Good morning, I’m Tim Walker with today’s essential stories.

Democrats promise ‘sober’ process, Republicans plan a circus

After three years of controversy and alleged corruption, Donald Trump at last faces a congressional investigation in the full glare of the public spotlight, as televised impeachment hearings begin on Wednesday. Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, has told colleagues the hearings are “a sober and rigorous undertaking,” but Republicans appear to have other ideas.

Combative Trump loyalist Jim Jordan has been temporarily drafted to the intelligence panel, where he is expected to unleash an aggressive challenge to the very legitimacy of the proceedings. Victoria Biekempis introduces the other key figures on the committee, as well as the crucial witnesses set to lay out the evidence of Trump seeking assistance from Ukraine to damage his potential 2020 rival, Joe Biden.

What to watch out for. Tom McCarthy suggests five things to watch out for as the public hearings get under way, while Victoria Biekempis provides a glossary of the impeachment-related terms that could determine Trump’s fate.

Focus on facts. Republicans will do their best to muddy the waters. The American people must keep their minds on the evidence, says Michael H Fuchs.

Erdogan arrives in DC with US-Turkey relations at low ebb

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Trump and Erdoğan at a Nato summit in Brussels last year. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, arrives in Washington on Wednesday, two years after his last visit to the US, when his bodyguards violently assaulted peaceful protesters outside the Turkish embassy. Trump is expected to give his authoritarian counterpart a warm welcome, but the recent Turkish offensive in northern Syria has left US-Turkey relations at their lowest point in decades. Bethan McKernan and Julian Borger lay out the agenda for Erdoğan’s visit, including human rights and Ankara’s Russian ties.

Journalist jailed. The journalist and novelist Ahmet Altan has been re-arrested by Turkish police just a week after he was released from prison over his alleged links to an attempted overthrow of Erdoğan in 2016.

Mass insect extinction poses threat ‘for all life on Earth’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bees and butterflies are both in steep decline, say conservationists. Photograph: Costfoto/Barcroft Media

The “unnoticed insect apocalypse” could lead to “profound consequences for all life on earth [and] for human wellbeing,” according to a report by a leading British ecologist, who estimates that half of all insects may have been lost since 1970 as a result of human activity. The use of pesticides and destruction of natural habitats has contributed to the extinction of 23 species of bee and wasp in the last century, but conservationists say the steep decline could be reversed if quick action is taken.

Emissions rise. The International Energy Agency has said carbon emissions will continue to rise past 2040 under the world’s existing climate policies, a trend that can be reversed only by a “grand coalition” of governments and investors.

Greta Thunberg. The teenage climate activist is hitching a ride back to Europe with two sailing YouTube influencers, after a global climate summit was relocated from Chile to Madrid. She left the US with a simple message on the climate crisis: vote.

Cheat sheet

The Bolivian senator Jeanine Añez has declared herself the country’s interim president after the ousted Evo Morales fled to Mexico. Morales’s socialist party, of whom Añez is a fierce critic, boycotted the legislative session where she assumed office.

A lawsuit alleges the number of migrants at a family detention centre in Texas who fall at the first hurdle in the asylum-seeking process, the so-called “credible fear” interview, has risen from just 3% to more than 90% since July.

An anonymous group of Facebook workers has published an open letter claiming the company is failing black employees, documenting multiple incidents of discrimination and hostility that left them feeling “as if we do not belong here”.

Two people have been reported dead after the Italian city of Venice was flooded by its highest tide in more than half a century, with flood waters peaking at 6ft and waves lapping in St Mark’s Square.

Must-reads

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Mandalorian: a ‘spaghetti western in space’. Photograph: 2019 Lucasfilm Ltd. All Rights Reserved

Does the flagship Disney+ Star Wars show deliver?

Disney’s new streaming platform, Disney+, launched on Tuesday to such demand that the service proved glitchy. And Charles Bramesco says its splashiest new show, the Star Wars spaghetti western The Mandalorian, was also something of a disappointment.

Controversial plan to redevelop Berlin’s Checkpoint Charlie

Three decades after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the site of its most famous crossing has become an embarrassment of fast-food outlets and naff souvenir shops, which fail to honour its charged history. But Berliners can’t agree on how to change it, as Jess Smee reports.

The year’s most talked-about foreign-language film

Bong Joon-ho’s darkly comic Korean thriller, Parasite, is already a box office hit and a virtual shoo-in for the best international film Oscar. But Guy Lodge asks whether it could go one further and make history by doing what Roma couldn’t: win best picture.

Chilean neighbours meet to plot a path through the chaos

After more than a month of violent political unrest – and in the absence of solutions from the country’s elite – tens of thousands of Chileans have attended spontaneous town hall meetings, or cabildos, taking it upon themselves to try to address the causes of the crisis. John Bartlett reports from Santiago.

Opinion

The crisis in Chile is a result of the country’s extreme inequality. And that inequality, says Richard Davies, can be traced back to the economic policies of a group known as the ‘Chicago Boys’ – who learned their ideas from an American, Milton Friedman.

On paper, their plan – poverty-eradicating growth backed up by an educational safety net – seemed complete and coherent. The accounts of those struggling in modern Santiago lay bare the gaps in these ideas.

Sport

Kentucky were the victims of a historic college basketball upset on Tuesday night, as the unfancied Evansville defeated the nation’s number one team 67-64 at home in the Rupp Arena.

Three years after his last professional game, Colin Kaepernick remains determined to return to the NFL. Which is why the league has invited all 32 of its teams to send their scouts to a private workout and interview session for the free-agent quarterback in Atlanta on Saturday.

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