Tonight:

Meeting ignorance with eloquence. I'll speak with Special Olympics athlete John Franklin Stephens about his thoughtful letter in response to a thoughtless tweet by Ann Coulter.

Our home and native languages. The latest census data shows that Canadians aren't just bilingual anymore -- they're multilingual.

Ever get the feeling you're being watched? Cindy Blackstock, an advocate for aboriginal youth, believes she's being monitored by Ottawa -- and this week, she'll see if the Privacy Commissioner agrees.

Stopping the clock on the clerks. Ontario's Law Society of Upper Canada prepares to vote on whether to abolish the articling process for lawyers in training.

Pardon my French. Decades after graduating, the British minister of education writes a letter of apology to the man who taught him français, proving he's learned a fourth "R" -- remorse.

And...shootin' the bull. For years, two oxen named Lou and Bill have been the beloved mascots for a Vermont college's farm -- so there's outrage when the school announces the animals will soon be hamburger.

As It Happens, the Wednesday edition. Radio that figures, whether the school rethinks its position or puts the mascots on a bun, it's going to have to start from the ground-up.

For political commentator Ann Coulter, being offensive is pretty much a career description.

The most recent of countless examples came on Monday night, in response to the presidential debate, when she tweeted: "I highly approve of Romney's decision to be kind and gentle to the retard."

Her use of the pejorative term to describe President Barack Obama provoked the expected reaction: widespread outrage.

But one man uniquely positioned to respond to Ms. Coulter saw her insult as an opportunity to educate.

John Franklin Stephens is a Special Olympics athlete, and a global messenger for the organization. He also has Down Syndrome. We reached "Frank" Stephens in Fairfax, Virginia.

For more than a year Cindy Blackstock has been claiming that the Canadian government is spying on her. And sometime within the next week, we'll learn if Canada's Privacy Commissioner agrees.

Ms. Blackstock is the Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada. In short, she advocates for aboriginal youth. In 2007, she filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal saying that the Canadian government discriminated against aboriginal children -- in which she cites a gap in federal funding for the welfare services of First Nations children versus funding provided for other Canadian children.

And for that complaint, Ms. Blackstock says the government has retaliated against her -- and spied on her.

We reached Cindy Blackstock in Winnipeg.

When Bill and Lou joined the farm a decade ago, everyone knew the risks.

But when Lou stepped into a woodchuck hole earlier this year, and the farm's director announced that they would go ahead, as planned, and turn him into hamburger meat, it sparked an outrage.

Despite the fact that Lou is an ox. As is Bill.

Philip Ackerman-Leist is the Director of the Farm and Food Project at Green Mountain College. We reached him in Poultney, Vermont.

Politicians don't often apologize. And when they do, it's usually begrudgingly.

Well, Michael Gove has apologized. And the British education minister has done it with such enthusiasm you might say it borders on grovelling.

The person on the receiving end is his high school French teacher. Three decades on, Mr. Gove written a letter of apology to Mr. Danny Montgomery for his bad classroom behaviour.

To read the text, we found a random British person.

Parlez-vous francais? Sorry, I mean, do you speak English? Aap Urdu boltay hein?

If you live in Canada, odds are you speak one of these languages. That's according to the latest national census data on language.

And the biggest question being raised by today's data is: have we reached the point where multi-lingualism is replacing official French -English bilingualism?

Graham Fraser is Canada's Commissioner of Official Languages. We reached him in Ottawa.

Turkey is a country fraught with a tension that's become a part of everyday life for people there -- the tension between secularism and religion.

Freelance journalist Dorian Jones is watching this play out in Istanbul. And he sends this account of how the debate is personally affecting Turks there -- part of our new series called "Ear To The Ground".

Dung-nabbit!

Last night we told you about a study involving the fascinating dung beetle -- a creature that cools itself by jumping on top of giant piles of excrement that it collects.

Unfortunately, our suggestion that they use their own dung is pure horse puckey. Thankfully, one of our listeners wrote in to give us the straight poop. Christopher Makja in Halifax, Nova Scotia emailed us this message:

"Dung Beetles do not roll up their own excrement. They roll up excrement of sheep, goats, camels, or other mammals."

Thanks, Christopher. Unlike the dung beetle, it seems we did actually step in our own excrement.

It's long been a tough, but necessary, step towards becoming a lawyer in most countries that practice common law. But tomorrow, Ontario's Law Society of Upper Canada will vote on whether to change -- or eveb abolish -- the practice of articling for a law firm, prior to being called to the bar.

Tom Conway is the Treasurer of the Law Society of Upper Canada, and he's been chairing a task force looking into the issue. We reached him in Toronto.

It's Giller time. The Scotiabank Giller Prize is one of Canada's most prestigious literary awards for fiction, and this year's prize of fifty thousand dollars will be handed out next Tuesday.

Tonight we have a reading from nominee Russell Wangersky. He's a St. John's writer who has published both non-fiction and fiction. He's up for the 2012 Giller for his collection of short fiction entitled Whirl Away.

The stories are about ordinary people facing difficult choices. In his story "Open Arms," he writes from the point of view of a woman who's separated from her husband. Things are still very tense between them -- so tense that even a simple phone call brings up a mix of complicated and conflicting feelings.

Here's Russell Wangersky, reading from his story "Open Arms".

After ninety-eight years, 2012 will mark the end of the chapter for the storied Ukrainian Bookstore in downtown Edmonton.

The store has been a fixture since 1914. But at its anniversary party on the weekend, the store's owners announced that they'll be closing their doors in December.

Elana Scharabun is the third-generation owner and manager of the Ukrainian Bookstore. She spoke to CBC Edmonton's Matthew Kupfer about why they've decided to close up shop.

It's now five days since the bomb blast that took the life of General Wassim al-Hassan, the head of the intelligence bureau of the Lebanese police force.

The factional violence that followed the assassination seems to have run its course, for now, but the political aftershocks have only just begun.

General al-Hassan was travelling to meet with members of his opposition political movement when he was killed. Some of those collagues say that their lives are now being threatened.

Ahmad Fatfat is a Lebanese Member of Parliament and part of the Future Movement. We reached him in Beirut.

Power corrupts. And apparently even moderate power can corrupt absolutely.

At least, that's if allegations of corruption in some municipal public works departments in Quebec are true. And former Montreal police chief Jacques Duchesneau believes they are. He also believes that, as a result, the mayor of Laval and the mayor of Montreal should step down.

The allegations were made during testimony at the Charbonneau Commission -- which is looking into possible corruption in the awarding of construction contracts in Quebec.

Jacques Duchesneau is also a member of the National Assembly for St-Jerome, representing the Coalition Avenir Quebec party. This morning, he spoke with CBC host Mike Finnerty on the radio show "Daybreak". Here is part of their conversation.

At first, it might be hard to summon much sympathy for seasick sheep. Especially if you've just returned from a cruise during which you felt so squeamish you could barely finish your tiramisu. But it's an issue.

Australia exports sheep overseas, often by boat. And there's evidence that some of the sheep are made so ill by the rolling sea that they can't eat -- which can lead to further health problems, and even to death.

A group of researchers from the University of Queensland wanted to look into the problem. But the sheep export companies they approached wouldn't allow them access to their ships. So, using a modified flight simulator, they built a contraption in the lab that mimics the roll, pitch and heave of the sea. And then they put sheep in it.

A reporter named Alex Mann from a Brisbane radio station called Triple-J visited the lab. Here's part of his report.

Right now, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot is in a women's prison colony hundred of kilometres from Moscow.

Her bandmate, Maria Alyokhina, is making a long, circuitous journey to a jail in Siberia in a windowless railway car. It will likely take her weeks to arrive at her destination -- which is one of the harshest correctional camps in Russia.

Judith Pallot has some idea what the women are facing. She's visited a number of Russia's women's prisons and has written a book about it. We reached her in Oxford, England, where she teaches human geography.

Dateline: Nottingham, England.

Director David Cronenberg has often said that the scariest movie he watched as a child was the Walt Disney classic "Bambi" -- because of the sad fate of Bambi's mother.

Well, a group of twenty-five people in Nottingham -- including a number of children -- will spend the rest of their lives saying that "Madagascar Three" is the scariest movie they ever saw. Because it wasn't.

On Saturday morning around ten o'clock, the families trooped into Screen Eight at the Cineworld complex in Nottingham and waited for the scheduled showing of "Madagascar Three" to begin. That's an animated movie about a group of wisecracking zoo animals trying to get back to their home in New York.

But instead, they waited a half-hour -- and were then treated to the first few minutes of "Paranormal Activity Four". That's a live-action movie about a rage-filled demon hell-bent on killing everyone.

At first, the parents in the audience assumed they were just watching an inappropriate trailer. And then they and their children watched as a blood-covered woman possessed by the demon threw the corpse of her boyfriend at the camera. And then they freaked out completely.

Natasha Lewis, who was in the theatre that day with her eight-year-old son Dylan, says, "Dylan has not liked going to the cinema before, but I thought we'd try it out.

"He doesn't want to go back."

Cineworld has apologized, blaming a "technical error". And it offered refunds and free tickets to anyone at that ill-fated screening of "Madagascar Three" that turned out to be "Paranormal Activity Four".

Could have been worse. Could have been "Bambi".