PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

BENTORK ANTAR WARGA PECAH DI MANOKWARI

saco-indonesia.com, Kawasan Pasar Tingkat Sanggeng, Kabupaten Manokwari, Papua Barat, pada Minggu malam telah terjadi kerusuhusa. Kerusuhan ini telah terjadi karena seorang warga meninggal akibat dianiaya oleh sekelompok orang mabuk.

kerusuhan tersebut juga telah mengakibatkan sebuah hotel dan beberapa lapak atau gerai di Pasar Tingkat Sanggeng, Manokwari juga sempat terbakar. Kedua kelompok warga yang bentrok hingga kini juga masih saling berseteru.

Namun hingga kini belum ada penjelasan dari pihak kepolisian. Aparat gabungan pun telah disiagakan di lokasi untuk dapat mencegah bentrok susulan.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

MOBIL HYUNDAI INDONESIA

Jika ada beberapa produsen mobil terkenal seperti diantaranya adalah mobil hyundai indonesia yang kini semakin di perhitungkan keberadaanya oleh sejumlah ahli dalam pengamatan industri mobil di tanah air. Terlebih lagi sejak hadirnya sosok mobil hyundai avega dengan spesifikasi yang lumayan mumpuni.

Hyundai mobil memang dikenal sebagai pembuat mobil dengan harga menarik. Untuk harga mobil hyundai dapat dijangkau oleh setiap kalangan namun tidak melepaskan kenyamanan dan keamanan termasuk didalamnya teknologi yang disematkan pada setiap unit mobil hyundai.

MELESTARIKAN KEBAIKAN

Seperti kata beliau Salman Al-Farisi dalam Muqoddimah kitab Ad-Darimiy • عَنْ عَبْدِ اللَّهِ بْنِ رَبِيعَةَ قَالَ قَالَ سَلْمَانُ : لاَ يَزَالُ النَّاسُ بِخَيْرٍ مَا بَقِىَ الأَوَّلُ حَتَّى يَتَعَلَّمَ الآخِرُ، فَإِذَا هَلَكَ الأَوَّلُ قَبْلَ أَنْ يَتَعَلَّمَ الآخِرُ هَلَكَ النَّاسُ * رواه الدارمي فى المقدمة Artinya : Manusia senantiasa dalam kebaikan selama Generasi muda belajar kepada generasi tua, jika Gnerasi tua habis sebelum generasi muda belajar pada generasi tua maka rusaklah ( kebaikan ) Manusia.> MELESTARIKAN KEBAIKAN

MOTOR MAHASISWA HILANG DARI PARKIRAN

Pemiliknya membeli minuman di minimarket, sepeda motor mahasiswa yang diparkirnya di depan Seven Eleven, Bulungan, Kebayoran Baru, Jakarta Selatan, raib diambil oleh maling. Dery Yanto yang berusia 22 tahun , warga Kebayoran Lama, Jakarta Selatan, telah memarkirkan sepeda motornya Yamaha Fino yang bernopol B 3393 SHZ warna biru diparkiran untuk membeli minuman. Usai kembali ke parkiran sekira pk.23:15 malam motor tersebut raib diparkiran. “Saya tanya ketukang parkir motor saya tidak ada?,” katanya saat melaporkan ke Mapolres Jaksel. Kasubag Humas Polres Jaksel, Kompol Aswin telah menerangkan pihaknya masih menyelidiki kasus tersebut. “Dalam penyelidikan, dan lebih berhati-hati lagi jika memarkir kendaraan,” katanya.> MOTOR MAHASISWA HILANG DARI PARKIRAN

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

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.

Ben Carson Says He’ll Seek 2016 G.O.P. Nomination

ate in February, Dr. Ben Carson, the celebrated pediatric neurosurgeon turned political insurrectionist, was trying to check off another box on his presidential-campaign to-do list: hiring a press secretary. The lead prospect, a public-relations specialist named Deana Bass, had come to meet him at the dimly lit Capitol Hill office of Carson’s confidant and business manager, Armstrong Williams. Carson sat back and scrutinized her from behind a small granite table, as life-size cardboard cutouts of more conventional politicians — President Obama, with a tight smile, and Senator John McCain, glowering — loomed behind each of his shoulders. (The mock $3 bill someone had left on a table in Williams’s waiting room undercut any notion that this was a bipartisan zone; it featured Obama wearing a turban.)

Bass seemed momentarily speechless, and not just because no one had warned her that a New York Times reporter would be sitting in on her job interview. Though she knew Williams — a jack-of-all-trades entrepreneur who owns several television stations and a public-affairs business and who hosts a daily talk-radio show — through Washington’s small circle of black conservatives, the two hadn’t spoken in years until he called her two days earlier. He had been struggling to come up with the perfect national spokesperson, he told her. Then, at the gym, her name popped into his head; Williams was fairly certain she was the one. Sitting across from a likely candidate for president, Bass was adjusting to the idea that her life might be about to take a sudden chaotic turn.

“It’s like getting the most random call on a Monday that you simply do not see coming,” she said. “Oftentimes, that is how the Lord works.”

Carson concurred: “It’s always how he works in my life.” Carson is soft-spoken and often talks with his eyes half closed, frequently punctuating his sentences with a small laugh, even if the humor of his statement is not readily apparent. Bass told Carson that she had been a Republican staff member on Capitol Hill then worked for the Republican National Committee. In 2007 she started a Christian public-relations firm with her sister. She enjoyed working on the Hill, she said, but the pay wasn’t as high as the hours were long. “We figured that we worked like slaves for other people, and we wanted to work for ourselves.”

Carson stopped her. “You know you can’t mention that word, right?” Carson waited a beat, then laughed, and Williams and Bass joined in. He was getting to the point; he needed a professional who could help him check his penchant for creating uncontrolled controversy just by talking.

The Ben Carson movement began in 2013, when Carson, a neurosurgeon, whose operating-room prowess and up-from-poverty back story had made him the subject of a television movie and a regular on the inspirational-speaking circuit, was invited to address the annual National Prayer Breakfast in Washington. With Barack Obama sitting just two seats away, Carson warned that “moral decay” and “fiscal irresponsibility” could destroy America just as it did ancient Rome. He proposed a substitute for Obamacare — Health Savings Accounts, which, he said, would end any talk of “death panels” — and a flat-tax based on the concept of tithing. His address, combined with the president’s stony reaction, was a smash with Republican activists. Speaking and interview requests flooded in. Carson, then 61, announced his planned retirement a few weeks later, freeing his calendar to accept just about all of them. In the months that followed, his rhetoric became increasingly strident. The claim that drew the most attention, perhaps, was that Obamacare was “the worst thing that has happened in this nation since slavery.”

Bass’s own use of the word prompted Carson to ask her what she thought about that incident. She considered for a moment.

“If you want to reach people and have them even understand what you’re saying, there is a way to do it, without that hyperbole, that might be. . . . ” She paused. “I just think it’s important not to shut people off before they —”

Carson jumped in. “That doesn’t allow them to hear what you’re saying?”

Bass nodded.

Likening Obamacare to slavery — and slavery was incomparably worse, Carson said — had its political advantages for a candidacy like his. It was the kind of statement that stoked the angriest of the Republican voters: conservative stalwarts who can’t hear enough bad things about Obama. This, in turn, led to more talk-radio and Fox News appearances, more book sales, more donations to the super PAC started in his name, more support in the polls. (The day before the meeting, one poll of Republican voters showed Carson statistically tied for first place with Jeb Bush and Scott Walker.)

Rhetorical excess was good for business, but Carson now wants to be seen as more than a novelty candidate. He has come to learn that such extreme analogies, while true to his views, aren’t especially presidential. They alienate more moderate voters and, perhaps even more damaging, reinforce the impression that he is not “serious” — that he is another Herman Cain, the black former Godfather’s Pizza chief executive who rose to the top of the early presidential polls in 2011 but then bowed out before the Iowa caucuses, largely because of leaked allegations of sexual misconduct, which he denied but from which he never recovered. Cain lingers as a cautionary tale for the party as much as for a right-leaning candidate like Carson. The fact that Cain, with his folksy sayings (“shucky ducky”) and misnomers (“Ubeki-beki-beki-beki-stan-stan”), reached the top of the national polls — much less that he was eventually followed there by the likes of Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, who all topped one or another poll in the 2012 primary season — wound up being a considerable embarrassment for the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney, and for the longtime party regulars who were trying to fast-track his way to the nomination.

Carson liked Bass and, without directly saying so, made it clear the job was hers for the taking. Carson’s campaign chairman, Terry Giles — a white lawyer whose clients have included the comedian Richard Pryor and the stepson of the model Anna Nicole Smith and who helped reconcile the business interests of the descendants of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. — had assembled a mostly white campaign team, including many from the 2012 Gingrich effort, and Carson wanted a person of color to speak for him. Bass said she would have to mull it over, pray about it. Carson nodded approvingly. “Pray about it,” he said. “See what you think.”

Williams knew the party was intent on protecting the eventual 2016 nominee from the same embarrassment Romney suffered. Already, suspiciously tough articles about Carson were showing up in conservative magazines and on right-wing websites. “They’re protecting these establishment candidates,” Williams said. “This is coming from within the house. This is family.” At the very least, he wanted to make sure that Carson didn’t do their work for them. (Carson would commit another unforced error a week later, when he told CNN that homosexuality was clearly a choice, because a lot of people go in prison straight and “when they come out, they’re gay”; he later apologized.)

“We need somebody to protect him, sometimes, from himself,” he told Bass — laughing, but only half kidding.

A candidacy like Carson’s presents a new kind of problem to the establishment wing of the G.O.P., which, at least since 1980, has selected its presidential nominees with a routine efficiency that Democrats could only envy. The establishment candidate has usually been a current or former governor or senator, blandly Protestant, hailing from the moderate, big-business wing of the party (or at least friendly with it) and almost always a second-, third- or fourth-time national contender — someone who had waited “his turn.” These candidates would tack predictably to the right during the primaries to satisfy the evangelicals, deficit hawks, libertarian leaners and other inconvenient but vital constituents who made up the “base” of the party. In return, the base would, after a brief flirtation with some fantasy candidate like Steve Forbes or Pat Buchanan, “hold their noses” and deliver their votes come November. This bargain was always tenuous, of course, and when some of the furthest-right activists turned against George W. Bush, citing (among other apostasies) his expansion of Medicare’s prescription drug benefit, it began to fall apart. After Barack Obama defeated McCain in 2008, the party’s once dependable base started to reconsider the wisdom of holding their noses at all.

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This insurgent attitude was helped along by changes in the nomination rules. In 2010, the Republican National Committee, hoping to capture the excitement of the coast-to-coast Democratic primary competition between Obama and Hillary Clinton, introduced new voting rules that required many of the early voting states to award some delegates to losing candidates, based on their shares of the vote. The proportional voting rules would encourage struggling candidates to stay in the primaries even after successive losses, as Clinton did, because they might be able to pull together enough delegates to take the nomination in a convention-floor fight or at least use them to bargain for a prime speaking slot or cabinet post.

This shift in incentives did not go unnoticed by potential 2012 candidates, nor did changes in election law that allowed billionaire donors to form super PACs in support of pet candidacies. At the same time, increasingly widespread broadband Internet access allowed candidates to reach supporters directly with video and email appeals and supporters to send money with the tap of a smartphone, making it easier than ever for individual candidates to ignore the wishes of the party.

Into this newly chaotic Republican landscape strode Mitt Romney. There could be no doubt that it was his turn, and yet his journey to the nomination was interrupted by one against-the-odds challenger after another — Cain, Michele Bachmann, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum, Ron Paul; always Ron Paul. It was easy to dismiss the 2012 primaries as a meaningless circus, but the onslaught did much more than tarnish the overall Republican brand. It also forced Romney to spend money he could have used against Obama and defend his right flank with embarrassing pandering that shadowed him through the general election. It was while trying to block a surge from Gingrich, for instance, that Romney told a debate audience that he was for the “self-deportation” of undocumented immigrants.

At the 2012 convention in Tampa, a group of longtime party hands, including Romney’s lawyer, Ben Ginsberg, gathered to discuss how to prevent a repeat of what had become known inside and outside the party as the “clown show.” Their aim was not just to protect the party but also to protect a potential President Romney from a primary challenge in 2016. They forced through new rules that would give future presumptive nominees more control over delegates in the event of a convention fight. They did away with the mandatory proportional delegate awards that encouraged long-shot candidacies. And, in a noticeably targeted effort, they raised the threshold that candidates needed to meet to enter their names into nomination, just as Ron Paul’s supporters were working to reach it. When John A. Boehner gaveled the rules in on a voice vote — a vote that many listeners heard as a tie, if not an outright loss — the hall erupted and a line of Ron Paul supporters walked off the floor in protest, along with many Tea Party members.

At a party meeting last winter, Reince Priebus, who as party chairman is charged with maintaining the support of all his constituencies, did restore some proportional primary and caucus voting, but only in states that held voting within a shortened two-week window. And he also condensed the nominating schedule to four and a half months from six months, and, for the first time required candidates to participate in a shortened debate schedule, determined by the party, not by the whims of the networks. (The panel that recommended those changes included names closely identified with the establishment — the former Bush White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, the Mississippi committeeman Haley Barbour and, notably, Jeb Bush’s closest adviser, Sally Bradshaw.)

Grass-roots activists have complained that the condensed schedule robs nonestablishment candidates — “movement candidates” like Carson — of the extra time they need to build momentum, money and organizations. But Priebus, who says the nomination could be close to settled by April, said it helped all the party’s constituencies when the nominee was decided quickly. “We don’t need a six-month slice-and-dice festival,” Priebus said when we spoke in mid-March. “While I can’t always control everyone’s mouth, I can control how long we can kill each other.”

All the rules changes were built to sidestep the problems of 2012. But the 2016 field is shaping up to be vastly different and far larger. A new Republican hints that he or she is considering a run seemingly every week. There are moderates like Gov. John Kasich of Ohio and former Gov. George Pataki of New York; no-compromise conservatives like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and former Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania; business-wingers like the former Hewlett-Packard chief executive Carly Fiorina; one-of-a-kinds like Donald Trump — some 20 in all, a dozen or so who seem fairly serious about it. That opens the possibility of multiple candidates vying for all the major Republican constituencies, some of them possibly goaded along by super-PAC-funding billionaires, all of them trading wins and collecting delegates well into spring.

Giles says his candidate can capitalize on all that chaos. Rivals may laugh, but Giles argues that if Carson can make a respectable showing in Iowa, then win in South Carolina — or at least come in second should a home-state senator, Lindsey Graham, run — and come in second behind Bush or Senator Marco Rubio in their home state of Florida, he could be positioned to make a real run. But that would depend on avoiding pitfalls like Carson’s ill-considered comments on homosexuality. Rather than capitalizing on the chaos, Carson may only contribute to it.

Ben Carson is, in many ways, the ideal Republican presidential candidate. With a not-too-selective reading of his life story, conservative voters can — and do — see in him an inspiring, up-from-nowhere African-American who shares their beliefs, a right-wing answer to Barack Obama. Before he was born, his parents moved to Detroit from rural Tennessee as part of the second great migration. His father, Robert Solomon Carson, worked at a Cadillac factory. His mother, Sonya — who herself had grown up as one of 24 children and left school at third grade — cleaned houses. When Carson was 8, Sonya discovered that Robert was keeping a second family. She moved, with her two sons, into a rundown group house. It was in a part of town that Carson described to me as crawling with “big rats and roaches and all kinds of horrible things.” Sonya worked several jobs at a time and made up the shortfall with food stamps. (Carson has called for paring back the social safety net but not doing away with it.)

Carson recounts this story in his best-selling 1990 memoir, “Gifted Hands,” which also became the basis for a 2009 movie on TNT, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. as Carson. Raised as a Seventh Day Adventist, Carson realized that he wanted to become a physician during a church sermon about a missionary doctor who, while serving overseas, was almost attacked by thieves but found safety by putting his faith in God. When Carson, then 8, told his mother his new dream, “She said, ‘Absolutely, you could do it, you could do anything,’ ” he told me. Forced by his mother to read two extra books a week, he made it to Yale, then to medical school at the University of Michigan, where he decided to specialize in neurosurgery. He was selected for residency at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, where he was named director of pediatric neurosurgery at 33, becoming the youngest person, and the first black person, to hold the title. He drew national attention by conducting a succession of operations that had never been performed successfully, most famously planning and managing the first separation of conjoined twins connected through major blood vessels in the brain.

Carson, a two-time Jimmy Carter voter, traces his conservative political awakening to a patient he met during the Reagan years. During a routine obstetrics rotation, he found himself treating an unwed pregnant teenager who had run away from her well-to-do parents. When Carson asked her how she was getting by, she informed him she was on public assistance; this led him to ponder the fact that the government was paying for the result of what he did not view as a “wise decision.” The incident, he says, fed his growing sense that the welfare system too often saps motivation and rewards irresponsible behavior. (When we spoke, he suggested that the government should cut off assistance to would-be unwed mothers, but only after warning them that it would do so within a certain amount of time, say five years. “I bet you’d see a dramatic decrease in unwed motherhood.”)

Carson’s friends at Hopkins say they do not remember him being particularly outspoken about his conservatism. He devoted most of his public engagement to urging poor kids in bad neighborhoods to use “these fancy brains God gave us,” through weekly school visits, student hospital tours and, ultimately, a multimillion-dollar scholarship program. “His issues were always medical care for the poor, education for the poor, equal opportunity — helping the less fortunate and really inspiring them as an example,” a mentor who named him to the chief pediatrics-neurosurgery post at Hopkins, Dr. Donlin Long, told me.

Even when Carson got the chance, in 1997, to speak in front of President Bill Clinton, at the national prayer breakfast, he mostly discussed the lack of role models for black children who were not sports stars or rappers. (There was possibly an oblique reference to Clinton’s sex scandals, when he told the audience that, if they are always honest, they won’t have to worry later about “skeletons in the closet.”)

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In 2011, Carson’s politics took a strident turn, mirroring that of many in his party during the Obama years. “America the Beautiful,” his sixth book, which he wrote with Candy Carson, his wife of 39 years, included a get-tough-on-illegal-immigration message and offered anti-establishment praise for the Tea Party. It suggested that blacks who voted for Obama only because he was black were themselves practicing a form of racism. (Earlier this year he admitted to Buzzfeed that portions of the book were lifted directly from several sources without proper attribution.) His prayer-breakfast performance in 2013, and the extremity of his remarks in the months afterward (Obamacare is the worst thing since slavery; the United States is “very much like Nazi Germany”; allowing same-sex marriage could lead to allowing bestiality), left some of his old friends bewildered. Students at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine protested his planned convocation address there in 2013, and he eventually backed out. When I asked Carson about the view at Hopkins that he had changed, he said his themes are still the same: “hard work, self-reliance, helping other people.” If he had become more overtly political, he said, it was only because the Obama years had led him to believe that “we’re really moving in a direction that is very, very destructive.”

None of this went unnoticed by campaign professionals. In August 2013, John Philip Sousa IV and Vernon Robinson, each of whom professes to be a virtual stranger to Carson, and who had previously been active in the anti-illegal-immigration movement, started the National Draft Ben Carson for President Committee. Sousa was just coming off a campaign to defend the sheriff of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio, from a recall effort, and he told me that he found Carson’s lack of political experience refreshing. “We have 500 guys and gals with probably a collective 5,000 years experience, and look at the mess we’re in,” he said.

Many others in the party feel the same way. Carson’s PAC finished 2014 with more than $13 million in donations, more than Ready for Hillary. Much of its money has gone toward further fund-raising, but Sousa — the great-grandson of the famous composer — points out that their effort has already built far more than just a war chest, organizing leaders in all 99 of Iowa’s counties. Regardless, Carson credits the fund-raising success of Sousa and Robinson with persuading him to enter the race.

Very early the morning after the job interview, Carson was in a black S.U.V., heading from Washington to the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center in Oxon Hill, Md., where he was to give the opening candidate speech of the Conservative Political Action Conference. The event, which functions as an early tryout for Republican presidential contenders, tends to skew rightward in its audience, drawing many of the same sorts of people who shouted at Boehner in Tampa. As such, it tends to favor anti-establishment candidates, but the news leading up to this year’s event was that Jeb Bush hoped to make inroads there.

It was still dark when we set out, and I joked with Carson about the hour, telling him he’d better get used to it. He retorted that his career in pediatric brain surgery made him no stranger to early mornings. This is a big theme of Carson’s presidential pitch: that neither the rigors of the campaign nor those of the White House can faze a man who held children’s lives in his hands. His life in brain surgery has prepared him for the presidency, he maintains, better than lives in politics have for his rivals. At the very least, he says, it conditioned him against getting too worked up about any problem that isn’t life threatening. “I mean, it’s grueling, but interestingly enough, I don’t feel the pressure,” he said.

At the convention hall, we were quickly surrounded by admirers. Two women were already waiting to meet him — white, middle-aged volunteers for Carson’s super PAC, who had traveled from South Carolina. One of them, Chris Horne, was holding a dog-eared and taped Bible. A founding member of the Charleston Tea Party who went on to work for Gingrich’s successful South Carolina primary campaign in 2012, Horne lamented over the attacks that Carson was sure to face. “You served us, you served the Lord, just don’t let them steal that from you,” she said. Her friend told him, “You’ve got God behind you!” Such religious evocations trailed Carson constantly while I walked the CPAC floor with him. Evangelicals are impressed not only with his devotion to their politics but also with his career path; as one of them told me, what’s more pro-life than saving babies?

During our ride to the conference, Carson told me his speech was not looking to “feed the beast.” When his appointed time came, he kept his remarks as tame as promised. “Real compassion” meant “using our intellect” to help people “climb out of dependency and realize the American dream,” he said. The national debt is going to “destroy us,” Obamacare was about “redistribution and control,” but Republicans better come forward with their own alternative before they repeal it, he said.

Because his speech was first, and it started several minutes early, the auditorium was slow to fill. Still, the first day saw a crush of people seeking autographs and pictures as he roamed the hall. The Draft Carson committee’s 150 volunteers swarmed the auditorium, collecting emails and handing out “Run Ben Run” stickers. After a quick interview with Sean Hannity, the conservative-radio and Fox News host — his second in two days — Carson was off to Tampa.

In the hours that followed his talk, the hall offered a view in miniature of what the next 12 to 14 months might hold for the party. Chris Christie, sitting across from the tough-minded talk-radio host Laura Ingraham, boasted about his multiple vetoes of Planned Parenthood funding, his refusal to raise income taxes and his belief that “sometimes people need to be told to sit down and shut up.” Cruz, an audience favorite, warning his fellow Republicans against falling for a “squishy moderate,” declared, “Take all 125,000 I.R.S. agents and put ’em on our Southern border!” Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, surging in polls, boasted that if he could face down the 100,000 union supporters who protested his legislation limiting collective bargaining for public employees, he could certainly handle ISIS. The next day, the traditional CPAC favorite Rand Paul spoke, packing the hall with his supporters who chanted “President Paul.” He warned, counter to the overall hawkish tenor of the event, that “we should not succumb to the notion that a government inept at home will somehow become successful abroad.” But he also vowed to end foreign aid to countries whose citizens are seen burning American flags. “Not one penny more to these haters of America.”

Perhaps the defining moment came near the end of the conference, when Jeb Bush spoke. In a neat trick of political gamesmanship — and a show of establishment muscle — his team had bused in an ample cheering section for the dozens of cameras on hand for his appearance. But a small contingent of Tea Party activists and Rand Paul supporters staged a walk out. When Bush began a question-and-answer session, they turned and left the auditorium to chant “U.S.A., U.S.A.” in the hallway, led by a man in colonial garb waving a huge “Don’t Tread on Me” banner. Plenty of other detractors stayed in the hall and peppered Bush’s remarks with booing as he stood by positions unpopular with the conservative grass roots: support for the Common Core standards and an immigration overhaul that provides a “path to legal status” for undocumented immigrants. Bush took it all in good humor, but finally seemed to give up.

“For those who made an ‘oo’ sound — is that what it was? — I’m marking you down as neutral,” he said. “And I want to be your second choice.”

Bush strategists told me they would not repeat Romney’s mistakes. Of course they would love to glide to an early nomination, they said, but they are prepared for a long contest and won’t be wasting any energy bending under pressure from a Paul or a Cruz or a Carson.

No one doubts that the pressure will increase, though. Despite the best wishes of the party’s leaders, GOP primary voters have given little indication that they will narrow the field quickly.

Before I left, I spotted Newt Gingrich, himself a fleeting presidential front-runner during those strange primary days of 2012. I asked him whether he thought all the party maneuvering — all the attempts to change the rules and fast-track the process — would preclude someone from presenting the sort of outside primary challenge he had carried out in the last election.

“No,” he told me, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “Look at where Ben Carson is right now.”

Harvey R. Miller, Renowned Bankruptcy Lawyer, Dies at 82

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

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.

Sid Tepper Dies at 96; Delivered ‘Red Roses for a Blue Lady’ and Other Songs

Mr. Tepper was not a musical child and had no formal training, but he grew up to write both lyrics and tunes, trading off duties with the other member of the team, Roy C. Bennett.

Don Mankiewicz, Screenwriter in a Family Film Tradition, Dies at 93

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.”

Obama Finds a Bolder Voice on Race Issues

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.

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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.”

Robert Patterson Jr., Lawyer and Judge Who Fought for the Accused, Dies at 91

Judge Patterson helped to protect the rights of Attica inmates after the prison riot in 1971 and later served on the Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Dan Walker, 92, Dies; Illinois Governor and Later a U.S. Prisoner

As governor, Mr. Walker alienated Republicans and his fellow Democrats, particularly the Democratic powerhouse Richard J. Daley, the mayor of Chicago.

Police Rethink Long Tradition on Using Force

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

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

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

With Iran Talks, a Tangled Path to Ending Syria’s War

UNITED NATIONS — Wearing pinstripes and a pince-nez, Staffan de Mistura, the United Nations envoy for Syria, arrived at the Security Council one Tuesday afternoon in February and announced that President Bashar al-Assad had agreed to halt airstrikes over Aleppo. Would the rebels, Mr. de Mistura suggested, agree to halt their shelling?

What he did not announce, but everyone knew by then, was that the Assad government had begun a military offensive to encircle opposition-held enclaves in Aleppo and that fierce fighting was underway. It would take only a few days for rebel leaders, having pushed back Syrian government forces, to outright reject Mr. de Mistura’s proposed freeze in the fighting, dooming the latest diplomatic overture on Syria.

Diplomacy is often about appearing to be doing something until the time is ripe for a deal to be done.

Now, with Mr. Assad’s forces having suffered a string of losses on the battlefield and the United States reaching at least a partial rapprochement with Mr. Assad’s main backer, Iran, Mr. de Mistura is changing course. Starting Monday, he is set to hold a series of closed talks in Geneva with the warring sides and their main supporters. Iran will be among them.

In an interview at United Nations headquarters last week, Mr. de Mistura hinted that the changing circumstances, both military and diplomatic, may have prompted various backers of the war to question how much longer the bloodshed could go on.

“Will that have an impact in accelerating the willingness for a political solution? We need to test it,” he said. “The Geneva consultations may be a good umbrella for testing that. It’s an occasion for asking everyone, including the government, if there is any new way that they are looking at a political solution, as they too claim they want.”

He said he would have a better assessment at the end of June, when he expects to wrap up his consultations. That coincides with the deadline for a final agreement in the Iran nuclear talks.

Whether a nuclear deal with Iran will pave the way for a new opening on peace talks in Syria remains to be seen. Increasingly, though, world leaders are explicitly linking the two, with the European Union’s top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, suggesting last week that a nuclear agreement could spur Tehran to play “a major but positive role in Syria.”

It could hardly come soon enough. Now in its fifth year, the Syrian war has claimed 220,000 lives, prompted an exodus of more than three million refugees and unleashed jihadist groups across the region. “This conflict is producing a question mark in many — where is it leading and whether this can be sustained,” Mr. de Mistura said.

Part Italian, part Swedish, Mr. de Mistura has worked with the United Nations for more than 40 years, but he is more widely known for his dapper style than for any diplomatic coups. Syria is by far the toughest assignment of his career — indeed, two of the organization’s most seasoned diplomats, Lakhdar Brahimi and Kofi Annan, tried to do the job and gave up — and critics have wondered aloud whether Mr. de Mistura is up to the task.

He served as a United Nations envoy in Afghanistan and Iraq, and before that in Lebanon, where a former minister recalled, with some scorn, that he spent many hours sunbathing at a private club in the hills above Beirut. Those who know him say he has a taste for fine suits and can sometimes speak too soon and too much, just as they point to his diplomatic missteps and hyperbole.

They cite, for instance, a news conference in October, when he raised the specter of Srebrenica, where thousands of Muslims were massacred in 1995 during the Balkans war, in warning that the Syrian border town of Kobani could fall to the Islamic State. In February, he was photographed at a party in Damascus, the Syrian capital, celebrating the anniversary of the Iranian revolution just as Syrian forces, aided by Iran, were pummeling rebel-held suburbs of Damascus; critics seized on that as evidence of his coziness with the government.

Mouin Rabbani, who served briefly as the head of Mr. de Mistura’s political affairs unit and has since emerged as one of his most outspoken critics, said Mr. de Mistura did not have the background necessary for the job. “This isn’t someone well known for his political vision or political imagination, and his closest confidants lack the requisite knowledge and experience,” Mr. Rabbani said.

As a deputy foreign minister in the Italian government, Mr. de Mistura was tasked in 2012 with freeing two Italian marines detained in India for shooting at Indian fishermen. He made 19 trips to India, to little effect. One marine was allowed to return to Italy for medical reasons; the other remains in India.

He said he initially turned down the Syria job when the United Nations secretary general approached him last August, only to change his mind the next day, after a sleepless, guilt-ridden night.

Mr. de Mistura compared his role in Syria to that of a doctor faced with a terminally ill patient. His goal in brokering a freeze in the fighting, he said, was to alleviate suffering. He settled on Aleppo as the location for its “fame,” he said, a decision that some questioned, considering that Aleppo was far trickier than the many other lesser-known towns where activists had negotiated temporary local cease-fires.

“Everybody, at least in Europe, are very familiar with the value of Aleppo,” Mr. de Mistura said. “So I was using that as an icebreaker.”

The cease-fire negotiations, to which he had devoted six months, fell apart quickly because of the government’s military offensive in Aleppo the very day of his announcement at the Security Council. Privately, United Nations diplomats said Mr. de Mistura had been manipulated. To this, Mr. de Mistura said only that he was “disappointed and concerned.”

Tarek Fares, a former rebel fighter, said after a recent visit to Aleppo that no Syrian would admit publicly to supporting Mr. de Mistura’s cease-fire proposal. “If anyone said they went to a de Mistura meeting in Gaziantep, they would be arrested,” is how he put it, referring to the Turkish city where negotiations between the two sides were held.

Secretary General Ban Ki-moon remains staunchly behind Mr. de Mistura’s efforts. His defenders point out that he is at the center of one of the world’s toughest diplomatic problems, charged with mediating a conflict in which two of the world’s most powerful nations — Russia, which supports Mr. Assad, and the United States, which has called for his ouster — remain deadlocked.

R. Nicholas Burns, a former State Department official who now teaches at Harvard, credited Mr. de Mistura for trying to negotiate a cease-fire even when the chances of success were exceedingly small — and the chances of a political deal even smaller. For his efforts to work, Professor Burns argued, the world powers will first have to come to an agreement of their own.

“He needs the help of outside powers,” he said. “It starts with backers of Assad. That’s Russia and Iran. De Mistura is there, waiting.”

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

Joseph Lechleider, a Father of the DSL Internet Technology, Dies at 82

Mr. Lechleider helped invent DSL technology, which enabled phone companies to offer high-speed web access over their infrastructure of copper wires.

Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Biographer of Clara Barton and Robert E. Lee, Dies at 64

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

Rolf Smedvig, Trumpeter in the Empire Brass, Dies at 62

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