After a TV report alleging that a Chinese food supplier used meat that had fallen onto the factory floor and mixed expired goods in with the new stuff, McDonald's and fast-food conglomerate Yum Brands have vowed to cease ties with the company. Now, they promise, all the steaming trash they serve you will be totally fresh.

A giant, 59-foot rubber duck made by Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman, was happily floating on the Nanming River in China's Guizhou Province, when it went missing on Wednesday night after days of heavy rain, local media reports say. The duck weighs 1 ton.

Chinese state media are reporting that a bus transporting kindergarteners home crashed into a pond in the Hunan province, leaving eight children and three adults dead. The Xinhua News Agency is reporting that an investigation has been launched and that the bus was carrying 11 when it could only seat seven.

After a recent security crackdown in Xinjiang, a region in the northwest of China, Chinese authorities are imposing a ban on Ramadan fasting for students, government officials, and civil servants, claiming that the ban is aimed at protecting people's "wellbeing."

Police in Hong Kong arrested 196 protesters at a sit-in following a rally staged by hundreds of thousands in protest of the Chinese government. Organizers have said that 510,000 people marched in the annual demonstration to mark the day the British colony was returned to China. Protests have become increasingly vocal in Hong Kong as Beijing attempts to reaffirm sovereignty over the largely autonomous city-state.

From Bloomberg today: "About 600,000 Chinese a year die from working too hard, according to the China Youth Daily. China Radio International in April reported a toll of 1,600 every day." What?? Chinese readers, please weigh in below on the veracity of this, if you are still alive.

Participants in the Chinese festival for the summer solstice in Yulin decided to schedule their annual events a week early after taking heat from activists about the ritual of eating dogs. It is not illegal to eat dogs in China, but with changing times and more Chinese citizens owning pets, the centuries-old tradition has received pushback.

Two people are dead and three others were injured after a woman dropped her mobile phone into a pit toilet in China's Henan Province. The woman's husband climbed into the cesspit to retrieve the lost device, but fainted from the stench, initiating a series of rescue attempts that ended in tragedy.

On June 1, this past Sunday, police came to the Beijing home of the artist Guo Jian—an Australian citizen, living in Beijing with an Australian passport—and took him away. Two days before, the Financial Times had published an interview with Guo. In it, he talked about how he'd privately made an installation of a diorama of Tian'anmen Square, buried in a layer of ground pork, till the meat had rotted. Guo went on to tell the reporter about his own experience at Tianan'men in 1989: a hunger strike, tear gas, bullets, blood, "the emergency room packed with bodies."

Police try to stop a man throwing "ghost money" into Hong Kong's Chinese liaison office on Tuesday to mark the 25th anniversary of China's June 4 crackdown on Tiananmen Square. The banners read, "Stop one-party rule in China," "Memorial," and "Demand accountability for the massacre." Image via Kin Cheung/AP.

A Chinese father is reportedly temporarily stuck in South Korea because his four-year-old son drew him an adorable picture—all over his passport. UPDATE 11:05 am: As Kotaku points out, there is evidence that this is probably a hoax.

Amazing video has emerged of a man catching a baby who fell from a second-floor apartment window during a recent thunderstorm in China.

More good news for JPMorgan Chase, the investment bank which has paid $30 billion in fines in the last two years: the firm's ex-head of investment banking in China was recently arrested in Hong Kong by an anti-corruption agency in an investigation believed to be related to the bank's possibly-illegal nepotistic hiring practices.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is expected to announce this morning in Washington that the Justice Department will file charges against Chinese government officials for allegedly hacking into American companies for trade secrets.

After getting a summer haircut, Jin Dan the Pomeranian saw himself in the mirror and immediately started walking on his hind legs. He wouldn't come down for two days, just leaning on the wall when he got tired.

Underwater travel is the next frontier of international transportation — if you are the kind of futurist who would believe a report made by a state-run Chinese news outlet. The Washington Post, citing this Bejing Times story, reports that the train of our nautical dreams is (maybe) happening:

Security footage from a shop in Huainan, China shows a man picking up a 12-month-old baby and flinging it into the air in the midst of what appears to have been a fight with the shopkeeper.

In 2012, a New York woman shopping for shoes found a disturbing note in her Saks Fifth Avenue bag. Someone claiming to be a worker imprisoned in a Chinese factory told a story of 13-hour days and being treated "like slaves," pleading for "HELP HELP HELP." Now the man behind that letter has been found.

After a minor crime spree in the States, eternal teen Justin Drew Bieber is trying to stay out of trouble these days. Yesterday, he visited a shrine in Tokyo, a safe place where nothing could go wrong. Except inflaming decades-old tensions between China and Japan.

With a handful of countries still searching the Indian Ocean for missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, there is bound to be at least some element of, well, too many boats in the ocean. According to a New York Times report, the one country annoying the others is China.