PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

saco-indonesia.com, Memilih AC atau air conditioner Indonesia yang baik dan benar tentu nya sangat baik ketika kita ingin membeli sebuah produk air conditioner Indonesia atau ac. Apalagi Indonesia juga merupakan daerah yang beriklim tropis yang telah memiliki 2 musim yakni musim hujan dan musim panas. Ketika datang musim panas atau kemarau, udara sejuk juga merupakan dambaan bagi setiap masyarakat. Dan udara sejuk telah menjadi suatu kebutuhan primer yang harus dipenuhi. Oleh karena itu kebutuhan akan air conditioner atau ac telah menjadi sangat penting. Maka dari itu, banyak keluarga yang telah membeli ac untuk tempat tinggal mereka. Namun, seperti nya kita juga sama-sama ketahui bahwa air conditioner atau ac ini harga nya juga cukup mahal. Tidak hanya itu memiliki ac di rumah, juga akan membutuhkan perawatan dan ini juga membutuhkan biaya yang tidak sedikit.
AC, Bagaimana Cara Memilih nya ?

acAC atau air conditioner Indonesia tidak hanya memiliki satu jenis saja, melainkan banyak jenis. Tidak hanya itu saja , banyak nya merek ac yang telah ditawarkan, ini telah membuat para pembeli harus cermat dan jeli dalam memilih jenis ac yang aman dan ramah terhadap lingkungan. Nah, beberapa hal yang bisa dijadikan sebagai pertimbangan dalam memilih ac yang baik dan benar, yaitu :

    Lihat dari segi fungsi. Kita pasti saat membeli suatu barang, karena fungsi dan manfaat nya. Begitu pula dengan membeli mesin pendingin ini. Kita tahu bahwa ac berfungsi untuk dapat menghadirkan udara yang sejuk. Maka dari itu, belilah produk mesin pendingin yang telah memang mampu untuk memberikan udara sejuk ruangan dalam waktu yang cepat. Untuk dapat mengetahui berapa cepat air conditioner tersebut mampu untuk mendinginkan ruangan, maka cukup dengan melihat evaporator pendingin yang ada pada bagian samping mesin pendingin tersebut. Semakin besar ukuran evaporator pendingin, maka ac tersebut akan mampu untuk mendinginkan suatu ruangan dengan lebih cepat secara alami dan seimbang.
    Perhatikan bagian kipas mesin pendingin tersebut. Jika pada mesin pendingin tersebut kipas digunakan bentuk nya besar, maka angin yang berhembus akan kencang. Dan ini akan dapat membuat ruang akan makin cepat dingin. Selain itu, jika kipas mesin pendingin tersebut besar dan juga lebar, maka air conditioner tersebut tidak akan menimbulkan suara yang berisik. Kipas yang besar ini juga tergantung pada evaporator. Semakin lebar dan besar evaporator sebuah mesin pendingin, maka secara otomatis kipas pada bagian blower akan lebih besar. Karena hal ini juga berhubungan dengan masalah keseimbangan. Namun jika ingin mendapatkan ac dengan kualitas yang terbaik, ada baik nya jika kipas tersebut bentuk seperti gerigi, sehingga akan dapat menyebabkan turbulansi akan menjadi tidak berisik.
    Coba pertimbangkan fitur-fitur lain yang berhubungan dengan kesehatan. Sekarang banyak produk air conditioner yang diciptakan dengan fitur-fitur tambahan yang berhubungan dengan kesehatan seperti mampu untuk membasmi kuman. Selain itu ada juga produk mesin pendingin yang dibuat dengan fitur yang mampu untuk menghilangkan bakteri. Ada juga produk ac yang mampu sebagai filter penyaring debu dan menghilangkan bau tidak sedap. Bahkan ada yang memproduksi air conditioner dengan fitur vitamin c di dalamnya yang juga mengandung antioksidan sehingga dapat meningkatkan kekebalan tubuh dan tubuh menjadi lebih sehat dan bugar.

Sekian informasi mengenai tips trik dalam memilih ac yang baik dan benar, semoga tips ini dapat berguna untuk semua ketika ingin membeli produk air conditioner

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

saco-indonesia.com, Pelaku spesialis pencurian kendaran bermotor (Curanmor), Ahmad Wirahadi Kusuma yang berusia 25 tahun , yang terjun ke sungai Ciliwung merupakan residivis.

“Pelaku baru keluar penjara dari Lapas Pondok Rajeg, residivis dalam kasus pencurian sepeda motor,”ujar Kapolsek Sukmajaya, Kompol Agus Widodo kepada Pos Kota di ruang kerjanya, Senin (30/12) pagi.

Kedua teman pelaku yang juga masih dalam pengejaran petugas yaitu KH alias J dan D alias E adalah sesama rekan satu sel dengan pelaku. “KH alias J sebagai pimpinan gembong pencuri, lalu D alias E bertugas sebagai joki pembawa motor hasil petikan atau curian,”katanya.

Mantan Kapolsek Beji ini juga mengungkapkan, kawanan spesialis curanmor ini setiap kali melakukan aksinya selalu mengincar motor yang sedang diparkir dalam teras rumah.

“Pelaku spesialis pemain subuh. Disaat pemilik rumah sedang lengah dengan tertidur pulas. Ada kesempatan pelaku untuk dapat melakukan aksi kejahatan,”ungkapnya.

Dalam menjalankan aksinya, lanjut Kapolsek, pelaku juga tidak butuh banyak waktu untuk berhasil mencuri motor. Hanya dalam hitungan menit. “Kurang satu menit pelaku telah berhasil membawa kabur motor curian yang diambil dari teras rumah maupun pinggir jalan dengan alat kunci letter T untuk dapat membobol motor,”demikian.

Sementara itu, untuk dapat menangkap dua pelaku yang buron KH alias J dan D alias E pihaknya telah mendapatkan informasi dari pelaku Ahmad Wirahadi Kusuma bahwa mereka kelompok Jonggol Jawa Barat.

“Anggota reserse kita sebar di lapangan untuk dapat mengejar pelaku yang buron,”tegasnya.

Sebelumnya, Ahmad Wirahadi Kusuma yang berusia 25 tahun, nekad terjun dari jembatan setinggi 50 meter dalam perumahan ke sungai Ciliwung. Aksinya tersebut telah dilakukan upaya berusaha mencoba kabur dari kejaran penghuni dan satpam perumahan yang telah memergoki pelaku berusaha mencuri motor di teras rumah milik Trijoto di Perumahan Pesona Khayangan Blok BJ, Sukmajaya Depok.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

Satu dari empat bandit ABG bermodus berpura-pura tanyakan alamat telah dibekuk saat beraksi di Jalan Tebet Timur Dalam IX C, Tebet, Jakarta Selatan.  Tersangka A yang berusia 16 tahun , telah dibekuk oleh petugas Polsek Tebet bersama dengan anggota KSK setelah korban I, 15, dirampok dan ditodong pisau dapur.

Kapolsek Tebet, Kompol I Ketut Sudharma, telah didampingi Kanit Reskrim Iptu Budi Setiyono juga menerangkan modus tersangka mendekati korban yang merupakan pelajar SMPN 73 Tebet, Jaksel untuk menanyakan alamat. “Tersangka menanyakan alamat bersama tiga temannya naik motor. Setelah menanyakan alamat dia mengeluarkan pisau dan merampas hp korban,” kata kapolsek.

Korban yang dirampok secara spontan teriak minta tolong hingga didengar warga dan polisi yang sedang berpatroli. Keempat pelaku juga sempat melarikan diri namun polisi membekuk satu dari empat tersangka. “Kami juga sudah mengantongi identitas teman tersangka dan masih memburunya,” ucap Iptu Budi Setiyono.

Tersangka juga mengaku mereka baru sekali beraksi. Namun, polisi tidak percaya dengan keterangan pelaku. “Dilihat cara aksinya, mereka sudah lihai,” kata Budi. Atas perbuatannya A yang mengaku frustasi karena di DO saat duduk di SMA dikenakan pasal 365 KUHP dengan ancaman hukuman di atas lima tahun penjara.

    saco-indonesia.com,

    cinta yang tulus dalam hatiku
    membuang hasrat mimpiku
    tuk bisa menyatakan sayang
    tuk bisa mengungkapkan semua
    pada dirimu

    tak mungkin bagiku tuk memilikimu
    segala rasa yang pasti tak mungkin
    tuk bisa kau terima semua
    tuk bisa kunyatakan rasa
    kucinta kamu

    reff:
    ketika bunga tak bermekar lagi
    dan dunia tak mungkin berputar lagi
    saat cinta tak membakar hati ini
    kau kan tahu betapa aku mencintaimu
    betapa aku menginginkan kamu

    tak mungkin bagiku tuk memilikimu
    segala rasa yang pasti tak mungkin
    tuk bisa kau terima semua
    tuk bisa kunyatakan rasa
    kucinta kamu

    back to reff: [2x]

    betapa aku menginginkan kamu

    Editor : Dian Sukmawati

Tips Memilih Jenis Lampu Rumah yang Cocok

Di antara banyak jenis bola lampu, semua tidak cocok untuk pencahayaan domestik. Cocok untuk digunakan di rumah ada semacam cahaya ini:

Lampu Light LED:

Lampu LED masih teknologi baru. ketika menyala, LED mampu telah menghasilkan percikan dari rangkaian optik bekerja dengan semikonduktor. Karena digunakan.Secara lebih nyaman secara keseluruhan, lampu ini juga tidak menghasilkan sangat sedikit panas, lampu ini tahan lama jauh lebih efisien daripada lampu pijar. 4 watt lampu LED, memiliki bertahan hingga 20 tahun dan jumlah cahaya yang sama 25 watt lampu pijar. Namun, harganya jauh lebih mahal daripada lampu pijar.

Lampu pijar:

Tipe pertama, bola lampu pijar adalah jenis paling murah lampu. Cahaya telah ditemukan oleh Thomas Edison, namun dalam banyak kasus digunakan untuk tahun 1990. Lampu pijar juga disebut incandesent dan bola lampu. Silakan mengoperasikan waktu saat melalui lampu filamen karbon dari dalm dari lampu pijar. Kemudian, menghasilkan panas dan menghasilkan cahaya cahaya.Selain, filamen karbon menghasilkan panas jenis lampu juga. Oleh karena itu, dapat menyebabkan panas ruangan menjadi penggunaan lampu ini. Selain itu, untuk dapat menghasilkan lampu pijar ini, hasil penguapan debu. Jika lampu dipasang di atap, saya menjalankan debu terjebak di atap itu. Akibatnya, lingkaran hitam, terbentuk di langit-langit. The bola lampu pijar di langit langit.Lampu, Anda perlu menghindari hal ini ketika saya mampu untuk mengarahkan cahaya untuk bersinar dan intensitas maksimum segera setelah instalasi sambungan, menempatkan kap lampu. Selain itu, lampu ini tidak terpengaruh oleh suhu dan kelembaban udara di sekitarnya. Namun, lampu
ini membutuhkan daya tinggi untuk membuatnya begitu bersinar. Masa hidup bohlam biasanya sekitar bola lampu pijar cocok untuk kamar yang tidak membutuhkan cahaya 1000 jam.Berdasarkan karakteristik dari 750, seperti kamar mandi atau penyimpanan kekuatan tinggi tersebut. Lampu pijar Selanjutnya, adalah mungkin untuk menggunakan dimmer.

Lampu Cahaya TL:

Seringkali, lampu neon, dikenal sebagai fluorescent atau neon. Lampu neon telah mulai digunakan sebagai alternatif untuk lampu pijar terakhir sering. Dan bekerja sama dengan lampu neon adalah gas yang menggunakan fluor dan fosfor. Ketika menerima dihasilkan arus dari gas UV. Sinar ultraviolet, dapat cenderung lebih mahal, dibandingkan dengan output neon lampu pijar terhadap radiasi putih.Harga kemudian dihasilkan. Namun, lampu ini lebih hemat energi. 20 lampu neon W memiliki jumlah cahaya yang sama dengan lampu pijar 100 watt. Lampu tidak menghasilkan polutan, tidak menghasilkan panas tetapi menggunakan untuk menjadi nyaman. Tetapi untuk dapat diaktifkan dengan intensitas maksimum, akan memakan waktu lebih lama untuk cahaya. Kehidupan lampu TL, secara umum, sangat terang, kualitas cahaya yang sedikit lebih tinggi di TL lampu LED sekitar 10.000 jam.Secara antara keseluruhan. Tapi harga jauh lebih murah daripada lampu LED lampu neon. Oleh karena itu, lampu ini adalah dunia cahaya termasuk rumah, yang paling ban

yak digunakan. Karena popularitasnya, adalah lampu yang telah menghasilkan berbagai cahaya bentuk dan ukuran banyak perusahaan yang estetika. Bahkan, beberapa tahun yang lalu, jenis cahaya adalah dalam bentuk tabung panjang.

Lampu halogen:

Aku punya lampu halogen yang sama prinsipnya, lampu pijar. Lampu ini dibuat lampu pijar kecil diterapkan untuk itu, dalam komposisi jumlah gas halogen. Selanjutnya, menempatkan fungsi cermin sebagai reflektor untuk menghasilkan cahaya terang dari lampu adalah kuat.Jenis tidak menyebarkan cahaya di belakang pengaturan biasa, itu adalah salah satu arah saja. Hal ini digunakan sebagai sumber cahaya hanya untuk tujuan kosmetik hanya dengan. Misalnya, cahaya untuk menerangi seni cahaya, lampu taman, Interior.

Jika Anda tidak mendapatkan angka yang akurat untuk Anda selalu, bahkan dapat Anda lihat sempatkanlah, untuk mengunjungi rumah dan toko-toko elektronik, yang saya mencoba untuk menghasilkan cahaya seragam . Jika Anda sudah familiar dengan jenis bola lampu benar, bagi Anda untuk menentukan apa jenis cahaya yang Anda butuhkan untuk rumah Anda akan lebih mudah

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

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

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

Hello, Mago.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Then came the stroke.

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

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

Most of all: Is this it?

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

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

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

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

Goodbye, Mago.

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

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.

Mr. Alger, who served five terms from Texas, led Republican women in a confrontation with Lyndon B. Johnson that may have cost Richard M. Nixon the 1960 presidential election.

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

A former member of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Mr. Smedvig helped found the wide-ranging Empire Brass quintet.

As he reflected on the festering wounds deepened by race and grievance that have been on painful display in America’s cities lately, President Obama on Monday found himself thinking about a young man he had just met named Malachi.

A few minutes before, in a closed-door round-table discussion at Lehman College in the Bronx, Mr. Obama had asked a group of black and Hispanic students from disadvantaged backgrounds what could be done to help them reach their goals. Several talked about counseling and guidance programs.

“Malachi, he just talked about — we should talk about love,” Mr. Obama told a crowd afterward, drifting away from his prepared remarks. “Because Malachi and I shared the fact that our dad wasn’t around and that sometimes we wondered why he wasn’t around and what had happened. But really, that’s what this comes down to is: Do we love these kids?”

Many presidents have governed during times of racial tension, but Mr. Obama is the first to see in the mirror a face that looks like those on the other side of history’s ledger. While his first term was consumed with the economy, war and health care, his second keeps coming back to the societal divide that was not bridged by his election. A president who eschewed focusing on race now seems to have found his voice again as he thinks about how to use his remaining time in office and beyond.

Continue reading the main story Video

Play Video|1:17

Obama Speaks of a ‘Sense of Unfairness’

In the aftermath of racially charged unrest in places like Baltimore, Ferguson, Mo., and New York, Mr. Obama came to the Bronx on Monday for the announcement of a new nonprofit organization that is being spun off from his White House initiative called My Brother’s Keeper. Staked by more than $80 million in commitments from corporations and other donors, the new group, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, will in effect provide the nucleus for Mr. Obama’s post-presidency, which will begin in January 2017.

“This will remain a mission for me and for Michelle not just for the rest of my presidency but for the rest of my life,” Mr. Obama said. “And the reason is simple,” he added. Referring to some of the youths he had just met, he said: “We see ourselves in these young men. I grew up without a dad. I grew up lost sometimes and adrift, not having a sense of a clear path. The only difference between me and a lot of other young men in this neighborhood and all across the country is that I grew up in an environment that was a little more forgiving.”

Organizers said the new alliance already had financial pledges from companies like American Express, Deloitte, Discovery Communications and News Corporation. The money will be used to help companies address obstacles facing young black and Hispanic men, provide grants to programs for disadvantaged youths, and help communities aid their populations.

Joe Echevarria, a former chief executive of Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm, will lead the alliance, and among those on its leadership team or advisory group are executives at PepsiCo, News Corporation, Sprint, BET and Prudential Group Insurance; former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell; Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey; former Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.; the music star John Legend; the retired athletes Alonzo Mourning, Jerome Bettis and Shaquille O’Neal; and the mayors of Indianapolis, Sacramento and Philadelphia.

The alliance, while nominally independent of the White House, may face some of the same questions confronting former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as she begins another presidential campaign. Some of those donating to the alliance may have interests in government action, and skeptics may wonder whether they are trying to curry favor with the president by contributing.

“The Obama administration will have no role in deciding how donations are screened and what criteria they’ll set at the alliance for donor policies, because it’s an entirely separate entity,” Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Air Force One en route to New York. But he added, “I’m confident that the members of the board are well aware of the president’s commitment to transparency.”

The alliance was in the works before the disturbances last week after the death of Freddie Gray, the black man who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody in Baltimore, but it reflected the evolution of Mr. Obama’s presidency. For him, in a way, it is coming back to issues that animated him as a young community organizer and politician. It was his own struggle with race and identity, captured in his youthful memoir, “Dreams From My Father,” that stood him apart from other presidential aspirants.

But that was a side of him that he kept largely to himself through the first years of his presidency while he focused on other priorities like turning the economy around, expanding government-subsidized health care and avoiding electoral land mines en route to re-election.

After securing a second term, Mr. Obama appeared more emboldened. Just a month after his 2013 inauguration, he talked passionately about opportunity and race with a group of teenage boys in Chicago, a moment aides point to as perhaps the first time he had spoken about these issues in such a personal, powerful way as president. A few months later, he publicly lamented the death of Trayvon Martin, a black Florida teenager, saying that “could have been me 35 years ago.”

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That case, along with public ruptures of anger over police shootings in Ferguson and elsewhere, have pushed the issue of race and law enforcement onto the public agenda. Aides said they imagined that with his presidency in its final stages, Mr. Obama might be thinking more about what comes next and causes he can advance as a private citizen.

That is not to say that his public discussion of these issues has been universally welcomed. Some conservatives said he had made matters worse by seeming in their view to blame police officers in some of the disputed cases.

“President Obama, when he was elected, could have been a unifying leader,” Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a Republican candidate for president, said at a forum last week. “He has made decisions that I think have inflamed racial tensions.”

On the other side of the ideological spectrum, some liberal African-American activists have complained that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help downtrodden communities. While he is speaking out more, these critics argue, he has hardly used the power of the presidency to make the sort of radical change they say is necessary.

The line Mr. Obama has tried to straddle has been a serrated one. He condemns police brutality as he defends most officers as honorable. He condemns “criminals and thugs” who looted in Baltimore while expressing empathy with those trapped in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness.

In the Bronx on Monday, Mr. Obama bemoaned the death of Brian Moore, a plainclothes New York police officer who had died earlier in the day after being shot in the head Saturday on a Queens street. Most police officers are “good and honest and fair and care deeply about their communities,” even as they put their lives on the line, Mr. Obama said.

“Which is why in addressing the issues in Baltimore or Ferguson or New York, the point I made was that if we’re just looking at policing, we’re looking at it too narrowly,” he added. “If we ask the police to simply contain and control problems that we ourselves have been unwilling to invest and solve, that’s not fair to the communities, it’s not fair to the police.”

Moreover, if society writes off some people, he said, “that’s not the kind of country I want to live in; that’s not what America is about.”

His message to young men like Malachi Hernandez, who attends Boston Latin Academy in Massachusetts, is not to give up.

“I want you to know you matter,” he said. “You matter to us.”

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.”

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

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

Mr. Fox, known for his well-honed countrified voice, wrote about things dear to South Carolina and won over Yankee critics.

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

“It was really nice to play with other women and not have this underlying tone of being at each other’s throats.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A skeptical Mr. Vasilakopoulos predicted tensions would worsen.

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

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

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

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.