The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/12/19 at 11:00 EST

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/12/19 at 11:00 EST

Okay, so there's this new play about the Rogers family and their battle for control over the gigantic telecom empire, and I cannot stop thinking about it. I'm Alameen Abdul-Mahmoud. I host a pop culture show called Commotion. This week, we're talking about Rogers v. Rogers, and on the show, we'll get into what this corporate story actually tells us about our national mythology and why Canadian theater audiences are craving more and more homegrown stories. Find and follow Commotion on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. From CBC News, the world is sour. I'm Neil Kumar. Today is the deadline for the U.S. Department of Justice to release its files on the late-convicted sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. Years of criminal investigations have amassed a vast amount of documents and other evidence. As Willie Lauer reports, the release could have big implications for the Trump administration.

Jeffrey Epstein killed himself while in custody in 2019, but his life, social network, and crimes have continued to occupy an outsized space in the American consciousness. Last month, Congress voted in favor of the Epstein-Files Transparency Act, despite pressure from President Trump to vote against it. Trump ultimately signed that bill into law. Republican Representative Thomas Massey played a key role in pushing the bill through Congress. He expects there to be roughly 20 names released in documents of people who are accused of committing crimes. If we get a large production and it does not contain a single name of any male who's accused of a sex crime or sex trafficking or rape or any of these things, then we know they haven't produced all the documents. It's that simple.

Many of Epstein's victims campaigned tirelessly for the release of these documents, Willie Lowry, CBC News, Washington. We are keeping an eye on a developing situation in Welland, Ontario, where Niagara Regional Police are asking people, to shelter in place at Welland Hospital in the surrounding area, including Plymouth Public School. Officers 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. U.S. authorities say they have found the body of the suspect in last Saturday's mass shooting at Brown University. Investigators also linked the 48-year-old to the killing of an MIT professor two days later.

Massachusetts U.S. attorney Leah Foley says, police discover the body in a storage facility. At approximately 9 p.m., federal agents breached a storage locker in Salem, New Hampshire, in search of Claudio Neves Valenti, a Portuguese national, we believed, shot and killed two Brown University students and an MIT professor in Brookline, Massachusetts. Federal agents found Nees-Volente dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Police traced Nees-Volente's rental car to the site, And while he attended the school as a grad student in 2000, officials say he had no current ties to the university.

Investigators are still searching for motive in the attack that left two people dead and nine others wounded. A new study is shown and Ontario policy implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic has saved dozens of lives. The research looked at an air conditioning mandate put in place in 2021 spurred by CBC News and the difference had made in health outcomes of seniors in long-term care homes. Lisa Jing reports. It was a necessary undertaking. Geriatrician Nathan Stahl on investigating the effects of Ontario's decision to mandate air conditioning in all residents' rooms in long-term care homes. And during the COVID-19 pandemic, residents were not able to congregate.

During the pandemic in 2021, CBC News was the first to ask Ontario Premier Doug Ford why AC wasn't mandatory in nursing home rooms, resulting in the province requiring it be installed by spring of 2020. Stahl's subsequent study found residents in homes without AC had an 8% higher odds of dying on extreme heat days compared with residents of homes with AC. York University Professor Emeritus Pat Armstrong and long-term care researcher says other provinces need to pay attention. You can die from the heat as well as you can die from the cold. She says a clear indication air conditioning is no longer a luxury.

Lisa Xing, CBC News, Toronto. And that is The World is Sour. Remember, you can listen to us where we get your podcast. We update every hour seven days week, or you can listen to us any time on voice-activated devices such as Google Home. For CBC News, I'm Neil Kumar. Thank you.