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According to the monitoring data of Gamma Radiation recorded for the past 24 hours (15th May 10:01 till 16th May 10:00) by the Taipa Grande Station of the Macao Meteorological Bureau, the Gamma-ray absorbed dose rate per minute ranges between 0.1160 and 0.1291μGy/h (micro Gray / hour) which is far more below the warning level of 0.35μGy/h. The Macao Meteorological Bureau will continue to pay close attention to the radiation level in Macao. If any abnormalities being discovered, we will release related message to the public immediately and inform relevant government departments to adopt relative contingency measures.
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The Cultural Affairs Bureau would like to inform our esteemed public that, due to the current inclement weather conditions, the nightly performances of "Encounters: St. Paul's Ruins Audiovisual Mapping", featured in the 22nd Macao Arts Festival, scheduled for 8pm and 9pm on the 13th through the 22nd of May, outdoors at the Ruins of St. Paul's, will be cancelled in the event that it is raining at 6pm on the evening in question. We apologise for the inconvenience.
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To allow the graduating class of Heritage Management Programme to gain further international exposure to heritage management practices and situations, a fieldtrip to the Historic Town of Vigan, one of the four UNESCO World Heritage sites of the Philippines was organised by Institute for Tourism Studies. Thirty-one students of IFT's Heritage Management Programme and two faculty members took part in the fieldtrip from 10 to 16 April 2011. Established in 2005, the IFT Bachelor of Science in Heritage Management is a pioneer in the region in the delivery of heritage management focused training to future leaders and managers in the heritage field. According to UNESCO documents, Vigan was established in the 16th century by the Spanish colonial powers as a trading post and it is today "the best-preserved example of a planned Spanish colonial town in Asia". Vigan's architecture expresses the fusion of cultural elements from elsewhere in the Philippines, from China and from Europe, resulting in a culture and townscape that "have no parallel anywhere in East and South-East Asia". Macao and Vigan have many things in common: both have similar colonial past, were trading ports and are similar in scale. Moreover, both of them have urban cores that have been inscribed on the UNESCO's World Heritage List. The field study trip comprised of five full days of workshop and fieldwork. IFT students and faculty members were warmly welcomed and received by the University of Northern Philippines (UNP). Faculty members and students from the tourism and architecture programmes of UNP worked jointly with the IFT students and faculty members. For the five field study days, students alternated between indoor workshop discussion with their IFT and UNP teammates, local resource people and facilitators drawn from the local tourism council, Mayor's office, conservation council and their instructors, and independent fieldwork at their respective study sites. Some students revealed that the field study trip helped them develop deep understanding of the complex issues of World Heritage management in general and the management process of a World Heritage Town in particular. Moreover, being in a foreign country, the involvement of local students in the learning process and extended interactions with stakeholders helped the students learn how to deal with heritage issues in an unfamiliar place and culture, a situation often encountered by professionals working in the heritage management field.
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According to the monitoring data of Gamma Radiation recorded for the past 24 hours (12th May 16:01 till 13th May 16:00) by the Taipa Grande Station of the Macao Meteorological Bureau, the Gamma-ray absorbed dose rate per minute ranges between 0.1178 and 0.1335μGy/h (micro Gray / hour) which is far more below the warning level of 0.35μGy/h. The Macao Meteorological Bureau will continue to pay close attention to the radiation level in Macao. If any abnormalities being discovered, we will release related message to the public immediately and inform relevant government departments to adopt relative contingency measures.
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According to the monitoring data of Gamma Radiation recorded for the past 24 hours (12th May 10:01 till 13th May 10:00) by the Taipa Grande Station of the Macao Meteorological Bureau, the Gamma-ray absorbed dose rate per minute ranges between 0.1169 and 0.1283μGy/h (micro Gray / hour) which is far more below the warning level of 0.35μGy/h. The Macao Meteorological Bureau will continue to pay close attention to the radiation level in Macao. If any abnormalities being discovered, we will release related message to the public immediately and inform relevant government departments to adopt relative contingency measures.
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Information from the Statistics and Census Service indicated that visitor arrivals in package tours decreased by 2.3% year-on-year to 498,972 in March 2011. Visitors from Mainland China (364,333); Taiwan, China (26,760); and the Republic of Korea (19,912) increased by 2.5%, 6.1% and 40.5% respectively. However, decrease was observed in the visitors coming from Japan (19,452), Hong Kong (19,125), Thailand (10,072) and Malaysia (9,305). In the first quarter of 2011, visitor arrivals in package tours decreased by 1.8% year-on-year to 1,407,876. In March 2011, Macao residents travelling outbound in package tours decreased by 13.3% year-on-year to 16,042, attributable to the notable decrease in residents travelled in package tour to Japan (-83.1%). The most popular tour itineraries were Mainland China (82.5% of total); Thailand (3.8%); and Taiwan, China (3.8%). In the first quarter of 2011, outbound residents in package tours increased by 6.7% year-on-year to 54,998. Meanwhile, outbound residents travelling under own arrangements using services of travel agencies increased by 18.9% year-on-year to 41,371; the main destinations were Mainland China (41.1% of total); Hong Kong (20.3%); Taiwan, China (19.8%); and Thailand (7.2%). In the first quarter of 2011, outbound residents travelling under such arrangements increased by 25.6% year-on-year to 126,540. At the end of March 2011, total number of available guest rooms of hotels and guest-houses increased by 981 (+5.1%) year-on-year to 20,129 rooms, with that of 5-star hotels (12,035) accounting for 59.8% of the total. Hotels and guest-houses received 677,869 guests in March 2011, up by 6.0% year-on-year, with the majority coming from Mainland China (55.1% of total) and Hong Kong (18.0%). The average length of stay of guests decreased by 0.01 night to 1.5 nights. The average occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses was 81.4%, up by 3.5 percentage points year-on-year; average occupancy rate of hotels stood at 82.0%, with 4-star hotels leading at 88.1% and the average for 5-star hotels reached 79.4%. Hotel guests increased by 1.9% year-on-year to 1,918,955 in the first quarter of 2011; average occupancy rate of hotels and guest-houses stood at 81.0%, up by 1.9 percentage point compared with 79.1% from a year earlier. In the first quarter of 2011, visitor-guests of hotels and guest-houses accounted for 61.5% of the total number of tourists (overnight visitors), higher than 60.6% in the same period of 2010.
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According to the monitoring data of Gamma Radiation recorded for the past 24 hours (11th May 16:01 till 12th May 16:00) by the Taipa Grande Station of the Macao Meteorological Bureau, the Gamma-ray absorbed dose rate per minute ranges between 0.1169 and 0.1283μGy/h (micro Gray / hour) which is far more below the warning level of 0.35μGy/h. The Macao Meteorological Bureau will continue to pay close attention to the radiation level in Macao. If any abnormalities being discovered, we will release related message to the public immediately and inform relevant government departments to adopt relative contingency measures.
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In this year's Macao Arts Festival (MAF), the Ruins of St. Paul's are no longer a mere performance stage, but emerge as the main attraction! Imbued with local, historical and cultural panache, the all-new programme Encounters: Audiovisual Mapping of the Ruins of St. Paul's will premiere at the 22nd Macao Arts Festival organised by the Cultural Affairs Bureau, and run from 13th to 22nd May. The programme - produced by Spain's Telenoika.Net (Audiovisual Open Creative Community) using advanced projection technology - seeks to ignite audience interest in the architectural beauty of the Ruins of St. Paul's, bringing a sense of visual enjoyment and pleasure to all spectators. For ten consecutive nights in May, the World Heritage Ruins of St. Paul's in Macao will be transformed into a digital drawing paper. In conjunction with originally composed music, sophisticated creative technology is used to create and display video images on the building façade.The projected content employs cinematography and storytelling techniques. The storytelling is divided into sequences of various motifs, which emerge from a script based on the architectural features and touching stories inherent in this World Heritage site.
Encounters is a programme tailor-made for the Ruins of St. Paul's by Spain's Telenoika.Net, a video production group founded in 2000 by a group of artists with a keen interest in audiovisual creativity. Over the past ten years, Telenokia has introduced various innovative audiovisual technologies to audiences worldwide, and earned an impressive reputation in the process. It takes about three months of creative development before the final performance can be presented to audiences. During the creative process, intricate measurements of the building contours are taken with the help of existing architectural plans and high-resolution images. The resulting 2D and 3D models are then projected onto the façade itself. After repeated technical tests, original music is added to the projected images. The entire process demands high precision technology and boundless creativity from the team.
Encounters: Audiovisual Mapping of the Ruins of St. Paul's will be staged at the Ruins of St. Paul's from 8:00pm and 9:00pm from 13th to 22nd May, with the duration of each performance approximately lasting 20 minutes. The general public is invited to appreciate this highly innovative and artistic performance. For further information about the programmes of the 22nd MAF, please contact the Cultural Affairs Bureau on (853) 8399 6699 or visit www.icm.gov.mo/fam.
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According to the monitoring data of Gamma Radiation recorded for the past 24 hours (11th May 10:01 till 12th May 10:00) by the Taipa Grande Station of the Macao Meteorological Bureau, the Gamma-ray absorbed dose rate per minute ranges between 0.1160 and 0.1291μGy/h (micro Gray / hour) which is far more below the warning level of 0.35μGy/h. The Macao Meteorological Bureau will continue to pay close attention to the radiation level in Macao. If any abnormalities being discovered, we will release related message to the public immediately and inform relevant government departments to adopt relative contingency measures.
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The Asia Pacific Regional Review Group (RRG) Face-to-Face Meeting under the International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG) of Financial Action Task Force (FATF) takes place in Macao SAR, from 11 to 13 May 2011. Delegates from 10 countries and reviewers from 9 jurisdictions and international bodies attend the meeting. Macao SAR Government collaborates with India as the co-chairs of RRG in Asia-Pacific region. The Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APG) is an autonomous and collaborative international organization founded in 1997 consisting of 40 members (including Macao SAR) and a number of international and regional observers. APG members and observers are committed to the effective implementation and enforcement of internationally accepted standards against money laundering and the financing of terrorism, in particular the Forty Recommendations and Nine Special Recommendations on Terrorist Financing of the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF), which is the global standard-setting body for anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing. As a means of focusing on threats to the financial system, the FATF has established a process for identifying high-risk or non-cooperative countries and jurisdictions and recommending specific action through its International Cooperation Review Group (ICRG). In response to the G20 Leaders' request in April 2009, international organizations and standard setting bodies are urged to take more stringent follow-up actions on those jurisdictions failing to take adequate progress to address the deficiencies identified in the mutual evaluation process. In response to this, the FATF and its associate members including APG have revised their follow-up procedure and Regional Review Groups are formed under the ICRG to carry out the review process and monitor the progress of the actions taken by the jurisdictions. Since its acceptance as APG member in 2001 the Macao SAR Government has been actively participating in the international efforts against money laundering and terrorist financing, and such participation has brought great benefits to its own AML/CFT work. In this RRG Face-to-Face meeting, the Macao SAR Government collaborates again with experts from different international bodies and regions. Experience of countries being reviewed is also a valuable reference to others who take part in this occasion, including Macao SAR. On behalf of the Macao SAR Government, the Financial Intelligence Office (GIF) is the hosting agency of this RRG Meeting. Apart from its functions of collecting and analyzing suspicious transaction information, GIF is the coordinator of the Anti-money laundering Working Group whose members also include Independent Committee for the Exercise of Disciplinary Power over Solicitors, Public Prosecution Office, Commission Against Corruption, Unitary Police Service, Macao Customs Service, Legal Affairs Bureau, Law Reform and International Law Bureau, Economic Services Bureau, Financial Services Bureau, Gaming Inspection and Coordination Bureau, Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute, Monetary Authority of Macao and Judiciary Police. Since its establishment in 2002, the Interdepartmental AML Working Group has been facilitating coordination, cooperation, and information exchange among government agencies in Macao SAR that tasked with implementing AML/CFT measures. It has also been playing a major role in following up the implementation and recommendations given in the APG/OGBS Joint Mutual Evaluation Report (MER). Another contribution of the Working Group is in the formulation of the AML/CFT laws of Macao SAR and their further revision. Sub-working groups have also been formed for review and study purpose of money laundering risks in specific sectors. Intra-governmental cooperation of AML efforts and coordination of training among government agencies for enhancement of AML/CFT knowledge are also the major roles of the Working Group.
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