The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/09/01 at 00:00 EDT

Episode Date: September 1, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/09/01 at 00:00 EDT

We are gathered here today to celebrate life's big milestones. Do you promise to stand together through home purchases, auto-upgrades, and surprise dents and dings? We do. To embrace life's big moments for any adorable co-drivers down the road. We do. Then with the caring support of Desjardin insurance, I pronounce you covered for home, auto, and flexible life insurance. For life's big milestones, get insurance that's really big on care at Dejardin.com slash care. From CBC News, the world this hour, I'm Neil Hurland.

We begin in the Northwest Territories. Hundreds of people in the hamlet of Fort Providence are being told to get out while it's still safe to do so. A fire nearby exploded in size this weekend. It's now burning within two kilometers of the community's edge. The fear is winds could push it even closer tonight. Fort Providence is southwest of Yellowknife. Veronica Gargan lives there, but tonight she's at an evacuation center in Hay River. I came by a bus. It was quite smoky. I mean, that smoke was getting thick, so it's kind of scary

too, so right now we're in a safe place. Structure protection teams are in Fort Providence trying to save homes and critical infrastructure. On Friday, another fire forced the evacuation of Wattie. Firefighters say they've had favorable winds there for the last 24 hours. The number of new wildfires in BC has shot up over the past few days caused by hot and dry conditions and lightning strikes. The coastal fire center in southwest BC saw more than a thousand lightning strikes just on Friday, and a number of fires were sparked near Pemberton. Sambellion is a fire information officer. Fire danger rating across the coastal fire center right now is a mix of moderate to high. So in these conditions,

spark can cause a wildfire. We did see some precipitation along with this lightning event, but it won't be enough to soak those finer fuels on our forest floors that are sort of primed for ignition or to extinguish any fires. Bellion says that many of the fires were located in high alpine areas. In Nova Scotia, officials say the Long Lake fire in the Annapolis Valley is still out of control. The good news is no more damage has been reported and favorable weather is helping fire crews make progress on containing the flames. But as Julia Wong reports, evacuees are worried and want to go back home. Anxiety is absolutely increasing.

Jonathan Gillis is trying to keep evacuees calm. It's been more than two weeks since the Long Lake Wildfire forced hundreds of people from their homes in Nova Scotia's Annapolis Valley. It's destroyed 20 houses and damaged many others. Gillis, the president of the West Dalhousie Community Hall, says residents were not prepared to be out of their homes for this long, and some, like Robert Howie, are losing patience. It would be nice to know when we're going back in, not as a date, but what we're working towards.

Officials say they're working to keep the fire from spreading to other communities and say they're aiming to get evacuees home as soon as possible. Julia Wong, CBC News, Bridgetown, Nova Scotia. The president of China is welcoming a group. group of national leaders that don't always get invited to meetings of Western leaders. He's hosting a two-day summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It's a chance for two particular leaders to flex their political muscle. Philip Lee Shanok reports. A steady parade of world leaders arrive in the Chinese port city of Chen Zhen. Among the heads of state

greeted warmly on the red carpet by Chinese president Xi Jinping, Russia's Vladimir Putin, and India's Narendra Modi. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization includes China, Russia, and India, and the likes of Belarus, Pakistan, and Iran. It's a large and growing alliance encompassing about half the world's population, and it's looking to counterbalance the influence of the group of seven nations and an increasingly unpredictable United States. This summit has already seen efforts to repair relations between India and China, with President Xi telling Prime Minister Modi the world is in the midst of a once-in-a-century transformation

and the two most populous countries can be partners in success. The dragon and the elephant can dance together. Philip Lyshadok, CBC News, Toronto. We're following a developing story in Nevada. A man has been found dead at the annual Burning Man Festival in the desert. Police are investigating it as a murder. Rangers found the body of a white adult male lying on the ground in a pool of blood.

And that is your world this hour. For CBC News, I'm Neil Hurland.