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NPR's Jim Zarroli reports that the blue chip Dow Jones industrial average has not declined at the same rapid clip as the battered Nasdaq during the recent stock downturn. But today the Dow fell very sharply and slipped below the 10,000 mark for the first time in five months, fresh evidence that pessimism about stocks is increasingly broad and deep.

NPR's David Welna reports on the partisan debate raging on Capitol Hill over the turmoil in the stock market and what that could mean for President Bush's tax reduction program. Republicans insist that if the economy is faltering, tax cuts need to be implemented without delay. Democrats argue that the falling stock prices mean it would be too risky to pass a 10-year tax cut plan, given the fact that there is no way to know whether the administration's long-range projections on the economy are accurate.

Linda Wertheimer talks with Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Climate Global Change, about President Bush's reversal on tightening carbon dioxide emissions from power plants to prevent global warming. The president sent a letter yesterday to four Republican senators stating that he had decided not to seek reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. This is a reversal of a previous campaign pledge. The decision is a blow to environmentalists and a win for coal and oil industries. Claussen's organizations membership includes 33 major companies.

Karen Schaeffer of member station WCPN reports that the Ford Motor Company has shut down a Cleveland-area engine plant while officials try to pinpoint the source of an outbreak of Legionnaires' Disease that has sickened at least three workers.

Commentator Judy Muller says she winces when she hears words such as 'efforting,' and she wonders how so many nouns are being turned into verbs.

Brenda Tremblay of member station WXXI reports that many people in the city of Rochester, New York, are reading the same book. People in supermarkets and malls wear pins that say they're reading, A Lesson Before Dying by Ernest Gaines. Its the story of a young black man wrongly sentenced to death. Rochester's mayor says its allowing residents to talk about race relations in a way they'd usually avoid.

NPR's Jason Beaubien reports that a plaque was erected in the New Hampshire State House to honor the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The 12-member group fought in the Spanish civil war to support the Loyalist government. But some say the plaque is memorializing Communists and Communist sympathizers.

Actress Kate Winslet, 24, became a star with her role in the blockbuster Titanic. Her breakthrough role came earlier, in Heavenly Creatures, a film based on a true story of two young girls who murder one of their mothers. Her other films include Ang Lee's Sense and Sensibility, and Jane Campion's Holy Smoke. She's currently starring in the film Quills.

Fighting has flared up again in the Balkans, in a demilitarized zone between Kosovo and Macedonia. NATO troops in the area are attempting to suppress that violence between ethnic Albanians and Macedonia security forces. But even as the region heats up, the Bush administration is moving to trim the ranks of Americans now on a peacekeeping mission in neighboring Bosnia. President Bush has said he wants the European Union to shoulder more of the burden in the region. NPR's Tom Gjelten reports.

Michael Montgomery of American Radio Works reports that since NATO-led peacekeepers moved into Kosovo nearly two years ago, hundreds of Serbs and other minorities have been killed. Many others have disappeared and are feared dead. The majority ethnic Albanians are reluctant to give information about missing Serbs. They harbor anger over the killings and destruction wrought by Serbian forces during the Kosovo war, and they fear reprisals by other Kosovars. International officials say the disappearances seem to be part of a campaign to discourage displaced Serbs from returning to Kosovo, and to drive out those who remain out in the province.