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Things aren’t going well for two of the country’s top health agencies—the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Tuesday, USA Today reported that the CDC has repeatedly faced secret federal sanctions over the mishandling of bioterror pathogens in several of its labs. The report, which came about only after USA Today won a Freedom of Information Act appeal, reveals that the CDC is one of just a handful of facilities that had a lab suspended after serious safety violations were found. The CDC acknowledged after the FOIA appeal that its labs have gotten into trouble with federal regulators six times for unsafely handling bacteria, viruses, and/or toxins that are considered potential bioterror weapons.

The agency refused to reveal the specific labs and most of the bioterror agents involved in the mishaps, citing security reasons and the federal Bioterrorism Act. However, it vaguely described issues such as “sending improperly killed select agent pathogens to entities not approved to receive them” and storing potential bioterror weapons in “un-registered” spaces within CDC labs. The CDC said that one of the incidents involved Japanese encephalitis virus, which can cause deadly brain inflammation. The agency was quick to note that the virus is no longer considered a potential bioterror weapon by the government.

Last night, a new Windows 10 Insider Preview unexpectedly made its way onto the Internet after Microsoft accidentally started releasing it to end users while sending it to Windows Update.

The new build, 14342, takes some big steps forward in Edge's extension support. Previously, extensions in the Edge browser had to be manually downloaded and installed. Now they are installed and updated in the same way as Universal Windows Apps. The number of extensions available for Edge has also grown, with a couple of ad blockers now joining the fray.

With this build, Microsoft is starting to bring back some of the more tablet-oriented features that were in Windows 8 but removed from Windows 10. Swipe navigation in the browser is now back, allowing you to navigate back and forward just by swiping the page left and right. The next Mobile build will also include this capability.

Hyperloop One

Here's a look at the sled Hyperloop One is testing in North Las Vegas today.

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The test of Hyperloop One's propulsion system is just one step of many on the path to achieve a dream put forth by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who first drew up a plan to transport people at 760mph in low-pressure tubes in 2013. Musk decided not to pursue this business venture, which he called Hyperloop, but his whitepaper spawned two rival Hyperloop companies and an international student engineer competition.

Hyperloop One, formerly known Hyperloop Technologies, announced its name change on Tuesday, hoping to differentiate itself from Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (HTT), which has also made considerable headway in research and development of such a transportation system. HTT announced on Monday that it had exclusively licensed passive magnetic levitation technology that would serve to keep Hyperloop pods off the track, minimizing friction as they speed through a tube.

Jonathan Schwartz in 2004 at the JavaOne conference. (Photo by Noah Berger/Bloomberg via Getty Images) (credit: Noah Berger/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

SAN FRANCISCO—Former Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz took the stand today in the second Oracle v. Google trial, testifying about the Java language and APIs, including how they were used in the market.

After a brief overview of his career path, Schwartz launched into a discussion about Java, the software language that Sun created and popularized. It's critical testimony in the Oracle v. Google lawsuit, in which Oracle claims that Google's use of Java APIs, now owned by Oracle, violates copyright law. Oracle is seeking up to $9 billion in damages.

Was the Java language, created by Sun Microsystems in the 1990s, "free and open to use," Google lawyer Robert Van Nest asked?

This photo demonstrates the difference in size in Zika virus-infected vs. uninfected fetal mouse brains. (credit: Li, Xu, Ye, and Hong et al./Cell Stem Cell 2016)

Three separate studies released Wednesday present the first batch of mouse model data on what happens when Zika virus infects a pregnant mammal—and the data is as grisly as one might expect.

The three studies were led by research groups in Brazil, the US, and China and back up the grim epidemiological data in humans, which links the virus to miscarriages and birth defects, particularly microcephaly, a defect in which babies are born with small and malformed brains.

This fluorescent image shows the Zika virus (green) inside a placenta cell (nuclei labeled in red). (credit: Bin Cao)

Collectively, the new studies highlight that when Zika infects a pregnant mouse, the virus homes in on the developing fetuses, invading the placenta and fetal brains in large numbers. In one of the studies, viral numbers in the placenta were 1,000-fold higher than in maternal blood. Once in fetal brains, the virus specifically attacked developing and mature neurons, triggering cell death, haywire immune responses, and severe brain malformations. In another of the studies, researchers noted that the number of viruses in a fetal brain increased by about 300 percent within three days of invasion. Many of the pups in the studies died in utero, while others were quickly eaten by their mothers after birth—a common mouse response to birthing sickly pups.

(credit: Getty Images | Glowimages)

The Frontier Communications acquisition of Verizon's network in Florida has created tons of problems for customers, including weeks-long outages, painfully long customer service phone calls, and bigger early termination fees, state Attorney General Pam Bondi says. Bondi sent a letter Monday to Frontier CEO Daniel McCarthy asking for faster fixes to remaining problems and refunds for customers.

Frontier purchased Verizon's FiOS and DSL businesses in California, Florida, and Texas, taking over the fiber and copper networks on April 1. Florida government officials are not alone in expressing alarm about problems the transition has caused customers, as a California legislative committee is planning a hearing on the topic on Wednesday next week.

Bondi said her office has received 128 complaints from former Verizon customers in Florida. "Business and residential customers have complained of going days or weeks without any Internet or phone service," Bondi wrote. "We have also received several complaints from seniors who have lost essential 911 services as the result of disruptions in land line services. This is not acceptable."

Artist's conception of a hot Neptune orbiting close to its host star. Kepler-223 has four such planets, all with orbital periods of less than 20 days. By contrast, Mercury's orbit takes 88 days. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

How did our solar system reach its current configuration? One of the leading candidates to explain things like the sparseness of the Asteroid Belt and the small size of Mars is the grand tack, in which Jupiter originally migrated inward toward the Sun until its interactions with Saturn pulled them both back outward.

The idea that giant planets may go for a wander around their star's orbital neighborhood has picked up some support from many of the exosolar systems we've discovered. We've spotted tightly packed systems of large planets when there probably wasn't enough material in the region to form all of them, suggesting that they formed somewhere else and then migrated into place.

But this idea raises some questions. What stops the planets from their wanderings, keeps them from smashing into each other, and prevents them from falling into their host star? A phenomenon known as orbital resonance may be the answer, and researchers argue that it explains the presence of four exoplanets all with orbits of less than 20 days.