NPR 2009-03-03

A rough start to the week for Wall Street: the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell to its lowest level in some 12 years today, dipping below 7,000. With the ongoing 1 credit crisis and more taxpayer 2 dollars going into AIG and Citibank, blue chip stocks are now less than half of what they were in October of 2007. Michael Farr is with the investment firm Farr, Miller 3 & Washington. He says the uncertainty 4 over how much more money the financial sector 5 may need is responsible for the latest market jitters 6. "Investors 7 were beginning to once again sell the financial stocks and banks, as Citigroup's conversion 8 of that preferred stock cast great uncertainty on the future of many of the banks. We really don't know how much more money a lot of these banks are gonna need in order to maintain their capital ratios."

On Wall Street, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 299 points today to close at 6,763. The NASDAQ was down 54 points. The S&P 500 lost 34 points today.

President Barack Obama has nominated Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as Secretary for Health and Human Services. NPR's Mara Liasson reports.

President Obama said Sebelius knows health care inside out, having served as the Kansas state insurance commissioner 9; and although she tried and failed as governor to expand health coverage 10 in Kansas by raising the cigarette tax, the president said she was the right person to help him lead a battle for health care reform that he said was no longer just a moral imperative 11, it was a fiscal 12 imperative. "It's a crisis punishing families, battering 13 businesses, squeezing our states, and increasingly imperiling our own budget. Health care is one of the fastest growing expenses in the federal budget, and it's one we simply can not sustain." The president also named Nancy-Ann DeParle as the White House health reform czar. DeParle was the commissioner of the Department of Health and Human Services in Tennessee, and she's a veteran of the Clinton administration's budget office where she handled Medicare and Medicaid. Mara Liasson, NPR News, the White House.

The CIA has destroyed almost 100 interrogation tapes of terror suspects, a far greater number than previously 14 reported from the agency. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports.

The revelation comes in just-released court documents as part of a lawsuit 15 about the treatment of detainees in US custody 16 outside the US. In the new papers, the CIA said that it could now confirm that 92 videotapes were destroyed. The issue is controversial because the tapes are thought to have recorded harsh interrogation techniques, like waterboarding, being used on a handful of terrorism suspects. The CIA had said in the past that the tapes were destroyed to protect the identities of the people who were doing the questioning. At the time, the Justice Department was trying to decide whether the tactics used were illegal. The Bush Justice Department ended up deciding that indeed they were. The Obama administration has since condemned 17 techniques like waterboarding as torture. Dina Temple-Raston, NPR News.

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Coast Guard officials now confirmed one of four men missing since a weekend fishing trip off the Florida coast has been found, though they say three others including two NFL players are still missing. Authorities say Nick Schuyler, a former University of South Florida football player, was found clinging to a 21-foot boat in the waters of the Gulf 18 Coast. Schuyler told rescuers the boat flipped 19 Saturday evening in rough seas. The search for the remaining men including Oakland Raiders linebacker Marquis Cooper and free-agent defensive 20 lineman Corey Smith as well as another former South Florida player William Bleakley continues. The four left the Clearwater area early Saturday in calm weather, but heavy winds quickly created high seas.

A Gallup poll finds Muslims in America have a much more upbeat outlook on their lives than Muslims in many other countries including some in Europe. NPR's Jennifer Ludden reports.

Forty-one percent of Muslim Americans said they were thriving. That's slightly less than Americans generally, but far more than said the same in France or Britain or many majority Muslim countries. The survey also found Muslim Americans are more likely than the nation as a whole to be well-educated professionals, and Muslim women even more so than men. Gallup analyst 21 Ahmed Younis says that should put to rest a stereotype 22. "The Achilles heel that has always existed, well, Muslims aren't like us because their women are oppressed, well, the data speaks to the proposition that that is absolutely not true." Gallup says Muslims are the only religious group in the US not dominated by ethnic 23 whites, and it found splits that reflect the wider society. For example, African-American Muslims reported lower incomes than those of Asian origin. Jennifer Ludden, NPR News, Washington.

Crude oil futures 24 fell $4.61 a barrel to close at $40.15 in New York.

I'm Jack 25 Speer, NPR News in Washington.