A second new personalized treatment for cancer has won approval from the Food and Drug Administration — a clear sign that such treatments will become more widely available for patients with no other options.
The treatment is called CAR-T and can have dramatic effects in some patients. But it is both grueling and expensive and will remain a last-ditch treatment for a few, specific cancer types.
The company that will market it, Gilead Sciences, has priced it at $373,000 and the FDA warns it can cause severe side effects.
. Cell therapy specialists prepare blood cells from a patient to be engineered in the lab to fight cancer at Kite Pharma, the company that developed the Yescarta therapy, in El Segundo, California. Kite Pharma via AP
Talk show host and journalist Charlie Rose was fired Tuesday by CBS News, PBS and Bloomberg in the wake of eight women accusing him of sexual harassment and unwanted advances in a report in The Washington Post.
“A short time ago we terminated Charlie Rose’s employment with CBS News, effective immediately,” said a statement posted to Twitter from CBS News President David Rhodes. “This followed the revelation yesterday of extremely disturbing and intolerable behavior said to have revolved around his PBS program.”
In a statement, PBS also announced it had ended its relationship with Rose, whose self-titled interview show began airing in 1991.
Rachel Tudor, a transgender professor whose tenure and promotion was denied at Southeastern Oklahoma State University, was awarded $1.1 million by a federal jury on Monday in a landmark Title VII case.
Tudor was hired by the university in 2004 as a tenure-track assistant professor in the English department and presented as male at the time. She began transitioning in 2007, becoming the university’s first openly transgender professor.
According to the lawsuit, after notifying the university that she would be presenting as a woman at work for the 2007-2008 academic year, Tudor received a phone call from an unnamed human resources staffer who told her the school’s vice president for academic affairs, Douglas McMillan, had inquired about firing her because her identity as a transgender woman offended his religious beliefs.
The Keystone XL pipeline cleared a major hurdle on Monday after a Nebraska regulator approved an alternate route for the $8 billion project.
The Nebraska Public Service Commission voted to approve TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL pipeline in a 3-2 decision that cleared a regulatory hurdle for the proposed 1,179-mile pipeline that would link Canada’s Alberta oil sands to U.S. refineries.
Nebraska was the only state that had yet to approve the pipeline’s route, and Monday’s decision appeared to pass that final regulatory challenge. But the move could still be challenged in court.
The five-member commission rejected TransCanada’s preferred route and opted for one of the alternative routes that moves the pipeline farther east.
. A TransCanada Keystone Pipeline pump station operates outside Steele City, Nebraska March 10, 2014. Lane Hickenbottom / Reuters file
Della Reese, who segued from pop and jazz singing stardom in the 1950s and ’60s to a long career as a popular TV actress on “Touched by an Angel” and other shows, died Sunday night at her home in California. She was 86.
“She was an incredible wife, mother, grandmother, friend, and pastor, as well as an award-winning actress and singer. Through her life and work she touched and inspired the lives of millions of people,” Reese’s family said in a statement. “She was a mother to me and I had the privilege of working with her side by side for so many years on ‘Touched by an Angel.’ I know heaven has a brand new angel this day. Della Reese will be forever in our hearts.”
Reared in gospel, Reese became a seductive, big-voiced secular music star with her No. 1 R&B and No. 2 pop hit “Don’t You Know” in 1959. The 45, her first single on RCA Records, was a ballad drawn from an aria from Puccini’s opera “La Boheme.”
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Della Reese sings during the Detroit 300 festival on July 20, 2001 in Detroit. Paul Warner / AP
Cassini disintegrated in the skies above Saturn early on Friday, following a remarkable journey of 20 years.
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Signs of Life?
Saturn’s sixth largest moon, Enceladus, has loomed large in the minds of astrobiologists since 2005, when Cassini first spotted geysers of water ice erupting from “tiger stripe” fissures near its south pole.
Scientists think these geysers are blasting material from a sizable ocean buried beneath the satellite’s ice shell, indicating that Enceladus has liquid water, one of the key ingredients required for life.
A bipartisan group of senators Thursday unveiled legislation to improve background-checks for gun sales, a narrow measure that attempts to address the recent spate of mass shootings.
The bill represents an incremental update to existing law but has the best chance of any effort to pass through Congress in recent years, with the weight of support from senior Senate Republicans behind it and no public opposition from the gun lobby.
The bill, crafted by Sens. John Cornyn, R.-Texas, and Chris Murphy, D-Conn., would attempt to better enforce current law and strengthen the National Instant Criminal Background Check system to ensure all background check information is uploaded.
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Senator John Cornyn, R-TX, and his wife Sandy Cornyn visit a memorial to the victims of the mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, on Nov. 12. R. Tomas Gonzalez / EPA
The gunman blamed for the deadly rampage in northern California began his killing spree by fatally shooting his wife and stashing her body beneath the floorboards of their home, police revealed Wednesday.
Word of the grim discovery came a day after Kevin Janson Neal gunned down four other people and attacked an elementary school before he was killed by police.
“We were looking for his wife, couldn’t find her yesterday,” said Tehama County Assistant Sheriff Phil Johnston said. “We located her dead body concealed under the floor of the residence.”
. Kevin Neal, suspect in California shooting. Tehama County
At least 437 people were killed and more than 7,600 others injured after a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck near Iran’s border with Iraq, authorities said Monday.
In Iran, rescuers who worked through dozens of aftershocks and were hindered by landslides ended their efforts late Monday night/early Tuesday morning, the country’s top emergency management official, Pir-Hossein Kolivand said, according to Reuters.
Many houses in rural areas of Iran are made of mud bricks that can crumble easily in a quake.
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A rescue worker searches for earthquake survivors in Sarpol-e-Zahab, Iran, on Monday. Pouria Pakizeh / ISNA via AP
Jimmy Kendrick owns a 2,300-square-foot home on a corner lot in Fulton, Texas, a small town of about 1,500 people along the coast. Hurricane Harvey hit his home hard, and now he’s confined to his living room and kitchen because the roof is leaking. He still doesn’t have electricity in the rest of his house.
But Kendrick noted that his situation isn’t as bad compared to others in town. “Those people who can’t afford housing at all: their mental anguish is really hard right now,” he said.
Unlike others struggling to recover in this town north of Corpus Christi, however, Kendrick is the mayor of Fulton.
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Emily Zurawski cries while inspecting her home in Port Aransas, Texas, on Sunday, Aug. 27, 2017. Nick Wagner / Austin American-Statesman via AP
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Cell therapy specialists prepare blood cells from a patient to be engineered in the lab to fight cancer at Kite Pharma, the company that developed the Yescarta therapy, in El Segundo, California. Kite Pharma via AP
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James' World 2 