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The numbers are hard to estimate but as many as 25,000 or even more transgender people live in the United States. For those males redefining themselves as women the voice can be a difficult part of the transition. From member station KUOW in Seattle Cathy Duchamp reports on a voice therapy program designed to help them sound more feminine.

NPR's Emily Harris reports that descendants of Thomas Jefferson are publishing a report that attempts to disprove Jefferson fathered children with Sally Hemings, one of his slaves. They're trying to counter recent DNA tests which tied a descendant of Jefferson to the family of Hemings.

From member station WHYY, Fred Mogul reports on the debut of composer Stephen Paulus's Voices of Light by the New York Philharmonic. Based on the work of two little-known medieval poets, this new sacred choral piece draws more on a "spiritual element" than evangelical tradition.

Commentator Austin Bay calms any fears that America's recent spy scandals with Russia and China signal a return to the Cold War.

His book The Human Stain about a classics professor accused of racism has just won the PENN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. It's his second such award. He won his first in 1994 with Operation Shylock. The Human Stain is the third of a trilogy which includes his American Pastoral and I Married a Communist.

We talked to people at the South East Recreational Facility -- known as SERF -- in Madison Wisconsin and asked them, "What is the riskiest thing you have done?"

In the first extensive briefing on the April first collision between a U.S. surveillance plane and a Chinese jet fighter, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said the US plane did not change course until after the collision. And the crew did, Rumsfeld said, frequently issue maydays, alerting China that it was about to make an emergency landing. The Pentagon released video of earlier encounters with Chinese jets in the region, showing how close they flew to the American surveillance craft. NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.

the lead singer of the punk band The Ramones. He died on Sunday at the age of 49. He had lymphoma. From their start in 1974, the Ramones combined fast, deafening guitar with precise drumming to create a hurricane of sound. Their songs had titles like Beat on the Brat, Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment and Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue.

NPR's Barbara Bradley reports on a federal judge's ruling that felons have a constitutional right to DNA evidence testing. The Virginia case involves James Harvey, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence for a 1990 rape he says he did not commit. He asked the state to do DNA testing on items of evidence, but Virginia refused. The judge ruled that the state must do the tests, as part of Harvey's right to due process. The ruling is believed to be the first of its kind in the federal courts.

Cisco Systems grew in breathtaking fashion to become one of the world's most valuable companies during the technology investment boom of the late '90s. But now Cisco is being hit hard by the economic slowdown. NPR's Jack Speer reports.