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For millennia, observant Jewish women have made monthly trips to a ritual bath called a mikvah for a kind of spiritual cleansing. In recent generations, the practice was dismissed by liberal Jews as demeaning. Now, some feminist Jews are reinventing the ritual.

Fossils found in northern China show that some of the first birds on Earth lived on the water. The exquisitely preserved fossils, resembling modern ducks or loons, lived 110 million years ago, when many forms of today' animals started to take shape.

An experiment confirms that a weird tribe of particles known as neutrinos actually change from one form into another as they journey about the cosmos. Neutrinos seem to pass through any object. If that's really the case, are neutrinos cursed to wander the universe in solitude forever?

As summer officially arrives this week, it's time to think about books to buy, borrow or check out of the library. Dr. Abraham Verghese, director of the Center for Medical Humanities and Ethics at the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio, offers a brief reading list.

U.S. and Iraqi forces launch an operation to take control of the insurgent stronghold of Ramadi, west of Baghdad. Violence there has taken a high toll on U.S. forces; it's considered one of the most dangerous places in Iraq.

Tulane University in New Orleans held its graduation ceremony Saturday after a traumatic year. Students who held on through Katrina and nine months of recovery heard advice and admonitions from former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.

Ernesto Miranda, aka "Smokey," was a co-founder of the infamous Mara Salvatrucha gang in Los Angeles. At 38, he was studying law and working to keep kids out of gangs. All that ended Saturday night, when he was shot to death, apparently in retaliation for his anti-gang efforts.

In the first part of a two-part interview, former U.S. Poet Laureate Billy Collins guides us through the new spoken-word four-CD box set Poetry on Record: 98 Poets Read Their Work, 1888-2006.

Nigeria's Senate kills a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed the country's president to run for a third term. Critics said the proposal would widen regional, ethnic and religious rifts. They hailed its failure as a victory for democracy.

There are plans to bring a new dump to Uniontown, Ala., where the county commission approved the project because the area desperately needs jobs. Commentator John Fleming says this is the kind of case that has been labeled "environmental racism."