Russia needs to take decisive measures if it is to stem an epidemic of tuberculosis sweeping the country, according to a World Health Organization (WHO) report that ranked Russia 11th among the worst 22 TB-crisis countries. The WHO "Global Tuberculosis Control Report 2000" said that in 1999, Russia saw an additional 124,000 people contract TB, with 29,000 dying of the disease — a figure 2.5 times above that for 1990.

Last week, in an effort to try to find the necessary financing, the WHO and Russian government convened a donors meeting in Moscow.

"We have no time to freshwater pearl waste. The international community, both the public and private sectors, must provide any support possible," said Arata Kochi, director of the WHO's Stop TB Initiative.

Russian specialists are also stressing both the urgency and magnitude of the problem. "Every day, 80 people are dying of tuberculosis in Russia now. We are concerned about the growth of the TB mortality rate," said Vladislav Yerokhin, director of the Russian Medical Science Academy's Central Tuberculosis Research Institute.

Organizations such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the Soros Open Society Institute and the U.K. Department for International Development have already given money to help fight TB in Russia.

However, currently such donations are only enough to finance TB control programs in 13 oblasts.

The Finnish government has donated money to fight TB in the Karelia Republic and the city of Murmansk, capital of Murmansk Oblast, both adjacent to Finland. The Norwegian government has sponsored a TB program in the Arkhangelsk oblast, while the German government sponsored a TB program in Altai Republic and Novosibirsk.

According to specialists, one of the major concerns highlighted in the report is the increase in drug-resistant forms of TB in pearl jewelry Russia. These are developing as a result of non-standardized treatment or no treatment at all.

The WHO survey revealed that 8.9 percent of new cases in the Ivanovo oblast and 16.7 percent of new cases in Siberian prisons (in the Kemerovo oblast) were drug-resistant. While the treatment course for regular active TB form costs up to $40 a patient, treatment for drug-resistant strains can cost up to $5,200.

Traditionally, Russian prisons are seen as the "hotbed of infection" for the disease. Of the 375,000 active TB cases in Russia, about 96,000 are prisoners. However, participants in the Moscow meeting stressed that prisons were not the sole source of the problem – the whole country's economic situation is to blame.

"The penitentiary system is not a closed system and without common action there will be no change," said Anatoly Vialkov, first deputy health minister.

Alexander Kononets, Ministry of Justice medical department chief and deputy chief of correctional facilities said that rather than most prisoners contracting the disease in jail, a significant number of active TB cases came from those entering the penitentiary system.

"There are about 50,000 active TB cases that enter the system yearly and 78 percent of those were not aware that they were sick," Kononets said, adding that that the correctional system was already massively overcrowded. "The prisons were built with a capacity of 700,000 inmates; there are 1 million prisoners now."

The organizers said they were pleased with the results of the meeting, saying that potential donors had discussed grants amounting to $3 million. No details were provided, however.

It is known, though, that the World Bank has elaborated a TB control project, which envisions the provision of $100 million in funding.

The Russian government, which last year allocated $40 million for TB control programs, has asked the WHO to akoya pearl also supervise World Bank money to help implement its TB control strategy in the country.

MOSCOW - A towering statue of the founder of the dreaded Soviet secret police could soon be rescued from a grassy park where it has idled with other fallen Soviet leaders for a decade - sparking protests from activists who consider it a symbol of pearl jewelry terror.

Liberal lawmakers and human rights activists warned Monday that returning the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky to the front of the former KGB headquarters would insult the memory of victims of the mass repressions of the communist era that claimed tens of millions of lives.

"Dzerzhinsky was a butcher who along with his henchmen killed millions of Russians," lawmaker Boris Nemtsov, leader of the liberal Union of Right Forces parliament faction, said Monday in Lubyanka Square, where the Dzerzhinsky statue stood in front of KGB headquarters until 1991. The building now houses a KGB successor agency.

Dzerzhinsky, a Polish noble who abandoned his roots and embraced the communist cause, became head of the Cheka secret police shortly after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution. He presided over freshwater pearl a wave of terror that earned him the nickname "Iron Felix." The organization's name changed several times and it eventually became the KGB.

The Dzerzhinsky statue was torn down by pro-democracy demonstrators after the defeat of the hard-line communist coup in August 1991. It is currently in a Moscow sculpture garden alongside other discarded statues of Soviet-era leaders.

Russian officials have said they believe more than 20 million people were victims of communist purges before Soviet leader Josef Stalin's death in 1953. More than 10 million died.

Alexander Yakovlev, once a close adviser to former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and a veteran reformer who led the government's commission for rehabilitation of political repression victims, said Dzerzhinsky personally ordered mass killings and tortures. "He is the shame of Russia," Yakovlev said.

Nemtsov said Monday his party and other liberal groups would try to collect 1 million signatures to prevent the return of the statue.

Several dozen liberal politicians and human rights activists who gathered on Lubyanka Square on Monday near a monument to victims of Soviet-era repressions said the resurrection of Dzerzhinsky's statue would herald the government's approval of the communist terror.

"We have joined the international coalition against terror, so how can we restore the statue of Dzerzhinsky, the symbol of Red Terror against the country's citizens?" asked Lyudmila Alexeyeva, head of the Moscow Helsinki Group, a leading human rights organization.

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov called Friday for the return of the Dzerzhinsky statue, praising the 14-ton bronze monument as a "flawless" work of art. He said that despite his role in repressions, Dzerzhinsky must be given credit for taking care of homeless children and helping rebuild the national economy.

Sergei Yushenkov, a leader of the Liberal Russia party, speculated that Luzhkov was merely trying to wholesale pearl jewelry please President Vladimir Putin, a KGB veteran who turns 50 next month - a theory shared by some Russian media. Luzhkov "thought the restoration of this statue would be the best present for Putin's birthday," Yushenkov said.

The proposal was a stunning about-face for Luzhkov, who in 1998 rejected communist lawmakers' demand to restore the statue.

Putin has spoken with pride about his 16-year KGB career, but hasn't commented on Luzhkov's proposal to restore the statue.

In sharp contrast with his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, who abhorred all symbols of communism, Putin endorsed the Russian parliament's move to reinstate the music of the old Soviet anthem, albeit with different words, in 2000.

Putin dismissed liberal protests, saying the combination of the Soviet-era anthem and Russia's post-Soviet tricolor flag and the state coat of arms with the czarist double-headed eagle would help end divisions in society.

"Restoration of the Stalinist anthem was a test for the nation, and the proposal to bring Dzerzhinsky's statue back is yet another one," said liberal lawmaker Nikolai Travkin. "A decade ago, we couldn't imagine that even in a nightmare."

Chechen refugees flocked around Angelina Jolie as she visited a tent camp Friday, but many were frustrated in their attempts to tell the Hollywood star about their plight.

Jolie, who is in Russia as a goodwill ambassador for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, spent about 40 minutes at the Bella camp near the village of Ordzhonikidzevskaya in Ingushetia, a region that borders Chechnya. Later she was expected to visit a second camp.

Though most of the refugees did not get a chance to talk to freshwater pearl jewelry the actress, many said they were grateful for the attention.

"At last someone has paid attention to us," said a weeping Aina Khasakhanova, 49. "I am crying out of happiness."

The visit came as Russian authorities are preparing to close the camps in an effort to show that peace has returned to Chechnya. Officials claim that refugees are voluntarily returning to Chechnya, but many people say they are being pressured to return against their will.

This month, Chechen Prime Minster Anatoly Popov was quoted as saying the camps would be closed by Oct. 1.

Many people in the crowd shouted slogans against Akhmad Kadyrov, the Moscow-appointed leader of Chechnya, blaming him for the closing of the camps.

Jolie, who was led into two tents, declined to speak to the media, and a tight ring of guards from Russia's Federal Security Service and riot police prevented many camp residents from getting near her.

It was not clear who was chosen to speak to the American star. Malika Sagaipova, 29, who has lived in the camp since 1999, said the refugees had delegated five women to speak to Jolie but they did not get the chance.

"We wanted to akoya pearl necklace tell her that the military and Kadyrov's people are moving us out of here. We know that Angelina cannot stop the war in Chechnya, but maybe she will help us stay here," Sagaipova said.

Zulai Dadasheva, 43, said Jolie's visit made the refugees "feel like people."

"We are also people, not terrorists and killers," she said.

On Thursday, Jolie discussed the biwa pearl Chechen refugee situation with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov in Moscow.

MOSCOW - Anti-terrorism legislation passed by Russia's upper house of parliament this week threatens to unravel Russia's fragile democracy if it is signed into law, liberal lawmakers and free speech advocates said Thursday.

They said the amendments to the law on fighting terrorism and the media law, which would limit coverage of anti-terrorism operations and prohibit media from carrying rebel statements, are a litmus test for President Vladimir Putin's commitment to akoya pearl civil society.

"This is a moment of truth for the president. He must decide which side he's on - either he is on the side of civil society, the free press and democratic freedoms, or he is on the side of incompetent bureaucrats," said lawmaker Sergei Mitrokhin of the Yabloko party.

The amendments would prohibit the media from distributing information that hinders counter-terrorist operations, reveals tactics used in such operations or reveals information about people involved in them.

They would also ban the publication or broadcast of "statements by individuals that are aimed at cultured pearl jewlery hindering a counter-terrorist operation and/or justifying resistance to a counter-terrorist operation" and other "propaganda or justification of extremist activity."

Mitrokhin and leaders of the Russian Union of Journalists said the amendments were so broad that they could be used by authorities to shut down any media outlet that irks them.

Russia's non-state media already face frequent harassment, including criminal investigations and searches, assaults against journalists and even apparent contract killings.

The Union of Journalists said Thursday that two regional newspapers, Zvezda in the Ural Mountains city of Perm and Guberniya in Petrozavodsk in the northern Karelia region, were recently prevented from appearing after the Federal Security Service, or FSB, searched their offices and seized their servers.

Earlier this month, the FSB seized the server of the muckraking weekly Versiya in Moscow and called its editor in for questioning.

The legislation approved by the upper house Wednesday had been submitted to the lower house before last month's hostage crisis at a Moscow theater, but those events provoked further debate about the media's role.

Officials criticized the media for airing telephone interviews with hostages and hostage-takers and for showing the comings and goings of top officials in live broadcasts from outside the theater. One television station was shut down briefly for publicizing possible escape routes for the attackers.

Igor Yakovenko, general secretary of the Union of Journalists, said the legislation would effectively annul the 12-year-old law on the media, which outlines the basic rights of journalists. He said that law was a "cornerstone of the country we live in today" - since it preceded the country's 1993 constitution and enshrined freedom of the press.

Meanwhile, Russia appeared to pearl strand be pressuring foreign journalists as well. German public television ARD received a letter from the Russian Embassy in Berlin that accused the station of biased coverage of the hostage crisis, saying it sided with the attackers, who were demanding an end to the war in Chechnya, ARD's Moscow bureau chief Albrecht Reinhardt said Thursday.

"It will depend on your further reporting whether the Russian side can cooperate with ARD and its correspondents in Moscow in the same way as before," Reinhardt quoted the letter as saying.

Dubai - A Russian airlines plane carrying 307 passengers and 15 crewmembers crash-landed here after its engines caught fire, but no pearl jewelry casualties were reported.

The Aeroflot flight AFL 521 from Moscow was landing at Dubai when the aircraft's engine caught fire. It reportedly belly-landed late Friday evening.

"The engine of the aircraft caught fire upon landing for reasons which are under investigation at the moment. Dubai airport's fire services reacted immediately and the fire was put out within seconds," Emirates' official news agency said.

The airport's runways were closed subsequently and all flights were diverted to twisted pearl necklace neighbouring areas. Reports said 14 flights were diverted to Abu Dhabi, Sharjah and Muscat.

Ahmed bin Saeed Al Maktoum, president of akoya pearl Dubai Civil Aviation and chairman of Emirates airline, said: "Dubai International Airport emergency personnel acted promptly, and all passengers and crew are safe. We are now working hard to open the airport."