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.
Moscow - Investigators examined flight recorders Thursday from Russia's mystery double air crash in which 89 people died, but one official doubted they would be of any use. "The tapes... did not show anything. Practically speaking they switched themselves off immediately. And so we failed to get any information," Vladimir Yakovlev, Russian President Vladimir Putin's envoy for the southern region, told ORT television. Najaf, Iraq - Iraq's most revered Shi'ite leader persuaded a rebel cleric Thursday to accept a deal ending a three-week uprising in Najaf, after returning to the holy city amid bloody clashes that killed at least 74 people. Iraq's government said it had also agreed to the deal brokered by Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, under which radical Shi'ite militiamen would leave the sacred Imam Ali shrine in Najaf and U.S. forces would also pull out of the city. Washington - Two U.S. contractors implicated in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal have defended their work in Iraq, with one saying its employees were not involved in "horrendous" abuses listed in a new report. Responding to two military reports this week on the abuse by U.S. soldiers and civilian contractors of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, CACI International said the company "endeavoured to act responsibly at every turn."
