PENGUINS HAVE TO WATCH THEIR WEIGHT, TOO

WHITE HOUSE: EPIPEN PRICES RAISE MORAL QUESTIONS

The White House weighed in on a controversy over the skyrocketing cost of the EpiPen allergy shot, saying unscrupulous pricing practices raise serious moral questions for pharmaceutical companies.

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said companies that develop and market lifesaving medication “often do real damage to their reputation by being greedy and jacking up prices in a way that victimizes vulnerable Americans.”

Though he said he wouldn’t “specifically second-guess the pricing strategy or the business practices” of any one company, Earnest said the price increase “raises significant questions, even moral questions, in the minds of a lot of people.” — Gregory Korte

ZIKA VIRUS MAY STAY IN BABIES’ BLOOD FOR MONTHS

The Zika virus may linger in the blood of an infected baby for more than two months, according to a new study from Brazil that raises concerns about the potential of the virus to continue in- flicting damage to an infant’s brain even after birth.

The study shows that Zika can cause serious harm to babies even if their mothers are infected relatively late in pregnancy.

Although Zika is known to cause devastating birth defects in babies — including microcephaly, in which infants are born with abnormally small heads and, in most cases, incomplete brain development — studies have suggested the greatest risk occurs when women are infected early in pregnancy.

In this case, the baby’s mother developed Zika-like symptoms at 26 weeks of pregnancy, at the end of the second trimester, according to the study, published Wednesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The woman gave birth to an apparently healthy boy, who had normal weight and length, in January.

An MRI of the baby’s brain, however, showed that his brain tissue had shrunk, but the fluidfilled spaces between the folds of his brain had grown larger.

The baby also had calcifications in his brain, or areas of scar tissue showing where the brain had been injured. — Liz Szabo

JUSTIN TALLIS, AFP/GETTY IMAGES As his comrades look on, a Humboldt penguin is weighed by a zookeeper Wednesday at the London Zoo to promote the zoo’s annual weigh-in event.