Canadian seniors are wealthier than ever. Do seniors' discounts still make sense?

The higher incidence of poverty in younger groups has prompted some Canadians to question whether seniors should be the group that enjoys age-related discounts on everything from bus fare to entertainment. (Miljan Zivkovic/Shutterstock)

Whether she's attending a chamber performance or playing in one, cellist and teacher Laura Backstrom says one thing is pretty consistent — the audience "looks like a sea of white hair," she says.

Backstrom, 60, said she initially thought it was because seniors have "a need for music in their life and they have the time for it and they have the resources." But lately, she wonders if audience demographics could have something to do with who gets a discount and who pays full freight.

While few would suggest any older person should struggle financially, the higher incidence of poverty in younger groups has some Canadians wondering whether seniors should be the group to enjoy the most discounts on everything from bus fare to entertainment.

There are valid concerns about seniors living in poverty but statistics show that cohort is not the hardest up in Canada. Six per cent of Canadians aged 65 and older are classed as low-income, compared to 11.1 per cent of all other adults, according to the most recent Statistics Canada data.

600,000 Sudanese refugees have landed in poverty-stricken Chad. Aid groups say they can't begin to keep up

Habiba Kamis Abakar, right, makes the journey into Adré, Chad, with her family. (Elizabeth Hoath/CBC)

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the UN’s refugee agency, says more than 600 people are crossing into Chad at this border every day, and 90 per cent of them are women and children.

They’re escaping a brutal civil war that continues to rage in Sudan between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, and the Sudanese army.

About 10 million people have been forced from their homes by the fighting, making it the biggest displacement crisis in the world.

Inside a refugee camp in Chad, The Current spoke with two men who shared their stories of fleeing violence, trying to protect and provide for their families — and whether they have any hope of one day getting to go home.

As K-pop groups experiment with AI, its future in music is up in the air

K-pop band Seventeen performs at the Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England, on June 28, 2024. (Oli Scarf/Getty Images)

One of the biggest music genres is experimenting with the power of artificial intelligence after K-pop group Seventeen used the technology to help promote the music video for its single Maestro.

The song is a hit, but the use of AI in the multi-billion dollar industry has been met with mixed reviews. 

The teaser trailer, released in April, features segments created by generative AI, and shows people playing classical music with robots in the background, and robots playing what looks like some sort of high-tech keyboard. 

"Some people are really for it. Some people are very much against it. But the use of generative AI, I think, is kind of here to stay," said Michelle Cho, assistant professor of Korean studies at the University of Toronto.

Why scientists had people watch videos of themselves doing karaoke until they blushed

A new study used karaoke to study what happens in people's brains when they blush. (Drazen Zigic/Shutterstock)

When researchers set out to learn what happens to our brains when we blush, they faced a conundrum — how could they sufficiently humiliate their study's subjects as they lay alone in a dark MRI machine?

"We knew that singing karaoke is, of course, very embarrassing," said Milica Nikolić, a developmental psychologist at the University of Amsterdam.

So Nikolić and her colleagues had the participants sing karaoke songs — each carefully selected to ensure maximum mortification — then had them watch video clips of their own performances while getting their brains scanned.

The findings, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shed light on the psychology of blushing, which the authors say is a completely involuntary reaction to feeling exposed.