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NPR's Howard Berkes reports from Sydney, Australia that some members of the International Olympic Committee feel that the games have become too big. In Olympic circle it's referred to as gigantism. Within the last ten years the number of nations participating in the Olympics has doubled.

NPR's Rob Gifford reports that China's largest corruption trial begins today in four cities in the southeastern province of Fujian. President Jiang Zemin, who heads the 61 million-member Communist Party, has declared clean government a goal of his rule. But the Fujian scandal has tainted members of the elite ruling circle, among them one of Jiang's proteges.

NPR's Debbie Elliott reports that voters in Selma, Alabama elected their first black mayor yesterday. Businessman James Perkins defeated Joe Smitherman, a former segregationist who took office about six months before the bloody voting rights marches that eventually led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Steve Young of Vermont Public Radio reports four state legislators lost their seats yesterday when they lost the primary election. The lawmakers were republicans that voted for a controversial law granting gay couples almost all the rights of marriage. After the bill passed a number of groups mobilized to repeal it...and to encourage voters to remove those who supported the measure.

Jazz saxophonist Stanley Turrentine died in a New York hospital after suffering a stroke. He was known for his smooth playing and his ability to adapt his style to contemporary audiences. Turrentine started his career playing with Ray Charles and Max Roach. He scored his biggest hit in 1970 with Sugar, which became something of a jazz standard, frequently performed and re-recorded by admirers. He was 66 years old.

This Saturday, the nation's first modern paved road will be reopened to the public after nearly fifty years. The Columbia River Highway was built back in 1913 and runs alongside the scenic Columbia. Kristian Foden-Vencil has a report.

For a respected physicist to suggest that it's possible for something to travel faster than light, is rather like a geologist declaring that the earth is flat. But as NPR's David Kestenbaum reports, tomorrows issue of the prestigious journal Nature contains a paper that claims exactly that.

NPR's Kathleen Schalch reports that a U.S. government agency has promised one-billion-dollars a year in loans to help countries in Sub-Saharan Africa buy AIDS treatments from U.S. companies. But AIDS experts say the money represents only a small step toward addressing the huge problem of HIV infection in Africa.

NPR's Joanne Silberner reports that use of a more extensive screening test for colon cancer could greatly improve doctors ability to catch the disease in its early stages. But some health experts say it's not clear yet that the test is worth the cost and effort. The research appears in this week's issue of the New England Journal of Medicine.

The diamond industry is proposing strict measures to stop the funding of African wars through diamond sales. So-called "conflict diamonds" from countries like Sierra Leone, Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo have helped to fund bloody wars. A proposal to stop the practice was made at a conference called the World Diamond Congress today in Belgium.