October 14, 2008

It's Tuesday, October 14th -- election day.

And in the spirit of non-partisanship, we will not be running any satire about the election.

CURRENTLY, the following is *NOT* a paid political announcement

This is the Current.

Memories and Moondust

Two summers ago, on his second Afghanistan tour, and two days after his 33rd birthday, Master Corporal Jeff Walsh lost his life. This morning, his family hopes a military trial at CFB Shilo in Manitoba will help them finally overcome the difficult circumstances surrounding Jeff Walsh's death.

That word, overcome, helps define the soldier from Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry. It's a word he wore proudly, tattooed on his right forearm. Jeff Walsh believed anything could be overcome if you tried hard enough.

Two years after his death, Master Corporal Walsh's family - his parents, his wife, his three young children, Ben, Jordan and Avery - continue to look for the closure eluding them.

Having spent time with those who knew him best, CBC producer Suzanne Dufresne brings us this profile of Master Corporal Jeff Walsh, and the story of one of the 98 soldiers killed in the Afghanistan War. We aired her documentary, Memories and Moondust.

PART TWO

Mafia Boy

For a few panicked hours one day in February, 2000, the websites of Yahoo, CNN, E-bay, E-trade and Dell crashed and burned, targets of North America's largest hacker attack.

Then U.S. President Bill Clinton convened a summit on cybersecurity, and Attorney General Janet Reno vowed to catch the culprit. A few months later, the RCMP didn't so much as get their man as they got, well, their boy. The hacker, Mafiaboy, was actually 15-year-old Montrealer - Michael Calce.

Michael Calce hasn't spoken about the experience until now. His book is called Mafiaboy: How I Cracked the Internet and Why It's Still Broken. He was in our Toronto studio.

PART THREE

Ransom of the Jews

About 22-million people live in Romania. Fewer than 10-thousand of them are Jewish. Pretty outstanding, considering that after WWII Romania had the second largest number of Jews in the world.

That demographic shift is due in no small part to a little known deal between Romania and Israel. In fact, most of Romania's Jews were sold to the Israeli government after the formation of Israel in 1948. Many of those who emigrated did so under the regime of Nicolai Ceausescu.

Hanna Gicza and her family later moved to Canada. They now live in Ontario. Hanna's story mirrors that of countless other Romanian Jews who emigrated after cash exchanged hands between the two governments. And it's stories like these that compelled Radu Ioanid to write Ransom of the Jews: The Story of The Extraordinary Secret Bargain Between Romania and Israel. He was in our Washington studio.