Washington
State sues to block proposed merger of Kroger and Albertsons grocery chains
SEATTLE (AP) — Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Monday sued to block the proposed merger of Kroger and Albertsons, two of the nation’s largest grocery chains.
In the suit filed in King County Superior Court, Ferguson argued that the $25-billion deal would harm consumers and raise prices, The Seattle Times reported. Kroger and Albertsons have more than 300 locations in the state and account for more than half of its grocery sales, according to the suit.
“This merger is bad for Washington shoppers and workers,” Ferguson said in a news release Monday. “Shoppers will have fewer choices and less competition, and, without a competitive marketplace, they will pay higher prices at the grocery store.”
Kroger, which owns QFC and Fred Meyer and is based in Cincinnati, is seeking to acquire Albertsons, which owns Safeway and Haggen and is based in Boise, Idaho.
In a statement Monday, Kroger said it was pushing back its timeline for closing the deal due to ongoing dialogue with regulators, including state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission. It now anticipates the closure may occur in the first half of its fiscal year, which ends in mid-August.
“While this is longer than we originally thought, we knew it was a possibility and ... accounted for such potential timing,” the statement said.
The company claimed the merger will bring lower prices for consumers.
Ferguson’s lawsuit was endorsed by United Food & Commercial Workers, Local 3000, which represents Kroger and Albertsons employees in Washington, northeast Oregon and northern Idaho, The Seattle Times reported.
“Workers, shoppers and our communities need to prevent this proposed mega-merger from taking place,” Yasmin Ashur, a union member who works in an Albertsons grocery store, said in a union statement Monday.
Last year, seeking to clear a path for a merger, Kroger and Albertsons announced plans to sell more than 400 stores and other assets to C&S Wholesale Grocers, a wholesale grocery supplier, amid concerns about market dominance.
Kroger and Albertsons agreed to merge in 2022. The grocery chains say they must merge to compete with Walmart, Amazon and other major companies that have stepped into the grocery business.
Florida
Family sues school district over law that bans transgender volleyball player from girls’ sports
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The family of a transgender volleyball player has added a South Florida school district as a defendant in a federal lawsuit that challenges a 2021 state law banning transgender girls from playing on female sports teams, claiming school officials have placed the family in danger.
Attorneys for the family filed an amended complaint Thursday that adds the Broward School Board, the school district’s superintendent and the Florida High School Athletic Association. The school officials had been named as defendants when the lawsuit was initially filed in 2021 but were dropped the next year, leaving just the Florida Department of Education and Education Commissioner Manny Diaz as defendants.
“While we can’t comment on pending litigation, Broward County Public Schools remains committed to following all state laws,” district spokesman John J. Sullivan said in a statement. “The District assures the community of its dedication to the welfare of all its students and staff.”
U.S. District Judge Roy Altman, a Trump appointee, ruled in November that state officials had a right to enforce a 2021 law that bars transgender girls and women from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes identified as female at birth but allowed the family to file an amended complaint.
The law, which supporters named “The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” was championed and signed in by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for president and has leaned heavily into cultural divides on race, sexual orientation and gender.
The transgender student, a Monarch High School 10th grader who played in 33 matches over the past two seasons, was removed from the team in November after the Broward County School District was notified by an anonymous tipster about her participation.
According to the lawsuit, the student has identified as female since before elementary school and has been using a girl’s name since second grade. At age 11 she began taking testosterone blockers and at 13 started taking estrogen to begin puberty as a girl. Her gender has also been changed on her birth certificate.
The girl’s removal from the volleyball team led hundreds of Monarch students to walk out of class in protest. At the same time, Broward Superintendent Peter Licata suspended or temporarily reassigned five school officials pending an investigation, including the girl’s mother, an information technician at the school.
The Associated Press is not naming the student to protect her privacy.
The initial lawsuit didn’t identify the student or her school, but the amended complaint said the family lost all privacy when the school district began its investigation. The student’s mother issued a statement at the time calling the outing of her daughter a “direct attempt to endanger” the girl.
The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights organization, has been supporting the family.
“The reckless indifference to the well-being of our client and her family, and all transgender students across the State, will not be ignored,” the group’s litigation strategist, Jason Starr, said in a statement last month.
Minnesota
Prosecutors urge rejection of ex-cop’s bid to dismiss civil rights conviction in Floyd murder
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal prosecutors urged a judge Friday to reject former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin’s attempt to overturn his civil rights conviction in the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
Chauvin filed his motion in federal court in November, saying new evidence shows that he didn’t cause Floyd’s death, and alleging ineffective counsel by his defense lawyer. He said he never would have pleaded guilty to the charge in 2021 if his attorney had told him about the idea of two doctors, who weren’t involved in the case, who theorized that Floyd did not die from Chauvin’s actions, but from complications of a rare tumor.
Floyd, who was Black, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, kneeled on his neck for 9 1/2 minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s death touched off protests worldwide, some of which turned violent, and forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism.
Chauvin asked U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, who presided over the federal case, to throw out his conviction and order a new trial, or at least an evidentiary hearing. Chauvin filed the motion from prison without a lawyer.
In a response filed Friday, lawyers from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division urged Magnuson to deny the request without a hearing.
They pointed out that Chauvin knowingly and voluntarily waived his appeal rights when he changed his plea to guilty. And they said he failed to show that his attorney’s performance was deficient, even if the outside doctors had contacted him and even if the attorney did not tell Chauvin. They said the evidence proved that Chauvin caused Floyd’s death.
“The claims Defendant argues that counsel failed to raise are baseless, and counsel cannot be ineffective for failing to raise baseless claims,” they wrote.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Chauvin’s appeal of his state murder conviction in November, a few days after Chauvin filed his motion to overturn his federal conviction. He is recovering from being stabbed 22 times by a fellow inmate at the federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, in late November. He is serving his 20-year federal civil rights and 22 1/2-year state murder sentences concurrently.
Mississippi
State high court won’t hear appeal from death row inmate convicted in 2008 killing
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Supreme Court has ruled for the second time that it will not reconsider an appeal from a death row inmate convicted in the stabbing death of a woman with whom he was living.
Timothy Ronk was convicted in 2010 of capital murder and armed robbery in Harrison County for the August 2008 killing of Michelle Craite. He received a death sentence for capital murder, plus a 30-year sentence for armed robbery.
Prosecutors said Ronk stabbed Craite and burned her house in the Woolmarket community, near Biloxi, to cover up the crime.
He then took items from Craite and gave them to a Florida woman he met online, prosecutors said. Defense attorneys argued Ronk stabbed Craite in self-defense.
In a ruling Thursday, the state Supreme Court rejected Ronk’s new effort to argue that he had ineffective legal representation. It’s similar to the same court’s 2019 ruling in his case.
No execution date has been set. Ronk, 44, is on death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
London
Sean Combs, who accused Diageo of racism, withdraws lawsuit against spirits giant
Rapper and entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs has withdrawn his lawsuit against Diageo as part of a settlement with the London-based spirits giant.
Combs and Diageo “have now agreed to resolve all disputes between them,” the two parties said in a statement released Tuesday. Diageo is now the sole owner of Ciroc vodka and DeLeon tequila, two brands Combs had part-owned and promoted in the past, and has no business relationship with Combs going forward.
No further details of the settlement were released.
Combs sued Diageo last May, saying the company didn’t make promised investments in Ciroc and DeLeon and treated them as inferior “urban” products.
Combs, who signed a deal to promote Ciroc in 2007 and purchased DeLeon with Diageo in 2013, said the neglect worsened after Diageo bought two competing tequila brands: Don Julio in 2014 and Casamigos in 2017. Diageo owns more than 200 brands, including Guinness beer and Tanqueray gin.
Combs, who is Black, also accused Diageo of racism. In court filings, Combs said Diageo leadership told him race was one of the reasons it limited distribution to “urban” neighborhoods. Combs was also told some Diageo leaders resented him for making too much money.
Diageo denied those claims. In legal filings, Diageo accused Combs of resorting to “false and reckless” allegations “in an effort to extract additional billions” from the company.
Combs’ reputation took a serious hit after the lawsuit was filed. In November, he was sued by R&B singer Cassie, who said he subjected her to a yearslong abusive relationship that included beatings and rape. Combs settled the lawsuit with Cassie, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, a few days after it was filed.
State sues to block proposed merger of Kroger and Albertsons grocery chains
SEATTLE (AP) — Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson on Monday sued to block the proposed merger of Kroger and Albertsons, two of the nation’s largest grocery chains.
In the suit filed in King County Superior Court, Ferguson argued that the $25-billion deal would harm consumers and raise prices, The Seattle Times reported. Kroger and Albertsons have more than 300 locations in the state and account for more than half of its grocery sales, according to the suit.
“This merger is bad for Washington shoppers and workers,” Ferguson said in a news release Monday. “Shoppers will have fewer choices and less competition, and, without a competitive marketplace, they will pay higher prices at the grocery store.”
Kroger, which owns QFC and Fred Meyer and is based in Cincinnati, is seeking to acquire Albertsons, which owns Safeway and Haggen and is based in Boise, Idaho.
In a statement Monday, Kroger said it was pushing back its timeline for closing the deal due to ongoing dialogue with regulators, including state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission. It now anticipates the closure may occur in the first half of its fiscal year, which ends in mid-August.
“While this is longer than we originally thought, we knew it was a possibility and ... accounted for such potential timing,” the statement said.
The company claimed the merger will bring lower prices for consumers.
Ferguson’s lawsuit was endorsed by United Food & Commercial Workers, Local 3000, which represents Kroger and Albertsons employees in Washington, northeast Oregon and northern Idaho, The Seattle Times reported.
“Workers, shoppers and our communities need to prevent this proposed mega-merger from taking place,” Yasmin Ashur, a union member who works in an Albertsons grocery store, said in a union statement Monday.
Last year, seeking to clear a path for a merger, Kroger and Albertsons announced plans to sell more than 400 stores and other assets to C&S Wholesale Grocers, a wholesale grocery supplier, amid concerns about market dominance.
Kroger and Albertsons agreed to merge in 2022. The grocery chains say they must merge to compete with Walmart, Amazon and other major companies that have stepped into the grocery business.
Florida
Family sues school district over law that bans transgender volleyball player from girls’ sports
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — The family of a transgender volleyball player has added a South Florida school district as a defendant in a federal lawsuit that challenges a 2021 state law banning transgender girls from playing on female sports teams, claiming school officials have placed the family in danger.
Attorneys for the family filed an amended complaint Thursday that adds the Broward School Board, the school district’s superintendent and the Florida High School Athletic Association. The school officials had been named as defendants when the lawsuit was initially filed in 2021 but were dropped the next year, leaving just the Florida Department of Education and Education Commissioner Manny Diaz as defendants.
“While we can’t comment on pending litigation, Broward County Public Schools remains committed to following all state laws,” district spokesman John J. Sullivan said in a statement. “The District assures the community of its dedication to the welfare of all its students and staff.”
U.S. District Judge Roy Altman, a Trump appointee, ruled in November that state officials had a right to enforce a 2021 law that bars transgender girls and women from playing on public school teams intended for student athletes identified as female at birth but allowed the family to file an amended complaint.
The law, which supporters named “The Fairness in Women’s Sports Act,” was championed and signed in by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running for president and has leaned heavily into cultural divides on race, sexual orientation and gender.
The transgender student, a Monarch High School 10th grader who played in 33 matches over the past two seasons, was removed from the team in November after the Broward County School District was notified by an anonymous tipster about her participation.
According to the lawsuit, the student has identified as female since before elementary school and has been using a girl’s name since second grade. At age 11 she began taking testosterone blockers and at 13 started taking estrogen to begin puberty as a girl. Her gender has also been changed on her birth certificate.
The girl’s removal from the volleyball team led hundreds of Monarch students to walk out of class in protest. At the same time, Broward Superintendent Peter Licata suspended or temporarily reassigned five school officials pending an investigation, including the girl’s mother, an information technician at the school.
The Associated Press is not naming the student to protect her privacy.
The initial lawsuit didn’t identify the student or her school, but the amended complaint said the family lost all privacy when the school district began its investigation. The student’s mother issued a statement at the time calling the outing of her daughter a “direct attempt to endanger” the girl.
The Human Rights Campaign, an LGBTQ+ rights organization, has been supporting the family.
“The reckless indifference to the well-being of our client and her family, and all transgender students across the State, will not be ignored,” the group’s litigation strategist, Jason Starr, said in a statement last month.
Minnesota
Prosecutors urge rejection of ex-cop’s bid to dismiss civil rights conviction in Floyd murder
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Federal prosecutors urged a judge Friday to reject former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin’s attempt to overturn his civil rights conviction in the 2020 murder of George Floyd.
Chauvin filed his motion in federal court in November, saying new evidence shows that he didn’t cause Floyd’s death, and alleging ineffective counsel by his defense lawyer. He said he never would have pleaded guilty to the charge in 2021 if his attorney had told him about the idea of two doctors, who weren’t involved in the case, who theorized that Floyd did not die from Chauvin’s actions, but from complications of a rare tumor.
Floyd, who was Black, died on May 25, 2020, after Chauvin, who is white, kneeled on his neck for 9 1/2 minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s death touched off protests worldwide, some of which turned violent, and forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism.
Chauvin asked U.S. District Judge Paul Magnuson, who presided over the federal case, to throw out his conviction and order a new trial, or at least an evidentiary hearing. Chauvin filed the motion from prison without a lawyer.
In a response filed Friday, lawyers from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Minnesota and the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division urged Magnuson to deny the request without a hearing.
They pointed out that Chauvin knowingly and voluntarily waived his appeal rights when he changed his plea to guilty. And they said he failed to show that his attorney’s performance was deficient, even if the outside doctors had contacted him and even if the attorney did not tell Chauvin. They said the evidence proved that Chauvin caused Floyd’s death.
“The claims Defendant argues that counsel failed to raise are baseless, and counsel cannot be ineffective for failing to raise baseless claims,” they wrote.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Chauvin’s appeal of his state murder conviction in November, a few days after Chauvin filed his motion to overturn his federal conviction. He is recovering from being stabbed 22 times by a fellow inmate at the federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, in late November. He is serving his 20-year federal civil rights and 22 1/2-year state murder sentences concurrently.
Mississippi
State high court won’t hear appeal from death row inmate convicted in 2008 killing
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Supreme Court has ruled for the second time that it will not reconsider an appeal from a death row inmate convicted in the stabbing death of a woman with whom he was living.
Timothy Ronk was convicted in 2010 of capital murder and armed robbery in Harrison County for the August 2008 killing of Michelle Craite. He received a death sentence for capital murder, plus a 30-year sentence for armed robbery.
Prosecutors said Ronk stabbed Craite and burned her house in the Woolmarket community, near Biloxi, to cover up the crime.
He then took items from Craite and gave them to a Florida woman he met online, prosecutors said. Defense attorneys argued Ronk stabbed Craite in self-defense.
In a ruling Thursday, the state Supreme Court rejected Ronk’s new effort to argue that he had ineffective legal representation. It’s similar to the same court’s 2019 ruling in his case.
No execution date has been set. Ronk, 44, is on death row at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
London
Sean Combs, who accused Diageo of racism, withdraws lawsuit against spirits giant
Rapper and entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs has withdrawn his lawsuit against Diageo as part of a settlement with the London-based spirits giant.
Combs and Diageo “have now agreed to resolve all disputes between them,” the two parties said in a statement released Tuesday. Diageo is now the sole owner of Ciroc vodka and DeLeon tequila, two brands Combs had part-owned and promoted in the past, and has no business relationship with Combs going forward.
No further details of the settlement were released.
Combs sued Diageo last May, saying the company didn’t make promised investments in Ciroc and DeLeon and treated them as inferior “urban” products.
Combs, who signed a deal to promote Ciroc in 2007 and purchased DeLeon with Diageo in 2013, said the neglect worsened after Diageo bought two competing tequila brands: Don Julio in 2014 and Casamigos in 2017. Diageo owns more than 200 brands, including Guinness beer and Tanqueray gin.
Combs, who is Black, also accused Diageo of racism. In court filings, Combs said Diageo leadership told him race was one of the reasons it limited distribution to “urban” neighborhoods. Combs was also told some Diageo leaders resented him for making too much money.
Diageo denied those claims. In legal filings, Diageo accused Combs of resorting to “false and reckless” allegations “in an effort to extract additional billions” from the company.
Combs’ reputation took a serious hit after the lawsuit was filed. In November, he was sued by R&B singer Cassie, who said he subjected her to a yearslong abusive relationship that included beatings and rape. Combs settled the lawsuit with Cassie, whose full name is Casandra Ventura, a few days after it was filed.
