Osama bin Laden urges
holy war
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP)-Osama bin Laden called on Muslims to join a holy war against “the American crusade,” and the United Nations said Monday that Afghanistan’s
ruling Taliban militia have
virtually shut down its humanitarian operations by threatening to kill its remaining staff.
In a statement provided Monday to Qatar’s Al-Jazeera satellite channel, bin Laden-the suspected mastermind of the September 11 attacks in New York and Washington-said, “We are steadfast on the path of jihad (holy war) with the heroic, faithful Afghan people.”
Bin Laden also expressed sorrow for the deaths of pro-Taliban Pakistanis killed for protesting “the aggression of the American crusade forces and their allies on Muslim lands in Pakistan and Afghanistan.”
He called them martyrs in the statement, which the TV station said was signed by bin Laden and dated Sunday.

Bush lifts key sanctions against Pakistan and India
WASHINGTON (AP)-The United States lifted key sanctions against Pakistan and India imposed over the nations’ nuclear weapons programs, apparently in appreciation of their help in the fight against terrorism. Saudi Arabia rejected a U.S. request to use its air bases for its military campaign.
President George W. Bush said in a statement Saturday that maintaining the sanctions, which barred economic and military assistance to India and Pakistan countries, “would not be in the national security interests of the United States.”
Maleeha Lodhi, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States, praised the move, saying it “will enable Pakistan to get economic aid and it’s a very important development.”
A senior Pakistani official said Bush’s decision lifts restrictions on military sales to Pakistan and makes the country eligible for new economic aid. It does not apply to sanctions imposed after the 1999 Pakistani military takeover, meaning Pakistan is still ineligible for U.S. loans and is prohibited from sending soldiers to America for training, the official said on condition of anonymity.
Pakistan’s help could be particularly important if the United States carries out an attack against neighbouring Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden, named as the prime suspect in the devastating September 11 attacks against America, has taken refuge.

Worlds collide: DNA sequencing approach can unclog
computer
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (AP)-The Internet is most often compared to a massive highway. Amit Singh hit upon a more elegant analogy, and it helped him design something to make computer networks work better. Two years ago, Singh was a
doctorate student at Stanford University, researching how computers could assist molecular biology research.
He realized that human DNA is like a complicated computer network, transmitting vast amounts of data as chemical compounds, rather than in binary computer code. Some of the compounds form genes, while others amount to clutter.
Singh saw how complex computer algorithms let scientists scan through the haze of DNA molecules to find genes while disregarding the clutter. Fascinated, he decided to see if the technique could work on a real computer network.
Singh enlisted the help of his brother Balraj, then an engineer at Intel Corp., and lined up $10.4 million from venture capitalists. Last month, their small company in Santa Clara, Peribit Networks Inc., began selling its first product, VCR-sized boxes that companies can plug into their networks. Like a scientist hunting for genes hidden in DNA, Peribit’s box scans
packets of data crossing a
network and searches for what is new.
Things it has seen before, from sentences that appear in several e-mails to the unchanging background in a video
conference, get translated into a tiny bit of code. It is as if a
hairball stuck in a drainpipe could be magically converted into a grain of salt.
“Data goes in fat and
inefficient, data comes out lean and efficient,” Singh said.

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