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Hello and welcome to Newsout from the BBC World Service coming to 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 squares since the start of the war in Gaza.

And the extraordinary story of a survival of a 20-year-old Sri Lanka 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 at 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 in 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 threw up some surprises

at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. 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, will face Germany,

a country that won at 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.

But the one exception is the final, which will take place at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on the outskirts

of New York City on July the 19th, and it's going to kick off at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

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