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This is the latest twist at the intersection of politics, sports and music that has surrounded this year's Super Bowl. Kaepernick is still in the middle of an ongoing arbitration case regarding a grievance he filed against the N.F.L. He has accused the league's owners of colluding to keep him out of the league after not being signed last season. His protests during the anthems became a cultural flash point, even though he wasn't in the league. Other N.F.L. players began kneeling to support Kaepernick, as did celebrities off the field. Last fall, Nike made Kaepernick the face of a prominent advertising campaign. This year's Super Bowl became particularly fraught because of the halftime show. Some high profile artists, including the rapper Cardi B, said they would not be willing to perform, in a show of solidarity with Kaepernick. Last year, Jay Z rapped in one of his songs: "I said no to the Super Bowl, you need me, I don't need you." Earlier this week, the N.F.L. announced the halftime acts would be Maroon 5 and the rappers Travis Scott and Big Boi. Scott's decision to participate, in particular, received backlash, including from prominent African Americans like Al Sharpton. Variety reported that Kaepernick and Scott spoke before the announcement and described the conversation as "cordial and respectful." But on Wednesday, several posts critical of Scott appeared on Kaepernick's Twitter account.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Helsinki's New Library Has 3 D Printers and Power Tools. (And Some Books, Too.) HELSINKI, Finland Two days before the opening on Wednesday of Oodi, Helsinki's new central library, its director, Anna Maria Soininvaara, stood before some of the high tech equipment that would soon be available for the public to use. She wasn't entirely sure what it all did, she said sheepishly. The devices included a laser cutter, computerized embroidery machines and equipment to digitally sculpt wood. In one glassed in area on the building's second floor, Helsinki residents could repair personal electronic items by 3D printing replacement parts and soldering them together. Ms. Soininvaara's uncertainty was understandable: The 59 year old, who has worked in the Finnish library system for three decades, is more of an expert on literature than on high tech engraving, and Oodi which means "ode" in Finnish isn't exactly a normal library. Given its breadth of services, one might be forgiven for wondering whether Oodi should be considered a library at all. A swooping three story construction of wood, steel and glass that looks like a ship topped with a layer of ice, the new building, which cost 98 million euros, or around 110 million, including equipment, is one of the most anticipated public projects in the country in years. It is an ambitious attempt by one of the most literate and digitally savvy nations in the world to reinvent the library for its population's future needs. "Books are important, but it's not the whole library," Ms. Soininvaara said. She pointed to Oodi's recording studios, kitchen, gaming room with PlayStation consoles, and an "immersive 3 D space," a room whose walls can be illuminated with digital projections, available to artists or for corporate presentations. The result of two decades of planning and public consultation, each of Oodi's three floors was built to fulfill a different civic purpose. Its expansive ground floor, which includes a restaurant, movie theater, European Union information center and several areas suited for concerts, is meant for events that encourage Helsinki's residents to mingle. The second floor, with electronic equipment and workrooms, is for noisy creative activity, and the top floor, an open plan, brightly lit "book heaven" with rows of white stacks, is a conventional, if inordinately tasteful, reading room. Tommi Laitio, the city's executive director for culture and leisure, explained that the building and its expansive technological offerings were partly intended as a bulwark against populism. In 2015, the right wing, populist Finns Party joined a coalition government. Jussi Halla aho, the party's leader, once argued that solving Greece's debt crisis would require a military junta, and he has linked Islam to pedophilia. "This is very much a political project," Mr. Laitio said, arguing that threats to democracy across the globe in recent years could be explained partly by people's uncertainty about technological advances. Oodi's high tech equipment is intended to counteract those fears. "It allows people to experience the future so it doesn't feel so intimidating," he explained. Finland's high profile investment in the public library system runs counter to trends in the United States and Britain, where many libraries have faced drastic budget cuts in recent years. Last year, a column in The Guardian argued that the cuts to the British system, which increasingly relies on volunteers, had been so severe that "the U.K. no longer has a national library system." Oodi "fits very well into the Nordic story of how societies work," Mr. Laitio said. "There are so few of us here, so we have to make sure everyone can develop to their fullest potential." With their generous publicly funded benefits, Nordic countries place a high premium on social integration and education, and, based on 2014 figures from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Finnish government spends more than one and a half times as much per capita on libraries as the United States. The Nordic countries are emerging as leaders in library design. Dokk1, a state of the art "hybrid library" with "maker spaces," a passport office and a playground, opened in Aarhus, Denmark, in 2015. It was named "public library of the year" by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions a year later, and its visitor numbers have grown significantly. Oslo's new central library, which is due to open in early 2020 on the Norwegian capital's waterfront, is expected to include a movie theater, gaming area and workshop for visitors to use digital equipment. "We have to make sure that libraries aren't just relevant for people who can't afford books or a computer," he said. Oodi is to begin mostly normal operations on Friday, after a two day opening celebration with concerts and speeches by politicians, including the Finnish president. Its architects noted that the building's balcony was built to be at the same level as the stairs to the Parliament building across the square, a symbolic gesture to indicate that learning is as important in Finnish society as politics. "We often think that things like social cohesion or democracy are just words, but in spaces like these they really come to life," Mr. Laitio said. "You need some social infrastructure for communities to work. You can't build them on friendship, or this abstract idea of living together."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Alex Jones Said Bans Would Strengthen Him. He Was Wrong. SAN FRANCISCO After Silicon Valley internet giants mostly barred Alex Jones from their services last month, traffic to his Infowars website and app soared on the blaze of publicity and the notorious conspiracy theorist declared victory. "The more I'm persecuted, the stronger I get," Mr. Jones said on his live internet broadcast three days later. "It backfired." Yet a review of traffic on Infowars several weeks after the bans shows that the tech companies drastically reduced Mr. Jones's reach by cutting off his primary distribution channels: YouTube and Facebook. In the three weeks before the Aug. 6 bans, Infowars had a daily average of nearly 1.4 million visits to its website and views of videos posted by its main YouTube and Facebook pages, according to a New York Times analysis of data from the web data firms Tubular Labs and SimilarWeb. In the three weeks afterward, its audience fell by roughly half, to about 715,000 site visits and video views, according to the analysis. The analysis did not include traffic to the two month old Infowars app or views of videos that Mr. Jones posted on Twitter, where his accounts remain active. He also still shares posts inside private Facebook groups, and his followers repost his content from their social media accounts. But data suggest that those sources of traffic are smaller than Mr. Jones's main Facebook and YouTube pages. That Facebook and Google, which owns YouTube, muffled one of the internet's loudest voices so quickly illustrates the tremendous influence a few internet companies have over public discourse and the spread of information. The fate of Infowars is likely to be a point of debate in congressional hearings on Wednesday with tech executives including Twitter's chief executive, Jack Dorsey, and Facebook's chief operating officer, Sheryl Sandberg. Part of the focus will be on claims by President Trump and other critics that Silicon Valley is silencing conservative voices. The case of Mr. Jones and Infowars is tricky for many politicians and figures on the right. While many dislike the idea of tech companies censoring political speech, and Infowars leans far right, Mr. Jones regularly spreads lies, conspiracy theories and inflammatory attacks against political enemies. (On Thursday, a Texas judge denied his motion to dismiss a defamation lawsuit by parents of children killed six years ago in the Sandy Hook school shooting, which he has falsely called a hoax.) Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, tweeted in August, "Am no fan of Jones among other things he has a habit of repeatedly slandering my Dad by falsely and absurdly accusing him of killing JFK but who the hell made Facebook the arbiter of political speech?" Now that access to Infowars is mainly through its website or app, Mr. Jones's ability to reach new viewers is severely limited because they will no longer come across his videos while scrolling through Facebook or YouTube, said Monica Stephens, a geography professor at the University at Buffalo who has studied the spread of misinformation online. "This increases the likelihood Infowars is preaching to a filter bubble versus reaching new audiences," she said. Another right wing provocateur might present a cautionary tale for Mr. Jones: Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart editor. Mr. Yiannopoulos gained notoriety during the 2016 presidential race for his abusive language, and Twitter barred him that year for harassing the comedian Leslie Jones. He also lost his job at Breitbart after making glib remarks about pedophilia, and his public profile gradually faded. Last month, Mr. Yiannopoulos lashed out at critics on Facebook, saying, "I have lost everything standing up for the truth in America, spent all my savings, destroyed all my friendships, and ruined my whole life." In an email, he wrote, "Social justice warriors machinate to get speakers canceled, and social networks purge conservatives, for the same reason: no platforming works." Neither Mr. Jones nor Infowars responded to requests for comment. Mr. Jones has long relied on Silicon Valley to distribute his message. His YouTube channel amassed 2.4 million subscribers and more than 1.6 billion views of nearly 36,000 videos it had posted since 2008, according to Social Blade, which tracks social media data. His success was due partly to YouTube's video recommendation algorithm, which, in an effort to drive clicks, pushed many users to Mr. Jones's clips. The main Facebook pages for Mr. Jones and Infowars, meanwhile, had drawn 668 million views of their videos over the past three years, according to Tubular Labs. But on Aug. 6, Facebook deleted four pages run by Mr. Jones or Infowars for breaking its rules, including by "glorifying violence" and "using dehumanizing language to describe people who are transgender, Muslims and immigrants." YouTube erased Mr. Jones's channel for flouting a penalty for a previous punishment for hate speech. YouTube also quietly deleted more than a dozen other channels associated with Infowars for trying to circumvent its rules. Since then, Mr. Jones has made the companies a central theme of his near daily show. In recent shows broadcast on his website, he has falsely accused YouTube and Facebook of being controlled by the Chinese government and assisting in an elaborate global conspiracy to control the world's population. A conspiracy theorist. Mr. Jones, who founded the website Infowars in 1999, has spread conspiracy theories and misinformation for years, including false claims that the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School was a hoax. A far right broadcaster and pitchman. Mr. Jones built a substantial following by appealing to conspiracy minded, largely white, male listeners via his website and radio show, where he amassed a fortune by hawking diet supplements and survivalist gear. A spreader of misinformation. Facebook and YouTube, among other tech companies, have removed most of Mr. Jones's content in an effort to curb the spread of misinformation. The bans have drastically reduced his reach. A Trump ally. Mr. Jones was an early supporter of Donald Trump, who has adopted many of Mr. Jones's conspiracy theories. Mr. Jones also has echoed the former president's false claims about the pandemic and the 2020 election. Held liable for defamation. In four lawsuits brought by the families of 10 Sandy Hook shooting victims, judges found that because Mr. Jones refused to turn over documents ordered by the courts, including financial records, he lost the cases by default. "It is a panopticonic, total internet of things integration, global social score, complete command and control system," Mr. Jones said three days after the ban. "It is the virtual reality, A.I. weapon system now attacking the United States with traitors inside the major security agencies blocking Trump's resistance of the program." He added, "I have been chosen for destruction because I brought you this information." Mr. Jones also directly appealed to Mr. Trump, asking him to intervene. (Mr. Trump appeared on Mr. Jones's show during the 2016 presidential campaign, telling him: "Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.") Eleven days after Mr. Jones began calling on Mr. Trump to weigh in, the president tweeted: "Social Media is totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices. Speaking loudly and clearly for the Trump Administration, we won't let that happen." Mr. Trump has since accelerated his criticism of Silicon Valley and how it surfaces information, alleging that Google doctored search results for his name. Google has denied the claim. For a brief period after the bans, Mr. Jones enjoyed a bump in publicity. Traffic to Infowars.com soared 67 percent to about 777,000 visits a day in the two weeks after the ban, compared with the previous two weeks, SimilarWeb said. Downloads of the Infowars app surged sixfold to 25,500 downloads a day over the same period, according to Apptopia, which tracks app data. But both figures have since fallen to nearly pre ban levels. And the spike could not replace the lost traffic from the top three Facebook and YouTube channels for Infowars, which together averaged roughly 900,000 video views a day in the three weeks before the ban, according to Tubular Labs. Other outlets have not helped much. Even as Mr. Jones's account has remained on Twitter, his videos there attract 21,000 views on average, compared with 44,500 views per YouTube video, according to NeoReach, which helps brands market on social media. The Infowars accounts on other sites, such as Dailymotion, Amazon's Twitch and BitChute, a video site mostly for people barred from YouTube, garner views in the hundreds for videos and often fewer. NeoReach said an analysis of Mr. Jones's followers on social media showed that most were white married men, with an average age of 28 and average annual income of 46,500. NeoReach said his Twitter account "has a notable audience concentration in New York." Despite Mr. Jones's early pronouncements that the bans would make his Infowars operation stronger, there are signs he is concerned. On one recent show, he ranted without evidence that Silicon Valley companies gave liberals like the billionaire George Soros access to their users' personal data, including "your film roll, what you did with your wife, your kids, you know, in the bathtub, Grandma." "It's all theirs," he shouted. "And everybody's lining up to kiss these monsters' disgusting satanic souls." Seconds later, the show went to a break, cutting to a recorded promotion in which Mr. Jones urged his followers to share Infowars' videos on social media and to sign up for its newsletter "so there's no way the censors can get between us."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Booth's translation honors the elliptical rhythms of Arabic and the language's rich literary heritage. She imbues the book's numerous poetic extracts with lyricism and devotedly preserves the rhymes and cadences of its proverbs. ("The feet walk fast for the loving heart's sake, but when you feel no longing, your feet drag and ache.") Yet there is no doubt that this is a contemporary novel, insistent and alive. Abdallah may be our guide, but privileged and irresolute he is anchored to the past; the divergent fates of three sisters draw Alharthi's tale into the future. When watchful Mayya marries Abdallah she quashes a fierce, unrequited love for another man. She calls her first child London, a name that provokes family ridicule but is as much a promise to her daughter as it is an act of rebellion: Your world, it suggests, will be bigger than mine. Bookish Asma is "not in any hurry to embrace all the joys of love in one gulp of intoxicating ether"; when she marries an ambitious artist, she leverages his desire for status to complete her education. Finally, there is beautiful Khawla, whose version of love is "sublime and self immolating"; but the cousin to whom she is promised has emigrated to Canada and no one expects him to return. There is no right way to love, the sisters' stories suggest, just as there is no right or single way to be a woman. Caught between the earth and the heavens, between "the sublime and the filth of creation," the moon is, Alharthi writes, "the treasure house for what is on high and what lies below." "Celestial Bodies" is itself a treasure house: an intricately calibrated chaos of familial orbits and conjunctions, of the gravitational pull of secrets.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
When vegetables pile up in my refrigerator, it sometimes feels like a CSA basket that needs to be dealt with before next week's delivery arrives. It can be a result of impulse buying at the market or the bits and pieces left over from various recipe tests; usually it's a bit of both. So last week I cleaned out the refrigerator. I cooked up some grains and decided to use just a skillet or a wok for the vegetables. I made two great discoveries while coming up with these simple and delicious vegetarian skillet suppers. One is that a wok should not be limited to Asian stir fries. A well seasoned carbon steel wok makes a great natural nonstick pan that you can get hot enough to obtain a wonderful seared flavor when you cook vegetables, no matter what the seasonings. The other thing I discovered is that the cooking water drained off from cooked barley or brown rice can be added to cooked vegetables the way pasta cooking water is sometimes used to moisten and add texture to an accompaniment. The starch in the nutrient dense water enriches the vegetables like a sauce. Just add more water than the usual proportion that you'd use say a quart for a cup of brown rice or barley, and drain the grains through a strainer set over a bowl when they're tender. You can cook this beautiful, lemony skillet dinner in a well seasoned wok or a heavy nonstick pan. You'll get the best seared flavor in a wok. Serve with quinoa. 1/4 cup water, stock or drained cooking liquid from the accompanying grain (optional)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Media Consolidation Is in the Air, and John Malone Is Fanning It More than ever, the media industry is hurtling toward greater consolidation. And consummate deal makers like John C. Malone, the 76 year old telecommunications billionaire, are increasingly testing the waters for potential transactions. In the latest examples of companies seeking scale, Mr. Malone has approached Univision about a potential investment in the Spanish language broadcasting giant, people briefed on the discussions said on Wednesday. And Discovery Communications, of which Mr. Malone is a major backer, has held merger discussions with Scripps Networks Interactive, other people briefed on those talks said. In neither case is a deal assured. But both sets of discussions highlight the growing sense among media companies that they must find partners to stand up to increasingly powerful cable and broadband service providers. As companies like Comcast, Charter which also counts Mr. Malone as a major backer and AT T grow stronger, content providers have sought ways to get bigger and maintain negotiating leverage with their telecom counterparts on things like retransmission fees. The cable channel Starz agreed last year to be acquired by Lionsgate Entertainment. Sinclair, one of the country's biggest local television station owners, secured a deal to buy Tribune. And of course, in a blockbuster 85 billion deal last fall, AT T agreed to buy Time Warner. Mr. Malone, whose financially savvy deal making helped shape the modern cable industry, has been a major advocate of acquisitions in the communications industry. And companies in the orbit of his Liberty empire have been at the forefront of media mergers. So perhaps it is little surprise that he and a top lieutenant, Gregory Maffei, contacted two top investors in Univision at the Allen Company media and technology conference in Sun Valley, Idaho, this month to broach the idea of a potential investment, the people briefed on those talks said. Univision, which was taken private by a group of investors for 13.7 billion in 2007, has considered going public for several years and first filed preliminary papers to do so in 2015. The company's leveraged buyout saddled it with a heavy debt load roughly 8.3 billion as of March 31 making determining a valuation somewhat tricky. It is unclear whether the broadcaster and its backers will choose to take on a major investor, sell the company or continue to pursue an initial public offering. It is also unclear whether other potential bidders like Grupo Televisa, the Spanish language content producer that had bid for Univision a decade ago, will emerge. For the moment, Univision's investors and Mr. Malone remain far apart on an acceptable valuation for the company, one of these people said. If Univision pursues an initial offering, it would likely do so in the first half of 2018, this person added. The people who spoke of the Univision and Scripps discussions insisted on anonymity because negotiations were continuing. Stocks rise after President Biden says Jerome Powell will stay atop the Fed. Retail earnings and Black Friday: the week in business. Meanwhile, Scripps and Discovery have held merger discussions, people with knowledge of those talks said. Scripps has also discussed a potential transaction with other suitors, one of those people added. News of the talks sent shares in Scripps Networks up 14 percent on Wednesday. That gave the channel operator a market value of just under 10 billion. Shares in Discovery were up nearly 5 percent, giving the company a market value of about 15.5 billion. News of the discussions, as well as Mr. Malone's interest in Univision, was reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal. For Scripps, a tie up with Discovery would make sense. The two companies held talks to combine several times most recently in 2014 though those discussions fell apart over a range of issues, including price. Winning over Scripps would mean placating the company's eponymous family, which controls roughly 92 percent of the broadcaster's voting stock and which votes as a group. Discovery, which is backed by Mr. Malone and the Newhouse family, has been an active deal maker since the collapse of the Scripps talks three years ago. The broadcaster has pushed abroad to expand its international presence, with deals to buy Eurosport and other foreign programming rights. That could prove compelling to Scripps, whose portfolio of channels is primarily domestic except for holdings like a 50 percent stake in Britain's UKTV. Among the potential benefits of the deal for Discovery would be cost savings and an opportunity to dominate the market for women's television. The deal would bring together Discovery's Investigation Discovery, OWN and TLC with Scripps's HGTV and Food Network. Scripps has also developed a significant presence on emerging platforms like Snapchat's Discover. The two companies' properties could also be combined into an entertainment focused "skinny bundle," a collection of channels that pay TV subscribers could choose instead of a more standard and more expensive broad array of programming. Discovery has sought to create such an offering, which could include channels like OWN and TLC as well as Scripps properties. And Scripps's chief executive, Ken Lowe, is friends with his counterpart at Discovery, David Zaslav. Both men were inducted into the Cable Hall of Fame in April. But some analysts seemed unimpressed by what a merger of the two companies would yield. Todd Juenger, an analyst at Bernstein, said combining Discovery and Scripps would allow them to cut costs but would not change the fact that many pay TV providers simply do not want several of the channels that they have to offer. "Do we find the pitch compelling?" Mr. Juenger wrote in a research note. "In a word, 'no.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
On the first night of her plan to stay alive, Scheherazade entertains the sultan Shahriyar with a tale that she stops telling before it's done. He is her new husband, and she has already found his scimitar, encrusted with the blood of the many wives he's slain. Unless she gives him a reason to keep her around, she'll be next. She's counting on her cliffhangers to save her. "That's how this story goes, doesn't it?" she asks him, rhetorically, and suddenly she's talking about the narrative they're in. "The monster Shahriyar terrorizes every woman in Persia; brave Scheherazade seduces him with stories until his thirst for blood subsides." "You seem weirdly self aware," he says. So are the liveliest moments of Jason Grote and Marisa Michelson's tangled new musical "One Thousand Nights and One Day," a critical deconstruction of the classic Middle Eastern folk tales of "One Thousand and One Nights." Interweaving a fantastical medieval Persia with contemporary New York, the show is at its best when it flat out mocks American ignorance and the stubbornness of ethnic cliches.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
When contemplating the subject of dying, Michael (Mark Duplass) can muster little else than "eh." "Paddleton," and its gestures toward hushed profundity, might evoke much the same reaction from audiences. Before receiving a cancer diagnosis, Michael spent the bulk of his time with his best friend, Andy (Ray Romano), doing puzzles, playing a squash like game called "Paddleton," and watching the same kung fu movie repeatedly. The diagnosis changes nothing and everything about their routine. The two men, who seem to have only each other, bristle at having to engage in small talk with anyone. And yet "Paddleton" is an aggressively gentle film. Well, for a film about assisted suicide. "Paddleton," a Netflix original film, spends most of its time chronicling the aftermath of Michael's diagnosis and his subsequent decision to end his life with Andy's help. Alex Lehmann, who directed the movie, and Duplass, who wrote it with him, make a commendable effort in observing its characters' tics in hyper specific detail. So do Romano and Duplass, who as actors are clearly invested in trying to imbue this intimate friendship with a lived in familiarity and mumbly warmth.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Amy Schumer shows off her baby bump in a new Netflix special. And a feel good drama about friendly neighbors arrives on NBC. AMY SCHUMER GROWING (2019) Stream on Netflix. In a recent interview with The New York Times, Amy Schumer said that she had been able to brush off criticism of her comedy by simply not caring what people thought. But she did wonder how viewers would react to this new special. "I don't know what's going to happen," she said. "What's the thing people will be furious about?" In "Growing," Schumer delivers her signature dry humor, riffing on women, marriage and pregnancy. She raises her dress to flaunt her belly within the first few minutes of the special and jokes that tying the knot with her husband, who is a chef, was similar to the rapper Snoop Dogg "marrying weed." COLD FEET: THE NEW YEARS Stream on Britbox. When the drama series "Cold Feet" debuted on ITV in 1997, it was seen as the British equivalent of "Friends": The show follows three couples in their 30s as they go about their lives in Manchester. It ended in 2003 after five seasons, and this revival, introduced in 2016, has been met with mixed reviews. Teenage children are in the picture, new romances have blossomed and now that the couples are in their 50s, the frailty of old age is a recurring theme. In a recent interview, Mike Bullen, the creator, said the latest season may be the best. "I'm wondering if we should call stop now, because I'm not sure we can improve on this series," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Since the first crop of engineering graduate students arrived last month at the brand new Cornell Tech campus on Roosevelt Island, many have been busy decoding the diagrams in Matthew Ritchie's dynamic mural rising four stories in the atrium of the Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Center, the main academic building. This is not lobby decoration tacked on as an afterthought. From the early design stages, Thom Mayne, the founder of Morphosis Architects, and his team integrated the mural and four other immersive installations in the cafe and unexpected "discovery rooms" throughout the new building: an art program engineered to provoke creative thinking. "The entire building is designed to spur imagination and innovation and sometimes unintentional interactions," said Patricia Harris, the chief executive of Bloomberg Philanthropies. More than 1 percent of the building's overall budget of 130 million (funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies and the city) was invested in new artworks by Mr. Ritchie, Michael Riedel, Matthew Day Jackson and Alison Elizabeth Taylor, as well as in the restoration and relocation of a historic 50 foot long mural by Ilya Bolotowsky. This canvas had hung in the Coler Goldwater Memorial Hospital, which was razed to make way for the Cornell Tech campus. Cornell University and Technion Israel Institute of Technology formed the partnership of Cornell Tech in 2011 and won New York City's competition to develop an applied sciences campus. As part of the deal, in which the city provided funding and land, Cornell Tech agreed to preserve three large scale paintings in the derelict W.P.A. era hospital. An Albert Swinden mural has been installed in the new Bridge building adjacent to the Bloomberg Center, and a Joseph Rugolo work will find a home in the next construction phase. The Bolotowsky canvas an abstract composition of geometric shapes in a soothing palette of blues, pinks and beiges had wrapped around a circular room in the hospital and required Mr. Mayne to accommodate a similar space in his floor plan. "This helped us think about how we could have other hidden rooms as an element of surprise," Ms. Harris explained. These enigmatic spaces include Mr. Jackson's "Ordinary Objects of Extraordinary Beauty," a continuation of his series called "Study Collections." The small trapezoidal meeting room is lined with shelves displaying natural and found objects like bones, ceramics and branches as specimens. "The things these students will dream up are at the cutting edge of the application of new science," Mr. Jackson said. "I wanted to present a room where they could sit and think about the material resources available on earth and what they'll do with them." The students will be unplugged while they're contemplating. Andrew Winters, the senior director for capital projects at Cornell Tech, said there are no outlets or wiring for electronic devices in the room, to encourage people to sit and talk. Part of the art program is to help students, faculty and researchers "get away from what they're doing day to day," Mr. Winters said. "Facebook and Pixar offices have secret rooms for people to go do yoga or sleep. We tried to elevate that a little bit." In another room, Ms. Taylor whose work updates the age old decorative inlay technique called marquetry has imagined what Roosevelt Island might have looked like in the 19th century. Using more than 10,000 cut and painted pieces of wood, she has pieced together vivid panoramic scenes covering the walls of the triangular room. One side depicts a dense thicket of tree trunks. The other two walls portray an abandoned interior caving in at the corners, with vines creeping in, like tentacles, through a window. Interested in the constant battle between human innovation and nature's overwhelming force, Ms. Taylor hopes that her piece, titled "Reclamation," gives students "perspective in this period of rapid technological change on how we've always adapted as a species." While these three rooms are intended as intimate spaces for students to meet or retreat, the other two artist installations are meant to animate the busier areas. Known for using text as raw material, Mr. Riedel has created a black and white inkjet print on ceiling panels, titled "Cornell Tech Mag," flowing overhead from the building's entrance through the cafe and then across the tabletops. Using what he calls "the bible for computer technology," he rearranged every word in the first four volumes of Donald Knuth's "The Art of Computer Programming" into alphabetical order, then enlarged all the o's and l's. "You can imagine it's like one and zero, or open and closed, or a circle and a line," explained Mr. Riedel, who was interested in the resulting abstracted pattern, covering some 5,000 square feet. Mr. Ritchie's atrium piece, "Everything That Rises Must Converge," is printed on an 80 foot high resin wall and three adjoining glass walls ascending through the core of the building and visible from each landing. It was conceived as a kind of "history of logical thinking," said the artist, who has often tackled epic themes. He wove together clouds of yellows and oranges with all manner of diagrams prototypes of the compass and the printing press, Charles Darwin's first sketch of the evolutionary tree of life, the first drawing of the internet superimposed with calligraphic markings that refer to an early experiment by Eratosthenes to approximate the diameter of the earth. Mr. Ritchie asked the faculty to contribute ideas for diagrams, reproducing a currently unsolved mathematical problem in computer science called the "P versus NP problem." Mr. Ritchie was warned that it is part of the culture at the Cornell campus in Ithaca to scrawl problems on glass walls as though they were whiteboards. The artist said he would welcome additions and thinks packets of pens should be left out. "We write on the walls a lot," Mr. Winters said. "Our engineering students like puzzles."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
RULE MAKERS, RULE BREAKERS How Tight and Loose Cultures Wire Our World By 376 pp. Scribner. 28. There is a longstanding debate among social scientists about what ultimately drives human behavior. Do ideals, symbols and beliefs lead people to act as they do? Or are the wellsprings of action and the drivers of history less ethereal: money, fear, the thirst for power, circumstance and opportunity, with culture as an afterthought? Scholars in the first camp are culturalists; in the second, materialists. And the disagreement between them is not merely academic. It spills over into heated policy debates about crime, poverty, immigration, economic development and everything in between. In "Rule Makers, Rule Breakers," the psychologist sides with the culturalists. "Culture is a stubborn mystery of our experience and one of the last uncharted frontiers," she writes. Her aim isn't to guide readers through all the complex elements that make up a culture, but to draw attention to one aspect she believes has been ignored: the social norms or the often informal rules of conduct, the dos and don'ts, the sources of tsking and raised eyebrows that emerge whenever people band together. According to Gelfand, cultures can be located along a continuum from "tight" to "loose" depending on the strictness of these rules. "Tight cultures," she observes, "have strong social norms and little tolerance for deviance, while loose cultures have weak social norms and are highly permissive." Think of the difference between a gathering for buttoned up middle aged churchgoers and a party for 20 somethings in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Gelfand's thesis is that mapping the tightness or looseness of the cultures of various groups nations, regions, social classes, companies, friendship circles helps explain things that might otherwise be puzzling. After discussing the dynamics of social norms she goes broad, using the tight loose distinction to analyze authoritarianism, populism, terrorism, inequality, political polarization, the world of business, even the happiness of individuals. Take authoritarianism: Why did Egyptians vote overwhelmingly for Abdel Fattah el Sisi in that country's 2014 presidential election, choosing to be led by an autocrat just a few years after the democratic hopefulness of the Arab Spring? Gelfand argues that whatever a country's baseline level of constraint (Egypt's religious conservatism would put it near the tight end of the spectrum), it can adjust in response to shifting conditions. Perceived threats, including social instability, produce tightening. So it was in Egypt, she claims. The ouster of Hosni Mubarak and the political chaos that ensued sent Egypt's society into a tailspin, leaving voters yearning for a strongman who could assert control and bring back order. Although Gelfand can occasionally come across as too much of a salesperson for her big idea, she's generally an engaging writer with real intellectual range. She sparkles most when diving into evolutionary anthropology to make sense of long term patterns in cultural tightness and looseness. Humans have evolved to be strikingly sensitive to norms, which provide a major evolutionary advantage as a way of facilitating cooperation. The evidence Gelfand reviews suggests that tighter cultures tend to form in the face of ecological challenges, high population density and threats from other groups. This is interesting stuff. The problem is that in spite of the context she provides for how norms developed in the first place Gelfand routinely ignores materialist explanations for the various phenomena she considers. Sure, would be strongmen can and do exploit voters' fears of instability and change. But another crucial element in explaining why Sisi, Egypt's former minister of defense, won 96 percent of the vote is that the military, determined to maintain its grip on the country and to keep billions of dollars in foreign aid flowing, banned the main opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, after deposing Mohamed Morsi, the inept but democratically elected Islamist president who followed Mubarak in office. Other examples are even more glaring, as when Gelfand accounts for limited upward mobility in the United States by pointing to the ostensibly tight culture of the working class, incapable of the flexibility needed to find a place in the new economy. She writes as though the hoarding of resources and opportunities by the wealthy was not a huge part of the story. The fact of the matter is that the very best research done today by social scientists straddles the culturalist materialist divide. This work Matthew Desmond on urban housing, Mario Luis Small on social networks and inequality, Kathryn Edin on poverty, Robert Shiller on narrative economics highlights multi factor causes and the intertwining of cultural and material influences. "Rule Makers, Rule Breakers" could have benefited from some of the same balance and nuance.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
This article is part of the developing coronavirus coverage, and may be outdated. Go here for the latest on the coronavirus. On Saturday, the Trump administration extended the ban on foreign nationals from certain European countries to include those traveling from the United Kingdom and Ireland. The latest restrictions go into place on Monday at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time. The ban on travelers from the European continent, which went into effect on Friday at 11:59 p.m. Eastern time, does not apply to United States citizens, green card holders or their immediate family members. The same will be true of the extended ban. But regardless of nationality or residency, all travelers could still be affected by increased security screenings, airline service reductions or other effects of the coronavirus outbreak. Here's a guide on which countries are affected, and what changes to air travel and airfare could occur.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Lee Bennett Hopkins, who in scores of anthologies he edited as well as in his own writings used poetry as a tool to teach and fire the imaginations of young readers, died on Thursday Aug. 8 in Cape Coral, Fla. He was 81 . His husband, Charles Egita, said the cause was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Mr. Hopkins was famed in the children's book world for championing poetry as well as for the sheer volume of his output. Beginning in the late 1960s he published more than 100 anthologies over a half century. There were volumes on particular subjects, about animals, space, inventions, art, punctuation, the different people youngsters were likely to encounter when they began attending school. He drew on writers known mostly within the children's literature universe and on household names like Carl Sandburg, Langston Hughes and E. E. Cummings. And he wrote poetry himself, often slipping one of his works into the anthologies he edited. For instance, his "Nasty Bugs," a 2012 anthology illustrated by Will Terry, included his own "Ode to a Dead Mosquito": You of little brain didn't you know I felt your sting the instant you began to drain? Other books were entirely his poetry, including "City I Love" (2009; illustrated by Marcellus Hall). Among the most ambitious of these was "Been to Yesterdays" (1995), a series of no nonsense poems about his early childhood that covered difficult subjects like divorce: When Daddy left us, he left his bedroom slippers beneath the sink on the bathroom floor. When Mama put them in the giveaway bag for the poor, I knew this time Daddy had gone out the door for good.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Derek DelGaudio, the creator and star of the stealthily entrancing solo show "In Of Itself," is a magician, a raconteur, a Conceptual artist and conceivably a mind reader. He is also, as he'll tell you, a wolf, a dog, a son, an orphan and "more than just an elephant." But here's the real question: Who are you? Enter the lobby of the Daryl Roth Theater, and hundreds of cards hanging from pegs will confront you. Arranged alphabetically, each announces, "I am" on its top half and includes a distinct phrase below "a ray of sunshine," "a hobo," "a water protector," "a pornographer," "an arborist," "a U.F.O. abductee." Ticket holders are told to choose how they'd like to be seen. (I took "the walrus," because it made me laugh and reminded me of my grandfather, who used to do a tableside comedy bit with chopsticks in place of tusks.) "In Of Itself," directed by Frank Oz, is ostensibly a show about identity. How we see ourselves. How others see us. How Mr. DelGaudio, a phenomenally talented magician last seen in the two sorceror show "Nothing to Hide," can set himself apart from the rest of the abracadabra crowd.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The fine artist Lina Iris Viktor has agreed to settle a lawsuit she filed against Kendrick Lamar and the singer SZA saying their music video for "All the Stars," part of the "Black Panther" soundtrack, used her work without permission. Viktor, a British Liberian artist, was approached twice by representatives of the movie asking if her work could be used in the film or as part of its promotion. After deeming the agreement too restrictive, she said no. Nonetheless, part of the video "is so clearly a copy of the artists's work," according to the complaint, which was filed in federal court in New York in February. Viktor sued for a portion of the profits from the sale of the single and the movie's soundtrack.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
LOS ANGELES Amy Pascal may be giving up the Sony Pictures crown, but she's keeping the jewels. In a deal announced late Monday, Ms. Pascal will join the producing team for Sony's most important film property the Spider Man series when she steps down as the chairwoman of the studio's movie operations in May. Landing the blockbuster franchise ranks her alongside Hollywood's most prominent producers. Ms. Pascal is also expected to join the producing team of the studio's "Ghostbusters" remake, according to people briefed on her exit package who spoke on the condition of anonymity. She is additionally expected to tackle "Cleopatra," an epic starring Angelina Jolie, which has long gestated at Sony; a project involving Dan Brown, the author of "The Da Vinci Code"; a "Little Women" adaptation; and a live action Barbie movie. Over the longer term, Ms. Pascal is looking at Broadway projects that include adaptations of "Tootsie," "Groundhog Day" and "This Is It," a 2009 Sony documentary that followed rehearsals for Michael Jackson's planned comeback concerts. Sony also said on Monday that Kevin Feige, the president of Marvel Studios, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company, would join Ms. Pascal in producing the next Spider Man film a type of insurance policy, given his recent string of hit movies, that the series will regain its creative footing after mediocre results for "The Amazing Spider Man 2" last year. As yet untitled, the movie will be released in July 2017. Andrew Garfield, who played the title character in the last two installments and who has expressed an interest in moving on, will not return. Together, the deals with Ms. Pascal and Marvel signify a structural transition at Sony, which was struggling with uneven box office results long before it suffered a devastating cyberattack in November. Like other studios, Sony will become less an operation run by an auteur chief for the last 18 years, Ms. Pascal and more a federation of powerful filmmaking arms competing for coveted release dates. Whoever succeeds Ms. Pascal will have to play mediator among the fiefs. Ms. Pascal, lured by the attractive new deal and drained by the pressures and embarrassment of the hacking crisis, announced her departure last week. She declined to comment. Thomas E. Rothman, the former chief executive of Fox Filmed Entertainment, is now in charge of Sony's rejuvenated TriStar division. Jeff Robinov recently brought his Studio 8, financed by China's Fosun Group, to Sony after leaving his post as the top movie executive at Warner Bros. Another Sony division dedicated to lower budget urban comedies and horror films, Screen Gems, is run by Clint Culpepper. Mr. Rothman and Mr. Robinov have only just started to assemble what are expected to be dozens of films that, alongside the contributions of Ms. Pascal, will shape Sony's creative signature through much of the next decade. Mr. Rothman and Mr. Robinov have already announced plans to work together on Ang Lee's "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk," a story of an Iraq war veteran. Ms. Pascal's presence on so many films will inevitably crowd out producers who might otherwise have had her slot. While there is a long history in Hollywood of departing studio chiefs cherry picking their producing projects, the extremely wide latitude being given to Ms. Pascal has already started some grumbling in the film industry's producing ranks. In addition to Spider Man, Ms. Pascal is moving toward some film projects with messy histories. Infighting over "Cleopatra" became public in December, when private emails stolen by hackers and published online revealed a vitriolic exchange between Ms. Pascal and the producer Scott Rudin over Ms. Jolie's involvement. "Barbie" has also encountered difficulties. Sony acquired rights to the Mattel doll after Universal tried, and failed, to find a way to match the perfectly pert Barbie persona to a film with contemporary sensibilities. Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, a seasoned producing team, were hired to film a version that was once expected to begin production last year, but did not. 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. Among her other planned film projects, "Little Women" has been a signature property for Ms. Pascal. Early in her career at Sony, when she was a production vice president, she shepherded a 1994 version to theaters, helping to establish her reputation for having a strong interest in women's films and ambitions that went beyond pop moviemaking. Ms. Pascal's exit deal, among the richest in Hollywood history, will guarantee her income of 30 million to 40 million over four years, according to people briefed on its terms. Her package also includes a percentage of profits on movies she produces and roughly 9 million annually for office costs and discretionary acquisition of scripts. The agreement ranks in opulence with the 20th Century Fox farewell package given to Peter Chernin when he left as president of News Corporation in 2009. Among the prime Fox properties Mr. Chernin joined as a producer was the reimagined "Planet of the Apes" series, which went on to generate more than 1 billion at the worldwide box office. Spider Man is a Marvel character, but Marvel sold Sony the movie rights in 1999 and has had almost no involvement since. As part of the agreement with Marvel announced on Monday, Marvel can include the Spider Man character in its own movies starting, perhaps, with "Captain America: Civil War," which will arrive in May 2016. Sony will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the stand alone Spider Man films. Avi Arad and Matthew Tolmach, who were producers of the last two Spider Man films, will take lesser roles on the next Spider Man movie. Both men, however, will remain fully involved with Sony's other Spider Man projects, including the villain focused spinoff "The Sinister Six." The Spider Man series came to Sony when Ms. Pascal helped connect the project with Laura Ziskin, a friend who resigned as president of Fox 2000 in 2009 and quickly set up shop as a producer at Sony. With the immense success of the first film in the series, "Spider Man," which had about 822 million in worldwide ticket sales after its release in 2002, Ms. Ziskin helped reinvigorate the studio. (She died of breast cancer in 2011.) Two more sequels, both starring Tobey Maguire as the title character, delivered mammoth ticket sales. But Sony's last outing with Spider Man its original deal with Marvel requires the films to keep coming did not perform as well as its predecessors, taking in about 706 million at the global box office in 2014. While Sony has struggled to keep Spider Man vibrant, Mr. Feige has delivered hits like "Guardians of the Galaxy" and "Captain America: The Winter Soldier."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
WASHINGTON California lawmakers on Friday passed a bill that would guarantee full and equal access to the internet a principle known as net neutrality in the biggest pushback yet to the federal government's rollback of rules last year. The California bill is viewed as even stronger and more consumer friendly than the original measures carried out by the Obama administration and abolished in December by the Trump era Federal Communications Commission. It is sure to set up a fight between broadband providers, which say strict rules would increase their costs, and consumer groups, which seek to ensure that all traffic on the internet is treated equally. It is the latest effort in a growing fight against deregulation by the Trump administration. Federal agencies that have slashed regulations on telecommunications are being challenged in court by more than 20 states. Thirty states have introduced bills to ensure net neutrality. If Gov. Jerry Brown signs the bill, California would become the fourth state to create a net neutrality law since the federal rollback, but it is considered the most significant. "This bill would set a tremendous precedent, with the power to shape the internet market not just in California but across the country for the betterment of consumers," Jonathan Schwantes, senior policy counsel for Consumers Union, said in a statement. The F.C.C. did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The bill was passed by the State Senate on Friday and the State Assembly on Thursday, both by large margins. "When Donald Trump's F.C.C. decided to take a wrecking ball to net neutrality protections, we knew that California had to step in to ensure our residents have access to a free and open internet," State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat and one of the bill's authors, said in a statement. Lawmakers in California are seeking to bar internet service providers like AT T and Comcast from blocking or slowing down the transmission of web traffic to the state's broadband customers. The bill would also prohibit promotions of free streaming for apps, a practice that can stifle the businesses of other websites that don't have the resources to offer such promotions. The bill would ensure that consumers would not be charged extra for access to websites. Consumers would also be guaranteed that video streams from any site like Netflix, Vudu or Hulu would be delivered to a mobile device or an internet television at the same speeds and quality. The bill would become California's second major internet law passed in the last few months. In June, the state adopted an internet privacy law, the first in the nation. It gave California internet users the ability to know what information a company like Facebook or Google was collecting, and how it was being used and shared with third parties. The law also gave them the right to stop data collection. California's laws have enormous influence across the country. Its higher standards for auto emissions, for example, have been followed by a dozen other states, giving California major sway over the auto industry. And the state's online privacy law has prompted tech companies to promote a weaker federal law that would nullify any state laws. New York State is considering a net neutrality law that mirrors the California bill. The law would face fierce resistance from telecommunications companies. Through their trade group, USTelecom, broadband providers lobbied against the bill, warning that the rules on their management of traffic would stifle innovation and hinder business models. Lawmakers said internet service providers had already indicated to them that they would sue to overturn a net neutrality law. "We will fight with everything we have to defend it," Mr. Wiener said in a news conference. Some legal experts say the F.C.C. did not have the authority to prohibit state net neutrality laws. In a separate court battle, a federal appeals court will decide if the commission's rollback was legal. Federal net neutrality rules have been challenged in lawsuits several times over the past decade and the issue could eventually wind up before the Supreme Court. "The internet must be governed by a single, uniform and consistent national policy framework, not state by state piecemeal approaches," Jonathan Spalter, president of USTelecom, said in a statement. Governor Brown, a Democrat, has not indicated his view on the bill, but it was widely supported by Democrats in the Legislature and by federal Democratic lawmakers from California like Nancy Pelosi, the House minority leader. Mr. Brown has until the end of September to decide on the bill, and he is expected to be intensely lobbied by telecommunications companies and consumer groups. In 2017, telecommunications providers fought against a state broadband privacy bill, which the Legislature never passed. "Telecommunications companies have tremendous power and sway in California, so we know the fight is not over," said Barbara van Schewick, a professor of law at Stanford University, who has been a strong proponent of net neutrality laws. The California bill is the most significant victory for supporters of net neutrality rules since the F.C.C. chairman, Ajit Pai, scrapped federal regulations last year. Net neutrality advocates view broadband providers as important utilitylike services like the phone, saying that without the rules, big players with deep pockets have an unfair advantage. Mr. Pai viewed the rules as burdensome. Telecom companies said they wanted to experiment with business models such as free streaming promotions over mobile phones with business partners. The broadband providers promised they would not block or intentionally slow down other websites in an anticompetitive manner. But consumer groups and internet websites have been waging an effort in states to revive rules. Similar laws have been passed in Washington, Vermont and Oregon. Several governors have signed executive orders that require any broadband provider to abide by net neutrality rules if they provide service to a state office or agency.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Last month, Andreas Valentin, a 66 year old professor at the State University of Rio de Janeiro, traveled more than 6,000 miles from Brazil to Berlin to participate in a restitution ceremony, of sorts. He was the guest of honor at the unveiling of a ... well, not new, exactly, but renewed fashion brand: Manheimer, founded by his great great grandfather, Valentin Manheimer, in 1840. It was once known as "the king of coats" and famous for creating mass produced high end ready to wear (or Konfektion) for men and women. Reimagined as a men's wear brand focused on a kind of plush, minimal suiting, the clothes are now for sale once again. If you haven't heard of it, that's understandable. Manheimer has been defunct since 1929. But once upon a time, around the turn of the 20th century, it was at the center of a German fashion world that rivaled Paris and London in design, production and glamour. Now one firm hopes to bring back a host of lost brands. Manheimer is among 32 companies founded by Jews, including the watchmaker F. L. Lobner, the luggage maker M. Wurzt Sohne and the cobbler Breitsprecher, that once speckled the streets of Berlin around the area known as the Hausvogteiplatz. Their trademarks have been acquired by Jandorf Holding, with the stated aim of restoring Germany to its rightful place in the realm of personal luxury and in the process reconnecting the brands to the heirs and bringing them back to their birthrights. "Germany is known for luxury car brands," said Lothar Eckstein, one of the Jandorf partners. "Everyone knows Gottlieb Daimler. But no one knows Manheimer was responsible for what became a global industry." They have that thing so beloved of the modern branding operation: a story to tell. The question is, can they make anyone hear it? It is not an easy appeal . No matter how nice the clothes are. Mr. Eckstein discovered the story when he moved to Berlin, after having grown up in a small town near Stuttgart. He was running Amazon in Germany and had founded his own independent media company. He realized, he said, "that the luxury industry moving online meant brands are more important, and that means brand history is more important." Poking around in the past, he said in a call from Berlin, "if you move here from other parts of Germany you can't help but notice how drastically visible World War II is even so many decades later. What ultimately triggered the idea of the revival of these brands was while walking across Hausvogteiplatz, the former center of the Jewish garment district." Fashion had been one of the largest sectors in Germany at the turn of the 20th century, with goods exported to the Netherlands, Britain, the United States and Brazil. The majority of the companies were owned and staffed by Jews. Two of the largest were Manheimer, which created one of the first systems of reproducing sizes (as opposed to tailoring for each individual), and Hermann Gerson, which clothed the royal court of Prussia. In the period between the wars, Berlin was the biggest center for luxury mass production in Europe, the city's streets filled with elegantly clad men and women whose clothes were documented in illustrations for the magazines of the time. It sounds straightforward. Yet they are fashion world outsiders, working with brands most people have never heard of, when most luxury brands and their heritage (and myths) have been carefully cultivated and nurtured for more than a century. And they are excavating the transgressions of the past in a country and a city that have latterly become an economic powerhouse of Europe and mecca for contemporary art and clubbing. Though not fashion. Despite there having been a Berlin Fashion Week since 2007, most famous German fashion designers have left Germany to become famous: Jil Sander showed in Milan. Karl Lagerfeld went to Paris (and Chanel). Even Hugo Boss has been showing in New York. Stefano Pilati, the former Yves Saint Laurent designer, has moved to Berlin but hasn't really established a fashion beachhead there. For a long time, when most people heard "German fashion," the stock response was a joke about sandals and socks. Mr. Eckstein and his partners not only have to change this perceptio n, they also have to introduce an idea that for most people is entirely new: that Germany has a credible past in luxury fashion. "The line was broken," said Margit Mayer, the style editor of Berliner Zeitung and the chief creative of the magazine division of Berliner Verlag. "We don't have that line that France does and Italy does and England does." "It's pretty extraordinary that such a long time after the war, we are still rediscovering this," Mr. Eckstein said. Though the Nazi past of companies like Hugo Boss, which in 2011 apologized for using workers from forced labor camps after a book it commissioned revealed that its founder was a loyal party member, and Adidas and Puma, which were created by the brothers Adolf and Rudolf Dassler, likewise members of the Nazi party, has been explored and acknowledged, little focus has been given to the companies that disappeared under the Nazi regime. Certainly in the potted histories of fashion, the German contribution is rarely mentioned. (Ask fashionistas who invented ready to wear, and a likely answer is Yves Saint Laurent in the 1960s.) "There was a reluctance to really think about the role of Jews in German culture and society, not least because many of the incumbents were occupying positions that had been formerly held by the victims of racial persecution," said Harold James, a German economic historian at Princeton University. "The real debate or rediscovery of the German past only started after a generational change, but by that time a great deal of the practical memory of what was lost had vanished." In some instances, as with Jewish scientists or artists or musicians, the task of recovering the past is easier because of the presence of books and paintings and recordings, but, he said, "fashion is not as well or clearly documented." Ms. Mayer also attributes the oversight to a general cultural prejudice against fashion, which was viewed as less serious, less worthy of study, than, say, philosophy and opera. There have been efforts to address the gap in the past, both within Germany and beyond, though their seemingly random nature has meant that they have not made much of an impact. Mr. Westphal's first book on the subject was published in 1992, a time, he said, when stakeholders like the German Fashion Council refused to speak to him. In 2000, a memorial consisting of three mirrors tilted up against each other like the mirrors you might find in a changing room, was erected in the Hausvogteiplatz to commemorate the Jewish garment workers and shop owners lost during the war. Plaques on the risers of the steps leading from the subway to the street list the names of the businesses that were destroyed. In 2007, Bloomsbury published a book by Roberta Kremer titled "Broken Threads: The Destruction of the Jewish Fashion Industry in Germany and Austria," based on an exhibition at the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre. In 2017, the Georgia Commission on the Holocaust designed a traveling exhibition called "Fashioning a Nation: German Identity and Industry, 1914 1945." Yet even when the general outlines of what happened are known, the companies themselves and their contributions to fashion are rarely mentioned. "Ask someone between the ages of 20 and 25 if they know the name Manheimer, and they would have no idea," Mr. Westphal said. Indeed, ask someone 40 and up, and you would probably get the same answer, said Markus Ebner, the editor of Achtung, a magazine about German fashion and culture. (He admitted that he had never heard of those companies.) Karla Otto, who grew up in Bonn and runs an international fashion communications empire, also scratched her head. Jandorf plans to tell the back story of each of its brands, through online histories and events, like the Manheimer unveiling at which Mr. Eckstein interviewed Mr. Valentin onstage. It is following the luxury playbook and talking the luxury talk going for "timeless style" over trend. Manheimer is being largely produced in Italy their signature "Berliner Mantel," or Berlin coat, however, will be made (duh) in Berlin with fabrics from Loro Piana, aiming to compete with brands like Caruso and Burberry. Michael Sontag, a young German designer who founded his own women's line in 2009, is a creative consultant . Manheimer will be sold directly to consumers online, with prices ranging from 1,000 to 1,500 euros for suits; shirts are around 189 euros, and cashmere coats, 2,500 euros. Jandorf is private, and Mr. Eckstein declined to release specific financial information, but he said the investment was in "the solid seven figures." If all goes as planned, Manheimer women's wear will follow. So will the next brand a line of crystal called Josephinenhutte, founded in 1842 by the end of the year. "Will it bring back the memory, style, classiness they had in the 1920s, or is it just a marketing ploy?" Mr. Westphal asked of Manheimer and its pitch. "I don't know. But maybe it's enough to send a signal to the younger generation that this is, at least, part of your history. That it isn't a blank wall." Mr. Ebner thinks the investment could help revitalize the fashion industry in Berlin, which has yet to produce a global breakout name. "Fashion week didn't get people here," he said. "Maybe zeroing in on the past of Berlin, and the roots, will do it." Maybe it doesn't matter why the story is told as long as it is told, and the lost fashion brands of Germany are finally given their due. "Most people don't realize that during Kristallnacht when the Nazis were burning books, they were also burning clothing and fabrics," said Mr. Valentin, who is planning to relocate from Brazil to Berlin when he retires from teaching next year to work with Manheimer. "Bringing that back to the light feels very important today."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Credit...Kayana Szymczak for The New York Times BOSTON David Reich wore a hooded, white suit, cream colored clogs, and a blue surgical mask. Only his eyes were visible as he inspected the bone fragments on the counter. Dr. Reich, a geneticist at Harvard Medical School, pointed out a strawberry sized chunk: "This is from a 4,000 year old site in Central Asia from Uzbekistan, I think." He moved down the row. "This is a 2,500 year old sample from a site in Britain. This is Bronze Age Russian, and these are Arabian samples. These people would have never met each other in time or space." In less than three years, Dr. Reich's laboratory has published DNA from the genomes of 938 ancient humans more than all other research teams working in this field combined. The work in his lab has reshaped our understanding of human prehistory. "They often answer age old questions and sometimes provide astonishing unanticipated insights," said Svante Paabo, the director of the Max Planck Institute of Paleoanthropology in Leipzig, Germany. Dr. Reich, Dr. Paabo and other experts in ancient DNA are putting together a new history of humanity, one that runs in parallel with the narratives gleaned from fossils and written records. In Dr. Reich's research, he and his colleagues have shed light on the peopling of the planet and the spread of agriculture, among other momentous events. In a book to be published next week, "Who We Are and How We Got Here," Dr. Reich, 43, explains how advances in DNA sequencing and analysis have helped this new field take off. The clean lab feels like it belongs in a computer chip factory. But Dr. Reich has not forgotten that these are human remains, not widgets on a conveyor belt. "This is a bone from a person's body who lived four thousand years ago, and we're destroying it," he said, gazing down at the Uzbek remains. "I think we need to do well by the individuals we're studying." Doing well means understanding who these people were, and how they were linked to one another and to us. Standing next to Dr. Reich was a suited technician, Ann Marie Lawson. She picked up the Uzbek bone and lowered it into a box, which she covered with a clear plastic lid. She pushed her gloved hands through two rubber lined holes on its sides. Ms. Lawson then inspected the freshly white bone. It came from the base of a skull, and deep inside was the inner ear. The bone that surrounds the inner ear turns out to be the best place in the body to search for ancient DNA. Ms. Lawson began sandblasting again, chiseling away chunks of bone. Eventually, she was left holding a remnant only as big as a grain of rice. Dr. Reich grew up in Washington, the son of the novelist Tova Reich and Walter Reich, the first director of the Holocaust Memorial Museum and now a professor at George Washington University. Dr. Reich began studying sociology as a Harvard undergraduate, but later he turned to physics and then to medicine. After graduating, he went to Oxford to prepare for medical school. There he met Dr. David B. Goldstein, who at the time was comparing the DNA of living people for clues to what their distant ancestors were like. Dr. Reich appointed Dr. Patterson deputy head of the newly formed genetics lab, and together they began developing new statistical techniques to plumb genetic data for hidden patterns. The two researchers devised a way to determine whether a single population descended from two or more distinct groups. Collaborating with researchers at the Center for Cellular and Molecular Biology in Hyderabad, India, they put their method to its first big test. Analyzing DNA from hundreds of villages, they discovered that just about every living Indian descends from two distinct groups. One, which the researchers called Ancestral North Indians, is related to Central Asians, Near Easterners and Europeans. The second group, Ancestral South Indians, is a mysterious population that is not closely related to any living people outside of India. The two populations mixed together, Dr. Reich estimated, 2,000 to 4,000 years ago. As Dr. Reich and his colleagues gained attention for their new methods, they got an extraordinary invitation: to study the DNA of Neanderthals. The invitation came from Dr. Paabo. In the 1990s, he had pioneered methods to extract ancient DNA from fossils dating back tens of thousands of years. While he studied many extinct species such as cave bears, mastodons and ground sloths Neanderthals were his deepest passion. Fossils of these heavy browed individuals date back over 200,000 years in Europe and the Near East. They made tools, weapons and even cave art. But they vanished about 40,000 years ago. The Denisovans, as they came to be known, split off from Neanderthals about 400,000 years ago, genetic analysis revealed. Denisovan DNA has turned up only in a few additional teeth discovered in that Siberian cave. The oldest such fossils date to over 100,000 years old; the pinkie bone belonged to a Denisovan who lived sometime between 48,000 and 60,000 years ago. Dr. Reich and his colleagues discovered that Denisovans, like Neanderthals, left a genetic legacy in living people, mostly in Australia, New Guinea and Asia. Their research also suggested that Denisovans divided early in their history into two lineages. "They were isolated from each other for many hundreds of thousands of years," said Dr. Reich. A study published on Thursday by Princeton geneticist Joshua Akey and his colleagues confirmed this finding and brought Denisovans into sharper focus. Each branch, the new study suggests, interbred with the ancestors of living humans. One Denisovan group left behind DNA in modern day Asians and Oceanians. The other branch left genetic traces only in living people in China and Japan. Ancient DNA has summoned the genetic shadows of a long vanished people, one that fossils alone could not reveal. Many scientists now suspect that ancient DNA will reveal other extinct kinds of humans in the future. "The discovery of Denisovan DNA was a landmark in my thinking about ancient DNA," said Dr. Reich. "It can reveal things about the past that are completely unexpected, that are not dreamed of in our philosophy." Dr. Reich's voyage through prehistory left him wondering about what DNA could reveal about more recent events. Museums around the world were loaded with bones of people who lived within the last 20,000 years, after all. Since those remains were younger, they'd be more likely to still have some DNA in them. To begin retrieving it, Dr. Reich retooled his laboratory, copying Dr. Paabo's facility in Germany to the last detail. "We even cloned the linoleum from Leipzig," he said. But in important ways, Dr. Reich broke from the standard scientific strategy for searching for ancient DNA. Dr. Paabo and other experts typically examine many fossils to find a rare one packed with DNA. They then try to reconstruct the entire genome. Dr. Reich's lab instead designed DNA "traps" that snag hundreds of thousands of genetic fragments from the human genome. The result is far from a complete genome sequence, but enough to divine ancestries and even get some clues about the traits of ancient people. These people almost entirely replaced the earlier farmers. Today, British people trace 90 percent of their ancestry to this immigrant wave. Were it not for the genetic findings, "nobody would have believed the scale of the turnover," said Ian Armit, an archaeologist at the University of Bradford who collaborated with Dr. Reich on the research. "Archaeologists will need to get to grips with this 90 percent replacement, and what this might really mean in human terms," he added. The Beaker people needed only to cross the English Channel to get to the British Isles. A far more spectacular voyage took place about 3,300 years ago, when humans first sailed to remote islands in the Pacific. Instead, the people who first arrived on Vanuatu and other Pacific islands came directly from Asia perhaps Taiwan or the Philippines without ever stopping in New Guinea. Only later did a wave of Papuans arrive. "We know now when that wave hits it hits before 2,400 years ago," said Dr. Reich. "And it's a total replacement." And that second wave actually was made up of at least two migrations. The Papuans who came to what is now Vanuatu probably sailed from the Bismarck Islands. But the Papuans who arrived further east, in Polynesia, came from other islands, possibly New Britain. As of last month, Dr. Reich's team has published about three quarters of all the genome wide data from ancient human remains in the scientific literature. But the scientists are only getting started. They also have retrieved DNA from about 3,000 more samples. And the lab refrigerators are filled with bones from 2,000 more denizens of prehistory. Dr. Reich's plan is to find ancient DNA from every culture known to archaeology everywhere in the world. Ultimately, he hopes to build a genetic atlas of humanity over the past 50,000 years. "I try not to think about it all at once, because it's so overwhelming," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
WASHINGTON The number of federal workers forced to work shorter hours soared this summer to 199,000 in July, from 55,000 a year earlier in a sign of the problems that federal budget policy is causing for the economy. The Labor Department reported on Friday that the economy continued to add jobs in July and that the unemployment rate fell to 7.4 percent, from 7.6 percent. But the pace of job growth slowed somewhat from the first half of the year and remains modest enough that the economy is years away from a full recovery. Contributing to the hangover from the worst financial crisis in decades is a wave of cuts in domestic and military spending, known collectively as the sequester, which is causing government furloughs as well as job losses and curtailed hours among federal contractors. Although the sequester became law on March 1, some of the effects, like the forced leaves, have begun to ramp up only recently. More job losses, rather than shorter workweeks, are predicted if the cuts remain in place into next year. Congress left on Friday for a summer recess of more than a month, after a week in which Republicans' divisions with one another and with President Obama suggested a new budget showdown may be coming in the fall. The disagreements leave no clear way to end the spending cuts that continue to slow the economy and could even lead to a more damaging government shutdown in October. Corporate and academic economists say that Washington's fiscal fights have produced budget policies that amount to a self inflicted drag on the economy's recovery. Joseph J. Minarik, director of research at the corporate supported Committee for Economic Development and a former government economist, said he could not remember in postwar times when fiscal policy was so at odds with the needs of the economy. "The macroeconomic situation is highly unusual," he said, adding: "We have to be concerned about our debt getting totally out of hand, so we are concerned about the federal budget. But the concern has got to be tempered by the fact that we have got to get some economic growth going as well." The effects of the cuts could be found in the details of Friday's jobs report. Although federal government employment did not decline in July as it had in previous months this year, the number of people who were working part time because they could not get their employers to give them full time hours rose significantly. This probably reflects decisions by many government agencies to achieve their required budget cuts by forcing employees to take unpaid leave. At the Department of Defense, for example, 650,000 civilians must take off 11 days without pay generally once a week through September, when the current fiscal year ends. The Internal Revenue Service likewise scheduled one furlough day a month from May through August. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. On her first day at the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Obama's new budget director, Sylvia Mathews Burwell, sought to meet employees and found many desks empty because it was a furlough day. And the new trade representative, Michael Froman, has struggled during his office's budget cuts to assign government lawyers to various negotiations abroad. In the private sector, employment at government contractors also appears to be falling as companies that do government research, provide custodial services and retrofit federal properties to be more energy efficient, among other things, are informed of contract cancellations or delays in bids for new contracts partly because the federal workers arranging the bidding are being furloughed. "The disjunction between textbook economics and the choices being made in Washington is larger than any I've seen in my lifetime," said Justin Wolfers, an economics professor at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy at the University of Michigan. "At a time of mass unemployment, it's clear, the economics textbooks tell us, that this is not the right time for fiscal retrenchment." Given that rough consensus in an otherwise quarrelsome profession, he added, "To watch it be ignored like this is exasperating, horrifying, disheartening." After the release of the jobs report, the first thought of many business forecasters was of the Federal Reserve, and what the data might suggest for its next move in September, when analysts believe it probably will begin tapering its stimulus measures known as quantitative easing. As the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, has made clear including repeatedly to Congress the Fed has continued its stimulus policies in part to offset the drag from fiscal policy. So economists are watching, too, what the White House and the Republican controlled House will do this fall as they once again confront two looming deadlines. First is Oct. 1, when government operations would shut down unless the two sides agree on spending levels for the fiscal year that starts that day. Perhaps in that same month, the Treasury will run out of ways to buy more time and Congress will have to raise the nation's borrowing limit, or else risk financial crisis or even default. "Over all, fiscal drag has likely reduced growth this year at least 1.5 percentage points, and isn't over yet," Bank of America Merrill Lynch wrote to clients on Friday. "The last thing the economy needs is a repeat performance. A key part of our optimistic forecast for next year is that there is not a sustained shutdown this fall; the latest bickering leaves us a little more concerned." The uncertainty itself is causing some businesses to hold back on hiring or investing. "Whether there's less fiscal drag, more fiscal drag, or a train wreck, we still really don't know," said Joshua Shapiro, chief United States economist at MFR. Congress's annual budget appropriations process was in chaos by the time lawmakers left town on Friday. Hardly any of the annual bills have gotten to the House or Senate floor yet, and Congress is scheduled to be in session just nine days in September before the Oct. 1 deadline. In the House, Republicans are split over domestic cuts demanded by the most conservative members that would go deeper than sequestration. And the Democratic controlled Senate has so far been unable to move measures that would raise spending above sequester levels, closer to the less restrictive amounts that both parties had agreed to in a July 2011 deal that ended an economically damaging showdown over raising the government's borrowing limit. Senior administration officials and a group of Senate Republicans will continue to explore possible compromises during August, they say, but neither side sounds hopeful. Perhaps the best that can come of the fall showdown, according to people with knowledge of the issues, is a compromise that still would keep the so called discretionary spending at the lowest levels in a half century reducing the fiscal drag, but hardly providing the sort of stimulus that Mr. Obama has proposed. "The private sector has been healing and that's helping to offset the adverse effects of the sequester. We're seeing the housing market turnaround, consumption has been a bit stronger the last couple of quarters," said Alan Krueger, a Princeton economist whose last day as Mr. Obama's chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers was Friday. "But we know we can grow faster than 1.7 percent."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
It may be hard to remember, but Americans once appreciated the government that serves them. That's long gone. Over the last six years, according to the Pew Research Center, four out of every five or more have said the government makes them feel either angry or frustrated. Last March, the ranks of the incensed included 78 percent of Bernie Sanders's supporters and a whopping 98 percent of those backing Donald J. Trump. More than half of voters including 61 percent of Mr. Trump's supporters feel they are not keeping up with the rising cost of living. Three quarters of Mr. Trump's supporters feel that life for people like them is worse than it was 50 years ago. Some of this is caused by irreversible forces. The days when white men kept an uncontested hold on political power, when young adults without a college degree could easily find a well paid job, are not coming back. Yet it's not as if nothing can be done. These frustrated Americans may not fully realize it, under the influence of decades worth of sermons about government's ultimate incompetence and venality. But there's a strong case for more government not less as the most promising way to improve the nation's standard of living. Last month, four academics Jeff Madrick from the Century Foundation, Jon Bakija of Williams College, Lane Kenworthy of the University of California, San Diego, and Peter Lindert of the University of California, Davis published a manual of sorts. It is titled "How Big Should Our Government Be?" (University of California Press). "A national instinct that small government is always better than large government is grounded not in facts but rather in ideology and politics," they write. The evidence throughout the history of modern capitalism "shows that more government can lead to greater security, enhanced opportunity and a fairer sharing of national wealth." The scholars laid out four important tasks: improving the economy's productivity, bolstering workers' economic security, investing in education to close the opportunity deficit of low income families, and ensuring that Middle America reaps a larger share of the spoils of growth. Their strategy includes more investment in the nation's buckling infrastructure and expanding unemployment and health insurance. It calls for paid sick leave, parental leave and wage insurance for workers who suffer a pay cut when changing jobs. And they argue for more resources for poor families with children and for universal early childhood education. This agenda won't come cheap. They propose raising government spending by 10 percentage points of the nation's gross domestic product ( 1.8 trillion in today's dollars), to bring it to some 48 percent of G.D.P. by 2065. That might sound like a lot of money. But it is roughly where Germany, Norway and Britain are today. And it is well below government spending in countries like France, Sweden and Denmark. This agenda, of course, is more popular among liberals than conservatives. Economists on the right insist that higher taxes and bigger governments reduce incentives to work and invest, harming economic growth. In one study, the Nobel laureate Edward Prescott argued that the higher taxes needed to fund a bigger government discouraged Europeans from working. Europe's reliance on consumption taxes which are easier to collect and have fewer negative incentives on work allowed them to collect more money without generating the kind of economic drag of the United States' tax structure, which relies more on income taxes. Americans have long been more suspicious of a big, centralized government than Europeans have been, of course. But in recent decades, the nation's difficult racial divide has played a crucial role in checking the growth of public services. It is much easier to build support for the welfare state when taxpayers identify with beneficiaries. In multifarious America, race and other ethnic barriers stood in the way. The American government pretty much stopped growing when the civil rights movement forced whites to share public space with blacks. Tax revenue as a share of the nation's economic output hit a peak in 1969 that it would not attain again until 1996, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. But for all the racial subtext to the election this year, times seem to be changing in unexpected ways. No, Hillary Clinton has not suddenly become a radical. And Mr. Trump's grab bag of economic proposals is too self contradictory to provide a sense of where he would land. Yet the popular dissatisfaction that has brought us to this pass, across one of the most unusual presidential primary seasons in memory, could open new space to rethink the role of government in society. Mr. Trump's supporters may not champion welfare. But they mistrust it less than your orthodox Republican. More of his supporters think the government should do more to help American families. More think corporate profits are too large. More think the economy is rigged to help the powerful. Fewer want to cut Social Security.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
SAN FRANCISCO Basketball players have pickup games. Rappers have freestyle cyphers. Tech entrepreneurs, according to the former chief executive of Uber, riff on big ideas in something they call a "jam sesh." Travis Kalanick, the former chief executive of Uber, who is known for pushing boundaries in business, kept his answers short and his demeanor neutral as he testified on Tuesday in a high profile court fight between Waymo and his former employer over intellectual property. Waymo, the self driving car unit of Google's parent company, Alphabet, called Mr. Kalanick to the stand during the first full day of testimony in the federal trial. It hoped to reveal how Uber's win at all costs attitude had pushed the company to acquire Otto, an autonomous vehicle start up created by a former Google engineer, Anthony Levandowski. Waymo contends and Uber denies that the deal was part of Uber's plan to steal intellectual property from Google's self driving car project, which would later be renamed Waymo, in order to close the gap in an area of technology essential to its business. As he waded through questions from Waymo's lawyers, Mr. Kalanick, who resigned in June as Uber's chief executive, offered unusual insight into how deals get done in Silicon Valley and the freewheeling some might say self parodying business culture at the biggest technology start ups. Mr. Kalanick said he and other Uber executives had a "jam sesh," or jam session, with Mr. Levandowski on a Sunday while Mr. Levandowski was still employed by Google. In fact, Mr. Kalanick was such a fan of these sessions that a 2015 profile of him revealed that his home was called a "Jam Pad." A jam sesh, as Mr. Kalanick explained it, is a business meeting akin to a session in which a jazz ensemble spontaneously works out music. Creative people come in with their own ideas and create "beautiful music." Or business plans. The group discussed laser sensor technology that was critical to the operation of self driving cars. A handwritten note on a whiteboard read, "Laser is the sauce." Mr. Kalanick, wearing a dark gray suit, a blue shirt and a silver tie in court Tuesday, didn't deny that Uber had wooed Mr. Levandowski and met with him at Uber's offices before he left Google. He said he was "a big fan" of the engineer, one of the first employees at Google's self driving car project, and wanted to hire him. But there was a hangup: Mr. Levandowski wanted to venture out on his own. "I wanted to hire Anthony and he wanted to start a company, so I tried to come up with a situation where he could feel like he started a company and I could feel like I hired him," Mr. Kalanick said, choosing his words carefully between long sips of water. He polished off four bottles of water in less than an hour on the witness stand. Uber acquired Otto for a reported 590 million in 2016, just six months after it was started. It is unclear how much Mr. Levandowski, already a wealthy man thanks to a 120 million bonus from his time at Google, personally made in the deal. An Uber spokesman, Matt Kallman, said the company had fired Mr. Levandowski in May before Otto could meet any of its performance targets. As a result, he lost out on an estimated 250 million worth of equity in Uber. Waymo contends that the clever solution let Mr. Levandowski create his own company and then buy it was simply obfuscation for a plot to steal important technology from Waymo. While the deal was unusual, it's not rare for an executive to want to ensure his independence inside a larger company. Technology giants often have to sell founders of start ups on the idea that they will maintain some independence, as well as a big payday, in an acquisition. Facebook, for example, acquired Instagram and kept the photo sharing app a separate unit within the company. Otto is still an independent unit within Uber and is technically a separate defendant in this case. Waymo is trying to portray Mr. Kalanick and Mr. Levandowski as a pair of aggressive, money hungry conspirators who worked together to steal Google's intellectual property. Before Mr. Kalanick testified, Uber's lawyers objected to Waymo's presenting a text message that Mr. Levandowski sent to Mr. Kalanick with a clip from the movie "Wall Street" in which Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, passionately argues that "greed, for the lack of a better word, is good." No ruling was made. On Wednesday, Mr. Kalanick is expected to be asked how much he revealed to Uber's board about Mr. Levandowski and what the engineer had taken with him from Google.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
In its last season in its Long Island City home, the Chocolate Factory will present work by Melanie Maar, Miguel Gutierrez, Niall Jones and others, the organization announced on Monday. The Chocolate Factory bought a permanent facility in the area last year, and it aims to reopen in 2020. "This season is about blurring the lines between process and product by supporting creative residencies and fully produced works on the same level," Brian Rogers, the artistic director at the Chocolate Factory, said by email. "It's always more about the process of creation, for me, than the result." Ms. Maar will present a new phase of her "Line Dance Death" project, Oct. 3 6. (The first phase was in May at the Chocolate Factory's un renovated future home.) The new one, a collaboration with Kenta Nagai and Madeline Best, will explore the irregular structure of the creative process. The final two segments will come in the 2019 20 season. (Programming for that season will be held at various locations before the new theater opens.) A new piece by Mr. Gutierrez, commissioned by the Chocolate Factory, will be presented as a part of the American Realness festival. Using popular Latin American music, the form of the telenovela, and choreography that blends individual and group movement, six Latinx performers will investigate the concepts of identity and difference.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The athletes who would have represented the United States at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow are an older crew now, two generations removed from missing what for some was a once in a lifetime chance in the spotlight. Some are retired or semiretired from their post athletic careers. Some are grandparents. Life has happened. And yet no one in a position of authority has ever made a formal apology for what even President Jimmy Carter, who ordered the American boycott to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, has said was a mistake. Olympic Games past and present are on a lot of minds this time of year, since the 2020 Tokyo Games would have been going on right now had they not been postponed until 2021 because of the coronavirus pandemic. So on July 19, the 40th anniversary of the opening ceremony of the Moscow Games, the chief executive of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee, Sarah Hirshland, posted a letter that came awfully close to an apology. In the letter, addressed to "the athletes of the 1980 U.S. Olympic team," she wrote: "It's abundantly clear in hindsight that the decision to not send a team to Moscow had no impact on the global politics of the era and instead only harmed you American athletes who had dedicated themselves to excellence and the chance to represent the United States. Hirshland's letter came three months after former Vice President Walter Mondale delivered a partial apology. "I think we did the right thing," Mondale told The Wall Street Journal in April. "But I'm sorry about how it hurt them." The effect has been mixed. For some athletes, there was a degree of appreciation, but as Benn Fields, the United States champion in the high jump that year, put it, "It's a little too late, 40 years later." That is not the fault of Hirshland, who has held her job for only two years. Also, the U.S.O.P.C., which promoted the 1980 athletes recently on TeamUSA.org, considers them Olympians, though the International Olympic Committee does not. The 1980 boycott was the result of several months of ultimatums and ultimately failed negotiations after Carter began to push hard for it early that year. The U.S.O.P.C. dared not defy the president, who tried to garner support from as many allies as possible. Ultimately dozens of countries, including Canada and West Germany, joined the boycott. But in the decades since, most international sports officials and many political leaders have fought to discourage Olympic boycotts, arguing they merely sacrifice an athlete's right to compete and make a living, and don't lead to changes in policy. Some of the athletes did not see the Hirshland letter, which was posted on the U.S.O.P.C. website and Twitter, and also distributed by the organization's alumni group. The 1980 athletes aren't exactly the Twitter generation, and email databases are not always up to date. Regardless, it turns out 40 years has helped heal some scars, though only some. "I haven't seen the letter, and I've moved on from 1980," Renaldo Nehemiah, 61, a former world record holder in the 110 meter hurdles who was considered a favorite for a gold medal in Moscow, responded in a text message. "No words can change history. Fortunately, 1980 didn't define me or my career." Nehemiah did not wait for 1984, deciding instead to pursue a career in the N.F.L. at a time when the Olympics were basically an amateur only affair and training four more years meant passing on earning income. Others did wait. Steve Scott, who ran the mile, and Edwin Moses, the 400 meter hurdles champion, competed in 1984 and 1988. Tracy Caulkins picked up three gold medals in swimming in 1984. And yet even for those who got another chance, missing 1980 still sticks in their craw, and Hirshland's letter was something of a salve. The winning time in Moses's absence in the event in Moscow was 48.70, more than a second slower than the winning time he ran in 1976. Scott, 64, who did not see the letter initially, said 1980 cost him a chance to learn how to handle Olympic competition, something he struggled with at the Los Angeles Games in 1984, where he finished 10th. "I had my chances," he said from his Texas home last week. "The guys I feel bad for are the ones who didn't, the athletes for whom 1980 was their year." Don Paige had the world's top time in the 800 meters in 1980. In 1984, he finished fifth at the U.S. Olympic trials, missing the team by two spots. Fields, the high jumper, spent four years after his 1976 graduation from Seton Hall preparing for the 1980 Games. He was inches off the world record and thought he had a good chance to break it in Moscow and win a gold medal. He hoped to spin that fame into marketing opportunities. Instead, he became one of more than 450 members of the American team to receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the highest civilian honor that can be bestowed by Congress, at a ceremony held when the athletes should have been in Moscow preparing to compete. Because of financial restraints and the large number of medals needed, they were given gold plated bronze medals.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
BABYLON (1980) Stream on Criterion Channel; Rent on YouTube, Google Play, Amazon and iTunes. Despite having its debut at Cannes nearly four decades ago, this film, which offers an unflinching look at daily life for black people in South London in the '80s, was just released in America last March. The film follows Blue (Brinsley Forde), a young mechanic who's steeped in the local reggae scene, and the racism and poverty that he encounters in Brixton at that time. In his review for the Times, Wesley Morris wrote, "The movie arrived with an X rating, which, in Britain, was basically like an R. But it ensured that the young black people whom 'Babylon' was primarily made for wouldn't have been let into a theater to see it." BLOWN AWAY Stream on Netflix. If you get nervous watching people construct delicate baked goods in the summer heat on "The Great British Baking Show," then this new Netflix competition show will send your stress levels soaring. This series brings together 10 masters of the niche art of glassblowing, where they compete for a chance to win 60,000 in prizes. To stay in the race, they have to work under pressure to create intricate glass robots, realistic looking glass body parts and colorful botanical themed sculptures that will impress the judges. It's like "Top Chef" meets "Forged in Fire," History's bladesmithing reality show, and the art is mesmerizing to watch.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
RATATOUILLE (2007) 9:15 p.m. on Freeform. The phrase "more relevant than ever" tends to be applied to aged pieces of pop culture that speak to topical political or social issues despite their age. But with the article in The Times last Wednesday about New York City's mounting rat outbreak, that label resonates here, too. This Pixar feature, which was directed by Brad Bird and won the Academy Award for best animated feature in 2007, takes as its hero a rat with epicurean tendencies, Remy (voiced by Patton Oswalt), who pursues a culinary career in Paris. "Displaying the usual meticulousness associated with the Pixar brand, 'Ratatouille' is a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film," A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times. SNATCH (2001) Stream on Netflix; Rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. The English director Guy Ritchie is back in theaters this weekend with the wholesome "Aladdin," which is a far cry from this, his well known ensemble crime comedy about seedy Londoners. Brad Pitt, Benicio Del Toro and Jason Statham are among its heavy hitting cast. Elvis Mitchell's review for The Times referred to the movie as a "spicy comic strip without an ounce of fat."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
PIETRASANTA, Italy Shading his eyes from the warm Tuscan sun, the artist Giuseppe Penone watched as a crane hoisted a bronze tree trunk into position to cradle an 11 ton carved marble block. It was the first time that all of the elements of the sculpture, "Leaves of Stone," had been fitted together as a sort of dress rehearsal, before it would be transferred to Rome. There it was unveiled on Monday in Largo Goldoni, in front of a downtown palazzo owned by Fendi, which commissioned the work. Mr. Penone was pleased with the dry run. "This work should work well in that space," he said in the yard outside the foundry where the bronze tree was cast. As one of the protagonists of Arte Povera, the avant garde Italian movement of the late 1960s that rallied around the use of humble materials to create "poor art," Mr. Penone is having a busy year. At 70, he is installing artworks not just in Rome, but also in the United Arab Emirates, for a piece commissioned by the Louvre Abu Dhabi. "Leaves of Stone" is a gift from Fendi to Rome, where the fashion house set up shop in 1925. "We want to give back to the community, to give thanks," said Pietro Beccari, the chairman and chief executive of Fendi. The public art piece is also a way for the company to further bind its name "to Rome and to Italian beauty because we believe the Fendi brand is 100 percent made in Italy," Mr. Beccari added. He said that when he arrived at Fendi in 2012, he changed the packaging logo from Fendi to Fendi Roma. Two years ago, Fendi moved its headquarters to a Mussolini era building in Eur, a suburb of Rome, restoring the renowned but abandoned Fascist landmark known as the Palazzo della Civilta Italiana. Ground floor exhibitions there have drawn more than 100,000 visitors. "We must overturn ugliness with beauty," Mr. Beccari said, noting that Rome has been in the headlines lately for its filth and decay. "That is our small contribution." As perhaps befalls an Eternal City, Rome has struggled to embrace modernity. It took decades for Maxxi, a national museum of contemporary art, to take root, and years for William Kentridge's 2016 "Triumphs and Laments," an ambitious public art project along the banks of the Tiber River, to receive the appropriate permits. By contrast, Mr. Penone's work was quickly approved after Fendi set up a commission with public officials, who supervised and facilitated the process. The Penone sculpture is the most recent example of Fendi's art and cultural binge. The fashion house restored several fountains in Rome, including the Trevi Fountain, and is the main sponsor for the Italian pavilion at the Venice Biennale this year. Later this month, Fendi will inaugurate the Spazio Fendi, a laboratory at the national Institute for Conservation and Restoration, which was founded in 1939 to preserve Italian heritage. Other Italian fashion brands have also helped spruce up Italy's tattered territory, in some cases encouraged by the so called Art Bonus, a 2014 law that offers tax credits for arts funding. Last December, Prada opened a second exhibition space, on top of one of Milan's most prestigious landmarks, the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The space showcases photography and complements the Rem Koolhaas designed Fondazione Prada, aiding Milan's claim as a vibrant hub for contemporary art.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Some luxury buildings have hired feng shui experts to help arrange harmonious spaces. Others recruit fitness experts to craft gym amenities. But a new Upper West Side co op development called in a "kosher consultant" to advise it on how to ensure that the project would be attuned to the needs of observant Jews. To keep kosher at the strictest level, some Jews commission extensive renovations to install double kitchen sinks and two dishwashers one for meat, the other for dairy. At the Chamberlain, at 269 West 87th Street, however, all that infrastructure is already installed. The Chamberlain, of course, welcomes all buyers provided they can afford 2.4 million to over 10 million for the two to five bedroom apartments. The Fair Housing Act, which prohibits discrimination against buyers and renters, requires that apartments be marketed to the general population. But the 39 unit project is one of a handful of luxury buildings from developers who are differentiating themselves by taking into account the tastes and needs of a specific subset of the population. In Flushing, Queens, the Grand at SkyView Parc, a 750 unit condominium from Onex Real Estate Partners, has appealed to Asian buyers with a park designed according to the principles of feng shui and brokers who speak fluent Mandarin.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
A grisly comedic thriller written and directed by Nicolas Pesce (his 2016 horror film "The Eyes of My Mother" got some positive notes), "Piercing" has an audaciousness that largely lies in splitting the difference between viewer interest and viewer exasperation. A movie that begins with a father (Christopher Abbott) standing over his newborn's crib holding an ice pick behind his back can't be said to be pulling any introductory punches. Soon, Abbott's character Reed hears the newborn instructing him to murder a prostitute. He travels from his stylized apartment building (outside views of it look like a diorama) to a stylized hotel. There he rehearses a horrific murder and dismemberment while the Brazilian musician Ze Luis's "Soneto of Love" plays on the soundtrack. This brand of Tarantino brewed, Williamsburg aged hipster irony was tired around the time that "Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead" came out (over 20 years ago), but Pesce does have some other tricks up his sleeve. Most of them borrow from the style of the lurid Italian films called giallos: Cult picture aficionados will be tipped off by the bright yellow hotel room phone.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
PARIS "Last dance for the choreographer Mats Ek," France Musique declared. "Mats Ek, the great Swedish choreographer, leaves the stage after 50 years of creation," Les Echos said. "The choreographer removes his works from the stage," Le Figaro reported in an article headlined "Mats Ek: The Shock of Farewell." According to those reports and others last week, Mr. Ek, a major figure in the European dance world, would create no more new works and, more unusually, would remove his existing pieces from the repertories of companies worldwide. A program of three works by the choreographer, "From Black to Blue," which ended a short run on Sunday night at the Theatre des Champs Elysees here, came with a lavishly illustrated pamphlet that described the shows as his goodbye. It noted his key works and principal interpreters, including his wife, Ana Laguna, and the ballerina Sylvie Guillem. Dance fans greeted the news on social media with surprise and dismay. "Mats Ek to retire and withdraw the rights to perform his work from everywhere?! An unimaginable loss for us! " Ian Parsons, a dance teacher, wrote on But Mr. Ek, 70, presented a rather more nuanced version of his decision in an interview backstage at the theater before Saturday's performance of "From Black to Blue," which consisted of two works from the 1990s, "She Was Black," and "Solo for 2," as well as a recent piece, "Axe," danced by Ms. Laguna, and the choreographer's longtime dancer Yvan Auzely. "The journalists insist on calling this a farewell, but it is not a farewell," he said. "For the next two years, I am making a definite stop to performance and production and selling my works. I have made this decision in order to get off the road, off the spinning wheel, to sense an experience of what it is not to have things waiting ahead." "If I want to come back to work with stage art in various forms after this experience of otherness, I will," he added. "And if not, I won't." Mr. Ek, who is best known for his full length reworkings of ballet classics like "Giselle," "Sleeping Beauty" and "Swan Lake," is Swedish dance royalty. His mother was the pioneering choreographer Birgit Cullberg, who founded the Cullberg Ballet in 1967; his father was the actor Anders Ek, who appeared in a number of films by Ingmar Bergman. His early career was as a theater director; he began to dance only at age 27. "For purely nepotistic reasons, my mother gave me a contract," Mr. Ek said. He began to choreograph almost at once and quickly acquired a reputation for his unusual movement style, which combines a rooted, earthy quality with physical humor and balletic precision and stretch. His interest in social and psychological issues is evident in works like "Giselle," in which his heroine and her fellow forest spirits, the wilis, are inhabitants of an asylum. Mr. Ek's work has been received with more enthusiasm in Europe than in the United States, where few companies perform it. In the interview, he emphasized that he had not hit a creative wall. "Maybe I don't want to just keep on doing," he said. He added that his decision to no longer allow companies to perform his work was not final, but was made to allow him to take a complete break, given that he had trying to oversee all productions of his work worldwide. "Even if I don't produce new things, it takes a lot of time and concern to make things function," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The former chairman of a British footwear company whose Dr. Martens brand of clunky boots has long been a fashion staple for punk rockers, Goths and hipsters alike bought an extra large apartment at Alchemy Properties' new glass and stone high rise condominium, 35XV, for 17,261,337.50, a transaction that was the most expensive closed sale of the week, according to city records. Stephen Griggs, part of the family that owned the R. Griggs Group, which was sold two years ago to the private equity group Permira, paid about 3,485 a square foot for a combined full floor unit, No. 18AB, at 35 West 15th Street in the Flatiron district. The building stands atop an annex of Xavier High School. Mr. Griggs, who has a home in England, purchased the apartment directly from the developer and paid the full 16.95 million asking price (plus fees). Wendy Triffon of Alchemy was the listing broker. The four bedroom four and a half bath apartment, with monthly carrying costs of 9,404, has 4,952 square feet of interior space designed by Benjamin Noriega Ortiz, along with an 842 square foot private terrace the only one in the 55 unit, 24 story building that provides panoramic views of Lower Manhattan.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The Goodman Theater's five and a half hour stage adaptation of Roberto Bolano's mammoth, seemingly unstageable novel "2666" drew a stream of ardent fans of the Chilean novelist to Chicago in 2016. The scope and technical complexity of the production which involved five distinct sets, 15 actors playing 80 characters, and an elaborate movie within the play made subsequent productions difficult. But now those who were unable to make the trip can binge watch the entire thing online, from a couch anywhere in the world. In an unusual arrangement, a filmed version of the production, which was adapted and directed by Robert Falls and Seth Bockley, will be available for free, unlimited streaming for at least two years. The streaming arrangement is supported by the Roy Cockrum Foundation, which was created in 2015 by a former monk (and onetime actor and stage manager) with proceeds from a 153 million Powerball jackpot.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Love "The Bachelor" but hate yourself? Duck into SleepCenter's cramped Chinatown basement art space on Wednesday for "Here for the Right Reasons," an endearingly scrappy one night show where artists will try to process the disquieting implications of their "Bachelor" fandom. "I think in a healthy society, 'The Bachelor' would be illegal," Artie Niederhoffer, a curator of the show, writes in an artist's statement penciled on one of the gallery's walls. She adds: "Gotta get my fix while society's still sick." Ms. Niederhoffer, a freelance writer, and Janie Korn, an illustrator, both 29, started watching the show in 2012. At first, it was a joke. Then, it wasn't. Their group texts with a mutual friend became consumed with "Bachelor" relationship analysis and speculation about behind the scenes producer manipulation. They found themselves drawn to the toxic hetero spectacle in the same way that some women read murder books to subconsciously deal with anxieties about violence. "It brought together this sisterhood," Ms. Korn said. These days, it's easy to recognize "The Bachelor" franchise the 13th season of "The Bachelorette," featuring the series' first black lead, is currently careering toward its inevitable rush proposal ending as a vacuous project complicit in various crimes against humanity. (Among them: the subjugation of women; the exploitation of the mentally ill; the perpetuation of racial stereotyping; and the advancement of corporate synergy.) But it's even easier to blow two to three hours a week watching it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Get Serious About the People Putting Us All at Risk I was a reporter in Rome in 2005 when Italy banned smoking in restaurants. I was skeptical. For many Italians, having a cigarette with after dinner coffee was simply part of the meal, like dessert. Also, Italians are famously lax about following rules: They dodge their taxes and park on sidewalks. As I wrote in these pages: "Smokers declared basta! they would never comply." But to my shock (and ease of breathing, since I have asthma), very quickly everyone did. If the Italians could do it with cigarettes, how come so many people in the United States aren't following relatively simple mandates to prevent the spread of Covid 19, which has killed more than 200,000 Americans? Thirty four states and the District of Columbia, have some sort of mask mandate, but many citizens and law enforcement agencies are blatantly ignoring them. This month, President Trump held an indoor rally with thousands of mostly unmasked supporters in Henderson, Nev., in violation of a state mandate that prohibits gatherings of more than 50 people. Last week, Mr. Trump held a rally in an airport hangar outside Pittsburgh, where thousands of mostly maskless people were crammed, cheering, cheek to jowl even though the governor had asked the campaign to follow the state's Covid 19 rules on mask use and social distancing. An infectious disease doctor in Florida told me she felt safest when she was in the hospital because, she estimated, fewer than a fifth of the people in her community were masking or social distancing in stores, despite a mask mandate. Some right wing groups have challenged governors' broad authority to order Covid 19 prevention measures. Last week, a judge appointed by Mr. Trump overturned Pennsylvania's limits on gatherings. But the legal standing is relatively clear. "Governors absolutely have the authority during a public health emergency to make laws to force people to wear masks, to limit gatherings," said Jaime King, an expert on health law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law. "So I'm perplexed at why people say, 'You can't force me.'" People who act as if these rules are optional might point to a double standard, asking why they should have to obey when others like the protesters against racial injustice this summer didn't. But at the protests I observed in Washington and New York City, everyone was wearing masks and mostly kept at least three feet apart, outdoors and moving. Yes, some people broke curfews, but there were very visible attempts at enforcement. Mark Hall, a professor of law and public health at Wake Forest University, noted that there are what he calls "hortatory laws" laws that are more about encouraging social norms rather than mandating behavior. But, he said, those involve "trivial" trespasses. "This does seem like a law that has much more serious consequences," he said about the masking measures. "It's not jaywalking or loitering or pooper scooping." Maybe people just don't like masks. But we routinely obey and police officers routinely enforce laws with which we don't entirely agree. You might think you can drive safely much faster than the speed limit. So maybe you push the boundary a bit, driving 65 in a 55 mile per hour zone. But those who drive 70, 80 or more know they could well get a big ticket and so they (mostly) curb the impulse. Many people originally objected to seatbelt laws as an infringement on personal freedoms, but who doesn't buckle up these days? Not smoking in restaurants and stores is now inviolable. My family had a dog in New York City when the Canine Waste Law took effect in 1978, and it was gratifying to watch women in minks suddenly start doing their pooper scooping duty. A big part of the reason adherence has been so variable is that governors generally declare the mandates, and local and city officials are left to decide how to enforce them. And these simple, sensible laws to protect public health have been politicized and wrapped up in controversy like no such laws before. So now we have some law enforcement officials announcing that they won't enforce masking laws or limits on gatherings imposed by their own governors in states like Ohio and Wisconsin. "A sheriff or police chief giving advance notice that it's OK to break the law?" said Mr. Hall. "There's a new level of lawlessness to that." Imagine the authorities announcing it was fine to ignore stop signs. The Italians' miraculous turnaround on restaurant smoking offers some lessons. There was consistent messaging: The law was there to protect nonsmokers' health. And there were fines: 275 euros, around 320 today, for people smoking, and 220 euros for the restaurant managers or owners. The Italian police, who themselves could frequently be seen smoking while walking their beats, enforced the rule. Andrew Cuomo was one of the few American governors who approached the coronavirus edicts almost militaristically (so un New York), and got a tragic outbreak under control. In Maryland, a state with a Republican governor, a man who had two parties of 50 people at his home was sentenced to a year in jail. But more governors have enforced these mandates timidly, almost apologetically. In many states, the message was muddled. In Pennsylvania, where disobedience could, on paper, lead to a 300 fine or up to 30 days in prison, state officials announced it wouldn't be enforced against individuals. Officials announced businesses could face citations if they didn't enforce the law, but the state was otherwise relying on citizens' "good sense and cooperative spirit." The repercussions from the Trump rally that defiantly ignored Nevada's mandate? An angry tweet from the state's Democratic governor criticizing "reckless and selfish actions." Donald Ahern, the businessman who allowed the event to take place in his company's warehouse, was fined just 3,000. Enforcement is difficult when "permission comes from the top," said Ms. King. How can we expect Americans to mask up when they're watching a Trump rally and "even he is breaking the law"?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Sports curses come in all shapes and sizes. They can involve livestock, soup commercials, magazine covers and, frequently, the selling of star players. In recent years, the rapper Lil B has made a name for himself in the sports realm with his curses most notably on James Harden of the Houston Rockets but it appears he has some new competition: the rapper Ja Rule. It all started on Saturday, when Ja Rule was performing at halftime of a game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the host Milwaukee Bucks. The performance came on the 17th anniversary of Ja Rule's collaboration with Ashanti, "Always Be On Time," hitting No. 1 on Billboard's Hot 100. But the show came under criticism immediately because of a somewhat misleading video of the crowd reaction and another one showing an unexpected guest: Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Bucks' star forward, who came out to begin warming up for the second half while Ja Rule was still performing on the court along with a group of dancers. The rapper initially shrugged off the criticism, but his tone changed when the Timberwolves decided to mock the performance on social media. In a post to Twitter, the team said "We too were hustled, scammed, bamboozled, hood winked, lead astray!!!" The post was a reference to an earlier post by Ja Rule about his role in the ill fated Fyre Festival, a luxury music event in the Bahamas that failed spectacularly in 2017. The rapper was not amused. The potential effects of this particular curse are unclear, though. The Timberwolves have existed as a franchise for 30 seasons and not only have not won a championship, but they have only made it out of the first round of the playoffs once in 2004. They are 28 31, putting them just outside legitimate playoff contention, and the notion that Karl Anthony Towns is departing anytime soon as Ja Rule suggested with "AND KAT IS LEAVING!!!" seems unlikely, as he has signed a five year contract extension that kicks in next year and guarantees him nearly 160 million. Of course, logic does not have to play a role in sports curses. The Chicago Cubs endured the so called Curse of the Billy Goat for more than 70 years after the team asked the owner of the Billy Goat Tavern, William Sianis, to leave a game because his goat was bothering fans. That the team had not won a World Series in more than 30 years before the episode was treated as mostly irrelevant. Other popular curses have included one in which the athletes endorsing Campbell's Chunky Soup seemed to become injured at an extraordinary rate. Another claimed that athletes had their performance fall off after appearing on the cover of Sports Illustrated. The most famous, of course, is the Curse of the Bambino, which doomed the Boston Red Sox to lose after selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees in December 1919. The jinx is credited by some with keeping the Red Sox from winning a World Series for 86 years, despite the first year of that stretch coming before the team sold Ruth, and the fact that the curse was barely mentioned in popular culture before George Vecsey wrote a column about it for The New York Times in 1986. Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe also wrote a book in 1990 that popularized the phrase. At the very least, the talk of Ja Rule's curse was good news for Lil B, who spent part of the weekend trending on Twitter. He celebrated by retweeting various people saying Ja Rule was simply stealing a tactic that Lil B had already perfected.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Sit still. It's the mantra of every classroom. But that is changing as evidence builds that taking brief activity breaks during the day helps children learn and be more attentive in class, and a growing number of programs designed to promote movement are being adopted in schools. "We need to recognize that children are movement based," said Brian Gatens, the superintendent of schools in Emerson, N.J. "In schools, we sometimes are pushing against human nature in asking them to sit still and be quiet all the time." "We fall into this trap that if kids are at their desks with their heads down and are silent and writing, we think they are learning," Mr. Gatens added. "But what we have found is that the active time used to energize your brain makes all those still moments better," or more productive. A 2013 report from the Institute of Medicine concluded that children who are more active "show greater attention, have faster cognitive processing speed and perform better on standardized academic tests than children who are less active." And a study released in January by Lund University in Sweden shows that students, especially boys, who had daily physical education, did better in school. "Daily physical activity is an opportunity for the average school to become a high performing school," said Jesper Fritz, a doctoral student at Lund University and physician at the Skane University Hospital in Malmo who was the study's lead author. "Activity helps the brain in so many ways," said James F. Sallis, a professor of family medicine and public health at the University of California, San Diego, who has done research on the association between activity breaks and classroom behavior. "Activity stimulates more blood vessels in the brain to support more brain cells. And there is evidence that active kids do better on standardized tests and pay attention more in school." John Ratey, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain," said: "Movement activates all the brain cells kids are using to learn, it wakes up the brain." "Plus," he added, "it makes kids want to come to school more it's fun to do these activities." But not all districts are embracing the trend of movement breaks. "The bottom line is that with only six and a half hours during the day, our priority is academics," said Tom Hernandez, the director of community relations for the Plainfield School District in Illinois, about 40 miles southwest of Chicago. He said that under state law, the schools provide daily physical education classes and that teachers in the district find ways to give students time during the day to refresh and recharge. "Kids aren't meant to sit still all day and take in information," said Steve Boyle, one of the co founders of the National Association of Physical Literacy, which aims to bring movement into schools. "Adults aren't wired that way either." Mr. Boyle's association has introduced a series of three to five minute videos called "BrainErgizers" that are being used in schools and Boys and Girls Clubs in 15 states and in Canada, Mexico, Ireland and Australia, he said. A version of the program is available to schools at no charge. The program is designed so that three to five times a day, teachers can set aside a few minutes for their students to watch a video and follow the cues given by the instructors. In one typical video, the instructors are college students of all shapes and sizes at the University of Connecticut who do a quick warm up and then lead kids through a mini workout involving movements from several sports: baseball, basketball and a triathlon. That's followed by a cool down. "At the end of the week, kids have gotten an hour or more worth of movement, and it's all done in the classroom with no special equipment," Mr. Boyle said. "We're not looking to replace gym classes, we're aiming to give kids more minutes of movement per week. And by introducing sports into the videos, giving kids a chance to try sports they may not have ever tried before." Julie Goldstein, principal of the Breakthrough Magnet School in Hartford, Conn., said her school has been using BrainErgizers since the spring of 2015. It's easy for the teachers to implement, and "easy for the students to follow," Mrs. Goldstein said. She said the program has "helped them focus and bring up their energy level in the classroom." Scott McQuigg, chief executive and a co founder of GoNoodle, a classroom movement program used in more than 60,000 elementary schools in the United States credits Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative with helping to bring movement and the health of children into the public consciousness. "We call this the Movement movement," Mr. McQuigg said. "If we invest three to five minutes for our kids to move in the classroom, we are actually going to optimize the next 45 minutes for learning. That small investment in time has such a big yield for teachers." GoNoodle, which offers free and paid videos, aims to entertain kids while they are moving, Mr. McQuigg said. GoNoodle and other "brain break" videos can be found on the website for "Let's Move! Active Schools," part of Mrs. Obama's "Let's Move!" initiative. "We have purposely not gone after this as an exercise program," Mr. McQuigg said. "This is a digital generation that expects to be entertained, and we think we can do more good around getting them to move if they are entertained." For example, GoNoodle videos have kids running alongside their desks through a virtual obstacle course or following along with dance moves. Joseph E. Donnelly, professor of medicine and director of the Center for Physical Activity and Weight Management at the University of Kansas Medical Center, said one of the good things about kids being more physically active in classrooms is that everyone is moving at the same time. "In physical education classes, there is a lot of standing around, a lot of minutes of kids waiting to do an activity, and sometimes kids are only moving for about 15 minutes during a 50 minute class," said Dr. Donnelly, who co authored a statement on the effects of physical activity and academic achievement in children that was published last year by the American College of Sports Medicine. "If you do movement in class a few times a day, that can add up to at least an extra 60 minutes more of movement per week." Lindsay DiStefano, an associate professor in the department of kinesiology at the University of Connecticut, said the country is due for a major shift toward appreciating the benefits of physical activity in the classroom. "In 1961, President Kennedy said school kids needed physical activity to thrive, but in the past 20 years, the pendulum has totally shifted the opposite way because schools are feeling the pressure to have students do well on standardized tests," Ms. DiStefano said. "We are not thinking about the child as an entire person, how physical activity helps them cope with the stresses of school and actually benefits them in the classroom."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
Just because a movie puts an overwrought ending at the beginning doesn't make that ending less well, wrought. "Cities of Last Things," picked up by Netflix after winning the top prize in the Toronto International Film Festival's juried section, opens with an upward looking shot of an apartment building. The jaunty soundtrack is undermined when a man flies off the roof, straight toward the camera. " Squelching ," the subtitles say as his blood spreads out. But the snide start of this feature from Wi Ding Ho, a Malaysian born filmmaker who lives in Taiwan, is misleading. Most of the movie is more delicate and allusive. It consists of three episodes in the life of a cop, Dong ling, that proceed backward chronologically, showing the turns of fortune that ostensibly made him into the violent, vengeful man he is in the initial, futuristic segment. Dong ling is played, from oldest to youngest, by Jack Kao (from "Millennium Mambo" and other Hou Hsiao hsien films), Lee Hong chi and Xie Zhang ying. In the first story, set in a beauty obsessed world where everyone has embedded identifying chips, he visits a prostitute (Louise Grinberg) who evokes "Vertigo" like memories of a woman from his past. We meet her doppelganger, a shoplifter, in the second episode. The third segment illustrates a legacy of violence in his family. As the full picture comes into focus, the narrative can tend toward the trite. The chief pleasure of the movie is the 35 millimeter cinematography of Jean Louis Vialard, who shoots mainly at night, taking wonderful advantage of the ways the light plays across city streets. Not rated. In Mandarin, English and French, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 47 minutes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
In the Mail on Sunday article, Dr. Bates, who at one point was in charge of archiving climate data at the centers, accused Mr. Karl of having used "unverified" data. In a long blog post published Saturday, Dr. Bates went into extensive detail the kind that only true data geeks could love about how data sets are or are not archived and verified at NOAA. But Dr. Bates also accused Mr. Karl of misusing the process. "We find Tom Karl's thumb on the scale pushing for, and often insisting on, decisions that maximize warming and minimize documentation," he wrote. Republicans on the House committee and Mr. Smith, in particular, have long attacked Mr. Karl's paper and have focused on it as part of a lingering investigation of what Mr. Smith has described as the Obama administration's "suspect climate agenda." The committee has demanded that NOAA researchers turn over emails related to the work; the scientists have refused to do so. Do the claims have merit? Climate scientists, some of whom had worked on the data sets, voiced support for the work of Mr. Karl and the other researchers. In a post on the blog of the Irish Climate Analysis and Research Units at Maynooth University, Peter Thorne, who worked on the data but left NOAA before work began on the paper itself, disputed much of what Dr. Bates said. 1. Time for action is running out. The major agreement struck by diplomats established a clear consensus that all nations need to do much more, immediately, to prevent a catastrophic rise in global temperatures. 2. How much each nation needs to cut remains unresolved. Rich countries are disproportionately responsible for global warming, but some leaders have insisted that it's the poorer nations who need to accelerate their shift away from fossil fuels. 3. The call for disaster aid increased. One of the biggest fights at the summit revolved around whether and how the world's wealthiest nations should compensate poorer nations for the damage caused by rising temperatures. 4. A surprising emissions cutting agreement. Among the other notable deals to come out of the summit was a U.S. China agreement to do more to cut emissions this decade, and China committed for the first time to develop a plan to reduce methane. 5. There was a clear gender and generation gap. Those with the power to make decisions about how much the world warms were mostly old and male. Those who were most fiercely protesting the pace of action were mostly young and female. Dr. Bates, Dr. Thorne wrote, was not involved in the data work and had misrepresented "the processes that actually occurred." Dr. Thorne also disputed the idea that Mr. Karl had his "thumb on the scale." Mr. Karl only used the data he was not personally involved in the refinements, Dr. Thorne wrote. "At no point was any pressure brought to bear to make any scientific or technical choices." In a post at Carbon Brief, a British website that covers climate science and policy, Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, disputed the contention that the data sets used in Mr. Karl's paper were unverified or that the data had been manipulated. Dr. Hausfather was one of the authors of a review of the NOAA ocean data, which showed the most change. The paper, published in January, compared the old and new NOAA data with independent data from satellites, buoys and other sources and found that the new data matched the independent data more closely. The result, he wrote, "strongly suggests that NOAA got it right and that we have been underestimating ocean warming in recent years."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
For more than 40 years, Morningside Ministries operated a nursing home in San Antonio, caring for as many as 113 elderly residents. The facility, called Chandler Estate, added a small independent living building in the 1980s and an even smaller assisted living center in the 90s, all on the same four acre campus. The whole complex stands empty now. Like many skilled nursing facilities in recent years, Chandler Estate had seen its occupancy rate drop. "Every year, it seemed a little worse," said Patrick Crump, chief executive of the nonprofit organization, supported by several Protestant groups. "We were running at about 80 percent." Staff at the Chandler Estate took pride in its five star rating on Medicare's Nursing Home Compare website. But by the time the board of directors decided it had to close the property, only 80 of its beds were occupied , about 70 percent. Revenue from independent and assisted living couldn't compensate for the losses incurred by the nursing home. In February, the last resident was moved out. Morningside Ministries operates two other retirement communities in the San Antonio area; they took in the independent living and assisted living residents and about 30 nursing home patients, absorbing most of the staff as well. But more than 40 older people had to relocate to other nursing facilities or move out of town closer to family, and 30 staff members lost their jobs. "There was some real sadness, tears, frustration," Mr. Crump said. "It's hard knowing you won't be providing services to those older folks." The locked doors of Chandler Estate. At the time of its close, only 80 of its beds were occupied, about 70 percent. Ilana Panich Linsman for The New York Times At least the organization has the cold comfort of knowing that nursing homes across the country are grappling with the same problem. The most recent quarterly survey from the National Investment Center for Seniors Housing and Care reported that nearly one nursing home bed in five now goes unused. Occupancy has reached 81.7 percent, the lowest level since the research organization began tracking this data in 2011, when it was nearly 87 percent. "It's a significant drop," said Bill Kauffman, senior principal at the center. "The industry as a whole is under pressure, and some operators are having difficulty." "The best facilities still have 100 percent occupancy and waiting lists that's how you know they're good," said Nicholas Castle, a health policy researcher at the University of Pittsburgh. But in 2015, the National Center for Health Statistics reported that more than a third of beds were empty in some states, including Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Utah. Texas wasn't far behind. Nationally, "200 to 300 nursing homes close each year," Dr. Castle said. The number of residents keeps shrinking, too, from 1.48 million in 2000 to 1.36 million in 2015, according to federal data. Given an aging population, you'd think nursing homes would be coping with the opposite problem surging demand for their services. But they also face growing financial strains and regulatory requirements intended to control costs, Mr. Kauffman pointed out. Under the Affordable Care Act, for instance, hospitals face financial penalties for readmissions, and some have responded by designating patients as "under observation," rather than admitting them as inpatients. After discharge, Medicare won't cover skilled nursing care for these patients. Moreover, "certain surgeries are migrating from inpatient to outpatient surgical centers," Mr. Kauffman said. Medicare won't cover skilled nursing for those patients, either. The growth of Medicare Advantage plans, which now cover a third of Medicare beneficiaries, also plays a role. "They have a keen interest in lowering costs, so maybe they divert people from skilled nursing to home care," Mr. Kauffman said. "If you do go to a nursing facility, instead of a 30 day stay, maybe the plan wants the patient out in 17 days." At the same time, nursing homes face stiffening competition. As their operators sometimes say themselves, they're selling a product nobody wants to buy. "You have increased alternatives, like assisted living, and other ways for people to stay at home," said Ruth Katz, senior vice president of public policy at Leading Age, which represents nonprofit senior service providers. "When people find community alternatives, they use them whenever possible." Federal policy has helped propel this shift. For years, advocates protested that Medicaid covered care in nursing homes but not in the places people much preferred to live. Congress paid attention and passed legislation in 2005. Thirty years ago, 90 percent of Medicaid dollars for long term care flowed to institutions and only 10 percent to home and community based services. Now, the proportions have flipped, and nursing homes get only 43 percent of Medicaid's long term care expenditures. A report from the federal Government Accountability Office earlier this year pointed out, for example, that Medicaid covers assisted living for 330,000 people. A demonstration program called Money Follows the Person has moved more than 75,000 residents out of nursing homes and back into community settings. It's good news for consumers but not so good for nursing homes. The 31 largest metropolitan markets have 13,586 fewer nursing home beds now than in late 2005, the investment center reports. This could prove a temporary crisis. When the baby boomers enter their 80s and need residential care, occupancy could pick up again. "You can cut with impunity," Ms. Grant said, and with financial pressures mounting, she worries that facilities will. So families with relatives in nursing homes might want to pay particular attention. If occupancy falls, maybe your loved one gets a private room. Or maybe the call button takes even longer to answer. The new federal rules require more accurate staffing information posted on Nursing Home Compare, using time cards rather than facilities' self reports. That's one way families can keep tabs on how empty beds may affect care. "Monitor the data," was Ms. Grant's recommendation. "Talk to staff and residents. Definitely keep an eye out."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Hours before President Trump falsely claimed to supporters at the White House early on Wednesday that he had already won the presidential election, he prefaced his argument with a tweet. "We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election," he wrote. Twitter clamped down on the statement, which lacked evidence, in about five minutes. The social media platform added a label saying the tweet contained disputed or misleading information, and largely blocked users from replying, liking or sharing it. But that didn't stop more than 750 other Twitter accounts from trying to amplify Mr. Trump's claims with the exact same message. "Everyone must tweet what realDonaldTrump did before getting suppressed by Twitter," all of the accounts posted, before sharing Mr. Trump's message verbatim.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
New York's Sidewalk Prophets Are Heirs of the Artisans of France's Lascaux Caves About 17,000 years ago, in the caves of Lascaux, France, ancestors drew on grotto walls, depicting equines, stags, bison, aurochs and felines. They wanted to convey to other humans a political reality crucial to their survival: They shared their environment with other beings that looked and behaved differently from them. Those early artisans drew these creatures over and over, likely fascinated by their forms and their powers, but also intuiting that whatever happened to the animals would almost certainly be a harbinger of what would happen to humans. The presence of the bison and stags, their physical fitness and numbers, their mass migrations would have indicated the onset of plagues or cataclysmic weather systems. Containing some 15,000 paintings and engravings from the Upper Paleolithic era, the caves in Southwestern France were not simply an exhibition space for local talent. They essentially constituted a public square where a community shared critical knowledge. These portraits and discrete stories are not very different from our contemporary forums: the street art adorning boarded up storefronts in New York City. They tell us about our shared political realities, the people we coexist with in social space and the ways in which our stories and fates are tied together. If you walk the streets of SoHo, the alleys of the Lower East Side, and heavily trafficked avenues in Brooklyn, as I did over the last few weeks, you will see these symbols and signs and might wonder at their meanings. What became apparent to me is that in the intervening millenniums between those cave paintings and the killing of George Floyd, the messages we share, like the sociopolitical circumstances that impel them, have become more complex. When we see the image of thin, green skinned, bipedal beings with teardrop shaped black apertures for eyes, we typically read "alien." But when I see the image of such a creature holding a sign that reads "I can't breathe," I grok an urgent message: Even aliens visiting from light years away understand the plight of Black people in the United States because this situation is so obviously dire. Today's street paintings contain dispatches that proliferate across the city sphere lovely, challenging, angry, remonstrative and even desperate. There are two critical things to note about them. They are different from graffiti, which to my eyes is egocentric and monotone, mostly instantiating the will of the tagger over and over again. I am here and you must see me, is the message. The street artists in these works point beyond the self, to larger, collective issues. The other pressing point is that these images in chalk, paint and oil stick are ephemeral. Between the time I walked these districts and alerted the photographer to document them, five images had already disappeared. One was a depiction of the transgender freedom fighter Marsha P. Johnson, whose image was marked in chalk on the sidewalk in the ad hoc tent city created near Chambers Street a few weeks ago. It's since been cleared out by police officers. Unlike the caves of Lascaux (which are on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites list) most of this work won't be protected or anthologized but it should be. The lingual messages and coded images on these plywood facades are the means by which future historians and researchers will come to understand this time and give our generation a proper name. On the Lower East Side I found a mural by Conor Harrington that both intrigued and flummoxed me. There is a figure that I take to be a man, in colonial era clothing (the red coat of what would have, in 1776, been the British faction) twirling a flag that seems to be changing from a blue and white striped field to a red and white scheme as if the figure's touch has sparked a revolution. This is perhaps a version of the received, hackneyed idea of the lone hero who can change the course of human history (the 19th century "great man" theory of leadership promulgated by Thomas Carlyle, among others). Or perhaps it's an attempt to demonstrate how quickly the flame of revolution can spark a fire that spreads everywhere. Last, there is a bifurcated mural, "Sad Contrast," on Mercer Street in SoHo that depicts a tearful Statue of Liberty. In the portrait, executed in a colorful expressionistic style, one side of the face is painted by Calicho Arevalo and the other by Jeff Rose King. Mr. King's side suggests an Indigenous woman in a headdress, composed to mirror the crowned Roman goddess. Both figures look steadily at the viewer, essentially asking: How will you see us, and what will we mean to you?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
A ground crew bowed toward an All Nippon Airways 787 Dreamliner as it returned from a test flight at the Haneda International airport in Tokyo. HANEDA AIRPORT, JAPAN Katsuhiro Ogami, a top engineer at All Nippon Airways, could not sit still Sunday on the airline's first test flight of a Boeing 787 Dreamliner jet fitted with fortified batteries. He peered, and peered again, at a monitor hooked to the plane's batteries for any signs of overheating. "We kept on checking the voltage again and again, because we were so nervous," he said in an interview after the 787 jet landed at Haneda Airport in Tokyo, apparently without incident. "Everything was fine, absolutely fine." Mr. Ogami may have gotten over his own jitters, but he and his colleagues at All Nippon, the largest operator of Boeing's 787 batteries, now must convince an uneasy public of the reliability of the jets most of which were grounded for three months because of concerns that the batteries crucial to the planes' sophisticated electrical systems might catch fire. Even as Boeing and the operators of its Dreamliners move swiftly toward getting the jets back in the air, they now face the delicate task of selling passengers on the idea that the jet is safe, even though engineers have still not figured out what exactly caused batteries to burn on two separate planes earlier this year. In the past week, regulators in the United States, Europe and Japan all of which grounded the 787 fleet after those incidents signed off on fixes to the batteries proposed by Boeing. Smaller airlines are already moving ahead in reintroducing the jet to their fleets, including Ethiopian Airlines, which used a 787 on Saturday on a two hour commercial flight from Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, to Nairobi. But the resumption of 787 flights at All Nippon and Japan Airlines, which together own nearly half the 50 Dreamliner jets Boeing has delivered so far, will prove the real test of whether the modified batteries will eliminate further mishaps. So both Japanese airlines are being cautious about bringing the Dreamliners back into service, saying they hope to resume scheduled commercial flights only in June. That will give them more time to conduct test flights, retrain their crew and to educate the public about the safety of the improved batteries. (All Nippon said it might introduce Dreamliners on some flights before June, however.) "It's up to us to explain how we've made these planes safer," Shinichiro Ito, chief executive of All Nippon and Mr. Ogami's boss, said at a press conference after flying on the test jet, together with executives from Boeing. "We won't decide to resume commercial flights until we're sure our passengers are comfortable with boarding a 787." The other airlines that already own 787s are all eager to resume service, although the timing varies. United has scheduled its 787s to start flying domestic routes on May 31 and plans to begin international flights on June 10, from Denver to Tokyo and Houston to London. The airline will then fly its 787s in August from Houston to Lagos, as well as from Los Angeles to Shanghai and Tokyo. LOT, the Polish national airline, plans to begin commercial 787 flights on June 5 between Warsaw and Chicago. Later, it expects to fly its planes to New York, Toronto and Beijing. Air India said it hoped to have flights by mid May. The other airlines that own 787s are Qatar Airlines and LAN of Chile. But it is in Japan where the 787 has a particularly difficult task in winning back confidence. The Japanese public has been subject to intense coverage of what first appeared to be teething problems of Boeing's next generation 787 jet: a cracked cockpit window and a fuel leak. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. Then a battery fire on a parked Japan Airlines jet in Boston in January, followed closely by a meltdown of batteries aboard a domestic All Nippon flight, catapulted the story into the nation's top headlines. The All Nippon incident, which prompted an emergency landing, has been particularly damaging to the 787's image in Japan. All day, TV stations played footage of the incident, emergency chutes splayed on the tarmac, with testimony from distressed passengers to boot. "I was terrified. I didn't feel alive," Masaaki Ishikawa, a 40 year old office worker, told the Sankei newspaper at the time. Now, some Japanese are understandably worried. "I'd be a little scared about going on a 787, especially if I was one of the first ones back on," said Takako Aso, 69, a pediatrician who was about to board a flight from Haneda to the southern island of Kyushu on Sunday. "I don't usually check what type of aircraft I'm boarding, and I almost think I shouldn't start, or I'd be too nervous." Boeing engineers say their fixes to the batteries which include better insulation between the eight cells in the battery, gentler charging to minimize stress and a new titanium enclosure and venting system eliminate all potential causes of battery fire. The engineers also acknowledge that they may never know what caused the batteries to overheat on the Japan Airlines and All Nippon aircraft because the cells were so damaged. Still, Boeing swore by its fixes Sunday. "No matter what the initiating cause was, it will have no effect whatsoever on the airplane because of the enclosure that we've designed," the Boeing 787 chief engineer, Mike Sennett, told reporters. "The enclosure ensures there can be no fire." Besides the repairs made by Boeing, the Japanese Transport Ministry has requested that All Nippon and Japan Airlines install improved battery monitoring systems on its planes and put its 787 cockpit crews through additional flight training. Once the planes are back in service, the airlines will take a sample of batteries every few months for tests to make sure the improvements are working. All Nippon said that five teams of engineers from Boeing were hard at work making the fixes to its 17 Dreamliners. Each of those aircraft will undergo a "proving flight" to confirm that no battery related failures occur during use, the airline said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
Resistance is etched into Afrobeat, the music forged by the Nigerian bandleader and activist Fela Kuti in the 1970s and 1980s. It's in lyrics that denounce brutality, corruption, apathy, fear and the legacy of colonialism. And it's in songs that deliberately stretch out, seizing time itself with African rooted funk grooves that don't rush but don't ease off either, merging dance propulsion with unmistakable tension and determination. Fela, as he was universally known, decided in the late 1960s that he had no use for love songs or party tunes; he wanted to challenge unjust authority. He battled Nigeria's government, which repeatedly had him beaten and imprisoned. His music, Afrobeat not to be confused with Afrobeats, the computer driven pop R B currently emerging from Nigeria and across Africa steered his knowledge of American funk and jazz back toward African modes and rhythms. Most of his start as simmering instrumentals, methodically layering little riffs and long lined melodies into burly grooves; they make way for the messages he sings, then surge ahead with even more urgency. It's music that's braced for a long struggle. Afrobeat hardly disappeared after Fela's death in 1997. It was carried forward by two of his sons, Femi and Seun; the style was also maintained by bands well outside Nigeria. And it has stayed all too relevant with anti racism protests happening today. Here's a starter kit for Afrobeat from Fela and some of his musical heirs. Nonstop nervous energy courses through "Zombie," Fela's denunciation of soldiers who would mindlessly follow any order. (It was aimed at the Nigerian military.) From the restless two guitar tangle that starts the track and continues virtually all the way through, into a saxophone melody that expands and contracts like a coiling snake, the song keeps gathering tension; now and then, the band drops away for a few suspenseful beats, then leaps back in with even fiercer scorn. Fela declared in 1970 that his compound in Lagos the home of family, band members and a recording studio was the Kalakuta Republic, independent of Nigeria. In 1977, after "Zombie" taunted Nigeria's military regime, soldiers attacked the compound and burned it down; Fela's mother was thrown from a window and later died of the injuries. Over a wiry, stubbornly repeating guitar line, "Sorrow Tears and Blood" calmly narrates the scene "Someone nearly die/someone just die/Police they come, army they come/Confusion everywhere" and envisions a climate of state intimidation: "We fear to fight for freedom." This is no more or less than a speedy, steamy, atmospheric 23 minute live workout by Fela and his band, who regularly performed six hours a night and four nights a week during the 1970s. It flaunts the pure stamina of the rhythm section, the riff by riff construction of horn solos, the call and response of Fela with the backup singers, and the way the crowd cheers every crest in the music. There are plenty of crests.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
LONDON An outspoken commentator who gained fame after appearing on "The Apprentice" will be leaving her job at the radio station LBC after a post on social media about the recent attack in Manchester. The commentator, , a conservative provocateur in the mold of Ann Coulter, is to step down after calling on Twitter for a "final solution" to the terrorism problem, which some had interpreted as a call for genocide, echoing the Nazi euphemism for the Holocaust. The post was later changed so that it read "true solution" rather than "final solution." Ms. Hopkins, who is a graduate of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, according to her website, joined LBC about a year ago to host a Sunday talk show. LBC declined to comment on the arrangement, saying only that "LBC and have agreed that Katie will leave LBC effective immediately."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
In his two decades as a consultant to organizations vying to host the Olympic Games, Terrence Burns helped write and review official bids and plans from dozens of potential candidate cities. In all those bids, he said, discussions of potential disruptions to the event were fairly narrow in scope: mostly natural disasters, like earthquakes or fires, and, more recently, terrorist attacks. "I've never seen an Olympic organizing committee asked, 'Are you prepared for a global pandemic?'" Burns said this week. Now, with just under five months to go before the scheduled opening of the Summer Olympics in Tokyo on July 24, organizers in Japan and at the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Switzerland are grappling with the coronavirus outbreak, which is threatening to derail the world's largest sporting event. In preparing for the Olympics, Japan's public health planning until now had focused on the prevention of measles and rubella, sexually transmitted diseases and food poisoning. A new disease, like the coronavirus, was not central to their calculations. Still, as the virus has begun to spread through the country, officials in Japan have played down suggestions that plans for the Games could be altered or even canceled. At a news briefing on Wednesday, the chief cabinet secretary, Yoshihide Suga, said that preparations for the Games were proceeding "as planned," adding that the Olympic torch would begin its journey to Japan in March according to schedule. The I.O.C. has also declined to entertain the possibility that the Games might not take place exactly as planned. But sporting events in Japan and elsewhere are already being canceled, as governments try to discourage large gatherings in major cities. Many who have procured tickets and made travel plans are now wondering whether they will have to scrap them. "We've had our first guests calling to ask questions about canceling," Anbritt Stengele, the president of Sports Traveler, a travel agency specializing in packages to international sporting events, said this week. "Everyone in the industry is monitoring it and concerned." People across the Olympic world have begun to ponder, then, what might happen if the coronavirus has not been brought under control before the summer. "I'm sure somewhere within the walls of the I.O.C. headquarters there's a big board with various scenarios on it where people are thinking about, 'OK, what do we do in a worst case situation?" said Dick Pound, a longtime I.O.C. member. There are options, of course, according to people like Burns who have worked with the Olympics for decades. None are very appealing. But the Women's World Cup, particularly back then, was a considerably smaller event in scope than the Olympics, with far fewer traveling fans, athletes, sponsors and media members. And in general, stadiums that can accommodate soccer, the world's most popular sport, are easy to find. Venues that can host surfing, sailing, equestrian dressage and track cycling? Less so. Olympic host cities block out rooms in countless hotels. They reserve high profile venues, generate public safety and transportation plans, and deal with a host of other logistical and legal issues years in advance, in anticipation of tens of thousands of visitors. "Who could put on an event the size and scope of the Olympic Games even beginning today, five months out?" Pound said. "Nobody, realistically." There is also the question of whether it would even make sense amid a viral epidemic to have thousands of people from around the world congregate in another city and then return to their homes. Yasuyuki Kato, professor of infectious diseases at the International University of Health and Welfare in Narita, Japan, noted that the Games could act as "a hub to disseminate the virus to other countries." The Olympics have been canceled outright three times in 1916, 1940 and 1944 during the world wars. The prospect of a cancellation now, when so many parties have invested billions of dollars and years of labor and have legal contracts seems almost unthinkable. Broadcasters have carved out huge programming blocks, and marketers have built campaigns meant to culminate in Tokyo. Athletes have trained for years to appear on that stage. "I'll tell you who definitely doesn't want to cancel is NBC," said Jules Boykoff, a professor of politics and an expert on Olympic history at Pacific University in Oregon. "They have put billions into the rights to these Olympics. There will be serious disgruntlement from those who have power. They will insist that the Games go on." A spokesman for NBC said, "The safety of our employees is always our top priority, but there is no impact on our preparations at this time." The spread of viruses can be suppressed in warmer months, and Melissa Nolan, an expert on infectious diseases at the University of South Carolina, said "most predictions estimate we'll see a major decline by July." But Pound said he believed any decision to cancel or modify the Games would have to be initiated by late May. Asked about Pound's comments, Suga, Japan's chief cabinet secretary, said they were "not the official view of the I.O.C." And the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, responding to questions from The New York Times, said that it was "not considering canceling." At some point, though, such an event might not feel like the Olympics, which is supposed to be a peaceful celebration of people from more than 200 countries. Can the Olympics be the Olympics without majestic opening and closing ceremonies in packed stadiums, or if events are spread out across multiple cities? The questions may grow louder as the virus spreads further. "It's unusual, it's unprecedented, it's a complex issue," Burns said, "and if something indeed happens, it will have a complex solution."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Timothy D. Cook, Apple's chief executive, explained the rationale with an analogy: "If you go to the market and you push your cart up to the cashier and she says or he says, 'How many units do you have in there?' it doesn't matter a lot how many units there are in there in terms of the overall value of what's in the cart." Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Bernstein, said Apple was trying to shift investors' attention away from the number of devices it sold. "Companies always try to put their best foot forward," he said. "Their best foot doesn't appear to be iPhone unit growth." Another wildly profitable quarter for Apple showed its business has mostly avoided the turbulence that has roiled its Silicon Valley peers. Facebook, Google and Twitter have faced questions about their influence in the spread of disinformation and the proliferation of hate speech. Apple has tried to separate itself from other tech giants by trumpeting that it values its customers' privacy and hires people to curate its services rather than relying on computer algorithms. The company responded to criticism about the addictive nature of its smartphones by adding tools for people to track their time spent on them. Last month, Apple released its most expensive iPhone ever, the XS Max, which starts at 1,100. On Tuesday, it raised the starting price of its iPad Pro to 800 from 650 and of its MacBook Air to 1,200 from 1,000, while also making the devices faster and more powerful.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
GHENT, Belgium Layers and layers of paint have been virtually and physically removed from the 15th century Ghent Altarpiece, a renowned work of biblical figures on wood panels, revealing for the first time in hundreds of years the individual brush strokes of the original paintings. In this first phase of restoration on one of the earliest art works to use oil paints on a large scale, new scanning techniques uncovered the singular skills of the Flemish brothers Jan and Hubert Van Eyck, beneath layers of overpainting and varnish. The restoration, which has been taking place for the last four years here at the Museum of Fine Arts, has involved painstaking work that has led to a number of discoveries, including the dating of several wooden panels from the same oak trees. As an early Renaissance piece, the altarpiece is widely recognized as one of history's most influential art works, because of the intimate attention it gives to both earthly and divine beauty. The polyptych altarpiece, consisting of 12 panels, has at its center its most iconic panel, "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb.'' It depicts a liturgy attended by different groups of people in a landscape rich in religious symbolism. In the middle is a white lamb on an altar, with a breast wound gushing blood. On the lower outer panels, people look on some more interested than others. The upper register portrays three enthroned figures: In the middle might be God or Christ experts are not sure flanked by the Virgin Mary on the left and John the Baptist on the right. On the upper outer panels, angels sing and play music. Adam and Eve, in one of the earliest renderings of them naked with fig leaves, stand on the outermost wings. The upper outside register represents scenes from the Annunciation of Mary and the lower register has sculptures of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist. The altarpiece has a dark side as well. Pieces of it have been stolen repeatedly over time, including by the Nazis, who stored the entire work in a salt mine for most of World War II. In fact, one panel, "The Just Judges," in the outer left corner on the inside, has been missing since 1934. Although it has been replaced with a copy, local conspiracy theories still circulate about where the original might be. But they were given the green light to carry out this perilous task after new scanning technology confirmed their hunches that what lay below was far more stunning and was "with more certainty than ever" painted by the Van Eycks and finished in 1432. The scanning technique, called macro X ray fluorescence analysis, or MA XRF, was revolutionary. "Never before has such a large surface been scanned; the outside panels measure eight square meters in total," said Geert Van der Snickt, a cultural heritage scientist at the University of Antwerp who helped develop the technique. This scanning technique is rapidly becoming the new golden standard for investigating historical paintings, he said. Since 2010, his team has scanned several smaller paintings, including Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers"; Rembrandt's "Syndics of the Drapers' Guild"; Edvard Munch's "The Scream" and a dozen other oil paintings by the Flemish Primitives. The scans laid bare efforts to conserve the altarpiece, and the handiwork of its original masters. "But what's most revolutionary here is that the scans influenced the actual restoration works and convinced restorers to scrape off paint from one of the world's most valuable paintings," he added. Scientists first bombard a painting with high frequency electromagnetic waves. This leads atoms inside a painting to ionize and emit electromagnetic waves of their own. The scanner then captures these secondary waves, and through an analysis of their energy, momentum and angle, identifies each different atom and its place in a painting. This allows scientists to construct images of a painting using one chemical element at a time, such as lead, copper, iron and mercury. By comparing these images, they are able to separate copper based red pigments in a superficial paint layer, for example, from lead based white pigments in an underlying layer. These scans are part of an elaborate restoration campaign, which set out in 2012 to document and restore all 24 paintings of the Ghent Altarpiece by 2020. The Church Council of the St. Bavo Cathedral, which owns the painting, assigned a team of restorers from the Belgian Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage to carry out a limited restoration, and an international committee of experts to oversee their work. The Flemish government allocated a budget of 1.26 million euros, or about 1.3 million. But when the scans, which have only been conducted on the exterior panels, showed that about 70 percent of those panels were overpainted, restorers dug deeper. Next, cross sectional microfragments smaller than a grain of salt were taken from the exterior panels and put under a digital 3D microscope, provided by the University of Ghent. By magnifying the microfragments 200 times, restorers observed the paint's surface in 3D, and saw how the layers were structured where the overpainting dating mostly to the 16th or 17th centuries ended, and where the original painting began. And so in early 2015 restorers began laying tiny compresses soaked in solvents on the overpaint. Looking through a microscope, they then removed the softened paint with a cotton swab, or sometimes with a scalpel. "A truly painstaking task," said Bart Devolder, a restorer who uncovered the original figure of Archangel Gabriel on one of the panels. Uncovered for the first time in about 500 years, the originals were in need of conservation. Each flake of ancient paint was treated with a tiny drop of isinglass, a natural collagen obtained from the swim bladder of a sturgeon, which was applied, heated and pressed down to match the surface. Small losses in the original paint were carefully filled with a mixture of chalk and animal glue, and then retouched to integrate into the original painting. Finally, several layers of varnish were applied with a brush, and a final coat with a spray. The result was "without a trace of hyperbole, a triumph: awe inspiring and transformative," said Michael Gallagher, a member of the international committee of experts and chief conservator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The project also provided an opportunity for experts on the dating of wood, or dendrochronologists, to examine the panels of the altarpiece. It was painted on 12 oak panels, a common form of support for paintings in the 15th century, until canvas became more popular near the end of the 16th century. "What we do is, we first identify the annual growth rings on a given piece of wood," Ms. Fraiture said. "This gives us a pattern, or a code if you will, which I then compare with my database" which covers more than 2,000 years of oak from Western Europe. Ms. Fraiture determined that the planks used in the panels of the Ghent Altarpiece each panel contains between two to four planks all came from oak trees in the Baltic region. "Back then, import of oak from the Baltic region was common, and was used for building ships, furniture and for paintings." "Several pairs of two or three planks, distributed over the different panels of the altarpiece, come from the exact same tree," she said. The felling of the trees occurred between 1368 and 1408, she estimated. "This tells us that the different panels, and thus the different paintings, have a common history from the very beginning," she said. The eight exterior panels have been returned to St. Bavo Cathedral, where the altarpiece had been on near continuous display since its installment in 1432. It remains to be seen whether the Flemish government, the main creditor, and the Cathedral Church Council, the owner of the artwork, will agree to a similar aggressive restoration for the remaining panels. Additional funds would be needed, and the deadline for 2020 would not be met, all sides agree. St. Bavo wants the panels back by 2020, when a new museum is scheduled to open. Well aware of the local politics surrounding the restoration, Mr. Gallagher said: "The next steps are crucial. It is absolutely vital that the same focus and care are brought to the interior wings." "I and my colleagues fully acknowledge the complexities of different expectations and competing timetables," he said, adding that nevertheless they were "confident that the No. 1 priority will remain the welfare and significance of Van Eyck's legacy." Back at the museum in Ghent, restorers started investigating the interior panels earlier this month. During a recent tour of the museum, Ms. Dubois halted before the central panel "The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb" and locked it with her eyes. (She decided to become a painting conservator when she first saw the Ghent Altarpiece at the age of 16.) "The white lamb in the middle, you see" she said, unable to suppress a smile, "I can assure you, is overpainted."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Lind's reporting leads her to tiny home enthusiasts and co living communities, as well as market oriented policy tweaks. The media sometimes refers to co living projects marketed to single people in cities as "adult dorms," a phrase that rightly offends her why should seeking community be treated as a symptom of immaturity? She visits a tranquil intentional community in Georgia where homes are designed to encourage neighbors to hang out with one another, and a cultural event is on offer nearly every night. Her book asks the right question: How can we move beyond the corrosive and exclusionary dream of the white picket fence, and instead, safely and happily house all Americans? Yet considering Lind's adventurous rejection of such a cornerstone of mainstream American thinking and life, her search for solutions is surprisingly provincial. Even when her reporting demonstrates the limits of many market driven solutions a program to offer incentives for Los Angeles homeowners to host low income renters in small cottages in their yards, for example, has, several years in, resulted in almost no new housing this doesn't seem to inspire her to think any bigger. She doesn't explore how other countries house people on a large scale, perhaps because many successful strategies require investing heavily in public housing. Lind exhibits only passing interest in social housing as a solution for this country, dismissing it as a "one size must fit all" strategy. But 80 percent of Singapore's residents live in public housing, which consists not only of apartments but also of self sustaining small communities with their own schools, hospitals, supermarkets and many other amenities. With the vast majority of the city state in public housing, there is no stigma to it, and the system is popular. She also overlooks the rich history of middle and working class cooperative housing in New York City. Lind works for the Chamber of Commerce in Philadelphia, heading its Arts Business Council. She is an inquisitive reporter and writer, but perhaps her colleagues in Philadelphia's business community wouldn't welcome an investigation of such left wing traditions.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
All images of public domain artworks in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection about 375,000 are now free for anyone to use however they may please. The museum announced on Tuesday that it had changed its open access policy to allow free, unrestricted use of any images of artworks in the public domain, using the license designation Creative Commons Zero, known as CC0. For example, the image with this article, "Increasing access to the collection has been a priority for over a decade," Thomas P. Campbell, the museum's director, said at a news conference. "Twenty years ago, as a scholar, we had to negotiate access even for catalog cards."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Home field advantage is gone this season, a big shift for sports bettors. The Dodgers' Julio Urias was not warming up in this photo he was pitching against the Giants with no fans in the stands. Sports is slowly coming back to North America, and that means that sports betting is returning, too. With baseball restarted and the N.B.A. and the N.H.L. soon to follow, bookmakers and bettors are confronting the questions that were forgotten for several months: Who are the favorites? Who has no hope? How can I make some money? And how does the coronavirus pandemic affect it all? Baseball plans to play 60 games, instead of its usual 162, in this regular season. Sixteen teams will make the playoffs, and the first round is just a best of three game series. Sounds like a crapshoot that almost any team can win. So why are the Yankees and Dodgers such heavy favorites? Both teams are about 4 1 to win the World Series, an astonishingly short price given that they will have to make the playoffs in a sprint, then win four straight series. No other team is less than 10 1. Bookmakers are unanimous: It's not us; it's the bettors. "The Dodgers and Yankees are perennially the most bet on teams to win the World Series," said Dave Mason, the sports book brand manager at BetOnline.ag. "Because of that expected volume, we have to limit our liability for these teams, and the best way to do that is keep their futures odds as low as possible." James Murphy, an oddsmaker at Sports Insider, noted that in the middle of last summer, the Astros and Dodgers were 3 1 to win the World Series and the Yankees 4 1. The eventual winner, though, was the Nationals, who were 25 1. "I was surprised to see that the futures prices are actually more top heavy this year," he said. So if the Yankees and the Dodgers are underpriced, where can a baseball bettor find a wise investment? "The smart money at least among the professional bettors I know in Nevada really hit the Milwaukee Brewers and Minnesota Twins hard," Murphy said. (The Brewers stand at about 30 1 and the Twins 15 1 to win the World Series.) "Since the favorites are always so overvalued in baseball, by definition the other teams are undervalued." 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. As you might expect, the Lakers and the Bucks, who had the two best records in the interrupted regular season, are the favorites at 5 2, with the Clippers just behind at 3 1. But where is the love for the Raptors? Though they have the league's third best record, and are the reigning champions, they stand at a whopping 20 1 to win it all. "The Raptors are a very solid team, but they play in a very weak East, and they lack star power without Kawhi Leonard," said Pat Morrow, head oddsmaker at Bovada. "Without that legitimate No. 1 player on the team, there is a limit on how far you can go." On the other hand, the Rockets, who have the league's ninth best record, are a well bet 12 1. "Casual bettors want to back superstars," Murphy said. "The James Harden Russell Westbrook led Rockets are perceived as a better team than the Pascal Siakam Serge Ibaka led Raptors." This despite the uncertainties after Westbrook tested positive for the virus and was quarantined. Depending on how they fare in the final eight regular season games, the Rockets could be as low as the seventh seed in the West. But "the seeding shouldn't make much of an impact because there is no travel and no home court advantage," Mason said. "The 'sharps,' at least the ones I know, really like Boston and Dallas as well as Toronto," Murphy said. Boston is about 18 1 to win the title and Dallas can be had for 35 1 or even more at some sports books. Under the new playoff format, eight of the 24 teams that will contest the Stanley Cup playoffs get a bye, obviously a significant advantage. And not surprisingly, those teams have the lowest odds. But one other team joins them. Despite not having a bye, the Penguins are as low as 12 1, the kind of price that bye teams are getting, despite having to beat the Canadiens in a best of five game opening round series. Once again, it's because of a star. "It's the Sidney Crosby factor," Murphy said. He pointed out that in the 2016 Eastern Conference finals, the Penguins were favored in every game even though the Lightning fought them tooth and nail before falling in seven games. "It was amazing how the money kept coming in for Pittsburgh despite the parity in that series," Murphy said. The team Pittsburgh will have to beat in that opening series got a second life, in the league and with bettors. It certainly appeared that the Canadiens would not make the playoffs under the normal 16 game format. Just before the league paused, they were 500 1 to win the Stanley Cup, Morrow said. Now, with the expansion of the playoffs, they have a shot, and those 500 1 tickets appear to have some value. The Canadiens are now 66 1. Bookmakers have historical data, power rankings and years of experience, all of which go into setting a solid line. Then the world is hit by a pandemic and much of it goes out the window. "The biggest adjustment we've had to make is accounting for the lack of home field advantage," Mason said. "Every team and venue holds a certain value, which is baked into the lines. But when we remove the emotional and psychological element of a home advantage, the odds have to be adjusted." Murphy said that some top bettors have said the absence of fans might mean weaker defensive intensity among players. "That makes sense, but there's no way to validate that until the games begin," he said. Morrow said that over under totals on baseball are having to be adjusted because of the new rule that puts a runner on second base in extra innings. "It's much more likely that extra innings will have multiple runs," he said. The addition of the designated hitter in the National League will also bump up run totals in that league's games. Murphy said that some sharp bettors were sitting out this season entirely because of the uncertainties. But not the casual players. "You've got recreational bettors that haven't had any major sports who are anxious to bet," he said. And after months of betting on table tennis, South Korean baseball and e sports, they finally have the action they have been craving.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Hotels near theme parks do more than offer a convenient respite from the lines and crowds. Largely aimed at families, the most elaborate of them operate as park extensions, with immersive design and enough amenities to ensure that you can retire to your room after a busy day and won't have to leave it again till morning. The following new and improved resorts champion proximity and entertainment, and many come with perks such as free shuttles to the theme park, on site ticket sales, early park admission and line jumping status. For extra immersion into the world of brick built characters, the Legoland Hotel at Legoland California Resort has introduced rooms themed after the Lego Friends collection of cartoon character girls from fictional Heartlake City. The 12 rooms, which sleep up to five, include an adult bed and either a pull out trundle or bunk beds, a beach house themed bathroom and Lego bricks, of course. The 250 room hotel also offers rooms themed after its Pirate, Adventure and Kingdom, or Medieval, collections of toys. Guests get early access to the nearby park, free breakfast and nightly children's entertainment. Friends themed rooms from 325, others from 175; legoland.com. Less than two miles south of Disneyland, the new Great Wolf Lodge Southern California, above, offers a sprawling 105,000 square foot indoor water park to retreat to after a day with Mickey and friends. The entertainment at this 600 room resort gives the bigger park a run for the money: It has a nine hole miniature golf course, a laser lit maze and kiddie bowling along with aquatic attractions that include a six story water slide, surf simulators, a wave pool and a lazy river. In addition to standard rooms, the resort offers themed suites with cabin decor and bunk beds. Dining choices range from wood fired steaks to poolside hot dogs. Though it's an attraction in its own right, the resort offers a Disneyland shuttle and sells tickets to the park on site. Rooms from 249; greatwolf.com/southern california. Modeled on the waterfalls and lagoons of the Caribbean, the new Loews Sapphire Falls Resort, right, is to open in July at Universal Studios Florida. Water and the tropical outdoors are central themes of the 1,000 room resort, which will include a pool with a water slide, sand beach, fire pit and children's play area in the central courtyard. Food leans exotic here too, including a ceviche bar and rum tastings in the lobby lounge and a pool bar and grill with a seafood menu. A stay at the resort includes early access to Universal Studios Florida and Universal's Islands of Adventure, with transport via land or water taxi. Rooms from 179; loewshotels.com/sapphire falls resort. Decorated with musical instruments and the album covers of its owner, Dolly Parton, Dollywood's DreamMore Resort opened last summer at her Great Smoky Mountains theme park, Dollywood. Drawing on the family and musical traditions of the South, the 300 room hotel, above, resides on 20 acres and has children's play areas, indoor and outdoor pools, a restaurant specializing in family style dinners, nightly storytelling sessions and rocker lined porches on which to while away balmy evenings. Perks include free shuttles to the nearby park, passes to reserve spots in line at its attractions and early entry each Saturday. Rooms from 170; dollywoodsdreammoreresort.dollywood.com. The new Shanghai Disney Resort, above top, offers two hotels next to the park and to Disney Town, an entertainment district. On Wishing Star Lake, Shanghai Disneyland Hotel offers views of the park's castle from many of its 420 rooms. Disney characters are everywhere, from bronze statues of Mickey and Minnie Mouse in the three story lobby to headboards that light up to evoke Tinker Bell. Amenities include indoor and outdoor pools, a hedge maze and dining options ranging from buffet meals with costumed characters to refined Asian cuisine with views from the top floor of the hotel. Rooms from 1,650 renminbi (about 250); shanghaidisneyresort.com. Nearby, the 800 room, figure eight shaped Toy Story Hotel, above, is filled with references to the Disney Pixar movies with statues of Woody and Buzz Lightyear, a splash park modeled on an alien battle and a play room with character themed slides and toys. A cafe serves dim sum and noodles. Rooms from 850 renminbi (about 130); shanghaidisneyresort.com. A feeder for the thrill park Busch Gardens Williamsburg and the living history attraction Colonial Williamsburg, Williamsburg Woodlands Hotel and Suites has expanded its appeal to families with a new splash park, right, featuring water cannons and slides near the outdoor pool. For adults, its new Huzzah's Eatery restaurant serves 18th century style beers brewed locally by Frank Clark, Colonial Williamsburg's master of historic foodways. Lodging includes breakfast, access to the Fun Zone with activities like mini golf, volleyball and storytelling, and free shuttles to both parks. Rooms from 129; colonialwilliamsburg.com. Known as the "water park capital of the world," the Wisconsin Dells combines sprawling resorts with lavish water parks. One of these, the 600 acre Wilderness Hotel and Golf Resort, has a variety of accommodations themed after the north woods, including log cabins, above, each with three to five bedrooms, fireplace, deck and gas grill. Next year it is to add 13 treehouses, each with a slide to connect its two levels. Access to the resorts' water parks five indoors, five outdoors is included for all registered guests. A new attraction known as a slideboard combines a tunnel water slide and an interactive video game, allowing riders to earn points by pressing buttons corresponding to lights as they whiz past. Rooms from about 225, cabins from about 500; wildernessresort.com.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Travel and travel planning are being disrupted by the worldwide spread of the coronavirus. For the latest updates, read The New York Times's Covid 19 coverage here. A waiter in the crowded cruise ship passageway approached the isolated passenger with a tray of food, two glasses of juice, plastic gloves on his hands and a white table napkin across his face. The napkin, tied over his mouth like a bandanna on a bank robber in an old western, was presumably supposed to protect the crew member aboard the Costa Luminosa from the spread of the coronavirus, which had already sickened three passengers. This was on Sunday, March 15, the first day that the crew began wearing gloves and shields over their mouths. The ship is now docked in Marseille, France, and French health authorities have boarded to conduct health checks. Americans on board have been told that a chartered plane will take them to Atlanta. Various government agencies are involved in figuring out what to do with them next, and some U.S. states may allow them to isolate at home, as some people who sailed on the Grand Princess did, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. When cruise lines decided to suspend U.S. sailings last week 40 ships carrying tens of thousands of passengers were in the middle of their voyages. On at least three of them, passengers got Covid 19 while cruise ship companies, port officials, governments and international health organizations scrambled to determine whose rules applied. Thousands of people were at sea, sometimes confined to tiny cabins, but also enjoying the bar, serving themselves from the buffet and enjoying festivities while more people contracted the disease and the ship captains tried to figure out what to do. The Braemar, a ship operated by Fred. Olsen Cruise Lines, was denied entry by four countries when a guest, four crew members and two passengers who had been on the ship tested positive. Cuba opened its port to them, and about 700 mostly British passengers took chartered flights home to England on Wednesday. Also Wednesday, nearly 100 passengers who had been in quarantine with six infected passengers aboard the Silver Explorer cruise off the coast of Chile were flown out of that country on charter flights, according to Chilean officials. Meanwhile, passengers aboard the Silver Shadow were close to completing a week in quarantine in the port of Recife in northern Brazil over coronavirus fears that are so far unfounded. Both the Silver Explorer and Silver Shadow are operated by Silversea Cruises, which is owned by Royal Caribbean. The Costa Luminosa, a 965 foot long ship built in 2009, is owned by the Crociere Group, Italy's biggest tour operator. Headquartered in Genoa, the company has 27 ships in service that offer trips from the Mediterranean to South America. The company, which is part of the Carnival Corp., came under fire in 2012, when its Costa Concordia ran aground off Tuscany, killing 32 people. The captain was sentenced to 15 years for manslaughter. The Costa Luminosa first left Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for a cruise around the Caribbean on Feb. 24. But the coronavirus was raging in Italy, and Jamaica did not let the Italians disembark as scheduled on Feb. 28. The next day, one of the ship's passengers, a 68 year old Italian man, was evacuated on Grand Cayman Island after having two heart attacks. The ship returned to Fort Lauderdale to drop some passengers off and pick more up. Destination: Venice. It was to be a grand affair with stops in Antigua, Puerto Rico, Malaga, Spain, the Canary Islands and Marseille. "We had planned a bucket list trip 30 night cruise and 30 around Europe, as my husband had spent 40 nights in the hospital back in October and November," Mrs. Nevis, who was on the ship with her 80 year old husband, said in an email. Kelly D. Edge, 60, a former HGTV decorator who lives in Miami, booked the cruise at the last minute with her husband, Woody Edge, 65. Rates on the Costa Cruises itinerary were already so appealing starting at 350 a person for a windowless cabin that the couple booked a suite for 1,250 a person. After the epidemic, Ms. Edge wanted her money back, but the company wasn't giving refunds. She packed a roll of paper towels and disinfectant wipes. When they arrived for their sailing on March 5, Costa sent them an email saying that the United States wouldn't let the ship go to Italy, so their final destination would be Marseille, instead. They got a 500 shipboard credit. "So we committed and went on," Ms. Edge said. "So we felt manipulated from the beginning." The ship was only half full. By March 7, two days after the ship left Fort Lauderdale, a 68 year old Italian woman who had already gone to the ship's doctor for a headache returned to the doctor with "worsening respiratory conditions," a Costa spokeswoman, Rossella Carrara, said. (An earlier communique from the company said she had cold symptoms.) She was evacuated in Puerto Rico on March 8, while the more than 1,400 passengers, including 168 Italians and 233 Americans, spilled out to the streets of Old San Juan to enjoy a day of leisure. Her close contacts were isolated, Ms. Carrara, a company vice president and spokeswoman, stressed. The protocol was strict and the reaction swift, Costa Cruises said. "We underline that the patient had already been placed in isolation on board," the company said in a statement. The next day, Antigua refused the ship entry, and the man who had the heart attacks in the Cayman Islands and had stayed behind in the hospital there started to develop a dry cough, so the doctors there tested him for the coronavirus. By then, the Costa Luminosa's sailing had turned into a trans Atlantic cruise to nowhere, with Antigua and Spain turning the vessel away, while the employees in charge minimized the situation on board and gave passengers misleading information. The gym stayed open and the Ping Pong contests continued. On March 11, the cruise stopped group activities like lounge and pool parties. Ms. Edge, who had taken advantage of the cheap cruise, was feeling worried. "If we make it the next 6 days to Tenerife with no illness, my attitude will most likely change," she wrote in an email. "But now it feels scary. Real or imagined." On March 12, three days after the Cayman Islands patient's coronavirus test was taken, it came back positive for Covid 19. It is unclear if the cruise line was ever notified, The casino, piano bar, pool, karaoke and gym stayed open, passengers said. The bands kept playing. "The bar stools were cheek to cheek," Mrs. Nevis said. A day later, at about 9 p.m. on Friday, March 13 five days after the sick woman was evacuated during the ship's Puerto Rico stop the governor of Puerto Rico gave a news conference announcing that the woman had tested positive. So had her husband. The news swept through the ship as passengers read about it on social media and news reports. But Costa Cruises took no further significant action, though serving utensils were taken away from the buffet, passengers said. At 2:15 p.m. the following afternoon, the cruise company told The New York Times that it still had not received official word from local health authorities. "However, we are aware that unofficial information is circulating on the alleged positivity of the 68 years old lady of Italian nationality who has been hospitalized in Puerto Rico on March 8," the company said in an email. "I did show our waiter in the restaurant the tweet about the positive test, and it was definitely the first he'd heard about the results, so the crew is also kept in the dark as far as I can tell," said Morgan Battisti, a 51 year old retiree from Oregon who was on board. Asked about the Costa Luminosa on Saturday, Carnival's chief medical officer, Grant Tarling, said: "What ship?" The Costa Luminosa was being handled in Europe, he said. Passengers were not allowed to disembark in the Canary Islands that day. However, three sick passengers, two with respiratory problems and one with a fever, were evacuated. The remaining passengers took photos of the ambulances and the men in hazardous materials suits outside. Hours later that same night, even worse news came. The man who had the heart attacks in the Cayman Islands had died of the coronavirus. Late on March 15, the company instituted the established protocol for an outbreak on board. People were to have their temperatures taken every day, and all 1,421 passengers were isolated to their rooms. Food was delivered to the cabins. The crew started wearing masks and gloves, and eventually even gowns over their clothes. People with inside rooms were moved to cabins with balconies. "The organization of all of this, of course, required some time, as you can imagine," Ms. Carrara, the company spokeswoman, said. She stressed that the company had introduced "rigid preboarding screening," which included temperature checks for everyone and restrictions for people coming from hard hit areas. She did not answer questions about whether the ship had been notified about the Cayman Islands man's illness, or why the cruise line waited for official notification from health authorities before instituting stricter health protocols. "Every situation is unique, as you know, but there continues to be broad coordination, guidance and learning provided from medical and maritime at our sister brands and the corporation," she said. Many passengers disembarked in Marseille on Thursday and were put on buses, with little information about how they were getting home. It is unclear whether they will be required to quarantine, and where. In exchange for the interruptions on the cruise, they were offered a 50 credit to spend on board for every port they were turned away from, and a refund credit to use for another voyage within the year. At a news conference on Thursday, President Trump suggested that Carnival cruise ships might be put into service as hospitals. Reporting was contributed by Aurelien Breeden in Paris; Ernesto Londono in Rio de Janeiro; and Elaine Glusac in Chicago. Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. And sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to receive expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
IN 1984 the year Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook creator, was born Michael S. Dell started a tech company in his dorm room, dropped out of college and changed the world. By making personal computers that were powerful, reliable and inexpensive, and by selling directly to buyers who customized their PC features, Mr. Dell revolutionized his industry. "The original PC industry was long on people with great technical ideas but short on people who were able to turn those ideas into opportunities into products that people really wanted," said Timothy Bresnahan, a Stanford economist. Along with Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, as well as Scott Cook of Intuit, Mr. Dell was one of those few great innovators, he said. "These people are very rare." Mr. Dell's early achievements were formidable, but unless his latest effort to turn around his company is successful, the Dell legacy today is very much in doubt. Last week, along with Silver Lake Partners, a private equity firm, he made a 24.4 billion buyout offer for his company an apparent bet that, without the scrutiny of public shareholders, he can get Dell back on track. Dell, the company, has been losing ground for years as the industry it once dominated has undergone upheavals that its founder failed to foresee. "The very nature of technology is that it changes a lot," said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein. "And Michael has conceded publicly that he has missed some big changes he failed to foresee smartphones or tablets and both of these shifts have been highly detrimental to the PC world." He has lagged in a crucial area of corporate strategy as well, said Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee in San Francisco. While Mr. Dell has always been attuned to the needs of corporate clients, he is 20 years behind I.B.M. in embracing a strategic shift to enterprise software and services, Mr. Wu said: "That's a higher margin business that Dell would like to go after, but I.B.M. and others have got tremendous leads. It will be very difficult for him to catch up." If Dell shareholders accept an offer price of 13.65 a share, Mr. Dell, who is contributing his stake of more than 14 percent in the company plus hundreds of millions more, would end up with more than 50 percent of the new company's equity, Mr. Sacconaghi estimated. Mr. Dell, who declined to comment for this article, would control the company without being subject to the day to day pressures of the stock market, which has pummeled Dell shares because its earnings have weakened. While Dell reports that 50 percent of its revenue is directly related to PCs, Mr. Wu says the figure is 70 to 80 percent when indirect revenue, like that for computer monitors, printers and services, is included. "The company has made big investments in other areas, but it's still mainly a PC company," he said. Lenovo, which makes the ThinkPad line of notebook computers formerly sold by I.B.M., "has been picking up corporate customers from Dell," Mr. Wu said. THEN there is a deeper issue: the entire PC industry is stagnant at best. Worldwide PC shipments declined 4.9 percent in the fourth quarter, versus the year earlier period, according to Gartner, a market research firm. Consumer preferences are shifting. With the ubiquity of smartphones and tablets segments where Dell is absent or very weak consumers aren't replacing PCs as often. "We don't expect people to abandon PCs, but they won't rely on them as much in the future," said Mikako Kitagawa, a Gartner analyst. Dell's share of this no growth market has been shrinking, to 10.2 percent worldwide in the fourth quarter of 2012, from 12.2 percent the previous year, Gartner said. Facing such headwinds, Mr. Sacconaghi said, Dell hopes to "hold PC profits flat or, worst case, down 5 percent a year, while they grow the rest of the business to more than offset that." But the market is skeptical. Dell's shares fell 30 percent in the 12 months before Jan. 14, when reports of an imminent buyout appeared. The leveraged buyout will layer 15 billion of new debt on the company. Microsoft, with which Dell has had close ties, is providing 2 billion. Because interest rates are extraordinarily low, servicing all that debt should be manageable, assuming that Dell maintains its current cash flow, Mr. Sacconaghi said. It's not clear how much the debt load will constrain Dell's investments in research and development. Josh Lerner, a Harvard Business School professor, said a study for which he was a co author found that after leveraged buyouts, most companies maintained their ability to innovate, largely by focusing research in "their core competencies." In other words, he said, "Dell might be able to prosper after a buyout; it would depend on how Michael Dell manages the company." Is the price being offered for the company fair? It's often unwise to bet against company insiders, especially founders like Mr. Dell, who may be presumed to know their companies' value better than outside investors. Consider John W. Kluge, who took Metromedia private in 1984 in a 1.1 billion leveraged buyout. Mr. Kluge, Metromedia's founder, promptly liquidated it, selling television stations (to Rupert Murdoch) and sundry assets like the Harlem Globetrotters and the Ice Capades. In the end, Mr. Kluge tripled his take to the chagrin of many former shareholders. Mr. Kluge, who died in 2010, wasn't interested in preserving his company or revolutionizing an industry, however. He merely wanted to make money. "When we buy an asset, we look at it as a return on the investment," he said in 1980. For Mr. Dell, whose name is on the door, other factors may be in play. "Another chapter is still to be written," Mr. Bresnahan said. Money will be part of it. So will the Dell legacy.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
As a boy growing up in Massachusetts, Luke Dittrich revered his grandfather, a brain surgeon whose home was full of exotic instruments. Later, he learned that he was not only a prominent doctor but had played a significant role in modern medical history. In 1953, at Hartford Hospital, Dr. William Scoville had removed two slivers of tissue from the brain of a 27 year old man with severe epilepsy. The operation relieved his seizures but left the patient Henry Molaison, a motor repairman unable to form new memories. Known as H. M. to protect his privacy, Mr. Molaison went on to become the most famous patient in the history of neuroscience, participating in hundreds of experiments that have helped researchers understand how the brain registers and stores new experiences. By the time Mr. Dittrich was out of college and after a year and a half in Egypt, teaching English he had become fascinated with H. M., brain science and his grandfather's work. He set out to write a book about the famous case but discovered something unexpected along the way. His grandfather was one of a cadre of top surgeons who had performed lobotomies and other "psycho surgeries" on thousands of people with mental problems. This was not a story about a single operation that went wrong; it was far larger. The resulting book "Patient H. M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets," to be published Tuesday describes a dark era of American medicine through a historical, and deeply personal, lens. Why should scientists and the public know this particular story in more detail? The textbook story of Patient H. M. the story I grew up with presents the operation my grandfather performed on Henry as a sort of one off mistake. It was not. Instead, it was the culmination of a long period of human experimentation that my grandfather and other leading doctors and researchers had been conducting in hospitals and asylums around the country. In my grandfather's case, his passion for tinkering with the human brain was driven in part by a very private goal: He was desperate to find a surgical cure for mental illness, because his wife, my grandmother, was mentally ill. Taking a hard look at the past can help provide a clear eyed view of the present. It's easy to condemn what we were doing even 10 years ago, let alone 60, but even terrible things once made perfect sense. I do wonder what we're doing today that we'll regret tomorrow. What was the most unsettling thing you learned about medicine of that era? The lobotomy is usually remembered as a brutal treatment for mental illness that was ultimately abandoned. It was certainly that, but what's been ignored is that many of the leading doctors and scientists of the era including my grandfather, who taught at Yale and was the director of neurosurgery at Hartford Hospital viewed the lobotomy as having not just therapeutic potential, but also great experimental utility. The rise of psychosurgery gave doctors and researchers license to perform on human beings the same sorts of brain cutting experiments once limited to chimpanzees. As one lobotomist put it, "Man is certainly no poorer as an experimental animal merely because he can talk." That attitude had a terrible human cost, and one of the people who paid the price was Patient H. M. Modern brain science has dark roots. H. M.'s story has been exhaustively documented in the medical literature. Why tell it again? Much of our understanding of how the brain works has come through studies of people whose brains didn't work. Henry is the prime example. His loss was our gain. For most of his life, though, Henry was just a pair of initials floating in front of a constellation of clinical and experimental data. His story was tightly controlled by the researchers who'd built their careers on him and who had an interest in presenting his story in a particular way. I believe Henry's story is important not only because of what he contributed to our understanding of memory, but also because of what his case can teach us about our sometimes ruthless pursuit of knowledge. Given the history of abuses you document, by psychiatrists, medical administrators and surgeons, are there protections you would add? One of the fascinating things about the story of Patient H. M. is that it straddles so many different eras in the history of medicine and brain science. When my grandfather operated on Henry, modern principles of informed consent didn't exist. Today, there are relatively good protections in place for human research subjects. That said, the best regulations on paper mean nothing without oversight and enforcement. Although the troubling ethical questions surrounding the case of Patient H. M. began six decades ago, in the operating room, they continued to crop up for the rest of Henry's life, and even after his death.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
What if a single injection could lower blood levels of cholesterol and triglycerides for a lifetime? In the first gene editing experiment of its kind, scientists have disabled two genes in monkeys that raise the risk for heart disease. Humans carry the genes as well, and the experiment has raised hopes that a leading killer may one day be tamed. "This could be the cure for heart disease," said Dr. Michael Davidson, director of the Lipid Clinic at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, who was not involved in the research. But it will be years before human trials can begin, and gene editing technology so far has a mixed tracked record. It is much too early to know whether the strategy will be safe and effective in humans; even the monkeys must be monitored for side effects or other treatment failures for some time to come. The results were presented on Saturday at the annual meeting of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, this year held virtually with about 3,700 attendees around the world. The scientists are writing up their findings, which have not yet been peer reviewed or published. The researchers set out to block two genes: PCSK9, which helps regulate levels of LDL cholesterol; and ANGPTL3, part of the system regulating triglyceride, a type of blood fat. Both genes are active in the liver, which is where cholesterol and triglycerides are produced. People who inherit mutations that destroyed the genes' function do not get heart disease. People with increased blood levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol have dramatically greater risks of heart disease, heart attacks and strokes, the leading causes of death in most of the developed world. Drug companies already have developed and are marketing two so called PCSK9 inhibitors that markedly lower LDL cholesterol, but they are expensive and must be injected every few weeks. Researchers at Verve Therapeutics, led by Dr. Sekar Kathiresan, the chief executive, decided to edit the genes instead. The medicine they developed consists of two pieces of RNA a gene editor and a tiny guide that directs the editor to a single sequence of 23 letters of human DNA among the genome's 3.25 billion so called base pairs. The RNA is shrouded in tiny lipid spheres to protect the medicine from being instantly degraded in the blood. The lipid spheres travel directly to the liver where they are ingested by liver cells. The contents of the spheres are released, and once the editor lands on its target, it changes a single letter of the sequence to another like a pencil erasing one letter and writing in another. Not only did the system work in 13 monkeys, the researchers reported, but it appeared that every liver cell was edited. After gene editing, the monkeys' LDL levels dropped by 59 percent within two weeks. The ANGPTL3 gene editing led to a 64 percent decline in triglyceride levels. One danger of gene editing is the process may result in modification of DNA that scientists are not expecting. "You will never be able to have no off target effects," warned Dr. Deepak Srivastava, president of the Gladstone Institutes in San Francisco. In treating a condition as common as heart disease, he added, even an uncommon side effect can mean many patients are affected. So far, however, the researchers say that they have not seen any inadvertent editing of other genes. Another question is how long the effect on cholesterol and triglyceride levels will last, Dr. Davidson said. "We hope it will be one and done, but we have to validate that with clinical trials," he said. Jennifer Doudna, a biochemist of the University of California, Berkeley, and a discoverer of Crispr, the revolutionary gene editing system, said: "In principle, Verve's approach could be better because it's a one time treatment." But it is much too soon to say if it will be safe and long lasting, she added. If the strategy does work in humans, its greatest impact may be in poorer countries that cannot afford expensive injections for people at high risk of heart disease, said Dr. Daniel Rader, chairman of the department of genetics at the University of Pennsylvania and a member of Verve's scientific advisory board. Dr. Kathiresan, of Verve, noted that half of all first heart attacks end in sudden death, making it imperative to protect those at high risk. Dr. Kathiresan began the research at the Massachusetts General Hospital and the Broad Institute, where he and his colleagues found a collection of genes that increase risk of heart attack at a relatively young age, as well as eight genes that, when mutated, decrease risk. Those protective genes, he reasoned, could be targets for gene editing if there were a way to alter them in people. Gene editing is only now succeeding, and so far its successes have been in rare diseases. Other investigators and companies have tried editing genes in mice to prevent heart disease, with some success, but primates are a much more difficult challenge. Dr. Kathiresan said that to his knowledge, his study is the first to use the pencil and eraser type gene editing in primates for a very common disease. Verve licensed the technology, called base editing, from Beam Therapeutics. If all goes well, Dr. Kathiresan hopes in a few years to begin treating people who have had heart attacks and still have perilously high cholesterol. For them, the risk of another heart attack is so high that the possible benefit may far outweigh the risks of the treatment. Heart disease generally occurs only after decades of high cholesterol levels, Dr. Davidson noted. By age 50, people most likely to have a heart attack already have a significant accumulation of plaque in their arteries. But if the PCSK9 gene could be knocked out in 20 year olds, he said, "there would be no heart disease in their future."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
You've been herding cattle for much of the decade. What lured you back to television? I did "Smart People" with S.J. in 2008 and just enjoyed her humor and her intelligence, and as a professional I thought she was almost peerless. And she called me, I guess it will be three years ago in January, and said: "Hey, would you read this? I'd really like you to do it with me." What's it like working with her? She's a wonderfully kind person, and you're like, "This is somebody that I'd like to be in business with." I don't know what S.J. would be doing if she wasn't where she is at the table of life. I think she'd be an astronaut or running a multinational corporation or a champion Nascar driver. This season, Robert and Frances are moving on, which I find bittersweet. Well, don't start dressing that carriage just yet. We never know what can happen in the post mortem of that divorce. Last year, wow, we really did explore the darkness of a family being torn apart, and there's still some of that conflict here and there. But now it's principally about parenting, and getting that right with a 17 and a 13 year old. And you acquire a new love, played by Becki Newton. I was concerned at first about that because Becki and I are, like, 18 years apart. But her character has a grown daughter, and we have our children, and you can make that connection emotionally after a certain age. Becki and I talked about it a good bit, and she's like, "You know, it doesn't seem awkward to me." And I was like, "All right, I'll roll with it." You might have to shave that mustache. It's a character unto itself. I had grown it right before we did the pilot for a role in "Daddy's Home," and Will Ferrell told me, "You look like a Civil War general." I thought that's a great look for me right now. And the mustache just turned into this cottage industry.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
"If you're trying to break up with me, just man up and do it." In a play about an ordinary couple, that might be no more than a mild crack. But in "Plot Points in Our Sexual Development," which opened on Monday at the Claire Tow Theater, it's a game changer. Cecily, the character who angrily flings the line, is a cisgender lesbian. Theo, at whom she flings it, is a self described "genderqueer trans person who is not a woman and is not a man, but is kind of a man, who loves lesbian jokes." Forty minutes into an hourlong work that has, until then, seemed restrained and respectful to the point of tediousness, "man up" comes off as intensely provocative, both on the part of Cecily and on the part of the playwright, Miranda Rose Hall. It's a phrase that acknowledges the complications of gender and sexuality as they are ever more finely sliced today but it's also a challenge to live beyond abstractions. The play, Ms. Hall's first professional production, faces a similar challenge. As directed by Margot Bordelon for LCT3, it seems for most of its length to keep present tense emotion at bay, as if in some kind of exercise or ritual. As the lights rise on the barest of stages just two chairs, a door and a herringbone parquet Cecily (Marianne Rendon) and Theo (Jax Jackson) are seated well apart from each other, facing straight ahead.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Critics hate "The Greatest Showman"; moviegoers love it. The split caught professional film journalists like myself by surprise when the musical, which opened in December to tepid business, became a box office smash and the soundtrack topped the charts in the weeks since. But I didn't get it: What was so great about "The Greatest Showman"? Nearly 1,200 readers took to nytimes.com, Facebook and Twitter to explain what they loved about the movie. Two emailed directly with passionate defenses. A colleague stopped me to share his surprise at truly enjoying it. The film's star, Hugh Jackman, even tweeted about my question, setting off another round of fans who emphatically told me how they felt. Trying to be less wrong, I decided to go see the movie again, this time keeping in mind your reasons. Strikingly, a sizable number of you have seen "The Greatest Showman" two, three and, in one case, 20 times. Your explanations reflected that devotion, which was effusive and heartfelt, whether speaking about the music, Hugh Jackman's performance or the experience of watching it with loved ones. A lot of you cited the current political moment but to make different points: Some of you found "Showman" an escape from the news, while others viewed the film's messages as a response to the headlines. Here's a small taste of the answers, edited for clarity and length because you had a lot to say. At some point everyone feels like an outsider. Being adopted I've heard over and over again that I'm "not Latina enough" or "not Jewish enough." But this is me. This movie emphasizes self love. It has a wonderful message. A tribute to humanity. I saw it three times and I cannot wait until it comes out so I can buy it. REBECCA L. ALEXANDER Every song is singable and every song has a positive message. Add to that the element that many of the characters are outcasts and freaks of their day. This is a film for this moment in time where issues of equality are no longer discussed on the fringes but are being confronted head on. SCOTT BERG The characters in the movie were society's outcasts and were given a place where they belonged and were celebrated. It's an important message to convey, especially now. BETH JANZEN BEZOOYEN It's the message. Dream. Live. Find your tribe. Don't be afraid to blunder. Rise up. Fall in love. Show the world who you are. How can you not understand why it's so good? NESSA FERRELL Seeing this movie was the release I needed to rid my mind of the social and political garbage our country is stewing in. I've never been a fan of musicals. However, I patiently sat through the film and it was worth every minute. As for critics, who the hell knows. Like many a movie, they were wrong on this one. RONDA HOOPER Many people today are waking up each morning wondering, "What the heck is going to happen today?" They are angry, sad, frustrated and feeling helpless when they watch the news. "The Greatest Showman" is 105 minutes of pure heart stopping, toe tapping entertainment. It allows us to escape. BARBARA ISHAM I am a legal aid attorney. A lot of my cases involve child abuse it breaks my heart to see these children. A particularly horrible case came my way yesterday. During my commute, I put on "The Greatest Showman" soundtrack. And I felt better. I contemplated going to see the movie again (I have seen in 6.3 times once I was taking my kids to another movie and kept sneaking into "Greatest Showman"). There is an indelible magical component of "Greatest Showman" that makes you feel like hope is out there, that good people are out there, and that we can have joy and happiness even when we make mistakes. J. WATERS I'm a 44 year old male high school English teacher, and I have seen "The Greatest Showman" eight times with my wife. First, it's about a circus and circuses have always offered the masses a much needed break from reality. There is also a happy ending for everyone. Yes, it's hokey, but you leave the theater with a light heart and a smile on your face. CHRIS BRYANT Everyone Can Enjoy the Music Are you kidding me? The songs are golden. I cannot get enough of the soundtrack. And the movie was touching. The moment on the rooftop with his daughters was beautiful. I think many parents can relate to that feeling of wanting to give your kids a world of opportunities that were maybe unavailable to you in some way. HALEY KASPRZYK The music is uplifting and joyful in a way that I haven't heard in such a long time. The choreography, costuming and sets were beautiful to me. And, most important, the story of a man losing his way and coming home was something I needed in these difficult times. ASHLEY C. NICHOLS Everything. The songs, the lessons ... the fact that my children loved it. I hate paying for the movies and we've seen it twice. We sing "This Is Me" as a family when someone is feeling down. It's an amazing message and movie. STEPHANIE BASTEK This weekend will be my third time seeing the film. Is the film an accurate biopic about Barnum? No. Was Barnum as great a humanitarian as Hugh Jackman is in the film? Most likely not. But we're judging him by today's times instead of the times in which he lived. Instead, they gave us memorable songs to express what the characters were feeling and actors who can say much with little or no dialogue. ANGELA WEAVER The emotions between Carlyle Zac Efron and Anne Zendaya reminded me of how I felt when I first met my husband I didn't think you could bottle that but it turns out, through "Rewrite the Stars," you can. SARAH TAYLOR I tried to beg off seeing "The Greatest Showman," and I reluctantly went with my husband. The movie hit me hard I was emotionally hooked by the underdog story, the music, Hugh Jackman, the sheer joy of the performances, the way it made me feel for days afterwards. I kept humming the songs (seriously, humming the songs all day), streaming the music, watching the YouTube videos of the actors' practices. This was abnormal behavior for me, luckily my husband loved the movie, too. SUSAN MAYFIELD I have seen this movie 20 times. No joke. I wasn't expecting anything special when my friend begged me to join her. By the time it ended, I felt a gut punch of emotions a shot of pure joy straight to my soul in a time that I so desperately needed. ROBERT NOREIGA The people in the theater actually clapped at the end of this movie. It was almost like a theater experience. Love the music. KATHY SIBLE I'm answering your question because I want Hugh Jackman to be able to make more movies like this one. Hugh Jackman is, to me, the most underappreciated entertainer of this generation by Hollywood's elite and critics. His talent, humanity, charisma and masculine energy light up a stage and screen, and he pours his heart and soul into his performances. THERESA MAHFOOD The movie is what it's about. You watch it like you're at the circus. You don't care if it's "fake" or low brow. You let yourself enjoy the music, characters and choreography. And you, Stephanie Goodman, are playing right into it. You're the critic in the movie who didn't like the circus, but had to admit that "the people" did. KATY VAN SANT	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
When your on campus audience is more likely to look at the phone between classes than pick up a newspaper, what's a student publication to do? For a steadily increasing number of student led papers, the answer has been doing away with print. The Cornell Daily Sun, one of the country's leading student newspapers, announced on Monday that it would decrease its print production to three days a week from five, joining a growing list of college and professional newspapers forced to adapt to financial challenges and the changing habits of readers. In an email to alumni, Sun editors acknowledged that rocky finances contributed to the decision. The newspaper had operated at a loss for seven years and was dipping into its "rainy day" fund, the editors said. But on the newspaper's website, editors described the cutback as a chance to focus more on digital journalism.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Speaking truth to power has long been central to how Kanye West navigates his art and his business. He lambastes the executives who don't grant him full creative and financial freedom. He calls into question the empathy of a president on live television. He lays bare his emotions in ways that disrupt tidy narratives about celebrity comity. He is a lit match in search of a fuse, setting fires that people (largely) cheer for. But in the last couple of weeks, as Mr. West has begun his return to public life after a quiet year, the roles have switched: He is the power, and speaking truth to Kanye West has become the norm. This has manifested in many forms. T.I. recorded a song with him directly challenging Mr. West's embrace of President Trump, including wearing a Make America Great Again hat. The radio personality Ebro Darden pushed back forcefully against Mr. West's support of the black conservative pundit Candace Owens. On "TMZ Live," Van Lathan, one of TMZ's producers, berated Mr. West full throatedly for his recent behavior, including his statement on the show that slavery was "a choice." The seeds of this moment are traceable to the final months of 2016, the last time Mr. West was so public, and one of the most troubled periods of his life. Within a period of weeks, his wife was robbed, his tour was canceled, and he was hospitalized. On "TMZ," he said that during those months, he developed an addiction to prescription opioids. That year concluded with his Trump Tower meeting with the President elect, a vexing public position for someone who'd always agitated on behalf of the dispossessed. Kanye West Likened Slavery to a Choice. History Says Otherwise. In perhaps his most shocking statement to date, the rap superstar Kanye West said 400 years of slavery sounded "like a choice." But history tells a different story. "There is Kanye West." "I don't know if he wanted this type of attention." "He's at the center of a hashtag." Kanye West made what might have been his most controversial statement to date during an interview with TMZ. "When you hear about slavery for 400 years for 400 years? That sounds like a choice." But historians reject this argument. Here's why. Kanye's idea is rooted in misconceptions about slaves being complacent. It also ignores the history of slave resistance. "The enslaved Africans resisted persistently in a number of different ways. Whether not working as hard as they could to something as widespread as a slave revolt. And so the biggest misunderstanding of slavery is this dominant idea, during slavery and after slavery, of the docile enslaved African." And while he has tried to portray his latest comment as revolutionary free thought "Do you feel that I'm being free and I'm thinking free?" far from being new or revolutionary, the idea that slaves were complicit in keeping up with slavery is age old. Prof. Kendi: "The ideas that he is sharing are actually quite old. There was a very prominent post slavery theory that black people were not resisting enslavement because they recognized that enslavement was better for them. That really lasted, even among scholars who wrote about slavery, well into the 1940s and 1950s." By repeating the narrative that enslaved people were docile Kanye works to blame the oppressed for what happened to them. It puts all the responsibility on the individual and ignores systemic inequality. Today, the conservative ideology of individualism and "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" follows a similar pattern. "People want to call it systemic racism. No!" "It wasn't what they were doing to me, it's what I wasn't doing." "You do not have to sit around and wait for somebody else to do things for you." Prof. Kendi: "According to this body of thought racial disparities exist and persist because black people haven't taken personal responsibility for their lives, because there's something wrong with them, because they're enslaved to the welfare state, and they refuse to resist in the way they refuse to resist to the slaveholder." This thinking allows Kanye to claim his own success. But by using his platform to share historically inaccurate information, he makes people believe that things in the past would have played out differently had they been there. It glosses over the real violence and suffering of slavery, and it muddles accountability. In perhaps his most shocking statement to date, the rap superstar Kanye West said 400 years of slavery sounded "like a choice." But history tells a different story. Chad Batka for The New York Times But in Mr. Trump, Mr. West recognizes himself: a natural disrupter; a person so secure in his gifts that he doesn't trouble himself with facts (or much believe in them); someone who sees generating passionate dissent as a sign of success, not as an indicator of a shaky premise. "I can tell you that when he was running, it's like I felt something," Mr. West told Charlamagne Tha God in an interview posted Tuesday. "The fact that he won proves something. It proves that anything is possible in America." But that kinship mistakes cynicism for earnestness, volume for accuracy, popularity for morality. Not all disruption is the same. In two interviews released Tuesday, with Charlamagne and "TMZ," Mr. West emphasized the importance of "free thought" and "free love," trying to contextualize his acceptance of Mr. Trump as part of a broader philosophy. But what really emerged throughout the day were other, more vulnerable notions: "unsettled pain" and "HSP," which stands for highly sensitive person, a term he returned to several times with Charlamagne. Mr. West was defiant in defending his positions, but he also presented as someone fragile and in need of protection. The interviews offered competing versions of lucidity. The conversation with Charlamagne, filmed two weeks ago, was an extended sit down that showed Mr. West at his most reflective. He began by addressing the difficulties of 2016, including how his music failed to thrive on the radio. He spoke about feeling wounded by two elder figures, Jay Z and Barack Obama, who he said had let him down. The Charlamagne interview was visually tempered, filmed largely in a white room with a later part filmed out in nature, as the sun was setting, draping the pair in darkness. The overall effect was calm, earthen, soothing. By contrast, the "TMZ" appearance was jolting, with Mr. West unconcerned with camera angles, directing his conversation in multiple directions smearing his reality atop the highly structured show's foundation. In a way, it served as evidence of his argument his free thought too liquid for the rigidity of the show. It was a kind of thrilling fourth wall breaking, the physical manifestation of Mr. West's trying to operate in an alternate reality of his making. Time and again, he referred to our society, our world, as a "simulation." Mr. Lathan pushed back vehemently: "The life that I live is as a real person, an actual person," he said. Mr. West contended that the artist's responsibility is only to himself, not to any greater ideology or other people. One of the most dispiriting moments of his "TMZ" appearance came as Ms. Owens was being given room to espouse her controversial views on police violence and the Black Lives Matter movement. Mr. West sat next to her, head down, fiddling with his phone, seemingly uninterested in the minutiae. (He woke up when Ms. Owens insulted Chrissy Teigen, John Legend's wife and a close friend, interrupting with, "I appreciate your free thought, but ...") It showed him as a vessel, not an agent, and also less interested when not the center of attention. This isn't free thought so much a disengagement from thought. (Mr. West is planning to release an album in June, he has said perhaps it is titled "Gotta Hear Both Sides.") This passivity parallels what's been happening on his Twitter feed, where he has been posting elementary misreadings of American political history, screengrabbing text conversations that rebut the inaccuracies. Watching this play out in real time recalled reports about the early days of the Trump presidency, when competing factions would sneak provocative articles onto his desk in hopes of swaying his opinion and triggering his pugilist instincts. Seeing Mr. West treated like a pinball, or a carrier pigeon, is uncomfortable. At one point during the "TMZ" conversation, when he was speaking about the importance of class (as opposed to race), Ms. Owens watched him and smiled, like a teacher enamored of a protege. Mr. West's recent commentary, from the absurd notions about slavery to what feels like parroting other people's talking points ("Obama was the opioid to our pain he pacified us"), has left fans to parse what difference if any there is between aligning with hateful ideology and merely speaking without much forethought (or sometimes post thought). In Mr. West's telling, these provocations demonstrate a willingness to think and say something that others wouldn't dare. As ever, he finds glee in believing he knows, and can say, a thing no one else does. But for Mr. West, that untethered glee is jumbled up with untethered hurt. Earlier on Tuesday, he posted on Twitter, "We need to have open discussions and ideas on unsettled pain." Mr. West has always been an artist who deals with pain in primal fashion. It's not a coincidence that, in the middle of his "TMZ" performance, he announced, "This is the most confident I've been since my mom passed." (Donda West died in 2007, a day after undergoing multiple plastic surgery procedures. On Twitter, Mr. West announced that his forthcoming album cover would be a photo of the surgeon who performed those surgeries.) Is this the manifestation of love or something more sinister? Only Mr. West knows. Though his methods may undo him, he is striving to bring people into conversation on terms of his own comfort. At the end of Tuesday, he posted a photo on Twitter of several people seated around a table with the caption "energy meeting. Beings from all different backgrounds." And he showed Charlamagne a 300 acre plot of land he bought with plans to build a community on it, a place where another reality might supplant the one he's currently railing against. A place where he is the truth and also the power. A place into which he might disappear, by choice or otherwise.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Mercedes Benz is recalling a number of 2015 C Class sedans worldwide including about 10,000 in the United States because the steering might fail, the automaker said. The C Class is all new for the 2015 model year. The steering coupling interlock may not have been put in the locked position at an assembly plant, Donna Boland, a spokeswoman for Mercedes in the United States, said by telephone. She said the problem was noticed on models sold in Europe, which are assembled at a different plant than those sold in the United States. American market Benzes are built at the automaker's plant in Tuscaloosa, Ala. No problems have been found yet on C Class sedans in the United States, but Mercedes decided on a worldwide recall, Ms. Boland said, adding that the automaker could not immediately say how many vehicles were being recalled around the globe. The automaker said it was not aware of any injuries related to the problem. Earlier this year, Mercedes recalled about 253,000 C Class sedans from the 2008 11 model years for a wiring problem in the taillights that could lead to a fire. The action came after an investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which had been prompted by complaints from owners.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Most New Yorkers hunting for an apartment to renovate put square footage at the top of their wish lists. Kurt Arnold and Aya Maceda prioritized something else. "Before how big it was, or anything else, our focus was that we wanted an apartment with a good quality of light," said Ms. Maceda, 42, a founder of the architecture firm ALAO. The couple, who were searching for a home to buy in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, in 2015, held fast to their desire for natural light, despite a number of competing demands: Their son, Kosi, now 10, needed more space, and they planned to expand their family further (they soon added a daughter, Lulu, now 4). They needed still more room for occasional overnight guests. "All Kurt and I saw were the large windows when we walked in," Ms. Maceda said. "We were in the canopy of the trees. Really beautiful afternoon light was coming in, and there were shadows from the branches on the walls." Her husband hesitated for a moment. "He nervously asked me, 'Can you make it work?'" Ms. Maceda said. "I said, 'We can make anything work.'" They bought the apartment that September for 712,000 and moved in without changing much, as Ms. Maceda began working on plans for a renovation that would make the most of every square inch. Not only did everyone need a place to sleep, but the couple knew they would have to contend with a deluge of toys, art supplies and professional gear. Mr. Arnold, 42, is a photographer, and had a closet full of equipment, and he and Ms. Maceda planned to work from home sometimes. "The design of the home had to address the energy of a creative household, while balancing that with our desire to have a simple, peaceful home," Ms. Maceda said. She was born in the Philippines and Mr. Arnold is from Grenada, and they wanted the apartment to have a tropical, modern feeling. "There's a Filipino word, maaliwalas," she said, that guided their thinking about the project. "It describes a generous space open, bright with a good flow of light and air." Unwilling to rent a second home to live in while the apartment was being renovated, they planned a phased approach to transforming their home, aiming to have the messiest work completed while they were away on family trips. The first phase, in 2016, focused on the lower floor, where they added a two level nook with a bed on the bottom and a play area on top, along with a built in ladder, just inside the front door. "I was pregnant, and my mom needed a place to sleep, because she was going to help us in the first months," Ms. Maceda said. At the same time, they built a bank of closets to house Mr. Arnold's photography equipment and various other things; renovated the kitchen and a small powder room; and tucked a desk with two workstations under the stairs. During the second big phase, completed in 2018, they overhauled the upper floor, adding an 80 square foot primary sleeping space over what had been part of the double height living room (an interior window and a new skylight help it feel sunny, though it has no exterior window). They also transformed the old sleeping loft into a bedroom with bunk beds for their children and a play area with a curtain that can be drawn to close it off. Of course, it's not a renovation project if there aren't delays. After a trip to Grenada during Phase 2, the family returned to find their apartment uninhabitable. Fortunately, "our neighbor was away," Ms. Maceda said, "so we stayed across the hall." The last phase, which was completed in December 2019 while they were in the Philippines, included renovating the full bathroom and walk in closet on the second floor. Completing the updates in phases allowed them to spread the cost slightly less than 100,000 in total over a few years, Ms. Maceda said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
More than a year after Apple battled the F.B.I. over the unlocking of an iPhone, a new skirmish may be brewing between the authorities and the company over privacy and strong encryption on its devices. Here is the situation Devin P. Kelley, who shot 26 people to death in a church in Sutherland Springs, Tex., on Sunday, owned an iPhone. That phone may contain evidence that could help law enforcement officials, but the authorities have not unlocked the device to peruse its contents. In a news conference on Tuesday, the F.B.I. said that it had not been able to get into the device owned by the gunman, but it did not specify the type of phone or the operating system. Apple said that it was "shocked and saddened" by the shooting and that it worked with law enforcement every day. "We offer training to thousands of agents so they understand our devices and how they can quickly request information from Apple," the company said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
In June, Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas made a speech opposing statehood for the District of Columbia, comparing its residents unfavorably with the people of Wyoming, who while fewer in number were in the senator's view more deserving of a star on the flag. Wyoming, he said, is a "well rounded working class state," while Washington is a city full of "bureaucrats and other white collar professionals." My first thought was that Cotton must not have read the short stories of Edward P. Jones. There are 28 of them, evenly divided between "Lost in the City" (1992) and "All Aunt Hagar's Children" (2006) and all set mostly within the boundaries of the nation's capital. They are populated by hard working people, some of them employed by agencies of the federal government, many more striving to gain a foothold in the middle class while toiling as chauffeurs, shopkeepers, retail workers and bus drivers. A few are doctors, lawyers and soldiers. There are some criminals and layabouts in the mix too, but even Wyoming has its share of those. A population granted such exquisitely detailed literary representation might also deserve the political kind. This may be the place to note that nearly all of Jones's Washingtonians, like roughly half of their real life counterparts, are Black. I know that it's silly to imagine that a hard ideological position could be dissolved by fiction, and I should point out that statehood doesn't figure explicitly among the concerns voiced by Jones's characters, who are of course entirely imaginary. Although nobody who has read these books will quite believe that they aren't real. The city they live in very much is. "All the places that I write about are real," Jones said in an interview with Hilton Als in 2013. Every story abounds in specific, knowable locations blocks, intersections, street addresses, all encrypted in the abstract alphabetical mathematical geographical code of Washington's neighborhoods: the barbershop "on the corner of 3rd and L Streets, Northwest"; "Georgia had always considered the corners of 5th and M as her lucky corners"; "Miss Jenny had come out of Hahn's shoe store, crossed New York Avenue and was going up 7th Street"; the building at 1708 10th Street, "around the corner from the fire station on R Street." That last address, the home of a domestic worker named Roxanne Stapleton who is suddenly and mysteriously struck blind, was one of Jones's childhood homes. "I never knew anybody that happened to," Jones told Als. "But I had to put her someplace to live, so I might as well put her in our 10th Street apartment, in a building that I knew." The cumulative effect of this kind of knowledge, this abundance of verifiable local information, is to endow the stories with a distinctive credibility. If Jones tells you someone found a parking space "on S Street, between 10th and 11th," you believe him. And this trust extends beyond geography into matters of history, genealogy and family life. The word "realism" isn't quite adequate, and in any case not everything that happens in Jones's Washington can be called realistic. The Devil, having swum across the Anacostia River, appears in a Safeway supermarket to tempt and bamboozle a young mother who secretly lusts after a man who isn't her husband. Another woman experiences a series of "miracles" an unsettling euphemism for horrifying mishaps in which she is the only survivor. Superstition and formal religion shape the thinking of many characters, especially those old enough to remember the Southern places where they lived before the capital summoned them. But "magical realism," a worn out phrase in any case, doesn't capture what Jones is doing in these stories from "All Aunt Hagar's Children," or in the sections of his novel "The Known World" (2003) that depart from a narrow set of assumptions about what might happen and why. While he was making his way as a writer, Jones, who was born in Washington in 1950, spent time working at Science magazine and then at a journal called Tax Notes, and there is a patient, empirical precision in his writing that might be said to fit in with the missions of those publications. His prose, even when it evokes natural mysteries and complex emotions, is always exacting in its observation and meticulous in its accounting. The world he invites us to know is a scrupulously documented, carefully quantified world. The attentive reader will notice the profusion of numbers: ages calculated to the month, times something has happened noted as if in a ledger, significant events measured mathematically. In the second paragraph of "Old Boys, Old Girls," we learn that "seven months after he stabbed the second man a 22 year old with prematurely gray hair who had ventured out of Southeast for only the sixth time in his life Caesar was tried for murder in the second degree." At the end of the story "Common Law," we are told that Georgia, a woman who has been trapped in an abusive relationship, is "one and a half years from marrying Alvin Deloach," "more than eight years from marrying Vaughn Anderson," "just about 30 years from seeing her first grandchild come into the world" and "more than 40 and a half years from death." Sometimes the numbers are from literal receipts bills of sale for goods and services, and in "The Known World," which takes place mostly in Virginia in the decade before the Civil War, for human beings. Jones also offers receipts in a more recent, metaphorical sense as evidence of something that somebody might have reason to doubt, as proof against equivocation, indifference and outright denial. As for the gospel singers, doctors, nurses and clerks which is also to say the grandparents, husbands, ex lovers, orphans and spinsters who populate these places, they hardly need to spell out the facts of American life to themselves or one another. Toni Morrison often said that her goal as a writer was never to solicit or pander to "the white gaze," in other words to cast off the burden assumed by many earlier Black writers of explaining and instructing white readers in matters of race. Jones, like many African American writers who arrived in Morrison's wake, renders his world with a similar kind of confidence. This isn't a matter of exclusion or separatism a book can be opened by anybody, and open any mind but of fidelity to the truth of experience. So it might go without saying though nothing really does that a white reader enters Jones's world from a different angle. What comes as news to me may strike you as a gentle reminder of something you always knew. What I feel as revelation you might experience as recognition. Places that seem strange to my eyes are no doubt home in someone else's. And realities that white people have the privilege of ignoring, euphemizing or attempting to justify are part of the infrastructure of Black existence. Children in Jones's stories are told that movie theaters and other amusements are off limits to them. Neighborhoods are broken up for redevelopment, discovered by gentrifying "pioneers," allowed to fall into decay. The police show up now and then useless, brutal, occasionally helpful. The violence and cruelty of the Jim Crow South, and of slavery before that, is an aspect of shared memory, as is the sweetness of life in a region about which someone says, "It's the worst mama in the world and it's the best mama in the world." An ordinary word that Jones uses frequently enough to make it feel freighted with special meaning is "people." It can refer to kin and community, but also to powerful collective entities that periodically assert their will and influence. "White people," of course, and "the world the white people had made for themselves," but also specialized departments within that world. "The Social Security people." "The city government people." "The American military people in Okinawa." There is, I think, a quiet point being made by this locution, which is that however much we may think about power and racism as systemic or structural phenomena, they are never truly impersonal. Every injustice, like every kindness, is carried out by human beings, even if they are unaware of the effects of or reasons for what they do. Sometimes "the government people" and others are benevolent, sometimes mean (generally they are less brutal than their equivalents in Louisiana or Arkansas), but their presence is always at once intimate and alien, their rules and attitudes arbitrary and often inscrutable. In "Marie," the final story in "Lost in the City," Marie Delaveaux Wilson, a widow living in an apartment at 12th and M, finds herself ensnared in a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare, summoned by "the federal government people" to a meeting with a Social Security official who is never available to see her. "Given the nature of life particularly the questions asked by the Social Security people she always took more than they might ask for her birth certificate, her husband's death certificate, doctors' letters." Receipts for her existence. In the face of this indignity, Jones allows Marie a small gesture of rebellion: She slaps the face of an inconsiderate receptionist named Vernelle. But the story isn't primarily about oppression and defiance. It's more about the way certain dramatic moments occur in the flow of time and consciousness that defines who a person is. The episodes at the Social Security office (at 21st and M, Northwest) are threaded through other memories and encounters, including a series of interviews conducted by a Howard University student named George Carter as part of an oral history project. Marie is willing to share reminiscences of her arrival in D.C. (where her mother had thought "God and his people" must live), and the reader samples some excerpts, but in the end she stashes the tapes in a drawer, "away from the things she needed to get her hands on regularly," and resolves never to listen again. Her biography is thus consigned to a kind of epistemological limbo, recorded but not entirely known. And this kind of half light the intuition that the whole story can only be grasped through the flickers and shadows cast off by the facts is part of the atmosphere of Jones's world. There is always more to be discovered within its boundaries. Read a few chapters of either collection and you will become aware of a distinctive chronological rhythm, a way of pulling time forward, backward and sideways, slowing it down and speeding it up. Jones comes close to inventing new verb tenses. "One day, you will see that Tennessee Creek again for the first time," a woman writes in a letter to a child she has recently met. "And I will see the house again for the first time." The beginning of "Tapestry," the closing story in "All Aunt Hagar's Children," offers a vivid, richly detailed narrative of events that didn't actually happen, but that would have happened "were it not for the sleeping car porter." It's not until four pages in that we learn the porter's name, and at the end, after he has married Anne Perry (who might otherwise have married Lucas Turner, but definitely not Ned Murray), Jones shifts back to a slightly different subjunctive mood, as Anne pictures what would happen if she were to abandon her new husband. His name, by the way, is George Carter, just like the young man in "Marie," who might be one of the 21 grandchildren or even 12 great grandchildren noted in the final passage of "Tapestry." That seems likely. The temporal loops and echoes don't just happen within the stories, but between them. We are frequently meeting people again for the first time. Reading the part of "Marie" in which she deters a would be mugger by stabbing his hand with a seven inch knife she keeps in her coat pocket casts you back to "Young Lions," the fourth story in "Lost in the City," whose main character is Marie's assailant, Caesar Matthews. He will return in "Old Boys and Old Girls," the fourth story of "All Aunt Hagar's Children," which follows him through a stretch in prison. The links and knots are too many to enumerate, and I'm by no means sure that, after multiple readings, I have accounted for all of them. "Lost in the City" begins with a delicate vignette called "The Girl Who Raised Pigeons." The man who gave the girl those pigeons is a barber named Miles Patterson whose remarkable origins are related in the first story of "All Aunt Hagar's Children," called "In the Blink of God's Eye." Georgia, the survivor of domestic abuse in "Common Law," figures in the title story of "Lost in the City." Those are, by the way, the eighth stories in their respective books. After a while, you learn to pay close attention to the names and addresses. Have I met this person before? Will I be seeing her again? Didn't she and that other family live on the same block of H Street? Was it at the same time? Did they know each other? These aren't just puzzles to solve, but invitations to reread, to retrace your steps until you feel as if those people know you too. "In 1855 in Manchester County, Virginia" a fictional "postage stamp," like William Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha, slotted into the geography of the real world "there were 34 free Black families, with a mother and father and one child or more, and eight of those free families owned slaves, and all eight knew one another's business." This business, intimate and economic, is the broad subject of the book, which centers on Henry's death and its aftermath. But like the stories in "Lost in the City" and "All Aunt Hagar's Children," "The Known World" moves freely, at times vertiginously, in time and space, propelling characters and their descendants suddenly into the decades after Emancipation and invoking the perspectives of invented 20th century scholars to illuminate Manchester County's history. We are led on journeys to Louisiana, Texas, the Carolinas, Philadelphia and Boston and Washington too, naturally always circling back to the knotted destinies of the people, white and Black, enslaved and free, who live on and around Henry's plantation. Their lives are linked, and defined, by the institution of slavery, another abstract, dehumanizing system of laws and customs that is also a network of human choices, desires, crimes and mercies. The essential cruelty of the system is stark and simple the threat and arrival of horrific violence, the forcible separation of families, the unending plunder of dignity, labor and joy but life within it is as complicated as anywhere else. Like the people we meet in Jones's stories, everyone in "The Known World," however brief our encounters with them, has a mind, a soul and a destiny that defy caricature or easy summary. They dwell in a terrible, beautiful place that draws you back to it again and again. Edward P. Jones, who turns 70 this year, has produced a compact body of work that keeps growing. I hope that he adds to it, but I also think it's bad manners for critics to demand more work from the artists we admire. I'm content to set aside a month each year to make my way, a story a day, through "Lost in the City" and "All Aunt Hagar's Children," and to make room on the calendar for further explorations of "The Known World."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The Public Theater announced on Thursday that it was canceling several performances of its hugely popular production of "Hamlet," starring Oscar Isaac, saying that the show's physical demands were becoming too much for the cast. "As an artist driven organization, the welfare of our actors is always a top priority," a spokeswoman for the theater said in a statement. "Over the last few weeks the intensity that 'Hamlet' requires of our actors over the four hour show is starting to take a toll." Theaters rarely cancel multiple performances of limited run shows "Hamlet" is scheduled to close Sept. 3 and it is especially unusual for productions that have high ticket demand. Some Broadway musicals have actors alternate in roles that are physically demanding, but performances are seldom canceled.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
We keep indoors. When we dare to venture out We are cautious. Our neighbors Smile, but in their eyes there is Reserve and suspicion. They keep their distance, As we do ours, in mute accord. Much of our fear is unspoken, For there is at last the weight of custom, The tender of rote consolation. We endure thoughts of demise And measure the distance of death. Death too wears a mask. But consider, there may well be good In our misfortune if we can find it. It is Hidden in the darkness of our fear. But discover it and see that it is hope And more; it is the gift of opportunity. We have the rare chance to prevail, To pose a resolution for world renewal. We can be better than we have ever been. We can improve the human condition. We can imagine, then strive to realize, Our potential for goodness and morality. We can overcome pestilence, war and poverty. We can preserve our sacred purpose. We can Determine who we are in our essential nature And who we can be. We are committed to this end For our own sake and for the sake of those Who will come after us. There is a better future, And we can secure it. Let us take up the task, and Let us be worthy of our best destiny. N. SCOTT MOMADAY Santa Fe, N.M. The writer is a novelist as well as a poet and won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1969 for "House Made of Dawn." I remember the days when I'd speculate That working from home would simply be great. No need for the car, the tie and the suit, No need, ever again, for that daily commute. I could work in my jammies, or wear nothing at all And never once worry 'bout the boss down the hall. I'd only dress up when I'd be meeting on Zoom Then I'd just have to clean a little part of the room. And how great it would be with no one to watch As I took a nip, now and then, from my bottle of Scotch. But now that it's happened, my dream hasn't come true 'Cuz working from home is like life at the zoo. A big cage of monkeys couldn't be any worse. The noise and congestion drive me to curse. With everyone here there's no peace and quiet. It's not at all what I thought when I wanted to try it. Alas, working from home, I get nothing done. And what's even worse it's not that much fun. Now I yearn for the days when I went off to work. Working from home, it turns out, was the dream of a jerk. MICHAEL R. WHITNEY Austin, Texas The pandemic has prompted me to consider how Emily Dickinson might feel about social distancing. The soul selects her own society, Then shuts the door. She keeps her social distance of Six feet or more. Unmoved, she notes the careless crowd Outside her gate; Unmoved, she notes the feckless folk Still tempting fate. I've known her from those foolish people Choose none Then turn her mind to friends she's meeting By phone. FELICIA NIMUE ACKERMAN Providence, R.I. Before we were living in a pandemic, we went to lunch with our friends in restaurants slurped soup with crackers we crushed with our bare fingers, our ordinary fingers that did not ignite terror, that were not vectors of disease. Before the days of self isolation, shopping was just another chore, sometimes a pleasure, a stroll through Costco sampling from little paper cups protein bars chocolate candies popcorn potato chips, strolling sampling buying big bags of broccoli spinach Asian cashew salad giant containers of gourmet cheese yes, toilet paper. The Before Times have receded deep into memory as if all of that happened ten, no, twenty years ago when we lived in another land of freedom movement laughter hugging sitting in each other's living rooms, living, alive, chatting for hours without measuring the social distance, without wearing N95 surgical masks or nitrile gloves, without anxious fear. Now we are living in another land, frightened confused, our minds always tasked with remembering to wash our hands, not touch our faces, not touch packages or mail without gloves Clorox wipes yes, remembering to worry, as if anxious worry could create a high wall surrounded by a moat of reeking fuming disinfectant to keep us safe in this new land of contamination fever suffocation death. We must not forget the Before Times, when we could touch doorknobs, doorbells, the mail, U.P.S. packages, restaurant tabletops, colleagues' keyboards, other people's hands, our own faces. We must not forget dinner parties, book groups, political rallies, concerts, movies, worship services, protests, weddings, funerals. In the Before Times we shared our joys sorrows together. Will we ever live together again? BONNIE SHAW Salt Lake City The weeks go by, the fourth, the fifth, And normalcy's become a myth. I want to hug, I want to hold, I want this deadly scourge controlled. I want to walk amidst a crowd. I want to lift this morbid shroud. I sit, sequestered in my home, And yearn to mingle, travel, roam. My energy is out of whack I want my normal problems back. ERIKA FINE Brookline, Mass. Do I have it? Do I not? How do I know what I've got? My temperature is 99, A teeny more, but I feel fine. I think I'm fine, that is to say, But am I, maybe, just OK? Is my throat a little dry? Or is it scratchy? If so, why? If I conclude that it is scratchy, Does it mean that I am catchy? My nose is runny, that's not new, But much more than it used to do. I think. Perhaps it's just a cold, Or maybe part of getting old. It's also true that I am tired, But then I also feel I'm wired. Maybe I should take a rest? Or could I, should I, take the test? I'm ready for all outdoor tasks, With Clorox wipes and gloves and masks. But still I'm clueless and cannot Begin to guess just what I've got. JANE LANG Washington In deference to the pandemic I have become my own pet. I eat and poop and pee, and once a day I take myself out for a walk in the woods. If I see other humans when I am out in the world I keep myself away from them. They say that I don't bite, but you can't be too careful. Apparently I am spoiled: I get way too many treats, and at home I just eat and sleep and play with all my electronic toys and try to learn some new tricks, even though I am an old dog. And, with some resistance, I occasionally get a bath. JOHN A. BULLARD Chelsea, Mich. the town is all but abandoned as if it had died yet somehow white and pink flowers have exploded on trees all around green early buds hang on all the bushes the sky is a soft blue as clouds go lazily about their way nature is having a celebration while men, women and children hide indoors or walk short distances in fearful small groupings of those with whom they are isolated strange yet in the long pull of human history not so out of the ordinary we have known this for thousands of years people running from the ravages of disease that would lick their insides like taking a meal and cause their guts to spill out into graves of freshly dug earth we have known this but we denied blithely fully ignorant of our mortality we thought we were immune the town is all but silent at times especially in the evenings after meal time everyone hides this is the only time in living memory when your neighbor might kill you just by saying hello DOUG TERRY Olney, Md. We have a virus of uncertainty and fear. We have a virus of shortages and gun sales. We have a virus of jobs lost and rent unpaid. We have a virus of talking heads and false knowledge I have a virus of canceled evenings canceled days. Calendar emptied, free from the inertia of saying yes. Destination home. Thoughts wander. Choices removed. Freedom gained. We kill the virus with questions. We kill the virus with challenged truths. We kill the virus with kindness. We kill the virus with patience. BRIAN L. GRANT Seattle Out on the back porch I'm reminded of all the twenty dollar Super Cuts I long ago disparaged. Then a decade of pricey trims that kept your balding pate in style. Now it's me you're left with. You stand a step below to level us and explain: start at the nape, you say, slowly so it doesn't yank. Fade to the top, then bottom up with the 2 blade. I hold the taloned guard, flip the tiny switch that makes it quiver. Someone in your younger years pulled her fingers through your hair With no one else to pass this way, we leave the trimmings where they fall and go inside for a hand of cards. The birds are wild now, scissoring through the April air. No doubt they'll find this treasure. MARGOT KAHN Seattle I am the sound of children crying. I am what makes you tremble and shiver in your bed late at night. I am the blackness you see when you close your eyes. I am the wolf hunting you down in a dark forest. I am the majestic yet treacherous mountains high up with the clouds. I am the rose you want to pluck but can't because my thorns are sharp like knives. I am the moonlight that shines at night. I am the nightmares you run from. I am the blizzard that will wipe you out. I am the waves pulling you under. I am the North Star shining bright in the dark blue sky above. I am as sweet as sugar with the ones I love. I am bitter like a million lemons with the ones who have hurt me or my loved ones. I am the silence growing louder in your ears. I am me, I am who I am meant to be, I am who I want to be. I am me. DHRUVI VASANI Walnut Creek, Calif. The writer, age 10, is a fourth grader.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
"The Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin," (1424 1434), the centerpiece of the exhibition "Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth," at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. BOSTON The most beautiful Italian Renaissance painting in the United States, "The Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin" by Fra Angelico, is on full time view but hard to find. Since 1903, the small picture has been in the same spot in the Early Italian Room of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum here, though invisible when you enter the room. It hangs around a corner of a big, jutting out fireplace. Unless you happened to wander over to a nearby window and glance to your left, you'd miss it. Isabella Gardner (1840 1924), who positioned every item in her house museum just so, and forbade rearrangement, placed the painting deliberately to give it plenty of gilt enhancing natural light. It sets up a visual ambush but also provides a moment of solitary communion. In the chapel like space, you can be alone with the painting, at least until someone else comes upon it and stops, wonder struck. At present, though, the wallflower picture is out of its corner and in the spotlight, as the centerpiece of a dream of a show through Sunday called "Fra Angelico: Heaven on Earth," in which the museum has united it with three related pictures from Italy and surrounded them with nine additional works. The ensemble, small though it is, illuminates an overlooked aspect of an artist we may think we know well: his skill, not just as gentle icon maker but as a dramatist, a spinner of sharply observed narratives. Dominican life in 15th century Florence was a complex environment. On the one hand, the order had a reputation for up to date learning, which attracted the loyalty and largess of high toned patrons, notably the Medicis. At the same time, its reform minded enclaves, committed to institutional poverty, supported themselves through handiwork, including art, and kept strong evangelistic ties to emotion fueled popular religion. Fra Angelico's painting, although praised and disparaged by art historians over the centuries for its perceived sweetness, shares aspects of both strains. This comes through in the Gardner show, organized by Nathaniel Silver, associate curator of the museum's collection, who has pulled off a diplomatic coup in landing unprecedented loans from the Museo San Marco, the chief repository of Fra Angelico's work. The most significant loans are those related directly to the Gardner's "Dormition and Assumption of the Virgin." That painting was one of four that Fra Angelico created from 1424 to 1434, for the sacristy of Santa Maria Novella, the Dominican mother church in Florence. All four were designed as free standing reliquaries and encased in cabinet like frames since removed or replaced embedded with sacred materials. And all four pictures are devoted to images of the Virgin Mary, with three depicting scenes from her life. What you see first in these modest size paintings is formal intelligence. You see the work of an artist who has a muralist's eye for graphic surprise; a miniaturist's sense of focus; and an opera director's instinct for what can make ceremonial drama feel emotionally particular: the way a hand is raised, a body bends, a draped garment falls. Once an atmosphere of style as power is established, the heavy hardware of religious symbolism starts to feel light. Movement between heaven and earth becomes fluid. A new version of naturalism is in operation. In what's thought to be the earliest painting showing the Virgin's life, "The Annunciation and Adoration of the Magi" divides roughly in half, with an image of the Annunciation floating above one of the three kings visiting the newborn Jesus. Both scenes are set against a patterned gold backdrop, like a curtain. In the Annunciation patterning also spreads across the floor: Mary and the annunciate angel are precious gems a ruby, a sapphire in a celestial jewel box. The scene with the three kings has the same gold curtain behind it, but the ground is a green grass lawn sprinkled with flowers. The youngest king, slender and blond, looks unsure of what to do. He half hangs back, half approaches the baby, shyly, tentatively. He's an amateur among professional actors of the sacred. Awed into awkwardness by the event, he's a stand in for us. The next painting in the series, "The Coronation of the Virgin," is a single continuous scene that rises in tiers. At the bottom, 19 saints kneel in rows. They face a steep staircase that looks to be made of rainbow colored clouds. At its top, an enthroned Christ reaches to steady his mother's new crown. The saints, for all their glamour, are earthbound. With their embroidered cloaks and crosiers, they're too heavy, too human, to climb that cloud staircase. Still, they're riveted by the sight of it, or all but two of them are. In the painting's foreground, St. Thomas Aquinas, intellectual in chief of the Dominican order, holds out an open book of psalms to us like a maitre d' offering a menu. Less invitingly, farther back in the crowd, a gray haired Saint Peter, clutching his keys to heaven, eyes us over his shoulder as if suspicious of our intrusion. Of the Marian paintings in the show, none is more sublime than the Gardner's own. When Bernard Berenson, who brokered its purchase, referred to it as "a darling" he wasn't wrong. It has two separate but related scenes. In the lower one, the deceased Virgin lies in deathlike sleep amid a gathering of apostles. Four are about to lift her bier you can sense from their postures that they are anticipating its weight while others whisper among themselves or stare in numbed sorrow. Jesus presides over all, carrying Mary's soul, in the form of a bright eyed child tucked in his arm.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
LONDON The Old Vic theater here has begun an initiative to address inappropriate behavior following allegations of misconduct by the actor Kevin Spacey during his time as the theater's artistic director. The plan, known as the Guardians Programme, is an alternate channel for employees to report instances of harassment outside of the formal structure of management and human resources. "We want everyone to have a way to share their concerns with someone outside of the 'regular' reporting line," Kate Varah, executive director at the Old Vic, said in a statement. "Our Guardians will actively listen and support, offering confidential advice on options, with discretion and empathy." The Old Vic's program comes as a report published by the British theater magazine The Stage found that one in three theater professionals and students among its registered users polled said they had experienced sexual harassment.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
On the eve of a Board of Education meeting in February where the death knell was to sound for five schools, Ron Huberman, the chief executive of Chicago Public Schools, granted an 11th hour reprieve. The low enrollment and poor academic record at Paderewski Elementary had made the South Side school a target for closing, and its students were being sent to Mason Elementary, the only nearby school that had higher test scores. Mr. Huberman said he changed his mind after walking from Paderewski to Mason and discovering that students would have to cross a wide intersection of four streets, a situation he concluded was too dangerous. Although the pardon for Paderewski might have been a relief for some teachers, parents and students, it did not address the problems at a low performing, underutilized school. Other poorly performing schools are also being spared as resistance to closing them has grown, confronting the next mayor with a longstanding question: What can be done with neighborhood schools where enrollment is shrinking and academic improvement is slow? Over the past decade, the elementary and high schools that make the list of the worst those in the bottom 25 percent on the Illinois Standards Achievement Test have changed. One of every three schools 47 of 155 managed to make it off the list. The worst schools now are arguably better than the worst schools were 10 years ago. Their test scores have gone up (though much has been made about changes to the ISAT that made the test easier), attendance is up slightly in the elementary schools and the dropout rate in the worst high schools has improved by 10 percentage points, though it remains at a troubling 54 percent. Graduation rates "are not really horrible anymore, but they aren't really good," said Elaine Allensworth, senior director and chief research officer for the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago, a respected source of public school data and analysis. Paderewski is a good example. Five years ago, JoAnn Roberts was brought in as principal. She had already made a name for herself as an effective, no nonsense administrator at other troubled schools. Right away, Ms. Roberts tried to change not only the way teachers and students thought about their school, but also to change the school itself. She bought new furniture and had the building painted from top to bottom. She stocked resource rooms with every kind of learning material a teacher might want, from math manipulatives to word games. She told teachers to get students' work up on the walls, along with multiplication tables, vocabulary words and other learning aids. While test scores at the school have not managed to pull Paderewski off the worst list, they have improved. The consortium's researchers have found that, like at Paderewski, even the worst schools improve if they have the right resources, including a principal who can forge strong ties between the school, parents and the community; hire good teachers and give them opportunities to improve their skills; install a rigorous curriculum; and make the school safe and centered on students' needs. Mayor Richard M. Daley and school officials have started programs that supply some of those ingredients but not others, Ms. Allensworth said. For example, a 2006 program called High School Transformation brought in better curriculums and teacher training, but ignored the need to forge community and parent ties and improve the learning climate. A pilot program to gauge the result of merit pay for teachers was found to be ineffective at schools where principals and staff members were not working well together. Shrinking enrollments at the worst schools also make them a financial burden. Paderewski where enrollment has declined by 60 percent since 2000, to 134 this school year spent 20,232 per student in the 2009 10 school year, about double the average per pupil spending in Chicago elementary schools. Fixed costs for maintenance and administration drive up the expense of keeping small enrollment schools open. The 126 worst elementary schools in the city have each lost, on average, a third of their students since 2000. Districtwide, the number of neighborhood elementary schools with fewer than 300 students has tripled in the last five years, to about 75. Experts say schools need to enroll at least 350 students to be financially viable. "It is completely inefficient," said Timothy Knowles, director of the Urban Education Institute at the University of Chicago and a former deputy superintendent of schools in Boston. "In a city and state with so many budget problems, it is irresponsible to have so many underutilized schools." Shifting demographics are one reason for the drop in enrollment. Paderewski, in a small, mostly black area of South Lawndale, is in a census tract where the number of school age children has dropped by 48 percent since 2000, according to census data. Another factor in the school's loss of students is the influx of new schools a situation created by the district itself. North Lawndale, a quick drive up Central Park Avenue from Paderewski, has more new elementary schools including four charters and one highly regarded magnet school than any other community in the city. Indeed, one of the strategies pursued by Mr. Daley and his school chief executives has been to shift attention from the worst performing schools by opening new, presumably better ones. Despite the academic and financial incentives for shutting underperforming schools, the district has been treading lightly on closings in recent years, for several reasons. In some neighborhoods, a school, however poor its performance, is the last remaining functional community institution, and many residents have emotional ties to it. In others, students shifted from a closed school may have to cross rival gang territories to get to their new one, and, finally, most displaced students have wound up at another poorly performing school, according to a study by the consortium. As opposition to the closings grew, Arne Duncan, the former public schools chief executive and now the United States secretary of education, initiated "turnarounds" in 2006, in which students continue to attend the same schools but administrators and most teachers are fired, and schools get an infusion of extra money. Seventeen schools have been selected for the program since 2008, and it is now the district's main school improvement strategy. Management of 12 of the schools has been outsourced to the Academy of Urban School Leadership, a nonprofit organization that also operates a teacher training program. As education secretary, Mr. Duncan has begun financing turnarounds on a national scale. The results in Chicago have so far not been impressive. Orr and Harper High Schools, the two high schools that were turned around in 2008, have shown no marked improvement in test scores. Ms. Allensworth, of the consortium, said only three elementary schools run by the academy have shown a significant increase in test scores. On a recent afternoon at Paderewski, Ms. Roberts, a drill sergeant in a pink suit, reviewed math and science tests with teachers. The results were sobering: No more than three students in each class had scored average or above average. But in the past five years, Paderewski's test scores have improved, from about a third of students' meeting or exceeding standards in math and reading to about half. She pushed the teachers that afternoon to think about what they needed to do. "What are the kids missing?" she asked. "What are you doing to fill that hole?" The teachers had two days to come back with an answer.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
Rolling Stone helped define the counterculture epoch. It filled its pages with the words of renowned writers, including Hunter S. Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Cameron Crowe and Greil Marcus. Its covers minted stars. And while it focused on music, its influence ultimately stretched into pop culture, entertainment and politics. "It was a magazine about music and the attitudes and things that music embraced," said Jann S. Wenner, the Rolling Stone founder who has put it up for sale. "Rolling Stone has been one of the great magazines of our time." Wanna see my picture on the cover Wanna buy five copies for my mother On the cover of the Rolling Stone. John Lennon appeared on the cover of the magazine's first issue, followed by nearly every rock star, and many celebrities, from the 1960s onward. Mr. Wenner was a particular fan of Bob Dylan, who has appeared on the cover nearly two dozen times. Provocative photography was also one of the magazine's hallmarks. The celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz began her association with the magazine in the early 1970s and set the tone for whimsical and insightful portraits, like her 1981 cover photo of Meryl Streep. Mr. Wenner and his editors have long been criticized for relying too heavily on aging rock heroes for Rolling Stone's covers. But the magazine still had the power to shock, as it did with a 2006 cover story on Kanye West that pictured him bloodied by a crown of thorns. "For every cover of Mick Jagger, you get a cover of Taylor Swift," Mr. Wenner said. "It's all great music, and they all belong in one place." But Rolling Stone's covers have also provoked outrage. When it featured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, then a 19 year old suspect in the Boston Marathon bombings, on its cover in 2013, some critics accused the magazine of glamorizing him as it did entertainment superstars. Long respected for its journalism, Rolling Stone was badly bruised by a 2014 article about an unproven gang rape at the University of Virginia. The debunked article, which was retracted in 2015 after a damning report from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, prompted three lawsuits and waves of negative coverage for the magazine. The magazine settled two lawsuits, one of which went to trial; a judge dismissed the third last year.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
With 1.3 billion people jostling for space, India has always been a hospitable environment for infectious diseases of every kind. And the coronavirus has proved to be no exception: The country now has more than six million cases, second only to the United States. An ambitious study of nearly 85,000 of those cases and nearly 600,000 of their contacts, published Wednesday in the journal Science, offers important insights not just for India, but for other low and middle income countries. Among the surprises: The median hospital stay before death from Covid 19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, was five days in India, compared with two weeks in the United States, possibly because of limited access to quality care. And the trend in increasing deaths with age seemed to drop off after age 65 perhaps because Indians who live past that age tend to be relatively wealthy and have access to good health care. The contact tracing study also found that children of all ages can become infected with the coronavirus and spread it to others offering compelling evidence on one of the most divisive questions about the virus. And the report confirmed, as other studies have, that a small number of people are responsible for seeding a vast majority of new infections. An overwhelming majority of coronavirus cases globally have occurred in resource poor countries, noted Joseph Lewnard, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study. But most of the data has come from high income countries. "It still surprises me that it took until this point for a lot of data to come out of a low or middle income country about the epidemiology of Covid," he said. In particular, he added, few studies anywhere have done contact tracing at the scale of the study. "I think it's some of the most important data we collect in an epidemic in order to decide what kinds of interactions are safe, and what kinds are not," he said. And yet, "data like this has not really been published very much." Though its overall total of cases is huge, the per capita number of cases reported daily in India and in many other low income countries, including in Africa is lower than in Spain, France or even the United States. And its number of deaths has not yet topped 100,000 which has surprised some scientists. India "is a place where you would expect a disease like this to roar through, at least in the older populations," said Dr. Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious disease expert at the Medical University of South Carolina. "They haven't seen that as much as you would expect." India recorded its first case of Covid 19 on Jan. 30 in an Indian citizen evacuated from China. The government began screening travelers from China and other countries on Feb. 7 and extended these efforts to travelers by sea and land on March 15. The country shut down on March 25 but reopened two months later, despite soaring rates of infection. The study focused on two southern Indian states, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, which together have a population of about 128 million, and represent two of the five Indian states with the most cases. They also have among the most sophisticated health care systems in the country. Contact tracers reached more than three million contacts of the 435,539 cases in these two states, although this still did not represent the full set of contacts. The researchers analyzed data for the 575,071 contacts for whom test information was available. "I think what they were able to do is actually really remarkable, to be quite honest," said Dr. Kuppalli, who has spent time in Tamil Nadu doing public health work. Contact tracing has proved difficult enough to do in the United States, she said. "I can't imagine what it would be in a place like India, where it's such a more crowded, crowded area." The contact tracing data revealed that the people infected first known as index cases were more likely to be male and older than their contacts. That may be because men are more likely to be out in situations where they might be infected, more likely to become symptomatic and get tested if they do become infected, or perhaps more likely to respond to contact tracers' calls for information, Dr. Lewnard said. That's not surprising because people generally tend to mix with their own age groups, Jeffrey Shaman, an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York, said: "That's a fairly robust result." Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. For example, more than 5,300 school aged children in the study had infected 2,508 contacts but were more likely to spread the virus to other children of a similar age. Because the researchers were not able to get information for all of the contacts, they could not assess the children's ability to transmit relative to adults. But the finding has relevance in the school debate, as some people have argued that children spread the virus to a negligible degree, if at all. "The claims that children have no role in the infection process are certainly not correct," Dr. Lewnard said. "There's, granted, not an enormous number of kids in the contact tracing data, but those who are in it are certainly transmitting." Over all, the researchers found, 71 percent of the people in the study did not seem to have transmitted the virus to anyone else; instead, just 5 percent of people accounted for 80 percent of the infections detected by contact tracing. This is different from the idea of "super spreader" events in which a single person infected hundreds of people at a crowded gathering, Dr. Lewnard said. The researchers noticed a key difference in those who did become sick and were hospitalized: They died on average within five days of being hospitalized, compared with two to eight weeks in other countries. The patients in India may deteriorate faster because of other underlying conditions like diabetes and high blood pressure or poor overall health, Dr. Lewnard said. Access to health care may also play a role, said Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the School of Public Health at Brown University, who has advised the Indian government on its health care infrastructure before the pandemic. Although India has some excellent hospitals, most hospitals in the country are ill equipped, have few beds and fewer doctors, Dr. Jha said. Most people in India also do not have health insurance that would allow them care from private hospitals. "There are going to be these large financial barriers that make people wait until they get very, very sick," Dr. Jha said. Conditions may be similarly dire in other resource poor nations. The amount of time patients may spend in the hospital is a "key planning parameter" for governments preparing for outbreaks, Dr. Lewnard said, and longer hospital stays can create bottlenecks during a surge. Among those infected, the researchers found an overall case fatality rate of 2 percent. The rate rose sharply with age, as it did elsewhere. But unlike in other countries, after age 65, the deaths sloped downward again. "It leads to a younger death distribution over all in the population than you would project," Dr. Lewnard said. The difference was not fully accounted for by the distribution of ages in the population. At 69 years, the life expectancy in India is 10 years lower than in the United States. The Indians who survive into old age may be more likely to survive the disease because of better health and access to health care, he and others said. A majority of Indians have a hardscrabble existence, earning a living as farmers, factory workers or day laborers, Dr. Jha said. "Those jobs are physically very, very demanding, and they have high fatality rates," he added. "They are just much less likely to make it into their late 70s or 80s compared to people who are white collar workers." Dr. Jha said he appreciated the study over all, but cautioned against extrapolating its findings too far. He is from the state of Bihar, among the most rural and poor states in India, whereas Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the two states in the study, are among the best equipped to deal with an outbreak, he said. "It is really important to understand this is not the experience of Bihar, this is not the experience of D.R.C.," he said, referring to the Democratic Republic of Congo. "This is a much rosier picture than what you are likely to see in those places." But other experts were impressed with the scale and scope of the study. "India has been the nexus of the most cases recorded for the last three, four weeks," Dr. Shaman said. "To see it in the Indian milieu is very important," he said. "We can't just study it in a few countries and then walk away."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
LONDON Amazon said on Wednesday that it was reviewing its website after a British television report said the online retail giant's algorithms were automatically suggesting bomb making ingredients that were "Frequently bought together." The news is particularly timely in Britain, where the authorities are investigating a terrorist attack last week on London's Underground subway system. The attack involved a crude explosive in a bucket inside a plastic bag, and detonated on a train during the morning rush. The news report is the latest example of a technology company drawing criticism for an apparently faulty algorithm. Google and Facebook have come under fire for allowing advertisers to direct ads to users who searched for, or expressed interest in, racist sentiments and hate speech. Growing awareness of these automated systems has been accompanied by calls for tech firms to take more responsibility for the contents on their sites. Although many of the ingredients mentioned by Channel 4 News are not illegal on their own, the report said there had been successful prosecutions in Britain against individuals who bought chemicals and components that can produce explosives. Amazon said in a statement that all the products sold on its website "must adhere to our selling guidelines and we only sell products that comply with U.K. laws." "In light of recent events, we are reviewing our website to ensure that all these products are presented in an appropriate manner," the statement continued. "We also continue to work closely with police and law enforcement agencies when circumstances arise where we can assist their investigations." The company declined to comment further. The New York Times found that similar algorithms may be at work in the United States. In one instance, a search for magnesium ribbon a product that can be used to make a crude fuse yielded a suggestion for two powders that explode when mixed together in the right proportions and then ignited. A second search yielded a suggestion for two out of three ingredients necessary to make gunpowder. Other tech companies have been in the spotlight for the algorithms that fuel their websites. ProPublica, a nonprofit news outlet, revealed last week that Facebook had enabled advertisers to seek out self described "Jew haters" and other anti Semitic topics. In response, Facebook said it would restrict how advertisers targeted their audiences. Buzzfeed also reported on how Google allowed the sale of ads tied to racist and bigoted keywords, automatically suggesting more offensive terms. Google said it would work harder to halt the offensive ads. Facebook has also come under scrutiny for potentially being used to influence people during the American presidential election last year. It disclosed this month that fake accounts based in Russia had purchased more than 100,000 worth of ads on divisive issues in the lead up to the vote. Last week's attack at Parsons Green train station was the fifth terrorist attack in Britain in a matter of months. Several people have been arrested in the investigation of the explosion, in which dozens of people were wounded.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
She may have dropped out of headlining Coachella this month because of her pregnancy, but Beyonce has not dropped out of public life. Instead, she has swapped a festival stage for an Instagram stage, and so just in time for what would have been her second concert performance she released a performance of a different kind: a photo shoot showcasing not her songs but her stomach, framed by a batwing tunic, over the knee suede boots and mirrored glasses. Followed shortly thereafter by a white gowned Easter extravaganza. Together they formed the latest installments in what might be termed Beyonce 3.0, the reimagining of Mrs. Knowles Carter not just as the Queen of Sound, or as a Black Lives Matter activist who uses her celebrity to speak up, but as the Mother of Us All: the avatar of female fecundity, her creative muscles stretching beyond making music to making life itself. In doing so, she has created a new paradigm for what it means to be a pregnant woman in the public eye one in which the very act of conceiving and carrying a child (or two children; she is having twins) becomes de facto proof of the power of femininity, doled out in carefully controlled and stage managed moments. The message is positive: Pregnant is beautiful. It should be worshiped. Ever since Demi Moore posed naked and cradling her distended belly on the cover of Vanity Fair in 1991, scandalizing and exciting readers in equal measure (Walmart insisted on a special wrapping), the birthday suit pregnancy photo shoot, or variations thereon, has been something of a trope in the celeb fashion axis. Cindy Crawford has done it. So has Brooke Shields. Ditto Britney Spears, Claudia Schiffer and Ciara, who appeared in the April issue of Harper's Bazaar in jeans and not much else, following up with a video of her dancing around and rubbing her stomach while lip syncing Whitney Houston's "I'm Every Woman." Yet Beyonce has taken it to a whole new level. It began in February with the announcement of her pregnancy. Though you couldn't exactly call it that; it was more like a visual album, of a different kind from "Lemonade," done in collaboration with the artist Awol Erizku and the poet Warsan Shire, whose poem "I Have Three Hearts" celebrated the occasion. Against the backdrop of the poem, multiple photos of Beyonce were published on her website: in lacy underthings with garlands entwined in her Pre Raphaelite hair, submerged like a mermaid with scarves trailing around her, next to a bust of Nefertiti amid the grasses of Demeter. She was nothing less than a cross between Venus, the goddess of love, and Gaia, the earth mother. (And yes, I know my mythologies are mixed up, but so were the references.) Maybe such reality checks have no place in the iconography of Beyonce, but there is no avoiding the fact that they have a place in most pregnancies. Indeed, there is something of an alt Beyonce movement happening, with a variety of women speaking up under headlines like "Hey Beyonce, as a Mum of Four Let Me Tell You This Isn't What Pregnancy Looks Like" (in The Independent) and "Beyonce Makes Me Feel Like a Lazy Pregnant Person" (from Redbook). Among others. Which is why it is something of a relief to consider other pregnant women in the public sphere whose examples are perhaps not as impossible to live up to, and whose stomachs have not become an object of veneration in their own right. Like, for example, Amal Clooney. While on one level it is hard to imagine how the highly privileged human rights lawyer/spouse of George/fashion favorite could be presented as an "accessible" role model, in this case she may be. Since announcing her pregnancy (not on Instagram, but by her husband telling a friend who happened to be the host of a television talk show), Mrs. Clooney, who is also carrying twins, has effectively gone about her business, appearing last month at the United Nations to talk about the female victims of the Islamic State. She wears a lot of day coats, which don't exactly hide her maternal state but don't advertise it either, and low heeled boots. By refusing to make it a big deal (except, maybe, in the privacy of her home who knows?), she makes it seem less of a big deal: not just to the paparazzi who cover her and clearly think her body is part of their story, but also to other women, who let loose a volley of criticism when a variety of outlets focused on her "baby bump" at the United Nations, instead of her speech. Her public self is not defined by her physical evolution. Now another potential role model is in the making: Serena Williams. Last week, when she posted a selfie in a yellow swimsuit with the words "20 weeks" on Snapchat, it created enormous excitement, not least because for those who cared to do the math and count backward it seemed clear she had won the Australian Open, her 23rd Grand Slam singles title, while in her first trimester. Which was something of a boost for all working mothers. This prompted speculation as to whether she would return to the court her spokeswoman said yes but in the meantime she was taking time off and had gone on a beach vacation with her fiance. Where, on regaining her No. 1 ranking, she promptly posted a message on Instagram to her unborn child ("You gave me the strength I didn't know I had" and "I am so happy to share being number one in the world with you ... once again today") along with a photo of her smiling and patting her tiny tummy.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
HONG KONG China's nouveaux riches millionaires, wealthy princelings and bribing business executives may soon find their wallets a little thinner: The price for French Champagnes and Burgundies, Italian Barolos and pinot grigios and other European wines may soon rise in mainland Chinese stores. Less than a day after the European Union said it was imposing preliminary import tariffs on Chinese solar panels, China's Ministry of Commerce announced Wednesday that it had begun a trade investigation of wines imported from the European Union. The investigation could lead to the imposition of steep tariffs by China. The European Union's trade commissioner, Karel De Gucht, announced Tuesday in Brussels that he was imposing preliminary tariffs of 11.8 percent on solar panels imported from China, saying the panels were being "dumped," sold for less than they cost to make, in Europe. If China was trying to send a retaliatory signal to Mr. De Gucht personally, wine might be a good target. He owns a 50 percent stake in a wine producing estate in the Tuscany region of Italy. The Chinese commerce ministry carefully avoided linking the solar panels to Wednesday's announcement that it would investigate European wines for improper duties or subsidies, saying instead that it was acting in response to a complaint from Chinese wineries. But the ministry issued a separate statement expressing "resolute opposition" to the decision on solar panels. "We hope the E.U. will further show their sincerity and show flexibility, through consultations to find mutually acceptable solutions," the statement said. The 27 countries of the European Union exported 980.7 million worth of wine to China last year, most of it from France, according to customs data compiled by Global Trade Information Services in Columbia, S.C. That is much smaller than Chinese exports of solar panels to Europe, which reached 27 billion in 2011 before a combination of trade frictions and cuts in European subsidies to buyers of solar panels started to discourage shipments. President Francois Hollande of France called on Wednesday for officials from all 27 countries to meet and form a united position on trade policy toward China, while France's trade ministry labeled the Chinese action as "reprehensible." Threatening to retaliate against fine wines during a trade dispute with the European Union is a time honored tactic for international trade negotiators. Wine exporters are a powerful political constituency and national figures in some European countries, particularly France. A threat to limit their overseas sales is a way to bypass European leaders and appeal to public sentiment for a reduction in trade tensions. Mr. De Gucht was already bucking widespread opposition in Europe by taking on Beijing over solar panels, with a range of national politicians and executives from other industries eager to expand not curtail trade relations with China. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. Clearview AI does well in another round of facial recognition accuracy tests. Elizabeth Holmes will resume her testimony in her fraud trial. In November 1992, in a dispute over European farm subsidies, the United States announced that it was imposing a 200 percent tax, to take effect in 30 days, on imports of still white wines from Europe, like Chablis from France and riesling from Germany, and a few red wines. The two sides quickly reached a compromise. Until now, China has tended to pursue retaliatory trade actions against industrial products, including imports of polycrystalline silicon, the main material for solar panels. That material is already the subject of a Chinese trade investigation after the United States imposed antidumping and antisubsidy tariffs totaling about 30 percent on Chinese solar panels. The Chinese threat against wine imports has the potential to upset consumers in China at least some of the most affluent ones. The move may also end up impinging on some Chinese investors because growing wine consumption in China has prompted a surge of investment in French vineyards. In recent years, Chinese companies and business leaders have snapped up more than three dozen chateaus in Bordeaux, the wine region that has drawn the greatest interest from Chinese drinkers. The acquisitions involved mostly lesser known vineyards among the close to 10,000 Bordeaux estates. Many of these properties have struggled in recent years to sell their wine in the traditional markets of Europe. Under the new Chinese owners, production in some cases is exported entirely to China, where the wine often is marked up substantially. Low end Bordeaux that might sell for less than 5 euros, or 6.50, in France, might go for five or 10 times as much in China. Philippe Casteja, president of the Conseil des Crus Classes en 1855, an organization representing elite chateau owners of Bordeaux, said punitive Chinese tariffs could substantially harm the French economy. About 500,000 people in France are employed in the wine industry. About 20,000 of those jobs, he said, are supported by sales to China, directly or indirectly. "The potential effect is very serious, both in terms of revenue and employment," Mr. Casteja said. As for Mr. De Gucht's wine holdings, according to the personal financial declaration he filed last July as a European Commission official, the estate, called La Macinaia, is a small vineyard and a destination for agricultural tourism, or vacationing in farmhouse resorts. The business, valued at 1 million euros, lost 145,313 euros in 2011 but still benefited from a small European Union subsidy of 1,500 euros as a "biodynamic winery," according to the declaration by Mr. De Gucht, who is a Belgian and a former president of the Flemish liberal party. He had a share in the property before he was European Union trade chief, said his spokesman, John Clancy. "There are no exports to China," Mr. Clancy said. While the Chinese trade case was immediate news in Europe on Wednesday, it drew less attention in China, possibly because the Ministry of Commerce did not release a timetable for its investigation. Western governments have long complained that Chinese antidumping and antisubsidy inquiries are capricious and seem to follow few of the complex but fairly transparent legal procedures used in the West. Some in China may be able to avoid the higher prices for wine if they are imposed. Hong Kong ended taxes on wine several years ago in a fairly successful bid to become a wine trading hub, and the nearly autonomous territory has become a popular place for many mainlanders to drink, then bring a bottle or two home. Extra taxes could also help another, more dubious Chinese industry: the entrepreneurs who print fake French labels and slap them on bottles of local plonk, some of it almost undrinkable.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
"Defending Jacob" is an eight episode murder mystery from Apple TV Plus with a full catalog of twists and an impressive cast that includes Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, Cherry Jones and J.K. Simmons. It's also Exhibit A for a question that's becoming increasingly unavoidable: Why does everything have to be a television series? The show, whose first three episodes premiere Friday, was created and written by Mark Bomback, who has some high quality experience in the movies: He was a writer and executive producer of "Dawn of" and "War for" the Planet of the Apes, two of the best thinking person's science fiction action films of recent years. And in "Defending Jacob," in which Evans plays a prosecutor whose 14 year old son is accused of murdering a classmate, Bomback has constructed an entertaining psychological thriller that takes some clever turns. If it had come out in the 1980s or '90s, when a lot of stories like this did, it might have starred Harrison Ford or Sharon Stone. It definitely would have been around 120 to 150 minutes long. But Bomback, working with the director Morten Tyldum, has stretched the proceedings out to 400 minutes. And while it means we get to see more of Jones and Simmons and of the young actor Jaeden Martell, who's good as the teenage suspect it's mostly a case of subtraction by addition.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
One benefit of discovery is that you get to name the things you discovered. Astronomy is blessed in this regard. There are more stars in the observable universe than grains of sand on Earth, trillions upon trillions enough to name a galaxy for every human who ever did or will live and every god or goblin proposed by human imagination. In the last two decades a new wonderland of naming opportunities has emerged with the discovery of planets around other stars, potential cradles of life and far future adventure. But so far exoplanets, like everything else in the sky, mostly don't have names, just numbers, like HD 156411 b or HAT P 5b. Are they secret agents? Celestial nomenclature typically is a rigid and exclusive business, closely managed by the International Astronomical Union, the world organization of astronomers. But in celebration of its hundredth anniversary, the I.A.U. is sharing the fun, allowing every country in the world to name its own exoplanet and the star it calls home. On June 7, the organization released a list of stars and their planets for the 79 countries that have signed up so far for IAU100 NameExoWorlds, as the project is officially called. Each star on the list is visible and bright enough to be seen with a small telescope from the country that now has dibs on it. For the United States, that would be a yellow star named HD 17156, a bit bigger and hotter than our sun, that lies about 255 light years away in the constellation Cassiopeia. Its planet is about three times the mass of Jupiter and orbits the host star in 21 days, and so is surely an unlivable furnace. Eduardo Penteado, an astronomer at the Museu de Astronomia e Ciencias Afins in Rio de Janiero, who is managing the project for the I.A.U., said that the process was just beginning but that it had already garnered interest. "Some national campaigns are already receiving many name entries," he wrote in an email. "The one in Greece already received 1,500 entries during the weekend." Stephen Pompea of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, who heads the U.S. naming campaign, said names started coming in as soon as the program was announced. Among the early contenders, he said, were a pair of names from Tolkien: Wilwarin, the elvish name for Cassiopeia, and Sauron. Some 4,000 possible exoplanets have been discovered in the Milky Way since 1995, by spacecraft like NASA's Kepler and TESS and by telescopes on the ground; by extrapolation, there could be billions of possibly habitable worlds in our galaxy alone. A few hundred have been confirmed as such by further observations. By astronomical tradition, whoever discovers a new planet or moon is entitled to suggest names for it to the I.A.U. The Union, which has 11,000 members in 93 countries, was founded in 1919 to promote international scientific cooperation; its hegemony over the heavens is absolute. No political string pulling or money paid to a commercial star registry can get your name on a star or anything else out there. But the Union is not unbending, nor is it unmindful of the need for more compelling names for places that might eventually be arenas for scientific fame. Its new project follows on a campaign in 2015 that invited everyday Earthlings to vote on names for 14 stars and the 31 planets orbiting them. Half a million votes came in from 182 countries and territories. So we now have, among other things, a four planet system named for Cervantes characters Quixote, Dulcinea, Rocinante and Sancho in Ara, a southern constellation. And a couple of planets in Ursa Major, Taphao Thong and Taphao Kaew, after characters in a Thai legend of an evil crocodile lord named Chalawan. This time around, astronomers in each country are responsible for organizing their own campaigns to invite suggestions and voting from the public. Indigenous names or phrases, reflective of the cultural and historical traditions of the individual country, are encouraged. The national coordinators will submit a few final candidates to a steering committee of the I.A.U., which will vet the names to make sure the rules have been followed. Among those rules: The names must be pronounceable, they cannot have religious, military or political references, and they cannot refer to living persons. "The NameExoworlds initiative reminds us that we are all together under one sky," Debra Elmegreen, an astronomer at Vassar College and president elect of the I.A.U., said by email. "What's cool for the proposers is that the names become official names." All the exoplanets on the new list were discovered before 2012. (It took time and additional observations to confirm their existence.) They all were discovered by telescopes looking either for stars that wobbled as orbiting planets tugged on them, or that blinked as planets passed in front and briefly occluded them. Most are Jupiter size, because monster exoplanets are the easiest, and thus the first, to be detected. Dr. Elmegreen said in an email that the steering committee began by inviting member countries of the United Nations to participate. So far, 79 have confirmed their participation, but anyone in any country can join by setting up their own national committee within their country. "That will take some effort, but should be lots of fun," she said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The 62nd annual Grammy Awards on Sunday were going to take place in the shadow of a scandal: the removal of the Recording Academy chief Deborah Dugan 10 days before the event and the stinging allegations of misconduct at the nonprofit that oversees the awards that she outlined in a complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Instead, they took place in the aftermath of tragedy: the death of Kobe Bryant in a helicopter crash at 41. The host Alicia Keys was tasked with responding to the basketball star's death on air; she chose to make a statement about "respect" after what she called "a hell of a week," too. Here are the show's highlights and lowlights as we saw them. It's been a long time since a phenomenon as talented, authentic, complex and delightfully of the moment as Billie Eilish took over the Grammys . She turned five of her six nominations into wins, victorious in all four major categories (album, song and record of the year, plus best new artist), becoming the first artist to sweep since Christopher Cross in 1981. At 18, she's the youngest person to win album of the year. It is all richly deserved: "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" redefines teen pop stardom, as Jon Pareles wrote in his review of the album. Eilish (working with her producer brother, Finneas O'Connell) digs her shapely talons into the conflicts that throb in our minds like her meticulously constructed tracks: anxiety and confidence, love and terror, fairy tales and reality. She is a genuine melting pot of pop history goths, rappers, confessional singer songwriters, all tucked into baggy clothes that defy all kinds of stereotypes. "Why," she cried into the microphone as she accepted her first televised award, for song of the year. "Aye yi yi," she started her second, for best new artist. "Please don't be me," she mouthed as album of the year was being announced. Finneas spoke up during their speech for the LP: "We wrote an album about depression and suicidal thoughts and climate change and being the 'Bad Guy,' whatever that means," he said, "and we stand up here confused and grateful." It was simply proof that sometimes the music industry does get it right. CARYN GANZ It's conventional wisdom at this point that the Grammys are more of a concert special than an awards show, but presenting the trophy for best comedy album on a night where only nine awards were given over nearly four hours was absurd. On Sunday, that insult to musicians was compounded when Dave Chappelle won for the third straight year in the category it's not like they were giving a new face some shine and then compounded once again by the fact that Chappelle, who might've at least given a speech to remember, did not even show up. (Poor Jim Gaffigan, and also every smaller artist in a genre category whose life would've been made by accepting a Grammy onstage.) Tanya Tucker accepted on Chappelle's behalf, giving a halfhearted "I'm sure he thanks y'all." Right. Sure. JOE COSCARELLI There were only the faintest hints of skepticism at the Grammys on Sunday, only the mildest acknowledgment of the controversies that have been engulfing the Recording Academy for the past two weeks, and really, the past two years. Saturday night, however, Sean Combs received the Salute to Industry Icons Award at the Clive Davis and Recording Academy's Pre Grammy Gala, and Diddy did not mince words. "Truth be told, hip hop has never been respected by the Grammys. Black music has never been respected by the Grammys to the point that it should be," he said. "For years we've allowed institutions that have never had our best interests at heart to judge us. And that stops right now." He issued a challenge to the Recording Academy to make radical changes in the next year, and urged his fellow artists and executives to be part of the evolution. And if things don't change, Diddy's predictions were dire: "We have the power. We decide what's hot. If we don't go, nobody goes. We don't support, nobody supports." JON CARAMANICA Best Example of Someone Coming to Play: Tyler, the Creator It was not technically good. But it didn't have to be good: It had to be insane, and on that point, it delivered. Steven Tyler side skedaddled over to Joe Perry and dragged his scarf draped mic stand around the Staples Center. Run D.M.C. broke through a wall of bricks that looked like a prop from a middle school play. Everyone seemed to be yelling, record scratching and guitar soloing in the wrong key, at the wrong tempo, in the wrong decade. But the crowd was grinning and dancing, swept up in some magical blend of nostalgia and Tyler's frontman charisma. (Two younger women in the front row were literally swept up by the latter. Cringe.) This was the party the Grammys have been trying, and failing, to capture for several years: the power of rock 'n' roll lunacy, compressed into seven minutes of riffing, screaming and nonsense. GANZ Like most of what Lil Nas X has accomplished in the last year, his epic performance of "Old Town Road" at the Grammys was not primarily about the music. Instead, he attempted the magic act of making memeability translate to network television, and he more or less pulled it off, relying on an intricate rotating set where each door led to another layer of winks and smirks: BTS, underutilized but still electric, did its "(Seoul Town Road Remix)"; Mason Ramsey and Billy Ray Cyrus kept their SEO alive; and Diplo pretended to play a banjo, adding about as much as he did to the success of "Old Town Road" in the first place. For the close watchers and "Road" completists, there was the empty chamber, featuring a green slimy skull, where Young Thug should have been, and rather than detracting from the unity, his absence just gave us all a chance to breathe amid the MDMA explosion. COSCARELLI FKA twigs learned pole dancing to make her video for "Cellophane," adding it to an already impressive movement vocabulary. She is also, however, a songwriter and singer who explores complex intersections of carnality, power and devotion as Prince did. So she was an intriguing choice to join a tribute to Prince, billed alongside Usher and Sheila E. But Prince's music remained a man's world on Grammy night, with a three song medley that was a teaser for a full length Prince tribute planned by the Recording Academy. The band added Vegas embellishments to the basics of Prince's arrangements, Usher did the lead singing and some Prince moves, Sheila E. added percussion and FKA twigs only danced: lithe and precise, but merely ornamental. "Of course I wanted to sing," she wrote on Twitter, but she took what she could get. PARELES In a show that included no shortage of tear jerking and maybe too many musical/visual/emotional whiplash moments, the tribute to the Los Angeles rapper Nipsey Hussle, who was killed last year, at least had coherence on its side. Meek Mill started things off with a crisp verse that led seamlessly into an appearance by Roddy Ricch, a surging talent from Nipsey's own neighborhood, before John Legend did his instant gravitas thing. DJ Khaled shouted some aphorisms, YG showed off his impeccable style and some local inter gang unity and then the gospel crossover king Kirk Franklin brought the wave of emotion home with a choir in white and gold. Above the stage, a portrait of Nipsey was set next to one of Kobe Bryant, another hometown hero. All of these things make sense together, which is more than can be said for a lot of Grammys moments. COSCARELLI Worst Sense of Pacing: Everyone Who Performed a Slow Song I've complained before about the preponderance of ballads at the Grammys and this year was no exception. We get it: you're a real musician whose songs are sturdy enough to be played on a grand piano. It's not that, in isolation, any of these belted slow songs were especially bad, but between Camila Cabello, Billie Eilish, Demi Lovato, H.E.R., Tanya Tucker and Alicia Keys, the repeated down moments were just too down for a show that can already feel interminable. And at least half of those women are capable of lighting the place on fire a la Tyler, the Creator, so to see them stick with safety just feels like a missed opportunity, while also preventing any one minimalist performance from being truly showstopping. On the other hand, if ballads are the key to keeping CBS viewers tuned in, skipping over album of the year nominee Lana Del Rey, whose "Norman Rockwell!" was full of modern day, lightly subversive torch songs, was extra foolish. COSCARELLI	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The designer Carly Cushnie speaks with a group of girls from the Lower East Side Girls Club backstage before her show. Casey Kelbaugh for The New York Times	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
The McClatchy family has been in journalism since 1857, when its flagship publication, The Daily Bee, chronicled the latest for residents of Sacramento in the wake of the gold rush. Now, in keeping with a trend that has placed hundreds of American news outlets in the hands of the finance industry, the McClatchy Company and its 30 newspapers are likely to end up the property of a hedge fund. The publisher of The Miami Herald, The Charlotte Observer and The Kansas City Star filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in February, after more than a decade of layoffs and plummeting revenue. Bids for McClatchy were due last week, with an auction supervised by U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Manhattan to start on Wednesday. The company, which is led by the family scion Kevin S. McClatchy and Craig Forman, a former Wall Street Journal reporter and Yahoo executive, is scheduled to inform the court of the winner by July 15. A likely outcome is that McClatchy, one of the country's largest newspaper chains and a consistent winner of prestigious journalism awards, will be owned by a New Jersey hedge fund, Chatham Asset Management. Under the deal, McClatchy, a publicly traded company, would go private. Chatham, which is the principal owner of American Media, the parent company of The National Enquirer, became a large McClatchy shareholder and assumed much of the company's debt in 2018. In April, McClatchy said Chatham had made a bid to take over the company. Other bidders could emerge at auction time. "We have continued to engage with a number of parties over the past few weeks and are encouraged to see the interest expressed in McClatchy," a company spokeswoman said. Although cutbacks have become all but unavoidable in the ailing newspaper industry, many journalists and civic leaders are rooting for McClatchy to end up with benevolent ownership that will not lead to further cost cuts. "Profit driven entities that are not interested in local journalism are not the solution," said Joey Flechas, a Miami Herald reporter and co chair of One Herald Guild, the union that represents employees at The Herald, El Nuevo Herald and Miami.com. Hedge fund ownership of publications like The Denver Post has led to steep layoffs in newsrooms, making it more difficult for those papers to keep readers informed. "With anything that's subject to the market," said Sree Sreenivasan, professor of digital innovation at Stony Brook University's School of Journalism, "their way of rewarding and judging the quality of anything is based on metrics and numbers that may not be synced with the reality on the ground and what is even possible, and they may judge newspapers the way they judge widgets, and find them lacking." The Great Recession dealt a blow to the industry when readers were already giving up print, a longtime home of lucrative retail ads and classified notices, in favor of digital devices. Google and Facebook came to dominate the online ad market, hampering publishers' attempts to generate the necessary revenue from digital advertising. From 2004 to 2019, roughly half of all newspaper jobs in the United States were eliminated as the cumulative weekday circulation of print papers fell to 73 million from 122 million, according to a University of North Carolina study. 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. Wall Street became a player in the industry more than a decade ago. The New York hedge fund Alden Global Capital now a media heavyweight through a subsidiary, MediaNews Group, a chain with roughly 200 newspapers saw opportunities in distressed media properties. With a strategy that led to deep layoffs at The Denver Post and other MediaNews Group publications, Alden has wrung profits from a business that seemed well past its heyday. In the fall, Alden announced that it had taken a 32 percent stake in Tribune Publishing, the owner of The Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun and papers in nine other major metropolitan areas. Last week, Alden secured a third seat out of seven on the Tribune Publishing board as it seemed to inch closer to taking control. It also has a 7.1 percent stake in another chain, Lee Enterprises, the publisher of The Buffalo News and dozens of other papers. McClatchy's troubles can be traced back to 2006, when it bought its much larger rival, Knight Ridder, then the second largest newspaper chain in the United States, for 4.5 billion, plus the assumption of 2 billion in debt. From the time shortly after the merger to the end of 2018, McClatchy's work force went from more than 15,000 full time employees to around 3,300, according to public filings. The current bankruptcy plan calls for McClatchy to cut staff further through 2022. The Knight Foundation, a journalism nonprofit that originated with the family whose Knight Newspapers merged with Ridder Publications to form Knight Ridder, declined to comment for this article. It reported an endowment of more than 2.4 billion in 2019. Chatham Asset Management, the company that could end up the winner of the McClatchy auction, is led by Anthony Melchiorre. In addition to taking control of the supermarket tabloid publisher American Media in 2014, Chatham is a major investor in Postmedia, the publisher of Canadian newspapers including The National Post, The Montreal Gazette and The Ottawa Citizen. Mr. Melchiorre, a Chicago area native, worked on Wall Street at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, where he led its junk bond division. He set up his hedge fund in Chatham, N.J., in 2002. Chatham often takes on the debts of struggling businesses that still have good cash flow. American Media and McClatchy fit that profile. For more than two years, the hedge fund has been trying to unload American Media publications, including The Enquirer. In 2018, American Media announced the sale of The Enquirer to the family that founded the Hudson News chain of newspaper and magazine shops. That deal still has not closed. Chatham pushed for a sale of The Enquirer and other tabloids after American Media was under federal investigation. The chairman, David J. Pecker, was said to have helped Donald J. Trump's presidential candidacy through a deal struck with Karen McDougal, a Playboy model who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. American Media acquired her story for 150,000 and never published it, a practice known as catch and kill. Federal prosecutors gave Mr. Pecker immunity in 2018, and American Media signed a nonprosecution agreement in which it affirmed that it had made the payment to influence the 2016 election. Mr. McClatchy, the chairman of McClatchy and a great great grandson of its founder, said in February that the company had filed for bankruptcy protection largely because of its 1.4 billion pension plan. McClatchy, which Mr. Forman has run as chief executive since 2017, disclosed last year that it did not believe it could make a mandatory 124 million contribution to the plan this year. Amid the raft of documents in the McClatchy case, there is a letter filed by the mayor of Sacramento asking the bankruptcy judge, Michael E. Wiles, to find local, civic minded owners of The Sacramento Bee. "I would urge you to choose a steward for this company that would build on the journalistic traditions of two of the most storied names in the business McClatchy and Knight Ridder rather than degrade them," Mayor Darrell Steinberg wrote. McClatchy newsroom employees are also hoping the bankruptcy proceedings end with the company in the hands of an owner that cares about good journalism. "We want to create a world where we're not saddled by mountains of debt through no fault of our own," said Mr. Flechas, the reporter at The Herald, "where financial pressures don't get in the way of us proceeding as a robust newsroom set on informing the public."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Bud Light sought to portray corn syrup as a nutritional boogeyman in its Super Bowl ad, which came days after it became the first major beer to start listing its ingredients on its label. Bud Light made an enemy of the corn industry on Sunday by boasting in a Super Bowl ad that, unlike its fiercest competitors, it does not brew its beer with corn syrup. While corn lobbyists responded in anger, and competing brands fought back, some viewers were left to wonder: Does it matter if corn syrup is used during fermentation? "The bottom line is that the claims regarding corn syrup in brewing are more marketing than science," said David Ludwig, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health. Beer is made by fermenting sugar. During the fermentation process, yeast converts the sugar into alcohol. "Corn syrup is a form of sugar that's been produced from a grain," Dr. Ludwig said. "Whether that sugar is produced by first milling and then enzymatically treating the grain, or doing so from corn in a separate process, isn't going to matter much to the final nutritional quality." Bud Light's ad came days after it became the first major beer to start listing its ingredients on its label. It lists just four water, barley, rice and hops. "Bud Light, if you're not standing with corn farmers, we're not standing with you," he said. The corn lobbying group, which says it represents 40,000 dues paying farmers among an industry of 300,000, said in a tweet aimed at Bud Light that "America's corn farmers are disappointed in you." The tweet was shared thousands of times. If you're concerned about the nutritional value of your beer and none of it is particularly healthy there's no need to focus on the sugars used during fermentation. You can just look at the label: The main considerations are the alcohol content and the final carbohydrate content. Cryptocurrency group loses bid for copy of U.S. Constitution. The company that produced 'Parasite' is in talks to buy Endeavor's scripted content arm. Critic of Teamsters leader claims victory in race to succeed him. If a beer company were to add corn syrup to the finished product, after the fermentation process, it would potentially be cause for concern, Dr. Ludwig said. Sugary beverages and too many processed carbohydrates are a "major problem with the food supply," he said, and they promote weight gain while also increasing the risk of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. High fructose corn syrup, a sweeter variant that is commonly added to processed food and beverages, has often been linked to obesity. Health professionals tend to suggest that there is little evidence high fructose corn syrup is less healthy than other artificial sweeteners, but that most people would benefit by cutting down on it along with all other forms of sugar. (Corn syrup is made entirely of glucose, while both high fructose corn syrup and white sugar contain glucose and fructose.) While Bud Light sought to portray corn syrup as a nutritional boogeyman, several beverages produced by its parent company, Anheuser Busch InBev, use corn syrup, including Bud Ice, Natural Ice and Rolling Rock, according to the company's nutritional data. MillerCoors, which makes Miller Lite and Coors Light, volleyed back on Twitter, shifting the focus from corn syrup to high fructose corn syrup. It wrote that it was "proud that none of our products include any high fructose corn syrup, while a number of Anheuser Busch products do." The company was correct: While many MillerCoors beers use corn syrup, none contain high fructose corn syrup, according to its published nutritional data. Some AB InBev brands, including Bud Light Lime A Rita, include high fructose corn syrup. The back and forth spat may not have been the best result for Bud Light, said Wendy Clark, chief executive of the advertising agency DDB Worldwide. "I don't know if anyone watching the Super Bowl necessarily cares about corn syrup, and it kicked up much ado about nothing," Ms. Clark said. "It's taken off into this corn syrup thing and not a Bud Light thing," she added, "and I don't know if that was the goal." In a statement, Anheuser Busch said it "fully supports corn growers and will continue to invest in the corn industry. "Bud Light's Super Bowl commercials are only meant to point out a key difference in Bud Light from some other light beers," it continued. "This effort is to provide consumers transparency and elevate the beer category." High fructose corn syrup was introduced in the 1970s as a cheaper alternative to sugar, and it was rapidly adopted as a key ingredient in sodas and other high calorie foods. The corn industry has pushed back against studies suggesting it is more harmful than sugar, spending tens of millions of dollars in lobbying to influence public opinion.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
SAN FRANCISCO When Brooks Koepka teed off in the quiet calm of Thursday morning, he figured he was not just a contender, but a favorite to win the P.G.A. Championship. All golfers ponder their chances against the field. Koepka is the one willing to do the math out loud. "The way the golf course sets up eliminates pretty much half the guys," Koepka said on Tuesday, with bluntness that has come to define his personality and championship play. "And then from there, half of those guys probably won't play well. Then from there, I feel like, mentally, I can beat them, the other half. So you've probably got 10 guys. That's the way I see it." On Thursday, with the shiny Wanamaker Trophy that he has won the past two years perched on a table nearby as a reminder of the stakes, he sent his first drive at T.P.C. Harding Park nearly 300 yards. By the time he returned to the clubhouse hours later, his hopes of becoming the first player in nearly 100 years to win the P.G.A. Championship in three consecutive years were firmly intact. Koepka shot a four under par 66, one stroke off the first round lead, held by Jason Day and Brendon Todd. His always brimming confidence verged on spilling over. "I'm excited for the next three days," he said. His laid back sentences never end with exclamation points. "I can definitely play a lot better, and just need to tidy a few things up, and we'll be there come Sunday on the back nine." It would be no surprise. Not only is Koepka the best major tournament player of the past few years, he is a brash counterpoint to golf's gentry, as honest as a polygraph test, as composed as the stoic Monterey cypress trees that line the Harding Park fairways. He has no interest in making golf friends he told Golfweek recently that he is "not close with any of the guys out here" perhaps because he is brazen in his singular pursuit: to win more majors. Four of his seven career victories came at majors, a rare ratio in an era of revolving weekly tour winners. He won the 2017 and 2018 United States Opens, then finished second in 2019. He won the 2018 and 2019 P.G.A. Championships, and is trying to become the first to win three in a row since Walter Hagen won from 1924 to 1927. In his last five starts at golf's four majors, he has finished no worse than fourth. Some widely known contemporaries still long for their first major championships players like Rickie Fowler, Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau. Others found major success, but have not won in several years players like Rory McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Dustin Johnson. Most of them get more attention than Koepka, perhaps because they better conform to the game's traditional civility. Koepka does not soften his edges to make others more comfortable. Instead, he tweaks some of those that considered rivals by everyone but Koepka. Last year, when reporters suggested that Rory McIlroy was a rival, Koepka pointed out, accurately, that McIlroy had not won a major since 2014, before Koepka was a full time member of the tour. Early this year, DeChambeau mocked Koepka's physique, saying he did not have any abs. Koepka posted a photograph of his four major trophies on Twitter and said DeChambeau was right. "I am 2 short of a 6 pack," he wrote. Koepka admits to a lesser focus during regular PGA Tour events. That much has been evident since golf restarted; nursing a partially torn patella tendon in his left knee, he has finished in the top 10 only twice. But he finished in a tie for second in the last tournament before the P.G.A. Championship, a warning to others that his favorite time of year had arrived. "I enjoy when it gets tough," he said on Tuesday. "I enjoy when things get complicated. There's always disaster lurking. It's something I enjoy, where every shot really means something." With one more major victory, Koepka would join the likes of Phil Mickelson, Seve Ballesteros and Byron Nelson, as a five timer. Koepka wants to blow past that class. Over the winter, he set a new career goal: 10 major titles. Only three men have reached double digits: Jack Nicklaus (18), Tiger Woods (15) and Hagen (11). The next 11 months may be telling. If all goes as scheduled, there will be seven major championships. Despite his bold talk, Koepka has the pedigree of an underdog. He was not a junior star like many of his peers. Lightly recruited for college, he went to Florida State (and was a four time all American), but spent a couple of seasons grinding on a secondary tour in Europe before earning his PGA Tour card. The P.G.A. Championship, which bunched golf's biggest names into several threesomes for Thursday and Friday, somehow did not pair Koepka with DeChambeau. Having built himself like a linebacker this year and now golf's longest driver, DeChambeau teed off in the afternoon with Fowler and Adam Scott. By then, Koepka, Zach Johnson, Justin Rose, Xander Schauffele and Martin Kaymer were among those already finished at four under. Koepka was paired with Gary Woodland, who beat Koepka by three strokes at the 2019 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach. Woodland shot a three under 67 on Thursday, and served as a daylong reminder of all that separated Koepka from his last chance at a historic three peat. "It would mean extra because I wasn't able to do it at the U.S. Open," Koepka said after his round. "I think that drove me nuts a little bit." He also played with Ireland's Shane Lowry, a friend and frequent golf partner in Florida during the gaps in the rejiggered schedule this year. The two chummily bantered as they played on Thursday. "He drove it long and straight, and he has that little fade back," said Lowry, who shot 68. "He'll be hard to beat this week, I'd say." Playing the back nine first, Koepka birdied four of Harding Park's final six holes, the course's exacting final exam of rough, trees and water. It was his key stretch, a promising omen. Koepka was not that impressed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
What Winter Jazzfest Says About Where the Music Is Going in 2020 Like jazz itself, Winter Jazzfest is a big, inclusive idea that finds its glory and purpose in smaller moments. Since its founding 16 years ago, the festival has grown to be more than New York's most buzzed about annual jazz happening, an opportunity to catch up on what's new in improvised music and to help predict what's next. By planting the music in rooms that feel both comfortable and alive and increasingly, by presenting acts that verge into electronica, indie rock and hip hop the event has also become an invitation to reconsider what jazz means in the 21st century. With New York's real estate market pushing most of the city's ground level creatives out of Manhattan, the festival responded this year by expanding into Brooklyn, introducing the borough's first edition of the Winter Jazzfest Marathon, where ticketholders bounce from venue to venue in adjacent neighborhoods. (The festival's typical, Lower Manhattan based marathon took place over two nights the previous weekend.) With 20 events across 11 days and more than 150 sets in over a dozen venues, this year's festival was more spread out than ever geographically and stylistically. It had a lot to say about the way music gets made in New York today, how it might be listened to and where it's headed next. Theo Bleckmann, a German born vocalist, has spent decades deepening his ideas around historical resonance, compositional complexity and theatrical persuasiveness. Performing at Subculture during the Manhattan Marathon, he capered from a kinetic and pulsing rendition of the Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" into a take on "Dido's Lament," an English aria, using loops and reverb to a Gregorian effect until he flowed seamlessly into a spacious version of Massive Attack's "Teardrop." Next door, at the Zurcher Gallery, the Portuguese singer Sara Serpa sang her signature wordless vocals, perfectly pitched over a gossamer synth played by Dov Manski; it all blended almost too well with the pastel abstraction of a huge painting that hung behind her. (The gallery was a new addition to the festival this year, and a good one; its mix of coziness and visual life was a welcome change from the bustle of most other spots.) And J. Hoard, a virtuoso singer with idiosyncratic tastes that lean toward pop, soul and gospel and whose vocal gifts have more in common with, say, Peabo Bryson's than with any jazz singer's moved between songs by Celine Dion, Thelonious Monk and himself. Looking (and, it's safe to say, feeling) resplendent in a velvet jumpsuit, backed by a seven piece band, Mr. Hoard sang balladic jazz numbers on his knees, as if worshiping or hanging out alone in his room; on more rousing pieces, he pogo ed as he sang, sometimes launching off the stage and parading through the crowd. Jazz is local across the globe Though its main mission is to proselytize for the bubbling New York scene, Winter Jazzfest has lately made solidarity with other cities a part of its identity. In 2020, that feels inevitable: To the extent that jazz is experiencing a cultural comeback, it's largely owed to the work of local musicians and organizers, who often present their own shows and give hometown audiences something to connect with in the flesh. That's an old tradition in jazz, as the Jan. 12 concert at Le Poisson Rouge, "From Detroit to the World: Honoring Marcus Belgrave," showed. More than perhaps any other city beside New York, Detroit incubated the hard bop sound that became jazz's trademark in the mid 20th century. Belgrave, a trumpeter who died in 2015, mentored scores of younger musicians there, and performed across the world. His wife, the vocalist Joan Belgrave, organized a hero's celebration that spanned generations, with Detroit elders like Johnny O'Neal and Sheila Jordan sharing the bill with a band of Mr. Belgrave's proteges, including the drummer Karriem Riggins and the trumpeter Theo Croker. A few nights earlier, the same stage had played host to a showcase of young, London based talent, all of whom are starting to gain a following abroad. Sets from the pianist Ashley Henry and the drummer Moses Boyd were highlights, and the commonalities between them (the influence of drum and bass's skittering rhythms; the proposal of a different kind of dance driven jazz, not directly influenced by American hip hop but instead directly tied to the British rave scene) suggested that jazz moves in collective steps, made by musicians operating in proximity. There's no age limit on new directions Two of the most arresting sets of the festival came from musicians who, decades into their careers, appear to have found new trailheads. Susan Alcorn, a pedal steel guitarist, began her career in blues and country settings before linking up with some of the New York experimental music world's luminaries. In recent years, she has started to become one of them. But most of her work in this vein has come in the form of droning solo performances or side musician work in other people's bands. That changed at the Manhattan Marathon, where Ms. Alcorn, 66, led a quintet at the Dance, a new venue in the East Village, that showed a glorious, swimming synergy right off the bat. Between Ms. Alcorn's pedal steel, Mark Feldman's violin and Mary Halvorson's guitar, it was often hard to tell which instrument was creating what sound even as each part of the equation remained distinct. Something similar was at play in the new quartet of Nasheet Waits, 48, a drummer who only rarely steps into a leadership role. His Manhattan Marathon opening set at an intensely crowded Zinc Bar began with a rubato rumble of group improvising, connecting the John Coltrane Quartet circa "Crescent" with a looser, more wriggling group approach a la Air. Joined by three musicians a generation his junior or more the fleet and fluid alto saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, the bassist Rashaan Carter and the South African pianist Nduduzo Makhathini, whose own set later that night was a highlight for many festivalgoers Waits built a group identity that resembled his own drum sound (aerated and unfastened, but deeply enmeshed in tradition) while drawing out the best in a crowd of younger compatriots. Few moments spoke more directly to what jazz is about, as a music and a practice. More Scenes from the Manhattan Marathon	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Rondel Holder, who lives in New York and works as a content creator at Essence magazine, was curious about his ethnic background, so he took a home DNA test that he bought from Ancestry. "I always thought of myself as being from Brooklyn, with Grenadian and Jamaican roots," he said. But the test results told another story, revealing that much of his ethnicity could be traced to two African countries, Togo and Benin. Mr. Holder said he went online within days of getting the news and booked a trip to Africa for about 3,500. When he got there, he said he was happy to meet some people his own age. "The locals I connected with were working millennials who liked to go out and have fun, like me," he said. Mr. Holder is among the growing number of travelers who take a heritage trip, as they are called, or at least consider one, based on results from at home DNA tests. They are available through companies such as Ancestry, 23andMe, AfricanAncestry.com and MyHeritage, and typically entail a saliva sample or cheek swab; the results arrive via email or mail within three to six weeks. Booking.com, one of the world's largest accommodations booking sites, surveyed 21,500 travelers this summer about their dream trips, and 40 percent reported that they wanted to take or had actually taken a trip based on the results of home DNA tests. Allegra Lynch, a member of the Travel Leaders Network who lives in Santa Rosa, Calif., said that she sold 1.5 million worth of such trips in 2018, primarily to Europe, compared with 800,000 in 2017. "The rise is 100 percent because of people wanting to go on trips after taking at home DNA tests," she said. An online video created for AeroMexico by the Ogilvy advertising agency last year played on the trend, offering discounts to Americans to fly to Mexico based on the portion of their heritage that a DNA test determined was from Mexico. Amid the debate around border security, the ad has recently gone viral on the Internet. John Raul Forero, the chief creative officer for Ogilvy Latam confirmed in an email that the ad had been created last year for the airline but had no further comment. The DNA promotion is no longer valid, according to Paula Santiago, a spokeswoman for the agency. Although some genetic experts question the accuracy of such tests to pinpoint geographical ancestry, the molecular genealogist Diahan Southard said that the results are usually on the mark, save for some exceptions. "The ethnicity breakdown you receive from a testing company relies heavily on the people the company is comparing you against," she said. "If you are from France, but your company hasn't tested very many French people, they aren't going to do a very good job with your breakdown." Still, accessibility and affordability are helping DNA based travel take off, according to Sarah Enelow Snyder, an assistant editor at the travel research company Skift. "You can buy one for less than 100, and it's a price that has helped propel the popularity of these trips," she said. Evita Robinson, the founder of Nomadness Travel Tribe, an online social media group for travelers of color, said that there was noticeable uptick from 2017 to 2018 in its 21,000 or so members talking about home DNA tests and planning trips based on the results. Mr. Holder was among those members. Ms. Robinson took a test last year that showed she is a mix of African American and Caucasian and has roots in several countries, including Senegal, South Africa and Ireland. She is traveling to Ireland in May for her first DNA based trip. Although DNA based travel can be poignant for anyone, it may even be more impactful for African Americans, according to Dr. Gina Paige, the co founder of AfricanAncestry.com, which specializes in genetic ancestry tracing for people of African descent. "Black people were taken from West and Central Africa to the Americas and the Caribbean, and as a result of that, our identity got lost," she said. "There are virtually no paper records for us until 1870, which is when the U.S. government started taking census information from us, so trips to Africa to learn more about our roots are often revealing and profound." Ancestry is starting a travel division that will include group and private tours. The group portion is a collaboration with EF Go Ahead Tours on a series of trips to Italy, Scotland, Ireland and Germany; they are led by one of Ancestry's genealogists and start at 3,500 for 11 days. As part of the group tour package, travelers receive an Ancestry DNA test beforehand and consult with a genealogist who uses their test results, along with historical records, to educate them about their origins. On tour, they follow an itinerary that includes visits to sites heavy on heritage, such as emigration museums and ports where emigrants left for the United States. Ancestry's private tours start at 2,000 a day and are created based on a combination of DNA results and research on a client's family history. "We look at a variety of data, including newspaper archives and church, military, marriage and death records," said Kyle Betit, a genealogist who heads the company's travel division. "The itineraries we create take people to the villages where their ancestors lived, and to the churches where they got married." Follow NY Times Travel on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Get weekly updates from our Travel Dispatch newsletter, with tips on traveling smarter, destination coverage and photos from all over the world.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
At a 2010 meeting in Brussels were, from left, Jean Claude Trichet, former European Central Bank president; Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany; Jose Manuel Barroso, European Commission president; Prime Minister George Papandreou of Greece and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France. ATHENS The warning was clear: Greece was spiraling out of control. But the alarm, sounded in mid 2009, in a draft report from the International Monetary Fund, never reached the outside world. Greek officials saw the draft and complained to the I.M.F. So the final report, while critical, played down the risks that Athens might one day default, an event that could have disastrous consequences for all of Europe. What is so remarkable about this episode is that it was not so remarkable at all. The reversal at the I.M.F. was just one small piece of a broad pattern of denial that helped push Greece to the brink and now threatens to pull the euro apart. Politicians, policy makers, bankers all underestimated dangers that seem clear enough in hindsight. Time and again over the past two years, many of those in charge offered solutions that, rather than fix the problems in Greece, simply let them fester. Indeed, five months after the I.M.F. made that initial prognosis, Prime Minister George A. Papandreou of Greece disclosed that under the previous government, his country had essentially lied about the size of its deficit. The deficit, it turned out, amounted to an unsustainable 12 percent of the country's annual economic output, not 6 percent, as the government had maintained. Almost all of the endeavors to defuse this crisis have denied the overarching conclusion of that I.M.F. draft: that Greece could no longer pay its bills and needed to cut its debt drastically. Until October, when European leaders conceded that point, the champion of the resistance was Jean Claude Trichet, who stepped down last week as president of the European Central Bank. It was he who insisted that no European country could ever be allowed to go bankrupt. ''There is simply no excuse for Trichet and Europe getting this so wrong,'' said Willem H. Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup. ''It is fine to make default a moral issue, but you also have to accept that outside of Western Europe, defaults have been a dime a dozen, even in the past few decades.'' If leaders had agreed earlier to ease Greece's debt burden and moved faster to protect countries like Italy and Spain as U.S. officials had been urging since early 2010 the worst might be behind Europe today, experts say. Today, Greece's problems have worsened so much that they threaten to rip apart the euro and the decade old 17 country monetary union created within the European Union to manage the prized common currency. An endless series of crisis meetings has pushed Athens into imposing an increasingly strict program of austerity on the Greek public in return for the promise of two major bailouts from more credit worthy European countries, along with the crucial support of the I.M.F. and the European Central Bank. It was never going to be easy to turn things around in Greece, particularly given European politics. In countries like Germany and the Netherlands, many people oppose bailing out their southern neighbors. Policy makers and, indeed, many financiers believed that they could buy enough time for Greece to solve its problems on its own. ''It was quite obvious, by the spring of 2010, that Greek debt could not be paid off,'' said Richard Portes, a European economics professor at London Business School. ''But in good faith, policy makers felt that Greece could grow out of its debt problem. They were wrong.'' Bob M. Traa is no one's idea of a radical. A Dutchman, he labors at the I.M.F., among the arcana of global debt statistics. He wrote the 2009 report. Immediately after that bulletin, he produced another, more damning analysis, which concluded that if Greece were a company, it would be bankrupt. The net worth of the country, he concluded, was a negative 51 billion euros, or 70.4 billion at current exchange rates. But because the Greek credit rating was high enough at that time, the country could keep borrowing money and skate by. Once again, the Greek government objected to the I.M.F. analysis, although this time, the report was not amended. Attention has only recently been drawn to these early I.M.F. studies. The Brussels research group Bruegel, which did an analysis at the I.M.F.'s behest, concluded that the fund should have done more to draw attention to Greece's troubles. By early 2010, banks and bond investors were growing reluctant to lend Greece money. The Greek finance minister then, George Papaconstantinou, delivered a blistering message to his European partners. ''I know we have German elections in May,'' he said, referring to a regional vote to be held that month that was being cited in part as a cause of German reluctance to sign off on a rescue package for Greece. ''But I have a 9 billion euro bond maturing on May 9, and if we are not careful, this could blow up in our face before the election!'' Despite that warning, Mrs. Merkel, angry about having been misled about Greek finances, stalled for time. Greek officials were acknowledging privately that the country was out of money. No one wanted to say so publicly. ''Any talk of restructuring was a total taboo,'' said a senior Greek official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. ''We never even brought it up. If we made this case to Europe, we would have been pariahs forever.'' Jamie Dimon walks back his quip that JPMorgan would outlive China's Communist Party. Stocks slip as interest rates rise, while jobless claims drop to their lowest point since 1969. The U.S. effort to cut energy costs may not have the intended effect. In February 2010, Yanis Varoufakis, a political economist with ties to Mr. Papandreou's party, suggested publicly that Greece default. He was attacked by the Greek Finance Ministry for spreading what officials there viewed as treasonous notions. He kept making his arguments, but a year later, after a debate on Greek public television with a government official, Mr. Varoufakis's once frequent invitations to speak on Greek state television started to dry up. From the beginning, Mr. Trichet of the European Central Bank privately warned Greek officials that the European Union would cut off funds to Greek banks unless the country agreed to austerity measures. ''You are not getting any help unless you implement your cuts,'' Mr. Trichet told them bluntly, according to a witness to the discussions. With financial markets falling whenever the debate on Greece's problems seemed to reach an impasse, European politicians were receptive to Mr. Trichet's argument about the Lehman like consequences of a Greek restructuring and the threat this might pose to larger countries like Italy and Spain. But Mr. Trichet's resistance, like that of many people who had been present at the creation of the euro, was also more personal. An architect of the common European currency, Mr. Trichet disclosed his deepest feeling at a June 2011 seminar in honor of Tommaso Padoa Scioppa, a recently deceased Italian economist who was one of the intellectual fathers of the euro. Mr. Trichet departed from his prepared speech and lapsed into a tone that one person attending described as very emotional. Emerging economies may go bankrupt, Mr. Trichet swore, but richer countries like Greece do not. At another speech this year, to bankers and government officials in Washington, Mr. Trichet said that the austerity measures were the key and that there was no need to reduce Greek debt. His assurances did little to ease the worries in the room. ''People were raising questions,'' said Charles H. Dallara, managing director of the Institute of International Finance, which was the host for the event. ''But it was such a dramatic notion having a European country default no one could accept it.'' That pattern of thinking had begun much earlier. In April and May 2010, as European leaders scrambled to come together for their first rescue for Greece and to create a bailout fund for other countries using the euro, Timothy F. Geithner, the U.S. Treasury secretary, urged his European counterparts to ''think big.'' He called on them to produce a plan that might rival in size the 700 billion bank rescue that Washington devised in 2008. At one point early in the talks, the team from Washington, headed by Mr. Geithner and Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, was told that the initial European proposal was for a bailout fund of about 60 billion euros. The team was stunned. The American officials told the Europeans that they were off by an order of magnitude, meaning that Europe should be talking about at least 600 billion euros. Markets were calmed briefly by the I.M.F. backed plan for Greece and the 440 billion euro rescue facility that was eventually agreed upon. In October 2010, Mrs. Merkel and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, suggested requiring some sacrifice from banks and other euro zone creditors, though their idea was that this would not happen until 2013 and would not affect Greece. But that declaration, agreed upon at a meeting in Deauville, France, set off more alarm bells in the markets. First, Ireland, then Portugal, had to seek bailouts. In breaking the taboo about contemplating private sector losses but lacking an immediate plan for Greece or firewalls for other nations, the French German statement set back prospects for tackling the mountain of Greek debt. Athens' failure to make good on its economic promises, meanwhile, including a 50 billion euro privatization program, turned attention to the deteriorating political situation in Greece. Bob Traa wrote International Monetary Fund reports starting in mid 2009 that sounded alarms about Greece's problems. Last April, the Dutch finance minister, Jan Kees de Jager, dared to raise the subject of Greek debt restructuring again, only to receive another blast from Mr. Trichet. By May, the Germans had concluded, long after most private economists said it was inevitable, that a restructuring was needed. Instead of bolstering Athens' finances, the austerity program in Greece was turning a recession into a near depression. The issue was broached at a meeting in Luxembourg, which was convened in secret but which quickly leaked to the media. This time, Wolfgang Schauble, the German finance minister, argued that Europe must face up to its Greek losses. But by then Mr. Trichet's objection was more than philosophical. The European Central Bank had acquired a lot of Greece's debt as part of the effort to prevent its collapse and could suffer if it had to write off its Greek bonds at a huge loss. He stormed out of the dinner in a huff. The result was more delay. ''It is very difficult to stand up to the president of the E.C.B.,'' said Guntram B. Wolff, an economist at the Bruegel institute. ''This is the person with the best information in the world and he was saying a Greek restructuring would be the end of the world.'' By the spring, the realization in Greece that it would need another bailout was pushing Mr. Papandreou to consider all options even the extreme step of leaving the euro, according to one banker who talked with him at the time. But the subject of reducing Greece's debt, which was on course to swell to more than 180 percent of the annual Greek economic output, was still taboo. In late June, Mr. Dallara, the banking representative, met in Athens with the prime minister and his newly appointed finance minister, Evangelos Venizelos. There would have to be a haircut for holders, on Greek debt, Mr. Dallara told them, meaning that creditors would have to accept less than full value on what was owed them. Paradoxically, it was a representative of the banking industry, perhaps more in tune with the realities of the marketplace, who finally insisted that Greece could not borrow and cut its way out of the crisis without restructuring its debt. ''There was shock and surprise on their faces,'' Mr. Dallara recalled. ''They could not believe it.'' Even though work proceeded on a haircut plan, the Greeks were reluctant to participate. ''They were being passive,'' Mr. Dallara said. ''I think they felt this was being driven by the European governments and they were not sure how to grab hold of the issue.'' In July, Europe finally agreed on a 21 percent haircut for the banks as part of a broader 109 billion euro bailout for Greece. While presented as an example of civic mindedness, the agreement soon came to be seen as a sweetheart deal for the banks that did little to reduce the total Greek debt burden. Mr. Dallara concedes it is not the natural order of things to have the banks leading restructuring talks, but he disputes the view that their interest has been a narrow one. ''We are trying to represent the broad interests of the system,'' he said. But Germany put its foot down, objecting that the cuts did not go far enough. While the deal reached in late October will require bondholders to accept deeper losses, Europe, Greece and Mr. Dallara continue to insist that the transaction will be voluntary. As a result, there will be no need to activate Greek credit default swaps, which would add to the complexity and cost. But in the eyes of many debt experts, this is simply another form of denial. ''You have to have a coercive element to make it work,'' said Mitu Gulati, a sovereign debt expert at Duke University Law School. ''To not accept that means you are living in Alice in Wonderland.''	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
During photography of the 2015 BMW 435i convertible, I shot beautiful video of flowers, clouds, horses and scenic vistas along rural roads. Almost none of it is used in the piece. This is, after all, a car review, not a CBS Sunday Morning sound and picture piece. But, as a convertible owner myself, I'm compelled to communicate what I see and smell when the top is down. It's not only about getting a deeper tan (something doctors will frown upon anyway). As convertibles go, the 435i is quite nice, and for the price of two well equipped Miatas, it should be. The Luxury model I drove was optioned up to the cost of 64,800. The 300 horsepower 3 liter in line 6 cylinder engine, with twin scroll turbocharging, danced flawlessly with its 8 speed automatic transmission partner. The hardtop mechanism hypnotized anybody who saw its precise movements. The convertible isn't as lithe in the corners as the 4 Series coupe. Added weight (and a readjustment of it) takes the edge off the fun for hard charging pilots who must drive the car to its limits. Owners slinging though turns using 90 percent of the 4 Series' ability will be quite satisfied if they manage to keep their licenses. The chassis is ingot solid, and the transmission is always on the right cog. Always. The 435i's convertible competition consists of the Audi A5, the Infiniti Q60, the Lexus IS and maybe the all new 2015 Mustang if you're looking to keep the budget in check. The openness of a convertible raises your awareness of the world you're passing. Close up the top and the world stares back.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
GENEVA For Thomas Minder, a decade long crusade against "fat cats" is coming to a head. The Swiss are set to vote Sunday on whether to adopt his proposal to impose some of the world's most severe restrictions on executive compensation. The prospect is opposed by the banks and other multinational companies that have long spearheaded Switzerland's economy, who say the rules will damage the country's business friendly climate. Mr. Minder, an entrepreneur and member of the Swiss Parliament (with no relation to the reporter), has taken the opposite view. "If this gets voted, it will be the best export advertisement possible, because investors put their money where they have the most to say, and that will clearly then be Switzerland," he said. The changes, he added, would guarantee that "investors will no longer have to worry about ridiculous backdoor deals." If Mr. Minder's proposal is adopted, shareholders of companies listed in Switzerland would have a binding say on compensation for executives and board members, and the plan would obligate pension funds to participate in all such votes. Mr. Minder's proposal would also ban departure packages like the 78 million payout that Novartis, the pharmaceutical company, agreed to give its departing chairman, Daniel Vasella. The payout set off a political storm and brought intense criticism from some investors, prompting Mr. Vasella to tell shareholders last week that the plan had been a mistake. Those who violate the new rules would be subject to fines worth as much as their salaries for six years and prison sentences as long as three years. The vote on Mr. Minder's proposal comes after the United States and Germany, among other countries, authorized shareholders to cast nonbinding votes on executive pay. Such actions have been taken in response to Occupy Wall Street and other movements that have attacked corporate abuses that fueled the world financial crisis. On Thursday, the European Parliament proposed to limit bankers' bonuses to twice their salaries. The latest opinion polls suggest that voters will endorse his project, and Mr. Minder said the Novartis controversy had illustrated exactly why tougher rules were needed. "There is something completely sick in a board like that of Novartis, where everybody is just friends with everybody," he said. As to Mr. Vasella's U turn, Mr. Minder said, "It's easy to renounce something which should in any case never have belonged to you." Still, Switzerland's business lobby is warning of dire consequences if voters approve the proposals. While Switzerland is home to 7.5 million people, it punches far above its weight in economic terms, thanks largely to multinationals in sectors including banking, watches, food, pharmaceuticals and engineering. Many of these companies have most of their shareholding outside Switzerland. "Switzerland risks becoming one of the most restrictive places for management in the world," said Meinrad Vetter, an official from EconomieSuisse, the Swiss business federation. For foreign companies, he added, Mr. Minder's proposal would "clearly be a very bad signal in terms of choosing Switzerland as a location to do business, because Switzerland has in fact always been a country that had been seen as very business friendly." Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. Neither have many institutional investors endorsed the plan. The Ethos Foundation, based in Geneva, which is owned by 141 pension and other funds, recognized that Mr. Minder had pinpointed a genuine problem in Switzerland in terms of weak shareholders' rights. But Mr. Minder's proposal would push Switzerland "from one extreme to the other," said Christophe Hans, head of communications at Ethos. Mr. Hans also warned that Mr. Minder's proposal could create a new set of managerial problems. "You cannot give the board the right to choose the C.E.O. but then not make it able to finalize the hiring contract," Mr. Hans said. "Which employee, let alone a C.E.O., would accept a job offer without first having the salary guaranteed?" And even if companies are unlikely to leave Switzerland in droves if voters approve Mr. Minder's initiative, "some family controlled companies would delist," Mr. Hans predicted. While Mr. Vasella and Novartis have focused recent attention on the issue, much of Mr. Minder's criticism is aimed at the Swiss banks whose earnings and shares have tumbled in recent years, even as the rest of the Swiss economy has remained relatively unscathed by the financial crisis. Mr. Minder said bankers like Marcel Ospel, the former chairman of UBS, had brought to Switzerland "the wrong and harmful banking spirit," learned while previously working on Wall Street. Five years ago, Mr. Minder had to be restrained by Mr. Ospel's bodyguards when he tried to storm the podium at a UBS shareholders' meeting. Mr. Minder also suggested that Switzerland's growing reliance on foreign executives had helped inflate compensation. He cited as an example Brady Dougan, an American banker who took charge of Credit Suisse in 2007 and has been among the top earners in Switzerland. "I want Swiss people on the boards of Swiss companies, not foreigners with the wrong culture," he said. The difference, Mr. Minder said, is "whether you believe money is everything or whether you can also understand that Switzerland has direct democracy and a sense of balance." Two other possible Swiss referendums are looming, both linked to salary issues. One concerns setting a minimum wage and the other is a so called 1 for 12 initiative, to ensure that the top salary in a company does not exceed the lowest one by more than 12 times. If Mr. Minder's initiative is rejected Sunday, Swiss voters will still automatically be approving a government counterproposal, which would give shareholders a vote on executive pay, though not necessarily a binding vote. Mr. Minder, however, warned that this alternative would not "prevent in any way backdoor deals." At the top of Mr. Minder's list of such deals is the one a decade ago that brought about his personal fight against what he terms rip off merchants. His family owned business, Trybol, which supplied toothpaste, mouthwash and other body care products to Swissair, found itself holding the bag when the Swiss flag carrier ran out of money in 2001. Swissair had decided to pay its new chief executive, Mario Corti, 12 million Swiss francs in advance when he was hired in 2001. Mr. Corti then left his job and Switzerland for the United States shortly after Swissair's grounding in October 2001. A Swiss court eventually acquitted Mr. Corti and other former Swissair directors of any mismanagement charges. Even so, the fact that Mr. Corti never returned the wages he had been paid upfront "should still be seen as criminal," Mr. Minder said. Mr. Minder eventually received the money he had been owed by the airline and then stepped up his campaign against what he considers excessive executive compensation. He gathered increasing public support after the onset of the world financial crisis, which also exposed management failures at UBS and other leading Swiss institutions.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
"I'm hearing my name mentioned a little bit tonight." "Vladimir Putin thinks that Donald Trump should be president of the United States, and that's why Russia is helping you get elected, so you'll lose to him." "I think I would make a better president than Bernie." "Bernie voted to exempt the gun manufacturers from liability." "I do not think that this is the best person to lead the ticket." "It comes down to Donald Trump with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s, and Bernie Sanders with a nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s." "Do we think health care for all, Pete, is some kind of radical communist idea?" "Mayor Bloomberg has a solid and strong and enthusiastic base of support. Problem is, they're all billionaires." "Was the way that the mayor implemented stop and frisk racist?" "Yes." "Senator Warren, that is a very serious charge that you leveled at the mayor " "Yes." " that he told a woman to get an abortion. What evidence do you have of that?" "Her own words." "And Mayor Bloomberg, could you respond to this?" "I never said it. Period. End of story. My fellow contestants up here ... I'm surprised they show up, because I would have thought after I did such a good job in beating them last week that they'd be a little bit afraid to do that." "You talk about concerns about race. Well, my good friend on the end of this platform, he in fact bought a system that was a private prison system." "You wrote the crime bill " "Where we come from, that's called 'Tommy come lately.'" " the crime bill that put hundreds of thousands of young black and Latino " "Not true." " men in prison." "If I were black, my success would have been a lot harder to achieve." "We can no longer pretend that everything is race neutral. We have got to address race consciously " "There's seven white people on this stage talking about racial justice." "Tom, I think she was talking about my plan, not yours." "I think we were talking about math, and it doesn't take two hours to do the math. Because let's talk about what it adds up to." "Let's talk about math. What every study out there, conservative or progressive, says, Medicare for All will save money." "The math does not add up." "I'll tell you exactly what it adds up to. It adds up to four more years of Donald Trump." "This is a global problem. We've got to work with countries all over the world to solve it." "if I'm elected, N.R.A., I'm coming for you, and gun manufacturers, I'm going to take you on and I'm going to beat you." "My secretary of education will be someone who has taught in public school." "If you want to make the criminal justice system work, you don't want to have repeat customers and you want to help people to get off of drugs." "The biggest misconception about me " " is that I'm not passionate " " that I'm boring " " is that the ideas I'm talking about are radical." "That I'm six feet tall." "That I don't eat very much." "I have more hair than I think I do."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Billy Bush, the former "Today" host whose lewd conversation with Donald J. Trump in 2005 roiled the presidential race, said in his first media interview since he left NBC in October that he spent his months away from the spotlight trying to "become a better, fuller man." In his conversation with The Hollywood Reporter, published on Sunday, Mr. Bush said he hoped to come back to television but apologized for his part in the recorded conversation with Mr. Trump. In that infamous conversation, Mr. Bush, then a host of "Access Hollywood," laughed along with Mr. Trump as the future president graphically bragged about his efforts to seduce a married woman, and of kissing and grabbing women. After the video emerged in October, Mr. Bush departed NBC under an undisclosed agreement. The former host said his behavior was explained by a desire to fit in and maintain access to Mr. Trump, who was a ratings powerhouse and tended to banter about "golf, gossip or women." "I felt that, in that moment, he was being typically Donald, which is performing and shocking," Mr. Bush said. "Almost like Andrew Dice Clay, the stand up comedian: Does he really do the things that he's saying or is that his act? "And in Donald's case, I equated it that way," he continued. "When he said what he said, I'd like to think if I had thought for a minute that there was a grown man detailing his sexual assault strategy to me, I'd have called the F.B.I." In retrospect, Mr. Bush wishes he had changed the topic, he said. But "I didn't have the strength of character to do it," he said. While he put out a short statement in October, in which he said he was "embarrassed and ashamed," he has otherwise avoided media attention in the last seven months. The recent interview was the first glimpse at what he has done with his time away, and how he has reacted to the scandal. Mr. Bush, who is married and has three daughters, said he has had difficult conversations with his family. One of his daughters, who was 15 at the time, tearfully called him out for laughing along with Mr. Trump, he said. He now has "a deeper understanding of how women can connect to the feeling of having to fight extra hard for an even playing field," he said. He has not spoken to Mr. Trump and would not say how he voted in November, he said. When the interviewer noted that Mr. Trump became president while he lost his job, Mr. Bush responded, "I will admit the irony is glaring." He said he intended to work his way back into television, and said he had "changed in a way that I think will make me better at my job." "I believe there will be more people like me in crisis," he said. "And with social media, a flame becomes a bonfire quickly. So I will be picking up my pen and writing them and calling them on the phone, and I will pursue these interviews and these moments with these people. And through what I've learned and where I've been, I will tell them, 'You have empathetic ears in me.' "	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
MARRAKESH, Morocco Under the yellow domed ceiling of the Theater Royal of Marrakesh, a small crowd cheered and watched in awe as champion break dancers from around the world battled, with head slides, freezes and kicks, in a competition streamed globally online. "Make some noise!" the host of the event screamed into a microphone. "Show enthusiasm. People don't know anything about Morocco." They were especially excited about the performance of Fouad Ambelj, a 24 year old Moroccan prodigy who dances as Lil Zoo and who has become a worldwide sensation. In Morocco, where state funding and institutions for the arts is scarce, break dancing has empowered young people to make their own entertainment since its arrival in the 1980s. The dance form, born a decade earlier in the Bronx, was ostensibly free; all it required were able bodies and open space. "As a young guy in Casablanca, if you don't have money or you don't want to sit in a cafe every day talking about football, one fun thing is to go to a space and conquer it," said Cristina Moreno Almeida, a postdoctoral fellow at King's College in London who has studied hip hop culture in Morocco. "It's a global language that they all speak and they all know." For years, these B boys practiced in public outdoor spaces. They fashioned makeshift dance floors out of cardboard to practice head spins when they couldn't find grass fields. Their recreational, D.I.Y. approach broke with cultural norms. "Moroccan youth don't usually dance in public spaces, unless it's a wedding celebration or Sufi procession," said Hisham Aidi, a researcher at Columbia University who writes about global hip hop and cultural policy. Before the internet and smartphones made it possible to watch back to back performances on YouTube, these dancers in training would watch hip hop films on VHS and practice tirelessly. Hicham Abkari, 52, was part of the pioneering generation of Moroccan break dancers in the '80s. He remembers watching Michael Chambers, an American dancer and actor who goes by the nickname Boogaloo Shrimp, perform the turbo broom dance in the 1984 hip hop movie "Breakin'." Afterward, Mr. Abkari tried to replicate the moves with his friends. "We were first attracted by the music, the appearance of the dancers," he said. "They dressed as they wanted and they looked free. We loved that it was simply an artistic expression free of judgment." Today Mr. Abkari is the head of the Mohammed VI Theater, which opened its doors to Casablanca's dancers in 2006 and was followed by the culture center L'Uzine in 2014. These spaces allow them to rehearse, improve and professionalize their art. Morocco and Algeria have the richest hip hop scenes in the Middle East and North Africa region, Mr. Aidi said, in part because of their connection to the immigrant communities in the French urban peripheries where hip hop is very popular. "As break dance or 'le smurf,' as it was called took off in France in the 1980s, the styles would trickle down to North Africa, carried by European born youth bringing cassettes, sneakers and tapes of 'H.I.P.H.O.P,' the pioneering French TV show which began airing in 1984, four years before 'Yo! MTV Raps,'" he said. According to Mr. Aidi, the form developed during a tense political period in Morocco when the government was cracking down on street protests, after the riots of 1984 prompted by hikes in food prices. While protesters and outspoken artists were targets, dancers flew under the radar because they were seen as apolitical. When a second generation of Moroccan B boy crews emerged in the early 2000s, their art really began to flourish. "The government also began supporting hip hop in earnest in the mid 2000s, after the Casablanca bombings of 2003, seeing music as a way to keep youth away from extremism," Mr. Aidi said, referring to a terrorist attack that killed 45 people. "The Moroccan regime keeps a fairly tight grip over the hip hop scene, showcasing pro regime rappers and isolating or arresting oppositional ones." Now, a new generation of B boys, and B girls, is forming in Morocco. Hajar Chaiboub, 21, started break dancing at the age of 13. She saw a group of peers rehearsing near her apartment in Temara, a city close to Rabat, the capital of Morocco. They made her feel welcome and taught her the basics. "It wasn't like any other sport or even like dancing," she said. "I felt comfortable. I knew all the guys, I was like a sister to them." Though break dancing is no longer an underground pursuit, these young artists still face considerable financial barriers; according to the World Bank, more than one fourth of young Moroccans are without a job, and sponsorships are hard to come by. Moreover, the dancers' opportunities to compete internationally are curbed by the difficulty of obtaining traveling visas. But grass roots enthusiasm from dancers past and present has kept the art form alive. Yassine Alaoui Ismaili, who took these photographs, was part of the early 2000s wave of break dancers in Casablanca. His story is a familiar one: He saw people dancing in a park and was instantly drawn toward their energy. "It is the same spirit here as when it was created in the Bronx," Mr. Ismaili, 33, said. "People were craving a place to express themselves."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
FRANKFURT Albert Speer Jr., an internationally prominent architect who sought throughout his life to distance himself from the dark legacy of his father, a member of Adolf Hitler's inner circle, died on Sept. 15 at his home in Frankfurt. He was 83. His death was announced by his architectural firm, AS P, in Frankfurt. It said the cause was complications of surgery he had undergone after falling at his home. Mr. Speer was the eldest of six children of Albert Speer, one of Hitler's closest confidants. The elder Speer was Hitler's chief architect and later his armaments minister, and was convicted of war crimes for his use of slave labor. The younger Mr. Speer's impact on urban landscapes was ultimately far greater than that of his father, whose grandiose architectural plans for the Nazi Third Reich were never realized. Albert Jr.'s firm designed master plans for Expo 2000 in Hanover, Germany; the Nigerian capital city, Abuja; and a so called Automobile City on the outskirts of Shanghai, close to a large Volkswagen factory.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
How do you keep up with the latest news about the volcano? I rely on multiple sources to tell me about conditions on the ground and where the threats are highest. Residents call or send me text and social media messages. I get updates from government and emergency management workers and the National Guard. And live notices go out via cellphone. What do things look like now? There's a fast moving lava flow going to another section of the Lower Puna community. Cellphone service has been cut off because power lines and cell towers are down. A major thoroughfare has been cut off and many families had to evacuate in the middle of the night. Local agriculture is devastated. Farms have been overrun by lava or crops have died due to volcanic gases in the air. What are some of the dangers? The direct threats to residents and first responders are the lava flow, which has created a 2,400 acre lava field and destroyed over 100 structures, and the volcanic gases. The volcano emits sulfur dioxide, which at high concentrations can be a health hazard especially for children, the elderly and people with respiratory illness. The broader threat is gaseous vog and ash vog is the volcanic form of fog. It not only threatens the immediate community but depending on how the wind travels is potentially dangerous to other communities miles away. What precautions should travelers take? We don't recommend and actually discourage tourists from visiting the active volcano area. Resources are strained. First responders police, fire, civil defense and the National Guard are focused on evacuations and keeping residents safe. The situation is continually changing and evolving. Now is not the time for tourists to blanket the area.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Welcoming a robot into her family was never Maxine Duncan's idea of a support aide in her older years. But this winter, she and her partner, Herbert Yarbrough, signed up to test a telepresence robot in their retirement community, the Heritage Downtown, in Walnut Creek, Calif. Their new pal has a screen for a head and scuttles around on wheels. The lure was being able to connect more easily with their families via video calls. The couple were immediately smitten. They have named the robot Jimmy. "It's an easy name to remember," said Ms. Duncan, 86, a former real estate broker. And Mr. Yarbrough, 89, takes the robot on the elevator to pick up breakfast downstairs. "We want to keep up on technology," said Ms. Duncan, who covets a self driving car. "A lot of older people are isolated from people and ideas. Now we're on the cutting edge." Rosie, the robot from "The Jetsons," has arrived. Early adopters like Ms. Duncan are on the front lines of testing new technologies that some experts say are set to upend a few of the constants of retirement. Eager not to be left behind, retirement communities are increasingly serving as testing grounds that vet winners and losers. Some simple tools that can help older adults are already mass market consumer items, like Amazon's personal assistant, Alexa. Other inventions, such as virtual reality technologies and robotic limbs, are still in their early days but could soon provide more freedom, resources and constant care to retirees. Some technologists see the most promise in the social dimensions. For too long, technology has been chasing problems rather than trying to delight human beings, said Joseph Coughlin, director of the AgeLab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Where are the devices that help us learn and expand our horizons?" he said. Virtual reality, for example, can entertain, educate and engage us, he said. "It's for young and old alike," Mr. Coughlin said. "And it's enjoyed, not needed. That's the high ground." These devices will especially help augment the adult child's caregiver role, he added. Thuc Vu, co founder of OhmniLabs, helped invent the robot Ohmni that is now Ms. Duncan and Mr. Yarbrough's companion. Dr. Vu, who has a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford, sees consumer robotics as the next big technology wave. "There's a huge senior population, but isolation and loneliness is still common," he said. "And we're also running out of caregivers, since most of them are getting older." This year, OhmniLabs robots will be offered by a consumer health firm, Home Care Assistance, to retirement communities and people aging in place. The yearly cost is about 20 percent of the cost, on average, of hiring full time caregivers, according to Lily Sarafan, chief executive of Home Care Assistance. "In five to seven years, caregiving will shift," Ms. Sarafan said. "And a lot of home automation will become more mainstream." Digital health means more attention to senior care, said Ms. Sarafan, who is an active tech investor and a mentor at StartX. "Otherwise, aging is a huge challenge," she added. Brookdale Senior Living, which has over 1,000 residential communities, is also aggressively testing new technology. Its Entrepreneur in Residence program invites start ups into its communities for short stays to test new gadgets. They include smart medication devices, virtual reality and family connection apps. Locast, a nonprofit streaming service for local TV, is shutting down Capital One's chief executive was fined after being called a 'repeat offender.' Older adults at Brookdale are eager to offer feedback, said Andrew Smith, the company's director of strategy and innovation. And entrepreneurs also get firsthand experiences with an aging population that has to adapt to their ideas. "Technology will change the way people age in America," Mr. Smith said. "It's going to drive every dimension of health or social isolation. Nursing homes were once where you'd go to die." Some devices miss their mark. Brookdale residents tested a body dryer, which is widely used at amusement parks to dry people after a ride. "But no one would come near it," he said. Virtual reality, however, has touched residents' hearts. "Seniors were weeping to see their old homes again," Mr. Smith said. Virtual reality rejuvenated life for Abdus Shakur, 67, who lives in a Brookdale residence in Quincy, Mass. A classically trained chef, Mr. Shakur opted to take a virtual trip to a Creole restaurant in Berlin, where he once worked. By wearing the V.R. headset, he could check out the current menu and look at the restaurant's colorful redesign. Mr. Shakur also took virtual trips to beaches in the Caribbean, where he felt the sand under his feet and saw schools of fish under water. "I felt like I was right there," said Mr. Shakur, who has a bad heart and doesn't travel as much as he used to. "It gives you so much hope. I can sit in my living room and go all over the world." Mr. Yarbrough often takes the robot, which they named Jimmy, on the elevator to pick up breakfast downstairs. Ryan Young for The New York Times Mr. Shakur's headset was developed by Rendever, after a co founder's mother in law's dementia led to communication problems. "So we're using V.R. as a mechanism to enhance life," said Dennis Lally, C.E.O. and co founder of Rendever, an M.I.T. company based in Boston. The founders spent hundreds of hours living with residents in Massachusetts to understand their needs, and a crucial lesson was that they often talked about travel. "Sensory stimulation is important," Mr. Lally said. "And V.R. creates a sense of wonder for the world again." Taking people back in time can even prompt more memories in people with cognitive impairments. Changing ideas about aging are also affecting how products are branded, said Stephen Johnston, co founder of the technology accelerator Aging2.0. Some, however, still have a learning curve, such as one start up that used the word "grandparent" in its name. "But not every older person is a grandparent," Mr. Johnston said. Front Porch, which operates retirement communities in California, has been one of the most actively involved in trying out the devices, he said. The company's Center for Technology Innovation and Wellbeing has tested many products and has been able to provide feedback to inventors and marketers on what works. A robot baby seal named Paro, for example, helped people with dementia communicate, while virtual reality that stimulates the mind worked well, too. This year, Front Porch will test ride sharing services and Amazon Echo as part of the internet of things that can operate smart devices. "Echo can reach people who are visually impaired," said Davis Park, director of the Front Porch Center for Innovation and Wellbeing. "And it can be interactive. It's a form of companionship." Front Porch residents have also tested another Silicon Valley invention: the AlterG Bionic Leg, a wearable rehabilitation robotic device that is therapeutic. Sara Carter, 82, who has had knee replacements and lives in a Front Porch community called Sunny View, tried the bionic leg. After walking back and forth with it, she said it was a useful tool. "I'm interested in technology that helps people," said Ms. Carter, who doesn't own a smartphone. The bionic leg, which was later altered to be lighter and fit better, is now on the market. Retirement communities can be the perfect proving grounds for such devices that will help an aging population, officials say. "There has been a big problem with asking seniors about these products," Mr. Park said. "We're a bridge."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Martin Gerstell, 94, volunteers at the National Gallery in Washington. When his fellow volunteers can't give him a ride, he uses Uber. Older People Need Rides. Why Aren't They Using Uber and Lyft? Martin Gerstell treasures his Thursday morning volunteer stint at the National Gallery of Art, where he fields questions at the main information desk. He patiently responds when visitors ask about the current exhibits, whether the paintings are real, where the bathrooms are. Usually, fellow volunteers give him a ride from his assisted living residence in northwest Washington to the museum downtown, and home again. But when they can't, Mr. Gerstell, 94, uses the Uber app his granddaughter installed on his iPhone. "They appear very quickly, and they're very helpful," Mr. Gerstell said of his Uber drivers, who fold and stash his walker in the trunk. Summoning a taxi, his previous option, usually took 15 to 20 minutes; Uber arrives in three to five minutes and charges less, under 20, to drive him downtown. It probably helps that Mr. Gerstell, a retired electrical engineer, handles new technology with aplomb. Donna Nettleton has encountered a different reaction at the Oasis Institute in Shiloh, Ill., where she volunteers to teach older people about digital devices. Her students take happily to Facebook, but "Uber and Lyft are scarier because they involve money," she explained. Older adults, warned continually about scams and identity theft, fear that misusing an app could empty their bank accounts. "It's challenging to build the confidence they need to actually use these things that could make life easier for them," Ms. Nettleton said. So far, she's been unable to convert any of her advisees including her 80 year old mother into riders. More than half of adults over 65 own smartphones, the Pew Research Center has reported. Yet among adults 50 and older, only about a quarter used ride hailing services in 2018 (a leap, however, from 7 percent in 2015). By comparison, half of those aged 18 to 29 had used them. In a survey by AARP last year, only 29 percent of those over 50 had used ride hailing apps. Two thirds said they weren't likely to do so in the coming year, citing in part concerns about safety and privacy. (Given data breaches at Uber, that's no baseless fear.) Nevertheless, transportation experts see ride hailing as a way to improve mobility and preserve independence for older people who can or should no longer drive, or never did. Ride hailing and, one day, autonomous vehicles are game changers, said David Lindeman, who directs health programs at the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society at the University of California, Berkeley. "We have wonderful new opportunities that many people are still not aware of." One reason for such optimism: evidence that with personalized instruction, older adults can master the mobile apps and take "networked transportation" to medical appointments, entertainment and leisure activities, social visits and fitness classes. In a newly published study, researchers at the University of Southern California offered three free months of unlimited Lyft rides to 150 older people in and around Los Angeles (average age: 72) who had chronic diseases and reported transportation problems. With training, nearly all used Lyft, most through the mobile app (a few used a call in service), for an average of 69 trips. On follow up questionnaires, almost all riders reported improved quality of life. But ride hailing companies aren't waiting around for more older adults to grow adept with their phones. Seniors in need of transportation constitute a potentially lucrative market. So Lyft and Uber and others are contracting with third parties, bypassing the need for older riders to use apps or to have smartphones at all. They're joining forces with health care systems, for instance. In the past 18 months, more than 1,000 including MedStar, in the Washington area, and the Boston Medical Center have signed on with Uber Health for "nonemergency medical transportation," the company said. Case managers and social workers can use Uber or Lyft to ferry patients to or from clinics and offices, reducing missed appointments. "Hospitals may spend millions on taxi vouchers," said Dan Trigub, who heads Uber Health. " Uber is cheaper , and we see higher patient satisfaction." The companies have targeted senior living facilities, too. Most provide some sort of scheduled transportation, primarily for medical visits, but often "the residents feel limited by the shuttle it doesn't really provide the independence they want," said Gyre Renwick, vice president of Lyft Business. Now, at Brookdale Senior Living, the nation's largest chain, as well as several other chains and communities, the front desk staff can call Lyft for residents, either billing the resident or rolling the cost into the monthly fee . Both major ride hail companies are also experimenting with programs for older and disabled people whose mobility problems make standard curb to curb services difficult to use. The Lyft and Uber apps can dispatch wheelchair accessible vans in several cities. In 20 cities, Uber Assist trains drivers to provide extra help for people using canes, walkers and folding wheelchairs, though riders must still be able to enter and leave the car on their own. In the Bay Area, though, frail older people can get "door through door" services from 12 year old SilverRide. Its trained, vetted drivers escort riders out of their homes, help them transfer into and out of the car, and then accompany them to their specific destinations. "Door to door takes you to the entrance to the hospital," said Jeff Maltz, a co founder of the service. "We'll take you all the way to the doctor's office." SilverRide has pilot programs underway in Sacramento, Los Angeles and Kansas City, Mo., Mr. Maltz said, and will expand further next year. Another smaller player, GoGo Grandparent, piggybacks on Uber and Lyft, hiring operators who can take riders' requests on standard telephones, via push button menu, or by voice. The operators arrange the trip, charging 27 cents a minute over the ride hailing fees. (Of course, family members can dispatch Uber and Lyft to pick up their older relatives as well, for no extra cost.) That raises a key question: Will ride hailing be too expensive for many seniors? In the U.S.C. study, the typical trip cost 22; the cost per month, had users actually paid it, averaged 500. After the study, about a fifth of riders said they wouldn't continue using ride hailing, mostly because of cost. Some Medicare Advantage programs now cover rides to medical appointments and pharmacies; Lyft expects to partner with most Advantage plans by next year, Mr. Renwick said. But most older Americans still use traditional Medicare, which doesn't cover such transportation. Experts like Alexandre Bayen, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, also worry about ride hailing outside metropolitan areas. "The rural population might not see this for a long time," he said. He envisions a combination of new public policies, subsidies and public private partnerships to make ride hailing broadly available.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Staff at the Seattle Children's Museum posted this list of books that feature anti racist messaging in May. Hours later, they found that certain parts had been deleted, like the phrase "Black Lives Matter." The label at the top right was added by staff. In the wake of the police killing of George Floyd and the protests that followed, institutions of every kind worked to figure out what they wanted to say. What sort of public statement should a shoe company release about racial injustice? How about a university? A theater? At the Seattle Children's Museum, staff members decided to post lists of children's books online that were anti racist in their messaging and featured joyful stories about Black children and their families. Another social media post featured a museum program where children create their own "support signs," not unlike the signs that activists bring to demonstrations, but typically softer. One declared "I love everything," with drawings of heart shaped balloons and peace signs. All of the posts started with a declaration: Black Lives Matter. Hours after the postings on Instagram and Facebook on May 30, all mentions of the phrase "Black Lives Matter" had been edited out of the captions. The museum's executive director explained her rationale for the deletions a couple of days later on a staff video call that participants taped. Christi Stapleton Keith, the director, said she personally believed in the message of Black Lives Matter but the institution had a process and needed to create a message "that the museum could all agree on as an organization.""And what happens" she went on, "if we lose funding? What happens if we lose donors? All of those considerations have to be considered when we write the language around this." The deletions and the call that followed created a crisis at the children's museum that is still unraveling more than two months later. Nine employees of the museum, which had been operating online only because of the pandemic, almost immediately went on strike. "At that moment I was prepared to never come back," said Maya Burton, who, at the time, worked in the museum's education department. Two weeks ago, those nine employees were laid off, though the museum said it was a preplanned layoff related to the exhaustion of its funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program and "in no way tied to recent developments." Now an outside investigator hired by the board of trustees is interviewing former and current employees as part of an inquiry into the social media incident. Ms. Stapleton Keith, who has run the museum since 2017, has been placed on paid leave until its conclusion. In an email, she declined an interview request, saying that she could not go into specifics because of the ongoing investigation. "I do want to underscore that the Seattle Children's Museum and myself, personally, do support Black Lives Matter and have long put forth educational programming for children that supports a more diverse, inclusive and equitable society," she said. In a statement released after the layoffs in July, the museum sought to explain the controversy: "Because the content dealt with sensitive topics and had been posted without typical discussion, review or approval from S.C.M. leadership, it was revised and references to Black Lives Matter were temporarily removed until a wider group of museum stakeholders could be consulted to ensure our messaging accurately represented our educational content." The museum, which once featured a staff of 20, is now operating with five people. It had laid off most of its workers earlier in the spring as the pandemic bore down on Seattle, and it became clear that it would be a while before children and families would converge on its vast playground of hands on activities, like the grocery store where visitors can pick out imitation food items. During the months of the pandemic, though, the museum's Instagram account had become a virtual stand in for its programming, filling up over the weeks with science demonstrations about wind energy and composting, or cooking programs that showed children how to make "heart healthy chocolate pudding." One former employee who often appeared as a host of the videos, Mimi Santos, said that it felt natural for the museum to post lists of books that dovetailed with the racial justice protests sweeping the country. The lists included titles like "Not My Idea: A Book About Whiteness" and "My Hair Is a Garden," a picture book about a Black girl learning the beauty of natural hair. When Ms. Santos heard that Ms. Stapleton Keith did not approve of what had been posted, she said that she told her supervisor that, "If you take it down you're telling the families that we serve and your front facing staff, who are majority people of color, you're telling us that you don't care." By the time the staff logged onto their computers to join the Zoom call with the director in June, they had a list of demands for their bosses, among them, that Ms. Stapleton Keith make a public apology and an explanation as to why the posts were edited. Ms. Stapleton Keith sought to explain what had happened on the call. She said that the social media posts hadn't gone through the proper processes and apologized for the "hurt all around because of the way these posts were handled." She told the staff that while "I don't think any of us disagree with the language around Black Lives Matter," releasing such a statement required more group consultation, as well as board approval. A former employee who wrote the captions for the posts, Meg Hesketh, said that she did not realize that writing "Black Lives Matter" in a social media post would require a review process or end up causing such a stir. She said that many members of the museum staff wore pins on their vests that say Black Lives Matter. Particularly upsetting, several staff members said, was the suggestion that the tone of the postings needed to be modified so as to not upset donors. The museum says that about 40 percent of its budget, which was roughly 1.3 million in 2018, is contributed. "My thought was that then we need to find better funding," Anthony Noceda, a former employee, said in an interview. "If their values don't align with that, then we don't need their money." Mr. Mathews, the board chair, said that the investigator had also been tasked with looking into what employees had recently identified as ongoing problems with how staffers of color were treated at the museum. He said that the board was "taking the hurt that our community feels very seriously." Ms. Burton said that, even if there is a chance some staff will be hired back, she had decided not to return and headed home to Florida, where she lived before moving to Seattle to attend college in 2012. On Sunday, she was in the middle of the drive, when she reflected on the tumult of recent months. "It's sad because I was sure that this was going to be my forever job," said Ms. Burton, who is Black. "But this is about people's lives. It's about my life, the lives of my family and friends." Since the controversy erupted in early June, the museum has used the phrase "Black Lives Matter" several times on its social media accounts and in its public statements. A new page on its website is called "Because Black Lives Matter."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Sophie Claudel was living in Paris and working at the Pompidou Center when France Moves took over New York City. "I heard a lot about it," she said over coffee, referring to the 2001 dance festival of French choreography. Her eyes widened with curiosity. "I always thought, why shouldn't we try to do something?" For Ms. Claudel, now the French Embassy's cultural attache specializing in the visual and performing arts, France Moves, programmed by Yorgos Loukos, was clearly important. But she knew that another French themed festival, 13 years later, would have to be different. Danse: A French American Festival of Performance and Ideas, which runs through May 18 at various venues, is organized by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy. Along with performances, there will be talks and two books published in conjunction with the series. Ms. Claudel is obsessed with the disparity between those who pay attention to visual art and those who focus on dance. She's hoping that the publications will leave an indelible mark. "I wonder if one of the reasons is maybe also the fact that it's a matter of trace what is left after a festival," she said. "We know, because we are very much involved in dance, that there's an impact, but for a large audience, what is the result?" With Danse, there is no single programmer, as when Mr. Loukos masterminded France Moves. (The company he directs, the Lyon Opera Ballet, is performing a work by Christian Rizzo Wednesday to Friday at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.) "Yorgos, I love him," Ms. Claudel said. "He's a friend and a great guy. But it's also important that there's no artistic director coming from France. The level of the programmers here is so high. They don't need anyone. They know exactly what they are doing." Cultural Services organized research trips to Europe for New York programmers to become better acquainted with French artists, which is probably why it's impossible to nail down an aesthetic theme for Danse. An experienced generation of artists, including Mr. Rizzo, Emmanuelle Huynh and Alain Buffard are mixed in with younger choreographers like Maud Le Pladec, the duo Cecilia Bengolea and Francois Chaignaud, and the collaborators Annie Vigier and Franck Apertet. For the mysterious "Topologie," which is being produced by the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City, Ms. Vigier and Mr. Apertet question an artist's position in the world. In it, five New York dancers, including John Hoobyar and Rebecca Patek, move along different paths in that Queens neighborhood, where, in street clothes, they perform repetitive actions. Viewers will receive a map at the theater with a diagram to help find the performers. Brian Rogers, the artistic director of the Chocolate Factory, met the artists two years ago when they invited a few people to a meeting at the Whitebox Art Center on the Lower East Side. "It turned out that this meeting was really an art project," he said. "They made me sign a video release. I went to Paris twice after that and got to know them. I just had this strange instinct about them. They're French in this particular way where they're really secretive about their motivations even to me. Normally that would make me run to the hills screaming, but for some reason I'm just really drawn to them." He laughed and added quickly, "Sometimes my instincts are very wrong." The dance world has significantly changed since 2001. Its decentralization, for one, has been aided by international festivals, mainly in Europe, where a number of New York artists have immersed themselves, including Trajal Harrell, Maria Hassabi, DD Dorvillier and Miguel Gutierrez. "That also woke up the dance community in France to be like, wow, there is also a lot going on in New York," said Cedric Andrieux, a former Merce Cunningham dancer now based in Lyon. At the moment, he is working, in France, with the American choreographer Daniel Linehan. As part of Danse, Mr. Andrieux will present a duet with Christophe Ives at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theater. Younger dance artists from around the world have made crucial connections through danceWEB Europe, a scholarship program for contemporary dance based in Vienna. But that's not to imply that all choreographers of a certain age or intent are making the same sort of work. As Mr. Harrell explained, "The aesthetics now are too diverse to say that there's one kind of movement that's grounding us all." Starting in the 1970s, France was a major producer for American choreographers like Cunningham and Trisha Brown. That bond has continued with artists like Mr. Harrell, who presents his work in France and is the recipient of generous residencies even though he isn't based there. "If I didn't have French co producers and support, my work would be very, very different; so I am fully indebted to mama France," he said. "I still feel that the base for my work is New York. Maybe that will change. I also think we don't have to choose anymore. There's enough going back and forth and that's a reflection of the Internet and the mobile world we live in." In New York, Lili Chopra's work as artistic director of the French Institute Alliance Francaise, where she is a curator of the annual fall Crossing the Line festival, has contributed to many cross cultural exchanges. But essentially the relationships created between New York and French dance artists are more of an unofficial endeavor: person to person. "Choreographers and dancers are not trying to pretend or say publicly, 'You know what? We work very much with the Americans,' or 'the Americans work very much with the French,' " Ms. Claudel said. "They don't care. What they're really trying to do is to develop their work in the best way possible and that means they talk to people who can give them something in terms of intellectual perception. I know that Emmanuelle Huynh loves the way Trajal talks about things, the way he sees the world. It's not something fake, it's something very deep."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
"Run This Town," a jagged, snappy procedural that splits its time between a downsizing newspaper and a dysfunctional city government, is a fictionalized account of an actual scandal. In 2013, The Toronto Star and Gawker both said their reporters had watched a video that appeared to show Toronto's mayor, Rob Ford, smoking crack. Six months later, he admitted to having used the drug, but did not resign. Bram (Ben Platt), a young journalist who writes listicles for a Toronto news outlet, is clearly out of his depth when he meets a potential source who wants to sell him the video. The movie, which ends with Bram delivering a self righteous, mostly unmotivated defense of his generation's work ethic, takes a weirdly sympathetic attitude toward his stumbles. The film is much sharper at city hall, where the two other major characters work. Kamal (Mena Massoud), the special assistant to the mayor, gleefully demonstrates his reporter stonewalling strategies to Ashley (Nina Dobrev), a new press aide. She eagerly runs interference for the mayor until he shows up at work drunk and grabs her lewdly. Damian Lewis plays Ford, whose name is not changed, in a surprisingly effective feat of prosthetics.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Rupert Hine in a recording studio in 1973. Although he performed under his own name, he was best known as a hit making producer. "I never wanted to be a rock star," he said. Rupert Hine, a prolific English producer and songwriter who thrived in the synth pop heyday of the 1980s making hits with Tina Turner, the Fixx and Howard Jones, died on June 4 at his home in Wiltshire, England. He was 72. The death was confirmed on his website. His wife, Fay Morgan Hine, said he had quadruple bypass surgery in 2010 and learned he had renal cancer in 2011. Mr. Hine began his recording career in 1965 and made six albums under his own name from 1971 to 1994, as well as albums with a group he started, Quantum Jump, in the 1970s. But he was better known as a hit making producer. He produced the Grammy winning Tina Turner hit "Better Be Good to Me" and other songs for her in the 1980s, and he produced the biggest hits by the Fixx, Howard Jones and Duncan Sheik. He also made albums with Stevie Nicks, Rush, Suzanne Vega and Underworld, and produced all star projects dedicated to environmental awareness and to human rights in Tibet. Rupert Neville Hine was born Sept. 21, 1947, in London, the son of Maurice and Joan (Harris) Hine. His mother was a nurse, and his father sold lumber. Rupert taught himself to play piano but never learned to read music. He made his recording debut in 1965 as part of the folk duo Rupert and David, with David McIver. Mr. McIver wrote lyrics for Mr. Hine's first solo albums in the early 1970s. Mr. Hine's band Quantum Jump had a hit in Britain with "The Lone Ranger," which was released in 1976 and quickly banned by the BBC for references to drug use and homosexuality. But it was revived by radio and television play in 1979, and a remix reached No. 5 on the British charts. Mr. Hine began producing albums in the 1970s, notably for the progressive rockers Kevin Ayers, Anthony Phillips and the band Camel. His own songs leaned toward the atypical structures and cerebral concepts of progressive rock. The ways his production melded acoustic and synthetic sounds aligned with pop's embrace of new wave and synth pop in the 1980s. He often played keyboards and synthesizers in his own productions. As electronic instruments emerged, he was a founding member of the International MIDI Association, which standardized the MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) specifications that make most synthesizers interoperable. Mr. Hine produced two albums by Howard Jones, including the million selling "Dream Into Action," and the first four albums by the Fixx, among them "Reach the Beach" in 1983, with the hit "One Thing Leads to Another." He also produced songs for Tina Turner's three multimillion selling 1980s studio albums, including "Better Be Good to Me" and the title song for her 1986 album, "Break Every Rule," which he co wrote. He produced two albums for Rush "Presto" in 1989 and "Roll the Bones" in 1991 and produced Stevie Nicks's million selling "The Other Side of the Mirror" in 1989. Mr. Hine resumed his solo career in the early 1980s, writing songs with lyrics by Jeannette Therese Obstoj and releasing three albums under his own name, each gleaming with electronic sounds. Anticipating a backlash from the music press against a hit making producer, he billed himself as a fictitious band, Thinkman, singing about subverting the media. He played nearly all of the instruments on Thinkman albums released in 1985, 1986 and 1990. Actors portrayed band members for photos and television appearances. Mr. Hine went on to produce Duncan Sheik's 1996 debut album, "Duncan Sheik," which included the hit "Barely Breathing." He made his final album as a songwriter under his own name, titled "The Deep End," in 1994, working with members of Underworld and the Fixx. He continued producing in the 2000s, including albums for Ms. Vega, Geoffrey Oryema and Teitur as well as another politically conscious project, "Songs for Tibet: The Art of Peace" (2008), with songs from Sting, Alanis Morissette, Dave Matthews and John Mayer. A follow up, "Songs for Tibet II" (2015), had songs from Lorde, Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel. In addition to Ms. Morgan Hine, whom he married in 2015, Mr. Hine is survived by a son from a previous marriage, Kingsley Hine; his stepchildren Amy Armstrong and Sam Armstrong; and a sister, Julie Juniper. Mr. Hine worked to nurture songwriters in recent years. He was a board member of the Ivors Academy, formerly the British Association of Songwriters Composers and Arrangers. He ran a publishing company, Auditorius, as a joint venture with BMG. And with the technology writer Alan Graham, he started the company One Click Licence, creating an app to streamline music licensing. Unlike some producers, Mr. Hine didn't set out to impose a signature sound. "What is this artist trying to say?" he said in a 2019 YouTube interview with Cherry Red Records. "With each individual song, how is he wanting to change the way the audience feels four minutes later?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
One of the most powerful men in European theater was flat on his back, merrily pedaling in the air. The floor length dress, platinum wig and tiara were a nice touch, and the pendulous rhinestone earring caught the light of BAM's Fishman Space. This aerobic interlude came early in the premiere performance of Olivier Py's four night run as Miss Knife, in whose guise he performs original songs written with the pianist Stephane Leach. "I started singing in drag when I was 18," Mr. Py (pronounced "pea"), now 52, said in a postshow chat in his native French. "I loved insolence, transgression. It looks like entertainment, but it's actually highly political." "I'm also well known in the world of quote unquote serious theater; I have responsibilities as the director of the Avignon Festival," he added. "So for someone like me to go on this clandestine path says something, I think, about freedom." The 70 year old Avignon Festival lasts only three weeks in summer, but it's a bear, with 50 to 60 events in an official program that presents such titans of publicly subsidized theater as Ivo van Hove, Romeo Castellucci, Thomas Ostermeier and Krystian Lupa, along with rising stars like the Spanish provocateur Angelica Liddell, dance shows, readings and exhibits. (Mr. Py doesn't oversee the thousand or so parallel offerings). That French directors don't have to spend as much time fund raising as their American equivalents leaves Mr. Py the time to helm shows, and write novels, essays and plays; sometimes he stages adaptations of his own books, as with this year's four and a half hour extravaganza "The Parisians." He is also in demand at major European opera houses, and has, by his count, directed 35 operas. When he has a free minute, he acts he portrayed the writer Maurice Sachs in the biopic "Violette," for instance. No project is too ambitious. Directing "King Lear"? Mr. Py upped the ante by translating it himself. The word "popular" is an important one to Mr. Py. "Our audience in Avignon isn't an elite audience at all the elite doesn't go to the theater, it goes to the opera," he said, laughing. Tickets for those under 26 cost 18 euros (about 21.50), with a top price of 39 euros (about 46.50). He added: "Avignon is a triumph of popular theater: work that is artistically demanding for a popular audience who's there to enjoy it, and who knows we give a expletive . We don't take people for idiots." It is not always smooth sailing. The French daily Le Monde trashed "The Parisians" under the headline "Olivier Py, Faust in the backrooms." The reviews of "King Lear" were possibly even worse; Cordelia was played by a ballet dancer with her mouth taped shut. The least you can say is that Mr. Py doesn't go for half measures. He made his mark as a writer director in 1995 with "La Servante," whose running time added up to 24 hours. "Baroque" and "excess" often pop up in descriptions of his style. Miss Knife's gown was not just floor length, it was also gold; her second outfit was a flamboyant Harlequin clown hybrid, her third a black feathered tutu. Her numbers are not just sad, they are tragic, filled with depression, lost loves and suicide: "Great classics of chanson!" Mr. Py exclaimed. The songs are performed straightforwardly, but Mr. Py's banter is surprisingly funny. "I've been told to speeek like zat because my French accent is very sexy," he said early onstage. And like all good impresarios, he knows how to surround himself. Each BAM show features a special guest, and Wednesday's audience was treated to a berserk appearance by Joey Arias, who duetted with Mr. Py on "All of Me," then performed a 15 minute "Summertime" that can be described only as unique. As soon as he is done with Miss Knife's current gig, Mr. Py will go back to his management role and continue assembling the festival's 2018 edition, which may or may not remedy a glaring absence: Avignon regularly welcomes theater makers from Europe, Africa and Asia, but not Americans (dance fares better, with choreographers like Trajall Harrell making the trip to Provence). "We're working on it," Mr. Py acknowledged. "I adored Annie Baker's 'The Antipodes,' but it's not touring. I'm putting out a call: If they want to come to Avignon, they are most welcome!"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
In 2017, I interviewed John Singleton for an article looking back 25 years to the Oscars in 1992, the year he was nominated for best director and best screenplay for his debut, "Boyz N the Hood." A few quotes from the director, who died Monday, wound up in the story then. But the interview covered more ground, including how he felt to be the first African American up for best director. Here's the transcript: Read the John Singleton obituary and an appraisal of "Poetic Justice." See where to stream his best films. Were you expecting to be nominated for best director at the Oscars? I wasn't at all. It was a surprise. I went to school as a screenwriter, so it was a great surprise to get nominated by the Writers Guild for best original screenplay. In the back of my mind, I was hoping I would get nominated for best original screenplay at the Oscars. I didn't think about the best director nomination because the Directors Guild of America hadn't nominated me. At the time, when I was that age, I was new to the business. The film performed very well, people loved it, and I was making the film for a core black audience. I didn't think it was going to cross over. I thought it would be like a great rap album, so it was really a surprise to me when the film garnered such critical success. I'm always worried when certain people like my work. They're part of the establishment why do they like me? I was trying to do a counterculture film, like "Easy Rider." So did you have mixed feelings about being embraced by the Oscars? No, my mantra at the time was I was happy, but I don't think I allowed myself to enjoy it as much. You do these things for the passion of it. You don't do it for the notoriety of it. There was a political thing about it. Barbra Streisand wasn't nominated for best director. That was a huge controversy. Some people said I took her slot. The irony was Barbra had gotten me into the D.G.A. she signed my application. Yeah, and after I made "Boyz N the Hood," I went around the lot, meeting veteran filmmakers Francis Coppola was making "Dracula," and Steven Spielberg was shooting "Hook." So I'd go hang out on these sets and watch my cinematic idols work and interact with them and socialize with them. That's what I remember most about the time. I felt like a kid in a candy store. I was living my cinematic dreams, and I was also going into a business that traditionally didn't have people like me and wasn't really welcoming people like me. But the generation that befriended me, at one time, they were the young game changers. So they were anointing me to continue. Francis Coppola told me to write as many films as I can and keep them personal and make films that I'm passionate about. Not to follow the norm of what the marketplace wanted me to do. And I still have that attitude. How did you feel about being the youngest and the first African American best director nominee ever? I felt good. At the same time, it was an irony because two years before, Spike Lee would have been for "Do the Right Thing." He was nominated for the screenplay but not for direction and didn't win anything. He's always been a big brother to me. I met him when I was 18 years old. He was deserving of that honor, but Spike's snub helped "Boyz N the Hood" over the top. You presented an award with Spike at the Oscars that year. How did that go? Were you nervous? I don't know that I was nervous, but I felt like I was put on display. We just looked at each other like, "O.K., let's go out and do this thing." We've always been really close for all these years. We've been cheering each other on professionally. Do you remember how you picked out what to wear? I think I wore the same suit I wore to Cannes. I wasn't as fashion conscious then as I am now. Which I think is great. I was in preproduction on my next movie, "Poetic Justice," hanging out with Tupac Shakur and Janet Jackson, and then I had to go to the Oscars. That was where my head really was. I even missed the Oscar luncheon because I had to rehearse with the actors. I didn't really allow myself to enjoy it as much as I could've because I was nervous about getting caught up in the hype of it. The last thing I wanted to do was to be talking about just "Boyz N the Hood" 20 years later because that was the only thing I ever did. That was how I was at 24 years old. I had a lot more work to do. I wanted to express myself in all different type of genres. That's what I've attempted to do over the course of my career. How did you feel when your categories came up? Did you think you might win one? I was hoping I would win best screenplay. I knew Jonathan Demme was going to win best director for "Silence of the Lambs" . He came really close to producing "Boyz." He was the first professional director I knew who said, "You have something here with this screenplay." He was going to get it made at Orion Pictures. He flew me to New York, he had read the script, he wanted to produce it. He took me to lunch and gave me some directing tips and took me to a screening room, and he was just about to show "Silence" to the studio for the first time. He said, "I have this film. It's a little long right now. It's just a rough cut. Will you sit and watch it?" I was sitting in the theater and I was just about to watch it, and I said, "I've got to go do something else." Because I was trying to hang out with Russell Simmons and Public Enemy. I'm happy I saw the film in its final form because it's so brilliant and it really holds up. I was hoping I would win the screenplay award because I continue to believe my film was the most original film of the year. So your applause for Demme when he won best director was genuine? We were friends. When we were both nominated, we celebrated. I used his advice for my first film. He would tell me things about thematics and what's going on behind a scene. This was just over lunch, and the things Demme told me have resonated with me to this day. I use them all the time. All those guys who were working at the time befriended me and helped my career.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
PHILIP FEAR, a radiologist, has helped build a physicians' group in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., to over 20 doctors. And his successful practice means that he is often asked to give lectures to medical groups. But until last year, he was reluctant to smile because his teeth were badly stained from a combination of genetic factors and tetracycline, an antibiotic he took as a child. Worse, in 2005, he let a dentist talk him into a gold crown on a tooth, on the basis that it would last forever while a porcelain one would have to be replaced in 20 years. "He said you wouldn't notice it, but I noticed it," Dr. Fear said. "There would be this North Star in pictures." So last fall, he spent 60,000 to have porcelain veneers put on his teeth. "I feel more confident," he said. "I feel a lot better about my teeth." Dr. Fear is among a growing number of people who are spending tens of thousands of dollars to look a little bit better. These aren't the people going under the knife to stretch their face taut, suck out the effects of overeating or inflate, deflate or reinflate parts of their bodies. Instead, these are people who believe that a little work will make a difference in their careers and their perceptions of themselves and can afford to pay for it. "Patients are looking for, 'How do I look better, but I have no time to recuperate in my bed for a week,' " said Michael Gold, a dermatologist whose practice in Nashville is about 30 percent cosmetic work. "The trend in all of cosmetic surgery since Botox came out is totally noninvasive procedures. Their numbers are going up." Mr. Gold performs skin tightening procedures using a thermal treatment. It breaks down the fat cells and makes the skin look tighter without much pain or redness. He said a popular thermal treatment, from EndyMed, costs 300 to 400 a treatment in Nashville, and most people need a half dozen treatments to improve an area. The same procedure in a city like New York could cost 1,000 a treatment, he said. While any cosmetic treatment may seem vain, many people say these less invasive treatments have improved their lives. Allie Wu, 31, said she ground her teeth while she slept for years. As a result, her jaw clicked when she opened and shut her mouth. In 2009, she had surgery to correct her jaw alignment, but it made the problem worse. Closing her mouth became more painful. She had a second procedure to fix the first one in 2010, but that led to further complications, including nerve damage and seven lost teeth. "I could only chew on one side," she said. "I also had problems breathing. I had a lisp." When she moved to New York three years ago to take a job as an actuary at a life insurance company, she went to a third oral surgeon to fix her lower jaw. This time it worked, but her teeth were misaligned and discolored from the two previous operations. "Emotionally, I was really down," Ms. Wu said. "I felt like I shouldn't have gotten any surgery. I would have rather lived with the joint pain than gone through all the pain and bills. It changed my look." The oral surgeon referred her to a cosmetic dentist who recommended she have her top teeth lengthened to reduce the appearance of her overbite. She said it has helped her professionally. "My smile looks natural," she said. "My speech is better. I don't have a lisp anymore. I can eat. The veneers corrected the color and the functionality." There is academic research on the business benefits of appearance. In "Beauty Is Wealth: C.E.O. Appearance and Shareholder Value," presented at the American Finance Association meeting in January, Joseph T. Halford and Scott H. C. Hsu of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee studied how a chief executive's appearance affected a company's stock price. The professors assessed 667 chief executives of companies in the Standard Poor's 500 stock index using a facial attractiveness index. (It measured the correlation of geometry and beauty.) They found that appearance mattered perhaps not the most shocking finding. Their research, though, built on other studies that linked personal achievement to attractiveness. Because these procedures are less invasive, they do not fix everything. And they can be abused the same way more invasive plastic surgery can. "Patients have to be realistic," Dr. Gold said. "If someone has skin overhanging their stomach, akin to 'The Biggest Loser,' they're not going to benefit from what I do. They need a tummy tuck procedure." He said any ethical dermatologist would try to dissuade a person who has become hooked on cosmetic procedures. It's no different in cosmetic dentistry. The elephants in the room are those unnaturally white teeth, known as Chiclets in the trade. "There is no such thing as a white tooth," said Dr. Michael Apa, who worked on Dr. Fear's and Ms. Wu's teeth. "Teeth are yellow white when you're young and gray white when you're older." In his practice in Manhattan, he said, he makes temporary teeth the color patients choose so they can try them. If they want to change colors after the veneers are in place, he said, he has to cut them off and start over. "The best advice I can give people is to really utilize the consultation as much as possible and get a real understanding of what they're in for," he said. "It's hard to say what the teeth are going to look like. The best way is to see countless before and after photos. You should ask for cases similar to yours." Whether facial or dental, these procedures do not freeze time the way some aggressive face lifts seem to do. A thermal treatment is going to have to be redone every couple of years. But how long it lasts depends on someone's lifestyle, with exercise and healthful eating extending the time between treatments. "We're not stopping the clock," Dr. Gold said. "We're turning it back. If you have this done when you're 40, you'll need something done at 45." The same goes for teeth. Dr. Apa said most people could expect to get 15 to 20 years out of veneers. But people who don't take care of them the way they would natural teeth you still have to brush, floss and go light on the cotton candy will accelerate the natural decay. "If you're cavity prone and not brushing your teeth, you're going to have rampant decay and you're going to be cutting them off every 10 years," he said. "You have to keep them clean and take care of them, or over time, bacteria breaks down that margin between the restoration and the tooth." If the decay is severe, the teeth will have to be pulled and the patient will need surgery to do a root canal and attach posts for implants. Of course, in businesses founded on beauty and vanity, a great smile is everything. Julien Farel, a French born hairstylist who owns several beauty businesses in the United States, said that at age 45 he felt that he had to have something done to continue to look young. "It was important for me not to age, but I'm not someone who wants to go under the needle," he said. "As a European, we always look at the Americans having the perfect smile." For him, the price of 18 veneers was a business expense. "I sell beauty, and I want to look great," he said. "This is a very important part of who I am." When you charge 1,000 for a haircut, as he does, paying 3,000 a tooth may not seem such a stretch. His haircuts last six months; his new teeth could last 20 years. But for others, these procedures are about gaining a quiet confidence to go about their regular lives. "I work in the insurance industry, and appearance is not as important for me as it is for someone in modeling," Ms. Wu said. "But I feel it gave me self confidence. I feel more confident going into work."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money

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