settlement

June 19 (UPI) — Paramount has pulled back on a $35 million settlement with President Donald Trump after he sued the media company over a segment on CBS’ News’ “60 Minutes.”

The lawsuit alleges that the program edited an interview with Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election to change how she would appear to viewers.

The stalled settlement is holding up a potential $8 billion takeover of Paramount by Skydance, a deal that the two companies negotiated over a year ago.

Despite the legal wrangling, Trump has said he is encouraged by the proposed merger in its current form, and endorsed the deal proposed by Skydance’s David Ellison.

“Ellison is great,” Trump told reporters on the White House lawn Wednesday. He’ll do a great job with it.”

Trump seemed to have connected the delay in the deal to his Paramount lawsuit.

The internal debate over the Trump lawsuit and the way it was being handled prompted CBS News President Wendy McMahon to resign in May, saying in a memo that she and the company could not agree on a path forward.

The Paramount-Skydance deal has been pending review by the Federal Communications Commission since last fall.

The suit, brought by 55 attorneys general, will help compensate victims and fund addiction treatment programmes.

The attorneys general of all 50 US states, Washington, DC, and four US territories have agreed to a $7.4bn settlement with drugmaker Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin – the pain medication that allegedly fuelled a nationwide opioid addiction crisis in the United States.

The group, led by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin, announced the deal on Monday.

“While we know that no amount of money can erase the pain for those who lost loved ones to this crisis, this settlement will help prevent future tragedies through education, prevention, and other resources,” Platkin said in a news release.

“The Sacklers put greed and profit over human lives, and with this settlement, they will never be allowed to sell these drugs again in the United States,” Platkin added, referring to the family who owns Purdue Pharma.

The company’s payment is intended to resolve thousands of lawsuits against the drugmaker. The group of attorneys general said most of the settlement funds will be distributed to recipients within the first three years.

Payouts would begin after the drugmaker wins sufficient creditor support for its Chapter 11 bankruptcy plan. Money would go to individuals, state and local governments, and Native American tribes and the Sackler family would cede control of Purdue.

According to several attorneys general, Monday’s agreements do not include Oklahoma, which in 2019 reached a $270m settlement with Purdue Pharma and the Sacklers to resolve opioid-related claims.

Platkin said members of the Sackler family have confirmed their plan to proceed with the settlement.

The settlement will also help fund addiction treatment, prevention and recovery programmes over the next 15 years, according to the attorney general.

“This settlement in principle is the nation’s largest settlement to date with individuals responsible for the opioid crisis,” his office said.

Purdue has been the subject of a backlash for years over accusations that it fuelled the US opioid epidemic. The bankrupt Stamford, Connecticut-based pharmaceutical company was known for aggressively marketing its drug to doctors and patients and calling it nonaddictive although it is highly addictive.

Purdue responded to the settlement by calling it a “milestone”.

“Today’s announcement of unanimous support among the states and territories is a critical milestone towards confirming a Plan of Reorganization that will provide billions of dollars to compensate victims, abate the opioid crisis, and deliver opioid use disorder and overdose rescue medicines that will save American lives,” a Purdue spokesperson told Al Jazeera.

In June last year, the US Supreme Court rejected an earlier settlement that would have given the Sacklers broad immunity from opioid-related civil lawsuits. The Sacklers would have paid about $6bn under that settlement.

More than 850,000 people have died from opioid-related overdoses since 1999, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, although deaths have recently declined.

College sports leaders and athletes were in limbo for months while waiting for a House settlement to be approved. An agreement would create clarity, better supporting college conferences and their respective universities that had been blindly preparing for the next academic year — unsure which name, image and likeness (NIL) rules they’d be playing by.

Late Friday, structure and stability arrived as the House settlement became approved and official.

“The decision on Friday is a significant step forward toward building long-term stability for college sports while protecting the system from bad actors seeking to exploit confusion and uncertainty,” Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey said during a news conference Monday morning that included commissioners of the Big Ten, Big 12, Atlantic Coast and the Pac 12 conferences.

The House settlement has set the stage for revenue-sharing between universities and their athletes. Claudia Wilken, the presiding judge of California’s Northern District, accepted the final proposal Friday between the NCAA and the plaintiffs, current and former athletes seeking financial compensation for NIL-related backpay.

The NCAA will pay close to $2.8 billion to former athletes — as many as 389,700 athletes who played between June 15, 2016, to Sept. 15, 2024 — across a 10-year period and will also implement a 10-year revenue sharing model that will allow universities to pay current athletes up to $20.5 million per year.

According to the settlement, the total is “22% of the Power Five schools’ average athletic revenues each year” and the revenue-sharing cap will incrementally increase every year.

Like a quarterback who completed offseason workouts, spring practices and fall training camp, Martin Jarmond had been preparing for this moment for nearly a year.

On Saturday came the big unveiling.

The UCLA athletic director discussed with The Times the plans for his department’s operations in the new college sports world created by the House settlement agreement with the NCAA that will allow schools to pay athletes directly for the first time starting July 1.

The big takeaways: UCLA will distribute $20.5 million in revenue sharing — the maximum allowed under the settlement — while keeping its Olympic sports programs and athletic department staff intact. The school will also preserve scholarship limits at their current levels for at least one year in order to distribute more revenue sharing money to each player.

“This is a pivotal moment in collegiate athletics, and we have to continue to invest in our athletics program to compete at the highest level,” Jarmond said. “That’s why student-athletes come to UCLA, to get the best education and compete at the highest level, and we must invest in our student-athletes to provide that championship-level experience.”

While Jarmond would not divulge the specifics of his revenue-sharing arrangement, it’s expected that UCLA will follow other Power Four conference schools in using U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken’s back-payment formula as a model for current athletes. Under this formula, which will distribute $2.8 billion to athletes who competed from 2016 to 2024 to compensate them for lost name, image and likeness opportunities, roughly 75% of the money will be shared with football players, 15% with men’s basketball players, 5% with women’s basketball players and 5% with all remaining athletes.

“We’ve worked really hard to look at the House settlement, along with other factors,” Jarmond said, “to determine how we were going to split up the revenue share.”

Jarmond told The Times last year that he anticipated a bigger share of revenue going to football and men’s basketball players because they were “responsible for more of the revenue based on the House settlement and the back pay for NIL and all those things.” Payments will rise each year as part of the 10-year settlement agreement.

Even though roster limits could eventually rise to 105 for football and 15 for men’s basketball as part of the settlement, keeping scholarship limits at their current levels — 85 for football, 13 for men’s basketball — will allow UCLA to provide each player on scholarship a bigger share of revenue. As part of the settlement agreement, any money used for scholarships (which have an estimated value of $65,000 per athlete at UCLA) comes out of the revenue sharing pot. Jarmond said his department would reevaluate this arrangement in a year to ensure it was best serving the school’s athletes.

UCLA is also committed to preserving its Olympic sports that have provided the lion’s share of NCAA championships in an athletic department widely regarded as one of the best in the nation. Jarmond said there would be no staffing cuts, but some personnel might be reassigned to better serve the athletic department.

“We are looking at reallocating staff,” Jarmond said, “to positions that better meet our needs in a changing landscape.”

The ability to pay players directly could help UCLA in ways that go beyond compensating its athletes. Revenue sharing arrangements could help narrow the resource gap between the Bruins and other Big Ten Conference schools that had more deep-pocketed NIL collectives engaging in pay-for-play practices.

Now, all new NIL deals exceeding $600 must be approved by NIL Go, a clearinghouse created by the College Sports Commission to analyze deals to ensure they serve a valid business purpose and provide fair market value.

It’s expected that all existing college NIL collectives — including UCLA’s Men of Westwood (which serves men’s basketball), Bruins for Life (football) and Champion of Westwood (women’s basketball, Olympic sports) — will essentially become marketing agencies that try to find endorsement deals for athletes.

Jarmond said UCLA was seeking a third-party partner to help secure so-called true NIL opportunities. Being based in Los Angeles should provide Bruins athletes with a clear advantage in securing marketing deals, Jarmond said.

Other challenges remain. Having traveled to Washington, D.C., to lobby for federal NIL legislation, Jarmond said he believed it was necessary to eliminate the imbalance that exists with more than 30 states having their own NIL laws.

While distributing $20.5 million in revenue will be another financial blow to an athletic department that has run $219.5 million in the red over the last six fiscal years — though the entire debt has been covered by the university, bringing the balance to zero — Jarmond said he has long championed athletes being paid and believes the move is long overdue. As part of the settlement involving back pay to athletes, UCLA’s share of NCAA revenue will be reduced by more than $1 million annually for the next 10 years.

UCLA’s finances could soon improve under a College Football Playoff revenue sharing agreement that is expected to provide Big Ten schools an additional $8 million to $12 million annually beginning in 2026. That’s on top of media rights deals tilted heavily in favor of Big Ten and Southeastern Conference schools, giving the Bruins another infusion of much-needed cash.

The athletic department has a new ally in Chancellor Julio Frenk, who signaled his intention to be closely involved with the school’s sports programs during a recent interview with The Times.

“Chancellor Frenk has been extremely supportive of athletics and the impact that it has on our community,” Jarmond said. “He has been supportive of our efforts every step of the way. He hit the ground running during a pivotal time not just for athletics but the university, and he has demonstrated support at a high level and I’m grateful for his leadership at such a pivotal time for athletics.”

While acknowledging that UCLA athletics needed to be more creative with revenue generation as part of what he called “a huge moment” that would forever change the trajectory of college sports, Jarmond said the school’s commitment to sports was unwavering.

“We have to be bold and innovative in this new world,” Jarmond said. “UCLA has always been on the forefront and been a leader and that’s not going to change. We will embrace this new era and we will continue to support our student-athletes at a championship level.”

Israel says its settlement expansion is to “prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state” as it announced 22 new settlements in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian lawyer Diana Buttu says Israeli officials are daring the world to stop them.

May 23 (UPI) — Boeing has avoided prosecution over two crashes of 737 Max planes that killed 346 people, but must pay $1.1 billion in a settlement reached with the U.S. Justice Department.

The aerospace company won’t face a trial as scheduled next month, ABC News reported.

Last week, DOJ officials met with crash victims’ family members, many of whom want the company to go to trial, about the agreement, according to CNBC.

The company, as part of the agreement, must pay $444.5 million for a new fund for crash victims. The eight-page agreement filed Friday was obtained by Flying magazine.

Paul Cassell, a lawyer representing some of the families, said in a statement he hopes U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor rejects the deal.

“This kind of non-prosecution deal is unprecedented and obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in U.S. history,” Cassell said. “My families will object and hope to convince the court to reject it.”

DOJ noted relatives of more than 110 crash victims said they support the non-prosecution agreement or “support the Department’s efforts to resolve the case pre-trial more generally.”

Democratic Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut sent a letter Friday to Attorney General Pam Bond urging her agency not to cut a deal and “to hold Boeing and any responsible executives accountable for their role in the 2018 Lion Air and the 2019 Ethiopian Airlines crashes, which killed a total of 346 passengers.”

The DOJ said it intends to file a motion to dismiss the case once the “agreement in principle” is finalized, by no later than the end of next week.

“It is the Government’s judgment that the Agreement is a fair and just resolution that serves the public interest,” the DOJ said in the filing in the North District of Texas in Fort Worth. “The Agreement guarantees further accountability and substantial benefits from Boeing immediately, while avoiding the uncertainty and litigation risk presented by proceeding to trial.”

In the agreement, Boeing “will admit to conspiracy to obstruct and impede the lawful operation of the Federal Aviation Administration Aircraft Evaluation Group.

Also, the aerospace company, besides the fund for victims, must pay a $487.2 million criminal fine, though $243.6 million it already paid in an earlier agreement; $444.5 million for a new fund for crash victims; and $445 million more on compliance, safety and quality programs.

On Oct. 29, 2018, the first crash in Jakarta, Indonesia, killed all 189 passengers and crew. Black box data from the Lion Air jet showed the pilots struggled to fight the plane’s malfunctioning safety system from takeoff to the moment it nose-dived into the water.

In the second crash four months later on March 10, 2019, 157 people died when a Ethiopian Airlines aircraft crashed minutes after takeoff in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The Maxes were grounded for nearly two years after the second crash.

In 2021 during the first Trump administration, Boeing agreed to a $2.51 billion fine to avoid prosecution.

It was set to expire two days after a door panel blew out of a nearly new 737 Max 9 operated by Alaska Airlines on Jan. 5, 2024. The aircraft left Boeing’s factory without key bolts installed.

In 2024, U.S. prosecutors said Boeing violated the settlement because the company failed to set up and enforce a compliance and ethics program to detect violations of U.S. fraud laws.

Then Boeing agreed to plead guilty to criminal fraud last December. O’Connor determined the government’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies was a factor in the selection of an independent compliance monitor for Boeing. The company had agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States and pay a fine of at least $243 million besides that same amount paid earlier.

In 2022, a Boeing former chief technical pilot was acquitted on fraud charges tied to the Max’s development.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has agreed to pay just under $5 million to settle a wrongful death lawsuit that Ashli Babbitt’s family filed over her shooting by an officer during the U.S. Capitol riot, according to a person with knowledge of the settlement. The person insisted on anonymity to discuss with the Associated Press terms of a settlement that have not been made public.

The settlement would resolve the $30-million federal lawsuit that Babbitt’s estate filed last year in Washington, D.C. On Jan. 6, 2021, a Capitol police officer shot Babbitt as she tried to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door leading to the Speaker’s Lobby.

The officer who shot her was cleared of wrongdoing by the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia, which concluded that he acted in self-defense and in the defense of members of Congress. The Capitol Police also cleared the officer.

Settlement terms haven’t been disclosed in public court filings. On May 2, lawyers for Babbitt’s estate and the Justice Department told a federal judge that they had reached a settlement in principle but were still working out the details before a final agreement could be signed.

Justice Department spokespeople and two attorneys for the Babbitt family didn’t immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Babbitt, a 35-year-old Air Force veteran from San Diego, was unarmed when she was shot by the officer. The lawsuit alleges that the plainclothes officer failed to de-escalate the situation and did not give her any warnings or commands before opening fire.

The suit also accused the Capitol Police of negligence, claiming the department should have known that the officer was “prone to behave in a dangerous or otherwise incompetent manner.”

“Ashli posed no threat to the safety of anyone,” the lawsuit said.

The officer said in a televised interview that he fired as a “last resort.” He said he didn’t know if the person jumping through the window was armed when he pulled the trigger.

Thousands of people stormed the Capitol after President Trump spoke to a crowd of supporters at his Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House. More than 100 police officers were injured in the attack.

In January, on his first day back in the White House, Trump pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in the riot.

Tucker and Kunzelman write for the Associated Press. AP writer Alanna Durkin Richer contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has agreed to pay a $329,794 fine to settle an ethics board’s complaint that he misspent public funds on his security detail during his brief, failed run for U.S. president.

The deal, announced Wednesday by the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, is the costliest repayment order in the ethics board’s history. But it allows de Blasio to avoid an even steeper penalty of $475,000 that was previously imposed, a reduction the board said came in light of the former mayor’s “financial situation.”

In exchange, de Blasio agreed to drop his appeal of the board’s finding. And for the first time, he admitted that he received written warning that his out-of-state security expenses could not legally be covered by city taxpayers.

“In contradiction of the written guidance I received from the Board, I did not reimburse the City for these expenses,” de Blasio wrote in the settlement, adding: “I made a mistake and I deeply regret it.”

The payments concern the $319,794.20 in travel-related expenses — including airfare, lodging, meals — that de Blasio’s security detail incurred while accompanying him on trips across the country during his presidential campaign in 2019. He will also pay a $10,000 fine.

The campaign elicited a mix of mockery and grousing by city residents, who accused the Democrat of abandoning his duties as second-term mayor for the national spotlight. It was suspended within four months.

Under the agreement, de Blasio must pay $100,000 immediately, followed by quarterly installments of nearly $15,000 for the next four years. If he misses a payment, he will be deemed in default and ordered to pay the full $475,000.

The funds will eventually make their way back into the city treasury, according to a spokesperson for the Conflicts of Interest Board.

An attorney for de Blasio, Andrew G. Celli Jr., declined to comment on the settlement.

De Blasio had previously argued that forcing him to cover the cost of his security detail’s travel violated his 1st Amendment rights by creating an “unequal burden” between wealthy candidates and career public servants.

Since leaving office in 2021, de Blasio has worked as a lecturer at multiple universities, most recently the University of Michigan, and delivered paid speeches in Italy.

Offenhartz writes for the Associated Press.