The World This Hour - The World This Hour for 2025/12/21 at 15:00 EST

Episode Date: December 21, 2025

The World This Hour for 2025/12/21 at 15:00 EST

Listen, what I love about Sarah Marshall's work as a podcaster is she can sit you inside a story like no one can. She can get into the satanic panic and you feel like you understand it better. And she does that without sensationalizing it. My name is Alameen, Abdul Mahmood, and that is the kind of thoughtful cultural analysis that we do on our show, commotion. Every day I sit down with journalists or insiders or culture critics and they weigh in on the books and TV shows and movies and music that you keep hearing about. And we get into what pop culture right now tells us about ourselves. So if you love pop culture, find commotion wherever you get your podcasts. From CBC News, the world this hour.

I'm Kate McGilfrey. In a year-end interview, the Prime Minister is pulling away from Trudeau-era climate policy. Mark Carney says the plan had too much regulation and not enough investment in clean energy and technology. Olivia Stefanovic has more. The fact is we're not going to meet our targets. It's the Prime Minister's strongest rejection yet of his performance. predecessor's climate plan. Mark Carney told CBC chief political correspondent Rosemary Barton, Canada won't achieve its climate goals under former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's plan. So he's

trying to steer the country in a new direction. We are going to grow clean energy in this country at a scale never seen before. But Carney's plan may also include a new biggimen pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific coast, a potential project that spurred the cabinet resignation of environmentalist Stephen Gilbo, who Carney says knew the details of a memorandum of understanding signed with Alberta before departing. And elements of the MOU were changed consistent with his views. Carney didn't specify which elements of the agreement were changed for Gilbo. The former minister declined CBC's request for an interview. Olivia Estevenovich, CBC News, Ottawa. The U.S. Coast Guard is pursuing another sanctioned oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela. The U.S.

has already seized two other tankers in less than two weeks. It's part of the Trump administration's effort to stop Venezuela from using what it says are false-flagged ships than to avoid sanctions on its oil sales. The politicians who spearheaded legislation forcing the release of the Epstein files are now working on a new plan to force the Department of Justice to release those documents in full. This comes after some of the files that were released on Friday were scrubbed off the DOJ website. Mitch McCann has the latest. The failure of the Department of Justice

to release all of its files on Jeffrey Epstein has congressional lawmakers looking for ways to hold Attorney General Pambondi to account. Republican Thomas Massey and Democrat Rokana lead efforts to force their release and Kana says they are now building bipartisan support to hold the Attorney General in contempt. We only need the House for inherent contempt

and we're building a bipartisan coalition and it would fine Pambondi for every day that she's not releasing these documents. The Deputy Attorney General says they need more time to review documents to protect victims' privacy. And Todd Blanche is defending the removal of images, including one featuring Donald Trump, saying they are checking privacy concerns raised by victims or advocates. We're going to address it. If we need to redact faces or other information, we will, and then we'll put it back up. The Justice Department says more files will be released in the coming weeks. Mitch McCann for CBC News, New York.

South Africa is dealing with its second mass shooting in a month. Nine people were killed, another 10 wounded when gunmen opened fire inside and outside of a tavern. It happened in Becker's Dahl, 40 kilometers southwest of Johannesburg. Local police commissioner Fred Kikana said shooters pulled up in two vehicles. Ten males alighted, nine of them with pistols, one of them with AK-47 rifle. They entered the tavern and randomly shot at the patrons, unprovoked. It's not yet clear why this happened or if the attack was entirely random. And many shoppers are still trying to buy Canadian during the holidays.

After U.S. tariffs reorganized consumer priorities in this country earlier this year, Gareth Davies is the founder of Maker House. That's an Ottawa shop that sells only Canadian-made goods. He says while there are signs of a buy-Canadian slowdown since March, his sales are still significantly higher. I think it points to the fact that people are this holiday season, looking for Canadian-made gifts. And we're hearing that, too, from our customers,

seeing a lot of new faces in the store and a lot of new orders from new customers online who probably wouldn't be looking for us in a previous year. Davies says December's sales are up by 30 to 40% compared to last year. That's the world this hour. For news anytime, head to our website, cbcnews.ca. For CBC News, I'm Kate McGilfrey. Thank you.