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The United States' greatest challenge yet to the vast power of today's tech giants has reached its climax.On Thursday and Friday, lawyers from the Justice Department, state attorneys general and Google will present their closing arguments in a years-long case: US et al. against Google – over whether the tech giant broke federal antitrust laws to maintain its dominance in online search.The government alleges that Google competed unfairly when it paid billions of dollars to Apple and other companies to automatically handle searches on smartphones and web browsers. Google insists that consumers use its search engine because it is the best product.In the coming weeks or months, the judge who oversaw the trial in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Amit P. Mehta, wil...

Near the end of a whirlwind trip to the Middle East this week, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken finished meetings with the Israeli president and relatives of American hostages held by Hamas, left his beach hotel in Tel Aviv and shook hands with protesters gathered outside.He looked them in the eye and said there was a new ceasefire agreement on the table for the hostages that Hamas would have to take.“Bringing your loved ones home is at the heart of everything we are trying to do, and we will not rest until everyone – men, women, soldiers, civilians, young, old – has come home,” he said.That public display of empathy toward frustrated protesters is something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has avoided since the war began in October. And, of late, he has focused his recent public com...

A California company is recalling organic walnuts sold at health food stores and co-op retailers in 19 states because of an E. coli outbreak that has sickened 12 people and hospitalized seven, federal officials said.Gibson Farms, the Hollister, California-based company, is voluntarily recalling its shelled walnuts branded as Organic Light Halves and Pieces after discovering that the walnuts may contain the E. coli 0157:H7 strain that "causes an illness diarrhea often with bloody stools". " the Food and Drug Administration said in an advisory Tuesday.The recall came after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notified the company of 12 recorded illnesses linked to walnuts. They were distributed in more than 300 food retailers, including Whole Foods Market, New Seasons Market and ...

Olga Fikotova Connolly, who won a gold medal in athletics for Czechoslovakia at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, watched Harold Connolly of the United States win one the next day and, in March 1957, married him as the highlight of a Cold War storybook. she romance, she died on April 12 in Costa Mesa, California. She was 91 years old.The cause was breast cancer, said her daughter Merja Connolly-Freund. She died at her son Jim's home, where she had been cared for in a hospice, Ms. Connolly-Freund said.European Athletics' governing body said Olga Connolly was the last living women's gold medalist from the Melbourne Games.Her competitive record as a discus thrower was outstanding: five Olympic Games (four representing the United States as an American citizen), five American champion...

Elon Musk has gutted the part of Tesla responsible for building electric vehicle charging stations, sowing uncertainty about the future of the largest and most reliable charging network in the United States.The layoffs of about 500 Tesla employees, which many of them posted on social media Tuesday, have raised questions about deals that Musk, Tesla's chief executive, made last year with leaders of General Motors, Ford Motor and other companies automakers allowing cars made by other companies to use Tesla Supercharger stations.Tesla's deals with other electric car makers assured buyers they would be able to find fast chargers on road trips, addressing one of the main reasons many people are reluctant to buy such cars. It was also seen as a coup for Musk, who validated Tesla's t...

Thousands of miles from the campus protests that have divided Americans, some displaced Palestinians are expressing solidarity with anti-war protesters and gratitude for their efforts.Messages of support were written on some tents in the southern city of Rafah, where about a million displaced people have sought refuge from Israeli shelling and ground fighting that Gaza health officials say has killed more than 34,000 people."Thank you, American universities," read a message captured on video by the Reuters news agency. “Thank you, students in solidarity with Gaza, your message has arrived,” read another neighbor.Tension has risen on campuses across the United States, with police in riot gear arresting dozens of people at Columbia University on Tuesday night and officers across the country...

In a tense Senate hearing on Wednesday, lawmakers sharply criticized UnitedHealth Group's handling of the cyberattack that crippled the U.S. healthcare system, citing the failure of its security systems and the potential disclosure of sensitive medical information of millions of Americans.Democratic and Republican senators have questioned whether the cyberattack of Change Healthcare, which handles a third of all U.S. health records and about 15 billion transactions a year, was so large-scale because UnitedHealth is too deeply entrenched in almost every aspect of the nation's medical care. UnitedHealth Group is not only the parent company of Change, but also the parent company of the country's largest health insurer and a large pharmacy benefits manager (Optum). United also su...

Ben Houchen, the regional mayor of the north of England, faces a tight race for re-election, thanks in part to wider problems in Britain's Conservative Party.

A pair of Meta's glasses takes a photo when you say, "Hey, Meta, take a photo." A miniature computer that clips onto your shirt, the Ai Pin, translates foreign languages ​​into your native tongue. An artificially intelligent screen features a virtual assistant that you speak to via a microphone.Last year, OpenAI updated its ChatGPT chatbot to respond with spoken words, and recently, Google introduced Gemini, a replacement for its voice assistant on Android phones.Tech companies are betting on a renaissance of voice assistants, many years after most people decided that talking to computers wasn't cool.Will it work this time? Maybe, but it might take a while.Large swaths of people still have never used voice assistants like Amazon's Alexa, Apple's Siri, and Google's As...

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vowed again on Tuesday to launch an invasion into the southern Gaza Strip, even as a renewed push for a ceasefire deal showed glimmers of a potential breakthrough.After seven months of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza, the United States, Qatar and several other countries hope to broker a ceasefire, and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is visiting the Middle East to push for a agreement.But with Hamas arguing that any deal should include an end to the war, and with right-wing politicians in Israel threatening to leave the ruling coalition if the long-planned incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah is delayed , Netanyahu said Israel reserved the right to continue fighting.“The idea of ​​stopping the war before achieving all its objecti...