Crews searched Monday through the rubble of homes and businesses torn apart by a tornado that ripped through the Dallas area the night before, and one person was killed by a falling tree in Arkansas as the storms moved to the northeast.
Radar confirmed the tornado struck near Love Field Airport and moved northeast through the city around 9 p.m. Sunday, said National Weather Service meteorologist Jason Godwin. There were no reports of fatalities or serious injuries in Texas early Monday, but Fire-Rescue spokesman Jason Evans says three people were hospitalized for evaluation of non-life-threatening injuries. Tens of thousands of people were without electricity.
One person died in northwest Arkansas when a tree fell on a home in Rogers, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Little Rock, according to the Benton County Department of Public Safety. Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said “significant storm damage” occurred in northwest Arkansas.
Damage was also reported in the northeast corner of Arkansas in the town of Tyronza, where two people were reported injured, Jonesboro TV station KAIT reported.
The nation’s three biggest drug distributors and a major drugmaker reached a $260 million settlement with two Ohio counties over the deadly havoc wreaked by opioids, just hours before the first federal trial over the crisis was about to begin Monday.
The settlement means the closely watched trial will not move forward now.
The trial involved only two counties — Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County and Akron’s Summit County — but was seen as an important test case that could gauge the strength of the opposing sides’ arguments and prod them toward a nationwide settlement.
Across the country, the drug industry is facing more than 2,600 lawsuits brought by state and local governments seeking to hold it accountable for the crisis that has been linked to more than 400,000 deaths in the U.S. over the past two decades. A federal judge in Ohio has been pushing the parties toward a settlement of all the lawsuits for nearly two years.
The agreement reached Monday calls for the distributors AmerisourceBergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson to pay a combined $215 million, said Hunter Shkolnik, a lawyer for Cuyahoga County.
The Minnesota Department of Corrections almost doubled the overtime it paid prison staff in the past year because of a chronic staff shortage and concern for employee safety.
The state’s DOC data shows it paid $12.3 million for more than 262,000 hours of overtime during fiscal year 2019. The St. Paul Pioneer Press reports that’s up from the year before when the DOC paid $6.9 million of overtime for 150,000 hours.
State Corrections Commissioner Paul Schnell said the agency increased its overtime use after two officers died last year. Corrections officer Joseph Gomm was allegedly bludgeoned to death by an inmate in Stillwater prison in July 2018. Officer Joe Parise died during a medical emergency two months later while responding to an attack on a colleague at Oak Park Heights.
Althea Larson can be reached lars2360@stthomas.edu.