Nation
6A THE ZAPATA TIMES
FDA approves new hepatitis C drug ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — Federal health officials have approved a highly anticipated hepatitis C drug from Gilead Sciences Inc. that is expected to offer a faster, more palatable cure to millions of people infected with the liver-destroying virus. The Food and Drug Administration said Friday it approved the pill Sovaldi in combination with older drugs to treat the main forms of hepatitis C that affect U.S. patients. Current treatments for hepatitis C can take up to a year of therapy and involve weekly injections of a drug that causes flu-like side effects. That approach only cures about three out of four patients. Sovaldi is a daily pill that in clinical trials cured roughly 90 percent of patients in just 12 weeks, when combined with the older drug cocktail. Between 3 million and 4 million Americans are estimated to carry the bloodborne virus, though most do not even know they are infected. Others have tested positive but are waiting for more effective treatments to become available. Hepatitis C symptoms may not appear until two or three decades after infection, though the virus can cause liver failure, cirrhosis and cancer if left untreated. Dr. Donald Jensen of the University of Chicago said he’s optimistic that new drugs like Sovaldi will increase treatment of the disease, which is blamed for 15,000 U.S. deaths per year. “I’m hoping that these new, less toxic therapies will drive more people to get tested and more primary care physicians to test their patients, knowing that the therapy is going to be more effective and easier,” said Jensen, who directs the university’s center for liver diseases. Gilead Sciences Inc.,
Current treatments for hepatitis C can take up to a year of therapy and involve weekly injections of a drug that causes flu-like side effects. based in Foster City, Calif., is one of a half-dozen companies battling over the market more effective treatments for hepatitis C. Many industry analysts expect Sovaldi to quickly dominate the field with sales of over $1.6 billion next year. Gilead said Friday it would price the drug at $84,000 for one 12-week supply. Patients with a less common subtype of the disease may need to take the drug for 24 weeks, raising the cost to $168,000 for one course of treatment. Drugs already on the market run between $25,000 and $50,000 for a course of treatment. The approval comes as the federal government urges all baby boomers to get tested for the disease. People born between 1945 and 1965 are five times more likely than other age groups to have hepatitis C, with many having contracted the virus by sharing needles or having sex with an infected person in their youth. For most of the last 20 years, the standard treatment for hepatitis C involved a grueling one-year regimen of pills and injections that caused nausea, fever and headaches and cured fewer than half of patients. Then in 2011, the FDA approved two new drugs from Merck and Vertex Pharmaceuticals that raised the cure rate to about 65 and 75 percent, respectively, when combined with the older treatments. Gilead’s once-a-day pill pushes the cure rate much higher. In a company study of
patients with the most common forms of the disease, 90 percent of participants had undetectable levels of the virus after 12 weeks taking Sovaldi plus the older pill-and-injection cocktail. The forms of the disease studied in the trial account for more than 75 percent of hepatitis C cases in the U.S. Gilead’s drug is less effective in treating a less common form of the disease that accounts for about 10 percent of U.S. cases. Patients with that strain of the virus had to take the drug for 24 weeks, twice the normal duration, to achieve an 85 percent cure rate. But even for those patients, experts say Gilead’s drug represents an important step forward. The company’s approach for those patients — Sovaldi plus another antiviral pill — is the first all-oral regimen to treat hepatitis C, eliminating the need for interferon, the injectable medication that is the backbone of standard treatment and causes diarrhea and other taxing side effects. Next year Gilead expects to file for FDA approval of a combination pill containing sofosbuvir and ledipasvir, another antiviral drug, that could become the first all-oral regimen for the most common form of hepatitis C, long viewed as the holy grail of treatments by drugmakers. Similar development efforts are underway from competitors like Abbott Laboratories, Bristol-Myers Squibb Co., Vertex Pharmaceuticals and others.
NSA: Global cellphone tracking is legal By KIMBERLY DOZIER ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The National Security Agency on Friday said its tracking of cellphones overseas is legally authorized under a sweeping U.S. presidential order. The distinction means the extraordinary surveillance program is not overseen by a secretive U.S. intelligence court but is regulated by some U.S. lawmakers, Obama administration insiders and inspectors general. Documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden showed that the NSA gathers as many as 5 billion records every day about the location data for hundreds of millions of cellphones worldwide by tapping into cables that carry international cellphone traffic. The Washington Post said the collection inadvertently scoops up an unknown amount of American data as well. The NSA said Friday it was not tracking every foreign phone call and said it takes measures to limit how much U.S. data is collected. The NSA has declined to provide any estimates about the number of Americans whose cellphones it has tracked either because they were traveling overseas or their data was irrevocably included in information about foreigners’ cellphones. “It is not ubiquitous,” NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines said in a statement. “NSA does not know and
cannot track the location of every cell phone.” Vines said the collection of the global cellphone location data is carried out under the White House order that governs all U.S. espionage, known as Executive Order 12333. That means congressional committees and relevant inspectors general can oversee the program, but the secret court established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act would not. It also makes it less likely that the NSA cellphone tracking would be affected by legal changes under consideration on Capitol Hill — most of which would involve changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. A frequent justification for the NSA programs by President Barack Obama and top U.S. intelligence officials is that they are overseen by all three branches of government. “The NSA claims its collection is incidental, but there is no question it’s deliberately engaging in the mass collection of cell phone location data that it knows will inevitably sweep up information on a huge number of innocent Americans,” said Catherine Crump, American Civil Liberties Union staff attorney in a statement. “And, all of this is happening without any supervision by a court.” The NSA spokeswoman, Vines, said legal restrictions under the intelligence law still apply to the cellphone tracking. When NSA analysts realize they unintentionally
collected an American’s information, they would have to separate it when possible or wall it off from the other information, and limit who can access it and how long it is kept. But an intelligence lawyer also told the Post that when U.S. cellphone data are collected, the data are not covered by the Fourth Amendment, which protects Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures. “FISA authorization would be required for the intentional collection of domestic metadata,” Vines said. “This activity is centered on overseas locations.” She said no domestic NSA program gathers such geolocation data.
SATURDAY, DECEMBER 7, 2013
Court eyes trespass By JIM MALEWITZ THE TEXAS TRIBUNE
A case involving the disposal of industrial wastewater pits two interests that are dear to many Texans against each other: oil and gas resources versus private property rights. A decision by the state’s highest civil court could have major implications for both. The Texas Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on Jan. 7 in a dispute between a company that operates injection wells in Liberty County and a nearby rice farm that says wastewater from those wells has migrated into a saltwater aquifer below its land. It calls the migration trespassing, for which it should be compensated. Among several smaller questions, the court will weigh a broad one: Just how far below the earth’s surface do property lines extend? “This is the classic battle between the two quintessential values that are in direct conflict with each other,” said Matthew J. Festa, a professor at the South Texas College of Law. “On a lot of different levels, this case could make some new law.” This is not the first time oil and gas interests have clashed with landowners in Texas. State courts have weighed in on several such showdowns in recent years, including eminent domain cases involving land seized to build pipelines. But the court has yet to consider the idea of underground trespassing. The dispute, which has reached the high court once before, has drawn the oil and gas industry’s attention. The well in question is classified as Class I and used for nonhazardous industrial waste. It is not one of the 50,000 Class II waste wells that drillers typically use. But lower courts’ opinions have drawn no distinction between the wells, stirring concerns that a ruling in FPL Farming’s favor would harm production. “Because the ability to produce oil and gas is inextricably tied to the availability of injection wells,” the Texas Oil and Gas Association says in a brief, “a new common law
Photo by Michael Stravato | The Texas Tribune
In a case before the Texas Supreme Court, representatives from a Liberty County rice farm say that water from an injection well has “trespassed” in the aquifer beneath its property. cause of action that threatens operation of injection wells likely threatens oil and gas production.” In 1997, Environmental Processing Services finished drilling an injection well about 400 feet from FPL Farming’s land, which the farm contested early on. Since then, the company has injected more than 100 million gallons of wastewater. Bob Kent, a former Texas environmental regulator and FPL Farming’s expert witness, testified that the waste plume had probably traveled across the property lines, basing those conclusions on a formula widely used by state and federal regulators. Representatives of the farm say they worry that the waste, which includes the flammable liquid acetone, will contaminate its groundwater and erode the value of its property. Though the water is too salty to drink, those on the farm’s side contend that it is valuable because desalination technology could make it drinkable. The well operator and its supporters say the waste will make the groundwater no more polluted than it naturally is. And in its brief, the Texas Oil and Gas Association calls it “impossible” for a well operator to “predict or control the precise path of migration within a formation that could span dozens of square miles.” On top of that, the industry group argues those points are moot point because the subsurface trespassing argument is near-
ly unprecedented. The appellate court in Beaumont is the only court to have accepted it. Common law holds that land ownership extends to the sky above and the earth’s center below, but courts have chipped away from that doctrine over the past decades as new technologies made parts of it impractical for the modern world. In a landmark 1946 case, for instance, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that airplane operators could be held liable for flying over private property only if they caused damage by flying too close. “The trend is kind of going away from ‘the doctrine,’ but it hasn’t been completely overruled,” Festa said. The concept of underground property rights is still murky. The injection well suit is flying under the radar of property rights advocates. No group has filed a brief in support of the rice farm, but the Texas Farm Bureau, which typically supports landowners in such disputes, said it was looking at the case after recently learning of its return to court. The group supported FPL Farming the last time the case reached the Supreme Court. That was in 2011, when the justices remanded the case to the lower courts after considering various arguments. “We think they own the property down to the center of the earth,” said Regan Beck, assistant general counsel for the Farm Bureau, adding, “You have a taking without compensation.”
ZCISD Public Auction Location Bus Shop 21st & Kennedy Items to be auctioned are as follows: Bus #01 2000 Thomas Bus #02 2000 Thomas Bus #03 2000 Thomas Bus #04 2000 Thomas Bus #07 1996 Thomas Bus #08 1996 Thomas Bus #09 1996 Thomas Bus #10 1996 Thomas Bus #20 VCR 2004 INT Bus #36 VCR 2002 INT All awarded bidders will have one week to remove all purchased items from lots. To schedule a walk-through of the lots please contact Ms. Teresa Hein at (956)2867639 on December 10, 2013 from 8:00am – 3:00pm. Bids must be delivered by December 13, 2013 by 2:00 pm at the Zapata County ISD Administration Building @ 702 East Avenue 17th Zapata, TX 78076. Please note: ZCISD will not be held liable for any accidents.