State and National News

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MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

I'm Michel Martin, and this is TELL ME MORE, from NPR News. Coming up, all eyes will be on London tomorrow when the city opens this summer's Olympic Games. And I don't know how this happened that our tickets got lost in the mail, but since they did, all this week, we are meeting some of the athletes who will be representing the United States. Today, we meet water polo player Tumua Anae. We'll talk with her and see how she's getting ready in just a few minutes.

"A major portion of Oakland's troubled police radio system failed shortly after President Obama's visit on Monday, leaving many of the 100 officers assigned to handle presidential security unable to communicate as protesters roamed the streets, police said Wednesday,"

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LINDA WERTHEIMER, HOST:

China announced today that it is prosecuting the wife of a disgraced party official for the murder of a British man. It's the latest sensational twist in the country's biggest political scandal in decades. NPR's Louisa Lim joins us now from Beijing. Louisa, could you bring us up to speed on this scandal and what the latest news is?

China's Xinhua news agency ends its report this morning on the murder case against a prominent politician's wife with this remarkable passage:

Photographer David Binder began documenting stories about AIDS in the late 1980s and became well known for humanizing the epidemic for various publications, including Life magazine and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Good morning, and welcome to "Day -1" of the 2012 Summer Olympics. That NASA-like designation is due to events already having begun in the soccer competition, before Friday's Opening Ceremony. Men's soccer begins play today.

Here are some stories that popped up overnight:

As bad as the players on the Toronto Blue Jays must feel about losing to the Oakland Athletics by a score of 16-0 Wednesday night, they can at least take comfort in knowing that other teams have suffered worse losses in the past.

As Yahoo Sports recounted:

The number of people filing first-time claims for jobless benefits fell by 35,000 last week, to 353,000, the Employment and Training Administration just reported.

That brings the level about back to where it was three weeks ago and down near a four-year low — but also keeps claims in the range where they've been trending for about the last year.