Correction Appended: Aug. 20, 2009 Somewhere in Iowa, a pig is being raised in a confined pen, packed in so tightly with other swine that their curly tails have been chopped off so they won't bite one another. To prevent him from getting sick in such close quarters, he is dosed with antibiotics. The waste produced by the pig and his thousands of pen mates on the factory farm where they live goes into manure lagoons that blanket neighboring ...

The tiny one-room house rests on a hill; no electricity and no running water. A creaky metal cot and a rusting wood-burning stove is all the comfort Herbert Hale says he needs. CHERRY CREEK, South Dakota (CNN) -- The tiny one-room house rests on a hill; no electricity and no running water. A creaky metal cot and a rusting wood-burning stove is all the comfort Herbert Hale says he needs. "All it is is logs, glue -- dirt and water ...

Nigerian dwarf goats grow to only 21 in. tall, about equal to a medium-size dog. "But they have giant udders," says Novella Carpenter. She should know: she has six goats that together provide a quart of milk a day, which she drinks and uses to make cheese and butter. And when the bleating beauties are not grazing in her 1,000-sq.-ft. yard, they're hanging out on the porch of her second-floor apartment in the middle of Oakland, Calif. Carpenter, ...

A lot of congratulations were passed around by lawmakers a few weeks ago when the federal hourly minimum wage was increased to $5.85, a 70 cent uptick. But wages are just part of the problem for workers in bottom-rung jobs. Health hazards, lack of insurance and labor law violations are among the on-the-job inequities faced by these workers, according to industry experts interviewed by TIME, as well as a new report from the Brennan Center for Justice at New ...

It is a problem of massive plastic proportions -- a giant floating debris field, composed mostly of bits and pieces of plastic, in the northwest Pacific Ocean, about a thousands miles off the coast of California. It's called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and it covers a vast area of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of miles of open ocean. Now researchers are trying to learn more about the sea-bound trash zone and perhaps find answers to basic questions. A ...

The downtown Kabul campaign headquarters of Dr. Abdullah Abdullah bustles with the expected frenetic activity of an election engine in the final throes of the campaign season. At lunchtime, waiters run up and down the stairs bearing massive trays of steaming pullau — the near-national dish of rice cooked with hunks of lamb, carrots and raisins — and towering stacks of flat bread to every room of the four-story building. Nearly 500 campaign workers are ensconced in this former ...

The same blue food dye found in M&Ms and Gatorade could be used to reduce damage caused by spine injuries, offering a better chance of recovery, according to new research. Researchers at the University of Rochester Medical Center found that when they injected the compound Brilliant Blue G (BBG) into rats suffering spinal cord injuries, the rodents were able to walk again, albeit with a limp. The only side effect was that the treated mice temporarily turned blue. The results ...

The United States military has been relatively mum on the recent capture of Army Pfc. Bowe Bergdahl. So has his family in Idaho. And with good reason. "The family members just don't want to do or risk doing anything to inflame the situation," said Blaine County Sheriff Walt Femling. "And you can see how easily that can happen ... We're going to respect that." Femling told CNN on Tuesday that it's comforting to know right now that he's all right. ...

For most of his life, until he was well into his 60s, Frank McCourt wasn't a writer, he was a teacher. But it is as a writer, the author of the wildly successful memoir Angela's Ashes, that he will be remembered. He died on Sunday in New York of meningitis. He was 78 years old. McCourt was born in Brooklyn in 1930 — he would later, much later, memorably describe the scene of his conception in his memoir ...

A former hospital employee may have exposed hundreds, or even thousands, of surgical patients to hepatitis C after taking their fentanyl injections and replacing them with used syringes filled with saline solution, authorities say. Kristen Diane Parker, who worked at Rose Medical Center in Denver, has admitted to secretly injecting herself in a bathroom and using unclean syringes as replacements for patients, investigators said. She had hepatitis C, which she believes she contracted through using heroin and sharing dirty needles ...