The Current from CBC Radio (Highlights)

Back in 2008, we watched as U.S. neighbourhoods emptied the fallout of a sub-prime mortgage crisis that would bring Billions in Bailouts and see the death of more than 400 banks. Now, a new report from a respected Canadian think tank that says our Canadian banks got a secret bailout and suggests that Canadians were misled has economists, bankers and finance officials seeing red. They say it is simply ... not true.

The last days of Osama bin Laden, the last days of Kingston prison and the first year of the Conservative majority government; coming up, our listeners check in on the timely stories of the week. And we hear from Naser Al Raas who has been out of a Bahrain prison since February but he's only been free to come home to Canada this week. He shares his harrowing story.

Over the last 28 years, Associated Press reporter Micheal Graczyk has made the trek to tiny Huntsville Texas, home to co-eds, convicts and those on death row. And hundreds of times, Michael Graczyk has stood in the death chamber and watched, listened and taken notes at a state execution. Today, as the fate of a Canadian on death row in Montana continues to play out, we're asking Michael Graczyk about the insights he's gained in the one state that executes more people than any other.

He's been Prime Minister for more than Six years but he's had a Majority government for precisely One year. And it is this past year where Stephen Harper has had the political freedom to implement change on everything from environmental controls to crime and punishment to economic development to civil service cuts. Today, we devote our first hour to that discussion, a retrospective on the first year of Conservative majority rule under Prime Minister Harper.

We continue our conversation of the one year anniversary of the Harper majority government and look at how exactly the Harper majority has left its mark. We hear how crime, federalism and the environment have changed in Stephen Harper's Canada.

Fredrik Gertten comes from Sweden and makes documentaries that focus on the struggles of the vulnerable. But when he made a documentary about a workers lawsuit brought against fruit giant Dole, he ran into his own lawsuit and a public relations effort to discredit him. Fredrik Gertten filed his own lawsuit and kept his cameras rolling, we hear from the director of Big Boys Gone Bananas.

*** This is an extended podcast *** One of the very few journalists to have ever interviewed Bin Laden or seen the inside of the Pakistan compound where he lived and hid for six years, takes us through those final moments ... from Bin Laden's last words to the painstaking intelligence work that still left the Obama administration at odds over whether to even okay the mission.

The budget bill before parliament has a great many tentacles affecting everything from oil and gas exploration to environmental assessment to fish. One outspoken critic, a former Progressive Conservative fisheries minister calls it a return to the Dark Ages.

Our project Game Changer focuses on Charles Taylor. We speak with the Canadian, the philosopher and public intellectual so admired that last month scholars from three continents gathered in Montreal to talk about his prolific and provoking contributions to society.

It is the road that leads to the riches of the oilsands but it is increasingly paved in misery. Highway 63 links Fort McMurray to Edmonton and has a reputation as one of the most dangerous stretches of road in Alberta and arguably the country. That narrow ribbon of road and it is narrow has been the scene of many horrific head-on collisions, the latest this past Friday. And an increasingly angry and growing group of Albertans is asking why such accidents keep happening.

The newest country on this planet is South Sudan, created by referendum amid much excitement just last year. But all weekend, Sudan's military was bombing South Sudan sites on orders of a president indicted for war crimes. But the new country's rebels and its new military aren't blameless and the civilians are - once again - caught in the middle.

It looks like a dog bone and takes up as much space as New Brunswick. They call it Kleopatra with a K and it is one of an estimated 15-hundred near-Earth asteroids, ripe for mineral exploration and extraction. Kleopatra, which is all metal, would be worth untold wealth if you could get there and start mining. And in the wake of the Google gang's plan to back a company called Planetary Resources to mine asteroids for precious metals and water, there are lost of questions about what you can own and what you can bring-on-home-and-sell when it comes to space.

Some have taken to calling it "The Quebec Spring". But these student protests are not pushing for democratic rights or against a ruthless dictator. They're about money ... specifically tuition fees. Quebec has the lowest fees in the country but a government plan to raise them has sparked student strikes at universities, colleges and CEGEP's across the province ... jeopardizing the entire school year and for some, whether or not they get into university. We hear about a court victory for one student allowing her to return to class and why fellow students consider her a scab with school books.

Could explosions at B.C. Sawmills lead to an environmental firestorm? The forests of British Columbia have been ravaged in recent years by an infestation of Pine Beetles. The trees they've killed have been harvested by lumber companies and processed at various mills. But now that supply of wood is running out and unless more is found, the owners of 2 mills destroyed by fire, including on this week, likely won't be rebuilt. A leaked report suggests that to save those mills and the jobs that go with them, some new wood could come from protected areas and that's where the debate begins.

Kingston Penitentiary is older than the country itself but the time has come to lock it down for good. What to do with Canada's famous crowbar hotel? Raze it to the ground, turn it into Condo's or how about a museum? The tour may short but the memories will last from 25 to life. We talk about the past of Kingston Pen with a former warden and it's future with the city's business development boss.