Sub-Saharan Africa had between 1.4 and 2.4 million new HIV infections in the last year, according to the most recent UNAIDS report—back in 2001, new infections were higher, between 1.7 and 2.7 million. HIV prevalence in adults is estimated at 5% in sub-Saharan Africa, down from its almost-6% estimate in 2000. That's one reason why there's something really, really odd about the conclusion of Michael Specter's fascinating piece on viruses in the New Yorker.

Conde Nast Portfolio's December issue will have 111.3 ad pages, says the Post's Keith Kelly: "That comes after a 185 ad-page debut in April, followed by 121.2 in September, 117.9 in October and 108.2 in November." (That's a bit more than 1/3rd of Vanity Fair's ad pages, right?) Meanwhile, we hear that on their website, media blogger Jeff Bercovici and finance blogger Felix Salmon have recently been trading off months as top traffic-getters. We also hear that the online ad folks are totally over the top! They don't have much inventory to sell, as site traffic is still low—and yet veritable hordes of them fly across the country to meet with agencies and pitch. The sales team sounds crazily over-built for the current size of the website.

The New York Times Company announced its August revenues today, and each of their divisions is trending pretty much as expected—though ad revenues for The New York Times Media Group were up very slightly over August last year, on the back of fashion, hotel and tech ads, as opposed to July, which was down nearly 3% over last year. But more of the same in general: internet ads up! New England ads down. About.com ads still up. Sort of related: stock in the toilet. Most interesting to us: In July, TimesSelect had 225,100 paying customers. As of August, it had 226,800. That is exciting growth of 1700 paying customers! That is somewhere between $7,076.25 and $13,515 dollars, depending on whether folks bought by the month or by the year, which is like half of Maureen Dowd's expense account this month.

Last week, Keith Kelly claimed that the New York Times will finally end the long national joke that is TimesSelect—you just know Maureen Dowd is cursing those Freakonomics guys right now for being able to refuse to have their blog behind the TimesSelect pay wall!—and a quick look at the just-out July numbers confirms that the core group of 225,000 or so people who signed up to pay for the service in the first place are pretty much the same people who still subscribe. (Everyone else either gets it free as part of their home delivery service, or as part of a college/university deal.) Whenever it does get shut down, it'll be a speck of egg on the faces of Times CEO Janet Robinson and Publisher Arthur "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr. But the failure of TimesSelect is probably the least of their worries right now: Their ad revenue, especially in the Regional Media Group (all those little papers they own in places like Lakeland, Florida) and classifieds across the board, is having a bit of a summer slump.

Porfolio has been on New York newsstands since April 16, and national newsstands since April 24. Which means it's not too early to ask: How's it selling?