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These facts might not be as fun as the NCAA Tournament Fun Facts the Chief shared on Tuesday, but I'm sure they'll excite everyone planning on attending the upcoming Olympics in Beijing:

Reducing Beijing's rats, flies, mosquitoes and cockroaches has been placed "at the top of the agenda" by the city's pest-control experts to ensure no outbreaks during the Olympic Games state media reported on Thursday.  "Since 2005, the Beijing Loving-Motherland Sanitation Movement Committee has called on sanitation workers and Beijing residents to kill pests and improve hygiene," Zeng [Xiaotong, a disease control official under China's Ministry of Health] said.

The Loving-Motherland Sanitation Committee sounds like a nice company for which to work, doesn't it? I bet they have a catchy commercial jingle.

Zeng said Beijing's major mosquito species was the same kind that caused a West Nile Virus outbreak that infected thousands of people and killed hundreds in the United States in 1999.

Great, now China is even stealing our disease production. Doesn't anybody get infected American anymore? -KD