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Credit...Nathan Bajar for The New York Times Vanity Is Not a Deadly Sin. It's One of Life's Last Vital Signs. Shirley Freitag has her eye on a coat for next fall: a Norma Kamali sleeping bag model in a searing shade of red. "It's the one that that fashion guy Talley is always wearing," she said, referring to Andre Leon Talley, the high visibility style world fixture. Ms. Freitag had stopped last week at the offices of Inspir, an upscale Upper East Side senior residence she hopes to move into once construction is finished later this year. Trim in a bottle green St. John jacket, skinny pants and sparkly black sneakers, she lowered herself elastically into a leather banquette, and got candid. Keeping up one's image takes work, Ms. Freitag said. Still, "I don't even walk my dog without putting my lipstick on." You might expect that Ms. Freitag, a retired real estate agent in her 80s, would be over all that. You would be wrong. "I'm going to my dermatologist right after this visit," she said, adding tartly, "What? You think I'm going to be sitting around waiting for my liver spots to come in?" Like scores of her contemporaries, a style conscious cohort whose numbers will only increase as baby boomers age, she is not inclined to shuffle, unkempt and uncared for, into her sunset years. Ms. Freitag represents the most senior of seniors in an aging population: a closely watched minority willing to make a substantial investment into their personal upkeep. Armed with robust confidence and, often, a bank account to match, they work out, practice warrior yoga poses, paint balayage streaks into their hair, shop and dress with an undiminished purpose and pride. Why not? "If you had style when you were younger, it never goes away," said Eve Greenfield, who lives at the Renaissance Palace in Coral Gables, Fla., one of the more established upscale senior residences popping up around the country. A sometime swimmer and inveterate shopper, Ms. Greenfield, who celebrated her 100th birthday last fall, announced with some fervor: "We look in a mirror, we care, we don't think old." She is part of an aging population whose sense of vanity remains intact: if not the last vital sign, as may be supposed, a reliable index of energy and self regard. "'Vanity,' it's a loaded word, but it has depth," said Marc E. Agronin, a geriatric psychiatrist at the Miami Jewish Health Systems. "It gets to the core of one's identity, of how people feel about themselves, how they see themselves changing or not changing over time." Making an effort to work out, draw on a perfect cat eye, or dress with some zip can provide continuity, said Dr. Agronin, the author of "The End of Old Age: Living a Longer More Purposeful Life." "It contributes to a feeling that you are still who you were, who you always have been, who you will continue to be." If they have always worn makeup and jewelry, even some patients with dementia will keep up those rituals, said Andrea Abbott, an executive at Symphony, a senior living company with multiple locations in the United States and Canada. It's a concept not lost on Zelda Fassler, 86, a strikingly animated resident at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale. Not long ago, Ms. Fassler ushered a visitor to her makeup table, its surface covered in salves and potions. "Even when I go to the dining room, I take my hair brush, my lipstick, my mirror and my wallet," she said. "That's my security." Nor is the notion lost on Ms. Greenfield, who holds classes from time to time at the Palace, providing fashion and beauty tips to eager fellow residents. She would likely be unsurprised to learn that a profusion of state of the art gyms, dental practices, plastic surgery clinics and high priced living complexes (accommodating independent seniors as well as those needing specialized care) is catering to, indeed trading on, the unabated desire of many older people to remain relevant and hip. Many such businesses are entering the marketplace in anticipation of a so called silver tsunami, expected to occur during the mid to late 2020s, when seniors will make up a far higher percentage of the population than they have in the past. By 2030, according to the United States Census Bureau, people 65 and older are expected to make up 19 percent of the population. Older seniors even now are consulting doctors and other medical professionals who once turned away most patients over 55, citing health concerns, but have softened their stance, taking on clients in their 80s and beyond. Dr. Levine remembered treating a patient, one of his oldest, who had come to him with a faintly perceptible break in her tooth. He suggested a partial denture. "'That's for old people,'" he recalled her saying. "Well, what about a bridge?" he asked. Nothing doing, she told him. "'I want an implant.'" "But Jean," he reminded her, "you are 98." Pounding a fist on the arm of her chair, she retorted, "'That's not my fault, now, doctor, is it?'" Some affluent seniors are seeking the perks available in luxury supportive housing that is cropping up across the country; the entrance fees can be 300,000 or more, and monthly rents range from 6,500 to nearly 20,000. They include Fountaingrove Lodge, a retirement community in Sonoma County, Calif., complete with a spa, a bank, a fitness center and a generously scaled outdoor pool. Some of the most sumptuous communities are still in development. Atria Senior Living, in a joint venture with the luxury real estate firm Related Companies, plans to own and operate more than 3 billion worth of senior living communities in major urban markets, each offering upscale amenities like salons, gyms and pools. Canyon Ranch, which two years ago announced its entry into the industry, expects to open multiple facilities around the country that offer a similar menu. Nearing completion, Inspir, where a one bedroom apartment rents for 17,000 a month, prides itself on providing the kinds of niceties more commonly found on cruise ships and at luxury resorts. Along with the requisite pool and fancy salon, it will offer concierge services enabling residents to order, via the Alexa installed in every unit, massages, acupuncture treatment or reiki therapy as readily as they can call up a Long Island iced tea. Other incentives will include a fitness center with customized workout technology: machines conceived to measure individuals' biometrics, frequency of use and general fitness level. "We are taking a hospitality approach to attract the person who has enjoyed the services of a five star hotel their whole life and wants to continue that," said Shane Herlet, the chief operating officer of Inspir. Sure, it all comes at a price, but soaring costs are no hurdle to prospective clients like Ms. Freitag. "We're not going to be around forever," she said, adding unabashedly, "I've worked all my life and it's my time now. If I'm going to go, I want to go in luxury." Symphony, with a high concentration of locations in Florida cities, offers a less showy brand of luxury. The company is eying boomers. "They are our primary customer," Ms. Abbot said. "They are the ones making the decision to move their parents in." For those parents, most in their 80s, swimming pools, smartly appointed common rooms, pools, salons and shopping expeditions to local malls can be part of the draw, she said. "These people expect to be part of an elite club or group with like interests." Seated alongside her more sedulously understated companions, Ms. Harris had an edge. But she had nothing on her splashier counterparts in other cities, a highly visible minority flaunting silver hair and an idiosyncratic fashion sense on blogs and Instagram feeds, eager to shed the inhibitions that many found cumbersome in an earlier life. They belong to a demographic that is in better shape, with more opportunities than previous generations, Dr. Agronin noted. "Some people adopt a whole new personality from a conviction," he said, that "all that we failed to explore in youth, we can explore in later in life." Women who have never exercised are exercising now, he said. And some of them are focusing for the first time on fashion. Reminiscing about a favorite aunt, Adele, he recalled that in her 80s she "started wearing tighter, more revealing clothing and flamboyant hats. "She became very glamorous," he said. "Probably she told herself, 'Time is running out, so if I'm going to do this, I'm going to do it now.'" Perched on a settee in the Palace's fancy old world common area all gilded mirrors, ponderous chandeliers, figured carpets and furnishings meant to recall the George V hotel in Paris Ms. Greenfield, a former decorator, said, "As I get older, I'm absolutely more interested in maintaining a certain appearance. "We dress for dinner every night," she went on, glancing conspiratorially at her friend Lea Swetloff, a painter and also a former interior designer. Ms. Greenfield said, "We put on a lot of makeup, we change our clothes. We come down looking glamorous, because, as we see it, this is our night out." Ms. Swetloff, 85, had brightened her discreetly tawny sweater and pants with festoons of chains and clusters of rings, some of which she had unearthed at a local junk shop. "I like stuff," she said firmly. If her daughter hadn't cautioned her against looking over the top on the day of her interview, she would have put on something more festive, she said, something more in tune with her tastes. "I was thinking of a colorful peasant shirt," she said, "with narrow jeans and a fringed vest." Ms. Freitag was feeling just as bold. "When I was younger, I always tried to look right, very appropriate," she said. "I was more concerned about image. But now that I've started to age, I march to my own drummer. I wear my sneakers, I wear my tights. I don't want to look absurd, but I do want to try different identities. "I feel liberated," she said. "I have no one to please but myself."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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This has been, by any measure, a bad year for consensus reality. First, there was President Trump's impeachment a divisive and emotionally charged proceeding that unleashed a torrent of lies, exaggerations and viral innuendo. Then came the Covid 19 pandemic an even bigger opportunity for cranks, conspiracy theorists and wishful thinkers to divide us along epistemic lines, into those who believed the experts and those who preferred to "do their own research." The Black Lives Matter protests this summer were a feeding frenzy for those looking to distort and reframe the narrative about police violence and racial justice. And while election years are always busy times for fact checkers, Mr. Trump's fusillade of falsehoods about voter fraud, Spygate and Hunter Biden's emails this year has resulted in a bigger challenge for those charged with separating truth from fiction. Zignal Labs, a firm that tracks online misinformation, analyzed which major news topics in 2020 were most likely to generate misinformation. Its data, which draws from sources including social media apps like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Reddit, as well as newspapers and broadcast TV transcripts, isn't an exact accounting of every single piece of misinformation out there. But it's a rough gauge of which topics are most frequently used as vehicles for misinformation, by those looking to inject confusion and chaos into media narratives. The topic most likely to generate misinformation this year, according to Zignal, was an old standby: Out of 2.6 million total media mentions of Mr. Soros so far this year, nearly half (1.1 million) were accompanied by terms ("Soros funded," "bankroll") that suggested that he played a role in funding left wing agitators. They peaked this summer, as false claims that Mr. Soros had funded Black Lives Matter protests went viral following the killing of George Floyd. Second on the list was Ukraine, which peaked as a misinformation topic in January and February, during Mr. Trump's impeachment proceedings along with keywords like "deep state" and "WWG1WGA," a shorthand used by followers of the QAnon conspiracy movement. About 34 percent of Ukraine's 9.2 million total media mentions were flagged as misinformation related. Third was vote by mail, which has been the subject of a torrent of misinformation by Mr. Trump and right wing media outlets. Roughly one out of every five vote by mail stories in 2020 has been misinformation, according to Zignal's analysis, with terms like "fraud" and "scam" being common red flags. With all three subjects, some of the most common spreaders of misinformation were right wing news sites like Breitbart and The Gateway Pundit. YouTube also served as a major source of misinformation about these topics, according to Zignal. Of course, the misinformation we've seen so far this year might pale in comparison to what happens after next week's election, if a contested result or allegations of fraud result in a new wave of false or misleading claims. Social media platforms have signaled that they will remove premature claims of victory, and attempts to delegitimize the election. But they also pledged to take down misinformation about Covid 19, and have had only mixed success in doing so. Here are the topics that generated the highest percentage of misinformation narratives:
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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A snowstorm that pushed across London on Sunday brought Heathrow Airport, one of the busiest in the world, to a virtual halt as airlines canceled numerous flights and planes were stranded at gates. Passengers described scenes of confusion and frustration. Some people boarded planes and waited for hours on the tarmac, only to have their flights canceled. Passengers waited for hours in lines that wound through the airport to speak with airline representatives. Many arriving flights were diverted. Lee Hutchison said he and his girlfriend, Jo Wisbey, landed at Heathrow from New York on Sunday morning to discover that they had missed their connecting flight to Edinburgh, Scotland. Their airline, British Airways, booked them on another flight, which was canceled, and then two other flights, which were also canceled. "Barely any flights went out, and the numbers of people needing rebooked grew and then would have to recycle people who kept having flights canceled," Mr. Hutchison said in an interview. A spokeswoman for British Airways, whose primary hub is Heathrow, said she did not know how many flights had been canceled, diverted or delayed. She said cancellations and delays were expected to continue into Monday. "We're very sorry that our customers' travel plans have been affected by severe weather conditions," the spokeswoman said in an email. "Heavy rain overnight and snowfall in the U.K. this morning, combined with a reduction in the number of flights able to land at Heathrow have caused disruption to our flight schedule." Some passengers said on Twitter that they waited more than 12 hours at Heathrow. Others said they were not allowed to retrieve their luggage after their flights were canceled. A representative for Heathrow did not respond to an email seeking comment on Sunday evening. On its website, Heathrow said disruptions were expected on Monday because planes and crew members needed for the flights had not been able to reach the airport. "We're working with our airline partners to return aircraft to where they need to be, and full service recovery remains the focus," the airport said. The snowstorm brought 10 inches of snow to parts of the London region, with some areas seeing the most snowfall in about five years. Passengers said far less snow fell at Heathrow, which is about 13 miles west of the center of London. "It stopped snowing at about 3 p.m.," Claire Moore, whose husband was stranded on a British Airways flight to Saudi Arabia, said in an interview. "And it wasn't exactly heavy snow." She said her husband arrived at Heathrow for a 1:20 p.m. flight to Riyadh. The flight was delayed until 3 p.m., then 4 p.m. and then 5 p.m. Finally at 8 p.m., she said, he boarded. But his travel was disrupted again when a passenger assaulted someone on the plane, and the police were called, Ms. Moore said. "After this point, the flight was deemed to be outside regulations for flight crew hours, and it was canceled," she said. Ms. Moore said her husband left Heathrow and returned home late Sunday evening. One of his co workers on the flight was not as lucky. "His colleague is still at Heathrow who appeared to have now lost his luggage," she said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Small zero emission city cars may have cute faces and small footprints, but they also pack more weight than you might expect, forcing engineers to come up with innovative diets. Electric cars and gasoline electric hybrids are hundreds of pounds heavier than their counterparts that run solely on internal combustion engines. For example, the E.V. version of the Chevrolet Spark carries 620 more pounds on its petite frame than the gasoline powered version. Of that, 560 pounds are batteries. To improve the power to weight ratio and keep the cars feeling zippy not to mention reducing the draw on the batteries engineers have had to innovate. When everything in a car is powered by electricity, at least sometimes, every kilowatt counts. Stripping a car to its barest, lightest self would help, but few people would buy such a car. So manufacturers are turning to their suppliers to help save weight and increase efficiency without sacrificing comforts. Consider the Bose stereo available as an option for the Nissan Leaf. Having partnered with Bose for years, Nissan asked the sound engineers there to devise a premium system for its revamped electric car that "couldn't affect the drivability or impede the vehicle's range," according to John Pelliccio, the manager of technical product marketing at Bose. Luckily, Bose engineers had already designed a high efficiency system for the Chevrolet Volt a few years before. The solution ended up being a system that is smaller and lighter, and that draws half the current of a conventional Bose stereo without compromising the sound quality, according to the audio company. The eight channel amp is the center of the system, and it was "designed to be very efficient in terms of taking power from the battery and turning it into power that can drive the speakers," said Mr. Pelliccio. "It's like fluorescent light bulbs vs. incandescent bulbs," he said. "Fluorescent bulbs don't generate so much heat; they do a better job than incandescent bulbs of taking electrical energy and turning it into light. Similarly, the energy efficient amp in the Leaf is doing a better job of taking electrical energy and turning it into sound." But for all its window rattling power, the stereo isn't the biggest amp vampire in an E.V. Keeping the interior comfortably warm is. "Say you're in Seattle driving an electric car," explained Robert Iorio, the electric propulsion manager at Ford. "To remain comfortable, you set the thermostat at 65 degrees, and it's 20 degrees outside. You're spending more power heating the cabin than driving the car." That doesn't mean you have to shiver all the way to work or wrap yourself in layers like Ralphie's little brother in "A Christmas Story." Ford uses a high capacity heater in all its electric and plug in Energi cars that transfers heat more quickly. And, as is the case with many other electric cars, you can use an app on your smartphone to preheat the car while it is still plugged in. "Select a go time when you want to leave," Mr. Iorio said, and the app will get the heater going before you step out the door. "Heat the car up from the grid rather than using propulsive power. Grid energy costs less, and it will give you a longer range." Drawing less power from the batteries to heat the car and blast the radio means more miles to drive and those miles will be more comfortable, too.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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Faced with mounting concerns and daily updates about the crisis wrought by the coronavirus pandemic on the global soccer industry, FIFA is drawing up plans for an emergency relief fund worth hundreds of millions of dollars, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The fund, should global soccer leaders sign off on it, would amount to the biggest response from any major sports governing body to the financial impact of the pandemic. As in other parts of the global economy, movement restrictions to reduce the spread of the disease have halted the cash flow in a business in which long term financial planning is typically treated as a luxury, with gate receipts and broadcast and sponsorship income largely committed to players' salaries and transfer market trading. That has led several federations, clubs and leagues to declare themselves to be in a state of financial distress. This week, MSK Zilina, a seven time Slovak champion, declared bankruptcy, and Uruguay's federation laid off 400 staff members because all soccer activities had been suspended. Even the biggest teams have not been immune to the first shutdown of its kind since World War II. Barcelona and Juventus announced pay reductions for their multimillionaire playing roster, and others have followed suit. "FIFA is in a strong financial situation and it's our duty to do the utmost to help them in their hour of need," FIFA said in a statement on Tuesday after publication of this article. "Therefore, we confirm FIFA is working on possibilities to provide assistance to the football community around the world after making a comprehensive assessment of the financial impact this pandemic will have on football." The scale of the crisis was brought into focus in a letter sent to the members of the European Club Association, an umbrella body for more than 200 top division clubs in Europe, by the organization's chairman, Andrea Agnelli. "We are all football executives responsible for the well being and sustainability of the clubs we manage, which are faced with a real existential threat," said Agnelli, who is also president of Juventus, the 35 time Italian champion. "As football is now at a standstill, so are our revenue flows on which we are dependent to pay our players, staff and other operating costs. No one is immune, and timing is of the essence. Meeting our concerns will be the biggest challenge our game and industry has ever faced." Now officials at FIFA want to take advantage of one of the biggest cash reserves among global sporting bodies and use it to shield some of the worst hit parts of the industry, a move that would be similar to how governments around the world have acted to buttress parts of their economies in the face of the pandemic, according to the people, who declined to speak publicly because the plan has yet to to be formally agreed upon. According to its latest annual report, published last year, FIFA had cash reserves of 2.74 billion. The organization is considering putting some of those reserves to use in the effort to prop up the ailing soccer economy and is also willing to borrow against its future television and sponsorship income to raise money for what is being described internally as a "football relief fund." The fund would require the approval of the FIFA Council, a 36 member group made up of soccer officials from the sport's six regional confederations, before the plans can move forward. The fund would be managed differently than FIFA's current development structure, in which the organization's administration is responsible for delivering 6 million across a four year cycle to each of its 211 member associations, whatever their size or needs. Officials at FIFA, based in Zurich, are making an assessment of the short and medium term impact of coronavirus on global soccer in order to work out how it can help the member associations, and who it will likely ask to act as a clearinghouse for requests for assistance in their countries. The fund could provide bridging loans and even emergency grants. There are concerns over whether the money will be directed to the most in need and not be misused, but the urgency of the situation has made that concern a secondary issue, according to one of the people. The relief fund, according to the plan, would be managed independently from FIFA's leadership to avoid the risk of being contaminated by sports political issues that have long roiled the soccer world. Relations between FIFA and some regional soccer leaders have soured as its president, Gianni Infantino, has moved to grow its influence beyond national team soccer and development and into club soccer.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Hi, I'm Leigh Whannell. I'm the writer and director of the film, "The Invisible Man." A lot of the film deals with paranoia and whether or not Elisabeth Moss's character is really seeing something. And this is a scene where she's actually dealing with physical presence and a physical threat. We don't get to meet our antagonist, Adrian. You don't have to learn a lot about him as the film goes on. And so I wanted the threat to suddenly become very real. And I thought it would be an interesting way to shoot a scene like this where two people are fighting, but you can only see one of the participants. RUNNING WATER And I could see that in my mind's eye. I could see what that would look like if we pulled it off well. Turns out it was quite hard to achieve. It took a while to get there, to get the thing on screen that I could see in my head when I was writing. But we got here, eventually. LOUD NOISE There's obviously moments in this scene that Elisabeth Moss could not perform. She's not a trained stunt performer. She cannot be thrown across a table. So then the question becomes, how do we shoot Elisabeth Moss and then cut to somebody else? So in the middle of the shot, we have to match frame a stunt person in. And then, so she'll do the actual throw and she'll get thrown, and then she'll land, and we have to freeze her and then match frame Elisabeth back in. And it was very technically difficult when she was interacting with the stunt performer in a green suit and when she wasn't. Because as we found out when we did visual effects, it's kind of easier to add something to a frame with CGI. It's hard to remove something, especially a human body in a bright green suit. Like if this person is moving and blocking the other actor, and what are we going to do with that moment where the stunt performer's arm is blocking Elisabeth's face. But I know that the visual effects guys, a company called Cutting Edge, in Sydney, had a lot of sleepless nights to get it looking amazing. BREAKING DISH
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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These 10 Foreign Language Films Have Been Nominated for Best Picture "Parasite," the scathing comedy thriller from Bong Joon Ho, has steadily been making history. Last year, it became the first South Korean movie to win the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Last month, it was nominated for six Oscars, including best picture, best international feature (formerly known as best foreign language film) and best director, all three of which were firsts for South Korean cinema. It became the first foreign language film to take home the top Screen Actors Guild Award, for best cast in a motion picture. And now, "Parasite" has become the first film not in English to win the Oscar for best picture. The movie, about a poor family scheming its way into working for a wealthy family, has grossed more than 160 million worldwide, and talks about a limited series adaptation for HBO are already underway. Only 10 other foreign language films have been nominated for the Academy's top prize. Despite rave reviews and box office successes, none of them could break the English language barrier. Here's a look at those ten. Nominated in 1938, this French World War I drama from Jean Renoir was the first foreign language film to land a best picture nod. It centers on two French officers captured by a German pilot and held in a prisoner of war camp. Critics consider "Grand Illusion" one of the greatest movies ever made. Franklin D. Roosevelt argued that "all the democracies in the world must see this film," while Orson Welles once said: "If I had only one film in the world to save, it would be 'Grand Illusion.'" The academy would have chosen otherwise. The movie lost to Frank Capra's romantic comedy, "You Can't Take It With You." "Z" draws from a true story and follows an investigator looking into the murder of a left wing politician in Greece. It was released in several European countries in 1969 the year it was nominated but was banned under the ruling military junta in Greece and would not screen there until after the junta fell in 1974. It received five Oscar nominations, and went on to win two, for editing and foreign language film. In the best picture category, "Z" lost to "Midnight Cowboy," John Schlesinger's X rated drama starring Dustin Hoffman and Jon Voight. This sprawling epic by the director Jan Troell follows a poor Swedish family on an arduous journey to Minnesota in the 19th century. The film led to a sequel, "The New Land," starring the same cast. A short lived series on ABC followed. "The Emigrants" was nominated for best foreign language film in 1972. Because of different categories' eligibility rules, it received four more nominations in 1973, for best picture, director, actress and adapted screenplay. It left both ceremonies empty handed, losing to a very different immigrant story in the best picture category, "The Godfather." The eminent director Ingmar Bergman directed this period drama set around the turn of the century about three sisters who reunite in 19th century Sweden as one of them is dying of cancer. The movie is said to be Bergman's most striking work in color. "All of my films can be thought of in terms of black and white," he once said, "except 'Cries and Whispers.'" It was nominated for five Oscars in 1973, including best director. But it just took home one, for best cinematography. The award for best picture went to George Roy Hill's caper, "The Sting," which scooped up seven Oscars in total. The Italian actor Roberto Benigni directed and starred in this tragicomedy, about an Italian Jew who is interned in a Nazi concentration camp but who convinces his son that the horrors around them are all part of a silly game. The movie is now one of the highest grossing non English language films in American box office history. It was nominated for seven Oscars in 1998, including best director and best screenplay. It won three, for best actor, original score and foreign language film. The romantic comedy "Shakespeare in Love" won best picture. Ang Lee's martial arts epic, about two lovers on the hunt for a stolen sword in 19th century China, brought in more than 128 million at the domestic box office when it opened 20 years ago. The film featured dizzying choreography by Yuen Woo ping of "The Matrix" and music by Yo Yo Ma. In 2000, "Crouching Tiger" became the first foreign language film to land 10 Oscar nominations. Lee lost in the best director category, but his picture won four awards, for cinematography, score, set direction and foreign language film. The best picture Oscar went to another historical epic, "Gladiator." This war drama from Clint Eastwood reimagined the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of Japanese soldiers. Primarily in Japanese, the film was a companion piece to Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers," which looked at the battle through the eyes of the Americans. Several critics said "Letters from Iwo Jima" was the best movie of the year. It won a Golden Globe for best foreign language film and, in 2006, was nominated for four Oscars, including best director and original screenplay. It took home one, for sound editing.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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Ten authors get credit for the Ariana Grande hit "7 Rings," though 90 percent of the songwriting royalties are going to just two of them the long dead Rodgers and Hammerstein, whose "My Favorite Things" inspired the new track. At least that agreement was reached quickly and amicably, unlike the time a lawsuit forced Robin Thicke and Pharrell Williams to pay millions of dollars to the Marvin Gaye estate. Inspiration doesn't come cheap. Things land somewhere in between in Adam Seidel's flawed but promising "Original Sound," the rare new play that pays attention to how the modern pop culture sausage is made. Nowadays, that means looking at the thin line between homage and appropriation, collaboration and exploitation. Mr. Seidel ("Catch the Butcher") and the director Elena Araoz draw the camps in quick, broad strokes. Ryan Reed (Jane Bruce) is a young folkie singer songwriter "near the top level." Pressured by her label to deliver a catchy pop single for her new album, Ryan, who has writer's block, plagiarizes a song uploaded by Danny Solis (Sebastian Chacon), an upstart D.J. and producer cutting tracks on his laptop. She figures it doesn't matter: "It's not like I ripped off Dr. Dre," she says. "This is just some nobody."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Q. How do I change the basic typeface in my new documents in Microsoft Word for Mac 2016 so that the program always uses it? A. One way to change the default typeface that Microsoft Word uses for each new document is to adjust the font settings box. On the Mac 2016 version of the program, create a document and then go to the Format menu in the toolbar. Select Font, and then choose the Font tab in the box. When you have the Font box open, use the menus within to choose the font and type size you want to use for the future files you create. When you are set, click the Default button in the lower left corner of the box. A box appears asking if you want to change the default font and warns that the change affects all documents based on the Normal template. Click Yes to make the change.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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CHICAGO What happens when you mix hip hop and ballet? You get hiplet, one of the more curious hybrids to make its way out of the dance world into popular culture. Conceived by Homer Hans Bryant, the artistic director and founder of the Chicago Multi Cultural Dance Center, hiplet (pronounce it "hip lay" to rhyme with ballet) showcases dancers on pointe as they twist and dip to the floor in a loose translation of hip hop movement. These young swans, largely African American and ages 12 to 18, are purposeful, arch and knowing. (For now, the hiplet dancers are all female, but if Mr. Bryant achieves his dream of starting a professional hiplet company, he said he would plan on adding men.) In ballet, pointe, a term derived from "sur la pointe" or on the tip of the toe is how dancers convey the illusion of flight or weightlessness. Pointe work is an essential component of ballet; it is also important in hiplet, but here pointe work has a different, more grounded effect. Dancers master movements like the hiplet strut walking on pointe with hips that sway from side to side or bend their knees until their buttocks nearly brush the floor while hopping on pointe and swishing their arms back and forth. Nia Lyons, an 18 year old hiplet dancer, calls this the duck walk. "You can't do hiplet without ballet," said Ms. Lyons, who will enter Dance Theater of Harlem's pre professional program in New York this fall. "None of us would be able to do this unless we had strong training, which I feel people neglect to realize. It's what they see on their phones versus behind the scenes, which is kind of hard to bring out." A live performance, as demonstrated at a festival at Douglas Park here in August, shows more polish and cohesion than what you see on a smartphone. But phones are where most people watch hiplet: Mr. Bryant's videos, available on his Instagram feed, have gone viral in recent months. His hiplet ballerinas, as he likes to call them, were on "Good Morning America" in May, and he is working with the production company Two Fifteen West Entertainment on the development of a reality show. Not everyone is enamored of Mr. Bryant's invention. Hiplet, with the dancers' bent knees and slightly flexed ankles, can look precarious though he and his dancers insist it's not dangerous and, aesthetically, it can look awkward. "I love awkward," Mr. Bryant said recently at his dance center in the South Loop. "Of course, it's probably making a lot of teachers cringe old ballet divas that are like, this is not supposed to be happening. O.K., wake up and get a life." And what would he tell them? "Watch and learn," he said. "And I would ask them how many generations of African American kids did they transform? What are you doing for the art? Get out of your comfort zone. Think outside the box. We're keeping it relevant and getting kids excited. Some people didn't like Picasso either. He painted funny." Even though hiplet challenges the traditional notions of ballet, in which line and form are held to exacting standards, Mr. Bryant's hybrid is borne more from classical ballet than from hip hop. A former member of Dance Theater of Harlem, he incorporates many ballet steps into his choreography and stressed that certain moves in hip hop can't be transferred to pointe. "My thing is to protect the feet and the leg," he said. "It's definitely ballet first." Admission to a hiplet class there are two levels at the moment is contingent upon a student's progress and commitment to both technique and pointe classes. "I check attendance," Mr. Bryant said. "I pulled four girls off pointe in the past year because they were just showing up for hiplet. No, no, no, that's not going to work for me." Students must have strong feet and legs, proficiency on pointe and the ability to pull back in their ankles instead of keeping them straight. Nia Parker, 17, said that the challenge comes in centering the body's weight. "I had to learn how to ground myself while staying lifted on my toes," she said. "You have to remember certain arms that aren't classical, along with your feet doing things that are classical, along with your legs doing things that aren't classical, but then there's still a classical base to it. It's a weird puzzle." The roots of hiplet date to 1994, when Mr. Bryant, now 66, created "The Rap Ballet," inspired by a concert he attended in Canada: "I noticed that all the kids in the audience kept the rap cadence, and I said to myself, if I could put rap and ballet together, I could really keep kids engaged." The work was performed by what was then the Bryant Ballet in schools and theaters in Chicago, New Orleans and the Virgin Islands. In "The Rap Ballet," Mr. Bryant would whisper lines like, "It puts your body in touch with your mind, it's just about the greatest discipline of all time" as dancers demonstrated ballet steps and street dances, like the Running Man, on pointe. That evolved into hiplet, a term that Mr. Bryant coined in 2009. For Ms. Parker, being able to combine a modern art form like hip hop with a classical art form also speaks to the times in which she lives. "That's kind of what art is for, and it's what a lot of people are doing with technology," she said. "They have the art software where you can do an oil painting but with your tablet. I feel like it flows into that." Mr. Bryant, who is known as Mr. Homer to his students who have included Sasha and Malia Obama said that he was at the other end of the Misty Copeland rainbow. "She's trying to prove to a whole bunch of people that she's black and she can do ballet," he said. "I'm trying to elevate these kids into who they are and to make a difference. None of these kids want to grow up to be ballerinas. If they go into dance, they want to go to a contemporary company or they're going to go to Europe. That's the end game. I'm trying to make better human beings."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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CLEVELAND Here are a few choice mutterings from the scrum of lawyers outside Courtroom 18B, about the federal judge who summoned them to a closed door conference on hundreds of opioid lawsuits: And the chorus: "This is not how we do things!" Judge Dan Aaron Polster of the Northern District of Ohio has perhaps the most daunting legal challenge in the country: resolving more than 400 federal lawsuits brought by cities, counties and Native American tribes against central figures in the national opioid tragedy, including makers of the prescription painkillers, companies that distribute them, and pharmacy chains that sell them. And he has made it clear that he will not be doing business as usual. During the first hearing in the case, in early January, the judge informed lawyers that he intended to dispense with legal norms like discovery and would not preside over years of "unraveling complicated conspiracy theories." Then he ordered them to prepare for settlement discussions immediately. Not a settlement that would be "just moving money around," he added, but one that would provide meaningful solutions to a national crisis by the end of this year. "I did a little math," he said, alluding to the rising number of overdoses. "About 150 Americans are going to die today, just today, while we're meeting." The transcript from that hearing has created a ruckus in legal circles. Adam S. Zimmerman, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, has begun teaching it in his classes. "We say we want judges to be umpires," Mr. Zimmerman said. "But when there's a large social problem at stake, judges can be umpires for only so long, before they decide it has to be solved." Lawyers on both sides would not speak on the record, noting that to criticize the judge presiding over their case would be professional suicide. But in private conversations, many were scathing, questioning his grasp of the issues and predicting that a stepped up timetable was bound to collapse. Can Judge Polster pull this off? "These are bold things for a judge to say and it's exciting and intriguing to follow," said Abbe R. Gluck, a professor at Yale Law School who directs the Solomon Center for Health Policy and Law. "But to say that his goals are ambitious would be an enormous understatement." In December, a judicial panel gathered all the prescription opioid cases filed in federal court across the country and plopped them into Judge Polster's lap. The consolidation of large numbers of similar cases is called a multidistrict litigation, or MDL; it's usually done to enhance efficiency and reduce costs. Rather than just one kind of industry defendant, this litigation has several, each playing a different role not only drug makers but also distributors and retailers. That makes the apportionment of liability even more contentious, with defendants blaming one another. All the defendants say the drugs were approved by the Food and Drug Administration and prescribed by doctors. Plaintiffs claim that manufacturers, like Purdue Pharma and Johnson Johnson, aggressively marketed the pills for years, despite knowing about addictive properties; that distributors, like McKesson and Cardinal Health, shipped alarming quantities without reporting to the authorities; that pharmacy chains, like Walgreens and CVS Health, looked away while selling flag raising amounts to individuals. Adding weight to the plaintiffs' case, the Justice Department filed a so called statement of interest in the litigation last week, to emphasize the government's "substantial costs and significant interest in addressing the opioid epidemic." The theories under which parties are suing make for a legal cacophony: public nuisance laws; fraud, racketeering and corruption; violations of federal and state laws on controlled substances. With the judge pushing for settlement, legal experts worry that these arguments may not get full consideration. "Courts are hard wired for litigation," through which facts can come to light, said Elizabeth C. Burch, a law professor at the University of Georgia who writes about multidistrict litigation. "Here, there's a short circuiting of that process. So how do you know if it's the right settlement if you don't have all the information in front of you?" Judge Polster has reminded both sides that if they resist settling swiftly in favor of litigation, they could be setting themselves on a path toward unpredictable jury trials. The night before the conference, many lawyers, expert witnesses and clients stayed in the same hotel. They gathered in rooms and the restaurant lounge, strategizing, trying to second guess the judge. On occasion, their voices could be overheard, rising in exasperation. Earlier that day, Judge Polster, 66, ate a hasty lunch of a hard boiled egg and tangerine unpacked from sandwich baggies, having just returned to his chambers from tutoring reading to a third grader at a school near the courthouse. He glanced at his wristwatch, its fraying band wrapped in duct tape. Before his day was over, the judge, shadowed by a reporter, would oversee a half dozen legal matters, help teach a class on mediation at Cleveland Marshall College of Law, dine with the opioid litigation's special masters court appointed intermediaries who expedite negotiations and then lug home a nearly foot thick binder of materials to study. Judge Polster, who is married to an arbitration lawyer, grew up in a middle class Cleveland neighborhood that his parents fought to integrate. Their activism taught him "ordinary people can do extraordinary things if they don't take a pass." His Jewish faith has also shaped his outlook on justice and compassion, he said; he teaches a confirmation class about ethical decision making. Like so many Ohioans, Judge Polster has been personally touched by the opioids crisis. A friend's daughter died from an overdose. "The stakes, in this case, are incredibly high," he said. "Any thinking person should feel terrible about the situation we're in." He was keenly aware that steering the process away from traditional litigation is unorthodox. "The judicial branch typically doesn't fix social problems, which is why I'm somewhat uncomfortable doing this," he said. "But it seems the most human thing to do." Upon hearing of the disparaging comments from some lawyers, Judge Polster stared into deep space to retrieve his words before making eye contact, a habit that some find unnerving. "I think that's a fair assessment," he said. "But I won't fault myself for attempting this." He would not address specific issues in the opioid litigation. But he opened a window into his thinking, generally, about why he prefers rapid settlement rather than trying cases. He believes that when parties have gotten this far down the road in a lawsuit, they already have at least 80 percent of the information they need to negotiate; the longer litigation continues, he said he has found, the more entrenched each side can become. Later that day, he told law students: "It's almost never productive to get the other side angry. They lash out and hurt you and themselves. I try to get the sides to think it through as a problem to solve, not a fight to be won or lost." The following morning, a mash up of small town mayors, big city lawyers, addiction doctors, pharmacy industry executives and a police chief trooped into Judge Polster's mahogany lined federal courtroom, a crowd of nearly 170. Lawyers hoisted folding chairs for overflow seating. Confusion was ubiquitous. Even the most optimistic admitted to low expectations, predicting that the day would amount to sword rattling and throat clearing. The judge had ordered a closed door session that morning with tiers of lead lawyers, their experts and clients, to educate him on the issues. Immediately after, he would begin settlement discussions. To that end, he had also invited representatives from two groups of state attorneys general, neither in his official purview. One group of about 10, which included Mike DeWine from Ohio, had already filed lawsuits in their home state courts. Another group of 41 attorneys general, who are cooperating in their own prescription opioid investigation, have not yet filed. The day ended with Judge Polster issuing brisk orders for the next steps. Leaving the courthouse, Mark S. Cheffo, who represents Purdue Pharma, the makers of OxyContin, tersely characterized the mood as "cautiously optimistic." Just 10 days later, Purdue announced it would no longer market OxyContin to prescribers. "This is a stunning about face by Purdue, which has long contended that it has not influenced physician education with its drug reps," said Dr. Anna Lembke, a Stanford addiction specialist who spoke as an expert witness on behalf of the plaintiffs at the Cleveland session. "I think the overwhelming pressure from Judge Polster, not to mention the court of public opinion, led to this radical reversal." Purdue issued a statement last week saying the company was "fully engaged in the process that Judge Polster has set in action to explore meaningful solutions" to the opioid crisis. On Tuesday, delegations of all star litigators and representatives of the attorneys general are to return to Courtroom 18B to begin negotiating "economic and noneconomic issues." With countless lives and billions of dollars at stake and both sides arguing their cases in the news media, the obstacles to resolution seem staggering. Yet on numerous occasions, Allen L. Bohnert, a former law clerk, has watched Judge Polster take on the intractable. "At the end of a long day where it looked like there wouldn't be a settlement, he'd walk out with one," said Mr. Bohnert, now an assistant federal public defender. "And he'd wink and say, 'Sometimes it takes a federal judge.'"
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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At 85, the painter Dorothea Rockburne is still blazing trails, making art in the unorthodox way she has for seven decades. "There's stuff in my head," Ms. Rockburne, an abstractionist with lively, penetrating eyes and a ready smile, recently explained. "It's really important for me to get it out of my head and into a viewable situation.'' From experience, she's learned that it can take a while to figure out how to get concepts onto a wall or canvas. It took about a year, for example, to figure out how to recreate several of her breakthrough works from 1967 through 1972 for a show opening Sunday at Dia Art Foundation in Beacon, N.Y. It will be the first time generations of art enthusiasts will see the work of this underappreciated artist in person, rather than from reproductions in catalogs and art magazines. It had been almost 50 years since the artist herself had seen some of them. Composed of cotton rag paper, specially ordered chipboard, grease and charcoal, it was one of many large scale works executed at a time when painters and sculptors made art with no regard for whether their pieces could be sold. When her second show at the Bykert Gallery on East 81st Street closed in the 1970s, "Domain of the Variable," parts of which had been glued to the wall, had to be tossed in the garbage. Years earlier, Ms. Rockburne discovered that the paper she used would no longer be manufactured, and she purchased rolls of it. They, too, had disintegrated. Reconstructing the art on view in Beacon took months, lots of trial and error, and a team of six installers to get everything right. "At Dia, we substituted materials, but it didn't matter," Ms. Rockburne said, explaining that she'll use any material that produces the desired effect. You learn to roll with the punches when you have exhibited in celebrated avant garde galleries; enjoyed friendships with A list artists, dancers, poets, and musicians Robert Rauschenburg, Cy Twombly, Merce Cunningham among them; managed as a single mother to pay the rent on a downtown loft where you made your work late into the night; and made your career taking on the big boys of the art world. Ms. Rockburne's understated work plugged into the prevailing Minimalist aesthetic of the day but also reflected her lifelong interest in higher mathematics. Indeed, she refers to herself as both an artist and a mathematician. When people hear her talk about how her art relates to higher mathematics, they often roll their eyes. According to Ms. Rockburne, "everyone had terrible math teachers, but I didn't." "Domain of the Variable" is a visual equation, setting out specific material variations within a single installation. There was another aspect to her paintings. As the artist said in her spacious, well lit loft on the edge of SoHo, "Even though it has an intellectual basis and mathematical structure, my work comes from a deep emotional source within me." Ms. Rockburne explained that someone could appreciate her art without being familiar with math. As she put it, "you don't have to know the composition of water to swim in it." But then, she added, "once you know what water is, and that we're 90 percent water, it becomes more interesting." Ms. Rockburne's interest in mathematics was a gradual process. Raised in Montreal, she fell under the spell of illustrated books that her Welsh born mother found on a trip to Alexandria, on Egyptian art. They fascinated her young daughter, who turned their pages avidly when she suffered from bronchitis and pneumonia during the long, bitter Canadian winters. (A number of paintings from Ms. Rockburne's Egyptian series of 1979 81, comprising black crayon lines, and gessoed and painted white linen folded into geometric shapes and borders, will open at Dia: Beacon next November.) Ms. Rockburne earned a scholarship at 16 to the Montreal Museum School. As she approached graduation, her two favorite art teachers counseled her to leave Canada, recommending that she attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina. When she got there, she found her calling. "Bob whispered in my ear, I have a car," she recalled. "We three became thick, and fast friends." Yet, she has always acknowledged that she is most indebted to her mathematics professor, the German emigre Max Dehn. She admired Dehn's "lively, disciplined but fearless mind. His enthusiasm for everything was infectious." "When I told him that I was having difficulties with assignments," she explained, "he said, 'What you need is to understand the principles of math as they occur in nature.'" Consequently, he invited her to join him on his 7 a.m. hikes. Her fate was sealed. In 1954, Ms. Rockburne arrived in New York with her husband, Carroll Warner Williams, an instructor she had met at Black Mountain, and their 2 year old daughter, Christine. The marriage didn't work out; and in 1958, she moved with her daughter from a cold water flat in the East 80s to a loft on Chambers Street. Now she was hanging out with future Pop artists and Minimalists (Claes Oldenburg, Carl Andre, Robert Morris). The sculptor Mark di Suvero built a big swing in the backyard where her daughter played. In the morning, Ms. Rockburne, a single mother, would bring her daughter uptown to school at Dalton. She'd paint from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m. To cover expenses, she held a series of day jobs, including one as a waitress, and another as a "girl Friday" for Rauschenberg. When she grew disappointed with the art she was making, she took a break. Ms. Rockburne joined the now legendary Judson Dance Theater. "They were young and revolutionary and wanted to change the world," Ms. Rockburne said during a dinner in SoHo. "They had a huge influence on me; and I realized why I was dissatisfied. In the middle of a performance, I suddenly saw what I wanted to do. I never danced again." She began making the art that secured her reputation. Initially, Ms. Rockburne was inspired by set theory, a branch of mathematical logic. "Tropical Tan" (1967 68), named for a color of paint, and also for human tan skin, is the earliest work on view at Dia: Beacon. Four 8 foot tall steel panels resting side by side were covered with wrinkle finish paint, which created a subtle texture on the smooth metal. "Set," a refined beauty, has also been newly rendered, now taller than ever, partly because of the high ceilings at the former Nabisco plant that serves as Dia's home. "Variable" is an astonishing introduction to Ms. Rockburne's radicality during the early 1970s. The two part installation encompasses an entire room. One section involves various pieces of paper and board covered with red grease, adding a striking color note. Paper board glued to the wall and then stripped off like a Band Aid leaves vibrant traces of a rupture. A long line carved into the wall between the two pieces, provides a deep shadow. The overall impact is "a controlled chaos," said Courtney J. Martin, the deputy director and chief curator of Dia. "The grease could have run; the wall could have been pulled apart, And yet neither of those things happened." This work, she added, "always deserved more attention than it received."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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BERLIN On a warm September afternoon, a startling sound could be heard in a rehearsal room here: a full size orchestra, playing the second act of Wagner's "Die Walkure." For ears starved during the long, nearly worldwide break in live performance caused by the coronavirus pandemic, it was bracing to be engulfed by rich brass chords ringing out above plunging strings as the goddess Fricka extracted a world changing promise from her reluctant husband, Wotan. "I'm not saying we planned this," Donald Runnicles, who was conducting the rehearsal, said in an interview. "But if you knew you were going to have a six month hiatus where you didn't hear any live music, what would you wish to hear after that six months? In my top 10, it would be 'Die Walkure.'" Then epic events offstage made the performance of onstage epics impossible. The company was able to provide some operatic relief in August with scaled down performances of "Das Rheingold," directed by its house staff in its parking garage. But the Herheim "Ring" eagerly anticipated, and rumored to be under consideration by the Metropolitan Opera for a future season is really getting started only now, with the full scale premiere of "Die Walkure" on Sunday. Major live, indoor operatic performance still seems far off in the United States, which has been much less successful at curbing the spread of the virus than many of the nations in Europe, where theaters are beginning to reopen. The Met announced this week that it would not reopen until next September. Still, cases are substantially rising again in Germany. Most performances in Berlin this fall are socially distanced, unstaged affairs; for "Walkure," however, a family of donors is underwriting daily testing for the cast, orchestra and key crew members for the rehearsal and performance period. Government subsidies, substantial even before the pandemic, will allow the company to sustain a reduced capacity of about 770 (instead of its usual 1,859), in keeping with new regulations in Berlin that allow for masked audience members to be seated about three feet apart. There will be intermissions of normal length necessary in Wagnerian repertoire that tests the stamina of audiences and performers alike with strict social distancing requirements and limited food service. "Siegfried" and a rescheduled "Rheingold" are slated to premiere later this season, with "Gotterdammerung," the final installment, next fall. Complete cycles are scheduled for November 2021 and January 2022. No Herheim production is simple. His work including a "Parsifal" at the Bayreuth Festival that retold Germany's bloody history, and a "Die Meistersinger" set in a magically expanding vision of its main character's cobbling workshop involves deep readings of both music and libretto, as well as stacked layers of reference to an opera's creation, performance and reception histories. The rabbit hole complexity and joyful, even campy, flourishes of his stagings have made Mr. Herheim, 50, one of the most sought after opera directors in Europe. The first production meetings for his "Ring" came in 2015, when, he said an interview, a refugee crisis forced Europeans "to face the fact that this is a crisis we have created ourselves, just like the climate catastrophe that is rolling over us now, and the coronavirus, too." When Wagner began work on the text of the "Ring," he was a young radical fleeing the failed revolutions of 1848. "We are all in a situation like Wagner," Mr. Herheim said. "All somehow refugees, confronted with the concept of not having a harbor, not feeling safe, and at the same time having to face the destinies of so many people trying to get to us, and face the fact that many of us are not ready to feel empathy." In his conception, "Das Rheingold" begins with singers arriving on a stage that's empty except for a piano, dragging suitcases behind them. They then begin to tell one another the story of the "Ring." Mr. Herheim said he was fascinated by Wagner's technique of retrospective storytelling: At many points in the cycle, the action is taken up by characters narrating events that have taken place. "It reminds us that the drama is who tells the story, and how," Mr. Herheim said. "There is no truth in a drama; it is all lies, and ideas." As in many of his productions, there is also a reference to past opera stagings, in this case Patrice Chereau's influential 1976 "Ring" at the Bayreuth Festival, which posited the cycle as a Marxian struggle in which the world moves from aristocratic to proletarian rule. The final evening ended with shellshocked masses standing in rubble, staring at the audience as if to say, "Your turn." One possible interpretation of Mr. Herheim's new production, he suggested, is that those people, or their descendants, had moved on and were now retelling the story. The sets for all four operas will be mainly constructed from the piano, the suitcases and their contents, enhanced by projections and video. "They all have their suitcases, their histories, their stories," Mr. Herheim said of the characters. "It's not ever the quality of theater to create perfect illusion. This is in some way a childish and simple approach. As if the only thing we have left as humans is this ability to tell stories this idea of reality, history, hope, future." Not that Mr. Herheim is naive about the uses to which humans have put stories, especially ones as powerful and troubling as Wagner's epic myth. "'Walkure' is an incredibly cruel piece," he said, pointing out the extent to which the characters are trapped by their destinies and actions. Wotan, the patriarchal god who loses control of his creation, seemed to loom especially large in his mind. "It's the greed," Mr. Herheim said, "and the power, and the need to be loved by an audience." Like a conductor, he jokingly suggested, or a stage director. For the singers, the rigor of Mr. Herheim's concept is mediated by his musicality. "It's been very intense, which I like," said Ms. Stemme, the production's Brunnhilde. "The work is very concentrated, and at the same time he never forces you to sing upstage or sideways" in ways that might damage the music. "The main thing for him is the music drama," she added, "and that's the way it should be." Lise Davidsen, a rising star soprano, is making her role debut as Sieglinde, a mortal woman, trapped in a violent and loveless marriage with the hunter Hunding. She finds short lived redemption in an affair with Siegmund incidentally, her twin brother before he dies and she gives birth to Siegfried, a transformative hero in the two final operas. "I must be honest and say that the Sieglinde we are making is quite different from what I had in my mind on the first day," Ms. Davidsen said. Mr. Herheim's concept gives the character both new strength and new complication: This Sieglinde doesn't just wait to be rescued, but kills a child she has had with Hunding as part of her escape. "The killing is what she has to do to be able to continue her life," Ms. Davidsen said. "It's on the edge of life. These characters are extreme parts of us. This is the sacrifice she has to make to free herself. When the audience is expecting complete freedom and release, immediately you see the bad side." At the first run through of the opening act with costumes and set, Ms. Davidsen and the American tenor Brandon Jovanovich, singing Siegmund, tussled and sang and took flight on the set's many moving parts. The stage pictures a man fleeing a violent storm into a world of frightened, lost souls living with suitcases packed, ready themselves to flee indeed seemed to resonate with current events outside the opera house. "These refugees are crossing an empty stage in a world where we cannot produce art in the same way as before," Mr. Herheim said. "We have to be aware of what it means to play. To rethink the function of art with someone like Wagner, who always had this entitlement and to see how we failed, and to try again."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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It's common for hotels along the Italian coast to be closed during the winter months and full to capacity during the summer. But between these extremes, the spring months offer an attractive combination of mild temperatures and lack of crowds. Hotels from the Lake District to the Amalfi Coast, all the way to Sardinia offer discounts for the season's first visitors in April, May and sometimes well into June. Sun on the Shores of Lake Como At the Grand Hotel Tremezzo on the shores of Lake Como, preseason rates start at 495 per night, compared to 750 per night for high season. This hotel is unique for its swimming experience; a floating pool is set right in the waters of Lake Como. In addition to beautiful water views, this family owned property dating back to 1910 looks out at the Grigne Mountains and the village of Bellagio. Casa Angelina, a 39 room boutique hotel on the Amalfi Coast, reopened for the season on March 24. Located in the town of Praiano, with views of the Tyrrhenian Sea, this hotel also offers four rooms in old fishermen's houses. Rooms during the summer months start at 961 per night, but during the spring start at 604 per night. A special offer available through May 15 includes extra savings: a further 10 percent room discount and a 99 credit for food and beverages or for the on site the spa. Set on top of a cliff in Sorrento, the Grand Hotel Excelsior Vittoria overlooks the Gulf of Naples and Mount Vesuvius. Spring rates start at 506 per night compared with 782 per night in the high season. Sea views are especially striking from the terrace, home to Terrazza Bosquet, a candlelit Michelin starred restaurant.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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A majority of Covid 19 pneumonia patients that we treated or observed during the surges in New York City and Italy had severe lung injury on first presentation. They were, in other words, arriving at the hospital too late, and many were winding up on ventilators. In all medicine whether in patients who have traumatic injury, cancer, diabetes or an infectious disease earlier identification and treatment leads to better outcomes. Covid 19 is no different. We must continue improving the I.C.U. care of patients with advanced Covid 19 pneumonia. But we will have the greatest public health impact if we prevent it from occurring in the first place. The value of early detection has become apparent in northern Italy, once the epicenter of the pandemic. The surge there has abated, and patients are no longer afraid to come to the emergency department. That means patients with symptoms of Covid 19, such as fever, muscle aches and cough, are coming to the hospital earlier and their illness is less severe. There is some heartening evidence admittedly inconclusive that earlier treatment makes a difference. In a small pilot study of 250 Covid 19 cases conducted by Dr. Cosentini in Italy, half were found to have mild pneumonia but their oxygen saturation was not yet compromised. All of these patients were able to be discharged from the E.R., and they were sent home with pulse oximeters. Only 5 percent returned and were hospitalized when their oxygen saturation levels declined slightly. None of these patients required a ventilator. And none of these 250 patients died. While there is no specific cure for Covid 19 and we have nothing that directly kills the virus, we do have treatments that help patients and prevent the need for a ventilator. These include various noninvasive methods of delivering oxygen, patient positioning maneuvers that open up parts of the lungs, and close monitoring and treatment of inflammation. There is no panacea; some patients will still have the disease worsen, and there are some patients who will still have serious injury from Covid 19 unrelated to the lungs. Until now the manner in which our health care system has addressed this crisis has failed. But doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists want to win. We want to tell families their loved ones are recovering and not dying. Everyone hopes new therapies and ultimately a vaccine will help defeat Covid 19. But until the magic bullets arrive, we must engage this disease differently that is, earlier if we are going to save lives and reduce the immense cost of care. For our country to benefit from this strategy, we need to completely change public health messaging and create a new standard of care and that messaging must come from the federal government. If the C.D.C. leads, health agencies around the world will follow. Dr. Richard Levitan is an emergency doctor at Littleton Regional Health in Littleton, N.H. Dr. Nicholas Caputo is an emergency doctor at Lincoln Hospital in New York. Dr. Roberto Cosentini is an emergency doctor at Papa Giovanni XXIII Hospital in Bergamo, Italy. Dr. Jorge Cabrera is a critical care doctor at the University of Miami Hospital. 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.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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Mr. Gosling's feeling and facility for Mr. Zorn's music was consistently impressive. In the first study, his hand over hand playing across all the piano's registers brought a lulling quality to the music's gentle dynamics. But he also found just the right punch for the percussive interjections that Mr. Zorn inserts into this not quite minimalist procession, keeping a quality of steely edge. Several of the nervier studies featured rambunctious, whipsaw conclusions to melodic statements often ending in one of the elaborate chords Mr. Zorn favors. And the 10th study had a madman machinist design worthy of the player piano canons of Conlon Nancarrow. But there were also other moods. The relatively calm sensibility of The Gnostic Trio one of Mr. Zorn's many, many other projects made an appearance in the fourth and 14th studies. (That is, assuming I counted correctly: In keeping with the laid back air of the Miller's pop up concerts, no programs, or titles for individual studies, were provided.) Mr. Gosling is far from new to Zorn, having appeared on the composer's records for over a decade. But the speed with which Mr. Zorn has been writing works with this pianist in mind is worthy of notice. (This includes a recent piece for Mr. Gosling and the soprano Barbara Hannigan, heard at this summer's Ojai Music Festival and coming to the Park Avenue Armory in October.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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SAN FRANCISCO Many booksellers on Amazon strive to sell their wares as cheaply as possible. That, after all, is usually how you make a sale in a competitive marketplace. Other merchants favor a counterintuitive approach: Mark the price up to the moon. "Zowie," the romance author Deborah Macgillivray wrote on Twitter last month after she discovered copies of her 2009 novel, "One Snowy Knight," being offered for four figures. One was going for " 2,630.52 FREE Shipping," she noted. Since other copies of the paperback were being sold elsewhere on Amazon for as little as 99 cents, she was perplexed. "How many really sell at that price? Are they just hoping to snooker some poor soul?" Ms. Macgillivray wrote in an email. She noted that her blog had gotten an explosion in traffic from Russia. "Maybe Russian hackers do this in their spare time, making money on the side," she said. But books are now a minuscule part of the company's revenue. Amazon is expanding into seemingly every field and geography, rattling competitors along the way. Prime Day, to be held on Monday, is a promotion that draws enormous media attention to discounted tech, gaming and other products. Meanwhile, the original bookstore is looking a little neglected, as if it were operated by algorithms with little sensible human input. "Amazon is driving us insane with its willingness to allow third party vendors to sell authors' books with zero oversight," said Vida Engstrand, director of communications for Kensington, which published "One Snowy Knight." "It's maddening and just plain wrong." The wild book prices were in the remote corners of the Amazon bookstore that the retailer does not pay much attention to, said Guru Hariharan, chief executive of Boomerang Commerce, which develops artificial intelligence technology for retailers and brands. Third party sellers, he said, come in all shapes and sizes from well respected national brands that are trying to maintain some independence from Amazon to entrepreneurial individuals who use Amazon's marketplace as an arbitrage opportunity. These sellers list products they have access to, adjusting price and inventory to drive profits. Then there are the wild pricing specialists, who sell both new and secondhand copies. "By making these books appear scarce, they are trying to justify the exorbitant price that they have set," said Mr. Hariharan, who led a team responsible for 15,000 online sellers when he worked at Amazon a decade ago. Amazon said in a statement that "we actively monitor and remove" offers that violate its policies and that examples shown it by The Times including the hardcover version of the scholarly study "William T. Vollmann: A Critical Companion," which was featured for 3,204, more than 32 times the going price were "in error, and have since been removed." It declined to detail what its policies were. A decade ago, Elisabeth Petry wrote a tribute to her mother, the renowned novelist Ann Petry. "At Home Inside," published by the University of Mississippi Press, is now out of print, but late last week secondhand copies were for sale on Amazon. A discarded library copy was 1,900. One seller offered two copies, each for 1,967, although only one was described as "Nice!" All these were a bargain compared with the copy that cost 2,464. "I wish I had some of that money," Ms. Petry said. Buying books on Amazon can be confusing, because sometimes the exact same book can have more than one listing. For instance, a search for the Petry book turned up another listing. This time, there was just one copy for sale, which cost a mere 691. Whether a customer paid that price or three times that sum apparently depended on what listing he or she found. "Let's be honest," said Peter Andrews, a former Amazon brand specialist who is manager of international client services at One Click Retail, a consulting firm. "If I'm selling a 10 book for 610, all I need to do is get one person to buy it and I've made 600. It's just a matter of setting prices and wishful thinking." One of the sellers of Ms. Macgillivray's book is named Red Rhino, which says it is based in North Carolina. The bookseller's storefront on Amazon is curiously consistent. One of the first books on the store's first page was Anthony Bourdain's "Kitchen Confidential." It was priced at 607, a hundred times what it cost elsewhere on Amazon. All the books on the first few pages of the storefront including such popular standbys as "Fahrenheit 451," "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" and "1984" also go for 600. That appears to be a popular price point for booksellers taking the high road. Acme Books, which was selling the 691 Petry book, used that exact price for "101 Blessings for the Best Mom in the World" and quite a few other books. Red Rhino got nearly 1,400 customer service reviews over the last year an impressive number, considering many customers do not bother posting reviews. The reviews are 91 percent positive, although some of the reviewers appeared uncertain just what a book is. "The book is intact, and it is not broken," wrote one. Commented another: "Very nice. Flexibility noted in many venues." Neither Acme nor Red Rhino returned emails for comment sent through their Amazon pages. As with many Amazon booksellers, it is hard to determine what, if any, existence they have outside the retailer. Even a casual browse through the virtual corridors of Amazon reveals an increasingly bizarre bazaar where the quaint policies of physical bookstores the stuff no one wants is piled on a cart outside for a buck a volume are upended. John Sladek, who wrote perceptive science fiction about robotics and artificial intelligence, predicted in a 1975 story that computers might start making compelling but false connections: If you're trying to reserve a seat on the plane to Seville, you'd get a seat at the opera instead. While the person who wants the opera seat is really just making an appointment with a barber, whose customer is just then talking to the box office of "Hair," or maybe making a hairline reservation ... Mr. Sladek, who died in 2000, is little read now, which naturally means his books are often marketed for inordinate sums on Amazon. One of his mystery novels, "Invisible Green," has a Red Rhino "buy box" Amazon's preferred deal offering it for 664. That is a real bargain compared with what a bookseller with the improbable name Supersonic Truck is asking: 1,942. (Copies from other booksellers are as little as 30.) Supersonic Truck, which Amazon says has 100 percent positive ratings, did not respond to a message seeking comment. Ms. Macgillivray, who has published eight novels, said she had been poking around Amazon's bookstore and was more perplexed than ever by the pricing. "There's nothing illegal about someone listing an item for sale at whatever the market will bear, even if they don't have the book but plan to buy it when someone orders it," she said. "At the same time, I would think Amazon wouldn't want their platform used for less than honorable practices." Since Ms. Macgillivray tweeted about "One Snowy Knight," the price on Amazon has not stood still. The most expensive copy just jumped again, to 2,800.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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CHICAGO When he began appearing in clubs here in 1974, Terence Smith wasn't trying to fool anyone. At 6 foot 9 in heels, with a bobbed blond wig barely hiding his dreadlocks, he wasn't aiming, as the Cheryl Lynn disco hit that became a drag rallying cry put it, "to be real." Nor was he trying to win, when, 18 years later, in his drag persona of Joan Jett Blakk, he sought the Democratic nomination for president. The slogan: "Lick Bush in '92." But if a black gay drag queen had no chance at victory, Blakk's campaign was more than a merry farce . Beneath its falseness, it was somehow genuine, suggesting the possibility of a different kind of success buried within conventional failure. That doubleness is both the subject and method of "Ms. Blakk for President," the uplifting hot mess of a play by Tarell Alvin McCraney and Tina Landau that opened on Monday at the Steppenwolf Theater Company. By any standard measure, it falls short of coherent drama. But by the nonstandard measures that drag has always lived by, it may be just as valuable as something else. Realness certainly isn't the aesthetic. Though partly drawn from recent interviews the playwrights conducted with Mr. Smith, "Ms. Blakk for President" is no documentary. For that, you might spend time in the theater's lobby, where an illustrated timeline of gay liberation and loss provides context, particularly about the drag and trans cultures that often get erased from such stories. Inside, Steppenwolf's Upstairs Theater is itself in drag. Unrecognizable as the place where I saw Bruce Norris's "Downstate" eight months ago, it features a raised runway zigzagging through the middle of what used to be the audience, with cafe tables, couches and conventional seats scattered around and amid the action. As designed by David Zinn, it approximates the bars and clubs in which Blakk, played by Mr. McCraney, literally made a name for herself. By the time the play's action begins, she had already used that name to further her political goals and have fun. In 1991 she ran for mayor against Richard M. Daley, a race that put the unlikely pair on a magazine cover as the "King and Queen" of Chicago. So when the local branch of the recently established advocacy group Queer Nation seeks to disrupt the 1992 Democratic convention in New York City as a way of bringing attention to gay rights, Blakk, in her fuchsia faux Chanel, seems a natural figurehead, sweet and sour and sure to be noticed. "If a bad actor can be elected president," she declaims, "why not a good drag queen?" Her not unreasonable platform: Fire everyone in Washington, hand the C.D.C. over to Act Up, hire the jobless to build houses for the homeless and legalize all drugs but tax them heavily. "Ms. Blakk for President," which Ms. Landau conceived and also directs, is an impressionistic record of Blakk's "true mock" campaign, staged as an old fashioned drag burlesque show. There are comedy bits, fabulous costumes (by Toni Leslie James) and musical interludes, some involving Marilyn Monroe ( Sawyer Smith ) as a tutelary spirit. These tend to upstage the main story, in which Blakk tries to get onto the floor of the convention at Madison Square Garden to make a speech. If that thread of plot, slim to begin with, quickly frays it was not even clear to me, until a later scene spelled it out, whether Blakk made it onto the floor in reality or fantasy it's because the authors are more interested in what happens along the way, and in how we tell queer stories. From the preshow variety acts to the postshow dance party, Ms. Landau makes sure we understand Blakk's quixotic campaign in the context of a culture that makes magpie victories from scraps of found material. In a way, this was also the aesthetic of "SpongeBob SquarePants: The Broadway Musical" which Ms. Landau directed in 2017. As in most drag shows, subtlety is not the aim here. Blakk's antagonists are cartoons, whether fascistic police officers or mainstream gays embarrassed to be represented by someone so proudly and disreputably "queer." Blakk's supporters are hardly more dimensional, generally spouting familiar agitprop or evoking the shouty agenda battles that have always bedeviled liberation movements. But in quieter moments, Mr. McCraney, both as author and performer, fills in some of the emotional blanks. He certainly makes a stunning sight in Blakk's outfits, an effect somehow enhanced by makeup that replicates Mr. Smith's cracked front teeth. At other moments he is not afraid to show us as he did in his Tony nominated script for "Choir Boy" the confusion and pain of even the proudest outsider. That vulnerability in drag's enamel shell is beautifully dramatized in the play's best moment, when Mr. McCraney, in a men's room at the Garden, transforms from Mr. Smith to Ms. Blakk in a sort of religious ritual. "This is my body and it is queer," he says, before getting his lipstick on More than anything, that self acceptance is what "Ms. Blakk for President" wants to model. The cast members who also include Patrick Andrews as a Queer Nation activist, Molly Brennan as a gay cable network producer, Daniel Kyri as a nerdy videographer and Jon Hudson Odom as the drag performer Glennda Orgasm appear in and out of various disguises that mostly let their own personalities show through. They demonstrate what it might look like if everyone relaxed about their gender presentation and stopped trying to police what other people find pleasurable. Policing what other people find pleasurable is basically a critic's job description, but I admit that "Ms. Blakk for President" defeated my attempts to judge it. Like Mr. Smith, who ran again for president in 1996 and for other offices since, the play subverts conventional ideas of success and failure. When "living is an act of resistance," as the authors write, a culture no less than a play succeeds just by surviving.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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Griselda Pollock, a Canadian and British art historian known for pioneering feminist study in the discipline, won the Holberg Prize, one of the largest international awards given to scholars in the humanities, social sciences, law or theology. The prize committee, in a citation, called Dr. Pollock "the foremost feminist art historian working today." "Since the 1970s, Pollock has been teaching and publishing in a field in which she is not only a renowned authority, but which she helped create," the committee wrote. The panel also noted her contributions to the field of film studies and cultural history broadly. The Holberg Prize, first awarded in 2004, comes with an award of 6 million Norwegian kroner, or about 650,000, and is given every year to a researcher who has made outstanding contributions in fields in the humanities, social sciences, law or theology. The prize is funded by the Norwegian government. Past winners include Paul Gilroy, Cass Sunstein and Onora O'Neill. Dr. Pollock is a professor at the University of Leeds. She has published 22 monographs, with four more forthcoming. Her 1981 book, "Old Mistresses: Women, Art and Ideology," co authored with Rozsika Parker, was a radical critique of the discipline of art history and its canon. It has become a classic text in feminist art history, as has her 1988 book, "Vision and Difference: Femininity, Feminism and Histories of Art."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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Created by Joe Gangemi and by Gregory Jacobs, a longtime Steven Soderbergh collaborator, "Red Oaks" stars Craig Roberts as David Meyers, a college kid who nurses dreams of becoming a filmmaker while logging time as an assistant tennis pro. The terrific ensemble around him includes Richard Kind and Jennifer Grey as his parents, who are deep in alternative marriage counseling; Oliver Cooper as his best friend, Wheeler, a shaggy haired valet who pines for a lifeguard (Alexandra Turshen) way out of his league; Ennis Esmer as David's superior, a suave home wrecker who seduces his discontented middle aged tennis students; and Paul Reiser as a wealthy Wall Street shark with an iron grip on the club presidency. Here are three reasons I love "Red Oaks": "Red Oaks" is the anti "Stranger Things." Rather than bombard the viewer with obvious callbacks and visual ideas plucked from '80s blockbusters, the show takes a more relaxed approach, with more playful references to the past. Some of that may be owed to a rotating cast of directors who understand the era, like Amy Heckerling ("Fast Times at Ridgemont High"), Hal Hartley ("The Unbelievable Truth"), and Gregg Araki ("The Living End"), and don't fetishize the feathered hair and Le Coq Sportif polo shirts any more than necessary. The country club is a lived in space, not a glib repository for John Hughes homages. Even when "Red Oaks" does opt to wink a little, as in a brilliant stand alone episode that riffs on body swapping comedies like "Vice Versa" and "Like Father, Like Son," David and his father glean touching insight into each other's lives. Rather than exploit Grey's career making turn in "Dirty Dancing," in which she scandalized the Catskills with Patrick Swayze, it imagines a tentative, late blooming same sex attraction to other middle aged women. And after two characters see "Aliens," there's just the subtlest of nods to Reiser's presence in the film. There are no lazy needle drops on "Red Oaks," none of the No. 1 hits or other obvious signifiers that tend to go along with period comedies of its kind. The soundtrack has been impeccably curated, with mid 80s radio hits that haven't been unearthed much in the decades since and hipper selections to underscore some significant moments. Gone but not forgotten chart climbers like Samantha Fox's "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)," Sheena Easton's "Strut" and Culture Club's "I'll Tumble 4 Ya" coexist with college rock staples like Television's "Marquee Moon," Talking Heads's "Pulled Up," and New Order's "Ceremony." The show may queue up Roxy Music's popular love song "More Than This" for maximum detonation, but not before dropping the lesser known title track from the band's "Avalon." And it all comes together like one long, seamless mix tape from a good friend.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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This Daily Pill Cut Heart Attacks by Half. Why Isn't Everyone Getting It? Giving people an inexpensive pill containing generic drugs that prevent heart attacks an idea first proposed 20 years ago but rarely tested worked quite well in a new study, slashing the rate of heart attacks by more than half among those who regularly took the pills. If other studies now underway find similar results, such multidrug cocktails sometimes called "polypills" given to vast numbers of older people could radically change the way cardiologists fight the soaring rates of heart disease and strokes in poor and middle income countries Even if the concept is ultimately adopted, there will be battles over the ingredients. The pill in the study, which involved the participation of 6,800 rural villagers aged 50 to 75 in Iran, contained a cholesterol lowering statin, two blood pressure drugs and a low dose aspirin. But the study, called PolyIran and published Thursday by The Lancet, was designed 14 years ago. More recent research in wealthy countries has questioned the wisdom of giving some drugs particularly aspirin to older people with no history of disease. The stakes are high. As more residents of poor countries survive childhood into middle age and beyond and as rising incomes contribute to their adoption of cigarette smoking and diets high in sugar and fat a polypill offers a way to help millions lead longer, healthier lives. About 18 million people a year die of cardiovascular disease, and 80 percent of them are in poor and middle income countries threatened by rising rates of obesity, diabetes, tobacco use and sedentary living. Medical experts, however, are sharply divided over the polypill concept. Its advocates including some prominent cardiologists point to the study as evidence that the World Health Organization should endorse distributing such pills without a prescription to hundreds of millions of people over age 50 around the globe. Some have estimated that widespread use could cut cardiac death rates by 60 to 80 percent. "The polypill concept is very important and it's surprising that it's taking so long for people to accept it," said Dr. Salim Yusuf, director of the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Canada and an expert on cardiac health in poor countries, who was not involved in the Iran study. "This study takes us one step closer." Other leading cardiologists consider the approach unethical and dangerous. Because aspirin, statins and blood pressure drugs all have side effects, they argue, no one should get them without first being assessed for risk factors like high blood pressure, high cholesterol or family history. "I'm a skeptic of the one size fits all, four drugs for everyone approach," said Dr. Steven E. Nissen, head of the department of cardiovascular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic. "It runs counter to what most of us in the U.S. consider good medical practice." Simple tests, including cholesterol tests that use only a finger prick, are available, he noted. Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and now the president of Resolve to Save Lives, an organization that seeks to lower worldwide cardiac deaths, said he thought a four drug pill like the one used in the study was appropriate only for people who had suffered a cardiac event. Some blood pressure medications are safe enough to give to untested people, he said. But aspirin, which can cause bleeding in the brain, is not; and statins, which can, in rare cases, cause liver and muscle damage, may not be. The Iran study was conducted by doctors from Tehran University, the University of Birmingham in Britain and other institutions. It was the first study of such a multidrug pill that was large and long lasting enough to measure "clinical outcomes" how many people actually had heart attacks, strokes or episodes of heart failure while taking the pills, rather than just how many, for example, lowered their blood pressure or cholesterol. Similar studies are underway in many countries. However, since there is so much controversy about the ingredients used in the medication, each study has its own pill recipe. Dr. Yusuf is leading the TIPS 3 trial on about 5,700 people in Bangladesh, Canada, Colombia, India, Malaysia, the Philippines, Tanzania and Tunisia; it uses a pill containing three blood pressure drugs and a statin. (The trial's three other "arms" use low dose aspirin, vitamin D and a placebo pill.) It is expected to end in March . And the SECURE trial is recruiting about 3,200 patients in seven European countries who are over 65 and have already had one heart attack. Its pill contains aspirin, a statin and a single blood pressure drug. It is expected to end in late 2021. In the Iran trial, those assigned to take pills had a third fewer cardiac events over five years than the control group, whose participants got face to face advice and monthly text reminders to lose weight, stop smoking, eat healthy food and exercise. All participants were asked to return their used blister packs of pills. Those who appeared to have taken at least 70 percent of them had the highest protective effect 57 percent fewer cardiac events. The rates of serious adverse events were similar in both groups. Only a few in each trial arm suffered from bleeding in the brain, the stomach or the intestines, all of which can be caused by aspirin. Mysteriously, although the cholesterol levels of those who got the pills dropped significantly during the trial, their blood pressure levels did not. That puzzled several experts who looked at the results, including Dr. Frieden, who said the two anti hypertension drugs used a diuretic and an ACE inhibitor should have significantly cut blood pressure levels. Dr. Tom Marshall, a cardiac disease prevention specialist at the University of Birmingham and a co author of the study, acknowledged the anomaly, saying, "I wish I had the answer." Baseline blood pressures in the population were not high, averaging 130 over 79, he said. Dr. Frieden said he was also troubled that the trial did not explain whether blood pressure readings were taken by machine or by people with stethoscopes. Some machines and some poorly trained humans get inaccurate results, he said. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. The trial was conducted in the "Golestan Cohort," a group of more than 50,000 Turkmen speaking people currently enrolled in cancer studies administered by Iranian researchers in coordination with the W.H.O. and the National Cancer Institute. Dr. Rekha Mankad, director of the Women's Heart Clinic at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, who was not involved in the Iran study, said it had some flaws, including early problems with how clusters were chosen and the fact that each cluster inevitably included some people already on heart disease medication. Nonetheless, she said, the overall study was well designed and she particularly praised the fact that half the participants were women. More than 80 percent of the study participants took most of their pills. Poor adherence, she said, is one of the biggest problems that polypills are meant to fight. Not only do poor people have little access to doctors or pharmacies, she noted, but "patients constantly say, 'Listen, doc, I take too many pills,' and drop something." "This is one pill with all the major things patients need," she added. "Now we need to see how difficult it will be to apply it to the real world."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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The Lebanese born architect Amale Andraos of WORKac will design the BeMA: Beirut Museum of Art, the museum announced on Tuesday. Ms. Andraos, the dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, founded the Manhattan based WORKac with her husband, Dan Wood, in 2003. "It's quite personal," Ms. Andraos, who left Beirut at age 3, said in a telephone interview. BeMA on a site owned by Universite Saint Joseph that once marked the Green Line that separated predominantly Muslim areas from predominantly Christian ones in the Lebanese civil war will feature a permanent collection of modern and contemporary artworks from Lebanon, the Lebanese diaspora and the region. The design wraps the building's facade in a six story promenade an allusion to the Mediterranean balcony turning the museum's walls into indoor outdoor spaces for art. This vertical envelope will include galleries, community rooms and urban gardens that invite in the surrounding community. "It's really intended to be part of the campus and part of the city," Ms. Andraos said, "to break down the sense that art is elitist and closed and instead become a place where there can be discussion and conversation."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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THE collector car community left its annual week of auction extravaganzas here with much to think about. After some uncertain years, have the value fluctuations caused by worldwide economic turmoil ended? Are the record breaking sale prices limited to the finest and rarest vehicles, or will more common offerings also benefit from the rising tide?. A total of 2,143 vehicles were auctioned at six events here, with total sales of at least 182 million, according to Hagerty.com, which tracks auction results for its collector car price guide. One indicator subject to the influence of available cars, to be sure was the average sale price: 84,985, a healthy 17,142 higher than last year. By genre, particularly strong sales were attained among European sports and racing cars like mid 1950s Mercedes Benz Gullwings; rare classics like a Tucker Torpedo and a one of five 1933 Pierce Arrow Silver Arrow; and vehicles with celebrity provenance, like a 1932 Packard Twin Six roadster once owned by Clark Gable. But over all there was strength, relative to recent years, from the top of the price ladder to the bottom rung. "Our totals were only a couple million off from 2007," Craig Jackson, chief executive of the Barrett Jackson Auction Company, said in an interview, referring to the peak year before the economy went into a tailspin. "It's coming back." Barrett Jackson's six day event, the largest of the annual January auctions in the Phoenix area, accounted for more than half of the vehicles that changed hands during the week, with total sales of more than 90 million. Barrett Jackson's top sale was a 1948 Tucker Torpedo that brought a surprising 2.9 million. The previous record for a Tucker was 1.1 million at Monterey, Calif., in 2010. "It was aggressively estimated before the sale at 2.5 to 3 million," the president of the auction house, David Gooding, said in an interview. "Eyebrows were raised at that amount. But the sale absolutely soared past that. We had no idea it would do that well." What might such a sale mean for the collector car market as a whole? "It is a strong but discerning market," Mr. Gooding said. "It's very, very strong for the best of the best. But average cars didn't set the world on fire." He added: "There is incredible strength for luxury brands from Europe, sports and racing cars especially, more post World War II than prewar. Those vehicles are seeing very strong, high demand." Even so, six auctions in town during the week may be one or two too many. Bonhams joined the party this year with a one day event, while at auctions conducted by RM, Russo Steele and Silver there was a drop from 2011 both in the number of cars consigned and in gross proceeds. "I do see the scene as a bit diluted around the edges," Mr. Gooding said. Even Gooding's catalog offered some vehicles a bit out of its usual range. These included a 1953 Simplex motorcycle and a garish 1948 Chrysler Town Country convertible once owned by the actor Leo Carrillo of the "Cisco Kid" TV series, that had a Texas longhorn head mounted on the hood. The longhorn's eyes even lit up, blinking left or right to signal turns. "Such a unique vehicle," the auctioneer, Charlie Ross, said with understatement. At RM, notable deals included the 781,000 paid for a 1991 Ferrari F40 Berlinetta bought new by Lee A. Iacocca, the onetime Chrysler chairman, and the 990,000 sale of a 1959 BMW 507 roadster one of only 251 built. Barrett Jackson, long considered a specialist in 1950s and '60s American sports and muscle cars, extended its reach in the other direction. The company's seven figure sales nine in all included prewar classics from Daimler, Duesenberg and Isotta Fraschini. The high end cars of Barrett Jackson's new Salon Offering Collection are part of what it called the 5000 series, named for the special lot numbers assigned to them. These cars, which carried reserves of at least 500,000, included the Tucker and a 1947 Bentley Mark VI from the collection of Ron Pratte, a Phoenix area businessman. Thirty five percent of the buyers at Barrett Jackson's auctions were first timers. "Businessmen are seeing how much potential there is in putting money into classic cars," Mr. Jackson said. "Where else are you going to put your money in a bank?" No small part of the Barrett Jackson event's appeal is based on its six days of nationally televised programming on the Speed cable TV channel. "The 5000 Series cars brought in some excitement and we are all about excitement," Mr. Jackson said. "We could do small, European style, one day events only for a small, select group of high end cars. But we prefer the large scale American style events. It's a lifestyle event now, with tours of the Phoenix area for our people who come in from out of town. We take the wives more than 100 of them this year shopping, golfing and to the casino. We have dinner and receptions. So do our sponsors." On the other hand, the auction house is getting very picky about the vehicles it accepts, Mr. Jackson said. "We turned down a lot of cars this time."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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The Apple logo hanging on the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue in New York City. In a recent consumer study, people had a difficult time recreating even some of the corporate world's simplest and most ubiquitous logos. Can You Draw the Starbucks Logo Without Cheating? Probably Not. The Apple logo was green. The symbol for Foot Locker was a sneaker. And Starbucks? The famous siren on every frappuccino and chai latte was not exactly the friendliest looking sea dweller. When 156 people were recently asked if they could draw some of the world's most iconic brand logos from memory, some of their recreations were laughably off the mark. But something wasn't so funny for the companies that have tried to sear their brands into the minds of consumers everywhere: For 10 iconic brands including Wal Mart, Burger King, and Ikea, the overall percentage of near perfect drawings was just 16 percent. That means fewer than one fifth of the participants could remember the correct positioning of the familiar blue and red rectangle of Domino's, or the three black stripes of Adidas. Even Target whose emblem involves a simple red bull's eye above the brand name confused people: 41 percent forgot the number of circles. "People spend so much on marketing to get people to recognize and remember their brand," said Nelson James, co founder and chief operating officer of the e commerce site Signs.com, which led the study. "We just wanted to know does it work?" The answer is that being able to recognize a logo and being able to recreate it appear to be vastly different things. Although participants thought they had a good grasp on the designs, expressing confidence that they could redraw them without seeing them, their actual reproductions proved otherwise. Logos are what companies use to help customers identify the brand, and choices like design, color and font are "critical," Mr. James said. "Having these logos where you can't correctly recall details means something." In an age of digital saturation, perhaps many of these carefully constructed logos are not as memorable as we think. A study conducted in 2014 by psychologists at the University of California, Los Angeles similarly asked 85 participants if they could draw the familiar Apple logo from memory. More than half the subjects even identified themselves as strictly Apple users. Yet only one could draw the icon perfectly, as scored by a 14 point rubric. Should Apple be worried? Not necessarily. Dr. Alan Castel, a psychology professor who was one of the authors of the study, said that the inability to accurately recall such daily ephemera as a brand logo really might be a beneficial quirk of our memory system. "We don't burden our memory with things we don't need to know," Dr. Castel said. He referred to a famous study in 1979 by the psychologists Raymond Nickerson and Marilyn Jager Adams, in which participants were asked to draw the face of a penny. Most struggled. "It's rare that you really need to recall something from memory," Dr. Castel said. "You simply recognize it, you see it on an item or a computer. You like it, you buy it." Still, in recent years, brands like Uber, YouTube, and Dropbox have redesigned their logos, trying to make them more simple, more intuitive or more easily recognizable. In 2014, Airbnb announced its new logo, which it calls the Belo, in a video that noted that the design was easy for customers to draw. Paul Stafford, co founder of DesignStudio, the agency that led the rebranding effort, said that Airbnb envisioned people renting out their homes and putting their own spin on the Belo on everything from magazines to bathrobes and shampoo bottles, like a hotel. "We had to create something that was so simple that everybody could draw it and interpret it themselves," Mr. Stafford said. "They also wanted people to be sharing it. Right down to the people tattooing the mark on their arms." 15 minimum wage for federal contractors will take effect Jan. 30. Jeff Bezos gives 100 million to the Obama Foundation. Mr. Stafford, however, said that he did not think that being able to draw a logo necessarily indicates how well it resonates. People often see logos so much that they feel like they know it. But they rarely critique it or study it enough to reproduce fine details a phenomenon that psychologists like Dr. Castel call "inattentional amnesia." When something is seen frequently, the information ends up being more easily ignored or forgotten. For instance, Dr. Castel said he would be curious how accurately people could recall the fine details of a stop sign. "We know it's red, but the more subtle features the exact shape of it, whether there's a white border around it these are things we often miss, even though we've seen it millions of times," he said. Perhaps the most surprising result of the Signs.com study was the company that fared best: Ikea. The Swedish furniture maker with the distinctive blue and yellow logo plastered across its giant retail stores was redrawn near perfectly by 30 percent of the participants. Asa Nordin, who is a senior coordinator of Ikea trademarks at Inter Ikea Systems, said the unique shape, colors, and longevity of the logo it has been around since 1983 most likely contributed to its memorability. "The logo is merely the symbol for what the Ikea brand promises and delivers," Ms. Nordin said in an email. "The logo shall mirror that 'promise' as near as possible, as well as stand out from its surroundings. To be consistent and unique is clearly a strength of a logo." The hardest logo to draw was Starbucks, which was redesigned in 2011. It is also arguably the most complex. "Simplicity is key," Mr. James said. "That's not necessarily a new concept. But this definitely corroborates that idea." But is any logo overwhelmingly memorable? Mr. James is now curious. Initially, he resisted putting an overly straightforward and ubiquitous symbol in his study, like those of McDonald's or Nike. "We thought it was too simple," Mr. James said. "But, I wonder."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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Hilton Worldwide has announced a new hotel brand today, Tru by Hilton, that is positioned to be the first design forward hotel chain in the midscale category where rooms start at 80. The new brand, the 13th in Hilton's portfolio, aims to capture travelers who it says shares a "millennial mind set," or an interest in value, simplicity and experience running across generations from millennials to baby boomers. Picture a Quality Inn or a Comfort Inn with a makeover along the lines of an Ace hotel, without the hipster restaurants, and you may have Tru by Hilton, which features bright colors, a lobby designed with areas for eating, playing games, working and lounging and efficiently designed guest rooms. "The rooms got smaller and the lobby got bigger," said Phil Cordell, global head of Hilton Worldwide's focused service brands, highlighting the social aspects of the new concept.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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Should she get an Oscar nomination for "Roma," Yalitza Aparicio says, "I'd be breaking the stereotype that because we're Indigenous we can't do certain things."Credit...Natalia Mantini for The New York Times Should she get an Oscar nomination for "Roma," Yalitza Aparicio says, "I'd be breaking the stereotype that because we're Indigenous we can't do certain things." MEXICO CITY Yalitza Aparicio, the star of Alfonso Cuaron's "Roma," sat on a sunny bench in Parque Mexico, just a few blocks from the Mexico City neighborhood that gave the film its title. She chose the park for a chat amid months of red carpets, photo shoots and press interviews in hotel rooms because she said it reminded her most of home, Tlaxiaco, Oaxaca. Aparicio, now 25, had just completed her teaching degree and was living in that mountainous city of 40,000 when she auditioned on a whim for the lead role in "Roma," a housekeeper and nanny named Cleo. Now, Aparicio is being heralded as a role model for women and Indigenous people in Mexico, and buzzed about by critics for her performance. Does she get recognized a lot these days? "No! Here? Well, no," Aparicio said in Spanish. "They only seem to recognize me when we go out dressed up, but when I'm dressed naturally, no. I think that a lot of people haven't seen it yet, and we look different on the screen than in person." "I feel freer here than when I'm surrounded by buildings and closed in. I've never liked feeling closed in," Aparicio said. Within a few minutes, she was surrounded by something else: fans. They appeared one by one, studying her from afar, then approaching to shake her hand and take selfies. She obliged. Congratulations, Yali incredible, incredible movie. I grew up here, it took me back. I had a nanny, all those details. When I saw it, I think I cried five times. It's you, right? Can you take a photo of us? I'm not made up at all. If you can, the further away, the better. Congratulations, lots of future success! In December, Aparicio appeared on the cover of Vogue Mexico, a milestone for a woman of Indigenous descent in the magazine's 20 year history. Aparicio isn't satisfied to be an exception; she wants to use her emerging star power to create a more inclusive future for her country. "It shouldn't matter what you're into, how you look you can achieve whatever you aspire to," she said. Even before the movie began showing on Netflix in December, there were signs of change: That month, Mexico's Supreme Court ruled that the 2 million plus domestic workers, the vast majority of whom are women, must have access to the country's social security system. The new president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has vowed a special focus on alleviating the oppression and poverty Indigenous peoples face. Though Cuaron didn't set out to make a political film, he is embracing the result. At a premiere last month at the Cineteca Nacional in Mexico City, he welcomed a domestic workers rights advocate, Marcelina Bautista, to the stage. "All domestic workers in Mexico are Libo, we identify with her," Bautista told the audience, referring to Cuaron's childhood nanny, Liboria Rodriguez, on whom Cleo is based. "Mexico owes a lot to its women, and we must end the violence and abuse of power over women." Even as Aparicio is celebrated, she has become a target of racist attacks online. Aparicio said that while it initially upset her, she is now focused on the scores who have called her a role model and sent fan art. "I'm not the face of Mexico," she added, since the country has many faces. The editor in chief of Vogue Mexico and Vogue Latinoamerica, Karla Martinez de Salas, said she witnessed the racist and classist reactions to photos of Aparicio in Vanity Fair, and worried that the Vogue images would meet a similar response. Rather, they were celebrated with the largest response the magazine has ever received on social media. In the park, Aparicio sat facing the sun. Her best friend in real life and on film, Nancy Garcia Garcia (who plays Adela, the cook), has told her she looks tired these days. She feels tired. In August, Aparicio flew to Venice for the premiere of "Roma," where she watched the movie for the first time. She tried to contain her emotions, but 30 minutes in, she began crying, and continued until the closing credits. It has been a whirlwind ever since, with trips to London, San Francisco, New York, Toronto, Los Angeles and more. The journey actually started two years earlier. The director of a Tlaxiaco cultural center had invited Aparicio's older sister, Edith, to a mysterious casting call that would turn out to be for Cuaron's big screen portrait of Cleo and Mexico City in the 1970s. Casting the lead was a monthslong process that involved tapes of more than 3,000 women, none of whom Cuaron found quite right. At the audition, Edith Aparicio, who was pregnant, hesitated and urged Yalitza to try out instead so she could recount the details. Cuaron met her at a callback. "I was starting to get a bit nervous until suddenly Yalitza walks into the office, and it was that presence kind of shy but very open," Cuaron recalled by phone. He'd been looking to match the sensibility of Libo, an empathic way of relating to others. Soon after, Aparicio called back. There was a gap before the application season for teaching jobs. "She says, 'Well, I think I can do it,'" Cuaron recalled. "'I have nothing better to do.'" To prepare for filming, Cuaron asked Aparicio and Garcia to improvise scenes. He was amazed at how quickly they began playing Cleo and Adela not replicating a conversation they might have had after class at teachers college. "What you see in the film, that's not Yalitza, that is Cleo," Cuaron said. "She crafted that character, you know? And she did it in a very kind of detailed way." The actors were not given a script or even a story arc. Aparicio drew on the intricate world of the set, based on Cuaron's childhood memories, along with her own vision of the character, based in part on her mother's experiences as a domestic worker. Aparicio became so invested in the role that when tragedy strikes her character, she suffers with agonizing realism. In fact, when the doctors deliver terrible news to Cleo, Aparicio didn't believe them at first. On set, Cuaron created a reality for Aparicio to inhabit. Now, she hopes to create a new reality in Mexico and show that Indigenous women can rise to the highest level in any field. It's an aspiration that faces significant obstacles: More than 70 percent of Mexico's Indigenous population lives in poverty, and discrimination in hiring, education and the justice system is rampant. If by an outside chance Aparicio receives an Oscar nomination she has picked up a handful of awards but was overlooked, for instance, by the Golden Globes "I'd be breaking the stereotype that because we're Indigenous we can't do certain things because of our skin color," she said. "Receiving that nomination would be a break from so many ideas. It would open doors to other people to everyone and deepen our conviction that we can do these things now." Aparicio isn't sure if she'll continue to act. As a teacher, she recognizes that film can transmit powerful messages. Molding the minds and hearts of children is much easier than changing the ingrained beliefs of adults, she said, yet she has been astonished to find that "Roma" is doing just that. "In the end, this isn't so different from what I wanted to do," she said. "I realized that film can educate people of all ages, in a far reaching way."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Movies
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On Sunday, we finally returned to an era defining show, gone for years, that captivated the world with its high stakes melodrama woven from familiar human fallibility. That show was "Downton Abbey." Because in the long awaited Season 8 premiere of "Game of Thrones," from the grand royal arrival onward, Winterfell resembled nothing so much as that great Edwardian manse of swollen emotion. Charged reunions, new conflicts and old grudges played themselves out upstairs and downstairs, inside and out, between siblings and exes, old friends and in laws, much of it rippling outward from a haughty noblewoman no one liked all that much. Granted, I don't recall Lady Mary ever incinerating anyone's brother, as Daenerys did to poor Dickon Tarly last season. And instead of the dowager countess's bon mots, we got Bran, just sitting there creeping everybody out. Overall it was a somewhat soapy but generally very satisfying setup for the final run of "Game of Thrones," as the sides coalesced for the wars to come. Jon and Dany's coalition of the living currently includes nearly everyone not named or sleeping with Cersei. She heads up the King's Landing faction, and this week welcomed a mysterious new man Capt. Strickland, leader of the Golden Company onto the team and Euron into her bed, while inviting more speculation about her purported pregnancy with the departed Jaime. Nearly everyone we like has now made it to Winterfell, although they don't always like one another all that much. Sansa and Tyrion reminisced about their cheerless but technically continuing marriage. The Hound, Gendry and Arya negotiated their complicated triangle, with a smitten Gendry displaying all the game you'd expect from a guy who's been solo rowing and hiding in blacksmith forges for the past few years. Jorah came in praise of Sam's heroic greyscale treatment, but Dany ruined it by admitting she had executed his father and brother. And all that was before the arrival of Jaime, who, at last count: once shoved Bran out a window; will be hated by Sansa and Arya (though he'd asked Brienne also at Winterfell! to help them); killed Dany's ally Lady Olenna; tried to kill Dany; and by the way, made his name by killing her dad. The point is, Winterfell is a fraught place, tense with history and the clashes of strong personalities. For most of its run, "Game of Thrones" has been defined by bigness and a far flung story structure. But as it returns for the final hurrah, it feels constrained and claustrophobic, as people hash out their differences and drop revelation bombs within tight shadowy shots. Want exclusive "Game of Thrones" interviews and news, as well as the internet's best articles on that week's episode? Sign up for our Season 8 newsletter here. The constricted, almost Alamo esque confines reinforced both the narrative notion that humanity is about to make its last stand ideally the occupants are less doomed this time and the thematic one that sometimes profound or painful differences must be overcome in order to solve the really big challenges. On Sunday, most of those differences involved Daenerys, whose revelation to Sam, if the most painful, was hardly the only awkward result of the putative King in the North arriving in thrall to the Dragon Queen. Leave it to the always excellent Lady Mormont to say what everyone was thinking. "You left Winterfell a king and came back ... I'm not sure what you are now," she said. "A lord? Nothing at all?" P.R. has always been a blind spot for Jon his stark moral rectitude (pun intended) makes him oblivious to the fact that selling the right thing is sometimes as important as doing the right thing. And sure enough, there he was on Sunday, sticking to the same "I'm doing this for your own good" script that literally got him killed awhile back. It was left to Tyrion, whose failure to coach Jon on his messaging in advance was only his latest advisory failing, to attempt damage control. But then he just said something else that will come back to haunt him. We have the greatest army ever and two full grown dragons, he said. "And soon the Lannister army will ride north to join our cause." Jon's reunion with Arya out by the weirwood tree was the nicest moment of the episode, the two outsiders of the Stark family coming together with more unguarded warmth than either had displayed toward anyone else, save perhaps their father Ned. (Have you ever used Needle, Jon wondered. "Once or twice," she said.) It made up for the trademark awkwardness of Jon's reunion with Bran, although somewhere in his three eyed database Bran appears to have stumbled upon some self awareness. In general, it probably wasn't the homecoming Jon was hoping for. It was all enough to make you want to retreat to the countryside with your lady. At one time there was fairly fervent fan speculation about who would ultimately ride the show's three dragons. Dany predictably took to Drogon a couple seasons ago and then, in an upset, the Night King claimed Viserion in Season 7. That left Rhaegal, the dragon named for Jon's father, though he didn't realize it. (Yet.) Sure enough, Dany coaxed Jon aboard, and after a brief bit of Dragons Ed the neck scale equivalent of 10 and 2 being "whatever you can hold on to" they were off. Soon Jon had Rhaegal fairly under control, and the couple was enjoying a loins stirring ride through the North. It was all ... fine. Look, I am not immune to the charms of new romance. That said, the whole sequence made me think about how many times I've told skeptical, fantasy averse friends that "Game of Thrones" is not what they think it is. Because for a few minutes, as the strings swelled and two gloriously maned young royals frolicked on dragons above a wintry landscape, it totally was. It also might amount to a final moment of bliss for Jonerys because the big bomb was about to drop at Winterfell. If Sam had been feeling hesitant about revealing Jon's true parentage to him, he was less so after he learned his new queen had torched his family. For his part, Jon seemed more upset about the besmirching of Ned's honorable reputation than about the upending of his own ideas about himself, though he could be forgiven for a certain amount of compartmentalization. "I know it's a lot to take," Sam said in a hilarious bit of understatement, before driving the wedge that only figures to get wider and more painful over the next few weeks. "You gave up your crown to save your people would she do the same?" We know the answer, and so does Jon. Perhaps Davos and Tyrion's plan to package the candidates as a power couple will soothe brittle egos, although it seems unlikely we've seen how well Tyrion's plans work out these days. We'll have to wait for next week, at least, to learn the ramifications for that, as well as to learn how he responds to Jaime's revelation that Cersei was lying, of course, about helping out in the war against the dead. (I'm already looking forward to Sansa's reaction.) Down in King's Landing, Cersei was in peak Cersei form, drinking wine, conniving with Qyburn, meet and greeting new mercenaries and having bored sex with her bug eyed suitor. Perhaps, though that was a rare bit of raw anguish we saw from Cersei after Euron crassly announced his own dad goals. The only things she has ever demonstrably cared about was Jaime and her children. Was her pain triggered by the loss of Jaime? The loss of the unborn child? All or none of the above? One vote against its being Jaime was that she sicced Bronn on him. Bronn whom we're repeatedly told cares only about himself and his own enrichment, even as he's done all sorts of heroic stuff for Jaime and Tyrion is now officially on their collective tail. Cersei has requested that he use that infernal crossbow, the ultimate emblem of Lannister toxicity. (Or an instrument of "poetic justice," if you're Cersei.) The Brothers Lannister have other concerns these days, of course, and the crossbow for hire subplot is probably just a means to get Bronn to Winterfell with everyone else before the big White Walker clash. But there's one person we know definitely won't be there: Little Ned Umber. You might recall that we met Ned last season, when Sansa wanted to take castles away from him and another child, Alys Karstark, because their fathers sided with Ramsay in the Battle of the Bastards. Those castles, Last Hearth and Karhold, also happen to be the first the White Walkers would encounter after breaching the Wall. But Jon intervened, saying he wouldn't punish children for the sins of their fathers. Fun fact: Sunday's premiere was the first post MeToo episode of "Game of Thrones." The show celebrated by plying Bronn with nude prostitutes. It was a "Thrones" throwback the series has mostly abandoned the gateway gratuitous sex of early seasons and perhaps one last kiss off from a show that's been known to tweak its scolders. (See also: the close up of the venereally afflicted actor in Season 6, after complaints about insufficient male nudity.) My colleague James Poniewozik wrote about how as "Game of Thrones" has gone on, it has become a "dragon delivery device," with character and narrative development becoming secondary to spectacle. A related quibble: The dragons themselves have become dad joke delivery devices. See Drogon's stink eye during Jon and Dany's date, or Jon's quip about how Rhaegal "completely ruined horses for me." What does a dragon eat? Sansa wondered. "Anything it wants," Dany says. And so on. It's a small thing, but this show doesn't wear corniness well. "The last time we spoke was at Joffrey's wedding, a miserable affair," Tyrion told Sansa. "It had its moments," she replied. See? That's actually funny. I'm looking forward to seeing how Jaime's arrival shakes up things at Winterfell we haven't even mentioned the Jaime Brienne Tormund love triangle. (Tormund arrives next week.) I'm also glad the show seems to be dispensing with the reunions and revelations fairly quickly, rather than letting them hang over these last episodes, which have plenty else to sort out before this thing is done. What about you? Was the return to Westeros everything you hoped it would be? Do Jon and Dany have any future at all? ("Nothing lasts," Varys intoned portentously.) Are we positive Lady Mary never incinerated anyone's brother? (She sexed a guy to death but there was no fire maybe she's saving it for the movie.) Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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From left, seated on couch: Amory Gonzalez Juarez, Jon Hanson and Thiago Naves, all of whom attended an M.I.T. boot camp in Australia. Together, they founded a company called QuickBrasil. It was time for Jon Hanson to step it up. His dream was to start a successful venture. Mr. Hanson, an engineer, now 38, had already taken a few online courses, but it was the intensive weeklong M.I.T. Innovation and Entrepreneurship Bootcamp held in Brisbane, Australia, a world away from his home in Brunswick, Me., that made his quest a reality. "I told myself, 'If I don't do it now, it's not going to happen,'" Mr. Hanson said. "It was exciting. I love traveling and going to new countries, and I had never been to Australia before, but the intensity of the course is something that surprised me. They don't call it a boot camp for no reason. I think the most sleep I got any night that week was four hours." Boot camps, like the one Mr. Hanson attended, are just one example of the growing number of short, intensive programs now offered online, or on campuses around the world, that can help workers at all stages of their careers become more globally minded and find global job opportunities. Mr. Hanson and the other 117 participants at the Brisbane boot camp listened to interactive lectures from successful entrepreneurs, founders of socially conscious nonprofits and venture capitalists, and each was part of a team that was assigned to design a business to solve a problem. Ultimately, Mr. Hanson connected with a boot camp student from Brazil and one from Guatemala, and they formed QuickBrasil, which helps people whose flights have been canceled. The service, currently only for Brazilians, helps passengers receive compensation from claims that the company files against any airline that serves the Brazilian market. "We came from different backgrounds and talents and coalesced around a common idea," he said. The rising number of concentrated programs intended to create a global mind set is not unexpected given that workplaces are increasingly global, with teams spanning continents and cultures. "People now compete globally, and it is intense," said Erdin Beshimov, a founder and director of M.I.T. Bootcamps, which started five years ago. "The opportunities are much greater for those with a global mind set." Dana Galin, 52, a leadership coach and founder of Imprint Leadership Partners in Atlanta, attended the three day Transformation with Purpose Bootcamp earlier this year at I.E. University, which is based in Madrid. "I am always looking to develop and help my clients do the same," she said. The curriculum examined "global trends, history and cybersecurity and how you place yourself in the world, and pushed us to explore our values," she said. The teaching took place at I.E. University's campus in Segovia, outside Madrid, in the 13th century Convent of Santa Cruz la Real. "It caused me to think bigger, to place myself in a bigger playground, and a bigger world," she said. "The world needs you to play big and make an impact in your part of the world. It's the ripple effect. The program made me wake up internally to what is driving my thinking and wake up to the world that I am a part of." That's not a bad return on a brief getaway, Ms. Galin said. And it's just what she and many others are seeking. "These kinds of programs are becoming so in demand because careers are way longer and more uncertain and fluid, and the need for constant update and upgrade is growing," said Teresa Martin Retortillo, the executive president of I.E. Exponential Learning. "The opportunity to pause in that process for a short period of intense and immersive training has become more and more relevant." While these may not be technical skills like coding, there is intrinsic value in looking at things from a different perspective. "Our students work on their curiosity," Ms. Martin Retortillo said. "You have the luxury of sitting next to people from different nationalities. Whether you're 28 or 58, sitting next to someone from a different culture is totally the spark." Following is a selection of short, globally focused programs that can help entrepreneurs, and those who are thinking about changing careers or are adding skills to their toolboxes. The M.I.T. Bootcamps are typically three to seven days of intensive training and are held around the globe. Most of the boot camps have 60 to 120 students. This year, M.I.T. will hold six open admission boot camps. Three are overseas (Brisbane, Tokyo and Hoffenheim, Germany), and three are on the Cambridge, Mass., campus (Healthcare Innovation, Deep Tech and Venture Scaling). Typically, 30 to 40 countries are represented at each one. Tuition: 6,500 to 9,500, depending on the content and equipment required. M.I.T. offers limited scholarships. Administrators can also guide participants to potential sources of funding. Mr. Hanson, for example, received a grant from the Maine Technology Institute. The M.I.T. Sloan School of Management also offers a Global Executive Academy, an eight day management and leadership program in Cambridge. Tuition: 15,300 (excluding accommodations). The Transformation With Purpose three day boot camp in Madrid and Segovia is aimed at those over 40 who are seeking to explore what their next act will be. Tuition: EUR4,600, about 5,100. There's also Transformation With Purpose Fellowship, a residential program on the Madrid campus for professionals who typically have more than two decades of work experience. The fellowship, which lasts nearly three months, is intended "to accelerate and enrich fellows' transformation to a new chapter of personal and professional purpose and explore options for the next act." Tuition for fellows is EUR45,000, about 50,000. Living expenses are not included. I.E. also offers five week High Impact Online Programs that are taught in English. The live virtual teaching sessions connect students with classmates around the world. One of the programs, Leadership and Strategy in the Age of Disruption, for example, focuses on the effect of rapid changes in global business and ways to respond. Tuition ranges from EUR1,950 to EUR2,050 per course. The U.C.S.F. Global Health Bootcamp is intended to bolster the careers of physicians, pharmacists, nurses and other health care professionals. This three day program (with an optional day focused on ultrasound training), is offered once a year, normally in January, at the university's Parnassus Campus. Students learn about hurdles to worldwide health delivery and can dive into specific areas through workshops on quality improvement, education, advocacy and mobile technology. One motivation for attendees is to build networks by interacting with faculty and speakers who are leaders in global health. Attendance is limited to 36 participants. Tuition is 1,200 to 1,550. New York University's Stern School of Business offers a roster of programs ranging from two to five days on its Greenwich Village campus under the canopy of Global Economy and Society Short Courses. These include the two day Sustainability Training for Business Leaders, which is intended to develop knowledge, skills and perspective to understand and address worldwide environmental and social challenges. Tuition is 3,800. "Every course we offer has a global component," said Prof. Robert Salomon, vice dean of executive programs. He teaches a two day course, Leading Global Organizations: Managing the Complex Challenges of Globalization, for entrepreneurs who are expanding abroad, executives at firms already doing business globally, and financial analysts or consultants whose clients are global organizations. The typical participant has an average of 15 years of work experience. The six day Executive Leadership Seminar is offered eight times a year in Aspen, Colo., or in the Washington, D.C., area. Each seminar has up to 23 participants from "across sectors and throughout the world to explore the values, habits and convictions that drive effective leadership," according to the website. Topics addressed include "basic assumptions about human nature, identity and the rise of individualism, the competing polarities of efficiency and community, and navigating leadership values in tension." Participants are from the corporate, nonprofit, government and military sectors with different levels of leadership responsibility and a diversity of geography, cultural background, and age. Tuition is 11,350. The fee includes all meals, lodging, seminar materials and activities. Scholarships of 5,675 are available for those who work for a nonprofit or government organization. Registration for the 2020 cycle of Executive Leadership seminars opens June 17.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Education
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NEWARK Schools, sports arenas and apartment buildings have sprouted in recent years in this troubled city as part of efforts to revitalize it. Now, it's kale's turn to take root in a most unusual spot. A former Grammer, Dempsey and Hudson steel plant in the Ironbound section of Newark is being razed by the RBH Group to make way for a giant custom built complex for its sole tenant, AeroFarms, a company producing herbs and vegetables in an indoor, vertical environment. Instrumental in reviving parts of Newark, the RBH Group sees the venture as a way to create jobs, clear a shabby block and supply a healthy, locally grown food source. The complex, a group of metal block, low slung buildings, some connected, some not, also has prominent backers. Through its Urban Investment Group, Goldman Sachs is picking up the bulk of the 39 million cost for development of the AeroFarms Ironbound complex, using equity, debt and bridge financing. Prudential Financial, whose headquarters are now in Newark, is also an investor. The project has been awarded 9 million in city and state money, in tax credits and grants. The new 69,000 square foot complex will also contain labs, offices and a cafe and is expected to be finished next year. Unlike urban vegetable gardens of the past that took advantage of empty lots or evolved in rooftop greenhouses, AeroFarms employs so called aeroponics and stacks its produce vertically, meaning plants are arrayed not in long rows but upward. Because the farming is completely indoors, it relies on LED bulbs, with crops growing in cloth and fed with a nutrient mist. Critics of vertical farming have complained that taste can suffer when food is cultivated without soil or sun, while proponents say vertical farms are extremely efficient and have a small environmental impact. They take up minimal space, grow round the clock and are near the markets that sell their crops, reducing the need for long truck trips. Vertical farms are also far less susceptible to the vagaries of unpredictable weather like droughts or floods. "We can deliver anything the plant wants, when it wants it, how it wants it and where it wants it," said David Rosenberg, chief executive of AeroFarms. The company has housed a smaller, temporary operation in an apparel store downtown. Scheduled to open this fall inside the new Ironbound site, AeroFarms projects it will reap up to 30 harvests a year, or two million pounds of greens, including kale, arugula and romaine lettuce, Mr. Rosenberg said. At that output, AeroFarms would be among the most productive vertical farms in the country, analysts say. Comparing vertical farms can be tricky. Unlike AeroFarms, some sell whole plants, or by products like juice and salad dressing. Also, because the height of rooms in vertical farms is often more important than their width, floor measurements can be misleading, some farmers say. Still, in real estate terms, the Ironbound operation would be among the country's largest. About two thirds of the complex, or 46,000 square feet, will be dedicated to crops, according to the company, in rooms with lofty 30 foot ceilings. In contrast, FarmedHere, an Illinois company, grows plants in about 47,000 square feet of a low slung 93,000 square foot former box factory near Chicago Midway International Airport. Founded in 2011, FarmedHere sells its produce to nearly 50 Whole Foods markets, plus other grocery stores, said Mark Thomann, the chief executive. Mr. Thomann said he welcomed company in a small but growing sector. "We all need to collaborate, since we really are competing with traditional farms," which still control 95 percent of the market, he said. "We all need to work together to make this a viable category." But in a sign of the risks inherent to the industry, other fledgling companies trying to grow crops in small spaces have sputtered and failed. For example, Alterrus Systems, maker of the shelflike VertiCrop system, with a greenhouselike farm on a sun dappled roof of a parking garage in Vancouver, British Columbia, declared bankruptcy this year. If the industry is nascent, it can still attract big backers. Previously, both Goldman and Prudential teamed with RBH on Teachers Village in Newark, a 160 million project that is creating a mix of schools, apartments and stores from a patchwork of warehouses and parking lots. But brokers say that Newark, about 10 miles west of New York, also appeals to start ups because of its dirt cheap rents, which is especially true in the Ironbound's ragtag industrial section, where warehouses can be had for as little as 5 a square foot. In comparison, rents for similar space in Brooklyn can be more than 20. "Companies are starting to realize that doing business in Newark is significantly cheaper," said Ron Beit, RBH's founding member. One reason that Newark, and especially the Ironbound section, may be so affordable is its legacy of pollution. Crisscrossed by truck routes and flight paths, the Ironbound also was the home of a federal Superfund site where Agent Orange, the toxic defoliant, was manufactured in the mid 20th century; the site has since been cleaned up. Similarly, over the years, toxins like lead have been discovered on the long block containing AeroFarms' new farm. In fact, the swimming pool in an athletic center there had to be constructed on an upper floor, over fears that harmful chemicals could seep into the water, said Drew Curtis, a director of the Ironbound Community Corporation, a local nonprofit that has worked to remediate the area. But while one parcel may still be a brownfield, most of the contaminated soil has been carted away, Mr. Curtis said. Besides, AeroFarms sits on land that has never been polluted, according to Mr. Beit, who added that its water supply would come from pipes, and not wells, anyway. And because only four trucks will service the farm daily, AeroFarms is expected to have a light environmental footprint: "Every use at that site would have probably added truck traffic, but this will be far less than other uses," Mr. Curtis said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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The United States economy has expanded for three quarters in a row, the Commerce Department said on Friday, helped along by consumer spending. Now the question is, Will the jobs follow? The broadest measure of the overall economy grew at an inflation adjusted annual rate of 3.2 percent in the first quarter of 2010, the Commerce Department reported. It had expanded 5.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 2.2 percent in the third quarter. While the expansion is welcome, it has not delivered the level of hiring needed to recover the ground lost during the recession. Speaking in the Rose Garden on Friday, President Obama acknowledged that many Americans might find little comfort in the numbers because " 'you're hired' is the only economic news they're waiting to hear." Still, economists are hopeful that news of solid, continued growth may bolster business confidence and persuade more companies to expand. "It's been a case of, when will they stop worrying and learn to love the boom?" said Robert J. Barbera, chief economist at ITG, who added that many analysts and companies had underestimated the economic turnaround. After dragging their heels for many months, consumers were at last a major contributor to economic growth in the first quarter. Consumer spending grew at an annual rate of 3.6 percent, a big gain from the 1.6 percent rate of the previous three months. Purchases of durable goods like cars led the way. Whether Americans might retrench for the long haul after seeing their homes lose value has been one of the biggest questions about the aftermath of the Great Recession. Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of the economy, and it usually drives growth during economic recoveries. Shoppers outside Macy's in Manhattan. Consumer spending makes up more than 70 percent of the economy. Economists are hopeful that families will continue to pick up the pace of purchasing and make the recovery more sustainable, although consumers may remain cautious about spending given the tepid growth in job creation and personal income. Consumer sentiment dipped slightly in April, according to a Reuters/University of Michigan consumer sentiment index released on Friday. "We haven't had consumer spending growth this strong in three years," said Nigel Gault, chief United States economist at IHS Global Insight. "But the caveat is that with real disposable incomes not growing, this was all done through the saving rate. We cannot rely on consumers continually driving down their savings. They need income support from hiring." Small businesses say Americans are loosening up a little after a bewildering period of debt reduction and uncertainty. Nate Evans, who owns a pottery making business with his wife, Hallie, in New Albin, Iowa, said sales in 2009 were the worst ever but that business was just starting to pick up. The Evanses sell their wares from their Allamakee Wood Fired Pottery home studio as well as in galleries in nearby states, and at craft shows in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Illinois. "I felt like the energy of the crowd was better," Mr. Evans said of the first fair this year, in Minnesota, adding that other craft sellers seemed to agree. "Most of the people we talked to said it was better than last year. Hey, it's not great, but it's better than last year." Just as Americans stepped up their purchases of autos and other products in the first quarter, companies invested more in capital goods. Business purchases of equipment and software, for example, grew at an annual rate of 13.4 percent, building on a 19 percent increase in the final quarter of 2009. For the first time in two years, businesses started increasing their stockpiles of goods. This inventory growth accounted for about half of the expansion in the first quarter. In the previous quarter, about two thirds of economic growth resulted from a decision by companies to draw down their inventories more slowly that is, not clearing their stockroom shelves so quickly but still not adding to them. Additional spending by companies "is very good news, since it indicates businesses are feeling more confident about the expansion to start spending some of their cash," Mr. Gault said. "If businesses are spending more on equipment, usually that would go along with more hiring, too." Federal government spending, including some remaining money from stimulus programs, grew at an annualized rate of 1.4 percent in the first quarter. But this was more than offset by continued cuts by state and local governments, whose spending decreased 3.8 percent. It was the third consecutive quarterly decline for state and local spending. "Government spending contracted, for all the ballyhoo about stimulus," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. "This recovery is going to have to stand on the backs of private sector demand, not on government demand, given all the current fiscal challenges." Modest expansion in business activity may not be enough to ease the lasting pain of the recession, many economists say. Hiring only recently began to materialize, with the economy adding 162,000 jobs in March, of which 48,000 were temporary Census related positions. The economy had shed about eight million jobs since the recession began in December 2007. Job growth hasn't been as strong as economic growth for several reasons, economists say. Businesses have found ways to make more with fewer resources, meaning that they have been able to meet additional demand for their products without bringing on many new workers. And companies are sitting on a tremendous amount of cash and appear unwilling to spend it. "Companies may be reluctant to invest because there's an enormous amount of uncertainty ahead for them, not just in health care policy but tax policy," said Paul Ashworth, senior United States economist at Capital Economics. "This isn't just about the sustainability of the recovery itself." Mr. Obama, in his remarks on Friday morning, rejected criticisms that his policies were bad for hiring by talking about tax cuts for small businesses, loans backed by the government and investments in areas like clean energy policies intended in part to encourage job creation. Even if hiring does finally start to grow at the same rate with demand, the economy is simply not growing fast enough to make a big dent in unemployment, economists say. The nation's gross domestic product a broad measure of goods and services produced in the country is far below its potential, according to projections of where the economy would have been had it followed its long term trend. Output would need to grow at least 5 percent annually for several years to get back on track and perhaps what is more important, to stimulate enough job creation to employ the 15 million Americans already out of work and the 100,000 new workers joining the labor force each month. Right now, many economists expect the nation's output to expand 2.5 to 3.5 percent this year. "Unless the pace of growth picks up significantly, we will see high unemployment rates for years to come," said Josh Bivens, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research organization in Washington.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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But let's not talk too much about the very bad man. Because revealingly enough, "All This Could Be Yours" is least satisfying when it comes to the terrible things Victor has done, the details of which are teased and promised and hinted at and revealed a little at a time, whereas I think they'd have been more terrifying if they'd just been stated outright, so that we could fully appreciate how they've affected everyone else. The novel's most interesting question is not: What kind of person is Victor Tuchman? The novel's most interesting question is: What kind of people has Victor Tuchman made, and can they become different people when and if he dies? That's the novel's through line Victor lies in a hospital bed in New Orleans while everyone else waits for him to die and in lesser hands this might be static. But Attenberg gets so deep into the psyches of her characters that the story ends up seeming electric with ruin, and with possible resurrection. Will Gary finally get on a plane to New Orleans to join the death watch, or will he stay in Los Angeles, getting a massage and making "a bad joke about his wife, Twyla, one that involved him naming the knot in his neck after her, and the masseur hadn't laughed, not because it wasn't funny (although it wasn't funny) but because he didn't speak English particularly well. I'm garbage, Gary had thought anyway"? Will Barbra finally become the kind of person she was meant to be before she married Victor, or will she remain the enervated person who derives her main sense of pleasure and triumph from her Fitbit? ("At least I'm getting my steps in," Barbra says as she paces the hospital halls.) And will Alex the novel's most acerbic, nuanced and engaging character finally achieve something like happiness, and if so, what might that look like? And if happiness is so hard earned, can it even be called happiness? There's a terrific moment early in the novel, in which Alex runs on a treadmill in her hotel gym and thinks about the "things her father said and did, things her mother didn't say and do, magazines, television, girls she went to high school with, a hundred men whistling at her on the street, America in general. She loathed herself, she forgave herself. She loathed them, she did not forgive them. She ran." This is a wonderful, cathartic moment, we think, until the deflating end of the scene, where Alex "raised her arms in the air in victory and ran that way until the machine shut itself off, emitting only the briefest congratulations on the completion of her workout."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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A spacious duplex penthouse at , the Witkoff Group's 91 unit brick and glass condominium in the West Village that sold out just weeks after sales began three years ago, officially closed for 34,433,707.06, according to city records, and was the most expensive transaction of the week. The nearly 5,700 square foot apartment, No. 9C, on the ninth and tenth floors, has five bedrooms, five and a half baths and two landscaped terraces totaling more than 2,700 square feet, with impressive panoramic views of the Hudson River, the Statue of Liberty and the cityscape. The monthly carrying costs are 11,554. The sale also included a separate studio, No. 2DN. The buyer's identity was shielded by the limited liability company BSS Charles Street. The lower level of the duplex, which has a private elevator landing, contains the main entertaining rooms, including a high ceilinged great room, dining room, library and eat in kitchen with Wolf, Sub Zero and Miele appliances. There is also an en suite bedroom for guests or staff.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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If grief could be calculated strictly in the number of lives lost to war, disease, natural disaster then this time surely ranks as one of the most sorrowful in United States history. As the nation passes the grim milestone of 200,000 deaths from Covid 19 only the Civil War, the 1918 flu pandemic and World War II took more American lives we know that the grieving has only just begun. It will continue with loss of jobs and social structures; routines and ways of life that have been interrupted may never return. For many, the loss may seem too swift, too great and too much to bear, each story to some degree a modern version of the biblical trials of Job. I thought of the biblical story of Job last month when I was asked to speak to the National Partnership for Hospice Innovation. How would I counsel others to cope with losses so terrifying and unfair? How could those grieving find a sense of hope or meaning on the other side of that loss? In my research I found myself drawn to the powerful rendition of the Book of Job by the 18th century British poet, artist and mystic William Blake, in particular his collection of 22 engravings, completed in 1823, that include beautiful calligraphy of biblical verses. Job, of course, is the Bible's best known sufferer. His bounty home, children, livestock is taken cruelly from him as a test of faith devised by Satan and carried out by God. He suffers both mental and physical illness; Satan covers him in painful boils. Job is conflicted at times he still has his faith and trusts in God's wisdom, and other times he questions whether God is corrupt. Finally, he demands an explanation. God then allows Job to accompany him on a tour of the vast universe where it becomes clear that the universe in which he exists is more complex than the human mind could ever comprehend. Though Job still doesn't have an explanation for his suffering, he has gained some peace; he's humbled. Then God returns all that Job has lost. So, the story is, in large part, about the power of one man's faith. But that's not all. So, the Book of Job isn't just about grief or just about faith. It's also about our attachments to our identities, our faith, the possessions and people we have in our lives. Grief is a symptom of letting go when we don't want to. Understanding that attachment is the root of suffering an idea also central to Buddhism can give us a glimpse of what many of us might be feeling during this time. We can recall the early days of the pandemic with precision; rites that weave the tapestry of life jobs, celebrations, trips now canceled. In our minds we see loved ones who will never return. Even our mourning is subject to this same grief, as funerals are much different now. In Blake's penultimate illustration in this series Job is pictured with his daughters. Notably Blake doesn't write out this verse from Job; instead he writes something from Psalm 139: "How precious also are thy thoughts unto me, O God! How great is the sum of them!" In the very last image, however, God has returned all he had taken from Job children, animals, home, health and more. Here, Blake encapsulates Job 42:12: "So the Lord blessed the latter end of Job more than his beginning: for he had 14,000 sheep, and 6,000 camels, and 1,000 yoke of oxen, and 1,000 donkeys." Blake intentionally didn't make the last image a carbon copy of the first, likely in order to reflect new wisdom: an understanding that we are more than just our attachments. The sun is rising, trumpets are playing, all signifying redemption. Job became a fundamentally changed man after being tested to his core. He has accepted that life is unpredictable and loss is inevitable. Everything is temporary and the only constant, paradoxically, is this state of change. So, where does all of this leave us now, as we think back to how our attachments have fueled our grief, but perhaps also our faith in what's to come? Can we look forward to a healthier, more just world? Evolution can sometimes look like destruction to the untrained eye. I think it leaves us with a challenge, to treat our attachments not simply as the root of suffering but as fuel that, when lost, can propel us forward as opposed to keeping us tethered to our past. We can accept the tragedy and pain secondary to our attachments as part of a life well lived, and well loved, and treat our memories of our past "normal" as pathways to purpose as we move forward. We still honor our old lives, those we lost, our previous selves, but remain open to what might come. Creating meaning from tragedy is a uniquely human form of spiritual alchemy. As difficult as it is now, in the midst of a pandemic, it is possible in fact, probable that after this cycle of pain we feel as individuals and collectively that we might emerge with a greater understanding of ourselves, faith (if you're a person of faith), and our purpose. The word "healing" is derived from the word "whole." Healing then is a return to "wholeness" not a return to "sameness." Those who work in hospice know this well the dying can be healed in the act of dying. But we don't typically equate healing with death. Ultimately, to me, that's the lesson offered by Blake's Job: understanding his role in a wider universe and cosmos, transformed in his surrender, and the release from the attachments to his old life. Job had the benefit of journeying across the universe to understand his life in a larger context. We don't. But we do have the benefit of being his apprentices as we begin to emerge from this period, and begin to choose whether it propels us forward or keeps us stuck in pain, and in the past. Amitha Kalaichandran ( DrAmithaMD) is a physician and the author of the forthcoming book "On Healing."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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The state of West Virginia on Wednesday settled a lawsuit against the nation's largest drug distributor, which had been accused of shipping nearly 100 million doses of addictive opioids to residents over a six year period. The state's suit accused McKesson Corporation of putting profits ahead of residents' welfare by failing to investigate, report or stop suspicious drug orders as required by law, and fueling a widespread drug epidemic. McKesson, the sixth largest American company in terms of revenue, reported over 208 billion in the last fiscal year. The giant distributor funneled enough hydrocodone and oxycodone to supply every legitimate patient with nearly 3,000 doses, state officials said. Tiny Boone County, with a population of fewer than 25,000, received 1.2 million doses of hydrocodone and oxycodone between 2007 and 2012, the lawsuit claimed. McKesson vigorously denied the allegations on Wednesday. April Marks, a spokeswoman for the company, said in a prepared statement that the company "is committed to working with others to end this national crisis, however, and is pleased that the settlement provides funding toward initiatives intended to address the opioid epidemic." Under the settlement, McKesson will pay 37 million to West Virginia. Nearly half of the amount is to be paid out within three business days of the case's dismissal, with the remainder paid in annual installments over five years. Sen. Joe Manchin, Democrat of West Virginia, disparaged the settlement as a "sweetheart deal" that "sells out" the state. "It's pennies on the dollar to what McKesson cost our state," Mr. Manchin said. The state will use portions of the settlement money to "further the collective fight against drug abuse in West Virginia," according to a statement released by Gov. Jim Justice and Patrick Morrisey, the state's attorney general. More than 30 states, and more than 1,600 cities and counties and other entities, have filed lawsuits against drug distributors, manufacturers and pharmacies over their roles in the opioid crisis. But huge fines and settlements are nothing new for large drug distributors and may have little impact on their profits. McKesson reached a 150 million settlement with the Department of Justice in 2017 over similar allegations, and paid 13.25 million to settle other federal claims as far back as 2008. Read more about the role of drug distributors in the opioid crisis. The three largest drug distributors McKesson, Amerisource Bergen and Cardinal Health supply more than 90 percent of the nation's drugs and medical products and are among the 15 largest American companies by revenue. McKesson has enhanced its monitoring of the distribution of controlled substances in recent years, Ms. Marks said, and uses sophisticated algorithms to check for suspicious orders and block shipments to drugstores that reach preset limits. Suspicious orders are reported to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, she said. In West Virginia, deaths caused by overdoses of hydrocodone and oxycodone increased 67 percent between 2007 and 2012. The state has the highest opioid overdose rate in the country, according to the Trust for America's Health. The state's epidemic received national attention following a series of Pulitzer Prize winning articles in the Charleston Gazette Mail that highlighted the role of giant distributors, which transport drugs from the manufacturers to every hospital, clinic and drugstore.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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SEATTLE To see what it's like inside stores where sensors and artificial intelligence have replaced cashiers, shoppers have to trek to Amazon Go, the internet retailer's experimental convenience shop in downtown Seattle. Soon, though, more technology driven businesses like Amazon Go may be coming to them. A global race to automate stores is underway among several of the world's top retailers and small tech start ups, which are motivated to shave labor costs and minimize shoppers' frustrations, like waiting for cashiers. They are also trying to prevent Amazon from dominating the physical retail world as it does online shopping. Companies are testing robots that help keep shelves stocked, as well as apps that let shoppers ring up items with a smartphone. High tech systems like the one used by Amazon Go completely automate the checkout process. China, which has its own ambitious e commerce companies, is emerging as an especially fertile place for these retail experiments. In addition, the efforts have raised concerns among privacy researchers because of the mounds of data that retailers will be able to gather about shopper behavior as they digitize their locations. Inside Amazon Go, for instance, the cameras never lose sight of a customer once he or she enters the shop. Retailers had adopted technologies in their stores long before Amazon Go arrived on the scene. Self checkout kiosks have been common in supermarkets and other stores for years. Kroger, the grocery chain, uses sensors and predictive analytics tools to better anticipate when more cashiers will be needed. But the opening of Amazon Go in January was alarming for many retailers, who saw a sudden willingness by Amazon to wield its technology power in new ways. Hundreds of cameras near the ceiling and sensors in the shelves help automatically tally the cookies, chips and soda that shoppers remove and put into their bags. Shoppers' accounts are charged as they walk out the doors. Amazon is now looking to expand Go to new areas. An Amazon spokeswoman declined to comment on its expansion plans, but the company has a job posting for a senior real estate manager who will be responsible for "site selection and acquisition" and field tours of "potential locations" for new Go stores. Nowhere are retailers experimenting more avidly with automating store shopping than in China, a country obsessed by new tech fads. One effort is a chain of more than 100 unmanned convenience shops from a start up called Bingo Box, one of which sits in a business park in Shanghai. Shoppers scan a code on their phones to enter and, once inside, scan the items they want to buy. The store unlocks the exit door after they've paid through their phones. Alibaba, one of China's largest internet companies, has opened 35 of its Hema automated grocery stores, which blend online ordering with automated checkout. Customers scan their groceries at checkout kiosks, using facial recognition to pay electronically, while bags of groceries ordered by customers online float overhead on aerial conveyors, headed to a loading dock for delivery to shoppers. Not to be outdone, JD, another big internet retailer in China, said in December that it had teamed up with a developer to build hundreds of its own unmanned convenience shops. The businesses put readable chips on items to automate the checkout process. At its huge campus south of Beijing, JD is testing a new store that relies on computer vision and sensors on the shelves to know when items have been taken. The system tracks shopping without tagging products with chips. Payment, which for now still happens at a kiosk, is done with facial recognition. JD and Alibaba both plan to sell their systems to other retailers and are working on additional checkout technologies. Back in the United States, Walmart, the world's largest retailer, is testing out the Bossa Nova robots in dozens of its locations to reduce some tedious tasks that can eat up a worker's time. The robots, which look like giant wheeled luggage bags, roll up and down the aisles looking for shelves where cereal boxes are out of stock and items like toys are mislabeled. The machines then report back to workers, who restock the shelves and apply new labels. At 120 of Walmart's 4,700 American stores, shoppers can also scan items, including fruits and vegetables, using the camera on their smartphones and pay for them using the devices. When customers walk out, an employee checks their receipts and does a "spot check" of the items they bought. Kroger, one of the country's largest grocery chains, has also been testing a mobile scanning service in its supermarkets, recently announcing that it would expand it to 400 of its more 2,700 stores. New start ups are seeking to give retailers the technology to compete with Amazon's system. One of them, AiFi, is working on cashierless checkout technology that it says will be flexible and affordable enough that mom and pop retailers and bigger outlets can use it. In the United States, venture capitalists put 100 million into retail automation start ups in each of the past two years, up from about 64 million in 2015, according Pitchbook, a financial data firm. "We see this as helping our associates," said John Crecelius, vice president of central operations at Walmart. "We are a people led business that is technology enabled." Some traditional retailers are also skeptical about whether the sort of automation in Amazon Go can move to large stores. They say the technology may not work or be cost effective outside a store with a small footprint and inventory. "That's probably not scalable to a 120,000 square foot store," said Chris Hjelm, executive vice president and chief information officer at Kroger. But he said it was just a matter of time before more cameras and sensors were commonplace in stores. "It's a few years out," he said, "before that technology becomes mainstream."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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The biggest shopping day in China is fast approaching, and American companies are treading carefully. Nov. 11, known as Singles Day or Double 11, started as an anti Valentine's Day celebration before the Chinese e commerce giant Alibaba Group converted it into an annual shopping spectacle that generates billions of dollars in sales. This year, Taylor Swift will help kick off the proceedings by performing at a gala in Shanghai. Some 22,000 international merchants are expected to offer discounts and other deals, mostly online, without the overnight lines and doorbuster bargains associated with Black Friday in the United States. But American companies have seemed unsure of how to approach China's 90 billion ad market, believed to be the second largest in the world. The trade dispute with the United States has led some Chinese consumers to spurn American brands, and tensions over how companies have addressed pro democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong have further complicated the economic back and forth. Even before the disquiet, Chinese companies had overtaken many American rivals in spending on ads. In 2015, half the top 10 marketers in China were Western brands, with Procter Gamble in first place, according to data from Magna, a media intelligence firm. Last year, three remained on the list, led by Coca Cola in fifth place. "Western brands have been scaling back their spending," said Luke Stillman, Magna's senior vice president of digital intelligence. If the trade war weakens China's currency and makes American products less affordable, those brands could cut the amount they spend on marketing further, Brian Wieser, who analyzes media for GroupM, wrote in a blog post in August. American companies, facing increasing pressure in the United States to take a stand on social issues, have lately stayed away from any whiff of the political in ads that appear in China. "They definitely talk about being conservative, and they try to double check things over and over again," said Ker Zheng, a marketing and partnerships manager at Azoya Group, which helps companies enter the Chinese e commerce market. "Chinese people in general are very averse to talking about politics, and if they do, it's in very hushed tones." A few days before Singles Day, advertisements on the Alibaba owned Tmall shopping platform from companies like Dell, Nike and Procter Gamble were more functional than flashy, focused largely on discounts. The Chinese government let companies and advertising partners know that they were being watched by issuing a notice this month warning against misleading marketing for the shopping event. Lin Zhengang, 48, a food service worker in Shaoxing, said boycotting American goods allowed him to express his "great anger toward the U.S. government's behavior." Other consumers said they were less concerned with a product's origin than its quality and cost. "If the price is good, I will buy. If it is not, I will not buy it," said Wang Yue, 31, a television camera operator in Beijing, who was eyeing cosmetics from the pop star Rihanna's Fenty Beauty line. "Trade war or not, it doesn't matter." "You don't want to be known as an American brand you want to be known as a Chinese brand," said Joe Tripodi, a former chief marketing officer at Coca Cola and Subway. "There will always be aspects of your brand that have dimensions of your origin, but the successful brands, in my experience, have really made a massive effort to become seen as a local brand." Xi Jinping, China's president, pledged this month that "China will open its doors only wider to the world." But the country's leadership has encouraged consumers to buy local, especially as the Chinese economy slows, panelists said. "I was born in a time when China lacked everything, when everything imported was good stuff," said Daisy King, an adviser to companies trying to make an impression in China. "In recent years, the Chinese government has been trying to promote nationalism and good quality local products." American marketing executives who have worked in China said the learning curve could be steep for outsiders. Starting and maintaining a foreign owned agency there is easier than it used to be, but regulations still favor domestic businesses, they said. Another hurdle is China's internet censorship system, known as the Great Firewall, which has blocked Google, Facebook and other platforms familiar to American advertising companies. American and European ad agencies in China have been hiring more Chinese citizens, rather than relying on expatriates, said Mr. Jones, the marketing executive. But ads from companies outside China still betray a lack of cultural literacy at times, and many Chinese consumers have been sensitive to their perceived missteps and product slip ups. "Brands have long been able to shoot themselves in the foot independent of any impact of trade wars or backlash against Hong Kong," Mr. Jones said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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It felt almost like a momentary return of Spring for Music, the defunct festival of North American orchestras at Carnegie Hall designed to give exposure to regional ensembles and encourage adventurous programming. The actual return of Spring for Music or its much revised and renamed successor, Shift, at the Kennedy Center in Washington happened the week before, April 9 15. But there at Carnegie, by happenstance, were two regional orchestras the Grand Rapids Symphony, from Michigan, on Friday; and the Pacific Symphony, from Orange County, Calif., on Saturday with distinctive programs. Also by happenstance, the music directors of both orchestras were once assistant conductors of the Boston Symphony Orchestra: Marcelo Lehninger in Grand Rapids and Carl St. Clair in Orange County. Both sizable audiences seemed rich with home state boosters, especially Michiganders on Friday. But there the similarities mostly ended. Spring for Music, in its day, defrayed some of the expenses and helped with the logistics of a New York appearance. The Grand Rapids ensemble, which celebrated its 75th anniversary with its Carnegie debut in 2005, returned, with its chorus of 140, again at its own expense (some 700,000). A campaign to finance the trip came "within a stone's throw" of its 1 million goal, according to Diane Lobbestael, the orchestra's vice president for development, and the remainder "will drop to the bottom line." The Pacific Symphony, making its Carnegie debut, had the good fortune to be presented by the hall itself, as part of a season long series of concerts centering on Philip Glass, who currently occupies Carnegie's composer's chair. The main event was the New York premiere of Mr. Glass's oratorio "The Passion of Ramakrishna," a Pacific Symphony commission (with the Nashville Symphony) first performed by the orchestra and the Pacific Chorale in 2006. It is a big, beautiful piece, written more or less in the style of Mr. Glass's Gandhi opera "Satyagraha" (1980), Mr. Glass at his best. "Gandhi wouldn't have been Gandhi if it hadn't been for Ramakrishna," Mr. Glass said of the 19th century Hindu mystic in a brief preliminary conversation on stage with Mr. St. Clair. The "Passion" text presents some of Ramakrishna's thoughts and tells of his death in touching fashion. In the earlier parts, Mr. Glass wields his sustained, seamless arpeggiations to produce a timeless, subdued sort of rocking lullaby. He breaks into uncharacteristically wild expressionism in the death scene, then finds his way to gorgeous tranquillity in an epilogue. The performance was excellent, with the orchestra sounding like a major ensemble; excellent singing from the chorus; and fine work by the baritone Christopheren Nomura and the soprano Elissa Johnston, especially lovely as the Mother of the Universe. The ambitious program opened with Mr. Glass's "Meetings Along the Edge," a movement from "Passages" (1990), a major work he wrote in collaboration with the Indian sitarist and composer Ravi Shankar. And it included Shankar's own Sitar Concerto No. 3 (2009), with his daughter, Anoushka Shankar, as commanding soloist. The idea behind the Grand Rapids Symphony's return to Carnegie, Ms. Lobbestael said, was to reintroduce the orchestra, with the Brazilian born Mr. Lehninger, in his second season as music director, to the national stage and celebrate his early achievements. So the program included works by the Brazilian composer Heitor Villa Lobos along with Falla's familiar "Nights in the Gardens of Spain" and Ravel's overfamiliar "Bolero." Villa Lobos's seemingly untranslatable "Momoprecoce" is a 1929 reworking of his set of piano pieces "Carnival for Brazilian Children." Like Falla's "Nights," it is a concerto like work, and the eminent Brazilian pianist Nelson Freire, on hand for both, presumably made the best possible case for it. Still, for all its local color and a semi jazzy, semi spiky style wavering somewhere between Gershwin and Stravinsky, it proved rather bland in the end. Villa Lobos's "Choros No. 10," a setting of Catulo da Paixao Cearense's poem "It Tears Your Heart," was altogether more compelling, and the Grand Rapids forces delivered it handsomely. It seemed a bit extravagant to have brought a large chorus to New York to sing four minutes of a 12 minute piece, but the decision was further justified by the encore, Faure's "Pavane," in its melting choral version. The Grand Rapids forces performed it well, as they did the entire concert but for a raw brass solo or two.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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CHEVROLET The redesigned 2014 Silverado, and its corporate cousin, the GMC Sierra, are due to arrive this spring. They were last all new as 2007 models. All three engines a 4.3 liter V 6 and V 8s of 5.3 liters and 6.2 liters are new. In addition to efficient direct injection of fuel, each can drop to 4 cylinder operation to preserve fuel. The automaker has yet to release power ratings or mileage estimates. The transmission are 6 speed automatics. The frame has been updated with high strength steel. The interior is new, as is the cab of which, Chevy says, "nearly two thirds" is high strength steel. For the first time the Crew Cab will be available with a 6 foot 6 box. TOYOTA Late this summer there will be an updated version of the Tundra, which was last redesigned for the 2007 model year. Although Toyota says the 2014 truck has a new look, casual observers may have a hard time seeing differences from the 2013 model. The most significant change may be an all new interior. Engines a 310 horsepower 4.6 liter V 8 and a 381 horsepower 5.7 liter V 8 are carried over, mated to 5 speed automatics. FORD Calling it "the future vision for pickup trucks," Ford introduced its Atlas concept truck, presumed to be a precursor of the next all new F 150, at the Detroit auto show last month. Ford said the Atlas was designed to have more fuel efficient technologies, including the newest versions of its EcoBoost engines. Given the hoopla surrounding the new Ram, Silverado and updated Tundra, the Atlas was Ford's attempt to avoid being overshadowed in a segment it has led for years, said Tom Libby, lead analyst for Polk's North American Forecasting Practice. Ford won't say when the next all new F 150 will arrive, but Mr. Libby expects it to reach the market in the fourth quarter of 2014. The last new F 150 was a 2009 model. NISSAN At the Chicago auto show this month, Nissan used words rather than a concept vehicle to promise a new truck. The company told journalists it was working on a new version of its full size Titan, but offered no specifics. In 2008, Chrysler said it would build a full size pickup for Nissan. But that deal fell through about 16 months later, apparently leaving Nissan hanging. The new Titan is likely to have a regular cab, something the first generation did not, costing it some fleet sales.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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This week the major television networks are unveiling their offerings for the coming season to advertising buyers. Plenty of money and prestige are at stake. Two New York Times reporters who cover media and television John Koblin and Michael M. Grynbaum assess what they saw during Wednesday's CBS presentation. MICHAEL: John, it's been a grueling week of cocktail shrimp and wagyu sliders, but we made it the 2016 upfronts are a wrap. I'm still a bit groggy from CBS's bash on Wednesday at the Plaza, so bear with me here, but the self styled Tiffany Network's coming comedy slate left me wondering: Is "Trump Voter" the new coveted demographic? All three of CBS's new sitcoms feature a middle aged white man alienated by the modern world. There's Matt LeBlanc as a contractor suddenly raising the kids when his wife goes back to work ("Man With a Plan"). Kevin James plays a police officer who retires, only to find his daughter is dating a cardigan clad hipster, among other indignities ("Kevin Can Wait"). And "The Great Indoors" pits Joel McHale against a bevy of millennials making his job obsolete. Prime Trump voters, all! Or maybe it's like the old Phil Hartman skit "Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer": a put upon protagonist whose world frightens and confuses him For starters, the network is in a really strong position. It has a ridiculous winning streak, attracting the most viewers among the Big Four networks for 13 out of the last 14 years. And it's got television's most dominant comedy, and by a wide margin, in "The Big Bang Theory." The problem? We're heading into Year 10 of that show. This isn't going to last forever. And the thing that scares CBS a little the way it scares a winning but aging baseball team that can't produce anything out of the farm system is it needs a hit. A real hit. Not a medium size "Life in Pieces" that is a decentish performer. So they're taking a big swing here three big promotable stars and probably willing and ready to take the criticism that comes with the fact that they are all white males. These are shows that may not play with "elites," like "Mad Men'' did, but may play elsewhere. And if they win, they win. (CBS does love to rattle off ratings stats the way a certain candidate loves to talk about poll numbers). Maybe Les Moonves, the chief executive, invited it on himself when he said of Trump a couple months back, perhaps with some regret: "It may not be good for America, but it's damn good for CBS." JOHN: Including a video installation with martini glasses and lyrics like "I did it 'Eye Way.'" Nice job, guys. When you're on brand, you're on brand. 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. I guess one of my takeaways: just how unforgiving CBS can be. At a press breakfast, the network's longtime scheduling czar, Kelly Kahl, said that "losing is a dirty word" at CBS in the era of Moonves. True of any network, but some shows get breaks. CBS seems more reluctant to offer them. The Jane Lynch comedy "Angel From Hell" did O.K. ish, and it got yanked after five episodes. Then again, that's how Mr. Moonves's pal, Robert Kraft, and his coach, Bill Belichick, handle the New England Patriots (am I going too far in saying Mr. Belichick is a friend of Mr. Trump's, too?). Also worth noting here: CBS has the N.F.L. on Thursday for the first five weeks in the fall season. So, back to Wednesday's upfront presentation for ad buyers: Their "late late" man James Corden performed first Thursday. As Alexander Hamilton. Stephen Colbert came on later for a quick routine. They really do love Mr. Corden, don't they? MICHAEL: It was hard not to read into the order of performances, and the disparate levels of exposure they got, although Mr. Colbert did have to get back to his studio in time to tape his show. But between the "Late Show's" growing pains and Mr. Moonves's effusive praise for Mr. Corden, it seemed clear which host is the current toast of Tiffany. JOHN: Then again, Mr. Corden is an actor, and he can sing. He's also hosting the Tonys (on CBS), so the "Hamilton" tie in for him specifically is a no brainer. But wait. We've talked comedies and late night. You wrote about reboots this week. What'd you think of CBS's big Friday night play, "MacGyver"? MICHAEL: Corden Hamilton the Tonys might finally win the demo! "MacGyver," on the other hand, may test the longevity of that storied TV brand. The trailer didn't have the sizzle of Fox's "24: Legacy" or ABC's "Designated Survivor." I liked the quirkiness of "Bull," which is, quite literally, based on the life of Dr. Phil. And "Pure Genius," with Dermot Mulroney (not Dylan McDermott), was created by Jason Katims, a former head writer of "Friday Night Lights." JOHN: Oh, and "The Good Wife" is not dead yet. A spinoff is coming to the CBS app and it's all about Christine Baranski. MICHAEL: There's no title yet, but I'd watch anything with Christine Baranski. It's a good way for CBS to retain the prestige audience that took a break from HBO on Sundays to catch Diane Lockhart co. The spinoff co stars Cush Jumbo, who joined "The Good Wife" as Alicia Florrick's pal Lucca Quinn this past season (and who opens in "The Taming of the Shrew" in Central Park next week) JOHN: O.K., Mike, I need a break. Great talking. See you next May. MICHAEL: I guess it's time for some post upfronts R. R. Hey, is there anything good on TV? JOHN: Mike, can't hear you. Watching the "Kevin Can Wait" trailer again. MICHAEL: OMG, I just realized that title is a pun.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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In another shake up of the digital news landscape, HuffPost's editor in chief, Lydia Polgreen, announced Friday that she was departing the website for a sector that many in media see as more of a growth area: podcasting. Ms. Polgreen, who has led the website since 2016, said in a statement posted on Twitter that she would step down this month to become the head of content at Gimlet Media, the podcast studio known for shows like "Reply All" and "Crimetown." Gimlet was bought last year by the audio streaming giant Spotify along with Anchor, which makes tools for producing podcasts, in a combined deal worth nearly 340 million. Vincent Tullo for The New York Times "Gimlet has built the greatest audio team in the world, and I'm so lucky to have the chance to learn from them," Ms. Polgreen wrote. "Together we have the opportunity to chart the future of the spoken word on the world's most powerful audio platform." Ms. Huffington started HuffPost, then known as The Huffington Post, in 2005 as a progressive website even though one of its co founders was the future conservative media impresario Andrew Breitbart. Over the years, it shifted from being known mainly for its unfiltered contributor pages and celebrity bloggers to a location for independent, in depth journalism. In 2012, it won a Pulitzer Prize for the reporter David Wood's series on wounded veterans. By that point, the site was owned by AOL, which bought it in 2011 for 315 million. AOL in turn was bought by Verizon for 4.4 billion in 2015. Under Ms. Polgreen, HuffPost was relaunched and moved away from the unpaid contributor system that had once defined it. It took on a tone befitting a tabloid Ms. Polgreen's word and posted attention grabbing headlines. (When the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos accused David Pecker, the American Media chief executive, of blackmailing him with nude photos, HuffPost's headline read: "BEZOS EXPOSES PECKER.") But it couldn't escape the headwinds that have battered a cadre of popular digital news outlets and stymied a model that was once seen as the future of journalism. Digital publishers have been hurt by falling ad rates, changing social media algorithms and the failure of video to be a financial savior. Many have merged, seeking safety in scale. They have also done extensive layoffs: In January 2019 alone, more than 1,000 jobs were cut at BuzzFeed, AOL, Yahoo and HuffPost. Late last year, Verizon Media denied a report in The Financial Times that it was looking to sell HuffPost. In a statement on Friday, a Verizon Media spokeswoman said the site "continues to be an important part of the Verizon Media family." "We remain excited for the future of HuffPost and we are committed to its success," she said. Podcasts continue to boom in popularity and audio start ups are hot property. This year, Spotify announced a roughly 200 million acquisition of The Ringer a sports and culture website with a popular podcast network as it sought more dominance in the podcasting realm. Mr. Smith reported this week that The Times was in exclusive talks to acquire the podcast studio Serial Productions.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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In the weeks before the pandemic, Anthony Longhi, 28, a self described shopaholic who's a sales associate at Celine in Paris, found himself smitten with a pair of black leather Yves Saint Laurent pants. Their four figure price felt indulgent, and he hesitated to buy them. Then came the news that France was about to go into shutdown. That did it. Mr. Longhi quickly made his way to the YSL boutique on Avenue Montaigne and bought the pants. They waited in his closet for over two months. On the day when lockdown restrictions were eased, he hit the streets in the leather pants, a plain white Zara T shirt, a Celine moto jacket, a necklace with his own baptism pendant and Perfecto shoes. Alas, a heat wave was on, and he began sweating into the pants. Concerned that they would shrink, he raced back home to take them off, and now awaits cooler temperatures in the fall. Mr. Longhi's story is, he acknowledged, one of great privilege. But it also has a positive message: He has refused to let the virus hold dominion over him. And he's unrepentant, planning to resume his fashion shopping full throttle ASAP. Rating Dries Van Noten's high impact spring 2020 collaboration with Christian Lacroix "ingenious" and "operatic," and predicting it would signal a return to couture, Li Edelkoort, 69, a fashion forecaster in New York, chose a red and black floral jacquard coat from that collection to wear during a spring world speaking tour. The coat had been little worn; "voluntarily stranded," as she put it, in Cape Town, where she's been sequestered since mid February. Nonetheless, it's become a badge of her identity, worn for a publicity photo "a great picture that came in handy for the avalanche of interview requests I've received over these past few months," Ms. Edelkoort said. Lately she's shown up wearing the coat "on Sundays, intra muros, for private corona brunches." At a local antique fabric store that upcycles interior textiles into face masks, she even found a matching red one. From New York, days before the coronavirus news hit, the transgender performance artist and club diva Amanda Lepore, 52, ordered a custom made ensemble gown and matching pasties, garter belt, gloves, cuffs and G string from Garo Sparo, the design house known for its corsetry. The gown has yet to be finished, but the accessories arrived with time to spare, prompting Ms. Lepore to reach for a glue gun and "stone" them, as she put it, with black Swarovski crystals (surely one of quarantine's more glamorous sewing projects). She would have worn the outfit to celebrate the Supreme Court's June 15 landmark ruling protecting L.G.B.T.Q. workers' rights, but had to rely on a Garo Sparo green glitter ensemble that she already had on hand to make a video singing "Get Happy" by Harold Arlen. In the more workaday realm, jumpsuits were already a look pre pandemic. With their easy informality they rival sweats as the semiofficial quarantine uniform. To some. She bought it, even though she's "not one of those SoulCycling Lululemon types," she said. Turns out the new jumpsuit is "insanely comfortable and perfect for anti contamination I just throw it in the washing machine at the end of the day." And then Ms. Stahl added: "Ironically, it looks a little like a hazmat suit." The New York hat designer Lola Ehrlich, 72, also bought a jumpsuit, when she was preparing for Paris Fashion Week in late February (in gray, from Alex Mill, at the designer's SoHo boutique). Accompanied by pearls and a frilly white blouse underneath, it proved perfect for her sales meetings. As customers flocked in from Milan, where the coronavirus had already taken hold, "the big question for the French, who otherwise kiss constantly at trade shows, was whether to give la bise the double kiss," Ms. Ehrlich said. But now her main association with the jumpsuit is "wearing it when I was bis ing or not bis ing." She has yet to put it on since then. Not so fancy footwear ill suited for padding around the house or skulking for necessities around the neighborhood. "Let's not talk about the fabulous Maison Margiela ombre green snakeskin boots I bought on resee.com, the resale website," said Edris Nicholls, 56, the celebrity hairstylist. But then she did: "I'm a freewheeling Margiela girl who collects his split toe boots. But I could not enjoy my latest pair during the spring and may not enjoy them in the fall." Ms. Nicholls, whose clients include Naomi Campbell and Harper Bazaar's new editor in chief, Samira Nasr, has hung her new boots on a wall and glares at them. "Cheers to our new normal and realizing we don't need things as much as we thought," she said. Ronne Brown, 36, the founder and C.E.O. of Girl CEO Inc., an organization in Washington, D.C., that advises Black female entrepreneurs, has also hung something up, on a closet door. One of her clients is Anifa Mvuemba, a Congolese born fashion designer, whose Hanifa clothing collection has been attracting attention. Early in March, Ms. Brown went to the Hanifa showroom shop in Kensington, Md., and bought a low cut, shape revealing black slip dress with side slits and ostrich feather trim to wear the following week at the empowerment dinners being held at a March retreat in Cancun, Mexico, for the women's organization EGL (Everything Girls Love). The shutdown began hours after her return flight. Since then, the new dress has been on display at least when her 17 year old daughter, Amor, isn't trying it on. But Ms. Brown refuses to designate the dress for festive events at unspecified future dates. "I'm just going to dress it down and pair it with tennis shoes," she said. Then there is Mike Greko, 29, a musician, songwriter and D.J. in New York, whose eclectic style incorporates elements of Nu disco, rock edge pop and more. He already owned a Ziggy Stardust esque bespoke red sequined performance suit from Ammar Belal Custom Menswear, but back in January he ordered a second, "in gray silver with a teal blue hue when the light hits it," he said. It arrived just before the shutdown began. Now he sometimes tries it on, "pretending it's the good old days." Otherwise, he said, it's hanging from a door hook, waiting patiently for when clubs reopen. But why two sequined suits? "They bring me joy," said Mr. Greko, "and according to Marie Kondo that's a good thing." Ms. Kondo would surely approve the use to which Muriel Favaro, 67, a Parsons School of Design accessories instructor, has put a humongous Comme des Garcons tote bag in a peculiar celery color that she began coveting when she spotted an identical one from last year's collection on the floor of the Grove Street PATH train station. An online search resulted in her own huge bag arriving from Italy just days before the shutdown. Her plans to show it off all over town foiled, Ms. Favaro wasted no time turning it into a knitting basket for all the random skeins of yarn that had been laying around her Jersey City apartment. In retrospect, Ms. Wolin regards this purchase as "symbolic, representing a different time before we had to worry about personal safety the way we do now. Not that it will get me out of Covid." At least the race will be proceeding. Katrina Razon, 29, a music festival and cultural events producer in Manila, obsessed over dress choices for the March celebration of Tatler Philippines that she would be attending after appearing on the magazine's cover. Her final choice? A Staud bubble gum pink halter neck maxi dress with a cutout waist and open back, summoned up online from Moda Operandi. But the event, like so many others, got canceled, and has yet to be rescheduled. "This crisis has been an intense accelerator," Ms. Razon wrote in an email. "I shake my head when I reflect back to how anxious I was deciding which dress to wear, and I realized very quickly that we are not the clothes we wear. Working in the music industry, my mind has shifted from little worries to survival." Verity Zisser, 16, a high school student in London, is confident the "loads of clothes" she bought for Glastonbury, Redding, Boardmasters the summer music festivals will get their airing next year. In the meantime, she couldn't resist cutting the pants of a Depop blue gray track suit into shorts and wearing them with her homemade abbreviated bandanna top and her Nike Air Force 1 high top sneakers.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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MARVIN SHIVNARAIN, a 39 year old graphic designer, opened the trunk of his 1964 Chevrolet Impala SS to reveal six large car batteries strapped in a line and four golden hydraulic pumps that shone in the afternoon sun. "Each one of these pumps goes to a cylinder on each corner of the car," Mr. Shivnarain said, describing the mechanism that makes the chassis of his Chevy, a lowrider, rise when the hydraulic cylinders extend and drop down when the pressure is relieved. At the moment, the Impala was bottomed out, whiskers off the ground. "That's a lot of power," he said, referring to the batteries that provide electricity for the hydraulic pumps. "It's very easy to burn through metal and to cause a giant fire by just touching the wrong wire with the wrong metal." "There've been mishaps," he said. Mr. Shivnarain recalled the first time he installed hydraulics, in a Ford Thunderbird during the early 1990s. He had not reinforced the sheet metal where the cylinders attached. A cylinder shot through the car the lowrider equivalent of slipping on a banana peel leaving him stranded in Manhattan. "Just stuck there for hours and hours," he said, shrugging. "You can't tow it it's too low. Basically, I almost dragged the car home." Mr. Shivnarain was goaded into reliving those trying times one recent afternoon. He was wearing a blue T shirt and jeans, and hosing down the Impala behind his house in this quiet Long Island suburb an unlikely place to find a lowrider, much less a garage like Mr. Shivnarain's. The garage is tall and white with an overhang on one side that shelters a vehicle lift. One of the two big barn doors was open wide. Spray nozzles for his airbrush gear and canisters of paint lined the door's shelves. Mr. Shivnarain was a teenager, living in nearby Hempstead, when he began airbrush painting on jeans and T shirts. One day, a close friend hired him to do airbrush work on his 5 liter Mustang. "I was a little afraid of it," Mr. Shivnarain remembered. "And he's like, 'What's the worst that can happen? If it doesn't come out good, we'll sand it off and I'll get it repainted. But if it works out good, I'll give you 200 bucks.'" Just like that, a career was born. Lowrider Impalas were the music video car of choice for rappers tall (Snoop Dogg) and small (Skee Lo). Before he bought the silver '64 Impala SS convertible he was washing, Mr. Shivnarain owned a standard 1964 convertible, which he sold to a man in Australia. "He owned a limousine business," Mr. Shivnarain said. "And he said they loved the lowriders out there. They were booking it left and right for weddings and all kinds of things." Mr. Shivnarain remembered the car fondly. "It was all built up," he said. "It had hydraulics, candy green paint a nice looking car. But it wasn't an SS, you know?" The SS the abbreviation for Super Sport was the top level of trim for Impalas. His current car is relatively tame by lowrider standards. It has hydraulics; the instruments have been replaced by a row of electronic readouts. But it lacks the dazzling finish of his previous car. There is some rust along the edges. Mr. Shivnarain plans to give the Impala the full lowrider treatment. But, he said, he has too many customer cars awaiting paint to work on his own. Mr. Shivnarain has also cut back the amount of time he spends doing airbrush graphics, a change necessitated by the pain lingering from an assault about six years ago. Leaving a restaurant in Hempstead with his brother and some friends, he said, two men approached; one pointed a gun at Mr. Shivnarain's head. He managed to bat down the assailant's arm, but the gun went off and Mr. Shivnarain was hit in the side. His brother and a friend were also shot. The three men recovered from their wounds, but Mr. Shivnarain said there was still a bullet lodged close to his spine, and it becomes painful if he's on his feet for too long. Now he does more of his design work at the computer his company is called Artist Technicians and spends less time doing custom paint for customers. His 2 year old son, Jayden, ran around the backyard, stopping every once in a while to dip a blade of grass into the soapy water. Mr. Shivnarain spoke about California, the epicenter of the lowrider culture, which can be traced to the 1940s. "When I'm out there, it's like a history lesson," he said. "I'll be with guys all the way down in San Diego and up to Montclair. They all have different stories of what a lowrider is to them. I'll reach out to the older lowriders, and they have some of the best stories from the '70s and '60s." "When we started out in 1992, there were no lowrider shops anywhere in the five boroughs," Mr. Shivnarain said. Hence, the catastrophes. In 1994, when Mr. Shivnarain and his friend Kenneth Joseph, known as Bean, started the Drastic Auto Club for lowriders, they contacted Mario De Alba Jr., who opened Mario's Auto Works in Montclair, Calif., with his father Mario Sr., in 1986. "They were superstars," Mr. Shivnarain said, before correcting himself. "They are superstars." Three other De Alba brothers (Albert, Greg and Adrian) also work at the shop, as does Albert's son, Albert Jr. "And that's what's so cool about California, they learn right from their father, they learn right from their grandfather," Mr. Shivnarain said. "They're learning the right way." Eventually, Mr. Shivnarain and the other members of his car club acquired the skills needed to build a proper lowrider, including audio video installation, body repair and hydraulic systems.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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Baby carriers, cribs, strollers, high chairs, changing tables, bath seats these ordinary nursery products result in an average of 66,000 injuries a year requiring trips to the emergency room for young children. Using data from the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, researchers estimate that from 1991 to 2011, there were 1,391,844 injuries among children under 3 that were serious enough to be treated in a hospital. The rate of injuries decreased from 1991 to 2003, mainly because there were fewer baby walker or jumper related mishaps. But in 2003, the rate began to rise, and by 2011 the number of injuries had increased by 23.5 percent. Three fifths of the injuries were caused by falls. Baby carriers were the problem in 19.5 percent of all injuries, and in more than half of those to infants under 6 months of age.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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Kanter has also publicly addressed political issues in his native Turkey, and his criticism of the president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has left him something of a man without a country. Kanter will add depth to a Portland team that currently holds the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference. The Blazers, who already had Evan Turner and Seth Curry contributing off the bench, have added two prominent pieces, Kanter and Rodney Hood, a small forward acquired in a trade with Cleveland last week. Kanter's play did not decline appreciably this season, but with the Knicks committed to a youth movement and to keeping their win total low in pursuit of the No. 1 pick in the draft there was no place for a productive center whose contract was set to expire at the end of this season. After acquiring DeAndre Jordan to help with the development of the rookie center Mitchell Robinson, the Knicks were unable to find a taker for Kanter, so they released him. Kanter had publicly complained about his treatment by the Knicks, but he wrote an open letter to fans after his release on Feb. 7, saying the team had always made him feel at home and that New York would always have "a special place in my heart." Knicks Coach David Fizdale, who did not play Kanter in six of his last eight games with the team, said last week that he thought the decision to part ways could be good for Kanter.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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One of Lorrie Meyercord's investments will be La MaMa, a theatrical organization and performance space with more than 50 years of work in the East Village. Like an out of town tryout for a Broadway musical, Lorrie Meyercord tested her desire to make an investment in the creative economy by choosing a small city before moving to New York. She invested 1 million in artist housing in Dearborn, Mich., in 2016 through a nonprofit group called Artspace, which builds and manages affordable residences for artists and art organizations. The venture was a success because it gave the arts community broader social support while also providing Ms. Meyercord with a safe investment. The concept is known as impact investing, in which investors consider social good in addition to financial returns. It was also a path to expand the way people think about investing in the arts, an area often overlooked by investors. Two years later, Ms. Meyercord is making a similar investment, but this time, she is focused on the thriving New York art scene. Working with Upstart Co Lab, which channels impact investing into the arts, Ms. Meyercord has invested 100,000 in a bond offering that will raise at least 5 million for projects in New York. The recipients, which will be announced on Monday, include La MaMa, a theatrical organization and performance space with more than 50 years of work in the East Village. The organization is receiving a 3.2 million line of credit that will help pay to renovate its main theater. "So many people are looking at the bottom line and not understanding how this loan affects our local economy," said Mia Yoo, artistic director of La MaMa, noting the group employs 45 people but give opportunities to about 1,500 artists a year. "La MaMa is dealing with experimental work and trying things for the first time," she said. "The impact of it, we don't see for years." She pointed to Julie Taymor, who produced early works at La MaMa in the 1980s, long before winning a Tony for directing the musical "The Lion King" in 1997. Impact investing has matured in the past decade. There is now an abundance of projects in clean water, education and low income housing, but growth in arts investing has been slow. "The arts by their nature are intangible, and so their results are intangible," said Evan Beard, national art services executive at U.S. Trust, a private bank for high net worth individuals. "There are metrics to say how many people got clean water or how many were cured of malaria. The metrics on this are challenging." Since Upstart Co Lab was founded in 2015, it has helped increase interest in impact investing in the arts because "we learned how to talk about this and frame it," said Laura Callanan, a founding partner. "Talking about what's in and what's out of the creative economy makes a lot of sense," Ms. Callanan added. She has also been able to point to the success of the Artspace investments. The Michigan project, which I wrote about in 2016, consists of 55 units of housing for artists and 20,000 square feet of commercial space focused on the arts. The investment was structured like a revolving line of credit, which has been drawn from again several times. Artspace was able to use the money to fund a similar project in Memphis. The success has attracted more interest. Ms. Meyercord's 1 million investment in the first project accounted for 40 percent of the 2.5 million that went to Artspace. Both then and now, Upstart teamed up with organizations that are known for their socially responsible investing: first with the Calvert Foundation, a mutual fund that organized the investment in Artspace, and this time with the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a lender known as LISC that underwrote the bond. The New York investment is focused on the blue collar workers in the arts community, particularly as manufacturing jobs in the city shrink. "It's not just the financial expectations and whether they're a good bet as a borrower but also their impact on the neighborhood," Ms. Callanan said. "The whole point is that these are jobs people can do across a lifetime." For recipients, the money often comes at a crucial time. "When Artspace goes out to do a project, predevelopment funding is impossible to raise money for," said Kathleen Kvern, president of national advancement at Artspace. "This allows us to start work and go raise money later," she said. "It's enabled us to start these projects when we didn't have a predevelopment contract." She said the group envisioned recycling a five year line of credit several more times, which differs from grants, which are given for a specific project. The downside, though: "These are loans," Ms. Kvern said, and they have to be paid back. And because Artspace is building permanent, affordable housing, the loans are going to be paid back not with a windfall but with consistent rents and fund raising. Some advisers argue, though, that impact investing in the creative economy could remain a hard sell compared with more common recipients of such funding like education and health care. Mr. Beard, who focuses on art lending at U.S. Trust, said there had been an uptick in using art to fund other philanthropic endeavors. He cited Agnes Gund's sale of a 150 million Roy Lichtenstein painting to start a criminal justice fund, called Art for Justice. Others, he said, are borrowing against their art to make traditional grants to organizations. And traditional art funding through philanthropy and private buyers has worked well, Mr. Beard said. "Does our art system need impact investing?" he said. "We already have this very dynamic art model that goes out in the world. That may be why we've seen a failure to launch with impact investing in the arts." But groups like Upstart Co Lab and LISC are looking to invest in a broadly defined creative economy, which can include traditional arts organizations like La MaMa but also small manufacturing companies that make high end cabinetry and retail displays. "We're providing an opportunity to invest in arts culture and creativity," said Sam Marks, executive director of the New York office of LISC. "We're trying to create a new channel of investment capital. This is about benefits for low and moderate income people." That channel is not necessarily a risky one, but it's also not a lucrative one, either. The eight year note on the New York project, which pays annual interest of 2.75 percent, is backed by LISC, which has an investment grade rating. Katherine Fulton, an independent philanthropic consultant in Northern California, said she was looking for impact investments in the arts but felt limited. Most of the savings that she and her wife, Katharine Kunst, an artist, have are managed by a large brokerage firm that does not have impact offerings. Until they made a 100,000 investment in the New York project, they felt there were not a lot of options for affluent investors. "We needed to find something that was easy to do," Ms. Fulton said. "It's a safe return. It's not a high return. But it's also important because cities and urban spaces need the creative economy." Of course, just labeling a deal as an impact investment in the arts does not make it a great investment. Ms. Meyercord said she toured a site in upstate New York that was aiming to revitalize a former manufacturing town with a film production facility. "It was really cool, but there wasn't a clear cut way to get involved," she said. "I don't live in New York, and I wasn't going to come in and spearhead the whole thing." The investments in New York and Dearborn were essentially in real estate, which in turn will be used in some form by artists. It's easy to grasp how an investor will be repaid. Ms. Meyercord estimated that six of her 25 impact investments were in the arts. She said she was happy with the investments she had made so far, but wished there were more people looking for deals with her. "It hasn't been more difficult than I thought," she said. "I would like to find more people like myself who are sourcing these projects and I can collaborate with. I haven't necessarily found other investors who make this a top priority." There is a silver lining: "Other investors think it's interesting, and they're happy to get on board. There just needs to be someone to do the legwork."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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At M.I.T.'s Media Lab, the digital futurist playground, David Rose is investigating swaddling, bedtime stories and hammocks, as well as lavender oil and cocoons. Mr. Rose, a researcher, an inventor entrepreneur and the author of "Enchanted Objects: Design, Human Desire and the Internet of Things," and his colleagues have been road testing weighted blankets to induce a swaddling sensation and listening to recordings of Icelandic fairy tales all research into an ideal sleep environment that may culminate in a nap pod, or, as he said, "some new furniture form." "For me, it's a swinging bed on a screened porch in northwestern Wisconsin," he said. "You can hear the loons and the wind through the fir trees, and there's the weight of 10 blankets on top of me because it's a cold night. We're trying a bunch of interventions." "I've got a mission," he said. "I want to reunite humanity with the sleep it is so bereft of." Sense is the first product made by Hello Inc., a technology company started by James Proud, a British entrepreneur, for which Dr. Walker is the chief scientist. In Paris, Hugo Mercier, a computer science engineer, has invested in sound waves. He has raised over 10 million to create a headband that uses them to induce sleep. The product, called Dreem, has been beta tested on 500 people (out of a pool of 6,500 applicants, Mr. Mercier said) and will be ready for sale this summer. That is when Ben Olsen, an Australian entrepreneur, hopes to introduce Thim, a gadget you wear on your finger that uses sound to startle you awake every three minutes for an hour, just before you go to sleep. Sleep disruptions, apparently, can cure sleep disruption (and Mr. Olsen, like all good sleep entrepreneurs, has the research to prove it). It is his second sleep contraption. His first, the Re Timer, a pair of goggles fitted with tiny green blue lights that shine back into your eyes, aims to reset your body's clock. He said that since 2012, he had sold 30,000 pairs in 40 countries. For years, studies upon studies have shown how bad sleep weakens the immune system, impairs learning and memory, contributes to depression and other mood and mental disorders, as well as obesity, diabetes, cancer and an early death. (Sedated sleep hello Ambien has been shown to be as deleterious as poor sleep.) The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention calls sleeplessness a public health concern. Good sleep helps brain plasticity, studies in mice have shown; poor sleep will make you fat and sad, and then will kill you. It is also expensive: Last year, the RAND Corporation published a study that calculated the business loss of poor sleep in the United States at 411 billion a gross domestic product loss of 2.28 percent. Companies now fight "presenteeism," a neologism that describes the lackluster performance of foggy brained, sleep deprived employees, with sleep programs like Sleepio, an online sleep coach, and sleep fairs, like the one hosted last month in Manhattan by Nancy H. Rothstein, director of Circadian Corporate Sleep Programs and otherwise known as the Sleep Ambassador, for LinkedIn. For the last few years, Ms. Rothstein has been designing sleep education and training programs for a number of Fortune 500 companies. At the LinkedIn sleep fair, she taught attendees how to make a bed (use hospital corners, please) and gave out analog alarm clocks. (It was her former husband's snoring, she said, that led her to a career as a sleep evangelist.) If sleep used to be the new sex, as Marian Salzman, a trend spotter and chief executive of Havas PR North America, proclaimed 10 years ago, today it is a measure of success a skill to be cultivated and nourished as a "human potential enhancer," as one West Coast entrepreneur told me, and life extender. "Sleep is the single most effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body," Dr. Walker of U.C. Berkeley said. "We have a saying in medicine: What gets measured, gets managed." "I can see sleep being another weapon in competitive parenting and career building," Ms. Salzman said. "If you want your child to succeed, do you have to buy them these sleep devices? Sleep is personal, it's class, not mass, and now the sleep industry is based on technical services, customized for me. It's a bizarre marriage of high tech and low tech. Chamomile tea is going to have a resurgence, as the antithesis to the whole pharma thing." The familiar paradigm of success used to center on the narrative of the short sleeper: Corporate titans and world leaders like Martha Stewart and our last two presidents counted abbreviated rest as proof of their prowess. It turns out that short sleepers, as they are known, may have a genetic mutation, as Arianna Huffington pointed out in her 2016 book, "The Sleep Revolution: Transforming Your Life One Night at a Time." The Army has proclaimed sleep a pillar of peak soldier performance. Jeff Bezos, the chief executive of Amazon, who used to take a sleeping bag to work when he was a lowly computer programmer, has said that his eight hours of sleep each night were good for his stockholders. Ms. Huffington's new company, Thrive Global, whose first round investors include the internet entrepreneur Sean Parker and the venture capital firm Greycroft Partners, is working with Accenture, JP Morgan Chase and Uber, among other companies, on antiburnout programming, which educates their employees on the importance of sleep. Aetna, the health care company, is paying its workers up to 500 a year if they can prove they have slept for seven hours or more for 20 days in a row. But the growing pile of apps, gizmos and gurus some from unlikely corners has led to "pandemonium in the bedroom," Ms. Rothstein said. In 2015, the actor Jeff Bridges made a spoken word album, "Dreaming With Jeff," a project for Squarespace, that reached No. 2 on Billboard's New Age chart and raised 280,000 for the No Kid Hungry campaign, for which he is the national spokesman. He collaborated with Keefus Ciancia, the composer and music producer, on a truly weird collection of quasi bedtime stories, musings about death and also a humming song, with Mr. Bridges's familiar gruff voice and all manner of ambient sounds that many listeners found more alarming than sleep inducing. "I don't know where this is leading," Mr. Bridges said the other day, "but I'm steeping myself in the subject. We're working on something called Sleep Club, which will be sort of a hub for all things sleep related." "Dreaming With Jeff" made me anxious, as did "Sleep With Me," a podcast by Drew Ackerman, a gravelly voiced librarian in San Francisco, whose "boring bedtime stories" are designed to cure insomnia and are downloaded at a rate of 1.3 million a month, as The New Yorker reported last year. I'm more drawn to the thousands of "songs" in Spotify's Sleep Sound Library, particularly "full gutters" and "office air conditioners," and I have a white noise machine. But recently, desperately, I craved a more substantial intervention, perhaps a cure for the 3 a.m. fretting that has plagued me for years. Mr. Mercier sent me his Dreem headset, a weighty crown of rubber and wire that he warned would be a tad uncomfortable. The finished product, about 400, he said, will be much lighter and slimmer. But it wasn't the heft of the thing that had me pulling it off each night. It skeeved me out that it was reading and interfering with my brain waves, a process I would rather not outsource. I was just as wary of the Re Timer goggles, 299, which make for a goofy/spooky selfie in a darkened room. My eye sockets glowed a deep fluorescent green, and terrified the cat. The Ghost Pillow, 85, has "patent pending thermo sensitivity technology" designed to keep your head cool. It is wildly comfy, but when I read what it is made from, a polyurethane foam, I lost sleep. I bought a Good Night Light LED Sleep bulb, 28, which comes with its own "patented technology" to support your body's melatonin production. I can't tell if that's what happened, but since the bulb is too dim for my middle aged eyes, I struggled to read my go to sleep aid, a worn copy of "The Pursuit of Love," by Nancy Mitford, and knocked off a good half hour earlier than usual. I was up again at 3 a.m., however, as my new Sense pod alerted me the next day, through an app on my phone. And again at 5 a.m., when the cat swatted the pod off the night stand and it glowed red in protest. "There was a noise disturbance," the app explained. Still, the best sleep I've had in weeks cost 22, and lasted 33 minutes. It was a Deep Rest "class" at Inscape, a meditation studio in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan designed by Winka Dubbeldam, the sought after Dutch architect, to evoke the temple at Burning Man, and other esoteric spaces, and created by Khajak Keledjian, a founder, with his brother, Haro, of Intermix, which they sold to the Gap for 130 million in 2013. Mr. Keledjian, a meditator, aims to make the practice both secular and modern: a "mindful luxury," he said. Though there are human "facilitators" in each class, who gently touch the feet of snoring attendees if they get too loud, the practice is guided by a recording made by an Australian female member of Mr. Keledjian's company. "We call her 'Skye,'" he said. It was lunchtime on a rainy Tuesday, and I settled onto a soft mat outfitted with a bolster, a pillow and a cozy fleece blanket. "Skye" urged me to stay awake, and then delivered a script like Ms. Rothstein's, in mellifluous antipodean tones. I drifted once or twice, and from the muffled snorts of the other attendees, they did too. That night, I slept until dawn.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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SHANGHAI China has taken another step toward loosening its capital controls and making its currency more freely convertible by approving the creation of a new kind of free trade zone here. China's State Council, or cabinet, said it was establishing a pilot zone in Shanghai to test some of the government's financial overhauls, including interest rate liberalization and full convertibility of China's currency, the renminbi, according to reports Thursday in the state run news media. Analysts say the free trade zone will not just promote interest rate liberalization and currency convertibility but will also allow "financial product innovation" and the raising of money abroad or investment in foreign stocks by corporations. Since taking office this year, Prime Minister Li Keqiang has been promising bold changes aimed at overhauling the economy and improving the nation's global competitiveness. In May, a State Council meeting presided over by Mr. Li said that by the end of the year the government would outline a plan for full convertibility of the renminbi and make it easier for Chinese individuals to invest. Still, many analysts say they believe that China's currency will not be fully convertible until 2015 to 2018. "The State Council expects this experiment as an essential step towards upgrading China's economy," Qu Hongbin, an economist at HSBC in Hong Kong, said in a report on Thursday. "It also expects the pilot's eventual national rollout." It is unclear exactly how the free trade zone would operate, but businesses and traders in the zone would probably be more free to import and export goods without customs approvals, and to convert foreign currency into renminbi more freely. 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. Clearview AI does well in another round of facial recognition accuracy tests. The approval of the free trade zone is a lift for Shanghai, which in 2009 won State Council approval to become a financial center to compete better with Hong Kong, London, New York and Tokyo. Although China has the world's second largest economy, after that of the United States, the government maintains strict controls over capital flows and cross border investments. It also has tight control over interest rates. The government does that, in part, to guard against perceived threats from international currency speculators and to prevent huge inflows or outflows of money from rocking the banking sector and the economy. But the government is moving ahead with plans to integrate with the global economy more fully by loosening controls over interest rates and cross border trade and investment deals. Analysts say loosening of those controls could strengthen the financial system and make it more efficient. The overhauls could also make it easier to trade the renminbi, setting the stage for it to rival the dollar some day as a reserve currency. The government controls its value, and beginning in 2005, Beijing began allowing the renminbi to strengthen against a basket of other major currencies, including the dollar. Analysts say the experimental zone is another move toward allowing the global financial markets to determine to value of the renminbi, also known as the yuan. After years of spectacular economic growth, China's economy has been showing signs of weakening this year, and economists are warning about looming risks in the banking industry. Shanghai, a city of 20 million, already has major ports and transportation hubs, and it is setting its sights on becoming a global logistics center. In 2005, Shanghai opened the first phase of the Yangshan Deep Water Port, which could eventually become the world's largest shipping container port. The facility, projected to cost 18 billion, is on an island that is reached by a bridge that stretches 20 miles across the sea.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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Sounding like a 19th century MSNBC pundit, John Quincy Adams once complained to his mother, Abigail, that America was interested "in personality rather than actual plans or programs." "You insisted that I strive to be the smartest person in every room," Adams, on a roll, continued. "And you know what? It turns out everyone hates the smartest person in the room!" But fine, so maybe the real Adams did not actually say all that it's the one in Aaron Posner's "JQA," presented online by San Diego Repertory Theater, who does. But the sentiment fits the historical figure this play of ideas introduces, and if it finds an echo now, that is very much the point. Over the past decade, Posner has emerged as a remarkably astute adapter, best known for retoolings of Chekhov plays that highlight their psychological acuity by transposing them to contemporary settings ("The Seagull" became "Stupid Bird," "Uncle Vanya" turned into "Life Sucks"). Here, he does something similar with a real figure a prologue informs us that what follows is "not historical fiction but fictional history" and turns out an engaging plea for active government and elementary civics. "JQA" is structured as a series of 10 chronological scenes, going from Adams's childhood until shortly before his death, between the statesman and another person. The interlocutors include Abigail Adams, George Washington, James Madison, Frederick Douglass and, finally, Abraham Lincoln, with whom Adams briefly overlapped in his postpresidential years in Congress. The hook is that four actors of diverse genders, ages and ethnicities handle every character and take turns portraying the title role always identified by a red coat. (The production is efficiently handled by the stage director Sam Woodhouse and the film director Tim Powell, who only stumble with a cheesy ending.) This conceit is similar to the one in Todd Haynes's cerebral biopic of Bob Dylan, "I'm Not There," but whereas Haynes tried to illustrate how one person can contain multitudes, Posner seems more interested in how a person can represent and, yes, serve a country's many people. Casting also serves as an ironic distancing device: In addition to pitching in as Adams, for example, Larry Bates also takes on Andrew Jackson and Frederick Douglass; Crystal Lucas Perry plays Adams; his wife, Louisa; and Lincoln. But the play, which premiered last year at Arena Stage in Washington, does not rely on postmodern, wink wink nods, and Posner steers clear of hindsight enriched anachronisms golf does pop up, probably because it took off in America in the late 18th century, a coincidence just too good to ignore. Rather, he uses fairly well known figures to engage in a series of dialectical exchanges that easily find contemporary resonance. Some touch on personal matters, as when Adams brings up his son's death, possibly by suicide, with James Madison (Rosina Reynolds). Others are very much political. "Keep 'em scared enough, and you can usually get your way," the wily Secretary of State Henry Clay (Jesse Perez) advises a dubious Adams. "Keep 'em terrified, and you can run roughshod on the law, take away their liberties, sell them any damn bill of goods you can imagine, and as often as not they'll thank you for it." It's clear where Posner's sympathies lie, and indeed "JQA" is unabashedly blue, which here refers both to language (keep in mind there is some cursing but that otherwise the show is appropriate for older kids) and to political affiliation: Through Adams, the play posits an ideal of public service as vital to the integrity of the country's fabric and its professed values. JQA Available on demand through Nov. 29; sdrep.org
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Theater
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How to watch: Tennis Channel, 7 p.m. Eastern time, then on ESPN, 9 p.m.; streaming on ESPN , 7 p.m. and ESPN3, 9 p.m. In the first set of Alexander Zverev's quarterfinal match against Stan Wawrinka, Zverev looked lost. Wawrinka's powerful serve and backhand were moving Zverev around the court, preventing him from gaining purchase in any of the points. He lost the first set in just 26 minutes. Zverev, the seventh seed, used his serve to settle back into the match. In the past, Zverev's serve has been the missing link in an otherwise well rounded game. On his run to Thursday night's semifinal, it has been among his most potent weapons. After Zverev won the ATP Finals in 2018, many thought he was likely to break through the oligarchy of the Big Three and win a major. He is closer than ever, but to get to the final he will need to beat the runner up of the 2019 ATP Finals, Dominic Thiem. Thiem, the fifth seed, is a clay court specialist who has made inroads on hardcourts over the past year. With a four set victory over Rafael Nadal, the world No. 1, Thiem has reached his first Grand Slam semifinal outside of the French Open, which is played on the burned red clay of Roland Garros. Thiem, whose court coverage and heavy topspin shots are well suited to slower courts, has often lost his battles against Nadal, whose style of play Thiem has liberally learned from or plagiarized, depending on whom you support. But in his quarterfinal victory, Thiem was able to change tack, successfully incorporating a knifed slice backhand that could slow down points or bring Nadal into net. When these two members of the so called Next Generation meet, the weight of being so close to a major title will no doubt be heavy on their minds. Of the active players on tour, five have won a Grand Slam title and all are over 30. Two previous winners are injured and struggling to return to the tour. The last person to win a Grand Slam title besides those seven was Marat Safin at the Australian Open in 2005, and he has since retired and been inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Thiem and Zverev still have a mountain to climb, but each is showing that his mental block against taking out a former champion is starting to fade.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Walter E. Williams, a prominent conservative economist, author and political commentator who expressed profoundly skeptical views of government efforts to aid his fellow African Americans and other minority groups, died on Tuesday on the campus of George Mason University in Virginia, where he had taught for 40 years. He was 84. His daughter, Devon Williams, said he died suddenly in his car after he had finished teaching a class. She said he had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and hypertension. As a public intellectual, Mr. Williams moved easily between the classroom and public forums that gave him wide reach. He wrote a syndicated column, lectured across the country and frequently appeared on the radio as a substitute host for the ardently conservative Rush Limbaugh. The author of about a dozen books, including "The State Against Blacks," Mr. Williams was the subject of a 2014 PBS documentary, "Suffer No Fools," in which he maintained that antipoverty programs were subsidizing "slovenly" behavior. "The welfare state has done to Black Americans what slavery could not have done, Jim Crow and the harshest racism could not have done namely to destroy the Black family," Mr. Williams declared in "Suffer No Fools." Mr. Williams was somewhat overshadowed by Thomas Sowell, a better known Black economist turned social and political commentator and a colleague with whom Mr. Williams maintained a long friendship (and whom he once interviewed as a stand in host on the Limbaugh program). But he made himself heard nevertheless. He argued that many well intentioned government programs, including the minimum wage and a law that in effect mandates union wages on federal construction projects, hurt disadvantaged Americans, particularly Black people. In an influential essay, "Minimum Wage, Maximum Folly," published in 2007, he argued that a minimum wage (it was 5.85 at the time) came with "legally mandated fringe benefits such as employer payments for Social Security, Medicare, unemployment compensation, and worker compensation programs at federal and state levels" that "run as high as 30 percent of the hourly wage." "Put oneself in the place of an employer," he wrote, "and ask: Does it make sense for me to hire a worker who is so unfortunate as to have skills enabling him to produce 4 worth of value per hour when he is going to cost me 8 an hour? Most employers would see doing so a losing economic proposition and not hire such a worker." Mr. Williams contended that the civil rights legislation championed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s had actually worsened race relations by seeking an "equality of result" in terms of voting rights and bans on discrimination rather than an equality of economic opportunity, which he said might better have lifted more Black Americans out of poverty and dependence on public welfare programs. He had his critics on the liberal side. In 1981, in a Q. and A. face off with Mr. Williams in the opinion pages of The New York Times, Benjamin Hooks, the president of the N.A.A.C.P. at the time, was unsparing in his assessment of Black conservatives like Mr. Williams. "Black conservatives are basically a carbon copy of white conservatives," Mr. Hooks said. "They object to affirmative actions designed to overcome preferences long accorded to white males; they object to busing, as one effective remedy for rectifying a school system that has been deliberately and historically segregated; they object, in some ways which are difficult for me to understand, to government spending to meet human needs and to assist poor people. They seem to favor a sub minimum wage, which would have some people working for a salary that would, upon receipt, put them below the poverty level." Mr. Williams also opposed affirmative action programs and proposals to pay reparations to Black people for slavery. ("The problems that Black people face are not going to be solved by white people," he said.) And he could be blunt in taking on liberal leaders in the Black community. "Racial discrimination and racism in our country could have earned a well deserved death," he once said, "but it has been resurrected by race hustlers, or poverty pimps as I call them, such as Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and many others in the civil rights movement who make a living on the grievances of Blacks." "My father deserted my mother when, I guess, I was 2 or 3 years old," he said in an interview in 2006. Walter and his sister, Catherine, were raised by their mother in a public housing project in North Philadelphia. In his youth Mr. Williams was an indifferent student, but he was always eager to earn money. Among other jobs, he picked blueberries, shoveled snow, washed dishes and, at 10, shined shoes. At 13, he found menial work for a women's hat manufacturer. There he taught himself to use the electric sewing machines, only to be fired when a seamstress complained to the authorities that his employment violated child labor laws. An after school job at a small brokerage house led him, in his midteens, to buy a few shares of Pepsi Cola stock, whose price he followed in the financial pages of The Philadelphia Bulletin. After graduating from high school, Mr. Williams made a brief sojourn with his father to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in Los Angeles City College. But after a falling out with his father, he moved back to Philadelphia and drove a taxi to pay for night classes at Temple University. Through another driver, he met his future wife, Conchetta Taylor, known as Connie. Mr. Williams was later drafted into the Army. At Fort Stewart in Georgia, he later recalled, he discovered that President Harry S. Truman's 1948 executive order banning discrimination in the armed forces had done nothing to prevent Black soldiers from being assigned the most menial jobs. Mr. Williams proved a rebellious soldier. Once, when ordered to paint a truck, he painted all of it, including mirrors and tires, and then explained his action to his superior officers in a mock obseqious manner, using what he called "my best Stepin Fetchit routine." Mr. Williams was eventually ordered to Korea, but before he shipped out, he and Ms. Taylor married. His wife died in 2007. In addition to their daughter, Mr. Williams is survived by a grandson. At his new post in South Korean, Mr. Williams once checked "Caucasian" on an official form to avoid an unpleasant assignment he wound up a postal clerk and wrote letters to various officials complaining of racial discrimination. (The Philadelphia Independent, a newspaper with a largely Black readership, published one of his letters on the front page.) Returning to California after his discharge, Mr. Williams enrolled at what is now California State University, Los Angeles. Intending to study sociology, he switched to economics after encountering the work of W.E.B Du Bois, who argued that capitalism was a major source of racism. Mr. Williams later said that he came to see economics "as a struggle for liberty." After receiving his bachelor's degree, Mr. Williams moved on to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he collected master's and doctoral degrees. At one point in his pursuit of a Ph.D., he was shocked when he flunked an economic theory exam and was told that a paper of his was among the worst in the class. The experience helped shape his thinking about race. "It convinced me that U.C.L.A. professors didn't care anything about my race: They'd flunk me just as they'd flunk anyone else who didn't make the grade," he wrote in his autobiography, "Up From the Projects" (2010). Until then his political leanings had been liberal; he believed, for example, that higher minimum wages unquestionably helped poor people. But a professor asked him to weigh good intentions against real world effects and pointed to the work of, among others, the University of Chicago economists Yale Brozen and Milton Friedman. (Mr. Williams would go on to appear in Mr. Friedman's PBS series "Free to Choose" in 1980.) He returned to Temple University in 1973, this time to teach. He remained on the Temple faculty until 1980, when he moved to George Mason University, where he served for a time as chairman of the economics department. For many years he was an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, the conservative think tank in Washington.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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With their eyes trained on a gilded frame containing a smeared, half formed image of a distinguished gentleman, a small group of potential bidders gathered Friday night over cocktails at Christie's New York and heard the pitch: here was the first portrait generated by an algorithm to come up for auction. The portrait, produced by artificial intelligence, hung on the wall opposite an Andy Warhol print and just to the right of a bronze work by Roy Lichtenstein. There were some smiles and at least one frown. Two people snapped cellphone pictures of the work, which looked as though someone had taken a sponge to a 17th century oil portrait. The arrival of what some call the infant stages of the next great art movement at one of the world's leading auction houses was greeted nonchalantly, with a nod of understanding and a sip of mezcal margarita. Christie's is hoping for a more explosive reaction on Thursday, when the gavel comes down on "Edmond de Belamy, from La Famille de Belamy," formally testing the art market's interest in AI art. The work estimated at 7,000 10,000 was a collaboration by the members of Obvious, a French trio composed of a student of machine learning and two business school graduates, none of whom have a background in art. There was no paint or brushes involved, just an algorithm that learns to imitate sets of images fed by humans in this case, thousands of portraits spanning the 14th century to the 20th. But is it art? Frederique Baumgartner, an art historian at Columbia University, said the AI work raised questions about "intention and authorship," but so, too, did artists from the past, including Marcel Duchamp (who famously made art out of a urinal). She went on to compare the portrait's contrasting tones, coupled with the subject's sober dress, with the old master of the Dutch Golden Age, Rembrandt van Rijn though she quickly added, "That's if I look half closing my eyes." The unusual sale shows the challenge traditional auction houses face staying relevant in a culture that moves at WiFi enabled speeds. Christie's which shattered auction house records in 2017 when it sold a 450 million Leonardo da Vinci painting reached out directly to Obvious this year, rather than working through a seller. (It is the only AI work in Thursday's sale of 363 lots.) Surprisingly, the loudest criticism has come not from the art establishment but from the small but passionate community of artists who work with AI, many of whom say that what Christie's and Obvious suggested was groundbreaking was in fact effectively AI Art 101. Ahmed Elgammal, the director of the Art and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at Rutgers University, said that the technology used to create the work, Generative Adversarial Networks, or GANs, had been used by artists since around 2015. "This group was totally irrelevant," he scoffed. Mario Klingemann, a German artist known for his work with GANs, put it bluntly. "When I saw that announcement" of the auction, he said, "my reaction was 'you can't be serious.'" He compared the portrait by Obvious "to a connect the dots children's painting." Richard Lloyd, the International Head of the Prints Multiples department at Christie's, who brought the work in, acknowledged that he hadn't made an exhaustive search of the small but very active field of AI art. "I just responded to it and thought it'd be cool," he said. What struck Mr. Lloyd most, he said, was the work's resemblance to European portraiture. "It looks like something you'd expect Christie's to sell," he explained. "We're the people who sold the Leonardo for 450 million." He thought that the work Obvious was doing would be a good way to ease potential buyers at Christie's into work made with AI. "I like the fact that it didn't at first blush look different," he said. Many artists and researchers who specialize in artistic applications of AI technology, while generally glad of the potential exposure the sale could bring, say that the portrait chosen by Christie's is derivative. Codes written to produce the kind of images Obvious has made are also shared freely online among enthusiasts, raising questions of originality. For its part, Obvious acknowledges that the technology it used was gleaned from others. "It's open source," explained Pierre Fautrel, one of the group's members, in an interview in New York last week. "We took a lot of different parts from different people." The biggest difference between the Obvious portrait and their predecessors' is the fact that Obvious had theirs printed on canvas and "signed" in the bottom right corner with a mathematical function used to produce it. They also had it extravagantly framed. "We're introducing it to people who do not necessarily know what a GAN algorithm is," Mr. Lloyd explained, speaking to the presentation. "It has to be, all things being equal, comparatively simple." The opportunity to capitalize on the buzz surrounding artificial intelligence fits in with Christie's efforts to market itself in new ways. In July it held its first Art Tech summit, focused on the theme of blockchain, the technology behind cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. (Obvious themselves have sold art on SuperRare, an online marketplace that allows users to buy and sell digital artwork using cryptocurrency.) Brick and mortar auction houses have been slow to accept art that explores new technologies. To be sure, Sotheby's, Christie's and Phillips offer plenty of digitally generated works by blue chip artists like Andreas Gursky and Christopher Wool. But the sort of digital video and virtual reality pieces that are featured routinely at contemporary art biennials rarely, if ever, appear at auction houses. Artists in the field are hoping that works sold at auctions like Christie's will increasingly enter private collections. That appears to be happening more often. Earlier this year the New Delhi art gallery Nature Morte hosted what was billed as India's first exhibition of work made entirely by AI, including works by Mr. Klingemann, Tom White, Memo Akten, Jake Elwes and Anna Ridler. In December, Dr. Elgammal of Rutgers will exhibit AI art for sale at SCOPE Miami Beach, a satellite fair during the time of Art Basel Miami Beach.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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Since the introduction of colorful, single load packets of laundry detergent in 2012 through the end of 2013, more than 17,000 children under age 6 ate or inhaled the contents or squirted concentrated liquid from a packet into their eyes, researchers reported Monday. Their study is the first to compile all cases reported to the National Poison Data System, confirming fears that accidental poisonings with laundry packets, which many households choose for their convenience, are not uncommon. Because reporting to the database is voluntary, the figure is likely an underestimation, several experts said. The study was published in the journal Pediatrics. Critics contend that some brightly colored packets too closely resemble candy or a teething toy. Two years ago, the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggested the packets "might represent an emerging public health concern." "These 17,000 children we found amounts to one child every hour being exposed to one of these laundry pod products," said Dr. Marcel J. Casavant, a study author and the medical director of the poison center at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. "That's a very different order of magnitude than other hazards." Most of the cases occurred among children aged 1 or 2, and nearly 80 percent involved ingestion of the contents of a packet. Two deaths of children have been confirmed, one in Florida and another in New Jersey. Most commonly, children vomited, became lethargic, irritated their eyes, coughed or choked, the researchers found. About 6,000 were seen in emergency rooms. About 750 were hospitalized, and half required intensive care. The laundry packets tend to burst in a child's mouth, and the concentrated contents can be swallowed all at once. "They are made with almost like a very thin Saran wrap that dissolves when wet," said Dr. Cynthia Aaron, the medical director of the Regional Poison Control Center at Children's Hospital of Michigan, which contributes to the national database. "They bite on it, and the contents go to the back of their throat." At least 10 brands of premeasured laundry detergent packets are available, including top sellers like Tide Pods and All Mighty Pacs. Consumers spent about 525 million on the two brands in 2013, an increase of more than 55 percent compared to 2012, according to IRI, a market research firm based in Chicago. In recent years, federal agencies, poison centers, Consumer Reports and manufacturers have warned parents to keep packets out of children's reach and sight. Angela Farrell, a 24 year old mother in Levittown, Pa., always kept detergent packets on a high shelf in her laundry room. One day in March, a packet fell on the ground, and her 18 month old son put it in his mouth. She noticed immediately but, she said, "by the time I had pulled it out, he had swallowed its contents." When the ambulance arrived, he was lethargic, struggling to breathe and vomiting copiously. In the emergency room, he had to be given a breathing tube. He was in intensive care at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for three days. He eventually recovered. "I'm very upset it happened to me, because I never thought it could," Mrs. Farrell said. She has switched back to liquid detergent. "I don't have to worry about him getting into that big bottle as easily as he bit into a packet," she said. Many laundry detergent packets are sold in soft pouches with Ziploc style tops that critics say don't deter preschoolers. Last August, Procter Gamble changed plastic tubs holding detergent packets, making them opaque so children could not see contents and outfitting them with triple latch lids to make them harder to open. At least four other companies "have made or are making changes regarding safety icons or opaque packaging," said Brian Sansoni, a spokesman for the American Cleaning Institute, a trade group for detergent manufacturers. Dr. Fred M. Henretig, an emergency medicine doctor and senior toxicologist at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said none of these changes would be sufficient to prevent poisonings. The products should have "true child resistant packaging," he said. "The most important factor in decreasing bad outcomes for kids is to decrease the toxicity of the product itself, or decrease the ability for it to get into the hands or mouths of young children," he said, adding, "It's not about bad parenting." Dr. Casavant and his colleagues called for better product packaging and labeling, public education and an industrywide product safety standard. ASTM International, a nonprofit standards developer, has begun the process of establishing a standard for packaging with manufacturers, federal officials and consumer advocates. "It's important at this moment for a strong and effective industry consensus standard to be established," said Scott Wolfson, a spokesman for the Consumer Product Safety Commission. But the process may take one to two years, according to Len Morrissey, a director of technical operations at ASTM. Some consumers want faster changes. In the last year, 36,000 people have signed a petition asking Procter Gamble, the maker of Tide Pods and Gain Flings!, to stop producing detergent packets that resemble candy and to wrap each packet individually. Erica Johnson, a political consultant in Homewood, Ill., created the petition a year ago, after her grandson swallowed a packet and was hospitalized. In 2013, a 16 month old boy who bit into a laundry detergent packet went into cardiac arrest, according to Dr. Steven Marcus, the medical director of New Jersey Poison Information Education System. The boy was resuscitated, but died a few days later. "As far as we are concerned, we are calling his death related to the ingestion," Dr. Marcus said. The child's parents, he noted, had the empty packet with chew marks.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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Alberto Ventura is the doorman at 1111 Park Avenue in Manhattan.Credit...John Taggart for The New York Times From White Gloves to Latex, the Doormen of New York They are the white gloved sentries, standing guard at New York City's better addresses, so signature a feature of life here that we tend to forget that in other metropolitan centers like Paris, London, Chicago or Boston uniformed doormen (and, less often, women) barely exist. They form a small army, some 35,000 residential doormen, concierges, porters, handymen and supers represented by a powerful union, 32BJ. They open doors, of course, load cars, receive packages, pass dogs off to professional walkers and in general make themselves indispensable to an ease of life many in this demanding town take for granted. Yet as protectors of the border between public and private, doormen play a role crucial to the currents of the metropolis, one never more evident than now when the front line of a global pandemic is one's threshold. "Yes, it's a job, but we also try to keep the building as a home," said Alberto Ventura, 65, who has worked the door at the same Park Avenue building for 42 years. "With the virus, we're trying to take it a day at a time and be as calm as we can." In places like these, where the buildings have names that seem filched from Thomas Hardy or street numbers that send the blood of real estate agents racing, the inescapable tumult of city life is stops at windowed wooden bi fold doors, inset with ornamental iron grilles. Once past the mahogany portals, residents and visitors alike experience an almost sedative calm and a security induced in large part by the assembled elements of a universalized department store version of taste. Almost inevitably there are marble floors with truffle insets, acres of Persian carpets, hard backed settees upholstered in maroon leather, silk shaded ginger jar table lamps casting light on phalaenopsis orchids planted in generic tole jardinieres. These days, of course, every surface, no matter how perfected, has become a potential site of danger, and it has become the job of Mr. Ventura and others in his line of work not just to swab elevator buttons with Lysol five times daily, but also to restore the psychic equilibrium of those to whom bad things are not supposed to happen. At increased risk to themselves, the staffs at most high end buildings throughout the five boroughs find themselves scrambling to institute hygienic measures. They are also enforcing daily changing guidelines, establishing ad hoc networks of notification, caring for the old and vulnerable left behind by an exodus that has rendered the Upper East Side a ghost town. "We're not a hazmat crew but we're doing what we can," Jimmy Brennan, 40, the resident manager of a cooperative building on Fifth Avenue, said of his nine member team. "The trick here is anticipating the needs and problems before they come up." At Mr. Brennan's building in the East 70s, that meant appealing to his board of directors well before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued stringent updated safety guidelines for a go ahead to shut down the gym and common areas, to suspend nonemergency contractors, to seal off floors left vacant by tenants who fled the city and to establish a phone tree and daily wellness check ins with those that remained. "Our population is mostly aged 60 to 100, 85 is a pretty common number here," said Mr. Brennan, a third generation building manager whose extended family oversees 30 separate buildings around New York. "History will judge whether it was better for us to be proactive than reactive. But, for now, I'd rather be effective than popular." "It's scary and I'm nervous," said Frankie Echevarria, 45, a longtime doorman at the Lafayette, a 146 apartment cooperative on East 9th Street in the Village. "I keep my distance, but I try to stay positive," he added, noting good naturedly that it was with some reluctance that he has begun policing for new coop rules banning open houses; food deliveries past the front desk; or tenants congregating in common areas. "People think New Yorkers are hard core and tough. But, really, we're just pussycats." Naturally, Mr. Echevarria said, he routinely dons latex gloves and lavishly deploys the building's stock of Clorox to deter cross contamination. Yet exposure to the coronavirus continues to hold added terror for him, he said, since his wife suffers from a serious immune disorder. "At the end of the day, though, we're here to help," Mr. Echevarria said. The Lafayette, a large building with an activist board, was quick to compile a phone tree so volunteers could assist the staff in aiding the homebound. Its longtime resident manager, Jay Miranda, 48, said it's "a nice little community here." Still, there may be few among the 300 residents of the building who could easily come up with the doormen's surnames, which appear once a year on an annual staff list produced by the board of directors at Christmas and may be forgotten as soon as tip envelopes are addressed. "It's easy to undervalue them," said Adam Soffer, a private mortgage banker at Wells Fargo. Symphony House, where Mr. Soffer lives, was designed by the architects Emory Roth Sons and is considered among Manhattan's premier addresses. "But if ever there were a time to overvalue them, it's now," said Mr. Soffer, who recently had takeout dinners delivered to his building's night crew. "These guys are on the front lines for the rest of us." When it was reported that the virus can survive on inert surfaces like cardboard and plastic, he went back to them for money to install an Ozonator tent for packages. "Normally, we get about 60 a day," Mr. Mercado said. The number quadrupled once people began to shelter indoors. "Now it's like Christmas," Mr. Mercado said. "I don't know that it would help," he added, of the tent, which helps disinfect the packages. "But I can't imagine it would hurt." Managers, doormen and valets, with their quiddities and quirks, help set the tone for the singular ecosystem that is any given apartment building, as Mr. Soffer, the banker, explained. The relationship between them and residents, as with concierges in Paris, is an unusual combination of familiarity and distance, formality and during moments like this tenderness. "There's the young guy that's quiet, and the older guy that's a grump," Mr. Soffer said. "The building has always been run like the Starship Enterprise, but until this happened and I stopped to listen to them, I never realized how at risk these guys were, even from the viewpoint of living paycheck to paycheck." Like so many of those responsible for keeping New York running, its doormen are both omnipresent and yet oddly unseen. Last week, as all New Yorkers began to shrink from human contact and hunker down in self isolation, their presence in their woolen greatcoats, piped trousers, neckties, white shirts and white gloves, lent the city a needful element of stability. "We're in this moment where no one will touch anyone, and cashiers won't take credit cards and you don't want people breathing on you and these guys are still there on the front lines," Mr. Soffer said. "They don't have the option to go the Hamptons they have to touch. Just thinking about all that gave me a new level of appreciation and respect."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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First came workout boot camps. Then off the grid yoga retreats. Next, hotel chains touting celebrity orchestrated fitness programs. Now, there is another way to travel without leaving your workout behind. Fitness pop ups in vacation destinations like Capri, Sri Lanka, Goa and Vietnam all offer relaxing getaways combined with exercise options, sightseeing and meals prepared by a professional chef. Often, these groups stay in private, rented villas. These four companies have created custom itineraries with workouts and wellness in mind. Designed for solo travelers to experience off the beaten track destinations through fitness and wellness, Escape to Shape's itineraries include destinations like Marrakesh, Jaipur, Siem Reap, Bhutan, Botswana and Cape Town. The packages are ideal for goal oriented, luxury lovers who want a fitness based trip in an exotic destination without skimping on the indulgences of a high end getaway. Erica Gragg, founder of the firm and a former event planner, hosts every trip personally and has a winning formula: workouts inspired by bucket list settings (Khmer boxing in Cambodia, circuit Training on the ancient rampart in Cartagena, beach boot camp in Vietnam, yoga in the underground cisterns of Istanbul), wellness elements (journal writing, meditation, yoga, massage) and thoughtful excursions (market visits, group hammam visits, a water blessing with a Buddhist monk, wine tastings) intended to deliver a culturally authentic taste of the destination. Guests stay at five star hotels or villas and enjoy healthful meals prepared by an on site chef. Rates from 4,500 to 14,000 per person, depending on location, room type and length of trip. International airfare and alcohol excluded.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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For years, politicians, housing advocates and potential home buyers have complained that tight credit policies after the housing market crash have kept too many deserving people from qualifying for mortgages. Now the government is taking steps that it says it hopes will allow more first time buyers and lower and middle income Americans to get home loans at low rates. On Monday, Melvin L. Watt, the nation's chief housing regulator, announced a program offering more reassurances to mortgage banks that fear they could suffer unpredictable losses on the loans they sell to the government. Separately, he disclosed that efforts are underway to allow borrowers to receive government backed loans with much smaller down payments than are now required. But contrary to early expectations, he offered few details on such plans. "We know that access to credit remains tight for many borrowers, and we are also working to address this issue in a responsible and thoughtful manner," said Mr. Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates the mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The move in large part is intended to reassure banks that have had to pay tens of billions of dollars to settle legal cases arising from the housing boom and bust and buy back bad loans sold to Fannie and Freddie. To avoid having to make those payments again, many lenders now demand that borrowers meet stricter requirements for loans, known in the industry as overlays. "We know that this issue has contributed to lenders' imposing credit overlays that drive up the cost of lending and also restrict lending to borrowers with less than perfect credit scores or with less conventional financial situations," Mr. Watt said in a speech on Monday to the Mortgage Bankers Association convention in Las Vegas. Some economists, with mortgage bankers, welcomed the new plan, saying that it, with more gains in the job market and a recent dip in mortgage rates, could put the housing recovery back on track. Ben S. Bernanke, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve, recently told an audience that even he could not get a loan to refinance his mortgage. "Creditworthy borrowers who have been locked out of the housing market will finally have an opportunity to become homeowners," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. But some housing finance analysts contend that tight credit does not sufficiently explain the weakness in the housing market. Instead, they say, an aging population, stagnant wages and a wariness of taking on new debt have all reduced demand for mortgages. 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. "The reality is that this is as much a demand driven drought as it is a credit driven drought," said Joshua Rosner, of Graham Fisher Company, a research firm. With the new plan, the government is trying to strike a balance between the frenzied years of the housing bubble, when mortgages were approved with little regard for the ability of borrowers to repay them, and the tight grip on mortgages after it burst. "It requires a lot of fine tuning to get a national mortgage market that achieves all the objectives we want," said Stan Humphries, chief economist for Zillow, a real estate website. To reassure mortgage lenders, the housing finance agency intends to further relax the agreements that determine when Fannie and Freddie may require banks to buy back bad loans. The terms that are being loosened involve loans that show evidence of fraud or other flaws in the underwriting process. Under the new agreements, for instance, Fannie and Freddie would demand buybacks only when there was a pattern of misrepresentations and inaccuracies in the loans. In addition, if problems are later discovered in loans, the deficiencies would have to be significant enough to have made the loans ineligible for purchase by Fannie and Freddie in the first place. These changes follow other recent adjustments by the housing finance agency to calm mortgage lenders. But mortgage banks did not increase lending to less creditworthy borrowers.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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Scientists measure electric fields in thunderclouds with instruments aboard airplanes and weather balloons, but during violent conditions these methods can be difficult, even dangerous. Now researchers may have found a better way to measure these electrical fields: the cosmic rays that originate from exploding stars. When cosmic rays hit the Earth's atmosphere, they create a shower of high energy particles. Researchers in the Netherlands measured the radio emissions generated by these showers and found that they varied markedly during fair weather and thunderstorms. The differences may provide an effective way to estimate the electric field in a thunderhead. Monitoring a cloud's electric field is important because it helps define the power of a thunderstorm, said Heino Falcke, an astrophysicist at Radboud University and one of the study's authors.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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We don't always know the people we mourn. This winter, an online message board for people with ostomies filled with comments deploring heartbreaking news from Kentucky. A 10 year old boy named took his life in January, apparently because of bullying related to his having had a colostomy. This child has something to teach those of us stunned by his death, I thought. But what? Seven was born with a birth defect that necessitated multiple surgeries, including a colostomy: a piece of the colon pulled through the abdominal wall to create what is called a stoma. Stool, moving from the intestine through the stoma, collects in a pouch attached to the belly. News reports said that Seven had the procedure reversed but continued to have trouble with leakage. His parents, Tami Charles and Donnie Bridges, told reporters that resulting odors triggered classmates' aggression. More specifically, they say that schoolmates subjected Seven, who was African American, to racist insults and choking. They had lodged complaints with the school and were looking forward to his making a fresh start in a new school for the sixth grade. But the damage took its toll before he had a chance to try: He hanged himself. It is impossible to register the horror of that event. Children with disabilities are often targeted by bullies. What courage Seven must have evinced in his elementary school years, I marvel while recalling how disoriented I initially felt living with a stoma. An ostomy abrogates our fundamental assumption of bodily autonomy. I was 64 when ovarian cancer necessitated an ileostomy, an operation involving the small intestine. The act of excretion could no longer be controlled. Evacuation occurs incessantly, from the front of the body. What should be inside and hidden a bit of intestine is outside and visible. Learning how to clean myself and replace the pouch required the supervision of a home nurse. I dreaded leaks. Wasn't I too well schooled to be ashamed of a medical intervention that saved my life? No, not really. Self loathing had me in its grip. Although hidden beneath clothing, the stoma made me feel defective. Even if Seven had found strategies to mitigate the self shame that clamped down on me, the shame inflicted by others would have been appalling. Shaming is most effective with those liable to internalize it. Bullies frequently target schoolmates who have labored against feeling humiliated by whatever difference might mark them: looking fat or skinny, short or tall, foreign or queer. All sorts of differences must be negotiated by all of our children at their, and our, peril. However, the difference manifested by an ostomy remains so taboo that it horrifies even educated adults. "I would rather be dead," people say about the prospect of a bag. Excrement is conflated with the stink of mortality, the waste to which we will be reduced after death. For this reason, ostomies generally remain shrouded in secrecy. They are not easy to address. The fate of leads me to reconsider the objections of a reader of my book "Memoir of a Debulked Woman," who was angered by my account of the mortification I experienced after ostomy surgery. Like many people with stomas, she prided herself on being a happy, productive individual. Ostomies, which relieve terrible abdominal pain as well as recurrent and debilitating diarrhea or constipation, free patients to actively pursue fulfilling goals. My testimony, she argued, would unduly alarm and harm those facing this operation. Is shame so toxic an emotion that articulating it promotes it? Yes, I concede, shame may be contagious. In an effort to grapple with my shame, I express it and you, recognizing our commonality, catch it. Ought I therefore be ashamed of my shame and stifle its expressions? But silence can intensify shame, just as shame can intensify silence. On the school bus, it fails to wrest language from bullies who engage in shaming. Regrettably, unashamed language sometimes also backfires. If a school counselor had instructed Seven's classmates on his medical state would he have wanted that? they might have empathized with him. Or they might have misused the conveyed information to hone their attacks. Perhaps we need more talk in schools not about victims but about bullies whose abusive behavior wards off intimations of their own abiding sense of shame. In fact, though, Seven's story focuses my attention on the often invisible burdens of children, adolescents, adults and seniors who undergo temporary or permanent ostomies: those born with congenital birth defects as well as those dealing with injuries or with inflammatory bowel disease, ulcerative colitis, diverticulitis, Crohn's disease, or bladder, colorectal and gynecological cancers. About 500,000 Americans. Seven's story discloses the vicious vise of shame and the need for resources to escape it. Instantly I go into didactic overdrive. Younger and older patients should be encouraged to meet periodically with mentors ostomy nurses (bless them!) tend to be brilliant, but seasoned patients as well who can assist with the physical, psychological and social trials that arise. did not have the time to discover that the longer one lives with a stoma, the easier it becomes ... partly because of the information, advice and camaraderie now available online. After notices of his death appeared on news outlets, teens and young adults who had undergone ostomy operations began conveying their condolences and promoting body acceptance by recounting their own struggles with shame. On Instagram, under the hashtag BagsOutforSeven, some shared photos of themselves with pouches. Their brazen dignity rebuffs not only stoma stigma but also the practice of stigmatizing any sort of physical difference.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Well
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While I get what Lisa Selin Davis is trying to articulate, can we finally do away with stereotypes concerning gender and sexuality? There is nothing beneficial about calling girls who play sports or refuse to wear dresses "tomboys." They are girls who simply play what they like and wear what makes them happy. Hence, we can just call them girls! Amy Bender Brooklyn The writer is a co founder of RIGit, a gender inclusive online clothing store and advocacy group.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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One recent Saturday on Governors Island, with a glorious gray dome of clouds covering New York Harbor, a Mister Softee truck idled on the car deck of the Lt. Samuel S. Coursen as passengers boarded the 6 p.m. ferry to Manhattan. Mister Softee had just sold one last rocket pop when a young woman wobbled onto the deck. Her tote bag read " roseallday," and her espadrilles said "Rose" on the vamp of the right shoe and "All Day" on the left. She precariously clutched an empty jeroboam of wine and a green bottle of "water." "There's an ice cream truck in this boat?" she asked. "It's on the boat!" She was surprised, also, to spot a friend on the top deck. "Shut up! Were you at the thing? I haven't gotten to Instagram yet." The thing Pinknic, a two day wine festival was a notably clever innovation in daylight night life. Each afternoon, 4,500 people gaily obeyed a pink and white dress code and enjoyed such classic pastimes as dancing, lazing about and flirting with police officers. Multiple bachelorette parties made the scene, so that when the headlining D.J., Claptone, began his Sunday set by sampling Seals Crofts "Summer breeze, makes me feel fine" sunlit veils fluttered on cue. "It's a place constantly caressed by the ocean breeze," said Michael Arenella, whose Jazz Age Lawn Party was the first event to put Governors Island on the map as a place to be seen while watching stratus clouds and cruise ships float by. Mr. Arenella's Dreamland Orchestra has serenaded its dapper audiences ladies in clutches and cloches, gents in boaters and box fresh brogues since 2005, and he is hardly alone in the ferry as a means of interdimensional travel. "It's that sense of leaving the frenzy of New York City behind and stepping on terrain that's haunted," he said. "Haunted, but in a charming way." Ice cream is essential to the summer vibe of New York's green spaces, with Central Park the paragon, a landscaped oasis of enchantment and premium vanilla bars. At Brooklyn Bridge Park, you may sup on a scoop of Ample Hills' Ooey Gooey Butter Cake while watching the helicopters thrum across the cityscape like parents at the adjacent playgrounds. Visitors strolling the High Line this season encounter a sculpture contrasting a photograph of ice cream with a giant fan that, given the decadence of neighboring boutiques, somewhat resembles an industrial guillotine. Governors Island actually is an ice cream cone, in outline, just as Italy is a boot. "We use that line in all our presentations," said Leslie Koch, the outgoing president and chief executive of the Trust for Governors Island. "The ice cream's the history," she continued, meaning that the island's northern half, with its forts and barracks, is like a distinguished scoop of America's maritime past. The southern half was bulked up by landfill, first in 1912, most recently in order to build the Hills, a feat of landscape architecture affording a panoramic view of the harbor that reorients perspectives like a mind expanding drug. Four hundred years after its settlement by the Dutch after its tenure as a military base ended in 1996, after proposals to turn it into a casino or a prison or a development Governors Island has emerged as a grand populist play space. Ms. Koch therefore ranks as a great New Yorker, but she is not really in control of the culture here. Arranging an event on Governors Island scarcely differs from applying for a permit at other parks, and the various delights that roll down the ferries' lift bridges hula hoops and unicycles, Hawaiian ukuleles and bluegrass mandolins, gear for badminton tournaments and pop up parkour courses are not curated. Which is all to say that Governors Island is the flavor of the season: a day trip utopia where fashion photographers jaunt for location shoots, and Conde Nast treats its digital strategy team to beach party tomfoolery. Pinknic drew a crowd so sharp as to supply much fresh intelligence on keeping Adidas Stan Smiths from looking stale. Though deed restrictions ensure that the island won't be overrun by commerce or luxury condos, a day spa is on the way, and the construction cranes scattered across the skyline are reminders that change is a constant. But this is its summer of perfect contentment. Michelle Palmer and Erik Slavin married June 4 on a grassy slope south of Governors Island's Fort Jay. The bride, a 36 year old headdress designer, was dressed as Hippolyta, queen of the Amazons, and the groom, a 49 year old digital artist, was got up as Theseus. "We condensed 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' down to 20 minutes for the ceremony," Mr. Slavin said. Puck was maid of honor. Ms. Palmer and Mr. Slavin were veteran visitors to Governors Island because of their affiliation with Figment NYC, an arts festival conventionally described as "Burning Man without the drugs." I first saw Ms. Palmer when she, rushing to get to Fairyland on time, politely cut a bathroom line. Me, I was just trying to get my 5 year old to go before visiting Play:ground, which is, per its creator, a "junk playground." "By definition, junk has no value to adults, so children understand implicitly that they can take ownership of it," said Alex Khost, a 41 year old web developer who administrates this free weekend playground and its weekday summer camp. At Play:ground, I initialed a waiver form seven times so that my only son could manipulate trash in a yard that reminded my wife of conditions in rural Guatemala. Governors Island is just the place to explore the decorum of progressive parenting. Here, mothers performatively scold themselves for allowing their children to run around doing whatever, confessions that are actually boasts about having the wisdom to visit a place where the prize for gaining the top of a rope climb is face time with Lady Liberty. These juxtapositions Ms. Palmer in her bridal unitard next to children preparing to revel in rubble are essential to the local magic. It's a shame that the goats down at the farm don't know how darling they look contrasted with 1 World Trade Center. It's a hoot that a scrappy punk festival tends to coincide with a military history fair. Punk Island was a smash this year, with the headliner, Leftover Crack, supported by bands with names like Sun Rot, Insubordination and Material Support. I watched a group called Lady Bizness unleash a fine Riot grrrl squall about 20 paces from Figment's whimsical miniature golf course for a crowd wearing black T shirts ranging from classics (the Cramps) to novelties ("I'm a divisive issue"). When the kids went for a bite to eat, it was like a night on old St. Marks Place, what with the monoxide fog of food truck exhaust and the chaos of eight bands playing on eight stages swirled into a hypnotic drone. It is easy to quickly grow protective of a place like this, which is at once a depository for New York's eccentricities and a showcase for its popular tendencies. The dolls and dandies attending the Jazz Age Lawn Party simultaneously express a passion for arcana and a thirst for making the scene as they lunch on the lawn (plucking grapes, scooping quinoa, picking at Caligulan spreads of Carr's crackers) or else cocktail like tycoons in 5,000 V.I.P. tents. But there are limits. "We did reduce ticket sales," Mr. Arenella said. "In 2012 and 2013, it started to feel too crowded blankets upon blankets upon blankets. I want it to always feel that you're at a picnic." Whether the entertainment is hot jazz or deep house or punk rock, the headline act is always the symphonic vista from the ferry the spires of Midtown and the steeples of Brooklyn chiming, the loading cranes of New Jersey calling to their Brooklyn kin, the towers of the bridges revealed in rhythmic new arrangements as you make the passage to a bite size empire of ice cream, where the city naps and dreams.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Houston's James Harden has become a master of the modern game, focusing entirely on 3 pointers and shots in the lane, where he is likely to be fouled. The text message from his assistant coach Rex Kalamian popped up on Doc Rivers's phone on an off night last week, but it contained no pressing strategic suggestions for the Los Angeles Clippers' next game. No injury updates or juicy trade rumors, either. Kalamian simply felt an urgency to let Rivers know that it had happened again another burst of the scoreboard overload that has dominated this 2018 19 N.B.A. season even more than the star laden Golden State Warriors. A laughing Rivers recounted how Kalamian's summary pointed out that nearly every winner that night (Jan. 14) scored 131 to 149 points. "It was like five teams up there," Rivers said. In truth it was only four Indiana (131), Atlanta (142), Golden State (142) and Philadelphia (149) but Rivers's point was made. A leaguewide push by teams to shoot more 3 pointers and take more shots earlier in the shot clock than ever before, combined with a freedom of movement crusade driven by the league office, has resulted in an offensive boom rendering scores in the 140s routine with few signs of it abating. The trend has not been met with universal approval. Some of the game's biggest names, including Gregg Popovich, Charles Barkley and Stan Van Gundy, continue to register concerns that teams are abandoning too many traditional offensive principles in favor of rampantly hoisting 3s. Top defenders like Golden State's Draymond Green and Denver's Paul Millsap have also charged that tighter refereeing has made it harder than ever to counter the offensive wizardry of dynamic new age scorers like Houston's James Harden, who rumbled for 61 points Wednesday night at Madison Square Garden to cap a five game streak in which Harden averaged a colossal 52.2 points. The reviews, though, have generally been more positive than negative. The N.B.A.'s 30 teams are averaging 110.5 points per game collectively (up from 106.3 last season), representing the highest rate since 1984 85, when it was a 23 team league that wasn't nearly as sophisticated in its defensive concepts and scouting techniques. "The game is the most skilled that I've ever seen it," said Rivers, who played in the N.B.A. from 1983 to 1996 and has been a head coach since 1999. "I like watching the game now, so I guess that's my answer. But it's a different game, there's no doubt about it." Said Millsap, who made four All Star appearances with Atlanta before joining the Nuggets in July 2017: "You can't really touch guys now. So the fouls are up, 3 point shooting is definitely up. And the scoring's up." As recently as three seasons ago, in 2015 16, teams managed to crack the 140 point barrier only five times. That number rose to 13 last season. This season it has already happened 28 times entering Friday's play, which coincides with the league average for 3 point attempts per game crossing the 30 threshold for the first time in league history at 31.3. The league office, however, insists that inflating scores further was not the aim when it announced that existing rules would be enforced with greater frequency this season. The rules in question forbid players to "hold, push, charge into, impede the progress of an opponent," or take any other measures that could be interpreted as causing the player guarded to be "rerouted." Kiki VanDeWeghe, the N.B.A.'s executive vice president for basketball operations, said the push to enforce such violations with more vigilance stemmed from longstanding team complaints about physicality away from the ball and in the post in an era when more and more coaches have favored switching defenses that call for defenders to pass players off to a nearby teammate instead of trying to fight through screens. "Those rules were always there," VanDeWeghe said. The freedom of movement movement gained steam last summer when coaches like Boston's Brad Stevens and Utah's Quin Snyder led the lobbying against the proliferation of switching defenses creating too many opportunities, in VanDeWeghe's words, for "holding and grabbing and physical play off the ball." Yet that's just one element of a cocktail that has changed the offensive equation as wildly as the N.B.A. witnessed in the 2004 5 season, when the pairing of Steve Nash and Coach Mike D'Antoni's famed Seven Seconds or Less Offense abetted by the league's crackdown on hand checking began to revolutionize offensive philosophy. The campaign to curtail physical play was among the factors that helped transform Nash from a mere All Star point guard to a two time winner of the Most Valuable Player Award. The Warriors, led by their Splash Brothers backcourt of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, then took D'Antoni's freewheeling approach to a new level in their first championship season in 2014 15 by averaging 27.0 3 pointers and a league high 98.3 possessions per 48 minutes. The Rockets, now coached by D'Antoni, have since made Golden State look comparatively restrained, averaging 42.3 3 point shots per game last season and 44.4 per game this season. Houston's devotion to 3 pointers and layups, and preferably nothing in between, at the behest of their analytics obsessed general manager, Daryl Morey, is such that Harden Co. are attempting more 3 pointers than 2 pointers as a team for the second consecutive season. Entering Friday's games, 19 teams were averaging at least 30 3 pointers per game, while pace is another area that has revved things up dramatically. Teams are averaging 99.5 possessions per 48 minutes this season, which is only 2.2 possessions more than last season, but consider that the Suns' highest pace average in Nash's peak years (97.7 possessions per 48 minutes in 2007 8) would rank 25th this season. "My first year here, we were No. 1 in the league in pace and it felt like we were running past everybody every night," Golden State Coach Steve Kerr said. "This year I think we're playing even faster than we did in 2014 15, but we're middle of the pack. The whole league has shifted in terms of priority and style." VanDeWeghe is convinced that when the competition committee reconvenes next month during All Star Weekend in Charlotte to assess how the game is being played and officiated, there will be more praise than grumbles. "I still remain the complaint department," VanDeWeghe said. "But most of the feedback I get is, 'The game looks better.' " "I'd like to see a balance where the rules are still geared toward these high scores, because I think a lot of people enjoy that, but you've got to give the defense a chance," Kerr said. "We're giving so much of an advantage to the offensive player." Proponents of the 3 pointer laud its comeback potency, in terms of wiping out big deficits quickly, but there's no dodging the fact that blowouts are on the rise. There have been 35 games already this season decided by 30 points or more compared to just 40 total last season and a record 49 in 2016 17. "I think a lot of people, maybe in the N.B.A. office and some of the media, just equate scoring with excitement," Stan Van Gundy, the ESPN analyst and former Miami, Orlando and Detroit coach, said on a recent NBC Sports "Habershow" podcast. "Close, competitive games, regardless of style of play, are always exciting. "I think we're headed in the wrong direction. We're O.K. right now. Where are we going to be in five years? Is everybody going to shoot 50 or 60 3s a game?" There has been no louder critic of the direction offenses are trending than Popovich, who routinely uses the word "boring" to describe the proliferation of shots behind the 3 point line. San Antonio's 24.3 3 point attempts per game, which ranked last in the league, would have ranked No. 2 as recently as the 2011 12 season. "Everybody penetrates to shoot 3s, so the artfulness of the game is sort of getting lost," Popovich said last week. "And everybody does the same thing because the analytics drives it, where shooting these 3s seems to be the smart thing to do.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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This week, shortly after her 60th birthday, Colo, the first gorilla born in human care, died in her sleep. Part of the reason she lived so long about 20 years longer than gorillas born in the wild is because of the care she received. In zoos today, keepers work to reduce the stress of caregiving by training animals to be a part of their own care. Gorillas drink from bottles. Rhinos learn to get their teeth brushed. Lions are trained to get vaccines. The shooting of Harambe at the Cincinnati Zoo last May spurred debate about whether animals like gorillas even belong in zoos. But most zoo animals won't be leaving anytime soon, and they require care that emphasizes their welfare if people want them to have long lives like Colo. It wasn't always the case that zoos emphasized stress reduction in tending to their nonhuman charges. Animals were sedated, anesthetized or motivated with fear and dominance. Consider elephants. Back in the day keepers and elephants stood dangerously close to one another as part of a method called free contact. With this method, a keeper could motivate an elephant to do what was wanted with inhumane tools like food deprivation, prodding with bullhooks or roped restraints, said DJ Schubert, a wildlife biologist at the Animal Welfare Institute. Not all zoos have fully abandoned some outdated methods of managing their animals' health. But the larger, accredited ones have taken lessons from updated methods for training elephants, and more animal trainers are using behavioral principles of learning and memory to shape behavior with rewards, reduce dangerous contact and allow animals some control in their own care. "We're not going to be able to emulate what animals do in the wild," said Dana Hatcher, a nutritionist at the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium in Ohio, where Colo lived. "But we are trying to do things that help recreate these natural behaviors to the best of our abilities." These are some of the ways animals in zoos and related dwellings can take part in their own care. In human care, a mother gorilla may not want or be able to care for her young. To get past this, zookeepers, like those at Columbus Zoo and Aquarium, become gorilla surrogates who stay with infants at all times. As part of a surrogacy program, human surrogates mimic the behavior of real mother gorillas. They cough like a gorilla when a baby does something out of line. They carry babies on their backs while crawling on their hands and knees. And just as mother gorillas do, the surrogates leave bits of food around their chest area for the baby to take. Through observational learning of these activities, gorillas that could become foster mothers to these infants learn behavior to take over their care. Animals in human care need shots or vaccines. And just like many humans, zoo animals do not like needles. But they can be trained not to mind. Getting lion cubs to tolerate needles for vaccines, for example, takes a lot of tiny, incremental steps. Often this starts when a trainer pairs a noise making device called a clicker with a reward like food so often that the clicker eventually becomes an indicator of reward. Through behavioral shaping, the trainer can then click to reward every time an animal performs a behavior more and more like what is desired. To get lion cubs used to being around needles, trainers present a tiny, capped needle to the animal, then a bigger one, and so forth. Every time the animal allows this to happen, it receives a reward. The process can take a few weeks to months, depending on the animal. And to reduce fear of needles, trainers may expose a cub to a needle 100 times, and poke it only once. Within a year, the lion takes vaccines without much fuss. Through a procedure called target training, giraffes learn to associate a tennis ball on a stick with a reward, and to move different body parts in the direction of that target. A giraffe can follow a target and learn to put its foot on a block to receive hoof care. Through more shaping and rewards, black rhinos learn to let caregivers brush their teeth to prevent gum disease. By rewarding them with a big scratch, trainers can get them to hold still for dental care. In a similar way, keepers train polar bears to tolerate nail trims and eye drops. "They learn to cooperate. It's kind of like a mutual agreement between the trainer and the animal," Mr. Felts said. "When you're training, you're giving them things they want, and they learn over time and repetition that the keepers are able to do things with them to help assist with their care."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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Read about the events that our other critics have chosen for the week ahead. 'INTO THE LITTLE HILL' AND 'FUTARI SHIZUKA' at the 92nd Street Y (March 7, 8 p.m.). Before "Written on Skin" and "Lessons in Love and Violence," two of the defining operas of the century so far, George Benjamin wrote "Into the Little Hill," a brilliant take on the Pied Piper myth with a libretto by Martin Crimp. It's performed here with the U.S. premiere of a new opera by Toshio Hosokawa, "Futari Shizuka" ("The Maiden From the Sea"), a reflection on the fate of refugees with a libretto by the playwright Oriza Hirata. James Baker conducts the Talea Ensemble, with Charlotte Mundy, Kerstin Avemo and Lucy Dhegrae singing, Alexander Polzin providing the concept, Sommer Ulrickson contributing the choreography, and the Noh actress Ryoko Aoki performing. 212 415 5500, 92y.org 'LA CENERENTOLA' at the Metropolitan Opera (March 12, 7:30 p.m.; through April 3). James Gaffigan, a Staten Island native, leads a revival of Cesare Lievi's production of this Cinderella story, with a cast that includes Tara Erraught as Angelina, Maurizio Muraro as Don Magnifico, Christian Van Horn as Alidoro, Vito Priante as Dandini and the headline grabbing tenor Javier Camarena as Don Ramiro, the Prince Charming of Rossini's adaptation. 212 362 6000, metopera.org NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC at David Geffen Hall (March 12, 7:30 p.m.; through March 14). Already in town to conduct the Met's "The Flying Dutchman," the ceaselessly busy Valery Gergiev takes the podium of the Philharmonic for three nights, albeit with an entirely predictable program that includes Stravinsky's "Petrushka"; Shchedrin's Concerto for Orchestra No. 1, "Naughty Limericks"; and Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3. Denis Matsuev is the soloist. 212 875 5656, nyphil.org
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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And as for Spectre, fixing the issue could actually require redesigning how computer chips are built. This whole thing has the big tech companies freaked out, from chip makers like AMD and Intel to software giants like Google and Microsoft. And honestly, they should be. People should probably be more worried about this than they appear to be, but it's difficult to convey a sense of urgency about complicated technical issues when the president of the United States is tweeting about the possibility of nuclear war. Mike: And that might not even be the weirdest thing on the internet this week. Social media superstar Logan Paul stepped in it big time, posting a video of himself stumbling upon a person who had killed themselves in Japan's "Suicide Forest." His discovery was an accident, but the posting and presentation he and his entourage treated the whole thing as a kind of a thrilling spectacle were entirely Mr. Paul's choices, and they were terrible. The internet rightly flew into an outrage almost immediately after he posted the video to YouTube, and eventually Mr. Paul pulled down the clip and apologized to his fans and the dead man's family. Farhad: Oh, that's interesting, Mike, but before you go any further let me just ask one small thing: Who? Logan Paul? I've never heard of him and I'm certainly not a subscriber to every one of his channels, definitely not. Mike: Er, O.K. But seriously, the whole thing really sours me on the internet and vlogging culture writ large. To me, it's a prime example of how social media stars and lifestyle bloggers seem to lose perspective on what's appropriate to share. When your entire success is based on capturing every moment of your daily life, it might be more difficult to step back and say, "Hey, maybe sharing this would be completely insensitive?" What's more worrisome is that this sharing culture seems to be fast becoming normalized and ubiquitous, advanced by the many tools we have at our disposal to put more of ourselves online. Even slayings and suicides have been live streamed. And the ability to attach these things to massive social networks means everyone has a built in, captive audience. In short, Black Mirror isn't so much a satire anymore it's basically a reality show. Farhad: I think this story presents a growing issue for YouTube. If 2017 was the year that everyone noticed the dangers of Facebook prompting Mark Zuckerberg to announce that he's spending this year trying to fix the platform I suspect our attention will now increasingly shift to YouTube.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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Officials in several states said that they were caught off guard on Wednesday when they learned that next week's shipment of the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine would contain fewer doses than the first week. In Oregon, state health officials said they were told they were only scheduled to get 25,350 doses of the vaccine next week, significantly less than the 40,950 doses that the state received this week. Iowa's public health department issued a similar release, saying they were told "they will not receive the volume of vaccine initially anticipated," and that their shipment would be as much as 30 percent less than what they received this week. Officials with Operation Warp Speed, the federal effort to distribute a Covid 19 vaccine to the public, also said Wednesday that they had allocated only 2 million doses for next week's shipment, less than the 2.9 million that were delivered this week. The officials said they expect to ship 5.9 million doses next week of a vaccine developed by Moderna, which is expected to be authorized by the Food and Drug Administration on Friday. The move sent some states scrambling to adjust their plans and raised questions about whether federal officials will be able to meet their goal of administering an initial shot of the two dose Pfizer and Moderna vaccines to 20 million people by January 1, just two weeks away. The smaller shipment appeared to be the result of a scheduling hiccup created when federal officials, responding to a request by states, decided to allocate next week's doses this Tuesday instead of on Friday, as they had planned. States had asked federal officials for more time to plan their allotments before deliveries begin on Monday, but doing so meant that the federal government could not include in that shipping estimate additional vaccine batches that were released after Tuesday, according to a senior administration official. The batches of vaccine that were not included in next week's allocation will be included in the shipment the following week, the official said. The official, who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the shipments, said it was unclear whether future weekly shipments would increase because the government did not have a good view into Pfizer's manufacturing process. Unlike other companies that took federal funding for development and manufacturing of their Covid vaccines, Pfizer signed an advance purchase agreement in which it is only paid if the vaccines are delivered. The official also said that the company's production estimates had fallen in recent weeks. Pfizer said in a statement on Wednesday that the company "is not having any production issues with our Covid 19 vaccine, and no shipments containing the vaccine are on hold or delayed." The company also said, "We have millions more doses sitting in our warehouse but, as of now, we have not received any shipment instructions for additional doses." The company also said it had shared with the federal government "every aspect" of its production and distribution process. "They have visited our facilities, walked the production lines and been updated on our production planning as information has become available," the statement said. Who should get a booster shot? It depends, Dr. Scott Gottlieb says. This fall, Pfizer halved initial estimates that it could make 100 million doses by the end of the year after running into manufacturing delays caused by difficulties locating equipment and raw materials, as well as needing more doses for an expansion of its clinical trial. In November, the chief executive, Dr. Albert Bourla, said about 25 million doses would go to the United States. On Wednesday, a Pfizer spokeswoman said that the company would be able to distribute 20 million doses in December in the United States. The controversy over short term deliveries is playing out against a backdrop of tense negotiations between Pfizer and the federal government over a new contract for tens of millions of more doses in the first half of next year. The two sides hope to reach an agreement by Christmas, but Pfizer has said it needs the federal government to use its authority to force suppliers to prioritize its orders a request that one person familiar with the negotiations said has been pending for months. The government wants Pfizer to sell it 100 million more doses enough to cover an additional 50 million Americans between the start of April and the end of June. Pfizer has said that it can only provide about 70 million doses then because other countries have already bought its remaining stock. The issue is especially fraught because, according to people familiar with Pfizer's version of events, the firm repeatedly asked the Trump administration to pre order more doses beginning in late summer but the administration failed to act until Nov. 25 more than two weeks after Pfizer announced the results from clinical trials showing its vaccine was safe and more than 95 percent effective. Now both sides are scrambling to figure out how Pfizer can boost its manufacturing to double the number of doses the firm can deliver for Americans in the first half of next year. So far, the Trump administration has only locked in a total of 300 million doses from Pfizer and Moderna. Because both vaccines require two doses, excluding the children and teenagers for whom no vaccine is yet approved, that still leaves more than 100 million Americans uncovered. Alex M. Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, alluded to the friction with Pfizer in an interview on Thursday morning with CNBC, saying "I do wish we would just stop talking about this Pfizer thing." He added that the federal government was willing to help Pfizer manufacture more "if they are willing to take our help."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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Now that the feathers and the sparkles and the high octane soca music have left the streets of the Trinidadian capital of Port of Spain for another year, what's left is what is referred to as the feeling of "tabanca." It's a post Carnival malaise that some say is only cured by more bacchanal. Port of Spain may be best known for its exuberant annual Mardi Gras that ended Feb. 13, but even when the Trinidadian capital's streets are not flooded with costumed revelers, it remains home to a vibrant arts scene. Behind an unassuming middle class house in the quiet midtown neighborhood of Woodbrook, lies a multifaceted arts center named Alice Yard. The "Yard," as it is called by locals, is an important hub of contemporary art activity in the city. Soon after walking through its always open gate on a sunny morning last spring, I met a Scottish artist in residence, Joanna Helfer; a group of people filming boiling sugar as a comment on Trinidad's colonial past; and others talking and laughing nearby. I complimented one of the women on her jewelry and she immediately showed me an Instagram account for the designer and told me about a range of local pop up craft fairs where I might find a piece of my own. When neighborhoods like Woodbrook came into being in the 1930s Nobel Prize winning writer V.S. Naipaul grew up in the area the backyards of these houses were where Carnival bands evolved out of community workshops known as "mas camps" (mas being short for masquerade). "Yards have always been part of our narrative, the kind of informal, non regulated spaces where people have played, lived," said Christopher Cozier, an artist and co administrator of Alice Yard, along with the architect Sean Leonard whose grandmother had lived on the property, and the local writer and editor Nicholas Laughlin. Alice Yard is part of an informal network of similar grass roots arts organizations across the Caribbean, such as Fresh Milk in Barbados and New Local Space in Jamaica. The administrators of Alice Yard also manage an affiliated sister space, Granderson Lab, in Belmont, the city's first suburb, initially populated by Afro Trinidadians in the post Emancipation 1800s. Granderson Lab, housed in a former family run printery belonging to Mr. Leonard, is now home to projects that include carnival planning and installation art. The post bacchanal creativity extends to the literary scene in Port of Spain. Since 2010, Caribbean literature has received an elevated platform with the founding of the Bocas Lit Fest. Held annually in April, the festival is free and showcases some of the best writers in the region. "It is a community that has changed and radically expanded over the past 10 years," said Mr. Laughlin, who is the literary festival's programmer. "It feels like there is a bubbling up of talent. Part of it is that, maybe for the first time, writers don't have to leave Trinidad to make careers for themselves." The festival also hosts events like poetry slams, screenings and lectures. And there are monthly literary open mic sessions held at the Big Black Box, another venue that offers a range of artistic and carnival related activities. Because Port of Spain is relatively small it has a population of just over 37,000 it is, according to Mr. Laughlin, "relatively easy to become connected to people." When I asked about how to find out about other literary events, he simply suggested taking a trip to Paper Based Books, a local shop that specializes in writing from the region. "Just talk to the person behind the counter," he said. While taking in the towering costumed characters, I ran into the artist and designer Richard Mark Rawlins. He told me about the 1000mokos project, a group that is working to get more people interested in the practice of stilt walking. He encouraged me to visit an address just across the street from Alice Yard the following Sunday. Arriving at the park I heard the loud rhythms of soca and witnessed Adrian "Daddy Jumbie" Young, a well known local expert and instructor in stilt walking, perform flowing movements on sky high stilts that seemed like magic. His ease and ability to spin, hop and jump while nine feet off the ground was more superhero than human. I thought there was no way I'd be able to do this. But after an hour of encouragement and instruction and lots of soca music, I made it up on a pair of two foot stilts and walked around a park. I recalled Mr. Cozier talking about Port of Spain's yards as spaces where people play. He could have been talking about the city itself.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Travel
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JAMES BARBER yearned to travel to exotic places when he was a boy reading National Geographic. Now 71 and a successful business owner, he is able to indulge that love in far flung destinations during trips created exclusively for him and his family. There was the trip to Egypt, Jordan and Italy in the months before the Arab Spring in 2010 that included private cooking classes in Jordan, gladiator school for his grandchildren in Rome and an armed guard in Egypt to keep everyone safe. He loved the one to Thailand where his grandchildren got to hold tiger cubs in their laps and he leash walked a full grown tiger, raised from birth by monks. "We were out in the woods and we saw an antelope," Mr. Barber said. "The tiger got stiff and followed him with his eyes. Then he relaxed and went on walking. The monk turned to me and said, 'Man is the only animal that kills for sport; the tiger's belly is full.' " While such experiences might cost the equivalent of several years of mortgage payments for an average family, Mr. Barber says it is worth the price for a couple of weeks away. "It is expensive, but I love the flexibility," he said. "If I organized the trip on my own, I'd miss a lot of things." These are trips that only money can buy. Like other areas of life, from education to housing to retirement savings, travel is something where the truly wealthy are pulling away not just from average Americans but also from the merely rich. And they are driving demand for the most exclusive trips. According to data collected by Virtuoso, a network of 8,900 top travel agents who serve two million customers, travelers who spend at least 100,000 a year on trips have increased their annual spending at two to three times the rate of the regular traveler over the past seven years. (Those regular travelers, in the company's parlance, still spend 10,000 a year on a vacation.) Last year, National Geographic Expeditions, known for its trips to places like Antarctica, the Galapagos and the Kalahari with archaeologists in tow, organized two around the world trips by private jet. The cost was 77,000 per person for 24 days and both trips, carrying 78 people each, sold out. By comparison, it costs 23,000 to be one of 148 on a 25 day trip to Antarctica. "One of the common links among our travelers is they're curious, passionate and they're looking for unique and authentic experiences," said Lynn Cutter, executive vice president for travel and licensing at National Geographic Society. For those more interested in being pampered than talking archaeology in Bhutan, the Four Seasons now has its own private jet that transports travelers among its resorts. A 24 day around the world trip next February makes 10 stops, including Bora Bora, Bali and Istanbul, and costs 119,000 per person. "You can expect to see a lot more of these jet trips coming," said David Kolner, senior vice president for the consumer division at Virtuoso. "They're selling out. You have to book in advance." Mr. Kolner said his firm was seeing strong sales of seats on Virgin Galactic where 250,000 buys a 20 minute spaceflight. He estimated that 700 seats had already been sold and Virgin Galactic has yet to take a customer to space. This interest in such unusual trips is a combination of wealth, impatience and being overwhelmed by all that is out there. He said when he started in the business, travelers were more accepting of someone else's idea, or just tagging along with a group on safari. Jason Clampet, a founder of Skift, a website for the travel industry, said that the increase in bespoke or custom travel closely mirrors developments with luxury brands in general. "You can get luxury at a mall anyone can buy a Louis Vuitton bag," he said. "A truly customized trip is something unique." For Gary Rolle, an investment manager in Los Angeles, paying a premium for a trip with his family and knowing that it will be well organized is worth the expense. His next trip with six family members, including his two grandchildren, will be to Australia. The 17 day trip is packed with visits to wildlife sanctuaries and parks filled with koalas, kangaroos and other animals that will delight his young grandchildren, yet at night the family will stay in luxury hotels. "I'm trying to create a high point in our lives," he said. "I'm willing to pay enough to make it a wonderful trip." Rebecca Wright, director of sales at R. Crusoe Son, which organized Mr. Barber's and Mr. Rolle's trips, said the company's typical traveler spent 10 days and 25,000, not including airfare, on a trip. It once organized a 90 day trip focused on studying the world's religions that cost 250,000, and a three year family journey from Australia to Geneva over land that stretched into the millions of dollars. "In Paris, the Eiffel Tower is a given but what else can make it special?" she said. "Can they go into the Louvre before hours and be there alone? Or is it just going into the Louvre with one of our specialist guides? The budget defines it." Greg Sacks, a founder of Trufflepig, a travel company that also publishes a lifestyle magazine, said his firm created its first 1 million trip last year, a seven day excursion to Antarctica for six friends. The company outfitted a full safari camp on the ice, arranged for planes to take the friends to the polar cap to do kite skiing and guides to take them to see a colony of penguins that only scientists normally glimpse. "It's hard to do a land based trip in Antarctica in comfort," he said. For its work, the company was paid 120,000 in fees and commissions. But Mr. Sacks cautions that many travelers confuse bespoke trips with staying in the most expensive places in every locale. These trips are about spending more time with family and friends and less with people they don't know. A more typical trip is four to six people at a cost of 50,000 total. "People have less time in general and they don't want to spend it hobnobbing around a table with 16 strangers," he said. "Our top clients will plan four or five years of travel with us. It's more like financial planning. It's trying to take a holistic approach." It is often the less expensive features, like not staying in only the best hotels in India, that make these trips special for someone who wants to get a feel for the country. "You're trying to understand someone and help them find the things that are the fit for their sensibility and not just their pocketbook," Mr. Scott, the travel consultant, said. "Otherwise you're going to get the run of the mill high end with no sense of authenticity or true luxury." Mr. Barber said he became interested in bespoke trips more than a decade ago. "I got tired of being stuck on the bus and waiting for someone else," he said. But he still plans simpler vacations to places he knows. He and his wife are soon headed to Hawaii for his 45th and her 47th visit to the island. "It's my favorite place and we stay at the hotel where we always stay," he said. But he has no expectations that the trip will match memories like one a few years ago in Borneo, where a female orangutan dropped from a tree in front of him. "She took my hand and started walking with me," he said, "right there in front of my wife."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Your Money
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From left, Devonte Hynes, Taiwo Lijadu, Kehinde Lijadu and Ahmed Gallab in performance at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2014. The Lijadu Sisters, identical twins, flourished in the 1970s in a Nigerian pop scene dominated by men. Kehinde Lijadu, a singer and songwriter who formed the Lijadu Sisters with her identical twin, Taiwo, a duo that had a string of hits in Nigeria in the 1970s and later found an international audience, died on Nov. 9 at the apartment she shared with her sister in Harlem. She was 71 . The cause was metastatic breast cancer, Taiwo Lijadu said. The Lijadu Sisters flourished in a Nigerian pop scene dominated by men. On the five albums they made in the 1970s, they sang in English, Yoruba and Ibo about corruption, poverty, urban violence and perseverance alongside songs about love and dancing. As they gained popularity in Nigeria, they were outspoken about equality for women. "I will forever be the mouthpiece of those who are oppressed worldwide," Kehinde Lijadu (pronounced KAY hin day lee JAH doo) said in "Lijadu Lessons," a 2014 YouTube series. The Lijadu Sisters lived and worked inseparably throughout their lives. They performed in matching outfits and sang nearly every line of every song together, in close harmony or in unison. Working with the producer and musician Biddy Wright, they made music that drew on Nigerian traditions and West African pop styles like highlife, Afrobeat and fuji, as well as international influences: funk, psychedelia, reggae and gospel. Even in their most pugnacious songs like "Erora," which criticizes a rapacious elite their music maintained an optimistic spirit. Kehinde and Taiwo Lijadu were born on Oct. 22, 1948, in Jos, a town in northern Nigeria. Kehinde was born second; according to Nigerian tradition, that meant she was considered the elder twin . They moved with their family first to Ibadan and later to Lagos. "Horizon Unlimited," released in 1979, was the last of the Lijadu Sisters' five albums. Their dealings with record business left them feeling exploited, and they never recorded again. Their father, Edmund Funso Lijadu, was a photojournalist who played piano. Their mother, Adelaide Efunyemi Lijadu, was a seamstress who also worked in pharmacies, mixing medications. She was a musician, too she played harmonica and she exposed her daughters to music from inside and outside Nigeria: I.K. Dairo, Miriam Makeba, Ray Charles, Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, the Beatles . When the twins began writing songs, Taiwo recalled in 2014, their mother advised: "When you write a song, make sure people can pick that song and the tune 200 years later. Talk about something that always happens, will always happen." In an interview with The Guardian, the sisters (they were quoted as one) said , "Music teaches us to reach out and do something about what is going on, socially, morally, financially, spiritually and politically." As teenagers the sisters found work as studio backup singers. They recorded their first single as the Lijadu Sisters, "Iya Mi Jowo" ("Mother, Please"), in 1968. At first, their mother chaperoned them and sewed their stage outfits. Audiences outside Africa first saw the sisters in the early 1970s, when the drummer Ginger Baker, best known for his work with the rock band Cream, came to Nigeria to work with musicians, among them Fela Kuti, the inventor of Afrobeat (and the sisters' second cousin). The sisters toured with Baker's African centered band Salt, which took part in the cultural festival at the 1972 Munich Olympics. They were meeting Jimi Hendrix's mother after their performance when they heard the explosions from a terrorist attack on the Olympics site. The Lijadu Sisters recorded their first album, "Urede," for EMI Nigeria in 1974. They then signed to the Afrodisia label, an affiliate of Decca Records, and made four albums aimed at both Nigerian and international audiences. "Danger" (1976), with lyrics mostly in English, drew on Afrobeat, reggae and soul. "Mother Africa" (1977) turned toward Nigerian roots, featuring traditional talking drum, lyrics in Yoruba and highlife style acoustic guitars. "Sunshine" (1978) reached outward again, with lyrics in English, synthesizer lines and infusions of disco, rock and reggae. Their final album, "Horizon Unlimited" (1979), was the culmination of their fusion of local and international grooves with urgent social commentary and romantic tidings . But their record business experiences had left them feeling exploited. "They don't care. They don't give one fig about the artist," Kehinde Lijadu said in 1979 in Jeremy Marre's documentary "Konkombe: The Nigerian Pop Music Scene." They expanded their performing circuit, traveling to Britain and to the United States, where in 1984 Shanachie Records released an anthology of their Afrodisia recordings, "Double Trouble." Its liner notes described the sisters as "identical twins who also share identical callings, habits, hobbies, a joint bank account and four children in between them ." In addition to her sister Taiwo, Ms. Lijadu's survivors include another sister, Irene Idowu Gbenrotwo; a brother, Ayodele Lijadu; and two children, Enitan Izevbekhan and Adekunle Adelekan . In 1988, the Lijadu Sisters toured the United States alongside Nigeria's leading juju band, King Sunny Ade and His African Beats . They relocated to New York City and continued to perform, but never found a satisfactory recording deal. In 1996, Kehinde Lijadu suffered severe spinal injuries in a fall, and the sisters withdrew from music as she slowly recovered her ability to walk and dance. They studied the Yoruba religion Ifa and herbal medicine, and both became priestesses and herbalists. Their 1976 song "Life's Gone Down Low" appeared on a 2005 compilation on the Luaka Bop label. The rapper Nas built a song, "Life Gone Low," on the song's Afrobeat vamp and title without crediting the Lijadu Sisters; it was officially unreleased but has circulated widely online.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Ruth Shellhorn with Walt Disney in July 1955. She worked directly with Mr. Disney on his park in California. This article is part of our latest Fine Arts Exhibits special report, which focuses on how art endures and inspires, even in the darkest of times. Frederick Law Olmsted, Calvert Vaux and Andre Le Notre are names nearly as well known as their famous landscapes Central Park for Olmsted and Vaux, and Versailles for Le Notre, the principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France. But what about the women? They have played major roles in a diverse array of landscapes in the United States: Marjorie Sewell Cautley, the landscape architect of Radburn in Fair Lawn, N.J., a New Deal era planned suburban community based on safety and access to shared parks and open spaces that became a model for projects around the world; Clermont Lee, whose designs revitalized the public squares and gardens of the Historic District in Savannah, Ga.; and Genevieve Gillette, the force behind the multimillion dollar funding for Michigan State Parks, one of the nation's most robust public systems. "Women have literally shaped the American landscape and continue to today," said Charles A. Birnbaum, president and chief executive of The Cultural Landscape Foundation, "but their names and contributions are largely unknown." For example, Ruth Shellhorn, who created the private gardens of many Hollywood moguls and worked directly with Walt Disney on his park in California, "has been overshadowed," Mr. Birnbaum said. "At Disneyland today, there's no recognition of her work." The exhibition highlights the stories of the lives of 12 designers and 12 sites (two have multiple locations) that represent a diversity of geography and approach. All properties are at risk from threats including insufficient funding, deferred maintenance and even demolition but most are still publicly accessible. "We're trying to elevate what these trailblazing women have brought to the table," Mr. Birnbaum said. Women have faced further challenges. In the 1800s and 1900s women excelled in garden clubs, civic improvement initiatives and as columnists for their local papers. Landscape architects, though, were also active, said Thaisa Way, landscape historian at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. "The profession had women early on before law, medicine and architecture but there were few women at the big firms, and the ones who were there were pretty invisible," said Dr. Way, author of "Unbounded Practices: Women, Landscape Architecture, and Early Twentieth Century Design." There were exceptions. Beatrix Farrand, the only woman founding member of the American Society of Landscape Architects (started in 1899), was celebrated for her private estate gardens and design work on campuses like those of Yale and Princeton. In contrast Annette McCrea, who also was active in the late 1800s, designed the landscapes around train stations in small towns throughout the Midwest for four of the major railroad companies at that time, but those sites and documentation about her work are long gone, said Dr. Way. "One hundred years later," Dumbarton Oaks, Farrand's Country Place Era style garden in Washington, D.C., "is still a stunning work of art," Dr. Way said. However, Dumbarton Oaks Park, a 27 acre nature focused public space, originally part of 53 acre Bliss estate, is threatened by storm water runoff problems and funding issues. Ms. Danadjieva, an 89 year old Bulgarian, led many urban design and city planning projects with Lawrence Halprin Associates, including large scale ones in the 1970s like the Ira Keller Fountain in Portland, Ore., and Freeway Park, perched above Interstate 5 in downtown Seattle. "The great majority of people never heard her name, but she is one of the unsung heroes," said Gina Ford, a landscape architect and co founder of Agency Landscape Planning. "She really gave shape and form and design expression to those incredible spaces." Thomas Polk Park, in Charlotte, N. C., an urban pocket park and fountain, was one of Ms. Danadjieva's first solo commission;Ms. Ford called it a masterwork of water feature design that is singular in this country. "It's just a magnificent monument, a powerful cascade of water, steps, stones, plants, and greenery, sculptural and beautiful," she said. "All you hear is the rush of the water. When you see people walking by, they are just drawn to it. It has this kind of presence in the city center." Ms. Ford said her firm would update the site, which had fallen into disrepair, "but will recognize its history and beauty." Because of the growing presence in landscape architecture programs of women, who now outnumber men, but who remain underrepresented in the profession, Ms. Ford co founded WxLA, a coalition to assist the next generation of women in the work force. "The fact that, over all, women have not been acknowledged as leaders in landscape design makes their work even more precious." A smaller location featured is the Lynchburg, Va., home and garden of the Harlem Renaissance poet Anne Spencer, who created and nurtured the garden from the time she moved there in 1903 with her husband Edward, until her death in 1975 at age 93. "One of the unique things about my grandparents' garden is the history, the stories," said Shaun Spencer Hester, the site's executive director and curator. Her grandfather, a carrier for the U.S. Postal Service, salvaged items along his mail route that he would turn into arbors, pergolas and benches. The property was a popular gathering spot for leading Harlem Renaissance figures, including Langston Hughes, James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. DuBois, Spencer's editor, who called it "the shrine."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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The hard work of dancing is too often undernoticed and underpaid. Enter the New York Dance and Performance Awards, better known as the Bessies, which bestow some much needed recognition and a touch of glamour on the profession once a year, if not a whole lot of money though this year's ceremony, at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Tuesday, began with an announcement that all nominees would receive a 500 honorarium. (It's a start?) Returning to its original home after five years at the Apollo Theater, the shebang felt more subdued than usual, perhaps because of its proximity to the election (or the absence of a bar in the theater, one of the Apollo's assets). The night opened with some words (on video) from the great ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov: "America welcomed me, an immigrant, and that welcome has made my life possible." On that note, Lucy Sexton, the executive director of the Bessies, welcomed us to the academy's Howard Gilman Opera House, before introducing our host, the choreographer, writer and comedian Adrienne Truscott, who talked politics mostly by way of her increasingly imaginative outfits. (Her cardboard box skirt sporting the letters "G.O.P.," the O rendered as a hole over her crotch, was a work of art in itself.)
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Dance
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SAN FRANCISCO When Facebook told Wall Street in July that its business would slow down, it had few answers for how it planned to change that trajectory. On Tuesday, the social network came back with some responses. The Silicon Valley company predicted that the next few years would be tough, but said Facebook was looking to a future where it would move beyond News Feed, the stream of content that is the core of the platform. The social network said it would instead focus more on different mediums like ephemeral messaging, private chats and video even though none of those make as much money as the News Feed does. "We have great products people love, but it will take us some time to catch up," Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, said in a conference call with investors. "It will take some time, and our revenue growth will be slower." Facebook disclosed its vision for the future along with its quarterly financial results, which showed slowing growth in revenue and in the numbers of new users. The earnings report followed a difficult 18 months for the firm, which has been under scrutiny for spreading disinformation, hate speech and leaks of user data. Facebook's business had initially withstood the scandals, but its growth had recently started to flag. Mr. Zuckerberg and others had vowed that Facebook would change to deal with those problems. The social network has pledged to hire tens of thousands more people to monitor content on its platform, and said on Tuesday it planned to spend 18 billion to 20 billion in operating expenses next year. But new problems keep cropping up almost every week; last week, for example, the company said it had identified and removed a new influence network that had originated in Iran. The company will also be tested next week when Americans vote in the Nov. 6 midterm elections. Facebook has said it formed a "war room" to prevent disinformation and election meddling from foreign operatives through its site. "The fact that problems keep emerging reinforces our view that the company is not as in control of its business as it needs to be," Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group, said in a note to clients about Facebook. For the third quarter, Facebook said its revenue rose 33 percent to 13.7 billion and profit increased 9 percent to 5.1 billion from a year earlier, roughly in line with what Wall Street had expected. Revenue growth was down from the 42 percent jump that Facebook had reported in the previous quarter. Facebook also said its daily active users increased 9 percent to 1.49 billion from a year earlier, down from 11 percent growth in the previous quarter. Its monthly active users reached 2.27 billion. The company's slowdown stems from more than just the scandals it has grappled with. Facebook has also almost fully saturated some of its most important markets, including the United States and Europe. In the European Union over the third quarter, Facebook lost one million daily users, partly because of tough new data privacy regulations that were put into place, said Dave Wehner, the company's chief financial officer. Another challenge is that people are moving away from public sharing on the News Feed and other public arenas, Facebook said. Instead, people are shifting more toward private messaging services. "People feel more comfortable being themselves when they know their content will be seen by a smaller group, and when they know it won't stick around forever," Mr. Zuckerberg said. "Public sharing will always be very important, but people increasingly want to share privately, too." Mr. Zuckerberg pointed to how people are sharing more on Facebook's "Stories" product, an ephemeral photo and video service. The idea of ephemeral messaging was made popular by its rival Snap with its Snapchat app; Instagram and Facebook later adopted the same concept. People are now sharing more than one billion "Stories" on Facebook every day, the company said. Yet Facebook does not charge as much for advertisers to run ads on "Stories" as it does in the News Feed, so shifting to ephemeral messaging may not be as lucrative, the company said. That is partly because tools to make ads for "Stories" are not fully developed yet, and it is easy for users to ignore ads on the service or skip the service altogether, analysts said. Mr. Zuckerberg said Facebook was also looking more toward some of the properties it already owned, such as messaging apps WhatsApp and Messenger, which together have more than two billion users. It is also building a stable of original programming on Facebook Watch, its video service, to engage users, as well as working on efforts like an e commerce marketplace, a jobs service and a dating service, he said. "This is a journey that's going to take years, not quarters," Mr. Wehner said in the call with investors. "It's going to take time."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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CHICAGO Tim Jackson's job is to convince young people that they have a stake in the future. The boys in his care at Harper High School, in one of the meanest neighborhoods on Chicago's South Side, all have harsh stories. One bouncy 15 year old freshman tells me about his older brother, a high school dropout who smokes weed and does little else. Another teenager, still a sophomore at 17, knows what it's like to have had a gun pointed at his head in fourth grade. Almost half the students who enroll at Harper drop out within five years, one of the highest rates in the city. The school is in a part of town where a dispute over a stolen bicycle or a Facebook fight between two girls over a boy might end up with a dead teenager. Mr. Jackson's task, as a counselor for the Becoming a Man program at Harper, is to help prevent such tragedies. To do that, he trains the boys to avoid the ingrained, automatic responses: throwing a punch to avoid appearing like a punk or pulling a gun in a fistfight, which might land them in a bad place. And that requires providing these teenagers with an objective in life a "visionary goal" worth saving themselves for. "It's hard to think how a teenager could imagine a life different from the one they're currently living if they've never seen anything else," said Jens Ludwig, a professor at the University of Chicago who directs the university's Crime Lab, which is evaluating the Becoming a Man program run by the nonprofit group Youth Guidance in some of the city's schools. By stimulating the imaginations of the boys under his wing, Mr. Jackson may do more than keep them out of trouble. Sowing the aspirations of children in Chicago's most distressed neighborhoods could provide their best shot at moving up the ladder of opportunity. The income gap has surged past the peak reached in the Roaring Twenties, raising doubts over whether the engine of economic opportunity has been choked off for all except the most fortunate or talented, perpetuating vast inequalities. We have only a vague idea, however, of how the process may work. Economists identified what Alan B. Krueger, President Obama's former chief economic adviser, called "The Great Gatsby Curve." Economic mobility is weaker in countries (and states) with bigger income gaps. But nobody has explained convincingly how inequality today might gum up the cogs of opportunity for the next generation. Recent research by Melissa S. Kearney of the University of Maryland and Phillip B. Levine of Wellesley College provide what might be the missing link: Inequality may perpetuate itself down the generations by messing up the decisions of underprivileged youth. In a research paper to be published next week by the National Bureau of Economic Research, Ms. Kearney and Mr. Levine detail robust evidence that young men of low socioeconomic status are more likely to drop out of high school, where the gap between families at the bottom tenth of the income distribution and families in the middle is wider. They challenge their results in many ways, but find nothing that could explain away inequality's effect. The dropout gap is not because of differences in school spending or differences in incarceration rates. Measures of segregation by income or race don't account for the difference. Nor, interestingly, does the spectacular acceleration of inequality between the richest and the rest. Their finding echoes an earlier study, in which they found that teenage girls of low socioeconomic status are more likely to become single mothers when they live in places where the income gap between the bottom and the middle is bigger. A meeting of an intervention program for at risk students at Harper High School in Chicago. Alex Wroblewski for The New York Times They suggest a similar explanation for both results: If a poor child perceives the middle class as out of reach, prohibitively far from his or her own station, the child will have little incentive to make the investments needed to get there, like finishing high school or avoiding becoming pregnant. This they call "economic despair." 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. "There are different ways to think about perceptions," Professor Kearney says. "Maybe they are discouraged. Maybe it's an identity story: 'I'm not one of these people.' Their peer group norms are different." In any case, simply explaining that high school graduates earn 38 percent more than dropouts and college graduates earn 19 percent on top of that is unlikely to persuade them to go the extra mile. Their narrative meshes well with other research. Teenagers who expect to have a professional or managerial job by age 30 have been found to reach higher levels of academic achievement. By contrast, young people who see no future tune out. One report, based on data from a seven year study of thousands of juvenile offenders in Philadelphia and Maricopa County, Ariz., found that those who expected to die young committed more crimes, and more serious ones, than those who hoped to make it to a ripe old age. A model developed by Garance Genicot of Georgetown University and Debraj Ray of New York University suggests that while aspirations that are a little above an individual's standard of living encourage investment in education, they can lead to frustration and lower investment if they become too far from an individual's current station. The work of Professors Levine and Kearney provides valuable new insight into inequality's impact on American society. It helps reconcile the fact that high school graduation rates among the poor have been stuck for decades even as the wage gap between graduates and dropouts has steadily widened, which should have provided an extra incentive to complete school. The conclusion that graduation rates are affected by inequality at the bottom, which has remained roughly constant over the last few decades, is consistent with the research by Raj Chetty of Harvard and colleagues, who found that rates of income mobility across generations have remained extremely stable even as inequality at the top has soared. Importantly, their model of "economic despair" provides a decisive blow to the nation's mythical identity as the land of opportunity: for many children at the bottom, it suggests, opportunity is not just out of reach. It is inconceivable. The research by Professors Kearney and Levine could portend a bleak future in which the diminished expectations of young Americans in disadvantaged families lead to poor choices that deepen their disadvantage as adults, and lead them to produce children with even lower expectations than their own. As Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University, told me: "The decisions that you make in your teens are going to determine in some sense how the rest of your life is going to be." But it is not hopeless. "The kinds of interventions we need are those that shape the opportunity sets and the perception of opportunity of these kids," Ms. Kearney said. Among the boys in the Becoming a Man program at Harper High, that does not seem to be an insurmountable task. Mr. Jackson started a recent session with a little tale: He recounted how he was rear ended by three drunken, angry men while sitting in his car at a stoplight just a few nights before. Should he confront them? Argue? He crossed the street and called the cops. He offered the students in the circle the method with which he figured out the answer: He should remember his stake in the future. Among the boys I talked to, one hopes to be a commercial artist, another a music producer, another a police officer, another a game designer. They might not all succeed. But with Mr. Jackson's help, they all seemed to have developed a sense about how they might get there. Following that path increases the odds that they will avoid the really bad stuff.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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PARIS Stefano Pilati is stepping down as creative director of Yves Saint Laurent, the French label said Monday, the latest in a round of musical chairs that is turning the world of fashion upside down. Mr. Pilati has been at the top of YSL, a unit of the luxury giant PPR, since 2004. He will have his final show for autumn winter women's wear on Monday in Paris, the company said, with a new creative director to be announced in "the coming weeks." His leaving had long been rumored. Hedi Slimane, a former men's wear designer for YSL and Dior Homme who is currently working as a photographer, is thought by industry insiders to be the favored candidate to replace Mr. Pilati. Designers like Mr. Pilati are the rock stars of the fashion world, paid enormous salaries for the excitement and marketing firepower they bring to luxury conglomerates. With the deaths of giants like Yves Saint Laurent, who died in 2008, the companies that inherit Europe's family fashion brands face the task of finding designers who can live up to their legendary predecessors. Like its peers, YSL had a bumper year in 2011 as sales to Asia boomed. The brand's revenue soared 31 percent from a year earlier, to 354 million euros (about 475 million) and pretax profit rose to 50 million euros, up 164 percent. Still, that was but a small fraction of PPR's revenue of 12.2 billion euros and net income of 986 million euros. "I think behind the change at YSL there is a desire at PPR to accelerate growth," said Virginie Blin, a luxury and retailing sector analyst at AlphaValue in Paris. "They look at Dior Couture, which has sales of about 1 billion euros, and they see a similar potential for YSL." The shake up atop YSL comes just days after the news that the Belgian designer Raf Simons will be leaving the Jil Sander fashion house after seven years as Ms. Sander returns to the top spot. Mr. Simons, who presented his final Jil Sander show on Saturday, is now thought to be a candidate for the top job at Christian Dior, the position that was left empty last year after John Galliano left in disgrace. As recently as last autumn, Mr. Simons was rumored to be in line to replace Mr. Pilati at YSL. Mr. Pilati had been "instrumental in the rebuilding and repositioning of an iconic French luxury brand," YSL said. "Under Stefano's guiding vision and artistic direction, the house has become a contemporary reference in high fashion." Siddhartha Shukla, a spokesman for YSL, said Mr. Pilati would not be available to comment. Claudia Mora, a spokeswoman for PPR, declined to comment on Mr. Pilati's departure.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Global Business
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It comes as no surprise to its ardent followers that the Ultimate Fighting Championship, known as U.F.C., will be the first organization to stage a major professional sports event in the United States since the spread of Covid 19 induced a monthslong live sports hiatus. Its brash president, Dana White, never wanted to cease operations in the first place. "I wanted to keep right on going; we'll figure this thing out," Mr. White told Sports Illustrated. "If this thing is that deadly, it's gonna get us no matter where we hide or what we do." In April, through U.F.C., Mr. White rented a private island where he is planning to put on fights by late June, involving international mixed martial arts fighters who may have difficulty securing visas. The territory which Mr. White has crowned "Fight Island" could stage bouts for the duration of the pandemic, or perhaps beyond, he says. The mixed martial arts, or MMA, fighters he oversees who are of various cultural and political leanings have a similar attitude. And so, the athletes will be back in action even sooner: There's a fight Saturday night. Not on Fight Island, where the venue is still under construction, but in Florida at the Jacksonville Arena, where lightweights Tony Ferguson and Justin Gaethje will square off in the headline bout. Neither man seems concerned. "I hope he breaks my nose, I've been waiting to get it fixed." Mr. Gaethje said tauntingly. "Maybe he'll plant an elbow on there." The road to this return, which will be without fans in the stands, was rocky. The first attempt resulted in a false start, as a planned April 18 card on Native American tribal land in California was scuttled amid objections from top state officials and television partners. But the efforts never stalled, nor did they lack for outlandish ingenuity. While most in official quarters have excoriated these moves, many grass roots sports fans on Twitter, Reddit, Instagram and other forums have cheered on the U.F.C.'s gung ho determination to fight on in the face of a tsk tsk from the powers that be. That scorn for politesse, the embrace of gritty, defiant independence and the nihilism toward the consequences are all a microcosm of what makes the combat sport excite so many people. It's what took U.F.C. from a ragtag competition held in tents in the 1990s (a sport that the late Senator John McCain once famously dismissed as "human cockfighting") to the signature franchise for mixed martial arts, airing on ESPN in prime time cable ever since the network agreed to a 1.5 billion megadeal to gain its television rights. There are, of course, countless people who would be happy to watch any live sport right now. Still, the U.F.C. has a unique and enduring appeal to a coarsened America that was there before this pandemic and that will thrive in its aftermath. Mr. Trump was, instead, in the role of star guest as he attended a big U.F.C. event. It was a remarkable sight, given that competitions of mixed martial arts were not even legal in New York until 2016. For the wide group of people on the outside looking in at this cultural phenomenon with furrowed brows, the question of its specific appeal beyond the age old attraction humans have to combat is common. Five action packed minutes this past August, before a prime time face off between Anthony Pettis and the welterweight superstar Nate Diaz (on his hyped return from a three year hiatus) may provide something like an answer. Hours before that "top card" fight, nearly every seat was filled to watch little known lightweights Khana Worthy and Devonte Smith battle. Both men in the octagon immediately began parrying each others' blows, prepared to defend against a combo of Brazilian jiu jitsu and American wrestling moves, or of karate kicks and boxer like jabs (or maybe just an improvised knee to the face.) Just four minutes into the first round, Mr. Worthy landed a punishing left hook beneath Mr. Smith's right ear, who crashed, back first, onto the canvas. The crowd exploded 17,000 odd people giving a big schoolyard "Ooo!" at the same time. Mr. Worthy charged at his wounded opponent, who was still on the deck and landed several more punches. Mr. Smith curled up. The referee rushed in to stop the fight and Mr. Worthy, a massive 6 1 underdog according to the gambling bookies, climbed atop the octagon, threw himself over it and toward the rapt crowd in celebration. It all happened in roughly 10 seconds. An instant jolt and turn of events few other sports can rival. The knockout took place at 9:42 p.m. By 9:43 the U.F.C.'s official account had posted a clip to Twitter: "WORTHY PULLS OFF THE HUGE UPSET!" Other trending posts quickly went up from fans and sponsors as well as peers of the fighters, who often have as many millions of followers as professional football players. I began following M.M.A. out of professional necessity. I was a boxing writer by trade until editors at outlets, including The Times, began inquiring a few years ago about my interest in covering U.F.C. as it ascended into mainstream acceptability. Dr. Bhrett McCabe, a sports psychologist, who has worked with mixed martial artists, explained to me the vicarious rush that people of all stripes feel watching U.F.C. matches by recalling one of the first times he took his young teenage daughter, who was not already a hard core fan, to a fight. "We were three rows back from the cage, and you could hear the fists hitting the chest, and the air leaving the lungs," Dr. McCabe said. "And you're sitting there, and it's this moment between 'I don't want to see a broken leg, but I also want to see a victory.' It's this weird psychological moment. I look over at my daughter she's 14 at the time and she's over there yelling and screaming." For fans, there's this idea of there being just enough distance between them and the fighters to provide a guilt free viewing experience. We watch them through a cage. But they're also packaged by the franchise on television as well as by themselves on social media as Tekken esque arcade game characters. The audience gets close, but not too close, to the blood. Despite the vague conventional wisdom that those who watch U.F.C. are mostly working class MAGA guys, a fairly diverse group of young men make up the majority of the actual fan base. "You go to a U.F.C. event, you see men, you see women, you see children," said Dr. Jennifer McClearen, a feminism and media scholar at the University of Texas Austin, whose book on women in U.F.C. will debut in spring 2021. "You see people who are doctors, and lawyers, and construction workers." It's a shift that was years in the making. When the Ultimate Fightng Championship was getting its start in the 1990s, it wasn't inaccurate to describe some of its fights as glorified cage matches. "There were always rules," Joe Silva, a U.F.C. technical adviser from 1994 to 2000, said in a U.F.C. documentary released this summer. "Obviously, in the beginning, there was a lot less." As active bans on mixed martial arts fighting spread from state to state, some fights were forced to be held in tents. Dana White took over as president of the U.F.C. in the early 2000s under new ownership who understood, as Mr. White put it in the same documentary, that "you can't beat" the government. "You have to work with them and run toward regulation and try to figure out how to make it safer," in order to "turn it into a real sport." The New Jersey Athletic Commission approved the competition soon after renegotiations and U.F.C. 30 (the 30th match in the promotion's series) was held on Feb. 23, 2001, at the Trump Taj Mahal in Atlantic City. Dana White still credits that tentpole event which Mr. Trump facilitated as the first domino that led a slew of states to accede to popular demand and legalize regulated mixed martial arts competition over the past two decades. "I'm never going to say anything bad about Donald Trump, ever," Mr. White told Fox News last year. "That guy gave us our start when nobody would talk to us." M.M.A. is gory, without question. But clinical research is showing the dangers of M.M.A. aren't quite as pronounced as once feared, specifically in relation to boxing. A groundbreaking study first published in 2015 by researchers at the Sather Sports Medicine Clinic at the University of Alberta which examined 1,181 mixed martial artists and 550 boxers over the course of a decade found that boxers are far more susceptible to major harm from concussions and other head trauma and more likely to experience loss of consciousness than M.M.A. fighters, who are instead at greater risk of more minor injuries. "Most of the blood you see in mixed martial arts is from bloody noses or facial cuts," the lead author Dr. Shelby Karpman explained. "It doesn't tend to be as severe, but looks a lot worse than it actually is."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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On a frosty February morning, Laura Benanti, a celebrated cabaret performer and Broadway star, sat in a Harlem church basement and worked through a few songs: "The Hello Song," "Trot, Old Joe," "Splishing and Splashing," "Snowflakes." This isn't Ms. Benanti's usual set list. But it was her regular duet partner: Ella, her 11 month old daughter, seated in her lap. Every Thursday, mother and daughter stroll a couple of blocks north from their Harlem apartment and scoot into a circle of brightly colored yoga mats for their weekly class with Music Together, a community program where children and parents gather to create music. Ms. Benanti, a fizzy, dizzy and witty actress who recently wrapped the Broadway comedy "Meteor Shower" and plays an fanatical mail fraud investigator on the TV comedy "The Detour," had spent the previous evening on "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert," on which she has a standing gig as Melania Trump. When Ms. Benanti narrows her eyes and pouts her lips, the resemblance to the first lady is jarring. In the sketch, Melania was promoting a new fragrance, Ocean of Loneliness, "a decadent bouquet of gardenia blossoms with a hint of 'I live in a prison of my own making.'" Ms. Benanti had thought it would be funny to spray some in her mouth, before realizing that the props department had supplied her with actual cologne. Ella, in a gray dress and gray tights with hearts at the knees, was a chubby cheeked dynamo. Fresh from a morning nap, she raced around the room, sometimes toddling toward the bathroom and lunging for the elevator. Ms. Benanti stopped her just before she gnawed a pair of shoes left near the entrance: "I don't mean to be a helicopter parent, but. ..." When Ella allowed it, Ms. Benanti sat with the singer Kate Mangiameli. The two women met by chance in a Starbucks last year, bonding over their colicky babies. The Music Together ringers occasionally joke about adding some vibrato to the "Hello Song," but so far they've resisted the urge to showboat. The room was low ceilinged and bright, with about a dozen mothers and their babies. The Music Together teacher passed out drums, and Ms. Benanti watched as Ella tried to stand on top of one and then wielded another like a tennis racket before giving it a couple of smacks. Then Ella ran off with a drumstick. "Oh good," Ms. Benanti said with a sigh, getting up again. "She can poke her eye out with that." When the hourlong class ended and the instruments and jingle bells and rainbow colored parachute were tidied away, Ms. Benanti and Ella reunited with Ella's nanny, Johana Caballero, who helped Ella into her stroller. "Johana saves me every day," Ms. Benanti said as the elevator took them to street level. "I would never want to purport that I do this myself." Her put together appearance is another thing she didn't want to purport. She had had her hair done that morning and had taken an extra moment to wipe Ella's breakfast off her black pants. "Normally I look like a monster," she said. "Like a garbage monster." Ms. Benanti, the daughter of the former Broadway performer and voice teacher Linda Benanti, spent the first half of her pregnancy starring in the blissful Broadway musical "She Loves Me" and suffering from morning sickness. She would throw up in the wings and run onto the stage. "It was so brutal," she said. Then postpartum depression kicked in, so early motherhood has not been only raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens. "But don't get me wrong," Ms. Benanti said. "I love Ella in a way I never thought possible." Ms. Benanti steered the stroller toward a coffee shop near Morningside Park, where they share breakfast every morning. Ms. Benanti is incognito in the neighborhood, but not Ella. "She's famous," Ms, Benanti said. "In this four block radius, she is famous." And as soon as the stroller nudged through the door, the baristas began to fuss over her.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Members of the Oklahoma Nature Conservancy carried an inflatable globe at the state Capitol in Oklahoma City. Nick Oxford for The New York Times
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Science
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"I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump's illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience. I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is. He is a racist. He is a con man. And he is a cheat." "Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not. And I want to be clear. But I have my suspicions." "A lot of people have asked me about whether Mr. Trump knew about the release of the hacked documents, the Democratic National Committee emails, ahead of time. And the answer is yes." "Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He lied about it because he never expected to win. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project." "Mr. Trump is a racist." "While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way. And he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid." "Mr. Trump is a con man. He asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair and to lie about it to his wife, which I did." "And I am going to jail in part because of my decision to help Mr. Trump hide that payment from the American people before they voted a few days later." "Did the president call you to coordinate on public messaging about the payments to Ms. Clifford in or around February 2018?" "Yes." "What did the president ask or suggest that you say about the payments or reimbursements?" "He was not knowledgeable of these reimbursements, and he wasn't knowledgeable of my actions." "He asked you to say that?" "Yes, ma'am." "Mr. Cohen, How long did you how long did you work in the White House?" "I never worked in the White House." "That's the point, isn't it, Mr. Cohen?" "No, sir." "Yes, it is." "No, it's not, sir." "You wanted to work in the White House." "No, sir." "You didn't get brought to the dance." "Did Mr. Trump ask you to threaten an individual or entity on his behalf?" "Quite a few times." "Fifty times?" "More." "A hundred times?" "More." "Two hundred times?" "More." "Five hundred times?" "Probably, over the 10 years." "Is there a book deal coming, or anything like that?" "I have no book deal right now in the process. I have been contacted by many, including for television, the movie if you want to tell me who you would like to play you, I'm more than happy to write the name down." "Can you please describe for us to the best of your recollection you were present exactly what Mr. Stone said to Mr. Trump?" "It was a short conversation and he said, 'Mr. Trump, I just want to let you know that I just got off the phone with Julian Assange, and in a couple of days, there's going to be a massive dump of emails that's going to severely hurt the Clinton campaign.'" "To your knowledge, did the president or his company ever inflate assets or revenues?" "Yes." "And was that done with the president's knowledge or direction?" "Everything was done with the knowledge and at the direction of Mr. Trump." "You're a pathological liar. You don't know truth from from falsehood." "Sir, I'm, sorry, are you referring to me or the president?" "Hey, hey! This is my time." "Are you referring to me, sir, or the president?" "When I ask you a question, I'll ask for an answer." "Sure." "Over and over again, you know, we want to have trust it's built on the premise that we're truthful, that we come forward, but there is no truth with you whatsoever. That's why that's important, to look up here and look at the old adage that our moms taught us: 'Liar liar, pants on fire.'" "Hm." "No one should ever listen to you and give you credibility." "Putting up silly things like this, really unbecoming of Congress. It's that sort of behavior that I'm responsible for I'm responsible for your silliness, because I did the same thing that you're doing now, for 10 years. I protected Mr. Trump for 10 years."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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Of the 16,000 books produced about Abraham Lincoln since his death 155 years ago, not one, in the view of the historian and biographer David S. Reynolds, fits the definition of a "full scale cultural biography." Reynolds, the author or editor of 16 books on 19th century America, has set out to fill that void with "Abe: Abraham Lincoln in His Times," a prodigious and lucidly rendered exposition of the character and thought of the 16th president as gleaned through the prism of the cultural and social forces swirling through America during his lifetime. More character study than narrative biography, this Lincoln portrait, fully 932 pages of text, goes further than most previous studies in probing the complexities and nuances of the man: his tastes, likes, dislikes, the quality of his thinking, the evolution of his ideas all shaped and molded by the society around him. At the same time, Reynolds succumbs to a pitfall in drawing conclusions about how particular Lincoln experiences influenced his later thoughts and actions when no evidence for such causal effects is discernible. The author employs speculative language abundantly, as when he writes within one three page section: "must have been also saddened by," "could not but have been moved by," "could have exposed him to," "must have also been aware" and "appears to have been influenced." It was a raucous and turbulent culture that greeted Lincoln's birth in 1809, with a sentimental quality, certainly, but also "ablaze with sensationalism, violence and zany humor" as well as "popular exhibits full of strange, freakish images." In tracing the multiple strains of American culture, Reynolds explores Puritan and Southern Cavalier sensibilities, frontier mores, alcohol consumption and the temperance movement, the Baptist Church, Quakerism, frontier humor, popular music, rural carnivals and P. T. Barnum, among other cultural phenomena. Lincoln embraced nearly all of it, Reynolds writes, "in an extraordinarily wide ranging manner." Indeed, he adds, Lincoln ultimately was able to redefine democracy "precisely because he had experienced culture in all its dimensions from high to low, sacred to profane, conservative to radical, sentimental to subversive." In portraying Lincoln, Reynolds examines an intellectual trait that guided this frontier lawyer throughout most of his life and became a hallmark of his presidency (and probably his greatness) his ability to free himself from dogma and synthesize seemingly divergent concepts into a coherent whole. Take, for example, Lincoln's view of his own ancestry New England Puritan on his father's side; Southern Cavalier on his mother's. The two regional sensibilities became so disparate that The New York Herald once declared, "There is nothing in common between them but hate." And yet Lincoln managed to mesh those sensibilities through what Reynolds calls "a unique fusion of cultural traits," which yielded a vision of national unity and generated a perception that he represented "a bridge across the Puritan Cavalier gulf." 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. Lincoln also managed to reconcile his "rationalist impulse" with more abstract thinking. He devoured and mastered all of Euclid's geometric propositions, for example, during his days as an itinerant lawyer on the Illinois court circuit; Reynolds believes Euclid's propositions about equal angles, equal sides and equal degrees actually combined with Lincoln's rationalist outlook to help shape his views on human equality. But another of Lincoln's literary companions on the circuit was Edgar Allan Poe, who stirred Lincoln's rationalist side with his elaborate tales of ratiocination but also saw limitations in the process of reason, as explained with particular acuity by Poe's fictional detective, C. Auguste Dupin, in the tale "The Purloined Letter." As Reynolds points out, in the story Dupin dismisses mathematics as a means of adducing abstract truths about morals or human motivation. "Mathematical axioms are not axioms of general truth," Dupin says, to which Reynolds adds: "On this point Poe trumped Euclid." Lincoln's aim, Reynolds says, was to find a "balance between reason and passion." He consequently positioned himself almost always upon a solid middle ground. Though he loathed slavery, he never joined such abolitionists as the radical William Lloyd Garrison or even New York's more moderate William Seward in criticizing the Constitution as a flawed document because it sanctioned slavery in the original states. Instead, Lincoln hewed to an "antislavery constitutionalism" that anticipated the eventual end of bondage by prohibiting its spread into new American territories. Thus did he anchor his outlook firmly "within the boundaries of the American system." As Congressman Lincoln said in 1848, "In the West, we consider the Union our ALL." One could argue, based on Reynolds's study, that this balance broke down as Lincoln and the country entered the vortex of war after the 1860 election. The crux of the matter was the concept of the "higher law," described by Reynolds as "the law of morality and justice that transcends human law, including what some regarded as pro slavery passages in the Constitution." The higher law was embraced by Northern radicals who argued that man's law lacked the force to address the moral blot of slavery. Garrison publicly burned the Constitution to make that point, and it guided John Brown in his murderous attack on a pro slavery family at Pottawatomie Creek during the 1856 "Bleeding Kansas" days and in his raid on Harpers Ferry three years later to initiate a Southern slave revolt. Lincoln rejected the higher law, declaring at one point that "insofar as it may attempt to foment a disobedience to the Constitution, or to the constitutional laws of the country, it has my unqualified condemnation." Reynolds writes that Lincoln saw the higher law as a potentially destabilizing concept because it could be "appropriated by anyone to defend any position." As for Brown, even as prominent literary figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau hailed him as "that new saint" and "the clearest light that shines on this land," Lincoln kept his distance and sought to balance a few words about Brown's "great courage" and "rare unselfishness" with a stern admonition that those traits "cannot excuse violence, bloodshed and treason." And yet Reynolds identifies Lincoln ultimately with the higher law, notwithstanding his early "condemnation." He bases this particularly on Lincoln's embrace of the equality language of the Declaration of Independence, which he viewed as "the most powerful moral law America had produced," as Reynolds puts it, and whose spirit, in Lincoln's view, was "inherent in the Constitution." Certainly this was a profound element of Lincoln's thinking. The historian Garry Wills has called Lincoln's elevation of the Declaration at Gettysburg "one of the most daring acts of open air sleight of hand ever witnessed by the unsuspecting." But Lincoln never suggested the principles of that hallowed language should be promulgated through any extra constitutional means or, later, any actions that went beyond the recognized laws of war. Reynolds may be on less solid ground when he seeks to portray Lincoln as an ultimate admirer of John Brown not of his lawlessness, of course, but of his "methods," which by 1864 seemed to Lincoln "desirable and defensible." Reynolds adds that by combining his Emancipation policies with his doctrine of "hard war" to break the South, "Lincoln had already established a cultural atmosphere friendly to the memory of John Brown." The author of a hagiographic Brown biography, Reynolds marshals his evidence for Lincoln's affinity for Brown with his characteristic thoroughness. But in the end he doesn't make a definitive case that Lincoln adopted a view of Brown that fit those of Emerson and Thoreau (or Reynolds). Ultimately he can't get around the fact that Lincoln was a saintly genius while Brown was a murderer, a traitor and a madman.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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Jimmy Kimmel's tearful description of his newborn son's heart defect has galvanized parents across the country. A few shared his experience as a frantic new father; many more gave silent thanks that they had been spared this ordeal. But the talk show host's monologue has also focused new attention on how infants with such birth defects were cared for before passage of the Affordable Care Act, and what may lie ahead for them should the legislation be repealed. "No parent should ever have to decide if they can afford to save their child's life," Mr. Kimmel said. Some medical experts, too, are deeply worried that these young patients may not receive the intense care they need. "The physical, emotional and financial tolls that families experience caring for children with complex chronic health problems are already extraordinary," said Dr. Jay Berry, a pediatrician at Boston Children's Hospital. "It's unfathomable, then, that we could make things worse by limiting or taking away the child's health care coverage." Roughly 40,000 infants are born each year with a heart defect. The one that struck Mr. Kimmel's son is called Tetralogy of Fallot with pulmonary atresia; it affects about seven of every 100,000 babies born alive and accounts for 2 percent of all congenital heart defects. The condition is hard to miss: The child is often born blue because the passage from the heart to the lungs is completely blocked. Blood cannot get to the lungs, where it would be oxygenated. The infant is alive only because a passageway to the lungs during fetal development remains, letting blood get through. It will close, though, and the condition can be fatal without immediate surgery, which can cost 100,000. Roughly 90 percent of these children will survive to age 18, but the initial surgery is just a temporary fix. Doctors usually have to operate several times over the years. And people with the condition need regular care from experts. "It's a disease of a lifetime," said Dr. Yuli Kim, director of the adult congenital heart disease center at the University of Pennsylvania. Before the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, federal law required employer sponsored plans to cover newborns regardless of their health status as long as their parents enrolled them within 30 days, said Karen Pollitz, a senior fellow at the Kaiser Family Foundation. If parents switched jobs, their new insurers could not impose waiting periods or charge more for sick newborns. But things were different for parents who bought their insurance individually. All 50 states had laws requiring newborns to be covered under a parent's insurance policy and not to be charged more if they were sick, if they were enrolled within 30 days. But if a parent switched plans after a baby's birth, the new insurer could refuse to cover the care for an ill infant for an initial period of time or charge more, Ms. Pollitz said. They could also do so if the parents were uninsured to begin with. Lifetime limits on coverage were a problem, too. In both individual and employer sponsored plans, some critically ill children met policy limits within the first few years of their lives. Ms. Pollitz pointed out, however, that about half of all newborns were and still are insured by Medicaid, "which basically says whatever the kid needs is covered." Many infants with severe congenital defects require home care provided under the program, as well. The bill would also allow states to opt out of several consumer protections, including the Affordable Care Act's ban on insurance companies' charging higher premiums to people with pre existing medical conditions. That could affect the roughly 8 percent of Americans who rely on the individual insurance market, though only if they had been uninsured for 63 days or more in the previous year. Under this plan, families with sick children who rely on individual coverage would "have to be meticulous about signing up at every open enrollment and never missing a payment," Ms. Pollitz said. "One slip up, and you're back in the underwritten pool again and could be charged an unaffordable amount." The Republican bill would also let states allow insurers to offer skimpier coverage than the Affordable Care Act requires, and it would provide smaller premium tax credits for many Americans. "You're going to have a certain level of income to even be able to afford the coverage in the first place," said Sabrina Corlette, a research professor at Georgetown University.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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LOS ANGELES Most mornings, Nina Jacobson drives her gray 2012 Tesla from her home in Brentwood to her office in Santa Monica with her two Australian shepherds, Hero and Pearl, in the back seat. As she pushes through the traffic, she takes calls via speakerphone from fellow producers, agents, studio executives, directors and the occasional pal like Carrie Fisher, with whom she shares a yearly birthday soiree. Ms. Jacobson, 51, is the founder and boss of Color Force, the boutique size film production company behind the 2.9 billion "Hunger Games" franchise. On a recent morning, she parked the Tesla across the street from the one story building where she works with a staff of seven and growing. Before getting out of the car, she finished a call with her partner at Color Force, Brad Simpson, who was in Atlanta keeping watch on the fourth installment of the "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" film series, which has earned 225 million globally at the box office. When Ms. Jacobson opened the car door, the two dogs bounded out of the back seat. "I said when I got fired I could bring my dogs to work," she said. She was referring to the low point of her career, when she was booted in 2006 from her job as president of Disney's Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group despite having overseen one of that decade's signature franchises, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" series. She bounced back quickly, though, establishing Color Force in 2007. She and her dogs passed through a wooden gate and went inside. The interior had the feel of a tech start up, with concrete floors, a kitchen and lots of open space. Twelve black and white portraits of "Hunger Games" characters took prime position on a wall outside her office, with Jennifer Lawrence, looking regal as the fierce heroine Katniss Everdeen, in the center. That blockbuster franchise fits perfectly with what Ms. Jacobson is trying to accomplish in a male dominated industry: to bring to the screen stories centered on women and others underrepresented in movies. Among the projects she has in the works are adaptations of the novels "The Goldfinch" by Donna Tartt and "Crazy Rich Asians" by Kevin Kwan, and for television, the "American Crime Story" series, which explores race, society and culture. In late October, Ms. Jacobson met with the screenwriter Christina Hodson, recently hired by Warner Bros. to write a reboot of the 1993 action hit "The Fugitive," who had an appointment to go over a script in development at Color Force that centered on a mythological tribe of women warriors who invade ancient Greece. Before they got down to discussing characters and story beats, Ms. Hodson described a run in she had at the Austin Film Festival, where she was on a panel to discuss women and movies. "This guy puts his hand up and says: 'First of all, let me just say, I love women. Don't mix me up with other guys,'" Ms. Hodson recalled. After his little preamble, the screenwriter said, the man went on to ask Ms. Hodson, who is half Asian and was raised in London, if she owed her success more to the film industry's attempts to hire women and minorities than to her own talent. Ms. Jacobson rolled her eyes and said: "Oh, brother. You don't ever hear about a man being asked, 'How did you get that job?'" "I was so pissed," Ms. Hodson said. "I told him we have to work four times as hard." The conversation moved on to the movie, a tale of two sisters, one the leader of a fierce warrior tribe driving the action. "I don't want to make it silly," Ms. Hodson said. Ms. Jacobson knows how hard it is for women in Hollywood, on both sides of the camera. "I've been fired from almost every job I've ever had," she said. In producing such fare, Ms. Jacobson is an industry outlier. A recent University of Southern California study showed that women remain underrepresented among the industry's directors, writers and composers. The same goes for actors, where men dominate women in speaking roles by a ratio of two to one. Minority and gay characters lag further behind. And the sexualization of female characters is on the rise, the report said. Ms. Jacobson, who is Jewish and gay, was raised in Brentwood and studied semiotics at Brown University. One of her first jobs after college was working for Joel Silver, the producer of the "Lethal Weapon" and "Matrix" action films. In those days, Ms. Jacobson wore Dr. Martens as she read scripts and suggested ideas. Now, she mostly wears black. She went on to work as a production executive at DreamWorks SKG and Universal Pictures. Once, she said, a male mentor told her, "You can't be a kick ass mother and a kick ass executive." In 1995, she and the producer Bruce Cohen, who would win an Oscar for "American Beauty" and receive a nomination for "Silver Linings Playbook," started Out There, a grass roots group comprising gay men and lesbians in entertainment. By that time, Ms. Jacobson was in a relationship with Jen Bleakley, now her wife with whom she has three children. During an Out There meeting held at Mr. Cohen's house in the mid '90s, Ms. Jacobson met Ryan Murphy, the producer and writer known for the television shows "Glee" and "American Horror Story." "It's hard to forget how radical it was in that age for a gay woman to not be afraid," Mr. Murphy said. That night, he recalled, the group talked about how to add same sex couples into scripts and fight discrimination in the workplace. "It was almost like a gay kindergarten, where you learned the tools," Mr. Murphy said. Cut to a garden table at Tiato, a restaurant in Santa Monica on a sun drenched afternoon, where Ms. Jacobson was meeting with two friends: Zanne Devine, a Miramax executive she has known for nearly 30 years, and Audrey Wells, the writer director of the 2003 romance "Under The Tuscan Sun," which Ms. Jacobson greenlit in her executive days at Disney. The lunch table talk turned to how Hollywood has shown signs of change since then. "You assumed that movies about women should be made, and women should make them," Ms. Wells told Ms. Jacobson. "But you didn't act like you were making a sacrifice or saying yes on a whim," Ms. Wells said. For instance, she said, when she ran into trouble with an unruly Italian crew during the filming of "Under the Tuscan Sun," Ms. Jacobson came through with support. "She believed me instead of saying, 'What's wrong with you?'" Ms. Wells said, adding that Ms. Jacobson gave her two extra weeks of filming. "Those were the days," Ms. Jacobson said with a sigh. As the three tucked into salads and glasses of iced tea, Ms. Jacobson told the story of how, exactly, she was fired in 2006. On a Sunday in July, Ms. Jacobson got a heads up call from a reporter who had heard layoffs were in the offing at Disney. Ms. Jacobson called the studio's chairman, Dick Cook, only to hear nothing back. The next morning, she was in the delivery room at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, where her wife was in labor with their third child. To complicate matters, her father had been admitted to the intensive care unit, too. Then, Ms. Jacobson said, her boss finally returned the call. He fired her over the phone. "I was furious, so mad, about how they went about it," said Ms. Devine, the Miramax executive. Ms. Wells added: "She had just done 'Pirates of the Caribbean,' and it made no sense. The way I felt about it was: Today your vengeance begins. And, boy, did she prove that to be the case." Disney tried to make it up to her by offering her a production deal. But Ms. Jacobson turned it down flat. "I was like, I don't want to work for the people who just fired me," she said. Her most recent hit was with the Emmy winning FX series "The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story," an exploration of celebrity and race, which was hailed for, among other virtues, Sarah Paulson's complex portrayal of the prosecutor Marcia Clark. For the second season of "American Crime Story," Ms. Jacobson promises another deep study of American life, this time focused on Hurricane Katrina. For the project, Ms. Jacobson sought writers of different socioeconomic backgrounds who understood Southern culture. "It was actually the most awkward thing I've had to do, call all these agents and say, 'Hey, I need your black writers from the South," said Allison Friedman, an executive at Color Force. The production company received 200 writing samples, which it winnowed down to 20 potential candidates. Of those, the company hired a diverse crew of eight writers. "There were great writers I'd never heard of," Ms. Jacobson said. "And that's a problem."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Early in 's creepily thought provoking novel "Read Me," the unnamed narrator a London man who has made an unpaid vocation out of stalking strangers, mostly women asks, "Did I really find my new life on the first day of looking? Much easier to believe it was already somewhere in me. ... Have I been someone all my life who would do what I've done? Or am I just somebody who did?" It's the rhetorical use of philosophical questions like these that make the novel self reflective. The narrator, who is the supposed "author" of the book before us a memoir of his deeds as a stalker befriends us. He invites us to engage with his inner dialogue. He is not overly charming, but still intelligent and warm enough that it can be easy to forget that he is a sociopath. At times he is profoundly good at rationalizing some very disturbing behavior. At other moments his manipulations are so cruel, his acts of violence so vile, that it feels profoundly disconcerting to have ever been seduced by him. His eerie shadowing begins when he unexpectedly inherits a large fortune from his aunt. The sum changes his life in an uncomfortable way. Rather than being "set free" by the money, he finds that the newfound freedom it gives him is actually much greater a burden than was the daily struggle for fiscal survival. To quell his anxiety, he rides city buses. He becomes an observer of others an activity that quickly escalates from simply watching to stalking. The novel centers largely on his pursuit of Frances, a young woman with a blossoming corporate career, and the ways he dismantles and destroys her life. In meddling in her affairs, the narrator must break one of his own rules, namely not making contact with or intervening in the lives of his subjects. His interest in Frances is born out of jealousy, of both the existential and misogynistic varieties.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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To humans and hamsters, the Kia Soul has been a design touchstone. It's often the Korean brand's best selling model, so designing an all new version was no small task. Like the latest boy band, youth baiting novelty cars can struggle to sustain a long, relevant career. Tastes change and people move on. One day, the Chrysler PT Cruiser is on top, praised for its daring retro style and toting up big sales. The next, it's a washed up punch line the booby prize for Walter Jr. on "Breaking Bad," nearly as pathetic as the Pontiac Aztek driven by his meth dealing dad. But the Kia Soul has steadily increased its following, toting up 118,000 sales last year, compared with about 32,000 in its debut year of 2009. This endearingly odd box has been backed by those irresistible hip hop hamsters, a stroke of advertising genius. Honda's own inside the box car, the Element, started strong in 2002 but faded badly before it was laid to rest in 2011. Following the Honda, Scion's xB met with approval from young and old alike. But Nissan's sad clown car, the Cube, is so rarely seen that I assumed, wrongly, that Nissan had stopped selling it. With the Soul firmly established, you can bet that Kia designers and engineers saw a cautionary tale in what became of Scion's box: Seeking to broaden the xB's appeal with a 2008 redesign, Toyota ruined the car instead, softening the polarizing shape and turning the campus rebel into a bland conformist. Fortunately, Kia's second generation Soul has grown and evolved, but without selling out or shedding its funky persona. Noticeably more solid feeling and quiet, thoroughly pleasant to drive and filled with winning design cues and premium features, the Korean built Soul actually has more charm than before. The new Soul's template was the lauded Track'ster concept car it had the stance of a bulldog and the production version has a number of show car styling cues. A body colored panel seems to float within the liftgate. That liftgate is book ended by eye catching high mounted vertical taillamps. Round fog lamps dangle like hip earrings from a glowering, trapezoidal air intake. More jewelry is optional: LED marker lights at front and rear. The Kia's decisively upgraded cabin and materials are persuasive in a budget friendly car that starts at just 15,695. The whimsical spirit of BMW's Mini brand is in evidence, expressed here in a circular theme that recalls leftover parts from the robot factory. Handsome outer dashboard vents, capped with "floating" tweeter enclosures, resemble little industrial cooling stacks. An extruded oval center stack houses an optional 8 inch navigation screen and climate controls. Available mood lighted speakers in the front wheel wells ripple through multiple LED colors in sync with music, if you wish. A glossy ball shaped shift lever controls the 6 speed automatic transmission. Whereas Mini's interiors have often allowed cute form to take precedence over useful function, the Soul is a paragon of ergonomics. Everything just works no owner's manual or anger management required. Touch screen menus are straightforward, Bluetooth cellphones pair up in seconds, navigation is a snap. High quality switches are right where you want them. A number of luxury automakers might wish that their driver interfaces worked as fluidly as the Kia's. All of this maturation does mean slightly higher prices, especially for the model I tested, a top dog Exclaim version that started at 21,095 and peaked at 26,195. Most shoppers, I imagine including parents covering the tab for their progeny will aim for versions closer to 20,000. But it was hard to fault the Exclaim's luxury level equipment. Kia's Uvo telematics system links smartphone apps like Pandora to the car's onboard display. A free three month trial of SiriusXM radio includes real time traffic, weather, movie times and sports scores. But although I sometimes appreciate wild car colors, I'm definitely not in the right demographic for the metallic algae color that Kia calls "Alien II." Perhaps the Kale Green or Inferno Red would be more appropriate. The Soul has grown slightly longer and wider. There's a smidgen more space for legs, shoulders and cargo, though the box shaped hauler already seemed roomy relative to its tidy footprint. If you drop the rear seats, the Soul suddenly seems more like a small S.U.V., eager to prove how much tall or bulky gear can be crammed inside. The base 1.6 liter 4 cylinder makes 130 horses and can be had with a 6 speed manual transmission. But you're better off with the 2 liter engine, available only with the automatic. This new engine now has direct fuel injection and makes 164 horsepower and 151 pound feet of peak torque. The old Soul could feel buzzy and a bit clunky, but the new one seems more substantial on the road. Kia says the chassis is 29 percent more rigid, with added sound absorption reducing interior noise by up to 3 decibels. The front pillars are nearly an inch narrower for better visibility. The Soul isn't exactly athletic in the manner of the Mazda 3 or to name another oddball crossover the Nissan Juke. But the Soul is eager, like a movie underdog determined to make the most of his chances. And that's a charming quality in any car. Kia relocated the rack and pinion steering box farther forward, in a stronger one piece unit that helps to improve control and handling. On Route 301, a lovely, winding road that spills east from Clarence Fahnestock State Park an hour north of New York City, the 18 inch alloy wheels and tires provided plenty of grip, permitting the car to slingshot from corner to corner.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Automobiles
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Terry Gross says that "Tell me about yourself" is the only ice breaker you'll ever need.Credit...Daniel Dorsa for The New York Times It's fair to say Terry Gross knows some things about talking to people. The host and co executive producer of NPR's "Fresh Air" has interviewed thousands of personalities over the course of her four decade career. It all started in the early 1970s, when, floundering a bit in her post college life, she landed a gig at WBFO, a radio station in Buffalo. There she would call subjects and interview them for the program she hosted, "This Is Radio." She moved to Philadelphia in 1975 to host "Fresh Air," the brainchild of a colleague from WBFO. Ms. Gross brings a combination of empathy and rigorous preparation to the job. "I read, watch or listen to as much of the person's work as possible, so I have an understanding of what makes them, or their story, important," she said. "I try to clarify in my own mind why this person matters, and why it's worthy of our listeners' time." One thing she does not allow of her interview subjects, however, is input on the edit. "When the interview is over, you don't have a chance to call back and say, 'Well I like my answer to this, I don't like my answer to that, can you edit that out," she said. (As someone who has been interviewed by Ms. Gross, I would like to say that I wish I hadn't insisted that her cats hate her. That said, I never asked for my comment to be removed from that particular episode of "Fresh Air.") In a subsequent chat, our roles reversed, Ms. Gross offered her thoughts on how to have a good conversation. "Tell me about yourself," a.k.a the only icebreaker you'll ever need Those are the only four words you need to navigate a potentially awkward conversation, whether on a blind date or at a cocktail party. Ms. Gross avoids asking more pointed questions (for example, "What do you do for work?") that presume information to be true. The beauty in opening with "tell me about yourself" is that it allows you to start a conversation without the fear that you're going to inadvertently make someone uncomfortable or self conscious. Posing a broad question lets people lead you to who they are. As an interviewer, Ms. Gross's goal is to find out how her subject became who they are; as a conversationalist, make that goal your own. Be funny (if you can). "A good conversationalist is somebody who is fun to talk to," she said. Ms. Gross, it's worth noting, is very funny. If you can't be funny, being mentally organized, reasonably concise and energetic will go a long way in impressing people. Most of us will never find ourselves in the position of being interviewed by someone like Ms. Gross, but most of us will certainly find ourselves in the position of being interviewed by someone. Preparation, she says, is key. "It helps to organize your thoughts beforehand by thinking about the things you expect you'll be asked and then reflecting on how you might answer," she said. A place where this can be especially helpful, particularly when meeting someone for the first time in a social setting, like a date, is considering how comfortable you are with opening up on certain topics. "It's helpful to think through where your boundaries are, so that you're not paralyzed agonizing over whether you're willing to confide something or not." In a job interview, organizing your thoughts by thinking about the things you expect you'll be asked and reflecting on how you might answer can help you navigate if things start to go badly. Take control by pivoting to something you want to talk about. Ms. Gross offered help for how to handle a job interview that's going badly. "If somebody is asking you questions and you don't feel that you have a strong response for it, say, 'let me share an experience.'" From there, you can share an experience that points to your talents and areas where you excel. An interview is a two way street, which can be hard to remember when you're the applicant who desperately wants to land the gig, but Ms. Gross gently reminds us that as an interviewee, you're there to do some sussing out of your own. What is the job really like? What would be expected of you? Being prepared, too, can help you avoid getting caught off guard, or help you to more easily pivot the conversation to a subject that you've prepared yourself to talk about in a way that plays to your strengths. Ms. Gross doesn't want you to dodge questions. But if you're going to, here's how. "Well, I don't think it is in my self interest to tutor people on how to dodge a question," Ms. Gross said. But, when pressed perhaps regretting the previous advice she gave to this interviewer about how to get people to answer questions they don't want to answer ("keep asking") she suggests using honesty. Say, "I don't want to answer that," or, if that's too blunt, hedge with a statement like, "I'm having a difficult time thinking of a specific answer to that." Going the martyr route with something like, "I'm afraid by answering that I'm going to hurt somebody's feelings and I don't want to do that," is another option. Ms. Gross wishes that everyone would pay attention to other people's body language. "Try to pick up on when you've kind of lost somebody's attention," she said. That way, you can avoid boring your fellow interlocutor to death or holding someone up from getting to wherever they may actually need to be. If the person engaging you in ceaseless chatter won't take the hint, Ms. Gross again recommends honesty. "Well, there's the truth, which is I'd love to talk some more, but I'm really late," even, she says, if it feels rude to cut things off. "If a person is being insensitive to you, you don't have a commitment to be beholden to their insensitivity." When to push back, and when not to Ms. Gross prefers to interview artists and creators over politicians, and she approaches those baskets of interviewees differently. Politicians, she believes, "owe us an answer," and so she, in her own very Terry Gross way will "keep asking and re asking and asking, and maybe I'll ask it in separate ways, and maybe I'll point out that they haven't yet answered the question." She prefers, however, to interview people who work in arts and culture, and offers those subjects more leeway to set parameters for the conversation. "I tell people that if I ask them anything too personal they should let me know and I'll move on," she said. "I want the liberty to ask anything with the understanding that if I'm pushing too far, my guest has the liberty and they know they have the liberty to tell me that I'm going too far. And once you told somebody that, you've committed to it, and you better fulfill the commitment."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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The Popcast is hosted by Jon Caramanica, a pop music critic for The New York Times. It covers the latest in pop music criticism, trends and news. These are fraught times for the young male pop singer business. Justin Timberlake is no longer young, nor particularly pop; Justin Bieber has been slowly removing himself from the narrative; and boy bands, from Prettymuch to BTS, are pop locking their way back to the forefront. Some might see a setback; others might smell opportunity. Two performers with new albums have their sights set on pop ubiquity: Charlie Puth and Shawn Mendes.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Music
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Re "Uncomfortable Questions" ("The America We Need" series, Sunday Review, July 5), by Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation: Mr. Walker has written an excellent article on the need for real changes to our capitalistic system if our democracy is to survive. Our present system, put in place one little brick at a time, ultimately generated a structure that grossly favors the rich over the poor. Mr. Walker points out that the changes necessary to address this inequality will require superrich support even though it will affect their wealth. However accurate Mr. Walker's analysis may be, I just wonder how many of his superrich brethren will support changes that would affect their wealth. I don't know any superrich people (unlike him, I don't attend 100,000 per table galas), but I have known some rich people. And I've always been impressed by their deep concern with maintaining, growing and protecting their wealth. The idea that one can ever have enough, that sharing wealth might have societal worth, is anathema to most of them. I suspect that most of the superrich would fall in the same category. Darren Walker is a brilliant analyst of our world and our nation. But his statement "I believe that capitalism is the best means of organizing an economy" leaves me fuming. Tell me why! It's my opinion that the inequality that Mr. Walker cites in his essay is a logical, even necessary outcome of the capitalist system itself, and it can't be "reformed" out. America's capitalism at its base flows from nothing but good luck compounded by avarice, then ossified by inheritance. And in 1944 Eric Williams, in his book "Capitalism and Slavery," showed that modern capitalism is a direct descendant of industrial slavery. It has sustained itself ever since as a lucky few exploiting the less lucky. I would love to be wrong about this, but empirically speaking, a couple of centuries of examples have shown no variation in outcomes. Darren Walker provided a comprehensive review of the relationships between corporations and the rest of us. I would add one additional concern. In 2006 I owned a small amount of stock in a large financial institution. During the financial crisis of 2007 8, this investment lost 90 percent of its value. When I read the annual report, I found a brief recount of market circumstances, followed by dozens of pages that explained executive compensation. Had I been an observer from another planet, I would have concluded that the sole purpose of the company was to compensate executives. In that crisis, the employees, communities, customers and even shareholders suffered. The executives who precipitated the crisis suffered much less. I suspect that the compensation of executives has been a driver in the conscienceless capitalism described by Mr. Walker. I agree with most of what Darren Walker wrote, but take issue with two things. "No chief executive, investor or rich person wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and says, 'Today, I want to go out and create more inequality in America.'" No, but I'll bet most executives and investors wake up thinking, "How can I create more value for the shareholders?" and "How can I crush the competition?" All too often, these ends are achieved on the backs of the lowest rung workers. And Mr. Walker writes, "I believe that capitalism is the best means of organizing an economy." An economy OK. But what about the people in a society? Somewhere around March 30, we saw how well capitalism works when an unseen force levels us: It leaves millions vulnerable, without health care, without jobs, and an economy with shuttering businesses. In about two weeks, capitalism failed and could not save us. Nor could or did the billionaires. Can we have more nuance in our capitalistic system, even just a little bit? Would a good dose of socialism in our economy kill us or perhaps save some lives? Darren Walker describes privilege in terms of tax code benefits for the very wealthy and laws written to strengthen corporate control at the expense of our democracy. But the ongoing conversation about "privilege" is usually framed not in corporate terms, but more about what we get as white individuals in America that our Black brothers and sisters don't get. This includes greater chances of not being beaten up or killed by the police, shorter prison sentences or not being arrested at all, and a better chance of finding good jobs and places to live. These are basic human rights we should all have. On average, the U.S. worker, white or Black, works more hours, has a lower life expectancy, pays more for health care, spends more time in prison and has fewer opportunities to join a union than citizens in comparable countries. I am willing to give up lots of the privileges that untethered capitalism affords us: the privilege of seeing our democracy dominated by powerful corporations and the 1 percent, the privilege of watching our public education system deteriorate, the privilege of paying more for health care, with poorer health outcomes than comparable countries, and the privilege of incarcerating more of our fellow citizens than other countries. As long as white people think of themselves as "privileged," the easier it will be for us to be duped into clinging to some racist idea of superiority that does not serve us. In "Political Capital" (column, July 5), Paul Krugman says that campaign contributions are only "part of the story" of why the rich have so much power. But part of the story of campaign contributions is the amount of time that candidates spend talking to rich people. Raising money is a time intensive process. Unless you're Bernie Sanders, people don't spontaneously give you money in response to emails; you have to call them up, individually, and ask for it. If you're in Congress, and you need to raise millions of dollars, you can't do it by calling people who can only afford to give 100; you have to call rich people. But nobody can give more than 2,800. So you have to call lots of rich people. And when you spend thousands of hours on the phone with rich people, their concerns are the concerns you hear about. Over time, that has an impact on your own views of what's important. A system of public financing, in which small contributions are matched at a high rate, would get politicians out of that rich people bubble. Steve Novick Portland, Ore. The writer was a candidate for the U.S. Senate in 2008. In 2017, the top 1 percent of all taxpayers paid a bigger share of individual income taxes than the bottom 90 percent combined, according to the Tax Foundation. The top 1 percent also paid a 26.8 percent average income tax, over six times the rate paid by taxpayers in the bottom 50 percent.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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The way you meet your future spouse sets the tone for everything to come, some people believe, much like the opening music in a movie. This has definitely been true for Jennifer and Charanpaul Singh Gill who recently celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary (and appeared in the Vows column on Oct. 31, 1999). The two met late one night in Manhattan in September 1994, when Ms. Gill called a car service for a ride home from her job as an editor at Newsweek magazine. Mr. Gill, who is known as Paul, was her driver. It was so dark in the car they could barely see each other. "It was almost like when people go for confession and they don't know what's on the other side," said Mr. Gill, whose family is from India and emigrated first to Britain and later to the United States when he was a teenager. By the end of the 15 minute ride, though, they had discussed their favorite books and music (he kept a guitar in the trunk for practicing between fares) and he had gotten her phone number. Nearly five years later, they were married in two ceremonies, one Sikh in honor of his background and one Catholic for Ms. Gill, who grew up in Torrington, Conn. Many of the elements of their meeting chance, luck, an openness toward strangers, and the experience of making an instant connection have characterized their marriage. Describing their marriage, both said the most difficult period was soon after the wedding when they began trying to get pregnant. "Had a couple miscarriages," Ms. Gill, 50, said in her down to earth way. "We went through fertility treatments." She added, "It was hard, really hard. I had friends who were having kids and we wanted to so badly. It just brings home the fact that getting pregnant and having a baby is just a miraculous thing." They eventually began the process of adopting a child from China, which involved far more paperwork, personal interviews and delays than they expected. "Right around that time, adoption in China started to slow down," Ms. Gill said. "What we expected to be a six month wait turned into a 15 month wait." Friends often asked when they expected to bring a child home and they got in the habit of responding, "Oh, May or June." On Feb. 1, 2007, they got a call from an adoption agency letting them know that a baby girl had been matched with them. They decided to name her "June." They traveled to China and waited with several other couples in a bland hotel conference room as the babies were brought in one by one. "They would come in and say, 'This is so and so and she's matched with you,'" Ms. Gill said. The babies ranged in age from 13 months to 18 months and were all dressed alike, in fleece coveralls the bright yellow color of newborn chicks. At no point did either of them consider turning back. "It's like taking a leap off a diving board or getting on a roller coaster," Mr. Gill said. "Once you're on it, you're on it." Finally, June was placed in Ms. Gill's arms. "It was just fantastic," she said. "She was just holding on to me, not trying to pull away." The first days of parenthood were among the most nerve racking and bonding of their marriage. "You're looking at each other and going, 'Am I doing it right?'" Ms. Gill said. "And the other person is going, 'You're doing great!'" Once they got home there were plenty of surprises, beginning with the amount of cooking required with a child in the house. "No one ever talks about how much you have to feed them, like all the time," Ms. Gill said. "There was no run up. June was already eating so it was like BAM. Food." Nearly two years later, they adopted their son, Kean, from South Korea. Although they were unable to choose the gender, they assumed they would be given a boy. "In Korea, they want to keep their girls," said Ms. Gill. "It's the opposite of China." For the Gills, meeting their children was similar to their own initial meeting an instant connection was made. "When Kean was put in our arms and when June was put in our arms, they were our kids," Ms. Gill said. "There was never, 'Whose child is this?'" June is now 13 and Kean is 11. "We are an unusual looking family," Mr. Gill said. "We're quadracial, if there is such a word. But we see ourselves as a family just like any other. For us, it's always been natural." Ms. Gill said, "We don't really blend in anywhere but I don't notice. It has made our lives so full." Mr. Gill no longer works as a driver he now specializes in implementing software for financial companies but driving is still a big part of his life. Along with guitars, he collects muscle cars from the '60s and '70s and also created a website, guessthefinalbid.com, where people can predict the final auction price for vintage or rare vehicles. More than anything, the Gills seem focused on parenthood, which they describe as a constantly unfolding mystery, especially since they are not genetically connected to June and Kean. "It's been exciting for us to discover who our kids are," Ms. Gill said. "We don't have a preconceived notion like, 'Oh, they are going to be musically minded because Paul is musical.' It is a mystery. We just let them lead." It turns out, June is interested in cross country running and making tiny sculptures like a balsam wood typewriter the size of a petit four. Kean is into math, origami and tap dancing. The Gills just laugh in their gentle, accepting manner because they are adept at none of those things. The two rarely celebrate their wedding anniversary, at least not in any fancy, expensive, or time consuming way. They basically skipped their 20th, although both say there is much to celebrate about their relationship. "Frankly, I can't believe it's been 20 years," Ms. Gill said. "It doesn't feel like 20 years. It still feels very fresh and new." When asked how they have stayed such a tight couple for so long, they don't have an answer and they don't seem interested in finding one, either. "I don't think we've done much analysis of our marriage," Mr. Gill said. "We haven't dug too deeply. You want to keep some of the mystery. Some things are better left unraveled." In their everyday life, the Gills are more comfortable than most with uncertainty and chance. They adopted Scout, a rescue dog from Mississippi, sight unseen. They found June and Kean's beloved babysitter by tacking a note on a bulletin board in an Asian supermarket near their house. If you are looking for love, or simply a larger community, this is Ms. Gill's advice: "Be open minded to everyone you come across. That's how I met Paul. That's how I met June. That's how I met Kean. That's how I met our babysitter. The most important people in my life, I met by being open to possibility." Continue following our fashion and lifestyle coverage on Facebook (Styles and Modern Love), Twitter (Styles, Fashion and Weddings) and Instagram.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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Joy Postell was living in Los Angeles when the news broke of Freddie Gray's death in her hometown, Baltimore, on April 19, 2015. "I was in a state of panic," Ms. Postell said. The story had been unfolding in real time for days, since initial reports that the 25 year old Mr. Gray had been arrested, on April 12, and in the course of a 45 minute police van ride, sustained a spinal injury that left him in a coma. On social media, Ms. Postell saw that her city had erupted in protests against police brutality. She wanted her pain and frustration to be heard, too, even if from a distance. Among locals, Baltimore is known as a "by the block" city. You can take a ride down a street laden with abandoned buildings, an open air drug market and other signs of poverty, then, around the corner, find gentrification in full bloom. Over the years, the city has been the backdrop and incubator of some of the nation's most heated racial tensions and class uprisings. These conflicts have borne artistic fruit: A generation of young musicians is writing Baltimore's present, and future, into their oeuvre. Not everyone shares his optimism about music's power to bring strangers together. In fact, some dispute it. The rap collective Refugee formed in 2013, after a group of artists had commiserated over feelings of creative alienation in the city. Its members Gunther, Faraji Jacobs, D Dillon, Mikey and Buffa7o Jackson spoke of "covert support" from their peers and the exclusion they sometimes feel in the city's dedicated art spaces. "Respect is not given publicly," Mr. Jacobs said. "It's like a backhanded slap then a kiss on the cheek. It's confusing." Mx. Ali grew up on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Pennsylvania Avenue with their mother and grandmother, and would pass Billie Holiday's statue every day on the way to their "very black" school. Holiday's legacy loomed large in Mx. Ali's childhood, but it was Sunday mornings spent with their grandfather at the Bethel A.M.E. Church on Druid Hill Avenue singing with the choir, channeling the spirit of ancestors that ignited Mx. Ali's musical awakening. Their work is inspired by Baltimore's club music, and relies heavily on percussion and call and response. "My music is literally not only a product but also an evolution of Baltimore musical history," Mx. Ali said. "I take pride in owning the sound of my city and honoring those like Miss Tony, who opened sonic doors for me as a musician." In 2013, Mx. Ali created Kahlon, a platform for independent genre nonconforming artists to meet and perform music through a continuing event series. "I had to create a community to foster," Mx. Ali said of Kahlon's founding. "The gatekeepers weren't radical enough to let people like me in." Mx. Ali's style tends toward the flamboyant: They might wear floral pattered bell bottoms with a long sleeved black turtleneck and a cropped snakeskin jacket, and the stage is where they feel the greatest freedom. Mx. Ali's spiritual lyrics ("I am the universe's mother, father, sister, brother, cousin, daughter, son / Am I the Holy Spirit? Who Am I?") transform performances into sermons of sorts, which draw on a Methodist upbringing but allow audience members to meditate and feel as close to whatever one may define as God. Butch Dawson, 25, is another example of the D.I.Y. imperative underpinning the city's independents. By his estimation, it's not the amount of equipment you have, or your degree, that makes you an innovator. "It's you," he said. "Pennsylvania Avenue in Baltimore was a historical strip for jazz musicians," he said, "so being from there made me have a better appreciation for jazz and made me want to incorporate that in my music." Mr. Dawson found his way into Baltimore's street wear scene, where he met like minded painters, rappers and designers. Some of them founded a multimedia platform, Basement Rap, through which they were able to proliferate their unique brand of hipster aestheticism. His sonic landscape is as kaleidoscopic as his personal style grungy, minimalist, funky and futuristic all at once and his rhymes flow like cool waters. Mr. Dawson considers himself part of a larger community of progressive artists "making it out of the city." And while, for the most part, he perceives the culture as a unified one, he has seen animosity expressed through gun violence, and "that's not what we need right now." In addition to their shared geography, Baltimore's young artists share "sankofa," a Ghanaian idea that loosely translates as "remembering our past to protect our future." Each holds a deep understanding and respect for the rich musical legacy into which they have been born. Mr. Dawson makes that clear in his latest single, "Liberation": "I'm from Baltimore city / You can't program me." Gioncarlo Valentine is a photographer and writer from Baltimore, living in New York. He most often focuses his lens on the black and L.G.B.T.Q.I.A. communities. Briona Butler is a writer in Washington, D.C.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Style
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Donald Trump's coalition in 2016 was an archaism, a throwback the last gasp of a fading white America, a last dance with the voting blocs that once delivered Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan their landslides, a resentment soaked attempt to maintain the power that white Christians once took for granted even as its demographic basis slips away. The Democratic Party's coalition, on the other hand, looks like the American future a Californian kaleidoscope of diversity, a multiethnic majority that only voter suppression and the rural bias of the Senate can keep at bay. This analysis is liberal cliche, but it has become cliche because it fit the trends of 2016 so well. Trump's coalition really was made up of the old, white and religious to an unusual degree; his racial and identitarian appeals were balder than almost any Republican predecessor's; and his party's current share of power does depend on the structure of the Senate and the Electoral College rather than majority support. It seems increasingly possible, though, that Trump will lose the 2020 election with a somewhat different coalition than the one he won with four years ago. Last week in a Fox News poll (whose relative closeness inspired heartburn in my Twitter feed), Joe Biden led Trump 51 percent to 46 percent, meaning that the president earned about the same prospective vote share as he won in 2016. But in the poll, Biden led by nine points among seniors, a group Trump won by nine points last time. Meanwhile, Trump reached 41 percent with Hispanics, which would be the highest share for any Republican nominee in decades. Both of the Fox demographic numbers are likely outliers, but a more modest version of the Hispanics for Trump trend shows up in a lot of polling. Win or lose, the whiteness of Trump's Republican coalition is likely to decrease and the racial polarization of the electorate to modestly diminish. This development, if it comes, will be a provisional indicator, not proof of any certain future any more than the composition of Trump's 2016 coalition proved anything definite about the world to come. But in a year defined by left wing racial justice activism, unexpected Republican strength with a nonwhite voting bloc would hint at the risks for progressives in their own kind of archaism, their own politics of nostalgia. If the essence of Trumpian nostalgia is a view that the United States can be governed as the conservative white Christian country it hasn't been for years, the essence of liberal nostalgia is the idea that the politics of racial redress in 2020 can simply pick up where the racial politics of 1965 left off as though the racial divisions in 21st century America looked like the color line of 50 or 60 years ago. This idea, implicit or explicit, is woven through the anti racist arguments elevated since the killing of George Floyd. The centering of slavery's arrival in America as an alternative to 1776, the depiction of "whiteness" as not just a useful concept but the central category of American experience, the evocations of Reconstruction as a model for the 2020s, the capitalization of "Black" (and in some cases "White" as well) and the collapse of all nonwhite experience into a shared story of racist oppression: In all these ways and more the liberal narrative increasingly assumes a bifurcated America, with four centuries of white privilege on one side and the history of slavery and segregation as the defining minority experience on the other. And the crucial political question, then, becomes whether enough white people can be persuaded to cross this color line and join what Adam Serwer, in an Atlantic essay, calls the first potential "anti racist majority in American history." But much of this bifurcation belongs to the past, no less than Trump's white Christian pastoralism. Specifically, it belongs to the country that existed at the time of the civil rights movement: a country with low in migration rates and longstanding restrictions on non European immigration, a country that had just passed through a 40 year project to assimilate Central and Eastern European immigrants while imposing segregation and exclusion for citizens of African descent, a country of two colors where 88 percent of the population was categorized as white. That is not the America that exists today. Not just the scale but the sheer diversity of post 1968 immigration has made our racial categories more complex, and in the process substantially changed what it means to have a debate about whiteness or racial redress or desegregation. And a liberalism that tries to collapse these complexities back into a binary is likely to end up with an agenda as anachronistic as Make America Great Again and a coalition no less vulnerable than the Republicans to the effects of demographic change. Some of those vulnerabilities can be distilled into pointed questions. What does a program of school desegregation look like in a country where white kids are a downward trending minority in the public school system? Can an anti racist liberalism maintain a system of affirmative action that obviously discriminates against the country's fastest growing minority group, Asian Americans, in order to achieve its goals of ethnic balance? Can unwieldy academic categories "Latinx" for a diverse Spanish speaking population that evinces little interest in the term, "BIPOC" for everyone from Native Americans to Pakistani immigrants to the millions of children of interracial marriages create durable political identities that subsume wildly divergent ethnic experiences? What happens to the votes of American Jews in a political left that increasingly regards them as a privileged cohort rather than as an oppressed one? And finally, is it really possible to sustain an anti racist political coalition whose most important white participants, the members of the intelligentsia and professional classes, are the institutional and often lineal heirs of the pre 1960s white Protestant establishment? By any reasonable measure, this inheritance means that the white liberals most invested in anti racism have more white privilege themselves than the heirs of rural fundamentalists and immigrant Catholics who currently vote for Trump. Political coalitions need an out group, an antagonist, but what happens when the coalition's internal logic makes one of its inmost in groups an enemy as well? The theoreticians of anti racism have answers to these questions, but many of those answers promise to save their theories rather than their political project. If an anti racist coalition loses power because too many Hispanics or Asian Americans abandon it, that will just prove the power of whiteness to co opt, suborn and seduce. Likewise, if the current progressive coalition sustains itself by limiting the demands of anti racism to symbolic rituals of white self abnegation, with material reparation perpetually postponed, then that will just show the resilience of privileged "nice white liberal" racism. But it's also possible that if liberalism's hope of a pan ethnic majority falls apart, then the sweeping theories of whiteness will themselves bear an important share of blame because their reductionist approach to a variegated social landscape makes unexpected reactions like a Hispanic drift toward Trump more likely. Alternatively, some of the most immediate and reasonable demands of anti racism from reformed police departments to shorter voting lines can probably be achieved with a racial politics that's more transactional and incremental, and therefore more durable, than the sweeping rhetoric of Reconstruction and reparation and white privilege. (As, indeed, a limited form of criminal justice reform was achieved even under Donald Trump.) This was the original promise of the Biden candidacy: a continuation of the incrementalism of the Obama era, which disappointed many activists and intellectuals but still has plenty of minority support.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Opinion
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Credit...Sam Hodgson for The New York Times In the last five years, dozens of schools have popped up offering an unusual promise: Even humanities graduates can learn how to code in a few months and join the high paying digital economy. Students and their hopeful parents shelled out as much as 26,000 seeking to jump start a career. But the coding boot camp field now faces a sobering moment, as two large schools have announced plans to shut down this year despite backing by major for profit education companies, Kaplan and the Apollo Education Group, the parent of the University of Phoenix. The closings are a sign that years of heady growth led to a boot camp glut, and that the field could be in the early stages of a shakeout. "You can imagine this becoming a big industry, but not for 90 companies," said Michael Horn, a principal consultant at Entangled Solutions, an education research and consulting firm. One of the casualties, Dev Bootcamp, was a pioneer. It started in San Francisco in 2012 and grew to six schools with more than 3,000 graduates. Only three years ago, Kaplan, the biggest supplier of test preparation courses, bought Dev Bootcamp and pledged bold expansion. It is now closing at the end of the year. Also closing is The Iron Yard, a boot camp that was founded in Greenville, S.C., in 2013 and swiftly spread to 15 campuses, from Las Vegas to Washington, D.C. Its main financial backer is the Apollo Education Group. Since 2013, the number of boot camp schools in the United States has tripled to more than 90, and the number of graduates will reach nearly 23,000 in 2017, a tenfold jump from 2013, according to Course Report, which tracks the industry. Tarlin Ray, who became president of Dev Bootcamp in April, said in an email that the school offered "a high quality program" that helped thousands of people join the high tech economy. "But we were simply unable to find a sustainable business model," he wrote. Iron Yard echoed that theme. In an email, Lelia King, a spokeswoman, said that while students benefited, the company was "ultimately unable to sustain our current business model." Boot camp courses, aimed at adults, vary in length and cost. Some can take 26 weeks or more, and tuition can reach 26,000. The average course length is just over 14 weeks, and the average cost is 11,400, according to Course Report. The successful schools, analysts say, will increasingly be ones that expand their programs to suit the changing needs of employers. Some have already added courses like data science, artificial intelligence, digital marketing and project management. Other steps include tailoring courses for corporations, which need to update the skills of their workers, or develop online courses. Ryan Craig, a managing director at University Ventures, which invests in education start ups, including Galvanize, a large boot camp, predicted that the overall market would still grow. But students, he said, would become more concentrated in the schools with the best reputations and job placement rates. The promise of boot camps is that they are on ramps to good jobs. But rapid expansion into new cities can leave little time to forge ties with nearby companies, the hiring market for boot camp graduates, said Liz Eggleston, co founder of Course Report. Some boot camps cater directly to corporate customers. General Assembly, which operates 20 coding campuses and has raised 119 million in venture financing, now works with more than 100 large companies on programs to equip their employees with digital skills. "Employer paid programs are now a big slice of the pie" for General Assembly, about half of its business, said Jake Schwartz, its chief executive. At Galvanize, Jim Deters, the chairman, said he recently stepped aside as chief executive to concentrate on getting more business from corporations. This year, Galvanize will have 2,000 students who pay their own tuition, and about 1,500 people in its programs tailored to and paid for by companies like IBM, Allstate and McKesson. "The business re skilling marketplace has become one of our biggest drivers of growth," Mr. Deters said. Kaplan is not closing Metis, a data science boot camp, which has corporate training programs. Several boot camps are deploying "blended" models with both in person and online teaching. Entirely online courses, in theory, could deliver rapid, profitable growth. But that is a different model from the immersive, face to face learning that has been the hallmark of the boot camp experience. "Online boot camp is an oxymoron," said Mr. Craig of University Ventures. "No one has figured out how to do that yet." The Flatiron School in New York may have discovered one path. Founded in 2012, Flatiron has a single campus in downtown Manhattan and its main offering is a 15 week immersive coding program with a 15,000 price tag. More than 95 percent of its 1,000 graduates there have landed coding jobs. In late 2015, the co founders, Adam Enbar and Avi Flombaum, decided to try an online only offering, Learn.co. The tuition is 1,500 a month. Students go at their own pace, and on average complete the course in seven months, putting in about 800 hours. Tuition charges stop after eight months and there are instructors online 16 hours a day for help and advice. Kailee Gray, 29, a math instructor in Fargo, N.D., seeking a career change, said she had communicated daily with instructors and participated in online study groups. On the night before a job interview, she recalled "getting panicked" and sent a message to an instructor. Soon, Rebekah Rombom, vice president for career services at Flatiron, was on the phone for a reassuring pep talk. Ms. Gray landed the job as have more than 95 percent of the students so far in Flatiron's online program, according to the company and an outside audit report. It seems a particularly high rate for an online course, especially when compared with free online courses, which only a small proportion of students complete. The school was the subject of a Harvard Business School case study, published this year, which found that the early success of the online only course has "expanded strategic options for Flatiron." But just how much is uncertain. "It's pretty clear that they can do it at the scale they have," said Thomas Eisenmann, a professor and lead author of the study. "What's not clear is whether it can go from a hundred or a few hundred to thousands and thousands."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Technology
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LONDON Rapha, the upmarket British bikewear brand credited with bringing fashionable as well as functional garments to the booming cycling market, is set to get additional pedal power in the form of a major new shareholder. The company, based in London, announced Monday that RZC Investments, an investment vehicle set up by Steuart and Tom Walton, two scions of the billionaire Walmart dynasty, would take a majority stake in the business, which was founded by its chief executive, Simon Mottram, in 2004. Mr. Mottram, a former branding consultant who advised luxury companies like Burberry and Davidoff, started Rapha after seeing a gap in the market for style conscious cycling clothes amid the sea of sweaty high visibility jackets, flapping shorts and badly fitting outfits in clashing color combinations. Alongside its premium garments, which range in cost from around 70 for a long sleeve T shirt to 200 for gloves and 290 for a jersey, Rapha regularly invites fans to frequent its stores, known as "clubhouses," where they can sip coffee and watch live cyclocross races on state of the art television screens. It also has an international cycling club with more than 9,000 members, each of whom pays an annual 229 fee. As the popularity of road cycling has soared over the last decade the sector is now estimated to be worth 47 billion globally, making it the largest sports category in the world, according to the strategy consultants OC C so, too, have the Rapha fortunes. Sales, which hit 80 million for the 12 months ending January 2017, have grown by more than 30 percent annually for 11 years in a row. Little wonder that a slew of hungry investors, which included LVMH and the Italian private equity group Investindustrial, started to circle when rumors of a possible sale surfaced last year. But ultimately it was the Walton duo, grandsons of Sam, the retailer's founder, who clinched the deal in part because of their avid affection for cycling, according to Mr. Mottram. "It was very important to me that they are both passionate cyclists," said Mr. Mottram, who will continue to hold the position of chief executive. "If they understood the broader vision of the sport, then I felt they would also feel sure that our model is the right way to do things." He declined to disclose what RZC Investments had paid for the majority stake, although some rival investors are said to have valued the privately held group at close to 255 million. "A partnership with Steuart and Tom also appealed because their firm is not a rapid turnaround kind of outfit, focused on short term gain," Mr. Mottram said. "Their fund really does have a long term view, which is important given the size of our ambitions for the brand." Steuart Walton added that he believed "Rapha represents the very best in the world of cycling." "Rapha's strategic vision has set the company on a path to tremendous growth and opportunity," he said. "We are excited to be part of this next chapter by bringing the best sport in the world to more people in more ways and places." A key priority for all would be expansion in the United States, the largest market for cycling in the world, accounting for 26 percent of Rapha sales. Clubhouses in Boulder, Colo., and Chicago opened this year, with another in Los Angeles set to open in the fall, and established communities are already growing in New York, San Francisco and Seattle. Mr. Mottram said he was keen to adopt a "local metro by metro approach," recognizing the pitfalls suffered by other British companies that have looked at the country as a single homogeneous space. "It is all very exciting," he said, "not least as we all hold huge ambition for the sport and just want more and more people to enjoy it, not just in America but all over the world. Cycling ticks all the boxes when it comes to the sort of lifestyle that more and more people are turning to." "Cycling is a sleeping giant," he added. "It helps you see new places, is a social activity and can easily be slotted in as part of daily life. From here on in, it will only get bigger."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Fashion & Style
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"The photo shows a clear border between Trump's bronzer and the stolen cadaver skin that enshrouds the remainder of his head. He looks like Hannibal Lecter when he stole a different person's face to escape from prison." STEPHEN COLBERT "He looks like he just got hit in the face with a pumpkin pie. He looks like he stuck his head in a volcano. He looks like a paint sample card from Home Depot." JIMMY FALLON "As you see from this very real photo of Trump arriving at the White House on Friday with the wind exposing his hairline, he looks just like he went to the beach wearing a dog cone. Trump only cares about the top 1 percent, even when he's applying sunscreen to his face. Looks like he stuck his face in an empty bag of Doritos and sucked up the dust." SETH MEYERS "Now, for some reason Trump was upset about this photo, so he tweeted, 'More fake news. This was photoshopped, obviously, but the wind was strong and the hair looks good? Anything to demean!' You know things are bad when Trump is thanking the wind. His hair and the wind do not have great history together. And what does that mean? And 'hair looks good?' That's the definition of narcissism. Imitating Trump My face looks like I got a chemical peel at Jiffy Lube, but hair looks good.'" STEPHEN COLBERT
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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Welcome to Best of Late Night, a rundown of the previous night's highlights that lets you sleep and lets us get paid to watch comedy. If you're interested in hearing from The Times regularly about great TV, sign up for our Watching newsletter and get recommendations straight to your inbox. President Trump has responded dismissively to congressional Democrats' push to investigate him. He told reporters on Tuesday that the House Judiciary Committee's broad inquiry into his activities was merely an effort to overshadow his achievements. "No administration has accomplished probably you could say this with absolute surety in the first two years anywhere near what we've accomplished," Trump asserted.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Television
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Federal Reserve officials and top economists have been debating which tools will work best to fight future recessions, and a clear consensus is forming: They are going to need lawmakers' help. Interest rates are mired at lower levels than in past economic expansions, part of a long running trend that looks unlikely to reverse anytime soon. That leaves central bankers with less room to goose the economy in a downturn and raises the possibility that they could exhaust their monetary ammunition in a serious slump. Lael Brainard, a Fed governor, on Friday issued one of the clearest calls for proactive congressional action, while speaking at a conference in New York held by the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. "Just as monetary policymakers are actively reviewing their tools and strategies, now is the time to undertake a review of fiscal tools and strategies to ensure they are ready and effective," she said. Fiscal policy is made by lawmakers with taxing and spending authority, and Ms. Brainard said the design of "more automatic, faster acting" responses in that arena would take work. Central bankers are hoping that both Congress and state and local authorities will step up come the next recession, helping to offset any economic pain. Monetary policy remains a powerful tool for fighting downturns and officials plan to use mass bond buying and promises to keep rates low for longer to make up for their lost room to cut rates. But central bankers could run out of the ammunition they need to quickly return the economy to health. The Fed has long used the federal funds rate as its primary tool for guiding the economy, and it is now set in a range of 1.5 percent to 1.75 percent. It was above 5 percent heading into the 2007 09 recession. "Long term interest rates are likely to be much lower going into the next downturn than they were going into any recession in the past 75 years," a set of top economists wrote in a paper prepared for the conference. "This will clearly limit the potential for old and new monetary policy tools to ease financial conditions and bolster economic outcomes." The Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, often tells lawmakers that the Fed will need their help going forward. During testimony last week, he said that "it would be important for fiscal policy to help support the economy if it weakens." But Ms. Brainard's implication that Congress should be thinking about how to make fiscal tools more automatic goes a bit further. The idea that Congress could pre commit to taxing or spending policies that would kick in as soon as the economy started to slow has increasingly been a centerpiece of Fed and academic economic research. One such proposal is the so called Sahm Rule. Created by Claudia Sahm, a former Fed economist, it would use a pronounced jump in the unemployment rate to trigger a fiscal response such as stimulus payments to households. Ms. Brainard's colleague Mary C. Daly, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, has also made a case for government spending policies that kick in immediately. Central bankers "face greater uncertainty about the impact of our tools and their ability to achieve our goals," she said in a speech this month. "Fiscal policy will need to play a larger role in smoothing through economic shocks," and "expanding the array of automatic stabilizers that form part of the social safety net can help mitigate the depth and duration of economic downturns." Ms. Brainard did not endorse any specific set of policies, but pointed out that while "monetary policy is powerful but blunt," fiscal policy can be used to tackle precise problems important when a big share of households "have low liquid savings and are particularly vulnerable to periods of unemployment or underemployment." Covid's impact on the supply chain continues. The pandemic has disrupted nearly every aspect of the global supply chain and made all kinds of products harder to find. In turn, scarcity has caused the prices of many things to go higher as inflation remains stubbornly high. Almost anything manufactured is in short supply. That includes everything from toilet paper to new cars. The disruptions go back to the beginning of the pandemic, when factories in Asia and Europe were forced to shut down and shipping companies cut their schedules. First, demand for home goods spiked. Money that Americans once spent on experiences were redirected to things for their homes. The surge clogged the system for transporting goods to the factories that needed them and finished products piled up because of a shortage of shipping containers. Now, ports are struggling to keep up. In North America and Europe, where containers are arriving, the heavy influx of ships is overwhelming ports. With warehouses full, containers are piling up. The chaos in global shipping is likely to persist as a result of the massive traffic jam. No one really knows when the crisis will end. Shortages and delays are likely to affect this year's Christmas and holiday shopping season, but what happens after that is unclear. Jerome Powell, the Federal Reserve chair, said he expects supply chain problems to persist "likely well into next year." While some congressional committees have looked into supplementing or strengthening existing spending programs that work to counter recessions like unemployment insurance, which pays out more when times are tough they have not been beefed up since the Great Recession. Some economists worry that a divided Congress would be slow to coalesce around a big spending package, like the crisis era American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, to help right the economy in a future downturn. The onus does not fall entirely on lawmakers. As Ms. Brainard suggested, the Fed itself is thinking about how to make monetary policy faster acting in times of crisis.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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LOS ANGELES Malik Monk is learning. It might be his favorite word. He says he is learning from Tony Parker and Kemba Walker. He says he is learning to defend "grown men" who know the tricks of the trade. He says he is learning to vary his pace when he comes off the bench for the Charlotte Hornets, because he does not need to dial it up to flambe all the time. "You have to know when to speed up and when to slow down," said Monk, a 6 foot 3 shooting guard, "and I'm still learning." Monk, 20, did not anticipate that his first two seasons in the N.B.A. would be so challenging, not after he was the Southeastern Conference player of the year in his only season at Kentucky and the 11th overall pick in the 2017 draft. He is no less confident in his abilities than he once was, but he is definitely less naive. "I thought it would be way smoother," he said in an interview on Tuesday before the Hornets played the Clippers at Staples Center. "I thought I was going to play right away when I first got here. I thought I was going to play right away this year, too. But it's been a lot of ups and downs." His growing pains are not unique to second year players. But there may be more organizational urgency with Monk given the Hornets' uncertain future. Walker, their All Star point guard and the face of the franchise, is due for unrestricted free agency this summer, and he needs more talent around him for the Hornets to be a contender. Perhaps Monk will be a part of that equation, but the clock is ticking and it still requires some imagination to envision the player he could become. Monk, though, offers flashes, and some of them came against the Clippers: the 36 seconds of game action he required to take and make his first 3 pointer, his running floater on the following possession, even his pyrotechnic offense in garbage time. He finished with 24 points in 21 minutes in a 128 109 loss. "He's an explosive scorer," said James Borrego, the team's first year coach. As the Hornets (19 21) grapple for a playoff spot, Monk is averaging 10.8 points in 18.9 minutes a game while shooting 39.7 percent from the field. While he needs to become a more proficient shooter, he has more pronounced limitations on defense, where he is on the small side for a shooting guard and lacks the savvy of many of the (bigger, more experienced) players he is trying to defend. "Man, if you're a second late, it's over with," Monk said. "You can recover in college. In college, you can hide in a zone, too. But here, you get exposed. Everybody's so good." At Kentucky, Monk teamed up in the backcourt with De'Aaron Fox, another immensely talented freshman who declared for the 2017 draft. Fox went fifth to the Sacramento Kings, and he has excelled this season, averaging 18 points and 7.3 assists a game while shooting 47.4 percent from the field. He starts. He plays loads of minutes. And he gets a lot of attention. Monk and Fox are on a group chat with a couple of other former teammates at Kentucky, Monk said, and they message one another all the time. Monk roots for Fox "I tell him, 'Keep killing, Fox,' " Monk said but he cannot help noting the opportunity that Fox has gotten, and how much he has made of it. "If you get down on yourself, that's going to mess everything up," Monk said. "So I just try to stay positive. You have to be patient, man. Patience." Borrego benched Monk for two games last month the coach was frustrated with the team's defense but said on Tuesday that he was pleased with Monk's progress. "He's just got to be more consistent on the defensive end," Borrego said, "and we're seeing that growth." Monk's minutes, though, have been sporadic much as they were last season under Steve Clifford, who now coaches the Orlando Magic and he said he was learning to adapt. Everyone wants to start, he said, but maybe he was meant to come off the bench and develop into an elite scorer like Lou Williams or Jamal Crawford, two players who have turned their reserve roles into art forms. Or maybe, Monk said, his career will take a different turn. "There are always teams watching," Monk said. "So, I mean, if this is not your spot, it might be somewhere else, and there's always somebody watching and it's probably somebody that likes you. So you've got to go out there and do stuff for you and for your team. If you do both of those things together, you'll be all right." Asked if he was happy in Charlotte, Monk said: "I'm playing basketball. So, yeah, I'm learning, and I'm watching the best every night. If you're not happy doing this, I don't know why you came to the N.B.A. So me playing or not, I'm still going to learn, I'm still going to smile, and I'm still going to be who I am. So I'm glad I'm in this situation."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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Lester M. Crystal, left, with Robert MacNeil, co host of "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour," in an undated photo. Mr. Crystal was executive producer of "NewsHour" for 22 years. Lester M. Crystal, who after 20 years at NBC News, including two as its president, moved to "The MacNeil/Lehrer Report" on PBS and immediately set about transforming it from a half hour program into "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour," a broadcast widely acclaimed for its breadth and depth, died on Wednesday in Manhattan. He was 85. His son Bradley said the cause was brain cancer. Mr. Crystal, a longtime resident of Scarsdale, N.Y., served as executive producer of "NewsHour" for 22 years, helping to establish the program as a distinctive voice in broadcast journalism. Anchored by Robert MacNeil and Jim Lehrer (who died in January at 85), "NewsHour" took an in depth approach to the news that the half hour news programs of commercial television largely could not. Mr. Crystal remained executive producer until 2005, when he became president of MacNeil/Lehrer Productions. He retired in 2010. Judy Woodruff, who came over from NBC to join "NewsHour" as a correspondent when the program started and is now anchor of its successor show, "PBS NewsHour," said Mr. Crystal had shaped the newscast in important ways. "He guided us to get out and talk to the American people," she said by email, "to bring their hopes, dreams and views to every newscast, to bring policy and political debates to life by talking to real people where they live and work." Lester Martin Crystal was born on Sept. 13, 1934, in Duluth, Minn. His father, Isadore, owned a food distribution business, and his mother, Sara (Davis) Crystal, was a homemaker. After graduating from Duluth East High School in 1952, Mr. Crystal enrolled at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. He earned a bachelor's degree there in 1956 and a master's degree in 1957. He started his career that same year as a news writer for KDAL radio and television in Duluth. He joined NBC in 1963, producing the nightly news program of its Chicago affiliate as well as the documentary series "Dateline Chicago." In 1965 he became regional manager in Chicago for "The Huntley Brinkley Report," the network's nightly news program, and in 1967 he moved east to become its news editor in New York. He advanced to associate producer and then, in 1968, to producer. Mr. Crystal was among the journalists who traveled to China when President Richard M. Nixon made his historic trip there in 1972. He became executive producer of "NBC Nightly News" and rose to executive vice president of the network's news division before being named NBC News president in October 1977. Perhaps the most wrenching moment in his two years as president was the murder of two NBC journalists, Don Harris, a correspondent, and Bob Brown, a cameraman, as they tried to leave after an investigative trip to the Jonestown cult in Guyana in November 1978. The mass suicide at the cult followed hours later. "The most meaningful memorial we can give to them," Mr. Crystal said of the two newsmen, "is to report the news with the determination and dedication they demonstrated in their careers." Mr. Crystal remained president until 1979, when, after being unable to dent the popularity of the "CBS Evening News," which had Walter Cronkite in the anchor chair, he was replaced by William J. Small and given the job of senior executive producer of politics and special news programs. (Mr. Small died in May at 93.) Once he moved to PBS, Mr. Crystal's "NewsHour" faced a test almost immediately: Mr. Lehrer had a heart attack three months after the show was launched, leaving Mr. MacNeil (known as Robin) in need of another partner for several months. "The new kid on the block, I suddenly became the Washington based co anchor along with Robin MacNeil in New York," Ms. Woodruff recalled. "Even with Robin's enormous talent, I don't think there was any way we could have kept the program going in Jim's absence without Les Crystal's direction." In 1984, as the hourlong version of "MacNeil/Lehrer" reached its one year anniversary, Mr. Crystal viewed the experiment as showing signs of success. "Many people tune in to us for the second half hour," he said in a 1984 interview with The Christian Science Monitor, acknowledging that those viewers were using his broadcast to supplement the half hour network news. "But those who watch us from the start have begun to understand that they will be getting all the major news. The most significant difference is that we take major stories and spend as much time on them as is called for sometimes as much as 20 minutes." In 1994, when the O.J. Simpson murder investigation consumed the commercial networks' newscasts for weeks on end, "NewsHour" didn't take the bait, sticking with its issues oriented segments and generally mentioning the Simpson case only briefly. "This is a program that deals with crime as a problem, not as a staple," Mr. Crystal told Howard Rosenberg, television critic for The Los Angeles Times. Mr. Rosenberg had some fun with the noncoverage. "Memo to Judge Lance Ito, who has ordered potential Simpson jurors to avoid all media," he wrote. "'NewsHour' is safe, as close to being Simpson free as TV news gets." Mr. Crystal married Toby Lee Wilson in 1958. In addition to his son Bradley, he is survived by his wife; two other children, Alan and Elizabeth Crystal; three grandchildren; and a sister, Elaine Hallfin. Another sister, Dinah Kossoff, died before him. "Les's voice was the one you wanted to break into your ear during a news making interview or on an election night," she said, "providing a crucial fact or giving you the breaking news you needed to get on the air right away: authoritative, calm and brief. He was a stickler for facts; you were OK if Les said it."
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Media
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The N.F.L. and the N.F.L. Players Association have finalized the last key financial issues related to this season, paving the way for an on time start to the regular season on Sept. 10. In the deal reached late Friday after a vote by the union's 32 team representatives, the salary cap or the maximum amount teams can spend on their rosters will remain at just under 200 million per team this season. But the cap will have a minimum of 175 million next season. Any shortfalls in revenue next year will be made up by reducing the salary cap through the 2023 season. The owners also agreed to a player proposal to scrap all preseason games to reduce the risk of infection. The sides had already agreed on several measures to reduce the risk of infection from the coronavirus as teams return to camps, meetings and practices, including outlining who can be inside team facilities and daily player testing for the virus. But the owners and the players' union had remained deadlocked on thornier questions, even as players began reporting to team facilities this week, leading some star players to start a public relations offensive on social media pushing for their concerns. Those included how much players will be paid if the season is shortened or canceled, and how to reduce the players' share of the loss of revenue if teams do not allow fans at games this season. 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. All players have to report to training camp by July 28. But with each team required to test players and staff members at least twice before allowing them to enter their facilities to take physicals, it is more likely that practices will begin in early August. Though all sides hope to open the regular season on Sept. 10, it remains unclear whether teams will allow any fans to attend. Earlier this week, the league said that fans would be required to wear masks at games and both the Giants and Jets became the first N.F.L. franchises to say that they would play regular season games at MetLife Stadium without spectators, heeding New Jersey's prohibitions on mass gatherings. Some teams like the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots have announced plans to limit their stadium's capacity to allow for fans. "The season will undoubtedly present new and additional challenges, but we are committed to playing a safe and complete 2020 season, culminating with the Super Bowl," Commissioner Roger Goodell said in a statement. The league earns about one quarter of its 15 billion in annual revenue from local sources, including ticket sales, parking, food and beverage sales, luxury boxes and sponsorships. The loss of income from these fan less games could cost the owners and players several billion dollars, though the precise amount will not be determined until the end of the season. The players and the league agreed on the wide ranging parameters, having had the benefit of observing other professional leagues negotiate returns with their unions. Although the N.F.L. and union locked horns the talks were considered to be less acrimonious than those between Major League Baseball and its players' union. While the owners are taking some steps, like selling additional sponsorships, to reduce their revenue losses, the players and owners had to decide how to offset the players' share of the losses. The owners wanted to put 35 percent of player salaries this season in escrow, determine what the losses were at the end of the year and return any difference. The players preferred to spread out the losses over as many as 10 years by reducing the salary cap. They ultimately agreed to recoup the losses over three seasons. In the new collective bargaining agreement signed in March, the players are owed 48 percent of league revenue, which means they are on the hook for that percentage of any losses. That labor deal does not include a clause that would allow the owners to forgo paying the players following certain extraordinary events, like natural disasters or terror attacks. Still, the start of training camp was never in doubt because the owners have the right to open camps at their discretion, and players who do not report could face penalties. But the union had pushed for a host of steps and the negotiations over player health and safety largely concluded just before the first rookies had to report to training camp on July 20. The league also agreed to test the players every day for the first two weeks they are in camp and if the rate of positive tests is below 5 percent, tests will be provided every other day.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Sports
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BENEATH THE TAMARIND TREE A Story of Courage, Family, and the Lost Schoolgirls of Boko Haram By Isha Sesay Isha Sesay sees herself in the girls she writes about. She is a Cambridge University educated, Peabody Award winning former anchor for CNN. They the subjects of her book, "Beneath the Tamarind Tree" are the mostly poor girls from, in her words, "homes without distinction," kidnapped by the jihadist group Boko Haram five years ago from their boarding school in the parched, impoverished northern Nigerian town of Chibok. Sesay is not from Chibok. But she is, as she says, one generation and one lucky lottery ticket of life removed from them. Her mother, Kadi Sesay, was born to poor, uneducated parents in a small city in Sierra Leone, not unlike Chibok. Kadi insisted on going to school. She excelled. She became a college professor, then a government minister and ultimately the shaper of Sesay's destiny. "If not for fate, twinned with my mother's childhood determination, I could just as easily have started off in a place not much different from Chibok," she writes. It is important that Sesay gets to tell this story. If she is not of Chibok, she is not entirely of CNN headquarters either. It is something of a gut punch when she learns, two years into the Chibok girls' ordeal, that her bosses do not remain exercised by their story. The news cycle moves on. The United States presidential election seizes the media's attention. The hashtag that pricked our collective conscience BringBackOurGirls all but melts away. Some Nigerians aren't much interested either. They wonder aloud if the kidnapping is a "hoax," designed to portray their country in a bad light.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Books
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Despite concerns about looming tax increases and government spending cuts, American employers added 155,000 jobs in December. Employees also enjoyed slightly faster wage growth and worked longer hours, which could bode well for future hiring. The job growth, almost exactly equal to the average monthly growth in the last two years, was enough to keep the unemployment rate steady at 7.8 percent, the Labor Department reported on Friday. But it was not enough to reduce the backlog of 12.2 million jobless workers, underscoring the challenge facing Washington politicians as they continue to wrestle over how to address the budget deficit. "Job creation might firm a little bit, but it's still looking nothing like the typical recovery year we've had in deep recessions in the past," said John Ryding, chief economist at RDQ Economics. "There's nothing in the deal to do that," he said, referring to Congress's Jan. 1 compromise on taxes, "and nothing in this latest jobs report to suggest that. We're a long way short of the 300,000 job growth that we need." If anything, the most visible debt related options that policy makers are discussing could slow down economic and job growth, which, at its existing pace, would take seven years to reduce the unemployment rate to its prerecession level. The 110 billion in across the board federal spending cuts scheduled for March 1, for example, might provoke layoffs by local governments, military contractors and other companies that depend on federal funds. A showdown over the debt ceiling expected in late February could also damage business confidence, as it did the last time Congress nearly allowed a default on the nation's debts in August 2011. "We may be seeing the calm before the storm right now," said Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomic Advisors, noting that a recent survey from the National Federation of Independent Business found that alarmingly few small companies planned to hire in the coming months. "Small businesses are wringing their hands in horror at what's going on in Washington." A best case for the economy, many analysts say, would involve a swift and civil Congressional agreement that raised the debt ceiling immediately. It would also address the country's long term debt challenges, like Medicare costs, without sudden or draconian fiscal tightening this year. Given the uncertainty over what Congress will do, estimates of the unemployment rate's path this year vary wildly. The more optimistic forecasts for the end of 2013 predict that unemployment will fall to just above 7 percent, which would be considerably below its most recent peak of 10 percent in October 2009, but still higher than its prerecession level of 5 percent. The job gains in December were driven by hiring in health care, food services, construction and manufacturing. The last two industries were probably helped by rebuilding after Hurricane Sandy. 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. Aside from the wild card of what happens in Washington, some encouraging trends in the economy including the housing recovery, looser credit for small businesses, a rebound in China and pent up demand for new automobiles suggest that businesses have good reason to speed up hiring. Congress's last minute deal to raise taxes this week will offset some of these sources of growth, since higher taxes trim how much money consumers have available each month. President Obama's proposals to spend more money on infrastructure projects and other measures intended to spur hiring are fiercely opposed by Republican deficit hawks. The fiscal compromise reached this week did include one modest form of stimulus, though: a one year renewal of the federal government's emergency unemployment benefits program. That program allows workers to continue receiving benefits for up to 73 weeks, depending on the unemployment rate in the state where they live, and stimulates economic activity because unemployment benefits are spent almost immediately. The extension was a tremendous relief to the two million workers who would otherwise have lost their benefits this week. Both she and her husband, Stephen, were laid off within the last 14 months from jobs they had held for more than a decade: she from a quality assurance manager position at an environmental testing lab, and he as foreman and senior master technician at an auto dealership. They are each receiving 548 a week in federal jobless benefits, or about a quarter of their pay at their most recent jobs. "It has just been such a traumatic time," Ms. Shadis said. "You wake up in the morning with shoulders tense and head aching because you didn't sleep the night before from worrying." More than six million workers have exhausted their unemployment benefits since the recession began in December 2007, according to the National Employment Law Project, a labor advocacy group. Millions of workers are sitting on the sidelines and so are not counted in the tally of unemployed. Some are merely waiting for the job market to improve, and others are trying to invest in new skills to appeal to employers who are already hiring. "I have a few prospects who say they want me to work for them when I graduate," said Jordan Douglas, a 24 year old single mother in Pampa, Tex., who is enrolled in a special program that allows her to receive jobless benefits while attending school full time to become a registered nurse. She receives 792 in benefits every two weeks, a little less than half of what she earned in an administrative position at the nursing home that laid her off last year. Ms. Douglas calculates that her federal jobless benefits will run out the very last week of nursing school. "This had to have been a sign from God that I had to do this, since it all worked out so well," she said.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Economy
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Two decades ago, Dobbs Ferry, then a working class village in southern Westchester along the Hudson River, was considered by many the poor stepsister of its immediate neighbors artsy Hastings on Hudson on its southern border and upscale Irvington to the north. While Hastings and Irvington attracted well heeled buyers from Manhattan and the tonier sections of Brooklyn, Dobbs Ferry, about 20 miles north of New York City, was often overlooked. Its housing stock was limited, and its school system lower performing than those of its neighbors. The village's image has since changed. The turning point came in 1998, when the Dobbs Ferry Union Free School District became the first in Westchester to join the International Baccalaureate organization, based in Geneva prompting home buyers to take a fresh look at the virtues of the 2.4 square mile village of 11,000 residents. The Baccalaureate group offers junior and senior high school students a two year, preuniversity course of study. "The change in the high school program was what drove the engine," said Linda Jo Platt, who moved from Manhattan to Dobbs Ferry with her husband, Bruce Platt, in the 1970s. "A lot has happened for the better in Dobbs Ferry," said Ms. Platt, the director of the Community Nursery School, which is owned by South Presbyterian Church in the village. Mr. Platt is a systems analyst for a data firm in Manhattan. At first the couple rented an apartment in Dobbs Ferry to see if the little village would be a good fit for them. Then, in 1978, convinced that it was indeed the perfect place to raise their son and daughter, they bought a three bedroom one bath ranch on a dead end street for 64,000. Their children are grown now, the house has been renovated and the mortgage is paid off. The couple has no plans to move elsewhere, Ms. Platt said. About the same time that the high school introduced the enriched curriculum, new residential construction began in the village, attracting a fresh group of buyers. In the late 1970s, when the Platts bought their home, Ms. Platt said, there was not only a dearth of inventory but also high interest rates for mortgages of about 8.5 percent. One of the first major construction projects of new residential units was the Landing, which tapped into the pent up demand for housing by offering 103 luxury townhouses next to the river. In ensuing years, as interest rates dropped, construction of homes and rental units continued. In the last few years, Gia Young, a sales agent for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage, said she has been seeing more buyers from Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg and Fort Greene in Brooklyn, attracted by Dobbs Ferry's diversity. The area bordering the river is a hive of activity, what Hartley S. Connett, the mayor, considers his "pride and joy." The village is in the second phase of upgrading the waterfront, a 7 million project that began around a year ago. The first phase involved stabilizing the shoreline. The current phase includes building a new fishing pier, boat dock and a playground, installing benches and lights and connecting new walkways to the county's trailway system. "We want to bring the river more into the life of the village," said Mr. Connett, who said he hoped the project would be completed within a year. Restaurants and shops are found along Cedar and Main Streets, which form a "V" shape in the section of the village west of Broadway, closer to the river. Many side streets in that area are lined with tidy, wood frame homes on small lots. East of Broadway, the neighborhoods consist of larger Victorians, colonials and occasionally a midcentury modern. The median sale price for a single family home in Dobbs Ferry for the 12 month period ending June 26 was 620,500, up from 601,000 for the same period five years earlier. The median sale price for a co op for the year ending June 26 was 190,000, versus 242,000 for the equivalent 12 month period five years earlier. The median condominium price was 440,000 for the year ending June 26, compared with 510,000 for the same period five years earlier, multiple listing figures show. Residents can swim and play ball at the eight acre Gould Park, where there is also a children's playground. The three acre Memorial Park also has playing fields and a children's playground. Sandra Rosas and her husband, Jonathan Doherty, and their sons a 9 year old and twins, 6 find there is more than enough to entertain them in the village. Ms. Rosas, a part time Spanish teacher, and Mr. Doherty, an accountant in Manhattan, bought a four bedroom two and a half bath colonial seven years ago for about 1 million. The three boys participate in town soccer leagues geared to their ages. The three children also attend a summer camp at the private Masters School. The village played a key role in the Revolutionary War, with the Continental Army troops, under the leadership of General George Washington, encamped in the village and in neighboring areas during the summer of 1781. From this encampment, Washington began the 400 mile march to Virginia, which led to a "turnaround in the military fortunes of the United States at the Battle of Yorktown," according to Dr. Richard Borkow, the village historian.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Real Estate
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Too many children are risking injuries, even lifelong health problems, because they practice too intensively in a single sport, and parents should set limits on their participation, according to a leading organization of athletic trainers. New recommendations issued by the National Athletic Trainers' Association urge parents to ensure that children and adolescents postpone specializing in one sport for as long as possible, that they take at least two days off each week for rest and that they not play a single sport for more than eight months a year. A proposed rule of thumb: A child's age equals the number of hours he or she should spend in sports training each week. The recommendations, more stringent than those issued by some physician groups, may pose a challenge to parents and youngsters who see intense year round athletic training as the path to coveted college scholarships and professional stardom. The advice arrives amid growing concern about a rise in athletic injuries among children engaging in tough training exercises. These regimens also can exact a psychological toll, increasing the risk that children and adolescents will burn out and quit sports altogether, the trainers' group said. 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. Like the Science Times page on Facebook. Sign up for the Science Times newsletter. "Single sports specialization is bordering on an epidemic in terms of the risks it can pose, for physical injuries as well as the potential for negative psychological effects," said Tory Lindley, president of N.A.T.A. "There is a myth that it takes a single sport specialization to succeed," Mr. Lindley added. "In fact, we're learning from research and anecdotal evidence that there is actually an opportunity for athleticism to improve if you expose the body to different sports and different movements." The guidelines are not intended to discourage physical activity: Many children are overweight, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends children aged 6 to 17 get at least one hour of moderate to vigorous physical activity every day. But as children's participation in organized sports has risen in recent years, so have injuries. Up to half are believed to result from overuse of joints and muscles. Bone and muscles are still growing in children, making them more susceptible. So called growth plates, where bone is being built, are especially vulnerable to injuries that may disrupt growth and may lead to chronic health problems. The recommendations are an "easy to follow list" of steps that can reduce injuries in young athletes, said Dr. R. Jay Lee, an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery at Johns Hopkins Medical in Baltimore, who specializes in pediatrics sports medicine. "The more we get the full complement of health care providers onto the same page, the more parents, coaches and the athletes themselves will buy into this new approach of mandating rest as a key component to a successful athletic career," he said. The new recommendations are more detailed and rigorous than those issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics , which in 2012 suggested that children and adolescents take a day off each week to rest and take a month away from sports each year. The advice also is more limiting than that offered by the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons , which includes restrictions on the number of teams youngsters join each season, and a recommendation against playing a single sport year round. The six N.A.T.A. recommendations are endorsed by five societies of athletic trainers, including professional football, hockey, soccer, basketball and baseball trainers, as well as the group's Intercollegiate Council for Sports Medicine. They include: Delay specializing in a single sport for as long as possible. To support general fitness and reduce injuries, "adolescent and young athletes should strive to participate, or sample, a variety of sports," N.A.T.A. said. One team at a time. Youngsters should participate in only one organized sport per season. Youngsters should not play a single sport more than eight months per year. Breaks in training give overstressed tissues time to recover, evidence suggests.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Health
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A scene from the "Gustav Klimt: Gold and Color" show at "Bassins de Lumieres" in Bordeaux, France, in June. BORDEAUX, France On the walls inside of a former World War II submarine base, a huge Gustav Klimt tree expands its branches and a gold Paul Klee fish floats by. The bright, changing colors of these projections are reflected by four saltwater pools. Visitors walk along gangways, watching the floor to ceiling digital animations based on famous works by Klimt, Klee and Egon Schiele. The show, called "Bassins de Lumieres," or "Basins of Light," opened on June 10 after a delay caused by France's coronavirus lockdown. It is the fourth immersive art space created by Culturespaces, a Paris based company that manages cultural sites and produces digital exhibitions. Its second, "L'Atelier des Lumieres," has been a huge hit in Paris, drawing 1.2 million visitors in 2018 and nearly 1.4 million the next year. The formula is straightforward: Culturespaces finds a structure with a notable history, like a former foundry or a bunker; renovates it; and adds offices, control rooms and a reception area. Then the venue opens with a flashy exhibition of digitized works by famous artists, projected onto the walls and animated to a soundtrack. A team of producers has so far created 15 digital exhibitions for Culturespaces, using works by artists including Marc Chagall, Yves Klein, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh. Sylvie Pflieger, an associate professor at the University of Paris who studies the cultural economy, said in an email that Culturespaces was "the true pioneer of 'immersive art,' which transports the individual to a dreamlike location." With its "Lumieres" experiences, Culturespaces is pushing the boundaries between entertainment and art, and between real life and virtual reality. Gone are the frames and the meditative stillness viewers are used to in museums, replaced by huge images that transform to the music of artists as varied as Beethoven and Janis Joplin. Culturespaces is used to operating outside the norm: For many years, the company's business has been the management of cultural and heritage sites in France for profit, an unusual setup in a country where the arts rely on significant state funding. Digital shows are only one part of what Culturespaces does. Founded in 1990 by Bruno Monnier, who worked at France's culture ministry before that, Culturespaces also manages arts and heritage sites across France, such as the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild in the South of France and the amphitheater in the city of Nimes. Often, the owners of these monuments, chateaus or museums are towns and regions and, by extension, the taxpayers who live there. A private takeover of a public institution is unusual in France. On average, cities spend 8 percent of their budget on culture, said Dr. Pflieger, the University of Paris professor. But arts funding on the national and regional levels has stagnated since the early 2000s, she added. "Cities are having to handle more and more burdens and are therefore reducing their cultural budgets," Dr. Pflieger said. "Events" include exhibitions, and for some of the venues Culturespaces runs, such as the Maillol Museum and the Musee Jacquemart Andre in Paris, those are crucial. The Musee Jacquemart Andre is currently showing paintings by J.M.W. Turner on loan from the Tate museums in Britain. Mr. Monnier said that drawing visitors with exhibitions had become harder over the years as heavy hitters like the Louvre in Paris have spent a great deal to produce blockbuster shows: The museum's once in a lifetime Leonardo show, which ran from November through February, had 1.1 million visitors. Competition has also come from museums funded by the luxury goods billionaires Bernard Arnault, whose Fondation Louis Vuitton opened in 2014, and Francois Pinault, who is set to open a showcase for his art collection next year. "These large exhibitions are expensive," Dr. Pflieger said. "It is necessary to obtain loans from museums, particularly foreign ones; ensure the transport of works in good condition, which implies gigantic insurance costs, and so on. It is clear that small museums cannot do this." When "L'Atelier des Lumieres" opened in Paris, it brought in a broader demographic than Culturespaces' other venues, Mr. Monnier said: "People who never go to museums, younger generations, guys and girls who are 16 year olds walking around hand in hand, families, grandparents, young parents." So called immersive experiences are not necessarily new. Constance DeVereaux, the director of arts leadership and cultural management at University of Connecticut, said they were "something you find at Disneyland," adding, "I was going to those in the 1960s." Dr. DeVereaux said that though there was nothing wrong with turning art into entertainment, the format of "Lumieres" might prevent viewers from thinking too deeply about what they saw. "There's so much going on when you observe a work of art that could be dimmed by the giant digital experience," Dr. DeVereaux said. Bruno Monnier worked at France's culture ministry before founding Culturespaces as a commercial venture. But Mr. Monnier thinks the scale of the "Lumieres" shows is exactly why they leave an impression. "You are completely inside. It's completely emotional. It's not just paintings on the wall," he said. Over the years, some in the art world have expressed fear of creeping privatization in countries where funding the arts has long been the responsibility of the government, but Christiane Hellmanzik, a professor of economics at the Technical University of Dortmund, said that applying a more business oriented mind set to art was smart. "From a pure economic perspective, if you bundle several ventures, that makes a lot of sense," Dr. Hellmanzik said, referring to Culturespaces' strategy of diversifying streams of income and creating a digital experience that can be replicated around the world, as well as a museum management technique that can be applied at different venues.
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N24News: A New Dataset for Multimodal News Classification
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Art & Design
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