Pt 1: H1N1 and Bacteria - Across the country, people are lining up to get the H1N1 flu vaccine. But it turns out, the virus -- the thing the vaccine is supposed to protect you from may be only part of the equation. Researchers who have studied the 1918 flu pandemic say the majority of people who died then, did so from secondary bacterial infections. A study released earlier this month by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control, found that bacterial co-infections could nonetheless pose a similar problem during this outbreak.



Pt 2: Letters - Thursday is our weekly mail day on The Current. And our Friday host, Hana Gartner, joined Anna Maria in studio to help read the mail.



Pt 3: The Crash of 1929 - Eighty years ago today, American investors watched in horror as the markets on Wall Street lost 14-Billion dollars in a single day. At the time, that was more than the entire annual budget of the U.S. Federal Government and more than the country had spent on World War One. Black Tuesday nearly drove the market to collapse. And it marked the beginning of the Great Depression. In the end, it took the devastation of World War Two to end a decade of poverty, misery and political extremism.

---

It's Thursday, October 29th.

UN security guards say they have no excuse for allowing a man dressed up as Colonel Sanders to enter one of the building's restricted areas

Currently ... The guards first became suspicious when the Colonel addressed the Security Council and demanded the immediate bombing of Swiss Chalet

This is The Current.

H1N1 and Bacteria - CDC Expert

Across the country, people are lining up to get the H1N1 flu vaccine. But it turns out, the virus -- the thing the vaccine is supposed to protect you from may be only part of the equation. Researchers who have studied the 1918 flu pandemic say the majority of people who died then, did so from secondary bacterial infections.
A study released earlier this month by the U.S. Centres for Disease Control, found that bacterial co-infections could nonetheless pose a similar problem during this outbreak.

Diana Blau is an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centres for Disease Control. She's also the main author of the study and she was in Atlanta.

H1N1 and Bacteria - 1918 expert

There have been several studies looking into the role that bacteria played in the 1918 flu pandemic. Doctor Keith Klugman is the co-author of one of them. He is the Chair of Global Health at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. His study was published in the Journal of Emerging Infectious Diseases. Doctor Klugman was in Philadelphia this morning.

H1N1 and Bacteria - Butler-Jones

Doctor David Butler-Jones oversees much of Canada's response to the H1N1 pandemic. He is the Chief Public Health Officer for the Public Health Agency of Canada. He was in Ottawa.

 

Letters

Thursday is our weekly mail day on The Current. And our Friday host, Hana Gartner, joined Anna Maria in studio to help read the mail.

WCB Hostage: It was a tense ten-hours last week at the Workers' Compensation Board building in Edmonton. Armed with a gun, Patrick Clayton took eight people hostage before surrendering peacefully to police. Before that he called the CBC in Edmonton to voice his grievances. The CBC's Gareth Hampshire answered the phone and we played some of those calls on Thursday.

One of those calls was with hostage Randy Morrow. He was released when the gunman gave himself up. Randy Morrow joined us from his home in Peace River, Alberta.

Gay in Uganda: Being gay or lesbian in Uganda isn't easy. You can be imprisoned for life for having sex with someone of the same sex. But a proposed law is creating a lot of anger and fear in the lesbian-gay-bi and transgendered community. It would impose jail terms on people who don't report gays and lesbians to police. And it also proposes the death penalty for gay sex in some cases. The writer behind a blog called Gay Uganda is so worried about the government monitoring him that he wouldn't speak to us over the phone, and would only answer questions by e-mail.

When we ran that segment on Tuesday we were hoping to speak with David Bahati, the Ugandan MP who tabled the bill. We couldn't reach him then. But we were able to speak with him yesterday.

*** We should warn you, his views are homophobic. But we felt it was important to hear them in order to understand the context in which Uganda's anti-homosexuality bill is being proposed. Many of you will find this offensive and may not be suitable for young children. ***

And we did get a letter from a listener in Halifax after listening to our original item on Tuesday to put in a request for Honourable Ministers Cannon and Day to share Canda's response to this bill. So we did just that and we will bring you the minister's response in the days ahead.

Request Count: As for other ministerial interview requests, we didn't make any this week. So we're still at 15 requests for federal cabinet ministers so far this season that have resulted in three interviews. Three for 15.

The Crash of 1929

Eighty years ago today, American investors watched in horror as the markets on Wall Street lost 14-Billion dollars in a single day. At the time, that was more than the entire annual budget of the U.S. Federal Government and more than the country had spent on World War One. Black Tuesday nearly drove the market to collapse. And it marked the beginning of the Great Depression. In the end, it took the devastation of World War Two to end a decade of poverty, misery and political extremism.

Last fall, the markets heaved and collapsed once again. And now, as the global economy claws its way slowly out of a recession, economists are once-again asking what happened and whether we should have seen it coming. Kenneth Rogoff says there are some disturbing similarities between then and now. He is the former Chief Economist with the International Monetary Fund and is now a professor of Economics at Harvard University and the co-author of the new book, This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly. He was in New York City.

Crash of 1929 - The Rational Market

Eighty years after Black Tuesday, the ups and downs of world's economies still hinge on the movements of the stock markets. So it's not surprising that economists all over the world have been trying their best to come up with a scientific theory about what drives the market.

And that's where Justin Fox thinks we've gone wrong. He's the business and economics columnist for Time Magazine. He's also the author of The Myth of The Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward and Delusion on Wall Street. He was also in New York City.

Last Word

We ended the program today with an addendum to a story we brought you last week on the 40th anniversary of the tragic fire aboard the HMCS Kootenay, the worst peacetime disaster in the history of Canada's Navy. Our documentay generated a lot of mail including this e-mail from John Ducker of Victoria. He wrote:

The story is not complete without having the awards these fine men received for their actions that day. As typical Canadian servicemen, the survivors were too modest to mention it of their own accord. It's an important part of the story.

Thanks to John Ducker of Victoria for flagging that. So we gave the last word this morning to the citations for bravery awarded to the members of the HMCS Kootenay.