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GUNUNG KELUD MASIH BERPOTENSI KEMBALI ERUPSI

saco-indonesia.com, Kamis (13/2) kemarin malam, sekitar pukul 22.50 WIB, Gunung Kelud yang telah terletak di Kabupaten Kediri, Jawa Timur telah mengeluarkan letusan. Hujan abu dan debu vulkanik telah terjadi di beberapa kota di Provinsi Jawa Timur hingga Jawa Tengah dan Daerah Istimewa Yogyakarta.

Letusan dahsyat ini disebut-sebut telah melebihi letusan sebelumnya pada 1990. Dari analisa PVMBG, tidak menutup kemungkinan erupsi susulan bakal kembali terjadi.

"Bisa saja (letusan susulan) kembali terjadi. Tapi tidak akan besar," kata Pelaksana Tugas Bidang Pengamatan dan Penyelidikan Gunung Api PVMBG Gede Suantika saat dihubungi, Jumat (14/2).

Abu vulkanik Gunung Kelud telah membumbung hingga ketinggian 17 kilometer. Abu akibat dari letusan dari Gunung tersebut telah menutupi wilayah sekitar dengan ketinggian beragam.

"Abu akibat erupsi dari Gunung Kelud telah mencapai 17.000 meter (17 kilometer)," katanya.

PVMBG telah meminta masyarakat untuk mengikuti arahan petugas setempat. "Tetap tenang dan jangan panik," jelasnya.

Abu vulkanik dari erupsi Kelud mendominasi ke arah barat daya. Di Jabar sendiri dilaporkan terkena serpihan abu seperti Tasikmalaya.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

MENJADI HAJI YANG MABRUR

Nabi Muhammad SAW bersabda, "Haji mabrur itu tidak ada balasannya kecuali surga.” (H.R. Bukhari)

Haji mabrur adalah haji yang diterima oleh Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala. Tanda-tandanya banyak. Di antaranya adalah hendaknya nafkah (biaya) haji tersebut dari hasil usaha yang halal karena nafkah menjadi poros penting dalam kehidupan manusia, terlebih lagi dalam urusan haji.

Bahkan disebutkan bahwa jika seseorang naik haji dengan biaya dari hartanya yang halal, maka akan ada penyeru yang berseru, “Bekalmu halal dan kendaraanmu halal, maka hajimu pun mabrur.” Adapun jika dia berangkat haji dari harta yang haram, maka penyeru tadi akan berseru, “La labbaika wala sa’daika. Bekalmu haram dan nafkahmu haram, maka hajimu tertolak tidak mendapat ganjaran.” atau dengan seruan yang semakna. Jadi, di antara tanda-tanda haji mabrur adalah jika dikerjakandengan biaya dari nafkah dan usaha yang halal.

Begitu pula, di antara tanda-tandanya adalah jika orang yang berhaji mengerjakan manasiknya sesuai dengan tata cara yang disyari’atkan dan diinginkan tanpa mengurangi sedikitpun, dan menjauhi segala larangan Allah selama mengerjakan haji.

Di antara tanda-tandanya pula adalah jika orang yang berhaji itu kembali dalam keadaan pengamalan agamanya lebih baik daripada sebelum berangkat, yaitu dia kembali dalam keadaan bertaubat kepada Allah subhanahu wa ta’ala, istiqamah (konsisten) dalam menjalankan ketaatan-ketaatan kepada-Nya, dan terus-menerus dalam kondisi seperti itu. Dengan begitu, hajinya menjadi titik tolak baginya kepada kea rah kebaikan, dan selalu menjadi peringatan baginya untuk memeperbaiki jalan hidupnya.

Sumber : http://artikel-haji-dan-umrah.blogspot.com

Baca Artikel Lainnya : LARANGAN KETIKA HAJI ATAU UMROH

Sejumlah 22 Orang Indonesia yang Punya Kekayaan di Atas Rp 12 Triliun

TOKYO, Saco-Indonesia.com — Dari hasil penelitian Credit Suisse dalam laporannya, Global Wealth Databook 2013, yang terbit pada akhir Oktober 2013 menunjukkan bahwa Indonesia di peringkat ke-24 dunia untuk negara dengan jumlah orang kaya paling banyak. Jumlah orang kaya terbanyak berada di Amerika Serikat, lalu Jepang, Italia, Perancis, Inggris, Jerman, China, Kanada, Australia, dan Spanyol.

Dari laporan tersebut, terdapat 22 orang superkaya Indonesia yang memiliki harta di atas 1 miliar dollar AS atau sekitar Rp 12 triliun (kurs Rp 12.000 per dollar AS). Sayangnya, Credit Suisse tidak mengungkapkan siapa saja 22 orang terkaya Indonesia tersebut.

Global Wealth Databook 2013 membagi dua kategori orang kaya, yaitu yang di atas 100.000 dollar AS dan yang di atas 1 juta dollar AS. Warga Indonesia yang memiliki kekayaan minimal 100.000 dollar AS atau lebih mencapai 2,18 juta orang (0,6 persen). Adapun yang di atas 1 juta dollar AS sebanyak 123.000 orang (0,4 persen).

Jumlah orang kaya Indonesia yang memiliki kekayaan minimal 100.000 dollar AS melebihi jumlah orang kaya Singapura, yang hanya 1,81 juta orang. Namun untuk yang memiliki kekayaan di atas 1 juta dollar AS, Singapura lebih banyak dari Indonesia, yaitu 174.000 orang. Secara peringkat, Indonesia berada di peringkat ke-24, sedangkan Singapura ke-23. Artinya, secara perorangan, warga Singapura lebih kaya daripada orang Indonesia.

Apabila dirinci lebih detail lagi, kategori di atas 1 juta dollar AS terdiri dari perorangan yang memiliki kekayaan 1 juta-5 juta dollar AS, 5 juta-10 juta dollar AS, 10 juta-50 juta dollar AS, 50 juta-100 juta dollar AS, 100 juta-500 juta dollar AS, 500 juta-1 miliar dollar AS, dan di atas 1 miliar dollar AS.

Adapun jumlah orang Indonesia yang memiliki kekayaan antara 1 juta-5 juta dollar AS berjumlah 106.739 orang, 5 juta-10 juta dollar AS berjumlah 9.579 orang, 10 juta-50 juta dollar AS berjumlah 6.032 orang, 50 juta-100 juta dollar AS berjumlah 541 orang, 100 juta-500 juta dollar AS berjumlah 341 orang, 500 juta-1 miliar dollar AS berjumlah 31 orang, dan di atas 1 miliar dollar AS sebanyak 22 orang.

Lembaga ini juga mengungkapkan, saat ini 80 persen kekayaan Indonesia masih banyak dalam bentuk fisik, seperti properti, peternakan, dan bangunan kantor, ketimbang kekayaan saham dan produk finansial. Namun lama-kelamaan, hal ini akan berubah. Kepemilikan bentuk produk finansial akan semakin banyak, seperti dituliskan dalam laporan tersebut.

Data kekayaan orang Indonesia dalam bentuk produk finansial per orang rata-rata hanya 1.948 dollar AS (15,7 persen). Adapun kepemilikan non-finansial 10.444 dollar AS (84,3 persen) dan utang 553 dollar AS per orang. Sementara itu, kekayaan kotor (gross wealth) rata-rata per orang sebesar 12.393 dollar AS.

Tahun 2000, jumlah kepemilikan produk non-finansial seperti properti dan sebagainya jauh lebih banyak lagi, yaitu 92,3 persen. Adapun kepemilikan produk finansial hanya 7,7 persen.

Dengan perkembangan perekonomian yang semakin baik di Indonesia, lembaga keuangan tersebut menempatkan kualitas data Indonesia pada kategori Cukup (Fair), dengan pendapatan per kapita sebesar 6.104 dollar AS. Sementara itu, pendapatan per kapita Amerika Serikat pada 2013 sebesar 68.673 dollar AS, sedangkan Jepang 57.422 dollar AS. (Koresponden Tribunnews.com, Richard Susilo, dari Tokyo, Jepang)

Bila Anda Membersihkan Rumah Sama dengan Berolahraga Satu Jam di Pusat Kebugaran!

Saco-Indonesia.com - Semuanya tidak ada kata sia-sia dari upaya Anda merapikan dan membersihkan rumah, sekecil apapun upaya itu. Meskipun suatu saat rumah Anda akan kembali kotor atau berantakan, ternyata kegiatan membersihkan rumah membuat tubuh sehat dan bugar.

Kontributor apartmenttherapy.com, Alysha Findley mengatakan, hasil studi mengungkapkan bahwa pekerjaan rumah mampu memberikan hasil serupa dengan menghabiskan satu jam berolah raga di pusat kebugaran. Sementara hasil studi lain mengungkapkan, mengubah perspektif Anda mengenai pekerjaan rumah mampu membuat Anda lebih fokus mengerjakannya, dan lebih banyak membakar kalori.

Penelitian tersebut melibatkan satu kelompok yang terdiri dari 84 pekerja hotel. Setengah dari kelompok tersebut diberi tahu bahwa beberapa bagian otot mereka akan terbentuk dan mereka akan membakar beberapa ratus kalori dengan hanya mengerjakan pekerjaan rumah. Setengahnya lagi tidak diberi tahun.

Hasilnya, kelompok yang diberi tahu ternyata memiliki berat badan, tekanan darah, lemak tubuh, rasio pinggang-ke-pinggul, dan indeks massa tubuh lebih rendah. Jadi, tunggu apa lagi, berikut ini beberapa kegiatan dan jumlah kalori yang bisa Anda "bakar"!

Menurut hasil studi yang dipublikasikan dalam apartmenttherapy.com, Calorie Lab, dan dailymail.co.uk, kegiatan membersihkan rumah terdiri dari beberapa jenis. Menyapu, mengepel, membersihkan lampu, dan berbagai kegiatan lainnya, masing-masing mampu membakar sejumlah kalori di tubuh Anda. Misalnya, Anda melakukan kegiatan seperti menyedot debu atau menyapu lantai. Rata-rata, Anda bisa membakar hingga 240 kalori perjam. Anda bisa mendengarkan musik dan gerakkan tubuh Anda sembari melakukan kegiatan ini. Hasil studi mengatakan, orang yang mendengarkan musik akan melakukan kegiatannya dengan lebih cepat.

Menggosok lantai bahkan bisa membuat Anda membakar 325 kalori per jam. Gosoklah lantai sembari berlutut dan kerahkan tenaga Anda.

Naik-turun tangga pun mampu membakar hingga 250 kalori per jam. Namun, sekali lagi, tanamkan di otak Anda bahwa ketika melakukan berbagai hal ini, Anda tengah berolah raga dan bukan melakukan pekerjaan rumah pada umumnya.

Menjaga anak yang tengah bermain, mengikuti permainannya dengan ikut berlari-lari, menggendong, dan mengangkatnya tinggi-tinggi sepuluh kali juga mampu membakar hingga 205 kalori per jam.

Kegiatan memasak mampu membakar 150 kalori per jam. Namun, usahakan Anda memotong, mencacah, mengulek, menumbuk, dan mencampurkan berbagai bahan masakan dengan tangan Anda sendiri. Minimalisir penggunaan alat elektronik untuk hasil lebih maksimal.

Mencuci baju mampu membuat Anda kehilangan 260 kalori per jam. Pastikan Anda menaruh keranjang cucian di lantai agar Anda terus-menerus membungkuk. Sementara itu, mencuci piring pun mampu membuat Anda kehilangan 200 kalori per jam.

Data lebih detil bahkan disediakan oleh Calorie Lab. Menurut Calorie Lab, kegiatan lain, seperti menyajikan makanan (102 kalori/jam), memberi makan binatang peliharaan (102 kalori/jam), membawa belanjaan (442 kalori/jam), menyetrika (88 kalori/jam), membereskan tempat tidur (68 kalori/jam), memindahkan perabot (340 kalori/jam), menyiram tanaman (102 kalori/jam), bahkan merawat orang tua Anda yang sudah sepuh pun mampu membuat Anda kehilangan hingga 204 kalori per jam.

Nah, Anda pilih yang mana?

Tribute for a Roller Hockey Warrior

Hockey is not exactly known as a city game, but played on roller skates, it once held sway as the sport of choice in many New York neighborhoods.

“City kids had no rinks, no ice, but they would do anything to play hockey,” said Edward Moffett, former director of the Long Island City Y.M.C.A. Roller Hockey League, in Queens, whose games were played in city playgrounds going back to the 1940s.

From the 1960s through the 1980s, the league had more than 60 teams, he said. Players included the Mullen brothers of Hell’s Kitchen and Dan Dorion of Astoria, Queens, who would later play on ice for the National Hockey League.

One street legend from the heyday of New York roller hockey was Craig Allen, who lived in the Woodside Houses projects and became one of the city’s hardest hitters and top scorers.

“Craig was a warrior, one of the best roller hockey players in the city in the ’70s,” said Dave Garmendia, 60, a retired New York police officer who grew up playing with Mr. Allen. “His teammates loved him and his opponents feared him.”

Young Craig took up hockey on the streets of Queens in the 1960s, playing pickup games between sewer covers, wearing steel-wheeled skates clamped onto school shoes and using a roll of electrical tape as the puck.

His skill and ferocity drew attention, Mr. Garmendia said, but so did his skin color. He was black, in a sport made up almost entirely by white players.

“Roller hockey was a white kid’s game, plain and simple, but Craig broke the color barrier,” Mr. Garmendia said. “We used to say Craig did more for race relations than the N.A.A.C.P.”

Mr. Allen went on to coach and referee roller hockey in New York before moving several years ago to South Carolina. But he continued to organize an annual alumni game at Dutch Kills Playground in Long Island City, the same site that held the local championship games.

The reunion this year was on Saturday, but Mr. Allen never made it. On April 26, just before boarding the bus to New York, he died of an asthma attack at age 61.

Word of his death spread rapidly among hundreds of his old hockey colleagues who resolved to continue with the event, now renamed the Craig Allen Memorial Roller Hockey Reunion.

The turnout on Saturday was the largest ever, with players pulling on their old equipment, choosing sides and taking once again to the rink of cracked blacktop with faded lines and circles. They wore no helmets, although one player wore a fedora.

Another, Vinnie Juliano, 77, of Long Island City, wore his hearing aids, along with his 50-year-old taped-up quads, or four-wheeled skates with a leather boot. Many players here never converted to in-line skates, and neither did Mr. Allen, whose photograph appeared on a poster hanging behind the players’ bench.

“I’m seeing people walking by wondering why all these rusty, grizzly old guys are here playing hockey,” one player, Tommy Dominguez, said. “We’re here for Craig, and let me tell you, these old guys still play hard.”

Everyone seemed to have a Craig Allen story, from his earliest teams at Public School 151 to the Bryant Rangers, the Woodside Wings, the Woodside Blues and more.

Mr. Allen, who became a yellow-cab driver, was always recruiting new talent. He gained the nickname Cabby for his habit of stopping at playgrounds all over the city to scout players.

Teams were organized around neighborhoods and churches, and often sponsored by local bars. Mr. Allen, for one, played for bars, including Garry Owen’s and on the Fiddler’s Green Jokers team in Inwood, Manhattan.

Play was tough and fights were frequent.

“We were basically street gangs on skates,” said Steve Rogg, 56, a mail clerk who grew up in Jackson Heights, Queens, and who on Saturday wore his Riedell Classic quads from 1972. “If another team caught up with you the night before a game, they tossed you a beating so you couldn’t play the next day.”

Mr. Garmendia said Mr. Allen’s skin color provoked many fights.

“When we’d go to some ignorant neighborhoods, a lot of players would use slurs,” Mr. Garmendia said, recalling a game in Ozone Park, Queens, where local fans parked motorcycles in a lineup next to the blacktop and taunted Mr. Allen. Mr. Garmendia said he checked a player into the motorcycles, “and the bikes went down like dominoes, which started a serious brawl.”

A group of fans at a game in Brooklyn once stuck a pole through the rink fence as Mr. Allen skated by and broke his jaw, Mr. Garmendia said, adding that carloads of reinforcements soon arrived to defend Mr. Allen.

And at another racially incited brawl, the police responded with six patrol cars and a helicopter.

Before play began on Saturday, the players gathered at center rink to honor Mr. Allen. Billy Barnwell, 59, of Woodside, recalled once how an all-white, all-star squad snubbed Mr. Allen by playing him third string. He scored seven goals in the first game and made first string immediately.

“He’d always hear racial stuff before the game, and I’d ask him, ‘How do you put up with that?’” Mr. Barnwell recalled. “Craig would say, ‘We’ll take care of it,’ and by the end of the game, he’d win guys over. They’d say, ‘This guy’s good.’”

Betsy von Furstenberg, Baroness and Versatile Actress, Dies at 83

Ms. von Furstenberg made her debut in the movies and on the Broadway stage in the early 1950s as a teenager and later reinvented herself as a television actress, writer and philanthropist.

Edward Chambers, Early Leader in Community Organizing, Dies at 85

A lapsed seminarian, Mr. Chambers succeeded Saul Alinsky as leader of the social justice umbrella group Industrial Areas Foundation.

Harvey R. Miller, Renowned Bankruptcy Lawyer, Dies at 82

Mr. Miller, of the firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, represented companies including Lehman Brothers, General Motors and American Airlines, and mentored many of the top Chapter 11 practitioners today.

Verne Gagne, Wrestler Who Grappled Through Two Eras, Dies at 89

Gagne wrestled professionally from the late 1940s until the 1980s and was a transitional figure between the early 20th century barnstormers and the steroidal sideshows of today

Maya Plisetskaya, Ballerina Who Embodied Bolshoi, Dies at 89

Ms. Plisetskaya, renowned for her fluidity of movement, expressive acting and willful personality, danced on the Bolshoi stage well into her 60s, but her life was shadowed by Stalinism.

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.”

Dean Skelos, Albany Senate Leader, Aided Son at All Costs, U.S. Says

Over the last five years or so, it seemed there was little that Dean G. Skelos, the majority leader of the New York Senate, would not do for his son.

He pressed a powerful real estate executive to provide commissions to his son, a 32-year-old title insurance salesman, according to a federal criminal complaint. He helped get him a job at an environmental company and employed his influence to help the company get government work. He used his office to push natural gas drilling regulations that would have increased his son’s commissions.

He even tried to direct part of a $5.4 billion state budget windfall to fund government contracts that the company was seeking. And when the company was close to securing a storm-water contract from Nassau County, the senator, through an intermediary, pressured the company to pay his son more — or risk having the senator subvert the bid.

The criminal complaint, unsealed on Monday, lays out corruption charges against Senator Skelos and his son, Adam B. Skelos, the latest scandal to seize Albany, and potentially alter its power structure.

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The repeated and diverse efforts by Senator Skelos, a Long Island Republican, to use what prosecutors said was his political influence to find work, or at least income, for his son could send both men to federal prison. If they are convicted of all six charges against them, they face up to 20 years in prison for each of four of the six counts and up to 10 years for the remaining two.

Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, of Long Island, who serves as chairman of the Republican conference, emerged from a closed-door meeting Monday night to say that conference members agreed that Mr. Skelos should be benefited the “presumption of innocence,” and would stay in his leadership role.

“The leader has indicated he would like to remain as leader,” said Mr. LaValle, “and he has the support of the conference.” The case against Mr. Skelos and his son grew out of a broader inquiry into political corruption by the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, that has already changed the face of the state capital. It is based in part, according to the six-count complaint, on conversations secretly recorded by one of two cooperating witnesses, and wiretaps on the cellphones of the senator and his son. Those recordings revealed that both men were concerned about electronic surveillance, and illustrated the son’s unsuccessful efforts to thwart it.

Adam Skelos took to using a “burner” phone, the complaint says, and told his father he wanted them to speak through a FaceTime video call in an apparent effort to avoid detection. They also used coded language at times.

At one point, Adam Skelos was recorded telling a Senate staff member of his frustration in not being able to speak openly to his father on the phone, noting that he could not “just send smoke signals or a little pigeon” carrying a message.

The 43-page complaint, sworn out by Paul M. Takla, a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, outlines a five-year scheme to “monetize” the senator’s official position; it also lays bare the extent to which a father sought to use his position to help his son.

The charges accuse the two men of extorting payments through a real estate developer, Glenwood Management, based on Long Island, and the environmental company, AbTech Industries, in Scottsdale, Ariz., with the expectation that the money paid to Adam Skelos — nearly $220,000 in total — would influence his father’s actions.

Glenwood, one of the state’s most prolific campaign donors, had ties to AbTech through investments in the environmental firm’s parent company by Glenwood’s founding family and a senior executive.

The accusations in the complaint portray Senator Skelos as a man who, when it came to his son, was not shy about twisting arms, even in situations that might give other arm-twisters pause.

Seeking to help his son, Senator Skelos turned to the executive at Glenwood, which develops rental apartments in New York City and has much at stake when it comes to real estate legislation in Albany. The senator urged him to direct business to his son, who sold title insurance.

After much prodding, the executive, Charles C. Dorego, engineered a $20,000 payment to Adam Skelos from a title insurance company even though he did no work for the money. But far more lucrative was a consultant position that Mr. Dorego arranged for Adam Skelos at AbTech, which seeks government contracts to treat storm water. (Mr. Dorego is not identified by name in the complaint, but referred to only as CW-1, for Cooperating Witness 1.)

Senator Skelos appeared to take an active interest in his son’s new line of work. Adam Skelos sent him several drafts of his consulting agreement with AbTech, the complaint says, as well as the final deal that was struck.

“Mazel tov,” his father replied.

Senator Skelos sent relevant news articles to his son, including one about a sewage leak near Albany. When AbTech wanted to seek government contracts after Hurricane Sandy, the senator got on a conference call with his son and an AbTech executive, Bjornulf White, and offered advice. (Like Mr. Dorego, Mr. White is not named in the complaint, but referred to as CW-2.)

The assistance paid off: With the senator’s help, AbTech secured a contract worth up to $12 million from Nassau County, a big break for a struggling small business.

But the money was slow to materialize. The senator expressed impatience with county officials.

Adam Skelos, in a phone call with Mr. White in late December, suggested that his father would seek to punish the county. “I tell you this, the state is not going to do a [expletive] thing for the county,” he said.

Three days later, Senator Skelos pressed his case with the Nassau County executive, Edward P. Mangano, a fellow Republican. “Somebody feels like they’re just getting jerked around the last two years,” the senator said, referring to his son in what the complaint described as “coded language.”

The next day, the senator pursued the matter, as he and Mr. Mangano attended a wake for a slain New York City police officer. Senator Skelos then reassured his son, who called him while he was still at the wake. “All claims that are in will be taken care of,” the senator said.

AbTech’s fortunes appeared to weigh on his son. At one point in January, Adam Skelos told his father that if the company did not succeed, he would “lose the ability to pay for things.”

Making matters worse, in recent months, Senator Skelos and his son appeared to grow wary about who was watching them. In addition to making calls on the burner phone, Adam Skelos said he used the FaceTime video calling “because that doesn’t show up on the phone bill,” as he told Mr. White.

In late February, Adam Skelos arranged a pair of meetings between Mr. White and state senators; AbTech needed to win state legislation that would allow its contract to move beyond its initial stages. But Senator Skelos deemed the plan too risky and caused one of the meetings to be canceled.

In another recorded call, Adam Skelos, promising to be “very, very vague” on the phone, urged his father to allow the meeting. The senator offered a warning. “Right now we are in dangerous times, Adam,” he told him.

A month later, in another phone call that was recorded by the authorities, Adam Skelos complained that his father could not give him “real advice” about AbTech while the two men were speaking over the telephone.

“You can’t talk normally,” he told his father, “because it’s like [expletive] Preet Bharara is listening to every [expletive] phone call. It’s just [expletive] frustrating.”

“It is,” his father agreed.

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Mr. Alger, who served five terms from Texas, led Republican women in a confrontation with Lyndon B. Johnson that may have cost Richard M. Nixon the 1960 presidential election.

Finding Scandal in New York and New Jersey, but No Shame

From sea to shining sea, or at least from one side of the Hudson to the other, politicians you have barely heard of are being accused of wrongdoing. There were so many court proceedings involving public officials on Monday that it was hard to keep up.

In Newark, two underlings of Gov. Chris Christie were arraigned on charges that they were in on the truly deranged plot to block traffic leading onto the George Washington Bridge.

Ten miles away, in Lower Manhattan, Dean G. Skelos, the leader of the New York State Senate, and his son, Adam B. Skelos, were arrested by the Federal Bureau of Investigation on accusations of far more conventional political larceny, involving a job with a sewer company for the son and commissions on title insurance and bond work.

The younger man managed to receive a 150 percent pay increase from the sewer company even though, as he said on tape, he “literally knew nothing about water or, you know, any of that stuff,” according to a criminal complaint the United States attorney’s office filed.

The success of Adam Skelos, 32, was attributed by prosecutors to his father’s influence as the leader of the Senate and as a potentate among state Republicans. The indictment can also be read as one of those unfailingly sad tales of a father who cannot stop indulging a grown son. The senator himself is not alleged to have profited from the schemes, except by being relieved of the burden of underwriting Adam.

The bridge traffic caper is its own species of crazy; what distinguishes the charges against the two Skeloses is the apparent absence of a survival instinct. It is one thing not to know anything about water or that stuff. More remarkable, if true, is the fact that the sewer machinations continued even after the former New York Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, was charged in January with taking bribes disguised as fees.

It was by then common gossip in political and news media circles that Senator Skelos, a Republican, the counterpart in the Senate to Mr. Silver, a Democrat, in the Assembly, could be next in line for the criminal dock. “Stay tuned,” the United States attorney, Preet Bharara said, leaving not much to the imagination.

Even though the cat had been unmistakably belled, Skelos father and son continued to talk about how to advance the interests of the sewer company, though the son did begin to use a burner cellphone, the kind people pay for in cash, with no traceable contracts.

That was indeed prudent, as prosecutors had been wiretapping the cellphones of both men. But it would seem that the burner was of limited value, because by then the prosecutors had managed to secure the help of a business executive who agreed to record calls with the Skeloses. It would further seem that the business executive was more attentive to the perils of pending investigations than the politician.

Through the end of the New York State budget negotiations in March, the hopes of the younger Skelos rested on his father’s ability to devise legislation that would benefit the sewer company. That did not pan out. But Senator Skelos did boast that he had haggled with Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, in a successful effort to raise a $150 million allocation for Long Island to $550 million, for what the budget called “transformative economic development projects.” It included money for the kind of work done by the sewer company.

The lawyer for Adam Skelos said he was not guilty and would win in court. Senator Skelos issued a ringing declaration that he was unequivocally innocent.

THIS was also the approach taken in New Jersey by Bill Baroni, a man of great presence and eloquence who stopped outside the federal courthouse to note that he had taken risks as a Republican by bucking his party to support paid family leave, medical marijuana and marriage equality. “I would never risk my career, my job, my reputation for something like this,” Mr. Baroni said. “I am an innocent man.”

The lawyer for his co-defendant, Bridget Anne Kelly, the former deputy chief of staff to Mr. Christie, a Republican, said that she would strongly rebut the charges.

Perhaps they had nothing to do with the lane closings. But neither Mr. Baroni nor Ms. Kelly addressed the question of why they did not return repeated calls from the mayor of Fort Lee, N.J., begging them to stop the traffic tie-ups, over three days.

That silence was a low moment. But perhaps New York hit bottom faster. Senator Skelos, the prosecutors charged, arranged to meet Long Island politicians at the wake of Wenjian Liu, a New York City police officer shot dead in December, to press for payments to the company employing his son.

Sometimes it seems as though for some people, the only thing to be ashamed of is shame itself.

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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.