Venezuela's President Nicolás Maduro said he asked the country's Supreme Court to conduct an audit of the presidential election, after opposition leaders disputed his claim of victory and amid international calls to release detailed vote counts.

Maduro told reporters Wednesday that the ruling party is also ready to show the totality of the tally sheets from Sunday's election.

"I throw myself before justice," he said to reporters outside the Supreme Court's headquarters in Caracas, adding that he is "willing to be summoned, questioned, investigated."

This is Maduro's first concession to demands for more transparency about the election. However, the Supreme Court is closely aligned with his government; federal officials propose the court's justices and they are ratified by the National Assembly, which is dominated by Maduro sympathizers.

Maduro's main challenger, Edmundo González, and opposition leader Maria Corina Machado, say they obtained more than two-thirds of the tally sheets that each electronic voting machine printed after polls closed. They said the release of the data on those tallies would prove Maduro lost the election.

Maduro insisted to reporters that there had been a plot against his government and that the electoral system was hacked, but he didn't give any specifics or present any evidence. He is expected to address national and foreign media Wednesday afternoon, his first official news conference since the election.

Pressure has been building against the president. The National Electoral Council, which is loyal to his United Socialist Party of Venezuela, has yet to release any printed results from polling centers as it did in past elections.

Attorney General Tarek William Saab on Tuesday told reporters that more than 700 protesters were arrested in nationwide demonstrations Monday and that one officer was killed.

The Venezuela-based human rights organization Foro Penal also on Tuesday reported that 11 people, including two minors, had been killed in unrest related to the election.

The Organization of American States was set to gather Wednesday to discuss Venezuela's election.

Maduro's closest ruling party allies quickly came to his defense. National Assembly President Jorge Rodriguez — his chief negotiator in dialogues with the U.S. and the opposition — insisted Maduro was the indisputable winner and called his opponents violent fascists.

Praising the arrests of the protesters, he said Machado should be jailed and so should González, "because he is the leader of the fascist conspiracy that is trying to impose itself in Venezuela."

In a Spanish-language post on X, the EU's Borrell urged Venezuelan authorities to "end detentions, repression and violent rhetoric against members of the opposition," calling threats against González and Machado "unacceptable."

Meanwhile, Machado and González urged their supporters to remain calm and avoid violence.

"I ask Venezuelans to continue in peace, demanding that the result be respected and the tally sheets be published," González said on X. "This victory, which belongs to all of us, will unite us and reconcile us as a nation."

New York’s highest court heard arguments Tuesday in a Republican challenge of a law that allows any registered voter to cast a mail-in ballot during the early voting period.

The case, which is led by Rep. Elise Stefanik and includes other lawmakers and the Republican National Committee, is part of a widespread GOP effort to tighten voting rules after the 2020 election.

Democrats approved the mail voting expansion law last year. The Republican challenge argues that it violates voting provisions in the state Constitution.

The hourlong arguments before the New York Court of Appeals in Albany hinged on technical readings of the Constitution, specifically whether certain passages would allow for the state Legislature to expand mail voting access.

At certain points in the hearing, judges quizzed attorneys on whether a constitutional provision that says eligible voters are entitled to vote “at every election” would mean a physical polling place or simply the election in general.

Michael Y. Hawrylchak, an attorney representing the Republicans, said that provision “presupposes a physical place” for in-person voting. Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey W. Lang, who is representing the state, said the phrase “just refers to a process of selecting an office holder” and not any physical polling place.

Democrats first tried to expand mail voting through a constitutional amendment in 2021, but voters rejected the proposal after a campaign from conservatives who said it would lead to voter fraud.

Lower courts have dismissed the Republican lawsuit in decisions that said the Legislature has the constitutional authority to make rules on voting and the Constitution doesn’t require voting specifically to occur in person on election day.

It is unclear when the Court of Appeals will rule.

Montana’s Supreme Court on Tuesday said it would allow the signatures of inactive voters to count on petitions seeking to qualify constitutional initiatives for the November ballot, including one to protect abortion rights.

District Court Judge Mike Menahan ruled last Tuesday that Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen’s office wrongly changed election rules to reject inactive voter signatures from three ballot initiatives after the signatures had been turned in to counties and after some of the signatures had been verified. The change to longstanding practices included reprogramming the state’s election software.

Jacobsen’s office last Thursday asked the Montana Supreme Court for an emergency order to block Menahan’s ruling that gave counties until this Wednesday to verify the signatures of inactive voters that had been rejected. Lawyers for organizations supporting the ballot initiatives and the Secretary of State’s Office agreed to the terms of the temporary restraining order blocking the secretary’s changes.

Justices said Jacobsen’s office failed to meet the requirement for an emergency order, saying she had not persuaded them that Menahan was proceeding under a mistake of law.

“We further disagree with Jacobsen that the TRO is causing a gross injustice, as Jacobsen’s actions in reprogramming the petition-processing software after county election administrators had commenced processing petitions created the circumstances that gave rise to this litigation,” justices wrote.

A hearing on an injunction to block the changes is set for Friday before Menahan.

The groups that sued — Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights and Montanans for Election Reform — alleged the state for decades had accepted signatures of inactive voters, defined as people who filed universal change-of-address forms and then failed to respond to county attempts to confirm their address. They can restore their active voter status by providing their address, showing up at the polls or requesting an absentee ballot.

Backers of the initiative to protect the right to abortion access in the state constitution said more than enough signatures had been verified by Friday’s deadline for it to be included on the ballot. Backers of initiatives to create nonpartisan primaries and another to require a candidate to win a majority of the vote to win a general election have said they also expect to have enough signatures.

A court in the United Arab Emirates sentenced dozens of Bangladeshi nationals to prison, including three for life imprisonment, over protests against their home government in the Gulf country, state media reported Monday.

The Abu Dhabi Federal Court of Appeal on Sunday handed 10-year prison sentences to 53 Bangladeshi nationals and an 11-year term to another Bangladeshi national, in addition to the three life imprisonments, according to the state-owned Emirates News Agency, WAM. The court ordered the deportation of the Bangladeshis from the UAE following their prison terms.

“The court heard a witness who confirmed that the defendants gathered and organised large-scale marches in several streets of the UAE in protest against decisions made by the Bangladeshi government,” WAM reported.

On Saturday, authorities in the United Arab Emirates ordered an investigation and an expedited trial of the arrested Bangladeshi nationals. The protests in the UAE followed weeks of demonstrations in Bangladesh by people upset about a quota system that reserved up to 30% of government jobs for relatives of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971. The country’s top court on Sunday scaled back the controversial system, in a partial victory for the mostly student protesters.

The UAE’s attorney general’s office on Saturday indicted the Bangladeshis on several charges, including “gathering in a public place and protesting against their home government with the intent to incite unrest,” obstructing law enforcement, causing harm to others and damaging property, according to WAM.

Bangladeshi nationals make up the UAE’s third-largest expatriate community. Many of them are low-paid laborers seeking to send money back home to their families. The Emirates’ overall population of more than 9.2 million is only 10% Emirati.

Political parties and labor unions are banned in the UAE, a federation of seven sheikhdoms. Broad laws severely restrict freedom of speech and almost all major local media are either state-owned or state-affiliated outlets.

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.