Now this one’s a strange story …

Little 10 year old Huang Li was watched by her father as she saw in the chilly southern China river, Xiang River, for three hours on October 2nd with her hands and feet bound! Her father believes the task will help his daughter achieve her dream of swimming across the English channel.

Huang Li managed to swim more than a mile in the river in early October. She traveled with the current as she swam moving like a dolphin through the water.

“Her swimming skills are perfect and she insisted on doing this,” Huang Daosheng said in a telephone interview. The girl, who lives in the city of Zhangjiajie in Hunan province, got the idea after seeing something similar on a local television program, he said.

With the Beijing Olympics less than a year away, sports is grabbing greater attention in an already sports-crazed country. Huang Li’s swim is at least the second time in recent months that a child athlete has drawn media attention.

Huang swam in a skirted swimsuit with her hands tied with string and her feet bound with a strip of cloth. Her face had a blue tinge due to the cold.

“It’s not dangerous because, first, her swimming skills are really good and second, I was swimming with her, staying close to her,” the father said. “I had her when I was 35, so she is my heart. I would never play around with her life.”

The father, a teacher who enjoys swimming, coaches his daughter and said the family does not have enough money for her to have a better coach. The girl started the sport when she was six and her father said her goal is to one day swim across the English Channel.

“She asks me every day, ‘Can I achieve this? Is the English Channel wide? Are the waves really big?’” Huang Daosheng said.

Did you hear the story about the woman from Utah who found a severed mouse head in a can of green beans?

The Arkansas company which makes the beans offered the woman $100 if she pledges to not take legal action. The official letter from Allens Inc of Siloam Springs, Ark., describes this as a gesture of good will.

Good will my butt! Marianne Watson isn’t interested in their offer stating “I won’t sign it under any circumstances,”.

She was never interested in taking legal action, but she did want to “put enough media attention on them that they either withdraw those cans or do something other than what they’re trying to do, which is shut me up.”

Watson was cooking lunch for two sons Sunday when she said she found a severed mouse head in a can of Allens Cut Green Beans, which had been purchased at a Wal-Mart store in American Fork. Nothing was eaten.

Allens spokesman James Phillips said the mouse probably was picked up during the harvest and did not originate in the canning factory. He called it an isolated incident.

“We apologize as much as we can, but we also do everything known from a technology standpoint and personnel standpoint to prevent it from happening,” he said. “But inevitably, occasionally, things like this occur.”

A recall is not necessary, Phillips said.

“This would not reach the level of exposing people to illness because the product is rendered commercially sterile,” he said in a phone interview. “Every can is cooked to a predetermined temperature and time.”

Watson said she may have the mouse remnants and green beans tested. She has refused to return them to the company.

“I was thankful I had a little soup earlier because I couldn’t eat after seeing that,” she said.

Isn’t that disgusting?

A police officer who demonstrated how his Taser worked by zapping a willing participant in the genitals got an official warning from his bosses.

Officer Randy Reynolds, Tenino Washington, fell under the watchful eye of his superiors when a video of the incident that occurred last Spring was posted on YouTube. Apparently the video clearly shows that the unidentified man wasn’t injured and onlookers can be heard laughing in the background.

Interim Police Chief Larry Dickerson has stated that Reynolds had been at a social gathering, but he was in uniform as he was on his way to work at the time. The unidentified man repeatedly asked Reynolds to use the weapon on him. Reynolds eventually obliged twice.

“He said he just wanted to know what it felt like. Randy didn’t want to do it at first, but the guy kept asking,” said Dickerson, who interviewed the man.

The Chief has said that no uniformed officer should demonstrate the use of a stun gun outside the line of duty except during training exercises.

“You don’t just go around doing your own demonstrations,” he said.

For his trouble Reynolds, 30, who’s been with the southwestern Washington towns police department since December 2005, will receive a formal reprimand in his personnel file and a warning not to misuse police equipment. He’ll also have to go over the departments taser policy and go over it with an instructor - again.

Did you hear the true story about how a woman lured her husband from a self made box that was perched on top of a 72 foot pole? No? Well he’d been up there protesting a looming jail term when his wife lured him down with a topless picture of herself that she’d included in the lunch that she’d sent up to him.

The hope and promise of a romp does it every time it seems.

Fred Gregor, 45 of Germany, was trying to have his 15 month conviction for fraud over turned by staying in his small cubicle which was perched high up on a converted television mast.

When interviewed over the telephone, he told Reuters that he wanted a new trial. His wife Susanne, 25, had originally backed up his protest until she eventually decided she’d had enough. Susanne is a former stripper. No wonder that topless photo worked! Together she and Fred are the parents of five children.

Perhaps now he’ll appeal his conviction just like most other people do when they feel that they’ve been wrongly convicted.