In Oman this evening, a plane door opened and two young men sprinted down a flight of steps, and into the arms of their friends and family.

Just hours earlier, Shane Bauer and Shosh Fattal had been released from the Iranian prison where they'd been held for twenty-six months. They had been accused of spying, after a hike that began in Iraq somehow took them across the border into Iran. Iran has never produced evidence of espionage, and a third hiker, Sarah Shourd, was released last year after he health began to decline.

There have been countless rumours, over the years, that Shane and Josh would also be freed. Farah Mawani has been there for it all. The Toronto woman is the co-founder of Free the Hikers, the coalition of friends and family that worked for today's release. We reached Ms. Mawani in New York.

Just as the dead were being mourned, even more were being killed.

In Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, tens of thousands of people gathered earlier today to grieve for the dozens shot in recent days. As they prayed for the dead, pro-government forces began firing on protestors camped out a few kilometres away, in the city centre.

Tom Finn is a freelance journalist. We reached him in Sanaa.

Things came to an end before she could even get a start.

Today, in Halifax, the board of directors for the Africville Heritage Trust announced it had fired its newly-hired executive director, Carol Nixon.

As we've told you on this program, the decision to hire Ms. Nixon -- whose appointment was announced last week -- has been highly controversial. Ms. Nixon is a white woman originally from Ontario and, as such, members of Nova Scotia's black community felt she didn't represent their interests. However, the Trust's board stood firmly behind its choice, until it emerged yesterday that Ms. Nixon has a sketchy employment record.

Daurene Lewis is chairwoman of the Africvile Heritage Trust. We reached her at her home in Halifax.

"As It Happens" requested an interview with Carol Nixon. She didn't respond. But she did talk briefly with local CBC reporter, Brian Dubreuil. Here is part of what she had to say, for the record:

Dateline: Switzerland.I am going to read you a number of sentences now. Each sentence, on its own, probably won't seem that strange to you. But as they pile up, they'll seem more and more incongruous, until you no longer believe anything I'm saying. But I assure you, what I'm about to say is true.

The story begins back in 2008, in Switzerland, when the Swiss government brought in a new animal-welfare law. Under the law, would-be dog owners have to take an intensive two-part course on how to own a dog right. Aquariums must be transparent on all sides, and the fish within must be exposed to the natural twenty-four hour light cycle. And this is the key part: all social animals must cohabit with -- or at least be exposed to -- other social animals of the same species.

You're asking if that includes guinea pigs. It does. Very much so. Technically, if you have one guinea pig, you can't have one guinea pig. You have to have two guinea pigs, because they're sensitive and social. They also die -- but they don't do it in a synchronized way. So if you're Swiss, when one of your guinea pigs dies, you have a problem. You can't just get rid of the first one, and you can't have just one.

As Priska Küng puts it, "Because they hardly ever die at the same time, people who don't want a new guinea pig and lose one of their two animals need an interim solution." And Ms. Küng provides that solution: a guinea pig rental service. For a nominal fee, she'll lease you a guinea pig to accompany your surviving guinea pig -- thus ensuring you aren't breaking Swiss law, and that your guinea pig has a fellow guinea pig to bore and annoy with endless stories of how awesome the dead guinea pig was.

So Priska Küng's guinea pig rental service kills two birds with one stone. Just don't use that phrase in Switzerland. You'll be arrested.

It is a government's paramount responsibility: to protect the lives of its people. But for the Somali government, that's proving an impossible task.

Somalia is facing a famine that has already claimed tens of thousands of lives. Seven-hundred-and-fifty thousand people are in immediate danger of starving to death -- and experts are warning that things are about to get far, far worse.

Before a famine was declared earlier this summer, the government of Somalia was struggling even to exist. Now it is struggling to prevent the mass starvation of its people.

Abdiweli Mohamed Ali is the Prime Minister of Somalia. We reached him in New York City.

A Grade Nine student is confronting his demons once again.

After enduring years of relentless bullying, Mitchell Brewster, a mixed-race fourteen-year old from Glace Bay, Nova Scotia refused to go to school anymore. Now, he has returned to his junior high school, the Oceanview Education Center, following a show of public support for his situation.

On Monday, the Universal Negro Improvement Association, U-N-I-A, held a public meeting in Glace Bay to bring attention to the boy's case. And more than a hundred people showed up to discuss the bullying.

This morning, the student's mother, Tracey MacNeil, spoke to CBC Nova Scotia host Steve Sutherland about the bullying her son had experienced at school. Here is some of that conversation, for the record.

No money, Poe problems.

While many cities in the United States claim to have a special connection with the late author Edgar Allan Poe, Baltimore is the one with Poe Museum. At least, for the time being. But possibly not for much longer.

The museum, formerly the home of the writer in the early nineteenth century, is in danger of being shut down because it can't financially sustain itself. In short, the museum might be nevermore.

Jeff Jerome is the museum's curator -- and its only employee -- and we reached him in Baltimore for the Tell-Tale story.

Shel Silverstein's new book of poetry opens with this invitation to the reader:

"Although I cannot see your face

As you flip these poems awhile,

Somewhere from some far-off place

I hear you laughing -- and I smile."

It's a message made more poignant and prescient given that the author died twelve years ago, at sixty-eight. This posthumous volume of poems, called Every Thing On It, was released this week by members of Mr. Silverstein's family.

And we'd like to share one or two of these rhymes with you now, starting with the title poem:

EVERY THING ON IT

I asked for a hot dog

With everything on it

And that was my big mistake.

'Cause it came with a parrot,

A bee in a bonnet,

A wristwatch, a wrench, and a rake.

It came with a goldfish,

A flag, and a fiddle,

A frog, and a front porch swing,

And a mouse in a mask --

That's the last time I ask

For a hot dog with everything.

And finally this one's called...

FRIGHTENED

"There are kids underneath my bed,"

Cried little baby monster Fred.

Momma monster smiled. "Oh, Fred,

There's no such things as kids," she said.

Those are just a couple of the one-hundred-and-thirty-seven poems by the late Shel Silverstein, which together with his iconic drawings, form a new collection called Every Thing On It, released this week by members of his family.

Of course, in addition to his writing for children, Mr. Silverstein catered to adult audiences as well -- as a cartoonist for Playboy, a playwright, and as a singer and songwriter. Among the many songs he wrote: "A Boy Named Sue", which became a hit for Johnny Cash, and this one, the all-time greatest classic of Canadian folkies The Irish Rovers. Here's "The Unicorn".

Making future planelessness plain.

Yesterday, Carol talked to Rob Godwin, a curator at the Canadian Air and Space Museum. He was none too pleased with the museum's landlord, the federal crown corporation that runs Toronto's Downsview Park. Downsview was kicking the museum and its collection of historic Canadian planes out of its home in the historic de Havilland aircraft plant in the park.

Mr. Godwin wasn't alone in his dispeasure. Peter Henshaw wrote from Ottawa to say:

"Thank you for covering this important story. How ironic that the only full-scale mock-up of the Avro Arrow should now receive the same treatment as the original planes. Please pursue the barbarians who have perpetrated this outrage."

David Soknacki would probably not self-identify as a barbarian, but he is the Chair of the Downsview Park Company. We reached Mr Soknacki in Toronto.

Adult sentences for violent young offenders. Harsher penalties for drug crimes. And tougher-to-get criminal pardons.

Those are just some of the aspects of the new omnibus crime bill that the federal government introduced yesterday. Last night, we spoke with Vic Toews, the Minister of Public Safety, about the legislation. But while the Minister wants to be tough on crime, some of you were getting tough on the Minister.

We got this email from Dianne Dowling in Kingston, Ontario:

"I have been involved for over two years in the effort to save -- and now, restore -- the Canadian prison farm program.

"Toews says he believes in the value of education and rehabilitation for inmates -- but he didn't say he would increase education and rehabilitation programming that actually reaches inmates. He claimed Correctional Services of Canada is working with colleges to provide training. That was the promise when CSC closed the farm program: it would be replaced by 'more relevant employment training' -- particularly trades. With two years for CSC to put something in place while they carried out the process of closing the farm at Frontenac Institution in Kingston, the best they have done is a carpentry program for eight inmates -- compared to the sixty involved in the farm.

"More inmates in prison for longer sentences, with lots of evidence from other jurisdictions that such policies don't work -- that's not tough on crime, it's stupid on crime.

"Canadians will pay enormously for this wrong-headed bill -- and social, health and education programs that actually could prevent crime in the first place will be sacrificed."

That email came from Dianne Dowling in Kingston, Ontario. Matthew Webb in Toronto had this to add:

"I'm interested to know which 'studies' Mr. Toews has seen which accurately speak to the number of 'unreported crimes' a person released from prison commits. He mentioned twelve a year on average. If something is unreported, it is thereby, necessarily, unknown, and unquantifiable. So then it would seem we are making policy decisions which incur billions of dollars in costs based on fictions sold as truth. Truly, the emperor wears no clothes in Canada.

That's from Matthew Webb in Toronto. Thank you all for your calls and emails.

First he blew the whistle. Now he's going to the Quebec Human Rights Commission.

Since last week, we've been telling you the story of Anthony Morgan, a student who posted a YouTube video after he spotted students at a rally in blackface, and displaying an array of racist stereotypes. He now says its time to make his concerns official.

We reached Mr. Morgan in Montreal.

Business owners in Montreal's Mile End are wondering what exactly it is they're seeing through the windows of what used to be a pet shop.

Listen to this: That was Max Leonard, who owns a nearby bistro. And he's not the only one who's seen the "perroquet" -- parrot -- through the pet store window. It closed a year ago, but people in the neighbourhood have seen strange sights in the abandoned shop ever since. They've also heard strange rumours about what might still be lurking in the building.

For the record, here are two concerned citizens, Noriko Baba and Heidi Daehler, speaking to CBC Montreal's Mike Finnerty.

When your moon hits their eyes like a big pizza-pie… that could be amore. Or it could be the last straw that provokes your long-suffering parents to evict your forty-one-year-old butt onto the street. Excuse my Italian.

Italy has a "bamboccioni" problem. "Bamboccioni" means "big babies". And it refers to the number of twenty, thirty- and even forty-somethings who are refusing to leave home and break their ties to Mama's apron strings.

Well, for one Venetian couple, enough is more than enough. And they have decided to evict their forty-one-year old son from the family abode.

"We cannot do it anymore," the man's father is reported as saying. "He demands that his clothes be washed and ironed and his meals prepared…My wife is suffering from stress and had to be hospitalized."

Lawyers have now contacted the son, and he has five days to get out of the house -- or face legal action.

Back in January of last year, Carol spoke with journalist and general observer of the Italian psyche, Beppe Severgnini about the country's "bamboccioni" problem. Here's part of their conversation, from our archives.

Well, we're coming up to my least favourite part of the program -- saying goodbye. But as Michael Stipe, lead singer for R.E.M. put it on the band's website today: "The skill in attending a party is knowing when it's time to leave."

It probably won't surprise you to know that he wasn't talking about our show. But it may surprise you to learn he was talking about R.E.M. Hard to believe, and -- if you're a fan -- hard to take, but after thirty-one years, the band is splitting up. Apparently members reached the decision to go their separate ways while working on an upcoming greatest-hits retrospective, to be released in November.

So as we go out tonight, we thought we'd go right back to the beginning, by playing the band's debut studio single, the subject of which holds a special place in our hearts. From 1981, this is R.E.M., with "Radio Free Europe".