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The Centers for Disease Control issues a health alert for travelers visiting Toronto, where the deadly respiratory disease known as SARS has killed at least 14 and infected more than 300. The SARS outbreak is having a major impact on the local economy, 10 percent of which comes from international tourism. Hear NPR's Susan Stone.

On a Navy hospital ship in the Persian Gulf, the USNS Comfort, American doctors often need translation help to understand their injured Iraqi charges. Lt. Ramzey Azar, an environmental health officer on the Comfort, is of Lebanese origin and often assists in translating. This is Lt. Azar's NPR War Diary.

Thousands of Chinese exposed to severe acute respiratory syndrome are told to stay home, and police seal a second Beijing hospital, isolating SARS patients and staff isolated from outside contact. Hear NPR's Bob Edwards and reporter Anthony Kuhn.

The Bush administration says Iran is sending agents into Iraq to influence the development of a postwar government. Iran and Iraq are bound by religion but often in conflict over culture and politics. Hear NPR's Melissa Block and Owen Matthews of Newsweek.

DNA is not just an instruction book for the present and something to pass on to future generations -- it is also a record of our genetic past. No longer do researchers look for clues to human history merely in fossil bones and stone tools, they also seek "genetic fossils" in the DNA of living peoples. NPR's David Baron talks to University of Maryland researcher Sarah Tishkoff, who, by studying DNA and mitochondrial DNA, has revealed some of the most detailed clues yet to humankind's origins.

NPR's Linda Wertheimer talks with Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci says SARS is a particularly dangerous disease because it passes directly from person to person. He urges people to follow travel advisories issued in response to the epidemic.

Host Bob Edwards speaks with NPR's Guy Raz on the capture of Tariq Aziz, deputy prime minister in the former Baath Party government of Saddam Hussein. He is the highest-ranking Iraqi government official so far apprehended by the United States.

She is professor of history at the University of Toronto and the author of the new book, Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, about the Peace Conference after World War I in which delegations from around the world convened to find an alternative to war. During the six months of the conference, new boundaries were drawn up in the Middle East. Out of that conference Iraq was born, and was for a time under British control. MacMillan's book, published under the title Peacemakers in England, was the winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize.

For many, the best analogy for the way DNA works is that it's like a computer program at the heart of every cell. Some of its programming tricks bear an uncanny resemblance to ones the human brain has dreamed up. But DNA also works in ways human programmers find entirely alien. David Kestenbaum takes the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the first scientific description of DNA to speak with researchers trying to understand this odd and extraordinary piece of "software," which is the product of billions of years of evolution.

Shoba Narayan has written about her journey from southern India to the United States in her new book Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes, celebrating food, family ties and Indian culture. View a video of Narayan demonstrating the correct way to cook vegetable dosa, and get recipes for some of the other dishes featured in Lynn Neary's report.