PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2017

Apakah semua rangkaian haji yang merupakan wajib haji kalau ditinggalkan karena sesuatu dan lain hal boleh digantikan dengan dam?

Jawab:
Betul. Wajib haji yang tidak bisa dilaksanakan harus diganti dengan Dam yaitu memotong seekor kambing, seperti:
- Tidak Mabit di Muzdalifah atau Mina.
- Melewati Miqot Makani tidak berniat Ihrom.
- Membungkus kaki atau menutup kepala karena uzur bagi pria.
Tapi kalau melanggar larangan ihrom seperti pakai minyak wangi, memotong rambut atau kuku, memetik tumbuh-tumbuhan Damnya cukup sekitar 20 real, tidak memotong seekor kambing.

Sumber : http://www.jurnalhaji.com

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saco-indonesia.com, Sebuah minibus jenis Suzuki Carry dengan nomor polisi B 1861 UFQ telah menabrak pembatas jalan yang berada tepat di depan Kompleks Gudang Peluru, Tebet, Jakarta Selatan Kamis (30/1) dini hari. Mobil malang tersebut oleng lantaran kondisi jalan yang rusak parah saat melaju dari arah Kampung Melayu menuju Casablanca.

Akibat serudukan ke pembatas jalan, bagian kanan depan mobil tersebut telah rusak parah. Usai telah menabrak pembatas jalan, mobil ini juga langsung melintang di tengah jalan dalam posisi ke arah sebaliknya.

Sopir yang diketahui bernama Said yang berusia (35) tahun itu telah menderita luka-luka di bagian kakinya dan langsung dilarikan ke Rumah Sakit setempat.

"Pas jalan tiba-tiba mobil itu oleng karena jalanan yang berlubang. Abis oleng langsung nabrak pembatas jalan terus langsung berbalik arah gitu posisinya," ujar salah satu saksi mata, Nur yang berusia (45) tahun saat ditemui di lokasi, Kamis (30/1).

Tak lama setelah kejadian, petugas dari Polsek Tebet pun tiba di lokasi dan memperingatkan sejumlah pengendara yang telah melintas di lokasi akan kondisi jalan yang berlubang akibat banjir.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

Sewa mobil di Cirebon murah. Murah bukan berarti miskin kualitas. Murah juga merupakan upaya dari pihak penyedia layanan untuk dapat memberikan tarif layanan yang diinginkan dan banyak dibutuhkan oleh konsumen. Demikian juga dengan layanan jasa sewa mobil di Cirebon. Anda juga bisa menemukan banyak layanan jasa sewa mobil murah yang tak kalah berkualitasnya dengan mobil-mobil yang mahal. Jika ada yang murah dan berkualitas, mengapa harus pilih yang mahal?

Tak semua orang saat bepergian telah memiliki anggaran yang besar. Sebagian orang telah memilih bepergian secara kolektif dengan tujuan untuk dapat menghemat anggaran. Salah satu anggaran yang cukup besar dikeluarkan selama dalam perjalanan adalah soal transportasi. Oleh karena itu, jika Anda akan bepergian ke Kota Cirebon secara bersama, sewa mobil di Cirebon dengan harga yang murah merupakan solusi perjalanan yang menyenangkan dan tentunya banyak dicari orang.

Banyak juga orang yang tak mempermasalahkan suasana kendaraan selama perjalanan karena faktor pendanaan yang terbatas. Namun sebenarnya kondisi dana yang terbatas tak menjadi alasan untuk Anda tidak bisa nyaman dalam perjalanan. Ada banyak tawaran sewa mobil di Cirebon yang bisa Anda dapatkan dengan harga yang murah meriah dan tetap nyaman berkualitas.

Sewa mobil di Cirebon ada banyak jenis armadanya, mulai dari armada avanza, elf, xenia dan lain sebagainya, hingga jenis-jenis mobil elit ditawarkan untuk mereka yang memiliki banyak anggaran dalam perjalanan. Sewa mobil di Cirebon akan membuat perjalanan Anda menjadi lebih berkesan di Kota Cirebon. Berbagai objek wisata sejarah, mengunjungi pusat kerajinan batik, mencicipi aneka rasa kuliner yang sulit dilupakan, berbelanja aneka jenis batik berkualitas dan oleh-oleh Kota Cirebon lainnya.

Sewa mobil di Cirebon sekarang juga, dan nikmati perjalanan berkesan bersama orang-orang tercinta. Sesekali untuk bisa menikmati suasana liburan yang lebih berkesan, ada baiknya Anda memilih sewa mobil di Cirebon ketimbang harus membawa mobil sendiri dan letih meyetir sendiri. Tujuan dari liburan adalah rileks dan santai, dengan memilih sewa mobil maka hal itu bisa Anda wujudkan.

Tanda Haji Mabrur

Zuhud Terhadap Dunia

Para ulama kita menyebutkan tanda-tanda haji yang mabrur, diantaranya Imam Hasan Al Bashri rahimahullah berkata: (Haji yang mabrur adalah agar ia pulang dari ibadah haji menjadi orang yang zuhud dalam kehidupan dunia dan cinta akhirat). Allah berfirman yang artinya: “Dan carilah (pahala) negeri akhirat dengan apa yang telah dianugerahkan Allah kepadamu, tetapi janganlah kamu lupa bagianmu di dunia”. (Surat Al-Qashash: 77)

Orang yang zuhud bukan berarti orang yang hanya beribadah di masjid dan tidak mau bekerja mencari harta untuk nafkah anak dan isteri tapi orang yang zuhud orang yang tidak diperbudak oleh hartanya, dunia boleh berada di tangannya tidak di hatinya, aktifitasnya dalam kehidupan dunia tidak melalaikannya dari ingat kepada Allah, melaksanakan shalat yang lima waktu tepat pada waktunya, tidak memutuskan silaturahmi, tetap rajin menuntut ilmu islam lalu mengamalkan dan menda’wahkannya, tidak melupakan tanggung jawab mendidik isteri dan anak-anak. Orang yang zuhud adalah orang yang penghasilannya dari yang halal, bukan dari hasil renten, riba, suap, korupsi, mencuri, judi, pungli, memeras, menipu, memakan hak orang lain. Semoga Allah mengaruniakan kita semua rezeki yang halal, baik dan berkah serta dijauhkan dari segala pendapatan yang haram, amin!

Lebih Baik Dari Sebelumnya Dalam Segala Hal

Ada lagi yang mengatakan diantara tanda haji yang mabrur adalah setelah pulang dari menunaikan ibadah haji, ia menjadi lebih baik dari sebelumnya .

1. Dalam Hal Tauhid

Menjadi lebih baik dalam hal tauhid. Jika ada diantara jamaah haji yang sebelum hajinya masih suka pergi ke dukun untuk minta kekayaan, anak, jodoh, cepat naik pangkat dan lain-lain maka setelah kita haji hendaklah kita tinggalkan hal tersebut dan bertaubat kepada Allah karena Rasulullah bersabda  yang artinya, “Barangsiapa mendatangi tukang ramal atau dukun lalu membenarkan apa yang dikatakannya, maka ia telah kafir dengan apa yang telah diturunkan kepada Muhammad”. (HR. Abu Dawud, At-Tirmidzi, Ibnu Majah, dishahihkan oleh Al-Albani dalam Al-Irwa` no. 2006)

Barangsiapa yang sebelum ia haji, suka menyembelih sapi atau lainnya untuk dijadikan sebagai tumbal atau sesajen maka sekarang harus meninggalkannya dan menyembelih kurban hanya untuk Allah karena Allah berfirman yang artinya: “Maka dirikanlah shalat karena Rabbmu dan berkorbanlah” (Surat Al- Kautsar 2).

“Katakanlah sesungguhnya shalatku, sesembelihanku, hidup dan matiku hanya untuk Allah Rabbul Alamin tidak ada sekutu baginya” (Surat Al-An’aam: 162)

Barangsiapa yang sebelum ia haji, masih mempercayai ramalan bintang maka tinggalkanlah dan bertawakallah kepada Allah semata.

Barangsiapa yang sebelum hajinya masih mengkeramatkan keris dan jimat-jimat, maka sekarang musnahkanlah segala jimat yang kita miliki.

Barangsiapa yang sebelum hajinya masih suka meruwat bumi untuk menghindarkan bencana, maka sekarang bertaubatlah dan tinggalkan upacara syirik itu, bergantunglah kepada Allah karena yang dapat menghindarkan bencana hanya Allah semata.

Barangsiapa yang sebelum hajinya masih mengkeramatkan sapi yang dikeluarkan setiap tanggal sepuluh Muharram bahkan berebut untuk memperoleh kotorannya yang dianggap dapat memberikan berkah, maka ketahuilah itu adalah perbuatan syirik.

Barangsiapa yang sebelum hajinya masih meyakini bahwa nasib sial akan menimpanya jika bepergian hari Selasa atau Sabtu juga untuk menentukan waktu pernikahan harus dihitung secara cermat karena kalau tidak pas harinya akan menimbulkan kesialan, maka itu semua adalah syirik. Allah tidak mengampuni dosa syirik kecuali jika pelakunya bertaubat, sesungguhnya Allah Maha Penerima taubat. Allah mengharamkan surga bagi orang yang berbuat syirik. Adapun orang-orang yang beriman dan tidak mencampur adukkan keimanan mereka dengan kesyirikan maka mereka mendapatkan keamanan dan hidayah dari Allah Taala.

2. Dalam Hal Ibadah

Hendaklah jamaah haji memperbaiki ibadahnya kepada Allah, shalat yang lima waktu jangan sampai ditinggalkan, zakat maal harus dikeluarkan dan shaum di bulan Ramadhan harus dijalankan. Segala ibadah kita laksanakan dengan penuh rasa cinta kepada Allah yang telah memberikan kepada kita nikmat yang tidak terhingga. Kita siap korbankan harta, tenaga dan waktu kita demi menggapai ridha Allah.

3. Dalam Hal Muamalah

Hendaklah kita perbaiki muamalah kita dengan orang tua yang telah melahirkan dan mendidik kita sejak kecil. Jangan sampai kita menyakiti hati mereka dan hendaklah selalu berbakti dan memperlakukan mereka dengan sebaik-baiknya. Jika orang tua kita telah meninggal dunia hendaklah kita selalu mendoakan untuk mereka.

Muamalah Suami Isteri

Bagi para suami hendaklah perbaiki muamalah dengan isterinya jangan mudah marah dan membentak isterinya jika berbuat kesalahan. Lakukanlah hal-hal yang menyenangkan isteri selama tidak bertentangan dengan syariat. Didiklah isteri dengan nasehat, membawanya ke majelis ta’lim, membelikannya buku dan kaset ceramah yang bermanfaat. Juga didiklah isteri dengan memberi keteladanan. Rasulullah bersabda: “Sebaik-baik kalian adalah yang terbaik terhadap keluarganya dan saya adalah orang yang paling baik diantara kalian terhadap keluargaku”.

Bagi para isteri perbaikilah muamalah dengan suami jadilah isteri yang taat. Rasulullah bersabda: “Apabila wanita shalat yang lima waktu, berpuasa di bulan Ramadhan, taat kepada suaminya dan memelihara kemaluannya, maka ia masuk surga dari pintu-pintu mana saja yang ia mau”.

Ketaatan kepada suami dalam hal yang makruf saja adapun dalam hal maksiat tidak ada ketaatan kepada makhluk dalam hal maksiat kepada Allah Al-Khaliq. Ketika suami baru datang dari pekerjaan janganlah disambut dengan berbagai macam problem dan hal-hal yang tidak menyenangkan tetapi sambutlah dengan senyum, sediakanlah makan dan minum serta biarkanlah suami untuk istirahat dulu setelah itu barulah sampaikan segala problem yang ada niscaya suami sudah lebih siap untuk mendengarkannya.

Muamalah Orang Tua dan Anak

Bagi para orang tua perbaikilah dalam pendidikan terhadap anak-anak, mereka merupakan amanat yang kelak kita akan diminta pertanggungjawabannya di hari akhir. Didiklah mereka dengan memberikan contoh yang baik, sekolahkanlah mereka di tempat yang baik, awasilah pergaulan mereka. Selalulah berdoa kepada Allah agar melindungi dan menjaga mereka dari segala kejahatan dan keburukan karena doa orang tua untuk anaknya insya Allah mustajab.

Muamalah Kaum Muslimah

Bagi kaum muslimah perbaikilah dalam hal berbusana, tutuplah aurat anda dan jangan diperlihatkan kepada laki-laki yang bukan mahramnya. Allah berfirman: “Hai Nabi katakanlah kepada isteri-isterimu, anak-anak perempuanmu, dan isteri-isteri orang mukmin, (Hendaklah mereka mengulurkan jilbabnya ke seluruh tubuh mereka). Yang demikian itu supaya mereka lebih mudah untuk dikenal, karena itu mereka tidak diganggu. Dan Allah adalah Maha Pengampun lagi Maha Penyayang”. (Surat Al-Ahzab: 59)

“Katakanlah kepada wanita yang beriman, hendaklah mereka menahan pandangannya, dan memelihara kemaluannya, dan janganlah mereka menampakkan perhiasannya, kecuali yang (biasa) nampak dari padanya. Dan hendaklah mereka menutupkan kain kudung ke dadanya, dan janganlah menampakkan perhiasannya, kecuali kepada suami mereka, atau ayah mereka, atau ayah suami mereka, atau putera-putera mereka, atau putera-putera suami mereka, atau saudara-saudara laki-laki mereka, atau putera-putera saudara laki-laki mereka, atau putera-putera saudara perempuan mereka, atau wanita-wanita Islam atau budak-budak yang mereka miliki, atau pelayan-pelayan laki-laki yang tidak mempunyai keinginan (terhadap wanita) atau anak-anak yang belum mengerti tentang aurat wanita. Dan janganlah mereka memukulkan kakinya agar diketahui perhiasan yang mereka sembunyikan. Dan bertaubatlah kamu sekalian kepada Allah, hai orang-orang yang beriman supaya kamu beruntung”. (Surat An-Nuur: 31)

Rasulullah bersabda: “Ada dua golongan dari penduduk neraka yang belum pernah saya lihat keduanya (sebelum ini), (pertama) suatu kaum yang memiliki cambuk bagaikan ekor sapi yang digunakannya untuk memukul manusia dan (kedua) wanita yang berpakaian tapi telanjang berjalan berlenggak lenggok, kepala mereka seperti punuk unta, mereka tidak masuk surga dan tidak mencium bau surga padahal bau surga itu tercium dari jarak yang sekian dan sekian jauhnya”. (Hadits Shahih, Riwayat Muslim)

Masih banyak diantara jamaah haji wanita yang berpakaian tapi telanjang, belum sempurna menutup auratnya, masih ada yang terlihat lehernya, terlihat lengannya, menutup aurat dengan pakaian yang ketat sehingga membentuk lekak lekuk tubuhnya, berpakaian dengan bahan yang tipis dan transparan sehingga terlihat kulitnya, pada hakekatnya mereka masih telanjang dan diancam tidak masuk surga. Hendaklah jamaah haji wanita menjadi sadar setelah menangis dan memohon ampun kepada Allah pada saat wuquf di Arafah, apakah kita ulangi kembali dosa-dosa kita?

Hendaklah jamaah haji wanita menjadi teladan bagi kaum muslimah di tanah air yang sedang dilanda dekadensi akhlak dan moral, didiklah puteri-puteri kita agar berbusana muslimah, nasehatilah mereka agar tidak keluar rumah dengan menggunakan celana pendek, celana panjang lebih-lebih celana yang sangat ketat dan perutnya terlihat, innaalillahi wa innaa ilaihi rajiuun.

Hendaklah jamaah haji wanita berdandan dan bersolek mempercantik diri, tetapi untuk siapa? Bukan untuk orang-orang diluar rumah tapi untuk suami di rumah, kenyataan yang ada banyak dari kaum muslimah berdandan ketika keluar rumah padahal dilarang oleh Allah yang kita cintai, Allah berfirman: “Dan hendaklah kamu (isteri-isteri nabi) tetap di rumahmu dan janganlah kamu berhias dan bertingkah laku seperti orang-orang jahiliyah yang dahulu”. (Surat Al-Ahzab: 33)

Ayat ini berlaku juga untuk segenap kaum muslimah dan mukminah.

Rasulullah bersabda bahwa seorang wanita yang pergi keluar rumah dengan menggunakan parfum sehingga tercium oleh laki-laki lain, maka sesungguhnya ia itu pelacur. Setiap hari kita berdoa memohon hidayah kepada Allah, maka sudah menjadi kewajiban bagi kita untuk mempelajari jalan-jalan hidayah berupa ilmu yang bermanfaat karena masih banyak diantara jalan-jalan hidayah yang belum kita ketahui dibandingkan yang sudah kita ketahui. Jangan kita menganggap ini adalah hal yang baru kita dengar, kami sudah terbiasa dengan adat kami dan dalih-dalih lainnya yang tidak bisa diterima oleh syariat. Allah berfirman: “Dan apabila dikatakan kepada mereka: lkutilah apa yang telah diturunkan Allah mereka menjawab: Tidak, tetapi kami hanya mengikuti apa yang telah kami dapati dari (perbuatan) nenek moyang kami. (Apakah mereka akan mengikuti juga), walaupun nenek moyang mereka itu tidak mengetahui suatu apapun, dan tidak mendapat petunjuk?” (Surat Al-Baqarah: 170)

Dan firmanNya: “Dan tidaklah boleh bagi laki-laki yang mukmin dan tidak (pula) bagi perempuan yang mukmin, apabila Allah dan RasulNya telah menetapkan suatu ketetapan, akan ada bagi mereka pilihan (yang lain) tentang urusan mereka. Dan barangsiapa mendurhakai Allah dan RasulNya maka sungguhlah dia telah sesat, sesat yang nyata”. (Surat Al-Ahzab: 36)

Muamalah Secara Umum

Hendaklah kita semua memperbaiki diri dalam hal tanggung jawab kita memperbaiki masyarakat. Bentengi aqidah umat dengan menyebarkan ilmu yang bermanfaat, dengan saling nasehat menasehati untuk menepati kebenaran dan nasehat menasehati untuk menetapi kesabaran, dengan saling bekerjasama dalam hal kebaikan dan taqwa. Tidak sedikit umat Islam di Indonesia murtad dari agamanya disebabkan kelengahan dan kelalaian kita. Benar sebab mereka murtad adalah karena lemah iman ditambah lagi dengan lemah ekonomi, tapi apakah boleh kita diam dan berpangku tangan? Tidak, kita harus berbuat sesuai dengan kemampuan kita. Apabila kita tidak bisa mendidik mereka karena keterbatasan ilmu kita, ajaklah mereka untuk menghadiri majelis-majelis ilmu, bagikan buletin dan buku-buku Islam, pinjamkan kaset-kaset ceramah yang bermanfaat. Jika mereka malas bekerja berilah motivasi, jika mereka nganggur carikanlah pekerjaan untuk mereka, jika puteri-puteri kita sudah dewasa carikanlah untuk mereka suami yang baik keislamannya jangan kita biarkan mereka menikah dengan laki-laki kafir.

Apabila anda sebagai pejabat janganlah anda menghalangi dan mempersulit orang-orang yang ikhlas mengajak manusia untuk mentauhidkan Allah dan tidak berbuat syirik, untuk mengikuti sunnah Nabi dan tidak berbuat bid’ah.

Bagi orang tua yang mempunyai anak puteri memakai jilbab atau cadar dukunglah mereka dan banggalah terhadap anak anda yang taat kepada Allah, semoga Allah menghiasi puteri anda dengan akhlak yang baik pula.

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Terdakwa mantan Deputi Bidang IV Pengelolaan Aset dan Moneter Bank Indonesia, Budi Mulya dalam eksepsinya telah menyebutkan kalau pemberian Fasilitas Pinjaman Jangka Pendek (FPJP) kepada Bank Century tidak ada kerugian keuangan negara. 
 
Dalam eksepsi yang telah dibacakan oleh kuasa hukum Budi, Luhut Pangaribuan telah menyebut kalau FPJP adalah penalangan, dimana bank wajib memberikan agunan.
 
"Sehingga secara teknis negara tidak mungkin dirugikan dari pemberian FPJP tersebut," katanya saat membacakan eksepsi di Pengadilan Tipikor, Jakarta, Kamis (13/3/2014).
 
Dimana, sambung Luhut, kebijakan itu telah diambil melalui mekanisme dan peraturan yang berlaku di BI sebagai Bank Central. Ini juga merupakan kebijakan perbankan.
 
"Pemberian FPJP telah diatur dalam PBI (Peraturan Bank Indonesia), sehingga bagian mana yang telah dianggap sebagai tindak pidana. Semua hal yang telah dilakukan adalah merupakan kebijakan kolektif instansi BI," tandasnya.
 
Dalam eksepsi disebutkan kalau dakwaan tidak cermat dan harus batal demi hukum karena dakwaan harus cermat dan lengkap menguraikannya.
 
Dalam dakwaan Jaksa Penuntut Umum (JPU) KPK, Budi didakwa atas kebijakan pemberian FPJP kepada Bank Century telah merugikan keuangan negara Rp689,894 miliar. Ia juga disebut dalam penetapan Bank Century sebagai bank gagal berdampak sistemik dan mengucurkan bailout senilai Rp6,7 triliun juga merupakan kerugian keuangan negara.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WASHINGTON — During a training course on defending against knife attacks, a young Salt Lake City police officer asked a question: “How close can somebody get to me before I’m justified in using deadly force?”

Dennis Tueller, the instructor in that class more than three decades ago, decided to find out. In the fall of 1982, he performed a rudimentary series of tests and concluded that an armed attacker who bolted toward an officer could clear 21 feet in the time it took most officers to draw, aim and fire their weapon.

The next spring, Mr. Tueller published his findings in SWAT magazine and transformed police training in the United States. The “21-foot rule” became dogma. It has been taught in police academies around the country, accepted by courts and cited by officers to justify countless shootings, including recent episodes involving a homeless woodcarver in Seattle and a schizophrenic woman in San Francisco.

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.

Though Robin and Joan Rolfs owned two rare talking dolls manufactured by Thomas Edison’s phonograph company in 1890, they did not dare play the wax cylinder records tucked inside each one.

The Rolfses, longtime collectors of Edison phonographs, knew that if they turned the cranks on the dolls’ backs, the steel phonograph needle might damage or destroy the grooves of the hollow, ring-shaped cylinder. And so for years, the dolls sat side by side inside a display cabinet, bearers of a message from the dawn of sound recording that nobody could hear.

In 1890, Edison’s dolls were a flop; production lasted only six weeks. Children found them difficult to operate and more scary than cuddly. The recordings inside, which featured snippets of nursery rhymes, wore out quickly.

Yet sound historians say the cylinders were the first entertainment records ever made, and the young girls hired to recite the rhymes were the world’s first recording artists.

Year after year, the Rolfses asked experts if there might be a safe way to play the recordings. Then a government laboratory developed a method to play fragile records without touching them.

The technique relies on a microscope to create images of the grooves in exquisite detail. A computer approximates — with great accuracy — the sounds that would have been created by a needle moving through those grooves.

In 2014, the technology was made available for the first time outside the laboratory.

“The fear all along is that we don’t want to damage these records. We don’t want to put a stylus on them,” said Jerry Fabris, the curator of the Thomas Edison Historical Park in West Orange, N.J. “Now we have the technology to play them safely.”

Last month, the Historical Park posted online three never-before-heard Edison doll recordings, including the two from the Rolfses’ collection. “There are probably more out there, and we’re hoping people will now get them digitized,” Mr. Fabris said.

The technology, which is known as Irene (Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.), was developed by the particle physicist Carl Haber and the engineer Earl Cornell at Lawrence Berkeley. Irene extracts sound from cylinder and disk records. It can also reconstruct audio from recordings so badly damaged they were deemed unplayable.

“We are now hearing sounds from history that I did not expect to hear in my lifetime,” Mr. Fabris said.

The Rolfses said they were not sure what to expect in August when they carefully packed their two Edison doll cylinders, still attached to their motors, and drove from their home in Hortonville, Wis., to the National Document Conservation Center in Andover, Mass. The center had recently acquired Irene technology.

Cylinders carry sound in a spiral groove cut by a phonograph recording needle that vibrates up and down, creating a surface made of tiny hills and valleys. In the Irene set-up, a microscope perched above the shaft takes thousands of high-resolution images of small sections of the grooves.

Stitched together, the images provide a topographic map of the cylinder’s surface, charting changes in depth as small as one five-hundredth the thickness of a human hair. Pitch, volume and timbre are all encoded in the hills and valleys and the speed at which the record is played.

At the conservation center, the preservation specialist Mason Vander Lugt attached one of the cylinders to the end of a rotating shaft. Huddled around a computer screen, the Rolfses first saw the wiggly waveform generated by Irene. Then came the digital audio. The words were at first indistinct, but as Mr. Lugt filtered out more of the noise, the rhyme became clearer.

“That was the Eureka moment,” Mr. Rolfs said.

In 1890, a girl in Edison’s laboratory had recited:

There was a little girl,

And she had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good,

She was very, very good.

But when she was bad, she was horrid.

Recently, the conservation center turned up another surprise.

In 2010, the Woody Guthrie Foundation received 18 oversize phonograph disks from an anonymous donor. No one knew if any of the dirt-stained recordings featured Guthrie, but Tiffany Colannino, then the foundation’s archivist, had stored them unplayed until she heard about Irene.

Last fall, the center extracted audio from one of the records, labeled “Jam Session 9” and emailed the digital file to Ms. Colannino.

“I was just sitting in my dining room, and the next thing I know, I’m hearing Woody,” she said. In between solo performances of “Ladies Auxiliary,” “Jesus Christ,” and “Dead or Alive,” Guthrie tells jokes, offers some back story, and makes the audience laugh. “It is quintessential Guthrie,” Ms. Colannino said.

The Rolfses’ dolls are back in the display cabinet in Wisconsin. But with audio stored on several computers, they now have a permanent voice.

Mr. Napoleon was a self-taught musician whose career began in earnest with the orchestra led by Chico Marx of the Marx Brothers.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.”

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Play was tough and fights were frequent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Mazel tov,” his father replied.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“It is,” his father agreed.

At the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Suzman’s signature accomplishment was the central role he played in creating a global network of surveys on aging.

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