The bloom is on the 'rose. The Wildrose Alliance Party of Alberta, that is -- which is becoming an ever-larger thorn in the provincial Conservatives' side.

It's always darkest within the Don. Toronto's notorious Don Jail is the site of the city's first homicide of 2010.

A former bit player takes centre stage. All eyes are on the hitherto peripheral country of Yemen -- where Al-Qaeda threats have led to the closures of five embassies.

Missionaries of hate. Uganda's new anti-homosexuality bill has its roots in the preachings of three American evangelists.

Lhasa, alas. Multi-lingual, multi-talented Lhasa de Sela -- a genre-hopping musical explorer -- dies in Montreal, at the age of thirty-seven.

And...you could call him St. Pol...ished. An eighty-year-old Winnipeg woman's air-travel nightmare turns dreamy -- when a man in shiny shoes cobbles together a solution.

As It Happens, the Monday edition. Radio that's laced with optimism.

When it comes to politics in Alberta, things don't change very often. So when there's even a small shift, it's considered historic.

This morning -- for the first time since the Progressive Conservative party came to power in 1971 -- two members of its caucus defected. Rob Anderson and Heather Forsyth left the beleaguered Tories to join the up-and-coming Wildrose Alliance.

Some see it as another signal that the new right-wing party is gaining momentum on a government that has been virtually unchallenged for almost four decades.

Danielle Smith is the leader of the Wildrose Alliance. We reached her in Calgary.

It was a trip they'll never forget. Especially now that so many people won't let them forget it.

Last March, three American evangelical Christians attended a conference in Uganda, addressing the so-called threat that homosexuals posed to the traditional African family. And it would seem their words were effective -- because a month later, a then-unknown Ugandan politician introduced the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009. Legislation that would see gays put to death for their sexuality.

But now, as international outcry against the bill increases, these evangelical speakers are trying to distance themselves from the aftermath of their words.

For six months last year, Reverend Kapya Kaoma went undercover to chronicle the relationship between the African anti-homosexual movement and American evangelicals. We reached Reverend Kaoma in Boston.

Lhasa de Sela was a world traveller.

Born in Big Indian, New York, the musician grew up on a converted school bus, travelling between Mexico and the United States, home-schooled by her American mother and Mexican father.

When she was 19, she moved to Montreal -- and in 1998, she released her debut album, the Spanish language La Llorona. The album won a Juno that year for best global album.

Over the next decade, she split her time between Montreal and Marseilles, and released two more albums, weaving together raw emotion with fairy tales, singing in Spanish, English and French.

Last Friday, Lhasa de Sela's worldly travels ended, when the thirty-seven-year-old singer died after a twenty-one-month battle with breast cancer.

Jim Corcoran is the host of CBC Radio's A Propos, a musician, and a good friend of the singer. We reached him in Montreal.

And that's the end of the first part of tonight's show. But we'll be back after the news with more As It Happens.

We'll tell you about a bad day in Yemen, a good day in Canso, Nova Scotia, and a snow day in Seoul, South Korea.

Stay tuned. I'm CO.

And I'm BB.

Hello again, I'm CO.

And I'm BB. This is As It Happens, Part Two.

Coming up:

B.C.'s Hul'qumi'num people are tired of dealing with the Canadian government -- so they go to an international body for help.

A well-heeled fellow passenger turns an eighty-year-old's uncertain trip home into a shoe thing.

Those stories are still to come on As It Happens.

Toronto has already had its first homicide of 2010. And it didn't take place on the streets of the city Its perpetrators were already behind bars. Kevon Phillips was found unconscious in Toronto's Don Jail on Saturday. He died later, in hospital. His murder is just the latest in a series of violent incidents to occur at the Toronto jail.

Christine Munro's son Jeffrey Munro was beaten to death at the Don Jail in November. We reached Ms. Munro at her home in Paris, Ontario.

The deaths of Kevon Phillips and Jeffrey Munro highlight growing concerns about hygiene, overcrowding and security at the Don Jail. The John Howard Society of Toronto is an organization that's concerned with prison conditions and overcrowding in city institutions. Greg Rogers is the Society's Executive Director. We reached him at home.

Never mind Tim Burton's movie, The Nightmare Before Christmas; eighty-year-old Elsie Clarke had a Nightmare after Christmas.

Over the holidays, Ms. Clarke was heading home to Winnipeg after visiting her daughter in Texas. Well, she was trying to get home -- but her travel plans quickly turned into the kind of purgatorial ordeal that makes holiday travel so very un-delightful. However, Miss Clarke -- being a damsel in distress -- was lucky enough meet her own knight in shining...shoes.

We reached Elsie Clarke at her home in Winnipeg.

It's easy to be smug about political scandals here in Canada. That's because we're terrific at dealing with them expeditiously. I mean, we wrapped up that Mulroney-Schreiber thing in less than twenty-two years, start to finish. And if any other serious problems come along, we're becoming experts at placing a call to the Governor-General. She'll prorogue anything!

So if you're Canadian, and you made a New Year's resolution to stop gloating, you may want to stop listening. Because remember that scandal over MPs' expenses in Britain? The one that began nearly two years ago? The one in which about four-hundred Members of Parliament allegedly claimed renovations, and mortgages they'd already paid, and assorted other silly things, as expenses? It's still going on! And it might not wrap up any time in the near future!

Now, on this side of the Atlantic, we would already have handled this problem, by forgetting about it, and groaning whenever it was brought up. But over there, the scandal is like the aftermath of your New Year's Eve party: more damaging details keep emerging.

To avoid being investigated for these details, three Labour MPs are claiming that Britain's Bill of Rights -- which was passed into law three-hundred-and-twenty-two years ago -- gives them immunity from prosecution.

The clause in question declares that "the freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament ought not to be impeached or questioned in any court or place out of Parliament." It's intended to protect free speech during the parry-and-thrust of Parliamentary back-and-forths. But Labour Party lawyers say parliamentary privilege also protects them from being investigated for charging taxpayers for getting rid of their knob-and-tube wiring.

Experts say the tactic probably won't work. But it will probably gum up the works, leading to months of legal wrangling. So, in effect, it will just defer the controversy until people don't remember it as well. Which, now I think about it, may indicate that the Brits are learning a thing or two from us about how to handle a scandal.

Today, in Yemen, the doors of the French, Japanese, and German embassies were shut. And the British and American embassies remained closed for a second day -- in response to threats of attack from presumed Al-Qaeda operatives.

The Yemeni capital, Sana, is under heavy security. And in an outlying rea today, Yemeni security forces clashed with militants, and killed two suspected members of Al-Qaeda.

These developments have recast the quiet, often-overlooked Middle Eastern country as a hub for the Islamist movement.

Zaid Al-Alayaa is the editor of the Yemen Observer Newspaper, and has been following the day's events. We reached him in Sana.

Once in a while, Mother Nature unleashes her fury in a way that makes even the most stalwart Canadians shake in their galoshes.

That happened this weekend in Atlantic Canada -- where there weren't just high winds, there were also tales of high drama. One of them belongs to eighty-seven-year-old Lillian Elliott of Victoria By the Sea, in Prince Edward Island.

Here she is, describing her own rescue on Saturday night.

For the most part, severe winter weather is old hat to Canadians. Or rather, old toque. We're so used to the nastiness of winter that we barely bat a frozen eyelash. Even Toronto hardly ever calls in the army any more.

But residents of Seoul, South Korea aren't as familiar with extreme winter weather. This time of year, the capital usually experiences cool, but mild weather. Today, though, the citizens of Seoul slogged their way through the biggest snow day in the city's entire recorded history. Almost thirty centimeters fell -- and while that may not sound so bad to someone in Northern Saskatchewan, it caused a major headache in a place that hasn't yet got the drift of drifts.

Here is part of a news report from Korea's English radio station, Arirang News:

The Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group of Vancouver Island have had a bone to pick with the Canadian government for some time now.

The bone in question is a sizable chunk of land the Hul'qumi'num say is theirs. The Canadian government doesn't see it that way. Back in the late nineteenth century, the government granted the land in question to a private railway contractor. And, under current treaty law, the Hul'qumi'num have no right to contest privately-owned property.

But all that may be about to change. The Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group have taken their fight outside Canada, to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights -- where they've been arguing that the way Canada has dealt with their land claim contravenes human rights law. The Commission has just granted the Hul'qumi'num people a full hearing.

Robert Morales is the chief negotiator with the Hul'qumi'num Treaty Group in Ladysmith, British Columbia. We reached him at his office.

It's an all-too-familiar story in Atlantic Canada: plants close, jobs disappear and people leave.

But the community of Canso, Nova Scotia may be re-writing that plot. After decades of nothing but bad news, there's some hope on the horizon --because a new fish processing plant is slated to open.

One of the people who helped make that happen is William Bond. He's a fisher, and the Vice President of the Canso Harbour Authority.