It was an ugly moment for the beautiful game.

On Friday, Togo's national soccer team was en route to the Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Angola when it was attacked. Just after the players crossed the border into Angola's northern province of Cabinda, gunmen opened fire on the team's bus. Two Togolese officials and an Angolan bus driver were killed, and several of the players were injured.

Angolan authorities arrested two people in connection with the attack. And Togo's government ordered the team to withdraw from the tournament.

Gilbert Houngbo is the Prime Minister of Togo. We reached him in the capital city, Lome.

It was within his rights -- but was it right?

Ever since Prime Minister Stephen Harper asked the Governor-General to prorogue parliament, many have been questioning the decision. For his part, the prime minister says he wanted the time to consult with Canadians as his government moves into the next phase of its agenda. But a growing chorus of Canadians is saying they'd rather the federal politicians go back to work.

Adding their voices to that chorus is a group of university professors. Almost two hundred professors signed a letter accusing Stephen Harper of violating the trust of the Canadian people, and acting anti-democratically.

Daniel Weinstock is a Professor of Philosophy at University of Montreal, and the author of the letter. We reached him in Montreal.

There was a time when hypnosis was seen as simply a trick performed at circuses and seances by shady characters. That was before Herbert Spiegel came along.

The New York psychiatrist did more than just about anybody to bring hypnosis into the mainstream as a legitimate therapy for pain, phobias and addiction. And he became something of a New York celebrity for his work. Actors, singers and politicians came to him for help. He treated the woman with multiple personalities known as "Sybil." And he had his own table at Elaine's, near Woody Allen's.

Dr. Spiegel died in his sleep in his home not far from the famous restaurant, at the age of ninety-five.

Back in 1977, Herbert Spiegel spoke to As It Happens about a test he had developed to separate those who are easily hypnotized from those who are not. From our archives, here is Dr. Spiegel explaining the technique to Barbara Frum.

It's too bad Dr. Spiegel isn't around any longer. He might have been able to help out Helmut Kirchmeier.

You see, Mr. Kirchmeier looked into a mirror and couldn't look away. No, he's not quite a modern-day Narcissus; he's a hypnotist and sword-swallower who fell under his own spell last week. We reached Mr. Kirchmeier at his home in London, England.

There are two sides to the story of sour gas wells in Alberta.

On one side we have high drama: the unsolved crime of six bombings of Encana gas pipelines, the sudden arrest of activist Wiebo Ludwig, and the images of Mounties scouring his property looking for evidence.

On the other side, there's a sombre reality: thousands of Albertans live every day with the threat of a sour gas leak -- citizens who have voiced their concerns about the impact of these pipelines on their environment.

Tim Losey is one of those people. We last spoke to him last in October of 2008, after the second bombing of a gas pipeline in Alberta. And we reached him again, at his home in Tomahawk, Alberta.

Dateline: Farnsfield, U.K.

There's a reason one of the U.K.'s most popular series is called "Britain's Got Talent", and not "Britain's Got Dignity". That's because -- like other shows of its ilk -- dignity is in short supply. The producers rely on a notion that is received as truth in show business: everyone will do anything to get on television.

But once in awhile, someone bucks that trend. And in the case of this story, it's an actual buck: a goat named Darren.

Darren's got talent. Because radio doesn't have pictures, we can't show you that talent. But we can play you the sound of children reacting to that talent. So here it is.

The idea of settling down in a small agricultural town in southern Italy may strike you as the ultimate realization of La Dolce Vita. But, for the millions of African migrants who come to Italy to work the fields, life more often resembles a stage of Dante's Inferno. A lack of basic resources, human rights and equitable pay contribute to a growing sense of alienation and resentment among migrant workers.

This weekend, those sentiments found violent release in Rosarno, a town in the southern region of Calabria, after a migrant worker was shot with a pellet gun.

Flavio di Giacomo is a spokesperson with the International Organization for Migration in Italy. We've reached him in Rome.

'Scuse me, but you may have noticed some Jimi Hendrix fans kissing the sky today.

They had just heard the news that a "new" Hendrix album called Valleys of Neptune will be released in early March. The album features a dozen unreleased recordings, and marks the rollout of a deal between Sony Music and the Hendrix estate -- a deal that could clear the purple haze for other unreleased Hendrix recordings.

Jimi Hendrix released just three studio albums before his death in 1970, but those recordings changed the sound of rock and roll forever. Hendrix was once quoted in his early career as saying "I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice." To accomplish that impossible task, Hendrix had to feed back that guitar through his amplifiers, add some wah-wah effects, play his Strat behind his head, and even go as far as setting it on fire -- a wop-bop-a-loo-mop-a-lop-bam-boom indeed.

The lead producer on the new album is Eddie Kramer, who was the engineer in the studio with Hendrix on the original recordings. He says the project made him feel like an archaeologist finding a marvelous gold artifact underneath the dust.

Die-hard fans may already be familiar with some of the tracks on the new release, because versions of many of the songs have showed up on various bootlegs and archival recordings. Here's an early version of the title track from a compilation called Lifelines: The Jimi Hendrix Story that was released in 1990. It was originally recorded at The Record Plant in New York in January of 1970 -- and features the late Mitch Mitchell on drums and Billy Cox on bass. Here is "Valleys of Neptune".

He's been called "the torturer of Tehran" and "the butcher of the press." Now, Saeed Mortazavi is being labelled the person responsible for the deaths of several opposition protestors this summer.

Iranian MPs have issued a report blaming the former prosecutor for the deaths of at least three prisoners at the Kahrizak detention centre. It's the first formal admission that abuses took place during the crackdown on election demonstrations.

Hadi Ghaemi has been monitoring the situation in the country's prisons for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. We reached him in New York.

William Shakespeare was a man of many words -- words that live on centuries after his death. For example, from Hamlet's famous soliloquy: "to be or not to be? that is the question." Or, from Romeo and Juliet: "But soft! What light through yonder window breaks?"

Or from Two Gentlemen of Lebowski: "The knave abideth."

Now, technically, that last one isn't Shakespeare. But it is an homage to the Bard -- and also to the Coen Brothers. It was written by aspiring filmmaker-slash-screenwriter Adam Bertocci. For Mr. Bertocci, the play is indeed the thing. Or rather, the play of the movie: he's adapted the Coens' 1998 comedy The Big Lebowski as a Shakespearean play.

In the film, Jeff Bridges' character, Jeffrey Lebowski -- better known as "The Dude" -- is "one cool guy." He wears his bathrobe to the grocery store, drinks White Russians, and plays a mean game of ten-pin.

But despite his distinct personality, the Dude is mistaken for another, richer, Mr. Lebowski by a pair of thugs who break into his apartment. Before The Dude can clarify his identity, one of the intruders urinates on his rug.

Encouraged by his friends, the Dude seeks compensation from the other Mr. Lebowski. Take a listen...

And now, here's Adam Bertocci's version of the same scene, as performed by the As It Happens players.

One of the major concerns about global warming is the effect it will have on rising sea levels. But as any good Sunday school student will verify, we're not the first to have to deal with such a crisis.

If you want to talk about extreme weather and problematic water, you have to talk about Noah. And how did he cope with rising seas? Well, by building an Ark, of course, and rounding up all the animals two-by-two. However, the shape of Noah's Ark may not have been the sleek ship-like image we often attach to the story.

Dr. Irving Finkel is a curator at the British Museum and a specialist in the ancient written language 'cuneiform'. He recently translated an ancient tablet that suggests the ark was a different shape altogether. We reached him at his home in London, England.

On Noah's ark, the animals came in two by two -- but it seems some creatures like to come in thirty to fifty at a time.

That's the case at the home of Nancy Cox -- where vultures are hanging around in the dozens. I don't mean realtors -- I mean actual, real-life, carcass-picking, carrion-feeding bald vultures. The scavengers have camped out on and around in her home since last July -- picking away at her house, watching her every move, and generally making Ms. Cox's life a living nightmare. Again, I'm not talking about realtors.

We reached Ms. Cox at her vulture-ridden home in Ridgeway, Virginia.