China releases British consulate worker

US probes link between vaping and lung disease as patient dies

HONG KONG: A British consulate employee detained in China has returned to Hong Kong, his family said yesterday, ending a two-week ordeal during which Beijing’s state media smeared him with lurid allegations.

Simon Cheng disappeared after visiting the neighbouring city of Shenzhen on Aug 8 and was placed in administrative detention by police, unable to contact his family or his British employers.

He was returning to Hong Kong on a high-speed train and sent messages to his girlfriend as he was about to go through customs, shortly before he was stopped by Chinese authorities.

In a statement posted on the Twitter-like Weibo, Shenzhen police said Cheng was “punished with administrative detention for 15 days... for violating the law of the People’s Republic of China on public safety management.”

Cheng’s relieved family announced his return yesterday.

“Simon has returned to Hong Kong,” his family said in a Facebook post, adding he would take “some time to rest and recover”.

Cheng was released yesterday as the term had expired, the police said, adding he had “confessed to the facts of his illegal activity”, but without saying what he was accused of.

The incident came as relations between Britain and China have become strained over what Beijing calls London’s interference” in pro-democracy protests that have wracked Hong Kong for three months.

Beijing has faced criticism previously for detaining foreign nationals during diplomatic spats, and for accusing dissidents or activists of sex crimes.— AFP WASHINGTON: A patient who had recently been vaping has died in the US after developing severe lung disease, officials said Friday, as authorities scrambled to find the cause behind almost 200 more potential cases.

“Yesterday we received a report of the death of an adult who had been hospitalized with severe unexplained respiratory illness after reported vaping,” Jennifer Layden, the chief medical officer in the Midwestern state of Illinois said.

She declined to provide the person’s gender, but said that the ages of the patients treated in the state had been between 17 and 38. As of Friday, there were 193 cases across 22 states of potential cases of severe lung illness associated with e-cigarette use since the end of June, according to figures released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The cause has not been determined but all had recently used e-cigarettes to inhale either vaporized nicotine or cannabis, and many of the products have been sent for lab testing.

“The severity of illness people are experiencing is alarming and we must get the word out that using e-cigarettes and vaping can be dangerous,” said Illinois health department director Dr Ngozi Ezike.

But Ileana Arias, acting deputy director on non-infectious diseases at the CDC, added that although the cases appeared similar, “it is unclear if these cases have a common cause, or if they are different diseases with similar presentations.”

No specific product has been identified or blamed for the illness in any of the cases.

E-cigarettes have been available in the US since 2006, and are sometimes used as an aid to quit smoking traditional tobacco products like cigarettes.

E-cigarette users don’t get exposed to the estimated 7,000 chemical constituents present in combustible cigarettes, and vaping is generally believed to be safer than smoking.

The liquids do, however, contain nicotine, which has been studied for decades and is known to be highly addictive, and a variety of other constituents classed as ‘potentially harmful’ according to a 2018 study compiled by the US National Academy of Sciences requested by Congress. — AFP