Briefs | Consumer Council reviews biscuit labels

The latest issue of Consumer Report features a comparison report on the nutrition facts of biscuits, with analysis into samples that contained high contents of fat, sugar and sodium. The current report compares a total of 84 samples of eight kinds of biscuits to check their contents. According to the Consumer Council, the “low sugar, low fat, low sodium and high fiber” is the most popular diet today in Macau. However, the current comparison shows that most of the biscuit samples do not meet the “3 Low 1 High” requirements. It advises consumers to refer to the recommended daily intake of nutrients as indicated by the World Health Organization.

Consumer prices mostly unchanged in August

The Composite Consumer Price Index for August 2020 was mostly unchanged from a year earlier at 102.21, according to the latest data released by the Statistics and Census Service (DSEC). Among the various sections of goods and services, the price indexes of education and health went up by 5.15% and 3.72% year-on-year respectively, whereas the index of recreation and culture fell markedly by 12.10% and the index of communication dropped 11.28%. For the 12 months ended August 2020, the average Composite CPI rose by 1.96% from the previous period (September 2018 to August 2019), with notable growth in education, health, and food and non-alcoholic beverages. The Composite CPI reflects the impact of price changes on the general households in Macau and is a key indicator of inflation.

MPI translation course for ‘practical interpretation’ concludes

The International Portuguese Training Centre for Conference Interpreting of the Macao Polytechnic Institute (MPI) cooperated with the Directorate General for Interpretation of the European Commission (DG-SCIC) to organize an interpretation training course from August 25 to September 4. According to a statement from MPI, this training course focused on “practical interpretation,” allowing students to make improvements by understanding the difficulties encountered in actual live interpretation. In each round of the Chinese-to-Portuguese and Portuguese-to-Chinese interpreting exercises, the instructors provided feedback on the students’ performance. MPI described this as “a valuable and beneficial training opportunity for all participants.” The MPI Training Centre officially opened on December 5, 2019. It aims to train Portuguese teachers for Macau, the Chinese mainland and the rest of Asia, and improve the level of interpretation education.