Front Burner

Weeks after a train derailed and crews released and burned toxic chemicals, officials are reassuring residents of East Palestine, Ohio that the air and water are safe. Many residents, however, remain wary of the long-term effects of materials like vinyl chloride, with some reporting symptoms like skin and eye irritation and hoarseness. Simultaneously, a political conversation is unfolding about wh...

News of the mysterious deaths of billionaire Canadian pharma giant Barry Sherman and his philanthropist wife Honey in December 2017 reverberated around the world. Five years later, with no arrests and little news from the police, their deaths remain shrouded in mystery and conspiracy theories, with too many lingering questions. Not just who killed them, but what kind of life do you have to live th...

Within the first several months of the COVID-19 pandemic, doctors around the world noticed something strange. Suddenly, they were seeing a surge of young patients presenting with sudden, explosive tics. But in many cases, these tics didn’t fit the profile of a tic disorder like Tourette Syndrome. Doctors started searching for a shared source that was causing the outbreak, and that search led them...

Last week, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called out oil companies for raking in “monster profits” and expanding production instead of focusing on renewable energy. 2022 was a record-breaking year for oil producers. According to the International Energy Agency, global gas and oil profits went from a recent average of $1.5 trillion to four trillion dollars last year alone. And in...

It all started two weeks ago with a suspected Chinese spy balloon, which carried a payload about the size of three buses. A U.S. fighter jet shot it down after it floated across the continent. Then, the U.S shot down a second object: something airborne over Alaska that the U.S. said was likely not a balloon at all. And now, there’s been a third and a fourth object taken down above North America th...

A few days ago, Canopy Growth Corporation, one of weed's biggest players, announced significant cuts and the closure of its headquarters in Smith Falls, Ontario, resulting in 800 layoffs for the town's biggest employer. Canopy reported a net loss of $267 million this quarter, bringing the struggling company's losses in the first three quarters of the year to $2.6 billion. Today on Front Burner, So...

An hour after the Toronto Star published an article about his affair on Friday, mayor John Tory was standing before reporters at Toronto City Hall. He offered his resignation. During his over eight years in office, some praised Tory as a boring mayor, a return to normalcy after the explosive Rob Ford years. But his critics have also accused him of presiding over a historic decline in Toronto, poin...

In 1985, at the height of the Black Power era, police dropped a bomb in a Philadelphia neighborhood. Their target? A family of Black radicals known as ‘MOVE,’ who found themselves ensnared in a city — and nation’s — domestic war on Black Liberation. Over seven episodes, host Matthew Amha investigates the events that culminated in the MOVE bombing, and the long afterlife of a forgotten American tra...

Last year, a TV show called Pam and Tommy dramatized the turbulent marriage between Canadian actress/model Pamela Anderson and Mötley Crüe drummer Tommy Lee. It’s the latest in a string of documentaries and shows that revisit and reframe the cultural conversation around famous women of the ‘90s and 2000s who were often wronged in the name of entertainment. But for Pamela Anderson, Pam and Tommy wa...

Alaa Alakel says the night after major earthquakes struck her home country of Syria was maybe the worst night of her life. She is a student in Toronto and waited sleeplessly by her phone for news from her family back home in Idlib. Rescue teams continue to search for survivors of the earthquakes that hit southern Turkey and northwest Syria on Monday. It’s the deadliest earthquake in the last decad...

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met with all 13 of Canada's premiers on Tuesday to pitch his plan for increased health-care funding to provinces and territories. The measures would amount to over $46 billion in new funding and – combined with what Ottawa was already planning to pitch in – totals almost 200 billion in total federal health-care spending over the next decade. Today, CBC chief political...

Canadian director Sarah Polley’s new Oscar-nominated film Women Talking is set in an isolated religious community where a group of women and girls must decide how to respond to sexual assault in their community. Over two days, they debate: should they do nothing, should they fight, or should they flee? Polley has been clear that her story is fiction. It is based on a novel by Miriam Toews, a Canad...

At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland last month, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger made a prediction about how the world will vie for resources in the coming decades. For years, Gelsinger said, much of geopolitical relations have turned on access to oil reserves. But in the future, he thinks a more important factor will be where microchips are made. Intel is a prominent figure in the computer c...

Behind every catfish, there’s the bait. Who is Janessa Brazil? Stolen images of an adult entertainment star are being used to con victims out of thousands of dollars, breaking hearts in the process. Journalist Hannah Ajala embarks on a quest to find Janessa, in this 8-part true crime series. And who is responsible for catfishing scams? Produced for the BBC World Service and CBC Podcasts by Antica...

Ozempic is a brand name for a drug that's prescribed to help manage Type 2 diabetes. But it's also being used in Canada as a treatment for obesity, something that some doctors – and a lot of people on TikTok – are talking about. There's a lot of questions about the risks and benefits of Ozempic when it comes to weight loss, and so much interest that there's been supply shortages of the drug, parti...

This week, a parliamentary committee questioned Gymnastics Canada CEO, Ian Moss, about his organization’s response to allegations of misconduct against a national team coach. The national gymnastics federation is just the latest in a growing list of sports organizations that have faced scrutiny for their handling of allegations of abuse and misconduct. Many have called it a safe sport crisis. Whil...

Over the past month, Israelis have taken to the streets in massive demonstrations. They're opposed to Prime Minister Netanyahu's new plan to limit the power of the Supreme Court and worry about what that means for minority rights and Israeli democracy. Today, we will talk about the make-up of Netanyahu's new coalition government and why that has protestors so concerned. We'll talk about Minister o...

Last week, after months of requests, Germany agreed to send German-built tanks called Leopard 2s to Ukraine, to help in their fight against Russia. That decision opened the door for other countries to send their Leopard 2s, including Canada – which will send four. The US also jumped in, agreeing to send 31 of its M1 Abrams tanks. All in, over 300 tanks are being sent to the country. Now, Ukraine i...

29-year-old Tyre Nichols was on his way to his mother’s house when Memphis police pulled him over. Police body cam footage and other video show officers punching, pepper-spraying, hitting him with a baton, and kicking him. He died three days later in hospital. Officials in Memphis have fired the five officers who were involved, who are all Black, and charged them with second-degree murder. They’ve...

This week, it was announced that Everything Everywhere All At Once was leading the Oscars with eleven nominations in total. It’s a mind-bending movie about a Chinese-American immigrant family with a laundromat that’s facing a tax audit. It’s a high-concept science fiction with a multiverse storyline, but it’s resonating with people for touching on issues like intergenerational trauma, the experien...

WARNING: This episode contains disturbting details about the deaths of two women and an Indigenous girl, in addition to allegations of sexual assault. Key First Nation member Noelle O’Soup died at just 14 years old. Police found her body in an apartment in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where they also found the bodies of an unnamed woman and a man immigration officials deemed a “danger to the pub...

In the weeks following the 2020 killings of 22 people in Portapique, Nova Scotia — the deadliest shooting rampage in Canadian history — the federal government began introducing steps to limit the types of guns people can own and use. There were orders in council, which began with a list of more than 1,500 firearms, before more were added, and later a piece of proposed gun control legislation, Bill...

Wagner Group is a private army that's been violently advancing Russian interests internationally – but in the shadows – for years. Now as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has stalled, the fighters-for-hire have taken centre stage to fight on Russia’s side. The mercenaries have been involved in some of the bloodiest battles of the entire war. Mary Ilyushina is a reporter covering Russia for the Washing...

Since Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took power, the federal government has awarded consulting firm McKinsey over $100 million dollars in contracts. Early this month, Radio-Canada reported that Ottawa’s use of the firm has skyrocketed since 2015, and that sources inside Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada were concerned about McKinsey’s growing influence on their policy without public know...

World news, local voices. Nothing is Foreign is a weekly trip to where the story is unfolding. Hosted by Tamara Khandaker. Since the Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021, there has been a crackdown on the rights and freedoms of women in the country. This episode of Nothing is Foreign shares the courageous story of a teacher in Afghanistan and her students — a secret class of girls be...