Tax That Lot, Refugee Finds Home in Canada, Illegal Signs Are Visual Pollution, Mars: A Watery Paradise

Howard Moscoe proposes a licensing fee or tax on temporary downtown parking lots with the revenue directed towards building more commuter parking lots at public transit hubs. Moscoe argues that this would induce more people to take transit and encourage temporary lots to be redeveloped more quickly.

Iranian refugee Zahra Kamalfar and her two children arrived in Vancouver yesterday after spending 10 months stuck in an airport terminal in Moscow.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Toronto as a Transit City, courtesy of Spacing.

"At least half the billboards in Toronto are illegal. In the entertainment district, almost all of them. It's visual pollution. We have to fight it." Rami Tabello of illegalsigns.ca gets his say in The Star this morning.

A 20-year-old man was arrested for vandalism after he was caught breaking the windows of a midtown synagogue. The man was wearing a swastika on his clothes and is reportedly "a total douche."

Water: It's officially on Mars. In fact, if the huge ice sheets found at its south pole were melted, they would blanket the planet in 11 metres of water. My dreams of surfing on Mars are one step closer to being realized.

Photo by bomb_tea in the Torontoist Flickr Pool.