Pharmacies to pay $13 billion over opioid crisis

Major pharmacies reach $13 billion in an opioid crisis deal; Netanyahu is set to become Israeli prime minister again.

Tonight's Sentences was written by Jariel Arvin.

$13 billion to settle opioid crisis lawsuits

 Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

• Tuesday, two of the largest US drugstores announced a tentative deal to resolve lawsuits over their role in the opioid crisis. [Associated Press / Geoff Mulvihill]
• CVS and Walgreens agreed to pay about $5 billion each to help states, cities, and tribes improve addiction treatment services. Neither company admitted wrongdoing. [Wall Street Journal / Sharon Terlep]
• More than 3,000 lawsuits claim pharmacies, drug manufacturers, and distributors did too little to stop the illegal distribution of painkillers that cost half a million American lives. [CNN / Shawn Nottingham]
• Walmart also agreed to pay $3.1 billion, bringing the total to $13 billion, in what could be one of the last significant settlements tied to the addiction crisis. [Bloomberg / Jef Feeley and Fiona Rutherford]
• Most of the plaintiffs must agree to the terms to finalize the agreement. It’s unclear how much support the deal will get, as it doesn’t resolve other, ongoing cases. [New York Times / Jan Hoffman]

Netanyahu is poised for victory in Israel

• Benjamin Netanyahu is set to become the next prime minister of Israel after his government won a majority of seats in parliamentary elections on Wednesday. [CNN / Abbas Al Lawati]
• To win, Netanyahu, 73, formed an alliance with politicians on the extreme right who have expressed racist and misogynistic views. [Axios / Barak Ravid]
• One of Israel’s most far-right governments in history is likely to crack down on Palestinians in the West Bank. [BBC / Yolande Knell]
• Netanyahu, Israel’s longest-serving prime minister, could return to leadership while facing corruption charges. [CNBC / Natasha Turak]

📍 If you read just one story

Vox’s Jonathan Guyer explains what the emergence of a new Palestinian resistance group means for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [Vox / Jonathan Guyer]

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Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro did not concede his election loss to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva in Wednesday remarks. But he did say he would follow the constitution. [Vox / Jen Kirby]

• An Oregon mayor was arrested for attempted murder after firing a gun at a family in a Halloween road rage incident. [ABC /Jon Haworth]
• On Wednesday, North Korea fired a record 23 ballistic missiles, escalating tension in the region. [NBC / Stella Kim and Jennifer Jett]
• Lawyers for former President Donald Trump reportedly thought Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas was the “only chance” to overturn the 2020 election. [Politico / Kyle Cheney, Josh Gerstein, and Nicholas Wu]

“It’s one more culprit of the overdose crisis that is having to pay their dues. Average Americans have been paying it for a long time.”

[Courtney Gary-Allen, organizing director of the Maine Recovery Advocacy Project, on the settlement offer / AP]

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