The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/12/19 at 10:00 EST

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/12/19 at 10:00 EST

Hi, Steve Patterson here, host of The Debaters, the show where we answer your most burning questions, like, do candles deserve more appreciation? Canada's best comedians wax on about it in this week's new episode, so listen wherever you get your podcasts. From CBC News, the world is sour. I'm Neil Kumar. Breaking news from Wellin, Ontario, where Niagara Regional Police are asking people to shelter in place at Welland Hospital and the Sun. surrounding area, including Plymouth Public School. Officers are responding to reports of a shooting in the southwestern Ontario community. The hospital is currently in lockdown, and there is a heavy police presence in the area. Turning to another mass shooting investigation, the Brown University case, now with the prime suspect dead, the focus this morning has turned to finding a motive.

Steve Futterman reports. The suspect in the mass shooting, 48-year-old Claudio Nevis Valenti, a Portuguese national and former Brown University graduate student was found dead in a storage unit. The break in the case came from a tip that led law enforcement to his vehicle, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Nerona. You ran in a car in Boston. We were able to find that car in New Hampshire.

After the university killings authorities say Valente drove to the Boston suburb of Brookline, where he allegedly killed an MIT physics professor, Nuno Larero, also Portuguese. Valenti and the professor attended the same school in Portugal in the late 1990s. Last night in Providence, Brown University students were glad the ordeal has ended. I mean, I definitely think there's a sense of relief in the community, having found the person. Officials say Valenti tried various methods to evade police, including changing license plates.

Steve Futterman, CBC News, Los Angeles. European leaders now have an agreement on a funding scheme to cover Ukraine's massive wartime deficit, following a marathon meeting in Brussels. Kiev is getting 90 billion euros to keep it afloat for the next two years. However, the loan will not be secured against frozen Russian assets. Crystal Gumancing has more from London. And I'm very pleased to say we made it. Emerging from the 17-hour summit, Ursula von der Leyen,

the European Union Commission president, detailed the new financial lifeline for Ukraine. Very important here. Ukraine would only need to pay back the loan once it receives reparations. 90 billion euros as promised. In the end, European leaders abandoned a much-touted idea to fund Ukraine with Russian frozen state assets. A move Russia fought against threatening retribution.

Hungary's leader, Victor Orban, was against that idea and is against the loan borrowing against the EU budget. Alexander Moreshko, chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Ukrainian Parliament, says his country was in such a desperate situation. They're happy to just have the money. They still feel Russian frozen assets should be turned over to Ukraine, but understand some countries have concerns requiring more timed.

Crystal Gamansing, CBC News, London. A deal to keep TikTok operating in the United States has now been signed. As Anisa Dari reports, it should keep the social media app under the control of U.S.-based investors. The U.S. side of TikTok will seek control sold and transferred to American investors by January 22nd. That deal is now signed, according to a memo seen by both the Associated Press and Reuters. Reports indicate that memo says both TikTok and ByteDance, the video app's parent company, have agreed that a little

under half of a new joint venture will be owned by three U.S. companies, MGX, Silver Lake, and Oracle. That's a tech company controlled by Trump ally Larry Ellison. Just under 20% of this new TikTok company will stick with the current owner, China-based bite dance. The TikTok app had been banned during the Biden administration over national security concerns tied to Chinese ownership. The first Trump administration had expressed similar concerns, but this time around, Trump kept postponing, cutting off the app. Under this deal, reports say the algorithm,

that's the program that controls what people see on TikTok, will be reconfigured based on U.S. data. And he said RECBC News, Calgary. that is your world this hour. Remember we can listen to us where we got your podcast. The world this hour is updated every hour seven days a week. For CBC News, I'm Neil Kumar.