The Current from CBC Radio (Highlights)

His opponents dubbed him Harper's pit bull but Senator Doug Finley defends his political strategies and talks about a struggle larger than the politics he loves. Doug Finley is confronting a cancer his doctors tell him he cannot survive. Between the chemo, he continues work on issues dear to him in the Senate. Today, Doug Finley reflects on parliament, politics, life and death.

It is a very difficult time to be a citizen of Mali. In the North, Islamist rebels rule with an iron and religious fist and a fighting force entwined with al-Qaeda. In the South, the army that might fight them is unstable and in disarray. Into this uncertainty, Western Nato nations including Canada are considering some kind of intervention.

Four years ago, all the talk was of reconciliation, of respect and of a new start for Canada and its aboriginal people. A Prime ministerial apology marked the birth of the Truth and Reconciliation commission. It's mission? To try to come to terms with the painful legacy of the more than 150 thousand aboriginal children who were forced into residential schools between the 1880's and the 1980's. Now, the Commission is taking the federal government to court, saying truth itself is at stake.

A small re-write of a beloved holiday poem has a lot of creatures stirred up. T'was the night before Christmas, and traditionalists choke at changes that make Santa give up the smokes. A Canadian publisher's attempts to weed out tobacco from Clement Moore's poem has made some readers ashen ... even Santa Claus himself argues it is censorship and political correctness gone wild.

Malala Yousufzai continues to recover from the shooting that almost ended her life and brought her fight for girls' education in Pakistan to worldwide attention. That struggle simply to go to school in parts of the country has been a fact of life for years. It's not only the Taliban that make it so difficult. Even in villages where militants pose no immediate threat, girls must fight their own families for the chance to learn. We take a closer look at one school and one remarkable woman trying to make a difference in northern Pakistan.

For the past two-and-a-half years, the Harper government has insisted 65 new F-35 fighter jets would be affordable, that warnings of cost overruns were wrong and that these particular Lockheed Martin models were the best stealth fighter jets for Canada. As the government now confronts costs that are three times higher and reviews its options, the man in the U.S. tracking costs on the same planes there warns the numbers could climb even higher. Today we get the the view from Ottawa.

We're staying high in the sky to try to assess what that satellite launch in North Korea says about its new leader. One year after inheriting power, Kim Jong Un has shown some national scientific prowess to a wary world, burnished his image with publicity photos and Facebook posts even while closing the border to China and keeping his own people locked in a cycle of repression and hunger. Can the son and grandson of dictators be anything but? We look at Kim Jong Un.

Worried about that doomsday thing coming up? We are happy to report that those seers convinced the Mayan calendar signals our end-of-days in-a-matter-of-days are projecting. Not predicting. We're talking perspective on everything from pranks ... to family planning ... to that calendar as we check your pulse on reaction to the stories of the past week.

Today we take a look at one province's attempt to get ahead of natural devastation led to controlled flooding, forced evacuations and now more than a year-and-a-half later ... whole neighbourhoods that still have nowhere to call home.

Citing statistics of tens-of-millions of unwanted pregnancies in the poorest countries, millions of abortions and tens-of-thousands of women dying in childbirth, the UN's Population Fund is asserting that access to family planning and contraceptives is a Universal Human Right. It is a designation that has outraged conservative and religious critics who accuse the UN of colonialism and of misguided policies that will infringe on basic rights and fob western drugs onto unsuspecting women. Proponents argue family planning rights will reduce infant and maternal death, enable women and bring prosperity. Today we take on this debate.

The Bushmen of the Southern Kalahari were dispersed, forced off their land under South African apartheid, only to be identified decades later in squalor. Some posing as token natives for tourists on the very land they lost. It was a long way from the people of Northern Canada with whom Hugh Brody worked for land claims. His invitation to work with those in the Kalahari for land claims settlements began an odyssey that lasted a dozen years and saw broken people transformed into effective leaders for change. Today, Hugh Brody's long journey with the Khomani San people.

From Candid Camera in the 50s ... to MTV's Punk'd, entertainers have pranked their way through the decades. Until last week when it all appeared to go horribly wrong when two Australian DJs played a hoax on a nurse at the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge Kate Middleton was staying. But where is the Line In the Sand between funny and mean? Today we speak to Mary - Marg Delahunty - Walsh and Gilbert Rozon of Just for Laughs to ask how far is too far?

Sometimes the more you ask, the less you learn. Ontario's College of Physicians and Surgeons has inspected private clinics failing 9 and passing 64 - with conditions. But it can't tell us who they are and nor can the provincial health ministry. Across the country, a patchwork of private clinics operates with little public transparency. Today, we are asking why.

They have taken to the streets by the thousands in Istanbul over the last few weeks. But the city that straddles Europe and Asia is upset not about its economy or its national politics, Turks are enraged over plans to round up stray dogs. The government is learning that messing with the city's legendary canines puts you in the dog-house.

We start the show in Cairo, where the euphoria of Egypt's revolutionary ouster of a tyrant has been replaced by an uncomfortable and even deadly reality. This ancient land, with a democracy in its infancy, may have chosen a government leader whose own idea of democracy leaves them with fears of theocracy.