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$280 million over that period.
• Schneiderman called Thursday's action the largest-ever multistate consumer protection-based pharmaceutical settlement. New York will receive $9 million under the settlement.
• In addition to New York, the District of Columbia and lead state Florida, other states involved in the settlement are: Alabama, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
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• WILLISTON, N.D. (AP) -- Grand Forks Rep. Gary Paur used to travel to the other side of the state for some hunting and time alone.
• With the explosion of oil activity in western North Dakota, he barely recognizes the place.
• "You could spend all day out there and not see anybody," Paur said. "The solitude is gone."
• Paur was one of more than two dozen lawmakers from the Dakotas who toured the oil patch this week to get a firsthand look at the boom and its impact on the area in an event sponsored by the North Dakota Petroleum Council.
• Lawmakers were bused to drilling rig and oil well sites and spent the night Wednesday in a crew camp near Williston. They also got an earful from local officials looking for help with millions of dollars in infrastructure needs.
• "This is the biggest construction project in America, and maybe North America," said Ron Ness, president of the oil trade group that represents hundreds of companies working in the oil patch. "You can read about it but to really get a feel of it, you have to be out here."
• North Dakota has risen from the nation's ninth leading oil producer to No. 2 in just six years, with advanced horizontal drilling techniques in the rich Bakken shale and Three Forks formations in the western part of the state.
• More than half of Williston's residents now work in oil-related jobs, the city's unemployment rate is less than 1 percent and there are more than 3,000 unfilled jobs.
• Williston Mayor Ward Koeser told lawmakers Thursday that the city's population has doubled in the past decade. He estimated the city has more than a half-billion

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