BRIEFLY

AMAZON ACCUSED: Amazon.com worked behind the scenes with merchants such as Levi Strauss to prod online rivals such as Home Depot, Walmart and Chewy to raise prices for consumers so it would not be undercut, California's attorney general said Monday. The Seattle-based retailer said its agreements with merchants are legal.

FEDERAL RESERVE: Kevin Warsh, President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Federal Reserve, will tell lawmakers at his Senate confirmation hearing Tuesday that he is "committed to ensuring that the conduct of monetary policy remains strictly independent," according to prepared remarks released Monday.

SOCIAL MEDIA: Tech billionaire Elon Musk did not appear Monday in Paris at a summons for questioning in a French probe into X and its AI chatbot, Grok, over alleged abuse of algorithms and fraudulent data extraction, the Paris prosecutor's office said.

GAZA STRIP: Israeli strikes killed at least two Palestinians in separate incidents Monday in the Gaza Strip, health officials said, and fighters from Hamas clashed with gunmen from an Israeli-backed militia, witnesses said. The two deaths were the latest violence to overshadow the U.S.-brokered ceasefire signed in October.

GULF DRILLING: Environmental groups sued the Trump administration Monday over its approval last month of oil company BP's ultra deep-water drilling project in the Gulf of Mexico. The groups sued on the 16th anniversary of the nation's worst offshore oil spill 50 miles off the Louisiana coast, when BP's Deepwater Horizon oil rig sent 134 million gallons of crude oil spewing into the ocean.

BIOTECH DEAL: U.S. drugmaker Eli Lilly will buy privately held biotech firm Kelonia Therapeutics for up to $7 billion, gaining access to experimental cancer treatments as it bolsters its oncology pipeline. The deal was announced Monday.

— Lee wire services