He was regarded by some as the face of the peace initiative in Afghanistan.

Earlier today, Burhanuddin Rabbani was killed by a suicide bomber who was welcomed into his Kabul home. Mr. Rabbani was a former president of Afghanistan. Last year, he was appointed leader of the High Peace Council, charged with negotiating a deal with the Taliban.

Haroun Mir is a political analyst and the director of Afghanistan's Centre for Research and Policy Studies. We reached him at home in Kabul.

It's tough on crime. And it has its fair share of critics.

Today at simultaneous news conferences in Montreal, and Brampton, Ontario, the government introduced its omnibus crime bill. The Safe Streets and Communities Act includes adult sentences for violent young offenders, harsher penalties for drug crimes and more rigid eligibility criteria for those applying for a criminal pardon.

The Prime Minister has promised to pass the legislation within the first one hundred days of this session of Parliament, but opposition parties have concerns about the bill's price tag.

Vic Toews is the Minister of Public Safety and he was in Montreal to announce the bill.

The pants of the future...will have three legs.

This audacious announcement was made by Ban Ki Moon, today, at a special -- oh my gosh. Did you hear that clunking sound? Oh no oh no oh no the satellite is falling everybody take cover the SATELLITE IS FALLING RUN FOR YOUR --

Oh, sorry, that was just a button falling off my shirt. Excuse me for being jittery about this satellite that's going to fall out of the sky very soon, possibly on me.

I should clarify that I'm pretty sure I'm being ridiculous. The Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, which was launched by the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1991, is expected to fall through our atmosphere -- maybe as soon as Thursday. It's been losing altitude since it was decommissioned in 2005. And now it's returning to Earth. Probably in pieces. Small pieces, that will do no damage at all.

Still, NASA admits it has no idea where any of the debris might land. So it's just issuing a vague heads-up regarding satellite chunks.

No one's really panicking (except for me). Because I recall the panic that preceded the fall of another NASA project: the space station called Skylab. It was launched in 1973, and housed three different groups of astronauts, who conducted all kinds of research, before it was abandoned a year later. And by 1979, the world was waiting anxiously for it to plummet. Things were tense.

On July ninth, 1979, on "As It Happens", the late Alan Maitland delivered this report:And two days later, on July eleventh, Skylab splashed down off the western coast of Australia. That night, host Michael Enright spoke with Frank Regan, a taxi driver in Kalgoorlie, Australia, who had seen it all fall apart.From our archives, that was former "As It Happens" host Michael Enright speaking with taxi driver Frank Regan in Kalgoorlie, Australia -- on July eleventh, 1979.

To reiterate: even though it weighs more than five tonnes and is the size of a bus, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite probably won't hurt anyone when it disintegrates on its way through the atmosphere, possibly as early as Thursday. According to NASA, there is a one-in-three-thousand, two-hundred chance that a human will be struck by a chunk of it. I don't like those odds.

Well, that's it, everyone. Arcade Fire has won all the awards.

Last night, their 2010 album "The Suburbs" was up for the last major prize it could win -- the Polaris Prize -- having already picked up the Juno Award and the Grammy Award for Album of the Year, and the Brit Award for Best International Album. Would it win? Could the loveable, ragtag gaggle of misfits have the skill, the songs, and, most important, the heart, to --

You know, I would continue this build-up, but the answer is "Yes, of course they could," and you probably already know that Arcade Fire won the Polaris Prize for the best Canadian album. I don't mean to sound upset about it; "The Suburbs" is a great album, no argument.

It deserves the prize. It deserves all the awards. It's just that, well, Arcade Fire sort of reminds me of that kid in high school who was great at sports and also was very good-looking but also was very interesting and thoughtful and nice. Everyone loved that kid. Although, somewhere, in a shameful place deep inside, didn't everyone resent that kid just a little? Come on. A tiny bit?

I mean no disrespect. I mean, as Arcade Fire's lead singer, Win Butler, said, "Just because you've heard of a band doesn't mean they suck." I'm just setting you up for the fact that we're not actually going to play Arcade Fire. First, I'm guessing you've already heard them on the radio today. Second, there were nine other fantastic nominees.

So we're going to play one of those bands in the shadow of the Arcade Fire colossus. From their Polaris-nominated album "Feel It Break", this is Austra, with "The Beat and the Pulse".

They're still up in the air.

That is, the job cuts at Environment Canada. Last week, we told you that the Harper government sent a letter out to the union representing public scientists, announcing that it may cut several hundred scientific positions from Environment Canada. Among those are key positions within Canada's ozone-monitoring program. We spoke with Dr. Tom Duck, about those cuts. Here's a bit of what he had to say:

Environment Canada has maintained that it isn't cutting jobs, but making sure its programs are, and I quote: "effective and efficient."

To get a sense of exactly what this means, we got hold of Canada's Environment Minister, Peter Kent. We reached Minister Kent in Ottawa.

Every year, I re-discover -- to my disappointment -- that I'm not a genius.

That's because, every year, I scan the list of recipients of grants from the MacArthur Foundation -- the so-called "genius grants". And every year, nothing.

But if you take a look at this year's list, you'll find another Canadian on there. Her name is Sally Otto. She's an evolutionary geneticist at the University of British Columbia. She's one of twenty-two MacArthur Fellows for 2011. And as a result, she's five-hundred thousand dollars richer. Also, she can go to sleep tonight knowing some very important people consider her a genius.

Sally Otto is in Austin, Texas.

This is one of those stories about something you probably don't know about, but once you hear about it, you'll inevitably want to know a whole lot more about it.

That thing is competitive lock-picking.

Schuyler Towne is on of the leading competitive lock-pickers in North America. We reached him in San Francisco.

It houses the only full-scale replica of the famous Canadian airplane, the Avro Arrow. But you can't go into the Canadian Air and Space Museum in Toronto to see it. Because today, the Museum was shut down.

Rob Godwin is the Space Curator of the museum. We reached him in Burlington, Ontario.

Seems like we spread a bit of controversy last night with our story on Vegemite, the Australian breakfast staple.

We told you that the Australian foreign minister Kevin Rudd had to face jarring questions about his treat at United States customs, when making his way to the UN.

Well, some of you wanted to set the food record straight:David Terry from Ottawa wrote:

"Please allow me to set the record straight about Vegemite once and for all. The original 'yeast extract' bread spread is Marmite, not Vegemite. It was invented in the U.K during the Second World War, and is delicious and nutritious with very high protein content. I like it on toast, crackers, or crispbread.

"Australians like to claim Vegemite as their own, when in fact they 'borrowed' the recipe and produced a cheap knock-off in a generic container which has neither the texture nor the flavour of the original recipe." That email came from David Terry in Ottawa, and Claudia Ashford from Courtenay, BC agrees. She wrote:

"Just for the record, any Brit will tell you that Vegemite is awful. The real deal is Marmite, a far superior product. When friends go to England I get a half-pound jar brought back. Nothing beats Marmite on toast."

Thank you for your emails. You are entitled to your opinions, however confusing and disturbing they may be.

Remember to feed us your thoughts anytime by calling Talkback at 1.866.481.5718. Or email us at aih@cbc.ca

And now it's time for Quote/Unquote.Oscar Wilde once said that he could sympathize with everything, except suffering.

And so it was yesterday for viewers of MSNBC.

Louisiana Republican Congressman John Fleming appeared on the network to argue against President Obama's plan to increase taxes for Americans who make more than one million dollars a year.

Congressman Fleming owns several successful Subway restaurants and UPS stores. Last year he earned six-point-three million dollars, and he is strictly opposed to an increase in his personal taxes. He says Washington has an overspending problem, not a tax problem. So his personal income tax shouldn't be increased because, quote:

"The amount that I have to reinvest in my business and feed my family is more like six hundred thousand dollars of that six-point-three million. So by the time I feed my family I have, maybe, four-hundred thousand dollars left over."

Unquote.

What's better than a portrait by the Spanish master Goya?

Well, two portraits by the Spanish master Goya, of course.

But that's just part of a discovery that researchers from Belgium and the Netherlands have made regarding one particular work of art at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum.

Joris Dik is a technical art historian and professor at the University of Delft in the Netherlands.

We reached him at home in Delft.

Most people choose to fly to Europe. But three Europeans heading back to the continent this week decided to use a different method. They opted to sail home. And it was a decision that nearly cost them their lives.

Early this morning, their sailing ship got caught up in a massive storm near Sable Island, Nova Scotia. And the violent waves were just too much for the small craft.

The three crew members were trapped on their stricken boat for hours before rescue services arrived.

Hannah Berke was one of the crew, and earlier today she told CBC Nova Scotia what happened.

If you look in kitchen cupboards, you'll probably have some pretty dusty items way in the back. But I bet none of them have lasted, intact and mould-free, for a century or so past their best-before date.

In a few days, Christie's auction house in London will be selling off a one-hundred-and-four-year-old cookie. The cookie in question was taken to Antarctica by Sir Ernest Shackleton. It was left behind, which is why it hasn't decomposed into stale crumbs -- the extreme dry cold acting as a natural biscuit preserver.

Brendan Carr is something of an expert in the cookies, which were made for explorers by Huntley and Palmers of Reading, England. He's the curator of the city's museum and that's where we reached him.