One month after a judge declared Google’s search engine an illegal monopoly, the tech giant faces another antitrust lawsuit that threatens to break up the company, this time over its advertising technology.

The Justice Department, joined by a coalition of states, and Google each made opening statements Monday to a federal judge who will decide whether Google holds a monopoly over online advertising technology.

The regulators contend that Google built, acquired and maintains a monopoly over the technology that matches online publishers to advertisers. Dominance over the software on both the buy side and the sell side of the transaction enables Google to keep as much as 36 cents on the dollar when it brokers sales between publishers and advertisers, the government contends in court papers.

They allege that Google also controls the ad exchange market, which matches the buy side to the sell side.

“It’s worth saying the quiet part out loud,” Justice Department lawyer Julia Tarver Wood said during her opening statement. “One monopoly is bad enough. But a trifecta of monopolies is what we have here.”

Google says the government’s case is based on an internet of yesteryear, when desktop computers ruled and internet users carefully typed precise World Wide Web addresses into URL fields. Advertisers now are more likely to turn to social media companies like TikTok or streaming TV services like Peacock to reach audiences.

In her opening statement, Google lawyer Karen Dunn likened the government’s case to a “time capsule with with a Blackberry, an iPod and a Blockbuster video card.”

Dunn said Supreme Court precedents warn judges about “the serious risk of error or unintended consequences” when dealing with rapidly emerging technology and considering whether antitrust law requires intervention. She also warned that any action taken against Google won’t benefit small businesses but will simply allow other tech behemoths like Amazon, Microsoft and TikTok to fill the void.

According to Google’s annual reports, revenue has actually declined in recent years for Google Networks, the division of the Mountain View, California-based tech giant that includes such services as AdSense and Google Ad Manager that are at the heart of the case, from $31.7 billion in 2021 to $31.3 billion in 2023,

The trial that began Monday in Alexandria, Virginia, over the alleged ad tech monopoly was initially going to be a jury trial, but Google maneuvered to force a bench trial, writing a check to the federal government for more than $2 million to moot the only claim brought by the government that required a jury.

The case will now be decided by U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema, who was appointed to the bench by former President Bill Clinton and is best known for high-profile terrorism trials including that of Sept. 11 defendant Zacarias Moussaoui. Brinkema, though, also has experience with highly technical civil trials, working in a courthouse that sees an outsize number of patent infringement cases.

The Virginia case comes on the heels of a major defeat for Google over its search engine, which generates the majority of the company’s $307 billion in annual revenue. A judge in the District of Columbia declared the search engine a monopoly, maintained in part by tens of billions of dollars Google pays each year to companies like Apple to lock in Google as the default search engine presented to consumers when they buy iPhones and other gadgets.

Venezuela’s Supreme Court has backed President Nicolás Maduro’s claims that he won last month’s presidential election and said voting tallies published online showing he lost by a landslide were forged.

The ruling is the latest attempt by Maduro to blunt protests and international criticism that erupted after the contested July 28 vote in which the self-proclaimed socialist leader was seeking a third, six-year term.

The high court is packed with Maduro loyalists and has almost never ruled against the government.

Its decision, read Thursday in an event attended by senior officials and foreign diplomats, came in response to a request by Maduro to review vote totals showing he had won by more than 1 million votes.

The main opposition coalition has accused Maduro of trying to steal the vote.

Thanks to a superb ground game on election day, opposition volunteers managed to collect copies of voting tallies from 80% of the 30,000 polling booths nationwide and which show opposition candidate Edmundo González won by a more than 2-to-1 margin.

The official tally sheets printed by each voting machine carry a QR code that makes it easy for anyone to verify the results and are almost impossible to replicate.

“An attempt to judicialize the results doesn’t change the truth: we won overwhelmingly and we have the voting records to prove it,” González, standing before a Venezuelan flag, said in a video posted on social media.

The high court’s ruling certifying the results contradicts the findings of experts from the United Nations and the Carter Center who were invited to observe the election and which both determined the results announced by authorities lacked credibility. Specifically, the outside experts noted that authorities didn’t release a breakdown of results by each of the 30,000 voting booths nationwide, as they have in almost every previous election.

The government has claimed — without evidence — that a foreign cyberattack staged by hackers from North Macedonia delayed the vote counting on election night and publication of the disaggregated results.

González was the only one of 10 candidates who did not participate in the Supreme Court’s audit, a fact noted by the justices, who in their ruling accused him of trying to spread panic.

The former diplomat and his chief backer, opposition powerhouse Maria Corina Machado, went into hiding after the election as security forces arrested more than 2,000 people and cracked down on demonstrations that erupted spontaneously throughout the country protesting the results.

Numerous foreign governments, including the U.S. as well as several allies of Maduro, have called on authorities to release the full breakdown of results.

Gabriel Boric, the leftist president of Chile and one of the main critics of Maduro’s election gambit, lambasted the high court’s certification.

The Arkansas Supreme Court upheld the state’s rejection of signature petitions for an abortion rights ballot initiative on Thursday, keeping the proposal from going before voters in November.

READ MORE: Arkansas election officials reject petitions submitted to put abortion rights on 2024 ballot

The ruling dashed the hopes of organizers, who submitted the petitions, of getting the constitutional amendment measure on the ballot in the predominantly Republican state, where many top leaders tout their opposition to abortion.

Election officials said Arkansans for Limited Government, the group behind the measure, did not properly submit documentation regarding the signature gatherers it hired. The group disputed that assertion and argued it should have been given more time to provide any additional documents needed.

“We find that the Secretary correctly refused to count the signatures collected by paid canvassers because the sponsor failed to file the paid canvasser training certification,” the court said in a 4-3 ruling.

Following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2022 decision removing the nationwide right to abortion, there has been a push to have voters decide the matter state by state.

Arkansas currently bans abortion at any time during a pregnancy, unless the woman’s life is endangered due to a medical emergency.

The proposed amendment would have prohibited laws banning abortion in the first 20 weeks of gestation and allowed the procedure later on in cases of rape, incest, threats to the woman’s health or life, or if the fetus would be unlikely to survive birth. It would not have created a constitutional right to abortion.

The ballot proposal lacked support from national abortion rights groups such as Planned Parenthood because it would still have allowed abortion to be banned after 20 weeks, which is earlier than other states where it remains legal.

Had they all been verified, the more than 101,000 signatures, submitted on the state’s July 5 deadline, would have been enough to qualify for the ballot. The threshold was 90,704 signatures from registered voters, and from a minimum of 50 counties.

In a earlier filing with the court, election officials said that 87,675 of the signatures submitted were collected by volunteers with the campaign. Election officials said it could not determine whether 912 of the signatures came from volunteer or paid canvassers.

Arkansans for Limited Government and election officials disagreed over whether the petitions complied with a 2013 state law requiring campaigns to submit statements identifying each paid canvasser by name and confirming that rules for gathering signatures were explained to them.

Supporters of the measure said they followed the law with their documentation, including affidavits identifying each paid gatherer. They have also argued the abortion petitions are being handled differently than other initiative campaigns this year, pointing to similar filings by two other groups.

State records show that the abortion campaign did submit, on June 27, a signed affidavit including a list of paid canvassers and a statement saying the petition rules had been explained to them. Moreover, the July 5 submission included affidavits from each paid worker acknowledging that the group provided them with all the rules and regulations required by law.

The state argued in court that this documentation did not comply because it was not signed by someone with the canvassing company rather than the initiative campaign itself. The state said the statement also needed to be submitted alongside the petitions.

The U.S. Supreme Court granted a stay of execution for a Texas man 20 minutes before he was to receive a lethal injection Tuesday evening. The inmate has long maintained DNA testing would help prove he wasn’t responsible for the fatal stabbing of an 85-year-old woman during a home robbery decades ago.

The nation’s high court issued the indefinite stay shortly before inmate Ruben Gutierrez was to have been taken to the death chamber of a Huntsville prison.

Gutierrez was condemned for the 1998 killing of Escolastica Harrison at her home in Brownsville in Texas’ southern tip. Prosecutors said the killing of the mobile home park manager and retired teacher was part of an attempt to steal more than $600,000 she had hidden in her home because of her mistrust of banks.

Gutierrez has sought DNA testing that he claims would help prove he had no role in her death. His attorneys have said there’s no physical or forensic evidence connecting him to the killing. Two others also were charged in the case.

The high court’s brief order, released about 5:40 p.m. CDT, said its stay of execution would remain in effect until the justices decide whether they should review his appeal request. If the court denies the request, the execution reprieve would automatically be lifted.

Gutierrez, who had been set to die after 6 p.m. CDT, was in a holding cell near the death chamber when prison warden Kelly Strong advised him of the court’s intervention.

“He was visibly emotional,” prison spokeswoman Amanda Hernandez said, adding he was not expecting the court stay. “We asked him if he wanted to make a statement but he needed a minute.”

“He turned around to the back of the cell, covered his mouth. He was tearing up, speechless. He was shocked.”

She said Gutierrez then prayed with a prison chaplain and added: “God is great!”

Gutierrez has had several previous execution dates in recent years that have been delayed, including over issues related to having a spiritual adviser in the death chamber. In June 2020, Gutierrez was about an hour away from execution when he got a stay from the Supreme Court.

In the most recent appeal, Gutierrez’s attorneys had asked the Supreme Court to intervene, arguing Texas has denied his right under state law to post-conviction DNA testing that would show he would not have been eligible for the death penalty.

A former Boston lawyer and prosecutor who was once named one of People magazine’s most eligible bachelors was sentenced Monday to between five and 10 years in state prison for rape.

Gary Zerola, 52, was found guilty last month after a jury deliberated for five hours and has been incarcerated since then. He was acquitted of a greater charge of aggravated rape and burglary.

Prosecutors said that Zerola, in January 2021, paid more than $2,000 for a night of drinking with a woman he was dating and her 21-year-old friend who’d just graduated from college. The friend became intoxicated and had to be helped back to her Beacon Hill apartment. Zerola later entered the apartment without permission and sexually assaulted the woman around 2 a.m. while she was sleeping, prosecutors said.

In a victim impact statement that was read in court, the woman said she’d tried desperately to not allow the incident to affect her, or to give Zerola any power over the rest of her life. But she said that participating in the trial had brought up “the significant and insidious effect this event has had on my life.”

“For months after the incident, I experienced nightly recurring nightmares reliving the assault. Even today, I still have nightmares of someone breaking into my apartment and trying to assault me,” the woman wrote. The Associated Press does not generally name victims of sexual assault.

“These cases are always difficult, and this victim deserves enormous credit for taking the stand and telling the jury what happened to her that night,” Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden said in a statement after the verdict.

Zerola’s attorney Joseph Krowski Jr. said Monday that his client is appealing the conviction. He said the sentence wasn’t what they wanted, but was within or close to the recommended guideline range for somebody without a previous criminal record. He pointed out that Zerola had been acquitted on two of the three original charges.

Krowski Jr. said his client was doing “as well as could be expected under the circumstances” and was going to put his time to good use and come out of the experience for the better.

Zerola had previously been accused of other sexual assaults but wasn’t convicted in those cases. He had faced two rape charges in Suffolk County and was acquitted in 2023, according to the district’s attorney’s office. He also was charged in three sexual assault cases between 2006 and 2007, but was not convicted.

Zerola worked as an assistant district attorney in Essex County for one year, and in Suffolk County for two months in 2000, according to former District Attorney Rachael Rollins’ office. He was arrested in January 2021.

Israel’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled unanimously that the military must begin drafting ultra-Orthodox men for compulsory service, a landmark decision that could lead to the collapse of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s governing coalition as Israel continues to wage war in Gaza.

The historic ruling effectively puts an end to a decades-old system that granted ultra-Orthodox men broad exemptions from military service while maintaining mandatory enlistment for the country’s secular Jewish majority. The arrangement, deemed discriminatory by critics, has created a deep chasm in Israel’s Jewish majority over who should shoulder the burden of protecting the country.

The court struck down a law that codified exemptions in 2017, but repeated court extensions and government delaying tactics over a replacement dragged out a resolution for years. The court ruled that in the absence of a law, Israel’s compulsory military service applies to the ultra-Orthodox like any other citizen.

Under longstanding arrangements, ultra-Orthodox men have been exempt from the draft, which is compulsory for most Jewish men and women, who serve three and two years respectively as well as reserve duty until around age 40.

These exemptions have long been a source of anger among the secular public, a divide that has widened during the eight-month-old war, as the military has called up tens of thousands of soldiers and says it needs all the manpower it can get. Over 600 soldiers have been killed since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

Politically powerful ultra-Orthodox parties, key partners in Netanyahu’s governing coalition, oppose any change to the current system. If the exemptions are ended, they could bolt the coalition, causing the government to collapse and likely leading to new elections at a time when its popularity has dropped.

In the current environment, Netanyahu could have a hard time delaying the matter any further or passing laws to restore the exemptions. During arguments, government lawyers told the court that forcing ultra-Orthodox men to enlist would “tear Israeli society apart.”

A statement from Netanyahu’s Likud party criticized the ruling, saying a bill in parliament backed by the Israeli leader would address the draft issue. Critics say it falls short of Israel’s wartime needs.

“The real solution to the draft problem is not a Supreme Court ruling,” the statement said.

In its ruling, the court found that the state was carrying out “invalid selective enforcement, which represents a serious violation of the rule of law, and the principle according to which all individuals are equal before the law.”

It did not say how many ultra-Orthodox should be drafted, but the military has said it is capable of enlisting 3,000 this year.

Some 66,000 ultra-Orthodox men are now eligible for enlistment, according to Shuki Friedman, an expert on religion and state affairs and the vice-president of the Jewish People Policy Institute, a Jerusalem think tank.

The ruling of Israel’s highest court must be followed, and the military is expected to begin doing so once it forms a plan for how to draft thousands of members of a population that’s deeply opposed to service, and which follows a cloistered and modest lifestyle the military may not be immediately prepared to accommodate. The army had no immediate comment.