Remember how China's food safety minister got sentenced to death last month?

Well, his appeals just ran out and he was executed. That's swift justice. The NPR coverage includes a fun list of "problem" imports from China, which they say is continuing to grow.

As that's going on, Beijing is now admitting that it's not just food and drugs that are a problem, it's water, too. Up to 50 percent of the water coolers in that city might be bubbling out "fake" water - stuff that either comes from other companies' bottles, or just straight from the tap.

(Personally, I think the tap water isn't as dangerous as all that, but still - if you're traveling, use that hotel room kettle and boil regularly. Consider filling your own bottles if you're a nervous type or the kind of MacGyver who enjoys turning a stay in a five-star hotel into a DIY project. As does this humble typist.)

The plus side to all these scary stories is that they're out in the open now. I mean, the last time I was in Beijing, I bet all this was going on but nobody really knew about it.

On the other hand, if you're planning on going to Hunan any time soon, there are things happening you won't be able to miss. Things on the scale of biblical plagues. Numerous sources are reporting that as many as 2 billion mice have overrun Hunan province. Specifically, they're swarming over the area around Dongting Lake, which has flooded. Islands in the lake are now underwater, and the many, many field mice who lived there now have nowhere to go.

Some people are actually scooping them up with fishing nets (and, presumably, bopping them on the head).

The big problem is that they expect the mice to start tunneling into the flood control dikes around the Yangtze, making the flooding worse, which drowns more islands, which sets more mice afloat. And into the cropland around the lake.