PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

MOBIL SUZUKI MURAH 085669970237

SUZUKI ERTIGA, Suzuki Indomobil Sales telah meluncurkan salah satu produk MPV (Multi Passenger Vehicle); yaitu kendaraan yang dapat mengangkut penumpang dalam jumlah relatif banyak, setelah sebelumnya Suzuki telah mengeluarkan produk MPV lainnya, yaitu Suzuki APV. Pada tanggal 22 April 2012, Suzuki Ertiga sebagai produk MPV Suzuki terbaru telah diluncurkan, dan pada saat launching tersebut juga disiarkan secara langsung oleh salah satu stasiun TV swasta nasional.

Dan pada saat ini, khusus untuk Suzuki Ertiga, pihak Suzuki Indomobil Sales yang telah meramalkan bahwa produk terbarunya ini, Suzuki Ertiga, akan sukses di pasar, maka pihak Suzuki Indomobil Sales mempersiapkan diri dengan merancang suatu sistem pemantauan pemesanan Suzuki Ertiga (Ertiga Customer Indent Tracking).

Adapun fungsi dari adanya pemantauan antrian / banyaknya pemesan yang rela inden adalah supaya masing-masing customer yang telah menginden dapat melihat bahwa tidak adanya sistem tumpang tindih yang memungkinkan dealer / sales memainkan harga dengan menaikkan harga Suzuki Ertiga tersebut (upping harga Suzuki Ertiga).

Untuk harga / pricelist Suzuki Ertiga waktu pertama kali launching hingga tanggal tulisan ini dibuat adalah sebagai berikut:

Ertiga GA --- Rp 143.000.000

Ertiga GL --- Rp 153.000.000

Ertiga GX --- Rp 165.000.000

SPESIFIKASI SUZUKI ERTIGA

* Eksterior *

Desain bodi Suzuki Ertiga sangat aerodinamis, sehingga mobil berjalan seperti tanpa hambatan (tidak tertahan oleh angin) Grille depan Suzuki Ertiga seperti membentuk huruf V, memberikan kesan sporty dan juga tegas Terdapat Fog Lamp pada Suzuki Ertiga (pada tipe GL dan tipe GX) Velg Racing / Alloy Wheel (pada Suzuki Ertiga GL dan Suzuki Ertiga GX) Terdapat Door Mirror Cover With Turn Signal (Kaca spion dilengkapi lampu sign) pada Suzuki Ertiga tipe GL dan Suzuki Ertiga GX.

*Interior*

Interior Suzuki Ertiga sangat mewah, dengan dashboar berwarna coklat muda yang sangat modern, selain itu dilengkapi Head Unit yang sangat canggih, dan juga untuk menunjang kenyamanan berkendara tersebut maka Suzuki Ertiga menyediakan slot USB, sehingga sensasi berkendara jadi lebih menyenangkan Tilt Steering pada Suzuki Ertiga membuat pengemudi dapat menyesuaikan kenyamanannya dengan dapat disesuaikannya posisi stir dengan postur tubuh pengemudi

Dashboard kendaraan MPV selama ini menampilkan informasi hanya Trip Meter, Odo Meter, dan Jam Digital saja. Namun, pada Suzuki Ertiga informasi-informasi tersebut ditambahkan lagi dengan adanya Fuel Consumption Average (pengukur pemakaian bahan bakar rata-rata, dan pengukur pemakaian bahan bakar pada saat berjalan) -Khusus pada Suzuki Ertiga tipe GX ada penambahan Termometer (pengukur suhu luar kendaraan) Kursi pada baris kedua, bisa digeser sejauh 240mm, sehingga menyediakan ruang yang leluasa untuk penumpang pada baris ketiga Fitur One Touch Walk In pada bangku pada baris kedua; hanya dengan mengangkat tuas keatas maka memudahkan akses bagi penumpang di baris ketiga.

Steering Switch, memudahkan pengemudi Suzuki Ertiga untuk mengganti channel audio tanpa harus memindahkan tangan dari setir.

*Security / Keamanan*

Pada setiap pintu Suzuki Ertiga (baik depan maupun belakang) sudah dilengkapi oleh Side Beam, fitur ini tidaklah digunakan oleh produk kompetitor. Adapun fungsi dari Side Beam adalah memperkecil efek benturan dari samping, sehingga penumpang akan lebih aman terhadap efek-efek yang berakibat fatal.

Seat Belt pada masing-masing penumpang Suzuki Ertiga akan membuat keseluruhan penumpang menjadi lebih aman ABS & EBD yang tersedia hanya pada Suzuki Ertiga GX Pada Suzuki Ertiga GX tersedia Air Bag

*Kenyamanan*

Bila pada kompetitor-kompetitor menggunakan roda belakang sebagai penggerak, maka pada Suzuki Ertiga penggeraknya adalah roda depan. Oleh karena itu maka tenaga yang dihasilkan Suzuki Ertiga adalah lebih maksimal dan karena digerakkan oleh roda depan juga menghasilkan konsumsi bensin yang lebih irit Jarak roda antara ban depan dengan ban belakang Suzuki Ertiga adalah lebih jauh bila dibandingkan dengan kompetitor sehingga menghasilkan kestabilan kendaraan yang jauh lebih baik dibandingkan dengan kompetitor-komptetitornya.

Demikian adalah spesifikiasi dan keunggulan dari Suzuki Ertiga dibandingkan pesaing, namun itu semua belumlah lengkap apabila anda belum mencoba Test Drive secara langsung Suzuki Ertiga ini dan merasakan sensasinya secara langsung bersama keluarga anda.

Selain itu pihak Suzuki Indomobil Sales mengadakan Test Drive berhadiah 5 Mobil Suzuki Ertiga dan 50 Motor Suzuki Nex bagi anda yang beruntung, masing-masing setiap bulannya akan diambil 1 pemenang Suzuki Ertiga dan juga 10 pemenang motor Suzuki Nex, kesempatan ini bisa anda dapatkan hanya dengan Test Drive Suzuki Ertiga saja.

31 MOTOR AKIL DISITA KPK

saco-indonesia.com, Komisi Pemberantasan Korupsi telah kembali menyita kendaraan yang diduga terkait dengan modus pencucian uang mantan Ketua Mahkamah Konstitusi, Akil Mochtar. Kali ini, penyidik telah menyita 31 sepeda motor dari berbagai tipe dan merek dari kawasan Cempaka Putih, Jakarta Pusat, diduga dari hasil pencucian uang Akil.

"Malam ini telah dilakukan penyitaan 31 sepeda motor dari berbagai merek," kata Juru Bicara KPK, Johan Budi.

Menurut Johan, yang berusia 31 tahun kuda besi itu diduga telah di bawah kepemilikan dan penguasaan Mochtar Ependy. Mochtar diketahui adalah salah satu orang dekat Akil, dan diduga telah menjadi pihak yang turut aktif membantu Akil melakukan pencucian uang.

Menurut Johan, seluruh sepeda motor itu telah disita dari rumah atau tempat di kawasan Cempaka Putih. "Rencananya malam ini motor-motor itu akan dibawa ke kantor KPK," ujar Johan.

Sebelumnya, KPK juga sudah menyita puluhan mobil dari berbagai merek dan tipe, juga terkait dengan pencucian uang Akil Mochtar. Mobil-mobil itu terjejer rapi di halaman parkir Gedung KPK. Selain itu, lembaga antikorupsi itu juga telah menyita sejumlah tanah serta tanah dan bangunan juga diduga terkait pencucian uang mantan politikus Partai Golkar itu.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

RIZAL RAMLI SIAPKAN 200 PENGACARA

saco-indonesia.com, Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) telah melayangkan somasi kepada mantan Menko Perekonomian Rizal Ramli terkait dalam pernyataan Rizal yang telah menyatakan bahwa jabatan Wapres Boediono adalah gratifikasi dari kasus Bank Century. Menanggapi hal itu, Rizal Ramli juga mengaku telah menyiapkan 200 lebih pengacara untuk dapat menghadapi somasi SBY itu. "Kami juga akan siapkan 200 lebih pengacara untuk somasi ini. Dalam suasana Indonesia yang pragmatis, transaksional ini, ratusan lawyer telah melawan kekuatan anti demokrasi secara sukrela dan juga telah memberi harapan kepada kami," kata Rizal di Gedung Juang, Jalan Menteng Raya, Jakarta Pusat, Senin (27/1/2014). Rizal pun juga terkesan dengan pengacara yang ingin membelanya dalam melawan somasi SBY tersebut. Salah satu pengacara yang telah bergabung adalah Ahmad Rifai yang juga pengacara KPK. "Sangat mengagumkan dan mengharukan, ternyata banyak sekali lawyer-lawyer yang secara probono, sukarela, beramai-ramai bergabung untuk dapat memperjuangkan demokrasi dan kebebasan berpendapat di Indonesia," tegasnya. Sekedar diketahui, selain Rizal Ramli, pengacara keluarga Presiden SBY, Palmer Situmorang juga telah melayangkan somasi kepada loyalis Anas Urbaningrum yang juga anggota Perhimpunan Pergerakan Indonesia (PPI), Sri Mulyono karena tulisannya di laman Kompasiana berjudul "Anas: Kejarlah Daku Kau Terungkap Editor : Dian Sukmawati saco-indonesia.com, Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) telah melayangkan somasi kepada mantan Menko Perekonomian Rizal Ramli terkait dalam pernyataan Rizal yang telah menyatakan bahwa jabatan Wapres Boediono adalah gratifikasi dari kasus Bank Century. Menanggapi hal itu, Rizal Ramli juga mengaku telah menyiapkan 200 lebih pengacara untuk dapat menghadapi somasi SBY itu. "Kami juga akan siapkan 200 lebih pengacara untuk somasi ini. Dalam suasana Indonesia yang pragmatis, transaksional ini, ratusan lawyer telah melawan kekuatan anti demokrasi secara sukrela dan juga telah memberi harapan kepada kami," kata Rizal di Gedung Juang, Jalan Menteng Raya, Jakarta Pusat, Senin (27/1/2014). Rizal pun juga terkesan dengan pengacara yang ingin membelanya dalam melawan somasi SBY tersebut. Salah satu pengacara yang telah bergabung adalah Ahmad Rifai yang juga pengacara KPK. "Sangat mengagumkan dan mengharukan, ternyata banyak sekali lawyer-lawyer yang secara probono, sukarela, beramai-ramai bergabung untuk dapat memperjuangkan demokrasi dan kebebasan berpendapat di Indonesia," tegasnya. Sekedar diketahui, selain Rizal Ramli, pengacara keluarga Presiden SBY, Palmer Situmorang juga telah melayangkan somasi kepada loyalis Anas Urbaningrum yang juga anggota Perhimpunan Pergerakan Indonesia (PPI), Sri Mulyono karena tulisannya di laman Kompasiana berjudul "Anas: Kejarlah Daku Kau Terungkap Editor : Dian Sukmawati > RIZAL RAMLI SIAPKAN 200 PENGACARA

CERITA SEDIH

tentang cinta pertama

Aku mengenalnya semenjak aku berusia 5 tahun, tapi mulainya rasa itu ada ketika aku duduk di kelas 4 SD, semenjak itu aku merasa aneh, karena usiaku juga masih terbilang kanak2. Entah apa yang aku rasa saat itu, aku tak mengerti apa yang sedang terjadi kala itu, aku seperti orang yang tak tentu arah.

Saat aku sadari ternyata aku mulai suka, ya aku suka untuk yang pertama kali pada seseorang. Namun aku tak mampu melakukan apa yang ingin aku lakukan. Aku hanya mengaguminya dari kejauhan, aku hanya mampu melihat senyumnya dari sini dari tempatku duduk kala itu. Aku melihatnya tertawa dan melihat bermain bola di lapangan itu, apa lagi saat kita bermain dan kejar2an. Aku sungguh suka... Laki laki yang aku pandang terlihat tampan dengan gayanya yg khas dan aku suka itu. Matanya sangat indah, rambutnya yang agak kriting menambah getaran dalam dada ini. Huuuuh aku suka dia, benar-benar suka dia.

Rasa ini semakin hari semakin dalam. Setiap hari yang aku ingin hanya memandang wajahnya. Suatu hari aku melihat tatapan matanya, tatapan mata yang sangat sejuk. Yang mampu membuat jantung ini berdegup lebih cepat. Dan akhirnya aku mulai bisa dekat dgn dia, karena saat itu aku dukuk 1 bangku dengannya,1 minggu itu. sangat menyenangkan, aku merasa sangat bahagia.

Hingga suatu hari, apa yang aku takutkan terjadi, dia pergi. Pergi tanpa pesan terakhir. Kini, hanya ada aku dan kenangan itu. Aku hanya mampu mengingatnya, mengingat semua senyumnya dan tatapan indah itu. Aku berjalan gontai sambil meneteskan air mata, air mata kehilangan. Dia, takkan pernah tau betapa sakitnya aku saat itu, saat dia pergi dariku. Aku tak mampu berkata apapun, aku hanya menangis dalam diam, menyesali semuanya. Aku mencoba tegar, aku mencoba terus untuk menutup luka ini, luka yang kau beri. Aku mencoba bahagia dgn apa yg aku milikki saat itu. Aku mencoba bertahan dgn senyumanku.

"Yaa Allah, jaga dia selama dia jauh dari sisiku". Dan saat itu aku mulai sadar, inilah cinta pertamaku. Di dalam penantianku, ada seorang pria datang dgn membawa sejuta cinta. Aku masih ingin diam, dan diam menunggu cintaku kembali dalam pelukku. Namun kehadirannya membuat aku tertawa seperti dulu, tetapi sungguh dalam hati ini masih ada nama cinta pertamaku. Aku hanya mampu tertawa sesaat saja, setelah itu kembali menangis dalam diamku, dalam penantianku. Untuk sementara waktu, sakitku terobati oleh kehadirannya di dalam sepiku. Namun hanya sementara dan setelah itu kami berpisah...klik di sini untuk kelanjutan nya .

by yandre pramana putra

GEISHA HATIKU BICARA

    saco-indonesia.com,

    Ku sadari keras watakku padamu
    Mungkin ku salah menyakitimu
    Atau mungkin pernah ku menduakanmu
    Memang ku kurang menghargaimu

    *
    Dan kini lantang hati bicara
    Takkan pernah ku buat kau kecewa
    Pastikan ku berubah

    **
    Kau buat hatiku bicara
    Cinta sungguh ku cinta
    Dan kau buat hatiku terus berkata
    Cintta sungguh ku cintaKau pahami semua caraku padamu
    Susah percaya dan terus mengganggu
    Fikiranmu yang tak lagi pikirkanku
    Ku tak percaya kau telah begitu

    Back to *, **

    Kau buat hatiku bicara
    Cinta sungguh ku cinta
    Dan ku pastikan semuanya karenamu

    Editor : Dian Sukmawati

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

David Goldman/Associated Press

National Guard soldiers boarding a truck in Baltimore on Sunday.

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

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

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, 93, Dies; Polish Auschwitz Survivor Aided Jews

Mr. Bartoszewski was given honorary Israeli citizenship for his work to save Jews during World War II and later surprised even himself by being instrumental in reconciling Poland and Germany.

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.

Take the Money and Run

The career criminals in genre novels don’t have money problems. If they need some, they just go out and steal it. But such financial transactions can backfire, which is what happened back in 2004 when the Texas gang in Michael

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.”

Don Mankiewicz, Screenwriter in a Family Film Tradition, Dies at 93

Mr. Mankiewicz, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter for “I Want to Live!,” also wrote episodes of television shows such as “Star Trek” and “Marcus Welby, M.D.”

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.

Dave Goldberg, Head of Web Survey Company and Half of a Silicon Valley Power Couple, Dies at 47

By VINDU GOEL and QUENTIN HARDY

Mr. Goldberg was a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist who was married to Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook.

Dave Goldberg Was Lifelong Women’s Advocate

Ellen Turner Dies at 87; Opened Kitchen to Feed the Needy of Knoxville

Ms. Turner and her twin sister founded the Love Kitchen in 1986 in a church basement in Knoxville, Tenn., and it continues to provide clothing and meals.

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

 

 

Cher and Marc Jacobs

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

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

From T Magazine: Street Lit’s Power Couple

THE WRITERS ASHLEY AND JAQUAVIS COLEMAN know the value of a good curtain-raiser. The couple have co-authored dozens of novels, and they like to start them with a bang: a headlong action sequence, a blast of violence or sex that rocks readers back on their heels. But the Colemans concede they would be hard-pressed to dream up anything more gripping than their own real-life opening scene.

In the summer of 2001, JaQuavis Coleman was a 16-year-old foster child in Flint, Mich., the former auto-manufacturing mecca that had devolved, in the wake of General Motors’ plant closures, into one of the country’s most dangerous cities, with a decimated economy and a violent crime rate more than three times the national average. When JaQuavis was 8, social services had removed him from his mother’s home. He spent years bouncing between foster families. At 16, JaQuavis was also a businessman: a crack dealer with a network of street-corner peddlers in his employ.

One day that summer, JaQuavis met a fellow dealer in a parking lot on Flint’s west side. He was there to make a bulk sale of a quarter-brick, or “nine-piece” — a nine-ounce parcel of cocaine, with a street value of about $11,000. In the middle of the transaction, JaQuavis heard the telltale chirp of a walkie-talkie. His customer, he now realized, was an undercover policeman. JaQuavis jumped into his car and spun out onto the road, with two unmarked police cars in pursuit. He didn’t want to get into a high-speed chase, so he whipped his car into a church parking lot and made a run for it, darting into an alleyway behind a row of small houses, where he tossed the quarter-brick into some bushes. When JaQuavis reached the small residential street on the other side of the houses, he was greeted by the police, who handcuffed him and went to search behind the houses where, they told him, they were certain he had ditched the drugs. JaQuavis had been dealing since he was 12, had amassed more than $100,000 and had never been arrested. Now, he thought: It’s over.

But when the police looked in the bushes, they couldn’t find any cocaine. They interrogated JaQuavis, who denied having ever possessed or sold drugs. They combed the backyard alley some more. After an hour of fruitless efforts, the police were forced to unlock the handcuffs and release their suspect.

JaQuavis was baffled by the turn of events until the next day, when he received a phone call. The previous afternoon, a 15-year-old girl had been sitting in her home on the west side of Flint when she heard sirens. She looked out of the window of her bedroom, and watched a young man throw a package in the bushes behind her house. She recognized him. He was a high school classmate — a handsome, charismatic boy whom she had admired from afar. The girl crept outside and grabbed the bundle, which she hid in her basement. “I have something that belongs to you,” Ashley Snell told JaQuavis Coleman when she reached him by phone. “You wanna come over here and pick it up?”

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In the Colemans’ first novel, “Dirty Money” (2005), they told a version of this story. The outline was the same: the drug deal gone bad, the dope chucked in the bushes, the fateful phone call. To the extent that the authors took poetic license, it was to tone down the meet-cute improbability of the true-life events. In “Dirty Money,” the girl, Anari, and the crack dealer, Maurice, circle each other warily for a year or so before coupling up. But the facts of Ashley and JaQuavis’s romance outstripped pulp fiction. They fell in love more or less at first sight, moved into their own apartment while still in high school and were married in 2008. “We were together from the day we met,” Ashley says. “I don’t think we’ve spent more than a week apart in total over the past 14 years.”

That partnership turned out to be creative and entrepreneurial as well as romantic. Over the past decade, the Colemans have published nearly 50 books, sometimes as solo writers, sometimes under pseudonyms, but usually as collaborators with a byline that has become a trusted brand: “Ashley & JaQuavis.” They are marquee stars of urban fiction, or street lit, a genre whose inner-city settings and lurid mix of crime, sex and sensationalism have earned it comparisons to gangsta rap. The emergence of street lit is one of the big stories in recent American publishing, a juggernaut that has generated huge sales by catering to a readership — young, black and, for the most part, female — that historically has been ill-served by the book business. But the genre is also widely maligned. Street lit is subject to a kind of triple snobbery: scorned by literati who look down on genre fiction generally, ignored by a white publishing establishment that remains largely indifferent to black books and disparaged by African-American intellectuals for poor writing, coarse values and trafficking in racial stereotypes.

But if a certain kind of cultural prestige is shut off to the Colemans, they have reaped other rewards. They’ve built a large and loyal fan base, which gobbles up the new Ashley & JaQuavis titles that arrive every few months. Many of those books are sold at street-corner stands and other off-the-grid venues in African-American neighborhoods, a literary gray market that doesn’t register a blip on best-seller tallies. Yet the Colemans’ most popular series now regularly crack the trade fiction best-seller lists of The New York Times and Publishers Weekly. For years, the pair had no literary agent; they sold hundreds of thousands of books without banking a penny in royalties. Still, they have earned millions of dollars, almost exclusively from cash-for-manuscript deals negotiated directly with independent publishing houses. In short, though little known outside of the world of urban fiction, the Colemans are one of America’s most successful literary couples, a distinction they’ve achieved, they insist, because of their work’s gritty authenticity and their devotion to a primal literary virtue: the power of the ripping yarn.

“When you read our books, you’re gonna realize: ‘Ashley & JaQuavis are storytellers,’ ” says Ashley. “Our tales will get your heart pounding.”

THE COLEMANS’ HOME BASE — the cottage from which they operate their cottage industry — is a spacious four-bedroom house in a genteel suburb about 35 miles north of downtown Detroit. The house is plush, but when I visited this past winter, it was sparsely appointed. The couple had just recently moved in, and had only had time to fully furnish the bedroom of their 4-year-old son, Quaye.

In conversation, Ashley and JaQuavis exude both modesty and bravado: gratitude for their good fortune and bootstrappers’ pride in having made their own luck. They talk a lot about their time in the trenches, the years they spent as a drug dealer and “ride-or-die girl” tandem. In Flint they learned to “grind hard.” Writing, they say, is merely a more elevated kind of grind.

“Instead of hitting the block like we used to, we hit the laptops,” says Ashley. “I know what every word is worth. So while I’m writing, I’m like: ‘Okay, there’s a hundred dollars. There’s a thousand dollars. There’s five thousand dollars.’ ”

They maintain a rigorous regimen. They each try to write 5,000 words per day, five days a week. The writers stagger their shifts: JaQuavis goes to bed at 7 p.m. and wakes up early, around 3 or 4 in the morning, to work while his wife and child sleep. Ashley writes during the day, often in libraries or at Starbucks.

They divide the labor in other ways. Chapters are divvied up more or less equally, with tasks assigned according to individual strengths. (JaQuavis typically handles character development. Ashley loves writing murder scenes.) The results are stitched together, with no editorial interference from one author in the other’s text. The real work, they contend, is the brainstorming. The Colemans spend weeks mapping out their plot-driven books — long conversations that turn into elaborate diagrams on dry-erase boards. “JaQuavis and I are so close, it makes the process real easy,” says Ashley. “Sometimes when I’m thinking of something, a plot point, he’ll say it out loud, and I’m like: ‘Wait — did I say that?’ ”

Their collaboration developed by accident, and on the fly. Both were bookish teenagers. Ashley read lots of Judy Blume and John Grisham; JaQuavis liked Shakespeare, Richard Wright and “Atlas Shrugged.” (Their first official date was at a Borders bookstore, where Ashley bought “The Coldest Winter Ever,” the Sister Souljah novel often credited with kick-starting the contemporary street-lit movement.) In 2003, Ashley, then 17, was forced to terminate an ectopic pregnancy. She was bedridden for three weeks, and to provide distraction and boost her spirits, JaQuavis challenged his girlfriend to a writing contest. “She just wasn’t talking. She was laying in bed. I said, ‘You know what? I bet you I could write a better book than you.’ My wife is real competitive. So I said, ‘Yo, all right, $500 bet.’ And I saw her eyes spark, like, ‘What?! You can’t write no better book than me!’ So I wrote about three chapters. She wrote about three chapters. Two days later, we switched.”

The result, hammered out in a few days, would become “Dirty Money.” Two years later, when Ashley and JaQuavis were students at Ferris State University in Western Michigan, they sold the manuscript to Urban Books, a street-lit imprint founded by the best-selling author Carl Weber. At the time, JaQuavis was still making his living selling drugs. When Ashley got the phone call informing her that their book had been bought, she assumed they’d hit it big, and flushed more than $10,000 worth of cocaine down the toilet. Their advance was a mere $4,000.

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Those advances would soon increase, eventually reaching five and six figures. The Colemans built their career, JaQuavis says, in a manner that made sense to him as a veteran dope peddler: by flooding the street with product. From the start, they were prolific, churning out books at a rate of four or five a year. Their novels made their way into stores; the now-defunct chain Waldenbooks, which had stores in urban areas typically bypassed by booksellers, was a major engine of the street-lit market. But Ashley and JaQuavis took advantage of distribution channels established by pioneering urban fiction authors such as Teri Woods and Vickie Stringer, and a network of street-corner tables, magazine stands, corner shops and bodegas. Like rappers who establish their bona fides with gray-market mixtapes, street-lit authors use this system to circumnavigate industry gatekeepers, bringing their work straight to the genre’s core readership. But urban fiction has other aficionados, in less likely places. “Our books are so popular in the prison system,” JaQuavis says. “We’re banned in certain penitentiaries. Inmates fight over the books — there are incidents, you know? I have loved ones in jail, and they’re like: ‘Yo, your books can’t come in here. It’s against the rules.’ ”

The appeal of the Colemans’ work is not hard to fathom. The books are formulaic and taut; they deliver the expected goods efficiently and exuberantly. The titles telegraph the contents: “Diary of a Street Diva,” “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang,” “Murderville.” The novels serve up a stream of explicit sex and violence in a slangy, tangy, profane voice. In Ashley & JaQuavis’s books people don’t get killed: they get “popped,” “laid out,” get their “cap twisted back.” The smut is constant, with emphasis on the earthy, sticky, olfactory particulars. Romance novel clichés — shuddering orgasms, heroic carnal feats, superlative sexual skill sets — are rendered in the Colemans’ punchy patois.

Subtlety, in other words, isn’t Ashley & JaQuavis’s forte. But their books do have a grainy specificity. In “The Cartel” (2008), the first novel in the Colemans’ best-selling saga of a Miami drug syndicate, they catch the sights and smells of a crack workshop in a housing project: the nostril-stinging scent of cocaine and baking soda bubbling on stovetops; the teams of women, stripped naked except for hospital masks so they can’t pilfer the merchandise, “cutting up the cooked coke on the round wood table.” The subject matter is dark, but the Colemans’ tone is not quite noir. Even in the grimmest scenes, the mood is high-spirited, with the writers palpably relishing the lewd and gory details: the bodies writhing in boudoirs and crumpling under volleys of bullets, the geysers of blood and other bodily fluids.

The luridness of street lit has made it a flashpoint, inciting controversy reminiscent of the hip-hop culture wars of the 1980s and ’90s. But the street-lit debate touches deeper historical roots, reviving decades-old arguments in black literary circles about the mandate to uplift the race and present wholesome images of African-Americans. In 1928, W. E. B. Du Bois slammed the “licentiousness” of “Home to Harlem,” Claude McKay’s rollicking novel of Harlem nightlife. McKay’s book, Du Bois wrote, “for the most part nauseates me, and after the dirtier parts of its filth I feel distinctly like taking a bath.” Similar sentiments have greeted 21st-century street lit. In a 2006 New York Times Op-Ed essay, the journalist and author Nick Chiles decried “the sexualization and degradation of black fiction.” African-American bookstores, Chiles complained, are “overrun with novels that . . . appeal exclusively to our most prurient natures — as if these nasty books were pairing off back in the stockrooms like little paperback rabbits and churning out even more graphic offspring that make Ralph Ellison books cringe into a dusty corner.”

Copulating paperbacks aside, it’s clear that the street-lit debate is about more than literature, touching on questions of paternalism versus populism, and on middle-class anxieties about the black underclass. “It’s part and parcel of black elites’ efforts to define not only a literary tradition, but a racial politics,” said Kinohi Nishikawa, an assistant professor of English and African-American Studies at Princeton University. “There has always been a sense that because African-Americans’ opportunities to represent themselves are so limited in the first place, any hint of criminality or salaciousness would necessarily be a knock on the entire racial politics. One of the pressing debates about African-American literature today is: If we can’t include writers like Ashley & JaQuavis, to what extent is the foundation of our thinking about black literature faulty? Is it just a literature for elites? Or can it be inclusive, bringing urban fiction under the purview of our umbrella term ‘African-American literature’?”

Defenders of street lit note that the genre has a pedigree: a tradition of black pulp fiction that stretches from Chester Himes, the midcentury author of hardboiled Harlem detective stories, to the 1960s and ’70s “ghetto fiction” of Iceberg Slim and Donald Goines, to the current wave of urban fiction authors. Others argue for street lit as a social good, noting that it attracts a large audience that might otherwise never read at all. Scholars like Nishikawa link street lit to recent studies showing increased reading among African-Americans. A 2014 Pew Research Center report found that a greater percentage of black Americans are book readers than whites or Latinos.

For their part, the Colemans place their work in the broader black literary tradition. “You have Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, James Baldwin — all of these traditional black writers, who wrote about the struggles of racism, injustice, inequality,” says Ashley. “We’re writing about the struggle as it happens now. It’s just a different struggle. I’m telling my story. I’m telling the struggle of a black girl from Flint, Michigan, who grew up on welfare.”

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Perhaps there is a high-minded case to be made for street lit. But the virtues of Ashley & JaQuavis’s work are more basic. Their novels do lack literary polish. The writing is not graceful; there are passages of clunky exposition and sex scenes that induce guffaws and eye rolls. But the pleasure quotient is high. The books flaunt a garish brand of feminism, with women characters cast not just as vixens, but also as gangsters — cold-blooded killers, “murder mamas.” The stories are exceptionally well-plotted. “The Cartel” opens by introducing its hero, the crime boss Carter Diamond; on page 9, a gunshot spatters Diamond’s brain across the interior of a police cruiser. The book then flashes back seven years and begins to hurtle forward again — a bullet train, whizzing readers through shifting alliances, romantic entanglements and betrayals, kidnappings, shootouts with Haitian and Dominican gangsters, and a cliffhanger closing scene that leaves the novel’s heroine tied to a chair in a basement, gruesomely tortured to the edge of death. Ashley & JaQuavis’s books are not Ralph Ellison, certainly, but they build up quite a head of steam. They move.

The Colemans are moving themselves these days. They recently signed a deal with St. Martin’s Press, which will bring out the next installment in the “Cartel” series as well as new solo series by both writers. The St. Martin’s deal is both lucrative and legitimizing — a validation of Ashley and JaQuavis’s work by one of publishing’s most venerable houses. The Colemans’ ambitions have grown, as well. A recent trilogy, “Murderville,” tackles human trafficking and the blood-diamond industry in West Africa, with storylines that sweep from Sierra Leone to Mexico to Los Angeles. Increasingly, Ashley & JaQuavis are leaning on research — traveling to far-flung settings and hitting the books in the libraries — and spending less time mining their own rough-and-tumble past.

But Flint remains a source of inspiration. One evening not long ago, JaQuavis led me on a tour of his hometown: a popular roadside bar; the parking lot where he met the undercover cop for the ill-fated drug deal; Ashley’s old house, the site of his almost-arrest. He took me to a ramshackle vehicle repair shop on Flint’s west side, where he worked as a kid, washing cars. He showed me a bathroom at the rear of the garage, where, at age 12, he sneaked away to inspect the first “boulder” of crack that he ever sold. A spray-painted sign on the garage wall, which JaQuavis remembered from his time at the car wash, offered words of warning:

WHAT EVERY YOUNG MAN SHOULD KNOW
ABOUT USING A GUN:
MURDER . . . 30 Years
ARMED ROBBERY . . . 15 Years
ASSAULT . . . 15 Years
RAPE . . . 20 Years
POSSESSION . . . 5 Years
JACKING . . . 20 YEARS

“We still love Flint, Michigan,” JaQuavis says. “It’s so seedy, so treacherous. But there’s some heart in this city. This is where it all started, selling books out the box. In the days when we would get those little $40,000 advances, they’d send us a couple boxes of books for free. We would hit the streets to sell our books, right out of the car trunk. It was a hustle. It still is.”

One old neighborhood asset that the Colemans have not shaken off is swagger. “My wife is the best female writer in the game,” JaQuavis told me. “I believe I’m the best male writer in the game. I’m sleeping next to the best writer in the world. And she’s doing the same.”

Robert Patterson Jr., Lawyer and Judge Who Fought for the Accused, Dies at 91

Judge Patterson helped to protect the rights of Attica inmates after the prison riot in 1971 and later served on the Federal District Court in Manhattan.