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It's Wednesday, February 7th.

Garth Turner has crossed the floor to sit as a Liberal MP. This, after stating last fall that if MP's change parties they should "go and get re-elected."

Currently, Mr. Turner declined to follow his own policy, noting his penchant for doing whatever the hell he feels like.

This is The Current.

General Rick Hillier

At the time, there appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary. Last April, Canadian soldiers operating near Dukah, a small town in southern Afghanistan, took into custody three Afghan men during a routine patrol.

But what happened next has provoked allegations of abuse and is now the subject of a military investigation. According to Amir Attaran, a University of Ottawa Law Professor who spoke to us yesterday, military documents he obtained through Access to Information requests show that at least one -- and perhaps all three -- of the detainees appear to have been beaten while in Canadian custody. On Monday, the Canadian military confirmed that it has launched an inquiry into Professor Attaran's allegations. The news has tainted what should have been a week of reflection and reassessment for General Rick Hillier.

Two years ago this week, he was named Chief of the Defence Staff and stormed into the office, grabbing the attention of hawks and doves alike. Today, military budgets are growing, new equipment is on order, and Canadian soldiers are engaged in their biggest military action since the Korean War. But -- as the news this week has made clear -- Canada's mission in Afghanistan has produced its own set of problems.

General Rick Hillier is Canada's Chief of Defence Staff and we reached him at his office in National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.

Listen to The Current: Part 1

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The Current: Part 2

Heat Mining

In a political climate reverberating with debate over how to reduce carbon emissions and still generate enough power to fuel our industries, there are those who hope for a miracle cure some untapped and emissions-free resource that would never run dry.

That hope has led some to take a renewed look down -- way down -- to the heat in the Earth's centre. Geothermal power is not new. In fact it's been around as long as the earth's tectonic plates have been pressing into each other.

What is new is our ability to access it. A report released last month from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology paints a glowing picture of the scope of geothermal energy reserves and the new ways we have of reaching them.

More on that -- and how it all might apply to Canada -- in a moment. But first, to Iceland -- a country blessed with especially strong geothermal resources that's already putting them to good use to meet its heating and power needs.

Gústaf Adolf Skúlason is the Deputy Director of the Association of Icelandic Energy Companies and Utilities. We heard from him with how he explains what Iceland has been able to do.

That dual appeal -- cheaper costs and zero emissions -- makes geothermal energy a very attractive option. And here in Canada, at least one business is taking note. Jean-Yves Germain is the owner of a Hotel company, Group Germain. He's building what he says is the first hotel in Canada to be heated and cooled entirely by geothermal energy. We heard from him in Montreal.

Powering one hotel is just a small step down North America's geothermal path. But there are scientists who are thinking much bigger. Last month, professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a report about a new drilling technique they say could make geothermal energy a viable alternative for the U.S.

Jeff Tester is a Professor of Chemical Engineering at M.I.T. and he led a US Energy Department sponsored study about the potential for geothermal energy in the United States.

Heat Mining – Economist

To tell us more about that panel's report -- and what its findings might mean for Canada's energy supply – we were joined by Michael Moore. He was also a panel member for the M.I.T. study and he's a Senior Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Environment and Economy at the University of Calgary.

Listen to The Current: Part 2

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The Current: Part 3

Space Junk

We started this segment with a clip from the opening to a TV documentary called "Space, The Final Junkyard." That's right, if it wasn't enough of a worry that our landfills can't handle all the junk our cities create every year, we are now advised the problem is getting just as bad in outer space.

Last month when China tested an anti-ballistic missile by blowing up one of its own satellites, it turned a single piece of space junk into hundreds of pieces of space junk. And according to some scientists, the possible long term effects of that one, single action could compromise space exploration for generations to come.

Don Kessler joined us to give us a lesson in space junk physics. He's a former Senior Scientist for Orbital Debris Research at NASA and a pioneer in the study of space junk. Don Kessler was at his home in Asheville, North Carolina.

Space Junk China Panel

When China blew up a satellite in outer space last month, it set off an explosion of protest down here on Earth...both over the mess it made and the political fallout it caused.

To talk more about this, we were joined by two guests. Geoff Forden is an arms expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was at his home in Wellesley, Massachusetts. And David Wright is the Co-Director of the Global Security Program with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He was at his home in Cambridge.

Space Junk – Archaeologist

One person's trash is another person's treasure - even in space. And our next guest says it's worth remembering that it's not just buckets of bolts and hunks of junk floating up there.

Alice Gorman teaches in the Archaelogy department at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.

Last Word – Space Junk

We've been talking about the damage space junk can do when it starts to clog up the skies and collide with other space junk doing exactly the same thing. But we haven't touched on the possibility that some of it might crash land hear on Earth.

There's actually a pretty good reason for that. With the brief exception of Skylab's famous re-entry and crash landing in 1979, the junk we throw up into space tends not to come falling back down to Earth. So if you've ever wondered about the odds of actually taking one for the terrestrial team ... consider the fact that -- so far as we know anyway -- there is only one living person who's ever been struck by human-made space junk.

Lottie Williams is a postal clerk who grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And we ended the show today with her story of what happened while she was walking in a park in Tulsa at about three-thirty in the morning on January 22nd, 1997 ... looked up and saw what she thought might be a meteor.

Listen to The Current: Part 3

(Due to various rights issues some segments may be edited for internet use)

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