The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/02/18 at 12:00 EST

Episode Date: February 18, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/02/18 at 12:00 EST

When a body is discovered 10 miles out to sea, it sparks a mind-blowing police investigation. There's a man living in this address in the name of a deceased. He's one of the most wanted men in the world. This isn't really happening. Officers are finding large sums of money. It's a tale of murder, skullduggery and international intrigue. So who really is he? I'm Sam Mullins and this is Sea of Lies from CBC's Uncovered, available now.

From CBC News, it's the world this hour. I'm Joe Cummings. We're getting an update this hour from the investigation into yesterday's plane crash at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. Few details have been released at this point, but we are hearing from survivors of the ordeal. One of them, John Nelson. When we hit, it was just a super hard hit the ground and the plane went sideways. We skidded like on our side and then flipped over on our back.

There was like a big fireball out this left side of the plane. And when we got finished, it was, I was upside down. Everybody else was there as well. Thankfully everybody was okay. Another passenger on the flight was Pete Carlson. All of us wanted to just be out of the aircraft. There was a wing there before and when we went out that exit there was no wing to be found. And so once we got back to a safe distance and kind of checked one another because there's so much adrenaline and stress, by that point there was a fire truck driving towards

us on the tarmac. The Delta Airlines plane arriving in Toronto from Minneapolis crashed while attempting to land and ended up rolling onto its roof. All 80 people on board survived, but 21 were taken to hospital. Canada's inflation rate is on the rise, with Statistics Canada saying it came in last month at 1.9 percent. That's up from 1.8 in December. StatsCan says this upward turn would have been worse had it not been for the federal government's GST holiday. The tax break started in the middle of December and ended over the weekend. The United States and Russia are taking steps toward reestablishing diplomatic ties, and that includes holding preliminary discussions on ending the war in Ukraine.

They began today in Saudi Arabia with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. But so far, there's no indication that Ukraine will be involved. Crystal Gamansing reports. We're going to appoint our teams respectively that have worked very quickly to reestablish the functionality of our respective missions. That reconnection, according to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was the first of four points agreed to by the U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, was the first of four points

agreed to by the U.S. and Russia. The second point is that we're going to appoint a high-level team from our end to help negotiate and work through the end of the conflict in Ukraine. Yuri Sak, a Ukrainian government adviser, says Ukraine won't accept a deal penned by Russia and the U.S. in isolation. We just know that Russians cannot be trusted trusted and this is why the security guarantees that Ukraine must receive as part of this process are very, very key. The U.K. has said it would be ready and willing to send British troops to Ukraine to ensure

enduring peace. But Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov says NATO or troops under any flag on the ground in Ukraine would be completely unacceptable. Crystal Gamancing, CBC News, London. With more pink slips to come, hundreds of government employees across dozens of U.S. agencies were fired over the weekend by Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. Cameron McIntosh has the latest now from Washington.

Right now, a lot of the people being let go are probationary employees who have been on the job less than two years, and some with very similar stories. Many are just getting form emails just saying, they're done, like Elizabeth Aniskiewicz, who was a lawyer at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. I have no information about exactly how long my health insurance will continue. And there's just a lot of questions about what we are supposed to do next to take care

of ourselves. Now, the administration says it's seeking to cut up to 10% of the federal workforce. It's going at a really fast pace and some departments are having trouble even tracking it. Take the National Nuclear Security Administration. It started cutting staff until it was realized it was firing some of the people that monitor the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile. So now it's trying to hire many back. Elon Musk has said mistakes will be made but is offering very little in the way of accountability.

Cameron McIntosh, CBC News, Washington. And that is The World This Hour. For news anytime, go to our website, cbcnews.ca. For CBC News, I'm Joe Cummings.