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The families of three Americans who have been detained in Iran since late last month after a hiking trip gone wrong say the trio were typically very careful and aware of their surroundings.
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Families of three Americans held in Iran say they were careful travelers.

And they're eager to hear word from their loved ones, as Iran has disclosed little information about the hikers' status since their July 31 detainment.

Shane Bauer, 27, Sarah Shourd, 30, and Joshua Fattal, 27, were taken into custody while hiking in the mountains along the border of pearl jewelry Iraqi Kurdistan, Iraq's self-ruled Kurdish region in the north, and Iran. They were surrounded by armed Iranian guards and taken into custody after they strayed across the border into Iran.

They have been accused of ignoring border patrol and possibly spying, but the Iranian government has not disclosed the charges against the Americans nor allowed anyone to visit them.
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Family members of the hikers told "Good Morning America" today that the area is heavily wooded with few markings that would indicate where exactly the border was.

"There's not like a big sign saying, 'You're about to biwa pearl go into Iran,'" Shannon Bauer, Shane Bauer's sister, said.

"They're meticulous planners," said Chris Rapp, Shourd's brother. "Typically they're very careful about where they are and what they're doing."

U.S. officials are looking into the Americans' fate, but have gotten few answers thus far.

"We asked our Swiss partners who represent our interests in Iran to please pursue our inquiries to determine the status of the three missing Americans," Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Aug. 3.

The State Department admitted Wednesday that "no progress" has been made.

"Switzerland has not been granted consular access to the akoya pearl three American hikers. Iran has not provided information about their location and whether or not any charges have been filed against them," said State Department spokesman Ian Kelly. "We are deeply concerned about their safety and welfare."

Acknowledging that his thinking on the issue has "evolved," President Barack Obama says he could support a law mandating that individuals purchase health care coverage, with fines for those who do not, but he stressed that there must be some kind of waiver for those who are simply unable to afford it.
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President Obama outlines the financials behind his health care reform plan.

"People have made some pretty compelling arguments to pearl jewelry me that if we want to have a system that drives down costs for everybody, then we've got to have healthier people not opt out of the system," the president said in an exclusive interview with ABC's Diane Sawyer today on "Good Morning America."

During the election campaign, Obama said he was opposed to a federal law mandating the purchase of health care coverage. But earlier this month in a letter to Congressional leaders working on the reform legislation, he said he would consider supporting such a measure, if it has room for exemptions for small businesses and individuals who cannot afford the premiums.
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The president would not delve deeply into the nuts and bolts of what he wants included and what he will concede in health care reform legislation, saying it's still early in the process, but he acknowledged that change will not come easily.

"There's a reason why it hasn't been done for 40-50 years," he said. "It's hard." But Obama once again stressed how urgent he believes it is to biwa pearl tackle this issue and said the cost of inaction is too high.

"If we don't make these decisions, we'll be worse off. If we do make these decisions, are there going to be some difficult changes that we're going to have to go through? Absolutely," he said.

Watch "ABC News Primetime: Questions for the President -- Prescription for America" Wednesday, June 24, at 10 p.m. ET

Obama would not say if he was open to taxing health benefits, but indicated that there was a breaking point in the balance sheets where he would say that the akoya pearl cost of reforming the system is too great for the federal government to handle.

"I think that if any reform that we get is not driving down costs in a serious way ... if people say, 'We're just going to add more people onto a hugely inefficient system,' then I will say no. Because -- we can't afford it," he said.

It's no surprise that James Maki's favorite song is "Imagine." Just months after his miracle face transplant , Maki, America's second person to undergo the procedure, is settling down and beginning to feel his smile again.
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A face transplant recipient describes how the surgery changed his life.

In 2005, a fall onto the electrified third rail of a pearl jewelry Boston subway left Maki badly burned and his face horribly disfigured.

He doesn't remember anything from the accident, but after living for years unable to eat solid foods and suffering unbearable cruelty from onlookers, he received a face transplant April 9. His donor was Joseph Helfgot, who had died undergoing a heart transplant.

Maki's New Face

Days after the surgery, Maki asked for a biwa pearl mirror and was elated with what he saw.

"It was that good," Maki said. "I saw my old self."
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"I can feel it coming back now," Maki said. "That's a long, long process. But I'm sure I'll get there."

Though the feeling has not completely returned to Maki's face, he has started to grow a beard. As for future plans, Maki said that besides eating Japanese food, he wants to akoya pearl settle down and live his life.

"I enjoy life," Maki said. "I'm just starting to live it now."

And as Maki continues to heal, the medical world prepares for an increase in the number of procedures and an expansion in the scope of transplantations.

"I felt that God had abandoned me," Saberi said. "I felt that maybe I did something wrong in my life and I deserved this punishment. I was very afraid, and so I gave in to biwa pearl their pressures during those first two weeks."

Saberi, who was raised in North Dakota and once competed in the Miss America pageant, said she was put in a chair facing the wall and blindfolded before being bombarded with questions from men seeking a confession that she was, in fact, a spy. It was, she said, "severe" psychological pressure.

She eventually caved to the accusations after being promised it would win her freedom.

"Since they were making these threats to me -- that I would have to remain in jail if I did not make this confession -- and because nobody knew where I was, I confessed to being a U.S. spy," she said. "I thought I had to do this to be free, but my conscience got the better of me."

What she did next, Saberi said, may have contributed to her eight-year sentence.

"I felt that the God that I had felt before had abandoned me was still with me, but he wasn't pleased with me and so I recanted my confession, knowing full well that freshwater pearl earrings it would mean I wouldn't be free," she said. "And indeed the prosecutor was quite angry with me and he sent my case to trial."

And yet when she heard her sentence -- that she'd have to spend the next eight years at Evin -- Saberi said it was somewhat of a relief.

"I thanked God because I knew that if I had been sentenced to only one or two years in prison, that there wouldn't be as much of an international outcry," she said. "Eight years, to me, seemed ridiculous and it also proved to me that if I had not recanted my confession, I would have gone free."

Despite the anguish that followed, Saberi said she's glad she stuck by her decision.

"The main thing for me was that whenever I do come out of prison, whether it be tomorrow or eight years from now, that I come out with my head held high," she said, "because I don't want to be freed upon a lie. I want to tell the truth even if it means I have to akoya pearl stay in prison."

She described her days there, including the first two weeks in solitary confinement, as being filled by recitation of the "Star Spangled Banner," pretend piano concerts on the prison walls and prayer.

Free from the Iranian prison where she slept for months on a blanket-covered floor, Roxana Saberi said she feels both grateful and guilty to be home when there are so many others she left behind.
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The jailed journalist talks about her career prior to imprisonment in Iran.

"I felt contradictory feelings, because on the pearl jewelry one hand, of course I was very happy to come out and to be with my family and friends," Saberi told Diane Sawyer today on "Good Morning America." But on the other hand, I felt very sorry about those women who had to stay behind."

Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist who had been living in Iran since 2003, was arrested on Jan. 31 while working as a freelance journalist and researching a book on Iran. She was working without press credentials, which were revoked in 2006, and was accused of everything from keeping wine in her home to being a pearl necklace  spy.

Originally sentenced to eight years in prison, she credited her May 11 release from Tehran's Evin Prison in large part to the outpouring of international support, both political and public.

"I'm very grateful for that, but some of these women are not even known to the outside world. There's not the same kind of international support for them," she said. "What they're trying to do is stand up, for example, for freedom of speech or belief and religion -- for basic human rights."

"I have to say that they were some of the strongest and shell pearl jewelry  most admirable people that I have ever met," she said, "not only in Iran, but in my whole life."
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