West Virginia

Striking Kroger grocery workers ratify contract

Striking Kroger Co. workers in West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio approved a new contract Thursday, ending a two-month standoff that has shut down dozens of supermarkets.

The workers agreed to a contract that maintains their health care benefits, a key issue in the drawn-out dispute.

Some 3,300 members of United Food and Commercial Workers Local 400 have been off the job since Oct. 13. The strike closed 44 stores, inconveniencing thousands of residents.

Texas

Defense seeks probation in beating at Bible camp

The defense sought probation and the prosecution heavy prison sentences Thursday for a preacher and his brother convicted of beating a boy with a tree branch for goofing off at a summer Bible program.

Seeking the lightest sentence possible from the jury, attorney Carlos Garcia argued that 23-year-old twins Joshua and Caleb Thompson deserve a second chance.

After deliberating two hours in the trial’s penalty phase, the jurors quit for the night.

The Thompsons were found guilty Wednesday of felony injury and aggravated assault in the beating of 11-year-old Louie Guerrero last summer. Prosecutors said Louie was so badly injured that he spent a week in intensive care and needed a blood transfusion.

Indiana

Murder charge filed after third body found

A tenant in a rundown apartment house in Hammond was charged with murder Thursday after a third body was discovered buried beneath a layer of freshly poured concrete in the building, police said.

The remains, discovered during a search for three missing teenagers, were found covered in heavy layers of plastic and duct tape. Police used a jackhammer and hand tools to locate and remove the bodies from the concrete.

The suspect, David Edward Maust, 49, has been in custody since Tuesday. He is scheduled for arraignment Friday.

The victims were identified as Michael Dennis, 13; James Raganyi, 16; and Nick James, 19.

NEW YORK City

Killer ordered to pay $15 million to mother

Child killer Joel Steinberg has been ordered to pay $15 million to the birth mother of his illegally adopted daughter.

In a decision made public Wednesday, Justice Louis B. York found Steinberg liable for pain inflicted on the girl when Steinberg killed her in 1987.

York awarded Michele Launders “$5 million for Lisa’s pain and suffering just before her death, $5 million for pain and suffering endured as a battered child, and $5 million in punitive damages for the heinous and outrageous crime committed against” the child.

Steinberg fatally struck the girl he had taken as a days-old infant from an unwed teenager. He was supposed to arrange an adoption, but instead took the baby home to his companion, Hedda Nussbaum.

Steinberg, 62, is completing an 8- to 25-year prison term for manslaughter in the child’s death, and is expected to be released in June.