May 5 & 8 from: Glasgow - Florence - Uljanovsk, Russia - Butare, Rwanda - Delhi

The walled compound where bin Laden lived for years, just a kilometre from a Pakistani military training base. Photo/Reuters

Al Qaeda after the fall

With the death of the world's most wanted man, what happens to the world's most wanted organization?

In the decade since nine-eleven, al-Qaeda has morphed from a handful of extremists fronted by Osama bin Laden into a network of radical sheikhs and sirdars from north Africa to the Middle East.

In a speech a few days ago, Dan Benjamin, a former Time correspondent now Counter-Terrorism Co-ordinator for the U.S. State Department,described the threat this way.

Benjamin spoke last week to the New America Foundation, a non-profit public policy group in Washington, D.C.

For more on the state of al-Qaeda after bin Laden, I'm joined from the Indian city of Delhi by Jason Burke, south Asia correspondent for The Guardian and The Observer newspapers. He's also the author of Al-Qaeda: The True Story of Radical Islam.

Listen to Jason's interview here

 

Italian geologists use a radar-type device to scan the crypt of the Florentine noblewoman believed to be Da Vinci's muse. If they find her, they plan to dig her up. Photo/Reuters

In search of Mona Lisa's smile

It's a tale from a crypt that may or may not be the Mona Lisa's.

Seems a real-life relic hunter is dead keen to burnish her reputation.

And if some of her sparkle rubs off on on his own, he doesn't mind a bit - as we hear from Dispatches contributor Megan Williams at the scene of the grime.

Hear Megan's dispatch now

 

 

 Singing in pitch banned in Scotland 

It's against the law for Rangers fans in blue to sing anti-Catholic songs in the stadium they share with cross-town rivals Glasgow Celtic - whose fans, in green, are descended from Irish Catholics. Photo /Reuters.

When it comes to sports rivalries, there's your Canadiens and your Leafs.

The Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees.

But neither can match the red-faced ferocity of the two Glasgow football clubs known as "The Old Firm."

And it's probably just as well.

Listen here to Maria Bakkalapulo's

View From Here

 

 

 

The rigors of Russian Journalism

Two women in the Russian town of Uljanovsk, Russia read Andrei's "Our Newspaper" in the film of the same name.  Photo/Courtesy of Hot Docs Film Festival

Andrei Schkolni is a Russian reporter who says he wants "to do real journalism and not just bootlicking."

So he quit the government newspaper and started up his own, only to find his stories about state shortcomings can lead to anonymous threats.

He's the subject of a new film documentary called Our Newspaper, screening this week at the Hot Docs Festival in Toronto.

The director is Eline Flipse talked to Rick in studio.

 Listen to their chat now

 

 Rwanda's whispers in the hall

Anastase Gahunga (with interpreter Didier Bikorimana) narrowly survived the genocide.  He says reconciliation between Hutu and Tutsi is needed but hard to achieve, even when mandated.  Photo/Dave kattenburg

Rwanda's been having a complicated time marking the anniversary of the genocide that claimed the lives of an estimated 800,000 Rwandans, most of Tutsi ethnicity, killed by the rival Hutus.

Seventeen years later there's a government-imposed policy of national harmony, which discourages any talk about ethnicity.

Many buy into it for fear of being accused of clinging to a "genocide ideology."

Dispatches contributor David Kattenburg went to the one place he expected to find the events of the past open to study and analysis.

Instead, he found what he describes as "spirits in the forest, and whispers in the hall."

Hear Dave's dispatch now

And on a related note; last week we interviewed journalist Peter Godwin about his book recounting Zimbabwe's independence and the subsequent massacre of Ndbele tribespeople by the governing Shona. Alan Templeton of Cobourg, Ontario heard that interview and wrote us to saying he was teaching in a rural boarding school in Lesotho at the time Rhodesia ended and Zimbabwe began.

 "There was a Shona girl in my...biology class" he writes. "She was very tall, muscular, with crooked teeth and a brooding air of competence about her. "After school that day she told me she was leaving to go back to Zimbabwe. I was happy for her, and I asked what she'd do when she got home. "Kill some Ndebele", she said. "I saw the country's future in her eyes. Hatred, tribalism, blood, hunger. And so it came to be. "I don't know what happened to her after she left Lesotho, but I'm sure of one thing: she killed some Ndebele," writes listener Alan Templeton of Cobourg, Ontario.

 

Coming up next week...

Next week an interview with Alan Paul, an American musician who formed a blues band in Beijing and went on to become big in China and changed his worldview.

Hear a reading from Paul's book here

 

This program is the work of producers Dawna Dingwall, Alison Masemann and Steve McNally. With technical producer Victor Johnston, Senior producer Alan Guettel and Rick MacInnes-Rae.