Front Burner

The Kremlin says Alexei Navalny died Friday in an Arctic prison. After surviving a poisoning and still making the decision to return to Russia, President Vladimir Putin's most significant opposition figure was serving 19 years on extremism charges.

What do we know about how Navalny died?

Amid accusations that he was murdered, what motivations would Navalny's enemies have for acting against him now? 

Not long after a number of Western commentators predicted Putin's demise over the Ukraine war, what does Navalny's death mean for Putin's tightening grip on Russia?

CBC's Briar Stewart explains.

When Jon Stewart stepped down as host of the Daily Show in 2015, it seemed pretty conclusive. For nearly 16 years, he guided the show through 9/11, the Iraq war, the 2008 financial crisis and more, becoming a voice of reason for many amid growing political divisions — but it was time to move on.

This week saw him back in the host's chair once again, where he'll now be every Monday. But things have changed a lot in the last nine years — especially politics. Does Stewart's brand of Bush-era both-sides-ism still work in 2024? Slate writer and senior editor Sam Adams unpacks the legacy of the Daily Show and whether the world still needs it.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Last week, paramedics in Belleville, Ontario responded to 13 drug overdoses in a single hour. By the time the city declared a state of emergency two days later, the total had reached almost two dozen.

So how did these near-simultaneous overdoses unfold? What caused them? And how can we stop the spikes of drug poisonings that have been happening in cities across Ontario?

Dan Taekema is CBC’s reporter covering eastern Ontario communities from Belleville, to Kingston, and beyond.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Rafah, a tiny city at Gaza’s border with Egypt, is currently sheltering more than half of the territory’s population. Many, crammed together in tent cities, have already relocated multiple times, as Israel’s war with Hamas has pushed them further and further south.

Now, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pledges to move ahead with a major assault on Rafah, the civilians sheltering in the city say there’s nowhere else to go.

Today our guest is Haaretz reporter Yarden Michaeli. He and his colleague Avi Scharf recently investigated the vast devastation that the Israel Defense Forces’ operations have left in Gaza. He talks to us about the path of destruction that kettled 1.4 million people into Rafah, and what it could mean if a full-scale invasion goes ahead.

For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.