now with all the latest sport here's hugh. chelsea boss enzo maresca says the club "trust" mykhailo mudryk after he claimed he did not knowingly take a banned substance that led to him failing a drugs test. the ukraine international has been provisionally suspended by the football association after a routine urine test provided by mudryk returned an "adverse finding". maresca hopes the forward is absolved of blame. the is absolved of blame. club and the coaching staff and the club and the coaching staff and all the people inside the training ground, we support and trust him. second, when these kind of things happen, you need to support your player in all aspects. ruben amorim says he wants marcus rashford to stay at manchester united after the forward revealed he was "ready for a new challenge." it's the latest twist in the ongoing uncertainty between the club and a player

who's been there since the age of ten but has appeared disillusioned with recent life at old trafford. rashford has scored 138 goals since making his debut in 2016 but he played no part in united's win against rivals manchester city at the weekend and has said should he leave the club, he would do so with "no hard feelings." but amorim has called rashford a "big talent" who he wants to help return to his best form and that he'd rather keep him as part of his squad. i don't talk about the future, i just talk about the present. i want the best of each one of them and that is the key point for me. i just want to win and to help the team to be better. so we are better with marcus rashford and that is simple, and we will try different things to push marcus to the best level that he has shown in the past, so that is all. rashford's next chance to play is in the efl cup quarter final tomorrow night against spurs, while the other three matches are tonight and there'll be an unfamiliar look to the touchline

at st mary's where southampton play liverpool for a place in the semi finals. the home side will have interim boss simon rusk in the dugout after russell martin was sacked, while arne slot won't be alongside him because he's been banned for picking up three yellow cards already this season. i think i'm still able to do the things i want to do. the moment you have less impact on your team is during the 45 minutes and the most impact you can have is at half—time or before the game and those are the things i can do. but in an ideal situation, i would havejust been on the sideline. but i got a yellow which i probably deserved. elsewhere, arsenal continue their attempts to win a first major trophy since the fa cup in 2020 with a quarter final against crystal palace. that was in mikel arteta's first season in charge and as he prepares to mark five years since becoming manager, arteta claims winning the efl cup could lead to more success. i fully believe in that, the fact that you are winning,

you'll get into the next round, the next competition. it builds, it creates something different around the team, that is why these kind of games are really, really important. and it creates, i think, the right path to go and do something, especially because of the timing and where that competition is played in this country, it gets that momentum going, ithink, yeah. oleksandar usyk says his rivalry with tyson fury is good for boxing. the two will meet for the second time in saudi arabia on saturday with the ukrainian�*s three heavyweight world titles on the line, with fury having already suggested there could be a third encounter in the future. tyson fury is very important for my boxing career. yeah, it's a very strong opponent. big... mm... it's important for me. it's not only for me. it's important for future history. for boxing in the world.

more build—up to that on the bbc sport website. and that's all the sport for now. bbc analysis has revealed that facebook severely restricted the ability of palestinian news outlets to reach an audience during the israel—gaza war. meta says any suggestion that it deliberately suppressed particular voices is "unequivocally false". joe tidy reports. in times of conflict, access to reliable news is vital, and today many turn to social media as their primary source of information. on platforms like facebook and instagram, how people engage with content so comments, likes, shares, reactions, can increase visibility and shape public opinion. but for the last year, palestinian journalists have raised concerns that their posts are being suppressed. and according to our research, something has happened here.

in the first comprehensive data analysis by territory since the start of the war in gaza, we analysed more than 100,000 facebook posts by different palestinian news organisations. this bar represents the average engagement per post in the lead up to the october 7th hamas attack on israel. as you can see, it fluctuates, but it's steady. and then hamas�*s attack and israel's subsequent and ongoing war in gaza became one of the biggest talking points in the world. but look what happens to the engagement on those same facebook pages. it nosedives. in fact, since that date, there's been a 77% drop in average engagement. one of the pages analysed in our investigation is the well—established palestine tv. they have 5.8 million followers on facebook and have had some posts about the war restricted by the platform.

we did the same analysis on similar news pages from israel and neighbouring arabic speaking countries, and found that engagement went up. meta confirmed that temporary product and policy measures were brought in in response to the conflict. the company admitted that pages posting exclusively about the war were more likely to see engagement impacted, but it said any implication that this was done to deliberately suppress a particular voice is unequivocally false. but according to some people from inside the company, palestinians have been deliberately suppressed. this former meta employee asked us to keep them anonymous, but shared internal documents about a change that was made to instagram's algorithm. within a week of the hamas attack, the code was changed, essentially making it more aggressive towards palestinian people writing comments on instagram posts. they gave us these leaked documents showing an order to strengthen the precision threshold

further from a0 to 25 for palestinian authors only, and this means the algorithm only has to be 25% sure a comment from a palestinian based in the west bank or gaza was potentially violating guidelines to make it less visible to other users. meta confirmed that this measure was taken, but said it was necessary to respond to what it calls a spike in hateful content. but clearly, some staff were unhappy about it. this kind of bias will affect the whole narrative. customers, regular customers, would be looking at their phones, thinking that they're seeing the truth when they're actually seeing just a very small slice, or they're being trapped in a bubble because other people were silenced. the decades long israeli—palestinian conflict continues to be one of the most difficult topics to address for many media organisations. but what our research suggests is that when platforms are as large as meta's, even small changes can have big implications. and joe is with me now. first of all, what prompted you

to get involved with this investigation?— to get involved with this investigation? to get involved with this investiuation? ., ., investigation? you might have seen across — investigation? you might have seen across social _ investigation? you might have seen across social networks i investigation? you might have seen across social networks in | seen across social networks in the last year, be —— people have been talking about shadow bank of the idea that you can post what you want but you are not getting the reach, and you are talking into the darkness —— shadow ban. people are complaining about this so we wanted to test this out because we have had tens of thousands of claims like this, but it is hard to know for sure, you would have to go to every individual and look at what they are posting and get their internal dashboard of how many people are looking at their things, so we looked at what we could actually collate ourselves, and bbc arabic found out you could look at the amount of engagements, comments and likes and shares, count those up and compare that to before the 7th of october and afterwards, and that is where we got these numbers. tell us more about — we got these numbers. tell us more about how _ we got these numbers. tell us more about how this _ more about how this investigation got to the facts.

we used a piece of software that collates that kind of information and my colleague went through a massive data project over weeks and weeks looking at the different numbers and then we looked at, could this be because these pages were demoting the algorithm because they were upsetting material? that is obviously a good assumption to make. what was interesting, we also saw that on the israeli pages, there was a rise on their engagement and a drop on their engagement and a drop on the palestinian pages, and then we thought, could it be about arabic language and the moderation of that? we tested out that theory by looking at other arabic news organisations in the region around israel and gaza, and they saw a huge increase so clearly there was an audience appetite for news about the gaza conflict but the palestinian news organisations based in palestinian territories were not getting the audience.— territories were not getting the audience. can we broaden

this out? _ the audience. can we broaden this out? in — the audience. can we broaden this out? in terms _ the audience. can we broaden this out? in terms of - the audience. can we broaden this out? in terms of the - this out? in terms of the history of this kind of accusation of bias. we know from the — accusation of bias. we know from the last _ accusation of bias. we know from the last few _ accusation of bias. we know from the last few years - accusation of bias. we know from the last few years that | from the last few years that matter has been accused of harshly and unfairly moderating palestinians compared to other people around the world —— meta has been accused will top there was a study done in 2022, that said, yes, palestinians have been unfairly moderated, there has been a particular problem, with arabic language moderation, they said, they are relying too much on machines, so a phrase that could be seen and flagged as harmful, or insightful, hamas, for example, that was misunderstood, and you need more humans on the ground and meta said they have worked hard to rectify that, but another report said the same thing last december, saying that there moderation decisions are having an unfair basis on the palestinians online, but they say the decisions they

take are to keep the platform safe and they are not doing any of this deliberately.— of this deliberately. thanks forjoining _ of this deliberately. thanks forjoining us. _ until the fall of the former syrian president bashar al—assad, only one place in the country was being governed by the opposition — which went on to topple him. since 2017, the north western city of idlib was led by authorities linked to the rebel group hts, which is now forming a new administration in damascus. the way they have governed idlib could offer clues to how they're now planning to run the wider country as our middle east correspondent hugo bachega reports. idlib. this was the rebel stronghold in north—west syria, run by the islamist group hayat tahrir al—sham. hts is now in power in syria, and trying to take its way of governing to the entire country. this is the ccu. this doctor moved from aleppo

early in the war, and has witnessed all the changes in idlib since hts took control in 2017, including this hospital, set up in an old warehouse. when hts came to us, we see a lot of development in idlib. we have a lot of things that we didn't have in the assad regime. we have a college of medicine, we have the college of pharmacy, we have college of architectures. here, they run an economy like any country. they tax goods, border crossings and trade and run telecommunication and energy companies. the income allows them to provide public services and fund their military operations. we tried to interview a local official, but were told all of them had gone to damascus to help in the formation of

the new government. hts has its roots in al-qaeda, and is considered a terrorist organisation by the uk, the us and the un. for years they've been trying to convince the world they've changed, and that they want to build a syria for all syrians. an hour's drive from idlib, in a small christian village, the church bells rang for the first time in a decade on the 8th of december, to celebrate the fall of the assad regime. people here don't seem concerned that minorities like them could be at risk, with islamists now in charge. 0ur friars they lived under hts. before was very hard, let us say. but for the last two years things start changing. they gave them more freedom to practice their faith. they called for other christians who were refugees

in latakia and aleppo to come back to take their land and to take their homes back. do you think they've changed? we hope, we trust. we trust in god, and we trust in the goodwill of the people. hts dominance has not been without discontent. protests like this one in march have been held against the detention of rivals, and what some say is their authoritarian rule. i'm talking to a lot of people here and everybody is very positive, everybody is very optimistic. and there's almost no criticism of hts here. no, no, they are now the heroes, to be honest. the syrian revolution people, the rebels also who were fighting assad for 1h years till this day, will not allow any dictators to come again. if they act as dictators the people are ready to say no.

from the ruins of a war and a dictatorship, a nation is being reborn. but what kind of nation will it be? hugo bashagha, bbc news, idlib. around the world and across the uk. this is bbc news.

for hundreds of years, residents in one town in northern canada have lived alongside their polar bear neighbours — but scientists are warning that climate change could spell danger. as the temperature rises and melts the ice polar bears need to hunt seals — they are being forced to spend more time on land, bringing them closer to people. 0ur science correspondent victoria gill has been in churchill, along with a team of polar bear researchers. there's a polar bear under our

tundra buggy, right now. he's very curious about us. oh, my word! at the height of polar bear season in churchill, manitoba, conservation scientists are out on the tundra monitoring one of the most southerly polar bear populations in the world. so the polar bears are starting to gather in this area because there's going to be sea ice here first. and for polar bears, sea ice means food. the bears are waiting for the bay to freeze so they can use it as a platform to hunt seals. but as the climate warms up here, the bears are having to wait for longer. we had about 1,200 polar bears here in the 1980s. and now we have closer to about 618, so we've lost almost about 50% of these polar bears in the last several decades. and we've tied that to these bears are on land about a month longer than their grandparents were. in the long term, this threatens the survival of this polar bear population. but in the short term it means the bears here are getting hungrier. the longer they're on shore, the longer they're fasting,

and the longer they might need to start looking for alternative sources of energy and food. and sometimes those sources are us. that poses a particular challenge for churchill and the team of rangers who run its polar bear alert programme. i came down this trail and i caught him up on this deck. it was testing the door. what did you do? so at that point, you haze them, right? you use your vehicle, horns, cracker shells, and you chase them in a desirable direction, which in this case would be away from town. this is a place that takes pride in setting an example for how humans can coexist with these big predators. everyone here that we've spoken to is very aware of it all the time. and, uh... should we go? i can hear cracker shots over there. that means that they may be moving a bear. there's a bear there. it's crossing the road.

get in the car. we heard crackers going off, and now the polar bear alert team are moving around. so we're going to get back in the car. so you can just see it through the trees there. we could see the polar bear alert team's quad bikes and their trucks moving the bear along. while a loss of sea ice threatens the survival of churchill's polar bears, it could also open up the bay and the town's port for more of the year. the new marine observatory here, that opened just this year, is carrying out experiments that aim to better understand what winter conditions on the bay will be like in the future. the bay is open water, essentially, on average, about five months a year, and it's on the trajectory to become all year round. and my colleague right there, and he's actually working specifically on improving the projection of ice conditions to facilitate, to help make better decisions on the shipping season.

this is a town preparing for a future without sea ice in the bay. the town's mayor, mike spence, says that could present opportunities. what do you think this place could look like in ten years time? it will be a bustling port. the future looks bright. the fate of the polar bears of the polar bear capital of the world, though, depends on us and whether we can rein in rising temperatures and preserve the ice that they depend on. we can keep arctic sea ice in the north and protect the species as a whole. sea ice is so much more thanjust frozen ocean. it really is, it's a garden. it's a platform. it's access to food. it's life, really. victoria gill, bbc news in churchill, manitoba. two astronauts stuck in space since the summer will have to wait even longer to get home. suni williams and butch wilmore arrived at the space station injune and were originally due to return to earth after just one week.

their initial stay was extended to february 2025 because of technical issues with the experimental spacecraft, starliner. now — following a delay in launching a new capsule to the iss — the pair won't be back until late march or possibly april. nasa said the delay posed no risk to the astronauts. let's speak to our science correspondent, pallab ghosh. talk us through what is going on. g talk us through what is going on. ~ ., ., talk us through what is going on,�* ., ., , talk us through what is going on. .,., , on. a lot of people will be thinking. _ on. a lot of people will be thinking, poor— on. a lot of people will be thinking, poor butch - on. a lot of people will be thinking, poor butch and l on. a lot of people will be - thinking, poor butch and suni williams, because they were blasted off injune to great fanfare on new rocket built by boeing and that was supposed to produce a second way of getting to and from the international space station, the other one being elon musk with his spacex, but there were a few hitches on the way, and their eight—day mission has been

extended as nasa tried to work out the glitches and whether they posed a risk to the astronauts coming back, so days have turned into weeks, and in two months, and then all of a sudden it is not until february that they would come back. spacex, the other big private sector company, has brought them down because —— has let them down because —— has let them down because their capture was not ready, they were supposed to have a crew rotation but the vehicle is not quite ready so they have got to wait and that is the story so far. ., ., ,, , wait and that is the story so far. ., , , far. how embarrassing is this for the company _ far. how embarrassing is this for the company or _ far. how embarrassing is this for the company or is - far. how embarrassing is this for the company or is this - far. how embarrassing is this for the company or is this a l for the company or is this a case of what happens and this is why they experiment? it is a bit embarrassing, _ is why they experiment? it is a bit embarrassing, and - is why they experiment? it is a bit embarrassing, and nobodyl bit embarrassing, and nobody has said anything publicly but spacex must have been feeling a bit smug that they have got to bring butch and suni out because boeing could not get it right, they will be fierce

rivals, but they had not delivered on their end of the bargain as well. as for the astronauts, they are probably feeling a bit bad about missing christmas which was always going to be the case, but they are professional astronauts, and the extra two months delay, if that is what it is, will not be a hardship because they have trained to be in space, there are hundreds of astronauts that would kill to be in their positions, to be in space for more than a week. suni williams said it is her happy place. they are probably delighted to stay in space a bit longer rather than the reverse. d0 stay in space a bit longer rather than the reverse. do we know what _ rather than the reverse. do we know what they _ rather than the reverse. do we know what they are _ rather than the reverse. do we know what they are actually i know what they are actually doing up there? twiddling their thumbs? usefulthings doing up there? twiddling their thumbs? useful things they can be getting on with?— be getting on with? there are useful things _ be getting on with? there are useful things and _ be getting on with? there are useful things and the - be getting on with? there are useful things and the space i useful things and the space station has a laboratory and there are hundreds of experiments that are being carried out. the biggest

experiment is what happens to the astronauts on board, readings are taken with a view to having long duration space missions, staying in space for longer and longer, for possible moon base and maybe even a trip to mars and back, so they are doing useful work. that is what their business is and that is what they are doing which is probably why they are so happy. thanks forjoining us. now, we ve got some reports on the whereabouts of a very important person. according to footage we ve obtained, it seems santa claus has traded the north pole snow for the sunny shores of copacabana beach. there, he met dozens of children with disabilities who gathered on the beach to receive their gifts from the white—bearded man himself. stay with us here on bbc news.

plenty more to come. i will be back with the headlines at the top of the hour. plenty more on the website and on the app. this is bbc news. hello. some of us have seen some pretty strong winds so far today. there are further bouts of windy weather to come over the next few days. 0n the satellite picture, one curl of cloud, one area of low pressure moving away northeastwards, but our next frontal system approaching from the southwest. some wet and windy weather with that. we have seen some very mild air tucked up into these weather systems, but some colder air is now starting to dig its way down from the north, so temperatures dropping through the rest of the day across scotland, northern ireland, northern england, some clear spells and some showers to take us into the first part of the evening.

it stays milder for longer further south, but with thickening cloud. heavy rain into south west england, wales, that running eastwards through the evening with a swathe of very strong winds running up through the english channel. those winds easing a touch through the second half of the night, but it's going to stay very windy across the north of scotland. here we will see some wintry showers with that colder air tucking in. and for all of us, well, it's not going to be as mild as last night. into tomorrow, a very different feel to the weather, all of us into the colder air. but we will see quite a lot of sunshine. showers blowing in on the strong northwesterly winds. it's going to be windy for all of us. some of those showers wintry over high ground. temperatures down in single digits, 5 to 9 degrees covers it for most of us. but when we factor in the strength of the wind, it will feel even colder than that. now into friday, here comes our next frontal system. another band of rain pushing

in from the west, some showers following on behind. some slightly milder weather tucked in with this frontal system for a time. and then as we head into the start of the weekend, it could turn very windy once again, a deep low hurtling towards the northwest of scotland. a lot of isobars on this chart. we could well see gales, maybe severe gales across the north and the west of scotland, the north coast of northern ireland with gusts potentially up to 80mph — that could cause some disruption. a real rash of showers working in here, some of those wintry up over higher ground. i think we'll see some more of those wintry showers as we go on into sunday. it's going to be a widely windy end to the weekend. things do, though, quieten down on the approach to christmas. christmas itself at the moment looks largely dry and very mild.

live from london — this is bbc news. a warning from the united nations that unless syria gets urgent support it could plunge back into violence. the conflict isn't over yet. we need immediate humanitarian assistance, but we also need to make sure syria can be rebuilt. a criminology student's found guilty of murder and attempted murder after stabbing two women on a beach in bournemouth. a suspect�*s arrested following the assassination of a russian general in moscow and more details about the killing are released. and a close encounter with the king of the arctic — we visit the polar bears

struggling to cope in a warming world. welcome to the programme. i'm lewis vaughan jones. the un s special envoy to syria has warned that unless the country gets urgent support it could be plunged back into conflict. geir pedersen, called for "free and fair elections" in syria and urged humanitarian assistance to the country more than a week after the downfall of president assad. there are a few challenges. one is that the conflict isn't over yet. yes, there is stability in damascus, but there are challenges in some areas, and of course, one of the biggest challenges is the situation in the north—east. we need immediate humanitarian assistance but we also need to make sure that syria can be rebuilt, that we can see economic recovery, and that we can hopefully see the beginning, where we start the process to end sanctions.