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When I saw the first episode of BBC America's Orphan Black last year, I was convinced it was a crappy Canadian police drama.

That's because the set-up seemed like the oddest sort of crime procedural nonsense. A street urchin-style grifter sees a middle class woman who looks just like her leap in front of a commuter train, nabs her purse and climbs into her life – only to find her doppelganger is a troubled police officer with problems of her own.

Orphan Black fans know that was only the tip of the tale; grifter Sarah Manning learned she was one of more than a half dozen clones spread across the world. And someone was killing them off, even as others were suffering from a mysterious health breakdown which seemed connected to their unique heritage.

The show returns Saturday for its second season in fine form, with star Tatiana Maslany continuing her unerring ability to inhabit several different characters – many of them onscreen at the same time – and make you believe each one is separate and distinct.

Maslany's sizable achievements aside, however, I'm convinced another big reason Orphan Black stands as one of the best new series of last year is because it is really several different kinds of shows in one.

On the surface, it's a science fiction story about the dangers of science advancing ahead of legality and morality. As the second season opens, the clone we know best, British-raised Sarah Manning, has seen her daughter and foster mother disappear, possibly taken by the shadowy medical corporation that's monitoring the clones.

Last season, we learned one clone had been brainwashed into killing the others by a religious zealot. On Saturday, we will see that he is not alone; other people of faith have joined the quest to capture the clones, raising compelling questions about where God's laws end and man's ambition begins.

There's also a thriller element to all this, as several of the clones have banded together in hopes of discovering how they came to be and why the CIA-like Dyad Institute is so interested in monitoring and controlling them. The clone who is a buttoned-down housewife, Alison Hendrix, is the go-to for comedy relief, stuck performing in a god-awful community theater musical while enduring rejection from her soccer-mom buddies for a meltdown last year.

And don't forget the bits of cop drama: Sarah originally took the identity of police office Beth Childs. Now Beth's partner Art Bell has joined forces with Sarah to track the conspiracy, risking his own career in the process. A double murder in a diner – which Sarah happened to witness – only draws more police attention in Saturday's show.

The new episode is a rollicking return to form for the series, featuring Sarah confronting the Dyad Institute itself to find her missing child and foster mom. Maslany's command of her work is so complete in this second season, you barely notice when the Canadian actress plays against herself in scenes featuring two and three clones interacting at once. It's fascinating to see how they film it all.

TV insiders credit social media for much of Orphan Black's success, as high profile fans such as Kevin Bacon, Patton Oswalt, Scandal co-star Josh Molina and Sarah Silverman tweeted love for the show, sometimes using the hashtag #CloneClub.

But I'll always value how Orphan Black's ability to shift and combine genres — sometimes in the same scene — kept me hooked through the first season while supercharging the second.

Unbridled industrialization with almost no environmental regulation has resulted in the toxic contamination of one-fifth of China's farmland, the Communist Party has acknowledged for the first time.

The report, issued by the ministries of Environmental Protection and Land Resources, says 19.4 percent of the country's soil is polluted with toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, nickel and arsenic. It was based on a soil survey of more than 2.4 million square miles of land across China, spanning a period from April 2005 until December. It excluded special administrative regions Hong Kong and Macau.

In a dire assessment, the report says: "The overall condition of the Chinese soil allows no optimism."

The Associated Press writes that the report was "previously deemed so sensitive [that] it was classified as a state secret." The official Xinhua news agency blames "Irrigation by polluted water, the improper use of fertilizers and pesticides and the development of livestock breeding cause pollution to farming land."

Almost 70 percent of the samples taken for the survey turned out to be "lightly polluted," i.e., twice the national standard for pollutants. About 7 percent were found to be "heavily polluted" with levels more than five times the national standard, according to The Guardian.

Most of the contaminated farm land is on the highly developed and industrialized east coast, but heavy metal pollution was especially bad in the country's southwest, according to the Guardian.

The newspaper says:

"In January, an agriculture official admitted that millions of hectares of farmland could be withdrawn from production because of severe pollution by heavy metals. And last December the vice minister of land and resources estimated that 3.3 million hectares of land is polluted, mostly in gain producing regions."

At least 12 Sherpa guides died Friday on Nepal's side of Mount Everest when an avalanche buried them on the world's tallest mountain.

The death toll may go higher: The Himalayan Times reports that while 12 bodies have been recovered, an additional body "has been sighted buried in the snow," and that as the day ended another five Sherpas were still missing. CNN quotes a Nepalese Tourism Ministry official as saying at least four Sherpas were still unaccounted for. We will watch for updates.

Regardless of the final toll, it's the single deadliest day ever on Everest — surpassing the eight deaths in May 1996 when a storm struck. That tragedy was the basis for the best-selling book Into Thin Air.

According to Reuters, the avalanche "hit the most popular route to the mountain's peak ... between base camp and camp 1." CNN says the site of the disaster is about 20,000 feet above sea level. Everest's peak is an estimated 29,035 feet above sea level.

This is the climbing season on Everest, which more than 4,000 people have successfully climbed. About 250 have died on the mountain that borders Nepal and Tibet, Reuters notes. The Sherpas who were killed Friday and some climbers had in recent days been setting ropes, preparing camps and acclimating to the altitude, CNN reports.

While dangerous, Everest is not the world's "deadliest" mountain, according to various analyses. As The Daily Beast has noted, Nepal's Annapurna has a "death rate" of nearly 38 percent — or, as The Telegraph has put it, Annapurna has "the highest fatality-to-summit ratio of any mountain over 8,000 meters [26,247 feet]." While about 160 people have reached the top of Annapurna and returned, at least 60 have died trying.

Everest's death rate stands at about 6 percent. Other mountains with higher death rates than Everest, according to The Daily Beast's calculations, include:

— K2, which straddles China and Pakistan (23 percent)

— Nanga Parbat, in Pakistan (22 percent).

— Kangchenjunga, on the border of India and Nepal (19 percent).

Next week, President Obama is going to Asia, where he'll talk up a proposed deal to increase U.S. trade with that region.

If he succeeds, he could open up huge new markets for U.S. farmers and manufactures, strengthen U.S. influence in Asia and set a path to greater prosperity.

At least, that's what the White House says.

Critics say that cheery outlook is all wrong. They believe the Trans-Pacific Partnership would lead to environmental harm, more expensive prescription drugs and a less open Internet. Worst of all, the deal would have a "devastating impact" on U.S. jobs, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., says.

Everyone agrees on this: The TPP would be a big deal.

Such a trade pact would pull together the United States, Japan, Australia and nine other countries whose collective gross domestic product accounts for 40 percent of all the goods and services produced in the world. The deal would influence geopolitics, the economy and the future of global trade.

The Government Shutdown

Obama's Absence At Asia Summit Seen Hurting U.S. Trade