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For administrative convenience and with immediate effect, future requests for hotel accommodation for visitors to the Annual Meetings should be addressed to ICC direct. ICC can be reached on (852) 2559 9973 (telephone) or (852) 2547 9528 (fax).

For official delegates, their hotel accommodation will be handled by the Joint Secretariat of the World Bank and IMF based in Washington DC.

The Annual Meetings will be held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and its new extension in mid-September 1997.

End

Aeronautical search and rescue exercise to be held tomorrow

The annual search and rescue exercise organised by Civil Aviation Department (CAD) Hong Kong will be held consecutively for three days starting tomorrow (Tuesday).

The exercise is to provide training and familiarisation in search and rescue techniques for staff of the Civil Aviation Department and other rescue units.

This year's exercise will consist of a search and rescue symposium by the various participating units, a short range rescue demonstration in the sea area near the Ninepins group of islands and a long range exercise in the South China Sea.

The short-range rescue demonstration will comprise dropping of a rescue kit which contains an inflatable life raft and jumping of a paramedic personnel from a C130 aircraft, winching of simulated survivors from the deck of a ship as well as from a life raft.

A spokesman for CAD responsible for organising and co-ordinating the exercise said today (Monday) that the main event would be held on Wednesday (December 4).

The exercise is aimed at testing the alerting, co-ordination and communication facilities of various participants. It will be activated tomorrow evening simulating an aircraft in distress about 130 kilometres south of Hong Kong.

Search aircraft, helicopters and ships will be dispatched to the area the next morning to search and locate the targets in the South China Sea.