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• LONDON (AP) -- A day before the Olympic gold medal game, players and coaches from the U.S. and Japanese women's soccer teams stood in front of reporters side-by-side, like buddies on the same squad, arms linked around each other's waists. The white warmup jackets of the United States alternated with the blue ones from Japan.type:bold,italic;
• All that cordiality? It ends at kickoff.
• "They snatched our dream last year," U.S. midfielder Megan Rapinoe said. "And still we have that respect for them."
• No matter the result Thursday, the Olympic women's soccer tournament couldn't ask for a better finale. The teams from last year's World Cup final meet again at Wembley Stadium, with organizers expecting the largest crowd ever to watch women play the sport at a Summer Games.
• For the players, of course, the result does matter. The Japanese are attempting become the first team to win World Cup and Olympic titles in back-to-back years. The Americans are bent on mending the heartache from a penalty kick shootout in Frankfurt 13 months ago.
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• HEFEI, China (AP) -- The wife of disgraced politician Bo Xilai invited a British businessman to a hotel room, where she got him drunk on wine and fed him poison, according to the evidence presented Thursday in one of China's highest-profile murder trials in years.
• The trial of Gu Kailai and a household aide, who are accused of murdering Bo family associate Neil Heywood, lasted all of four hours. International media were barred from the courtroom, so details of the case against Gu were provided by Tang Yigan, deputy director of the Hefei Intermediate People's Court in eastern China.
• He did not say when a verdict was expected, but said Gu and the aide, Zhang Xiaojun, did not contest the murder charges.
• The secretive and tightly orchestrated court proceeding marks a step toward resolving the messiest scandal the leadership has faced in two decades. Observers

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