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The numbers surrounding the 2010 Fifa World Cup draw to be held here on Friday are both record-breaking and staggering. (AllAfrica)

The Liberian government has announced that it is in the final stages of securing a U.S. $1.6 billion Indonesian investment in palm oil production which is expected to create 35,000 jobs. (AllAfrica)

President Jacob Zuma has announced a range of new measures to fight HIV/Aids and will undergo testing for his HIV status as part of a new campaign to persuade all South Africans to do the same. (AllAfrica)

NAMIBIAN politics is set to get an extreme makeover - the opposition political landscape seems to have undergone a dramatic shift with a new official opposition emerging after two days of counting and verifying election results. (AllAfrica)

The World Health Organization (WHO) issued a new set of guidelines for the treatment of HIV and prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) on 30 November. (AllAfrica)

The Security Council today extended and expanded the arms embargo and related sanctions in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), which have been in place since 2003, for another year. (AllAfrica)

The ongoing case of Congolese rebel leader Laurent Nkunda will come before Rwanda's Supreme Court, Mr Nkunda's lawyer said Tuesday. (AllAfrica)

The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) has said that the nation's crude oil production capacity has recorded a quantum leap in the aftermath of the amnesty programme and the return of peace in the Niger Delta area. (AllAfrica)

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) today launched an assessment of the impact of contamination from oil across the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta in Nigeria, which has been plagued by local unrest and ecological damage in recent years. (AllAfrica)

A senior United Nations peacekeeping official today voiced "extreme" concern over the fate of two abducted staff members of the joint UN-African Union mission in Darfur (UNAMID), warning that the security situation on the war-ravaged western flank of Sudan continues to be unstable. (AllAfrica)

"It was like writing my first exam. I was nervous and didn't want to make a mistake. I must have checked the ballot 10 times." (AllAfrica)

Zimbabwean professionals in the UK say they will need to see real change before they would even consider going home, despite South Africa's ongoing attempts to resolve the disputes between the bickering partners in Zimbabwe's unity government. (AllAfrica)

Special Programmes minister Naomi Shaban Tuesday said that the the real figure of the squatters evicted from the Mau forest was yet to be ascertained. (AllAfrica)

The military operation targeting piracy off the Somali coast has been termed a success. (AllAfrica)

The President of West African Pharmaceuticals Manufacturers Association, Mazi Sam Ohuanbuwa has said that there is a high prevalence of counterfeit drugs in Sub-Saharan Africa which ranges between 15% and 25% of all medicines. (AllAfrica)

Increased banditry, kidnappings of relief workers and attacks on humanitarian compounds in eastern Chad are threatening crucial aid for nearly 100,000 people, many of them refugees or internally displaced persons (IDP), the United Nations reported today. (AllAfrica)

Phoebe Rajula is grateful that she and her daughter have access to life-prolonging antiretroviral medication, but the frequent trips to Mbagathi District Hospital in the capital, Nairobi, for their medication take a toll on her meagre finances and her energy levels. (AllAfrica)

The Unity Party has attributed its defeat in the recent Montserrado County by-election to many factors, amongst them importing officials with fabulous salaries, but warns that should the Congress for Democratic Change of football star George Weah emerge victorious in 2011, there will be disaster. (AllAfrica)

THE Arusha-based Regional Air Services has started offsetting some of the company's carbon footprint with Carbon Tanzania as part of its corporate responsibility for sustainable welfare of people and environment. (AllAfrica)

When 20-year-old Isoke Aikpitanyi was offered a job in Italy in 2000 she leapt at the chance. Life was difficult at home in Nigeria and opportunities for young women were limited and few. She knew that she would have to enter the country illegally and that the promised job would be low-paying and menial - that of a maid or nanny perhaps. But it seemed better than staying home, and the woman who made the job offer would also make the travel arrangements and pay the costs, which Ms. Aikpitanyi would repay from her earnings. (AllAfrica)

THE Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) wants former president Thabo Mbeki to apologise for his part in the country's HIV/AIDS crisis. (AllAfrica)

SIX opposition parties are claiming that possible rigging of the election results could be taking place, following what they claim were a number of irregularities in the election process. (AllAfrica)

Sixteen-year-old Andela Milambo* wants a husband. She is not looking for love, but for someone to share the burden of living with HIV. She wants to be able to take her medicine without having to hide, to discuss the recurring herpes with someone who understands. (AllAfrica)

Today is World Aids Day, and of the 33 million people living with the condition worldwide, over 60% percent live in Sub-Saharan Africa. (AllAfrica)

Somali pirates have reportedly seized a Greek-owned oil tanker and its 28 crewmembers more than 1000 kilometers off the coast of Somalia. (AllAfrica)

Complacency, ignorance and indifference are reversing Uganda's gains against the Aids epidemic, a senior government official warned yesterday. Dr Kihumuro Apuuli, who heads the Uganda Aids Commission, the government agency responsible for coordinating the fight against Aids, said the number of new HIV infections is "unacceptably high" and rising. (AllAfrica)

After two decades of drought the urgent prayers in Swaziland's annual incwala ceremony, a month-long ritual in which ancestral spirits are petitioned for good rains, have been answered with weeks of torrential downpours. Floods now threaten food security. (AllAfrica)

Mamaleshoae Nkhahle is a mother of four who works as an expert patient at the Likotsi health clinic in Lesotho's capital, Maseru. She helps people newly diagnosed with HIV to come to grips with the stigma of the disease, and diminishes the effects of such attitudes by talking openly about her own experiences of living with the virus. (AllAfrica)

United Nations peacekeepers planted nearly 600 trees in a botanical garden in Côte d'Ivoire over the weekend, a small but symbolic step in a project to combat climate change that has already surpassed its target of 7 billion trees - one for every person in the world. (AllAfrica)

Some headway has been made in mitigating the impact of HIV/AIDS on children and young people, but too many are still needlessly infected, and receive little or no treatment, care and support. (AllAfrica)

All South African babies testing HIV-positive will be treated, in a major change of policy announced by Jacob Zuma. (BBC News)