Wall Street doubled down on its losses on Thursday, just a day after financial markets closed at their lowest point in nearly six years.

In a day dominated by fear and uncertainty, financial markets plunged in late trading, carving new lows, in a melee of selling that cut across every sector of the market. Energy companies took the heaviest blows as the price of crude oil fell below $50 a barrel, and financial stocks sank sharply on fears that billions in government aid have done little to cure the financial and credit crises.

“The market can only take so many punches,” said Quincy Krosby, chief investment strategist at The Hartford. “This market needs a break. It needs clarity. The question is, when and how much?”

No one had an answer on Thursday afternoon.

The Dow Jones industrial average set another new low for the year on Thursday, shedding 444.99 points or 5.5 percent to close at 7,552.29. The wider Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index fell an even steeper 6.7 percent, adding to its losses after tumbling 6 percent on Wednesday.

The August 2008 report by John L. Helgerson, the C.I.A.’s inspector general, could lead the Justice Department to reopen its investigation into the shooting, and to refocus particularly on whether senior C.I.A. officers obstructed justice or lied to Congress by deliberating withholding details about the downing from prosecutors and lawmakers.

The Justice Department closed its investigation into the matter in 2005, declining to prosecute agency officers either for their role in the 2001 incident, which killed an American missionary and her 7-month old daughter, or for participation in other aspects of an anti-drug program in Peru that was launched under President Clinton in 1994.

Helgerson’s report, parts of which were made public on Thursday, said that Justice Department investigators and Congress were never allowed access to internal C.I.A. reviews that portrayed the downing as merely one mistake among many in a C.I.A. counter-narcotics program that the report said had operated for years outside of legal boundaries set by the White House.

The figures detailing Iran’s progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency,which has been conducting inspections of the country’s main nuclear plant at Natanz. The report concluded that as of early this month, Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium.

Several experts said that was enough for a bomb, but they cautioned that the milestone was mostly symbolic, because Iran would have to take additional steps. Not only would it have to breach its international agreements and kick out the inspectors, but it would also have to further purify the fuel and put it into a warhead design - a technical advance that Western experts are unsure Iran has yet achieved.

“They clearly have enough material for a bomb,” said Richard L. Garwin, a top nuclear physicist who helped invent the hydrogen bomb and has advised Washington for decades. “They know how to do the enrichment. Whether they know how to design a bomb, well, that’s another matter.”

Iran insists that it wants only to fuel reactors for nuclear power, but many Western nations, led by the United States, suspect that its real goal is to gain the ability to make nuclear weapons.

Oil prices dropped below $50 a barrel on Thursday for the first time in 22 months, shedding close to $100 in four months as an ailing global economy pares its consumption.

The drop in prices comes as stock and bond markets fell because of fears about the health of the financial system, and a flurry of new indicators showed how badly the economy was faring.

Just as a booming global economy had steadily driven up commodity prices for six years, the current meltdown means the world needs less oil, and is sharply driving down prices.

It is a stunning - and sudden - reversal that has taken aback many experts. Oil futures on the New York Mercantile Exchange fell $3.04 to $50.58 a barrel in morning trading. At one point, crude oil was down $3.71, to $49.91 a barrel. Oil futures have lost more than two-thirds of their value after settling at a peak of about $145 a barrel in July.

Some analysts predict oil could fall to $30 to 40 a barrel as the world economy worsens.

Instead, the chief executives of the Big Three automakers opted to fly their company jets to the capital for their hearings this week before the Senate and House - an ill-timed display of corporate excess for a trio of executives begging for an additional $25 billion from the public trough this week.

"There's a delicious irony in seeing private luxury jets flying into Washington, D.C., and people coming off of them with tin cups in their hands," Rep. Gary L. Ackerman (D-New York) advised the pampered executives at a hearing yesterday. "It's almost like seeing a guy show up at the soup kitchen in high-hat and tuxedo. ... I mean, couldn't you all have downgraded to first class or jet-pooled or something to get here?"

The Big Three said nothing, which prompted Rep. Brad Sherman (D-California) to rub it in. "I'm going to ask the three executives here to raise their hand if they flew here commercial," he said. All still at the witness table. "Second," he continued, "I'm going ask you to raise your hand if you're planning to sell your jet ... and fly back commercial." More stillness. "Let the record show no hands went up," Sherman grandstanded.

By now, the men were probably wishing they had driven - and other members of the House Financial Services Committee weren't done riding the CEOs over their jets. "You traveled in a private jet?" Rep. Nydia M. Velazquez (D-New York) contributed. Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-North Carolina) felt the need to say that "I'm not an opponent of private flights by any means, but the fact that you flew in on your own private jet at tens of thousands itself dollars of cost just for you to make your way to Washington is a bit arrogant before you ask the taxpayers for money."

Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) bade an emotional farewell to the Senate Thursday, telling colleagues a day after conceding defeat in his reelection bid that he will return to his home state and try to restore his reputation following his conviction last month on federal corruption charges.

Stevens, 85, the longest-serving Republican in the history of the Senate, described his part in what he called the "transformation" of Alaska into an economic success story from an "impoverished territory" when he first took office.

Delivering what he said was his last floor speech, Stevens recalled that when he came to the Senate in 1968, "many people doubted whether Alaska had what it took to be a successful state" and wondered if it was still "Seward's folly." He referred to the moniker once attached to the purchase of the territory from Russia in 1867 at the behest of Secretary of State William H. Seward.

In his 40 years in the Senate, Stevens became known as an ardent champion of his home state, obtaining billions of dollars in federal funding for projects there, but he ran afoul of federal financial disclosure laws and was convicted last month on seven felony counts for failing to properly report gifts worth $250,000, including extensive remodeling of his Alaska home by an oil-field services company.

"I love everything about America," Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, said two years ago. His words reflected the sentiments of a growing class of ambitious Arabs who are tired of being seen as the eternal losers in world history. He spoke on behalf of those who are simply interested in doing business and have long felt alienated by the leftist and nationalist ideologies of pan-Arabism, by Wahhabism in Saudi Arabia and by the Palestinians' obsession with victimhood. But despite the rapid pace of progress in this futuristic region during the last eight years, the current administration in Washington has made things difficult for these modern Arabs. This explains why the sheikh of Dubai followed his words of adoration with a much-quoted caveat: "I love everything about America, except for its foreign policy."

The chemicals giant abandoned any plans to match last year's profit, saying that it has seen a "massive decline" in demand for its products. Company CEO Jürgen Hambrecht said that the company was suffering from a slump in consumer demand in the key markets forcing the company to cut its profit forecast for the second time in two months. "In particular, customers in the automotive industry have canceled orders at short notice," he said.

Last year BASF's pretax profit was €7.6 billion ($9.5 billion) on sales of €57.9 billion ($73 billion.) The company saw its third-quarter earnings slump 38 percent from €1.2 billion in 2007 to €758 million in 2008.

The House Steering Committee voted 25-22 to make Waxman the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, replacing Michigan Democratic Rep. John Dingell, the most senior member in the House.

The House Democratic caucus will vote Thursday.

The Waxman-Dingell battle has been watched closely on Capitol Hill. Waxman is regarded as an ally of environmentalists, while Dingell has ties to the auto industry. He's resisted higher fuel standards and tighter limits on greenhouse gases. It will be the first major test of whether the party's liberal wing has more clout than its moderate wing.

Dingell had called Waxman an "anti-manufacturing left-wing Democrat" and said that it would be a mistake to have him in charge of the committee, particularly with the auto industry struggling.

More than 389,000 children and teenagers were treated last year with Risperdal, one of five popular medicines known as atypical antipsychotics. Of those patients, 240,000 were 12 or younger, according to data presented to the committee. In many cases, the drug was prescribed to treat attention deficit disorders.

Risperdal is not approved for attention deficit problems, and its risks - which include substantial weight gain, metabolic disorders and muscular tics that can be permanent - are too profound to justify its use in treating such disorders, said  panel members.

“This committee is frustrated,” said Dr. Leon Dure, a pediatric neurologist from the University of Alabama School of Medicine who was on the panel. “And we need to find a way to accommodate this concern of ours.”

A federal jury convicted Alberto W. Vilar of all 12 counts in his securities fraud trial on Wednesday, a final fall from grace for a man who gave millions of dollars to musical and other causes but was ostracized for falling short on his pledges.

Vilar, 67, blinked when the first guilty verdict was pronounced by the foreman in a United States District courtroom but remain stone-faced. His former partner and co-defendant, Gary A. Tanaka, 65, was convicted of three of the counts.

The verdict came after three-and-a-half days of often heated deliberations. Raised voices were heard inside the jury room, and at one point the panel asked for a half-hour cooling-off period. One woman on the jury was sniffling as she left the courtroom.

The two men, former partners in Amerindo Investment Advisors Inc., were charged in a 12-count indictment alleging conspiracy and securities fraud, investment adviser fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering. Tanaka was found guilty of conspiracy, securities fraud and investment advisor fraud.

Vilar’s lawyer, Herald Price Fahringer, said his client would appeal. “We’re deeply disappointed in the jury’s verdict,” he said. “We expect to be fully vindicated on appeal.” When Vilar was asked what went wrong, he said softly, “I don’t know.”

The indictment returned Monday has not yet been signed by the presiding judge, and no action can be taken until that happens.

The seven indictments made public in Willacy County on Tuesday included one naming state Sen. Eddie Lucio, Jr., and some targeting public officials connected to District Attorney Juan Angel Guerra's own legal battles.

Regarding the indictments targeting the public officials, Guerra said, "the grand jury is the one that made those decisions, not me."

Guerra himself was under indictment for more than a year-and-a-half until a judge dismissed the indictments last month. Guerra's tenure ends this year after nearly two decades in office. He lost convincingly in a Democratic primary in March.

An FBI agent was shot and killed Wednesday morning near Pittsburgh while executing a search warrant in a drug raid, said law enforcement officials.

The agent, who was not immediately identified, was shot about 6 a.m. at a house in Indiana Township, about 10 miles northeast of Pittsburgh, a spokesman for the FBI's office for western Pennsylvania told reporters.

An FBI news release on the incident said the FBI was working with the Drug Enforcement Administration and local police in executing a federal search warrant when the shooting occurred. It said initial reports that the incident was associated with a home invasion were false.

"We are in the process of notifying the agent's family and will provide more details later today," said the news release.

The agent had been on the job for about three years, said a law enforcement official.

In the 11-minute video, posted on the Internet, al-Zawahiri repeatedly and unfavorably compared the first black U.S. president-elect to Malcolm X, the black Muslim leader and activist who was assassinated 43 years ago.

"You represent the direct opposite of honorable black Americans like Malik al-Shabazz, or Malcolm X," Zawahiri said, according to English subtitles of his Arabic remarks provided by al-Qaeda's propaganda arm. "You were born to a Muslim father, but you chose to stand in the ranks of the enemies of the Muslims, and pray the prayer of the Jews, although you claim to be Christian, in order to climb the rungs of leadership in America."

Zawahiri said Obama, Colin Powell and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice "confirmed" Malcolm X's definition of a "house negro," a term the militant black leader often used to describe black leaders who were subservient to white interests.

The document, the Commander’s Report on the suspect, Specialist Robert H. Marko, also raises serious questions about the soldier’s mental state during his time at Fort Carson beginning in late 2006 and whether he should have deployed to Iraq in 2007.

It was common knowledge among his commanding officers and his fellow soldiers, the document states, that Specialist Marko, who is being held without bond, believed himself to be an “alien dinosaur-like creature, and that he would transform from his human form into his Black Raptor form on his 21st birthday - 13 Oct 08.”

Specialist Marko, 21, is one of six soldiers from the Fourth Brigade Combat Team based in Fort Carson, Colorado, who have been charged or convicted of murder in the past two years.

He is charged with raping and murdering Judilianna Lawrence, a 19-year-old developmentally disabled woman who had met him online. Specialist Marko admitted to the police that on Oct. 10, he took Ms. Lawrence to the mountains overlooking Colorado Springs, blindfolded and raped her, then slit her throat, according to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office arrest affidavit. The affidavit also said that three days later - the day he believed he would transform into the Black Raptor - Specialist Marko took the police to where he had left her body.

Businesses cut prices at a record rate last month, builders started fewer new homes than anytime on record, and last week more people filed for new unemployment benefits than in any week since 1992, according to government data, as the outlook for the economy continues to dim.

The Labor Department announced this morning that new applications for jobless benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 542,000 last week. It also revised the figure from the previous week down to 515,000.

That follows announcements Wednesday that new-home starts in October were the lowest since at least 1959, when the government began keeping data. The consumer price index plummeted by the most since that series of monthly data was started in 1947, as the economy slowed so abruptly that companies had to slash prices to sell products.

Federal Reserve leaders released projections indicating they expect the economy to worsen significantly in the coming year. The most pessimistic of 17 Fed officials expects joblessness to rise to 8 percent at the end of 2009, which would be the highest in a quarter-century.

Every year, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives finds thousands of licensed gun dealers in violation of federal law, often for very minor problems.

The agency, which conducts about 11,000 inspections a year, says it has come up with a way to eliminate many of those violations before they happen.

Instead of filling out the required ATF paperwork by hand, gun buyers and dealers will now be able to complete what officials say is a fail-safe electronic version of the document, known as Form 4473.

Speaking at a gun shop in Upper Marlboro where he announced the change, acting ATF Director Michael J. Sullivan  said the new option would cut down on illegible answers and incomplete answers - the most common causes of violations.

Such simple human errors account for about 60 percent of the violations cited annually by the ATF, and finding a way to reduce them has been a priority for the agency and the industry, said Sullivan.

The judge said the military can continue to detain a sixth Algerian - Belkacem Bensayah - who was captured with the other five.

One of the men to be released is Lakhdar Boumediene, whose landmark Supreme Court case last summer gave the Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment.

The government had accused all six of the men of planning to travel to Afghanistan to join al-Qaeda.

The global financial crisis has hit the global shipping industry hard, knocking down shipping volumes - and sending charter rates for moving dry bulk cargo such as iron ore, coal, steel, grain and other commodities by about 90 percent.

And Greeks, who control nearly 20 percent of the world's merchant fleet and whose shipping tycoons such as Aristotle Onassis and Stavros Niarchos gained near mythical status in the 1960s and 1970s, are feeling the pinch.

''The shipping industry is at the forefront of the free economy, and we're the first ones to feel the recession as well as the boom,'' said shipping broker Francois Savaricas of ACE Chartering. ''In this case, what we're going through is not so much a shipping crisis as a whole financial crisis.''

By a secret vote of 137 to 122, House Democrats ended Dingell’s nearly 28-year reign as his party’s top member on the committee. In doing so, Waxman’s backers upended the seniority system to install a leader more in tune with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on a variety of issues.

Although Pelosi did not formally endorse Waxman, members of the Democratic caucus understood that she could have stopped him if she had wished. The incoming Obama administration had also signaled its direction when it named Philip Schiliro, a longtime and loyal aide to Waxman, as the new White House director of Congressional relations.

Besides seating a committed environmentalist as head of the energy committee, the vote also removes one of the auto industry’s best friends from a key leadership post - further evidence of how much power the American car-makers, whose executives have been pleading for federal money, have lost in Congress.

"Stress causes neurons (brain cells) to shrink or grow," said Bruce McEwen, a neuroscientist at Rockefeller University in New York. "The wear and tear on the body from lots of stress changes the nervous system.''

He said that stress is "particularly worrying in the developing brain, which appears to be programmed by early stressful experience."

Stress in early life, even in the womb, can later lead to undesirable changes in behavior and the ability to learn and remember. Other consequences may be substance abuse and psychiatric disorders, researchers said at a conference of neuroscientists in Washington this week.

"Pre-natal stress can change the brain forever," said Tallie Baram, a neurologist at the University of California, Irvine. "Stress changes how genes are expressed throughout life."

Shares on Wall Street closed at their lowest levels in five years on Wednesday as hope dimmed in Washington for an emergency bailout of the auto industry.

The late-day sell-off came in frenzy amid growing fears of deflation.

The Dow Jones settled below 8,000 for the first time since 2003, dropping 427.47 points or 5 percent to 7,990. The broader Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was 6.1 percent lower. The technology-heavy Nasdaq composite index was down 6.5 percent.

“It’s painful,” said Howard Silverblatt, senior index analyst at Standard & Poor’s. “A lot of people have pulled a lot of cash out. They’re sitting on the side. It’s all I hear all day: ‘Where can I hide?’ ”

All corners of the market were down, but the financial, transportation and consumer sectors took the heaviest blows. Financial stocks were down an average of 9 percent over the day, and the banking giant Citigroup dropped 22 percent.

The session was dedicated to a second public reading of the agreement, which governs the presence of American troops in Iraq through 2011 and which the Parliament is scheduled to vote on Monday. Even before the session began, legislators were apprehensive.

“There is much tension inside the parliament,” said Iman al-Asadi, a Shiite lawmaker, shortly before the session was scheduled to start. “We worry that they will fight each other inside the room.”

Lawmakers who support the pact said they were worried in particular about the followers of the anti-American Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr, who make up a bloc of 32 legislators in the 275 member Parliament. While there are those in Parliament, like many Sunnis, who have objections to elements of the pact, the Sadrists reject any agreement with the Americans in principle.

In a departure from protocol, security guards were present in the room, both because of the tension and because several Iraqi government officials, including the ministers of foreign affairs and finance, were in attendance to answer questions about the agreement. Hoshyar Zebari, the foreign affairs minister, said the guards were unarmed.

U.S. consumer prices and housing starts fell in October to levels not seen since the 1940s and 1950s, signs of a collapse in household spending that threatens to deepen and lengthen any economic downturn.

Although the decline in prices was led by a steep drop in the price of crude oil, it marked the first time in more than a quarter-century that so-called "core inflation" - which excludes the cost of energy and food - has fallen into negative territory.

The Labor Department reported this morning that overall consumer prices declined by 1 percent in October on a seasonally adjusted basis - the largest one-month price drop since the agency began compiling the statistic in 1947.

With the cost of crude oil plummeting, overall energy prices fell 8.6 percent in October compared with the month before, and by 43 percent over the past three months.

Excluding energy and food prices, which are particularly volatile, the price decline was a more modest 0.1 percent.

The chieftains of Detroit's Big Three automakers made a desperate appeal to skeptical lawmakers Tuesday for $25 billion in emergency loans to forestall the possible collapse of the domestic auto industry, offering to cut their own salaries in exchange for government aid.

Yet the chances were looking increasingly bleak that Congress would quickly approve a lifeline to help the firms survive some of the most devastating economic conditions since Henry Ford founded the Ford Motor Co. in 1903.

In testimony before the Senate Banking Committee, the chief executives of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler blamed the failure of the global credit system for driving down auto sales and plunging their firms into crisis. Chrysler chief executive Robert L. Nardelli revealed that his company had considered filing for bankruptcy protection, but decided it would take too long to reach an accord with suppliers, lenders and labor.

"We're in a very fragile position," said Nardelli.

Holder, 57, was offered the job late last week and tentatively accepted it, sources said. The Obama team intends to make the nomination official if he receives at least moderate support from Republican lawmakers and completes the vetting process, the sources said. Intermediaries began to reach out to Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee  last week, and the vetting pace accelerated Tuesday.

Sources close to the process said Holder was a "near-certainty" to become the first African American nominated to head the Justice Department, which plays a leading role in enforcing civil rights laws. Officials in the Obama transition office said no final decision has been reached.

The nation's next top law enforcement officer will inherit significant challenges, including a workforce demoralized by allegations of political interference in the Bush years; the vexing issue of how to close the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; and the question of whether to open criminal investigations of administration officials who approved harsh interrogation tactics and warrantless wiretapping.

But walk upstairs to the second floor, and the ancient corpses on display seem to tell a different story.

One called the Loulan Beauty lies on her back with her shoulder-length hair matted down, her lips pursed in death, her high cheekbones and long nose the most obvious signs that she is not what one thinks of as Chinese.

The Loulan Beauty is one of more than 200 remarkably well-preserved mummies discovered in the western deserts here over the last few decades. The ancient bodies have become protagonists in a very contemporary political dispute over who should control the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region.

The Chinese authorities here face an intermittent separatist movement of nationalist Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim people who number nine million in Xinjiang.