By Sean Callebs and Jason Morris

It's an absolutely beautiful New Orleans sunset, the kind of night that used to be a bonanza for shrimpers like Paul Willis.

"We are trying to make a living, but because these foreign countries are using cheap labor, slave labor – call it whatever you want – we can't compete, we just can't compete. This pass on an evening like this would have had 300 vessels in here ready to shrimp. You are going to see eight tonight, that's what's happened to this industry."

Willis says the U.S. shrimp market has completely crashed. Fuel costs and Mother Nature may be a never-ending battle, but Willis says his biggest foe is cheap shrimp pouring in from Asia. He only makes as much per pound today as he did 15 years ago. While cut-rate Asian shrimp are sold for three dollars a pound, by the time he pays for fuel and crew wages, he's looking at spending more than four dollars to harvest a pound a shrimp just to break even.

A three-year investigation by the AFL-CIO affiliated Solidarity Center, funded in part by the U.S. State Department, found several leading U.S. retailers received shrimp from plants in Thailand and Bangladesh where workers as young as 8-years-old are subject to sweatshop conditions.

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By Sean Callebs, CNN

She asked not to be identified. Her first name is Melissa. A victim who beat the odds.

“I thought I would be dead. I never thought I would live to be 22 or 24-years-old,” says Melissa. Her story begins when she was 17, living with another runaway, she says a pimp promised them a better life.

“He started to pay our rent. Pay our bills. Make sure that we had food in our house.” But he also – literally overnight – forced Melissa to trade sex in exchange, she tells us.

“Within a day, my whole life changed. I had to sleep with people. He would tell me where I had to be and when I had to be there.”

Human rights advocates tell us that right now there are about 25,000 young women in the United States who have been forced into sex trafficking. Along with the horror stories we hear of women brought into the U.S. from Asia, Latin America, and Europe, advocates tell us many of the young women forced into sex trafficking are runaways from right here in the United States.

Melissa’s story fits the profile. Trying to escape a broken home, she says she was sexually abused at young age. Pimps prey on women like her.

“It's a problem that's happening right here and it's happening to people’s daughters, nieces, nephews, and grandchildren. And it's plaguing every community in the United States,” says Luis CdeBaca, U.S. ambassador-at-large to fight human trafficking. He says it's time for the U.S. to step up its crackdown on sex trafficking with more aggressive investigations and prosecutions.

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It's a problem hiding in plain sight: modern day slavery.

The State Department says up to 17,500 people are trafficked into the U.S. every year, usually women and children.

This next story puts a new face on the global crisis. 30 men who say they moved half way around the world for a shot at the American dream, but were tricked into a life of forced labor.

CNN's Sean Callebs reports for part one of our AM original series, "No Way Out? Human Trafficking."

On Thursday the Senate's Homeland Security Committee held the first public hearing on the Fort Hood shootings, which several senators called a "terrorist" attack.

Brian Jenkins was among those who testified. He's a terrorism analyst and senior adviser for the RAND corporation. He spoke to John Roberts on CNN's "American Morning" Friday.

As the Fort Hood investigation unfolds, officials are taking a much harder look at a radical imam from Yemen.

The feds think his teachings likely influenced suspect Maj. Nidal Hasan and several other jihadists accused of attacks across the globe. CNN's Jim Acosta reports.

Read more: Senate panel seeks to 'connect the dots'

The investigation continues today into what may have driven Maj. Nidal Hasan to allegedly go on a shooting spree that left 13 people dead at Fort Hood. So far the suspect has not spoken to investigators.

So who is he talking to? Retired Col. John Galligan is Hasan's defense attorney. He spoke to John Roberts on CNN's American Morning Wednesday.

President Obama is heading to Fort Hood Army Post for Tuesday's memorial service, to remember the victims of last week's shooting that left 13 dead, 12 of them U.S. soldiers.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Texas Gov. Rick Perry and other dignitaries will also attend the service, which is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. (2 p.m. ET).

Photographs of victims of the Fort Hood shooting are seen surrounding the podium of the memorial service that President Barack Obama will attend today.

CNN special live coverage of the memorial at Fort Hood begins today at 1:30 p.m. ET. You can see it live on CNN, CNN.com/Live, or on your iPhone with the new CNN app.

Fort Hood, Texas (CNN) – Investigators believe the suspected gunman in last week's massacre at Fort Hood acted alone, but his communications had been flagged by U.S. intelligence agencies in late 2008, the FBI said Monday.

Army Spc. Ryan Hill and daughter, Emma, 3, light a candle Saturday near the main gate of Fort Hood in Texas.

The suspect, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, remained in intensive care at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. In a statement issued Monday night, the FBI said its investigation so far "indicates that the alleged gunman acted alone and was not part of a broader terrorist plot."

Thursday's shooting left 13 dead, 12 of them U.S. soldiers, and 42 wounded.

Hasan, a U.S.-born citizen of Palestinian descent, was a licensed psychiatrist who joined the Army in 1997. He was promoted to major in May and was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan sometime soon, but had been telling his family since 2001 that he wanted to get out of the military.

A Muslim, he had told his family he had been taunted after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. In August, he reported to police that his car was keyed and a bumper sticker that read "Allah is Love" was torn off. A neighbor was charged with criminal mischief after that complaint.

But the FBI disclosed that Hasan came to its attention as part of an unrelated terrorism probe in December 2008, when agents reviewed "certain communications between Maj. Hasan and the subject of that investigation."

The intercepts "raised no red flags," with no mention of threats or violence that would have triggered a U.S. terrorism investigation, senior investigative officials said Monday.

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Pvt. Joseph Foster is one of dozens wounded in the deadly shooting at Fort Hood last week. He was shot in the hip trying to save those around him, but he survived and says he's still ready for deployment to Afghanistan in January.

Foster and his wife Mandy spoke to our John Roberts on American Morning Monday.

Fort Hood, Texas (CNN) - Officers early Friday raided the apartment of a soldier suspected in the deadly shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, searching for clues as to what caused the military psychiatrist to allegedly gun down soldiers he had taken an oath to help, a police spokeswoman said.

The alleged gunman, identified as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire at a military processing center at Fort Hood, killing 13 and wounding 30 others, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone said.

Hasan, a psychiatrist practicing at Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood, was shot multiple times and was taken into custody, ending the shooting rampage Thursday afternoon, Cone said.

In the nearby town of Killeen, a SWAT team and FBI agents were searching Hasan's apartment to help determine what caused the shooting, which military experts called the worst mass shooting at an American military base, Carol Smith, a Killeen police spokeswoman, said early Friday. Read more

See pictures, map from Fort Hood