Morning Edition

A couple of thousand years before the Egyptians preserved some of their dead, a much simpler society made the first known mummies.

The Chinchorros, the first mummy makers, lived about 7,000 years ago in South America, on the coast near the border between modern-day Peru and Chile. The desert area where they lived was so dry, dead people turned into mummies naturally.

Bud Selig, the commissioner of baseball, has persuaded his owners and the players to add an extra wild-card team to the playoffs, so now five teams per league will qualify.

Not only is this terrific for the fans, but Selig also wisely managed to make it so that the wild-card teams engage in a one-game showdown for the privilege of being the team that joins the three division winners in the battle for the league championship.

I have just the old-fashioned word for this newfangled development: nifty.

Transcript

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

A listener to sports radio station WWL noticed an uncanny resemblance. New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees is the spitting image of the late U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes. That is, long before the 19th president grew that long grey beard.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was in Miami, where he courted Cuban-American voters Monday. They're one of the few minority communities that vote solidly Republican. In a news conference Monday, Romney suggested voters don't care about a candidate's race.

Brown became famous in the 1960s with her bestseller Sex and the Single Girl. In it, she urged single women to embrace careers and sexuality. The book led to a three decades long career editing Cosmopolitan. Brown took the magazine from dowdy home and garden coverage to a saucy handbook for single women.

President Obama continues his campaign bus trip across Iowa. He's traveling from west to east, drawing sharp contrasts with the Republican ticket. Obama warned some jobs could be in jeopardy if a wind power tax credit is allowed to expire, as Romney has proposed.

A quarter of the state is classified as being under "exceptional drought" — the highest level recorded. As creeks and riverbeds dry up, farmers are drilling deeper wells to get water for their crops. Now the state is cutting back its permits because of environmental concerns.

This is the second in a three-part series about major American networks trying to appeal to a broader Latino audience.

Every morning at 11:45, NBC News officials hold a conference call with their counterparts at sister networks to sort through stories of interest. Among those on the line are executives at CNBC, MSNBC and The Weather Channel; digital news editors; and executives at Telemundo, a Spanish-language broadcast network.