It's only Tuesday, but it's already been a terrible week for Parti Québecois leader Pauline Marois.

Yesterday, three high-profile PQ members resigned. And today, a fourth Member of the National Assembly defected from the party. This latest MNA to quit -- Jean-Martin Aussant -- went one big step beyond his colleagues in his criticism of Madame Marois' leadership: he said that he believes she should step down as leader.

For the record, here's part of what Monsieur Aussant told reporters today:

DALET - FTR: ANOTHER PQ MNA QUITS

JDFor the record, that was Jean-Martin Aussant, the fourth Member of the National Assembly to quit the Parti Québecois caucus this week.

André Pratt is the chief editorialist with the newspaper La Presse. We reached him in Montreal.

She wanted it so badly that Tammy Marquardt had the word tattooed on her arm: "Freedom".

Today, she got it.

Back in 1995, Ms. Marquardt was sent to prison for the death of her two-year-old son Kenneth. Part of that conviction was based on the expert testimony by Charles Smith. The former pathologist said that Tammy Marquardt's baby, Kenneth, had been strangled or suffocated. But it was later revealed that the toddler had in fact died of an epileptic seizure.

Since that trial -- and others that came before and after it -- Mr. Smith has had his medical license stripped because of misconduct and incompetence. Today, the Crown withdrew the murder charge partly because of his flawed evidence.

This afternoon, Ms. Marquardt described to reporters what fourteen years behind bars was like for her, and what it did to her family. Around the time she was convicted, two adopted sons of hers were also taken away.

For the record, here is part of what Ms. Marquardt had to say, beginning with her thoughts on former pathologist Charles Smith.

In a Syrian town that's become the eye of the storm in the three-month protest movement, there are signs that the regime's iron rule could be slowly falling apart.

Syrian officials says that a hundred-and-twenty members of their security forces were killed by "armed gangs" on Monday in Jisr Al Shughour -- but activists and protesters have a different story about what happened. Regardless, the Syrian Ministry of Interior is sticking to its story, and has promised to retaliate with a major military incursion.

Jisr Al Shughour is a town near the Turkish border. Details about what's happening there are increasingly hard to find, because no independent media is allowed to report there, and the government is trying its best to block communications.

Wissam Tarif is the executive director of the Syrian Human Rights group, Insan. He's usually based along the Syrian-Lebanese border, but today we reached him near Brussels.

What is a great white shark's favourite band?

Before you guess, let me remind you that sharks are obviously the coolest creatures in the ocean. If the sharks were sunglasses, those sunglasses would be mirrored. If the shark were a vehicle, it would be a customized old-school van with a souped-up engine, and an airbrushed picture of Thor on the side. Or a chopper driven by a young Dennis Hopper. So let me ask you again: what is a great white shark's favourite band?

Obviously, it's AC/DC.

We all know that intuitively. But an Australian tour operator named Matt Waller says he can support our intuitive opinion with research.

Mr. Waller's company, "Adventure Bay Charters", offers tourists the opportunity to swim with great whites. Or rather, it offers tourists the opportunity to cower inside a diving cage surrounded by great whites.

A while ago, Mr. Waller began experimenting with playing Australian rock music out of underwater speakers attached to the cages. I'm assuming Men At Work, Air Supply, the Bee Gees, and Olivia Newton-John, because those are pretty much the only Australian artists I know. The sharks ignored the music -- until Mr. Waller started blaring AC/DC. Then, he claims, the great whites swam right up to the diving cages, and rubbed their terrifying faces right on the speakers.

He has some theory or other about the low frequencies in the music of AC/DC attracting the sharks. And I'm sure that seems true to scientists. But sharks don't care about science. Sharks care about awesomeness, and being awesome. So naturally, they're drawn to the one band that is actually the musical equivalent of a shark.

Here's the science to prove it: AC/DC, with "Thunderstruck".

It started with an embarrassing photo and some jokes about frankfurters. Now, a dozen days and many excuses later, Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner has confessed to sending sending several women suggestive messages and pictures of himself.

He says he won't resign. But the Republicans are calling for his head. And his own party has vowed to investigate the matter.

Mark Jacobson is an author and journalist. He got to know Anthony Weiner while writing a profile of him for New York magazine two years ago. We reached Mr. Jacobson in New York.

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum

Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead

Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead.

By "he" I mean Shrek. Not the children's-book hero turned pop-culture phenomenon -- that franchise has been dead for years. I'm talking about Shrek the sheep, arguably New Zealand's most famous ovine.

Back in 2004, Shrek made headlines around the globe after he eluded kiwi shearers for over six years, hiding in caves on New Zealand's South Island.

And during his time AWOL, Shrek grew a magnificent, untameable 'fro. When the wily Merino sheep was finally shorn, in a live televised event, his fleece weighed twenty-seven kilograms.

After his discovery, Shrek became the darling of the country. He was lauded as a single-minded creature who wouldn't play by the rules -- even though, let's face it, he was probably more of a small-brained creature who probably woke up every day thinking, "Why am I in this cave?" He met the former Prime Minister Helen Clark. And made over a hundred-and-fifty thousand dollars for kids' charities, when his famous fleece was sold off.

But despite all his cunning, Shrek couldn't evade the biggest shearer of them all: time itself.

The iconic sheep was put down this weekend, because of age-related illnesses.

During the height of his fame, former "As It Happens" host Mary Lou Finlay spoke with Shrek's owner, John Perriam. So here, from our archive, is an excerpt from that April, 2004 interview.

This fall, an author is finally going to have his first novel published.

Which doesn't sound like big news. Authors have their first novels published all the time. to have his first novel finally published. But it is news when the writer has been dead for over eighty years. And when that writer was the man behind the world-famous Sherlock Holmes stories.

This fall, the British Library is set to publish Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Narrative of John Smith" for the first time -- a story he wrote three years before his first Sherlock Holmes novel.

Daniel Stashower is one of the editors of the book. We reached him in Washington, D.C.

Dateline: Paris, France.This may surprise you, but there are people who believe Twitter is silly, and should be ignored. Some of them are just curmudgeons. One of them is Congressman Anthony Weiner. And several of them are media officials in France.

But in the latter case, it's not just wishful thinking. Even though everyone and their dogs share bons mots on Twitter, France has just banned all references to Twitter and Facebook from television and radio news. According to the country's broadcast regulator, phrases like "Follow us on Twitter" and "Find us on Facebook" subliminally advertise for the social media sites.

So radio hosts can use Twitter and Facebook. They just can't talk about it. Instead, the Conseil d'audiovisuel superieur would rather hosts be more general, and say things like "You can follow us on the social media."

Which, nowadays, is a bit like saying, "If you want to find me, look in the world."

"Inception" was confusing enough without that guy sitting behind me who kept calling his friends to tell them he was watching "Inception" and it was, like, totally confusing.

Those cellphone-using, texting jerks can ruin movies. As the owners of the Alama Drafthouse in Austin, Texas, know well. Since 1997, that movie theatre has had a strict no-talking or texting policy. But it seems like someone missed the memo.

Recently, a woman went to the cinema and texted on her phone. She was asked to stop, twice -- and then given the boot. No refund.

This did not make her LOL. She immediately called the theatre and left an expletive-laced piece of her mind. Which the Alamo Drafthouse promptly turned into a "Don't Talk or Text PSA", which now runs before R-rated movies.

Here's a censored version of that message, for the record:

Confucius once said, "To go beyond is as wrong as to fall short." But the truth is that many people "go beyond" all the time when they're at work, and they're not doing it for the money.

Cindy Fulawka says that over the course of about two decades, she put in a lot of overtime during her job. She also says she didn't get a red cent for any of it. In 2007, she filed a class action lawsuit against her employer, the Bank of Nova Scotia. And that case has just jumped an important legal hurdle: three judges of the Ontario Divisional Court have agreed the case can proceed as a class action, despite efforts on the part of the bank to quash it.

The lawyer for the complainants is Louis Sokolov of Sack Goldblatt Mitchell LLP in Toronto.

It could have been called legitimate protest, or political provocation. But either way, between ten and twenty-three Syrian protesters were killed by Israeli Defence Forces on Sunday, at Israel's border with Syria in the Golan Heights.

Last night, Mark Regev, the official spokesman for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, told As It Happens that the protesters were fired upon because there was a risk they might have broken through the fence and into Israel.

That interview led Mehdi Naimi, of Nanoose Bay, B.C., to write this e-mail:

"I cannot say I was moved by your interview with the Israeli official; quite the contrary, I froze. I began to feel the numbness in that man who was justifying the killings with formulaic phrases: words like 'restraint'...'enemy invasion', and such.

I am not taking sides with either of the parties. I am sure if it were a Syrian official in the same situation, we'd be listening to well-used nonsense all the same. I just feel so much sorrow at the thought of another generation of Arab and Israeli children growing up in the sea of violence that surrounds them.

It just feels like the whole world is standing aside and watching so much human potential go to waste by terror and oppression. Are our children going to listen to the same 'news' in twenty years?"

That email was from Mehdi Naimi of Nanoose Bay, B.C.

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There are lies, damned lies -- and then there's Zimbabwe's voter's roll.

A South African researcher has managed to get his hands on a copy of neighbouring Zimbabwe's electoral register. And after doing a bit of number-crunching, he's discovered some rather intriguing anomalies.

R. W. Johnson from the South African Institute of Race Relations is said researcher. We reached him in Capetown, South Africa.

Reaction to yesterday's federal budget was swift and firm. According to Liberal leader Bob Rae, the budget fails to address the continuing challenge of poverty in Canada. Windsor M-P Brian Masse responded to the budget by saying that the government's priorities were mixed up, and that too many seniors and Canadians are without jobs. Elizabeth May of the Green Party says the budget doesn't do enough to address climate change.

I know what you're saying: "But what do golfers think?"

Well, today, we finally found out. This morning, golf industry representatives from across the country gathered on Parliament Hill to advocate for tax fairness in the name of golf.

Jeff Calderwood is the C-E-O of the National Golf Course Owners Assocation, and here, for the record, is an excerpt of his speech at this morning's news conference.

With a spiffy new Kindle, you can hold thirty-five hundred e-books in the palm of your hand. Apple's iPad boasts that it can manage up to eight times more. But Shaunna Raycraft has them both beat. The Saskatchewan woman has managed to get nearly three-hundred-and-fifty thousand books into a device that she calls...a farmhouse.

We reached Shaunna Raycraft in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Aaron Rome was skating on thin ice in Boston last night.

Five minutes into the opening period of last night's hockey game, the defenceman with the Vancouver Canucks delivered a vicious check to the head of Nathan Horton. He's the forward and one of the top scorers for the Boston Bruins.

Beantown fans were not -- and are not -- impressed. The phones at call-in radio shows rang off the hook. Here's a sample from "The Planet Mikey Show", which airs on the WEEI Sports Radio Network, for the record.