Biro travel umroh murah 2015, Melayani pemberangkatan umroh murah 2016 dengan paket umroh murah 2015, 2016 pasti hemat ke tanah suci agen resmi. Travel Umroh Murah 2015 / 2016 Paket Umroh Murah Dan
saco-indonesia.com, Warga Ciledug Yosefat Natanael yang berusia 28 tahun , telah ditembak oleh orang yang tak dikenal saat rayakan malam tahun baru di Mal Living Word Alam Sutera, Kecamatan Serpong Utara, Tangerang, Rabu (1/1) dinihari.
Menurut berdasarkan keterangan, korban warga perumahan Duren Village Kecamatan Ciledug ini sedang merayakan malam pergantian tahun di mal tersebut bersama kerabatnya. Entah mengapa, tiba-tiba ada orang yang tidak dikenal telah menembak dirinya dan mengenai bahu kanannya sehingga ambruk
Pengunjung mal yang sedang memadati pusat perbelanjaan tersebut telah menjadi panik. Satpam mal bersama polisi yang telah berjaga di areal mal tersebut segera ke lokasi penembakan. Namun, pelaku kabur di tengah keramaian warga yang menikmati malam tahun baru.
Korban telah ditolong oleh petugas dan dilarikan ke RS Omni Alam Sutera untuk mendapatkan perawatan dokter serta mengeluarkan proyektil yang bersarang di tubuhnya.
Editor : Dian Sukmawati
YOSEFAT DITEMBAK OLEH ORANG YANG TAK DIKENALsaco-indonesia.com,, Truk kontainer dengan plat nomor B 9376 KS telah mengalami kendala teknis hingga telah menyebabkan kemacetan di Jalan Tol Dalam Kota, Tomang-Grogol.
Hal ini juga disebabkan bagian belakang kontainer terlepas di kilometer 14 800 yang sedang membawa alat berat, gerder.
"Alat beratnya juga tidak jatuh. Hanya sambungan yang lepas," kata Rafli selaku operator sentra komunikasi Jasa Marga saat dihubungi, Selasa (28/1).
Sampai saat ini informasi yang telah dimiliki pihak Jasa Marga masih belum lengkap. Sebab pihak yang berada di lokasi belum dapat memberikan laporan.
Namun, Rafli juga mengatakan lepasnya sambungan kontainer ini juga tidak menyebabkan korban jiwa. Sedangkan mengenai penyebabnya, ia juga belum bisa memberikan informasi.
"Penyebabnya kami juga belum tau. Tapi tidak ada korban akibat kecelakaan ini," terang Rafli.
Editor : Dian Sukmawati
Bulan suci Ramadhan adalah bulan yang penuh berkah, rahmat, dan ampunan. Dalam bulan suci Ramadhan, setiap amal kebaikan diberikan ganjaran berkali lipat. Sebagaimana disebutkan dalam sebuah hadits berikut ini.
Rasulullah Shallallahu 'Alaihi Wasallam bersabda,
"Setiap amalan anak Adam akan dilipatgandakan pahalanya, satu kebaikan akan berlipat menjadi 10 kebaikan sampai 700 kali lipat. Allah 'Azza wa Jalla berfirman, ‘Kecuali puasa, sungguh dia bagianku dan Aku sendiri yang akan membalasnya, karena (orang yang berpuasa) dia telah meninggalkan syahwatnyadan makannya karena Aku’. Bagi orang yang berpuasa mendapat dua kegembiraan; gembira ketika berbuka puasa dan gembira ketika berjumpa Tuhannya dengan puasanya. Dan sesungguhnya bau tidak sedap mulutnya lebih wangi di sisi Allah dari pada bau minyak kesturi.” (HR. Bukhari dan Muslim, lafadz milik Muslim)
Setiap amal baik akan diganjar berkali lipat, tak terkecuali melakukan ibadah umrah di Bulan Ramadhan. Melasanakan ibadah umrah di bulan ramadhan memiliki nilai yang luar biasa, yaitu pahalanya sama seperti menunaikan haji bersama Rasulullah Saw.
"Umrah pada bulan Ramadhan menyerupai haji." (HR. Al-Bukhari dan Muslim) dalam riwayat lain, "seperti haji bersamaku." Sebuah kabar gembira untuk mendapatkan pahala haji bersama Nabi Shallallahu 'Alaihi Wasallam.
Oleh sebab itu, tak heran jika umrah ramadhan menjadi favorit kaum muslimin untuk berburu pahala. Sesuai kemampuan yang dimiliki, mereka bisa memilih beragam paket umrah ramadhan yang disediakan tour dan travel. Ada paket umrah ramadhan di awal bulan, tengah bulan, atau akhir bulan. Bahkan, ada paket umrah ramadhan sebulan penuh.
Tidak menjadi masalah jika memilih satu dari sekian paket yang ditawarkan tersebut. Awal bulan, tengah bulan, atau akhir bulan. Sebab Ibnu Abbas mengatakan bahwa Rasulullah Saw bersabda, “Barangsiapa mendapati bulan Ramadhan di Makkah, lalu berpuasa secara utuh dan melakukan shalat malam pada beberapa malamnya, maka Alah akan mencatat untuknya seratus ribu bulan Ramadhan selain di Makkah. Dia juga akan mencatat satu kebajikan tiap siang hari, dan satu kebajikan tiap malam hari.”
“Allah akan memberi pahala sama dengan pahala memerdekakan seorang budak tiap siang hari, dan seorang budak lagi tiap malam hari, juga dua barang bawaan kuda di jalan Allah tiap siang hari dan dua barang bawaan kuda di jalan Allah tiap malam hari.”
Al-Khuza’iy mengatakan bahwa Ishak dan Ibnu Abi Umar menceritakan kepada kami, “Abdurrahim bin Zaid telah bercerita kepada kami dengan isnad seperti itu.” (Al-Azraqy: 11/23 dan Ibnu Majah: 1041).
Nah, bayangkan jika selama satu bulan penuh pada bulan suci Ramadhan kita berada di tanah suci. Segala amal baik kita mendapatkan ganjaran seolah beramal di Bulan Ramadhan selama seratus ribu bulan dibandingkan beramal pada Bulan Ramadhan di luar tanah suci. Padahal, amal kebaikan di Bulan Ramdhan akan diganjar berkali lipat dibandingkan amal kebaikan di bulan biasa. Subhanallah...
Oleh sebab itu, selama menjalankan ibadah umrah Ramadhan di tanah suci, jangan lupa untuk melakukan amal-amal berikut ini.
Shalat wajib berjamaah
Atha’ menceritakan dari Abdullah bin Zubair RA, bahwa Rasulullah SAW bersabda, “Satu kali shalat di masjidku ini lebih utama daripada seratus ribu kali shalat di tempat lain, selain Masjidil Haram. Dan satu kali shalat di Masjidil Haram lebih utama daripada seratus kali shalat di masjidku.” (Al-Fakihy: 11/90).
Itulah pahala shalat yang dilakukan secara individu di Masjidil haram dan Masjid Nabawi. Nah, bagaimana jika melakukan shalat berjamaah di Masjidil Haram?
Ibnu Abbas RA berkata, “Barangsiapa mengerjakan shalat di Masjidil Haram, di sekitar Baitullah yang dihormati, dengan berjamaah, maka Allah akan mencatat untuknya sebanyak dua puluh lima kali seratus ribu kali shalat.”
Lalu seorang tabi’in bertanya kepadanya, “Apakah ini pendapatmu, wahai Ibnu Abbas, ataukah dari Rasulullah SAW?” Dia menjawab, “Oh, bukan pendapatku, melainkan dari Rasulullah SAW.” (Al-Fakihy: 11/92).
Said bin Jubair menceritakan dari Ibnu Abbas RA, sesungguhnya Nabi SAW pernah membaca firman Allah, “Sesungguhnya (apa yang disebutkan) dalam, (surah) ini, benar-benar menjadi peringatan bagi kaum yang menyembah Allah.” (QS. Al-Anbiya’: 106). Lalu beliau bersabda, “Itu adalah shalat lima waktu berjamaah di masjid ini.” (Al-Fakihy: 11/96).
Shalat malam/Tarawih berjamaah
Nabi Shallallahu 'Alaihi Wasallam bersabda, "Barangsiapa yang menunaikan shalat malam di bulan Ramadan dengan keimanan dan mengharap pahala, diampuni dosa-dosanya yang telah lalu." (HR. Bukhari dan Muslim)
Nabi Shallallahu 'Alaihi Wasallam pernah bersabda, "Siapa yang shalat bersama imamnya sehingga selesai, maka dicatat baginya shalat sepanjang malam." (HR. Ahlus Sunan)
Bersedekah
Seperti kita ketahui, Rasulullah Shallallahu 'Alaihi Wasallam adalah manusia paling dermawan. Beliau menjadi lebih demawan lagi ketika di bulan Ramadhan. Sampai-sampai digambarkan beliau menjadi lebih pemurah dengan kebaikan daripada angin yang berhembus dengan lembut. Beliau bersabda, "Shadaqah yang paling utama adalah shadaqah pada bulan Ramadhan." (HR. al-Tirmidzi dari Anas)
Rasulullah Shallallahu 'Alaihi Wasallam bersabda, "Siapa yang memberi berbuka orang puasa, baginya pahala seperti pahala orang berpuasa tadi tanpa dikurangi dari pahalanya sedikitpun." (HR. Ahmad, Nasai, dan dishahihkan al-Albani)
Selain ketiga amal tersebut, terdapat amal kebaikan lain yang bisa dijadikan sebagai alat menangguk pahala Ramadhan yang melimpah ruah saat melakukan umrah ramadhan di tanah suci. Mitra haji dan umrah bisa mengikuti di artikel berikutnya. (RA)
AMAL IBADAH LIMPAH RUAH SAAT UMROH RAMADHANsaco-indonesia.com, Timnas Indonesia U-23 telah dapat memastikan satu tiket final setelah berhasil mengalahkan musuh bebuyutannya Malaysia, di ajang semi final Sepak Bola SEA GAMES 2013 yang diselenggarakan Myanmar. Garuda muda telah berhasil untuk mengalahkan Harimau Malaya lewat adu pinalti dengan skor 4-3 setelah sebelumnya kedua tim bermain imbang 1-1 hingga pluit akhir.
Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono ( SBY ), langsung merespon atas kemenangan anak asuhan Rahmad Darmawan tersebut melalui akun Twitter-nya. SBY pun juga berharap di Final nanti, Garuda muda bisa membawa pulang medali emas yang telah beberapa tahun tidak pernah didapat oleh Indonesia.
"Selamat atas kemenangan Timnas Indonesia U-23 dlm semi final SEA GAMES 2013. Saya bangga. Satu langkah lagi jadi juara. Kita bisa! *SBY*" tulis SBY dalam akun resminya, Kamis(19/12).
Ucapan SBY pun juga langsung direspon ribuan pengikutnya di jejaring social tersebut. Bahkan salah satu pemain timnas Hamkah Hamzah telah meminta agar SBY dapat menghadiri Partai final yang akan diselenggarakan di Zayyarthiri Stadium, Naypyidaw, Myanmar, saat bertemu Thailand pada hari Sabtu mendatang.
Seperti yang telah diketahui, Tim nasional Thailand U-23 akan menjadi lawan Indonesia di partai final SEA Games Myanmar 2013. Kepastian itu diperoleh setelah Thailand berhasil memetik kemenangan tipis 1-0 atas Singapura di semifinal kedua yang digelar Zayyarthiri, Naypyidaw, Kamis (19/12) malam.
Kepastian Thailand menjadi lawan Garuda Muda ini telah ditentukan oleh gol Praweenwat Boonyong pada menit ke-23 lewat titik penalti. Gol tersebut telah menjadi satu-satunya gol yang tercipta pada laga yang digelar usai laga Malaysia vs Indonesia tersebut.
Baik Thailand maupun Indonesia sejatinya telah mengenal permainan satu sama lain. Pasalnya, kedua tim sebelumnya telah bertemu di babak penyisihan Grup B. Saat itu, Thailand mampu mempecundangi Indonesia dengan skor telak 4-1.
Editor : Dian Sukmawati
Bekasi, Saco-Indonesia.com - Lagi KPK kembali memeriksa Direktur Utama PT Pertamina Karen Agustiawan terkait penyidikan kasus dugaan penerimaan hadiah terkait kegiatan hulu minyak dan gas, Senin (27/1/2014). Kali ini, Karen akan diperiksa sebagai saksi bagi tersangka baru kasus itu, mantan Sekretaris Jenderal Kementerian Energi dan Sumber Daya Mineral Waryono Karno.
"Bersaksi untuk Pak Waryono," kata pengacara Karen, Rudi Alfonso di Gedung KPK, Kuningan, Jakarta.
Rudi mendampingi Karen diperiksa KPK pagi ini. Sementara Karen, enggan berkomentar kepada wartawan mengenai pemeriksaannya. "Ya enggak tahu, kan belum diperiksa, tunggu saja nanti selesainya, baru ini kita kasih tahu," sambung Rudi.
Lebih jauh mengenai kasus dugaan gratifikasi kegiatan hulu migas ini, Rudi mengatakan bahwa kliennya tidak tahu mengenai dugaan aliran dana ke Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat (DPR) yang diberikan mantan Kepala SKK Migas Rudi Rubiandini. Dia membantah dugaan PT Pertamina menyumbang dana untuk tunjangan hari raya (THR) anggota DPR.
"Kalau itu saya pastikan enggak ada. Ibu ini kan sudah sering diancam untuk dipecat tapi dia tidak pernah melayani permintaan itu," kata Rudi.
Sebelumnya, KPK memeriksa Karen sebagai saksi bagi tersangka Rudi Rubiandini. Dalam persidangan terdakwa kasus ini, Simon G Tanjaya di Pengadilan Tindak Pidana Korupsi Jakarta terungkap bahwa Simon menyuap Rudi terkait pelaksanaan lelang terbatas minyak mentah dan kondesat bagian negara di SKK Migas, antara lain dengan menyetujui Fossus Energy Ltd sebagai pemenang lelang terbatas kondensat Senipah bagian nehara pada 7 Juni 2013 periode Juli 2013.
Rudi juga menyetujui Fossus Energy sebagai pemenang lelang terbatas minyak mentah Minas/SLG bagian negara pada 4 Juli 2013 untuk periode Agustus 2013.
Saat dikonfirmasi soal lelang terbatas bagian negara tersebut seusai diperiksa sebagai saksi bagi Rudi beberapa waktu lalu, Karen tidak menjawab.
Sumber : Kompas.com
Editor : Maulana Lee
Dirut Pertamina Diperiksa KPK KembaliPublic 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.
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
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
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.
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
75%
21
3
81
16
3
51
42
7
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%
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.
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
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
28%
61
11
26
64
11
37
57
6
The nationwide poll was conducted from April 30 to May 3 on landlines and cellphones with 1,027 adults, including 793 whites and 128 blacks. The margin of sampling error is plus or minus three percentage points for all adults, four percentage points for whites and nine percentage points for blacks. See the full poll here.
Even as a high school student, Dave Goldberg was urging female classmates to speak up. As a young dot-com executive, he had one girlfriend after another, but fell hard for a driven friend named Sheryl Sandberg, pining after her for years. After they wed, Mr. Goldberg pushed her to negotiate hard for high compensation and arranged his schedule so that he could be home with their children when she was traveling for work.
Mr. Goldberg, who died unexpectedly on Friday, was a genial, 47-year-old Silicon Valley entrepreneur who built his latest company, SurveyMonkey, from a modest enterprise to one recently valued by investors at $2 billion. But he was also perhaps the signature male feminist of his era: the first major chief executive in memory to spur his wife to become as successful in business as he was, and an essential figure in “Lean In,” Ms. Sandberg’s blockbuster guide to female achievement.
Over the weekend, even strangers were shocked at his death, both because of his relatively young age and because they knew of him as the living, breathing, car-pooling center of a new philosophy of two-career marriage.
“They were very much the role models for what this next generation wants to grapple with,” said Debora L. Spar, the president of Barnard College. In a 2011 commencement speech there, Ms. Sandberg told the graduates that whom they married would be their most important career decision.
In the play “The Heidi Chronicles,” revived on Broadway this spring, a male character who is the founder of a media company says that “I don’t want to come home to an A-plus,” explaining that his ambitions require him to marry an unthreatening helpmeet. Mr. Goldberg grew up to hold the opposite view, starting with his upbringing in progressive Minneapolis circles where “there was woman power in every aspect of our lives,” Jeffrey Dachis, a childhood friend, said in an interview.
The Goldberg parents read “The Feminine Mystique” together — in fact, Mr. Goldberg’s father introduced it to his wife, according to Ms. Sandberg’s book. In 1976, Paula Goldberg helped found a nonprofit to aid children with disabilities. Her husband, Mel, a law professor who taught at night, made the family breakfast at home.
Later, when Dave Goldberg was in high school and his prom date, Jill Chessen, stayed silent in a politics class, he chastised her afterward. He said, “You need to speak up,” Ms. Chessen recalled in an interview. “They need to hear your voice.”
Years later, when Karin Gilford, an early employee at Launch Media, Mr. Goldberg’s digital music company, became a mother, he knew exactly what to do. He kept giving her challenging assignments, she recalled, but also let her work from home one day a week. After Yahoo acquired Launch, Mr. Goldberg became known for distributing roses to all the women in the office on Valentine’s Day.
Ms. Sandberg, who often describes herself as bossy-in-a-good-way, enchanted him when they became friendly in the mid-1990s. He “was smitten with her,” Ms. Chessen remembered. Ms. Sandberg was dating someone else, but Mr. Goldberg still hung around, even helping her and her then-boyfriend move, recalled Bob Roback, a friend and co-founder of Launch. When they finally married in 2004, friends remember thinking how similar the two were, and that the qualities that might have made Ms. Sandberg intimidating to some men drew Mr. Goldberg to her even more.
Over the next decade, Mr. Goldberg and Ms. Sandberg pioneered new ways of capturing information online, had a son and then a daughter, became immensely wealthy, and hashed out their who-does-what-in-this-marriage issues. Mr. Goldberg’s commute from the Bay Area to Los Angeles became a strain, so he relocated, later joking that he “lost the coin flip” of where they would live. He paid the bills, she planned the birthday parties, and both often left their offices at 5:30 so they could eat dinner with their children before resuming work afterward.
Friends in Silicon Valley say they were careful to conduct their careers separately, politely refusing when outsiders would ask one about the other’s work: Ms. Sandberg’s role building Facebook into an information and advertising powerhouse, and Mr. Goldberg at SurveyMonkey, which made polling faster and cheaper. But privately, their work was intertwined. He often began statements to his team with the phrase “Well, Sheryl said” sharing her business advice. He counseled her, too, starting with her salary negotiations with Mark Zuckerberg.
“I wanted Mark to really feel he stretched to get Sheryl, because she was worth it,” Mr. Goldberg explained in a 2013 “60 Minutes” interview, his Minnesota accent and his smile intact as he offered a rare peek of the intersection of marriage and money at the top of corporate life.
While his wife grew increasingly outspoken about women’s advancement, Mr. Goldberg quietly advised the men in the office on family and partnership matters, an associate said. Six out of 16 members of SurveyMonkey’s management team are female, an almost unheard-of ratio among Silicon Valley “unicorns,” or companies valued at over $1 billion.
When Mellody Hobson, a friend and finance executive, wrote a chapter of “Lean In” about women of color for the college edition of the book, Mr. Goldberg gave her feedback on the draft, a clue to his deep involvement. He joked with Ms. Hobson that she was too long-winded, like Ms. Sandberg, but aside from that, he said he loved the chapter, she said in an interview.
By then, Mr. Goldberg was a figure of fascination who inspired a “where can I get one of those?” reaction among many of the women who had read the best seller “Lean In.” Some lamented that Ms. Sandberg’s advice hinged too much on marrying a Dave Goldberg, who was humble enough to plan around his wife, attentive enough to worry about which shoes his young daughter would wear, and rich enough to help pay for the help that made the family’s balancing act manageable.
Now that he is gone, and Ms. Sandberg goes from being half of a celebrated partnership to perhaps the business world’s most prominent single mother, the pages of “Lean In” carry a new sting of loss.
“We are never at 50-50 at any given moment — perfect equality is hard to define or sustain — but we allow the pendulum to swing back and forth between us,” she wrote in 2013, adding that they were looking forward to raising teenagers together.
“Fortunately, I have Dave to figure it out with me,” she wrote.
Dave Goldberg Was Lifelong Women’s AdvocateWASHINGTON — A decade after emergency trailers meant to shelter Hurricane Katrina victims instead caused burning eyes, sore throats and other more serious ailments, the Environmental Protection Agency is on the verge of regulating the culprit: formaldehyde, a chemical that can be found in commonplace things like clothes and furniture.
But an unusual assortment of players, including furniture makers, the Chinese government, Republicans from states with a large base of furniture manufacturing and even some Democrats who championed early regulatory efforts, have questioned the E.P.A. proposal. The sustained opposition has held sway, as the agency is now preparing to ease key testing requirements before it releases the landmark federal health standard.
The E.P.A.’s five-year effort to adopt this rule offers another example of how industry opposition can delay and hamper attempts by the federal government to issue regulations, even to control substances known to be harmful to human health.
Document: The Formaldehyde Fight
Formaldehyde is a known carcinogen that can also cause respiratory ailments like asthma, but the potential of long-term exposure to cause cancers like myeloid leukemia is less well understood.
The E.P.A.’s decision would be the first time that the federal government has regulated formaldehyde inside most American homes.
“The stakes are high for public health,” said Tom Neltner, senior adviser for regulatory affairs at the National Center for Healthy Housing, who has closely monitored the debate over the rules. “What we can’t have here is an outcome that fails to confront the health threat we all know exists.”
The proposal would not ban formaldehyde — commonly used as an ingredient in wood glue in furniture and flooring — but it would impose rules that prevent dangerous levels of the chemical’s vapors from those products, and would set testing standards to ensure that products sold in the United States comply with those limits. The debate has sharpened in the face of growing concern about the safety of formaldehyde-treated flooring imported from Asia, especially China.
What is certain is that a lot of money is at stake: American companies sell billions of dollars’ worth of wood products each year that contain formaldehyde, and some argue that the proposed regulation would impose unfair costs and restrictions.
Determined to block the agency’s rule as proposed, these industry players have turned to the White House, members of Congress and top E.P.A. officials, pressing them to roll back the testing requirements in particular, calling them redundant and too expensive.
“There are potentially over a million manufacturing jobs that will be impacted if the proposed rule is finalized without changes,” wrote Bill Perdue, the chief lobbyist at the American Home Furnishings Alliance, a leading critic of the testing requirements in the proposed regulation, in one letter to the E.P.A.
Industry opposition helped create an odd alignment of forces working to thwart the rule. The White House moved to strike out key aspects of the proposal. Subsequent appeals for more changes were voiced by players as varied as Senator Barbara Boxer, Democrat of California, and Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, as well as furniture industry lobbyists.
Hurricane Katrina in 2005 helped ignite the public debate over formaldehyde, after the deadly storm destroyed or damaged hundreds of thousands of homes along the Gulf of Mexico, forcing families into temporary trailers provided by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
The displaced storm victims quickly began reporting respiratory problems, burning eyes and other issues, and tests then confirmed high levels of formaldehyde fumes leaking into the air inside the trailers, which in many cases had been hastily constructed.
Public health advocates petitioned the E.P.A. to issue limits on formaldehyde in building materials and furniture used in homes, given that limits already existed for exposure in workplaces. But three years after the storm, only California had issued such limits.
Industry groups like the American Chemistry Council have repeatedly challenged the science linking formaldehyde to cancer, a position championed by David Vitter, the Republican senator from Louisiana, who is a major recipient of chemical industry campaign contributions, and whom environmental groups have mockingly nicknamed “Senator Formaldehyde.”
In laminate flooring, formaldehyde is used as a bonding agent in the fiberboard (or other composite wood) core layer and may also be used in glues that bind layers together. Concerns were raised in March when certain laminate flooring imported from China was reported to contain levels of formaldehyde far exceeding the limit permitted by California. Typical laminate flooring CLEAR FINISH LAYER Often made of melamine resin PATTERN LAYER Paper printed to resemble wood, or a thin wood veneer GLUE Layers may be bound using formaldehyde-based glues CORE LAYER Fiberboard or other composite, formed using formaldehyde-based adhesives BASE LAYER Moisture-resistant vapor barrier What is formaldehyde? Formaldehyde is a common chemical used in many industrial and household products as an adhesive, bonding agent or preservative. It is classified as a volatile organic compound. The term volatile means that, at room temperature, formaldehyde will vaporize, or become a gas. Products made with formaldehyde tend to release this gas into the air. If breathed in large quantities, it may cause health problems. WHERE IT IS COMMONLY FOUND POTENTIAL HEALTH RISKS Pressed-wood and composite wood products Wallpaper and paints Spray foam insulation used in construction Commercial wood floor finishes Crease-resistant fabrics In cigarette smoke, or in the fumes from combustion of other materials, including wood, oil and gasoline. Exposure to formaldehyde in sufficient amounts may cause eye, throat or skin irritation, allergic reactions, and respiratory problems like coughing, wheezing or asthma. Long-term exposure to high levels has been associated with cancer in humans and laboratory animals. Exposure to formaldehyde may affect some people more severely than others.Formaldehyde in Laminate Flooring
By 2010, public health advocates and some industry groups secured bipartisan support in Congress for legislation that ordered the E.P.A. to issue federal rules that largely mirrored California’s restrictions. At the time, concerns were rising over the growing number of lower-priced furniture imports from Asia that might include contaminated products, while also hurting sales of American-made products.
Maneuvering began almost immediately after the E.P.A. prepared draft rules to formally enact the new standards.
White House records show at least five meetings in mid-2012 with industry executives — kitchen cabinet makers, chemical manufacturers, furniture trade associations and their lobbyists, like Brock R. Landry, of the Venable law firm. These parties, along with Senator Vitter’s office, appealed to top administration officials, asking them to intervene to roll back the E.P.A. proposal.
The White House Office of Management and Budget, which reviews major federal regulations before they are adopted, apparently agreed. After the White House review, the E.P.A. “redlined” many of the estimates of the monetary benefits that would be gained by reductions in related health ailments, like asthma and fertility issues, documents reviewed by The New York Times show.
As a result, the estimated benefit of the proposed rule dropped to $48 million a year, from as much as $278 million a year. The much-reduced amount deeply weakened the agency’s justification for the sometimes costly new testing that would be required under the new rules, a federal official involved in the effort said.
“It’s a redlining blood bath,” said Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown University Law School professor and a former E.P.A. official, using the Washington phrase to describe when language is stricken from a proposed rule. “Almost the entire discussion of these potential benefits was excised.”
Senator Vitter’s staff was pleased.
“That’s a huge difference,” said Luke Bolar, a spokesman for Mr. Vitter, of the reduced estimated financial benefits, saying the change was “clearly highlighting more mismanagement” at the E.P.A.
The review’s outcome galvanized opponents in the furniture industry. They then targeted a provision that mandated new testing of laminated wood, a cheaper alternative to hardwood. (The California standard on which the law was based did not require such testing.)
But E.P.A. scientists had concluded that these laminate products — millions of which are sold annually in the United States — posed a particular risk. They said that when thin layers of wood, also known as laminate or veneer, are added to furniture or flooring in the final stages of manufacturing, the resulting product can generate dangerous levels of fumes from often-used formaldehyde-based glues.
Industry executives, outraged by what they considered an unnecessary and financially burdensome level of testing, turned every lever within reach to get the requirement removed. It would be particularly onerous, they argued, for small manufacturers that would have to repeatedly interrupt their work to do expensive new testing. The E.P.A. estimated that the expanded requirements for laminate products would cost the furniture industry tens of millions of dollars annually, while the industry said that the proposed rule over all would cost its 7,000 American manufacturing facilities over $200 million each year.
“A lot of people don’t seem to appreciate what a lot of these requirements do to a small operation,” said Dick Titus, executive vice president of the Kitchen Cabinet Manufacturers Association, whose members are predominantly small businesses. “A 10-person shop, for example, just really isn’t equipped to handle that type of thing.”
Big industry players also weighed in. Executives from companies including La-Z-Boy, Hooker Furniture and Ashley Furniture all flew to Washington for a series of meetings with the offices of lawmakers including House Speaker John Boehner, Republican of Ohio, and about a dozen other lawmakers, asking several of them to sign a letter prepared by the industry to press the E.P.A. to back down, according to an industry report describing the lobbying visit.
Within a matter of weeks, two letters — using nearly identical language — were sent by House and Senate lawmakers to the E.P.A. — with the industry group forwarding copies of the letters to the agency as well, and then posting them on its website.
The industry lobbyists also held their own meeting at E.P.A. headquarters, and they urged Jim Jones, who oversaw the rule-making process as the assistant administrator for the agency’s Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention, to visit a North Carolina furniture manufacturing plant. According to the trade group, Mr. Jones told them that the visit had “helped the agency shift its thinking” about the rules and how laminated products should be treated.
The resistance was particularly intense from lawmakers like Mr. Wicker of Mississippi, whose state is home to major manufacturing plants owned by Ashley Furniture Industries, the world’s largest furniture maker, and who is one of the biggest recipients in Congress of donations from the industry’s trade association. Asked if the political support played a role, a spokesman for Mr. Wicker replied: “Thousands of Mississippians depend on the furniture manufacturing industry for their livelihoods. Senator Wicker is committed to defending all Mississippians from government overreach.”
Individual companies like Ikea also intervened, as did the Chinese government, which claimed that the new rule would create a “great barrier” to the import of Chinese products because of higher costs.
Perhaps the most surprising objection came from Senator Boxer, of California, a longtime environmental advocate, whose office questioned why the E.P.A.’s rule went further than her home state’s in seeking testing on laminated products. “We did not advocate an outcome, other than safety,” her office said in a statement about why the senator raised concerns. “We said ‘Take a look to see if you have it right.’ ”
Safety advocates say that tighter restrictions — like the ones Ms. Boxer and Mr. Wicker, along with Representative Doris Matsui, a California Democrat, have questioned — are necessary, particularly for products coming from China, where items as varied as toys and Christmas lights have been found to violate American safety standards.
While Mr. Neltner, the environmental advocate who has been most involved in the review process, has been open to compromise, he has pressed the E.P.A. not to back down entirely, and to maintain a requirement that laminators verify that their products are safe.
An episode of CBS’s “60 Minutes” in March brought attention to the issue when it accused Lumber Liquidators, the discount flooring retailer, of selling laminate products with dangerous levels of formaldehyde. The company has disputed the show’s findings and test methods, maintaining that its products are safe.
“People think that just because Congress passed the legislation five years ago, the problem has been fixed,” said Becky Gillette, who then lived in coastal Mississippi, in the area hit by Hurricane Katrina, and was among the first to notice a pattern of complaints from people living in the trailers. “Real people’s faces and names come up in front of me when I think of the thousands of people who could get sick if this rule is not done right.”
An aide to Ms. Matsui rejected any suggestion that she was bending to industry pressure.
“From the beginning the public health has been our No. 1 concern,” said Kyle J. Victor, an aide to Ms. Matsui.
But further changes to the rule are likely, agency officials concede, as they say they are searching for a way to reduce the cost of complying with any final rule while maintaining public health goals. The question is just how radically the agency will revamp the testing requirement for laminated products — if it keeps it at all.
“It’s not a secret to anybody that is the most challenging issue,” said Mr. Jones, the E.P.A. official overseeing the process, adding that the health consequences from formaldehyde are real. “We have to reduce those exposures so that people can live healthy lives and not have to worry about being in their homes.”
The Uphill Battle to Better Regulate FormaldehydeMs. Rendell was a prolific writer of intricately plotted mystery novels that combined psychological insight, social conscience and teeth-chattering terror.
Ruth Rendell, Novelist Who Thrilled and Educated, Dies at 85Mr. Goldberg was a serial Silicon Valley entrepreneur and venture capitalist who was married to Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer of Facebook.
Dave Goldberg, Head of Web Survey Company and Half of a Silicon Valley Power Couple, Dies at 47Mr. 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.
Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, 93, Dies; Polish Auschwitz Survivor Aided JewsBEIJING (AP) — The head of Taiwan's Nationalists reaffirmed the party's support for eventual unification with the mainland when he met Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of continuing rapprochement between the former bitter enemies.
Nationalist Party Chairman Eric Chu, a likely presidential candidate next year, also affirmed Taiwan's desire to join the proposed Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank during the meeting in Beijing. China claims Taiwan as its own territory and doesn't want the island to join using a name that might imply it is an independent country.
Chu's comments during his meeting with Xi were carried live on Hong Kong-based broadcaster Phoenix Television.
The Nationalists were driven to Taiwan by Mao Zedong's Communists during the Chinese civil war in 1949, leading to decades of hostility between the sides. Chu, who took over as party leader in January, is the third Nationalist chairman to visit the mainland and the first since 2009.
Relations between the communist-ruled mainland and the self-governing democratic island of Taiwan began to warm in the 1990s, partly out of their common opposition to Taiwan's formal independence from China, a position advocated by the island's Democratic Progressive Party.
Despite increasingly close economic ties, the prospect of political unification has grown increasingly unpopular on Taiwan, especially with younger voters. Opposition to the Nationalists' pro-China policies was seen as a driver behind heavy local electoral defeats for the party last year that led to Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou resigning as party chairman.
Taiwan party leader affirms eventual reunion with ChinaA 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.
Jean Nidetch, 91, Dies; Pounds Came Off, and Weight Watchers Was BornHOBART, Tasmania — Few places seem out of reach for China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has traveled from European capitals to obscure Pacific and Caribbean islands in pursuit of his nation’s strategic interests.
So perhaps it was not surprising when he turned up last fall in this city on the edge of the Southern Ocean to put down a long-distance marker in another faraway region, Antarctica, 2,000 miles south of this Australian port.
Standing on the deck of an icebreaker that ferries Chinese scientists from this last stop before the frozen continent, Mr. Xi pledged that China would continue to expand in one of the few places on earth that remain unexploited by humans.
He signed a five-year accord with the Australian government that allows Chinese vessels and, in the future, aircraft to resupply for fuel and food before heading south. That will help secure easier access to a region that is believed to have vast oil and mineral resources; huge quantities of high-protein sea life; and for times of possible future dire need, fresh water contained in icebergs.
It was not until 1985, about seven decades after Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen raced to the South Pole, that a team representing Beijing hoisted the Chinese flag over the nation’s first Antarctic research base, the Great Wall Station on King George Island.
But now China seems determined to catch up. As it has bolstered spending on Antarctic research, and as the early explorers, especially the United States and Australia, confront stagnant budgets, there is growing concern about its intentions.
China’s operations on the continent — it opened its fourth research station last year, chose a site for a fifth, and is investing in a second icebreaker and new ice-capable planes and helicopters — are already the fastest growing of the 52 signatories to the Antarctic Treaty. That gentlemen’s agreement reached in 1959 bans military activity on the continent and aims to preserve it as one of the world’s last wildernesses; a related pact prohibits mining.
But Mr. Xi’s visit was another sign that China is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent’s resource potential when the treaty expires in 2048 — or in the event that it is ripped up before, Chinese and Australian experts say.
“So far, our research is natural-science based, but we know there is more and more concern about resource security,” said Yang Huigen, director general of the Polar Research Institute of China, who accompanied Mr. Xi last November on his visit to Hobart and stood with him on the icebreaker, Xue Long, or Snow Dragon.
With that in mind, the polar institute recently opened a new division devoted to the study of resources, law, geopolitics and governance in Antarctica and the Arctic, Mr. Yang said.
Australia, a strategic ally of the United States that has strong economic relations with China, is watching China’s buildup in the Antarctic with a mix of gratitude — China’s presence offers support for Australia’s Antarctic science program, which is short of cash — and wariness.
“We should have no illusions about the deeper agenda — one that has not even been agreed to by Chinese scientists but is driven by Xi, and most likely his successors,” said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former senior official in the Australian Department of Defense.
“This is part of a broader pattern of a mercantilist approach all around the world,” Mr. Jennings added. “A big driver of Chinese policy is to secure long-term energy supply and food supply.”
That approach was evident last month when a large Chinese agriculture enterprise announced an expansion of its fishing operations around Antarctica to catch more krill — small, protein-rich crustaceans that are abundant in Antarctic waters.
“The Antarctic is a treasure house for all human beings, and China should go there and share,” Liu Shenli, the chairman of the China National Agricultural Development Group, told China Daily, a state-owned newspaper. China would aim to fish up to two million tons of krill a year, he said, a substantial increase from what it currently harvests.
Because sovereignty over Antarctica is unclear, nations have sought to strengthen their claims over the ice-covered land by building research bases and naming geographic features. China’s fifth station will put it within reach of the six American facilities, and ahead of Australia’s three.
Chinese mappers have also given Chinese names to more than 300 sites, compared with the thousands of locations on the continent with English names.
In the unspoken competition for Antarctica’s future, scientific achievement can also translate into influence. Chinese scientists are driving to be the first to drill and recover an ice core containing tiny air bubbles that provide a record of climate change stretching as far back as 1.5 million years. It is an expensive and delicate effort at which others, including the European Union and Australia, have failed.
In a breakthrough a decade ago, European scientists extracted an ice core nearly two miles long that revealed 800,000 years of climate history. But finding an ice core going back further would allow scientists to examine a change in the earth’s climate cycles believed to have occurred 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago.
China is betting it has found the best location to drill, at an area called Dome A, or Dome Argus, the highest point on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Though it is considered one of the coldest places on the planet, with temperatures of 130 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, a Chinese expedition explored the area in 2005 and established a research station in 2009.
“The international community has drilled in lots of places, but no luck so far,” said Xiao Cunde, a member of the first party to reach the site and the deputy director of the Institute for Climate Change at the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences. “We think at Dome A we will have a straight shot at the one-million-year ice core.”
Mr. Xiao said China had already begun drilling and hoped to find what scientists are looking for in four to five years.
To support its Antarctic aspirations, China is building a sophisticated $300 million icebreaker that is expected to be ready in a few years, said Xia Limin, deputy director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration in Beijing. It has also bought a high-tech fixed-wing aircraft, outfitted in the United States, for taking sensitive scientific soundings from the ice.
China has chosen the site for its fifth research station at Inexpressible Island, named by a group of British explorers who were stranded at the desolate site in 1912 and survived the winter by excavating a small ice cave.
Mr. Xia said the inhospitable spot was ideal because China did not have a presence in that part of Antarctica, and because the rocky site did not have much snow, making it relatively cheap to build there.
Anne-Marie Brady, a professor of political science at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the author of a soon-to-be-released book, “China as a Polar Great Power,” said Chinese scientists also believed they had a good chance of finding mineral and energy resources near the site.
“China is playing a long game in Antarctica and keeping other states guessing about its true intentions and interests are part of its poker hand,” she said. But she noted that China’s interest in finding minerals was presented “loud and clear to domestic audiences” as the main reason it was investing in Antarctica.
Because commercial drilling is banned, estimates of energy and mineral resources in Antarctica rely on remote sensing data and comparisons with similar geological environments elsewhere, said Millard F. Coffin, executive director of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Hobart.
But the difficulty of extraction in such severe conditions and uncertainty about future commodity prices make it unlikely that China or any country would defy the ban on mining anytime soon.
Tourism, however, is already booming. Travelers from China are still a relatively small contingent in the Antarctic compared with the more than 13,000 Americans who visited in 2013, and as yet there are no licensed Chinese tour operators.
But that is about to change, said Anthony Bergin, deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “I understand very soon there will be Chinese tourists on Chinese vessels with all-Chinese crew in the Antarctic,” he said.
WASHINGTON — The last three men to win the Republican nomination have been the prosperous son of a president (George W. Bush), a senator who could not recall how many homes his family owned (John McCain of Arizona; it was seven) and a private equity executive worth an estimated $200 million (Mitt Romney).
The candidates hoping to be the party’s nominee in 2016 are trying to create a very different set of associations. On Sunday, Ben Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, joined the presidential field.
Senator Marco Rubio of Florida praises his parents, a bartender and a Kmart stock clerk, as he urges audiences not to forget “the workers in our hotel kitchens, the landscaping crews in our neighborhoods, the late-night janitorial staff that clean our offices.”
Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, a preacher’s son, posts on Twitter about his ham-and-cheese sandwiches and boasts of his coupon-clipping frugality. His $1 Kohl’s sweater has become a campaign celebrity in its own right.
Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky laments the existence of “two Americas,” borrowing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s phrase to describe economically and racially troubled communities like Ferguson, Mo., and Detroit.
“Some say, ‘But Democrats care more about the poor,’ ” Mr. Paul likes to say. “If that’s true, why is black unemployment still twice white unemployment? Why has household income declined by $3,500 over the past six years?”
We are in the midst of the Empathy Primary — the rhetorical battleground shaping the Republican presidential field of 2016.
Harmed by the perception that they favor the wealthy at the expense of middle-of-the-road Americans, the party’s contenders are each trying their hardest to get across what the elder George Bush once inelegantly told recession-battered voters in 1992: “Message: I care.”
Their ability to do so — less bluntly, more sincerely — could prove decisive in an election year when power, privilege and family connections will loom large for both parties.
Questions of understanding and compassion cost Republicans in the last election. Mr. Romney, who memorably dismissed the “47 percent” of Americans as freeloaders, lost to President Obama by 63 percentage points among voters who cast their ballots for the candidate who “cares about people like me,” according to exit polls.
And a Pew poll from February showed that people still believe Republicans are indifferent to working Americans: 54 percent said the Republican Party does not care about the middle class.
That taint of callousness explains why Senator Ted Cruz of Texas declared last week that Republicans “are and should be the party of the 47 percent” — and why another son of a president, Jeb Bush, has made economic opportunity the centerpiece of his message.
With his pedigree and considerable wealth — since he left the Florida governor’s office almost a decade ago he has earned millions of dollars sitting on corporate boards and advising banks — Mr. Bush probably has the most complicated task making the argument to voters that he understands their concerns.
On a visit last week to Puerto Rico, Mr. Bush sounded every bit the populist, railing against “elites” who have stifled economic growth and innovation. In the kind of economy he envisions leading, he said: “We wouldn’t have the middle being squeezed. People in poverty would have a chance to rise up. And the social strains that exist — because the haves and have-nots is the big debate in our country today — would subside.”
Who Is Running for President (and Who’s Not)?
Republicans’ emphasis on poorer and working-class Americans now represents a shift from the party’s longstanding focus on business owners and “job creators” as the drivers of economic opportunity.
This is intentional, Republican operatives said.
In the last presidential election, Republicans rushed to defend business owners against what they saw as hostility by Democrats to successful, wealthy entrepreneurs.
“Part of what you had was a reaction to the Democrats’ dehumanization of business owners: ‘Oh, you think you started your plumbing company? No you didn’t,’ ” said Grover Norquist, the conservative activist and president of Americans for Tax Reform.
But now, Mr. Norquist said, Republicans should move past that. “Focus on the people in the room who know someone who couldn’t get a job, or a promotion, or a raise because taxes are too high or regulations eat up companies’ time,” he said. “The rich guy can take care of himself.”
Democrats argue that the public will ultimately see through such an approach because Republican positions like opposing a minimum-wage increase and giving private banks a larger role in student loans would hurt working Americans.
“If Republican candidates are just repeating the same tired policies, I’m not sure that smiling while saying it is going to be enough,” said Guy Cecil, a Democratic strategist who is joining a “super PAC” working on behalf of Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Republicans have already attacked Mrs. Clinton over the wealth and power she and her husband have accumulated, caricaturing her as an out-of-touch multimillionaire who earns hundreds of thousands of dollars per speech and has not driven a car since 1996.
Mr. Walker hit this theme recently on Fox News, pointing to Mrs. Clinton’s lucrative book deals and her multiple residences. “This is not someone who is connected with everyday Americans,” he said. His own net worth, according to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, is less than a half-million dollars; Mr. Walker also owes tens of thousands of dollars on his credit cards.
But showing off a cheap sweater or boasting of a bootstraps family background not only helps draw a contrast with Mrs. Clinton’s latter-day affluence, it is also an implicit argument against Mr. Bush.
Mr. Walker, who featured a 1998 Saturn with more than 100,000 miles on the odometer in a 2010 campaign ad during his first run for governor, likes to talk about flipping burgers at McDonald’s as a young person. His mother, he has said, grew up on a farm with no indoor plumbing until she was in high school.
Mr. Rubio, among the least wealthy members of the Senate, with an estimated net worth of around a half-million dollars, uses his working-class upbringing as evidence of the “exceptionalism” of America, “where even the son of a bartender and a maid can have the same dreams and the same future as those who come from power and privilege.”
Mr. Cruz alludes to his family’s dysfunction — his parents, he says, were heavy drinkers — and recounts his father’s tale of fleeing Cuba with $100 sewn into his underwear.
Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey notes that his father paid his way through college working nights at an ice cream plant.
But sometimes the attempts at projecting authenticity can seem forced. Mr. Christie recently found himself on the defensive after telling a New Hampshire audience, “I don’t consider myself a wealthy man.” Tax returns showed that he and his wife, a longtime Wall Street executive, earned nearly $700,000 in 2013.
The story of success against the odds is a political classic, even if it is one the Republican Party has not been able to tell for a long time. Ronald Reagan liked to say that while he had not been born on the wrong side of the tracks, he could always hear the whistle. Richard Nixon was fond of reminding voters how he was born in a house his father had built.
“Probably the idea that is most attractive to an average voter, and an idea that both Republicans and Democrats try to craft into their messages, is this idea that you can rise from nothing,” said Charles C. W. Cooke, a writer for National Review.
There is a certain delight Republicans take in turning that message to their advantage now.
“That’s what Obama did with Hillary,” Mr. Cooke said. “He acknowledged it openly: ‘This is ridiculous. Look at me, this one-term senator with dark skin and all of America’s unsolved racial problems, running against the wife of the last Democratic president.”
G.O.P. Hopefuls Now Aiming to Woo the Middle ClassAs governor, Mr. Walker alienated Republicans and his fellow Democrats, particularly the Democratic powerhouse Richard J. Daley, the mayor of Chicago.
Dan Walker, 92, Dies; Illinois Governor and Later a U.S. PrisonerMs. 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.
Ellen Turner Dies at 87; Opened Kitchen to Feed the Needy of KnoxvilleThe 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.
Mike Phillips, Half of Kentucky’s ‘Twin Towers’ of Basketball, Dies at 59A 2-minute-42-second demo recording captured in one take turned out to be a one-hit wonder for Mr. Ely, who was 19 when he sang the garage-band classic.
Jack Ely, Who Sang the Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie’, Dies at 71A former member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Smedvig helped found the wide-ranging Empire Brass quintet.
Rolf Smedvig, Trumpeter in the Empire Brass, Dies at 62