Front Burner

Today, an in-depth look at puberty blockers and their use on minors with gender dysphoria. These drugs have come under an enormous amount of scrutiny in recent years, with some questioning their benefits, safety and long-term impact. After banning the use of puberty blockers for gender treatment of people under 18, a new clinical trial in the U.K. aims to get to the bottom of those concerns. Azeen...

First, the latest on the massacre at Bondi Beach in Australia. The mass shooting targeted the Jewish community on the first day of Hanukkah. We speak with Sean Tarek Goodwin, a reporter with ABC News, who was one of the first to arrive on the scene. Second, a surprise defection on Parliament Hill. Late last week, just hours after Parliament wrapped for the year, the Liberals welcomed another floor...

‘Make America Great Again' has been Donald Trump’s brand for a decade, riding the movement’s anti-elitist wave into the presidency and remaking the Republican Party. But cracks are now showing in the coalition, raising questions about Trump’s commitment to MAGA goals. One of his staunchest allies has become his loudest critic: Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently announced sh...

Every U.S. president releases a national security strategy document about a year into their term, but few have made as big a splash as Donald Trump's, earlier this month. The document formally spells out much of what we've come to expect from Trump's approach to foreign policy in his second term: political relationships are transactional, and American interests take priority above all else. The do...

It's estimated that as many as 10 per cent of adults in Canada use a GLP-1 type drug like Ozempic. The prescription medicine is used for type 2 diabetes management and increasingly prescribed off-label for weight loss. And this month, for the first time, the World Health Organization has conditionally recommended GLP-1 drugs for the long-term treatment of obesity. But while these drugs have been c...

Two of the biggest media companies in the world are going to war over Warner Bros. Discovery, a massive media conglomerate that owns a historic Hollywood studio, as well as the likes of  HBO  and  CNN .  This week, Paramount put in a hostile all-cash takeover bid for Warner Brothers worth more than $108 billion. This followed Netflix’s announcement a few days earlier that they...

Through 2022 and 2023, two Vancouver activists made international headlines with DULF — the Drug User Liberation Front. In a bid to stop overdose deaths, founders Jeremy Kalicum and Eris Nyx sold clean, tested drugs — bought on the dark web — to their members as an alternative to the contaminated street supply. But that international attention led to political blowback. DULF was raided by police,...

Today, we bring you a wrap on U.S. politics. We begin with two scandals plaguing U.S. defense secretary Pete Hegseth, from allegations of war crimes to a scathing report accusing him of mishandling classified military intelligence. And we cover the fallout from President Donald Trump’s tirade against Somali immigrants, including a surge of ICE raids in Minneapolis. Plus, the politics behind Trump’...

In 2015, as governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney’s ‘Tragedy of the Horizons’ speech made waves in the global climate community. It was seen as a landmark call for the financial sector to recognize the costs of climate breakdown. But fast forward 10 years and a fierce debate is swirling around whether Carney is living up to that warning. Since becoming Prime Minister, he’s scrapped the cons...

The U.S. Supreme Court is soon expected to rule on the legality of President Donald Trump's sweeping worldwide tariffs. The court will rule on whether his use of a 1970s national security law violates the U.S. constitution, which clearly states that only Congress has the authority to implement taxes — of which tariffs are a type. But regardless of which way the court rules, Trump and his administr...

Last week, two National Guard soldiers were shot in Washington, D.C. after they were ambushed by a lone shooter near the airport. One was killed and the other remains in serious condition. The suspect, Rahmanullah Lakanwal, was shot and is still in hospital facing murder charges. The picture emerging of Lakanwal is of an isolated, deeply troubled man struggling to support his wife and five kids.&n...

Our guest today has taken a long look at an out-of-fashion principle in higher learning – institutional neutrality. Basically it’s the importance of letting students and faculty say what they want, and not have the administration put its thumb on the scale. In that he sees a whole world of problems facing post-secondary education today, from public and political support to an ongoing court case. S...

Over the weekend, Donald Trump declared on Truth Social that the airspace around Venezuela should be considered closed. Venezuela’s foreign ministry responded by calling the comments "another extravagant, illegal and unjustified aggression against the Venezuelan people". Late last week, Trump also said that land action against alleged drug trafficking networks in the country could start very soon....

In a somber speech last week Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned his people that their country was on the brink of a critical choice: either lose their dignity or risk alienating a key partner, America. His speech came after Donald Trump set a deadline demanding the war-torn country accept a unilateral American peace proposal. That proposal has been internationally panned and called a R...

Sudan’s civil war is now the worst displacement crisis in the world, with more than 12 million people currently displaced from their homes. Earlier this year, the outgoing Biden administration designated the war a genocide.  This war includes countless proxies fighting over billions of dollars in natural resources, access to key shipping routes along the Red Sea, and control of one of the old...

On Thursday Prime Minister Mark Carney and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith are set to announce the outlines of a plan that could set Alberta and B.C. on a collision course. It’s a potential energy deal that would give Alberta special exemptions from federal environmental laws and offer political support for a new oil pipeline to the B.C. coast, among other things. That is, if Alberta can get throug...

After meeting on the sidelines of the G20 in South Africa, Prime Minister Mark Carney and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have announced they would restart trade talks. It’s a long way from where the two countries have been for the last several years. Relations blew up in 2023 after former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused agents of India’s government of being involved in the murder of a S...

At a press conference last week U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi laid out fresh allegations against Ryan Wedding, a 44-year-old Canadian and former Olympian who has been on the FBI’s most wanted list since March. Wedding is already accused of orchestrating multiple murders, and these new charges add to the drug and conspiracy allegations he’s facing. We speak to Calvi Leon, a reporter at the Toront...

Section 33 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms — the so-called "notwithstanding clause" — allows governments, both provincial and federal, to override sweeping sections of the other rights the Charter grants. It was intended as a last resort to prevent federal and judicial overreach, leaving power with elected officials, accountable to voters. A compromise demanded by premiers like Albe...

For decades there have been allegations that wealthy foreigners traveled into the Bosnian war, during the siege of Sarajevo, to shoot at besieged civilians for sport. That accusation is now the subject of an investigation by the public prosecutor's office in Milan, Italy. Today, we’re joined by Janine di Giovanni who covered the Bosnian war as a reporter for the Times of London, and lived through...

Mark Carney’s Liberals survived a confidence vote on their first budget Monday night.  It was a strange vote, with four members of the Conservatives and the NDP abstaining, as well as some voting chaos from two of the most powerful members of the Conservative Party. CBC’s senior Parliamentary writer Aaron Wherry breaks down how the vote went, what it tells us about Parliament right now, and w...

Over 75 years ago, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was established and signed by the newly formed United Nations after the atrocities of the Second World War to create a roadmap that establishes that every single person, regardless of who they are or where they’re from, has inalienable, inherent rights that the world must protect. But if you’ve been paying attention to the news at all la...

With the absolutely massive amounts of money tied up in the AI data centre boom, it's not hard to see why people fear a bubble. That worry has come into sharper focus in recent weeks, following comments from OpenAI and some big moves on the stock market. This recent round of bubble fear isn't about the tech itself. Rather, it's a growing realization that the boom is being funded in a way that’s st...

It started with U.S. President Donald Trump's 'quips' about Canada becoming the 51st state. Nearly a year later, the Canada-U.S. relationship has weathered a barrage of tariffs, trade threats and taunts. CBC's Washington bureau — Paul Hunter, Katie Simpson and Willy Lowry — weigh in on the past year of Canada-U.S. relations under Trump, the current trade stalemate and whether the country that's be...

This week, thousands of pages of documents were released from the estate of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Some suggest Donald Trump knew more about Epstein’s crimes than the President has let on –– though the White House has called it a smear job. These 23-thousand pages also tell a story that goes much further than the White House, giving insight into just how enmeshed Epstein was with...