Saying he just wants to help her prepare to achieve her dream of someday swimming across the English Channel, a father tied his daughter's hands and feet and watched her swim in a chilly southern China river for three hours Tuesday.

In an interview, Huang Daosheng said her daughter, Huang Li, 10, swam more than a mile in the Xiang River on Tuesday, traveling with the current.

A Quebec court sentenced Olympic biathlete Myriam Bedard's boyfriend to six months in jail on Friday. Nima Mazhari was sentenced after being convicted of possession of stolen property and art theft for stealing 20 paintings valued at $100,000 from elderly Montreal artist Ghitta Caiserman-Roth.

Mazhari previously shared an art studio with Caiserman-Roth, but prosecutors claimed Mazhari stole the well-known artist's paintings after the relationship went bad and she canceled the lease on the studio.

In the anticipation of the 2008 Olympic Games, authorities in Beijing have devoted themselves to new efforts to improve citizens' manners and upgrade the city's image. According to the state press reports, the efforts have proved fruitful so far, however, the city still has a long way to go before perfection.

According to a study by the People's University of China, the incidents of littering, spitting, flaunting traffic rules and queue-jumping have all started to decline since 2005, the Xinhua news agency reports.

A Chinese man is suing the Beijing trade bureau for denying him a permit to sell bags of "World Cup air." The man had a plan to sell air from the World Cup and let soccer fans breathe in the air while watching the game.

Li Jie, an entrepreneur, also had plans to sell "2008 Olympic Air." The price would have been about 50 yuan or $6.30. The Chaoyang Industry and Commerce Bureau rejected his application, saying air from special places was not classified as "an industrial category."

Experience Works, an organization offering training and employment services for the elderly, has named a 104-year-old as America's oldest worker. Waldo McBurney of Quinter, Kansas, has been honored by the group while other elderly peers of his, have already spent decades in retirement.

McBurney has no plans for retirement soon. He graduated from the then Kansas State Agricultural College, which is currently known as Kansas State University in 1927. He worked in agriculture for twenty-five years, before he started working as a beekeeper.