At a Glance

State Police unit to focus on illegally prescribed opioids

LANSING (AP) — The Michigan State Police has announced a new task force that will look into medical professionals suspected of illegally distributing controlled substances, like opioids.

The diversion investigation unit’s work already has led to criminal enterprise, conspiracy to manufacture illegal prescriptions and other charges against a nurse practitioner in Lansing. A doctor in Mason also has been charged with manufacturing illegal prescriptions, possessing controlled substances and health care fraud.

State police Director Col. Joe Gasper says “prescribing medically unnecessary controlled substances pushes highly addictive drugs on to ... streets impacting public and patient safety.”

Founders co-owner: Discrimination suit ‘biggest challenge’

GRAND RAPIDS (AP) — A Founders Brewing co-owner says the backlash the western Michigan brewery has faced over a former worker’s racial discrimination lawsuit has been the “biggest challenge.”

Tracy Evans, who is black, filed the lawsuit last year saying workers at the Grand Rapids-based brewery repeatedly used racist language around him. He says the company fired him in retaliation for complaining to human resources, but the company denies that.

MLive cites a Detroit Metro Times report that says Founders general manager Dominic Ryan, who fired Evans, told Evans’ lawyer in a case disposition that he didn’t know Evans was black.

The Detroit Free Press reports that several bars have stopped serving Founders’ beers in response to the disposition.

Co-owner Dave Engbers told MLive that he’s trying to rebuild trust and that he wants to reassure the Detroit community that Founders celebrates “people of all different backgrounds and ethnicities.”

Masterpiece found in French woman’s kitchen sells for $26.6M

PARIS (AP) — An old painting found in the kitchen of an elderly French woman, who considered it an icon of little importance, has made her a multimillionaire.

The work, a masterpiece attributed to the 13th-century Italian painter Cimabue that was discovered earlier this year, sold Sunday for $26.6 million.

Dominique Le Coent of Acteon Auction House, who sold the masterpiece to an anonymous buyer near Chantilly, north of Paris, said the sale represented a “world record for a primitive, or a pre-1500 work.”

An auctioneer spotted the painting in June while inspecting a woman’s house in Compiegne in northern France and suggested she bring it to experts for an evaluation. It hung on a wall between the kitchen and dining room.

The woman will now receive “the majority” of the sale money, the auction house said.

Titled “Christ Mocked,” the painting measures about 10 inches by 8 inches.

Art experts say it is likely part of a larger diptych that Cimabue painted around 1280, of which two other panels are displayed at the Frick Collection in New York and the National Gallery in London.

Cimabue, who taught Italian master Giotto, is widely considered the forefather of the Italian Renaissance.

Specialists at the Turquin gallery in Paris initially examined the painting and concluded with “certitude” that it bore the hallmarks of Cimabue.

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