PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

Saco-Indonesia.com - Sejak masih jejaka, Suno (58), warga Desa Karang Kedawang, Kecamatan Sooko, Kabupaten Mojokerto, Jawa Timur, sudah akrab dengan usaha persepatuan. Walau kala itu ”sekadar” sebagai tukang sol sepatu. Kini, ia menjadi salah satu pelaku usaha kecil dan menengah dengan produksi sampai 70 kodi sandal per hari.

Sebagai tukang sol sepatu, Suno yang memulai membuka usaha sendiri pembuatan sandal dengan merek Expo, enam tahun silam, telah malang melintang dari satu tempat kerja pembuatan sepatu ke tempat pembuatan sepatu lain.

”Awalnya saya bekerja menjadi tukang sol sepatu di Surabaya, tepatnya di Petemon, lalu pindah ke Rangkah, dan terakhir kerja di pabrik sepatu di Sukomanunggal,” katanya.

Suno adalah salah satu dari sekitar 1.300 pelaku usaha kecil dan menengah (UKM) di wilayah kerja Bank Tabungan Pensiunan Nasional (BTPN) Cabang Mojokerto yang menjadi nasabah sekaligus binaan bank ini.

Sejak tahun 2010 Suno mendapat kucuran kredit Rp 30 juta untuk tambahan modal sekaligus pengembangan usahanya. Setahun berikutnya, Suno kembali mendapat kucuran kredit Rp 60 juta. Pada 2012, dia mendapat kredit lagi sebesar Rp 98 juta.

”Sebelum kucuran kredit dari BTPN sampai tiga kali, modal awal untuk mulai membuka usaha sandal ini saya pinjam dari koperasi sebesar Rp 10 juta,” kata Suno.

Setelah menjadi binaan BTPN dan mendapat pelatihan, khususnya menyangkut manajemen keuangan dalam pengelolaan usaha kecil, usaha sandal Suno berkembang cepat.

Rugi

Suno bercerita, pada awal memulai usaha, dia sering menyerahkan pengerjaan pembuatan sandal kepada orang lain. ”Istilahnya, saya men- sub- kan pesanan itu kepada perajin sandal lain,” ujarnya.

Namun, hasilnya justru tak menguntungkan, bahkan Suno menelan kerugian. ”Saya sempat tak mengerjakan sendiri pesanan sandal itu. Hasilnya, dalam dua bulan saya rugi sekitar Rp 3,5 juta.”

Pengalaman pahit itulah yang memaksa Suno mengerjakan sendiri produk sandal Expo miliknya. Seiring berjalannya waktu, usahanya tumbuh dan berkembang. Pesanan dari pedagang grosir di Pasar Turi, Surabaya, misalnya, terus meningkat.

”Sekarang saya sudah bisa membayar orang. Di sini ada tujuh karyawan dari tukang sol, tukang kap, dan seorang sekretaris,” kata Suno.

Dibantu anaknya yang masih lajang, Sugianto, untuk memasarkan produknya, Suno bangga bisa memberikan lapangan pekerjaan kepada orang lain.

”Rata-rata setiap hari usaha saya ini bisa memproduksi 30 sampai 50 kodi sandal. Kalau pesanan sedang ramai, dalam sehari bisa mencapai 70 kodi. Kalau sudah begini, saya juga menyerahkan pengerjaan pembuatan sandal kepada enam tukang sol, tukang kap, dan tukang katokan di rumah. Mereka mengerjakan pesanan itu di rumah masing-masing, saya mengontrol hasilnya,” kata Suno.

Pedagang grosir

Sekarang, usaha skala kecil yang digeluti Suno dengan produk sandal untuk dewasa dan anak-anak serta sandal perempuan ini tak hanya dipasarkan di Surabaya dan sekitarnya, tetapi juga sudah sampai ke Tulungagung, Jawa Timur, hingga Solo, Jawa Tengah.

”Selain melayani pedagang bedak (eceran di pasar atau kaki lima), saya juga mendapat pesanan dari para pedagang grosir,” kata Suno.

Seminggu sekali ditemani Sugianto, salah satu anaknya, dengan mobil boks, Suno membawa ribuan pasang sandal menyusuri jalur tengah antara Jawa Timur dan Jawa Tengah.

Sebagai mitra usaha kecil dan menengah, BTPN Mojokerto telah menyalurkan kredit usaha kecil dan menengah sejak tahun 2009 hingga 2012. Kredit yang disalurkan itu mencapai lebih dari Rp 110 miliar.

”Ada 30 sampai 40 debitor UKM sepatu dan sandal yang menerima kucuran kredit kami, salah satunya yang berhasil, ya, usaha sandal milik Suno,” kata Mashudi, Area Daya Spesialis BTPN Cabang Mojokerto.

Suno mengakui, sebelum mendapat pelatihan manajemen keuangan dari BTPN, usahanya sekadar berjalan saja. Susno yang tak sempat menamatkan sekolah dasar (SD) itu sama sekali tak mempunyai pengetahuan soal pengelolaan keuangan usaha.

”Dulu, manajemennya campur aduk tidak karuan, tetapi sekarang pembukuan usaha ini sudah mulai rapi,” kata Suno.

Ketangguhan

Usaha sandal yang digeluti Suno adalah potret ketangguhan lapisan wong cilik yang berhasil dalam mengembangkan usaha. Walau dalam skala kecil, dia bisa memberikan sumber penghasilan dan penghidupan bagi orang lain.

”Saya masih punya impian untuk memiliki atau setidaknya membuka toko sandal dan sepatu di Pasar Klewer, Solo. Di toko itu tidak hanya menjual hasil produksi saya, tetapi juga hasil produksi perajin lain,” tutur Suno tentang harapannya.

”Keinginan saya ke depan menciptakan lebih banyak lagi lapangan kerja untuk orang-orang kecil dan susah,” katanya.

Soal keuntungan dari hasil usahanya itu, Suno mengaku masih sangat bergantung pada permintaan pasar, selain kelancaran pembayaran dari grosir ataupun pedagang bedak. ”Setidaknya dalam setahun saya masih bisa menikmati keuntungan bersih sekitar Rp 20 juta untuk ditabung. Itu kalau semuanya berjalan lancar. Namun, sering pembayarannya molor, bahkan ada yang bayar 50 persen di muka, sisanya baru dibayar satu-dua bulan,” tuturnya.

Suno, sang juragan sandal yang lahir di tanah Majapahit itu, kini bisa bernapas lega walau setiap hari harus berpikir keras untuk menjaga agar usahanya tetap berdenyut dalam situasi politik dan ekonomi yang kurang memihak kepada wong cilik ini.

GP Tax Consulting adalah salah satu unit usaha dari PT Great Performance  perusahaan yang bergerak dibidang jasa riset,  jasa konsultasi pajak dan biro jasa di Jakarta Pusat.
Dengan didukung tenaga konsultan pajak profesional yang telah terdaftar, bersertifikat dan berpengalaman bertahun-tahun di bidang perpajakan GP Tax Consulting hadir dan siap membantu permasalahan perpajakan baik di perusahaan maupun pajak pribadi anda.
Visi dan Misi

Sebagai sebuah perusahaan jasa konsultan pajak kami mempunyai Visi untuk selalu memberikan pelayanan secara optimal agar dapat memberi nilai tambah bagi klien kami.

Adapun Misi kami adalah :

    Menyediakan jasa konsultasi yang profesional dan berkwalitas tinggi kepada klien secara konsisten
    Memberikan jasa konsultasi yang dapat menyelesaikan kasus/permasalahan pajak klien secara tepat, komprehensif dan sesuai dengan peraturan pajak yang berlaku
    Menjadi mitra kerja yang baik bagi klen dan fiskus
    Membantu pemerintah dalam meningkatkan kesadaran dan kepatuhan para wajib pajak untuk memenuhi kewajibannya membayar pajak sesuai dengan Undang-undang dan Peraturan yang berlaku.

Kami selalu memberikan solusi dan pelayanan Jasa Konsultasi Pajak Terbaik dengan didukung partner yang memiliki komitmen yang tinggi, serta staff konsultan pajak professional dan terlatih khususnya di bidang perpajakan di Indonesia.
Hubungan networking yang kuat dalam jajaran korps perpajakan di seluruh Indonesia mempermudah kami dalam menyelesaikan setiap  permasalahan dan kasus perpajakan yang kami hadapi di lapangan.

Terdapat beberapa perbedaan antara Haji dan Umroh. Ibadah Umrah itu sendiri bisa dikatakan Haji kecil, karena ada beberapa manasik yang sama. Namun antara Haji dan Umrah tidaklah sama. apa saja perbedaan antara haji dan Umrah, berikut ini sedikit paparan mengenai perbedaan antara Haji dan Umrah.

Dari segi waktu, ibadah haji mempunyai waktu-waktu tertentu yaitu bulan-bulan tertentu yang tidak sah niat ihram haji kecuali di dalamnya. Adapun bulan-bulan tersebut yaitu: syawal, dzulqo’dah, dan 10 hari pertama dari bulan dzulhijjah. Sedangkan umrah, maka hari-hari dalam setahun adalah merupakan waktu dibolehkannnya untuk niat ibadah umrah, kecuali waktu-waktu haji bagi orang yang berniat ihram haji saja didalamnya.

Adapun dari segi manasik, dalam ibadah haji terdapat wukuf di arafah, mabit di mudzdalifah dan di mina, melempar jumrah. Sedangkan umrah, hal-hal di atas tidak perlu dilakukan. Yang mana umrah hanya terdiri: niat ihram, thowaf dan sai, halq atapun tahallul.

Ulama’ sepakat atas kewajiban menjalankan ibadah haji bagi yang mampu, sedangkan dalam umrah terdapat perbedaan pendapat hukum menjalankannya, apakah ia wajib atau tidak bagi yang mampu.

Mengetahui Perbedaan antara Haji dan Umrah sangat diperlukan dan harus diperhatikan. Ada beberapa perbedaan hal antara Haji dan Umrah, siantaranya sebagai berikut :

    Umrah tidak mempunyai waktu tertentu dan tidak bisa ketinggalan waktu.
    Dalam umrah tidak ada wukuf di Arafah dan tidak ada pula singgah di Muzdalifah.
    Dalam umrah tidak ada kegiatan melontar jumrah.
    Tidak ada jamak antara dua shalat seperti dalam pelaksanaan haji. Demikian menurut Ulama Hanafiyah, Malikiyah, dan Hanabilah. Sedangkan ulama Syafi’iyah berpendapat dibolehkan jamak dan qashar. Menurut mereka, haji dan umrah bukanlah sebab bagi bolehnya jamak antara dua shalat, melainkan sebabnya adalah karena safar (perjalanan).
    Tidak ada thawaf qudum dan tidak ada pula khutbah.
    Miqat umrah untuk semua orang adalah Tanah Halal. Sedangkan dalam ibadah haji, miqat bagi orang Makkah adalah Tanah Haram.
    Menurut ulama Malikiyah dan Hanafiyah, hukum umrah adalah sunah muakkad sedangkan haji hukumnya adalah fardhu. Menurut ulama Hanafiyah, pada ibadah umrah tidak ada Thawaf Wada sebagaimana dalam haji. Membatalkan umrah dan melakukan thawaf dalam keadaan junub tidak diwajibkan membayar denda seekor unta yang digemukkan (al-badanah) sebagaimana diwajibkan dalam ibadah haji.

Demikian Ulasan mengenai perbedaan Haji dan Umrah. memang terdapat beberapa Ikhtilaf Ulama, namun itu adalah berkahnya ikhtilaf. smoga sedikit penjelasan Haji Umrah ini bermanfaat.
 

Sumber : http://www.zaen-haji-umrah.com

saco-indonesia.com, Jelang akhir tahun 2013, Real Madrid ternyata telah berhasil meraih satu lagi catatan yang cukup membanggakan. Klub yang berjuluk Los Blancos itu resmi telah memiliki duet tertajam di antara kontestan La Liga lainnya di 12 bulan belakangan.

Karin Benzema dan Cristiano Ronaldo, dua ujung tombak utama si putih, telah menyumbangkan 53 gol untuk klubnya atau jadi yang paling produktif di sepanjang tahun 2013. Tentu saja nama yang disebut kedua telah memiliki kontribusi yang sangat dominan di angka tersebut. Ronaldo mengkreasikan tak kurang dari 38 gol. Sementara itu Benzema telah menyumbangkan 15 gol.

Duet lainnya, Lionel Messi dan Alexis Sanchez, hanya mampu menutup akun gol mereka berdua di tahun 2013 dengan jumlah 44 atau berselisih sembilan gol dari duet Ronaldo-Benzema. La Pulga telah mencetak 28 gol sementara Sacnchez membukukan tak kurang dari 16 gol.

Berada di tempat ketiga, adalah duet milik Atletico Madrid. David Villa dan Diego Costa hingga saat ini sudah memiliki 40 gol. Eks Barca telah menyumbang 13 di antaranya, sementara itu 27 sisanya dibuat atas nama Costa.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

Lenovo telah menegaskan akan mempertahankan merek Motorola setelah vendor asal China itu mengakuisisi vendor ponsel tersebut.

"Motorola juga merupakan brand yang sangat kuat di AS dan Eropa. Seperti halnya produk-produk IBM, kami juga akan mempertahankan merek Motorola selain tetap mengembangkan smartphone merek Lenovo," ujar Country General Manager Lenovo Indonesia Rajesh thadani.

Menurut dia, saat ini pihaknya dan Motorola tengah dalam masa transmisi dan konsolidasi bisnis, sehingga belum dapat diketahui rencana Lenovo ke depan terhadap Motorola.

Namun, kata Rajesh, akuisisi Motorola dan unit bisnis server x86 IBM makin melengkapi portofolio Lenovo dan sekaligus memperkuat bisnis smartphone, PC, dan tabletnya di level global.

Lenovo telah resmi mengakuisisi divisi ponsel Motorola dari Google Inc senilai USD 2,91 miliar. Angka ini juga merupakan nilai akuisisi terbesar di industri teknologi di China.

Dikutip dari GSMArena, sebagai bagian dari akuisisi tersebut, Google juga akan mempertahankan sebagian besar portofolio paten Motorola seperti current applications dan invention disclosures. Lenovo sendiri juga akan mengakuisisi sekitar 2 ribu paten disamping merek Motorola Mobility dan merek dagang Motorola.

Mr. Pfaff was an international affairs columnist and author who found Washington’s intervention in world affairs often misguided.

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.

Photo

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue reading the main story

 

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

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

This is intentional, Republican operatives said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Haroche was a founder of Liberty Travel, which grew from a two-man operation to the largest leisure travel operation in the United States.

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

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.’”

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

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.

Ms. Pryor, who served more than two decades in the State Department, was the author of well-regarded biographies of the founder of the American Red Cross and the Confederate commander.

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

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.

WASHINGTON — 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.

Continue reading the main story

 

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.”

Continue reading the main story

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.

Sources: Consumer Product Safety Commission; Minnesota Department of Health

 

By The New York Times

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.”

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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.”

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.

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.

Ms. Meadows was the older sister of Audrey Meadows, who played Alice Kramden on “The Honeymooners.”