National News from NPR

Federal health officials have added new safety alerts to statins, a class of drugs used to lower cholesterol levels. The Food and Drug Administration cited rare side effects, including memory loss, diabetes and muscle pain. Robert Siegel talks to Rob Stein about the news.

On Wednesday evening, President Obama is expected to host a dinner at the White House honoring veterans of the Iraq War. Veterans still face challenges after their homecoming, including a higher-than-average unemployment rate.

No one ever said economic forecasting was easy:

On the last day of February 2007, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke told Congress that "the fundamentals are very strong" for the U.S. economy.

And about those problems starting to show up in the housing market? "We don't see it as being a broad financial concern or a major factor in assessing the course of the economy," he said back then.

That's it. They win. He's giving up his privacy.

Trying to maintain privacy in contemporary America is just too time consuming, too complicated, too exhausting. He can't tell the good guys from the bad guys anymore. He doesn't know whom to trust.

Davy Jones, who thrilled many a young girl's heart back in the '60s as a member of the Monkees, has died.

TMZ broke the news. It reports being told by the medical examiner's office in Martin County, Fla., of the 66-year-old singer's death. The English-born Jones apparently lived in that part of Florida.

The Boston Globe reports this morning that Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was baptized posthumously in a Mormon temple in Idaho last year.

Pearl was Jewish and was captured and killed by terrorists while reporting in Pakistan in 2002.

Reuters and The Associated Press are reporting that Egyptian authorities have decided that seven Americans who it has accused of engaging in illegal "political activity" may now leave the country.

An ominous excerpt from the latest BBC News report on what's happening in Syria:

"The Syrian army is advancing on opposition positions in Homs, which has been under artillery bombardment for nearly a month, reports say. Security officials said the city's besieged district of Baba Amr would be 'cleaned' within the next few hours."