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Our founding myth suggests the Americas were a lightly populated wilderness before Europeans arrived. Historian Charles C. Mann compiled evidence of a far more complex and populous pre-Columbian society. He tells John Ydstie about 1491.

A new survey finds significant differences of opinion on immigration policy among U.S.-born Latinos and those born abroad. Nearly half of all Mexicans would move to the U.S. if they could, it says.

President Bush is on his way home from a four-country tour of Asia. His last stop was in Mongolia, where he expressed thanks for that country's contribution to the Iraq war effort. He also praised Mongolia's movement toward democracy and a more open economy.

Astronaut Steve Robinson successfully removes two small pieces of fabric that were poking out of the shuttle's heat shield. NASA engineers worried the fabric could cause superheated air to damage the shuttle when it returns to Earth next week.

Ward died on Sunday at age 79.

A battalion of Marines based in Ohio is mourning the loss of 14 comrades, who died in a roadside bomb attack Wednesday in Iraq's Anbar province. It's the battalion's second loss in three days: six other marines died Monday in the same area.

Dennis Rader, the confessed BTK serial killer, receives 10 life sentences for murders committed in Kansas. In June, Rader pleaded guilty to 10 murders that took place between 1974 and 1991.

The first federal trial over the painkiller Vioxx begins Tuesday in Houston. Pharmaceutical company Merck has defended its handling of the drug in two previous state cases, losing one of them. Merck withdrew Vioxx from the market last year after a study showed that the drug posed heart risks.

Drugmaker Merck faces more than 7,000 lawsuits related to its painkiller Vioxx. The first of four federal Vioxx trials is slated to begin Tuesday in Houston. The case involves a 53-year-old Florida man who had a fatal heart attack in 2001 after a month on Vioxx.

In 1938, at a low point in his career, Jelly Roll Morton recorded a series of interviews and performances with the folklorist Alan Lomax. Now those recordings have been released in a new box set from Rounder Records called Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings.