PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

INDOSAT PILIH 50 PELANGGAN HANGOUT

saco-indonesia.com, Memberikan apresiasi kepada anggota Komunitas FansClub JKT48 sekaligus telah memanfaatkan momen libur akhir tahun, Indosat telah mengajak 50 anggota terbaik untuk hangout seharian bersama personel JKT48.

Ke 50 anggota ini telah mendapat kesempatan untuk makan siang, meet & greet dan berfoto bersama personel JKT48, yang kemudian dilanjutkan dengan Nonton Film terbaru box office dan ditutup dengan Dinner dan Nonton langsung Konser Teater JKT48 di Teater JKT48 FX.

Ke-50 anggota Komunitas FansClub JKT48 ini juga merupakan anggota yang telah terpilih dari 15 ribu member komunitas JKT48 nasional, yang telah diseleksi dengan melihat reload dari masing-masing anggota mulai bulan Juni sampai November 2013 dan mereka adalah anggota dengan reload tertinggi dari seluruh Indonesia.

Program apresiasi ini juga merupakan salah satu komitmen kami bagi para member komunitas JKT48 terbaik dari seluruh Indonesia, sambil memanfaatkan liburan seru bersama IM3, ujar Agus Nurudin, Group Head National Channel Management Indosat, dalam siaran pers.

JKT48 telah dipilih selain karena sebagai Brand Ambassador Indosat IM3 juga telah mempunyai banyak fans yang sangat loyal. Program apresiasi dan retensi semacam ini rutin diberikan Indosat sebagai bentuk penghargaan atas loyalitas para anggota komunitas dalam menggunakan produk Indosat.

Dengan program apresiasi ini diharapkan para anggota komunitas semakin setia dan terus menggunakan produk Indosat serta menjadi word of mouth dalam mempromosikan produk dan layanan Indosat, tambah Agus.

Komunitas JKT48 juga merupakan bagian dari anggota komunitas Sahabat IM3 yaitu komunitas anak muda di sekolah-sekolah yang saat ini sudah berjumlah belasan ribu komunitas sekolah yang tersebar di seluruh Indonesia.

Para siswa yang telah tergabung dalam komunitas Sahabat IM3 ini juga akan menikmati berbagai keuntungan diantaranya tarif telepon dan SMS murah ke sesama teman sekolahnya dalam satu komunitas.

Selain itu indosat juga bekerja sama dengan sekolah untuk dapat mendukung kegiatan belajar mengajar dengan pemberian sarana mengajar ke sekolah seperti akses internet, super WiFi, finger print, mendukung kegiatan sekolah seperti pentas seni serta aktifitas lain yang berguna bagi sekolah.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

DI ALBUM YOVIE , RAISA JADI DAYA TARIK

saco-indonesia.com, Nama Yovie Widianto sebenarnya sudah menjadi suatu jaminan kalau album yang telah dirilisnya yang berjudul Irreplaceable #Takkan Terganti akan menuai sukses. Sederet nama-nama besar penyanyi yang telah terlibat dalam album tersebut tentunya juga akan menjadi nilai tersendiri.

Banyak penyanyi yang telah terlibat di album ini, seperti 5 Romeo, Raisa, Andien, Hedi Yunus, RAN, Alexa, Marcell, Rio Febrian, Mario dan Chewy. Hal ini telah membuat Yovie dan tim akan menyediakan setengah juta copy CD.

"Yang pertama standar 120.000 tapi kita siapkan 500.000 copy, kita juga sangat optimis karena lagunya semua orang sudah tahu, artisnya juga berkualitas," ujar Harun Nurasyid perwakilan dari Music Factory Indonesia selaku label yang telah memproduksi album Yovie saat konferensi pers di KFC Kemang, Jakarta.

Dari sekian penyanyi yang telah memiliki kualitas vokal di atas rata rata, pihak label juga punya keyakinan besar album tersebut akan laris manis, karena adanya sosok Raisa, yang belakangan namanya sedang booming.

"Kebetulan juga ada Raisa di album ini yang lagi heboh, ini juga dapat memudahkan penjualan kita," tandas Harun.

Editor : dian sukmawati
Sumber ; kapanlagi.com

WANITA BUNTUTI PENCURI MOTORNYA HINGGA TERTANGKAP

saco-indonesia.com, Rumah pedagang kopi di Kampung Rawa Malang, RT10/09, Semper Timur, Cilincing, Jakarta Utara, Kamis (6/2) kemarin sore, telah disatroni oleh maling. Selain sepeda motor matic, pelaku juga telah menggasak dompet kecil, kunci dan STNK motor yang disimpan di lemari pakain korban. Namun pemilik rumah masih beruntung. Pasalnya saat Umi Sumiati yang berusia 53 tahun ingin melapor ke Polsek Cilincing tak sengaja berpapasan dengan pelaku yang sedang menunggangi motornya.

Dengan menggunakan ojek, diam-diam korban telah mengikuti pelaku, Ruli Aminuloh yang berusia 17 tahun dari belakang dan ternyata mengarahkan ke rumah kontrakan pelaku tak jauh dari rumah korban. Begitu memastikan pelaku tinggal di rumah itu, korban lalu telah melaporkan peristiwa itu ke Polsek Cilincing, sekitar pukul: 19.00 WIB.

Tim Buser Polsek Cilincing kemudian bergerak menuju rumah pelaku. Pelaku yang sedang tidur-tiduran langsung panik begitu mengetahui polisi datang. “Awalnya dia bersikukuh bahwa motor tersebut merupakan motornya. Tapi kita meminta STNK motor dan memang benar motor tersebut atas nama korban,” kata Kanit Reskrim Polsek Cilincing, AKP Imam Tulus.

Petugas kemudian telah menggelandang pria pengangguran itu berikut sepeda motor Beat B 6120 UVZ ke kantor Polsek Cilincing . “Dari pemeriksaan, ternyata sepeda motor yang sering hilang di kawasan tersebut dilakukan tersangka. Dia beraksi jika penghuni rumah sedang pergi. Kita masih dalami peranan tersangka terkait dalam sindikat pencurian kendaraan bermotor,” ujar Imam Tulus.

“Tapi samapi sekarang tersangka masih bungkam motor yang dicurinya dijual di mana. Kita akan kejar teman-teman korban untuk mencari informasi,” jelas Imam.

Warga di sekitar tempat tinggal korban selama juga ini sempat curiga melihat hidup pelaku yang berpenampilan serba mewah, padahal Ruli tidak memiliki pekerjaan.

Tersangka Rulis juga mengaku, rencananya uang hasil penjualan sepeda motor itu akan dihabiskan bersama rekan-rekannya di lokalisasi liar Rawa Malang bersama para PSK. Dan jika habis ia kemudian mencari mangsa di rumah kosong yang ditinggal pemiliknya.

Editor : Dian sukmawati

ARSENAL VS CHELSEA

saco-indonesia.com, Arsenal telah berhasil ditahan imbang tamunya Chelsea di ajang Premier League, Selasa dini hari (24/12). Laga yang bertajuk Derby London itu juga harus berkesudahan imbang tanpa gol. Tambahan satu poin untuk membuat Arsenal berada di peringkat kedua dan gagal untuk menggeser Liverpool. Kedua tim tersebut telah mempunyai poin yang sama dengan koleksi 36 poin. Sementara Chelsea berada di peringkat empat dengan 34 poin

Pada awal-awal babak pertama kedua tim tersebut bermain dengan tempo sedang dan cenderung hati-hati. Terlihat cuma sesekali berhasil menekan ke daerah pertahanan lawan masing-masing.

Dua puluh menit laga berjalan, Arsenal juga mulai menguasai permainan. Ada dua peluang yang didapat dari sepak pojok bagi kedua tim, namun masih belum bisa untuk mengubah kedudukan.

Mendekati menit ke tiga puluh The Gunners masih terus menekan. The Blues yang terus ditekan masih tetap tenang dan sesekali bisa untuk mencuri counter attack. Di menit ke-32 tendangan keras Lampard masih mengenai mistar gawang. Kedudukan juga masih imbang tanpa gol.

Tendangan Willian dari sisi kiri Chelsea hasil dari serangan balik telah mampu digagalkan dengan mudah oleh Szczesny. Sampai babak pertama berakhir kedudukan masih sama kuat tanpa gol. Kedua kiper tersebut tak banyak melakukan penyelamatan gemilang.

Babak kedua dimulai Arsenal masih terus menekan. Pasukan Arsene Wenger masih belum bisa untuk menembus rapatnya pertahanan Chelsea. Tim tamu yang terus digempur mencoba menyerang melalui serangan balik yang cepat.

Pertengahan babak kedua pertandingan mulai keras. Wasit telah menghadiahi kartu kuning bagi kedua tim. Ramires dan Theo Walcott harus menerima kartu kuning akibat pelanggaran.

Tendangan keras Lampard dari luar kotak penalti mampu ditangkap oleh kiper Arsenal dengan mudah. Pemain The Gunners telah kembali diganjar kartu kuning. Thomas Rosicky mendapat kartu kuning setelah melanggar Ivanovic.

Mourinho yang menginginkan perubahan memasukkan Andre Schurrle dan Oscar. Menit ke ke-78 Arsenal mendapat peluang. Tendangan keras Giroud masih menyamping gawang Cech. Kedudukan tak berubah.

Sampai peluit panjang dibunyikan kedudukan tetap imbang tanpa gol. Kedua tim harus puas berbagi angka.

Arsenal: Szczesny, Sagna, Mertesacker, Vermaelen, Gibbs, Arteta, Rosicky, Ramsey, Ozil, Walcott, Giroud.

Chelsea: Cech; Ivanovic, Cahill, Terry, Azpilicueta; Mikel, Lampard; Ramires, Willian (Oscar 77"), Hazard (Schurrle 73") ; Torres (Luiz 86").

Statistik Arsenal - Chelsea
Shots: 7 - 13
Shots on goal: 2 - 4
Penguasaan bola: 61% - 39%
Pelanggaran: 7 - 12
Corner: 4 - 4
Offside: 3 - 2
Kartu kuning: 2 - 1
Kartu merah: 0 - 0.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

SEDIKIT TENTANG KECERDASAN EMOSI

Seorang Mahasiswa Sedang Di Tes kemampuannya Oleh Bapak Dosen.

"IQ Tau?"

"Intelectual Quotient.. pak"

"Itu mah kepanjangannya, Artinya Apa?"

"Tingkat Kecerdasan Seseorang Yang Diukur Memakai Derajat Kecerdasan Intelektual, Bisa Di tes Pake Tes IQ pak, Pokonya Kecerdasan yang Menyangkut Aspek-aspek Nyata Manusia. Misalnya Dalam menerima Dan menangkap Pelajaran. Intinya Kebanyakan Orang yang IQnya Tinggi pasti Pinterlah. Kecerdasan Rasional, Dua Di tambah Dua Sama Dengan Empat."
"Hebat Juga Kamu, Meski Agak Ribet, Kalo EQ?"

"Emotional Quotient, Adalah tingkat ukur untuk kecerdasan emosi, yang udah diakui lebih penting dari IQ, karena EQ mengambil Aspek-aspek yang tidak terlihat dari kecerdasan manusia"

"kenapa EQ Lebih Penting Dari IQ?"

"karena EQ memberikan gambaran tentang sikap manusia akan dirinya yang pasti sudah punya emosi. Emosi inilah yang memegang peranan penting bagi manusia karena Emosi kalo bisa dikendalikan akan sangat membantu dalam kehidupan manusia, kalo tidak bisa dikendalikan maka akan sangat berbahaya"

"Contohnya apa? "

"kalo dari buku yang saya baca itu ada kisah nyata. Seorang mahasiswa yang pinter banget, pinter fisika, matematika dan semuanya yang selalu mendapat nilai A, Suatu hari dia dapat nilai dari profesornya. Emosinyapun meluap dan langsung ngambil pisau untuk menusuk dosennya..."

"tapi dia kan cerdas"

"Dia emang cerdas pak, kalo nggak cerdas, nggak mungkin dapet A terus. Tapi dia Nggak Cerdas Secara Emosi pak, IQnya tinggi Tapi EQnya Jongkok"

"kalo otak, menurut penelitian terakhir dibagi menjadi berapa?"

"Dua Pak"

"Apa Aja?"

"otak rasional, yang 80% menempati otak,"

"satu lagi?"

"namanya Lymbic System pak, hanya menempati 20% dari keseluruhan otak, tapi Dari sinilah semua emosi berasal. sangat mempengaruhi dalam kehidupan manusia pak, Lymic System ini kecil-kecil cabe rawit pak, kalo nggak hati-hati bisa bahaya."

"ada dua skills yang diperlukan dalam kecerdasan emosional, apa aja?"

"Intrapersonal skills dan interpersonal Skiils"

"apa itu?"

"Interpersonal skill, Kehalian manusia Untuk bergaul, Mengerti emosi orang lain, mengerti emosi yang berasal dari luar tubuhnya pak, kalo intrapersonal ini kemampuan untuk mengerti emosi yang berasal dari dalam diri sendiri, contohnya nggak langsung down kalo lagi ada masalah, nggak terpuruk saat jatuh, selalu Bangkit dan nggak pernah nyerah pak"

"Terapkan itu dalam kehidupan harianmu nak"

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.

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.

Bruce Alger, 96, Dies; Led ‘Mink Coat’ Protest Against Lyndon Johnson

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.

Hard but Hopeful Home to ‘Lot of Freddies’

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Children playing last week in Sandtown-Winchester, the Baltimore neighborhood where Freddie Gray was raised. One young resident called it “a tough community.”

Hard but Hopeful Home to ‘Lot of Freddies’

The neighborhood where Freddie Gray came of age has survived harrowing rates of unemployment, poor health, violent crime and incarceration.

Rolf Smedvig, Trumpeter in the Empire Brass, Dies at 62

A former member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Smedvig helped found the wide-ranging Empire Brass quintet.

Marcel Pronovost, 84, Dies; Hall of Famer Shared in Five N.H.L. Titles

Pronovost, who played for the Red Wings, was not a prolific scorer, but he was a consummate team player with bruising checks and fearless bursts up the ice that could puncture a defense.

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.

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.”

Calvin Peete, 71, a Racial Pioneer on the PGA Tour, Is Dead

With 12 tournament victories in his career, Mr. Peete was the most successful black professional golfer before Tiger Woods.

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.

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.

Fatal Police Shootings: Accounts Since Ferguson

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Jim Fanning, 87, Dies; Lifted Baseball in Canada With Expos

Hired in 1968, a year before their first season, Mr. Fanning spent 25 years with the team, managing them to their only playoff appearance in Canada.

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.”

How Some Men Fake an 80-Hour Workweek, and Why It Matters

Imagine an elite professional services firm with a high-performing, workaholic culture. Everyone is expected to turn on a dime to serve a client, travel at a moment’s notice, and be available pretty much every evening and weekend. It can make for a grueling work life, but at the highest levels of accounting, law, investment banking and consulting firms, it is just the way things are.

Except for one dirty little secret: Some of the people ostensibly turning in those 80- or 90-hour workweeks, particularly men, may just be faking it.

Many of them were, at least, at one elite consulting firm studied by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. It’s impossible to know if what she learned at that unidentified consulting firm applies across the world of work more broadly. But her research, published in the academic journal Organization Science, offers a way to understand how the professional world differs between men and women, and some of the ways a hard-charging culture that emphasizes long hours above all can make some companies worse off.

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Ms. Reid interviewed more than 100 people in the American offices of a global consulting firm and had access to performance reviews and internal human resources documents. At the firm there was a strong culture around long hours and responding to clients promptly.

“When the client needs me to be somewhere, I just have to be there,” said one of the consultants Ms. Reid interviewed. “And if you can’t be there, it’s probably because you’ve got another client meeting at the same time. You know it’s tough to say I can’t be there because my son had a Cub Scout meeting.”

Some people fully embraced this culture and put in the long hours, and they tended to be top performers. Others openly pushed back against it, insisting upon lighter and more flexible work hours, or less travel; they were punished in their performance reviews.

The third group is most interesting. Some 31 percent of the men and 11 percent of the women whose records Ms. Reid examined managed to achieve the benefits of a more moderate work schedule without explicitly asking for it.

They made an effort to line up clients who were local, reducing the need for travel. When they skipped work to spend time with their children or spouse, they didn’t call attention to it. One team on which several members had small children agreed among themselves to cover for one another so that everyone could have more flexible hours.

A male junior manager described working to have repeat consulting engagements with a company near enough to his home that he could take care of it with day trips. “I try to head out by 5, get home at 5:30, have dinner, play with my daughter,” he said, adding that he generally kept weekend work down to two hours of catching up on email.

Despite the limited hours, he said: “I know what clients are expecting. So I deliver above that.” He received a high performance review and a promotion.

What is fascinating about the firm Ms. Reid studied is that these people, who in her terminology were “passing” as workaholics, received performance reviews that were as strong as their hyper-ambitious colleagues. For people who were good at faking it, there was no real damage done by their lighter workloads.

It calls to mind the episode of “Seinfeld” in which George Costanza leaves his car in the parking lot at Yankee Stadium, where he works, and gets a promotion because his boss sees the car and thinks he is getting to work earlier and staying later than anyone else. (The strategy goes awry for him, and is not recommended for any aspiring partners in a consulting firm.)

A second finding is that women, particularly those with young children, were much more likely to request greater flexibility through more formal means, such as returning from maternity leave with an explicitly reduced schedule. Men who requested a paternity leave seemed to be punished come review time, and so may have felt more need to take time to spend with their families through those unofficial methods.

The result of this is easy to see: Those specifically requesting a lighter workload, who were disproportionately women, suffered in their performance reviews; those who took a lighter workload more discreetly didn’t suffer. The maxim of “ask forgiveness, not permission” seemed to apply.

It would be dangerous to extrapolate too much from a study at one firm, but Ms. Reid said in an interview that since publishing a summary of her research in Harvard Business Review she has heard from people in a variety of industries describing the same dynamic.

High-octane professional service firms are that way for a reason, and no one would doubt that insane hours and lots of travel can be necessary if you’re a lawyer on the verge of a big trial, an accountant right before tax day or an investment banker advising on a huge merger.

But the fact that the consultants who quietly lightened their workload did just as well in their performance reviews as those who were truly working 80 or more hours a week suggests that in normal times, heavy workloads may be more about signaling devotion to a firm than really being more productive. The person working 80 hours isn’t necessarily serving clients any better than the person working 50.

In other words, maybe the real problem isn’t men faking greater devotion to their jobs. Maybe it’s that too many companies reward the wrong things, favoring the illusion of extraordinary effort over actual productivity.