Monday, May 23, 2011

Today, the people of Joplin, Missouri, are assessing the damage in their city. To many, it's as though yesterday's tornado tore the city in two. It left a large swath of destruction through the town centre of Joplin, killing dozens of people.

Rescue teams are carefully searching the wreckage for survivors, and there have been many stories of those who survived terrifying moments. One of those stories was recorded on a cell phone, in a convenience store. When the storm blew the store's windows out, a dozen or so people huddled in the cooler. Everyone survived, but they emerged to see sky where the roof once was. For the record, here's part of the recording.

Jeff Lehr is a reporter with the Joplin Globe newspaper, and he also survived yesterday's tornado. Since then, he's been at his office in Joplin. That's where we reached him.

Human rights activists in Tennessee are hoping efforts to introduce a new law in the state will not live long and prosper.

On Friday the Tennessee senate passed a bill that would prevent teachers from discussing homosexuality in Kindergarten to Eighth grade classrooms.

One man is prepared to boldly go where most actors haven't gone before to aid teachers and gay activists who oppose the bill.

That man is George Takei, better known to the world as Mr. Sulu from Star Trek.

Here is an excerpt of his plan, for the record.

We reached George Takei in Los Angeles, California.

A Conservative majority? An NDP baby boom in Quebec? The results of this month's federal election still have some observers scratching their heads.

Stuart Soroka is scratching through the numbers instead.

He's a political science professor at McGill University and a co-investigator with the Canadian Election Study. The study has been collecting mountains of data on every Canadian election since 1965 in an attempt to understand what makes Canadians vote, why we vote the way we do, and what changes from one election to the next.

Professor Soroka released the first batch of results from this year's election on Friday. We reached him Montreal.

When Gideon Christian got married in September 2009, he expected that he and his wife would make a home in Ottawa.

The couple got married in their home country, Nigeria, and then Gideon returned to Canada to resume his university studies. The couple sent in her resident sponsorship application. They were told everything seemed in order and that they'd have to wait eight months or so.

Almost two years -- and a series of mistakes by officials -- later, they're still apart, despite an apology from the federal government.

We reached Gideon Christian at home in Ottawa.

Ever since the Ontario Special Investigations Unit -- or SIU -- closed its investigation last week into the case of Dorian Barton, As It Happens has been trying to find out why. Mr. Barton is the bystander at last summer's G20 summit who ended up with a black eye and a broken arm at the hands of police.

We know there is a photographer who took a picture of a police officer, and who said that officer was the one who struck Mr. Barton. The Toronto Police have given the SIU the officer's name. But last week, we heard the director of the SIU tell us there's still a big problem: none of the eleven or so other officers on the scene that day identified their colleague as the person who struck Mr. Barton.

On Friday, As It Happens spoke with the Toronto Police's director of communications, Mark Pugash.

After that interview, we heard from you. Gary Fletcher in Vancouver writes:

"Enough of this absurd Alice in Wonderland! No law-respecting Canadian listening to the fantastic sidestepping nonsense we've had to endure over the last week could possibly believe our interests are being protected. Without the rule of law, Canada has nothing!"That email was from Gary Fletcher in Vancouver.We also heard from Mark Heseltine in Edmonton. He writes:

"There is more than enough evidence to go before a jury. The question is not whether the person can be identified by name. The question is what a jury would make of the evidence as it exists.

There is a picture. There is a name. There is a victim. Let the case proceed to trial."

Thanks to Mark Heseltine for that email.And, we also received this email from Lawrence Crosthwaithe in Edmonton:

"The outrage is understandable; the obfuscation of the police is predictable.

What's needed now is a citizenry asking this question: "What are you going to do next?" What the police and the crown do or not do is now the salient issue.

There are myriad methods available to identify the officer in question, and that fact is clear as crystal."Thanks to Lawrence Crosthwaite and to everyone who wrote or called.

Well, in Friday's interview with Mark Pugash, the Toronto Police spokesperson, he said there are a number of investigations underway, including an internal one looking into the case of Dorian Barton.

Mr. Pugash also said the police gave the SIU all the information it required and accused the investigation unit's director, Ian Scott, of getting his information wrong. Mr. Pugash went on to say that he can understand why none of the eleven or so officers could identify their colleague as the one who struck Mr. Barton.

That's when Mr. Pugash mentioned a separate video that was also taken that day.

In case you missed our interview, here is a part of what Mr. Pugash had to say.

After that interview, we heard from Ted Burley. He's the father of the alleged victim, Dorian Barton. Here's part of what he had to say in his phone message.

Astronomers in Arizona were once privy to the clearest views of the night sky. That's in danger of changing, in part, because of the state's worry about securing its southern border with Mexico.

The problem is that patrol helicopters and floodlights are sometimes drowning out the night sky with their bright lights.

Dan Brocious is a spokesman for the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory. We spoke to him in Boston, where he was attending the Summer Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

Oscar Wilde once wrote, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars." Well, fans of AFC Wimbledon soccer club in England have been stargazing for the past nine years. But now some of those dreams are coming true.

South London's Wimbledon Football club - and by football I mean soccer - had a long and proud history in the English Football League. For many years they played in the country's top-flight Premier League and even won English soccer's prestigious F-A Cup back in the nineteen-eighties.

But eight years ago, the Norwegian consortium that owned the club decided to relocate Wimbledon FC to Milton Keynes - breaking all ties with the South London community that had passionately supported the team for decades.

So the fans took matters into their own hands, and bank accounts -- and set up their own, new club.

A club that was one-hundred-percent owned and run by the fans themselves.

And now, after working their way through the lowest echelons of English soccer, Wimbledon once again has a team among England's elite. As of Sunday, AFC Wimbledon earned entry into Football League Division Two.

On Sunday, AFC Wimbledon's coach, Terry Brown, spoke to BBC Radio 5's Garry Richardson about the team's meteoric rise. Here is an excerpt from that conversation, for the record.

This month, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization held an emergency meeting in Rome to discuss an increasingly distressing global problem: Rising food costs, in a time of global population growth.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged decision makers in Rome to find new solutions, to "respond to rising food prices, not with failed policies of the past, but with a sounder approach".

Just what these new "sound approaches" might be is unclear. But Nick Cullather says there are plenty of examples of what not to do.

Nick Cullather is a historian who's delved deeply into the policies of aid. And the Indiana University professor found that the struggle to feed the world's hungry didn't just seem like a war --- it was a tool of war.

His new book, The Hungry World: America's Cold War Battle Against Poverty in Asia, was nominated for this year's Lionel Gelber Prize for non-fiction.

He spoke to Carol from the National Public Radio studio in Bloomington, Indiana.