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(credit: CDC)

As health experts brace for the possibility that Zika will invade the mainland US, politicians are squabbling over funding for domestic defense systems, including mosquito control and vaccine development.

In February, the Obama Administration requested $1.8 billion in emergency funds to fight off the virus. But Congressional Republicans argued that money allotted to fight Ebola in West Africa could be used instead. On Wednesday, after a two-month-long impasse, the White House announced that $510 million of the $2.7 billion earmarked to battle Ebola would be transferred to the Zika fight. The administration will repurpose an additional $79 million from other accounts, including funds for emergency medical supplies during epidemics and national vaccine stockpiles.

(credit: White House/CDC)

But even with the $589 million, health officials and the administration argue that they need more funding to fight Zika. The money would go to developing diagnostics and a vaccine, as well as to mosquito surveillance and control.

(credit: Niklas Morberg)

A young American boy is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging his and others' placement on a government terrorist watchlist.

According to the civil complaint filed in federal court in Virginia on Tuesday, the boy had been given an “SSSS designation indicating that he had been designated as a ‘known or suspected terrorist'" while going through airport security.

Since he was a seven-month-old, Baby Doe, as he is referred to, was subject to “extensive searches,” including rifling through all of his diapers.

(credit: eGames)

So you want to get into e-sports, but you're worried that the myriad existing popular competitions can't match the grandeur and incorruptible respectability of something like the Olympic games. The UK government has a potential solution, today announcing the eGames as "an international gaming tournament where national pride is the prize."

That pride is apparently the only prize... the announcement makes it clear that "the eGames will be a medal only competition, with no prize money, but the opportunity to take home gold for your country." That might be a hard sell in a space that routinely attracts competitors with prize pools that can easily surpass $18 million, but it does line up with the lack of international prize money for Olympic athletes (local Olympic committees often give cash to gold medal winners, though).

The new eGames will be looking to bask in some reflected glory from the upcoming Rio Olympic Games, hosting its first competition as a two-day "pop up" in Rio during the Summer Olympics in August. Any nation will be welcome to field an "eTeam" (their term, not ours) in the eGames, but so far only four countries are confirmed as participants: Britain, Canada, Brazil, and the US.

(credit: Florival fr )

Tesla has "no current plans to open a factory in Europe,” a spokesperson for the company told Ars. But that hasn’t stopped French Energy and Environment Minister Ségolène Royal from saying that her best idea for repurposing an old nuclear power plant in northeastern France is to try to convince Tesla to build a factory there for its electric vehicles.

The Fessenheim plant, which sits on the France/Germany border, went into operation in 1978 and is currently operated by French energy company EDF. Today, it’s the oldest working nuclear power plant in France, but after the 2011 Fukushima disaster, the French government decided to close the facility by 2017 in the interest of safety. German broadcaster Deutsche Welle reported earlier this week that in 2014, a water leak was discovered coming from one of the reactors, but jammed control rods forced EDF to shut the reactor down using unconventional methods. Deutsche Welle says that the incident was played down by EDF in 2014.

Still, many people oppose the closure of the power plant, with Royal noting in previous interviews that the nuclear plant supports some 2,000 jobs. France currently relies on nuclear power to supply 75 percent of its electricity nationwide, but the French government has said it wants to reduce this share to 50 percent by 2025, according to Deutsche Welle.