A 19-year-old prostitute working in an apartment that doubles as a brothel said she has up to eight clients a day. Working in the southern boom city of Shenzhen, a special economic zone just north of Hong Kong, she told CNN she worries about getting AIDS, but has her own prevention measures. "I always use condoms or take an injection. The medicine can prevent sexually transmitted diseases," she said. "Some girls do not use prevention measures, but we don't talk ...

South Africans received a horrifying measure of just how bad their country's rape crisis is with the release this week of a study in which more than a quarter of men admitted to having raped, and 46% of those said that they had raped more than once. The study, conducted by South Africa's Medical Research Council, reveals a deeply rooted culture of violence against women, in which men rape in order to feel powerful, and do so with impunity, ...

Hope was 14 years old when her uncle raped her. "He trapped me to the ground and covered my mouth with his hand," said the 18-year-old from Zimbabwe. "He threatened to kill me if I ever told anybody." So, she kept quiet. "After a while people around the villages started saying that I looked pregnant," she said. Hope was not only pregnant, but her uncle had infected her with HIV. Like many young girls in ...

Attention aspiring princesses: Prince Harry has almost landed. On Friday, the 24-year-old prince begins a two-day tour of New York City, his first international trip as a representative of the British royal family. Among other things, he'll meet with families who lost loved ones on September 11 and visit soldiers injured in Afghanistan and Iraq at Manhattan's Veterans Affairs Medical Center. With those engagements in mind, the royal heartthrob, who has a well-known penchant for long, alcohol-fueled nights, won't be hitting New York's dance floors. "Quite frankly ...

Buried on page 795 of President Obama's budget, released last Thursday, is a paragraph banning the federal funding of needle-exchange programs for drug addicts — an apparent about-face on his campaign promise to overturn that longstanding ban. To the further consternation of AIDS and addiction activists, a statement of support for needle exchange was recently removed from the White House website. Is Obama reversing course? The Administration says no. Responding by email, Jeff Crowley, director of the White ...

We know a fair amount about South Africa's new President as a man. Jacob Zuma has six wives and 19 children, and he has been tried for rape and corruption . His party, the African National Congress, sells him as an affable consensus-builder and a champion of the dispossessed — and on both counts, it's true, he scores. But we know very little about him as a policy-maker. Zuma has consistently refused to answer questions of policy, describing himself ...

If the fast spread of swine flu suggests the world is small, the global response to the epidemic reminds us that in many ways it's still light years apart. Swine flu has been making headlines in the Western world, but in places like India and Africa, where "pandemic" is just another part of the daily vocabulary, no one has so much as stifled a sneeze. In Africa, malaria kills more than 3,000 children a day; in South Africa, HIV/AIDS ...

Lakshmi Mittal lost about $25 billion in the past year. But don't feel too bad for the steel magnate. Mittal remains Britain's richest man, worth an estimated $15.9 billion, according to the Sunday Times' annual Rich List. Mittal took a particularly big hit -- losing 61 percent of his wealth, the London newspaper said. But he was far from alone. Russian-born oil magnate Roman Abramovich, who owns English Premier League side Chelsea, is worth a hair over $10 billion, down ...

Madonna said she hopes the Malawian girl she wants to adopt and the boy she already adopted "will one day return to Malawi and help the people of their country." A Malawian judge this month rejected the American pop star's petition to adopt 3-year-old Chifundo "Mercy" James, but her lawyer has filed an appeal. "I want to provide Mercy with a home, a loving family environment and the best education and health care possible," Madonna said in an e-mail to ...

Two members of a Palestinian militant group were killed Saturday in clashes with members of the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza, security and medical sources said. The American pop star had filed a petition to adopt a girl, Chifundo James, 3. The rejection was based on a residency requirement and the judge's belief that the child was in good hands at an orphanage. "There is a gripping temptation to throw caution to the wind and grant an adoption in the ...