Appeal for money for Russian jails

The Russian justice minister, Yuri Chaika, has warned that the disease, tuberculosis, is spreading uncontrollably through the country's overcrowded prisons.

He's asked the lower house of parliament, the Duma, for a billion Roubles or more than eight-million dollars for Russia's prison system.

Mr Chaika said that more than ninety-thousand inmates had tuberculosis and there was a shortage of at least sixteen-thousand hospital beds to treat the disease.

Mr Chaika wants to build facilities for another ninety-thousand inmates; more than sixty per cent of prison buildings, he said, were built before 1917 and were worn out. On Wednesday, the Duma approved the amnesty of one hundred and twenty thousand prisoners.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service