PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2017

Alat berat pontonpile jatuh, akses ke Sunter Boulevard dialihkan

Sebuah truk kontainer yang bernomor polisi B 9147 Q yang telah membawa alat berat jenis pontonpile tergelincir di Jalan Mitra Sunter Boulevard, Sunteragung, Tanjung Priok, Jakarta Utara, Jumat (14/3).

Akibatnya, sejak pukul 06.00 pagi WIB, akses keluar tol sunter dan Jalan Boulevar Barat Kelapa Gading menuju Sunter dialihkan.

Peristiwa tersebut telah terjadi sekitar pukul 04.00 WIB. Namun untuk dapat menghindari stagnasi lalu lintas, Kepolisian telah melakukan pengalihan sejak pukul 06.00 WIB.

Sopir truk, Badri yang berusia (33) tahun , telah mengatakan awalnya tengah mengemudikan truk dari arah Ciputat menuju proyek di Bilangan Kelapa Gading. Namun saat baru turun dari pintu keluar Tol Layang Wiyoto Wiyono, Sunter dan berbelok ke arah Jalan Mitra Sunter Boulevard, alat berat yang dibawa goyang lalu terjatuh ke jalanan.

"Saya sempat stabilkan dan truk sudah lurus jalannya. Tapi karena ada tanah di bak jadi licin dan pontonpile tergelincir," ujarnya, Jumat (14/3).

Dia kesulitan mengevakuasi sendiri. Pengangkatan menggunakan dongkrak hidrolik pun gagal. Bahkan karena tidak mampu menahan beban, dongkrak patah. Hingga pukul 10.00 WIB, pemindahan alat berat masih terus diupayakan.

Kanit Patroli Jalan Raya (PJR) Jaya Dua, Satlantas Polda Metro Jaya, AKP Sigit P, telah mengatakan pengalihan terpaksa dilakukan. Hal itu agar tidak menyebabkan stagnasi lalu lintas yang mengarah ke lokasi.

"Dari pada macet total dan tidak bergerak. Akhirnya sejak pukul 06.00 WIB pagi tadi kita lakukan pengalihan," ujarnya.

PENCURI MOTOR SPESIALIS DI HALAMAN MESJID DIBEKUK

saco-indonesia.com, Kawanan pencuri motor yang sering beraksi di halaman mesjid di kota Bandung telah diringkus oleh jajaran Polsek Andir, Senin subuh telah dibekuk polisi. Selain telah mengamankan G,31, US,25, dan P,18, polisi telah menyita 17 sepeda motor yang siap diobral ke wilayah Jabar bagian Selatan.

“Dari 33 motor yang telah berhasil dipetik, hampir 90 persen lokasi kejadianya di halaman mesjid di kota Bandung,“ kata Kapplrestabes Bandung Kombes Pol Mashudi.

Didampingi oleh Kapolsek Kompol Janter Nainggolan, dia juga menjelaskan, terungkapnya kawanan ini berawal dari razia kendaraan bermotor yang digelar Polsek Andir di Jalan Rajawali Kota Bandung.

Tersangka G, yang telah membonceng US, langsung tancap gas saat diberhentikan petugas. Beberapa polisi mengejar, dan kedua tersangka yang telah mengendari motor D 2976 ZAR berhasil ditangkap.

Dalam pemeriksaan, keduanya tidak bisa menunjukan surat kendaraan. Polisi yang telah memeriksa, akhirya menduga kuat kedua pria itu juga merupakan pemetik motor. “ Saat tempat kosnya digeledah, 17 motor berhasil diamankan,“ tandasnya.

Tersangka G, kata Mashudi, saat diperiksa juga mengakui 17 motor hasil kejahatan dicuri dari halaman mesjid di kota Bandung. “ Komplotam ini juga sudah memetik 33 motor. Kebanyakan motor disikat di halaman mesjid milik jamaah,“ jelasnya.

Tersangka G juga mengaku terpaksa mencuri motor karena terdesak kebutuhan. Dia dan temanya US juga merupakan buruh tani yang hanya mendapatkan upah Rp 20 ribu. “ Kami mencuri hanya ingin mencari uang yang besar,“ akunya dihadapan penyidik.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

MENDAG JABATAN POLITIS

saco-indonesia.com, Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) belum juga menunjuk menteri perdagangan pengganti Gita Wirjawan. Anggota Komisi VI DPR, Hendrawan Supratikno mengatakan, SBY perlu pertimbangan matang untuk dapat menunjuk pangganti Gita.

"Menteri perdagangan jabatan politis. Karena, telah melibatkan berbagai perjanjian modern, diplomasi internasional, dan perdagangan internasional," kata Hendrawan di Gedung DPR, Jakarta, Selasa (11/2/2014).

Dia juga telah menyinggung mekanisme penunjukan menteri perdagangan yang berlaku selama ini. Menurutnya, siapa pun presidennya posisi menteri perdagangan harus ditempati oleh orang yang telah mendapat persetujuan dari Amerika Serikat.

"Dulu kan siapa pun presidennya, menteri perdagangan harus persetujuan Washington. Itu dulu, enggak tahu kalau sekarang," sambung politikus PDI Perjuangan ini.

Hendrawan juga telah menyarankan, dengan mempertimbangkan efektifitas kerja, hendaknya pengganti Gita diambil dari internal Kementerian Perdagangan.

"Kalau orang baru nanti harus belajar lagi. Bisa dari BKPM. Kalau rutenya BKPM maka Mahendra Siregar yang kuat. Tapi kalau pertanian, yang dianggap sebagai kunci, Bayu Krisna Mukti adalah figur yang cocok. Tapi tentu ini semuanya hak prerogatif presiden," paparnya.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

SBY jadi jurkam, mampukah selamatkan muka Demokrat

Ketua Umum Partai Demokrat Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono telah dipastikan akan turun tangan dalam Pileg April mendatang. SBY akan turun jadi juru kampanye partai yang telah mengantarkannya menjadi presiden selama dua periode ini. Lalu mampukah SBY mengangkat muka partainya yang kini turun drastis?

Beberapa lembaga survei telah menyatakan bahwa Partai Demokrat saat ini sulit untuk dapat mencapai angka enam persen. Partai berlambang bintang mercy itu telah diprediksi hanya akan hanya memperoleh sekitar 4 sampai persen suara dalam Pileg yang digelar 9 April mendatang.

Kubu Demokrat yakin dengan majunya SBY sebagai juru kampanye hal itu akan mengangkat elektabilitas Demokrat. SBY telah dinilai masih sangat 'sakti' untuk dapat membuat Demokrat naik kembali citranya setelah diterpa isu korupsi dan perpecahan.

Meski telah didaftarkan sebagai juru kampanye, hingga saat ini SBY belum juga mengajukan cuti. Sementara, beberapa menterinya sudah mengajukan cuti kepada SBY.

"Beliau kalau mau kampanye kan belum anu, beliau barangkali belum, sejauh ini belum ada rencana," ungkap Mensesneg Sudi Silalahi di Kantor Presiden, Jakarta.

SBY sendiri yakin jika partainya tidak akan jatuh seperti yang disampaikan beberapa lembaga survei. SBY juga yakin jika Demokrat bisa memperoleh suara hingga 12 persen.

Wakil Ketua Dewan Kehormatan Partai Demokrat, Melani Leimena Suharli juga mengaku, partainya telah melakukan survei internal menjelang Pemilu 9 April 2014, mendatang. Menurutnya, hasil survei internal itu berbeda hasilnya dengan survei-survei dari luar.

"Elektabilitas Demokrat memang turun dari 20 persen (pemilu 2009), berdasarkan survei internal sekarang 10-12 persen. Turun, tapi tidak rendah sekali seperti prediksi beberapa lembaga survei. Pak SBY bilang 12 persen," kata Melani kepada wartawan di Komplek Parlemen, Senayan, Jakarta.

Lalu mampukah SBY untuk mengembalikan kejayaan Demokrat saat didaulat menjadi juru kampanye dalam Pemilu nanti? Benarkah hasil survei internal bahwa Demokrat bisa memperoleh suara hingga 12 persen? Kita tunggu saja di Pemilu Legislatif 9 April mendatang.

ADIK BUPATI NIAS SELATAN DITAHAN

saco-indonesia.com, Kepolisian Daerah Sumatera Utara telah menahan FD, adik Bupati Nias Selatan Idealisman Dachi. FD diduga telah terlibat korupsi pengalihan lahan untuk fasilitas umum menjadi lokasi Balai Benih Induk.

"Mulai Senin pukul 20.00 WIB malam , FD telah resmi kami tahan," kata Direktur Reskrim Khusus Polda Sumut Kombes Pol Dono Indarto di Medan, Senin (23/12). Demikian dilansir dari Antara.

Penahanan tersebut juga merupakan kelanjutan proses penyidikan 1atas kasus dugaan korupsi tersebut setelah penahanan Sekdakab Nias Selatan AL dan Asisten I Pemkab Nias Selatan FS. FD diduga juga ikut serta dalam mengalihkan proyek pengadaan lahan untuk fasilitas umum tersebut menjadi Lahan Balai Benih Induk (BBI).

Dugaan korupsi tersebut telah berawal ketika Pemkab Nias Selatan menganggarkan dana Rp 10 miliar dari APBD tahun 2012 guna pembelian lahan yang diperuntukan perkantoran dan fasilitas umum.

Namun, anggaran untuk pengadaan fasilitas umum tersebut telah dialihkan menjadi pengadaan Balai Benih Induk dan menyerahkan pemegang proyek kepada FD. Akibat kebijakan tersebut, negara diperkirakan telah mengalami kerugian sekitar Rp9,4 miliar.

"Kami juga masih harus mendalami dan mengembangkan penyidikan. Jika ditemukan bukti, siapapun kita lakukan tindakan sama sesuai hukum," katanya.

Direktorat Reskrim Khusus Polda Sumut menahan Sekdakab Nias Selatan AL dan Asisten I Pemkab Nias Selatan FS pada Kamis (19/12).

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

ay 4, 2015 ‘Game of Thrones’ Q&A: Keisha Castle-Hughes on the Tao of the Sand Snakes

“It was really nice to play with other women and not have this underlying tone of being at each other’s throats.”

William Sokolin, Wine Seller Who Broke Famed Bottle, Dies at 85

The bottle Mr. Sokolin famously broke was a 1787 Château Margaux, which was said to have belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Sokolin had been hoping to sell it for $519,750.

Taiwan party leader affirms eventual reunion with China

BEIJING (AP) — The head of Taiwan's Nationalists reaffirmed the party's support for eventual unification with the mainland when he met Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of continuing rapprochement between the former bitter enemies.

Nationalist Party Chairman Eric Chu, a likely presidential candidate next year, also affirmed Taiwan's desire to join the proposed Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank during the meeting in Beijing. China claims Taiwan as its own territory and doesn't want the island to join using a name that might imply it is an independent country.

Chu's comments during his meeting with Xi were carried live on Hong Kong-based broadcaster Phoenix Television.

The Nationalists were driven to Taiwan by Mao Zedong's Communists during the Chinese civil war in 1949, leading to decades of hostility between the sides. Chu, who took over as party leader in January, is the third Nationalist chairman to visit the mainland and the first since 2009.

Relations between the communist-ruled mainland and the self-governing democratic island of Taiwan began to warm in the 1990s, partly out of their common opposition to Taiwan's formal independence from China, a position advocated by the island's Democratic Progressive Party.

Despite increasingly close economic ties, the prospect of political unification has grown increasingly unpopular on Taiwan, especially with younger voters. Opposition to the Nationalists' pro-China policies was seen as a driver behind heavy local electoral defeats for the party last year that led to Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou resigning as party chairman.

Rhapsody, a Lofty Literary Journal, Perused at 39,000 Feet

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Last summer at a writers’ workshop in Oregon, the novelists Anthony Doerr, Karen Russell and Elissa Schappell were chatting over cocktails when they realized they had all published work in the same magazine. It wasn’t one of the usual literary outlets, like Tin House, The Paris Review or The New Yorker. It was Rhapsody, an in-flight magazine for United Airlines.

It seemed like a weird coincidence. Then again, considering Rhapsody’s growing roster of A-list fiction writers, maybe not. Since its first issue hit plane cabins a year and a half ago, Rhapsody has published original works by literary stars like Joyce Carol Oates, Rick Moody, Amy Bloom, Emma Straub and Mr. Doerr, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction two weeks ago.

As airlines try to distinguish their high-end service with luxuries like private sleeping chambers, showers, butler service and meals from five-star chefs, United Airlines is offering a loftier, more cerebral amenity to its first-class and business-class passengers: elegant prose by prominent novelists. There are no airport maps or disheartening lists of in-flight meal and entertainment options in Rhapsody. Instead, the magazine has published ruminative first-person travel accounts, cultural dispatches and probing essays about flight by more than 30 literary fiction writers.

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An airline might seem like an odd literary patron. But as publishers and writers look for new ways to reach readers in a shaky retail climate, many have formed corporate alliances with transit companies, including American Airlines, JetBlue and Amtrak, that provide a captive audience.

Mark Krolick, United Airlines’ managing director of marketing and product development, said the quality of the writing in Rhapsody brings a patina of sophistication to its first-class service, along with other opulent touches like mood lighting, soft music and a branded scent.

“The high-end leisure or business-class traveler has higher expectations, even in the entertainment we provide,” he said.

Some of Rhapsody’s contributing writers say they were lured by the promise of free airfare and luxury accommodations provided by United, as well as exposure to an elite audience of some two million first-class and business-class travelers.

“It’s not your normal Park Slope Community Bookstore types who read Rhapsody,” Mr. Moody, author of the 1994 novel “The Ice Storm,” who wrote an introspective, philosophical piece about traveling to the Aran Islands of Ireland for Rhapsody, said in an email. “I’m not sure I myself am in that Rhapsody demographic, but I would like them to buy my books one day.”

In addition to offering travel perks, the magazine pays well and gives writers freedom, within reason, to choose their subject matter and write with style. Certain genres of flight stories are off limits, naturally: no plane crashes or woeful tales of lost luggage or rude flight attendants, and nothing too risqué.

“We’re not going to have someone write about joining the mile-high club,” said Jordan Heller, the editor in chief of Rhapsody. “Despite those restrictions, we’ve managed to come up with a lot of high-minded literary content.”

Guiding writers toward the right idea occasionally requires some gentle prodding. When Rhapsody’s executive editor asked Ms. Russell to contribute an essay about a memorable flight experience, she first pitched a story about the time she was chaperoning a group of teenagers on a trip to Europe, and their delayed plane sat at the airport in New York for several hours while other passengers got progressively drunker.

“He pointed out that disaster flights are not what people want to read about when they’re in transit, and very diplomatically suggested that maybe people want to read something that casts air travel in a more positive light,” said Ms. Russell, whose novel “Swamplandia!” was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize.

She turned in a nostalgia-tinged essay about her first flight on a trip to Disney World when she was 6. “The Magic Kingdom was an anticlimax,” she wrote. “What ride could compare to that first flight?”

Ms. Oates also wrote about her first flight, in a tiny yellow propeller plane piloted by her father. The novelist Joyce Maynard told of the constant disappointment of never seeing her books in airport bookstores and the thrill of finally spotting a fellow plane passenger reading her novel “Labor Day.” Emily St. John Mandel, who was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction last year, wrote about agonizing over which books to bring on a long flight.

“There’s nobody that’s looked down their noses at us as an in-flight magazine,” said Sean Manning, the magazine’s executive editor. “As big as these people are in the literary world, there’s still this untapped audience for them of luxury travelers.”

United is one of a handful of companies showcasing work by literary writers as a way to elevate their brands and engage customers. Chipotle has printed original work from writers like Toni Morrison, Jeffrey Eugenides and Barbara Kingsolver on its disposable cups and paper bags. The eyeglass company Warby Parker hosts parties for authors and sells books from 14 independent publishers in its stores.

JetBlue offers around 40 e-books from HarperCollins and Penguin Random House on its free wireless network, allowing passengers to read free samples and buy and download books. JetBlue will start offering 11 digital titles from Simon & Schuster soon. Amtrak recently forged an alliance with Penguin Random House to provide free digital samples from 28 popular titles, which passengers can buy and download over Amtrak’s admittedly spotty wireless service.

Amtrak is becoming an incubator for literary talent in its own right. Last year, it started a residency program, offering writers a free long-distance train trip and complimentary food. More than 16,000 writers applied and 24 made the cut.

Like Amtrak, Rhapsody has found that writers are eager to get onboard. On a rainy spring afternoon, Rhapsody’s editorial staff sat around a conference table discussing the June issue, which will feature an essay by the novelist Hannah Pittard and an unpublished short story by the late Elmore Leonard.

“Do you have that photo of Elmore Leonard? Can I see it?” Mr. Heller, the editor in chief, asked Rhapsody’s design director, Christos Hannides. Mr. Hannides slid it across the table and noted that they also had a photograph of cowboy spurs. “It’s very simple; it won’t take away from the literature,” he said.

Rhapsody’s office, an open space with exposed pipes and a vaulted brick ceiling, sits in Dumbo at the epicenter of literary Brooklyn, in the same converted tea warehouse as the literary journal N+1 and the digital publisher Atavist. Two of the magazine’s seven staff members hold graduate degrees in creative writing. Mr. Manning, the executive editor, has published a memoir and edited five literary anthologies.

Mr. Manning said Rhapsody was conceived from the start as a place for literary novelists to write with voice and style, and nobody had been put off that their work would live in plane cabins and airport lounges.

Still, some contributors say they wish the magazine were more widely circulated.

“I would love it if I could read it,” said Ms. Schappell, a Brooklyn-based novelist who wrote a feature story for Rhapsody’s inaugural issue. “But I never fly first class.”

Mike Phillips, Half of Kentucky’s ‘Twin Towers’ of Basketball, Dies at 59

The 6-foot-10 Phillips played alongside the 6-11 Rick Robey on the Wildcats team that won the 1978 N.C.A.A. men’s basketball title.

Advertisement Politics Obama Finds a Bolder Voice on Race Issues

As he reflected on the festering wounds deepened by race and grievance that have been on painful display in America’s cities lately, President Obama on Monday found himself thinking about a young man he had just met named Malachi.

A few minutes before, in a closed-door round-table discussion at Lehman College in the Bronx, Mr. Obama had asked a group of black and Hispanic students from disadvantaged backgrounds what could be done to help them reach their goals. Several talked about counseling and guidance programs.

“Malachi, he just talked about — we should talk about love,” Mr. Obama told a crowd afterward, drifting away from his prepared remarks. “Because Malachi and I shared the fact that our dad wasn’t around and that sometimes we wondered why he wasn’t around and what had happened. But really, that’s what this comes down to is: Do we love these kids?”

Many presidents have governed during times of racial tension, but Mr. Obama is the first to see in the mirror a face that looks like those on the other side of history’s ledger. While his first term was consumed with the economy, war and health care, his second keeps coming back to the societal divide that was not bridged by his election. A president who eschewed focusing on race now seems to have found his voice again as he thinks about how to use his remaining time in office and beyond.

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Obama Speaks of a ‘Sense of Unfairness’

In the aftermath of racially charged unrest in places like Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and New York, Mr. Obama came to the Bronx on Monday for the announcement of a new nonprofit organization that is being spun off from his White House initiative called My Brother’s Keeper. Staked by more than $80 million in commitments from corporations and other donors, the new group, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, will in effect provide the nucleus for Mr. Obama’s post-presidency, which will begin in January 2017.

“This will remain a mission for me and for Michelle not just for the rest of my presidency but for the rest of my life,” Mr. Obama said. “And the reason is simple,” he added. Referring to some of the youths he had just met, he said: “We see ourselves in these young men. I grew up without a dad. I grew up lost sometimes and adrift, not having a sense of a clear path. The only difference between me and a lot of other young men in this neighborhood and all across the country is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving.”

Organizers said the new alliance already had financial pledges from companies like American Express, Deloitte, Discovery Communications and News Corporation. The money will be used to help companies address obstacles facing young black and Hispanic men, provide grants to programs for disadvantaged youths, and help communities aid their populations.

Joe Echevarria, a former chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, will lead the alliance, and among those on its leadership team or advisory group are executives at PepsiCo, News Corporation, Sprint, BET and Prudential Group Insurance; former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey; former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; the music star John Legend; the retired athletes Alonzo Mourning, Jerome Bettis and Shaquille O’Neal; and the mayors of Indianapolis, Sacramento and Philadelphia.

The alliance, while nominally independent of the White House, may face some of the same questions confronting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins another presidential campaign. Some of those donating to the alliance may have interests in government action, and skeptics may wonder whether they are trying to curry favor with the president by contributing.

“The Obama administration will have no role in deciding how donations are screened and what criteria they’ll set at the alliance for donor policies, because it’s an entirely separate entity,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One en route to New York. But he added, “I’m confident that the members of the board are well aware of the president’s commitment to transparency.”

The alliance was in the works before the disturbances last week after the death of Freddie Gray, the black man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody in Baltimore, but it reflected the evolution of Mr. Obama’s presidency. For him, in a way, it is coming back to issues that animated him as a young community organizer and politician. It was his own struggle with race and identity, captured in his youthful memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” that stood him apart from other presidential aspirants.

But that was a side of him that he kept largely to himself through the first years of his presidency while he focused on other priorities like turning the economy around, expanding government-subsidized health care and avoiding electoral land mines en route to re-election.

After securing a second term, Mr. Obama appeared more emboldened. Just a month after his 2013 inauguration, he talked passionately about opportunity and race with a group of teenage boys in Chicago, a moment aides point to as perhaps the first time he had spoken about these issues in such a personal, powerful way as president. A few months later, he publicly lamented the death of Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teenager, saying that “could have been me 35 years ago.”

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That case, along with public ruptures of anger over police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, have pushed the issue of race and law enforcement onto the public agenda. Aides said they imagined that with his presidency in its final stages, Mr. Obama might be thinking more about what comes next and causes he can advance as a private citizen.

That is not to say that his public discussion of these issues has been universally welcomed. Some conservatives said he had made matters worse by seeming in their view to blame police officers in some of the disputed cases.

“President Obama, when he was elected, could have been a unifying leader,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican candidate for president, said at a forum last week. “He has made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions.”

On the other side of the ideological spectrum, some liberal African-American activists have complained that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help downtrodden communities. While he is speaking out more, these critics argue, he has hardly used the power of the presidency to make the sort of radical change they say is necessary.

The line Mr. Obama has tried to straddle has been a serrated one. He condemns police brutality as he defends most officers as honorable. He condemns “criminals and thugs” who looted in Baltimore while expressing empathy with those trapped in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness.

In the Bronx on Monday, Mr. Obama bemoaned the death of Brian Moore, a plainclothes New York police officer who had died earlier in the day after being shot in the head Saturday on a Queens street. Most police officers are “good and honest and fair and care deeply about their communities,” even as they put their lives on the line, Mr. Obama said.

“Which is why in addressing the issues in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York, the point I made was that if we’re just looking at policing, we’re looking at it too narrowly,” he added. “If we ask the police to simply contain and control problems that we ourselves have been unwilling to invest and solve, that’s not fair to the communities, it’s not fair to the police.”

Moreover, if society writes off some people, he said, “that’s not the kind of country I want to live in; that’s not what America is about.”

His message to young men like Malachi Hernandez, who attends Boston Latin Academy in Massachusetts, is not to give up.

“I want you to know you matter,” he said. “You matter to us.”

In Baltimore, National Guard Pullout Begins as Citywide Curfew Is Lifted

David Goldman/Associated Press

National Guard soldiers boarding a truck in Baltimore on Sunday.

Baltimore residents prepared to resume the more familiar rhythms of their lives as days passed without new bouts of widespread rioting and as the National Guard began to pull its troops from the city.

In Baltimore, National Guard Pullout Begins as Citywide Curfew Is Lifted | PAKET UMROH BULAN JANUARI 2016

Nepal’s Young Men, Lost to Migration, Then a Quake

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KATHMANDU, Nepal — When the dense pillar of smoke from cremations by the Bagmati River was thinning late last week, the bodies were all coming from Gongabu, a common stopover for Nepali migrant workers headed overseas, and they were all of young men.

Hindu custom dictates that funeral pyres should be lighted by the oldest son of the deceased, but these men were too young to have sons, so they were burned by their brothers or fathers. Sukla Lal, a maize farmer, made a 14-hour journey by bus to retrieve the body of his 19-year-old son, who had been on his way to the Persian Gulf to work as a laborer.

“He wanted to live in the countryside, but he was compelled to leave by poverty,” Mr. Lal said, gazing ahead steadily as his son’s remains smoldered. “He told me, ‘You can live on your land, and I will come up with money, and we will have a happy family.’ ”

Weeks will pass before the authorities can give a complete accounting of who died in the April 25 earthquake, but it is already clear that Nepal cannot afford the losses. The countryside was largely stripped of its healthy young men even before the quake, as they migrated in great waves — 1,500 a day by some estimates — to work as laborers in India, Malaysia or one of the gulf nations, leaving many small communities populated only by elderly parents, women and children. Economists say that at some times of the year, one-quarter of Nepal’s population is working outside the country.

Gene Fullmer, a Brawling Middleweight Champion, Dies at 83

Fullmer, who reigned when fight clubs abounded and Friday night fights were a television staple, was known for his title bouts with Sugar Ray Robinson and Carmen Basilio.

Sid Tepper Dies at 96; Delivered ‘Red Roses for a Blue Lady’ and Other Songs

Mr. Tepper was not a musical child and had no formal training, but he grew up to write both lyrics and tunes, trading off duties with the other member of the team, Roy C. Bennett.

Andrew Lesnie, Cinematographer of ‘Lord of the Rings,’ Dies at 59

The magical quality Mr. Lesnie created in shooting the “Babe” films caught the eye of the director Peter Jackson, who chose him to film the fantasy epic.

Review: ‘Frontline’ Looks at Missteps During the Ebola Outbreak

y NEIL GENZLINGER

Frontline

Frontline An installment of this PBS program looks at the effects of Ebola on Liberia and other countries, as well as the origins of the outbreak.

The program traces the outbreak to its origin, thought to be a tree full of bats in Guinea.

With Iran Talks, a Tangled Path to Ending Syria’s War

UNITED NATIONS — Wearing pinstripes and a pince-nez, Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria, arrived at the Security Council one Tuesday afternoon in February and announced that President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to halt airstrikes over Aleppo. Would the rebels, Mr. de Mistura suggested, agree to halt their shelling?

What he did not announce, but everyone knew by then, was that the Assad government had begun a military offensive to encircle opposition-held enclaves in Aleppo and that fierce fighting was underway. It would take only a few days for rebel leaders, having pushed back Syrian government forces, to outright reject Mr. de Mistura’s proposed freeze in the fighting, dooming the latest diplomatic overture on Syria.

Diplomacy is often about appearing to be doing something until the time is ripe for a deal to be done.

Now, with Mr. Assad’s forces having suffered a string of losses on the battlefield and the United States reaching at least a partial rapprochement with Mr. Assad’s main backer, Iran, Mr. de Mistura is changing course. Starting Monday, he is set to hold a series of closed talks in Geneva with the warring sides and their main supporters. Iran will be among them.

In an interview at United Nations headquarters last week, Mr. de Mistura hinted that the changing circumstances, both military and diplomatic, may have prompted various backers of the war to question how much longer the bloodshed could go on.

“Will that have an impact in accelerating the willingness for a political solution? We need to test it,” he said. “The Geneva consultations may be a good umbrella for testing that. It’s an occasion for asking everyone, including the government, if there is any new way that they are looking at a political solution, as they too claim they want.”

He said he would have a better assessment at the end of June, when he expects to wrap up his consultations. That coincides with the deadline for a final agreement in the Iran nuclear talks.

Whether a nuclear deal with Iran will pave the way for a new opening on peace talks in Syria remains to be seen. Increasingly, though, world leaders are explicitly linking the two, with the European Union’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, suggesting last week that a nuclear agreement could spur Tehran to play “a major but positive role in Syria.”

It could hardly come soon enough. Now in its fifth year, the Syrian war has claimed 220,000 lives, prompted an exodus of more than three million refugees and unleashed jihadist groups across the region. “This conflict is producing a question mark in many — where is it leading and whether this can be sustained,” Mr. de Mistura said.

Part Italian, part Swedish, Mr. de Mistura has worked with the United Nations for more than 40 years, but he is more widely known for his dapper style than for any diplomatic coups. Syria is by far the toughest assignment of his career — indeed, two of the organization’s most seasoned diplomats, Lakhdar Brahimi and Kofi Annan, tried to do the job and gave up — and critics have wondered aloud whether Mr. de Mistura is up to the task.

He served as a United Nations envoy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and before that in Lebanon, where a former minister recalled, with some scorn, that he spent many hours sunbathing at a private club in the hills above Beirut. Those who know him say he has a taste for fine suits and can sometimes speak too soon and too much, just as they point to his diplomatic missteps and hyperbole.

They cite, for instance, a news conference in October, when he raised the specter of Srebrenica, where thousands of Muslims were massacred in 1995 during the Balkans war, in warning that the Syrian border town of Kobani could fall to the Islamic State. In February, he was photographed at a party in Damascus, the Syrian capital, celebrating the anniversary of the Iranian revolution just as Syrian forces, aided by Iran, were pummeling rebel-held suburbs of Damascus; critics seized on that as evidence of his coziness with the government.

Mouin Rabbani, who served briefly as the head of Mr. de Mistura’s political affairs unit and has since emerged as one of his most outspoken critics, said Mr. de Mistura did not have the background necessary for the job. “This isn’t someone well known for his political vision or political imagination, and his closest confidants lack the requisite knowledge and experience,” Mr. Rabbani said.

As a deputy foreign minister in the Italian government, Mr. de Mistura was tasked in 2012 with freeing two Italian marines detained in India for shooting at Indian fishermen. He made 19 trips to India, to little effect. One marine was allowed to return to Italy for medical reasons; the other remains in India.

He said he initially turned down the Syria job when the United Nations secretary general approached him last August, only to change his mind the next day, after a sleepless, guilt-ridden night.

Mr. de Mistura compared his role in Syria to that of a doctor faced with a terminally ill patient. His goal in brokering a freeze in the fighting, he said, was to alleviate suffering. He settled on Aleppo as the location for its “fame,” he said, a decision that some questioned, considering that Aleppo was far trickier than the many other lesser-known towns where activists had negotiated temporary local cease-fires.

“Everybody, at least in Europe, are very familiar with the value of Aleppo,” Mr. de Mistura said. “So I was using that as an icebreaker.”

The cease-fire negotiations, to which he had devoted six months, fell apart quickly because of the government’s military offensive in Aleppo the very day of his announcement at the Security Council. Privately, United Nations diplomats said Mr. de Mistura had been manipulated. To this, Mr. de Mistura said only that he was “disappointed and concerned.”

Tarek Fares, a former rebel fighter, said after a recent visit to Aleppo that no Syrian would admit publicly to supporting Mr. de Mistura’s cease-fire proposal. “If anyone said they went to a de Mistura meeting in Gaziantep, they would be arrested,” is how he put it, referring to the Turkish city where negotiations between the two sides were held.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon remains staunchly behind Mr. de Mistura’s efforts. His defenders point out that he is at the center of one of the world’s toughest diplomatic problems, charged with mediating a conflict in which two of the world’s most powerful nations — Russia, which supports Mr. Assad, and the United States, which has called for his ouster — remain deadlocked.

R. Nicholas Burns, a former State Department official who now teaches at Harvard, credited Mr. de Mistura for trying to negotiate a cease-fire even when the chances of success were exceedingly small — and the chances of a political deal even smaller. For his efforts to work, Professor Burns argued, the world powers will first have to come to an agreement of their own.

“He needs the help of outside powers,” he said. “It starts with backers of Assad. That’s Russia and Iran. De Mistura is there, waiting.”

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