Tonight:

Points of departure. A new report exposes the staggering number of refugees that have fled Syria -- a hundred thousand last month alone.

Making overtures. Inside the country, where chaos reigns, the conductor of the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra considers it his job to keep the music alive.

Not a banner day, then. A Quebec pilot is hired to trail a provocative message about the Prime Minister -- but is grounded by the RCMP.

Take those jobs and shove them. Enbridge says the Northern Gateway will employ thousands of people -- but the Alberta Federation of Labour says the oil company is giving us the business.

Hell is author people. An online critic savages various books and praises crime writer R.J. Ellory -- and then turns out to actually be R.J. Ellory.

And...both the people and the building were pre-occupied. For decades, squatting artists made a home in the Tacheles complex in Berlin -- and one of them, the Canadian musician Peaches, reflects on its official closure.

As It Happens, the Tuesday edition. Radio that doesn't know squat -- but is willing to learn.

It is perhaps the bleakest picture yet of what is happening in Syria.

During the month of August, more than a hundred thousand refugees fled over the border into neighbouring countries. That number is unprecedented, despite many violent chapters in the eighteen-month-old Syrian uprising.

Melissa Fleming is the spokesperson for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. We reached her in Geneva.

There it was, buzzing above the Ottawa-Gatineau Capital region. A small plane with a big sign.

The banner trailing it read, in French: "Stephen Harper Nous Deteste-dot-CA". In English: Stephen Harper Hates Us. Dot-CA.

It was hired to fly for three hours -- but after just ninety minutes, the RCMP interrupted the flight and ordered the plane to land.

Jean-Pierre Ciambella is the pilot of the Piper Supercub airplane that was hired by the Public Service Alliance of Canada on the weekend. He's in Saint-Hubert, Quebec.

R.J. Ellory couldn't have written a better review himself.

On the website Amazon, a reader with the username "Nicodemus Jones" gave Mr. Ellory's award-winning mystery novel "A Quiet Belief in Angels" five stars. And he added this awestruck praise. Quote:

"Some of it was chilling, some of it raced along, some of it was poetic and languorous and had to be read twice and three times to really appreciate the depth of the prose...it really is a magnificent book."

Unquote.

As I say, Mr. Ellory couldn't have written a better review himself. And I know that because he did write that review himself.

Recently, a fellow mystery writer named Jeremy Duns discovered that Mr. Ellory had repeatedly used the usernames "Nicodemus Jones" and "Jelly Bean" not just to praise his own work on Amazon, but to bury the work of others. Using a pseudonym, Mr. Ellory critiqued a book by Scottish writer Stuart MacBride, writing, "This is the second of this author's books I have read, and to tell you the truth, I can't be bothered any more."

Mr. Ellory has taken the bold step of apologizing, under his own name. In a statement to the Daily Telegraph newspaper, he wrote, quote: "I wholeheartedly regret the lapse of judgment that allowed personal opinions to be disseminated in this way and I would like to apologize to my readers and the writing community."

Unquote.

That apology may not be enough for the writers who were subjected to his venom by fictitious proxy. But I can guarantee it's more than enough for "Nicodemus Jones", who would likely pronounce it "really a magnificent display of contrition".

For the artists who lived and worked in Berlin's best-known squat, it likely seemed that this day was always just around the corner --and, at the same time, that it would never arrive.

Today, after twenty-two years of occupation, authorities finally cleared the last forty or so people out the Tacheles art centre.

In 1990, artists moved in and prevented the run-down East Berlin building from being destroyed. The threat of closure has loomed ever since.

The Canadian musician Peaches is one of those who worked at Tacheles. We reached her in Berlin.

The streets of north Belfast have erupted in violence for a second night.

Young Protestant loyalists have been attacking Northern Irish police with petrol bombs, fireworks, bricks and bottles.

Fifteen officers were injured in clashes last night -- bringing the total number of injured police to over sixty.

Alban Maginness is a North Belfast MLA with Northern Ireland's nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party, the SDLP. We reached him in Belfast earlier today.

When Pluto was demoted from its status as a planet, astronomer David Jewitt simply shrugged and moved on.

Years before, he'd already reached the conclusion that Pluto was just part of a larger collection of icy space objects he'd discovered in the outer reaches of our solar system. And that the tiny ninth planet really wasn't anything special.

Those icy space objects came to be called the Kuiper Belt -- and today David Jewitt was finally honoured for his discovery. This afternoon, he received the prestigious Kavli Prize in Norway.

We reached Professor Jewitt at his hotel in Oslo, Norway.

Syria is burning.

Now in its second year, the uprising there has spread across the country, and grown more violent. Explosions are heard in Damascus. As we heard earlier, people are leaving the country in the tens of thousands. And most now believe that the regime's days are numbered.

And yet life in the capital carries on -- in sometimes surprising ways.

Missak Baghboudarian is the conductor of the Syrian National Symphony Orchestra, which is preparing its new season. We reached him yesterday in Damascus.

You might think that labour unions would be happy to hear a new pipeline will be creating jobs for their members.

But the Alberta Federation of Labour is opposing Enbridge's proposal to build a billion-dollar pipeline to ship raw bitumen from the Alberta oilsands to Asia. Even though Enbridge says it will create thousands of jobs.

The Labour Federation is making its case this week, at the final phase of public hearings into the project in Edmonton.

Gil McGowan is president of the Alberta Federation of Labour. We reached him in Edmonton.

It wasn't the decision they wanted. But relatives of victims of a 1948 massacre by British soldiers in Malaysia are taking some comfort in a court ruling today.

At the time, Britain was involved in the so-called Malayan Emergency. This involved British soldiers trying to put down a communist-led revolt in then-British Malaya. And when those soldiers entered the village of Batang Kali, locals claim they gunned down twenty-four innocent civilians.

Britain's High Court has upheld a decision not to hold a public inquiry into the killings. But it did accept the version of events by victim's relatives -- rather than the official history portrayed by U.K. government records.

John Halford was representing the victim's relatives. Earlier today, he told us about what happened in Batang Kali on December eleventh and twelfth, 1948 -- and how official accounts tried to cover up the truth.

As we told you on Friday, the Burmese government made a list. And now journalists, activists and politicians are checking it twice. Last week, over a thousand names of people who were previously banned from entering the country appeared on a government website. This means they're off the black list and allowed to visit Burma.

One of those names is Paul Copeland. Mr. Copeland is a Toronto-based lawyer and a founder of the Canadian Campaign for Free Burma. We reached Mr. Copeland in Toronto.

If I heard there was a great white shark hunting seals off your coast, I would get out of the water. And never go back in. But Scottish fisherman Hamish Currie is not me. He headed out to catch the big fish.

But, just like in the movies, he got more than he bargained for.

We reached Mr. Currie in Cushendall, Northern Ireland.

For most of us, Ringo Starr is -- and always was -- a Beatle. He secured his seat behind the kit in 1962, as the band was poised to take the world by storm. But before that storm, Ringo was a hurricane -- as the drummer for the popular Liverpool act, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. The group played a major part in the city's beat music scene, known as Merseybeat.

Ringo joined the band when he was eighteen and played with them for about three years, before Brian Epstein convinced him to jump ship and join the Beatles.

Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, for their part, recorded a few singles -- including one produced by Epstein in 1964. But despite their popularity at home, they of course never acheived a level of fame anywhere near that of the Fab Four.

Frontman Rory Storm, born Alan Caldwell, died in 1972, when he was just thirty-four.

But now, forty years after his death, Rory Storm and the Hurricanes is garnering a second listen. The band's first full album is set for release later this month -- after the lead singer's sister discovered a series of early recordings in her basement.

The tapes were recorded in 1960, at the Jive Hive Club north of Liverpool, and at Rory Storm's house -- dubbed Stormsville -- where Merseybeat bands, including the Beatles, would gather to play after hours.

So we'll have to wait to hear what the album sounds like. But in the meantime, here's a post-Ringo Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, with a live 1963 recording of "I Can Tell".