WHITMAN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a driver was killed when his truck crashed along a western Nebraska highway.

The accident occurred around 2 p.m. Wednesday about 2 miles (3 kilometers) east of Whitman. The Grant County Sheriff’s Office says the rendering truck rolled while coursing down Nebraska Highway 2.

The Sheriff’s Office identified the driver as Steven Brummet, who lived in Lexington.

GERING, Neb. (AP) — Officials say a wildfire south of Gering in the Nebraska Panhandle has been brought under control.

The fire had blackened about 100 acres (40 hectares) of land by Tuesday evening. It’s believed to have been started by a lightning strike Monday.

Region 22 Emergency Management Director Tim Newman says the fire’s been hard to fight because of the thick underbrush and the gullies that characterize the Wildcat Hills-area land.

Aircraft dropped fire retardant to help the firefighters from several departments. No injuries have been reported.

CHADRON, Neb. (AP) — A Nebraska county treasurer accused of forgery and official misconduct has taken a plea deal.

Court records say 65-year-old Barb Sebesta pleaded no contest Tuesday to three misdemeanor counts of official misconduct as Dawes County treasurer. Prosecutors dropped three more misconduct counts and one of forgery in exchange for Sebesta’s pleas. Her sentencing is set for Sept. 8.

She declined to comment Wednesday and referred an AP reporter to her attorney, who didn’t immediately return a message.

A state audit alleged Sebesta altered a check written by a taxpayer. Sebesta has said she was trying to clarify the proper amount for a bank. She also was accused of twice failing to collect sales tax and of failing to maintain trust balances in a timely fashion.

SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — The Latest on a Food and Drug Administration panel’s review of a gene therapy treatment (all times local):

3:30 p.m.

A panel of cancer experts has voted in favor of a leukemia treatment which could be the first gene therapy available in the U.S.

The Food and Drug Administration advisory panel voted 10-0 on Wednesday to recommend approval of the treatment developed by the University of Pennsylvania and Novartis Corp. The one-time treatment would be for children and young adults with advanced leukemia.

The therapy could be the first of a wave of treatments custom-made to target a patient’s cancer. Called CAR-T, it involves removing immune cells from a patients’ blood, reprogramming them to create an army of cells to recognize and destroy cancer and injecting them back into the patient.

The FDA is not required to follow the panel’s recommendation but often does.

10:30 a.m.

Cancer experts who advise government regulators are reviewing what could be the first gene therapy approved in the U.S.

The Food and Drug Administration panel is holding a hearing Wednesday to discuss the treatment developed by the University of Pennsylvania and Novartis Corp. The drugmaker is seeking approval to use the one-time treatment for children and young adults with advanced leukemia.

The therapy could be the first of a wave of cancer treatments custom-made to target a patient’s cancer. Called CAR-T, it involves removing immune cells from a patients’ blood, reprogramming them to create an army of attack cells and putting them back into the patient.

The panel is reviewing the safety, effectiveness and production of the treatment. It will vote on whether to recommend FDA approval.

The biopsy shows cancer, so you have to act fast, right? Not necessarily, if it’s a prostate tumor.

Men increasingly have choices if their cancer is found at an early stage, as most cases in the U.S. are. They can treat it right away or monitor with periodic tests and treat later if it worsens or causes symptoms.

Now, long-term results are in from one of the few studies comparing these options in men with tumors confined to the prostate. After 20 years, death rates were roughly similar for those who had immediate surgery and those initially assigned to monitoring, and surgery had more side effects.

“Many men, when they hear the word cancer, you want to do something about it,” said one study leader, Dr. Gerald Andriole, urology chief at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. “The reality is, if you have a low-risk cancer, like the study shows, you don’t need treatment, certainly not urgently.”

It’s not all black and white, though. Early stage doesn’t necessarily mean low risk. Some results in the study lean in favor of surgery, and it does have some advantages. It also may improve survival for certain groups. Here’s what this and other studies tell us about who does and doesn’t benefit from surgery.

WHY NOT TREAT EVERYONE?

Start with a fact many find hard to accept: Not all cancers are destined to kill. Some prostate tumorsare deadly, but most grow so slowly that men will die of something else.

Treatments — surgery, radiation or hormone therapy — can cause impotence, incontinence, infections and other problems, and sometimes do more harm than the disease ever would.

Monitoring doesn’t mean do nothing. Men can get frequent tests, and there are more and better ways to detect disease progression now than there used to be, so there’s usually still a chance to treat and potentially cure it if it starts to worsen, Andriole said.

WHAT THE EVIDENCE SAYS

Only a few studies have tested monitoring versus immediate treatment. One found no difference in death rates after more than 20 years; another found surgery improved survival odds, but only for men under 65.

Those were done before wide use of PSA blood tests, back when more tumors were found because they caused symptoms, which often means more advanced disease.

Researchers wondered: Would the results be the same with modern screening and treatments?

The new study, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, aimed to answer that. Doctors assigned 731 men to observation or surgery. After a decade, survival rates were similar, but doctors wanted longer follow-up.

Now, after 20 years, two thirds of these men have died and the original conclusions still stand, though the numbers leaned in surgery’s favor. Fewer men died in the surgery group, but the difference was small enough that it could have been due to chance. Only about 9 percent of men ultimately died from prostate cancer, showing how relatively seldom the disease proves fatal.

Results are in Thursday’s New England Journal of Medicine.

DID SURGERY DO ANY GOOD?

Yes. Fewer men in the surgery group later had treatment because there were signs the disease might be worsening — 34 percent, versus 60 percent of the group assigned to monitoring. In many cases, it was prompted by rising PSA levels, but surgery also clearly prevented more cases from spreading throughout the body.

Half of the group assigned to monitoring wound up getting some sort of treatment within five years. In one quarter of those cases, men “just got fed up” with monitoring and thinking about cancer, Andriole said. The rest were prompted by signs of progression.

Surgery also may have improved survival for men in the middle range of risk, with PSA levels between 10 and 20, and a Gleason score (a measure of how aggressive cancer cells look under a microscope) of 7. Only about one quarter to one third of men in the U.S. fall in this category, though. Most men are early stage and low risk.

“Surgery is right for the right person, and it’s somebody with intermediate-risk disease,” Andriole said.

SIDE EFFECTS

Surgery had more side effects — 15 percent of men in that group later sought treatment for trouble having sex, and 17 percent, for incontinence. The numbers were 5 percent and 4 percent, respectively, of men assigned to observation.

“You can’t divorce quality of life outcomes from cancer outcomes because they both count for patients,” said Dr. David Penson, Vanderbilt University’s urology chief, who had no role in the study.

“Some guys will look at this and say, ‘I don’t want to be impotent, I don’t want to be incontinent,'” and will forgo surgery even if there’s a chance it will help them live longer, he said. “In the end, each man’s going to make his own decision.”

DETROIT (AP) — Takata is adding 2.7 million vehicles from Ford, Nissan and Mazda to the long list of those recalled to replace potentially dangerous air bag inflators.

The inflators are a new type that previously was thought to be safe. Vehicles affected are from the 2005 through 2012 model years.

Takata inflators can explode with too much force and spew shrapnel into drivers and passengers. At least 17 people have died and more than 180 injured due to the problem.

Takata uses the chemical ammonium nitrate to inflate air bags. But it can deteriorate when exposed to humidity and high temperatures. Previously the company thought inflators with a drying agent were safe. But the government says new tests show that some inflators with the drying agent pose a safety risk.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska’s occupational licensing requirements will continue to face scrutiny from advocates and lawmakers who view some as unnecessary barriers to creating more jobs.

The Platte Institute for Economic Development said Tuesday it will keep pursuing the issue along with lawmakers who are researching different licensing requirements before next year’s session.

The group cited a report, the 50-State Small Business Regulation Index, which ranked Nebraska among the 10 most regulated states when it comes to occupational licensing rules.

Lawmakers this year approved job-licensing changes for real estate agents, dental hygienists, bank loan officers and car salespeople, among other professions. Other proposals stalled in committee, including a bill to relax training requirements for cosmetologists to bring them more in line with the national average.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts is kicking off a tour of businesses throughout the state in the build up to a state economic development summit later this week.

Ricketts said Tuesday that the summit will focus on issues such as affordable housing and ways to address the state’s workforce shortage.

His comments came following a tour of LI-COR Biosciences in Lincoln, one of several companies that helped Nebraska win a national economic development award. Nebraska now has the most economic development projects per capita in the nation.

Ricketts toured an energy company in Adams earlier Tuesday, and later this week he’s expected to visit companies in Snyder, West Point, Falls City, Endicott, Kearney and McCook.

The Governor’s Summit on Economic Development is scheduled for Thursday in Lincoln.

Update 7.12.17

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A young man is dead and a woman was treated for a gunshot wound to the hand following a disturbance in Hershey on Tuesday afternoon.

According to the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office, deputies responded to the report of a shooting on East Second Street, in Hershey, at around 1:56 p.m.

Deputies arrived and found a female with a gunshot wound to her hand.  It was reported that a male subject was also shot and may be deceased.

Deputies entered the residence and found the “young man” deceased from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.

A preliminary investigation revealed that a young couple had gotten into an argument at an earlier time.

Chief Deputy Roland Kramer says the female went to her mother’s house in Hershey. At around 1:55 p.m., the male subject arrived at the residence armed with a handgun.  He stated that he wanted to talk to his girlfriend.

Kramer says a struggle occurred between the male subject, the mother, and the mother’s boyfriend.

At some point, the mother was reportedly shot in the hand. Kramer says all subjects then fled the home and the young male turned the gun on himself.  He was pronounced dead at the scene.  The mother was taken to Great Plains Health for treatment. Her injuries are not believed to be life-threatening.

Kramer says the investigation is ongoing and the names of those involved are being withheld at this time.

 

A 39-year-old North Platte man may face charges following a multi-vehicle crash on North Highway 83 Monday afternoon.

At around 4:25 p.m., Lincoln County deputies responded to the report of a multi-vehicle injury accident near Mile Marker 101, about 15 miles north of North Platte.

Deputies say a southbound Ford Van, driven by Koby Cooper, crossed the center line and struck a northbound Chevrolet S-10 pickup, driven by 73-year-old Florence Lemmer, of Stapleton.  A short time later, a semi hauling plastic barrels of Hydrochloric Acid approached the scene and swerved to avoid hitting the vehicles.  Deputies say this caused the semi, driven by 35-year-old Todd Stapleton, of Cheyenne, Wyoming, to drop one of its containers on the highway, spilling acid.

Authorities say Cooper, Lemmer and a passenger in Lemmer’s vehicle, 88-year-old James Chapman, also of Stapleton, all sustained non-life threatening injuries and were transported to Great Plains Health for treatment. Stapleton was not injured.

Deputies on the scene were exposed to fumes from the acid but remained on the scene.

Chief Deputy Roland Kramer says deputies suspect that Cooper was under the influence of some kind of narcotic at the time of the crash.  They are awaiting the results of chemical tests and say Copper may be charged in the incident at a later time.

The investigation is ongoing.

In addition to LCSO, the Logan County Sheriff’s Office, North Platte Fire and Rescue and the Arnold Fire Department also responded to the scene.