The U.S. Transportation Department opened an investigation on Monday of whether a high tech airline passenger screening system unfairly singles out minorities for additional security checks. But one group that represents the people the agency sought to protect from profiling objected to the investigation, saying plans to question planeloads of passengers about their race, religion and other personal characteristics for comparison purposes was overly intrusive and unnecessary.

A band that can be implanted around the stomach and tightened to help severely obese people lose weight won government approval Tuesday.

The grass-roots "marriage movement" has come of age. Today it throws down a gauntlet in front of those it says have fostered a "culture of divorce." More than 100 members of the broad-based coalition - which includes some of the nation's most noted researchers on marriage, as well as clergy, judges, divorce lawyers, marriage counselors, sociologists and policy wonks - are issuing The Marriage Movement: A Statement of Principles. It blasts the effects of divorce and calls for a national commitment to marriage.

Relatively healthy seniors who pray or meditate may add years to their lives, says a study out today. The devout have long believed that prayer helps gain admission to the hereafter. But the study suggests that regular prayer, Bible study or meditation may have important benefits in the here and now. "This is one of the first studies showing that people who pray live longer," says Harold Koenig, one of the researchers at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. Koenig and colleagues describe the study in the Journal of Gerontology.

In two major rulings Wednesday, the Supreme Court struck down a Nebraska law banning so-called “partial-birth abortion” and allowed the Boy Scouts to bar homosexuals from serving as troop leaders. The court was deeply divided on both topics, ruling 5-4 each time.