Google agreed on Monday to pay a A$55 million ($35.8 million) fine in Australia after the consumer watchdog found it had hurt competition by paying the country’s two largest telcos to pre-install its search application on Android phones, excluding rival search engines.

Reuters report that the fine extends a bumpy period for the Alphabet-owned internet giant in Australia, where last week a court mostly ruled against it in a lawsuit brought by Fortnite maker Epic Games accusing Google and Apple of preventing rival application stores in their operating systems.

Google’s YouTube was also last month added to an Australian ban on social media platforms admitting users aged under 16, reversing an earlier decision to exempt the video-sharing site.

On anti-competitive tie-ups with Australian telcos, the country’s consumer watchdog on Monday said Google struck deals with Telstra and Optus, under which the tech giant shared with them advertising revenue generated from Google Search on Android devices between late 2019 and early 2021.

•Rodrigo Paz Pereira is the frontrunner in Bolivia’s first-round presidential election which took place on Sunday.© Freddy Barragán/AP

Bolivia is set to elect a non-left wing president after nearly two decades of near-continuous rule by the incumbent socialist party, according to official preliminary results.

Senator Rodrigo Paz Pereira and former president Jorge Quiroga came in first and second place respectively in Sunday’s presidential elections.

Neither received a high enough share of the vote to secure an outright win, so the vote will go to a run-off between these two candidates, due in October.

Paz Pereira, of the Christian Democratic Party, was a surprise vote leader, after opinion polls had suggested Samuel Doria Medina, a businessman, was the frontrunner.

The electoral authorities said it can take up to three days to finalise the results.

•Myanmar junta’s leader Min Aung Hlaing.

Myanmar will begin its general elections on 28 December, its military government announced on Monday.

BBC news report that this will be the first vote since the junta’s leader Min Aung Hlaing, seized power in a bloody coup in 2021, and imprisoned democratically elected leader Aung San Sung Kyi.

Myanmar has been embroiled in a civil war since, with deadly battles between the military and ethnic armed groups, many of whom have said they would not permit voting in their areas.

Previous plans to hold an election were repeatedly delayed as the military has struggled to contain an opposition insurgency which has gained control over much of the country.

Some 55 parties have registered for the polls, state media said Monday, adding that nine of them plan to compete for seats nationwide.

The first phase of the multi-party democratic general election for each parliament will begin on Sunday, 28 December 2025,” Myanmar’s election commission said in a statement.

Dates for the subsequent phases will be announced later.