Questioning their intelligence. The final report on the Air India bombing suggests it could have been avoided, if the RCMP and CSIS had co-operated.

Slow death in Venice. While the U.S. Congress fishes for answers from the CEO of BP, the fishermen of Venice, Louisiana fish for nothing at all.

Where one case closes, another opens. Now that Bloody Sunday has been addressed, Gerry Adams tells us why it's time to re-examine killings that took place in 1971.

A diva's final curtain. Remembering Maureen Forrester -- the Canadian contralto who was the operatic voice of a generation.

Telling tales out of stool. For an explanation of how sperm whale poop fights global warming, we turn to a scientist who knows her sh -- uh, field of study.

And...the thick profound vox jumps over the lazy brogues. The sound of a man's voice reveals his upper-body strength -- even if he can't carry his end of the conversation.

As It Happens, the Thursday edition. Radio that speaks softly and bench-presses a really big stick.

It's been twenty-five years since the Air India bombings, and finally, there are some answers.

In his final report on the terrorist attack that left three-hundred-and-twenty-nine people dead, Justice John Major harshly criticized the government, the RCMP, and CSIS for their failure to prevent what he called "the largest mass-murder in Canadian history" -- and for the political stone-walling that occurred after the tragedy.

Lata Pada was in Ottawa, closely following today's events. Her husband and two daughters were killed in the bombing. Since then, she has been adamant about the need for a public inquiry. We reached her at the airport on her way back home to Mississauga.

Two days ago, the long-awaited Saville Report on the events of "Bloody Sunday" was released. And now, more families in Northern Ireland are seeking vindication.

In August of 1971 -- five months before "Bloody Sunday" -- British troops killed eleven people in Ballymurphy, Northern Ireland. Today, speaking at a press conference, the families of those killed called for an independent investigation into their loved ones' deaths.

Speaking alongside the families was Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams. He said the Ballymurphy killings bore a striking similarity to the events of Bloody Sunday and represented another "cover-up" of British soldiers' brutality. We reached Mr. Adams in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

On Monday night, we brought you the sad story of the Waterloo University football team. The team has withdrawn from the Ontario University Athletic Association league for next season, after nine players were disciplined for using banned substances.

Today, Carl Zender, the team's assistant coach, shot back at the man who decided to suspend the program -- Waterloo University Provost Feridun Hamdullahpur. Here is part of what Mr. Zender said, for the record.

It's a sensitive issue that can have life-changing consequences.

Determining when senior citizens are no longer able to drive is difficult, and it's a decision that generally rests solely with family physicians. This month, a new test will help doctors screen patients for their driving competency.

The test - called SIMARD MD - was developed at the Medically At-Risk Driver Centre at the University of Alberta.

Dr. Bonnie Dobbs is the Chair of that Centre, and we reached her at the airport in Edmonton.

To the conductors she worked with, Maureen Forrester was a delight. And to opera fans, she was an icon -- a diva in the true, old-fashioned sense. The kind of diva we whose like we'll never see again.

Last night, Canadian legend Maureen Forrester passed away, at the age of seventy-nine.

Ms. Forrester was born in a French-speaking neighbourhood of Montreal. At thirteen, she left high school. She took a job as a secretary, in order to help pay for singing lessons. She started out performing at community centres, and during ladies' tea parties. But by the time she was twenty-six, she had a New York City debut under her belt.

She got her start in opera relatively late -- first, as a soprano, and then as a mezzo-soprano, before her rich voice settled into the deeper contralto range -- the range in which she did her best and most famous work.

At the height of her career, she performed as many as one-hundred-and-twenty concerts a year. She toured across five continents. Her work in the operas of composer Gustav Mahler was her most celebrated -- although she was also critically praised for performances of Brahms, Dvorak, Bach and Handel. Ms. Forrester was also famously gracious to her audiences. Even in her prime, she happily appeared across Canada on small stages, in small towns, accompanied by whatever mostly-in-tune piano could be rustled up.

During the nineteen-eighties, Maureen Forrester served as the chair of the Canada Council for the Arts. In that role, she promoted and championed Canadian music and composers.

And her insight into Canadian culture went beyond its music. In the early nineteen-nineties, at the onset of Quebec referendum talks, former As It Happens' host Michael Enright spoke with Ms. Forrester. From our archives, here is part of that conversation, from June ninth, 1992.

Hello again, I'm RH.

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

Coming up:

According to science, even if I say I don't work out, you can tell I can rip a phone book in half just from the sound of my voice.

And an encore presentation of our interview with author Charles Bowden, about the centre of Mexico's drug war, Ciudad Juarez.

Those stories are still to come on As It Happens.

Today in Washington, BP's Chief Executive Officer, Tony Hayward, apologized for the spill in the Gulf of Mexico. He assured members of the U.S. Congress that his company will pay for what is now being described as the worst environmental catastrophe in American history.

But on the seafloor of the Gulf, crude oil continues to gush from the broken wellhead. Along the coast, fishing communities are coping with the closure of much of the Gulf Fisheries. And then, of course, there is the sludge that's now washing up on shore in earnest, miring Louisiana's delicate coastal ecosystem.

Damon McNight runs Super Strike Charters in the town of Venice, Lousiana, which is now the heart of the state's clean-up effort. We spoke with Mr. McNight on May 3rd, two weeks after the sinking of the Deepwater Horizon, when the spill was still relatively small. We reached him again today, in Venice.

"When the sunlight strikes raindrops in the air, they act as a prism and form a rainbow."

Based on that short passage, can you tell how strong I am? Well, I'll fill you in: I did three chin-ups while I said it. So now you know, because I told you. But if a man had spoken that passage about the prism -- or something equally banal -- there's a very good chance you would know how strong he is, just from the way he said it.

At least, that's the suggestion of a new study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B journal this week. It found that people are astute judges of a man's toughness, based only on a short sample of his voice.

Dr. Aaron Sell is a post-doctoral researcher at the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California Santa Barbara. He was the lead author on the study. He spoke to us from Eugene, Oregon.

Is new noodles good noodles?

Last night, we told you about Kraft Dinner's decision to reinvent its noodle -- creating a whole new kind of pasta that incorporates cauliflower. But when we sent a box of the new "Smart Kraft Dinner" to K.D. expert West Gidluck, in Biggar, Saskatchewan, he recognized the noodles were tubes -- but he didn't think they were tubular.

CS: West Gidluck's disappointment with "Smart Kraft Dinner" also brought some responses from Talkback -- including this strong defense of its smartness.

Well, Sandy's experience was inspiring. But as you heard, Mr. Gidluck was concerned not only with the taste, but also about what the cauliflower noodle might mean to a wheat farmers, like him.

Then Rick Armstrong from Aurora, Ontario sent us an email with a creative solution. He wrote:

"Your preamble about cauliflower Kraft Dinner got me thinking. So I bought original KD, a head of cauliflower, black forest ham and old cheddar cheese, mixed it all together and my dog Amy and I enjoyed it thoroughly while listening to As It Happens.

"Not quite what Kraft had in mind, but they sold two boxes today they otherwise would not have -- and the farmers still get their grain sold."

That email was from Rick Armstrong in Aurora, Ontario. Thanks for writing, and good luck to Amy and her digestive system.

Thanks for all your calls and emails. Talkback is hungry for your comments anytime. Call toll-free at 1-866-481-5718. Or drop us a line. Our email address is aih@cbc.ca.

Most of us consider feces kinda icky. Even if it's produced by one of the largest and most elegant mammals on the planet -- the sperm whale.

Well, it turns out that, while icky, the bodily waste produced by the whales is actually useful.

To explain, we reached Trish Lavery, a whale researcher at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.

Dateline: Durban, South Africa.Iker Casillas makes a lot of money stopping soccer balls from going into the goal. About six million Euros per year -- which is about seven-point-six million Canadian dollars. The Spanish goalkeeper, who is also the captain of the team, is regarded as one of the best, if not the best, in the world at what he does.

Which made it all the more surprising when, yesterday, he blundered an otherwise routine play to let the ball into the net.

The goal allowed lowly Switzerland to beat the defending European champions -- and placed the Spaniards' chances of advancing to the next round of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in jeopardy.

So Spanish soccer fans were incensed, of course. How could this happen? Who was to blame?

Well, the media of course.

And in this case, the 'media,' is one Sara Carbonero, a Spanish sports reporter, who also happens to have been voted the world's sexiest journalist by reputable men's magazine FHM.

And who also happens to be the girlfriend of one Iker Casillas.

Now, the wives and girlfriends of all the Spanish players are actually barred from showing up anywhere near South Africa for the next two weeks. That's apparently because it's feared they will distract the players' ability to focus. But an exception was made for Ms. Carbonero, because it's her job to be there.

And now she's ruined everything. Because Iker Casillas, Spain's six-million-Euro man, was apparently so affected by Ms. Carbonero's presence in the stadium that, as multiple Spanish websites put it, his strength was "sapped." Causing him to let in an easy goal. Possibly causing Spain, the pre-tournament favourite, to make an early exit.

Nobody is suggesting that it was Mr. Casillas's own fault. Because that would imply that maybe he's not worth the six-million Euros he's paid each year to not miss balls like that. Or that he just made a mistake that was his own fault. Instead, it all comes down to Spanish culture, and the proximity of a double-x chromosome.

Which is what you might call moving the goalposts.

This week, Felipe Calderon called on his countrymen to help bring an end to the war against drugs -- a war that has claimed the lives of more than twenty-three thousand people in Mexico since late 2006.

"This is a battle that is worth fighting because our future is at stake," said the Mexican president. "It's a battle that, with all Mexicans united, we will win."

But moments before his speech, a group of his soldiers came under fire while investigating a house in the popular tourist town of Taxco.

It was a telling moment in what has become a long and interminable battle -- one in which the Mexican government seems to be lagging further and further behind.

Over the past few months, violence linked to the drug cartels has surged, and June looks set to be the deadliest month yet.

Back in April, Carol spoke with author Charles Bowden about life in Ciudad Juarez, the epicentre of the country's war against drugs. Here's a repeat broadcast of that conversation.