Kabul, Mar. 23 : United States Special Forces reportedly killed five people near the Afghan-Tajik border on Sunday, and claimed that they were militants.

The United States military said in a statement that its forces had also detained four suspects in an operation against a "terrorist network".

The military statement also said the operation was coordinated with the local Afghan police. But the provincial police chief, General Abdul Razaq Yaqoubi, said no information had been given to him, the Kunduz governor or the head of intelligence.

Washington, March 23 : German scientists have developed an automated synthesizer that can enable the use of carbohydrates in revolutionary new vaccines and drugs to battle malaria, HIV, and a bevy of other diseases.

Dr. Peter H. Seeberger, principal investigator for the research, developed the device at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich.

He says that it can build intricate molecules in a few hours, instead of the months or years required with existing technology.

Washington, Mar. 23 : Defending his Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, President Barack Obama has said that the global economic recession has not made the US dollar as weak as is being made out to be. But he warned that excessive borrowing and high deficits could weaken the Treasury Bill demand.

In an interview with "60 Minutes" on CBS, Obama said that he is yet to take a firm position on the bill, and was not alarmed about whether the bill would be seen as constitutional or not.

Washington, Mar. 23 : President Barack Obama finds the job of commander in chief "exhilarating," adding that while he was reading more now, most of what he was reading consisted of briefing books.

"You know, you get a little time to read - history or, you know, policy books that are of interest. But there's a huge amount of information that has to be digested, especially right now. Because the complexities of Afghanistan are matched, maybe even dwarfed, by the complexities of the economic situation," the New York Times quoted him, as saying.

Washington, Mar 23: Hollywood actress Julia Roberts’ latest flick ‘Duplicity’, which was being touted as her much-anticipated return to the big screen, has been beaten by Nicolas Cage’s latest offering ‘Knowing’ and Paul Rudd’s ‘I Love You, Man’.

Julia Roberts, whose last major hit was ‘Erin Brokovich’ back in 2000, was aiming to repeat the same success with ‘Duplicity’.

Washington, Mar. 23: President Barack Obama has said that the United States must look for a way out of the war in Afghanistan, suggesting that the military build-up in that landlocked country will not be open-ended.

“There’s got to be an exit strategy. There’s got to be a sense that this is not perpetual drift,” Obama told “60 Minutes” on CBS in a wide-ranging interview.