Sexual exploitation and forced labor are the most common forms of human trafficking in the world, a new report from the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime said. The "Global Report on Trafficking in Persons" is based on data from 155 countries and offers a global assessment of human trafficking and efforts to fight it. The most common form of human trafficking is sexual exploitation, at 79 percent, the report said. The victims of sexual exploitation are predominantly women and ...

Hillary Clinton says her first overseas trip to Asia as U.S. secretary of state is aimed at creating a "network of partners" to tackle problems that no nation can deal with alone, including the global economic crisis. En route to Asia on Sunday, Clinton told reporters that the economy would serve as the backdrop of her trip, and she intends to explain steps the United States is taking with its $787 billion stimulus bill. She said she will be "seeking ...

One thing is certain about avian influenza: it's deadly. All three people who contracted the H5N1 strain of the virus in China last year died. In the first six weeks of 2009, eight people have come down with bird flu, and five have died. Another thing is that while the disease has yet to go pandemic, as many doctors fear it could, it remains worrisomely persistent. Every year since 2003, about 100 people in Asia, the Middle East and Africa ...

North Korea's nuclear program is "the most acute challenge to stability in northeast Asia," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Friday. But, Clinton said in a 45-minute address to the New York-based Asia Society, the Obama administration is prepared to seek a permanent, stable peace with Pyongyang as long as its government pursues disarmament and does not engage in aggression against neighboring South Korea. "If North Korea is genuinely prepared to completely and verifiably eliminate their nuclear weapons program, ...

If anyone on the planet could convince men that breast-feeding moms can have a sex life, it would be Salma Hayek. The beautifully busty actress, on a trip to Sierra Leone to support a tetanus-vaccination project, nursed a starving baby she encountered while being filmed by ABC News. She did this, she told the camera crew, in part out of compassion for a suffering child, but also to help lift the stigma against breast-feeding in Africa, where men often think ...

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton could appoint a special envoy for North Korea before leaving for Asia next week, senior administration officials told CNN. The officials said Stephen Bosworth, the dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and a former State Department official, has been offered the job. Bosworth would replace Assistant Secretary Christopher Hill, who is expected to replace Ryan Crocker as U.S. ambassador to Iraq. The officials spoke on the ...

China has killed 13,000 birds in the country's far northwest to control what it called an epidemic of bird flu, state media reported Tuesday. Five hundred fowl that had died in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region tested positive for the H5N1 virus, according to China's Ministry of Agriculture. In late January, China confirmed its sixth case of bird flu in a human. The ministry said at the time that, although further human bird flu cases were possible throughout China, there ...

A U.S. spy satellite snapped an image within the last several days of preparations at a North Korean missile site previously used for Taepodong-2 missile launch operations, a senior U.S. official told CNN Tuesday. The photograph shows North Korea assembling telemetry equipment at the site -- equipment that would be needed for a launch to take place, the official said, adding that so far, there is no direct evidence of a missile being moved to the launch pad. Telemetry ...

Police arrested a man near the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday after he drove up to one of the building's barricades with a rifle in his vehicle and told officers that he had a delivery for President Obama, a Senate spokesman said. Sgt. Kimberly Schneider identified the man as Alfred Brock, 64, of Winnfield, Louisiana. She said Brock was charged with possession of an unregistered firearm and unregistered ammunition. Brock drove up to the north barricade at the Capitol late Tuesday ...

Thousands of Liberians living in the United States face deportation March 31 when a federal immigration status created for humanitarian purposes expires. In the 1990s, a bloody civil war raged through the West African nation, killing 250,000 people and displacing more than a million, according to a U.N. report. The United States extended "temporary protection status" to all Liberians who could get to America, and 14,000 of them took advantage of that humanitarian offer. Temporary protection status is an immigration ...