BBC News

Us Brits are weather obsessed.

Be it a heatwave, the latest named storm or a weather warning - it’s our go-to topic for small talk. Join BBC Weather’s Carol Kirkwood, Matt Taylor and Barra Best, along with famous faces Jeremy Vine and Lucy Porter, to explore where our fascination with a white Christmas comes from.

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The US House of Representatives has voted against a Donald Trump-backed funding measure, bringing a government shutdown a step closer.

A revised spending plan failed to reach the two-thirds majority needed in the lower chamber of Congress, with 38 Republicans voting against the bill on Thursday night, defying the president-elect.

After the bill failed by 174 votes to 235, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said he would come up with another solution before government funding lapses at midnight on Friday.

The Trump-approved replacement bill would have tied government funding to a two-year suspension of the federal debt limit, which determines how much the government can borrow to pay its bills.

Unlike in much of the rest of the world, government shutdowns in the US happen relatively often due to a 1980 act which basically ruled that without a budget there can be no spending.

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US diplomats are in the Syrian capital Damascus where they plan to meet representatives from Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the group now in charge but which Washington still designates as a terrorist organisation.

The visit follows those of delegations in recent days from the UN and other countries including the UK, France and Germany.

The delegation of senior officials includes Assistant Secretary of State Barbara Leaf, Roger Carstens, who is US President Joe Biden's hostage envoy and Daniel Rubinstein, senior adviser in the Bureau of Near East Affairs.

This is the first formal American diplomatic appearance in Damascus in more than a decade.

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French President Emmanuel Macron landed in Mayotte on Thursday morning, bringing four tonnes of food and health cargo with him.

Some distraught and furious citizens of the French Indian Ocean territory jeered and shouted at him during his visit to the cyclone-devastated country.

At least 31 people are reported by French officials to have died, while thousands are still missing after the cyclone tore through the small islands on Saturday.

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Judges in the French city of Avignon have sentenced Dominique Pelicot to 20 years in prison for aggravated rape after he drugged and abused his then wife, Gisèle Pelicot, and invited dozens of strangers to rape her.

Dominique stood accused alongside 50 other men. Of the 50 co-defendants found guilty, 46 were found guilty of rape, two guilty of attempted rape, and two guilty of sexual assault.

For almost a decade, Gisèle Pelicot was unknowingly given sedatives by her ex-husband, who has admitted to raping her and inviting men he had recruited online to have sex with her in her bed at home while she was unconscious and unaware.

Although Dominique Pelicot admitted the charges against him, most of the other men on trial denied what they did was rape.

It was Gisèle's decision to waive her anonymity and throw this trial into the open - in her words, making "shame swap sides" from the victim to the rapist - something which has turned the 72-year-old into a feminist icon.

Reeta Chakrabarti presents BBC News at Ten reporting by Andrew Harding in Avignon.

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The de facto leader of Syria, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has said the country is exhausted by war and is not a threat to its neighbours or to the West.

In an interview with the BBC in Damascus he called for sanctions on Syria to be lifted, saying “the victim and the oppressor should not be treated in the same way.”

Sharaa led the lightning offensive that toppled Bashar al-Assad's regime less than two weeks ago.

The actions of Syria's new rulers in the next few months will indicate the kind of country they want Syria to be - and the way they want to rule it.

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Today, we discuss Gisèle Pelicot, whose ex-husband has been jailed for 20 years after drugging and raping her, and inviting dozens of strangers to also abuse her over nearly a decade.

Dominique Pelicot, 72, was found guilty of all charges.

He was on trial with 50 other men, all of whom were found guilty of at least one charge, although their jail terms were less than what prosecutors had demanded. Outside the courtroom, Gisèle gave her "profound gratitude" to supporters and said she believes in a "better future" for women.

Adam is joined by Newsnight’s Victoria Derbyshire, BBC Paris correspondent Andrew Harding, and BBC online journalist Laura Gozzi to discuss today’s convictions and the impact of the trial for women’s movements across the world.

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A major journalism body has urged Apple to scrap its new generative AI feature after it created a misleading headline about a high-profile killing in the United States.

The BBC made a complaint to the US tech giant after Apple Intelligence, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to summarise and group together notifications, falsely created a headline about murder suspect Luigi Mangione.

The AI-powered summary falsely made it appear that BBC News had published an article claiming Mangione, the man accused of the murder of healthcare insurance CEO Brian Thompson in New York, had shot himself. He has not.

Now, the group Reporters Without Borders has called on Apple to remove the technology. Apple has made no comment.

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Eleven years since she was forced to flee the country, BBC Middle East correspondent Lina Sinjab returns to Syria to be one of the first journalists for a western news network broadcasting from Damascus after the fall of the Assad regime.

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The BBC's Russia Editor, Steve Rosenberg, has challenged Vladimir Putin on whether he has "taken care" of Russia during his 25-year rule.

At the president's annual end-of-year press conference, Rosenberg reminded Putin about how his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin, told him to take care of the country when he handed over power.

In response, Putin said Russia had "regained its sovereignty".

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