PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

ZIVILIA SESAL

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    Editor : Dian Sukmawati

Blusukan ke Marunda, Jokowi heran banyak wartawan TV mengikuti

Gubernur DKI Jakarta Joko Widodo (Jokowi) hari ini akan melakukan blusukan ke RT 3 RW 7 Kelurahan Marunda, Kecamatan Cilincing, Jakarta Utara. Pada hari ini ia merasakan ada yang berbeda dengan rombongannya.

"Kok sepertinya wartawan televisinya lebih banyak ya?" ungkap Jokowi di sela-sela blusukan, Jumat (14/3).

Wartawan yang berada di sekelilingnya awalnya hanya tersenyum. Karena masih penasaran Jokowi akhirnya menanyakan kembali kepada rombongan wartawan.

"Feeling saya ini wartawan televisinya kok ada banyak ya? Memang ada apa sih?," tanya Jokowi.

Wartawan akhirnya buka suara. "Kabarnya bapak mau deklarasi kali. Makanya banyak yang ngikutin. Pada mau liputan detik-detik terakhir blusukan," jelas wartawan.

Jokowi yang mendengar jawaban wartawan hanya tersenyum geli. Bahkan dirinya hanya menggelengkan kepalanya karena masih tidak percaya kalau wartawan televisi lebih banyak yang mengikutinya hari ini.

KAMPUNG PULO PASTI BANJIR

saco-indonesia.com, Wakil Gubernur DKI Jakarta Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (Ahok) telah mengatakan, Kampung Pulo, Jakarta Timur akan selalu mengalami musibah banjir. Bahkan, banjir tersebut juga akan terus datang sampai hari kiamat.

Menurut Ahok, Kampung Pulo berada di bantaran Kali Ciliwung yang tidak dibolehkan mendirikan bangunan. Walaupun bukan musim hujan, Kampung Pulo juga bisa saja kebanjiran apabila debit air yang datang dari hulu Ciliwung sangat besar.

"Kampung Pulo juga pasti akan banjir sampai kiamat karena warga tinggal di bantaran sungai," ujar Ahok di Balai Kota, Jakarta Pusat, Senin (03/2)

Ahok juga meminta warga yang berada di Kampung Pulo untuk pindah dari kampung tersebut ke rumah susun yang telah disediakan oleh Pemprov DKI Jakarta. Namun, apabila tidak mau pindah, lanjut Ahok, warga telah diminta mengalah untuk mundur 20 meter dari bantaran kali.

Setelah itu, Pemprov DKI juga akan membuat sheetpile atau dinding turap guna untuk menahan debit air yang tinggi di wilayah tersebut. Dengan begitu, pemerintah tidak perlu melakukan tindakan tegas dalam penertiban.

"Kadang-kadang, kami terpaksa memaksa. Ini seperti ngurus anak-anak aja, kita paksa kalau mereka ngelawan," kata Ahok.

Sebelumnya, Gubernur DKI Jakarta Joko Widodo juga menegaskan masalah banjir Jakarta secara keseluruhan sama, yaitu karena banyaknya pemukiman di bantaran sungai, khususnya di Ciliwung.

"Problemnya sama di semua tempat di Jakarta. Yang banjir kan pinggir kali semua. Jadi bukan air cari rumah. Rumah mencari air," ujar Jokowi.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

BANDUNG PUNYA BUS SEKOLAH GRATIS

saco-indonesia.com, Pemerintah Kota Bandung telah resmi memperkenalkan bus sekolah baru di Balai Kota Bandung. Bus yang berkapasitas 70 penumpang ini rencananya akan dioperasikan pada pertengahan tahun mendatang secara gratis.

Selain untuk dapat mengurai kemacetan karena anak sekolah beralih ke transportasi masal, bus tersebut juga akan sangat membantu untu mengurangi beban anak sekolah karena tidak dipungut biaya. "Ini ada rencana gratis, biar anak sekolah bisa untuk mengurangi biaya, semoga dengan jumlah yang banyak bisa akan mengurangi beban kemacetan," kata Wali Kota Bandung, Ridwan Kamil disela-sela launching Bus Sekolah, Senin (30/12).

Pada kesempatan tersebut, bus sekolah yang berwarna kuning ini juga sempat diujicobakan. Didampingi istrinya, Ridwan antusias telah menaiki bus mengitari jalanan kota kembang yang sedang lengang.

Sekilas bus ini juga cukup nyentrik. Selain berwarna kuning, ditampilkan juga gambar binatang seperti badak dan monyet. Menurut Emil, maksud bus diberi gambar hewan, untuk dapat mengedukasi siswa atau siswi tentang binatang karena saat ini banyak hewan yang nyaris punah.

"Melalui bus, ini juga bagian dari mengedukasi," terangnya.

Di dalam bus sederet 30 kursi berwarna abu-abu dengan logo Pemkot Bandung berderet rapi yang diatur berhadapan. Untuk penumpang berdiri ada sekitar 40 pegangan di bagian atas.

Ridwan juga menambahkan akan ada 10 bus yang beroperasi tahun depan. Saat ini bus tersebut juga masih diproduksi. "Ini baru prototipe, yang lainnya masih proses di pabrik," terangnya.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

ILMU ALLAH

ilmu-allah Berkata Malaikat: "Maha Suci Engkau, tidak ada ilmu bagi kami kecuali yang telah Engkau ajarkan kepada kami; sesungguhnya Engkau Dzat Yang Maha Mengetahui dan Yang Maha Menghukumi" Surat Al-Baqoroh (2:32). Beribu-ribu tahun yang lalu, ketika Allah akan menjadikan Adam sebagai khalifah di muka bumi, para Malaikat sempat mempertanyakan mengapa Allah memilih mahluk yang doyan berbuat kerusakan dan mengalirkan darah menjadi khalifah?. Mengapa bukan justru mereka saja yang terus menerus tanpa putus bertasbih yang dinobatkan menjadi khalifah bumi? Heran. Bagaimana cara Allah menangani keheranan Malaikat? Wa ‘allamal adaama asmaa-a kullahaa diajarkan-Nya-lah kepada Adam nama seluruh benda yang waktu itu ada di muka bumi. Sini tanah, situ pohon, sana batu, sono langit, ini hidung, itu kaki, dst, dst. Setelah itu Allah berkata kepada Malaikat: "Sebutkanlah kepada-Ku nama benda-benda itu jika kalian benar". Malaikat menyerah. Fasajaduu – mana sujud para Malaikat itu, kepada Adam, illaa ibliis – kecuali Iblis. Hanya ilmu tentang nama-nama benda. Bukan ilmu dasar iptek matematika, fisika, kimia, biologi yang ruwet-rumit. Hanya nama-nama benda. Tidak lebih. Peristiwa Besar Kejadian itu sepertinya hal kecil. Padahal adalah sebuah peristiwa besar. Yang menunjukkan betapa makhluq itu tidak ada apa-apanya dimata Sang Khaliq. Malaikat dibuat dari cahaya. Manusia dibuat dari tanah. Tugas manusia adalah beribadah kepada Allah. Tugas Malaikat adalah, antara lain, mencatat amal baik dan amal buruk manusia. Dari hal-hal itu, seorang anak kecil saja bisa menarik kesimpulan bahwa kedudukan Malaikat lebih tinggi dari manusia. Tapi mengapa Malaikat “kalah” ketika di test nama-nama? Padahal hanya nama-nama sederhana? Kalah oleh manusia yang ingredient alias ramuan bahan dasarnya saja “lebih rendah”?. Jawabnya: karena Allah menghendaki demikian. Karena Allah menghendaki mengajarkan kepada Adam ilmu nama-nama yang tidak pernah diajarkan-Nya kepada Malaikat. Einstein-Hawking Jika ditanya siapakah ilmuwan-ilmuwan terbesar sepanjang masa, maka Albert Einsten dan Stephen Hawking adalah dua nama diantaranya. Yang pertama terkenal dengan teori relativitasnya, yang kedua terkenal dengan teori ‘big bang’ alias dentuman besarnya. Teori apa itu? Bukan porsi artikel ini untuk menjelaskannya. Jawaban terhadap pertanyaan mengapa kecemerlangan otak mereka tidak diberikan kepada ilmuwan Muslim melainkan justru diberikan kepada ilmuwan atheis, identik dengan jawaban terhadap pertanyaan mengapa ilmu nama-nama tidak diberikan kepada Malaikat. Diantara 25 Nabi, ada 5 Nabi yang mendapatkan peringkat Ulul ‘Azmi: Fashbir kamaa shobaro uulul ‘azmi – shobarlah sebagaimana rasul yang diberi keshobaran hati. Mereka adalah Nuh, Ibrahim, Musa, Isa dan Muhammad. Tetapi mengapa Musa sampai harus meminta-minta diajari ilmu mengetahui masa depan kepada Nabi Khidir yang di dalam daftar 25 Nabi pun, tidak ada? Tragisnya, boro-boro mendapatkan ilmu, Musa menjadi murid Khidir pun, gagal, karena tidak bisa menahan diri untuk tidak bertanya atas berbagai hal yang memang aneh dan layak ditanyakan. Misalnya, dengan enaknya Khidir membunuh orok yang masih merah, dll. Mengapa Khidir lebih pintar dari Musa? Jawabnya: karena Allah menghendaki demikian. Dikejadian lain, mengapa Musa yang Ulul ‘Azmi bisa dikalahkan oleh ilmunya Bal’an bin Bauro sehingga muter-muter selama 40 tahun sampai bisa menemukan Baitul Maqdis? Jawabnya: karena Allah menghendaki demikian. Jika sejak tahun 1886 mobil Merdeces-Benz menemukan puluhan ribu paten, maka setiap paten sesungguhnya adalah Ilmu Allah, hanya saja awalnya ditemukan oleh orang Jerman, Tuan Gottlieb Daimler dan Tuan Carl Benz. Dst., dst. Tidak ada secuilpun di dunia ini yang tidak didasarkan atas ilmu Allah. Bahkan sekedar nama-nama benda. Ikhtilaf Sayang sekali, untuk 1 ilmu yang sama, Allah memberi keleluasaan kepada manusia untuk menafsirkannya secara berbeda. Terutama ilmu-ilmu non-eksakta. Untuk ilmu eksakta, atau dulu disebut ‘ilmu pasti’, dimana-mana di belahan dunia manapun yang namanya 2 kali 2 hasilnya 4; yang namanya air selalu mengalir ke tempat yang lebih rendah; yang namanya kecepatan cahaya selalu jauh lebih besar daripada kecepatan suara; dst., dst. Tetapi bagaimana dengan ilmu yang satu ini yang berbunyi: al-jamaa’atu rohmatun wal firqotu ‘adzabun – jamaah adalah rohmat dan pecah belah adalah siksa. Ada seabrek pengertian yang dimaksud ‘jamaah’, ada seabrek pengertian yang dimaksud ‘rohmat’, ada seabrek pengertian yang dimaksud ‘firqoh’, dan ada seabrek pengertian yang dimaksud ‘adzab’. Kalau dibuat matriks 4x4 jamaah-rohmat-firqoh-adzab, maka pengertiannya sudah pasti seabrek-abrek. Maka disinilah fungsinya isnad atau mata rantai yang menjamin tersambungnya dengan pengertian yang sebenarnya dengan apa yang diajarkan dan dimaksudkan oleh Nabi. Disinilah pentingnya ilmu asbabun-nuzul atau sebab-sebab turunnya sebuah ayat Al-Quran atau asbabul-wurud atau sebab-sebab adanya sebuah hadits. Disinilah penting hadits Bukhori, Muslim, Nasai, Abu Daud, Tirmidzi, Ibnu Majah, dsb. Ilmu Tidak Bermanfaat. Hah! Mosok iya ada ilmu yang tidak bermanfaat? Yakin, haq: ada!. Buktinya Nabi mengajarkan do’a yang dibaca sebelum minum air zamzam: Alloohumma innii as-aluka ‘ilman naafi’a – Ya Allah hamba memohon ilmu yang bermanfaat. Bukti lain, di hadits lain, Nabi mengajarkan do’a: Alloohumma innii a’uudzu bika min ‘ilmin laa yanfa’ – Ya Allah hamba berlindung dari ilmu yang tidak bermanfaat. Nah. Banyak ilmu ternyata tidak selamanya identik dengan orang faqih atau orang faham. Faqihun wahidun asyaddu ‘alasy syaithooni min alfi ‘aabid – Satu orang faqih lebih berat bagi syaithan daripada seribu orang yang bodoh. Jadi bukan orang yang banyak ilmunya yang ditakuti syetan. Tapi orang faqih. Satu ketika ada seorang sahabat yang menyimpan sedekah di sebelah mimbar di masjid, dengan harapan diambil oleh orang miskin. Apa yang terjadi? Sedekah tadi diambil oleh seorang pencuri. Di lain hari, disimpannya lagi sedekah di sebelah mimbar masjid, dengan harapan yang sama. Apa yang terjadi? Sedekah tadi diambil oleh orang tidak baik lainnya. Demikian seterusnya. Sohabat tadi kemudian lapor kepada Nabi yang kemudian dijawab bahwa pada saat sedekah itu diletakkan di sebelah mimbar, pahalanya sudah diterima di sisi Allah. Ilmu Allah dari hadits diatas adalah, saat sedekah, pahala sudah jadi. Urusan sedekah itu menjadi apa, sudah menjadi urusan Allah. Identik dengan keadaan masa kini. Saat seorang Mumin menyerahkan sedekahnya kepada Baitul Maal wa Tamwil (BMT), saat itu pahalanya sudah diterima oleh Allah. Terserah Allah, melalui pengurus BMT mau diapakan sedekahnya itu. Itulah ilmu Allah, sebagaimana yang dapat dipetik dari hadits sedekah yang diambil bukan oleh orang miskin diatas. Sebaliknya mereka yang sedekah kemudian mengungkit-ungkit, mencari-cari, berprasangka, suudzon tanpa hak, itu adalah Ilmu Syetan yang mengajak menghancur-leburkan amal sedekahnya sendiri. Yaa ayyuhalladziina aamanuu laa tubtiluu shodaqootikum bil manni wal adza – Wahai orang-orang yang beriman janganlah kalian membatalkan sedekahmu dengan mengungkit-ungkit dan menyakitkan hati. Nah, apalagi kalau bukan Ilmu Syetan yang membatalkan amalan? Ibadah Ghoiro Maghdhoh Definisi syirik sudah jelas. Ada di Al-Quran dan ada di Al-Hadits. Syirik yang terang-terangan alias dzahar adalah menyembah kepada selain Allah, atau menduakan Allah. Syirik yang samar alias khoufi adalah ibadah mengharapkan ‘sesuatu’ selain pahala dari Allah. Segala macam syirik ganjarannya adalah dimasukkan kedalam neraka. Maka itu terhadap pendapat yang menyatakan bahwa menghormat bendera adalah perbuatan syirik, sudah pasti disebabkan bingung tidak bisa membedakan antara “menyembah” dengan “menghormat”. Hormat bendera adalah bagian dari kewajiban warga negara untuk selayaknya menghormati segala atribut yang melambangkan kebesaran negara. Bahkan untuk hal-hal tertentu, pelecehan terhadap atribut negara menimbulkan konsekwensi hukum. Jika istiqomah – konsisten dengan keyakinannya, yang menyatakan syirik terhadap menghormat bendera, seharusnya menyatakan syirik pula terhadap yang mentaati lampu setopan di perempatan jalan, dan yang mentaati tukang parkir, karena bukankan taat itu hanya kepada Allah dan Rasul? Bahkan seharusnya menyatakan perbuatan syirik pula terhadap pembayaran STNK, pembuatan KTP dan SIM, dll., dll., bukan? Karena kebanyakan ilmu, namun bukan Ilmu Allah, melainkan ro’yu ilmu fikiran sendiri, maka syetan pun masuk. Padahal ro’yu itu sangat berbahaya. Sabda Nabi, barang siapa yang berkata dengan ro’yu alias fikiran sendiri - fa ashooba faqod akhto – umpamapun perkataannya benar, maka tetap saja salah. Apalagi perkataannya salah. Pantas bingung. Kalau sudah bingung, firman Allah tsummun bukmun ‘umyun – tuli bisu buta, fahum laa yarji’uun – maka mereka tidak bisa kembali. Alhamdulillah bagi mereka yang bisa mengamalkan ibadah maghdhoh yang berkaitan dengan Rukun Iman percaya kepada Allah, Malaikat, Kitab, Nabi, Qodar dan Kiamat; serta ibadah yang berkaitan dengan Rukun Islam Syahadat, Sholat, Zakat, Puasa dan Haji. Alhamdulillah bagi mereka yang bisa membedakan mana ibadah ghoiro maghdhoh yang tidak berkaitan dengan kedua rukun diatas, melainkan ibadah sosial. Yaitu memiliki keyakinan bahwa menjadi warga negara yang taat kepada Pemerintah yang sah serta menghormati 4 pilar (1) Pancasila, (2) Undang-undang Dasar (UUD) 1945, (3) Bhineka Tunggal Ika dan (4) NKRI, adalah bagian daripada ibadah. Hanya Ilmu Allah yang sebenarnya yang bisa membawa keyakinan seperti itu. Maka sesekali tirukanlah ucapan Malaikat ketika menyerah kepada Allah untuk sujud kepada Adam: “Ya Allah, tidak ada ilmu bagi kami kecuali yang telah Engkau ajarkan kepada kami”. Kalau sudah demikian, setinggi apapun ilmu agama dan ilmu dunia yang dikuasai, bagaimana mungkin masih bisa sombong? Fa aina tadzhabuun? Liwon Maulana (galipat)> ILMU ALLAH

Richard Suzman, 72, Dies; Researcher Influenced Global Surveys on Aging

At the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Suzman’s signature accomplishment was the central role he played in creating a global network of surveys on aging.

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.

Jim Fanning, 87, Dies; Lifted Baseball in Canada With Expos

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

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.”

William Price Fox, Admired Southern Novelist and Humorist, Dies at 89

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

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.

Nepal’s Young Men, Lost to Migration, Then a Quake

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KATHMANDU, Nepal — When the dense pillar of smoke from cremations by the Bagmati River was thinning late last week, the bodies were all coming from Gongabu, a common stopover for Nepali migrant workers headed overseas, and they were all of young men.

Hindu custom dictates that funeral pyres should be lighted by the oldest son of the deceased, but these men were too young to have sons, so they were burned by their brothers or fathers. Sukla Lal, a maize farmer, made a 14-hour journey by bus to retrieve the body of his 19-year-old son, who had been on his way to the Persian Gulf to work as a laborer.

“He wanted to live in the countryside, but he was compelled to leave by poverty,” Mr. Lal said, gazing ahead steadily as his son’s remains smoldered. “He told me, ‘You can live on your land, and I will come up with money, and we will have a happy family.’ ”

Weeks will pass before the authorities can give a complete accounting of who died in the April 25 earthquake, but it is already clear that Nepal cannot afford the losses. The countryside was largely stripped of its healthy young men even before the quake, as they migrated in great waves — 1,500 a day by some estimates — to work as laborers in India, Malaysia or one of the gulf nations, leaving many small communities populated only by elderly parents, women and children. Economists say that at some times of the year, one-quarter of Nepal’s population is working outside the country.

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.

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.

Baltimore Residents Away From Turmoil Consider Their Role

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A skeptical Mr. Vasilakopoulos predicted tensions would worsen.

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

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

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

As Vice Moves More to TV, It Tries to Keep Brash Voice

The live music at the Vice Media party on Friday shook the room. Shane Smith, Vice’s chief executive, was standing near the stage — with a drink in his hand, pants sagging, tattoos showing — watching the rapper-cum-chef Action Bronson make pizzas.

The event was an after-party, a happy-hour bacchanal for the hundreds of guests who had come for Vice’s annual presentation to advertisers and agencies that afternoon, part of the annual frenzy for ad dollars called the Digital Content NewFronts. Mr. Smith had spoken there for all of five minutes before running a slam-bang highlight reel of the company’s shows that had titles like “Weediquette” and “Gaycation.”

In the last year, Vice has secured $500 million in financing and signed deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars with established media companies like HBO that are eager to engage the young viewers Vice attracts. Vice said it was now worth at least $4 billion, with nearly $1 billion in projected revenue for 2015. It is a long way from Vice’s humble start as a free magazine in 1994.

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But even as cash flows freely in Vice’s direction, the company is trying to keep its brash, insurgent image. At the party on Friday, it plied guests with beers and cocktails. Its apparently unrehearsed presentation to advertisers was peppered with expletives. At one point, the director Spike Jonze, a longtime Vice collaborator, asked on stage if Mr. Smith had been drinking.

“My assistant tried to cut me off,” Mr. Smith replied. “I’m on buzz control.”

Now, Vice is on the verge of getting its own cable channel, which would give the company a traditional outlet for its slate of non-news programming. If all goes as planned, A&E Networks, the television group owned by Hearst and Disney, will turn over its History Channel spinoff, H2, to Vice.

The deal’s announcement was expected last week, but not all of A&E’s distribution partners — the cable and satellite TV companies that carry the network’s channels — have signed off on the change, according to a person familiar with the negotiations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

A cable channel would be a further step in a transformation for Vice, from bad-boy digital upstart to mainstream media company.

Keen for the core audience of young men who come to Vice, media giants like 21st Century Fox, Time Warner and Disney all showed interest in the company last year. Vice ultimately secured $500 million in financing from A&E Networks and Technology Crossover Ventures, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has invested in Facebook and Netflix.

Those investments valued Vice at more than $2.5 billion. (In 2013, Fox bought a 5 percent stake for $70 million.)

Then in March, HBO announced that it had signed a multiyear deal to broadcast a daily half-hour Vice newscast. Vice already produces a weekly newsmagazine show, called “Vice,” for the network. That show will extend its run through 2018, with an increase to 35 episodes a year, from 14.

Michael Lombardo, HBO’s president for programming, said when the deal was announced that it was “certainly one of our biggest investments with hours on the air.”

Vice, based in Brooklyn, also recently signed a multiyear $100 million deal with Rogers Communications, a Canadian media conglomerate, to produce original content for TV, smartphone and desktop viewers.

Vice’s finances are private, but according to an internal document reviewed by The New York Times and verified by a person familiar with the company’s financials, the company is on track to make about $915 million in revenue this year.

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It brought in $545 million in a strong first quarter, which included portions of the new HBO deal and the Rogers deal, according to the document. More of its revenue now comes from these types of content partnerships, compared with the branded content deals that made up much of its revenue a year ago, the company said.

Mr. Smith said the company was worth at least $4 billion. If the valuation gets much higher, he said he would consider taking the company public.

“I don’t care about money; we have plenty of money,” Mr. Smith, who is Vice’s biggest shareholder, said in an interview after the presentation on Friday. “I care about strategic deals.”

In the United States, Vice Media had 35.2 million unique visitors across its sites in March, according to comScore.

The third season of Vice’s weekly HBO show has averaged 1.8 million viewers per episode, including reruns, through April 12, according to Brad Adgate, the director of research at Horizon Media. (Vice said the show attracted three million weekly viewers when repeat broadcasts, online and on-demand viewings were included.)

For years, Mr. Smith has criticized traditional TV, calling it slow and unable to draw younger viewers. But if all the deals Vice has struck are to work out, Mr. Smith may have to play more by the rules of traditional media. James Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s son and a member of Vice’s board, was at the company’s presentation on Friday, as were other top media executives.

“They know they need people like me to help them, but they can’t get out of their own way,” Mr. Smith said in the interview Friday. “My only real frustration is we’re used to being incredibly dynamic, and they’re not incredibly dynamic.”

With its own television channel in the United States, Vice would have something it has long coveted even as traditional media companies are looking beyond TV. Last year, Vice’s deal with Time Warner failed in part because the two companies could not agree on how much control Vice would have over a 24-hour television network.

Vice said it intended to fill its new channel with non-news programming. The company plans to have sports shows, fashion shows, food shows and the “Gaycation” travel show with the actress Ellen Page. It is also in talks with Kanye West about a show.

It remains to be seen whether Vice’s audience will watch a traditional cable channel. Still, Vice has effectively presold all of the ad spots to two of the biggest advertising agencies for the first three years, Mr. Smith said.

In the meantime, Mr. Smith is enjoying Vice’s newfound role as a potential savior of traditional media companies.

“I’m a C.E.O. of a content company,” Mr. Smith said before he caught a flight to Las Vegas for the boxing match on Saturday between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. “If it stops being fun, then why are you doing it?”

Maya Plisetskaya, Ballerina Who Embodied Bolshoi, Dies at 89

Ms. Plisetskaya, renowned for her fluidity of movement, expressive acting and willful personality, danced on the Bolshoi stage well into her 60s, but her life was shadowed by Stalinism.

Review: ‘Frontline’ Looks at Missteps During the Ebola Outbreak

y NEIL GENZLINGER

Frontline

Frontline An installment of this PBS program looks at the effects of Ebola on Liberia and other countries, as well as the origins of the outbreak.

The program traces the outbreak to its origin, thought to be a tree full of bats in Guinea.

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.

Edward Chambers, Early Leader in Community Organizing, Dies at 85

A lapsed seminarian, Mr. Chambers succeeded Saul Alinsky as leader of the social justice umbrella group Industrial Areas Foundation.