Amanda Moore

The 33 Chilean gold miners who have been trapped underground since August 5 may be rescued as soon as Wednesday, according to the country's mining minister, Laurence Golborne.

We often hear about successful medical drug clinical trials, and assume that such trials frequently test "magic bullet" cures. Nearly every trial, however, requires a control group: people who are not given the new drugs and, thus, don't benefit from them if they are later proven to work.  Many doctors, researchers and patients are asking questions about the fairness of maintaining these control groups, once a given drug being tested has positive results.

Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator from Alaska, may have lost the bid for nomination in the Republican primary, but that fact hasn't seemed to dampen her plans to continue her campaign for November's general election. 

Earlier this week, one of three American hikers who had been detained in Iran since last summer was released from prison. Iranian police arrested Sarah Shourd and her two companions, Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, in July 2009 on Iran's border with Iraq and accused the trio of espionage. 

Alex Fattal, Joshua Fattal's older brother says all three hikers are innocent and were wrongly imprisoned.

The Census Bureau will release its annual Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage report today and the expectations are grim.

A new study shows that Caesarian sections account for about 1/3 of births in the U.S. And that number is expected to rise. Is the C-Section becoming the new natural and safe way to give birth? We want to hear from you: what's so natural about "natural" birth, anyway?

Today marks the formal end of the United States' combat mission in Iraq, after almost eight years. There are now fewer than 50,000 troops left in Iraq — all serving in non-combat roles. The Obama administration has pledged to withdraw all troops by October 2011. But many are now asking questions about what Iraq's future holds. What kind of presence will the U.S. have there in the coming years and is it realistic for the country to fully support itself by the end of next year?

Earlier this month, former Mexican president Vicente Fox wrote that Mexico should consider legalizing drugs and current president Felipe Calderon has called for a debate on the idea. More than 28,000 people have died in Mexico in drug-related violence over the last 3 years. 

Federal Reserve chairman, Ben Bernanke speaks today at an annual Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. What will Bernanke say about where our economy stands, in light of some recent grim numbers we've received this summer? And do we face a real threat of a "double-dip recession?"

There's long been a growing gap between the rich and the poor in the United States, but some believe that disparity could actually cause more harm than previously thought. A group of economists, sociologists, and legal scholars are saying there may be a correlation between income inequality and financial crises. One possible link between the two, according to David A. Moss, an economic and policy historian at the Harvard Business School could be the fact that Wall Street titans wield power that, in turn, allows them to promote policies which benefit them, but not necessarily the financial system as a whole.

33 miners remain trapped more than 2,000 feet below ground at the San Jose copper and gold mine in Copiapo, Chile. 

The results are in for the Sunshine State's most expensive and, arguably, nastiest primary in history.  

It's safe to say Goldman Sachs, Toyota and BP had a rough year. The three high-profile companies all faced huge catastrophes and then suffered the public relations nightmares that followed (and continue to plague them).

To support relief efforts in Pakistan, the United States currently has 18 military and civilian aircraft in the country and three based in Afghanistan. American helicopters have evacuated nearly 6,000 people and delivered more than 717,000 pounds of relief supplies. And Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has just announced the U.S. will increase aid to Pakistan to $150 million.

But the context for the American military presence in Pakistan is more complicated than simply delivering humanitarian aid. Pakistan is home to militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba, whose offshoot organizations have already become a visible force during this crisis. The Pakistani Taliban is already believed to be behind two attacks against security forces in Peshawar since the start of the flooding.

Bobby Thomson, the baseball legend who hit the winning shot for the New York Giants in the 1951 National League playoff series died on Monday night. He was 86.

According to North Korea's government-run Uriminzokkiri website, the country now has dipped a toe into the world of social media, with both a Twitter account and YouTube channel.

A new report released this week by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) warns that the "oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico poses... indirect threats to seafood safety." State and federal officials, however, say they are aggressively testing seafood from the Gulf Coast in order to protect the public from any potential health risks from the oil that gushed continuously into the water for nearly three months. With these conflicting messages, how difficult will it be for the Gulf's seafood industry to get back on its feet?

Just months before the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, archeologists in Georgia have discovered the location of a stockade used for Camp Lawton, a Confederate prison camp which housed Union prisoners of war.

According to a new report, spending on state Supreme Court elections has doubled in the last decade. According to polls, three in four Americans believe money spent on campaigns for judgeships can affect later courtroom decisions; some states are calling for methods to protect the court system from special-interest money donated during election season.

In our world where BlackBerries, cell phones, laptop computers and other digital devices rarely provide an escape from constant communication, it's often more difficult to disconnect than stay connected. But, as Matt Richtel writes in today's New York Times, one group of five neuroscientists successfully separated themselves from technology to enter the wilderness and study how the heavy and consistent use of digital devices affect the brain.