The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/02/08 at 15:00 EST

Episode Date: February 8, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/02/08 at 15:00 EST

The following is advertiser content from Audible. In a world of endless noise, slowing down to meditate is key to ensuring your health. Author Chris Bailey shows that we all have time in how to train your mind. Listen to a sample now. I'll cover how to meditate, which is far simpler than you might think, in greater depth later on in the show. But in a nutshell, the practice simply involves focusing on your breath or on another object of meditation for an amount of time that you predetermine. Each time you get lost in thought, which you will constantly, you draw your attention back to your breathing.

That's pretty much it. Doing this lets you step back from the thought patterns in your head, which helps you think more clearly. Meditation can seem hard as hell in practice, but almost stupidly simple in theory. Explore over 890,000 titles on audible.ca by signing up for a free 30-day trial and start listening today. From CBC News, the world this hour, I'm Julianne Hazelwood. China may have launched a disparaging and malicious information campaign against Liberal leadership candidate, Chrystia Freeland, according to a Canadian intelligence task force.

Kate McKenna has the details. The task force that monitors foreign interference says an information operation was directed at Liberal leadership candidate, Chrystia Fre Freeland and the Chinese government may have been behind it. The task force says officials detected coordinated and malicious activity targeting Freeland and the operation was traced to WeChat's most popular news account, an anonymous blog linked to the People's Republic of China. In a statement Freeland said she won't be intimidated by Chinese foreign interference and thanked national security agencies.

It's very troubling that this continues to happen. Liberal leadership frontrunner Mark Carney says he reached out to Freeland last night. I absolutely support her campaign and the process that we're undertaking to have a fair election for the leadership of the Liberal Party. He thanked Global Affairs for their work to detect foreign interference. Kate McKenna, CBC News, Ottawa. Alberta's premier is responding to allegations of political interference in the way contracts were awarded by the Alberta Health Service. Danielle Smith is urging the province's auditor general to expedite his investigation, and

the premier says she was not involved in any wrongdoing. Jo Horwood has the latest. Alberta's auditor general revealed the ongoing investigation Thursday after the Globe and Mail reported it had obtained a letter from the lawyer of Athena Menzelopoulos, the former CEO of Alberta Health Services. The CEO was recently fired from her job. According to the Globe, the letter included claims of political interference. It also alleged that the CEO was dismissed days before she was scheduled to meet with the Auditor General about her own investigation into procurement contracts and deals for private

surgical facilities. CBC News has been unable to obtain a copy of the letter. In a statement Saturday morning, Premier Smith calls the allegations troubling and says she has not been involved. She says she has directed officials to be quick and transparent with requests from the Auditor General. She also says she has asked for an internal review underway at AHS to be delivered to her directly. Jo Horwood, CBC News, Calgary. On an Israeli army base, Or Levy rushes into his brother's arms hugging him tightly. He was one of three Israeli men released after almost 500 days in Hamas captivity. Unlike hostages released

earlier, the three looked gaunt, pale pale and weak. Their release was the latest under the Gaza ceasefire agreement and was accompanied by the release of 183 Palestinian prisoners and detainees in Gaza. The released Palestinians were welcomed by hugs from friends and family. Negotiations on a second phase of the deal began this week. It's hoped the agreement would see more hostage for prisoner exchanges and the withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza. Earlier this morning a federal US judge blocked Elon Musk's team from accessing Treasury Department records that contain sensitive personal information. The ruling came after 19 state attorneys general applied for an injunction. President Donald Trump gave Musk the job of uncovering and slashing

what they call wasteful government spending. It's been one of the busiest tornado seasons ever recorded in Canada. David Sills is with the Northern Tornadoes Project at Western University in London, Ontario. He says there were 129 twisters across the country. It sounds like a busy year but we had a lot of weak tornadoes across the country and not a lot of strong ones thankfully. The only EF2 strength tornadoes so that you know the strength that could take a roof off a house occurred in Ontario and Quebec. Even then most of them occurred in the forested areas off to the north. Sills says climate change appears to be having an effect on tornado frequency and the length

of the season. And that's your World This Hour. You can listen to us wherever. You get your podcasts updated every hour, seven days a week. For CBC News, I'm Julie-Ann Hazelwood.