World Report - December 19: Friday's top stories in 10 minutes

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

Nationalist club "Second Sons Canada" recruits members by focusing on fitness, history and tradition, but its leaders hold radical beliefs. Welland, Ont., hospital, schools in lockdown as police investigate reports of a shooting in area.US authorities say the suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University has taken his own life. Trump administration is set for long-awaited Epstein files release.Australia launches gun buyback program in response to Sunday's mass shooting at Bondi Beach. EU leaders agree to 90 billion Euro loan for Ukraine, but the money isn't being borrowed against frozen Russian assets. ByteDance agrees deal to hand control of TikTok US app to new joint venture, allowing the app to continue to operate in the United States. 

Welcome to Lilith Fair! In the late 90s, a groundbreaking all-female music festival emerged, led by Canadian artist Sarah McLaughlin. Promoter said, you can't put two women on the same bill. People won't come. And it put a huge fire under my butt to prove them wrong. Representation for women in rock music wasn't there. And worse, you're being pitted against each other.

Lilith became a free train. Catch the documentary that chronicles a pivotal moment in music culture. Watch Lilith Fair, building a mystery. For free on CBC Gem. This is a CBC podcast. This is World Report. Good morning, I'm John Northcott. There is a new and growing nationalist club in this country.

It's called Second Suns Canada. On its face, the club is focused on Canadian history, celebrating veterans and encouraging physical fitness. But that public image obscures its leaders' radical beliefs. Christian Poslang and our visual investigative. team have been digging into the group. Race war is here. Second Sun's vice president, Alex Vrend, says racial conflict is underway in Canada.

You may have seen Second Suns marching in the streets, masked, in Niagara, London, Ottawa, or Regina. The group pitches itself as a men's nationalist club, revering Canadian history and tradition. But Vren says the group welcomes neo-Nazis in its ranks. We do have national socialist members. CBC's visual investigations team dug through hundreds of hours of audio and video from personal live streams published by the group's leaders to see what it really represents. Among the hundreds of instances of violent rhetoric, anti-Semitism, and racial slurs, one key idea they push, remigration, an innocuous term that hides its violent intent.

Here's second son's president, Jeremy McKenzie. Get in the truck, you're going to the airport. Make me, okay, bang, anybody else? Stephen Ray is an analyst with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue. Remigration for Second Sons is a euphemism for ethnic clenact. He wants that the group pushes narratives about tradition, history, and heritage to attract recruits. The intent behind that is to essentially create this big front door all the while behind the scenes, the leaders of the group want to actually indoctrinate these people into a more extremist worldview and

more hardcore way of thinking. Second Sons was only founded in 2024, but it's grown rapidly since then. They say over 2,000 people have applied, with chapters across the country. Christian Pawslang, CBC News, Toronto. To learn more about Second Suns, Canada, and read the full story from CBC's visual investigations team, go to cBCNews.ca. We're keeping an eye on a developing situation in southwestern Ontario. Niagara Regional Police say one officer has been shot,

and people in the area around Welland Hospital are being asked to shelter in place. Mark Carcassol is tracking developments and joins us now in studio. Mark, what do we know so far? Well, John, information has been coming out all morning, in little snippets from Niagara Regional Police based in Welland, Ontario, which is just west of Niagara Falls. We did get confirmation from them just after 10 a.m. essentially, where they issued a tweet saying, quote, a shelter in place order remains in effect. As police responded to the area this morning,

one officer was shot and struck by gunfire. The officer has been transported to hospital as a precaution to assess injuries, which are not believed to be life-threatening. A male suspect is contained within a building in the area. That is the last update they've given us so far. They do Do say, though, that there is a large-scale perimeter that they've implemented. Within that perimeter is a hospital, the well-end hospital, and the authority overlooking that hospital has told people that patients currently in the hospital will be treated, but we're not taking any new patients at this time, and anyone with appointments to come in, check in with us because you might have to delay them.

Also, the school that is in their staff and students are being locked down. They are not allowed to leave the school until the lockdown is lifted. But most notably, some students were actually on school buses on route to the school. school at the time of this incident. Parents locally were informed by the school authority that those kids that were on buses at the time had been redirected to another nearby school and they can pick up their kids, get in touch with them, get a little more information there. And that's sort of where things stand right now, John. We're waiting for a little more information on what exactly was police were responding to and the status of the officer

and anyone else involved in this incident. Meanwhile, this large sort of 12-block area under lockdown, shelter in place, until we get a resolution to the situation. That's right. Mark Carcassel joining us in studio. Thank you, Mark. Thank you. In the United States, the five-day manhunt for a campus shooter is over. U.S. authorities say they've found the suspect in the mass shooting at Brown University dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. This, after also linking him to the murder of an MIT professor earlier this week. Steve Futterman reports. After five days, officials say there is no longer a danger. Our Providence neighbors can finally breathe a little easier. The city's mayor, Brett Smiley, made the announcement.

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 more than 120 kilometers away. The break in the case came from a tip that led law enforcement to his vehicle, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Norona. He ran in a car in Boston. He drove it.

We were able to find that car in new, New Hampshire. After the university killings authorities say Valenti 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. Police are still looking for a precise motive, FBI special agent, Ted Docks. Even though the suspect was found that our work is not done. 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. The clock is ticking for the Trump administration. By midnight tonight, Attorney General Pam Bondi is legally required to release a massive archive of files on the late Jeffrey Epstein. After months of delays and a near-unanimous vote in Congress, the Department of Justice must now make over 300 gigabytes of data public. The move follows a week of mounting pressure with new photos showing Epstein alongside some of the world's most powerful men. Victims say they are bracing for the truth, while critics watch for any signs of a potential final hour cover-up. It took a marathon meeting in Brussels, but European leaders have an agreement on the funding scheme to cover Ukraine's massive wartime deficit.

Kyiv is getting 90 billion euros to keep it afloat for the next two years, but the loan will not be secured against frozen Russian assets. Crystal Gamansing reports 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, Viktor Orban, was against that idea and is against the loan borrowing against the EU budget. It looks like a loan, but of course the Ukrainians will never be able to pay it back.

Well, the thing is that it's a great news for us from all respects. 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 time. We continue to hope. We continue to fight.

In his Iran news conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, Ukraine doesn't want peace. His position, Russia, will end the war if the root causes for his full-scale invasion are addressed. Crystal Gamansing, CBC News, London. And finally, content creators are celebrating a new deal that will keep TikTok operating in the United States. It was reported last night, just as users were hitting the red carpet for the TikTok Awards in Hollywood. If for them to find any way to keep it as great, and I hope that they can keep the integrity of what the app initially was, Even if we was to go through a different platform,

the community that's been built on TikTok, anywhere it was going to be strong. I'd love to see free speech alive and well and being protected, especially for the younger generation. U.S. Congress has raised national security concerns about TikTok. It says China could access sensitive user location and browsing data for espionage, or the algorithm could be manipulated to spread propaganda or misinformation.

Anisadari tells us who will control that powerful algorithm. algorithm now. The U.S. side of TikTok will see 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 bite dance, 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's had R.CBC News, Calvert. And that is the latest national and international news from World Report. I'm John Northcott. This is CBC News. For more CBC podcasts, go to cBC.ca.com.