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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Alex RedZone. And at 14 hours GMT on Wednesday the 13th of January, these are our main stories. A senior Republicans desert the president. Is it feasible that the second impeachment of Donald Trump might lead to conviction? The biggest mafia trial in years gets underway in Italy, and entering this house is like witnessing a horror scene.

You have these huge holes in the wall from the guns that the police shot more than 80 times.

A BBC investigation shows that in Brazil's largest cities, black people are much more likely to be killed by police. Also in this podcast where we don't find anything under the sun, we drink seawater.

It is bad for our health, but we have no choice because otherwise we would have nothing in our tummy warnings of a looming food crisis in Madagascar and a zebra stripes.

A help or a hindrance? Donald Trump's tenure in the White House will end on January the 20th when Joe Biden is inaugurated as the forty six president of the United States, but Democrats are still hoping they can bring that departure date forward as we record this podcast.

The House of Representatives is planning to vote once again on articles of impeachment. Democrats have accused the president of incitement and insurrection after some of his supporters stormed the Capitol building last week fighting police and vandalizing offices. Five people died. This will be the second time Democrats have launched impeachment proceedings against the president. But unlike last time, a number of senior Republicans are now willing to break ranks. Some, such as the Republican Congressman John CatCo, are now publicly condemning Donald Trump.

The president's role in this insurrection is undeniable more than social media. Ahead of January six, and in his speech that day, he deliberately promoted baseless theories, creating a combustible environment of misinformation and division. To allow the president United States to incite this attack without consequences is a direct threat to the future of this democracy.

John Kotoko. But why are the Democrats launching a complicated impeachment process when Donald Trump has just a week left in office? The Democratic congressman, Jamie Raskin, says action cannot wait, describing the president as a national security threat.

He is not respecting the peaceful transfer of power. He is not taking care that the laws are faithfully executed. He is not protecting the republic against mob insurrection, invasion and hostility. He is not protecting the Republican form of government for the people of the United States.

I asked our correspondent in Washington, Gary O'Donahue, what we can expect in the coming hours.

Well, in some ways, the choreography of today is pretty clear, and the outcome, I think, is pretty clear. What we're going to get is a number of hours of debate on various rules and then a debate on the impeachment article itself. Later on, we'll probably take them about an hour to vote on it because of some people voting remotely and all this kind of thing, the distancing that's going on. And we're expecting at the end of that for President Trump to be impeached by the House of Representatives.

We know that the Democrats have the numbers. We've heard now that five Republicans named Republicans are going to vote with Democrats. Many more might do as well.

So by the sort of close of play here in Washington, President Trump will be in the history books to be the only president impeached twice.

But the extraordinary thing about this and the thing that makes it very different from the impeachment process of a year ago is that people are now saying it's actually not impossible that the Senate might be ready to convict him because there are very senior Republicans possibly up to and including Mitch McConnell, who are suggesting that the president has committed impeachable offenses.

Yeah, over the last day or so, just under a day or so, Mitch McConnell has obviously been making it clear through his friends in the media that he is open to the idea of impeachment, that he is furious with the president, that he doesn't want to speak to him ever again was one quote that people were talking about, you know, he said to close friends and that that does make the prospects of a trial. I mean, there would be there would be a trial in any case.

But the prospect of a trial where enough Republicans could join the Democrats if Mitch McConnell were on side for a conviction now is pretty impossible for that to happen before Donald Trump leaves office next Wednesday. But a trial could happen thereafter at some point. And that impeachment conviction could then lead to a vote which would bar him from federal office and running again in 2024, which he said he wanted to do.

So the tectonic plates are shifting and they are shifting underneath the Republican Party in this country in a way that I think risks some sort of potential split in the future. But certainly there are two wings now of this Republican Party at loggerheads over what should happen next.

Gary O'Donahue speaking to me from Washington. The trial of more than 300 Mafia suspects has got underway in southern Italy. It's one of the biggest cases of its kind in decades. Our correspondent Mark Loane is keeping an eye on proceedings for us from Rome. I asked him how this immense and complicated trial is being carried out.

They've actually managed to convert a call center into a very large courthouse, Alex, because it is such a huge undertaking. There are 400 lawyers, more than 900 witnesses, 355 suspects. This is the largest anti mafia trial that Italy. Has held since the 1980s and it is targeting this one mafia, the Vigneron guitar, which is down in Calabria, the southern tip of Italy, and it is a very, very large undertaking likely to last for two years.

And the suspects are on trial on a number of charges, including drug trafficking, money laundering, murder and attempted murder.

Who are the defendants? What are they accused of?

Well, the interrogator is Italy's most powerful organised crime group. It dominates Europe's cocaine trade. About 80 percent of the cocaine trafficking in Europe is in their hands. They have affiliates right across the world from Latin America to Australia, an estimated worldwide membership of about 20000. The suspects themselves are part of one clan within the UN. That ANNOTATES is a group that tends to rely on family blood ties and the clan that's being targeted. The Mancuso clan is quite important within the that I get that the trial, prosecutors hope, will will weaken the group to some extent.

It's not going to be the decisive blow because it is just one clan. And as we all know, of course, Alex, when you cut off the head of one snake within the Mafia, several others come up in its place.

Very briefly, Mark, how powerful is the Mafia these days? They still control large parts of drug trafficking.

They have infiltrated the health system. They are still powerful within Italy. And there are three or four of them. But there have been several big trials over the years and there has been a change in culture in that people now speak openly about the mafia and the need to counter them. Whereas in the 70s and 80s they were much more underground and and it was much more kind of silence that this was something that you just could not really talk about.

Mark Lowen, our correspondent in Rome.

An investigation by the BBC's Brazilian service has found that in the first six months of last year, more people were killed by the police in Rio de Janeiro than in the whole of the United States. And a young black Brazilian is up to five times more likely to be shot by police than a white counterpart. Legia Jean-Maurice reports on one gruesome but apparently typical case. You may find parts of her report disturbing.

We are going to be tough. I am not my father. My father was murdered in me inside his house during a police operation. He was 14 years old.

Raphaela lives with her husband and Romanian daughter in Songul Cell on the north side of Rio. On the day her son was killed, he had gone to play at his cousin's house for Voltaggio Luis about two thirty pm.

I heard the helicopter. I called Joao and said, Son, I'm very worried because the helicopter is shooting. But he said, Mom, be calm. We're inside the house.

That was the last time Raphaela spoke to her son. Oh, Yakir so scared.

The police arrived at the barbecue area where in front of them all the teenagers said there are only children in the house. That's when they threw a grenade and the teenagers got scared. But as they ran, the police started shooting as well, turned to run. He was shot in the back. They knew there were only teenagers in the house.

Rafael, a tragic account matches police reports from the crime scene. Entering this house is like witnessing a horror story. You have toys everywhere, you see clearly the house where children used to hang out all the time. And besides all that, you have lots of bloodstains still for a little and they are still on the floor. You have these huge holes in the wall from the guns that the police shot more than 80 times.

Eight months on, no one has been arrested. The authorities say Jewelz case is still under investigation.

I never imagined an assault rifle. I imagined a superficial wound as heals.

Former Chief of police Hopsin Rodriguez da Silva does not condone the violence, but with one of the highest crime rates in the world, he says it's important to understand being a police officer in Brazil is extremely dangerous.

For general assumption is that when a policeman approaches this areas, he does not know what he will come across. But it's very likely that someone will be armed.

This generates tension and fear, and when this manifests in a policeman, it's much more likely to react poorly to a situation.

I never talked to Jerome about racism, but yes, I think it was indeed prejudice because the police think that everyone who lives in the favela is a criminal and these murders usually happen to black people.

For the thousands killed last year by police in Brazil, it's unlikely the majority will ever see justice.

That report by Legia Guimaraes from the BBC's Brazilian Service.

The United States has cast doubt on the credibility of the Ugandan presidential and parliamentary elections taking place on Thursday as it withdrew its team of observers. In a statement, the U.S. Embassy in Kampala said Without the robust participation of observers, the elections would lack accountability and transparency. More details from Catherine Byaruhanga in Kampala.

The United States said it could not meaningfully observe the process, with only a small team accredited and expressed concern that many Ugandan and foreign observers had not been given access. The European Union says it's not deploying monitors because they were not formally invited. But Uganda's Electoral Commission says it has accredited 800 observers, including some from the UK, the EU and the East African community. Britain, the EU and the US have all condemned human rights abuses during the campaigns.

Catherine Hanga, the United Nations food program, is warning of a looming humanitarian crisis in southern Madagascar caused by three consecutive years of drought and a recession triggered by the coronavirus pandemic. The WFP says more than one point three million people are expected to suffer from food insecurity. This report is from Richard Hamilton, who used to be the BBC's correspondent in Madagascar.

Hi. Children waiting at a World Food Program distribution center in the district of Ambo's sorry, the WFP says the drought, coupled with the economic impact of coronavirus, will leave a third of the population in southern Madagascar struggling to put food on the table. That's twice as many as last year.

It says that with malnutrition rates continuing to spiral, families are resorting to strategies such as eating tamarind fruit mixed with clay to survive a at lives with her five children and seven grandchildren in a remote village.

They have to dig in the sand looking for cactus leaves. But even these are growing scarce. When they have nothing left, she walks tens of kilometers in the scorching sun to beg in the neighboring village. But if she returns empty handed, they're forced to drink seawater to fill their stomachs.

We still have some of these leaves we have to dig under this sand without being sure to find anything. Yesterday and today I couldn't go because I feel very weak.

Where we don't find anything under the sand, we drink seawater. It is bad for our health, but we have no choice because otherwise we would have nothing in our tummy.

The WFP is already providing emergency food assistance to several thousands of households in the region. Lola Castro is the regional director for Southern Africa.

The number of severely food insecure as well as severely acute malnourished children is increasing as we speak. We need funding and we need resources for the World Food Program to be able to augment the response and the capacities down in the gratitude of Madagascar.

The organization is appealing for 35 million dollars in funding. This includes emergency food supplies for 150000 children so that they can stay in school. An assessment by the WFP an anniversary found that three out of four children were absent from the classroom, mostly so they can help their parents forage for food.

Richard Hamilton reporting. Still to come in this edition of our podcast, perhaps we enjoyed ourselves a little bit too much over the Christmas period.

And now we have to face up to the consequences. We have some tough weeks ahead of us.

Spain faces a battle against two enemies, the pandemic and extreme snowfalls. The Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, says he's returning home this week from Germany, where he's been receiving treatment after being poisoned with a nerve agent. Mr. Navalny said to return home or not was never a question for him. He now faces jail, as Sarah Rainsford in Moscow explains.

Just in the last few weeks, a new criminal investigation has been launched. He's been accused of embezzling huge amounts of money, up to seven million dollars worth of rubles that was donated to his anti-corruption foundation. And in the meantime, the prison authorities here have appealed to a court in Moscow to send him to prison because they say he's violated the terms of a previous suspended criminal sentence for fraud. Again, a case that Mr Navalny has said was politically motivated.

So it is a rather bold choice, let's say, to come back here.

Sarah Rainsford, the US president has been banned by Twitter and Facebook, but this ban, called for by Donald Trump's opponents for years, has its critics.

Germany's leader, Angela Merkel, has expressed alarm at the idea of Silicon Valley billionaires deciding who gets hurt and who doesn't. And Brazil's President Jiabo scenario is moving to the rival platform telegram to protest at Twitter, censoring his ally, Mr. Trump memory. The Middle East Media and Research Institute publishes English language translations of social media messages originally written in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Pashto, Turkish, Russian and Chinese. It's Vice President Alberto Fernandez told Lawrence Pollard how censorship is a highly sensitive issue.

I remember when I worked in the U.S. government with the rise of ISIS, there was a concern in the U.S. government about pressing social media companies. It sounds crazy now a pressing social media company too much in 2014 to take stuff off because it would it would empower or help the discourse of the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians.

And, of course, Twitter played a role in the rise of this ISIS phenomenon that we saw.

But it was amazing. So what you're saying that there was an embarrassment in the government of not wanting to push the social media companies too far? Bearing in mind the horror of what was circulating on their platforms, then? That's right.

And only when ISIS in August of 2014 began beheading Westerners and putting those clips and those horrific images on, that's when the first takedowns by Twitter began of ISIS propaganda in 2013, 2014, when the caliphate declared all of that. They are untouched in their presence there. It only becomes because of political pressure and popular pressure in the West that they're forced to change.

And what do you think, therefore, is the pressure that led them to take Donald Trump off Twitter?

Because if it takes all that to make them act on beheading videos, did it take more or less to make them act on Donald Trump?

Well, I think social media companies and certainly the United States tend to lean left. That's not a surprise, not an insult. I think that's a reality. And so they I think they are going to be extraordinarily conscious of kind of the discourse that exists on the progressive side or the left or the Democratic side of the ledger. And certainly there was great unhappiness by many people, not just Democrats, of what was seen as demagoguery by the president. And so they felt that they had to respond in accordance to the demands or the interests of their constituency and obviously tried to be, you know, responsible in some ways according to their own lights.

But what you say about the caliphate is fascinating, that there was a political embarrassment. You think about not wanting to seem to be treading on the toes of the First Amendment and pushing social media too far before it became impossible to ignore. There were two things. There was, especially back then, the kind of default libertarian world view in Silicon Valley that basically said freedom in the digital space is a good thing. It's a total good and we don't want to limit that in any way.

Let a thousand flowers bloom at the same time. The US government didn't want to be seen as censoring social media companies because of that message that it said this is the same time with the U.S. government and others in the West were pressing for what Internet freedom needed to be expanded in the world. We need to fight against regimes that want to limit and control Internet freedom.

Alberto Fernandez, the vice president of Memory, that's the Middle East Media and Research Institute, speaking to Lawrence Pollard and staying with the subject of Israeli journalist Josh Baker, has spent four years investigating these.

Story of Sam Sally, a mother who left behind a comfortable life in the US and traveled to the heart of the Islamic State group's caliphate with her family.

Her husband became an ISIS sniper and her 10 year old son, Matthew, appeared in an infamous propaganda video threatening President Trump. Josh presents his findings in I'm Not a Monster, a 10 part BBC podcast co-produced with PBS.

It's already run for six episodes, and it describes what happened when Sam took her family and embraced the cause of the caliphate and also what happened when they returned to the US. Here's an excerpt. When Sam sent a message from Raqqa to her sister in the US asking for help.

I have to be forward with you because I don't have a lot of time.

Almost every day, five to ten bombs are dropped around us. The shock waves are insane. It rained shrapnel, everything from rocks to metal sheets to glass shards. I have no idea where I will end up if you don't help me. So please help me. Now, we are talking a matter of days, not weeks.

Here now to tell me more about the series is Josh Baker. Josh, how did you first hear about Sam and her family?

I came to it from quite a strange and unexpected set of circumstances. So I was in the Iraqi city of Mosul with their special forces while they were fighting to defeat ISIS. And unfortunately, while I was there, I was hit by an ISIS suicide bombing, which injured me quite badly. And then while I was in the UK recovering an old contact, got in touch with me and we met up. And while we were talking, he mentioned this American family from South Bend, Indiana, that were supposedly stuck in Raqqa, which at the time was the capital of the so-called caliphate.

And I thought it was like, you know, back up what you mean. There's an American family trapped with ISIS. And that became the start of a four year investigation. First, just trying to find the family and then understand how they ended up with ISIS and what happened when they came back to the US.

Your experience of going to Raqqa, what was it like to come face to face with ISIS members?

It's always interesting because I think we think of these people and we see these people as these very extreme things that they are, but they're also human beings. And one of the things that we try to do in the podcast series is understand how somebody ends up in a group like ISIS and living within such an extremist ideology. And one of the things that's particularly interesting about Samantha Saleh, she does not appear to have at any time supported ISIS's ideology. She didn't want to be part of it.

So the question is, why did she end up there? Now she says she was tricked. There are facts that suggest otherwise. And throughout the series, we unpick that and try to find out what the truth really is.

I know this is probably an almost impossible question to answer, but what are your most memorable moments while investigating this story?

I think there's one key standout moment for me, and that is some son, Matthew, was forced by ISIS to appear in the group's last propaganda video from Raqqa, where he was made to threaten President Trump. And this video was beamed around the world. It was seen by millions of people.

And for Matthew, that has meant that his future has been somewhat limited because everybody thinks of him as somebody who is associated with ISIS. But earlier this summer, I was able to sit down with Matthew after more than a year of planning and give him a chance to tell his story and going to what really happened. And it's the first time we've heard in depth from the perspective of the child who lived for more than two and a half years under the Islamic State group's rule and what that was like.

And it gave him a chance to reclaim his narrative. And he's doing really well today. So to see him go from being forced to be a mouthpiece for for ISIS to restarting his life has been probably one of the most special things I've ever encountered.

As a journalist, you took an incredible personal risk to make this, didn't you, on several occasions?

Yes. I mean, I think not always by choice. Sometimes you just find yourself in a dangerous situation and you have to adapt to it. But, you know, there was a very clear parallel early on for me. I had just survived a suicide bombing myself. And when I met my contacts that I mentioned earlier, he also showed me a video in the video of Matthew being forced to construct his own suicide bombing. So I was confronted by the parallels of having lived through suicide bombing and then seeing a young boy being put in the position of potentially having to carry out his own attack.

Thankfully, he didn't. But this gave me an incredible drive to want to find him and find the truth of what happened.

Josh, I can I can truthfully say that is the most interesting conversation I've had today. And I've had other very interesting conversations.

Thank you. Making time to talk to us in this podcast. That's Josh Baker, investigative journalist and host of the BBC podcast series I'm Not a Monster. And Episode seven will be available from January the 18th.

Spain has been experiencing record breaking weather conditions.

Last weekend, Storm Filumena hit the country, causing the heaviest snowfall in at least 50 years. Since then, temperatures have fallen, hampering attempts to clear the snow and ice. All of this has set back efforts to fight the coronavirus. Spain has registered more than two million cases and 50000 covid related deaths. Guy Hedgecoe reports.

Martha Santori or shovel snow from the entrance to her house near the Gretel's mountains west of Madrid, snow rarely falls heavily in the Spanish capital or in this area, but the novelty of these Arctic conditions has quickly faded.

At the beginning, we were enjoying ourselves a lot, like we were going to be with no man and, you know, but then we started to see the danger in this region. Like, for example, you see this cable up here and we saw the tree that was falling snow and it was bending down this way and we really thought it was going to fall and the whole thing down.

The authorities have told people in Madrid and other areas of central Spain to stay at home where possible and schools in the capital are closed until next week. For many, this big freeze has amounted to a new confinement following months of restrictions due to covid-19.

But not everyone is following the advice to stay in on social media.

There's been footage of a number of scenes like this, a party in the snow in central Madrid where people even danced a conga.

The concern is that this kind of snow inspired euphoria is encouraging the spread of coronavirus. Fernando Simon, head of the National Medical Emergency Unit, warned that Spaniards need to go back to the kinds of precautions they were taking before the snow and before the holidays.

Don't us a holiday, perhaps. We enjoyed ourselves a little bit too much over the Christmas period, and now we have to face up to the consequences. We have some tough weeks ahead of us. I'm not judging during the holidays. Everyone obviously needs to relax, but this has consequences. I think we will be sensible enough to take precautions again and probably by the beginning of next week. The numbers will not rise so much. But the negative impact on hospitals and schools and in terms of raising fatalities will continue for at least three weeks.

Spain started administering the Fizer by tech vaccine on December the 27th. This woman in Guadalajara was the first to receive it, and this week the first doses of the Moderna vaccine have arrived. However, the authorities have admitted that the snow and ice are slowing down their distribution. The good news is that Spain's meteorological crisis should ease in the coming days. The bad news is the health care crisis will almost certainly continue. Guy Hedgecoe.

Finally, scientists here in Britain have been investigating how zebras with their distinctive black and white stripes apparently still manage to hide in plain sight.

Terry Egan reports.

It's something that's puzzled biologists for over a century. You might think if you're trying to avoid being hunted down and eaten, that sporting a striking black and white pattern isn't exactly the best way to do it. But early naturalists thought otherwise. They put forward the theory of motion DUSSEL believing that it's hard for predators to estimate the speed or direction of patterned prey while it's running.

And somewhat in the spirit of that dazzle, patterning was used on ships in the First World War to help them evade being spotted. But can this really be the case? It's counter instinctive, perhaps, and scientists in Exeter have been taking a much closer look. They've been testing the theory using a touch screen game called Dazzle Bug. That's where you have to catch a rectangular bug, but it keeps changing its pattern in an effort to stop you doing so.

What the scientists found was that even when they were moving, the bug still tended to lose that clear patterning. It's the strongest evidence yet against the motion devil hypothesis. And as a consequence, the scientists suggest that protection in motion may rely on a completely different mechanism. Where that leaves the zebra is anyone's guess. But while the results may raise more questions than they answer, it does reinforce the idea that even for scientists, nature is a constantly moving target.

That report by Terry Egan.

And that's all from us for now. But there'll be an updated version of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics we've covered. Send us an email address, global podcast at BBC, Dot Seo Dot UK. I'm Alex Ritson.

This edition was mixed by Nick Jones, the producer, Rahul Saanich, and the editor Karen Martin. Until next time. Goodbye.