* A senior official said Russia had no plans to deploy military bases in member countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization

MOSCOW

BEIJING, November 30 (RIA Novosti, Alexei Yefimov) – China's health minister said Wednesday that the country was taking measures to keep the number of HIV-infected people below 1.5 million by 2010.

MOSCOW, November 30 (RIA Novosti)-Russia has not given Ukraine an ultimatum over NATO membership, Ukraine's defense minister said Wednesday. "My Russian counterpart and I did not even discuss Ukraine's accession to NATO," Anatoliy Hrytsenko said in response to media reports that appeared after he met Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov on Monday.

MOSCOW, November 30 (RIA Novosti) – Federal budget losses from oil revenue shortfalls in 2004 totaled $2 bln, the head of the Federal Tax Service said Tuesday.

MOSCOW, November 30 (RIA Novosti) – Defense ministers from the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the loose alliance of states that replaced the Soviet Union, gathered in Moscow Wednesday to discuss cooperation in 2006.

ROSTOV-ON-DON, Novemebr 30 (RIA Novosti, Sergei Rudkovsky) – Local veterinary authorities in the Astrakhan region in southern Russia culled 92 dead swans Tuesday, an official from the Emergency Situations Ministry said Wednesday.

MOSCOW, November 30 (RIA Novosti)-The December 4 presidential elections in Kazakhstan will be a serious step forward from the standpoint of acceptable international standards, the country's foreign minister said Wednesday.

MOSCOW, November 30 (RIA Novosti) – Russia's Federal Tax Service collected about $160 billion in taxes for the federal budget in January-September 2005, a 32% increase year-on-year, the service's head Anatoly Serdyukov said Wednesday.

MOSCOW, November 30 (RIA Novosti) – Federal budget losses from oil revenue shortfalls in 2004 totaled $2 bln, the head of the Federal Tax Service said Tuesday.