Capturing a lightning rod in a bottle. We'll find out more about Richard Colvin -- the Canadian diplomat whose testimony about torture in Afghanistan has shocked the country.

Close encounters of the fourth-estate kind. A feature interview with Lydia Cacho -- a Mexican journalist who defied beatings and death threats to tell her stories.

Once more unto the breach. An American judge finds The Army Corps of Engineers responsible for levee failures during Hurricane Katrina.

Herman on the mount. The European Union's first permanent president may not be a firebrand -- but he's no Belgian waffler.

Building consensus? Not a chance. A member of a Jewish group against settlements in the occupied territories gives us a window into her thinking.

And...if you ask them "O death, where is thy sting?", they'll say, "My forehead?" Turns out the most frightening thing about killer bees is how unbelievably stupid they are.

As It Happens, the Thursday edition. Radio that reflects on the unbearable dullness of bee-ing.

They say you shouldn't shoot the messenger. But you could hear ricochets all over Parliament Hill today.

Yesterday, a senior Canadian diplomat testified at a House of Commons committee looking into the torture of Afghan detainees. Richard Colvin worked for Canada's Department of Foreign Affairs in Afghanistan from 2006 to 2007. In his testimony yesterday, he said that he warned Canadian government and military officials on several occasions that Afghan detainees being turned over by Canadian soldiers were being tortured. However, according to Mr. Colvin, his warnings were repeatedly ignored.

Today, the Conservative government is distancing itself from Mr. Colvin and his comments, by questioning the credibility of his testimony. Here is an exchange between Peter MacKay, the Minister of Defence, and Bob Rae, the Liberal Foreign Affairs critic, that took place earlier today in Question Period, for the record.

So just who exactly is the man at the centre of this storm? To learn more about Richard Colvin, we turned to Michael Semple, who worked in Afghanistan during the same period. Michael Semple was Richard Colvin's European Union counterpart -- serving as the Deputy to the E-U's Special Representative for Afghanistan.

Michael Semple is currently at Harvard University's Carr Center, and that is where we reached him.

On last night's programme, we played a portion of Richard Colvin's testimony to the House of Commons committee. We also mentioned that we had requested an interview from the Minister of Defence, but he was unavailable.

In response, Jane Livingston, in Knowlton, Quebec, sent us the following e-mail:

"I was totally appalled to hear of the torture of prisoners handed over by our troops to Afghani officials. However, I don't think Steven Harper is listening. How do we, as ordinary citizens, get these government officials into the broadcast studios to answer for the actions? It was no surprise to me that the government was, once again, 'unavailable for comment.'"

Well, we did try again to get that comment from a member of the government. Here is the list of Conservative Members of Parliament whom we requested interviews with today:

Peter MacKay, the Minister of Defence;

Laurie Hawn, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Defence, and member of the Special Committee on the Canadian Mission in Afghanistan;

Jim Abbott, the Parliamentary Secretary for the Minister of International Co-operation, and another member of the Committee on Afghanistan;

Cheryl Gallant, a Conservative M-P who also was at yesterday's Special Committee meeting;

And finally, Peter Kent, the Minister of State of Foreign Affairs.

Unfortunately, they were all unavailable for comment.And still with Afghanistan...

Hamid Karzai was sworn in today for his second term as the country's president. As you'll recall, the presidential election was plagued by widespread allegations of fraud. After much delay, Mr. Karzai was declared the winner -- but only after his main rival Abdullah Abdullah pulled out of a planned run-off, because he said it was impossible to hold a fair vote.

Today, Abdullah Abdullah gave his perspective on the new government. Here is some of what he had to say, for the record.

Many of the people who warned it could happen were ignored. Now, for the first time a U.S. Court has found the government directly responsible for some of the damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Seven plaintiffs had filed a lawsuit, arguing that the Mississippi River Gulf Coast Outlet, a canal built by the Army Corps of Engineers, contributed to the flooding in New Orleans. And yesterday, Judge Stanwood Duval ruled that the plaintiffs were right -- that negligence by the U.S. Army had indeed led to significant flooding.

Dr. Ivor van Heerden is the former deputy director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center. He consulted for the plaintiffs in the case. Today he's in Oberlin, Ohio.

Hundreds of people gathered this afternoon at St. Anne's Roman Catholic Church on the Esgenoopetitj First Nation, commonly known as Burnt Church, in New Brunswick. They were there for Hilary Bonnell's funeral.

The sixteen-year-old had been missing since early September. She was last seen walking on a highway near the First Nation community after attending a party. Hilary's remains were discovered buried in a wooded area near Tracadie-Sheila last week.

Yesterday, at her daughter's wake, Pam Fillier spoke to reporters about her grief, and the need for facilities for young people in the community.

Hello again, I'm CO.

And I'm BB. This is As It Happens, Part Two.

Coming up:

Property values: we'll hear from a member of Peace Now -- a group of Israelis fighting settlements in the occupied territory.

The calm after The Swarm: if you're still scared of killer bees, you'll be relieved to find out that they're really dumb.

Those stories are still to come on As It Happens.

Earlier this week, Mexico's top-selling newspaper, E-l Universal, released this tally: cumulatively, twelve reporters, photographers, editors and radio hosts have been murdered in Mexico so far this year. That number -- and numbers from years past -- makes Mexico the most dangerous place for journalists to work in the Western hemisphere.

That's not news to Lydia Cacho.

Six years ago, Ms. Cacho wrote a series of articles for the local Cancun newspaper Por Esto. The articles examined allegations of child sexual abuse, made by social service organizations like UNICEF. Those organizations were claiming that some popular Mexican tourist destinations, including Cancun, were becoming centres for child pornography rings. Ms. Cacho's reporting was fearless -- she dug deep, and exposed high-level officials implicated in these rings.

A couple of years later, she published a book about her work entitled The Demons of Eden: The Power That Protects Child Pornography. And that book made her a target.

Eight months after its release, in 2005, Lydia Cacho was arrested. Police picked her up in Cancun and drove her from Cancun to a beachfront twenty hours away. They tortured her, and told her that, unless she retracted her allegations and renounced her book, she would die.

Today, the Mexican journalist is in Toronto to receive PEN Canada's One Humanitarian Award. PEN Canada is a not-for-profit organization that defends freedom of expression for writers and journalists around the world.

Lydia Cacho joined Carol in our Toronto studio, earlier today.

He's described, politely, as a "pragmatic, rather than charismatic figure". And as of tonight, Herman van Rompuy is the first permanent president of the European Council.

The appointment of the Belgian Prime Minister as the top E.U. official came down to the wire, with national leaders reaching an agreement over supper tonight. That agreement came only after British Prime Minister Gordon Brown dropped his support for his predecessor, Tony Blair, and ceded to the wishes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and French President Nicholas Sarkozy.

But although van Rompuy cuts a meek figure, many say he's anything but demure when it comes to achieving his political ends. David Cronin is a columnist for the Guardian newspaper who lives in Brussels. We reached him at home.

The selection of the new head of the European Union wasn't the most controversial event happening in Europe today, however. What had most tongues wagging was the soccer match yesterday between France and Ireland, to determine which team would qualify for next summer's World Cup in South Africa. The game ended in a tie, which meant -- because of the aggregate score over two games -- that France qualified.

But the way that tie was achieved, well, it has many Irish fit to be tied. Here BBC Radio's play-by-play of the goal in question, for the record.

The Number One movie at the box office last weekend was "2012". Spoiler alert: it's about the end of the world. And the apocalypse is rendered in loving, extremely expensive detail.

Well, you might have seen it coming. Not the end of the world, necessarily -- although watch this space -- but the natural conclusion of escalating movie violence. Why, earlier this year, people complained about the harrowing subway-hostage thriller, The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3, starring Denzel Washington and John Travolta. And thirty-five years before that, they complained about another terrifyingly violent film -- this one about hostages in a subway. It was entitled The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 -- and it starred Robert Shaw and Walter Matthau.

That film was based on a book by John Godey, and thirty-five years ago tonight, As it Happens spoke with Mr. Godey, just after the first Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 was released.. Here's part of his conversation with former host Barbara Frum, from back in 1974.

You could say it's an "unsettling" debate.

This week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the construction of nine-hundred new homes in East Jerusalem -- in an area that is supposed to be reserved for Palestinians. The announcement has drawn the ire of U.S. President Barack Obama, and other world leaders, who say the announcement is designed to provoke hostilities -- and will harm the peace process in the Middle East.

Yesterday, As It Happens spoke with New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind. He was in East Jerusalem, leading a delegation of Americans who plan to buy up property in the same area, making it impossible for Palestinians to do so.

Noa Galili was also at that ceremony -- but she was there to protest against it.

She represents Peace Now, a group of Israeli Jews opposed to the building of settlements in East Jerusalem and the occupied territories -- what Mr. Hikind was referring to as "Judean Sumeria". We reached her in Tel Aviv.

That happens to be the voice of Michael Caine, from the 1978 film The Swarm. But who among us didn't say those exact same words, back in the late 'seventies -- when we learned that killer bees would sting us all to death? After all...they had always been our friends. Until they turned on us -- as dramatized in this terrifying scene from The Swarm, in which a bad actor's helicopter is attacked.

"That could have been my helicopter," we all muttered to each other in the cinema. And when General Slater, played by Richard Widmark, had this conversation with Brad Crane, played by Michael Caine, we all feared he was right.

Well, I have some surprising news. The Swarm, however brilliant a film, was not scientifically accurate. I know -- I was shocked, too. But here's the truth: killer bees are stupid.

A team of scientists at the University of Sussex, in Britain, pitted Africanized killer honeybees against regular European honeybees, in a kind of insectile Reach for the Top. The researchers tried to teach both types of bees to associate the smell of jasmine with a sugar reward. After one trial, about half the European bees were making the Pavlovian association: when they smelled that puff of jasmine, they stuck their proboscises out to get some more sugar water.

But with all due respect to Richard Widmark, the Africanized killer bees proved they were not of equal intelligence -- either to us, or to their European colleagues. Only about a quarter of them cottoned on to the sugar reward after one trial. And after three trials, only about half of the dim-witted murderers were anticipating sugar after a whiff of jasmine -- compared to three-quarters of the law-abiding bees.

The next day, they tested to see which bees remembered the whole jasmine/sugar thing. And, surprise, surprise -- more of the European bees remembered the association than did the killer bees.

So the bad news is that killer bees could still probably destroy us all. But the good news is, even if they want to, they can't remember that they want to. Apparently, if you're swarmed by Africanized killer bees, you should just point at something, and they'll look at it, and then they'll forget they were killing you.

Or you could blow up an oil slick, like they did at the end of The Swarm -- which led to this conversation between Katharine Ross and Michael Caine: