An ending before a commencement. One day before they were to graduate from college, three men are killed in a Labrador boating accident.

Hard labour of love. A couple is sentenced to fourteen years of severe punishment in prison in Malawi, for the crime of being gay.

The artful dodger. A shadow is cast in the City of Light, when a mysterious thief steals five masterpieces from a Paris museum.

It's enough to make us sixth. On a list of G-8 countries' readiness to switch to a "low carbon" economy, Canada sits distressingly low.

Dialing for dolour. A misprint turns a retired Indiana couple into a sounding board for people with property-tax problems.

And...what fresh shell is this? Well, it belongs to the common musk turtle -- which, it turns out, breathes through its tongue.

As It Happens, the Thursday edition. Radio that's heard of putting your foot in your mouth -- but not your pants.

People across Labrador are coming to terms with tragedy tonight.

The search for three missing college students who swept over a waterfall is now officially a recovery mission. The men had gone onto the Churchill River on Tuesday evening, in a small boat. But they underestimated the strength of the currents.

Initially, there had been hope that the men would be found alive, but today those hopes were dashed. Rescue crew officials have said there is no chance of finding the young men alive.

All three of the men were students in the Industrial Millwright program at the College of the North Atlantic in Happy Valley-Goose Bay. Tomorrow was supposed to be their graduation day.

Todd Russell is the local MP for the area, and knows the families of the men. We reached him in Goose Bay, Labrador.

This morning, the city of Paris awoke to a nasty surprise. Overnight, a lone thief broke into the Paris Museum of Modern Art and stole five major works, including an oil painting by Pablo Picasso and one by Henri Matisse.

Arnaud Cornette de Saint Cyr is an art vendor in Paris, and that's where we reached him.

The phone rings. You pick up. Wrong number. No big deal, it happens all the time. But then the phone rings again. Wrong number again. And then it happens again. And again. And again.

It's not just annoying -- although it is that. It's also kind of mysterious. Because all the callers are asking about the same thing: their overdue property taxes.

That's exactly what happened to a retired couple in Indiana. We reached Carolyn Baxley in New Albany.

Before I tell you the following story, I should warn you: wherever you are, there are lions outside. Lots of lions. They're very hungry. And also angry, for some reason. So it's safer if you just stay inside and spend some time with me.

That might seem like a pretty desperate ploy to get you to listen to the radio. You might even think it was lame. And you'd probably feel the same way if you were a female topi antelope. Especially if some jerk used that ploy to trick you into sex.

That happens a lot amongst topi antelopes. A couple of behavioural ecologists have spent twelve years studying the elegant, horselike creatures in a nature reserve in Kenya. And the scientists are about to release a study on the male topi's sexual subterfuge.

Female topis have a pretty small window for procreating. If it were an actual window, it would be one of those front-door peepholes. They each ovulate only one day a year. So on that single day, they've got a lot of mating to do if they want to ensure they procreate. Which is why they visit an average of ten different territories where males hang out -- and mate around eleven times.

Maybe it's because the males really want to propagate the species. Or maybe it's because, even when every female has a different ovulation day, the mating season only lasts a month-and-a-half -- which means they're extremely hot to trot. Whatever the reason, male topi antelopes want to make sure they have sex.

So when a female looks like she's about to split, to hook up with another group of suitors, a male topi will issue a snort. That snort is an alarm call, and it sounds like this:That alarm call is the same one male and female topis issue when they see a predator -- such as a lion. In the case of a real threat, topis follow up that snort by staring at the lion. And the lion, realizing it's lost the element of surprise, decides it's just too hot, and goes elsewhere for dinner.

So in the case of the amorous male antelopes, they snort alarmingly, and stare off in the direction the female was about to head. Of course, she doesn't see any lions. But in that part of Kenya, you can't be too careful. So the female stays put -- and the sneaky male triumphantly mounts her.

Apparently, this "fake it so you make it" approach is exclusive to topi antelopes. Other animals try somewhat similar cons, but no other creature is so brazen and shameless. Except for Homo sapiens, of course. Which reminds me: those lions are going to be outside until the end of the show, so you should probably just stay inside, and listen to the radio.

And that brings us to the end of the first part of tonight's program. The news is next -- and then As It Happens will be back with these stories:

Their courage, and their convictions. Both halves of a gay couple in Malawi are punished with the maximum possible prison sentence.

Audit man out. A Nova Scotia MP speaks out against his colleagues' vote against a review of their spending.

Underground phenomenon. A team of archaeologists uncovers a twenty-seven-hundred-year-old tomb in Chiapas, Mexico.

Stay tuned. I'm CO.

And I'm DJ.

Hello again, I'm CO.

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

Coming up:

In the aftermath of an Ottawa firebombing, we'll investigate the group that has claimed responsibility.

And if the common musk turtle spends too much time being tongue-in-cheek, it will suffocate.

Those stories are still to come on As It Happens.

It all began with a celebration.

Last December, two men in Malawi held a gathering to mark their engagement. That gathering also marked the beginning of the end of their happiness together. Since then, they've been vilified in their conservative country's media, thrown in jail, and accused of being pawns in a Western conspiracy to export homosexuality.

Now, things have gotten even worse for Steven Monjeza and Tiwonge Chimbalanga. The couple has been convicted of gross indecency and committing unnatural acts. Today, they were sentenced to fourteen years in prison, and hard labour.

Dunker Kama works with the human rights group Centre for the Development of People. We reached him in Blantyre, Malawi.

It's an issue of transparency. It's also an issue of what politicians call "optics".

Last month, Auditor General Sheila Fraser offered to review Parliament's spending habits, as a way of helping trim the fat in these cost-cutting times. After all, Members of Parliament have more than half-a-billion dollars a year at their discretion. But the MPs weren't too keen on Ms. Fraser checking the books. Earlier this month, Parliament declined the Auditor-General's invitation, saying she was overstepping her bounds.

Now there are some voices of dissent speaking out against that decision, saying that it makes politicians look untrustworthy. Peter Stoffer is one of them. He's a New Democrat MP from Nova Scotia. We reached him on his cell phone in Eastern Passage.

Over the past year, the Tea Party has been making waves in American politics -- and on Tuesday it secured its first major victories.

Candidates Todd Lally and Rand Paul both won their G.O.P. primaries in Kentucky. So last night on the program, we spoke with Michael Hagan about those victories, and about the Tea Party movement. Mr. Hagan is a professor of political science at Temple University in Philadelphia.

In response to that interview, we received this e-mail from Francis Trueman:

"Your guest presented a superficial and essentially wrong-headed characterization of Rand Paul. There is much more to this man.

"Rand Paul and his legendary father, Ron Paul, are profoundly intellectual, strict constitutionalists, and, to say the least, authorities on the intricacies of monetary policy. Incredibly, they want to end the Federal Reserve and return to the non-interventionist foreign policy of the Founding Fathers.

"Morever, they are not strict social conservatives, and are strongly against the disastrous war on drugs. These views are anathema to most Republicans and many in the populist Tea Party movement.

"The Pauls -- father and son -- are true radicals for liberty, and wish to preside over nothing less than a second American Revolution."

That e-mail came to us from Francis Trueman.

If you have any comments you'd like to share with us, call Talkback at 1-866-481-5718. Or send an e-mail to aih@cbc.ca.

The tongue is an amazing organ. It's the most powerful muscle in the body. It can taste, articulate words, and make rude gestures. But a zoologist has discovered another of the tongue's amazing capabilities -- it can breathe. At least, it can when it's inside a turtle that lives in southern Canada and the eastern United States.

Egon Heiss is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Vienna, who has been studying the common musk turtle.

All together now: We're Number Six! We're Number Six! We're -- wait, stop chanting. Sorry. Number Six isn't a good thing.

That's the ranking Canada holds among the G-8, in terms of our performance transitioning to a "low-carbon" economy. The study, released today, was commissioned by the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy.

Bob Page is the TransAlta Professor of Environmental Management and Sustainability at the University of Calgary. He's also the Chair of the N.R.T.E.E. We reached him in Ottawa.

Earlier this week, in Sydney, Australia, a foreign student from Germany found himself in a frightening situation. He was surrounded by three men, on a dark street, late at night. And they were not friendly. They proceeded to kick and punch him. And when he fell down to the curbside, he feared the worst -- and had a moment to deeply regret having been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Except that, as it turned out, he was in the right place, at the right time. Courtesy of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the story of what happened next is our Sound of the Day.

It's been two days since the firebombing of an Ottawa branch of the Royal Bank of Canada. So far, no arrests have been made -- but police say they are closing in on the suspects.

In a video posted online, a group calling itself F.F.F.C.-Ottawa claimed responsibility for the firebombing. The two-minute video lists a rambling series of complaints, including concerns over native rights, the Alberta oil sands, and the Vancouver Olympics. It also includes a warning to the organizers of next month's G-8 and G-20 summits in Ontario. The group says simply: "We will be there".

So who exactly is F.F.F.C.-Ottawa? To find out, we reached Tom Quiggin, a Senior Research Fellow with the Canadian Center of Intelligence and Security Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa.

Cycling to end a deadly cycle.

Last night, thousands of cyclists across Quebec took part in the "Tour du Silence" -- a silent bike ride to commemorate cyclists who have died on the road. But the annual international event was especially poignant this year, following a pair of deadly cycling accidents last week: last Friday three female triathletes died after being hit by a pickup truck; and on the weekend a fifty-seven-year-old man in Val Morin was hit by a driver who is now accused of driving while impaired.

Hector Perrin, Nicolas Chourot and Louise Atkinson-Clark all took part in the ride in Laval. And although it's called the "Tour du Silence," they had plenty to say about why they were there.

Its residents aren't saying much -- but their burial site is saying plenty.

A team of archaeologists in the Mexican state of Chiapas has uncovered an ancient tomb in a pyramid -- one unlike any previously found.

Bruce R. Bachand is the project director of the excavation team. He thinks they've found something that connects the dots in a crucial time in Mesoamerican development. We reached Professor Bachand at the site, in Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas.