PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

saco-indonesia.com, Google baru saja telah mengumumkan di blog Chromium-nya bahwa perusahaannya akan telah memberikan hadiah total Rp 32,8 miliar bagi hacker yang bisa meretas sistem operasinya.

, kegiatan ini juga akan dikemas dalam kompetisi yang bernama Pwnium, sebuah kontes hacking yang sudah menjadi agenda tahunan Google. Di tahun 2014 ini, acara Pwnium juga sudah memasuki tahun keempat dan bakal akan diselenggarakan di bulan Maret mendatang.

Pada konferensi keamanan CanSecWest di Vancouver , British Columbia, Google telah mengumumkan jika hadiah tersebut akan diberikan pada peretas yang bisa mengeksploitasi Chrome OS secara keseluruhan. Hal ini telah meliputi penjelasan menyeluruh terkait dalam semua bug yang terdapat dalam sistem operasi tersebut.

Selain itu, peserta Pwnium 4 juga akan diberikan pilihan antara meretas HP Chromebook berbasis ARM atau Acer Chromebook berbasis Intel Haswell microarchitecture.

Hacker juga akan mendapatkan uang sebesar USD 110 ribu atau setara Rp 1,3 miliar jika dirinya dapat masuk dan menyusup ke sistem browser Chrome OS. Sedangkan nominal hadiah hingga lebih dari puluhan miliar dapat didapat jika hacker bisa menyusup dan menguasai Chrome OS secara keseluruhan.

Berdasarkan lansiran tersebut, pada ajang Pwnium 3 yang diselenggarakan tahun lalu, telah diketahui hanya ada satu hacker dengan nama sandi 'Pinkie Pie' yang telah berhasil masuk ke dalam sistem browser di Chrome OS dan berhasil mendapatkan hadiah sebesar USD 40 ribu atau setara Rp 486 juta.

Pwnium 4 yang diadakan Google ini sendiri bertujuan untuk dapat menghilangkan lubang yang ada di sistem Chrome OS dan membuat Chrome browser maupun Chrome OS menjadi semakin aman.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

Sejarah
PT. THAYIBA TORA TRAVEL UMRAH DAN HAJI KHUSUS didirikan pada tanggal 29 Desember 1988 di Jakarta oleh H. Alhanif Nawawi, dengan motivasi membangun dua kebaikan (kebaikan dunia dan akhirat), sebagaimana nama “Thayiba” (Arab) artinya “Baik” dan “Tora” (Malaynesia) artinya “Baik/Indah”, jadi Thayib Tora artinya dua kebaikan.

Berdasarkan motivasi tersebut Thayiba Tora bertekad untuk menjadi pelayan tamu Allah, sungguh terhormat menjadi pelayan tamu Allah, untuk itu Thayiba Tora berupaya semaksimal mungkin menghantarkan tamu Allah dengan ikhlas dan tawakal kepada ibadah yang diterima (mabrur) menuju keridhaan-Nya sepanjang masa.

Tujuan Didirikan

    Mengelola usaha penyelengaraan perjalanan ibadah yang berdimensi dua kebaikan.
    Menjadi salah satu sumber pendapatan yang halalan-thayyibah.
    Menjadi pintu masuk untuk mengembangkan berbagai usaha lain yang berkaitan.

Motto

"PILIHAN UNTUK UMRAH DAN HAJI MABRUR SERTA IBADAH YANG SEMPURNA"

Visi

Menghantarkan jamaah mencapai ibadah umrah/haji yang mabrur, membangun kemitraan yang adil, mengembangkan silaturrahim dan kenyamanan beribadah.

Misi

    Mendorong kemantapan calon jamaah untuk menunaikan ibadah umrah/haji secara benar dan sempurna untuk mencapai ibadah yang mabrur.
    Mengembangkan penyelenggaraan program perjalanan ibadah umrah/haji yang unik, pembimbing ibadah yang siqah, serta pelayanan yang amanah.
    Mengembangkan karyawan profesional-amanah untuk melayani jamaah secara profesional dan amanah.
    Mengembangkan Ukhuwah Islamiyah, Silaturrahim, Ta’awanu ‘alal birri wa taqwa untuk mencapai kehidupan yang rahmatan lil ‘alamiin.

Keistimewaan

    Pelayanan Optimal
    Bimbingan Ibadah Berkesinambungan
    Kesempatan Bermitra

Produk

    Paket Haji Khusus
    Paket Umrah Reguler 9 Hari
    Paket Umrah 1 Bulan Ramadhan
    Paket Umrah Lailatul Qadr + Idul Fitri
    Paket Umrah Plus Cairo Alexandria
    Paket Umrah Plus Istanbul
    Paket Umrah Plus Amman Aqsha
    Paket Islamic Tour

Legal Dokumen

    Notaris Ny. Siti Rachmani W, SH. No. 29; 29/12/88, No. 14; 24/10/1989.
    SK. Menkeh. RI No. AHU-44533.AH.01.02.Tahun 2009.
    Notaris H.M Afdal Gazali, SH., No. 38; 16/02/09.
    SIU BPU, Kpts. Dirjen Pariwisata No. Kep./16/BPU/XII/ 90.  6 Desember 1990.
    S.K. Menag. RI. No. D/593 tahun 2008 tentang penetapan Biro Perjalanan Umum sebagai penyelengara perjalanan Umrah.
    S.K. Menag. R.I. No. D/138 tahun 2009 Tentang penunjukan penyelengara urusan Haji ONH Plus.
    NPWP No. 01.330.998.4-017.000.
    TDP No. 09.03.1.63.25120.

Asosiasi

    ASITA (Association of the Indonesian Tours & Travel Agency)
    AMPHURI (Asosiasi Muslim Penyelengara Haji & Umrah Republik Indonesia)
    KADIN (Kamar Dagang dan Industri)

Budaya Perusahaan

    Thayiba Tora menjunjung tinggi budaya Perusahaan dengan motto IKHLAS (I=Ikhlas, K=Kerja keras, H=Harmonis, L=Lapang dada, A=Amal sholeh dan S=sempurna)"

Prinsip Kerja

    Thayiba Tora memegang teguh prinsip kerja : Amanah, Praktis, Obyektif, Terbuka dan Kekeluargaan.

Program Pasca

    Dalam rangka menjaga kesinambungan dan terjalinnya hubungan sesama jama'ah, maka Thayiba Tora mengadakan dan memfasilitasi berbagai kegiatan (1) Kajian Islam, (2) Bulletin, (3) Silaturahmi, (4) Kegiatan Sosial, dan (5) Sinergi Bisnis.

Manajemen

    Komisaris Utama

    : DR. Ir.H. Fuadi Rasyid, MSc.

    Komisaris

    : H. Aibrah Said, SH.

    Direktur Utama

    : Ir. H. Artha Hanif

    Direktur Operasi & Koordinator
    Pembimbing Ibadah

    : Ir. H. Farhat Umar, MS.

    Pembimbing Ibadah

    : Ust. H. Erizal Ilyas, Lc. MA.

    Koordinator Tim Kesehatan

    : Dr. H. Sani Taufiq, SpAn

Sumber : http://thayiba-tora.co.id

Baca Artikel Lainnya : TRAVEL UMRAH HAJI PLUS

Direktur Utama PT PLN Nur Pamudji untuk yang kesekian kalinya telah dipanggil oleh Kejaksaan Agung. Anak buah Dahlan Iskan itu dipanggil terkait dalam pengadaan flame turbin pada 12 pembangkit listrik dan gas sektor Belawan tahun 2007-2009 lalu senilai Rp 23,98 miliar.

"Jadwal rencana pemeriksaan Selasa 11 Maret 2014, saksi Nur Pamudji selaku direktur utama PT PLN," kata Kepala Pusat Penerangan Hukum (Kapuspenkum) Kejaksaan Agung Setia Untung Arimuladi, Selasa (11/3).

Selain Nur, Kejaksaan juga telah memanggil saksi lainnya yaitu Setia Anggoro Dewo selaku direktur keuangan PT PLN dan Eddy D Erning Praja selaku direktur SDM & umum PT PLN.

Sebelumnya, dalam kasus ini Kejaksaan agung juga telah menetapkan lima tersangka dari PLN antara lain mantan General Manajer PT PLN Pembangkitan Sumatera Bagian Utara Albert Pangaribuan, Manajer Bidang Perencanaan PLN Edward Silitonga, Ketua Panitia Pemeriksa Mutu Barang PLN Ferdinand Ritonga, Manajer Produksi PLN Fahmi Rizal Lubis, dan Ketua Panitia Lelang PLN Robert Manyuazar.Penyidik menduga ada penggelembungan harga dalam pengadaan flame turbim tahun anggaran 2007, 2008, dan 2009.

Hal ini dikarenakan alat tersebut tidak sesuai spesifikasi yang telah ditentukan.Tender ini juga telah dimenangkan oleh dengan MAPNA dari Iran yang memiliki kualifikasi non OEM (Original of Manufucture). Harga spare part non OEM memang lebih murah 40 persen dibandingkan OEM. Tak sampai di situ kerusakan flame turbin tersebut juga menjadi bukti ada penyelewengan dalam pengadaan dan pemeliharaan flame turbin.

Akibat dari kasus ini, Nur sempat disebut akan mengundurkan diri. Meski begitu sampai saat ini kabar itu belum terbukti, sebab Nur juga masih menjalankan tugasnya di BUMN tersebut.

HAJI BAGI WANITA YANG SEDANG HAIDH

Oleh
Ad-Daimah Lil IftaAl-Lajnah

Pertanyaan
Ad-Daimah Lil IftaAl-Lajnah ditanya : Apa hukum wanita muslimah yang haidh dalam hari-hari hajinya, apakah sah hajinya sebab demikian itu ?

Jawaban
Jika seorang wanita haidh dalam hari-hari hajinya maka hendaklah dia melakukan apa yang dilakukan orang-orang yang sedang haji selain thawaf dan sa'i hingga dia suci. Jika dia telah suci dan mandi maka dia thawaf dan sa'i. Jika seorang wanita haidh dan tidak tersisa dari amal-amalan haji selain thawaf wada', maka ketika pulang dia tidak wajib membayar kifarat apa pun karena thawaf wada tidak wajib bagi dia dan hajinya sah. Sebagaimana landasan dasar tersebut adalah.

[a]. Hadits yang diriwayatkan dari Abdullah bin Abbas Radhiallahu 'anhu bahwa Rasulullah Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda.

"Artinya : Wanita yang nifas dan haidh jika keduanya datang ke miqat maka keduanya mandi dan berihram dan melaksanakan semua manasik haji selain thawaf di Baitullah" [Hadits Riwayat Ahmad dan Abu Dawud]

[b]. Dalam hadits shahih disebutkan riwayat dari Aisyah Radhiallahu 'anha, bahwa dia haidh sebelum melaksanakan manasik umrah, maka Nabi Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam memerintahkan kepadanya untuk ihram haji selain thawaf di Baitullah hingga dia suci. Juga diperintahkannya melakukan apa yang dilakukan orang yang haji dan memasukkan ihram kepada umrah.

[c]. Imam Bukhari meriwayatkan hadits Aisyah Radhiallahu 'anha.

"Artinya : Bhawa Shafiyah istri Nabi Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam haidh, lalu dia menyampaikan hal itu kepada Rasulullah Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam, maka beliau bersabda : 'Apakah dia menahan kita (dari pulang)'. dia berkata : 'Sesungguhnya dia telah thawaf ifadhah'. Nabi Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda : 'Jika demikian maka tidak'". [Hadits Riwayat Bukhari, Muslim dan yang lainnya]

Dalam riwayat lain disebutkan, bahwa 'Aisyah berkata : "Shafiyah haidh setelah thawaf ifadhah. Aku sebutkan haidhnya kepada Rasulullah Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam. Maka Rasulullah Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda : "Apakah dia menahan (kepulangan) kita ?" Saya berkata : "Wahai Rasulullah, sesungguhnya dia telah thawaf ifadhah di Baitullah kemudian dia haidh setelah ifadhah". Maka Rasulullah Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda : "Karena itu hendaklah dia (ikut) pulang !" [Hadits Riwayat Bukhari, Muslim, dan yang lainnya]

WANITA HAIDH KETIKA IHRAM TIDAK BOLEH SHALAT

Oleh
Syaikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz

Pertanyaan
Syaikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz ditanya : Bagaimana shalat dua rakaat ihram bagi wanita yang haidh ?

Jawaban
Wanita yang sedang haidh tidak boleh shalat dua raka'at ihram, bahkan dia ihram dengan tanpa shalat. Sebab shalat haram bagi wanita yang haid. Terlebih shalat dua rakaat ihram hukumnya sunnah menurut jumhur ulama, bahkan sebagian ulama menilainya tidak termasuk sunnah karena tidak terdapat dalil khusus. Sedangkan jumhur yang menilainya sunnah adalah karena berpedoman kepada hadits Nabi Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam bersabda.

"Artinya : Allah berfirman : "Shalatlah kamu di lembah yang diberkahi ini dan katakanlah : "Umrah dalam haji" [Hadits Riwayat Ahmad, Bukhari, dan Abu Dawud]

Maksudnya, di lembah al-Atiq dalam haji wada'. Juga terdapat riwayat dari seorang sahabat Nabi Shallallahu 'alaihi wa sallam shalat kemudian ihram. Maka jumhur ulama menyatakan bahwa ihram setelah sunnah, baik shalat wajib atau sunnah. Karena wanita yang haidh dan nifas haram mendirikan shalat, maka keduanya ihram tanpa shalat dan tidak meng-qadha' shalatnya (dua ra'kaat ihram).

HAIDH ATAU NIFAS SETELAH IHRAM

Oleh
Syaikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz

Pertanyaan
Syaikh Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah bin Baz ditanya : Jika seorang wanita haidh atau nifas setelah ihram, apakah sah jika dia thawaf dia Baitullah, atau apakah yang dia harus lakukan, dan apakah dia wajib thawaf wada.?

Jawaban
Wanita yang nifas atau haidh ketika kedatangannya untuk umrah maka dia hendaknya menunggu sampai suci. Jika telah suci, dia thawaf, sa'i dan memotong rambut, maka sempurnakanlah umrahnya. Tapi jika datangnya haidh atau nifas setelah umrah atau setelah ihram haji pada hari ke 8 Dzulhijjah, maka dia melakukan manasik haji, yaitu wukuf di 'Arafah, mabit di Muzdalifah, melontar tiga jumrah di Mina, dan lain-lain seperti talbiyah dan dzikir. Lalu ketika dia telah suci, dia thawaf dan sa'i untuk hajinya. Namun jika wanita haidh atau nifas setelah thawaf dan sa'i dan sebelum thawaf wada' maka gugur darinya thawaf wada'. Sebab wanita yang haidh atau nifas tidak wajib thawaf wada'.

Disalin dari buku Fatwa-Fatwa Haji dan Umrah oleh Ulama-Ulama Besar Saudi Arabia, penysusun Muhammad bin Abdul Aziz Al-Musnad, terbitan Pustaka Imam Asy-Syafi'i, hal. 130-134, penerjemah H.Asmuni Solihan Zamaksyari Lc]

Baca Artikel Lainnya : BAJU UNTUK UMRAH

Bagi Anda yang suka membaca atau perlu mengerjakan beberapa tugas membaca di tempat tidur, misalnya akan menghadapi ujian esok harinya, tentunya cahaya telah menjadi faktor yang sangat penting. Memang membaca di tempat tidur juga tidak disarankan, namun jika didukung dengan pencayahaan yang tepat, kenapa tidak. Dan lampu tidur atau lampu meja disamping tampat tidur Anda bisa menjadi pilihan yang tepat.

Selain dapat memebantu Anda dalam pencayahaan ketika memebaca, lampu ini juga dapat memperindah ruangan. Selain efek cahayanya, modelnya pun juga bisa menampilkan kesan tersendiri dalam kamar Anda.

Kalau Anda tertarik untuk dapat mengisi ruangan pribadi Anda dengan lampu meja ini, tidak hanya asal memebeli. Namun juga disesuaikan dengan bentuk meja, serta konsep ruangan yang selama ini Anda ciptakan.

Berikut ada beberapa tips yang bisa menjadi panduan Anda ketika dalam membeli lampu meja untuk kamar Anda:

Pilih ukuran yang sesuai

Lampu ini Anda beli sebagai pelengkap meja kamar tidur Anda, jadi jangan memebeli lampu tidur dengan ukuran terlalu besar tauapun terlalu kecil, hingga tampak tidak proporsional. Itulah sebabnya Anda perlu memilih yang cocok dan menyatu dengan baik.

Sesuaikan interior

Kalau kamar Anda bernuansa sporty, misalnya banyak unsur sepak bola berarti jangan memilih lampu yang bergaya Victorian dengan ukiran yang detail. Karena lampu yang Anda pilih harus sesuai dengan gaya kamar Anda. Kalau kamar Anda bergaya interior yang klasik atau traditional, lempu berbahan kayu-kayuan bisa menjadi pilihan. Tak hanya serasi dengan ruangan, warna lampu pun juga harus Anda perhatikan.

Panjang lampu meja

Panjang serta tinggi lampu meja layak menjadi pertimbangan utama. Jika terlalu pendek, maka bahu Anda akan menutup semua cahaya. Kedengarannya hal ini juga merupakan suatu hal sepele, namun Anda tentunya tidak ingin membaca tanpa mendapat pencahayaan yang tepat bukan? Jika Anda membaca buku di malam hari, Anda mungkin ingin membaca dengan bertumpu pada bantal Anda yang nyaman daripada duduk di meja. Nah jika lampu menja Anda justru terlalu tinggi, ini juga dapat menyilaukan mata, dan Anda tidak mendapatkan cahaya yang maksimal. Inilah alasan mengapa Anda juga harus memeperhitungkan tinggi lampu yang akan Anda pilih.
    
Pilih lampu LED

Zaman sudah semakin berkembang pesat. Daripada Anda memanfaatkan lampu traditional, alangkah baiknya jika Anda beralih untuk menggunakan lampu LED. Selain lebih praktis, lampu jenis ini juga lebih hemat.

Setelah Anda mempertimbangkan banyak faktor diatas, jangan lupa sebelum membawa pulang lampu tersebut, cek terlebih dahulu bagaimana kondisinya. Dan perhatikan berapa besar daya atau watt nya. Anda tentunya tidak ingin tagihan Anda membengkak hanya karena lampu meja baru.

Oya, jika Anda memerlukan tempat kost murah di Cirebon yang bersih, aman, dan nyaman serta fasilitas lengkap, Pondok Avicenna di Jalan Taman Pemuda No. 2 Cirebon adalah pilihan yang tepat dan solusi terbaik.  Rumah kost murah di Cirebon ini memiliki 28 kamar.  Adapun fasilitas yang disediakan kostel di Cirebon ini diantaranya kamar mandi di dalam, closet duduk, internet unlimited 24 jam, meja belajar dan tempat tidur spring bed, lemari pakaian, AC Panasonic, air panas dan air dingin, gratis cuci pakaian per hari 5 potong, ruang tamu bersama, TV LCD dengan saluran HBO, Fox, RCTI, dll. Fasilitasnya lengkap, bukan? untuk ukuran mahasiswa/pelajar maupun karyawan.  Apalagi rumah kos di Cirebon menerima sewa kamar dengan sistem kos harian.  Ayo tunggu apalagi?  Kost-lah di Pondok Avicenna.

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

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.

Photo

 

Last summer at a writers’ workshop in Oregon, the novelists Anthony Doerr, Karen Russell and Elissa Schappell were chatting over cocktails when they realized they had all published work in the same magazine. It wasn’t one of the usual literary outlets, like Tin House, The Paris Review or The New Yorker. It was Rhapsody, an in-flight magazine for United Airlines.

It seemed like a weird coincidence. Then again, considering Rhapsody’s growing roster of A-list fiction writers, maybe not. Since its first issue hit plane cabins a year and a half ago, Rhapsody has published original works by literary stars like Joyce Carol Oates, Rick Moody, Amy Bloom, Emma Straub and Mr. Doerr, who won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction two weeks ago.

As airlines try to distinguish their high-end service with luxuries like private sleeping chambers, showers, butler service and meals from five-star chefs, United Airlines is offering a loftier, more cerebral amenity to its first-class and business-class passengers: elegant prose by prominent novelists. There are no airport maps or disheartening lists of in-flight meal and entertainment options in Rhapsody. Instead, the magazine has published ruminative first-person travel accounts, cultural dispatches and probing essays about flight by more than 30 literary fiction writers.

Photo

 

An airline might seem like an odd literary patron. But as publishers and writers look for new ways to reach readers in a shaky retail climate, many have formed corporate alliances with transit companies, including American Airlines, JetBlue and Amtrak, that provide a captive audience.

Mark Krolick, United Airlines’ managing director of marketing and product development, said the quality of the writing in Rhapsody brings a patina of sophistication to its first-class service, along with other opulent touches like mood lighting, soft music and a branded scent.

“The high-end leisure or business-class traveler has higher expectations, even in the entertainment we provide,” he said.

Some of Rhapsody’s contributing writers say they were lured by the promise of free airfare and luxury accommodations provided by United, as well as exposure to an elite audience of some two million first-class and business-class travelers.

“It’s not your normal Park Slope Community Bookstore types who read Rhapsody,” Mr. Moody, author of the 1994 novel “The Ice Storm,” who wrote an introspective, philosophical piece about traveling to the Aran Islands of Ireland for Rhapsody, said in an email. “I’m not sure I myself am in that Rhapsody demographic, but I would like them to buy my books one day.”

In addition to offering travel perks, the magazine pays well and gives writers freedom, within reason, to choose their subject matter and write with style. Certain genres of flight stories are off limits, naturally: no plane crashes or woeful tales of lost luggage or rude flight attendants, and nothing too risqué.

“We’re not going to have someone write about joining the mile-high club,” said Jordan Heller, the editor in chief of Rhapsody. “Despite those restrictions, we’ve managed to come up with a lot of high-minded literary content.”

Guiding writers toward the right idea occasionally requires some gentle prodding. When Rhapsody’s executive editor asked Ms. Russell to contribute an essay about a memorable flight experience, she first pitched a story about the time she was chaperoning a group of teenagers on a trip to Europe, and their delayed plane sat at the airport in New York for several hours while other passengers got progressively drunker.

“He pointed out that disaster flights are not what people want to read about when they’re in transit, and very diplomatically suggested that maybe people want to read something that casts air travel in a more positive light,” said Ms. Russell, whose novel “Swamplandia!” was a finalist for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize.

She turned in a nostalgia-tinged essay about her first flight on a trip to Disney World when she was 6. “The Magic Kingdom was an anticlimax,” she wrote. “What ride could compare to that first flight?”

Ms. Oates also wrote about her first flight, in a tiny yellow propeller plane piloted by her father. The novelist Joyce Maynard told of the constant disappointment of never seeing her books in airport bookstores and the thrill of finally spotting a fellow plane passenger reading her novel “Labor Day.” Emily St. John Mandel, who was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction last year, wrote about agonizing over which books to bring on a long flight.

“There’s nobody that’s looked down their noses at us as an in-flight magazine,” said Sean Manning, the magazine’s executive editor. “As big as these people are in the literary world, there’s still this untapped audience for them of luxury travelers.”

United is one of a handful of companies showcasing work by literary writers as a way to elevate their brands and engage customers. Chipotle has printed original work from writers like Toni Morrison, Jeffrey Eugenides and Barbara Kingsolver on its disposable cups and paper bags. The eyeglass company Warby Parker hosts parties for authors and sells books from 14 independent publishers in its stores.

JetBlue offers around 40 e-books from HarperCollins and Penguin Random House on its free wireless network, allowing passengers to read free samples and buy and download books. JetBlue will start offering 11 digital titles from Simon & Schuster soon. Amtrak recently forged an alliance with Penguin Random House to provide free digital samples from 28 popular titles, which passengers can buy and download over Amtrak’s admittedly spotty wireless service.

Amtrak is becoming an incubator for literary talent in its own right. Last year, it started a residency program, offering writers a free long-distance train trip and complimentary food. More than 16,000 writers applied and 24 made the cut.

Like Amtrak, Rhapsody has found that writers are eager to get onboard. On a rainy spring afternoon, Rhapsody’s editorial staff sat around a conference table discussing the June issue, which will feature an essay by the novelist Hannah Pittard and an unpublished short story by the late Elmore Leonard.

“Do you have that photo of Elmore Leonard? Can I see it?” Mr. Heller, the editor in chief, asked Rhapsody’s design director, Christos Hannides. Mr. Hannides slid it across the table and noted that they also had a photograph of cowboy spurs. “It’s very simple; it won’t take away from the literature,” he said.

Rhapsody’s office, an open space with exposed pipes and a vaulted brick ceiling, sits in Dumbo at the epicenter of literary Brooklyn, in the same converted tea warehouse as the literary journal N+1 and the digital publisher Atavist. Two of the magazine’s seven staff members hold graduate degrees in creative writing. Mr. Manning, the executive editor, has published a memoir and edited five literary anthologies.

Mr. Manning said Rhapsody was conceived from the start as a place for literary novelists to write with voice and style, and nobody had been put off that their work would live in plane cabins and airport lounges.

Still, some contributors say they wish the magazine were more widely circulated.

“I would love it if I could read it,” said Ms. Schappell, a Brooklyn-based novelist who wrote a feature story for Rhapsody’s inaugural issue. “But I never fly first class.”

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

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.

The magical quality Mr. Lesnie created in shooting the “Babe” films caught the eye of the director Peter Jackson, who chose him to film the fantasy epic.

Todd Heisler/The New York Times

Children playing last week in Sandtown-Winchester, the Baltimore neighborhood where Freddie Gray was raised. One young resident called it “a tough community.”

Hard but Hopeful Home to ‘Lot of Freddies’

The neighborhood where Freddie Gray came of age has survived harrowing rates of unemployment, poor health, violent crime and incarceration.

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.

Gagne wrestled professionally from the late 1940s until the 1980s and was a transitional figure between the early 20th century barnstormers and the steroidal sideshows of today

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.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A skeptical Mr. Vasilakopoulos predicted tensions would worsen.

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

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

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

Though Robin and Joan Rolfs owned two rare talking dolls manufactured by Thomas Edison’s phonograph company in 1890, they did not dare play the wax cylinder records tucked inside each one.

The Rolfses, longtime collectors of Edison phonographs, knew that if they turned the cranks on the dolls’ backs, the steel phonograph needle might damage or destroy the grooves of the hollow, ring-shaped cylinder. And so for years, the dolls sat side by side inside a display cabinet, bearers of a message from the dawn of sound recording that nobody could hear.

In 1890, Edison’s dolls were a flop; production lasted only six weeks. Children found them difficult to operate and more scary than cuddly. The recordings inside, which featured snippets of nursery rhymes, wore out quickly.

Yet sound historians say the cylinders were the first entertainment records ever made, and the young girls hired to recite the rhymes were the world’s first recording artists.

Year after year, the Rolfses asked experts if there might be a safe way to play the recordings. Then a government laboratory developed a method to play fragile records without touching them.

The technique relies on a microscope to create images of the grooves in exquisite detail. A computer approximates — with great accuracy — the sounds that would have been created by a needle moving through those grooves.

In 2014, the technology was made available for the first time outside the laboratory.

“The fear all along is that we don’t want to damage these records. We don’t want to put a stylus on them,” said Jerry Fabris, the curator of the Thomas Edison Historical Park in West Orange, N.J. “Now we have the technology to play them safely.”

Last month, the Historical Park posted online three never-before-heard Edison doll recordings, including the two from the Rolfses’ collection. “There are probably more out there, and we’re hoping people will now get them digitized,” Mr. Fabris said.

The technology, which is known as Irene (Image, Reconstruct, Erase Noise, Etc.), was developed by the particle physicist Carl Haber and the engineer Earl Cornell at Lawrence Berkeley. Irene extracts sound from cylinder and disk records. It can also reconstruct audio from recordings so badly damaged they were deemed unplayable.

“We are now hearing sounds from history that I did not expect to hear in my lifetime,” Mr. Fabris said.

The Rolfses said they were not sure what to expect in August when they carefully packed their two Edison doll cylinders, still attached to their motors, and drove from their home in Hortonville, Wis., to the National Document Conservation Center in Andover, Mass. The center had recently acquired Irene technology.

Cylinders carry sound in a spiral groove cut by a phonograph recording needle that vibrates up and down, creating a surface made of tiny hills and valleys. In the Irene set-up, a microscope perched above the shaft takes thousands of high-resolution images of small sections of the grooves.

Stitched together, the images provide a topographic map of the cylinder’s surface, charting changes in depth as small as one five-hundredth the thickness of a human hair. Pitch, volume and timbre are all encoded in the hills and valleys and the speed at which the record is played.

At the conservation center, the preservation specialist Mason Vander Lugt attached one of the cylinders to the end of a rotating shaft. Huddled around a computer screen, the Rolfses first saw the wiggly waveform generated by Irene. Then came the digital audio. The words were at first indistinct, but as Mr. Lugt filtered out more of the noise, the rhyme became clearer.

“That was the Eureka moment,” Mr. Rolfs said.

In 1890, a girl in Edison’s laboratory had recited:

There was a little girl,

And she had a little curl

Right in the middle of her forehead.

When she was good,

She was very, very good.

But when she was bad, she was horrid.

Recently, the conservation center turned up another surprise.

In 2010, the Woody Guthrie Foundation received 18 oversize phonograph disks from an anonymous donor. No one knew if any of the dirt-stained recordings featured Guthrie, but Tiffany Colannino, then the foundation’s archivist, had stored them unplayed until she heard about Irene.

Last fall, the center extracted audio from one of the records, labeled “Jam Session 9” and emailed the digital file to Ms. Colannino.

“I was just sitting in my dining room, and the next thing I know, I’m hearing Woody,” she said. In between solo performances of “Ladies Auxiliary,” “Jesus Christ,” and “Dead or Alive,” Guthrie tells jokes, offers some back story, and makes the audience laugh. “It is quintessential Guthrie,” Ms. Colannino said.

The Rolfses’ dolls are back in the display cabinet in Wisconsin. But with audio stored on several computers, they now have a permanent voice.

Imagine an elite professional services firm with a high-performing, workaholic culture. Everyone is expected to turn on a dime to serve a client, travel at a moment’s notice, and be available pretty much every evening and weekend. It can make for a grueling work life, but at the highest levels of accounting, law, investment banking and consulting firms, it is just the way things are.

Except for one dirty little secret: Some of the people ostensibly turning in those 80- or 90-hour workweeks, particularly men, may just be faking it.

Many of them were, at least, at one elite consulting firm studied by Erin Reid, a professor at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. It’s impossible to know if what she learned at that unidentified consulting firm applies across the world of work more broadly. But her research, published in the academic journal Organization Science, offers a way to understand how the professional world differs between men and women, and some of the ways a hard-charging culture that emphasizes long hours above all can make some companies worse off.

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Ms. Reid interviewed more than 100 people in the American offices of a global consulting firm and had access to performance reviews and internal human resources documents. At the firm there was a strong culture around long hours and responding to clients promptly.

“When the client needs me to be somewhere, I just have to be there,” said one of the consultants Ms. Reid interviewed. “And if you can’t be there, it’s probably because you’ve got another client meeting at the same time. You know it’s tough to say I can’t be there because my son had a Cub Scout meeting.”

Some people fully embraced this culture and put in the long hours, and they tended to be top performers. Others openly pushed back against it, insisting upon lighter and more flexible work hours, or less travel; they were punished in their performance reviews.

The third group is most interesting. Some 31 percent of the men and 11 percent of the women whose records Ms. Reid examined managed to achieve the benefits of a more moderate work schedule without explicitly asking for it.

They made an effort to line up clients who were local, reducing the need for travel. When they skipped work to spend time with their children or spouse, they didn’t call attention to it. One team on which several members had small children agreed among themselves to cover for one another so that everyone could have more flexible hours.

A male junior manager described working to have repeat consulting engagements with a company near enough to his home that he could take care of it with day trips. “I try to head out by 5, get home at 5:30, have dinner, play with my daughter,” he said, adding that he generally kept weekend work down to two hours of catching up on email.

Despite the limited hours, he said: “I know what clients are expecting. So I deliver above that.” He received a high performance review and a promotion.

What is fascinating about the firm Ms. Reid studied is that these people, who in her terminology were “passing” as workaholics, received performance reviews that were as strong as their hyper-ambitious colleagues. For people who were good at faking it, there was no real damage done by their lighter workloads.

It calls to mind the episode of “Seinfeld” in which George Costanza leaves his car in the parking lot at Yankee Stadium, where he works, and gets a promotion because his boss sees the car and thinks he is getting to work earlier and staying later than anyone else. (The strategy goes awry for him, and is not recommended for any aspiring partners in a consulting firm.)

A second finding is that women, particularly those with young children, were much more likely to request greater flexibility through more formal means, such as returning from maternity leave with an explicitly reduced schedule. Men who requested a paternity leave seemed to be punished come review time, and so may have felt more need to take time to spend with their families through those unofficial methods.

The result of this is easy to see: Those specifically requesting a lighter workload, who were disproportionately women, suffered in their performance reviews; those who took a lighter workload more discreetly didn’t suffer. The maxim of “ask forgiveness, not permission” seemed to apply.

It would be dangerous to extrapolate too much from a study at one firm, but Ms. Reid said in an interview that since publishing a summary of her research in Harvard Business Review she has heard from people in a variety of industries describing the same dynamic.

High-octane professional service firms are that way for a reason, and no one would doubt that insane hours and lots of travel can be necessary if you’re a lawyer on the verge of a big trial, an accountant right before tax day or an investment banker advising on a huge merger.

But the fact that the consultants who quietly lightened their workload did just as well in their performance reviews as those who were truly working 80 or more hours a week suggests that in normal times, heavy workloads may be more about signaling devotion to a firm than really being more productive. The person working 80 hours isn’t necessarily serving clients any better than the person working 50.

In other words, maybe the real problem isn’t men faking greater devotion to their jobs. Maybe it’s that too many companies reward the wrong things, favoring the illusion of extraordinary effort over actual productivity.