US Sex trafficking: Lifelong struggle of exploited children

In the US, poverty, deprivation and exploitation draws thousands of its own children down into a dark underworld that offers few ways out.

It is a world few Americans are aware of. But tens of thousands of American children are thought to be sexually exploited every year.

It's believed that every night hundreds are sold for sex.

The FBI says child sex abuse is almost at an epidemic level, despite the agency rescuing 600 children last year.

"Trafficking" often conjures images of people from other countries being smuggled over land and across the sea and then forced to work against their will in foreign lands. People are trafficked into America from Mexico, Central and South America. But the vast majority of children bought and sold for sex every night in the United States are American kids.

Source: BBC

Malaysia says almost certain debris found off Madagascar is from a Boeing 777

Malaysia is "almost certain" that plane debris found on Reunion Island in the Indian Ocean is from a Boeing 777, the deputy transport minister said on Thursday, heightening the possibility it could be wreckage from missing Flight MH370.

Malaysia Airlines was operating a Boeing 777 on the ill-fated flight, which vanished without a trace in March last year while en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing in one of the biggest mysteries in aviation history. The plane was carrying 239 passengers and crew.

Search efforts led by Australia have focused on a broad expanse of the southern Indian Ocean off Australia, roughly 3,700 km (2,300 miles) from France's Reunion Island.

There have been four serious accidents involving 777s in the 20 years since the widebody jet came into service. Only MH370 is thought to have crashed south of the equator.

France's BEA air crash investigation agency said it was examining the debris, found washed up on Reunion Island east of Madagascar on Wednesday, in coordination with Malaysian and Australian authorities, but that it was too early to draw conclusions.

Source: Reuters