Macau Daily News (English)

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The increase was led by a 37.6 percent jump in broadband subscribers to 42.8 million, according to a report from the Xinhua news agency, citing the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

Hong Kong has 3.3 million Internet users and Macao 201,000, or about 51 percent and 46 percent of their populations, respectively, according to the report.

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Batelco has lately signed a new bi-lateral Commercial Roaming Agreement with Macau's telecommunications provider, Smartone Mobile Communications Ltd, enabling Batelco Mobile users to make and receive calls while traveling in one of the gems of the Far East.

Smartone operates a GSM 900/1800 service with a handset display of SmarTone. Batelco's mobile customers will be automatically connected to the Macau-based service upon arrival in the city.

The service, which went live last month, forms part of Batelco's commitment to ensuring that its mobile customers are among the most 'connected' around the globe. Batelco Mobile users can now make and receive calls, text message and use a raft of additional services in 105 countries through agreements with 253 other mobile operators.

'We are delighted to provide our customers with this addition to our comprehensive roaming service,' says Hamza Ali, Senior Manager –Mobile Services. 'Whether they are in Macau for business or holidays, Batelco Mobile users can now stay in contact with loved ones and colleagues with ease and convenience via their own mobile phone.'

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An emergency water diversion scheme from Guizhou to Guangdong Province has successfully eased the drinking water salinity to a normal level in Macao, the city's fresh water supplier announced on Friday.

Relying on fresh water supply from the Pearl River in south China, Macao had suffered from a salt tide from the beginning of this year. Water salinity rose to the highest level at 420 ppm on Jan. 29, said the Macao Water.

The Tianshengqiao Reservoir in southwestern Guizhou Province onthe Xijiang River, a tributary of the Pearl River, began to discharge water downstream on Jan. 17 to suppress the water salinity, which became serious due to two years of drought disaster.

The company said that the water transfer will continue in the next week. Macao will have time to draw and store up as much freshwater as it can. The salinity of Macao's fresh water will remain within a normal guideline till the end of February.

Currently the water salinity in Macao has dropped to 190 ppm, and will continue to dip to 170 ppm next Monday so as to ensure the fresh water quality during the Chinese New Year, which will fall on next Wednesday, according to the company.

Drought in the Pearl River valley, mostly in Guangdong Provinceon south China's coast, has been worsening since last autumn. As aresult, sea water began to flow backwards into the Pearl River andmany cities along the river are running short of fresh water.

It is feared that the worst salt tide in two decades will occurin the Pearl River valley in the spring of 2005, which will endanger water supply to more than 15 million people in the economically developed Pearl River Delta, and Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions.

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Over 130,000 visitors from the Chinese mainland are expected to flush in Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) under the mainland's facilitated individual travel scheme (FIT) on Macao-bound tours during the Chinese New Year, said a senior tourist official here Monday.

The Macao SAR government would make an all-out endeavor to deal with the large passenger flow during the mainland's "Golden Week Travel" in the week-long Chinese New Year holiday, said Manuel Pires, deputy director of the Macao Tourist Office in a joint press conference held by the Tourist Office, the Health Service, the Customs and the Public Security Police Bureau.

According to official statistics, since the FIT scheme was launched on July 28, 2003, over 450 million tourists were benefited and made tours to Macao by the end of Jan. 31 this year.

The Tourist Office announced to activate a notification mechanism with its counterpart in Guangdong Province during the holiday reporting the number of tourist arrivals to Macao as well as hotel room rate and price on a daily basis, which is expected to help control the passenger flow.

The small gaming city with a mere land coverage of less than 30square kilometers is under a heavy pressure from handling vacation travelers during China's three long holidays, namely the Chinese New Year in February, the Labors' Day in May and the National Day in October. With a population of 450,000, it host over 16 million tourist arrivals last year with nearly half of them from China's mainland.

The concerned departments vowed to stay on high alert on the disease-control and security measures at customs during the travel spree. The police headquarters and the customs authorities have asked all staff to remain on post during the holiday in order to ensure a swift passenger flow and social security.

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China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) recorded 9,786 crime cases in the year 2004, a decrease of 1.4 percent from the previous year.

Macao Secretary for Security Cheong Kuok Va said at a press conference on Monday that most types of the crimes in the region went down, except for cases of false money and drug trafficking, which showed a significant increase in numbers.

He said that Macao's growing number of individual travelers from the mainland had had "no serious impact" on the city's public security situation.

He pointed out that only seven in every 100,000 individual visitors had violated laws during their stay in Macao last year, when Macao logged 3.5 million individual travelers from China's mainland.

The top security official said Macao's police forces would reinforce combat against theft, which would attaint Macao's tourist image. The department would continue to strengthen cross-border cooperation with their counterparts in neighboring Guangdong Province and Hong Kong to fight against illegal immigration, drug trafficking and employment of illegally imported labors.

The crime rate in Macao has sustained a downturn since it returned to the motherland in 1999. Prior to that, gangland violence used to infringe the city's gaming industry, which blackened Macao's international image in the 1990s. Crimes involving in the use of gang violence has basically eradicated here in recent years with the strong support of the Chinese central government.

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To celebrate the Year of the Rooster, Macau Government Tourist Office will stage a 10-minutes fireworks display on February 8 (Tuesday) at 11:59 pm. The fireworks will be discharged from a barge 500 meters from the waterfront of Macau Tower by a firework company from Mainland who took part in the Macau International Fireworks Display Contest.

Members of the public can view the spectacular display from the vantage points near the Sai Van Lake and the waterfront of Taipa. MGTO hopes that the visitors and local residents can enjoy the traditional festive season in Macau.

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9/2/2005 9:18

Chief Executive of China's Macau Special Administrative Region Edmund Ho Hau Wah on Tuesday delivered a Lunar New Year address hoping that Macau's economy could make sustainable development in the coming year.
Delivering the message on the eve of Lunar New Year, Ho said that based on the robust growth achieved last year, Macau is expecting a more vigorous economic growth in the coming year. He wished Macau people to seize the chance and improve themselves both materially and spiritually.
He said that Macau should enhance its comprehensive might and create long-term prosperity.

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Red fire ants, whose sting can sometimes prove fatal to humans, have appeared in this special administrative region of China, reports Xinhua.

The ants, which have a nasty sting that can cause painful, itchy blisters and nausea, were found near construction sites in two of Macau's offshore islands, Taipa, and a reclaimed strip between Taipa and Coloane islands.

The Macau civil and municipal affairs bureau Friday sought help from experts in China's southern Guangdong province, where the insects were found in January.

As no ant mounds were found at the construction sites, experts estimated that the ants had recently arrived and were small in number. The municipal affairs bureau said the ants could have come along with the building material.

Local hospitals, meanwhile, said no cases of ant bite had been reported so far.

Taiwan reported its first death from red fire ants last October. In January this year, the ants were found in some areas in Guangdong province as well as in Hong Kong.

Under the alerts from its neighbouring regions, Macau has reinforced inspection to prevent possible spread of red fire ants, and intensified plant quarantine at customs.

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(CCTV)
Updated: 2005-02-19 09:53

From March 1st, residents in the municipalities of Tianjin and Chongqing will be able to apply for individual travel to Hong Kong and Macao.

People in these two cities will only be required to provide resident cards and identification cards when applying for passports to Hong Kong and Macao. The process is much simpler than before, when people had to submit materials to prove the purpose of their trips.

Currently, people living in those regions that haven't yet launched the new policy can only arrange their trips through travel agencies.

Since July 2003, many regions of China have launched the policy, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and some cities in Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces.

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24/2/2005 15:35

Macau's education authorities have observed a sharp fall in the number of students in high schools, and held an increasing number of casinos to blame for the serious dropout phenomenon.
According to the latest figures from the Education and Youth Affairs Bureau, there were 95,485 students enrolled in Macau's 89 schools offering compulsory education in the new semester, which indicated a loss of 2,777 students over the corresponding period of last year.
Sou Chio Fai, director of the bureau was quoted by Thursday's Macau Daily acknowledging high school dropout problem was the primary cause to the decrease in addition to the dwindling number of birth rate.
The bureau estimated that some hundreds high school students left school to pursue jobs in casinos last year, when four casinos came on stream offering thousands of job opportunities.
Teachers in Macau held that it was a foreseeable result that the students were wooed by "fast-earning" money in casinos, since the government has designated the gaming industry as the city's economic backbone. However, they advised the students to take a more prudent thought, because it would more difficult to obtain an on-the-job training or advanced education after students walk into society than studying in school.
Currently, 56,008 students in school are enjoying compulsory education free of charges, which cost 425 million patacas (US$53 million) of the Macau Special Administrative Region ( SAR)government's budget last year.

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MACAO, March 14 (Xinhuanet) -- The number of tourists traveling Macao in groups reached 186,445 in January, up 17.4 percent from the same period of last year.

According to the statistics released by the Macao Statistics and Census Bureau on Monday, 147,469 of the total visitors were from the Chinese mainland, up 12.5 percent from the corresponding period of last year.

Meanwhile, the number of group tourists from China's Taiwan surged by 41.6 percent year-on-year to 15,046 in January.

The bureau's statistics also showed that the number of hotel rooms reached 9,630 accommodating a total of 302,431 guests in January. The averaged hotel room occupancy rate stood at 67 percent, while that in three-star tourist hotels averaged 74 percent during the period.

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MACAO, March 18 (Xinhuanet) -- The averaged salary in China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) is on the rise due to a new round of economic take-up.

According to the latest statistics from the Macao Statistics and Census Bureau, the wholesale and retail sectors employed 18,080 people in the fourth quarter of last year, 14 percent more than that of the same period of the previous year, and the salary averaged 5,972 patacas (747 US dollars) per month, up 6.4 percent year-on-year.

Meanwhile, staff in the aviation and transportation industries were among the high-paid employees. The salary averaged 20,673 patacas (2,584 US dollars) and 9,820 patacas (1,228 US dollars), respectively, during the period.

The SAR's economic growth gathered speed in 2004, marking an unprecedented yearly increase of 25 percent. In addition to the city's economic mainstay of gaming and tourism industries, the transportation, construction, logistics and the tertiary sectors are craving for more hands offering thousands of job vacancies, according to the bureau.

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Bronze sculpture of the Wallace Fountain has already become a familiar scene here in Macao, as the second fountain was erected in the city on Tuesday.

The sculpture offering running water with a quality up to par of the European driving water standard has become a fancy tourist attraction, since Macao was the second city in Asia after Tokyo to have the fountain. The first Wallace Fountain was built in the downtown area of the Macao Peninsula in July last year, while the second one settled its foot on the Taipa Island of Macao this time.

The fountain has its origin in Europe. Upon the inauguration, a stream of water flowing continuously from the center of the dome of the Renaissance-style sculpture, which have four "Goddesses" representing "Simplicity, Temperance, Charity and Goodness" supporting the roof of the fountain.

Philippe Wind, executive director of the Macao Water Supply Co.Ltd. said at the inauguration ceremony that the fountain can quench the thirst of tourists and passers-by for free, while allowing them to have the pleasure of enjoying its unique design and the glamour of the surroundings on the offshore island.

The inauguration of the fountain coincided with the World WaterDay on Tuesday. Attending the inauguration ceremony, Ao Man Long, secretary for transport and public works stamped the postmark of the commemorative covers of the World Water Day, which started issuance on Tuesday.

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The three-month long Moments of Eternity: Timepieces--Collection from the Palace Museum, attracting a total of more than 70,000 viewers, drew its conclusion on Mar. 20 in Macao SAR. Jointly sponsored by Macao Museum of Art, Beijing National Palace Museum and other relevant institutions, the exhibition displayed 120 pieces (sets) of timepiece collections or other cultural relics related to timepieces provided by Beijing National Palace Museum. It is the first time that Beijing National Palace Museum has lent so many collections for an exhibition.

This time, all the collections of timepieces on display are exquisitely made, which can be praised as superb craftsmanship excelling nature. They are the essence of the intelligence and painstaking efforts of domestic and foreign craftsmen. Additionally, all these collections are of high historic, scientific and artistic value. They reflect the European tradition and custom, aesthetic conceptions as well as the influence of the introduction of western timepieces upon Chinese clock-making technology in Qing Dynasty, and demonstrate the achievements of combination of early western civilization with Chinese national wisdom.

Since it opened on Dec. 17 last year, the exhibition has been warmly welcome by the Macao residents. Particularly, many overseas tourists came all the way to Macao to feast their eyes with the collections.

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1/4/2005 15:14

An international conference on Chinese medicine was opened Friday in China's Macau Special Administrative Region (SAR), where some 100 experts gathered for academic exchanges on evidence-based Chinese medicine.

The conference was sponsored by the International Society for Chinese Medicine (ISCM) and co-organized by over 20 ISCM member colleges of medicine from China's mainland, Hong Kong and Macau as well as those from America and Europe.

The three-day conference will focus on discussions on evidence- based Chinese medicine for cardiovascular, liver, lifestyle- related diseases as well as pains. Experts will deliver keynote speeches on enhancing evidence of evidence-based Chinese medicine, medical therapy for congestive heart failure, cancer prevention and diabetes and other lifestyle-related diseases.

Chief Executive of the Macau SAR Edmund Ho Hau Wah said at the inauguration ceremony, that Chinese medicine is undergoing a standardization process. Combined with modern technology, the century-old traditional culture has yielded new development, which has been well acknowledged by the international community.

He said that Chinese medicine has been developed in Macau through generations. Macau is keen on establishing itself as a platform for building the industry of Chinese medicine by boosting research and production.

ISCM is a non-governmental organization registered in Macau. Its members include such prestigious universities as Beijing University of Chinese Medicine, University of Hong Kong, University of Cambridge and University of British Columbia.

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30/3/2005 14:58

The 15th Chinese International Symposium for Clinical Nutrition is going to take place in China's Macau Special Administrative Region on April 4-7, organizers said here Wednesday.
The annual symposium, co-sponsored by the Ministry of Health, the Chinese Medical Association and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, has developed into one of the most significant academic communication conferences in the field of clinical nutrition in China, and acquired a wide respect and support around the world.
This year's session, the first ever held outside of China's mainland, will invite top-notch experts to deliver lectures on their researches of special diets in clinical nutrition and nutrition in premature newborn.
Clinical nutrition refers to the various ways and means providing necessary nutrition to a patient's body with the aim of preventing or correcting malnutrition in the patient. A patient's body, when well supplied with nutrition, is able to better withstand pain and trauma and convalesce quicker.
The conference will be co-organized by the Macau Medical and Health Federation, the Macau Polytechnic Institute and the Hospital Center Conde S Januario.

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MACAO, April 1 (Xinhuanet) -- The total number of visitor arrivals to China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) increased by 40 percent year-on-year to a historical high record of 16.67 million in 2004.

Figures released by the Statistics and Census Service on Friday showed that visitors came mainly from China's mainland and Hong Kong, which corresponded to 57 percent and 30 percent of the total arrivals.

There were 3.5 million mainland visitors traveling to Macao under China's facilitated individual travel scheme on Macao-bound tours. Meanwhile, the number of visitors came in group tours leaped to 2.5 million, up 64 percent over 2003.

The majority of the visitors came in Macao via the SAR's land checkpoints, which made up 57 percent of the total, and those arrived by sea or by air accounted for 22 percent and 32 percent, respectively.

The bureau's statistics also showed that the number of Macao's outbound travels in package tours went up 35 percent over 2003 to 211,966 in 2004. Meanwhile, 286,471 Macao residents traveled under their own arrangements with the assistance of travel agencies, representing an increase of 37 percent over 2003.

Compared with 2003, the number of overnight guests increased by30 percent to 3.9 million. The average occupancy rate of hotels inthe city was 75.6 percent in 2004, a jump of 11.3 percentage points from the previous year. The average length of stay of overnight guests was 1.22 nights, down 0.04 night.

Meanwhile, the per-capita spending of visitors in 2004 was 1,633 patacas (204 US dollars), up 8 percent over 2003. Travel spending of mainland visitors topped the list with 2,991 patacas (374 US dollars) per-capita.

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MACAO, March 29 (Xinhuanet) -- Macao's population has reached 465,333, according to the latest survey by the Macao Statistics and Census Bureau.

The bureau's statistics released on Tuesday showed that the population retained an annual growth rate of 3.7 percent in 2004. Residents aged between 15 and 64 accounted for 74.8 percent of thetotal population.

The Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) has gradually entered a fast period of population growth as the economy is getting warmer. There were 3,308 new births last year, up 3 percent from the previous year. The city also logged 1,737 marriage registrations in 2004, representing an increase of 32.7 percent over the previous year.

Meanwhile, the SAR approved 7,279 residency permits, and received 6,885 emigrants from China's mainland in the year 2004. Enditem

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China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) on Tuesday banned all forms of exports of ammunition or any related military logistics via Macao to Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia.

In a government gazette endorsed by Chief Executive of the Macao SAR Edmund Ho Hau Wah, Macao banned export, re-export and entrepot trade of ammunition and related military logistics including machinery maintenance equipment to Cote d'Ivoire and Liberia.

According to the gazette, any aids, consultation or training activities concerning Cote d'Ivoire shall be banned here from now to Dec. 15 this year. Meanwhile, Macao forbids any import of diamond mined in Liberia, which will be in place till June 22, and the ban on import of log and timber products from Liberia remains valid till Dec. 22.

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A new investment residence law came into effect in Macao on Monday setting the threshold of investment residence permits at the price of 500,000 patacas (62,500 US dollars).

The Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) government has amended the residence permits to meet the current situation on the property market, according to Francis Tam Pak Yuen, secretary for economic and finance.

Under the new law, applicants for property investment residence permits need to invest at least one million patacas (125,000 US dollars) in the local real estate market. A qualified applicant should have a guaranteed seven-year deposit of at least 500,000 patacas (62,500 US dollars) in a local bank, and hold a bachelor or a similar degree.

The law is generally expected conducive to attract educated people mainly from China's mainland to the SAR, while at the same time lift the investment permit price to prevent the local real estate market from overheating.