affairs, Carol Off has covered conflicts in the Middle East, Haiti, the Balkans and the sub-continent, as well as events in the former Soviet Union, Europe, Asia, the United States and Canada. She reported the fallout from the 9/11 disasters with news features and documentaries from New York, Washington, London, Cairo and Afghanistan. She has covered Canadian military missions around the world including its latest combat operation in Kandahar.

Her award-winning documentaries include: “Fatwas and Beauty Queens”, the story of a young Nigerian woman journalist who fled into exile when her article on a Miss World Pageant was deemed blasphemous; “Of Crimes and Courage”, the story of a child who survived the massacre of her family in Kosovo and then went on to personally hunt down the killers; “In the Company of War Lords”, the story of Washington’s complicity with Afghanistan’s most murderous criminals; "Playing with Fire," about the anti-Indian movement in North America; "Children of Chernobyl”, the story of Cuba's medical therapy program for child victims of the Chernobyl disaster; “Flight from Bosnia”, an investigation into war criminals who found safe haven in Canada’s refugee system; and "Thou Shalt Not Kill”, a profile of religious extremists who kill abortion doctors.

Carol Off's coverage of the post-war reconstruction of the Balkans and the war crimes trial for Yugoslavia led her to write the best-selling book, The Lion, the Fox and the Eagle: A Story of Generals and Justice in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, and another national best-seller on the war in Croatia, The Ghosts of Medak Pocket: The Story of Canada’s Secret War, which won the prestigious Dafoe Foundation Award in 2005. Her most recent book, Bitter Chocolate: Investigating the Dark Side of the World’s Most Seductive Sweet, chronicles the international cocoa industry and the machinations behind Big Chocolate.

Carol Off was an arts reporter for CBC Stereo in the early 1980s, when she also wrote for several periodicals. She was the CBC Ottawa correspondent for Sunday Morning in the late 1980s covering the Canada/USA Free Trade Agreement, the Meech Lake Accord, the founding of the Reform Party and the re-election of Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservatives. She then became CBC Radio’s National Reporter for the Province of Quebec where she covered among other stories the Bloc Quebecois, the Montreal massacre, the Oka crisis and several election campaigns.

Carol Off has won numerous awards for television and radio work, among them: a Gemini; two gold medals from the New York Festival of Television; a selected screening at the Monte Carlo Television Festival; several awards and citations from the Columbia Television awards; a Gabriel award; a B’nai Brith Award and number of awards and citation from the National Radio and Television Association.

She is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario. She lives and works in Toronto.

We are thrilled to have Carol Off in the hosting chair. Please join us in welcoming her.

Latest show      Friday, October 27, '06

Getting the lay of the land of the Taliban. A New York Times reporter takes us to the borderlands between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

He's been expelled -- but can he be deported? An immigration lawyer argues that the Canadian government has no authority to give an exiled American teacher the boot.

Hope and apprehension in Kinshasa. United Nations troops are at the ready, in advance of Sunday's presidential runoff in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Casting their nets too narrowly? A UNICEF worker responds after his organization is criticized for poor distribution of malaria-preventing bednets.

Alberta mound. Our story about a mysterious, unnamed land formation in Wild Rose Country brings an avalanche of Talkback.

And...pretty soon, they won't even have the one leg to stand on. We talk to the inventor of the plastic flamingo yard ornament, after his creation gets a pink slip.

As It Happens, the Friday edition. Radio that hates lawn goodbyes.