Olympic Updates

BEIJING - Americans Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser will play for the gold medal in beach volleyball.

BEIJING - Lyudmila Blonska of Ukraine is under investigation for a positive doping test and could be stripped of her silver medal in the Olympic heptathlon.

BEIJING - The Russian synchronized swimming duo of Anastasia Davydova and Anastasia Ermakova has repeated as Olympic champions.

BEIXIAOYING TOWN, China - Larisa Ilchenko of Russia has won the gold medal in the women's 10-kilometer marathon swim, an event making its Olympic debut.

QINGDAO, China - Chinese windsurfer Yin Jian has won the host nation's first-ever Olympic sailing gold medal with a win in the women's RS:X class. Italy's Alessandra Sensini won the silver and Britain's Bryony Shaw scored bronze.

BEIJING - Clear some more space in that pile of pretty Olympic medal boxes. Shawn Johnson and Nastia Liukin are bringing home more loot, including a gorgeous gold of Johnson's very own.

BEIJING - Lolo Jones was supposed to take the Olympic 100-meter hurdles title. Other entrants knew it. Jones knew it. Even told herself so right before the start, mouthing, "I can win this race," when she was introduced to the crowd.

BEIJING - Jamaica's Usain Bolt has won his semifinal in the 200 meters, moving closer to becoming the first man since Carl Lewis in 1984 to sweep the Olympic sprint titles.

BEIJING - Sylvia Fowles and the U.S. women's basketball team were too big for South Korea to handle. Fowles scored 26 points and grabbed 14 rebounds to lead the U.S. to a 104-60 rout of South Korea on Tuesday night and advance to the semifinals of women's basketball.

BEIJING (Reuters) - India's Sushil Kumar won the bronze medal in the men's 66kg freestyle wrestling event at the Beijing Olympics on Wednesday.

BEIJING (AFP) - Ukraine's heptathlon silver medallist Liudmyla Blonska has failed a drugs test, the IOC confirmed Wednesday as the first high-profile doping failure hit the Beijing Olympics on the 13th day.

BEIJING - World champion Ramazan Sahin of Turkey has won the Olympic freestyle wrestling gold medal at 66 kilograms by scoring a tight victory over Andriy Stadnik of Ukraine.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Digital media and dazzling sport have won unprecedented ratings, Olympics bosses said on Wednesday as they debuted two events aimed at the young and adventurous.

BEIJING - Russia's Buvaysa Saytiev has won a record-tying third Olympic freestyle gold medal.

BEIJING - Dzhakhon Kurbanov, the light heavyweight from Tajikistan who bit his opponent on the shoulder in a quarterfinal bout, won't face additional sanctions or suspension by the International Boxing Association (AIBA).

BEIJING (Reuters) - Five American blogger-activists and a foreign artist have been detained in Beijing as the government intensifies a crackdown on pro-Tibetan protests in the home stretch of the Olympics, rights groups said on Wednesday.

BEIJING (AFP) - Italy edged Poland 3-2 in a men's volleyball quarter-final thriller at the Beijing Olympic Games on Wednesday.

BEIJING (AFP) - China has detained six American pro-Tibet activists, including an artist who planned to project a giant laser beam onto a Beijing building at the Olympics, a group said Wednesday.

BEIJING (AFP) - A dominant United States ensured their place in the last Olympic softball final ahead of the sport being dumped from the Games by beating Japan 4-1 Wednesday.

BEIJING (AFP) - Two elderly Chinese women who applied to demonstrate at official Olympic protest zones have been ordered to serve one year each of reeducation through labour, a close relative said Wednesday.

BEIJING (AFP) - South Korean Olympic athletes have been given detailed guidelines to avoid friction with their North Korean counterparts in Beijing, officials said Wednesday.

BEIJING - Chinese authorities have ordered two elderly women to spend one year in a labor camp after they applied to hold a protest during the Beijing Olympics against being forced from their homes, a relative said Wednesday.

QINGDAO, China - New Zealand windsurfer Tom Ashley has won the gold medal in the men's RS:X class, while France's Julien Bontemps has taken the silver and Israel's Shahar Zubari the bronze.

LONDON (AFP) - Newspapers were positively giddy Wednesday morning after "Team GB" won four gold medals, celebrating the country's unexpected levels of success in Beijing.

BEIJING (Reuters) - Defending champions Ricardo Santos and Emanuel Rego were knocked out of the Olympic beach volleyball on Wednesday, leaving fellow Brazilians Marcio Araujo and Fabio Luiz Magalhaes to play the U.S. favorites for gold.

BEIJING (AFP) - Cuba crushed China 17-1 in Olympic baseball on Wednesday with the trouncing called to a halt in the seventh inning under the sport's mercy rule.

URUMQI, China - As police with riot clubs patrolled nearby, a merchant whispered that he feared a sweeping crackdown in China's northwestern Muslim region once the Olympic spotlight fades.

BEIJING (AFP) - Russia's Larisa Ilchenko won the gold medal for the Olympic Games women's 10 kilometres marathon swim here on Wednesday in a time of 1 hour 59.27 minutes.

BEIJING (AFP) - Taiwan's defending Olympic champion Chu Mu-yen and world champion Juan Antonio Ramos of Spain stayed on course for a high-profile -58kg semi-final clash at the Beijing Games Wednesday.