Arabia to slash numbers on the pilgrimage and to bar muslims from outside. Too dominant and too powerful thats whats being leveled against 4 of americas Largest Tech Companies at a congressional hearing in washington d. C. The chief executives of Facebook Google amazon and apple have all been defending their Business Practices theyre accused of stifling competition and monopolizing the industry free from regular action its the culmination of a yearlong investigation by the u. S. Congress detailing how the Companies Avoid liability on the current laws well our correspondent alan fischer joins us now from capitol hill for more on that hearing allan i believe its just all wrapped up after more than 5 hours talk us through what weve had today. Well the Tech Companies are essentially saying that theyre very american and that their end of it if theyre smart and they make big profits and they say that theyve had to be innovative and theyve had to include people because if they didnt they would disappear in the way that 10 years ago if you were talking about the take giants hed be talking about my space and friendster remember them no no one does because of course they fell away when Facebook Google and others took that space so they insist that what theyre doing creates jobs it creates wealth it creates opportunity for many people it gives a platform for developers to bring their products to the market and that the shouldnt necessarily be broken up in fact jeff bezos said that they have less than 4 percent of the you keep the u. S. Retail market but of course that includes things like gas stations going in and filling up your car with petrol it also includes food shopping in things like that although amazon is we knew were stretching into that the chairman of the subcommittee which is all about looking at anti trust essentially anti Business Practices well right from the very start he made it clear that he thought there was a problem and it was something that the Tech Companies needed to address and have too much power this power stave off new forms of competition creativity and innovation and while these dumb firms may still produce some new Innovative Products their dominance is killing the Small Businesses and factoring in the overall dynamism out of the engines of the American Economy well alan is on what sort of significance to todays proceedings actually hold. Well its important because both democrats and republicans see that there is a problem here they see it through slightly different lenses and certainly the republicans on the committee were concerned about bias even though this was meant to be all about Business Practices and. They carried their job but what is important here is that this subcommittee has been investigating this for more than a year the see there is a significant problem there and essentially this is a short being fired across the bows of the tech giants no that show was also echoed by the president dont trump saying that if the Tech Companies didnt do something to stop their monopoly then he would take executive action if congress didnt act well its as if Congress Might well i this committee has called for further hearings in september and the chairman of the committee he had from earlier he said that some of these Companies Need to be broken up some need to be regulated there has to be a change in the law and the legislation particularly in the digital age because a lot of these laws were drawn up at the beginning of last century when there were Big Companies around and they were taking advantage of their position so this is essentially the legislator saying to the big Tech Companies you really need to get your house in order and if you dont well do. Our interests that live for us on capitol hill with all the losses thank you very much our. Well as weve been saying apple Facebook Google and amazon are 4 of the 5 most valuable u. S. Companies lets take a look at the scale of their operations they have a combined market value of nearly 5 trillion dollars thats slightly more than the entire g. D. P. Of japan the 3rd largest economy in the wild the annual revenue of the 4 tech giants combined is more than 770000000000. 00 thats equal to the g. D. P. Of saudi arabia the Washington Post reported that the 4 companies have spent more than 350000000. 00 over the last decade on lobbying activities out of the estimated 4600000000. 00 people connected to the internet google and facebook have crossed the 2000000000 use the mark apples 1500000000 while amazon hasnt disclosed its reach we can now speak to Kani Guglielmo she is the editor in chief of the american tech website seen at and she joins us now live via skype from San Francisco county thanks for being with us this was a hearing that was really meant to be about competition in the market but the dominance of these giants has not really been in question so why are we seeing this specifically now. Well what youre seeing is that they are getting even bigger where in the middle of a pandemic more people are at home ordering goods on line looking at Online Entertainment doing shopping searches engaging with people across video channels and other things and so this is been a Long Time Coming this hearing is just the culmination as was mentioned earlier of a year long investigation but people have been looking at the Tech Industry for the past 3 or 4 years not just here in the United States but in the European Union they are extremely large have billions of people on their platform they affect how we live how we work our we play in how we do business and so that is the culmination of what youre doing today its a moment in time to take a look at their influence and if we need to do a reset from a legislative perspective this may be the time to do it and i certainly think given the tenor of todays hearings that youre going to see that happen well speaking of this kind of moment in time this white house certainly doesnt have the friendliest relationship with big tech has that played into things. Well you heard today from some of the republicans who endorsed the white house policy saying that facebook in particular has not been a platform that is friendly to conservative voices and their point of view the president United States has new social media to great effect and to you know propagate his message but hes now being reined in and so that was the tenor of a lot of the talk that you heard from the republicans just about the reach of the platforms and giving voice to some viewpoints on the democratic side you talked about the democrats talk about the power of business and the monopolistic practices that theyre concerned about going into the future so its fair to say that both sides of the political spectrum here in the United States are not particularly happy with the way that the tech businesses are doing Business Today this has all been incredibly high politicized i mean its an Election Year so thats unsurprising but i do want to ask you mentioned there that republicans were criticizing facebook my understanding is that facebook has been relatively friendly to conservative groups conservative ideas and really its been twice so thats been trying to rein in the president so is there a realisation amongst the conservative groups about just where their power base is like. I dont know if theres been a realization but what were seeing is that facebook which has been very hands off especially compared to twitter which is the primary platform that the president uses to get his message rapping is stepping up itself some of its efforts and because of that were seeing you know just the start of some you know. Canceling of messages or you know taking down a post what youre seeing also is that Mark Zuckerberg the c. E. O. Of facebook is coming under pressure his own employees and his advertisers are boycotting facebook and theres going to be a business effect on that because the dissent from ation and misinformation that helped you know reframe if you will the 2016 u. S. President ial election there is concern that that is happening today ahead of our november election here for president turning to google of mr pichai doesnt have the biggest profile but he was really consistently target as a day despite having a testify there a year ago we were surprised by that attitude. I mean they started from the get go going after google and china again theres been a year long investigation there are over 1300000. 00 documents that have been gathered including internal Company Emails about their Business Practices i think whats at issue is not just that these companies have massive platforms which they do but that they also have products that compete with 3rd parties so the question becomes are they using the platform to advantage themselves in places where they compete with thousands that was certainly the question that came up for google for amazon and for apple which all deal with 3rd parties and so google got a lot of the attention because 90 percent of web searches have been through google today a lot of the Online Advertising they are the largest beneficiary of Online Advertising so a lot of the business and eyeballs if you will of consumers happened on that platform and so were going to continue to hear more about their Business Practices and exactly how they promote their products over others do you pay to get your products and Services Show up in google results that is extremely important placement in a Google Search results ok this is just another step in a very long conversation hit that from the scene that thank you for being with us great to get your insights on aljazeera my pleasure thank you now the death toll from the krajina virus pandemic has surpassed 150000 in the United States thats the highest number of fatalities in any nation by far and accounts for nearly a quarter of the recorded global toll now 2 of the most populous states california and florida have both recorded their largest single day death tolls and the 2nd west affected country in the world brazil has reported a record daily jump that infections and deaths nearly 70000 new cases and 1600 fatalities were confirmed just in the past day that brings the total number of infections to more than 2500000 well more than 90000 people have died. Meanwhile the Welfare Program is warning at least 14000000 people in latin america are at risk of starvation as that region realize from the Economic Impact of this pandemic and a number of countries are being forced to extend lockdowns in an effort to try to stop the virus spreading out money or palo reports. The World Food Program estimates the number of people in latin america experiencing severe Food Insecurity could more than quadruple in 2020 in brazil which ranks 2nd in the world in the number of coded 19 infections a federal stopgap Welfare Program has made significant progress in curbing extreme poverty during the pandemic. But experts warn such measures have only temporary benefits and latin american countries need to step up efforts to prevent more people from going into poverty. Kovan a pandemic has just been devastating in latin america i mean we are already dealing with economic deterioration in many different issues but covert has come on top of it just in the areas where p. In this region alone weve seen a substantial increase in overall 11000000 people that are marching toward the brink of starvation so its devastating and its why we must act and we must act now so that we can bring some hope to people of the political destabilization mass migration economic deterioration a supply Chain Disruption that many people starve in addition to covered itself the World Food Program says many of those who will go hungry are workers from latin americas Informal Sector. In mexico where coded 900 cases have surpassed 400000 Informal Sector employees make up roughly half the nations work force. In. This implies that many mexicans will cross the poverty line those who previously managed to cross into the spectrum of the middle classes will return to poverty and these are not small numbers the National Institute that measures poverty calculates this will amount to 10000000 mexicans. Countries across latin america are struggling to strike a balance between Public Health and the health of their economies but with the loosening of restrictions and the reopening of businesses comes more contagion and calls for renewed lockdowns. After surpassing 9000 confirmed deaths on wednesday colombia became the latest country to announce an extension to their containment measures economists expect those. Preventative mandatory isolation as a general criteria is to be extended until august 30th. Latin america is now the region of the world with the highest number of infections with more than 4 and a half 1000000 confirmed cases since the start of the code 19 pandemic. Al jazeera. Now the United States has announced plans to pull nearly a 3rd of its military personnel out of germany and the ongoing roue of the defense spending nearly half of the 12000. 00 troops will be moved to other locations in europe including italy and belgium White House Correspondent jim to help explains. Making good on its threat to the u. S. Announced a withdrawal of almost 12000 u. S. Soldiers from germany its a move the defense secretary insists will improve the military partnership between north american and european allies. I think we are we are excited about where were going and what it will mean in terms of our ability to enhance to turn strengthen the strengthen the alliance in the process the cuts will reduce u. S. Forces in germany by about a 3rd about 25000. 00 will remain some soldiers will be repositioned within nato countries including belgium and italy the rest will return to the United States the u. S. European command will also move to belgium but speaking to reporters on wednesday outside the white house u. S. President trump offered a different explanation for the move he said it was to punish germany for not contributing 2 percent of its g. D. P. As required for members of the north atlantic treaty organization. But. Well germanys military spending is up its still smaller relative to other nato allies as a driver of europes economy republicans and democrats in the u. S. Congress have long held germany should be paying more for share defense but most oppose removing u. S. Troops from germany fearing it will weaken regional stability and nato is capacity to push back against russia. The plan to withdraw u. S. Troops from germany is expected to cost billions and could take years to execute and could be reversed if President Trump does not win reelection in november can really help get aljazeera the white house still ahead from here on out their fears about censorship the controversy surrounding a new social media no intent. To abuse death well have more on the plight of refugees trying to reach the mediterranean. However got a lot of hot weather loss of lives showers to across north america quite a scattering of storms on display here across the plains pushing down towards the southeastern corner eastern seaboard also seeing some wet weather from time to time of those temperatures 37 in d. C. Weakening up to 31 in new york got that heat even pushing north of the border 28 there for toronto what a rush of showers some of them very heavy pushing up towards tennessee towards kentucky around the appalachians we could see some thunder downpours possibly causing some flash flooding from time to time further south across the deep south that should be a little drier than it has been recently but you see the wet weather no really to far away up towards the primaries into central kind of the again some wet weather which was the west coast here is looking fine and dry still very hot in phoenix temperatures could touch 46 celsius on friday the high fire risk remaining across the southwest for the caribbean where we got yet more Stormy Weather coming into the leeward side as we go on through the next couple of days this developing system in may well become a tropical depression if not a Tropical Storm that will bring flooding rains possibly some mudslides a big storm surge towards the lesser. Antilles and also affecting parts of the virgin islands. That. Came from the countryside to cairo and became part of a new life. They say this is different to be in the form of aljazeera world meets the man whos been keeping a close eye on residential life in the big cities for decades but who may now be passing into history. To see for movies he wasnt do