European Union regulators have hit Google with a 1.49 billion euro ($1.68 billion) fine for abusing its dominant role in online advertising.

It’s the third time the commission has slapped Google with an antitrust penalty, following multibillion-dollar fines resulting from separate probes into two other parts of the Silicon Valley giant’s business.

The EU’s competition commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, announced the results of the long-running probe of Google’s AdSense advertising business at a news conference in Brussels on Wednesday.

“Today’s decision is about how Google abused its dominance to stop websites using brokers other than the AdSense platform,” Vestager said.

The commission found that Google and its parent company, Alphabet, breached EU antitrust rules by imposing restrictive clauses in contracts with websites that used AdSense, preventing Google rivals from placing their ads on these sites.

Google “prevented its rivals from having a chance to innovate and to compete in the market on their merits,” Vestager said. “Advertisers and website owners, they had less choice and likely faced higher prices that would be passed on to consumers.”

AdSense is an older Google product that lets web publishers such as bloggers place text ads on their websites, with the content of the ads based on results from search functions on their sites. Microsoft filed an EU antitrust complaint about the service in 2009 and the EU Commission formally launched its probe in 2016, although it said at the time that Google had already made some changes to allow affected customers more freedom to show competing ads.

Last year, Vestager hit the company with a record 4.34 billion euro ($5 billion) fine following an investigation into its Android operating system. In 2017, she slapped Google with a 2.42 billion euro fine in a case involving its online shopping search results.

 
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U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is in the Middle East for regional security talks as Washington looks to draw new support in its opposition to Iranian aggression.

Pompeo began is trip in Kuwait late Tuesday and headed to Israel Wednesday.  His trip will also take him to Lebanon.

In Israel, Pompeo is due to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose government is headed to a tough April 9 re-election contest as Netanyahu is embroiled in a corruption investigation and facing allegations of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. 

Pompeo, in comments to reporters en route to the Middle East, dismissed the suggestion that his meeting with Netanyahu could be seen as the U.S. intruding in the Israeli election in support of Netanyahu.

A senior State Department official said last week that Pompeo would not be meeting with Netanyahu’s opponents, but Netanyahu alone as the current head of the Israeli government.

Netanyahu is visiting Washington next week for the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful Jewish lobbying group in the United States, and also could meet with President Donald Trump.

Pompeo said the recent U.S. shift away from terminology describing the West Bank and Syria’s Golan Heights as “Israeli-occupied” to that of “controlled” by the Jewish state was not accidental.

He said that the characterization in a recent State Department report on human rights around the world about Israeli control of the disputed territories “was a factual statement about how we observe the situation.  And we think it’s very accurate, and we stand behind it.”

Pompeo said that on his third stop, in Beirut, “we’ll spend a lot of time talking with the Lebanese government about how we can help them disconnect from the threat that Iran and Hezbollah present to them.”

The United States considers Hezbollah, a militant Islamist political group, as a pro-Iranian “terrorist” organization, even though it is represented in the coalition government of Prime Minister Saad Hariri, a U.S. ally.

 
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Frustrated in the Trump era, several Democratic presidential hopefuls are proposing dramatic reforms that would shake up US institutions and their centuries-old traditions, including abolishing the Electoral College and adding justices to the Supreme Court.

The changes are not typically debated in the country’s presidential campaigns, and remain largely out of reach for the moment, given the paralysis in a divided Congress and certain opposition by Republicans.

But they represent some of the new ideological litmus tests being proposed by a left-leaning party still smarting from Donald Trump’s 2016 victory and desperate to oust him in 2020.

On Monday, US Senator and presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren offered concrete support for scrapping the election system that has endured fierce demonization by Democrats because it allowed two Republicans to recently win the presidency despite losing the popular vote: Trump in 2016 and George W. Bush in 2000.

“My view is that every vote matters,” Warren told a townhall meeting in Mississippi, arguing that the southern state along with several populous ones like California rarely receive presidential candidates because they aren’t considered battlegrounds.

“I think everybody ought to have to come and ask for your vote,” she said.

“We can have national voting, and that means get rid of the Electoral College.”

Other Democrats have warmed to the idea, including potential presidential contender Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana who said ending the system would encourage greater voter participation at the national level.

Another proxy debate for Democrats as they weigh who will be their standardbearer: whether to expand the Supreme Court beyond its current nine members.

Warren and two other candidates, Senators Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand, told Politico they want to address the issue.

Two 2020 hopefuls, Buttigieg and former congressman Beto O’Rourke, have floated the idea of expanding to 15 justices: five nominated by Democrats, five by Republicans and the remaining five picked by the other 10.

Trump rejected the suggestions Tuesday, saying Democrats were seeking to return the court to a liberal lean after it shifted to the right with the president placing conservative nominees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh on the bench.

“It’ll never happen. I guarantee it won’t happen for six years,” Trump said, referring to his remaining time in office should he win re-election.

Democrats are potentially seeking retribution for what they see as grievous political injustices.

Several Democratic lawmakers say Republican leaders’ refusal to consider Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, is tantamount to stealing a Supreme Court seat, and liberal activists have pushed for rebalance through expansion of the court.

Constitutional scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, a professor at University of California, Berkeley Law School, says it’s “premature” for Democrats to talk about packing the court.

“There are difficult issues and it only matters if the Democrats win the presidency and both houses of Congress,” Chemerinsky told AFP.

Ignoring ‘rural’ America?

Achieving another Democratic goal, abolishing the Electoral College, would also be difficult.

It would require lawmakers to pass a constitutional amendment — no easy feat in a paralyzed Congress — and then ratification by 38 out of the 50 states.

The current system consists of 538 electors — the total number of members of the US Senate and House of Representatives, plus three electors for the capital Washington — who vote in favor of the candidate who gets the most votes in a state.

Securing 270 electoral votes wins the presidency.

In nearly all states, it’s a winner-take-all proposition, even if the winner does not secure a majority, such as when third-party candidates are on the ballot.

Trump, for example, won swing state Pennsylvania with just 48.2 percent of the vote, but earned all 20 of its electoral votes.

Only Maine and Nebraska allot electoral votes according to who wins the states’ congressional districts. The system is a step closer to elections decided by a nationwide popular vote.

Another option is gaining momentum. A handful of Democrat-leaning states including California, Illinois and New York have joined a compact aiming to elect presidents based on who wins the popular vote.

On Friday, Colorado became the first swing state to join the group.

Critics argue that the Electoral College minimizes the role of millions of voters in several populous states because the results there are rarely in doubt.

The system is lauded by Republicans because it forces candidates to earn votes from various parts of country, not just the big cities.

“The desire to abolish the Electoral College is driven by the idea Democrats want rural America to go away politically,” tweeted Republican Senator Lindsey Graham.
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Some high school students are taking a new approach to college admissions by applying to dozens of schools at a time to shop among offers.

Kayla Willis of Westlake High School in Atlanta was accepted to 31 out of the 44 colleges and universities she applied to, receiving more than $1 million in scholarship offers.

After some prompting by her father, Willis tweeted her school portrait with a display of logos of the schools that offered her admission. The tweet was “liked” more than 150,000 times.

Jordan Nixon of Douglasville, Georgia was accepted to 39 schools and raked in $1.6 million in scholarship offers. Although she hasn’t selected a school, Nixon said she knows she wants to study international business, according to local news reports.

Michael Love of Detroit was accepted to 41 schools. Dylan Chidick, whose family has been in and out of homelessness since moving to New Jersey from Trinidad, now has to pick from among the 17 colleges that offered him a spot.

These students and others are still outliers in the practice of applying to numerous colleges, but they may be part of a growing trend.

In 2016, 35 percent of first-time candidates applied to seven or more schools, compared with just 17 percent who applied in 2005 to that many institutions, according to the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC).

Money a big factor

One reason for the increasing number of applications is the cost of education, and the need to shop for the best financial offer.

“This is tied to the growing cost of college, the need to shop for financial aid awards and merit scholarships, larger economic uncertainties,” said Nicholas Soodik, associate director of the college office at Pingree School in South Hamilton, Massachusetts. “There are real reasons why kids are applying to more schools. It’s not just the hunt for the most prestigious college.”

Soodik noted that his high school seniors at Pingree applied to an average of six colleges and universities this year.

Debbie Prochnow, the college career information coordinator at Blake High School in Maryland, also said members of her class of 2019 applied on average to about six schools each.

“We recommend that kids apply to six to eight and apply to a variety of schools based on selectivity, and include public colleges in Maryland for financial safeties,” Prochnow said, adding that the number is “about the same” as last year’s.

Prochnow said that although a few of her students applied to 15 colleges, “That is not the norm.”

Soodik noted that, at least at his private school, the growth in the average number of applications fell mostly in the early action and early decision programs. Those are applications submitted to colleges in the fall for students who want a reply in December or January, rather than the typical April acceptances or rejections.

Kayla Willis says she will attend Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, after receiving a full scholarship.

College admissions advisers and students note that application fees to college are not cheap. While the average is $50 per submission, fees can go up to $200, according to U.S. News and World Report.

Willis noted she was diligent in applying for application fee waivers, something that many high school students may not know is available.

“I did not spend a dime on anything! My application fees were waived, no transcript or SAT fees!” she tweeted.

 
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Special counsel Robert Mueller began investigating President Donald Trump’s former lawyer,

n, for fraud in his personal business dealings and for potentially acting as an unregistered foreign agent at least nine months before FBI agents in New York raided his home and office, according to documents released Tuesday.

The series of heavily redacted search warrant applications and other documents revealed new details about the timing and depth of the probe into Cohen, who ultimately pleaded guilty to tax fraud, bank fraud, campaign finance violations and lying to Congress.

The records show the inquiry into Cohen had been going on since July 2017 — far longer than previously known— and that a big part of its focus was Cohen’s taxi businesses and misrepresentations he made to banks as part of a scheme to relieve himself of some $22 million in debt he owed on taxi medallion loans.

Prosecutors were also interested in money that was flowing into Cohen’s bank accounts from consulting contracts he’d signed after Trump won office. Some of those payments were from companies with strong foreign ties, including a Korean aerospace company and Columbus Nova, an investment management firm affiliated with Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg.

Cohen was ultimately not charged with failing to register as a foreign agent.

Many sections of the records dealing with the campaign-finance violations Cohen committed when he paid two women to stay silent about alleged affairs they had with Trump were redacted. A judge ordered those sections to remain secret after prosecutors said they were still investigating campaign finance violations.

Lanny Davis, an attorney for Cohen, said the release of the search warrant “furthers his interest in continuing to cooperate and providing information and the truth about Donald Trump and the Trump organization to law enforcement and Congress.”

The FBI raided Cohen’s Manhattan home and office last April, marking the first public sign of a criminal investigation that has threatened Trump’s presidency and netted Cohen a three-year prison sentence he’s scheduled to start serving in May. The agents who also scoured Cohen’s hotel room and safe deposit box, seized more than 4 million electronic and paper files in the searches, more than a dozen mobile devices and iPads, 20 external hard drives, flash drives and laptops.

Both Cohen and Trump cried foul over the raids, with Cohen’s attorney at the time calling them “completely inappropriate and unnecessary” and the president taking to Twitter to declare that “Attorney-client privilege is dead!”

A court-ordered review ultimately found only a fraction of the seized material to be privileged.

Tuesday’s release of the search warrant came nearly six weeks after U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III partially granted a request by several media organizations, including The Associated Press, that the search warrant be made public due to the high public interest in the case.

David E. McCraw, vice president and deputy general counsel for The New York Times, said he was hopeful Pauley would approve the release of additional materials in May after the government updates the judge on its investigation.

“The documents are important because they allow the public to see first hand why the investigation was initiated and how it was conducted,” McCraw said in an email.

The judge acknowledged prosecutors’ concerns that a wholesale release of the document “would jeopardize an ongoing investigation and prejudice the privacy rights of uncharged third parties,” a ruling that revealed prosecutors are still investigating the campaign-finance violations.

The judge ordered prosecutors to redact Cohen’s personal information and details in the warrant that refer to ongoing investigations and several third-parties who have cooperated with the inquiry. But he authorized the release of details in the warrant that relate to Cohen’s tax evasion and false statements to financial institutions charges, along with Cohen’s conduct that did not result in criminal charges.

“At this stage, wholesale disclosure of the materials would reveal the scope and direction of the Government’s ongoing investigation,” Pauley wrote in a ruling last month.

Cohen pleaded guilty over the summer to failing to report more than $4 million in income to the IRS, making false statements to financial institutions and campaign-finance violations stemming from the hush-money payments he arranged for porn actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. Cohen implicated Trump in his guilty plea, saying the president directed him to make the payments during his 2016 campaign.
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