Macau Daily News (English)

[SeeMacau]

China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) is on high alert of dengue fever, which is very likely to break out this summer.

The Macao Health Bureau on Tuesday warned citizens that the disease would probably re-emerge this year, as dengue fever usually breaks out every three to four years.

The bureau said in a public circular that it will mobilize a large crowd of volunteer workers to aid the preventive activities of dengue fever from April 6 to June 25.

This year's anti-dengue fever campaign will take the forms of exhibitions, shows and games from April to mid-June to help citizens better understand self-prevention measures against dengue fever.

Volunteer workers will start issuing questionnaire papers to make citizens aware of the deadly disease, and help the government's work in insect abatement and update the information on the prevention of the disease among the folks.

[SeeMacau]

A Macau cargo ship capsized Tuesday evening at the estuary of south China's Pearl River, leaving six people missing as of Wednesday night.
The source with the Nanhai Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Communications said the 500-ton ship, with seven on board, came across with fresh gales and capsized five nautical miles northwest of Guishan Island at 7:49 p.m.
The rescue bureau immediately organized a rescue operation and saved one crew member at 9:40 p.m. Tuesday.
The provincial maritime rescue center has mobilized many ships in search of the six missing. The rescue operation is still going on.

[SeeMacau]

The 54th Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) Annual Conference officially opened this morning with H.E. Mr. Edmund Ho, Chief Executive of the Macau Special Administrative Region, welcoming 1,176 delegates from 44 countries to Macau.

"We foresee a strong and solid growth in the tourism industry as well as the vast opportunities to be provided," said Mr Ho. "We also have no illusions on the challenges ahead of us." He added: "As you are fully aware, many of these challenges are not unique but rather universal, shared by many our partners in this region. We value our participation in PATA and we firmly believe that we all will become stronger and better through our closer partnership and cooperation."

Mr Ho's speech was preceded by messages from Macau SAR Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture Dr Chui Sai On, 2004/2005 PATA Chairman Mr Ram Kohli and PATA President and CEO Mr Peter de Jong.

Dr Chui said: "Throughout its membership of PATA, Macau has maintained a close relationship with the Association. And today, it carries special and important implications to Macau as the host, for the first time, of the PATA Annual Conference."

He added: "PATA has always been active in the enhancement of growth, value and quality of travel and tourism for its members within the Asia Pacific region. Four PATA Task Force reports on Macau were written over the past 25 years, giving us constructive ideas as well as visions, in the development of the tourism industry."

Mr Kohli praised Macau's determination to expand its destination image to encompass its rich and unique culture and heritage and thanked Mr Ho, Dr Chui, Mr Antunes and the Macau Host Committee, a collaboration of private- and public-sector tourism stakeholders in Macau, for making the Conference possible.

During the PATA Presidential Address, Mr de Jong asked delegates to stand for one minute of silence in remembrance of the more than 170,000 people killed and some 100,000 people still missing and feared dead as a result of the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean quake and tsunami.

Mr de Jong said: "Two years ago, as we recognised the external threats to our industry, we expanded PATA's strategic agenda to include a strong focus on advocacy and reputation management. It was the right call. Sadder but wiser from our recent years' experience dealing with the Bali bombing, with SARS, with Avian Flu, and our successful Phoenix recovery campaign, PATA is now, more than ever, ready to respond rapidly to crises that threaten our region."

Mr de Jong went on to outline the Association's rapid and authoritative response to the December 26 quake and tsunami tragedy. He said: "Our response to the tsunami, when viewed in total, is part and parcel of PATA's transformation into an agile, knowledge-based and advocacy-embracing travel trade association."

Following a colourful Macanese cultural performance, International Air Transport Association Director General and CEO Mr Giovanni Bisignani delivered the opening keynote address on the Conference theme "Connecting Tourism's Stakeholders".

"Globally, tourism is responsible for 5% of GDP. In PATA countries, tourism directly accounts for up to 50% of GDP," said Mr Bisignani. "If one link in the value chain is weak or broken, everybody suffers. This has been the lesson of Asia Pacific's recent crises." He added: "Everyone in this room has felt their impact. In a global world of instant news, coordinated action is critical."

Toward the end of the opening session, PATA recognised leading travel industry individuals and organisations with assorted awards, including the "Father of the Boeing 747" Mr Joseph F Sutter, who was inducted into the PATA Gallery of Legends. In addition, Mr Joao Manuel Costa Antunes and Mr Bo W Long both received PATA Life Membership honours for their contributions to PATA's work over many years.

Two 2005 PATA Grand Award winners -- the best of the 2005 PATA Gold Awards programme -- also received their awards: the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India for its Ajanta Ellora Conservation & Tourism Development Project and Banyan Tree Holdings for its Banyan Tree Spa Bintan.

Last night (April 17), the Macau Host Committee, comprising representatives of the SAR's public- and private-sector tourism stakeholders, hosted a spectacular reception at the Taipa Houses-Museum.

For the next three days, Conference delegates will hear from experts on strategic travel industry topics, such as changes in the aviation sector's competitive environment; poverty alleviation through tourism; the industry's sustainability; the relationship between tourism and the arts; and China (PRC)'s rise as a tourism destination and source market.

[SeeMacau]

It is a curious irony that the first newspaper in China was a Portuguese -language weekly. Founded on September 12, 1822 in Macau by Paulino da Silva Barbosa, the Abelha da China, or China Bee, survived only one year but left behind a profound legacy.

Today, the enclave's 460,000 residents are served by eight Chinese and three Portuguese daily newspapers, five Chinese and one Portuguese weeklies, an English daily and dozens of magazine titles; all this on top of a raft of publications imported from Hong Kong and the mainland. Each morning, street -side newsstands are piled high with up to 20 different daily papers.

On the face of it, the media market would appear to be booming in line with the general economic headiness in Macau. In fact, the opposite is true.

Most local publications barely break even and often struggle to pay salaries, the local television and radio station has run at a loss for more than a decade and the advertising market remains seriously depressed. Apple Daily Group advertising director Mark Simon, whose paper ferries about 7,000 copies a day to the territory, said flatly: "Macau is boring. It's a small market for everybody and ad rates just don't pay much."

Indeed, homegrown press probably would have succumbed long ago to the influx of Hong Kong and mainland competitors if not for the very unique dynamics of the market: the single largest investor in Macau's media industry is the local government. Nearly every media organisation in Macau receives an annual subsidy of up to 780,000 patacas ($ 790,530), distributed by the Macau Government Information Bureau, known by its Portuguese acronym GCS.

Moreover, the government shows no signs of giving the market a freer hand in the sector - as it did in recent years with gaming and telecommunications. In February, Chief Executive Edmund Ho Hau-wah announced plans to increase press subsidies by the end of the year. Last month, the government took over Macau's only terrestrial television and radio broadcaster, Teledifusao de Macau (TDM), by formally acquiring the 49.5 per cent that it did not already hold.

"Macau is a tiny place and there is a lot of media spillover from Hong Kong," said GCS director Victor Chan Chi-ping. The subsidies to media organisations were a kind of "public service", he said, "Because they cannot survive commercially on their own ."

Jose Rocha Dinis knows this first hand. The 58-year-old director of the Portuguese-language daily Jornal Tribuna de Macau (JTM) has lived here for 24 years, prior to which he worked as a journalist in Lisbon. As he sat in his office next to Senado Square, smoking brown cigarillos and chatting over a cup of espresso, Mr Dinis said the subsidies "are a way to protect the local industry, otherwise we would be completely eaten by Hong Kong".

Mr Dinis' paper, a 24-page tabloid with a circulation of about 1,000, employs six staff journalists and receives an annual subsidy of 594,000 patacas. JTM also relies heavily on court announcements, which by law must be published in both Chinese and Portuguese newspapers, as well as advertisements from various government departments. "Macau is like a three-legged table," he said. "The Portuguese community is a short leg, but without it the table falls. The government understands this."

In many ways, the local government's acquisition of broadcaster TDM marked the end of an experiment in privatisation. Hong Kong television had dominated Macau's airwaves ever since Television Broadcasts started broadcasting in the late 1960s. TDM was set up by the Portuguese administration in 1984 to provide local content, with a Portuguese and Cantonese channel on both radio and television, and it ran at a loss from day one. In 1989, in an effort to turn it around, the government brought in private investors but retained a 50.5 per cent stake.

At that time, Macau had no laws against tobacco advertising. The new management floated a plan to sell ads to cigarette companies and beam the station's signal over to Hong Kong, ostensibly bringing in a windfall of new revenue. The move, of course, was blocked by Hong Kong authorities, and resulted in a "complete disaster", said current TDM chief executive Manuel Goncalves.

Later changes to the structure of the private shareholdings failed to produce positive results, despite involvement from casino tycoon Stanley Ho Hung-sun and future Chief Executive Edmund Ho. The private investors returned their 49.5 per cent share to TDM in 2002 and the company was forced to rely on the government to cover nearly all operating costs. TDM last year lost 60 million patacas.

"We don't call it a loss anymore," said Mr Goncalves, now that the government was the sole backer. "It's necessary funding for public service. The market will never allow a profitable station in Macau."

That verdict appears to apply to print media, too. The pro-Beijing Chinese -language Macao Daily News, with upwards of 30,000 copies per day, is the largest newspaper by far. It receives a direct annual subsidy of 780,000 patacas from the local administration and the lion's share of legal and government announcements. It supplements that with a good number of sauna advertisements, among others. But staff and production costs at the Daily News are proportionately high and among Macau's papers, their situation is "the roughest", according to Mr Chan.

"The biggest papers face the heaviest pressure. They all need subsidies to survive."

There are limits to the subsidies, however. Publications need to be dailies or weeklies and to have been in business for five years before they can qualify. Portuguese daily Hoje Macau was launched in September 2001 and is eagerly awaiting the financial support. "It's been hard to pay salaries because we don't receive subsidies," said director Joao Costeira Varela. Still, Hoje makes ends meet through court announcements and limited ad sales to private companies. In addition, subscriptions at 10 patacas per paper from government departments account for about 200 copies of its 1,000 circulation.

Also unqualified are publications in languages other than Chinese and Portuguese. But that cuts off a nascent, and possibly the only, growth market in Macau's print media landscape: English-language publications.

Increasingly, locals are turning to English as a second language and an influx of gaming industry expats has further broadened the audience. Last autumn, the English-language Macau Post Daily was launched and is doing well, despite a strong reliance on newswire content.

Macau Business, a glossy monthly distributed mainly to hotels but also in Hong Kong, was established in May last year and has been growing steadily since. Its executive director, Paulo Azevedo, was formerly a journalist with TDM and another Portuguese daily, Ponto Final. "The Portuguese language in Asia is like Latin, like we're 16th century Dominican priests or something," he said. "It's nice to maintain this image of Macau but commercially speaking it's a nightmare. There is no growth there."

Mr Azevedo says his magazine has been breaking even since it launched and advertising profits are reinvested to fund expansion. Still, it is hard to make ends meet and he could use some assistance from the government coffers. "You can't give to some and not others."

If a welfare mentality is sprouting among Macau's media organisations, nobody seems concerned by it, least of all the recipients of the administration's largesse. To be sure, the government can afford to prop up the sector for the foreseeable future, armed as it is with a war chest of gaming tax revenues. But perhaps some industry fundamentals have not really changed since the China Bee first went to press in the early 1800s.

Indeed, the irony of that enterprising publication was not that it printed in Portuguese. Rather, it was that the paper's founder, Barbosa, was the territory's governor. You can guess how it was funded.

[SeeMacau]

The Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA)'s Strategic Intelligence Centre (SIC) today released 'Asia Pacific Tourism Forecasts 2005-2007' at the 54th PATA Annual Conference in Macau.

This new series of forecasts for 40 countries across the Asia Pacific region predicts overall growth in international visitor arrivals of 10.6% per year to 2007. Every destination covered in the PATA region is predicted to post positive annual growth to 2007, ranging from 4.0% (Pakistan) to 20.9% (Malaysia).

There are numerous factors influencing the forecasts: the recovery following the tsunami, the emergence of low-cost airlines, the rapidly rising middle-classes across Asia, and significant advances in avionics leading to new generation aircraft that will change how we move around the world.

"Combined, these factors look set to dramatically increase intra-regional travel flows," said PATA Director-SIC Mr John Koldowski. "Whatever the changes we expect, and those we don't, the travel industry needs an anchor, a meticulously researched set of predictions on which to plan future strategies."

The 'Asia Pacific Tourism Forecasts 2005-2007' are produced by the eminent scholars Professor Lindsay Turner and Professor Stephen Witt.

[SeeMacau]

The Macau Judiciary Police arrested eight suspected barrack sharps, who were alleged to cheat at a local casino.
Friday's Macau Daily News said that the eight suspects all from China's mainland belong to a gang of fraudulent gambling. They had cheated 1.39 million patacas (US$173,750) away from a local casino in a coordinated move.
Police said that the suspects foisted discarded barrack cards in playing while heavily smoking to camouflage the trick.
Police seized gaming chips, discarded casino cards and 200,000 patacas (US$25,000) in cash in a raid at the suspects' hotel rooms on Thursday.

[SeeMacau]

A Macau cargo ship capsized Tuesday evening at the estuary of south China's Pearl River, leaving six people missing as of Wednesday night.
The source with the Nanhai Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Communications said the 500-ton ship, with seven on board, came across with fresh gales and capsized five nautical miles northwest of Guishan Island at 7:49 p.m.
The rescue bureau immediately organized a rescue operation and saved one crew member at 9:40 p.m. Tuesday.
The provincial maritime rescue center has mobilized many ships in search of the six missing. The rescue operation is still going on.

[SeeMacau]

MACAO: The total number of tourists visiting the enclave in groups in February rose year-on-year by 59.6 per cent, thanks to the Chinese Lunar New Year holidays.

Of the 194,322 group tourists 147,384, or 46.5 per cent more than last year, were from the mainland. The number of Taiwanese tourists was 20,743, a 150 per cent jump. Tourist groups from Hong Kong rose the least, by 8,867 or 16.4 per cent.

The Chinese New Year holidays fell in February this year rather than January as in last year. Taking the first two months as a whole to eliminate the distortion caused by the festival timing, the arrivals grew 35.7 per cent from a year earlier.

The number of Macao residents travelling overseas in groups shot up to 22,393, 2.6 times more than the same month in 2004. Their most popular destinations were the Chinese mainland, South Korea and Thailand.

As for local residents who booked with travel agencies for individual trips, the month of February saw a total of 22,431 departures, 14.8 per cent more than last year. Their favoured destinations were the mainland (40.1 per cent), Hong Kong (23.2 per cent) and Taiwan (17.6 per cent).

A total of 10,181 hotel rooms were available in February, a 10.4 per cent increase over last year, thanks to the five new hotels in the SAR.

The number of tourists using hotels grew by 8.9 per cent, to 288,249, lifting average hotel occupancy by 0.9 per cent from a year ago, to 65.4 per cent. Three-star hotels enjoyed the highest occupancy at 70.5 per cent, with the average length of stay being 1.16 nights, slightly less than the year before.

[SeeMacau]

The Macao Judiciary Police arrested eight suspected barrack sharps, who were alleged to cheat at a local casino.

Friday's Macao Daily News said that the eight suspects all from China's mainland belong to a gang of fraudulent gambling. They had cheated 1.39 million patacas (173,750 US dollars) away from a local casino in a coordinated move.

Police said that the suspects foisted discarded barrack cards in playing while heavily smoking to camouflage the trick.

Police seized gaming chips, discarded casino cards and 200,000 patacas (25,000 US dollars) in cash in a raid at the suspects' hotel rooms on Thursday.

[SeeMacau]

A Macao cargo ship capsized Tuesday evening at the estuary of south China's Pearl River, leaving six people missing as of Wednesday night.

The source with the Nanhai Rescue Bureau of the Ministry of Communications said the 500-ton ship, with seven on board, came across with fresh gales and capsized five nautical miles northwest of Guishan Island at 7:49 p.m.

The rescue bureau immediately organized a rescue operation and saved one crew member at 9:40 p.m. Tuesday.

The provincial maritime rescue center has mobilized many ships in search of the six missing. The rescue operation is still going on.

[SeeMacau]

Eva Lo Tak Wah is certainly not the first Macao entrepreneur to tap Beijing market, but as a chairperson of the Prime International Conference Exhibition (Beijing) Co. Ltd., she has become the first one from Macao to set up a solely-funded firm in the national capital.

The fanfare that greeted the company's opening on March 4, 2005,was out of proportion of its modest size. The company's inauguration ceremony was witnessed by Edmund Ho Hau Wah, chief executive of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR), and Bai Zhijian, director of the Liaison Office of the Central People's Government in the Macao SAR and Lu Hao, vice mayor of Beijing.

"I can see that people have clung a high hope on me, and I would not let them down," said a smiling Lo.

Compared with hundreds of exhibition and convention firms in Beijing, the Prime with an initial investment of 100,000 US dollars is far from being even noticeable. However, its existence signifies the first Macao-funded company registered in Beijing, and it targets one of the most promising industries in the national capital.

Lo's experience in Beijing started more than one year ago, when she undertook convention organization projects through a joint venture firm that she founded with a local company. Her most successful case was organizing the WTO and China: Beijing International Forum 2004. The conference drawing over 300 participants to discuss the Market Environment and Opportunities for China in the Later Stage of the Transitional Period after its Entry into WTO has helped Lo establish her reputation as a professional convention organizer in Beijing.

"It was the implementation of the Mainland/Macao Closer Economic Arrangement (CEPA) that has given me the confidence of making a bolder step forward to establish my own business in Beijing," said Lo.

She went to the Macao Economic Services Bureau to obtain a service provider certificate in January this year, which made her eligible to invest in the mainland.

With CEPA's preferential policies given to Macao investors to go into the mainland market, Lo has found the Beijing market more approachable. As the incumbent vice chairman of the Beijing Youth Federation, Lo has her personal reasons to favor Beijing over other cities in the mainland to set up her first firm.

[SeeMacau]

The principal of Angola's Agostinho Neto University, João Teta, is in Macau since today early morning, in the capacity of chairman of the Association of Portuguese Speaking Universities (AULP).

Angop learnt today from a note from the principal's office that, the visit aims at officially inviting Macau to occupy one of the vice presidencies of AULP, as well as seeking this country's technological support for the implementation of virtual Universities of the Portuguese Speaking countries.

João Teta is being accompanied by AULP's deputy chairman, Lopes da Silva, and by its Secretary General, Alarcão Troni.

[SeeMacau]

HONG KONG, Macau welcomed 4.45 million visitors in the first quarter of 2005, up 18.8 percent from the same period a year ago, the government said on Friday.

Mainland Chinese made up 55.8 per cent of the total number of arrivals between January and March, up 13.5 percent from the first quarter of 2004.

Macau, the only place in gambling-mad China where casinos are legal, logged 1.53 million visitors in March alone, a 17.3 percent increase over the year-ago period.

Macau government officials expect the number of visitor arrivals in 2005 to reach 20 million, against last year's 16.6 million.

Macau's gaming and betting businesses comprising casinos, greyhound and horse races and a string of lotteries generated a gross revenue of 42.3 billion patacas (US$5.28 billion) in 2004.

Government economists estimate that the gaming and tourism industry generated about half of the territory's gross domestic product last year, which grew 28 percent year-on-year in real terms from 2003.

[SeeMacau]

MACAO, April 25 (Xinhuanet) -- China's mainland has issued 5.46 million individual travel passes to the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) by the end of February, a senior Chinese official said here on Monday.

Wang Liaoping, director of the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao Affairs Department of the Ministry of Commerce said that the economic and trade relations between China's mainland and Macao are in the best time in history.

The Mainland/Macao Closer Economic Partnership Arrangement in effect since the beginning of 2004 has ensured facilitated cooperation in finance, tourism and professional qualification attestation, said Wang at the Seminar of "the Strategic Development and Opportunities of the Economic Integration among Mainland, Hong Kong and Macao," which opened here on Monday.

The mainland and Macao have facilitated bilateral trade and investment policies with the trade volume between the two sides jumping 24.7 percent to reach 1.8 billion US dollars in 2004. The two sides will realize free cargo trade before 2006, said Wang.

By the end of March, the Macao Economic Bureau has issued 113 certificates of product origin, which help save 518,000 patacas (64,750 US dollars) of tariff on Macao's export to the mainland. The bureau also issued 199 service provider certificates allowing Macao investors to invest in cargo surrogating, transportation, warehouse, telecoms and retailing business in China's mainland.

[SeeMacau]

The Macao Historical Architecture Clump has been qualified for the final contest for the world heritage award at UNESCO's meeting in July, disclosed a culture official here on Sunday.

Macao's bid has passed an expert appraisal to enter a shortlist of 30 projects worldwide for the final round competition at the meeting of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, Stephen Chan Chak Seng, chief of the Cultural Heritage Department of the Macao Cultural Bureau told Xinhua in an exclusive interview.

Macao's bid under the name of Macao Historical Architecture Clump has been designated as China's only nomination to apply for the World Heritage selection of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in 2005. It embraces 12 priceless cultural heritage sites, including China's oldest church, Christian cemetery, lighthouse and western theater.

The 29th meeting of UNESCO's World Heritage Committee is set for July 10 to 16 in South Africa, which will announce this year's winners to be inscribed in UNESCO's World Heritage List.

Macao preserves China's largest clump of urban historical properties with a 400-year history of mixing the eastern and western cultures. With the support from the Chinese government, the Macao Special Administrative Region officially launched the procedures for the world heritage bidding in July 2002, said Chan.

He added that the relics, most are still in use, have witnessed the earliest pervasion of western religious culture in the oriental continent as well as its ensuing co-existence with the local culture.

As a tourist mecca hosting over 16 million visitor arrivals last year, Macao has brought all of its 128 cultural sites under preservation and an overall face-lift to embrace the patronage of international tourists as well the world heritage bidding.

[SeeMacau]

Five members of a committee overseeing electoral affairs of the Legislative Assembly (LA) of China's Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) swore in Tuesday.

President of the committee Fong Man Chong and four members, namely Lao Si Io, Jose Chu, Lau Ioc Ip and Ho Wai Heng, swore in front of Macao's Chief Executive Edmund Ho Hau Wah and other government officials.

The committee members are from the court, the Municipal AffairsBureau, Public Administration and Civil Service Bureau, the Finance Services Bureau and the Information Bureau, respectively.

Fong said that compared with the LA election four years ago, the election of the third LA set for Sept. 25 will see more registered voters. The total number of voters are expected to reach 180,000 when the voter registration stops on May 28.

According to the Basic Law, in the third LA election, 12 legislators will be directly elected through the general ballot, 10 legislators are to be indirectly elected by corporate societies and another seven members will be nominated by the chief executive

[SeeMacau]

The Chinese Cultural Exchange Association was set up in Macao on Saturday to promote cultural exchanges between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait.

Vice Chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee Xu Jialu, Deputy Director of Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council Wang Zaixi and Chief Executive of the Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) Edmund Ho Hau Wah were among those attending the inauguration ceremony of the association.

Daniel Tse Chi Wai, president of the association said that the main objective of this association is to function as a cultural bridge between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan by promoting educational, scientific, technological and artistic exchanges.

Xu Jialu said that the association was set up at the right time, in the right place and by the right people. He hoped it could be a platform creating new chances for cross-strait exchanges.

[SeeMacau]

Mariana Kou puts receiving an education high on her list of things to accomplish and she says getting her education in the United States is the most important thing she could do for herself. “ I’m originally from Macau which is a small city right next to Hong Kong and I decided to come to the United States because I believe that the U.S. has more resources for [getting] an education and that would give me more learning opportunities to get the best out of my undergraduate education,” she says. “I think education is actually very very important because you utilize your background for your career development and skills, but I think that it actually helps you and teaches you how to live your life like what you should do and it helps you to think about what you want to achieve in your life and how do you want to interact with people,” she says. [and] “Overall, what is just correct to do and like what is the right thing to do and it helps you to formulate your goals and your personal life.”

Mariana is a senior attending Notre Dame University. She tells us a little bit about her major. “I’m now a finance major and I am in the Mendoza College of Business. I am very interested in the major and I took a lot of different classes in finance and I have learned the different aspects of the financial markets,” she says. “With my degree, I want to get an analyst position and just start my career in the financial industry,” she adds. “ In the long term I think I will spend maybe ten years in the financial industry and afterwards I may start my own business, but I am not quite sure yet.”

Mariana says being involved in campus activities has been a good thing for her, but she really appreciates the university resourcefulness in helping international students adapt to living in the U-S. “I’m actually in some of the cultural clubs and I am the co-person of the Asia International Society and I think the university has done a very good job to apply the resources to help international students adapt to U.S. life, like providing all the information about how to get a social security number and how to get a job on campus to get use to the U.S. life and meet more people,” she says. “Also I think the university has done a really good job to help people to get a sense of community on campus and to build religious groups. They have a department on campus called ‘campus ministry’ and they organize a lot of retreats to help people get together.”

When it comes to cultural differences, Mariana says the lifestyles aren't that different from her hometown, but she believes that Americans are more of a diverse group and very accepting of people from other countries. “I think one of the big differences that I feel that Americans are more use to different cultures I would say and that they have more experiences to all kinds of different people,” she says. “Even the American companies they have different people from different cultures, different kinds of people from different races and it seems to me that Americans are more of a diverse group,” she adds. [and] “Actually I feel more comfortable coming to the U.S. because it is a diverse group of people and all the people aren’t from one race so I feel that it is very easy to adapt to a U.S. life and it is okay to be an international student and Americans welcome us and we can learn a lot of things from you. As for similarities I think the lifestyle is not that different from my hometown. We have all kinds of facilities and it seems that the life is pretty much the same. I don’t feel that it is very different as far as everyday life.”

After graduation, Mariana will stay in the United States where a job awaits here in New York. Mariana Kou is one of more than 500-thousand international students currently enrolled in U-S colleges and universities.

[SeeMacau]

The leading Margaux property, Château Palmer, is for the first time conducting a recorking of one of its old vintages away from the Château.

The recorking of 500 bottles of the renowned 1961 vintage, will take place some 8,000 miles away from Bordeaux, in Macau, on the south coast of China. The Lisboa Casino in Macau has one of the world's largest private stocks of the vintage, which they bought in 1997. Château Palmer decided the corks needed replacing, but as such a large number of bottles would be difficult to send back to the Château, it was decided to do the recorking in Macau.

The recorking will take the same form as that used by Australian producer Penfolds in their well-known Recorking Clinics, when bottles of Grange and other of their top wines are checked over, tested for condition, and topped up with similar wine. The recorked Penfolds wines are then given a certificate of authenticity which is signed by the winemaker and stuck on the back of the bottle.

While the Penfolds Clinic will only top up low level bottles with wine from the current vintage, Palmer will be topping up the 1961 bottles with wine from the same vintage.

1961 is widely regarded as a top Bordeaux vintage. Wine writer and auction expert Michael Broadbent describes it as "one of the greatest post-war vintages to date, and one of the best of the twentieth century." He adds: "The top 1961s became the gold dust of the wine world". Despite being a great year, it was a low yielding vintage, and the production of 1961 Château Palmer only amounted to 35,000 bottles. This is barely 30% of a normal vintage.

[SeeMacau]

Six immigration auto-gates, also known as e-channels, are now in operation at Macau Ferry Terminal to provide smooth and efficient traveller clearance.

Hong Kong permanent residents, aged 11 or above, holding smart identity cards can use the e-channels in the departure hall. They run from 10am to 6pm daily.

The Immigration Department said it will review the operating situation with a view to extending the opening hours.

If a person's thumb or finger is too dry or too moist, the scanner's ability to read the print will be affected, so a wet or dry tissue should be used to wipe it.