News You Might Have Missed: Flood Prevention, Buy Clean Air and a Bit More Olympics

Now that the potholes and washed-out roads from July's storm are getting filled authorities are working on preventing another series of flash flooding we saw a month ago. Some other things that have caught our attention recently include puffing on canned air, a Chinese How I Met Your Mother/Friends/lots of other American sitcoms, another few hits to calm out Olympic addiction and a smartphone launch to watch - and it's not Apple.

In response to the storm flooding, in July that left 79 dead, authorities are planning to build 20 underground flood pools at low-lying traffic areas by next summer. No specific details of where these will be have been released but hopefully they'll correspond to the more dangerous areas on these flood maps.

One of the most common complaints about Beijing is the air pollution and until now the only reprieves have been wearing masks or shelling out for pricey air filters. Starting in September, we’ll have the option of buying canned fresh air for 4-5 kuai. We’ll have more on this once the airy product hits the shelves next month.

A popular Chinese TV series is drawing the ire of fans for stealing its content from Western sitcoms. Ipartment, a comedy centered around the interaction between the residents of two neighboring apartments, is getting called out online for ripping off plot lines and dialogue from Friends, Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother and The IT Crowd.

A movie director is in trouble with a neighbor over some bloody arms and heads. Pang ZeMuFeng placed gory movie props on a shelf in the line of sight of his neighbor who sued and got the court to issue an order for the removal of the fake body parts.

The Olympics are over but what’s a few more link to wean ourselves off the controversy and Weibo chatter.

• Why didn’t China bag as many medals as expected? Apparently, because American chests and heads bestow an insuperable advantage.
• Scary photos of synchronized swimmers are all over Weibo. Some users have pointed out the resemblance between some of the water balelerinas and famous anime villian Onepiece.
• A CCTV reporter forgot to turn off her mike during the men's 10m diving and was unknowingly recorded for 2-3 minutes providing inappropriate comments, including this gem about Tom Dailey: “He’s abnormal. Maybe because he only has one parent.”
• Companies are profiting from some athletes big wins and they didn’t have to sign any fat checks. Savvy businesses registered several of the Olympians as brands long before the London Games. Liu Xiang’s name has been registered for 48 times, Lin Dan’s name was registered for selling pig food in 1997 and Ye Shiwen is now an underwear brand.

Are you one in 60 million? According to industry figures, from June 2011 to June 2012, 60 million shoppers were cheated out of 30 billion kuai by Chinese online shopping scams. Most were the result of fake websites and non-refundable purchases (whether anything was received is unclear). Needless to say, this is just another area you need to watch out for, in addition to ongoing worries over fake cabs, fake money and fake food.

Finally, some good news on the tech front. Xiaomi, China's Apple, has just announcement their new second-generation phone will be going on sale in October, with competitive features to the iPhone 4S but at less than half the price. Click through to the link for all additional specs.

Photos: Hexun.com, cpartment.com, weibo.com