The Reminder is making its archives back to 2003 available on our website. Please note that, due to technical limitations, archive articles are presented without the usual formatting.
Airobi - Tens of thousands of activists and health workers rallied worldwide Monday to mark World AIDS Day, and officials hailed new initiatives, new funding and a new pill to fight the disease that has infected 40 million people and kills more than 8,000 every day. The World Health Organization and UNAIDS promised cheaper drugs, simpler treatment regimens and more money as part of a campaign launched in Nairobi to provide three million HIV-infected people with the latest drugs available by the end of 2005 in a $5.5-billion US effort. "In two short decades, HIV/AIDS has become the premier disease of mass destruction," said Dr. Jack Chow, the assistant director general of WHO. "The death odometer is spinning at 8,000 lives a day and accelerating." Samarra, Iraq - One of the bloodiest engagements since the fall of Saddam Hussein showed a new, deadlier side of the Iraqi insurgency: stepped up, co-ordinated assaults by groups of guerrillas bent on battle rather than a hit-and-run attack, the U.S. military said Monday. "Here it seems they had the training to stand and fight," said Capt. Andy Deponai, whose tank was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade during the firefight Sunday in Samarra, north of Baghdad. Residents disputed U.S. assertions that dozens of Iraqi fighters died, saying fewer than 10 were killed and that most of those were civilians.
