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narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. announcer: and now, "bbc news". >> i am helena humphn washington and this is bbc world news america. the republican-controlled house of representatives opens a formal impeachment inquiry into president biden. thousands are dead and thousands more are missing as libya deals with the aftermath of a relentless storm surge. and opening arguments take place between the u.s. government and one of the world's largest tech companies. ♪

welcome to world news america. we start in washington, where the u.s. house of representatives has announced it will open impeachment inquiry into u.s. president biden. speaker of the house kevin mccarthy says the inquiry will focus on, quote, allegations of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption. this comes after months of investigations into the president which have found no evidence of misconduct. the heart of this inquiry is president biden's son hunter. many republicans have questioned hunter biden's business dealings and he is currently under federal investigation for possible tax crimes. those leading this impeachment inquiry question president biden 's knowledge of his son's potential crimes. speaker kevin mccarthy said these allegations facing the biden family, quote, paint a pi cture of corruption. >> that is why today i am directing our house committee to

open a formal impeachment inquiry into president joe biden. this logical next step will get our committees the full power to gather all the facts and answers for the american public. that is exactly what we want to know. the answers. i believe the president would want to answer these questions and allegations as well. i would encourage the president and his team to fully cooperate with this investigation in the interest of transparency. we're committed to getting the answers for the american public. nothing more, nothing less. we will go wherever the evidence takes us. helena: the white house has called inquiry, quote, extreme politics at its worst. a white house spokesperson saying, house republicans have been investigating the president for nine months and have turned up no evidence of wrongdoing. his own gop members have said so. kherson --

he's now flip-flopped because he doesn't have support. iwth me -- with me now is our correspondent. first, how did all this come about? anthony: kevin mccarthy said in his brief speech this morning there was serious incredible evidence of presidential misdeeds any talked about joe biden being less than forthcoming of the knowledge he had with his son hunter's dealings. some of the foreign money that had been directed towards hunter biden, some was flagged by the treasury department as suspicious. in his view that was enough that now is the time to start these proceedings in order to give these committees that are doing the investigation more power to issue subpoenas and get documents to compel testimony. courts look at this and think, is there an impeachment investigation? is there is, it will give the

investigation more legal leeway. helena: previously kevin mccarthy said he would not begin impeachment proceedings without a vote. he has not done that. so how is he able to progress? anthony: there is nothing spelled out about how impeachment proceedings should take place. the constitution says the president would be impeached by a house of representatives by a majority vote. but how to get there is more a tradition and past precedent is not spelled out in law. where kevin mccarthy is now is not about where he -- what he said today, but pressure from the right wing, like matt gaetz who has been threatening to try and remove him from the speakership if he did not come along and initiate impeachment investigations. helena: tell us more about the timing. as you point out, this is coming

amid pressure for kevin mccarthy. anthony: we are approaching a government shutdown at the end of the month. if a budget is not approved in order to give the government continued spending authority. the money is simply going to run out. there's a lot of conservative members of the house who want to tow a hard line on budget negotiations. they want to cut spending even further than kevin mccarthy agreed to during debt negotiations really over this year. they are threatening kevin mccarthy that they are going to shut the government down unless they get more of what they want. kevin mccarthy may have made the calculation that this is one way of giving them something, moving forward on impeachment. that will keep his right flank happier and they might be more willing to go along with budget negotiations. helena: but will it? it does not appear to have mollified some republicans on the right. tell us more about what we are seeing. anthony: matt gaetz, the congressman from florida who i

mentioned earlier, he called this a baby step in a speech he gave earlier today right after kevin mccarthy came out. said this was not going fast or far enough, and he once again threatened to prompt a vote. all it takes is one member of the house to prompt a vote to vacate the chair and force a new election for speaker of the house. this is something kevin mccarthy agreed to at the beginning of the year when he won that marathon campaign to be elected speaker of the house, is he would give individual members of the republican caucus power to pull him out if they were not satisfied. now we have gates and other members of the house freedom caucus, the right wing of the republican party, using that power to get this impeachment investigation off the ground, and possibly to get kevin mccarthy to be more submit that it -- more sympathetic to their budget cuts. helena: very briefly, is kevin mccarthy's speakership in jeopardy? anthony: it has been in jeopardy since day one. he has been hanging on since a

thread. talk about the narrowest of majority has, 10 vote difference between republicans and democrats. he has the narrowest of a majority to hold onto that. every step of the way will be a challenge for him. helena: our correspondent anthony putting it all into perspective for us. thank you so much. earlier, my colleague trina perry spoke to senator chris coombs, a close ally of president biden, on the announcement. >> if i can start with the breaking news that speaker mccarthy announced he is launching impeachment inquiry into president biden without holding a vote. what is your response to that? >> well, frankly, i wish that the house gop would focus on the business in front of us, which is avoiding a government shutdown just a few weeks from now. of all the coverage today of speaker mccarthy's announcement, my favorite was an article in a local newspaper called the hill that was titled, senate gop says house republicans lack evidence.

that is about the best summary i could provide. which is that, frankly, this is a fishing expedition. there is not enough evidence to launch a formal inquiry. that is why they will not be a vote on the house floor launching an inquiry. this is just putting a wrapper around the existing inquiries house republicans have been engaging in now without clear outcomes or products or evidence, for several years. >> you touched on it slightly, but what will this mean for relationships on the hill between the democratic members and the republican members? you do have to agree on that funding bill to keep the lights on in the government. >> i am a member of the appropriations committee in the senate, and the sharp contrast between the senate and the house is that in the senate we passed all of our appropriations bills out of our committee with broad bipartisan support. in the house, they have accomplished that for none of their bills. this week in the senate we are taking up three of our most

important bills and we will pass them out of the senate. the house will not do that for any of their bills. frankly, we should be doing the hard work, building bipartisan consensus, passing the spending bills that are essential to keeping our government open, rather than going on partisan fishing expeditions. >> do you think the move by speaker mccarthy will damage those relationships? >> yes. i think they will be harmful, not constructive. but frankly, i recognize that he has a very slim majority. in event after event, speaker mccarthy shows he is being held hostage by the most extreme elements of his republican majority. >> are you expecting a shutdown then? >> the odds of a government shutdown are going up with each passing day, when there is not a clear path forward to how to resolve that. the senate, both democrats and republicans, have a path forward, but the house does not. and when the speaker pulls

stunts like this, taking in offramp into a fishing expedition for partisan purposes, it increases the likelihood we once again embarrass the people of the u.s., that we failed to do our work on time, and we weaken our nation by showing partisanship prevails over productivity and bipartisanship. it is my hope we will avoid that, find a path forward, and we will not shut down the government on september 30. but given today's announcement i am more concerned than ever. >> if i can just ask you about another developing story, we see the north korean leader kim jong-un has arrived in russia for a meeting with vladimir putin. is that something the u.s. should be concerned about? >> yes. i think there are both positive and negative sides to the story. on a positive light i think vladimir putin is desperate, desperate for resupply and

reinforcement. he's meeting because north korea has massive stockpiles of ammunition, something russia badly needs to sustain their world war i-style barrage of artillery over ukraine. but every member of the security council, including russia, has, for years, sanction kim jong-un's regime in north korea over their nuclear ambitions and nuclear weapons program. i am deeply worried what the bargain will be here. what sort of high value technology, nuclear-related technology kim jong-un will extract from vladimir putin of the price of his becoming a new supplier to russia's war machine. helena: north korean leader kim jong-un arrived in russia on tuesday, traveling in an armored train for talks with russian president vladimir putin. footage released show mr. kim

meeting with kremlin officials. this is kim's eighth trip outside his country in 12 years. he also stepped between the demilitarized zone between north and south korea twice. during this visit he is expected to seek economic aid for north korea. u.s. officials warned the leader s were likely to discuss providing weapons for the war in ukraine, a move the u.s. and its allies have expressed deep concern over. in libya, devastating floods have left thousands dead and thousands more still missing. pictures coming out of the country shows scenes of devastation from the past few days. authorities say more than 2300 people are dead. the major floods were triggered by storm mcdaniel hit the north african nation sunday, and perhaps hit the hardest the port city of -- pekin see the aftermath here. floods caused two dams to

collapse which sent a tsunami-like surge of water into the city. now the focus shifts to disaster response efforts. and a foster has more on those efforts and how political conflict in libya is complicating things. reporter: a torrent of water washing away everything in its path. the devastation is clear to see. the death toll is harder to quantify. the red crescent and red cross say as many as 10,000 people are missing. but in a country without a single functioning government, getting accurate information is hard. since gaddafi was deposed as its leader in 2011, libya has been in turmoil. there were two riled will -- rival governments and fighting for control in the east and west. >> libya has been stuck in a political quagmire now for at least eight, nine years.

really, even though there has been no major outbreak of violence since 2020, sporadic violence has taken place. but there has been no settlement to that conflict. reporter: the lack of internationally recognized government sources makes it difficult to know which details to trust. all the videos you see here have been checked i bbc verify. now, the authorities need to get help to the people who filmed them. by the ongoing conflict makes access to libya difficult in any aid that arise will be far slower than its desperate survivors need. helena: with the recovery efforts underway in libya, just a couple thousand kilometers away, morocco is recovering from a natural disaster of its own after a powerful earthquake caused widespread devastation. moroccan state television reports 2900 people have died from the quake.

another 5500 were injured. the 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck the high atlas mountains late friday. and major focus is now aid. the moroccan government is now facing some criticism. they accepted help from spain, britain, the united arab emirates, and qatar. it is not however taken offers from italy, belgium, france, and germany. germany said it did not think the decision was political, while italy said morocco only received aid from companies with -- countries where they have close relations. court is in session for one of the biggest tech giants in the world, google. the u.s. government is claiming google is abusing its power as a monopoly to dominate the search engine industry. during oh coming -- prosecutors argued google has weaponized exclusive deals with companies like apple and samsung to stifle the competition. the defense says the popularity of google is because it is a

better product than other search engines, including microsoft's bing. the last time the u.s. government brought a major monopoly case to trial was in 1998 against microsoft, over claims the company illegally grouped its products in a way that stifled competition and compelled people to use its products. earlier i spoke to tim woo, special assistant to the president for technology and competition policy under the biden administration. thank you for joining us here on the program. this is undoubtedly a big case, but how significant do you see it as being? tim: i think it is a very big case. it is one of a trilogy of big cases that are coming. another one against facebook, another one against google, may be one against amazon. it is clearly the centerpiece of the biden administration's campaign against big tech. helena: let's take a look at the camp lane -- the campaign and

the case. it accuses google of being a classic monopoly, saying it has used wrongful means to ward off the competition. how has it allegedly gone about that? tim: the core of the case is that google used its money to protect its monopoly in search. it did that by paying apple and mozilla and a lot of other companies to make google be the default product, far after it had become a monopolist, with the goal of trying to hang onto that market position. that is the core of the case, basically an anti-competitive set of deals. helena: help us understand this more, because i think many consumers might look at this, and the argument from google would be that the service google provides is free, it's useful to so many of us, that they have not been charged, let alone been charged over the odds when it comes to antitrust, then. so how does this harm them?

tim: nobody doubts that google makes a good product. people love google, and it has been successful. i do not think that is the allegation. the complaint is centered on the maintenance of monopoly. it's a legal in the united -- it is illegal in the united states to hold onto your monopoly using anti-competitive means, including contracts. to ask whether consumers like google is the wrong question. consumers also like to microsoft back in the day. people liked standard oil well enough even further back. the question is whether they are deliberately preventing competition. there is another story in the 2010's where you see a google competitor show up and start to offer a different kind of product, may be one that is more protective of privacy, for example. and that did not happen. we have one monopoly.

and even if it is a popular monopoly, it is still a monopoly. helena: you mentioned microsoft. i want to take a look at that case and antitrust complaint that was filed against the company in 1998. does this give us any indication into how this case can go? tim: it is a very similar complaint, in some ways, modeled after the microsoft case. the basic argument was microsoft used its power and its money to make sure that a small company known as netscape, with its navigator product, would not get anywhere. and they were successful. navigator, which had had a strong market share, dropped off, and microsoft replaced it. the main difference between these two cases is with microsoft, the federal government effectively had a dead body to point at.

in google's case, one of the challenges for the government is no one is able to really get a start against a google search product. but the core legal theory is similar. it is basically a theory of monopoly maintenance. helena: if you look at this internationally, google has to comply with regulation in the european union, for example. so isn't this more an issue with the u.s. government as opposed to with google itself in terms of not having the legislation? tim: the europeans, the european commission, have been aggressive, and mainly have targeted google's shopping services and others. the u.s. federal government is going right at the core of the google monopoly. and i think in some ways, the american case is more aggressive. europeans bring more cases.

americans tend to bring bigger, stronger cases, and have more of a taste for break and other aggressive remedies. i think that is an important distinction between what is happening here and what is happening in europe. helena: ultimately, what do you think a remedy would look like? tim: it is a great question. i think they could ask google to sell its chrome browser. as you may know, google controls the browser market at this point, the way microsoft did, which makes it harder for other companies to get a start. i also think one of the most important things about this case is even though it is centered on curse -- on sea -- on search, it's also about ai. this will directly affect ai becoming a commercial product. if i were a judge and the defense department i would be thinking about remedies and making sure google fights fair

when it comes to artificial intelligence. helena: tim woo, thank you for being with us. the white house announced eight more tech companies pledged to voluntarily follow safety security interest standards with ai. adobe and ibm joined six other industry leaders who made a similar announcement in july. as part of our conversation earlier with senator chris coombs, he spoke about congress's role in those safeguards. >> you have been looking at and very concerned about american citizen's data being used to train these ai algorithms. what kind of protections can you put in place against that? >> we are in the early stages of legislating about artificial intelligence. look, ai has been around for decades. in its more sophisticated forms it has been embedded for years now. but chatgpt brought it to the screens of millions of americans

and brought it to the consciousness of congress. here tomorrow we are going to have a long session with dozens of leaders, critics of artificial intelligence, those who are leading ai companies and firms, and those who are on the cutting edge of technology development. i think we need to show that we can legislate, and legislate in a balanced, bipartisan fashion, in a relatively swift fashion. the u.k., the eu, other countries around the world are showing an intention to move forward with ai regulations. my subcommittee which deals with intellectual property, we have had a series of hearings and i will soon release a discussion draft of legislation that will help protect individuals' likeness, voice, from ai impersonates and -- impersona tion. getting this right is as important as moving swiftly. >> we see this in a very practical way with the hollywood writers and actors strike and

the concerns they have about their images and rights being taken over by machines. what can congress do for those people? >> tomorrow we are going to hear from both the head of the screen writers guild and the motion picture association, essentially both sides that ongoing strike. i think we need to find a constructive path forward that helps make sure that those who make their living from acting, from singing, from writing, from performing, can know what sorts of protections and rights they have. from their image, their likeness, their work being used without their knowledge, consent, or compensation. i also think we need to make sure we do not over regulate. the u.s. has long been a place of great innovation in technology and now in artificial intelligence. so striking that right balance will be a key part of my work in this area in the coming weeks. >> ok. senator chris coombs, thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you.

helena: remember, you can find more and all the days news on a website, plus to see what we are working on anytime check us out on your faux socials media site or app. thanks for your company on world news america. bye for now. narrator: funding for this presentation of this program is provided by... narrator: financial services firm, raymond james. narrator: funding was also provided by, the freeman foundation. and by judy and peter blum kovler foundation; pursuing solutions for america's neglected needs. ♪ ♪

>> lillie parker's -- relief workers respond to disasters in morocco and flooding in libya. house republicans moved to open an impeachment inquiry into president biden. an updated covid booster gets the green light has infections are rising nationwide.