PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

SEWA TENDA

saco-indonesia.com, Untuk anda pecinta alam, berkemah juga merupakan kegiatan biasa, sehingga perlu persiapan dan perlengakapan berkemah pastinya sudah hapal diluar kepala, dari kesemuanya peralatan dan perlengkapan berkemah, tenda telah menjadi perlengkapan yang harus dibawa untuk dapat mengarungi dan menikmati alam liar. Sekarang ini juga terdapat banyak variasi, model dan tentu saja harga tenda itu sendiri. Bahkan tak jarang yang telah menjadikan tenda sebagai sebuah bisnis jasa sewa tenda.

Biasanya untuk mereka yang bergerak dalam bisnis sewa tenda seringkali telah menawarkan paket-paket kenyamanan ataupun harga yang bersaing. Salah satunya MyHab. Salah satu pemain bisnis dalam bidang jasa sewa tenda menawarkan kenyamanan meskipun anda berada di alam liar.

Sewa Tenda juga mampu menampung sebanyak dua orang, dimana didalamnya telah dilengkapi dengan tempat tidur yang cukup empuk, lantai yang bisa ditinggikan, bahan anti air sampai ada "lemari besi" (safety box) untuk dapat menyimpan barang berharga pada saat anda ke kamar kecil atau mandi di sungai.

Tak hanya untuk cocok untuk berkemah di alam liar, sewa tenda ini juga cocok untuk keperluan piknik ataupun  menunggu konser atau festival yang mengkususkan anda untuk menginap. Dapat menghemat ongkos menginap dihotel bukan.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

PENYEBAB AC TIDAK DINGIN

Sebagai negara tropis Indonesia telah mempunyai udara yang cenderung panas dan gerah. Untuk itu tak sedikit rumah-rumah modern sekarang yang telah dilengkapi dengan penyejuk udara atau Sparepart AC.

Namun seiring dengan usia pemakaian, sering terjadi Sparepart AC anda menjadi kurang dingin bahkan tak dingin sama sekali. Apa penyebabnya ?

1. Sparepart AC yang kotor, filter di unit AC yang kotor dapat menyebabkan terhalangnya peredaran udara dingin yang dibuat dari evaburator. Maka kerjakan minimal satu bulan sekali guna untuk membersihkan sisi AC itu supaya penyerapan udara dingin dapat makin optimal.

2. Bagian evaburator (evab) kotor, biarpun pada sparepart AC sudah dilengkapi dengan filter, akan tetapi debu yang halus sebagian tak tersaring filter itu, dengan begitu bakal masuk serta melekat pada area evaburator dimana lama-lama bakal penuh serta  bakal menghambat penyerapan udara dingin yang dibuat evaburator. Guna untuk menangkal penumpukan debu kerjakan pencucian area evaburator minimal tiga bulan sekali. Pada pembersihan area evab sebaiknya memakai layanan dari penyedia servis yang anda percaya. Sebab bila pencucian dikerjakan oleh seseorang yang tidak benar-benar mengerti tentang AC mungkin ketika pencucian, modul PCB bisa terpapar air, dimana pastinya menyebabkan korslet ketika dihidupkan. Sekaligus jugs dapat menyebabkan kerusakan di suku cadang lainnya.

3. Gas freon sedikit. Tekanan freon yang menurun dapat menyebabkan pencapaian temperatur dingin bakal membutuhkan tempo yang lumayan lama, dengan begitu kerja kompresor juga turut lama serta tiada waktu standby, serta yang bakal ada kompresor menjadi demikian panas juga bakal membuat pendek usia kompresor itu. Pada yang satu ini tidak boleh dikerjakan sendiri apabila anda tidak paham mengenai metode pengisian freon maupun berapa besar yang mesti diisikan. Sebab pengisian freon mesti dicocokkan pada power mesinnya

4. Kondensor kotor, kondensor alias lang cenderung dikenal pada unit outdoor sparepart AC atau disebut juga blower ini pun mesti terpelihara kebersihannya. Sebab ketika AC hidup, unit AC bakal mengalami panas di kondensornya, serta panas itu dibuang lewat terdapatnya  kipas yang terdapat pada sparepart AC itu. Serta jika prosedur pembuangan udara tidak mulus atau optimal, panas kondensor juga bakal terlalu tinggi, sehingga AC menjadi kurang dingin. Juga yang cenderung merepotkan jika mengabaikan kondensor kotor, lama-lama kompresor pun bakal mendapatkan panas berlebihan serta bakal overload. Bila dibiarkan maka kerja kompresor bakal melemah serta bakal membuat pendek usia kompresor. Oh ya jika kondensor terlampau kotor pun menyebabkan kerja kompresor menjadi berat serta penggunaan listrik pun  bakal meningkat alias bertambah, maupun juga yang dikatakan ampere naik melampaui standar wajarnya

Dirut Pertamina Diperiksa KPK Kembali

Bekasi, Saco-Indonesia.com - Lagi KPK kembali memeriksa Direktur Utama PT Pertamina Karen Agustiawan terkait penyidikan kasus dugaan penerimaan hadiah terkait kegiatan hulu minyak dan gas, Senin (27/1/2014). Kali ini, Karen akan diperiksa sebagai saksi bagi tersangka baru kasus itu, mantan Sekretaris Jenderal Kementerian Energi dan Sumber Daya Mineral Waryono Karno.

"Bersaksi untuk Pak Waryono," kata pengacara Karen, Rudi Alfonso di Gedung KPK, Kuningan, Jakarta.

Rudi mendampingi Karen diperiksa KPK pagi ini. Sementara Karen, enggan berkomentar kepada wartawan mengenai pemeriksaannya. "Ya enggak tahu, kan belum diperiksa, tunggu saja nanti selesainya, baru ini kita kasih tahu," sambung Rudi.

Lebih jauh mengenai kasus dugaan gratifikasi kegiatan hulu migas ini, Rudi mengatakan bahwa kliennya tidak tahu mengenai dugaan aliran dana ke Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR) yang diberikan mantan Kepala SKK Migas Rudi Rubiandini. Dia membantah dugaan PT Pertamina menyumbang dana untuk tunjangan hari raya (THR) anggota DPR.

"Kalau itu saya pastikan enggak ada. Ibu ini kan sudah sering diancam untuk dipecat tapi dia tidak pernah melayani permintaan itu," kata Rudi.

Sebelumnya, KPK memeriksa Karen sebagai saksi bagi tersangka Rudi Rubiandini. Dalam persidangan terdakwa kasus ini, Simon G Tanjaya di Pengadilan Tindak Pidana Korupsi Jakarta terungkap bahwa Simon menyuap Rudi terkait pelaksanaan lelang terbatas minyak mentah dan kondesat bagian negara di SKK Migas, antara lain dengan menyetujui Fossus Energy Ltd sebagai pemenang lelang terbatas kondensat Senipah bagian nehara pada 7 Juni 2013 periode Juli 2013.

Rudi juga menyetujui Fossus Energy sebagai pemenang lelang terbatas minyak mentah Minas/SLG bagian negara pada 4 Juli 2013 untuk periode Agustus 2013.

Saat dikonfirmasi soal lelang terbatas bagian negara tersebut seusai diperiksa sebagai saksi bagi Rudi beberapa waktu lalu, Karen tidak menjawab.

Sumber : Kompas.com

Editor : Maulana Lee

PRIMA SAIDAH TRAVEL HAJI PLUS

PRIMA SAIDAH adalah Divisi Haji Khusus/Plus dan Umroh PT. HAPPY PRIMA WISATA dengan Kantor Pusat di Gedung TWINK Lt. 5,  Jl. Kapten Tendean No. 82 Jakarta Selatan. PT. HAPPY PRIMA WISATA berdiri pada tanggal 13 Oktober 1999.

PT. HAPPY PRIMA WISATA merupakan salah satu dari 220 Biro Penyelenggara Haji Khusus (Plus) yang mendapatkan Legalitas (izin resmi) dari Pemerintah, karenanya PRIMA SAIDAH selalu berusaha memberikan pelayanan yang prima dan terbaik kepada Jamaah Haji dan Umroh dan yang penting adalah sesuai dengan kaidah-kaidah syariah.

Adapun Program Haji Khusus (Plus) dan Umroh PRIMA SAIDAH adalah Program Haji Khusus (PLUS) dan Umrah "Rahmatan Lil'Alamin" dengan harapan PRIMA SAIDAH dapat memberikan Rahmat  bagi seluruh kaum muslimin dan muslimat yang berniat melaksanakan haji dan umroh pada umumnya dan para jamaah haji dan umroh yang memberikan kepercayaan kepada PRIMA SAIDAH untuk membantu mewujudkan niat suci mereka pada khususnya.

Akhir kalam kami mendoakan semoga Niat Suci Anda dimudahkan Alloh untuk diwujudkan dan dapat terlaksana sesuai dengan harapan serta yang paling utama adalah mendapatkan Ridho dan Rahmat Alloh SWT, Amien Ya Robbal 'Alamin.....

Sumber : http://primasaidah-travel-haji-umroh.blogspot.com/

Baca Artikel Lainnya : CARAKA WISATA

BKD rumuskan tes kemampuan PNS eselon III dan IV

Pemerintah Provinsi DKI Jakarta saat ini sedang merumuskan tes kemampuan bagi 6.800 Pegawai Negeri Sipil (PNS) golongan eselon III dan eselon IV di lingkungan Pemprov DKI Jakarta. Perumusan tersebut tengah digodok Badan Kepegawaian Daerah (BKD), Sekretaris Daerah dan Asisten Gubernur Bidang Kepegawaian.

"Seleksi itu sudah ada instruksi lisan dari pak gubernur. Kemudian akan saya terjemahkan dan implementasikan seperti apa, tapi kami kumpulkan pejabat yang terkait dulu," ujar Kepala BKD I Made Karmayoga di Balai Kota DKI Jakarta, Jumat (14/3).

Made juga menegaskan BKD juga akan menggandeng pihak luar yang kompeten serta telah melibatkan konsultan dalam proses seleksi tersebut. Namun, lanjut Made, saat ini BKD masih fokus dalam penyelesaian lelang kepala sekolah.

"Kita juga akan cari narasumber bagaimana menerjemahkan atau menindaklanjuti dari instruksi lisan itu. Harus ada saran juga dari para ahli. Tapi harus menyelesaikan lelang kepala sekolah dan lelang kepala Puskesmas dulu. Kan itu belum dilantik," kata dia.

Made juga menambahkan saat ini BKD belum menentukan waktu pelaksanaan seleksi tersebut. Namun, gubernur dan wakil gubernur telah meminta pelaksanaan tersebut dilakukan bulan depan.

"Waktu pelaksanaannya belum diputuskan. Kalau pimpinan sih pengennya cepat kalau bisa April sudah mulai. Tapi kami juga harus perhitungkan kesiapan segala macamnya. Akan diupayakan April sudah mulai. Tapi jangan sampai mengganggu kinerja PNS yang melakukan tes," ujarnya.

Menurut Data BKD, pejabat eselon III di DKI Jakarta berjumlah 862 orang, yang terdiri dari 615 orang golongan III A dan 247 orang golongan III B. Kemudian untuk pejabat eselon IV berjumlah 5.942 orang, terdiri dari 3.758 orang golongan IV A dan 2.184 orang golongan IV B.
"Seleksi itu sudah ada instruksi lisan dari pak gubernur. Kemudian akan saya terjemahkan dan implementasikan seperti apa, tapi kami kumpulkan pejabat yang terkait dulu," ujar Kepala BKD I Made Karmayoga di Balai Kota DKI Jakarta, Jumat (14/3).

Made juga menegaskan BKD juga akan menggandeng pihak luar yang kompeten serta telah melibatkan konsultan dalam proses seleksi tersebut. Namun, lanjut Made, saat ini BKD masih fokus dalam penyelesaian lelang kepala sekolah.

"Kita juga akan cari narasumber bagaimana menerjemahkan atau menindaklanjuti dari instruksi lisan itu. Harus ada saran juga dari para ahli. Tapi harus menyelesaikan lelang kepala sekolah dan lelang kepala Puskesmas dulu. Kan itu belum dilantik," kata dia.

Made juga menambahkan saat ini BKD belum menentukan waktu pelaksanaan seleksi tersebut. Namun, gubernur dan wakil gubernur telah meminta pelaksanaan tersebut dilakukan bulan depan.

"Waktu pelaksanaannya belum diputuskan. Kalau pimpinan sih pengennya cepat kalau bisa April sudah mulai. Tapi kami juga harus perhitungkan kesiapan segala macamnya. Akan diupayakan April sudah mulai. Tapi jangan sampai mengganggu kinerja PNS yang melakukan tes," ujarnya.

Menurut Data BKD, pejabat eselon III di DKI Jakarta berjumlah 862 orang, yang terdiri dari 615 orang golongan III A dan 247 orang golongan III B. Kemudian untuk pejabat eselon IV berjumlah 5.942 orang, terdiri dari 3.758 orang golongan IV A dan 2.184 orang golongan IV B.

Baltimore Residents Away From Turmoil Consider Their Role

BALTIMORE — In the afternoons, the streets of Locust Point are clean and nearly silent. In front of the rowhouses, potted plants rest next to steps of brick or concrete. There is a shopping center nearby with restaurants, and a grocery store filled with fresh foods.

And the National Guard and the police are largely absent. So, too, residents say, are worries about what happened a few miles away on April 27 when, in a space of hours, parts of this city became riot zones.

“They’re not our reality,” Ashley Fowler, 30, said on Monday at the restaurant where she works. “They’re not what we’re living right now. We live in, not to be racist, white America.”

As Baltimore considers its way forward after the violent unrest brought by the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man who died of injuries he suffered while in police custody, residents in its predominantly white neighborhoods acknowledge that they are sometimes struggling to understand what beyond Mr. Gray’s death spurred the turmoil here. For many, the poverty and troubled schools of gritty West Baltimore are distant troubles, glimpsed only when they pass through the area on their way somewhere else.

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And so neighborhoods of Baltimore are facing altogether different reckonings after Mr. Gray’s death. In mostly black communities like Sandtown-Winchester, where some of the most destructive rioting played out last week, residents are hoping businesses will reopen and that the police will change their strategies. But in mostly white areas like Canton and Locust Point, some residents wonder what role, if any, they should play in reimagining stretches of Baltimore where they do not live.

“Most of the people are kind of at a loss as to what they’re supposed to do,” said Dr. Richard Lamb, a dentist who has practiced in the same Locust Point office for nearly 39 years. “I listen to the news reports. I listen to the clergymen. I listen to the facts of the rampant unemployment and the lack of opportunities in the area. Listen, I pay my taxes. Exactly what can I do?”

And in Canton, where the restaurants have clever names like Nacho Mama’s and Holy Crepe Bakery and Café, Sara Bahr said solutions seemed out of reach for a proudly liberal city.

“I can only imagine how frustrated they must be,” said Ms. Bahr, 36, a nurse who was out with her 3-year-old daughter, Sally. “I just wish I knew how to solve poverty. I don’t know what to do to make it better.”

The day of unrest and the overwhelmingly peaceful demonstrations that followed led to hundreds of arrests, often for violations of the curfew imposed on the city for five consecutive nights while National Guard soldiers patrolled the streets. Although there were isolated instances of trouble in Canton, the neighborhood association said on its website, many parts of southeast Baltimore were physically untouched by the tumult.

Tensions in the city bubbled anew on Monday after reports that the police had wounded a black man in Northwest Baltimore. The authorities denied those reports and sent officers to talk with the crowds that gathered while other officers clutching shields blocked traffic at Pennsylvania and West North Avenues.

Lt. Col. Melvin Russell, a community police officer, said officers had stopped a man suspected of carrying a handgun and that “one of those rounds was spent.”

Colonel Russell said officers had not opened fire, “so we couldn’t have shot him.”

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The colonel said the man had not been injured but was taken to a hospital as a precaution. Nearby, many people stood in disbelief, despite the efforts by the authorities to quash reports they described as “unfounded.”

Monday’s episode was a brief moment in a larger drama that has yielded anger and confusion. Although many people said they were familiar with accounts of the police harassing or intimidating residents, many in Canton and Locust Point said they had never experienced it themselves. When they watched the unrest, which many protesters said was fueled by feelings that they lived only on Baltimore’s margins, even those like Ms. Bahr who were pained by what they saw said they could scarcely comprehend the emotions associated with it.

But others, like Lambi Vasilakopoulos, who runs a casual restaurant in Canton, said they were incensed by what unfolded last week.

“What happened wasn’t called for. Protests are one thing; looting is another thing,” he said, adding, “We’re very frustrated because we’re the ones who are going to pay for this.”

There were pockets of optimism, though, that Baltimore would enter a period of reconciliation.

“I’m just hoping for peace,” Natalie Boies, 53, said in front of the Locust Point home where she has lived for 50 years. “Learn to love each other; be patient with each other; find justice; and care.”

A skeptical Mr. Vasilakopoulos predicted tensions would worsen.

“It cannot be fixed,” he said. “It’s going to get worse. Why? Because people don’t obey the laws. They don’t want to obey them.”

But there were few fears that the violence that plagued West Baltimore last week would play out on these relaxed streets. The authorities, Ms. Fowler said, would make sure of that.

“They kept us safe here,” she said. “I didn’t feel uncomfortable when I was in my house three blocks away from here. I knew I was going to be O.K. because I knew they weren’t going to let anyone come and loot our properties or our businesses or burn our cars.”

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.”

Jozef Paczynski, Inmate Barber to Auschwitz Commandant, Dies at 95

Mr. Paczynski was one of the concentration camp’s longest surviving inmates and served as the personal barber to its Nazi commandant Rudolf Höss.

G.O.P. Hopefuls Now Aiming to Woo the Middle Class

WASHINGTON — The last three men to win the Republican nomination have been the prosperous son of a president (George W. Bush), a senator who could not recall how many homes his family owned (John McCain of Arizona; it was seven) and a private equity executive worth an estimated $200 million (Mitt Romney).

The candidates hoping to be the party’s nominee in 2016 are trying to create a very different set of associations. On Sunday, Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, joined the presidential field.

Senator Marco Rubio of Florida praises his parents, a bartender and a Kmart stock clerk, as he urges audiences not to forget “the workers in our hotel kitchens, the landscaping crews in our neighborhoods, the late-night janitorial staff that clean our offices.”

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a preacher’s son, posts on Twitter about his ham-and-cheese sandwiches and boasts of his coupon-clipping frugality. His $1 Kohl’s sweater has become a campaign celebrity in its own right.

Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky laments the existence of “two Americas,” borrowing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s phrase to describe economically and racially troubled communities like Ferguson, Mo., and Detroit.

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“Some say, ‘But Democrats care more about the poor,’ ” Mr. Paul likes to say. “If that’s true, why is black unemployment still twice white unemployment? Why has household income declined by $3,500 over the past six years?”

We are in the midst of the Empathy Primary — the rhetorical battleground shaping the Republican presidential field of 2016.

Harmed by the perception that they favor the wealthy at the expense of middle-of-the-road Americans, the party’s contenders are each trying their hardest to get across what the elder George Bush once inelegantly told recession-battered voters in 1992: “Message: I care.”

Their ability to do so — less bluntly, more sincerely — could prove decisive in an election year when power, privilege and family connections will loom large for both parties.

Questions of understanding and compassion cost Republicans in the last election. Mr. Romney, who memorably dismissed the “47 percent” of Americans as freeloaders, lost to President Obama by 63 percentage points among voters who cast their ballots for the candidate who “cares about people like me,” according to exit polls.

And a Pew poll from February showed that people still believe Republicans are indifferent to working Americans: 54 percent said the Republican Party does not care about the middle class.

That taint of callousness explains why Senator Ted Cruz of Texas declared last week that Republicans “are and should be the party of the 47 percent” — and why another son of a president, Jeb Bush, has made economic opportunity the centerpiece of his message.

With his pedigree and considerable wealth — since he left the Florida governor’s office almost a decade ago he has earned millions of dollars sitting on corporate boards and advising banks — Mr. Bush probably has the most complicated task making the argument to voters that he understands their concerns.

On a visit last week to Puerto Rico, Mr. Bush sounded every bit the populist, railing against “elites” who have stifled economic growth and innovation. In the kind of economy he envisions leading, he said: “We wouldn’t have the middle being squeezed. People in poverty would have a chance to rise up. And the social strains that exist — because the haves and have-nots is the big debate in our country today — would subside.”

Continue reading the main story

 

Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)?

Republicans’ emphasis on poorer and working-class Americans now represents a shift from the party’s longstanding focus on business owners and “job creators” as the drivers of economic opportunity.

This is intentional, Republican operatives said.

In the last presidential election, Republicans rushed to defend business owners against what they saw as hostility by Democrats to successful, wealthy entrepreneurs.

“Part of what you had was a reaction to the Democrats’ dehumanization of business owners: ‘Oh, you think you started your plumbing company? No you didn’t,’ ” said Grover Norquist, the conservative activist and president of Americans for Tax Reform.

But now, Mr. Norquist said, Republicans should move past that. “Focus on the people in the room who know someone who couldn’t get a job, or a promotion, or a raise because taxes are too high or regulations eat up companies’ time,” he said. “The rich guy can take care of himself.”

Democrats argue that the public will ultimately see through such an approach because Republican positions like opposing a minimum-wage increase and giving private banks a larger role in student loans would hurt working Americans.

“If Republican candidates are just repeating the same tired policies, I’m not sure that smiling while saying it is going to be enough,” said Guy Cecil, a Democratic strategist who is joining a “super PAC” working on behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Republicans have already attacked Mrs. Clinton over the wealth and power she and her husband have accumulated, caricaturing her as an out-of-touch multimillionaire who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech and has not driven a car since 1996.

Mr. Walker hit this theme recently on Fox News, pointing to Mrs. Clinton’s lucrative book deals and her multiple residences. “This is not someone who is connected with everyday Americans,” he said. His own net worth, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is less than a half-million dollars; Mr. Walker also owes tens of thousands of dollars on his credit cards.

But showing off a cheap sweater or boasting of a bootstraps family background not only helps draw a contrast with Mrs. Clinton’s latter-day affluence, it is also an implicit argument against Mr. Bush.

Mr. Walker, who featured a 1998 Saturn with more than 100,000 miles on the odometer in a 2010 campaign ad during his first run for governor, likes to talk about flipping burgers at McDonald’s as a young person. His mother, he has said, grew up on a farm with no indoor plumbing until she was in high school.

Mr. Rubio, among the least wealthy members of the Senate, with an estimated net worth of around a half-million dollars, uses his working-class upbringing as evidence of the “exceptionalism” of America, “where even the son of a bartender and a maid can have the same dreams and the same future as those who come from power and privilege.”

Mr. Cruz alludes to his family’s dysfunction — his parents, he says, were heavy drinkers — and recounts his father’s tale of fleeing Cuba with $100 sewn into his underwear.

Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey notes that his father paid his way through college working nights at an ice cream plant.

But sometimes the attempts at projecting authenticity can seem forced. Mr. Christie recently found himself on the defensive after telling a New Hampshire audience, “I don’t consider myself a wealthy man.” Tax returns showed that he and his wife, a longtime Wall Street executive, earned nearly $700,000 in 2013.

The story of success against the odds is a political classic, even if it is one the Republican Party has not been able to tell for a long time. Ronald Reagan liked to say that while he had not been born on the wrong side of the tracks, he could always hear the whistle. Richard Nixon was fond of reminding voters how he was born in a house his father had built.

“Probably the idea that is most attractive to an average voter, and an idea that both Republicans and Democrats try to craft into their messages, is this idea that you can rise from nothing,” said Charles C. W. Cooke, a writer for National Review.

There is a certain delight Republicans take in turning that message to their advantage now.

“That’s what Obama did with Hillary,” Mr. Cooke said. “He acknowledged it openly: ‘This is ridiculous. Look at me, this one-term senator with dark skin and all of America’s unsolved racial problems, running against the wife of the last Democratic president.”

Negative View of U.S. Race Relations Grows, Poll Finds

Public perceptions of race relations in America have grown substantially more negative in the aftermath of the death of a young black man who was injured while in police custody in Baltimore and the subsequent unrest, far eclipsing the sentiment recorded in the wake of turmoil in Ferguson, Mo., last summer.

Americans are also increasingly likely to say that the police are more apt to use deadly force against a black person, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll finds.

The poll findings highlight the challenges for local leaders and police officials in trying to maintain order while sustaining faith in the criminal justice system in a racially polarized nation.

Sixty-one percent of Americans now say race relations in this country are generally bad. That figure is up sharply from 44 percent after the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown and the unrest that followed in Ferguson in August, and 43 percent in December. In a CBS News poll just two months ago, 38 percent said race relations were generally bad. Current views are by far the worst of Barack Obama’s presidency.

The negative sentiment is echoed by broad majorities of blacks and whites alike, a stark change from earlier this year, when 58 percent of blacks thought race relations were bad, but just 35 percent of whites agreed. In August, 48 percent of blacks and 41 percent of whites said they felt that way.

Looking ahead, 44 percent of Americans think race relations are worsening, up from 36 percent in December. Forty-one percent of blacks and 46 percent of whites think so. Pessimism among whites has increased 10 points since December.

Continue reading the main story

Do you think race relations in the United States are generally good or generally bad?

60

40

20

0

White

Black

May '14

May '15

Generally bad

 

 

Continue reading the main story

Do you think race relations in the United States are getting better, getting worse or staying about the same?

Getting worse

Staying the same

Getting better

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

44%

37

17

46

36

16

41

42

15

 

 

The poll finds that profound racial divisions in views of how the police use deadly force remain. Blacks are more than twice as likely to say police in most communities are more apt to use deadly force against a black person — 79 percent of blacks say so compared with 37 percent of whites. A slim majority of whites say race is not a factor in a police officer’s decision to use deadly force.

Overall, 44 percent of Americans say deadly force is more likely to be used against a black person, up from 37 percent in August and 40 percent in December.

Blacks also remain far more likely than whites to say they feel mostly anxious about the police in their community. Forty-two percent say so, while 51 percent feel mostly safe. Among whites, 8 in 10 feel mostly safe.

One proposal to address the matter — having on-duty police officers wear body cameras — receives overwhelming support. More than 9 in 10 whites and blacks alike favor it.

Continue reading the main story

How would you describe your feelings about the police in your community? Would you say they make you feel mostly safe or mostly anxious?

Mostly safe

Mostly anxious

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

75%

21

3

81

16

3

51

42

7

 

 

Continue reading the main story

In general, do you think the police in most communities are more likely to use deadly force against a black person, or more likely to use it against a white person, or don’t you think race affects police use of deadly force?

Police more likely to use deadly force against a black person

Police more likely to use deadly force against a white person

Race DOES NOT affect police use of deadly force

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

44%

37%

79%

2%

2%

1%

46%

53%

16%

9%

8%

4%

 

 

Continue reading the main story

Do you favor or oppose on-duty police officers wearing video cameras that would record events and actions as they occur?

Favor

Oppose

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

92%

93%

93%

6%

5%

5%

2%

2%

2%

 

 

Asked specifically about the situation in Baltimore, most Americans expressed at least some confidence that the investigation by local authorities would be conducted fairly. But while nearly two-thirds of whites think so, fewer than half of blacks agree. Still, more blacks are confident now than were in August regarding the investigation in Ferguson. On Friday, six members of the police force involved in the arrest of Mr. Gray were charged with serious offenses, including manslaughter. The poll was conducted Thursday through Sunday; results from before charges were announced are similar to those from after.

Reaction to the recent turmoil in Baltimore, however, is similar among blacks and whites. Most Americans, 61 percent, say the unrest after Mr. Gray’s death was not justified. That includes 64 percent of whites and 57 percent of blacks.

Continue reading the main story

As you may know, a Baltimore man, Freddie Gray, recently died after being in the custody of the Baltimore police. How much confidence do you have that the investigation by local authorities into this matter will be conducted fairly?

A lot

Some

Not much

None at all

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

29%

31

22

14

5

31

33

20

11

5

20

26

30

22

 

 

In general, do you think the unrest in Baltimore after the death of Freddie Gray was justified, or do you think the unrest was not justified?

Justified

Not justified

Don't know/No answer

All adults

Whites

Blacks

28%

61

11

26

64

11

37

57

6

 

 

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.

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.

Fatal Police Shootings: Accounts Since Ferguson

Photo

 

 

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

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.

Meet Mago, Former Heavyweight

GREENWICH, Conn. — Mago is in the bedroom. You can go in.

The big man lies on a hospital bed with his bare feet scraping its bottom rail. His head is propped on a scarlet pillow, the left temple dented, the right side paralyzed. His dark hair is kept just long enough to conceal the scars.

The occasional sounds he makes are understood only by his wife, but he still has that punctuating left hand. In slow motion, the fingers curl and close. A thumbs-up greeting.

Hello, Mago.

This is Magomed Abdusalamov, 34, also known as the Russian Tyson, also known as Mago. He is a former heavyweight boxer who scored four knockouts and 14 technical knockouts in his first 18 professional fights. He preferred to stand between rounds. Sitting conveyed weakness.

But Mago lost his 19th fight, his big chance, at the packed Theater at Madison Square Garden in November 2013. His 19th decision, and his last.

Now here he is, in a small bedroom in a working-class neighborhood in Greenwich, in a modest house his family rents cheap from a devoted friend. The air-pressure machine for his mattress hums like an expectant crowd.

Photo

 

Today is like any other day, except for those days when he is hurried in crisis to the hospital. Every three hours during the night, his slight wife, Bakanay, 28, has risen to turn his 6-foot-3 body — 210 pounds of dead weight. It has to be done. Infections of the gaping bedsore above his tailbone have nearly killed him.

Then, with the help of a young caretaker, Baka has gotten two of their daughters off to elementary school and settled down the toddler. Yes, Mago and Baka are blessed with all girls, but they had also hoped for a son someday.

They feed Mago as they clean him; it’s easier that way. For breakfast, which comes with a side of crushed antiseizure pills, he likes oatmeal with a squirt of Hershey’s chocolate syrup. But even oatmeal must be puréed and fed to him by spoon.

He opens his mouth to indicate more, the way a baby does. But his paralysis has made everything a choking hazard. His water needs a stirring of powdered food thickener, and still he chokes — eh-eh-eh — as he tries to cough up what will not go down.

Mago used to drink only water. No alcohol. Not even soda. A sip of juice would be as far as he dared. Now even water betrays him.

With the caretaker’s help, Baka uses a washcloth and soap to clean his body and shampoo his hair. How handsome still, she has thought. Sometimes, in the night, she leaves the bedroom to watch old videos, just to hear again his voice in the fullness of life. She cries, wipes her eyes and returns, feigning happiness. Mago must never see her sad.

Photo

 

When Baka finishes, Mago is cleanshaven and fresh down to his trimmed and filed toenails. “I want him to look good,” she says.

Theirs was an arranged Muslim marriage in Makhachkala, in the Russian republic of Dagestan. He was 23, she was 18 and their future hinged on boxing. Sometimes they would shadowbox in love, her David to his Goliath. You are so strong, he would tell her.

His father once told him he could either be a bandit or an athlete, but if he chose banditry, “I will kill you.” This paternal advice, Mago later told The Ventura County Reporter, “made it a very easy decision for me.”

Mago won against mediocre competition, in Moscow and Hollywood, Fla., in Las Vegas and Johnstown, Pa. He was knocked down only once, and even then, it surprised more than hurt. He scored a technical knockout in the next round.

It all led up to this: the undercard at the Garden, Mike Perez vs. Magomed Abdusalamov, 10 rounds, on HBO. A win, he believed, would improve his chances of taking on the heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, who sat in the crowd of 4,600 with his fiancée, the actress Hayden Panettiere, watching.

Wearing black-and-red trunks and a green mouth guard, Mago went to work. But in the first round, a hard forearm to his left cheek rocked him. At the bell, he returned to his corner, and this time, he sat down. “I think it’s broken,” he repeatedly said in Russian.

Photo

 

Maybe at that point, somebody — the referee, the ringside doctors, his handlers — should have stopped the fight, under a guiding principle: better one punch too early than one punch too late. But the bloody trade of blows continued into the seventh, eighth, ninth, a hand and orbital bone broken, his face transforming.

Meanwhile, in the family’s apartment in Miami, Baka forced herself to watch the broadcast. She could see it in his swollen eyes. Something was off.

After the final round, Perez raised his tattooed arms in victory, and Mago wandered off in a fog. He had taken 312 punches in about 40 minutes, for a purse of $40,000.

In the locker room, doctors sutured a cut above Mago’s left eye and tested his cognitive abilities. He did not do well. The ambulance that waits in expectation at every fight was not summoned by boxing officials.

Blood was pooling in Mago’s cranial cavity as he left the Garden. He vomited on the pavement while his handlers flagged a taxi to St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital. There, doctors induced a coma and removed part of his skull to drain fluids and ease the swelling.

Then came the stroke.

Photo

 

It is lunchtime now, and the aroma of puréed beef and potatoes lingers. So do the questions.

How will Mago and Baka pay the $2 million in medical bills they owe? What if their friend can no longer offer them this home? Will they win their lawsuits against the five ringside doctors, the referee, and a New York State boxing inspector? What about Mago’s future care?

Most of all: Is this it?

A napkin rests on Mago’s chest. As another spoonful of mush approaches, he opens his mouth, half-swallows, chokes, and coughs until it clears. Eh-eh-eh. Sometimes he turns bluish, but Baka never shows fear. Always happy for Mago.

Some days he is wheeled out for physical therapy or speech therapy. Today, two massage therapists come to knead his half-limp body like a pair of skilled corner men.

Soon, Mago will doze. Then his three daughters, ages 2, 6 and 9, will descend upon him to talk of their day. Not long ago, the oldest lugged his championship belt to school for a proud show-and-tell moment. Her classmates were amazed at the weight of it.

Then, tonight, there will be more puréed food and pulverized medication, more coughing, and more tender care from his wife, before sleep comes.

Goodbye, Mago.

He half-smiles, raises his one good hand, and forms a fist.

Jean Nidetch, 91, Dies; Pounds Came Off, and Weight Watchers Was Born

A 214-pound Queens housewife struggled with a lifelong addiction to food until she shed 72 pounds and became the public face of the worldwide weight-control empire Weight Watchers.

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.

François Michelin, Head of Tire Company, Dies at 88

Under Mr. Michelin’s leadership, which ended when he left the company in 2002, the Michelin Group became the world’s biggest tire maker, establishing a big presence in the United States and other major markets overseas.

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.