Family nurse practitioner Munira Maalimisaq, center, gives a vaccine education session at Inspire Change Clinic, a nonprofit health care center she leads in Minneapolis. Tuberculosis cases in the U.S. have been rising since 2021. (Photo courtesy of Munira Maalimisaq) In Johnson County, Iowa, the number of tuberculosis cases has increased in recent years — and so has the cost of containing it. The cost of contact tracing and surveillance, traveling each day to patients’ homes to ensure they take their meds or booking hotel rooms to quarantine patients, has surged from $17,000 in 2020 to $65,000 last year. That doesn’t include $13,000 spent last year for language translation, as many of the cases were among the local immigrant communities, said Danielle Pettit-Majewski, director of the Johnson County public health department. She said the rise in spending is directly tied to the increase in diagnoses since 2020, with latent infections tripling, from 27 that year to 90 last yea...
U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth listens to questions during a news conference at the Pentagon on March 2, 2026 in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) WASHINGTON — The U.S. war on Iran will continue unabated on President Donald Trump’s terms, with more troops on the way and more casualties expected, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters early Monday. Speaking to the press for the first time since the United States and Israel launched a massive attack early Saturday, the secretary, whose comments came as the military announced the fourth U.S. service member killed, would not specify a timeline or exit strategy for the mission. “We will finish this on America first conditions of President Trump’s choosing, nobody else’s, as it should be,” Hegseth said. Hegseth did not provide details about the three U.S. service members whose deaths were announced Sunday. The secretary said that “a squirter” — apparently referring to an offensive missile or dro...