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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.

Good morning.

Our early headlines:

-- Reports: Notebook From Colo. Shootings Suspect Arrived At School After Attack.

-- 'China's Katrina': Second City Flooded; Corruption, Incompetence Blamed.

Other news making headlines:

A "suspicious package" that the University of Colorado's medical school in Aurora says was delivered to the school on Monday was "a notebook sent through the mail by suspected killer James Eagan Holmes before [last] Friday morning's massacre," The Denver Post reports.

Transcript

RENEE MONTAGNE, HOST:

Good morning. I'm Renee Montagne.

It's the start of state fair season, which means lots of weird and fried food. The Indiana State Fair decided on spaghetti and meatballs ice cream as the fair's official food. The noodles are made of gelato, the sauce is strawberry tomato, and the meatballs are chocolate. It's topped with shredded white chocolate cheese. Yummy. At the Iowa State Fair you can try a double bacon corndog. Last year, Iowa featured deep fried butter. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright National Public Radio.