Doubting Thomas. After making offensive remarks about Israel, trailblazing White House journalist Helen Thomas resigns in a blaze of ignominy.

The worst medicine. A new report alleges that doctors on the CIA payroll conducted experiments on detainees.

Shipping and handling. Israel intercepts the Rachel Corrie relatively gently -- but what will become of the aid meant for Gaza?

Drone-ing on and on. The U.N. warns that remote-control missile-firing aircraft cast shadows over issues of accountability.

Acid happens. Close examination of Botticelli's painting "Venus and Mars" reveals Mars may have been high on more than Venus.

And...they were very nearly going through a stage. A British theatre company almost breaks a lot of legs -- when its prop grenades turn out to be actual grenades.

As It Happens, the Monday edition. Radio that figures the audience could have given them a lot more than a hand.

All the way back to President Dwight Eisenhower, she has been a thorn in the side of White House administrations. She would eventually work her way up to the front row of the West Wing briefing room -- not an easy feat for a female correspondent. But today, eighty-nine-year-old Helen Thomas -- the former White House Bureau Chief for United Press International, who was the "dean of the White House Press Corps" -- is done.

All because of this:

Ms. Thomas's remarks went viral. A high school cancelled her speaking engagement at its graduation ceremony. Her agent dropped her. And today, she suddenly announced her retirement.

A woman who rose through the ranks over decades is abruptly, in the words of some of her colleagues, "going down in flames".

Lanny Davis was President Bill Clinton's legal counsel. Today, we reached Mr. Davis in Washington D.C.

Activists say it is just more evidence of Israel's intransigence when it comes to allowing aid into Gaza. Israel says the peaceful commandeering of the MV Rachel Corrie on the weekend shows that it does treat activists with respect. Still, there remain questions about what will happen to the aid cargo on board the Irish-registered ship -- and renewed calls for an international inquiry into last week's skirmish aboard the Mavi Marmara, that left nine people dead.

Mark Regev is the official spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We reached him in Jerusalem.

Today, the town of Leamington, Ontario is bruised and battered after being hit by an F1 Tornado early yesterday morning.

Centuries-old trees were ripped from the ground, roofs were torn from houses and cars were smashed by debris and fallen trees. So far, ten houses have been condemned because they were so badly damaged.

Leamington also happens to be the greenhouse capital of North America. Many of its greenhouses were felled by the storm.

Chris Jacobs is the general manager of Keepsake Plants, one of the worst hit groups of greenhouses in the area. We reached him at work in Leamington.

The performers in every theatre production hope their show will create a bang. But the Magor Players of South Wales didn't realise how close they actually came to achieving that goal in a violently literal way.

The group was putting on a production based on the popular U.K. television comedy "Dad's Army". The comedy is based on the lives of Britain's Home Guard during the Second World War. The troupe was delighted when one of its member's found some authentic props for the show. With these realistic pieces on set, the Magor Players figured, they would have every chance of bringing the house down. Which, again, was a distinct, and distressing, possibility.

Keith Poultney is a member of the Magor Players. We reached him Newport, Wales.

And that brings down the curtain on the first part of tonight's program. And just a reminder that Talkback is always waiting in the wings. The toll-free number is 1-866-481-5718. And you can e-mail As It Happens at aih@cbc.ca.

We'll be back with Act Two right after the news -- and these stories:

Physician, shame thyself. According to a new report, the CIA hired doctors to help them fine-tune "enhanced interrogation" techniques.

The leak won't spring itself. The soldier who passed along a classified American military video is arrested by the Pentagon.

What a revoltin' development this is! Turns out that toddlers aren't disgusting on purpose -- they just can't tell when we're disgusted.

Stay tuned. I'm CO.

And I'm TA.

Hello again, I'm CO.

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

Coming up:

A spring has sprung: why scientists are breathless over a weird little low-oxygen creek 'way up in the Canadian North.

And...remembering Himan Brown -- a pioneering radio dramatist who created a generation of insomniacs, with various things that went bump -- and creak -- in the night.

Those stories are still to come on As It Happens.

Slapping, waterboarding and sleep deprivation. Just a few of the techniques adopted under the Bush Administration's "enhanced interrogation" program, after the attacks of September eleventh, 2001.

But while it's well-known that the CIA has employed such methods, a new report reveals that doctors on the agency's payroll may also have been experimenting on detainees.

Dr. Scott Allen is the lead medical author on the report, and is a medical advisor to Physicians for Human Rights. We reached him in Cumberland, Rhode Island.

Almost every day, someone confesses their crimes to Adrian Lamo.

As a high-profile former computer hacker, he attracts those who do the kind of thing that once made him famous. But a recent disclosure by an American soldier stood out.

The Army specialist told him he was the one behind the release of sensitive military secrets to the website Wikileaks -- including the video of a helicopter strike in Baghdad that left a Reuters reporter and his driver dead. We told you that story when Wikileaks went public with the video in April.

Mr. Lamo went to the Army with what he knew -- and that, it seems, prompted the arrest of Specialist Bradley Manning.

We reached Adrian Lamo at home in Carmichael, California.

The sound of a creaky door opening. An organist pumping out creepy, hair-raising music. And then... the horrifying sound of someone being smashed in the head.

Well, that sound was actually a bludgeon against a melon, but it was the effect that counts. And Himan Brown was the man who created that effect -- introducing all of those sounds and more to radio drama, terrifying generations of listeners.

Himan Brown, one of the greatest radio dramatists of all time, died Friday at his home in New York. He was ninety-nine.

Mr. Brown got his start in New York, when he was still a teenager and a student at Brooklyn College. In 1929, he convinced NBC to let him act in, cast and produce a radio drama about a Jewish family in the Bronx. His part in the show only lasted six months, but his career had begun.

Over the years, Mr. Brown produced more than thirty thousand radio dramas, including "Dick Tracy," "The Adventures of the Thin Man," and his most popular series, "Inner Sanctum."

He was convinced that nothing visual could match the magic of sound. In a 2003 interview, he said he didn't need car chases or mayhem. All he needed was to "creak the door open, and visually your head begins to go. The magic word is 'imagination'."

Himan Brown dedicated most of his life to radio drama, even after television pushed his genre out that creaking door. He revolutionized the medium with his creative sound effects, including his introduction of music as a sound effect to create a sense of terror and mayhem.

In the nineteen-seventies, radio dramas aired in the final half hour of summer edition of As it Happens. Here's a little taste of Hiram Brown's series "Inner Sanctum", from our archives.

It is an unfortunate truth that we don't always know the effect we have on other people. There's only one way to figure out that effect: by watching those other people to see how they react.

The results can be disappointing. You launch into what you think is a hilarious anecdote about the time your tongue piercing got infected, and when you glance around the dinner table, you see everyone listening is kind of pale, and they've stopped eating their tapioca. Or you spend more than seventy million bucks to make a film of L. Ron Hubbard's "Battlefield Earth", but when you actually show it to an audience, they're grim-faced and silent. Later, when they file out of the cinema, they won't even look at you, even though you're John Travolta.

The good news is that, having seen people's disgust, you can then adjust your behaviour accordingly. Unless you're five years old or younger.

According to James Russell, a psychologist at Boston College, toddlers just don't understand grown-ups' facial expressions of disgust. His work flies in the face of theories that everyone understands six simple expressions from infancy: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust.

Dr. Russell and his colleagues studied six hundred children between the ages of two and seven. They showed their subjects pictures of adults wearing each of the six expressions. And then they asked those squirmy subjects to assign those faces to boxes at the bottom of the screen -- containing the words "happy", "sad", "angry", "scared", "surprised", and "disgusted".

If you've ever wondered why your two-year-old acts like she doesn't have a clue what you're feeling at any time, here's why: she doesn't. The only expression two-year-olds could identify correctly was "happy". They categorized all the other "negative" expressions -- sad, angry, scared, and disgusted -- as "angry". By age three, more of the kids could correctly identify faces as "sad". By four, they could appreciate some of the nuances between angry and scared. And by age five, they were finally able to properly recognize disgust.

It explains why your toddler doesn't stop excavating the contents of his diaper just because you're grossed out. It's not that he doesn't care. It's that he's not able to read his audience yet. Give him a little time.

And to warn him about the kinds of expressions he'll have to deal with in the future, maybe you could play him this Wilf Carter song. This is "Sick, Sober, and Sorry".

The story of Kendra Webdale is an good example of something positive resulting from tragedy. In 1999, Kendra died after she was pushed in front of a New York subway train. The man who pushed her was mentally ill, and had a long history of hospitalizations.

After her death, the state of New York passed a law allowing judges to order detainment and treatment of mentally ill individuals. "Kendra's Law", as it's known, has since been adopted by forty-four other states. The law is considered a success. But as it comes up for review in New York State this month, the Office of Mental Health has recommended it only be renewed for five years.

Dr. Fuller Torrey believes the law should be made permanent. Dr. Torrey is a psychiatrist and is the founder of the Treatment Advocacy Center in Arlington, Virginia. We reached him in Bethesda, Maryland.

In the world of modern warfare, one weapon is gaining increasing notoriety: the "Drone".

"Drones" are pilot-less missile-firing planes operated by people with computer consoles, thousands of miles away from their intended targets. At present, they're the United States' weapon of choice in the "War on Terror"; on average, two drone attacks are launched every week. And they're becoming more popular: more and more countries are planning to stock their arsenals with 'Drones' -- or have already done so.

Phillip Alston, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions has been examining the weapons, and their effect. We reached Mr. Alston in Singapore.

Lost Hammer Spring is a tiny body of water on Axel Heiberg Island, in Canada's far north. How anybody managed to come across it in the first place is curious enough. But its remoteness and isolation are hardly the most curious things about it. And now, the spring has captured the attention of NASA, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project, and a host of scientists besides.

Lyle White is one of them. He's a microbiologist at McGill University who has just publised a paper on Lost Hammer Spring. We reached him in Montreal.

When it comes to art, everyone's a critic. For every person who thinks the Mona Lisa is a brilliant rendered portrait of the beautiful mystery at the heart of humanity, there's someone else who mutters, "I could do a better painting of a creepy-looking woman smirking."

Well, personal taste aside, one art historian has done a lot of research on one famous Botticelli painting -- and he's willing to designate it "high art."

David Bellingham is a programme director at the Sotheby's Institute of Art in London, which is where we reached him.