PAKET UMROH BULAN FEBRUARI MARET APRIL MEI 2018

• Orang yang ingin bergembira harus menyukai kelelahan akibat bekerja.
• Janganlah engkau berteman dengan orang jahat karena sifatmu akan mencuri sifatnya tanpa engkau sadari.
• Plato berkata ,”Orang yang berilmu mengetahi orang yang bodoh karena dia pernah bodoh,sedangkan orang yang bodoh tidak mengetahui orang yang berilmu karena dia tidak pernah berilmu”.
• Budi pekerti yang tinggi adalah rasa malu terhadap diri sendiri.
• Plato di Tanya ,”Bagaimana caranya agar seseorang biasa hidup dengan tenang?”. Dia menjawab ,” Jika orang itutidak melakukan kejahatan dan tidak beredih akan sesuatu yang di alaminya,maka dia tentu akan merasa tenang”.
• Kerendahan seseorang di ketahui melalui dua hal : banyak berbicara tentang hal-hal yang tidak berguna,dan bercerita padahal tidak di tanya.
• Jangan terlalu banyak mengenal orang .sebab, kalian lebih sering di sakiti oleh orang yang kalian kenal,sedangkan orang yang tidak kalian kenal nyaris tidak dapat menyakiti kalian.
• Jangan terburu buru nanti akan berakibat malu, haraplah sabar biar jangan dikatakan orang bar bar
• Motivasi adalah kekuatan untuk terus maju menerjang semua rintangan yg ada tuk meraih apa yg kita inginkan
• Jauh lebih lega jika kamu telah jujur mengungkapkan rasa kepada dia yg kamu cinta daripada memendamnya dalam hati.
• Kemampuan terbaikku adalah cara berpikirku. Kemampuan terbaikmu adalah cara berpikirmu
• Ketika kamu menuliskan kekesalan, ketika itu; kamu hanya akan membuat dirimu mengesalkan
• Tidak perlu berusaha tuk menjadi oranglain. Sebab, kamu adalah istimewa, dan lebih baik dari mereka
• Kekurangan ialah kelebihan yang tertutupi. Tidak ada yg perlu ditutup, tetapi cukup membukanya
• Akan lebih baik jika mengatakan “Aku akan berusaha selalu”, daripada “Aku akan selalu”
• Kasih yang ditabur kepada sesama, kelak akan membuahkan kebahagiaan
• Dosa kita kepada yang Maha Kuasa hanya taubat jawabannya, dosa kita kepada sesama berminta maaf penawarnya
• Dalam duka pasti ada suka. Jangan menyerah; karena dengan putus asa kita tidak lebih dari pecundang
• ketika seseorang melukaimu, janganlah bersedih Karena Tuhan selalu menitipkan penyembuh buatmu
• Mereka yang menyambut tantangan, adalah mereka yang memberi ruang pada impian tuk menjadi kenyataan
• Jangan rendahkan dirimu untuk mendapatkan sesuatu, tapi rendahkan hatimu untuk berikan sesuatu
• Secara tidak sadar, seseorang yang menyakitimu hanya akan membuatmu semakin kuat!
• Seseorang menangis, bukan karena ia lemah. tetapi karena dia sudah terlalu lama KUAT.
• Kamu adalah seorang yang istimewa. Kamu hanya tidak menyadarinya, atau mungkin belum menyadarinya
• Seorang yang cerdik adalah dia yang memanfaatkan setiap peluang yang ada
• Mereka yang menyambut tantangan, adalah mereka yang memberi ruang pada impian tuk menjadi kenyataan
• sakit dlm perjuangan itu hanya sementara. bisa semenit/setahun. namun jika menyerah rasa sakit itu akan terasa selamanya.
• Jangan remehkan hal-hal sepele. Sebab, dari sinilah hal-hal besar biasanya terwujud
• Hidup menawarkan begitu banyak pilihan. Pilih serta jalani yang terbaik, dan menjadi seorang pemenang!
• Tegap langkahmu dalam mengahadi kerasnya kehidupan tidaklah cukup tanpa disertai tegapnya iman
• Kebohongan hanyalah ketenangan sesaat. Dan bila tidak diselesaikan, akan menjadi kegelisahan seumur hidup
• Secara tidak sadar, dengan kejujuran; kamu telah menyelamatkan dirimu sendiri
• Menyelesaikan permasalahan dengan emosi/kemarahan hanya akan menimbulkan permasalahan lainnya
• Sebab, setiap perbuatan baik akan ada ganjarannya. Biarkan sang waktu yang menjawab
• mengapa harus marah, ketika ruang “MAAFKAN” masih tersedia?
• Taburlah sebanyak mungkin kebaikan. Sebab, buahnya akan sangat mendamaikan
• Jangan katakan sulit. Ketahuilah; tidak ada yang sulit bila dikerjakan dengan sepenuh hati
• Peluh yang menetes ketika kau mencari nafkah, akan terbayar dengan nikmat dan berkah yang kau makan
• Tak perlu banyak kata utk menunjukan kau peduli, karena trkadang diam-mu adl cara trbaik u/ mnunjukan kepedulianmu.
• Jangan berusaha/mengerjakan sesuatu dengan setengah hati, karena hasil yang kamu dapat juga hanya setengahnya.
• Jangan lelah untuk mencari ilmu karena segala sesuatu di dunia ini perlu ilmu, jika tak ada ilmu maka kita sama saja dengan orang mati, tak akan bisa berbuat apa-apa
• Datangilah sahabatmu di saat dia susah dan lenyaplah di saat dia bahagia, karena sesungguhnya kamulah yang akan diingat di saat dia sedang susah di saat kamu membantunya
• Sesungguhnya di saat kesusahan teman, satu senyum yang tulus lebih berharga daripada sejuta kata yang tiada guna.
• Sesungguhnya masih banyak orang di dunia yang lebih susah dari kita, maka hentikanlah segala keluhan kita dan bersyukur terhadap apa yang kita punya.
• Berusaha untuk selalu berfikir positif dan optimis dalam semua kesulitan ,Jangan terobsesi pada pengalaman masa lalu atau masa depan, tapi tataplah masa kini. Masa lalu sudah lewat, tak akan kembali lagi, masa depan itu belum terjadi jadi kita tak tahu apa yang terjadi dan akhirnya hanya berangan berharap sesuatu, tapi di masa kinilah, kita harus menentukan dan membuat keputusan terhadap diri kita.
• Berfikir positif dan optimis terlihat seperti kalimat puisi yang sepele, tapi sdarilah ini sangat penting dalam peran anda mengambil keputusan yang akan menentukan kesuksesan atau kehancuran
• Bercerminlah dari kesalahan orang lain, selain dari kesalahan diri kita sendiri,bercermin pada kesalahan diri sendiri supaya tidak terjatuh pada lubang yang sama, dan dengan bercermin dari kesalahan orang, maka akan lebih memacu kita agar kesalahan itu tidak menimpa kita.
• Jujurlah meskipun kejujuran itu membawa kita ke neraka.
• Tidak akan keadilan bisa ditegakkan selama kita masih acuh terhadap hukum yang ada dan mementingkan kepentingan pribadi.
• Jika kamu mencintai seseorang, cintailah dia apa adanya, bukan karena kamu ingin dia menjadi seperti yang kamu inginkan, karena sesungguhnya kamu hanya mencintai cerminan diri kamu pada dirinya.
• Bermimpilah akan sesuatu dan jadikanlah mimpimu itu kenyataan, sesungguhnya tak akan ada dunia ini jika tak ada yang bermimpi
• Jika kamu gagal mendapatkan sesuatu, hanya satu hal yang harus kamu lakukan, coba lagi!!!!
• Janganlah kamu mencintai seseorang karena paras/wajahnya, hartanya dan jabatannya, tapi cintai karena kebaikan dan ketulusan hatinya karena diantara itu semua, hanya kebaikan dan ketulusan hatinya yang tetap abadi.
• Langkah yang bijak akan senantiasa membawa hidup anda ke jalan yang tenang dan bahagia dalam menggapai cita – cita

saco-indonesia.com, Seorang pemuda telah ditemukan tewas bersimbah darah akibat luka bacok senjata tajam di Gg. Bedeng Jl Saharjo, Kel. Manggarai, Kec. Tebet, Jakarta Selatan.

Septiawan yang berusia 22 tahun , warga Kp. Pisangan RT 03/04 Kel. Penggilingan, Kec. Cakung, Jakarta Timur, telah ditemukan ambruk di gang jalanan akibat luka bacok.

Kapolsek Tebet, Kompol I Ketut Sudarma, juga menjelaskan korban telah ditemukan oleh warga sekitar pk. 19:30 malam dalam keadaan berlumuran darah hingga akhirnya.

“Dari keterangan saksi sementara, korban juga sempat berkelahi satu lawan satu. Namun masih dalam penyelidikan kami,” ucap Kapolsek Tebet.

Pemuda tersebut telah mengalami luka bacok pada tangan sebelah kanan, kepala belakang dan Leher akibat sabetan benda tajam. Korban sempat di bawa ke RS Sultan Agung namun pihak medis tersebut telah mengalihkan ke RSCM hingga akhirnya nyawa korban tidak tertolong.

“Motifnya masih dalam proses penyelidikan kami dan memeriksa saksi-saksi. Anggota kami sedang memburu pelaku,” tambah Kompol I Ketut

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

saco-indonesia.com, Satu rumah di Perumahan Mega Sentul  Blok Alamada Jl. Aster, RT.002/08, Desa Pasir Laja, Kecamatan Sukaraja, Rabu malam telah digerebek oleh Tim Densus 88 Anti Teror.  Dalam penggrebekan tersebut seorang anggota yang terduga teroris jaringan Abu Roban telah diamankan bersama tiga penghuni lainnya

Terduga teroris itu Saduloh Rojak yang berusia 40 tahun, sebagai pemilik rumah, sedangkan tiga lainnya  Sibgotulloh,19, Achmad Jayabrata,22, dan Sayan Hibatulloh,19 adalah tamunya saat penggerebekan berlangsung. Selain itu  tim Densus juga telah   menyita cairan bahan kimia seember seberat 25 kg, pistol air softgun, senjata tajam dan senjata yang berbentuk pulpen serta sejumlah buku jihad.

Ketua RW 08 Desa Pasir Laja Nurrahman, telah mengatakan tidak ada perlawanan saat  penggerebekan. terjadi  “Sekitar pkl.18:30, lima anggota Densus 88 tersebut datang ke rumah saya dan meyerahkan surat izin penangkapan di Blok Alamada Jl. Aster,” katanya.

Menurutnya, penggrebekan tersebut telah berlangung sangat cepat dan Tim Densus telah membawa sejumlah barang bukti dari rumah Saduloh Rojak. “Usai mengerebek rumah Saduloh di Blok Alamada, Tim Densus juga telah menggerebek rumah istri keduanya di  RT.003/05 di perumahan yang sama. Tim Densus juga sempat memeriksa Ny. Sifa, istri pertama Saduloh,” katanya.

Dia juga telah menyebutkan, selama ini Saduloh juga jarang bergaul, tapi rajin salat di majid di  dalam kompleks. “Tapi belakangan ini dia jarang salat ke masjid. Kami tidak tahu pasti pekerjaanya, dia juga sering berangkat kerja pagi, siang dan malam. Tidak seperti pegawai biasa yang berangkat pagi dan pulang sore atau malam,” katanya.

Editor : Dian Sukmawati

1. STMJ
Minuman yang terbuat dari susu, telur, madu, dan jahe ini tentunya sudah tidak asing lagi bagi anda. Minumlah minuman ini dikala anda merasa lesu, lelah, dan kurang enak badan. Minum STMJ diyakini bisa memulihkan tenaga, menambah kekebalan dan menghangatkan tubuh anda.

2. Wedang jahe
Wedang jahe atau air jahe hangat sangat tepat dikonsumsi ketika sistem kekebalan tubuh menurun, terutama saat musim hujan di mana tubuh kita cukup rentan terserang berbagai penyakit seperti flu. Selain itu, minuman jahe dapat membantu menurunkan kadar kolesterol, mencegah potensi stroke, hingga risiko serangan jantung.

3. Wedang ronde
Wedang ronde hampir sama dengan wedang jahe, namun menawarkan sensasi yang berbeda. Wedang ronde merupakan perpaduan antara wedang jahe dengan bola-bola ketan yang terdiri dari kacang dan gula. Bola-bola ketan ini cukup kenyal dan rasanya enak. Kacang yang terdapat dalam bola-bola ketan tersebut juga menawarkan segudang nutrisi yang baik bagi tubuh, sehingga mengonsumsi wedang ronde terutama di saat tubuh kurang fit adalah langkah yang tepat.

4. Bandrek
Minuman hangat tradisional asli Jawa Barat ini juga menawarkan banyak manfaat bagi kesehatan. Sama seperti minuman tradisional lainnya, bandrek cukup efektif dalam menghangatkan tubuh. Dari bahan-bahannya saja, bisa diketahui bahwa bandrek adalah minuman kaya manfaat. Bandrek menawarkan keharuman rempah-rempah, terdiri dari kayu manis, serai, cengkih, pandan, tambahan gula dan sedikit garam.

5. Bajigur
Satu lagi minuman tradisional khas Jawa Barat adalah bajigur. Bajigur adalah minuman hangat yang terbuat dari santan, gula aren, garam, dan sedikit jahe. Kadangkala, penyajian bandrek biasanya juga ditambah dengan sedikit cengkaleng (kolang-kaling). Bajigur sangat cocok dinikmati ketika cuaca dingin. Kacang rebus, pisang rebus, dan ubi manis adalah ‘camilan’ yang tepat untuk menemani anda disaat menikmati bajigur.

JAKARTA,  - Unjuk rasa besar- besaran di Jakarta sudah jauh hari digaungkan para buruh akan digelar untuk memperingati Hari Buruh, Rabu (1/5/2013). Istana Negara rencananya akan menjadi salah satu tujuan aksi. Tapi, ternyata Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono bertolak ke Surabaya, Jawa Timur, Rabu pagi, untuk kegiatan kunjungan kerja.

Agenda Presiden ke Jawa Timur, tak sepenuhnya tak terkait dengan peringatan Hari Buruh. Dijadwalkan Presiden akan berdialog dengan buruh PT Maspion dan PT Unilever di Surabaya. "Adalah menjadi tradisi yang kami lakukan, tujuh tahun terakhir ini setiap peringatan Hari Buruh 1 Mei kami selalu ada forum dialog dan komunikasi dengan para pimpinan konfederasi dan federasi," kata SBY ketika menerima para pimpinan beberapa serikat buruh di Istana Negara Jakarta, Senin (29/4/2013).

Presiden Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) mengaku terus memantau dinamika yang berkembang di kalangan buruh menjelang peringatan Hari Buruh Internasional atau May Day. Termasuk rencana buruh melakukan aksi unjuk rasa besar-besaran. "Saya memantau dinamika dan perkembangan teman-teman di perburuhan termasuk unjuk rasa  tetapi yang jelas saya kira semua sepakat unjuk rasa buruh itu tertib dan tidak merusak," kata SBY.

SBY mengaku senang kalau demo buruh berjalan tertib dan tidak merusak karena itulah yang namanya  demokrasi. "Boleh ada ekspresi ada sesuatu yang ingin dikritikkan pada pemerintah, pada yang lain, termasuk pikiran seperti apa, tapi tertib. Kalau tidak tertib apalagi anarkis membawa masalah bagi semua, bagi negara, perekonomian, industri dan pekerja sendiri," kata SBY.

Oleh karena itu, SBY meminta buruh dalam berunjuk rasa nanti harus menjaga situasi itu. "Manakala harus menyampaikan protes dan aspirasinya jaga ketertiban, sehingga pesannya sampai pada saya, pada pemrirntah dan ada solusi," kata SBY.

Sebelumnya, para buruh yang tergabung dalam Majelis Pekerja Buruh Indonesia (MPBI) menyatakan, sudah ada 150.000 buruh yang mengonfirmasikan keikutsertaannya dalam May Day. Tak hanya datang dari seputar Jabodetabek, buruh yang mengikuti aksi hari ini datang dari Karawang, Purwakarta, dan daerah lain.

Berita terkait dapat dibaca dalam topik: Demo Buruh

Over the last five years or so, it seemed there was little that Dean G. Skelos, the majority leader of the New York Senate, would not do for his son.

He pressed a powerful real estate executive to provide commissions to his son, a 32-year-old title insurance salesman, according to a federal criminal complaint. He helped get him a job at an environmental company and employed his influence to help the company get government work. He used his office to push natural gas drilling regulations that would have increased his son’s commissions.

He even tried to direct part of a $5.4 billion state budget windfall to fund government contracts that the company was seeking. And when the company was close to securing a storm-water contract from Nassau County, the senator, through an intermediary, pressured the company to pay his son more — or risk having the senator subvert the bid.

The criminal complaint, unsealed on Monday, lays out corruption charges against Senator Skelos and his son, Adam B. Skelos, the latest scandal to seize Albany, and potentially alter its power structure.

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The repeated and diverse efforts by Senator Skelos, a Long Island Republican, to use what prosecutors said was his political influence to find work, or at least income, for his son could send both men to federal prison. If they are convicted of all six charges against them, they face up to 20 years in prison for each of four of the six counts and up to 10 years for the remaining two.

Senator Kenneth P. LaValle, of Long Island, who serves as chairman of the Republican conference, emerged from a closed-door meeting Monday night to say that conference members agreed that Mr. Skelos should be benefited the “presumption of innocence,” and would stay in his leadership role.

“The leader has indicated he would like to remain as leader,” said Mr. LaValle, “and he has the support of the conference.” The case against Mr. Skelos and his son grew out of a broader inquiry into political corruption by the United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, that has already changed the face of the state capital. It is based in part, according to the six-count complaint, on conversations secretly recorded by one of two cooperating witnesses, and wiretaps on the cellphones of the senator and his son. Those recordings revealed that both men were concerned about electronic surveillance, and illustrated the son’s unsuccessful efforts to thwart it.

Adam Skelos took to using a “burner” phone, the complaint says, and told his father he wanted them to speak through a FaceTime video call in an apparent effort to avoid detection. They also used coded language at times.

At one point, Adam Skelos was recorded telling a Senate staff member of his frustration in not being able to speak openly to his father on the phone, noting that he could not “just send smoke signals or a little pigeon” carrying a message.

The 43-page complaint, sworn out by Paul M. Takla, a special agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, outlines a five-year scheme to “monetize” the senator’s official position; it also lays bare the extent to which a father sought to use his position to help his son.

The charges accuse the two men of extorting payments through a real estate developer, Glenwood Management, based on Long Island, and the environmental company, AbTech Industries, in Scottsdale, Ariz., with the expectation that the money paid to Adam Skelos — nearly $220,000 in total — would influence his father’s actions.

Glenwood, one of the state’s most prolific campaign donors, had ties to AbTech through investments in the environmental firm’s parent company by Glenwood’s founding family and a senior executive.

The accusations in the complaint portray Senator Skelos as a man who, when it came to his son, was not shy about twisting arms, even in situations that might give other arm-twisters pause.

Seeking to help his son, Senator Skelos turned to the executive at Glenwood, which develops rental apartments in New York City and has much at stake when it comes to real estate legislation in Albany. The senator urged him to direct business to his son, who sold title insurance.

After much prodding, the executive, Charles C. Dorego, engineered a $20,000 payment to Adam Skelos from a title insurance company even though he did no work for the money. But far more lucrative was a consultant position that Mr. Dorego arranged for Adam Skelos at AbTech, which seeks government contracts to treat storm water. (Mr. Dorego is not identified by name in the complaint, but referred to only as CW-1, for Cooperating Witness 1.)

Senator Skelos appeared to take an active interest in his son’s new line of work. Adam Skelos sent him several drafts of his consulting agreement with AbTech, the complaint says, as well as the final deal that was struck.

“Mazel tov,” his father replied.

Senator Skelos sent relevant news articles to his son, including one about a sewage leak near Albany. When AbTech wanted to seek government contracts after Hurricane Sandy, the senator got on a conference call with his son and an AbTech executive, Bjornulf White, and offered advice. (Like Mr. Dorego, Mr. White is not named in the complaint, but referred to as CW-2.)

The assistance paid off: With the senator’s help, AbTech secured a contract worth up to $12 million from Nassau County, a big break for a struggling small business.

But the money was slow to materialize. The senator expressed impatience with county officials.

Adam Skelos, in a phone call with Mr. White in late December, suggested that his father would seek to punish the county. “I tell you this, the state is not going to do a [expletive] thing for the county,” he said.

Three days later, Senator Skelos pressed his case with the Nassau County executive, Edward P. Mangano, a fellow Republican. “Somebody feels like they’re just getting jerked around the last two years,” the senator said, referring to his son in what the complaint described as “coded language.”

The next day, the senator pursued the matter, as he and Mr. Mangano attended a wake for a slain New York City police officer. Senator Skelos then reassured his son, who called him while he was still at the wake. “All claims that are in will be taken care of,” the senator said.

AbTech’s fortunes appeared to weigh on his son. At one point in January, Adam Skelos told his father that if the company did not succeed, he would “lose the ability to pay for things.”

Making matters worse, in recent months, Senator Skelos and his son appeared to grow wary about who was watching them. In addition to making calls on the burner phone, Adam Skelos said he used the FaceTime video calling “because that doesn’t show up on the phone bill,” as he told Mr. White.

In late February, Adam Skelos arranged a pair of meetings between Mr. White and state senators; AbTech needed to win state legislation that would allow its contract to move beyond its initial stages. But Senator Skelos deemed the plan too risky and caused one of the meetings to be canceled.

In another recorded call, Adam Skelos, promising to be “very, very vague” on the phone, urged his father to allow the meeting. The senator offered a warning. “Right now we are in dangerous times, Adam,” he told him.

A month later, in another phone call that was recorded by the authorities, Adam Skelos complained that his father could not give him “real advice” about AbTech while the two men were speaking over the telephone.

“You can’t talk normally,” he told his father, “because it’s like [expletive] Preet Bharara is listening to every [expletive] phone call. It’s just [expletive] frustrating.”

“It is,” his father agreed.

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.

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.

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. Crough played the youngest daughter on the hit ’70s sitcom starring David Cassidy and Shirley Jones.

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.”

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

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. Napoleon was a self-taught musician whose career began in earnest with the orchestra led by Chico Marx of the Marx Brothers.

Mr. Haroche was a founder of Liberty Travel, which grew from a two-man operation to the largest leisure travel operation in the United States.

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.

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.

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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.

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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.”

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.

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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.