Reuters - Western criticism of death sentences handed to five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor by a Libyan court shows a lack of respect for the Libyan people, Libya's foreign ministry said late on Thursday.

AFP - South Korean scentists have said they are closer to understanding how a protein found in both primates and humans blocks the progression of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in the apes.

AFP - Long taboo, condoms have made a startling entrance into the media in this conservative Muslim country once gripped by an Islamic insurgency but now taking on a very different threat: HIV/AIDS.

Reuters - Former U.S. president Bill Clinton was made an honorary chief in Papua New Guinea on Sunday after signing an agreement to help combat HIV-AIDS in the South Pacific island nation.

AFP - Officials in China's worst hit AIDS province plan compulsory pre-marital HIV tests as part of a series of tough measures to stem the spread of the fatal virus, state media has said.

AFP - Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, 69, has taken a voluntary HIV-AIDS test in Abuja in a move to encourage Nigerians to emulate the practice.

Reuters - About 1.2 million people in countries hard hit by AIDS are receiving life-extending drugs thanks to two major U.S. and international funds, double from a year ago, but many millions more need help, the funds said on Friday.

AFP - Three-year-old Ibraham Akinyi pushes a toy car made of scrap metal across a makeshift wooden table, oblivious to the horrors that befell his mother, Beatrice, after his father's death from AIDS in 2003.

AFP - At a seminar marking World AIDS Day in Helsinki, the Finnish EU presidency urged an improvement in the status of young women and prevention in tackling the HIV/AIDS epidemic.