Briefs | Over 1.2 million trips recorded during CNY

During the first three days of the Chinese New Year holiday, 1.21 million people passed through the city’s various border gates, according to figures provided by the Public Security Police Force (PSP). On last Friday and Saturday, 770,000 border crossings were registered. PSP expected a peak in the number of tourist arrivals on Sunday and today. Yesterday until 5 p.m., 197,000 arrivals were recorded. PSP put into place human traffic control measures at several of the city’s most visited spots, including the Ruins of St. Paul and the Avenida de Almeida Ribeiro.

UM team places 2nd in math contest

A team of postgraduate students from the University of Macau (UM) Faculty of Science and Technology was awarded second prize at the 13th National Postgraduate Mathematic Contest in Modelling, according to a statement from UM. The team was formed by PhD student Guo Li and masters students Wu Yinwen and Kong Lingning. Led by assistant professor Chen Long from the Department of Computer and Information Science, the team chose the “genome-wide association study” in the contest. “By applying the sparse linear model, the team designed a mathematical method to find disease-related genes in the human DNA and achieved good results in the analysis of test data,” UM said in its statement. The contest attracted nearly 9,000 teams from universities in China, UM added.

Seven motorbikes burn during fire accident

Yesterday in the early morning around 4 a.m., a fire took place outside Nam Sun Garden Building, at Estrada Governador Albano de Oliveira in Taipa, completely burning seven motorbikes. Another six were partially burnt as the fire spread to two nearby shops. No injuries have been reported. The Fire Service Bureau believes that the cause of the fire is ambiguous and has forwarded the case to the Judiciary Police. Last month, more than 80 motorbikes and several bicycles were damaged by fire. A local man was arrested for causing the accident by carelessly throwing a lit cigarette.

Counterfeit currency scheme uncovered

The Judiciary Police (PJ) has arrested a man who allegedly traded around 100 counterfeit USD banknotes. TDM reported that the man did not act alone and was part of a counterfeit currency scheme. “The fake banknotes have vague features. The words USD are visible clearly in the real banknotes. Subject to UV lighting, the security line on the real banknotes shows neon reaction. That isn’t visible with the fraudulent notes. The watermark on the fake banknotes appears even without being subject to UV lighting. It proves that it was added afterwards,” a PJ spokesperson said.