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A sprawling, terraced apartment at , the Witkoff Group's 91 unit brick and glass condominium in the West Village, has changed ownership for the second time in six months. And at 17,750,000, just under 1 million more than the first purchase price, it was the week's most expensive closed sale, according to city property records. The seller, whose identity was shielded by the limited liability company Odd Couple West, had purchased the apartment, No. 8A South, from the sponsor for 16.84 million in February. It was relisted with Douglas Elliman Real Estate three months later for 19.5 million. The monthly carrying charges are 7,727. The listing brokers were from the Alexander Team of Douglas Elliman. Michael Sarg of Compass represented the buyer, identified as 8AS LLC. The apartment has 3,629 square feet of interior space, with five bedrooms, five and a half baths, a chef's kitchen with a breakfast room and a 26 by 19 foot great room. It also has two landscaped terraces, totaling 1,178 square feet, that provide panoramic vistas of the Hudson River and the cityscape.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Jake Michaels for The New York Times When Mennonites began moving to Belize in the late 1950s, they did so for the same reason their ancestors have migrated for centuries: to live in line with their religious beliefs, including the separation of church and state, pacifism and sustainability, without interference. That means apart from the government, with limited technology and surrounded by farmable land. Mennonites, a traditionally sectarian Christian denomination, trace their roots to the Anabaptist wing of the Protestant Reformation. Today they number approximately one million worldwide, with most living in parts of the developing world, including Paraguay, India and the Democratic Republic of Congo. An agreement with the country's government checked off certain ideological boxes for them: They were able to negotiate exemptions from military service and given permission to establish private schools where lessons would be taught in their primary language, a Low German dialect called Plautdietsch. The group left Mexico in the mid 20th century primarily for reasons of faith, but land was also a factor and now affords them some distance from outsiders. Consequently, the Belize Mennonite community has remained largely out of the public eye. But their way of life offers much for those dissatisfied with the realities of a hyper connected urban existence to ponder. The Mennonite belief that Christians should be "in the world but not of it" has fostered a sectarian ethos that prizes self sufficiency and mutual aid within the group. Older children look after younger children; neighbors help each other fix farm equipment. The goal is to live as cooperatively and as peacefully as possible. In Belize, Mennonites express themselves through dress and design, too. The plain styles of clothing that they may wear are highly regulated, though more loosely so for men, who often buy their clothing in stores. Women, on the other hand, make most of their own garments and are expected to wear prayer coverings on their heads whenever they are in public. A generational shift in dress styles has slowly taken place, with bright colorful printed textiles replacing somber solid colors. The group's interactions with technology are also influenced by their communitarian ethic. It is often assumed that people who reject technology do so out of fear of its all consuming nature, but the choice has more to do with skepticism and adherence to principle. For instance, their rejection of cars for personal use is not because they believe motorized vehicles are inherently bad they use tractors for farming but rather their emphasis on the importance of community. If one were to have access to a car, one would be tempted to leave, but the limited travel range of horses and buggies keeps Mennonite settlements close knit. Of course, it's 2018, so some Mennonites use smartphones for business, and sometimes those smartphones end up in the hands of their children. That members of these communities now have infinite access to the outside world in their palms means the Old Colony Mennonites could be on the cusp of a major shift. Already there have been other signs of modernization, including the increasing number of Mennonites both men and women who are employed by outside businesses (factories, for example) rather than have the traditional, hyper local occupations of farming, carpentry and mechanical work.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Meanwhile, as part of the New York International Fringe Festival, the former City Ballet soloist Kathryn Morgan (of ifthepointeshoefitskm) has been playing Galina Panova in "To Dance," a new musical about the former Kirov dancers Valery Panov and his wife, Galina, at the Theater at the 14th Street Y. (Not everyone today will remember that the Panovs' application for exit visas to Israel was a cause celebre in 1972 74; it took international campaigning before those visas were granted.) The final two performances are Thursday and Sunday. This Thursday brings the world premiere of "Pearl," a dance play about the writer Pearl Buck, which plays this week at the David H. Koch Theater (through Sunday). The director choreographer is Daniel Ezralow. Pearl Buck, the daughter of missionaries, spent most of her first 40 years in China, and devoted much of her life to writing about aspects of women's rights, Asian cultures, and other issues. How will she and dance suit each other? "An Evening of Poetry Danced," on Friday at Pace University's Schimmel Center, gives audiences a chance to sample five different kinds of Indian dance Bharatanatyam, Chhau, Kathak, Mohiniattam and Odissi. The Chhau, Kathak and Mohiniattam dancers have all recently performed in New York, and have proved admirable. Poetry in five Indian languages will be heard: Malayali, Oriya, Sanskrit (or languages inspired by its verses) Telugu and, yes, English. For those unsure about Indian dance or how to distinguish one genre from another, these anthology evenings prove invaluable.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
As the coronavirus spread across the United States, sweeping through low income, densely populated communities, black and Hispanic patients have been dying at higher rates than white patients. Crowded living conditions, poorer overall health and limited access to care have been blamed, among other factors. But a new study suggests that the disparity is particularly acute for black patients. Among those seeking medical care for Covid 19, the illness caused by the coronavirus, black patients were hospitalized at nearly three times the rate of white and Hispanic patients, according to an analysis of patient records from a large health care system in Northern California. The disparity remained even after researchers took into account differences in age, sex, income and the prevalence of chronic health problems that exacerbate Covid 19, like hypertension and Type 2 diabetes. The finding suggests that black patients may have had limited access to medical care or that they postponed seeking help until later in the course of their illness, when the disease was more advanced. Black patients were also far less likely than white, Hispanic or Asian patients to have been tested for the virus before going to the emergency room for care. Black patients "are coming to us later and sicker, and they're accessing our care through the emergency department and acute care environment," said Dr. Stephen H. Lockhart, the chief medical officer at Sutter Health in Sacramento and one of the authors of the new study. The study, which was peer reviewed, was published in Health Affairs. Delayed care may give the virus more time to spread through households and neighborhoods, Dr. Lockhart and his colleagues concluded. The delays also suggest that minority patients continue to face barriers despite California's broad expansion of health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. "How soon you access care, even supportive care, affects how you experience illness and how much pain and suffering you have," said Kristen M.J. Azar, a research scientist at Sutter Health who was the study's lead author. She added, "While we don't necessarily have treatments at this point, there are therapies being developed, and identifying people early on as these treatments become available will be important in order to prevent poor outcomes, like death and being put on ventilators." Dr. Clyde W. Yancy, chief of cardiology at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, said the granular study of patient records bolstered cruder public health reports of higher Covid 19 death rates among black Americans. The data confirm that socioeconomic factors play an outsize role in influencing health status and vulnerability to infection, he added. "Where and how we live contributes greatly to our health," said Dr. Yancy, who has written about health disparities and the pandemic. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The new study analyzed the electronic health records of 1,052 confirmed Covid 19 patients who sought care between Jan. 1 and April 8 at Sutter Health, a health system serving 3.5 million patients in Northern California. More than half of the 61 black patients who tested positive for the coronavirus were admitted to hospitals, compared with about one quarter or fewer of the Hispanic, white and Asian patients who tested positive. Black patients were also more likely than the others to be so sick that they required treatment in an intensive care unit.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
La Salle University, a private college in Philadelphia, is planning to auction dozens of works from its museum to raise millions of dollars for the university. The school's plan, as reported by the Philadelphia Inquirer, is to sell 46 works by artists like by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Georges Rouault, Thomas Eakins and Henri Matisse. The art is expected to raise as much as 7 million, or more, which would be used to "to help fund teaching and learning initiatives in its new strategic plan," according to the Inquirer. A respected institution, the La Salle University Art Museum opened in 1976 and owns a permanent display of paintings, drawings and sculptures from the Renaissance to the present.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Let's go down the shore. Grab the Coppertone and the beach towels, I'll fill the cooler with Rolling Rock and some hoagies and a bag of Herr's Barbecue Flavored potato chips. Did I forget anything? The Kadima paddles? My black bikini? A novel by Agatha Christie? A cheesesteak wit wiz? Oh wait, I know what I forgot that between the pandemic and the sheer distance, the only Jersey Shore I can visit now is the one in my imagination. Fortunately, coming from Philly, I have a lot of Jersey in my memories. My friend Kenny's parents had a house in Ventnor, where I lived the summer I worked at Lenny's Hot Dogs in Margate. Years later, after his father, Mickey, died, the family put a plaque up on a boardwalk bench, capturing a thing that Mickey once said as he gazed out at the crashing waves. "You know," he said, "this beach is a good idea." Some people I grew up with went to the Poconos or Bucks County or vacation places in Maine (where I live now). But for my family, the only destination was the Jersey Shore. When I was really little, we stayed in Cape May, with its Victorian mansions and beaches full of clam shells. I remember being so sunburned one day that tears came to my eyes as my mother touched my back. I can still feel the cool of the Noxzema cream she rubbed on my shoulders, can still hear her voice saying, "Don't cry, this will make it better." When I was a little older, we went to Surf City, on Long Beach Island. Some days, we'd ride our bikes to Barnegat Light. The lighthouse there was called Old Barney. When I was 10, I stood at the edge of a Surf City jetty one day as a hurricane approached, wondering how I was going to survive my life. I stood there watching the crashing waves, trying to come up with a way of solving the insoluble problem of being trans. Then I thought, maybe you could be cured by love. Later that night, as the island was evacuated, we drove back toward Philly in a black Dodge Seneca, an amazing car with fins like a manta ray. As we drove away, I looked out the back window at the beach where I'd had my moment of insight. "Don't worry," my aunt said. "We're going to be safe now." Eight years later, on the night of the nation's bicentennial, you'd have found me on a beach in Stone Harbor with my friend Toby and his girlfriend, Sally. Fireworks exploded over the sea before us. Toby was on one side of Sally, and I was on the other, and we all had our arms around each other. This was not exactly what I had in mind, back in Surf City, when I pledged to be transformed by love. But it was close enough. As a teenager I spent my days in Atlantic City. In those pre gambling days, it was a spooky ghost town, full of almost abandoned hotels like the Marlborough Blenheim overlooking Park Place. The boardwalk, though, was not yet dead, and on a hot summer day you could see someone dressed up as Mr. Peanut standing near the Peanut Store, shaking the hands of strangers. Over at the Steel Pier you could ride something called the Hell Hole. This was a circular chamber that spun so fast you were pinned to the wall by centrifugal force. At a certain moment of rarefaction, they dropped out the floor. At the top of the Hell Hole was a circular railing where you could stand and look at the people getting sick on the ride below you. A sign by the entrance read: RIDE OR WATCH, SAME PRICE. In college I worked at Lenny's Hot Dogs, next door to Lucy, a 19th century hotel shaped like an elephant. My friends and I might have strayed out of a Bruce Springsteen song that summer, staying up all night slinging hot dogs and pepper hash, passing out on the beach as the sun came up. One day, tipsy on Mateus rose, I made out with someone on an abandoned lifeguard stand. I said, I'm hurt, she said, Honey let me heal it. It's a shame the summer can't last forever. I could easily spend my days watching the saltwater taffy machine spinning that thick goop around in the humid twilight; or playing Skee Ball; or riding the bumper cars with their sleek graphite floor and sparks raining down from the electrical grid overhead. I could eat an Ocean Liner from the Super Sub Shop; or nosh on an onion bagel with Nova from Lou's in Ventnor; or just lie there in the hot sun, hour after hour, listening to Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on a battery operated boom box. So we closed our eyes and said goodbye, to gypsy angel row, felt so right, together we danced like spirits in the night. Autumn is coming, and with it the most important election of our lives, a chance once and for all to end our national nightmare.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Before Jeff Marlow bought a 2009 Dodge Journey, he had never heard of anything called a Totally Integrated Power Module. But now, like many consumers, he's unhappily familiar with the device, which distributes electrical power in the vehicle. "My wife would literally walk outside, and the windows would be rolled down, and the blower motor would be on, and the radio would be on, but there was no key in the ignition, no key fob anywhere near the vehicle," Mr. Marlow of Broken Arrow, Okla., said in a telephone interview. But despite all the unbidden electronic activity and the battery's still having power, the vehicle wouldn't start, he said. Mr. Marlow is one of at least 240 owners of Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep vehicles, often from the 2011 model year, who have complained to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration about electrical problems such as stalling, failure to start and headlights turning off during night drives. They blamed the power module, and some said dealers wanted at least 1,000 for the repair if the vehicle was not under warranty. In an email, a spokeswoman for Chrysler said the company was looking into the problem. "Chrysler Group is actively investigating customer complaints and analyzing returned Total Integrated Power Module (T.I.P.M.) parts in its effort to diagnose the source of various issues experienced by customers," Ann Smith, a spokeswoman for the automaker, wrote in an email. Ms. Smith could not immediately say when Chrysler's investigation began. Many of the owners who complained to N.H.T.S.A. expressed concerns over safety and were angry at the safety agency and Chrysler. "Vehicle power shuts down while driving at highway speed in any and all driving conditions," the owner of a 2011 Jeep Grand Cherokee told the agency this month. "There is no warning when power goes out. Driver can be stranded in the middle of freeway or off ramp or busy intersection. Extremely dangerous. Worse than G.M. issue." Some of the owners are furious about the cost. "Chrysler refuses to do a recall on this," the owner of a 2011 Grand Cherokee wrote in June. "Are they insane? We could have been in a serious accident. I just purchased this car in November of 2013 because I thought it would be safe for me and my new baby, and now I have to dish out 1,300 because of a faulty part." A safety agency spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. The Chrysler module is the most widespread issue reported by car owners this year, the owner of CarComplaints.com, Mike Wickenden, wrote in an email. There are about 300 complaints about 2011 12 Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango sport utility vehicles on his website, and about half involve the module, he said. On Thursday, the Center for Auto Safety, a nonprofit consumer advocacy group, made a formal request called a defect petition asking the federal safety agency to open an investigation into the issue on a range of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep and Ram vehicles. "Chrysler T.I.P.M. failures result in a variety of safety related issues in multiple vehicle components, many of which have the potential for destructive results," the petition said, adding that the reports about stalling alone should be reason enough for the agency to investigate. Under federal regulations, the safety agency must conduct an inquiry to see if the evidence warrants a formal investigation of a problem. The agency looked at a module problem in May 2007 after receiving complaints about stalling from owners of 2007 Jeep Wranglers and Dodge Nitros. About two months later, Chrysler said there was a problem and recalled almost 81,000 of those models for a fault with the module. Late in 2011, Chrysler sent dealers a technical service bulletin noting that owners might complain about the anti theft alarm going off for no apparent reason and about the vehicle's failure to start. The automaker blamed the module and said the problem could affect many of its most popular models, including the 2011 Ram 1500 pickup, Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango. The problem is also the subject of a class action lawsuit filed in 2013 in the United States Court for the Central District of California. The suit asserts that Chrysler has a widespread problem with the module. and "since the T.I.P.M. controls power to a wide variety of essential vehicle systems, including safety and security systems, the defect often leaves the vehicles incapable of providing reliable or safe transportation." Chrysler lawyers filed a motion this year refuting the allegations and asking that the case be dismissed. On Friday, the judge allowed the case to continue.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
The new vaccines will probably prevent you from getting sick with Covid. No one knows yet whether they will keep you from spreading the virus to others but that information is coming. The new Covid 19 vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna seem to be remarkably good at preventing serious illness. But it's unclear how well they will curb the spread of the coronavirus. That's because the Pfizer and Moderna trials tracked only how many vaccinated people became sick with Covid 19. That leaves open the possibility that some vaccinated people get infected without developing symptoms, and could then silently transmit the virus especially if they come in close contact with others or stop wearing masks. If vaccinated people are silent spreaders of the virus, they may keep it circulating in their communities, putting unvaccinated people at risk. "A lot of people are thinking that once they get vaccinated, they're not going to have to wear masks anymore," said Michal Tal, an immunologist at Stanford University. "It's really going to be critical for them to know if they have to keep wearing masks, because they could still be contagious." In most respiratory infections, including the new coronavirus, the nose is the main port of entry. The virus rapidly multiplies there, jolting the immune system to produce a type of antibodies that are specific to mucosa, the moist tissue lining the nose, mouth, lungs and stomach. If the same person is exposed to the virus a second time, those antibodies, as well as immune cells that remember the virus, rapidly shut down the virus in the nose before it gets a chance to take hold elsewhere in the body. The coronavirus vaccines, in contrast, are injected deep into the muscles and stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies. This appears to be enough protection to keep the vaccinated person from getting ill. Some of those antibodies will circulate in the blood to the nasal mucosa and stand guard there, but it's not clear how much of the antibody pool can be mobilized, or how quickly. If the answer is not much, then viruses could bloom in the nose and be sneezed or breathed out to infect others. "It's a race: It depends whether the virus can replicate faster, or the immune system can control it faster," said Marion Pepper, an immunologist at the University of Washington in Seattle. "It's a really important question." This is why mucosal vaccines, like the nasal spray FluMist or the oral polio vaccine, are better than intramuscular injections at fending off respiratory viruses, experts said. The coronavirus vaccines have proved to be powerful shields against severe illness, but that is no guarantee of their efficacy in the nose. The lungs the site of severe symptoms are much more accessible to the circulating antibodies than the nose or throat, making them easier to safeguard. "Preventing severe disease is easiest, preventing mild disease is harder, and preventing all infections is the hardest," said Deepta Bhattacharya, an immunologist at the University of Arizona. "If it's 95 percent effective at preventing symptomatic disease, it's going to be something less than that in preventing all infections, for sure." A C.D.C. study finds stillbirths are higher in pregnant women with Covid. Canada expands its list of vaccines accepted for travel. Michigan recommends that all residents older than the age of 2 wear a face mask indoors. Still, he and other experts said they were optimistic that the vaccines would suppress the virus enough even in the nose and throat to prevent immunized people from spreading it to others. "My feeling is that once you develop some form of immunity with the vaccine, your ability to get infected will also go down," said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University. "Even if you're infected, the level of virus that you replicate in your nose should be reduced." The vaccine trials have not produced data on how many vaccinated people were infected with the virus but did not have symptoms. Some hints are emerging, however. AstraZeneca, which announced some of its trial results in November, said that volunteers had been testing themselves regularly for the virus, and that those results suggested that the vaccine might prevent some infections. Pfizer will test a subset of its trial participants for antibodies against a viral protein called N. Because the vaccines have nothing to do with this protein, N antibodies would reveal whether the volunteers had become infected with the virus after immunization, said Jerica Pitts, a spokeswoman for the company. Moderna also plans to analyze blood from all its participants and test for N antibodies. "It will take several weeks before we can expect to see those results," said Colleen Hussey, a spokeswoman for Moderna. The trials have so far analyzed only blood, but testing for antibodies in mucosa would confirm that the antibodies can travel to the nose and mouth. Dr. Tal's team is planning to analyze matched blood and saliva samples from volunteers in the Johnson Johnson trial to see how the two antibody levels compare. In the meantime, Dr. Bhattacharya said, he was encouraged by recent work showing that people who received an intramuscular flu vaccine had abundant antibodies in the nose. And a study of Covid 19 patients found that antibody levels in saliva and blood were closely matched suggesting that a strong immune response in the blood would also protect mucosal tissues. Only people who have virus teeming in their nose and throat would be expected to transmit the virus, and the lack of symptoms in the immunized people who became infected suggests that the vaccine may have kept the virus levels in check. But some studies have suggested that even people with no symptoms can have high amounts of coronavirus in their nose, noted Dr. Yvonne Maldonado, who represents the American Academy of Pediatrics at meetings of the federal Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. The first person confirmed to be reinfected with the coronavirus, a 33 year old man in Hong Kong, also did not have symptoms, but harbored enough virus to infect others.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
During Italy's so called Years of Lead in the mid 1970s, a communist paramilitary organization known as the Red Brigades assassinated businessmen and political leaders, including the country's prime minister, Aldo Moro. Mr. Agnelli was surely a target. Yet he bravely drove to work every day in his Fiat compact, exuding strength and calm to his workers and the nation. "He thought that a day when someone tries to assassinate you and fails is a more interesting day than when they don't," Mr. Hooker said. He Set His Own Fashion Rules One of the funniest moments in the documentary is a montage of men who copied Mr. Agnelli's sui generis look of wearing his watch over his shirt cuff. For him, it was a practical response to a problem. "The cuffs were very tight on the shirts he had made," Mr. Hooker said. "He couldn't fit a watch under." It's a goofy move, and the guys who do it look ridiculous. Except, of course, Mr. Agnelli. In the film, friends like Jean Pigozzi and Mr. Kissinger recall how Mr. Agnelli would call them in the early mornings, asking, "What's new?" He loved gossip, the juicier the better. He Knew How to Make an Entrance Mr. Agnelli kept two helicopters fueled up on the lawn of his estate in Turin. One to go the mountains to ski, the other to the Mediterranean to go sailing. And he would arrive in port by jumping from his helicopter from 30 feet into the water and swimming to his yacht. He pulled the same helicopter diving stunt when visiting friends, jumping into the swimming pools of their villas. He Was Flashy, but Not Too Flashy Though Mr. Agnelli was an avid boater who sailed the harbors of the French and Italian Rivieras, he was no oligarch out to show off the biggest boat. His famous yacht, Agneta, was an 80 foot jewel box with a Burmese teak deck and possession free staterooms. "All he had under there was a hammock for him and whichever girlfriend he was with," Mr. Hooker said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
SEATTLE Zoran Popovic knows a thing or two about video games. A computer science professor at the University of Washington, Dr. Popovic has worked on software algorithms that make computer controlled characters move realistically in games like the science fiction shooter "Destiny." But while those games are entertainment designed to grab players by their adrenal glands, Dr. Popovic's latest creation asks players to trace lines over fuzzy images with a computer mouse. It has a slow pace with dreamy music that sounds like the ambient soundtrack inside a New Age bookstore. Since November, thousands of people have played the game, "Mozak," which uses common tricks of the medium points, leveling up and leader boards that publicly rank the performance of players to crowdsource the creation of three dimensional models of neurons. The Center for Game Science, a group at the University of Washington that Dr. Popovic oversees, developed the game in collaboration with the Allen Institute for Brain Science, a nonprofit research organization founded by Paul Allen, the billionaire co founder of Microsoft, that is seeking a better understanding of the brain. Dr. Popovic had previously received wide attention in the scientific community for a puzzle game called "Foldit," released nearly a decade ago, that harnesses the skills of players to solve riddles about the structure of proteins. The Allen Institute's goal of cataloging the structure of neurons, the cells that transmit information throughout the nervous system, could one day help researchers understand the roots of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's and their treatment. Neurons come in devilishly complex shapes and staggering quantities about 100 million and 87 billion in mouse and human brains, both of which players can work on in Mozak. That is far more than professional neuron analysts at places like the Allen Institute can ever hope to handle. Enlisting novices through a game like "Mozak" helps with the task. But the real goal is to use high quality neuron reconstructions done by humans the more the better to train computers to do the job more accurately than they can now. "If we create a corpus of thousands of these neurons, the chances are the computational methods will become better," Dr. Popovic said. "You can see this as symbiosis computers learn from what people are doing and they do better." "Mozak" has helped the Allen Institute increase the number of neuron reconstructions from 2.33 a week that a team of professional analysts were doing on their own, to 8.3 reconstructions a week, said Staci Sorensen, senior manager of morphology at the Allen Institute. That reflects both the contributions of players and the productivity benefits of an internal version of "Mozak" that the institute's professionals now use. About 200 people a day play "Mozak" now, and with more players will come more reconstructions. "I'm hoping ultimately for an order of magnitude, a factor of 10, acceleration," said Christof Koch, president and chief scientific officer of the Allen Institute. "How big is the community willing to do this? Is it 20 oddballs or thousands?" "Mozak" is the latest in a growing array of citizen science initiatives with the dual aims of using the wisdom of crowds to tackle complex problems and engaging the public in science. There are public efforts to count bird populations to help scientists understand the effects of climate change. An effort called Galaxy Zoo aids the work of astronomers by getting the masses to classify the shapes of galaxies from telescope imagery. In 2015, the Obama administration sought to build awareness of citizen science projects through a forum at the White House, creating a portal to catalog them. "Foldit," Dr. Popovic's earlier effort, used game mechanics to become one of the most successful citizen science projects, attracting nearly a million players over its lifetime. Since then, similar games have found followings, like "EyeWire," which uses players to map retinal neurons to help unlock the mysteries of vision. The spark for "Mozak" came from Jane Roskams, a professor of neuroscience at the University of British Columbia and former executive director for strategy and alliances at the Allen Institute, when she attended a White House workshop on brain science initiatives a couple of years ago. After meeting with Dr. Popovic back in Seattle, the two applied for and received a National Science Foundation grant that they used to develop the game. "There are some clear opportunities for really engaging a much broader public audience for tackling some of these big data challenges," Dr. Roskams said. "Most of the time experts think they need to turn to experts." Playing "Mozak" doesn't offer the slick graphics and sugar rush of matching gems in "Candy Crush." The game the name of which means "brain" in Serbo Croatian, Dr. Popovic's mother tongue presents players with images of mouse and human neurons captured on powerful microscopes by the Allen Institute in its laboratories.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Credit...Bryan Derballa for The New York Times Last month, residents of Kiryas Joel, a New York village of 35,000 Hasidic Jews roughly an hour's drive from Manhattan, began hearing about a promising treatment for the coronavirus that had been rippling through their community. The source was Dr. Vladimir Zelenko, 46, a mild mannered family doctor with offices near the village. Since early March, his clinics had treated people with coronavirus like symptoms, and he had developed an experimental treatment consisting of an antimalarial medication called hydroxychloroquine, the antibiotic azithromycin and zinc sulfate. After testing this three drug cocktail on hundreds of patients, some of whom had only mild or moderate symptoms when they arrived, Dr. Zelenko claimed that 100 percent of them had survived the virus with no hospitalizations and no need for a ventilator. "I'm seeing tremendous positive results," he said in a March 21 video, which was addressed to President Trump and eventually posted to YouTube and Facebook. What happened next is a modern pandemic parable that illustrates how the coronavirus is colliding with our fragile information ecosystem: a jumble of facts, falsehoods and viral rumors patched together from Twitter threads and shards of online news, amplified by armchair experts and professional partisans and pumped through the warp speed accelerator of social media. Dr. Zelenko's treatment arrived at a useful moment for Mr. Trump and his media supporters, who have at times appeared more interested in discussing miracle cures than testing delays or ventilator shortages. Sean Hannity, the Fox News host, quickly promoted Dr. Zelenko's claims on his TV and radio shows. Mark Meadows, the incoming White House chief of staff, called Dr. Zelenko to ask about his treatment plan. And Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump's personal lawyer, praised him in a podcast interview this week for "thinking of solutions, just like the president." Few people have been as hopeful about hydroxychloroquine as Mr. Trump, who has enthusiastically promoted it for weeks as "very effective" and possibly "the biggest game changer in the history of medicine" even as health experts have cautioned that more research and testing are needed. That has not deterred Mr. Trump's supporters, who have vilified public health officials such as Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the most outspoken advocate of emergency virus measures. Instead, some are pinning their hopes on Dr. Zelenko and his unproven treatment plan, which has now been seen by millions. In a phone interview from his home, where he has been in self isolation, Dr. Zelenko, who goes by Zev, described a dizzying week filled with calls from media and health officials from countries including Israel, Ukraine and Russia, all seeking information about his treatment. Some world leaders, including Brazil's president, Jair Bolsonaro, are also talking up some of the same drugs as a cure. "It's a very surreal moment," said Dr. Zelenko, who has been practicing medicine for 16 years. "I'm a simple country doctor, you know. I don't have connections." The online spread of his treatment plan may have real world consequences as countries consider testing the drugs he recommends on patients. Their popularity has also spurred shortages of hydroxychloroquine, which is used to treat lupus, rheumatoid arthritis and other chronic diseases. In New York's tight knit Hasidic community, Dr. Zelenko's sudden fame has caused tensions. Shortly after he posted on YouTube, a group of village officials wrote an open letter pleading with him to stop. They said he had exaggerated the extent of the coronavirus outbreak in Kiryas Joel, using a small sample of his patients to predict that as many as 90 percent of village residents would get the virus. "Dr. Zelenko's videos have caused widespread fear that has resulted in the discrimination against members of the Hasidic community throughout the region," the officials wrote, disputing the figure. Critics have accused Dr. Zelenko of getting ahead of scientific research. Several small studies, including a controversial French one of 20 coronavirus patients, have found that hydroxychloroquine may be effective against the coronavirus. This week, doctors in China said it had helped to speed the recovery of a small number of patients who were mildly ill from the coronavirus. But other studies have contradicted those findings, or have been inconclusive. "Anyone who tells you these drugs work, or don't work, is not basing that view on science," said David Juurlink, the head of the division of clinical pharmacology at the University of Toronto. "There's reason to be optimistic, and there's also reason to be pessimistic." Dr. Jeff Paley, an internist in Englewood, N.J., who shares some patients with Dr. Zelenko, said it was "irresponsible" for him to promote a treatment without warning people that the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin can cause severe side effects if not properly administered, especially in patients with pre existing heart problems. A C.D.C. study finds stillbirths are higher in pregnant women with Covid. Canada expands its list of vaccines accepted for travel. "I've gotten numerous calls from patients demanding the regimen, saying they believe Dr. Zelenko is magically curing his patients," Dr. Paley said. Dr. Zelenko, who learned two years ago that he had a rare form of cancer, was not the first doctor to recommend treating the coronavirus with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin, though he was among the first to recommend that they be given to patients with only mild symptoms. He said that while he was optimistic, it was too early to tell whether the drugs would ultimately work. But hopes for a miracle cure have ballooned as the coronavirus spreads, and Mr. Trump and his allies are not waiting for the clinical trials to finish. An analysis by Media Matters last week found that Fox News had promoted hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine as a coronavirus cure more than 100 times over three days. Tech companies have begun cracking down on hyperbolic claims about the drugs. Last week, Twitter removed a tweet by Mr. Giuliani that said hydroxychloroquine was "100% effective" in treating Covid 19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Facebook, YouTube and Twitter this week took down a video by Mr. Bolsonaro claiming that the drug "is working in all places." YouTube later took down Dr. Zelenko's video, saying it violated the site's community guidelines. But he appeared to share the president's initial skepticism about the virus. In early March, he posted several right wing memes about the coronavirus on Facebook, including one that referred to the pandemic as a "Dem panic" and another that featured Hillary Clinton on a list of "things more likely to kill you than the coronavirus." "When I see something funny, I maybe in a juvenile way posted it without much thought," Dr. Zelenko said of the posts. "I never thought that I would be in the public limelight." For more than a decade, Dr. Zelenko has been a fixture in Kiryas Joel, where a sign at the village entrance encourages visitors to "dress and behave in a modest way." Unlike most of the residents, who belong to the Satmar sect of Orthodox Judaism, Dr. Zelenko is part of the Chabad Lubavitch movement and does not live in Kiryas Joel itself, which has made him something of an outsider. Ari Felberman, a patient of Dr. Zelenko's for years, called him a "phenomenal doctor" and said that if he had exaggerated the coronavirus threat in Kiryas Joel, it was only out of concern for his patients' health. "When he spoke about how many people were affected, it was just to shake up the community and say, 'Don't take this lightly,'" Mr. Felberman said. Villagers began experiencing coronavirus symptoms in early March. Days later, after Dr. Zelenko began treating patients with his three drug combination and saw many of them improving, he created a YouTube account and uploaded his video that addressed Mr. Trump. "At the time, it was a brand new finding, and I viewed it like a commander in the battlefield," he said of the video. "I realized I needed to speak to the five star general." Hydroxychloroquine, which is sold under the brand name Plaquenil, has started selling out at many pharmacies nationwide. Some health systems have begun reserving their supplies for coronavirus patients, depriving those who take it for other conditions. At least four states have restricted hydroxychloroquine prescriptions to prevent hoarding. HCQ, as hydroxychloroquine is known, is generally considered safe for clinical use. But it can be risky if patients administer the drugs themselves. Last month, an Arizona man died after ingesting a type of fish parasite treatment that listed chloroquine phosphate as one of its ingredients. "You don't want people stockpiling this at home," said Dr. Dena Grayson, a biotech executive who has helped develop drugs for Ebola and other epidemics. "If you do get sick, you need to take this under close supervision of a doctor to make sure you don't drop dead." This week, the F.D.A. issued an emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine, allowing doctors to distribute them to coronavirus patients. The agency's chief scientist, Denise Hinton, wrote in the authorization order that the drugs "may be effective in treating Covid 19." New York also recently began clinical trials of hydroxychloroquine combined with azithromycin. While dealing with his newfound fame, Dr. Zelenko, who has been practicing telemedicine from his home office, is working to keep his coronavirus patients alive. He said his team had seen about 900 patients with possible coronavirus symptoms, treating about 350 with his regimen. None had died as of Thursday, he said, though six were hospitalized and two were on ventilators. He is worried about his own health. One of his lungs was removed as part of his cancer treatment, and chemotherapy has weakened his immune system, putting him in a high risk category for the coronavirus. "I have eight children, and I want to live," he said. "I'm personally motivated to find a solution."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Our weekday morning digest that includes information about cruise ships, riverboats and resorts, with deals, tips and anything else that travelers may want to know. Travelers interested in a European river cruise this fall will receive some help getting there. Grand Circle Cruise Line announced it would provide free airfare from the United States for travelers choosing from a pair of river trips on its "Eastern Europe to the Black Sea" cruise. Passengers who choose departures on either Oct. 28 or Oct. 29 and book before Sept. 1 will be given a free ticket, a value the company estimates about 1,100 per person from New York or 1,300 from Seattle. The 13 day tours begin with three days in Budapest before sailing to Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. The ships can accommodate 120 to 160 passengers. The base fare starts at 2,795 a person. Travelers must call 800 221 2610 and use the code LBSP 111 when booking to get the deal. NEW SHIP ON THE AMAZON There is a new way to discover the Amazon River. The small ship cruise line Haimark Limited is to launch a new 44 passenger ship, RV Amazon Discover, on the Peruvian end of the Amazon River on Oct. 11. The ship will be stationed in Iquitos year round and depart on six night itineraries that explore the tributaries, rain forests and traditional villages along the Amazon and into the wildlife rich Pacaya Samiria National Reserve. Naturalists will offer safari like excursions via small skiffs to spot pink dolphins, sloths, caiman and other wild animals. Each suite will be fitted with telescopes allowing guests to investigate the jungle while on board and to peer at the stars at night. The ship also features a plunge pool and spa, and programming includes Peruvian cooking classes and naturalist talks. Cruises start at 3,799 a person, based on double occupancy.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Last month, when I returned to Madeleine L'Engle's novel "A Wrinkle in Time," more than 35 years after I first read it, I was taken aback. The intricate plot was as I remembered: The gangly, genius teenager Meg Murry, her younger brother, Charles Wallace, and her friend Calvin O'Keefe still travel through time and space by way of a tesseract, a fifth dimensional phenomenon, to rescue her father from the evil IT, a disembodied brain that demands conformity from all who surround it. Rather, I now was unsure about my lifelong insistence that it was my favorite book as a child. Rereading it as a 42 year old African American woman, I started scouring "A Wrinkle in Time" for that original sentence or scene of identification in which my 7 year old eyes saw myself in that all white setting. Readers have long hailed Meg as a heroine of science fiction, but the 1962 novel is beloved as much for its unconventional female protagonist as L'Engle is for weaving together complex ideas about religion, Cold War politics and astrophysics within the genre of children's literature. And for a whole generation of white girls who grew up during the 1960s and '70s, the novel served as a political awakening. Catherine Hand is a producer of the new Disney adaptation of the book. After working on a made for television version for ABC, Ms. Hand told The New Yorker in 2004 that she discovered the book when she was 10, adding: "The engine that drives it is Meg's inner life, and it's astonishing, because here is a girl who at that moment is stronger than her father. For some of us, it planted the seeds of the women's movement." For others, the novel's influence has only grown over time. Pamela Paul, writing in The Times on the book's 50th anniversary in 2012, opined that "bookish girls tend to mark phases of their lives by periods of intense literary character identification" and "for those who came of age anytime during the past half century, the most startling transformation occurred" upon reading this book. She went on, "It was under L'Engle's influence that we willed ourselves to be like Meg Murry." But for African American girls like me, identification with Meg was not as easy. Even as we saw parts of ourselves in Meg's heroism, we also had to resist our own invisibility in a novel that was unable or unwilling to imagine any people of color as inhabitants of the many planets, including Earth, to which its characters traveled. Such racial myopia is not L'Engle's alone. After much debate in the publishing industry, children's literature is more diverse today than ever before but still is far from representative. Of some 3,500 children's books received from United States publishers in 2017 by the Cooperative Children's Book Center at the University of Wisconsin Madison, 116 were by black authors and 319 were about African American characters, the center said. In the 1980s, I had even fewer choices. So instead of seeing my full self in Meg, I ended up cherry picking the traits to which I could relate: her bravery and intelligence, or even more rare her feelings of abandonment and anger caused by her father's absence. Ayana Mathis, the African American author of the best selling novel "The Twelve Tribes of Hattie," had a similar disconnect with this novel even though it remains her favorite book, alongside Mildred D. Taylor's "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry" (1976). "My thoughts on the book have nothing to do with my identifying with Meg," Ms. Mathis told me in a phone interview. "But I was intellectually challenged by it in a way that few books written for my age group at the time did. It expanded me but it also scared me and not with cheap thrills, but because it asked such compelling questions about evil. IT was a brain that was frightening and instructive." It was only when the director Ava DuVernay announced that Storm Reid would play Meg as a biracial girl in the screen adaptation that my relationship with the character started to change. Ms. Reid described Meg as "an African American girl that is smart, that is beautiful and that basically realizes that she is enough." Through this awareness, the actress added, Meg "just taps into her superpowers to be able to save her dad, her brother and save the world." This revision alongside the film's broader multiracial cast, which includes Mindy Kaling, Gugu Mbatha Raw, Reese Witherspoon and Oprah Winfrey not only expands the feminist reach of L'Engle's original vision, but also directly challenges the overwhelming absence of girls of color as leads in Hollywood films in general, and science fiction films in particular. As recently as 2012, controversy greeted Amandla Stenberg when she played Rue in the first "Hunger Games" movie. Rue was a black character in the dystopian novel it was based on, but fans seemed not to realize it and complained loudly about the casting. Ms. Reid's turn as Meg, by contrast, seems to have only increased fan anticipation for the movie. More radically, Ms. DuVernay's choice for Meg helps redefine our notions of the universal. Rather than assume children of color will seamlessly identify with Meg as we do with the book or with the young, white heroines of the "Hunger Games" or "Divergent" franchise, this film gives us a different, racially inflected female future and present. And that changes how I now appreciate the book. It is still my favorite from childhood, but now, rather than contort myself into Meg, I am able to see how the novel's play with time and space continues to influence me as an African American writer. I'm obsessed with how people, events and cultural objects from the past shape our understandings of race and gender in the present. "A Wrinkle in Time" might not ask the same questions that I do now, but it was the first novel I ever read that explored multiple time dimensions and gave me permission to imagine history as incomplete, unfolding, and a phenomenon with hopes that can be taken up by successive generations. After I was done with the novel this time, I put my copy on my 5 year old daughter's bookshelf, for I am comforted by what she is now able to find in "A Wrinkle in Time." Though we contemporary viewers and readers are unable to engage in interplanetary travel like Meg, Ms. DuVernay's version takes us somewhere even more substantive. By emphasizing diversity over dystopia, her film does not simply warn against the dangers of who we might become, but celebrates the vast richness of who we already are.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
New York City Ballet announced on Thursday that it was canceling its spring season because of the coronavirus pandemic, but the company plans to pay its dancers, musicians and other employees through May 31, the date the season was to have ended. The cancellation was expected, with museums shut down, theaters dark and cultural events of every kind on hold across the city. The decision means delays for two world premiere works, which will be postponed to another season. City Ballet board members approved the plan on a Wednesday afternoon conference call, said Katherine E. Brown, the company's executive director. The cancellation of the season which was set to begin on April 21 would mean a projected financial loss of about 8 million for the company by the end of this fiscal year, which includes lost revenue from a spring gala. "Because a dancer's career is so finite, losing a season like this is going to have a lasting impact on them, emotionally and physically," said Jonathan Stafford, the company's artistic director. "We're trying to do everything we can to support them off the stage."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
A former wife of the South African hotel magnate Sol Kerzner paid 18,867,059.42 for a duplex penthouse at the Greenwich Lane, a nearly blocklong condominium complex rising at the site of the former St. Vincent's Hospital campus in Greenwich Village. The transaction was the most expensive closed sale of the week, according to city property records. Heather Kerzner, the fourth wife of Mr. Kerzner, the founder of Kerzner International, whose luxury properties include the Atlantis resort brand, will likely be using the sponsor unit, No. PH7A, at 140 West 12th Street, between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue, as a pied a terre. Her primary residence is in London. The six room apartment has the feel of a downtown loft, with a partly open floor plan, red oak hardwood floors, large casement windows and 10 foot beamed ceilings. There are 4,317 square feet of interior space, which includes four bedrooms and four and a half baths, along with a large living/dining area and an eat in kitchen, both of which open to a north facing terrace. The master suite features a private balcony, two walk in closets and an en suite bath with a marble mosaic floor and a vanity made of custom millwork and marble. On the top floor is a combination media room and bedroom with a fireplace, a wet bar and an expansive terrace.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
THE LAST BLACK MAN IN SAN FRANCISCO (2019) Stream on Amazon; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Awkwafina has Queens; Jimmie Fails has San Francisco. Fails, an actor and San Francisco native, plays a fictionalized version of himself in this indie drama directed by Joe Talbot. The story centers on Fails's character's efforts to hold onto a home (in more senses than one) in a rapidly changing Bay Area. "It's a plaintive American narrative that here becomes an expressionistic odyssey, both rapturous and melancholic," Manohla Dargis wrote in her review for The Times. "In moments it feels as if Jimmie and his faithful artistic friend, Montgomery (Jonathan Majors, a mournful heartbreaker), are dreaming the movie into existence, pouring its surrealistic jolts and hallucinatory beauty out of their heads and straight into yours." THE BLING RING (2013) Stream on Netflix; rent on Amazon, Google Play, iTunes, Vudu and YouTube. Down the coast from "The Last Black Man in San Francisco," the Southern California teenagers at the heart of this drama are committing crimes and hoarding designer clothes. The movie concerns a group of young thieves who break into celebrity homes. (They're played by Emma Watson, Katie Chang and Israel Broussard, among others.) The film was directed by Sofia Coppola, who adapted it from a Vanity Fair article. Her version of the story, A.O. Scott wrote in his review for The Times, has "a whiff of tabloid incredulity."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
What makes you uncomfortable? A wedding is a holy moment. Guests are snapping photos. You try to explain this is a time when people are uniting their lives and being guided together. It's not always a time for photos. I've had the bride and groom extend the kiss a little too long and that makes people very uncomfortable. Dancing down the aisle, however, is great. Is there something you include in every wedding? I know rabbis who do cartwheels down the aisle after the pronouncing. I'm not like that. I'm warm, companionate and serious. Two weeks before a couple marry, I ask them to write a love letter to each other, which they open the morning of the wedding. I've asked them to send me a copy in advance. I always check to make sure they've read it, and I usually incorporate something from their letters into the sermon. Sometimes it's funny; sometimes it's serious. It's an excellent exercise in communication for them and it gives me a bit of insight into their personalities. Couples enjoy doing it, and they like it when I use their own words during the ceremony. Do you stay in touch with the couples you marry? Each year I mail or email 200 or 300 anniversary cards. What marital advice do you offer? I encourage the couple to remember why you fell in love. What brought you two together, not what's tearing you apart. It's a life choice that you're making. You need to forgive, have a sense of humor and to show love for the other person. The wedding is a half hour in a person's life, but it's the marriage that's important. The ceremony is going to be beautiful, but building your lives together is more important. What's the weirdest thing you've experienced? I performed a wedding at the foot of Camelback Mountain in Phoenix and a rattlesnake slid down the aisle. Another time a bee kept circling my nose and on the 'Amen' I slammed the rabbi's manual book together with the bee in the middle of it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
SAN FRANCISCO After months of bickering over who would be covered by a landmark bill meant to protect workers, California legislators passed legislation on Wednesday that could help hundreds of thousands of independent contractors become employees and earn a minimum wage, overtime pay and other benefits. But even before California's governor, Gavin Newsom, had signed it into law, the battle over who would be covered flared up again. Uber, one of the main targets of the legislation, declared that the law's key provisions would not apply to its drivers, setting off a debate that could have wide economic ramifications for businesses and workers alike in California, and potentially well beyond as lawmakers in other states seek to make similar changes. "California sets off a chain reaction," said Dan Ives, a managing director of equity research at Wedbush who tracks the ride hailing industry. "The worry is that the wildfire spreads." In California, religious groups said they feared that small churches and synagogues would not be able to afford making pastors and rabbis employees. Winemakers and franchise owners said they were worried they could be ensnared by the law, too. Even some of the contractors for the app based businesses that have been at the center of this debate said the change could hurt them if companies like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash decided to restrict how often they could work or cut them off entirely. Under the bill, workers are likely to be employees if the company directs their tasks and the work is part of the company's main business. California has at least one million workers who work as contractors and are likely to be affected by the measure, including nail salon workers, janitors and construction workers. Unlike contractors, employees are covered by minimum wage and overtime laws. Businesses must also contribute to unemployment insurance and workers' compensation funds on their employees' behalf. For months, lawmakers have jockeyed to exempt a variety of job categories, including doctors, insurance agents and real estate agents. Carrying out the mandate will most likely be anything but orderly. Companies in dozens of industries must decide whether or not to comply pre emptively or risk being sued by workers and state officials. Some workers may find that their schedules and job descriptions change, while others may be out of a job altogether if their employers cut back hiring amid rising costs. Mr. Newsom has said he intends to sign the bill but has indicated that he would be open to negotiating changes or exemptions with businesses like Uber and Lyft if they were willing to make other concessions. That has added to the air of uncertainty about the law. Litigation is also likely to follow. Uber said Wednesday that it was confident that its drivers will retain their independent status when the measure goes into effect on Jan. 1. "Several previous rulings have found that drivers' work is outside the usual course of Uber's business, which is serving as a technology platform for several different types of digital marketplaces," said Tony West, Uber's chief legal officer. He added that the company was "no stranger to legal battles." In order to classify drivers as contractors, legal experts said, Uber would also have to prove that it didn't direct and control them, and that they typically operated an independent driving business outside their work for Uber. Historically, if workers thought they had been misclassified as a contractor, it was up to them to fight the classification in court. But the bill allows cities to sue companies that don't comply. San Francisco's city attorney, Dennis Herrera, has indicated that he may take action. "Ensuring workers are treated fairly is one of the trademarks of this office," he said in a statement. And California may be only the beginning, as lawmakers elsewhere, including New York, move to embrace such policies. Legislators in Oregon and Washington State said they believed that California's approval gave new momentum to similar bills that they had drafted. 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. "It makes everyone take notice," said State Senator Karen Keiser of Washington, whose Legislature could take up the measure next year. "It's not just a bright idea from left field. It gives it a seriousness and weight that is always helpful when you're trying to pass a new law." While much of the debate about the California legislation has been about the impact on fast growing businesses like Uber, Lyft and DoorDash, it could apply to many kinds of employers, including those that long predated the so called gig economy. Religious groups said some congregations would struggle to pay for full employment benefits for their leaders if they were converted from independent contractors to employees. "For smaller ones that operate on very small budgets, it could force them to lay off their rabbi or maybe only hire them part time," said Nathan Diament, the public policy director for the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center. Even drivers for Uber and Lyft have been split on the bill. Some of them visited lawmakers' offices in Sacramento to plead their case for employment status. Others objected to the bill, worrying that it would take away their ability to switch their work on and off just by opening an app. "I'm torn. Drivers are so split on the issue," said Harry Campbell, a driver and the founder of the publication The Rideshare Guy. Uber and Lyft have long maintained that converting drivers to employees would most likely require the companies to schedule drivers in shifts rather than allowing them to decide when, where and how long to work. While nothing in the bill requires employees to work scheduled shifts, in practice the companies may want to restrict drivers from working when there are few customers and the revenue that drivers bring in would not offset the hourly costs of employing them. After New York City enacted a minimum wage for drivers this year, Lyft put such restrictions in place because having too many drivers on the road without passengers could significantly raise the minimum wage the company had to pay under the city's wage formula. "Drivers will have some restrictions," Mr. Campbell said. "The question for me is whether it will be worth it for all the drivers to have protections." The costs for app based businesses, many of which are not profitable, could be significant. Uber held a troubled initial public offering in May and has reported large losses and slowing revenue growth. Dara Khosrowshahi, Uber's chief executive, has laid off hundreds of employees in recent months, including Tuesday, to cut costs. But some traditional businesses have argued that the mandate merely levels the playing field. Construction companies have long complained that they face unfair competition from rivals that classify workers as contractors so they can avoid paying payroll taxes and lowball bids on projects. App based companies are "starting to send carpenters, electricians, plumbers off their platform independent contractors who make very low wages," said Robbie Hunter, the head of the state building trades council that represents construction worker unions in California. "They're undercutting brick and mortar businesses doing the right thing paying for workers' compensation, being very efficient, working hard to make a profit." In other cases, the new law has created anxiety and confusion. Small vineyard owners are concerned that they could be forced to directly employ the independent truckers they use to haul their harvests and become responsible for providing insurance and workers' compensation. Currently, truckers operate as contractors, with their own rigs and insurance, and serve several vineyards, said Michael Miiller, director of government relations at the California Association of Winegrape Growers. "Our members are growers, not trucking companies," Mr. Miiller said. "The target of legislators is Uber and Lyft, but the unintended victims are small, independent vineyards on the coast of California." Saunda Kitchen owns a Mr. Rooter plumbing business in Sonoma County that has 30 employees, for whom she pays payroll taxes and provides the various mandated benefits. But Ms. Kitchen said she believed that she herself would have to become an employee of Mr. Rooter under the new law, which could cause the parent company to pull out of the state. "I wouldn't have access to new technology, training, help with marketing," said Ms. Kitchen, who planned to talk with Mr. Rooter officials on Thursday about how to proceed.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
'HUMA BHABHA: WE COME IN PEACE' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 28). This spare and unsettling sculptural installation for the Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Roof Garden Commission includes two figures: one that is somewhat humanoid but with a ferocious mask face and that visually dwarfs the jagged Manhattan skyline behind it, and another bowing in supplication or prayer, with long cartoonish human hands and a scraggly tail emerging from its shiny, black drapery. The title is a variant on the line an alien uttered to an anxious crowd in the 1951 science fiction movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still," but it ripples with other associations: colonization, invasion, imperialism or missionaries and other foreigners whose intentions were not always innocent. The installation also feels like an extension of the complex, cross cultural conversation going on downstairs, inside a museum packed with 5,000 years of art history. (Martha Schwendener) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'THE FACE OF DYNASTY: ROYAL CRESTS FROM WESTERN CAMEROON' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 3). In the African wing, a show of just four commanding wooden crowns constitutes a blockbuster in its own right. These massive wooden crests in the form of stylized human faces with vast vertical brows served as markers of royal power among the Bamileke peoples of the Cameroonian grasslands, and the Met's recent acquisition of an 18th century specimen is joined here by three later examples, each featuring sharply protruding cheeks, broadly smiling mouths and brows incised with involute geometric patterns. Ritual objects like these were decisive for the development of Western modernist painting, and a Cameroonian crest was even shown at MoMA in the 1930s, as a "sculpture" divorced from ethnography. But these crests had legal and diplomatic significance as well as aesthetic appeal, and their anonymous African creators had a political understanding of art not so far from our own. (Jason Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'HEAVENLY BODIES: FASHION AND THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Cloisters (through Oct. 8). Let us pray. After last year's stark exhibition of Rei Kawakubo's irregular apparel, the Met Costume Institute is back in blockbuster mode with this three part blowout on the influence of Catholicism on haute couture of the last century. The trinity of fashion begins downstairs at the Met with the exceptional loans of vestments from the Vatican; upstairs are gowns fit for angels in heaven (by Lanvin, Thierry Mugler, Rodarte) or angels fallen to earth (such as slinky Versace sheaths garlanded with crosses). The scenography at the Met is willfully operatic spotlights, choir music which militates against serious thinking about fashion and religion, but up at the Cloisters, by far the strongest third of the show, you can commune more peacefully with an immaculate Balenciaga wedding gown or a divine Valentino gown embroidered with Cranac's Adam and Eve. (Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION' at the Museum of the Moving Image. The rainbow connection has been established in Astoria, Queens, where this museum has opened a new permanent wing devoted to the career of America's great puppeteer, who was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died, too young, in 1990. Henson began presenting the short TV program "Sam and Friends" before he was out of his teens; one of its characters, the soft faced Kermit, was fashioned from his mother's old coat and would not mature into a frog for more than a decade. The influence of early variety television, with its succession of skits and songs, runs through "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show," though Henson also spent the late 1960s crafting peace and love documentaries and prototyping a psychedelic nightclub. Young visitors will delight in seeing Big Bird, Elmo, Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef; adults can dig deep into sketches and storyboards and rediscover some old friends. (Farago) 718 784 0077, movingimage.us 'ALEJANDRO G. INARRITU: CARNE Y ARENA' at 1611 Benning Road NE, Washington (through Aug. 31, 9 a.m. 9 p.m.). Perhaps the most technically accomplished endeavor yet in virtual reality but closer in form to immersive live theater, created by a two time Oscar winner has arrived in a former church in Washington after outings in Cannes, Milan, Los Angeles and Mexico City. In "Carne y Arena" ("Flesh and Sand"), you explore the exhibition on your own with a motion sensitive headset that transports you to Mexico's border with the United States; brutal encounters with border guards interweave with surreal dream sequences, which you can perceive in three dimensions. The characters are computer renderings of the bodies of actual migrants; the landscapes are photographed by Mr. Inarritu's brilliant longtime cinematographer, Emmanuel (Chivo) Lubezki. It remains too early to say whether virtual reality will reshape art institutions, but this is a rare achievement, and not only for its political urgency. Tickets will be released only on the website at 8 a.m. Eastern time on the 1st and 15th of each month of the exhibition's duration. (Farago) carneyarenadc.com 'THE INCOMPLETE ARAKI' at the Museum of Sex (through Aug. 31). It remains a bit of a tourist trap, but the for profit Museum of Sex is making its most serious bid yet for artistic credibility with a two floor exhibition of Japan's most prominent and controversial photographer. Nobuyoshi Araki has spent decades shooting Tokyo streetscapes, blossoming flowers and, notably, women trussed up in the baroque rope bondage technique known as kinbaku bi, or "the beauty of tight binding." Given the venue, it's natural that this show concentrates on the erotic side of his art, but less lustful visitors can discover an ambitious cross section of Mr. Araki's omnivorous photography, including his lastingly moving "Sentimental Journey," picturing his beloved wife, Yoko, from honeymoon to funeral. (Farago) 212 689 6337, museumofsex.com 'ZOE LEONARD: SURVEY' at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through June 10). Some shows cast a spell. Zoe Leonard's reverberant retrospective does. Physically ultra austere, all white walls with a fiercely edited selection of objects photographs of clouds taken from airplane windows; a mural collaged from vintage postcards; a scattering of empty fruit skins, each stitched closed with needle and thread it's an extended essay about travel, time passing, political passion and the ineffable daily beauty of the world. (Holland Cotter) 212 570 3600, whitney.org 'LIKE LIFE: SCULPTURE, COLOR AND THE BODY (1300 TO NOW)' at the Met Breuer (through July 22). Taking a second run at the splashy theme show extravaganza, the Met Breuer has greater success. This one is certainly more coherent since it centers entirely on the body and its role in art, science, religion and entertainment. It gathers together some 120 sculptures, dolls, artist's dummies, effigies, crucifixes and automatons. Many are rarely lent and may not return anytime soon. (Roberta Smith) 212 731 1675, metmuseum.org 'THE LONG RUN' at the Museum of Modern Art (through Nov. 4). The museum upends its cherished Modern narrative of ceaseless progress by mostly young (white) men. Instead we see works by artists 45 and older who have just kept on keeping on, regardless of attention or reward, sometimes saving the best for last. Art here is an older person's game, a pursuit of a deepening personal vision over innovation. Winding through 17 galleries, the installation is alternatively visually or thematically acute and altogether inspiring. (Smith) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'MILLENNIUM: LOWER MANHATTAN IN THE 1990S' at the Skyscraper Museum (through June 24). This plucky Battery Park institution transports us back to the years of Rudy Giuliani, Lauryn Hill and 128 kilobit modems to reveal the enduring urban legacy of a decade bookended by recession and terror. In the wake of the 1987 stock market crash, landlords in the financial district rezoned their old skyscrapers for residential occupancy, and more than 20 towers were declared landmarks, including the ornate Standard Oil building at 26 Broadway and the home of Delmonico's at 56 Beaver Street. Battery Park City flowered; yuppies priced out of TriBeCa came down to Wall Street; a new Guggenheim, designed by a fresh from Bilbao Frank Gehry, nearly arose by South Street Seaport. From this distance, the 1990s can seem almost like a golden age, not least given that, more than 16 years after Sept. 11, construction at the underwhelming new World Trade Center is still not finished. (Farago) skyscraper.org 'ALBERTO SAVINIO' at the Center for Italian Modern Art (through June 23). The paintings of this Italian polymath have long been overshadowed by the brilliant work of his older brother, Giorgio de Chirico. This show of more than 20 canvases from the late 1920s to the mid 30s may not change that, but the mix of landscapes with bright patterns and several eerie portraits based on family photographs are surprisingly of the moment. (Smith) 646 370 3596, italianmodernart.org 'SCENES FROM THE COLLECTION' at the Jewish Museum. After a surgical renovation to its grand pile on Fifth Avenue, the Jewish Museum has reopened its third floor galleries with a rethought, refreshed display of its permanent collection, which intermingles 4,000 years of Judaica with modern and contemporary art by Jews and gentiles alike Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and the excellent young Nigerian draftswoman Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze. The works are shown in a nimble, nonchronological suite of galleries, and some of its century spanning juxtapositions are bracing; others feel reductive, even dilletantish. But always, the Jewish Museum conceives of art and religion as interlocking elements of a story of civilization, commendably open to new influences and new interpretations. (Farago) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org 'THE SENSES: DESIGN BEYOND VISION' at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (through Oct. 28). There's a serious, timely big idea at this exhibition: As social media, smartphones and virtual reality make us ever more "ocularcentric," we have taken leave of our nonvisual senses and need to get back in touch, literally. Thus "The Senses" features multisensory adventures such as a portable speaker size contraption that emits odors, with titles like "Surfside" and "Einstein," in timed combinations; hand painted scratch and sniff wallpaper (think Warhol's patterned cows but with cherries cherry scented, naturally); and a device that projects ultrasonic waves to simulate the touch and feel of virtual objects. The show also presents commissions, videos, products and prototypes from more than 65 designers and teams, some of which address sensory disabilities like blindness and deafness, including Vibeat, which can be worn as a bracelet, brooch or necklace and translates music into vibrations. And if you bring the kids, they will likely bliss out stroking a wavy, fur lined installation that makes music as you rub it. (Michael Kimmelman) 212 849 8400, cooperhewitt.org 'CHAIM SOUTINE: FLESH' at the Jewish Museum (through Sept. 16). The Russian Jewish artist Chaim Soutine (1893 1943), who spent most of his life in Paris, is best known for bloody, ecstatic paintings of beef carcasses. But it wasn't death that interested him it was the immaterial life force of the material world. Along with an instructive lineup of naked fowl, silver herring and popeyed sardines, this indispensable tribute to the transcendent but still undervalued painter centers on a stupendous 1925 "Carcass of Beef," glistening scarlet, streaked with orange fat and straddling a starry sky. (Will Heinrich) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org 'GRANT WOOD: AMERICAN GOTHIC AND OTHER FABLES' at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through June 10). This well done survey begins with the American Regionalist's little known efforts as an Arts and Crafts designer and touches just about every base. It includes his mural studies, book illustrations and most of his best known paintings including "American Gothic" and "The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere." Best of all are Wood's smooth undulant landscapes with their plowmen and spongy trees and infectious serenity. (Smith) 212 570 3600, whitney.org 'TARSILA DO AMARAL: INVENTING MODERN ART IN BRAZIL' at the Museum of Modern Art (through June 3). The subtitle is no overstatement: In the early 1920s, first in Paris and then back home in Sao Paulo, Brazil, this painter really did lay the groundwork for the coming of modernism in Latin America's most populous nation. Tired of the European pretenders in Brazil's art academies, Tarsila (who was always called by her first name) began to intermingle Western, African and indigenous motifs into flowing, biomorphic paintings, and to theorize a new national culture fueled by the principle of antropofagia, or "cannibalism." Along with spare, assured drawings of Rio and the Brazilian countryside, this belated but very welcome show assembles Tarsila's three most important paintings, including the classic "Abaporu" (1928): a semi human nude with a spindly nose and a comically swollen foot. (Farago) 212 708 9400, moma.org 'BEFORE THE FALL: GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN ART OF THE 1930S' at Neue Galerie (through May 28). An exhibition in the form of a chokehold, the third of the Neue Galerie's recent shows on art and German politics pushes into the years of dictatorship, with paintings, drawings and photographs by artists deemed "degenerate" by the Nazis as well as by those who joined or tolerated the party. (You will know the dissidents, like Max Beckmann and Oskar Kokoschka; the fascists and sellouts are less known.) Gazing at macabre still lifes of dolls and dead flowers, or dreamy landscapes in imitation of an earlier German Romanticism, you may ask to what degree artists are responsible for the times in which they work. But then you see "Self Portrait in the Camp," by the Jewish German painter Felix Nussbaum made between his escape from a French internment camp and his deportation to Auschwitz and you know that there can be no pardon. (Farago) 212 628 6200, neuegalerie.org 'GOLDEN KINGDOMS: LUXURY AND LEGACY IN THE ANCIENT AMERICAS' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through May 28). With its cheerfully crowd seeking title, the Met's exhibition of pre Columbian art promises an unabashed celebration of splendor. Offering some 300 objects spanning more than 2,500 years, and representing cultures from the Moche, Wari and Inca to the Olmec, Maya and Aztec, it delivers in full. Among the standouts are an "Octopus Frontlet" (A.D. 300 600), a gold body ornament made by the Peruvian Moche; "earflares" big as bangles, the oldest of which date to 800 500 B.C.; a wonderfully vivid, graceful Mayan relief from 736 A.D. that depicts a bejeweled King Pakal I; and shockingly vibrant panels made with tens of thousands of blue and gold macaw feathers by the Wari of Peru in A.D. 600 900, their function unknown. (Nancy Princenthal) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'SALLY MANN: A THOUSAND CROSSINGS' at the National Gallery of Art, Washington (through May 28). All of this photographer's strengths are on view in this deftly chosen and admirably displayed exhibition that covers most of her 40 plus year career. The 108 images here (47 of which have never been exhibited before) provide a provocative tour through Ms. Mann's accomplishments and serve as a record of exploration into the past, into this country's and photography's history, stamped with a powerful vision. (Vicki Goldberg) 202 737 4215, nga.gov	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
FRANKFURT Josef Ackermann, former chief executive of Deutsche Bank and one of Europe's best known business leaders, abruptly resigned as chairman of the Zurich Insurance Group on Thursday after acknowledging that he might be accused of sharing blame for the apparent suicide of the company's chief financial officer. Mr. Ackermann said in a statement that he was "deeply shocked" by the death on Monday of Pierre Wauthier, the chief financial officer, and that any allegation by the dead man's family that he shared responsibility was "unfounded." Still, Mr. Ackermann's sudden resignation from the part time supervisory position came as a surprise. He was a battle tested banker who endured numerous controversies during a decade at the top of Deutsche Bank, including a trial on criminal charges and a messy boardroom battle over who would succeed him. The death of Mr. Wauthier, a citizen of both France and Britain, came less than two months after the suicide of another prominent Swiss executive, Carsten Schloter, head of Swisscom, the country's dominant telecommunications provider. There was no obvious link between the two deaths other than the high expectations placed on well paid managers in large companies everywhere. A spokesman for Zurich Insurance, Bjorn Emde, said there had been no indication that Mr. Wauthier was suffering extraordinary distress. "In a stock listed company working in a competitive environment worldwide, there is always a certain level of stress," Mr. Emde said. "We didn't see anything special. It came as a shock to us. He was a close friend for many of us and a very respected colleague." It is unclear why Mr. Ackermann thinks he might be blamed. But he said on Thursday that the scandal would make it difficult for him to remain head of the Zurich Insurance board. "I have reasons to believe that the family is of the opinion that I should take my share of responsibility, as unfounded as any allegations might be," Mr. Ackermann said in a statement. "As a consequence, I see the possibility of a continued successful board leadership to the benefit of Zurich called into question. To avoid any damage to Zurich's reputation, I have decided to resign from all my board functions with immediate effect." Shares of Zurich Insurance fell more than 2 percent on Thursday in local trading. The company scheduled a conference call between top managers and analysts for Friday morning to discuss the recent events. Mr. Wauthier, who had worked at Zurich since 1996 and had been chief financial officer since 2011, was found dead at this home in Zug, Switzerland, apparently a suicide, the police said on Tuesday. He was 53 and married, and he had two children. It was also unclear why the family of Mr. Wauthier might have blamed Mr. Ackermann for his death. No one answered a telephone listed under Mr. Wauthier's name in a suburb of Zug on Thursday. Tom de Swaan, a former chief financial officer of the Dutch bank ABN Amro who had been vice chairman of the Zurich Insurance board, will serve as acting chairman, the company said. Martin Senn will remain as chief executive, responsible for daily operations of the company. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. Mr. Wauthier's death and the resignation of Mr. Ackermann come during a difficult period for Zurich Insurance. Second quarter net profit fell 27 percent to 789 million. The company blamed natural disasters, including tornado damage in Oklahoma and flooding in Europe, for the decline. Mr. Ackermann, 65, a native of Switzerland, has been one of the country's most prominent business leaders. He was regarded in Switzerland as a local boy made good, achieving international stature as the first non German to lead Deutsche Bank and as a spokesman for the banking industry worldwide. Until last year, he was chairman of the Institute of International Finance, a leading industry group. Mr. Ackermann left Deutsche Bank last year after 10 years as chief executive. He led the bank through the financial crisis, avoiding a direct government bailout, but was the focus of recurrent controversy. In 2004, Mr. Ackermann was acquitted of charges that he and other members of the supervisory board of Mannesmann, a German mobile telecommunications provider, illegally paid a bonus to the company's chief executive after it was sold to its rival Vodafone. After prosecutors successfully appealed for a new trial, Mr. Ackermann agreed to pay a fine and the charges were dismissed. Before his retirement from Deutsche Bank, Mr. Ackermann carried out a public feud with the supervisory board chairman over his successor. Mr. Ackermann had a tense relationship with Anshu Jain, the head of Deutsche Bank's investment banking division, who was ultimately chosen to be co chief executive along with Jurgen Fitschen.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
A Japanese space mission that has been studying an asteroid not far from Earth on Thursday night (Friday in Japan) fired a copper projectile at its surface. A camera also released during the operation showed an ejection of material from the asteroid, suggesting that the blast had gone off as intended. Since last year, the Japanese probe, Hayabusa2, has been studying the asteroid, Ryugu, with the aim of returning its collected samples to Earth in 2020. Hayabusa2 began by surveying the object's surface, and subsequently landed multiple robotic probes on the asteroid's rocky terrain. In February, Hayabusa2 fired a much smaller projectile into the asteroid's surface during a brief touchdown, collecting samples from the cloud of debris that the operation kicked up. Sign up to get reminders for space and astronomy events on your calendar. Why make a crater on the surface? Hayabusa2 already has landed briefly on Ryugu's surface and collected samples. But the surface materials scattered by the bullet like projectile fired in February have been exposed to the solar system's weather. Studying them offers scientists a potential picture of Ryugu's surface. But that debris won't reveal much about the asteroid's geological history, just as the topsoil in your yard won't tell you much about what your neighborhood was like during the last ice age. Making a crater will also offer clues to how asteroids similar to Ryugu respond to being struck by objects. How did Hayabusa2 try to make the crater? Hayabusa2 carried a device called the Small Carry on Impactor. Unlike the small tantalum projectile that was fired at the asteroid in February as the spacecraft touched down on the surface, the impactor device detached from the spacecraf t . That allowed the probe to race to the other side of Ryugu and avoid damage from the anticipated explosion or the resulting debris. The impactor was made of copper. According to the Planetary Society, a funnel containing plastic explosive hurled the copper projectile into the asteroid's surface, intending to make a crater that could be as large as about 30 feet wide. The spacecraft also launched a small camera that recorded the explosion. Before scientists elect to have the spacecraft collect samples from the crater, which would happen some weeks from now, they will make sure the landing conditions are safe. If not, they will collect measurements of the crater using instruments aboard Hayabusa2. Why are scientists studying this asteroid? Asteroids are bits and pieces leftover from the disc of gas and dust that formed around the young sun and never quite coalesced into a planet. They contain some almost pristine compounds that help tell what the early solar system was like 4.5 billion years ago. Ryugu, as dark as coal, is a C type, or carbonaceous, asteroid, meaning it is full of carbon molecules known as organics including possibly amino acids, the building blocks of proteins. Such molecules are not always associated with biology and can form from chemical reactions in deep space, but asteroids could have seeded Earth with the organic matter that led to life. About three quarters of asteroids in the solar system fall into the C type. This space rock was discovered in 1999 and not given a name until 2015. Ryugu is named after Ryugu jo, or dragon's palace a magical undersea palace in a Japanese folk tale. Isn't NASA doing something like this too? Yes. The Osiris Rex spacecraft is currently surveying another carbon rich asteroid known as Bennu, and it too will collect samples and return them to Earth. Bennu is even smaller than Ryugu, about 500 yards wide. Osiris rex will not return with its samples until 2023. Early research results announced last month also revealed that Bennu is more rugged than expected, and that it is shooting rocks from its surface into space.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
It's April, so I must be writing about "Bosch." This is the fifth straight year I've taken note of a new season (now the sixth) of Amazon Prime Video's Los Angeles cop show based on Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch novels. It's an indulgence in a time when many worthwhile series go unremarked. This year, I can rationalize it as coronavirus related: "Bosch" is my comfort show, the one I binge the day it's available. On Friday I'll be quarantined in my happy place. The show adheres to a tough guy ethic from another era of television you wouldn't be surprised to see a "Cannon" vintage Quinn Martin credit pop up onscreen and there's something a little retrograde and formulaic about the conception of Bosch, a non dirty Harry who plays it mostly by the book but sits on deep reserves of righteous anger. In practice, though, nuanced writing (under the showrunners Eric Overmyer and Daniel Pyne) and a marvelous performance by Titus Welliver make Harry a singular character, a California combo of stone faced avenger, laid back hipster and tireless gumshoe. Strong, silent types take up a smaller share of the TV landscape than they used to, but another prime example also returned this week: Doron Kavillio (Lior Raz) in the Israeli drama "Fauda," whose 12 episode third season arrived Thursday on Netflix. "Fauda," about an undercover Israeli counterterrorist unit, is set in the claustrophobic environs of the West Bank and Gaza and continually rattles with the sound of automatic weapons; it's a very different show from the quieter and more deliberate "Bosch." But at the core of each is that same laconic hero, the volatile outsider who bends the rules (in Harry's case) or shatters them (in Doron's) in order to uphold a status quo that's showing serious signs of wear. As I watched the shows back to back (all of "Fauda" Season 3, 5 of 10 episodes of "Bosch" Season 6), the similarities in the protagonists kept jumping out: the defensiveness, the loneliness, the distrust of bosses, the attraction to similarly hard edged women. Each dotes on a daughter who has had to grow up too fast; each has perfected a cold stare that would make granite blanch. On the surface it may be macho by the numbers, but Raz and Welliver both find appealing, complicated characters beneath the attitude. "Fauda" has a new head writer, Noah Stollman, who was an executive producer of the fine Israeli mini series "Our Boys." That show was about how families fracture under the strain of unending conflict and occupation, and Stollman brings that theme to "Fauda," putting Doron undercover in a Palestinian village where he becomes a father figure to a young boxer (Ala Dakka) whose real father (an excellent Khalifa Natour) has been in an Israeli prison for 20 years. The father's release complicates Doron's mission, which is to find the boxer's cousin, a Hamas operative. As always with "Fauda," the story spirals out in increasingly messy strands of betrayal and violence the Arabic word fauda means chaos as Doron and his team sneak into and out of the occupied territories to rescue, kidnap or kill. One shabby pickup chase or courtyard shootout looks much like another, and Stollman and his fellow writers have labored to give the season's narrative a little more structure and thematic heft. The affection that develops between Doron and the young Palestinian athlete, symbolic of a desire for connection between their peoples, is an engine of catastrophe, tearing apart lives and families. The notion of endless cycles of pain is embedded in a season that begins with a man leaving prison and ends with another walking in. The course of "Bosch" can't be discerned from half a season, but the setup has the seemingly casual density characteristic of Overmyer's work here and in "Treme." Seasons of "Bosch" bleed into one another, and Harry and his partner, Jerry Edgar (Jamie Hector), both steal time to work on nagging cases from the past while they focus on a more immediate challenge: the disappearance from a hospital locker of enough cesium to make large parts of Los Angeles uninhabitable for 300 years. Oh, and the doctor who was forced to take the radioactive material was murdered, too. "Bosch" is a show of small but persistent pleasures, and they remain intact. The writing is literate but natural. The manifold story lines, including the problematic mayoral campaign of the police chief (Lance Reddick) and the coming of age of Harry's daughter, Maddie (Madison Lintz), now interning at the civil rights law firm of Honey Chandler (Mimi Rogers), dip in and out of one another seamlessly. Welliver and Hector, and Welliver and Lintz, create relationships so quietly believable, it's as if they're in the room with you. Explaining himself to a colleague angry with one of his rash and dangerous improvisations in "Fauda," Doron says, "I can't help it, bro, it's who I am." It's another point of contact with "Bosch," where in Season 5, Maddie wearily said to her father, "You're just you." In that common sense of fatalism neither Harry nor Doron will ever give up on pushing his particular rock up the hill there's a comfort we can use right now.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Sadie Radinsky, 17, of Los Angeles, says her dog Mikey is "so happy when he's just looking at the wind and letting it hit his face, just smelling the smells of right now. He's not thinking about what he's going to be doing later, which is something my dogs have taught me a lot about." People of all ages become deeply connected to their pets, but in the lives of teenagers, animals often play a special role. Indeed, pets provide comforts that seem to be tailor made for the stresses of normal adolescent development. To start, animals don't judge and teenagers are generally subjected to a great deal of judgment. Adults tend to harbor negative stereotypes about adolescents, and even those who feel neutral or positive about young people often engage them with the aim of cultivating their growth in one way or another. "Pets are, by their nature, nonjudgmental," notes the developmental psychologist Megan Mueller, an assistant professor of human animal interaction at Tufts University. "A lot of teenagers will report that as a very important aspect of the relationship. If the teenager is upset the dog won't tell them 'maybe you shouldn't have said that to your friend.'" Even when adolescents aren't being critiqued by adults, they are often aware of being sized up by their peers. Dr. Andy Roark, a veterinarian in Greenville, S.C., and the father of tween daughters, often thinks about "social media and adolescence and young girls about affirmation and the withholding of affirmation." As Dr. Roark notes, "we're all looking for validation, and that's what pets give to us. You have this being who is 100 percent in your corner." Further, pets give young people opportunities to enjoy sharing their warm and affectionate feelings. Most adolescents yearn for emotional intimacy, but are often understandably worried that their attempts to seek it will be ignored, misunderstood or rebuffed. According to Dr. A nne Downes, a veterinarian in Westport, Conn ., animals give adolescents a way to be "caring and loving without the fear of a complicated or hurtful reaction." Sadie Radinsky, a 17 year old who lives in Los Angeles, carried her aging dog outside when it could no longer move comfortably. "I'd hold her like a baby and she would lay her head on my shoulder," said Sadie, who felt fulfilled by the arrangement. "She was in need, and I was meeting her needs." Relationships with pets not only offer teenagers a safe space for emotional intimacy, but they also often provide adolescents with salutary physical contact as well. Psychologists have long known that touch can play a powerful role in improving mood and reducing stress. For teenagers, however, hugs can be hard to come by. Even when shouldering intense emotional pain, adolescents are usually reluctant to be cuddled by their parents. And while some teenagers flop all over each other, seeking physical comfort from agemates can sometimes be a complicated move or one that gets mistaken for a sexual overture. In my own clinical practice with adolescents I've been struck by how often they describe rolling around on the floor with the dog, or snuggling with their cat, guinea pig or pet rabbit as a reliable strategy for recovering from a terrible day. Their accounts of the stress relief gained from nuzzling animals aligns with research showing the positive impact that physical contact with animals can have on the human nervous system. This stress relieving power of animals inspired the Whitfield School, a private school near St. Louis for grades 6 through 12, to base a golden retriever named Sunshine in its main office. Ruth Greathouse, the principal and the one who takes Sunshine home each night, finds that the dog gets more visitors than usual during high pressure times of the year. She reports that during the recent final exam period, "a lot of kids that don't normally come in came to see Sunshine to give and get affection. Then they were ready to go on to their next thing." In a similar vein, some colleges now offer students the chance to play with puppies as a way to ease their end of term stress. Ms. Greathouse has also observed something many pet owners report: animals recognize when there's a heightened emotional need. Sunshine, who always wears a leash when roaming the school hallways, "sometimes walks past 15 kids, and then makes a decision to go up to a particular student." Dr. Downes likewise confirms that animals are especially attuned to body language in people and that "you are likely to get attention from a dog if you are emotionally upset, or just not yourself." While the animal may simply be curious about why we seem different, Dr. Downes notes that it's easy for humans, and perhaps teenagers in particular, to read its interest as a welcome source of sincere concern. For teenagers who struggle with emotional difficulties, animals are sometimes formally recruited into a therapeutic role. In my practice, I have witnessed the important, if less designed, support that animals sometimes provide to adolescents facing ongoing challenges. For instance, one patient of mine grew up in a family that was materially comfortable, yet relationally impoverished. Cleareyed about her situation, yet still trapped within it, she developed a powerful bond with her cat. She described the cat as the only member of the family she could count on always available, always ready to listen, always keeping her secrets. It was clear to me that the young woman's cat helpfully buffered the privations of her upbringing. While that particular teenager relied on her relationship with her cat to move past a painful present situation, animals can also support young people by grounding them in the moment. Dr. Downes, who is also the mother of two teenagers, appreciates that animals can help young people to focus on the now, "which is not what teenagers usually get to do. They are always having to think about the futures, having to worry that everything they do might hold implications down the line." Sadie, the teenager who carried her aging dog outside, agreed. "We're hardly ever present," she said. "We're always wishing we had done better on that Spanish test last week." Her younger dog, a poodle named Mikey, is "so happy when he's just looking at the wind and letting it hit his face, just smelling the smells of right now. He's not thinking about what he's going to be doing later, which is something my dogs have taught me a lot about."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
WASHINGTON It was a great year for the stock market. And it was also a pretty good year for many people's biggest investment: their homes. In 2013's last glimpse at the housing market, figures released on Tuesday showed that home prices in major metro areas kept rising in October. Year over year, prices were up 13.6 percent, the biggest gain in more than seven years. After plummeting during the housing bust, prices have increased steadily since the spring of 2012. Prices in 20 major American metro areas increased a modest 0.2 percent between September and October, without seasonal adjustment, evidence that the quick rebound in prices is slowing, according to the closely watched S P/Case Shiller data. Higher mortgage rates might continue to slow the pace of improvement going forward, analysts say. Nationally, the increase in home prices is moderating, the S P/Case Shiller analysis said. Prices decreased in nine metro areas between September and October, including Denver, Chicago and Washington, whereas just one saw price decreases between August and September. "Monthly numbers show we are living on borrowed time and the boom is fading," said David M. Blitzer of S P Dow Jones Indices in an analysis of the new data. A big question, he said, is how quickly the Federal Reserve pulls back from its extraordinary efforts to keep rates low. "The key economic question facing housing is the Fed's future course to scale back quantitative easing and how this will affect mortgage rates," Mr. Blitzer said. "Other housing data paint a mixed picture suggesting that we may be close to the peak gains in prices." He added: "Most forecasts for home prices point to single digit growth in 2014." In many metro areas where prices declined sharply particularly those encompassing Sun Belt and Rust Belt cities like Phoenix, Las Vegas and Detroit similarly sharp rebounds followed. But generally, prices have not touched their pre bust heights, with prices across the country remaining about 20 percent lower, the S P/Case Shiller data show. In Dallas and Denver, however, prices have hit new peaks, the report said. Many economists expect price increases to moderate next year, with higher prices and higher mortgage costs making homes less affordable, even though the labor market recovery might pick up some steam and inventory might increase in some areas. "Even after this reduction, we will be still expanding our holdings of longer term securities at a rapid pace," Ben S. Bernanke, the Fed chairman, said at a December news conference, his last before Janet L. Yellen takes over, pending Senate confirmation. "Our sizable and still increasing holdings will continue to put downward pressure on longer term interest rates, support mortgage markets, and make financial conditions more accommodative, which in turn should promote further progress in the labor market." 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. But mortgage rates have risen, and the pace of sales has slowed in many metro areas. According to the National Association of Realtors, a trade organization, existing home sales dropped 4.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.9 million in November. New home sales dropped 2.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 464,000, the Census Bureau said. "While most housing markets still remain affordable, rising mortgage rates and rising house prices over the past six months are making it more challenging for the typical family to purchase a home without stretching beyond their means," said Frank Nothaft, chief economist at Freddie Mac, in an analysis. "We expect mortgage rates to rise over the coming year, so it's critical we start to see more job gains and income growth in the coming year." In some areas, limited housing supply has pushed prices high. "Home sales are hurt by higher mortgage interest rates, constrained inventory and continuing tight credit," said Lawrence Yun of the National Association of Realtors, in an analysis. "There is a pent up demand for both rental and owner occupied housing as household formation will inevitably burst out, but the bottleneck is in limited housing supply, due to the slow recovery in new home construction." In a separate report released Tuesday, the Conference Board, a research group, said that consumer confidence jumped to 78.1 in December, from 72.0 in November, with sentiment about current economic conditions reaching its highest level since the spring of 2008. "Despite the many challenges throughout 2013, consumers are in better spirits today than when the year began," said Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at the Conference Board. Many economists do expect jobs and income growth to improve, and to have a resulting effect on housing. "We expect that the improving employment picture next year will be accompanied by a sustained increase in interest rates, which in turn will roll over into the mortgage market," said Doug Duncan, chief economist at Fannie Mae. He said the housing recovery might continue on a "modest upward trend."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Quinn the Quarantine Fox Wants You to Be Safe at Home None Quinn the Quarantine Fox has become a home safety mascot in a time when it's especially important to prevent non coronavirus emergency room trips. The United States Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting buyers from the dangers of household items, issuing recalls and teaching people how to avoid common, life threatening emergencies like kitchen fires and ingesting poisonous cleaners. Now that a chunk of the country's population is spending an inordinate amount of time at home, the U.S.C.P.S.C. has increased the frequency of its messaging and channeled it through a new mascot: Quinn the Quarantine Fox. Joseph Galbo, who runs the U.S.C.P.S.C.'s social media accounts, created Quinn and has been making memes for the agency since 2016; some of them have been archived by the Library of Congress. "Our mission is to engage, entertain and educate people about how they can stay safe in their homes," Mr. Galbo, 33, said in a phone interview last week. But the agency had never had to address a pandemic on social media. As the coronavirus spread and shelter in place orders expanded, Mr. Galbo knew he needed to cook up a social campaign quickly and update the agency's website with critical information. "Now more than ever, with people staying in their homes like they're supposed to, we are fully expecting as an agency to see product related injuries," Mr. Galbo said. Health care systems are already overwhelmed by coronavirus patients. The U.S.C.P.S.C.'s goal is to help prevent additional trips to the emergency room. Made with stock photos and rudimentary Photoshop skills, the U.S.C.P.S.C.'s memes may seem slapdash, but they're carefully considered. To choose a species for this character, Mr. Galbo drew on the idiom "clever as a fox" and the whimsical but wily Mr. Fox from Wes Anderson's movie "Fantastic Mr. Fox." With Quinn, Mr. Galbo wanted "to create a character that people could attach to emotionally, but also symbolized being clever and creative and staying on top of what's happening around them," he said. The character also nods to the wartime idea of hunkering in a foxhole, as more people stay home and brace themselves for change. Of course, the agency doesn't want to frighten anyone or issue propaganda. "Striking that balance between being cute but also serious is something we're always trying to do," Mr. Galbo said. The U.S.C.P.S.C. uses data from the agency's epidemiology department, surveys of emergency room records and product injury reports to inform its messaging; Quinn's posts so far have focused on topics like child safety, poison control, smoke detectors, anchoring furniture and preventing falls. "We're always analyzing what's hurting people," Mr. Galbo said of the targeted approach. The agency has released several "Stay Safe" home checklists for various age groups during the coronavirus pandemic as well. Mr. Galbo recognizes that in a crisis, many people turn to social media for answers. The agency posts to Facebook and Instagram, but most frequently to Twitter, where Quinn has become a calming, informative anchor on timelines otherwise filled with an ever refreshing list of horrors and frustrations. "People are coming for immediate information," he said, but they are looking for distraction and connection. "That's why we continue to move forward with this strategy of kooky characters teaching safety tips," he said. "I think people are still looking for that kind of escapism." As long as they are, the agency can try and teach them lifesaving lessons. The agency shares a nightly message from Quinn. The fox's face hangs in the halo of the moon and hovers over a new landscape each evening. A few lines of text relate the same message each time: "Good night, kind friends. Tomorrow we care for one another all over again. Quinn the Quarantine Fox." Mr. Galbo said people seem to find the regularity and positivity comforting. "When you look at the great communicators of the past, a lot of them had a nightly signoff, like Cronkite and Murrow," he said. He hopes that the recurring character can offer the U.S.C.P.S.C.'s followers some stability right now. "If a tiny fox in the moon brings people a little joy, it's an easy thing for us to do," he said. "It just helps contribute to the idea that we're going to get through this together."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Nearly two thirds of mothers said they felt they had been criticized for their parenting decisions, according to a national poll released in June from the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital in Michigan. Researchers asked 475 mothers of children up to the age of 5 across the United States about feeling judged for their parenting skills. Sixty one percent felt that they had been judged, with most of the criticism coming from close to home, said Sarah Clark of the Child Health Evaluation and Research Center at the University of Michigan, the co director of the poll. "What stood out was the perception among so many more mothers that criticism is coming from folks within their own family," she said. "It was almost equal parts their spouse or partner, their own parents, and their in laws. The stereotype would be the in law would lead the parade on that, but it didn't turn out that way." The researchers wondered whether mothers would report more criticism coming from acquaintances and strangers, or people online. But only 7 percent of the mothers, who were surveyed in January, reported cyber judging via social media. Mothers were three times as likely to report being criticized within the family as from the outside, Ms. Clark said. "I wonder if when a comment comes from someone so close, the comment feels different," she said. "Mothers start getting input about their parenting when they're pregnant, people pat their abdomen, people say, you should be getting off your feet," said Dr. Barbara Howard, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. "There are a thousand things people feel they have permission to say about their parenting." Dr. Howard is a developmental behavioral pediatrician, and the children referred to her are, by definition, children with behavioral issues. And often, she says, family members have strong opinions about how those behaviors should be managed. "I talk about it all the time, I say, who else has an opinion about how to handle this," Dr. Howard said. When there are differences of opinion between spouses about how to handle an issue, she said, they need to negotiate their parenting style but not by criticizing and undermining one another in front of the child. She was not at all surprised by the topics around which mothers in the poll reported criticism. They are the same topics she hears about in the office, she said: "It's discipline, sleep and diet, that's always it." Among the mothers surveyed who reported being criticized, 7 out of 10 had been taken to task over issues of discipline. "More often what we see are different interpretations of what this kid is doing right now in terms of behavior and what's reasonable to expect," Ms. Clark said. Grandparents who live at a distance may see a child only on special occasions, when the routine is disrupted and the child is perhaps unusually excited. If the grandparents offer criticism, or at least what the mother hears as criticism, it can further divide families who are already geographically separated. "About half of the moms said they avoid certain people who give too much criticism," Ms. Clark said. And while that may be fine if the critic is a nosy neighbor down the block, "if it becomes a reason to limit that kid's time with grandma, I think we lose things that way." For parents who are upset by the criticism, Dr. Howard said, it's important to remember that a grandparent, especially a grandparent at a distance, may be trying, however awkwardly, to be involved in a child's life. "People may go out of their way to avoid relatives they find are too critical," she said. She suggested being more direct and saying, "I'm not going to come over here anymore if you keep putting me down." And then say, "I really want you to be part of my children's lives." What mothers hear as criticism, especially from their own parents, may also reflect concern for the mother's well being; the grandparents may look at the child's sleep problem and see an exhausted mother. "They're often in pain for the parent when the parent is struggling with a behavior," Dr. Howard said. Mothers who were surveyed reported very low numbers for criticism coming from the child's health care provider (8 percent) and the child's day care provider (6 percent). Ms. Clark suggested that this was because mothers expected advice and guidance from these quarters, and therefore didn't hear the suggestions as criticism. "How does mom translate the statement?" she asked. "From the doctor, we're just trying to keep this kid healthy, from the day care provider, we're trying to help this kid have a happy day." It goes to show, she said, that the criticism is partly what the sender says, and partly what the receiver hears. "It's received as coming from someone who's trying to help my kid be well and succeed in life, as opposed to comments from the family where we don't always perceive that intention." But it's also possible that pediatricians are seen as uncritical because they don't raise some of these fraught topics, like discipline and parenting. "I'm guessing that pediatricians aren't giving enough advice, they may not be seen as critical because they aren't saying enough about it," Dr. Howard said. What is the impact of the criticism? Sometimes mothers do need to find out if they're doing something wrong. "We were happy to see that a sizable chunk of folks said that in response to something they perceived as criticism, they went out and sought more information," Ms. Clark said. "They either asked the child's doctor or went and looked online." But 40 percent of the mothers in the survey said the criticism made them feel unsure of themselves as mothers. "If you get to the point where the voices of criticism potentially raise that level of anxiety, that's where we worry," Ms. Clark said. "No one ever says anything good to parents, like 'Oh, I think you handled that tantrum beautifully,'" Dr. Howard said. Unless perhaps you are the Duchess of Cambridge, whose efficient handling of her 2 year old daughter's brief tantrum last month made news headlines around the world. "How often does anybody ever say to you, 'You did a magnificent job of managing that,'" Dr. Howard said. "We all know positive feedback is much better than negative feedback."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Well
SHANGHAI Facebook is blocked in China, but it is feeling comfortable enough there to look for its own place. The social media giant in recent months has quietly scouted for office space in Shanghai, according to two people with knowledge of its efforts there. Those offices would house employees working on Facebook's effort to make hardware but could also help with its broader ambitions in China, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the plans. Facebook's plans are tentative, the people said, and would depend on approval from the Chinese government. But if successful, it would be a symbolic victory for the social network, which has long worked to get into China despite being blocked there for nearly a decade. "We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country in different ways," a Facebook spokeswoman said in response to questions about the office plans. Facebook has been looking for momentum in China, home of the world's largest population of online users. Earlier this year, it quietly authorized the release by a small local company of a Chinese version of its Moments photo managing app. Despite being obstructed in China, Facebook has many reasons to continue pursuing business there. The social network sells advertising to Chinese companies hoping to reach the rest of the world. The Chinese ad sales, supported from its office in Hong Kong, are some of the largest in Asia. Even China's government propaganda organs use it. Facebook's new hardware ambitions would require a Chinese presence as well. The initiatives would require plugging into China's electronics supply chain, which helps build some of the world's most popular gadgets, like Apple's iPhone. The office would first be used by employees of Facebook's hardware effort, called Building 8, according to the people with knowledge of the plans. Anything from an internet connected medical device to a drone requires coordination with dozens of Chinese producers and assemblers, mostly located in the southern part of the country. Facebook has for years entertained the idea of a Chinese office. In late 2015, it obtained a license to open an office in Beijing, but the permit lasted only three months and it could not establish a space in that time. Oculus, the virtual reality company Facebook bought three years ago, already has a Shanghai office. At the moment, Facebook uses third parties and its own employees to sell ads in China. Because of cybersecurity concerns, Facebook employees run special security software on devices when they travel in China and do not have access to secretive or critical business information. Opening an office in Shanghai allows more support for its employees when they are in China, but also raises security questions. The Building 8 teams, which focus on their own hardware projects, would have less need to access sensitive Facebook data when in China, one person said. The office could also help Facebook work more with local Chinese companies. If it opens a Shanghai office, Facebook would not be the only Western internet company banned in the country to have some space there. Google, which pulled its servers out of China in 2010 after it decided to stop censoring search results, retained offices in Beijing and Shanghai that support both advertising and research and development. Google still maintains extensive advertising sales and research facilities there. Facebook over the past three years has pulled out all the stops to court the Chinese government and gain approval for its network. Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, has showed off his Mandarin at one of the country's top universities and has directly courted Xi Jinping, China's president. The office search comes just months after Facebook released the Chinese language version of Moments. That app, called Colorful Balloons, originally went largely unnoticed but briefly rose into the top 50 in the photo and video section of China's iPhone app store after The New York Times reported its release last month, according to app research company App Annie. Like other cities in China, Shanghai has been eager to attract technology start ups and other internet related investments. Earlier this year, a woman listed as the executive director of the company that released Colorful Balloons on Facebook's behalf was photographed at a meeting between Shanghai government officials and Facebook. In order to open an office in Shanghai, Facebook will likely have to register a branch company in Shanghai as well. That the Colorful Balloons app has not come down could be a sign that Facebook has done something right with the government, said Teng Bingsheng, a professor at Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. Opening an office, if it happens, would be another sign. "It has symbolic meaning," Mr. Teng said, "because it must be the result of good communication with the government."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
LAS VEGAS Two days after Sheldon Adelson's lawyers lost in their attempts to have a judge removed from a contentious lawsuit that threatens his gambling empire, a call went out to the publisher of this city's most prominent newspaper. Almost immediately, journalists were summoned to a meeting with the publisher and the general counsel and told they must monitor the courtroom actions of the judge and two others in the city. When the journalists protested, they were told that it was an instruction from above and that there was no choice in the matter. It is unclear whether Mr. Adelson, who was then in talks to buy the newspaper, The Las Vegas Review Journal, or his associates were behind the directive or even knew about it. But the instruction came in the first week of November, as negotiations on the sale were drawing to a close. It was an ominous coincidence for many in the city who worry what will become of the paper now that it is owned by Mr. Adelson, a billionaire casino magnate and prominent Republican donor with a history of aggressively pursuing his interests. Suspicions about his motives for paying a lavish 140 million for the newspaper last month are based on his reputation in Las Vegas as a figure comfortable with using his money in support of his numerous business and political concerns, said more than a dozen of the current and former Review Journal staffers and local civic figures who have worked closely with him. "I find it hard to believe that he would have so dramatically overpaid for that paper without having some agenda in mind," said Jon Ralston, a columnist and the host of "Ralston Live," a political television show in Las Vegas. In a statement, Mark Fabiani, a crisis management expert and a spokesman for Mr. Adelson, compared his purchase of The Review Journal to those of the billionaires John Henry, who bought The Boston Globe, and Jeff Bezos, who bought The Washington Post, in recent years. Questions are always raised when a billionaire buys a paper, he said. "But over time these questions are answered, and in the end the newspapers often benefit from the financial strength that new owners provide." For a week, Mr. Fabiani repeatedly declined to respond to questions about wheth er Las Vegas judges were discussed during sales talks. But he said in a written statement that The Review Journal had reported on business cases before Mr. Adelson was involved, and the newspaper did not publish any articles based on the journalists' monitoring of the judges. Asked about concerns that Mr. Adelson sought to influence matters in the city, Mr. Fabiani said that Mr. Adelson "has more personal money invested in Nevada than pretty much anyone else, and so he is understandably heavily involved in all aspects of the Las Vegas community." For five years, Mr. Adelson and his lawyers have frequently clashed with Elizabeth Gonzalez, the judge overseeing a lawsuit against his gambling company, which involves allegations by a former executive of bribes to officials in Macau, where it operates a casino, and the possible presence there of organized crime. The case, which is being heard in Clark County District Court, could have significant repercussions for Mr. Adelson's future in the gambling industry, and his high priced legal team has fought it vigorously. On Nov. 4, with Mr. Adelson already in talks to buy The Review Journal, the Nevada Supreme Court rejected a request from Sands China to have Judge Gonzalez removed from overseeing the lawsuit. The company said that rulings and comments made by Judge Gonzalez in court reflected a bias against Mr. Adelson and Sands. Judge Gonzalez has twice sanctioned Mr. Adelson's team, finding that it had failed to disclose information and ignored one of her orders. Once, while Mr. Adelson was giving testimony, she admonished him for disagreeing with her when she instructed that he answer a question, saying, "You don't get to argue with me." The case Judge Gonzalez is overseeing started in 2010 when the former chief executive of Sands' operation in Macau, Steven C. Jacobs, filed a wrongful termination lawsuit, claiming he was fired for refusing to carry out orders from Mr. Adelson that he said he believed were illegal, including payments to local officials that might violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Mr. Adelson and Las Vegas Sands have insisted that they did nothing wrong and that Mr. Jacobs was fired for cause and is seeking money he does not deserve. If the allegations raised in the lawsuit prove true, they could have significant consequences for Mr. Adelson and Sands because Nevada law bars casino owners from, among other things, associating with members of organized crime. Mr. Adelson and his company have rejected the claims, but the lawsuit prompted the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department to open investigations into Las Vegas Sands. In a recent S.E.C. filing, Sands said it was cooperating with federal investigations but could not predict their outcomes or potential impact. Mr. Adelson has spoken of his interest in buying The Review Journal, which has a circulation of just under 200,000 and is an influential voice among civic leaders, for several years, according to those with knowledge of his relationship with the paper. Journalists here worry that there is no shortage of issues, including the lawsuit, that they will feel pressured to cover differently. Among other things, Mr. Adelson is a fierce opponent of loosening marijuana regulation, which will be on the Nevada ballot in 2016, and of online gambling, which remains an active issue in the state. He is also involved in other contentious lawsuits that have been the subject of critical media coverage. The Review Journal has a libertarian bent, and its editorial page agrees with Mr. Adelson on some issues. But it has also been unstinting in its news coverage of him, including articles on the lawsuit being overseen by Judge Gonzalez. It is not clear whether Mr. Taylor has been instructed to do so, and he declined to comment. Nor was it clear, staff members said, whether Mr. Adelson and his family had been directly orchestrating matters since the sale. It could be the case, they said, that the paper's management or Mr. Adelson's aides had been acting pre emptively to satisfy what they thought Mr. Adelson, known to be a demanding and exacting man, may have wanted. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. He rose to prominence in the city as the combative, litigious owner of the Sands Casino, and a political kingmaker. Forbes has estimated his net worth at about 25 billion, and he travels with an entourage of bodyguards. He is a generous backer of both local and national politicians, and puts his considerable resources toward local and national issues about which he feels strongly. "When you have all the marbles, you can make the calls," said Carolyn Goodman, the mayor of Las Vegas. "And he has all the marbles." On Dec. 10, a deal for The Review Journal arranged by Mr. Adelson's son in law closed, leaving the sellers, a company managed by the investment group Fortress, with an estimated gain of nearly 60 million. It was done through a recently incorporated Delaware company fronted by a small publisher of newspapers in Connecticut, Michael E. Schroeder, and Mr. Adelson and his family did not acknowledge that they were the buyers until news reports revealed them to be. Many in the city remain concerned about the state of journalism there. The other prominent local newspaper, The Las Vegas Sun, runs as an insert in The Review Journal as part of a joint operating agreement. "Without wishing to speak ill of The Sun," said James DeHaven, a reporter who left The Review Journal, "The Review Journal is the source of robust, independent reporting in Las Vegas. As it goes, so goes good journalism in Southern Nevada." Some have looked to Israel, where Mr. Adelson owns a free national newspaper called Israel Hayom, as a potential guide to his intentions. The paper was founded in 2007 and has been accused of supporting the conservative positions of Benjamin Netanyahu, then the leader of the parliamentary opposition and now Israel's prime minister, and of using Mr. Adelson's billions to undercut its competitors. Mr. Adelson and Israel Hayom insist that it offers unbiased coverage. Within Las Vegas, says Michael Green, an associate professor of history at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, Mr. Adelson seems to expect an increasing political power, commensurate with his staggering wealth. He may also be taking political clashes more personally, Mr. Green said. Mr. Adelson's first foray into local politics came in 1996, when he helped oust a Democrat from the Clark County Commission, which has jurisdiction over the Las Vegas Strip. In 1998, he became more involved, contributing more than 2 million to an effort to defeat three Democrats on the commission. All three, however, won re election. Another political target the same year seemed more personal: Shelley Berkley, formerly a top aide to Mr. Adelson at the Sands Corporation, was running her first campaign for Congress. Previously, Ms. Berkley has said, Mr. Adelson had suggested that he would back her if she switched parties and ran as a Republican. Instead, he fired her in 1997, after she suggested he make contributions to judges to curry favor. Mr. Adelson donated to Ms. Berkley's opponent and to committees that attacked her in TV ads. She won anyway. Despite her support of Israel a signature issue for Mr. Adelson he continued to oppose her during her 14 years in the House and sent millions to the super PAC that fought against her in her losing Senate campaign in 2012. In 2014, when Judge Gonzalez stood for re election, associates of Mr. Adelson apparently tried to recruit candidates to unseat her. David Thomas, a political consultant who worked on that campaign for Judge Gonzalez, said that two people told him separately that associates of Mr. Adelson had approached them to see if they would run against her. The lawsuit that Judge Gonzalez is overseeing is far from Mr. Adelson's first court case. Former employees have sued him, contending that he discriminated against them. And he has filed a series of defamation claims over the years, including one against The Daily Mail and another against a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. He also sued a columnist for The Review Journal, John L. Smith, for defamation over a book Mr. Smith had written. Mr. Smith, who filed for bankruptcy while defending himself, later wrote that his lawyer told him the case was "about making me an object lesson for my newspaper and other journalists who dared to criticize the billionaire." (Mr. Adelson eventually dropped the case.) While several of those suits were settled out of court or dropped, Mr. Adelson won damages against The Daily Mail and is still pursuing his action against the Wall Street Journal reporter.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
MADRID The treasures of the Hispanic Society of America works by Goya, Velazquez and El Greco, among other masters are not a popular tourist draw at the group's Beaux Arts museum in Washington Heights. But through Sept. 10, the haughty portrait of the Duchess of Alba by Goya and 200 other works from the century old Hispanic Society are finally receiving blockbuster recognition from thousands of visitors to the Prado Museum here along with royal accolades, an international prize and souvenir folding fans. For more than a century, the Hispanic Society's landmark museum and library on West 155th Street in Manhattan has offered free entrance to its world class collection of Spanish art. But it has struggled to draw crowds. That changed in the debut week of its Madrid exhibition, "Treasures From the Hispanic Society of America," which has attracted more than 150,000 spectators since April 4. Among the first to pay tribute were the former King Juan Carlos and his wife, Sofia. Their appearance at the opening of the exhibition marked the royal recognition of the society, which has the largest collection of Spanish art and manuscripts outside Spain. Then in May, the New York museum received the Princess of Asturias award for international cooperation a Spanish prize ordinarily reserved for high profile institutions like the International Red Cross. "When some of the society employees saw the exhibition for the first time, some of them started to cry," said Miguel Falomir, the new director of the Prado and a curator of the show. "They felt such emotion to see their objects on display in a way they had never seen before." Essentially, the society now occupies a museum within a museum in the Prado, which considered the collection so important that it ceded three floors of its new Jeronimos wing to show more than 200 works from New York. By the end of the show, Mr. Falomir said, the total number of visitors to the exhibition is expected to reach 400,000. The society is determined to exploit the traveling exhibition to raise its own profile, along with a 16 million makeover of its New York building under the guidance of Philippe de Montebello, former director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and chairman of the society's board of trustees. He is leading the drive to renovate the museum and also to give it an international footprint by expanding its five member board to 20, with new trustees from Mexico and Europe. In January, the society closed the building for two years of lighting renovations, roof replacement, installation of air conditioning and development of 3,000 square feet for temporary exhibitions. Part of the funding is coming from the City of New York, and the society still needs to raise about 13 million. "We get about 25,000 people a year now, and that's ridiculous," Mr. de Montebello said. "We should be getting 100,000." He added: "We have three great paintings by Velazquez. It's an extraordinary collection, but the difficulty is that the museum is at 155th and Broadway. Manhattanites are extraordinarily provincial, and they need more incentive to come." Madrid got the first look at silks and religious robes that have rarely surfaced in the New York museum, because of lighting issues that could cause fragile textiles to deteriorate. Some 60 percent of the objects are making a public debut for the first time in Spain, including two vivid polychrome wood busts of Saint Martha and Mary Magdalene and an intricate Mexican map from 1584. Goya's 1797 oil portrait of the Duchess of Alba has also emerged from six months of restoration at the Prado, which used a relining process to attach a new canvas to the back of the existing one. The restoration has revealed a faint red sheen in the Spanish beauty's black lace dress, a portrait that provoked gossip that Goya was in love with his muse. But in this case the Madrid museum is funding the shipping expenses and standard exhibition costs a project sponsored by the foundation for the Spanish bank BBVA, which contributed 625,000 euros, or roughly 700,000. In addition, the Prado produced a video about the society that is on YouTube. The narrative centers on Archer Milton Huntington, a philanthropist and stepson of a wealthy 19th century railroad magnate, Collis P. Huntington. As a boy, Archer became fascinated with Spain and ultimately amassed a collection of 18,000 works with the ambition to "make a poem of a museum." In 1904, Huntington founded the Hispanic Society museum and reference library, which at its peak in 1909 had more than 168,000 visitors. Mitchell Codding, executive director of the society and a curator of the traveling exhibition, said that in Madrid the museum can finally show off the breadth of Huntington's collection, which spans 4,000 years. The show and its catalog were produced in about a year, benefiting from close personal relations between top officials at both institutions, according to Jose Pedro Perez Llorca, the chairman of the board for the Prado, where Mr. de Montebello is an honorary board member. The society hopes to send the exhibition to Mexico City and within the United States to cities with large Hispanic populations. The Albuquerque Museum is scheduled to host the exhibit from November 2018 through March 2019. "New Mexico is financially one of the poorest states in the United States, but we are culturally rich in diversity, historic heritage, and culture," said Andrew Connors, the museum's curator there. "We hope this exhibition will allow New Mexicans to celebrate world cultures." Mr. Connors has already identified a sculpture in the show that could be a local favorite: the funerary monument of the ancestor of a duke who gave his name in 1706 to Albuquerque.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
El Espace is a column dedicated to news and culture relevant to Latinx communities. Expect politics, arts, analysis, personal essays and more. ?Lo mejor? It'll be in Spanish and English, so you can forward it to your tia, your primo Lalo or anyone else (read: everyone). At the end of 2016, in between jobs and ready for a change, I moved back to the Dominican Republic for a few months. Every night at my tia's home in Santo Domingo, I watched her and the other women and girls on my dad's side of the family brush out their curls, braid their hair and wrap it into the same Princess Leia style buns to sleep. They'd inherited this bedtime ritual from my grandmother, who died in the early '90s and whose long mane of pelo bueno was legend in my family. (Ugh. I know. But even if it shouldn't be a thing, it still is.) I envied the shared communion of this small gesture, which I'd never witnessed growing up in New York: their jalones had historia. Inevitably, we leave parts of ourselves behind when we emigrate traditions that are too hard to keep up; foods for which the right sazon is nearly impossible to find. But Mexican Americans (and Pixar) have taken the Day of the Dead and made it a distinct part of American culture too. In many cities, especially those with large Chicano populations like Houston and Los Angeles, altars honoring deceased ancestors and loved ones with food and mementos have popped up on street corners and in shops in advance of the holiday on Nov. 2. In Dallas, for example, where about a third of the population is Hispanic and primarily of Mexican descent, Maroches Bakery, in the Bishops Arts District neighborhood, has become known for its Day of the Dead community altar. When I spoke to Tellez on the phone, he was busy fielding orders for the Day of the Dead's signature pan de muerto, a sweet roll brushed with egg wash and dusted with sugar. "We open at 1," he was telling a customer. "The bread will be ready by 6." Tellez is insistent on making pan de muerto the traditional way, without any artificial ingredients to speed up the process. It's part of his effort to keep Mexican culture alive in a quickly gentrifying city. When the customer in the shop seemed to grumble about the wait, Tellez simply said: "That's how you roll in this area." Both Tellez and Cindy Pedraza Puente, who co owns CocoAndre, a Mexican chocolatier that creates artisanal chocolates for the Day of the Dead in Dallas, said that not everyone in their community embraces the tradition wholeheartedly. Pedraza Puente said her mother was a Sunday school teacher and some of her fellow congregants many of whom were second and third generation immigrants found it hard to reconcile their Catholic faith with the Day of the Dead traditions. When the animated movie "The Book of Life" came out in 2014, Pedraza Puente said she noticed that more people wanted to dress up like the movie's characters, but she hopes to teach people that the Day of the Dead "isn't a costume." "This is an actual tradition with roots, and it means something," she said. In its honor, she throws an annual party attended by hundreds of people. Separately, but on the topic of Oaxaca, this is a quick and fascinating history of how artisans in one village expanded their pottery offerings beyond the practical. It's also just a really lovely look into how the people of San Marcos make their red colored ceramic cookware from mountain earth, over enormous fire mounds. This is my favorite paragraph: No one wants an ancient tradition to vanish, but most do and more will. After all, it's not the object that matters those comales are made of just earth, water and sand. Yet each is slightly different in shape and texture, owing to the hand that formed it, and distinct in its random markings, with traces of smoke and soot from the firing. They are, in fact, very beautiful. It seems the more basic the process, the more magic the object can hold. The candy factory of your dreams is in Colombia For a candy fiend like me, it doesn't get much better than this story by the novelist Ingrid Rojas Contreras about the Colombina factory where sweet Bon Bon Bum lollipops (and dreams!) are made. "They are as central to growing up Hispano as receiving your first merengue lessons on New Year's Eve from a drunk tio or tia who insists your life depends on your ability to sway your hips with swing," writes Rojas Contreras. Listen: those merengue lessons are a rite of passage! Maybe you can relate. The Catholic Church is trying, y'all. After a nearly monthlong gathering, a group of bishops presented Pope Francis with a document calling for the increased inclusion of women and young parishioners in the church. "The absence of women's voices and viewpoint impoverishes discussion and the path of the church," said the document. Amen, right? Still, some believe the final document fell short, in part because it dropped a specific appeal to protect L.G.B.T. people. That acronym was used in a previous draft, but the final was more vague in renewing the church's "commitment against every discrimination and sexually based violence." Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, an advocacy group for gay Catholics, said that if one of the auditors they'd brought in between the ages of 18 and 29 had been gay, perhaps the Vatican would have had a more complex understanding of L.G.B.T. concerns. If you're looking for something lovely, I recommend this essay by John Paul Brammer, a Mexican American writer, about rewatching the 2017 Pixar movie "Coco." "I teared up at the very beginning of the film, when I first set eyes on Coco sitting in a wheelchair, wrinkled, in a state of forgetting," he wrote for the publication Them. "My abuela suffered from dementia before her death, and as with any successful magic trick, I believed I could reach out and touch Coco's hand, which would surely feel like my abuela's, and ask her if she knew me." I'm not crying! You're crying! (Ok, but seriously, who else wants to rewatch "Coco" immediately?) Do you have suggestions for El Espace? Want to receive it as a newsletter? Let me know: elespace nytimes.com	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is suggesting that pregnant women and their partners postpone trips to Miami Dade County after five people, three of them tourists, were diagnosed with Zika that was transmitted from mosquitos in Miami Beach, the second reported area in the United States where transmissions have occurred. At least fourteen people have contracted the virus from mosquitoes in Miami's Wynwood area, prompting the C.D.C to issue its first call for pregnant women to steer clear of a section in Miami. Here is what travelers need to know if they are in Miami or plan to travel there. Is it safe to travel to Miami? In general, yes, said Dr. Stephen Morse, an epidemiology professor at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health, although pregnant women or women who wish to become pregnant in the near future may want to avoid visiting. "Miami is definitely a city in a subtropical climate, and it has plenty of mosquitoes year around so there is always a chance of getting bitten," he said. Will airlines let you change or cancel your flight? Delta Air Lines has been dealing with customers who want to make changes or cancel their reservations on flights to areas affected by Zika since February, said Morgan Durrant, a spokesman. "Refunds are and have been available," he said in an email. "Customers are asked to call and speak to a Delta reservation sales specialist to discuss." JetBlue is also working with travelers scheduled to fly to Miami. The airline's policy states: "Customers traveling to/from destinations reported by the C.D.C. to be affected by the Zika virus may qualify for a refund or the option to make changes to their current travel plans to alternate destinations or travel dates."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Note the last two words in the title of Heidi Schreck's hit show, "What the Constitution Means to Me": This is a highly personal take, not a historical or legal lecture. Yet Schreck succeeds in widening her autobiographical play into a paean for basic fairness: The American Constitution, admired as it is, fails to protect all of us from violence and discrimination. Like the recent captures of "Hamilton" and "American Utopia," albeit on a much more intimate scale, "What the Constitution Means to Me" (streaming on Amazon) successfully preserves a Broadway experience for the screen. Schreck, who has the amiable presence, storytelling verve and pedagogical chops of an ideal schoolteacher, starts off by recounting how she paid for college with the money she earned as a teenager giving speeches about the Constitution in American Legion halls.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
The latest iteration of "Forbidden Broadway," Gerard Alessandrini's long running satirical revue, will move to the York Theater Company at Saint Peter's for an extended engagement following the close of its production at the Triad Theater on Sunday , the company has announced . Performances at the new space will begin on Jan. 15, 2020. The first run of Alessandrini's franchise opened Off Broadway in 1982, skewering the Broadway shows and stars of the day. It has since become a theatrical institution, evolving over more than three decades to lampoon the latest casting choices, musical numbers and corporate minded producers. The franchise has earned Alessandrini a Tony Honor for Excellence in Theater, an Obie Award and a number of Drama Desk Awards. Its current edition, "Forbidden Broadway: The Next Generation," opened at the Triad in October, and features spoofs on the recent "Oklahoma!" revival, "Moulin Rouge" and "Dear Evan Hansen" with sketches like "Woke lahoma!" and "Dear Evan Has Been." The New York Times theater critics Ben Brantley and Jesse Green designated the production a Critic's Pick in their joint review, with Green writing that the show is "not just an excuse for mockery but also an opportunity for reflection." The current show, which was written and directed by Alessandrini, has a cast that includes Immanuel Houston, Aline Mayagoitia, Chris Collins Pisano, Jenny Lee Stern and Joshua Turchin, with Fred Barton at the piano. Gerry McIntyre choreographed the production. The return engagement is being presented in association with John Freedson, Harriet Yellin, Peter Brash, David Zippel and Alessandrini, with Tzili Charney.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The director Lee Sunday Evans was still finding her footing in the world of New York theater when, in the early 2010s, she directed teenagers in "Caucasian Chalk Circle" and "Cyrano de Bergerac" as part of a young artists program run by the downtown company Waterwell. "Those were plays that no one in the professional world was going to give me a chance to direct," she said during a phone interview Wednesday, explaining how the experience brought motivation. "It was a really invigorating thing as a young artist." Now Ms. Evans is becoming a leader of the company that helped nurture her. Waterwell announced Wednesday that it has named Ms. Evans as its new artistic director, following the departure earlier this year of Tom Ridgely, one of the company's two founders. Ms. Evans's work as a director this year has included Clare Barron's "Dance Nation" at Playwrights Horizons and David Greenspan's "The Things That Were There" at the Bushwick Starr. In 2015, she directed Kate Benson's "A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes," which won an Obie Award that year.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Meganne Wecker got a sense in January of the economic blow coming to her family's furniture business from her suppliers in China. Ms. Wecker, the president of Skyline Furniture, a 74 year old manufacturer in the Chicago suburbs, heard from her partners in China about the economic devastation caused by the coronavirus outbreak. Skyline, which has about 50 million in annual revenue, sells to retailers like Wayfair and Target, and the supply chain loss could deliver a huge blow. She prepared herself for the worst, but it was still gut wrenching when she and her father, Ted Wecker, Skyline's chief executive, had to shut down the company as the U.S. economy came to a lurching halt. They decided in mid March to close both factories and stop paying themselves, but they continued to pay all 300 employees for two weeks. But time is running short, and Ms. Wecker, like other small business owners, must determine how to keep her company afloat as stores and restaurants are shuttered, manufacturing comes to a standstill and people are told to stay home. Some choices pay cuts, furloughs, layoffs could seriously harm employees who have worked for them for years. The damage is already becoming apparent: More than 6.6 million people filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday, surpassing the record 3.28 million claims from the week before. For Skyline, it's unclear when the State of Illinois will let it reopen. "Our top two priorities were the health and safety of our employees and how we are going to come out of this with a business that's still operating and intact," Ms. Wecker said. "We're going to try to understand all that is available with packages and loans." She is hopeful that she can get federal funds through a relief effort known as the paycheck protection program to pay most of her employees this month. Maneuvering through the crisis is much harder for smaller businesses, which cannot afford the raft of advisers, lawyers and accountants that large companies have to guide them. At the end of last week, the chief executives of Visa and Morgan Stanley publicly pledged not to lay off any employees this year. That's reassuring for the 77,000 workers at the two firms. For small business owners, keeping everyone employed may not be possible. But they will also have to determine what it would take for the company to endure the economic slowdown and emerge after the crisis as a viable business. Even entrepreneurs who have the personal wealth to weather the pandemic are contemplating what their business will look like in a different marketplace. Bob Parsons, the founder of GoDaddy, the internet domain name company, said he was trying to manage a steep drop in income. He had parlayed the billions he made into 18 businesses with 900 employees, but he said most everything was shuttered, including his golf course, the Scottsdale National Golf Club in Arizona, and his Harley Davidson dealership. His holding company, YAM Worldwide, includes a private lending arm and 2.1 million square feet of commercial real estate in Phoenix. "One of our biggest deals is we own shopping malls," he said. "That's a lot of restaurants, nail shops, fitness centers, and not a lot of rent is going to come in from them." His goal is to keep most of his 900 employees employed through April and re evaluate after that. Many business owners are struggling with tough decisions on a personal level, said Pierre duPont, a partner at the financial services firm Cerity Partners, where he has many business owners as clients. "It's just not about the numbers," he said. "It's about the people and the relationships that make the business whole." Ms. Wecker said Skyline employed some families that had worked there for many years. "We had a woman who celebrated her 50th year working here," she said. "Her son and grandson work for us, too." Brian Ascher, partner at Venrock, a venture capital firm, recommends pulling off the Band Aid quickly. "If you have to cut, the goal is to cut once, cut deeply and do it quickly," he said. "Then you have to treat the remaining troops really well, so they have psychological safety." Rent is an area ripe for renegotiation. Mr. Parsons is expecting less rent from his tenants, and Mr. Ascher is encouraging companies he's invested in to ask for rent reductions. He has seen landlords cut rents by 10 percent to 20 percent but also up to 50 percent. Another strategy for business owners is to stretch the cash they have. Companies with 18 months of cash are in the best position, and those with 12 months should try to stretch it to 18 months, Mr. Ascher said. Companies with less than 12 months are going to struggle. But they must spend the cash wisely, said Bob Buchanan, head of business transition planning at Wells Fargo Private Bank. For smaller companies without access to credit lines, surviving until the arrival of any stimulus money will be difficult. Research from Next Street, an advisory firm focused on small businesses, found that 25 percent cannot make it past 30 days and another 25 percent do not have enough cash to get past 90 days. The Small Business Administration loans that forgive expenses like payroll may not arrive quickly enough to help. "You're going to see a lot of press that the money is going out the door, but any funding will take three weeks from application," said Michael Roth, managing partner at Next Street. And given the rush of applications, banks will put a priority on their existing clients. "It's not going to real small business, the businesses that people see in their communities," he said. "Those small businesses are not going to get it for four to six months." He pointed out that the lenders accredited through the Small Business Administration had never handled more than 30 billion in a year; they're now being asked to process 350 billion in three months, more than 40 times the volume. There is one source of quick cash: The S.B.A. is offering 10,000 grants through its economic injury disaster loan program. Applying for one also puts a business in line for a loan through the same program, said Clint Coons, founder of Anderson Advisors. Russo's, a 100 year old fruit and vegetable company outside Boston, lost half of its revenue in 24 hours when the universities, public schools and restaurants that it supplied closed. Its retail store remains open, and business is increasing. Karen Russo, a fourth generation member of the family that owns the company, said she had long wanted to create boxes filled with a variety of fruits, vegetables and other products that could be placed directly in the trunk of a customer's car. Her father, Tony, who owns the company, resisted but finally agreed two weeks ago. Now they have four types of boxes, which are selling well. "It's hard to expand and contract at the same time, but we're trying our best," Ms. Russo said. "We've been doing a lot of thinking about what we have and how we can use it in a different manner." Before closing its factories, Skyline prepared its work spaces for a different world when people return. It moved workers six feet apart, reclaimed unused space in one factory and drew up plans for shifts to have fewer employees working at the same time.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Why Do Bird Eggs Have Different Shapes? Look to the Wings Owls' are spherical, hummingbirds' are elliptical and sandpipers' are pointy. All bird eggs have the same function to protect and nourish a growing chick. But they come in a brilliant array of shapes. This variety has puzzled biologists for centuries. Now, in the most comprehensive study of egg shapes to date, published Thursday in Science, a team of scientists seems to have found an answer. The researchers cataloged the natural variation of egg shapes across 1,400 bird species, created a mathematical model to explain that variation, and then looked for connections between egg shape and many key traits of birds. On a global scale, the authors found, one of the best predictors of egg shape is flight ability, with strong fliers tending to lay long or pointy eggs. "This paper is remarkable because it creates a wonderfully unified theory for the variety of egg shapes we see in nature," said Claire Spottiswoode, a bird ecologist at the University of Cambridge and the University of Cape Town who did not participate in the research. In the new study, the authors conducted a multistep investigation that brought together biology, computer science, mathematics and physics. They first wrote a computer program, named Eggxtractor who says scientists have no sense of humor? , that classified eggs based on their ellipticity and asymmetry. Elliptical eggs are elongated and round on both ends, like cucumbers, and asymmetric eggs are pointier on one end, like mangoes. With Eggxtractor, the researchers plotted nearly 50,000 eggs, representing all major bird orders, from a database of digital images by the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology in Berkeley, Calif. "We could see then that egg shapes varied from spherical, to elliptical, to very pointy, to almost everything in between," said Mary Caswell Stoddard, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at Princeton University and the lead author of the study. Next, the researchers attempted to answer how eggs might acquire varying shapes. Rather than looking at the shell, as one might expect, they focused on the egg's membrane (the film you see when peeling a hard boiled egg), which is essential to the egg's shape. The scientists identified two parameters that could influence egg form: variations in the membrane's composition and differences in pressure applied to the membrane before the egg hatches. By adjusting these two parameters, "we were able to completely recover the entire range of observed avian egg shapes" a good test of the model, said L. Mahadevan, a professor of applied math, biology and physics at Harvard University and an author of the study. Finally, the researchers looked into why egg shapes might be so spectacularly diverse. One popular hypothesis centered on nest location: Cliff nesting birds, it was thought, lay pointy eggs so that if the eggs are bumped, they spin in a circle rather than rolling off the cliff. Another suggested that birds lay eggs in shapes that pack together best in different size clutches. But when the authors related egg shape to these and other variables, they were surprised to find that none of them fit on a global scale (though they may still play important roles on smaller scales). Instead, egg shape was strongly correlated with a measure of wing shape, called the hand wing index, that reflects flight ability. So what connects flight to egg shape? In general, birds want to pack as many nutrients as possible into their eggs. But, in order to fly, they must maintain sleek bodies meaning their eggs can't be too wide. Common murres, for instance, are fast, powerful fliers and have asymmetric eggs, as do least sandpipers, which migrate long distances.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
With no roar from the fans, all that was left on Monday for Coco Gauff was the roar of the planes as they passed over the all but empty Louis Armstrong Stadium. Down below was a strange scene: Gauff and Anastasija Sevastova, an opponent nearly twice her age, locked in an edgy and erratic duel surrounded by stands covered in big blue tarps. A year ago, Gauff, an American teenager who has embraced the big occasion in her short career, rode a wave of support in Armstrong Stadium to reach the third round of the United States Open. But against Sevastova, she failed to recapture the same form and was defeated in the first round, 6 3, 5 7, 6 4, amid the silence. "I just got on tour a little over a year ago, so I still have a lot to learn and a long ways to go," said Gauff. That was abundantly clear on Monday. Gauff double faulted 13 times and had her serve broken seven times against Sevastova, the No. 31 seed from Latvia. Though Gauff avoided double faults in the final game of the match, she was unable to avoid a series of errors off her less reliable forehand wing. "I hope everybody gives Coco plenty of time," said Tracy Austin, one of tennis's most remarkable wunderkinds, who reached No. 1 and won two U.S. Opens in her teens. "I think it would be kind, and it would be the right thing to do. Take it from someone who has been through it and who all of the sudden was thrust into I don't want to call it chaos but an intense spotlight." Sevastova can be a challenge for a player of any age. She is a crafty 30 year old veteran who is adept at mixing spins and tactics and has an often devastating backhand drop shot. Though she has struggled in 2020, both before and after the extended tour hiatus because of the coronavirus pandemic, she has had her best results at the U.S. Open, reaching the quarterfinals in 2016 and 2017 and the semifinals in 2018. She battled herself mentally on Monday, surrendering a winning position with a 4 2 lead in the second set with a series of errors as she frequently cast withering glances at Ronald Schmidt, her coach and boyfriend. Gauff had internal tussles of her own, putting a hand to her forehead repeatedly after double faults and looking imploringly toward her father Corey and mother Candi, who were sitting courtside with masks covering most of their faces. But both players stabilized in the final set with the final game providing the only break of serve. "I wish I would play like this when I was 16 years old," Sevastova said admiringly of Gauff. "Great player. Nothing more to say. I think she maybe started a bit slower than me, but she was getting better as the match went on. That's so important I think in tennis." Gauff, who reached the fourth round of Wimbledon in her first Grand Slam tournament in 2019, started this season auspiciously, upsetting Osaka in the fourth round of the Australian Open in January before losing in the quarterfinals in three sets to American compatriot Sofia Kenin, the eventual champion. She spent the forced break at home in Delray Beach, Fla., practicing with her father Corey and her co coach Jean Christophe Faurel. She then played a strong comeback tournament at the Top Seed Open in Lexington, Ky., defeating two seeded players Aryna Sabalenka and Ons Jabeur in taut three set tussles before losing in the semifinals to Jennifer Brady, another eventual champion. But Gauff was unable to produce consistent tennis in the two tournament bubble in New York, losing 6 1, 6 3 in the first round of the Western Southern Open to Maria Sakkari, the No. 13 seed, and then losing to Sevastova in their first meeting. Though it is tempting to attribute Monday's defeat to Sevastova's unusual style, Gauff did manage to prevail in Lexington against Jabeur, a player with a similarly varied game and flair for the exotic shot. It seems premature to speculate about a sophomore slump for Gauff. But Gauff's serve and forehand have been less than dependable in recent weeks with double faults and errors piling up. Gauff has struggled to find consistency with her service toss and repeatedly caught her toss on Monday, particularly in the first two sets. "It's surprising that Coco's serve was not retooled more during pause of play," said Pam Shriver, a former U.S. Open singles finalist who is now an ESPN analyst, in a post on Twitter. "Toss too high. Toss too erratic. Pause on take back too long. Not enough weight transfer." Sevastova often played to Gauff's forehand on important points and did so again during the final game, when Gauff made four unforced forehand errors, including the final stroke of the match, which landed in the net on Sevastova's fourth match point. Until Monday, Sevastova had not won a singles match in a regular tour event this season, going 0 7. But her only other victory in 2020 was a big one: coming against Serena Williams in Latvia's 3 2 defeat to the United States in a Fed Cup qualifying round match. That was Williams's first singles loss in Fed Cup, which, it should be pointed out, she has played sparingly through the decades. But when in form, Sevastova's unusual game can bewitch the opposition, and she deployed her arsenal of pace changes and drop shots effectively against Gauff, one of the fastest players on tour even at her young age. "She's moving so well, it's tough to finish the point," Sevastova said. "She hits amazing backhand. Forehand for sure could be better. Still, it's uncomfortable to play her." But surely much more comfortable without a packed stadium creating a ruckus after every Gauff winner. The atmosphere was transcendent in Armstrong Stadium in 2019. It was Zen garden quiet on Monday except for those planes. It was all a stark opening day reminder of how different this U.S. Open is from its predecessors. Though she is only 16, it is hard to imagine Gauff playing in a weirder atmosphere. And the reassuring news as she returns to the practice court to prepare for her first French Open is that she should have many U.S. Opens still to come with the crowds in her corner.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
President Trump made his first public comments about the coronavirus on Jan. 22, in a television interview from Davos with CNBC's Joe Kernen. The first American case had been announced the day before, and Kernen asked Trump, "Are there worries about a pandemic at this point?" The president responded: "No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It's one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It's going to be just fine." By this point, the seriousness of the virus was becoming clearer. It had spread from China to four other countries. China was starting to take drastic measures and was on the verge of closing off the city of Wuhan. In the weeks that followed, Trump faced a series of choices. He could have taken aggressive measures to slow the spread of the virus. He could have insisted that the United States ramp up efforts to produce test kits. He could have emphasized the risks that the virus presented and urged Americans to take precautions if they had reason to believe they were sick. He could have used the powers of the presidency to reduce the number of people who would ultimately get sick. He did none of those things. I've reviewed all of his public statements and actions on coronavirus over the last two months, and they show a president who put almost no priority on public health. Trump's priorities were different: Making the virus sound like a minor nuisance. Exaggerating his administration's response. Blaming foreigners and, anachronistically, the Obama administration. Claiming incorrectly that the situation was improving. Trying to cheer up stock market investors. (It was fitting that his first public comments were from Davos and on CNBC.) Now that the severity of the virus is undeniable, Trump is already trying to present an alternate history of the last two months. Below are the facts a timeline of what the president was saying, alongside statements from public health experts as well as data on the virus. On the same day that Trump was dismissing the risks on CNBC, Tom Frieden, who ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for eight years, wrote an op ed for the health care publication Stat. In it, Frieden warned that the virus would continue spreading. "We need to learn and fast about how it spreads," he wrote. It was one of many such warnings from prominent experts in late January. Many focused on the need to expand the capacity to test for the virus. In a Wall Street Journal article titled, "Act Now to Prevent an American Epidemic," Luciana Borio and Scott Gottlieb both former Trump administration officials wrote: If public health authorities don't interrupt the spread soon, the virus could infect many thousands more around the globe, disrupt air travel, overwhelm health care systems, and, worst of all, claim more lives. The good news: There's still an opening to prevent a grim outcome. ... But authorities can't act quickly without a test that can diagnose the condition rapidly. Trump, however, repeatedly told Americans that there was no reason to worry. On Jan. 24, he tweeted, "It will all work out well." On Jan. 28, he retweeted a headline from One America News, an outlet with a history of spreading false conspiracy theories: "Johnson Johnson to create coronavirus vaccine." On Jan. 30, during a speech in Michigan, he said: "We have it very well under control. We have very little problem in this country at this moment five. And those people are all recuperating successfully." That same day, the World Health Organization declared coronavirus to be a "public health emergency of international concern." It announced 7,818 confirmed cases around the world. Trump took his only early, aggressive action against the virus on Jan. 31: He barred most foreigners who had recently visited China from entering the United States. It was a good move. But it was only one modest move, not the sweeping solution that Trump portrayed it to be. It didn't apply to Americans who had been traveling in China, for example. And while it generated some criticism from Democrats, it wasn't nearly as unpopular as Trump has since suggested. Two days after announcing the policy, Trump went on Fox News and exaggerated the impact in an interview with Sean Hannity. Trump replied: "Well, we pretty much shut it down coming in from China. We have a tremendous relationship with China, which is a very positive thing. Getting along with China, getting along with Russia, getting along with these countries." By the time of that interview, the number of confirmed coronavirus cases around the world had surged to 14,557, a near doubling over the previous three days. On Feb. 5, the C.D.C. began shipping coronavirus test kits to laboratories around the country. But the tests suffered from a technical flaw and didn't produce reliable results, labs discovered. The technical problems were understandable: Creating a new virus test is not easy. What's less understandable, experts say, is why the Trump administration officials were so lax about finding a work around, even as other countries were creating reliable tests. The Trump administration could have begun to use a functioning test from the World Health Organization, but didn't. It could have removed regulations that prevented private hospitals and labs from quickly developing their own tests, but didn't. The inaction meant that the United States fell behind South Korea, Singapore and China in fighting the virus. "We just twiddled our thumbs as the coronavirus waltzed in," William Hanage, a Harvard epidemiologist, wrote. Trump, for his part, spent these first weeks of February telling Americans that the problem was going away. On Feb. 10, he repeatedly said in a speech to governors, at a campaign rally and in an interview with Trish Regan of Fox Business that warm spring weather could kill the virus. "Looks like by April, you know, in theory, when it gets a little warmer, it miraculously goes away," he told the rally. On Feb. 19, he told a Phoenix television station, "I think the numbers are going to get progressively better as we go along." Four days later, he pronounced the situation "very much under control," and added: "We had 12, at one point. And now they've gotten very much better. Many of them are fully recovered." His message was clear: Coronavirus is a small problem, and it is getting smaller. In truth, the shortage of testing meant that the country didn't know how bad the problem was. All of the available indicators suggested it was getting worse, rapidly. On Feb. 23, the World Health Organization announced that the virus was in 30 countries, with 78,811 confirmed cases, a more than fivefold increase over the previous three weeks. Trump seemed largely uninterested in the global virus statistics during this period, but there were other indicators stock market indexes that mattered a lot to him. And by the last week of February, those market indexes were falling. The president reacted by adding a new element to his public remarks. He began blaming others. He criticized CNN and MSNBC for "panicking markets." He said at a South Carolina rally falsely that "the Democrat policy of open borders" had brought the virus into the country. He lashed out at "Do Nothing Democrat comrades." He tweeted about "Cryin' Chuck Schumer," mocking Schumer for arguing that Trump should be more aggressive in fighting the virus. The next week, Trump would blame an Obama administration regulation for slowing the production of test kits. There was no truth to the charge. Throughout late February, Trump also continued to claim the situation was improving. On Feb. 26, he said: "We're going down, not up. We're going very substantially down, not up." On Feb. 27, he predicted: "It's going to disappear. One day it's like a miracle it will disappear." On Feb. 29, he said a vaccine would be available "very quickly" and "very rapidly" and praised his administration's actions as "the most aggressive taken by any country." None of these claims were true. By the end of February, there were 85,403 confirmed cases, in 55 countries around the world. Almost two decades ago, during George W. Bush's presidency, the federal government developed guidelines for communicating during a public health crisis. Among the core principles are "be first," "be right," "be credible," "show respect" and "promote action." But the Trump administration's response to coronavirus, as a Washington Post news story put it, is "breaking almost every rule in the book." The inconsistent and sometimes outright incorrect information coming from the White House has left Americans unsure of what, if anything, to do. By early March, experts already were arguing for aggressive measures to slow the virus's spread and avoid overwhelming the medical system. The presidential bully pulpit could have focused people on the need to change their behavior in a way that no private citizen could have. Trump could have specifically encouraged older people at most risk from the virus to be careful. Once again, he chose not to take action. Instead, he suggested on multiple occasions that the virus was less serious than the flu. "We're talking about a much smaller range" of deaths than from the flu, he said on March 2. "It's very mild," he told Hannity on March 4. On March 7, he said, "I'm not concerned at all." On March 10, he promised: "It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away." The first part of March was also when more people began to understand that the United States had fallen behind on testing, and Trump administration officials responded with untruths. Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, told ABC, "There is no testing kit shortage, nor has there ever been." Trump, while touring the C.D.C. on March 6, said, "Anybody that wants a test can get a test." That C.D.C. tour was a microcosm of Trump's entire approach to the crisis. While speaking on camera, he made statements that were outright wrong, like the testing claim. He brought up issues that had nothing to do with the virus, like his impeachment. He made clear that he cared more about his image than about people's well being, by explaining that he favored leaving infected passengers on a cruise ship so they wouldn't increase the official number of American cases. He also suggested that he knew as much as any scientist: I like this stuff. I really get it. People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors said, 'How do you know so much about this?' Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should have done that instead of running for president. On March 10, the World Health Organization reported 113,702 cases of the virus in more than 100 countries.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
On a Tuesday in July, about 45 retirees, tourists and working folk on lunch break queue silently at the Chinatown Complex food center in Singapore's Smith Street. They are sweating in the tight heat (it's 90 degrees outside and there isn't air conditioning), waiting to order at the metal framed Hawker Chan Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle stall . Hawker Chan sells plates of soy sauce chicken rice for 2 Singapore dollars (about 1.50) and gained global fame when it was awarded one star in 2016 in Singapore's first Michelin guide, making it the world's cheapest Michelin starred meal. Some devotees line up for more than an hour; this tableau of diners loyally waiting for their favorite dirt cheap food is replicated in hawker centers across this island nation. It's a far cry from the Singapore depicted in the hit movie "Crazy Rich Asians," based on the best selling novel of the same title. Watch the film and the Lion City, as it's known, appears exclusively populated by the immaculately coifed and buffed uber rich (true, there are plenty here) who live in lushly landscaped sprawling homes (many of those about) and jet set to islands to escape the ennui of daily life (it happens). But, in the six years that I have lived in Singapore, a per capita G.D.P. heavyweight, I've learned that the scene at Hawker Chan is much more reflective of life here. It is commonplace to live and have fun in the city without breaking the bank. Singapore gained independence in 1965, when it was mostly low rise with shop houses and kampongs (villages) where homes had tin and thatch roofs. A government drive led to the creation of the Housing Development Board, which replaced kampongs throughout the island with high density towers known as H.D.B.s, no frills blocks where four fifths of the country's 5.6 million residents today live. With a strategic location in Asia and a history of receiving migrants from Southeast Asia, China, India and Europe, Singapore gradually prospered, the greatest leap occurring in the last two decades, when it shifted from an industrial to financial capital and reworked its agenda to attract the rich through lifestyles. "Motor racing and luxurious living became promoted systematically as part of the landscape, epitomized by the iconic Marina Bay Sands," said Dr. Liew Kai Khiun, an assistant professor at the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information at Nanyang Technological University. Today, immense wealth exists in pockets but given the country's Lilliputian size (smaller than New York City), it seems to inhabit everyday life, visible in the Ferraris that I see rumble around the roads daily, the marquee condominium complexes (one, Reignwood Hamilton Scotts, has an elevator for vehicles so residents can park their exotic sports cars in their living rooms) and the marinas. But these snapshots are not the norms. "The perception of Singapore as the playground of the rich has caused some uneasiness and tension," noted Dr. Liew. This was expressed in the complaints (about stereotyping, lifestyle, lack of ethnic diversity) by Singaporeans over the trailer of "Crazy Rich Asians" that portrays a city alien to the experiences of ordinary folk here. Singapore is costly: for the fifth year running, it's the most expensive city in the world according to an annual survey by the Economist. With an average annual resident income of about 46,000 Singapore dollars, most Singaporeans regularly tighten their purse strings, this necessary financial prudence helped by a wide range of free and low cost facilities and diversions. There are free parks to explore, free concerts, free health clinics and tons of cheap places to eat. A day out need not cost a small fortune. The 184 acre Singapore Botanic Gardens (about three quarters the size of the New York Botanical Garden) opened in 1859, and in its early days was an important center for cultivating plants, especially the rubber tree. Free to enter, it became a Unesco World Heritage Site in 2015 and is a spotless, peaceful patch of greenery, filled with people strolling (with or without dogs), exercising and bird watching. Gardens by the Bay was built on reclaimed land and is a marvel of engineering and sustainable design. I like how its climate controlled greenhouse domes, superstructure artificial trees and green expanses contrast with the nearby central business district towers. The Singapore Symphony Orchestra stages free concerts around the city (sometimes at the Botanic Gardens). Music fans can also check out the rotating schedule of free shows at Esplanade, the performing arts complex with a roof inspired by the durian fruit. Companies like Monster Day Tours and Indie Singapore offer free walking tours of Little India and Chinatown that trace the evolution of these enclaves. ION Orchard, a shopping mall known for its high end designer stores, has a free contemporary multimedia art gallery on its fourth level, and free art is dotted around the city. My favorite freebie, Haw Par Villa, was opened in 1937 by the Aw brothers, the inventors of Tiger Balm; I never tire of the sometimes gruesome dioramas and sculptures depicting Chinese folk tales through imagery that includes dismembered and impaled torsos or people drowning in bubbling pools of blood. There are also many economical ways to experience Singapore. The city has a network of pool complexes that cost a couple of dollars for adults, and include the Olympic size pool at the O.C.B.C. Aquatic Centre and one at Jurong East neighborhood with water slides, a lazy river and a wave pool that I have visited more than 30 times. H.D.B.s often have markets at the ground level, where I and many Singaporeans buy fresh produce and household necessities at lower prices than in the city's ubiquitous air conditioned malls. For 2.50 Singapore dollars, visitors can catch a boat to Pulau Ubin, a small, little developed isle off Singapore's main island that gives a hint of life here pre independence: It's populated with jungle and wildlife and a handful of residents in tin roof homes, no running water and virtually no electricity; an undiluted immersion into nature. I liken it to time travel. No trip to Singapore would be complete without a meal at a hawker center, a microcosm of the deep multicultural heritage here (a subject unexplored by the film). "The food in Singapore is one of the best melds, not just a melting pot, of world flavors," said K.F. Seetoh, Singapore's de facto food ambassador and creator of the World Street Food Congress, by email. "It is beyond rich migrant food culture." For example, he noted that rojak, a fruit and vegetable salad whose name translates to 'eclectic mix' and whose origins are unclear, "is neither this nor that, but truly our own style," an apt symbol of the many cultures of Singapore. Singaporeans are predominantly ethnically Chinese, but the pan Asian sensibilities of the country are inescapable from street signs and subway announcements in the country's four official languages (Mandarin, Malay, Tamil and English), to the mosques, churches, Buddhist and South Indian temples dotted around the island, sometimes on the same stretch of road. I can think of no place that offers a profound mix of Asian cultures and cuisines so compactly. I have spent many hours at hawker centers, for a quick meal or to sip on a fresh sugar cane juice and watch myna birds with sun colored beaks and slick black feathers chirping and hopping between tables, waiting for falling scraps. Sometimes I go just to wander among stalls selling an endless variety of dishes that embody the cultural melange, "everyday cuisines like satay, chicken rice, yong tau fu, fish head curry, prata, nasi lemak, laksa, mee siam," said Dr. Tan Ern Ser, a sociologist at the National University of Singapore. "The cultural makeup of Singaporeans is somewhat complex. It is Southeast Asian, South Asian, East Asian and global, but not in an essentialist way, where race is defined by fixed, unchangeable traits." While these dishes lip smacking, addictively salty, spicy, silky and costing a few dollars originate from different parts of the continent, they are all considered wholly Singaporean, comfort food of sorts. And they are like the country as a whole: not crazy, not universally rich, but most certainly Asian.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Sure, the morning sun sparkles off a harbor packed with lobster boats and schooners. And yes, it feels good to breathe the sea air and watch the gulls cross the lighthouse at the tip of the breakwater. All well and good. But how's the coffee? Terrific, and thanks for asking. The coffee I'm drinking at Rockland's Rock City Coffee Roasters was made with Sumatran beans freshly roasted, ground before my eyes and drip filtered straight into my mug, a pour over. It's a brew worthy of the view. When I was writing my book "Caffeinated," an investigation of the history, politics and science of caffeine, I noticed an oddity about coffee: Though we so appreciate it when overworked and under rested, as a tonic to the working grind, we love it equally while on vacation. Even a restful vacation, no deadlines looming, relaxing with family and friends by the water, seems improved by coffee. Better yet, some really good coffee. The first stop could be Rockland, guarding the western mouth of Penobscot Bay. That's where Rock City's roaster, Kevin Malmstrom, recommended the Sumatran. Rock City began roasting coffee in 1999, as a spinoff of a cafe bookstore. Now it's split into two storefronts: the roasting plant with its quiet cafe, and the larger, livelier cafe a few blocks north on Main Street. Mr. Malmstrom said that Rock City was best known for its dark roasts. And he said the roasting plant sometimes draws curious tourists: "We get some funny questions. A lot of people are like, 'What's that smell?' " The next stop is 14 miles north on Route 1. As the road drops from the Camden Hills into Lincolnville Beach, look for a weathered wood, green roofed cabin that might belong on a northern Maine lake. Beyond a wide porch with wooden rockers is a room lined with coffee on one side and tea on the other. This is Green Tree Coffee and Tea. Often as not, the voluble owner, John Ostrand, will stick his head out from the back room where he roasts his beans. Mr. Ostrand said that many customers want some guidance in choosing coffee, and it is easiest to help people who know wine. Someone who prefers cabernet sauvignon to pinot noir, for example, will probably like a coffee with more body. "Coffee tastes really good here on the coast of Maine," Mr. Ostrand told me over an espresso on the porch. "Coffee tastes better here than if you are at a truck stop on Route 128, even if it's a Starbucks." The next roaster on our tour is 50 miles east, past the Penobscot Narrows Bridge, on the banks of the Union River in downtown Ellsworth. Rooster Brother is a multifaceted operation a kitchen supply store/deli/coffee roaster. Pamela Elias, who owns the store with her husband, said they started roasting coffee in 1987. "We loved the way that coffee smelled, but it never tasted as good as it smelled," she said. "We wanted it to taste as good as it smelled. People thought we were nuts to try to do this." Now the store sells coffee year round to locals, and seasonally to vacationers en route to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park. Gene Pellerano, the roaster, said he will sell beans only within four days of roasting, because the flavors diminish with time. "The brightness, the acidity, slowly goes away; the fruit goes away," he said. Increasingly, he finds that customers are becoming adventurous in their choices. "As we've picked up coffee from more countries, they are not afraid to try something new," Mr. Pellerano said. For one last cup of coffee, a traveler can drive 30 miles southwest through blueberry barrens, over a high suspension bridge and across a narrow causeway to the town of Deer Isle, on the east side of Penobscot Bay. Improbably perched on the second floor of a sprawling clapboard schoolhouse at the center of the tiny town is (The name is a nod to the 44th parallel, where Deer Isle sits.) The owners, Melissa Raftery and Megan Wood, bought a small, used roaster and began roasting for friends in October 2010. By December, they'd hung out a shingle. Everything about 44 North is low tech and funky. There's even a trap door to the wood shop below, where they use a fishing net to hoist up 60 kilo bags of green coffee beans. There is no espresso machine at 44 North; they serve pour overs dripped into Mason jars. Ms. Raftery said that they tend toward lighter roasted coffee, in sync with the third wave coffee movement. Their farmers' market business is "going gangbusters," Ms. Wood said. And she has noticed a growing trend: Vacationers are loading up on coffee before leaving Deer Isle on Sundays, and taking a few pounds of coffee home with them. It may be that coffee tastes better in Maine, or it may be that Maine roasted coffee tastes better. Either way, coffee connoisseurs no longer need to pack their provisions when visiting.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
"Wow, the N.R.A. as we know it could be gone. Aw, thoughts and prayers." JIMMY FALLON "When the news broke, people were shocked, mostly because this had nothing to do with Trump." JIMMY FALLON "And to make sure it dissolves, she's going to put Jared Kushner in charge of it. Imitating Jared Kushner 'You can count on me oh, no. Oh, you guys, bad news. Oh, I Kushed it." SETH MEYERS "Yeah, right now, the N.R.A. is in so much trouble even Trump is afraid to wish them well." JIMMY FALLON, presumably referring to the president's recent good wishes for Ghislaine Maxwell "One of the biggest politicians who received donations from the N.R.A. is Senator Mitch McConnell. That probably explains why, today, he was seen breathing into his neck like it was a paper bag." JIMMY FALLON "Trump was like: 'We have to protect the N.R.A. I want them to go down to Disney World and set up an N.R.A. bubble." JIMMY FALLON	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Creative Time, the New York based nonprofit arts organization that is known for large scale public art projects, has chosen Justine Ludwig, who has served as deputy director and chief curator at Dallas Contemporary, as its next executive director. The appointment ends a nine month search for a new leader at Creative Time. Ms. Ludwig is to take up the post on June 15. Her predecessor, Katie Hollander, a Creative Time veteran, was chosen in 2016 to fill the shoes of the organization's longtime, Anne Pasternak, who departed for the Brooklyn Museum. Ms. Hollander left Creative Time in June after a year and a half as executive director. "We are thrilled to be working with Justine," Jon Neidich, Creative Time board member and head of the search committee, said in a statement. Her "commitment to social justice and devotion to the realization of artists' dreams make her the perfect person to further Creative Time's role as a leading voice in public art, both nationally and beyond."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Before Elizabeth Cunningham was sold on the Harris Five Prong Approach to Dating, she had some questions for the man trying to sell it to her. "I was like what, what is this?" said Ms. Cunningham, 40, recalling a late night phone conversation with Michael Harris in January 2017, in which he preached of the pentad: 1. Notice. 2. Interest. 3. Like. 4. Love. 5. Marriage. "You mean to tell me that you have this five prong approach and yet you're 44, you've never been married and you have no children?," Ms. Cunningham asked. "Does this thing really work?" "Both Elizabeth and Michael are really gracious, hospitable and friendly people, each with a wacky sense of humor," Ms. Augustin said. "They are also very much grounded in their Christian faith, which is why I thought they would be perfect for each other. But as it turned out, the timing just wasn't right for them as both were going through difficult times, so there was absolutely no spark." Ms. Cunningham, who grew up in Roosevelt, N.Y., received a bachelor's degree in theater arts from N.Y.U. and a master's degree in acting at Columbia before heading to Los Angeles in June 2004, in the hope of becoming an actress. Though she found some work, she abandoned her dream in September 2013 when she returned home to be the primary caretaker for her mother, Herma Cunningham, who had cancer. "I thought Michael was a good looking guy, but I was so distracted by my mother's situation that when I got to the restaurant, I'm not even sure I shook his hand," Ms. Cunningham said. "I don't think there was a paragraph of sentences spoken between us that night." Mr. Harris, who is now 45, grew up in Detroit and graduated from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He went on to receive an M.B.A. from the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. During his last semester at North Carolina, he completed a four month graduate level study abroad program at the Stockholm School of Economics. Mr. Harris, who is also a chartered financial analyst, was single and working as a controller at a data center in Manhattan when he met Ms. Cunningham. That sparkless meeting did nothing to enhance Mr. Harris's self confidence, as he was in the middle of a midlife crisis. "In some respects of my life, I felt I had achieved what I wanted to achieve," he said. "But I saw that a lot of my friends were getting married and having kids and they all started disappearing on me. "New York might be filled with eight million people, but for me, it felt more like I had become a part of a certain kind of crowded loneliness, and all of the glass half empty things about New York really started getting on my nerves." They moved on, but kept limited tabs on each other through Facebook and other social media platforms. In July 2015, Mr. Harris moved to Denver, and took a year off work. He began looking for a job in February 2016, after falling off his snowboard and dislocating a shoulder. In July, he landed a job as an investment banker there. Five months later, Mr. Harris returned to New York to attend a friend's annual Christmas party and crossed paths with Ms. Augustin. She told him that Ms. Cunningham's mother had only weeks to live. Saddened, Mr. Harris reached out to Ms. Cunningham via text message, setting in motion the first of five prongs. Ms. Cunningham was a bit shocked to hear from Mr. Harris again. "It was really out of the blue," she said. They agreed to meet for drinks. Mr. Harris arrived early, but the noise inside the bar seemed like the wrong setting for a sober catch up conversation that would include a dying mother. "It's too noisy in there," he mouthed to her as he led her outside to the corner of Fifth Avenue and East 36th Street, where Ms. Cunningham continued to wait patiently, this time in the bitter cold. Mr. Harris was still talking five minutes later when he looked at Ms. Cunningham, and noting "her patience and grace," gave her an unexpected peck on the cheek. Ms. Cunningham, a very conservative Christian, called it "a shocking moment," but a nice one. "I had never kissed him before, and now we're out in the cold and he's on the phone and just comes up to me and kisses my cheek. I was like, 'Who is this guy?'" Mr. Harris finally ended his call and they walked across the street to another restaurant, the Archive. This time around, sparks flew, while getting caught up on the two previous years since they last saw each other. "I thought he was very smart, very funny and a gifted conversationalist," Ms. Cunningham said. "I felt like he was really into who I was and interested in me outside of the realm of being a caretaker. By the time we left, I wanted to get to know him more but I wasn't sure if it would happen. I called Barbara and said 'O.K., who is this Michael dude, what's his story. Does he have a girlfriend.'" It was during those late night conversations that Mr. Harris came to see that he too had been blessed, and that he too had found comfort, his in a woman. "I truly valued her love and dedication to her mother and I admired how calm she was during such a tragic time in her life," he said. In February 2017, Ms. Cunningham's mother died, and Mr. Harris went to New York for the funeral. "During the burial, he took my hand and my entire family was like, 'What, who is this person?'" Ms. Cunningham said. "Much like that first time he surprised me with a kiss, he had shocked me again, but deep inside, I wanted him next to me." A month after the funeral, Ms. Cunningham joined Mr. Harris and his friends on a ski trip in Keystone, Colo. They visited Pikes Peak near Colorado Springs, but the peak was closed because of snow and ice, and they could only ascend to about 12,000 feet. While up in the clouds, Mr. Harris surprised Ms. Cunningham with what he called a "proposal," asking her to be his girlfriend. When she said yes, he presented her with a diamond encrusted heart shaped silver necklace as a way of symbolizing that she now owned a part of his heart. "At that point in my life, I was in need of a certain level of softness, and Michael provided it," Ms. Cunningham said. "I came to realize that he is a loving guy with an amazing level of detail and thoughtfulness." They soon embarked on a long distance relationship. Love: Someone to lean on In November of that year, Ms. Cunningham suffered another emotional setback with the unexpected death of her father, Donovan Cunningham. "It was the best surprise of my life," Ms. Cunningham said. "Having seen many of those same people at the funerals of my parents, it was quite a stark difference, a completely exciting moment created by Michael that I will never forget." Marriage: A ring and promise of another The couple were married April 14 at Trinity Lutheran Church in Brooklyn, and exchanged vows before Pastor Patrick Boatwright and Ms. Augustin, who served as co officiant. The groom made seven vows to the bride, and it was his fourth that wowed the 175 guests, some from Canada, Kenya, Norway, Spain and South Africa. "There have been so many upgrades to my life, relative to my midlife crisis," he said. "Now, you are my life's ultimate upgrade. So in return, I vow to seek to upgrade your life. Be it a five carat purple five year anniversary ring, be it the last piece of bread in the house if on hard times, be it a kind supportive word that's meaningful." Pastor Boatwright couldn't resist on the five carat promise. "Five years from now," he announced, "I will remind Elizabeth about that ring." Laughter filled the old church on 46th street in Sunset Park, and moments later there was more, when told to kiss his new bride, he covered his lips several times over with a lip balm, and then did so. Later that evening, a van carrying the 18 person wedding party pulled up to the curb at nearby Warehouse Studios, where the reception was held. They made their way up an iron staircase where the guests including Mr. Harris's 75 year old father, Herman Harris were enjoying music while feasting on chicken and empanadas, black eyed peas, plantains and macaroni and cheese. Kaddu Luyombya, one of the groom's two best men, noted that "Michael was doing pretty well when he was single. He had a great job, a new condo and a new car. But he didn't start living the life he dreamed of living until Elizabeth came into his life." Asked if the groom's five prong approach had ultimately worked, the bride said: "I never really looked at it as a test or a quiz, but more of an emotional roadmap. It was basically five levels of honesty in terms of where we were at as a couple, and at the end of the day that's a good thing because every woman wants to know where they stand in a relationship."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
The spa has left the building. Industry growth indicates those places that once dispensed pampering are now expanding their reach into adventure trips, hotel design and even cultural programming under the banner of wellness travel. "Wellness travel has traditionally been associated with the spa experience," said Anne Dimon, the president of the recently formed Wellness Tourism Association, which unites industry partners in advancing the category. "Today it's more about food and opportunities for fitness and to be out in nature." Once confined to the spa silo, wellness has seeped into other areas. The Peninsula Hot Springs near Melbourne, Australia, is adding seven new mineral pools that face an amphitheater, allowing patrons to soak while taking in a concert. Spa directors work with the room divisions of Mandarin Oriental hotels to consult on ways to encourage sleep. It's even behind the scenes: The spa staff at the Barcelo Gran Faro Los Cabos must attend morning yoga. Creative and cultural programming are joining the wellness fold, too. At the new Amanyangyun near Shanghai, guests can learn the meditative crafts of calligraphy and painting. In fall, the spa brand Six Senses will open five small lodges in Bhutan that guests can hike between, exposing them to different aspects of the culture. "Before it was experiential travel and now everyone's talking about transformative travel," said Beth McGroarty, the research director of the Global Wellness Institute, a nonprofit devoted to health and wellness education. "Transformative travel is typically defined as something that wraps you up in story, is extremely emotional, challenges you and shakes up your life." The following new developments in wellness travel aim to make you buffer, smarter, healthier and better fed. The fitness chain Equinox is building its first hotel in New York, but already other hotels have made expansive gyms their key amenity. In Chicago, the new Hotel at Midtown offers guests entree to Midtown Athletic Club, with access to indoor and outdoor lap pools, 16 tennis courts, a cycling studio, boxing gym and hundreds of group classes weekly. The restaurant offers healthy grain bowls as well as more indulgent duck fat tater tots (rooms from 189). Also a membership club, the 150 room Carillon Miami Wellness Resort features a two story fitness center with a rooftop pool, rock climbing wall and more than 300 fitness classes weekly, including beach boot camp. The 70,000 square foot spa features a hydrotherapy circuit and wellness experts include a "grocery guru" to teach healthy shopping practices (rooms from 495). Women only tour operators have long worked wellness into their itineraries, combining hiking or safari trips with yoga and meditation. Advancing the genre, the eight acre SuperShe Island in Finland, opening this month with cabins, saunas and wellness activities, will welcome 10 women at a time (weeklong stays, 4,000 euro, or about 4,700). The Catskills property that once hosted the borscht belt classic Kutsher's resort will soon reopen with YO 1 Wellness Center. Fronting Bailey Lake, the 131 room resort will offer Ayurvedic therapy based on traditional Indian healing, eight yoga rooms, 36 therapy rooms and a 213 seat theater (rooms from 900, all inclusive). The 160 room, wellness focused Waldhotel, among four hotels at the new Burgenstock Resort Lake Lucerne in Switzerland, is home to Health Medical Excellence, a 37,000 square foot medical center staffed by doctors with specialties ranging from dermatology to orthopedics offering checkups, weight loss plans and other services (three day programs from 4,040 Swiss francs, or about 4,045). Among more affordable newcomers, the 189 room Civana resort in Carefree, Ariz., has five to seven complimentary fitness and enrichment classes daily, such as spinning, juicing and art and meditation (rooms from 169, plus a 25 activity fee). Next fall, Miraval Austin will open in Texas with its own farm and chicken coop, and a kitchen featuring classes in conscious cooking that consider environmental impacts as well as nutrition. When it's not holding silence retreats, Eremito in Umbria, Italy, modeled on a historic monastery, offers workshops in Gregorian chant. Mandarin Oriental holds Silent Nights at its spas where conversation is discouraged. In Quebec City, the 17th century monastery Le Monastere des Augustines provides rooms in the original cloister, breakfast served in silence, workshops in painting and opportunities to hear the nuns singing vespers. The Japanese concept of shinrinyoku, or forest bathing, blends a gentle hike with mindfulness, encouraging participants to listen to the birds, notice the patterns on the leaves and observe the insects. Find it at the Ojai Valley Inn Spa in Southern California, as well as Blackberry Farm in eastern Tennessee. Most cruise ships offer fitness areas and spa services. Some even have designated wellness cruises like Seabourn, which has teamed with the integrative medicine guru Dr. Andrew Weil to offer itineraries in Alaska and the Mediterranean. But in May 2019, the industry will get its first wellness cruise line in Blue World Voyages. According to Gene Meehan, its founder and chairman, the plan is to turn an existing 900 passenger ship into a 350 passenger one, making the top level a spa and relaxation deck. Fitness facilities, including yoga and spinning studios, golf and soccer simulators, and batting cages will fill another level; a bike shop will outfit passengers for rides during port calls. Seven night itineraries in the Mediterranean will start around 3,400 a person. Medical wellness vacations have taken a tech turn with programs to analyze DNA, and prescribing fitness and nutrition routines based on the results at destination spas like Canyon Ranch in Tucson and Lenox, Mass. Near San Diego, Cal a Vie Health Spa's WellnessFX program uses blood tests to measure cardiovascular, metabolic, hormonal and nutritional health. Guests then meet with the staff dietitian to discuss eating and lifestyle recommendations. The spa also offers body scanning to monitor body shape, and headbands that monitor brain activity during meditation. For athletic travelers, a new category of extreme fitness trips introduces new challenges. Nicknamed the Iceman, Wim Hof has set records for withstanding extreme environments, including swimming below ice. Now fans can learn his method, which is grounded in breathing exercises, mental focus and exposure to cold temperatures on seven day trips to the Spanish Pyrenees in June and July (1,799 euros).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
So you have a few days to spare in one of Brazil's largest, most beautiful cities. Whether you plan to roam through Vila Madalena's market or take in the art at IMS Paulista, the first thing you'll need is comfortable walking shoes. Beyond that, here are some other essentials, with the help of Wirecutter, The New York Times's product review site. Ria Misra, an editor at Wirecutter, offers a few reminders: First, pickpockets target tourists, so aim to blend in. Keep your camera secured with a strap, your shopping in a tote or messenger bag (not a backpack) that zips shut securely, and any cash or cards tucked out of sight in a not easily accessible wallet. Regardless of the weather, you'll probably find that your light jacket gets much more of a workout than your sunglasses. The skies are often overcast, but weather conditions fluctuate by the week, the day and even the hour, Ms. Misra noted. Dressing simply and casually in light, sheddable layers will help you stay comfortable in a variety of both temperatures and situations, from morning walking tours of the city's vivid street art through an evening of cocktails and live music. With the basics out of the way, here are Ms. Misra's packing suggestions, complete with specific recommendations from Wirecutter experts.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Grading college students on quizzes given at the beginning of every class, rather than on midterms or a final exam, increases both attendance and overall performance, scientists reported Wednesday. The findings from an experiment in which 901 students in a popular introduction to psychology course at the University of Texas took their laptops to class and were quizzed online demonstrate that the computers can act as an aid to teaching, not just a distraction. Moreover, the study is the latest to show how tests can be used to enhance learning as well as measure it. The report, appearing in the journal PLoS One, found that this "testing effect" was particularly strong in students from lower income households. Psychologists have known for almost a century that altering the timing of tests can affect performance. In the past decade, they have shown that taking a test say, writing down all you can remember from a studied prose passage can deepen the memory of that passage better than further study. The new findings stand as a large scale prototype for how such testing effects can be exploited in the digital era, experts said, though they cautioned that it was not yet clear how widely they could be applied. "This study is important because it introduces a new method to implement frequent quizzing with feedback in large classrooms, which can be difficult to do," said Jeffrey D. Karpicke, a professor of psychology at Purdue, who was not involved in the study. He added, "This is the first large study to show that classroom quizzing can help reduce achievement gaps" due to socioeconomic background. On the first day of their Psych 301 course in fall 2011, James W. Pennebaker and Samuel D. Gosling who have taught it jointly for years instructed all 901 students to bring a laptop to class, if they had one (they all did). The students then learned why: They would be taking a short quiz in each subsequent class on their computer. The quizzes would be short and personalized seven questions that the entire class would answer, and one tailored to each student, usually a question from another quiz that he or she got wrong. In place of a final exam, grades were based on cumulative quiz scores. The questions "weren't impossible, as long as you did the reading and paid attention in class, but there were definitely some 'thinkers,' " Namita Pallod, 18, who recently took the course in the quiz format, said by email. "The harder part for me was always when old questions you had missed previously came back." Most students hated it at first, Dr. Pennebaker said. "Sam and I usually get really high course evaluations" from the students, he said; "these were the lowest ever." Dr. Gosling offered one explanation. "For the first few weeks, every time their friends went out drinking, they couldn't go; they had yet another test the next day." Their co author was Jason D. Ferrell, also at Texas. By the end of the course, however, the class had outperformed a previous Psych 301 class of 935 students that used midterm exams scoring 10 percent higher on a subset of 17 questions that appeared on both classes' tests. The quizzed group also got slightly higher grades, the study found. The grade improvements were sharpest among students from lower income backgrounds those from poor quality schools "who were always smartest in class," Dr. Gosling said. "Then they get here and, when they fail the first midterm, they think it's a fluke," he went on. "By the time they've failed the second one, it's too late. The hole's too deep. The quizzes make it impossible to maintain that state of denial." By forcing the students to stay current in the reading and pay attention in class, the quizzes also taught them a fundamental lesson about how to study, the authors said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
"Without Facebook there wouldn't be such a movement, but the online activity is fueled by the energy in the streets," said Thomas Miralles, a real estate agent in France who moderates a Facebook group for "Yellow Vest" protesters. After Yellow Vests Come Off, Activists in France Use Facebook to Protest and Plan PARIS Last Saturday, Thomas Miralles donned a yellow vest in his hometown in southern France and headed out to protest President Emmanuel Macron and high taxes. Afterward, he and other demonstrators around the country returned home, just as they had done every weekend for the past month. But though they were no longer gathered together in town squares and on the streets, Mr. Miralles and many fellow protesters were far from dispersed. Away from the television cameras and police lines, they kept coordinating their actions online mostly on Facebook. While attention has been directed at the dramatic Saturday protests across France, much of the action occurs on the social network the rest of the week. Between Sunday and Friday, people like Mr. Miralles broadcast Facebook Live sessions, share sensational videos of police aggression, host polls to crowdsource what issues to talk about during coming TV interviews, and plot their next moves. "Both fuel each other," said Mr. Miralles, 27, a real estate agent in Perpignan who moderates a Facebook group for protesters that has amassed more than 305,000 members. "Without Facebook there wouldn't be such a movement, but the online activity is fueled by the energy in the streets." The Facebook interactions are feeding the so called Yellow Vest protesters, which helps explain why so many have kept turning up every Saturday, forcing Mr. Macron to announce this week that he would cut taxes and increase some incomes. Inside the hundreds of Facebook groups that have popped up about Yellow Vests, the discussions some of them rambling, others more intellectual have offered clues as to what protesters have seized on each week. This week, protesters in the Facebook groups were focused on Mr. Macron's concessions. Many posted that the actions were insufficient and called for continued demonstrations, according to messages reviewed by The New York Times. The anger suggested that more demonstrations would occur this Saturday, though the numbers were likely to be smaller after a terrorist attack on Tuesday in Strasbourg in northeastern France. "We are on the right track, let's not give up," wrote one user in the Facebook group La France en Colere, or Angry France, on Tuesday while sharing a news article suggesting that "tired" police forces might join the Yellow Vests. In recent weeks, Facebook has turned several average citizens nurses, truck drivers and small business owners into Yellow Vest influencers. Several have received over three million views for videos of them speaking into their phone, according to data from Crowdtangle, which tracks activity on Facebook. But there is also plenty of misinformation, which provides fuel for more disaffection. After the Strasbourg shooting, in which a gunman killed four and wounded 10 others at a Christmas market, some users in Facebook groups falsely accused Mr. Macron's government of using the attack as a diversion. That led some groups to temporarily turn off comments. "Shooting in Strasbourg, a government machination to intimidate Yellow Vests," one user posted on Tuesday. "It smells of smoke." The post was later deleted. Mr. Miralles, who became the administrator last month of La France en Colere, said he tried to delete the most extreme material posted in the Facebook group. But that task is difficult, he said, given how fast moving the activity is. "There's a huge amount of conspiracy theories, which is a shame," he said. "We're facing an increasing need of moderators and administrators. It's a little complicated." Mr. Miralles joined the Yellow Vest movement in October after growing frustrated with high taxes. He said he had reached out to La France en Colere to volunteer to help screen the posts flooding in as interest in participating in protests swelled. Within weeks, he was one of the group's eight moderators, spending several hours a day responding to messages from fellow activists and reading through comments. Steven Lebee, 31, a stay at home father from Haute Savoie in the Alps who volunteers with Mr. Miralles, said many protesters looked only to Facebook for information because of widespread mistrust of the mainstream media. "There's no other existing tool that could allow us to share so much information without being censored," Mr. Lebee said. "The information we share is shared as we share it. There is no media distortion." But the proliferation of rumors and misleading posts on Facebook about the protests has led to concerns that the site is inflaming anger and making it harder for the authorities to find solutions. Apart from the false information about the Strasbourg shooting, Yellow Vests last week shared misleading Facebook posts about a nonbinding United Nations migration pact signed by Mr. Macron in Marrakesh, Morocco, arguing that he would "hand France's sovereignty over to the U.N." Pictures falsely showing members of the police and military supporting the demonstrators were also shared hundreds of thousands of times. On Twitter and the messaging platform Telegram, protesters also posted videos of French military vehicles with the false claim that they were being deployed to squash protests. Facebook, which has grappled with scrutiny about how it spreads disinformation and distorts elections, published tips for spotting false information and said it had teamed up with fact checking organizations in France.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
According to the suit, "We Shall Overcome" is an adaptation of a spiritual called "We Will Overcome," which was first mentioned in print in 1909 in The United Mine Workers Journal as "that good old song." By midcentury it was firmly established as a protest hymn, and its role as an anthem of the Civil Rights movement even today led the Library of Congress to declare it "the most powerful song of the 20th century." The suit asserts that the song's copyright was never as broad as its publishers claimed, and has long since expired. Pete Seeger, who was associated with the song for decades, published a version of "We Will Overcome" in 1948, in a periodical called People's Songs, and commented over the years that it was unknown exactly how "Will" became "Shall" in the song's title. ("It could have been me with my Harvard education," Mr. Seeger wrote in 1993; he died in 2014.) Ludlow, the publisher, filed a copyright registration for "We Shall Overcome" in 1960, but the suit claims that this registration covers only an arrangement of the song and some additional verses. The suit cites a study by a musicologist, conducted at the request of the foundation, stating that this version of the song is essentially the same as the one published in 1948, whose copyright if it was ever valid would have expired in 1976. A person answering the phone at the Richmond Organization's office on Tuesday said the company would not comment on the suit, and the company did not respond to an email. As with the "Happy Birthday" case, the suit began with an effort to license the song for a film. According to the suit, the We Shall Overcome Foundation contacted the publishers several times for permission to use "We Shall Overcome" in a planned documentary about the song, but was rejected.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
LONDON Ruth Mackenzie, the British director of the Holland Festival, has been chosen as the next artistic director of the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris, succeeding Jean Luc Choplin, who has held that position since 2004. The decision, which must be ratified at a Jan. 11 meeting of the theater's administrative board, was announced on Tuesday by the Paris mayor's office. Later, the mayor, Anne Hidalgo, tweeted that Ms. Mackenzie had been chosen for her "experience and her ambitious and innovative artistic project." Ms. Mackenzie, 59, will not just be the rare Briton to head a French national institution, but the first woman to run the Chatelet since the theater opened in 1862. She will have a partner in the French arts administrator, Thomas Lauriot dit Prevost, who was Mr. Choplin's No. 2 from 2006 to 2013, and who will hold the title of general director. "We applied as a team," Ms. Mackenzie said. "These are big jobs, and it's very nice when there are two of you to work things out." Mr. Lauriot dit Prevost was also "fantastically French," Ms. Mackenzie added, "which makes up a little for me being British."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Patti Smith is a funky original, an authentic bohemian whose pretensions to poetry were ratified by her solid instincts for rock 'n' roll. For Smith, a great artist must be a rebel of romanticism, whether it be the poet Arthur Rimbaud or the rocker Jim Morrison (two exalted figures in her bad boy Hall of Fame). Her 2010 memoir, the National Book Award winning "Just Kids," was a shrewd, absorbing chronicle of Smith as, initially, a disciple and, subsequently, a master of the art of creating a persona that itself becomes an artistic achievement: in Smith's case, the rich ragamuffin, the superstar street urchin who has realized her wildest dreams. Dreams dominate Smith's third and latest memoir, "Year of the Monkey." Set during 2016, it includes bedside visits she makes to dying friends such as the playwright Sam Shepard and the producer journalist Sandy Pearlman, and ends with her appalled reaction to the election of Donald Trump but "Monkey" is primarily about Smith's quivering inner life during her 70th year. It begins with Smith booking a room in a place she calls "the Dream Motel." Not long after, she meets a fellow named Ernest, who, as the book proceeds, proves a speaker of sentiments that invariably dovetail with Smith's musings. Are we really supposed to believe that dream obsessed Patti just happens to meet an earnest Ernest who says things like, "The thing about dreams ... is that equations are solved in an entirely unique way, laundry stiffens in the wind and our dead mothers appear with their backs turned"? Smith zigzags around the country from Manhattan to San Francisco, from Venice Beach to Tucson snapping photos that head up each chapter here. But nearly every time her travelogue gets up a head of steam, the narrative momentum is halted for Smith to describe another one of her damn dreams. "I dreamed of a long train of migrants walking from one end of the earth to the other": Patti's dream is Tucker Carlson's nightmare.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
For thousands of years, the story of the Philistines has been told through the lens of their enemies, such as the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Assyrians and the writers of the Hebrew Bible who described David's defeat of Goliath, the mighty Philistine warrior. While little of the Philistines' stories about themselves endure, ancient DNA from Bronze and Iron Age skeletons, uncovered in the ruins around the seaport city of Ashkelon in Israel, is providing clues to the mysterious origins of these long gone people. A team of archaeologists and geneticists who have spent more than 30 years excavating the city retrieved, for the first time, genetic data from ten Ashkelon skeletons, from about 3,600 to 2,800 years old. Their analysis suggests early Iron Age Philistines shared some genetic heritage with Mesolithic, or Stone Age, hunter gatherers from Southern Europe. That contributes genetic evidence to the idea that people migrating eastward from the Mediterranean sailed to the shores of the Levant and helped contribute to the beginnings of the Philistines. Their findings were published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. Archaeologists have long wondered about the origins of the Philistines, who are thought to have established themselves in the Levant around the 12th century B.C.E. and lived there until their destruction by the Babylonians in 604 B.C.E. The Hebrew Bible mentions they came from "Caphtor," which some archaeologists believe might be present day Crete, while some modern interpretations of ancient Egyptian texts suggest they were the "Peleset," or maritime invaders associated with a group called the "Sea Peoples." From these texts and other archaeological remains, some scientists and historians have argued the appearance of the Philistines resulted from a mass migration from a particular homeland, such as Cyprus or Anatolia, while others have said they came from multiple places across the Mediterranean. Yet, others have argued the Philistines were always in the Levant, and some have also suggested they were pirates. "Now we finally have direct evidence for this key idea: Where did the Philistines come from?" said Daniel Master, director of the Leon Levy Expedition to Ashkelon. "They came from outside this region, they came from the West, they came from across the Mediterranean." The genetic clue that led Dr. Master and his colleagues to their conclusion was found in DNA collected from the skulls of four early Iron Age infants buried beneath the floors of their late 12th century B.C.E. homes in Ashkelon. Dr. Master said the infants, who were not related, were most likely Philistines born in Ashkelon and not immigrants because of the conditions in which they were buried. His colleagues performed an ancient DNA analysis and uncovered European derived genetic material, suggesting the infants' recent ancestors may have arrived from overseas somewhere in Southern Europe. The researchers said they could not yet pinpoint specifically whether these people came from Greece, Sardinia, Crete or elsewhere. "We kind of managed to narrow it down to Southern Europe, but we are very limited at this point by the amount of reference populations that we have because there are a lot of gaps in geography and time," said Michal Feldman, a graduate student at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany, and lead author on the study. The team also retrieved DNA from three Bronze Age individuals found in an Ashkelon necropolis, who likely lived there before the Philistines, and were radiocarbon dated to around 1746 to 1542 B.C.E. These individuals did not show the same European derived genetic signature seen in the infants, offering the team a genetic comparison between Late Bronze Age and Iron Age people of Ashkelon when there was a known cultural change. In later centuries, population mixture reduced the Southern European genetic signature among the Philistine population, although the group's identity as Philistines remained clear in ancient texts. Evidence of this process was found in DNA extracted from three Philistine skeletons in a cemetery of the later Iron Age, or about the 10th and 9th century B.C.E. In these three adults, the researchers did not find the same European genetic markers that they saw in the infants. The burial conditions, however, made it clear that both the early Iron Age infants and the later Iron Age adults were culturally Philistines, according to the team. "What surprised me the most was to see that 200 years later this European signal almost completely disappeared," Ms. Feldman said. She said the finding suggests that after arriving in the Levant, the people who had this European signature intermarried with a local population, which led to the genetic signature getting diluted in the Levantine population. "It is a drop of migration that had a very short term genetic effect, but a long term cultural effect." Marc Haber, a population geneticist at the University of Birmingham in England who was not involved with the study, said the genetic analysis was "solid" and that the evidence for the population change during the Iron Age was well supported. The finding fits with an understanding of the Philistines as an "entangled" or "transcultural" group consisting of peoples of various origins, said Aren Maeir, an archaeologist at Bar Ilan University in Israel.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
It was just two years ago when Joel Embiid, the Philadelphia 76ers' gregarious and talented center, told reporters about an interaction he had with his gifted rookie partner, the much more subdued but still skillful Ben Simmons. Simmons approached Embiid after the Boston Celtics had just eliminated the Sixers in the Eastern Conference semifinals in five games and showed him his hands. "There's going to be a lot of rings on these," Embiid recounted Simmons saying. The Sixers were the envy of many opposing teams, their two young dynamic stars with their best days in front of them. They had won over a typically unforgiving fan base, many of whom among it brushing aside their flaws, assuming that, like with many league greats, they would be fixed with time. Two disappointing playoff runs later, Philadelphia finds itself once again hitting reset. The Sixers were heartbroken in the Eastern Conference semifinals against the eventual champion Toronto Raptors last year, when Kawhi Leonard's series clinching jump shot rimmed in, and humiliated this year, when those pesky Celtics swept them in the first round with Simmons out injured. Gone is the hopefulness with which Simmons held up his hands. The team has little salary cap flexibility, few trade assets with which to retool and an unclear organizational direction. They've gone from the envy of the league to a cautionary tale. Much of the blame has fallen on the front office, particularly Elton Brand, the team's general manager, for putting together a mismatched roster through botched trades and by overpaying inconsistent veterans like Tobias Harris and Al Horford. The team blamed the coach, Brett Brown, saying in the announcement of his firing on Aug. 24 that the Sixers "fell well short of our goals" and that it would be "best to go in a new direction." This is what often happens in these situations: a clean, easy way to absolve the front office of responsibility. But there are also the curious cases of Embiid and Simmons, the franchise pillars who have not shown the growth expected of prospective superstars. Embiid, 26, is a maestro in the low post. His dazzling footwork near the basket has made him difficult to stop during his four healthy seasons. Yet after averaging a career high 27.5 points and 13.6 rebounds per game last year, his numbers dipped to a more pedestrian 23 points and 11.6 rebounds this year. His 3 point shooting (33.1 percent) remained a weak point, down slightly from his rookie year percentage of 36.7. And yet again, Embiid's conditioning became an issue late in games, as he often looked tired and was slow getting up and down the floor. Simmons, 24, has developed into one of the best defenders in the league over three seasons, after he missed his postdraft season with a foot injury. But his numbers haven't varied much beyond what they were this season: per game averages of 16.4 points, 7.8 rebounds and 8 assists. A constant stream of criticism of Simmons has centered on his strange, seemingly purposeful refusal to shoot 3 pointers; he has shot just 24 in three seasons. It became enough of an issue that Brown publicly called for Simmons to shoot more from deep. A month later, in January, Brown said that he had "failed" to get Simmons to change his game. Simmons and Embiid have put up good, consistent numbers and, occasionally, great ones. Their production has been reliable. But "good," "consistent" and "reliable" typically are not the words most prominently associated with franchise centerpieces who win championships. So the question becomes: Are Embiid and Simmons championship level focal points? Or are they merely mortal stars? If the answer to the latter is yes, Simmons's hands will be devoid of rings for years to come. If this seems unfair, remember that it was the players particularly Embiid who raised expectations for themselves. After Embiid's rookie 2016 17 season, in which he played fewer than half the 82 regular season games, he declared to The Daily Mail, "I think I have the talent to become a Hall of Famer, to win championships and Most Valuable Player Awards." This is not to say that the book has been written on the duo, who have contrasting playing styles, personalities and approaches to the game at a still early stage in their careers. Their best days may very well be in front of them. Billy Lange, an assistant coach for the Sixers from 2013 to 2019, said in an interview that observers should be patient. After all, he said, greatness does not happen overnight. "I think sometimes what gets very lost in how people evaluate them is that, look, this is still very new," said Lange, now the head coach at Saint Joseph's University. "Ben just finished his third season, and he didn't have a full season. People want to often comment about what he can't do, but the reality is that he's an All Star and now he's got to take the next jump to superstar." He added: "I can say this about both of those guys: They have ambition. What comes with maturity and ownership is now, 'How do I match that ambition to reach those goals?' They both want to be great." When Simmons and Embiid entered the N.B.A. two years apart, they came with different levels of fame. Simmons, the first pick of the 2016 draft, was quieter but in some ways better known. That fall, Showtime released a documentary called "One Done" that examined Simmons's lone year at Louisiana State. Embiid was drafted third in 2014 out of the University of Kansas. Hailing from Cameroon, he was more of a mystery, having arrived in the United States when he was 16, shortly after playing basketball for the first time. From his own telling, he learned how to shoot by watching videos on YouTube. After missing his first two N.B.A. seasons because of foot injuries, which also cost Simmons his first postdraft year Embiid quickly drew attention with his unfiltered, jovial nature. Just a sampling: There was the time in 2017 when a Lyft driver spotted Embiid casually going for a nighttime jog by himself through the streets of Philadelphia. In 2018, Embiid asked Rihanna on Twitter if she was single. And there was lots of trash talk, aimed at opponents and, sometimes, their parents. Embiid won over the Philadelphia fans, who have not seen a 76ers championship since 1983, by being funny, vicious and brilliant on their behalf. But as the Sixers embarked on a disappointing regular season that left them fighting for the sixth seed in the N.B.A.'s weaker Eastern Conference, there were signs that Embiid's relationship with the city's fan base had frayed. In February, Embiid shushed the home crowd after hitting a clutch 3 pointer against the Chicago Bulls, following reports of booing from the unhappy fans. At the end of July, Embiid played down that incident on "The Rights to Ricky Sanchez," a Sixers fan podcast, saying that he loved playing in Philadelphia because of its passionate fans. "But then again," Embiid said, "if you dish it, you've also got to be able to take it. Just like when I shushed them and they all went crazy. I'm like 'Well, you were booing me!'" For now, it appears that the Embiid and Simmons partnership is staying together. On that same podcast, Embiid said that they "can get so much better than we are right now." "The potential that we have, I love him, I want to be with him for the rest of my career," he said. And despite the team's struggles this year, Brand recently told reporters that he intended to continue to build around Embiid and Simmons. But if they don't make a leap soon, there is a decent chance that the city's love for them tenuous with even the best athletes may come to an end.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Tim Winton has carved a voice that is uniquely Australian, finding poetry and an austere beauty in local vernacular and landscape. SYDNEY, Australia In the remote Western Australian fishing town he calls home, Tim Winton, one of this country's most talented writers, says many residents for years assumed he was selling weed. "You're either a fisherman or on the dole," said Mr. Winton, whose novel "The Shepherd's Hut" is out in the United States next week. "I was the only person not working on the boats. And I had an extensive veggie garden and long hair." It was only when Mr. Winton appeared on "60 Minutes," a popular current affairs program here, to discuss his 1991 best seller "Cloudstreet" that his neighbors realized he was famous. One remarked: "Oh, I always thought you had 'herbal' interests." Declared a "living treasure" by the National Trust in 1997, Mr. Winton is one of Australia's most beloved literary figures. Since publishing his first novel "An Open Swimmer," in 1982, when he was 22, Mr. Winton has won has the country's prestigious Miles Franklin Award four times, been shortlisted for the Booker Prize twice ("The Riders" in 1994 and "Dirt Music" in 2001) and appeared on a postage stamp once (in 2010). Mr. Winton, however, remains ill at ease with his stature (visiting the set he felt like "some foreign dignitary about as useful as Prince Charles"). At Icebergs, the iconic Sydney restaurant overlooking the sweeping sands of Bondi Beach, he scuttles in furtively, sinking behind the table with visible relief no one has recognized him. Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. For almost three decades, Mr. Winton has taken care not to divulge where he lives. Largely, this is so that his three children and wife of 36 years, Denise, could "have a normal life" something that extends now to his two grandchildren. Mr. Winton is cognizant of his near celebrity status in a country that rarely lionizes its literary authors. Yet he has carved a voice that is uniquely Australian, finding poetry and an austere beauty in local vernacular and landscape. As Mr. Baker put it at the premiere, his is a celebration of "Australian plain speak." Sign up for the Australia Letter to get news, conversation starters and local recommendations in your inbox each week. "The Shepherd's Hut" is no different. A fable about acceptance and forgiveness, teenager Jaxie Clackton is a victim of domestic violence. Orphaned when his father dies, and afraid he'll be blamed, he flees on foot from his small town to the northern wheat belt. In a desperate quest that mirrors both "Huckleberry Finn" and the knights from the tales of King Arthur, he must overcome physical deprivation to reach the girl he loves. Along the way, he finds a different intimacy: friendship with exiled Irish priest Fintan MacGillis who lives in a shepherd's hut with only the kangaroos for company. Most of Mr. Winton's books have been set along the wild coastline, which he calls home, or the suburbs of waterside Perth, where he grew up. "The Shepherd's Hut" takes place far from the ocean, in Western Australia's vast interior saltlands where "the dirt was baked hard" and the earth is all "salt bush and low mulga, red dirt and pebbles." Jaxie Clackton, too, is a boy hardened: a kid with an "elbows out walk like a scorpion all burred up for a fight." Mr. Winton initially tried writing "The Shepherd's Hut" from multiple perspectives, predicting scant sympathy for the "foul mouthed hypermasculine" Jaxie. Looking back, he sees this aborted dilution of Jaxie's voice, which now dominates the novel, as "a failure of nerve," he said. Writers need "to take risks and to do stuff that is awkward." Over a meal of fish and wine, Mr. Winton is soft and modest, if shy. He clasps his hands as he talks, peppers his conversation with "mate," and rarely makes eye contact. With his long hair cascading down his shoulders he comes across as a faintly disheveled surfer dude for whom, refreshingly, airs and graces don't matter. (When I ask what he is wearing to the movie premiere, he gives a bemused shrug, points to his blue T shirt and replies, "this?") Raised in a working class evangelical Christian family, Mr. Winton was the first of his close kin to ever finish high school (some of his relatives remain functionally illiterate). Reading became a form of "transport, in almost that religious sense," he said. Today Mr. Winton is no longer the "God botherer I was," but he still counts himself as a Christian of sorts. "I'm tired of all the cataloging and all the hair splitting," he sighed. "For me, if it's not about love, if it's not about mercy, if it's not about kindness, if it's not about liberation then I'm just not that interested." Many of Mr. Winton's books highlight what he calls "the secret, deep hurting cause of men." It is a subject matter that has touched a nerve: When he is out surfing, boys have paddled up, bashfully, to confide his books "had spoken to them and for them." In a recent public talk held in Sydney, Mr. Winton tackled a larger problem: "the terror generated by toxic masculinity." "I worry about our revulsion for them, our desire to banish them," he said. "Boys need help. And men need fixing. I'm mindful of that." When asked to expand, Mr. Winton provides an analogy: All children are born with a rich palette of colored pencils. By the time many boys reach 18, however, they are so emotionally stunted they only have brown, black and purple left. They're living a "monochrome life and they don't even realize they're colorblind." Toxic masculinity, Mr. Winton argued, mutates in settler societies; it is no accident that in "The Shepherd's Hut" Jaxie is referred to as a "wild colonial boy." Enclosing his fist into a tight ball, Mr. Winton stated: "You show up, you seize" and "you dig in, you enclose, you consolidate, you defend." Such settler instinct vanquished not just Australia's indigenous peoples, but the very land itself, Mr. Winton asserted. Alongside his wife, Denise, a nurse turned marine scientist, the couple are staunch environmental activists.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Do you remember the Alan Lightman novel "Einstein's Dreams"? It was such an odd little volume to hit the best seller list, back in the early 1990s: a playful thought experiment about the nature of time, told in vivid episodes imagined by a young Albert Einstein's slumbering brain. The waking Einstein, a distracted 26 year old patent clerk in Berne, Switzerland, is a subtle presence in the book. A visionary struggling to make sense of his visions, he appears only a handful of times, in brief interludes. Yet he is a fully drawn person, understandable and sympathetic. The same cannot be said, alas, of the Einstein in the earthbound new musical "Einstein's Dreams," an adaptation that puts the physicist at the center of the action. The show's creators, Joanne Sydney Lessner (book and lyrics) and Joshua Rosenblum (music and lyrics), don't know how to flesh him out or make us invest in a plot whose ending we know from history: He will come up with the theory of relativity. To mesh Einstein's quotidian world with his reveries, the show directed by Cara Reichel for Prospect Theater Company at 59E59 Theaters invents a siren like figure, a beautiful woman named Josette (Alexandra Silber) who appears to Einstein (Zal Owen) only in his dreams, and always in a long crimson gown.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
WHAT YOU HAVE HEARD IS TRUE A Memoir of Witness and Resistance By Carolyn Forche It is the late 1970s and Carolyn Forche is a 27 year old poet with one published book of poetry, teaching at a university in Southern California. One day Leonel Gomez Vides, 37, arrives at her door with his two young daughters, claiming that he's driven all the way from El Salvador just to talk to her. Forche has never met Gomez, though he's a cousin of Claribel Alegria, whose poetry Forche, despite her rudimentary Spanish, wants to translate, and whose home in Mallorca she has visited. (Alegria's daughter is a close friend.) There she heard Gomez warily described as a man involved in dangerous things, possibly even working with the C.I.A. Gomez's plan is to spend just a few days in California, and then drive home. It's unclear to Forche why he's come. He gives her a crash course on Salvadoran history from the pre Columbian era to the present, when the tiny country, marked by staggering economic inequality, is ruled by a corrupt military that steals millions of dollars every year in United States aid, murders priests and political opponents, and tosses disappeared torture victims, including an American, from helicopters into the Pacific. It's a country also increasingly terrorized by the right wing death squads of Mano Blanca, the White Hand. Looking back on Gomez's visit in "What You Have Heard Is True," a memoir of the consequences of that encounter, Forche reflects that he was translating "not only between languages, but also from one constellation of understanding and perception to another." But Gomez wants more from Forche than just better translations of his cousin's poems. War is coming to El Salvador. Americans aren't paying attention; she will be the one to tell her country what is happening in his. But she's not a journalist, she protests, she's a poet. He wants a poet. Forche arrives in El Salvador during a fraught and uncertain moment. Political repression is increasing. People aren't sure if the guerrillas are a rumor or a reality. The administration in Washington has a new policy that stresses human rights, which has Salvadoran military officers confused. Is the policy meant seriously, or is it just rhetoric? Want to keep up with the latest and greatest in books? This is a good place to start. None Learn what you should be reading this fall: Our collection of reviews on books coming out this season includes biographies, novels, memoirs and more. See what's new in October: Among this month's new titles are novels by Jonathan Franzen, a history of Black cinema and a biography by Katie Couric. Nominate a book: The New York Times Book Review has just turned 125. That got us wondering: What is the best book that was published during that time? Listen to our podcast: Featuring conversations with leading figures in the literary world, from Colson Whitehead to Leila Slimani, the Book Review Podcast helps you delve deeper into your favorite books. Gomez goes everywhere, to places he believes it's strategic to be seen the United States Embassy, Salvadoran military headquarters, his own coffee farm and other places where he surely hopes not to be. He's a kind of behind the scenes power broker, always gathering information. He knows the value of "a good piece of information," but also of its limits. He has relations with the Catholic Church, but has a rule against going inside churches. "I believe with my life," he explains. And what is that life? When Forche confronts him about his rumored ties to the C.I.A., he responds indignantly: "Do I work for those sons of bitches? What do you think?" Gomez sets up meetings for Forche with Salvadoran military officers who seem to believe she may be connected to the American government and have a message to convey about the bothersome new human rights policy. "I didn't understand what was happening, why we were driving all over the country, stopping here and there to talk to people, all kinds of people. ... I would be introduced as a poet from the United States, or else nothing would be said about who I was, to the point of awkwardness." A visit to "a village with no running water or electricity, talking by the light of a cook fire," is followed by one to the elegant home of a coffee farmer, where on the terrace she talks to "the lady of the house ... about her children, away at school in Switzerland or the United States." "What You Have Heard Is True" is not just an account of a young woman's encounter with horrific human suffering and resistance in a foreign country, and her resulting political awakening; even in the hands of a poet who writes prose as beautifully and powerfully as Forche does, that would be a familiar story. The memoir is also a portrait of Gomez, a singular dynamo, and of their complex relationship. Early on, he is the unquestioned mentor. But this is not a Pygmalion story, or one about a student who rebels against her teacher. They are clearly fascinated by each other; there is romantic tension in their banter, some of it charged with a grim humor. Gomez puts Forche in difficult positions, even in danger. When he takes her to meet with a powerful general, she protests: "But you used me, and I don't even know for what." He responds: "I did not use you, I gave you a rare opportunity. ...You are now a mysterious person of some importance, and that might save your life." Forche has to learn to negotiate Gomez's occasional paternalism. Yet he is always urging her to be independent too to "make your own decisions." She forms friendships with women who say: "Please don't tell anyone where I live. ...Don't tell anyone that you know me." They, too, repeatedly urge Forche to become her own person. These women a nun, a doctor who treats the poor, a woman who entertains death squad assassins in her living room while Forche and another woman hide upstairs lead her deeper into the country's harsh realities; it is with her female friends that she has two terrifying near escapes from death squads. Gomez tells Forche: "Look, Papu. Look at this. Try to see." Learning to see how to see better and what to do with what you see is a recurring motif in the memoir. "I wrote down in pencil what I saw, what I heard. ...I have heard it said that to write is to dream on paper. In these notebooks from the time of El Salvador there are no dreams." One recovered incident, person, landscape and image at a time, the narrative advances, accruing tremendous authority and emotional power. It amounts to almost a shamanistic transmitting of Forche's experience into our own. (Only during a brief sojourn in Guatemala, which Forche doesn't know as well as El Salvador, does the writing become folkloric; it isn't true that the "Mayans don't distinguish between past, present and future," for example.) The familiar polemics and slogans that spread through so many other testimonial writings from that time, like a dull gray dye, here barely intrude. Gomez is a kind of pragmatic, nonideological revolutionary; he presciently reflects that the guerrillas must not be seen as Marxists, in order to prevent the blood bath that will ensue if the United States backs the Salvadoran military. When Forche learns that one of her heroes, the Salvadoran poet Roque Dalton, was murdered by his guerrilla allies, she writes in her notebook, "This will tell you something about them." Writers like Roberto Bolano and Horacio Castellanos Moya have described the disillusionment and sense of betrayal of a generation that paid a devastating price for its revolutionary idealism and bravery; Forche's memoir returns us to the realities from which such youthful rebellion emerged. Much of what she describes is horrifying: the body dumps of the death squads; a disemboweled corpse by the roadside, "the man's entrails stretched out across the road maybe carried across by carrion birds." Recently in our culture there's been much discussion about whether the sufferings of "others" can be evoked without descending into unethical appropriation or a pornography of victimhood and violence (as in many narco movies and novels). Forche justifies a fundamental conviction that sometimes you have a duty to try to describe what you've witnessed; if the motives are unethical, that will be apparent in the work. "I promise you that it is going to be difficult to get Americans to believe what is happening here," Gomez tells Forche. "For one thing, this is outside the realm of their imaginations. For another, it isn't in their interests to believe you. For a third, it is possible that we are not human beings to them." Those insights seem as perceptive now as then, as Americans confront the continuing repercussions of unaddressed social ills and unabated violence and corruption in El Salvador and neighboring countries in the form of waves of young refugees arriving on our southern border. None other than Archbishop Oscar Romero, a future saint of the Catholic Church, soon before his murder, urges Forche to go home and tell what she has seen. That is what Forche has dedicated much of her life to doing in her poetry, activism and teaching. What Leonel Gomez was really offering when he lured her down to El Salvador was the chance to become Carolyn Forche. Anyone who reads this magnificent memoir will partake of that luminous transformation.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Rocio Villegas Piedrahita, at left, and Magaly Villegas Piedrahita with a portrait of their mother, Aliria, who died in November at age 77 with only mild symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, despite a genetic mutation that should have caused her to become severely ill in her 40s.Credit...Federico Rios for The New York Times In Life, She Defied Alzheimer's. In Death, Her Brain May Show How. Rocio Villegas Piedrahita, at left, and Magaly Villegas Piedrahita with a portrait of their mother, Aliria, who died in November at age 77 with only mild symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, despite a genetic mutation that should have caused her to become severely ill in her 40s. MEDELLIN, Colombia Aliria Rosa Piedrahita de Villegas carried a rare genetic mutation that had all but guaranteed she would develop Alzheimer's disease in her 40s. But only at age 72 did she experience the first symptoms of it. Her dementia was not terribly advanced when she died from cancer on Nov. 10, a month shy of her 78th birthday, in her daughter's home on a hillside that overlooks the city. Neurology investigators at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, led by Dr. Francisco Lopera, have followed members of Ms. Piedrahita de Villegas's vast extended family for more than 30 years, hoping to unlock the secrets of early onset Alzheimer's disease. In that time they encountered several outliers, people whose disease developed later than expected, in their 50s or even 60s. But none were as medically remarkable as the woman they all knew as dona Aliria. In recent years Aliria traveled to Boston, where investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital conducted nuclear imaging studies of her brain as part of an ongoing study of this Colombian family, the largest in the world with genetic early onset Alzheimer's. In Boston it was discovered that Aliria had exceptionally large quantities of one protein seen in Alzheimer's amyloid beta without much tau, the toxic protein that spreads later in the disease cascade. Something had interrupted the usual degenerative process, leaving her day to day functioning relatively preserved. A pale, bird boned woman, Aliria died of a metastatic melanoma that was discovered only in September. Weeks before she died she was still cracking jokes and remembering life in a rural hamlet of Angostura, the mountain town where she was born and raised as one of eight siblings. In the early 1970s she fled Angostura and her abusive husband, moving with her two young daughters, Magaly and Rocio, to the city. There she washed and ironed clothes to support the girls, whose two brothers joined them. Like many families fresh from the mountains, they moved frequently around Medellin's sprawling hillside districts, eventually settling in Barrio Pablo Escobar, a neighborhood built by the drug kingpin as a public relations gambit in the 1980s. Aliria did not have overly healthy habits that might help her stave off Alzheimer's. She could not resist a good party, her daughters said, and even in recent years she liked to tie one on weekly with her girlfriends. Her sweet and chatty nature endeared her to her neighbors, who on Nov. 20, came out in droves to attend a Mass in her honor. Her melanoma diagnosis, delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, was an unexpected blow. Her daughters recalled her obsessive daily sweeping of her stoop, which exposed her to the sun. Aliria was assigned to palliative care, and nursed by family members who kept her toenails painted, her jewelry adjusted and her face freshly made up as the relentlessly elegant Aliria insisted that they do until the end. Here are more fascinating tales you can't help but read all the way to the end. None Getting Personal With Iman. The supermodel talks about life after David Bowie, their Catskills refuge and the perfume inspired by their love. A Resilient Team for a Broken Nation. With the Taliban in control, what, and whom, is Afghanistan's national soccer team playing for? The Fight of This Old Boxer's Life Was With His Own Family. A battle among Marvin Stein's family over his fortune broke out, and he suddenly found himself powerless to fight for himself. She died in her pajamas at 8:30 a.m. on a Tuesday. Post mortem studies to learn how dementia works on the brain have been a pillar of Alzheimer's research since 1906, when Dr. Alois Alzheimer, a German psychiatrist and brain anatomist, shared findings from a patient named Auguste Deter, a woman who became known to science as Auguste D. When Dr. Alzheimer met Auguste D., she was a deeply disoriented 51 year old housewife who could not state correctly what she was eating for lunch. She died at 55 after a severe, progressive dementia that would now be called early onset Alzheimer's disease. It was what Dr. Alzheimer discovered in tissue slides of Auguste D.'s brain that distinguished her disease from other dementias he had studied. Microscopic seed like structures permeated her shrunken brain, along with strange tangles that marked where neurons had died. Later these became known as amyloid plaques and tau tangles, key hallmarks of Alzheimer's disease. No one expected to have this brain so soon, and Aliria would likely have lived much longer if not for her cancer. Aliria's daughter Rocio Villegas Piedrahita said that her mother was aware that her brain would be donated to science, "and she was fine with it. We even joked that it was the 'golden brain.'" Ms. Villegas Piedrahita said it seemed to her that Alzheimer's research drug research, especially had stagnated. "The death of my mom, as sad as it is for us, may have opened many doors," she said. Her older sister, Magaly Villegas Piedrahita, agreed: "We're not selfish. We wanted to donate this brain. We just hope the field can advance." The brain bank at the University of Antioquia is staffed by medical faculty, residents and students, who communicate by WhatsApp messages and must be ready to move upon news of a death. Brain tissue deteriorates quickly, and samples must be fixed in preservative or frozen within a few hours to be useful. On the morning of Nov. 10, Dr. Andres Villegas, the director of the brain bank, solemnly shared news of Aliria's death with his colleagues. "This is a historic moment," he wrote. The team had not worked with the brain of an extreme outlier before, and it was unclear to Dr. Villegas whether other researchers had, either. But Dr. Villegas said he was also saddened. Many in the research group had come to regard Aliria as a friend, and her death from cancer had been painful and premature. His colleague Dr. David Aguillon, in the meantime, took a taxi to extend condolences to Aliria's family and receive their final consent papers. Dr. Aguillon had cared for Aliria in recent years and accompanied her on study visits to Boston. During their last trip, in April 2019, when Aliria was still recovering from a knee surgery, he had pushed her all around the cold and rainy city in a wheelchair, a memory she cherished for what remained of her life. While they waited for Aliria's body to arrive, Dr. Villegas and the staff messaged each other demands: freezers checked, sterile gloves, iodine, cell culture medium, tissue preservative mixed and ready. The brain bank often sends tissue to its collaborators abroad, and within days samples of Aliria's brain would be under study in Germany and California, as well as Medellin. Each brain donation begins not in a hospital mortuary but in a large and well equipped funeral home. The arrangement allows the researchers to remove the brain and walk it quickly to their dissection lab a block away, after which the family can proceed with a funeral or cremation. Aliria's autopsy started at 11:30 a.m., three hours after her death. Dr. Villegas's senior team members, Dr. Aguillon and Johana Gomez, a biologist, suited up in plastic overalls, masks and face shields, precautions made necessary by the pandemic, while a medical student, Carlos Rueda, stood by taking notes. The team removed the brain with relative ease, although the process is always intricate, with connective tissue that must be carefully severed. Dr. Villegas then extracted from deeper in the skull the pituitary gland and olfactory membrane, structures of interest to Alzheimer's researchers. The group took samples of skin, tumor and vital organs, before leaving the remains of their famous patient, one on whom so many research hopes have been pinned, to be cremated. Within minutes the group converged again down the street at the brain bank's dissection lab, a room no bigger than a walk in closet. It was nearly 1 p.m., and Dr. Aguillon placed Aliria's brain on a scale. It weighed 894 grams, just under two pounds considerably less than a healthy brain. Mr. Rueda began photographing it on a rotating platform used to create a three dimensional image, while Dr. Villegas narrated and Dr. Aguillon typed. Dr. Villegas noted that the brain had atrophied in a way that appeared typical for an Alzheimer's patient, and that he saw little evidence of cancer, although it was present in many other organs. The brain's low weight struck Dr. Villegas as curious given that Aliria's symptoms were not yet so advanced; in the months before her death, she still recognized her family and friends, still cooked her own meals and bathed herself, and had no trouble recalling words like "neuroscience" and "coronavirus." But the truly important findings in an Alzheimer's brain are molecular and microscopic. Using a long, blunt tipped salmon knife, Dr. Villegas set to work dissecting the organ to create tissue samples. Tissue staining, involving techniques not altogether different from those used over a century ago by Dr. Alzheimer, will have a lot to say about how Aliria's disease differed from other cases like it; this procedure would be performed by Dr. Villegas and his colleagues in Medellin. In the meantime, the team's collaborators abroad had a long list of requests, and time was running out. Taped to the wall was an elaborate map of the brain indicating the regions most desirable for single cell RNA sequencing and electron microscopy. Dr. Villegas consulted it every few minutes, leaning in and squinting. He needed a sample from the superior frontal sulcus but how big? And an anterior orbital gyrus. At 3:30 p.m., seven hours post mortem, the Medellin team was still collecting samples. They ran a narrow path: trying to meet the needs of their collaborators without taking so long that they compromised the quality of the tissue. "We're under emergency orders," Dr. Villegas said; the couriers would arrive the next day. Among the things that distinguished Aliria's case from any other like it was that investigators would have genetic, clinical imaging and now autopsy information to work with: a single case, but with a comprehensive suite of data. At the University Medical Center Hamburg Eppendorf in Germany, a neuropathology researcher, Diego Sepulveda Falla, who has worked with the Medellin group for years, awaited a dozen odd samples from Aliria's brain. The key one was a frozen piece of the entorhinal cortex, a pinky size structure that regulates memory and time perception and the first brain region from which tau begins to spread. Dr. Sepulveda Falla said he would use single cell RNA sequencing and machine learning to compare samples from Aliria's brain with those from more than 125 Colombians who had died with the same Alzheimer's causing mutation. In Santa Barbara, Calif., a cell biologist, Ken Kosik, and his team, who recently secured a grant from the National Institutes of Health to study tissue from the Medellin brain bank, awaited further samples. On some, they would perform single cell RNA sequencing, which can reveal how specific genes are expressed in brain cells. Dr. Kosik and his colleagues recently discovered the chemical receptor involved in the spread of tau from cell to cell, a receptor earlier found to interact with the APOE gene, which affects Alzheimer's risk. The sequencing results could shed light on how one of Aliria's two rare mutations may have acted against the other. Neither Dr. Kosik nor Dr. Sepulveda Falla offered a hypothesis about this brain or what they might find. But it was a matter of scientific due diligence to explore it. "She was a very important patient; her story made news all over the world," Dr. Kosik said. "We learned a lot from her and now that she's died, it's on us to make sure we give it a careful look." Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
New York, New York, is the city so nice it got two of everything: two baseball teams, two decrepit airports and now two riverside art galleries designed by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. His Whitney Museum of American Art has packed in visitors since the spring of 2015, spellbound as much by its balconies and switchback staircases as by its light filled, column free galleries. Now it has a fraternal twin a hundred blocks north: the Lenfest Center for the Arts, which serves as a new hub for Columbia University's art, film, theater and writing programs. Both rise eight stories beside the Hudson River, though the Lenfest is a bit farther inland. To reach the Whitney, you walk past former meatpacking warehouses that now sell thousand dollar cashmere sweaters; the Lenfest, for its part, is a stone's throw from that Fairway with the walk in freezer. The Lenfest hosts a performance space, screening room and the relocated Wallach Art Gallery which has presented exhibitions by the likes of Nancy Holt and Xu Bing, presentations of M.F.A. work, as well as shows organized by graduate students in art history. Formerly ensconced in the university's art history department, it now has 4,000 square feet in the new Piano building, which can be divided as needed with temporary walls. If in places the building feels like a reduced Whitney, with what a real estate broker might call a "partial river view," the Lenfest does continue a happy third act for Mr. Piano, whose midcareer cultural buildings, notably at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Morgan Library Museum, didn't always live up to his early achievements. (His other major New York building, I ought to mention, is the headquarters of The New York Times.) Next door is Mr. Piano's larger, quietly distinguished Jerome L. Greene Science Center, whose narrow windows and industrial detailing look almost like a test run for his giant, nearly complete Palais de Justice in Paris, Mr. Piano's adopted hometown. The Wallach has a full slate of programming on tap this year; on deck are encouraging sounding shows on Frank Lloyd Wright and on black models in French modernist painting. It opens, however, with "Uptown," a showcase of contemporary painting, sculpture, photography and video by artists living in the northern stretches of Manhattan. The show's curator is Deborah Cullen, the Wallach's director, and she offers a sunny view of the uptown art scene, perhaps more rooted in its communities than its Brooklyn counterpart. "Uptown" features 25 artists, among them well known figures like Sanford Biggers, Nari Ward and Julie Mehretu, but also impressive artists of less renown. A solid majority has roots in Latin America, the Caribbean or the African diaspora. Mr. Ward, born in Jamaica in 1963, has worked for decades in Harlem and is represented here by a hefty yet understated assemblage, "Xquisite LiquorsouL," from 2009. Its base is formed from an old style neon sign for a liquor store, some of whose letters have been rotated; it lies horizontally on the ground, and its surface is bestrewn with fake flowers and the toes of high heels and ballet slippers. As often in Mr. Ward's large scale sculpture, junk from the street is infused with Afro Caribbean motifs and a surreal vision of the natural world, although the pink flowers and dainty shoes may also put you in mind of the French Rococo. A similar elevation of the everyday can be seen in the art of Michael Kelly Williams, who solders musical instruments and decorative ironworks into uncanny mash ups. Ms. Mehretu has teamed with her wife, the Australian artist Jessica Rankin, to produce a suite of works on paper that speak to one another in charismatic counterpoint. Ms. Rankin makes spare, poetic collages in which a few oblique phrases, like "barely volunteering" or "your little pool of words," give ballast to geological formations, the night sky or the Empire State Building shrouded in fog. Ms. Mehretu, too, has long had an interest in abstracting geography, and her supremely confident paintings on paper bristle with suggestions of bodies in migration. There are duff notes. Elizabeth Colomba, a Martinican painter of languorous black women in lush surroundings, had an intriguing show last year at the Long Gallery in Harlem, but the two examples here are airless and mannered, and too reliant on gold leaf. The young artist Shani Peters collages Black Lives Matter demonstrations into earlier protests but undercuts her political gaze by outfitting the gallery with incense and meditation cushions. (There's a place for personal care, but when the fate of health care for millions of Americans is on the line, such hippie healing rings rather hollow.) But on the whole this show hits high, especially when it offers a view of the vibrancy of uptown. John Pinderhughes's stately black and white photographs of Harlem seniors, in their Sunday best or else at work in a mechanic's shop, are testaments to the intimacy fostered through long years in a community. And Alicia Grullon from the Bronx, technically, though a fellow of the Wallach embedded herself in the senior citizens' center of the Grant Houses, a public housing project not far from this gallery, to listen to the life stories of its longtime residents. Her video "Storytelling" sees Ms. Grullon winningly narrate their histories and dreams, in both English and Spanish, against a digital backdrop of Hollywood clips, Billie Holiday concerts and documentary video of the old age home. "Uptown" is being pitched as the first in a triennial series, and if it's meant to proclaim the Wallach's arrival, it also functions, perforce, as a kind of peace offering. Columbia's expansion into west Harlem the university prefers "Manhattanville" marks the university's largest growth since moving to Morningside Heights in the late 19th century, and has occasioned angry op eds, lawsuits and even hunger strikes. The focus on local artists is a welcome decision, therefore, and "Uptown" will also partner with other Harlem institutions, including the Studio Museum, El Museo del Barrio and the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Did the art world need another ennial? Perhaps not, but Ms. Cullen's first show and its partnership with Harlem institutions large and small are acts of good faith for a university whose designs north of 125th Street have not always been benign. And her cunning decision to cast "Uptown" as a triennial means that Columbia is on the hook to meet its artsy neighbors at least once every three years, and, I hope, far more often than that.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Ms. Randall, 56, is the president of the Garment District Alliance, formerly known as the Fashion Center, one of 69 business improvement districts in New York City. She has led the nonprofit organization, which represents the interests of garment and other businesses in the neighborhood, since its formation in 1995. A. The rebranding is essentially going back to who we are and what we've always been. We've had the name, the Fashion Center Business Improvement District, for 20 years, and, to be honest, it really never got any traction. So we hired a branding firm and did a lot of work and interviewing with our stakeholders, but at the end of the day it's the garment district. And you can't pull that over on anybody, even if there's not one designer left in the garment district. Q. Are there many designers left? A. Oh, there are still hundreds of designers. We have about 24,000 fashion industry employees in the garment district now about 6,500 production jobs. That's actual sewing machine jobs. So it's certainly still a hub for fashion. But what's happened: There used to be 200,000 fashion industry jobs in that neighborhood, and since the 1960s those jobs started going overseas, as they have with any production based industry. A. One of the things that happened is we started getting creative services and business services moving in. The Hudson Yards rezoning, between Eighth and Ninth Avenues within our district, allowed for buildings 70,000 square feet or under to be redeveloped as residential or hotels. So we've had 28 hotels built in the garment district since 2005. Q. Does this type of development take away from the character of the neighborhood? A. It doesn't really. What you had was a conversion of soft sites, which were parking lots, a two story building. The hotels have been sort of a boon, because we have about 100,000 people a year that stay in this neighborhood now. You're not going to knock down any of these big, beautiful loft buildings. There are big, wide open floor plates with beautiful architectural detail, and then the ground floor retail is very narrow and deep. The folks that like these floor plates are architects and creative services and production for video and music, and those kinds of things. And the avenue buildings will also never come down. Q. But all these changes are not bringing in many more designers, are they? A. It's not. But the neighborhood is still defined by fashion in a sense that the biggest cluster is still fashion. So when you look at the categories of businesses that we have, the largest categories are fashion, and then business services and creative services. Q. Who are some of the big designers still in the district? A. In terms of showrooms, Donna Karan and Ralph Lauren are still there. Michael Kors, Betsey Johnson, Carolina Herrera; there are still many, many designers. You also have clusters of young designers in Brooklyn and Queens. But I think the young people coming into the industry now still come to the garment district, because you still have suppliers here and factories and sample makers and showrooms. There is a certain energy. A lot of designers still come here to get their start. But once they become fully evolved companies, they don't necessarily need to want to be here. They want to be where there are little bistros and coffee shops. We really need to make sure that this neighborhood starts providing those uses so that those designers don't leave, but also for the creative services and the folks in offices. Q. What are the occupancy rates for the buildings in the neighborhood? A. We have the highest occupancy we've ever had in the garment district since the '60s. We have about 9 percent vacancy for all the commercial buildings. Five years ago it was about 12 percent, and the rents are pretty competitive with other like neighborhoods, with Class B and C buildings. Q. How about rental rates per square foot? A. The rental rates are between 40 and 60, on average. Five years ago they were probably about 25. Q. How many square feet are we talking about here? A. The district is from 35th to 41st Street, and Fifth to Ninth Avenue. It's 34 million square feet. Q. So who is your favorite designer? A. I used to always say if I could wear anybody I want, I would wear either Oscar all the time or Armani. But I work for a nonprofit.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
It was a very quiet sales week in the music industry ahead of the Grammy Awards on Sunday night. With no major releases, and no debuts making it to the Top 15, the Bronx rapper A Boogie Wit da Hoodie's "Hoodie SZN" (Highbridge/Atlantic) returned to No. 1 for its third nonconsecutive week atop the Billboard chart. Driven by steady streams, the album moved a total of 47,000 equivalent units, according to Nielsen Music, combining 68 million digital on demand song plays and just 398 in traditional sales a record low in sales for a No. 1 album, beating its own bottom water mark of 823 from last month. (Neither of the album's trips to No. 1 in January came during its debut week on the Billboard 200, a rarity on today's charts.) "I Am I Was," the former chart topper by the Atlanta rapper 21 Savage, climbed back to No. 2 from No. 8, following his arrest on Super Bowl Sunday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. 21 Savage, whose album added another 40,000 units with just 839 in sales in its seventh week out, remains in ICE custody and is facing potential deportation proceedings because the government says he is in the United States illegally. Future's "The Wizrd," another recent No. 1, fell one spot to No. 3 this week, with 51 million streams and 1,600 in sales for a total of 40,000 units, while Travis Scott's "Astroworld" is No. 4 in its 27th week on the chart. The soundtrack for "A Star Is Born," another chart fixture in recent months, is No. 5 with 38,000 units as the film and album continue their path through awards season. Business should pick up next week: Ariana Grande, who has had two No. 1 hit songs so far this year, released "Thank U, Next," her second album in six months last Friday, and is poised for another blockbuster debut. And then there's the Grammys stimulus, which could lead to sales bumps for Sunday night's stars, like Kacey Musgraves, Brandi Carlile, H.E.R. and Cardi B. Musgraves won album of the year for "Golden Hour," which peaked at No. 4 last April.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
The adage says if you teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime. Today, if you teach a man to fish, or a woman for that matter, they'll end up on Instagram. Social media has become the newest place for anglers to document every whopper, track the finest fishing holes and meet like minded pals who swap secrets about everything from the best bait and lures to the most picturesque seaside villages. Recreational fishing is on the rise in United States: The Fish and Wildlife Service reported last year that the number of anglers had grown eight percent, to 35.8 million in 2016 from 33.1 million in 2011. One of those new to the sport is Noelle Coley, 26, the manager of a medical marijuana dispensary who lives in Wheat Ridge, Colo. She said she took up fishing a few years ago after an ex boyfriend gave her a rod and reel. Ms. Coley shares her catches on Instagram, but she guards her prized fishing holes from snoops, fearing her favorite streams will become crowded with newcomers. "I change the angle when taking a photograph," she said of her popular Instagram posts. "I'm mindful not to tag rivers." With 21,500 Instagram followers, she has attracted the attention of more than just curious lookyloos. Three months ago, she said she signed a contract with a sponsor, Hardy, a maker of fly fishing rods and reels based in Alnwick, England. The company gives her free equipment in exchange for mentions on her social media account. Instagram has its share of celebrity fishermen, among them the actor Chris Pratt, a longtime enthusiast who documents his travels to Texas and Louisiana. Donald Trump Jr. chronicles excursions with his children to their home in upstate New York or to Palm Beach, Fla., when they visit Mar a Lago. But it is the everyday angler who has embraced Instagram with zeal. Scott Goldsmith, 30, who works in commercial real estate in West Palm Beach, scrolls through Instagram the way his father perused the weekly fishing reports once ubiquitous in newspapers published in coastal villages and river towns. He follows more than 2,500 accounts on Instagram. "Like most things in life, information is everything in fishing," he said. Last month, for example, Mr. Goldsmith noticed that an account he follows had posted photographs of swordfish caught recently off the coast of Florida. Within a day, Mr. Goldsmith took his boat to the same spot and went home with a catch of his own. "You follow as many people as you can in the local area and try to see what is going on," he said. "If a spot is hot on Friday, it's probably going to be hot on Saturday. And if you are a guy, like me, working in an office, Instagram can really help." Chris Hood, a professional outdoor photographer based in La Crosse, Wis., said most of the images he sees on social media are from amateur photographers. "But that's not a bad thing," he said. For one, it keeps anglers honest. "People used to sit around and tell their old fishing stories, you know, 'I caught a fish and it was this big,'" he said. "People didn't believe it. Now everyone has a camera on their phone, and it's definitely a thing in the community to document what you catch." Instagram has also been a boon for fishing adjacent businesses. Daniel Giunta, the owner of Double D Charters in Montauk, N.Y., credits social media for the growth in his sports fishing charters. He struck a deal with Mustad, a maker of hooks that found him online. (The company gives him new products to test and hooks to give away.) He, too, has become an expert shutterbug, taking photographs of charter passengers and (with permission) tagging them online. "Within two hours of hitting the docks I'll get five or 10 new followers," Mr. Giunta said with a laugh. "Being a captain these days is all about being a good photographer. I know where the light is. I know where they need to stand." "In the old days, you brought the fish back to the harbor six hours later, dead, and hung it upside down to be photographed," he said. "The background was cluttered up with buildings. The fish lost its color." Now, more customers are choosing to release their prized catches, he said. With camera phones, the gratification is immediate. "A fish out of water has vibrant colors," Mr. Giunta said. "The background is a blue sky. And everyone is smiling." Perhaps, though, it is camaraderie among peers that is driving the Instagram crowd. Ms. Coley of Colorado said she had fished with 15 women in the past year, most of whom she met on the social media site. "It's hard to find women who fish hard, all morning, into the evening, who will even fish through lunch," she said. "You really get to know someone by looking at their photographs." Two years ago she came across the account of Ruth Sims, a fellow angler, who lives in Seattle. "I liked her personality," she said. "I thought she would be a blast." They talked (in real life) and, since then, have taken about a dozen fishing trips.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
PARIS For all the talk of new generations and upstart millennials dictating the agenda these days, the fashion establishment is awfully how to put this? mature. For every Bruno Sialelli, 31, who will have his debut here for Lanvin on Wednesday or Daniel Lee, 32, who last week showed his first collection for Bottega Veneta in Milan, the majority of the big brands are dominated by designers well into middle age, and beyond. Sometimes quite far beyond. Partly in recognition of this situation, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton in 2013 introduced its Young Designers Prize, the richest, and most public, search for new fashion talent. Now, the first day of Paris Fashion Week is dominated by some of its winners: Rokh, designed by Rok Hwang, who won a special prize last year; Jacquemus, by Simon Porte Jacquemus, who won a special jury prize in 2015; and Marine Serre, who won the main award in 2017.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
"My name is Faustin I come from Congo, somewhere in Central Africa." That's how the choreographer Faustin Linyekula introduced himself last week in Brooklyn. The phrase could have come from one of the dance theater works that have made him a darling of international festivals and inspired Frieze magazine to call him "quite possibly the most important artist working on the African continent today." But Mr. Linyekula wasn't onstage. He was meeting the cast of a new project, one of three he's presenting in New York this month. It was the first day of "Festival of Dreams," a two week workshop with It's Showtime NYC, a program that helps street dancers find legal alternatives to performing in subway cars. Twenty three participants almost all male, African American and in their 20s were working with Mr. Linyekula at BRIC House, building toward free performances in which they would share their dreams for a better future. That idea might seem to invite easy Hallmark card sentiments and childish fantasies. But not when Mr. Linyekula is explaining it. Talking to the dancers, he briskly summarized his home country as "quite a messy place," beset by massacres and wars that never really end, where "if 100 people die, it is not news." In such a place, imagining any future, much less a better one, is an exercise of extreme will. "I have to fight for it," he said. "I have to invent it." For an hour, the dancers discussed their own precarious present, but then Mr. Linyekula got them dancing. "Where I come from," he told them, "no knowledge system is complete until it goes through the body." But he was not there to teach them how to dance, he said. His approach is not a physical technique so much as "a way of thinking about who we are," a form of poetry and storytelling written with the body. "My dance is about who I am," he said. He instructed them to take their turn in introducing themselves, by improvising danced self portraits that ended the way he had started, filling in the phrase "My name is..." And he showed them what he meant, commanding attention with the subtlest undulations of his small, wiry body. From the start, his own choreography has been concerned with his relationship to his country: the Democratic Republic of Congo, as it is called now, or Zaire, as it was called when he was growing up in the 1970s and '80s. And his work has been defiantly personal. "I am showing the individual in a context where there is no space for individuals," he said in an interview in Ballet Dance. He might have become an expatriate, but in 2001, he established Studios Kabako, a space dedicated to dance, in Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This visit to New York isn't Mr. Linyekula's first. But this time, he said, he wanted to stick around longer and meet people. In addition to "Festival of Dreams" (at Roberto Clemente Plaza in the Bronx on Sept. 23 and at Weeksville Heritage Center in Brooklyn on Sept. 24), he is debuting a duet called "Banataba" at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Saturday and Sunday) and presenting the United States premiere of "In Search of Dinozord" (at New York University's Skirball Center, Sept. 22 and 23) with his company, also called Studios Kabako. The three shows, all part of the French Institute Alliance Francaise's Crossing the Line Festival (in collaboration with MetLiveArts and N.Y.U. Skirball), serve as a good introduction to the breadth and distinctiveness of his work. They express his worldview, cleareyed about the most terrible facts yet not despairing. It's an attitude that he tried to convey to the It's Showtime NYC dancers in their first moments together. "Back in Congo," he told them, "we make a circle when we dance." Circles, called cyphers, are the favorite configuration of hip hop dancers as well, but Mr. Linyekula did not let them form one. Instead, he arranged them like an audience in a proscenium theater, in what he called "the colonial relationship." Circles create and express community, he said. "But that is not the world we live in. The circle is broken, and if we want to make the circle again, we must take responsibility." This idea of responsibility lay beneath all of Mr. Linyekula's suggestions to the dancers that day, and he returned to it often in an interview, suggesting it as the connection among the three projects. "What do we receive from those who walked here before us, and what do we pass on?" he asked. "Banataba," at the Metropolitan Museum, focuses on the inheritance part and Mr. Linyekula's often repeated formulation of his dancing as an attempt to remember his name. "When you look at the history of my country," he said, "it seems that because of the rupture of colonialism, all the old ways of recording history were broken. And the Western way written history doesn't go back very far." So when Mr. Linyekula enters a museum, he is "in search of a broken piece of history." Earlier this year, invited by the Metropolitan to interact with its collection of art from the Kingdom of Kongo (a historical category broader than current borders), he discovered a piece that had never been exhibited. It was from the Lengola people, his mother's tribe. This discovery prompted him to make a journey with his mother to her father's village, where she had not been since 1975. "I didn't know the history of my family past my grandfather, but now we know seven generations back," he said. "The history is fragile, but it's not lost." In "Banataba," Mr. Linyekula will tell the story of that trip, and, more pointedly, of a religious sculpture he chose not to bring back to a Western museum. But it's also about his interaction with an old friend, the South African dancer Moya Michael, and about the two of them together in the museum's transplanted 16th century Spanish patio. "Being in a space with that many layers of history, your body vibrates differently," Mr. Linyekula said. "It's about putting my body where it will say what it knows, the things in my genes that connect me to generations past. That history may be broken, but it's not lost, either." Mr. Linyekula created "In Search of Dinozord" in 2007, the year he moved Studios Kabako to Kisangani. "This was the city where I had dreamt as a teenager of changing the world," he recalled. "I wondered if it was still possible to dream there." And, in the face of political corruption, child soldiers and senseless death, was it possible to make poetry and beauty? "In Search of Dinozord" is an attempt to do that. It's a ritual of mourning, set to Mozart's "Requiem" and politicians' speeches, with bodies quivering and crumpling to the ground. "My name is Dinozord," says the dancer whose solo ends the work, the youngest dancer in the piece. The solo makes space for the individual; it dreams of the future. The hip hop in it speaks to the genre's global reach, but it's not a coincidence that the section resembles the rehearsal exercises that Mr. Linyekula gave to the It's Showtime NYC dancers. Setting up others in this way is his method, his mission. "It's about building an army of people who question and are ready to take responsibility," Mr. Linyekula said. "It's about those who can take over, those who can continue."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Art styles don't die; they barely go away. They can be exhausted by uninspired overuse, go out of fashion or be judged hopelessly reactionary. After that they mostly lie dormant until artists come along and make them new again. For example, the Ukrainian born, Israel based artist Zoya Cherkassky has developed an unlikely hybrid of Social Realism and early Modernist figuration, spiked with cartooning, manga comics and children's book illustrations. It can be seen in "Soviet Childhood," her knockout American debut exhibition at Fort Gansevoort, a quirky downtown gallery. Read reviews of other shows closing soon: Nancy Spero at MoMA PS1 and Leonora Carrington at Wendi Norris. The show presents recent works from the artist, who was born in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, in the U.S.S.R., in 1976, started studying art at the age of 10 and emigrated to Israel with her family at age 14, in 1991, when the collapse of Communist rule was months away. In 2010, while pregnant with her own daughter, she began to paint and draw her memories of growing up in the Soviet Union.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
On the Mattress for 'Sleep,' an 8 Hour Lullaby My first mistake was waking up early to get groceries. Then it was a long Friday at work, followed by a piano recital and finally a sprint downtown where, exhausted, I was in the worst possible shape to take in one more concert. Except that the performance was "Sleep," Max Richter's eight hour soundtrack engineered, with the help of scientific consultants, to provoke a relaxing night. By dozing off, I'd be doing my job. "Our lives are very data saturated now," Mr. Richter said in an interview last week. "We're always on our screens, and mostly we're being sold stuff. It squeezes out a lot of richness of what we are." A calm, relaxing, very, very long work like his, he added, "could act as a sort of protest song." But "Sleep," which unfolded on Friday and Saturday at Spring Studios in Manhattan after recently being released on streaming platforms for easy home consumption, was perhaps not the most robust protest against rampant materialism. For one thing, tickets cost 250. For another, the show ended up looking like a prolonged ad for Beautyrest, which provided the audience's mattresses to be donated later to a charity for children who have trouble sleeping, Mr. Richter said and stamped its brand on everything: linens, sleep masks, swag bags. The space, in a corner of TriBeCa bristling with new high rises, was tricked out like an upscale disaster shelter. Marina Abramovic's "Goldberg," a high end sensory deprivation treatment of Bach's "Goldberg" Variations at the Park Avenue Armory a few years ago, came to mind. But before that Bach performance, all belongings even watches were shut into lockers so that audience members could be, in theory, fully "present." At "Sleep" there were no such restrictions, and the data saturated listeners, ostensibly approaching Mr. Richter's Magic Mountain to briefly shun modernity, often had their phones out, busily documenting the night in text messages and posts on social media. Some people stood in the center aisle to pose for photos, with the band comprising Mr. Richter, members of the American Contemporary Music Ensemble and the soprano Grace Davidson visible behind them. Spring Studios' floor to ceiling windows offered the cityscape as an alluring backdrop for pajama clad selfies. For some reason, water wasn't available at the bar. I put away my notebook and tried to listen to "Sleep" as Mr. Richter intended. For the first half hour, it was just him at the piano, playing a slow, pulsing lullaby. His rhythmic precision was admirable, given that his score was just stretches of whole notes; he played with the focus of a dyed in the wool Minimalist. All of this factored into "Sleep," which was first released in 2015. But the piece is also a homage to Bach's "Goldberg" Variations. (The two works have the same number of sections.) While aware that the piece's origin story is apocryphal, Mr. Richter was intrigued that the "Goldbergs" were supposedly written for a count with insomnia. Bach, it needs be said, this ain't. "Sleep" is rife with the hallmarks of Mr. Richter's style: a clarity that can seem like superficiality; an earnestness and emotionality that often come off as more ersatz and manipulative than personal. And it's difficult to buy into an eight hour exercise in mindfulness when, against Mr. Richter's best intentions, it opened itself to being more of a social media sensation. Silence did reign in the middle of the night, when the piece reached its enchanting apex. Around me people slept, or lay awake as if in a trance. The lofts and office towers of TriBeCa rested, too. There were no stars in the sky, but the lights twinkled in the choppy waves of the Hudson River. I fell asleep, and dreamed that someone was walking among the mattresses, handing out water. Around 5:30 in the morning, the sun began to rise, gradually filling the room with light as the "Sleep" orchestra played obvious music to match it: an increasingly loud, radiant major chord. If the earlier lullaby music had been purposefully low and mantralike, based on scientific research into what puts us to sleep, this gentle reveille also had an experimental basis: Higher frequencies wake us up. As people awoke, they grabbed their phones to capture the sunrise. A couple kissed and said good morning, as if at home and not surrounded by 100 strangers. "Sleep" ended with a fade out, immediately followed by the voice of a Beautyrest staff doctor, guiding the audience through meditation with the phlegmatic voice "Saturday Night Live" actors use to parody NPR. "Our motivation resets over the course of the symphony of the night," she said. "What will you do today? What will you achieve today?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
In German there's a predictably satisfying word for the final work produced by an apprentice: Gesellenstuck, an object assessed by the relevant guild for its application of logical and practical skill. A solid thing, then, in both senses: physically durable and intellectually sound. It's also, however, an object that does not serve its ostensible purpose. Made purely to demonstrate its maker's proficiency, a Gesellenstuck cabinet is less a thing to put in one's living room for holding china than a thing made to prove its cabinet ness. Or, in the case of "Brutto" ("Ugly"), the first story in 's brilliant, manic new collection, "Some Trick," a suit is not a thing to be worn but instead, a thing that attests to suit ness. A financially struggling painter hides her Gesellenstuck a fusty monstrosity, technically perfect and fashionably moribund, a "baleful garment that no one would ever wear because of the hatefulness of the cloth and the cut and the straps and the stitching" in a wardrobe in her studio. Until it's seized on by a shameless Italian curator thrilled by the suit's hideousness. He orders her to make 20 of them. Miuccia Prada, real life executor of the jolie laide look, buys the show. Like a Gesellenstuck, a DeWitt short story is a thing crafted with unimpeachable skill, even genius, but as you marvel at the stitching you might also shudder at the sense of a cruel, even brutal, joke. The stitching falls between as well as within stories; the collection proceeds with fractal precision. In "Improvisation Is the Heart of Music," a wicked little tale about marriage and monotony, a husband repeats the same elaborate anecdote verbatim, over and over. No "heart" to this music; it's as heartless as the rote rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In" that the husband and wife sing as a round, closing out the story while engaged in what else? the monotony of dishes. Improvisation (or its lack) is also a theme of "Famous Last Words," in which intellectual theorizing proves a dubious means of seduction, so much so that one character "goes into a skid on the slippage of meaning and smashes up against silence." There is much madness in DeWitt's method, a madness of pure logic. Several of DeWitt's characters are virtuosos or geniuses, including Peter, a statistician by hobby who has written an unexpectedly popular kids' book about robots. In "My Heart Belongs to Bertie," Peter is occupied with graphs of binomial distributions as well as various odds related to a potential second book deal. We're in a mathematical equation. It's a story that teaches you how to read a DeWitt story, just as her debut novel and masterpiece, "The Last Samurai" (2000), offered to teach willing readers several languages. As Peter attempts to show his uninterested agent some graphs, he's thwarted: "The surface of the table was taken up with all sorts of paraphernalia superfluous, not to say impedimental, to ratiocination." That genius and art making must be stymied by the sticky clutter of life, whether ketchup bottles or the caprice of the publishing market, is hilarious, tragic, maddening and true.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
When Dr. Denise McDermott, 49, isn't seeing patients for telehealth appointments, there's a good chance she's wearing a robe. In fact, as soon as she and her 11 year old son finish the video portion of their work and school days, they both make the switch. "It's become our joke during the pandemic: We're the robe family," said Dr. McDermott, a psychiatrist in Manhattan Beach, Calif. Now that many homes have become de facto offices for the foreseeable future, work wardrobes have adjusted accordingly. "It's important to be mindful of what makes you feel good," said Dr. McDermott. "Wearing a robe is almost like giving yourself permission to relax, but it also makes me feel powerful and confident." The robe is just one of many cozy styles catching on in isolation; sweatsuits, pajamas and slippers have also seen an uptick in sales, and leggings have replaced structured pants for many people. But while form fitting athleisure is intended (if not worn) for physical activity, pure leisure wear is an unabashed investment in time off. "When I step into slippers and walk outside to check the mail, I feel like a hot, confident Upper East Side housewife," Ms. Lester, a painter in Brooklyn, added. In the 19th century, robes (or dressing gowns) were worn by men and women as a transitional garment. They also gave women the freedom to complete household tasks and activities unbound by restrictive corsets. Now celebrities such as Chrissy Teigen and Andy Cohen are embracing the robe for similar reasons and inspiring their followers to do the same. Retailers have reported a rise in sales from their leisure collections, which include robes and sleepwear. According to Jennifer Foyle, global brand president for Aerie, sales from the brand's "Real Free Sleep Collection" more than doubled between February and April 2020. Similarly, a rep for Lands' End said that sales of women's sleepwear are up more than 75 percent from last year. Supportive slippers and house shoes are selling, too. For example, Vionic, which specializes in on trend, podiatrist approved footwear, has seen a 300 percent year over year increase in slipper sales, according to a representative for the brand. The shoe company Birdies's best selling style used to be a classic black loafer; now it's a luxe satin slide. "We've seen a significant shift in style preferences in recent weeks, with slide sales having increased by 200 percent since the beginning of April, once our customers knew they would be home for the foreseeable future," Bianca Gates, the co founder and C.E.O. of Birdies, said. Instead of spending the summer in overly air conditioned offices, many will still be working from home, where staying cool will be a priority. Alexis Herb, 25, a geographic information system technician intern from Boston, recently ordered a silk robe to wear around the house because she wanted "something that was light and comfortable especially when it's warmer out." Similarly, Rachel Bolt, 24, a student nurse from Shasta County, Calif., is the proud owner of a new silk robe from Kim Ono, which she wears with bedazzled slippers that feature Larry David's face to complete her "quarantine uniform." Ms. Bolt has endometriosis and said that the robe takes some pressure off her abdomen. "It's incredibly comfortable," she said. "I feel sexy, for lack of a better term, and in a weird way, I feel more put together." Helen Sharp, 34, who owns a P.R. agency in Austin, Texas, already had an extensive robe collection, but bought a Cleobella kimono when she realized she would be working from home. "I feel elegant in a nice robe and wanted an extra colorful one to lift my spirits during these weird times," she said. "I also feel like social norms have kind of hilariously flown out the window during the stay at home order, and wearing a robe just feels more natural and suitable to me than anything else." Men are embracing robe life, too. Matt Sarafa, 22, a designer specializing in gender neutral fashion and a student at U.C.L.A., sees the robe as a garment that is not just flowing but gender fluid. "Men can be kind of weird about wearing things that don't fit the exact mold of masculinity, but I feel like robes are almost an exception to that because they kind of have a silhouette like a dress, but are still 'socially acceptable' in the very patriarchal society we live in," he said. His garment of choice these days is a black Versace robe with gold baroque sleeves. "It's a little bougie," he said. "Now that I'm home 24 7, I might as well be comfy and fly." Michael James Nuells, 31, a professional actor and special events manager from Toluca Lake, Calif., made an investment in a silk smoking jacket (inspired by Hugh Hefner's) and a pair of blue velvet slippers to match. "I can't lie," he said, "being wrapped in my new jacket and strutting around my house in my new get up makes me feel pretty fantastic, especially in these horribly uncertain times."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
LONDON Only just out of recession, Britain's fragile economic recovery is running into another familiar problem: inflation. Annual consumer price inflation jumped to 2.7 percent in October from 2.2 percent the previous month, according to official figures released on Tuesday, muting prospects that the Bank of England would move to stimulate the economy, at least in the short term. The data, from the Office for National Statistics, reflected increases in university tuition fees and in food prices but did not take into account some of the latest increases in energy bills, which looked set to push the headline inflation figure higher in coming months. Inflation remains an Achilles' heel of the British economy. Unlike the euro, Britain's currency fell significantly on world markets after the financial crisis, resulting in imported inflation as the exchange rate pushed up the prices of non British goods.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
In a novel case, federal prosecutors on Friday brought criminal charges against an executive at Zoom, the videoconferencing company, accusing him of engaging in a conspiracy to disrupt and censor video meetings commemorating one of the most politically sensitive events in China. Prosecutors said the executive, Xinjiang Jin, who is based in China, fabricated reasons to suspend accounts of people in New York who were hosting memorials on the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and coordinated with Chinese officials to identify potentially problematic meetings. He is accused of working with others to log into the video meetings under aliases using profile pictures that related to terrorism or child pornography. Afterward, Mr. Jin would report the meetings for violating terms of service, prosecutors said. At least four meetings commemorating the massacre this year largely attended by U.S. based users were terminated as a result of Mr. Jin's actions, according to prosecutors. Mr. Jin, who is also known as Julien Jin, acted as the liaison between Zoom and Chinese government authorities, prosecutors said. He is identified in the criminal complaint only as an employee of a U.S. telecommunications company. Zoom confirmed on Friday that it was the company. Mr. Jin has not been arrested and is at large in China, which does not have an extradition treaty with the United States. The case represented an unusually sharp warning by law enforcement officials to American technology companies that operate in China, which often find themselves caught between the principles of free speech and the demands of China's censorship machine. "Americans should understand that the Chinese government will not hesitate to exploit companies operating in China to further their international agenda, including repression of free speech," Christopher Wray, director of the F.B.I., said in a statement. A spokesman for Zoom said on Friday that Mr. Jin violated its policies by attempting to circumvent internal controls. Mr. Jin has been fired, and other Zoom employees have been placed on administrative leave pending the completion of an internal investigation. In a lengthy statement, the company said it has since provided end to end encryption for all users and restricted access for China based employees to Zoom's global network. The company has its headquarters in San Jose, Calif., and has hundreds of employees in China. Charging a China based employee working for an American company is an aggressive rebuke against China, which requires tech companies that operate there to monitor user activity in order to censor politically sensitive topics. Seth DuCharme, the acting U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, whose office brought the case, said the allegations exposed the security vulnerabilities of American tech companies that engage in the "Faustian bargain" of operating in China. Let Us Help You Protect Your Digital Life None With Apple's latest mobile software update, we can decide whether apps monitor and share our activities with others. Here's what to know. A little maintenance on your devices and accounts can go a long way in maintaining your security against outside parties' unwanted attempts to access your data. Here's a guide to the few simple changes you can make to protect yourself and your information online. Ever considered a password manager? You should. There are also many ways to brush away the tracks you leave on the internet. The U.S. attorney's office in Brooklyn has been particularly active in bringing cases that have angered the Chinese government, including a criminal case against Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, and charges against eight people accused of conspiring on behalf of China to harass political dissidents in the United States to return home. Mr. Jin was charged with conspiracy to commit interstate harassment and illegal conspiracy to transfer means of identification. A lawyer for Mr. Jin could not be identified. The case is also a black eye for Zoom, raising fresh questions about the company's security at a time when its software is heavily relied on for work, school, health care and more. Mr. Jin asked co workers for user data from American servers, which he did not have direct access to, prosecutors said. It was not clear how much access Chinese government officials have obtained to the account information of Zoom users in the United States. The spokesman for Zoom said the company's internal investigation revealed that Mr. Jin shared individual user data with Chinese authorities. He shared the data for "fewer than 10 individual users" who were based outside China, the company said. The criminal complaint portrayed a relentless effort by Mr. Jin and others to stop video meetings commemorating the anniversary of the massacre, on June 4. In the weeks before the anniversary, Mr. Jin warned a co worker in the United States that Chinese officials were tracking Zoom users and emphasized the need to keep secret demands by the Chinese government for censorship, according to the criminal complaint. "They request that we cannot disclose it," Mr. Jin wrote. "Otherwise it will greatly impact our country's reputation." Mr. Jin told the colleague that if the Tiananmen Square issue was poorly handled, China could block the company's servers, according to prosecutors. In another instance, Chinese government officials notified Mr. Jin of a planned American based Tiananmen Square memorial and provided him with the meeting number of the video call, which Mr. Jin was then able to terminate, prosecutors said. It was not clear how officials obtained the meeting number, as it had not been publicized, according to prosecutors.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
LONDON What happens to a novel's characters when their author abandons them? This was the question the British playwright Laura Wade wanted to solve in bringing "The Watsons," an unfinished novel by Jane Austen, to the stage. Written in 1804 5, the story of the young Emma Watson, who returns to her struggling family after being raised by a rich aunt, is just 17,500 words long. The manuscript is the only one Austen gave up writing. Perhaps the story was too close to the bone. Struggles in Austen's own life a death in the family, encroaching poverty and diminishing chances of marriage mirrored those of the book's characters. But, equally, Austen might just have been suffering from writer's block. Was the fact she abandoned it a warning to a would be adapter? "It should have been!" Ms. Wade said in a recent interview in London. When she began working on the play, she frequently "stalled" when trying to continue the story, she said. The playwright, best known for "Posh," which was a hit when it was staged at the Royal Court here in 2010 and was later made into the 2014 movie "The Riot Club," has been working on this adaptation for over a decade. Her playful new version opened at the Chichester Festival Theater, in southeast England, on Saturday. Ms. Wade's partner, Samuel West, is the director. Initially, a producer approached Ms. Wade about making a play from one of Austen's novels, but she wasn't interested in "just another rattle through 'Pride and Prejudice,' " she said. When she found "The Watsons" in a collection of Austen's unpublished works, however, it caught her interest. To finish it, Ms. Wade said, she not only had to "think into this writer's brain across 200 years," but also find a happy ending that works in 2018. (Her other new play, "Home, I'm Darling," opens in the West End in January.) The first half of "The Watsons" largely follows Austen's original material, lifting much of its dialogue directly. The young Emma returns to the Watson family, where her father is gravely ill. She and her three older sisters know they must get married to be financially secure, but, though Emma catches the eye of the wealthy and arrogant Lord Osborne, as well as the pious but boring Mr. Howard, neither seem terribly attractive options. "I found it quite frustrating, trying to find the right outcome for Emma to try to give this young woman a future from a fairly bleak opening," Ms. Wade said. Mr. West, the director, said in a telephone interview from Chichester, that Austen had written "herself into a hole." Ms. Wade's solution was to imagine what Austen's characters would have done if they had the same opportunities as women today: Suddenly, new relationship and career options open up for the Watsons when they are no longer corseted by class, wealth or gender. "I knew I wanted to do something meta theatrical with it," Ms. Wade added. "I don't want to give the game away, but it does go a bit bonkers, a bit Pirandellian," she said, referring to Luigi Pirandello, and his 1921 play "Six Characters in Search of an Author," in which fictional characters storm a theater, demanding their story be told. In the novel, Mr. Watson is seriously unwell; while writing it, Austen's father died. His death threw the Austen women on hard times and, at 29, she was also facing the fact that she would likely remain a spinster just like Elizabeth Watson, the older sister in the novel. "One of Austen's nieces subsequently said events in her own life came too close to what she was writing," Kathryn Sutherland, emeritus professor in English at Oxford University, said in an interview. "It gets quite dark, the story, and coincidentally, her own life gets darker too. It's a story of dispossession, and in the course of writing it she becomes more dispossessed. Perhaps it was too painful to continue." "The Watsons," is significant in Austen's oeuvre because it contains a move toward darker, more cynical material, as well as character types and situations that she returned to in later works, Professor Sutherland said. "This idea of a girl who is looking for a home becomes a motif that runs through later Austen novels," she added, giving the examples of Fanny Price in "Mansfield Park" and Anne Elliot in "Persuasion" The haughty Lord Osborne is obviously a trial run for Mr. Darcy in "Pride and Prejudice," she added. "I don't think the previous adaptations and continuations are terribly good, to be honest," Professor Sutherland said, adding that Ms. Wade was doing "something rather different. There is something satisfying about her critiquing the Austen world, and bringing it up to date, in a witty way." For Ms. Wade, however, tussling with the characters and their deceased creator has been difficult at times. "It can be daunting dealing with material you're in love with," she said. There is also the pressure of living up to the expectations of the army of dedicated fans who prop up the Jane Austen industry, which extends from modern riffs like "The Jane Austen Book Club" to genre mash ups such as "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies," as well as Austen themed cruises, Austen quote T shirts, and Austen style festivals, where participants dress in Regency costume. "I'm imagining a first night, looking out into the audience, and it's all bonnets," Ms. Wade joked. The play was "written from huge affection," she added. "I hope the die hard fans will enjoy it." If they don't, maybe they're not familiar with Austen's juvenile works, which Professor Sutherland said revealed a spirit of mischief similar to the one found in the play. The young writer produced "spoof stories" in which the normal social order is overturned, she said, giving the example of "Jack and Alice," where Jack gets killed off to allow his sister to inherit a fortune not something that could actually have happened in the early 1790s. Ms. Wade, Professor Sutherland said, was using "the spirit of the teenage Jane Austen to get the older Jane Austen out of the hole she's dug herself into."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
SAN FRANCISCO It's bonanza time in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street. Snowflake, a data storage and analytics provider, kicked off a frenzied phase of technology initial public offerings on Wednesday when its stock opened at more than double its listing price and then soared in early trading, in a sign of Wall Street's appetite for fast growing companies. The company opened at 245 a share on the New York Stock Exchange, up from 120 set by its bankers, and then shot up to as high as 319 before closing at 254. The listing, which valued Snowflake at 70.4 billion, was the largest so far this year and the largest ever for a software maker, according to Renaissance Capital, which tracks I.P.O.s. It was also a major payday for Snowflake's venture capital investors, who had valued the start up at 12.4 billion just seven months ago. Snowflake is among several prominent tech companies that are expected to list their shares in the coming months as the tech industry thrives amid the pandemic induced economic downturn. After a lull in I.P.O.s during the volatile early months of the coronavirus crisis this spring, new listings roared back over the summer and have accelerated in recent weeks, even as tech stocks hit some recent turbulence. Other companies are also rushing to get out ahead of the Nov. 3 election, which could lead to more volatility. They include Airbnb, the home rental company; DoorDash, the on demand delivery provider; Wish, an e commerce site; Palantir, a data analytics start up; OpenDoor, a real estate marketplace; and Asana, a collaboration software provider. This week, the software companies Sumo Logic, American Well Corporation and Unity Software are also set to go public, along with JFrog, which listed its shares on Wednesday. Together, the debuts represent a private market value of more than 78 billion. Investors are eager to back hot I.P.O.s to juice their returns, said Kathleen Smith, principal at Renaissance Capital. "We've been on this rocket ship of returns since the drop in March," she said. But Ms. Smith cautioned that Snowflake's high price set it up for trouble if it did not keep growing quickly. "It's nosebleed territory," she said. "It can't mess up on the growth side." Frank Slootman, Snowflake's chief executive, agreed. "This is just a hot deal, and we'll have to live with the consequences of it," he said in an interview with CNBC. The action followed weeks of mounting hype over Snowflake, which offers database software that companies use to store and analyze their reams of information. Mr. Slootman, a longtime Silicon Valley software executive who has led Snowflake since 2019, previously ran ServiceNow and Data Domain, both of which also went public. On Tuesday, Snowflake sold 28 million shares for 120 each, a sharp increase from its initial price range of 75 to 85. It raised a total of 3.4 billion in its offering, which was led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The company's revenue has been growing quickly, jumping 133 percent in the first six months of the year to 242 million, up from 104 million during the same period last year. But it is also unprofitable, losing 171 million in the first half of this year. In its offering prospectus, Snowflake emphasized that once customers begin using its services, it often gets them to move more of their data onto its platform. Snowflake's largest investors include Sutter Hill Ventures, which owns 20 percent of the company, as well as Altimeter Capital, Redpoint Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Iconiq Capital. Last week, Berkshire Hathaway and Salesforce Ventures each agreed to purchase 250 million of shares in Snowflake's public offering, stoking hype around the listing. In recent years, public market investors have been skeptical of the richly valued, money losing "unicorn" start ups that enjoyed a decade of free flowing venture capital. Last year, Uber's I.P.O. flopped and WeWork, the co working company, pulled its I.P.O. after intense scrutiny. The arrival of the coronavirus in March further threatened to upend the start up industry. But the opposite has happened. Start ups and big technology companies alike have benefited as people work and learn from home and live more of their lives online. Now start ups are taking advantage of the booming stock market and investor excitement for tech. Several tech start ups with upcoming market debuts plan to try new methods and processes for the transaction. Some, including OpenDoor, the vehicle sales site Shift Technologies and various electric vehicle makers, are agreeing to "blank check" mergers via special purpose acquisition companies. Such transactions offer more flexibility around deal terms and can be completed quickly. Others, like Palantir and Asana, said they would go public via direct listing, which bypasses the traditional underwriting process. With a private valuation of 20 billion, Palantir could be the largest company to try such a transaction, following in the footsteps of Slack, the workplace collaboration service, and Spotify, the music streaming company. Venture capitalists have argued for this method because it does not aim for a first day trading "pop" that indicates the company could have priced its shares higher and raised more money from the transaction.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Tribune Publishing, the parent company of The Los Angeles Times, won an auction for The Orange County Register and The Riverside Press Enterprise this week with a bid of 56 million in cash, the company said on Thursday, though the acquisition still faces several hurdles before it can proceed. A few hours after the announcement, the Justice Department said it had filed a lawsuit to block the sale out of concern that it would give Tribune Publishing "a monopoly over newspaper sales in each county and allow it to increase subscription prices, raise advertising rates and invest less to maintain the quality of its newspapers." The deal also is subject to court approval at a hearing scheduled for later this month because the parent company of the two newspapers, Freedom Communications, filed for bankruptcy late last year. The agreement, if approved, would end a long process for both Tribune Publishing, which has coveted the Southern California newspapers as part of a plan to expand its reach and streamline costs, and Freedom Communications, which initially aimed to revamp the newspaper business in the region but fell victim to the same forces that have besieged newspapers across the country.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
More and more Brooklyn sellers are listing their homes with Manhattan size prices. So far, the highest price paid was 12.5 million in 2012 for an 1839 house in Brooklyn Heights where Truman Capote once lived. Here are the five most expensive residential listings in Brooklyn as of May 7: This 1857 Brooklyn Heights mansion with 17,500 square feet at 3 Pierrepont Place is listed for 40 million. It is known as the Low Mansion for its original owner, A. A. Low, whose son Seth Low was mayor of Brooklyn in the 1880s and mayor of New York in 1902 03. The building has been subdivided into eight apartments, to be delivered vacant. This penthouse with 11,000 square feet is on the 10th, 11th and 12th floors of One Brooklyn Bridge Park, a waterfront condominium in Brooklyn Heights. It has six bedrooms, six full bathrooms, two half baths, a terrace, a 3,500 bottle wine room, a gym with a climbing wall, a screening room and views of the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor. This triplex penthouse in the Clock Tower condominium at 1 Main Street in Dumbo has three bedrooms, three and a half baths, a glass elevator and four giant see through working glass clocks with views of the Brooklyn Bridge and New York Harbor. Originally listed for 25 million in 2009, the penthouse has gone through a series of price cuts and a parade of brokers. This gated five bedroom property in Mill Basin at 2458 National Drive is on Jamaica Bay. It includes a pool, an outdoor pavilion that seats 40 and two boat slips. Originally listed for 30 million in October 2013 with a guesthouse, the price was cut to 17 million about six months ago and no longer includes the guesthouse. This 25 foot wide five story 1859 brownstone in Brooklyn Heights at 192 Columbia Heights has six bedrooms, three full baths, two half baths, three fireplaces, a library, two terraces and a landscaped backyard. Norman Mailer once used studio space on the top floor. The house was originally listed for 16 million in April of last year.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Whether thought of as an emotional weapon, a psychological state or simply the most profoundly irritating behavior that a colleague or family member can manifest, passive aggression is a fancy name for something we are all familiar with. The term dates to 1945, when it was used by the military psychiatrist William Menninger to define the attitude of sulky, balky soldiers. But passive aggression, as a sly and infuriating art, has surely never been practiced as entertainingly as it is in a certain high school faculty lounge in Garrison, Ohio, where a group of teachers are doing their teeth gritting darnedest to get along. Such is the setting for "Miles for Mary," a priceless portrait of accumulating anger in the workplace from the Mad Ones, which opened on Monday at Playwrights Horizons. First staged at the Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn in the fall of 2016, "Miles for Mary" unfolds as a series of meetings, held over several months in the late 1980s, to organize a local annual telethon for sports scholarships. (The well worn, cluttered gym room in which they assemble, designed by Amy Rubin, exudes the claustrophobia of the too familiar.) Like many office meetings, they are conducted according to specific rules of order. These have been established to keep the participants from speaking out of turn, dominating the proceedings at the expense of others, and generally acting "inappropriately," to use an enduring, catchall catchword. Psychological safety valves have been set up under a rubric that includes, in addition to that kindergarten standby "timeout," "take a two" and "real time check in" to allow for the release and defusing of tensions.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The editorial board is a group of opinion journalists whose views are informed by expertise, research, debate and certain longstanding values . It is separate from the newsroom. The 2020 election was not simply free of fraud, or whatever cooked up malfeasance the president is braying about at this hour. It was, from an administrative standpoint, a resounding success. In the face of a raging pandemic and the highest turnout in more than a century, Americans enjoyed one of the most secure, most accurate and most well run elections ever. Don't take our word for it. Listen to the state and local officials of both parties in dozens of states who were tasked with overseeing the process. "Numbers don't lie," Georgia's Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, said on Friday when he certified his state's vote total following a hand recount of about five million ballots. Joe Biden won Georgia by a little more than 12,000 votes. Same story in Michigan. "We have not seen any evidence of fraud or foul play in the actual administration of the election,'' said a spokesman for the Democratic secretary of state there. "What we have seen is that it was smooth, transparent, secure and accurate." Over all, the 2020 election "was the most secure in American history," according to a statement put out this month by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which is made up of top federal and state election officials. "There is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised." A bipartisan consensus like this may tempt some people to conclude that the dire pre election warnings were overblown, that the risks to the election were never that serious. The reality is the opposite. The threats were many and real. There were massive logistical hurdles to running an election during a deadly disease outbreak. There was chaos sown deliberately by a sitting president to undermine Americans' faith in the integrity of the democratic process. There was good reason to fear an electoral meltdown. That the meltdown didn't materialize was thanks to months of hard work and selfless commitment by tens of thousands of Americans across the country: state and local elections officials, volunteer poll workers, overburdened postal carriers, helpful neighbors and generous philanthropists. It is neither wise nor realistic to count on this sort of mobilization happening every four years. "The smoothness of the election was not self executing," said Vanita Gupta, the president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, an organization that supports voting rights. "Don't lose sight of how much work we did to make it this way." The nation will need to prioritize voting rights and election administration to a degree it has never adequately done. For example, why are Americans still waiting for hours in line to cast their ballots? In 2014, a bipartisan commission said no one ought to have to wait more than 30 minutes to vote. Six years on, the country is nowhere close to that goal. The solutions are not a mystery. Here are three of the most obvious ones. More money. In the first wave of the pandemic last spring, elections experts and officials pleaded with Congress to provide up to 4 billion to help ensure a smooth election. Lawmakers approved one tenth of that amount. "We get what we pay for," said Justin Levitt, an election law scholar at Loyola Law School. "We poured trillions into pandemic recovery, and a teaspoonful into the democracy that makes it work." Some of the shortfall was made up by private philanthropists, who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to state and local governments. Professional sports teams offered up their empty arenas so voters could safely cast ballots in person. Donors provided masks and other protective gear for poll workers. All of that was welcome, and yet the American people pay taxes for just this purpose; they shouldn't have to rely on the beneficence of the wealthy to keep their democracy intact. Less voter suppression. It wasn't so long ago that both parties supported the protection of voting rights. In 2006, Congress overwhelmingly voted to reauthorize the Voting Rights Act. Today, the Republican Party is awash in conspiracy theories and there's no other way to put it fundamentally distrusts the American electorate. In hundreds of lawsuits filed over voting and election procedures in 2020 the most ever in an election season Republicans consistently sided against voters. In too many cases, the courts let them have their way. They blocked reasonable, targeted measures to make voting easier during the pandemic, like extending ballot arrival deadlines or increasing the number of drop boxes. President Trump has spent the past five years building a fantasy world in which he can lose only because the other side cheated, and far too many people are content to live in it. In the absence of a whit of evidence, a majority of Republicans say they believe Joe Biden's victory is the result of fraud. That's why Mr. Raffensperger, a committed Republican, is being punished for his defense of Georgia's electoral process with everything from death threats to a potentially illegal request by Senator Lindsey Graham, a top Republican, who Mr. Raffensperger said tried to persuade him to throw out legally cast ballots. The United States needs members of both major political parties to support voting rights and access to the polls not just because they believe it helps democracy, but because they believe it helps them. Thwart disinformation. America needs a far more aggressive and coordinated response to the massive disinformation campaigns polluting social media and people's dialogue with one another. Social media giants like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube did more in 2020 to combat these campaigns than ever before, and yet it wasn't nearly enough. When a lie can race around the globe in minutes, anything less than an immediate response is too slow. The labels applied to misleading or factually untrue content were often vague, and did not necessarily refute the disinformation. Also, it's obvious that most of the disinformation right now is coming from one side of the political spectrum. Social media companies need to confront that reality head on and stop worrying about being called biased. That's especially important when it comes to the accounts of high profile figures like President Trump, who have the power to deceive huge numbers of Americans with a single tweet. Democracy is a fragile thing, and it requires constant tending and vigilance to survive. Americans were lucky this time. They were also well prepared. When pushed to the brink, they mobilized to protect their democracy. For this moment, at least, tune out the president, his flailing dishonesty and his bottomless disregard for the American experiment. Instead, express gratitude to the millions of Americans who still believe in that experiment, and who did all they could to make this election succeed in the face of daunting odds. Then help make sure they don't have to do it by themselves again.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
In the world of education, it was the equivalent of the cool kids' table in the cafeteria. Executives from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, McKinsey consultants and scholars from Stanford and Harvard mingled at an invitation only meeting of the New Schools Venture Fund at a luxury hotel in Pasadena, Calif. Founded by investors who helped start Google and Amazon, this philanthropy seeks to raise the academic achievement of poor black and Hispanic students, largely through charter schools. Many of those at the meeting last May had worried that the Obama administration would reflect the general hostility of teachers' unions toward charters, publicly financed schools that are independently run and free to experiment in classrooms. But all doubts were dispelled when the image of Arne Duncan, the new education secretary, filled a large video screen from Washington. He pledged to combine "your ideas with our dollars" from the federal government. "What you have created," he said, "is a real movement." That movement includes a crowded clique of alpha girls and boys, including New York hedge fund managers, a Hollywood agent or two and the singers John Legend and Sting, who performed at a fund raiser for Harlem charter schools last Wednesday at Lincoln Center. Charters have also become a pet cause of what one education historian calls a billionaires' club of philanthropists, including Mr. Gates, Eli Broad of Los Angeles and the Walton family of Wal Mart. But for all their support and cultural cachet, the majority of the 5,000 or so charter schools nationwide appear to be no better, and in many cases worse, than local public schools when measured by achievement on standardized tests, according to experts citing years of research. Last year one of the most comprehensive studies, by researchers from Stanford University, found that fewer than one fifth of charter schools nationally offered a better education than comparable local schools, almost half offered an equivalent education and more than a third, 37 percent, were "significantly worse." Although "charter schools have become a rallying cry for education reformers," the report, by the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, warned, "this study reveals in unmistakable terms that, in the aggregate, charter students are not faring as well" as students in traditional schools. Researchers for this study and others pointed to a successful minority of charter schools numbering perhaps in the hundreds and these are the ones around which celebrities and philanthropists rally, energized by their narrowing of the achievement gap between poor minority students and white students. But with the Obama administration offering the most favorable climate yet for charter schools, the challenge of reproducing high flying schools is giving even some advocates pause. Academically ambitious leaders of the school choice movement have come to a hard recognition: raising student achievement for poor urban children what the most fervent call a new civil rights campaign is enormously difficult and often expensive. "I think many people settle and tend to let themselves off the hook," said Perry White, a former social worker who founded the Citizens' Academy charter school in Cleveland in 1999 naively, he now recognizes and has overseen its climb from an F on its state report card in 2003 to an A last year. "It took us a while to understand we needed a no excuses culture," he said, one of "really sweating the small stuff." Visits to half a dozen charter schools in Cleveland and New York State show that high and low performing schools often seem to take pages from the same playbook. They require student uniforms, a longer day and academic year, frequent testing to measure learning, and tutoring for students who fall behind. They imitate one another in superficial ways, too, like hanging inspirational banners: "This Is Where We're Headed. To College!" say posters in the hall of the Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School in Brooklyn, with campus scenes of a chemistry lab and big time college sports. But the differences in how schools are run, the way classes are taught and how school culture is nourished are striking. It is like watching two couples dance a tango, one with poise and precision, the other stumbling to execute the intricate footwork. At Williamsburg Collegiate, whose middle school students annually outscore the district and city averages on state tests, Jason Skeeter stood before his math students the other day as tightly coiled as a drill sergeant. He issued instructions in a loud, slightly fearsome voice, without an extra word or gesture. "Five minutes on the clock," he told the 26 fifth graders, as they began a "Do Now" review sheet on least common denominators. On the whiteboard, an agenda told students precisely what to expect for the 60 minute period. Mr. Skeeter placed his digital Teach Timer on an overhead projector so the countdown was visible to all. When the buzzer sounded, he announced, "Hold 'em up," and students raised their pencils. "Clap if you're with me," he said, clapping twice to snap students to attention. The class responded with a ritual double stomp of the feet and a hand clap. Jason Skeeter using an overhead projector to teach math to fifth grade students at Williamsburg Collegiate Charter School in Brooklyn. Mr. Skeeter, 30, a stocky man in a dark blue shirt and tie, moved swiftly to a second timed exercise, the "Mad Minute," 60 multiplication problems in 60 seconds. "Pencils down," he ordered after the minute was up. "Switch papers with your partner." The teacher read aloud the 60 answers. "Hands on your head when you're done counting" correct answers, he told students. He started the timer again as he called students' names DeAndre, Alejandro, Nakeri, Lyric typing their scores into a laptop. He announced the class average: 37.86. "Brian Leventer," he said, making what the school calls a cold call to one student rather than looking for a raised hand, "what does it round to?" "Thirty eight is correct," Mr. Skeeter said. The class had fallen two points shy of fifth graders in a rival class. "Close, close, close," the teacher said. At Williamsburg Collegiate, everything is measured, everything is compared, graphed and displayed publicly. Besides academics, students compete for merit points for good behavior and receive demerits for absent homework or disrespect. The school drills students on posture and clear speaking, known as SLANT, shorthand for "Sit up straight. Listen. Ask and answer questions. Nod for understanding. Track the speaker," meaning follow with your eyes. "I will give merits to the first group to stop what they're doing and track me," Mr. Skeeter said at one point. A rigidly structured environment is part of the formula the school believes produces success. Another is "the use of data to inform everything we do," said Brett Peiser, the superintendent. If tests reveal that 70 percent of students do not know how to add fractions with like denominators, teachers reteach it. The curriculum is constantly adjusted. Although half of Mr. Skeeter's fifth graders began the year, their first at the school, below grade level, his goal is for all to pass the state exam. It is a goal that eludes most schools statewide with populations like Williamsburg Collegiate's, which is 99 percent African American and Hispanic, with 83 percent eligible for free or reduced price lunches. Yet last year all 78 of the school's fifth graders who took the math exam passed. "If our goal is to close the achievement gap and prepare students for college, obviously we're trending in the right direction," Mr. Peiser said. In Ohio, the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy is not the kind of charter school that celebrities visit. It is, however, close to the norm for urban Ohio, where 60 percent of charter school students in the eight largest districts attend a school that earned a D or F on its last state report card, according to an analysis by Catalyst Ohio, an independent publication supporting school improvement. Alison Ellis, who is 27 and in her second year of full time teaching, had the advantage of a small class of 14 the other day to teach sixth grade math, in preparation for the state tests on which the all important school report cards are based. "Yesterday we looked at the extended responses part of your test," Ms. Ellis said, referring to practice exercises the students had done. "We had a rough day." She passed out a work sheet reviewing similar material, starting with a word problem calling for basic arithmetic. "Jackie ate lunch at the Double D Diner," she read. "Her check is shown below." Debroah A. Mays, the principal at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, with a first grader. Ken Blaze for The New York Times The students bent to their work sheets, six girls and eight boys, the boys ranging in size from a student with a faint mustache and an untucked extra large polo shirt to another seemingly half his size. The Arts and Social Sciences Academy, which Ohio says is in a state of "academic emergency," might not strike a casual observer as a school that is failing its students, who are similar demographically to Williamsburg Collegiate's 98 percent African American, 91 percent economically disadvantaged. But the contrast with the Brooklyn school was apparent in many subtle ways. In Ms. Ellis's classroom, the whiteboard was empty except for the date no agenda to focus students. Although Ms. Ellis timed students on solving problems similar to those they would expect on the state test, she was imprecise about when time was up. The pace was unhurried; there was little sense of the urgency to impart and absorb knowledge that lends an electricity to classrooms at Williamsburg Collegiate. At one point, a boy put his head on a desk and had to be wakened. As fifth graders one year ago, only 20 percent of the school's students passed the state math exam, results that contributed to the school's overall grade of F. The principal, Debroah A. Mays, was disappointed by the results. She introduced a yearlong improvement plan that included Saturday tutoring and teacher training. "We are determined to become a school of excellence," Mrs. Mays said. Even though the school did worse on the Ohio math and English exams than the average Cleveland public school, families did not flee Arts and Social Sciences Academy. On the contrary, enrollment has doubled in each of the past two years. It is a phenomenon often seen in academically failing charter schools when parents perceive them as having better discipline than district schools. "Families love the feeling of community; they walk in and say they feel safe," Mrs. Mays said. "They don't worry about bullying. My kids are just a bunch of marshmallows." Since the first one opened in Minnesota in 1992, charter schools have captivated school reformers, originally on the political right but increasingly from the center left. Largely an urban phenomenon, charter schools in some 72 cities now enroll 10 percent or more of public school students, up from 45 cities three years ago, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools. Fifty five percent of enrolled students nationwide are black or Hispanic, the alliance says, and more than a third qualify for free or reduced price lunches, a common measure of poverty. The movement sometimes makes for strange bedfellows. "When I first got into this, I thought everyone interested in educating poor black kids would be a good lefty," said Lyman Millard, director of development at Citizens' Academy in Cleveland and a Democrat. "We went to a state charter convention where they were debating which of two bumper stickers to have printed: 'Go With Bush' or 'God Wants Bush.' I thought, what did we get ourselves into?" In 2007, President George W. Bush visited a Harlem charter, but President Obama has done him one better, pledging to use the Harlem Children's Zone, a network of charter schools and social services, as a model for high poverty urban areas. The administration's Race to the Top competition, which waves the carrot of 4.3 billion in education aid to states that comply with administration goals, has prompted three so far Illinois, Louisiana and Tennessee to lift limits on the number of charter schools. Advocates say there has never been more political momentum from Washington in favor of charter schools. The club of millionaires and billionaires who support them includes Mr. Gates; Mr. Broad, whose fortune is from home building and financial services; Michael Dell of Dell Computer; Doris Fisher, who, with her late husband, Donald, founded the Gap; and the Walton family. Rather than starting their own schools, these philanthropists largely went looking for successful charters and provided money for expansion. Thus they can boast of mainly backing academic winners. Naomi Hunt, a student at Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy, which is working to improve its grade of F on its last state report card. Ken Blaze for The New York Times Celebrities who support charters have also picked carefully. In Los Angeles, a former writer for "L. A. Law," Roger Lowenstein, founded the Los Angeles Leadership Academy, which ranks in the top 10 percent of schools statewide with similar disadvantaged populations. He has cultivated as donors the screenwriter James L. Brooks and the television agent Rick Rosen, who represents Conan O'Brien. In New York, Mr. Legend, the Grammy winning soul singer, has used his visibility to debate political opponents of charter schools in the news media. "What these people are proving who are running excellent schools is that poor black and brown kids can be successful," he said in an interview. "Until recently a lot of Americans didn't even believe that was true, because they saw such persistent gaps in the education outcomes." Mr. Legend is on an advisory board of Harlem Village Academies, three small schools that held a glittery fund raiser at Lincoln Center last week. Katie Couric told the crowd that she was a mentor to students on Saturday mornings. Hugh Jackman, the host, announced a 500,000 gift from Rupert Murdoch. Last year, 93 percent of eighth graders at the flagship Harlem Village Academy passed the state math, English, science and social studies exams, compared with 41 percent in its West Harlem school district, records show. Critics of charter schools, often teachers' unions and their political allies, say the schools rely on a corps of young teachers who are willing to work 60 hour weeks, but who burn out quickly. In addition, as the United Federation of Teachers reported in January, charters in New York City enroll a smaller share of special education students and those still learning English. An independent study recently backed the claims to high achievement made by New York City charters, which have benefited from the strong support of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the schools chancellor, Joel I. Klein. Devised to address criticism that charters skim off the most motivated students, the study compared the state test scores of students in charter schools with those who had wanted to enroll but were not picked in lotteries that charters hold when they have too many applicants. The study concluded that charter students made better progress in math and English than their counterparts who ended up in traditional schools. In math, students in charters from kindergarten through eighth grade came close to equaling the achievements of suburban students, nearly closing what the study's lead author, Caroline M. Hoxby, a Stanford economist, called the "Scarsdale Harlem" gap. Ms. Hoxby's study, released in September, followed by three months the much broader investigation by a Stanford colleague, at the Center for Research on Education Outcomes, which showed discouraging results for charters nationally. Drawing on data from the District of Columbia and 15 states (but not New York), that study's finding that 83 percent of charter schools are doing no better than local public schools shocked many advocates, all the more so because its author, Margaret E. Raymond, is a fellow at the Hoover Institution, a bastion of libertarianism. Ms. Hoxby, also a fellow at the Hoover Institution, where she is a member of a pro charter task force, and Ms. Raymond engaged in a sharp online exchange over research methodologies an echo of years of arguments over charter school data. (Ms. Raymond's study did show that learning improved the longer students were in charters.) What most experts can agree on is that charter school quality varies widely, and that it is often associated with the rigor of authorities that grant charters. New York, where oversight is strong, is known for higher performing schools. Ohio, Arizona and Texas, where accountability is minimal, showed up in Ms. Raymond's study with many poorly performing schools. Perhaps the sharpest knock on charters one that even some proponents acknowledge is that mediocrity is widely tolerated. Authorities are reluctant to close poor schools. Some advocates concede that the intellectual premise behind school choice that in a free market for education, parents will remove students from bad schools in favor of good ones has not proved true. "If you look at the hopes and dreams from 1992, it didn't pan out that quality would rise because of marketplace accountability," said James Merriman, chief executive of the New York City Charter School Center. "It turns out you need government accreditation to drive quality, and the human capital to make schools go. The hard lesson is, it is so dependent on human capital." Mr. Skeeter of Williamsburg Collegiate is what advocates mean when they talk of human capital. A former public school teacher in the Bronx, where he lives, he works from 7 a.m. to 5:30, nearly three hours longer than his public school day. The charter school says it pays teachers about 15 percent above union scale, though there is no tenure. "I have more say in what I teach and how I teach, which is important to me," Mr. Skeeter said, adding that in a traditional public school he felt "handcuffed" to the assigned curriculum. Ninety eight percent of some 1,000 students in grades three through eight in Uncommon Schools, almost all poor minority children, passed their New York State math exam last year, and 89 percent passed the English exam. "Higher in both cases than the white average," Mr. Peiser pointed out. Such stellar results have attracted philanthropists, including those from the New Schools Venture Fund, which seeks to replicate top charter schools. Whether that is possible at a scale that could move the needle in American education may be the greatest challenge of all for the charter movement. Nonprofit networks of charter operators with top flight schools outfits like Uncommon, KIPP and Aspire Public Schools have created only about 350 in the past decade, and required 500 million in philanthropic support, according to Thomas Toch, author of a study last year on many of the groups underwritten by the New Schools Venture Fund. He questioned whether successful charters could be "scaled up" without sacrificing quality and without heavy subsidies from private donors. "It's easy to open schools, but it's very hard to open and sustain and to grow networks of very good schools," said Mr. Toch, a founder of Education Sector, a research group. The education historian Diane Ravitch offers a parallel critique. "Charters enroll 3 percent of the kids," she said. "The system that educates 97 percent, no one's paying any attention to." In a new book, Ms. Ravitch describes her about face from supporter of the school choice movement as a member of the first Bush administration to a critic. In an interview, she pointed to the Obama administration's oft stated goal of turning around 5,000 public schools the bottom 5 percent which it is leveraging through 4 billion in School Improvement Grants to states that adopt one of four strategies, including giving failing schools to charter operators. "What we're likely to get are lots of mediocre and very bad charters," Ms. Ravitch said. Mr. Duncan, the education secretary, replied through a spokeswoman: "We do not favor one kind of school over another. We favor educational quality and accountability for all schools." The teachers and principal at the Arts and Social Sciences Academy, which has 230 students in temporary buildings, do not want to remain in the category of failing charter. They hope to expunge the F on their school's report card with this year's state exams. "Soaring to Success!" a banner in the hallway read the other day, exhorting one and all. "There are 13 school days to the Ohio Achievement Assessment!!" In Ms. Ellis's math class, she patiently demonstrated how to answer the word problem of Jackie and her lunch at the Double D Diner. As she reread the problem, one boy interrupted: "I thought it was a he," he said, meaning "Jackie." "One thing I've noticed we get stuck on is names," Ms. Ellis said, gently correcting that Jackie is a she. "They have the wackiest names," she told students named Devonere, Aja, Danisha and Caz'mier, who might be unfamiliar with some of the references of standardized tests. She assigned a more challenging problem, and as she went from desk to desk offering advice, students worked without the familiar distractions of a more crowded classroom hands raised for a bathroom pass, students wandering over to backpacks. Disengagement here was expressed passively: after most of the time allotted to complete the problem had passed, one boy had drawn only a line dividing the work space in half. At a bank of computers in the back, where other students were working, one had his head on the keyboard. The computers ran a learning program, A Plus, with problems geared to a student's abilities. A boy was working his way through simple math. "A glass of lemonade costs 25 cents," the computer screen told this sixth grader. "A hot dog costs 5 cents. How much will it cost to buy both?" When he tapped the correct answer, the screen flashed, "Way to Go." Clearly, this school still has work to do.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Education
Baby blanket, burp rags, teething toy, bottles, breast pump, swim diaper, bathing suit, sunglasses, sun hat, two kinds of infant sunscreen, diaper cream, diapers, wipes, changing pad, onesies, footies, sun dresses, pants, T shirt, shoes, socks, sweater, sweatshirt, coat, baby carrier, travel bassinet, sleep sack, car seat stroller, pop up shade tent, mosquito bands, mosquito netting, three types of "natural" mosquito repellent and a 10 day supply of baby food. That is our Mexico trip, in list form. Traveling internationally with an infant for the first time, I was prepared for challenges and misadventures. I was less prepared for how firmly rooted in my ways I've become as a traveler. Having prided myself on mastering the art of packing light, I should have known that schlepping the daunting list of infant must haves would make me feel like a snail hauling its home. Before having a baby, I imagined one toy, one book, a few outfits, some diapers. What else do they need, I thought. During our trip, my husband and I barely managed to make do with three heavy checked bags. Though there were some things we could have done without (we overpacked on clothes, and repellent wasn't needed, though I didn't regret bringing it), almost everything else was well used and handy, if not necessary. Some, like the Peapod an ultracompact, 3.5 pound shade tent, play pen and travel bed in one has become indispensable. As a committed carry on flier, I've been surprised that ditching our luggage at the check in counter (or, better yet, curbside) has been remarkably liberating. My frequent flier credit card granted us one free checked bag each, which easily pays for its 90 annual fee. And while the Delta Air Lines baggage policy allows them to charge for luggage for so called "lap infants" (babies under 2, traveling without a paid seat of their own), on eight flights with my daughter, Roxie, we have yet to be charged for her bag, which doubles as a bassinet. Being a baby, it turns out, has some benefits.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
The Syrian civil war has left nearly a half million people dead, displaced millions more, and turned one of its largest cities, Aleppo, into an open air slaughterhouse. The war is destroying antiquity too. For just under a year, from May 2015 to March 2016, the Islamic State held control of the ancient central city of Palmyra, a boomtown that became a Roman colony in the third century A.D. To their viciousness against the men and women of Syria and northern Iraq, the Islamic State added brutality to culture. In that year they destroyed several temples where Palmyrenes had worshiped a panoply of pre Islamic gods. They beheaded the archaeologist Khaled al Assad, the leading authority on Palmyra's history, and broadcast his death online. The city's museum was ransacked. Several captives were tied to ancient columns and executed with explosives: crimes against the present and the past at once. Last spring, the Russian backed Syrian Army routed the jihadists but in December the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) retook Palmyra. Last month they blasted a Roman amphitheater, as well as a tetrapylon, an entranceway formed by a quartet of columns. On Monday, the Russian defense ministry released drone footage that purports to show new destruction to the theater, as well as numerous trucks circling the heritage site. The website evokes the syncretic, multicultural wonders of Palmyra, many of which are now destroyed, through two caches of historical images: 18th century etchings of Palmyra after the drawings of the architect Louis Francois Cassas, and 19th century photographs by Louis Vignes, a French naval officer. The latter were acquired in 2015 by the Getty; they're the oldest known photographs of Palmyra, and most have not been seen widely before. Europeans had encountered Palmyra as early as 1691, when a group of English merchants in Aleppo trekked through the desert to see the ruined city, and reported on the mixture of Greco Roman and Persian motifs in its religious and civic buildings. A 1753 book on Palmyra by the British classicist Robert Wood included painstaking illustrations of the city's architectural ornamentation, which became a runaway success among British designers. Robert Adam, the dean of Georgian neoclassicism, based the ceilings of Osterley Park, a west London mansion, on those of the Temple of Bel, which feature blooming rosettes set in octagonal recesses. But the young Cassas, who had developed a passion for antiquity while studying in Rome, illustrated Palmyra with unprecedented dedication. He was dispatched to the Near East by the French ambassador in Constantinople, who commissioned Cassas to document significant sites in Cyprus, Lebanon, Palestine and Syria. He arrived in May 1785, just shy of his 29th birthday, and in less than a month Cassas had drawn every building in Palmyra. Some he depicted as he saw them, bestrewn with marble stumps and fallen capitals. "There are columns and capitals overturned in the middle of entablatures and door frames, richly adorned and half broken," Cassas wrote. "Beyond all these wonderful ruins extends an ocean of blazing sand, stretching all the way back to the horizon that appears to shimmer like a blue sea." Cassas also made careful diagrams of the floor plans and elevations of Palmyra's buildings, including the Temple of Bel, a monumental house of worship destroyed by ISIS in 2015. Others he retrofitted into capriccios of the multifaith city, whose inhabitants worshiped a collection of Babylonian, Phoenician and Greek gods. Still more of Cassas's prints captured the ruins of the past amid Orientalist visions of the present: turbaned sheikhs, grinning camels. Nearly a century later, Vignes took part in a French scientific expedition to the Near East, where he photographed the Dead Sea and the sites of Petra. He then continued to Palmyra by himself, and there, in 1864, he took the first photographs of the ancient city. The expedition's patron died shortly afterward, and so Vignes's Palmyra images, unlike his Petra photographs, were never widely distributed. Some exist only as single prints. The Getty acquired and digitized them two years ago, as ISIS began to destroy the city. Vignes's hazy, sepia toned photographs of Palmyra disclose that some of the city's monuments were in good repair in the mid 19th century among them the Temple of Baalshamin, now dynamited, where Palmyrenes worshiped a god of Phoenician origin in a Hellenistic setting. Other photographs show antique sites amid piles of rubble. After Syria won its independence in 1946, local and international archaeologists began to excavate at Palmyra, and they unearthed far more of the ancient city marketplaces, forums, temple foundations that Vignes's camera saw only as earth. What enthralled Cassas and Vignes about Palmyra is precisely what ISIS hates about it: They discovered the material vestiges of a multilingual and multiconfessional society, nourished by commerce from East and West. In part, ISIS's iconoclasm there has flowed from the polytheistic history of Palmyra, which stands in rebuke to their Salafist convictions. (They have also blown up the tombs of Shiite and Sufi saints, whose interpretations of Islam they consider heretical.) Just as much, ISIS leaders destroy cultural heritage as an incitement "an act of psychological warfare," as the British archaeologist David Wengrow has said. For all the insights of "The Legacy of Ancient Palmyra," its web design is clunky. Thumbnail images are too small to see properly in the mobile version, while in desktop format Cassas's prints often appear with severe moire patterning at lower screen resolution. In one sense, the digital reproductions are no substitute for seeing these prints and photographs in a proper museum show. (More than two dozen of Cassas's original drawings were on view last year in "Palmyra: What's Left," an exhibition at the Wallraf Richartz Museum in Cologne, Germany.) But in another sense, it is fitting that these images should circulate digitally along the same networks that ISIS has so effectively used to advertise its own inhumanity. Its war has been waged through images as well as armaments. We need images too, from the past and the present, to guard the ideals we so often fail to realize but cannot live without. These prints and photographs are more than just testaments to a threatened archaeological inheritance; they are traces of explorations and crosscultural exchange too many now seek to shut down.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
The road of excess, William Blake believed, leads to the palace of wisdom. Or possibly to a plate of CBD infused doughnuts with a chocolate dipping sauce, then an aerial pas de deux. Earlier this summer I visited two high end dinner theater productions, "The Devouring: A Marriage of Heaven and Hell" and "Midsummer: A Banquet." Dinner and theater don't necessarily go together: Fine dining is already performative, and good theater is satiating. Why complicate either? The idea of a "culinary theater," an art that feeds our baser senses and fails to engage our intellect, made Bertolt Brecht apoplectic. Then again, he probably never tried the welcome cocktail at "The Devouring." In "Midsummer," Third Rail Projects, an immersive theater outfit, and Food of Love Productions, a company that makes a picnic of pentameter, want you to follow Shakespeare's young lovers into the Athenian woods. But they don't want you to go in hungry. Or do they? When you arrive at Cafe Fae, in an art nouveau space I remember as having been a brunch spot and a clothing store , a cast member clad in jodhpurs leads you to your table and presents you with various appetizers crudites, spreads, a few cold cuts, a bag of bread rolls. (The plating leans toward Mason jars and gingham. Athens: so homespun.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
At a moment when living composers especially women struggle to get their works performed, few would have predicted that a half hour TV show would emerge as a key showcase for their work. But "Mozart in the Jungle," the daffy Amazon comedy whose fourth season began streaming on Friday, has become an unlikely destination to hear new music. Here is a taste of some of the recent pieces featured on the show, which is set in a fanciful version of the New York classical music world and stars Gael Garcia Bernal, Bernadette Peters, Malcolm McDowell and Lola Kirke. The works were performed on Tuesday at National Sawdust, the striking performance space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which itself has a cameo in the season. Caroline Shaw, a composer, violinist and singer, won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013, when she was 30 and has gone on to have her work performed by some of classical music's major artists and collaborate with Kanye West. She appears as herself in the fourth season of "Mozart": Ms. Kirke's character, who leads an ensemble devoted to works by women, serenades Ms. Shaw outside her apartment and gets permission to premiere this piece, "Hi," in a conducting competition. (Ms. Shaw conducts it here.) The composer Missy Mazzoli won wide acclaim for her opera "Breaking the Waves," based on the dark psychosexual film by Lars von Trier, and just premiered a new opera, "Proving Up," at the Kennedy Center in Washington. She composed this piece, "Impromptu," for the show's third season, where it was presented as a work by Mr. McDowell's character, the aging but rebellious maestro Thomas Pembridge. Nico Muhly, whose Hitchcockian opera "Marnie" will be performed at the Metropolitan Opera next season, wrote a made for TV aria for the third season of "Mozart," in which he also had a cameo. On the show, Mr. Garcia Bernal's character, a conductor, flies to Venice to lead a diva's comeback concert. He persuades the singer to try something new: a Muhly aria based on the "Long Island Lolita" tabloid case in which a teenager named Amy Fisher shot the wife of her lover, Joey Buttafuoco. It is sung here by the soprano Susanna Phillips, currently appearing in "La Boheme" at the Met. Paola Prestini co founded her first production company, VisionIntoArt, while still a student at the Juilliard School, and went on to become the artistic director of National Sawdust. She is currently collaborating with Robert Wilson on an opera theater work based on Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea." This is an excerpt from her piece "Listen, Quiet," which is performed in season four of "Mozart" at a chaotic party in which Mr. Garcia Bernal's character, distraught, gives away his possessions. (The cellist here, Jeffrey Zeigler, who used to play with the Kronos Quartet and is married to Ms. Prestini is part of an ensemble's worth of musicians with cameos in the party scene.)	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Soon after Anna Holmes took on the job of building the website Jezebel, in 2007, she set it apart from established publications like Vogue and Elle with a post offering 10,000 to anyone who would send in the best unretouched version of a women's magazine cover photo. And with that, Jezebel had marked its territory: feminist cultural criticism, with an edge. "It seems quaint now, because there are tons of media outlets influenced by Jezebel," Ms. Holmes said. "But at the time, there was no proof that it was marketable." Within three years, Jezebel had surpassed its sibling publication, Gawker.com, the flagship site of Gawker Media, in monthly page views. Ms. Holmes said she wasn't fully aware of her site's success until it was parodied on NBC's "30 Rock" as JoanOfSnark. "It's this really cool feminist website," Liz Lemon, the protagonist played by Tina Fey, says. "Women talk about how far we've come and which celebrities have the worst beach bodies." In the aughts and the earlier part of this decade, other online feminist publications sprang to life Feministing, The Hairpin, The Toast and many others covering everything from paid leave to the Kardashians in a conversational voice that was sometimes rude, sometimes funny and never didactic. Now many of those sites are dead or dying, and Jezebel is under new management, part of a stable of publications run by the hedge fund controlled ownership group, G/O Media, that recently set off a staff exodus at the sports site Deadspin. Feminist media has been especially hard hit by the financial turbulence in the news industry. Samhita Mukhopadhyay, a former executive editor of Feministing and now the executive editor of Teen Vogue, said she missed the years when those publications were connecting with readers, calling it "the heyday" of independent feminist media. "It was this amazing moment where we were making careers out of blogging in our underwear. Now it's not a good time for start up media," she said, adding, "I worry that people are afraid to align themselves with publications that are explicitly feminist." The gradual collapse has continued into this year. Feministing, an independent blog founded in 2004, plans to shut down in the weeks to come. At its peak, the site had 1.2 million unique monthly visitors, with most revenue coming from ads and reader donations. The co executive editors, Lori Adelman and Maya Dusenbery, said Feministing helped popularize the term "slut shaming," ran early interviews with chart toppers like Lizzo and pushed for coverage of Gamergate, a cybermob that targeted women. Molly Elizalde, the former editorial and creative director of Lenny Letter, said she had recently tried to help a female journalist place an essay, only to realize, "There's a huge hole." To some degree, the sites were undone by their own popularity. Larger media organizations like The New York Times, The Washington Post and Conde Nast took notice of the rising generation of women journalists and hired them. (The Times hired gender editors in 2017; The Washington Post has a gender columnist and a product called The Lily that is targeted at women.) And with the rise of the MeToo movement, the concerns of the scrappy upstarts became the stuff of prizewinning investigations conducted by major news outlets. At the same time, women's glossies at the big magazine publishers absorbed elements of that voice, a sensibility that also informed television series like "Fleabag" and "Broad City." "A lot of these closures were less about any sort of failure and actually about our success," Ms. Schrupp, the former Broadly editor, said. "These places became so successful at showing women's experiences as full, real experiences that other companies had to keep up. But it's sad that they're the ones who suffer for it." Ms. Holmes noted the change that has taken place since the early days of Jezebel, when her use of the word "feminism" in an early memo "set off alarm bells" at Gawker Media, as did her posting of a story on menstruation. Editors may have also adjusted their view of which stories are right for women's publications. Stella Bugbee, the editor in chief of The Cut, the popular site that is part of New York Media, said web data shows that a reader interested in beauty products will also click on a political story. So The Cut runs "The Body Politic," a column by Rebecca Traister, the author of "Good and Mad: The Revolutionary Power of Women's Anger," alongside one by Daise Bedolla called "Why Is Your Skin So Good." Historically, Ms. Traister said, it "has never blown anyone's mind" that a newspaper subscriber would be interested in two things at once say, stocks and sports because the reader, presumed male, was understood to have varied interests. "The integration of feminist political commentary and investigative reporting with other stuff, whether it's fashion or beauty or sports, is part of a necessary expansion of the mainstream media to include women as full human beings," Ms. Traister said. Hanna Rosin, a co founder of Slate's DoubleX vertical, described Jezebel and other early women's blogs as "lady spaces where people get rowdy." That rowdiness, Ms. Rosin said, has largely been traded for the landmark investigations published by large publications able to afford the cost of having reporters and editors focus on a single story for months at a time. She cited the articles on Harvey Weinstein in The Times and The New Yorker as "earth shattering," adding that they were made possible thanks to the "coming of age" of women's media. But some journalists from the early wave worry that the voice of the feminist blogs has been diluted on its way to the mainstream. "I remember The Washington Post started this women's blog and it was in lipstick font," said Jessica Valenti, who co founded Feministing with her sister, Vanessa Valenti. She was referring to a site called She the People that the Post started in 2012 whose logo had a lipstick underline. "I was like, 'Ugh, this is what happens when mainstream publications try to take on an insurgent young thing.'" Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, the current editor in chief of Jezebel, concurred, saying, "There's an edge that feminism brings to coverage. And it naturally will get softened when it's no longer run by the feminists it's targeting." Despite the recent shutterings, the particular voice of the feminist blogs has not disappeared. The godmother of them all, Bust, started as a 'zine by Debbie Stoller and Laurie Henzel in the Riot Grrrl days, is hanging in there 26 years after its founding. The magazine's motto "For women with something to get off their chests" sums up an ethos that seems unlikely to die, no matter what troubles come for the media industry.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
XXXTentacion, the Florida rapper who was killed in June at age 20, reached No. 1 with his first posthumous album, while Billboard decided to uphold its results in a contested chart two weeks ago in which the accuracy of its data had been called into question. "Skins" (Bad Vibes Forever/Empire), XXXTentacion's third album, reached the top spot with the equivalent of 132,000 sales in the United States last week, which includes 52,000 in sales of the full album and 122 million streams of its tracks on services like Spotify and Apple Music, according to Nielsen data reported by Billboard. It is the second time that XXXTentacion who was awaiting trial on charges of battery, false imprisonment and witness tampering at the time of his death has topped the chart, following his last album, "?," in March. Meek Mill's "Championships" (Maybach/Atlantic), last week's chart topper, fell one spot to No. 2 in its second week, and Michael Buble's holiday album "Christmas" a seasonal chart hit every year since its initial release in 2011 is in third place. On Tuesday, Billboard also announced the results of an audit of its album chart covering the week that ended Nov. 29, when Travis Scott's four month old album "Astroworld" beat the rapper 6ix9ine's "Dummy Boy" for the top spot. Those results were immediately contested, with questions being raised over the data collected and processed by Nielsen Billboard's longtime partner on its charts and the increasingly common practice of bundling albums with sales of concert tickets or merchandise, a tactic widely seen as a way for artists to boost their chart positions.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
If you have health insurance through Medicare, the federal health care program for those 65 and older, your annual open enrollment period the time when you can change your coverage starts today and runs through Dec. 7. Choices you make now will take effect Jan. 1. Traditional Medicare covers hospital stays and outpatient visits on a fee for service basis, and you don't need to do anything if you're satisfied with your coverage. But if you buy an additional Medicare Part D prescription drug plan, or if you have chosen coverage through a private Medicare Advantage managed care plan, it's wise to pay close attention, because details can change significantly from year to year. Premiums may go up, drugs may be dropped from the menu of covered medicines and doctors you like to visit may leave your network. "The decisions you make in open enrollment can impact you for the entire year, or even longer," said Nicole Duritz, the vice president of health education and outreach at AARP. Medicare Advantage plans often carry low or even no premiums and most include prescription drug coverage, so they're often attractive to people on fixed incomes. They usually restrict care to a network of doctors, however. Offerings vary widely from state to state, and even within states. About 14 million people, or more than a quarter of Medicare beneficiaries, are enrolled in the plans.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
Each week, technology reporters and columnists from The New York Times review the week's news, offering analysis and maybe a joke or two about the most important developments in the tech industry. Want this newsletter in your inbox? Sign up here. Hi, everyone. I'm Kate Conger, a tech reporter, here to tell you about how the tech world got caught up again this week in a debate about censorship and free speech. On Tuesday, President Trump accused Google of burying conservative news sites in search, and on Wednesday he posted a video that claimed Google had failed to promote his State of the Union address on its home page as it had for President Barack Obama. Google had, in fact, promoted Mr. Trump's State of the Union address. And search engine experts said Google's search algorithm was influenced by keywords that appear on a site and how often that site is linked to by other websites, not political bias. Still, the president's accusations echoed throughout the tech industry. My co worker Sheera Frenkel and I wrote this week about an internal push among Facebook workers who claim that the company is unwelcoming to conservative employees and question its ability to impartially moderate content. All of the furor comes at an inconvenient time for executives, some of whom are scheduled to testify before Senate and House committees. Election interference and social media influence campaigns will almost certainly come up, but expect plenty of questions about how these companies moderate political speech, too. Most tech companies strive to be politically neutral Google, Facebook and Twitter all have political action committees that tend to donate evenly to Republicans and Democrats. Yet they're still struggling to counter allegations of bias. Part of the blame lies with the companies, which are consistently opaque about how their services work. This can leave users to invent conspiratorial explanations for how the companies work. But the continued pressure on tech companies to clean up election interference on their platforms seems to be nudging them toward transparency. Several companies have introduced ad transparency tools ahead of the midterm elections, giving details about political ads that run on their platforms. Opening up about their moderation guidelines might help users understand how companies police and organize the content on their platforms. In other news from the week: My co worker Nellie Bowles has written a profile of Vinod Khosla, a billionaire who has spent more than a decade locked in a bizarre legal battle to keep visitors from walking onto a stretch of California coastline he purchased. (Mr. Khosla told Nellie that he'd be fine if visitors arrived by boat.) Mr. Khosla's beach fight has dragged on endlessly, yet somehow I can't stop reading about it. As Nellie puts it, "The stakes are both enormous and hilariously low." I loved Farhad Manjoo's column about the ways technology enables "overtourism." Services like Airbnb and Uber make travel more affordable, while Instagram lures travelers to a handful of destinations in hopes of getting "the shot." The column got under my skin because I'm completely guilty of the bad habits Farhad describes I use Instagram as a travel agent, scouring through geotags to find my next destination. Heather Murphy has the fascinating story of Barbara Rae Venter, the genetic genealogist who helped investigators crack the Golden State Killer case. Ms. Rae Venter started exploring genealogy as a hobbyist, but is now involved in dozens of criminal investigations, and her story reveals the kinds of clues genealogy can provide. Although David Gelles writes that Elon Musk is facing a number of challenges at Tesla, Mr. Musk continues to embarrass himself on Twitter. This past week, he renewed his baseless claims that a man involved in the effort to rescue a boys' soccer team from a flooded cave in Thailand is a pedophile. When Mr. Musk was challenged on this, he argued that if his claim was false, the man surely would have sued and that the lack of a lawsuit proved his point. But surprise! The man, Vernon Unsworth, informed Mr. Musk of his intent to sue in early August, BuzzFeed reported. Kate Conger writes about privacy and tech policy issues, as well as Uber and Twitter. She joined The Times from Gizmodo. Follow her on Twitter: kateconger.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
"How to Retire in Your 30s with 1 Million in the Bank," a Times article about the FIRE movement (it stands for "financial independence, retire early"), generated a lot of reader responses. Some were dubious about the whole idea. Some expressed their own desires to exit the rat race. And many readers had practical questions about navigating the thornier issues of personal finance. Here, the story's subjects answer those questions. Followers of FIRE pride themselves on hacking their finances, so they can lower their living expenses and live off their savings. But what about health care? How can they afford to pay for skyrocketing medical costs, especially when they grow older? Vicki Robin, an author of "Your Money or Your Life," has been financially independent since the 1970s, when she was in her 20s. For the first 10 years, she said, "I was stupid and I didn't have insurance." Later, she bought a high deductible, low premium policy, which saved her from financial ruin when she was diagnosed with cancer. "I had several thousand dollars in expenses, then my health insurance kicked in," she said. Now 73, she is on Medicare. As full time travelers, Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung, a 30 something married couple from Toronto, are covered through what's known as expat insurance. They recently purchased a policy from IM Global with a 2,500 deductible for around 30 each per month, Mr. Leung said. For dental work, they practice medical tourism. "We got our teeth cleaned in Poland for about 50," Ms. Shen said, adding that she found their dentist on the site Dental Departures. Carl Jensen, a software engineer near Denver who "fired" last year, at first bought coverage from the Affordable Care Act exchange, paying around 700 per month for his family of four. The family now has coverage through his wife's employer (she took a job after he retired). Should they need to self insure in the future, Mr. Jensen would likely use a health care cooperative like Liberty HealthShare, as other FIRE adherents have, where members share medical expenses. A policy for his family would cost about 500 per month, he said. While health care is expensive in the United States, some of it nevertheless operates on a sliding scale, said Pete Adeney, a.k.a., Mr. Money Mustache. For instance, A.C.A. plans are subsidized. "So, if you are truly retired with, say, a 1 million portfolio and choosing to live off 25,000 of annual dividends, that is your only taxable income, and you would qualify for very low health insurance premiums," Mr. Adeney said. What about education costs? How can you send your children to college on a modest fixed income? For Mr. Jensen, Mr. Adeney and other FIRE parents, the answer involves rethinking modern ideas about higher education and parenting. "I told my children that we'll find a way to get them to college, but we're not going to pay for the whole thing," said Mr. Jensen, who has two young daughters. "I don't think I'm obligated to do that." Mr. Adeney's strategies for educating his young son include attending a lower tuition in state school, encouraging his son to work through high school to save money for education costs, living off campus with roommates, "and all the traditional college behaviors that allowed earlier generations to get through their education with a smaller loan balance." Scott Rieckens, who moved his family from high cost Southern California to Bend, Ore., after adopting the FIRE principles, said he and his wife prefer not to start a tax advantaged 529 college savings plan for their 3 year old daughter because it isn't sufficiently flexible. In 15 years, Mr. Rieckens said, "I can't tell you what the state of the job force or higher education is going to look like, with automation, robotics and A.I. coming into play, online free courses." One thing he does know: He wants his daughter to work during high school and college, as he and his wife did, to supplement whatever assistance they provide. "Financial literacy is the best gift we can give her toward her future," Mr. Rieckens said. How can 1 million last 30 years or more in retirement? Many FIRE folks follow what they call the 4 percent rule. Jason Long, a pharmacist in rural Tennessee who retired last year at 38, and who chronicles his financial life in lucid prose on his blog, explained how it works: "The safe withdrawal rate of 4 percent means that you should calculate 4 percent of your current portfolio amount. You can withdraw that amount every year. For instance, 4 percent of 1 million is 40,000. You are allowed to increase that 40,000 by inflation only. Suppose inflation was 3 percent for the year. Next year you can spend 40,000 3 percent of 40,000, or 41,200. Doesn't matter whether your portfolio went up to 1.2 million or down to 0.8 million." Mr. Long adds: "There is some disagreement over how safe this is and how long the portfolio will last. We are on a 3 percent withdrawal rate. There is no historical precedent for that ever failing over any time, period." But perhaps the best way to preserve a nest egg in retirement is to not spend a lot of money. Being frugal is the key to FIRE, then as now, Ms. Robin said: "No matter what my means and when I was young I lived on just over 100 a month even then I would come out ahead at the end of the year." What if there's an economic downturn or financial crisis? Ed Ditto, who blogs as Early Retirement Dude, faced that nightmare scenario. He retired in 2005 with close to 1 million, and watched his portfolio rise over the next two years. But when the financial crisis hit, he and his wife lost 48 percent of their savings. "It was terrifying," Mr. Ditto said. "The emotional side is something nobody can prepare you for." Thankfully, he had a paid for house with low yearly property taxes ( 1,500), and enough cash to cover 15 months of expenses if he tightened his belt (he did). The experience taught him two important lessons: Keep cash on hand and don't panic sell. "I am religious about maintaining six months' expenses in a money market account and I frequently have more. Often a year," he said. Mr. Ditto also defends full service brokers more than your average low fee index fund investing FIRE follower. In 2008, his own broker talked him out of liquidating his entire portfolio. It was wise advice, it turned out. As he detailed in a blog post, his net worth has recovered and far surpassed its precrash value, now approaching 2.6 million, even after drawing out living expenses for the past 13 years. If or when the next economic crisis hits, Mr. Ditto said, one thing he won't do is stay glued to the TV, as he did back in 2008. "Being an early retiree gives you too much time to pay attention to the financial press when you shouldn't do that." Instead of leaving the work force, why not find a more rewarding job? We posed this question to several FIRE adherents, and the short answer was, they didn't consider that option. Indeed, many were so burned out from their jobs by the time they quit, they still look back on the experience with something akin to post traumatic stress. "I would work if I could do it completely on my own terms," said Mr. Jensen, adding that he knows he is unlikely to find such a scenario. Now that he is free of one, a job is the least of his interests: "I heard a quote the other day that only boring people are bored. There's so many things I want to do." For Ms. Shen, who works in information technology, changing jobs or cities wouldn't have solved the underlying instability she felt in her tech profession. "I'm always subjected to that risk of being outsourced," she said. Now, she and Mr. Leung travel, blog and are writing a book about their experience for Penguin Random House, to be published next year. "We're outsourcing ourselves, instead of my job being outsourced," she said. Mr. Long said going back to work at some point is "certainly a possibility," though right now he has plans to volunteer as a running coach and as a teacher for an English as a second language program in his area. Besides, he currently doesn't need the money. "One of my favorite books is 'Walden' by Henry David Thoreau," Mr. Long said. "Nothing in 'Walden' involves the acquisition of material possessions."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
TO LOVE AND TO CHERISH "I'm the one you want to sit next to when things are dull," says , whose new novel, "By Invitation Only," debuts at No. 4 this week. "My old sweet friend Pat Conroy once said to me, you know, you're funny on the page," she recalls. "And I said, yes, I am. I know there are those who say humor diminishes the literary value of a story, but I think humor is desperately needed in every corner of this world. Desperately. Humor is a mighty powerful tool when correctly applied." Frank's wit permeates her social media (her Facebook bio says she's been "married for a thousand years to a saint whose name is Peter, not to be confused with the biblical one, with whom I have two spectacular children Victoria and William, not to be confused with the queen or the conqueror") and infuses "By Invitation Only," a Southern comedy of manners about the marriage of a wealthy young woman from Chicago and the son of a South Carolina farmer. Her own family inspired the novel in a way. "My two children married splendid people over the last three years and all sides couldn't be happier," Frank says. "But what if they had not been so wise? Our weddings were wonderful. But what if they had been nightmares? I started thinking of all the many things that could've gone wrong. And what about the courage it takes to marry someone outside your world? I think my main characters Shelby and Frederick were so in love they barely noticed the differences in their backgrounds. But the mother of the groom and the mother of the bride did, and that's when the fun began."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The last time the country was at war with itself, Michael Moore made a movie people were mad at, too. It opened at the end of June, 16 years ago. The parent company that released it didn't even want to. But after weeks of controversy, the Palme d'Or at Cannes and a very good trailer, Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" had become a thing, such a thing that there was no not seeing it or, since we're talking about scorched earth culture combat, having feelings about its right to exist even if you hadn't. By June 27, his documentary howl against the Iraq war earned him the No. 1 movie in North America. And the reason to bring it up now is that we're back there again, in conflagration. Only, the war is civil, and the casualties include the unjustly Black dead. As yet, no work of popular culture has arrived that crystallizes, totalizes and polarizes the way Moore's movie did. Excuse me, no new work. What seemed called for in 2004 was a reckoning over a government waging war in our name. Moore's was among the opening salvos. What feels called for now is an interrogation of government, monuments and entertainment. Down go the statues. Away with the films. One watchword back then was "freedom" "freedom fries," "Operation Iraqi Freedom." Three presidencies later it's "systemic" a term that knows the psychic, bureaucratic undergirding designed to keep certain people's freedom curtailed. The movies had been around for about a century. They couldn't help but perpetuate the old harms. A steward of the system never wants to hear about "systemic." To the steward, the system is simply life. This was not a great week at the box office. Right behind Moore were the Wayans brothers at, for them, a low ebb with "White Chicks," in which Detectives Marlon and Shawn disguise themselves as a couple of socialite blondes in order to fight crime. At No. 5, in its second week, was Tom Hanks unbridled and unsinkable in Steven Spielberg's "The Terminal." Two movies were about cats estranged tiger siblings in Jean Jacques Annaud's live action "Two Brothers" and Bill Murray lazing his way through his voice work as Garfield in a partially animated version of the comic strip. It's the most effective stretch in the film, ending with the notorious tale of President Bush receiving word of the second attack then continuing to read children a book at a school in Florida. And something about the way Moore presents this bit, as an aftershock of this electoral cataclysm, forced me to rewind just because I really had to think about what I would've done in that moment. According to Moore, the president just sits in the classroom for seven minutes. What follows is mixed bag agitprop. Moore manages to wrap in the Bushes' cozy business relationship with the Bin Laden family; the American industrialization of fear and paranoia and xenophobia; the constriction of privacy; the toll of the war on Iraqi civilians, American troops, the administration and their families; a climactic bid to get congressional lawmakers to enlist their own children in the war; and the recruitment of a grieving Michigander named Lila Lipscomb to perform the mourning of her slain son along the National Mall. It's all too much. And I don't mean it's morally or ethically too much although as a tactician Moore has as much in common with David Blaine as he does "Frontline." I mean that the first 70 minutes are still masterly. But the aw shucks acuity that guides it is unsustainable because Moore lets the fire hose of enragements turn his movie into a polemical wet T shirt contest. He began as the disillusioned farceur of "Roger Me," in 1989. By the 2000s, he'd become a political assassin. (His firearms opus, "Bowling for Columbine," won an Oscar in 2003.) The achievement of "Fahrenheit 9/11" is that Moore could see clearly enough to make any movie at all. Woe to the filmmaker who would dare to play Michael Moore in 2020. That isn't a wish for a director not to. It's a dare. Or is that work already upon us, something like Arthur Jafa's video "Love Is the Message, the Message Is Death" (2016), Black America tragically, triumphantly compressed into an epochal, all purpose seven and half minutes? Still: What medium would even currently suit the scope of the task? A month of premium television, predawn tweet storm, or seismic 8 minute and 46 second video? Moore was among the very last American nonfiction filmmakers with access to the megaplex and our undivided attention. Bureaucracy is brighter and more yielding in "The Terminal." That's what's wrong with it. Hanks is playing a schmo rendered stateless after his made up Eastern European nation (Krakozhia!) undergoes a coup. He's just landed at a New York airport, is denied entry to the United States and can't exit until his country gets its act together. In the meantime, he's got the run of the place. There's a way to watch this movie where Hanks's impersonation of a Slavic St. Bernard leaves you delighted to be covered in his slobber. He's an impossible comic marvel of excess and complexity. But another way to watch "The Terminal" is interrogatively. Hanks spends the movie being helped out by a Mexican (Diego Luna), an African American (Chi McBride) and an Indian (Kumar Pallana) who all do support work around the airport. How long would this movie be if Spielberg, working from a script credited to Sacha Gervasi and Jeff Nathanson, had somehow made it about one of them? Or, in 2004, an Iraqi? It's just to say that his wonder here is all wrong. I cracked up every time somebody slips on the floors that Pallana, whose tangy performance is still the best thing in the film, has purposely over mopped. This movie is a good time, and the last 25 minutes are absurdly moving. It just doesn't want to get near the truly emotionally, logistically harrowing business of national limbo. Instead, it makes Hanks a Christ figure, performing minor miracles of ingenuity like turning abandoned luggage carts into quarters and quarters into Whoppers. (Catherine Zeta Jones, as a pitifully lovelorn flight attendant, gets turned into Meg Ryan.) Hanks even does carpentry and handiwork. Stanley Tucci's customs director is our Pontius Pilate; and Luna, McBride and Pallana apostles. It's a fable of what somebody heard Christianity was supposed to be cute. The sulfuric churning the torture and terror and ambivalence and uncertainty of faith, or Catholicism in the work of Scorsese and Abel Ferrara always gets sunnily allegorical with Spielberg. You're at the movies. You're also at Sunday school. I wish I could say that "White Chicks" was in on some joke. Well, I wish I could report that the joke it's in on was funny for 100 plus minutes. Watched a generation removed from its original targets (the Hilton sisters and the Hamptons), the movie still feels loosely ripe for the micro age of the Becky and the Karen. (The white girl makeup isn't as nauseating as I remembered, either.) It's just too busy chasing gross out bits to reap much durable satire. There are only two movies in this batch with anything interesting for a white woman to do. One is act like robot. The other is launch herself onto Ryan Gosling. The robot movie loses. That's "The Stepford Wives," which was at No. 10 and not not a hit in its third week. I don't know why another version of Ira Levin's novel was necessary, since the life feels strangled from Paul Rudnick's script. The one liners suddenly dry up, and the big thought never gets completed. This version, which Frank Oz directed, brasses up a gender satire for Nicole Kidman, Bette Midler, Roger Bart and Glenn Close. But you can tell nobody could agree on how to get wherever it was Rudnick wanted to go. Kidman is fired from a television executive job (the early scenes of her and her lineup being drooled over at a convention are still a riot) and moves to Connecticut with her husband (Matthew Broderick). But the movie doesn't know what to do with most of these people. So it lets Close spend the last minutes doing her best impression of Sissy Spacek's house at the end of "Carrie." The movie feels like it's on to something about the brain deadening homogeneity of suburban whiteness, especially with Midler on the prowl. I wonder if what's missing from it now is simply more 2020, the introduction of a Terry Crews or Wayans brother to stimulate the paranoid carnality lurking within these mechanical Donna Reeds. The final shot of the movie Close sputtering alongside Christopher Walken's sparking head (long story) matches the sad dismount in "The Notebook," one of the most strangely structured love stories I've ever seen. You spend the movie being pulled between a romance in the 1940s where Gosling is a handy soldier who comes from nothing and McAdams is a Dixie belle who's got it all and a marriage story in the present with James Garner and Gena Rowlands. What's happening in the now turns grim enough to get this thing shelved as "horror." At first, all Garner is doing is reading Rowlands a romance handwritten in a notebook. Things then take a turn that makes the attachment of the two halves more formally cumbersome than emotionally tragic. We couldn't quite have known it in 2004, but this sort of sudsy romance was on its deathbed. So now when McAdams sprints toward Gosling, leaps onto him and wraps her limbs around him, my heart sped up. Nobody's that hungry for anything in the movies now, certainly not for love. The director Nick Cassavetes, working with an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, carves out lots of space for these two to get to talk to each other, like the gorgeous seven minute walk they take early on. I believe this movie more today than I previously did. It's still thin. The big question is when are these two going to be on the same page to get married and live in the bigass house he practically rebuilds for her? But there's something about McAdams flinging herself into all this thinness that fills the movie out. I don't know that "reacts to charm" is a teachable skill. But McAdams has about seven faces for it. The movie's set during Jim Crow era South Carolina. So what a moment to drop by McAdams's character's family estate. Her father spends the movie in white, 25 piece suits and a dastard's dark mustache, like he's starring in the first half of "The Colonel Sanders Story." As maybe a table full of white people dine outside, under a tent, a Black staff stands behind them, at the ready, a completely different sort of monument to the Confederacy. There's a whole separate essay to be written about how race functions in movies like this, where the only Black folks with speaking lines are all in uniforms taking care of white people like Garner and Rowlands in their nursing home; where James Marsden arrives as a toothsome suitor who "comes from old Southern money"; where McAdams never asks Gosling about the Negroes integrating hoedowns on his daddy's front porch. You don't have to jump to any conclusions about what's what because the implication concludes itself. The Black people in "The Notebook" dance and serve and band lead. They seem happy enough. Why dig even a little further? The South in a Sparks movie has been so racially disinfected you could eat off its floors.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Jazz at Lincoln Center's 33rd season will include appearances from a wide array of internationally renowned vocalists, tributes to the legends of jazz and premieres of new suites by members of its resident orchestra. The season will kick off Sept. 25 26, with a program featuring new arrangements of classic Charlie Parker tunes for the Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra, and will end with a similar program featuring the music of John Coltrane (June 11 12). In both cases, younger saxophonists will be featured guests. In between, the season will comprise more than two dozen different two night engagements at Jazz at Lincoln Center's main stages, the Appel Room and the Rose Theater. On Oct. 2 3, a quartet featuring Joshua Redman, Brad Mehldau, Christian McBride and Brian Blade will revisit "MoodSwing," an album that these four jazz luminaries released in 1994 (as the Joshua Redman Quartet).	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
One by one, the honorees came forward to be recognized: the wounded veteran, the tech executive and the noted porn star. It was the 10 year reunion for Scotlandville Magnet High School's Class of 1997 in Baton Rouge, La., and a few alumni were being singled out for professional distinction. Stephanie Clifford needed no reintroduction. "Everybody already knew," she said of her career in an interview. She worked the room of suits and gowns with a smile. By now, the public knows both too much about Ms. Clifford, who goes by Stormy Daniels, and almost nothing at all. She is the actress in pornographic films who is suing a sitting president, with whom she said she had a consensual affair, in order to be released from a nondisclosure agreement she reached with his lawyer just before the 2016 election. Over the past two months, she has guided the story of her alleged relationship with President Trump and the 130,000 she was paid to keep silent into a full fledged scandal. If Ms. Clifford's court case proceeds, Mr. Trump may have to testify in depositions, and her suit could provide evidence of campaign spending violations. She is scheduled to appear on "60 Minutes" on Sunday. And if her name has seemed ubiquitous repeated on cable television and in the White House briefing room, and plastered on signs outside nightclubs, where her appearance fees have multiplied there is this to consider: Unlike most perceived presidential adversaries, about whom Mr. Trump is rarely shy, Ms. Clifford has not been the subject of a single tweet. To many in the capital, Ms. Clifford, 39, has become an unexpected force. It is she, some in Washington now joke, and not the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who could topple Mr. Trump. A 1997 photo of Ms. Clifford, then Stephanie Gregory, taken from her high school yearbook. Those who know her well have registered the moment differently. Ms. Clifford has subsisted amid the seamier elements of a business often rife with exploitation and unruly fare; more than a few of her film titles are unprintable. But for most of her professional life, Ms. Clifford has been a woman in control of her own narrative in a field where that can be uncommon. With an instinct for self promotion, she evolved from "kindergarten circuit" stripper to star actress and director, and occasional mainstream success, by her late 20s. Why would a piece of paper and an executive legal team set her back? ALSO READ: Stormy Daniels Offers to Return Payment to End Deal for Her Silence "She's the boss, and everyone knew it," Nina Hartley, one of the longest working performers in the industry, said about Ms. Clifford. "The Renaissance porn star," said Ron Jeremy, once perhaps the most famous porn star of all. "She was a very serious businesswoman and a filmmaker and had taken the reins of her career," said Judd Apatow, who directed her cameos in the R rated comedies "Knocked Up" and "The 40 Year Old Virgin." "She is not someone to be underestimated." In her own scripts, she has gravitated at times toward more ambitious productions, with elaborate plotlines and nods to politics. Her standards on set can be exacting. Ms. Clifford does not mind firing people, colleagues said, banishing those who flub a scene or gild a resume. She has demanded that an actor change his "dumb" stage name because it would look silly on her promotional materials. And she has coaxed singular performances from her charges, once guiding Mr. Jeremy through a scene in which he sang to her small dog. Her competitive streak is not well concealed. After industry award nominations were announced one year, Ms. Clifford, who had amassed more than a dozen such honors, reminded an interviewer that she had been snubbed in the categories of cinematography and editing. She has a daughter, a third husband and an expensive hobby: equestrian shows. "She blends right in," said Packy McGaughan, a trainer on the competition circuit. "A pretty girl riding a horse." More recently, inconspicuousness has been elusive in her life, but that is largely by design. Ms. Clifford has leveraged her newfound crossover fame into a national stripping tour, with scheduled dates through the end of the year. Not everyone is interested in attending. "Pretty sure dumb whores go to hell," someone wrote her on Twitter last week. Classmates remember her as a serious, unobtrusive student a natural fit at a competitive, racially diverse high school with an engineering focus. They knew her as Stephanie Gregory, the girl with the auburn hair. She liked horses and Motley Crue. A quote beneath her senior yearbook photo hinted at high aspirations: "We will all get along just fine," it read, "as soon as you realize that I am Queen." The actress in 2006 at the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas. She thought she might be a veterinarian, or maybe a writer. "At first I thought I wanted to be a journalist," Ms. Clifford said by phone on Friday in a 12 minute interview about her background. Her parents, Sheila and Bill Gregory, divorced when she was about 4, leaving her largely in the care of her mother. She has not seen either parent in over a decade. Ms. Clifford, who later took her first husband's surname, came from a "really bad neighborhood," she said. She strained to remember exactly what she was like then. "I don't really know because I'm such a different person now," she said. "I wasn't like the popular girl, and I wasn't the jock, and I wasn't the ditz. I don't know. I was just sort of in the middle of the road." She had offers from colleges, she has said. She had the test scores. The dancing started on a lark, of sorts. She was 17 and visiting a friend at a strip club in town, when she was persuaded to perform a "guest set." "I remember going on stage and thinking I was going to be a lot more afraid than I was," Ms. Clifford said. "It was a slow night. There were like three people in the club, and I made enough money on two songs to make more than I did all week answering phones at the riding stable that I worked at." After high school, she found a professional home at the Gold Club in Baton Rouge, ingratiating herself with management as a reliable and magnetic performer, slogging through shifts from 3 p.m. to 2 a.m. to earn perhaps a few hundred dollars a night. A calendar from 1999, in which Ms. Clifford straddles a Harley Davidson as the dancer for July, still sits in the club, now called the Penthouse Club Baton Rouge. "We knew," said Chuck Rolling, who has long overseen operations there. "She was moving in a direction that was bigger than us. We're in Baton Rouge. We're not even New Orleans." Ms. Clifford eventually graduated to higher profile dancing work, traveling across Texas and Louisiana to headline at strip clubs, before transitioning to pornography. She was both determined to bend the business to her will and conflicted about the long term consequences. "I have very mixed emotions about stripping because stripping got me where I am now," she said, at age 23, in an industry interview. "I own my own house, I own my own car, I own my own business. My credit is excellent. I have nice furniture and nice things." Still, the risks were clear. "I have just seen so many girls that it just ruins them," she said then, "so many women who are 35, 40 years old and still stripping and have nothing to show for it, and that is just really sad." Ms. Clifford chose a more tempestuous stage name than most peers. She was not an Angel, or a Summer, or a Destiny. She was Stormy. And she was blond now. Ms. Clifford has not shown up at competitions since news broke in January that she accepted a financial settlement in October 2016 weeks before the election agreeing to keep quiet about her alleged intimate relationship with Mr. Trump. She has said the affair, which representatives of Mr. Trump have denied, began in 2006 and extended into 2007, the year she married Mr. Mosny. Earlier this month, she escalated public attention by filing suit, calling the 2016 contract meaningless given that Mr. Trump had never signed it and revealing that the president's personal lawyer had taken further secret legal action to keep her silent this year. She has said that she does not want to expose the equestrian world or her daughter to the attendant circus trailing her now. But the show has gone on for Ms. Clifford. She has danced across the country in recent months, from Las Vegas to Long Island. There are many more appearances to come. It would be foolish, she has said, to turn down more money than usual for the same work. "She likes to maximize her profits," said Danny Capozzi, an agent who manages her bookings, "not only on the feature dance bookings but at all times."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
After Kate Walter, a memoirist and essayist, was accepted onto Westbeth's wait list in 1987, she tried to put it out of her mind. "You can't think about it too much," Ms. Walter said, explaining that, even back then, when Manhattan still had a relative abundance of inexpensive apartments where artists could live and work, spots at Westbeth, a well known artists' housing complex in the West Village, were highly coveted. "It was secure; you knew you wouldn't have to leave," Ms. Walter said. But affordable rent wasn't the only, or even the primary, draw. Moving into Westbeth which opened in 1970, after a young Richard Meier oversaw the conversion of the former Bell Laboratories into 383 live work spaces also meant joining an artistic community. "It's a legendary place, living among all these artists. I liked the idea of that," said Ms. Walter, 69, who was ecstatic when she finally made it to the top of the list after a decade. "I remember calling up all my friends and my parents, screaming." Not even the size of the apartment she would be moving into a 390 square foot studio dimmed her enthusiasm. She had been sharing a one bedroom apartment in the East Village with her long term girlfriend, and initially the plan was for them to move into Westbeth together. But when they discovered that their combined income would push them over the limit for a one bedroom apartment, it was decided that Ms. Walter should take a studio by herself. "We weren't getting along anyway at the time, and it seemed like some space might help," she said. "It was really a blessing, as we broke up a few years later." And if her studio was, in some ways, spartan she slept on a pullout sofa because there wasn't enough floor space to have a bed and do yoga at home the building offered an elevator and a laundry room, which felt like luxuries after decades of living in walk ups. Most important, she had the freedom to focus on the work she wanted to be doing. "It really enabled me to write creative nonfiction," said Ms. Walter, who wrote her memoir, "Looking for a Kiss: A Chronicle of Downtown Heartbreak and Healing," while living at Westbeth. "If I had a higher rent, I would have had to do more of other things." Occupation: Writer of creative nonfiction and recently retired staff instructor at the Borough of Manhattan Community College. What is Westbeth: The first and largest federally subsidized artists' colony, opened in 1970 in a cluster of converted Bell Laboratories buildings. The wait list has been closed for years. To get in, Ms. Walter had to prove she was an artist by showing her work, and she had to be recommended by other artists in her field. An aging community: Although Westbeth is a NORC, or naturally occurring retirement community, in recent years Ms. Walter said she has noticed more children in the halls. Creative pursuits: Ms. Walter is part of an acting group and a singing group called the Bliss Singers. Both workshops are held at Westbeth and taught by Westbeth residents, but they are open to others who live in the neighborhood. On how other residents live: "It's really interesting to see what other people in your same line do with their space," Ms. Walter said. "Some built rooms; one woman built lofts; another couple built all these cabinets. Another guy had his bed and his desk against one wall, and the other 80 percent of the space was his painting studio. Everyone's apartment looks different." Of course, she added, "living here has its ups and downs people know your business and that kind of thing." It also took her 14 years on the internal wait list to move into a one bedroom apartment, a 600 square foot space for which she pays 1,021 a month. "My friends like to joke that it only took me 24 years to get a one bedroom in Westbeth," said Ms. Walter, who consulted several people in the building to help decide whether she should take the apartment or hold out for a potentially better space in the future. After a weekend of consideration, she told the management office she would take it, and she felt certain she had made the right choice when they told her they had been inundated with calls and inquiries from other wait listed residents.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. We're all stuck at home at the moment, so here are the 50 best movies on Netflix right now. B.Y.O.P.: Be Your Own President Jimmy Fallon, Stephen Colbert, Conan O'Brien, Seth Meyers and James Corden all took last week off. On Monday, they returned to a county seared by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and the protests that followed. On "The Tonight Show," Fallon began by addressing the recently unearthed clip from a 2000 episode of"Saturday Night Live" in which he wore blackface to play Chris Rock. He said he was sorry, embarrassed and "horrified." "The thing that haunted me the most was, how do I say: 'I love this person. I respect this guy more than I respect most humans. I'm not a racist. I don't feel this way,'" Fallon said in his monologue. "And instead, what I kept getting advised was to just stay quiet and to not say anything. And that's the advice because we're all afraid."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
It takes grit to run a modern dance company for 20 years, and Pascal Rioult has succeeded, driven partly by a desire to churn out works meant to pack an emotional wallop. Like his mentor Martha Graham, in whose troupe he danced, he creates efficiently structured choreography that is meant to stir and even unsettle the soul. Yet while Mr. Rioult's passion for pairing dance and music is obvious, passion isn't everything, and a missing ingredient blurs his efforts: a choreographic voice of his own. This week at the Joyce Theater, Rioult Dance New York presented two programs that included works by Graham and May O'Donnell, another mentor, as well as the premiere of "Dream Suite," set to Tchaikovsky's romantic Orchestral Suite No. 2 in C. Inspired in part by the surreal work of Chagall, Mr. Rioult strives to bring a dream, haunted by two birds and a bull, to life. In this effort to explore his mischievous side dancers wear animal masks designed by Anne Posluszny Mr. Rioult never really gets a handle on Tchaikovsky's lush music, which opens as two groups of six take turns crossing the stage diagonally and retreating like lapping ocean waves. His movement is a rote, repetitive string of reactions to notes as he choreographs with opposition in mind: The hips dart one way, as the arms spiral in another. Mr. Rioult, intent on evoking a world of whimsy, also injects shuffling, pigeon toed steps that look a great deal more awkward than truly odd. Charis Haines, alone in the middle of the stage, curls onto her side as the scene shifts: Mr. Rioult seems to take inspiration from the suite's fourth movement, "Reves d'enfant" ("Child's Dreams"). Dancers, no longer a chorus but peculiar characters, saunter through the space.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
After the talk of taxi ads and touring, what to do about scalpers and what's up with the cast recording and how much will the investors be repaid, the conversation turned, improbably, to artificial flowers. It was a steamy July morning in a poster packed office on the ground floor of a Greenwich Village apartment building, and 23 people who had raised money to finance "Hadestown" were gathered for the first time since the show a contemporary retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth had won the Tony Award for best new musical. Mara Isaacs, one of four lead producers and the only person in the room standing, punched her right hand into her left palm to punctuate her points as she outlined plans to keep the show front and center while newer musicals began to arrive and lure the limelight. Did the co producers want to pay to resume distributing them, at least to the scores gathered nightly at the stage door? And what about the effect of a nonbiodegradable memento on the environment? Ms. Isaacs who had helped shepherd the project since "Hadestown" was a concept album by a Vermont based folk musician with no ties to Broadway knew a tricky issue when she saw it. The matter was tabled for another meeting. "We're obviously in a really great position right now," Ms. Isaacs said . "But we're not taking that for granted." She was talking about her own show's fortunes, but she could have been talking about women like herself, who are arriving on Broadway as lead producers in ever greater numbers, and whose influence is reshaping theater's top tier. "There's been such a change," said Julia Jordan, the executive director of the Lillys, which promotes gender parity in theater. "Some sort of tipping point was reached this year." As leaders and tastemakers they are bringing their own life experiences to bear on the shows they oversee, particularly attentive to how women and girls are portrayed, and whether women are employed on their creative teams. "Of course, if we have a different way of being in the world, it's going to affect what we produce and how we produce," said Ms. Price, who staunchly believed that a radical rethink of "Oklahoma!" belonged on Broadway. "It really matters." How They Got Here Some Broadway producers, of both genders, arrive in the industry with personal fortunes to draw upon. Others have historically learned the ropes by starting as apprentices to already successful producers. But many in this new generation of female producers are taking alternate paths to the industry's top rung picking up skills in the nonprofit theater world, which has become an important breeding ground for Broadway shows, or in the corporate entertainment industry, home to many of the movie and pop music brands that end up seeding international stages. "Collaborations between the nonprofit and commercial sectors have become much stronger, with much more fluidity," said Caro Newling, a British producer who has worked with the director Sam Mendes, first running the London nonprofit Donmar Warehouse, and now as commercial producers . "Once you become part of the fabric, it allows you to learn more, understand more, find your way around more." And then there are those working in both spheres: Barbara Pasternack, the artistic director of the nonprofit TheaterWorksUSA, is leading a commercial production of "The Lightning Thief" that opens on Broadway in October, while Ms. Roth is supporting a nonprofit Broadway revival of Paula Vogel's Pulitzer Prize winning "How I Learned to Drive" that opens in April. Other women are cutting their teeth in the recording industry, the film business and large theater conglomerates before coming to Broadway. So Ms. Pavlovic, as chief executive of the Australian company Global Creatures, is simultaneously shepherding stage adaptations of "King Kong," "Moulin Rouge!", "Strictly Ballroom" and "Muriel's Wedding. " Lia Vollack, as head of the theater division at Sony Pictures Entertainment , is developing a musical adaptation of the film "Almost Famous," which begins its Broadway aimed production in San Diego next month, and "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," the high stakes Michael Jackson bio musical. And Ms. Pelman, as creative managing director of Stage Entertainment, a large European venture, is leading "Tina." Every indication is that women will play an increasing role in lead producing on Broadway. Ms. Frost, who teaches a producing class at Columbia University, said nine of her 10 students last semester were women. And Valerie Novakoff, an associate producer whose research found that 28 percent of commercial shows on Broadway in the last five years had a female lead producer, is planning to start a private equity fund next year to invest in productions with women in their leadership teams. Sonia Friedman is among the most successful and powerful theater producers in both London and New York. But recalling her start, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, still stings. "As I was going up through the industry, I would often get accusations that I was sleeping my way through the business," she said. "There was this view that I wasn't getting these opportunities or climbing the ladder through my own skill, tenacity, strength or talent that there had to be something else going on as well. It's shocking to say it out loud and I don't think I've ever said it out loud but it means I had to work that much harder, putting in more energy and time to prove myself." Ms. Friedman, based in London, now has a long list of credits in the West End and Broadway, and shelves full of Olivier and Tony Awards. Her productions won the best play Tony each of the last two seasons, with "The Ferryman" and "Harry Potter and the Cursed Child," and this season she is a lead producer, with Tom Kirdahy, of "The Inheritance," an ambitious two part play about gay male life in New York. She is heartened by the progress she sees in the industry. "I love the fact that younger women are feeling far more empowered to speak their mind, talking about stories and ideas that they're interested in , " she said. But she is not alone among female producers who say they have faced sexism. "There are significant unseen hurdles to leading a show to Broadway, some of which have implicit gender bias there's a lot of 'She'll never be able to do that' and 'What does she know? " said Ms. Isaacs of "Hadestown." "There were a lot of things we had to do that men would never be asked to do proving how we were raising money, who our investors were, and that the show was ready." Paula Wagner, a longtime Hollywood agent and producer who led "Pretty Woman" on Broadway, described similar experiences. "When it comes to the area of finances, I think women are held to much more rigorous standards," she said. "Men can walk in the room, and say 'I am the lead producer,' and there is a natural acceptance of that person and that position, but a woman has to earn that." Ms. Friedman said she will never forget an incident a few years ago in New York when a senior industry leader walked over to her, as she stood chatting with male producers, patted her on the head and said, "Aren't you doing well? I'm so proud of you." Eva Price sat alone on one side of a stark conference room, taking notes in a journal. The blood and bluegrass reimagining of "Oklahoma!" had won the Tony for best musical revival a few weeks earlier, and now her bookers were arrayed on the other side of the table, doling out the good news, and the bad, about their efforts to find theaters around the country willing to stage the audacious revival, which is darker than audiences raised on school and summer stock productions might expect. For years, Ms. Price placed small shows at small houses all across America but now she is playing in the big leagues. She is a lead producer not only of "Oklahoma!," but also of "Jagged Little Pill," an Alanis Morissette jukebox musical that opens in December. Ms. Price took an unusual path into producing she was working as an assignment editor at ABC News when she made the leap, helping a friend put on an Off Off Broadway show. "I didn't have family money or a wealthy husband or wife, but I just networked my face off, got a hold of properties, got a hold of investors, an eventually everything got bigger and better," she said. So she was carefully taking notes at the meeting with her bookers. There are expected to be about 40 Broadway scale shows touring the country next season, and most theaters will present only eight to 10 of them. Which presenters were committed to "Oklahoma!" and which were hesitant? Who might benefit from a call, or an early glimpse at marketing materials? Then there were the other issues, specific to Daniel Fish's idiosyncratic interpretation: Could chili be served at theaters on the road, as it is on Broadway? (To be determined.) Will a contemporary dance interlude be as long as it is on Broadway? (No.) And how could the show help theaters educate their audiences about what to expect? (Materials to come.) "Sorry to give you a tough one," Ms. Price said to the team as the meeting ended. "Next year," she said, referring to "Jagged Little Pill," "will be a little easier."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The Met Goes Beyond Its Doors to Pick a Leader Who Bridges Art and Technology For the first time in 60 years, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has reached beyond its own doors for a new leader, choosing a Vienna born museum director who is conversant in the old masters, modern art and Minecraft to steer the venerable institution through the digital age. The Met announced on Tuesday that Max Hollein, 48, currently the director and chief executive of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco and a veteran of Germany's oldest art foundation, will become its 10th director this summer. He will take command of the Met at a time when museums are under increasing pressure to remain relevant, raise funds and attract new audiences. "The Met is one of its kind," Mr. Hollein said in an interview at the museum. "The museum has the opportunity to be not just an art destination," Mr. Hollein added, but "a major provider of understanding and different narratives to a global audience." Unlike his recent predecessors Philippe de Montebello, who served for 31 years, and Thomas P. Campbell, who served for eight, Mr. Hollein did not ascend from the Met's curatorial ranks. He was reportedly a runner up when Mr. Campbell was chosen in 2008. But he was an appealing candidate this time around for a museum seeking a stabilizing force after a period of financial turmoil. He is an aggressive fund raiser with experience in contemporary art as well as a broader knowledge of art history, who has a track record of digital innovations. Since age 31, Mr. Hollein has served as a museum director, including 15 years at several institutions in Frankfurt: the Stadel Museum, which houses one of Europe's important collections of old masters; the Schirn Kunsthalle, which exhibits modern and contemporary art; and the Liebieghaus, with a world renowned sculpture collection. At the Stadel, Mr. Hollein developed a forceful digital strategy and oversaw a 69 million renovation and expansion that doubled the gallery space and created a new wing for art made since 1945. All three museums during his tenure saw record levels of attendance and added more than 2,800 artworks to their collections. He only recently moved to the United States, in 2016, to head the Fine Arts Museums, consisting of the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, which specializes in American art; and the Legion of Honor near the foot of the Golden Gate Bridge, which focuses on European art. At a time when museums are making a concerted effort to expand the cultural conversation to include more women and people of color, Mr. Hollein said it was also important to him that the Met "open up" to incorporate a range of perspectives. He cited his current institution's acquisition last year of 62 works by African American artists, from the Souls Grown Deep Foundation in Atlanta. (The Met acquired 57 works from the foundation in 2014, some of which go on view in an exhibition that opens May 22). Many in the art world had wondered whether the Met director job would draw first rate candidates, given the museum's recent reorganization of its leadership structure. Rather than governing from the top of the pyramid, like Mr. Campbell, who also served as chief executive before he was forced to step down last year, Mr. Hollein will report to Daniel H. Weiss, the president and chief executive of the Met. "We are going to be genuine partners," Mr. Weiss said. Though both will have responsibility for fund raising, Mr. Hollein will be in charge of the artistic side of the museum exhibitions, acquisitions, programming while Mr. Weiss will oversee business and operations. Nevertheless, some of the names said to be under consideration , according to a person familiar with the selection process who declined to be identified discussing internal deliberations, included Adam D. Weinberg, the director of the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York; Julian Zugazagoitia, the chief executive and director of the Nelson Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Mo.; Emilie Gordenker, the director of the Mauritshuis, the museum in The Hague; Timothy Rub, the director of the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Taco Dibbits, the director of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Mr. Hollein's art world peers seem to think highly of him. "Max is an excellent choice," said Glenn D. Lowry, the director of the Museum of Modern Art. "He's an esteemed colleague, he's known to many of us, he's been an interesting director for a while." Michael Govan, the director of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, said Mr. Hollein "is extremely personable and he has had a tremendous amount of experience in management both of organizations and friendships." Still, the selection of Mr. Hollein could lead to complaints that the Met has again chosen a white man for the top job. "This could have been a moment for the Met to take a leap into the present," said Tom Eccles, executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. "This is a moment when we're really trying to unearth different histories, different viewpoints, new ways of thinking about geographies and identities." Candace K. Beinecke, a board member who led its search committee with Richard Chilton, said that "the museum's commitment to diversity is evident in everything we do, and the search was no exception to that." The Met would not disclose Mr. Hollein's salary. As director and chief executive, Mr. Campbell's total compensation was 1.4 million, including a salary of 942,287 and the use of a Fifth Avenue apartment (which the Met plans to sell), according to recent tax records. Mr. Campbell was forced out in the wake of the museum's financial problems and low morale, departing amid revelations about a close personal relationship he had with a female staff member. Daniel H. Weiss, the president and chief executive of the Met in the museum's Greek and Roman Galleries. Mr. Hollein, as director, will report to him. (His predecessor, Thomas P. Campbell, held director and C.E.O. titles.) Joshua Bright for The New York Times To right its finances, the Met cut staff and recently started charging non New Yorkers mandatory admission of 25. The museum also scaled back plans for its new modern and contemporary wing, initially expected to cost 600 million. Mr. Hollein will have to raise money for that reconceived project at a time when many cultural projects are vying for funds, namely the Museum of Modern Art's 400 million expansion; the Studio Museum in Harlem's 175 million new home; the Frick Collection's 160 million redesign; and Geffen Hall's renovation, initially estimated at more than 500 million. Although European museum directors are typically assumed to require fewer fund raising skills, given government support for the arts, that is changing. Mr. Hollein said he raised half the cost of the Stadel extension from private donations, an impressive feat and unusual for Germany, where large cultural projects are mostly state funded. A 2014 article on the German website Deutsche Welle said Mr. Hollein "manages to walk the line between art and commerce," citing for example the Stadel's partnership with the German drugstore chain DM, which sells art pieces as prints for people's living rooms. Some have accused Mr. Hollein of going too far; in 2012, he was forced to defend the museum against accusations that he had turned the acquisition of a Raphael painting of Pope Julius II with questionable provenance into "a mass public spectacle." he said at the time: "We knew that the attribution was going to be controversial. That's why it was so important for us to not simply hang it in the museum, but to present all the facts we had gleaned over the years. I don't see this as sensationalist, but rather as a very open and transparent process." Nevertheless, the Met job will present a learning curve for Mr. Hollein, who began his career at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, as the chief of staff and executive assistant to its former director, Thomas Krens, but who has never led a museum in New York. The Met can be something of a shark tank, requiring a constructive working relationship with its powerful curators. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco receive a healthy 1.6 million visitors, but that pales in comparison to the Met's 7 million annual visitors across its three locations. In San Francisco, Mr. Hollein managed an operating budget of 60 million and over 500 employees; the Met has a budget of 305 million and a staff of 2,200. Mr. Hollein grew up in an artistic household, the son of Hans Hollein, the Viennese postmodern architect. Max Hollein studied art history at the University of Vienna and business administration at the Vienna University of Economics. As a curator, he specialized in art of the 1980s and '90s and organized the Austrian pavilion at the Venice Art Biennale in 2005. While running the de Young in San Francisco, Mr. Hollein added its first contemporary art curator, and he is not risk averse. The museum's first major show since his arrival, "Contemporary Muslim Fashion," opening in September, will explore Muslim dress codes and their influence on fashion worldwide. (Mr. Hollein's wife, Nina Hollein, is an Austrian clothing designer; they have three teenagers.) "On the one hand it's a fashion show, on the other hand it will address complex social, political questions," Mr. Hollein said. "Museums these days are one of the few areas where you can have a complex cultural discussion in a non polemical way."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
INGRATITUDE and a grating impertinence are something many parents have come to expect from their high maintenance subunits, but challenging one's parent is less common in the automotive world. One example of such churlish corporate behavior is the 2011 Kia Optima, which strongly challenges the Sonata made by Kia's parent, Hyundai. This is not simply an attempt to annoy an older relative, for the Optima is picking on the entire field of midsize sedans. Its targets include the Honda Accord, Toyota Camry, Ford Fusion, Nissan Altima and Chevrolet Malibu. What's more, the Optima is likely to have some success if Kia continues to show improvement in its quality and reliability. While the Sonata and the Optima are corporate cousins, the companies stress that they are hardly identical. Although the cars are built on the same basic architecture and use essentially the same major components, engineers for each company tweaked each car to their own performance targets. The two are also assembled far apart, the Optima in South Korea and the Sonata in Montgomery, Ala. The cars are also far apart on pricing. My Optima test car was an upscale EX with a 6 speed automatic transmission, a 2.4 liter 4 cylinder engine producing 200 horsepower and a long list of standard equipment including leather upholstery. The starting price was 23,190; the options were a 2,000 navigation package that required the addition of a 2,250 Premium Package. The premium package offers not only heated front seats, but rear seat heaters as well. Further, the front seats can be cooled just like those in high end luxury sedans. The package also includes a heated steering wheel and a two section panoramic sunroof. With all that, the window sticker was 27,440. None of the Optima's competitors can match that level of self indulgence, much less the price. The Sonata Limited comes closest by offering heated front and rear seats and a single sunroof; it costs about 900 more than the Optima EX. Hyundai intends to respond: on its 2012 Sonata, the panoramic sunroof will be standard on the Limited model, a spokesman said. The price difference is even greater for the other competitors in the class. There are two other versions of the Optima. One is a sporty model with a turbocharged 2 liter 4 cylinder rated at 274 horsepower. It starts at 26,690. A hybrid is promised this summer. Kia hasn't announced the hybrid's pricing, but predicts the E.P.A. rating will be 35 m.p.g. in the city and 40 m.p.g. on the highway. While the Optima has a smaller price tag than its rivals, its physical dimensions are similar and its interior room and cargo space are competitive. Where the Optima stands out is visually. The interior and exterior have an upscale flair that is missing in a segment where the main mission is everyday practicality. The style of the appointments and the upscale features convey a sense of fiscal well being far beyond what one would expect for the sticker price, providing succor in troubling economic times. The controls are simple and intuitive, and storage space is adequate. The twin sunroofs are a perk de soleil, really brightening the interior. The navigation system, while easy to use, showed it is subject either to fits of disorientation or a wicked sense of whimsy. In Vermont, I left the Interstate to get fuel. Rather than tell me to make a U turn to get back on the highway, it sent me along three miles of tiny dirt roads that, I suspect, were last used by Roger's Rangers. At last I passed the gas station where I had stopped and there rejoined the Interstate. Like all the vehicles in this segment, the Optima comes with the expected safety features: side impact air bags, active front head restraints, side air curtains, antilock brakes and electronic stability control. The Optima (as well as the Sonata, Fusion and Malibu) is rated a Top Safety Pick by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety for its performance in crash tests and its electronic stability control. The news from behind the wheel is just as positive. A drive on a rough road demonstrates two things. One is an extremely solid structure that refuses to concede weakness with even a small quiver. The other is the suspension's ability to keep sharp impacts from jostling the occupants. The handling is pretty much what you'd expect from a competent front wheel drive family sedan. Sweeping turns are a pleasure, but if you try to hustle through a tight corner you are quickly made aware of all the weight in the front; the Optima feels nose heavy. There is one way to make it change direction a little more quickly: Lift off the gas heading into the corner so that the nose edges a bit deeper into the turn. One minor downside is a soft brake pedal. Also, the Optima is a little slow to settle down on an undulating surface, resulting in an extra bobble or two. The steering has reasonable weight and is predictable, but it lacks feeling, that hard to define sense of a partnership with a vehicle. And there is a slight vagueness on center when you point the Optima straight ahead. The Optima can't match the steering of the Fusion, which may be the best in this class. A 6 speed manual is available only on the entry level LX version ( 19,690). Everything else, including the sporty turbo version, gets a 6 speed automatic. All versions except the hybrid have direct gasoline injection, an increasingly popular technology intended to provide more power and better fuel economy. Not only does the standard Optima have more horsepower than its main competitors, it also weighs less than all of them except the Altima. The 6 speed automatic is impressive. It is quick to figure out when it needs to downshift and it does so with finesse. Upshifts are smoothly discreet and appropriately timed. The transmission can be shifted manually by those who want to be a little more involved or are dealing with mountain roads. The Optima's strong, flexible powertrain carries an Environmental Protection Agency rating of 24 m.p.g. city and 34 m.p.g. highway. Even with more power, the Optima manages to beat its main competitors by 1 m.p.g. either in the city or on the highway. That's nice for bragging rights, but inconsequential in the real world. One consideration for consumers is Kia's reliability record, which trails its competitors. For years the company fought to stay out of the lowest ranks in the reliability and dependability surveys by J. D. Power Associates. But there have been signs of significant improvement: in Power's 2011 Vehicle Dependability Study which looked at how 2008 models held up Kia ranked only slightly below the industry average. But it was still well behind Toyota, Honda and Ford. Another thing to consider is a Kia recall in March that raised questions about corporate judgment. In that action, Kia recalled about 70,000 Optimas from the 2006 8 model years because the shift cable could become detached, causing the driver to think the automatic was in Park when it was not. The worrisome thing was Kia's admission to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration that it had known about the defect for four years but decided a recall was unnecessary because, it said, drivers would notice that the shift lever felt different and would therefore use the parking brake. Kia announced the recall only after the safety agency began an investigation. That morality play aside, the Optima is a competent and extremely pleasant package, with style and price at the core of its allure.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Iowa and New Hampshire. Here they come again, reliably in grim tandem, like the flu and gastroenteritis. Two small, unrepresentative states will set the terms of the Democratic presidential campaign, exerting far more influence over the nominating process than states that rank 32nd and 42nd in population have any right to. This must end for Democrats. Everyone knows it. Everyone argues it. But then, everyone throws up their hands. Iowa has been first for nearly 50 years now, a position to which the Democratic Party has given its tacit assent. And New Hampshire why, New Hampshire has a law stating that it must be the first primary. So there. To which I say: So what? What the Democrats must do is simple. Stop giving the assent, and break the law. We need a little Democratic Party civil disobedience. Let's quickly review how Iowa came to have this position. After the calamity of 1968 (the convention riots, the Vietnam War schism), the party opened up the nominating process. States were encouraged to have primaries and caucuses. Iowa adopted a cumbersome, four stage nominating process, of which the caucuses were the first step. So it had to go early. Kathie Obradovich, a former opinion editor for The Des Moines Register, said last year that "the old story is that they figured out how long it would take to print all the paperwork on their elderly mimeograph machine." Mimeograph machine! Mark Penn and Andrew Stein write that "only a broader course correction to the center will give Democrats a fighting chance in 2022" and beyond. Tory Gavito and Adam Jentleson write that the Virgina loss should "shock Democrats into confronting the powerful role that racially coded attacks play in American politics." Ezra Klein speaks to David Shor, who discusses his fear that Democrats face electoral catastrophe unless they shift their messaging. Ross Douthat writes that the outcome of the Virginia gubernatorial race shows Democrats need a "new way to talk about progressive ideology and education." So that's how Iowa got the first vote. To Iowa's half century, New Hampshire goes back a full century. It has held the first primary since 1920. But it was, again, after 1968, when state politicians saw the nominating system was being changed, potentially threatening New Hampshire's primacy, that they passed a law saying it had to have the first primary. As is often observed, the Democratic National Committee can't do much about these dates. It's the Constitution itself (Article I, Section 4) that says that states "shall" decide on the "time, place and manner" of their elections. So the committee can't change the dates. It can, however, do something else. It can ignore the two states. That's right. Let Iowa and New Hampshire hold their caucus and primary, but don't participate. Make all the candidates agree that they won't seek a spot on the ballot. Impossible? That's what everyone will say. But it's not. Oh, I'm sure it's all very complicated with respect to the committee's bylaws. But bylaws can be changed, by people who want to change them. The problem with Iowa and New Hampshire, as David Leonhardt laid out in detail in The Times, is that they are horribly unrepresentative of a party that is now, according to the 2017 Pew Typology Survey, 54 percent white, 19 percent each African American and Latino, and 9 percent other. Iowa is 85 percent white non Hispanic, and New Hampshire is 90 percent. So what the Democratic National Committee needs to do is choose two other, more representative states. I would suggest Florida and Michigan. Florida is more diverse than the country as a whole. The United States is 60 percent white non Hispanic, 13 percent African American, and 18 percent Latino; Florida is 54, 17 and 26. Michigan is somewhat less diverse than the country, at 75, 14 and 5, but at least the black population is representative, and there are other strong arguments for making an important Rust Belt state an early test. These states are diverse in other important ways. They have major cities, smaller cities, suburbs, university towns and farms. They have economic diversity. And of course both are swing states with lots of electoral votes (29 and 16, respectively). They matter in a way Iowa and New Hampshire (six and four) do not. I say Florida and Michigan, but take your pick. The point is, the Democrats should pick two large and diverse states or it could be four states that are rotated, to add to the geographic diversity and tell them to move their primary dates (and yes, primaries would be far, far preferable to caucuses) forward. And then, let Iowa and New Hampshire do what they want, but just ignore them. The committee has some leverage here. It schedules debates. It should schedule them in Florida cities like Orlando, Tampa and Gainesville, and Michigan cities like Detroit, Lansing and Ann Arbor. Never in Ames or Manchester. That's a carrot. Now, here's a stick. Impose a debate qualification that any candidate who seeks a ballot position in either state or spends more than three days campaigning there will be barred from the debate stage. Problem solved. Yes, it's hardball. But at this point, hardball is what's needed. There is no rational argument against it. Well, maybe there's one. Some will raise the possibility that treating the two states like this will ensure that the next Democrat running for president will lose the states and their electoral votes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Volvo's Cross Country line has been a hit. Hiking up the height, adding hill decent control, and rugged cladding made their wagons more popular than s'mores. It's now available... in sedan form? (ON CAMERA) Automakers are beginning to tinker with variants of the crossover, BMW's X4 and X6 with their fastback design are a good example of that. And remember, this is not a new concept. Subaru version used to produce a sedan version of the Outback. Now they don't. Volvo is wisely keeping production low, just 500 copies, all in this paint color. A jacked up S60 could look awkward, but in my week with this curiosity, it attracted as many compliments as it did mud puddles. There's a price to be paid by skipping the Cross Country wagon. (ON CAMERA) More than cargo flexibility is lost with the sedan version, there's a lot less space. Big hinge arms don't help. The spare hogs the trunk, some automakers replace them with repair kits but those who wander off road will want the security of real rubber. The V60 wagon version easily gobbles up six packs of the two ply, this one stops... at only three? Ooof. Moving on to strengths... (SOUND UP) It's no slouch, sprinting to 60 in under seven seconds. Oomph comes from a turbocharged 2.5 liter five, yes five cylinder engine packing 250 horses (SOUND UP) and 266 lb ft of torque on standard grade gas (SOUND UP) the power is channeled to all four wheels, the gear box is a sure sifting six speed. (SOUND UP) Volvo does a nice job of pampering passengers, the S 60 is quiet at freeway speeds (ON CAMERA) Between the supremely comfortable seats and the ride quality, this is a terrific road trip car. Great for, dare I say it, cross country driving. The raised height means it's not as eager to conquer corners as the standard S60 sedan, this one is built to coddle. Being a Volvo, there are way too many safety features for me to cover. (ON CAMERA) If it feels you're not paying attention, Volvo's City Safety System will automatically brake for cars and pedestrians, and in some cases bicyclists. Funny, I couldn't find anyone to volunteer for that test. I have driven the V60 Cross Country wagon on some fairly rough terrain. Owners shouldn't try to run with Jeep Wrangler and Toyota 4Runner. Consider the buyer demographic. Moderate snowfall, deeply rutted forest service roads, and muddy stretches are a piece of cake. (ON CAMERA) In short, most owners will never ever tax the all wheel drive system. (SOUND UP) What you stare at the most is pleasant enough. Audi and Mercedes might do a more impressive job in the cabin but they don't offer a raised up sedan, do they? Volvo lets drivers set the mood when it comes to the gauge cluster. The heated wheel is highly recommended for cool climates. Storage cubbies in creative places are always helpful. (ON CAMERA) Volvo's new user interface is a candidate for best in the biz. Unfortunately it's not on this car. Until S60 gets redesigned, this small knob does the heavy lifting, and the voice commands aren't much better. A bright note, the climate controls are the best in the biz. (ON CAMERA) Stretching out is not an option in the Cross Country though foot and legroom are fine for an average sized adult. Cushions are contoured and supportive. Bottoms can be warmed, phones can be charged. A two grownup limit back here will keep everyone happy. S60 is available in front and all wheel drive versions without the Cross Country treatment (in case cladding and extra ground clearance is not your thing). But, for those who insist on traversing tougher terrain in a four door, Volvo raises the ability to get a sedan filthy, to new heights.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. Public impeachment hearings kicked off in Washington on Wednesday, with the top United States diplomat in Ukraine, William B. Taylor Jr., and a senior State Department official in charge of Ukraine policy, George P. Kent, testifying before the House Intelligence Committee. "Today's live testimony was as dramatic as it was historic. It was the biggest ratings hit for C SPAN 3 since 'Drunk History' starring Brett Kavanaugh." STEPHEN COLBERT "Today was the first time in over 20 years that Congress has held a public impeachment hearing. And if this one is anything like the last one, Trump will be impeached, then be acquitted in the Senate, and then in 20 years, his wife will lose an election to some idiot." SETH MEYERS "Today the new evidence against President Trump was called 'damning.' Some say this could end his presidency. No, wait I'm sorry this joke is from two years ago. That joke is also from one year ago and six months ago. We have we've used that cue card, like, 15 times." CONAN O'BRIEN Taylor testified that a member of his staff overheard Trump on a phone conversation with Gordon Sondland in which the president asked about "the investigations," with Mr. Sondland responding that Ukraine was "ready to move forward" with them. "'Unexplainable, illogical, crazy' that's the description Bill Taylor gave of Trump's actions. It's also the title of Trump's new memoir. Same thing, yes. Imitating Trump It's my full story and it's a coloring book, folks. You're gonna love it." TREVOR NOAH "O.K., this is just unbelievable. Trump's people were discussing their Ukrainian plot in public in a restaurant that's what he's saying. I mean, first of all, that is rude. You are in a restaurant, you put your phone away; you engage." TREVOR NOAH "A good criminal would call and say, 'Are you alone?' Trump would say, 'Are you alone? If not, go find some people to stand next to. Put me on speaker phone this is a doozy.'" SETH MEYERS "So this staffer overheard Trump asking about a foreign nation investigating his political opponent. That's like if they had a picture of Nixon breaking into the Watergate." STEPHEN COLBERT "This is big news because it appears to confirm that Trump knew about the attempt to pressure Ukraine to investigate the Bidens, which is the first time we've gotten hard confirmation of that since Trump himself. This is what these hearings are going to be like all the way through. Every bombshell will just be confirming things we already know. It will be like if, instead of a secret taping operation, Nixon had a TikTok." SAMANTHA BEE "So Trump got caught before he could force Zelensky to do it. He failed, but the fact that he's a bad criminal doesn't make it not a crime. Because if being bad at something makes you not that thing, then Trump is not a business owner or a husband." STEPHEN COLBERT "The president called the hearing a joke, a sham and a hoax and he said he didn't watch it. A White House spokesperson said the president was too busy working. Right. They might as well have said he was at a zumba class." JIMMY KIMMEL "When asked what he was doing, Trump said, 'I was cleaning out my desk.'" CONAN O'BRIEN "There's no way you were too busy to watch. Trump watches T.V. all the time. I'm shocked there wasn't a T.V. next to him while he was answering that question." SETH MEYERS "Trump wanted to, but he threw his T.V. remote out the window when he wasn't named People magazine's 'sexiest man of the year.'" JIMMY FALLON "Also those hearings he didn't watch? He doesn't like the cast." SAMANTHA BEE "President Trump criticized the use of outside counsel for questioning at today's impeachment hearing, saying, 'I see they're using lawyers that are television lawyers. They took some guys off television.' Which is ironic, because Trump would love to take one of his lawyers off television." SETH MEYERS Billie Eilish, Lizzo, and John Mayer are among the artists participating in the latest round of the "Jimmy Kimmel Live" show's "Mean Tweets Music Edition"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
On West 79th Street from Amsterdam Avenue to Broadway is a remarkable holdover from the late 19th century, two facing rows of townhouses on a wide street. In the Upper West Side/Central Park West Historic District, the buildings are almost intact, although four were replaced in the 1970s with a homely apartment house of the same height, 203 209 West 79th. Now the owner of the sour looking interloper, Anbau Enterprises, proposes to demolish it and build new residences on this unusual block residences as in a 16 story apartment house. The proposal is now before the Landmarks Preservation Commission. It is hard to look at streets like West 79th and imagine them as cynosure addresses. But these wide streets once had a grandeur that gave them far more cachet than their narrower neighbors. So it was with the debonair residences of straw colored brick and cream colored masonry in the two facing rows. The 1894 high stoop houses on the south side, Nos. 206 to 226 West 79th, were the work of the developer William W. Hall and the architects Thom Wilson, who here produced elegant feathery detail in terra cotta, shells and lacy ornament. The developer Platt Marie built the houses on the north side in 1896 and 1897, originally running from 203 to 225 West 79th. The firm engaged Clarence True, one of the great architects of the West Side, and for these structures he used his newly introduced American basement plan, with the entrance just a few steps up from the street. Although the block has been damaged by cornice removals and store installations, in its prime it gave the appearance of having been built in a coordinated fashion, rather than the usual jumble of varying groups of four or five rowhouses in assorted materials and styles. Early tenants were people like the theatrical Shubert Brothers, Lee and Jacob, who lived at 222 West 79th Street with their mother and two sisters. Or Louis Ralston, a fine art importer who lived at 206 West 79th. In 1913 he shipped 1 million in paintings from London to New York on the Mauretania, including works by Raeburn, Romney and El Greco. The 1910 census shows Ralston and his family in occupancy with, among other servants, a French butler, Henry Noirjeon. The 1915 census indicates that Noirjeon had left their employ; he was replaced by Joseph Mulligan. In 1920 the family was getting along with just a cook, a waitress and a baby nurse, but when the 1925 census rolled around, they had a butler again, Harold Smith, 30, born in Bermuda. Unlike his predecessors, he was black. It appears Smith was the last butler on the block; by 1930, the Ralstons had left No. 206, their place taken by Danish born Meta Vensel, 40, who ran a rooming house with 15 tenants. Somehow, unlike all the comparable wide streets on the West Side, this block, corners excepted, escaped the inroads of apartment houses, which otherwise came to dominate even prestigious streets like West 72nd. But the departure of the Ralstons marked the beginning of changing times on West 79th. In 1940 two safecrackers made off with 10,000 from the restaurant Tony's Italian Kitchen, which had moved into No. 212. And in 1944 Harry Lewis, a waiter who had a furnished room at No. 218, was found dead in bed, bound with neckties; an account in The New York Times did not state the cause of death. In the 1970s, the time came for four of True's houses, Nos. 203 to 209: The architect Joseph Feingold designed a grim new brown brick front when they were gutted for apartments. Now a new owner, Anbau Enterprises, has proposed a replacement for the Feingold structure. Designed by the architect Morris Adjmi, it rises 16 stories. Although the building's bare raw western exposure is discourteous to its neighbors, it otherwise makes the right gestures to a historic district, with terra cotta panels and light colored masonry in the same general palette as the houses. Except for height. If you judge the proposed apartment building by the 12 story Hotel Lucerne at the Amsterdam Avenue corner, then the design is in context and hardly jarring. But if you judge it in the context of the rows from which it derives, it's out of step. If this plan doesn't fly, the obvious option for Anbau is probably not up its alley: rebuild the original rowhouses, brick for brick. Or Anbau could propose an apartment house reminiscent of those that went up on the West Side in the 1920s an interesting exercise, but it would not address the height problem. Maybe Anbau could put up a six or eight story building of the same character as the rowhouses; it would be out of context, but not grievously so. There is historic precedent for such mixed type rows, if that's the goal. In the end, the question is, what is context in a historic district? Does our desire for a wince free streetscape trump private property rights? Do we want old looking buildings or contemporary ones? And just what is contemporary, anyway? Or do we, perhaps, just not want any change at all?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
, the executive director of the Art Students League of New York, the 142 year old nonprofit art school, will step down from that post at the end of this month to live in Spain. Mr. Goldberg, who has directed the league since 2001 and been associated with it since 1979, when he took a drawing class with Robert Beverly Hale, told members in an email last week that he and his wife, Silvia, "fell in love" last month with a village in Andalusia and bought a house there. "It has been the greatest privilege of my life to have been part of the Art Students League," Mr. Goldberg wrote. "The League will always be with me, heart and soul."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Gloria Vanderbilt, who died Monday at age 95, was many things in her long life: an artist, author, actress, socialite, designer, pawn, tragic story, triumphant survivor, eternal optimist, mother and wife (multiple times), but for many in the late 1970s and early 1980s, she was also the name that helped changed denim forever. "Gloria Vanderbilt" that looping, cursive scrawl with the G and the V leaning right as if blown by a giant gust of wind (or enthusiasm), the d listing left, as if leaning in to confide a secret, all of it splashed across the back pockets of millions of tightfitting dark denim jeans was, for a time, like a secret passport to a new world of style. It promised a taste of the life that little Gloria had grown up to live, one marked by apartments on Park Avenue, Hollywood, self invention and reinvention, beauty and fame in the face of all odds. Only thanks to Gloria Vanderbilt, all of a sudden everyone could have access to it. She took the most democratic of all American basics and married it to a story seemingly lived entirely behind a velvet rope, and the combination altered everyone's closet. If you think your clothes have nothing to do with Gloria Vanderbilt, think again. Ms. Vanderbilt was not the first magnetic society figure to put her name on a line of clothing Diane von Furstenberg beat her to that but she was the first to put it on jeans. The result propelled her to public fame in a way that her earlier forays into acting never did, allowing her to rewrite her narrative in the public imagination. Instead of "poor little Gloria," the child victim of a terrible public custody battle, she became Gloria Vanderbilt, jeans queen and female entrepreneur. And that transformation paved the way for a host of designers who came after her, from Carolina Herrera (who began her line in 1980) to Tory Burch and even the Kardashians style setters selling the elixir of their own glamour via garments. "She was relevant in everything she did," said Ms. von Furstenberg. "She got the zeitgeist for almost a century." It began in 1970, when Ms. Vanderbilt, who had discovered art in high school and studied it for a while at the Art Students League of New York, appeared on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" to show off some of her collages. (She had had a show at the Hammer Galleries in New York the year before.) That led to some dabbling in textile design. In 1976, Murjani, a Seventh Avenue manufacturer, was looking for a name to put on its jeans to set them apart from the mass of denim. Murjani was already working with Ms. Vanderbilt on a line of blouses, and the company asked her if she would be interested. Ms. Vanderbilt was unsnobby enough, and smart enough, and had been in Vogue enough, to see the opportunity. The jeans displayed her name on the back pocket for all to see and sported a little swan on the inner front pocket, a reference to Ms. Vanderbilt's first stage role in 1954, in "The Swan" at the Pocono Playhouse in Pennsylvania. (She was also one of Truman Capote's "swans," that group of beautiful women he immortalized in the 1975 story "La Cote Basque 1965.") Introduced in 1977, they were advertised on buses, and with a 1 million television commercial campaign featuring Ms. Vanderbilt herself purring into the camera. The day the commercial was shown, Murjani said, all 150,000 pairs of jeans the company had produced sold out. Ms. Vanderbilt proved you didn't need a formal design background to be a fantastically successful designer. "It's a matter of taste, isn't it, sensing what can go with what?" she said in an interview for the Financial Times in 2014. "I don't think it has to do with education." Indeed, it had to with aspiration. In 1979, her denim line was the best selling one in America, beating rivals Calvin Klein, Jordache and Sasson. If Calvin was nightclub sex, and Jordache was surf 'n' stallion sex, Gloria Vanderbilt offered something else: grown up, classy sex. Even her use of the word "derriere" in the commercials so French! smacked of that je ne sais quoi. Appearing in a fur wrap, her signature dark helmet of hair with its chin length flip shellacked into place, beaming her face wide rectangular smile, she touted the benefits of stretch denim, how it felt "like the skin on a grape" (as one model described it). She was QVC before QVC existed. In 1980, her line generated more than 200 million in sales and Calvin and co. were riding an even bigger wave to global domination.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style

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