The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/01/31 at 02:00 EST

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/01/31 at 02:00 EST

Hey, friend, come on in. My name is Alameen Abdelmahmoud. I'm the host of a show called Komotion. Let me tell you what we do. Every day we gather some of the sharpest and wittiest culture critics I know around the Komotion table and then we get into the biggest stories that are happening right now in the world of arts and entertainment. Things like Bad Bunny's latest album or this incredibly close best actress race at the Oscars or how YouTube is changing kids entertainment. You can find a new episode of commotion every weekday wherever you get your podcasts. From CBC News, the world this hour, I'm Claude Fague. All 67 people on board the airliner and helicopter that crashed in Washington have been killed.

That's according to U.S. officials officials. 40 have been recovered so far. Thursday night they confirmed they had recovered the flight and data recorders from the jet but not the Blackhawk helicopter. But as Paul Hunter reports, the US president is already laying blame. On final approach to Washington National Airport, one of the busiest and most tightly controlled air spaces in America, somehow a military helicopter on a training flight crossed into the path of American Airlines Flight 5342, carrying 60 passengers. There was a fireball and both plummeted into the river. At the White House,

U.S. President Donald Trump called it a dark and excruciating night. Trump then quickly turned to politics, seeming to blame the Biden and Obama administrations for putting diversity hires ahead of merit at the U.S. Federal Aviation Authority. The FAA's diversity push includes focus on hiring people with severe intellectual and psychiatric disabilities. And though there's been no evidence so-called diversity hires played any role at all in the crash, Trump then signed off on a new executive order emphasizing no more diversity hires specific to the FAA. Paul Hunter, CBC News, Washington.

On the heels of the tragic midair collision in Washington, the Trump administration says it wants to change the way the FAA operates. Late Thursday night, U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said he wants to reform the FAA. Duffy said he's, quote, in the process of developing an initial plan to fix the FAA and hopes to release that plan shortly. U.S. President Trump is vowing those crippling tariffs against Canada are coming and soon. In response, Canadian officials are trying to prove this country takes border threats seriously.

Part of that is two new Black Hawk helicopters that will patrol the Alberta and Quebec borders. Tom Perry has more. A show of force for a very specific audience. The RCMP displaying one of its two newly leased Black Hawk helicopters. The federal government is hoping this beefed up air power gets noticed by US President Donald Trump, who has threatened tariffs against Canada over what he regards as its lax border control. We heard their message about fentanyl and the border. Industry Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne says Canada is more than happy

to work with the US on securing the border, but the fact remains, he says, Canada is the source of less than 1% of the fentanyl and migrants entering the u.s Not that any of that seems to matter to Donald Trump. So we'll be announcing the tariffs on Canada and Mexico Trump also repeated the latest variation of his threat that the tariffs will come in this Saturday February 1st threat that the tariffs will come in this Saturday, February 1st, leaving Canadian officials once again bracing for what comes next and vowing to respond. Tom Perry, CBC News, Ottawa. To Los Angeles.

Canadian singer and California resident Alanis Morissette is one of several performers playing at a benefit concert tonight for victims of the LA wildfires. Fire Aid is using two separate venues. 29 people lost their lives due to the wildfires that gutted several neighborhoods and homes earlier this month, including comedian Billy Crystal, whose house burned down to the ground in Pacific Palisades. These were the clothes I wore when I fled my house with my wife Janice, like so many of us did on January 7th.

It was all I had, wore it for a week plus an N95 mask. I looked like an evacuee or someone who had just robbed a 7-Eleven. One hundred percent of the proceeds from the concert will go towards fire relief efforts. And that is your World This Hour. For CBC News, I'm Claude Fague.