Before and after Chicago moved to cool the city by refurbishing its alleyways.  Photo/Illinois Sustainable Cities Symposium

Cooling the Windy City

Summer heat in the U.S. is giving way to the friction of a race to become the Republican Party's Presidential candidate.

And Texas Governor Rick Perry is doing his bit to hot things up with a sceptic's take on climate change.

Never mind a city like Chicago is already in its grip and trying to slow it down.

At a recent news conference, the oil-state governor slagged off those who suggest global warming is the man-made consequence of too much coal and cars.

Listen to Rick's item from Chicago

Dennis Porter gets an archery lesson from Congolese pygmies who have left the forest for squalid camps near the city of Beni. Photo/Dennis Porter

Small people - big challenge

To say the pygmies of central Africa got a raw deal is an understatement. Civil war has forced them out of their ancient forest homes and plunged them unprepared into the 21st century. 

For all that, they remain relentlessly cheerful, despite hardly having a pot to pitch in, as our correspondent discovers.

Dennis's View From Here

A tale of two Haitis

For several months this year, CBC Correspondent Connie Watson was based in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, documenting the dramatic events unfolding there.

But after many visits and hotel stays, she wanted to do it in a way that would give her a different perspective on the country.   So she moved in.

Listen to Connie's dispatch now...

Connie moved to Port-au-Prince to get a sense of Haiti's people and their political response to their post-quake problems.
She didn't have to look far.

hear about the surprise she got...

The Tuareg nomads are valued for their fighting prowess and knowledge of the desert. "To know what is happening here," this rebel leader says, "you must find a Tuareg. We are the eyes of this desert."  Photo/Brent Stirton/National Geographic - from the September 2011 issue of National Geographic Magazine.

Gadhafi's legacy to Africa

The collapse of the Gadhafi regime delights many Libyans but holds the risk of ongoing instability for much of the rest of the region. 

The mercenaries he recruited in Africa over the years are deserting him and heading home, armed and without many prospects.

Journalist Peter Gwin is a staff writer with National Geographic and recently spent time with one of them, a member of the Tuareg tribe from Mali, who  revealed Gadhafi's bloody agenda for ethnic cleansing.  Gwin joined us from Washington.

Rick's chat with Peter Gwin

Peter Gwin's reporting on the Tuareg is part of a series for the Pulitzer Centre on Crisis Reporting called "Saharan Insecurity"

An elephant slaughtered in Kenya to feed new demands for ivory tusks. Photo/Alex Shoumatoff

Ivory's deadly comeback

The ivory trade that once decimated elephant herds in Africa is showing signs of new life because of new demand in the affluent Far East.

The luggage of a South Korean diplomat contained sixteen tusks. 

Chinese labourers working on vast new road projects have been apprehended with suitcases of ivory in Kenya.  And wars on Kenya's borders are also fuelling the trade.

Journalist Alex Shoumatoff has seen the worst of it up close and  documents the new ivory underground in a recent edition of Vanity Fair magazine. He joined us from Montreal.

Rick's interview with Alex

Alex Shoumatoff's article on the slaughter is called "Agony and Ivory".

 
This program is the work of producers Dawna Dingwall, Alison Masemann, Steve McNally, and intern Kazim Rizvi. With technical producers Tim Lorimer and Victor Johnston, Senior producer Alan Guettel and myself.

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