Supporters of the leader of the radical Shiite "Army of Al-Mahdi" Moqtada Al-Sadr handed over control of police stations and government buildings in An-Najaf, Al-Kuf and Karbala to the Iraqi police, Reuters reports. This was done by order of As-Sadr himself. Now the coalition forces control an-Najaf completely, and Al-Kufa and Karbala - partially. The liberation of these three cities was one of the main requirements of the command of the coalition forces to the supporters of Al-Sadr.

About ten people, including representatives of the Central Election Commission of Georgia, are blocked in the building of the district election commission in the Adjarian regional center of Khulo. The Novosti-Georgia agency reports this with reference to the press service of the united opposition movement Our Adzharia. Representatives of the CEC arrived from Tbilisi in Adzharia to prepare for the repeated elections to the country's parliament.

The American company Halliburton has confirmed the disappearance of seven of its employees in Iraq, reports Reuters. They went missing last week after being attacked by a transport convoy. The company hopes that hostage truck driver Thomas Hamill will be released and that the fate of the other six missing workers will be cleared up. Hamill was kidnapped last Friday during an attack on a convoy near Abu Ghraib.

Four corpses with multiple gunshot and stab wounds were found on Monday in an apartment on Brateevskaya Street in Moscow. As REGNUM was told by a source in the Ministry of Internal Affairs, among those killed is a 49-year-old woman registered in this apartment. She was found with a gunshot wound to the stomach and a stab wound to the chest area. In addition, her 30-year-old son and two 21-year-old girls were in the apartment. A live 2-year-old baby was also found in the apartment.

The journalists of the Russian TV channel REN-TV were unexpectedly granted accreditation to work in Qatar, RIA Novosti was told in the press service of the TV company. "Just unexpectedly, our journalists were given accreditation. The journalists already had tickets in their hands. Now they are changing them," the press service employee said.

In Kabardino-Balkaria, four convicts escaped from a pre-trial detention center, Gazeta.Ru reports with reference to Interfax. Two of them were convicted under Article 105 of the Criminal Code ("murder") to 15 and 16 years in prison, two more - under Art. 158 of the Criminal Code ("theft") for two years each. The escape was made on Monday at about 18.00 from the territory of the SIZO household yard.

A black spot of unknown origin was found on the main antenna of the American segment of the ISS, mounted on the Destiny module, RIA Novosti reports. Ground specialists drew attention to it after receiving images from video cameras installed on the outer surface of the station.

The Headquarters for the Protection of Russian Schools in Latvia plans to hold a series of protest actions from April 13 to 16 against the decision of the Latvian authorities to transfer the teaching of most subjects in secondary schools of national minorities into the Latvian language from the new academic year. It is reported by RIA Novosti. Headquarters activists called on students of Russian schools in Riga to come to Bastion Hill in the city center by 17:00 local time on April 13.

On Tuesday the Basmanny Court of Moscow will consider the issue of extending the terms of detention of the head of the fourth department of the Yukos Economic Security Service, Alexei Pichugin. This was reported to RIA Novosti in court. The Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation asks to extend the deadline until June 19. Pichugin was detained on July 19, 2003.

The prosecutor's office of the Novosibirsk region opened a criminal case on the fact of unreasonable receipt of subsidies from JSC "Novosibirskkhleboprodukt". It is reported by RIA Novosti with reference to the Department of Information and Public Relations (UIOS) of the Prosecutor General's Office of the Russian Federation.

The club has already been registered with the Office of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation for the Chechen Republic and has its own seal, REGNUM reports with reference to the Grozny-Inform agency.

Former Chairman of the Government of the Chechen Republic Anatoly Popov has been appointed First Deputy Head of the Federal Agency for Construction, Housing and Communal Services. This was reported by the Novye Izvestia newspaper, citing an informed source in the Federal Agency. The new appointment took into account Popov's extensive managerial and professional experience, the source said. Anatoly Popov served as head of the Chechen government from February 10, 2003 to March 16, 2004.

Georgian Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania said that the talks he held on Tuesday with the head of Adjara, Aslan Abashidze, turned out to be fruitless. The Secretary of the National Security Council of Georgia Vano Merabishvili also took part in the talks. At the talks in Batumi, the issue of disarming the Adjarian formations, which official Tbilisi considers illegal, was discussed, Interfax reports. "We couldn't agree on anything.

On Tuesday, the Moscow City Court will announce the verdict in the so-called "crab case," RIA Novosti was told in court. The prosecutor suggested that the court sentence the defendants in the "crab case" to imprisonment for a term of 4.5 to 6 years. The state prosecution asks to appoint the longest term to the first deputy head of the State Committee for Fisheries of the Russian Federation, Yuri Moskaltsov.

The Russian Foreign Ministry demands the immediate release of the Russians captured in Baghdad, Boris Malakhov, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, said on NTV. “We appeal to those who organized and carried out this action with a firm demand to immediately release innocent people,” he stressed.