PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

IBADAH HAJI DALAM ISLAM

Ibadah haji adalah salah satu rukun Islam yang lima, dan salah satu kewajiban dalam Islam, berdasarkan al-Quran, as-Sunnah dan ijma' kaum Muslimin.
Allah Subhannahu wa Ta'ala berfirman:

"…Mengerjakan haji itu adalah kewajiban manusia terhadap Allah, yaitu (bagi) orang yang sanggup mengadakan perjalanan ke Baitullah. Barangsiapa mengingkari (ke-wajiban haji), maka sesungguhnya Allah Mahakaya (tidak memerlukan sesuatu) dari semesta alam." (QS. Ali 'Imran: 97)

Dan Nabi Shalallaahu alaihi wasalam bersabda:

بُنِيَ اْلإِسْلاَمُ عَلَى خَمْسٍ شَهَادَةِ أَنْ لاَ إِلَهَ إِلاَّ اللَّهُ وَ أَنَّ مُحَمَّدًا رَسُوْلُ الله وَإِقَامِ الصَّلاَةِ وَ إيْتَاءِ الزَّكَاةِ وَ صَوْمِ رَمَضَانَ وَ حَجِّ الْبَيْتِ الْحَرَامِ

"Islam dibangun di atas lima perkara; bersaksi bahwasanya tiada Ilah yang haq kecuali Allah, dan bersaksi bahwasanya Muhammad adalah Rasul utusan Allah, menegakkan shalat, menunaikan zakat, berpuasa di bulan Ramadhan dan menunaikan ibadah haji ke Baitullah." (Hadits shahih riwayat al-Bukhari dan Muslim).

Demikian pula kaum muslimin telah sepakat akan kewajiban ibadah haji dan umrah bagi mereka yang mampu, dan tiada seorangpun menyelisihi kesepakatan ini. ( Lihat Tafsir Ibni Katsir I/364 dalam penafsiran ayat di atas, dan al-Mughni, Ibnu Qudamah 5/5)

Sumber : http://www.myrisalah.com

Baca Artikel Lainnya : BELAJAR DARI NABI IBRAHIM AS

BERCOCOK TANAM JAGUNG

MEMILIH BENIH Benih bermutu merupakan syarat utama untuk mendapatkan panen yang maksimal. Disebut benih bermutu; jenisnya murni, bernas, kering, sehat, bebas penyakit dan campuran biji rumput yang tidak dikehendaki. Kriteria ini biasanya menghasilkan tanaman sehat, kekar, kokoh dan pertumbuhan yang seragam. PEMILIHAN LAHAN LAHAN YANG BAIK Lahan yang baik adalah lahan yang kering, berpengairan cukup, lahan tadah hujan, lahan gambut yang telah diperbaiki atau lahan basah bekas menanam padi. Agar tumbuh dan berproduksi dengan baik Jagung harus ditanam di lahan terbuka yang terkena sinar matahari penuh selama 8 jam. KADAR pH Meskipun idealnya memerlukan pH 6,8 tetapi jagung bisa toleran terhadap lahan tanaman pH 5,5 – 7.0. Apabila ada tanah yang pH nya terlalu rendah bisa dinaikkan dengan menaburkan kapur. Kemudian agar lebih efisien, aplikasinya bisa dilakukan bersama dengan pengolahan lahan. Setelah penaburan, lahan dicangkul dan disiram agar kapur bisa tercampur secara merata. Kebutuhan kapur sangat bergantung pada nilai pH awal lahan. Sebagai patokan, untuk satu hektar lahan yang memiliki pH 5,0 dibutuhkan kapur antara 2 sampai 4 ton. Apabila pH lahan terlalu tinggi atau basa, maka dapat diturunkan dengan menaburkan belerang. Namun hal ini dilakukan jika nilai pH lahan memang sangat tinggi yakni 8,0 atau 9,0 PENGOLAHAN LAHAN PEMBERSIHAN GULMA Sebelum jagung ditanam, lahan perlu dibersihkan dari gulma dan tanaman liar. Gulma seperti alang alang, rumput teki, semak dan pohon perdu disiangi sampai ke akar akarnya. Gulma itu dibakar, abunya ditaburkan ke lahan sebagai kompos untuk kesuburan tanah. Gulma jangan dikubur, karena dikawatirkan akan munculnya hama seperti rayap dan semut. Selain itu, alang alang dan rumput teki bisa tumbuh kembali apabila hanya dikubur di dalam tanah. Selain gulma, pohon pohon besar yang tumbuh di sekitar lahan dan berpotensi menghalangi masuknya sinar matahari; untuk jagung melakukan proses fotosintesis, juga perlu ditebang. PENCANGKULAN Pencangkulan dilakukan dengan memindahlkan tanah bagian bawah sedalam 15 s/d 20 cm ke atas permukaan lahan. Selain untuk menyeimbangkan ketersediaan unsur hara antara bagian bawah dan bagian atas lahan, pencangkulan juga dimaksudkan membuat tanah lebih remah dan gembur. Untuk lahan yang memiliki jenis tanah gembur atau bekas tanaman semusim, pencangkulan cukup dilakukan sekali saja. Sementara itu untuk lahan yang memiliki tanah berat, pencangkulan perlu dilakukan dua kali lalu digaru. Jika lahan yang digarap terlalu luas, pencangkulan bisa diganti dengan bajak agar pengerjaannya bisa lebih cepat. PEMBUATAN BEDENGAN Pembuatan bedengan untuk lokasi penanaman benih banyak dilakukan di dataran rendah pada lahan kering, lahan bekas sawah, atau lahan tadah hujan. Bedengan dibuat selebar 70 s/d 100 cm, dengan ketinggian antara 10 s/d 20 cm. Sedangkan untuk panjangnya disesuaikan dengan kondisi, kontur, lahan. Di daerah kering tinggi bedengan sebaiknya dibuat agak rendah untuk memudahkan penyiraman karena jika terlalu tinggi membutuhkan banyak air saat penyiraman. Di antara bedengan dibuat parit selebar 20 s/d 30 cm yang berfungsi untuk mengatur keluar masuknya air di bedengan agar akar jagung tidak tergenang. PEMUPUKAN Pemupukan dimaksudkan meningkatkan kandungan unsur hara di lahan tanam. Waktu pemberian pupuk RI1, yang paling efektif selain bersama dengan saat pencangkulan atau pembajakan bisa juga diberikan saat akan membuat lubang tanam. Dengan cara begitu, pupuk RI1 yang diberikan akan tercampur merata dengan lahan tanam. Sebagai pedoman untuk lahan 1 hektar diperlukan 12 – 15 liter pupuk RI 1. PENANAMAN PEMBUATAN LUBANG TANAM Lubang tanam dibuat sedalam antara 2 s/d 5 cm menggunakan tugal, yakni alat terbuat dari kayu bulat panjang ujungnya runcing. Jarak lubang adalah 20 x 20 cm atau 20 x 40 cm. Agar barisan lubang tanam yang dibuat menjadi teratur, bisa digunakan alat bantu berupa tali yang dibentangkan sepanjang bedengan. Sementara itu, untuk benih yang ditanam di parit bedengan, diperlukan jarak antar lubang sepanjang 20 cm. PENANAMAN BENIH Untuk menghindarkan hama dan jamur serta untuk merangsang pertumbuhan dengan kualitas yang baik, sebelum ditanam benih direndam terlebih dahulu ke dalam air yang sudah dicampur pupuk RI1 selama 30 menit. Sesudah direndam perlu ditiriskan, tetapi tidak perlu diberi fungisida. Penanaman benih dilakukan pada pagi atau sore, saat matahari tidak begitu terik. Setelah benih masuk ke lubang, maka lubang itu harus ditutuip lagi dengan tanah secara ringan; tidak perlu dipadat padatkan. Waktu terbaik menanam benih adalah waktu akhir musim hujan agar saat masa pertumbuhan hingga memasuki masa mengeluarkan buah, tanaman masih mendapatkan pasokan air dan diharapkan saat panen tiba, musim kemarau telah datang sehingga memudahkan proses pengeringan. Mengingat dewasa ini kondisi dan situasi musim di Indonesia selalu berubah, untuk memastikan jadwal yang tepat, seyogyanya berkonsultasi terlebih dahulu dengan dinas pertanian setempat. PERAWATAN PENYULAMAN BENIH Satu minggu setelah tanam benih akan tumbuh dan muncul tanaman muda. Saat itu pengecekan harus dilakukan. Jika ada benih yang tidak tumbuh, mati, atau tanaman muda terserang penyakit, segera lakukan penyulaman yakni melakukan penanaman benih kembali yang proses dan tata caranya sama dengan penanaman benih sebelumnya. Penyulaman ini dimaksudkan agar tanaman tumbuh seragam, baik umur maupun sosoknya. Karena itu penyulaman tidak bisa dilakukan setelah tanaman berumur di atas 25 hari, dikarenakan pada usia itu sistem perakaran tanaman sudah tumbuh kuat sehingga benih sulaman tidak mampu bersaing memperebutkan unsur hara. PENYIANGAN GULMA Penyiangan dilakukan dua kali; pada saat tanaman berumur 14 hari dan 40 hari setelah tanam. Untuk gulma seperti rumput atau perdu lain, penyiangan dilakukan manual dengan cara mencabut seluruh bagian tanaman gulma sampai ke akar akarnya. Setelah itu gulma dikumpulkan dan dibakar sampai habis! Bersama penyiangan gulma yang kedua dilakukan juga pembubunan, yakni menutup akar tanaman yang muncul ke permukaan tanah dengan menggunakan tanah yang diambil di antara tanaman. Dengan menggunakan cangkul, tanah dipindahkan ke barisan jagung yang ada di kanan dan kiri hingga tercipta parit baru barisan tanaman. Hal ini dimaksudkan agar akar tanaman semakin mencengkeram tanah sehingga tanaman tidak akan roboh saat diterpa angin. PUPUK LANJUTAN Pada usia 15 s/d 30 hari setelah tanam atau setelah penyiangan pertama, tanaman perlu diberi pupuk lanjutan. Dengan tetap menggunakan RI1, pemberian pupuk ini dilanjutkan kembali setelah berusia 40 hari. PENGAIRAN Pengariran dilakukan dengan sistem leb; mengalirkan air ke dalam parit hingga meresap ke seluruh bagian bedengan. Cara ini lebih efisien dibanding penyiraman manual yang tentu memakan banyak waktu dan tenaga. Agar akar tanaman tetap mudah bernafas, usahakan saat melakukan pengairan air tidak sampai menggenangi bedengan. Untuk lahan yang tergolong kering atau saat tanaman mulai mengeluarkan buah, pengairan harus dilakukan dengan teratur dan terjadwal. Lahan yang terlalu kering atau kekurangan air saat proses pembuahan akan mengakibatkan tongkol tumbuh kecil sehingga mengurangi jumlah produksi pada saat panen. MASA PANEN Umur panen tergantung dari varietasnya. Tetapi ada beberapa ciri khusus, salah satunya adalah ketika daun jagung, kelobot, sudah berwarna putih kecoklatan dan tidak meninggalkan bekas apabila bijinya ditekan menggunakan kuku. Sebelum dipanen, daun jagung dikupas dan dipangkas bagian atasnya sehingga yang tersisa di pohon adalah buah jagung yang terkupas tetapi masih tersisa daunnya. Perlakuan ini dimaksudkan untuk mempercepat proses pengeringan jagung. Setelah beberapa hari di pohon dan bijinya tampak mengering, barulah dilakukan pemetikan dengan mengambil waktu pada siang hari, ketika cuaca terik, agar kadar air dalam biji tidak bertambah. Ingat, kadar air yang tinggi menyebabkan buah jagung mudah terserang penyakit. Pemetikan jagung bisa dilakukan dengan memetik buahnya saja, tongkolan, atau sekaligus dengan daun keringnya. Jika jagung yang dipanen buahnya saja akan lebih mudah diangkut menggunakan keranjang atau karung, maka jagung yang dipanen dengan daunnya akan memudahkan pengangkutan bila menggunakan pikulan. Setelah jagung dipanen, selanjutnya perlu dilakukan penjemuran, pemipilan; memisahkan biji jagung dari tongkolnya, dan penyimpanan. HAMA DAN PENYAKIT PENANGGULANGAN HAMA Penggerek Batang Serangga ini meletakkan telurnya pada daun, dan setelah menetas larvanya akan memakan batang jagung. Gejala ini bisa dilihat ketika muncul lubang pada batang jagung. Selain itu, Penggerek Batang juga menyerang rambut dan pucuk tongkol buah jagung. Jika dibiarkan hama ini bisa menyebabkan berkurangnya produksi bahkan gagal panen. Pencegahannya bisa dilakukan dengan menanam jagung secara serempak, melakukan rotasi, dan memusnahkan tanaman yang terserang. Lalat Hama lalat berwarna abu abu, meletakkan telurnya berwarna putih di bawah permukaan daun. Setelah beberapa hari menetas larva memakan daun, pangkal daun dan pangkal batang serta menyebabkan munculnya lubang lubang di seluruh bagian tanaman. Jika seranggannya hebat, batang bisa patah karena pangkalnya habis dimakan. Pencegahannya antara lain dengan melakukan penanaman serentak, memilih varietas yang tahan serangan hama, memasang mulsa jerami di atas bedengan dan selalu menjaga kebersihan dari gulma. Ulat Tongkol Ulat tongkol meletakkan telurnya yang berwarna putih di daun dan rambut tongkol. Setelah menetas telur akanberubah menjadi larva berwarna kuning berkepala hitam. Larva inilah yang akan menyerang tongkol buah, dan menyebabkan kebusukan. Pencegahan hama ini dilakukan dengan mengambil dan memusnahkan satu per satu. Ulat Tanah Ulat tanah ini menyerang bagian bagian vital seperti batang dan buah. Hama ini menyerang pada malam hari dan dan bersembunyi di dalam tanah pada siang hari. Ulat tanah biasa menyerang tanaman yang masih muda, membuat batang tanaman akan patah dan mati. Pencegahannya dengan menggunakan metode olah tanah. Kumbang Penggerek Biji Kumbang ini menyerang buah sejak saat panen sampai masuk ke dalam gudang. Biji buah menjadi keropos karena bagian dalamnya habis digerogoti, dan kerugiannya bisa mencapai 70%. Kumbang Bubuk Kumbang ini hampir seperti Kumbang Penggerek Biji, juga menyerang buah jagung. Gejala yang ditimbulkan adalah munculnya lubang lubang pada biji jagung yang lama kelamaan biji jagung akan hancur menjadi bubuk. Hama ini menyerang biji yang kurang kering dan biasanya terjadi pada saat cuaca lembab, dan kerusakan yang terjadi bisa mencapai 10%. Kutu Daun Kutu daun menyerang dengan cara menghisap cairan makanan yang ada di daun. Tanaman akan kekurangan cairan dan daun berubah warna menjadi kuning, mengering, akhirnya mati. Pencegahan dilakukan dengan merotasi tanaman untuk memutus siklus kehidupannya. Ulat Grayak Dalam skala besar ulat grayak akan menghabiskan seluruh daun dan hanya menyisakan tulang daun. Pencegahannya dengan melakukan rotasi tanaman dan untuk menekan perkembangannya perlu menjaga kebersihan lahan. Monyet dan Babi Serangan kedua hama ini dapat menimbulkan kerugian yang sangat besar. Dalam waktu semalam monyet dan babi bisa menghabiskan dan merusak tanaman seluas seperempat hektar. Untuk mengatasi hama ini bisa digunakan jerat dan kincir bambu yang bersuara keras. PENANGGULANGAN PENYAKIT Busuk Kelobot Penyakit busuk kelobot, daun jagung, disebabkan oleh jamur dengan gejala munculnya bintik bintik bulat warna hitam kebiruan di kelobot. Buah akan membusuk, akhirnya mati. Pencegahannya selain berdekatan dengan pohon pisang; karena sama sama merupakan inang jamur, bibit harus direndam dengan RI1. Bercak Daun Penyakit ini juga disebabkan oleh jamur, menyerang daun, pelepah, dan tongkol buah. Gejalanya muncul bercak bercak berwarna coklat dan kuning di daun, pelepah, dan tongkol buah. Penyakit ini menyebabkan terhambatnya proses fotosintesis sehingga mengganggu produktivitas. Pencegahannya dilakukan dengan menanam varietas yang tahan serangan penyakit ini. Pengendaliannya dilakukan dengan memusnahkan tanaman yang terserang agar tidak menular ke tanaman lain. Busuk Tongkol Pada awalnya jamur menyerang daun kemudian merembet ke buah, dengan gejalanya memunculkan bercak bercak berwarna merah muda atau coklat gelap di kelobot buah. Akibatnya tongkol buah akan membusuk dan menyebabkan gagal panen. Pencegahannya dilakukan dengan menanam varietas yang tahan terhadap hama ini dan membersihkan gulma yang berpotensi menjadi inang jamur. Busuk Kerdil Penyakit kerdil disebabkan oleh virus yang pada awalnya memunculkan bercak bercak kuning muda dan memenuhi seluruh permukaan daun. Tanaman tidak bisa melakukan proses fotosintesis sehingga kekurangan makanan dan menjadi cacat atau kerdil. Pencegahan terbaik dengan melakukan penanaman varietas yang tahan terhadap penyakit ini dan melakukan rotasi tanaman untuk memutuskan siklus kehidupan virus. Tanaman yang terserang harus dimusnahkan agar tidak menjadi inang dan menulari tanaman lain yang masih sehat. Hawar/Blight Penyakit Hawar disebabkan oleh bakteri yang biasa menyerang daun bagian bawah tanaman muda yang akan berbunga, dengan gejala awal munculnya bercak bercak pada daun berbentuk huruf V. Akibatnya pertumbuhan terhambat dan produktivitasnya menurun, daun mengering lalu mati. Pencegahannya selain menanam varietas yang tahan terhadap penyakit ini, juga harus membersihkan gulma di sekitar lahan terutama inang sejenis bawang. Sedangkan pengendaliannya dengan cara memeusnahkan tanaman yang terserang. Bulai/Downy Mildew Penyakit ini disebabkan jamur, dan bagian yang diserang adalah daun terutama pada tanaman muda berumur di bawah 40 hari. Daun berubah warna menjadi kuning keputih putihan dan di bagian bawahnya muncul semacam serbuk berwarna putih berbentuk seperti tepung. Serangan jamur ini akan meningkat pada suhu udara tinggi. Akibatnya tanaman rusak dan tidak bisa menghasilkan tongkol jagung yang sempurna. Jika serangan hebat tanaman mati. Pencegahan penyakit ini dilakukan dengan merendam benih dengan RI1 sebelum ditanam. Pengendaliannya dilakukan dengan cara membakar tanaman yang diserang. Busuk Batang Penyakit busuk batang disebabkan oleh bakteri yang gejala awalnya batang abgian bawah berubah warna menjadi kecoklatan kemudian membusuk, mati, dan patah secara tiba tiba. Dari titik patahan tercium bau busuk yang menyengat. Pencegahannya dilakukan dengan selalu menjaga kebersihan lahan agar tidak menular ke tanaman yang masih sehat. Karat Daun Penyakit Karat Daun disebabkan oleh jamur dengan gejala awal muncul bercak bercak merah dan keluar serbuk seperti tepung berwarna coklat kekuning kuningan. Akibatnya tanaman tidak bisa melakukan fotosintesis fengan sempurna sehingga pertumbuhannya lambat, bahkan bisa mati. Pencegahannya dilakukan dengan menanam varietas yang tahan terhadap penyakit ini. Catatan : Dari semua jenis hama diatas ketika tanaman kita diserang hama, dapat dilakukan langkah - langkah sebagai berikut : Aplikasikan Nutrisi RI1 Organik dicampur dengan rendama daun tembakau dan extrak daun sirsak, extrak daun intaran, extrak daun suren kemudian semprot kan pada tanaman dan tanaman yang terserang hama secara merata.> BERCOCOK TANAM JAGUNG

Tukul Arwana Sedang Nikmati Manis Bisnis Properti

Cegah Kanker Prostat dengan Tomat

TEMPAT WISATA TAMAN MINI INDONESIA INDAH

Taman Mini Indonesia Indah (TMII) juga merupakan suatu kawasan wisata budaya di Jakarta. Di tengah-tengah TMII juga terdapat sebuah danau yang telah menggambarkan kepulauan Indonesia yang besar dalam bentuknya yang kecil.

Gagasan pembangunan suatu miniatur yang telah memuat kelengkapan Indonesia dengan segala isinya ini yang telah dicetuskan oleh Ibu Negara, Siti Hartinah, yang lebih dikenal dengan sebutan Ibu Tien Soeharto. Gagasan ini tercetus pada suatu pertemuan di Jalan Cendana no. 8 Jakarta pada tanggal 13 Maret 1970. Melalui miniatur ini diharapkan akan dapat membangkitkan rasa bangga dan rasa cinta tanah air pada seluruh bangsa Indonesia. Maka dimulailah suatu proyek yang disebut Proyek Miniatur Indonesia “Indonesia Indah”, yang dilaksanakan oleh Yayasan Harapan Kita.

Taman Mini Indonesia Indah

TMII mulai dibangun tahun 1972 dan telah diresmikan pada tanggal 20 April 1975. Berbagai aspek kekayaan alam dan budaya Indonesia sampai pemanfaatan teknologi modern telah diperagakan di areal seluas 150 hektar.

TMII juga telah memiliki logo yang pada intinya terdiri atas dua huruf I dan I. Kedua huruf ini telah mewakili nama “Indonesia Indah” sedangkan maskotnya berupa tokoh wayang Hanoman yang dinamakan NITRA (Anjani Putra). Maskot Taman Mini “Indonesia Indah” ini telah diresmikan penggunaannya oleh Ibu Tien Soeharto, bertepatan dengan dwi windu usia TMII, pada tahun 1991.

Di Indonesia, hampir setiap suku bangsa telah memiliki bentuk dan corak bangunan yang berbeda, bahkan tidak jarang satu suku bangsa yang memiliki lebih dari satu jenis bangunan tradisional. Bangunan atau arsitektur tradisional yang mereka buat selalu dilatarbelakangi oleh kondisi lingkungan dan kebudayaan yang dimiliki. Di TMII, gambaran tersebut diwujudkan melalui Anjungan Daerah, yang mewakili suku-suku bangsa yang berada di 33 propinsi Indonesia.

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Taiwan party leader affirms eventual reunion with China

BEIJING (AP) — The head of Taiwan's Nationalists reaffirmed the party's support for eventual unification with the mainland when he met Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping as part of continuing rapprochement between the former bitter enemies.

Nationalist Party Chairman Eric Chu, a likely presidential candidate next year, also affirmed Taiwan's desire to join the proposed Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank during the meeting in Beijing. China claims Taiwan as its own territory and doesn't want the island to join using a name that might imply it is an independent country.

Chu's comments during his meeting with Xi were carried live on Hong Kong-based broadcaster Phoenix Television.

The Nationalists were driven to Taiwan by Mao Zedong's Communists during the Chinese civil war in 1949, leading to decades of hostility between the sides. Chu, who took over as party leader in January, is the third Nationalist chairman to visit the mainland and the first since 2009.

Relations between the communist-ruled mainland and the self-governing democratic island of Taiwan began to warm in the 1990s, partly out of their common opposition to Taiwan's formal independence from China, a position advocated by the island's Democratic Progressive Party.

Despite increasingly close economic ties, the prospect of political unification has grown increasingly unpopular on Taiwan, especially with younger voters. Opposition to the Nationalists' pro-China policies was seen as a driver behind heavy local electoral defeats for the party last year that led to Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou resigning as party chairman.

Top News China’s Intents Are Questioned as It Builds in Antarctica

HOBART, Tasmania — Few places seem out of reach for China’s leader, Xi Jinping, who has traveled from European capitals to obscure Pacific and Caribbean islands in pursuit of his nation’s strategic interests.

So perhaps it was not surprising when he turned up last fall in this city on the edge of the Southern Ocean to put down a long-distance marker in another faraway region, Antarctica, 2,000 miles south of this Australian port.

Standing on the deck of an icebreaker that ferries Chinese scientists from this last stop before the frozen continent, Mr. Xi pledged that China would continue to expand in one of the few places on earth that remain unexploited by humans.

He signed a five-year accord with the Australian government that allows Chinese vessels and, in the future, aircraft to resupply for fuel and food before heading south. That will help secure easier access to a region that is believed to have vast oil and mineral resources; huge quantities of high-protein sea life; and for times of possible future dire need, fresh water contained in icebergs.

It was not until 1985, about seven decades after Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen raced to the South Pole, that a team representing Beijing hoisted the Chinese flag over the nation’s first Antarctic research base, the Great Wall Station on King George Island.

But now China seems determined to catch up. As it has bolstered spending on Antarctic research, and as the early explorers, especially the United States and Australia, confront stagnant budgets, there is growing concern about its intentions.

China’s operations on the continent — it opened its fourth research station last year, chose a site for a fifth, and is investing in a second icebreaker and new ice-capable planes and helicopters — are already the fastest growing of the 52 signatories to the Antarctic Treaty. That gentlemen’s agreement reached in 1959 bans military activity on the continent and aims to preserve it as one of the world’s last wildernesses; a related pact prohibits mining.

But Mr. Xi’s visit was another sign that China is positioning itself to take advantage of the continent’s resource potential when the treaty expires in 2048 — or in the event that it is ripped up before, Chinese and Australian experts say.

“So far, our research is natural-science based, but we know there is more and more concern about resource security,” said Yang Huigen, director general of the Polar Research Institute of China, who accompanied Mr. Xi last November on his visit to Hobart and stood with him on the icebreaker, Xue Long, or Snow Dragon.

With that in mind, the polar institute recently opened a new division devoted to the study of resources, law, geopolitics and governance in Antarctica and the Arctic, Mr. Yang said.

Australia, a strategic ally of the United States that has strong economic relations with China, is watching China’s buildup in the Antarctic with a mix of gratitude — China’s presence offers support for Australia’s Antarctic science program, which is short of cash — and wariness.

“We should have no illusions about the deeper agenda — one that has not even been agreed to by Chinese scientists but is driven by Xi, and most likely his successors,” said Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute and a former senior official in the Australian Department of Defense.

“This is part of a broader pattern of a mercantilist approach all around the world,” Mr. Jennings added. “A big driver of Chinese policy is to secure long-term energy supply and food supply.”

That approach was evident last month when a large Chinese agriculture enterprise announced an expansion of its fishing operations around Antarctica to catch more krill — small, protein-rich crustaceans that are abundant in Antarctic waters.

“The Antarctic is a treasure house for all human beings, and China should go there and share,” Liu Shenli, the chairman of the China National Agricultural Development Group, told China Daily, a state-owned newspaper. China would aim to fish up to two million tons of krill a year, he said, a substantial increase from what it currently harvests.

Because sovereignty over Antarctica is unclear, nations have sought to strengthen their claims over the ice-covered land by building research bases and naming geographic features. China’s fifth station will put it within reach of the six American facilities, and ahead of Australia’s three.

Chinese mappers have also given Chinese names to more than 300 sites, compared with the thousands of locations on the continent with English names.

In the unspoken competition for Antarctica’s future, scientific achievement can also translate into influence. Chinese scientists are driving to be the first to drill and recover an ice core containing tiny air bubbles that provide a record of climate change stretching as far back as 1.5 million years. It is an expensive and delicate effort at which others, including the European Union and Australia, have failed.

In a breakthrough a decade ago, European scientists extracted an ice core nearly two miles long that revealed 800,000 years of climate history. But finding an ice core going back further would allow scientists to examine a change in the earth’s climate cycles believed to have occurred 900,000 to 1.2 million years ago.

China is betting it has found the best location to drill, at an area called Dome A, or Dome Argus, the highest point on the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. Though it is considered one of the coldest places on the planet, with temperatures of 130 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, a Chinese expedition explored the area in 2005 and established a research station in 2009.

“The international community has drilled in lots of places, but no luck so far,” said Xiao Cunde, a member of the first party to reach the site and the deputy director of the Institute for Climate Change at the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences. “We think at Dome A we will have a straight shot at the one-million-year ice core.”

Mr. Xiao said China had already begun drilling and hoped to find what scientists are looking for in four to five years.

To support its Antarctic aspirations, China is building a sophisticated $300 million icebreaker that is expected to be ready in a few years, said Xia Limin, deputy director of the Chinese Arctic and Antarctic Administration in Beijing. It has also bought a high-tech fixed-wing aircraft, outfitted in the United States, for taking sensitive scientific soundings from the ice.

China has chosen the site for its fifth research station at Inexpressible Island, named by a group of British explorers who were stranded at the desolate site in 1912 and survived the winter by excavating a small ice cave.

Mr. Xia said the inhospitable spot was ideal because China did not have a presence in that part of Antarctica, and because the rocky site did not have much snow, making it relatively cheap to build there.

Anne-Marie Brady, a professor of political science at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and the author of a soon-to-be-released book, “China as a Polar Great Power,” said Chinese scientists also believed they had a good chance of finding mineral and energy resources near the site.

“China is playing a long game in Antarctica and keeping other states guessing about its true intentions and interests are part of its poker hand,” she said. But she noted that China’s interest in finding minerals was presented “loud and clear to domestic audiences” as the main reason it was investing in Antarctica.

Because commercial drilling is banned, estimates of energy and mineral resources in Antarctica rely on remote sensing data and comparisons with similar geological environments elsewhere, said Millard F. Coffin, executive director of the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies in Hobart.

But the difficulty of extraction in such severe conditions and uncertainty about future commodity prices make it unlikely that China or any country would defy the ban on mining anytime soon.

Tourism, however, is already booming. Travelers from China are still a relatively small contingent in the Antarctic compared with the more than 13,000 Americans who visited in 2013, and as yet there are no licensed Chinese tour operators.

But that is about to change, said Anthony Bergin, deputy director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “I understand very soon there will be Chinese tourists on Chinese vessels with all-Chinese crew in the Antarctic,” he said.

François Michelin, Head of Tire Company, Dies at 88

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.

Finding Scandal in New York and New Jersey, but No Shame

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jozef Paczynski, Inmate Barber to Auschwitz Commandant, Dies at 95

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

William Sokolin, Wine Seller Who Broke Famed Bottle, Dies at 85

The bottle Mr. Sokolin famously broke was a 1787 Château Margaux, which was said to have belonged to Thomas Jefferson. Mr. Sokolin had been hoping to sell it for $519,750.

Native American Actors Work to Overcome a Long-Documented Bias

Late in April, after Native American actors walked off in disgust from the set of Adam Sandler’s latest film, a western sendup that its distributor, Netflix, has defended as being equally offensive to all, a glow of pride spread through several Native American communities.

Tantoo Cardinal, a Canadian indigenous actress who played Black Shawl in “Dances With Wolves,” recalled thinking to herself, “It’s come.” Larry Sellers, who starred as Cloud Dancing in the 1990s television show “Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,” thought, “It’s about time.” Jesse Wente, who is Ojibwe and directs film programming at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto, found himself encouraged and surprised. There are so few film roles for indigenous actors, he said, that walking off the set of a major production showed real mettle.

But what didn’t surprise Mr. Wente was the content of the script. According to the actors who walked off the set, the film, titled “The Ridiculous Six,” included a Native American woman who passes out and is revived after white men douse her with alcohol, and another woman squatting to urinate while lighting a peace pipe. “There’s enough history at this point to have set some expectations around these sort of Hollywood depictions,” Mr. Wente said.

The walkout prompted a rhetorical “What do you expect from an Adam Sandler film?,” and a Netflix spokesman said that in the movie, blacks, Mexicans and whites were lampooned as well. But Native American actors and critics said a broader issue was at stake. While mainstream portrayals of native peoples have, Mr. Wente said, become “incrementally better” over the decades, he and others say, they remain far from accurate and reflect a lack of opportunities for Native American performers. What’s more, as Native Americans hunger for representation on screen, critics say the absence of three-dimensional portrayals has very real off-screen consequences.

“Our people are still healing from historical trauma,” said Loren Anthony, one of the actors who walked out. “Our youth are still trying to figure out who they are, where they fit in this society. Kids are killing themselves. They’re not proud of who they are.” They also don’t, he added, see themselves on prime time television or the big screen. Netflix noted while about five people walked off the “The Ridiculous Six” set, 100 or so Native American actors and extras stayed.

But in interviews, nearly a dozen Native American actors and film industry experts said that Mr. Sandler’s humor perpetuated decades-old negative stereotypes. Mr. Anthony said such depictions helped feed the despondency many Native Americans feel, with deadly results: Native Americans have the highest suicide rate out of all the country’s ethnicities.

The on-screen problem is twofold, Mr. Anthony and others said: There’s a paucity of roles for Native Americans — according to the Screen Actors Guild in 2008 they accounted for 0.3 percent of all on-screen parts (those figures have yet to be updated), compared to about 2 percent of the general population — and Native American actors are often perceived in a narrow way.

In his Peabody Award-winning documentary “Reel Injun,” the Cree filmmaker Neil Diamond explored Hollywood depictions of Native Americans over the years, and found they fell into a few stereotypical categories: the Noble Savage, the Drunk Indian, the Mystic, the Indian Princess, the backward tribal people futilely fighting John Wayne and manifest destiny. While the 1990 film “Dances With Wolves” won praise for depicting Native Americans as fully fleshed out human beings, not all indigenous people embraced it. It was still told, critics said, from the colonialists’ point of view. In an interview, John Trudell, a Santee Sioux writer, actor (“Thunderheart”) and the former chairman of the American Indian Movement, described the film as “a story of two white people.”

“God bless ‘Dances with Wolves,’ ” Michael Horse, who played Deputy Hawk in “Twin Peaks,” said sarcastically. “Even ‘Avatar.’ Someone’s got to come save the tribal people.”

Dan Spilo, a partner at Industry Entertainment who represents Adam Beach, one of today’s most prominent Native American actors, said while typecasting dogs many minorities, it is especially intractable when it comes to Native Americans. Casting directors, he said, rarely cast them as police officers, doctors or lawyers. “There’s the belief that the Native American character should be on reservations or riding a horse,” he said.

“We don’t see ourselves,” Mr. Horse said. “We’re still an antiquated culture to them, and to the rest of the world.”

Ms. Cardinal said she was once turned down for the role of the wife of a child-abusing cop because the filmmakers felt that casting her would somehow be “too political.”

Another sore point is the long run of white actors playing American Indians, among them Burt Lancaster, Rock Hudson, Audrey Hepburn and, more recently, Johnny Depp, whose depiction of Tonto in the 2013 film “Lone Ranger,” was viewed as racist by detractors. There are, of course, exceptions. The former A&E series “Longmire,” which, as it happens, will now be on Netflix, was roundly praised for its depiction of life on a Northern Cheyenne reservation, with Lou Diamond Phillips, who is of Cherokee descent, playing a Northern Cheyenne man.

Others also point to the success of Mr. Beach, who played a Mohawk detective in “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and landed a starring role in the forthcoming D C Comics picture “Suicide Squad.” Mr. Beach said he had come across insulting scripts backed by people who don’t see anything wrong with them.

“I’d rather starve than do something that is offensive to my ancestral roots,” Mr. Beach said. “But I think there will always be attempts to drawn on the weakness of native people’s struggles. The savage Indian will always be the savage Indian. The white man will always be smarter and more cunning. The cavalry will always win.”

The solution, Mr. Wente, Mr. Trudell and others said, lies in getting more stories written by and starring Native Americans. But Mr. Wente noted that while independent indigenous film has blossomed in the last two decades, mainstream depictions have yet to catch up. “You have to stop expecting for Hollywood to correct it, because there seems to be no ability or desire to correct it,” Mr. Wente said.

There have been calls to boycott Netflix but, writing for Indian Country Today Media Network, which first broke news of the walk off, the filmmaker Brian Young noted that the distributor also offered a number of films by or about Native Americans.

The furor around “The Ridiculous Six” may drive more people to see it. Then one of the questions that Mr. Trudell, echoing others, had about the film will be answered: “Who the hell laughs at this stuff?”

Ghostly Voices From Thomas Edison’s Dolls Can Now Be Heard

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.

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

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

Calvin Peete, 71, a Racial Pioneer on the PGA Tour, Is Dead

With 12 tournament victories in his career, Mr. Peete was the most successful black professional golfer before Tiger Woods.

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

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