By Tami Luhby, CNN

(CNN) — Millions of Americans got a nasty reminder this month of just how costly health care coverage is.

Workers, Obamacare enrollees and Medicare beneficiaries are all contending with steeper-than-usual hikes in their health insurance premiums for 2026 – yet another stressor in the nation’s affordability crisis.

Employers’ health benefit costs are expected to rise 9%, the largest increase in several years, though they will try to soften the blow somewhat for workers, according to consultants. Premiums for the benchmark Affordable Care Act plan soared 26%, on average, one of the biggest jumps since the Obamacare plans debuted more than a decade ago. (Enrollees’ actual premium payments are expected to spike 114%, on average, due to the expiration of the enhanced federal subsides, according to KFF, a health policy research group.)

And Medicare Part B premiums, which cover doctors’ visits, outpatient hospital services and other care, shot up nearly 10% this year, the largest increase in four years and second-largest hike, in dollar terms, in the program’s history. The standard monthly premium is now $202.90, up $17.90 from last year, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The surge comes as insurers are in the hot seat in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump says he will soon meet with industry leaders to pressure them to lower premiums, while House lawmakers grilled the CEOs of several major insurers in daylong hearings on Thursday.

Representatives from both sides of the aisle challenged the executives, questioning why they are not able to better control costs, especially when they have grown into behemoths that own doctors’ practices, pharmaceutical benefit managers, pharmacies and other health care services businesses that rake in big bucks. Also, lawmakers repeatedly castigated the insurance executives for trying to pad their profits by denying or delaying approval of the care doctors say their patients need.

The insurers responded that they are better able to coordinate treatment and focus on providing value-focused care as multiservice providers, while noting they are required by law to spend at least 80% of premium dollars on health care claims. In addition, they said they are reforming their prior authorization practices to speed and simplify the approval process.

Insurers, however, don’t always feel pressured to reduce costs, said Vivian Ho, a health economist at Rice University. For instance, many larger employers hire an insurance company to administer their health benefits but pay their workers’ claims.

“There’s not as much incentive to drive the hardest bargain if you’re not on the hook for most of the increased prices yourself,” Ho said.

Getting more care

While the employer, Medicare and Affordable Care Act markets each have some specific reasons for the premium increases, there are many common factors driving up policyholders’ monthly tabs.

One top reason is that Americans have been going to the doctor more often in recent years and, in some cases, getting more intensive treatments. This increased utilizatio

By Brad Lendon, CNN

Manila, Philippines (CNN) — Two gravesites, less than 10 miles apart in a crowded, noisy, Asian metropolis of 14 million, stand testament to the horror, sacrifice and history of World War II.

Go to one and you can see the names and read the stories of those buried there, more than 17,000 troops, almost all of them lost in battle across the Pacific from 1941 to 1945.

Their headstones — 16,938 Latin crosses and 175 Stars of David — are arranged in neat rows in meticulously manicured grass across 152 acres in the Manila American Cemetery.

Go to the other and you’ll see just a single white cross, steps away from a hole in the ground leading to the dungeons of an old stone Spanish fort.

Its base bears an inscription: “This cross marks the final resting place of approximately 600 Filipinos and Americans who were victims of atrocities during the last days of February 1945.”

There are no individual stories here, but local lore says the spirits of those who perished in Fort Santiago’s dungeons remain and sometimes make themselves known to visitors.

Haunted and holy. These are the last vestiges of a global conflict in Manila.

Just steps from the gleaming skyscrapers of the Bonifacio Global City neighborhood in the Philippine capital, the Manila American Cemetery is an oasis of calm in one of the world’s most densely populated cities.

The noise of Manila’s notorious traffic goes silent just after I pass the gates of the burial ground. No hum of scooters, no roar of jeepney engines, no incessant honking of car horns. The soothing calm is broken only by the occasional jetliner taking off from Manila International Airport, three miles to the west, or a groundskeeper’s golf cart.

Rows upon rows of headstones — 17,111 in total — are laid out on the gentle slopes of a hilltop, the largest single burial ground for US World War II casualties.

The hilltop is capped with a circular memorial to those whose remains were never found after the war, 36,286 names chiseled into huge limestone tablets.

Some 3,000 of those headstones are of “unknown soldiers” — “A comrade in arms known but to God,” they read.

The rest identify those buried beneath them, some with histories of the fallen.

Private First Class Alfred Davenport is one of the first I see. Buried not far from the cemetery entrance, Davenport was a Black infantryman from Plymouth, North Carolina, who died from injuries sustained in Bougainville, Solomon Islands, in June 1944. He was 20 years old, his biography says.

Though Davenport served in a segregated unit for Black soldiers, “he and his comrades are buried side by side regardless of their rank, race, religion, gender and nationality,” the biography says.

Walking up the road up the hill from Davenport’s grave I come to the monument to the missing. In the US Navy section, I find five brothers from Iowa — George, Francis, Joseph, Madison and Albert Sullivan — who all died after the light cruiser on which they served, the USS Juneau, sank in a Japanese torpedo attack during the 1942 Battle of Guadalcanal, also in the Solomons.

Their deaths represent the largest loss to one family in US military history, according to the Naval Museum Development Foundation.

The Sullivans aren’t the only brothers memorialized at the cemetery. Buried beneath its grounds are the remains of 21 sets of brothers, all lying side by side.

Manila American Cemetery isn’t just a memorial ground. It can be an immersive history lesson, too.

On the walls of the circular memoria

By Elizabeth Wolfe, CNN

(CNN) — Waves of Minneapolis residents filled frigid city blocks and packed the Timberwolves NBA arena Friday to demand ICE leave their neighborhoods, even as the immigration official orchestrating the crackdown promised detentions would not let up.

Protests touched virtually every corner of the city Friday. Storm-weathered Minnesotans endured subzero temperatures at a downtown march, airport protest, arena rally and saw an “economic blackout” in which businesses closed their doors to boycott ICE’s presence.

But Border Patrol Commander-at-Large Gregory Bovino doubled down on the unrelenting detention effort, which has at times swept up legal residents, US citizens and even a preschooler. He vowed earlier Friday to continue the government’s search for “criminal aliens.”

“We’re going to take them off the streets wholesale,” Bovino said at a news conference. “It’s on. We won’t quit.”

Children and families are among those caught up in the mass deportation campaign. A 5-year-old boy was detained alongside his father in their driveway earlier this week, adding to the mounting list of controversial encounters over which federal and state officials are clashing.

Fallout continues over the ICE shooting of Minneapolis mother Renee Nicole Good, as two sources tell CNN an FBI agent originally tasked with an investigation into the encounter has resigned.

As tensions reach a fever pitch in Minnesota, Maine has found itself to be the latest state in the crackdown crosshairs. The Trump administration, continuing its penchant for meme-ready monikers, has dubbed the effort “Operation Catch of the Day” and announced more than 100 arrests this week.

Here’s the latest:

• FBI agent investigating fatal ICE shooting resigns: The FBI agent who was assigned to work with state investigators to look into the fatal ICE shooting of Renee Good has resigned from the bureau, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Soon after the agent opened a civil rights investigation into the officer, she was ordered to reclassify it as an investigation into an assault on the officer. It comes amid a much larger purge of seasoned FBI agents across several states, multiple sources familiar with the departures told CNN.
• 5-year-old remains in custody: There are dramatically conflicting accounts over what led up to the detention of preschooler Liam Conejo Ramos alongside his father. Amid concern for the boy’s welfare, Bovino, the Border Patrol official, said Friday his agents are “experts in dealing with children.” The child and his parent have been sent to a family detention facility in Texas. Liam is now the fourth child from his school district to be taken away by ICE in just the past two weeks, Columbia Heights Public Schools said.
• Feud over state detainees: DHS spokesper

The Associated Press

Beijing (AP) — The Chinese military’s top general is being investigated for suspected serious violations of discipline and law the Defense Ministry said Saturday.

Zhang Youxia, the senior of the two vice chairs of the powerful Central Military Commission, is the latest figure to fall in a long-running purge of military officials.

Analysts believe the purges are designed both to reform the military and to ensure loyalty to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who also chairs the military commission. They are part of a broader anti-corruption drive that has punished more than 200,000 officials since Xi came to power in 2012.

Another member of the commission, Liu Zhenli, has also been placed under investigation by China’s ruling Communist Party, a Defense Ministry statement said. Liu is the chief of staff of the commission’s Joint Staff Department. The commission is the top military body in China.

The statement did not provide any details on the alleged wrongdoing.

Zhang, who is 75, joined the People’s Liberation Army in 1968 and is a general from its ground forces.

The Communist Party expelled the other vice chair of the commission, He Weidong, last October and replaced him with commission member Zhang Shengmin.

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By Alicia Wallace, CNN

Minneapolis (CNN) — During Januarys here, the days are dark and short, the ground is cold and hard, and the subzero air pierces and cuts.

Still, life moves forward.

Frozen lakes take center stage for popular festivals, sporting events and gatherings. A mother strolls to the local grocer with her kid and toboggan in tow. Friends gather outside a local taproom for a game of curling. Strangers lend a hand and a little muscle to push cars out of snowbanks. The daily shovel of the front walk allows for some “cold-enough-for-yas” with the neighbors.

But the small-town-like tranquility that runs deep through this city of neighborhoods has been shattered in recent weeks.

Thousands of armed and masked federal agents have been deployed to Minnesota, with Minneapolis serving as the epicenter of the largest immigration enforcement operation in US history.

Daily life has been upended at schools, hospitals, stores and restaurants and in neighborhoods where sidewalks were once well-trodden with runners, people walking their dogs, families taking daily strolls and children heading back home after getting dropped off by the bus. Days are pockmarked with flare-ups and altercations between federal agents and residents.

Neighborhood chat channels document how friends, coworkers and schoolchildren were here one day and gone the next.

The watershed moment occurred earlier this month, at 9:37 a.m. on a Wednesday, when resident Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent.

Once again, the eyes of the world were on Minneapolis, a city and metro area that has had more than its fair share of high-profile and tragic events in recent years – among them the murder of George Floyd at the knee of a city policeman, and the unrest that followed; the assassination of state Rep. Melissa Hortman, who was killed alongside her husband and dog; and the mass shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and school that left two students dead and dozens injured.

Woven through the city are vestiges of that trauma and strife from years past and from days and weeks present. Yard signs, flags, murals, memorials, ribbons and graffiti silently speak volumes of what this city and region have faced, conveying the idea that life here doesn’t move on from grief but instead moves forward hand in hand with it and forever changed by it.

Some residents say those p