U.S. lawmakers sought on Wednesday to break a logjam over $1.1 billion in funding to combat the Zika virus, with the Senate possibly considering legislation as soon as next week, even as one congressman toted a jar full of mosquitoes to the House floor to condemn congressional inaction.
"Can you imagine the fears and anxieties if the mosquitoes were not in this jar?" Florida Republican David Jolly told his colleagues as he brandished the container holding about 100 of the insects in the House of Representatives chamber.
"Members of Congress would run down the hall to the physician's office to be tested," added Jolly, whose state is the first in the nation with local transmission of the mosquito-borne virus that has spread through the Americas.
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