Libya 'to postpone June elections'
June 09, 2012
Elections in Libya for a constituent assembly, originally set to be held by June 19, are to be postponed for logistical reasons, electoral commission members said on Saturday.
One commission member, on condition of anonymity, said the postponement until July or later had been decided mainly to allow time for appeals from candidates who had been ruled out of the contest.
Past Perfect = Salah satu anggota komisi, tanpa menyebut nama, mengatakan penundaan sampai bulan Juli atau kemudian telah diputuskan terutama untuk memungkinkan waktu untuk banding dari calon yang telah dikesampingkan dalam kontes.
"Several dates have been proposed, but most discussions are pointing to July 10," the official said.
present perfect = "Tanggal telah diajukan, tetapi sebagian besar diskusi yang menunjuk ke tanggal 10 Juli" kata pejabat itu.
The chairman of the electoral commission, questioned by AFP, would say only that "an announcement will be made tomorrow (Sunday) at a news conference."
Another member of the electoral commission said the postponement had been decided in consultation with UN officials working with the commission who had "proposed a date during the first week in July."
Past Perfect = Anggota lain dari komisi pemilihan mengatakan, penundaan itu telah diputuskan dalam konsultasi dengan para pejabat PBB yang bekerja dengan komisi yang telah "mengusulkan kencan selama minggu pertama pada bulan Juli."
"But if we are not ready by that date, the election will be postponed for the month of August also, until after Ramadan," the Muslim holy fasting month, the official cautioned.
Rumours have abounded in the Libyan capital that the constituent assembly election will be put off, despite the authorities insisting it will go ahead on time, despite no actual polling day being announced.
More than 2.7 million Libyans, or around 80 percent of eligible voters, have registered to participate in what marks the first national poll after four decades of dictatorship under Moamer Kadhafi, toppled last year.
The ruling National Transitional Council, having declared the country's "liberation" three days after the October 20 capture and killing of Kadhafi, launched a roadmap to a new Libya with a 20-month countdown to elections.
A transitional government was to organise within eight months the election of a 200-member assembly, or "general national congress." The NTC is to step down once the congress holds its first session.
Racist Abuse, Far-Right Flags at Russia Football Match
June 10, 2012
Warsaw, Poland. Racism and violence involving Russia’s fans have marred the start of the European Championship and confirmed fears that Euro 2012 could be a troubled tournament.
Fans of co-host nations Poland and Ukraine had been seen as a potential source of racial abuse, following a damning investigation by the BBC. Instead, Russia became the main security issue after evidence emerged Saturday of incidents at the Wroclaw stadium where it beat the Czech Republic 4-1 on Friday.
past perfect = Penggemar co-host bangsa Polandia dan Ukraina telah dilihat sebagai sumber potensi penyalahgunaan ras, menyusul penyelidikan memberatkan oleh BBC. Sebaliknya, Rusia menjadi masalah keamanan utama setelah muncul bukti Sabtu insiden di Stadion Wroclaw di mana ia mengalahkan Republik Ceko 4-1 pada Jumat.
Czech defender Theodor Gebre Selassie, who is black, was the target of racial abuse reported by official fan monitors to Euro 2012 organizer UEFA.
Simple Past = Ceko bek Theodor Gebre Selassie, yang berkulit hitam, menjadi sasaran pelecehan rasial dilaporkan oleh monitor penggemar resmi untuk Euro 2012 penyelenggara UEFA.
Russia supporters later fought stadium stewards in an attack seen worldwide after footage circulated online. Wroclaw police said four people were treated in a hospital.
Simple past = Pendukung Rusia kemudian berjuang stadion pelayan dalam serangan terlihat di seluruh dunia setelah rekaman beredar online. Wroclaw polisi mengatakan empat orang dirawat di rumah sakit.
A potentially volatile clash between Russia and Poland looms in Warsaw on Tuesday — a Russian national holiday with fans planning to march from the city center to the stadium.
A Russia team spokesman, Nikolai Komarov, said the federation declined comment on details of the reported incidents.
However, Komarov told The Associated Press in a telephone interview: “The federation has many fans, you don’t have control over them all.”
Saturday’s reports tarnished what was a successful opening day for Euro 2012. Two compelling matches followed constant negative headlines regarding social and political issues in the eastern European neighbors, including monkey chants aimed at Netherlands players during a public practice Wednesday at Krakow, Poland.
UEFA has pledged zero tolerance of discrimination during the three-week tournament. To help achieve this, it asked the Football Against Racism in Europe (FARE) fans’ network to send two monitors to each match offensive banners, chants and behavior in stadiums, and report to UEFA within 24 hours.
On Saturday, FARE said it identified verbal insults targeted at Gebre Selassie, whose father is Ethiopian.
“There was some suggestion that the Czech defender went to take a corner and had a few problems,” FARE executive director Piara Powar told the AP.
Fans also displayed a nationalist “Russian Empire” flag which “we take as evidence of far-right sensibilities,” Powar said in a telephone interview.
Powar said FARE officials aimed to provide footage of Gebre Selassie being abused.
“We are trying to get that evidence, and it’s not always possible to capture it on film,” he said.
Still, film was available showing some Russian fans attacking security staff.
Polish police said the four injured stewards “were not badly injured, and security footage was being studied to identify those involved.
UEFA said in a statement that “around 30 fans” attacked the stewards in a “brief and isolated incident.
“The situation was quickly and efficiently brought under control,” the statement said, though footage appeared to show attackers walking away from the scene.
The 16 competing teams’ national federations are responsible for their fans’ actions. They would be fined by UEFA before facing possible expulsion from Euro 2012 for repeated offenses.
Four years ago, UEFA fined Croatia 20,000 Swiss francs (then $19,600) for its fans’ neo-Nazi flags and chants during a Euro 2008 quarterfinals loss against Turkey in Vienna, Austria. On Sunday, Croatia plays Ireland in Poznan, Poland.
“We don’t expect UEFA to act on every report,” Powar acknowledged. “It’s tough to evidence everything that could be admissible in a hearing.”
Powar also expressed concern at possible nationalist flashpoints in Tuesday’s march, even if Russia fans are denied permission by Warsaw city authorities to go ahead.
“There is a feeling that the Russians will do it anyway,” he said. “We have got a lot of people out and we will be looking.”
Powar said Polish feelings were agitated by Russia basing its players in a Warsaw hotel neighboring the country’s presidential palace, close to a shrine commemorating the Smolensk air disaster.
Simple Past = Powar mengatakan perasaan yang gelisah Polandia oleh Rusia mendasarkan pemainnya di sebuah hotel Warsawa tetangga istana presiden negara itu, dekat dengan tempat suci memperingati bencana Smolensk udara.
Poland’s then state president Lech Kaczynski was among 96 people who died on April 10, 2010 when their airplane crashed in Russia.
Conspiracy theories persist in Poland that Russia was complicit in the crash.
Concerns of racism at Euro 2012 were fueled last month by a British television program, entitled “Stadiums of Hate,” showing discrimination and violent incidents at recent club matches in Poland and Ukraine. It was broadcast in Poland this week.
Racism marred the Netherlands’ preparations for its opening match Saturday against Denmark after several spectators made monkey noises at players during a squad practice in Krakow, Poland, which was attended by 25,000 people.
Simple Past = Rasisme dirusak persiapan Belanda untuk pertandingan pembukaan Sabtu melawan Denmark setelah beberapa penonton membuat suara monyet pada pemain selama latihan skuad di Krakow, Polandia, yang dihadiri oleh 25.000 orang.
UEFA President Michel Platini has said that his organization has given referees the power to stop and abandon matches if crowds racially abused players.
After Italy forward Mario Balotelli threatened to leave the field if abused, Platini warned players they would get yellow cards for acting alone to protest.
Gebre Selassie said this week that he would not walk off the field.
“I’m not ready to give up,” said the 25-year-old player. “I definitely won’t leave. I’ll stay until they throw stones at me.”
Sumber : The Jakarta Globe
gunadarma.ac.id
Minggu, 10 Juni 2012
Tugas Bahasa Inggris Bisnis 2 Passive voice
Vietnam Banking Reform in Trouble: Experts
Cat Barton | June 10, 2012
Vietnam’s drive to restructure its troubled banking sector is being derailed by powerful interest groups as the political will needed to force through painful reforms falters, experts say.
present continuous = Hard Vietnam untuk merestrukturisasi sektor perbankan yang bermasalah yang sedang tergelincir oleh kelompok kepentingan yang kuat sebagai kemauan politik diperlukan untuk memaksa melalui reformasi menyakitkan kehilangan momentum, para ahli mengatakan.
After a decade of rapid, chaotic bank liberalization, Vietnam has ended up with too many domestic banks (42) — many of which are overloaded with toxic debt — and poor governance across the system, economists warn.
Last year, faced with persistently high inflation and critical liquidity conditions at many of the weaker banks, the government announced aggressive restructuring plans.
But as inflation has fallen — from a high of 23 percent last August to 8.3 percent in May, allowing the central bank to increase monetary supply and easing banks’ liquidity problems — so too have appetites for reform.
“Things have calmed down a bit because of falling inflation. So now they’re thinking ‘OK we don’t have to be so aggressive’,” said economist Nguyen Xuan Thanh, director of the public policy program at the Fulbright School in Ho Chi Minh City.
“The second factor [slowing reform] is the resistance from the banks, from the owners of the banks... the political economy doesn’t allow the government to act decisively by taking over a bank and cleaning it up to sell.”
Aside from five fully-foreign owned banks, such as ANZ and HSBC, the sector is dominated by large state-owned banks and dozens of smaller joint stock banks owned by public or private investors.
Present tenses = Selain lima sepenuhnya-asing bank milik, seperti ANZ dan HSBC, sektor ini didominasi oleh besar bank BUMN dan puluhan bank kecil saham gabungan yang dimiliki oleh investor publik atau swasta.
After years of rapid credit growth, the balance sheets of many of these banks are weighed down with toxic loans — the majority of which went to badly-run state-owned enterprises and speculative property investments.
While the larger state banks benefit from an implicit government guarantee and continued investor confidence, many of the joint stock banks have serious liquidity problems and can barely stay afloat, experts say.
This has hit the broader economy — credit lines have all but dried up which has affected small and medium businesses particularly badly with some 18,000 going bankrupt this year alone.
Unless there is decisive restructuring, the system will remain unhealthy “and the economy as a whole will suffer”, said Thanh.
What the government needs to do is “take over the weakest banks, merge them, sell off the bad debt and then resell the merged bank”, said Jonathan Pincus, a HCMC-based economist from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Vietnam program.
“It would be quicker and less risky for the system as a whole. But bank owners would resist this,” he said.
To have a banking license in Vietnam, one Hanoi-based diplomat said, you have to be “very well connected”. Bank ownership brings benefits — the possibility of kickbacks, access to cheap credit.
Many small joint stock banks are owned by subsidiaries of state-owned enterprises or well-connected groups of investors who own multiple banks, evading regulations with accounting tricks.
present tenses = Banyak bank kecil saham gabungan yang dimiliki oleh anak perusahaan dariperusahaan milik negara atau yang memiliki koneksi kelompok investor yang memilikibeberapa bank, menghindari peraturan dengan trik akuntansi.
The sector is riddled with complex cross ownership patterns which are proving “politically difficult to unwind”, Pincus said.
The government’s reform plan relies on private sector voluntary mergers to improve systemic liquidity by having those with healthy balance sheets absorb those in trouble.
But many banks are hiding the true state of their balance sheets and finding ways to hide their non-performing loans (NPLs), Pincus told AFP.
“They loan money to customers of other banks, who use the money to close out their loans with others. Customers of other banks do that with them. It keeps everyone’s NPL rate down,” he said.
The government has divided the banks into four categories with different credit growth ceilings for 2012 — in effect, identifying the weaker institutions and banning them from lending.
Five to eight of them will be merged this year, the government has said, although it now appears “embarrassed” and is backing off from this pledge, said Le Tham Duong from the Ho Chi Minh City Banking University.
With the first merger of three weak banks in December, rather than the government taking over the institutions, writing off bad debts, and seriously restructuring, the banks were simply rolled together, experts say.
Vietnam’s central bank chief Nguyen Van Binh has said that “in the near future there will be more voluntary mergers and acquisitions under the State Bank’s strict supervision”.
But what is needed is serious state-led restructuring not private sector mergers, said Fulbright’s Thanh, adding that this would require huge resources and a clear admission of the scale of the bad debt problem.
“Politically and legally if you do that it is very risky,” he said. “First there needs to be political will which is still lacking.
Singapore's Starcount Measures Social Media Popularity
The Jakarta Globe | June 10, 2012
Present Continuous Tenses =
Penghargaan Bintang perdana Sosial sudah sedang direncanakan untuk Singapura suatu saat dalam waktu dekat. Perusahaan ini akan mengundang orang yang paling populer di media sosial untuk upacara penghargaan gala mirip dengan Grammy atau Oscar.
Cat Barton | June 10, 2012
Vietnam’s drive to restructure its troubled banking sector is being derailed by powerful interest groups as the political will needed to force through painful reforms falters, experts say.
present continuous = Hard Vietnam untuk merestrukturisasi sektor perbankan yang bermasalah yang sedang tergelincir oleh kelompok kepentingan yang kuat sebagai kemauan politik diperlukan untuk memaksa melalui reformasi menyakitkan kehilangan momentum, para ahli mengatakan.
After a decade of rapid, chaotic bank liberalization, Vietnam has ended up with too many domestic banks (42) — many of which are overloaded with toxic debt — and poor governance across the system, economists warn.
Last year, faced with persistently high inflation and critical liquidity conditions at many of the weaker banks, the government announced aggressive restructuring plans.
But as inflation has fallen — from a high of 23 percent last August to 8.3 percent in May, allowing the central bank to increase monetary supply and easing banks’ liquidity problems — so too have appetites for reform.
“Things have calmed down a bit because of falling inflation. So now they’re thinking ‘OK we don’t have to be so aggressive’,” said economist Nguyen Xuan Thanh, director of the public policy program at the Fulbright School in Ho Chi Minh City.
“The second factor [slowing reform] is the resistance from the banks, from the owners of the banks... the political economy doesn’t allow the government to act decisively by taking over a bank and cleaning it up to sell.”
Aside from five fully-foreign owned banks, such as ANZ and HSBC, the sector is dominated by large state-owned banks and dozens of smaller joint stock banks owned by public or private investors.
Present tenses = Selain lima sepenuhnya-asing bank milik, seperti ANZ dan HSBC, sektor ini didominasi oleh besar bank BUMN dan puluhan bank kecil saham gabungan yang dimiliki oleh investor publik atau swasta.
After years of rapid credit growth, the balance sheets of many of these banks are weighed down with toxic loans — the majority of which went to badly-run state-owned enterprises and speculative property investments.
While the larger state banks benefit from an implicit government guarantee and continued investor confidence, many of the joint stock banks have serious liquidity problems and can barely stay afloat, experts say.
This has hit the broader economy — credit lines have all but dried up which has affected small and medium businesses particularly badly with some 18,000 going bankrupt this year alone.
Unless there is decisive restructuring, the system will remain unhealthy “and the economy as a whole will suffer”, said Thanh.
What the government needs to do is “take over the weakest banks, merge them, sell off the bad debt and then resell the merged bank”, said Jonathan Pincus, a HCMC-based economist from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Vietnam program.
“It would be quicker and less risky for the system as a whole. But bank owners would resist this,” he said.
To have a banking license in Vietnam, one Hanoi-based diplomat said, you have to be “very well connected”. Bank ownership brings benefits — the possibility of kickbacks, access to cheap credit.
Many small joint stock banks are owned by subsidiaries of state-owned enterprises or well-connected groups of investors who own multiple banks, evading regulations with accounting tricks.
present tenses = Banyak bank kecil saham gabungan yang dimiliki oleh anak perusahaan dariperusahaan milik negara atau yang memiliki koneksi kelompok investor yang memilikibeberapa bank, menghindari peraturan dengan trik akuntansi.
The sector is riddled with complex cross ownership patterns which are proving “politically difficult to unwind”, Pincus said.
The government’s reform plan relies on private sector voluntary mergers to improve systemic liquidity by having those with healthy balance sheets absorb those in trouble.
But many banks are hiding the true state of their balance sheets and finding ways to hide their non-performing loans (NPLs), Pincus told AFP.
“They loan money to customers of other banks, who use the money to close out their loans with others. Customers of other banks do that with them. It keeps everyone’s NPL rate down,” he said.
The government has divided the banks into four categories with different credit growth ceilings for 2012 — in effect, identifying the weaker institutions and banning them from lending.
Five to eight of them will be merged this year, the government has said, although it now appears “embarrassed” and is backing off from this pledge, said Le Tham Duong from the Ho Chi Minh City Banking University.
With the first merger of three weak banks in December, rather than the government taking over the institutions, writing off bad debts, and seriously restructuring, the banks were simply rolled together, experts say.
Vietnam’s central bank chief Nguyen Van Binh has said that “in the near future there will be more voluntary mergers and acquisitions under the State Bank’s strict supervision”.
But what is needed is serious state-led restructuring not private sector mergers, said Fulbright’s Thanh, adding that this would require huge resources and a clear admission of the scale of the bad debt problem.
“Politically and legally if you do that it is very risky,” he said. “First there needs to be political will which is still lacking.
Singapore's Starcount Measures Social Media Popularity
The Jakarta Globe | June 10, 2012
If the music world has Billboard charts and the film world has box office numbers as reliable ways to measure success, social media now has Starcount to gauge popularity.
Launched on May 31 by Singapore-based company All the Worlds Entertainment, Starcount lets users of 11 social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Orkut, Renren, Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo, Youku, Mixi and Vkontakte — pick their favorite people on those platforms. Starcount users can choose fun, insightful or influential individuals in many fields, including fashion, film, music, sports, gaming, TV, brands and politics.
The chart can be accessed from any desktop on www.starcount.com, but it’s also available as a free application on Apple iOS devices. Starcount is touting the fact that although it is a global chart, it also gives a nod to popular users in specific countries. Browsing around the website, you can discover who’s currently popular in Singapore, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, the United States and many other countries. Users can even combine the geography and field of work categories, allowing them to keep tabs on social media “stars” across a wide range of disciplines.
The system took two years to prepare, according to Drew Thomson, joint chief executive for All The Worlds Entertainment.
“And the chart is changing every day,” Thomson said. “Every day you can discover someone new.”
The company has bigger plans than just keeping track of who’s hot on Facebook at any given moment, though. Starcount hopes to create a new type of awards show based on honoring social media’s brightest. The inaugural Social Star Awards are already being planned for Singapore sometime in the near future. The company will invite the most popular people on social media to a gala awards ceremony similar to the Grammys or Oscars.
Joint chief executive Paul Morrison said the event will be a multi-genre show that will include the top fans who helped their favorite personalities reach the highest rank on the charts.
It could be an idea whose time has come, if outside interest is any gauge. Morrison said the company had already scored a content partnership with BBC Worldwide, which has agreed to broadcast the event.
So far, Starcount is serious about reaching voters from other countries. Its website is currently available in English, Russian and Chinese, with Portuguese, Hindi and Spanish in the works.
Launched on May 31 by Singapore-based company All the Worlds Entertainment, Starcount lets users of 11 social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google+, Orkut, Renren, Tencent Weibo, Sina Weibo, Youku, Mixi and Vkontakte — pick their favorite people on those platforms. Starcount users can choose fun, insightful or influential individuals in many fields, including fashion, film, music, sports, gaming, TV, brands and politics.
The chart can be accessed from any desktop on www.starcount.com, but it’s also available as a free application on Apple iOS devices. Starcount is touting the fact that although it is a global chart, it also gives a nod to popular users in specific countries. Browsing around the website, you can discover who’s currently popular in Singapore, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, the United States and many other countries. Users can even combine the geography and field of work categories, allowing them to keep tabs on social media “stars” across a wide range of disciplines.
The system took two years to prepare, according to Drew Thomson, joint chief executive for All The Worlds Entertainment.
“And the chart is changing every day,” Thomson said. “Every day you can discover someone new.”
The company has bigger plans than just keeping track of who’s hot on Facebook at any given moment, though. Starcount hopes to create a new type of awards show based on honoring social media’s brightest. The inaugural Social Star Awards are already being planned for Singapore sometime in the near future. The company will invite the most popular people on social media to a gala awards ceremony similar to the Grammys or Oscars.
Joint chief executive Paul Morrison said the event will be a multi-genre show that will include the top fans who helped their favorite personalities reach the highest rank on the charts.
It could be an idea whose time has come, if outside interest is any gauge. Morrison said the company had already scored a content partnership with BBC Worldwide, which has agreed to broadcast the event.
So far, Starcount is serious about reaching voters from other countries. Its website is currently available in English, Russian and Chinese, with Portuguese, Hindi and Spanish in the works.
Present Continuous Tenses =
Penghargaan Bintang perdana Sosial sudah sedang direncanakan untuk Singapura suatu saat dalam waktu dekat. Perusahaan ini akan mengundang orang yang paling populer di media sosial untuk upacara penghargaan gala mirip dengan Grammy atau Oscar.
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