five minutes," Mrs. Itskovich said. "It is a newer building, it is a new apartment, it served the purpose for us." They offered the asking price, and then learned an offer had already been accepted. But the seller was interested in backup offers, so they raised their bid to 1.235 million. The seller agreed on the condition that they sign the contract immediately. They did, and then learned the apartment was an estate sale. The executor lived in Ireland. "Probate court can take forever," Ms. Berzon said. Forever, in this case, was a year and a half. The Itskoviches finally closed this summer. The good news, Ms. Berzon said, is that in the interim, values rose. Now, "we are doing decoration, adding some spice to the apartment," Mrs. Itskovich said including, in the entry hall, a mural of Rockefeller Center. That's what they see right outside. Their floor is low enough to permit a good view of the "Today" show crowds. Mrs. Itskovich is eager to do her morning power walk in Central Park. They plan to sell the Bergen Beach house at some point after they move in. "The location could not be better," Mr. Itskovich said. "It's walking distance to everything. My wife starts walking around the streets and she is amazed. Whatever she sees from inside the car looks completely different. On every single block, we find something."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Economic statistics released Friday offered the clearest sign yet that the recovery, already acknowledged to be sauntering, had slowed to a crawl. The government lowered its estimate of economic growth in the second quarter to an annual rate of 1.6 percent, after originally reporting last month that growth in the April June period was 2.4 percent. The revision is a significant slowdown from the annual rate of 3.7 percent in the first quarter and 5 percent in the last three months of 2009. The news came at the end of a week that showed the economic retrenchment that began in the second quarter has spilled over into the summer. Existing home sales in July were down to their lowest level in a decade, and sales of new homes last month were at their lowest level since the government began tracking such data in 1963. Orders for large factory goods, excluding the volatile transportation sector, dropped in July, indicating that recovery in the manufacturing sector also was stalling. With such grim reports, economists are now concerned that the outlook for job creation, which has been spluttering all summer, could deteriorate further. Companies and consumers tend to be spooked by bad news, and market analysts and economists worry that faltering confidence could cause employers to hold back on hiring. "When you get a downshift in growth there is a risk that it will feed on itself," the chief economist at MF Global, James F. O'Sullivan, said. "The question now is to what extent has the improving trend just been temporarily set back or has it really been short circuited." In a speech Friday morning, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben S. Bernanke, said that he expected the economy to continue on a growth track, "albeit at a relatively modest pace." He also indicated that the Fed would be willing to resume large purchases of longer term debt if the economy worsened. Such moves could have the effect of lowering mortgage rates. Although rates are already at historic lows, economists suggest that lower rates could eventually spur some home buying or at least refinancing, which gives households more cash to spend. Meanwhile, a closely watched survey by the University of Michigan and Thomson Reuters showed that consumer sentiment ticked up marginally in August from July, but remained well below levels seen during the previous six months. The bulk of the downgrade in the second quarter G.D.P. was because government analysts had assumed that American companies added more inventory to their warehouse shelves than they actually did. The adjustment also took into account a sharp rise in imports, leading to a wider than estimated trade deficit. Economists polled by Bloomberg News had been expecting the second quarter growth figure to be revised down to 1.4 percent. Inventories, originally reported to have grown by 75.7 billion, actually grew by 63.2 billion. Some economists pointed to a silver lining in the figure. Because companies have kept inventories relatively low, "if demand was to take off, they would have to hire additional workers and ramp up production," said Omair Sharif, United States economist at the Royal Bank of Scotland. "So the fact that businesses did not accumulate enough inventories sets the stage for a much stronger pickup in employment and hours worked in the future, if demand picks up." For now, companies are not building up inventories. "There is some hesitancy out there now about building up any more than they have to," said Thomas J. Duesterberg, chief executive of the Manufacturers Alliance MAPI, a trade association. Imports, which were first reported to have grown at an annual rate of 28.8 percent, the biggest jump in a quarter century, grew by 32.4 percent, compared with a much lower gain of 9.1 percent in exports. Mr. Duesterberg said he expected exports to grow further in the second half of the year. What strength there had been in the original growth number came from business investment in items that included office buildings, equipment and software. The revised number showed that such spending rose at an annual rate of 17.6 percent, not much different from the 17 percent estimated in the initial second quarter report. Consumer spending, which economists often look to as a primary indicator of recovery, grew 2 percent. That was a slightly better rate than the Commerce Department originally said last month when it reported that consumption grew at an annual rate of 1.6 percent in the second quarter, and just above the 1.9 percent increase in the first quarter. Optimists pointed to that bump in consumer spending as a sign that the recovery, while weak, still had legs. Bernard Baumohl, chief global economist at the Economic Outlook Group, said that he expected the Fed to take action and for companies, now sitting on large cash reserves, to eventually start hiring again, moves that he believed would translate into more robust consumer spending. But more bearish analysts said there was little evidence that the economy was recovering in anything but name only. With more recent indicators showing a shrinking housing market, dwindling orders for factory goods and rampant discounting among retailers, some economists saw far more clouds than sun. "Given all the stimulus and all the steroids and all the medication, the economy should be ripping right now," said David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist for Gluskin Sheff Associates. "The fact that it's not should lead people to believe that this is certainly not a common recession." Mr. Rosenberg pointed out that during the Great Depression, the economy experienced several quarters of official growth, despite the presence of bread lines and rampant unemployment. Now, he said, "it seems the diagnosis is pretty clear, but people don't like to talk about it, because Depression depresses people." Economists have been revising their forecasts for growth in the second half, with Goldman Sachs now projecting annual growth of 1.5 percent. Ben Herzon, a senior economist at Macroeconomic Advisers, a forecasting group, said the firm had taken its estimate for third quarter growth down to 1.7 percent from 2.5 percent at the beginning of July. Mr. Herzon said that he was not expecting a double dip back into recession, however. "It's difficult to point to a shock that would be bad enough to put the economy back into a recession," he said. "I just think it means that this recovery is going to be slower and more painful than we originally expected."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Credit...Jeremy M. Lange for The New York Times MAMARONECK, N.Y. On a rainy day in mid March, nearly 300 National Guard members in military fatigues arrived to set up a containment area in the New York City suburb of New Rochelle, one of the earliest coronavirus hot spots in North America. Three miles away in the adjacent town of Mamaroneck, the United States Golf Association was getting ready to welcome 150,000 fans and the world's best golfers to the 120th United States Open at Winged Foot Golf Club from June 18 to 21. "At the time, you realize they're trying to save lives and we're just a golf event," Mike Davis, the U.S.G.A. chief executive, recalled in an interview last month. "You think to yourself, 'Are you kidding me?'" Davis said. "This has to show up in the town next to Mamaroneck? What's the chance of that happening?" Within hours the U.S.G.A. had pulled the plug on playing in June in New York's Westchester County, confidentially suspending the construction work necessary to build colossal grandstands and hospitality tents. The logistical planning, laborious prep work at the golf course and marketing of the event had begun five years earlier. Suddenly, no one in the organization knew when or where the championship might be played, or if it would be contested at all in 2020. The following six months were a dizzying maze of global deliberations that acknowledged and yet defied the gloomy March prospects for holding the event, especially in New York. But next week, barring a new complication, the four day U.S. Open, one of the oldest sporting events in America, will be conducted, albeit without fans, at Winged Foot beginning Sept. 17. Indeed, Davis had conversations with officials from at least four other states as he tried to find a new home for this year's U.S. Open. At one point, unable to reschedule the event before the weather was expected to turn cold in New York, Davis agreed to hold the championship in December at the Riviera Country Club in Southern California. Only a furtive 11th hour call altered the negotiations again. In the end, there were hundreds of similar phone calls, emails and texts between the leaders of golf's governing bodies and New York state and local officials. The talks branched in myriad directions, including surprisingly the office of Roger Goodell, the N.F.L. commissioner. "It was an absolute roller coaster," Davis said of the last several months. "An intricate jigsaw puzzle that everybody was trying to put together at the same time." But if there was a first piece of the puzzle that fell into place, it was a belief, spurred by medical experts, that Westchester County's status as the one of the nation's earliest coronavirus hot spots might mean a quicker recovery from the crisis than in other parts of the country. "At one of our earliest meetings, our medical advisers told us to hang in there," said John Bodenhamer, the U.S.G.A.'s senior managing director of championships. "Let it play out. Their point was that what is a hot spot now might not be one in late summer." At the time, however, the fear and anguish in and around New Rochelle was profound. At Winged Foot Golf Club, one employee died from the virus, according to the club's general manager, Colin Burns. "We felt we were under siege as a community," Burns said. "New Rochelle was just blistering with cases. I don't think the championship was in the forefront of anyone's thinking. We were in a state of shock." Even outside New York, multiple obstacles were developing that seemed to doom the likelihood of a U.S. Open being held at Winged Foot this year, or anywhere in the northeastern United States. Most notably, a reconfigured golf calendar lacked an open week until October, and possibly later. The coronavirus pandemic shut down all golf competitions in mid March, but the sport's seven governing bodies (the PGA, L.P.G.A. and European tours, as well as the independent stewards of golf's four major championships like the U.S.G.A.) had privately recast a tightly packed international golf schedule. The calendar had become a game of musical chairs, and the U.S. Open still not officially postponed from June appeared to be the one left standing. Late in March, golf's leaders decided they would announce the new schedule on April 6, with the U.S. Open shifting to December in California. News releases had already been drafted. On April 3, it was announced that the U.S. Women's Open would move from June to December in Houston, its original site. Early on the morning of Palm Sunday, April 5, Davis got a call at home from Martin Slumbers of the R A, the organization that oversees the British Open. Slumbers told Davis that the British Open, which had been postponed from July to Sept. 17, was canceled for 2020. It was a blow for golf over all, but Davis knew it was a game changer for his signature event. There was now an opening for the U.S. Open to remain at venerable Winged Foot, in mid September. Davis then placed a call to top executives at Fox Sports, which had broadcast the previous five U.S. Opens. Could Fox, which regularly televises multiple Sunday N.F.L. games in September, still handle the final round of golf's national championship not in June but on Sunday, Sept. 20? Davis said Fox called Goodell about abandoning an N.F.L. doubleheader that day. "Roger came back and said, 'Yeah, we'll work with you,'" said Davis, who added, referring to Goodell: "Because he loves golf." As it played out, the decision to move the championship to September was, according to the U.S.G.A., the genesis of a new television deal for the event. In June, NBC Universal, which does not broadcast Sunday afternoon N.F.L. games, took over the rights to the U.S. Open, and all U.S.G.A. championships, from Fox. By midafternoon on April 5, the heads of the seven governing golf bodies got together on a telephone call for what was, Davis said, about the 40th time since March. It was agreed that the U.S. Open at Winged Foot would assume the mid September spot vacated by the British Open. Though that was the plan, it was still viewed as conditional. On the same day, New York State's death toll from the coronavirus climbed above 4,000, although Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo pointed to early indications that the crisis could be plateauing. Larry Schwartz, Cuomo's former chief of staff who rejoined the governor's administration during the Covid 19 crisis, first contacted the U.S.G.A. in May, not long after Cuomo had announced his support for professional sports to return in New York if the state's tally of virus cases sustained a decline and if the sports adhered to strict safety protocols. Schwartz had worked with the U.S.G.A. the last time the U.S. Open was at Winged Foot, in 2006. But it wasn't until July that Schwartz's dialogue with the U.S.G.A. intensified as he, along with Dr. Howard A. Zucker, the state health commissioner, reviewed the safety guidelines prepared for the U.S. Open, which were modeled after those in place on the PGA Tour since its restart in mid June. Schwartz advised Cuomo that the U.S.G.A.'s safety protocols not only met state guidelines, but also went a step farther by insisting that the several hundred volunteers needed to run the championship would be entirely from the New York area. Typically, U.S. Open volunteers come from all the world. In addition, at Winged Foot, no one would be permitted on the grounds without first passing a coronavirus test. There was one sticking point before the state would approve the event: The U.S.G.A. was holding out hope that a limited number of fans, between 2,000 and 5,000, could still attend the tournament daily, but Cuomo wanted all returning sporting events to be fan free. Burns is heartened that club members are enthusiastic about being recruited to serve as New York based U.S. Open volunteers, but he is also disappointed that because it is a fan free event, businesses in the nearby village of Mamaroneck will not benefit from an influx of nearly 40,000 spectators daily. Burns had rented trolleys to shuttle fans from the club to the village and to a large waterfront park where food trucks and entertainment would serve as a hub for a festival type atmosphere. Justin Zeytoonian, the general manager of the Smokehouse Tailgate Grill in Mamaroneck, said he had estimated that the U.S. Open, including practice rounds, would have meant an additional 20,000 in revenue for his restaurant. Latimer, the Westchester County executive, said he expected that the area would see only 20 percent of the usual economic benefit a U.S. Open yields. The nonprofit U.S.G.A. reported that the 2019 championship generated 165 million in revenue, with 70 million in profit that funds numerous golf initiatives nationwide, as well as more than a dozen other championships the association conducts. The U.S.G.A. has cancellation insurance, but Davis said that the organization's loss on this year's featured event would still be "well into eight figures."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
In the words of its playwright, Ming Peiffer, "Usual Girls" is a show about "the joys and horrors of growing up being a woman the extreme joys and the extreme horrors." And the play, which had its final performance on Sunday, is almost perfectly tailored for this moment. It follows a half Korean, half white girl in 1980s Ohio into adulthood, frankly tackling issues of race, sexuality and rape along the way. Ms. Peiffer said that the show went into rehearsals just as Christine Blasey Ford publicly accused the Supreme Court nominee Brett M. Kavanaugh of sexual assault, the culmination of a year of MeToo allegations. Playing in Roundabout Theater Company's 62 seat underground space, it earned a New York Times Critic's Pick, and the sold out run was extended twice. That is a charmed reception for a young writer getting her first professional production. In an interview on the cusp of the final performance, Ms. Peiffer, 30, reflected on the ride. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. How often did you end up seeing the show? I watched it all through previews I was making many changes so I saw it for about a month straight. Which is a lot. It's a very, very personal story, and a very triggering story, so it was a lot to see that. I've pretty much come back every week since if I can get a seat to my own show! It's a good problem to have. This is not a play that tries to make the audience comfortable. Could you feel that in the theater? Oh, yes. Because of the humor, I think the whole experience is of the audience being comfortable, being comfortable, being comfortable then suddenly being very uncomfortable. Which, for me, is the experience of rape, and is the experience of sexual abuse, and the experience of growing up female bodied, female presenting in this world. So often your sexuality is yours, it's yours, it's yours, until it's taken away from you. What surprised you about responses to the production? The predominant reaction to this play is complete strangers coming up to me and telling me extremely, extremely personal things about themselves. We had a student matinee the other day with high school arts students, and three of the students there, two women and a young man, during the talkback shared that they really related specifically to this final scene a scene where there's the aftermath of a rape happening. Another thing that surprised me but I guess upon further reflection, doesn't completely surprise me is the amount of older women who have come to me and said: "You know, we grew up in different times, the specifics are different, there are some references I didn't necessarily get. But the thing that struck me the most about your play is how little has changed." Last night was our benefit performance. So among an audience that was mostly white and you know, obviously, donors an older audience. I saw out of the corner of my eye there was this half Asian, very young woman who didn't seem to be a donor to me. She came up to me after the show with tears in her eyes and told me she found out about the show late, the only seats that were left were for the benefit, so she spent 250 as a Christmas present to herself to see this show. She was just getting super emotional and apologizing for it. I kept saying: "Don't apologize. Do not apologize." Because so much of the Asian experience is internalizing and not feeling like your emotions are valid, not feeling like the experiences you go through are valid, not feeling like the racism you experience is real. Sign up for Theater Update, a weekly email of news and features. I understand your father used to wake you up in the middle of the night to read his writing. My father wanted to be a poet and was a very creative person, and because of various things his mental disease, his alcoholism, his drug addiction never became what he set out to be. And so, yeah, he used to come home from the bar coked out of his mind and would wake me up at the age of 5 and have me read drafts of his poetry. Even though my relationship with my father was very dysfunctional, I've now grown to a point in my life where I have empathy for him, even though he wasn't a great person. And I think that makes me a much better dramatist. Did your parents see the show? I'm no longer in contact with my father, but my mother did. It was a very emotional experience for her, and actually the actor who plays my father, when he came up afterward he really wanted to meet my mom because he's the nicest guy ever but when he came up to meet my mom, my mom literally flinched and kind of couldn't even look him in the eye. It was pretty intense. But then when I was back for Thanksgiving, we were able to have some conversations about things, and I could tell she was proud. What has "Usual Girls" led to professionally? The development deal I have at FX that's sort of inspired by my life, and has influences of the play, but isn't directly the play. Following a young half Asian woman as she's navigating sex and relationships in her life, dealing with this father who is a drug addict and believes he was experimented on by the government, and also dealing with her mother who has now converted to Judaism, living in a Jewish household. This very wacky intersectional family in Columbus, Ohio. What are your plans for the week after the show? Anything else you want to say about the experience?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The New York Times recently spoke with more than two dozen women in the technology start up industry about sexual harassment, provoking a range of reactions with their accounts. Sarah Kunst, an entrepreneur who told The Times about an unwanted advance from Dave McClure, a founder of 500 Startups and an investor, wrote on Twitter that several women had shared similar stories of harassment involving Mr. McClure:	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
With the coronavirus replacing many graduation ceremonies with virtual pomp and circumstance, many families are feeling the loss of a significant ritual. And for parents with children graduating from both high school and college this year, the letdown is supersized. "Missing out on solemn and formal, joyous and exuberant anticipated events is as heartbreaking for seniors as it is for their parents. Families of double seniors face a heavy thwack of disappointments," said Wendy Mogel, a clinical psychologist in Los Angeles. "There is definitely a gap right now that is difficult to fill," said Simon J. Bronner, author of "Campus Traditions: Folklore From the Old Time College to the Modern Mega University." "We can do online classes and virtual events, but the milestone of the commencement is difficult to simulate." Dr. Bronner, dean of the College of General Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, and professor of social sciences, said, "For students graduating from high school, graduation is the formal ceremony marking your independence, your separation from home." Dr. Bronner, who helped plan his school's May 15 virtual ceremony, said "we need to be creative as educators and work with students to see what their emotional needs are, to find some kind of ritual closure, because they are not getting that now." But the cancellation of traditional commencements is giving families with multiple graduates opportunities to celebrate in new ways. According to Dr. Bronner, there may be a silver lining in the creation of these new rituals. "Commencements have changed over the years, becoming larger, and they have lost some of the social intimacy they used to have, and less centered on the students," he said. "Commencements are supposed to be student centered." On May 2, Katie Kresnak watched from her house in Lafayette, Calif., as her 22 year old daughter, Hannah, graduated from the University of Michigan in a ceremony she and her housemates who had quarantined together held in their front yard. With all 11 of the graduates' families watching online, the women took turns walking across a makeshift stage, with each speaking about the others. The families also got a chance to talk about their graduates in a ceremony that Ms. Kresnak said felt intimate. "It provided that closure you need psychologically to move from one chapter to the next," Ms. Kresnak said. "It was so much more memorable and meaningful than if we had been there in person." If plans hold, she and her 18 year old son, Nick, who will be attending the University of Washington, will get similar closure next month when he is to graduate from Acalanes High School. The school has tentative plans to have students at scheduled times walk by themselves down a corridor decorated with memories from their senior year, then outside to the school entrance where they will walk across the stage and either get their diploma from the principal if public health officials allow it, or pick it up from a table, Ms. Kresnak said. "I've been so impressed by the effort that the school and our community have made to support the seniors," Ms. Kresnak said. "Acalanes has this saying now of 'Community Can't Be Canceled,' and it's really been so supportive." Humor is keeping Anne O'Brien of South Riding, Va., sane as she deals with a high school senior, a college senior, and a daughter who was supposed to get married in a few weeks but had to postpone the ceremony because of the pandemic. "We hit the jackpot here," said Ms. O'Brien, a neonatal intensive care nurse. "If you ask any of the girls, they say they have it worst." Aydyn O'Brien, 17, graduating from Freedom High School next month in a virtual ceremony and planning to attend Florida State University, has commiserated with her sister, Marin, 22, graduating from the University of South Carolina the planned ceremony earlier this month has been postponed, with plans for the in person ceremony in August. "It was really nice to have her back home because she understood how I was feeling," Aydyn said. "We feel bad for each other, and we can share how we are hurting over this." Paula Martin of Boulder, Colo., credits her 21 year old son, Jackson, with helping her cope with her sadness over missing his graduation from Amherst College on May 31 with his optimism and sunny outlook for the future. Jackson also has been a good sounding board for 18 year old Henry, graduating from Boulder High School and planning to attend the University of Puget Sound, as Henry mourns missed traditions with friends. Ms. Martin hopes a car parade on May 17, where students in their caps and gowns circle the school in cars as teachers, family and friends appropriately social distanced line the route with signs, will help bring joy. "We have learned that it's OK to mourn what they are missing this year. We have learned not to take rituals for granted," Ms. Martin said. "The takeaway from this is to find different ways to commemorate or find joy in different kinds of experiences." The Martins now have a family book club, started after Ms. Martin joked that they had all run out of things to talk about. She hopes it will continue well beyond the pandemic. Marcia Maziarz of Washington, D.C., is saddened that neither of her daughters will ever see the other graduate from high school. Anna Ruhlman, 18, had to miss her sister Claire's high school graduation four years ago because her own middle school graduation ceremony was the same day and time. "Before that never seemed like that big of a deal, but now it feels different because I won't get to see Claire graduate from Bates (College) now," said Anna, who is graduating from School Without Walls High School and planning to attend Temple University. Ms. Maziarz hopes Anna will do a short commencement walk on their block with other high school seniors who live nearby to celebrate her graduation next month. For Claire, whose virtual graduation ceremony is May 31, Ms. Maziarz received a package from Bates College that included a blank "blessing card." These cards, filled with notes from loved ones, are normally posted on the arches that graduates pass through during graduation. "Maybe we can recreate that here somehow," Ms. Maziarz said. Shelby Roscoe of Newburgh, Ind., watched helplessly as her 22 year old daughter, Mahayla, learned she had four days to leave DePauw University before it was closed for the academic year. Her virtual ceremony is May 17. "She tried to cram in all the senior traditions she could with her friends in those four days," Ms. Roscoe said. "I'm glad she at least had some closure." But Ms. Roscoe's 18 year old son, Kolbe, has not been able to cap off his senior year at Signature School in Evansville, Ind., with time honored traditions, including a planned May 21 graduation ceremony, before he heads off to Purdue University in the fall. "We will find ways to celebrate them, but there is not that closure of seeing them walk across a stage," Ms. Roscoe said. "It may be just decorating our front door, to make it loud and big, so people know we are proud of our graduates." Melissa Guthrie of Dickson, Tenn., celebrated her birthday on May 8 while her daughter, RaeAnn, 21, graduated from Mississippi College, her degree conferred in a Facebook Live ceremony. RaeAnn watched the celebration with her family from their home. Ms. Guthrie hopes to see her 18 year old son, Ian, walk across the stage in June if Dickson County High School can hold its planned ceremony on the football field. Ian plans to attend Nashville State Community College in the fall. But even if the ceremony takes place, they've been told that because of social distancing, Ian would be able to invite only four people. "He has three siblings, so which one will make the cut, that will be memorable," Ms. Guthrie said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Damage from Hurricane Harvey in Katy, Tex., a Houston suburb.Credit...George Etheredge for The New York Times HOUSTON For six months, Sue and Roger Powell have been hoping to find a buyer for their 7,100 square foot home in the Houston suburb of Katy. A week ago, after they waded out of it with a few suitcases on air mattresses, those hopes had largely faded. Then they got an unexpected call from their real estate agent: a house hunter was interested. "Somebody actually called her before we got back in here," Sue Powell said as she stood in her driveway last week, a safety mask around her neck and a pile of her possessions on the curb. "I was really surprised," said her husband, describing how they had "gondoliered" their way back home over Labor Day weekend. "I didn't think anyone would be interested for years." "You have a country that's divided between high cost places like Bay Area and New York and higher unemployment areas like Detroit, and places like Houston pick up the slack," said Issi Romem, chief economist at BuildZoom, a San Francisco company that helps homeowners find contractors. And even after Hurricane Harvey revealed the city's vulnerability to catastrophic flooding, leaving thousands displaced and still living in shelters, people here are betting that nothing can stop Houston's continued growth. Redfin, a national real estate brokerage firm, said its agents had 45 home buyers lined up to purchase homes here when the storm hit. Only eight buyers backed out because of the storm, and tour requests immediately rebounded a week later. "I was shocked," said Glenn Kelman, the company's chief executive, who lives in Seattle. For now, buyers and sellers are trying to figure out how prices have changed after the flood. The Powells' potential buyer and many others are looking for a deal on a damaged home. At the same time, many economists are forecasting that the price of undamaged homes will rise as demand outstrips supply. Early estimates suggest that tens of thousands of homes were damaged, and developers are worried about labor shortages as repairs get priority over new construction. But as insurance and government money comes in, developers and real estate agents are betting that the area will quickly clear the backlog and continue along its normal trajectory of adding homes and people. Throughout Houston proper and the surrounding suburbs, developers sprawl ever outward, paving over pastures and former wetlands and leaving nothing to absorb the water, when it comes. "It is one of the most affordable housing markets in the country because people were able to build in places where they were likely to get flooded in the future," said Svenja Gudell, chief economist at Zillow, the real estate data service. Houstonians lose track of how many times they've been flooded. They repeatedly renovate or rebuild on elevated platforms and say they will go higher the next time if they have to. Their own home was fine because after the last flood, two years ago, they moved out and built a new one on an elevated platform, returning in March. The storm waters of Harvey rose up six of their seven front steps. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. "We have stairs everywhere front, back, garage," Ms. Asin said. "We have stairs going into the backyard." Elevated homes are common in Houston, particularly around Ms. Asin's neighborhood. In July, the City Council approved construction on the first nine homes in a batch of 42 near Brays Bayou that will be elevated using FEMA funding. The appeal is particularly obvious right now: Elevated homes sit untouched above devastated houses with massive piles of debris all around them. Across the street from Ms. Asin, Arturo Loza, part of a Mormon volunteer relief effort, was helping gut a flooded house with a sink, cabinets and piles of books heaped in front. Ms. Asin had been through three large floods since she moved near the bayou two decades ago. In Harvey, her losses were contained to the garage, which was not elevated, and so her daughters' cars were ruined, and a refrigerator was left floating. But this was nothing new. She said her family had lost five cars to rain and water damage in the last three years. Asked why they had bought a home in the neighborhood to begin with, Ms. Asin said: "The house was built in 1955 and it had never flooded. We thought, it hasn't flooded yet!" Then Tropical Storm Allison hit in 2001 and left a foot of water on the ground floor of the house. "We got it remodeled," Ms. Asin said. "They told us it was a 500 year flood." But in 2015, the so called Memorial Day flood almost completely covered their front yard, and Mr. Everett was photographed standing on a little patch of ground surrounded on all sides by water. That flood left three inches of water in their home, enough that everything had to be torn out Sheetrock, cabinets, floors. He predicted that after Harvey, even more homeowners would decide to demolish their flooded homes and build from scratch, but higher, and that already elevated homes would increase in value. (According to the Insurance Information Institute, homeowners in flood prone areas are often required to elevate their houses to get flood insurance, and the areas designated can change with storms and development.) In the meantime, even as National Guard trucks remained on the streets and drones assessed damage, the steady stream of migration continued. After the hurricane, when the city was still underwater in some places, Christine Garcia and her boyfriend, John Klein, packed their car in Chicago and set off on a long planned move to Houston. They were not entirely sure whether their apartment would be habitable, and were unable to get any answers from their landlord, but they arrived to find their two bedroom duplex was dry. The couple is renting now, but they moved there because they would like to buy eventually. Mr. Klein was attracted by the area's cheap housing he said he had seen homes advertised for 50,000 though he quickly came to appreciate the risks that such a low price entails.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
We spend a lot of time trying to tame our technology or wean ourselves from its ills. But tech at its best can help us create new things and express ourselves. That's why Tech Tip is evolving from a daily Q. and A. with readers into a monthly illustrated guide for people who want to use tech to hatch and produce stuff that makes them happy. First up: how to improve those mediocre iPhone photos you know, the ones that are crooked or too dark into images that we are proud to share. Say you were in Washington and snapped a photo of the Jefferson Memorial that did not come out the way you intended. The first thing to do is to go to Apple's Photos app , open the picture and tap the Edit button in the upper right corner of the screen when holding the phone horizontally. In iOS 11 on an iPhone 8, this takes you into the Edit mode, where the wand shaped Enhance button in the upper left corner can be used to brighten the image and enhance the color. (You can also edit photos when holding the phone vertically, and icon placement may vary by iPhone model and iOS version.) But what if you don't like instant fixes? Here's where you take control. To really dive under a photo's hood, select the dial shaped Adjustments icon on the right side of the screen, the third one from the top, below Crop/Rotate and Filters and above the More menu for using third party apps. Once you tap the Adjustments icon, you will see three main categories: Light, Color and B W. Touch a category heading to see all the elements of the image you can edit independently. Tap the name of a control for an onscreen slider to make your modifications. In the Light category you can change the photo's Brilliance, a setting that can make the picture look more vibrant without intensifying the color saturation. You can also adjust the picture's overall Exposure. And you can fiddle with the amount of detail visible in both the Highlights (bright areas) and the Shadows (dark parts) of the image, as well as the Contrast, which is the scale difference between the photo's light and dark tones. The Color category has preview sliders for adjusting the overall saturation, or intensity, of the color in the photo. You can also change the contrast between similar colors in the scene to make them "pop" more. Does the picture have a noticeable green, pink, yellow or blue tint? Move the Cast slider to get rid of it. Want to summon your inner Berenice Abbott and convert your color photos into artsy monochrome shots? Select the B W category and adjust the intensity, tone, grays and grain in the image. For a more automatic approach, tap the Filters icon on the Edit screen to try out new looks. Step 4: Straighten up and cut the clutter Many photos improve instantly if you cut out distracting elements and tighten the framing. Tap the Crop tool icon and drag the corners of the white box around the part of the picture you want to keep. Want the traditional Instagram square crop? Choose an aspect ratio by tapping the icon that looks like a stack of squares in the bottom right corner. The Photos app may automatically straighten the image so horizontal and vertical elements in the scene are roughly parallel to the edges of the picture. If it doesn't or you want to make your own changes slide your finger on the protractorlike dial on the right to find your preferred alignment. Sometimes it's easy to go overboard or maybe you were just experimenting anyway. If you are dissatisfied with your work, hit the Cancel or Reset button while still in the Edit mode to undo an adjustment. Even after you have saved an edited picture and change your mind about it, Photos lets you restore the picture to its unedited state. Just open it again, tap the Edit button and choose Revert to Original.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Trevor Noah also broadcast live, with his writers facing an even bigger time crunch than Colbert's because "The Daily Show" starts earlier, at 11 p.m. Eastern. But they pulled through, delivering quips about nearly every major aspect of the speech. "Just a few minutes ago, President Trump finished the second State of the Union address and yes, his tie was crooked when he walked in. Trump walked past 600 people and not a single one of them had the balls to tell him. In fact, at some point Mike Pence was like, adjusts tie 'This is the way ties should be from now on.' " TREVOR NOAH The Trumps invited a grade school boy named Joshua Trump, who is not related to the president but has complained of being bullied over his name, to attend the speech. Noah called it a masterful strategic move. At one point in the speech, Trump said, "If there is going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation." Noah found that easy to poke fun at. "O.K., that didn't make sense, but it rhymed. I wonder if Trump just wrote a bunch of rhymes to try and stop the investigation. He was just sitting in front of the mirror like, impersonating Trump 'Life is fuller without Robert Mueller! Any collusion is an illusion! If you lock up the orange ... nothing rhymes with orange. O.K.' " TREVOR NOAH Elsewhere, Trump spoke in braggadocious terms about how Congress had more women than ever. Noah felt the need to remind the president that most of those women belong to the opposition party. Trump has struggled with teleprompters in the past; this time, Noah confessed to being impressed with Trump's performance. "There was one thing we can all agree on: He read really well. Yeah, he's really improved. Like, I don't know if he's ready for a second term, but he's definitely ready for the second grade. I am so proud of him." TREVOR NOAH	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Amazon hopes to persuade people to pay for something they have traditionally enjoyed free: short form audio. Audible, Amazon's audiobook and spoken word subsidiary, on Thursday announced Channels, a subscription service that will offer a new library of audio, including original programs, articles read aloud and more. At 4.95 a month, it presents a lower priced entry point to the service and significantly expands on Audible's core audiobook offering, while giving listeners more incentive to stick with the company. Channels will be free under Audible's traditional 14.95 monthly membership, which provides access to hundreds of thousands of programs and audiobooks.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Going to college can seem like a choice between impossibly high payments while in school or a crushing debt load for years afterward, but one state is experimenting with a third way. This week, the Oregon Legislature approved a plan that could allow students to attend state colleges without paying tuition or taking out traditional loans. Instead, they would commit a small percentage of their future incomes to repaying the state; those who earn very little would pay very little. The proposal faces a series of procedural and practical hurdles and will not go into effect for at least a few years, but it could point to a new direction in the long running debate over how to cope with the rising cost of higher education. While the approach has been used in Australia, national education groups say they do not know of any university in the United States trying it. The Oregon plan had an unusual, and unusually swift, gestation. Less than a year ago, neither elected officials nor advocacy groups there had even considered it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
What U.S. Tech Giants Face in Europe in 2017 For American tech behemoths like Google and Facebook, Europe can be both a blessing and a curse. The region and its 500 million consumers are one of the companies' most important overseas markets. And in cities from Lisbon to Ljubljana, people often can't get enough YouTube videos, Amazon purchases and Twitter messages. Yet policy makers in the 28 member European Union have also become some of the most ardent critics of how Silicon Valley companies dominate much of the digital world. The criticisms include the companies' perceived failure to pay local taxes and their collection of reams of personal information. These tensions took center stage in 2016: Apple was ordered to pay 13 billion euros, or about 13.7 billion, in back taxes to the Irish government; Google was accused of unfairly favoring some of its digital services over those of rivals; and Uber was prohibited from operating some of its ride booking services in the region. The companies deny wrongdoing. The next 12 months are shaping up to be potentially even more painful. Many of the investigations that started in 2016 will be decided in the coming year. If Silicon Valley companies lose the battles, they could be forced to change how they operate not only in Europe, but also farther afield. Google is facing three sets of antitrust charges in Europe related to some of its search services and Android, its popular smartphone operating system. The first set of charges linked to accusations that Google unfairly promoted its shopping product over those of rivals could be decided by early spring and might lead to a fine of up to 10 percent of the company's global revenue, or about 7.5 billion (though most penalties are significantly less). The company has repeatedly denied that it favors its own services over those of others, and it is spending close to a half billion dollars across Europe to endear itself to locals. Any appeal of the decision would take years. Google's European woes also extend to taxes, and French officials will most likely decide this year if the company must pay more than 1 billion in back taxes on its operations there. It also has appealed a decision by France's data protection regulator that it must apply the "Right to Be Forgotten" rule across its global domains, including those in the United States. The current right allows people with connections to Europe to ask search engines to remove links to online content about themselves, under certain circumstances. The appeal will be heard in 2017. On the top of Apple's agenda in 2017 will be its appeal of the EUR13 billion tax bill. Lawmakers in Ireland are also appealing the decision, claiming that the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, overstepped its jurisdiction and that Apple did not receive preferential tax treatment. Both appeals are expected to be heard by Europe's top courts in late 2017, at the earliest. The cases will most likely take on an increasingly political angle. President elect Donald J. Trump has suggested that American companies with significant cash held overseas might be able to repatriate these nest eggs at a reduced tax rate. If Mr. Trump goes ahead with this plan, expect a standoff between American and European lawmakers over where such money including from Apple should be taxed. The social media giant is becoming an increasing target for European officials because of its ever expanding role in the region's economy. In 2017, Facebook will face the outcomes of investigations in France, Spain, Germany and the Netherlands about how it tracks both members and nonmembers who use the company's services and visit third party websites with embedded Facebook "like" buttons. The company won a similar case on appeal in Belgium. Facebook also has until the end of January to respond to European charges that it misled regulators when it sought approval for its 19 billion takeover of WhatsApp, the internet messenger it now owns. Amid concerns that Facebook did not sufficiently clamp down on fake news during the American presidential election, the company has faced similar worries in Europe, where some officials have called for it to be held responsible for such content, and for hate speech. In March, a German task force will report on how Facebook and other social media companies have responded to these issues. Legislation could follow if lawmakers believe the companies have not done enough. The ride hailing company has been locked in a yearslong struggle to operate freely across Europe after some taxi associations and policy makers accused it of flouting local rules and promoting unfair competition. In April, the European Court of Justice, the region's highest court, is expected to rule on whether Uber is a transportation service or a digital platform a decision that will have far reaching consequences. If Uber is deemed a transportation service, it will have to comply with Europe's tough taxi rules and not be able to offer some of its low cost services. If the court rules Uber is a digital platform, the company will have greater ability to expand aggressively in the region, still one of its more important international markets.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
On view for one week only at the Museum of Modern Art, "Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker: Work/Travail/Arbeid" is among the most substantive and challenging exhibitions of the year. But is it an exhibition at all? Ms. De Keersmaeker, a renowned Belgian choreographer, emerged in the 1980s with exacting, cerebral dances, performed with her company, Rosas, and often featuring live music by the Ictus Ensemble. For this new project, she and her longtime dance troupe and musical partners adapt her rigorous choreography from stage to gallery and present dance as a museum show like any other. But also: a museum show unlike any other. This "danced exhibition" began on Wednesday and runs only until Sunday, in MoMA's atrium. It has no proper beginning or end, running in nine hour cycles unrelated to the museum's opening times, and although this hostile central space has been fitted with a sprung dance floor, there is no stage as such. You can come and go as you please, and you can stand anywhere, as in any other gallery. If you want to catch the Nan Goldin exhibition elsewhere on the second floor, you'll have to walk through "Work/Travail/Arbeid," whose whirling dancers and itinerant musicians must rethink their steps around the public. I watched a two hour segment at a preview on Tuesday night, and then a further three hours on Wednesday and two hours on Thursday during normal museum time. In both cases, viewers started at the room's edges and slowly felt more confident to occupy the dancers' space. The performers will work around you though the pianist has it hardest, and I had to duck his Steinway on wheels. Ms. De Keersmaeker's dancers walk, run, spin and splay to a score by the French composer Gerard Grisey, whose "Vortex Temporum," for six musicians, is a multi tempo wash of sounds in the style known as spectralism. (Ms. De Keersmaeker initially used "Vortex Temporum" for a theater work, seen last fall at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.) Where much modern dance dissociated movement and music Merce Cunningham sometimes didn't disclose accompaniment to his troupe before they went onstage the dancers in "Work/Travail/Arbeid" perform largely on the beat, each one closely tracking a particular musician. During one solo, the dancer Bostjan Antoncic crouched in place multiple times, then spun like a dervish, against breathy long notes and pizzicato flashes from the violinist Igor Semenoff. Later another dancer, Marie Goudot, walked alongside the clarinetist Dirk Descheemaeker, then pranced in circles while the musician played Grisey's undulant, fast paced theme. Many sequences in "Work/Travail/Arbeid" start from a simple structure flexing the spine, spinning in place while the dancer spirals out from the atrium's center in an ever widening orbit. (They often travel along a series of chalk circle paths drawn on the floor and restored by the troupe every hour.) Like all of Ms. De Keersmaeker's choreography, this piece demands immense precision, especially in the sextet, when pairs or trios twirl, fall and arise in tandem. The trilingual title expresses as much. This is not a "work" as in art work (oeuvre in French, werk in Dutch). This is "work" as in labor, or practice: the slow and serious development of quality over time. But just as important as the motions and sounds of "Work/Travail/Arbeid" are the adjustments required to create a "dance exhibition" in a museum. In the theater, ticketholders have committed to an experience until intermission, at least while here you can watch for any spell you like. In the theater, cellphones are switched off; here, you can live tweet every arabesque and extension. And the presence, and mobility, of hundreds of museumgoers jars Ms. De Keersmaeker's clear cut choreography, and Grisey's music too. On Wednesday morning a school group made a ruckus in the lobby during a hushed passage of the score. The night before several dancers retraced their steps around a supporting column, and had to dodge spectators while doing so. The immense achievement of "Work/Travail/Arbeid" is enacted through that collision, where the precise structure of the dance enmeshes with the life of the museum. Unlike Tino Sehgal, whose chatty performers question art's value and permanence, and unlike Marina Abramovic, whose marathon sit down in this space became an indulgent spectacle, Ms. De Keersmaeker does not fit easily into art's current vogue for in person "experiences." She is a formalist of the first order, far closer to an earlier generation of choreographers in museums like Trisha Brown, who died on March 18 and to whom Ms. De Keersmaeker has dedicated this show. "Work/Travail/Arbeid," structured as an exhibition rather than a scheduled performance, actually ramps up the distinction between dance and art. At every moment you have to think hard, at once, about both the dance in progress and the dance's volatility in the gallery. "Work/Travail/Arbeid" first appeared in 2015 at WIELS, an art space in Ms. De Keersmaeker's hometown, Brussels, where it ran for nine weeks. It was later reworked for shorter runs at the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Tate Modern in London. This is its last stop. Though I did not see the piece in any of its European iterations, this seems to be the most public and least enclosed version of "Work/Travail/Arbeid." What intimacy it may have lost in MoMA's tall atrium is made up for by its penetration into the other spaces of Yoshio Taniguchi's building. On Wednesday, Grisey's music could be heard throughout the third floor architecture and design galleries and made a spooky, hard charging accompaniment to the Bauhaus collection. (One of this show's virtues: it uses MoMA's vogue for dance to smuggle in contemporary music, with which the museum is far less comfortable.) Up in the prewar painting and sculpture galleries, museumgoers clustered in the picture window between Willem de Kooning's "Woman I" and Barnett Newman's "Vir Heroicus Sublimis," as Ms. De Keersmaeker's dancers orbited clockwise below. What Ms. De Keersmaeker knows, and what "Work/Travail/Arbeid" resoundingly affirms, is that difficulty and delight are not at odds. Spectacle in museums is here to stay, but the best pleasures are adult pleasures, the ones that make demands on us and might even leave us improved. You have three days more to see it yourself. Look hard. Concentrate. Work.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
DETROIT When Ford rolls out its redesigned F 150 pickup truck here on Monday morning to kick off two days of press previews for the 2014 North American International Auto Show, the automaker will be making one of the boldest product gambles in its 111 year history. The calculated risk Ford is taking casting aside the traditional and long proven welded steel construction of the truck's cab and cargo bed and switching to a body that is largely lightweight aluminum is sure to rank among the most important news items coming from the automakers' displays at the show. In most years, the star attraction of this annual industry showcase is something like the lustworthy Chevrolet Corvette Stingray of last January. That the headline grabber of the 2014 show might turn out to be a vehicle as utilitarian and practical as the F 150 says a lot about what a great leap this pickup is. The much anticipated switch in materials an investment of billions of dollars by Ford in factory updates, production tooling and engineering expertise is a breakthrough in scale and a first for pickups. It is aimed at drastically reducing the F 150's weight to improve fuel economy. According to engineers involved in its development, the new truck is expected to be some 15 percent lighter over all than the steel 2014 version, with the aluminum body and bed alone shaving more than 450 pounds. Including engine and suspension components, aluminum is expected to account for as much 1,000 pounds of the truck's weight. Cutting weight is widely regarded as the most cost effective way to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gases. Industry experts say that trimming weight by 10 percent results, on average, in a fuel economy improvement of 6 to 7 percent. By Ford's calculations, the 2015 truck, equipped with a new 2.7 liter EcoBoost V6 and a 6 speed automatic transmission, will be capable of achieving "close to" 30 miles a gallon in the Environmental Protection Agency's highway test when it goes on sale this year, according to engineers who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the ratings have not been formally announced. A 30 m.p.g. rating would catapult the F 150 well beyond its competitors, led by the 2014 Ram 1500 HFE at 25 m.p.g. highway, and would handily top the thriftiest (23 m.p.g. highway) 2014 F 150. And this is the payoff it would bring Ford's most profitable vehicle line closer to meeting the government's future fleet mileage standards, which call for vehicles with a footprint as large as a full size pickup to average 30.2 m.p.g. by 2025. The new F 150 arrives after a giddy 2013 for automakers, in which vehicle sales in the United States rose 7.6 percent, to 15.6 million. Now entering its 13th generation, the F 150 has been America's best selling vehicle for 32 consecutive years 763,402 were sold last year and the top selling truck for 37 years. The F Series accounts for 35 percent of Ford's North American revenue, according to IHS Automotive, a market analysis firm. The new F 150 is Ford's first step in a broad strategy to shift all of its full size truck bodies, including the F 250 and F 350 Super Duty pickups and the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator S.U.V.'s, to primarily aluminum construction over the next three years, Ford engineers said. The plan will create common manufacturing processes and tooling in Ford's three United States truck plants. "Ford is stepping out ahead of the other truck makers with the aluminum strategy," said Richard Schultz of Ducker Worldwide, which tracks industrial materials usage. Engineers involved with the program credit Alan Mulally, Ford's chief executive, with supporting the lightweight F Series plan throughout the financial crisis, when Ford was forced to drop some vehicle programs and mortgage assets to avoid the financial hardships that hit General Motors and Chrysler. Despite aluminum's widespread use in heavy truck cabs and in military vehicles, aircraft and warships where its combination of strength, durability, weight savings and corrosion resistance is paramount there are still critics among pickup customers who equate the light metal with beer can flimsiness. But engineers say that a stamped aluminum body can equal or even outperform steel in overall strength, dent resistance and crash protection, depending on the material used, its thickness and how the structure is designed and assembled. There are challenges: While it will probably be months before the 2015 prices are announced, industry experts say that the use of aluminum will raise the cost of producing F 150s by several hundred dollars. Ford is using 5000 and 6000 series sheet the numbers indicate the particular alloys supplied by Alcoa and Novelis. These alloys are popular with automakers because they are easy to form, rugged and, in the case of 6000, provide the smooth "class A" surfaces required for visible panels like fenders. About half of the truck's stampings will use the more expensive 6000 series sheet, heat treated to a T4 condition, a manufacturing step that significantly toughens the material by heating it to 750 degrees Fahrenheit for two hours, followed by immediate quenching in water. The material hardens further when the body goes through the paint drying oven. Ford engineers said the F 150's body and box strength also comes from the combination of structural adhesive basically industrial glue and some 4,000 rivets used to join much of the aluminum, replacing about 7,000 spot welds of a steel truck. While the bodies will shift to aluminum, F Series models will continue to use separate steel ladder type frames, which are the foundation of the trucks' towing and payload capabilities. The frame of the F 150 is a new design that is stronger, yet 80 pounds lighter, than the 2014 version. Its front section is made using a process called roll forming, which results in an exceptionally robust yet lighter structure, Ron Krupitzer, head of automotive applications at the Steel Market Development Institute, said. Other parts remaining in steel include side impact door beams and the front and rear bumpers. While Ford has experimented with various aluminum intensive concepts since the 1980s, the focus was mainly on unibody designs, which do not have separate frames. The automaker came close to producing an all aluminum sedan in the mid 1990s, according to Mr. Schultz, who at the time was an executive at Alcoa. Instead, company leaders decided to invest in aluminum bodies for Jaguar, which Ford owned in 1990 2007, and from that relationship Ford is said to have retained intellectual property rights to much of the aluminum forming and assembly technologies. Ford's only production vehicle with an aluminum intensive body was the Ford GT supercar, built in small numbers in 2004 6. As global fuel economy laws have become more stringent, aluminum's use in automotive applications has steadily grown. But volume production of all aluminum bodies had been limited to luxury makes like Audi, Jaguar Land Rover and Mercedes. With the 2015 F 150, Ford changes everything.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
For years, thousands of people who hadn't been convicted of a crime languished in New York jails because they could not afford bail. New Yorkers were locked away for months, even years, not because they were dangerous, but because they were poor. Lives were ruined. Young people, overwhelmingly black and Hispanic teenagers, were thrown away like trash. Families were splintered, and communities torn apart. Finally last year, the State Legislature banned bail for defendants charged with most misdemeanor and nonviolent offenses. New York's top Democrats preened and crowed, congratulating themselves as progressive champions. Now, those same Democrats are buckling, crumpling in the face of an ugly campaign to undermine the bail law by forces long opposed to reform. The effort to destroy bail reform was underway even before the law went into effect. Prosecutors and police unions issued ominous warnings about its imagined impact. One district attorney was even recorded training prosecutors in how to subvert the law. Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a "new way to talk about progressive ideology and education." It wasn't until a spike in anti Semitic hate crimes though, that the campaign really began to pick up steam. Some in the Hasidic community, an important voting bloc in New York, called on lawmakers to revisit the bail law. The New York Post, true to character, helped things along by telling the story of Tiffany Harris, a Brooklyn woman who allegedly slapped three Orthodox women and shouted an anti Semitic slur, then was released without bail, only to be arrested the following day for allegedly punching a woman. On Jan. 1, a judge ordered Ms. Harris held at a hospital to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. If anything, high profile cases like this one should prompt calls for increased funding of the state's supervised release programs, to ensure they are equipped to serve defendants fighting mental health or substance abuse issues. Roughly 40 percent of those locked up on Rikers Island are known to be suffering from mental illness evidence of how New York has used its jails until now. But amid a deeply troubling rise in anti Semitic hate crimes, the pressure is on to punish instead. So the Harris case, aided greatly by The New York Post, has led to calls for more incarceration. "We need to make sure that habitual criminals stay behind bars not on the streets," Assemblyman Simcha Eichenstein wrote on Twitter on Dec. 30, two days before the bail law went into effect. Never mind that bail is assessed in New York according to flight risk, not public safety. Never mind that Ms. Harris hadn't been convicted of the crime. "It really is a vigilante mentality," said Lisa Schreibersdorf, the executive director of Brooklyn Defender Services, which represents Ms. Harris. Crime remains extremely low. Yet the same people are making the same tiresome arguments, calling for more police officers to save us from the criminals whom liberals allow to roam the streets. Republican Party leaders in New York have promised to campaign on the issue, insisting without evidence that bail reforms will return New York to the early 1990s, when the murder rate was over 2,000 a year. The Twitter feed of the Sergeants Benevolent Association is offering a steady stream of hysteria. "Law enforcement across NY State can NO longer keep violent prisoners in jail," it wrote Jan. 2. "NYS residents need to beware and may no longer be safe." People who have never shown much interest in the enormous cost of overpolicing and mass incarceration, or in the lives of black and Hispanic Americans in general, assure us that the solution to every problem is to lock people away and throw away the key. "The real solution to disorder in our cities is the same as it always has been: More and better policing," Senator Tom Cotton said in a speech this month. "New York's finest and police officers all across the country have broken crime waves in the past, using steely resolve and superior force. They can do it again, if only we give them the freedom and support they need." Disappointingly, the city's police commissioner, Dermot Shea, has joined the voices opposed to the reforms. In no time, most of the state's top Democrats, feeling the pressure, have signaled that they are open to changing or scaling back the reforms, just days after they went into effect. That includes Gov. Andrew Cuomo; the Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart Cousins; State Attorney General Letitia James; and Brooklyn's borough president, Eric Adams. Mayor Bill de Blasio, though, has outdone himself, offering praise for the bail law out of one side of his mouth while also promoting a change that would allow judges to consider dangerousness when setting bail. New York has never had such a measure on the books. Studies have shown that such consideration are likely to worsen racial disparities already rampant in the criminal justice system. Only the Assembly speaker, Carl Heastie, a longtime supporter of the bail reforms, has tried to hold the line, reminding the state why the changes were necessary in the first place. "For too long, our criminal justice system has allowed those with the means to grease the wheels of justice, leaving those without to languish," he said in Albany on Thursday. "By implementing this system, everyone is treated the same." This was all so predictable. This is, after all, the United States, where outrage over a woman like Tiffany Harris, who is black, can undo years of hard fought criminal justice reform, while no one bats an eyelash as Harvey Weinstein, accused of being a serial rapist, walks free on bail. Democrats should grow a spine, stand up for the law and reassure the public that they are at no increased danger. To do that, they must ensure that jail is not the only answer to public safety. The governor, mayor and Legislature can devote more attention to the state's supervised release programs and mental health system. As a temporary measure, they can send more police officers to Orthodox Jewish communities that have been targeted by anti Semitism. But they should resist calls to dismantle the law, and especially reject allowing judges to consider "dangerousness," a standard that would take New York back into the criminal justice Dark Ages. For years, jail was the easy answer to issues arising from complicated problems of addiction, mental illness, poverty and shattered communities. To build a fairer criminal justice system, New York has already committed itself to a better way all it needs now are leaders who share that commitment. 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
SAN FRANCISCO TikTok sued the U.S. government on Monday, accusing the Trump administration of depriving it of due process when President Trump used his emergency economic powers to issue an executive order that will block the app from operating in the country. The suit, which was filed in the Federal District Court for the Central District of California, is TikTok's most direct challenge to the White House and escalates an increasingly bitter back and forth between the popular video app and American officials. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese internet company ByteDance, poses a national security threat because of its Chinese ties. On Aug. 6, he issued twin executive orders banning transactions with TikTok and the Chinese social media app WeChat within 45 days. A week later, he issued a separate executive order giving ByteDance 90 days to divest from its American assets and any data that TikTok had gathered in the United States. "We do not take suing the government lightly; however, we feel we have no choice but to take action to protect our rights, and the rights of our community and employees," the company said in its suit. "Our more than 1,500 employees across the U.S. pour their hearts into building this platform every day," the company said, noting that it planned to hire more than 10,000 more workers across eight states in the coming years. Relations between the United States and China have soured in recent months over rifts in geopolitics, technology and trade. The campaign has been partly provoked by China's more assertive posture, but also Mr. Trump's desire to convince voters that he is tough on China. As part of that, Mr. Trump's advisers have zeroed in on technology companies that they say are beholden to the Chinese government through security laws, including ByteDance, the Chinese telecom equipment maker Huawei and the internet company Tencent, the owner of WeChat. Mr. Trump's first executive order against TikTok draws its legal authority from the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which allows the president to regulate economic transactions in a national emergency. Past administrations have used it to punish foreign governments, as well as drug kingpins and hackers, but have never used it against a global technology company. Jason M. Waite, a partner at the law firm Alston Bird, said courts would probably be reluctant to challenge the president on national security grounds. But if a court does decide to rule against Mr. Trump, that could end up curtailing the powers of the presidency. "I do think the U.S. should be concerned about having to defend I.E.E.P.A. actions and the impact that could have on the authority of a future president," Mr. Waite said. TikTok said in a blog post explaining the grounds for its lawsuit that the Trump administration "failed to follow due process and act in good faith, neither providing evidence that TikTok was an actual threat, nor justification for its punitive actions." The company also claimed that the purported national security threat identified by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States was based on "outdated news articles" and did not address the documentation provided by TikTok demonstrating the security of user data. One of the Trump administration's chief concerns has been the storage of American user data on foreign servers. But in its complaint, TikTok said it had taken "extraordinary measures to protect the privacy and security of TikTok's U.S. user data," which included storing American users' data outside China on servers in the United States and Singapore. The company said it had also erected "software barriers" that stored U.S. user data separately from the data kept on other products and companies owned by ByteDance. The company also said many of its top personnel including its chief executive, general counsel and global chief security officer were all in the United States and were not subject to Chinese law. And further, content moderation across the TikTok app is led by a team based in the United States, operating independently from China. The Justice Department declined to comment on the suit. The president's move to ban WeChat, a social media app used widely by people of Chinese descent in the United States, is also facing legal challenges. On Friday, a nonprofit group calling itself the WeChat Users Alliance filed a separate suit in a federal court in San Francisco arguing that the president's attempt to ban WeChat violated various constitutional protections, including the First Amendment, and seeking an injunction against the move. The executive orders against TikTok have led ByteDance to explore a sale of the popular video app, which is used by millions of teenagers and influencers. The company is in talks with multiple American firms, including Microsoft and Oracle, for a sale of at least parts of its business. TikTok is continuing to negotiate a potential sale while it fights the U.S. government in court.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Life often isn't easy for small performing arts venues in New York. Even beloved spaces can struggle with the city's high rents and competition for fund raising dollars. But Jack, an interdisciplinary performance space in Brooklyn's Clinton Hill neighborhood, is showing that it is possible to thrive. On Tuesday, Alec Duffy, the co director of Jack, announced that the organization has signed a 10 year lease to move into a larger home. Jack is known for hosting experimental and politically inclined theater, dance and music performances, as well as community forums on issues that are relevant to its neighborhood. Its new venue will be at 18 Putnam Avenue, just a short walk from its current site, and it will include a backstage area, a lobby, space for an administrative office and a slightly increased audience capacity. The aim is to open in midsummer. Jack's current lease ends March 31. Mr. Duffy said that the move was made possible by conservative budgeting, unexpected grants and a little bit of real estate luck. "We had a very good year last year, so we're coming out of 2018 with a significant surplus, which is going toward building the space out," Mr. Duffy said. "And the rent is pretty much on par with what we're paying now." But he acknowledged that the decision also includes "a huge leap of faith that the Jack family of supporters and their network can help us make this dream possible." A fund raising campaign will help raise money for the new space.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
In Columbia, S.C., on Saturday, a young protester told a reporter that she just didn't think voting is "how change happens." "They've been telling us to do that for so long," she added, "and we've done it and look at everything that's still going on." Fury over the cruel death of George Floyd, a black man in police custody, combined with fear of a deadly virus and its painful economic impact, make this a dark, dizzying moment in our national life. But African Americans shouldn't feel hopeless, because the black vote does matter it has never mattered more. It is at the heart of the fight to take back America. The biggest story of 2020 politics is hard to ignore. But somehow it is being ignored. Joe Biden would be retired if not for the black vote. Black voters made him the Democrats' presidential nominee. In November, the number of black voters who turn out in the crucial swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin is likely to be the deciding factor in the election. That means black voters, 12 percent of the national electorate, are set to pick our next president. Black women, the most reliable activist base of the party, are this year's version of the stars of past campaigns Soccer Moms and Blue Collar Moms. The best illustration of this power is a black woman asking Jim Clyburn, her South Carolina congressman, who he planned to vote for in the primary. He said Joe Biden and followed up with a public endorsement: "We know Joe. But most importantly, Joe knows us." Mr. Biden went on to blow out the competition in South Carolina and easily win the rest of the South. Two top competitors with no traction among black voters, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, dropped out and endorsed him. The party's sudden consolidation around Mr. Biden abruptly ended a confusing race that many feared was hurtling toward an open convention. Few had seen it coming. Mr. Biden looked boring in comparison with the impassioned Bernie Sanders and the furious Donald Trump. Yet polls consistently showed that in a general election matchup, it was Mr. Biden who held the highest margin of victory over Mr. Trump. There are many reasons for black voters to like Mr. Biden his record on judicial appointments and voting rights during his long tenure on the Senate Judiciary Committee; his work on federal stimulus spending after the recession and on Obamacare; and of course his service as vice president to the nation's first black president. But beating Mr. Trump tops the list. For black voters, the prospect of four more years of this administration is about more than politics. It is a reaction born of real fear of the racism that led a white man to shoot Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia and a white police officer to press his knee into the neck of George Floyd in Minnesota, of the racism that every day results in more black people dying of the coronavirus. African Americans see this, and they see a president who does nothing to stop it. Contrary to the image created by news coverage of the Black Lives Matter protests, 43 percent of black voters are moderates. A quarter identify as conservatives. These are the black people in church on Sunday. They are proud members of a sorority or fraternity. Russian trolls recognized the power of these voters. "No single group" was targeted more than African Americans, according to a Senate Intelligence Committee report on interference in the 2016 presidential election. The Russians wanted to drive down black enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton. But they also worked to deepen the black white divide to increase white turnout for the Republican Party. Their bots and trolls depicted black Americans as synonymous with the loudest activists in the Black Lives Matter movement. They amplified Mr. Trump's tactic of appealing to "forgotten" white voters by demonizing blacks and Latinos, suggesting they bring crime and bad schools into white neighborhoods and contribute to the flight of American jobs. The strategy seems to have succeeded. In 2016, while white turnout went up, "the black voter turnout rate declined for the first time in 20 years in a presidential election," according to the Pew Research Center. President Trump, too, recognizes the power of the black vote. After his upset win in 2016, he said: Blacks "didn't come out to vote for Hillary. They didn't come out. And that was big so thank you to the African American community." Today he continues putting his attention and campaign money into diminishing the impact of black voters. First, he wants to attract more than the 8 percent of the black vote he won in 2016. He likes to cite low unemployment statistics as evidence that he is a good president for black Americans. Of course, black unemployment fell to 7.5 percent from 16.8 percent under President Obama; it fell two more points under Mr. Trump before skyrocketing in the course of the pandemic. But if he can't get them to vote for him, he'd like to keep them from voting at all. Mr. Trump is opposed to mail in voting, even during the pandemic, saying it is fertile ground for fraud. But his real concern seems to be that making voting easier in any way means more members of minorities will vote, and vote for Democrats. In March he was explicit in saying "you'd never have a Republican elected in this country again" if mail in voting were allowed. Last week he doubled down, tweeting that it would "lead to the end of our great Republican Party." Third, Mr. Trump is trying to assure suburban white female voters that they shouldn't fear being labeled racist if they vote for him. White women moved away from the Republican Party in the 2018 midterms in part in reaction to Mr. Trump's bully boy behavior and the racial division he encourages. They didn't want to be seen as some of those "fine people," as Mr. Trump described the white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va. During the Super Bowl, white women and blacks were the target audience of a high priced ad centered on the president's decision to commute the prison sentence of a black woman who had been in jail for 21 years for a nonviolent drug conviction. Then, during his 2020 State of the Union address, he celebrated a former member of the Tuskegee Airmen and featured a black woman and her daughter who received an academic scholarship. But anyone who remembers Mr. Trump's record of disrespect toward women, and black women in particular, isn't going to fall for this act. He told four congresswomen of color, three of whom were born in the United States, that they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came." He called Representative Maxine Waters, a California Democrat, a "low IQ person" and Omarosa Manigault Newman, a former aide, a "dog." He said one black reporter was a "loser" and another asked "a lot of stupid questions." "His supporters are right he does attack everyone," Adia Harvey Wingfield, a sociology professor at Washington University in St. Louis, told The Washington Post. "But there's also a clear commonality in the attacks he levels against people of color and black professionals. These are straight out of historic playbooks about black workers and professionals in particular not being qualified, not being intelligent or having what it takes to succeed in a predominantly white environment." After three years of Mr. Trump as president, 65 percent of black people say it is a "bad time" to be black in America, according to a January Washington Post Ipsos poll. Just as dispiriting, most black people now say white Americans "do not understand" the discrimination they face. That applies to white Democrats as well as white Republicans. The sense of racial isolation is fueled by the high incidence of hate crimes against black people as well as against Latinos and Jews. And then there is the anxiety over the prospect of four more years of being invisible as the president sets national goals. For example, Mr. Trump regularly demeans government workers, many of whom are black. He's still trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and cut financial aid to the unemployed. Mr. Trump was slow to respond to the coronavirus overall. But he really failed to step up to the crisis in black America. "The disproportionate impact of Covid 19 crisis is only having the effect of increasing people's disdain and distrust of Trump and the entire administration," Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, a super PAC focused on black Democrats, told The New York Times. After Mr. Arbery was stopped while jogging on a residential Georgia street and shot to death for no apparent reason, Mr. Trump said it was "very disturbing" but added that the gunmen might have reacted to "something that we didn't see on the tape." The refusal to condemn the attack outright led black activists to complain that even in the face of what looked like murder, Mr. Trump felt the need to nod to his "largely white coalition," according to The Washington Post. "When you have hate emanating from the Oval Office, why are we surprised?" said Karen Bass, a California congresswoman who heads the Congressional Black Caucus, about the shooting. Black Americans have had enough. They have an explosive, personal investment in defeating Mr. Trump in 2020. More than 80 percent of them say Mr. Trump is a racist. For them, defeating him is the civil rights movement of 2020. And it is not an empty threat. If black voters returned to the polls at their 2012 levels, the Democratic presidential candidate "would win the Electoral College by 294 244," according to an analysis by the Center for American Progress. If Mr. Biden chooses a black woman as his running mate, as many expect him to do, it could further boost turnout. He is said to be considering Kamala Harris, Val Demings and Stacey Abrams. He has also promised to name a black woman to the Supreme Court. Given their role in his triumph in the Democratic primaries, black women are at a point of maximal leverage in demanding a seat at the table of power. One 2006 study of voting patterns found that black Democratic candidates spurred a jump of two to three percentage points in turnout among blacks and whites. There is the risk of increasing the number of whites voting in opposition to the black candidate. But that risk comes with a big benefit if the history making ticket sparks a boost in black turnout in swing states. White Democrats actually were "a little more likely than black Democrats to think a black nominee would help the ticket's chances," according to the summary of a CBS News poll in early May. Most black voters say their priority for a vice president is simply that the candidate black or white increases Mr. Biden's chance of winning. In late May, polls showed the top choice for Mr. Biden's vice president among black and white Democrats was Senator Elizabeth Warren. It's likely that Mr. Trump is now hoping that suburban white voters will be so frightened by the protests against police violence and news footage of broken windows at Target stores that they will turn to him in sufficient numbers to nullify the black vote. Stoking racial divisions may work for his base, but not for voters in the middle. Polls show most independents have already decided they can't support Mr. Trump. Now they have seen the tape of Mr. Floyd dying. Violent protests may make them anxious, but they have had their eyes opened to injustice. These are dark days, but black voters' profile and power have never been this high. They have the chance to lead the nation to recovery. Civil rights leaders, who pushed for the 1965 Voting Rights Act and had their blood spilled to register black voters, dreamed of this moment. Juan Williams is a Fox News analyst and the author of "What the Hell Do You Have to Lose?" He writes a column for The Hill. 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
How did the political left squander the opportunity that was the 2020 primary campaign? The Trump presidency has created tremendous energy among progressives. More than half of Democratic voters now identify as liberal. Most favor "Medicare for all." A growing number are unhappy with American capitalism. This year's campaign offered the prospect of transformational change, with a Democratic nominee who was more liberal than any in more than a half century. Instead, the nominee now seems likely to be a moderate white grandfather who first ran for president more than 30 years ago and whose campaign promises a return to normalcy. True, Bernie Sanders could make a comeback, but it would need to be a big one. Among people who voted on Super Tuesday itself rather than voting early, before Joe Biden won South Carolina Biden trounced Sanders. The race would have to change fundamentally for Sanders to win. If he doesn't, the obvious questions for progressives is what went wrong and how they can do better in the future. I think there are some clear answers empirical answers that anybody, regardless of ideology, should be able to see. I'd encourage the next generation of progressive leaders to think about these issues with an open mind. The biggest lesson is simply this: The American left doesn't care enough about winning. It's an old problem, one that has long undermined left wing movements in this country. They have often prioritized purity over victory. They wouldn't necessarily put it these terms, but they have chosen to lose on their terms rather than win with compromise. You can see this pattern today in the ways that many progressive activists misread public opinion. Their answer to almost every question of political strategy is to insist that Americans are a profoundly progressive people who haven't yet been inspired to vote the way they think. The way to win, these progressives claim, is to go left, always. Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a "new way to talk about progressive ideology and education." Immigration? Most Americans want more of it. Abortion? This is a pro choice country. Fracking? People now understand its downsides. Strict gun control? Affirmative action? A wealth tax? Free college? Medicare for all? Widely available marijuana? Americans want it all, activists claim. This belief helps explain why so many 2020 candidates hoping to win the progressive vote including Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris embraced ideas like a ban on fracking and the decriminalization of the border. The left persuaded itself that those policies were both morally righteous and politically savvy. To reject any one of them was to risk being labeled a neoliberal sellout. The thing is, progressive activists are right about public opinion on some of these issues. Most Americans do favor higher taxes on the rich, marijuana legalization and additional gun control. But too many progressives aren't doing an honest analysis of the politics. They are instead committing what the journalist Matthew Yglesias has called "the pundit fallacy." They are conflating their own opinions with smart political advice. They are choosing to believe what they want to believe. They often do so by pointing to polls with favorably worded, intricate questions and by ignoring evidence to the contrary. Affirmative action, for example, typically loses ballot initiatives. Polls show that most Americans favor some abortion restrictions and oppose the elimination of private health insurance. By designing campaign strategies for the America they want, rather than the one that exists, progressives have done a favor to their political opponents. They have refused to make tactical retreats, which is why they keep losing. I think Warren may have been the person most damaged by this dynamic in 2020. (And, yes, she was also hurt by sexism.) She could have positioned herself as the candidate who excited much of the left but was more acceptable to the center left than Sanders. Instead, she mimicked Sanders, making many Democratic voters who were rooting for her worried that, like him, she couldn't win a general election. Or look back at the 2018 midterms. In competitive districts, candidates backed by progressive groups like Justice Democrats and Our Revolution were shut out. They lost in either the primaries or the general election. There isn't a single Sanders like member of Congress from a purple or red district. There are dozens of moderates. Remember: The policy positions of Sanders, Warren and other progressives on Medicare for all, for instance are often closer to the views of most Democratic voters than the moderate position is. Yet many Democrats spurn the progressive candidate. These voters care more about winning than about perfect policy agreement, and they support the candidate whom they (correctly) see as more in tune with the full electorate. The progressive wing of the party has still had a good few years, pushing the party left in multiple ways. Even Biden's platform is strikingly liberal. But if progressives aren't satisfied being influential runners up, I would suggest three broad principles. First, don't become PINOs (progressives in name only). Decide on a few core ways in which you think moderate Democrats are wrong, and stake out different positions. Second, stop believing your own spin. Analyze public opinion objectively. Acknowledge when a progressive position brings electoral costs. Finally, start testing some new political strategies. A single break with orthodoxy can send a larger signal. It can make a candidate look flexible, open minded, less partisan and more respectful of people with different views. Maybe the new approach should involve economic progressivism and cultural moderation, which happens to reflect American public opinion. Maybe it involves a different approach on immigration insisting on a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants but also a slowdown of future immigration. Maybe it means announcing that fracking and nuclear energy are crucial to fighting climate change. Or maybe it involves finding more progressive candidates who hunt or talk about their relationship with Jesus Christ and have some related policy positions. I realize that political compromise usually feels unpleasant. But I'd ask: How does losing feel? As luck would have it, the Democratic Party has a loyal group of voters who, though hardly monolithic, tend to be more pragmatic and less wishful than progressive activists. They also tend to be culturally moderate, as many swing voters are. This group, of course, is black voters, especially those middle aged and older. They just swung the 2020 nomination away from Sanders and toward Biden. Until progressives figure out how to do better with black voters, they are going to have a hard time winning. And the same strategies that will help progressives win more black voters in the primaries are also likely to win over more swing voters in a general election.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
PARIS Even during a period of rising food prices and economic uncertainty, Damien Bignon, a poultry farmer in the Paris region, cannot meet the demand from local markets and stores for his organic eggs. At the Ferme des Beurreries near Feucherolles, west of the capital, Mr. Bignon employs five people overseeing 3,000 chickens on 432 acres. He also produces organic cereals for his own feed and other clients and wheat to sell to a neighboring mill. Mr. Bignon thinks he could comfortably expand to 12,000, matching the number of chickens on the farm in 1990 before its conversion to organic operations. But he is determined to manage carefully any growth to maintain quality, keep customers satisfied and not crowd out other local farmers. He charges 2 euros ( 2.82) for a half dozen eggs about twice the cost of factory farmed eggs at a French supermarket. "The issue for us is retaining that success without falling into the traps of industrialized agriculture," he said. "There's risks in organic becoming a mass market." Sales of organic foods appear robust across Europe and the United States despite weak economic conditions and rising inflation. The strong sales are attracting more interest and activity from investors, who see potential in mergers through economies of scale, especially in Europe's more fragmented market. In December, Compagnie Biodiversite, the French owner of Lea Nature, which supplies organic food, health products, textiles and cosmetics through large retail channels, announced its purchase of a large stake in Ekibio, another French player. That alliance makes it France's second biggest organic food specialist, behind Distriborg, which is owned by the Dutch group Royal Wessanen. Wessanen, which has been divesting assets in North America, is trying to expand in Europe, analysts say. And Hain Celestial, based in Melville, N.Y., which makes organic food, drinks and personal care products, this year bought Danival, a French organic producer, as well as GG UniqueFiber, a Norwegian natural foods company. The investor Carl C. Icahn has been building a stake in Hain. Many farmers and analysts expect the sector to remain strong in coming years, helped by increased public awareness of environmental and potential health benefits, better organization and production techniques, new demand from emerging markets and those periodic public scares attending events like the recent nuclear plant radiation leaks in Japan. Another theory is that, as with the luxury industry, the core consumers, typically with high disposable incomes, are less affected by hard times. "Over all, it's very surprising how stable the organic markets have been even in this critical economic situation," said Urs Niggli, director of FiBL, an independent nonprofit research institute focusing on organic agriculture in Switzerland. He predicted sales would accelerate in coming years, assuming economic growth picked up. Organic Monitor, a market research firm and consultancy based in London, estimates that the global market for organic food and drink products in 2009 was 55 billion, 5 percent more than in 2008 and more than double the level in 2000. Significantly, the financial crisis and recession slowed the rate of growth in some countries, while the trend continued. In the United States, sales of organic food reached 26.7 billion last year, according to the Organic Trade Association. That was a 7.7 percent increase from 2009, which itself was 5.1 percent higher than 2008. The United States has now overtaken Europe to become the largest market. European sales grew 3.9 percent in 2009 after double digit growth in previous years, according to Organic Monitor. In France, a late starter, and in Sweden and Belgium, sales in 2009 expanded more than 15 percent, according to FiBL. British sales contracted in the face of weaker consumer spending and fewer product lines at large stores, while the German market, Europe's largest, was stable after a period of strong increases. According to the Agriculture Department, certified American organic farmland grew 127 percent from 2002 to 2007 and then by 12 percent from 2007 to 2009. While both Europe and the United States have helped organic farmers, the methods and motivations have been different. Europeans nurtured the sector because of perceived environmental and social benefits, while the United States supported standards, certification, research and education, treating the sector "primarily as an expanding market opportunity," according to paper written several years ago by Carolyn Dimitri and Lydia Oberholtzer, experts at the Agriculture Department. In Europe, subsidies for organic farming are drawn from European Union funds and disbursed to farmers by national governments, as well as in less direct ways, like marketing and procurement programs. Organic farms receive on average higher subsidies in absolute terms and per hectare (almost 2.5 acres) than conventional farms, according to the Europe's Farm Accountancy Data Network. In Western Europe generally, the subsidy amounted to 438 euros ( 614) a hectare against 355 euros in 2007.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
Call it KAWSMANIA. The former graffiti tagger Brian Donnelly, who in 2021 will be the subject of a survey show at the Brooklyn Museum, was definitely the artist of the moment at this week's marquee auctions held by Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips. Though Jeff Koons might have set an auction record on Wednesday night for a work by a living artist, that bar was reached courtesy of Christie's recent increase in buyer's fees, introduced on Feb. 1. Mr. Koons's "Rabbit" and David Hockney's "Portrait of an Artist (Pool with Two Figures)," auctioned last November, both sold for hammer prices of 80 million, but 762,500 of new fees at Christie's inched Koons to that record level of 91.1 million. The transformation in the market for paintings and sculptures of the cross eyed cartoon characters developed by KAWS, as Mr. Donnelly is better known internationally, was far more obvious. Demand for his work has reached a new level since the extraordinary 14.8 million bid last month in Hong Kong for his 2005 painting "The Kaws Album." Demand was even greater this afternoon at Phillips for "The Walk Home," a 2012 painting featuring the cartoon character SpongeBob SquarePants, but with the artist's trademark crossed out eyes. At least five telephone bidders battled for this lot at one point the price jumped 1 million with a single bid before it finally sold for 6 million, the highest price of the week for the artist. The result was 10 times the low estimate of 600,000. "The early attention to his work came from younger, emerging buyers from Asia," said Scott Nussbaum, head of 20th Century and Contemporary Art in New York at Phillips, explaining how the market for KAWS, who currently has 1.9 million followers on Instagram, has expanded. "But now we're seeing older, established collectors from the United States and Europe walking into our galleries and asking to see the KAWS as well as the de Kooning." Jean Michel Basquiat famously made a similar transition from street art to fine art. His drawings and paintings are now featured in almost every high end contemporary action. For many, Phillips offered the pick of this season's Basquiat entries with the 1983 "Self Portrait," painted on two found wooden doors. Offered from the estate of Matt Dike, a Los Angeles hip hop producer who was a friend of the artist, this sold for 9.5 million with fees to the New York based art dealer Jude Hess. Later in the evening, Sotheby's also jumped on the KAWS bandwagon when it offered the 2008 canvas, "Kurf (Hot Dog)," estimated at 1.5 million to 2.5 million. Competition was a little more measured here; the telephone bidding stopping at 2.7 million. Still, it seemed to represent a speculative side of the market hungry for the next big thing. "The market is wacky. History means nothing. It's more about momentum and trading," said Douglas Walla, a private dealer based in New York, commenting on the current vogue for KAWS. "The whole thing is lubricated by social media. Artists have been able to become successful without having to engage with the critical arena." But Sotheby's contemporary auction also included two important works by traditional blue chip names that put things somewhat into perspective. Mark Rothko's 1960 "Untitled," an archetypical abstract comprising rectangular fields in maroon, red, white, had been deaccessioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art to fund new acquisitions. Though the sell off had raised some eyebrows, the prestige of the SFMoMA provenance won over bidders and it sold for 50.1 million to a telephone buyer, against an estimate of 35 million. Francis Bacon's little exhibited 1952 canvas, "Study for a Head," was a rare opportunity to buy a painting from the artist's famous "Screaming Pope" series. Never offered at auction before, the work had been owned since 1975 by the Seattle philanthropists Richard E. Lang and Jane Lang. It sold for 50.4 million, more than double the low estimate, to the New York based art adviser, Chris Eykyn.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Scott Lilienfeld, an expert in personality disorders who repeatedly disturbed the order in his own field, questioning the science behind many of psychology's conceits, popular therapies and prized tools, died on Sept. 30 at his home in Atlanta. He was 59. The cause was pancreatic cancer, his wife, Candice Basterfield, said. Dr. Lilienfeld's career, most of it spent at Emory University in Atlanta, proceeded on two tracks: one that sought to deepen the understanding of so called psychopathic behavior, the other to expose the many faces of pseudoscience in psychology. Psychopathy is characterized by superficial charm, grandiosity, pathological lying and a lack of empathy. Descriptions of the syndrome were rooted in research in the criminal justice system, where psychopaths often end up. In the early 1990s, Dr. Lilienfeld worked to deepen and clarify the definition. In a series of papers, he anchored a team of psychologists who identified three underlying personality features that psychopaths share, whether they commit illegal acts or not: fearless dominance, meanness and impulsivity. The psychopath does what he or she wants, without anxiety, regret or regard for the suffering of others. "When you have these three systems interacting, it's a bad brew, and it creates the substrate for what can become psychopathy," said Mark F. Lenzenweger, a professor of psychology at the State University of New York at Binghamton. "This was Scott's great contribution: He helped change the thinking about psychopathy, in a profound way, by focusing on aspects of personality, rather than on a list of bad behaviors." Dr. Lilienfeld's parallel career encompassed clinical psychology and aimed to shake it free of empty theorizing, softheadedness and bad practice. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, he led a loose group of researchers who began to question the validity of some of the field's favored constructs, like repressed memories of abuse and multiple personality disorder. The Rorschach inkblot test took a direct hit as largely unreliable. The group also attacked treatments including psychological debriefing and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or E.M.D.R., both of which are used for trauma victims. "Many practitioners, because they don't keep up with the scientific literature, may be using suboptimal and, in some cases, even dangerous treatments," Dr. Lilienfeld told The New York Times in 2004. Many therapists bristled at the critiques, seeing a strain of zealotry or scientific purism that ignored the messy, idiosyncratic demands of treating actual human beings. Undeterred, Dr. Lilienfeld founded The Scientific Review of Mental Health Practice, a journal "devoted exclusively to distinguishing scientifically supported claims from scientifically unsupported claims in clinical psychology, psychiatry and social work." Dr. Lilienfeld became a self appointed public ombudsman, an impish scientific conscience, at once easygoing, formidable and precise in his critiques. He made himself eminently accessible to students, reporters and even rivals. He would pick up his phone on the first ring, as if expecting the call. "He just believed that was all part of his job," Ms. Basterfield said. He also received blowback when he touched a nerve. In 2017, he published a critique of the scientific basis for microaggressions, described as subtle and often unwitting snubs of marginalized groups. (For instance, a white teacher might say to a student of color, "My, this essay is so articulate!") Dr. Lilienfeld argued that the concept of microaggressions was subjective by nature, difficult to define precisely, and did not take into account the motives of the presumed offender, or the perceptions of the purported victim. What one recipient of the feedback might consider injustice, another might regard as a compliment. The nasty mail rolled in, from many corners of academia, Dr. Lilienfeld told colleagues. "There was no one like him in this field," said Steven Jay Lynn, a psychology professor at Binghamton and a longtime collaborator. "He just had this abiding faith that science could better us, better humankind; he saw his championing as an opportunity to make a difference in the world. He enjoyed stepping into controversial areas, it's true, but the motives were positive." Scott Owen Lilienfeld was born on Dec. 23, 1960, in Queens, the third child of Ralph and Thelma (Farber) Lilienfeld. His father was a radiologist, his mother a homemaker. He attended Cornell University, earning a degree in psychology in 1982, and completed a Ph.D. in 1990 at the University of Minnesota. He taught at the State University of New York at Albany before joining the faculty at Emory in 1994. He married Lori Marino in 1992; they divorced in 2004. He married Ms. Basterfield in 2016. In addition to her, he is survived by a sister, Laura.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Franco Zeffirelli, the Italian director known for his sumptuous films and stage productions, died on Saturday at 96. Read the Times obituary. The critics sometimes found his work overstuffed, with more attention paid to decor than to human beings. But audiences ate it up for decades. Here are some of the highlights from an extravagant career: If there is a signature Zeffirelli opera, it may well be Puccini's "La Boheme." His staging from 1963 is still in the repertoire of the Vienna State Opera and Milan's Teatro alla Scala, and the Metropolitan Opera's pharaonic 1981 production remains untouchable. If you want to see opera that goes over the top of the top, this is it, with a huge, multistory set and, at its fevered peak, hundreds of people crowding the stage, taking realism almost into surrealism. For his first film outing, Mr. Zeffirelli directed Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor, then at peak celebrity, as the combative lovers of "The Taming of the Shrew." The result is not nearly as camp as you might expect, and the stars deliver enjoyable performances greatly enhanced, of course, by the knowledge of their real life tumultuous relationship. As usual with Mr. Zeffirelli, the costumes and sets are exuberantly gorgeous, at times nearly eclipsing the leads. Mr. Zeffirelli stuck with Shakespeare for his second feature, "Romeo and Juliet" eight years after he directed the play (with Judi Dench as the heroine) at the Old Vic in 1960. He shot the film on location in Italy and cast the unknown teenagers Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey as the lovers, giving the film an energy and sensuality that have contributed to its remarkable longevity a contemporary making of featurette emphasized the actors' youth, describing them as "bubbling with fun and part of today's love generation." Fun fact: an uncredited Sir Laurence Olivier was the narrator. Among Mr. Zeffirelli's most illustrious collaborators was the great soprano Maria Callas. Their 1958 production of "La Traviata," in Dallas, remains mythical among opera fans. It began with the heroine's death and unfurled as a flashback, as did Mr. Zeffirelli's successful 1983 screen adaptation of the opera, starring Teresa Stratas and Placido Domingo. "With 'Traviata' I never alter my original idea," Mr. Zeffirelli told The Times in 1989. "The changes are only to polish." By the mid 1960s, Mr. Zeffirelli's reputation as an opera visionary was so secure that in September 1966, he opened the Met's new theater at Lincoln Center, with the world premiere of Samuel Barber's "Antony and Cleopatra." That his relationship with the Met would continue unabated for decades is all the more remarkable because the production is famous for having been plagued by technical mishaps; at one point, the soprano Leontyne Price found herself stuck inside a pyramid, "Spinal Tap" style. Among Mr. Zeffirelli's most idiosyncratic (read: cultishly nutty) projects was "Brother Sun, Sister Moon," a 1973 biopic about the young St. Francis of Assisi. The folk pop star Donovan contributed songs after the original hires for the score, Leonard Bernstein and Leonard Cohen, bailed. The result was very much of its time, mixing flower power, faith and poetic flights of fancy. Still, Mr. Zeffirelli could not help himself, making "the sort of movie that tries to make poverty look chic, and almost goes broke in the attempt," as Vincent Canby said in his review for The Times.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
In March of 2019, 50 people were charged for their role in a coordinated effort to buy admission to elite American universities. They included an heiress to the Hot Pockets fortune, Michelle Janavs; the Oscar nominated actress Felicity Huffman; and the television star Lori Loughlin and her husband, the designer Mossimo Giannulli. Perhaps the most famous beneficiary of the scheme was Ms. Loughlin and Mr. Giannulli's daughter Olivia Jade Giannulli, who was accepted into the University of Southern California under the false pretense that her ability as a coxswain would be an asset to the school's rowing team. (A fabricated athletic profile of Ms. Giannulli, an influencer with close to two million subscribers to her YouTube channel, identified her as a coxswain for the nonexistent L.A. Marina Club.) Ms. Loughlin and Mr. Giannulli initially claimed to be innocent, only to plead guilty in May after prosecutors released staged photos Mr. Giannulli had furnished of Ms. Giannulli and her sister posing on rowing machines. Ms. Loughlin was sentenced to two months in prison, and her husband was sentenced to five. Ms. Giannulli was never charged with a crime, nor were any other of the other children who stood to benefit from the scheme. On Tuesday, Ms. Giannulli, 21, who has been silent on the scandal, appeared on "Red Table Talk," the Facebook show hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith; her daughter, Willow; and Ms. Pinkett Smith's mother, Adrienne Banfield Norris. The show has become a destination for celebrities and the celebrity adjacent to talk publicly about things that they have not talked publicly about before. Here are a few takeaways from Ms. Giannulli's interview. She was 'confused' about her application process. Although no students were charged as part of the federal investigation into the admissions scandal, the extent of Ms. Giannulli's knowledge about the fraud remains unclear. While the original F.B.I. complaint noted that some students were "unaware" of their parents' efforts on their behalf, in a memo recommending prison sentences for Ms. Loughlin and Mr. Giannulli, an assistant U.S. attorney wrote that Ms. Giannulli had discussed with her parents "how to avoid the possibility that a high school counselor would disrupt their scheme." After the counselor expressed doubt to a U.S.C. admissions official that Ms. Giannulli was involved in crew, the memo noted, her father "aggressively" confronted the counselor in person, and asked why he "was trying to ruin or get in the way of" Mr. Giannulli's daughter's "opportunities." Evidence in court included a falsified resume outlining Ms. Giannulli's purported athletic career. During the "Red Table Talk" discussion, Ms. Giannulli described her awareness of her parents' machinations in vague terms. "I didn't really 100 percent understand what just had happened," she said, referring to the scandal's aftermath. "Because there was a lot that, when I was applying, I was not fully aware of what was going on." "I was definitely confused when this all came out," she continued. "And I went and confronted them about everything. They didn't really have much to say, except, like, 'I'm so sorry. I, like, really messed up in trying to give the best to you and your sister.'" She said that reading reports about her college application and credentials was disorienting. "I wasn't aware of what was going on, because I did work hard," she said. She later added, "I think what was important was for me to come here and say, 'I'm sorry. I acknowledge what was wrong.' And I wasn't able to say that for so long. So I think people almost thought, 'Oh, she must not care.'" By contrast, at least one other student whose mother pleaded guilty to fraud and conspiracy as part of the same federal investigation issued a statement of apology almost immediately after news of the scandal broke. "I am upset that I was unknowingly involved in a large scheme that helps give kids who may not work as hard as others an advantage over those who truly deserve those spots," Jack Buckingham wrote in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter on March 13, 2019, one day after his mother, Jane Buckingham, was arrested. (Ms. Buckingham was secretly recorded plotting to give her son a fake ACT exam so that he would be unaware his apparent high score was not genuine.) "For that I am sorry though I know my word does not mean much to many people at the moment." Mr. Buckingham noted in his statement that he had "been advised not to speak on the matter at hand." She didn't initially understand why her parents' actions were wrong. Ms. Giannulli opened the interview by talking about the positive parts of seeing her parents brought to justice. "I think that this has been like a really eye opening experience for me and situation, and although there's a lot of negative around it and there's a lot of mistakes and wrongdoings, it's led me to have a completely different outlook on a lot of situations," she said. But when the news broke, she said later in the interview, she wasn't sure why people were so angry that her parents had paid her way into college. "I remember thinking, 'How are people mad about this?'" she said, adding that at the time she thought, "I don't really understand what's wrong with this." The admissions scandal became a symbol of a system of higher education already seen as exploitable for those with means and all but impregnable for those without. Ayesha Haleem, a student at the University of California, Los Angeles, told The New York Times shortly after the scheme became public: "The higher education system has always benefited people who come from privileged backgrounds." Ms. Giannulli said that such privilege was so abundant among her peers that it was imperceptible to her. "A huge part of having privilege is not knowing you have privilege. And so when it was happening it didn't feel wrong," she said. "It didn't feel like 'That's not fair, a lot of people don't have that.'" She was not entirely welcome at the Red Table. Before Ms. Giannulli sat down at the table, Ms. Banfield Norris, known on the show as Gammy or Gam, said that she would have preferred not to have her on. Ms. Pinkett Smith said that Ms. Giannulli had asked to come on the show. Ms. Banfield Norris said that she had "fought" Ms. Giannulli's appearance "tooth and nail." "I just found it really ironic that she chose three Black women to reach out to for her redemption story," Ms. Banfield Norris said. "I feel like here we are, a white woman coming to Black women for support when we don't get the same from them. It's bothersome to me on so many levels. Her being here is the epitome of white privilege." Ms. Pinkett Smith argued back saying that she would not want to be ungenerous to others only because they were not generous to her. "People look at us, they say, 'you're Black and you're female' and they automatically put us in a category," Ms. Pinkett Smith said. "So looking at her as being white, young and privileged and then putting her in the category, it's the same thing. So I just see it as this cycle." Ms. Banfield Norris responded, "It's not our responsibility to raise her consciousness." Though Ms. Giannulli expressed contrition and said that she was not deserving of pity, she added that a relatively recent experience had played an outsize role in helping her understand what made people so angry at her and her parents. A few weeks earlier, she said, she had volunteered in the Watts neighborhood of southern Los Angeles, working with children in an after school program. Talking to them, she said, "shifted my whole mentality." "They all were so little, but they were so grateful for that education, that after school place that they could go, away from their neighborhood," she said. "I was watching all of them, and I was thinking about my situation and that I took all of that for granted." She said that the experience made her want to give back to others, though she did not specify whether she would continue to volunteer in Watts or elsewhere. "I'm just at the beginning, and I want to continue doing stuff and finding more things to do," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. It's a familiar sight to have a top player's sister in the draw of the Miami Open, where this year Venus and Serena Williams are both competing for a 17th time. But this tournament is the first time at a WTA level event that top ranked Naomi Osaka was joined in the singles main draw by her older sister, Mari. Everyone else in women's tennis is ranked below Naomi Osaka right now, including Mari, 22, who is ranked 338th, and normally plays lower level events. She received a wild card for this tournament and played her first WTA main draw match on Thursday against another wild card, 205th ranked Whitney Osuigwe. Osaka acquitted herself well in a 6 2, 6 4 loss. Naomi Osaka, who is 18 months younger than her sister, said that it was "really enjoyable" to have her Mari with her at a tournament, and that she hoped it would be an experience they shared far more in the future. "For me it would be a dream," Osaka said. "Because I don't really talk to that many people, and she's the nicer one in this relationship. It would definitely mean a lot." Though siblings like the Williamses or Marat Safin and Dinara Safina have risen to the peaks of the sport, siblings with far different career altitudes are more common. Naomi Osaka's opposite number in the men's tour, top ranked Novak Djokovic, had two younger brothers who struggled in the large shadow he cast. Despite receiving many wild cards, Marko Djokovic reached a career high ranking of No. 571; Djordje Djokovic reached No. 1,463. Marko, 27, now coaches and competes only occasionally, while Djordje, 23, stopped competing in 2015. Novak Djokovic, 31, said that his brothers' decisions to step back from tennis had come as a relief to him. "I'm glad they've decided themselves what they want to do, because in the end of the day it's something that gives me satisfaction and peace, knowing that they made the decision, not myself or my parents or anybody else," Djokovic said. "Because in this kind of circumstance, they feel obliged, or they feel pressure that they have to meet the expectations of the other brother or sister. Because if you're part of the same sport, naturally, everyone will compare you to your other siblings. It's not ideal, especially if your other sibling is the best in the world." Siblings of top players have often drafted off that familial fame to get started in their career, but the main draw wild card for Mari Osaka raised many eyebrows around the tournament, considering she was ranked more than 200 spots below the cut for the qualifying draw for this elite event. James Blake, the Miami Open tournament director, said the decision to double the number of Osakas in the draw had been an easy one. "Obviously Naomi is someone that's accomplished so much, and you want to encourage her sister as well," Blake said. "You wonder if there's a lot of talent and she hasn't had the same opportunities. We know she'll also be a draw. Naomi has so many fans; Mari is going to hopefully gain some of those fans by association." Blake, who reached a career best of No. 4, had a brother, Thomas, who reached 264th a parallel that he admitted tinted his view. "He got some wild cards, definitely with the Blake name," James Blake said. "He really appreciated them. Mari has thanked me, her parents have thanked me. They realize that this is a big opportunity for her." It is rarer for the younger sibling to make a splash on tour first. For most of their childhoods, Mari had dominated her younger sister in practice matches. "Up until I was 15 she was 6 0 ing me, ridiculous," Naomi said. "I don't know what happened, maybe finally something clicked in my head, but for sure she was beating me. In the win loss record, she's up by like a million or something." Both entered the qualifying draw of the WTA tournament in Stanford, Calif., in 2014. Naomi, then 16, reached the main draw and then stunned the 2011 United States Open champion, Samantha Stosur, in the first round. "It's probably the second best win of my life," Osaka said after that victory, "the first being when I first beat my sister." As Naomi continued to soar upward, Mari's trajectory stalled; her career best ranking was 280th last May. Before Thursday she had not competed for more than a month because of a right shoulder injury. Her first match this season was a 6 0, 6 0 loss to 471st ranked Katie Volynets, a far cry from the competitive level she showed on Thursday. Mari Osaka said she was determined to play this tournament, knowing for the past six months that she would be awarded a wild card. "It was just super exciting and new for me," Mari said of the experience. "I'm super thankful that I actually got it." She smiled at the mention of her sister's rise from 70th to first in the rankings since the beginning of last year. "I'm really proud of her," Mari said. Asked if she was able to focus on her own path or felt she had "big shoes to fill," Mari said: "My own journey is separate, but of course I tend to compare a little bit, so it's frustrating. But, you know, not much I can do about that."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
The star of Laurie Berg's "The Mineralogy of Objects" is an inflatable sex doll named Tanya. She appears midway through the 55 minute dance, which made its debut on Thursday at Danspace Project, in line with Ms. Berg and the three other female dancers who make up the cast. They toss Tanya around and try to keep her aloft like a beach ball. They engage her in an absurdly acrobatic ballroom duet. They roll with her on the ground as she deflates. This is amusing fun, as is the satire in Tanya's program bio and the moment when the dancers replicate the sunburst image from George Balanchine's "Apollo," including Tanya's limbs in the array of arabesques. But much else about the show is less clear in tone. There's a lot of dance in it. Karl Scholz's score lays down a heavy, metronomic beat that changes texture but rarely relents. After the beat goes quiet, the women pick it up again with their footfalls, and throughout they worship it like dancers in a club. There's something funny, though, about their manner and their moves. They reminded me of Pee wee Herman or Devo. (Was it a melodic hint of "Burning Down the House" by Talking Heads that made me think of the 1980s?) Even before Tanya shows up, the nerdiness suggests a joke Ms. Berg has a good deadpan face and yet the dance is constructed intricately, with a sophisticated interplay of independence and unison. It's hard to know what to take seriously.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
'ARCHIVE IN MOTION: 75 YEARS OF THE JEROME ROBBINS DANCE DIVISION' at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (through Jan. 25). August is a good catch up month, and the Jerome Robbins Dance Division provides an excellent reason to do just that with this exhibition, which was put together by the division's curator, Linda Murray. It traces the history of the department with an abundance of treasures, including Agnes DeMille's costume from "Rodeo," a tunic and floral crown worn by Isadora Duncan, original costume designs by the African American ballerina Janet Collins, and footage of Anna Pavlova's "Dying Swan," as well as one of the feathers she placed in her tutu during performances. And that's just a start. 917 275 6975, nypl.org/events/exhibitions/current THE HUDSON EYE at various locations in Hudson, N.Y. (Aug. 23 Sept. 2). Jonah Bokaer Arts Foundation presents a new festival with a focus on dance, music, performance, film, visual art, food and night life. Curated by Aaron Levi Garvey, the series highlights cultural and economic diversity in the Hudson area. Participating artists include Jonah Bokaer Choreography Bokaer performed with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company before creating his own work, which is influenced by visual art and design Ryder Cooley, Laura Gutierrez, Patrick Higgins, Rachel Libeskind, Tony Orrico and Sheida Soleimani. thehudsoneye.com	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Mr. Chua introduces other characters, including a tiger whose halves (front and hind) talk to each other. Portrayed by two of the actors in an ingenious get up (Karen Boyer designed the costumes), the beast is too silly to be scary. And that's part of the problem. Many comic elements gossiping pandas, a rap by the princes are played so broadly that little seems at stake. Briskly directed by Chongren Fan, the show is fun, but watching it feels more like cheering pro wrestling than like witnessing a struggle for the soul of an empire. Read our critics' list of the year's best theater, from a sprawling family drama to a bold "Oklahoma!" "The Emperor's New Clothes," at the Clurman Theater, is as devoted to making children reflect as to making them laugh. Adapted by Barbara Zinn Krieger and devised and directed by Adrienne Kapstein, the play begins in the present in Central Park, where a girl, intent on texting, sits down next to Andersen's famous statue. The statue (Emmanuel Elpenord) stirs to life, though the girl seems to think that he's just a stranger, reading. After he persuades her to look at his book she starts with "The Princess and the Pea" he vanishes, and she's swept into the world of his stories. Portrayed as a bewildered but intrepid young soul by Ayla Bellamy, this nameless heroine becomes not just an onlooker, but a key player, in the tales that follow. At first taken into confidence by the crooks promising the emperor a fabulous new wardrobe, she also exposes that he's, well, exposed. (Don't worry, parents he parades in his underwear.) She then finds herself as the helpful kitchen maid in another emperor's court in "The Nightingale," only to wind up among birds in "The Ugly Duckling." To her shock, she discovers that she's that story's titular character and what could be a weirder looking duck than a human?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Jane Harper leans on the Australian environment in all her novels. "The Lost Man," like "The Dry," is a study in isolation, she says (seen here riding a ferry in Sydney Harbor).Credit...Matthew Abbott for The New York Times Jane Harper leans on the Australian environment in all her novels. "The Lost Man," like "The Dry," is a study in isolation, she says (seen here riding a ferry in Sydney Harbor). SYDNEY, Australia Four years ago, Jane Harper was a business reporter at The Herald Sun, a tabloid in Melbourne, Australia. Harper, who is now 38, liked to tell friends that she had "more self improvement activities than a Victorian spinster," busying herself with hobbies including sewing, ballroom dancing, tennis and piano lessons. But there was one project Harper didn't talk about: She was writing a murder mystery inspired by "Gone Girl," Agatha Christie and all the other thrillers she'd loved reading since childhood. "Is there anything more boring than someone trying to tell you about the novel they're working on?" Harper asked over lunch recently here in Sydney. She was explaining why she didn't let on about her manuscript, which she worked on for an hour before and after work each day. A journalist eking out a novel is cliche, but what happened next was so shocking, you'd have to call it a twist. In April 2015, Harper entered pages she'd written over the past six months into the Victorian Premier's Literary Award for an Unpublished Manuscript. She won, picked up six figure publishing deals in Australia, the United States and Britain, and went on to sell more than a million copies worldwide of her debut novel, "The Dry." "It was stunning," offered a former colleague, Victoria MacDonald, of her friend winning a major literary award for a manuscript she knew nothing about, and then becoming Australia's most widely read crime writer. "She didn't have a smartphone for a really long time" 2014, Harper later confirmed "and I remember thinking that the time the rest of us were wiling away on Candy Crush were the moments Jane must have been working on her book." Read our reviews of "The Dry," "Force of Nature" and "The Lost Man." Harper outlined her writing process in a TEDx Talk last October called "Creativity in Your Control." She returns often to the idea that artistic endeavor is made easier and more enjoyable with planning. "If you focus on the technical aspects," she says, neat red corkscrew curls bobbing, "you can build a framework which serves as a base for your creative ideas." 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. Harper's TEDx Talk was in part, perhaps, an effort to set the record straight: Much has been made in the news media about a 12 week creative writing course she took in 2014 through an offshoot of the London branch of the literary agency Curtis Brown. Shortly afterward, she produced the manuscript of "The Dry." When Harper was asked at lunch about the course, it was the one time she seemed anything less than sunny. "I think honestly the impact of that has been overstated," she said. "I was a journalist for thirteen years. I wrote every single day. I wrote thousands of words a week under pressure." The course, she said, merely offered her some external accountability. The writing is the "fun part" for Harper, but for several months beforehand, she plots. As her Australian editor Cate Paterson said, every development in a Jane Harper story feels credible. "It's one of the things that I get annoyed about with other crime writers," Paterson said. "Some late inclusion, or a new character out of the blue, is the one who did it, but what I find with Jane is that the clues are there all along and she puts them together in a clever way." Another element that Paterson said elevates Harper's books from procedurals is an attention to character. At the center of both "The Dry" and "Force of Nature" is Aaron Falk, a Melbourne detective. In "The Dry," he is forced to confront a dark chapter in his past as he solves a murder in his hometown; in "Force of Nature," he searches for a missing hiker, lost in the woods outside the city. Falk, at times infuriating in his emotional inhibition, is a particularly compelling creation. "I want people to think, 'I know someone like that,'" Harper said. "I figure out what keeps people awake at night and what drives them to get out of bed in the morning, and that involves a lot of details that don't make it into the books." Characters' coffee preferences, for instance: "Aaron Falk is from Melbourne so he'd probably be a flat white man," she said, using a term for steamed milk poured over espresso. "And Nathan" a divorced dad who solves the death of his brother in "The Lost Man" "he'd be instant coffee, happy to drink it black but with a splash of long life milk on occasion." (Harper, whose parents are British and who spent much of her childhood in England, is "more of a tea person.") Nathan drinks long life milk in part because he lives hundreds of miles from the nearest town, on a remote cattle station in the northern Australian state of Queensland. Harper leans on the Australian environment in all of her novels. "The Lost Man," like "The Dry," is a study in isolation and its psychological and physical effects particularly on men, who in regional areas of Australia are vulnerable to depression and suicide. "Setting informs plot," is how Harper put it, when asked about her skill in conjuring up a familiar type of Australian bloke, at once taciturn and tender. Where "The Dry" probed the dangers of prolonged drought on a close knit farming community, "The Lost Man" is concerned with how people live and die in the unforgiving outback. The novel opens in the desert, with the discovery of Nathan's brother's body five miles from his four wheel drive vehicle and the food, fuel and water in its trunk. What happened to separate Nathan's brother from his survival kit? "I knew I wanted somewhere hot and far flung, but with a community of sorts," Harper said of her choice of location. As part of her planning, she flew to Charleville, some 400 miles west of the Queensland capital of Brisbane, and then drove more than 500 miles further to the tiny town of Birdsville, on the edge of the Simpson Desert. The town's claim to fame is hitting the highest ever temperature in Queensland, of 49.5 degrees Celsius (121.1 degrees Fahrenheit). Now it's the town that served as inspiration for "The Lost Man." Accompanying Harper on her journey was Neale McShane, the officer in charge of Birdsville Police Station for 10 years, who is now retired. McShane, by himself, once patrolled an area of outback the size of the United Kingdom, with a population of about 250 people. From her training as a journalist, Harper had determined exactly what she needed from the research trip: "I knew how I wanted the story to play out, but I'd left enough flexibility for the things I didn't have at that stage." She didn't know how two way radios worked, for instance, or what kitchens looked like at cattle stations. Those were the known unknowns. But there were still surprises: "If anything," she said, "I'd underestimated how dangerous it can be out there, and how quickly things can go wrong." Reached on the phone from his home in Charleville, McShane praised Harper's evocation of (very) small town life. "You can drive 12 hours here without passing another car," McShane said. "She nailed the loneliness of it." "You don't have to know the place to get the feelings of the characters," said Deborah Force, who owns an independent Melbourne bookstore called the Sun and was an early champion of Harper's writing. "The Lost Man" was her shop's best selling title over the holidays. "Even people who say they don't like crime really liked 'The Dry,'" Force said. Harper doesn't want to be boxed into a genre. "I don't really feel drawn to dark things or human misery," she said. Although all three of her books feature a sudden and mysterious death, they aren't grisly or scary. "The number of books you come across with a young blond woman who gets mutilated and killed," said Paterson, Harper's editor, with a sigh. "I'm just reading a submission at the moment from an agent which starts with a woman getting kidnapped. You get overwhelmed by it." Harper's goal is clear: to write books people will enjoy reading, ones that she would like to read herself. Right now, those books happen to involve crime. "As a journalist I learned not to assume people will read to the end," she said. "I need to keep people engaged."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Pity Melbourne: After seven years of topping the Economist Intelligence Unit's most livable city rankings, it was finally displaced last year by another coffee loving city, Vienna. Despite being nudged down a notch to No. 2, Melburnians aren't too worried. Though the city is currently grappling with issues related to being such a popular place to live rapid growth, high property prices, congested roads the city in the southeastern part of Australia continues to be the country's capital for all things cultural. There are more festivals than can fit on a calendar; a thriving, boundary pushing restaurant scene; and a commitment to the arts that will only deepen with the National Gallery of Victoria's plans to build the largest contemporary art gallery in Australia by 2025. Melbourne may have lost its crown, but it still has its spacious Victorian era parks, flat whites and famously sunny way of life. 2) 6:30 p.m. Everything on the barbie The smell of smoke and crackle of firewood hits you the second you enter Matilda, opened last June by Scott Pickett, one of Melbourne's most acclaimed chefs. Nearly everything at Matilda is cooked over fire or charcoal the open kitchen, set right next to the front door, is equipped with an offset smoker, wood fired oven, rotisserie and two fire pits, but there's nary a gas stove in sight. And this wood fired focus pairs well with a menu highlighting native Australian ingredients, from the grilled baby barramundi topped with a grenobloise made from salt bush, desert lime and lemon myrtle (44 dollars) to the grilled 21 day aged Tasmanian porterhouse with a macadamia romesco (49 dollars). And though the Pink Lady apple tarte Tatin (22 dollars) is baked in a conventional oven, there is a fire element here, too a gentle smoking of the vanilla ice cream on the side. Built in 1878, the opulent, bayfront Hotel Esplanade was the epicenter of society life in St. Kilda's early days. The philanthropist Alfred Felton, a major benefactor of the National Gallery of Victoria, lived here for over a decade until his death in 1904, and throughout the 20th century, the hotel was a premier music venue, hosting everything from jazz and big band performances to disco nights. After falling into disrepair, the Esplanade (called "the Espy" for short) underwent an 18 month renovation and reopened in November to play music once again. There are now three stages in the sprawling complex including one in the hotel's ballroom, the Gershwin Room and a full slate of events every weekend, ranging from up and coming Australian bands to more conceptual performance art shows. Upcoming shows include Sun Kil Moon (May 15) and Sydney singer Ruby Fields (May 28 to 30). Melbourne is an early rising town, which is not surprising for a city that prides itself on its coffee. And when it comes to coffee, Seven Seeds, a roaster and cafe in a converted warehouse space just north of downtown, is brewing some of the best in the city. The cafe sources its beans directly from growers on scouting trips to places like Ethiopia, Guatemala and the Bolivian Andes and recently started publishing the "farmgate price" paid to growers in an aim for greater transparency. The filtered cold brews (5 dollars) are fantastic, served with cocktail style blocks of ice, and the breakfast menu features standouts like crab scrambled eggs topped with a Sichuan pepper caramel sauce and cilantro and mint salad (24 dollars). Public tasting sessions are also frequently held on Saturday mornings to demonstrate the baristas' brewing techniques. Known simply as the "Queen Vic," the Queen Victoria Market is not only Melbourne's largest open air market, it's also one of the oldest, with a more than 140 year history that earned it a place on Australia's National Heritage List last year. The market is packed no matter what time you visit, so conserve your energy and focus on the colorful meat, fish and dairy halls. The smorgasbord on offer here includes everything from lamb, mint and rosemary sausages to Australian bush herbs, macadamia dukkah and all manner of local cheeses and sourdough breads. Snack here, or order a bowl of freshly steamed mussels (from 11 dollars) outside at The Mussel Pot, a market favorite. (Tip: If you're in town midweek, check out the night market on Wednesday evenings during both summer and winter.) As far as origin stories go, few are as slickly produced as the tale of Melbourne's beginnings at the Melbourne Museum (adults 15 dollars, children free). The extensive, interactive exhibition first takes visitors through the history of the original Aboriginal inhabitants of the region and details the devastating impact of the arrival of Europeans in 1835: Their numbers were decimated by disease, and their lands stolen. The story then continues through Melbourne's early days as a gunslinging gold rush town and tracks its phenomenal growth in more recent years. Two other highlights: the Wild exhibition, which details how a menagerie of more than 600 animals has been impacted by climate change; and the gorgeous Forest Gallery, a canopied woodland of tree ferns, gum trees and other native plants, populated by the birds and fish that have always called this part of Australia home. The once working class neighborhood Fitzroy is now the go to spot in Melbourne for local designers. There are well known Australian fashion labels to be found here, such as Kloke and Handsom, as well as Mud Australia, a maker of brightly colored porcelain. But independent designers have a space, too. Uscha stocks Japanese inspired ceramics, woodwork and leather items made by local artists, while Third Drawer Down partners with established and emerging artists on exclusive designs for everyday items like mugs, tote bags and homewares. At Design a Space, more than 80 local clothing designers rent racks to display their creations, keeping 90 percent of profits from sales. And the weekly Rose St. Artists' Market features more artists, designers, bakers and organic farmers, peddling their wares in a former junkyard. As Melbourne's eating and dining scene has matured in recent years, one chef in particular has been at the forefront: Andrew McConnell, who now counts a stable of nine venues to his name. Opened in late 2015, the wine bar Marion has been one of the most popular because of its eclectic wine menu categories range from skin contact whites to "Everything in Moderation, including Moderation" reds (mainly easy drinking reds) as well as the delicious, well priced bar food. The chef's selection (65 dollars a person) offers a sampling of the greatest hits, among them the Hiramasa kingfish topped with preserved orange peel, pickled fennel, Espelette pepper, fennel pollen and flowers; and grilled cuttlefish with burned spring onion dressing, radish, fennel and fried curry leaves. A curious side note: a few window seats overlook the brick alley known as Deadman's Lane, so named for the bodies that ended up here either drunk or dead during Fitzroy's gangland days in the early 1900s. Few people know the ins and outs of Australia's booming craft distilling scene like Seb Costello, founder of the Fitzroy cocktail bar Bad Frankie. Named after the former governor of Van Diemen's Land (now Tasmania), Sir John Franklin, who banned small batch distilling on the island in the early 19th century, the bar celebrates the best of modern Australian spirit making, with a menu spanning some 500 local gins, whiskies, vodkas and even more obscure liqueurs like a South Australian rakia and Tasmanian absinthes. Mr. Costello's love of Australia carries over to the bar menu of jaffles, an Australian toasted sandwich snack, as well as the wallpaper featuring photographs of vintage Australiana, including a few from his own family albums.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
An heir of a prominent German banking family recovered a Renaissance era painting on Friday that was looted by the Nazis and then bought by the Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, who amassed a collection of more than 1,000 paintings. The work, "The Raising of Lazarus," by an anonymous German artist, was salvaged by the Monuments Men at the end of World War II before entering the Bavarian State Paintings Collection in 1961, where it remained until now. The heirs didn't know it was there but a company that helps families recover looted art noticed several years ago that it was on a list of artworks lost during the war. The State Paintings Collection has agreed to buy the piece from the heirs. The work, painted in oils on wood, is thought to have been created between 1530 and 1540 and was part of a collection assembled by James von Bleichroder, the son of Gerson von Bleichroder, a Jewish banker who rose to fame as Otto von Bismarck's personal financial adviser. James von Bleichroder died in 1937. The family suffered persecution and expropriation at the hands of the Nazis and the Bleichroder art collection was seized and sold in May 1938 at auction in Berlin. Goering bought the painting shortly afterward from the dealer who had purchased it at auction.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Emily Noyes Vanderpoel amassed a large collection of textiles, ceramics and enamels particularly pieces from Asia and the Near East. In 1902, Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, a 59 year old artist, historian and collector of exotic artifacts, published a book called "Color Problems." Written for interior decorators and florists, dressmakers and milliners, "Color Problems" was subtitled "A Practical Manual for the Lay Student of Color." Its mission: to teach readers who lacked studio art training how to create harmony with hues. The book went through two English language printings. Then it faded away. A curiosity in antiquarian stalls for decades, it is being reissued this month through a collaboration of two Brooklyn publishing companies, The Circadian Press and Sacred Bones Records. A limited edition hardcover facsimile and a softcover edition will be distributed to backers of the Kickstarter campaign that initially funded the project in July, starting the week of Oct. 15. The softcover edition, which costs 35 and can be preordered, will be available to the public on Nov. 9. The 400 page book issues diktat after diktat for handling color, such as the inadvisability of mixing extreme versions of the same hue. For instance, if you place a crimson American rose next to an orange red geranium, Mrs. Vanderpoel insists, "they injure each other. And are therefore disagreeable." Quoting the British designer F.W. Moody, she describes the natural world as the best teacher of palettes: "There is hardly anything in nature that is not perfect in color: A dead sparrow would enable you to arrange the marquetrie of a cabinet with faultless harmony." Frequently she sends readers to the back of the manual to consult one of 116 illustrations. More than her guidelines, it is Mrs. Vanderpoel's surprisingly modern color studies that have brought "Color Problems" back from the dead. For many of her illustrations, Mrs. Vanderpoel filled a 10 by 10 grid with abstractly patterned colors in fractions matched to a particular decorative object say, an Egyptian mummy cloth, a teacup and saucer, a panel of the Alhambra or an Italian majolica vase. The plate labeled "Color Analysis from Chinese Porcelain," for instance, is composed of irregular gridded patches of lapis lazuli (50 percent), turquoise (20 percent), ocher (12 percent) and violet (9 percent). Illustrated like oversized pixels, the drawings "are strange and inscrutable and look like they've been designed by a computer," said Liza Daly, a software engineer, who learned about "Color Problems" through a 2014 post on The Public Domain Review. For all of their freshness, Ms. Daly noted, the color studies also reflect "this strange, very Victorian desire to catalog the world." Three years ago, she introduced a Twitter feed called Emily N. Vanderbot, a daily computer generated image of a random household object whose dominant colors are assigned percentages using Mrs. Vanderpoel's format and nomenclature. So who was Emily Noyes Vanderpoel? Born in New York City in 1842, she split her adult life between Manhattan and Litchfield, Conn., where she lived in a Georgian house that belonged to her great grandfather, the Revolutionary War spy Benjamin Tallmadge. At 23, she married John Aaron Vanderpoel, the scion of a blue blooded family in Kinderhook, N.Y. Less than a year later, she was a widow and pregnant with her only child, a son. She never remarried. Mrs. Vanderpoel made her reputation as a watercolorist. When she died in 1939 at 96, her New York Times obituary described a World War I inspired painting called "Ypres," which is no longer extant, as her most notable accomplishment. But she is best known today as a historian. The first curator of the Litchfield Historical Society, she worked to revive and preserve the village's colonial heritage in that pristine, white clapboard way of nostalgic Victorians. "Chronicles of a Pioneer School," her two volume history of the Litchfield Female Academy, which her grandmother attended, is still cited in scholarly articles on education. She also wrote a 1924 book on the history of American lace making. "She was a Connecticut Brahmin, a daughter of the Revolution, an intensely feminist suffragette," said Alan Bruton, an architect and professor at the University of Houston, who began researching Mrs. Vanderpoel's work in 2010 and wrote the introduction to the new edition of "Color Problems." Mr. Bruton also painted Mrs. Vanderpoel as an "anti xenophobe" and a "citizen of the world," who collected decorative objects from different cultures, though she is believed to have traveled outside of the United States only once, on a Mediterranean cruise. Many of her textiles, ceramics and enamels particularly pieces from Asia and the Near East are now in the Slater Memorial Museum in Norwich, Conn. "She's a strong woman in an age of strong women," Mr. Bruton summed up. Her contemporary William Lampson Warren, a former director of the Litchfield Historical Society, noted that she was "inclined to be a tartar, though she knew what she was doing." But "Color Problems," Mr. Bruton said, hints at a sensitive artist who was too humble to recognize that her didactic color studies could be appreciated as genuine works of art. Josef Albers didn't make that mistake. Pointing out that "Color Problems" begins with a discussion of color blindness and the fact that your idea of red may not be my idea of red no matter how scientific the definition of the hue, Mr. Bruton said he believes Mrs. Vanderpoel was mostly interested in communication. She compiled rules and painted mechanical looking color studies to get as close to a common experience of color as she could, while acknowledging that changes in the illumination, form and surface texture of an object, as well as in the mood, cultural heritage and physiology of the beholder make objective truth all but impossible. For that reason, he said, "Color Problems" is very much a book for our time.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
"It's almost an idea," one of Kurt Barnert's fellow students at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf says of Kurt's latest effort. It's meant as both criticism and encouragement, and a reminder of the aesthetic rules at this WestGerman outpost of the early '60s avant garde. Artistic practice among the young Dusseldorfers is not about form, tradition or technique. It's about the invention and execution of concepts that shed light on the arbitrary nature of art itself, and on the absurdities of the society that produces it. Kurt the fictional protagonist of "Never Look Away," who bears a close biographical resemblance to the actual German painter Gerhard Richter is a recent arrival from the East German city of Dresden, where they do things differently. (The complicated relationships between Kurt and Richter, and between Richter and the film's director, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, are explored by Dana Goodyear in a fascinating recent New Yorker article.) Back home, thanks to his skill as a draftsman and his compulsive productivity, Kurt found success as a socialist realist, producing large scale murals of heroic workers and peasants and portraits of bureaucrats. Like their Nazi precursors, the Communist rulers of East Germany scorn the subjectivism and decadence of modernist art. According to Kurt's mentor in Dresden, in the west it's all about "ich, ich, ich" rather than about the collective struggles and triumphs of the people. In following Kurt (played as an adult by Tom Schilling) from his boyhood in the 1930s to his career breakthrough 30 years later a journey that occupies more than three hours of the viewer's time von Donnersmarck comes tantalizingly close to having an idea. "Never Look Away" bristles with half formed thoughts and almost heady insights, and hums with an ambition that is exasperating and exhilarating in equal measure. Richter's mid '60s paintings, and the similar canvases that Kurt executes at the climax of the film, are haunting, challenging attempts to plot the intersection of personal and historical experience, a zone composed almost entirely of gray areas. Exact reproductions of ordinary photographs with faces and other details blurred, they are troubling and suggestive studies in unspoken guilt and suppressed memory, heavy with meanings that they refuse to disclose. That is not the way von Donnersmarck operates. He is not a man to choose nuance when a statement of the obvious, preferably accompanied by an orchestra and tasteful nudity, is available. "Never Look Away" traffics in all kinds of thorny, ambiguous material: It's about family secrets, psychological misdirection, the sometimes uncanny harmonies between artifice and reality. But its methods are almost defiantly literal, engineered for accessibility and sentimental impact. This is not entirely a bad thing. Von Donnersmarck's first feature, "The Lives of Others," unpacked some of the moral baggage of the former East Germany and laid out the contents in clear, conventional cinematic language. Part melodrama and part Cold War thriller, that film won an Oscar in 2007 and was embraced by many critics, including this one, for its blend of suspense and ethical precision. "Never Look Away," working on a grander scale in muddier genre territory not quite a biopic, it hovers between psychological drama and period romance tries to achieve a similar blend of clarity and excitement. Even when it stumbles, it remains watchable and engaging, partly because von Donnersmarck possesses an old fashioned Hollywood showman's sensibility. In addition to the lush music (composed by Max Richter), it has rich, velvety images (for which Caleb Deschanel has just received an Oscar nomination) and emphatic performances by highly attractive actors. Schilling is not the most charismatic among them, but he has a sensitive, sympathetic demeanor. Slight and youthful, he seems less like a prodigy than like an excellent student. As a child (played by Cai Cohrs), he is initiated into the mysteries of art by his aunt Elisabeth (Saskia Rosendahl), who takes him to the Nazis' exhibition of "Degenerate Art," where the two find clandestine inspiration. When Elisabeth is diagnosed with a mental illness, the full cruelty of the regime reveals itself: She is sterilized and then murdered in the name of genetic hygiene. The man responsible for this atrocity, and others like it, is Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch), a prominent gynecologist who will become Kurt's father in law. There are no spoilers here. The link between Kurt and Seeband is revealed to the audience fairly early. What keeps us guessing is when, how or whether Kurt will learn the truth. In the meantime, he falls in love with Seeband's daughter, Ellie (Paula Beer), in Dresden after the war. Her father, protected by a Red Army officer who owes him a favor, enjoys more than mere impunity: Seeband is celebrated as a leader of the workers' state, an authentic hero of socialism. He is no fan of Kurt and sets out to sabotage his relationship with Ellie in shockingly brutal and devious ways. Koch who played the principal victim of totalitarianism in "The Lives of Others" plays this monster with true movie star panache. When he's on screen, "Never Look Away" crackles with sulfurous life. (Koch's only rival in this department is Oliver Masucci, playing a Dusseldorf teacher of Kurt's modeled on the artist Joseph Beuys). But Seeband's magnetism and his transparent evil undermine a potentially central line of moral inquiry in the story, having to do with the ways Naziism embedded itself in ordinary German life. Instead, von Donnersmarck sensationalizes the horror, by which I don't mean he amplifies it (that would hardly be possible) but that he turns it into fodder for simple and emphatic emotions. Long as it is, the movie never risks depth or difficulty. The relationship between Ellie and Kurt, which should be its emotional axis, is a pallid romance punctuated by near tragedy and solemn, beautifully shot movie sex the kind that telegraphs profound feelings through the use of candles and graceful changes of position. (In movies like this, when something really important happens, people do it standing up). Back in the decades in which the movie takes place, critics and philosophers made much of the distinction between art and kitsch a way of defending seriousness and difficulty against the pleasures and comforts offered in different ways by totalitarian ideology and consumer capitalism. That vocabulary has long since fallen out of vogue, but it doesn't feel out of place here, since von Donnersmarck is essentially trying to use the tools of kitsch to illuminate the mysteries of art. Which is an almost interesting idea. Or an interesting almost idea.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
We have met the walking dead , and they are us. That, at any rate, seems to be the bludgeoning point of all the screen zombies that keep walking and sometimes running in our direction. Since George A. Romero unleashed the zombie movie with "Night of the Living Dead" (1968), the departed and their annihilating hunger have proved unsurprisingly durable metaphors for the human condition. The German movie "Endzeit" "Ever After" in English approaches the subgenre by folding the undead into a fairy tale. It's once upon a time in the apocalypse and zombies have taken over the country (and perhaps the rest of the world). Only two cities remain safe, including the heavily defended Weimar , where the heavily medicated Vivi (Gro Swantje Kohlhof) lives in an institution. She vacantly stares into the beyond, troubled by the past and the terrors swirling in her head. The director Carolina Hellsgard sets the scene efficiently, sweeping the camera over the eerily empty streets and snaking coils of razor wire. The barricades convey fear, but also defiance and optimism. People here clearly want to make it through the apocalypse, though what Vivi wants is less certain. Trembling, eyes darting, she seems lost in her own dread or indecision or drug induced haze. It's all very unclear and not that compelling, especially since fast moving zombies are chomping in the wings.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
After his graduation from the University of Delaware in 2012, Steven Rollino moved back home with his parents on Long Island, N.Y. He commuted to work in Manhattan via the Long Island Rail Road. Between the hour long train ride and the legs on either end, the trip took him more than two hours each way. Weary of the commute, Mr. Rollino, a salesman in the information technology field, decided to team up with two friends to rent a place. Their plan soon stalled. "I didn't really have control," Mr. Rollino said. "My friends were dragging their feet." About a year ago, he and his parents, Mark and Rosemarie Rollino, decided to buy a starter apartment together. The idea was that it would be an investment property, to be rented out "once I get married, have a family and all that, if I move out to the suburbs like everybody," said Mr. Rollino, 26, the eldest of five siblings. "We always had that investment piece in our mind." One of the first buildings the three liked was a co op north of Madison Square Park. A large one bedroom there, for 595,000 with monthly maintenance in the low 1,400s, was being sold by an architect. The building allowed unlimited renting after two years of ownership. But the apartment, which had been redone with a spartan modern aesthetic, was so individual that "it would never be my place it would always be that other person's place," Mr. Rollino said. They moved on, and the unit sold for 640,000. Mr. Rollino and his parents also liked a large one bedroom in a 1938 co op building, this one in the Flatiron district, slightly south of Madison Square Park, for 549,000, with monthly maintenance in the mid 600s. (The regular maintenance fee was almost 1,000 a month, but a three year rebate was in effect.) The apartment, on the ground floor, was in the back of the building, so it was away from foot traffic. The family's offer of slightly over the asking price was accepted. To their surprise, another buyer swooped in with a much higher offer a practice sometimes known as "gazumping." The Rollinos declined to counteroffer. The apartment sold for 590,000. The learning curve about the Manhattan market was steep, Mr. Rollino's father said. "The apartment is listed under the actual value to draw people in and to draw the prices way over asking," he said. "I realized the strategy is to make everybody fight over it. Once you understand the game, then you know how to play it." The Rollinos visited an appealing one bedroom in a small elevator co op building near Stuyvesant Square. The price was 529,000, with monthly maintenance in the low 1,300s. The kitchen, however, was "a funnel type kitchen," Mr. Rollino said, with a strange triangular shape. "When you have to turn sideways to open your oven, perhaps we should think, 'Wait a minute,' " Ms. Lindorme said. That one sold for the asking price. After nearly a year, despite many weekend apartment visits, the Rollinos were still empty handed. "The coolest part is you don't know what's behind the door," Mr. Rollino said. He was always eager to see and always surprised at "how much bigger these photographers can make these apartments look." But the hunt, initially interesting, was growing tiresome. Mr. Rollino thought they might have better luck if they focused on studios instead of one bedrooms. A studio surfaced in the building the Rollinos had originally liked, the one north of Madison Square Park. The apartment, sectioned off with a large bookcase, was being rented out and seemed cluttered. But Mr. Rollino loved the space, a rectangular room with a walk in closet and a dressing area. The asking price was 420,000, with monthly maintenance in the high 800s. "Sometimes going down in price makes things a better find," Ms. Lindorme said. The Rollinos went back several times. "I knew that once we got the big bulky bookcase out of there, the whole place would open up," Mr. Rollino said. "When we changed our mind set from looking for a one bedroom to a studio, all the stars aligned."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Until now, little has been heard from Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, whom the authorities charged in connection with the sale of 80 million in phony works. From Afar, a Fugitive in the Knoedler Art Fraud Gives His Defense He was accused of having been a central figure in one of the largest art world scandals of recent times, but little has been heard from Jose Carlos Bergantinos Diaz, who the authorities say helped orchestrate the sale of 80 million in phony works. Now in his first in depth interview, Mr. Bergantinos Diaz, a fugitive living in Spain, has acknowledged to a documentary filmmaker that he discovered Pei Shen Qian, the painter from Queens whose ability to mimic the work of Modernist masters fooled much of the art world. But he denied assigning him that task or of being involved in the scheme to sell dozens of the counterfeit paintings, made by Mr. Qian in his Queens garage, as the work of artists like Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock. "I was never ambitious; Glafira was the ambitious one," Mr. Bergantinos Diaz, 64, told the filmmaker Barry Avrich, whose documentary, "Made You Look," just aired on Canadian TV. "She loved fancy clothes and fancy parties." Ms. Rosales, 63, who pleaded guilty to nine counts of conspiracy, fraud and other crimes in 2013, told the authorities that Mr. Bergantinos Diaz used threats and abuse to coerce her into continuing with the scheme. They arrested and charged him with wire fraud and money laundering as well as conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and other crimes in 2014, but have been unable to extradite him from Spain. As the film depicts, the scandal rocked the art world, called into question the ability of experts to determine what works are authentic and led to Knoedler's closure after 165 years in business. Speaking from Spain, Mr. Bergantinos Diaz said he had made a mistake in trusting Ms. Rosales and that she had lied when she accused him of mistreating her. "I forgive her and she is the mother of my daughter and I wish her the best," he told the filmmaker. Mr. Avrich, who said he has plans for a limited theatrical release of the documentary in New York and Britain in the fall, said he interviewed Mr. Bergantinos Diaz in Lugo, the art dealer's hometown in the northwest part of the country. Mr. Bergantinos Diaz told the filmmaker that he met Ms. Rosales in Mexico and they moved to New York where, impressed by the high prices that art could fetch, they established a gallery in Chelsea. At one point, he describes placing colleagues in an auction room to help bid up the price of a work he was selling. But it was Ms. Rosales, he said, who had ambitions to be a big player in the art world. Among the most astonishing elements of the scheme was that the painter, Mr. Qian, was able to master the styles of a diverse array of famous painters to the point that acknowledged experts and sophisticated collectors did not notice they were frauds. The federal authorities said it was Mr. Bergantinos Diaz who recruited Mr. Qian to produce the scores of paintings and drawings that were presented as newly discovered works by major artists. They said in court papers that he treated the canvases to make them look old and that some of the proceeds from the sales were wired to bank accounts in Spain controlled by him. In his conversation with the filmmakers, Mr. Bergantinos Diaz described how he met Mr. Qian at the Art Students League, an arts school in New York. "We knew from the school that he was very talented at doing copies of famous artists," he told the filmmakers. Mr. Bergantinos Diaz bought some of his works. While he insisted Ms. Rosales had the most contact with Mr. Qian, he said that sometimes they made suggestions together about what he should paint. He said Ms. Rosales's work with the Knoedler Gallery was independent of him, that he never met its director, Ann Freedman, and that he was not aware that Ms. Rosales was selling work made by Mr. Qian as the real thing. "I didn't know everything she was selling or buying because we were distanced from each other and I have my own networks," he said, speaking sometimes through a translator.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Through May 12. Participant Inc., 253 East Houston, Manhattan; 212 254 4334, participantinc.org. Dash Snow died in 2009 of a drug overdose at the age of 27, and this sad, sometimes disturbing show is the largest presentation of his work in New York since then. Organized with the Dash Snow Archive, it reveals both talent and the waste of it. Mr. Snow was born to wealthy art world aristocracy the de Menils and an impeccable uptown pedigree. But he was rebellious from an early age, and began mostly living on his own, downtown, at 15. There he formed an alternative family of street artists and other discontents, whose chief recreation was getting drunk or high. Family money enabled him to pursue these habits full tilt, but that didn't stop him from making quite a bit of art. The work in this show at Participant Inc., pessimistically titled "The Drowned World," identifies Mr. Snow as a kind of post punk, latter day Fluxus Surrealist artist, sarcastic and often angry, and adept at making something out of almost nothing. Included here are 200 Polaroids from the several thousand the artist took, which alternate chaotic debauchery with occasional tenderness. For his collages, Mr. Snow spliced newspaper images into elegant, suggestive exquisite corpses, and stacked words from headlines into poetic ransom notes. The objects here are only intermittently interesting, among them "I Snorted My Dad," which begins with a child's school chair and a stack of New York Post newspapers, and ends with a dark, slim vintage book titled "In the Event of My Disappearance." ROBERTA SMITH Half a dozen arguments about knowledge and perception run through Barbara Ess's new show, "Someone to Watch Over Me," at Magenta Plains. This photographer, author and former No Wave rocker is known for favoring lo fi technology like the pinhole camera, and every image in the exhibition whether taken at home, grabbed from surveillance footage on the internet, or shot through a telescope is blurry. It might seem like a familiar, if perennially topical, comment on the unreliability of photography as a medium . But this blurriness also unmasks the role that the viewer's expectations play in making a picture : The five white blobs in a staticky gray print called "Wild Horses" do look like horses, but if the piece were titled differently you would also believe they were just digital noise. Sometimes the blurriness dampens your impulse to interpret , as in the alluring "Beach (from Balcony)." You can't make out any details; all you can do is enjoy the pretty colors. Most of all, by stripping an image of its extraneous ambiguities, Ms. Ess's studied blurriness leaves in place only such facts as she can transmit with certainty. In "Guys on Corner," two figures dressed in black face each other on a New York City street corner. You know it's New York from the flashing orange of the Don't Walk sign, and you know the sign is orange thanks to a minimal but sufficient halo of reddish pixels in an otherwise monochrome print. Is one of them leaning back in disbelief at something the other said? Has he been shot? Or are they ogling someone out of frame? If you could see their expressions, you'd have to guess. But because you can't, you stick with what you know: Just two guys on a corner, like the title says. WILL HEINRICH There's no way Eusapia Palladino, an Italian spiritualist medium, could have read the radical feminist Valerie Solanas's " SCUM Manifesto," which calls for the elimination of men. Ms. Palladino died nearly 50 years before the manifesto was published, and she was illiterate. But what if, by some magical reordering of time and fact, she could have? Would she have found it meaningful or inspiring? These questions are raised by "Less Light," the first United States solo exhibition for Chiara Fumai, whose work will be among those representing Italy at this year's Venice Biennale. Ms. Palladino, whose psychic powers were denounced as trickery during her lifetime, served as a muse for Ms. Fumai, who died in 2017. This was a crux of the artist's practice: She resuscitated female historical figures from obscurity, creating a new feminist pantheon that values alternative forms of creativity. Several of those figures appear here, including Elisabetta Querini, a Dogaressa of Venice, and Annie Jones, a bearded lady with P.T. Barnum's traveling circus. In the photographs that open the show, Ms. Fumai dresses up and poses as some of them, with the SCUM Manifesto at hand. A line from it appears on the wall behind her: "A male artist is a contradiction in terms." The installation "The Book of Evil Spirits" (2015) incorporates photographs of Italian Sign Language, automatic drawings, the elements of a Ouija board and a video featuring Ms. Fumai as Ms. Palladino, channeling other women. The video is layered, mixing images, texts, time periods, fact and fiction. Like all the work in the show, it has an air of purposeful artifice suggesting that history itself is a kind of performance, and that art may just be the thing to help us rewrite it. JILLIAN STEINHAUER What if indigenous people could turn the tables on colonial powers, ingesting their cultures and using them for their own ends? The Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade's "Anthropophagic Manifesto" (1928) encouraged Brazilians to "cannibalize" or devour other (European) cultures in order to liberate themselves from domination, an idea Jeffrey Gibson borrows for his exhibition "The Anthropophagic Effect" at the New Museum. Mr . Gibson's show is crammed with history and ideas but also striking objects, images and rousing performances. (One to look for is a drumming event on June 8 with 50 performers in the museum's lobby and theater.) His signature works, however, are geometrically patterned garments that resemble the ghost shirts worn by Native American warriors, as well as helmets. He calls these "proposals," since they include traditional materials like beads and bits of gourd or porcupine quills, but are updated with text printed in graphic lettering or photographs. A nearby display of Cherokee and Choctaw objects and clothing borrowed from his family copies the clinical arrangements in ethnographic museums. A table in the gallery is covered with colorful slogans: "He Speaks to Ancestors"; "She Makes Music as Magick"; "His Paints Are His Medicine"'; "Their Dark Skin Brings Light." Shelves of books offer lessons on indigenous film, political resistance and modern art, which was often deeply influenced by indigenous patterns and rituals. What becomes clear is the two way effect of Anthropophagia: The colonizers cannibalized, but so did indigenous peoples. In the latter case, however, this is an aesthetic very hard won. MARTHA SCHWENDENER	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The Star of David may look the same upside down as it does right side up, but the same can't be said of a painting by the American Color Field artist Morris Louis that implements the Jewish symbol, and for years has potentially been viewed in flipped over form. The work, now on display with the title "Man Reaching for a Star" in an exhibition at the Jewish Museum, was until recently referred to as "Untitled (Jewish Star)." The painting had been displayed in the museum under its previous title twice before, once in 1997 and again in an exhibition that ran for several years beginning in 2003. But during preparations for the current exhibition "Scenes From the Collection," curators decided that a set of red chalk arrows drawn on the back of the work suggest that the orientation had been 180 degrees off. "We got into this fascinating discussion, looking at this painting anew," Claudia J. Nahson, a curator at the museum, said in a phone interview. Another curator, Stephen Brown, described a group standing around the painting in the museum's storeroom, considering how the piece was originally intended to be shown. The new orientation reveals what appears to be the abstract figure of a man reaching for the star, an image that carries weight for a painting that has been interpreted as a response to Nazi book burnings in the 1930s and to McCarthy era efforts to suppress public figures perceived as Communist or leftist.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The piece that opens the exhibition "To Exalt the Ephemeral: Alina Szapocznikow, 1962 1972," Hauser Wirth's thorough and enthralling first show of the artist's work since beginning to represent her estate last year, is an untitled plaster cast of her mouth. Rough edges frame the philtrum, chin and bits of cheek around her lips, and the piece rests on a spindly plaster stem that descends a couple of inches to a broader foot. Born in Poland in 1926, Szapocznikow survived a concentration camp and made it to Paris after the war, only to die of breast cancer in 1973, just shy of her 47th birthday. She produced work in an arresting variety of mediums and registers: silly, surreal lamps; a famous series of photographs of chewed gum; cast resin "tumors," made after she was diagnosed; and heartbreakingly vulnerable self portrait busts. Most of it centered on the paradox of the human body, that strange material form that stamps itself so heavily into the human spirit, and so the untitled plaster lips, which date to 1965, offer a perfect introduction. Closed and slightly pursed, they suggest silence in the face of the unspeakable. You might think of the sexual parceling out of women's bodies, or of the abattoirs of the Holocaust. (A 1962 plaster cast called "Noga," or "leg," also in the show, amplifies this sense: Even while capturing Szapocznikow's petite build, it evokes a chicken thigh on a plate.) Separating the lips from their face serves to emphasize their function, reminding us that it's not finally a body's form, but what it does speaking, crying, kissing that counts. Those chewing gum photographs, 20 moody, black and white close ups shot in 1971, get to the intimate connection between Szapocznikow's humor and her pathos. Honeycombed with tooth marks and placed, just so, on a little ledge, the wads look like slugs, snails, newts, cocoons or even a toppled image of the Virgin Mary. It's funny to think that a worthless piece of chewing gum could be more visually complex, and arguably more interesting to look at, than many an abstract sculpture, and heady to consider how many thousands of such detailed relics we're casting off all the time. At the same time, it's sobering to remember just how precarious a line divides the relics we treasure from those we treat like garbage. You could also see Szapocznikow's many changes of medium as a search for forms ambiguous enough to capture the sensation of passing time. The gum does that even frozen in photographs, its shapes look transitional and impermanent. And a series of photographs embedded in resin, known as "Pamiatki," or "Souvenirs," does it, too. In one of a pair from 1967, the face of Szapocznikow's friend, the fellow artist Christian Boltanski, is rolled up, just one more object to be stowed somewhere. In the other, an image of Twiggy, the actress and model, stands up as if on its own but as it does, it buckles, and appears to melt. WILL HEINRICH It's rare that an art review serves as a trigger warning, but this one does. Similarly, a sign inside Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg's exhibition "One Last Trip to The Underworld" at Tanya Bonakdar warns that the show contains graphic images: indications of rape, dismemberment and psychological distress rendered in Claymation, a form that is usually used in children's movies and television shows. The video "How to Slay a Demon" (from 2019, as are all works in the show) is the most explicit, with women's bodies dressed in silk, brocade or gold lame being stripped by a series of beasts and monsters sporting claws, horns, tails, baring teeth and bulging eyes. A hot pink octopus devours a woman in a silver body suit in the video "One Last Trip to The Underworld," while another woman reassembles herself (literally) in "Damaged Goods." Sculptures throughout the gallery feature cartoonish birds attacking flowers in a pollinating process that is simultaneously natural and violent. The works here are not pitch perfect. The texts and electronic music accompanying the videos could be more sophisticated or finely tuned. The behavior and trauma represented, however, correct millenniums of art in which rape was made to look "sexy," or otherwise diminished its impact on survivors. In this sense, Ms. Djurberg and Mr. Berg have succeeded in producing art that is devastating and necessary. MARTHA SCHWENDENER The panels in Sonya Kelliher Combs's "Credible" (2019) look as if they've been wounded. Circular marks made of human hair and red stitches bring a specter of violence to the surface. Each piece features a map fragment covered with a painted, muddied layer of acrylic polymer. The panels indicate the locations of the 35 Alaskan cities and villages where members of the Roman Catholic Church have been accused of abuse. An artist of Inupiaq and Athabascan descent, Ms. Kelliher Combs was raised in a small town in Alaska. She draws on the traditions of these Native communities, whether through the form of a cuff in "Polar Bear Curl" (2017) another piece in her exhibition "Mark" at Minus Space or the incorporation of animal parts, such as a moose jaw, into her series "Remnants," also represented here. Her artworks are delicate and visibly handmade, often suggesting care as well as loss. They become louder and more insistently expressive through repetition: "Polar Bear Curl" contains 34 variations on the same shape. In "Credible," the accumulation isn't just formal; it's informational, as Ms. Kelliher Combs lists the towns and names of the accused alongside her panels. The decision is unusually explicit, but it doesn't dilute the poetry of her images it only makes them feel more urgent. JILLIAN STEINHAUER Amy Brener made "Omni Kit (Eostra)," the 7 foot tall winged column that presides over her striking New York solo debut, with urethane foam and resin, platinum silicone and Hydrocal. She dyed this modern ooze a vivid purple and violet, studded it with flower buds, blossoms and a variety of junk store toiletries, and shaped it with Jell O molds and decorative cake pans. Adding a heavy breastplate and a mysterious scalloped disc for a head, and sticking grayish lavender candles into the miniature Bundt pan protrusions covering the column's leg, she arrived at what looks like a cross between a Minoan idol and a central African power figure. Secreted among the candles are a few sleeping male faces miniature replicas of a cast that Ms. Brener's father, also a sculptor, took of himself before he died. You could take all this as an elegy to the numberless lives and moments subsumed in the modern world's tide of meaningless garbage. But if you're willing to suppose that a Q tip can be as pretty as a larkspur, you could take it instead as triumphant assertion that our garbage contains nothing but strands of individual meaning, in endless, renewable depth. WILL HEINRICH	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
"Ramen Heads" has all the thrills of a corporate training video, with about as much humor, too. Over narrated and self serious, this documentary allows its good intentions to pave the way to a tepid tale. Centering on Osamu Tomita, who runs one of Japan's most praised ramen restaurants, the film follows him and a few other chefs as they mix broth, cook noodles and greet customers. We're told that making and eating ramen can be a quasi religious experience. Slow motion footage, instrumental music and loving close ups of ingredients do all they can to drive that point home. What the film lacks, though, is a strong reason to watch. Unlike the obsession witnessed in "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" or the drollness of "The Search for General Tso," "Ramen Heads" usually forgoes a driving theme or story line. Other than late scenes charting Mr. Tomita's plans for his shop's 10th anniversary celebration, food preparation is the overwhelming motif, leading to myriad shots of boiling pots and steaming meals.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Social Security has always seemed like a future problem, with experts long predicting a benefits squeeze in the decades ahead. But the coronavirus has put tens of millions of Americans out of work, and economists are predicting that the recovery will take years. That means the future is now. If nothing is done to shore up the program, all benefit checks will need to be cut by roughly one quarter in perhaps 11 years or, if the recession is protracted and severe, maybe even sooner. "We thought we had more than a decade, and now it could be less than a decade," said Kathleen Romig, a senior policy analyst at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. "That makes a big difference both psychologically and in policy terms." The pandemic has hastened the cash crunch's arrival by wiping out jobs and the payroll taxes Social Security's dedicated source of revenue that they provide. Fewer people are paying into the retirement trust fund, and the longer they're out of work, the deeper the problem becomes. (Even more pressing may be a fix for Social Security's disability program, which has a trust fund of its own. A report issued by the Congressional Budget Office last month projects that fund could be exhausted in 2026.) Despite such grim projections, Social Security hasn't received a lot of attention during the presidential campaign, given everything else going on. But whoever wins next week will have little choice but to stretch out his hand toward the third rail of politics. And both candidates have offered ideas that could significantly shift how Social Security works. President Trump hasn't released a proposal, but he has said he wants to eliminate the payroll tax Social Security's lifeblood as an expansion of the temporary holiday enacted by executive action over the summer. (Few companies have stopped collecting the tax, which would have to be repaid in 2021.) "At the end of the year, on the assumption that I win, I'm going to terminate the payroll tax," he said in August. Instead, he said, he would pay for the program through the general budget, which could count on "tremendous growth." Mr. Trump has stated this on more than one occasion, but Sarah Matthews, deputy White House press secretary, said the president meant only that he wanted to forgive the taxes deferred under his order. "President Trump will always protect Social Security, as he has stated numerous times," she said. Policy experts are highly skeptical that the payroll tax could be eliminated; it would require congressional action and be politically difficult. But if it happened, Social Security would have to compete for funding in a way it hasn't before. "We have a very crowded budget as it is," said Shai Akabas, economic policy director at the Bipartisan Policy Center. "And having Social Security in the mix with everything else puts the program at risk in the future." Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, has released a proposal that's more moderate than many offered by his party's progressive wing. But it would nonetheless make fundamental changes. Mr. Biden proposes an expansion of the payroll tax, but only on the highest earning Americans. Currently, the payroll tax 12.4 percent, split between employees and employers applies to the first 137,700 of a worker's earnings. Under Mr. Biden's plan, high earners would also have the tax assessed on their earnings above 400,000. (Because the 137,700 threshold rises over time, eventually all income up to 400,000 would be subject to the tax in about 30 years, the Urban Institute estimated.) For decades, the amount a worker pays into the system has factored into how much they ultimately receive in benefits. But Mr. Biden has suggested that higher earners might not get anything in return for the added tax they pay, a change that would break a link that has been in place since the program began. The issue is still being studied, however, and no decision has been reached. Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' "A key principle of social insurance in general and the Social Security program in particular is that contributions are linked to benefit calculations," said William Arnone, chief executive office of the National Academy of Social Insurance, a nonpartisan group of social insurance experts. Mr. Biden's plan also proposes more generous benefits, including a new minimum benefit for new retirees equivalent to 125 percent of the poverty level, or 15,950 in 2020. He would also allow certain caregivers unable to work full time to earn Social Security credits. Those provisions and others would immediately lift more than 350,000 beneficiaries out of poverty, according to a recent analysis by the Urban Institute. And all retirees would probably see their benefit checks grow slightly faster. Mr. Biden's plan would calculate cost of living adjustments using a different price index that more closely tracks the spending of older consumers, like on health care bills. Even with the tax on high earners, Mr. Biden's proposal would buy the program only an additional five years of solvency, according to the Urban Institute analysis, though it would soften the benefit cuts that would be necessary if further changes weren't made. Mr. Biden's policy advisers, however, said the proposal was something of an opening bid. "The vice president's financing proposal shows how he would protect and increase benefits for all Social Security recipients while making a down payment on long term solvency," said Gene Sperling, an outside adviser to Mr. Biden and a former national economic adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. Just about every American has something at stake, or someone close who does: Roughly 178 million workers contribute to the program, and, this year, an estimated 65 million Americans will receive more than 1 trillion in retirement, disability and survivor benefits. The average monthly retirement check is about 1,500 per month, according to the Social Security Administration. Under current law, retirement benefits can come only out of the trust fund, which will be depleted by 2034, according to Social Security Administration estimates that do not take the pandemic into account. At that point, taxes collected will be enough to pay only 76 percent of benefits. (A Congressional Budget Office report from September predicted the trust funds would run out in 2031; others, including the Bipartisan Policy Center, project it could be sooner.) The cost of inaction is serious, Mr. Akabas said, because as insolvency creeps closer, the changes necessary will become increasingly painful tax increases will need to be greater, any cuts more severe. "The longer we wait to fix the problem," he said, "the fewer people who can play a role in the solution." About half the population 65 and older lives in households that receive at least half of their income from Social Security, according to a 2017 study published in the Social Security Bulletin. Roughly 25 percent of elderly households rely on Social Security for at least 90 percent of their income.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
The theater community is reeling from Thursday's announcement of a shutdown of Broadway theaters through April 12, a public health measure to protect audiences from possible coronavirus transmission. A blow to the heart and to a vital economic engine of the city it's also a fairly unprecedented move, but for two days following the Sept. 11 attacks. At this moment is it comforting, or not comforting, to think back to the bubonic plague sweeping through London in the early 1590s, and again, catastrophically, in 1603? Then, too, the authorities closed the theaters in order to stem the tide of infection. The theater, I have always maintained, is composed of language, ether and actor. One commodity the theater has that film and television do not have is air. Air is that wonderful substance that denotes presence. It creates that magical backstage dust we inhale together. It is also the substance through which people cough, sneeze and infect one another. Though theater artists are now understandably worried about the loss of livelihood for friends and colleagues, there is probably also a collective sigh of relief that our leadership put health over profit. The virus disproportionately affects the demographic over the age of 70; and theater audiences tend to skew older. How can we be responsible to our audiences, and also go about our business, which involves bodies in proximity to one another? Though playwrights have always dreaded coughing patrons (it generally means we have induced boredom), now the cough is greeted with a different kind of dread. At the moment, most forward thinking businesses are telling workers to work from home, to cancel all but essential travel and to have meetings by video. But what if your business is presence? During the 1590s plague, when the theaters were shut, William Shakespeare apparently chose to write poems instead. From his "Venus and Adonis," penned while the playhouses were closed and writers were essentially quarantined, came this somewhat strange compliment: "The plague is banished by thy breath." Should we theater people writers, players and audiences alike be staying home now and writing and reading poetry as a curative for the next month? Books, unlike group events, carry no germs. My own children's school has closed indefinitely, and I've been encouraging them to learn a new poetic form every day they are at home. So far, only my son has written a sonnet, an ode to candy. The final couplet: "Now I must eat you with a splendid grace/Remember how I put you in my solemn face." But they all just looked at me with raised eyebrows when I mentioned a villanelle. Thomas Dekker, a not very well known Elizabethan playwright eclipsed by the competition, wrote an account of the plague year called "The Wonderfull Yeare, 1603" in which a seventh of London's population died, despite shuttered theaters and quarantines. Dekker writes of the desolation and loneliness of that year, as well as of the triumphant reopening of the theaters, like "a merry epilogue to a dull play." "This world, after all our science and sciences, is still a miracle; wonderful, inscrutable, magical and more, to whosoever will think of it," he said. Our theaters need to remain nimble to this public health crisis, and all the calm and extraordinary artistic directors I know are doing just that. Many theaters are, as my fellow playwright Lauren Gunderson has suggested, modifying cancellation and rebooking policies for the month of March in the hopes that sick audience members return to the theater when the crisis has calmed. The Women's Project Theatre has canceled its performances and closed its office, but is guaranteeing payment to its artists for the duration of the closure. Some artists and theaters, like the nonprofit Court Theatre in Chicago, have called for audiences who can afford an extra ticket or two to donate canceled tickets back to nonprofit theaters, knowing that the livelihoods of their favorite artists might swing in the balance. The theater has survived a plague before, not only in the 1600s, but also in the 1980s. And the theater, with its tender heroism, empathy and propensity to help others, will survive again. As we wait out the reopening of our theaters this spring, we might try amateur theatricals at home, living room readings, podcasts of theater and staying home and writing plays in solitude. In the meantime, I am taking up the mantle of everyone's worried great aunt and telling my students at the Yale School of Drama not to kiss on the cheek, not to gather in large groups and, when in doubt, to stay home and write or read love poems. And on April 13th, only 10 days before Shakespeare's birthday, to return to the theater where we are reminded, in joy and in tragedy, of how interconnected we all are. Sarah Ruhl, a playwright, is an author, most recently, of "44 Poems for You." 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
"The Plague" is a parable and sermon, and should be considered as such. The message is not the highest form of creative art, but it may be of such importance for our time that to dismiss it in the name of artistic criticism would be to blaspheme against the human spirit. M. Camus is a master of the Defoe like narrative. Against the background of events, he creates various attitudes of human beings toward the plague, heightened by touches of intimate observation. As far as possible he isolates his people from their private lives, and thrusts them into their public situation. The plague becomes thus a kind of laboratory for studying attitudes towards itself. The attitude of the priest, who first regards it as a scourge of God against the wickedness of modern life; of the journalist Rambert, for whom it means separation from the woman he loves; of Tarrou, for whom it becomes the occasion of realizing his passion to correct an injustice at the center of society.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Despite her return to autobiography, the authorial mask is not completely removed, and the essays are stronger for it. The voice is more expansive than in her memoirs, imbued with an authority that is all the more powerful because it is diffuse and flexible, aware of its limited perspective and willing to be measured against those of others. Cusk occasionally cedes the narrative to long anecdotes relayed by friends and acquaintances an echo of her recent novelistic strategy. At other moments, her perspective becomes disembodied and panoramic, as in an essay on driving that considers the roads of the English countryside from the viewpoints of pedestrians and drivers, which becomes a metaphor for the "peculiar difficulty in attaining objectivity." If the "Outline" novels were an exercise in listening to, and weighing, the stories of others, in these essays, Cusk is similarly contending with inherited narratives marriage, civility, feminism to see whether they are still inhabitable, whether anything can be salvaged. The second half of the collection includes critical pieces on D. H. Lawrence, Natalia Ginzburg and Louise Bourgeois, among others, and furnishes keyholes onto Cusk's aesthetic vision, one that is so rigorous and uncompromising that the term "sensibility" feels too frivolous. One is tempted to speak of her artistic ideology. An essay on women's writing contains her most explicit artistic manifesto. Drawing on Virginia Woolf and Simone de Beauvoir, Cusk argues that literature from the structure of the novel down to "the very size and character of the literary sentence" consists of forms made by men, and that women cannot create their own art using the master's tools. True women's writing, she believes, concerns itself "with what is eternal and unvarying, with domesticity and motherhood and family life." One could object that motherhood is not every woman's destiny it is not mine but then, such complaints are precisely what makes writing so treacherous for women: Dare to draw larger observations from your life, and you are accused of generalizing. Fail to do so, and you are navel gazing. Many writers respond to this dilemma by making their experience broadly "relatable," becoming mouthpieces for certain ideas and demographics, a tactic that ends up diluting their authority. Cusk, like the best artists, has renovated her work from its deepest interior the self transforming her private crises into an expansive aesthetic vision. She believes entirely in D. H. Lawrence's claim that "one is in oneself the whole of mankind," and her essays reveal how profoundly this individualistic vision suffuses her work, even when she is not physically "there." She has not obliterated the self but refracted it much as a woman imprints herself onto the furnishings of her home, or a mother onto her children, manifesting her image in everything she creates.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Stonehenge eroding under the forces of extreme weather. Venice slowly collapsing into its canals. The Statue of Liberty gradually flooding. Images like these, familiar from Hollywood climate catastrophe thrillers, were evoked by a joint report, released on Thursday by Unesco, the United Nations Environment Program and the Union of Concerned Scientists, that detailed the threat climate change could pose to World Heritage sites on five continents. Adam Markham, the deputy director for climate and energy at the Union of Concerned Scientists and the report's lead author, said that while many of the sites were bound to be affected by factors including a rise in sea levels, intense storms and wildfires, planning could go a long way toward protecting them.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
CBS announced on Tuesday that it had hired the former ABC and NBC anchor Josh Elliott to work for its streaming service. The hiring of Mr. Elliott, who was a prominent face on ABC's "Good Morning America," signals that CBS News is prepared to meaningfully invest in its streaming service, which is called CBSN. "This is a serious effort," David Rhodes, the president of CBS News, said in an interview. "It's not extracurricular." The service, which started in 2014, runs 24 hours a day and has given CBS an opportunity to broadcast when the news division otherwise doesn't have airtime on television. The streaming access is free, and has been a crucial priority for Mr. Rhodes in the last year. The hiring of Mr. Elliott may also start speculation that CBS has found a would be successor for Charlie Rose on the network's morning show, "CBS This Morning." When Mr. Elliott was at NBC Sports, many people in the industry thought he might be groomed as a successor to Matt Lauer on "Today." But nothing materialized during a fitful year and a half at the network, in which his on air time was limited. Mr. Elliott left NBC at the end of last year, after the network let him out of his contract early. Mr. Rhodes emphasized that Mr. Elliott's hiring was about CBSN but acknowledged that the network needed to think about succession plans for the morning show. "That's an area of interest," he said. "It's certainly something we need to be thinking about. But that's not what this is about." Mr. Rhodes said that there was no agreement in place that would bring Mr. Elliott to the morning show. "The only agreement we have with Josh is to come here as anchor of CBSN," he said. After years of failed experiments and difficulty finding any traction in the morning hours, "CBS This Morning" has shown signs that it is working. This season to date, "CBS This Morning" has been drawing 3.6 million viewers, an increase of 10 percent. But Mr. Rose, who joined the show in 2012, is 74, and CBS has no obvious candidate to replace him. Mr. Rhodes said that Mr. Elliott's primary duties would be to serve as anchor for CBSN but that he would be allowed to do work on the network, similar to the situation with current CBSN anchors. It's not entirely clear what hours constitute "prime time" for the streaming service, but Mr. Rhodes said that Mr. Elliott would most likely take on the late morning to midday shift. He will begin this month. Mr. Rhodes also said there would be additional off camera hirings for the streaming service, which reaches a younger audience than the television network. "I feel like he needs an outlet," Mr. Rhodes said of Mr. Elliott. "He needs this outlet. We're going to need from him as much as he can bring in these different areas of reporting and anchoring. It's another reason it's the perfect place for him because it's kind of unlimited. We have some really hard working people at CBSN, but we don't have enough of them."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
HONG KONG After months of brisk activity, China's torrid economy is finally growing a little more slowly. But data released on Tuesday and Wednesday leaves unclear whether the slowing is enough to bring down inflation particularly as long as the central bank is pumping tens of billions of renminbi into the economy each week to keep the Chinese currency from rising more quickly against the dollar. Chinese policy makers now face a delicate balancing act. They must try to divine how much more currency appreciation the country's highly successful export industry can withstand, before the stronger renminbi makes Chinese goods less competitive on the global market. Printing fewer renminbi to buy dollars would be the most direct step that China could undertake to fight inflation, Western and Chinese economists say. But policy makers have feared that doing so would let the renminbi rise too quickly and cause layoffs at export factories even though the latest data shows a surge in exports. Instead of crimping the money supply, policy makers have resorted to domestic measures, like raising interest rates and forcing commercial banks to park more of their assets at the central bank instead of lending them. But those moves are now starting to slow the domestic economy in China. Any curb on the domestic economy directly contradicts the government's long term goal of shifting from export led growth to more self reliant growth with a greater emphasis on domestic consumption. Even though prices at the consumer and producer levels rose a little less quickly last month than they had in March, the slight slowdown at the consumer price level was less than many economists had expected. Consumer price inflation edged down to 5.3 percent in April, from 5.4 percent the month before. Retail sales and construction barreled ahead in April, but not quite as quickly as the month before. Industrial production slowed last month, but that was partly because factories had expanded so vigorously that they surpassed the electricity supply in some areas. Another factor was that some parts were in short supply from Japan after the natural and nuclear disasters there. Meanwhile, the purchasing managers index has inched down, although it is still forecasting continued economic growth. Taken together, the welter of economic data released Tuesday and Wednesday suggests that the Chinese economy is "cooling, but still hot," said Hongbin Qu, HSBC's chief economist for greater China. As a move against inflation, Mr. Qu predicted in a research note, the government could tighten monetary policy further for the domestic economy. Some economists are starting to ask whether the government might have gone too far in raising interest four times since October. But interest rates on bank deposits remain far below consumer price inflation, while interest rates on corporate loans remain below inflation at the producer level. Many Chinese business executives say that their sales are still strong, and some are still finding credit readily available. "Orders are strong from stores within China, and we see the potential for the domestic market ever expanding," said Stan Hu, the sales manager at the Xigo Electric Group Company, an air conditioner manufacturer in Nantuo, in southern China's Guangdong Province. "It is true that banks have tightened their lending to companies, but we have not been affected given our healthy financial situation." Others, though, are struggling for loans particularly smaller businesses, as well as exporters of low margin products like mass market clothing. The worried include Colin Cheng, sales manager of Ningbo Yinzhou Gold Sun Garments Company, which makes T shirts, skirts and other knitted garments in Ningbo, in east central China. "The banks have tightened lending, especially to enterprises such as ours," he said. "We still have a three year loan outstanding from the banks. But once it expires, we have already been informed that it is not likely the loan will be rolled over." The strongest facet of the Chinese economy these days is also in many ways the least welcome: exports. China's exports jumped 25.9 percent last month from a year earlier. That was a contrast to overall industrial production, which rose only 13.4 percent, as companies devoted more factory capacity to filling orders from overseas, rather than focusing on goods for domestic consumption. China's trade surplus in April, at 11.43 billion, was nearly three times what economists had expected, as exports surged past their previous record, set in December. Countries like India, Singapore and Brazil have been dismayed at the extraordinary success of Chinese companies in grabbing business and seizing a large share of the jobs and prosperity created by the world's gradual recovery from the economic downturn. A cornerstone of that export success has been the huge intervention in currency markets. The People's Bank of China issued renminbi to buy an average of 15 billion a week worth of dollars and other currencies during the first quarter, pushing its foreign exchange reserves over 3 trillion for the first time.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
Like many immigrants to the United States, Alexander Hamilton reinvented himself in New York City. His haunts in and around Manhattan were the backdrop to his spectacular triumphs, trials and death. Here are some of the addresses he frequented: This spot was the first Capitol building of the United States, where George Washington took the oath of office as the nation's first president, observed by a crowd of 10,000. Hamilton watched the ceremony from the balcony of his home at 58 (now 57) Wall Street, several yards away. The original hall was destroyed in 1812; the current structure was built in 1842. The Hamiltons resided for 10 years at 58 Wall Street. But Hamilton also had law offices at 69 Stone Street, 12 Garden Street (today Exchange Place), 63 Pine Street, and 58 Partition Street (now Fulton Street) though none of the structures remain. After he and his wife, Eliza, built their family estate in northern Manhattan, Hamilton kept a townhouse at 54 Cedar Street. He spent his last night there. On the site of the Bank of New York, which was founded by Hamilton, this museum is devoted to American finance and financial history. On display are documents signed by Hamilton, copies of his published works, and replicas of the dueling pistols that Aaron Burr fatally fired at him. (Hamilton's pistols are on private display at the JPMorgan Chase building in Manhattan.) Named after his father's ancestral estate in Scotland and also, perhaps, the St. Croix plantation of his mother's sister, this gracious yellow house is the only surviving Hamilton residence. He lived here for only two years before his death. The house, which has twice been moved a few blocks, is today a national historic monument.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel

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