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

I'm Alex Ritson, and in the early hours of Wednesday, the 8th of January, these are our main stories.

The US President-elect Donald Trump has refused to rule out using military force to take control of Greenland and the Panama Canal.

The social media giant meta is ending fact-checking on Facebook and other platforms,

saying it wants to prioritise free expression over censorship.

The outgoing US Secretary of State has accused the paramilitary rapid support forces of committing

genocide in Sudan.

Also in this podcast.

I was up on Everest and my tent was shaken very hardly this morning.

So I woke up to realize I was surrounded by avalanches coming down the mountain.

We meet the climber who spent an earthquake on the side of Mount Everest.

The US President-elect Donald Trump has ramped up threats to seize control of the Panama Canal

and Greenland saying he can't offer assurance that he wouldn't use military or economic coercion.

He also said eliminating the artificially drawn US-Canada border would be beneficial to national security.

And his intervention comes on the day that his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., visited Greenland an autonomous Danish territory in the Arctic.

While answering a journalist's question during a news conference in Florida,

it was difficult to separate humour or bombast from genuine policy.

Just how likely is it, then, that the next president of the United States will try to take

these territories with military force.

A question for our North America correspondent, Ned Atorfic.

I don't think he would. I think he is making these statements as sort of leverage.

Look, when you look at Greenland, as an island in the Arctic, it's very strategically placed.

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