return key and hilited/selected region

[Hadron Quark]

I'm fairly sure my last installtion had the region key removing any text
I had selected as a region. The version I use now 

GNU Emacs 22.0.50.1 (i486-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, Xaw3d scroll bars) of 
2006-08-24 on vernadsky, modified by Debian

Now, if I hilite some text as a region and hit the return key, then nothing
happens except for the region becoming unmarked.

How can I configure return to wipe a region as it did before?

,----
| RET (translated from <return>) runs the command newline
|    which is an interactive compiled Lisp function in `simple.el'.
| It is bound to RET.
| (newline &optional arg)
| 
| Insert a newline, and move to left margin of the new line if it's blank.
| If `use-hard-newlines' is non-nil, the newline is marked with the
| text-property `hard'.
| With arg, insert that many newlines.
| Call `auto-fill-function' if the current column number is greater
| than the value of `fill-column' and arg is nil.
`----

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