Hello and welcome to News Out from the BBC World Service.
Coming to you live from London, I'm Sean Lay.
Coming up on the programme, Bethlehem celebrates Christmas, lighting for the first time.
It's tree in Major Square since the start of the war in Gaza.
And the extraordinary story of a survival of a 20-year-old Sri Lankan man whose home was flooded in minutes during last week's intense storms.
I was carrying my grandmother and my father was carrying my grandfather and we were running to the hill nearby.
But before all that,
next summer's Men's FIFA World Cup will be the largest in the history of international soccer,
with 48 national teams in all.
They'll be playing across Canada, Mexico and the United States.
The organisers revealed today how they plan to juggle time zones and temperatures in order to satisfy the globe's most viewed sporting event.
Deliver it at the right time and audiences, along with advertising revenue, will follow.
Today's logistical details throw up some surprises at the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
For example, Curacao, the smallest country ever to play in the competition.
It's an island off the coast of Venezuela.
In case you don't know, we'll face Germany, a country that won the cup four times.
Laura Williamson is editor-in-chief of The Athletic.
She was watching and afterwards gave me her assessment of how FIFA had managed competing demands and what potential problems remain.
I think they've done a really good job overall of trying to keep players and fans out of the searing midday and early afternoon heat in the US,
Canada and Mexico.