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Zuby Malik is an unlikely candidate to violate international law. A 78 year old mother of four with a crown of silver hair, she is a retired obstetrician gynecologist with a penchant for order. But Ms. Malik is fighting for her life. After receiving a Stage 4 non small cell lung cancer diagnosis a year ago, she exhausted many of the treatments available to her and grappled with torturous side effects that left her itching and gasping for breath. During the summer, she decided to go to Cuba and bring back a cancer vaccine that is not approved in the United States. That she comes from a family steeped in medical training made the decision all the more difficult. "At first, I was a little nervous," said Ms. Malik, sitting in her Northern California living room flanked by an oxygen tank and a table of medicines. "But American treatments were not helping me, and I decided I should go to Cuba. What other choice did I have?" Soon after she began the medication, she said, her breathing became easier and her energy returned. In her refrigerator was a box of blue and orange capped vials of the vaccine. Other cancer patients are following the same unlikely trail. Since beginning to normalize relations with the United States in 2014, Cuba has become a hot tourist draw with its unspoiled beaches and vibrant night life. But the country also has a robust biotechnology industry that has generated an innovative vaccine called Cimavax. It is part of a new chapter of cancer treatment known as immunotherapy, which prompts the body's immune system to attack the disease. A vial of Cimavax in a photo supplied by the Malik family. Cimavax is a therapeutic vaccine developed not to prevent cancer, but to halt its growth and keep it from recurring in patients with non small cell lung cancer. Developed in Cuba and available to patients there since 2011, it works by targeting a protein called epidermal growth factor, or E.G.F., that enables lung cancer cells to grow. The vaccine stimulates the body's immune system to make antibodies that bind to E.G.F., preventing it from fueling the cancer's growth. It is also available in Peru, Paraguay, Colombia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Last month, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York announced that the Roswell Park Cancer Institute, a nonprofit cancer center designated by the National Cancer Institute in Buffalo, had received authorization from the Food and Drug Administration to conduct a clinical trial of Cimavax. It marks the first time since the Cuban revolution that Cuban and American institutions have been permitted to engage in such a joint venture, said Roswell Park's chief executive, Candace S. Johnson. The trial could take years, but American cancer patients are not waiting. Over the past couple of years, dozens have slipped into Havana and smuggled vials of the vaccine in refrigerated lunchboxes back to the United States, sometimes not even telling their doctors. Talk about Cimavax on cancer patient networks online has been escalating steadily as relations between the two countries have warmed and more patients are making preparations to go. "There's no doubt that without this medicine, I would be dead," said Mick Phillips, 69, of Appleton, Wis., who first went to Cuba in 2012 and has been returning annually ever since. "When we were children, we were taught that Cubans didn't know what they were doing. Turns out they do." Despite experiences like Mr. Phillips's, trials in Cuba have shown only a modest benefit over all. In the most recent trial, patients receiving the vaccine after chemotherapy lived about three to five months longer than patients who did not receive it. The study, published earlier this year in the peer reviewed journal Clinical Cancer Research, also found that vaccinated patients with high concentrations of E.G.F. in their blood lived even longer. The United States' embargo against Cuba prohibits the importation of most goods from Cuba, including medication, without a license. American citizens are now permitted to travel to Cuba if their purpose falls into one of a dozen categories approved by the Treasury Department, but seeking medical care is not one of them. Most patients going to Cuba fly through a third country such as Canada or travel under a general education category called "people to people." None have declared with customs officials the dozens of vials of Cimavax they bring back tucked in their backpacks or suitcases. Stephen Sapp, a public affairs officer for United States Customs and Border Protection, says there is no record of Cimavax being intercepted at the United States' border. If it were, it is unclear what might happen. Under the F.D.A.'s "personal importation policy, some unapproved medications may be brought into the country if there is not an adequate alternative available in the United States, or if treatment began in a foreign country and the amount is limited to a three month supply. In addition, the Treasury Department recently established a new general license enabling American citizens to import Cuban pharmaceuticals under certain circumstances. But in the case of Cimavax, the regulation has apparently never been put to the test. Ms. Malik's son, Nauman, carried 80 vials of the vaccine and a set of syringes in his backpack when he and his mother flew into Los Angeles from Cuba in June. Patients generally receive an initial round of four injections at La Pradera, an international health center that caters mostly to foreign medical tourists in Havana two to the arms and two to the buttocks and then continue to give themselves periodic injections at home for up to several months. At the airport, Mr. Malik wrote on his declaration form that he was carrying medication, but he said that authorities did not ask what it was. "I was ready for the discussion, but it just never happened," he said. Cuban researchers began working on Cimavax in the 1990s, prompted in part by the high rate of lung cancer in the country. A noncontrolled study in 1995 produced the earliest published evidence of the feasibility of inducing an immune response against epidermal growth factor in patients with advanced tumors, according to a 2010 article published in Medicc Review, an international journal of Cuban medicine. Dr. Kelvin Lee, the chairman of immunology at Roswell Park, has been collaborating with scientists at Cuba's Center of Molecular Immunology since 2011. He said he hoped the vaccine could be used on other head and neck cancers and ultimately "to prevent cancer." Patients in Cuba began receiving the vaccine free in 2011, and it has been administered to more than 4,000 patients worldwide, according to Roswell Park. Lung cancer and immunotherapy researchers are intrigued by Roswell Park's proposed trial, which would combine the vaccine with a form of immunotherapy called a checkpoint inhibitor that keeps the cancer from turning off a patient's immune system. The Roswell trial intends to use the drug Opdivo, one of four checkpoint inhibitors approved by the F.D.A. But the scientists are also reserved in their appraisal of Cimavax, in part because the Cuban trials were done on a relatively small number of patients. There is concern that the vaccine has received disproportionate attention in the flush of warming relations between the two countries. "The data is intriguing, but we need to do more definitive studies to evaluate the benefits," said Justin F. Gainor, a thoracic oncologist at Massachusetts General Hospital who works on the design of clinical trials for novel therapeutics. "Right now, the body of evidence does not support using it outside the clinical trial process." The Cuban health care system has long been recognized for providing high quality health care. A 2015 report on the Cuban health system by the World Health Organization noted, "In Cuba, products were developed to solve pressing health problems, unlike in other countries, where commercial interests prevailed." With Cimavax migrating into the United States, those commercial interests are already coming into play. In Cuba, a four shot dose of Cimavax costs up to 100 to manufacture, Dr. Lee said. Mr. Phillips, of Appleton, Wis., estimates that he pays about 9,000 for his annual supply of Cimavax, or about 1,500 a dose, which a visiting nurse administers every two months. Although some patients say the price recently dropped to about 850 a dose, the total cost of the trip can easily run more than 15,000, including airfare, lodging at La Pradera for several nights, and several months worth of the vaccine. Mr. Phillips, a lifelong smoker who was given a lung cancer diagnosis in 2009, said it was worth every penny. After chemotherapy and radiation, his cancer returned in 2010. "Since I have been taking Cimavax, it hasn't come back," said Mr. Phillips, who travels to Cuba via Toronto. How other patients are doing on Cimavax is difficult to gauge. Ms. Malik's oncologist declined to be interviewed, saying he did not know enough about the medication. Several patients said they had not told their doctors for fear that they would refuse to treat them further. "I'm afraid he won't treat me if I am being treated by a Cuban doctor," said a 57 year old woman named Lily who started Cimavax in Cuba in June and asked not to be identified because she is afraid of consequences for not declaring it. "I think he'll be afraid of liability or malpractice issues if he treated me while I was taking something that's not F.D,A. approved." In the five months since Ms. Malik began taking Cimavax, her experience has been mixed. Initially, the fluid in her lungs diminished significantly, giving her renewed energy and allowing her to get around without her walker. But recently, fluid has begun to build up in her right lung, and she has grown weak and short of breath. Her son says she is likely to switch to a new medication soon and stop taking Cimavax. a "It's not panning out as we'd hoped," he said. "It's really like the Wild West trying to know what is best to do." Stories of patients returning from Cuba are met with keen interest on the online health care social network Inspire, which supports a lung cancer group of about 53,000 members. They share information about how to travel under the radar and which size of refrigerated lunchbox is best. "We got a lot of inquiries," said Judy Gallant, an owner of P G Travel, which has offices in Ontario and Havana, and is planning trips to Cuba for half a dozen American patients. "We make it clear we are not medical people. We just help them connect with people who are." Some American patients have a new worry: that when Donald J. Trump, the president elect, takes office, he might crack down on Cuba and make it more difficult for patients to travel there. But Mick Phillips does not seem worried. "I think we're going to be O.K.," he said. "Trump may do a lot of things, but I don't think he's into preventing people from being able to live."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
International Paper in Courtland, Ala., closed in 2014, costing the local economy a thousand jobs. Hiring is growing now, but capital investment less so. Both are needed to increase productivity and economic growth. Back when "Gunsmoke" was on TV and Lyndon Johnson was president, the United States economy managed to storm ahead by nearly 5 percent a year for nearly a decade. What we would give to recover some of that power! During Ronald Reagan's presidency two decades later, the rise in the economic cycle, coming out of what was then the worst downturn in the post World War II era, averaged a bit over 4 percent a year. By the time George W. Bush lived in the White House, the rebound from recession delivered an average growth rate of under 3 percent. You want to know how much bounce it has now? In the seven years since the United States emerged from the Great Recession under President Obama, annual growth has averaged just about 2 percent. The bad news? Unless business and government do something to improve the economy's underlying capability, the United States will be lucky to achieve even that paltry growth rate over any sustained period of time. "The growth we have experienced has gained from a massive cyclical tailwind," Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary who also served as President Obama's chief economic adviser, told me. But that cyclical tailwind bolstered by putting idle resources back to work, which brought the unemployment rate down to 5 percent from 10 percent is spent. The jobless rate will not fall from 5 percent close to what economists consider full employment without excessive inflation to zero. What remains is an economy at the mercy of two powerful dynamics. The first is a gradual shrinking of the work force as a share of the population, as it is squeezed by successive waves of retiring baby boomers and no longer gaining from the one time surge of women into the paid work force in the 20th century. The second is a persistent decline in productivity growth over the last dozen years. Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute adds it up this way: Over the next five years, labor force growth of half a percentage point plus productivity growth of half a percentage point will push the economy ahead at the anemic pace of just 1 percent a year. The Federal Reserve was able to help engineer a recovery from the recession, but there is little the Fed can do to change the economy's underlying prospects. "Monetary policy can't deal with structural problems," Mr. Achuthan said. "The litmus test for any policy is, what impact does it have to improve productivity or demographic growth?" America's stagnant outlook is important: Debt is a bigger burden in slow growing economies. Paying for a growing number of retirees becomes more onerous. How the pie is divided becomes a tougher political problem in economies that don't grow. This stagnation, exacerbated by the fact that most of the income gains the economy has managed to achieve have gone to the upper crust, underlies much of the anger coursing through the public this election year. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. On its own, raw growth isn't enough. But without decent growth, combined with policies to maintain low unemployment, there is little prospect of improving the fortunes of the less well off. While Donald J. Trump exploits that anger, his grab bag of proposals deporting a large share of the work force; offering multitrillion dollar tax cuts, mostly for the rich, that would only further widen inequality; blocking trade with much of the world; maybe raising the minimum wage, maybe not would do nothing to bolster growth. But don't worry, it will be great. Hillary Clinton, who has put together a coherent platform focused on raising the incomes and enhancing the economic security of middle class families, has steered clear from addressing the very real danger of low growth over the coming decades. Instead, she has promised to put her husband, who presided over the burst of growth in the late 1990s, in charge of economic policy. Voters should not let the candidates avoid the tough questions: What, if anything, can and should be done to enhance the economy's ability to grow? Should the prospect of long term stagnation inform policy more directly? At the very least, the dismal forecast calls for the government to prepare for another bout of fiscal stimulus. The recovery by now is already seven years old. With interest rates near rock bottom, the Fed would have little room to prevent another spike in unemployment if the economy were to falter. "If there is a cyclical downturn in a year or in the next several months, there would be nothing in that shotgun," said Alan S. Blinder, a former vice chairman of the Fed who is now at Princeton. Mr. Blinder has put together a careful set of proposals to refurbish the fiscal policy toolbox in case the economy takes a tumble and stimulus is needed quickly. "Students learn in Economics 101 that lower taxes and/or higher levels of government spending can mitigate recessions by boosting aggregate demand," he writes. "That simple Keynesian idea should be no more controversial today than Darwinian natural selection or global warming." But it is. Many Republican politicians reject all three ideas. And as long as the G.O.P. is in control of Congress, that party will have its hand on the nation's spending levers. The long term is even more challenging. Some experts, like John G. Fernald, a senior researcher at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, share the view of the budget office that productivity will advance by roughly 1.5 percent a year, returning to its average pace since 1970. That would mean little more than 2 percent annual growth. Is that the best the United States can do? Not necessarily. Productivity has slowed to a large extent because hiring is growing faster than capital investment. That means each new worker is most likely not just less skilled but also has less capital to work with, less help from machinery or software to increase output and generate income. One way to increase productivity would be to provide an incentive for capital investment, perhaps with a business tax overhaul that would lead corporations to repatriate the money they are keeping abroad. Relaxing restrictions on educated immigrants would also increase entrepreneurship and investment. Subsidizing child care might encourage more mothers to return to the work force faster. Eliminating onerous regulations things like occupational licenses that restrict eligibility for a variety of jobs and overly tight zoning laws that prevent the building of new homes would improve economic efficiency and equity. More focused training could substantially enhance the human capital of the work force. Public investment to revamp the nation's crumbling infrastructure would not only produce jobs for underemployed construction workers, it would also deliver a big productivity boost. How much bang would this deliver for our bucks? Mr. Summers says better policies could add from a half to a full percentage point to growth. And he holds out hope that substantial investments in advanced technologies that have not yet shown large productivity benefits will eventually do so. But even with the best of intentions, cautions Douglas W. Elmendorf, a former Congressional Budget Office chief who is now dean of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, "we are not going to get back to 3 percent with anything we know how to do now."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
Live like a king. It's a phrase that connotes wealth, luxury, excess, a life of unlimited possibility and security. How easy it is to let the sparkle of the crown jewels blind us to the dead enemies and discarded undesirables through which they were purchased. This week's episode of "Billions" reminds us, as bluntly as the show ever has, that the games played by Bobby Axelrod and his billionaire boys club in order to remain comfortable on their thrones can have as steep a cost to bystanders as to any player in the game. Take a close look at the title, "The Wrong Maria Gonzalez." The right Maria Gonzalez is a maid in the home of Victor, a former analyst at Axe's firm who led her to poisoning herself in order to tank the initial public offering of Ice Juice last season and thus get back in the good graces of his ex employer. But to hear Maria tell it, she lived like a serf, bowing to the whims of her feudal lord and lady even before this act of industrial espionage landed her on an F.B.I. witness list. If she broke a glass, Victor's wife broke her taillight, putting her at risk of getting pulled over and, eventually, deported. Which is exactly what Victor and Axe conspire to do to her once they get wind of her possible participation in the Ice Juice case. (Victor knew she was involved the moment she showed up slightly late for work; his oligarch sense must have tingled.) To the horror of our hero Bryan Connerty and his F.B.I. ex flame Terri McCue (Susan Misner), they arrive at the local immigration detention center only to discover that a different woman by the same name is being held captive there. Thanks to a record keeping mishap, the "right" Maria Gonzalez is already on her way back to Guatemala helped along, they correctly deduce, by Axe and his minions, in this case a comically sinister duo Axe has hired as his new skulduggery specialists. And if you thought that Attorney General Jock Jeffcoat would be sympathetic to the need to un deport an "illegal immigrant" back to the United States so she can testify against an extremely wealthy white man, I've got a building on Fifth Avenue to sell you. It's a nasty bit of work, right down to Bobby's repulsive smirk when he learns his plan was a success. Initially it appeared as if he had contacted his new security gurus to help him move money out of the country; the revelation that he was talking about a human being in such callous terms bordered on nauseating. The episode's final shot shows Maria, still in her maid's uniform, brushing off a child street vendor's offers in the unfamiliar place she now must call home once again. The whole story line is reminiscent of those unforgettably ugly moments on "The Sopranos" when the petty squabbles and turf wars of Tony's crew spilled over to civilians, leaving an undertipped waiter convulsing in a parking lot with his skull bashed in or a lawn contractor with two broken arms working as an underboss's slave. And yes, I went there with the "Sopranos" comparison it's that good at being that bad. But there's a larger critique at work here, since there's no right Maria Gonzalez in this situation at all. Terri, Bryan and Bryan's boss, Oliver Dake, aren't happy their witness has been deported, but they're not exactly falling all over themselves to change the country's immigration policies in response. Many more Maria Gonzalezes are at risk of getting rounded up, interred and expelled by an administration led by a rich New Yorker who rode to power, in part, on a wave of xenophobia and atop an ocean of business dealings that are currently under federal investigation. Playing Attorney General Jeffcoat, the actor Clancy Brown really embraces the revanchist rhetoric. "She is three times illegal," he says of the wrong Maria. "That makes her removable. And she was removed." He sounds for all the world like the space marine drill sergeant he played in Paul Verhoeven's anti fascist sci fi satire, "Starship Troopers," ranting about humanity's extraterrestrial insectoid enemies. (I'm just waiting for Wags to quote the film's immortal declaration, "We can ill afford another Klendathu.") Jeffcoat is hardly alone in his calculated callousness. Axe Capital faces a major crisis just before the first round of trades overseen by his handpicked successor, Taylor, in the form of a tsunami that hits Brazil and upends a half dozen major industries. In an effort to cut their losses and impress Axe, who's holding 2 billion in reserve to hedge his bets against his replacement, Taylor spends the episode ordering a series of high risk moves into various sectors that the disaster has rendered exploitable. "Is no one worried about the people, you know, in Brazil?" asks Ben, one of the firm's more sheepish analysts. "If it's a moneymaker, we do it," Taylor proclaims, offering a credo by way of a response. But don't worry: The firm's resident charity guru suggests that various donations can be made to help the victims as a sort of moral carbon offset plan for robbing their devastated country blind. Great system, gang! Even among the supposedly good guys, conscience salving and favor trading are endemic. Hardly a scene with Chuck Rhoades goes by in which he isn't calling in a debt or incurring one himself, maneuvering so that a judge more favorable to the case against Axelrod will preside over his trial. In a strangely moving exchange that takes place in an empty hallway in the bowels of the courthouse, Chuck stops the libertarian judge Leonard Funt (played by the great character actor Harris Yulin), asking the judge to recuse himself from the case as payback for Chuck's decision not to prosecute his son when he was caught dealing Adderall to his classmates in med school. It clearly pains Chuck to do this to a man he knows is sincere in his principles, even if they're principles with which he disagrees. "You need that feeling in your stomach to know you're alive," Judge Funt spits back the implication being that Chuck is a natural born schemer. "I really think I am sorry," Rhoades replies. That he needs to think about it at all is a worrying sign, but I buy it, even if Funt doesn't. Maria Gonzalez, meanwhile, doesn't have a dad on the bench with friends in high places. You can see where that leaves her. I think Lara Axelrod has it right when she bitterly instructs a friend er, "friend" who is considering a divorce not to do it. "You think the attention you receive is deserved," Lara sneers, before schooling her on the fact that it's all contingent on her proximity to her husband's wealth and power. "Now you're trying to decide whether to be pissed or grateful," she concludes after her ice cold lesson in how their world works. "Definitely grateful." To paraphrase another great drama, Lara knows better than anyone that if you come at the king, you'd best not miss.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Montauk Sofa, a Montreal based maker of sustainable furniture since 1995, with clients including Brooke Shields and Calvin Klein, has bought a 4,500 square foot retail condominium. It is on the ground level of a newly developed mixed use luxury condo in a 1915 five story building in the TriBeCa East Historic District. For the past two decades, the business, which has stores throughout North America, was at 51 Mercer Street in SoHo. Over the last few months it temporarily leased space at 39 Lispenard. New York Road Runners, founded in 1958 and best known for sponsoring the New York City Marathon among its more than 65 events a year, is consolidating its warehouses around the city by taking a 10 year triple net lease for this newly built, 40,000 square foot single story warehouse. The space has ceilings that are more than 21 feet high, as well as five overhead doors. The group is responsible for electricity, taxes and insurance costs.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
"The Song of Names" begins with a disappearance: In 1951, David Eli Rapoport, a violinist of around 21, is set to make a splash on the London stage. Born in Poland as Dovidl, Rapoport was, as a child, left in the care of a gentile London family that respected his Judaism and nurtured his talent. They prepared him for a life as a virtuoso. What could possibly cause him to skip his debut? It says much for "The Song of Names" that the eventual answer is powerful enough to be convincing (although it seems less plausible that Dovidl would stay vanished for 35 years). Based on a novel by the classical music critic Norman Lebrecht, and directed by Francois Girard ("The Red Violin"), the film alternates between two timelines.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
In 1972, having campaigned on a platform of firing his high school's top administrators, Michael Moore won a seat on the Davison, Mich., school board. (The assistant principal, he says, whacked his bottom with a two by four as punishment for not tucking in his shirt.) At 18, Mr. Moore became the youngest elected official in the country. Early in "The Terms of My Surrender," Mr. Moore's shaggy and self aggrandizing Broadway showcase, a photograph blown up as large as the stage of the Belasco Theater depicts the embryonic provocateur taking his place on that board. The older members look deeply vexed to find the gawky, longhaired firebrand in their midst. Don't get me wrong: Mr. Moore has led an exemplary life of progressive activism, both in the trenches and as a filmmaker. His early movies, like "Roger Me," represent an impish moral intelligence at its most incisive. It helps that he chose good targets and had an ear for irony. Even before his stint on the school board, he helped torpedo the Elks' "Caucasians only" policy by delivering a jeremiad against it in an oratory contest sponsored by ... the Elks. There's little he's against that most theatergoers are for. The director Michael Moore talks about his one man show, "The Terms of My Surrender," which opened on Broadway on Aug. 10. It focuses on the Trump presidency and activism. Michael Moore: MUSIC intro street and backstage TITLE Michael Moore Debuts on Broadway Can a Broadway show bring down a sitting president. It was a it was a theory I had a question. I thought well why not let's give it a try. We've tried everything else since January. in the dressing room and out "Hair and makeup Ok, Im done" the terms of my surrender as a one man show it's a piece of theater that I've written that I wanted to perform. live NATPOP LIVE music starts Moore goes on stage. so a lot of things I talk about aren't necessarily about Trump per se I don't think there's anything really new to say at this point. I think we get the drill. But but I do have a lot to say about us. And how I think we ended up with him and maybe how to prevent something like this from ever happening again NATPOP Im not going through 2018, and I'm not going through 2020, you you have to join me here. to do it in the city where the Clinton campaign was where the where so much of liberal America has its base. It's it's like I as a Midwesterner want to say to the base here come out of the bubble. We can win. We can do this. But you've got to understand what's going on between the Hudson River and xxxx Boulevard. There is a lot going on here! NATPOP It's a daily shithsow hitting us. Just one piece of shit one day after another. Did I say every day? Every hour? The film takes a while. And and the show is happening right now as you see it. There's no editor the producers even though they may be in the house they can't edit me or tell me what to say or whatever. Anytime I'm let loose. Every night at 8 0 3 p.m. NATPOP assistant Did he just...Is this a new question now? you know anything could happen NATPOP Let's fact check it... It makes a lot of people nervous here. But but it'll it'll be fine. It's so so far no one has died. NATPOP What's the latest today? That Steve Bannon is trying to convince trump no name this guy Steven Miller from Mars to be the new comm dir I I enjoy the conversation with my fellow Americans. I'm It's a privilege to live in this country. And but the rights I have are not privileges. They come to me by the very power and the very fact that I am an American and I have these rights to speak my mind to encourage others to rise up to either take this country back or take us into a better direction and I have a lot of faith that my fellow Americans who feel the same way are going to do that The director Michael Moore talks about his one man show, "The Terms of My Surrender," which opened on Broadway on Aug. 10. It focuses on the Trump presidency and activism. Such a character would be easier to dismiss if his stated motive for appearing on Broadway were not so timely. He wants to help liberals turn their Post Traumatic Trump Disorder into practical action that might protect the country from four years of kleptocratic depredation. Perhaps that's why President Trump shows up only peripherally, in projected images or as a kind of hovering hobgoblin. "I'm not coming to this stage every night to conduct a political rally," Mr. Moore told The New York Times in July. "This is not a kumbaya piece of theater." That's true: "The Terms of My Surrender" is not organized well enough to be either of those things. Certainly it falls short of offering seriously useful ideas about how individuals can make a difference as Mr. Moore, drawing on his own biography, insists they can. Details are scant. Run for school board, he recommends. Be Rosa Parks. Download 5calls.org, an app that promises to "turn your passive participation into active resistance." This show did that pretty well for me, even without the app. I actively resisted plenty of material that might otherwise be amenable to me politically. Some of it took the form of hokey set pieces that fizzled, such as a demonstration of what the T.S.A. now prohibits passengers from taking onboard a plane: hedge clippers, dynamite, Muslims. Particularly feeble (and sour) was a game show involving audience members selected to prove Mr. Moore's thesis that the "dumbest Canadian" is more knowledgeable about the world than the "smartest American." Almost any savvy talk show host does this kind of material much better. Worse, though, is Mr. Moore's collection of "and then I annoyed" war stories, many of them (like the one about the Elks crusade) told previously. I don't complain that he is always the hero of these stories; on Broadway you don't deduct points for narcissism. What is dispiriting is that many of the targets, however deserving, are so old and obvious, including Ronald Reagan (for his 1985 Bitburg blunder) and Glenn Beck (for his 2005 radio monologue exploring the free speech implications of threatening to assassinate Mr. Moore). The problems we face today are much more complex and intractable. But even when Mr. Moore turns his attention to more recent and generally compelling matters, as in a long, impassioned segment about the water crisis in Flint, Mich., you sense that he is enjoying his dudgeon too much. His tendency to cut factual corners to smooth the storytelling, as in that Flint segment, doesn't help. Several times I was reminded of the criticisms that have dogged him, from the right and the left, throughout the second half of his career as a polemicist. In particular I recalled Christopher Hitchens's accusation that Mr. Moore's 2004 documentary, "Fahrenheit 9/11," reflected a kind of "moral frivolity." Frivolity, moral or otherwise, would be most welcome here. But for theatergoers expecting anything theatrical from "The Terms of My Surrender," the evening, directed as if with hands thrown up in resignation by Michael Mayer, will prove fairly grim. Mr. Moore, awkward and often tongue tied, is not a natural stage creature. There is a script, but it seems to be more of a reconfigurable scaffold, changing from night to night. (At the performance I saw on Tuesday evening, the interview segment which had earlier featured guests like Representative Maxine Waters of California and Morgan Spurlock was cut.) A lot of the material is thus delivered semi impromptu, with all the stutters and longueurs that entails. To make up for this Mr. Moore affects a cute, common man delivery that fools no one, though the crowd at the Belasco, including a few shills, claps for almost all of the bait he tosses. Some toss bait back, including vulgar imprecations against the president that are hardly distinguishable from the cries of "Lock her up" that horrify us in other settings. Unsavory elements of Mr. Moore's persona and material slip by almost unnoticed in such an echo chamber. One icky bit, meant to demonstrate the limits of free speech, finds him calling (or pretending to call) the office of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo of New York and, using Mr. Beck's 2005 script, threatening to kill him. In several other places, Mr. Moore's valorization of the Midwestern working class from which he hails cuts against his claim that ordinary Americans, like the ones who voted for Mr. Trump, are stupid. "America," he says, has been "dumbed down and now can't think." These moments suggest a thinking failure of his own: a failure to examine the inapt moral equivalences and disguised elitism inherent in his brand of provocation. The result is as confusing politically as it is theatrically. Audiences hoping for a bit of feel good liberal therapy, let alone a good show, may be disappointed to find that Mr. Moore isn't very interested in them. He's not preaching to the choir: He's bragging to it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
Clark Middleton, a versatile film and television actor who delivered striking performances in supporting roles and whose struggles with rheumatoid arthritis as a child gave him a cause to champion and grist for an autobiographical one man Off Broadway play, died on Oct. 4 in Los Angeles. He was 63. His wife, Elissa Middleton, said the cause of death was West Nile virus. She said he may have been bitten by an infected mosquito in their backyard. Mr. Middleton, who was 5 foot 4 and had little movement in his neck, seldom played leading roles, but he was a scene stealer. He was often cast as peculiar, feisty and eccentric characters. In Bong Joon Ho's postapocalyptic thriller, "Snowpiercer" (2013), he played the painter who quietly chronicles horrors that unfold on a rushing train. In Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill: Volume 2" (2004), he helped bury Uma Thurman alive. He was also a stalwart of the downtown New York theater scene, and he appeared on Broadway in 2018 alongside Denzel Washington as the anarchist Hugo Kalmar in Eugene O'Neill's "The Iceman Cometh." Mr. Middleton's best known role was probably in the NBC crime drama "The Blacklist." He played Glen Carter, the irritable Department of Motor Vehicles employee who becomes an unlikely informant to the show's villainous protagonist, Raymond Reddington, played by James Spader. "Raymond Reddington is a different character with Glen than with anyone else in that show, and that's because Clark brought that," Mr. Spader said in a phone interview. "Clark was not that character, but that character was all Clark." As a spokesman for the Arthritis Foundation, Mr. Middleton strove to convey the message that juvenile rheumatoid arthritis a rare form of arthritis that causes joint inflammation in children younger than 16 and can interfere with growth and bone development was not a limitation. But the condition, which ravaged his body when he was a boy, was undeniably part of his creative identity. "I know I'm not a big, strong, handsome man, but I began to feel like one" when acting, he told The Daily Gazette of Schenectady, N.Y., in 1993. "When I look into a mirror, I see what I am, but I know there's a 6 foot 2 man inside of me." "By thinking of it as something that you're fighting, you almost become a victim to it, and it has power over you," he said of his disability in a video for the Arthritis Foundation. "So I suggest reframing it, and thinking about befriending it, and learning to dance with it." Clark Tinsley Middleton was born on April 13, 1957, in Bristol, Tenn., and grew up in Tucson, Ariz. His parents, Mel and Sue (Holbrook) Middleton, were public school teachers. Mr. Middleton attended the Palo Verde High Magnet School in Tucson and, briefly, the University of Arizona. He learned he had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis when he was 4, and his family could do little but watch as the disease warped his body. He didn't attend school for almost three years, taking classes at home. "At first it distorted my hands," he told The Gazette. "Then the cortisone I had to take made my cheeks fat. At 8, I lost movement in my neck. When I was 15, my hip snapped." Mr. Middleton endured agonizing flare ups throughout his life. He underwent a dozen joint replacement surgeries and two back operations. In his 20s, he headed to Southern California and found work at a car rental agency and in a Social Security office. He took an acting class on a lark and at one point performed a scene there from "A Hatful of Rain," a play and later a 1957 movie about a morphine addict. The room fell silent. "No one applauded or even spoke," he said. "I figured I was terrible and started to cry. The teacher looked at me and said, 'That was wonderful. You should be an actor.'" Mr. Middleton headed to New York City to study acting. He got a dingy room at an S.R.O. in Hell's Kitchen and started taking classes at the Herbert Berghof Studio. Soon he was immersed in the city's independent theater scene. Geraldine Page became his teacher and mentor. He performed at La MaMa and the Public Theater. He worked with playwrights like Sam Shepard, John Guare and John Belluso. And he found an affordable apartment on the Upper East Side, which he inhabited for over 30 years. But the malady in his bones was never far away. When he was 35, Mr. Middleton started experiencing excruciating pain. Doctors discovered that his hips had completely deteriorated and that he needed artificial ones. He had no insurance, but his doctors were able to arrange an operation. He recounted the episode in his one man Off Broadway play, "Miracle Mile." Mr. Middleton's film and television career bloomed in the 2000s, and he went on to play roles in the 2005 film "Sin City," the science fiction TV series "Fringe," on Fox, and the recent "Twin Peaks" reboot on Showtime. He married Elissa Meyers, who is also an actor, in 2006. He became involved with the Arthritis Foundation afterward. "Some people get R.A., and they just want to curl up and don't want to be seen or do anything," Ms. Middleton said. "Clark was the antidote to that." In addition to his wife, he is survived by his mother, Sue Perior, and a brother, Kirby. Mr. Middleton and his wife moved to Los Angeles two years ago. After the pandemic took hold on the West Coast in March, he didn't leave the house, having already been living with a compromised immune system. But he remained active creatively, teaching virtual acting classes and reading Beckett and Shakespeare plays in his backyard. One Saturday last month, Mr. Middleton woke up feeling sick and, by the afternoon, had developed a fever. Then his mental acuity started to fade. He died at Cedars Sinai Medical Center two weeks later. Mr. Middleton's final live performance, in an intimate Zoom production of O'Neill's one act play "Hughie," occurred in his bedroom in July. He played a weary Times Square hotel night clerk who must listen to the woeful ramblings of a gambler hanging out in his lobby. The clerk's role starts off quietly and simply enough. By the play's end, Mr. Middleton had stolen the show.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Manhattan's latest crop of new luxury developments continues to attract a steady stream of buyers. At the ultra pricey 220 Central Park South in Midtown, the grand limestone skyscraper designed by Robert A.M. Stern Architects, four more units officially sold, including New York City's most expensive closing in May: a three bedroom aerie for nearly 26.5 million. On the Upper West Side, at 250 West 81st Street, another limestone creation by Mr. Stern and company, there were also four apartment sales among them, the largest in the nearly sold out 28 unit building. At almost 25.7 million, this was the month's runner up sale. About half a dozen purchases also closed at the newly opened Hudson Yards. Philip I. Kent, the former chief executive of Turner Broadcasting System, was one of the many buyers at 15 Hudson Yards, the megaproject's first residential tower. (Oh, and the architect who helped design that building also bought an apartment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.) In other big deals, there were notable townhouse transactions, including the sale of the longtime Upper East Side home of John L. Loeb Jr., the former United States ambassador to Denmark. The most expensive co op sale was also on the Upper East Side: Howard Stringer, the former head of the Sony Corporation, found a buyer for his Fifth Avenue apartment. At 220 Central Park South, the supertall condominium near Columbus Circle with expansive Central Park and cityscape vistas, doors opened to residents late last year. It's difficult, though, to pinpoint how many of the 100 or so units have sold or are under contract, given the developer's reluctance to provide that information. Last month, apartments on the 44th, 43rd, 30th and 28th floors closed. The higher floor units were similarly configured, with 3,114 square feet and three bedrooms and three and a half baths, and they were close in price. (No. 43A sold for almost 25.5 million, about 1 million less than 44A, the month's priciest transaction.) The lower units, on the building's B line, each sold for 15.8 million. Both are nearly 2,500 square feet, with two bedrooms and two and a half baths. The 65 floor building, developed by Vornado Realty Trust, set a national record earlier this year for the highest price paid for a single residence when the billionaire hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin shelled out almost 240 million for four floors totaling 24,000 square feet. The Upper West Side tower, on the corner of 81st and Broadway, offers more of a boutique feel, standing 18 stories tall, with retail occupying the first two floors. The building was developed by Alchemy Properties and the Carlyle Group, and was designed to blend in with the neighborhood's many prewar apartment houses. The month's most expensive sale there was apartment No. 16A, a combination of two units, on the 16th and 17th floors, encompassing 6,766 square feet. The duplex currently contains nine bedrooms, eight full baths and two powder rooms. It also comes with an abundance of outdoor space, including four terraces one off the great room on the lower level, and on the upper level: two off a second great room and one off the master suite. Also closing in the building: No. 8A, a 3,277 square foot unit with five bedrooms and five and a half baths, for 9.7 million; and No. 6B, which has two bedrooms and two and a half baths over 1,571 square feet, for 6.5 million. Mr. Kent's purchase at 15 Hudson Yards was made through a trust, and one of several closed sales at the 88 story condo in May. He paid nearly 7 million for the 66th floor unit, which has two bedrooms, two and a half baths and 2,076 square feet of space. Mr. Kent served as the chairman and chief executive of Turner Broadcasting System from 2003 to 2013. The 15 Hudson Yards building, which opened this year, is at 11th Avenue and 30th Street, within the 28 acre Hudson Yards project. It was developed by the Related Companies and designed by Diller Scofidio Renfro, in collaboration with the Rockwell Group and Ismael Leyva Architects. Among the other townhouse sales last month, 46 East 66th Street, between Madison and Park Avenue, sold for 17.7 million to MRR Development, which is run by the developer Rotem Rosen. He reportedly intends to offer the house for short term rentals as an alternative to hotel stays. The house, five stories high and 20 feet wide, contains 8,200 square feet with five bedrooms and seven baths, along with many hotel like amenities, including a full floor with a gym and recreation room. It had lingered on the market since 2016, with an initial asking price of 28 million. The most recent price tag was 21 million. Also, 64 East Seventh Street, between First and Second Avenues in the East Village, sold for 15.8 million; the asking price was 18 million. The 25 foot wide, four story house has five bedrooms and five and a half baths. And the new owners (they bought via limited liability company) also get a pizza oven and basketball hoop on the rooftop terrace, where they can simultaneously work out and feast. For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
It should not be possible for a human being listed at 6 feet 7 inches and 285 pounds to outrun a guard while chasing down a loose ball, to fool him with a behind the back dribble and then to glide in for a layup, but Zion Williamson warps logic and good sense every time his size 15 feet step onto a basketball court. The final score of Duke's victory against North Dakota State does not suggest as much, but there was a juncture in the teams' East Region game Friday night when the outcome was theoretically in doubt. The No. 1 over all seed Blue Devils led by gasp only 4 points at halftime. Duke ended up trampling the No. 16 Bison by 85 62, after leading by as many as 31, because of a sequence early in the second half in which Williamson unleashed the breadth of his singular repertory: he made a shot while being fouled; missed the free throw but grabbed the ball and dunked it; rebounded a wayward North Dakota shot and started a possession that ended in a Duke 3 pointer; and then stole the ball, ran it down and dropped it in the basket. All within 58 seconds. It was 40 27 then, and it was over because Williamson, the Blue Devils' bulldozing ballet dancer, had decreed it was. Williamson finished with 25 points on 12 of 16 shooting, and another Duke freshman, R.J. Barrett, added 26. By showcasing its powers of devastation, Duke though it wobbled early, like the other two top seeds who played Friday, Virginia and North Carolina, and a No. 2, Tennessee evaded the upsets that pervaded what was a more appealing second day of the tournament. The minor surprises in the South, No. 10 Iowa beat No. 7 Cincinnati, 79 72, and No. 9 Oklahoma bludgeoned No. 8 Mississippi, 95 72, while No. 9 Washington whipped No. 8 Utah State, 78 61, in the Midwest paled against the wins that had the capacity to upend the bracket. In dispatching No. 4 Kansas State by 70 64 in the South, No. 13 University of California, Irvine preceded victories by No. 12 Oregon, which walloped No. 5 Wisconsin by 72 54 in the same region, and by No. 12 Liberty, which stunned No. 5 Mississippi State by 80 76 in the East. For a spell Friday, North Dakota State envisioned joining them, too. "It just never felt like you were going to get beat until they really got going," Coach David Richman said. And by they, he was referencing Williamson, who has few, if any, peers around the nation, let alone in the Bison's Summit League. Asked about the difficulties in preparing for a player like Williamson, and with all of two days' notice, Richman interrupted the reporter: "Is there any guys like him besides him?" For the uninitiated, the best nickname in the N.C.A.A. tournament hails from U.C. Irvine: the Anteaters though apparently the cognoscenti prefer an abridged moniker. "We usually like to take off the 'Ant' and just say 'Eaters,'" guard Evan Leonard said. "So I feel like Eater Nation, stuff like that, is pretty cool." Also pretty cool: claiming the first significant upset of the tournament. The Anteaters Eaters, excuse us ousted Kansas State to capture the program's first N.C.A.A. tournament victory. Indeed Irvine had only one previous appearance losing to Louisville in 2015 and its recent lineage is littered with strong regular seasons followed by flameouts in the Big West Conference tournament. But in a dreadful season for California's men's teams, one in which standard bearers like Stanford, U.C.L.A. and U.S.C. didn't even qualify for the National Invitation Tournament, the Anteaters have represented the Golden State with distinction, going 31 5 with 17 straight wins. "We have visions of potentially growing into something greater you know, every player dreams of that, every program sort of dreams of that," Coach Russell Turner said. "This was a big step toward that tonight. You know, U.C. Irvine, folks, I don't know, live in the shadow, live like little brothers to U.C.L.A. and S.C. and maybe some others: Cal, Stanford, San Diego State. Maybe like little brothers. Well, little brother has been in the weight room, getting better, getting ready for a chance like this." U.C. Irvine had not lost since Jan. 16, and to extend that streak, the Anteaters summoned critical 3 pointers from two juniors, Leonard and Max Hazzard. Leonard made his shots on consecutive possessions to put U.C. Irvine ahead to stay for the final nine minutes, and Hazzard drilled a shot from the corner with about 90 seconds remaining to push its lead to 66 61. Kansas State, which won a share of the Big 12 title, missed its all Big 12 forward Dean Wade (injured foot). "I mean, if you studied or watched us, obviously it's a huge difference," Coach Bruce Weber said. "But no excuses." Virginia spent the last year waiting for its chance to atone for its unprecedented early exit from the 2018 N.C.A.A. tournament, when it became the first No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16. When that chance arrived, the Cavaliers sleepwalked through the first half against Gardner Webb and found themselves confronting potential embarrassment again. "That will always be part of our story," Coach Tony Bennett said. "I understand that. I'm sure a lot of people thought it was going to be part of our story the second year in a row." Virginia persisted, though, rolling to a 71 56 victory after outscoring the Bulldogs by 21 points in the second half. De'Andre Hunter who missed that dispiriting tournament loss to Maryland Baltimore County last year with a hand injury scored 23 points to lead the Cavaliers, who recognize their place in infamy but, at Bennett's urging, have regrouped from it. Together, they watched a video of a TED Talk given in Charlottesville, Va., of all places, in which the speaker, discussing his personal grief, said, according to Bennett, that "if you learn to use it right, it can buy you a ticket to a place that you couldn't have gone any other way." The junior guard Kyle Guy, who had 8 points Friday, still keeps an image of U.M.B.C.'s celebration as the screen saver on his phone and in his Twitter profile. He said an author, Joshua Medcalf, had talked to the team last year, telling the Cavaliers, "Be where your feet are." Even as Virginia sputtered in the first half, trailing by as many as 14, Guy said he focused on positive reinforcement. Bennett said the mood at halftime was upbeat, and he asked his assistant coaches to "uplift" players and not "panic." "Yes, we made some adjustments that I think helped the guys out there," Bennett said, "but it was, you know, don't you dare leave anything in this locker room." The second day of the tournament began with Iowa extending the Big Ten's stretch of dominance, as the Hawkeyes pulled away late from Cincinnati to win, 79 72. Iowa's victory improved the Big Ten's record to 6 0, which was marred later when No. 5 Wisconsin lost to Oregon.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
A young John Lennon is hiding out in a backstage hallway in "A Hard Day's Night" (1964), and only one woman a mod Londoner with short, dark hair, a slouchy sweater and eyeglasses on a chain seems to recognize him. But after some sexy Beatles banter, she concludes, "You don't look like him at all." When an inventor, his flying car and his adorable children end up in the kingdom of Vulgaria in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" (1968), the best dressed villain is the gaudy, child hating Baroness Bomburst, who during her big musical number (with Gert Frobe), "Chu Chi Face," survives her husband's repeated attempts to murder her. In the James Bond spoof "Casino Royale" (1967), Frau Hoffner the teacher of Mata Bond , the daughter of Mata Hari and 007 is at the center of a scene that parodies German Expressionism. ("You're insane, my child, quite insane .") And on the stage, in "Stop the World I Want to Get Off," the acclaimed London and Broadway musical hit of the Kennedy era, there was something familiar about the four women in the unhappy life of Littlechap (Anthony Newley). All of them his wife and his Russian, German and American loves were played by Anna Quayle.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
Western monarch butterflies spend their winters in Pismo Beach and other sites on the central California coast. A few months later, they breed in the Central Valley and as far north and east as Idaho. But where they go in between remains an open question. Now, a group of researchers wants the public's help to solve that mystery. They would like anyone who spots a monarch north of Santa Barbara this spring to snap a quick picture. The researchers from Washington State University, Tufts University, the nonprofit Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation, and the University of California, Santa Cruz need photographic evidence, a date and a location to confirm where the monarchs might be living. (Photos and information can be emailed to monarchmystery wsu.edu or uploaded on the iNaturalist app.) "Something's going on in early spring," said Cheryl Schultz, a professor at Washington State University in Vancouver. Researchers know that winter survival isn't the issue in the short term, she said. But they don't know whether the monarchs are not making it to breeding sites, not finding plants to nourish them along the way, or not able to find mates. The Western monarch population, which lives west of the Rocky Mountains, stood in the millions in the 1980s. In 2017, an annual count found 200,000 butterflies. In 2018, the tally fell to about 30,000 a figure that held steady last year, said Elizabeth Crone, a biology professor at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. The monarch's decline is part of a larger trend among dozens of butterfly species in the West, including creatures with names like field crescents, large marbles and Nevada skippers, said Matt Forister, an insect ecologist at the University of Nevada, Reno, whose conclusions are based on a nearly 50 year set of data compiled by Art Shapiro, a researcher at the University of California, Davis. "The monarch is very clearly part of a larger decline of butterflies in the West." Research pins the loss of Western butterflies on a variety of factors, including development, climate change, farming practices and the widespread use of pesticides by farmers, and on home and business lawns, Dr. Forister said. Another factor, she said: Some homeowners, eager to attract monarchs, have planted tropical milkweed. Although the butterflies will feed on them, these plants tend to spread disease, because they don't drop their leaves, Dr. Schultz said, which may be contributing to the declining monarch population. Native milkweed supports the population without this risk, she said. Climate change also plays a role in the challenges facing monarchs and other butterflies, said Chip Taylor, a professor emeritus at the University of Kansas, who also directs Monarch Watch, a network of students, teachers, volunteers and researchers. Temperatures in the Western monarch's overwintering sites along the coast now average 2 degrees higher in January and February than they did just two decades ago the highest rate of increase outside Alaska, he said. Western monarchs are quite similar to their Eastern cousins, just a bit smaller and darker, Dr. Crone said. But they have a distinct migratory pattern. While the Eastern monarchs migrate from Mexico to as far away as New England and Southern Canada, the Western ones mostly remain in Southern California or migrate from the mid coast up as far as British Columbia and as far east as the Rockies, Dr. Schultz said. In the last couple of years, she said, the range of their breeding grounds has been contracting. The butterflies are going inland as far as Nevada, but they're not making it as far as Washington State anymore. Like other insects, butterflies often have good years and bad. "Butterfly populations are bouncy," Dr. Schultz said. "While we think the situation right now is very concerning, we do think there's a lot of potential to turn it around." Dr. Schultz said she saw two reasons for hope. First, the population decline seen in 2017 18 wasn't repeated last year. And second, she's seen butterfly populations rebound before. When she started working to help preserve the Fender's blue butterfly in the early 1990s, there were only about 1,500 of the insects left in the Willamette Valley in Oregon. This year, thanks to collaborative efforts by citizens, farmers, private landowners and government, there were almost 25,000. "That's the kind of commitment that gives me both optimism and the sense that we can do this," Dr. Schultz said. "My hope with Western monarchs is we can bring the population back up." In other butterfly related news, a study published Jan. 28 in Nature Communications provided new insights into how butterflies keep their wings from overheating in the sun. Previous temperature research had focused on the thorax, because butterflies cannot fly if their thorax is too cold. But their thin wings build up heat quickly, and the new research examined how that heat is dispersed so it does not kill the fragile living cells in the wing. Using imaging techniques, researchers from Harvard and Columbia universities found specialized scales on the living parts of the wing that have tiny, intricate structures allowing them to dissipate heat. This enhanced thermal radiation allows the parts of the wing with living cells to remain cooler than other parts of the wing, by as much as 10 to 15 degrees Celsius.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The emergence of subjectivity in the form of integrated sensory images of bodily boundaries and position, as well as states of affairs in the external world accompanied by evaluative, "valenced" feelings, offered such a major advantage a "dramatic leap" over the simple unconscious "sensing" and "registering" of the first life forms that sentience proliferated. With the emergence of subjective experience, new concepts, those of psychology, are needed to explain the phenomenon. "We can think of feelings as mental deputies of homeostasis," Damasio writes. "Feelings are for life regulation, providers of information concerning basic homeostasis or the social conditions of our lives." In creatures like humans, feelings provide the individual with feedback about general well being, a sense of how specific regions of the body, the gut, the nose and throat are faring, as well as an awareness of social relations. According to Damasio, subjectivity bound by feelings and memory produces what we call consciousness. Despite the fact that Damasio is a famous neuroscientist he has always worried about "traditional neuro centric, brain centric, and even cerebral cortex centric accounts." This was one of the central arguments of his earlier book "Descartes' Error," in which he bemoaned "the abyssal separation of mind and body." Feelings are essential and they involve the entire body. This is one reason Damasio is skeptical of both "the prevalent view ... that subjectivity is unlikely to have emerged in any creature besides sophisticated humans," as well as the search among fellow neuroscientists for the specific place in the brain where consciousness happens. Consciousness is a global, organismic property, not a local brain property, he argues, and it is ubiquitous. All mammals are conscious. Birds have experiences. Octopuses do not have spines or centralized brains but have feelings, and some social insects might well have them, too. Feelings are an evolutionary solution nature has come up with as a way of preserving life. Some philosophers will wonder why Damasio doesn't dwell on and repeat endlessly, as they do, that consciousness is a mystery, that no one has offered a satisfying account of how feelings, experience, subjectivity and consciousness emerged, and how experience is produced. Yet "satisfying" and "satisfactory" are different concepts, and no matter how intuitively puzzling a fully naturalistic theory of consciousness may seem, we have every reason to think that Damasio has the right idea about how experience emerged. The design of nervous systems provided organisms with a unique, private, subjective perspective. The system is designed to deliver certain information in an experiential format to its owner, and only to its owner. Late in the book, Damasio wonders whether we can expect feelings to help us through our current cultural crises. His answer is that humans will always aim for homeostasis, and feelings will provide the guide for regaining equilibrium. But he points out that "the physiological rationale and primary concern of basic homeostasis is the life of the individual organism within its boundaries. ... Basic homeostasis remains a somewhat parochial affair, focused on the temple that human subjectivity has designed and erected the self." This problem, the problem of self interest, is not a scientific problem. Calling attention to it is a suitable way to end this brave and honest book. We are gregarious social animals. The homeostatic imperative seeks stability for itself and those near and dear. If recognizing this worries us, it is thanks to the fact that we are conscious beings who feel and care, including about the costs of feeling and caring in the self centered, parochial way we do.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
At the start of Bill T. Jones's "Analogy/Lance: Pretty aka the Escape Artist," we hear a conversation between two voices. "I've got to deal with Lance," says one. "And who the hell is that?" says the other. It's an apt question, one that's not always easy to answer during this 80 minute collage of dance, song and dialogue, which had its New York premiere at the Joyce Theater on Tuesday. That elusiveness, it seems, is part of the point. The second installment of Mr. Jones's work in progress called "Analogy Trilogy," a series based on oral histories he conducted, "Analogy/Lance" journeys through the dual and dueling lives of Mr. Jones's nephew, Lance T. Briggs, and Lance's club dancer alter ego, Pretty. It's a story of one body reconciling two selves, and of one family member trying to know another. Eight members of the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Company whose nearby home, New York Live Arts, is co presenting the troupe's two week Joyce season embody Lance's many dimensions and life phases, from his successful audition, as a boy, for the San Francisco Ballet School, to an adulthood torn between the highs and lows of the night life he hungrily pursued. Most central, anchoring this portrait of fractured identity, are the tall, commanding Talli Jackson and Cain Coleman Jr.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
For me, celebrating Juneteenth was like planning a birthday party or hosting a family reunion. My father organized the first Juneteenth gathering in Grand Prairie, Texas, in 1987 and continued his efforts throughout my childhood, implanting me in the process. Weeks before the holiday, my family and our friends would draft itineraries and search for soul food caterers, trying to create an environment different from the previous year's, to keep people excited about attending, on a tight budget. Some years there were multiple music performances and expensive activities. Other years there were contests with no monetary prize, but every year, no matter how much funding was provided, two themes remained true: community and Texas pride. On June 19, 1865, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, Union soldiers arrived in Texas to report that the Confederacy had surrendered two months earlier and that enslaved people were now free. Texas was the last state to receive the news. In celebration of the long overdue ending of slavery, black Texans come together every year to remember our ancestors and the harsh treatment they endured for centuries. In a red state where white supremacy groups still congregate and Confederate flags fly from the back of trucks, it's an indication that we are just as Texan as anyone else and our culture has influence in a place that once delayed our emancipation. Juneteenth is a reminder that our freedom was fought for and not just handed over to us. It's the blueprint for the hundreds of movements that followed to further guarantee that freedom was achieved. And in 2020, during a national outcry for justice, awareness of Juneteenth seems at an all time high: An increasing number of companies, including Vox Media, Twitter and Square, will now observe June 19 as a permanent company holiday. The day also feels more timely and relevant than ever, a reminder that freedom is still long overdue. The morning of Juneteenth always began with a parade. Dance teams, high school bands and church groups would showcase their talents while small businesses and local recreation centers drove floats to show their support for the black community. If I wasn't marching along with friends, I'd catch a ride on the back of my grandfather's pickup truck and sit next to my dad. Prince would blast from the speakers while dancing pedestrians followed behind the car. Several people would yell "Thank you" to my father, and I could see that he was proud of his work, and even more proud of the kinship present in his own neighborhood. The 30 minute route would lead us to the park, where bounce houses, horseback riding, basketball courts and a swimming pool waited for the children. The adults and elders would congregate around the stage or browse through the vendors, debating what makes someone a true Christian and spreading neighborhood gossip. At 2 p.m., lunch was served, led by a grace, carried by guest speakers and concluded with tons of hugs and kisses from people who somehow were related to you. By the evening, parents would trickle off while the older kids would hunt fireflies or listen to the elders tell stories of how much the neighborhood had changed since they were children. And by night, families headed home or to the lake to pop fireworks. The entire celebration lasted only six hours but had the vitality to keep you feeling warm and loved throughout the summer. It acted as a reminder that there was a community of people who were rooting for you, supported you and wanted to see you succeed. Every time you left a Juneteenth celebration, you took with you new stories, new connections and a new sense of what it meant to be black, but specifically what it meant to be black in Texas. As I watch predominantly white brands post their Black Lives Matter statements and sift through my emails from editors who finally are interested in my opinion, I remember everything I was told and overheard during Juneteeneth celebrations. "Never shop where you won't get hired" and "Don't let anyone tell you that you can't do something" ring deep in my ears as I navigate embedding myself into this movement. I am reminded of history lessons and uncomfortable conversations regarding systemic racism that I heard not in a classroom but instead from speakers on Juneteenth. Attending a Juneteenth celebration was freeing: I had the freedom to wear my hair however I wanted without judgment, to dress however I wanted without comments and to express myself without microaggressions. All of these freedoms granted to me as a child have molded me into the proud black woman I am now. It's the one day each year that I've been able to exist, unapologetically and unproblematically, in a space surrounded by people who have my growth in their best interest. In response to the recent killings of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, protests and advocacy online and on the ground have spread worldwide. From a nationwide plea for justice to the cancellation of "Cops," and now the observance of a holiday celebrating emancipation, our asks are finally being answered. And the importance of Juneteenth is finally receiving widespread recognition. It's also likely that this movement will lose its momentum as businesses begin to reopen and "normal life" makes its return. Whatever might come, I know where I'll be on Friday: celebrating the continued fight that the brave and relentless people before me expect for my generation to carry on. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
Mr. Ryan didn't look as awkward as he did in the famous cringe worthy photo that shows him in his gym rat attire, complete with a backward baseball cap, which made him look like the world's last Limp Bizkit fan. But the combination of his PowerPoint presentation and his down to business sleeves statement unleashed a slew of internet barbs and memes. Weeks later, in a counter news conference to criticize the proposed health care act, Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, tweeted, "I might even roll up my sleeves," and then he did just that. Mastering the roll up can be more challenging than properly knotting a necktie. Some of us opt for the most basic but least comfortable approach: turning the cuff over and over until you hit elbow. Less constricting and easiest to undo, according to the website Real Men Real Style, is the "master roll": pull the sleeve end to the elbow, keep it in place with a finger under the fabric and cup it around the cuff. President Trump favors roomy suits and long red ties his personal armor. John F. Kennedy, arguably our most stylish president, looked good in a suit and also showed mastery of the furled sleeves look during his down time at Hyannis Port, Mass. But as Mr. Ryan demonstrated, seemingly every politician who has appropriated the look since has only served to soil its image (if not the shirt itself). When Howard Dean blurted out his infamous "scream" during the 2004 campaign, guess how he wore his sleeves? While running for president, John Kerry and Mitt Romney favored the same look, which only gave them the appearance of stodgy bosses trying hard to bond with their employees. "Rolled up sleeves are fine if you're sitting down with a bunch of folks and working something out late in the day," said Joe Navarro, author of "What Every Body Is Saying: An Ex FBI Agent's Guide to Speed Reading People." "But if you're making a formal statement, that requires formality." Regarding Mr. Ryan's recent moment, Mr. Navarro added: "A leader is supposed to look like one. Instead it looks like he's working hard at perception management."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
PIERRE LAURENT AIMARD AND TAMARA STEFANOVICH at Zankel Hall (Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m.). Partners in life are partners at the piano for this concert of works for four hands. Messiaen's "Visions de l'Amen" is the major piece, prefaced by miniatures by Bartok, Ravel's "Sites auriculaires" and the American premiere of Harrison Birtwistle's "Keyboard Engine." 212 247 7800, carnegiehall.org EMERSON STRING QUARTET AND SHAI WOSNER at Alice Tully Hall (Oct. 21, 5 p.m.). The Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center has done a better job of venturing into the music of our own time in recent years, and does so again here, with William Bolcom's Piano Quintet No. 1. Mozart's Piano Quartet in E flat and Dvorak's String Quartet in G complete the program. 212 875 5788, chambermusicsociety.org ANGELA HEWITT at the 92nd Street Y (Oct. 21, 3 p.m.). Subtle, sensitive and supreme in Bach, Hewitt's series devoted to the composer she has spent as much time with as anyone in recent memory continues with the entire second book of "The Well Tempered Clavier." 212 415 5500, 92y.org IGOR LEVIT at Zankel Hall (Oct. 19, 7:30 p.m.). Excerpts from Levit's utterly absorbing new album are on the bill here, including Brahms's left hand only version of Bach's Chaconne, Busoni's "Fantasia nach J.S. Bach," Schumann's "Ghost" Variations, Liszt's reworking of the Solemn March to the Holy Grail from "Parsifal," and Busoni's transcription of Liszt's organ work, the Fantasia and Fugue on "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam." 212 247 7800, carnegiehall.org 'MARNIE' at the Metropolitan Opera (Oct. 19, 8 p.m.; Oct. 22, 7:30 p.m.; through Nov. 10). Nico Muhly's second opera at this house is a gloss on the 1961 novel by Winston Graham and the 1964 film by Alfred Hitchcock, and, like Muhly's first, "Two Boys," it arrives via a frostily received premiere at the English National Opera. With a libretto by Nicholas Wright and in a production by Michael Mayer, it has a cast featuring Isabel Leonard in the title role, Christopher Maltman as Mark Rutland and Iestyn Davies as Terry Rutland. Robert Spano conducts. 212 870 7457, metopera.org NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC at David Geffen Hall (Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m.; through Oct. 27). It's a mark of how progressive the music director Jaap van Zweden's programming has been so far that the guest conductor Tugan Sokhiev's concerts this week look so harmless. He's an interesting conductor, though, and can be heard in Borodin, Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 4 and Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 1. Gil Shaham is the soloist. 212 875 5656, nyphil.org TYSHAWN SOREY at the Kitchen (Oct. 21, 6 p.m.; Oct 22 23, 8 p.m.). Three nights of music by this extraordinarily talented musician, who not only plays multiple instruments, but also composes at the cutting edge of classical, jazz, everything in between, and much beyond. On Sunday, he is joined by the pianist Marilyn Crispell; on Monday, he debuts seven pieces for sextet; on Tuesday, he adds turntables, electronics and vocals to the mix. 212 255 5793, thekitchen.org 'TOSCA' at the Metropolitan Opera (Oct. 25, 7:30 p.m.; through Nov. 17). David McVicar's ultratraditional production of Puccini's classic returns for one of two runs this season. (The second opens in March.) Sondra Radvanovsky sings Tosca, with Joseph Calleja as her Cavaradossi, and Zeljko Lucic as Scarpia. Carlo Rizzi wields the baton. 212 870 7457, metopera.org RALPH VAN RAAT at Weill Recital Hall (Oct. 24, 7:30 p.m.). This concert has the whiff of an occasion about it. Not only is there the premiere of "Searching for Unison," a new commission by Louis Andriessen, who seems to be everywhere at the moment, but also a virtually unheard piece by Debussy, Alkan's stomach churningly difficult Symphony for Solo Piano, and, believe it or not, the American premiere of a newly discovered piece by Pierre Boulez, the "Prelude, Toccata, and Scherzo," dating to around 1944. 212 247 7800, carnegiehall.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
new video loaded: How Deep Sea Creatures Emit Their Own Light See how monkeys teach manners, elephants show empathy and ants imitate water in ScienceTake, combining cutting edge research from the world of science with stunning footage of the natural world in action. See how monkeys teach manners, elephants show empathy and ants imitate water in ScienceTake, combining cutting edge research from the world of science with stunning footage of the natural world in action.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Though some Americans may fly to another state and begin their road trip there, Mr. Cohen and his colleagues are seeing many more people simply driving from home. It's typically less expensive , and a road trip offers more flexibility in terms of schedule. Travelers can relax, leave at the last minute, and discover historical sites, local cuisine, museums, shopping, hiking, festivals and theme parks along the way. Despite taking shorter trips, people nonetheless want to roam as far away as possible. "They don't want to spend the night any closer than eight hours from home," Mr. Cohen said. And the trip has to have multiple overnight stops with activities and attractions , "not just Grandma's house," he said. For example, Mr. Cohen said retirees typically visit family during their road trips, but most of the time they stay elsewhere. From the inception of the vacation, to the miles logged along the way, social media is a comparatively new aspect of the road trip. In the last four years MMGY has observed the role of social media in recording and sharing travel experiences explode, mainly among millennials. The percentage of people who say they post vacation photos on social media to make friends and family jealous has doubled over the last four years "we believe that one's grossly understated," Mr. Cohen added as has the number of people who use social media to record their travel experiences. Instagram and the like aside, road tripping is among the few travel trends today not being, er, driven by millennials. Boomers are the largest group of road trippers (followed by Generation Xers ), and for them, it seems there's some element of nostalgia. For millennials, the appeal of the road trip is often economical, though for many, and for a number of Generation Xers, life experiences like road trips matter more than shiny new things, according to MMGY. How people choose where to travel was something of a surprise to Mr. Cohen, who reasonably figured that the first thing most people do when planning a vacation is to decide where to go. Turns out, less than half the people he studied do that. Instead, he said, people tend to say "Here's what I want to do, now where can I do it?" For millennials it may be, "I have this much money, where can I best spend it?" There isn't just one type of road tripper with a single set of goals. And road tripping is unlikely to experience another dramatic rise. "It can't just keep skyrocketing," Mr. Cohen said . But he expects to see modest growth this year as Americans retirees, young families, millennials, Generation Xers without children continue rolling on.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
NEWPORT, R.I. After a makeover that made it into a luxury destination at the easternmost tip of the Hamptons on Long Island, N.Y., Gurney's Montauk Resort and Seawater Spa is bringing its name to another seaside hot spot: Newport, R.I. The owners of Gurney's resort are transforming a former Hyatt Regency on Goat Island, between Newport Harbor and Narragansett Bay, into a second Gurney's. Behind the project is George Filopoulos, the founding principal of Metrovest Equities, and Lloyd Goldman, founder of the BLDG Management Company. Along with backing from Square Mile Capital Management, they are putting about 18 million into improving the 257 room resort, which, while open in the meantime, is scheduled for a grand opening in May. Like Gurney's Montauk, which Mr. Filopoulos and Mr. Goldman purchased in 2013, Gurney's Newport will be open year round. The name recalls Maude Gurney, who founded the Montauk location in 1926. The city of Newport, at the southern end of Aquidneck Island, is known as much for its rich history as for its beaches and boisterous waterfront bar scene. Settled in the 1600s, the city has a population of about 24,000 and retains many Colonial era buildings. A dozen or so opulent mansions preserved from the Gilded Age invite tourists in for gawking tours. Downtown, along the harbor, historic Thames Street is densely lined with shops, restaurants and bars that thrum with tourists throughout the summer. With help from the hospitality design firm Petermax, the new owners are changing the interiors and the outdoor spaces. They are also bringing in Scarpetta, the LDV Hospitality restaurant brand that started in New York's meatpacking district before adding several other locations, including Gurney's Montauk. And a new marina nearing completion will accommodate 22 boats ranging in size from 40 to 240 feet. At 350 to 1,100 a night between Memorial Day and Labor Day weekends, Gurney's will compete with other Newport luxury locations, a segment of the tourism market that is flourishing, Mr. Smith said. Brian Young, the managing director of the Castle Hill Inn, a Relais Chateaux property with 40 acres along the coastline, said Gurney's was a welcome addition that would strengthen Newport's reputation as a getaway destination. "Will we compete head to head for a particular bride and groom? Maybe," said Mr. Young, noting that Castle Hill does about 100 weddings a year. "But it could also be that we have the ceremony and reception here, and a lot of the guests stay at Gurney's." Newport's upscale appeal stands in contrast to the much more challenging reality for many of its residents. Newport has the fifth highest poverty rate in the state, "which is pretty surprising for most people because they don't think of Newport as having any poverty," said Marilyn Warren, the executive director of the city's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center. Nearly 60 percent of households are renters, according to HousingWorks RI, a research and advocacy organization. Ms. Warren said that, because of the city's high cost of living relative to wages, her agency's food pantry served many working people "living on the edge," including bank tellers, certified nursing assistants and, very commonly, hotel workers. The destination wedding trend seemed to be driving development applications, as "everybody's trying to cash in," said Johanna Vietry, the president of Friends of the Waterfront, a local group that advocates public access to the water. This month, her group opposed a plan for a boutique hotel next to a restaurant on a downtown wharf that she said "would have blocked everybody's view." The planning board rejected the plan. Ms. Vietry said that the Hyatt owners allowed the public access to their Goat Island waterfront most of the time. If that changes under the new ownership, "that will be a sad day," she said. "We'll keep our fingers crossed." Hotel occupancy in Newport exceeded 80 percent last summer, and averaged 65 percent year round, according to data from STR, a hotel market data firm. Room rates averaged 250 to 313 a night during the height of summer, and around 210 year round. Many wedding venues book at least a year in advance, said Kim Bakarian Gaynor, a professional wedding planner in Newport. "It is very pricey for many couples, but it depends on where you go," she said, estimating the starting range at 40,000. Mr. Filopoulos said that further expansion of the Gurney's brand will depend in large part on whether they can find sites with similar characteristics. That means a prime oceanfront location and enough land to roam around on in an area that isn't already saturated with accommodations.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Seriously, Equifax? This Is a Breach No One Should Get Away With Equifax, you had one job. Your only purpose as a corporation, the reason you were created and remain a going concern, is to collect and maintain people's most private financial data. Now you have fallen down on your only job and spectacularly so. Hackers penetrated the spectral gauze of security surrounding your website, and over the course of nearly two months, they made away with the personal information of as many as 143 million Americans. It is the most important financial data available on any of us our names, birth dates, Social Security numbers, home addresses and in some instances a lot more and it was just sitting there on your site, all but wrapped up in a red bow. So, Equifax, I have to ask: Now that you have failed at your one job, why should you be allowed to keep doing it? If a bank lost everyone's money, regulators might try to shut down the bank. If an accounting firm kept shoddy books, its licenses to practice accounting could be revoked. (See how Texas pulled Arthur Andersen's license after the Enron debacle.) Here's one troubling reason: Because even after one of the gravest breaches in history, no one is really in a position to stop Equifax from continuing to do business as usual. And the problem is bigger than Equifax: We really have no good way, in public policy, to exact some existential punishment on companies that fail to safeguard our data. There will be hacks and afterward, there will be more. Experts said it was highly unlikely that any regulatory body would shut Equifax down over this breach. As one of the nation's three major credit reporting agencies, which store and analyze consumers' financial history for credit decisions, it is likely to be considered too central to the American financial system; Equifax's demise would both reduce competition in the industry and make each of the two survivors a bigger target. Raj Joshi, an analyst at Moody's, said in a note to investors that Equifax was likely to be fine, as "the impact of the security breach will only modestly erode its solid credit metrics and liquidity." The two regulators that do have jurisdiction over Equifax, the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, declined to comment on any potential punishments over the credit agency's breach. Consumers also have piddling rights over how Equifax may continue to use their credit data. "There's nothing in any statute or anything else that allows you to ask Equifax to remove your data or have all your data disappear if you say you no longer trust it," said John Ulzheimer, a consumer credit expert who worked at Equifax in the 1990s. But wait, it gets worse. You also can't prevent Equifax from getting any more of your data. "You might be able to casually say to your bank that you don't want them to give information to Equifax anymore, but I don't know that's going to have an effect on anything," Mr. Ulzheimer said. "You don't control the rules of engagement." This isn't just about Equifax. We live in the age of Big Data. We have allowed, mostly passively, the emergence of huge and exquisitely detailed databases full of information about all of us. Financial companies, technology companies, medical organizations, advertisers, insurers, retailers and the government thanks to technology, they can all now maintain massive warehouses of information on just about everyone alive. Yet in many cases these data stores are only lightly regulated, and compared with the scale of the data compromised, the punishment for breaches is close to nonexistent. There is no federally sanctioned insurance or audit system for data storage, the way the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation provides insurance and a wind down process for banks after losses. For many types of data, there are few licensure requirements on organizations seeking to house personally identifiable information. In many cases, terms of service documents indemnify companies against legal consequences for breaches. In fact, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the credit reporting service that Equifax is offering customers affected by this breach requires people to waive their legal rights to sign up. "It is troubling that Equifax is forcing people to waive legal rights in order to receive fraud monitoring after the company's breach put their personal information at risk," Samuel Gilford, a bureau spokesman, said in a statement. With all these ways of mitigating fallout from attacks, breaches keep happening and in almost all cases, even when the data concerns tens or hundreds of millions of people, the companies that were hacked continue to operate anyway. See Yahoo, for instance, which hackers hit for 500 million accounts, and then again for one billion accounts but which is still in business. You might argue that not every data hack deserves a corporate death penalty. That's reasonable. Neither Target nor Home Depot, for instance, is primarily in the business of storing your data. Both were hit in hacks for millions of people's credit card data, but after they offered some penance and promised to fix their systems, it's not unreasonable that you would continue to shop at their stores. And you might argue that hacking is impossible to avoid no matter how many security measures companies take. Unforeseen calamities happen in complex systems banks are robbed, airliners crash, car engines blow up. But the Equifax case is troubling because neither of these arguments applies. "If it fails at its one job, it really is quite hard to justify using it again," said Steven S. Rubin, a lawyer who specializes in cybersecurity law at the firm Moritt Hock Hamroff. And if it really is impossible to safeguard against hacking, Equifax's continued existence becomes even more untenable. On its website, Equifax boasts that it "organizes, assimilates and analyzes data on more than 820 million consumers and more than 91 million businesses worldwide, and its database includes employee data contributed from more than 7,100 employers." But if we are now conceding that hacks just happen and no one can stop them well, here's a crazy thought: Maybe let's not allow any company to house all this data. I contacted Equifax to ask about this, but did not hear back.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been right about a lot. She was right in the early 1990s, when, as a fierce critic of China's human rights record, she rejected the bipartisan faith that economic liberalization in China would inevitably lead to greater democratization. She was right again in 2003 when, as the leader of the House Democrats, she was one of the few party leaders to oppose the war in Iraq. She was right during the 2008 primary, when she rejected the entreaties of powerful allies of Hillary Clinton Harvey Weinstein among them to get behind a plan to use superdelegates to help Clinton take the Democratic nomination from Barack Obama. Pelosi was right throughout Obama's administration, when she struggled to make the president see that his fetish for bipartisanship was leading him to make pointless concessions to Republicans, who would never negotiate in good faith. In "Pelosi," Molly Ball's admiring and illuminating new biography of the most powerful woman in American politics, there's a scene where Pelosi expresses her frustration to Obama's chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, over Obama's doomed courtship of Republican support for health care reform. "Does the president not understand the way this game works?" she asks. "He wants to get it done and be beloved, and you can't have both which does he want?" The House speaker would rather get it done. There's a pattern in Ball's book. Again and again, Pelosi is dismissed, first as a dilettante housewife, then as a far left San Francisco kook, finally as an establishment dinosaur and throughout, as a woman. She perseveres, driven by a steely faith in her own abilities. And more often than not, she is vindicated. The arc of Ball's book is one of triumph. Pelosi was born to a prominent Democratic family in Baltimore, but the San Francisco network of influence that led her to Congress was one she built herself. When she entered the House of Representatives in 1987, women were a rarity in the chamber and completely absent from leadership. Sexual harassment and belittlement were constant. Twenty years later, she became the first ever female House speaker. And in 2019, after regaining the top spot in the chamber, she came to preside over the most diverse Democratic caucus in history, one she did as much as anyone to elect. For the first time in her public life, Pelosi became an icon, lauded for her unparalleled ability to get under Donald Trump's skin. In one of her first meetings with the president when she was speaker, she helped goad him into taking public responsibility for an imminent government shutdown. Video of her strolling out of the White House in a chic Max Mara coat, putting on her tortoise shell sunglasses with a sly smile, appeared in countless memes. "It was as if America, after years of fixation on her weaknesses, had suddenly woken up to her strengths," Ball writes. 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 a liberal reading Ball's book and I suspect it will largely be liberals who will want to read a shining account of Pelosi's career a major question is whether the speaker's strengths are equal to the severity of the dangers bearing down on our country. Even before coronavirus, many on the left worried that Pelosi wasn't doing enough to constrain Trump, though she eventually came around to impeaching him. Once the pandemic hit, there was growing alarm among progressives that Democrats, in negotiating rescue packages, didn't insist on the funding necessary to make the 2020 election secure, which could unfold in the shadow of a pandemic that makes in person voting life threatening. Congressional Democrats have leverage, Michael Grunwald wrote in Politico, but "they don't seem inclined to use that leverage to take on Trump." In the past, Pelosi has always seemed to have a plan, even if those sniping from outside couldn't see it. When it comes to Trump, does she still? Reading "Pelosi," it's hard to know exactly how Pelosi sees the threat that Trump poses. Despite meticulous reporting and multiple interviews with the House speaker, Ball, Time magazine's national political correspondent, doesn't penetrate her steely exterior, as she herself acknowledges. Pelosi, Ball writes, "is a private person, and her inner life is fundamentally off limits." To understand her, we can only look to her record. Parts of that record should comfort those who fear that Pelosi is going soft. One of the book's most telling anecdotes involves the late congressman Jack Murtha, a grizzled, conservative Democrat from Pennsylvania. An ex Marine, Murtha initially supported the Iraq war, but in November 2005 he called a news conference to decry it and demand a six month timetable for withdrawal. "The war in Iraq is not going as advertised," he said. "Our military is suffering. The future of our country is at risk." It was a turning point in the public's understanding of the war; as Ball writes, "One analyst later dubbed it the 'Murthquake,' and antiwar activists credited Murtha with a seismic shift in the public debate." Yet as Murtha became a major face of opposition to the Iraq war, Pelosi remained silent, enraging antiwar activists who believed she'd left Murtha out on a limb. Amy Poehler, playing Pelosi on "Saturday Night Live," mocked her timidity. "What are the Democrats proposing to counteract all this corruption?" asked Darrell Hammond, playing MSNBC's Chris Matthews. "That's easy, Chris. We're going to do nothing," Poehler said. "Pelosi let them criticize her even though she knew the truth: She and Murtha had orchestrated the whole thing, and agreed that it had to look like a one man crusade," Ball writes. Both believed his withdrawal proposal would carry greater weight if he didn't seem to be working with the caucus's left flank. Here we see one of the more striking things about Pelosi: She's willing to advance her policy goals at the expense of her own image. Part of the reason Pelosi has been underestimated is simple sexism, but part is that she genuinely seems to care less about how she's perceived than about what she can accomplish. Ball describes the Murtha episode as "an illustration of Pelosi's theory of public opinion." Pelosi likes to repeat a quotation from Abraham Lincoln: "Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed." It was a line she invoked to explain her reluctance to impeach Trump, infuriating people myself included who believed she was following rather than leading. But Ball has made me think we were misunderstanding Pelosi; the speaker was emphasizing the importance of shaping public opinion before acting, not using public opinion as a reason not to act. So as I read Ball's book, I kept thinking that maybe Pelosi's impeachment hesitation had been a put on, a repeat of the Murtha play. But it appears it wasn't she really did hold out until her caucus gave her no choice. Likewise, her willingness to collaborate with Trump, even if it gives him legislative accomplishments to tout, is genuine. Pelosi, Ball writes, thought she could, "as she had with George W. Bush, work with him on goals they shared even as they fiercely opposed each other where they didn't agree." She never aspired to lead an all out campaign against Trump's authoritarianism. Pelosi has always been a progressive; until the last few years, the right used her as the ultimate symbol of left wing extremism. But her relentlessly pragmatic approach to politics is the polar opposite of, say, the Bernie Sanders approach. Pelosi doesn't begin by asking what kind of world we want. She asks where the votes are. The speaker is, as she herself has said, a master legislator. "If this book has a thesis, it is that you needn't agree with Nancy Pelosi's politics to respect her accomplishments and appreciate her historic career," Ball says. But you can do that and still wonder if, at this moment, her skill at making the system work is enough to check a man happy to destroy it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
It is one of a doctor's most important final acts in caring for a patient, even though the patient is no longer around to appreciate it. I refer, of course, to filling out the death certificate, a document that has myriad benefits for the living: establishing a legal basis for life insurance and estate settlements; providing critical information to survivors and descendants in an era of burgeoning advances in genetics; advancing knowledge about diseases, accidents and other causes of death; and much else. For all these reasons, the accuracy of the certificates should be a paramount concern for public health, both nationally and internationally. And that is why two recent studies of doctors in New York City teaching hospitals are so unsettling. The studies, published in the May issue of the journal Preventing Chronic Disease, support what researchers have long suspected: that heart disease is overreported as a cause of death, while diseases like pneumonia and cancer tend to be underreported. Equally disturbing, one of the studies suggests that the health system is far too cavalier about the accuracy of death certificates. That study surveyed resident doctors in specialty training in 26 hospitals where about 40 percent of the city's deaths occur. Of 521 respondents, 54 percent said they had knowingly reported what they believed was an inaccurate cause of death. Only one third of the respondents believed that the system accurately documents the cause of death. The reasons varied. Some doctors said they had never learned the proper procedures, or were too busy to fill out the documents correctly. Because of restrictions in duty hours, many resident doctors had to enter a cause even though they did not know the patients they just assumed care through transfers at the end of work shifts. Some said data codes forced them to enter diagnoses that did not match their medical judgments: The electronic system rejected causes like sepsis from infection or acute respiratory distress syndrome, and hospital administrators instructed the doctors to certify another cause of death. Frustrated with the system and the time pressures, doctors may take the easy way out by "just putting something down that would be easily accepted," an author of the study, Dr. Keith M. Rose of St. Luke's Roosevelt Hospital Center in Manhattan, said in an interview. Particularly disturbing is that most doctors said they had no formal training in filling out death certificates, either in medical school or in their residency programs. Since the study was conducted in spring 2010, based on respondents' experience in the preceding three years the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene says it has been a national leader in improving the quality of death certificate information. In 2009 the department introduced a training program in eight hospitals that accounted for 10 percent of all deaths in New York City. The second study, which followed doctors in that program, dealt directly with the issue of overreporting heart disease as the cause of death, particularly among older patients. Heart disease is considered the nation's leading killer, and doctors may list it by default without evaluating other possibilities. The practice tends to obscure the incidence of other serious ailments. A health department team led by Dr. Teeb Al Samarrai found that heart disease dropped by 54 percent as a cause of death in the hospitals where the program was given, compared with a decrease of 6 percent or less in hospitals where it was not. The educational effort also led to an increase in four other categories. Influenza and pneumonia almost tripled as causes of death rising to 11 percent of certified deaths, from 4 percent. Chronic lower respiratory disease rose to 5 percent from 2 percent. Cerebrovascular disease, including strokes and aneurysms, rose to 4 percent from 2 percent. And cancer rose to 16 percent from 11 percent. Documenting deaths is a local responsibility. North American colonists followed the European custom of churches' being responsible for recording deaths, just as for christenings and marriages. In 1639, the Massachusetts Bay Colony transferred such registrations to the courts. Before 1900, the United States lagged behind European countries in developing a centralized death registration system. By 1910, the country had developed a standard model death certificate, Dr. Randy Hanzlick wrote in a 1996 history of death registration for The Journal of Forensic Sciences. Filling out a death certificate blends fact and professional judgment. That combination often makes it difficult to certify the precise cause, particularly among older patients who die with more than one ailment. Assigning one of the competing causes as the responsible one can be challenging. Occasionally, families may pressure doctors not to list suicide, AIDS or other health problems as the cause of death, perhaps because of stigma and perhaps because of restrictions in life insurance policies. A doctor's role is to describe the chain of medical events or conditions leading to death, based on four categories. One is the immediate cause of death, the specific ailment that directly preceded it. The second is intermediate causes, those that created the immediate cause. The third is the underlying cause, the ailment that set off the chain of events. ("Cardiac arrest" is never acceptable as the underlying cause of death, because it is a tautology: The heart stops in every death, and cardiac arrest can result from hundreds of ailments.) Last, doctors are asked to list the patient's other ailments, even though they did not cause death. The chain of causes is often long and complicated, and sometimes the starting point is not clear. For example, was the cause of a drowning the inability to swim? Being pushed or falling into water? A heart attack, abnormal heart rhythm or a stroke? Inebriation? The side effects of a prescribed or illicit drug? Or hot weather? In general, a government medical examiner must be informed in cases of criminal neglect or violence; drug and chemical overdose and poisoning; workplace accidents; sudden death when in apparent good health; a death in which no physician has cared for the patient in the preceding 31 days; and injuries like falls, among other causes. Eventually, the certified cause of death becomes part of a long statistical trail, from the local physician to city and state health officials, and then is listed among the official vital statistics of the United States. And once in a while, an absurd entry, usually a result of miscoding Alzheimer's disease in a 2 year old, prostate cancer in a woman, cervical cancer in a man is caught and corrected. Dr. Barbara A. Wexelman, who conducted the study with Dr. Rose when she was a surgical resident in New York City, said she encountered some resistance from colleagues, who chided her for studying a subject they considered obscure and unimportant. She had a ready comeback. "Death certificates are really important," she says she told the skeptics. "We owe it to our patients to be able to accurately record why they die" and thus, she went on, to "help the living."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
From the perspective of evolutionary and developmental biologists, a horse's hoof is literally a giant middle finger. It seems to be the remnant of a foot that once had five full toes, with only three remaining visible two vestigial digits are still on either side of the large, hardened middle digit, but there is no trace of the others. The hoof has been held up as a sterling example of the idea that if something isn't working for a creature, it may be shed completely, with an excess toe or two left on the cutting room floor of evolution. But when Kathryn Kavanagh, a biologist at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, was sorting through preserved horse embryos recently, she saw something that at first she couldn't quite believe. In the very early days of gestation, in the area of the foot where the hoof eventually forms, Dr. Kavanagh counted clusters of developing cells representing toes. And there were not three there were unmistakably five. The missing toes had in fact never left the horse, Dr. Kavanagh, Scott Bailey and Karen Sears report in a paper published Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The finding suggests that certain stages of development cannot be changed, even if, in the adult animal, they leave no visible trace. The window of time when all five toes were visible was very short. Because it can be difficult for scientists to obtain large numbers of horse embryos at different stages to study, it is possible that scientists who earlier studied horse anatomy assumed that horses had at most three toes because they didn't get the glimpse Dr. Kavanagh did.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Two years ago, Catherine Duff, then 57, tearfully described eight debilitating bouts of antibiotic resistant Clostridium difficile infection to a government panel in Washington. She grew better, she said, only after treating the gastrointestinal infection at home with her husband's feces, a blender and an enema bag. Mark B. Smith, a young doctoral student in microbiology, was in the audience, almost as teary as Ms. Duff. Resolving to help patients like her, he started a nonprofit called OpenBiome, the first stool bank in the country, which distributes fecal samples from healthy donors to help cure people with tenacious C. difficile infections. Now OpenBiome has made the process, called fecal microbiota transplantation, far simpler. The bank has come up with a capsule containing fecal microbes that can be taken much like any other drug poop in a pill. "It's such an obvious improvement," Dr. Smith said. C. difficile resides among trillions of other bacteria in normal, healthy humans. When antibiotics wipe out the competition, the bacteria spread through the gut, producing toxins and causing persistent diarrhea. The disease afflicts an estimated 450,000 Americans annually, killing 15,000. Most pick up the infection in hospitals and nursing homes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
BEIJING Ren Zhengfei, the founder of the Chinese technology giant Huawei, has accused the United States of having political motivations in leveling criminal charges against the company and his daughter, a top Huawei executive. The comments, made in an interview with the BBC that was published Monday, mark a rhetorical escalation. Mr. Ren and the firm had previously declined to say much on the case, citing respect for the legal process. But he appears to be sharpening his language as a hearing nears on whether his daughter should be sent to the United States to stand trial. "I object to what the U.S. has done," Mr. Ren told the BBC. "This kind of politically motivated act is not acceptable." Late last month, the Justice Department unveiled sweeping charges against Huawei and its chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, outlining yearslong efforts by the Chinese firm to steal American industrial secrets, obstruct a criminal investigation and evade economic sanctions against Iran.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Decades later, Abby, the witness (Tuppence Middleton), is faced with selling her mom's rickety Niagara Falls motel. Sister Laure (Hannah Gross) is all for it. Abby retains an attachment and resents the third generation business hotshot who wants the property. Her haunted memories find a link to his back story, and her suspicions, in turn, are fed by Walter, a local podcaster, self styled historian and conspiracy theorist. He's played with droll understatement by David Cronenberg. Cronenberg's entrance he emerges from a lake in wet suit and full scuba gear is one of the more noteworthy in recent genre cinema, in part because the robust performer is 76 years old. This intriguing movie has quite a few plot twists, and they're all admirably worked out. But in the aggregate, they tend to pull away from the film's strongest feature, which is the dank, dread filled atmosphere sustained almost throughout by Albert Shin, the director and co writer. Nevertheless, for patient or forgiving fans of idiosyncratic thrillers, "Disappearance" may deliver satisfactory spills and chills.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
I am, as we all are, stuck at home these days. Back in mid March I assumed I would spend much of my time in lockdown reading still and always my favorite activity, ideal for an indefinite period of mandatory solitude imposed by, say, a pandemic. This has not been the case. I've read fewer books over the past few weeks than I have over any comparable stretch that I can remember. Focus has evaporated. The cognitive load of living through the coronavirus has gone straight for my literary jugular. Retaining new information or absorbing new stories may be a problem, but one reliable workaround is escaping into much loved classic crime fiction. These novels, and these authors, helped form my reading sensibility, and I return to them every few years. I loved them first, though, because they were simply damn good books. Revisiting these novels in audio format is a way to acquaint myself anew with the fiendish plots, terrific prose and indelible characters, and to experience a different version of the initial infatuation. And if you've never read these works before, how lucky to get to experience those joys for the first time. When Dorothy L. Sayers first published WHOSE BODY? (Brilliance Audio; 6 hours, 54 minutes) in 1923, she was years away from feeling constrained by the limits of detective fiction, constraints she would push against with masterpieces like "Gaudy Night." This novel, the first in her series starring the sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, was written as a means of escape for herself, from her own daily penury, and for a 1920s audience clamoring for diversion from their recent troubles (a world war, a global pandemic, revolutions). Detective fiction offered readers an imaginary, makeshift order: Killing people in fiction was sport and fun. The discovery of a man's body in a bathtub, and the subsequent search for his identity, provide the narrative engine for "Whose Body?" But the real pleasure of the novel, conveyed with extra brio by Guy Mott's brisk and lively narration, is the depiction of Wimsey's world as enjoyable fantasy, a place for the harried, the stressed and the weary to live somewhere else in their minds. As Sayers became more disenchanted with what detective fiction had to offer, her fellow crime queen, Agatha Christie, was perfecting and reinventing the genre. By the late 1930s Christie was such a bona fide celebrity her publishers devised an annual marketing campaign, called "A Christie for Christmas," to accompany the release of each new Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple adventure. But her non series books also arrived with much fanfare, like the propulsive 1938 mystery MURDER IS EASY, (HarperAudio; 6 hours, 57 minutes), which begins on a London bound train with a happenstance conversation between Luke Fitzwilliam, returning to England from overseas police work, and Lavinia Pinkerton, who confides that she's traveling to Scotland Yard to report a serial killer stalking Lavinia's English village; what's more, she predicts who the next victim will be. When her prophecy comes true, Luke goes to the village to suss out the culprit. While "Murder Is Easy" is good but not superior Christie there is, perhaps, one devious twist too many good Christie still makes for excellent listening, thanks to the voice work of Gemma Whelan, who articulates each character with distinction and carries the narrative forward with gentle aplomb. 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. Raymond Chandler operated on a track entirely parallel to that of his British born counterparts. An outsider in the Midwest of his birth and the England of his schooling, the failed oil executive eventually found his voice in writing. Specifically, in pulps like "Black Mask," where he honed and refined his detective character Philip Marlowe in stories that boiled hard and talked tough. In 1939, THE BIG SLEEP (Audible Studios; 6 hours, 16 minutes) arrived to wide acclaim, as well it should have. Chandler's evocative prose suffuses this detective story of family secrets, craven lies and mysterious deaths with the romance of the Los Angeles cityscapes he'd fallen in love with and has by now transmitted to 80 years' worth of readers. All of which is why I found myself let down by Ray Porter's narration. Was that a regional twang I detected, jarring with my innate sense of how Marlowe ought to sound? Never mind that Porter seems to be trying too hard, leaning too far in to the street smart demeanor when that was always the facade that Chandler hung his work on, barely masking the glorious sentimentality at the heart of his crime fiction. Chandler and his compatriots Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain embody that American school of hard boiled fiction that became one of this country's best known literary exports. But there was a third stream, not quite cozy, not quite noir, dominated by women, almost entirely rooted around suspense of the psychological variety. Patricia Highsmith, from the first, had an unerring sense of what drove ordinary people to the most extreme lengths, the result of which was often murder. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (Blackstone Audio; 9 hours, 41 minutes), her 1950 debut novel, goes far beyond the ingenious, familiar, oft copied concept two brand new acquaintances resolving to do one's wife in, except one means it and the other doesn't to lay bare the roots of miserable marriages, of class differences, of obsessive desires. It's a strange, nasty fever dream of a book that still has the power to shock 70 years later. That power comes through in Bronson Pinchot's narration. His voice conveys the requisite pitch of menace and malice, at once impulsive and premeditated, as well as the sly humor that was a characteristic of so much of Highsmith's fiction. I'd love to hear Pinchot narrate one of the author's story collections, too, like "Little Tales of Misogyny." While Highsmith concentrated most of her fiction on the ways in which performing masculinity covers up for rage, Margaret Millar mined slightly different psychological terrain. A Canadian transplant in California, Millar began publishing mystery novels long before her husband, Kenneth Millar, did under the pen name of Ross Macdonald and at first with more success. (It would take him a while to shed his academic dreams for the commercial success that far eclipsed his wife's.) Millar's mastery of domestic oriented suspense found full fruition in "Beast in View," published in the same year (1955) as Highsmith's "The Talented Mr. Ripley," which Millar's novel bested for the Edgar Award. BEAST IN VIEW (Audible Studios; 5 hours, 27 minutes) also happens to be my own favorite of Millar's works (anthologized in the Library of America's "Women Crime Writers: Eight Suspense Novels of the 1940s 50s," which I edited in 2015). It begins as a moving portrait of Helen Clarvoe, a lonely young woman besieged by harassing phone calls yet disbelieved at every turn. The surprise twist gear shift, rooted in the inevitable, is like all of Millar's twists they shock, but they always, always play fair. An audiobook narrator has a challenging task in portraying Helen in all of her complexity as she spirals further down into the muck. Jennifer Wydra doesn't quite meet that challenge, convincing though I found her vocalization of Helen's internal terror to be. But there is a savagery to the text of "Beast in View," and to Millar's crime writing as a whole, that needed more airing. For this one, I'd recommend gulping down the print edition. At barely 160 pages, it won't take long at all.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Memorial Day falls neatly between Mother's Day and Father's Day, which makes it fitting to consider two new books one revolving chiefly around a mother, the other around a father whose authors pay tribute to exemplary men and women of the Greatest Generation. When Betsy Lerner, a writer and literary agent, was a rebellious pot smoking adolescent in the 1970s, she did not appreciate the buttoned lip conventionality of her Eisenhower era mother; nor did her parents' emotional reticence ease communication. In her frank and deeply personal memoir, "The Bridge Ladies," Ms. Lerner admits that even when she entered her 50s, her vision of her mother and the well coiffed women she played bridge with every Monday for 50 years remained clouded. She "clumped them all together like the presidents carved into Mount Rushmore, indistinguishable one from another," she writes. These ladies, prosperous, cautious Jewish matrons from Connecticut, veterans of the Depression and wives (in several cases) of veterans of war, were "just a little too old or insulated to embrace 'The Feminine Mystique.'" To a moody teenager who preferred black T shirts and tinted glasses to twin sets and pearls, they seemed square. Nonetheless, Ms. Lerner craved their approval and read criticism into their most benign comments. "When they said I looked good, I wondered if they really thought I was fat," she writes; any remark from her mother felt like a crushing blow. Even recently, she admits, her combative mind set persisted. When her mother asked why she didn't buy fat free cottage cheese instead of low fat, it "nearly set off a world war between us." But in 2013, as her mother, Roz, was recovering from an operation, the author resolved to make peace. She began her campaign by infiltrating the bridge circle, intending to break through the ladies' polished surfaces and gain a deeper understanding of their inner lives, and, she hoped, her mother's. Sitting with Roz, Bette, Bea, Jackie and Rhoda (the club had five members, in case one had a conflict), she eavesdropped as they bid, passed and took tricks. For years, she had imagined that during card play, the women let down their guards, spilled secrets, groused about their spouses and worried about their children. Instead, she found, to her disappointment, they did not ever "trash anyone" or "share a deep feeling." Their commandments were: "Thou shalt not pry. Thou shalt not reveal. Thou shalt not share." To uncover their "private language," she decided, she would have to learn their game. With trepidation, she signed up for classes; and though it took her ages to master the rudiments of bidding, soon bridge had her "in its thrall." When, two years in, she finally won a hand, she downplayed her triumph. "A monkey could have won the hand," she writes. But she continued (and you can practically see her blush on the page): "I head home a few inches off the ground. And then I proudly call my mother." The book intermingles Ms. Lerner's progress at the game with the hard won revelations she scored from the Rushmore set as she began to see them as individuals, and know them as bridge partners. With Bette, she brought up a tragedy that her mother had always refused to discuss: the death of Ms. Lerner's baby sister, Barbara, in 1964, from pneumonia. Had the ladies known about it? the author asked. "Everyone knew," Bette replies. Had her mother spoken of it, during all those bridge Mondays? "Not once," Bette says. Ms. Lerner found such reticence callous. Yet, gradually, grudgingly, she came to accept that TLC did in fact exist in the pre TMI world. Just because a bridge luncheon didn't operate like a therapy session didn't mean it wasn't therapeutic, she saw. For the ladies, it was a safe, neutral zone where they went to recharge as they weathered life's blows, keeping up appearances and their spirits as they trumped, finessed and ate kugel from china plates. She writes, "I never thought I would say this, but I think the Bridge Ladies are brave." Another kind of bravery colored the childhood of an American boy named Thad Carhart, who was whisked away from suburban Washington in 1954, along with his baby sister and three older siblings, to a towering, "claptrap" mansion in France, in the quiet castle town of Fontainebleau, an hour from Paris. In 1954, World War II was a recent memory and NATO was barely five years old. Mr. Carhart's father, an Air Force pilot, had been appointed a staff officer at NATO's fledgling command in Europe, headquartered in Fontainebleau's fairy tale chateau. In "Finding Fontainebleau," Mr. Carhart explains that the castle was built as a hunting lodge in the 12th century, then gussied up to palatial proportions over the next 700 years by French rulers. While his father plied his statecraft at the chateau (or indulged his hobbies fencing, riding, shooting and flying planes), his mother toiled at the rental mansion, cooking dinner on a "wounded behemoth" of a wood fired cast iron stove, and wrangling old world domestic staff: coal men, gardeners, maids and a floor polisher who bound brushes to his feet and skated across the parquet. For three years, the American family would make this history drenched hamlet their home. While bringing alive this redolent Gallic chapter of his boyhood (baguettes from the boulangerie; inkwells and laborious handwriting exercises at school), Mr. Carhart also resurrects the mood and mores of a particular window in time: the 1950s of Ike and Elvis's America, and postwar France.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
Google and Facebook continue to gobble up the digital advertising market, siphoning away revenue that once paid for the quality journalism that Google and Facebook now offer for free. They are gaining increasing control over digital distribution, so newspapers that once delivered their journalism with their own trucks increasingly have to rely on these big online platforms to get their articles in front of people, fighting for attention alongside fake news, websites that lift their content, and cat videos. And for all of Google's and Facebook's efforts to support journalism by helping news organizations find new revenue streams and survive in the new world that these sites helped create they are, at the end of the day, the royals of the court. Quality news providers are the supplicants and the serfs. It's an uneasy alliance that has publishers chafing at the returns they receive from Google and Facebook, which rely on the free flow of premium news and information. So what we used to call "the newspaper industry" but which now includes outlets with robust online existences is coming together to make its biggest push so far to change the balance of power. This week, a group of news organizations will begin an effort to win the right to negotiate collectively with the big online platforms and will ask for a limited antitrust exemption from Congress in order to do so. It's an extreme measure with long odds. But the industry considers it worth a shot, given its view that Google and Facebook, regardless of their intentions, are posing a bigger threat economically than President Trump is (so far) with his rhetoric. That's how David Chavern, the chief executive of the News Media Alliance, put it in an opinion piece published online by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday evening. The Alliance, the main newspaper industry trade group, is leading the effort to bargain as a group. But it has buy in across the spectrum of its membership, bringing together competitors like The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, as well as scores of regional papers like The Star Tribune of Minneapolis, which face the gravest threats. In the tumultuous news climate, Google and Facebook don't want to be seen as undermining real journalism. And executives with both companies told me it was in their interests to have ample, reliable news content. "We're committed to helping quality journalism thrive on Facebook," Campbell Brown, Facebook's head of news partnerships, said. "We're making progress through our work with news publishers and have more work to do." This week, Facebook executives will meet with publishers to introduce new ways for them to sell subscriptions on the site. It will be the latest of several moves over the past few months to improve exposure for local news in the site's news feed and make it easier for news sites to run their own ads in Facebook's Instant Articles program. Google has made similar efforts through its News Lab. It says it has made changes to its algorithm to show quality news more prominently in search results. And it is working to help newsrooms take advantage of new technology to innovate and increase online revenue. "We want to help publishers succeed as they transition to digital," Google said in a statement, calling the effort "a priority." Publishers say they appreciate how Google and Facebook put their news content in front of many millions of users they couldn't reach on their own. And they acknowledge the efforts the platforms are making to help. But as Mike Klingensmith, the publisher of The Star Tribune and the chairman of the News Media Alliance, told me in an interview, "they're talking to us, but there hasn't been a lot of action yet." Even if more help comes as promised, the economic imbalance leaves the industry at the mercy of the platforms' generosity or immediate public relations imperatives: Facebook and Google are on the way to holding nearly 60 percent of the online advertising market, according to eMarketer. Mr. Klingensmith said that for midsize dailies, which have been hit particularly hard by the shift in ad spending, "it is impossible for us to go as a one off company and negotiate or even get an appointment with these companies." The Times is backing the move for what is called an anticompetitive safe haven, in part, Mr. Thompson said, "because we care about the whole of journalism as well as about The New York Times." He said The Times would consider joining a collective negotiation should its own talks fail to yield satisfactory results, which, he noted, they have yet to do. In seeking the right to negotiate together, the news providers are trying to avoid the trouble that major book publishing houses got into when they worked with Apple to develop an online book rival to Amazon. Without any government clearance, they ran afoul of antitrust laws. The Alliance acknowledges that its bid requires legislation giving them specific clearance to negotiate as a group, which is not commonly granted. It's an especially big ask from a Congress that hasn't had a great legislative batting average and whose controlling party, the Republicans, is not in a very press friendly mood these days. Then again, News Corporation's founder and executive chairman is Rupert Murdoch, whose sway with the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress is without parallel in the media world.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
ATLANTA The moments that Des Linden wants back came with about three and a half miles left in the race on Saturday as she battled wind gusts and the punishing hills at the U.S. Olympic marathon team trials. Doubt crept in, as it often does at some point in a 26.2 mile race, and that's when the leaders started to pull away. "I got a little soft," said Linden, who overcame brutal conditions of rain, wind and cold to win the Boston Marathon in 2018. Her mental darkness lasted only a few minutes. A few miles later, it appeared she just might reel in Sally Kipyego for third place and a third trip to the Olympics. But then Kipyego no longer seemed to be getting closer. Not only that, but Linden was running out of real estate. All that pain, all those miles in training, and then, on a cold, blustery day, there was Kipyego, on the final straightaway, running away with the last spot on the plane to the Tokyo Games this summer. Linden watched from 11 seconds back. "I still thought I had a chance," she said shortly after the race, her jaw quivering in the cold. "I wasn't going to give up until I finished. Well, when she finished. Then I gave up." Every four years, there are athletes who just miss out on a spot on the Olympic team. But there may be nothing crueler than just missing one of the six spots on the U.S. marathon team, which are decided in one make or break race. Consider how close Leonard Korir, 33, a Kenyan born member of the U.S. Army, came to making the team. He spent most of the last 10 miles of the race in perfect position to use his speed to book his ticket to the Olympics. He left the finish area without making the team or speaking to reporters. Who could blame him? In his debut marathon in October, Korir blazed a course in Amsterdam with a time of 2 hours 7 minutes 56 seconds, making him the second fastest qualifier in Saturday's field. But when he needed a final burst in the last quarter mile, he came up short, closing a 20 meter gap between him and Abdi Abdirahman to two or three strides, only to finish three seconds out. Korir's time was 2:10:06, Abdirahman's 2:10:03. So it was left to Linden, 36, a two time Olympian, to explain what it felt like to be so close. "Bummer,'' she said, still processing it. She has experienced this kind of heartbreak: In 2011 at the Boston Marathon, she was right there down the final stretch on Boylston Street. She had never been faster. She ran the race she had dreamed of winning more than any other in 2:22:38, but was outkicked by Caroline Kilel of Kenya by two seconds. Linden named her dog Boston because the race meant so much to her, and in 2018, on a day when the bone chilling rain came sideways, it all went right for her. She has been trying to get back to something like that place ever since, and on Saturday, it seemed as if she was going to. She took her turn leading a deep group of elite women into the second half of the race, also making sure to tuck in and protect herself from the wind and let some of the others do some of the hardest work. She had shown twice before that she knows how to get on the podium in this race, where third is as good as first, and fourth can hurt way more than 27th. Linden knew this course was going to be hard for everyone. It was new and no one had run it. The locale was out of the comfort zone of elite racers used to running the marquee races in New York and Boston and the like. In those races, Linden knows where the tough parts are, where the pack will surge, where she will hurt. In Atlanta, the day before the race, she did not even know where she was going to get her usual prerace bowl of rice. As expected, the race started slowly and tactically, with six minute miles, then slowly gained steam. Still, 14 women crossed the halfway mark at once, in 1:14:38, and at Mile 20, there were as many as 10 runners with a shot at the podium. Linden, right there among the leaders, seemed solid. Then, around Mile 22, she felt the pace quicken, as Molly Seidel and Aliphine Tuliamuk pushed to a 5:17 mile. She didn't have an answer. For a moment, she thought of Boston, just seven weeks away. Maybe she ought to jog in, save her legs and come back strong for that race? She dismissed the thought. Stay out here and fight. And so she did, into the wind, up the hills of the final miles, getting just one spot away from a seat on the plane. And that's where she finished. "You learn," she said while the memory was fresh and goose bumps were rising in the cold wind of the finish area. "You think: Next time. And then: Oh, yeah, no next time." Linden will be 40 in four years. She has been at this for more than a decade. So much pain, so many miles. But Boston beckons. That's where all the miles lead, as she has said, especially on a day like Saturday, when she was forced to try hard to believe that sometimes a race isn't about the results but the effort and the process. Believing in anything else might lead to madness. Plus, a new generation is rising.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Tom Brady's 20 year career with the New England Patriots, which came to an end on Tuesday with the announcement that he would seek a new team as an unrestricted free agent, had no shortage of superlatives. Six Super Bowl championships. Nine A.F.C. championships. A 219 64 record as a starter that's an average season of 12 4. While his time in New England might seem like an endless run of excellence, one year does stand out. In 2007, Brady had one of the greatest seasons ever by a quarterback, and, not coincidentally, the Patriots had one of the greatest seasons ever by a team. In his first six seasons as the team's starter, Brady had established a consistent baseline of success: about 300 completions at a 60 percent rate. About 25 touchdowns. A little less than one interception a game. An adjusted yards per attempt rate of 6 or 7. And a lot of wins: 10, 12, even 14 each season. Almost every other team in the league would have been ecstatic to get numbers like that from its quarterback, let alone win three Super Bowl titles under his command, as the Patriots did in those six seasons. None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. In 2007, at age 30, he elevated his game and put up numbers he had never reached, and in many cases would never reach again. His 300 or so completions became 398. And receivers caught his passes at a higher rate: 68.9 percent of the time. It is the only season of Brady's career in which he led the league in completion percentage. Brady would never again exceed 39 in a season. His adjusted yards per pass in 2007 zoomed to 9.4 percent, best in the league and another career high he would not match. Brady's astonishing numbers in 2007 also heralded a permanent change in his skill set. After throwing a dozen or so interceptions each season early in his career, Brady had only eight in 2007, a meager 1.4 percent of passes attempted, compared with a previous low of 2.3. Ever since, Brady has been extraordinarily difficult to intercept. Starting in 2010, Brady has not had an interception rate higher than 2 percent. In several seasons, he almost seemed to play as if there weren't any defensive backs on the field: He threw only seven or eight interceptions over a full season four more times. There were four interceptions in 2010, then two in 12 games in 2016, when he was 39. He never again hit the 14 interceptions that he gave up in three of his first six years as a starter. Brady would post even better numbers in some categories in seasons to follow: He broke the 5,000 yard barrier in 2011, surpassed 400 completions three times and led the league in a slew of categories. After a well deserved first Most Valuable Player Award in 2007, he won the prize again in 2010 and 2017. He also led the Patriots to three more Super Bowl wins. But he never again put together such an across the board complete season. And those Brady numbers in 2007 added up to wins for the Patriots: 16 of them without a loss for the only undefeated regular season in the N.F.L. since 1972, when the Miami Dolphins were 14 0. The odd thing about the Patriots' phenomenal 2007 season is that it is remembered as something of a disappointment because of their upset in the Super Bowl by the Giants after David Tyree's helmet catch. But perhaps the passage of time, and Brady's departure from New England, will give Patriots lovers and haters alike the perspective to see the 2007 season for the remarkable feat it was.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
An Abrupt End to The Tampa Tribune After a Blow Delivered by Its Rival TAMPA, Fla. A pair of 18 wheel rigs waited outside the former printing plant of The Tampa Tribune on a recent afternoon. Workers were busy dismantling machinery and hauling it away, preparing for the building's demolition. Nearby, in what had been the newsroom, file folders, reporters' notebooks and other detritus lay scattered on the floor, evidence of a hasty retreat. The Tribune, whose motto was "Life. Printed Daily," was abruptly shut down on May 3 after having covered this city and its environs for 123 years. The reasons for its demise were familiar: precipitous drops in advertising, the rush of readers to the web, the fallout of the economic recession. But this particular case felt a little more personal and left the journalists who found themselves suddenly out of work with the sense that they had been betrayed. It was The Tribune's main competitor, The Tampa Bay Times, based 25 miles away in St. Petersburg and owned by the nonprofit Poynter Institute, that dealt the knockout punch by purchasing The Tribune and then immediately shutting it down. The deal for the purchase of The Tribune from the Revolution Capital Group was struck almost five months ago, but was not revealed until this month. Tribune employees said they knew nothing about the paper's planned sale to its rival, and believed that, their building having been sold to a Miami developer, they would move into new offices in Tampa as soon as suitable space could be found. "People feel like fools, they feel like dupes and they feel deceived," said Michelle Bearden, a 20 year veteran of The Tribune who was laid off in 2014 and keeps in close touch with former colleagues. "Revolution had already inked the deal with The Tampa Bay Times to sell the paper. There was never any intention to find a new home and continue The Tribune as a competitive entity. There was no commitment to this community, no intention to try to make this newspaper profitable again, no interest in preserving a historical tradition." About 265 people lost their jobs. The Times took control of its rival's lists of advertisers and subscribers. "It was quick, it was clinical," said Joe Henderson, 64, who started at The Tribune in 1974 as a sportswriter and covered 20 World Series championships, several Super Bowls and the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens. "I got two months' salary. I'm fortunate that I'm not in bad shape, but I'm concerned for some of my colleagues. Everybody gave their heart and soul into that paper. I wish it had ended better." During a farewell party at a riverfront restaurant, scores of former Tribune employees wistfully toasted their shared history and rifled through boxes of paraphernalia bearing the newspaper's name T shirts, beach chairs, mugs, key rings. It was all that remained of their former employer. "It's like losing my parents all over again," said Linda Kemp, who began working as a secretary in 1976 at The Tampa Times, The Tribune's afternoon sister paper. When it closed in 1982, Ms. Kemp moved to the promotions department at The Tribune. Over the years, The Tribune which was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in 1966 for local investigative reporting had won the enduring affection of many of its readers, even as it struggled to assert itself in a protracted circulation war. "The Tribune was more gritty, The Times more refined," said Howard Troxler, a former columnist, editor and reporter who spent nine years at The Tribune and 20 years at The Times before retiring in 2011. "The Tribune was kind of like the poor stepchild." A name tag at the farewell party for Patty Chesser, listing the bureaus she worked in during her 25 years with The Tribune. Melissa Lyttle for The New York Times Occasionally, Mr. Troxler said, "we broke a huge story over The Times's head and of course it was always especially sweet." He said that The Tribune whose editorial positions tended to lean right, the opposite of The Times sometimes stirred up its more conservative readers with investigations into Tampa's Hispanic power structure, particularly its judges, prosecutors and legislators. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. "Yet The Tribune knew and loved Tampa, and loved its culture," he said. "A lot of the writers knew it well and wrote a lot of great stories about it." Marjorie Knapp, a retired grade school teacher in Pinellas County who was a Tribune reader for about 40 years, said she stopped about three years ago. "Local writers were let go," she said. "More and more news seemed to be wire service filler. Political stances became more conservative." The paper across the bay, founded in 1884 as The West Hillsborough Times and later known as The St. Petersburg Times, changed its name to The Tampa Bay Times in 2012 to telegraph its intention of being the sole provider of printed news in an area of 2.7 million people that includes Clearwater. The Clearwater Sun closed in 1989 after publishing for 75 years. Managers at The Times insisted that buying The Tribune and closing it was the only way forward in a challenging and uncertain market. Both newspapers had made deep staff reductions in recent years and had raised cash by selling their headquarters. Despite being Florida's highest circulation newspaper and the winner of 12 Pulitzer Prizes two of them this year The Times has had a rough patch. It took out a 28 million loan in 2013, and borrowed another 13.3 million just before purchasing The Tribune. "We've been under threat for years now," said Ken Koehn, a 25 year veteran of The Tribune who had been its managing editor since 2012. "They were pretty open about it," he added, referring to the Times management's desire to see The Tribune gone. Mr. Koehn recalled that about four years ago, The Times had lowered its annual subscription price to 26 in The Tribune's core circulation area. "It used to be 10 times that," he said. "But it caused our circulation people to react to it, and then no one was making any money." Pointing to The Times's assumption of millions of dollars in debt, as well as the sale of its headquarters in St. Petersburg and other properties nearby, Mr. Koehn said The Times had paid a heavy price to be the only paper in the area. "They look at it as though they won in the end, but they really drove both papers to the brink of destruction," he said. "If you ask me who won the newspaper war, I'd say no one did. We both lost."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
In 1977, when Chuck Davis planted the first seed for his DanceAfrica festival, he presented his company in the Lepercq Space at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where he built an African village. Now in its 38th year, the event continues at the academy's opera house as a beloved tradition that rings in Memorial Day weekend with a cacophonous bang. The festival, which began with a performance on Friday, marks Mr. Davis's final year as the artistic director of DanceAfrica, which includes an outdoor bazaar and a film series. Next year he passes the reins to the artistic director designate, Abdel R. Salaam, who helped to organize the 2015 installment subtitled "Brazilian Rhythms. African Roots." Even though the program was capped by Bale Folclorico da Bahia, a Brazilian company, the night was all about bidding a fond and percussive farewell to Mr. Davis. The first half featured the youthful, adorably vigorous BAM/Restoration DanceAfrica Ensemble, along with Bambara Drum and Dance Ensemble, from the Bronx, in "Unchained," a scintillating arrangement of West African dances. The drumming just about shook the theater. But after intermission, a lethargy set in with the presentation of the recipients of the academy's Samuel H. Scripps Scholarships, as well as the announcement of the new Baba Chuck Davis Emerging Choreographer Scholarship. Was this an award show or a performance? After the program passed the three hour mark, the problem became clear: editing. This was at least two shows rolled into one.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
'APOLLO'S MUSE: THE MOON IN THE AGE OF PHOTOGRAPHY' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 22). This exhibition is a journey through an uncommon history, that of representations of the moon across four centuries. An outsize and beautifully installed revelation of persistent astronomical searches, it is a trailblazing marriage of science and art 300 images and objects (a telescope, a photograph used as a fire screen, two moon globes, Hasselblad cameras used by astronauts), plus film excerpts. The images shine a bright light on astronomers' unstoppable pursuit of knowledge as well as on technological advances, artistic responses and fantasy, and also a generous serving of unabashed cuteness. The show amounts to a testament to the human drive to know and explore, and it quietly affirms the growing influence of visual representations of the moon from the invention of the telescope through the Apollo 11 moon landing 50 years ago. (Vicki Goldberg) 212 535 7100, metmuseum.org 'ARTISTIC LICENSE: SIX TAKES ON THE GUGGENHEIM COLLECTION' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (through Jan. 12). Displays that artists select from a museum's collection are almost inevitably interesting, revealing and valuable. After all, artists can be especially discerning regarding work not their own. Here, six artists Cai Guo Qiang, Paul Chan, Richard Prince, Julie Mehretu, Carrie Mae Weems and Jenny Holzer guided by specific themes, have chosen, which multiplies the impact accordingly. With one per ramp, each selection turns the museum inside out. The combination sustains multiple visits; the concept should be applied regularly. (Roberta Smith) 212 423 3840, guggenheim.org 'AUSCHWITZ. NOT LONG AGO. NOT FAR AWAY' at the Museum of Jewish Heritage (through Jan. 3). Killing as a communal business, made widely lucrative by the Third Reich, permeates this traveling exhibition about the largest German death camp, Auschwitz, whose yawning gatehouse, with its converging rail tracks, has become emblematic of the Holocaust. Well timed, during a worldwide surge of anti Semitism, the harrowing installation strives, successfully, for fresh relevance. The exhibition illuminates the topography of evil, the deliberate designing of a hell on earth by fanatical racists and compliant architects and provisioners, while also highlighting the strenuous struggle for survival in a place where, as Primo Levi learned, "there is no why." (Ralph Blumenthal) 646 437 4202, mjhnyc.org 'BRAZILIAN MODERN: THE LIVING ART OF ROBERTO BURLE MARX' at the New York Botanical Garden (through Sept. 29). The garden's largest ever botanical exhibition pays tribute to Brazil's most renowned landscape architect with lush palm trees and vivid plants, along with a display of paintings and tapestries. In the late 1960s and early '70s, Marx (1909 94) planted bright bands of monochrome plants along Rio's Copacabana Beach and the fresh ministries of Brasilia, then the new capital. For this show, the garden and its greenhouses synthesize his achievements into a free form paean rich with Brazilian species, some of which he discovered himself. (Alcantarea burle marxii, one of many thick fronded bromeliads here, has leaves as tall as a 10 year old.) Check the weather, make sure it's sunny, then spend all day breathing in this exuberant gust of tropical modernism. (Jason Farago) 718 817 8700, nybg.org 'T.C. CANNON: AT THE EDGE OF AMERICA' at the National Museum of the American Indian (through Sept. 16). In 31 years, Cannon made more stunning artworks than some artists make in much longer lifetimes. This retrospective brings together his polychromatic paintings of Native Americans, intimate drawings commenting on the country's violent history, and original poetry, folk songs and letters to emphasize the full breadth of his singularly hybrid vision. That he made so much mature work in so many mediums before dying in a car accident in 1978 is all the more remarkable. In Cannon's most powerful works, he brings Modernist styles most notably Post Impressionism and Fauvism to bear on portraits of Native Americans. There are echoes of Matisse in his ambush of colors and patterns, and shades of van Gogh in his animation of the landscape. But paintings like "Two Guns Arikara" (1974 77) and "Indian With Beaded Headdress" (1978) demonstrate his irrefutable originality. (Jillian Steinhauer) americanindian.si.edu 'PIERRE CARDIN: FUTURE FASHION' at the Brooklyn Museum (through Jan. 5). He was never a great artist like Dior, Balenciaga or Saint Laurent, but Pierre Cardin still at work at 97 pioneered today's approach to the business of fashion: take a loss on haute couture, then make the real money through ready to wear and worldwide licensing deals. He excelled at bold, futuristic day wear: belted unisex jumpsuits, vinyl miniskirts, dresses accessorized with astronaut chic Plexiglas helmets. Other ensembles, especially the tacky evening gowns souped up with metal armature, are best ignored. All told, Cardin comes across as a relentless optimist about humanity's future, which has a certain retro charm. Remember the future? (Farago) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.org 'CULTURE AND THE PEOPLE: EL MUSEO DEL BARRIO, 1969 2019' at El Museo del Barrio (through Sept. 29). This golden anniversary survey of wonderful art from the collection of a treasured East Harlem based institution sounds a political note from the start, with works by figures who were crucial to the museum's earliest years, like the street photographer Hiram Maristany and the great printmaker Rafael Tufino. Throughout the show, whether in abstract paintings or sculptural installations, art and activism blend. And there's joy: A 2006 collage called "Barrio Boogie Movement" by Rodriguez Calero generates the elation of the sidewalk it depicts, and Freddy Rodriguez's homage to the Dominican catcher Tony Pena a gold leaf baseball nestled in a mink lined glove is a rush of pure fan love. (Holland Cotter) 212 831 7272, elmuseo.org 'CYCLING IN THE CITY: A 200 YEAR HISTORY' at the Museum of the City of New York (through Oct. 6). The complex past, present and future roles of the bicycle as a vehicle for both social progress and strife are explored in this exhibition. With more than 150 objects including 14 bicycles and vintage cycling apparel it traces the transformation of cycling's significance from a form of democratized transportation, which gave women and immigrants a sense of freedom, to a political football that continues to pit the city's more than 800,000 cyclists against their detractors today. (Julianne McShane) 212 534 1672, mcny.org 'LEONARDO DA VINCI'S "SAINT JEROME"' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 6). The 500th anniversary of da Vinci's death in 1519 will bring big doings to Paris this fall with a one stop only career survey at the Louvre. New York gets a shot of buzz in advance with the appearance at the Met of a single great painting: "Saint Jerome Praying in the Wilderness." On loan from the Vatican Museums, it's one of the most rawly expressive images in the da Vinci canon. And it's a mystery. We don't know exactly when it was painted, or for whom, or why. Like much of this artist's work, it's unfinished. Incompleteness is part of its power. And powerful this picture is, a spiritual meltdown unfolding right before your eyes. You won't want to miss it. (Cotter) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'DRAWING THE CURTAIN: MAURICE SENDAK'S DESIGNS FOR OPERA AND BALLET' at the Morgan Library Museum (through Oct. 6). Drawn from Sendak's bequest to the Morgan of his theatrical drawings, this succinct yet bountiful exhibition offers an overview of a dense, underappreciated period in this artist's career, undertaken with his most celebrated books well in the past and his life in uneasy transition. "Fifty," Sendak said, "is a good time to either change careers or have a nervous breakdown." The new midlife career he took on in the late 1970s was that of a designer for music theater. His rare ability to convey the light in darkness and the darkness in light brought him to opera. It's the focus of this show, which is aimed at adults but likely delightful for children, too. Five of his productions emerge before our eyes from rough sketches to storyboards, polished designs and a bit of video footage in those unmistakably Sendakian colors, watery and vivid at once. (Zachary Woolfe) 212 685 0008, themorgan.org 'ELECTIVE INFINITIES: EDMUND DE WAAL' at the Frick Collection (through Nov. 17). How does a contemporary artist enter a scene as formidable as Henry Frick's Gilded Age mansion? For de Waal, the English ceramist and author of the acclaimed family memoir "The Hare With Amber Eyes," the answer is with modesty. Only as you follow de Waal's site specific installations in nine of the museum's galleries does his own restrained music begin to ring out. Below Ingres's dangerously seductive "Comtesse d'Haussonville," he installs little strips of solid gold leaning against two huddles of white porcelain; in the richly appointed West Gallery, two pairs of overlapping flat screen shaped glass boxes ("From Darkness to Darkness" and "Noontime and Dawntime") distill the experience of being overwhelmed by painted imagery into a lucid kind of serenity. (Will Heinrich) 212 288 0700, frick.org 'THE JIM HENSON EXHIBITION' at the Museum of the Moving Image (ongoing). The rainbow connection has been established in Astoria, Queens, where this museum has opened a new permanent wing devoted to the career of America's great puppeteer, who was born in Mississippi in 1936 and died, too young, in 1990. Henson began presenting the short TV program "Sam and Friends" before he was out of his teens; one of its characters, the soft faced Kermit, was fashioned from his mother's old coat and would not mature into a frog for more than a decade. The influence of early variety television, with its succession of skits and songs, runs through "Sesame Street" and "The Muppet Show," though Henson also spent the late 1960s crafting peace and love documentaries and prototyping a psychedelic nightclub. Young visitors will delight in seeing Big Bird, Elmo, Miss Piggy and the Swedish Chef; adults can dig deep into sketches and storyboards and rediscover some old friends. (Farago) 718 784 0077, movingimage.us 'ILLUSTRATING BATMAN: EIGHTY YEARS OF COMICS AND POP CULTURE' at the Society of Illustrators (through Oct. 12). Batman turned 80 in April, and now the character is being celebrated with this visual feast of covers and interior pages, teeming with vintage and modern original comic art that shows the hero's evolution. The exhibition includes "Bat Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan," a display devoted to a Batman story originally printed in Japan, and "Batman Collected: Chip Kidd's Batman Obsession," featuring memorabilia belonging to the graphic designer Chip Kidd. (George Gene Gustines) 212 838 2560, societyillustrators.org Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. 'ALICJA KWADE: PARAPIVOT' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 27). This shrewd and scientifically inclined artist, born in Poland and based in Berlin, has delivered the best edition in five years of the Met's hit or miss rooftop sculpture commission. Two tall armatures of interlocking steel rectangles, the taller of them rising more than 18 feet, support heavy orbs of different colored marble; some of the balls perch precariously on the steel frames, while others, head scratchingly, are squinched between them. Walk around these astral abstractions and the frames seem to become quotation marks for the transformed skyline of Midtown; the marbles might be planets, each just as precarious as the one from which they've been quarried. (Farago) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'SIMONE LEIGH: LOOPHOLE OF RETREAT' at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (through Oct. 27). Leigh's sensuous, majestic sculptures of black female figures fuse the language of African village architecture and African American folk art, and sometimes racial stereotypes, like the "mammy" figurines produced and collected in earlier eras in America. Sculpture is only one part of the practice that earned Leigh the Hugo Boss Prize 2018, but it is the one that inspired this show of three large objects in a gallery off the rotunda. The title comes from the writings of Harriet Jacobs, an enslaved woman who spent seven years hiding in a crawl space to escape her master's advances. In the exhibition, the "loophole" becomes a kind of artistic conceit, too, in which Leigh moves deftly between mediums, styles and messages, addressing multiple audiences but always, as she has stated, black women. For Leigh, loopholes might include representations of women that link back to ancestors or empower women by drawing on the freedom available through art. In that sense, these sculptures are sentinels, and placeholders. (Martha Schwendener) 212 423 3840, guggenheim.org 'MARTA MINUJIN: MENESUNDA RELOADED' at New Museum (through Sept. 29). One of the best shows of the summer returns to a legendary moment of midcentury avant gardism with the vividness of time travel. It replicates with convincing accuracy a funky D.I.Y. multichamber labyrinth created in Buenos Aires in 1965 by the young Argentine artist Marta Minujin, assisted by the artist Ruben Santanonin. The work's title, "La Menesunda," is, appropriately, slang for "a confusing situation," and the immersive combination of happening, performance and installation manifested in cheap, colorful materials makes it so. (Smith) 212 219 1222, newmuseum.org 'NOBODY PROMISED YOU TOMORROW: 50 YEARS AFTER STONEWALL' at the Brooklyn Museum (through Dec. 8). In this large group show, 28 young queer and transgender artists, most born after 1980, carry the buzz of Stonewall resistance into the present. Historical heroes, including Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, are honored (in a film by Sasha Wortzel and Tourmaline). Friends in life, Johnson and Rivera are tutelary spirits of an exhibition in which a trans presence, long marginalized by mainstream gay politics, is pronounced in the work of Juliana Huxtable, Hugo Gyrl, Amaryllis DeJesus Moleski and Elle Perez (who is also in the current Whitney Biennial). (Cotter) 718 638 5000, brooklynmuseum.org 'OCEAN WONDERS: SHARKS!' at the New York Aquarium (ongoing). For years, the aquarium's 14 acre campus hunkered behind a wall, turning its back to the beach. When aquarium officials last year finally got around to completing the long promised building that houses this shark exhibition, maybe the biggest move, architecturally speaking, was breaking through that wall. The overall effect makes the aquarium more of a visible, welcoming presence along the boardwalk. Inside, "Ocean Wonders" features 115 species sharing 784,000 gallons of water. It stresses timely eco consciousness, introducing visitors to shark habitats, explaining how critical sharks are to the ocean's food chains and ecologies, debunking myths about the danger sharks pose to people while documenting the threats people pose to sharks via overfishing and pollution. The narrow, snaking layout suggests an underwater landscape carved by water. Past the exit, an outdoor ramp inclines visitors toward the roof of the building, where the Atlantic Ocean suddenly spreads out below. You can see Luna Park in one direction, Brighton Beach in the other. The architectural point becomes clear: Sharks aren't just movie stars and aquarium attractions. They're also our neighbors as much a part of Coney Island as the roller coasters and summer dreams. (Michael Kimmelman) 718 265 3474, nyaquarium.com 'PHENOMENAL NATURE: MRINALINI MUKHERJEE' at the Met Breuer (through Sept. 29). You almost forget that art has the power to startle to make you wonder "How on earth did someone even think to do this, never mind do it?" until you see a show like this survey of sculptures by Mukherjee (1949 2015), an Indian artist. Roughly half are figurelike forms made from hemp ropes worked in a knotted macrame technique of finger aching ingenuity and titled with generic names of pre Hindu nature spirits and fertility deities. Smaller, ceramic pieces, flame shaped and midnight black, suggest Buddhas. Late cast bronze sculptures look both botanical and bestial. The result isn't folk art or design or fiber art or religious art or feminist art. It's modern art of deep originality. And it's an astonishment. (Cotter) 212 731 1635, metmuseum.org 'PLAY IT LOUD: INSTRUMENTS OF ROCK ROLL' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Oct. 1). Presented in collaboration with the Rock Roll Hall of Fame, this exhibition offers a vision of history in which the rock music that flowered in the 1960s and '70s sits firmly at the center. The format of the rock band provides the structure of the show, with one room given over to the rhythm section and another showcasing "Guitar Gods." Yet another room has a display highlighting the guitar's destruction, with pieces of instruments trashed by Kurt Cobain and Pete Townshend. To the extent that it shifts focus toward the tools of the rock trade, the show is illuminating. Of particular interest is the room set aside for "Creating a Sound," which focuses on the sonic possibility of electronics. The lighting in "Play It Loud" is dim, perhaps reflecting rock music as the sound of the night. Each individual instrument shines like a beacon, as if it's catching the glint of an onstage spotlight. It makes the space between audience member and musician seem vast, but that doesn't diminish the wonder of browsing the tools once used by pop royalty. (Mark Richardson) 212 535 7710, metmuseum.org 'PUNK LUST: RAW PROVOCATION 1971 1985' at the Museum of Sex (through Nov. 30). This show begins with imagery from the Velvet Underground: The 1963 paperback of that title, an exploration of what was then called deviant sexual behavior and gave the band its name, is one of the first objects on display. Working through photos, album art and fliers by artists like Iggy Pop, the New York Dolls, Patti Smith and, yes, the Sex Pistols, the exhibition demonstrates how punk offered a space for sexual expression outside the mainstream. In the story told by "Punk Lust," much of it laid out in placards by the writer and musician Vivien Goldman, one of the show's curators, graphic sexual imagery is a tool for shock that frightens away the straight world and offers comfort to those who remain inside. While some of the power dynamic is typical underage groupies cavorting with rock stars images from female, queer and nonbinary artists like Jayne County and the Slits make a strong case for sex as an essential source of punk liberation. (Richardson) 212 689 6337, museumofsex.com 'SCENES FROM THE COLLECTION' at the Jewish Museum (ongoing). After a surgical renovation to its grand pile on Fifth Avenue, the Jewish Museum has reopened its third floor galleries with a rethought, refreshed display of its permanent collection, which intermingles 4,000 years of Judaica with modern and contemporary art by Jews and gentiles alike Mark Rothko, Lee Krasner, Nan Goldin, Cindy Sherman and the excellent young Nigerian draftswoman Ruby Onyinyechi Amanze. The works are shown in a nimble, nonchronological suite of galleries, and some of its century spanning juxtapositions are bracing; others feel reductive, even dilettantish. But always, the Jewish Museum conceives of art and religion as interlocking elements of a story of civilization, commendably open to new influences and new interpretations. (Farago) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org STATUE OF LIBERTY MUSEUM on Liberty Island (ongoing). Security concerns stemming from the Sept. 11 attacks led the National Park Service to restrict the number of people who could go inside the Statue of Liberty's massive stone pedestal and up to the crown. So the Statue of Liberty Ellis Island Foundation wanted to offer something more for visitors who found the outdoor view less than satisfying: a stand alone museum on the island that would welcome everyone who wanted to hear the story behind Lady Liberty. Going beyond the vague and often dubious ideal of American "liberty," the museum's displays highlight the doubts of black Americans and women who saw their personal liberties compromised on a daily basis in the 1880s, when the statue opened. These exhibits also spotlight a bit of history that is often forgotten: that the French creators intended the statue as a commemoration of the abolition of slavery in the United States. (Julia Jacobs) statueoflibertymuseum.org 'STONEWALL 50 AT THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY' (through Dec. 1). For its Stonewall summer, the society offers a bouquet of three micro shows: "Letting Loose and Fighting Back: L.G.B.T.Q. Nightlife Before and After Stonewall," which closes on Sept. 22, is devoted the night life that thrived in places such as the 1950s lesbian bar called the Sea Colony and the gay male sex clubs like the Anvil and the Ramrod that sizzled in the 1970s. "By the Force of Our Presence: Highlights From the Lesbian Herstory Archives" documents the founding in 1974 by Joan Nestle, Deborah Edel, Sahli Cavallero, Pamela Olin and Julia Stanley of a compendious and still growing register of lesbian culture. And "Say It Loud, Out and Proud: Fifty Years of Pride" turns a solo spotlight on charismatic individuals: Storme DeLarverie (1920 2014), Mother Flawless Sabrina/Jack Doroshow (1939 2017), Keith Haring (1958 90) and Rollerena Fairy Godmother. (Cotter) 212 873 3400, nyhistory.org 'T. REX: THE ULTIMATE PREDATOR' at the American Museum of Natural History (through Aug. 9, 2020). Everyone's favorite 18,000 pound prehistoric killer gets the star treatment in this eye opening exhibition, which presents the latest scientific research on T. rex and also introduces many other tyrannosaurs, some discovered only this century in China and Mongolia. T. rex evolved mainly during the Cretaceous period to have keen eyes, spindly arms and massive conical teeth, which packed a punch that has never been matched by any other creature; the dinosaur could even swallow whole bones, as affirmed here by a kid friendly display of fossilized excrement. The show mixes 66 million year old teeth with the latest 3 D prints of dino bones, and also presents new models of T. rex as a baby, a juvenile and a full grown annihilator. Turns out this most savage beast was covered with believe it! a soft coat of beige or white feathers. (Farago) 212 769 5100, amnh.org '2019 WHITNEY BIENNIAL' at the Whitney Museum of American Art (through Sept. 22). Given the political tensions that have sent spasms through the nation over the past two years, you might have expected hoped that this year's biennial would be one big, sharp Occupy style yawp. It isn't. Politics are present but, with a few notable exceptions, murmured, coded, stitched into the weave of fastidiously form conscious, labor intensive work. As a result, the exhibition, organized by two young Whitney curators, Rujeko Hockley and Jane Panetta, gives the initial impression of being a well groomed group show rather than a statement of resistance. But once you start looking closely, the impression changes artist by artist, piece by piece there's quiet agitation in the air. (Cotter) 212 570 3600, whitney.org 'VIOLET HOLDINGS: LGBTQ HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE N.Y.U. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS' at Bobst Library (through Dec. 31). With the Stonewall Inn now a National Historic Landmark (and a bar again; it was a bagel shop in the 1980s), nearby New York University has produced a homegrown archival exhibition at Bobst Library, across the park from Grey Art Gallery. Organized by Hugh Ryan, it takes the local history of queer identity back to the 19th century with documents on Elizabeth Robins (1862 1952), an American actor, suffragist and friend of Virginia Woolf, and forward with ephemera related to the musician and drag king Johnny Science (1955 2007) and the African American D.J. Larry Levan (1954 92), who, in the 1980s, presided, godlike, at a gay disco called the Paradise Garage, which was a short walk from the campus. (Cotter) 212 998 2500, library.nyu.edu 'CAMP: NOTES ON FASHION' at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (through Sept. 8). Inspired by Susan Sontag's 1964 essay, "Notes on 'Camp,'" the latest spectacular from the Met's Costume Institute attempts to define this elastic, constantly evolving concept, which leaves taste, seriousness and heteronormativity in the dust. The show researches camp's emergence in 18th century France and 19th century England, examines "Sontagian Camp" and culminates in an immense gallery of designer confectionaries from the 1980s to now that calls to mind a big, shiny Christmas tree barricaded with presents. (Smith) 212 535 7100, metmuseum.org 'LEONARD COHEN: A CRACK IN EVERYTHING' at the Jewish Museum (through Sept. 8). The curators of this show, John Zeppetelli of the Musee d'Art Contemporain de Montreal and Victor Shiffman, commissioned artists of various disciplines to develop pieces inspired by Cohen. Some are simple and quiet, like "Ear on a Worm" from the film artist Tacita Dean, a small image playing on a loop high in a space that shows a perched bird, a reference to "Bird on the Wire" from Cohen's 1969 album "Songs From a Room." Some are closer to traditional documentary, like George Fok's "Passing Through," which intercuts performances by Cohen throughout his career with video that surrounds the viewer, suggesting the songs are constant and eternal while the performer's body changes with time. Taken together, the layered work on display has a lot to offer on Cohen, but even more to say about how we respond to music, bring it into our lives, and use it as both a balm and an agent for transformation. (Richardson) 212 423 3200, thejewishmuseum.org 'ECLIPSE OF THE SUN: ART OF THE WEIMAR REPUBLIC' at the Neue Galerie (through Sept. 2). George Grosz's mordant, topsy turvy "Eclipse of the Sun" anchors this summer showcase, which is much angstier than your average beach read one of media induced alienation, changing gender roles, rampant inequality and a democracy at the breaking point. (No points for guessing why Weimar is back in fashion!) A half dozen impassive portraits by Otto Dix exemplify the cold exactitude of the Neue Sachlichkeit, or New Objectivity; so does another Grosz of a reader with a glass eye, skin waxy, veins bulging. The movement's shrewdest painter remains Christian Schad, whose full frontal "Two Girls" makes sex appear as pleasurable as an autopsy. Not safe for work? Schad's pitiless gaze on desire is hardly safe for the museum. (Farago) 212 994 9493, neuegalerie.org 'MOOD: STUDIO MUSEUM ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE' at MoMA PS1 (through Sept. 8). The Studio Museum in Harlem is a movable feast these days. With a new David Adjaye designed headquarters under construction on West 125th Street, the museum is distributing its exhibitions among various locations around town. Its annual artists in residence show, which is known for being a reputation clincher, has found a berth at MoMA PS1 in Long Island City, Queens. This year's three participants Allison Janae Hamilton, Tschabalala Self and Sable Elyse Smith are arguably already en route to stardom. It's also worth noting that, strategically and tonally, this year's edition, with its formally experimental, slow release explorations into the politics of African American life, is very much of a piece with the excellent, and overlapping, 2019 Whitney Biennial. (Cotter) 718 784 2084, moma.org 'CHARLOTTE POSENENSKE: WORK IN PROGRESS' at Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, N.Y. (through Sept. 9). This Hudson Valley institution continues its satisfying enlargement of its roll call of Miminalists and Conceptualists with a major showcase of this German artist, who showed her modular, industrially inspired sculptures alongside Donald Judd and Frank Stella in the late 1960s, but then abandoned art for sociology. Posenenske's most important works were free standing pipes, made of sheet steel or cardboard, that look almost exactly like commercial air ducts. Unlike some of the control freaks whose art is also on view here, Posenenske made her art in infinite editions, out of parts that can be arranged in any shape you like: a generous distribution of authorship from the artist to her fabricators and collectors. (Farago) diaart.org 'WALT WHITMAN: AMERICA'S POET' at the New York Public Library (through Aug. 30) and 'WALT WHITMAN: BARD OF DEMOCRACY' at the Morgan Library Museum (through Sept. 15). "I am large, I contain multitudes," Whitman wrote in "Song of Myself." And this summer, New York has been hosting an unusually large and varied selection of artifacts of its most celebrated literary son in honor of his bicentennial birthday, which was on May 31. The public library's exhibition surveys the landmarks of the poet's public career, drawing in large part from its rich holdings. The one at the Morgan features objects from its collection, too, alongside loans from the Library of Congress, including an errant 19th century butterfly with a back story as colorful as its wings. (Jennifer Schuessler) nypl.org/waltwhitman 212 685 0008, themorgan.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Filmmakers can have a tough time distinguishing themselves in the crowded serial killer genre. For Fatih Akin, the director of "The Golden Glove," the solution seems to have been making his movie as vomitous as possible . The film is based on a novel taken from the exploits of Fritz Honka, who was sent to prison in Germany after police discovered the dismembered bodies of several women in his Hamburg apartment in the 1970s. Luckily, the movie is not being presented in Odorama, which spares viewers the aroma of decaying flesh that Honka (Jonas Dassler) repeatedly blames on his neighbors' cooking. But if you've ever longed to hear the sound of a saw cutting through neck gristle mixed for Dolby Atmos , this Cannes prize winning filmmaker has you covered. "The Golden Glove" mainly shuttles between two locations, squalid and more squalid. One is the red light district bar that provides the movie's title, where Honka hangs out with Hamburg's most down and out reprobates and picks up aging prostitutes. The other is Honka's attic apartment, which gets a fruitless cleaning when the mostly oblivious Gerda ( Margarethe Tiesel ) accompanies Fritz home one night and sticks around.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
The American Pianists Association awarded its 2019 Cole Porter Fellowship on Saturday to Emmet Cohen, a rising star whose resume already includes stints with some of jazz's most esteemed elders. The 28 year old pianist, who was competing against four other finalists, will receive 50,000, a recording contract with Mack Avenue Records, and two years of professional services. The competition's closing event took place on Saturday at the Hilbert Circle Theater in Indianapolis, capping a 14 month process in which each finalist also had an engagement at an Indianapolis jazz club and participated in an outreach program at a local high school. With his win, Mr. Cohen joins a lineup of nine past awardees that includes Sullivan Fortner, Aaron Parks, Dan Tepfer and Aaron Diehl who have all attained significant renown since winning. The American Pianists Association holds a competition for young musicians every two years, but it alternates between jazz and classical. Mr. Cohen was a finalist the last time it focused on jazz pianists, in 2015, but he lost to Mr. Fortner.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
From Juliet to Alice Kramden, women have communed from their upper story windows, but few ever reached a wider audience with as mundane a message as Mary Fiumara. In an indelible long running television commercial first broadcast in 1969, Mrs. Fiumara, playing a devoted, robust and aproned mother, convincingly hollers "Anthony! Anthony!" from a second floor tenement window in the Italian North End of Boston to summon home her 12 year old son from blocks away for a hearty serving of Prince spaghetti. To get there, Anthony, in short pants and sneakers, wends his way through a crowded street market, races up the stairs and arrives out of breath but, like his welcoming mother, smiling. Her long connection to the neighborhood was a big reason she was cast for the commercial. Its producers had been seeking authenticity, choosing to film in the North End itself and casting local people whom they discovered on location. Mrs. Fiumara was chosen when a casting director saw her peering from a window. (The apartment in the ad was not hers, however.) Her two word speaking part was the beginning and end of Mrs. Fiumara's acting career. She went back to being a homemaker and remained one. The boy in the commercial, Anthony Martignetti, and his family had moved to the neighborhood from Italy only a few years before he was cast. Shown for 13 years, the commercial transformed him into a local celebrity. He is now 58. "If it wasn't for her, the commercial would never exist," Mr. Martignetti, a court officer and the divorced father of a 12 year old son of his own, said of Mrs. Fiumara in a phone interview on Thursday. "She was like my second mother," he said. "She was always looking out for me, and anytime I would see her on the streets, she said, 'How you doing, Anthony, can I buy you an ice cream?' even before the commercial." Mr. Martignetti said he ultimately made about 20,000 from the Prince commercial. He appeared in one other, for a local restaurant. His son auditioned for a remake of the Prince commercial on the company's centennial, but someone else got the part. Prince Spaghetti, now a division of the New World Pasta Company in Harrisburg, Pa., was founded on Prince Street in Boston by three Sicilian immigrants in 1912. In the early 1950s, to broaden its appeal beyond Italian American consumers (and to entice those who still made their own macaroni), the company proclaimed, "Wednesday is Prince spaghetti day." The Jerome O'Leary advertising agency in Boston had coined a generic version of the slogan for a macaroni industry association, but when the group rejected it, it was snapped up by Prince's chief executive, Joseph Pellegrino, another agency client. Mr. Pellegrino, a former shoeshine boy from Brooklyn, simply added the company's name. Mrs. Fiumara, born Oct. 6, 1927, in Italy, the daughter of Angelo Fronduto and the former Teresa Coppola, is survived by her sons, John and Richard; three grandchildren; and a brother, Pasquale Fronduto.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Rising emissions of carbon dioxide create twin threats for coral in oceans around the world: warmer temperatures, which can cause mass bleachings, and ocean acidification, which can hinder the animals' ability to build reefs. But a new study published on Friday in the journal Science Advances suggests that ocean acidification may be the bigger worry in some waters. Studying a chain of remote Australian islands in the Indian Ocean, researchers found that more acidic waters (those that have absorbed more atmospheric carbon dioxide) cause serious skeletal deformities in juvenile coral in subtropical waters.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
LOS ANGELES Twenty First Century Fox disclosed on Monday that it had incurred costs of 10 million "related to settlements of pending and potential litigations" during its fiscal third quarter in the aftermath of sexual harassment allegations at Fox News. That revelation was made in a regulatory filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission in which 21st Century Fox said it "has also received regulatory and investigative inquiries relating to these matters and stockholder demands to inspect the books and records of the company which could lead to future litigation." The company said that in the nine months leading up to March 31, it had incurred 45 million in costs tied to litigation related to harassment allegations. The New York Times on April 1 disclosed financial settlements involving multiple women who had accused Bill O'Reilly, the top rated Fox News personality, of sexual harassment or behaving inappropriately. Fox News ousted Mr. O'Reilly on April 19 after conducting an internal investigation; advertisers had also left his show in droves. He has denied any wrongdoing. The housecleaning continued on May 1 with the dismissal of one of the network's co presidents, Bill Shine, a protege of Roger Ailes, who was pushed out as the chairman of Fox News last summer amid his own sexual harassment scandal. Mr. Ailes has also denied any wrongdoing. Reporting its first quarterly earnings since Mr. O'Reilly's departure, 21st Century Fox executives managed to avoid discussing the upheaval almost entirely on Wednesday. In a 34 minute call with analysts, Lachlan Murdoch, the executive chairman, and James Murdoch, the chief executive officer, steered attention toward climbing subscriber fees for the company's cable channels and their high expectations that regulators would approve the company's 14.3 billion buyout of Sky, the British satellite TV giant.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
But the review, by the Washington law firm Crowell Moring, found differently, the institute said. "The investigation found that the Board Chair and Director acted in all respects with the best interests of the DIA in mind and did not find that they or any employee or volunteer at the DIA engaged in any misconduct related to the allegations included in the whistle blower complaint," the museum said in a news release. "There was no finding of any intention to mislead or hide information, nor was there any finding of any conflict of interest, violation of DIA policy or violation of applicable law." The institute said the law firm's report would not be made publicly available. In the news release, it said the firm "undertook an exhaustive review of key documents, interviews with numerous persons with relevant knowledge, and review of applicable law, related peer group policies and industry association guidance and best practices." It said the review had identified possible changes that could be made to the DIA's processes and policies in order to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest "and to clarify potential policy ambiguities," but it said it could not give details about what these are until the board has considered them further. John N. Tye, founder of Whistleblower Aid, said in a statement that neither he nor his clients were contacted by the law firm that conducted the review. That and the fact that the report was not being made public "are sure signs that DIA is not serious about addressing the conflicts of interest disclosed by our clients," he said. The complaint was filed at a time when other concerns about Mr. Salort Pons's management style and DIA's treatment of its Black employees were roiling the institute.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
BRUSSELS Importers of inexpensive solar panels from China said on Tuesday that imposing tariffs would lead to hundreds of thousands of job losses in the European Union, the biggest export market for the Chinese equipment. The claims by the Alliance for Affordable Solar Energy, a coalition of companies that install and service panels, were aimed at stopping the European Commission from imposing penalties in the biggest trade case of its kind in terms of value. The association presented its evidence on Monday at a hearing with the commission, which opened a case in September to determine whether the Chinese were selling solar equipment for less than the Chinese market price. The antidumping case covers exports from China worth 21 billion euros ( 28 billion) in 2011. The commission will decide by June whether to begin imposing provisional duties in the antidumping case. It began a second investigation in November into whether the Chinese government was unfairly subsidizing panel makers. The cases have split the solar sector. European manufacturers are adamant that Chinese practices are illegal under international trade rules, and they are pushing the commission to take measures to save an important component of the clean energy industry. But installation and service companies represented by the alliance say the best way to promote clean power in Europe is to procure commodity products like panels from China and from other low cost manufacturers. Thorsten Preugschas, chief executive of Soventix, a German company that builds and operates solar plants worldwide, said at a news conference Tuesday that tariffs of 60 percent would lead to the loss of as many as 242,000 jobs over three years. He said Prognos, a consulting firm, had conducted the study. Underscoring his sector's reliance on Chinese imports, Mr. Preugschas said Soventix bought about 80 percent of panels from Chinese manufacturers last year because prices were as much as 45 percent lower than those purchased from some manufacturers in Europe. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. Mr. Preugschas said that Chinese factories could sell cheaply because of their size. The difference was "economies of scale," he said, and so the "big manufacturers have a price advantage, and it doesn't matter where in the world they are located." A group of solar equipment makers, including SolarWorld, a German company that is among complainants in Europe and in a separate case in the United States, fought back Tuesday, saying that unfair practices had already meant thousands of lost jobs and 30 bankruptcies in Europe. The study carried out by Prognos "applies mathematical trickery" to reach its estimate of how many jobs would be lost once tariffs were applied, Milan Nitzschke, the president of the group, EU ProSun, said in a statement. Mr. Nitzschke also said that prices for consumers were stable or had even decreased in the United States and that the number of installations had grown, even after the American authorities imposed tariffs on Chinese solar products. "Only fair competition keeps jobs in Europe and leads to a development of the solar energy in the E.U.," Mr. Nitzschke said. The United States imposed duties on billions of dollars' worth of solar products from China over the next five years to shield American producers from lower priced imports. The European case would be four or five times as large by value, partly because of the scale of the industry in Europe, where many governments offer incentives to install panels in homes and offices. John Clancy, a spokesman for Karel De Gucht, the European trade commissioner, said his department would not comment on potential job losses from tariffs because the case was continuing. But Mr. Clancy said the "overall economic interests in the E.U." would be taken into account during the investigation, including importers and industries that use imported products.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
One hot summer in Marienbad, 73 year old Johann Wolfgang von Goethe runs into Frau von Levetzow and her three daughters, old family friends. He has always been struck by the eldest, Ulrike (now 19), but this year he notices a difference in the way she returns his gaze. "Please understand, dear onlookers, I study not just stones, but eyes as well," he declares in Martin Walser's new novel, "A Man in Love." Goethe has become famous enough that he has to play up to the role. "What causes more changes in the eye, a new light from without, or a different mood from within? Since ... the weather has just now slid a dense cumulus cloud in front of the sun for us, Ulrike's eyes are in the process of changing from blue to green." In spite of his professorial tone, Goethe's a goner he's the one in the process of changing, and the rest of the novel follows him through the various feverish stages of an obsession. Walser is telling a version of the story that made Goethe famous in the first place, of the sorrowful young artist Werther's unrequited infatuation with a young woman called Lotte. "Was not our relationship," Werther asks, "a perpetual interweaving of the most subtle feeling with the keenest wit, whose modifications, however extravagant, all bore the mark of genius?" This, more or less, is what Walser's elderly hero feels now about his conversations with Ulrike, who teases him by twisting his own slightly pompous epigrams against him. (At one point, she even quotes a long passage from one of his novels.) Like Werther, Goethe ends up tagging along, involving himself in Ulrike's life (buying presents for her sisters, making small talk with her mother) in the belief that something exquisite and profound and unreadable by outsiders is taking place in their everyday encounters.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Images of potential Republican presidential candidates at the 2015 Conservative Political Action Conference. A new study calls into question the long held belief that conservatives are happier than liberals. Conservatives are happier than liberals, or so decades of surveys that ask about life satisfaction would suggest. The existence of a so called ideological happiness gap is so well established that recently social scientists have mostly tried to explain it. But a new series of studies questions the gap itself, raising the possibility that although conservatives may report greater happiness than liberals, they are no more likely to act in ways that indicate that they really are happier. "If it's real happiness, it should show up in people's behavior," said Peter Ditto, a professor of psychology and social behavior at the University of California, Irvine, and an author of an article about the studies, which were led by Sean Wojcik, a doctoral candidate at the university. "What our evidence suggests is that it's limited to self reports of subjective well being," Professor Ditto said. The article appears in the March 13 issue of the journal Science. In fact, when behaviors rather than self reports were examined, liberals seemed to have a small but statistically significant happiness edge. The researchers examined two behaviors linked to happiness: smiling and using positive language. For their subject pool, they chose large groups whose political leanings could be identified with some reliability, including members of Congress and users of Twitter and LinkedIn. One study analyzed the emotional content of more than 430 million words entered in the Congressional Record over 18 years. Liberal leaning politicians, the researchers found, were more likely to use positive words and no more likely to use sad or negative words. Political ideology in the study was defined by the speaker's voting record or party affiliation. The study also examined publicly available photographs of 533 members of Congress, finding that conservative politicians were less likely than liberals to display smiles involving facial muscles around the eyes, a measure that previous research has found to be associated with genuine emotion. Two other studies analyzed the emotional tenor of language in 47,000 Twitter posts by nearly 4,000 Twitter users and the photographs of 457 users of LinkedIn, with similar results. The Twitter users were identified as liberal or conservative depending on whether they subscribed to feeds from the Democratic or Republican parties. The LinkedIn users were affiliated with organizations associated with liberal or conservative ideologies, like Planned Parenthood and the Family Research Council. In their report, the researchers note that the ideology gap, while thoroughly established over the years, was based on a single methodology: asking people how happy they are. But such self reports, they argue, are susceptible to people's habit of evaluating themselves in an unrealistically positive manner, a tendency that psychologists call self enhancement. A fourth study in the series surveyed visitors to YourMorals.org, a psychology research website, in which participants filled out questionnaires measuring life satisfaction and the propensity to self enhance. As in previous research, conservatives reported greater happiness than liberals. But they were also more prone to self enhancement, the study found. "Conservatives' reports of happiness do seem to be bolstered by this self enhancing tendency," Mr. Wojcik said. The research will almost certainly reignite debate over which side of the partisan aisle is happier and spawn further studies. And the findings have limitations, as the investigators concede. "It would be a mistake to infer from our data that liberals are 'objectively' happier than conservatives or that conservatives' self enhancing tendencies are necessarily maladaptive," they write in their report.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
The biggest tobacco companies in the United States will start running prime time television commercials and full page ads in national newspapers on Sunday but the campaign is unlikely to spur enthusiasm for their products. "More people," one ad says, "die every year from smoking than murder, AIDS, suicide, drugs, car crashes, and alcohol, combined." Another reads: "Cigarette companies intentionally designed cigarettes with enough nicotine to create and sustain addiction." Each ad starts by noting that Altria, R. J. Reynolds Tobacco, Lorillard and Philip Morris USA were ordered to make the statements by a federal court. The messages stem from a lawsuit brought by the Justice Department in 1999. As part of the 2006 ruling in the suit, which sought to punish cigarette makers for decades of deceiving the public about the dangers of their product, the companies were ordered to disseminate "corrective statements" centered on the health risks and addictive nature of smoking. But until now, they resisted through appeals and by wrangling over wording. "It's both an important victory and a frustrating one," said Matthew Myers, president of the Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids, who has worked on the case since 1999. The tobacco companies "have spent millions of dollars and a decade of time resisting a court order that simply requires them to publish truthful facts about their products and their behavior," he said. Mr. Myers said the ads would be less effective than originally intended because fewer people read newspapers and watch television today. The tobacco companies, he said, also negotiated to not include the phrase "here's the truth" in the ads. Altria, which owns Philip Morris USA, the maker of Marlboro cigarettes, declined to comment beyond an Oct. 2 release about the ads, which said it was working to make its business practices more responsible. Murray Garnick, the company's general counsel, said in the statement that "includes communicating openly about the health effects of our products, continuing to support cessation efforts, helping reduce underage tobacco use and developing potentially reduced risk products." R. J. Reynolds, which is part of British American Tobacco with Lorillard, said in an email that the company was "fully complying with its obligations under the court order." The initial order came from a 1,600 page civil racketeering judgment from Judge Gladys Kessler that excoriated the tobacco industry for lying about and misrepresenting its products beginning in the 1950s. She said they had sought "to make money with little, if any, regard for individual illness and suffering, soaring health costs or the integrity of the legal system." The corrective statements were meant to appear in places that tobacco companies had "historically used to promulgate false smoking and health messages." In addition to the TV and newspaper ads, there will be messaging on the packs themselves and on the company's websites, though details are still being worked out. 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. "I certainly don't think that what we have finally ended up with is really in the spirit of the original ruling," said Ruth Malone, a professor of nursing and public health policy at the University of California, San Francisco, who consulted for the Justice Department in the case. "The original ruling was so that the American public would understand that they had been deceived through multiple means about whether smoking caused disease, whether smoking killed people, whether secondhand smoke caused disease, whether nicotine was addictive," she said. Proposed versions of the ads in 2011 appeared tougher. One said: "We told Congress under oath that we believed nicotine is not addictive. We told you that smoking is not an addiction and all it takes to quit is willpower. Here's the truth: Smoking is very addictive. And it's not easy to quit. We manipulated cigarettes to make them more addictive." Tobacco companies argued that the initially proposed statements were "forced public confessions" designed to "shame and humiliate them." They also said the statements were unnecessary after a 2009 law gave the Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate tobacco products. The campaign that will begin on Sunday includes five different ads with statements divided by category, such as the "manipulation of cigarette design and composition to ensure optimum nicotine delivery" and "adverse health effects of exposure to secondhand smoke." Other statements include "Secondhand smoke causes lung cancer and coronary heart disease in adults who do not smoke" and "Smoking kills, on average, 1,200 Americans. Every day." Full page ads will run online and in the Sunday issues of more than 40 newspapers, including The New York Times, on five separate days. There are also five versions of the commercials, which will run for a year on CBS, ABC and NBC in the evenings on Monday through Thursday. The spots feature a voice reading a statement as the text appears on the screen. Altria said in its most recent annual filing that it expected actions related to the order to cost 31 million. American cigarette manufacturers spent more than 8 billion on advertising and promotional expenses in 2014, according to the Federal Trade Commission, though the vast majority of that was through price discounts. That year, they spent 50 million on magazine ads, while newspaper spending was too limited to report. The companies are not allowed to advertise on broadcast TV. In October, the F.D.A. expanded its public education campaign to emphasize the harmful effects of nicotine on the developing brain. The agency will follow that with ads aimed at discouraging young people from using e cigarettes. About 15 percent of adults in the United States smoked cigarettes in 2015, compared with 43 percent in 1965, government figures show. And while the tobacco industry has moved to create safer products, Dr. Malone said the public should understand that the companies would rather not be running the corrective statements campaign. "The only reason they're finally printing and broadcasting all of this is because they were forced to do so by a judge that found them guilty of racketeering," Dr. Malone said. "Otherwise, this would still be going on."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
If you're going to build a house, deciding where to put it is usually key. But the location of the house that Nirav V. Patel and Carla Lanas built in Austin, Tex., was ultimately determined by the flip of a coin. The couple had been living in a condominium in the West Campus neighborhood of Austin for years, and wanted to stay put. But "it was this bachelor pad," with a single lofted bedroom, said Mr. Patel, 46, who works in marketing at Oracle and had bought the apartment in 2005. By 2014, with their first baby on the way, they were on the verge of outgrowing the space. So it seemed serendipitous when a representative from the neighborhood association got in touch with Mr. Patel, Ms. Lanas and other neighbors in their building to say that the owner of a house on the next street was looking to sell. There were a few problems: The house, which dated to the 1930s, was unremarkable and had been used as student housing. And it sat in the middle of a double wide lot, which made it expensive. But another couple in their condo Ernesto Cragnolino and Krista Whitson, both architects was interested as well. Before long, the neighbors came up with a plan: The two couples would split the 520,000 cost of the lot and either transform the existing structure into a two family home or demolish it to make way for two separate houses. Shortly after closing on the property, they determined that the best option would be to raze the old house and start fresh. "The plan was to subdivide the lot so that we each got a half and could do a house independently from one another," said Ms. Lanas, 44, who trained as an interior designer in New York and now works in administration at the University of Texas at Austin. It wasn't until later that they realized the two halves of the lot weren't exactly equal: The northern half seemed preferable, with a slightly higher elevation and more trees and open space relative to the next house on the block. To determine who got which lot, the couples met in the street for a best of five coin toss. Mr. Patel and Ms. Lanas lost, and got the southern half. That was probably for the best, said Murray Legge, the architect Mr. Patel and Ms. Lanas hired to design their house. "As I started to work on it, I realized it was actually the better lot, because we had this opportunity to work with the southern light," he said. Mr. Patel and Ms. Lanas shared images of what they hoped for with Mr. Legge, including photos of courtyard houses designed by Luis Barragan, the Mexican architect known for designing colorful homes with simple geometry. "The lot is long and narrow, so it wasn't practical to do a true courtyard house. But we took the elements of a courtyard house," Mr. Legge said, and remixed them. He also took advantage of every opportunity to play with light. Facing the street, the two story stucco structure he created is largely opaque for privacy, with an entrance courtyard hidden behind a low wall. Along the southern side, however, the house opens up to a yard and deck, with a long span of windows on the ground floor and a recessed deck above. At the top of the 1,950 square foot house, some sections of the roof rise higher than others, with periscope like windows designed to channel sunlight. Inside, the ground floor is largely open, with Douglas fir cabinetry separating various living areas but stopping short of the ceiling, so light can flow between the spaces. "I wanted it to feel like the ocean when you're in the bathroom," Carla Lanas said of her choice of blue tile for the upstairs bathroom, which has a Sanford cast iron clawfoot tub from Signature Hardware (from 1,249). In the kitchen, one small window is positioned near the floor. "We call it a ground light," Mr. Legge said. "There's a lot of light that bounces off the ground, and it's quite beautiful because it will pick up the color of plants or gravel." It also functions as a peephole for the couple's sons, River, 4, and Mateo, 2. On the second floor, where a bridge like hallway connects two bedrooms at one end and the master suite at the other, a void funnels sunlight into the kitchen below. To keep costs down to about 500,000, Mr. Patel and Ms. Lanas coordinated the construction with Mr. Cragnolino and Ms. Whitson, who built their own house at the same time. They used the same general contractors, Green Places, and many of the same tradespeople to economize on utilities, foundation work, framing and oak flooring although the two houses are very different. An unconventional screened porch is at the back of the house. After a delay of more than two years waiting for city approval to demolish the original house and subdivide the lot the construction took just over a year. Mr. Patel and Ms. Lanas moved in last July, and are still pleasantly surprised by what Mr. Legge created. "What I've really appreciated, now that we've been here through a few seasons, is the way there's different light in the house in the winter and summer," Mr. Patel said. And with a variety of small exterior spaces rather than a single central courtyard, he added, "I'm outside as much as I'm inside throughout the day." For weekly email updates on residential real estate news, sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: nytrealestate.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani at the Frick Collection's music room, which will be converted into an art gallery as part of the museum's planned expansion and renovation. In 1999, before a recital in the music room of the Frick Collection, the pianist Frederic Chiu, then 34, told the audience that he was greatly relieved not to be playing in some generic concert hall before thousands of people. He said that the Frick's wonderfully intimate, oval music room had a similar ambience to the Parisian salons where the early Romantic repertory he was about to perform would have been played. To enhance the feeling of intimacy, Mr. Chiu pretended to be a host and spoke to the audience about each piece. For 80 years, New York audiences and critics, including me have felt as much affection for the Frick's music room as the artists who have performed there, even ones of international renown. It truly is the closest thing to a 19th century music salon this city has to offer. But the beloved room is, sadly, now on borrowed time: On Tuesday, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission approved the Frick's plan for a major expansion and renovation of its complex, originally a 1914 Gilded Age mansion. The salon like space will be turned into a gallery for special exhibitions. The museum promises to continue its concert series, but in a new 220 seat basement auditorium that will mostly be used for lectures and educational events. Though it's good that the Frick will maintain this commitment, many music lovers will mourn the loss of the old room, which, when chairs are brought in, can accommodate only 147 people. Every seat is coveted; performances typically sell out. That oval space is uniquely suited to chamber music, which was historically conceived for, as the name of the genre suggests, salons and intimate rooms. Most concert halls today, including those designed for chamber music, are too big. Alice Tully Hall, the home of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, seats 1,086. It's a warm, inviting space with good acoustics for a hall that size. It's perfect for a small orchestra, and the music of string quartets comes across with full, lively sound. Yet when you hear a quartet in a much smaller venue, like Weill Recital Hall (with 268 seats), the combined sounds of the instruments, whether in a diaphanous passage of Ravel or an earthy, gnashing outburst in Bartok, permeate the space vibrantly. In the Frick's room, the sound of that same string quartet becomes even more visceral and engulfing, and individual voices come through with palpable clarity. You can hear and see! the players tossing phrases back and forth between instruments. I remember being swept away when the Utrecht String Quartet, on its first American tour from the Netherlands in 2013, played Sibelius's visionary String Quartet in D minor, "Voces Intimae" ("Intimate Voices"). Though there are intricate, soft spoken strands of music in this brooding, mercurial work, it also has stretches of frenzied intensity. Both the detailed subtleties and walloping fervor came through thrillingly in the performance. I've had similarly memorable experiences over the years at the Frick: the dynamic violinist Augustin Hedelich and the pianist Charles Owen, playing sonatas by Beethoven, Schumann and Janacek in an exciting 2013 recital; the formidable cellist Nicolas Altstaedt, joined by the fine pianist Alexander Lonquich in riveting accounts of Britten's Sonata in C and Debussy's Cello Sonata in 2016. Longtime patrons of the Frick's concert series had to adjust in 2005, when the museum started charging 20 for tickets that had been free for decades. But the museum had a deficit to deal with. And, after all, institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art had long charged for concerts. The good will the Frick had earned from music lovers over many years has largely been maintained. (Tickets currently go for 45, or 40 for members.) But it's another thing to lose the music room altogether. (Preservationists have fought for the space by seeking an interior landmark designation that would preserve it, but so far they have been unsuccessful.) Now, the closest thing New York will have to a music salon may be the intimate Board of Officers Room at the Park Avenue Armory. Juliet Sorce, a consultant working with the Frick, told me that the new "subterranean auditorium," as she described it in a phone interview, would "be circular in shape," to "give a nod" to "the aesthetic of the old music room." Plans call for curvilinear rows of fixed seats facing the stage. Ms. Sorce emphasized that today, the oval room today is used only about 25 percent for music. Otherwise it hosts lectures and educational programs, and the Frick has long been dissatisfied with the room's suitability for these events. Concerts will still occupy about 25 percent of the new space's calendar. The firm Selldorf Architects is working with acoustical engineers to "design" the space, a concept that can raise fears of amplification with classical music fans who value natural sound. But Ms. Sorce made clear that the hall would have natural acoustics for music and would "maintain an intimate feeling." Audiences will have to wait and see; the project is expected to be completed in 2022. It's hard to argue that the Frick, which now must place important special exhibitions in basement galleries, should not be able to repurpose the centrally located music room for art. And preservationists have not been united in their reactions to the expansion plan: Some endorse the design as an improvement over an earlier, failed effort, while others still protest it strongly. Regarding the music room, Theodore Grunewald, from the Committee to Save the New York Public Library, has said that "destroying" the Frick's music room would be "an erasure of New York City's cultural and civic memory."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Robin Montgomery, Still Just 15, Was Ready for Her U.S. Open Debut As she sat in a small interview room in Melbourne this January, Robin Montgomery could see that her dreams were more within reach than ever before. Nearby on the grounds of the Australian Open, another 15 year old, Coco Gauff, was playing in the fourth round against the eventual champion Sofia Kenin, having beaten Naomi Osaka, the defending champion, a round earlier. "Hopefully I'll be able to be in her shoes soon," Montgomery, who was competing in the junior tournament there, said in January. "I definitely think it's more possible now, seeing her doing it. It gives me more motivation to do it, and more belief in myself to be able to accomplish that." A month earlier, Montgomery had won the prestigious Orange Bowl title in the 18 and under division. "My next goal is to break through the pros, play some 25Ks and hopefully get some wild cards into the bigger tournaments," Montgomery said. "Then, hopefully, I have an outbreak." Just over a month after leaving Australia, Montgomery would claim her first professional title, winning a 25,000 tournament in Nevada. But before the wild cards to big events could come, there was, in fact, an outbreak, with the coronavirus pandemic shutting down professional sports. While Gauff had been able to play Wimbledon as a 15 year old capturing the world's imagination a year earlier Montgomery was sidelined. On Monday the wait ended, as Montgomery made her Grand Slam debut at the United States Open, where she was the youngest player in either singles draw. She battled admirably and showed her problem solving abilities to turn a lopsided match into a competitive second set, which she led 3 1 before falling 6 1, 6 3 to 23rd seeded Yulia Putintseva. Montgomery's sweeping southpaw power was evident throughout the match, but the undersized Putintseva has made a career of neutralizing big hitters such as Montgomery. Putintseva took advantage of inconsistent serving by Montgomery to ultimately control the match. Though a part of her was restless during the sport's hiatus, Montgomery said she found the time at home restorative. "I've been working on my fitness and things I can improve on the court," she said. "I was changing minor things, because at the end of the day it's the small details that are going to make you or break you." "One thing I made clear to her is that we can gain something out of this thing," Agnamba said. "Physical training and fitness, we can maximize that, and that can be what we gain from the confinement. We tried to stay positive and think about what can happen when things open. Someone, somewhere, is going to be ready; somebody is not going to be ready. We wanted to be the ones ready when things opened up." During the stoppage, Montgomery was able to train at the Junior Tennis Champions Center in College Park, Md., near her hometown, Washington, D.C. Her mother, Gabrielle, had first brought her there at 5, eager to find an outlet for her daughter's endless energy. "When Robin started walking and talking and had a lot of energy at 3, 4, I just put her in everything from swim lessons to dancing to French," Gabrielle Montgomery said. Tennis proved enough of a physical and mental challenge to satisfy young Robin. "I always felt tired after practice," Montgomery said. "Feeling tired, honestly, made me feel good about myself." Coaches at the Junior Tennis Champions Center said Montgomery has never struggled to channel her energy productively. Ponkka said he grasped Montgomery's potential when watching her turn around a match against a seeded player at last year's junior U.S. Open. "Robin had no business winning that match," Ponkka said. "She lost the first set 6 1 and that girl was outplaying her. And then Robin adjusted, problem solved, started serve and volleying, and turned it around. Everybody was there agents, U.S.T.A. high performance there were a lot of people watching. That showed me that she could do it under pressure." Frances Tiafoe, who grew up playing at the same tennis center and also won the Orange Bowl at 15, called Montgomery his "little sister" and said he offers her advice whenever she asks. "I've really taken her under my wing," Tiafoe said. "She works super hard. She's super professional. Lefty who hits the ball huge she's special." Tiafoe was in the fitness room when Montgomery was notified early this month that she had received a wild card into the U.S. Open main draw. "I look at Frances and I'm like 'I'm going to see you at the Open,'" Montgomery recalled, beaming. "He sprinted out of the fitness room, kicked the door, and he's screaming. We were all just really excited." Another hurdle followed the good news, however: A player in Montgomery's training group at the tennis center tested positive for the coronavirus, meaning Montgomery could not continue training at the center in the weeks before her Grand Slam debut. In the interim, a series of withdrawals by top women allowed the 593rd ranked Montgomery to claim an unexpected spot in the qualifying draw of the Western Southern Open, where she had her first match against a top 100 opponent, falling 6 1, 6 4 to Sorana Cirstea. Ponkka said he believed the tour stoppage would make Montgomery's lack of big stage experience less of an issue than it would be otherwise. "Everybody's in the same boat," he said, adding: "She's a very smart girl on and off the court, and I have confidence that she will be able to play well. How far that takes her, nobody knows, but she's going to be playing some good tennis there." The youngest player in the draw already has a vote of confidence from the eldest: Venus Williams, 40, came away impressed by Montgomery after the two hit together this summer while Williams was in Washington. "It feels like she's got a bright future," Williams said. "She looks like she's got ease in the strokes and natural power coming along. All it takes is time and perseverance. There is no limit to what a person can achieve as long as they believe it. It's all in the cards for her if she can make that happen."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
President Trump may have stymied some expectations with his we are all one nation speech after the military fashion show sorry, display in front of the Lincoln Memorial on the Fourth of July, but it was Melania Trump in a slouching off one shoulder mid calf Carolina Herrera dress, standing silent and smiling by his side in every picture, who really put a twist on the messaging. After all, if there were ever a moment to go all out in some form of patriotic dress, to use clothing to make a point, it was this one: a moment conceived by the president and promoted by the White House as a celebration/demonstration of American military might and historical triumphalism; a moment titled Salute to America; a purely symbolic moment designed to create images to go around the world. Mr. Trump himself dressed the part, in his white shirt, navy suit and bright red tie, a little flag pin on his lapel, as color coordinated with Old Glory as it was possible to be amid the tanks. Yet there was the first lady, in white with ... rainbow stripes on her skirt. And fuchsia heels. Rainbow stripes? And though there was a fair amount of chatter online about the issue of wearing a white dress on what was a rainy day (it turned a little uncomfortably see through), ultimately that happenstance was less provocative than the idea that the first lady might again be using her image as a way to speak her mind. Because Mrs. Trump does not work with designers to create her public facing looks but rather buys them (a rarity these days among public figures, and a good thing), they rarely know when she is going to wear one of their products, or why or so Wes Gordon, the creative director of Herrera, told me after Mrs. Trump had worn a dress from the brand during her recent trip to Japan. As a result, the labels themselves can't shed much light on whether there is ever a more nuanced rationale behind Mrs. Trump's choices than simply love of a pretty summer frock. (The Herrera dress in question this time was from the resort 2019 collection, and was on sale for 1,884 on FarFetch.com.) But you would have had to live under a rock for the past month not to have been met, pretty much everywhere you turned, with rainbow stripe paraphernalia created in support of Pride Month and the L.G.B.T.Q. community. Even the president's campaign shop has been selling rainbow stripe T shirts. The symbolism could not have escaped the first lady's office, or her stylist, Herve Pierre. Nor could the fact that, despite the merchandise, the president has worked to bar transgender people from serving in the military, and has been appointing to the federal bench judges who do not support trans rights. And Mrs. Trump does have a history with a similar dress being interpreted in a similar way: In 2017, at the White House congressional picnic which happened to take place on the same weekend as New York's Gay Pride parade she wore rainbow grid Mary Katrantzou, prompting the Hollywood Reporter to ask, "Could the FLOTUS be using her wardrobe to silently protest against her husband's anti gay agenda?" She also knows her symbolism: when she and her husband visited France for Bastille Day in 2017 the visit that reportedly first gave the president the idea for his military extravaganza she wore a white dress embroidered with red tulips and blue cornflowers, the latter being the French flower of remembrance, to watch the official parade. In any case, she was clearly aware of the watching eyes this time around, as, in what has become an increasingly rare gesture, she wore a dress from an American brand as she did last Fourth of July when she appeared in blue gingham Ralph Lauren, and sort of did in 2017, when she wore navy Esteban Cortazar, a Colombian born, Miami raised designer as opposed to her usual European favorites, Dior and Dolce Gabbana. Unlike those prior Fourth of Julys, however, when she was dressed largely in various permutations of red, white and blue, the reference this past Thursday seemed to be to another flag altogether. There's a tendency, still, to see Mrs. Trump's clothing choices as implicit statements of independence from her husband and from the country's expectations nonverbal clues from a very private woman who rarely speaks and certainly never lets the world in on her thought processes; who offers only highly staged managed glimpses of her life behind the curtain. Maybe it's wishful thinking. But honestly, if she was either revealing her own loyalties, or suggesting that despite his actions to appease ultraconservatives, her husband has his own ideas, was there any better day to try?	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Fashion & Style
This article was reported and written in collaboration with ProPublica, the nonprofit journalism organization. Top researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center have filed at least seven corrections with medical journals recently, divulging financial relationships with health care companies that they did not previously disclose. The hospital's chief executive, Dr. Craig B. Thompson, disclosed his relationship with companies including the drug maker Merck, and Dr. Jedd Wolchok, a noted pioneer in cancer immunotherapy, listed his affiliations with 31 companies. The corrections followed the resignation in September of Dr. Jose Baselga, the cancer center's chief medical officer, who had failed to disclose his company ties in dozens of articles in medical journals, including prominent publications like The New England Journal of Medicine. Dr. Baselga's omissions, including payments totaling millions of dollars, were first reported last month by The New York Times and ProPublica. Since then, medical centers around the country, including Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and N.Y.U. Langone Health, have urged their researchers to review whether they properly reported relationships to outside companies. According to a correction posted Sept. 17 in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, Dr. Thompson's conflict of interest statement had not been included in an article published in January. The updated disclosure noted his role as a founder of Agios Pharmaceuticals, a cancer start up, and his position on the boards of two publicly traded companies, Merck and Charles River Laboratories, which assists research in early drug discovery. Dr. Thompson received 300,000 from Merck in 2017, and was paid 70,000 in cash by Charles River, plus 215,050 in stock, according to the companies' financial filings. His compensation package as Memorial Sloan Kettering's chief executive is 6.7 million. Dr. Thompson resigned from both company boards on Oct. 2, after weeks of internal turmoil at the nonprofit hospital and public scrutiny of its leaders' financial relationships with for profit companies. Mr. Morey also said that a "patchwork" of disclosure requirements by different publications has complicated matters. "In many cases, researchers are now disclosing above and beyond what is asked for and required, even when their disclosures have no connection to the research they conducted," he said, adding that Memorial Sloan Kettering has created a task force to establish its own standards. "This is a massive, industrywide problem." In a statement, Dr. Thompson said his correction arose from the broader review. "I was no different," he said. Of the more than 70 articles he published since arriving at the hospital in 2010, he said, "I identified one study in my review, of which I was a secondary author, that I thought should be updated." Some of the omissions were extensive. In an updated disclosure, Dr. Wolchok, director of the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at the hospital, outlined his ties to many companies, including receiving consulting fees, owning stock options or being a co founder. The list of companies that pay him range from major manufacturers like Bristol Myers Squibb and Merck, for whom he works as a paid for consultant, to start ups like BeiGene, Apricity and Adaptive Biotech, in which he reports owning stock options. He corrected two articles in the journal Cancer Cell and a third in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. Dr. Wolchok is a widely regarded expert in immunotherapy, having treated some of the first patients with a drug based on the work of Dr. James P. Allison, who along with Tasuku Honjo won this year's Nobel Prize for Medicine. Other Memorial Sloan Kettering researchers on Dr. Wolchok's papers also updated their interactions with industry, including Dr. Matthew D. Hellmann, Dr. Taha Merghoub and Dr. Michael A. Postow. "Although the below additional disclosures are not directly relevant to the published work, the authors put them forward in the spirit of full transparency," one correction said. "The authors apologize for any inconvenience." Dr. Wolchok did not disclose most of his 31 relationships in articles recently published in other journals, including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA and Lancet Oncology. Dr. Wolchok has been paid more than 90,000 from major drug companies since 2014, according to a federal database that only includes payments from companies whose products received approval from the Food and Drug Administration. Most of his relationships are with early stage start ups. Dr. Wolchok said he conducted a review of more than 300 articles and decided to submit updated disclosures on some of them "out of an abundance of caution." Some journals, including Cancer Discovery, "have rejected these updates because they have determined they are not relevant to the subject matter," Dr. Wolchok said in a statement. Mr. Morey said that existing disclosures in the other articles, including those published in the New England Journal of Medicine, were appropriate, based on Dr. Wolchok's interpretation of the journals' guidelines. Although medical journals vary in their requirements, many urge researchers to err on the side of revealing a company relationship. One set of guidelines published by the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors advises authors: "You should disclose interactions with ANY entity that could be considered broadly relevant to the work." As an example, it says for a researcher studying a particular aspect of lung cancer, "you should report all associations with entities pursuing diagnostic or therapeutic strategies in cancer in general." Other corrections involved Dr. Michelle Bradbury, who is the head of a research laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering and a director in the radiology department. In two corrections published Monday in the journal Chemistry of Materials, Dr. Bradbury and other study authors said that they should have disclosed that two of them, as well as their institutions Memorial Sloan Kettering and Cornell University have a financial interest in Elucida Oncology. The original articles were published in 2017. Dr. Bradbury is a co founder and serves on the scientific advisory board of Elucida, which is exploring the use of nanoparticles in cancer detection and treatment, a focus of the articles. Another author, Dr. Ulrich Wiesner of Cornell University, is also a company co founder and a member of its scientific advisory board. (Dr. Wolchok is also on the Elucida scientific advisory board, which he noted in one of his corrections.) The corrections also said that "one or more" patent applications had been filed by the authors on topics related to the articles. The corrections to Dr. Bradbury's studies were first reported by the website Retraction Watch. A third correction involving Dr. Bradbury was posted Thursday. That article, for which Dr. Bradbury was one of several authors, was published in Applied Materials Interfaces in 2017. "In a handful of cases, even though the research in these publications was very early stage and rooted in basic science, my co author from Cornell and I decided we would update them," Dr. Bradbury said in an email. A spokesman for Cornell referred comment to Memorial Sloan Kettering. Dr. Baselga has also corrected his conflict of interest disclosures in several journals, including two in the New England Journal of Medicine, three in Clinical Cancer Research and two in Cancer Discovery, where he is still one of two editors in chief. The American Association for Cancer Research, which publishes Cancer Discovery, said it had formed a panel of experts to evaluate whether he should remain in a leadership role. He has also revised disclosures with the American Society of Clinical Oncology, which said that if Dr. Baselga participates in future meetings, "his slides will be subject to review in advance of his presentation and the session will be audited by ASCO staff and volunteers for any evidence of bias." ASCO also said that if Dr. Baselga again does not disclose his interactions properly, he would be "prohibited from presenting in any capacity (author, session chair, discussant, etc.) at an ASCO sponsored meeting for the following two years." Beyond revisiting disclosures, Memorial Sloan Kettering is undertaking a broader review of its staff's interactions with the health care and pharmaceutical industries, including whether senior leaders should sit on the boards of publicly traded companies. It also said it would hire an outside law firm to investigate specific allegations made following Dr. Baselga's departure.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Health
Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor in chief of The Atlantic, set off a storm of criticism Thursday when he suggested that, in seeking a diverse group of writers for cover stories, he had found it difficult to hand those plum assignments to anyone other than white male magazine journalists. "It's really, really hard to write a 10,000 word cover story," Mr. Goldberg said in an interview with Nieman Lab, a nonprofit journalism organization and website, which noted that 11 of The Atlantic's 15 most recent cover stories were written by men. "There are not a lot of journalists in America who can do it. The journalists in America who do it are almost exclusively white males." The way to broaden The Atlantic's contributors, Mr. Goldberg continued, is to tell new writers that "you're really good at this and you have a lot of potential and you're 33 and you're burning with ambition, and that's great, so let us put you on a deliberate pathway toward writing 10,000 word cover stories." "It might not work," he said. "It often doesn't." Critics seized on the comments, accusing the veteran editor of underestimating the abilities of those who fall outside the pool of white male writers. The article length he cited fueled hours of commentary on Twitter, especially among journalists. Margaret Sullivan of The Washington Post joked on Twitter: "I aspire to be one of those women who can write 1,200 words. I top out at about 850." Andi Zeisler, a co founder of the nonprofit feminist organization Bitch Media, wrote, "So has anyone told Jeffrey Goldberg about women who write books yet."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Tyler Tumminia has been named the interim commissioner of the National Women's Hockey League, replacing the league's founder, Dani Rylan Kearney. The N.W.H.L. confirmed the change on Monday and announced that it was switching its operational model to an unincorporated association with a six person board of governors to ensure "alignment of interests between the league and its teams." Under the previous system, the six team league was owned by a group of investors that also controlled four of the league's clubs, in the New York metropolitan area, Connecticut, Minnesota and Buffalo. Although the league sought independent owners for all six franchises, only two teams are independently owned the Boston Pride and the Toronto Six, an expansion club for the 2020 21 season. Since its inception in 2015, the N.W.H.L. operated more like a single entity like Major League Soccer with salary limits and investors or shareholders controlling major decisions for the teams. This differs from the models used by the N.H.L. and the N.F.L., which the N.W.H.L. will now attempt to mimic. Martin Edel, a lecturer at Columbia Law School who specializes in sports law, said that the single entity model of the last 20 years or so was built primarily on trying to avoid the antitrust laws, like Section 1 of the Sherman Act, rather than on growth. "I haven't seen new leagues that have arisen since the early 1990s come up in the traditional model; that's why this is frankly surprising," Edel said of the N.W.H.L.'s switch. "Is that a better model for growth? It could be." The older model became challenging to uphold after Miles Arnone, a venture capitalist, purchased the Pride in 2019, and Boston seemed to gain a clear advantage over the rest of the teams. Pride players praised the provided equipment, training and travel amenities, which trumped those of the league owned teams. Boston recorded the best record in the league at 23 1 0 and made the Isobel Cup final (which was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic). The Buffalo franchise was briefly owned from late 2017 to the spring of 2019 by Pegula Sports and Entertainment, the parent company of the N.H.L.'s Buffalo Sabres and the N.F.L.'s Buffalo Bills, and that team had similar success. Rylan Kearney will remain with the league and lead the pursuit of securing independent ownership for the Metropolitan Riveters, the Connecticut Whale, the Minnesota Whitecaps and the Buffalo Beauts. She declined an interview request for this article on Monday, but on Tuesday, on Twitter, she wrote: "Five years and two days after our first games, this is a historic day as the NWHL adopts a new governance model. Commissioner Ty Tumminia is a rock star and the perfect woman to lead." She added: "I am extremely proud of what the NWHL has achieved, grateful to the fans, players, partners, staff, and woho media," a reference to reporters covering women's hockey, "and I am more inspired than ever to play my part in the continued development of Hockey For All." Andy Scurto, an insurance and tech entrepreneur who is on the new board of governors, thanked Rylan Kearney in a statement for bringing the league "where it is today." "Tyler brings a wealth of relevant experience and we are confident that she will help take the league to the next level," he added, referring to Tumminia, the interim commissioner. For five years, Rylan Kearney had been the lone visible face of N.W.H.L. leadership and took the brunt of criticism for missteps. When many around the hockey world called for merging competing women's hockey leagues, she remained confident that the N.W.H.L. was pushing toward creating the best environment available for female hockey players. After playing ice hockey at Northeastern, Rylan Kearney moved to New York and opened a coffee shop in East Harlem. At the time, women's professional hockey was almost nonexistent in the United States, with one team in Boston playing in the Canadian Women's Hockey League. Rylan Kearney saw an opening to bring women's pro hockey to the U.S., starting with four teams in the N.W.H.L. The league signed Olympians and stars from the C.W.H.L., like Hilary Knight and Meghan Duggan. But during the N.W.H.L.'s second season, the league incurred financial troubles, including lawsuits, and slashed player salaries, creating distrust from several top players. In a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Rylan Kearney acknowledged that it was more difficult than she envisioned to get major companies on board supporting women's sports. After many players left the N.W.H.L., Rylan Kearney secured partnerships with companies like Twitch that somewhat stabilized the league's standing. The N.W.H.L. added franchises in Minnesota in 2018, and Toronto in April. The N.W.H.L., which will begin its sixth season in January, will now turn to Tumminia to pursue the broadcast rights deals and partnerships with major brands that have largely eluded women's hockey. The C.W.H.L. folded in 2019 because of economic troubles. The Canadian league operated as a centrally funded, nonprofit enterprise. Last season, the N.W.H.L.'s highest announced salary was 15,000. Tumminia first got involved with the N.W.H.L. this year as the chairwoman of the Toronto team, a position she will leave because of her new post. Previously, Tumminia helped run several minor league baseball teams with a focus on sponsorship and marketing. "This is a time of opportunity and transformation for the N.W.H.L., and the changes we are making across the league will fortify a foundation for continued success well into the future," Tumminia said in a statement. Tumminia's ascent arrives at a time when women's hockey is at a standstill because of the coronavirus pandemic. A majority of N.C.A.A. Division I women's college hockey conferences have indefinitely delayed their 2020 21 seasons, while some Division III conferences have canceled theirs. Several international tournaments have been canceled, and the Professional Women's Hockey Players Association, a barnstorming group that includes players like Knight and other top Olympians, is operating with a limited schedule. Members of the P.W.H.P.A. have been resolute in creating their own path toward a pro league that can provide players livable salaries, which the N.W.H.L. does not yet provide.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
"Evil Under the Sun" was my first. I liked the way Poirot insisted on his Belgianness in a world determined to mistake him for French. He's a showman, with his flamboyant mustache and knife edged bons mots, and he needs an audience; watch him gather the hotel guests to narrate the series of deceptions that led to the strangling of Arlena Marshall. Miss Marple, by contrast, sits and knits and claims to notice only what any reasonably observant, experienced person might. Her modesty belies not only her natural authority but also her extensive gardener's knowledge of pesticides, so handy when your rural enclave is a magnet for homicide. Poirot is a professional, Miss Marple a professional amateur, but I have special affection for Christie's accidental sleuths. They don't start out with the presumption of omniscience; they struggle like the rest of us. In "The Secret Adversary" (1922), Christie introduces Tommy Beresford and Tuppence Cowley, a young man and a young woman emerging, energetic and relatively unscathed, from World War I. They call each other "Old Thing" and "Old Bean," but their combined ages, she writes, wouldn't exceed 45. This entrepreneurial pair decide to earn a living by billing themselves as adventurers, and through strokes of luck and instinct, they help unmask a deep state espionage ring. Beefy, ominous Russians loom large, as does a case of amnesia. In her rendering of spycraft, Christie can't touch John le Carre. But with Tommy and Tuppence, she hit on something different: a rare triumph of life stage narrative. The two marry and feature in four more books, growing old in real time. "Partners in Crime" (1929) finds Tuppence six years after the wedding, discontented and longing for excitement. Their mentor, Mr. Carter, drafts them to run a detective agency, which they take on with what he fondly calls "excessive self confidence." In "N or M?" (1941), they are empty nesters, written off as past their prime until, once again, Mr. Carter steps in with an undercover assignment. In "By the Pricking of My Thumbs" (1968), they are grandparents. At this novel's climax, Tuppence, closeted with an unlikely killer, has an epiphany: She realizes, simply and profoundly, that she is old. Lulled by the enduring sharpness of her mind, she has forgotten that her body is no longer that of the 20 something gamin who suffered chloroforming and kidnapping in the name of good mystery fun. It's hard to blame her. I had forgotten, too. Turn back the clock, then, to "Partners in Crime." The charm of this collection of stories involves Christie's sport with the genre. For each case, Tommy and Tuppence, avid readers of detective fiction, adopt the manner and method of one of their favorite sleuths Sherlock Holmes, Thornley Colton, Father Brown fitting character to crime with a fan's delight. In the final chapter, Tommy imitates none other than "the great Poirot," with Tuppence as Hastings, his amiable sidekick. "Partners in Crime" was published just nine years after Poirot made his debut in "The Mysterious Affair at Styles." For Christie to declare her creation on a par with Sherlock Holmes even as Tommy pokes fun at Poirot's fastidiousness ("By the way, mon ami, can you not part your hair in the middle instead of one side? The present effect is unsymmetrical and deplorable") might be fondly attributed to excessive self confidence. I think of it as a victory of brio. Poirot and Miss Marple would approve.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Chicago's Jose Abreu and Atlanta's Freddie Freeman were named the most valuable players of the American and National leagues on Thursday. Jose Abreu is a right handed slugger in the American League, and Freddie Freeman is a left handed slugger in the National League. Otherwise, the two might as well be the same player. Both play first base and have made three All Star teams since 2014, when Abreu joined the Chicago White Sox after defecting from Cuba. Both have played for only one major league team Freeman for the Atlanta Braves but have never reached the World Series. Both reside in the same statistical neighborhood: Abreu has a .294 career average and an .870 on base plus slugging percentage, Freeman .295 and .892. "That's who I try to be is that guy you can count on and never have to worry about and Jose Abreu is that guy for the White Sox," Freeman said on Thursday. "All you want to do as a big league player is be consistent, and he's been consistent since the day he got to the big leagues. Ultimate run producer. The year he had is absolutely incredible." Freeman's was similarly dominant, and now he will be linked in history with Abreu as the most valuable players of the 2020 season. Abreu received 21 of 30 first place votes from the Baseball Writers' Association of America in the totals announced Thursday, while Freeman collected 28 of 30. Jose Ramirez of the Cleveland Indians finished as the runner up in the American League, with D.J. LeMahieu of the Yankees placing third. In the N.L., Mookie Betts of the Los Angeles Dodgers was second, and Manny Machado of the San Diego Padres was third. The previous high finish in the award voting for both Abreu and Freeman was fourth place, and they are past the age of most winners. Abreu, 33, and Freeman, 31, become the first players who were over 30 on opening day of their M.V.P. season since the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez in 2007. Naturally, a season that was truncated to only 60 games because of the coronavirus might have taken less of a physical toll than a normal schedule. "It feels like 60 games has been 162," Freeman said in October, as the Braves marched to Game 7 of the N.L. Championship Series before losing to the Dodgers. "But this is all worth it." Freeman had especially acute challenges because of his fight with the coronavirus. He tested positive on July 3 after experiencing full body aching and a fever, which spiked to 104.5 degrees. None Everyone Loves Ohtani: The Angels' two way star was a unanimous pick for A.L. M.V.P. and his superfans redefine devotion. Phillie Phavorite: Bryce Harper truly committed to Philadelphia and now he's back on top of baseball, winning the N.L. M.V.P. Cy Young Winners: Milwaukee's Corbin Burnes and Toronto's Robbie Ray had hit rock bottom before they worked their way up to stardom. Baseball Is Stuck in Neutral: The potential of a lockout has a star studded group of free agents waiting for the dust to settle. Free Agency Tracker: Get the latest updates on signings, contract extensions and trades. "I said a little prayer that night; I've never been that hot before," Freeman later told reporters. "My body was really, really hot. So I said, 'Please don't take me.' I wasn't ready." Freeman recovered in time for the Braves' July 24 opener but struggled as he built back his strength. Through 13 games, he was hitting .190. "I was just extremely tired," Freeman said on Thursday. "It took the wind out of me just walking to the other side of the house." Freeman said that he was careful to conserve his energy and that he had mostly stayed inside before games, instead of practicing on the field, for more than half of the season. Feeling strong and hydrated at game time helped him play better than ever, he said. "At the beginning, I would hop off the bag holding a runner on, and I'd get tired," Freeman said. "So I had to save my bullets and save how I was feeling. I tried to stay away from batting practice, because we started at the end of July, and Atlanta's pretty hot at the end of July." Abreu had his best season since 2014, when he won the A.L. Rookie of the Year Award after starring in Cuba. He played all 60 games (like Freeman), and batted .317 with 19 homers, a major league high 60 runs batted in and a career best .987 O.P.S. Abreu also led the majors in total bases (148) and led the A.L. in slugging (.617) and hits (76). Emotion poured out of Abreu after the announcement on MLB Network. He bowed his head for a minute or two, sobbed, and even punched himself. He said the award honored his mother, Daisy Correa, who told him in Cuba to pick an unusual uniform number so he would stand out. "She is why I do every single thing every day, and she's my motivation," Abreu said through an interpreter. "I respect who she is. This is for her, that I am who I am." Abreu led the White Sox to a 35 25 record and their first playoff berth in 12 years. But they lost in the best of three first round to the Oakland Athletics and fired Manager Rick Renteria, replacing him with the Hall of Famer Tony La Russa, 76. The team has stuck with La Russa despite the revelation that he was arrested in February and charged with driving under the influence in Arizona. "I cannot question if Tony's the right person for this club or not; that's not my call," Abreu said. "What I can say is that Ricky was a great manager, he was a great person, he helped me a lot, and I was very honored to be part of a team that he managed. At the same time, I'm really excited to have the chance to play for a manager like Tony LaRussa. I think we have to wait and see how this goes." Abreu and Freeman become the first winners of the M.V.P. awards since the baseball writers removed its namesake, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, from the trophy. Landis was Major League Baseball's first commissioner, from 1920 through 1944, and upheld the notorious color barrier.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
Choosing outdoor furniture isn't easy. You need something that combines comfort, low maintenance and not just good looks, but the right kind of good looks. A modern glass house, for example, might call for sprightly metal and mesh chairs, while a more traditional one may demand heavier teak pieces or ornate wrought iron. "I start with the style of the architecture and go for that spirit," said Fernando Wong, a landscape designer with offices in Miami; Palm Beach, Fla.; and Southampton, N.Y., whose recent projects include the Four Seasons Hotel at the Surf Club, in Surfside, Fla. It's also important to match the size of the chairs to the size of the space, said Mr. Wong's partner, Tim Johnson. "One of the biggest mistakes people make when they're buying furniture is they get the scale wrong," Mr. Johnson said. "It's too big and looks like a set from 'Alice in Wonderland.'"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Any conversation about travel to New Mexico seems to start with Santa Fe, the t ourist magnet about 60 miles up the road from Albuquerque, the state's largest city. But Duke City (so called for its namesake, the Duke of Alburquerque, the early 18th century Viceroy of New Spain) has been emerging from its neighbor's shadow ever since the popular drama "Breaking Bad" began in 2008. Home to sizable Native American and Latino communities, both with major cultural attractions (including the National Hispanic Cultural Center, which holds more than 700 cultural events a year), Albuquerque expects more time on camera since Netflix bought local ABQ Studios last fall and announced a plan to bring 1 billion in production to the state over the next 10 years. Entrepreneurs are starting up midcentury modern tours, dealing clever T shirts and kombucha at the Rail Yards Market, opening craft breweries and redefining retail. See the city at its most colorful during the Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta, Oct. 5 to 13, when hundreds of hot air balloons launch in early morning mass ascensions. Get your bearings on a "Mezcla de Culturas" walking tour with Heritage Inspirations. Among its guides, Bobby Gonzales, a 13th generation New Mexican, leads two hour rambles ( 75) through Old Town, Albuquerque's original settlement, established in 1706, and the emerging Sawmill District next door. While strolling through hidden courtyards and adobe lined streets, he talks about the Spanish quest for gold that led explorers north from Mexico to Albuquerque on the Rio Grande. He identifies vernacular architectural styles like New Mexican farmhouse with adobe walls and metal roofs, and tells offbeat stories about the 36 days the Civil War came to town and Old Town's attempt in the 1950s to divert some of the tourist traffic heading north to Santa Fe by remodeling Victorian buildings in Pueblo evoking fashion. Surrounded by 25 acres of lavender fields and gardens, Los Poblanos Historic Inn Organic Farm, on the agricultural fringe of Albuquerque, champions farm to table fare at its restaurant, Campo. Residing in the farm's restored dairy buildings that date back to the 1930s, Campo, which means field, focuses on cooking with fire and using local ingredients in dishes such as roasted vegetable tostada ( 15) and grilled rack of lamb ( 40). Its prime seats are at the chef's table, where guests are served an eight course meal with a front row view of the open hearth ( 120). Make a reservation in advance or dine at the bar, where the entire menu is served. Arrive before 6 p.m. to browse the inn's Farm Shop next door which deals local artist designed blankets, carbon steel cookware and ceramic dishes from Japan. Flamenco dance has a long history in Albuquerque, dating back to the 16th century, according to the University of New Mexico. Sponsored by the university and the National Institute of Flamenco, a local nonprofit dance school, the annual Festival Flamenco Alburquerque each June has been running for 32 years. Catch the Institute's performers and visiting artists on weekends at the Hotel Albuquerque at Old Town, which hosts its Tablao Flamenco Albuquerque show (tickets from 10), featuring dancers as well as a guitarist and a singer, called a cantaor, or two. Together they perform impassioned and improvised dances that spellbind audiences sipping tempranillo, nibbling on tapas and cheering, "Ole!" Dating back to 1942, when drugstores commonly had soda fountains, Duran Central Pharmacy has expanded on the tradition and given it a New Mexican accent. Guests enter through the pharmacy and gift shop and follow their noses to the bustling diner on the left where orange vinyl stools line the curved lunch counter, and the griddle behind it sears hand rolled flour tortillas. They come ready to dip into the green or red chile sauce smothering the huevos rancheros ( 9.30) or concealing a chile topped burger ( 10.30). On your way out, browse the gift section for jars of the restaurant's signature chile sauce and flour sack dish towels printed in bright graphics by the local brand Kei Molly Textiles. Work off those huevos on the 16 mile Paseo del Bosque Trail, a multiuse trail that follows the Rio Grande through its cottonwood "bosque" or forest where it's cooler, even on the warmest days. The Pace shared bike program stations rental cycles conveniently throughout town ( 1 for 15 minutes). But to go farther, faster and more comfortably, rent a hybrid bike from Routes Bicycle Tours Rentals where the staff readily offers directions and maps ( 20 for four hours). The company also runs two hour tours daily (from 50) and may customize the route based on your interests in history, architecture or even "Breaking Bad." After browsing the many Old Town shops selling souvenir ristras (strings of drying chiles) and Native American turquoise jewelry, hit the stylish Spur Line Supply Co. in the Sawmill District. The owner, Tess Coats, has assembled a collection of artisan made and New Mexican goods in a showroom size space, offering everything from apparel to housewares to vinyl records. Her own 1971 Airstream trailer sits in the middle of the store, filled with, recently, vintage clothing, ice buckets and inflatable pool toys. Shoppers will find locally made jewelry, Dryland Wilds botanical beauty products, macrame plant hangers and fun T shirts, including one that salutes the state as "Land of Manana." A coffee shop invites lingering at the communal table or out on the patio. New Mexico is small in terms of population (roughly 2 million), but big in terms of beer. The Brewers Association puts the state at 10th in the nation in terms of breweries per capita. More than 40 breweries and taprooms are in and around Albuquerque. Start a tasting tour at the handsome Bow Arrow Brewing Co., founded by Native Americans Shyla Sheppard and Missy Begay, producing sour, barrel aged and other beers using regional ingredients (most pints 5.50). Next, hit the industrial Brewery District to try the Elevated I.P.A. ( 5.50) at La Cumbre Brewing Co. It's worth the trip farther from the town center to stop by Steel Bender Brewyard, a lively, all ages friendly taproom and restaurant in an industrial setting. Order a Compa lager ( 5 pint) or the Judy, a barrel aged saison ( 9), and soak it up with a two fisted Steel Bender cheeseburger topped with a fried egg and green chile strip ( 14). One of the largest petroglyph sites in North America lies just on the western edge of Albuquerque in Petroglyph National Monument. Here, Native American ancestors to the modern Pueblo people carved images of turtles, parrots, hands, geometric designs and other symbols onto rock surfaces between 400 and 700 years ago. Archaeologists estimate that the 17 miles of escarpment within the park hold more than 25,000 images. Three hiking trails offer opportunities to see them. The shortest, the one mile Boca Negra Canyon walk, passes up to 100 petroglyphs on a steep and rocky hill of volcanic boulders (free admission; parking 1 to 2). If you have more time, hit the 2.2 mile Rinconada Canyon to see up to 300 carvings. May through October, the Sunday morning Rail Yards Market (free) combines local food farm produce and prepared food crafts and live music with an opportunity to see Albuquerque's atmospherically crumbling Rail Yards. Once one of the city's biggest employers, the train yard is home to the vast Machine and Boiler Shops with broken windows and rusty beams, now popular settings for film productions, including "The Avenger." After sampling market fare, save room for tamales from nearby El Modelo Mexican Foods, which began making tortillas by hand in 1929. Fans line up at the to go counter for tamales generously stuffed with shredded pork in spicy red chile ( 2.60) and sloppy green chile brisket burritos ( 5.15). There's no indoor seating, so grab a stack of napkins and find a table in the shade in the adjoining parking lot or yard.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
An 8,437 square foot commercial condo is available on the entire fifth floor of this 1890 six story NoLIta loft building, where commercial spaces are on odd numbered floors and apartments are on even ones. The space, with 11 foot high ceilings, features 16 offices, a kitchenette, a reception area and exposed brick walls with archway openings. There are two elevators, and a common outdoor space on the top floor. Common charges are 7,260 a month, with taxes at 3,278. A private investment partnership led by Greenroad Capital has bought this 21,520 square foot 1916 five story loft office building two blocks from South Street Seaport. The fourth floor is occupied, while the rest of the building is vacant and is to be renovated. There are 26,300 square feet in air rights.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The brightest orb in the center of this photograph captured by the Hubble Space Telescope is a galaxy some 300 million light years away called NGC 4889. At its core rests a supermassive black hole that is about 21 billion times the size of the sun, according to NASA and the European Space Agency. Though you cannot see it in this image because black holes swallow light, NASA said it was one of the largest star devourers ever observed. It dwarfs the black hole that twists at the center of our Milky Way, which researchers estimate is only four million times the size of the sun. The monster once feasted upon many of its host galaxy's stars, gas and dust, but is no longer active.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
Just as humans rely on their sense of smell to detect suitable food and habitats, avoid danger, and find potential mates, so do fish only instead of sniffing scent molecules floating through the air, they use their nostrils to sense chemicals suspended in water. But fish will start losing their ability to detect different smells by the end of the century if atmospheric carbon dioxide levels keep rising, scientists warned in a recent study published in the journal Nature Climate Change. For fish, the sense of smell is "particularly important when visibility is not great," said Cosima Porteus, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Exeter and the lead author of the study, which examined elevated carbon dioxide levels and their effects on olfactory sensitivity, gene expression and behavior in European sea bass. "Therefore, even a small decrease in their sense of smell can affect their daily activities." Dr. Porteus and her colleagues exposed juvenile sea bass to the amount of carbon dioxide that is predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to be in seawater by the year 2100, which is more than double today's levels of carbon dioxide. When exposed to the elevated levels, the fish had to be about 42 percent closer to an odor source to detect it, the researchers found, making it harder for them to notice food or predators.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
'The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century,' by Kirk Wallace Johnson Johnson unspools an utterly fascinating and "complex tale of greed, deception and ornithological sabotage" about a young flutist named Edwin Rist, who in 2009 broke into a British natural history museum and stole hundreds of preserved bird skins. "He intended to fence the birds' extravagantly colored plumage at high prices to fellow aficionados in hopes of raising enough cash to support both his musical career and his parents' struggling Labradoodle breeding business in the Hudson Valley," wrote our reviewer, Joshua Hammer. 'American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land,' by Monica Hesse Over a five month period starting in 2012, 67 fires were set across an isolated stretch of Virginia. A mechanic eventually took responsibility, but solving the mystery isn't what makes this book so compelling: It's the back story of an improbable outlaw and his fiancee, who quickly emerges as one of the most memorable femme fatales in recent true crime cases. The story, our critic Jennifer Senior wrote, "has all the elements of a lively crime procedural: courtroom drama, forensic trivia, toothsome gossip, vexed sex." 'The Orchid Thief: A True Story of Beauty and Obsession,' by Susan Orlean The veteran reporter and bibliophile (don't miss her latest, "The Library Book") introduces readers to John Laroche, a 36 year old who became so obsessed with orchids, he hired himself out to the Seminole tribe of Florida to set up a plant nursery and propagation laboratory on the tribe's reservation and hatched a scheme that would benefit the Seminoles, the world and himself. Our reviewer wrote: "In Ms. Orlean's skillful handling, her orchid story turns out to be distinctly 'something more.' ... She writes that orchids appeal to people because they are both smart and sexy: smart in their ability to survive; sexy in their look and feel. She describes the lengths to which collectors have gone to acquire them. She introduces us to people who deal in them, steal them, do anything but kill for them." In 1977, Terri Jentz and her college roommate set out on a cross country bike trip. Seven days into their 4,200 mile journey, the two were camping at a state park in Cline Falls, Ore., when a man in a truck brutally attacked them first with his truck, then with an ax. "Strange Piece of Paradise" is Jentz's memoir of her own survival. Our reviewer wrote: "She is condemning American culture, one of easy violence that glorifies 'the badass outlaw,' that values 'self gratification, impulsivity and irresponsibility, and rewards preening narcissism.' She is condemning violence against women and a society wide indifference toward its ubiquity, what she calls our 'passive complicity.' ... But Jentz keeps the editorializing to a minimum, and her soapbox is, for the most part, more of an easy chair. I felt a bit hopeless, but I never felt harangued."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
The painfully long and slow recovery of the American economy stumbled last month as employers added a disappointing 162,000 jobs, the government reported on Friday, leaving uncertainty about the timing of the Federal Reserve's plans to begin tapering its extraordinary efforts to revive healthy growth after the financial crisis that hit the world five years ago. The unemployment rate, which comes from a different survey, gave a more encouraging signal, edging down to 7.4 percent from 7.6 percent in June. But the improvement was only partly a result of more people getting jobs. More people also dropped out of the labor force. The unemployment rate refers only to people who are actively looking for work. While the jobs report was lackluster, particularly compared to expectations that the economy might add closer to 200,000 jobs, many economists said the latest data was unlikely, on its own, to cause Federal Reserve officials to back away from plans to begin easing its stimulus policies. Ben S. Bernanke, chairman of the Fed, has said that the central bank would start reducing its monthly purchases of Treasuries and mortgage backed securities "later this year." Many Wall Street analysts have interpreted that comment as pointing to action as early as the Fed's meeting in September. "The payroll numbers were a little disappointing, but the Fed has said it's more interested in the unemployment rate than the payroll numbers," said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics. He noted that the Fed's own forecasts put the unemployment rate around 7.2 to 7.3 percent at the end of this year, not far below the July level. Referring to inflation, he said, "If anything, today's numbers would harden my view if I were a hawk and persuade me to become more hawkish if I were wavering." "The committee needs to see more data on macroeconomic performance for the second half of 2013 before making a judgment on this matter," James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and one of the members of the Fed committee that sets interest rates who is more dovish on inflation, said in a speech on Friday. Other indicators also painted a somewhat darker picture of the economy and the job market than was evident from reports earlier this year, with both average hourly wages and the length of the private sector workweek shrinking modestly in July. The job gains reported on Friday were concentrated in retail, food services, financial activities and wholesale trade, according to the Labor Department. Manufacturing gained 6,000 jobs, the first improvement since February, although economists caution that the timing of auto plant shutdowns in the summer can distort the numbers. July represented the 34th consecutive month of job creation, but the latest pace of employment gains is still far below what would be needed to absorb the backlog of unemployed workers anytime soon. At the roughly 192,000 a month average rate of job growth so far this year, it would take more than seven years to close the so called jobs gap left by the recession, according to the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution. There are now 11.5 million Americans looking for work who cannot find it. That figure nearly doubles when two other groups of "underemployed" workers are taken into account: people who want to work but have stopped looking, and people who are working part time because they cannot secure full time jobs. The number of Americans in so called involuntary part time employment has barely budged in recent years, and the total for July 2013 was exactly the same as a year earlier. For these unemployed and underemployed workers, the social safety net that has been supporting them has frayed as a result of federal, state and local budget cuts. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. The high cost of gas is forcing families to cut back on activities and essentials. "I honestly didn't think it would be this hard," said Keith Aiken, 38, who moved into a homeless shelter in Greensboro, N.C., about a month ago. His employer of more than a decade, a group home for people with disabilities, shut down last August, and he has been looking for work ever since. After state officials ended North Carolina's eligibility for federal unemployment benefits last month, Mr. Aiken's benefits stopped and he was no longer able to pay his rent. "Hopefully, something will come open pretty soon," he said, noting that he was looking into contract labor in Iraq or Afghanistan. "I like to think I'm down but not quite out yet." The outlook for hiring is unclear, particularly since even the moderate rates of job growth in recent months do not seem justified by the weak gains in economic output. The nation's gross domestic product grew at an annual rate of 1.7 percent in the second quarter and 1.1 percent in the first quarter, much slower than would be predicted from recent hiring trends. Economic output and job growth seem unlikely to stay decoupled for too long, some economists say, in which case output growth should start to pick up, or job growth should start to slow, or both.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
THE TWICE BORN Life and Death on the Ganges By Aatish Taseer The "twice born" in Aatish Taseer's title are the Brahmins who are "reborn" when they undergo initiation as young men into India's highest caste. But the word could refer equally well to Taseer himself. His story is a variant of the much told tale of the American man (or Englishman or European man, seldom a woman) who revolts against the shallowness of Western materialism and goes to India to find his soul, to reinvent himself, to be spiritually reborn. Cross this genre epitomized by W. Somerset Maugham's 1944 novel, "The Razor's Edge" with the equally shopworn story of the American in search of his ethnic identity and you get a man of Pakistani and Indian heritage who (re)turns to India to find his roots (and/or soul). But Taseer's is a far more convoluted authorial voice: Born in 1980 in London to a Muslim father (the governor of Pakistan's Punjab Province, assassinated by an Islamist fanatic in 2011) and a Sikh mother (a famous Indian journalist), Taseer was educated at a posh international school in India and then in America, where he graduated from Amherst College. A successful, often controversial, journalist, he was much praised for his first book, a blend of memoir and travelogue called "Stranger to History: A Son's Journey Through Islamic Lands," and for his three novels, which deal with a young Indian who returns to his country after some years abroad. It's not very hard to see an obsessive pattern here, in which "The Twice Born" forms the final element, since it aims to do for Hinduism (and India) what Taseer's first book did for Islam (and Pakistan). It was a difficult re entry. Taseer describes his own cultural schizophrenia in India: "I saw everything as an Anglicized Indian watching an imaginary European or American visitor watch India, and I had my heart in my mouth as I tried to guess what he would make of it. It was an embarrassment twice removed." Part of the problem was that he had chosen to view his rediscovered country through the lens of Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, which he had studied for a decade. Taseer is rightly enthralled by the great richness of Sanskrit literature and by its amazing survival over thousands of years in the minds and lives of Indian scholars, primarily in one community: the Brahmins. He loves the Brahmins for both their knowledge and their disdain for materialism. And his admiration for these unworldly intellectuals, who seem at first to be his kind of people, inspires his appreciation of traditional India, which for him is Hindu India. But this gives him an idealized, airbrushed image of Hinduism and India, which he views en saffron, the color of the robes of ascetics and hence originally a symbol of ascetic Hinduism but nowadays an emblem of right wing, nationalist Hinduism. He therefore decides to live in the holiest city of Hindu India, Varanasi. Actually, Taseer calls it Benares, the British name Indians have replaced with the original Sanskrit. Elsewhere he comments obliquely on this choice: "One forms an idea of India by balancing what India knows about herself with what outsiders, from Megasthenes and Fa Hsien to Al Biruni and Niccolo de Conti, have written about her. It makes the country ripe for being defined from the outside." Yet he largely ignores the many Indian writers who, pace Taseer, have managed to define it quite well from the inside. 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. Taseer's discovery of India results in a detailed, learned and highly readable tour of Hindu history, noting many of the positive contributions of the centuries of Muslim rule and dwelling at some length on the degrading and demoralizing effects of the British Raj. But along the way, the saffron scales seem to fall from his eyes as he describes the rise of Hindu nationalism, with its anti Muslim violence, and the failure of liberal Hinduism to apply more than an ineffectual Band Aid to the deep, septic wound of the people once called Untouchables, now known as Dalits. He excoriates the rise of the present ruling party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and its prime minister, Narendra Modi, charting the way they have exploited both anti Muslim passions and the wounded pride inflicted by British rule, riding to power on a wave of religious bigotry. He watches Modi manipulating precisely those high minded Hindu values that he, Taseer, has so admired. He is particularly eloquent when he bemoans the weird claims that have been made for Indian (that is, Hindu) science, including the assertion that ancient Indians used nuclear weapons and mastered air travel. By this time, Taseer has realized that a much admired Brahmin friend named Tripathi is speaking "a cut rate version of the banalities one hears every day on American college campuses," and Taseer fears that his former awe of this man may have been "an extension of my romantic idea of Tripathi." Finally, near the very end of his narrative, Taseer comes up against the issue of caste. After a seemingly jolly dinner at a Brahmin home, he is shocked, shocked, to see his friends insist that a non Brahmin dinner companion must wash his own plates and utensils. At that moment, "a deep shame came up in me, as if from the recesses of childhood, like the shame of wetting one's pants." Despite his sharp eyed condemnation of the evils of Hindu nationalism and caste, Taseer manages to salvage his admiration for the Brahmin world by making a rather artificial, though quite common, distinction between two aspects of religion, spirituality and magic. Spirituality love of the gods, of ancient texts, of uplifting and comforting ceremonies and magnificent architecture is high minded, moral, inspiring, and Taseer praises the Brahmins for their spirituality. However, magic the superstitious belief in the efficacy of rituals and astrology, along with the measures taken to avoid pollution from contact with lower castes is stupid, destructive, cruel. Taseer's damning critique of Modi's "pseudoscientific impulse" culminates in his dismissal of Hindu magical thinking, which he sees as opposed not only to science but to religion. Though he admits that "I had tried to sidestep the subject of magic until now, even though it had encroached many times," it is magic that finally drives Taseer out of India. After months spent hanging out in ashrams, he realizes, as he is about to visit yet another, that "I did not want to enter its crowded spaces where religious feeling was at a fevered pitch. I made some excuse about not wanting to remove my shoes." He had undergone a kind of reverse enlightenment, from the purified life of the mind to a realization of the material tragedy of present day India. He puts it well: "Maybe all my questing after India had been the precursor to my moving more honestly away from it." As he encounters more anti Muslim violence, more anti Dalit violence, as well as the "vigilantes" falsely proclaiming the sanctity of cows, he recoils from the sort of fanaticism that killed his father. But he salvages some of his original idealism by remarking, "It was an age that spelled the destruction of the very ideal of the Brahmin." And what of his own ideals? "After Amherst," he writes, "I had planned to come back to India forever, but I was unable to fit back in." He returns to New York, to the man to whom he is married (as he tells us, though he sometimes lies about it in Benares). All that he has been able to salvage from the saffron days is his love of Sanskrit, which he continues to study, now at Columbia University. There he encounters a "left wing Indian intellectual" who insists, "I am not a Brahmin. ... For me that word is the same as Nazi." This encounter makes Taseer recall the horrors of "castebound" India and Modi's manipulation of "the old Indian disease of symbolic action." Two more deaths rekindle his grief over his father. In mourning all three, he explains, "I was also mourning the end of my life in India." And that death was his rebirth.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
Teaching as a Second Act, or Maybe Even a Third GAIL R. RUSCETTA changed careers for the first time when she had children. A theater major who bounced between acting gigs in her 20s, Ms. Ruscetta took the kind of leap that overachieving city dwellers often fantasize about: She and her then husband moved to Montana and opened a horse farm and riding school. Fifteen years later, Ms. Ruscetta who was an active volunteer in her children's classrooms and then helped home school them was going through a divorce. Time for another career switch. This time, she decided to try teaching. Ms. Ruscetta, 57, moved to Virginia and enrolled in a yearlong, 3,500 training course designed by the state Education Department for career changers. She financed her training and living expenses from the sale of a dressage horse, and in the fall of 2012 she started a job at a public middle school in Alexandria, teaching English as a second language. She figures this career will stick. "I'll probably be working until I'm 85," she said. Teaching, with the draw of doing good, the steady (if unspectacular) paychecks, summers off and solid pension benefits, has long been perceived as a durable second or third career. But in the last five years, the profession has taken a number of hits. The economic downturn led to layoffs across the country's school districts. The total number of jobs in public schools remains about 345,000 below its 2008 peak, according to Labor Department figures. What's more, a series of changes to academic standards, threats to tenure and an overhaul of the way teachers are evaluated have all contributed to turbulence in public education, with teachers, unions and some parents' groups pushing back. Some cities and states are debating whether they can guarantee the kinds of generous public pensions they have in the past. Still, the idea of shaping young minds remains attractive, and with the economy slowly improving, school districts are hiring again. And as many as a million teachers could retire in the next four to six years, the federal Department of Education says. Although only three states offer universal preschool, more cities and states are moving to join them and increase the demand for teachers. Changing demographics are raising the demand for bilingual teachers. The Labor Department says the number of teaching jobs is projected to grow over the next decade by more than 429,000. For a late starter taking the first step toward a teaching certification, the candidate's college major may dictate options, since most states require that teachers demonstrate content knowledge in their subjects. Elementary teachers gain more general credentials, so there is more flexibility there. Poor districts are more likely to be hiring. "There tends to be higher turnover in those districts," said Segun Eubanks, director of teacher quality at the National Education Association, the nation's largest teachers' union. Even in more affluent and suburban school districts, said Mr. Eubanks, the highest areas of need are for teachers of special education, English as a second language, and math and science. In many states, some college level work in the subject a candidate plans to teach is required for certification. Others require candidates to pass content knowledge exams. There are hundreds of routes to teaching credentials and a job, and the paths vary from state to state. Prospective teachers can consult Teach.org, a website sponsored by the Department of Education along with some corporate sponsors, the nation's two largest teachers' unions and Teach for America, which places high achieving college graduates into low income schools for two year stints. Other resources include the National Association for Alternative Certification and the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education. While more traditional teacher education programs offer more time to prepare, other routes pair brief training with a learn on the job approach. More traditional programs charge tuition and generally require taking some time off from paid work to attend classes, although online options are also available. Fees range from a little less than 6,500 in California's state university system to as high as 54,000 for a master's degree from Teachers College, which generally takes two years, including student teaching assignments. According to the National Education Association, a first year teacher can expect an average salary of around 36,000, although states including California, New Jersey and New York average closer to 45,000. In most cases, there are no bumps for age or experience in another profession. Many states sponsor programs that attract career changers who need to earn income right away. Teaching Fellows programs, run by the New Teacher Project in 12 states, offer summer training sessions followed by placement in a public school classroom on a first year teacher's salary. Admission to the program, including mentoring and observation throughout the school year, is selective. About 13 percent of applicants were selected last year. "We think about training these folks like they are pro athletes," said Ana Menezes, a vice president who oversees the training programs. Teach for America also occasionally takes on a seasoned career switcher. As with the Teaching Fellows program, candidates spend five or six weeks training over the summer. The program covers room and board, but does not pay a salary during this period. In the fall, corps members are placed in paid positions in neighborhood schools or charter schools, most in poor areas. Scott Graham, 49, a retired Air Force chief master sergeant, first laughed when his daughter, then a Teach for America corps member in San Antonio, suggested he try the program, too. He applied and was sent to Houston three years ago for summer training. "When I was living in a dorm with all these young kids, I was like, 'Oh my gosh, what have I gotten myself into?' " Mr. Graham recalled. He now works in a middle school in San Antonio, where he helps students with discipline problems. Although two decades older than many of his peers, he shares their drive: He is training to be a school administrator.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Your Money
In Chekhov's "The Seagull," a budding writer named Konstantin wants to create a new kind of theater. This may have a little something to do with his tumultuous relationship with his famous actress of a mother, Arkadina. So Konstantin comes up with a rather pompous play that prompts Mom to say, "What experimental mess is this?" When this line comes up in "Seagullmachine," you may find yourself thinking, "Arkadina, you read my mind." And there is a lot more experimental and a lot more mess to come in this nearly three hour long mash up of "The Seagull" and Heiner Muller's "Hamletmachine." The idea by the Assembly company ("I Will Look Forward to This Later," "That Poor Dream") to combine these two texts is not as far fetched as it looks because both share a concern with "Hamlet" and theater itself. "Hamletmachine," in particular, is a godsend to the avant garde minded, a postmodern "cri de rage" from 1977 that is so abstractly flexible, performances of its nine page script have ranged from one to eight hours.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
In dance, as in life, youth has its privileges: There are things you can get away with for only a limited time. An older group of dancers, for instance, probably couldn't have pulled off Ethan Stiefel's "Knightlife," the comic ballet that opened a three day run of American Ballet Theater's Studio Company at the Joyce Theater on Friday. The Studio Company serves as a kind of steppingstone from ballet training to professional life; many of its members, ages 16 to 20, wind up in the main company or other leading troupes around the country. Alumni include the superstars Misty Copeland and David Hallberg. At the Joyce, the group was joined by advanced students from Ballet Theater's Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis School. These younger affiliates, who performed "Knightlife" and Raymond Lukens's effervescent "Danse Baroque," seemed on par with their older peers; they were just as lucid and expansive. If Ballet Theater faces any challenge in hiring new dancers, it may be a surplus of talent within its own ranks. The company is fostering choreographic talent, too. Mr. Stiefel is a former principal with the company, and Gemma Bond, who contributed "Third Wheels," a new trio, is a corps member steadily finding her voice as a dance maker.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
'Cause London, as seen through the director Tom Hooper's eyes, is looking awfully postapocalyptic. Streets, homes, milk bars: Everything is so barren you'd swear it was "28 Days Later," only instead of zombies, there are singing mice and marching cockroaches. There's also an unseen dog pressing at a door and, by my count, one actual human, who, in the opening frames, tosses a sack into an alley. My immediate thought was that it was a dead kitty, but no, it's a live kitty named Victoria (Francesca Hayward) who's been deposited in the alley so she will ... starve to death? Be compacted? Chew her way out? The correct answer is: rescued by a guerrilla band of Jellicles. Makes you wonder if it was all just some humanitarian long game. Ingenue pale, Victoria gets some shade from the Jellicle street chicks but quickly finds protectors in the form of Munkustrap (Robbie Fairchild) and Mr. Mistoffelees (Laurie Davidson). The timing of Victoria's abandonment is fortunate because this very night one lucky Jellicle will be chosen to ascend to the Heaviside Layer and to "a different Jellicle life." Victoria doesn't pause to ask if this is a good thing, but she does reasonably inquire how said cat will be chosen. "By singing a song," explains Munkustrap. With that, the implicit motive of "Cats," the stage show, becomes the explicit engine of "Cats," the movie. It's a competition, bitches. Bring your best musical selves. But there's a problem here. To hunger for the Heaviside Layer means to hunger for a new life, and the felines of "Cats" (it was an issue with the show, too) are feeling pretty good about things. Jennyanydots (Rebel Wilson) has vermin at her beck and call. "Puss in Spats" Bustopher Jones (James Corden) has garbage bins ripe for deep diving. Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer (Danny Collins and Naoimh Morgan) are making a fine, if slightly risky, living plundering homes. Even Gus the Theatre Cat (Ian McKellen) seems A O.K. with reliving his glory days. Why do any of them need to brave the uncertainty of an afterlife? The pandemic has been a time of renewal and reinvention for Taylor Swift. After releasing two quarantine albums, the singer is in the process of releasing the rerecordings of her first six albums. None A Fight for Her Masters: Revisit the origin story of Swift's rerecordings: a feud with the powerful manager Scooter Braun. Pandemic Records: In 2020, Ms. Swift released two new albums, "Folklore" and "Evermore." In debuting a new sound, she turned to indie music. Fearless: For the release of "Fearless (Taylor's Version)," the first of the rerecordings, Times critics and reporters dissected its sound and purpose. Reshifting the Power: The new 10 minute version of a bitter breakup song from 2012 can be seen as a woman's attempt to fix an unbalanced relationship by weaponizing memories. The question looms larger with Macavity, who, in the glowering person of Idris Elba, is now the uber antagonist this show never had and perhaps never knew it needed. As I watched him vaporize one Heaviside aspirant after another, I got an agreeable chill thinking that "Cats" was tearing a bloody page from "Sweeney Todd," so it was a little disappointing to learn that Macavity isn't actually killing his victims but depositing them safely on a barge in the Thames. Why? So he can grab the Heaviside Layer for himself, that's why. But isn't he already the master or, if you like the Stringer Bell of his domain? Able to teleport cats at will and lord it over the entire Jellicle realm? Why would he give all that up for a one way ticket to outer space? The number's climax, unfortunately, is the already infamous spectacle of Elba looking nekkid as all hell in skintight coffee colored fur. (Be careful of what you wish for, indeed.) But why hasn't anyone onscreen noticed that Judi Dench, making her big entrance as Old Deuteronomy, is a dead ringer for Bert Lahr in "The Wizard of Oz"? All those vassal kitties bowing and kowtowing, and I'm just waiting for her to break into "If I Were Queen of the Forest." (The "Oz" resonance extends to the chandelier balloon that carries our winner skyward at film's end.) Well, Old Deut may be a theological game show host, but she's got ethics, and she isn't about to put up with Macavity's nonsense. "I judge a cat by its soul," she tells him. "You're a cheat." For that, she gets disappeared to the same Thames barge, at which point Macavity morphs from Sweeney Todd to Captain Hook and demands that she walk the plank. The only one who can apparate her back to safety is the Jellicles' magician intern. This plot development does impart new urgency to the many, many choruses of "Magical Mister Mistoffelees," but the choruses still keep piling up, and nothing keeps happening. I'm happy to report that Macavity and his minions are foiled, and Grizabella (Jennifer Hudson), the only character truly in need of a metaphysical makeover, comes forward for her reward. Hudson doesn't look anything like a faded showgirl prostitute with years of mileage. On the contrary, she seems like she could clobber every single one of her cat tormentors. But as an actress, Hudson is all in lurching and crouching and wincing and weeping like a thousand Meg Ryans. (At one bravura juncture, parallel rivulets of snot come trickling out of her nose.) It's the most Method Grizabella I've ever seen and maybe the least compelling. Because why ask Hudson to sing "Memory" and not let her unleash that monster voice? Every time she seems to be digging in for real, she scurries back to a bewildered head tone, and what should be the movie's musical centerpiece ends well, I'll quote Eliot from another context not with a bang but a whimper. Anyway, off goes Grizabella, and we're left with Old Deut sitting atop a lion statue and rather bizarrely choosing this moment to instruct us on the addressing of cats. In the original show, this number at least gets a big choral send off; in the dry, crackly hands of Dame Judi, it becomes a prissy, self satisfied catechism. (A cat is not a dog, y'all.) Is it me, or does all this anticlimactic talk of caviar and potted grouse and salmon paste undercut the show's redemptive message? I mean, is Old Deut supposed to be the Jellicle Marianne Williamson or the Jellicle Martha Stewart? I was even more confused when she gave Victoria a grandmotherly rub and murmured: "I believe you truly are a Jellicle cat." Wait, is this what the movie was supposed to be about? Victoria's coming of age? Doesn't it turn the whole show into a protracted hazing ritual? In the spirit of the season, let me grope toward an upside. "Cats" might have been a better movie, but it's doubtful it would have been a satisfying one, and the experience of watching it is a welcome reassurance that live theater still does some things better than film. Making us believe in humanoid cats is one of them. Best scene: I've never had much patience for Gus the Theatre Cat, but that was until McKellen got his hands on him. It's a tone poem of pride and shyness and loss, with, yes, stirrings of dementia. Perhaps the best moment comes when Gus, mistakenly believing he's just generated bolts of lightning, gazes in mild wonder at his own hand. Best line: Dialogue is now part of the "Cats" universe, but there's nary a zinger to be found, unless you count some rather obvious cat puns. Drinking game: A sip of a Black Cat Vodka cocktail every time one kitty sweetly nuzzles another. I Google so you don't have to: Henry Irving (1838 1905) and Herbert Beerbohm Tree (1852 1917) were famous English actor managers of the Victorian era. If Gus did act with them, he would be a singularly old pussy now. Pity is something I've never felt for Rebel Wilson she's too tough a cookie but boy, does she struggle to get a laugh here. Jason Derulo's boyish ardor puts his number over. It also places him at the tamer end of the Rum Tum Tugger spectrum, and I was a little surprised to see how easily he bled back into the chorus. Andy Blankenbuehler's choreography left me neither fer nor agin. The opening number is decent, and I liked seeing classically trained dancers like Robbie Fairchild given room to show their chops. But the most fun and kinetic turn comes from Steven McRae as Skimbleshanks, who turns a fairly ho hum Thomas the Tank Engine number into a tap extravaganza. (And leaves you wondering why such a happy footed employee would want to chuck it all for the Heaviside.) The song that Swift co wrote for the movie includes the line, "You'll dance with these beautiful ghosts," which leaves me seriously worried that all the onscreen cats are dead. Is that why the streets are so empty? What's next? "Sixth Sense: The Musical"? Take a bow. We got through it.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
A composite of several real life balloon trips (Glaisher is real and Wren is fictitious, but likely based on the flamboyant French balloonist Sophie Blanchard), "The Aeronauts" has a natural buoyancy that mostly resists the drag of its earthbound flashbacks. Stuffy scenes between James and his parents ( Tom Courtenay and Anne Reid ) alternate with his entreaties for money from the Royal Society, where his bewhiskered fellow scientists think he's a hoot. After a few of these interludes, neither we nor the movie can wait to get back in that basket with Amelia. Structural road blocks aside, "The Aeronauts" is that rare adventure movie to celebrate the silence in which its wonders unfold. The cloud of butterflies that magically appears, and the flakes of snow that hover, seemingly stationary, around the balloon during its too swift descent, are permitted to linger quietly on the screen and in the mind. At one point in the film's most terrifying sequence as Amelia climbs up the balloon's exterior to release a perilously frozen gas valve, George Steel's cinematography has such a hushed and blinding beauty that it would be a crime to close your eyes. Equal parts dizzying and dippy, "The Aeronauts" is family entertainment at its most charming and chaste. By and by, you realize you've been watching a romance blossom without a single kiss, but that shouldn't be a surprise: What James and Amelia are really in love with is the sky.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
From left: Elias Williams for The New York Times; Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times From left: Elias Williams for The New York Times; Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times Credit... From left: Elias Williams for The New York Times; Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times The fashion designers Tommy Hilfiger and his wife, Dee Ocleppo, finally sold their domed duplex atop the landmark Plaza Hotel, though it took 11 years and several price reductions for that to happen. The closing price for their penthouse, on the 18th and 19th floors of the Plaza Residences at 1 Central Park South, was almost 31.3 million, a steep drop from the 80 million they once sought. The buyer was Terry Taylor of Palm Beach, Fla., one of the country's largest private owners of automobile dealerships. The sale was among the most expensive transactions in New York City in October. The priciest, though, were at 220 Central Park South. A unit on the 47th floor sold for 61 million, and one on the 45th for roughly 55.5 million. Another, on the 54th floor, was purchased for nearly 38.2 million by Michael and Kimberly Cantanucci, who are also the owners of auto dealerships. Four smaller apartments at the ultra pricey Midtown tower also closed, two of which were picked up by the hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin, who already owns four full floors in the building. His purchase earlier this year, for nearly 240 million, set a national record. Throughout October, denizens of the fashion world were involved in several closings. Gilbert W. Harrison, a deal maker in the retail industry who now runs a consulting firm, and his wife, Shelley D. Harrison, sold their Fifth Avenue co op to Nathaniel Wertheimer, whose family owns the Chanel fashion house. The estate of Josephine Chaus, a founder of the Chaus clothing brand, sold her Upper East Side townhouse. And the designer Thom Browne and his partner, Andrew Bolton, one of the forces behind the annual Met Gala, bought a townhouse on Sutton Place. Mr. Hilfiger and Ms. Ocleppo, a former model who has her own fashion line, paid 25.5 million in July 2008 for their Plaza home, a combination of two units. Two months later, apparently looking for a quick flip, they briefly relisted the property for 50 million. The couple later invested another 20 million for renovations and redesigns at the 5,600 square foot space. Over the past decade, the penthouse has been on and off the market several times with various brokers. The asking price went as high as 80 million in 2013, and as no takers emerged, was steadily reduced. The penthouse has four bedrooms and four and a half baths, along with a terrace overlooking Central Park off the spacious master suite on the top floor. There is also a media room, office and library nook within the large living room on the lower level. The apartment's elaborate decor features lacquer finishes and an "Eloise" themed mural in the dome room, designed by the artist Hilary Knight, who illustrated the "Eloise" children's books. (The book series is about a mischievous girl who lived on the "tippy top floor" of the Plaza.) The month's biggest sales, at 220 Central Park South, were both 6,591 square foot, full floor apartments. Each has five bedrooms and seven and a half baths, according to the listings with the broker Deborah Kern of the Corcoran Group. Like many of the units in the building, they also offer stunning Central Park and city vistas. The identity of the buyer of the 47th floor was shielded by the limited liability company, 47 SPC 1. The buyer of the 45th floor was the CJ220CPS Trust. Public records also showed a 38.15 million mortgage was taken out on that property with Bank of America in Houston, and that it was a second home. The unit acquired by the Cantanuccis, who run the New Country Motor Car Group, based in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., also has park views and loads of space. Their 4,814 square foot home comes with four bedrooms and four and a half baths, according to the listing. The couple also gets Mr. Griffin as a neighbor. Their apartment sits just above the four floors 50th through 53rd that he owns. Mr. Griffin also bought two adjacent studios on the 20th floor, one for just over 2 million and another for around 1.9 million. Also sold in October at No. 220 was apartment No. 36B, a three bedroom, three and a half bath unit with 3,043 square feet. The price was 21.9 million. The buyer was identified as Stephen C. Park, who made the purchase (and also took out two mortgages) through the limited liability company KPG15A3. A one bedroom, one bath apartment with 503 square feet, No. 18G, sold for 1.8 million. The buyer used the limited liability company 47 SPC 1. The apartment sold by the Harrisons is at 993 Fifth Avenue, a limestone clad building designed in the 1930s by Emery Roth, across from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It closed at 19 million, which was the city's most expensive co op sale for the month. The couple is not leaving the building: They bought a smaller unit on the second floor for 5.6 million. The residence they sold takes up the entire 11th floor and contains five bedrooms and six and a half baths, as well as a large formal dining room, library and separate staff quarters. The buyer, Mr. Wertheimer, is the son of Alain Wertheimer, the chairman of Chanel. Mr. Harrison is the founder and chairman emeritus of Financo, a New York based investment banking firm that provides services to the retail and merchandising industries. He currently runs the Harrison Group, a financial advisory firm also focused on retail and merchandising. The month's second biggest co op sale, at 12.8 million, was a four bedroom, five bath apartment at 110 Central Park South, in Midtown. The buyer was Aleksandra Melnichenko, the wife of the Russian billionaire Andrey Melnichenko. She already owns a penthouse in the building. The estate of Ms. Chaus, who died in 2015, sold her red brick townhouse at 128 East 73rd Street, near Lexington Avenue, for 15 million. She started her clothing brand with her husband, Bernard Chaus, who died in 1991, and they bought the house in 1987. Mr. Browne and Mr. Bolton are the new owners of 1 Sutton Place, a brick Georgian townhouse overlooking the East River that was built in the 1920s for Anne Harriman Vanderbilt. The four story structure has 6,000 square feet, with six bedrooms, six full baths and two half baths, according to the listing with Sotheby's International Realty. The master suite takes up most of the third floor and features a large dressing area and extra large bathroom. On the top floor are offices and a terrace room that opens to a sunroom, which offers vistas of the river and the Queensboro Bridge. The home has six fireplaces, a huge eat in kitchen and breakfast room, and a dining room that opens to a terrace. Mr. Browne is the founder and head of design for Thom Browne, which designed the daytime outfit worn by Michelle Obama during the second inauguration of Barack Obama. Mr. Bolton is a curator for the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute, which is celebrated each year at the Met Gala fund raiser. Also last month: Eric Trump, the son of President Donald J. Trump, sold a one bedroom, one bath apartment (with a tenant in place) at Trump Parc East, at 100 Central Park South, for 2.4 million. John J. Burns of Cheyenne, Wyo., made the purchase through the limited liability company Art Gardens.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
The unforgiving pavement of Greenwich Street unspooled half a dozen stories below. But Brent Weingard, who had strapped himself into an olive green harness and attached himself to a canvas belt that in turn was attached to a hook on the facade of No. 55, seemed oblivious to the fact that gravity was not his friend. Dangling outside the oversize double hung window, the belt his only protection, Mr. Weingard didn't bat an eye. Silhouetted against a large swath of the West Village, he squirted blobs of Joy ("my grandmother swore by it") into his bucket of water, razored off hard to remove grime, and sponged away cascades of dirty water with the fuzzy multicolored mops that he calls porcupines, using microfiber cloth for the corners. Moving as gracefully as a dancer, he finished up with crisp, meticulous swipes of his squeegee. By the time Mr. Weingard crawled back into the apartment 10 minutes later, his bucket was brimming with black water, testament to how filthy a New York window can get in just a few months or even weeks, especially a window hard by highways. But he finds scrubbing away grime deeply satisfying. "I like working with squeegees and water," Mr. Weingard, 55, said as he stepped carefully about in his black Red Wing work boots with their no scuff soles. "Washing windows is dirty work because the city is so dirty. And to be honest, I don't think the work is all that healthy. But I love it." Mr. Weingard is the moving force behind Expert Window Cleaners, a company that he started nearly three decades ago as a political science student at Columbia University and now operates out of his Yorkville apartment. He had been introduced to the craft when his globe trotting father, who worked for I.B.M., moved the family for a time to house proud Holland, and young Brent watched window washers at work. Some years later he bought his first professional equipment; today he works in some 1,000 buildings a year. His strong right arm is his team of 10 assistants, mostly from Ecuador and Guatemala. The city's high end residential buildings are his specialty, and he'll go anywhere to Greenwich Village town houses, to glass towers like the Post Toscana on First Avenue, to Upper West Side grandes dames like the Ansonia. His clients, especially the downtown variety, are a roster of the rich and/or famous, among them Lenny Kravitz (Mr. Weingard remembers the pile of guitars in a corner), E. L. Doctorow and Monica Lewinsky. He can tell tales of the van Goghs and Picassos he has seen and of apartments so vast he has gotten lost. The tools of his trade are simple, even homely the porcupine mops, the squeegee, the dropcloths, the faded towels (laundered daily), the bottles of purified water, the stubby green stepladder. But with half a dozen jobs on a day that typically starts at 8 and goes until 6, his schedule is complex. Making his way around congested city streets, the eternal search for a parking space (amazingly, he always seems to find one), struggling to show up at the appointed hour (or apologizing profusely when he's running late), not trekking dirt onto a client's floors or splattering the new curtains sometimes washing windows seems the least of it. This morning Mr. Weingard was working solo at the century old Archive, where he has been a regular since the building opened as a luxury rental complex in 1988 with nearly 500 apartments. "This was my first building," he said, parking his powder blue minivan across the street. "The super, George Wagner, was a friend." Lugging his stuff to an apartment being readied for a new tenant, he suited up in his belt and harness, cautiously made his way onto the narrow ledge just outside the glass, attached his belt to hooks on the building's facade and set to work. If he has an audience inside the apartment, however, he will tell stories gleaned from decades of viewing the city from a distinctive perspective. "I remember the time I got stuck outside this building," he said as he wielded his squeegee. "It was winter, the window was closed, it got stuck and I couldn't get it open. Then it started snowing." Gingerly, he made his way across the ledge to the window of the apartment next door, pried it open, stepped in, buzzed the intercom, "and Walter in the lobby rescued me." "And of course everyone mentions Kundera," Mr. Weingard said, alluding to the author of the novel "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," with its surgeon turned window washer protagonist. Though he once met a girlfriend through a customer, he has never wound up a job by popping open a bottle of Champagne and enjoying an amorous moment with a client. His work has, however, led him to cross paths with a number of people who have become part of his life, among them his doctor, his lawyer and his dentist. Happily for him, he has no stories about sudden attacks of vertigo. If he suffered from acrophobia, he said, he'd be in another line of work, "because that's something you don't outgrow." Plus, he is attentive to safety and a regular at the meetings of the International Window Cleaners Association, the industry's trade group. Because New York is tougher than most places when it comes to washing windows the traffic, the congestion, the pollution city window washers use a variety of techniques to get to where the dirt is. They clamber up scaffolding. They use ropes to rappel down the sides of high rises, an approach that most are loath to discuss or have abandoned because city regulations sharply curtailed the practice. Like Mr. Weingard, they work as much as possible inside an apartment, using what is called belt work only for hard to reach exteriors. Ivor Hanson, the author of the memoir "Life on the Ledge: Reflections of a New York City Window Cleaner," is intimately familiar with the world Mr. Weingard inhabits. All the glassy new towers translate into business. "But when times are tight," Mr. Hanson said, "people wash their windows less often, so there's more pressure on the window washer." As the city has grown more affluent, the social dynamics have changed also. "People are fussier," Mr. Weingard said. "They get upset if they can't get an appointment right away, or if the guy is five minutes late." There's also less chatting with the customer; usually, a domestic worker or a doorman escorts Mr. Weingard into an apartment. Today, he said, most people have their windows washed once or twice a year, paying him an average of 20 apiece for normal double hung windows, more for larger or more complicated installations. Like many window washers, Mr. Weingard does not plan to do this sort of work forever. Crouching and balancing become tougher; the lightning fast reflexes needed to prevent falls slow down. Mr. Weingard sees himself retiring to his family's farm in the Allegheny Mountains. But for now, he regards washing the windows of what he calls "my buildings" as something of a calling. "Because why live in New York," he said, "if you can't look out the window and see how beautiful the city is?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
Six months after Beethoven contemplated suicide, confessing his despair over his increasing deafness in the 1802 document known as the Heiligenstadt Testament, he was carousing in taverns with a charismatic new comrade, George Polgreen Bridgetower. This biracial violinist had recently arrived in Vienna, and inspired one of Beethoven's most famous and passionate pieces, the "Kreutzer" Sonata. Beethoven even dedicated the sonata to Bridgetower. But the irritable composer who would later remove the dedication to Napoleon from his Third Symphony eventually took it back. While Napoleon didn't need Beethoven to secure his place in history, this snub reduced Bridgetower to near obscurity. Though his name was included in Anton Schindler's 1840 biography of Beethoven, he was described inaccurately as "an American sea captain." Like so many Black artists prominent in their lifetimes, he has been largely forgotten by a history that belongs to those who control the narrative. Bridgetower's father who took the name Frederick, and sometimes went by others was the driving force behind his son's career. Handsome, charming and fluent in multiple languages, Frederick was a natural storyteller with a flair for promotion; he claimed that his father had been an African prince unofficially adopted by a Dutch sea captain, was promised diamonds and gold dust, and then sold into slavery, surviving a shipwreck in the process. The father married an African woman and wound up in Barbados, where Frederick was born; the name Bridgetower was likely derived from the island's capital, Bridgetown. It's unclear how Frederick wound up in Poland, but the historian William Hart wrote in a 2017 article in The Musical Times that young Bridgetowers's godparents were members of the noble Radziwill family; Frederick, and possibly his wife, may have been in their service. The couple and their son soon moved to Austria, where Frederick, known as "the Moor," worked as a page to Prince Nikolaus Esterhazy. The music loving prince maintained his own orchestra at his palace in Eisenstadt, where Haydn was court composer. (George Bridgetower was later touted as a pupil of Haydn's, but it's unclear if he ever studied with the master.) Bridgetower's public debut was long thought to have taken place in Paris in 1789. But Mr. Hart discovered an advertisement in a Frankfurt newspaper promoting a concert by "Hieronymus August Bridgetown," the "son of a Moor," in April 1786, when the boy would have been just seven. It noted that he had already played for Emperor Joseph II. The Bridgetowns, as they were then known, lived for a time in Mainz, an important musical center, where Maria gave birth to another son, who would later become a cellist. Frederick, leaving his wife and younger child behind, took on tour his elder son, who, billed as a "young Negro of the Colonies," performed a violin concerto by Giornovichi in the prominent Concert Spirituel series in Paris in 1789. "His talent, as genuine as it is precocious, is one of the best replies one can give to the philosophers who wish to deprive those of his nation and his color the faculty of distinguishing themselves in the arts," said a review in Le Mercure de France. After several more concerts in Paris, including one attended by Thomas Jefferson, the Bridgetowers as they then called themselves left for England, where the family created a sensation. With Oriental inspired clothing in vogue, Frederick played up his presumed exoticism by wearing flowing Turkish robes. Everyone wanted to meet this "African prince" and his prodigy whose name had now become George. By the fall of 1789, Frederick had arranged for his son to play before King George III and Queen Charlotte, as well as the Prince of Wales, later George IV. George induced "general astonishment" playing in Bath, according to the Bath Morning Post. At 11, he made his London debut with a Giornovichi concerto between the first two parts of Handel's "Messiah." He and his father were often at Carlton House, the town residence of the Prince of Wales, who organized regular chamber concerts. On June 2, 1790, the prince sponsored a benefit concert for Bridgetower and another young artist at the Hanover Square Rooms, the premier concert venue for fashionable society. Until then, Frederick had skillfully managed his son's career. But his behavior turned increasingly self destructive. At a masquerade attended by the prince, Frederick dressed as a caricature of a Black slave, advocating for abolition; this was certainly a worthy cause, but the stunt served to alienate the elites whose favor he had taken pains to cultivate. During a performance of "Messiah," he shouted for a repeat of the "Hallelujah" chorus, and, after a struggle, was thrown out of the theater. There were reports of excessive drinking and womanizing. Charlotte Papendiek, a lady in waiting to Queen Charlotte and a prolific journal keeper, wrote that Frederick gambled away his son's money and treated him so brutally that George sought refuge with the Prince of Wales at Carlton House. Frederick was committed to an asylum before being sent back to Germany by the prince, who took 12 year old George under his protection. The prince gave him the opportunity to learn from the finest musicians in London. He studied composition, theory and piano with Thomas Attwood and violin with both Francois Hippolyte Barthelemon and Giornovichi. He formed a close relationship with Giovanni Battista Viotti, a violinist and composer whose confident, daring style would influence his own. Over the next decade, Bridgetower would play in nearly 50 public concerts with leading orchestras and musicians, including Haydn and the double bass virtuoso Domenico Dragonetti. He was the first violinist of the Prince of Wales's band; the organist and composer Samuel Wesley wrote that Bridgetower was "justly ranked with the very first masters of the violin." After visiting his ailing mother in Dresden, Bridgetower arrived in Vienna in early April 1803. He had been invited by Prince Lobkowitz, one of Beethoven's patrons, to play that composer's quartets. Beethoven and Bridgetower formed an instant bond. The composer, then 32, may have recognized himself in the 24 year old violinist. Beethoven had been nicknamed the Spaniard for his swarthy complexion, and engravings of the two men show a marked resemblance. They also had in common abusive fathers with vested interests in their careers, as well as the ability to thrill audiences with their astonishing talents. After hearing Bridgetower play, Beethoven not only agreed to participate in a concert for him at the Augarten, but also decided to write something for them to perform together. He had already started sketching out the first two movements of a violin sonata, to accompany a previously discarded finale. He now began to compose with Bridgetower in mind, as the two men stayed up nights drinking and acting like teenagers. Though Bridgetower was described as melancholic, he could also be high spirited and ribald. He brought out Beethoven's freewheeling, bawdy side. The concert had been planned for May 22, 1803, but since the sonata wasn't ready, it was postponed until the 24th. At 4:30 that morning, Beethoven instructed his pupil, Ferdinand Ries, to copy out the first two movements for the violinist. Ries managed only the first, and the piano part was still in sketch form. Beethoven and Bridgetower took the stage for the morning concert, having never rehearsed the piece. Bridgetower was sight reading. Beethoven had given Bridgetower an opening solo that began with an explosive declaration, moving into a fiery, sensual dialogue. At one point, Bridgetower surprised Beethoven by imitating and then expanding on a short piano cadenza in the first movement. Beethoven, jumping up, hugged him, crying, "My dear boy! Once more!" After the performance, Beethoven presented Bridgetower his tuning fork and wrote a dedication on the score: "Sonata mulattica composta per il mulatto Brischdauer, gran pazzo e compositore mulattico" ("Mulatto sonata composed for the mulatto Bridgetower, great lunatic and mulatto composer"). Tolstoy wrote about the unsettling first movement in his novella "The Kreutzer Sonata," whose protagonist, after hearing his wife play the piece with her violin teacher, stabs her to death in a jealous rage. Beethoven didn't do anything that extreme, but after Bridgetower made a rude comment about a woman Beethoven admired, the two men quarreled and Beethoven took back the dedication. Bridgetower returned to London and continued to perform, enjoying the patronage of the Prince of Wales. On May 23, 1805, he participated in a concert in the Hanover Rooms, along with his brother, who played a Romberg cello concerto. Their father had also come back to England, where he was arrested and thrown in jail for vagrancy. In 1811, Bridgetower received a master's degree in music from Cambridge University and became a member of the Royal Philharmonic Society. Five years later, he married Mary Leake, the daughter of a prosperous cotton manufacturer; they had two daughters. One died in infancy, and he grew estranged from the other. He and his wife separated in 1824. Little is known about Bridgetower's later years; at some point, he seems to have stopped performing, making his living as a piano teacher in Rome and Paris. In an 1847 letter to Madame de Fauche, a fellow musician, he makes a joking but telling reference to his biracial identity: "If the bearer of this letter is fortunate to find you, favor me by having your message conveyed to him who is not fair enough to be 'my tiger,' nor 'dark enough' to be 'my Friday,' but is my long tried honest Caliban." The allusion to the half human, half beast character in Shakespeare's "Tempest" is a poignant one: When his island is suddenly occupied, Caliban is enslaved. Bridgetower died on Feb. 29, 1860, in a house on a small back street in south London; he was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. The death certificate identifies him as a "gentleman." By then, Beethoven had been gone for 32 years. It's unknown if Bridgetower ever played the "Kreutzer" Sonata again, or if he was in contact with Beethoven after their rift. All we know is that on May 24, 1803, two brilliant performers dazzled a crowd with their high wire virtuosity. One of them entered history. Patricia Morrisoe is the author of the novel "The Woman in the Moonlight."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
MONTCLAIR, N.J. I won't lie: I had to suspend disbelief while watching a crucial moment in Frank London's new opera "Hatuey: Memory of Fire" on Sunday. On stage, a conquistador priest brandished a crucifix as he urged an indigenous rebel to embrace Jesus. In Yiddish. Tied to the stake, the defiant Taino chief told the priest that if heaven had whites in it, he would rather go to hell. "Vayl di vayse zaynen in himl vil ikh liber in Gehenem zayn," the chief sang, as the salsa band yes, salsa band played on. It would seem that Mr. London, a leader of klezmer groups in New York, and his librettist, the playwright Elise Thoron, have some explaining to do. Their opera, which received its United States premiere in the Peak Performances series at Montclair State University this weekend and runs through Sunday, is set in Cuba and sung in Yiddish, with some text in Spanish and English. Hatuey, its hero, was a real life Taino warrior who organized an armed defense against the invading Spaniards and was burned at the stake in 1512. Mr. London and Ms. Thoron are both white. The work's musical language is Afro Cuban jazz. As it happens, the opera's incongruities are also its strength, as the layering of cultures helps make it a compelling and eminently entertaining work of musical theater. The opera is based on an epic poem written in Yiddish in 1931 in Havana. Its author, Oscar Pinis (later, after traveling to America, Asher Penn), was a 23 year old Ukrainian Jew who had recently fled the pogroms in his homeland. The story of the failed indigenous uprising against the forces of Hernan Cortes evidently touched a nerve in Pinis and inspired a work simmering with anti colonialist outrage. In the opera, Oscar becomes a character. In a Havana nightclub he falls under the spell of Tinima, a Cuban singer of Taino descent as well as an activist fighting the repressive regime of Gerardo Machado, Cuba's president. In her songs, she evokes the martyrdom of Hatuey and encourages the young poet to write about him. "Does your language have a word for 'freedom?'" she responds, by way of permission. The 16th century story comes alive in scenes acted out by characters from the nightclub. At the same time, Tinima enlists Oscar's help in arming Havana's students against the police crackdown. He is fearful, haunted by memories of a bloody pogrom back in his village in Ukraine. The 1930s nightclub setting works. It gives Mr. London an excuse to arrange a number of vibrant Cuban songs and is a vehicle for the fierce artistry of Jennifer Jade Ledesna, a smoky voiced alto and feline dancer, as Tinima. The onstage salsa band with cello, conducted by Constantine Kitsopoulos, moves in and out of the spotlight, underpinning spoken dialogue with a light rhythmic shimmer and turning up the heat for barn burning numbers like Irving Berlin's "I'll See You In C U B A." The members of the strong cast were all amplified, sometimes too closely. Nathaniel Stampley's suave baritone, in the title role, and Nicolette Mavroleon's dusky soprano could probably have shone unaided. But all were comfortable in the transitions from spoken theater to song, and the frequent dancing was more than persuasive. Yes, it felt odd to see a predominantly black and Latino cast perform in Yiddish. (A first production in Cuba last year translated chunks of the libretto into Spanish to make it more accessible to audiences.) But as the story of the vanquished Hatuey was brought to life, the language added a layer of melancholy. After all, Yiddish, too, is virtually extinct in the part of the world that gave birth to it. And it was easy to see the affinity a Jewish refugee felt in 1931 for a people forced into internal exile by a conqueror. The ambitious Peak Performances series took a gamble when it decided to stage a work that would inevitably draw questions about cultural appropriation on a university campus. On Sunday the audience responded with warmth and enthusiasm. For New Yorkers interested in salsa, social justice and "oy veys" in aria form, it's worth the schlep.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
What books are currently on your night stand? You mean my leaning pile of guilt? If a book is on my night stand, it means I haven't read it and feel like I should. I'm too embarrassed to name them, as some are written by people I know. As for the books that have come off my night stand recently, they are all forthcoming. Here are some books worthy of reading in 2017: Thi Bui's "The Best We Could Do"; Charmaine Craig's "Miss Burma"; Don Lee's "Lonesome Lies Before Us"; Bao Phi's "Thousand Star Hotel"; Vaddey Ratner's "Music of the Ghosts"; and Akhil Sharma's "A Life of Adventure and Delight." What has your post election reading looked like? I've been reading news and opinion pieces on Facebook and Twitter. They're utterly terrifying and depressing, since my social circle basically thinks that a Trump presidency spells the end of the world. To get out of the echo chamber, I read Donald Trump's Twitter feed. It's utterly terrifying and depressing, and I run back into the echo chamber. I take comfort in the children's literature that I read to my 3 year old son. He will tolerate the tales of Beatrix Potter, which I find soothing, but mostly he wants to hear about Batman, Superman, Ghostbusters and Star Wars. The moral clarity of these stories is comforting not just for a 3 year old, but also for many adults. This is why they are relevant in our divided age, where most people identify with the rebels but so many in fact are complicit with the Empire. What's the last great book you read? Kia Corthron's "The Castle Cross the Magnet Carter." This big, ambitious, challenging novel should have gotten much more attention. It tells the 20th century history of the United States through the intersecting lives of two white brothers and two black brothers. It is, by turns, tender, brutal and redemptive. 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. What's the best classic novel you recently read for the first time? Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" on audio. I had read it a long time ago, but hearing Joe Morton's stupendous performance was like encountering the novel for the first time, again. The Morton version is absolutely riveting. What's your favorite book no one else has heard of? "The Land at the End of the World," by Antonio Lobo Antunes, beautifully translated by Margaret Jull Costa. This novel about an old man reflecting on his experiences as a young medic in Portugal's colonial war in Angola was my touchstone while I wrote "The Sympathizer." Every morning I would read two or three pages of its magnificent prose, dense with striking and unexpected imagery, until the moment arrived when I was so seized by the novel's spirit that I was motivated to turn to my own. I wanted to imitate Lobo Antunes, and I failed. On a stationary bike, sweating. In my car, on audio. At the dining table or my desk, with a pen in hand. Best of all, in bed, at night, with a double of Scotch, neat. O.K., sometimes it's a triple. What moves you most in a work of literature? The sentences, which include the rhythm, word choice and images. I will put a book down if the first sentence doesn't immediately thrill me. Since I don't get to read very many books purely for pleasure, I have no time to waste on a book whose every sentence isn't a delight. Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid? The genres I most enjoy reading are the ones I try and avoid, because I love them too much. As a child and teenager, those beloved genres were comic books, science fiction, fantasy and war stories, both fiction and nonfiction. As an adult, I added crime stories. The problem is that if I pick up a crime thriller by Jo Nesbo, Walter Mosley or Don Winslow, or a science fiction novel by Octavia Butler, I'll be up until the early hours of the morning to finish it, and I don't have the time. That's likewise the case with comic books when I give in to them, whether they are by the Hernandez brothers, Alan Moore, Rumiko Takahashi, Osamu Tezuka, Adrian Tomine, Gene Luen Yang, or many others. Besides the fact that these genres provide gripping storytelling, I also love them because they oftentimes have more to tell us about our larger contemporary world than so called literary fiction (which doesn't acknowledge that it's a genre as well). Comic books long ago predicted presidents like Donald Trump, in series like Frank Miller and Dave Gibbons's "Give Me Liberty." Crime fiction, which often connects low level crime to high level corruption, can help us understand the operations and effects of a Trump presidency that unabashedly favors strongmen of all kinds. Science fiction likewise often speculates on grand political questions. Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars," for example, is about the colonization of that planet and the ensuing tragedy wrought by human politics, greed and ambition. It takes place in the future but is really about our eternal human strengths and weaknesses. I like it when literature gets political, and contemporary literary fiction is more often apolitical than not. How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time or several simultaneously? I love paper books, but traveling with them was a pain, because my luggage could only accommodate so many books. When the Kindle came along it solved that problem of portability and was my favored reading mode for several years. Then I published my novel and rediscovered the fetish of the physical object. I wanted to hold my book and enjoyed seeing it on bookstore shelves, and have returned to the thrill of buying and reading paper books. I still read on the Kindle, however, and also listen to books on audio. It doesn't matter how I'm reading as long as I'm reading. I read several books at a time, which mirrors to some extent how I always have more than one writing project that I work on simultaneously. How do you organize your books? What's your favorite book to assign to and discuss with your students? Maxine Hong Kingston's "The Woman Warrior." I find the book endlessly rewarding to teach, because it's so rich and layered and still relevant to the lives of students. In addition, it's a powerful book about the necessity and dangers of storytelling. The first line is "'You must not tell anyone,' my mother said, 'what I am about to tell you,'" and the rest of the book is about the author telling everyone what her mother said. Telling what must not be told is one of the writer's primary tasks. It is also a difficult and dangerous one. What kind of reader were you as a child? Which childhood books and authors stick with you most? I was a lonely boy and a voracious reader who treated the library as my second home. I loved Curious George and Tintin, although I see their problems now as an adult who's more sensitive to racial and colonial connotations. I wouldn't want to reread the Hardy Boys, Tom Swift or "Tom Brown's School Days," but I liked them as a child. Other favorites that I have not revisited for fear of spoiling their memory are Robert Louis Stevenson's "Treasure Island"; "D'Aulaires' Book of Greek Myths"; Tolkien's "The Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings"; Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Robot books; Frank Herbert's "Dune"; early Robert Heinlein novels; Harper Lee's "To Kill a Mockingbird"; Erich Maria Remarque's "All Quiet on the Western Front"; Audie Murphy's "To Hell and Back"; Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia; and many, many superhero and war comic books. A curious child can read whatever he or she wants in a good library, which has no borders and stands up for the First Amendment. That meant that by the time I was 13 or 14, I had access to lots of war books filled with sex and violence, as well as trashy, soft core porn paperbacks featuring detectives, medieval knights and hit men. This probably goes a long way toward explaining how I became the writer that I am. If you could require the president to read one book, what would it be? For President Obama, the Bible (the Old Testament, not the New). For President Trump, the Bible (the New Testament, not the Old). President Obama has a great degree of the compassion recommended in the New Testament, but many of us who admire him wish he would sometimes, like the Old Testament God, figuratively hurl fire and brimstone at his domestic political opponents (I recognize that the drone strikes he has authorized are a literal kind of fire and brimstone, but at least he's not playing with the idea of pre emptive nuclear attacks). President Trump has no problem with loving his followers and smiting his enemies, but he needs to learn humility, generosity and self sacrifice from the New Testament Jesus, who washed the feet of the poor, fed the hungry, respected women and rejected the corruption of the establishment. You're organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite? Haruki Murakami, since it seems unlikely I'll ever meet him. He can curate the music and cook spaghetti. Carrie Fisher, for her wit and bravura. Lastly, John Berger. I love that Berger gave half his Booker Prize money in 1972 to the Black Panthers, and used the other half to fund the research for his next book on migrant laborers. Berger was the kind of writer we need more of politically committed, aesthetically serious, always curious. What do you plan to read next? Roland Barthes's "Writing Degree Zero," which I sadly have not read yet. Paisley Rekdal's forthcoming "The Broken Country: On Trauma, a Crime, and the Continuing Legacy of the Vietnam War." Jeff Chang's "We Gon' Be Alright: Notes on Race and Resegregation," since I want to learn what we need to do to make everything alright. Linh Dinh's "Postcards From the End of America," which chronicles a declining America through the author's travels among the down and out. Perhaps many liberal and leftist writers think they should reach out to this part of our country, but Linh Dinh is one of the few to do it. Solmaz Sharif's "Look," a work of poetry that is about war and language, drawing partially from the Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms (I've been reading a bit at the intersections of war and poetry, most recently the excellent volumes "Night Sky With Exit Wounds," by Ocean Vuong, and "Hardly War," by Don Mee Choi). Ta Nehisi Coates's "Black Panther," because the character and the author are an awesome combination. Perhaps I'll find inspiration for the comic book I would love to write someday about Agent Orange, an anti imperialist crime fighter who is simultaneously superhuman and disabled, born as a result of the dioxin that the United States sprayed in Vietnam. I promise it will be funny.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
On a recent Saturday night in rural Becket, Mass., pop music blared inside a crowded barn turned dance studio. Some people grooved quietly at the edges of the room; others sprang into back flips or tap danced in heels. At the center of a tight knit circle, one dancer coiled his body around the slow, driving rhythms of Sia's "Cheap Thrills," cheered on by friends. When Beyonce's "Formation" came on, a small army broke into the official choreography and riffed on its hip shaking themes. It was the weekly cast party at Jacob's Pillow Dance Festival, and an international crowd of dancers was relaxing after a busy day of work by dancing more. The Argentine ensemble Che Malambo and the South Korean company Bereishit Dance mingled with members of Urban Bush Women from New York and students from the School at Jacob's Pillow. Spanish, British and Korean speakers wordlessly traded steps, finding similarities among styles like house and malambo, fleet footed forms born in different hemispheres. Anyone watching that euphoric scene might assume that dancing socially is a breeze for professional dancers. And for many it is, offering a welcome escape from the rigors of the studio and stage. Yet for those who devote their lives to dance, dance floors aren't all carefree all the time. Many dancers know the feeling of being asked in social settings to perform on the spot, of being treated like "a show pony," as the choreographer Kyle Abraham put it in a recent interview. And formal training doesn't always lend itself to dancing just for fun. The choreographer Aynsley Vandenbrouke started out studying ballet and classical modern, "where you were told what to do all the time," she said. "I didn't have an improvisation practice like I do now. So my brain would sort of short circuit in more informal situations. It was like, if there wasn't a barre, I couldn't dance." For others, dancing socially came first. Growing up in Pittsburgh in the '90s, Mr. Abraham was a regular at local raves. He started studying ballet, modern and jazz, he said, to widen his repertoire when he went out. While dancing at a friend's wedding a few years ago, he said he began thinking about the reverse: how to translate the feeling of a rave to the stage. (That project, tentatively called "The Social," is a slow burner, but he hasn't abandoned it.) In one sense, dancers with years of training are really no different from those without it everyone has a complex, individual relationship to the dance floor. In this season of festivals, pool parties and rooftop raves, Mr. Abraham, Ms. Vandenbrouke and other professional dancers elaborated on the pleasures and perils of dancing when off the clock. These are edited excerpts from those conversations. Dancing at parties was how I first realized I liked dancing. At any weddings I went to as a kid, even before I started dance training, I would always be the last one on the dance floor, just by myself, playing in the fog machine. I'm not one to be commanded to dance. Sometimes I'll be out with friends, and we'll meet some people, and they'll ask us what we do, and we'll say, "We're ballet dancers," and they'll say, "Oh! Show us some of your moves!" and I refuse. What are we supposed to do? Whip out fouettes in the club? That's insane. When I started going out, my trained dancer mind was always looking to be "correct." Eventually I saw that self censoring is completely antithetical to the vibe of a good dance party. The "technique" of dancing for fun has more to do with embracing many different experiences than finding one correct way to move or dress or behave. When I finally gave myself permission to let loose, I began by emulating other dancers whose moves I thought were cool or whose energy I liked. It allowed me to try on different identities, in a way. When I was younger, I'd have fights when people at parties would say, "Don't you want to dance?" I'd be like, "No, especially not on command." I couldn't articulate it then, but dancing for me is this deep, deep practice. So that's why I don't just get up, that's why it's more weighted. CASTRO In Urban Bush Women, we talk a lot about our mother tongue: What were you dancing to in your kitchen, with your mother, the people who raised you, anyone you consider family? I grew up dancing at home salsa, merengue prior to being in dance school, and that lived on through my training and continues to this day. We dance all the time outside of rehearsal. A'KEEN I'm always trying to get the least likely person to dance. I'm like, "I know you got it!" Because for me, dance is so liberating. And in a country where freedom isn't guaranteed you know what I mean? These are real issues. I'm not here to be a spectacle. I'm here to charge the space, so that we can all, if for 30 seconds, if for one song, feel that freedom and embody that and live in it. Because walking out of this club, we don't know who's going to get stopped or whatever. That's the reality. Athletes will talk about "the zone" or "flow state," that idea of being completely present in what you're doing, having no sense of time passing. When that happens in the club, to me it's the most essential and true expression of self. It's also nice to dance socially because you don't have to worry about the millions of things a dancer/choreographer has to think about when a performance is going down, like taking notes, lighting, sound. I remember being an apprentice in the company, and I was even more quiet and shy and weird than I am now. Even then I would really let go at company events like galas and young patron parties . Dancers would come up to me in technique class the next morning going, "Whoa, Claire, you were workin' it last night!" I was a little ashamed at first, but now I just accept it, and it's fun. Sometimes it really invigorates me, and I feel super energized the next day to channel that freedom onto the stage. Going out dancing is definitely the biggest form of release for me. Usually I go by myself. I don't like to be the center of attention at all when I'm at the club. I just want to get in the zone and find a good corner to do my thing. I do like those moments, though, where I look over and see someone who's also having the time of their life, and we can just acknowledge that and keep going. Artists were asked about their favorite songs to dance to this summer. Listen on Spotify:	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
COMANCHE NATIONAL GRASSLAND, Colo. On a dry, chilly morning in the Southern Colorado grasslands, Bruce Schumacher led a group of AmeriCorps volunteers across the narrow, shallow Purgatoire River to an out of place bump in the landscape. He pushed aside loose, reddish dirt with his hands, revealing a bone the size of a microwave oven the limb of a sauropod dinosaur, said Dr. Schumacher, a paleontologist. The workers were surprised that the fossil was just sitting out on the plains, unguarded. Two of them joked about coming back at night to pull it out of the ground. A two hour ride down a dirt road, far from cellphone service or any other signs of human life, Picketwire Canyon is a dinosaur lover's dream, largely because of hundreds of hubcap size theropod and sauropod footprints pressed into a nearby layer of limestone, which abuts the river. Dr. Schumacher, 48, who lives in La Junta, Colo., is one of two field paleontologists employed by the United States Forest Service. They are responsible for protecting and promoting dinosaur remnants scattered across the agency's 193 million acres, primarily in the Rocky Mountain states. The fossil site to which Dr. Schumacher led the volunteers is just one of many in the Morrison Formation, layers of rock lining 100 foot tall mesas alongside the canyon. The site was discovered months beforehand, but because there were too many dinosaur bones and too few people to excavate them, it was reburied, for protection against thieves and the elements. For months, these bones lay undisturbed in the grasslands like buried treasure. The two stewards of the Forest Service's dinosaur bones are far outnumbered by the approximately 350 archaeologists employed to manage the traces of human life, though the dinosaurs were around far longer than humans have been. "It all goes back to the laws and the homocentricity of those laws," Dr. Schumacher said of the disparity. The National Historic Preservation Act requires strict protection of human structures built 50 or more years ago on federal lands. With the requirement comes funding for archaeologists. While Dr. Schumacher and his Forest Service counterpart do team with academic researchers and museums, which provide some outside funding for protection of bones, there is no law that protects paleontological resources to the same degree. Because of the program's popularity, he no longer advertises it. Most of the volunteers have devotedly returned for every project and become a highly skilled team. During their first week, in 2001, volunteers searched along the lower edges of the canyon walls that frame the valley for the bluish white fossils that stand out among the brown and gray rocks and bright yellow grasses "developing their bone goggles," Dr. Schumacher calls it. By the second to last day, they'd found nothing. So one volunteer took from his knapsack some petrified wood he had brought back to show his dejected partners. "That's not wood," Dr. Schumacher recalled telling the volunteer, who led the team back to where he had found the fossil. There, over the next several seasons, the crew spent a week or two every year uncovering a Camarasaurus that they named Woody. In all, they pulled out about 15 percent of the skeleton, now on display in the Sternberg Museum of Natural History at Fort Hays State University in Kansas. Most of the volunteers are amateurs interested in paleontology, like a retired meat cutter, a retired secretary of an oil and gas company and a retired aerospace engineer. Some did their own bone hunting before they found the program. Others were looking for opportunities for travel oriented post retirement volunteer work; many have worked on similar archaeological projects around the world. Bigger bones often require several weeks of tedious work, spread out over seasons, as the volunteers delicately coax them out of clay or mudstone. In October 2014, resting on his side in a safari hat, Ms. White's husband, Allen, 80, carefully brushed dirt from a bone lodged in the Riverside Quarry wall. Nearby, a mutton chopped volunteer named Leroy Frazier, 62, (license plate: BONEDGR) carefully reassembled what looked like a football size vertebra. "This is Sunday's jigsaw puzzle," he said, laughing. Up the river from the quarry, on another day of prospecting for dinosaurs, less seasoned volunteers pushed brooms across the dry limestone riverbed. Every couple of minutes someone uncovered new tracks made by theropods (bipedal carnivores whose prints show three talonlike toes) or sauropods (plant eaters that walked on all fours, leaving circular prints like potholes). The footprints stretch for yards, disappearing and reappearing over the years, as floods and the river itself alter the landscape. "It's always been called the longest track site in North America," said Dr. Schumacher, adding that with recent discoveries by his volunteers, it may be the biggest collection of tracks in the world. A Forest Service tractor scooped dust off the riverbed, leaving about six inches to be more gently removed by volunteers. Theropod tracks in the riverbed follow, and sometimes overlap, those of sauropods. For this reason, some at the site speculated that the tracks might be a game trail: theropods stalking their sauropod prey. "This is where the big boy started getting in trouble," said Sonny Fernandez, 77, resting by sauropod tracks that get deeper with each step and appear to be angling erratically left. "All those young ones seen him coming, said, 'Hey, fat boy.'" All signs suggest that this substantial trackway continues well beyond the berm of dirt where the volunteers stopped at the end of the week. And the group's recent discovery of adult sauropod tracks alongside previously uncovered juvenile tracks lends support to an emerging theory that these dinosaurs traveled as a family. But the prints still buried are almost certain to remain mysteries until the volunteers return. Fortunately for Dr. Schumacher's mental health, he is in no rush to see the 150 million year old prints exposed. Still, he says that with more resources, the Forest Service could replicate the type of educational programs that currently exist. Before joining the Forest Service, he had worked on Sue, the best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever found, as part of a team hired by the Field Museum in Chicago. The fossil's discovery, in South Dakota, led to a major legal dispute involving the landowner, the finders and the federal government. In 1997, the Field Museum paid 8.36 million for Sue at auction. "At that time the Forest Service got this sense that fossils are worth a lot of money," Dr. Schumacher said. In particular, Toadstool Geologic Park in Nebraska was seeing a lot of small scale thefts, he said old mammal bones being flipped for nickels and dimes on the black market. Back then, he added, the position of the Forest Service was: "People are stealing stuff. We don't really know how to manage it. We're not going to manage it. But we're not going to let them steal it." "That was the impetus of the whole program," he said of the Forest Service's 's paleontology effort. In the early 1990s, the agency hired its first paleontologist, Barbara Beasley, to identify Forest Service resources worth protecting. Dr. Schumacher was brought on a couple of years later. Since then, thefts of fossils and bones have decreased, Dr. Schumacher said, and interest in preservation has grown. Still, funding is hard to come by. The agency's two person field paleontology program is part of the minerals department, which is primarily concerned with valuable coal and oil deposits. The Forest Service's archaeology program and the Bureau of Land Management's paleontology program, by contrast, are placed in their agency's heritage departments. The heritage departments are geared toward education, rather than commodities like oil and gas, and are therefore more equipped to fund educational and preservation efforts. When the Forest Service created its paleontology program in the 1990s, it followed that model, placing it in the minerals department, where it remains today, a misfit: an education based program among a bunch of commodity based programs. In the 23,000 acre Picketwire Canyon alone, Dr. Schumacher knows of a half dozen substantive bone sites in addition to the covered track site. Some are untouched, and others have been only surveyed by the small groups of volunteers working two weeks each year. He lauds the Rocky Mountain region of the Forest Service, the only region that employs field paleontologists. He says he does not expect dozens of new colleagues but he would like the Forest Service to hire a third paleontologist so that the volunteer program can be replicated in other parts of the country. "The real value comes from education and talking with kids learning about the history of the earth," he said. "That's not a commodity that you're going to sell and burn." His wish may be granted. Regulations directing the Forest Service to carry out the National Paleontological Resources Preservation Act of 2009 which seeks to curb the theft or collection of fossils on public lands but does not contain specific preservation mandates like those in the National Historic Preservation Act were established in April, Ms. Ottaviano said, adding that the agency was considering additional staffing. Meanwhile, the volunteers in Picketwire Canyon keep digging. At the end of another day's work, they ate dinner together, sharing beer and wine. They reminisced about digs from a decade ago, asking Dr. Schumacher for progress updates on their big finds, which are showcased in academic papers and in museums throughout the Southwest. A group of bearded men stayed up late, talking paleo shop, but the next morning, everyone was up early, eager to get back to their sites along the Purgatoire River. Back at the track site, volunteers were digging excitedly toward the back wall, hoping to learn what would come of the erratically angling sauropod. Because the animal appeared to have lost its footing, the location of its next tracks were becoming harder to guess.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Science
We are later introduced to Saint Vincent, a gentler personality who prefers to "move in Ada's dreams." But it is Asughara who forces Ada's rational self ever further into the background and takes over her body more than any other personality. "Freshwater" is a poetic and disturbing depiction of mental illness as it haunts the protagonist from birth to adulthood: "the brief insanities that are in you, not just the ones that blossomed as you grew taller ... but the ones you were born with, tucked behind your liver." It is an unflinching account of the way mental illness can grow, transform and destroy not just relationships, but one's sense of self as well. Unlike many depictions of dissociative identity disorder in fiction, Emezi steers clears of hysteria and fear driven drama. The voices in Ada's mind build creatively on a consistent belief about madness: that in the height of suffering, sufferers are not themselves; they become possessed by different spirits. As Sylvia Plath famously wrote in 1962, "I am terrified by this dark thing that sleeps in me." Ada's voices don't just talk to her; they fight with her during the novel's narration in a moving portrayal of a struggle against something that exists within, a mental anguish that no amount of reasoning can conquer. More powerful than Emezi's prose, though, is what it brings to the real world. Eating disorders, cutting, depression, suicide, manic depression in the popular imagination, all these things are most often seen as the struggles of young, wealthy, white American women. This novel expands the universe of mental illness to include women of color and other ethnicities. Rooting Ada's story in Igbo cosmology forces us to further question our paradigm for what causes mental illness and how it manifests. It causes us to question science and reason. "Freshwater" builds slowly, but that only crystallizes how fractured Ada and her personalities are. As the voices in her head get louder and grow hungrier, the story gains momentum. Only when Ada looks to her roots is there hope that she will wrest back control from her tormentors. For both the reader and Ada, that comes as a revelation, if not quite a relief.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Books
In this week's special Europe issue, explore the rivers, lakes and shorelines of 10 favorite places; follow in the footsteps of Carl Linnaeus in Swedish Lapland; dine along the Adriatic coast between Venice and Trieste (below); and find a serene hotel with a water view. Has anyone ever traveled to Italy to go on a diet? Like every cartoon, the notion of the oft romanticized country as the tourist's pigging out destination it provided the "Eat" in Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir "Eat, Pray, Love" has some basis in reality. Still, the evocation of Italy as one gluttonous infinity of pasta, prosciutto, gorgonzola, gelato and bread lasciviously dunked in saucers of olive oil overlooks two interrelated facts. First, Italians have an enviably low adult obesity rate (10 percent, compared with 34 percent of Americans). Second, even the most landlocked villages in Italy are less than 300 miles from a shore, and thus from a bounty of frutti di mare, or fruit of the sea. For those pitiable souls suffering from a lifelong aversion to seafood, I propose Italy's Adriatic coast as the place to get over it. Many times over the past two decades, I've navigated the trek from Venice to Trieste, two of Europe's most bewitching cities. It was along this arc that I came to appreciate how Italy's core culinary principle a reliance on the freshest of ingredients extends to the sea. Anyone who thinks that anchovies (alici) taste fishy, or that calamari is palatable only if it's fried, or that the only worthwhile fish on an Italian menu is sea bass (branzino), needs to feast on Adriatic cuisine for a proper disabusing. Inveterate seafood lovers traveling along this roughly 100 mile stretch of coastline have their own educations in store. Here is where you take a pass on the familiar medleys of clams, scampi and swordfish. Gravitate, instead, to Adriatic delicacies like finger length mackerel (sgombri), small spotted brown octopus (moscardini), turbot (rombo) and a succulent if unsightly mud burrowing crustacean known as mantis shrimp (canocchie). Hardly by coincidence, the perfect accompaniment to such dishes is from the neighboring vineyards of the Friuli Venezia Giulia region, where the country's best white wine originates. Andrea Wyner for The New York Times Among the dozen or so stellar restaurants in Venice, the rigor with which this 34 year old culinary landmark has devoted itself to Adriatic frutti di mare is second to none. I received my first confirmation of this one morning in 1996, when I dropped by to secure a lunch reservation and found the proprietress, Piera Bortoluzzi Librai, hunched over a bowl filled with the tiny local shrimp known as schie, which she peeled with her own fingers. I've eaten here at least 20 times since; not one meal has been less than outstanding. Situated a stone's throw from the Stua canal, a zigzagging 10 minute walk from the Rialto bridge in the San Polo neighborhood, Antiche Carampane is now run by Piera's son Francesco Agopyan. While there is no such thing as an "undiscovered" Venetian restaurant, this always full, 16 table place attracts an equal proportion of residents and discerning tourists who have been properly admonished by the "No Pizza, No Lasagne, No Menu Turistico" sign beside the front door. Meals invariably commence with a complimentary butcher paper cone filled with schie, gently fried. After this come agonizing decisions. From the well curated wine list, I chose the elegant white blend Arbis Blanc made by the famed Friulan brother sister winery Borgo San Daniele. The antipasti here are a must: During my most recent lunch, I forewent the tempting array of crudi for a delicious plate of grilled octopus and artichoke. But it's the seafood based pastas at Antiche Carampane that have no peer in Venice. Deviating from my standard choice, the tagliolini in spider crab sauce, I opted for one of the restaurant's justly famed dishes: spaghetti in cassopipa, a rich shellfish sauce laced with anise, cardamom and other spices. There is not a lot to see in the coastal village of Grignano, about 15 miles north of Trieste. But on a winter evening, the spectacle of this dockside trattoria with its lights on was more than enough. The back page of the handwritten menu offers a few items "for those who don't love fish," just as the wine list concludes with "some reds." The bias here is plain: You do not come to the Adriatic for beefsteak and cabernet. Tavernetta Al Molo is a casual and unhurried respite from city dining, one where the seafood offerings are straightforward but also precise. Its wine list includes many nearby producers of local white grapes like Vitovska and Malvasia Istriana that pair brilliantly with fish. The misto marinato antipasto included a carpaccio of branzino that was so fresh it might have leapt directly out of the sea and onto my plate. For this reason, I elected for my main course to stay with branzino grilled whole and then filleted and was not the least disappointed. As with Antiche Carampane, however, the star was the pasta course. Though the bristling February evening called out for Al Molo's well regarded Zuppa della Tavernetta (made with clams, mussels, scampi and monkfish), I gravitated instead to the ravioli stuffed with spigola (a cousin to branzino) beneath a ragout of scampi, tomato and parsley. Coupled with the stony Vitovska of Edi Kante, the dish represented the quintessence of Italian simplicity. After the Crema Catalana dessert a divine apocalypse of custardy richness I stumbled out to the dock (molo) and observed the stars flickering over the quiet sea. I also noticed the outdoor tables where, some warm evening, I would surely find myself. Curiously, Trieste's most distinguished restaurants tend not to take advantage of the city's window onto the sea that offers their most crucial ingredients. For such a vista, drive a couple of miles above the city limits to the village of Contovello, where this honest trattoria commands an unsurpassed view of the Gulf of Trieste. Slauko presents the Adriatic culinary experience at its most stripped down. In contrast to the heavenly expanse of shimmering seascape, the interior is determinedly plain though no matter in summer, when the seating is outdoors. There is no wine list, only a dozen or so bottles of excellent Friulan whites in the lobby's display refrigerator. Nor have I ever seen a menu in my half dozen visits to Slauko. The proprietor, a scruffy but affable fellow, stands at the table and tells you what he has available. (It's possible to call the day before and request that he look for particular items at the Trieste seafood market.) Still, everything at Slauko hits the mark, largely by staying out of the way of its chief ingredients. During my most recent visit, the antipasto of grilled razor clams and scallops was on par with a three star Michelin delicacy. Accentuating the flavors was the olive oil that the owner said he had produced himself from the rocky Carso hills nearby. The next dish, a lobster risotto of epic richness, required no adornment in the slightest. From the day's catch, I selected a grilled whole San Pietro, or John Dory fish possibly the most unsightly flatfish the Adriatic has to offer, but light and submissive in the mouth, requiring only a little parsley and lemon to bring out its gentle brininess. The accompanying roasted potatoes and asparagus could not have been more basic, or appropriate. Service at Slauko is, to put it charitably, leisurely. Or so I've been told by other diners. From my perspective, staring out into the yawning azure gulf with razor clams and a glass of Malvasia is an experience not to be rushed, or even ended. Everything about this lagoon side restaurant is a revelation, beginning with its locale, in the remote and relentlessly picturesque town of Marano Lagunare. Before even walking into the trattoria one early Sunday afternoon, I eyed the handsome Roman architecture along the town square and the fleet of fishing boats docked in the lagoon and determined that I would be back for an extended stay. Then I stepped inside, and the question became, "How soon?" Vedova Raddi has been a family run restaurant since its opening in 1938, and among its guests in the 1950s was Ernest Hemingway. Why it's not famous today can be explained only by its obscure location, almost exactly halfway between Venice and Trieste several miles south of the autostrada. It is both elegant and unstuffy, and its fidelity to seafood both from the Adriatic and the lagoon is total. The proprietor, Decio Raddi, whose grandmother founded the place, showed me to my table overlooking the water, where I settled in for what I knew would be a full afternoon of maritime self gratification. The antipasto of breaded and broiled shellfish included a delectable smooth shelled bivalve, fasolari, I had never encountered. It appeared as well among the pasta dishes, along with tiny shrimp from the Gulf of Trieste and the tiny Adriatic clam known as peverasse. But I elected to go with the linguine and canocchie, which I love for its chewy richness but tend to avoid when it's not already extracted from its tenacious shell. This was the way to eat it, peeled and cut into small bites with homemade pasta and a sprinkling of parsley. As I perused the main courses, feelings toward the lagoon eel, Mr. Raddi put his hand on my shoulder and gently but firmly insisted that I select the Adriatic sole for its exceptional freshness. I did so. You've had sole before, and so have I this was more like a creamy feather fluttering down my throat, leaving me in a kind of fugue state. After departing Vedova Raddi for Venice's airport, I learned that another local restaurant, Tre Canai, specializes in grilled eel on wooden spits. Next time I'll know better: In Marano Lagunare, come for the seafood, stay over for the lagoon cuisine. Trattoria alla Laguna Vedova Raddi, Piazzetta Garibaldi 1, Marano Lagunare, 39 20 50670302, vedovaraddi.it. Dinner for two without wine, about 130.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Travel
Ta Nehisi Coates, among the most influential intellectuals and writers in the United States, is leaving his position as a national correspondent for The Atlantic after a decade with the magazine, its top editor said Friday. Mr. Coates, 42, gained a wide readership during his time at The Atlantic, where he published sweeping, painstakingly reported essays about systemic racism and white supremacy in the United States. In a memo to the staff, Jeffrey Goldberg, the magazine's editor in chief, called the departure "bittersweet news." "As he has explained to me and as he's written in the recent past the last few years for him have been years of significant changes. He's told me that he would like to take some time to reflect on these changes, and to figure out the best path forward, both as a person and as a writer," Mr. Goldberg wrote.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
Alex Tizon, a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter whose well received 2014 memoir documented his insecurities and alienation as a Filipino American, was found dead on March 23 in his home in Eugene, Ore. He was 57. His wife, Melissa, said that he had died in his sleep and that the cause had not yet been determined. At The Seattle Times, where he shared a Pulitzer in investigative reporting in 1997, and later at The Los Angeles Times, where he was Seattle bureau chief, Mr. Tizon (pronounced TEA zahn) was admired as a prose stylist and was known for long, deeply reported articles. He wrote of his own life in "Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self." In the book, he addressed many of the stereotypes he had internalized as an Asian American, having experienced them "as a set of suspicions that seemed corroborated by everyday life." "When did this shame inside me begin?" he wrote. "Looking back now, I could say it began with love. Love of the gifted people and their imagined life; love of America, the sprawling idea of it, with its gilded tentacles reaching across the Pacific Ocean to wrap around the hearts of small brown people living small brown lives. It was a love bordering on worship, fueled by longing, felt most fervently by those like my parents who grew up with America in their dreams. The love almost killed us." Mr. Tizon's memoir detailed his struggle to find masculine Asian role models in Western popular culture and his childhood attempts to make himself look whiter. He recalled dangling from trees to stretch his vertebrae and pinching his nose with a clothespin to narrow it. "'Big Little Man' is an unflinchingly honest, at times beautifully written, often discomforting examination of Tizon's remarkable, yet thoroughly relatable, life," Jay Caspian Kang wrote in The New York Times Book Review. Mr. Tizon said in an online interview with The Boston Globe last year that he thought life had grown better for Asian Americans. "I have nephews who are just worldbeaters," he said. "They read my book, and yeah, they can relate to some of it. But a sense of inferiority? No. That's just not there." Michele Matassa Flores, the managing editor of The Seattle Times, said in a phone interview that as a reporter Mr. Tizon "focused on the gray" rather than seeing the world in black and white. "The world was not a simple place for Alex," she added, "and he wanted to convey that to his readers." On one assignment Mr. Tizon rode through the streets of Seattle with a gang during a period of growing violence in the city in the late 1980s. He also wrote a series of profiles, "Crossing America: Dispatches From a New Nation," for which he traveled across the country with the photographer Alan Berner after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Mr. Tizon, along with Eric Nalder and Deborah Nelson, won the Pulitzer Prize for articles about problems facing a Department of Housing and Urban Development program to help Native Americans build homes. The articles chronicled dysfunction and incompetence within the department, corruption and nepotism at the tribal level, and misallocation of funds at Indian reservations around the country. In many cases, the articles showed, the result was overcrowded hovels for most and taxpayer funded mansions for a connected few. "It is not much more than a large plywood box, this house Thelma Moses calls home," one article began. "To stand outside it is to wonder how such dimensions 10 feet by 12 feet can enclose a life." The series resulted in a congressional investigation and changes in the federal program. Tomas Alexander Tizon was born in Manila on Oct. 30, 1959. His parents, Francisco Tizon and the former Leticia Asuncion, used borrowed money to bring their family to Los Angeles in 1964. The Tizon family lived in Seattle and the South Bronx before settling in Oregon. Alex graduated from high school in Salem, Ore., in 1977 and earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Oregon. He received a master's degree in journalism from Stanford University in 1986, the year he joined The Seattle Times.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
The documentary "The Opera House" celebrates the history of the Metropolitan Opera in particular, the construction of the organization's current Lincoln Center home, which had its 50th anniversary in 2016. Given that Peter Gelb, the general manager of the Met, is one of the producers, and that the movie is opening at the Film Society of Lincoln Center, the Met's across the plaza neighbor, it should probably be taken as a partisan history. To its credit, "The Opera House," directed by Susan Froemke, only sometimes plays like a fund raising tool. The meatiest material concerns the building of Lincoln Center. Architecture historians describe the competing visions for the design of the complex, and the movie doesn't ignore the displacement that came with what Robert Moses called "the scythe of progress." Former West Side residents share stories of having to leave their homes. It's also suggested that Lincoln Center had a specific Cold War role as an institution designed to show off the United States' commitment to culture. But much of "The Opera House" is less substantial. Alfred Hubay, the longtime box office manager, recalls how he caught the opera bug and took a job as an usher, figuring that would be an easy way to hear more. And Leontyne Price, still a magnetic presence, remembers the chaotic preparation for the Franco Zeffirelli production of "Antony and Cleopatra" that opened the new venue, and having to contend with a malfunctioning tomb.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Movies
SAN FRANCISCO David Drummond, the chief legal officer of Google's parent company, Alphabet, and one of its most senior executives, is leaving the internet giant amid an investigation into his relationships with women who worked at the company. In an email sent to employees at Google and Alphabet, Mr. Drummond, who joined Google in 2002, said he planned to leave Alphabet at the end of the month. He said that it was the "right time for me to make way for the next generation of leaders" in light of Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google's founders, stepping back from day to day roles at the company. His resignation comes more than a year after 20,000 Google employees protested the company's handling of sexual harassment and inappropriate workplace relationships. The protests were a public reckoning for a permissive work culture that had existed since the company's early days exemplified by generous exit packages for senior executives even after they were accused of sexual misconduct. In recent months, Mr. Drummond had come to symbolize how despite the company's assertions that it would no longer tolerate such actions some powerful men in the technology world accused of inappropriate behavior often weathered the storm, landing new jobs or keeping their old ones. Some employees inside Google were dismayed that Mr. Drummond was not forced to leave after the details of an extramarital relationship he had with a woman who worked for him became public. The concerns about Mr. Drummond's workplace romances took on new life when he recently married another woman from Google's legal department. The departure of Mr. Drummond, who could not be reached for comment on Friday, signals a changing of the guard for Alphabet. He was one of the longest serving and influential executives at the company. As an outside lawyer for the Silicon Valley firm Wilson Sonsini, he helped draft the original incorporation papers for Google and later became the company's first general counsel. He was instrumental in many of the company's prominent and sometimes controversial moves, including the decision to pull out of the Chinese market in 2010 and the legal battle with media companies over copyright claims on YouTube, which Google acquired in 2006. Last month, in announcing that Mr. Page and Mr. Brin planned to step down from executive roles at the company, Alphabet announced that Sundar Pichai, Google's chief executive, would also lead the parent company. When Google in 2015 created the holding company called Alphabet and became one of its subsidiaries, Mr. Drummond was one of the few executives who was tapped to work for the parent company. Mr. Drummond also oversaw two of Alphabet's investment arms, GV and CapitalG. At one point, he also served as a board member at Uber after an investment from GV, then called Google Ventures. He stepped down from the Uber board after it became apparent that Uber's plans for a self driving car would come into conflict with Google's own driverless car ambitions. After the departure of Eric Schmidt, Google's former chief executive, from Alphabet's board last year, Mr. Drummond was seen as one of the last major links to its past culture problems. Jenn Kaiser, an Alphabet spokeswoman, said Mr. Drummond did not receive an exit package. However, his departure had been telegraphed in the last few months as he sold off most of his shares in Alphabet, unloading about 222 million worth of company stock since November. Based on public securities filings, Google has disclosed that it has paid Mr. Drummond at least 258 million, including stock options and grants, since 2006, according to Equilar, an executive compensation consulting firm. That does not include what Mr. Drummond was paid before the company's lucrative initial public offering in 2004 and excludes some years when his compensation was not public. Last year, a committee of independent directors from Alphabet's board hired a law firm to investigate its handling of allegations of sexual misconduct and inappropriate relationships by current and former executives as part of its legal defense against shareholder lawsuits over its handling of the matters, according to documents viewed by The Times. The shareholder lawsuits accused the board of enabling the misconduct of Alphabet executives. Among the subjects in the inquiry were Mr. Drummond's relationships with women at the company, according to the documents. Mr. Drummond faced additional scrutiny in August when Jennifer Blakely, a former senior contracts manager in Google's legal department, published an essay on Medium about her relationship with him. She wrote that Google forced her out of the legal department after the birth of their son made it impossible to the hide the relationship. Ms. Blakely was part of the Times article. Her essay also said that Mr. Drummond had other extramarital relationships with women at the company after they split. At the time, Mr. Drummond said he had never started a relationship with "anyone else who was working at Google or Alphabet."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
Treasury Pick Tries to Cast His History as Right for the Job As the Senate gears up to vote on the next Treasury secretary, President Obama's choice for the job, Jacob J. Lew, has been forced to navigate through something of a political minefield. As White House chief of staff and a former budget director, Mr. Lew has sought to show he has enough Wall Street experience to handle turbulent financial markets, but not enough to prevent him from reining in the powerful banking industry. Mr. Lew, who is expected to win an initial nod from the Senate Finance Committee on Tuesday and sail on to approval in a full Senate vote, has battled a range of criticism, including questions about his lucrative tenure at Citigroup, a Cayman Islands investment and housing assistance he received as an administrator at New York University more than a decade ago. To shore up his support, Mr. Lew has met privately in recent weeks with 41 senators and responded to 738 questions for the record. On Tuesday, he is scheduled to head to Capitol Hill for another meeting. Much of the vitriol surrounding Mr. Lew's nomination concerns the terms of his employment at Citigroup, which seemed to reward him for leaving the bank if he took a high ranking position in government. During Mr. Lew's confirmation hearing, Senator Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, peppered Mr. Lew with questions about the terms of that contract, specifically challenging whether the contract violated the president's efforts to "close the revolving door." Under the terms of Mr. Lew's contract with Citi, he kept certain bonus compensation if he left for a "high level position with the United States government or regulatory body," but not a competitor in the private sector, according to several people with direct knowledge of the contract. Many of the most exacting questions have come from Senator Charles Grassley, Republican of Iowa, related to a money losing investment in a fund based in the Cayman Islands. Mr. Lew had a 56,000 investment in the Citigroup fund, leading to questions from Republican senators about whether the investment had been put there to dodge taxes. At one point during the hearings, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, held up a huge picture of Ugland House, an office building in the Cayman Islands where thousands of companies, including Mr. Lew's fund, have registered. The display struck a particularly discordant note because Mr. Obama has used the Ugland House as a symbol for tax havens in his first campaign for president. "Well there's a certain hypocrisy in what the president says about other taxpayers, and your appointment," Mr. Grassley said during the hearing. Mr. Lew responded by saying that he did not get any tax advantages because of the investment's location and sold it for a loss. Senator Grassley also pressed Mr. Lew for more details on hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans that New York University provided while he was an executive with the school. Kevin Spacey was ordered to pay 31 million to the 'House of Cards' studio after sexual harassment allegations. Netflix buys a visual effects company in a move to support its global ambitions. "N.Y.U. provided the financing over a decade ago," Mr. Lew wrote in a response to Senator Grassley's follow up questions, providing details on the dollar figures and construction of the financing. "During the intervening time period, I repaid the university and privately refinanced the mortgage on my home multiple times. I am still living in the same home today." Senator Grassley was not satisfied with Mr. Lew's written responses, saying he still had concerns about the transparency of Mr. Lew's compensation. "Mr. Lew has a lack of knowledge or a poor memory of some of the perks he received through his tenure at New York University and Citigroup," the senator said in a statement. "Most people who receive a 1.4 million loan from their employer remember the terms." Privately, officials involved in the confirmation process called the spate of attacks on Mr. Lew politically motivated, arguing that the Cayman Islands criticisms are a direct reprisal for attacks leveled at Mitt Romney during the presidential campaign for his offshore bank accounts. Much of the battle over Mr. Lew's income and former status on Wall Street is inconsistent, the aides contended, pointing out that Republicans broadly backed Henry M. Paulson Jr., who left his position as chief executive of Goldman Sachs to become Treasury secretary in 2006. Despite the criticism, some Republican senators on the committee have signaled their support for Mr. Lew, including Rob Portman of Ohio. In a promising sign for Mr. Lew's prospects, Richard Shelby of Alabama, who sits on the appropriations committee as well as the banking committee, said he would back Mr. Lew. Mr. Lew is a longtime Democratic budget expert, who has spent most of the last 30 years as a Congressional aide or in the White House working on issues like Social Security, taxes and fiscal policy. While still in grade school, Mr. Lew served as a foot soldier in Eugene McCarthy's first presidential campaign. He later served as an aide to Tip O'Neill, a longtime speaker of the House. Mr. Lew quickly rose to more prominent positions, eventually serving as the powerful White House budget director, first for President Bill Clinton and later for President Obama. Mr. Obama chose him in no small part for that expertise. The next Treasury secretary will need to deal with the so called sequestration, a round of 85 billion in budget cuts to be made before the end of the fiscal year in September, as well as a fight over financing the government. Mr. Lew began his relatively brief immersion on Wall Street when he joined Citigroup in 2006 as chief operating officer of the bank's global wealth management unit. But the role he took on in January 2008 as chief operating officer for the bank's alternative investment unit stirred the most congressional ire. Containing some of the most volatile investments at the bank, the unit plowed money into hedge funds and private equity investments. Those investments helped to catalyze Citigroup's huge losses in the depths of the financial crisis, forcing the bank to take billions of dollars in taxpayer money.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Economy
AMERICAN BALLET THEATER at the Metropolitan Opera (through July 7). The doubleheader of Alexei Ratmansky's "Firebird" and Wayne McGregor's new "AfteRite" receives three more performances between Friday and Saturday. Mr. Ratmansky, a consummate storyteller, brings colorful intrigue to a mystical avian tale, while Mr. McGregor, a British choreographer known for aggressive physical extremes, reconsiders the ubiquitous dance classic "The Rite of Spring." Both works are set to celebrated Stravinsky scores. Beginning Tuesday, Ballet Theater switches gears and heads to India for the Russia born epitome of 19th century exoticism, "La Bayadere." 212 362 6000, metopera.org DANCEAFRICA at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House (May 25 28). This impressive showcase of African dance returns for its annual performances at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where it began in 1977. This year's theme, "Remembrance, Reconciliation and Renewal," focuses on South Africa and observes the centennial of the birth of Nelson Mandela. From that country comes Ingoma Kwazulu Natal Dance Company, a composite of several traditional and contemporary dance troupes performing a variety of indigenous dance styles, as well as contemporary dance by Siwela Sonke Dance Theater. Also on the program is BAM/Restoration Dance Youth Ensemble's performance of a work that connects the African anti apartheid movement to the American civil rights movement. 718 636 4100, bam.org FOOD FOR THOUGHT at Danspace Project (May 31 June 2, 8 p.m.). The Momentum Project, which provides meals for the homeless, partners with Danspace Project to enlist artists in its efforts. For this weekend's performances (and also on June 28 and 29), those who donate canned goods receive discounted tickets. Each evening is curated by a different artist who has invited three or four colleagues to perform. Curators on this first round are Maura Donohue, Remi Harris and Paz Tanjuaquio. 866 811 4111, danspaceproject.org	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The bright voiced American soprano Lisette Oropesa who is known for singing bel canto onstage and running marathons offstage has been awarded the prestigious Richard Tucker Award, the prize's administrators announced on Monday. The award, which comes with 50,000 and the opportunity to headline a starry celebratory gala at Carnegie Hall on Oct. 27, is among the most sought after prizes for young American opera singers. Many of its past recipients have gone on to stardom. Ms. Oropesa, 35, is one of the few opera singers who have been featured in both Opera News and Runner's World, which reported on her 2015 feat of running the Pittsburgh Marathon the morning after starring in a production of Donizetti's "La Fille du Regiment." The article noted that "her standing ovation to marathon time was just over 13 hours." She has had recent successes in both famous bel canto roles and Meyerbeer rarities. When she sang the role of Marguerite de Valois in Meyerbeer's "Les Huguenots" at the Opera National de Paris last fall, Zachary Woolfe wrote in The New York Times that Ms. Oropesa "sounded lucid and silky, radiating good intentions."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
Margaret Sullivan, the public editor of The New York Times, is leaving to join The Washington Post as its media columnist, the two newspapers announced on Monday. Ms. Sullivan assumed her role at The Times in 2012, and her tenure was scheduled to end in August. In a memo to the staff, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., The Times's publisher, praised Ms. Sullivan, saying she had "ushered the position into a new age." He said that she would remain at the paper for "a number of weeks" and that the search for a successor was underway. "We will be in a position to name Margaret's successor very soon," he wrote. As the fifth public editor appointed by The Times, Ms. Sullivan wrote about journalistic issues and ethics in regard to Times coverage, addressing a range of subjects including fairness and stereotyping.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
WHAT IS IT? A mildly less responsible version of the latest Accord family sedan. HOW MUCH? 24,140 to start; as tested, 33,140. WHAT MAKES IT RUN? A 185 horsepower 2.4 liter 4 cylinder or a 278 horsepower 3.5 liter V 6. HOW QUICK IS IT? Enough to take so called sportier cars by surprise. IS IT THIRSTY? Mileage ranges from an E.P.A. rating of 26 m.p.g. in town and 35 highway for the base engine with a continuously variable transmission to a worst case 18/28 for a manual shift V 6. FLASHING its bright red plumage, the bird that flitted onto my street one late autumn morning was from a rare species. First, this was a generously proportioned two door coupe, an infrequent sight in a country that prefers family cars that have four doors. Second, this coupe had a manual transmission, adding grace to its thrumming V 6 heart. Finally, this was a Honda not drab, gray and common, but in return to Capistrano form, a class leader that even the most cynical spotter might call handsome. Between Japan's tragic tsunami and the company's seeming complacency, Honda has been in a funk, demoted from its first string status in design or innovation. Models like the CR V crossover wagon remain top sellers, but too many of Honda's makeovers have come across as placeholders, not the trendsetters we've come to expect. Whatever was ailing Honda, the new Accord is a remarkable return to form, both as bread and butter sedans and the dessert course of coupes. Flinging the sweetened coupe around New York, snicking its delightful shifter, I was reminded of some of the best driving Hondas (the CRX Si, for instance) and Acuras (the Integra). Sure, Accords have always driven well. But the coupe reminded me that design and materials matter more than ever; that a graceful exterior and expensive looking cabin can make a car seem revolutionary even when it's not. Whoever drew the Accord Coupe deserves a pay raise. Dual character lines tango down the sides. Tasteful brightwork highlights kinked rear window frames, tented by a graceful radius of metal. The rear end, with its swelling lip and trunk lid, is the kind of complex to manufacture shape once reserved for luxury cars. If I remained unconvinced, the motorists who rolled down their windows to praise the car sealed the case: "How's it drive?" a man driving alongside shouted. "It looks great, a lot like an Audi A5." A Honda that looks like an Audi? I hadn't heard that one before. The haphazard air that permeated the interior of the previous generation Accord has also been banished. Replacing it is one of the smartest cabins in the class, with well shaped seats and gauges that mimic the dials of a chunky chronograph. With Honda's optional LaneWatch, flicking the right turn signal activates a camera to bring up a view of the right hand lane. Displayed on the navigation screen, it's the sharpest high res image I've seen in an automobile, and it seems tailor made for safeguarding Manhattan bicyclists lurking in the blind spot. There's still a bit of Honda's hall monitor feel, with tedious screen menus and layers of redundancy that can seem like overkill. A smaller, optional HondaLink touch screen, below the main eight inch display, connects smartphones via USB cable to manage Internet media. But when HondaLink isn't in use, its screen is wholly redundant to the main display. Trimming about two inches from the sedan's length and wheelbase, and an inch in height, the Coupe loses some practicality: rear legroom shrinks by five inches and the trunk is about 15 percent smaller. Yet this is still a spacious midsize car, a grown up's version of the buzzier, cheaper compacts of old. This is the quietest, most solid Accord yet, a plush cruiser that becomes pleasingly taut and composed through curves. And once the children are snug in bed, parents can relive their wilder years especially if they have chosen the 278 horse V 6. Car and Driver hustled the V 6 Coupe from 0 to 60 m.p.h. in 5.6 seconds, quick enough to match 6 cylinder Mustangs or Camaros. The coupe offers more frugal 4 cylinder versions with either a manual or a continuously variable transmission. Manual shift V 6 models do without the fuel saving cylinder shutoff system found on automatic V 6 Coupes.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Automobiles
With the school year in full swing and holidays quickly approaching, it's time to organize your kitchen. No more fumbling for the spices behind the tortilla chips or bumping into your partner while trying to get breakfast for the family on the table. To get started, here are some tricks professional organizers use to keep their own kitchens clutter free. GET IN THE ZONE After cooking in dozens of Manhattan apartments, Faith Roberson, a personal chef turned professional organizer, realized the best way to limit the amount of time she spent trying to find things was to create kitchen zones by task. "Every kitchen that I worked in varied in size and utility," said Ms. Roberson, whose company is called Organize with Faith. "I found that even if the person that came in after me didn't put an item back where they found it, I could easily find it somewhere in that zone." Similarly, she continued, "All of your food doesn't have to go together it can be separated and stored near its appropriate zone," making it possible for multiple people to be in the kitchen without getting in the way of one another. "I had a client who loved making smoothies, so we put all of their powders and nuts, cocoa nibs and seeds in a separate drawer near the blender, in stackable food containers." A bonus: Removing those items from the pantry freed up space for other dry goods the man used less often. GIVE EVERYDAY ITEMS PRIME COUNTER SPACE "Like real estate, the kitchen is all about location, location," said Collette Shine, a professional organizer in Manhattan who describes her countertops as "the Park Avenue of the kitchen" where only a small selection of appliances and utensils are allowed to reside. That includes her Keurig coffee maker, a small blender and a carafe holding spatulas and ladles. Gravy boats, turkey lifters and other infrequently used tools are stored on high shelves in the "outer boroughs" of her cabinets. "We tend to use a small amount of items frequently," said Ms. Shine, whose company is called Organize and Shine. But everyone's kitchen needs are different. Don't put the toaster on the counter if you rarely make toast. Maybe your juicer deserves that prime real estate instead. PERSONALIZE YOUR PANTRY Keep canned goods visible using an expandable three tiered shelf in the pantry or deep cabinets, like Expand A Shelf (about 15 at the Container Store), recommended Alejandra Costello, a professional organizer in Purcellville, Va. "Round items are best stored on round organizers," she said, like the OXO Good Grips Lazy Susans she uses in her kitchen to hold spices, oils, vitamins and medicine bottles. But two round cake pans and a pack of marbles will also do the trick, she noted: "Place marbles inside one cake pan and place the second cake pan on top; it spins just as well as a store bought lazy susan." To corral snacks, sweets and paper goods, Ms. Costello uses free standing drawers at the bottom of her pantry; she recommends filling them with clear, airtight containers to hold dry goods, identified with chalkboard or dry erase labels that are easily updated when contents change. THINK BEYOND THE KITCHEN Professional organizers are not averse to using office supplies or other hacks in the kitchen to keep their shelves tidy. Ms. Costello, for example, uses a paper sorter to store baking sheets and cutting boards upright, making them easier to see and grab. To keep the outside of her refrigerator free of clutter, she lined the inside of a cabinet door with sheet metal, so she can use magnets to stick photos and phone numbers there. To keep her tea bags tidy, she uses interlocking drawer organizers (about 6 at the Container Store). MEASURE YOUR SPACE Before you run out and stock up on spice racks and shelving, be sure you know exactly how much space you have to fill. "The biggest mistake I see people make is not measuring their drawers before going out and buying drawer organizers," Ms. Shine said. And even after measuring, organizing pros recommend installing expandable or spring loaded dividers, for flexibility. TACKLE THE FRIDGE "It's rare that people outfit their refrigerators the same way they do their pantries or other cabinets in the kitchen, but if they choose to go the extra mile, they'll be surprised at how much space they gain, money they'll save, and how little goes to waste," said Ms. Roberson, of Organize with Faith. "Crispers are rarely big enough to carry or properly divide all of your fruits and vegetables." Her solution: supplementing them with glass canisters, baskets and plastic bins. First, measure the space between the refrigerator shelves. "Your goal is to maximize the entire depth of the fridge by finding Tupperware that will fit front to back," she said. When shopping, pick up a few different styles to help categorize and eliminate the possibility of cross contamination as in, "Tupperware with white lids is for leftovers," she said. "Tupperware with blue lids is for fruit and veggies; longer trays hold uncooked meat, and dairy." Another tip: Adding a lazy susan to the refrigerator helps prevent condiments or other items from getting lost and spoiling before you can use them. GET RID OF WHATEVER YOU DON'T USE Donate rarely used cooking appliances. "Wedding gifts like pasta makers and egg poachers are nice," Ms. Roberson said. "But if you'd rather buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's than make your own ice cream, let those gadgets go." That also applies to expired canned food, spices that are stuck to the bottle and duplicate kitchen tools, she said: "How many measuring cups and mixing bowls do you really need?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Real Estate
WASHINGTON Lawmakers hammered the chief executives of Twitter, Facebook, Google and one another at a Senate hearing on Wednesday, with Republicans claiming the companies were suppressing conservative views while Democrats accused their colleagues of holding a "sham" hearing for political gain. For nearly four hours, members of the Commerce Committee pelted Twitter's Jack Dorsey, Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg and Google's Sundar Pichai with more than 120 questions about social media speech and the harm caused by their platforms, often framing their attacks through the lens of next week's election. But unlike previous tech hearings, this one put the partisan divide on full display. Republicans attacked Twitter and Facebook for what they said was censorship of posts by conservative politicians and for downplaying a recent New York Post article about Hunter Biden, the son of the Democratic presidential nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr. "Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear?" Senator Ted Cruz of Texas asked. Democrats countered that Republicans had concocted the hearing to pressure the companies into going easy on them before Election Day. "It's a sham," Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii said. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said Republicans were politicizing "what should actually not be a partisan topic." And Senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois said they were "placing the selfish interests of Donald Trump ahead of the health of our democracy." The theatrics, which often devolved into shouting, meant that the topic of the hearing the future of a legal shield for online platforms was barely debated. The event had been billed as a discussion about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, a law that protects social media companies from liability for what their users post and is regarded as sacrosanct by the platforms. Washington's efforts to take on large tech companies in recent months have largely been bipartisan. Last week, Democrats and Republicans cheered a Justice Department lawsuit that accused Google of breaking antitrust law while protecting a monopoly over its internet search service. And lawmakers from both parties have pushed for new regulations to be applied to the tech companies. But the hearing's barbed exchanges pointed to how the debate over online speech has become increasingly divided, with the companies caught in the middle. Of the 81 questions asked by Republicans, 69 were about censorship and the political ideologies of the tech employees responsible for moderating content, according to a tally by The New York Times. Democrats asked 48 questions, mostly about regulating the spread of misinformation related to the election and the coronavirus pandemic. "I don't know what changes could be made that would satisfy everyone," said Jeff Kosseff, an assistant professor of cybersecurity law in the United States Naval Academy. "You're seeing two very, very different worldviews." Wednesday's hearing came together after months of protest by President Trump and Republican lawmakers over actions by the tech companies to label, remove and limit the reach of posts. Twitter started labeling posts by Mr. Trump in May for being inaccurate and for glorifying violence. Mr. Trump retaliated that month with an executive order aimed at stripping social media companies of the Section 230 legal shield. His allies in Congress have since piled on, with the Senate Commerce Committee's Republican leadership threatening to subpoena Mr. Dorsey, Mr. Zuckerberg and Mr. Pichai to discuss Section 230. Democrats, who have been angered at the companies for allowing hate speech and political misinformation to spread, also agreed to the hearing. Conservative claims of censorship online are based largely on anecdotal examples of right wing commentators or lawmakers whose content was moderated by social media platforms. But many conservative personalities have built enormous audiences on the platforms, and lawmakers did not offer evidence that systemic bias was built into the companies' products. For the tech executives, appearing on Capitol Hill has become routine. Wednesday's hearing was Mr. Zuckerberg's fifth time testifying in front of Congress since April 2018; it was the third time for Mr. Pichai and Mr. Dorsey. All three testified over video feeds because of the pandemic, with Mr. Zuckerberg briefly experiencing a technical glitch at the start of the event. Mr. Dorsey bore the brunt of questions, with Republicans asking him almost four dozen times about alleged "censorship" of conservative politicians and media outlets. He was asked 58 questions in total, more than the 49 for Mr. Zuckerberg and 22 for Mr. Pichai, according to the Times tally. "Mr. Dorsey, your platform allows foreign dictators to post propaganda, typically without restriction," said the Commerce Committee's chairman, Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi. "Yet you typically restrict the president of the United States." Mr. Dorsey replied that Twitter had taken actions against leaders around the world, including Mr. Trump. "As we think about enforcement, we consider severity of potential offline harm, and we act as quickly as we can," he said. Democrats asked Mr. Zuckerberg about how Facebook was protecting against interference in the election. He said the company had spent billions of dollars on election security, and promised to push back against foreign disinformation targeted at the political process. He also faced questions about how the service was combating extremism online. Mr. Pichai emerged largely unscathed. Ms. Klobuchar, who has proposed changes to antitrust law, questioned him about whether Google was too dominant. "We do see robust competition in many categories of information," Mr. Pichai said. The attacks left little time for substantive discussions about revising Section 230. In one exception, Senator Deb Fischer, a Republican from Nebraska, asked Mr. Zuckerberg about what changes he would like to see in Section 230 on content moderation. He said he wanted more transparency around how content was moderated, to help build trust among users. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican from West Virginia, also asked the tech leaders about a clause in the statute that protects companies from liability for restricting access to content that they deem "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing or otherwise objectionable." She asked whether they would be in favor of redefining the phrase "otherwise objectionable."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Technology
This Veterans Day I hesitated before texting my friend Jasper. Reflexively chipper, he typically shrugs off the topic of his military service, having only once described to me a mission gone fatally wrong as impassively as if he were recounting a time he got caught in the rain. The following day I watched "Remnant," a digital collage featuring interviews and audio excerpts, enticing video and ace sound design. Primarily about the vestiges of war, it's captivating but not always clear about what it means to say. Directed by Ruben Polendo and conceived and created by Theater Mitu, "Remnant" is billed as an interactive experience. (First presented as a live performance, it was reimagined as a digital production during the pandemic, and is presented here by New York Theater Workshop.) Once you take a virtual step into this experimental theater space, you're greeted with an invitation "Choose a path to continue" and three clickable blocks. Each segment is 20 minutes long and different in style, but unfortunately the interactive part of the show ends there. Theater Mitu's cast performs literary excerpts and interviews with past and present soldiers. This is accompanied by a visual hodgepodge sometimes vintage footage, sometimes shadowy, overlapping silhouettes, sometimes just a soldier's hands. The lead music and orchestration is by Ada Westfall, whose reedy vocals sometimes overtake the content, and whose lyrics occasionally steer the production into oversentimentality. The second path brings us back to yesteryear with a groovy 1960s style announcer. Playful and intriguing, the segment uses the etymology of the word "remnant" as a jumping off point for a postmodern grab bag of references to pop culture and mythology related to the theme. Segments from an old cable access show and commercials are intercut with a story from Egyptian mythology about an immortal bird who lives within each person and then, in death, returns to the heavens. There's Arthurian legend and a sound loop of the physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer's famous quote of the Mahabharata: "Now I am become death." After reading an excerpt from the Mahabharata where the hero nearly succumbs to his fear and grief while heading into battle, the announcer abruptly preens to the audience, "It's a spectacular beach read and a great companion while your near and dear lies in a hospital bed next to you." But the function of irony here is unclear, as is the production's ultimate stance on war and its soldiers, who are viewed from a position of curiosity but also fear. Should we empathize? Condemn? Or is capturing the complexity of the issue itself the goal? Because for all of its points of fascination, there is an odd imbalance of focus in "Remnant," which seems 70 percent interested in the leftovers of war and 30 percent interested in other examples of loss and residuals of disaster. Take the third path, for example: It begins and ends with us assuming the perspective of a stroke survivor trying to communicate through a system of blinking. Here we are concentrating on the remnants of the body: how the body changes after death, a woman's interview with her dying mother, a disconnected phone booth in Japan where people go to speak to their deceased loved ones. There are existential moments ("We fear death because we are born knowing only life") as well as conceptual ones ("Who has never killed an hour? Not casually or without thought, but carefully: a premeditated murder of minutes"). Despite its lopsided approach, "Remnant" is absorbingly chameleonic. Alex Hawthorn's sound design is pristine; headphones are required for this immersive aural experience, which is textured with rich overlays, repetitions and loops. After watching the show, I asked Jasper what remained with him after his service. He said questions: about his ideals, about our country's tradition of violence. "Remnant" captures aspects of this, but could go further, and be more timely. At the end, the production encourages us to submit thoughts about our own remnants. A version of the piece might consider this: at the end of 2020, even if we haven't been at war, as such, we may all still feel like remnants of catastrophe. We have no choice but to move forward, to survive.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Theater
The magic works fast. From the moment the first child fairy flitters across the stage, pausing front and center to ripple her arms like tiny, trembling wings, the regenerative power of George Balanchine's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" starts to take hold. Decent story ballets are hard to come by, but this New York City Ballet production, set to music by Felix Mendelssohn, has everything: humor, fantasy and spectacular dancing. Take anyone you know, of any age. Though City Ballet has faced scandals and backstage drama over the last year, the level of dancing remains high. It can't be easy. On Tuesday and Thursday the spring season wraps up with "Midsummer" on Sunday at the David H. Koch Theater there were two new interpreters of Puck, each charming for different reasons. Taylor Stanley, on Tuesday, braided the quick wit of the character with what he brings to all of his roles: natural, razor sharp efficiency of movement and a mysterious inner life. He didn't just dance the role, he lived it. Roman Mejia, a rising member of the corps de ballet, is more ebullient: He has a smile that spreads to his eyes, and while his Puck had little of the elegant etherealness of Mr. Stanley's, his glee was contagious. There were moments when he pushed too hard and was too hammy, but his boyish zeal (or should that be puppyish?) had real gusto. Ashley Laracey, lovely as Hermia, conveyed grief and longing through her regal arms and hands. She's best in dreamy roles in ballets like "Emeralds" and "Scotch Symphony," in which she made her debut last Friday. What she lacks in power and stamina, she makes up for in her delicacy. Nothing is rushed. But Sara Mearns, as Titania in "Midsummer," was a rush of eloquent amplitude and daring. The way she uses her weight to tip herself off balance and right herself again gives her dancing a lush sense of tension and release. Her vivid acting is on another level, too. Titania's duet with Bottom, a weaver transformed into a donkey by the mischievous Puck, was elevated by her glamorous daffiness. As Oberon on Thursday, Anthony Huxley transmitted playful refinement: With his impeccable technique and noble bearing, he sailed across the stage like a beam of golden light, springing into jumps and beats as if he were skipping down a sidewalk. That night, Emily Kikta's Hippolyta was astonishing for her sleek power, a contrast to Tuesday and the inconsistent, stilted dancing of Megan LeCrone. A silken pas de deux dominates Act 2 of "Midsummer," and on Tuesday it was a reminder that Megan Fairchild, opposite Tyler Angle, is one of the most alluring dancers in the company. Her technique has always been strong; but since she has returned from two challenging acts for any ballerina dancing on Broadway, then having a baby her dancing has reached a deeper place. When Ms. Fairchild is onstage, you can tell she doesn't want or need to be anywhere else. Is that really true of all dancers? To watch her return to the formidable ballerina role in "Theme and Variations," the final movement of " Tchaikovsky Suite No. 3," was to witness struggle and triumph as she wavered early on and fought back with such spirit and sweep that the performance became something more than just a performance. It was a real life reminder: Never give up. Another dancer who holds nothing back is the joyful, continually impressive Indiana Woodward, who flew across the stage in admirable abandon as the dancer in apricot in Jerome Robbins's "Dances at a Gathering," in which Mr. Huxley, in brown, was all quiet elegance. (Isn't it time that Ms. Woodward is promoted to principal? Like Mr. Stanley, what can't she do?) And, as always at City Ballet, there are those who dance in the back row like it's the front. Mira Nadon is clearly going to go places. So how about letting her go somewhere now? I also have my eye on Jonathan Fahoury. And Miriam Miller, already in possession of beauty and line, is gaining strength. On Saturday, she reprises her part as Titania, a role she's danced since 2015. But she needs more challenges. Ms. Miller does something that many don't: She looks at the people she's performing with, and that goes a long way: That is dancing.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
Americans will debate the American drone strike that killed the Iranian commander Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani for a long time: whether it was wise, what it means for the Middle East, and how to proceed. But so far, the most dramatic consequences have arisen from where the strike happened in Iraq. It appears that in undertaking the strike, the Trump administration may have sacrificed a valuable American counterterrorism partnership with Iraq at the altar of a risky pressure campaign against Iran with no end in sight. On Sunday, Iraq's Parliament took a nonbinding vote urging Iraq's government to expel American forces from the country. The strike on Iraqi soil, killing Iraqi officials, without Iraqi consent appears to have united the two largest rival Shiite parliamentary blocs behind expulsion. Since 2014, American troops have been in the country as invited guests of the Iraqi government to fight the Islamic State and train the Iraqi military. Iraqis deemed a shooting war with Iran and its Iraqi allies as a far cry from that mission. Iraqi politics sometimes goes to the precipice only to pull back. That could still happen here, especially given that Kurdish and Sunni leaders boycotted the vote. But it is difficult to see how American forces can stay to conduct their mission if the Iraqi Parliament, as well as inflamed Iraqi militias, now wish them gone. Iraqi political factions have previously tried to expel American forces only to fall short. But this time is different. After popular protests against corruption, Iraq's political leadership is the weakest it has been in 15 years. So are the ties between American and Iraqi leaders. Assuming these votes do indeed mean that America's days in Iraq are numbered, that is bad for Iraq and America, a major opportunity for the Islamic State, and also a big victory for Iran. General Suleimani would have been pleased to see American forces pushed out of a country that shares a 900 mile border with Iran, where American troops represented one of the major counterweights to Tehran's domination.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
MIAMI BEACH Mitchell Kaplan remembers Lundy's market with the kosher butcher shop, Friedman's Bakery and the Art Deco synagogue down the street. He remembers the Yiddish in the air. He remembers the deli grocery where he picked up a sesame bagel with cream cheese on the way to school. Back then, everyone on South Beach the southern tip of Miami Beach was much older. "They were all like my grandparents," Mr. Kaplan said the other day. It was the late 1970s, the beginning of the '80s, and South Beach was a Jewish retirement village, a tropical shtetl, some people called it, a shtetl with palm trees. "It was so Jewish, I thought everybody in the world was Jewish," said Mr. Kaplan, who grew up on South Beach, started the independent bookstore, Books Books, and was a founder of the Miami Book Fair. It was a world that vaporized as developers poured money into South Beach, turned it into a flashy, artsy American Riviera. Friedman's bakery is an Argentine fast food place now. The synagogue is a museum. "Shtetl in the Sun," is filled with photos by Andy Sweet, cherubic, always smiling, every bubbe's darling. He shot in color with a Hasselblad. His photography partner, Gary Monroe, used a Leica. He worked in black and white. In the documentary, photos, reminiscences of Mr. Kaplan and others, archival footage and video of South Beach today tell the story of the shtetl with palm trees and its passing. The photographers developed different styles Mr. Sweet more casual, catching scenes as if by chance; Mr. Monroe, more meticulous, more concerned about structure. Their photographs exude warmth and empathy. They bring to mind Diane Arbus without the weirdness and Robert Frank. Mr. Sweet admired William Eggleston. Henri Cartier Bresson and Garry Winogrand were models for Mr. Monroe, who went on to photograph around the world, write books, curate museum exhibitions and teach photography. The camera is often looking into people's faces: Ordinary people doing ordinary things sitting in a folding plastic chair on an Art Deco hotel porch, walking along a sun bleached, nearly empty boulevard. The faces are soulful, ambiguous. Sad, but not terminally sad. Happy but not endlessly happy. Sometimes it looks like resignation, or maybe weariness, or longing. A man in a powder blue sport coat looks annoyed. "Yeah, what about it?" his tight face seems to be saying. One black and white shot cuts across a man's torso and forearms, one arm scarred with a concentration camp tattoo. In another photograph, three women in a party crowd seem alone and isolated, even from each other, absorbed in grave thoughts. A little distance behind them and unawares, a man in a checked sport coat and pointed paper hat beams into the camera. The life they were living had been decades in the making. They were working class New Yorkers, people from other cold places, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston; Holocaust survivors. They had ended up with little money. Miami Beach had drifted out of favor with tourists. Frank Sinatra and his crew and Jackie Gleason were gone. The Art Deco hotels were getting ragged and renting for almost nothing. But there was plenty of sunshine, and always a nice breeze riffling the palm fronds. They played cards and mah jongg and shuffleboard on big concrete courts and danced at parties, lots of parties. "What could be better?" says a man in an unbuttoned blue dress shirt in some vintage footage. But people missed their families up north, their children, their grandchildren. "Fun?" one deeply tanned woman says into the video camera. "Nothing. I sit on the porch. This is my fun." A woman in a sleeveless, knit, aqua blouse says, "Some of these parents have not heard from their children in years." The book and the film might never have been possible if not for a burst of luck after several calamities. On Oct. 16, 1982, Andy Sweet was murdered in his apartment not far from South Beach, stabbed 27 times. Three men were implicated. One went to prison. Mr. Sweet may have known them. Cocaine and sex may have been factors. "It was really never that clear," his older sister, Ellen Sweet Moss, says in the film. Mr. Sweet's family entrusted thousands of his South Beach negatives to an art storage company. Somehow everything was lost. Then Stan Hughes, the partner of Mr. Sweet's sister, took a stack of comics one day to the family's household storage locker . As he was leaving, his eyes fell on some long, flat boxes. One label read: "Work Prints 371 440, Roll 5." Mr. Hughes had stumbled upon work the family hadn't known existed, hundreds of Mr. Sweet's rough work prints, contact sheets and even some big, finished prints. Many were badly faded. Mr. Hughes, who had taught animation and Photoshop to college students in Chicago, spent the next 10 years, off and on, restoring the photos. Ms. Sweet Moss put some on Facebook and, two years ago, they became the inspiration for the book and the film.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
HONG KONG The turmoil in Asia's emerging economies intensified on Wednesday as potential military action in Syria fanned market anxiety and stoked oil prices. Asian markets have been under pressure for weeks, over fears that the United States Federal Reserve will start tempering its stimulus effort. Now, investors are worried that rising oil prices could further undermine growth in the region. With the White House contemplating a "limited" attack on Syria, the price of benchmark crude oil has jumped from about 107 a barrel at the start of this week to more than 112. The price is currently near 110. Costlier oil will add to many Asian economies' woes by increasing import bills for companies and countries. It also threatens to fuel inflation, complicating the job of policy makers as they look to bolster growth. India, which imports much of the oil it needs, is especially vulnerable. On Wednesday, the value of the Indian rupee fell nearly 4 percent, its steepest daily decline in years. The slow progress on reforms in many Asian economies is causing many investors to look for better opportunities elsewhere, especially given the gradual pickup in the United States and Europe, said Andrew Sullivan, the director of sales trading at Kim Eng Securities in Hong Kong. "A lot of cash flowed into emerging markets in the last few years as investors searched for yield," Mr. Sullivan said. Now that Western economies are showing signs of turning around, he said, these flows have been reversing. Investors "are seeking the safety of returning their cash to nearer home," he said. "It is difficult to see that changing anytime soon." In Thailand, the main index dropped 1.4 percent, taking its decline since late May to more than 20 percent, while the baht fell to 32.24 per United States dollar, its weakest level since March 2010. Those falls came despite soothing comments from the Thai central bank's deputy governor, Pongpen Ruengvirayudh, who said on Tuesday that the bank had "enough reserves at the moment to cover outflows and maintain economic growth including imports," Reuters reported. Open or closed on Thanksgiving? Here are stores' plans for Thursday and Friday. In Indonesia, the rupiah fell to 10,930 per dollar, its weakest level since April 2009. Investors there are awaiting a central bank policy meeting, hastily called for Thursday, amid widespread speculation that the bank may move to raise interest rates to prop up the currency. Policy makers in Indonesia and other emerging markets are in a tough situation. While higher interest rates might help attract renewed capital inflows, they would also raise finance costs for companies and risk stifling growth, Mr. Sullivan said. "It's a very difficult situation there are no easy answers to this." In India, the recent turmoil follows years of nervousness about slowing growth and political gridlock ahead of elections next year. A persistent current account deficit also means that the outflows from India have been especially pronounced in recent months. As a result, the rupee has been weakening for more than two years, with especially significant moves since the Federal Reserve signaled in May that it would soon scale back its support of the American economy. On Wednesday, the rupee hit 68.77 per dollar, compared with around 55 at the beginning of the year. The rupee's weakness and higher oil prices are sharply increasing its import bills. Many analysts and policy makers have stressed that the recent volatility does not portend another crisis of the sort that shook Asia in 1997 and 1998. Central banks' foreign exchange reserves are higher than they were back then. At the same time, more Asian debt is now in local currencies, rather than in dollars, meaning that weaker local currencies do not bring a painful increase in debt servicing costs. "The road may be rocky in the near term, particularly for the largest deficit countries India and Indonesia but we don't think this is the Asian crisis all over again," Paul Gruenwald, Standard Poor's chief economist for the Asia Pacific region, said in a report on Wednesday.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Global Business
Kimberly Bartosik on becoming a choreographer: "There's something in this body that these really fantastic male artists haven't gotten to. So what is that? Only I can access it." Like some of the best New York stories, it started with a chance encounter on a subway platform. The longtime dancer Kimberly Bartosik was waiting for a train when a colleague, the choreographer and curator Dean Moss, approached her with an unexpected question: Would she be interested in making a dance? That was about 20 years ago, and Ms. Bartosik has since choreographed more than a dozen works. She related that anecdote over coffee recently near the Brooklyn Academy of Music, where her latest evening length piece, "I hunger for you," will be presented, beginning on Wednesday, as part of the Next Wave Festival. Though she had performed with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for nine years, and with Wally Cardona for several more, she hadn't seriously considered creating her own work until Mr. Moss proposed it. "Something in me was like, 'I think you should see what this is,'" she said, "and it opened up this whole Pandora's box." Since that tentative start, Ms. Bartosik, 52, has thrown herself into the precarious life of a freelance dance maker. One of just a few female choreographers to come out of Cunningham's company, she spent years distancing herself from his influence. Still, in works of feverish beauty and mystery, she seems to share his proclivity for stretching dancers (herself included) to imaginative physical extremes. Ms. Bartosik spent her formative years in upstate New York and North Carolina, one of five siblings raised by evangelical parents. The core of "I hunger for you," she said, is a reflection on faith of all kinds, not just religious and its power to transform the body. At a recent rehearsal, five courageous members of her company, daela, appeared to surrender themselves to ecstatic, sometimes erotic states, backed by Sivan Jacobovitz's roiling soundscape. "There's a wildness that has grown in her work a desire for wildness and violence in the body," said the dancer and choreographer Joanna Kotze, who has worked with Ms. Bartosik since 2009. That artistic shift has paralleled new opportunities. The Next Wave Festival invitation, Ms. Bartosik said, brought levels of funding and creative support she had never before received, including a residency at Lumberyard in Catskill, N.Y., and the chance to work with a dramaturge (Melanie George) and a costume designer (Harriet Jung) for the first time. She has also invested more in lighting design, by her husband and frequent collaborator, Roderick Murray. "I've been able to say, 'Rick, you're actually my hired lighting designer, not just my husband who's going to do this for free,'" she said, laughing. Ms. Bartosik spoke about the "slow burn" of becoming a choreographer and the process behind "I hunger for you." These are edited excerpts from that conversation. Tell me about not wanting to choreograph. When I left Merce, I was never going to be a choreographer. That was the last thing I wanted to do. I was working for this amazing part of history, and I was like, "What could I ever add?" I didn't want to commit, to be honest to that life, to having to scramble. But the more I peeled back the layers of that interest, I was like, "Yeah, this is really who I am." How did making your own work compare to dancing for other people? I remember thinking, There's something in this body that these really fantastic male artists haven't gotten to. So what is that? Only I can access it. I spent a long time in the studio by myself. The first few pieces I made, I worked only with women. What was the starting point for "I hunger for you"? If I were to put it into one line, it came from my response to what I feel is the rage and the sorrow that we are carrying in our bodies at this moment in time. It doesn't matter what our ideologies are; I think that in our culture, there is so much we carry in our bodies, and how do we deal with those things? I started with all these questions about religion and faith. Faith is still something very deep in this work, but not faith connected to religion. It's bigger than that. Did those questions have to do with your family? My siblings and I had, at first, a pretty conservative Catholic upbringing, and then my parents joined an evangelical church. I remember going to these churches and seeing people go into states speaking in tongues, slaying in the spirit. The power of believing in something changed their bodies. I wasn't sure what my own belief was. I was just like: "Oh! Wow." Watching people have such deep faith, it imprinted itself on me as this crazy physical phenomenon. Like, how did you do that? How did that happen? In rehearsal, there was almost a feeling of exorcism. There is a deep essence of pulse, or what I've started to call life force. It's a very different place than I've ever been with my body or my practice, which is built a lot on restraint. You've collaborated with your husband on many projects. Is that challenging? It's tricky, and at the same time, I don't think I could be with somebody who wasn't deeply involved in my work, because it's become my whole being. My body wakes him up at night because I'm trying to figure out a problem, and he feels that energy radiating from me. He'll sit up and say, "Are you choreographing again?"	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Dance
The Metropolitan Museum of Art plans to open its doors on Aug. 29, after more than five months of pandemic shutdown, a museum spokesman said. If everything goes smoothly with New York's phased reopening, museums would be allowed to open on July 20 in the fourth and final phase of the plan. The Met has set its date for about a month after that, with some staff members returning to work a few weeks earlier to prepare, the spokesman said. "The safety of our staff and visitors remains our greatest concern," said Daniel H. Weiss, the museum president, in a statement. "We are eagerly awaiting our reopening as, perhaps now more than ever, the Museum can serve as a reminder of the power of the human spirit and the capacity of art to bring comfort, inspire resilience, and help us better understand each other and the world around us," he said.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Art & Design
Rob Roth Previews the Black Party, a 'Night to Let Go of Your Inhibitions' This Saturday night, thousands of gay men will don leather outfits or the skimpiest of black accessories to dance at a club on the Far West Side of Manhattan for a 20 hour marathon event known for its erotically daring stage shows, theatrical acrobatic acts and otherworldly lighting. The Black Party, the granddaddy of all gay "circuit" parties, is an annual rite of spring bacchanal that turns 38 this year, a remarkable run by any standard. (Tickets cost 160 at the door.) While the hedonistic, dance driven formula has remained unchanged, it has a new creative director, Rob Roth, a 48 year old multimedia artist who lives on the Lower East Side. The role is something of a homecoming for Mr. Roth, who made a name for himself at the Jackie 60 and Click Drag parties of the 1990s, creating shows and art installations. When those parties faded, Mr. Roth switched to commercial work for brands like Coach, along with his own performance art. The journey back to night life was a result of a death. For years his friend Michael Peyton, a producer of the Black Party, tried to get him to work on the party. After Mr. Peyton died from cancer in 2015, he felt an obligation to help carry the tradition forward. So when Stephen Pevner, the producer of the Black Party, asked him to join last year, it was hard to say no. What does the creative director for the Black Party do? My role is helping them create the theme. Then I direct and create the teaser film that comes out a couple weeks before. The film actually dictates the tone and the look and the feel of everything else. I plant the seed, and it sort of grows from there. What was your concept for this year's film? I really wanted to put a pole dancer in space. I was trying to find guys who would go out to a basement in Bed Stuy to get tied up for the two day shoot. It was very old school New York, like what I used to do at Mother. How is the Black Party different from other gay circuit parties? The Black Party is known for being much darker, much more dangerous, more naughty. What is the most scandalous thing you've seen at the Black Party? I can't say that! Let's just say I have seen a lot. How can I phrase this? The acts are quite hard core. I've seen a lot of beautiful bondage performances and things I can't really describe. The time that I went with Debbie Harry in 2000 and we went backstage. Backstage had more shenanigans than onstage. To me it was a rather shocking experience but sort of funny, too. There was a sort of beautiful chaos to it. There were go go boys and performers, and all these people in fetish gear, and drag queens and people running around. Some were preparing for shows, some had just finished shows, some were between shows. And everyone was just yapping away and yelling and screaming and having a good time. What can partygoers expect this year? I'm working on something with Darrell Thorne, a performance artist who's also a friend. And there's going to be a lot of dark corners. But it's what people always expect from the Black Party: a bit of a debauched experience that you can escape into. I think the Black Party is all about escapism, which we definitely need for the moment. What does the Black Party mean to gay men today? It's definitively a night to let go of your inhibitions. I think some of the older generation look at it as a constant, something that was important in the past and it's important to keep these traditions going. I think with the younger ones, they seem to be curious about New York in the past. And I think there's some history there. And some ghosts. What are you looking to forward this year? I always really love dancing. I also really do love some of the outfits. Chi Chi Valenti used to call Halloween amateur night, but this is pro night. You've got to get pro for the Black Party. Do you know what you're going to wear? I don't. But last year I wore some Zana Bayne sock garters, high heel boots and a jock strap, with a military shirt. But this year I have no clue what I'm going to wear. I always wait to the last minute. It depends on how cold it is too.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style
Not long after several of the country's biggest tech firms namely Apple, Facebook and Google kicked the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones off their various online platforms, Mr. Jones's allies complained that he had been deprived of his First Amendment rights to free speech. "Social media goes Gestapo!" wrote Bill Mitchell, a conservative Twitter personality with 366,000 followers, on Monday evening. "The great censorship purge has truly begun," warned Paul Joseph Watson, a contributor to Mr. Jones's website, Infowars. And in his own message on Twitter, one platform that hasn't removed his content, Mr. Jones asked: "Now, who will stand against Tyranny and who will stand for free speech?" The removal of Mr. Jones and Infowars came after months of mounting pressure on technology companies to tackle the spread of misinformation online. Mr. Jones and Infowars have for years used social media to push unfounded conspiracy theories. On Sunday, Apple removed five of the six Infowars podcasts on its popular Podcasts app and by Monday Facebook and Google's YouTube had followed with similar measures. But this isn't the only effort to stop Mr. Jones from spreading his theories. He also faces multiple defamation claims, and well before Monday's moves, several scholars of free speech had already concluded that many of the things he has said online were not in fact protected by the First Amendment. After months of increasing their scrutiny, tech companies have deleted content from the right wing provocateur Alex Jones. Alex Jones is the internet's most notorious conspiracy theorist. And with his site, Infowars, he's peddled a number of dark and bizarre conspiracy theories. "Sandy Hook, it's got inside job written all over it. You want us to cover Pizzagate. We have covered it. We are covering it. And all I know is God help us we're in the hands of pure evil." After weeks of criticism, YouTube, Facebook, Apple, and Spotify all acted to essentially erase many of his videos and posts from their services. In many cases, the companies are saying he violated their terms regarding hate speech and a number of other rules. Alex Jones today in his show dedicated nearly all four hours to what he called censorship of his platform. "And President Trump, the Republican Congress, the statehouses, independent media all need to rally together against this global move to censor America and the planet." And this is something that he essentially has been warning his followers of because there was sort of ticky tacky enforcement for several weeks, and he sort of saw this coming. "This is the internet purge, people." I think for those who have tracked the social media policies by some of these big tech firms, today was a significant moment, because these tech companies have really struggled with this dilemma of wanting to combat misinformation online, but at the same time not wanting to become arbiters of truth. "Can you define hate speech?" "Senator, I think that this is a really hard question. And I think it's one of the reasons why we struggle with it." For months, and really for years, the tech companies have been reluctant to weigh in on a lot of these controversial speech issues. But it appears after months of criticism, that tech companies have finally said, in the case of Alex Jones, that enough is enough. After months of increasing their scrutiny, tech companies have deleted content from the right wing provocateur Alex Jones. Ilana Panich Linsman for The New York Times In a recent court filing, four law professors who specialize in free speech issues said that Mr. Jones's oeuvre was riddled with "absurd conspiracy theories" and urged a federal judge considering a lawsuit against him not to let him hide behind the First Amendment while publishing his rhetoric. "False speech does not serve the public interest the way that true speech does," the scholars wrote. "And indeed, there is no constitutional value in false statements of fact." The filing an amicus, or friend of the court, brief was submitted in June in the case of Brennan Gilmore, a former State Department official and Democratic Party activist who attended last summer's violent far right rally in Charlottesville, Va. Mr. Gilmore, 39, was on the street on Aug. 12 when James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd of protesters, killing a woman, Heather Heyer, and injuring several others. 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. After Mr. Gilmore posted a video of the episode online and spoke about it repeatedly to the media, Mr. Jones published his own video on Infowars, accusing him in a rambling jeremiad of being a plant from the Central Intelligence Agency employed by the billionaire George Soros. In a breathless moment ("I mean, it's like, whoa, whoa C.I.A.?"), Mr. Jones went on to suggest that Mr. Gilmore may have been involved in the attack on Ms. Heyer to bring about what he described as "the downfall of Trump." In March, Mr. Gilmore sued Mr. Jones for defamation, arguing that he had suffered threats and harassment because of the report. Mr. Jones is also facing defamation lawsuits filed by the parents of victims of the Sandy Hook school shooting in Connecticut for claiming the attack was an elaborate hoax. But the Gilmore suit is the first against Mr. Jones in which a judge, Norman K. Moon of Federal District Court in Charlottesville, has directly sought the opinion of First Amendment scholars. Brennan Gilmore, left, who has filed a defamation lawsuit against Mr. Jones, with his lawyer, Andrew Mendrala, in March. In defending himself, Mr. Jones has claimed in court papers that his allegations concerning Mr. Gilmore were "opinion, not statements of fact" and that Infowars is a "freewheeling" website, "in which hyperbole and diatribe reign as the preferred tools of discourse." His viewers, Mr. Jones maintained, "expect an interview or monologue to be more free flowing and opinionated and less precise in its use of language than an article or a book." While they acknowledged that the protection of speech is "a priority of the first order," the First Amendment scholars, from institutions like Rutgers University and the University of Chicago Law School, noted that since the Middle Ages defamation law has created "social boundaries about what speech is and is not acceptable." It has also, they wrote, long sought to balance the freedom of expression with the safeguarding of people's reputations. To do this, the scholars said, defamation statutes have always restricted some speech especially for private figures like Mr. Gilmore, who have less of an ability than those like Mr. Jones with media platforms to "disseminate their own side of the story." The scholars were particularly scathing when it came to Mr. Jones's contention that his videos on Infowars reflected nothing more than his beliefs. It would set a dangerous precedent, they said, if Judge Moon ruled on his behalf. "It would allow unscrupulous news organizations to couch their language as 'opinion' and to mask their meaning with implication and insinuation," the scholars wrote. That, they added, would leave "readers clear as to the message but avoiding all liability for defamatory remarks. This should not be allowed and, in fact, is not allowed." The law professors who signed the amicus brief were Lyrissa B. Lidsky, dean of the University of Missouri School of Law, Tamara R. Piety at the University of Tulsa College of Law, David A. Strauss from the University of Chicago Law School, and Carlos A. Ball of Rutgers. The brief was also signed by Michael B. Hissam, a lawyer at the firm of Bailey Glasser in Charleston, W.Va., who is amicus counsel for Mr. Gilmore, and Katharine M. Mapes and Katherine O'Konski, lawyers at the firm of Spiegel McDiarmid in Washington.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Media
"He's a confidante for me," Falcons quarterback Matt Ryan said of Ricardo Allen, left, the team's safety and founder of its social justice committee. Six years later, the photo remains one of Ricardo Allen's favorites. Standing in a Dick's Sporting Goods, the Atlanta Falcons defensive back is smiling ear to ear, having just been promoted to the active roster after spending most of his rookie season on the practice squad. Matt Ryan, the team's star quarterback, is walking into the frame to shake his hand. "Now it's time to be making some of those big checks," Allen remembers Ryan saying, referring to the sixfold bump in pay he would receive. "And with them comes a greater level of responsibility." Allen, 28, cherishes the picture because it captured the elation he felt after overcoming being cut in training camp a scene captured on the HBO reality show, "Hard Knocks" and his unlikely relationship with Ryan, 35, that has now guided both men through this tumultuous year that has rocked them both, personally and professionally. As two of the longest tenured Falcons, team captains and leaders of the offense and defense, players who study the game obsessively and share notes, they have leaned on each other as the team, and its social justice committee that they lead, sought ways to respond to the social upheaval roiling the country, a journey The New York Times is following this season. Allen and Ryan don't finish each other's sentences or hang out often at backyard barbecues. Rather, their friendship was forged in the training facility, where their lockers face each other's, and it has deepened to the point that when Allen's brother was killed this summer, Ryan was among the first people to reach out. "There's a level of depth that comes with time," Ryan said of their relationship. "You just feel for the guy, your friend and what he's going through, losing a loved one." The team's miserable start, in which the Falcons (4 7) lost their first five games and fired Coach Dan Quinn and General Manager Thomas Dimitroff, could change Allen and Ryan's future as teammates, a concern that looms as the team continues social justice initiatives they'd planned as part of a wave of renewed N.F.L. activism. Their efforts reflect the different paths they took to the N.F.L. Ryan attended private schools, was drafted third over all in 2008 and has become the face of the franchise in Atlanta. It was only after George Floyd's killing at the hands of Minneapolis police in May that Ryan felt compelled to come off the sidelines on the issue of racial inequity. None Week 11 Predictions: Here are our picks against the spread. N.F.L. Tightens Covid Protocols: As cases rise and Thanksgiving approaches, the league is requiring masks inside team facilities and increasing testing. The Packers' Defense Is Their M.V.P.: Green Bay's oft overlooked defense has kept the team from falling out of the Super Bowl chase. The Long Path to the Super Bowl: With 18 weeks in the regular season and fewer teams earning byes in the playoffs, the Super Bowl is still a long way off. Playoff Simulator: Explore every team's path to the postseason, updated live. "When you haven't gone through something yourself it's harder to be able to relate to it," Ryan said to explain not getting involved earlier. "But turning a blind eye is no longer acceptable to me. It took time and I wish I had done it faster, but we're in a position where I hope we're starting to move things in the right direction." Allen's involvement is driven more by his lived experience. The first member of his family to attend college, the diminutive cornerback (he's 5 foot 9) earned a roster spot off the practice squad, a kind of N.F.L. Horatio Alger story. Allen was raised by a single mother, Brenda Green, who worked two jobs, and an older brother, Adrian, whom he idolized. Allen didn't play youth football because money was tight. He later joined the football team at Mainland High School in Daytona Beach, Fla., where he befriended Michael Squillacote, one of a handful of white teammates. Their relationship changed the trajectory of Ricardo's life. He spent weeks at a time at the Squillacote's home, which sits on 10 acres in a largely white area north of Daytona Beach, about 10 miles and a world away from where Allen lived. The two teenagers bonded over video games, talking football and working out. In return for their hospitality, Michael's parents, Steve and Betsy Squillacote, expected Allen to complete the same chores as their two sons and carry at least a 3.0 grade point average. Allen and Michael worked at Steve's home building company. "He just needed a push in the right direction," Betsy Squillacote said. "I've had people come up to me, and say, 'hey man, what are you doing hanging with that family?'" Allen said. "I said, 'what are you talking about? They helped raise me.'" The Squillacotes's influence helped ease Allen's move to Purdue University, in predominantly white West Lafayette, Ind., to play college football. But it still came as a shock to him when campus police stopped him one night on campus and asked to search his backpack for no apparent reason. Later, Allen came to feel that he had been racially profiled, an uncomfortable reminder that even his popularity as a football player did not exempt him from being targeted because of the color of his skin. After Allen was promoted to the active roster late in 2014, he and Ryan's relationship blossomed. They faced each other in practice and Ryan taught Allen how to read offenses and how to navigate the off field responsibilities of being a professional football player. Allen, a favorite of Quinn's, rose to being a full time starter at safety in 2015 and founder of the team's social justice committee in 2017. "I've always had a tremendous amount of respect for him as a player but as he's grown into a more veteran player, his voice is heard more on different topics," Ryan said of Allen. "He's a confidante for me." During their seven years together, Allen and Ryan have obsessed over the minutiae of their sport. Before every game, Ryan stops at Allen's locker for a pregame pep talk. After practice, they chat about parenthood in the hot or cold tub. In the off season, the pair organizes workouts in Florida for veteran players. Only occasionally did they discuss tougher topics like race relations and police brutality. In the past three years, though, Allen and other Black teammates began speaking out publicly against police brutality. Few white teammates joined them, including Ryan, who said he didn't have the vocabulary to speak up and said his support "was always in the background." That changed for Ryan this summer when the Falcons held virtual meetings about Floyd's killing. Hearing players, including Allen, describe instances of being racially profiled by police, Ryan recognized he could no longer sit idly by. "For our team, it was the third or fourth time talking about the same things," Ryan said. "If we continue to take the same approach, and guys continue to do what we've been doing, that's not going to work." In early June, after ESPN wrote about Allen's 2018 trip to Selma, Ala., to visit the site of 1965 Civil Rights march, Ryan called and, in what he said was an uncomfortable conversation, asked how he should speak out because he was unfamiliar with talking about issues of race. Allen told him just to be himself and speak from the heart. "I'm from the 'hood and live in the country club now, but I can see how people don't understand what it's like in the 'hood because they've never seen it," Allen said of Ryan's discomfort. "Matt and a bunch of other white teammates hit me up, and the main thing they tried to tell me was they don't know the perfect thing to say," Allen recalled. Ryan's community efforts, to that point, focused on supporting children's hospitals and Boys and Girls clubs. Growing up outside of Philadelphia, Ryan had classmates and teammates of various backgrounds. But he did not have to confront the harsh realities that Black teammates like Allen routinely did. "I feel fortunate to come from where I come from," Ryan said. "Playing sports my whole life, I've also come to appreciate it even more because knowing other situations that guys have gone through. There's a lot of things they've had to overcome that I didn't." Ryan joined the Falcons' social justice committee and decided to use his popularity in Atlanta to raise more than 1.3 million, including 500,000 of his own money, to support after school programs in underprivileged neighborhoods in Atlanta to give Black children a safe place to exercise and learn from mentors. To drum up donations, Ryan held a radio a thon and invited Allen, who talked about growing up in Florida. When Ryan formed a committee to help him disperse those funds, Allen suggested including influential people in Atlanta's Black community, including the rapper Killer Mike, born Michael Render, who is one half of the hip hop duo Run the Jewels. Allen has been "one of the first guys I asked to help, and he's been one of the first guys to give advice on things going on from the jump," Ryan said. Then the violence that surrounded Allen growing up hit home. In late July, Adrian Allen, who was 31, was stabbed to death in a fight in Daytona Beach. Adrian had been in and out of jail over the years, Ricardo said, cleaning up his life for a while, then falling backward. Ryan was one of the few Falcons told about Adrian Allen's death, and he immediately called to offer his sympathy, something that reminded Ricardo of how far they'd come as friends. "You don't really have very many good friends in the N.F.L. because players come and go and they're focused on their lives," Allen said. Ryan's call "says that I'm not just a football player to him, that he cares for me outside the walls of what we do for a business."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Sports
In their television dramas, they sought to depict the most chillingly dystopian scenarios they could imagine terrifying alternate realities in which life as we knew it had been devastated by revolutions, plagues, technology run amok or hordes of bloodthirsty zombies. At the time, the writers of these series "The Handmaid's Tale," "Westworld" and others wanted to entertain and challenge audiences with dark reflections of society that they could tell themselves were avoidable or too outrageous to transpire. But now, amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, the people who make these shows are looking at their work in a different light. These creators and producers are in no mood to gloat or to chastise viewers for failing to heed their admonitions. But they have a clear understanding of why we remain drawn to dystopian entertainments and they wonder whether current events will have some lasting impact on their work. And they admit to pangs of remorse for asking audiences to engage with the nightmares they invent. "You do feel guilty about putting these anxieties in people's minds," said Bruce Miller, the creator and showrunner of Hulu's adaptation of "The Handmaid's Tale." "There's no way not to feel like you somehow wished things into being," he said. "But it shows you how television, and drama in general, has something to tell people about how the world works." Alison Schapker, the showrunner of Netflix's dark science fiction series "Altered Carbon," said she had become acutely aware of how her work is being received "when television has become one of the fundamental outlets we have to pass time and process what's happening in the day." She added that viewers' amplified discomfort would invariably seep back into her writing. "What I want to say as a storyteller always comes from the life I'm living, and that life has been completely upended," Schapker said. While these dehumanizing scenarios have proliferated in popular culture, Jonathan Nolan, a co creator and showrunner of "Westworld," said they all derived from a shared human curiosity to imagine society under stress while observing from a safe distance. "As a culture, we're collectively trying out different strategies and outcomes, trying to get a sense for where we might screw things up," Nolan said. He added that though there are utopian fantasies out there too, "people are more interested in watching versions of the world in which things have gone wrong than have gone right." Lisa Joy, Nolan's fellow creator and showrunner, said that dystopian narratives can serve as a psychic proving ground to explore in moments of relative calm. "If you look at history, there's cycles of war, of poverty, strife, famine and disease," she said. "You know it would be hubris to think we were immune to those cycles forever." Alex Garland, who wrote and directed the high tech thriller "Devs" for FX on Hulu, said that its central ideas "massive tech companies with unregulated authority, massive imbalances of power and wealth" required no conjecture on his part. "There's nothing remotely insightful about pointing it out," he said. "It's completely obvious. We all know it's there." Garland has also contemplated apocalyptic scenarios in his films "Annihilation" (which finds Earth imperiled by alien mutation) and "28 Days Later" (the planet is overrun by zombies). He explained that these kinds of stories offered an enticing form of "wish fulfillment." "When I was a kid and watching zombie movies," Garland said, "I'd partly be thinking zombies are scary. But I'd also be thinking, wow, it would be amazing if you could bust into any shop and take whatever you wanted." Of course, Garland said, this kind of voyeurism is satisfying when it occurs "in anticipation, from the safety of things not being like that." He said that creators and audiences had persuaded themselves that "by engaging with the dystopia, that will vaccinate us against them happening." Now that civilization has arrived at an authentic crisis, not unlike the kinds he has dramatized, Garland could not help but wonder if this storytelling had been futile. "It's a bit like doing a Twitter protest," he said. "It sounds like I'm saying something. But what's the actual result? Probably just another noise bouncing around the echo chamber." Do these dystopian stories really have any power to prepare us for impending adversity? Miller, the "Handmaid's Tale" showrunner, said this genre at least offered the comforting perception that individuals can have some control over their chaotic environments. "We always want to tell stories in which one person's decisions have an effect," he said. "And in a dystopian world, because it's more stripped down to its essentials, the choices are simpler. You can take the problem you're interested in and put it at the center." But in the weeks and months to come, will audiences lose their appetites for imaginary worlds gone wrong, and instead seek out stories where things turn out for the better? These TV producers cautioned against the idea of rewriting their series to address the coronavirus pandemic head on. "The thing that's happening at the moment is completely real," said Garland, whose work on "Devs" is already mostly complete. "You're not going to get any meaningful reaction to what is happening now for at least a few years." Schapker, from "Altered Carbon," echoed these sentiments, saying that these shows did not need to be turned into sentimental fantasies or dismal dirges either. The responsibility of storytellers, she said was to absorb "the complexity of the moment and reflect it in our work." "I don't think it's time for saccharine," she said, "and I don't think it's time to just look out my window and stare." The cast and crew of "The Handmaid's Tale" were about two weeks into filming the first new episodes for the fourth season, Miller said, when they had to halt production as concerns about the coronavirus mounted. Whatever transpires between now and when filming is able to resume, Miller said that it was unlikely these episodes would be changed, whether to reference real life events or to adjust their tone. "God knows what things are going to be like by the time this season of the show comes out," he said. "When you try to hit a target and the target hasn't even materialized yet, it's a little difficult." At the same time, Miller said that he and his colleagues were still writing the last episodes of this new season, and that it was all but assured the ongoing calamity would influence their process in ways they cannot yet predict. While their overall goal "to tell a story and make people feel connected to it" remains the same, Miller said, "part of my job is to be a delicate flower, to feel what's going on in the world. It does change what we write and it will certainly change what we discuss, storywise." The "Westworld" producers said that they had finished filming the third season of the show, but a lengthy process of postproduction and special effects still lay ahead, one that they were trying to figure out how to run remotely while they worked from home.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Television
Ms. Yellen is a former chair of the Federal Reserve. Mr. Bernstein is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. It became clear this summer that public health measures across much of the country were relaxed too soon and without proper medical safeguards against the coronavirus. So now, once again, the commerce that Americans rely upon is retrenching. About 80 percent of Americans live in places that are pausing or dialing back reopening. Yet the Senate left for its August recess without a compromise plan on a coronavirus relief bill for states, cities, the unemployed, businesses and the public health system. If senators still fail to resolve stalled negotiations when they return after Labor Day, millions of needy Americans will suffer and the overall economy could degrade from its current slow rebound in growth to no growth at all. Both monetary policy, which is the Federal Reserve's job, and fiscal policy, the job of the federal government, have complementary roles to play in supporting the economy. (State governments can't help because their revenues are plummeting and they are mandated to balance their budgets, which require spending cuts and layoffs and only add to the economy's woes.) The economics of this moment are not complicated: A self sustaining recovery cannot occur unless the virus is controlled. It is true that after the first shutdowns of March and April, the economy did begin, in May and June, to pull itself out of a deep, pandemic induced hole, thanks in part to generous 600 per week federal unemployment assistance that the Senate let expire in July after negotiations between Democrats and Republicans broke down. Now, so called real time data show consumer spending slowing overall and deteriorating conditions for low income households, who have become more anxious about how they will pay for their rent and their food. In a recent survey, 12 percent of American adults, or 30 million, reported that their household sometimes or often didn't have enough food in the past week. (For Black and Latino households, the share was about 21 percent.) These numbers reflect the confluence of at least three forces: acceleration of the spread of the virus; expiration of the supplemental federal unemployment benefits; and the ending of various eviction moratoriums. All three developments disproportionately affect low income people and persons of color. And aside from the grave ethical questions raised by ending crucial safeguards for the vulnerable, such actions endanger the economy as a whole. The Federal Reserve has largely done its job. By mid March, it cut short term interest rates to zero, and all but promised to keep them there for quite a long time. The Fed also bought large quantities of government bonds and government backed mortgage securities to keep markets functioning and to keep borrowing costs low. These actions have pushed the 10 year Treasury yield down to almost its lowest level ever, which will spur more spending in crucial sectors like housing and automobiles. In March, when the credit market, the economy's bloodstream, began to clog, the Fed established so called emergency "facilities" to keep credit flowing to businesses small and large and to state and local governments. This forceful response cleared the blockages. Congress, however, cannot expect the Fed to keep everything together on its own. When unemployment is exceptionally high and inflation is historically low, as they both are now, the economy needs more fiscal spending to support hiring. Monetary power sets the table and Congress's fiscal dollars bring in the diners. In this way, they form a potent one two punch against stagnation. The Fed makes sure the credit backdrop supports growth; Congress and the president make sure families and businesses have enough money in their pockets. As its chair, Jerome Powell, has recently stressed, the Fed has "lending powers, not spending powers." The Fed can't send out checks to households, increase unemployment payments, stay evictions or provide grants to small businesses on the verge of shuttering. These are jobs for Congress and for the Trump administration. Until August, Congress had actually been quite a strong partner to the Fed's work. The situation now congressional inaction in extending fiscal support is reminiscent of a similar period after the last recession. At the start of 2011, unemployment was still elevated at just over 9 percent. The Fed had lowered interest rates to around zero. But Congress allowed fiscal support to lapse, worried more about deficits than all those still unemployed. The Fed chair at the time, Ben Bernanke, summarized the problem well when he said, "With fiscal and monetary policy working in opposite directions, the recovery is weaker than it otherwise would be." With inflation as low as it is, servicing the debt required by the one two punch of aggressive monetary and fiscal policies is relatively inexpensive. So why, then, are we back here again? Why is Mr. Powell having to make the same pleas to Congress that Mr. Bernanke did and why is a Fed chair being ignored again? We weren't in the room, so we don't know exactly why congressional negotiations broke down or what it will take for them to restart. But we could not be more confident that our economic prescription is the right one. The Fed stepped up. Once again, it's Congress's turn. Janet Yellen, a former chair of the Federal Reserve, is a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution. Jared Bernstein is a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We'd like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here's our email: letters nytimes.com. Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter ( NYTopinion) and Instagram.	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Opinion
OSSINING, N.Y. Since moving to New York in the early 2000s, the pianist Kris Davis has released close to an album a year under her own name, rarely with the same group twice, while also becoming one of the most trusted side musicians in avant garde jazz. Her signature style, based in miniature gestures, has a peculiar appeal: Rarely does such serrated, asymmetrical music often diced up into odd time signatures, or improvised freely feel this fun to listen to. Last year she tied for the top spot in the "Rising Star Artist" category in DownBeat magazine's critics poll, a good gauge of who's next in line. And she has stepped up her work as an impresario and educator: She recently formed a nonprofit organization, which now houses her record label, Pyroclastic Records, and this fall she took on a leadership position at Berklee College of Music's new Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. In all of these roles, Ms. Davis, 39 , is fighting for fringe music, guiding it toward a more engaged and maybe even accessible future. But her best arguments on its behalf have always come directly through the music. On Friday, Pyroclastic will release "Diatom Ribbons," Ms. Davis's latest album and the one most likely to catch on with a broad jazz audience. "It was a little bit of trying to throw a wrench in things and see what happened," Ms. Davis said last month over lunch near her home in northern Westchester, explaining how she assembled the unusual band featured on the album. "I never like to bring in a piece and say, 'This is the finished product.' There's more to be done, in terms of the composition and the collaboration, that for me brings the piece to life." The record is both a refinement of Ms. Davis's strengths as composer and bandleader, and an expansion on them. Its motley group of musicians often from opposite ends of the jazz world, some of whom hadn't even heard of each other before the session include two saxophonists, two guitarists, a bassist, a vibraphonist, a turntablist, a drummer and Esperanza Spalding on occasional guest vocals. They play in various configurations across the 10 tracks, almost all Davis originals. And "Diatom Ribbons" puts her rhythmic, pattern based style of avant garde playing into a direct conversation with funk grooves, played with prismatic nuance by the drummer Terri Lyne Carrington a marriage that, in retrospect, seems like it was destined to occur. Uniting musicians from such different artistic backgrounds, never establishing a standard ensemble size, Ms. Davis forced the group members to listen to one another harder, and to place their traditional instrumental roles into question. "When I joined the jazz band in junior high school, it just opened another world," she said. "Oh, we can make music together? Oh, we can actually improvise?" She went on to study music at the University of Toronto, playing almost every night on the city's humming jazz scene. Even at relatively buttoned up gigs, she found ways to push boundaries without losing people's attention. "I would take it way out," she said, remembering her weekly solo piano engagements at the Toronto Marriott. "It didn't matter. Everybody was just like, 'Oh, she's into it.' It's meaningful, it has intent, so people would always respond." After graduating, Ms. Davis moved to New York City in 2001. She found a community there of other recent music school grads, and a mentor in the saxophonist Tony Malaby. When he invited her to "bring some structures" that is, small musical phrases or devices into a rehearsal that the band could mess around with, it unlocked a new way of understanding composition: as a form "of influencing improvisation and directing it in a specific way," she said, but not controlling it. "I was immediately struck by how she would interact with ideas, getting them really fast and then turning them into her own expression," Mr. Malaby, who appears on the new album, said in an interview. "Then the thing that's amazing about Kris is, she was able to put that down on paper in a way that never felt caged or framed. She could catch the essence and the vibe and the purity of improvisation, and then be able to catalog it as a place to start from." It's clear why Ms. Davis would be drawn to these little life forms. Much of the music on "Diatom Ribbons" is built on phrases of just a few notes, which she then moves around between keys or positions on the piano. Often, miniature hammering patterns are rejiggered and replanted in various places across a measure or a track, becoming the foundation for an expansive, ensemble driven piece. While Ms. Davis focuses a lot of energy on crafting short, isolated bits, she vests her notes with a particular sensitivity and awareness. There is always a reassuring continuity within this ostensibly hectic music: a sense of rolling forward and building out, as if everything were connected . The secret to all this, really, is great rhythm. Perhaps the most essential quality to Ms. Davis's success, her rhythmic sensitivity comes largely from the influence of Cecil Taylor, she said. (On various tracks on the new album, the turntablist Val Jeanty cuts up excerpts from interviews with Taylor and the French modernist composer Olivier Messiaen, an equally strong source of inspiration for Ms. Davis.) "He's playing free, but there's rhythm in everything that he's playing," Ms. Davis said of Taylor's music. " There can be rhythm, even when it is abstract or visceral. It still can be rhythmic." Ms. Carrington sensed this immediately in Ms. Davis during their earliest performances together: first when she invited the pianist to join her band for a gig in Taipei, then when Ms. Davis returned the favor, bringing Ms. Carrington and Ms. Jeanty together in an unorthodox piano drums turntables trio, for a wholly improvised set at the Stone. "The way she was playing, it just made the whole band come together," Ms. Carrington said. "Even if we were not playing something in the same rhythm at the same time, it would still work together."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Music
This article is part of our latest Design special report, which is about crossing the borders of space, time and media. Despite all the advances in electronic commerce, many furniture sales remain an old fashioned affair, completed in person. Because sofas and lounge chairs tend to be expensive, unwieldy and difficult to return, it has always been reassuring to flop down in a potential purchase for a comfort check and to ask a sales associate for advice before unsheathing the credit card. The arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, however, changed everything. Within days of closing their stores, many furniture companies took a big digital step by putting robust virtual interior design services front and center. Arhaus, BoConcept, Design Within Reach, Ethan Allen, Frette, Mitchell Gold Bob Williams, Parachute, Restoration Hardware, and West Elm, among many others, began promoting personalized, one on one interior design sessions delivered via videoconference and online chat, for free. And many consumers, suddenly living life through Zoom, took them up on it, inviting the retailers into their homes through a smartphone lens. David Cherry, a business technology analyst at Google in Boulder, Colo., who recently moved from a one bedroom apartment into a three bedroom house, needed help furnishing his new space. "There was a certain section of my living room that was just a weird space I didn't know what to do with," said Mr. Cherry, 36. He thought about hiring an interior designer, but figured no one would be willing to visit his house with the coronavirus circulating in Colorado. "So I decided to just guess, and pick something," he said. When he visited West Elm's website, however, he noticed the availability of an online design chat. Skeptical, but with nothing to lose, he asked for help designing his living room. "I went into it thinking, 'If I get involved in this chat, they're probably just going to try to sell me all this furniture,'" he said. But he found the designer he was connected with to be genuinely helpful and willing to work around his existing furniture. "It was really cool because they ask you questions around what your current lifestyle is like," he said. "They actually really cared about the space." Laura Wilson, the manager of design services at West Elm, said the size of the resulting order was of little concern. The company's designers are happy to troubleshoot a single rug, "or it can be soup to nuts, top to bottom everything in that room," she said. "We just want to make it accessible, convenient and easy for every customer to get that expert advice." There is a very good chance that Mr. Cherry's experience is about to become the new normal in full service furniture sales, even as stay home orders are eased and lifted. She pointed to the growth of affordable online interior design services such as Havenly, Modsy and Decorist as proof. "Those services have demonstrated that there is a real demand from consumers for help with interior design, and that they're actually really happy to get that help digitally," she said. Furniture retailers were already experimenting with tools for virtual design consultations. The pandemic just created an increased sense of urgency. Design Within Reach, for instance, began a pilot project for virtual design services provided by a few employees in February. But in March, when the spread of the coronavirus was declared a pandemic, the company pushed ahead with a full scale rollout. Before, dwr.com had a limited chat function focused on providing basic answers to simple questions, such as queries about product dimensions and materials. The new chat is an immersive, personalized experience in which customers and employees share photos and engage in videoconferences to design whole rooms, which sometimes leads to presentations of three dimensional renderings. "We're using video to see customer spaces and resolve their problems," said Debbie Propst, the president of retail at Herman Miller, which owns Design Within Reach. "This is something we were planning on doing regardless of the current situation. But I will say that the current situation is driving new customer behavior. People are being forced to make furnishings decisions they may not otherwise have done without physically seeing the product." The Design Within Reach service pairs customers with a local sales associate, based on their internet connection. The idea is that online introductions may eventually become long term relationships. Once stores reopen, sales associates can host video based store tours for customers, or schedule in person meetings. Customers who use the chat function are 10 times more likely to make an online purchase than those who don't, "and our average order value is about 25 percent higher," Ms. Propst said. She added, "We're seeing the highest success when the photo sharing and video chat functionalities are used." At most retailers, regular return policies still apply if some items do not work out. Returned items are cleaned and in some cases isolated for a period. Companies focused on bedding and bath accessories, including Parachute and Frette, have started similar services. Through a videoconference or phone call after customers answer preliminary questions online and share photos of their rooms, "we answer questions and talk through what types of products might work for whatever they're looking for," said Ariel Kaye, the founder and chief executive of Parachute. "And then we follow up with a curated mood board." The mood boards have inspirational images as well as specific product images that offer a color palette and guidance on how pieces can be mixed and matched within a room. "Once our team is back in the office, we're going to create an environment where they have all the products, so on these video calls, we can actually be showing products, like a mini store experience," Ms. Kaye said. Of course, some homeowners may feel that inviting a sales professional into their home through a video stream is just as intrusive as doing so through the front door. When the ultimate goal is to make a sale, how can you trust a designer's advice? Mr. Cherry, at least, was surprised at how little pressure he felt from West Elm's designers. They even told him not to buy certain things like when he asked if he needed an ottoman to go with his swivel chair, or if he should add a few decorative accessories. "That got me to trust them a little more," he said. "I told her I wanted furniture, decor, everything," said Ms. DonFrancesco, 35. "What was so fabulous about her was that she actually incorporated some of the pieces we already had." Ms. DonFrancesco said that Ms. DiLullo also seemed to put as much care into selecting paint colors, which Arhaus does not sell, as she did the furniture. So when Ms. DonFrancesco needed to design a home office for videoconferences with patients in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, she turned to Ms. DiLullo for help once again but this time through text message. Ms. DiLullo created a mood board, Ms. DonFrancesco deleted some suggested artwork to replace with her framed professional certificates, and they explored color options for the walls before placing the order for furniture and accessories. That high level of service, delivered almost instantaneously, is unlikely to disappear when the coronavirus is eventually brought under control, said Ms. Miller at Bain Company. "This experience, right now," she said, "is going to permanently shift the way consumers buy online."	N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification	Style

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