Oxana and Pavel Rucsineanu fell in love while living in a Moldovan hospital's tuberculosis ward. Now, several years later, Oxana has recovered, and she and the couple's new baby live in an apartment. But Pavel's infection has evolved into a deadly form of TB, which keeps him from joining his new son and wife.

Tuberculosis is much less of a health threat in the United States than it is in other countries. But a family in Boston discovered that even here, no one is immune from this ancient foe. More than a dozen family members were infected with TB, and matriarch Judy Williams died at age 59.

For more than a decade, a nonprofit in Tanzania has been using the rat's keen sense of smell to detect buried land mines around the world. Now the group is training the critters to help diagnose tuberculosis at rural clinics.

Problems at a Canadian factory have caused a shortage of tuberculosis tests in the U.S. Some hospitals and health departments around the country are deferring routing TB testing as a result.