Festival Minum Tuak Manis, a Moment Where You Could Taste the Exotic... timesindonesia.co.id
TRIBUNJATENG.COM - Mantan Gubernur DKI Jakarta, Basuki Tjahaja Purnama alias Ahok resmi ditunjuk Presiden Joko Widodo dan Menteri Badan Usaha Milik Negara (BUMN) Erick Thohir menjadi Komisaris Utama (Komut) Pertamina.
Pekan ini, rencananya Pertamina bakal menggelar Rapat Umum Pemegang Saham Luar Biasa (RUPSLB).
Jauh sebelum kepastian muncul, saat desas desus Ahok akan jadi bos perusahaan pelat merah itu, pro dan kontra telah bermunculan. Banyak yang menentang namun tidak sedikit pula yang mendukung.
Sejauh ini, di luar kasus yang menyeretnya hingga mendekam di penjara, Ahok dikenal sebagai sosok yang tegas dan keras.
Bahkan, peneliti Alpha Research Database Indonesia Ferdy Hasiman menitipkan harapan agar Ahok segera memberantas mafia migas dari hulu hingga hilir.
Tugas pertama Ahok menurutnya adalah memberantas mafia migas hingga ke akar-akarnya.
Meskipun Presiden Jokowi telah melikuidasi Petral melalui Tim Reformasi Tata Kelola Migas di awal pemerintahannya, namun, mafia migas disinyalir masih ada.
Untuk itulah kata Ferdy, Ahok bisa menjadi tangan kanan Presiden RI dalam memberantas mafia seiring dengan jabatan Komut yang diembannya.
"Mafia ini masih menempel sambil mencari celah bagaimana mereka mencoba bermain kembali dan bagaimana Presiden Jokowi bisa melunak," ungkap Ferd seperti dilansir Kompas.com, Minggu (24/11/2019).
Oleh karena itu, Ahok harus menunjukkan taringnya. Jika sudah demikian, tentunya keberadaan Ahok di Pertamina akan cukup menggentarkan mafia migas yang diduga masih eksis, maupun oknum orang dalam yang main mata. Meskipun, dengan posisi Komut, Ahok tidak mengurusi operasional, hanya pengawasan terhadap direksi dan mengevaluasi program kerja.
Selasti Panjaitan is a Senior Equity Research of Vibiz Research Center and also as Partner of Wealth Planning Services at Vibiz Consulting
GridOto.com - Seperti kita tahu Ford memang tidak pernah berencana untuk mengeluarkan Ford Fiesta versi performa berlabel Fiesta RS seperti halnya Focus. Hal ini jugalah yang menggugah Maxton Design yang begitu penasaran untuk mewujudkan sebuah kreasi Ford Fiesta RS. Langkah utamanya tentu dengan mengubah beberapa bagian bodi biar lebih agresif dengan body kit bergaya Focus RS. ( Baca Juga: Inspiratif Nih Deretan Modifikasi Ford EcoSport, Dari Sporty Hingga Bergaya ALTO )
Tampilan depan diubah pada bagian bumper dan kap mesin
Mulai dari tampilan depan diganti bagian bumper depan diganti lebih menganga. Namun tetap dikemas clean beserta gril yang lebih lebar warna hitam. Tidak hanya bumper, area kap mesin juga sudah diberi sisipan hood scoops agar aura sportynya makin keluar.
Tuah dari bodi kit ini tidak saja meningkatkan kualitas fascia namun juga area sisi yang diberii elemen aerodinamis lain berupa ventilasi udara samping.
The watch subcategory within the Internet Retailer 2019 Top 1000 grew web sales $1.71 billion in 2018, up 21.6% from $1.41 billion as a category in 2017.
The 16 retailers in this category have a few notable metrics, such as a high average order value, with three watch retailers having an AOV higher than $5,000.
The largest online watch retailers, Jomashop.com, Fossil Group Inc. and WatchBox accounted for 46% of the category’s total sales, with each retailer generating well over $150 million in online sales.
The infographic below contains data on watch retailers in the Top 1000, including total 2018 web sales, median conversion rate, the fastest-growing retailers in this subcategory and the watch retailers with the largest average order values.
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Phil Spencer, executive vice president of Xbox Business for Microsoft Corp., speaks during the ... [+] company's Xbox One X reveal event ahead of the E3 Electronic Entertainment Expo in Los Angeles, California, U.S., on on Sunday, June 11, 2017. Microsoft announced a worldwide release date of Nov. 7 for what the company said will be its smallest and most powerful video-game console ever, the Xbox One X. Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg © 2017 Bloomberg Finance LP
The future of the video game industry is becoming increasingly complicated as the years wear on. These days, it’s not just two console giants going head-to-head with PC floating around beside them. We have consoles from Sony, Xbox and Nintendo, PC, the entire mobile games industry, Virtual Reality and now, game streaming offerings from Google, Amazon and some of the console manufacturers themselves. Things are getting…crowded.
So, sometimes you have to make a call about the direction you’re going, and Xbox’s Phil Spencer has made his thoughts pretty clear about VR and how it pertains to Xbox’s next console, Scarlett. In an interview with Stevivor, Spencer says that he doesn’t like how his past quotes about VR sounded, that VR would come to Xbox One X when it was more than “demos and experiments,” because he thought that may sound demeaning to those working hard on VR.
Well, the VR industry might not love his new comments either.
“I have some issues with VR — it’s isolating and I think of games as a communal, kind of together experience. We’re responding to what our customers are asking for and… nobody’s asking for VR,” Spencer said.
He goes on to say that there are plenty of places to get VR experiences on PC and elsewhere. He doesn’t mention Sony’s PSVR, Xbox’s main rival, but Sony appears to have seen the quote and it’s caused Shuhei Yoshida to chime in with some thoughts of his own in a tweet:
We don’t actually know if Sony’s PS5 will be going deep on VR in any capacity, though PSVR, which has sold 4.2 million units the last time we saw figures in March 2019, has been the best-selling VR headset out there due to its price and ability to work with PS4, rather than a pricier gaming PC. But with 102.8 million PS4s sold, that’s a 4% attach rate over the course of the entire generation. And we are currently in a phase of VR where Valve debuts Half-Life: Alyx and everyone says “Ah, *this* could be the moment VR takes off!” because well, that hasn’t happened yet, and it remains a niche scene, rather than an industry-transforming revolution.
So, of the dueling philosophies here between Spencer and Yoshida, who is right?
That’s a complicated question. I personally believe that Spencer, despite these somewhat clumsy quotes, is right to conclude that Xbox Scarlett probably does not need to focus on VR, and Microsoft’s efforts are better spent developing things like Game Pass and xCloud which fit into the existing console ecosystem better.
An employee of an electronics retail shop sells the new Sony PlayStation virtual reality (PSVR) ... [+] headset before its opening in Tokyo on October 13, 2016. The electronics giant - which has been leaning on its videogames business to claw back to profitability - started selling its PlayStation virtual reality (PSVR) headset on October 13 in the Japanese domestic market and North America. / AFP / KAZUHIRO NOGI (Photo credit should read KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP via Getty Images) AFP via Getty Images
Yet I also agree with Yoshida that you can’t always just make things that people are asking for and nothing else, as you miss out on innovation that way. I would actually cite Nintendo as a prime example of this hit or miss philosophy where in experimenting with new ways to play that no one is “asking for” per se, you get hits like the Wii and Switch, though also occasional misses like the Wii U. Sony, generally speaking, plays it pretty safe in terms of its consoles at least, and a “departure” like PSVR isn’t exactly some runaway success story. But I think in terms of its first party games you can see building things fans aren’t expecting working well, from wild concepts like Horizon Zero Dawn to unexpected reworkings of existing series like God of War.
I will be genuinely curious to see if Sony has VR plans for the PS5 going forward, as I wouldn’t be surprised if we did not actually see a PSVR 2 this time around. But we have at least a year before we know that for certain, and at launch at least, it seems like we’ll just get two powerful consoles launching head-to-head.
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SA’s prevalence of entrenched poverty is exceedingly high — even relative to this region’s norms — and extremely rare beyond this region. Postapartheid poverty reduction efforts have relied heavily on transfer payments, quotas and expanding the government’s wage bill. This maximised dependencies while blocking paths to broad prosperity. Unsustainable early progress has been reversed. SA’s poverty has been rising for more than a decade with no end in sight.
SA’s vulnerabilities to dependency-inducing policies include: considerable reliance on resource extraction; an absence of foreign military threats; the lack of a regional economic challenger; and no country is as distant from the world’s top three economies. As global integration reduced the world’s poverty to about 5%, excluding this region, SA’s dependency politics became increasingly unaffordable.
How can it be that 60% of South Africans — more precisely 70% of blacks — live on less than R50 per day? Whereas economies focused on manufacturing and services are economically nimble and defiant against dependency-provoking politics, economies relying on extraction and agricultural exports are the opposite. The disruption-driven global economy rewards responsiveness and punishes laggards.
Not only is SA not going to be invaded by a foreign army, the door is open to our achieving deep global integration, which sustained high growth requires. Instead, with external pressures lacking, the focus has been inward as political power could be clinched by creating dependencies. This strategy was, however, always destined to backfire. Our realisable mineral and agriculture export potential is modest relative to the nation’s compounding poverty and borrowings.
Women’s progress
Until only about a century ago women’s lack of voting rights was nearly universal. Their second-class status stemmed from inferiority at hand-to-hand combat. As technologies downgraded human strength’s military and commercial relevance, societal blockages weakened and women’s roles greatly expanded. In an increasing number of societies, women are now the majority of college graduates. The future is not bright for old-boys clubs, rather women’s rising prominence is a hallmark of this era.
Reducing discrimination-induced inequalities greatly enriches societies. and women’s progress will continue as political and economic forces favour their interests. The real game changer, however, has been women becoming economically independent. Independence happens at modest income levels. Yet when allowed to compound, such “freedom dividends” overwhelm restrictive social barriers. This becoming increasingly common has helped make peace and prosperity the global norm.
Conversely, SA’s crony crowd frames economic issues around race while exploiting inequalities to camouflage dependency-entrenching policies. This elite-entrenching strategy was never economically sustainable as continually expanding income transfers chokes growth. The politics of confronting the government’s wage bill pits President Cyril Ramaphosa’s camp against the unions and workers, who will now side with the ANC’s aggressive patronage faction.
That far too many people’s incomes trace to government policies is explained by political patronage, not viable efforts to redress inequality. High-volume, high-vulnerability dependency is precisely what patronage systems seek to achieve. A healthy economy would allow the private sector to steadily grow employment, thus undermining government dependency. Apartheid’s legacy of massive race-based poverty alongside its social scars provided the ideal political cover to package dependency-inducing employment as redress to historical inequities.
Cal’s 24-20 victory over Stanford on Saturday, which ended the Bears’ nine-game Big Game losing streak, seemed like a climax to the season. But the Bears still have business to attend to.
Heading into the regular-season finale at UCLA on Saturday, the Bears (6-5, 3-5 Pac-12) are jockeying for bowl-game position and have a chance to end up tied for second place in the Pac-12 North, which would be their highest finish since the conference added two schools and split into two divisions in 2011.
Cal’s sixth win on Saturday made it bowl-eligible, but with three other teams — Washington, Arizona State and Washington State — also having the same 6-5 overall record and 3-5 conference mark as Cal, a lot has to be sorted out regarding postseason berths.
At the moment it appears the Redbox Bowl in Santa Clara and the Las Vegas Bowl are likely destinations for the Bears, who would face a Big Ten team in the Redbox Bowl and a Mountain West squad in the Las Vegas Bowl.
“What we’re trying to do is give ourselves a chance to play in the best bowl possible,” Cal coach Justin Wilcox said Monday night.
Besides enhancing Cal’s bid for a prestigious bowl, a win over UCLA combined with a loss by Oregon State against Oregon on Saturday would move the Bears into a tie for second place in its division.
“What we’re concerned about is beating UCLA,” Wilcox said. “How things shake out, we can’t really depend on other people.”
Knowing Chase Garbers will be the Bears quarterback this week will ease some concerns.
The Bears are 5-0 this season in games in which Garbers played more than a half, and 1-5 in the games in which he didn’t. And he was the star of the Big Game, leading a winning touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter.
Cal fans no doubt wonder what Cal’s season would have looked like if Garbers had been healthy the entire season.
“I don’t spend a lot of time on hypotheticals,” Wilcox said. “I thought Devon Modster continued to improve the more he played.”
Modster’s effective play while he was at UCLA was a factor when the Bruins beat Cal 30-27 in 2017, before he transferred. Playing against the players Modster once called teammates would have provided an intriguing story line Saturday, but only unforeseen circumstances will allow it to take place.
Garbers and Modster are two of the 29 players on the Cal roster from the Los Angeles area, and they cherish playing an important game close to home.
Cal wide receiver Nikko Remigio, who had the game of his life with nine receptions for 157 yards in the Big Game, is from Orange and he expects 50 or more family members to be on hand in Pasadena.
“Any game in L.A. will mean so much to me, just because I’m back home and I have a ton of family coming,” he said.
Cal hopes Saturday’s game turns out better than last season’s matchup, when UCLA, which was 0-5 at the time, handed Cal its worst defeat of the season, 37-7 in Berkeley.
Jake Curtis is a freelance writer.
Gold prices edged higher from a two-week low hit earlier on Tuesday, as equities retreated from multi-year highs, with investors awaiting more details on the imminent trade agreement between the United States and China.
Spot gold was up 0.27% at $1,458.92 an ounce. U.S. gold futures was up 0.14% at $1,459.0. Gold earlier touched its lowest since Nov. 12 at $1,450.30, having posted losses in the previous four sessions.
"The only story here is the China-U.S. (trade deal). Last few sessions gold has been selling off on hopes for a U.S.-China deal. Right now, gold is paused here and is in kind off wait-and-see (mode)," said Bob Haberkorn, senior market strategist at RJO Futures.
China's Vice Premier Liu He, U.S. Trade representative Robert Lighthizer and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin discussed issues related to the phase one agreement on Tuesday, China's commerce ministry said.
"The talk on the streets is that the phase one deal is going to be a non-event. People believe that there would be a deal but very little substance in it," said Michael Matousek, head trader at U.S. Global Investors. "The market is going to be wandering around aimlessly for another week or two, until we get more information out of the Federal Reserve coming into December and the China trade deal."
However, despite optimism in the market for a conclusion to the protracted trade war between the world's two largest economies, analysts believe that gold is going to remain bullish in the longer term. Speculators increased their bullish positions in COMEX gold and silver in the week to Nov. 19, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said on Friday.
"The reason why you are seeing CFTC positions increasing is because people are looking long term and are worried about equities being too hot right now," Haberkorn said. "They are concerned about a large sell-off in equities with how high they have got so fast."
Global equities edged off their highest in almost two years, but kept record levels in sight. Safe-haven bullion has gained over 13% so far this year.
Elsewhere, silver was up 0.6% at $16.99 per ounce. Palladium inched up 0.1% to $1,798.59, having earlier touched its highest since Nov. 4, while platinum gained 0.6% to $902.12 .
HOUSTON — Commercial spaceports are increasingly portraying themselves as centers of economic development, including those without any launch activity.
This increased focus of spaceports as part of broader aerospace and other industry development strategies was on display at the Nov. 19 meeting here of the Global Spaceport Alliance, a spaceport industry group whose members include a number of proposed and even licensed facilities that have yet to host a launch.
A case in point is Houston Spaceport, the name given to the spaceport activities at Ellington Airport in Houston. The airport, run by the Houston Airport System, received a launch site operator’s license from the Federal Aviation Administration in 2015, although the facility has yet to host a launch or reentry, and is unlikely to do so for the foreseeable future.
That’s an intentional decision, spaceport officials said. “We determined that there were too few players, in terms of operators,” said Arturo Machuca, general manager of Ellington Airport and Houston Spaceport. “We decided we were not going to build our business case immediately around operations.”
Instead, the purpose of the spaceport is “to build a focal point for aerospace innovation,” he said, such as development of facilities to host companies like Intuitive Machines, a company working on commercial lunar landers. Other non-space companies at the spaceport include one building UAVs and another that announced plans in September to establish an aviation training center there.
The spaceport is in the midst of “phase 1” of development of 165 acres at the spaceport, building infrastructure like roads and utilities that could host additional companies. “We invite and attract companies to come to the Houston Spaceport and help build that cluster of aerospace and aviation companies,” he said.
That approach turns the spaceport into something of a business park, but Machuca said that could not have happened without getting an FAA license that showed the capability to one day host launches. “The economic impact that we’re seeing is now tangible. It’s making a difference,” he said. “It would not have been possible without Houston Spaceport being recognized and licensed as an operational spaceport.”
That’s a message that can work for other spaceports. “We have to be telling the story to the general public on how spaceport infrastructure is going to be nothing but a win-win for them,” he said. “It all goes back to equipping the city with that infrastructure that will allow for them to be part of this business.”
Prospective spaceports, though, need to fit into the broader economic devleopment goals of their host area. “In order to be successful, it cannot be in isolation,” said Vernon McDonald, senior vice president for strategic solutions at KBR. “The success of the spaceport has to be tied to the economic development plans for your city, state, region. If space is not featured in their economic development strategic plan, you have a problem because you cannot go it alone.”
That model is being used elsewhere, by spaceports large and small. The biggest example is in Florida, where Blue Origin and OneWeb Satellites have built factories just outside the gates of the Kennedy Space Center as Space Florida, the state’s space development agency, works to attract more users to the area.
On a far smaller scale is Colorado Air and Spaceport, the former Front Range Airport outside Denver that received an FAA license in 2018 but, like Houston, has not hosted any launches. David Ruppel, director of the spaceport, said he’s had some success attracting companies, like Reaction Engines, that want to do engine testing there, and is working on a spaceport master plan to guide future development.
That space activity, he added, has helped grow more conventional aviation activities there as well. “When you do something with space, it doesn’t preclude the other activities. The two things are very easily integrated,” he said.
Both Colorado and Houston retain aspirations for hosting launch activity, primarily in the form of horizontal takeoff and landing vehicles, including for suborbital point-to-point travel. “We do believe, without hesitation, that point-to-point transportation will become a regular way of traveling,” Machuca said, but added he didn’t know when those capabilities would be ready.
In the meantime, Houston Spaceport will focus on economic development, including the ancillary businesses it supports. Machuca said that, with plans for an aviation safety training center there, he’s received inquiries from hotel chains interested in building a hotel nearby for the customers of that center.
“Arturo is not finished until we see an Applebee’s and a Starbucks at the spaceport,” quipped McDonald.
