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NBC News — Ye, the artist previously known as Kanye West, paid a settlement to a former employee who alleged that he had used antisemitic language in the workplace.

In addition, 6 people who have worked with Ye or witnessed him in professional settings over the past 5 years said they had heard him praise Adolf Hitler or mention conspiracy theories about Jewish people. 3 of them are former employees or collaborators & they said they recalled multiple instances of Ye’s using antisemitic language. The 3 other people said they recalled a 2018 incident in which Ye went on an antisemitic tirade in an interview at TMZ’s offices.

Their accounts, as well as the settlement, suggest that Ye has used such language for years in more instances than previously known to the public.

Ryder Ripps, a conceptual artist who worked with Ye on & off from 2014 to 2018, said he recalled multiple times when Ye spoke positively about Hitler & the Nazis or mentioned anti-Jewish conspiracies during meetings in the summer & fall of 2018. Ripps, who is Jewish, said he pushed back against Ye’s comments at the time but thought they “didn’t seem that dangerous.” After Ye’s most recent wave of statements, however, Ripps said he sees things differently. “This is dangerous & disgusting & actually violent,” he said.

In the settlement reviewed by NBC News, Ye paid a former employee who alleged having witnessed more than 1 incident in which Ye praised Hitler or Nazis in business meetings. Ye denied the claims made by the former employee in the agreement.

CNN reported last Thursday that a business executive who worked for Ye had accused him of creating a hostile work environment through an “obsession” with Hitler & had received a settlement.

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CVS Health has announced an agreement in principle that would make it the first major pharmacy chain to reach a nationwide settlement of lawsuits over how it handled prescriptions for powerful & addictive prescription opioid painkillers that are linked to an overdose epidemic.

The company would pay about $5 billion over 10 years under a deal that, if accepted, would be one of the largest settlements over the crisis. Other pharmacies, including Rite Aid, Walgreens & Walmart have reached agreements with individual states.

CVS announced its proposed deal Wednesday as it released its quarterly earnings. The company did not admit liability or wrongdoing & said that nonfinancial terms remain to be resolved.

The company has launched educational programs & installed safe disposal units for drugs in stores & police departments, among other measures designed to reduce misuse of opioids.

In the lawsuits, governments said pharmacies were filling prescriptions that they should have flagged as inappropriate.

Under the settlement plan, CVS would pay $4.9 billion to state & local governments & about about $130 million to Native American tribes over the next decade. The exact amount would depend on how many governmental entities accept the terms of the deal.

The proposed settlement brings a nationwide tally of finalized & completed settlements between companies and governments to more than $45 billion.

Opioids have been linked to more than 500,000 deaths in the U.S. over the past 2 decades. Most of the deaths initially involved prescription drugs. As governments, doctors & companies took steps to make them harder to abuse & obtain, people with opioid use disorder increasingly switched to heroin, which proved more deadly.

In recent years, opioid deaths have soared to record levels around 80,000 a year. Most of those deaths involve illicitly produced version of the powerful lab-made drug fentanyl, which is appearing throughout the U.S. supply of illegal drugs.

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Source: AP

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BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (AP) — A suburban Minneapolis city has agreed to pay $3.2 million to the family of Daunte Wright, a Black man who was fatally shot by a police officer who said she confused her gun for her Taser.

The tentative settlement also includes changes in police policies & training involving traffic stops like the one that resulted in Wright’s death.

Wright was shot once in the chest by Brooklyn Center Officer Kim Potter, who is white, after the 20-year-old was stopped for expired registration tags in April 2021. The former officer was subsequently convicted of first- & second-degree manslaughter & was sentenced to 2 years in prison.

Potter is heard on video yelling “Taser” several times just before she fires her pistol.

The shooting happened at a time of high tension in the area, with former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, standing trial just miles away for the killing of George Floyd, who was Black. Floyd’s May 2020 death prompted a reckoning over police brutality & discrimination involving people of color.

The fallout from Wright’s death led the Brooklyn Center City Council to pass a series of reforms, including the use of social workers & other trained professionals to respond to medical, mental health & social-needs calls that don’t require police.

The changes also prohibit police from making arrests for low-level offenses & require the city to use unarmed civilians to handle minor traffic violations.

The settlement is one of the largest involving police conduct Minnesota. Last year, the city of Minneapolis agreed to pay $27 million to Floyd’s family.

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(CNN) The families of five children and four adults killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting have reached a $73 million settlement with the now-bankrupt gun manufacturer Remington and its four insurers, the plaintiffs' attorneys said Tuesday.

The settlement comes more than seven years after the families filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against Remington, the manufacturer of the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle used in the massacre that left 20 children and six adults dead in Newtown, Connecticut.

The families have also "obtained and can make public thousands of pages of internal company documents that prove Remington's wrongdoing and carry important lessons for helping to prevent future mass shootings," the plaintiffs' attorneys said in a news release.

"These nine families have shared a single goal from the very beginning: to do whatever they could to help prevent the next Sandy Hook. It is hard to imagine an outcome that better accomplishes that goal," plaintiffs' attorney Josh Koskoff said.

"This victory should serve as a wake-up call not only to the gun industry, but also the insurance and banking companies that prop it up," Koskoff said.

The families sued Remington in 2014, alleging it should be held partially responsible for the shooting because of its marketing strategy. A 2005 federal law protects many gun manufacturers from wrongful death lawsuits brought by family members -- but the marketing argument was a new approach.

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