Health care coverage gaps to hit local hospitals

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ORLANDO, Fla. -

In just months, tens of thousands of central Floridians will lose their health care coverage. They fall into a gap -- uncovered by Medicaid and making too much for significant stipends afforded by the Affordable Care Act.

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"God forbid I get some kind of illness or whatever that I wont be able to get the health care that I need, said 31-year-old Charlene Caines.

Cainescan't get health care coverage. She works and goes to school but falls into the "no coverage" gap.

"She's in the gap. She's too low to qualify for subsidy through the market place or too high and doesn't qualify for the current Medicaid programs,"said Larri Thatcher, of Orange County Legal Aid Bar Association.

For example, a single parent with one child falls into the gap of no coverage if he or she makes between $5,436 a year to $15,730 a year.

More than 50,000 Orange County residents fall into this area.

"In the last month alone we have seen 37 people that have come to legal aid for some other reason, but while here have told us they do not currently have health care coverage,"Thatcher said.

Without Medicaid expansion, 1 million Floridians will continue to go without coverage.

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Health care coverage gaps to hit local hospitals

Big Precision Medicine Plan Raises Patient Privacy Concerns

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White Houses move to develop customized care prompts worries about data security and informed consent

Credit: Thinkstock/ImageSource

A new effort to create tailor-made medicine for patients around the U.S. is getting a boost from a $215-million presidential initiative. Its an ambitious undertaking fraught with concerns about patient privacy, funding and how such data would be stored. But because its such an innovative idea, there are few blueprints to work with. The broad federal effort, first announced during Pres. Barack Obamas State of the Union address and then fleshed out with a few more details and a presidential East Room address last week, would create a personal health care information database of more than a million individuals. In addition to patient histories the endeavor would include genetic data and information from devices like wearable health monitors, and the collection of bacteria, fungi and viruses in and on the body called the microbiome. Armed with reams of such data scientists hope they could one day offer more personalized medical care, or precision medicine, that would differ from person to person based on their unique genetic makeups and other factors. The end result of the initiative, according to Obama, will be delivering the right medicine at the right time every time to the right person. Moreover, as the president envisions it, patients would also be able to access their own data. Rather than start culling data from scratch, however, the effort aims to tap existing info on patients in clinical trials and incorporate it into the new massive effort. And thats where it gets complicated, says Kristen McCaleb, program manager of the Genomic Medicine Initiative at the University of California, San Francisco. Scientists often disagree on the importance or meaning of particular genetic variants for disease. When a sick patient agrees to get his DNA analyzed it triggers a string of decision-making. A doctor may tell the lab to only seek results about specific genes. And once the genome is sequenced, another expert makes a judgment callruling if a mutated gene identified by the sequencer is risky or not. Certain mutations, such as variants of the BRCA1 gene linked to breast cancer, are clearly defined. The significance of many others, however, remains muddier, so two scientists looking at the same list of more than 30,000 genetic variants for each person may have varying opinions about whether or not those genetic mutations are strongly linked to disease or worth exploring further. That ambiguity, McCaleb says, could spell trouble for the presidents precision medicine initiative. If they plan on incorporating all 30,000 variants coming from one million people, somebody better have a gigantic, honking-fast supercomputer capable of capturing all that raw data, she says, because otherwise investigators would be relying on a series of relatively subjective interpretations of that information, making it cumbersome to work with. As excited as we are that Pres. Obama has made this a priority, there are a lot of logistics to be worked out here, she says. Robert Green, the director of a genome research program, G2P, at Brigham and Womens Hospital in Boston, says that a raw data set from a single genome takes roughly 100 gigabytes of storage. So all that data will also pose a computational challenge. When his team collected 800 genomes for a large Alzheimers study, the only way they could practically share the data, other than sending it around on hard drives as they do now, he says, would be to put it on a giant server in the cloud and then researchers could log in to access the server remotely and use analytic tools to explore the massive data set.* Thats the only way you could access 800 genomes, much less 10,000 or a million, he says. Naturally, this gives rise to privacy concerns. When information from one million people is brought together, it would make an attractive target for a hacker working to link the data back to individuals. Such a breach could rob both patients and their families of their privacy. Data for research are typically scrubbed of identifying factors like a patients name and birth date, but someone with enough information about an individuals family tree may be able to connect some dots. Such data privacy concerns already have a track record of scaring away a segment of potential research subjects. When people agree to be part of an academic study they sign a consent form that says they consent to have their data used in specific ways. Green, for example, heads up a whole genome-sequencing project geared toward incorporating genetic data into clinical medicine. To that end, his team has sequenced the genomes of more than 100 people who agreed to have their personal data shared with large government databases as well as Greens own biobank. Thats good news for the White Houses precision medicine initiative, says Green, who would like his data sets to be folded into the effort. But getting people to sign on after they learned all the ways their data could be used did prove challenging, he says. About 25 percent of research participants that bowed out during the consent processwhen they were in the office and talking in personcited fear of health insurance discrimination as the primary reason, he says. Still other projects, like U.C. San Franciscos, would have to go through an entirely new consent process as well as the time-consuming and expensive effort of recontacting patients. Their patients, McCaleb says, did not sign up to be part of larger databases like this one. And exactly who would pay for the staff time to do that remains unclear. Moreover, with different data sources coming togethersay U.C. San Franciscos genome sequencing alongside comprehensive patient histories from the long-standing Framingham Heart Studydifferent questions were asked and the data were organized quite differently, which, in turn, raises questions about the margin of error on the info when its all mashed together, she says. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, says that a board will be formed to advise on issues such as privacy and data reliability and to decide who will oversee the initiative and its details. Federal agencies, if awarded the $215 million outlined in the president's 2016 budget request, would be tasked with creating an easily accessible database with needed privacy protections and streamlining the regulatory approval process for the instruments that would help scientists find the data. Moreover, patient advocates and privacy experts will be at the table, Obama said in his public remarks on January 30. They wont be on the sidelines, it wont be an afterthought and we will protect patients in a responsible way, he said. Further details of the proposal, whenever they are released, could help patients decide how protected they should feel.

*Clarification (2/3/14): This sentence was edited after posting to more precisely describe how data from the large Alzheimer's study is currently shared.

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Big Precision Medicine Plan Raises Patient Privacy Concerns

Are 'Transhumanists' Trying to Play God?

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February 12, 2015|8:10 am

In 2000, Craig Venter, along with Francis Collins, joined then-president Clinton in announcing the mapping of the human genome.

Since then, Venter has been a leader in the field of synthetic biology, a multi-disciplinary field related to genetic engineering.

And what he recently told the Wall Street Journal sent chills down my spine. Venter said, "We're going to have to learn to adapt to the concept that we are a software-driven species and understand how it affects our lives. Change the software, you can change the species, who we are."

The Journal's selected headline of the article described how we can now "control our evolution," which because evolution is supposed to be an unguided process, must be a misnomer. What Venter was actually describing would be better characterized as playing Creator to everyone else's Adam.

Read more at http://www.christianpost.com/news/when-adam-plays-god-why-transhumanism-wont-end-well-133846/

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Are 'Transhumanists' Trying to Play God?

A new twist on HIV vaccines shows results in monkeys, study says

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An effective vaccine for HIV has eluded researchers for several decades, due to the pathogen's infamous shape-shifting abilities.

Even though researchers have identified certain broadly neutralizing antibodies that can conquer multiple strains of the human immunodeficiency virus, many strains of rapidly mutating HIV remain resistant to the these super antibodies.

In recent years however,researches have proposed a new method of battling the virus that involves gene therapy.

Instead of using a vaccine to stimulate the body's own immune system, so that it produces HIV antibodies, scientists are bypassing the immune system entirely.

In experiments involving rats and monkeys, the researchers have used non-life-threatening viruses to alter the animals' genome so that its cells produce designer molecules capable of neutralizing HIV.

In a paper published Wednesday in the journal Nature, a team of researchers said they had used the technique to protect rhesus macaques from repeated intravenous injections of a SHIV, a combination of simian immunodeficiency virus and humanimmunodeficiency virus.

The technique, researchers said, "can function like an effective HIV-1 vaccine." (HIV-1 is the main family of the virus, and accounts for most infections worldwide.)

When HIV enters the body, it attacks specific immune cells. As the virus copies itself over and over, and kills more and more host cells, the immune system grows progressively weaker. If left untreated, this progressive weakening will give rise to AIDS.

In most cases, the HIV virus begins its attack by latching onto two separate protein structures on the surface of its target white blood cells. One of these structures is called CD4, and the other is called CCR5.

In the Nature study, researchers set out to engineer an antibody-like molecule that would mimic both of these proteins, so that it would act as decoy of sorts for the virus. Instead of latching onto a host cell, HIV would latch onto a specially enhanced protein molecule, or eCD4-Ig, that was released by the cell.

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A new twist on HIV vaccines shows results in monkeys, study says

Clash DJ Mix – David Carretta

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French electro-techno futurist David Carretta leads us on a journey down bleep street for the latest exclusive instalment of the Clash DJ Mix series.

After two decades in the game, Carretta has become known as something of a forward-thinking master at producing spiky, atmospheric electro that might work its way through anything from Italo-disco to noir-ish, cinematic electronica to the work of fellow French innovators like Laurent Garnier, Gesaffelstein and Arnaud Rebotini.

Thankfully, hes still crafting superb slabs of banging, synth-laden goodness that would sound perfect at any sweaty basement rave, as his latest EP, Land of Sin (released on The Hacker and Gesaffelsteins ZONE Records), demonstrates.

Carrettas exclusive Clash mix is a beguiling journey through electronic experimentation across the years, soundtracked by the likes of Kraftwerk, Cabaret Voltaire, Gary Numan and Throbbing Gristle.

But well let the man himself explain more: "For this mixtape I selected songs from the late 70s and early 80s to show just how incredibly modern and futuristic music from this era can still sound. At the same time I also had in the back of mind to compile the soundtrack to the kind of movie that I would love to see."

"Anyway, the music, and indeed artists, on this mix are those that have inspired me over the past three decades, going right back to when I first discovered electronic music. When you listen to this music youll hear the sounds that have that inspired not only me, but so many others over the years, and not just electronic music producers or DJs, but pop, rock and hip hop acts too."

"Unfortunately, time is limited and there are still many of my favourite artists from this period who I couldnt feature in this mix its just impossible to fit everything into the space of just one hour! So who knows, maybe I will follow this up with both a Volume 2 and a Volume 3 and showcase some of my favourite EBM and Italo-disco bands too."

Check it out now.

Tracklisting: Peter Baumann - Romance John Carpenter - Escape From New York Goblin - Profondo Rosso Gary Numan - Down In The Park D.A.F - Der Rauber Und Der Prinz Throbbing Gristle - Hot On The Heels Of Love Cabaret Voltaire - Just Fascination Crash Course In Science - Flying Turns Kraftwerk - Radio Stern Kraftwerk - Europe Endless

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Clash DJ Mix - David Carretta

A Look Back: Futurist Joel Barker on the Challenge of Change

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Editor's Note: In 1995, IndustryWeek asked 25 of the leading CEOs, management gurus and futurists what they saw coming for their companies, their jobs and their life between 1995 and 2020. While we are still five years away from 2020, we nevertheless are going to revisit those reflections, opinions and predictions in the coming weeks and months and see how well are they holding up. The first of the 25 trail blazers into the future (presented in alphabetical order) is:

Joel A. Barker, Futurist

In the last 25 years, managers -- and management philosophy -- have come to understand that there are multiple modes of change. One is what I call "paradigm enhancement," which the total-quality, continuous-improvement message has been all about.

The other is radical change -- or paradigm-shift change -- which is unlike any other kind of change that you must deal with as a manager.

... I think the challenge for management in the future is to substantially improve its ability to anticipate change. And there are two aspects of that:

One is to be able to spot a paradigm shift in its early formation -- because there is usually a five- to 10-year developmental life before it hits you between the eyes. Manager-leaders must also learn how to monitor what is happening outside the boundaries of their business, because often that is where radical change originates.

The typical manager reads inside his profession; but that's not where you find the future. My rule is to get into areas that you're unfamiliar with and look around and see what is going on. When I work with corporations, I set up teams of 50 people, having each person read five different magazines. So yon have 250 periodicals covered every month -- and they are all reading outside the boundaries.

The second thing is to understand the long-term implications of a new change when you find it. There are first-, second-, and third-order implications, which may be either positive or negative, and you have to discuss them in a patterned way.

If you don't take the time to think about the long-term implications, you will be seduced by the short term.

... The ability to understand the long-term positive and negative implications of potential decisions, before they are made, is the new frontier. And the responsibility we have for doing that is growing every day, because our information technology is so much more powerful than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

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A Look Back: Futurist Joel Barker on the Challenge of Change

Gig: London Electronic Arts Festival LEAF 2015 Mar 6-7

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This two-day celebration of electronic music is more than just a musos fantasy made real.

Combining electronic music, art, literature, records, technology and digital futurism, it is a cornucopia beyond even the wildest dreams of the most sonically-literate out there.

Day one will be when most of the talky stuff goes on, so to broaden your musical knowledge get down to this. Day two is when the tunes really kick into gear, with performances from some of the biggest and most progressive names in the electronic arts. It starts during the day and carries on all night with LEAF event taking place across the citys plethora of nightclubs. Tune-wise, we highly recommend catching Modeselektor, 808 State performing their 1989 LP Ninety as part of the classic album series and Kate Simko with the London Electronic Orchestra.

The whole thing is curated by Bestival mainman Rob Da Bank, which ensures amongst many things, its wildly diverse line up of persuasions. Fantastic.

When: Mar 6 & 7 / times vary Where: Tobacco Dock, 50 Porters Walk, E1W 2SF. And various venues across London. Check the website for full listings. Cost: 10+ Tube: Shadwell Web: leaflondon.net

Marina and the Diamonds - Mar 11 The first show in almost two years from the synth-pop superstar songstress who will be debuting new material from her Froot album, which is out next month. Shes already got a load of global fest shows lined up so you bet she will over here too, but for now, to whet your appetite, this is a sneaky little low key show. When: Mar 11 / 7pm Where: Oslo, 1a Amhurst Road, E8 1LL Cost: 16.50 Tube: Hackney Central Web: oslohackney.com

Underworld Mar 6 Underworld, who hit commercial paydirt when Born Slippy a-la-Trainspotting saw them go super global, started their career officially with this genre-bending debut. Celebrating its 20thbirthday, it is as ground-breaking and hip-shakingly super today as it was then. And after theyve rattled through this, if their show last year at the Royal Festival Hall is anything to go by, they'll be dipping into some other classics from their stupendous career that has seen them break all the rules. A techno act with a mumbly singer you say? Ooooh yes please.

When: Mar 6 / 7pm Where: Hammersmith Apollo, 45 Queen Caroline Street ,W6 9QH Cost: 20+ Tube: Hammersmith Web: eventimappollo.com

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Gig: London Electronic Arts Festival LEAF 2015 Mar 6-7

Futurism Wire: Mussolini's 'Square Colosseum' Could Soon be a Fendi HQ

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Monday, February 16, 2015, by Rachel B. Doyle

Photo by Jean-Pierre Dalbra via Flickr

Far from the tourist center of Rome, near the southern end of the Metro B line, there lies a 420-acre complex of ten monumental concrete buildings known as the Esposizione Universale Roma (or EUR). Spearheaded by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini in 1935, the campus was meant to showcase the glories of totalitarian architecture. The most famous of the buildings is the Palazzo della Civilt del Lavoro, dubbed the "Square Colosseum," a monolith with hundreds of identical arched loggias on its faade. Now, Italian papers are reporting that EUR's most imposing asset might be sold off to the fashion house Fendi, which already rents part of the fascist-era building.

The city of Rome is facing a cash crisis, and the state-owned firm that administers EUR was further weakened by revelations of a mafia-related corruption scandal in December. The public seems to be divided about the rumored sale of the Square Colosseum, which is an iconic piece of architecture in its own right but is hardly beloved in a city with so many impressive ancient sites. "The Italian state owns way too much heritage; with owning heritage comes vast responsibility," a former director of the British School in Rome told the Guardian. "It needs to concentrate on its priorities, like the real Colosseum."

Photo by Patrizio Boschi via Flickr

Rome may sell Square Colosseum to Fendi as city faces cash crisis [Guardian]

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Futurism Wire: Mussolini's 'Square Colosseum' Could Soon be a Fendi HQ

Freedom bankruptcy case at crossroads

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With available funds dwindling and millions in claims pending over the January 2014 Elk River chemical leak, the Freedom Industries bankruptcy case appears to be at a crossroads.

No clear plan for resolving the case is in sight, prompting U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ronald Pearson to schedule a status conference early next month to ask various interested parties for options.

Pearson called the conference, set for 10 a.m. March 3, to ask for input with respect to how this case should be administered to conclusion utilizing the limited resources available to obtain the best results for the public and parties in interest, the judge said in a three-page order entered on Feb. 6. The conference will be held in the bankruptcy courtroom at the Robert C. Byrd U.S. District Courthouse, and is open to the public, the judges order said.

In the ruling, Pearson noted that more than $200 million in claims have been filed against Freedom Industries, with most of that accounted for by 3,800 damage claims filed by victims of the Jan. 9, 2014, leak that contaminated the regional drinking water supply.

But, the judge noted, Freedoms most recent financial report to the court showed payables of $3.2 million for legal and environmental consultant fees that have not yet been approved by the court.

Only $1.5 million in cash remains from a total of almost $16 million in assets listed by the debtor at filing of its bankruptcy petition, Pearson said.

The judge said these numbers raise questions about what will be proposed by Freedoms current management led by a chief restructuring officer approved by the court with respect to the rights to the $3 million insurance policy limits the debtor is attempting to collect as a result of the spill incident.

While Freedom appeared to have worked out a deal with AIG Specialty Insurance Co., Pearson noted that former Freedom President Gary Southern facing indictment on Clean Water Act violation and bankruptcy fraud charges has filed a new challenge to the insurance deal. Lawyers for some residents had hoped that the $3.2 million insurance payment could be used for a class-action settlement funding projects like water testing or studies of leak-related health effects.

The court is not comfortable with moving forward with a decision about how this case should be administered or what might be done with the proposed $3.2 million of insurance proceeds without greater input from spill claimants who hold 95 percent of the claims in the case, Pearson said in a second order, made public Feb. 9.

Because no class-action case against Freedom has yet been approved in U.S. District Court or in the bankruptcy case, Pearson asked bankruptcy case claims agent Jim Lane and Tony Majestro, a lawyer for some residents, to meet with lawyers for all leak victims to receive information from spill claimants as to the administration of this case and what rights they assert in the case.

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Freedom bankruptcy case at crossroads

Answers remains elusive in Freedom Industries bankruptcy case

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Officials overseeing the Freedom Industries bankruptcy on Tuesday touted progress on cleanup of the companys Elk River facility, but acknowledged that answers to other pressing issues that have stalled the resolution of the case remain elusive.

Still unclear are crucial decisions regarding how or when Freedom might obtain an insurance payment of more than $3 million for the January 2014 chemical leak, how victims might eventually be compensated, and whether additional funds can be recouped for the bankruptcy estate from various parties, including former Freedom owners and executives.

Weve got to make some progress on these things, said U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Ronald Pearson. Lets get these things teed up.

Pearson spoke Tuesday morning to a courtroom full of lawyers representing Freedom Industries, various companies Freedom owes money to, victims, state agencies, West Virginia American Water and former Freedom officials.

The judge called a status conference of interested parties after observing in an early February order that the case was at a crossroads. At the time, Freedom had dwindling resources, with just $1.5 million in cash and $200 million in claims, and a liquidation plan that Pearson said he didnt think could ever be approved as written.

In a status report submitted on Friday, Freedoms court-approved chief restructuring officer, Mark Welch, said that the company currently has about $700,000 cash in hand. The report said Freedom hopes to get Pearsons approval to put about $450,000 of that into an escrow account to fund the rest of the remediation of the Elk River facility, site of the leak that contaminated drinking water for 300,000 residents across the Kanawha Valley and surrounding communities.

The report said that Freedom has spent no less than $10.5 million on matters relating to environmental compliance, testing and remediation since it filed for bankruptcy more than a year ago. After tearing down and removing more than a dozen chemical tanks at the Etowah Terminal along the Elk River, Welch also oversaw the removal of 600 tons of contaminated soil and construction of retention berms around the former footprint of the facilitys Crude MCHM tanks, the report said.

Shortly before Welch filed his status report with the bankruptcy court, the state Department of Environmental Protection accepted the Freedom site into its voluntary industrial cleanup program. The move gives the company 31 days to negotiate with the DEP on a schedule for developing its final cleanup plan.

Welch said in his report that he believes Freedoms only remaining remediation work involves capping the MCHM portion of the facility, monitoring, ongoing stormwater collection and additional water and other testing.

Acceptance into the voluntary DEP program allows Freedom to clean up the site based on some as-yet-undetermined risk-based contamination standard, as opposed to previous state agency orders that required all MCHM contamination at the location to be removed. DEP Secretary Randy Huffman has said, though, that Freedom must clean up the site so that the risk of this stuff getting back in the water has been eliminated -- not just minimized.

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Answers remains elusive in Freedom Industries bankruptcy case

Freedom Industries plea hearings set

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. A federal judge has scheduled plea hearings for next month for Freedom Industries and four former Freedom officials. All are expected to plead guilty to Clean Water Act crimes in connection with the January 2014 chemical leak that contaminated the drinking water supply for hundreds of thousands of residents in Charleston and surrounding communities.

U.S. District Judge Thomas E. Johnston scheduled the plea hearing for Freedom Industries for 3 p.m. March 23. The company has said it has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors on one felony and two misdemeanor pollution charges outlined in an information filed against the company. An information is a charging document that generally indicates that the defendant is cooperating with authorities and has reached a plea agreement.

Johnston scheduled a plea hearing for former Freedom official William Tis for 10 a.m. March 16 and for former Freedom official Charles Herzing for 2 p.m. March 16.

U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin confirmed earlier this week that Tis and Herzing had both reached plea agreements with his office.

Tis and Herzing were both charged with three misdemeanor water pollution crimes in an indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in December. Both had originally pleaded not guilty.

Johnston set a plea hearing for former Freedom official Michael Burdette for 10 a.m. March 18 and for former Freedom official Robert Reynolds for 2 p.m. March 18.

Burdette and Reynolds were charged in separate informations with one misdemeanor count each of violating the Clean Water Act. They have not yet made any court appearances.

Former Freedom officials Dennis Farrell and Gary Southern both also face three Clean Water Act charges, and Southern faces separate bankruptcy fraud charges for allegedly trying to hide his personal wealth from Freedoms bankruptcy proceeding and from civil lawsuits filed against the company over the leak. Farrell and Southern both have pleaded not guilty. Trial is scheduled for Oct. 6.

Reach Ken Ward Jr. at kward@wvgazette.com, 304-348-1702 or follow @kenwardjr on Twitter.

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Freedom Industries plea hearings set

Two Freedom officials to plead guilty, prosecutors say

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Two former Freedom Industries officials who were indicted on Clean Water Act charges have agreed to plead guilty in the governments case over the January 2014 Elk River chemical leak that contaminated the drinking water for hundreds of thousands of residents, prosecutors revealed in court documents filed Wednesday morning.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Philip Wright filed separate motions this morning in U.S. District Court in Charleston, asking to schedule guilty plea hearings in the cases involving former Freedom officials William Tis and Charles Herzing.

U.S. Attorney Booth Goodwin confirmed that Tis and Herzing had both reached plea agreements with his office.

Tis and Herzing were both charged with three misdemeanor water pollution crimes in an indictment handed up by a federal grand jury in December. Both had pleaded not guilty. Trial was scheduled to start on March 10, but the defendants had already asked for a delay in the proceedings.

The two men are among six former Freedom officials facing criminal charges following Goodwins investigation of the Jan. 9, 2014, spill of Crude MCHM and other chemicals from a storage tank at the companys facility, located just 1.5 miles up the Elk River from West Virginia American Waters regional drinking water plant.

Former Freedom officials Dennis Farrell and Gary Southern both also face three Clean Water Act charges, and Southern faces separate bankruptcy fraud charges for allegedly trying to hide his personal wealth from Freedoms bankruptcy proceeding and from civil lawsuits filed against the company over the spill. Farrell and Southern have both pleaded not guilty.

Also Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Thomas E. Johnston agreed to delay trial in the cases from March 10 until Oct. 6.

Pre-trial motions are due Aug. 21, responses due Aug. 28, and a pre-trial hearing was scheduled for Sept. 2, according to a two-page order Johnston entered Wednesday afternoon.

Earlier in the day Wednesday, prosecutors also filed motions to schedule guilty plea hearings for Freedom Industries and for two other Freedom officials, Michael Burdette and Robert Reynolds, who face charges related to the spill.

Freedom Industries has said in a prepared statement that it has reached a plea agreement with federal prosecutors on one felony and two misdemeanor Clean Water Act charges outlined in an information filed against the company. An information is a charging document that generally indicates that the defendant is cooperating with authorities and has reached a plea agreement.

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Two Freedom officials to plead guilty, prosecutors say