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"Of course, in my head, there's always a fashion show going on it's weird, maybe?" he said, laughing. "But when we decided that Japan was the destination, I said I know where I want to be." The show followed previous cruise shows held at the Oscar Niemeyer designed Niteroi Contemporary Art Museum in Rio de Janeiro and at the John Lautner Bob and Dolores Hope estate in Palm Springs, Calif., which, together, Mr. Ghesquiere called a "trilogy." Vuitton is a travelers' label, founded on trunks, so a bit of architectural tourism makes sense. But it does not hurt to surprise a jaded fashion crowd with wild experiences, either. "I think it's more exciting to do a cruise collection in that context," Mr. Ghesquiere said, "where you bring people to see your clothes and your fashion, of course, but also to be able to share another feeling, of architecture and nature." The setting was decided before the collection was designed, so Mr. Ghesquiere had a chance to indulge his longtime love of Japan and tailor the clothes and bags to the scene, drawing from both classical references (obi belts, Kabuki masks) and contemporary ones, including the girl gang bikers of the Japanese "Stray Cat Rock" films of the 1970s. (They are turf war epics and heist capers with fabulous titles like "Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter," "Stray Cat Rock: Delinquent Girl Boss" and "Stray Cat Rock: Wild Jumbo.") He worked with Kansai Yamamoto, the Japanese designer best known for creating some of David Bowie's most otherworldly stage clothes, whose patches and illustrations of peeping eyes decorated handbags and clutches and even found their way onto some of the clothes. Far from it being a case of the tail wagging the dog, the collection looked great, even removed from its Japanese element and shrunken to smartphone size. Mr. Ghesquiere's modern day stray cats had patchwork jackets sassed up with leopard print, but also great tailored pieces, like cocooning, almost corseted looking blazers. (Most women will probably want to wear them with pants, but fashion shows are not meant to be purely prescriptive.) It was a playful evolution of Mr. Ghesquiere's fall collection, with its dolled up wardrobe staples and propositions for day to day dressing (albeit at great expense). Less playful, but quite lovely, were a series of lace evening dresses, the most beautiful in black, embroidered with gold leaves. It was inspired, apparently, by Noh theater costumes. It could make a convert out of any actress or high rolling customer, Japanophile or not. If you don't Noh, now you Noh.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Glenda Jackson, taking a break from rehearsals for "Three Tall Women," which will mark her return to Broadway after 30 years.Credit...Annie Tritt for The New York Times LONDON "No," said Glenda Jackson, the great British actress and former member of Parliament, her voice like a tolling bronze bell. "Oh no. No." When Ms. Jackson who is returning to Broadway for the first time in three decades, in a starry new production of Edward Albee's "Three Tall Women" says "no," it often has a conclusive tone that effectively shuts the door on a subject. Three "no's" suggests that the door has been triple locked. In this instance, the topic was pretty much guaranteed to elicit denial, diversion or evasion from Ms. Jackson, who spent 23 uninterrupted years away from the stage and screen while working in government. That would be the embarrassing fact (or, as she would have it, nonexistence) of her celebrity. It was a January morning at the cafe of the National Gallery, and I had made the mistake of asserting that Ms. Jackson was one of the reigning movie goddesses of the early 1970s, given her status as a two time Oscar winner for Best Actress and, more surprisingly, something of a box office draw. Ms. Jackson with a helmet of cropped coppery hair, no visible makeup and a black and white dress from Marks Spencer roared right back at her audience. "Oh, c'mon," she said, in the manner of a popular but stern school head on games day. "We don't do standing ovations in England." For once, though, a standing ovation seemed warranted. Though Ms. Jackson holds a special place in the hearts of film and theater cognoscenti, she hadn't exercised her acting muscles or even attended the theater during her years in Parliament. Yet critics had waxed ecstatic over her portrait of a despot suddenly betrayed by age a man, as Ms. Jackson described him, to whom "no one had said 'no' in his entire life." "She appeared naked in a sense from her first entrance," said Matthew Warchus, the Old Vic's artistic director, who had facilitated Ms. Jackson's return to her former profession. "We hadn't seen her in so long, so it was an incredible thing to hear her voice again. That's a neat trick, to make your first entrance after 20 years of silence." In person, Ms. Jackson is formidable but hardly as forbidding as her reputation would have it. She answers questions with a conscientious courtesy, only slightly underscored by impatience. Her face remains the face she was born with, scored with the lines you would expect a lifelong smoker to accumulate but untouched by the mask like distortions of plastic surgery. On the morning I met her in London, she arrived at the cafe, straight from "bloody public transport," in a sharp and purposeful blur, like a blade flung by a circus thrower seeking its target. She was again sans makeup and wearing drop pearl earrings (a gift from her son) and a wardrobe red coat, black pants, buffalo check flannel shirt, running shoes largely acquired from her trusty Marks Spencer. ("A good thing about Marks Spencer, they don't hound you when you're going round.") She was conscious of the time, since she was on "grandson patrol" that day and would be needing to pick up her son's 11 year old from school. At a certain point, she realized it might be a good idea if she had something to eat. We both ordered the soup, which came with bread. "How big is the bread?" she asked the server. "It's half a loaf isn't it? One of those should do. One to share. Save money and save food. Two thirds of the world go to bed hungry every night, and we stuff ourselves." Ms. Jackson did not check her cellphone. She doesn't have one. "No, I have no piece of information technology equipment at all," she said, and she is thankful to have no access to social media. But as a star of long standing, surely she must have to deal with certain incursions into her privacy. Does she read what is written about her? "Well, no, because nobody writes about me," she says. "There's nothing to write about. I lead a very dull, ordinary life which is the kind of life that I wish to lead." As for what she does when she's not working, "Well, you have to keep your place clean, you have to pay your bills, you have to do the shopping." Such comments seem a matter less of false modesty than of existential necessity, and jibe with her definition of herself: "I'm a pretty antisocial Socialist." Glenda Jackson was born in 1936 in the Cheshire region of Northern England, the daughter of working class parents. (Her father was a bricklayer; her mother cleaned houses and worked in shops.) Being the oldest of four girls, she has said, instilled in her "an overdeveloped sense of responsibility." She started appearing in amateur theater productions in the area when she was working behind the counter in a Boots pharmacy. "Someone said to me that you should do this professionally," she recalls matter of factly. "So I wrote to the only drama school I had ever heard of." It was a big one, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London; she was accepted, with scholarships. When she began to audition professionally, she was told she could expect only character parts. She found work, usually in supporting roles, in repertory companies, which was how she met Roy Hodges, a fellow actor and stage manager, to whom she was married from 1958 to 1976. (Their son, Dan, would grow up to become a political columnist; Ms. Jackson now lives in the basement flat of the house he shares with his wife and son.) She became a bankable star, who worked in both offbeat masterpieces ("Sunday Bloody Sunday") and bloated costume duds ("The Incredible Sarah," as Sarah Bernhardt). She appeared on stage, in London and New York in productions that included a "Macbeth" (1988), opposite Christopher Plummer, with which she made her last previous appearance on Broadway. It was not a success. "There were great difficulties over the kind of production it was going to be," Ms. Jackson remembered. "Very ruthless, Broadway. People do devour people. I think we had about three or four directors." Ms. Jackson perceived a different kind of ruthlessness at work in her native Britain, then under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. "What she'd done to my country, I didn't believe it," she said. She recalled reading a Thatcher quote that said "there's no such thing as a society," and "I was so incensed by that, I walked into my closed French windows and almost broke my nose." She had been asked before if she'd be willing to stand for a Labor Party seat. And then "suddenly out of the blue Hampstead and Highgate came up. And I thought, 'Oh, go for it, just do it.'" When she won, she didn't think twice about saying goodbye to acting. "There's no way you could do both," she said. Overtures about acting again had been made to her while she was still in Parliament, from, among others, Mr. Warchus and the "Three Tall Women" producer Scott Rudin (who as a theater crazy kid had seen her on Broadway in "Marat/Sade" and wanted her for the part Judi Dench played in the film "Notes on a Scandal"). But it was only after she stepped down from her Parliament seat in 2015 that acting once again seemed like a possibility. Mr. Warchus recalled his first meeting with her about "Lear": "I met her at the stage door and she was smoking, and she seemed to be in some sort of irascible state." After they talked in his office, he took her onto to the Old Vic stage. "And I could see her sort of unfurl,'' he said. "We stood there looking out, and her eyes became a bit watery and she was reminiscing about the different shows that she'd done. It may seem an obvious and sentimental thing to say, but it was a homecoming for her. I had seen the great rigorousness; then I also got to see the emotion." When I repeated Mr. Warchus's recollection of that "homecoming" moment to Ms. Jackson, she almost snorted. "Oh no," she said. "No, no. Oh no. It was a theater I worked in more than once. And they'd maintained it beautifully." As you might suspect, Ms. Jackson's approach to acting appears to be unclouded by mysticism or sentimentality. She sees performing as a collaborative effort, above all. ("I was taught to leave my ego outside the stage door," she said to me several times.) In discussing "Lear," she kept insisting that the play is not only about its title monarch. "There's not a bad part in it." In the meantime, she was thinking with horror about packing for the trip to New York, a place she hadn't visited in so long she couldn't recall the last time she was there. "I hate traveling," she said, sounding almost nervous, for once. "I hate luggage." The next time I saw Ms. Jackson was in a Broadway rehearsal room on West 42nd Street, where she was embodying the frail but fierce old woman identified simply as A in Albee's script, under the soft spoken direction of Joe Mantello. Her co stars, Ms. Metcalf and Ms. Pill, were on hand as B and C, women of different generations tending to the demanding A in the play's first scene. It was kind of distressing to see Ms. Jackson looking and sounding so feeble, and a relief when she became her trenchant self again during breaks. She interrupted the proceedings to suggest that the tone of the scene should alter more palpably after A says something particularly arrogant to Ms. Pill's character. ("I mean, it's so rude, isn't it? I don't care how old you are. There's no excuse for it.") And then without a beat, she became Albee's insufferably rude woman once again. Ms. Pill said she had expected to be intimidated by Ms. Jackson, and she was right, though there's "not an element of diva in the slightest." The intimidation factor, she said, comes from her being "potentially the smartest person in the room." Later that day, in a lounge at the hotel where she is staying, Ms. Jackson's voice was softer than during our first encounter, and she spoke more slowly. I had the impression of someone carefully husbanding her energy. She was pleased, she said, to be working with other actresses, for a change. "It has been, really, everything one could hope for. Because, as I've said, most plays have only one decent woman's part in them, and if you've got it, there aren't any other actresses to work with." She said she still hadn't entirely found her way into her role in "Three Tall Women," and astutely elaborated on some questions of character she was trying to resolve. (Was C's fear of theft motivated by experience or paranoia?) And what about other roles to come, perhaps in film? "Oh, I think that's highly unlikely. I mean, I think parts for women of my years are well and truly finished." And theater? "That depends. Again, where are the contemporary playwrights?" Mr. Warchus, however, said that in watching her performing Lear, "not for a second did you think that this is someone's swan song. It was the opposite. And she said to me, 'What's next Matthew? Find me another play.'" In her 30s, Ms. Jackson had said she was looking forward to old age, because it "seems the only irresponsible time of your life." When she decided she would not stand for Parliament again three years ago, she said she thought, "'Oh, I'm going to be so irresponsible. There'll be nothing to be responsible for." The reality was, perhaps inevitably, quite the opposite. "In truth, you are even more responsible," she said, not sounding remotely regretful. "What gets you out of bed in the morning, if not you?" For the moment, Ms. Jackson's sense of responsibility is trained almost entirely on her current role. Her nights are spent with the script, she said, and it is all she has been reading. And though she loves to walk in New York, she had been outside only rarely since she arrived, because it had been cold, which had forced her to cut down on smoking. ("I'm well below 10 a day. I don't know how good or bad that is.") Did she find she was recognized on the streets? "No, I'm not recognized in London. What would people recognize?" Well, she is inimitably herself, I said. Her response: "Oh no, come on, good God. No."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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This tax season was the first in which Charlie Clark, 64, filed his return with his newly attained status: retiree. Mr. Clark almost always prepared his family's tax return, but when he ran the numbers through TurboTax last month, he was pleasantly surprised. "This year, holy cow, we were in the 15 percent tax bracket for the first time in probably 30 something years," said Mr. Clark, who retired after a 40 year career in the oil and gas engineering industry. "That is pretty sweet." When the paychecks stop coming, minimizing the tax bite becomes even more important. There are several strategies that can help, particularly when retirees, like Mr. Clark, suddenly find themselves in a lower tax bracket. But they are not always obvious. "It sometimes requires changing their mind set from decades of packing money into retirement accounts to considering how to get that money out at the lowest cost," said Robert Schmansky, an enrolled agent and financial planner in Michigan. "Many just try to postpone withdrawals, but that's not necessarily the best approach." James Wood, 82, a former factory manager, provides some guideposts. "When I retired 17 years ago," he said, "I set my goal to reduce taxable income as much as possible." To do that, he used several methods, which included moving about 20 percent of his tax deferred savings to Roth accounts, where the money could be withdrawn tax free. Here are some more ideas on becoming more tax efficient in retirement: Manage tax brackets With a little planning, many older people can manage which tax bracket they will land in. But you will need different types of retirement accounts to work with, including a traditional 401(k) or I.R.A. (tax deferred), a Roth I.R.A.(money is withdrawn tax free) and taxable investment accounts. That way, you can strategize about what to draw from in a given year and better manage how much of your income is taxable. Many people retire with the bulk of their money tied up in traditional retirement accounts. That does not leave much flexibility, especially once you are required to begin taking withdrawals known as required minimum distributions after age 70 1/2 . (That amount is based on your life expectancy: A 70 year old retiree with a 750,000 I.R.A., for instance, would be required to withdraw more than 27,000.) But there are several actions a retiree might take earlier, depending on the situation. One approach is to simply start spending down traditional I.R.A. accounts first perhaps while delaying taking Social Security. By doing that, the eventual required minimum distributions will be lower. For those who need more than the minimum distribution to cover expenses, one way to keep taxable income down is to make withdrawals from a Roth I.R.A., or a brokerage account, paying capital gains only on the profit. "We have some control in retirement of what that adjusted gross income will look like prior to 70 1/2 , depending on what levers we pull," said Ann Reilley Gugle, an accountant and financial planner in Charlotte, N.C. Roth conversion To add more of those levers, retirees might consider converting a portion of a traditional I.R.A. account to a Roth I.R.A. Taxes will be due on the amount converted, which is why this is best done when you're in a lower tax bracket, perhaps before turning to Social Security. Mr. Wood, the retired factory manager, converted about 4 percent of his tax deferred I.R.A. money into a Roth each year for five years, starting when he was 65. "The tax bill was not huge for the future benefit of no Roth taxation," he said. There's room for many retirees in the 15 percent tax bracket the next bracket jumps to 25 percent to convert the money. While the upper limit on taxable income of the 15 percent bracket is 37,450 for singles and 74,900 for joint filers in 2015, in reality, many taxpayers can remain in that bracket and still earn much more. 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 married couple over 64 may earn 98,000, counting two personal exemptions ( 8,000 total in 2015) and the standard deduction ( 12,600, with an extra 1,250 each for older people) and perhaps even more for those with large itemized deductions. Figuring out if a Roth conversion makes sense requires detailed analysis, including making certain assumptions about the future direction of tax rates. The good news? If you get it wrong, you have until the due date of the return (including extensions) to reverse the transaction. "Maybe your tax rate might be lower later," said Mark Luscombe, principal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer. "But that depends a lot not only on your own tax situation, but also the law." Roth I.R.A.s don't require account owners (or spousal beneficiaries) to take minimum distributions at least under current law making the accounts also a good place to leave money to heirs. "If a couple wishes to bequeath 100,000 to each child, conversions may make sense because a Roth is the best way to gift," said Ms. Gugle. "When a nonspousal beneficiary inherits it, they only need to take required minimum distributions over their own life expectancy. The account grows tax free and there is no tax due on any withdrawals." There is another benefit. Many retirees may be surprised to learn that income tax is owed on up to 85 percent of their Social Security benefits if they exceed relatively modest income thresholds. But Roth withdrawals do not count as income in that calculation. Pay 0 in capital gains Long term capital gains are not taxed for people in the 10 and 15 percent tax brackets, which means many retirees will have opportunities to pay nothing at all. "Harvest capital gains in years when the tax rate on them is zero," said Wade Pfau, a professor of retirement income at the American College of Financial Services. Charitable deductions Charitably inclined taxpayers nearing retirement who also itemize their deductions might consider making two years of donations right before they stop working (while they are still in a higher tax bracket). But instead of donating directly to the charity all at once, you can parcel it out over a few years by parking the money in a donor advised fund. "They don't have any deductions in Year 1 or 2 of retirement," said Benjamin Hockema, an adviser in Park Ridge, Ill. "But they can still give the money out each of those years." Retirees who must take required minimum distributions are also permitted to donate some or all of that amount directly to charity (up to 100,000). "If they do that, they don't get the charitable deduction," Mr. Luscombe said, "but they don't have to take that into income." Medical deductions While it has become more difficult to deduct medical expenses, people 65 and older have an advantage in 2015 and 2016: They can deduct medical and dental expenses that exceed 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income. After 2016, the floor will rise to 10 percent. So retirees and their spouses might consider getting any nonemergency procedures, operations or even dental work with high out of pocket costs during the same year if they expect their combined expenses could exceed that floor. Part time work Working part time in retirement can have important tax implications; extra income could push Social Security benefits into taxable territory, for example. Moreover, if you have not yet reached the official retirement age 66 for the current generation but are working part time and receiving Social Security, the benefit amount may be reduced. The upside, for a couple where at least one person is working, is that each spouse can shelter up to 6,500 in traditional or Roth I.R.A. accounts (as long as the working spouse earns as much as the contribution amount).
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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The two brothers arrested in connection with the reported attack on the "Empire" star Jussie Smollett were released without being charged on Friday, a police spokesman said. They are no longer considered potential suspects. "Due to new evidence as a result of today's interrogations, the individuals questioned by police in the 'Empire' case have now been released without charging and detectives have additional investigative work to complete," Anthony Guglielmi, the Chicago Police Department spokesman, said in a statement. That announcement was the latest twist in an investigation that started late last month, when Smollett told the authorities that he had been attacked early one morning by two masked men who yelled homophobic and racial slurs at him in downtown Chicago. Smollett also told the police at the time that the assailants had tied a rope around his neck and poured a chemical substance on him. But the two people who were arrested are acquaintances of Smollett, a lawyer for the men said. At least one had appeared on "Empire," a fact that had fueled social media speculation that at least parts of Smollett's story were not true. The police went from describing the two men as possible suspects for whom there was probable cause to believe they were part of the crime to releasing them, without explanation as to what had changed. In a brief phone interview late Friday night, Guglielmi said Smollett was still being treated as a victim. Since Smollett reported the attack, the Police Department has said several times publicly that it has no reason to doubt his story. A representative for Smollett did not immediately respond late Friday to a request for comment on the latest development. The men were initially detained on Wednesday after arriving on a return flight from Nigeria. Also on Wednesday, the police raided their home and, according to CBS Chicago, removed items like an "Empire" script, a phone and a black face mask hat. For weeks, the investigators who have treated the case as a possible hate crime had few leads. They could not find surveillance footage showing any attack. However, within days of the reported episode, the police released the images of two men who were in the area, whom the police considered "potential persons of interest." After "meticulous investigation with the use of advanced technology, interviews with the victim and witnesses, and transportation records," the police said, they discerned the two men's identities and detained them. Gloria Schmidt, a lawyer for the two men arrested, did not respond to calls and emails requesting comment, but did tell CBS Chicago: "They're really baffled why they are people of interest. They really don't understand how they even got information that linked them to this horrific crime. But they're not guilty of it. They know that the evidence is going to prove them innocent. They send their best to Jussie." In an interview broadcast on "Good Morning America" on Thursday, Smollett expressed frustration that his story was being doubted. Read more about Jussie Smollett's interview on "Good Morning America" and other developments here. "It feels like if I had said it was a Muslim, or a Mexican, or someone black, I feel like the doubters would have supported me much more," Smollett told ABC's Robin Roberts. "A lot more." He also said he was sure that the men in the surveillance images were the ones who attacked him. "Because I was there," Smollett said. "For me, when that was released, I was like, 'O.K., we're getting somewhere.' I don't have any doubt in my mind that that's them. Never did." It is unclear whether the Chicago police still believe that the men in those images were the men they arrested this week.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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Facebook Is 'Just Trying to Keep the Lights On' as Traffic Soars in Pandemic SAN FRANCISCO As the coronavirus spread around the world and people everywhere were ordered to stay home, phone calls over Facebook's apps more than doubled. In many countries, messaging on Instagram and Facebook soared by over 50 percent, while group calls in Italy jumped by more than 1,000 percent. And hungry for information, people clicked repeatedly on virus news stories shown by the social network. Inside Facebook, that meant the pressure was on. "We're just trying to keep the lights on over here," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said in an interview last week. As airlines, hotels, restaurants and other companies struggle to stay afloat during the pandemic, Facebook is also laboring to cope with the fallout. But unlike those other businesses, the Silicon Valley giant is being strained by the coronavirus in a different way: Its usage is going through the roof. Skyrocketing traffic and a crush of new users are now stressing Facebook's systems just as its 45,000 employees are dealing with working remotely for the first time. The company is also trying to keep its users' data secure while employees who sift through posts to moderate content do so from home. At the same time, Facebook has added to its workload by promising to do more to limit virus misinformation. "The usage growth from Covid 19 is unprecedented across the industry, and we are experiencing new records in usage almost every day," Alex Schultz and Jay Parikh, two Facebook vice presidents working on infrastructure, said in a blog post on Tuesday. "Maintaining stability throughout these spikes in usage is more challenging than usual now that most of our employees are working from home." What has saved Facebook's network from crashing altogether, Mr. Zuckerberg said, was that the virus and the quarantines have had the largest impact in just a few areas where Facebook operates. Facebook is banned in China, where the virus first appeared, for instance. Those areas that have the highest concentration of people using Facebook's services during peak hours from home are also spread out by time zone, Mr. Zuckerberg said, which staggers the swell of traffic. The strain has been compounded by Facebook's work force adapting to working from home, which had been discouraged in the past. The company's executives have long preached internally that face to face meetings and in person collaboration were central to Facebook's success. The importance of in person conversation was so great that employees at offices from Singapore to New York were frequently asked to travel to the company's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., for quarterly meetings. That has made the transition to working from home especially difficult, said four Facebook employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. To communicate, Facebook employees were told to use BlueJeans, which provides technology for videoconferencing calls, they said. But they quickly found that calls were frozen, or the video quality so bad that it was hard to make out who was speaking. Many employees instead turned to Apple's FaceTime feature, Google video hangouts or Zoom conference calls. Some even built their own version of a video conference call, according to two employees. Facebook employees had been posting on those boards at a record rate, according to one employee. While some workers were sharing tips and best practices of how to set up a home office, others were sharing links to buy heirloom seeds for at home farming, and instructions on how to sew their own face masks, one employee said. Last week, a bug within Facebook's system began marking thousands of posts by major news outlets like Politico and The Sydney Morning Herald as spam, which resulted in the removal of the posts. It took Facebook a day to correct the mistake, as engineers struggled to communicate remotely with one another over how the bug had been introduced and what it would take to fix it. While they scrambled, rumors spread among Facebook's users over the source of the bug, with many accusing the company of censoring people's speech. Internally, Facebook managers said that while the bug was routine, the amount of time it took to fix it was not. "This was just a technical error, and we're still doing the post mortem to understand what happened so we can operationalize any learnings from that," Mr. Zuckerberg said last week. The Landscape of the Post Pandemic Return to Office None Delta variant delays. A wave of the contagious Delta variant is causing companies to reconsider when they will require employees to return, and what health requirements should be in place when they do. A generation gap. While workers of all ages have become accustomed to dialing in and skipping the wearying commute, younger ones have grown especially attached to the new way of doing business. This is causing some difficult conversations between managers and newer hires. How to keep offices safe. Handwashing is a simple way to reduce the spread of disease, but employers should be thinking about improved ventilation systems, creative scheduling and making sure their building is ready after months of low use. Return to work anxiety. Remote work brought many challenges, particularly for women of color. But going back will also mean a return to microaggressions, pressure to conform to white standards of professionalism, and high rates of stress and burnout. Working from home has also made moderating Facebook's posts more difficult. This month, Facebook put its army of global contractors from outside agencies on paid leave. Those contractors, who number over 15,000, are responsible for sorting through the posts, images and videos that flow through Facebook's services on a daily basis to weed out sensitive, explicit or hateful material. Given that, Facebook employees have been asked to remove only the most sensitive, fringe posts, said one employee. The company also told employees that it would rely more heavily on their artificial intelligence systems to flag and remove posts. "I do think it's reasonable to expect that for some of the other categories where the severity might not be as imminent or extreme, that we may be a little less effective in the near term while we're adjusting to this," Mr. Zuckerberg said. While Facebook's usage is soaring, that may not translate into financial gains. Most of the increase in traffic has occurred on the company's messaging services like WhatsApp and Messenger which bring in relatively little revenue. And though more people are using the main News Feed and Facebook Stories in the core app, the company said it wasn't immune to a wider pullback in advertising. "Our business is being adversely affected like so many others around the world," Mr. Schultz and Mr. Parikh said in the blog post. "We've seen a weakening in our ads business in countries taking aggressive actions to reduce the spread of Covid 19."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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MOST of us do not even want to contemplate the death of a spouse or partner much less the prospect of having to take care of the financial end of such a loss while still grieving. There are, however, plenty of details that people can attend to in advance that can avoid some measure of stress when the time comes. Most people tend to ignore or procrastinate over such tasks for obvious reasons but planning can certainly ease some avoidable financial sorrows. The first step to prepare for this unhappy life stage is to make sure both partners have a thorough understanding of the couple's spousal and individual assets and where they are. Are there life insurance policies? Do they name the right survivors as beneficiaries? What about pensions and other retirement plans? How will the money flow after someone's death? As all too many people find out too late, this sort of preparation should start well before either spouse becomes disabled or dies. The general principle is to protect the survivor and enable him or her to make decisions about the estate's assets. One couple who went through this exercise, Erika and John Lupo of Sparta, N.J., did so sooner than most, and it paid off. When Mr. Lupo died of cancer last year at age 57, Ms. Lupo, 51, who runs an acting school, was extraordinarily well prepared unlike many widows. In his final days, Mr. Lupo, a former salesman, did everything he could to prepare his estate and make sure his wife knew where his assets were and how they could be bequeathed to her and heirs. Working with Mark Germain, a certified financial planner with Beacon Wealth Management in Hackensack, N.J., Mr. Lupo had several documents in order just a few weeks before he died. "We made out wills, durable powers of attorney and a trust" for Mr. Lupo's daughter, Mr. Germain said. "We also made some arrangements for the son in the will. We had to do some sophisticated planning." For Mr. Lupo's widow, the advance planning came as a great relief even as she mourned her husband. "We had everything in place," she said. "I had no idea how to do any of this. They guided me seamlessly." Organization of one's estate will certainly not lessen the emotional turmoil, but it will smooth the way to financial security in the fog of grief. More than 800,000 Americans lose their spouses each year, and 700,000 of them are women, according to the Census Bureau. Because women generally outlive men, they spend an average of 14 years without a spouse. There are now more than 14 million widows and widowers, accounting for about one quarter of the over 65 population. Although in the past, one spouse usually the husband "took care" of all of the financial planning, Mr. Germain said, most people don't do a very good job of it. That traditional role is often a smoke screen for partial preparation and keeping one's spouse largely in the dark, he said. "Don't think of an estate plan as a 'death' plan," Mr. Germain advised. "I try to get that out of my clients' minds. Many people don't have a clue as to what will happen with an estate after death." One client, he said, a 72 year old man, changed ownership of his assets while his wife was dying, creating financial chaos. But times are clearly changing when it comes to traditional gender roles. "Twenty years ago, the average husband did all of the finances," said Catherine Anne Seal, a Colorado Springs based estate planning lawyer and the president of the National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys. "Now it's not uncommon for the wife to handle finances." Widows who are inexperienced with money management tend to make a common mistake, Ms. Seal said: They "make imprudent gifts to adult children" within a year of their husband's death. Down the road, this may leave the widow short of money, depending on how long she survives her husband. Ms. Seal advises that couples title their assets "jointly with rights of survivorship," particularly if their joint estate is under 4 million. But estate planning becomes more complex if there are multiple marriages and stepchildren involved. "Couples in second marriages need good estate planning with attorneys who understand these issues," Ms. Seal said. Such professionals can provide a checklist of what both spouses should know: Where are the documents relating to Social Security? Insurance policies? Marriage and birth certificates? Wills? Powers of attorney? Living trusts? It is also important to have a list of all assets, such as real estate, stocks, bonds, savings accounts, safe deposit boxes and trusts. Also on the to do list: locating the titles to all properties, ranging from autos to vacation homes. Veterans should have copies of all military discharge papers. Another vital step is to appoint capable, financially skilled trustees in your powers of attorney, Mr. Germain said. They could be family members, but they should have some working knowledge of how to handle money. The National Academy of Elder Law Attorneys has a searchable online directory for people who want to find a lawyer who can help handle these complexities. When interviewing prospective lawyers, ask them if they specialize in the particulars of your situation: Are you divorced? Do you have a special needs child? Do you have properties in several states? You should also involve your tax planner and financial planner if you have them. A certified financial planner who acts as fiduciary can work directly with your accountant and family lawyer. At the root of a transparent estate plan, most lawyers say, is openness and communication. Both spouses should attend the meetings with lawyers and financial professionals. And each spouse should know the location of all important documents and understand what will happen upon death. Contingency plans should be made in the event one spouse becomes disabled or incapacitated. Prepare a workable estate plan while you are healthy. Cognitive decline can take its toll on couples' abilities to manage and execute an estate plan. "Most people are in denial about what the aging process looks like," Ms. Seal said. "That's why you need trustworthy agents in your powers of attorney documents. You need to create a plan for incapacity." Ms. Lupo of New Jersey emphatically agrees. "Realize that you need to take the time to understand your finances," she said. "When you're well that's when you need to plan."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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On Thursday, it was a stylishly retro 1962 Bulova Super Compressor on analogshift that won my heart. On Wednesday, it had been an elegantly understated 1970 Rolex Submariner, courtesy of jasonheaton, that quickened the pulse. Tuesday had brought its own obsession, a vintage Heuer 3647 Carrera chronograph, regrammed on hodinkee. Daily, if not hourly, my social media addiction causes flare ups of a second, closely related, malady: vintage watch deficit disorder, a chronic form of watch envy that inspires thoughts of raiding the 401(k) account. I am hardly alone. Among watch obsessives, the impact of Instagram can hardly be overstated. Facebook's explosively popular photo sharing app not only serves to unite members of this fusty, long obscure subculture the world over, but it has also helped spread watch obsession among the digital generation, turbocharging the vintage market in the process, several prominent dealers said. In the last three years, his company's Instagram following has surged to over 71,000, from fewer than 5,000. And business has boomed right along with it, with revenue up some 30 percent this year. To Mr. Altieri, the twin spikes seem like more than a coincidence. "We'll post a new green Rolex anniversary model Submariner from 2004, complete with box and papers, and, usually within minutes," he said, people will message him, "'Hey, let me know the price.'" It's a big change for a hobby long associated with paneled studies, elbow patches and discretion. Indeed, until recently, watch enthusiasts had few opportunities to show off prize pieces aside from dinner parties with friends or geeks only online forums like TimeZone or WatchUSeek. Instagram, by contrast, is everything that traditional watch collecting was not: young, colorful, brazenly digital and populist. (The app has some 700 million users worldwide.) And showing off? It is the lingua franca of the medium, a wellspring of covetousness that inspires FOMO and a gotta have it hunger among users regarding seemingly any and all Instagram subjects: travel, food, fashion and, lately, watches. "Watch collecting is a very tactile hobby, and if it can't be tactile, it is visual," said James Lamdin, the 33 year old founder of Analog/Shift, a high end Manhattan vintage watch boutique with more than 72,000 Instagram followers. Those visuals were once limited on old school online forums, where "uploading images of watches basically required a degree in coding," he said. Not so with Instagram, where lovingly styled "wrist shots" of vintage Omega Speedmasters or Heuer Autavias can be enhanced, sharpened and uploaded within seconds for all the world to see. Images of rare collector pieces on Instagram can create a feeding frenzy among collectors. Last year, for example, after Hodinkee, the watch site with over 378,000 Instagram followers, posted a photograph of the coveted 1969 Rolex "Paul Newman" Daytona reference 6241 available for sale on its online shop around 9 a.m. one day, messages were pouring in within seconds. Five minutes later, a buyer in his 30s snapped up the treasured Rolex for 175,000, a record price for the site, said Ashley Kinder, who manages Hodinkee's retail operation. "Before that," Ms. Kinder said, the buyer "had only ordered with us once to purchase a 150 watch strap." Certainly, marketing fine timepieces on Instagram has its limits. Because most use the app as a forum for sharing photos among friends, many users chafe at overt salesmanship by retailers, said Yoni Ben Yehuda of Material Good, a New York seller of luxury goods known for its salon like retail space in SoHo. That is why his company tends to emphasize arty photos celebrating the lifestyle associated with fine timepieces (say, street shots of fashionably dressed New Yorkers), rather than catalog style shots of specific timepieces for sale, he added. But the landscape could change quickly. Thousands of apparel, jewelry and beauty retailers, including the likes of Kate Spade, have begun to experiment with Instagram's recently introduced shoppable photo tag, which allows users to buy directly through the app without interrupting their scrolling. When watch retailers start using this technology, "get out of the way," Mr. Altieri said. "It's going to be like a tidal wave that hits the shore."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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A three bedroom with double living rooms and a sunroom in Inwood would seem like a dream apartment to many New Yorkers. But once you fit in six people and a rabbit, perhaps not so much. In the Trader/Wolma family, however, you won't hear anyone complaining. Jackson Trader, 14, shares a bedroom with his brother, Wesley, 12, and stepbrother, Jonathan Wolma, 15. The tiny third bedroom in their apartment belongs to their sister, Chloe Wolma, 17, and the living room is occupied by a rabbit named Max. "Moving here was a big sigh of relief. It's been really freeing," Jackson said. "Things are a lot less cramped." Four years ago, when Rick and Dana Trader combined their two families, Rick and his two sons, Jackson and Wesley, moved into the Battery Park City two bedroom that Dana shared with her two children from her first marriage, Chloe and Jonathan. New York City children are used to sharing bedrooms, and even if squeezing four to a room was less than ideal, they made it work with a loft bed for Chloe and a bunk bed with a pullout trundle for Wesley, the youngest. To address disagreement over TV channels, they installed a TV watching nook under Chloe's bed. "But when we moved in together, the kids were so much smaller," Ms. Trader said. "In a few years they doubled in size." "There was not a lot of breathing room," Jackson said. "And Chloe had to get up for school at 6:15." Asked if it was difficult to agree on decoration with three younger brothers, Chloe laughed. "There was no decoration. It was less about aesthetics than 'How can we make it work?'" Still, that amount, they figured, would go a lot further in a neighborhood that didn't have Gucci and Burberry stores, recent arrivals courtesy of the Brookfield Place renovation. Even their bodega had been replaced by Le Pain Quotidien. Occupation: Ms. Trader is the vice president of employee experience at Meetup; Mr. Trader is in sales at Braze, a mobile marketing company. Their children: Chloe and Jonathan Wolma, 17 and 15, and Jackson and Wesley Trader, 14 and 12 School commutes: Chloe and Wesley head to the Upper East Side to attend Eleanor Roosevelt High School, where she is a senior, and Robert F. Wagner Middle School, where he is an eighth grader. Jackson is a sophomore at the Bronx High School of Science, which is significantly closer than it was when he was living in Battery Park City. But Jonathan, a sophomore at Millennium High School, now has an hour commute rather than a 10 minute walk. Why they didn't stay in Battery Park City: Because of the growing crowds and the cost. After leaving their 4,500 a month apartment, Ms. Trader said it was re listed for 2,000 more a month. All the three bedrooms they saw in the neighborhood cost at least 7,500 month. Buying in the city: The Traders considered it, but even million dollar listings would have been a downgrade from their Battery Park City apartment. Instead, they sunk their down payment into an 1890s farmhouse in Salt Point, N.Y., where there is a swimming pool, a barn with a Ping Pong table and "lots of quiet and space," Mr. Trader said. "It's all the things the city is not. We go up there most weekends." But Manhattan is not a place with an abundance of reasonably priced family size apartments. "Once you go up to something in a family size range, stuff skyrockets," Ms. Trader said. "A three bed is, like, twice the cost of a two bed." And cramped though it felt, they soon learned that their two bedroom was actually spacious by the standards of the borough. "People had taken one bedrooms and hacked them into two bedrooms. Some of the places we saw calling themselves four beds were really two beds," Ms. Trader said. "We needed one where the living room was big enough so at least six people could sit down at once." After a brunch with friends in Inwood, they walked past Inwood Hill Park, and Ms. Trader mused that she would move in an instant if a place in one of the townhouses along the park ever opened up. Mr. Trader had lived in nearby Hudson Heights years earlier, and they had initially been optimistic about finding a sizable place nearby, but the inexpensive, sprawling apartments of his youth had disappeared, replaced by awkwardly laid out one and two bedrooms. "That was more discouraging than anything else, to know that that model was gone," he said. Then, hunting through StreetEasy on a family vacation, Ms. Trader saw a listing for a "huge three bedroom" in a "rarely available full floor townhouse" across from Inwood Hill Park. Rent was 3,300 a month. She immediately called the broker, Lincoln Wettenhall of Douglas Elliman, and was relieved to find out that she didn't have to fly back to secure the apartment, as showings wouldn't start for several days. "We said, 'What do you need? We'll bring cash. We'll pay the year upfront,'" Mr. Trader said. "We were the first ones in to look at it." Ms. Trader added: "And still, somehow someone got in front of us. We were amazed." Fortunately, the competition dropped out and the Traders moved in a little over a year ago. While the addition of a tiny third bedroom might seem a modest improvement, their new apartment's layout is airy, with a sizable kitchen, a sunroom overlooking the park and, crucially, double living rooms, so the children have one of their own, with their own television and couch. "Growing up in the Midwest, everyone hung out in the basement," Ms. Trader said. "Until they got older, I didn't realize how much they needed a space where they could breathe without us hanging over their shoulders." And while the family misses many things about Battery Park City the movie theater, the Shake Shack, going ice skating at the Brookfield Place rink after a half day of school, the community garden and the short commute for Jonathan, a sophomore at Millennium High School in the financial district there are ample advantages to their new home. For instance, a shared backyard where they grow tomatoes and basil. And using Inwood Hill Park as their front yard "Manhattan's last natural forest," said Chloe, who is happy to have a room of her own, at least for now. She will most likely be assigned a roommate when she starts college next fall. Who, if anyone, will be allowed to take her space when she leaves is a matter of some contention. "We'll try to be as fair as possible probably drawing straws and rotating through," Ms. Trader said. "But Chloe's always quick to remind us that she'll be coming home again."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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She began with a plea for civility. "Please," Kristen Welker instructed the men standing before her, "speak one at a time." For the most part on Thursday night, Ms. Welker got what she wanted. In a high stakes debut overseeing a presidential debate taking charge of a candidate matchup that proved a bucking bronco for the previous moderator, Chris Wallace of Fox News Ms. Welker, an NBC anchor and correspondent, managed to restore order to a quadrennial institution that some believed could not be tamed. No doubt, she benefited from Trump 2.0: A calmer president arrived onstage Thursday, a contrast with the candidate who derailed the proceedings in Cleveland last month. And she had a technological assist in the form of muted microphones, a novelty installed to keep the exchanges between Mr. Trump and his Democratic opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., from going from civics to chaos. But in a poised and crisp performance, Ms. Welker, 44, succeeded where Mr. Wallace was walloped. Battle tested by years of covering the Trump White House, she parried with the president and cut him off as needed; Mr. Trump, eager to shed voters' memories of his unruly performance last month, mostly acquiesced.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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WHILE motorcycles typically lead cars in the area of engine performance, they are decidedly playing catch up in the use of electronic controls. But the two wheelers are coming on fast, moving beyond conveniences like GPS navigation to adopt functional enhancements. Fuel injection is a given, antilock brakes are appearing on more bikes each year and drive by wire throttles are rapidly gaining ground. The oneupsmanship is most intense among the racetrack focused sportbikes, where the benefits of traction control and on the fly adjustments of the engine management system can be best appreciated. A few days spent with the Aprilia RSV4 recently served to demonstrate just how sophisticated the electronics have become.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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LOS ANGELES Everyone in Hollywood has a Playboy Mansion story. Many are unprintable. But the tale that best sums up Hugh Hefner's den of iniquity, for a lot of women, comes from Sharan Magnuson, who arrived in Hollywood in 1980 to pursue an acting career and soon discovered a side of the Playboy Mansion that most people never discussed certainly not if they wanted to be invited back. "At first, it was magical," Ms. Magnuson, who went on to become a senior executive at Warner Bros., said by phone on Thursday, a day after the death of Playboy's founder, Hugh Hefner. "Glamorous. Fun. The mansion in perfect condition. Beautiful banquet spreads. You'd go outside and there were flamingos and monkeys. And Hef, who would come downstairs later, was always gracious and cool." Some of his male guests? Not so much. In the mid 1980s, Ms. Magnuson, who was then known as Sharan Lea, and a girlfriend were invited to the mansion on a Sunday: movie night. She was not naive, and ran with a hard partying crowd. But she did not expect to find herself cornered outside near the mansion's famous grotto, with its three mammoth hot tubs and wooden shelves stocked with jumbo bottles of Johnson's Baby Oil. A guy who had seemed nice suddenly had nine hands. "He tried to get me into the cave, and, when I refused, he really manhandled me," Ms. Magnuson said. "I felt violated."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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The bat is returned to her rightful owner by the conclusion of the episode, but not before something else comes to pass that has never happened on "The Walking Dead": Negan offers Rick leniency. Just when it looked as if the Saviors had long passed the point of reconciliation with the Hilltopper coalition, Negan offers to let Rick live freely as part of his clan. Negan being a scoundrel, he makes it clear that Rick would have a life of custodial work, but walking his staunch stance back from the death penalty is a significant shift. That change may have been spurred by his separation from Lucille, but it still signals that both Rick and Negan are capable of seeing a light at the end of this tunnel. (The warm, soft focus light of the paradisiacal flash forwards, perhaps?) Whether he's ready or not, Negan is headed for more upheaval on his home front. The tension between him and Simon will soon snap, as each man comes to the individual realization that they've reached an impasse. During their altercation, an errant word from Rick alerts Negan to that fact that Simon laid waste to the Scavengers, in direct defiance of the orders Negan had issued him. Elsewhere, Simon tentatively makes his case for mutiny to Dwight, easing his potential co conspirator into antipathy against Negan. (The agreeably sketchy Steven Ogg makes a meal out of the lines: "Let's get candid. Let's get weird.") Not that it takes much easing: Dwight is all too eager to take Negan down a peg. Things don't look so positive for Negan at the conclusion of this week's episode, as Jadis holds him at gunpoint in a car with an unknown destination. But when he makes his inevitable return, there will be hell to pay. Everyone wants the same thing an end to the hardship but the warring factions are unbudging in their positions on how best to achieve that. Still, as time marches onward, as the list of lost lives continues to lengthen, as everyone grows more fatigued and hungry and fed up, reconciliation becomes a little more appealing. In a moment of desperation, Negan immediately compromised and offered Rick his life. It's only a matter of time until the natural downward course brings the other characters to that breaking point, where the only objective is to establish a cease fire. For now, however, violence can be a sufficient answer to any nagging problems. Jadis has never been one to talk out her problems, and when she comes to blows with Negan, the chances seem slim that both parties will emerge alive. The lingering question is just how bad life has to get before the territorial attitudes and grudges are dwarfed by some darker alternative. As Negan reminds Rick, Carl is barely cold in the ground. In a rare moment of actorly subtlety, Andrew Lincoln flashes a stunned, wounded look, as if wondering what could possibly be worth all this loss.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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Fashion is always central to life in Milan, and never so much as during Fashion Week, which begins on Jan. 17 with the fall/winter 2015 men's wear. But there is more to do in the city, Italy's second largest, than gaze at models with chiseled cheekbones, in well tailored suits (not to imply that activity ever becomes tiring, of course). Milan, our top choice in the list of 52 Places to Go in 2015, will host the 2015 World Expo, from May through October, and parts of the city still resemble construction zones in preparation for it. Alongside these urban development projects, old structures of various stripes among them a foundry, a bank and a farmhouse have recently been repurposed as bars, shops, restaurants and cultural centers. The New York Times recently spent 36 Hours in Milan, dining in a former sawmill, admiring artworks at the Gallerie d'Italia Piazza Scala and scavenging designer wear in fanciful shops like Nonostante Marras, and found an energy coursing through this thoroughly Italian yet outward looking city that is likely to last long after the Expo. All in one shopping can be found at La Rinascente, which stocks its floors with everything from kitchen tools and pastas to handbags, clothes and footwear. Also eclectic, though on the higher end, Osanna Visconti sells cast bronze furniture as well as jewelry she creates with the help of her daughter, Madina. For designer approved restaurants, shops and hotels, check out this interview with Morgan Collett, the co founder of the line Saturdays Surf NYC. His favorite spot for aperitivo? Bar Basso. "The first time I went here my friend ordered me a Negroni that you had to use two hands to drink."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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MAYBE the Standard Poor's 500 stock index crossing 1,800 this week is a sign of a stock market bubble, or maybe the companies that compose it will continue to grow. There are arguments for both, but the correct answer will be clear only at some point in the future. For investors trying to make rational decisions about their portfolio today, this is little comfort. The chatter can be scary. And advice like "stay the course" is about as helpful as telling someone to stop worrying and be happy. Sure, there are plenty of advisers working with their clients on financial plans. But these plans can be too general and easy not to follow. Recently, I started hearing more about advisers who were adapting something from the institutional investment world for individual clients: investment policy statements, which are commonly used by foundations and endowments to create parameters for how securities are bought and sold and guidelines for making changes to holdings and hiring and firing managers. An I.P.S., as it is known, is to a financial plan what a Range Rover is to a minivan. Both will carry your children safely, but only the Range Rover will power up a gravelly mountain. Of course, most people who own a Range Rover are traveling the same, well paved suburban streets as the minivan driver, making all that engineering a bit of overkill. To some, the same argument can be made for an I.P.S. It's just too much. But the people I spoke with who had one talked about a difference in their investment performance and their state of mind. Robert McCarthy, a lawyer who held senior positions at MTV, Viacom and Time Warner, said he started working with an adviser who uses an I.P.S. in late 2009. "I was very chastened," he said. An I.P.S. "was a guide to the level of risk in each portfolio." Like many, though, Mr. McCarthy came to this the hard way. He is on his third adviser since big losses in 2000 and 2008. The same thing happened with David A. Gelb, a periodontist with expertise in implant surgery. His portfolio today is the same value as it was in 2000, before it dropped by nearly two thirds. Now he is a true believer when it comes to an I.P.S. "I said, 'My God, why didn't any of my other advisers ever discuss something like this with me?' " Dr. Gelb said. "If you don't have an objective or a game plan, how predictable can you be?" In its structure, an I.P.S. is fairly simple. Investors sit down with their advisers and assess their return objectives and comfort with risk. Then the adviser designs the portfolio with that in mind. Where an I.P.S. goes further than a financial plan is that it sets a target allocation for each type of security say, stocks and adds an upper and a lower range for the percentage of the portfolio that can be in that security. In the case of Mr. McCarthy, the I.P.S. for him and his wife sets a target of 40 percent for stocks. That percentage can go as high as 60 percent and as low as 20 percent. "If I get nervous about the state of the stock market and say, 'This is too frothy,' the exposure gets reduced, but it won't go below the minimum equity number," he said. "But market performance can have that effect, too. If you go over the maximum number, it gets reduced." The idea is to keep people from getting so bullish that they overcommit to a sector and lose when it inevitably falls, or so bearish that they sell their investments and go to cash. "This is standard operating procedure for an endowment, a foundation or a pension," said John W. Rafal, the founder and vice chairman of Essex Financial Services, which manages approximately 4 billion for individuals and institutions. "After the crashes of 2000 through 2003 and then the crash of 2007, '08, and '09, we thought this would give our clients the same protections we give to pensions." Mr. Rafal, who advises Mr. McCarthy and Dr. Gelb, said the reason for the imperfection was that members of an institution's investment committee use the I.P.S. as a guide to fulfill their fiduciary duty and to provide continuity as people rotate on and off the committee. With individuals, it's their money, and they can change their minds. Dr. Gelb said he credited the set rebalancing of his portfolio with reducing the volatility of his investments and making him more comfortable that the gains he has achieved are less susceptible to being wiped out. Jordan Waxman, a managing director at HighTower's HSW Advisors, said he required all of his clients to have an I.P.S. He sees it as a way to lay out goals in a structured way. But he admitted that he could do this because he has only 50 clients who together have 1.25 billion with him. "The reason it doesn't work for small clients is not because of the client but because of the adviser," he said. "Most advisers have hundreds of small clients. They can't spend the time to write an 18 page I.P.S. for each client. The best they can do is summarize their clients' goals." One way around this may be what Tanglewood Wealth Management did. John Merrill, its founder, said he realized in the mid 1980s that as people began talking about asset allocation as an art or a science that it was just as important to gauge how his clients felt. From that, he came up with six versions of an I.P.S., including conservative, moderate and growth versions. "The biggest single thing we do is talk to them in terms of their prior investment experience because at some point, they have all jumped ship," he said. And when they call to do that now as happened with a client a few months back during the government closure Mr. Merrill said he suggested modifying their allocations within the parameters. "It keeps you in there," he said. "The worst thing you can do is go to all cash. That's where people fumble." Of course, a full blown investment policy statement for an individual is only as useful as what it contains. "Some are two pages and don't have enough detail, and some are so long that no one is ever going to read them," said Pat Boyle, investment strategist at Bessemer Trust. "The best ones are three to five pages, and they're written in English, not by attorneys." He said that for families with multigenerational wealth, an I.P.S. can help transmit values around money, but for most wealthy clients the firm produces investment guidelines, which suffice. These guidelines are focused on traditional investment objectives, like returns, risk tolerance and spending. Still, other firms take a view that it is better to focus clients on goals, like paying for college or buying a second home, than on the hard numbers. This is what Northern Trust has developed in a robust technology platform that, in real time, allows people to match how their money needs to be invested to pay for what they want. "The purpose of an I.P.S. is essentially to put some discipline and structure around an invest strategy," said Scott Koch, senior vice president at Northern Trust Wealth Management. "But one of the questions you first have to ask is why is the strategy what it is in the first place. If you don't understand the why, it's hard to adhere to any discipline." Even with an I.P.S. most investors are still going to be subject to some degree of emotion in their investing. "I don't feel handcuffed by this thing, but it's been a useful tool," Mr. McCarthy said. "My advisers push back when they feel I'm overreacting to things." And that will mean more than someone saying, "Stay the course."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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COLOR OUT OF SPACE (2020) Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes or Vudu. More than 20 years after the director Richard Stanley was fired from the set of "The Island of Dr. Moreau," he returns to narrative filmmaking with this trippy science fiction horror. The movie, an adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's short story, follows a family that has recently traded the city life for a quiet New England Farm. When the father, Nathan (Nicolas Cage), finally manages to reignite the spark missing from his marriage, a meteorite crashes into his front yard. Its crater unleashes a mysterious energy in the form of a hypnotic, purple hue that goes after the family in bizarre, bloody ways. Jeannette Catsoulis named the film a Critic's Pick in her review for The New York Times, writing that "lovers of aberrant, gooey B movies will be all in." PAAVO JARVI AND SOL GABETTA 2 p.m. on medici.tv. The Estonian conductor Paavo Jarvi leads Japan's NHK Symphony Orchestra and the Argentine cellist Sol Gabetta in this live performance from Germany. The program starts with the Emily Dickinson inspired piece "How Slow the Wind," by the Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu, followed by a Schumann Cello Concerto and Bruckner's Seventh Symphony. IN SECRET (2014) Stream on Hulu; Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube. Elizabeth Olsen seeks passion in a loveless marriage in this romantic thriller, set in 19th century Paris. She finds it in her husband's friend, and it's all downhill from there. The movie leaves Hulu Saturday.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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How to watch: ESPN, 2:30 a.m. Eastern; streaming on ESPN , 7:15 p.m. and ESPN3, 2:30 a.m. Sofia Kenin, the 14th seed, reached her first Grand Slam final by beating Ashleigh Barty, the world No. 1 and homegrown favorite at the Australian Open. Kenin and Barty both looked tentative in opening exchanges, but it was Kenin, the young American, who late in the first set began to take more initiative on points. Kenin's serve, which has been exceptional throughout the tournament, was once again on display and will need to remain a steady factor in her game to help her settle the nerves that can afflict any Grand Slam finalist. Garbine Muguruza, unseeded at this year's Australian Open, has become the first Spanish woman to reach the Australian Open since 1998. Her victory over Simona Halep, the fourth seed, in the semifinal on Thursday was one of her most convincing performances in years. Halep, whose defensive skills are among the best on tour, was overpowered by Muguruza's flattened baseline shots. Muguruza has now beaten three top 10 seeds on her way to the final, and is in remarkable form. After a few years of disappointing results, Muguruza reunited with her old coach Conchita Martinez, and has reaped the benefits. She looks more confident as she strives to win her third Grand Slam title.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Should You Get a Cheaper Phone? Be Sure to Look Into the Camera The evolution of the smartphone can be summed up by two trends: Phones just keep getting bigger. They are also getting pricier. The chief examples are phones from Apple and Samsung Electronics, the top handset makers. Samsung this week introduced the Galaxy S9, its new flagship smartphone, with starting prices of about 720 and, for a slightly larger screen, 840. Years ago, Galaxy phones started at about 650. Apple's iPhone prices are also increasing. Last year, Apple released the iPhone 8 for 699, up from the 649 starting price of earlier iPhones. In addition, the company introduced the iPhone X, its first premium tier handset, for 999. Rising prices make the smartphone one of the most expensive household products. But unlike televisions, which plummet in price and attract bargain hunters, many consumers are willing to up their spending on phones. "They become more and more essential to people's everyday life, so price sensitivity just continues to erode," said Jared Wiesel, a partner at Revenue Analytics, a pricing and sales consulting firm. Yet plenty of people don't want to splurge on a fancy phone every few years. Huawei, the Chinese manufacturer, was the No. 3 phone maker in the fourth quarter last year, IDC, a research firm, said. Sales of cheaper Honor smartphones and other low end devices contributed to the company's growth. And there's a silver lining for those who want to spend less: Cheaper smartphones have never been better. If you spend between 200 and 300, you can get a capable, fast smartphone for basic tasks like placing calls, using maps and sending texts. Of course, there are trade offs, like lower quality screens and less impressive cameras. Is a budget phone right for you? Here's an overview on the pros and cons of going cheap, with some phone recommendations from Wirecutter, a New York Times company that tests products. Let's start with the downsides of buying a cheaper phone. You won't get the best camera. Budget phones lack the advanced camera sensors found on high end smartphones. So if you go cheap, your phone camera probably won't be very fast, won't do a great job at taking photos in low light and will lack features like optical image stabilization, which helps photos remain clear even when your hands are shaky. "The camera is a big one," said Andrew Cunningham, a Wirecutter editor. "If you're taking photos, especially in low light, performance is going to fall off a cliff." Obviously, you won't get cutting edge features like the infrared face recognition system on the iPhone X or the fancy stylus on Samsung's big screen Galaxy Note. You also won't get the fastest computing processor, so your phone won't be as capable of running games with heavy graphics. You also won't get the brightest and most vibrant display. The fanciest smartphones have OLED screens, which have better color accuracy and contrast. You won't get many software updates, which are important because they introduce new features and security enhancements. For phone makers, the priority is issuing big software updates to more powerful smartphones. At best, with a cheap Android phone you will probably get one major software update and a few security updates over 18 months. With all that said, there are plenty of benefits to buying a good budget phone. You will get a decent camera. Many cheaper phones have high resolution sensors that can take clear, rich photos. "A cheap phone today is going to have a better camera than a cheap phone from three years ago," said Nathan Edwards, a senior editor for Wirecutter. "It's not like they're truly awful." You'll get a good enough screen for reading websites, watching videos and looking at photos. Budget phones still use LCD, an older display technology that has greatly matured and still looks quite good. Your phone will be fast enough for important tasks like placing calls, sending and receiving email, browsing the web and running lightweight apps. If you aren't an app aholic or a gamer, maybe that is all you will need. So here's the upshot. There is a strong argument for spending more on your smartphone: If it is your most important technology tool for work and play, you should probably invest in a superior device. But if you want a phone only for basic tasks and you're not in a hurry to adopt the latest and greatest technology, a cheaper phone may serve you well. Picking the Right One Now comes the tough part: picking a good budget phone and avoiding the duds. Wirecutter tested 20 of the best budget smartphones over the last few years to highlight a few. Expect to spend roughly 200. Wirecutter's top budget phone is Motorola's Moto G5 Plus, which costs about 230. It has a high quality camera, a good 5.2 inch screen, a fast fingerprint sensor and plenty of storage. The device also comes unlocked, meaning it works with all American carriers. (If you want to spend a bit more, you could buy the Moto X4, which is water resistant and on sale for 300, down from 400.) Wirecutter also highlighted Huawei's 200 Honor 7X, which has a better camera and bigger screen than the Moto G5 Plus. The downside is it runs an older version of the Android operating system, called Nougat. Another option, if you prefer iPhones, is to buy an older iPhone model. Apple is still selling the iPhone 6s, introduced in 2015, which is reasonably fast with a nice camera and a good screen. It costs 449 through Apple, but you may find it much cheaper elsewhere. What's more, Apple typically supports its iPhones for about five years, so the 6s should continue to get software updates through 2020. "A lot of things you'd have to pay 600 or 700 bucks for three or four years ago, you'll get for 200 or less now," Mr. Cunningham said. "If you just want the basics, a budget phone is going to do just fine for most people."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Full reviews of recent dance performances: nytimes.com/dance. A searchable guide to these and other performances is at nytimes.com/events. ABT Studio Company (Friday through Sunday) What does the next generation of American Ballet Theater look like? This junior wing of the company comprises dancers ages 16 to 20 who may soon graduate to the senior ranks. They bring two programs to the Joyce Theater, including works by the former Ballet Theater principal Ethan Stiefel, the corps member Gemma Bond, the British choreographer George Williamson and Ballet Theater's resident artist Alexei Ratmansky, among others. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, 212 242 0800, joyce.org. (Siobhan Burke) American Tap Dance Foundation (through Sunday) The annual "Rhythm in Motion" festival is a one stop shop for today's top tap. The two distinct programs feature artists who have been recognized for infusing new energy into the form in recent years, like Michelle Dorrance and Chloe Arnold, and those likely to keep the momentum going. Through her company, Ms. Dorrance has also championed wily new talent like Warren Craft and Leonardo Sandoval, who contribute their own choreography here, along with others. Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., 14th Street Y, 344 East 14th Street, East Village, 646 395 4310, atdf.org. (Brian Schaefer) Charles Atlas and Yvonne Rainer (Tuesday) Ms. Rainer, a founding member of the iconoclastic Judson Dance Theater in the 1960s, is the subject of "Rainer Variations," a 2002 film by the artist Charles Atlas. No traditional biopic, the film includes Ms. Rainer in an extended interview, spliced and superimposed with re enactments of the same interview. A screening will be followed by a conversation with the artists. At 8 p.m., Danspace Project, St. Mark's Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, 866 811 4111, danspaceproject.org. (Burke) Ballet Preljocaj (Wednesday through April 24) The French choreographer Angelin Preljocaj created his three part "Empty Moves" over 10 years, beginning in 2004. Set to a 1977 recording of John Cage's cacophonous "Empty Words," which draws from the journals of Henry David Thoreau, the full trilogy comes to New York for the first time. While Mr. Preljocaj has been known to retell classic stories, as with his 2008 version of "Snow White," here he plays with the absence of narrative. Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday through April 23 at 8 p.m., April 24 at 2 p.m., Joyce Theater, 175 Eighth Avenue, at 19th Street, Chelsea, 212 242 0800, joyce.org. (Burke) Nora Chipaumire (through Sunday) In an imitation boxing ring, the powerful Zimbabwe born dancer and choreographer Nora Chipaumire dukes it out with the Senegalese performer Pap Ibrahima Ndiaye while Shamar Wayne Watt eggs them on as coach and cheerleader. This is the setting of "Portrait of Myself as My Father," a no holds barred look at masculinity in African culture and the African male body in American culture. Paired with the physical and sociological punches is "Afro Promo 1: Kinglady," a film by Ms. Chipaumire. Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 3 p.m., Alexander Kasser Theater, Montclair State University, 1 Normal Avenue, Montclair, 973 655 5112, peakperfs.org. (Schaefer) Martha Graham Dance Company (through Monday) Martha Graham lived into her 90s, and now so too has her company. The tenacious troupe that bears her name celebrates its 90th anniversary with three programs mixing its founder's masterpieces with new works by contemporary choreographers. Graham classics include "Chronicle" (1936), "Appalachian Spring" (1944), "Cave of the Heart" (1946), "Lamentation" (1930) and "Night Journey" (1947). Living contributors include Nacho Duato, Mats Ek, Pontus Lidberg, Andonis Foniadakis and the unpredictable Canadian choreographer Marie Chouinard, who contributes a world premiere for the company's women. Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., 90th anniversary program on Monday at 7 p.m., City Center, 131 West 55th Street, Manhattan, 212 581 1212, nycitycenter.org. (Schaefer) Miami City Ballet (through Sunday) George Balanchine isn't new to Lincoln Center, but he is when danced by the Miami City Ballet, which debuted at David H. Koch Theater earlier this week. The company's run includes Balanchine's "Bourree Fantasque" and Twyla Tharp's "Sweet Fields," as well as local premieres of new works by Alexei Ratmansky, Justin Peck and Liam Scarlett. Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., 212 496 0600, davidhkochtheater.com. (Schaefer) New York City Ballet (Tuesday through May 29) The spring season starts with three distinct programs, beginning with George Balanchine's "Jewels" on Tuesday. Wednesday's bill, "21st Century Choreographers," includes three works that reward repeated viewings: Alexei Ratmansky's "Pictures at an Exhibition," Justin Peck's "Everywhere We Go" and Christopher Wheeldon's "Estancia"; if you've seen them before, see them again. Thursday brings ballets to the music of American composers, including Jerome Robbins's "N.Y. Export: Opus Jazz" and Mr. Peck's lavish story ballet, "The Most Incredible Thing." Tuesdays through Thursdays at 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m., Saturdays at 2 and 8 p.m., Sundays at 3 p.m., David H. Koch Theater, Lincoln Center, 212 496 0600, nycballet.com. (Burke) Olga Pericet (Thursday through May 1) Ms. Pericet, a brash flamenco dancer who can take on many personas in a single performance, returns to the small, charming theater at Repertorio Espanol. She is joined by the guitarist Javier Patino and the singers Manuel Gago and Miguel Lavi. Thursdays and April 27 at 7 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2:30 p.m., with an additional show at 3 p.m. on April 30, 138 East 27th Street, Manhattan, 212 225 9999, repertorio.org. (Burke) Vicky Shick and Dancers (through Saturday) Ms. Shick has been a captivating performer and dancemaker for decades, drawing in audiences with her keen attention to detail and gestures that can be casual or quirky, or both. In her latest work, "Another Spell," she convenes what she calls a "village of women," in which Ms. Shick and seven performers explore their relationships, play with dynamics of community and individuality, and ultimately comment on female camaraderie and intimacy. At 8 p.m., Danspace Project, St. Mark's Church, 131 East 10th Street, East Village, 866 811 4111, danspaceproject.org. (Schaefer) Streb Extreme Action Company (through April 24) After a winter hiatus, superheroes are back in the multiplexes. More excitingly, they're back in Brooklyn, where Elizabeth Streb's gang of action heroes can be seen in "SEA (Singular Extreme Actions)," a new show that once again tests the boundaries of the human body as it navigates an army of complex, bespoke mechanical contraptions. The soundtrack shifts from show to show as audience members contribute to the playlist. Thursdays and Fridays at 7:30 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays at 3 p.m., Streb Lab for Action Mechanics, 51 North First Street, Williamsburg, 866 811 4111, streb.org. (Schaefer)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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That was good enough. Alongside the actress Mia Wasikowska, Mr. Stanfield stars in "Changers: A Dance Story," a new piece Mr. Jonze wrote and directed in collaboration with the choreographer Ryan Heffington and the design label Opening Ceremony. It will have its premiere on Sunday, as Opening Ceremony's fashion week presentation, and then open to the public for a four night run at La MaMa, the East Village theater. (Proceeds from ticket sales go to the Hurricane Harvey relief fund.) The fashion and dance worlds have long flirted, and Opening Ceremony has a history of collaborating with Mr. Jonze, a friend, and others in their cool kid clique. "We have this relationship where we dip in and out of each other's projects," said Humberto Leon, one half of the design team Opening Ceremony. "He comes by our office like every other day." This is the first time they've opened their work to the public, though. "We wanted to be inclusive, not just insidery," Mr. Leon said. Though Mr. Jonze is known for his dance heavy music videos (he twice won MTV awards for helping choreograph Fatboy Slim videos, including "Praise You," in which he danced), "Changers," which runs about 30 minutes, is his first crack at a longer dance piece. "I can really explore telling a story in a language which is all dance," he said. "I like trying to do things I've never done before, that I don't know how to do. That's when it's exciting, because you don't know whether it's going to work or not." He wrote a script and came armed with movement ideas. On tour recently with the singer Frank Ocean, "I'd be in the hotel by myself during the day," devising steps, Mr. Jonze said. "I'd videotape myself dancing out phrases and then text them to Ryan." Mr. Heffington, a Los Angeles choreographer and studio owner with a dedicated following, who is best known for his work on videos with Sia (on YouTube, he'll teach you to do the "Chandelier" dance), saw himself in a supporting role, helping fulfill Mr. Jonze's precise vision. "It's been more specific than I think any other project I've had the pleasure to work on," Mr. Heffington said, "because there is such a specific narrative." The piece is the story of a couple, Ms. Wasikowska and Mr. Stanfield, and the evolution of their relationship. "We're fast forwarding this couple's life, to bring us to present day," said Carol Lim, the other half of Opening Ceremony. The set includes two wardrobes, and the dancers change clothes throughout, in front of the audience their way of modeling Opening Ceremony's designs. Though there's no dialogue, "they all have dialogue inside every move and gesture," from the script, Mr. Jonze said. "You're on a mission," he told Mr. Stanfield in rehearsal, as he crossed the stage at La MaMa, tearing his hair. For Ms. Wasikowska ("Alice in Wonderland"), who does have dance training she was on the ballerina track until she was a teenager it was a welcome change from regular acting. "This is actually my ideal stage performance," she said. "I don't have to speak, I just move." On Wednesday she was deep in rehearsal at La MaMa, learning her solo from Mr. Heffington: "We chassee, pique arabesque upstage, we shimmy downstage," he instructed as they practiced in front of a mirror. A three step turn, another chassee, a stomp on the left foot that Ms. Wasikowska couldn't quite get. "Could I do the other foot, please?" she begged, jokingly. Beforehand, Mr. Jonze and Mr. Heffington bounced ideas back and forth, quickly. "Where the piano goes dink dink dink, I don't know what it's called but those sort of twirly legs, put two of those in there," Mr. Jonze instructed Mr. Heffington. Mr. Heffington didn't bristle at the simplified movements he was being asked to make. In traditional dance performances, he said, "there's such a beautiful skill set, that sometimes you can get whisked away with what that is." But this is different, "because the language of emotion is so strong and loud, and you see these characters." "Dance," he said, "is just like the shell of how they communicate." The 10 or so tracks that form the score were mostly songs that Mr. Jonze already loved, with some suggestions from Mr. Heffington, said Sam Spiegel, the music director and Mr. Jonze's brother. Mr. Jonze also pulled inspiration from street performers, and from a Buddhist retreat he went on in Dharamsala, India. "The song 'Downpipe' by Mark Knight was being played regularly during their aerobic yoga classes," Mr. Spiegel said, and made it into the piece.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Over his nine plus years as head coach of the Dallas Cowboys, Jason Garrett, like nearly every coach not named Bill Belichick, has been on and off the hot seat. Things looked up at the end of last season, when Dallas went 10 6, won its division and a playoff game. With young stars in quarterback Dak Prescott and running back Ezekiel Elliott, there was reason to think the Cowboys could have many more successful seasons ahead. But this season's mixed results fueled dark speculation about Garrett's future early and often. On Sunday, more than a week after Dallas finished the season at 8 8 and out of the postseason the Cowboys confirmed that they had parted ways with Garrett. The decision came after several meetings and days of speculation and news media reports that Garrett would be fired, but the writing on the wall this season has not looked promising long before then. The Cowboys had three consecutive wins to start the season, but those came against the Giants, Redskins and Dolphins hardly the N.F.L.'s elite. Even at 3 0, there was no offer of an extension of Garrett's contract, which is set to expire Jan. 14. None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. "I just think he's so focused on the task at hand," the Cowboys executive Stephen Jones, Jerry Jones's son, told the radio station KRLD FM in September. "It's nothing that's come up." During Garrett's tenure, the Cowboys were consistent winners, with an 85 67 record and only one season below .500. But they reached the playoffs just three times and never made it past the divisional round. The Cowboys were not able to keep it up, losing three straight: two reasonable losses to the Saints and Packers followed by a shocking defeat against a winless Jets team. Despite the Jets debacle, Jerry Jones had good things to say about Garrett in the aftermath: "I have felt that we have a lot invested in Jason Garrett. He's evolved into what I think is a top coach. He would be a very sought after coach if he were out here in the open market. There are a lot of pluses there. He brings a lot to the table." But he again said that a final decision would be made at the end of the season. Wins were clearly imperative. A 37 10 win over their main rival for the N.F.C. East title, the Philadelphia Eagles, put the Cowboys back in a good position. The team got to 6 4, but then hit another three game skid. It started with a 13 9 loss to the Patriots. It was seemingly an understandable defeat, but Jones seemed annoyed. "With the makeup of this team, I shouldn't be this frustrated," he told reporters after the game. Garrett had been a 2 1 underdog to keep his job when the season began, according to sportsbetting.ag. As this bad run continued, the odds became 4 1, and then 7 1. The three game skid was capped by a loss to a weak Bears team that left the Cowboys at 6 7. The news media was now openly speculating about who Garrett's replacement would be. Sports Illustrated: "Who Will Coach the Cowboys in 2020?" CBS: "Cowboys have interest in Urban Meyer, Chris Petersen as possible candidates to replace Jason Garrett in 2020." NFL Network reported that only a "deep" playoff run would save Garrett's job. Despite the bad losses, the Cowboys rebounded to trounce the Los Angeles Rams and had the opportunity to win the division and a playoff berth by beating the Eagles again, this time in Philadelphia in Week 16. They were 2 point favorites. They lost, 17 9. "It's very disappointing," Jones said after the game. "We all expected to leave here as N.F.C. East champs. We're not." A win over the woeful Redskins in the finale was not enough. The Cowboys finished 8 8 and missed the playoffs. The Garrett is fired watch went into overdrive. Garrett played quarterback at Princeton, and his time with the Cowboys dates to 1992, when he was a member of the practice squad. He made the regular roster the following season and spent seven seasons as a backup quarterback for the team. After short stints elsewhere, he retired as a player and then returned to Dallas as offensive coordinator in 2007. Garrett, 53, replaced Wade Phillips midway through the 2010 season, when the Cowboys were 1 7. Working on an interim basis, he led the team to a 5 3 record the rest of the season, then was named the head coach. One of the biggest disappointments of Garrett's reign came in 2016, when the Cowboys had the best record in the N.F.C. at 13 3 but lost their first playoff game to Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers. That was the postseason debut for Prescott and Elliott, dynamic young players who raised expectations for a new golden era for the Cowboys. But in the three seasons since, the team has a single playoff win.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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On Tuesday, America's two foremost ballet companies, playing at adjacent theaters at Lincoln Center, are reviving two of the world's finest full length ballet love stories: American Ballet Theater is dancing Frederick Ashton's "La Fille Mal Gardee" and New York City Ballet is performing George Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream." These masterpieces were made in the early 1960s by the two superlative creators of 20th century ballet, both born in 1904. Here, by way of introduction, are two YouTube clips that show their contrasting ways of depicting love. The story for "La Fille Mal Gardee" (1960) goes back to pre Christian comedy: The heroine's mother wants her daughter to marry the wrong man, but cannot prevail against the evident rightness of young love. A comedy (the mother, Widow Simone, is played by a man) set in the farming countryside, it shows the rural community that knows and celebrates the lovers. Lise, the heroine, and her beloved, Colas, have no fewer than five love scenes, each showing differently their mutual devotion; the final one is part of their wedding. Here, though, is their first scene. Its charm lies in the way it shows these children growing up. They dance with ribbons, a leitmotif throughout the ballet. At first they merely play at being horse and driver; the ribbons are harness, reins and whip. But Ashton shows you the moment (1:26 to 1:29) when they put away childish things. Colas, who has had the ribbon in his mouth like the horse's bit, stops, turns around and stands, suddenly locked in Lise's eyes; and the dynamics and tempo change, melting in lyrical tenderness. It's often played smilingly, as here by Marianela Nunez and Carlos Acosta (a wonderful "Fille" partnership). But I've also seen it played with doting seriousness at one 1977 performance (Galina Samsova and Desmond Kelly), this was the first moment in the performing arts that flooded my eyes with tears. (I had seen the tragic emotion of "Romeo and Juliet" and "Swan Lake" without crying; and I already knew "Fille." But the heartfelt simplicity of this lovers' gaze melted me.) A note in Ferdinand Herold's score says "Love is upon them": Absolutely. Their ribbon games turn into poetry; in one of the most beloved moments in ballet, they make a cat's cradle together a child's game, but one that now expresses all the intricacy of their love. Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1962) has three pairs of human lovers (Hermia and Lysander, Helena and Demetrius, Hippolyta and Theseus) and one married pair of fairy monarchs (Titania and Oberon). The plot of Act I shows the confusions between them. (One pas de deux is for Titania with Bottom the weaver when he is transformed into an ass.) But it is in Act II that Balanchine demonstrates the ideal of Romantic love: two anonymous dancers at the wedding divertissement dance to Mendelssohn's string symphony No. 9. The music is high, sweet and tender; the dance seems timeless, and suspended. The opposite of the "Pyramus and Thisbe" amateur dramatic show that Shakespeare provides at this stage in the drama, it floats above the ballet's plot like the moon. The pas de deux is about the chivalry whereby a man showcases a woman and joins her in perfect harmony. This exquisite performance the clip shows the beginning, middle and end of the duet spliced together almost seamlessly is by the City Ballet principals Tiler Peck and Jared Angle at last year's Vail International Dance Festival in Colorado. Though there are jumps, balances and lifts, there are no highlights; the choreography's greatest beauty lies in the silken legato flow that threads together a wide range of steps. The most miraculous passage is the ending (1:26 to 1:54), a long arc in which the dancers seem to move in slow motion beyond gravity. Mr. Angle lets Ms. Peck fall one way in his arms, next raises her so that she opens up into a soft arabesque (1:44), and then gently tips her so that she falls back the other way, turns to face him and subsides in a crescent. He supports her with his right hand and frames her with his left. (Ms. Peck dances it on Tuesday and Friday at City Ballet, with Mr. Angle's brother Tyler; Jared Angle dances it on Saturday evening with Abi Stafford.) In these two great works as often elsewhere Ashton and Balanchine show why, for many people, the male female pas de deux is where ballet reaches its most moving. Ballet has never surpassed these peaks.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Martin Shkreli, the disgraced former pharmaceuticals executive, was sentenced to seven years in prison for securities fraud in Brooklyn on Friday, and a judge has ruled that the government will have its pick of his assets to satisfy the 7.36 million judgment against him. There is a brokerage account with 5 million in cash. There are shares in his company Vyera Pharmaceuticals, even a Picasso. And then there is an item that has been the subject of worldwide intrigue: the sole copy of the Wu Tang Clan album "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," packaged in a custom silver and nickel case and accompanied by a 174 page leather bound book. It may be the most famous album ever kept in the possession of just one person. The original price, set when Mr. Shkreli bought the album at auction three years ago, has never been publicly confirmed, though it has been reported and stated more than once by Mr. Shkreli as 2 million. If seized, the album would most likely be studied by government appointed appraisers and offered at a public auction, said Charles A. Intriago, a former federal prosecutor who is an expert in financial crimes. Determining the market value for "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin," however, would be difficult, according to several experts in music memorabilia and art auctions. Among the complications are the restrictions that the Wu Tang Clan placed on the original sale and the bizarre twists in Mr. Shkreli's stewardship. The experts all doubted that the album could yield anywhere near the 2 million it was apparently worth to Mr. Shkreli. For an item whose worth depends on its uniqueness and safekeeping, "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" has a history that would probably worry any potential collector, said Jeff Gold, the owner of the music collectibles store Recordmecca and a top dealer in rock memorabilia, who appraised the Bob Dylan Archive before its sale in 2016. Have any copies been made? How has it been stored? How many people have heard it? All those questions could weigh on a sale. But Mr. Gold said an even greater concern was that last September, Mr. Shkreli offered the album on eBay, drawing bids of just over 1 million half what he had supposedly paid for it. Mr. Shkreli was jailed in the midst of the auction and the sale was never consummated, but the low price and the canceled sale mean the album could now be tainted in the eyes of any serious collector. "The bloom is off the rose," Mr. Gold said. The album's provenance, of course, is what made it so exceptional in the first place. With artists worrying that the digital economy had crushed the value of music, the Wu Tang Clan once hailed as the visionary kings of New York rap decided to make "Once Upon a Time in Shaolin" a one of a kind art piece, wrapping it in mystery and pomp, and making its very release a statement about music's worth.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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Matthew Perry, the author and star of "The End of Longing," doesn't list "Friends" in his program bio, but he doesn't need to. That hit television series, on which he played the wiseacre Chandler Bing for 10 seasons, sticks to him like a sweaty shirt. Far from a Bing ectomy, "The End of Longing," which opened on Monday in a slick MCC Theater production, amounts to a relapse. The part Mr. Perry has written for himself is a Chandler gone to seed, a round the clock drunk named Jack who is eking his way through his late 40s on sarcasm and a last filament of charm. Naturally, we meet Jack at a restaurant, although this one is not a Greenwich Village coffee shop but a chic Los Angeles watering hole. There he quickly annoys his way into the company of two attractive women a decade younger than himself. Stephanie (Jennifer Morrison) is a self possessed stunner with sang froid and spike heels. Her friend Stevie (Sue Jean Kim) is a world class neurotic whom no amount of Zoloft can assuage. Currently she is apoplectic because a guy she just hooked up with hasn't responded to a text message in four hours. Not much is stirred up except memories of better meet awkward scenarios. Nor is that problem ameliorated when Jack, Stephanie and Stevie are soon joined by a hunky doofus who, as coincidence would have it, is both Jack's best friend and Stevie's recent hookup. His name is Joey. Sorry, I mean Jeffrey but, like much of the play, the character is cribbed, badly, from the "Friends" template. Jeffrey (Quincy Dunn Baker) is a lovable dope whom the other characters can zing illogically. ("You think the Magna Carta is about a giant cart," Stevie says.) No matter; his developing relationship with Stevie, sketched in a ticktock series of crises and comfortings, is merely a comic foil to the foreground adventures of Jack and Stephanie. Their story is not only just as implausible, but also hinges on a false equivalency between Jack's alcoholism and Stephanie's work. She's a high end escort. At first it seems that the play wants us to be as titillated by that as Jack is. Soon, though, it becomes clear that Mr. Perry has chosen Stephanie's occupation as a way to gin up indignation and conflict. She and Jack are both trapped, he suggests, in destructive addictions that harm themselves and others and are thus equally immoral. This makes little sense on its face, and, anyway, we are never given the opportunity to explore whether it is really true of Stephanie. The worst she seems is aloof. Jack, on the other hand, is a calamity, and Mr. Perry, who has spoken about his own alcohol and drug addictions, doesn't try to make the picture prettier than it is. He is genuinely scary as a jalopy of a man running on ethanol. Less than an hour away from the bottle, Jack starts quaking visibly. In that state, his charm is revealed to be a quickly peeling veneer; as monstrous as he is when drunk, you feel he would be even worse sober. But if Jack is convincingly darker than your typical sitcom denizen, Mr. Perry doesn't have the verbal and dramaturgical skills as an author to take the play his first where the character is leading. You will wait forever for the moment in which the familiar setups pay off with a sudden deepening, an acknowledgment that the mechanical jabs and parries have been part of a smarter plan all along. Rather, with few exceptions, such as a scene in which Jack tries to wheedle Valium out of a pharmacist, the play remains trite even as it approaches seriousness. We learn, for instance, that Jack drinks because his first love jilted him, just as Stephanie is an escort because her father hit her. That even such thin revelations send the dialogue skittering back to familiar laugh track comforts is a problem both in the script and the production. Under the direction of Lindsay Posner, who also directed the play's hit London premiere last year, "The End of Longing" seems like staged television, with its smooth turntable transitions and indie pop interstitial music. Nor is much left to the imagination. Sarah Laux's on the nose costumes all but billboard the characters; the central motif of Derek McLane's set is a liquor bottle collage. The performances are likewise too legible. Ms. Kim is so committed to Stevie's hysteria that Jeffrey's affection for her seems absurd; Mr. Dunn Baker's dimness as Jeffrey does much the same in the other direction. Mr. Perry, expert though he is, also seems to have set his dials way too high. Only Ms. Morrison underplays, and while this makes her better company, it does not help us understand Stephanie, who I doubt is understandable anyway. Or perhaps all four would make more sense if seen on actual television, tempered there by the coolness of the medium. But the foundational failure of "The End of Longing" would still remain: a metabolism that can't accommodate a feeling for more than a few seconds. The best sitcoms are jokey, yes, but full of character truth that sustains the jokes across episodes and seasons. Though Mr. Perry must know this, he hasn't managed to replicate it. Instead, he has written a synthetic play that mostly points out just how much better "Friends" was written.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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The British conservationist Norman Myers drew public attention to mass extinction, disappearing habitats and environmental refugees long before they became common topics in the news and causes of widespread concern. Dr. Myers, an ecological consultant who died on Oct. 20 at 85, lobbied politicians, companies and organizations and wrote or helped write nearly 20 books and hundreds of articles in scholarly journals and newspapers that posited groundbreaking ideas, many of which were later supported by further research. Many of his books and articles were based on examinations of published work rather than on field work of his own. This perspective allowed him to ask questions and make inferences that other researchers might have missed. But it also opened him to criticism that his conclusions were based on insufficient evidence. Dr. Myers responded to his critics by arguing that the potential for ecological catastrophe made it all the more important that he publicize troubling discoveries. In an essay in The Guardian in 1992, he inveighed against "the established approach," which "has required scientists not to publish or otherwise present their findings until they have a high degree of certainty." "This approach, productive as it has long been, is less appropriate in a world subject to severe environmental injury," he continued. "If we wait until we achieve certainty about the greenhouse effect, for instance, it will be too late to do much about the problem." In his book "The Sinking Ark" (1979), Dr. Myers raised the possibility that biologists were gravely underestimating the number of species that go extinct each year by overlooking insects and other invertebrates. Official estimates at the time put the number of extinctions at one per year; Dr. Myers thought it was closer to one per day. Many scientists now agree that the rate of extinction is far higher than it has historically been. "The Sinking Ark" presaged later works like Elizabeth Kolbert's Pulitzer Prize winning "The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History" (2014). Dr. Myers and his colleagues proposed that biological "hot spots" relatively small habitats often threatened by human encroachment hold much of the earth's biodiversity, and that government subsidies for industries like energy and agriculture can harm the economy and the environment. He was one of the earliest researchers to tie the disappearance of the rainforest to the world's growing demand for beef and the consequent need for more grazing land for cattle. He was also one of the first to note the displacement of large numbers of refugees because of environmental concerns. Scientists like Edward O. Wilson and Paul R. Ehrlich embraced some of Dr. Myers's theories. Dr. Myers proposed pragmatic solutions to ecological problems ideas that could be counterintuitive and that sometimes outraged environmental activists. He once suggested that one way to protect the habitat of grazing animals in Africa would be to promote their harvesting as a food source so that local populations would become less reliant on farming and ranching, which destroy habitats. "Disquieting as it may sound to foreigners, wildlife in Africa should be commercialized in many places exploited for every last nickel of income," Dr. Myers wrote in an article cited in The New York Times Magazine in 1982. He also argued that many scientists should drop their pretense of objectivity and become active proponents for their work. He reached out to politicians like Al Gore and Margaret Thatcher. He worked as an adviser to the World Bank, the United Nations and other international agencies, and to the United States government. "If scientists exercise 'professional propriety' about environmental problems by remaining silent about them because they lack conclusive evidence, their silence will often be misconstrued by political leaders: absence of evidence about a problem can be taken to mean evidence of absence of a problem," Dr. Myers wrote in 1992. "When politicians decide to do nothing, they decide to do a great deal in a world that is not standing still. To practice undue caution can be reckless." He attended Oxford University, where he studied German and French. In 1958, after graduating, he went to Kenya, where he became a colonial administrator and worked closely with Maasai tribesmen. An avid long distance runner, he sometimes accompanied the Maasai on daily jaunts of dozens of miles, and for a short time he held the record for the swiftest ascent and descent of Mount Kilimanjaro. Dr. Myers became a teacher before Kenya declared independence from England in 1963, and in time he became a wildlife photographer. He spent long hours staking out wild animals, waiting for dramatic moments like lions pouncing on zebras at a watering hole. During the waits he devoured material about the species he was observing, and about biology and ecology in general. "During five years I put myself through an undergraduate course in biology without realizing what I was doing," Dr. Myers said in 1999 to an interviewer from the University of California, Berkeley. He entered graduate school at Berkeley and in 1973 completed an interdisciplinary doctorate, studying topics like wildlife management, demography, political science and international law.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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TOKYO SoftBank warned investors on Monday that the value of its technology fund may have dropped by as much as 16.7 billion over the last fiscal year, as its investments have been hit hard by the fallout from the coronavirus and by big bets on unprofitable companies like WeWork. SoftBank, which had deployed a 100 billion Vision Fund to make huge wagers on young companies like WeWork and Uber over the last few years, said in a statement posted to its website that the fund would record a loss of 1.8 trillion yen for the fiscal year that ended in March "due to the deteriorating market environment." While the loss will be partially offset by revenue from SoftBank's other businesses, the company said it expected to end the year with a Y 1.35 trillion loss, its first annual loss in 15 years. The disclosure marked another stumble for SoftBank, which upended the start up investment world when it began the Vision Fund in 2017 but has lately been struggling. The fund was the largest pool of money ever raised for private technology companies, with backing from sovereign wealth funds in Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, as well as Apple and Foxconn.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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A type of phytoplankton important for carbon storage in marine environments is declining in the Southern Ocean, possibly because of climate change, researchers reported in Geophysical Research Letters. Emiliania huxleyi secretes a calcite shell, helping transport carbon dioxide from the surface into the deeper reaches. From 1998 to 2014, there was about a 4 percent reduction in the calcification rate during the summer months in the Southern Ocean.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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When "A Suitable Boy" was published in 1993, the 1,349 page tome about post Independence India, written by Vikram Seth, became one of the longest English language novels in print. Superlative reviews around the world ensured its place in the door stopping canon of modern literary classics. For many devoted readers, the book, set in the 1950s and featuring multiple interreligious friendships and relationships, has endured because of its myriad relatable family dramas and also for being a kind of guide to what it means to be a secular, independent citizen. Now, after several stalled attempts, the beloved novel has been adapted into a lavish new six part series, directed by the Oscar nominated filmmaker Mira Nair ("Salaam Bombay!," "Monsoon Wedding"). When it debuted on BBC One in July, it was lauded in Britain as the network's first prime time drama filmed on location in India with an almost entirely Indian cast. In India, the reaction was more complicated: Members of the ruling Hindu nationalist party have called for a boycott over its depictions of interfaith romance, and the police opened an investigation into Netflix, which distributes the show there. In the United States, where "A Suitable Boy" debuted Monday on the streaming service Acorn TV, the series arrives a bit more quietly, but boycott free. "The main reason I wanted to do it was to make a mirror to the world that we were farther and farther away from," Nair said in a recent video call from her home. "The '50s has always been a real pull for me 1951 was the year my parents got married," she added. "It was a secular time and a time of real idealism, taking from the English what we had known, but making it our own." The novel "A Suitable Boy" emerged as Hindu nationalist politics began to take center stage in India following violent clashes over the destruction, in 1992, of a 16th century mosque in Ayodhya. Seth set the novel in the aftermath of the violent 1947 division of India by the British along religious lines, which created Pakistan. But his approach was to pen a dramatic comedy of manners, spinning a prickly mother's attempts at Indian matchmaking into a sprawling and heartfelt saga of four upper class families, star crossed lovers, religious coexistence and post Partition politics. It became the definitive novelization of India's founding years. After several failed attempts to have the book adapted, Seth personally chose the Welsh screenwriter Andrew Davies for the job, fresh off a successful 2016 BBC adaptation of another historical epic, Tolstoy's "War and Peace." As Seth continued to work on his long gestating sequel to the novel, he entrusted his sister, Aradhana Seth, to ensure the integrity of the adaptation. (She is credited as both a producer and an executive producer.) The BBC commissioned the series in 2017; Nair, who had expressed interest from the beginning, was brought on the next year. Humorous comparisons aside, the "Suitable" adaptation, though similar in both soapiness and sweep to "The Crown," had nothing like the budget devoted to the House of Windsor drama, one of the most expensive shows on TV. In order to afford the locations and period detail both Nair and Vikram Seth wanted, the production was trimmed from eight episodes to six and condensed the book's serpentine narrative. "Every time you see something that's being adapted, you have to go in with fresh eyes and leave the book outside the viewing room," Aradhana Seth said. Rather than spread the attention among the novel's many central characters, the TV version focuses primarily on two young protagonists, Lata and Maan (Tanya Maniktala and Ishaan Khatter), who are coming into adulthood as India prepares for its first post independence elections, held in 1952. While Maan aids in his father's election campaign in the countryside, opening his eyes to the wider politics of caste and religion, Lata learns what it means to find her own way despite her mother's comedic insistence on finding her a suitable Hindu boy. "There is so much energy to Lata," Maniktala said. "She's fresh out of her university; she's yet to explore the world. She lives in a bubble where, according to her, everything will be great." Filming was completed in India last December and Nair took a break in March from editing the show in London with a visit home to New York. Then international borders closed because of the coronavirus. In the video interview, Nair demonstrated how she toggled between multiple screens to edit with her team across the world. Even the music was scored remotely, with a full orchestra in Budapest and her composers, Alex Heffes and the sitarist Anoushka Shankar, in Los Angeles and London. When the show premiered in Britain, it was widely praised in the mainstream press as a milestone in representation on the BBC. South Asian critics were less kind, focusing on the mannered English dialogue and overly enunciated accents, with particular focus on why an 84 year old Welsh writer had adapted this iconic story about the birth of modern India and a young woman's romantic awakening. As social media criticism built, Vikram Seth broke his public silence to defend his choice of Davies, saying "race should have nothing to do with it" in The Telegraph. "It's a balance between getting someone very, very Indian to write it or someone very, very experienced at adapting long books," Davies explained from his home in the British Midlands. (His other TV adaptations include "Bleak House" and "Pride and Prejudice.") "I feel a little prickly and needing to defend my territory and not have it taken away from me as a writer. I would claim the right to put myself in the mind of people who are different from me." Nair, who was raised in a secular Hindu family, pushed to return more of the novel's political themes back into the screenplay. "Politics was front and center for me, and that was one of the biggest things that I could do was to re shift the balance of the story," she said. "Less from 'will she or won't she marry' 'Pride and Prejudice' and Mrs. Bennet, that trope to really making Lata feel like the making of India." Nair also set out to integrate as much spoken Hindi and Urdu into the screenplay as allowable within the strictures of BBC broadcasting. Asked about balancing the twin demands of her unapologetic brown gaze and prestige British television, she laughed. "It was a charming tussle, can I say." It's a familiar challenge for Nair. A seasoned veteran of the sometimes bruising battles for more truthful and artful representations of South Asians on Western screens, she has made several acclaimed films about India and its diaspora. "She tends to pick topics that reflect ongoing social issues grounded in everyday realities," said Amardeep Singh, a professor of English at Lehigh University, in Pennsylvania, who wrote the book "The Films of Mira Nair: Diaspora Verite." "With her attempt to take on the changes occurring in modern India, 'A Suitable Boy' fits very nicely into an arc that includes films like 'Monsoon Wedding' and 'Salaam Bombay!'." The series was filmed on location amid the "grandeur and the decay" of real cities, as Nair described it, where production designers labored to hide the electrified chaos of modern life to achieve the show's layered, midcentury Indian minimalism. An appropriated mansion in Lucknow, in northern India, was refashioned into the salon of a Muslim singer and courtesan named Saeeda Bai. Her home is the luminescent force at the center of Nair's adaptation, the embodiment of an aristocratic Islamic court culture and literary sensuality that was in decline by the time the story begins. Maniktala teared up over the phone as she reflected on her own grandfather's trauma as a Hindu refugee forced by the 1947 partition to flee to India from what is today Pakistan. "I realize how important pain is, and the lessons" to be found in that, she said. "The kind of empathy people had I feel the humanity aspect has been on the decline," she continued. "We have to remember where we came from. We can never forget."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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Jujamcyn Theaters, the operator of five Broadway houses, has sued its insurers for denying it millions of dollars that the theater company says it deserves as payment for the losses suffered during the monthslong coronavirus pandemic shutdown. The theater company said that one of the insurance companies, Federal Insurance Company, denied it "even a penny" of pandemic related coverage, while the other company, Pacific Indemnity Company, paid it a fraction of what the Broadway operator believes it should be paid. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on Tuesday, is the latest challenge to the insurance industry's refusal of coverage for the deluge of business losses experienced during the pandemic. After Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York shut down theaters in March and then closed all nonessential businesses, arts institutions of all kinds filed insurance claims for business income loss. But the insurance industry has issued a torrent of denials, arguing that its policies never promised this kind of coverage in the first place and that fulfilling all of these requests would bankrupt the industry. On March 12, when Mr. Cuomo ordered an end to all gatherings of more than 500 people effectively shuttering all 41 Broadway theaters Jujamcyn was forced to cancel the hit musical "Hadestown" at the Walter Kerr Theater, as well as four other shows, including "The Book of Mormon" and "Frozen." The theater company submitted its business income loss claim to Federal Insurance, but the insurer denied coverage, saying that there was no "direct physical loss or damage," which is needed to trigger payments. Such policies are designed to replace lost income in cases of building damage or when a civil authority has shut down the surrounding area. In its lawsuit, Jujamcyn argues that the coronavirus pandemic does cause physical loss or damage, explaining that the virus can adhere to surfaces for days and linger in the air inside buildings for hours. In a July letter to the insurer's parent company, Chubb, Jujamcyn's lawyer requested that the insurer withdraw its denial, writing that its theaters might not generate box office revenue for the rest of the year and that its business income losses may exceed 29 million. "Chubb has seized upon excuses to abandon its insured in its time of need," the lawyer, Jeffrey L. Schulman, wrote. Chubb, which is also the parent company of Pacific Indemnity, is a common insurer of arts organizations. Weeks into the pandemic, the company's chief executive, Evan Greenberg, caused a stir among clients when he said in an earnings call that business interruption insurance "doesn't cover Covid 19" and that "the industry will fight this tooth and nail." In a statement responding to Jujamcyn's lawsuit, Chubb said that it had paid out millions of dollars this year for the pandemic related disruption of Broadway performances but that most standard property insurance policies do not cover pandemic risk when it comes to business interruption. "Creating false expectations about coverage that does not exist, including filing baseless lawsuits, will not solve this crisis," it said. Jujamcyn said in its lawsuit that it should also be granted insurance payments based on the fact that state and local government had shut its theaters down. The state's phased reopening does not yet include indoor theaters. According to the lawsuit, which accuses both Federal Insurance and Pacific Indemnity of a breach of contract, part of the reason that Jujamcyn's business income insurance claim was denied was because the governmental orders did not prohibit access to the theaters, meaning theater employees were not barred from entering and checking on the buildings. Mr. Schulman called that a "ludicrous position." The second part of the lawsuit argues that Pacific Indemnity, which provides Jujamcyn with performance disruption coverage, was wrong in its decision to only grant the theater company one payment of 250,000 for its five theaters. The insurance company said that the pandemic qualified as a single "occurrence," requiring only one performance disruption payout. Jujamcyn countered that the insurer was suffering from a "serious case of seller's remorse" and actually owed it more than 1 million.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Ever feel hemmed in by your airport choices? Especially for those living in major metropolitan areas, it often seems that you're forced to fly to and from a limited list of places. But there are options for the seasoned budget traveler: smaller and sometimes more out of the way airports that can save you a decent chunk of change and a fair amount of grief. I researched a number of examples throughout the United States and found a number of cases when smaller is better. The New York City area airport making the biggest splash in the trans Atlantic pool is not Kennedy, Newark or La Guardia: It's Stewart International Airport in Orange County, about 60 miles north of Manhattan. The low budget carrier Norwegian Air Shuttle is currently offering some great deals for fall travel, including 99 one way fares from Stewart to destinations like Edinburgh; Belfast, Northern Ireland; and Bergen, Norway. (The return ticket will cost you a bit more than 99.) Adults can pay as little as 16.75 (off peak) to take the Metro North Railroad from Grand Central Terminal to Beacon, followed by a 1 shuttle to the airport itself. Long Island MacArthur Airport and Westchester County Airport excel in flights to and from Florida, including major destinations like Orlando and smaller ones like West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale (a decent alternative to Miami International Airport in its own right). The no frills carrier Frontier has invested substantially in MacArthur, with a number of new routes for this year and next, including nonstop service to Atlanta and Chicago, as well as attractive 128 nonstop round trips to Orlando on select dates in late August. The same itinerary would cost 199 from Newark. Chicago has two major airports, O'Hare and Midway. The budget carrier Southwest Airlines dominates the latter; O'Hare, of course, is the 800 pound gorilla, routing multiple airlines to and from most of the free world. Travel into the city proper, though, can be arduous, even on public transportation. O'Hare, which sits far to the northwest, can be particularly bad, especially if you're not going somewhere served by the Blue Line, the leg of the Chicago Transit Authority that serves that airport. Are there alternatives? Rockford International Airport, about 85 miles from downtown Chicago, is a bit isolated for the casual traveler. But flying into General Mitchell International Airport in Milwaukee offers some opportunities to cut costs. I've personally saved about 200 flying into Milwaukee instead of Chicago when I needed a last minute ticket from the West Coast. Currently, a round trip from Los Angeles to Milwaukee during select dates in August would run just 224 on Delta; the next cheapest non red eye option on a major carrier would cost 321 to O'Hare. Granted, the Delta flight has a layover, and you'll need a kind soul willing to make the 90 minute drive from Chicago to pick you up. But those on their own needn't fret: Amtrak's Hiawatha route can get you from Milwaukee's airport to Chicago's Union Station in 80 minutes for 25 or take a Greyhound bus, which can run as little as 10. As someone who frequently uses Los Angeles International Airport, I don't think it's a bad airport, it's just a pain to get to (and leave from). Its location is inconvenient for those who don't live on the west side of the city, and the traffic surrounding it is frequently gridlocked. Many a friendship (and Uber rating) has been strained over an LAX pickup. Hollywood Burbank Airport has occasionally saved me a few dollars but, more important, frequently allowed me to keep my sanity. Security lines are short, and traffic is rarely bad entering or exiting the airport. Most important, its location is far more convenient for much of Los Angeles's non beach dwelling populace. Sample nonstop fares to and from San Francisco in August and September are 97 round trip identical to flying out of LAX. But given the added convenience, I'd certainly choose Burbank. Seattle Tacoma International Airport isn't necessarily the best airport for Seattle area denizens Bellingham International Airport, close to the Canadian border, can sometimes save those bound for Washington's biggest city (and even those who are Vancouver bound, too) a significant amount of money. A sample route I searched, San Diego to Bellingham, was a mere 104 round trip on Allegiant Air during select days in September. The same itinerary into Sea Tac would have cost double (and a ridiculous 556 into Vancouver). Those worried about transportation from Bellingham to Seattle need look no further than Bolt Bus fares for the roughly two hour trip are as low as 1 (plus 2 service fee), though fares typically range from 8 to 15. Dallas Love Field Airport is practically in downtown Dallas at least compared with Dallas Fort Worth, the city's main international airport (and American Airlines headquarters), which sits far to the northwest of the city center. In addition, routes from Love Field, where Southwest Airlines is headquartered, adequately cover most areas of the United States. In some cases, flights from Love Field best those from Dallas/Fort Worth by a substantial amount. A one way from Dallas/Fort Worth to Omaha, for example, might run you 255 on select days in September. That same itinerary from Love Field would cost you only 93 on Southwest. The name Manchester Boston Regional Airport does seem to be pushing it a bit, considering the airport isn't even in the same state as Boston it's about 20 miles over the border in New Hampshire. But those willing to make the 75 minute trek from that airport into Boston can be well rewarded for their effort. On select dates in September, for example, a one way from Chicago to Boston will run you 132 on American or United not bad, but significantly pricier than spending 85 to fly into Manchester on Southwest. When you factor in the two free checked bags on Southwest and their painless change policy, the savings become even more significant. The only trick is getting into Boston: It's too far for a taxi, and many of the shuttle services aren't well priced, either. Your best bet is to take a Greyhound bus directly from the airport; fares start at 10 each way. There are only a few departures daily, so you have to take care to sync up your flight arrival with the bus schedule, and hope you're not delayed. Worst case scenario, you can head to the main bus depot in Manchester (10 minutes from the airport) and go from there. Orlando International Airport is the larger of Orlando's airports (and the closest to Disney World), but Orlando Sanford International Airport, about 30 minutes northeast of downtown, is a clear winner on certain routes, particularly on Allegiant, which offers nonstop service to cities on harder to find routes: Cedar Rapids, Iowa; Knoxville, Tenn.; and Plattsburgh, N.Y. It also has some intriguing deals on flights to the Caribbean, including 166 round trip fares to San Juan, P.R., for select dates in September (beating Orlando International by over 30) and 265 round trip fares to Aruba, besting Orlando International by about 90. Major airports dominate for a reason, and you'll have little choice but to use them much of the time. Overlook the smaller airport at your own peril, however: They frequently can offer you great deals in addition to a much smoother experience than their larger brethren.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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From left, Miles Davis, Lee Konitz and Gerry Mulligan in a 1949 recording session. Mr. Konitz's work with the Miles Davis Nonet early in his career helped establish his reputation. This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here. Lee Konitz, a prolific and idiosyncratic saxophonist who was one of the earliest and most admired exponents of the style known as cool jazz, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 92. His niece Linda Konitz said the cause was complications of the coronavirus. She said he also had pneumonia. Mr. Konitz initially attracted attention as much for the way he didn't play as for the way he did. Like most of his jazz contemporaries, he adopted the expanded harmonic vocabulary of his fellow alto saxophonist Charlie Parker, the leading figure in modern jazz. But his approach departed from Parker's in significant ways, and he quickly emerged as a role model for musicians seeking an alternative to Parker's pervasive influence. Where modern jazz in the Parker mold, better known as bebop, tended to be passionate and virtuosic, Mr. Konitz's improvisations were measured and understated, more thoughtful than heated. "I knew and loved Charlie Parker and copied his bebop solos like everyone else," Mr. Konitz told The Wall Street Journal in 2013. "But I didn't want to sound like him. So I used almost no vibrato and played mostly in the higher register. That's the heart of my sound." Although some musicians and critics dismissed Mr. Konitz's style as overly cerebral and lacking in emotion, it proved influential in the development of the so called cool school. But while cool jazz, essentially a less heated variation on bebop, was popular for several years and some of its exponents, notably the baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan and the trumpeter and singer Chet Baker, both of whom he sometimes worked with, became stars Mr. Konitz for most of his career was a musician's musician, admired by his peers and jazz aficionados but little known to the general public. This was in part because of his personality: An introvert by nature, he was never entirely comfortable in the spotlight. And it was in part because of his musical philosophy, which valued spontaneity above all else and often led him to pursue daring improvisational tangents that could leave his less adventurous listeners feeling a little lost. (His way of preparing for a performance, he once said, was "to not be prepared.") "My playing was about making a personal statement getting audiences to pay attention to what I was saying musically rather than giving them what they wanted to hear, which is entertainment," he said in the 2013 interview, referring to his early struggles to find an audience. "I wanted to play original music." His willingness to take chances was admired by advocates of so called free jazz, which, beginning in the late 1950s, defied established rules of harmony and rhythm. But ultimately no label, not even "cool," really fit Mr. Konitz; he was best characterized as sui generis. Reviewing a performance in 2000 for The New York Times, Ben Ratliff called Mr. Konitz "as original a player as there is in jazz" and praised the "boiled down wisdom" of his playing, noting that "even when he is in the heat of improvisation, it sounds like someone whistling a tune he has known all his life." Leon Konitz was born in Chicago on Oct. 13, 1927, the youngest of three sons of Jewish immigrants. His father, Abraham, who owned a laundry, was from Austria; his mother, Anna (Getlin) Konitz, was from Russia. Inspired by Benny Goodman, he persuaded his parents to buy him a clarinet when he was 11. He later switched to saxophone, and in 1945, with the ranks of the nation's dance bands depleted by the draft and opportunities for young musicians plentiful, he began his professional career with the Chicago based band of Jerry Wald. His first big break came in 1947 when he joined the Claude Thornhill orchestra, whose soft sound and pastel colors meshed well with his playing style. A subsequent stint with the more dynamic and aggressive Stan Kenton ensemble proved an uneasy musical mix but helped spread his name in the jazz world. The recordings that did the most to establish Mr. Konitz's reputation were made in the late 1940s and early '50s, after he had moved to New York, under the leadership of two of the most distinctive artists in modern jazz: the pianist and composer Lennie Tristano, with whom he studied for several years and whose unorthodox approach to improvisation helped shape his own; and the trumpeter Miles Davis, whose short lived but influential nine piece band sought to adapt the ethereal Thornhill sound to a bebop context. Those recordings, and others Mr. Konitz made as a leader in the 1950s, were widely admired by other musicians. But that admiration did not translate into work, and he struggled to find bookings; for a brief period in the '60s he stopped performing altogether. He did not find steady employment as a musician again until the mid '70s, when New York City experienced a small jazz renaissance. He attracted a loyal audience for his work both with small groups and with a nonet that, despite its ambitious repertoire and arrangements, ultimately did not last much longer than the Miles Davis ensemble on which it was partly modeled. He had a bigger following in Europe, where for the last several decades of his life he spent much of his time and did most of his recording. His European discography ranged in style and format from "Lone Lee" (1974), on which he played unaccompanied, to "Saxophone Dreams" (1997), on which he was supported by a 61 piece orchestra. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2009. While Mr. Konitz rarely maintained a working group for more than a few months, he performed and recorded as both leader and sideman with an impressive array of top rank musicians, ranging from the pianist Dave Brubeck (on Mr. Brubeck's 1976 album "All the Things We Are," which also featured the avant garde saxophonist Anthony Braxton) and the drummer Elvin Jones (on Mr. Konitz's influential 1961 album "Motion," an experiment in spontaneity recorded without planning or rehearsal) to, in more recent years, the pianist Brad Mehldau and the guitarist Bill Frisell. In 2003, in a rare foray outside the jazz world, he played on Elvis Costello's album "North."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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La Felicita, which opened last year, is perhaps the biggest, splashiest new Italian establishment in Paris. Paris Might Be the Best City for Italian Food (Outside Italy) When Julien Carotenuto, a Parisian of Italian heritage, abandoned his retail career to pursue his dream of making fresh mozzarella for his hometown, the predictions were dire. "People told me, 'you're crazy,'" he recalled on a recent afternoon. "In Italy, everyone said that I would never pull it off. Even my friends and family said it would be very hard." After all, who could possibly imagine that refined palates from Roquefort laden, Brie loaded France the king of cheesemaking nations would possibly be tempted by a humble foreign interloper? But Mr. Carotenuto, 33, churned ahead. He studied cheesemaking in Italy. He hired a veteran cheesemaker, Franco Picciuolo, whose father and grandfather had also plied the trade. He even found a French farming cooperative with buffaloes to provide milk for real mozzarella di bufala. When he landed a storefront in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, his operation, Nanina, went live. Some, like Mr. Carotenuto, sprout from the local population to champion their Italian roots. Others make culinary pilgrimages from France's boot shaped neighbor, swelling an Italian expat community in the Paris area that officially numbers around 160,000, according to the Italian consul general, Emilia Gatto, though she estimates the actual figure to be double that. "I came to France because the French are the best culinary technicians in the world," said one of them, Denny Imbroisi, during the opening night of Malro, his new Italian Mediterranean Arabian restaurant in the Marais. As stylish partygoers filled the industrial chic space, the chef, who is in his 30s, recounted how he arrived in Paris a decade ago, won a contestant spot on "Top Chef," and then cooked in two of Mr. Ducasse's gastronomic temples Louis XV in Monaco and Jules Verne in the Eiffel Tower before opening Ida ("my family's Italian food and French cuisine"), then Epoca ("100 percent Italian"), and now Malro. "There's really an Italian movement that has exploded over the last three years," Mr. Imbroisi said. Thanks to that explosion, Paris might now be the best city outside of Italy for Italian eating and drinking. With a few Metro tickets, you can journey from Venetian aperitivo culture (Hostaria Urbana), then south to Sicilian home cooking (Pane e Olio), disembarking occasionally at cozy wine bars (Tappo), massive indoor food halls (La Felicita) and new Italian restaurants from French celebrity chefs (for example, Piero TT, by Pierre Gagnaire). In April, the Right Bank welcomed an outlet of Eataly with a glittery gala, and the Left Bank should soon see a luxury hotel from the Italian JK brand. The marquee attraction will be a restaurant by Miky Grendene, the Italian creator of the exclusive Casa Tua members' club in Miami. "All of a sudden the Aperol spritz is the drink that Parisians drink the most," said Nico de Soto from the counter of Danico, the dual level lounge he runs behind the chic Daroco Italian restaurant, formerly the showroom of the fashion designer Jean Paul Gaultier. "I always try to put some kind of twist on a spritz on the menu." One past experiment included clarified kiwi juice, a pinch of salt and prosecco, recalled Mr. De Soto, a Frenchman who also runs Mace bar in New York City. Another involved a punch with booze, tea and milk, because "when you mix acidity with milk, the milk will curdle, and that acts as a filtering agent to clarify the whole cocktail." In fact, you practically need an Aperol detector to locate the city's Italian bars. Like Danico, they are often discreetly tucked in restaurants or even hidden behind unmarked doors. Sometimes the best strategy is simply to knock on the walk in freezer. Doing so grants entry to Moonshiner, a Prohibition style speakeasy behind Da Vito pizzeria, as well as No Entry, a plush pink haven of vintage Italian spirits (including Aperols and Camparis from the 1970s) beneath Pink Mamma restaurant. To sniff out the bar called Herbarium, however, follow your nose. In the Hotel National des Arts et Metiers, the sultry, candlelit space is overseen by the Italian bar impresario Oscar Quagliarini, a veteran of Lancome and other French perfume houses who strives to add an olfactory dimension to his drinks. "What I love about perfume are the emotions, and I was never able to find that in cocktails," said Mr. Quagliarini by telephone from Milan, where he also lives and works. Thus motivated, he has employed his scent making skills to create "edible perfumes" that he sprays into his liquid creations. La Foret du Lac, for example a mixture of aromatic gin and homemade pine based syrup with a blast of pine iris sandalwood vapor. The pies have it Perhaps nowhere is the Franco Italian romance hotter than in the realm of pizza. After all, France consumes more pies than any other country (upwards of 700 million) except the United States, according to studies by the French consulting group Gira Conseil. These days you can hardly hurl a ball of burrata without hitting an upstart pizzeria, including many created by folks from the Mecca of pizza making itself: Naples. "Paris has become an El Dorado for Neapolitans," said Julien Serri, the Franco Neapolitan chef owner of Magna, a new takeout joint for Naples street food, including rolled pizzas and folded pizzas, in the Pigalle neighborhood. "We're like a family here." That family enfolds everyone from the natural wine aficionado Graziella Buontempo whose Da Graziella pizzeria is lined with vintage Art Nouveau tiles to the purist Guillaume Grasso, the Franco Italian scion of the family behind Gorizia, a century old Naples pizza institution. "I'm trying to transmit authenticity here no tuna, no merguez, no fried eggs on top," said Mr. Grasso, 28, as his Italian cousin ran around the year old restaurant, Guillaume Grasso La Vera Pizza Napoletana, delivering bubbling hot margherite, diavole and other classics to a packed crowd. Covered in flour, Mr. Grasso gestured to a framed certificate from the Associazione Verace Pizza Napoletana, a Naples organization that honors pizzerias using the city's traditional ingredients and preparations. "You need a wood oven, and you need to leave the dough out at room temperature refrigeration is prohibited as well as certain varieties of tomatoes and mozzarella from the region," he explained. "I'm not interested in making 1,000 pizzas per day. What interests me is carrying my family's tradition." No such certificate adorns the wall at Bijou ("jewel" in French), an experimental (and expensive) pizza restaurant in the arty old Montmartre neighborhood. And that is fine with the chef Gennaro Nasti, an iconoclast keen to rub caviar in the face of Neapolitan tradition. "Italian food is like Japanese food," he continued. "You can't just add ingredients everywhere you destroy years of history. The rule of two to three is good: main product, garnish, seasoning." In the Marche d'Aligre food market, Mr. Tondo entered a butcher shop, Boucherie Les Provinces, and asked if they had received any recent visits from the chef Giovanni Passerini, a mentor to Mr. Tondo nearly 10 years back. One fellow nodded and soon the two were guffawing about the Roman chef "he plays the guitar and likes to drink," in Mr. Tondo's affectionate description who headed Rino, an influential Mediterranean modern restaurant that closed in 2014. Experimenting with food alongside Mr. Passerini was a rite of Parisian passage for the newly arrived Sardinian, even if it was sometimes a high wire act. "We didn't know anything at all then," Mr. Tondo said, grinning. "We just did whatever we wanted. We were just having fun." Rino's end scattered its kitchen crew like seeds, but many members sprouted up elsewhere in town as pioneers of Paris's new Italian scene. Mr. Tondo opened Roseval, another darling of the Paris food blog cabal, before ceding the space to a fellow Rino alumnus, the chef Michele Farnesi, who has relaunched it as Dilia. As for Mr. Passerini, in 2016 he opened Passerini, an excellent Italian Continental restaurant with minimalist decor and natural wines. On a given night, the menu might include anything from tripe stew to lobster spaghetti to fresh mozzarella from Julien Carotenuto's Nanina outfit, no less. If you go Young and design conscious, the Italian new wave in Paris is fueled by a lightened touch, fresh ingredients, terroir focused wines and original cocktails. RESTAURANTS Sicilian flavors fill the colorful farmhouse chic rooms at Les Amis des Messina (81 rue Reaumur), where Ignazio Messina serves a long menu that might include pumpkin slices in a sweet sour baste or octopus in spicy tomato broth. Arrive early for an original cocktail in the discreet basement bar. Francesca Feniello, the chef at year old Tempilenti (13 rue Gerbier) comes from Sardinia and serves pan Italian comfort food like tagliatelle with hearty lamb ragu and panna cotta with ricotta cheese and cucumber salad. Amid the shelves of natural wines at Au Nouveau Nez (104 rue St. Maur), the Florentine cook Alessandra Olivi might be making runny poached eggs with green beans and Parmesan, or a meatless Mediterranean burger with crispy fried eggplant and molten scamorza cheese. PIZZERIAS The Turin based organization Cucina Italiana Senza Frontiere (Italian Food Without Borders) anonymously tested scores of Paris pizzerias last year to find the city's best pizza margherita. Their winner was Sicilian run La Massara (70 rue de Turbigo), which also serves its own house ale. French owned, but bursting with Italian staff and ingredients, Dalmata (8 rue Tiquetonne) is a neon bright fun house that creates sublimely spongy, smoky, lightly burned crusts for pies like the Black Delerium, a mix of ricotta, fior di latte, truffle cream, shaved truffles and mushrooms. BARS The perfumer Oscar Quagliarini also writes the cocktail card at Grazie (91 Boulevard Beaumarchais), an industrial cool pioneer of the pizza and cocktails formula. The French restaurateur Philippe Baranes, whose family tree includes the Italian painter Amadeo Modigliani, is putting the finishing touches on Amaro (38 rue Condorcet), a new Venetian themed lounge devoted to Italian alcohols and classic Venetian bar snacks, or cicchetti. EVENTS On Dec. 15 and 16, more than 80 natural Italian winemakers gather to uncork their bottles during the fourth edition of the Vini di Vignaioli salon, which also features dinners and tastings at numerous off site Italian restaurants. Organized by the Italian consulate and other Italian associations, the Paris edition of the international Settimana della Cucina Italiana Nel Mondo (a.k.a. Italian Food Week) unfolds around the city every November. For future Italian culinary and cultural events in Paris, the Italie a Paris website is a vast repository of all things Italian happening in, and relating to, the City of Light.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Inspiring women take center stage in "Women, War Peace II." And an intruder upends a couple's life in "The Salesman." WOMEN, WAR PEACE II 9 p.m. on PBS (check local listings). Who runs the world? This limited series returns with four films about women who have led nonviolent movements for peace and human rights. The program begins with "Wave Goodbye to Dinosaurs," about the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition, a political party established in 1996 to secure representation of women in peace negotiations. (The party disbanded in 2006.) "The Trials of Spring," which centers on three Egyptian women fighting for "bread, freedom and social justice" during the Arab Spring in 2011, follows at 10. The second half of the series airs Tuesday at 9. JESUS: HIS LIFE 8 p.m. on History. The biblical drama "Mary Magdalene" will hit theaters next month with Rooney Mara in the title role alongside Joaquin Phoenix as Jesus. The story of Mary a Jewish woman who traveled with Jesus and witnessed his crucifixion and resurrection is also told in this new series that is part drama, part documentary, along with the tales of seven other figures who played important roles in Jesus's life. The first episode reimagines Jesus's birth with a focus on Joseph. ONE NATION UNDER STRESS (2019) 9 p.m. on HBO; Stream on HBO platforms. The neurosurgeon and medical reporter Sanjay Gupta crisscrosses the United States to understand why the country's life expectancy rate has been steadily dropping in this sobering documentary by Marc Levin ("Class Divide"). Gupta emphasizes the rise of "deaths of despair" caused by cirrhosis, drug overdose and suicide, while researchers point to obesity and chronic stress. What's important, the film conveys, is to discover the cause of the cause which seems to be mainly greater depression and social isolation. We see the human side of the issue when Gupta visits a town in Pennsylvania where a plant closure has left hundreds of residents jobless and stressed out. THE SALESMAN (2017) Stream on Amazon; Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu or YouTube. The Iranian filmmaker Asghar Farhadi won his second Oscar for this suspenseful drama about a married couple in Tehran. At the outset, Emad (Shahab Hosseini) and Rana (Taraneh Alidoosti), theater actors working on a production of Arthur Miller's "Death of a Salesman," move out of their rundown apartment before it crumbles over their heads. A fellow actor helps them settle in a new place, but the previous tenant left behind many belongings and doesn't seem to be returning for them. Emad and Rana soon understand why the apartment is filled with clutter, but only after a troubling incident causes a rift between them and pushes Emad down a vengeful spiral. A. O. Scott named the film a Critic's Pick in his New York Times review. "With exquisite patience and attention to detail," he wrote, Farhadi "builds a solid and suspenseful plot out of ordinary incidents, and packs it with rich and resonant ideas."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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In Gillian Walsh's "Scenario: Script to Perform," the dancers never look up. On Thursday at the Kitchen, Maggie Cloud, Nicole Daunic, Mickey Mahar and Ms. Walsh walked into the bright, silent space clasping sheets of paper, heads bowed and eyes fixed on those pages, to remain there for most of the next 80 minutes. Were they scripts or scripture, these handheld scores? Deeply inward and inscrutably systematic, as intriguing to watch as it is exhausting, "Scenario" is almost religious in its focus on those documents, whatever they may contain. The spartan work, Ms. Walsh's first evening length piece, feels at first like a rehearsal. The dancers wear various combinations of denim, sneakers, shorts and T shirts. (The aesthetic is resolutely '90s.) In muted voices, as if speaking only to themselves, they recite strands of letters and numbers. These correspond, or at least coexist, with a repertoire of simple, deliberate movements, repeated and rearranged. Feet, widely parted, pivot from parallel to turned out; a lunge addresses one corner of the empty room, then another. "Five. Seven. K. Five. Seven. Two. N," is one recurring, cryptic fragment. "Ten. Twenty. Ten," elicits a side to side jump, one foot slightly in front of the other. The pauses between words, varying in length, establish a lulling rhythm. Stefan Tcherepnin's barely there sound, a buzzing that intensifies and recedes, reminds us that we're in a theater, as does Zack Tinkelman's lighting, which has surprising moments of deep pink and blue.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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LONDON The playwright and director Kwame Kwei Armah, known for his outspoken views on racial inequality in British theater, has been announced as the new artistic director of the Young Vic theater here. The British born Mr. Kwei Armah is the artistic director of Center Stage in Baltimore. He will leave the post in June 2018 to move back to Britain and take up the position at the Young Vic, an internationally renowned theater in South London that produces classic plays as well contemporary productions. "To walk into the Young Vic is to come face to face with everything I love about theater, so I am beyond humbled, if not a little scared," Mr. Kwei Armah said in a statement. Mr. Kwei Armah's work includes a production of "One Night in Miami" at the Donmar Warehouse in London, which was nominated for an Olivier Award, and "One Love," a musical about Bob Marley. He is in rehearsals for "The Lady From The Sea," an adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's 1888 play that he is directing at the Donmar.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Clockwise from top, Aberdeen Street Social, whose menu has been called "British modern." The Greek restaurant Souvla. Ho Lee Fook, which fuses Cantonese with other Asian traditions. Chachawan, which draws inspiration from the street food of northeast Thailand. I go to Rome and I know that there will be prosciutto in my days, bucatini in my nights. I go to Lisbon with an uncontestable agenda of the shellfish and the sausage that the Portuguese cook so enviably. I go to Hong Kong with no foregone conclusions, just a blank menu to be filled any number of ways. That's what I love about it. Technically, Hong Kong's cuisine is Cantonese, and you should fit some dim sum into your dining. But what really distinguishes this electrifying city is its almost unrivaled culinary internationalism. It's not just a global crossroads for business. It's a global crossroads for food, one of a handful of commercial capitals, like New York and London, that have no particular concentration of ambitious, accomplished restaurants in any one genre. The most appealing and important places cut across all traditions. That's the case in Hong Kong partly because it's a setting where many of the best known chefs from other countries establish outposts, sometimes even exporting versions of the enterprises that made them famous. Sushi superstars from Tokyo have planted flags here. As in Manhattan, there's a Motorino for Neapolitan pizza lovers and a Carbone for fans of Italian American cooking. As in Paris, there's a L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon. During a visit I made to Hong Kong in 2013, two of the new spots drawing the most chatter were a Mexican restaurant, Brickhouse, and a Japanese yakitori, Yardbird. When I returned recently and took a fresh inventory of newcomers that had generated significant enthusiasm, the list included many restaurants with Mediterranean moorings Spanish, French, Italian or an amalgam of those. One restaurant advertised a melding of Italian and Japanese. A spot specializing in upscale American hamburgers was a big hit, as was one specializing in Japanese curry. And that's not counting the five standouts described in more detail below. Suffice it to say that in this one polyglot city across one hungry week, I ate the whole wide world. But that wasn't all that the terrace provided. Time and again, regarding dish after dish, our server noted that some leaf, shoot or blossom had come from the greenery out there, mere strides away. Forget farm to table, this was patio to table and a vivid illustration of Nur's stated commitment to local products. I had sat down to my dinner here with some doubts. The restaurant's name recognizes the first syllable of the chef's (Nurdin Topham) as well as the Arabic word for "light." Its website lays out both Mr. Topham's belief in a restrained, healthful discipline he calls "nourishing gastronomy" and his past involvement in "a somewhat unorthodox project the deliciousness of insects." I braced for preciousness and strange critters. I needn't have. There are traces of molecular gastronomy in some of Mr. Topham's artfully composed dishes, which reduce certain ingredients to concentrated pastes or broths of intense flavor. And there's a vigorous nod to the Copenhagen culinary temple Noma, where Mr. Topham briefly worked, and to its locavore ethos. For that reason, Nur has sometimes been called a New Nordic restaurant. But it's more original than that. With a scrupulous emphasis on the best vegetables, fish and meat available and with absolutely flawless cooking, at least when I visited, Mr. Topham produces food that's sensationally robust without being the least bit rich. It's almost oxymoronic, packing a light wallop, with a clearness and purity of effect that I've seldom encountered. And it's bug free! If this is nourishing gastronomy, put me down for ceaseless gastronomic nourishment. Nur doesn't give you any choices. It serves just one tasting menu of nine courses including dessert, and they came in rapid enough succession and sensible enough measure that I never felt impatient or overwhelmed (though, by the end, I felt amply filled). There were orbs of heirloom tomato with a texture almost like sorbet and a pool of tomato water around them. A subsequent dish combined salmon eggs with walnuts and horseradish yogurt. Squid, paired with charred onions and lemon basil, was exquisitely supple and sweet, and dessert was a fitting, fetching cap to a meal with such a vegetal, herbaceous bent: ice cream that tasted like French onion soup. Although that terrace accommodates a few diners, I sat at a spacious and relatively quiet table just inside, within view of an open kitchen more fully and pleasantly integrated into the dining room than such stages often are. And I had a glass of white Burgundy, followed by a glass of Barolo, from a wine list that covered many of Europe's highlights. The white granite tables are rimmed in bright red. The booths and benches are upholstered in deep purple. There's a long, long bar that rests atop a long, long rectangle of pale stones held together by a mesh cage. As visually arresting as all of this is, I'm not sure what it has to do with Greece, which is the country whose cooking Souvla pays tribute to. But the menu would be instantly recognizable to any Athenian. The food would pass muster as well. Greeks like to think that they have some special secret for octopus that's tenderer than anywhere else, but they'd be hard pressed to outdo the kitchen here, which sculpted and arranged the thin columns of pale pink flesh into a sort of pyramid. It was octopus Legos. I'm an ardent lover of taramosalata, that Greek (and Turkish) spread of smoked fish roe and olive oil, and Souvla's achieved the perfect pitch of saltiness, along with an ethereal creaminess. It spread like a cloud across triangles of toasted pita that were glossed with oil and still warm. Those two dishes came toward the start of our meal, and I figured that they'd be the high points. But there were taller peaks ahead. One was gemista, a hearty, earthy casserole of potatoes, tomato sauce and peppers stuffed with rice. The other was the slow cooked lamb, ribbons of meltingly soft leg meat placed next to a glittering relish of pomegranate and a tiny glass bottle filled with a tangy yogurt dressing. As I looked at the artful presentation of the lamb and thought back to the octopus, the decor suddenly made sense. It was an announcement that Souvla would respect Greece but reinterpret it with fillips all its own. So while Souvla covers the hoary classics spanakopita, moussaka it gives some of them a face lift, and it tacks on a long list of elaborate specialty cocktails, the focal point of a lively bar scene. While Souvla and Nur are tucked away, almost invisibly, in tall buildings, Chachawan opens wide to the street, with the sidewalk almost acting as its vestibule. This befits its air of scruffy, ragtag informality and a menu that's inspired in part by street food from Thailand, or, to be more specific, the northeastern Thai province of Isan. That's how narrowly focused this restaurant is, and that's how ethnically ambitious Hong Kong can get. With the cooking of Isan you get ample spice. You get serious fire. One dish almost brought me to my knees. It looked so innocent, so pretty, a salad with a bright, approachable medley of colors and textures, courtesy of green papaya, cherry tomatoes, dried shrimp, peanuts. But there were a few small chiles lurking in there, and they soon enough registered their presence in my throat and in my gut, which was suddenly a caldron. It seethed and bubbled for hours to come. Chachawan was worth the burn. Not every dish carried that risk, but nearly every dish had the interplay of contrasting effects that are at the heart of Southeast Asian cooking. In the "Larp Moo," a loose, wet mix of chopped pork, pork skin, shallots and mint needed something dry and firm, so it got that, from leaves of crisp, cool iceberg to be used as wraps. Sweet and sour, sugar and spice, cold and hot: These were the currents that ran through most of the dishes, including a garlicky, boneless chicken thigh on a stick: a supersized satay. Sweet and salty were the playmates in an excellent dessert of coconut rice dumplings in a salted coconut cream. Chachawan is routinely thronged, but it's not for everyone. Situated in the increasingly trendy neighborhood of Sheung Wan, it doesn't take reservations. Some of its servers are better at striking hipster poses than seeing to your needs. The seating is on the awkward side of snug. This restaurant is as polished and refined as Chachawan is hectic. It spreads out over two stories that include a downstairs bar, outdoor terraces and an upstairs dining room that's dominated by dark woods and brings to mind the inside of a chest of drawers. The servers are numerous, proper and hovering. And the prices reflect this. Especially if you order wine from Aberdeen's widely ranging list, the bill can climb high. The restaurant is affiliated with the English chef Jason Atherton, a Gordon Ramsay protege with a rapidly growing international roster, including several previous places in Hong Kong. His menu here has been called "modern British," a culinary phrase that, like "new American," tends to be elastic. In Aberdeen's case, it means the existence of British staples and British conventions complemented by Asian, Mediterranean influences. So while the starters I encountered included a pig's trotter with black pudding for the Anglophile, there was also tuna tataki with ponzu dressing, not to mention a tomato salad with Italian burrata cheese. I was especially impressed with two entrees, a sublime pork chop served with a red pepper relish and slices of lamb rump dusted with a "kidney powder" that teased out the meat's muskiness. My companions and I savored these at a spacious table next to a glass wall that let just the right amount of light onto our meal. If the pork at Aberdeen Street Social was sublime, the pork at Ho Lee Fook was nearly life changing. I mean the strips of pork char siu, which refers to a Cantonese method of cooking the meat over fire and giving it a sweet red glaze. Char siu is a staple of Chinese takeout, but I've never had takeout that uses Berkshire pigs from Japan. When that caliber of flesh meets this method of preparation, the results are a fatty, flavorful knockout. Then again, most everything I had at Ho Lee Fook wowed me. The restaurant fuses Cantonese with other Asian traditions as well as any flourishes that the chef, Jowett Yu, deems appropriate. It's thrillingly unbound, never letting precedent get in the way of deliciousness. My favorite dish, even better than the pork, comprised slices of wagyu short rib that were arranged on one side of the bone, a green shallot kimchi on the other side and a jalapeno puree through which either or both could be swept. The way the heat of that puree cut the richness of the beef was exhilarating. The menu sprawls across a half dozen categories, including "raw," "roast meat" and "vegetables." There are fried chicken wings as well as hot and sour steak tartare, cabbage and pork dumplings as well as clams cooked in a Thai basil and tamarind broth. My companion and I ate twice as much as any two people should, longed to eat more and seriously thought about coming back the next night to do precisely that. The restaurant's setting is sexy: a dark underground room with just a few riveting pieces of art, including a white and gray dragon along one wall. This is what a Chinese drug lord's rec room might look like.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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A generation ago, parents worried about the effects of TV; before that, it was radio. Now, the concern is "screen time," a catchall term for the amount of time that children, especially preteens and teenagers, spend interacting with TVs, computers, smartphones, digital pads, and video games. This age group draws particular attention because screen immersion rises sharply during adolescence, and because brain development accelerates then, too, as neural networks are pruned and consolidated in the transition to adulthood. On Sunday evening, CBS's "60 Minutes" reported on early results from the A.B.C.D. Study (for Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development), a 300 million project financed by the National Institutes of Health. The study aims to reveal how brain development is affected by a range of experiences, including substance use, concussions, and screen time. As part of an expose on screen time, "60 Minutes" reported that heavy screen use was associated with lower scores on some aptitude tests, and to accelerated "cortical thinning" a natural process in some children. But the data is preliminary, and it's unclear whether the effects are lasting or even meaningful. Yes, but so does every other activity that children engage in: sleep, homework, playing soccer, arguing, growing up in poverty, reading, vaping behind the school. The adolescent brain continually changes, or "rewires" itself, in response to daily experience, and that adaptation continues into the early to mid 20s. What scientists want to learn is whether screen time, at some threshold, causes any measurable differences in adolescent brain structure or function, and whether those differences are meaningful. Do they cause attention deficits, mood problems, or delays in reading or problem solving ability? Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Have any such brain differences been found? Not convincingly. More than 100 scientific reports and surveys have studied screen habits and well being in young people, looking for emotional and behavioral differences, as well as changes in attitude, such as in body image. In 2014, scientists from Queen's University Belfast reviewed 43 of the best designed such studies. The studies found that social networking allows people to broaden their circle of social contacts in ways that could be both good and bad, for instance by exposing young people to abusive content. The review's authors concluded that there was "an absence of robust causal research regarding the impact of social media on the mental well being of young people." In short: results have been mixed, and sometimes contradictory. Psychologists have also examined whether playing violent video games is connected to aggressive behavior. More than 200 such studies have been carried out; some researchers found links, others have not. One challenge in studying this and other aspects of screen time is identifying the direction of causality: Do children who play a lot of violent video games become more aggressive as a result, or were they drawn to such content because they were more aggressive from the start? Even if scientists found strong evidence of a single, measurable effect if, say, three hours of daily screen time was associated with a heightened risk of being diagnosed with A.D.H.D. such a clear association wouldn't necessarily suggest there were any consistent, measurable differences in brain structure. Individual variation is the rule in brain development. The size of specific brain regions such as the prefrontal cortex, the rate at which those regions edit and consolidate their networks, and the variations in these parameters from person to person make it very difficult to interpret findings. To address such obstacles, scientists need huge numbers of research subjects and a far better understanding of the brain. Isn't that what the N.I.H. study aims to address? Yes. The ongoing A.B.C.D. study expects to follow 11,800 children through adolescence, with annual magnetic resonance imaging, to see if changes in the brain are linked to behavior or health. The study began in 2013, recruiting 21 academic research centers, and initially focused on the effects of drug and alcohol use on the adolescent brain. Since then, the project has expanded, and now includes other targets such as the effects of brain injury, screen time, genetics, and an array of "other environmental factors." The recently published paper covered by "60 Minutes" provided an early glimpse of the anticipated results. A research team, based at the University of California, San Diego, analyzed brain scans from more than 4,500 preteens and correlated those with the children's amount of screen time (as reported by the children themselves in questionnaires) and their scores on language and thinking tests. The findings were a mixed bag. Some heavy screen users showed cortical thinning at younger ages than expected; but this thinning is part of natural brain maturation, and scientists don't know what that difference means. Some heavy users scored below the curve on aptitude tests, others performed well. But the accuracy of self reported screen time estimates is hard to ascertain. And the association between small differences in brain structure and how people actually behave is even more vague. As a result, researchers effectively are multiplying one uncertain relationship by another, and need to make statistical adjustments. Clear conclusions are extremely hard to come by, and complicated by the fact that a brain scan is no more than a snapshot in time: a year from now, some of the observed relationships could be reversed. The authors acknowledge as much. "This diversity of findings provides an important public health message, that screen media activity is not simply bad for the brain or bad for brain related functioning," they concluded. In other words, the measured effects may be good, or, more likely, not meaningful at all, until further research demonstrates otherwise. But surely screen addiction is somehow bad for the brain? It's probably both bad and good for the brain, depending on the individual and his or her viewing habits. Many people who are socially isolated, as a result of abuse, personal quirks or developmental differences such as Asperger's syndrome, establish social networks through their screens that would be impossible to find in person. Disentangling negative consequences to physical brain development from positive ones will be enormously difficult, given the many other factors potentially in play: the effects of marijuana use , drinking, and vaping, genetic differences, changes at home or school, and the entire emotional storm of adolescence. Most parents are probably already aware of the biggest downside of screen time: the extent to which it can displace other childhood experiences, including sleep, climbing over fences, designing elaborate practical jokes and getting into trouble. Indeed, many parents maybe most watched hours of TV a day themselves as youngsters. Their experiences may be more similar to their children's than they know.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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It's No Accident: Advocates Want to Speak of Car 'Crashes' Instead Roadway fatalities are soaring at a rate not seen in 50 years, resulting from crashes, collisions and other incidents caused by drivers. That is the position of a growing number of safety advocates, including grass roots groups, federal officials and state and local leaders across the country. They are campaigning to change a 100 year old mentality that they say trivializes the single most common cause of traffic incidents: human error. "When you use the word 'accident,' it's like, 'God made it happen,' " Mark Rosekind, the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, said at a driver safety conference this month at the Harvard School of Public Health. "In our society," he added, "language can be everything." Almost all crashes stem from driver behavior like drinking, distracted driving and other risky activity. About 6 percent are caused by vehicle malfunctions, weather and other factors. Preliminary estimates by the nonprofit National Safety Council show deadly crashes rose by nearly 8 percent in 2015 over the previous year, killing about 38,000 people. Dr. Rosekind has added his voice to a growing chorus of advocates who say that the persistence of crashes driving is the most dangerous activity for most people can be explained in part by widespread apathy toward the issue. Changing semantics is meant to shake people, particularly policy makers, out of the implicit nobody's fault attitude that the word "accident" conveys, they said. On Jan. 1, the state of Nevada enacted a law, passed almost unanimously in the Legislature, to change "accident" to "crash" in dozens of instances where the word is mentioned in state laws, like those covering police and insurance reports. New York City adopted a policy in 2014 to reduce fatalities that states the city "must no longer regard traffic crashes as mere 'accidents,' " and other cities, including San Francisco, have taken the same step. At least 28 state departments of transportation have moved away from the term "accident" when referring to roadway incidents, according to Jeff Larason, director of highway safety for Massachusetts. The traffic safety administration changed its own policy in 1997, but has recently become more vocal about the issue. Mr. Larason, a former television traffic reporter, started a blog called "Drop The A Word" and has led a campaign to get major media outlets to stop using the term. Last year, he enlisted supporters to join with grass roots groups in urging The Associated Press to clarify how reporters should use the word "accident." In April, The A.P. announced a new policy. When negligence is claimed or proven in a crash, the new entry reads, reporters should "avoid accident, which can be read by some as a term exonerating the person responsible." (The New York Times's style guide does not take any position on the terminology.) But use of "accident" has its defenders, as Mr. Larason discovered in 2014 when he posted his thoughts on the word in a Facebook group popular among traffic reporters. "Why can't human error be an accident even if the error is preventable," one person wrote. "What is being solved by having this debate? What injustice are we correcting?" And when Mr. Larason suggested to officials at the Virginia Department of Transportation that they stop using "accident," he received a note saying that drivers are familiar and comfortable with the word. Virginia officials also wrote that drivers might not consider a minor incident to be a "crash," and so the change could be confusing. The word was introduced into the lexicon of manufacturing and other industries in the early 1900s, when companies were looking to protect themselves from the costs of caring for workers who were injured on the job, according to Peter Norton, a historian and associate professor at the University of Virginia's department of engineering. The business community even developed a cartoon character the foolish Otto Nobetter, who suffered frequent accidents that left him maimed, immolated, crushed, and even blown up. The character was meant to warn workers about the risks of inattention. "Relentless safety campaigns started calling these events 'accidents,' which excused the employer of responsibility," Dr. Norton said. When traffic deaths spiked in the 1920s, a consortium of auto industry interests, including insurers, borrowed the word to shift the focus away from the cars themselves. "Automakers were very interested in blaming reckless drivers," Dr. Norton said. But over time, he said, the word has come to exonerate the driver, too, with "accident" seeming like a lightning strike, beyond anyone's control. The word accident, he added, is seen by its critics as having "normalized mass death in this country," whereas "the word 'crash' is a resurrection of the enormity of this catastrophe." These days, the pressure to change the language stems partly from aggrieved families using social media like Facebook clubs and Twitter to lobby for change. Safety advocates often post Twitter messages to journalists and policy makers, urging them to stop using "accident" to describe a crash. When New York City changed its policy in 2014, it did so partly in response to such grass roots efforts, including from a group called Families for Safe Streets. The group is led by parents like Amy Cohen, whose son, Sammy, was run over and killed in Brooklyn in 2013. She helped start a campaign called "Crash Not Accident," and said that the drivers in deadly wrecks should not be given the presumption of innocence just because they have lived to tell their side of the story. "Whose story do you have at the time of the crash? The driver! The victim is dead," Ms. Cohen said. "The presumption should be to call it a crash, which is a neutral term."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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In the preposterously entertaining "Red Sparrow," Jennifer Lawrence plays a Russian ballerina turned murderous spy. And why not? Russian spies are apparently everywhere, and we seem to be in the middle of the Cold War 2.0. Anyone who has ever watched a ballet also knows how terrifyingly capable dancers are, with their steely strength, athleticism and discipline. Ms. Lawrence, best known as the teenage survivalist turned savior Katniss Everdeen in the "Hunger Games" series, has played rough before, so when her character in "Red Sparrow" brutally twists in a knife, it's almost like old home week. The story, too, is familiar but has notes and beats that have been refurbished and scrambled enough to hold and at times surprise you. Ms. Lawrence plays Dominika Egorova, a prima ballerina for the Bolshoi. Her face framed by bangs and a curtain of waist skimming hair, Dominika rules the stage until a midperformance catastrophe cuts her down. With an ailing mother (Joely Richardson) and no money or options, she turns to her uncle, amusingly named Vanya (Matthias Schoenaerts, sliming up his sex appeal), a power monger in the foreign intelligence service who makes her an unsavory offer. She's to serve as a honey pot for a man of interest, a job that of course goes wrong. Francis Lawrence narrates a sequence from the film featuring Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton. I'm Francis Lawrence, and I'm the director of "Red Sparrow." So what you're about to see is a scene between Jennifer Lawrence, playing Dominika Egorova, and Joel Edgerton's character, Nate Nash. Jennifer's character has been given a mission of trying to find a mole in the Russian government. And his last known contact is Nate Nash, an American CIA agent. "Dominika Egorova." "You know my name?" We shot the film primarily in Budapest. And in creating this scene, the production designer, Maria Djurkovic, and I wanted a very realistic version of what a US embassy might be. I wanted in a way to do the sort of anti party scene that you might find in a "Mission Impossible" movie or in a Bond movie. And those always tend to take place in operas and things like that. And it's all very glamorous and people are in tuxedos and everybody looks really beautiful. And in my experience of seeing these kind of embassy events, they're often quite boring. And so we found this great '60s university in Budapest, a medical university, that we used to lobby for the embassy and populated it with a bunch of background that we cast in Budapest but dressed them very quite bland. Something to look out for in this scene is it's one of the very few times, if not the only time, that Jen's character smiles in the movie. And part of what we thought would be really interesting in this, because this is one of the first times we start to cement the romance between the two of them, is that he should charm her a bit. "Hey, I'd like to see you again." "Why? Are we going to become friends?" "Is that what you want?" "I don't have any." And so for all the maneuvering the two of them are doing, she does get charmed by Joel and smiles in this. Francis Lawrence narrates a sequence from the film featuring Jennifer Lawrence and Joel Edgerton. The director Francis Lawrence (no relation to Ms. Lawrence) paints the movie red quickly and lavishly, daubing and washing that color onto sets, costumes and pouty lips. By the time he stages the first murder, the blood has begun to flow liberally, as if to underscore the movie's title. The scene makes for a gruesome tableau, especially because of its intimacy (death often comes in close up here), and because of the blood that splatters across Dominika, an augury of the lurid, messy violence to come. And come it does in dribbles, gushes and an occasional shot to the head. "Red Sparrow" is based on the novel (the first in a trilogy) of the same title by Jason Matthews, a former C.I.A. officer who presumably knows something about the death dealing world of spy versus spy. The C.I.A. digs the novel and posted a review on its website, which suggests it would also approve of the movie's politics (United States good, Russia bad); humorously, the agency did warn that the sex was explicit and "the Russian characters are not as nuanced as their U.S. counterparts." (The violence onscreen is, as with most mainstream movies, blunter and more attentively staged and filmed than the sex, which is ho hum decorous.) The Russians are about as movie real as the American characters, which mostly just means that they're types fleshed out with recognizably human detailing and all the polished professionalism and the slight, detached irony that comes when you hire smooth veterans like Charlotte Rampling, Jeremy Irons and Ciaran Hinds. They're welcome company, as is the rest of a cast that includes Joel Edgerton as Nate, a C.I.A. operative in Russia whose cover is blown soon after the movie opens. He's working with a Russian intelligence insider called Marble, a meaty bone that the Americans are gnawing on. (Nate's colleagues include a roundup of yammering, evidently spineless bosses in the States and a few colleagues in the field played by Sakina Jaffrey and Bill Camp with stern faces and wit.) While Nate takes care of American business, Dominika is forced deeper into the Russian intelligence apparatus, a two track narrative that finds him fighting for credibility while she trains to become a Motherland prostitute. Dominika's part of a cohort that is decorously called sparrows, though she speaks angry truth to power when she accuses her uncle of sending her to "whore school." Filled with pretty young things all equally exploitable women and men this is a suitably grim academy supervised by a severe matron who could be the daughter of Rosa Klebb, one of James Bond's most memorable adversaries. A diminutive operative with a knife in her shoe, Klebb (an indelibly ferocious Lotte Lenya) appears in the Cold War era film "From Russia With Love." Part of what's both queasily provocative and instructive about "Red Sparrow" is that while Dominika might have been a Bond Girl in an earlier time (or, really, just in the next flick), here she's allowed to go full on Klebb. Unlike in Bond movies, though, there are few self aware winks in "Red Sparrow." Working from Justin Haythe's script, Mr. Lawrence folds in moments of levity (a delectably acid and funny Mary Louise Parker stirs things up), but "Red Sparrow" mostly hews closer in grim vibe and viciousness to Bourne than to Bond. And, in classic fashion, Dominika endures the extremes of punishment penance that centers on her pulverized, near martyred body that often come with heroic journeys. The rawness of the violence is startling, partly because despite "Atomic Blonde" and other female driven movies, it's still unusual to see a woman receive (and freely mete out) such barbarity. That may not be everyone's idea of progress, but it's both appealing and crucial that "Red Sparrow" doesn't soft sell Dominika. There's an attractive, recognizable toughness to her as well as a febrile intensity born from need and circumstances, including the existential reality of being a woman in a man's world. Dominika is sentimental (mostly about her mother), but she isn't sentimentalized and never becomes the movie's virgin or its whore, its femme fatale or good girl. She's just the one carrying the fast track story. And when Dominika becomes involved with Nate, it's because, well, that's how the roles were written. Ms. Lawrence and Mr. Edgerton never manage to spark, but it scarcely matters; their characters are too busy to seriously moon over each other. As she does, Ms. Lawrence goes all in, seamlessly meeting the movie's physical demands whether she's dancing onstage or crawling in blood while turning Dominika into a character who grows more real with each unreal scene. She worked with Mr. Lawrence on three "Hunger Games" movies, and this shared history probably smoothed some of the story's edges, and may also explain why "Red Sparrow" moves so fluidly even as the story nuttily kinks and bounces around locations. It helps that Ms. Lawrence, like all great stars, can slip into a role as if sliding into another skin, unburdened by hesitation or self doubt. Craft and charm are part of what she brings to this role, as well as a serviceable accent, but it's her absolute ease and certainty that carry you through "Red Sparrow." She was born to screen stardom, and it's a blast to see where it's taking her.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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Republicans in the Senate are poised to acquit Donald Trump without even truly putting him on trial. They have allowed no new witnesses and no new evidence. And why would they? If they know that their plan all along was to let him get away with his corruption and stonewalling, more evidence only reveals their treachery in sharper relief. So, once again, Trump not only survives his venality, he is emboldened by the lily livered cowards' fear of crossing him. This is the dawn of American authoritarianism, and Republicans are not only not trying to stop it, many are openly cheering it. The rest of us many of us, anyway are aghast, overcome and exhausted. There is a never ending stream of dishonesty, offense and hostility emanating from this administration, sometimes too much to properly track. It at times overwhelms people's capacity for outrage. And, in that deluge of grief and distress, many simply chose to disconnect. I cannot tell you how often I meet people intelligent, interested and interesting people who say that they have simply had to disengage from the news as an actual means of mental health and spiritual survival. This phenomenon of "news avoidance" has taken on an acute peculiarity in the age of Trump. A paper last year in SAGE Journals found that people were experiencing high levels of stress and emotionality when talking about political news now, and they "frequently develop mechanisms to cope with high levels of emotionality." A 2017 "Stress in America" survey by the American Psychological Association found: "More than half of Americans (57 percent) say the current political climate is a very or somewhat significant source of stress, and nearly half (49 percent) say the same about the outcome of the election." The A.P.A.'s former executive director for professional practice, Dr. Katherine C. Nordal, has advised people, "If the 24 hour news cycle is causing you stress, limit your media consumption." She continued: "Read enough to stay informed but then plan activities that give you a regular break from the issues and the stress they might cause. And remember to take care of yourself and pay attention to other areas of your life." That is precisely what many people are doing: turning away from Trump, to the degree they can, and pouring their passions into pet projects, things they can actually control, things close to them where they feel they can make more of a difference. But, even as such, Trump is still somewhat inescapable. He has seized on America's obsessions. He has bored his way into our brains. Even when you are not obsessively consuming news about him, he is still omnipresent. Trump has arrived at a moment of supreme voyeurism and compulsive fame whoring. He has stepped into our flaws and stretched open our shame. He is a genuine danger, but also a perfect object for political mania. Still for some people, being checked out means they consume less of the poison, and that is the only way they feel they can survive. I struggle with how to evaluate these people. In a way, I completely understand. Sometimes I, too, take a day or a weekend away from the insanity to preserve my own peace. But is a sustained disconnect irresponsible and a demerit on one's political citizenship? Does disconnection represent a drift toward cynicism, self defeat and apathy? I don't think it has to be, but I worry that on some level it is inevitable. I see two main groups of people who want Trump gone: the exhausted and the excited. The exhausted just need this nightmare to draw to a close. The excited have a replacement candidate about whom they are passionate. The former, I believe. lean more on the electability argument, and the latter promote the more transformative candidate. Both groups can be highly motivated to vote, but I will concede that it is a much better feeling to vote for someone rather than against someone. The exhausted contingent simply lacks the spark of excitement. Outrage, while essential, isn't by itself sufficient. So, I say to the people who have tuned out: I get it. Take some time. But, re engagement is essential. The resistance is not dead. It's not even flagging. I know that it can be dispiriting that Trump has done so much but suffered so little for it. But, this is your season of action and influence. On Monday the electoral stretch kicks off with the Iowa caucuses. America has a choice to make, and you will be part of the choosing. Get excited! Manufacture enthusiasm if you must. Democrats have options. Yes, they each have hurdles and negatives, but there are also some striking positives. But none of this will matter if, in November, Trump's opponent isn't pushed over the top with overwhelming electoral energy. 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 and Twitter ( NYTopinion), and Instagram.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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In the predigital days, advertising agencies were ruled by swaggering creative directors who gorged on lavish client contracts and sometimes created campaigns that set the cultural agenda and captivated the public. Nearly every piece of that equation has changed. Agencies are better informed than ever before about consumers, having amassed huge stores of their data. But many of those consumers, especially the affluent young people prized by advertisers, hate ads so much that they are paying to avoid them. At the same time, companies that hire ad agencies are demanding more from marketing campaigns while paying less for them. As a result, the advertising industry faces an "existential need for change," according to a blunt report published on Monday by the research firm Forrester. Now the agencies must "disassemble what remains of their outmoded model" or risk "falling further into irrelevance," the report concludes. "It's harder to reach audiences, the cost of marketing is going up, the number of channels has exponentially proliferated and the cost to cover all of those channels has proliferated," Jay Pattisall, the lead author of the report, said in an interview. "It's a continual pressure for marketers we're no longer just creating advertising campaigns three or four times a year and running them across a few networks and print." As advertisers bombard consumers across platforms like Twitch, Facebook, television, billboards and more, consumers are trying to get away, signing up for ad blockers and subscription services. "People hate advertising," said Joanna Coles, the former chief content officer of Hearst Magazines, during a session at the Advertising Week conference last month in New York. "And it's all advertisers' fault." Seated next to her, nodding in agreement, was Marc Pritchard, the chief brand officer at Procter Gamble, one of the largest advertisers in the world. Ads, he said, are often irrelevant and sometimes "just silly, ridiculous or stupid." "We tried to change the advertising ecosystem by doing more ads, and all that did was create more noise," he said. The industry, over all, is also struggling to adapt as Google and Facebook reshape ad delivery and Netflix stokes appetites for ad free entertainment, according to a separate report also released on Monday by GroupM, the media buying arm of the ad giant WPP. The result is "dangerous days for advertisers," according to the report. "With shifts in viewing habits, commercial impressions in the most viewable, highest attention media are in free fall across the world," researchers wrote. "The problem is universal, and if the viewing behavior of younger audiences is a harbinger, things are not going to get better." Some start ups have begun rewarding or compensating consumers to look at ads. But to effectively reach viewers, advertisers must also "incorporate data driven, tech fueled approaches and platforms into the creative process and tool kit," according to the Forrester report. Last year, WPP merged Young Rubicam, a creative agency cited in "Mad Men," with its digital ad business VML. Soon after, WPP combined J. Walter Thompson, which was founded in the 1800s, with the digital agency Wunderman. The consolidation will bolster agencies as clients scale back their budgets, according to the Forrester report. Steven Moy, the chief executive of the Barbarian agency, said that multiyear contracts had shortened, with budgets tightening and performance metrics becoming more stringent. "I haven't seen a lot of multimillion dollar, blue sky, five year projects happening it's more like, 'can you deliver something in six months?'" he said. Global spending is expected to grow at slower rates this year and next year compared with 2018, weighed down by signs of a weakening economy and rising geopolitical tensions, according to data released Thursday from the WARC research group. For the first time ever next year, Facebook, Google, YouTube and other online platforms are expected to soak up the majority of advertising dollars, according to WARC. Advertising giants are facing competition for clients from consulting companies such as Deloitte and Accenture, while independent agencies such as Wieden Kennedy New York have beaten out legacy advertising companies for major accounts such as McDonald's.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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THIS IS REALITY Jason Abrams, far left, with the football player Vernon Davis, the interior decorator Anton Barns, and Lisa Cordero and Kristen Cook, both real estate agents, visiting a property on "Scoring the Deal." PROFESSIONAL athletes who have just signed seven and eight figure contracts can, virtually overnight, become enthusiastic investors in high end real estate. But their eyes are often bigger than their wallets, and their shopping sprees to pick up properties often get them into financial trouble, particularly after their playing days are over. In 2009, Sports Illustrated estimated that 78 percent of N.F.L. players go bankrupt or face serious financial stress within two years of hanging up their spikes. Some 60 percent of N.B.A. players go broke within five years, the magazine found. Jason Abrams, a real estate broker who lives in Birmingham, Mich., said he had seen a lot of financial heartache over the past nine years of selling and renting homes to sports stars. One former player with the Dallas Cowboys told him six months ago that he owned 26 homes, some of which had gone into foreclosure. So Mr. Abrams has added a goal for his company, the Abrams Team, which is part of the Keller Williams national realty firm: to reduce the number of bankruptcies among current and former professional athletes. He tells the athletes that they need to come out of college "thinking about one thing: 'How am I going to be a star in this man's league?' You have to have razor focus." To that end, the agent insists that all athletes he works with rent, not buy, in their first year in the league, whether they are the first pick in the draft or an undrafted free agent. None Week 11 Takeaways: Here is what we learned this week. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Jets Lose Again: Falling to the Miami Dolphins, the Jets receiver Elijah Moore offered consolation. What Will the Giants Do With Daniel Jones? The team must evaluate the quarterback ahead of a contract decision. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. Mr. Abrams, a 33 year old college dropout, has even turned his man on a mission message into a reality TV show. He is focused on being the "Jerry Maguire of real estate," as he says on the show, "Scoring the Deal," which had its debut this month on HGTV. A camera crew follows him around the country as he helps athletes buy, sell and rent homes. The show offers a peek at the fast paced world of sports star real estate, in which athletes are often pressed for time to shop for a new home after being drafted or traded. Mr. Abrams is portrayed as working in 48 hour cycles with one client, and he sometimes jets between cities where he is working deals during the same half hour episode. Is Mr. Abrams really a do gooder? Or is this just clever self promotion? After watching two episodes, despite Mr. Abrams's stated goal of warning athletes about real estate pitfalls, I didn't see a lot of education going on. Viewers looking for the sort of alpha male posturing that occurs between the brokers Fredrik Eklund and Ryan Serhant on Bravo's "Million Dollar Listing New York" might want to change the channel. Mr. Abrams said he had sold HGTV his idea for the show because the network hadn't required it to be "drama based." He said there was no "baby mama drama," nor were there manipulated scenes, as some critics have suggested of "MDLNY." "I wanted to make a show that was true to what we do," he said. Without the catfights, what passes for tension on the show? Well, there's the appalling lack of three bedroom apartments to rent in New Orleans for under 5,000 a month for Greivis Vasquez, a 26 year old basketball player with the Hornets, as depicted in an episode on Tuesday. Or the fact that Mr. Abrams said he hadn't slept in his own bed in Michigan for five weeks. In another episode, Mr. Abrams frets over whether Nicole June, the wife of the former football player Cato June, will approve any of the three places he has selected in Manhattan. (The family wants an apartment in the city so Mr. June can be closer to a Broadway play he has invested in.) While riding in a limousine at episode's end, she gives Mr. Abrams the green light to try to negotiate a SoHo loft down to their budget range of 5 million to 10 million, from 13.7 million. While reality shows can often inspire eye rolling guffaws about just how "real" they are, Mr. Abrams, with his heavy Michigan accent and unbuttoned appearance, comes off as a down to earth guy who understands how to cater to the athletes and their needs. And athletes do have particular needs. Basketball and football players often don't fit into conventional showers or bathtubs and have to worry about low ceilings. They don't have the time or the inclination, in most cases, to do major decorating, especially when they are still single. They want agents to walk their dogs and be available 24/7 to let people in for visits, said Andrew Azoulay, a broker at Town Residential in New York. Their first home is all about "flash," Mr. Abrams said, and it might include black leather wallpaper or exotic dancing poles. Or a master bed whose headboard doubles as a fish tank, like the one Clinton Portis, the former Washington Redskins running back, installed (at a cost of more than 100,000) after he bought his home in McLean, Va., in 2004. When it came time to sell in 2011, Mr. Portis had to leave it for the next owner; the cost to move it was "confiscatory," Mr. Abrams said. While prices vary from city to city, Mr. Abrams has found that most name brand athletes are looking for homes between 5 million and 15 million; the vast majority of athletes, of course, live in homes that cost less than 5 million, he said. There are outsize exceptions. The Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez was selling his nine bedroom home in Miami Beach for 38 million, until he pulled it off the market this week for undisclosed reasons. The former baseball player Barry Bonds has listed his seven bedroom home in Beverly Hills for 25 million. And top athletes have paid top dollar for rentals. Before buying a Manhattan pad at the Rushmore at 80 Riverside Boulevard, Mr. Rodriguez rented at 15 Central Park West for 30,000 a month. Before looking to buy in Miami, Ray Allen, a basketball player for the Heat, rented a 10 bedroom house for 50,000 a month, according to Mayi de la Vega, the chief executive of ONE Sotheby's. Renting a furnished apartment is the best way for a professional athlete to focus on earning that first contract, Mr. Abrams insists. "The only thing you should be bringing is your suitcase," he said. "We are not buying beds, we are not buying paintings, and we really shouldn't be buying jewelry. What we should be buying is time: time to review the playbook, time to start working out, time to find a chef in the area that is going to cook healthy for you, time to find a trainer that will work with you on the weekends."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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About a decade ago, the veteran choreographer Deborah Hay was watching a video of her 2004 dance "The Match," and it seemed to her like a play. So she wrote a description of what her dancers had done in the form of a script and invited the Austin based theater collective Rude Mechs to use it as stage directions for a new work. That work, "Match Play," had a well received run in Austin in 2005, but its New York debut came only on Wednesday, at New York Live Arts. In the interim, one of the characters has acquired the poignancy of obsolescence. He is an answering machine. The other principal characters are human, four housemates. (There's also a cameo by their neighbor, a talking cow.) But the sentient answering machine is crucial. In an offstage voice somewhere between that of the HAL robot from "2001: A Space Odyssey" and the faceless neighbor on "Home Improvement," he is a guru who periodically leads the audience in perception exercises. In this way, he is a clever stand in for Ms. Hay, whose instructions run from the simplest of movement directions to impossible sounding suggestions and unanswerable questions, which straddle the line between profound and absurd. The Rude Mechs players have the absurdity down. While following Ms. Hay's movement directions, which she at one point describes as "deliberately inconsequential" and which are included for reference in the program, they could be parodying avant garde dance. But although they make peculiar noises as instructed by Ms. Hay, and tease the audience with a mute opening monologue (forcing us to guess at meaning without the help of verbal language), they also talk, drawing on text by Kirk Lynn and from the notebooks that the experimental playwright Richard Foreman offers free for the taking online.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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Now more than ever, children's films lean heavily on pop music, whether in the form of original numbers or highly sweetened updates of well known songs. "Frozen" and "Trolls" have resulted in albums that linger near the top of the charts and the occasional song "Let It Go," "Can't Stop the Feeling!" that oozes out from the world of children out into the collective popular consciousness. But children are omnivores now, with access to a whole universe of music on streaming services, and hear songs on YouTube, via gaming systems, through TikTok and so much more. They have ample opportunity to broaden their taste at a young age. On this week's Popcast, a conversation with some of the members of The New York Times culture desk who have young children about the role music plays in their homes, what kinds of music appeal to their children, and what unexpected sounds their kids have taken to playing on repeat.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Stephanie Aubert, a journalist in Marseille, with a mosaic she captured in the game Flash Invaders. Of its 151,000 plus players, she is ranked 102. Flash Invaders, a free phone game popularized in France, seems today like a perfect lockdown pastime: The objective is to walk around one's city and snap photos of street art. It's a distinctly outdoor activity and one with a devoted coterie of players whose interactions are largely limited to the virtual realm. But when lockdowns first began early this year, its developers weren't so sure. It wasn't clear yet how the coronavirus could be spread, and encouraging people to explore their surroundings seemed like a bad idea in the midst of widespread lockdowns. "Should we take it down?" Adrien Chey, a software developer at the company, recalled wondering in March. The Flash Invaders team kept the app live but added a stay at home reminder. "Doctors, delivery workers, some people had to keep working, and to prevent them from playing seemed cruel," Mr. Chey reasoned. "They should be able to have this little moment, the small pleasure of playing the game." Indeed, the game has been a solace for its players, turning solitary walks into treasure hunts. To win points, players collect images of mosaics by the anonymous French artist known as Invader that are installed in Paris and cities around the world. The record for most artworks collected in a single day was set in late October, just before the recent lockdown in France. Iris de la Rochefordiere, 21, a psychology student in Paris, downloaded the app in September. Though she was initially skeptical, she said, "it's really helped me be in the present moment." Rather than take the metro, she now walks to her internship in the 13th Arrondissement to collect new mosaics, "zigzagging at random" for almost an hour each way. "It's not about your psychomotor skills or your speed like in an arcade game," she said. "It's just: Are you observant?" "It's so satisfying when I take a picture and hear the little sound," Ms. de la Rochefordiere said. There are over 1,000 mosaics in Paris, where the first pixelated alien invaded the Bastille neighborhood in 1996. The retro tiles have long rewarded attentive Parisians with interludes of color in the otherwise muted city, mostly on street corners but also under bridges and on out of the way curbs. When the phone game was introduced by the artist in 2014, that once private satisfaction became a communal sport. For every casual flaneur like Ms. de la Rochefordiere, there is a hunter. "I spend so much time on Google Street View that once I arrive, I have the impression that I've already been there," said Stephanie Aubert, 50, a journalist in Marseille who is ranked 102 out of more than 151,000 players. The several thousand mosaics by Invader beyond Paris are a boon for players who travel often and have a knack for adventure. Completists must snorkel for underwater Invader installations in Mexico and attend live events like a taping of "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," where the artist left a mosaic in 2015. The game has brought fans together some closer than others. Denis Gettliffe Perez, 50, and Melanie Perez Gettliffe, 48, met in 2017 at a Pink Panther mosaic in the 11th Arrondissement. "We weren't looking for love and Invader offered it to us," said Ms. Perez Gettliffe. (They married in December 2018.) During the pandemic, new mosaics have popped up. Invader visited Marseille in August, giving locals dozens of new octopi and other Mediterranean themed mosaics to collect. Ms. Aubert thought the invasion was a little cliched all those sun soaked bottles of pastis but was impressed that the artist made it beyond the Vieux Port and into the working class districts in the north. "It was great to see his choices in a city that I know so well," she said, noting that in other places, like Djerba or Hong Kong, his artworks double as her travel guide. "I'm a pretty bad tourist actually, but this gives me a purpose." The app doesn't generate any revenue, whether from ads or the sale of its users's geolocation data. That approach sets Flash Invaders apart from games like Pokemon Go and Landlord, which generate revenue when users visit certain sites or make in app purchases. Players can also keep their identity private. "It's important to us that you can be anonymous," Mr. Chey said, like the artist himself.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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It's been a week of loss in music, as two bold composers died: Matt Marks (at just 38) and Glenn Branca (at 69, still too young). Here's Mr. Mark's arrangement of the Beatles' "Revolution 9," instantly memorable. And Seth Colter Walls guided us through 10 highlights of Mr. Branca's career, spent in the blurry space between the experimental pop and contemporary classical worlds. We also celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of the dramatic soprano Birgit Nilsson, one of the wonders of opera history. (I had a picture of her up on my wall as a teenager!) And another anniversary: 25 years ago, Yanni (no, not Yanny) played the Acropolis and changed the course of PBS pledge drives forever. I went to Philadelphia to speak with the great man and watch him in concert. The mustache is back. (And read the rest of our classical music coverage here.) ZACHARY WOOLFE The first time I heard Puccini's "Turandot" at the Metropolitan Opera I was in high school. Birgit Nilsson sang the title role. Talk about an introduction. The closest I ever got to her in performance, though, was a recital of songs and arias in the late 1970s at Symphony Hall in Boston. I had a free student ticket, a terrific seat practically in the center of the orchestra section. I remember the sensation of hearing Nilsson's enormous voice filling the space so effortlessly: Her sound was never forced, just gleaming and full. Sometimes, right before beginning a phrase, Nilsson would take a deep breath and I could see her ample chest expanding as she inhaled. I'd grab the arms of my seat knowing I was about to be gloriously inundated. For her final encore that night, she sang "I Could Have Danced All Night" from "My Fair Lady." Having fun, Nilsson actually took a couple of dancing turns as she sang. This song had long been one of her favorite encores. She sang it during a gala 1960 performance of "Die Fledermaus" with Herbert von Karajan leading the Vienna Philharmonic, when she was one of a cavalcade of opera stars who showed up and performed during the party scene. Catch that final high C. ANTHONY TOMMASINI Young hatchlings form strong attachments to the first objects they see outside their shells. Ever since I was a young Wagnerite, a similar kind of imprinting has bonded me to Birgit Nilsson: She was not only my first Brunnhilde; to me, she will always be Brunnhilde. Her performance overwhelms me not least those seemingly easy, pure high notes, which were so powerful that she had to take three steps back from the recording microphone each time she unleashed one. I find her almost unbearably moving in the final Immolation Scene, when she calls for her trusty horse, Grane, to ride onto Siegfried's funeral pyre in an act of world redeeming sacrifice. It's a short phrase "Grane, mein Ross" but she packs it with affection, love, strength and nobility. I grew to treasure it even more when I learned that John Culshaw, the visionary producer who made the recording as part of the first ever studio "Ring" cycle, had pranked Ms. Nilsson at the recording session, sending a real, live horse to answer her call. "It was apparently totally undisturbed by my fortissimo singing and the orchestral flares depicting the downfall of Valhalla," she later wrote. "The horse seemed to find al this quite normal. No doubt a Wagner fan." MICHAEL COOPER Sometimes, when puzzling over the question of why opera isn't more popular, I ruefully remind myself of this scene from Strauss's "Elektra." I was a kid when it was broadcast on public television, and I remember walking into the room where my father was watching it and running out. To my young ears, Elektra's anguish over her murdered father sounded discordant, alien, ugly. But the four notes of Ms. Nilsson's powerful "A ga mem non" stayed with me, a twisted earworm. Of course, "Elektra" later became one of my favorite operas, and an earlier recording of it by Ms. Nilsson became one of my desert island discs. It's a useful reminder that it can take more than a single helping to develop a taste for some of the best things in life coffee, wine and opera come to mind. Now if we could just get more people to try that second helping. MICHAEL COOPER Her wounded rage in the first act is painful. Her love scenes are hypnotic. And here, in the ecstatic, climactic scene of love, death and transfiguration that ends Wagner's "Tristan und Isolde," Ms. Nilsson delivers. One moment her voice swells like the sea; the next it is as delicate as sheer silk. This 1966 recording of "Tristan und Isolde," made live at the Bayreuth Festival with a top notch cast under the baton of Karl Bohm, is the one I turn to most. Ms. Nilsson generally preferred live recordings to studio recordings "what they lose in technical perfection they gain in vitality and spontaneity," she wrote and she called Bohm her favorite of the 33 conductors for whom she sang Isolde. You can hear it in every scene. Various online librettos translate her final words, "hochste Lust," as "highest bliss," "highest desire" and "utmost rapture." But listening to her voice, the meaning is clear even without a German English dictionary. MICHAEL COOPER I nearly missed Heartbeat Opera's "Fidelio" reorchestrated, reduced and reimagined for the era of Black Lives Matter and I'm so glad I didn't. The production, staged smartly in a subterranean theater at the Baruch Performing Arts Center that already had the look of a concrete correctional facility, deftly navigated the tricky art of adaptation with new English language dialogue (alongside Beethoven's arias in the original German) that felt urgent and powerful without pontificating. Even the moment that most risked heavy handedness, the Prisoners' Chorus performed by real American prison choirs on video, turned out to be one of the most poignant. Have a listen, though be warned: The scene left me searching for tissues. JOSHUA BARONE Read about how Heartbeat Opera adapted "Fidelio" for the era of Black Lives Matter. David Lang's "the day" (2017) was a gut punch near the end of this year's Bang on a Can Marathon, which otherwise felt strangely tiresome relocated to the N.Y.U. Skirball Center's proscenium theater. The Lang piece, a prequel of sorts to his 9/11 minded "world to come" (2003), featured the cellist Maya Beiser, with spoken text delivered by Kate Valk. In introducing "the day," Mr. Lang said he wanted to imagine "who people are, what they think about" so he fashioned a libretto from writing down what he saw when he Googled "I remember the day that I." The result, in just 30 minutes, is nothing short of life itself: by turns hopeful, funny, surprising and tragic. Many of the lines find profundity in the quotidian, like "I stood next to him." Some are revelatory: "I decided that the pain I was causing myself was truly optional." JOSHUA BARONE
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Attempts to move away from airbrushing in advertising have ebbed and flowed over the last decade, but at a time when even Barbie now comes in petite, tall and curvy, more retailers are turning to authentic looking women to market their products. One of them is Aerie, the intimate apparel brand owned by American Eagle Outfitters, which features women of varying body types in its marketing campaigns to promote a positive body image. To underscore the point, the company will begin a social media campaign this week to support the National Eating Disorders Association. This is the second year Aerie has devised ads to highlight the association's eating disorders week. The current ads, featuring an average size model, are aimed at the brand's target customers women between the ages of 15 and 25 and are intended to heighten awareness of the perils of bulimia and other eating disorders. The "Strong, Beautiful, Me" campaign, which appears on Instagram and other social media, is not the only instance of a company's trying to promote a positive body image among women. David's Bridal, one of the country's largest wedding gown retailers, cast Mercy Watson, a size 14 model its average customer size in its spring bridal season ad campaign. Christian Louboutin, famous for its red soled shoes, recently hired a plus size model for the first time in its two decade history, to be the face of a social media campaign for a new lipstick. This year, for the first time, Sports Illustrated put a plus size model, Ashley Graham, on the cover of its annual swimsuit issue. The 28 year old Ms. Graham appeared earlier in a Lane Bryant commercial advertising its lingerie for larger women. Yet those instances remain the exception, more than a decade after Dove, the beauty products company owned by Unilever, announced that it was upending conventional female advertising images with its "real beauty" campaign. In that campaign, Dove presented six underwear clad women with different body types, to stand for women as they really are rather than as the perfectly proportioned specimens that many people might like them to be. Even as Dove promoted its effort to showcase everyday women, it was criticized because its ads for another brand, Axe, showed beautiful, slender women swooning over men who used the line's toiletries. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Other companies, including Nike and H M, also introduced advertising in the early and mid 2000s with women who did not look like stereotypical models. But after that splash of realism, subsequent years saw only a smattering of the same. "YouTube, selfies and everyone being a media creator are helping to change what we see," said Michelle R. Nelson, a professor of advertising at The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. "At the same time, we want to see people who are like us, but maybe the idealized version of ourselves." Such divided views show up in market research. In a 2008 study, researchers at Villanova University and the College of New Jersey found that glamorized ads made young women feel more negative about their sexual attractiveness, weight and physical condition. Even so, study participants said they liked the ads and were more likely to buy apparel featured in those ads than items shown in ads with typically proportioned women. Research from the University of Sussex in England, published in 2004 in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, found that ultra thin models made women feel worse about how they looked, but that women were not more likely to buy products from companies whose ads featured those models. Aerie adopted the natural body approach in 2014, with its AerieReal ads that featured models of various sizes, shapes and skin colors, and did not airbrush beauty marks, scars or tattoos. Aerie, with sales of about 340 million in 2015, is vying with the lingerie giant Victoria's Secret for a bigger share of the lucrative market in sleepwear, swimwear and underwear. The line, which is sold in American Eagle Outfitters and stand alone stores and on its e commerce site, is relying on its healthy, positive role model approach to attract young women. "Real and unretouched models are the core of our brand DNA," said Jennifer M. Foyle, Aerie's global brand president, who said traffic is up as customers embrace the idea of women models whose appearance is not altered. The "Strong, Beautiful, Me" campaign will donate all proceeds from the sales of a limited edition T shirt, available only online, to education about and treatment for eating disorders. Customers who donate to the cause in Aerie stores will be given a bracelet. The ads feature the British born model Iskra Lawrence, 25, a spokeswoman for the eating disorders association, which organizes more than 65 walks annually to increase awareness and raise funds for education programs. "As a curvy woman, I know young women are constantly being told that they're not good enough," Ms. Lawrence said, "but we're trying to change that mind set."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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Bret Stephens: Gail, I hope you had a fun and happy Fourth of July weekend. Did you spend any of it watching reruns of Donald Trump's Mount Rushmore speech? Gail Collins: Well, Bret, I know you have a higher opinion of Thomas Jefferson than I do. But I believe we can agree that Trump's speech would have caused Jefferson to put his great stone head under a blanket and cry. Bret: Actually, I thought it was a speech very much in the Jeffersonian tradition, in terms of the distance between the political ideals it expressed and the personal behavior of the man expressing them. It's almost hilarious to hear the guy who belittles and demeans anyone who disagrees with him object to leftists "demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees." Bret: That said, I thought it was a canny political speech that Democrats dismiss at their peril; it reminded me of the way Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign pegged Walter Mondale's followers as the "blame America first" crowd. The Democrats' Achilles heel in this election is a far left fringe that may be relatively small but is highly visible. And Americans aren't going to get behind anyone who wants to remove George Washington's statues along with Jefferson Davis's; or to rewrite U.S. history as a story of unbending oppression as opposed to gradually and imperfectly unfolding liberty; or to defund, rather than to reform, the police. My sense is that Joe Biden will need to put some more visible daylight between his campaign and that side of the left, even if it risks alienating a part of his base. Gail: Biden's made it very clear he's opposed to improvisational statue toppling what he refers to as "grabbing Jefferson off his chair." Bret: I can happily live with four years of bad diction and fumbled phrases. In the great contest between the evil buffoonery and the dottering mediocrity, the choice for me is easy. Gail: The event that I think will have huge reverberations in November is Trump's decision to push his court case against Obamacare. The country is obsessed with coronavirus, and the White House is fighting to get rid of health insurance protections for people with pre existing conditions. Bret: It's political malpractice. I was opposed to Obamacare in 2009 and wanted the Supreme Court to repeal it in 2012. But health care systems, however imperfect, take on a life of their own. Change should always be incremental, and it should never harm people who are directly in harm's way. Which, of course, is where so many people are today. Gail: Wow, Trump continues to bring us together. He might be dividing the country but he's uniting the columnists. Bret: Just promise we'll still be friends when he's gone. Regarding the Obamacare suit: I don't see the Supremes deciding to dismantle it. Chief Justice Roberts is settling nicely into the Anthony Kennedy role as the Court's swing vote. And he seems especially reluctant to turn the Court into an agent of sweeping social change, which explains his vote in the Louisiana abortion case. I think that's the essence of thoughtful conservative jurisprudence, centered around respect for precedent and incrementalism. The other big question hanging over us is about the continued spread, especially in the South and West, of coronavirus cases. Can the country afford to shut down again? Or is the right question whether it can afford not to shut down? Gail: Can you imagine running a restaurant in New York or New Jersey, waiting out the shutdown, and then discovering that you're not going to be able to reopen because places like Arizona and Texas tried to avoid suffering, and then hosted a coronavirus comeback? Bret: I wonder about that. Coronavirus rates are also rising steeply in California, which had a lockdown about as severe as New York's. And fatality rates are so far holding steady or rising only slightly even in states like Texas and Florida that have seen infection rates soar over the last month. Gail: Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio have been hearing the restaurants' howls of pain for months now, and the last thing they wanted to do was postpone the next stage of reopenings. I give them a lot of credit for making the hard choice. Of course once again, the problem is at the top, where the president is claiming that 99 percent of coronavirus cases are "totally harmless." Life with Trump keeps reminding me of that scene in "Peter Pan" where Tinker Bell is dying and the audience revives her by clapping to prove they all believe in fairies. Worried about a pandemic? Just keep saying everything's fine and magic will happen. About the restaurants: What's your feeling about reopenings? Bret: I'm all for doing everything possible to facilitate outdoor dining, at least while it's warm and sunny. If it means shutting off most of Greenwich Village to traffic, I'm for it. My main belief is that we shouldn't simply impose one size fits all solutions. Instead of working toward this or that date when all restaurants can reopen at the same time, why can't restaurants be asked to meet certain safety criteria for indoor or outdoor dining? Gail: That's sort of what's happening. The indoor restaurants have to meet certain spacing requirements between tables, and of course the staff wear masks. But I know you think people like Cuomo are overdoing it. Bret: Cuomo's made bigger mistakes than that, though it's too easy to fault someone, in hindsight, for exercising an abundance of caution. Still, until there's an effective vaccine, we're not going to have a perfect solution. But we can have 100,000 partial solutions, each involving some sensible, localized accommodation between need and risk. Colleges can adopt hybrid solutions for classroom instruction, mixing in class and virtual learning. Cities can broker accommodations to lower rents for small businesses while they limit the number of customers. Airlines can conduct 15 minute Covid spit tests, helping to ease travelers' minds. And all these arrangements can be subject to common sense changes as conditions improve or deteriorate. Tangentially related: Do you miss going into the office? Gail: Wow, I really do. Columnists have always been able to work anywhere, but I really treasured my days in the office. Just doesn't feel as much like writing for a newspaper when the only other inhabitant of my work space is a dog. Bret: You'll be happy to know that I'm getting a dog. He'll be a useful sounding board for my more rabidly conservative columns.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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Frieze New York is a commitment. Now in its sixth year, with more than 200 galleries showing Modern and contemporary art from 30 countries, this fair is like a small city set up in a lavishly sculptural tent on Randalls Island. Yet its organizers have realized that visitors generally come for only one day. So this year Frieze is shorter, opening to the public on Friday and running through Sunday. Where Frieze has expanded is in its attention to 20th century art and in its deeper coverage of Latin American art, especially from Brazil. On the subject of Latino and Latin American art in the giant fall exhibition "Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA," at the Getty Museum and other institutions across Los Angeles, Frieze has organized a symposium with the Getty and the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. Frieze also feels more politically reflective this year: Claudia Rankine, a poet who examined race in the book "Citizen: An American Lyric," is among the speakers in the Frieze Talks series (Sunday at 11:30 a.m.), and an initiative to help save the National Endowment for the Arts has been mounted. Emerging art action is still prevalent in two sections: "Frame," which features galleries founded after 2009, and "Projects," which focuses on special installations. Here are some highlights. BRUCE SILVERSTEIN GALLERY In the "Spotlight" section, showcasing a single artist in each booth, Bruce Silverstein is exhibiting three spectacular canvases from the 1970s by Alfred Leslie, a painter who started off as an Abstract Expressionist and later turned to figurative realism. "Americans, Youngstown, Ohio" (1977 78) is three conjoined canvases with figures dressed in everyday clothes and lit from below, while "A Death in the Family" (1976) features a corpse, but also a plate of eggs with a cigarette butt. Odes to banal America, the paintings feel like Caravaggio or Georges de La Tour for the '70s recession era. GALLERY YAMAKI FINE ART Also in the "Spotlight" section, Gallery Yamaki from Kobe, Japan, is showing works by the octogenarian artist Kimiyo Mishima, who is best known for her ceramic pieces. The booth includes a wonderful mesh trash can filled with replicas of ripped up cardboard boxes. Carefully painted with product logos and text, they are like fragmentary ceramic versions of Warhol's "Brillo Boxes." Also in the booth are several of Ms. Mishima's collage paintings from the 1960s, which include texts and images in both Japanese and English, creating a cross cultural, East West mash up. GALLERY ISABELLE VAN DEN EYNDE A Dubai gallerist, Isabelle van den Eynde, is showing the work of one of the leading Emirati artists, Hassan Sharif, who died last year at 65. Mr. Sharif was best known as a Conceptual artist, but his command of color is on full view in a large scale work made with pieces of painted cotton rope, titled simply "Colours" (2016). His playful approach to abstraction can be seen in the humble sculpture "Mask" (2014), with bits of rug rolled around white rope and mounted on the wall like a Richard Tuttle work. THE APPROACH Bill Lynch had a show at White Columns in New York in 2014, organized by the painter Verne Dawson, a classmate at Cooper Union in the 1970s. Mr. Lynch, a schizophrenic, died at 53 in 2013. Now his wonderful, curious paintings on wood panels are on view in the booth of the London gallery the Approach, coinciding with the release of a new book dedicated to his work. Landscapes and still lifes morph into abstraction. At all times, Mr. Lynch's paintings look breathless, effortless and artless. SILVIA CINTRA AND BOX 4 This booth from Rio de Janeiro has an impressive display of work by Amilcar de Castro, an artist involved with the Neo Concrete movement in Brazil in the 1950s. A wall of his small steel sculptures features pieces reminiscent of those by Brazilian artists like Lygia Clark or Lygia Pape, whose fantastic retrospective is now on view at the Met Breuer. Some of the other Brazilian booths to seek out are A Gentil Carioca; Fortes D'Aloia Gabriel; and Galeria Luisa Strina. JON RAFMAN An exhibition organized by Cecilia Alemani for the nonprofit "Projects" section of Frieze is Jon Rafman's "Dream Journal, May 2016 February 2017," an hourlong animated video loop screened inside a small theater with seats covered in resin, paint and other materials. "Dream Journal" may have started in Mr. Rafman's mind, but it eventually merged with internet subcultures. The overlap with pornography is obvious, both in the way it was traditionally viewed (24/7 in small, seedy theaters) and because digital culture simultaneously expands and exposes the limits of human fantasy, with computer generated fetishes proliferating in the form of avatars and wildly hybrid creatures. CANADA Marc Hundley's apartment in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, is about the same size as his gallery's space at Frieze this year, so he more or less swapped them. He outfitted the booth with some of the custom furniture with which he accompanies shows of his paintings and prints; his friends' art notably a striking abstract painting from Matt Connors, and two handsome aluminum wedges from Noam Rappaport and several pieces borrowed for the occasion, including a dewy 1947 Grandma Moses painting, "A May Morning." It's a model home at once utopian and sinister filled with inspiring art but open on two sides to all comers. XAVIER HUFKENS The most Instagram worthy feature of the large group exhibition in the booth of the Brussels based gallerist Xavier Hufkens is a series of gothically creepy mixed media heads by the sculptor David Altmejd. The Frankenstein like chaos of colors and textures would be unsettling enough, but Mr. Altmejd ups the grotesqueness by severely disfiguring the pieces, in two cases cutting crystal lined holes right through their features. An Abraham Lincoln with giant golden ears and half his face missing seems particularly pointed. GROSVENOR GALLERY This gallery in London anchors an exhibition of fine drawings by the South African artist Dumile Feni, who was born in Cape Province in 1939, emigrated to London and died in New York in 1991, with an eight foot high charcoal called "Jazz Musicians, April December 1968." He drew sinuous, polished figures that might bring to mind the work of Egon Schiele if they weren't so smooth, and if he didn't model them with crosshatching so glittering and tight that it almost resembles fabric. His three musicians, all naked, look like buoyant dolls wrapped in thread. P420 GALLERY This gallery from Bologna, Italy, devotes its booth entirely to Irma Blank's gorgeous "Eigenschriften" (or "Self Writings") series, made between 1968 and 1973 in Siracusa, Sicily, where this German born artist moved in the 1950s. Each drawing is made up of a larger or smaller rectangular block of squiggly ink or pastel lines, which mimic cursive writing. Ms. Blank came up with an array of different squiggles, and within each drawing, minor variations build into an entrancing, wavelike effect.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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In celebration of the truant teen, whose advice "If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it" spun his friends through Chicago, travelers can re create some of the famous scenes from the film this month with a series of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" themed events and hotel packages in and around the city. Ferris Fest, scheduled for May 20 to May 22, is an immersive experience highlighting his epic day, said David Blanchard, whose company, Filmed Here, is organizing the weekend. A portion of the proceeds will go to two national anti bullying organizations in a nod to the films of the director John Hughes, which shared a backdrop of teen bullying and high school issues, Mr. Blanchard said. " 'Ferris Bueller' is timeless," he said. "It's really about breaking free from that 9 to 5 grind and really appreciating life and taking an adventure, whatever that might be." The Hughes family has endorsed the event, Mr. Blanchard said, and family members, along with some of the cast among them Cindy Pickett (who played Katie Bueller), Lyman Ward (Tom Bueller), Edie McClurg (Grace) and Jonathan Schmock (the maitre d' of Chez Quiz) will attend two screenings ( 25) at the Gorton Community Center in Lake Forest, Ill. Other events include an opening night '80s high school theme dance party with cast meet and greets ( 50) in Mr. Hughes's hometown, Northbrook, Ill., including a chance to be photographed with a replica of the Ferrari Spyder from the film, along with Larry "Flash" Jenkins, who played its errant garage attendant ( 100). Two days of filming location bus tours (from 175) cap the event.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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FOUR years ago, Juli Frawley's twin daughters went off to separate colleges. It was their first time apart, and they struggled. Shortly into the first semester, one started to suffer from anxiety attacks and began drinking and taking drugs to deal with them. She first used marijuana, her mother said. But midway through the year, this daughter, who had been in church groups while growing up outside of Boston, began taking hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD several times a week. Her parents knew something was going on, but chalked it up to her partying like many freshmen. Then that spring, she took so much LSD at a concert she ended up being admitted to the psychiatric ward at the University of Miami Hospital. That began a two year odyssey of residential and outpatient therapy for their daughter. While she is now in recovery and is attending a different college, it was a difficult, uncertain and expensive time for her family. "She's healthy, strong and in a good place," Mrs. Frawley said. "It was a long and twisted journey." And it was one, Mrs. Frawley estimated, that cost her family over 200,000 in less than two years. Treatment for drug and alcohol addictions is incredibly expensive, often rising to tens of thousands of dollars a month for residential treatment. And even people who have good insurance that will pay for such programs often face limits on how much that insurance will cover. Yet people like the Frawleys, who could afford treatment for their daughter, still face the issue of finding the right treatment. That is where a small group of people have stepped up as consultants to guide families through the many options for treatment. "I was able to call my friend and say, 'I need that consultant right now,'" Mrs. Frawley said. "It was just by luck that I happened to know someone who had used a consultant." And she credits that consultant with her daughter's success and for guiding her through the labyrinthine process of finding the right programs for both her daughter and, by extension, the family. Traditionally, referrals from a person's doctor or psychologist combined with word of mouth have been how families choose treatment programs. But consultants say they can provide a broader and more objective selection of options and, in some cases, even the names of specific clinicians. "Doing this research on your own can be a superscary process," said Mike Ferguson, founder of FBHC Advisors, in Santa Monica, Calif., who worked with the Frawleys. "You have a financial adviser. Why wouldn't you want someone who knows the field and can help you that way?" This help is not cheap, and it is on top of whatever the treatment center itself costs. Mr. Ferguson's fees are on the lower end, at about 10,000 a year. Bill Messinger, founder of Aureus, an addiction consultant group in Minneapolis, charges 5,000 to 10,000 to set up an initial plan of care and then 5,000 a month for close monitoring for six months or so after that. "Our model is early intervention," Mr. Messinger said. "We know pretty quickly when someone relapses. If you can catch someone in the first couple of weeks when they relapse, it's better than not knowing for six months." Sam Dresser, a principal at Clere Consulting, said his firm sought to work with the extended family for as much as two years to educate all of them on how to better handle the addiction or mental health needs of the family member. Like a lawyer, he charges an hourly rate 325 that typically adds up to 20,000 to 80,000 the first year. Debbie Connolly, whose son was in and out of treatment for six years before finally getting to a recovery state, said she spent more than 500,000 on his treatment. And there were several missteps along the way, including bringing him home from treatment too early against the advice of counselors. "In general, the recommendations were really great," she said of the consultants she used. "I didn't even know where to start. You have all those programs at your fingertips and then it's still a crapshoot." The consultants' argument is that even great treatment programs may not be the right fit for a particular person. Arden O'Connor, founder of the O'Connor Professional Group, which consults on an array of issues from addiction to eating disorders, said her firm focused on coordinating care and coaching families. But that, she said, can include helping select, from a list of hundreds, a center to treat an eating disorder to arranging round the clock monitoring of a hedge fund executive who doesn't want a relapse. "Sometimes it's very basic, and they just need to stop drinking," Ms. O'Connor said. "A lot of times, it's crisis management. We're helping the individuals with short and long term goals." Mr. Dresser said his process involved the whole family. He makes sure families know they're going to have to do work on their behavior, too. "When you tell people they're going to spend two days going to school with you and the other side of the phone says, 'I want you to grab my son and put him in treatment,' that's not our client," Mr. Dresser said. "We want to be part of a bigger solution for families. Plucking him out of the family and putting him into treatment is not where the field is these days." Likewise, Mr. Ferguson said it was important for families to set realistic goals for what they expect to accomplish. "Treatment is an investment, and you're due an outcome from that investment," he said. "But what is the expected outcome? Sobriety? A certain mental health outcome? It's tailoring a path with a family and really looking at it like an investment." But families need to be ready, too. Mr. Messinger said his strategy was to employ therapeutic leverage which means setting firm consequences for people who stray from recovery to alter someone's behavior. Not every family can stay the course. And these consultants, who are working on behalf of the entire family and not just the individual in treatment, are not always appreciated at some treatment centers. "A lot of case managers or standard health care services providers are very standoffish with anyone in the financial realm," said Jim Grubman, founder of FamilyWealth Consulting. "They see advisers as only acting in their own self interest. They defend confidentiality to an extreme. They don't understand the collaborative nature of how people work really well together at this high level of wealth and private banking." An additional problem for wealthy families is that the staff of some programs can treat wealthier people differently by being excessively deferential or critical, which can be bad for recovery. Consultants, he said, help find programs with better trained staff. "It makes a huge difference," he said. "Most people don't understand the wealthy and what their lives are really like. They're just dealing with their stereotypes." The consultants said they let families know they cannot always swoop in and make everything right. Ms. O'Connor said failure was part of this business, and she recalled a situation where a wealthy man would go to alcohol treatment but check himself out after a few days. "We tried numerous types of interventions," she said. "He never embraced recovery. He's still not living a life of purpose. He's still getting into crises."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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"Is it necessary for a mountaineer to be so serious when he chops wood?," the woman asks her stoic host while the soundtrack pounds with the drumbeat promise of thrills that never materialize. But if Petitjean's dialogue is problematic, its delivery is no less so: at times, the discord between a character's words and lip movements suggests that some line readings had to be dubbed. All of which leaves a lot of heavy lifting for the cinematographer, Thierry Arbogast, whose considerable talents go some way toward manufacturing a tension that the script lacks. The blinding white fluency of the snowmobile crash in the film's opening is an excellent example; but viewers are more likely to identify with the cop's solitary goldfish, gazing out at a world that's both familiar and incomprehensible. Not rated. In French and English, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 31 minutes.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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The Los Angeles Lakers lost their season to injuries and general ineptitude weeks ago, and all that remains for them now are a handful of games and a playoff free finish. It turns out there is still plenty of room for minor calamities along the way, which they proved at Madison Square Garden on Sunday afternoon. In a sleepy matinee devoid of long term consequences, the Lakers' 124 123 loss to the Knicks was, in some ways, a symbol for all that has gone wrong for them and for LeBron James in particular. Absent a bunch of injured players, the Lakers crumbled against the worst team in the league, and James, for all his ability, was more problem than solution. After hogging the ball for his team's final four possessions, James had a leaning runner one that could have put his team ahead blocked by the Knicks' Mario Hezonja in the waning seconds. For the Knicks, who have been bound for the N.B.A. draft lottery since training camp, it was a rare chance to celebrate. For the Lakers, who had seemingly hit rock bottom when they lost to the Phoenix Suns two weeks ago, it was another opportunity to rev up the backhoe and dig a little deeper. "We got real stagnant," said Lakers forward Kyle Kuzma, who was reduced to a spectator on the court late in the game as James tried to win it by himself. James's appearances at the Garden are usually big deals. He likes the lights, the stage, the grandeur, the history. But the postbrunch atmosphere for Sunday's game had all the buzz of a linoleum convention, an indictment of two lousy teams playing for nothing and an indication, perhaps, that James has lost some of his luster this season. He had his moments a dunk here, a no look pass there that had the crowd roaring with appreciation. James finished with 33 points, 8 assists and 6 rebounds, which is a fairly ordinary game for him even now, at age 34, chest deep in his 16th season. But he has set an impossible standard for himself, and his late game struggles against the Knicks were emblematic of a season gone awry. He faded badly in the fourth quarter, shooting 4 of 15 from the field as Hezonja did what he could to make James's afternoon as difficult as possible. James missed his final four field goal attempts. "Anytime he was with the ball, I was trying to get him tired," Hezonja said. It is hardly the worst strategy to have James dominate the ball in pressure situations and let him do what he wants. How many times has he come through? In a few weeks, James's streak of 13 straight playoff appearances and eight straight trips to the N.B.A. finals will come to an end. No one expected him to haul the Lakers (31 39) to the mountaintop the roster was poorly constructed from the start but the level of dysfunction has been fairly shocking. James is already banking on the off season. "There's a lot of great free agents this summer," James said. "Not going to name any names, because every time I say something, or our organization says something about a specific person, we get in trouble. But we have an opportunity to get better." For now, though, James is taking some hits to his reputation. There was the Anthony Davis saga, which seemed to erode whatever fragile chemistry the team had left. There was James's subsequent pledge to "activate" himself into playoff mode, which merely resulted in more losses. And there was Sunday, when James tried to win the game by himself and came up empty. Even Walt Frazier, the Hall of Fame guard who is an analyst for MSG Network, criticized James during Sunday's broadcast for sitting apart from his teammates, at the end of the bench, during an early timeout. "When you're the face of the N.B.A., you should be more a part of the team," Frazier said. To be fair, James was not in the game at the time, and he always sits at the end of the bench. But the optics were poor, and James has not been an exemplar of team building this season. It has been easy to find faults. And sure enough, late in the fourth quarter, he appeared to show, once again, how little he trusts his teammates. "We got the ball in our best player's hands and we tried to make him make the right decisions," Kuzma said. "We just try and live with it."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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"If Bezos Can Get Hacked, You Can, Too" (Wealth Matters column, Business Day, Feb. 1) lays out simple steps wealthy industry leaders can take to protect themselves against malicious actors. The hacking of the Amazon chief Jeff Bezos highlights a critical issue in corporate security: Consumer based apps, like WhatsApp, are developed for entertainment and shouldn't be relied upon by senior executives for sensitive communications. Global companies need to use security products designed for corporate use that prioritize security and privacy. The Bezos hack also underscores the fundamental issue of education. Businesses of all sizes, small and large, must ensure that employees are educated in threats, like mobile phishing, and offer guidelines on secure behavior. Good cybersecurity is not a one time event, but an ongoing set of ingrained behaviors by every employee, at every level, in the business.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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Executives at the British drug maker GlaxoSmithKline were warned nearly two years ago about critical problems with the way the company conducted research at its drug development center in China, exposing it to potential financial risk and regulatory action, an internal audit found. The confidential document from November 2011, obtained by The New York Times, suggests that Glaxo's problems may go beyond the sales practices that are currently at the center of a bribery and corruption scandal in China. They may extend to its Shanghai research and development center, which develops neurology drugs for Glaxo. The failings, some experts said, underscore the problems that can arise when major drug companies export their scientific development to emerging markets like China. Since 2006, 13 of the top 20 global drug makers have set up research and development centers in China, according to a report by McKinsey Company. "It's cheaper to do research there," said Eric G. Campbell, a professor of health care policy at Harvard Medical School. However, "I have absolutely no doubt that with cheaper research comes greater risk." Auditors found that researchers did not report the results of animal studies in a drug that was already being tested in humans, a breach that one medical ethicist described as a "mortal sin" in the world of drug research. They also concluded that workers at the research center did not properly monitor clinical trials and paid hospitals in ways that could be seen as bribery. Last year, Glaxo said, a more favorable audit found the concerns had been addressed. But several outside experts said the problems outlined in the initial audit were grave and painted a picture of an organization that failed to keep tabs on a crucial research center as it expanded both in size and scope. And it indicates that the problems there were more extensive than were reported in June, when the company fired the head of research and development in China after discovering that an article he helped write in the journal Nature Medicine contained misrepresented data. In a statement, Glaxo said it was committed to conducting "robust" audits of its business practices, and in this instance, "the process worked exactly as intended." It added, "Patient safety is paramount and the audit reports do not show that this was compromised." Glaxo's research and development center opened in 2007 with lofty ambitions not only to help the company's drugs get approved in China, but also to serve as one of its primary research hubs. The center grew quickly, expanding from one employee in 2007 to 460 in 2011, according to the audit. But as it grew, supervisors did not always ensure that the work done there was of high quality, auditors found. One of the most troubling lapses a problem the report labeled "critical" involved a drug known as ozanezumab, which was being developed to treat patients with multiple sclerosis and Lou Gehrig's disease. The report revealed that the drug's project leader belatedly learned the results of three studies of ozanezumab in mice. During their investigation, auditors came across six studies whose results had not been reported, even though early trials in humans were already under way. Reporting such information is crucial, ethicists said, because animal studies can identify safety risks and are among the main factors drug companies use to decide whether to pursue human trials. "If that's true, it's a mortal sin in research requirements," said Arthur L. Caplan, the head of the division of medical ethics at NYU Langone Medical Center. He served as the chairman of an advisory committee on bioethics at Glaxo from 2005 to 2008. "No one could approve human trials without having that information available, scientifically or ethically. That's kind of a Rock of Gibraltar sized ethics violation." The auditors said the results did not affect patient safety, but warned of the high stakes involved, saying participants could be exposed "to unnecessary risk or no benefit to the disease state." Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. Glaxo said that "when the full range of data from all the studies was reviewed, GSK determined that the efficacy would not be strong enough to continue," and it terminated a trial of ozanezumab in multiple sclerosis patients. It is still studying the drug in people with Lou Gehrig's disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, according to the company. In the follow up audit, auditors said senior managers at the Chinese research unit had "embedded a compliance culture that was not evident during the prior audit," and did not find any issues of concern, according to an executive summary of the report that was provided by Glaxo. Outside ethics experts said the report raised questions about whether patient safety was adequately protected. Auditors found that Glaxo employees failed to record whether research participants had signed new consent forms during the course of clinical trials. They also did not document whether participants were taking the planned dosage of drugs, or whether they followed up when they learned that participants were not following a clinical trial's protocol. In the statement, Glaxo said that employees were properly monitoring trials but acknowledged that they were not adequately documenting their work. The company said it had corrected the problem, and the later audit found that practices had improved. The 2011 audit report also raised alarms about the way the Shanghai office was paying the people who were overseeing the company's trials at outside hospitals or clinics. According to auditors, Glaxo was paying many sites a flat fee for the cost of a full time coordinator, regardless of the number of participants enrolled in the trial. The report warned of "reputational, financial and/or regulatory action risk where payments made to investigators regardless of actual work completed are perceived as bribery or corruption." Chinese investigators have said that Glaxo participated in a widespread bribery and corruption scheme in which the company used travel agencies to funnel illegal payments to doctors and government officials to bolster drug sales, and authorities have said they are also looking into the practices of other pharmaceutical companies. On Monday, Glaxo said that some of its executives might have broken the law. Outside experts said the payment of doctors and other hospital employees where trials were being conducted was tricky, because paying a fee based on the number of people enrolled in a study could also be seen as inappropriate. "I'm much more concerned about people who are paid by the head to recruit," said Dr. Campbell. Still, he said, if large payments were being made for little work, that could raise eyebrows. "It could be seen as simply another way to put money in people's hands," he said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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WASHINGTON President Obama's pick to run the Food and Drug Administration, Dr. Robert M. Califf, was finally confirmed for the job by the Senate on Wednesday, in a vote of 89 to 4, after weeks of opposition from a handful of lawmakers who had blocked his nomination over what they said was the agency's poor record on prescription painkillers. An epidemic of abuse of painkillers has swept the United States, with deaths from overdose of prescription opioids quadrupling since the late 1990s. Some senators used the opportunity presented by Dr. Califf's nomination to question the F.D.A., the agency in charge of approving the drugs. In speeches on the Senate floor over several days this week, they appealed to their colleagues to vote against Dr. Califf, arguing the agency he had been tapped to run had approved too many of the opioid drugs and had ignored the advice of its own expert panels, which have occasionally recommended against approval. "F.D.A. stands for Food and Drug Administration, but over the last 20 years it really stands for 'fostering drug addiction,' " Senator Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, said in a speech on the Senate floor on Tuesday. "We have to have an honest discussion about the role that agency is playing." He added: "It is not really a debate over Dr. Califf at all. This a debate over the agency." In response, Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for the Department of Health and Human Services, which includes the F.D.A., said in an email: "The F.D.A. takes seriously its role in combating the opioid epidemic. Earlier this month, the F.D.A. launched a far reaching plan that leverages its science based approach, focusing on policies aimed at reversing the epidemic. As part of this effort, during the approval process, the agency plans to re examine the risk benefit paradigm for opioids to ensure that it considers their wider public health effects."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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Rachael Williams decided it was time to live alone this winter, after the second time in three years that one of her roommates stopped paying rent. "I really did not want to move," said Ms. Williams, a 31 year old teacher who works at Liberty Avenue Middle School in East New York, Brooklyn. "I'm a Coast Guard military brat and I don't mind moving, but I've moved eight times in six years." She figured that her best chance of staying put in the future would be to make sure that hers was the only name on the lease. She just didn't know if she could afford it. The absolute top of her budget was 1,600, which is around the bottom of the market for studios and one bedrooms in Brooklyn, where she'd been living and wanted to stay. Since Ms. Williams hadn't been expecting to move, she had no money set aside for a security deposit, broker's fees or moving expenses. She only learned that her roommate, the leaseholder, had been cashing and keeping the rent money from her and another roommate when the landlord called to say that rent hadn't been paid in months. (Because she was on a sublease, she was not liable for the unpaid rent.) But her long spell of bad apartment luck was about to change. Shortly after the call from the landlord, she came across a listing for a large one bedroom in eastern Bedford Stuyvesant, near Ocean Hill, which was about a 15 minute motor scooter ride from the school where she works. It had just posted, there was no broker's fee, and the rent was 1,550 a month. When she went to see the apartment the next day, the first thing that caught her eye was the blue kitchen cabinets, which reminded her of the kitchen in her favorite childhood home. "I loved the blue cabinets," said Ms. Williams, who immediately felt drawn to the space. Occupation: English teacher at a public middle school. She also trains teachers through the New York City Teaching Collaborative and New York City Teaching Fellows. Kitchen cabinets for art supplies: On a friend's recommendation, Ms. Williams started keeping her nonperishable food in the refrigerator to free up space for her arts and crafts supplies. She taught herself how to macrame and also makes candles with essential oils. Unexpected bonus: "Now that I live by myself, my dad wants to visit. He's never visited me in New York before. So that's exciting." On upgrading from a scooter to a motorcycle: "There are so many potholes in New York, I wanted to focus on learning how to navigate through the streets safely before I had to manage the clutch. I've wanted a motorcycle since I was a kid." There were other pleasant surprises: high ceilings, an enormous mirror in the living room and, even though the apartment was on the second floor, a huge outdoor space on the roof in the rear of the house. It was also the entire floor of a townhouse, which meant it had good light on two sides. And the rent included electricity, which made it feel like a little less of a stretch. Then, as she waited to hear back about her application, wondering how she'd assemble the move in money, she started receiving unexpected checks. There was an insurance reimbursement from when someone had hit her parked scooter in January, then two more checks from after school work that she'd forgotten were coming. Friends volunteered to help her move. Then the broker called to tell her that since her credit was excellent, she could have the apartment. When people ask her how she found her new home, she tells them: God. "I'm serious," said Ms. Williams, who keeps a copy of the Bible on her coffee table. "I wasn't prepared at all and the timing just worked out perfectly." At the lease signing, she was excited when the landlady told her she'd prayed for a tenant like her. "Living alone, I always wanted to do it I think most people do but I never thought I'd be able to with my salary and paying off loans," said Ms. Williams, who moved in this April. She got along with her roommates, but no place she lived really felt like home. There was a teeny tiny, 1,100 bedroom in the East Village and a windowless bedroom on the Upper East Side, followed by shares without heat, shares with collapsing ceilings, shares with paper thin walls and shares where one of the four roommates was always an Airbnb guest. She often found herself longing for the quietude of her own space, where she wouldn't have to make conversation in the kitchen or the hall. "I identify as an introvert," Ms. Williams said. "I love to be alone, to journal or read in the evenings or listen to music without lyrics, especially after spending a long day with 13 year olds." She started sprucing up her new space shortly after moving in, repainting the living room from a buttercream hue to a grayish white, and replacing the light fixtures in the living room and bedroom. "I really want to do the apartment justice. It has a lot of character, but it's older so it needs love and attention," she said. "I'm learning a lot about my own style. With roommates I had to make the most of what was given to me. Here I can get a sense of what I actually like." The landlady, who lives downstairs, has also promised to help her learn to garden a welcome offer since Ms. Williams has had trouble even keeping succulents alive, which she admits may not be the fault of bad light in her previous apartments. "I feel comfortable here; it's becoming a home," she said. "It feels like I have privacy and space, but if I need anything I can just shout."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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In 2009, Alberto and Joylyn Estrella bought a one bedroom at Oro, then a brand new high rise condominium in Downtown Brooklyn. "We bought at the bottom of the real estate crash, so we were able to negotiate a great deal," Mr. Estrella said. The price was 400,000. The couple loved the convenient location. "The neighborhood was developing and flourishing," Mr. Estrella said. His wife used the building's gym. He enjoyed the pool and the basketball court, where he would shoot hoops or join pickup games. His work, in the banking field, sent them to Sao Paulo, Brazil, for two years. Shortly after they returned, Ms. Estrella became pregnant. "We fell into that trap of 'we're having a baby, we need all the space we can get,' " Mr. Estrella said. So they put the unit on the market. It sold for 760,000 a year ago, just before their son, Alessandro, was born, and they moved to a two bedroom rental nearby at Bklyn Gold while pondering their next step. Their rent was around 3,700 a month. Alessandro slept in their room and didn't consume much space. They ended up using the second bedroom for storage. The Estrellas, both in their early 30s, missed being homeowners. Concerned that both interest rates and housing prices would rise, they felt that buying in a lively Brooklyn neighborhood was a good long term strategy. Last summer, they went on the hunt for a two bedroom with good closet space and a washer dryer. Their price range was up to 900,000 or so. "It was important to be close to cafes and restaurants," said Ms. Estrella, who is pursuing a graduate degree in international relations at New York University. "I get a lot of writing done in coffee shops." Family friendly Park Slope called to them. A two bedroom in great condition, at a small co op building on Fifth Avenue, was listed at 749,000, with a monthly maintenance fee of around 700. They deliberated. Their online search criteria had called up alarmingly few choices, and they saw that selling prices were often above listing prices. "Every time we asked to make an appointment, the broker would say, 'That one is off the market,' or 'It's already in a bidding war.' The brokers were saying you need to be really competitive to even have a chance," Mr. Estrella said. So they fell into a second trap, the feeling that "there is nothing else out there," he said. They bid 805,000 for the Fifth Avenue place. But as soon as their offer was accepted, the couple had second thoughts. The lobby had no place to park a stroller. The second bedroom was just 80 square feet. "In order to have a washer dryer, they took away the coat closet," Mr. Estrella said. "My wife has a lot of coats. People make sacrifices, and I don't know if that's one of the ones I'd make." They withdrew their offer, believing it was too high. The apartment sold for 785,000. In Brooklyn Heights, they considered a co op on Montague Street listed at 699,000, with maintenance of slightly more than 1,100 a month. The large living room window, right on the street, tempted passers by to peek. They envisioned endlessly adjusting the shades. It wasn't a true two bedroom, either. The place had been billed as a one bedroom with an office or nursery, but the windowless space had been created with a pressurized wall. The couple moved on, and the apartment sold for 700,000. At another Brooklyn Heights co op, a bathroom had been enlarged at the expense of the master bedroom, now "tiny to the point that if you had a queen bed and two night stands, you could barely walk around," Mr. Estrella said. In Ditmas Park, Brooklyn, the couple visited a 2007 condominium building. Two bedrooms there were in the high 800,000s; the common charges of around 500 a month included negligible taxes. The building had a tax abatement that was to expire shortly, at which point taxes would soar to more than 1,000 a month. Three of the building's 12 units were for sale, "I guess because the tax abatement was up and people wanted to get out of there," Mr. Estrella said. They were finding that two bedrooms weren't all that much larger than one bedrooms and layouts were often strange. Some were in less than pristine condition, requiring money for upgrades. Many of the places they saw were a tedious and slow subway ride away from Manhattan. So they checked out 388 Bridge, which opened in Downtown Brooklyn in 2013. It was what they had wanted all along a new tower right downtown, one subway stop from Manhattan. Ms. Estrella realized how much she liked "having the services of the building and being in an area where you are steps away from everything." Only a few units in their price range remained. They decided they could live with a one bedroom that was around 100 square feet larger than their place at Oro. It had the requisite washer dryer and closet space. The couple bought the apartment this past winter for 945,000. Monthly charges are a bit more than 800. They are looking into creating some kind of corner nook for Alessandro, whose crib is now in the bedroom. "We know there's an expiration date," Mr. Estrella said. They don't have the pool and the basketball court they had at Oro, but they gained a playroom and a playground. Mr. Estrella swims at a gym near his Midtown office and, at the moment, rarely plays basketball. At Oro, "I had my own basketball," he said. "I left it on the court as a parting gift." Their building is filled with children. "Alessandro has a lot of kids his age he can play with," Mr. Estrella said. "We didn't have that in any other building we looked at."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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The Elderly vs. Essential Workers: Who Should Get the Coronavirus Vaccine First? Health care workers and the frailest of the elderly residents of long term care facilities will almost certainly get the first shots, under guidelines the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued on Thursday. But with vaccination expected to start this month, the debate among federal and state health officials about who goes next, and lobbying from outside groups to be included, is growing more urgent. It's a question increasingly guided by concerns over the inequities laid bare by the pandemic, from disproportionately high rates of infection and death among poor people and people of color to disparate access to testing, child care and technology for online schooling. "It's damnable that we are even being placed in this position that we have to make these choices," said the Rev. William J. Barber II, a co chairman of the Poor People's Campaign, a national coalition that calls attention to the challenges of the working poor. "But if we have to make the choice, we cannot once again leave poor and low wealth essential workers to be last." Ultimately, the choice comes down to whether preventing death or curbing the spread of the virus and returning to some semblance of normalcy is the highest priority. "If your goal is to maximize the preservation of human life, then you would bias the vaccine toward older Americans," Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former Food and Drug Administration commissioner, said recently. "If your goal is to reduce the rate of infection, then you would prioritize essential workers. So it depends what impact you're trying to achieve." The trade off between the two is muddied by the fact that the definition of "essential workers" used by the C.D.C. comprises nearly 70 percent of the American work force, sweeping in not just grocery store clerks and emergency responders, but tugboat operators, exterminators and nuclear energy workers. Some labor economists and public health officials consider the category overbroad and say it should be narrowed to only those who interact in person with the public. Historically, the committee relied on scientific evidence to inform its decisions. But now the members are weighing social justice concerns as well, noted Lisa A. Prosser, a professor of health policy and decision sciences at the University of Michigan. "To me the issue of ethics is very significant, very important for this country," Dr. Peter Szilagyi, a committee member and a pediatrics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, said at the time, "and clearly favors the essential worker group because of the high proportion of minority, low income and low education workers among essential workers." That position runs counter to frameworks proposed by the World Health Organization, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, and many countries, which say that reducing deaths should be the unequivocal priority and that older and sicker people should thus go before the workers, a view shared by many in public health and medicine. Dr. Robert Redfield, the C.D.C. director and the nation's top public health official, reminded the advisory committee of the importance of older people, saying in a statement on Thursday that he looked forward to "future recommendations that, based on vaccine availability, demonstrate that we as a nation also prioritize the elderly." Once the committee votes, Dr. Redfield will decide whether to accept its recommendations as the official guidance of the agency. Only rarely does a C.D.C. director reject a recommendation from the committee, whose 14 members are selected by the Health and Human Services secretary, serve four and a half year terms and have never confronted a task as high in profile as this one. But ultimately, the decision will be up to governors and state and local health officials. They are not required to follow C.D.C. guidelines, though historically they have done so. "When you talk about disproportionate impact and you're concerned about people getting back into the labor force, many are mothers, and they will have a harder time if their children don't have a reliable place to go," she said. "And if you think generally about people who have jobs where they can't telework, they are disproportionately Black and brown. They'll have more of a challenge when child care is an issue." In September, academic researchers analyzed the Department of Homeland Security's list of essential workers and found that it broadly mirrored the demographics of the American labor force. The researchers proposed a narrower, more vulnerable category "frontline workers," such as food deliverers, cashiers and emergency medical technicians, who must work face to face with others and are thus at greater risk of contracting the virus. By this definition, said Francine D. Blau, a labor economist at Cornell University and an author of the study, teachers belong in the larger category of essential workers. However, when they work in classrooms rather than remotely, she said, they would fit into the "frontline" group. Individual states categorize teachers differently. Dr. Blau said that if supplies are short, frontline workers should be emphasized. "These are a subset of essential workers who, given the nature of their jobs, must provide their labor in person. Prioritizing them makes sense given the heightened risk that they face." The analysis, a working paper for the National Bureau of Economic Research, is in line with other critics, who say that the list of essential workers is too wide ranging. "If groups are too large, then you're not really focusing on priorities," said Saad B. Omer, director of the Yale Institute for Global Health, who worked on the vaccination frameworks for the W.H.O. and the National Academies. Some health policy experts said that to prioritize preventing deaths rather than reducing virus transmission was simply a pragmatic choice, because there won't be enough vaccine initially available to make a meaningful dent in contagion. A more effective use of limited quantities, they say, is to save the lives of the most frail. Moreover, vaccine trial results so far show only that the shots can protect the individuals who receive them. The trials have not yet demonstrated that a vaccinated person would not infect others. Though scientists believe that is likely to be the case, it has yet to be proved. Harald Schmidt, an expert in ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania, said that it is reasonable to put essential workers ahead of older adults, given their risks, and that they are disproportionately minorities. "Older populations are whiter, " Dr. Schmidt said. "Society is structured in a way that enables them to live longer. Instead of giving additional health benefits to those who already had more of them, we can start to level the playing field a bit." But to protect older people more at risk, he called on the C.D.C. committee to also integrate the agency's own "social vulnerability index." The index includes 15 measures derived from the census, such as overcrowded housing, lack of vehicle access and poverty, to determine how urgently a community needs health support, with the goal of reducing inequities. Further complicating matters, the different priority groups discussed by the C.D.C. committee are overlapping many essential workers have high risk conditions, and some are older than 65. Some states have suggested that they will prioritize only essential workers who come face to face with the public, while others have not prioritized them at all. Even some people whose allegiance lies with one group have made the case that others should have an earlier claim on the vaccine. Marc Perrone, president of the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, which represents 1.3 million grocery and food processing workers, said that despite the high rate of infection among his members, he thought that older adults should go first. "Here's the thing: Everybody's got a grandmother or grandfather," Mr. Perrone said. "And I do believe almost everybody in this country would want to protect them, or their aging parents." But Dr. Nirav Shah, Maine's top public health official, said he respectfully disagreed, repeating the explanation he had given his in laws who are older but in good health and able to socially distance. He said: "I've told them: 'You know what? I'm sorry, but there are others that I need to get this vaccine to first, so that when you guys get vaccinated, the world you come back into is ready to receive you.'" All these plans are, of course, unfurling with essential information still unknown.Many state officials said that as on the ground realities emerge, they fully expect their plans to evolve. One uncertainty: given the high rates of apprehension swirling around this vaccine, how many people in the early groups will actually line up for it? "If a high proportion of essential workers decline to get the vaccine, states will have to quickly move onto the next group anyway," said Dr. Prosser, the University of Michigan health analyst. "Because once the vaccines arrive, they will have to be used in a certain amount of time before they degrade."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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Day 20, or maybe 21. Days blur. Rituals: Like John Cheever who every morning, dressed in his suit and tie, rode down the elevator of his apartment building, and then took the stairs to his study in the basement, I crawl out of bed, dress and grab my coffee, and then off I go to my own newly formed study in our living room. Later a small bowl of granola, a boiled egg. More work. A late afternoon walk, earbuds and an audiobook lift me momentarily from a world where people by the thousands are dying and others are living in quarantine or seclusion, losing livelihoods. This week I listen to "Howards End" and the fortunate lives of Margaret, Helen and Tibby; where they'll reside once their lease is up is its major plot. A call from the hospice nurse on Saturday, March 28. My mother in Cleveland has a 102 degree fever. Restless, uncomfortable. Morphine. Further decline. A restriction is lifted from the visitor ban from two weeks ago. Laura, my older sister, thankfully lives nearby and is allowed into the care home so long as she wears a mask and doesn't leave my mother's room. My younger sister, Cindy, and I are furloughed in Connecticut and New York. Mom looks terrible, Laura group texts once she enters Mom's room, papered in framed photographs of her family and her own floral paintings. Over the years, on my monthly visits from New York, witness to her slow decline, loss of appetite, inability to form more than a few words in a sentence, wheelchair bound, I prayed that it would end before my mother would not remember me. In the last six months, when her speech became compromised, it was her smile I held on to when she saw me from her chair at the table near the window. The little tap of her hand. Outside daffodils have shot up, waving their crowns; forsythias in their crude and blinding crimps of yellow burst forth, as they did every spring in the yard of my childhood home. I'm not ready. FaceTime: my mother under a white blanket, white thinning hair pulled back, hollowed eyes, sculpted cheekbones, frail hands. Her face reminds me of a painting I can't recall, maybe by Rembrandt. My son, Lucas, and husband, David, briefly join the FaceTime. We reminisce. How she stood over me to make sure I meticulously dried every piece of lettuce for the salad for her elaborate holiday dinners. Never bottled condiments on the table. Kept a suitcase of antique toy cars and trucks she collected at flea markets in her house when my toddler son and nephew came for a visit. Lucas, now grown, remembers Laura's bedroom in our childhood home where she wallpapered in black and white posters of Marilyn Monroe, John Kennedy, Herman's Hermits, The Beatles. A last text from Laura a few hours later. Five p.m., March 29. Mom's gone. David's judgment is less clouded by emotion. The rabbi calls to express his condolences. In Judaism the period of Nisan is the first month of the Jewish calendar, and since Passover is the spring festival of liberation, it is a special time for our mother to leave us and pass over. Ordinarily, when someone dies, there's a 30 day mourning period following shiva, but Passover cancels it to commemorate the month of rebirth, the rabbi says. He briefly outlines the plan. No funeral service. Only a grave site burial. Only 10 people permitted. Everyone must stand six feet apart. The ritual of Kriah, the tearing of the cloth, a symbol of pain and grief; throwing dirt on the coffin, a mark of closure. Afterward the seven day shiva candle. A pearl gray morning of howling winds. I dress for the virtual graveside burial in a black flowing blouse my mother would love, put on the sapphire earrings she gave me, lipstick my mother never left the house without it. David changes from his now that we're in lockdown sweats into a crisp blue button down shirt. A driver in a sedan arrives to pick up Laura. We sisters group text (and occasionally Laura snaps us a photo) as the car drives through mostly empty roads to Mount Olive Cemetery in the Cleveland suburbs. We switch from text to FaceTime. Laura shows off her new glasses. We blow kisses. The sedan pulls up the long drive to the cemetery. It is one of the grayest days I remember. At 11 a.m. the service begins. Through the window of my phone a jerky kaleidoscope of cloudy sky, a small blue tent flapping in the wind, underneath a podium where the rabbi presides, a quick flash to the chestnut colored coffin soon to be lowered into the ground. Hundreds of gravestones like dominoes stand in the background, a few bare trees just beginning to bud. A blue bird skims the weighted sky. I look up from the tiny screen on my phone and out my own window in Long Island at a family of trees in the yard, their crippled, arthritic branches a chorus of joining arms. The rabbi speaks loudly over the demented wind. Cindy and I have saved many hundreds, maybe thousands of lives for not traveling, he says, almost madly, head raised to the heavens. I'm not sure, but nevertheless, I am briefly solaced. Laura rises from her fold up chair and throws handfuls of earth on the top of the coffin for each of my mother's four daughters (the youngest deceased), before it is lowered into the ground. "The Lord is my shepherd ... he maketh me to lie down in green pastures ..." the rabbi begins. "He maketh me to lie down in green pastures," I repeat, grateful for the psalm's command, its authority. It's days before the beginning of Passover. The story in the book of Exodus, of the 10 biblical plagues where God commanded the Egyptians to suffer so that they knew who was in charge, comes to me. History repeats itself. A virus permeates the globe. Soon, sooner than later, we too, those of us whose lives will be spared, if we are vigilant in our seclusion or quarantine, or are lucky, will eventually be delivered, just as the Israelites were delivered from slavery more than 3,000 years ago. In my own home, after the virtual burial, I say the blessing and light the seven day shiva candle I retrieved in gloved hands the day before the Jewish Center kindly left it in a plastic baggie outside on my porch to begin the mourning period. Later in the day, I take my walk. Put in my earphones. "Howards End," Chapter 12, Margaret privately mourns Mrs. Wilcox: "A funeral is not death, any more than baptism is birth or marriage union. All three are the clumsy devices, coming now too late, now too early, by which Society would register the quick motions of man." I can't remember now if it rained.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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The Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas in Austin has been at the forefront among museums in collecting modern and contemporary Latin American art since it opened in 1963. It is now strategically building up its holdings from the Spanish and Portuguese colonial era with an acquisition of 119 paintings, sculptures, furniture and silverwork collected by Roberta and Richard Huber. The works, from countries across modern day Latin America including Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador and Peru and dating from the late 1600s to the early 1800s, are valued at approximately 2.5 million. "The Hubers started putting together this collection back in the '70s when the world wasn't paying attention to this area, certainly not in the United States," said Simone Wicha, the director of the Blanton. "It fits so beautifully into us being able to contextualize Latin America, both at the museum and with our colleagues at the university, one of the leading research institutions dedicated to Latin American studies broadly." The Blanton first focused on pre modern Latin America in 2016 by partnering with the Carl Marilynn Thoma Art Foundation to fund a curator in Spanish colonial art and lend works long term from its collection in this period. This fall, "Painted Cloth: Fashion and Ritual in Colonial America," showcasing objects from the Huber acquisition and Thoma collection, looks at the social role of textiles produced in Bolivia, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela during the 1600s and 1700s.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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The Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth prides itself on its collection of works by modern masters like Picasso, Matisse and Mondrian. And now it can add Amedeo Modigliani, the Italian artist who died young and today fetches upward of 170 million at auctions, to its roster. Gwendolyn Weiner, daughter of the locally famous art collectors Ted and Lucile Weiner, has donated Modigliani's sculpture "Head" (circa 1913) to the museum in honor of her parents. Modigliani (1884 1920) is said to have seen himself as more of a sculptor than a painter, though fewer than 30 sculptures by him survive today, compared with hundreds of paintings. The Kimbell's "Head" is carved in limestone, which Modigliani scavenged from construction sites around Paris, including the city's subway. The coveted "Head" sculptures bear Modigliani's signature look: elegant, often elongated figures that verge on abstraction and appear inspired by statues in far flung locales like Africa and ancient Greece. The Metropolitan Museum of Art has one in its collection, from 1912, and in 2014 Modigliani's "Tete" (1911 12) sold for 70.7 million at Sotheby's a record for the artist until his painting "Nu Couche" (1917 18) fetched 170.4 million at Christie's the next year.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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SAN FRANCISCO Snap went public in March in what was one of the tech industry's most highly anticipated initial public offerings of the year. Then the messaging and media company promptly posted dismal financial results for two consecutive quarters, piercing the hype. On Tuesday, Snap continued to disappoint with its latest financial snapshot. The company reported revenue for the third quarter that missed Wall Street expectations and also posted a larger than expected loss, as well as high costs. In the aftermath, its stock plunged about 20 percent in after hours trading but recovered slightly. The numbers add up to a big question mark for Snap. While the Venice, Calif. based company has been regarded as innovative in social media, it faces a juggernaut in its chief rival, Facebook. Over the past year, Facebook has copied some of Snapchat's most popular features in an effort to peel away its users. That has hurt the growth of Snap's user base and advertising revenue, and its stock has performed disappointingly, trading below its offering price of 17 a share for months. "User growth is slowing; revenue growth is failing to live up to expectations," said Rich Greenfield, a managing director at the research firm BTIG.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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BOB GINSBERG, a retired production manager for an educational publisher, is worried that he does not know any of the logins and passwords for online accounts belonging to his partner or brother and they do not know his. At 72, he said his concern was not about Facebook or e mail. It was for their financial lives, which have migrated online, making paper account statements anachronistic. Now, when people die without disclosing their financial affairs to anyone, there is often no paper trail for heirs to follow. "You'd never know someone else's financial arrangements, but if it was paperwork you'd have a clue," Mr. Ginsberg said. "I'm entirely comfortable doing absolutely everything online. But if I have to take over for my brother or my partner, I don't have any of their information." In its annual Wealth and Worth study, released this week, U.S. Trust said 45 percent of the high net worth people it polled had not organized passwords and account information for their digital lives in a place where heirs or an executor would find them. (By contrast, the bank said that 87 percent knew the location of important documents and most had a will.) Much has been written about how family members struggle to get access to the e mail and social network accounts of loved ones who have died. They have sentimental value much the way photo albums and personal letters do. But far less attention has been paid to the logins, passwords and answers to security questions that will give access to an online financial life. In an era when far fewer records are kept on paper, spouses and children may not even know that some accounts exist. Think of savings accounts that are only online, or a rollover retirement account that hasn't been touched in years. "It's not only something that needs to be addressed with an individual dying," Chris Heilmann, chief fiduciary executive at U.S. Trust, said. "If an individual becomes incapacitated, people typically plan for someone to have a durable power of attorney so someone can step in and handle your affairs. But now you're finding the attorney has to deal with your digital issues. They have to access your computer; they have to pay bills for you." Sharing the combination of letters or numbers that give access to a person's most important financial details is turning out to be a lot harder than telling loved ones that everything they need to know is in a safe deposit box. What can people do? There are many Web sites and tools that allow people to upload their accounts and passwords in so called digital vaults. They promise security and a one stop shop for disparate digital lives. But they often go unused just as there are a lot of lawyers around but not everyone has an estate plan. People need to record their account information and passwords just as they need to make an appointment to draw up a will. And that seems to be the problem. Joel Feldman, a retired garment manufacturer, said he had an estate plan but he had been reluctant to write down all of his logins and passwords and give them to his son. He also does not use a financial adviser, who would know some of that information. "It does concern me," Mr. Feldman said. "I keep saying I'm going to make a CD of my bank statements and put it in my safe deposit box, but I don't do it." He said he figured that his son could probably find everything on his computer. One reason people say they put off drawing up a list is that passwords are constantly changing. But that doesn't seem to be the reality for many in retirement now. Mr. Feldman said he has only two or three different passwords because he would forget more than that. Kieran Clifford, a retired vice president for finance from Lucent, said the password to his Gmail account was recently stolen. By combing through past e mails, the hacker found a Fidelity statement, got the account number, and e mailed his broker at a separate firm to transfer 250,000 to a bank in Hong Kong. Everything had the same password his initials and date of birth. "The e mail said I'm going out to a meeting and you won't be able to contact me so go ahead and do the transfer," Mr. Clifford said. Fortunately, his financial adviser called him before doing anything, and they now have an agreement that any move must be confirmed by phone. Like many things, it sometimes takes a scare to get people to act. After the incident, Mr. Clifford, 65, said he wrote down his passwords and gave them to his daughter. What remains to be seen is how vigilant he will be in keeping his passwords different from each other and updating the list his daughter has. For people who are not highly organized and pragmatic about their estate plans and that is most people it seems that short of a crisis they need a persistent adviser to push them. Mr. Heilmann said that when his firm reviewed traditional estate plans with clients it got them to draw up digital plans as well. This is where wealthier people have a leg up: someone else to do the kind of boring data entry that few of us want to do. Mr. Heilmann said people needed to think about five things to ensure that everything goes smoothly with their digital financial lives if they become incapacitated or die: they need to maintain a list of their digital information; send the information to someone they trust; make sure other people know who has the information; leave instructions for how everything should be handled; and note all of this in an estate plan and update it regularly. While time consuming, this advice is straightforward. But advisers said that for many who are considering these steps, another issue arises: a fear that someone else has access to their financial life. Louise Gunderson, a managing director at UBS wealth management, said she encouraged clients to upload their information to a secure system that allowed whoever they designated to see the account information but not to move the funds. "We come up with a solution, but it depends on who acts on it," she said. "Some parents say, 'I don't want my kids to know anything.'" For the less wealthy, whose children need to know everything to care for them, advisers warn the children not to use the passwords to log into accounts as their parents. Doug Lockwood, president of Hefty Wealth Partners, said that to have any legal standing and to ensure that other relatives don't accuse them of wrongdoing caregivers needed to have a power of attorney while their parents were alive and to know the rules when they die.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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LONDON Take away the state of the art drones and the gyro stabilized 4K cameras from the BBC's latest blue chip natural history series, "A Perfect Planet." Strip out the luscious score and the stunning close ups of nature at its most intimate. What you are left with are the same clipped tones and breathy, awe struck commentary that entertained and educated the viewers of grainy black and white nature programs in the 1950s. It is hard to find anything in modern television that has endured since the middle of the last century. Yet there is the British naturalist Sir David Attenborough and his reassuring, occasionally chiding, voice of God narration, virtually undimmed by age, still lending gravitas and luster to sequences of lesser flamingos in Tanzania, land iguanas on the Galapagos Islands and flamboyant cuttlefish off the coasts of Indonesia. Repeatedly voted both the most trusted and popular person in his home country, Attenborough may be the most traveled human in history. (For his landmark 1979 series "Life on Earth" alone, he traveled 1.5 million miles.) "If the world is, indeed, to be saved," writes the environmental journalist and activist Simon Barnes, "then Attenborough will have had more to do with its salvation than anyone else who ever lived." His latest, which debuts on Jan. 4 in the United States on the streaming service Discovery , was filmed in 31 countries over four years (and six volcanic eruptions). Across five episodes, it will examine the forces of nature that shape all life: volcanoes, sunlight, weather, oceans and the newest: humans. On a video call from his own habitat the book lined study of his home in the leafy London suburb of Richmond Attenborough talked about his 67 years onscreen, the silver lining of the pandemic and why Joe Biden had him jumping out of his chair. These are edited excerpts from the conversation. Was there a scene in your new series that had the most poignant echo for you of something you saw in the field decades ago something that has been transformed since by climate change? That's not the focus of this particular series climate change is what it's not about. In a way, it's an antidote to climate change gloom. It is showing the extraordinary resilience of the natural world and the marvelous way in which everything interdigitates, just forms a perfect mesh. In a way, that's a biological obviousness in that things evolve to fit one another. If you've got a 50 million year circumstance, it's not surprising it ends up interlocking in many kinds of ways. It's about how, in fact, in this age, when we're worrying so much and correctly about the problems of the natural world, there are marvelous marvels to be seen and we're showing some of them. We've had enough for the moment about disasters. Are there ways you hope we can come out of this pandemic with an improved chance of meeting our obligations to the planet? I think that what this pandemic has done, in a very strange way, is made an awful lot of people suddenly aware of how valuable and important the natural world is to our psychic well being. We're busy about our ways, going on the underground railway, dashing into offices, turning on lights. I am more aware of the changes that there have been in the natural world, around London, than I have been in decades. During the summer, I went for walks in my garden twice a day, at least. It's only a pocket handkerchief size it's not a big garden but nonetheless, there was something to be found, every time. And I was listening to birds. I'm a rotten bird watcher I don't know one bird from the other but I know a bit more this year than I did last, I'll tell you that. Are you surprised how little attention has been given to the role our abuse of animals has played in this pandemic from the wet markets in Wuhan to mink farms in Denmark? We don't seem to learn how our exploitation of living creatures can come back to bite us. Well, that may be so. The markets of the Far East are notorious. Everybody concerned with animal welfare knows that these are the hellholes of the natural world, really. I remember seeing pangolins in the wet market in Indonesia in 1956. Whether there was a pandemic or not, there are parts of the natural world where animals are regarded as objects and treated as though they had no feeling, without any sympathy of any kind. And it's prevalent all over the world. It's a horrible thing to see. Yes, I mean, we're the spectators of what happens over there. But the fact remains that the United States is one of the major driving forces in the world. I have to say that at the Paris C.O.P. meetings the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2015 , I was there with the British chief scientist, Sir David King. As we left the hall together after the announcement that they were going to sign, he said: "We're there! We're there!," and he was walking on air. When President Trump declared that they were going to withdraw from that, it was an equally, commensurate in size blow and very, very gloomy indeed. I actually jumped out of my chair when we heard Biden say he will renew membership of that agreement. I got up and said: "Rah! Rah!" clenches his fists in the air . This coming autumn, the meetings in Glasgow are going to be absolutely crucial to the survival of the natural world. But with the United States back in there, the world can say, "Yes, we're still in there with a chance." And it's only a chance! It's by no means certain. Are politicians ever candid with you one to one about why they've found it so hard to make headway? I know why they find it so hard. They know that within three, four, five years, they're going to be standing in front of the electorate again and saying, "Put me back in power." It's easy enough to pay lip service to the bigger disasters, but if you don't ever look beyond your own electoral life, then you're short changing the electorate. The paradox, it seems, is that I thought when the pandemic started, people would say: "Oh well, don't worry me about what's going to happen in 50, 100 years' time. I'm desperately worried about what's going to happen with the pandemic." And people did say that last part , but they didn't say the future doesn't matter. On the contrary, I feel that the C.O.P. talks in Glasgow, which should have been just about finished by now had the original plan happened, stand a better chance of success in about a year's time. More people are aware of the fragility and value of the natural world as a result of the pandemic. I was struck by a line of yours about rockhopper penguins in the oceans episode: You said their success depends on both judgment and luck. How lucky have you been, with your career having coincided with the advent of television and commercial air travel? Yes, I think for a naturalist, you might say that my title for my career would be: "A Perfect Career." I've been fantastically lucky it's nothing to do with merit but being there at the right time. Having spent all my life trotting around the world and getting other people to pay for it in order to see the most wonderful things you could ever wish to see ... how could I not but say that was a perfect career? It was just incredibly fortunate. Death has been such a presence this year, and there's plenty of it in this series. Has a life spent studying the natural world given you a healthier attitude toward it? I have a very, very healthy attitude toward death, yeah. Laughs. No, I don't think it's changed me. If you're a biologist, you're always aware of death. And you know how long species live and what their optimum is and so on. No, not particularly. I ought to be thinking more about it because people are going to clear up after me. I'm not entirely indifferent to material objects, and I think about my poor son and daughter who are going to have clear it all up. That's my main concern really. I was a paleontologist at university, and I've always loved fossils and so on, so wherever I've gone on these trips, I'm liable to put hunks of rock in the bottom of my suitcase. If I were a decent scientist, I would have stuck a label on each one. So what I've been doing in this pandemic is I've been into the cellar and found hunks of rock lying around there and thinking, "What on Earth is that?" Your voice was voted Britain's best loved in a recent Virgin Media poll. It's a crucial tool of your trade. Over the years, in what ways have you refined how you deliver your voice over? Well, I think, biologically, your voice changes. Mine hasn't changed all that much, actually; I think it's dropped a bit in pitch. I've seldom seen a program that I've written and narrated where I haven't said at the end of it, "Not bad, but too many words." I think the best commentary is almost the least commentary, and fortunately one of the ways in which natural history editors work, at least the best ones, is that they make the story vivid in images, and you can watch the story without any words at all. If you can see it in the picture, you shouldn't spend your time saying: "This is a glorious sight!" If the viewers aren't convinced by the pictures, you're actually making them feel dissatisfied. So, by and large, I eschew adjectives and metaphors and high flown language and just try and produce the facts that are required to make sense of the pictures. Nowadays, you generally do only the narration on these landmark series. What do you miss most about being out in the field? Oh, just the air. Just being en plein air, as they say. And the sound of the birds and one thing or another. And blossoms. And being able to be proactive, being able to turn over that leaf to see what's underneath it. Alastair Fothergill, Attenborough's executive producer actually paints birds, and that's a way of focusing your attention about the natural world. I'm probably the least proactive naturalist that I know. I tend just to sit around and just watch.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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Ai Weiwei, the provocative and politically minded Chinese artist who has two major projects coming soon to New York City, has another big installation to add to his busy year: the East Coast debut of "Trace" (2014), which will open at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in June. The museum, in Washington, on Monday announced "Ai Weiwei: Trace at Hirshhorn," a focused but sprawling exhibition that features "Trace" as its centerpiece and will be on view from June 28 through Jan. 1, 2018. "Trace" commissioned by the FOR SITE Foundation, the National Park Service and the Golden Gate Park Conservancy was created as a site specific installation at Alcatraz in San Francisco, where it drew nearly one million visitors. The work comprises 176 portraits made up of thousands of Lego bricks, depicting people whom Mr. Ai considers activists, prisoners of conscience and free speech advocates.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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Meredith Monk has spent over 50 years steadily churning out gracefully challenging works. It has come to feel like part of the rhythm of living in New York one of the better parts for Ms. Monk to announce a new stage show. Sections of "Cellular Songs" her latest evening length piece, written for an entirely female version of her vocal ensemble and running through Sunday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music have appeared as works in progress since 2015. In those presentations, several of Ms. Monk's stylistic hallmarks were in evidence: unpredictable yet ensorcelling rhythmic grooves; trebly, chattering murmurs arising from groupings of singers; solo passages requiring the deep, plaintive power of the composer's shockingly serene voice. A listener might have heard an excerpt or two say, at the annual boisterous free festival hosted by the Bang On A Can organization and come to the conclusion that Ms. Monk was focusing on tidy new miniatures. She was not. The premiere of the entire "Cellular Songs" on Wednesday evening had the cumulative force of some of her best writing. Joined with Ms. Monk's installation art scenarios (realized by the video artist Katherine Freer) and choreography, this linked series of pieces was a coherent meditation on themes of individual flourishing and collective belonging. The microscopic unit of measurement suggested by the title hardly represents the work's ambitions. Concepts that engage individuality tend to be a bandleader's dream, since they allow performers to show off singular talents as here, with Allison Sniffin's gifts on multiple instruments, or the lithely expressive dancing and finely controlled vibrato of Jo Stewart, the latest addition to the ensemble. Like Duke Ellington, Ms. Monk knows well how to weave solo lines tailored to specific performers (herself included), but her dramatic gifts are often clearest during passages involving multiple players. In "Hey nyo," a lengthy ensemble number that was the evening's centerpiece, Ms. Monk charted numerous routes between clashing semitones, unsettling microtonal swoops and gentler harmonies. No sonic experience was given short shrift; by the end, a sense of calm felt honestly won. The formidable complexity of material like that helped the poetry of seemingly simpler numbers like "Happy Woman," in which Ms. Monk gradually offers up contradictory self identifications ("I am an honest woman," "I'm a lying woman") sneak up on a listener. That song's unsheathing of new personalities each different, yet connected to the ones before seemed in tune with Yoshio Yabara's subtly varied layers of costuming. Over 75 minutes, Ms. Monk spun together these divergent elements so fluidly that it created an unmistakable sense of hope. It's much easier to conceive of bridging public divides or even containing multitudes, as an individual when you witness a synthesis like the one created in "Cellular Songs." In a program note, Ms. Monk said she hoped to propose "an alternative possibility of human behavior, where the values are cooperation, interdependence and kindness, as an antidote to the values that are being propagated right now." That's a lofty goal, particularly for a music drama that works through abstract, mostly wordless means. But Ms. Monk's approach to political content, so free of didacticism, is seductively clear and persuasive here. Occasionally it's even humorous, as when video images of groups of hands dissolve between comically different arrangements (one moment solemnly posed, the next making duck like forms and wiggling). At other times, the staging feels almost mythically profound, nowhere more so than when the core group is joined by members of the Young People's Chorus of New York City. Ms. Monk has been making this sort of magic happen for a long time. But no matter how many decades she keeps creating them, works as strong as "Cellular Songs" will never feel rote.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. President Trump agreed to open the government for three weeks amid continuing border wall negotiations, but he insisted that he hadn't backed down from any of his demands. Stephen Colbert said on Monday that the president's approach seemed less like a strategy and more like recalcitrance. Or worse. "His heels are completely dug in. When asked if he would accept less than 5.7 billion for his wall, Trump said: 'I doubt it.' So just to be clear, he's making the exact same offer backed by the exact same threat, but somehow he expects different results. Well, you know what they say: The definition of insanity is Donald Trump." STEPHEN COLBERT "And believe me, folks, I know races. Many people call me a race ist." STEPHEN COLBERT While he was on the topic of Trump's tweets, Colbert pointed to one in which the president claimed, without apparent proof, that illegal immigration had already this year cost the country nearly 19 billion and he gave the figure down to the dollar. The former Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz announced over the weekend that he might run for president in 2020. The news was not met with much enthusiasm and that includes on late night TV. Colbert said that after two years of Trump, he was not eager to hand the presidency to another C.E.O. "To all the billionaires threatening to run for president: No thanks. We're too full for seconds!" STEPHEN COLBERT "They need new hobbies. I tell you what, can't Richard Branson just build a day camp for these guys to keep them off the streets?" STEPHEN COLBERT "I heard that former Starbucks C.E.O. Howard Schultz is thinking about running for president. Meanwhile, the C.E.O. of Dunkin' Donuts is thinking about running a meth lab out of every store." JIMMY FALLON "So it would be Mr. Pumpkin Spice Latte taking on an actual pumpkin spice latte." TREVOR NOAH, showing a picture of Howard Schultz next to a picture of President Trump James Corden had a cynical take on a report by Tinder that it sees its highest number of users in the middle of January. "Researchers at Tinder have released some interesting user information, and it's particularly appropriate for tonight. Apparently, the most popular time to use the dating app is right now, in January, and particularly on Monday evenings. Yeah, in winter, after the holidays, on a Monday. So literally when you're at your most depressed." JAMES CORDEN "The most popular time of the day to use Tinder is apparently 9 p.m. And by the way, the most popular time to completely give up on love forever is 9:02 p.m." JAMES CORDEN "According to The Washington Post, when President Trump gives tours of the White House and shows people the Lincoln Bedroom, he remarks how tall Lincoln was and how small the bed is. Said Trump, 'That proves he used to sleep like me in a fetal position, and crying!'" SETH MEYERS "Howard Schultz could be running for president in 2020. Or as they call it at Starbucks, venti venti." STEPHEN COLBERT Every so often, Jimmy Kimmel uses some sleight of ear to make Washington sound a lot more risque than it is.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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It was not too long ago that automakers were tripping over themselves in pursuit of younger buyers, offering boxy wagons and small, jellybean shape city cars. The Scion xB, the Honda Element, the Nissan Cube: All were funky departures for Generation X from the dowdy minivans of their parents. But times and tastes change. When Toyota announced last week that it would mothball its youth oriented Scion brand, it punctuated a broader retreat in the industry from quirkier car designs, particularly at the low end of the market. Today's younger buyers, loosely referred to as Generation Y, have embraced a term that would have turned off their immediate forebears. "Compared to Gen X, Gen Y is very mainstream," said Michelle Krebs, senior analyst for Autotrader. "They see the car as a symbol of their accomplishments and aspirations. They're into very established, highly respected global brands, whereas Gen X always wanted something different from what their parents drove." American millennials are active auto shoppers. In 2014, younger buyers accounted for 27 percent of new car sales, according to J. D. Power and Associates. But they have little taste or patience for Scion, an American subsidiary founded by Toyota in 2003 explicitly to woo younger buyers. After reaching peak sales of 173,000 a year in 2006, the Scion plunged as low as 45,000 in 2010 . Some of its models will survive, but under the Toyota name. Instead, younger buyers have embraced conservatively styled crossovers and sport utility vehicles. Even once moribund Buick is attracting millennials with its strong selling Encore compact crossover. Scion never strayed far from the formula it concocted when "The Fast and the Furious" referred to one movie, not a 4 billion Hollywood juggernaut. Central to the Scion recipe were unconventional exterior designs ripe for personalization. The so called tuner culture that blossomed in the 1990s in Southern California readily adopted the cars, with their sub 20,000 sticker prices, idiosyncratic yet malleable styling and easily upgraded exhaust and engine management systems. Scions were underbaked by design. "Toyota is, 'measure 17 times, cut once,' whereas Scion was more, 'measure twice, cut once,' " said Jack Hollis, group vice president of marketing for Toyota's American subsidiary, Toyota Motor Sales. "Being progressive wasn't something that came easy for Toyota 13 or 14 years ago. Scion was a laboratory for experimentation." Mr. Barnum, like some other Scion die hards, spent liberally in the aftermarket to customize his car. Coley Brown for The New York Times Mr. Hollis, who previously served as vice president of Scion, added: "We had the lowest median age buyer in the market, so the recession hit us hard." But while other carmakers roared back, with a record 17.5 million passenger vehicles sold in 2015, Scion's numbers never recovered. Mini, the emblematic British brand resurrected by the BMW Group of Germany at the dawn of the millennium, has also struggled against the preference of millennials for more staid and bigger cars, with American sales of the Mini relatively flat since 2012. The asymmetrical Cube from Nissan, a vehicle whose emphatic strangeness was unrivaled in the United States market, was discontinued in 2014. Production of the Honda Element, an airy four door beloved by dog owners for its crate ready rear load area and easily cleaned interior, was stopped in 2011. Mr. Hollis said that the initial success of the Scion FR S, a well reviewed sports coupe, was attributable in part to its "being mainstream." But consumers gave a wan embrace to the Scion iQ, a tiny runabout aimed at urban dwellers. "It didn't work as well," he said of the iQ experiment. Stewart Reed has a front row seat to aesthetic shifts in the industry, as chairman of the transportation design program at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., one of the car industry's top incubators of global design talent. Mr. Reed recalled that the original Scion xB, whose resolutely boxy body scored a knockout for unfashionable design, sold strongly through its first generation. "The profile that it struck in the landscape was quite interesting," he said. But the second generation of that car proved to be the beginning of the end for Scion as a stand alone brand. A heavier, rounder xB polarized the Scion faithful just in time for the economic downturn. "As the new xB came in, I remember people responding by buying up the old one, essentially hoarding them," Mr. Reed said. Those hoarders are among a devout core who will remain Scion's champions. Among them is Noel Barnum, 25, a medical telemetry technician in Long Beach, Calif. "The audience will still be there," he said. "Scion punched the scene in the mouth. They could release these weird looking cars that looked like toasters and do really well with them." Mr. Barnum's FR S coupe bears the hallmarks of a Scion die hard who spent liberally in the aftermarket for an enormous rear deck lid wing, a pavement scraping front chin splitter, a body kit and outsize custom alloy wheels. Blame for Scion's failure to meet shifting tastes among young buyers did not lie with the design studios, Mr. Barnum said, but with the marketing department. "The xB II was substantially higher priced than the first gen car," he said. "And at that price, all of a sudden you could start thinking RAV4," he said, referring to Toyota's best selling compact crossover. Indeed, as it winds down the Scion brand, Toyota is describing its laboratory experiment as a success, claiming that 45 percent of Scion owners remained in the Toyota group of brands for their next purchase or lease. Given the cyclical nature of the car business, unconventional designs may resonate anew with younger buyers entering the market. But for the time being, an old saying in the auto industry has been flipped on its head. "Right now, you can't really say: 'You can sell a young man's car to an old man, but you can't sell an old man's car to a young man,' " Mr. Reed said. "It's a make you smile shift."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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Madagascar has been struck by a fast spreading outbreak of plague, creating panic and prompting the World Health Organization to send 1.2 million doses of antibiotics to the island nation. Since August, the country has reported over 200 infections and 33 deaths. The outbreak is beginning to resemble the early stages of the West African Ebola crisis in 2014: a lethal disease normally confined to sparsely populated rural areas has reached crowded cities and is spreading in a highly transmissible form. Schools, universities and other public buildings have closed so they can be sprayed to kill fleas, which may carry the infection. The government has forbidden large public gatherings, including sporting events and concerts. Fears that the outbreak could spread to other countries are rising. Late last month, plague struck a basketball tournament for teams from Indian Ocean countries, killing a coach from the Seychelles and infecting another from South Africa. The players are being monitored, Malagasy health authorities told the W.H.O.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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The Indiana Department of Health announced the third death on Friday, and hours later, officials in Minnesota confirmed that a fourth person had died. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is investigating a fifth death, and an official said Friday that "vaping is a probable potential cause." Two other deaths, one in Illinois, the other in Oregon, had been announced previously. "There is clearly an epidemic that begs for an urgent response," Dr. David C. Christiani of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health wrote in an editorial published on Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine. The editorial called on doctors to discourage their patients from using e cigarettes and for a broader effort to increase public awareness about "the harmful effects of vaping." Officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention echoed that call in a briefing. "While this investigation is ongoing, people should consider not using e cigarette products," said Dr. Dana Meaney Delman, who is leading the C.D.C.'s investigation into the illness. Read our story about the rise of this mysterious vaping related illness that is spreading across the nation. The recent rise of acute lung illnesses linked to vaping has deepened concerns about the safety of the devices. E cigarettes were intended to help smokers quit traditional cigarettes by providing a way to satisfy an addiction to nicotine without the deadly toxins that come from burning tobacco . But in 2018, vaping among American teenagers exploded and large numbers of young people who had never smoked started using e cigarettes. They were especially attracted to sleek devices made and marketed by Juul Labs, which now dominates the market. A 2018 survey sponsored by the federal government found that 21 percent of high school seniors had vaped within the previous 30 days, compared to 11 percent a year earlier. Now young people are being sickened by the new wave of lung illnesses. C.D.C. officials said they believe that some "chemical" is involved as the cause but they have not identified a single responsible "device, product or substance," Dr. Meaney Delman said. Dr. Christiani wrote in The New England Journal editorial that it was not yet clear which substances were causing the damage. E cigarette fluids alone contain "at least six groups of potentially toxic compounds," he wrote, but he noted that many of the patients had also vaped substances extracted from marijuana or hemp. The mixed up stew of chemicals might even create new toxins, Dr. Christiani suggested. The journal also published a study of two clusters of 53 cases in Wisconsin and Illinois. What looked like scattered cases earlier this summer has become a full fledged and widespread public health scare, leaving otherwise healthy teenagers and young adults severely ill. The first case of the mysterious lung illness, in Illinois, came in April , indicating that the syndrome emerged earlier than the mid June date that federal officials have often cited as the time the afflictions began. The patients studied in Illinois and Wisconsin were typically "healthy, young, with a median age of 19 years and a majority have been men," said Dr. Jennifer Layden, chief medical officer and state epidemiologist for the Illinois Department of Public Health. A third were younger than 18. The journal article about the Illinois and Wisconsin patients said that 98 percent were hospitalized, half required admission to the intensive care unit, and a third had so much trouble breathing that they needed to be placed on ventilators. Eighty four percent had vaped a product including T.H.C., the high inducing chemical in marijuana . Dr. Layden said a majority had also used a "nicotine based product," noting that there were "a range of products and devices." The journal article about those cases mentions that the heating coils in vaping devices might release metal particles that could be inhaled. "The focus of our investigation is narrowing but is still faced with complex questions," said Ileana Arias, the C.D.C.'s acting deputy director for noninfectious diseases. She added, "We are working tirelessly and relentlessly." Mitch Zeller, the director of the Center for Tobacco Products at the Food and Drug Administration, said particular concern is developing around products that are jury rigged by vaping retailers, or tampered with or mixed by consumers themselves. "Think twice," he said, urging consumers to avoid vaping products purchased on the street or that they have made themselves. Read our story about the explosive growth of teenagers addicted to vaping, with no easy way to quit. Public health officials have underscored one fundamental point: that the surge in illnesses is a new phenomenon and not merely a recognition of a syndrome that may have been developing for years. Indiana on Friday confirmed a third death from a severe lung illness linked to vaping shortly before officials in Minnesota confirmed a fourth. The patient, who was 65 , had a history of lung disease, but state officials said his acute lung injury was linked to "vaping illicit T.H.C. products." Health officials in Los Angeles County, Calif., said Friday that they had been investigating a dozen reports of lung illnesses linked to vaping, including one death, since Aug. 14. The patient who died was "an older adult with chronic underlying health conditions," though "it is clearly believed that vaping is a probable potential cause," Dr. Muntu Davis, a health officer with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health, said at a news conference. Most of the cases involved teens and young adults, but a third were middle aged and older adults, Dr. Davis said. Of the 12 patients, 11 were known to have vaped T.H.C. products, he said. "If you don't have to vape don't do it right now," Dr. Davis said. "It's wise to stay away from this until we understand what the implications are." Two other people one in Illinois, the other in Oregon, both of whom were adults have died from what appears to be the same type of illness, health officials in those states have said. Patients afflicted with the illness typically have showed up in emergency rooms with shortness of breath after several days of flulike symptoms, including high fever. In an especially severe case in Utah, a 21 year old man had such serious lung damage that even a ventilator could not provide enough breathing help. Doctors had to connect him to a machine that pumped oxygen directly into his bloodstream to keep him alive. "We were flying in the dark with this kid," said Dr. Sean J. Callahan, a pulmonologist and critical care specialist at the University of Utah, and an author of a letter about six vaping patients in Utah that was published Friday in The New England Journal of Medicine. "I thought he was going to die," Dr. Callahan said. "I kept thinking, his parents were there, if this were me and my wife, how crushed we would be for something that is completely avoidable. I worry that these products are really geared toward young people and kids, and we need a call to ban these things. That's my call to action as a father and a doctor." The patient survived, and went home after two weeks in the hospital. It is too soon to tell whether people with vaping injuries will recover fully, or sustain lasting lung damage, Dr. Callahan said. He added that doctors need to take better histories of young patients who come in with pneumonialike symptoms to try to find the real cause. Some patients and their families are forthcoming about vaping, but others are not. In one case, he said, medical residents were puzzled by what could have caused the illness. He asked the patient's mother to leave the room and then, instead of asking if the patient vaped, he simply asked, "What do you vape?" The answer was T.H.C. The state of New York, where 34 people have become ill, said on Thursday that vaping samples from eight of its cases showed high levels of a compound called vitamin E acetate. Investigators there are focusing on the possibility that the oily substance might be playing a key role in the illness. However, some of the more than 100 vaping samples being examined by the federal government did not test positive for vitamin E acetate, so that compound remains only one of many possible causes of the heavy lung inflammation.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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"Hell no, we're not opening on Monday," the owner of the Plaza in Atlanta said. LOS ANGELES In recent weeks, a tentative timeline for reopening America's movie theaters began to take shape. It involved pushing to get 75 percent of the country's 5,548 cinemas selling tickets again this summer, enough to justify the wide release of two potential blockbusters: Christopher Nolan's mind bending "Tenet," scheduled for July 17, and Disney's mega budget "Mulan," set for July 24. That one two punch would be enough to draw moviegoers back into theaters that had been closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, multiplex operators believed, allowing Hollywood to salvage part of the blockbuster season and, perhaps, revive a pastime that has taken on symbolic importance for the American economy. But some politicians want their popcorn now. Some Republican governors are urging cinemas to reopen sooner rather than later, despite business and public health realities that make an abrupt relighting of marquees impractical, if not impossible. To help restart Georgia's economy, Gov. Brian Kemp wants theaters to reopen starting Monday. Tennessee, where Regal Cinemas is based, plans to allow most businesses to reopen at the end of next week. South Carolina and Ohio are also restarting their economies. Texas and Florida are itching to do the same. But movie theaters are worried about opening up too early. They don't want to be lumped in with meatpacking plants and senior centers as hot spots for the virus. Already struggling financially, theaters fear that a too soon return could stigmatize them as dangerous places to congregate. And with new movies from Hollywood not set to debut until the middle of July at the earliest opening too soon would only make operators spend money before they could truly recoup costs from patrons. "Hell no, we're not opening on Monday," Chris Escobar, who owns the 485 seat Plaza Theater in Atlanta, said by phone. "When we do, it will not be because of political pressure. It will be because leading public health experts say our lives are no longer at risk." He added: "I want to be back in business right this second. But we've got to be smart about it. What happens if we open too soon and contribute to an outbreak? Traced to the Plaza Theater! You know what that would do to my business? I wouldn't have one." "We are not going to reopen until our partners in distribution will be supplying us with a consistent supply of new films," Mr. Stone wrote in an email. The two biggest chains, AMC and Regal, declined to comment. The industry was heartened to be included in Phase 1 of President Trump's broad federal guidelines to restart the economy, grouped with restaurants and houses of worship rather than with large concert venues. Now the chains, which operate independently but consult one another on best practices, are spending their time determining what protocols should be established. Separating seating within auditoriums is one idea. Owners are also contemplating longer intervals between showings to allow for deeper cleaning, plexiglass partitions at concession stands, and primarily touch free environments in which staff members wear masks and gloves and patrons don't carry physical tickets. Hand sanitizer and wipes would be made available. Theater companies are desperate to begin doing business again. They were in a delicate state even before the pandemic: Attendance has been on the decline down 5 percent last year in North America to 1.24 billion and competition, most notably from streaming services, has been on the rise. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. Out of business for more than a month, chains like AMC and Cineworld are in particularly bad financial shape. Last week, AMC staved off bankruptcy by taking on 500 million in new debt, pushing its total to 5.3 billion. The new funding, AMC said, will allow it to withstand closures around the world until November. There is concern that the longer theaters remain closed, the more the habit of moviegoing weakens, especially as studios send more films initially intended for theatrical release to video services. That list now includes "Artemis Fowl" (Disney), "Trolls World Tour" (Universal), "The Love Birds" (Paramount) and "Scoob!" (Warner Bros.). Publicly, theater operators have pointed to supply as the primary holdup. The major studios have postponed every big release planned for May and June "Black Widow," "Top Gun: Maverick," "F9," "Wonder Woman 1984" leaving multiplexes with nothing to show even if they wanted to reopen. Because most summer films cost 300 million or more to make and market, studios need the majority of theaters to be open before releasing the movies. Bringing them out in staggered fashion in the United States is not an option, studio executives say, in part because of piracy concerns. "Until the majority of markets in the U.S. are open, and major markets in particular, new wide release movies are unlikely to be available," the National Association of Theater Owners said in a statement on Wednesday. "As a result, some theaters in some areas that are authorized to open," the statement added, "will not be able to feasibly open." Behind the scenes, owners are working through a more complicated mix of considerations. Lawyers are trying to sort out what kind of liability theaters could face if audience members get infected with the virus. Some multiplex operators are discussing whether to require ticket buyers to be part of a loyalty program, collecting personal information so the company can assist authorities with contact tracing if needed. "When this crisis passes, the need for collective human engagement, the need to live and love and laugh and cry together, will be more powerful than ever," Mr. Nolan wrote. "We don't just owe it to the 150,000 workers of this great American industry to include them in those we help, we owe it to ourselves. We need what movies can offer us."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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MANCHESTER, England That sinking feeling, that sense that it was all happening again to Paris St. Germain, might have set in a couple of weeks ago, when Neymar limped off a field in Strasbourg, his face crumpled with tears, the fifth metatarsal in his right foot broken. Or it might not have come until a little later, until last weekend, until the point when Edinson Cavani, wincing from the pain in his hip, was told he would not be able to return to the field at the Parc des Princes for the second half of a Ligue 1 game against Bordeaux. Or maybe it was not the injuries, but the composite effect of them: Maybe it was the slow drift in P.S.G.'s performances these last few weeks their first domestic defeat of the season, at Lyon; being taken to extra time in a cup game by Villefranche, a third division team; squeezing past Bordeaux, once Cavani had gone. It all pointed in the same direction: that just as the mercury was rising and thoughts were turning once again to the Champions League, the most ambitious club project in Europe, the team that has distorted the transfer market and allegedly bent the rules in its relentless pursuit of success in this competition, was splintering and fracturing and crumbling once again. Suddenly, it felt as if a meeting in the last 16 with Manchester United was rather more daunting than it had seemed when the draw was made, back in December, back before Neymar's tears, back before Cavani's grimace, back before Villefranche. That was partly because of P.S.G.'s travails, of course, but partly because United looked reinvigorated. More than that, in fact: United looked like a completely different team, with completely different players, the gray clouds of Jose Mourinho's moody, miserable tenure replaced by the unending sunlight of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. Solskjaer had not lost a game as United manager before Tuesday's visit from P.S.G. He had restored Paul Pogba a virus, in Mourinho's estimation to his position as one of the world's finest midfielders. Anthony Martial and Marcus Rashford were thriving, too. Old Trafford had its smile back, a predator's grin, ready to become the latest place where P.S.G.'s finest laid plans fell to pieces, just as they had at the Bernabeu last year, and at the Etihad and the Nou Camp in the years before that. And then, just when it was happening again, it did not. P.S.G. produced a performance not just of class but of cunning and courage, and swatted Manchester United aside, 2 0. Presnel Kimpembe and Kylian Mbappe this great international vision, this expression of Qatari soft power, delivered by two boys from Paris's sprawling banlieues scored a goal each, and P.S.G. might feel slightly disappointed not to have left with more. Later on, Pogba against his hometown club was sent off, meaning United's standout performer will miss the return leg next month. With his exit, all reasonable hope of a turnaround in Paris departed, too. As it turned out, the harbinger of what was to come here was not Neymar's injury, or Cavani's, or any of the other feints and misdirections offered by P.S.G. in recent weeks. Instead, it was in November, in the aftermath of the French champion's victory against Liverpool in the opening stage of this competition. It was then, as his players danced on the field, celebrating a victory in a group stage game one high on tension and fraught with traps, admittedly, but still a group stage game that Thomas Tuchel, P.S.G.'s German coach, saw something. His team had not just beaten Liverpool for talent, not relied on Neymar's virtuosity or Mbappe's breathtaking speed; it had beaten them for effort, too. It had dug in and ground it out. It had proved, against a dogged, determined opponent, that it could fight, too. "Now, we feel something," Tuchel said. Those were the characteristics P.S.G. fell back upon Tuesday night in Manchester: Thiago Silva, among the club's first wave of superstar signings, all the way back in 2012, towering in defense; Marquinhos, deployed to stifle and to shadow Pogba, dominant in midfield; the bustle of Marco Verratti, the hustle of Angel Di Maria. Those are the traits that teams need to overcome these challenges, to shine on these stages, to thrive in this competition, just as much as they need star power and sublime skill. Those are the traits that, in previous years, P.S.G. has not been able to call on. It cowered against Real Madrid last season, as if waiting meekly for its fate. It melted away against Barcelona the year before that, unable or unwilling to resist as Neymar and Lionel Messi ran riot. It would be dangerous to suggest that this victory provided a blueprint for P.S.G.'s future, to use this exception to prove some wayward rule. This is not proof that P.S.G. is better without the world's most expensive player, or evidence that a project built on and seduced by star power is innately flawed. Neymar improves every team he is part of; if Tuchel harbors designs to win the Champions League, he will need the Brazilian back. Much the same goes for Cavani, as diligent and spirited a forward as might be found. Better teams than Manchester United, of which there are several, would pose more questions, and find more answers. That Tuchel found a way to win in their absence, though, suggests that something has shifted, that the P.S.G. project has reached another stage, that after years of searching for a way to win even when all seems arrayed against them, they have found what Tuchel, that night in November, called a "new culture." Now, they feel something. All that remains is to make sure that Neymar, and Cavani, feel it, too.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Terence Blanchard's "Fire Shut Up in My Bones," seen here at Opera Theater of St. Louis last year, will open the Metropolitan Opera's 2021 22 season, the first work it is presenting by a Black composer. This spring, after the coronavirus pandemic forced the closure of performing arts institutions around the world, Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Metropolitan Opera, faced the truth. "It's transparently obvious that social distancing and grand opera cannot go together," Mr. Gelb said in a New York Times interview back then, as he announced the cancellation of the Met's fall season. In short order, other New York institutions followed that lead. On Sept. 23, in the latest blow from the crisis, the Met announced that the cancellation would extend to its entire 2020 21 season. It's hard to see how the New York Philharmonic, Carnegie Hall and other musical organizations not to mention Broadway theaters can open their doors safely any time sooner. To his credit, Mr. Gelb is looking at this period as not just a pause but a reboot. He has realized that if the Met is going to rise again after the virus subsides, it must do things differently, to prove itself more essential than ever. The work it presents must matter and how the company presents itself must matter, too. Relieved from the demands of daily performances, the Met like the nation's other arts institutions must take time to think about its place within larger societal currents, especially the roiling issues of racial injustice and police brutality that have inspired nationwide demonstrations. Black classical artists and administrators have spoken out powerfully about systemic discrimination within the field. To that end, the ambitious 2021 22 season Mr. Gelb unveiled as he announced the current season's cancellation is also a statement of purpose that seeks to address multiple oversights in the Met's history. If all goes according to plan, the house will open on Sept. 27, 2021, with Terence Blanchard's "Fire Shut Up in My Bones," which had its premiere last year at Opera Theater of St. Louis. Based on a memoir by Charles M. Blow, a Times Op Ed columnist, and with a libretto by Kasi Lemmons, it will be the first work by a Black composer ever presented by the Met. "Fire" had already been announced for a future Met season, but Mr. Gelb rightly saw that this spot the Met's comeback offering was the right time and platform. For a company of its size and importance, the Met has not done nearly enough to foster living composers and contemporary music. So it's great that in addition to the Blanchard work, there will be productions of two other recent operas: Matthew Aucoin's "Eurydice," with a libretto by Sarah Ruhl, first staged at Los Angeles Opera early this year, and Brett Dean's 2017 adaptation of "Hamlet." Not since 1928 have so many new works been presented here. And it shows substantial institutional buy in that Yannick Nezet Seguin, the Met's music director, will conduct "Fire Shut Up in My Bones" and "Eurydice." The Met has also long been playing catch up regarding female conductors. Last fall Karen Kamensek led the company's first production of Philip Glass's "Akhnaten," making her only the fifth woman to conduct at the Met. This coming season five productions will be conducted by women: Ms. Kamensek (in a return of "Akhnaten"), as well as Susanna Malkki, Jane Glover and, in their company debuts, Eun Sun Kim and Nathalie Stutzmann. Never have this many women conducted in a Met season. These moves are all heartening and important. Yet what took so long? How is it possible that no Black composer has ever been commissioned, nor any older work by a Black composer presented, in the Met's history? Just this spring, Anthony Davis won the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his eighth opera, "The Central Park Five," which had its premiere last summer at Long Beach Opera in California. Mr. Davis's first opera, "X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X," was a landmark success at the New York City Opera in 1986. Why hasn't it ever be seen at the Met? In 2017, when Opera Philadelphia inaugurated a citywide festival, a highlight was the premiere of "We Shall Not Be Moved," a powerful, timely opera by the composer Daniel Bernard Roumain and the librettist Marc Bamuthi Joseph, directed by Bill T. Jones. Though chamber size, the work blazed with dramatic daring, with a score that boldly drew from gospel, funk, jazz and contemporary modern styles. I could image a Roumain opera written for the Met's stage. And it's baffling that the Met has lagged so badly in hiring female conductors. For at least 20 years Ms. Malkki has been one of the most exciting and sought after conductors in classical music. Yet so far at the Met she has led only the 2016 run of Kaija Saariaho's "L'Amour de Loin" which, speaking of oversights, was the first work by a female composer presented by the Met in a century, though the company has plans to address this, too. The Met's reckoning with representation comes as it and Mr. Gelb deal with the severe economic challenges wrought by the pandemic. The Met stands to lose well over 100 million in revenue. Roughly 1,000 employees, including the company's superb orchestra and chorus, have been furloughed without pay since April. Yet if this devastating shutdown forces the Met to grapple with its role in American society and to shift the overwhelmingly traditional template of its programming, then there will have been an important upside to the crisis. The prestigious, gilded Met has hardly been a trailblazer in this regard, but it could set an example for other American opera companies and orchestras to use this time to think about and rethink their offerings. I don't mean to overstate the boldness of the Met's 2021 22 plans. For a company that presents roughly two dozen works each season, that three of them would be new or recent seems hardly radical. And classical music and opera must do better at making their institutions both the artists onstage and the administrators that support them reflect the diversity of the American people. But the Met season scheduled to begin a year from now represents an exciting start to what could be a new era. And there are signs of a more sustained commitment to change than a single season: The company announced that it has chosen three Black composers Valerie Coleman, Jessie Montgomery and Joel Thompson to join its collaborative commissioning program with Lincoln Center Theater. I keep thinking back to Sept. 11. Just four days after the attacks, New York City Opera returned. Before long, so did the rest of Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall and Broadway. New Yorkers were making a statement that, even in the face of horror and fear, the performing arts so crucial to the city would go on. It was hard not to worry that, snug in your seat at the Met, an attack could come anywhere, any time. But everyone was willing to take that risk. The coronavirus is an entirely different kind of attacker. There can be no quick return to the opera or concert hall. Will opera survive? I think it will, but probably not without major and overdue changes. Perhaps colossus houses like the Met will have the upper hand. After all, the company already has international reach through its Live in HD broadcasts and, of late, its series of livestreamed recitals. Yet companies of the Met's size will not get any more easy to swing economically. Smaller institutions with more focused missions may well prove more flexible and adept not just chamber opera enterprises but also larger houses that present a limited season of offerings and work out per engagement contracts with singers and musicians. The next months will reveal much including the big question of whether, even by next fall, it will be safe for the Met and the performing arts in America to return. We can only hope so.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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When the Mets hired Brodie Van Wagenen as their new general manager last October, they wholly embraced, even promoted, his status as an unconventional outsider a converted player agent. The team made a similarly unorthodox addition on Tuesday, announcing that Jessica Mendoza, a baseball analyst for ESPN, would join the team's front office as a baseball operations adviser to Van Wagenen. The Mets said Mendoza, a softball gold medalist in the 2004 Olympic Games who joined ESPN in 2007, would focus on player evaluation, roster construction, and health and performance. But in noting that Mendoza also would retain her high profile role on "Sunday Night Baseball" telecasts, the announcement gave a new dimension to questions about objectivity for ESPN. The network has long covered sports while also paying leagues billions of dollars each year to air them, and it has increasingly seen its own employees blur the lines between covering and participating in sports. Van Wagenen said at a news conference Tuesday morning that hiring Mendoza furthered the team's efforts to shake up the way it does business. "I was an outside the box hire," Van Wagenen said. "I've been a believer that you need to get new voices and fresh perspectives in any room, especially when you are making decisions." Mendoza, 38, has a sterling history in softball and baseball. She was one of the best college softball players ever, and later won a gold medal at the 2004 Athens Games and a silver in 2008. She has been with ESPN for about 12 years and became a color analyst on "Sunday Night Baseball" the network's flagship baseball program in 2016. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. While Mendoza will evaluate players and provide input on roster construction, Van Wagenen said she would be especially influential in the areas of health and performance and technology. He also said she would work for the Mets during baseball's annual general manager and winter meetings in the off season, suggesting her role would be more consequential than those of others including the ex Yankee Alex Rodriguez who are both broadcasters and advisers for teams. Mendoza's deal with the Mets includes a confidentiality agreement, Van Wagenen said, adding that she would not share on her broadcast "anything she gleans from our operation." She also will not be allowed to share with the Mets anything she learns about other teams through her ESPN duties. Mendoza will be in the Mets' training camp in Port St. Lucie, Fla., on Friday. ESPN has long had a revolving door between the playing fields and the broadcast booth. Just last week, Jason Witten left "Monday Night Football" to return to his N.F.L. playing career, one year after Jon Gruden did the same to return to coaching. Still, Mendoza's hire is different. She is perhaps ESPN's highest profile baseball voice, one of the network's most important employees on its most important baseball broadcast. She is currently scheduled to be in the booth for a June game between the Mets and Atlanta Braves. ESPN shrugged off suggestions of conflict of interest, and argued that Mendoza was far from the first baseball broadcaster to navigate such concerns. "There are numerous examples across networks of these type of arrangements where commentators work closely with teams, and we will be fully transparent about Jessica's relationship with the Mets," said Josh Krulewitz, an ESPN spokesman. "We have complete faith in her ability as a leading M.L.B. voice for ESPN." ESPN's relationship with baseball is especially intimate. The network also employs Rodriguez, who is a special adviser for the Yankees, and David Ross, a special assistant for the Cubs. On Tuesday, ESPN also announced that the Yankees pitcher C. C. Sabathia would contribute to various ESPN television shows this season, mostly in coverage of sports other than baseball. Other networks have similar situations: The retired baseball players Frank Thomas and David Ortiz, who both work for Fox, also have roles with their old teams. But Van Wagenen's insistence that Mendoza would have input on important baseball decisions seems to set her apart from other broadcasters' or ex players' roles as "special advisers," a role that tends to be more ceremonial than substantive. Ross and Rodriguez are not listed as part of the front office on their respective teams' websites, and Thomas is an adviser for business operations. When Ortiz's role was announced, he focused on his duties of recruiting free agents and making community appearances. Like ESPN, the Mets are accustomed to the revolving door in the baseball industry. Van Wagenen was hired from Creative Artists Agency, where he represented Mets stars like Jacob deGrom and Yoenis Cespedes. In taking the job, Van Wagenen divested himself from his stake in C.A.A., and he has said that he will recuse himself from any contract negotiations with past clients, including deGrom. If that wasn't confusing enough, Mendoza is also represented by C.A.A. And then there's Tim Tebow, working his way up through the Mets' minor league ranks while remaining with ESPN as a college football analyst.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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When Jason Figueroa was a teenager in the Bronx, he spent time visiting a family friend in Putnam Valley, a sleepy town in southwestern Putnam County, just across the border from Westchester. The friend lived in Highfields, the only townhouse development there, and Mr. Figueroa found the place so peaceful and friendly that he was determined to move there one day. "It was my escape," he said. "Highfields was the No. 1 place I wanted to live." Mr. Figueroa, 34, now works as a doorman in Manhattan. His wife, Michelle Hernandez, 35, is a saleswoman at a jewelry store in the Bronx. They came close to fulfilling Mr. Figueroa's dream in 2013, when they moved to Putnam Valley with their son, who was then 3, trading their Bronx rental for a two bedroom ranch. The house, which they bought for 190,000, was not in Highfields. "It was a great starter home," Mr. Figueroa said. "And I knew the market would eventually go up, and I could easily sell it." "Quiet" is a good way to describe the 41 square mile Putnam Valley. You could also call it "rugged" or "rustic." The town's roughly 11,700 residents live amid rocky slopes and huge boulders left by retreating glaciers. Hilly roads snake through forests lined with 200 year old stone walls, beside pastures where horses graze, and around numerous ponds and lakes. A good portion of the 14,086 acre Clarence Fahnestock Memorial State Park lies in Putnam Valley, along with about 1,000 acres of protected land owned by the town and the Hudson Highlands Land Trust. "We are trying to preserve as much as we can," said Sam Oliverio Jr., the town supervisor and a lifelong resident. Socioeconomically, Mr. Oliverio said, "we run the gamut from very poor to very wealthy. Mainly, though, it's a white collar commuter town, with lawyers, doctors and accountants who work in White Plains and the city. And we have a lot of tradespeople carpenters, plumbers, electricians who work locally. It's a real blend." He called Putnam Valley "fiscally conservative, but socially progressive, with thriving racially diverse and LGBT populations." Mr. Figueroa called the town "old timey": "It reminds me of those old fashioned places I've seen in movies, where everybody knows everybody, everybody helps each other out," he said. "That's what I love about it." 4 FAWN RUN A three bedroom, three and a half bathroom house, built in 1992 on two acres, listed for 499,900. 845 206 1215 Sheryl Luongo, the Putnam Valley assessor, said the town has roughly 4,800 single family homes. The three major lakes Lake Peekskill in the southwest corner, Roaring Brook Lake to the northeast and Lake Oscawana, the largest, in the middle are the hubs of once summer only, now year round communities consisting primarily, but not entirely, of modest homes. Elsewhere, houses are more spread out, a mix of colonials, contemporaries, farmhouses, ranches and a few log chalets. There are some developments of bigger homes on larger lots, built in the 1990s and 2000s, and several older homeowner associations, like Floradan Estates, as well as the townhouses in Highfields. "It's not your cookie cutter suburb," said Christine Rowley, an associate broker with RE/MAX Classic Realty. 22 ELM ROAD A two bedroom, three bathroom Cape Cod style house, built in 2005 on 0.75 acres, listed for 469,000. 646 302 1146 Deborah Glatz, a saleswoman at Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, said homes in Putnam Valley range from around 250,000 for a small cottage to more than 1 million for a lakefront property and upward of 2 million for an estate. "There's value here," she said. "You can get more house than you can in Westchester, and taxes are lower." Recently, the market has been strong, Ms. Rowley said: "I have had a lot of bidding wars over the past year, with sellers getting close to full price, and occasionally above." Inventory has decreased, Ms. Glatz noted, and prices have gone up. "It is still a seller's market," she said. "But that may shift if an abundance of homes comes on the market in the spring." According to information from the Hudson Gateway Multiple Listing Service, there were 50 single family homes on the market in late January, from a 757 square foot, one bedroom cottage, built in 1954 on 0.14 acres, listed for 199,000, to a 5,786 square foot, four bedroom lakefront colonial, built in 2004 on 29.57 acres, for 2.95 million. The median sale price for a single family home during the 12 month period ending Jan. 28 was 340,000, up from 338,000 during the previous 12 months. 211 LAKE DRIVE A two bedroom, one bathroom lakefront cottage, built in 1951 on 0.15 acres, listed for 325,000. 646 302 1146 For a rural, predominantly residential town, Putnam Valley has its share of recreational and social options. People who live around the lakes can ice skate in the winter and swim, fish and boat during the summer. Residents congregate at Leonard Wagner Memorial Park for summer concerts, holiday celebrations and the annual Town Day. The park has ball fields, tennis courts, nature trails, a roller hockey rink and a pavilion, and is the site of a county run senior center. The culturally inclined can attend student and community run events at the high school's 575 seat performing arts center and assorted activities held by the Tompkins Corners Cultural Center at the historic Tompkins Corners United Methodist Church. Hudson Valley MOCA, a contemporary art museum in Peekskill, is a few miles away. Hikers will find miles of trails in Fahnestock Park and the Hudson Highlands Land Trust's 358 acre Granite Mountain Preserve. Putnam Valley has a restaurant, Brookside Grille, a sprinkling of delis and pizzerias, and a tiny commercial area known as Oregon Corners. Shopping is plentiful in neighboring Cortlandt and Yorktown, in Westchester County. All of Putnam Valley is served by the Putnam Valley Central School District, which also serves a small section of Cortlandt. The district's approximately 1,700 students attend Putnam Valley Elementary School for kindergarten through fourth grade; Putnam Valley Middle School for fifth through eighth grade; and Putnam Valley High School for ninth through 12th grade. The middle and high schools share a campus. On the 2017 2018 state assessments, 72 percent of the district's fourth graders were proficient in math and 57 percent were proficient in English language arts; statewide equivalents were 48 percent and 47 percent. Mean SAT scores for the 2018 graduating class were 558 in evidence based reading and writing and 577 in math; statewide equivalents were 534 and 534.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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When Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, first met a journeyman musician named Bob Marley in 1972, he had a feeling that the young man might find success. "He had a kind of aura about him," Mr. Blackwell, 80, recalled in a recent interview. "I had an idea that he could have an impact." But Mr. Blackwell said he did not imagine the kind of pop culture sainthood that Marley would ultimately achieve: tens of millions of albums sold, instant name and dreadlock recognition around the world, and an estate that, in Forbes's estimate, earned 23 million last year, partly from the sale of family branded products like speakers, coffee and Marley Natural cannabis. While the family of Marley, who died in 1981 at 36, handles most aspects of his estate, Mr. Blackwell controls the rights to Marley's music publishing catalog, including the copyrights to classic reggae songs like "One Love" and "Three Little Birds." On Saturday Mr. Blackwell signed a 50 million deal with Primary Wave Music Publishing, a boutique New York music company, the latest in a string of high profile transactions reflecting how streaming has boosted the value of music catalogs. "Basic publishing is absolutely important, but it's not very exciting," said Mr. Blackwell, who speaks in a slow, soft British accent but carries two cellphones that chirp constantly. "But now it is the music business. Record companies used to manufacture, and that was the difference between a record company and a publishing company. All that is really gone now." Under the deal, Primary Wave will control 80 percent of Mr. Blackwell's share of two catalogs: Marley's songs and Blue Mountain Music, a publisher that Mr. Blackwell set up in 1962, which has reggae hits by Toots the Maytals and rock classics by Free ("All Right Now") and Marianne Faithfull. Blue Mountain also has rights to U2 songs, but those are excluded from the deal, Mr. Blackwell said. Primary Wave has carved out a lucrative niche in music publishing by focusing on aggressive branding and marketing campaigns for what its founder, Larry Mestel, calls "the icons and legends business." The company has a relatively small catalog of about 12,000 songs its roster includes Smokey Robinson, Def Leppard and Steve Cropper, who wrote "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" with Otis Redding that it promotes heavily through commercial tie ins, movies and TV shows. Mr. Mestel, whose first job was working for Mr. Blackwell at Island, declined to offer any specifics about his plans for the Marley songbook. As examples of his company's approach, he cited two past campaigns. When Primary Wave managed Kurt Cobain's catalog, it struck a deal with Converse to drape sneakers in Nirvana lyrics; for Aerosmith, the company helped create a state lottery game, with each scratch off card revealing words from Aerosmith songs. For the estate of the pianist Glenn Gould, Primary Wave plans to send a hologram of Gould who died in 1982 and famously hated playing live on a concert tour. The Marley catalog is unusual. During his lifetime, he had few chart hits, but his music has achieved steady, far reaching popularity that has lasted for decades. According to Nielsen, Marley's songs have been streamed more than 1.7 billion times in the United States alone, and his fame permeates deep into emerging markets like Africa and India. "There isn't a crevice of the world," Mr. Mestel said, "where Bob Marley isn't a god." Unlike most publishers, Primary Wave sees itself as a branding house and an asset manager, exploiting song catalogs on behalf of investors that have contributed to an acquisition fund. The company, Mr. Mestel said, has about 400 million to invest in music on behalf of those investors, a group that includes BlackRock, the world's largest money manager. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. Over the past year, hundreds of millions of dollars have changed hands in music publishing transactions. In June, Concord paid almost 600 million for Imagem, which includes the Rodgers Hammerstein catalog. In December, Kobalt bought Songs (Lorde, the Weeknd) for 160 million, and this month Round Hill Music closed a 240 million deal for Carlin Music, which includes standards like "Fever." Money managers, lawyers and music executives say that a confluence of factors, including low interest rates and a roaring stock market, has created an especially frothy market for alternative investments like music rights. And the success of streaming has quickly given a boost to catalog valuations, pointing to the possibility of steady growing returns for years to come. "We're experiencing growth from multiple sources simultaneously," said Barry M. Massarsky, an economist who specializes in valuing music catalogs. "It's a perfect storm of value for music publishing assets." In a competitive market, Primary Wave's pitch to songwriters is that it can find new ways to market old material. For Mr. Robinson, who signed a 22 million deal with Primary Wave in 2016, the company did a deal with American Greetings to promote a new holiday, Father Daughter Day, using Mr. Robinson's song "My Girl." When he was looking for a new home for his songs, Mr. Robinson said in an interview, those ideas sold him. "When I got to Primary Wave, they had made up a brochure with all kinds of things to show me how they operate," Mr. Robinson said. "It had my picture on the cover and my songs listed and everything. It was just so attractive to me, I signed with them." Mr. Mestel said that he seeks only tasteful deals. But the Marley family controls the use of their patriarch's name and likeness, and Mr. Blackwell said that the family, which earns the majority of the songwriting royalties, has the final right to refuse any use. Mr. Blackwell, who began his career selling Jamaican singles out of the trunk of his Mini Cooper in London, built Island into a major power with Marley, Steve Winwood, Cat Stevens, Grace Jones and U2. In recent years, he said, he has devoted himself to his Island Outpost collection of resorts and Blackwell Rum, shrinking his music publishing business to just a few employees. The new partnership with Primary Wave, Mr. Blackwell said, had him excited about returning to music, and to the worldwide popularity of Marley. "I was in Singapore last year in a little bar," he said. "Suddenly you look up, and there on the TV, singing a song, is Bob Marley."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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Pluto is hazy, with a chance of clouds. Scientists working with data from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, which flew past Pluto last year, are presenting some of their latest results this week in Pasadena, Calif., at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences. The findings include images showing seven small, bright spots that might be clouds floating just above Pluto's surface. New Horizons had already discovered haze in Pluto's tenuous atmosphere, rising more than 120 miles into the sky and separated into at least 24 distinct layers.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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For decades, the Rosenberg family has been attempting to recover this Degas work, "Portrait of Mlle. Gabrielle Diot," a pastel portrait that was taken from Parisian art dealer Paul Rosenberg by the Nazis. A Family Recovered Most of What the Nazis Stole. But Not This. The family of Paul Rosenberg, a renowned Paris art dealer whose gallery had exclusive arrangements with Braque, Matisse and Picasso, has worked tirelessly, with tremendous success, to recover the 400 works the Nazis looted from him. That Mr. Rosenberg kept meticulous records and purchased museum quality art helped the family to reclaim all but 60 pieces. The works recovered in recent years include Matisse's "Woman Seated in an Armchair," discovered in the Munich apartment of the reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt. Another Matisse, "Woman in a Blue Dress in Front of a Fireplace" was returned by the Henie Onstad Art Center in Norway in 2014. But one pastel portrait by Edgar Degas, an image of particular importance to Paul Rosenberg, has proved to be maddeningly elusive. For decades, the family has been tracking the pastel, "Portrait of Mlle. Gabrielle Diot," created in 1890. Yet efforts to recover it have been repeatedly thwarted, even though the family knows the identity of a German dealer who has tried several times to sell it. International law doesn't govern such situations. The rights to possession recognized under German law might make litigation difficult, experts say, and the intervention of German officials on the Rosenbergs' behalf has gone nowhere. "It has been completely frustrating," said Marianne Rosenberg, Paul's granddaughter and an art dealer with a gallery in New York. "Something appears, then it disappears again and you lose it for another 20 years." Few families can match the Rosenbergs' track record for getting back art lost in the war. Though Paul Rosenberg's records were helpful, so were the patience and perseverance of three generations of family members whose efforts stretch back to the waning days of the German occupation of Paris. In August 1944, Lt. Alexandre Rosenberg of the Free French forces stopped a train outside the city, only to find that it contained many of the works that the Nazis had looted from his father. Not among them was the Degas portrait of Ms. Diot, a young woman with limpid blue eyes and chestnut curls piled atop her head. It had once hung in Paul Rosenberg's study in Floirac, near Bordeaux. The dealer rented the house as a refuge from the Nazis in 1940. After the Rosenbergs fled France, the German ambassador had the portrait seized from the house, along with other items, and it wound up in the Jeu de Paume, the Paris museum the Nazis converted into a warehouse for pictures plundered from Jews. Mr. Hans wanted the Rosenbergs to buy back the pastel. Ms. Rosenberg refused, Mr. Marinello said, and when she did, he said, Mr. Hans told her the portrait would be returned to the consignor and she would never get it back. Mr. Hans declined to be interviewed for this article. But his colleague, Anne Auber, said in an email that Ms. Rosenberg had insulted Mr. Hans during the call. Ms. Auber declined to identify the current holder of the work, except to say that the portrait is now in Switzerland. But she gave a brief history of the work, tracing it back to a Swiss family, who lived in Ascona, a town on Lake Maggiore near Italy. She said the family had bought the portrait in Paris in 1942. Mr. Hans has said he later helped them broker its sale in 1974 to the current holder. No subsequent sales seems to have occurred, despite the catalog listing in 1987. But Mr. Marinello said he learned by chance that the dealer had tried to sell the portrait again in 2003. A German businessman, Christian von Bentheim, told Mr. Marinello that he had been approached by Mr. Hans and asked if he could help facilitate a discreet private sale of "Portrait of Mlle. Gabrielle Diot" for a price of about 3 million euros, or about 4.6 million today. Mr. von Bentheim, who had no experience in art dealing, said in an interview that he had asked Robert Morgan, an artist friend of his, to look into the pastel. Mr. Morgan said he contacted a curator friend who quickly established that the work had been stolen from Paul Rosenberg. "I told Christian it was looted and advised him to have nothing to do with it," Mr. Morgan said by telephone. Angry with Mr. Hans, Mr. von Bentheim said he returned a full size color reproduction the dealer had given him. "I really didn't want to have anything to do with it," he said by telephone. "Hans used me to try to get rid of this pastel." Selling the portrait is difficult because it is listed on several international databases of looted art. Mr. Marinello said he reached out to Mr. Hans again in 2016, asking him to reveal the name of the holder of the portrait, but Mr. Hans again declined. So Mr. Marinello tried a new tack, writing to the German Culture Ministry asking the government to intervene to recover the portrait. A ministry official contacted Mr. Hans requesting that he reveal the name, or contact details, of the consignor, Mr. Marinello said. Jewish heirs of looted art have agreed in other cases to partially compensate good faith buyers, or to auction disputed works and divide the proceeds. Even the Rosenbergs have compromised in the past: In 1970, Alexandre Rosenberg accepted a below market value compensation payment for a looted Degas painting that had surfaced in Cologne, Germany. Marianne Rosenberg said it makes no sense to pay for the return of a looted work, especially when the current holder has tried to sell it, knowing it was stolen. "I cannot understand on any level why a family that has been looted by the Nazis should have to pay to get its property back," Ms. Rosenberg said. "Are we supposed to buy back what we own? We want our looted work back. Full stop. There is no excuse for this behavior and this unwillingness to return this work, which they know is looted." But the family has no plans at this time to file a lawsuit in an effort to recover the work at this time because of the difficulties involved. "German law is not restitution friendly," Mara Wantuch Thole, a Berlin based attorney who specializes in such cases, said. While German law says even a good faith purchaser cannot pass good title to a stolen work, it also stipulates that theft claims should be made within 30 years. And, after 10 years, the law recognizes the possession rights of the current holders unless it can be shown they knew the work had been stolen when it was purchased.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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Economists and advisers being courted by Republican presidential hopefuls, clockwise from bottom left: Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation; Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute; James Pethokoukis of the American Enterprise Institute; Kevin Warsh of the Hoover Institution; Arthur Laffer, whose famed curve inspired Reaganomics; Laurence Kotlikoff, a professor at Boston University; Glenn Hubbard, head of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and dean of Columbia's business school; and Tony Fratto, who served at the Treasury and the White House under George W. Bush. For months now, many in the ever growing legion of Republican presidential hopefuls and their staffs have been quizzing a sprawling web of economists who have, in turn, been auditioning the candidates. The contenders have shopped for wave your magic wand economic ideas and alternatives to the Affordable Care Act. They have asked the experts, arrayed along the conservative spectrum, for information on their colleagues and even guidance about which Democrats they can consult. This do si do is particularly intense along a circuit that runs primarily through Washington, crowded with right leaning research and advocacy organizations like the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation. But it extends up through Ivy League bastions like Harvard and Columbia and across to Northern California at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. And like teenagers at a school dance, most contenders have yet to pair off with anyone in particular. "A lot of the candidates are still trying to figure out who they're comfortable with and who they want in their circle," said Michael R. Strain, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, who has met with a handful over the past year. "We're still in the phase of broad discussions where I think the candidates are trying to talk to a whole lot of people with a wide range of views." But some of the candidates "are much more insistent on monogamy," said Lanhee Chen, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and former policy director for Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign. "They pretty much require it." One of those is Jeb Bush, who officially entered the race this week. His family ties provide him with a much deeper bench of experienced economic hands than any of his competitors. According to several people consulted by the campaign, he has already locked in Glenn Hubbard and Kevin Warsh, two prominent conservatives whose resumes include close ties to Wall Street, previous presidential campaigns and stints in George W. Bush's White House. "There is no one more in the middle of a network of great advisers than Hubbard," said Kevin A. Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and a veteran of several campaigns. "Whatever they want to talk about, Glenn can get the best people, even Democrats." Beyond the party's traditional triumvirate of economic concerns tax reform, looser government regulation and free trade candidates are also looking for help in developing proposals that can help them stand out, be easily understood by voters and withstand the volley of assaults that their opponents are sure to lob. "There is such a small set of people who can actually do what has to be done," Mr. Hassett said. After five campaigns, he said, he is sitting this one out so that he can offer advice to anyone who comes knocking. Another economist likely to remain unaffiliated is Arthur Laffer, whose famed curve inspired Reaganomics. Many mainstream economists have pointed to the failures in Mr. Laffer's supply side promises that lowering top tax rates will lift economic growth and lead to more federal revenues. But he holds a venerable position among Republicans and is frequently sought out as much to pay homage to as to receive advice. He has met with nearly all of the top Republican hopefuls, he said, including the long shot Tea Party hero Ben Carson ("a rock star," Mr. Laffer said), and Jeb Bush, with whom he served as a pallbearer at the funeral of the Cuban born millionaire Jorge Mas Canosa, who created a powerful anti Castro lobbying machine in Miami. Elizabeth Holmes Hones Her Defense in Day 2 of Testimony Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Politicians aren't experts, Mr. Laffer said. "They give a speech and if anyone boos, they change their speech," he explained. "They're living, breathing polls and that's the way it should be." The latest, with Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, took place Thursday night at the Four Seasons restaurant in Manhattan. Mr. Laffer's co hosts include Larry Kudlow, a former Reagan adviser and a CNBC commentator, and Stephen Moore, a flat tax champion at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. Moore has been working closely with Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky on a new tax proposal, a 14.5 percent flat tax, which he unveiled on Wednesday in an op ed article in The Wall Street Journal. The dinners are partly meant to encourage candidates to adopt three ideas: lower tax rates, more open trade and pro immigration policies. The group is concerned about the party embracing policies that hearken back to the "fortress America" ideas espoused by the onetime presidential candidate and conservative commentator Patrick J. Buchanan in the 1990s, Mr. Moore said. They also, no doubt, want to push back against some younger and more moderate conservative voices so called reformicons who have argued that the party should focus less single mindedly on tax cuts and pay more attention to other issues like inequality, middle class wage stagnation and the costs of higher education. James Pethokoukis, a reformicon economist at the American Enterprise Institute who has met with several campaigns, has advised against a narrow focus on cutting tax rates. "They think the country is in bad shape, and they want big change, not incremental change," he said of the candidates. "Everyone wants faster economic growth. I've said the best way to do that is through a number of initiatives, and not try to find a magic bullet." He mentioned fewer government regulations and investments in education and infrastructure as examples of his suggested initiatives. Mr. Pethokoukis said he was not planning on joining any particular campaign: "I give my 2 cents to all comers." Tim Kane, an economist at the Hoover Institution, said he had met with four campaigns, primarily to discuss his specialty, immigration. He added that there was a recognition that Republicans were vulnerable to Democratic charges that they didn't care about inequality. What they want to know, he said, is: "How do you combat it?" Mr. Bush is perhaps furthest along in putting together his economic team. As Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics and an adviser to the McCain campaign in 2008, said: "He has more support from mainstream economists and establishment economists." Both Mr. Warsh and Mr. Hubbard, who is dean of the Columbia University business school, declined to talk about the campaigns. When asked about the generation long stagnation on middle class incomes, Mr. Hubbard argued that "compensation didn't stagnate," citing large increases that employers have paid out in health and pension benefits. "Global changes in the market make it difficult to get wage gains," he added. One challenge for Mr. Bush, unlike the other Republican candidates, is that memories of the housing bust and the ensuing financial crisis at the end of his brother's second term are still fresh. "Both Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton have relationships and history they will have to overcome," said Tony Fratto, a longtime G.O.P. strategist who is backing Mr. Bush. "He has to make his own case for his background and ideas, but she has a more complex challenge, namely explaining and differing from the sitting administration that she was part of." Newcomers to the political circus, like Mr. Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, don't have such baggage, but they also lack ties within the Republican establishment, compelling them to reach beyond the usual suspects. Laurence Kotlikoff, an economics professor at Boston University who ran for president himself as a third party candidate in 2012, said Mr. Carson called him to talk about the size of the deficit. Mr. Kotlikoff was disdainful of the network that presidential candidates of both parties tend to rely on. "The problem with politicians," he said, "is that they hire economists who instantly become politicians."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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Or something to that effect. Hard as it may seem to believe that an app designed to facilitate criminal acts could have a nefarious purpose, we finally discover what the powers that be have had in mind for Caleb. For weeks, there has been speculation over Caleb's true identity: Could he be a host or some other artificial creation? Throughout the season, the jumble of fragmented moments that have circulated in his memory has recalled Bernard at his glitchiest, forever struggling to solve the puzzles created by his own consciousness. In the meantime, he has attached himself to Dolores, not least because she moves forward with a confidence and certainty that he could never manage on his own. On this week's episode, Dolores leads him to a facility in Sonora, Mexico, where some of the biggest secrets of the Rehoboam project are stored. Earlier in the season, we got a glimpse of a Mesa like operation where human "anomalies" are subject to whatever editing they need to bring them back in line with their predictable, algorithmically correct cohorts. The entire purpose of the Seracs' project was to wrangle the destructive chaos of human interaction into a coherent, sustainable plan for survival. There's no room in the system for people inclined to chart their own course because the models all point to the likelihood of extinction. It was never a great sign that Engerraund Serac's brother was the first fly in the ointment, and many others, like Caleb, would follow. One of the smarter ideas this season is that Serac is a defensible villain: Rehoboam grew out of nuclear catastrophe and the promise of more catastrophes to come, so even the most heavy handed tactics to keep mankind in line are sensible. It may not sound great for one man and his machine to have the power to control the destinies of individuals and nations, but it sounds better when there are no other options. In order to keep the great Westworld park known as Planet Earth operational, anomalies like Caleb had to be brought back to their loops like the hosts and if they couldn't be, they needed to be decommissioned.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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LOS ANGELES As a first year guard with the Philadelphia 76ers a decade ago, Jrue Holiday was just hoping for playing time. But he can still remember the excitement he felt before his first games against luminaries like Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade and Shaquille O'Neal, whom Holiday found especially imposing in real life. "That was kind of scary," he said. "Not even going to lie." Holiday now plays for the New Orleans Pelicans, who employ a first year forward named Zion Williamson. But while Williamson acknowledged that it was neat to go up against stars like LeBron James for the first time "a dude you've been watching on TV for a long time," Williamson said the calculus is different for him. He is already one of the scary ones. Thirteen games into his N.B.A. career, Williamson has done his part to meet the outrageous expectations that have trailed him since the Pelicans made him the No. 1 pick in last year's draft. His dunks register on seismographs. He has shown himself to be a surprisingly deft passer. And he has helped put the Pelicans in the playoff picture. "A lot of times with really talented players at that age, you're going to see flashes of brilliance," the Pelicans' J.J. Redick said. "But he's brought a level of brilliance and intensity every night that he's played so far. The consistency has been remarkable." But it is about him, whether he likes it or not. Since making his debut last month after missing the first half of the season with a knee injury, Williamson has averaged 23.3 points and 7.1 rebounds a game while shooting 57.3 percent from the field. After Tuesday's game, James said he considered Williamson's game "a perfect fit" for the N.B.A.: quick, explosive, multidimensional. At the same time, James made it curiously clear that he and Williamson do not know each other. "I've never met him," James said. "I've never met him before. Never. Never had a conversation with him. Never met him before." The game itself was entertaining James scored a season high 40 points as if to broadcast the fact that he is the present and not the past and served as a preview of a potential first round playoff series. Williamson's arrival has coincided with a competitive playoff race in the Western Conference. Entering Wednesday, the Pelicans (25 33) were 3.5 games behind the injury riddled Memphis Grizzlies (28 29) for the final playoff spot in the West. Without Williamson through the first half of the season, the Pelicans were up and down. Ingram and Lonzo Ball, whom New Orleans acquired over the summer as a part of the deal that sent Anthony Davis to Los Angeles, showed promise, and Holiday offered his usual brand of leadership. But the Pelicans also drifted through a 13 game losing streak. Since Williamson made his debut on Jan. 22, the Pelicans are 8 6. He seemed bothered by Tuesday's result. "Every win matters," he said, "and every loss matters." Redick has been around a few players, he said, who are deceptively productive guys who might appear to be having quiet nights then clutter the box score with a triple double. Williamson, for all his rim level pyrotechnics, is that type of player. Consider that he is attempting only 15.3 field goals a game. His efficiency has stood out to teammates. "He's going to develop into one of the elite players in the N.B.A.," said Redick, who went on to cite areas where Williamson has room for improvement. "You can go down the list: He can shoot it better, he can defend better, he can pass better, he can do a lot of it better. But he's doing it all pretty darn well right now." For his part, Williamson said he was "trying to get better at everything." He was not particularly expansive after the game. On facing James for the first time: "It was a great experience. He's an incredible player, and his resume speaks for itself." On holding himself to a high standard: "I hate when I make mistakes." On whether the atmosphere at N.B.A. games is different from what he experienced as a college player at Duke: "I feel like it's pretty similar. The only difference is there's no student section." The spotlight on Williamson has only intensified in recent weeks. "It's absolutely crazy, really, where every hotel, every restaurant everything that we do there are just a ton of people there that want to see him," Gentry said. "And I think he tries to accommodate as much as he possibly can. But obviously, it's impossible to stop and sign every autograph and everything like that. But he tries to do the best he can." The great concern, of course, is his health. Each game doubles as a physiological litmus test: Did Williamson avoid injury? Because no one this big should be this dynamic. At 6 feet 6 inches and 284 pounds, he seems to defy logic, gravity and biomechanics, and the Pelicans' medical staff has worked with him on landing with less force. Every time he emerges from another game with all of his limbs intact, it builds confidence among the viewing public, at least that his style of play may just be sustainable. "We're still in a position of thinking long term with him," said Gentry, who has limited Williamson's playing time to 28.4 minutes a game. "We want to be able to have him for 15 years." One month into his career, Williamson is making an impression. The Pelicans want it to last.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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WASHINGTON Technology companies have taken plenty of hits on privacy this year. In May, Europe began enforcing a sweeping new law that lets people request their online data and restricts how businesses obtain and handle the information. Then in June, California passed its own law that gives people the right to know what information companies are collecting about them, why the companies are collecting that data and with whom they are sharing it setting a privacy benchmark for the United States. Now top tech companies are going on the offensive. In recent months, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft and others have aggressively lobbied officials in the Trump administration and elsewhere to start outlining a federal privacy law, according to administration officials and the companies. The law would have a dual purpose, they said: It would overrule the California law and instead put into place a kinder set of rules that would give the companies wide leeway over how personal digital information was handled. "We are committed to being part of the process and a constructive part of the process," said Dean Garfield, president of a leading tech industry lobbying group, the Information Technology Industry Council, which is working on proposals for the federal law. "The best way is to work toward developing our own blueprint." The efforts could set up a big fight with consumer and privacy groups, especially as companies like Facebook face scrutiny for mishandling users' personal data. Many of the internet companies depend on the collection and analysis of such data to help them target the online ads that generate the bulk of their revenue. "It's clear that the strategy here is to neuter California for something much weaker on the federal level," said Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group. "The companies are afraid of California because it sets the bar for other states." In the United States, tech companies' efforts to fight privacy regulations gained momentum in late spring, as it became clear that the California proposal might become law. At a board meeting for the Information Technology Industry Council in May, Joel Kaplan, Facebook's top lobbyist, warned that an early proposal for privacy in California posed a threat to the industry and that the trade group needed to make the issue of privacy a priority, according to two people briefed on the meeting, who were not authorized to speak publicly. Mr. Kaplan said the California proposal could spread to other states, the people said. Top lobbyists for other tech companies agreed that it could be more problematic than the new European law, and that it would unleash a patchwork of state laws that would not only strap their businesses but become a regulatory headache, the people briefed on the meeting said. Until that moment, there had been a split in the tech industry about privacy rules. Companies like IBM and Salesforce, which sell data storage and software to other businesses, were more willing to accept consumer privacy laws, IBM and other members of the Information Technology Industry Council said. Social media and other companies that relied primarily on advertising for revenue, like Facebook and Google, were adamant that the industry should fight all rules. But at that meeting, it became clear that Facebook and Google had softened their resistance to a federal privacy law, as long as they were deeply involved in writing the rules. "There has been a complete shift on privacy," said Chris Padilla, vice president for government and regulatory affairs at IBM. "There is now broad recognition that companies that were resistant to privacy rules can no longer just say no." Facebook declined to comment. But in congressional testimony in April, its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, indicated that the social network would be open to privacy regulation. Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life None With Apple's latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here's what to know. A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties' unwanted attempts to access your data. Here's a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online. Ever considered a password manager? You should. There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet. Google said it seemed inevitable that privacy rules would come to the United States. "There are renewed efforts to define the privacy legislative frameworks of the future, and we look forward to working with policymakers around the world to move the process forward," Google said in a statement. Many of the companies also recognized that it was a good time to press ahead with a federal privacy law since Trump administration officials have expressed openness to a business friendly approach to such rules. David Redl, the head of a division of the Commerce Department that is leading the agency's privacy efforts, said in a July speech that the administration's "commitment to prosperity will be our guide." "We also know that industry is looking to the administration to demonstrate leadership on this issue," he said at the time. "They're rightfully concerned about the potential for a fractured and stifling regulatory landscape." Lindsay Walters, White House deputy press secretary, said in a statement that the administration aimed to work with Congress on legislation "that is the appropriate balance between privacy and prosperity." The administration said it intended to have an outline of potential rules by the end of the year. But the timeline could easily be pushed back, as numerous agencies may be involved, including the Commerce Department, the Federal Trade Commission, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology. In a sign of the latitude that a federal privacy law might give tech companies, at least three trade groups the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Internet Association, and the Information Technology Industry Council are planning to push for voluntary standards instead of legal mandates that carry steep penalties for violations. In exchange for volunteering to follow certain guidelines on what kind of information they collect and share about users, the groups said, they would insist that the federal statute nullify California's rules.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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A new breed of state based savings accounts can help workers prepare for retirement, in part by allowing them to push back the time when they file for Social Security payments, a new analysis suggests. Half of all states have considered plans to offer automatic individual retirement accounts, and at least five (California, Connecticut, Illinois, Maryland and Oregon) have begun offering them or have taken steps toward doing so. The plans vary in their details but, in general, are for workers at private sector employers that don't offer retirement plans. Those workers are automatically enrolled in the state I.R.A. program and have contributions withdrawn from their paychecks, although they can choose to opt out or change their contribution. Many people think they must start receiving Social Security as soon as they retire, but the two steps don't have to be done simultaneously. People can start claiming their federal benefits at age 62, but waiting at least a year or two to collect means their monthly payments will be larger because of the way the federal program is structured. Those enrolled in the new state sponsored accounts could, instead, use that money to temporarily cover their expenses after they retire, allowing them to delay claiming their Social Security benefits for a year or more, the report from the Pew Charitable Trusts said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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THE MAN IN THE RED COAT By Julian Barnes Biographers usually tell the life story of a person with strong name recognition. It's much harder to pull off the story of those who are largely forgotten. Few people today are likely to recognize Count Robert de Montesquiou, or Dr. Samuel Jean Pozzi, two of the principal figures in "The Man in the Red Coat." Yet Julian Barnes succeeds brilliantly in bringing them to life, together with their Parisian contemporaries, in what is often remembered nostalgically as the Belle Epoque. The book opens with an account of a trip to London taken by Montesquiou and Pozzi and another friend in the summer of 1885. Their purpose was "intellectual and decorative shopping," as Montesquiou put it. For Barnes, this prologue is essentially a device to introduce the art and personalities of what is evidently one of his favorite historical periods. The book contains no overarching narrative, but unfolds as a series of entertaining vignettes, circling back from time to time to Montesquiou and Pozzi. Of the various characters, Pozzi is the most interesting. He was a truly distinguished doctor, specializing in advanced surgical ideas, as well as a pioneering gynecologist admired for his kindness and tact; his hospital management and operating room techniques saved countless lives. (An American surgeon opposed to the antisepsis promoted by Pozzi declared that "doctors are gentlemen, and gentlemen's hands are clean.") In 1901, when Pozzi was 54, he became the first professor of gynecology in France, and there is real nobility in his inaugural address at the Broca Hospital, which he had done much to modernize: Surgeons must bear in mind "the matter of conscience for each of us who holds the power of life and death over a fellow human being," he said, adding that they should never forget "the divine figure of Pity." Read an excerpt from "The Man in the Red Coat." Pozzi was also, as the Princess of Monaco put it, "disgustingly handsome" and well aware of it. Unlike many in this story, he was enthusiastically heterosexual; one of his affairs was with Sarah Bernhardt, and there were plenty of others. His relationship with his wife and children was deeply troubled. By the time his daughter Catherine was 22, she was writing in her journal, "And yet, I did love him, this moral wreck of a father." To be sure, Catherine cast a cold eye on everybody. She described the younger of her two brothers as "ugly, absurd, fat bottomed, impotent, pederastic, angry, friendly when the whim takes him, banal and repugnant." Barnes's title comes from a magnificent full length 1881 portrait of Pozzi by John Singer Sargent, which didn't re emerge into public view until 1990; Barnes tells us that viewing it was the original inspiration for this book. Sargent himself mentioned it in a letter to Henry James in London to introduce a visit from "Dr. S. Pozzi, the man in the red gown (not always), a very brilliant creature." Pozzi is the main character, but only intermittently, for Barnes's achievement is to retrace the crossing and recrossing paths of dozens of individuals in a milieu that was once ostentatiously up to date. It may now seem faded and artificial, but its inhabitants were aesthetes and dandies, and artificiality was the whole point. Oscar Wilde, whom they all knew, makes cameo appearances from time to time, but the focus is on le tout Paris, the upper crust that called itself the whole of Paris. The book is a pleasure to read in every way. Barnes writes with elegance and wit, probes motives with a novelist's imagination but also a historian's skepticism, plucking memorable formulations enhanced by his own deft translations from letters, journals and newspaper squibs. Montesquiou's biographer describes him as "a shining, buzzing, virulent scarab." Flaubert complains to George Sand that, according to a critic, "I pollute a stream by washing in it." A pet tortoise expires after being painted gold and studded with jewels, and its carapace becomes "its metallic and gemmate tomb." The only fictional work that gets close attention is the once scandalous "A Rebours," by Joris Karl Huysmans. It's emphasized because everyone recognized Montesquiou as a model, if not the model, for the protagonist, Des Esseintes; Barnes comments on "the clicking latch of a roman a clef." But the novel also epitomizes the transgressiveness that was once so daring and now, as Barnes acknowledges, "seems fanciful, decorative, egotistical camp." More interesting today may be Montesquiou's role as a model for the Baron de Charlus in "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu," which was so widely noticed that Montesquiou said ruefully, "I ought to start calling myself Montesproust." His good looks must have been proverbial, for when he visited America in 1903 a newspaper exclaimed, "The beautiful Count is coming to Boston." Of special value in this book are the carefully chosen contemporary illustrations. Barnes gives close attention to the subtleties in some remarkable paintings, notably Sargent's "Dr. Pozzi at Home" (the man in the red coat) and his arresting "Madame X," who turns out to have been a dull and conventional person. Whistler also painted Montesquiou in "Arrangement in Black and Gold," which its subject adored, though "as a painting, it began slowly to collapse toward darkness, thanks to bitumen in the black paint." Another, equally striking portrait, by Giovanni Boldini, perfectly captures the count's confident, posturing dandyism. There are powerful photographs, too, notably a haunting portrait of Bernhardt by Nadar, and a disturbing image of Audrey Deacon, a young American (and intimate friend of Catherine Pozzi's) lying dead among flowers in her open coffin. Contrasting with these images are some pleasantly absurd photographs Wilde in Greek national costume, complete with a manly skirt; the waspish gossip Jean Lorrain as a dying warrior; and Montesquiou with his head on a platter to represent the decapitated John the Baptist. As a counterpoint to the art photographs, Barnes has included dozens of tiny celebrity portraits of poets, politicians, actresses and popes that were included with bars of chocolate in the early 1900s, together forming what he calls a "rich gallimaufry of fame." Endless verbal combats are recounted, and literal ones as well. Dueling was considered the appropriate response to an affront, however trivial: Two men disagreed about how thin Bernhardt was when she played Hamlet and settled the matter with pistols (they both survived, though one almost didn't). Even Proust fought a duel, after a journalist hinted at a homosexual relationship, but no harm came of it since both participants deliberately fired in the air. It probably comes as a surprise to learn that the great statesman Georges Clemenceau fought no fewer than 22 duels during the course of his life. Clemenceau's bitterness against Germany helped inspire the postwar reparations that made Hitler's rise possible, but the Great War figures only as an ominous background rumble, as does the Dreyfus Affair. We do learn that Pozzi was Dreyfus's doctor. The preening and self consciously decadent elite were never the whole of Paris, and with few exceptions Proust and Wilde being the obvious ones didn't leave much of interest behind. "Time," Barnes admits, "is equally the enemy of the butterfly, the dandy and the epigram." The aesthetic cult, that art of "strange thoughts and fantastic reveries and exquisite passions," as Walter Pater called it, has lost much of its fascination. One may recall Max Beerbohm's little masterpiece "Enoch Soames," in which a minor poet bargains with the Devil to travel into the future, where he finds that he is known only as the subject of a story by Max Beerbohm. Soames's book of poems, which Soames describes as "exquisite, and many hued, and full of poisons," is titled "Fungoids."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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HELENA, Mont. Yellowstone area grizzly bears, scheduled to be hunted this month for the first time in decades, were granted a reprieve by a federal judge who ordered the animal restored to full protections under the Endangered Species Act. United States District Judge Dana Christensen ruled in favor of the Crow Indian Tribe and other tribes and environmental groups who had argued that the Fish and Wildlife Service had erred in removing the bear's threatened status in June 2017. The agency, beginning with a proposal to take the bears off the list during the Obama administration, had failed to consider how the de listing would affect other populations of protected grizzlies in the region, according to the judge's decision. He also said the agency's analysis of threats to the animal was "arbitrary and capricious," according to the judge's decision. The case, the judge wrote, "is not about the ethics of hunting, and it is not about solving human or livestock grizzly conflicts as a practical or philosophical matter."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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What on earth is going on in the films of John Cassavetes? Any movie lover is bound to confront that question, perhaps under a cloud of misconceptions and secondhand impressions. Maybe you heard that Cassavetes, a critical figure in American independent film, had ushered in a new era of realism in movies. Maybe you saw "Shadows," which inaugurated the actor's directorial career in the late 1950s, and believed its closing title card: "The film you have just seen was an improvisation." (It wasn't, at least in any meaningful sense; the "Shadows" most of us know revised an earlier feature.) And watching the fits of pure impulse that animate "Husbands" (1970) in which three mourning friends suddenly jet off to London, among other surprises or the childlike mannerisms of the characters that Gena Rowlands, Cassavetes's wife, sometimes played, it is tempting to ask: Would anyone actually behave this way? But Cassavetes's films offer shades of humor, joy, terror and sadness that have no analogues elsewhere in cinema. Crucial to understanding them is the realization that "raw" is not the same as "recognizable," and that if his films deserve the loaded label of realism, it is only in a sense that he creates characters whose psychologies are too personal to classify. That is even the subject of his wonderful "Opening Night" (1977): Rowlands plays an unraveling actress unable to perform until she has synced with her role's idiosyncrasies. That is an excellent description of "A Woman Under the Influence" (1974), a strong candidate for Cassavetes's greatest film and certainly one of his most characteristic in its emotional swings, its peculiarities and its catharsis. It deals with the shared life call it madness, if you will of a husband and a wife, and the times when their folie a deux edges into public view. Outsiders, perhaps united in bafflement with moviegoers first encountering Cassavetes, judge it or don't understand them. Stream it on Hulu, Kanopy or HBO; rent or buy it on Amazon, iTunes or Vudu. The film opens with Nick (Peter Falk), a construction worker, learning that he'll have to skip his "unbreakable" date night with Mabel (Rowlands) to fix a water main, a schedule change that foreshadows the greater rift to come. Mabel is already preparing for their time together. She is introduced corralling their three children and piling them into her mother's car with a weirdly emphatic command to keep her apprised. ("I don't want any slip ups on this," she tells her mother, played by Rowlands's own parent.) With date night canceled, Mabel, already drinking and talking to herself, wanders off to a bar, where she picks up a stranger (O.G. Dunn), whom she assumes as she tends to with strangers is well versed in what's going on in her head. "Hey, you know Nick stood me up tonight?" she says. Everybody knows Mabel is a little nuts. "She's unusual. She's not crazy, so don't say she's crazy," Nick tells a co worker. The morning after the water main repair, he brings a group of them over for a meal, in a scene whose sheer length and non sequiturs might throw anyone unfamiliar with the filmmaker. Mabel prepares spaghetti for Nick's friends and introduces herself multiple times. The co workers take turns singing operatically. Mabel peers so close to one it's as if she's inspecting his vocal cords. She grasps the cheeks of another: "This is what I call a really handsome face." Nick decides she's pushed her games too far. He shuts her down, and when the men leave, he calls her a "wacko," with a mixture of fondness and alarm. Nick accepts Mabel's flightiness, but he frets over whether others do with some cause. Later that day, another father brings his children over and grows worried watching the balloon filled backyard party Mabel throws for them. The day culminates in a scene of extraordinary volatility and anguish. Nick becomes enraged, and Mabel tilts toward an apparent breakdown. Nick, who has called a doctor to examine her, embraces her tightly and apologizes for the intervention even as he participates in it. During a brief moment when he is suddenly alone, he closes his eyes and bows his head, perhaps realizing that repressing Mabel is a betrayal, and that forcing them apart means betraying himself. With Mabel committed, it doesn't take long for Nick to settle into his own form of lunatic domesticity. "Comes to mind I don't know my kids," he decides, and his solution is to nab them from school for a chilly day at the beach. After the family outing, he gives them beer in the flatbed of a truck. That evening, when Nick puts them to bed and then asks if they are hungry, his mind seems as erratic as Mabel's. But it would be a mistake to peg the movie as a critique of homemaking. Noting that it's reductive to call Mabel an "oppressed housewife," the Cassavetes scholar Ray Carney said in an interview that, in Cassavetes's films, "every time we want to lasso a character or a scene with an idea, it scoots away from us." That ambiguity is central to his movies: As Carney suggests, they are too particular, too magical, vital and strange, to condense to diagnoses of the world. The last section of the film is set six months later, when Mabel returns from the hospital. Her odd backyard party for the children is mirrored in Nick's homecoming celebration for her, which in its own way is wildly inappropriate. He has invited far too many people, some of whom barely know Mabel, and not provided so much as a Coke for them to drink. He and his mother (Katherine Cassavetes) kick them out just as Mabel pulls up, leading to a scene of hilarious awkwardness as the guests tender their hellos and goodbyes in the pouring rain. Something is off, both with Mabel and the atmosphere. Just before an extended family dinner that is the subdued opposite of the spaghetti lunch, Nick takes Mabel into the darkened stairwell and begs, in close up: "I just want you to be yourself." He coaxes her to make the raspberry noises she always does with her lips (rhymed by the kazoo scoring in the closing scene). The finale restores their rituals: Mabel utters the word "spaghetti," like a mantra, and calls one kid "banana," the nickname both parents use, as she tucks him in. Affection passes wordlessly between the couple. As Nick puts a bandage on Mabel's hand, she asks, "Do you love me?" He is tongue tied. Is that realistic? For Nick and Mabel, this is the only reality there is.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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Eight in 10 workers at Yardbird Southern Table and Bar in Miami were born abroad. "The idea that legal immigrants are taking jobs away from residents of the U.S. is just not reality," the head of its parent company said. Is Immigration at Its Limit? Not for Employers MIAMI After finishing a particularly satisfying dinner at a Coral Gables restaurant with his wife, Pedro Martinez quietly slipped around to the back alley where the kitchen is. "Whatever you're making, I'll give you a raise," Mr. Martinez whispered when the back door swung open. An executive at 50 Eggs, a restaurant group based in Miami, he is always ready with a stack of business cards for occasions like this. More immigrants have streamed into South Florida than to most American cities, and for decades, employers have relied on them to wash dishes, put up drywall and care for grandmothers. Still, there are not enough to fill Miami's relentless boomtown demand for workers. As unemployment rates nationwide have sunk to record lows, filching workers from kitchens and construction sites, warehouses and Walmarts, truck cabs and nursing homes has become routine. In cities like Miami that are magnets for immigrants, newcomers have filled some job openings, but employers across several industries and states insist that many more are needed for their businesses to function, let alone grow. The economic impact is just one facet of an immigration debate that vibrates with political and moral import, challenging ideas about America's identity and culture. But it is also one that can be examined more dispassionately by looking at the numbers. And the numbers, most economists say, indicate that there is plenty of room. Immigrants make the country richer, they argue. "Without immigration, we shrink as a nation," said Douglas Holtz Eakin, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office who has advised Republican presidential candidates and now leads the conservative American Action Forum. That's because growth is driven by two ingredients: the size of the work force and how efficiently those workers produce things. And both are creeping well behind the postwar average. One reason is that Americans are having fewer babies. Birthrates fell last year to a three decade low, ensuring that the next generation of native born Americans will be smaller than the current one. The result is fewer workers and consumers; fewer houses to build, phones to sell and cars to buy; fewer gains all around. Turn away new immigrants, and the picture darkens considerably. Using census data, the investment company the Blackstone Group estimates that without immigration, the working age population between 25 and 64 years old would drop by 17 million by 2035. "We really need immigrants," Byron R. Wien, vice chairman of Blackstone's Private Wealth Solutions group, said during the company's quarterly webcast last month. "If we have a shrinking population, it's going to be tough to have rising G.D.P.," or gross domestic product. At the moment, there are 7.3 million job openings nationwide and six million people unemployed. That gap is expected to widen as the number of retirees grows faster than the number of new workers. "In every market that we're in, we're dealing with staffing shortages," said Pilar Carvajal, the founder and chief executive of Innovation Senior Management, which manages seven assisted living centers in Florida. Entry level workers in the area make from 10 to 12 an hour the same as a dishwasher and slightly more than a farmworker. "Thank God we have immigrants coming in," she said. "We're hiring them as fast as they come." More than a million immigrants enter the United States every year, most of them through authorized channels. Altogether, there are more than 44 million immigrants, or 13.6 percent of the population. The share is significantly higher than it was in 1970, but below the peak in the 1890s, when millions of Europeans crossed the Atlantic Ocean. President Trump has publicly resisted the argument that the nation needs more immigrants. "Our country is full," he said during a visit to the border this spring. "We can't take any more." But Mr. Trump's proposals have at times deviated from his statements. In May, he proposed revamping legal immigration, without reducing the overall level, by giving preference to immigrants with skills, education and job offers, instead of people with family ties. There is no way to figure out precisely how many more immigrants the national economy could easily absorb without a lot of guessing. Powerful forces like technology, globalization and the decline in union strength can heave economies around willy nilly, benefiting some workers and hurting others, regardless of immigration. Despite a decade long expansion and a low official jobless rate, the income gap is widening, and many Americans struggle to find stable employment and middle class wages. Ford and Rivian no longer plan to work jointly on electric vehicles. Elizabeth Holmes took the stand in her trial. Follow along with our reporters. Ken Griffin, head of Citadel, bid highest for a copy of the Constitution. A common complaint is that immigrants snatch jobs from native born Americans, particularly those who didn't finish high school. This group is already most likely to earn the minimum wage or be out of work. There is scattershot evidence that in some places immigrants can press down wages at the lowest end of the income scale, but that is not typical. An economy, after all, is not a snapshot frozen in time, but a moving picture. Immigrants take jobs, but they also help create jobs by generating demand for goods and services like groceries, haircuts and homes. More often, economists say, immigrants complement American workers. More educated women, for example, may decide to work if the availability of immigrants makes child care more affordable. And many tasks that most people previously did themselves mowing lawns, polishing nails, picking up takeout, driving are now contracted out because there is labor to do them. "The middle class is afforded some luxuries that only the affluent could afford in the past because of immigration," said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute's office at New York University School of Law. "If people are prepared to adjust their needs, we don't need as many immigrants." Choices about how to provide essential services and compensate workers are not just economic but political as well, Mr. Chishti pointed out: Should the government spend more on training, offer workers incentives to relocate, subsidize elder care, protect workers' bargaining power or help build affordable housing so that low wage workers can cover basic expenses? What happens now is that migrants tend to fill jobs that citizens don't want to take for the pay offered. And they are also much more willing to pick up and move to a new city or state for a job. Push up costs too much, and some jobs might disappear or move to other countries. Over all, income and production would shrink. In Houston, the economy has averaged 2.5 percent annual growth over the last decade. Maintaining that growth requires immigration, the Center for Houston's Future, a research group associated with the Greater Houston Partnership, concluded. In industries like health care, hospitality, construction and technology, there are simply not enough workers to sustain the growth rate. During the last decade, the Houston area's native born work force grew 1.6 percent annually while the number of documented immigrants jumped 5 percent. Undocumented workers increased 0.4 percent. To many workers, complaints about a labor shortage ring hollow when companies are earning record profits and giving executives multimillion dollar paychecks while offering workers meager raises. Several businesses, though, have much slimmer profits. Nationwide, for example, restaurant profit margins average 3 to 5 percent. At one of 50 Eggs' busiest restaurants in Miami, Yardbird Southern Table and Bar, roughly 80 percent of the staff members were born abroad. "The idea that legal immigrants are taking jobs away from residents of the U.S. is just not reality," said John Kunkel, the founder and chief executive of 50 Eggs, which also operates Yardbird locations in Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Dallas and Singapore. "That's the armchair view of somebody who doesn't run a business." Seasonal industries, like agriculture and resorts, are particularly dependent on migrant workers. Several Trump Organization properties have obtained temporary visas to employ dozens of foreign born workers. This past tomato season, DiMare Fresh, a family owned distributor with farms in Florida and California, had scores of unfilled jobs. At its main packing house in Homestead, about an hour south of Miami, the company was able to fill only 165 of the 280 open jobs. Another center in Ruskin, near Tampa, lost many of its workers when Amazon opened a fulfillment center a few minutes away. "Amazon has sucked up all the labor," said Paul DiMare, the chief executive. He said his business could not afford to offer year round employment or benefits. The company is experimenting with new technology a machine to automatically stack 25 pound boxes of tomatoes on pallets, and sensors to sort tomatoes by size and color when there aren't enough graders, usually older Haitian women at this site, to eyeball the produce as it loops along conveyor belts. Automation, rather than higher wages, is often the response to labor shortages. When immigration restrictions in the mid 1960s dried up the pool of Mexican farm laborers, California growers started using mechanical harvesters to pick tomatoes. "Firms adjust," said Jay Shambaugh, director of the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. "If you have a shortage of low skill workers, you'll get more kiosks at McDonald's where you punch in your order." Tomato season in Florida doesn't resume until November. In the meantime, Mr. DiMare shakes his head when asked about detentions at the border and deportation raids. "They want to send all these people back," he said. "Who the hell is going to do all this work?"
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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Sitting down for a meal at the Lakes of the Clouds Hut, which offers hikers shelter, food and a place to rest on the slopes of Mount Washington.Credit...Tristan Spinski for The New York Times Sitting down for a meal at the Lakes of the Clouds Hut, which offers hikers shelter, food and a place to rest on the slopes of Mount Washington. Thousands of hikers head to the White Mountains of New Hampshire each year to stay in the high mountain huts of the Appalachian Mountain Club. Accessible only by foot and connected by the Appalachian Trail, the eight huts offer rustic but comfortable hospitality. For families with younger children, or hikers who may not have the time, skills or gear to undertake a more serious backpacking expedition, hiking the huts lower the barriers to entry to the backcountry. James Wrigley, 34, has held almost every huts related job for the last 15 years, from hut croo member ("croo" is a derivative of the word "crew") to hut director, his current role. He first visited Lonesome Lake Hut when he was 3 years old and hiked there with family or friends nearly every year thereafter. "When I was a kid, the huts allowed me to get out in the outdoors in a way that I wouldn't have been able to do otherwise," Mr. Wrigley said. He now hopes his own 3 year old child will be up for making the trek this summer. The communities that are forged in the huts is one thing that makes them so special, Mr. Wrigley said. "It's pretty rare that you get a bunch of strangers around a table to talk about life," he said, "When you're having dinner and playing games together, it's a really wonderful experience." The eight huts are connected by more than 50 miles of the Appalachian Trail. Madison Spring Hut was the first, built in 1888. Other huts were added and modernized as their popularity increased over the years. These days around 30,000 hikers stay in the huts every year. Nightly stays, which include dinner and breakfast, cost between 110 and 175 per person, with cheaper prices on weeknights. Discounts are also available for A.M.C. members and visitors staying three or four nights. An A.M.C. annual membership costs 50 for an individual and 75 for a family. A 25 membership is available for seniors and under 30 years olds. During the full service season (May through October for the lower elevation huts and mid September for the more exposed, higher elevation huts), hikers are greeted by the croos who pack in supplies and provide hot meals and educational activities for guests. During the off season, some of the huts remain open but they are staffed by a caretaker only and visitors must bring their own provisions. The A.M.C.'s White Mountain Guide, now in its 30th edition, is an invaluable resource for planning your trip. Some of the huts are easier to reach than others, so you'll want to think about your fitness level and the kind of trip you'd like to have. You can also call the A.M.C. reservation line (603 466 2727) for information. Reservations for the following summer are usually available as early as August or September. Weekends at the Lakes of the Clouds and other popular huts fill up quickly, but weekend stays are available at other huts if you book in the early spring. The A.M.C.'s Pinkham Notch Visitors center, near Gorham, N.H., is a convenient jumping off point for hikers, offering hiking maps and knowledgeable guides and selling any small item gear you may have forgotten in the gift shop. It's a three hour drive from Boston and a 6.5 hour drive from New York City. You can park and leave your car in the parking lot there. The Concord Coach Line also offers service from Logan International Airport or Boston's South Station to Pinkham Notch. Many hikers spend a night at the Joe Dodge Lodge before embarking on a hut to hut trip. During the peak summer months, the A.M.C. offers shuttle service to a number of trailheads. You can also hike directly to Lakes of the Clouds Hut and Madison Spring Hut from Pinkham Notch. The Appalachian Trail in the White Mountains is one of the toughest stretches of trail in North America. Appalachian Trail "thru hikers" (who are hiking the entirety of the Appalachian Trail) slow to a crawl in the White Mountains. After hiking 15 to 20 miles a day on average on other sections, they often manage just 7 to 8 miles in the Whites. The slow pace in this region is the result of an incredibly uneven trail bed and trails that drive straight up the mountains (unlike in other mountain ranges, where trail builders use switchbacks to make the climb less steep). Yet for those willing to face the arduous terrain, the rewards are many: sweeping views of the breathtaking Pemigewasset Wilderness, the Presidential peaks, and for the intrepid, the chance to summit Mount Washington, one of the tallest peaks on the Eastern Seaboard . It is usually safe for an intermediate hiker to plan on hiking at a pace of one mile per hour. The distance to or between huts is generally no greater than eight miles, and often much less. Zealand Falls Hut, Lonesome Lake Hut and Mizpah Spring Hut can all be reached via family friendly hikes of just a few miles. In fact, one child per adult can stay free at Lonesome Lake Hut during the summer. On summer weekends the trails are a regular thoroughfare, crowded with day hikers, backpackers, thru hikers and hut to hut hikers, though solitude can still be found on some of the more difficult and remote sections of the trail. After a long day on the trail, the warm light of a high mountain hut are a welcome sight. When you arrive at a hut, you'll check in with one of the hut croo members and they'll help you get oriented. Each has a common area and one or more separate bunk rooms. You'll want to pick out a bunk and stash your gear in the bunk room there are no private accommodations at the huts so you'll need to be comfortable with co ed, communal living. Wool blankets and pillows are provided (but no pillowcases), so if you're a warm sleeper you'll do fine in midsummer. Many hikers like to bring a light sheet, sleep sack or sleeping bag as well. In the shoulder months, a warm sleeping bag is essential. Bathrooms are gender segregated, and feature composting toilets (that actually don't smell much at all) and sinks for brushing teeth and washing up . Neither showers nor towels are available. Fresh baked bread, other snacks, tea and coffee are self serve at the hut . There are also plenty of board games and books if you find yourself with some time on your hands. A hearty dinner is served at 6 p.m., family style, so be prepared to get to know your fellow hikers. After dinner the croo offers educational talks on subjects ranging from alpine vegetation and boreal forests to the hydroelectric system used at one of the huts. Bedtime comes early with quiet hours and lights out from 9:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. If the morning light doesn't wake you up, the hut croo will by singing a song or reading a poem.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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The third season of "This Is Us" comes to a close. And "The Last O.G." returns for a second run. THIS IS US 9 p.m. on NBC. This is the end ... for now. (Spoiler alert!) Last week's episode chronicled the ups and downs Beth (Susan Kelechi Watson) and Randall (Sterling K. Brown) endured to stick together. Back in the present, the couple had an explosive falling out in which each said some cruel things. Whether that portends the end of their marriage is the crux of this season finale. As for the fate of the show, a fourth season hasn't been announced. But the creator, Dan Fogelman, remains hopeful: In an interview with Deadline in February, he said, "Next season is a season of new beginnings and restarts." AMERICAN SOUL 9 p.m. on BET. The first season of this scripted series on "Soul Train" wraps up with the members of Encore confronting personal hurdles as they inch closer to musical stardom.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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What does time look like? How do we represent its passage when time is an abstract idea, yet (as the linguist George Lakoff points out) we often discuss it as though it were a physical object? We lose it, we waste it, we maximize it, we travel through it. In Ray Bradbury's great novel of adolescence, "Dandelion Wine," 12 year old Douglas Spaulding experiences time as a kind of unending glorious summer until he meets a very old man who tells stories about his distant youth. These tales plunge Douglas backward nearly 70 years and he discovers time can play tricks on you. It can slow down and speed up and go backward, creating endless loops. Douglas calls this old man a Time Machine. Seth calls "Clyde Fans" a "picture novel," not a "graphic novel." The term has a slightly old fashioned ring to it. There's a straightforwardness I rather like. It sounds like what you would call this book if the term "graphic novel" never existed. The pictures themselves begin right away, in a 26 page title sequence that includes catalog advertisements, a mysterious postcard, portraits of two men, then a long, silent tour of an empty home on a moonlit night. Almost all of these images reappear in one form or another, which means the opening is sort of like the overture to a Broadway musical, introducing us to tunes we'll hear later. In one sense Seth is giving us the gift of familiarity, like the faces of people we know at a party otherwise filled with strangers. These moments help us focus on what's most important, and engage our own memory as part of the storytelling. Seth draws time out, both literally and metaphorically. It took him over 20 years to finish this book (he made lots of other books during that time, and published chapters of this one as he went along, the way Dickens did with his novels). His drawing style changed over those years. It's as if "Clyde Fans" itself is a monument to passing time, and the first direct mention of time in the story is, curiously, a reference to a broken clock. "By the way, pay no attention whatsoever to the clocks. I'd be very surprised if any of them are still wound or working." This is spoken by the character Abraham Matchcard in 1997, during an extraordinary 69 page sequence that begins the narrative, and it seems like good advice for the whole book. Abe is an old man, a former salesman, whose father, we learn, was the Clyde of Clyde Fans. Clyde Matchcard founded the business in 1937, and it thrived for many years, until Abe himself took over and eventually drove it into the ground. As Abe wanders from room to room, a Willy Loman without a family, he tells us jokes about salesmen as well as the story of his life. Attention must be paid. We take in the architecture of his home, and we get a hint of the city around him. He talks and talks as rooms lead to other rooms and eventually to the ruined office that was once the center of his family's electric fan business (imagine Seth looking in that very window). Alone and filled with regret, he tells us his life story. A brother named Simon is mentioned and we get hints there may have been something wrong with him, though we don't know what. Their mother is mentioned, and we learn that at some point their father walked out on the family. There is anger and bitterness in Abe's recollections, but also a sense of resignation. He's lost everything, including his teeth, which are kept in a jar in the bathroom. Whom is he talking to? Himself? Us? Whom are these jokes for? Is he like the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," setting the scene for us and guiding the story, or is he more like the unnamed narrator in Daphne du Maurier's "Rebecca," whose point of view will take us through the entire narrative? We find the answer once this epic introduction ends and we are suddenly plunged back in time to 1957 (coincidentally the same year Bradbury published "Dandelion Wine"). Here we find ourselves with Abe's mysterious brother Simon. Through Simon we begin to learn the truth behind Abe's stories. The dynamic of the book shifts now, and we go deep into Simon's mind. We experience his world, we feel his fears and share his obsessions. As the story progresses, it slowly opens up from the concrete specifics of the brothers' intertwined lives to larger metaphysical themes. There are hints of mental illness, thwarted ambitions and untapped desires. Beneath his sweating, terrified exterior, is Simon actually an artist who has no language or context for art? What becomes of a dreamer who doesn't know he can dream? At a moment in his life that is somehow both mundane and critical, Simon overhears a conversation between two women in a diner: "The sun was shining, the air was clear. It was just lovely. The kind of spot where time seems to stand still. A sort of enchanted place. ... But silly me. That was 20 years ago. At least." This snippet reverberates for Simon in unexpected ways a moment of transcendence and beauty lost and then pined for and it reverberates for us for the rest of the book. Open "Clyde Fans" and let Seth take you into his time machine. The technology is relatively simple: cardboard, binding, glue, thread, paper and ink, words and pictures. Most of the drawings are in black and blue, as if the entire novel were composed of bruises. Perhaps we're being reminded that the past can be a painful place to visit. There's no room for nostalgia in Seth's vision. The past is as sharp and painful as the present. In fact, the past is the present, conjured in words and pictures, existing in the spaces between what's said and unsaid, what's seen and unseen. It's in these spaces where Seth knows alchemical reactions occur. In the end, as we close the pages on Simon and Abe and step back into our own lives, we might feel even for just a moment that we finally know what time looks like.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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It's a beautiful Saturday evening and you want to go out to a hot new restaurant, maybe splurge on one of those grand Michelin three star restaurants in New York. Don't slip the maitre d' a 100 bill if you actually want to get into one of them in prime time. You're too late. The tables are all committed, and even if one could be found, it's reserved for people like Beyonce and Jay Z. You may have better luck if you settle for an off hour reservation, say at 5:30 p.m. great if you have children or 10:30 p.m., if you're not famished by then. So what's the secret for someone who's affluent and interested in being seen and maybe sampling the food at the trendiest restaurants in New York, Los Angeles and Miami? Success at the game often entails calling in all sorts of favors. The actress and socialite Cassandra Seidenfeld, for example, said she usually relies on her politeness and reputation for being a generous tipper to get into a New York restaurant the moment it opens. But when the Polo Bar, Ralph Lauren's trendy, exclusive restaurant, opened in January, she couldn't get a table. "I'd call and they'd say 'We have a waiting list that lasts months,' " Ms. Seidenfeld said. "No one in New York wants to wait months. I had friends who were posting that they were in the restaurant, which made me ballistic." She mentioned her frustration to her personal shopper at Ralph Lauren on Fifth Avenue, around the corner from the restaurant, and he offered to call on her behalf. A day later, she was dining there with a friend. "I was shocked by the power of my personal shopper," she said. People who have success at the table game will say this: Getting in takes money, for sure, but it's more about soft power than hard tactics. But even hip restaurants need to pay the bills, and that means early and late seatings for the non A list crowd. Michael Ridard, partner at Baoli, a fashionable Miami Beach restaurant, said someone who wanted to eat at his restaurant should aim for 7 p.m. and forget trying to get a 9:30 p.m. reservation, when the restaurant will be filled with A listers and a D.J. spinning music. Jason Apfelbaum, whose Manhattan restaurant Sushi Roxx just opened, said he planned to have two reservation times, but guests would be seated in different areas within the restaurant. While he said the average affluent person had no chance of getting one of the 14 seats at the center of the restaurant, which will feature a Tokyo style cabaret, there are 58 additional seats in the main room and 53 more in a lounge (in other words, the less cool area). Abraham Merchant, president and chief executive of Merchants Hospitality, said he typically held a private room at his restaurant Philippe in Manhattan for celebrity clients but would open it up to diners who commit to ordering an expensive wine or spending well on the meal. "Sometimes, people will order a bottle of Chateau Lafite ahead of time you'll get the room then," he said. "If they're going to spend 10,000, we'll give them the room." This may seem to be over the top just for the privilege of spending a lot of money on dinner. But Herb Karlitz, who runs Karlitz Company, a marketing firm geared toward the food industry, said diners frustrated by this process should get to know the person who can wave them in. It's rarely the one answering the phone and offering the 5:30 p.m. reservation. "If it sounds like a young kid who's just a robot, ask to speak to the general manager and be honest and say, 'Here's my situation,' " Mr. Karlitz said. "That probably works a third of the time, which isn't the greatest odds, but it's a third better than you had before." Small restaurants are particularly problematic. The most difficult reservation to get in New York may still be Rao's, the East Harlem Italian restaurant that has been around for more than a century and is not even open on Saturday. It only has so many tables and a lot of regulars, so getting in is notoriously difficult. Mr. Karlitz said he frequently fielded requests from people seeking his help. His suggestion is to find one of the charities supported by the family that owns Rao's and to bid on a reservation. "I saw one reservation go for 20,000," he said. "And you're still paying for dinner. It's crazy." Mr. Apfelbaum, who has been in the restaurant business for two decades, said there were certain tricks he used when he was on the other side of the phone to edge his reservation closer to the golden hour. "Sometimes, I'll pretend I'm a concierge and say 'I have guests who are staying in the presidential suite, and they just flew in from London and they're requesting a prime table at 8 p.m.,' " he said. "I've almost always gotten a reservation." "With my regular guests, I will frequently mention to them, if you're going to be here next month or in three weeks perhaps we can make a reservation for you now to get in" a desired restaurant, said Michael Romei, chief concierge at the Towers of the Waldorf Astoria, where he has worked for 22 years. "The longer time frame we have, the better the chances are of getting someone in." There are, of course, tactics on the ethical edge. Mr. Karlitz said his parents used to pretend they had a reservation and shame the maitre d' into seating them. Today, he said, that trick "probably works one out of 10 times, but it's just not the right thing to do." There is also an underground network of concierges who, like ticket scalpers, resell reservations they secure for as much as 200 a person. Spiro Menegatos, an owner of Nerai, a power lunch spot, said nonregulars often take an 11:30 a.m. reservation and arrive late in the hope of eating closer to 12:30. Other couples will split up their party to keep it below seven people, which requires a credit card, to be charged in case the party doesn't show up. The best if most labor intensive way to get in may be the old fashioned strategy used by Barry Weintraub, a plastic surgeon in Manhattan and the Hamptons: He calls in favors. One way is to phone the concierge at the Pierre Hotel, where many of his patients stay. The concierge then calls the restaurant and makes Dr. Weintraub's standing as a fine diner known among his bona fides are that he has no problem spending 2,000 to 3,000 on a dinner for four, he is a gracious guest and he tips well above 20 percent. "They often have access that a civilian, even a plastic surgeon, might not have," Dr. Weintraub said. But if he wants to go back, he knows what that entails. "You take care of the maitre d'," he said. "Everyone is working. If you understand that and enjoy the experience, it's great all around."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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NEW ORLEANS In the months before the rookie phenom Zion Williamson made his belated and stirring N.B.A. debut on Wednesday at age 19, he spent his rehab from knee surgery as a 6 foot 6, 284 pound gymnast learning to stick the landing. With guidance from the medical staff of the New Orleans Pelicans, Williamson tried to correct biomechanical flaws suspected of contributing to a tear in the lateral meniscus a rubbery, shock absorbing cartilage on the outside of his right knee. The meniscus was trimmed during surgery in October. Then, said Williamson, who can leap so much higher and is so much more agile than one might expect of someone his size, it was time to learn how to run and jump more safely. Williamson trained himself to land with his knees bent, instead of straight legged. The bent knee landing helps disperse the pounding forces of basketball. He also worked to avoid tilting his knees inward when landing with a rebound or making a sharp cut, which can put added stress on the outside of the joints. In his first official game, Williamson scored 22 points in a loss to San Antonio, including 17 in a breathtaking flurry over three minutes of the fourth quarter. Still, he has missed half of his rookie season. And while his nascent professional career is full of luminous and generational possibility, it is also emblematic of growing worry among N.B.A. officials about young players who have played basketball almost exclusively as teenagers and then enter the league more vulnerable to injury than they should be. It may seem logical that the best way to get better at basketball is to play it more often. But specialization and intense training of repetitive movements from a young age, researchers say, can leave muscles overstressed and prone to imbalance, subjecting players to the possibility of injury and, eventually, shortened N.B.A. careers. The delayed start to Williamson's rookie season is "smoke in front of the fire" to Dr. Neeru Jayanthi, the director of sports medicine research and education at Emory University in Atlanta and a leading expert on youth sports and training patterns. "What is wrong with the basketball culture that we have continual patterns of top players not making significant contributions related to injury?" Dr. Jayanthi asked in a recent interview. Early, intense training and specialization in one sport can age young players' bodies three or four years beyond their chronological age, Dr. Jayanthi said. This has led him and other medical experts to question whether Williamson will be able to sustain a pro career of 15 or more years, like LeBron James and Michael Jordan. "It makes me skeptical," said Dr. Jayanthi, who has not treated Williamson. But David Griffin, the Pelicans' executive vice president of basketball operations, said the post rehab Williamson "is a radically improved physical version of himself." The Pelicans declined to make their medical staff available to discuss Williamson. Griffin said that Williamson had gained more flexibility in his ankles and hips through rehab, which had helped relieve undue force on his knees and permitted him to move with more agility on defense. An ongoing challenge, Griffin said, is keeping the young forward, who packs on muscle quickly, strong enough to control his movements but light enough not to generate more torque. Williamson said he had dreamed of being a basketball star from the age of 4. By 5, he played A.A.U. travel ball with 9 year olds. By 9, he was waking up at 5 a.m. to practice shooting and other drills. By seventh grade, he had stopped playing soccer and football and committed himself fully to basketball. During his freshman year of high school in Spartanburg, South Carolina, he received his first scholarship offer to play in college, and his summers became filled with extensive travel and organized games. A generation ago, many elite athletes, such as Jordan, had played multiple sports growing up. That conditioned their bodies to various types of movement. And they often took breaks from repetitive motion activities in the summer. Now top high school basketball stars like Williamson can end up playing nearly as many organized games in a year as an N.B.A. player. A 2017 study published in The American Journal of Sports Medicine examined 237 N.B.A. first round draft picks from 2008 to 2015. It found that 43 percent of those who played a single sport during high school sustained a major injury in their pro careers, compared with 25 percent of those who played multiple sports. Multisport athletes also tended to have longer N.B.A. careers. Dr. Brian Feeley, a sports medicine orthopedist in San Francisco who was a co author of the study, said there was little evidence to indicate that, for a boy, specializing in a sport before reaching skeletal maturity around 16 or 17 would necessarily make him better. But such specialization is associated with higher injury rates. The N.B.A. now recommends that players not begin specializing in basketball until age 14 or older; limit the scheduling of organized games; and rest at least one day a week and for a longer period each year. "The question is whether somebody like Zion should have taken breaks," said Dr. Feeley, who did not examine Williamson. Dr. Feeley added that a meniscus tear sustained by a teenager might suggest that young muscles and joints have been overloaded "when they're not really ready for it yet" and a predisposition to types of injuries as a professional that "you may not necessarily experience until you were in your 50s or 60s." Griffin said the Pelicans were not "overly concerned" with the potential health effects of Williamson's specialization as a youth, given his willingness to work to correct his biomechanical flaws. Williamson expressed some frustration with his rehab and being unable to make his customary explosive moves. He said that, at times, he wanted to "punch a wall or kick chairs," but he dismissed any concern over his decision to specialize in basketball since middle school. "My advice would be, if you love the sport, just play it," Williamson said. The risk is real, though. Recent research, Dr. Jayanthi said, suggests that forceful, specialized training from a young age may contribute to biomechanical flaws. Such movement deficiencies have been widely studied by Dr. Marcus Elliott, a physician and founder of P3, a sports performance company that is completing a five year study of nearly 500 current N.B.A. players.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Mid performance at Shakespeare's theater, his latest tragedy, "Othello," is humming along. In the audience, the poet Emilia Bassano Lanier looks down upon the players with mounting outrage. Already, between acts, she has had a dust up with her magpie of an ex, the playwright, accusing him of presenting her words as his own. Now she hears more of them: things she has said to him coming out of the mouths of his ladies. So Emilia scrambles from her seat and bursts into the scene, where an actor playing one of the ladies breaks character. "There's a woman on the stage!" he shouts, scandalized. It's a deliciously funny moment, and it's only deepened by our sudden consciousness of the several layers of theatricality we've been taking for granted. Because in Morgan Lloyd Malcolm's "Emilia," women play the men playing the women in "Othello." Women play every role. A contemporary chiaroscuro fantasy of a bio play, "Emilia" transferred from Shakespeare's Globe to the West End last year and recently won three Olivier Awards, including best comedy. Its whole point is to put a woman, Lanier, onstage and surround her in solidarity with an all female company.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Top right and middle, Landon Nordeman for The New York Times; top and bottom right and bottom middle, Firstview; bottom left, Landon Nordeman for The New York Times
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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NOT ENOUGH Human Rights in an Unequal World By Samuel Moyn 277 pp. Belknap Press/Harvard University Press. 29.95. "Rights" is an inescapable word in modern politics. But asserting rights is easier than demarcating them. Should they be just political, or also social and economic? Must they rest on international or national laws, or do they embody "self evident" truths? "We agree about the rights, but on condition no one asks us why," said a participant in deliberations on the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Samuel Moyn's "Not Enough" continues his effort to recast the history of the "human rights politics" that materialized in the 1970s with the Helsinki Accords and Jimmy Carter's foreign policy. This new attention was, he argued in "The Last Utopia," a consequence of decolonization, the Vietnam War's end and the decay of Communist regimes. As older visions dissipated, "idealists," some in Amnesty International or Human Rights Watch, pursued a new "moral consciousness." But Moyn labeled this shallow utopianism because it made economic inequality secondary, at best. His new book elaborates on these arguments, looking back at the evolution of welfare states and the allied idea of "social citizenship" (rights to education, health care and housing), while targeting the neoliberalism of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. By "neoliberalism," Moyn (a professor of law and history at Yale) evidently means the global surge of "market fundamentalism" associated with Milton Friedman or the World Bank. Human rights ideology and neoliberalism were not twins, Moyn says, but both fostered a perception that social justice was passe or, worse, evocative of awful regimes. Democratic welfare states, meanwhile, were experiencing difficulties.
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Books
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On Saturday night, in a nearly empty arena in Jacksonville, Fla., U.F.C. 249 will make the world's biggest mixed martial arts organization the first major North American sport to return from an industrywide shutdown amid the coronavirus pandemic. Of course, the U.F.C.'s president, Dana White, would have preferred not to take a hiatus at all, even as the rapid spread of the virus shut down sports events from the N.C.A.A. basketball tournaments to the Masters, and forced the N.B.A., N.H.L., M.L.B. and other leagues to suspend their schedules. Instead White pressed forward with plans to stage U.F.C. 249 on April 18, looking toward a lightweight title matchup in Brooklyn between the Russian Khabib Nurmagomedov and the American Tony Ferguson that had been years in the making. When the New York State Athletic Commission refused to approve the event, the U.F.C. clung to its date while scouting new locations. Nurmagomedov, the U.F.C.'s lightweight champion, eventually dropped out, unable to leave his native Dagestan because of pandemic related travel restrictions. He was replaced by Justin Gaethje, a top lightweight contender. The first answer is Florida, where Gov. Ron DeSantis declared pro sports an essential industry when issuing a stay at home order last month. The U.F.C. plans to stage two more cards in Jacksonville next week after the series begins Saturday with U.F.C. 249. Ferguson, an unorthodox striker known for bloody brawling and submissions, will face a power puncher in Gaethje during the main event, which figures to deliver excitement and a high pace. With no competition from Major League Baseball or from hockey and basketball playoffs, U.F.C. is positioned for a big viewership win. And yet its success will also be measured by whether it proves harmful to public health. On Friday night, U.F.C. officials said one of their fighters, Ronaldo Souza, a Brazilian middleweight nicknamed Jacare, had been pulled from U.F.C. 249 because he had tested positive for the coronavirus earlier in the day. The U.F.C. said in a statement that two of Souza's cornermen had also tested positive for the virus. Souza, who was not showing symptoms, told the promotion company when he arrived in Jacksonville on Wednesday that one of his relatives might have had the virus, a U.F.C. executive told ESPN, which is airing the preliminary bouts and selling the pay per view card. Saturday's 11 remaining bouts, with the fight between Souza and Uriah Hall canceled, are divided among two broadcasts. Starting at 6 p.m., six preliminary bouts will appear on ESPN, the ESPN streaming service, and on U.F.C. Fight Pass. The main pay per view card, with five fights, will begin at 10 p.m., and will stream on ESPN for 64.99. What's different about this card? The venue, the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena, usually seats up to 15,000 people, but U.F.C. 249 will not have spectators. And the U.F.C. is limiting the number of fight night and TV production staff members in the arena, staging this show with a crew of 150 instead of the usual 300. Pre fight and post fight news conferences have been moved online, and there were no ceremonial weigh ins on Friday night, when screaming fans and on stage staredowns would typically have contributed to fight week hype. Lawrence Epstein, the chief operating officer of U.F.C., told the Sports Business Journal that about 1,200 Covid 19 tests would be used for fighters and other employees during the three events in Florida. During an online news conference on Thursday, several fighters spoke about the discomfort of having long cotton swabs shoved up their nostrils. The test was particularly uncomfortable for Gaethje, who has a blocked passage in his right nostril because of an old injury. The fighters themselves are staying in a local hotel, and they have been given private saunas to help them shed weight and private workout rooms. Inside the arena, everyone besides the fighters is required to follow physical distancing recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Outside the arena, competitors have been aware of the absence of traveling fans. "It's just more calm," said the U.F.C. bantamweight champion, Henry Cejudo, who will face Dominick Cruz in Saturday's second billed event. "We know we're fighting, but it doesn't feel like fight week. It's deserted." How did the event get to this point? When other pro sports outfits suspended operations in mid March, White made plain his intention to stick as closely as possible to the U.F.C.'s normal schedule. He has said in interviews since then that moving forward has allowed the U.F.C. to avoid layoffs. So when New York regulators barred U.F.C. 249 from Brooklyn, the company targeted the Tachi Palace Casino Resort on tribal land in California, postponing the event only when executives from Disney, the parent company of ESPN, implored White not to go on with his California plan. By then Gaethje had replaced Nurmagomedov in the main event, and speculation raged about where the card would land. White repeatedly talked about moving operations to a private island where fighters would fly in from around the world for events that the U.F.C. planned to hold weekly. White says "Fight Island" is still a plan, though he has not revealed specifics about its location or timing. Besides a nearly empty arena and people staying far apart from one another outside the octagon? Ferguson is a relentless pressure fighter, and Gaethje has put together a string of stunning one punch knockouts. The preliminary bouts are full of fighters matched to produce maximum violence. In the final bout of the ESPN preliminary fights, Anthony Pettis whose wall walking roundhouse kick to Ben Henderson's head in 2010 became a viral highlight will face Donald Cerrone, a fighter nicknamed Cowboy who has delivered, and received, some of the U.F.C.'s most spectacular knockouts. Normally fighters like Cerrone and Pettis would land on the pay per view portion of the event, but their presence on cable TV probably isn't a coincidence, since they are likely to deliver the kind of high impact violence that could prompt a casual fan to purchase the main card.
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While on their honeymoon in Hoi An in central Vietnam last month, Sharadhi Gadagkar and Kunal Patel didn't bother a hotel concierge with questions about things to do. Instead, the couple signed up for their first Airbnb experience, a tour organized by SecretEATS, during which they hit five locations serving original cocktails, including a spiked iced coffee in the wood planked loft of a designer boutique. It was a perfectly tipsy three hours with two other guests and two guides. "We love booking these types of experiences," said Ms. Gadagkar. "They give you a unique perspective on the local culture that's much harder to get on our own." The majority of these day trips, unlike hotels and flights, are still booked offline, representing the next major growth opportunity for online travel companies. Players large and small are racing to aggregate existing group tours, activities and attractions from river cruises in Chicago to "Sound of Music" tours in the Alps. These tech companies, a mix of established businesses and start ups, also are developing more personalized, local "experiences," like a butchery class at a London gastro pub or a tour of Buddhist temples in Ho Chi Minh City. Recent advances in technology for booking and buying activities and tours, as well as travel envy spawned by social media, have accelerated the growth. Investors are plowing money into the sector in record amounts, like the 484 million round of funding that Berlin based aggregator GetYourGuide announced in May. "There is a real unique leap, more of a quantum leap being made in the experience space," said Jamie Wong, founder and chief executive of San Francisco based Vayable, which has been offering urban experiences hosted by locals since 2011. "It's a pretty massive pie and its growing far faster than hotels or car rentals, so it's a place where people are starting to sink money." The so called experience economy and shift to buying memories rather than things has been tracked since the late 1990s. In truth, all travel is an experience, but the branding and marketing of "experiential travel" has been one of the top tourism trends in recent years. Typically, these excursions would be found through a hotel front desk or a local tourism office. But tourists, especially screen dependent millennials, are increasingly turning to their phones for instant booking. Not having to struggle with a language barrier is also an incentive. Operators of tours booked online can be the same ones used by local tour offices. But when they're not, deciphering which guide to choose, or even which site, can be tricky. Online platforms say their quality control includes monitoring reviews to weed out underperformers, and some have instant messaging for customers to send up red flags on site and secret shoppers to test tours. Even so, tourists like Zeena Bacchus and Felix Eke, who were traveling in Southeast Asia last month, prefer an in person transaction. Ms. Bacchus, 29, a nurse practitioner from Pennsylvania, used online booking platforms TripAdvisor and Klook to get an idea of things to do when in Hoi An. But they arranged sightseeing through a local tourism office, figuring they could negotiate a better price and establish trust in person. "I've just found that when traveling in other countries, I can tell a local tour company exactly what I want and see if they can work out my activities for the amount of days I have," Ms. Bacchus said. Ms. Gadagkar and Mr. Patel, San Francisco based tech workers, are sold on online experiences. Besides their Airbnb cocktail adventure, they booked wine, rafting and cycling tours in New Zealand last year through TripAdvisor and its Viator business. "We prefer this to booking through local tour offices, because it helps us plan our trip ahead of time, and the unbiased reviews and pictures are super helpful in differentiating between two similar experiences, whereas that's harder to do when booking with local tour offices," said Ms. Gadagkar. Paradoxically, the travel search and buy supply is growing so rapidly that it's easy to be sucked into another digital ecosystem of choices that can distract travelers from exploring where they actually are, or from immersing serendipitously on their own for free. The expanding experiences segment splits into a few groups. Major online travel companies like TripAdvisor, Expedia and startups like Klook, KKday and Musement have amassed inventory from the million plus tours, attractions and activities available. Many are also recruiting entrepreneurs to upload less commercial offerings with personal connections to local culture and residents.Booking.com jumped into experiences in 2016 in Europe and the Middle East. In May, the company opened its attractions offerings to all travelers, regardless of whether they had also bought accommodations. It started with attractions in 10 cities, from an Edinburgh castle tour to a Flamenco show in Barcelona.The goal, like with other big aggregators, is to be a mobile concierge desk for all points of a trip."To be very honest, these are humble beginning days," said Ram Papatla, Booking.com's vice president of global experiences. "We have a lot to learn in terms of how deep we need to go and what kinds of tools we need to build." Some startups are focused mainly on building their own supply with local guides, who design encounters where travelers have a deeper engagement with a place. Context Travel was one of the first in 2003, with experts leading private art, architecture and food tours, followed in 2005 by Global Greeter Network, where volunteers show visitors highlights and hidden spots in cities for free.Traveling Spoon, with locals hosting cooking classes and making homemade meals, came on the scene in 2013. Airbnb quickly became a dominant player in the space after it introduced its experiences in 2016, now with more than 30,000 offerings in 1,000 cities. Dozens more have crowded the scene recently, with apps coming last year from Lyfx, which pairs travelers with outdoor adventurers, and this year from VeloGuide, matching travelers with local cyclists for personal tours. There are also niche players like Tiqets, which offer tickets to attractions and museums like a priority pass to the Sistine Chapel, and Tinggly, whose website sells gift vouchers for multiple experience packages including dining in the dark in Estonia.Finally, vacation package resellers like TourRadar, Stride and Evaneos aggregate multiple day tours around the world and let users customize a vacation with an agency operator.
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The dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi disappeared after he walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul just over two weeks ago, and evidence increasingly suggests he was brutally murdered. But on Wednesday night, a new piece of his work submitted by his assistant after he disappeared was published by The Washington Post, for which Mr. Khashoggi worked as a columnist. In just over 700 words, his column lamented the dearth of a free press in the Arab world, which he said "is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors, but through domestic forces vying for power." He sought to promote the free exchange of ideas and information under the headline, "What the Arab world needs most is free expression." Mr. Khashoggi's editor, Karen Attiah, wrote a preface to the column. She said she received the file from Mr. Khashoggi's translator and assistant a day after he was reported to be missing. "The Post held off publishing it because we hoped Jamal would come back to us so that he and I could edit it together," Ms. Attiah wrote. "Now I have to accept: That is not going to happen. This is the last piece of his I will edit for The Post." The column came amid reports of audio recordings suggesting that Mr. Khashoggi was met by his killers shortly after he walked into the consulate in Turkey on Oct. 2, and that his fingers were severed and he was beheaded. Saudi officials have denied harming Mr. Khashoggi, but they have not provided evidence that he left the Saudi Consulate, or offered a credible account of what happened to him. President Trump appeared to take Saudi officials' claims at face value, disregarding Turkish assertions that senior figures in the royal court had ordered his killing. The president told reporters on Wednesday that the United States had asked for copies of any audio or video evidence of Mr. Khashoggi's killing that Turkish authorities may possess "if it exists." In his column on Wednesday, Mr. Khashoggi wrote that government clampdowns on the press in the Arab world were sometimes met with little resistance.
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It would be one thing to suggest that Trevor Lawrence, the dynamic Clemson quarterback, be paid 173,000 this season. But what about the long snapper at Bowling Green? And it would raise few eyebrows to say that Luka Garza, the University of Iowa basketball star, should be paid 115,600. But what about the backup point guard at Portland State? As the N.C.A.A.'s amateurism model the one that has turned college sports into a billion dollar industry has been increasingly under assault in courtrooms and legislative halls, Senator Cory Booker on Thursday produced the most ambitious swing at it yet. He put forth a multipronged bill with a provocative element: It would give every athlete in a handful of revenue generating sports a share of profits. The proposal, called the College Athletes Bill of Rights, would also provide lifetime scholarships, government oversight of health and safety standards, public reporting of booster donations, unrestricted transfers and create a commission with subpoena power to ensure compliance. The bill stems not only from Booker's experience as a former football player at Stanford, he said, but from conversations he has had in recent months with college players, which he said have centered on the racial inequities of an unpaid, largely Black work force generating millions for largely white coaches and administrators. Framing the issue as one of social injustice or, more starkly, as akin to a slave system is nothing new for athlete activists. But that description is carrying greater currency at a time when institutions across the country are being scrutinized for systemic racism. The coming year may provide a tipping point for the N.C.A.A., which on Wednesday convinced the Supreme Court to take up a lower court ruling that said the organization violated antitrust laws by putting restrictions on educational benefits that colleges could provide athletes. Five states have already passed legislation (and more than 20 others have proposed bills) that would allow athletes to cash in on their fame, and at least four other bills related to the issue have been introduced in Congress. That three bills by Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Representative Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, a former Ohio State receiver have been put forth by Republicans is a sign that this issue may generate bipartisan attention. Booker's bill, which is being co sponsored by Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, has drawn only Democratic support thus far, with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Representative Jan Schakowsky of Illinois signing on. But Booker said that he has found an empathetic ear with Senator Lindsey Graham, the Judiciary Committee chairman, who along with the Commerce Committee headed by Wicker, has held hearings this year on athletes' ability to make money off the use of their name, image and likeness. Those hearings have come at the urging of the N.C.A.A., which has been lobbying for legislation that would provide it an antitrust exemption. The goal of the N.C.A.A.'s lobbying is to supersede state legislation, like laws passed in California and Florida, that aims to limit a college's ability to prohibit athletes from being compensated for their skills while, say, a computer whiz or a music prodigy faces no such restrictions. The 61 page bill proposed by Booker addresses more than paychecks. It would set health standards that range from concussion protocols to how sexual assault cases should be investigated. It would set up a fund to help cover the costs of injuries that may linger long after an athlete's career is over, and it would regulate sports agents. It would require colleges to reduce coach and administrator salaries and rein in other costs before dropping sports. And it would establish a nine member commission, appointed by the president, with at least five former college athletes, with the power to investigate and fine universities as much as to 250,000 for violating its provisions and ban individuals from working in college athletics. "This is a belt and suspenders approach to enforcement," said Blumenthal, a former Connecticut attorney general. "There will be no winks and nods here. We are writing a good law and it will have teeth." The most ambitious and likely the most contentious provision would require colleges to share the profits they make with the athletes who generate them. In sports where revenues exceed the cost of scholarships across an entire division at the moment that would be athletes who play football, men's and women's basketball and baseball the profits generated in each sport would be shared equally with the scholarship players. Using data supplied by universities to the Department of Education, Booker said that would mean payments of 173,000 a year to football players, 115,600 to men's basketball players, 19,050 to women's basketball players and 8,670 to baseball players who are on full scholarship. Those figures pale in comparison with coaches' salaries. Fifty head football coaches, for example, earned at least 3 million this year, according to a USA Today database. At Ohio State, four assistant coaches earned at least 1 million. If the bill is tilted toward the athletes, Booker said, that is because it is the only bill so far to be crafted from the athletes' perspective, though it notably avoids any mention of whether athletes should be considered employees. Booker's bill will not be addressed in the Senate's current session, but he said he would reintroduce it when the new one begins in January. The starting point on eventual legislation if it is closer to Booker's proposal or Wicker's bill will be influenced heavily by the remaining two Senate races in Georgia on Jan. 5. If Republicans hold on to at least one of the two seats, Wicker will retain his seat as committee chairman. If not, then Democrats will control the Judiciary Committee on which Booker and Blumenthal both sit, and the Commerce Committee of which Blumenthal is a member. "If we're in the majority, it puts us in a much better position to get this done," Booker said.
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Given the indefinite postponement of the Tony Awards, we recently looked back on a Broadway season that ended prematurely and decided to distribute our own set of prizes. It seems only fair that we extend our discussion to Off Broadway which, before its houses were also shuttered, provided some of the most original, powerful and prescient theater of the past year. BEN BRANTLEY So much of what we saw Off Broadway from last spring onward has stayed in my mind, Jesse or, perhaps, I should say, it haunted me. In many of these productions, time seemed to be torn off its hinges, and the solid floor of what we think of as "normal life" to have cracked open. Who knew how apt a preface such works would provide for the rudderless world we now inhabit? JESSE GREEN "Rudderless" is exactly how a lot of these terrific plays (and a handful of musicals) wanted us to feel politically, existentially and even spiritually I mean with actual ghosts. Above all, I'm thinking of Yael Farber's production of "Hamlet," starring Ruth Negga, at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn. Its treatment of the supernatural was as simple and successful as any I've encountered. GREEN And Farber smartly staged most of the ghost scenes in the midst of the audience, so we had to do physical work turning, hunting to confirm our worst fears. Another play that actively destabilized our perception of a predictable world was Lucas Hnath's "The Thin Place," at Playwrights Horizons, about a medium who may be a fraud and a client who insists on believing her anyway. Weirdly, in the audience, I preferred to believe her, too. BRANTLEY Hnath is my nominee for playwright of the year, in terms of his ability to unsettle through unorthodox theatricality. That was true not only of "The Thin Place," but also of his devastating "Dana H.," an account of his mother's abduction by a psychotic patient she had served as a chaplain. The text consisted entirely of interviews conducted with his mother, delivered by the actress Deirdre O'Connell (lip syncing to the recorded material). And what initially seemed like a gimmick became a powerful instrument of dislocation. This was at the Vineyard Theater, which also presented the season's other great work of destabilizing documentary theater, Tina Satter's "Is This a Room." BRANTLEY Emily Davis's portrayal of Reality Winner captured the wrenching internal struggle that happens when we're trying to pretend life is "normal" that it's not under threat and about to unravel when of course the opposite is true. And at this point, I would like to declare Negga, O'Connell and Davis as tied for the best actress of the year, on or Off Broadway. GREEN No disrespect to performances on Broadway this season but, as usual, Off Broadway offers actors so much more range to explore, and in these cases with no loss of bravura opportunities. I was also stunned by Hannah Gadsby, whose uncategorizable "Douglas" a stand up act that was also a drama that was also a tirade was not just a great turn but a beautifully crafted argument about sexual, neurological and physical difference. "I no longer believe that I am falling short of expectations," Gadsby says in the show. "I believe it is those expectations that are falling short of my humanity." BRANTLEY Gadsby is disruptive in a positive sense, in that she's redefining all sorts of preconceptions, whether about genre or gender. This was a season that shook up expectations of what a play could be, as we've noted, but also of what a musical could be. (The high point among more conventional fare: Michael Mayer's blissful production of "Little Shop of Horrors" starring Jonathan Groff.) I'm thinking of Michael R. Jackson's "A Strange Loop," an exercise in athletic navel gazing at Playwrights Horizons about a black, queer creator of musicals (like Jackson); and "Octet," Dave Malloy's extraordinary a cappella chamber opera at the Signature Theater, about a group of internet addicts gathered in an Alcoholics Anonymous style assembly. Both shows were, for the most part, set in the shadowy, teeming interiors of isolated human minds. GREEN And both were about characters lost in worlds that at first seemed free but turned out to be prisons. What prescience! Usually we think of great new work as historical, tying together threads of recent social change. But in so many plays this season, authors seemed to predict what was coming next or at least to question, often bitterly, the presumption of stability in the present. That's why we saw so many ghosts: They are both warnings and reproaches. In Bess Wohl's extraordinary "Make Believe," at Second Stage Theater, the ghosts were the kind children make with white sheets but also the kind adults sense hovering around them, whispering that the world is not as safe as they were told it would be. GREEN For most of that audience, "Heroes" was both an insight into a world we rarely think of without snark and a horror story about the backlash always threatening to rise from the graveyards of past battles. That theme was even more explicit in two plays that rethought the successes of gay liberation: "Dr. Ride's American Beach House," by Liza Birkenmeier, and "History of Violence," based on an autobiographical novel by Edouard Louis. "Dr. Ride," at Ars Nova, looked longingly at a moment (it's set in 1983) before everyone had to choose sexual sides. And "Violence," another St. Ann's presentation, described in painful detail the way academic ideas about sexuality get twisted into an impossible knot by a real world gay tryst that turns to rape. BRANTLEY "History of Violence," with its self made intellectual protagonist who came from a blinkered blue collar background that he revisits in the course of the play, is also of course about class, and how it shapes prejudices, identity and, often, a paralyzing feeling of predeterminism. I found the same themes in a much more conventional, but equally energizing, portrait of a New York shelter for victims of abuse, Stephen Adly Guirgis's "Halfway Bitches Go Straight to Heaven," at Atlantic Theater Company.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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