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Chinese official did not smoke before Muslim leaders: demoted

Beijing: In an unusual move, China has demoted a ruling Communist party official in the volatile Uygur Muslim majority Xinjiang province for not “daring” to smoke in front of local religious leaders, regarding it as a sign of timidity in fighting against extremism.

Jelil Matniyaz, the party chief of a village in Hotan, Xinjiang was demoted from “senior staff member” to “staff member” on March 25 for his “infirm political stands and for being afraid to smoke in front of religious figures,” a notice posted on the Hotan Daily’s social media WeChat account said. “Smoking is a personal choice, and religious and ordinary people should respect each other, but his behaviour of ‘not daring’ to smoke conforms to extreme religious thought in Xinjiang,” the Global Times quoted a Hotan official as saying. “As a party chief, he should lead the fight against extreme religious thought, otherwise, he would fail to confront the threat of extreme regional forces,” the official said.

“According to local religion customs, smoking is not allowed in front of older or religious people,” Turgunjun Tursun, a professor with the Zhejiang Normal University, said. However, some religious people force ordinary citizens also to comply with the requirements, a senior official who had been working in Xinjiang for years, told the paper.

The official’s demotion is an isolated case, Tursun said, adding that the local government should balance de-extremist behaviour and local customs in the crackdown on extremism. The move to demote the official comes as authorities intensified their efforts to curb religious extremism. Early this month, the province where the Chinese security forces are battling recurring attacks by Uygur militants enacted a new law banning a wide range of acts, including wearing veils or growing “abnormal” beards. In Xinjiang, the Turkic speaking Uygurs are restive for several years over increasing settlements of Han population from other provinces. China blames separatist East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM), an Al-Qaeda affiliated group for the spate of violent attacks in the province. A number of its members reported to have joined the Islamic State militant group to fight in Syria. China believes that they would return to carry out attacks in the country.

Xinjiang issued a regional anti-extremism regulation in March which bans supporting extremism and curtailing religious freedom and activities. The anti-extremism campaign also requires officials to inform local residents about some customs that are used by religious extremists, Tursun said.

Stealing toilet paper! Can be caught.

BEIJING: Public toilets in Chinese capital have started using facial recognition technology to stop toilet paper theft after it became rampant.

At the Temple of Heaven, one of the capital's busiest tourist sites and a former hotbed of toilet paper kleptomania, a user in need of tissue paper must stand in front of a wall-mounted machine with a high definition camera, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported. The device's software remembers recent faces, and if the same person reappears within a certain period, it refuses to activate the automatic roller.

For years, many residents have been taking reams of paper from public toilets for use at home. Such behaviour has placed a considerable financial burden on public toilet management.

China to lose 200 million to smoking

Beijing: Smoking-related diseases will claim 200 million lives in China this century and plunge tens of millions into poverty, a report said.

China is the world’s largest producer and consumer of tobacco, and the industry provides the government with colossal sums. In 2015, it recorded 1.1 trillion yuan (USD 160 billion) in profits, up 20 per cent year-on-year.

But a report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) said on Friday that the Asian giant will suffer an economic toll if it does not urgently reduce its smoking population. The paper – called “The Bill China Cannot Afford” – estimated that the total annual economic cost of tobacco use in the country in 2014 was 350 billion yuan, up tenfold from 2000.

“If nothing is done to reduce [the death rate] and introduce more progressive policies, the consequences could be devastating not just for the health of people across the country, but also for China’s economy as a whole,” WHO China representative Bernhard Schwartlander said in a statement.

The calculation includes both the direct costs of treating tobacco-related illness and the indirect costs such as lost work productivity. “The rapid increase in costs associated with tobacco use in China is unsustainable,” Schwartlander added.

Twenty-eight per cent of all adults and 50 per cent of men in China are estimated to smoke regularly. Rural-to-urban migrants are more likely to be smokers, the report said, adding that they risk descending into poverty when smoking-related medical costs become too great – a reality at odds with the government goal of eradicating poverty nationwide by 2020.

The organisations recommended a smoke-free policy across the country akin to laws in Beijing and Shanghai, where smoking is banned in most public places.

Who would walk the family dog! Father kills son

Washington: A man shot and killed his 22-year-old son in the US after an argument between the two over who would walk the family dog escalated into a shootout. Police responded to a call of a person shot at a home in Chicago’s Burnside neighborhood.

There they found two men, aged 43 and 22, who had shot each other after a “verbal altercation,” authorities were quoted as saying by the Chicago Sun-Times. Chicago Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi tweeted that the fight between the father and son was over “who was going to walk the dog” and both men opened fire. They sustained multiple gunshot wounds and were taken to Advocate Christ Medical Center, where the 22-year-old man was pronounced dead. The father was listed in critical condition, authorities said.