Hello, I'm Helen Mann, sitting in for Carol Off.

Good evening, I'm Jeff Douglas.

This is As It Happens.

Tonight:

Three doors down from a powder-keg. A Barrie, Ontario father tells us about being forced to leave his home while dozens of bombs are removed from his neighbour's house.

Destroying the negative. A married gay couple fights back when an anti-same-sex marriage group uses their photo in its campaign.

Boy banned. Bashir Mohamed showed up at a barbecue with some criticism for Immigration Minister Jason Kenney -- only to find himself booted, and arrested.

Taking their arms in his hands. In Los Angeles, an artist makes sculptures out of guns that were handed over to the city's police department.

One whey, not another. The British Cheese Board asked people to write anthems celebrating Cheddar cheese -- and tonight we'll hear the five finalists.

And...for him, every project's a pet project. Over his fifteen years in office, the mayor of Talkeetna, Alaska, has taken a licking -- mostly from himself, because he's a cat.

As It Happens, the Monday edition. Radio that appreciates a politican who thinks outside the box.

Today, Lance Black learned it could be days before he can move back home.

His small neighbourhood in Barrie, Ontario, has been evacuated while police carefully remove the bombs, guns and other explosive materials from a home on a quiet street.

The bombs were discovered after a man named Donald Feldhoff turned himself into police. He's now charged with a thirty-four-year-old unsolved murder. His father, William, has also been arrested.

Lance Black lives three doors down from the Feldhoffs, where police continue to comb the house.

Mr. Black has relocated to a local hotel with his family. And that's where we reached him, in Barrie, Ontario.

I haven't been to the U.K. for a couple of years now, but the last time I was there I came across an iconic English sandwich at a cafe on the northeast coast. The sandwich is called a Chip Buttie. If you're not familiar with the Chip Buttie, I'll describe it for you now: it's a big bun, with chips -- and by chips I mean French fries -- inside. Yes, the British love their chips so much they put them in a sandwich.

Which brings me to a Times of London editorial published this past weekend. This summer has been one of the wettest in recent U.K. history. So much so that the country is full of discounted swimwear, and unpurchased patio furniture. And also -- gasp -- the potato crops have been affected, which means the price of chips may go up.

So, as Olympic athletes begin to arrive in London, the Times has asked that the rain stop. From the editorial, quote:

"Let us make our position crystal clear. We are against this weather. It must stop raining and soon."

It goes on to say:

"When the proverbial cheapness of chips comes under threat, The Times says enough is enough. The British climate is supposed to be unpredictable. At the moment, it is anything but. If sustained sunshine is too much to ask for, most of us would settle for a little bit of fickle."

Unquote.

As we go to air, there's been no official response yet from the sky.

There's a seventeen-year-old in Edmonton who wants to debate the Minister of Immigration, Jason Kenney.

Bashir Mohamed and his family came to Canada as refugees, fleeing civil war in Somalia. He became a Canadian citizen last year, and is set to begin at the University of Alberta this fall.

Mr. Mohamed is concerned, though, that Canada is becoming less welcoming to the refugees following in his footsteps. He wants the government to reverse its cuts to refugee health care coverage.

On Saturday, Mr. Mohamed tried to take on Minister Kenney at an event in Edmonton. But it didn't really work out. Instead, he wound up arrested and facing assault charges.

We reached Bashir Mohamed in Edmonton.

Romney to Obama: apologize for attacking me. Obama: no.

It's early days in the campaign for the presidency of the United States, but the tone has already been set. The bad news for everyone is that the tone is both nasty and confusing.

At issue at the moment is Republican candidate Mitt Romney's tenure as the chief executive of Bain Capital -- a financial services company. Mr. Romney was a founding partner in the company. By the late 'nineties, Bain Capital was managing billions of dollars, and was one of the most successful private equity firms in the United States.

Then, between 1999 and 2002, various companies in which Bain Capital had invested laid off workers, went bankrupt, or outsourced jobs.

If Mitt Romney was still chief executive during this period, the Obama campaign wants Americans to know that he presided over these failed ventures, and supported companies that sent jobs overseas. And that's where things get nasty and confusing.

In 1999, Mr. Romney took a leave of absence from Bain to run the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. But in documents filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2000 and 2001, he's referred to as the "managing director" of Bain. And other documents show that he got at least a hundred thousand dollars in compensation from Bain Capital in 2001.

According to the Obama campaign, this means Mitt Romney remained head of a rapacious company with dubious ethics for three of its most dubious and rapacious years. Yesterday, Mr. Romney's advisor Ed Gillespie attempted to cleary the air on CNN's "State of the Nation". Here is part of that conversation with host, Candy Crowley -- for the record.

For Tom Privitere and Brian Edwards, it's a photo that captures one of the happiest days of their lives -- a photo of the two of them kissing on the day they got engaged to be married. The New York City skyline is their backdrop.

But now, that photo is being used in an anti-gay marriage campaign that goes against everything the two men believe.

Last week, Tom and Brian learned their photo had been altered and used without their permission by an anti-civil union and anti-gay rights group in the United States.

Tom Privitere and Brian Edwards are now married, and today we reached Mr. Privitere in Montclair, New Jersey.

Apparently, history and context are also in the eye of the beholder.

On Friday, we spoke with Conservative MP Rob Anders. He objects to the federal government funding a new visitor centre at Bethune Memorial House in Gravenhurst, Ontario. Dr. Norman Bethune was, of course, an internationally admired Canadian physician and medical innovator. He's known for providing medical help during the Spanish Civil War, and for joining the Chinese Communist Party while they fought the Japanese.

The latter being the sticking point for Mr. Anders. He said that the government funding a memorial site for Dr. Bethune was, quote, "lionizing a supporter of Mao", whom he referred to repeatedly as "the biggest mass murderer in history".

We received several emails on this story -- all of which took issue with Mr. Anders.

Tom Koch in Toronto sent us this email:

"[Mr. Anders's] complaint about public monies spent to maintain Dr. Norman Bethuene's home is sad, and shocking in its ignorance. Like physicians today who serve in Medicine sans Frontieres, his mission was to provide medical care to those without care, to serve where no others could or would. He is honoured because he exemplified the humanitarian goals of medicine...service without respect to political allegiance."

That email was Tom Koch in Toronto.

David Murphy in Bloomington, Indiana wrote:

"What Bethune did in China, and before that in Spain, was what hundreds of thousands of Canadian soldiers would do a few years later: help to resist Japanese aggression and European fascism. And associating Bethune with Mao's supposed killing of eighty million people is ridiculous. Bethune died ten years before Mao and the Communist Party came to power in China. Rob Anders' deliberate distortion of Canadian and global history for his narrow ideological purposes is disgraceful."

That was from David Murphy in Bloomington, Indiana.

And Judy Anderson from Winnipeg shared her personal connection with Dr. Bethune in this email:

"Dr. Bethune was recruited to travel to China by the Communist Party, to help the people there who needed surgical care and were being invaded by the Japanese. He met Mao, but did not work for Mao; neither did my aunt, Jean Ewen, who was Bethune's surgical nurse. They also taught surgical skills and nursing practices there, for a pittance, and certainly not for the glory.

"Bethune was in China because he had ideals that led his heart to help others where he could. Rather than passing judgment on the integrity or morality of Bethune, or disparaging the appropriateness of Canadian taxpayers making Bethune House finally recognize the man's origins and actions, this MP should try to walk in the shoes of someone like Bethune. He might learn that public service for a social ideal, given generously and with stubborn gumption and dedication, can really benefit and build a community."

That email came from Judy Anderson from Winnipeg.

In the Bible, the Book of Isaiah calls on people to bring about peace by turning their swords into ploughshares.

In Victor Hugo Zayas' book, the modern version of that to bring about art by turning guns into sculptures. His latest exhibit is currently on display at the Los Angeles Police Department's headquarters.

Mr. Zayas is a sculptor and teacher in Los Angeles. That's where we reached him.

It's incredibly easy to make cheese. As a national competition in the U.K. has just proved.

Back in May, Britain's Cheese Board invited Brits to write an anthem for the nation's favourite cheese -- Cheddar. The rules were simple: write lyrics celebrating Cheddar cheese, and put those lyrics to one of three tunes: "God Save the Queen", "Land of Hope and Glory" or the hymn "Jerusalem".

Well, now the Board has pared more than a hundred entries down to just five. And they are asking for public votes to select the best anthem.

And just like the delectable cheese, the final five come in many sharp flavours.

Forty-nine years ago, a complicated hero was born -- a prickly, brain kid from the town of Idaville, with a knack for crime-solving. And that knack came in handy, because the mysteries he's called upon to solve would flummox Sherlock Holmes -- not to mention any kid reading about them.

Nevertheless, millions and millions of kids did and do read the adventures of Leroy Brown -- better known by the nickname "Encyclopedia Brown" -- created by one-time newspaper reporter Donald J. Sobol.

Today, Mr. Sobol's family revealed that the author died on July eleventh, at the age of eighty-seven.

Every "Encyclopedia Brown" mystery took the form of a story that ostensibly contained the clues you needed to solve the mystery -- and then, at the end of the book, the solution to that mystery. Sometimes you'd turn to the back and nod proudly to see your own conclusions confirmed.

Sometimes you'd turn to the back and slap your forehead, muttering, "Of course!" And sometimes you'd turn to the back and shake your head, because no one short of the head of Scotland Yard could possibly have solved it.

But Encyclopedia Brown did -- and for the bargain rate of twenty-five cents, plus expenses.

In 2007, Eric Greenberg -- the man behind the retro pop culture website "Just My Show" -- interviewed Donald J. Sobol. Here's part of their conversation.