By André Bovee-Begun

This balmy morning finds the heat somewhat lessening for Harper and his friends. In a nutshell, everything federal has gone peanuts, and the spotlight is on the NDP supporting the Conservative government on Friday’s possible confidence vote. The budgetary hurdle, which could trigger another election (remember: vote early and vote often), is all set to test whether Harper’s embattled crew of policy wonks can hold onto the country or not. For better or worse, Layton has signalled that his party will throw its weight behind the Conservatives this time. Liberal leader and PM-contender Michael Ignatieff is already cracking jokes about the apparent odd couple.
And a bad parking job combined with an “alternative fuel–burning engine” led police to conclude that a van parked next to a large propane tank was potentially
a bomb. Police evacuated roughly twenty-five hundred people from an area of 1.6 square kilometres near Finch and Markham Road, later telling reporters that the danger had been “rendered safe.” These assurances aside, it looks increasingly like there may have been little or no real threat whatsoever, but the Centennial College student who parked the van was still arrested, and police told reporters they expected to lay unspecified charges against the twenty-seven-year-old.
Michael Walker, the city councillor who wanted garbage and ambulance workers declared essential, is also saying that cyclists in the city should need licences. Now that blaming bikes has officially entered public policy discussion, Kelly McParland at The Post is all for it. We wouldn’t normally include an editorial, especially one by the likes of McParland, in Newsstand, but in this case his impassioned call to crack down on reckless bike-users is nothing less than a top-notch primer on the road ahead for this manufactured debate. If only hard data indicated that the great majority of car-to-bike accidents are the driver’s fault. And scapegoating bikes hardly seems fair, since cars kill pedestrians too, but to Torontoist’s knowledge no one has yet demanded instituting a municipal walking license.
Well, it won’t help electric bike riders from getting injured in traffic collisions, but Toronto’s Works Committee (both “left” and “right” sides of it, lest we forget what really matters) voted to go full-steam ahead and request a staff review on the section of Walker’s proposal that would make helmets for cyclists mandatory. That’s okay, but it’s also illegal. God damn, these road laws are a pain!
Hogtown digs the pig, are we right? Well, dug or otherwise, swine flu is expected to make a triumphant return to Toronto the Not-Currently-Coughing-So-Much. Vaccine fans and flu-haters alike, read on! It seems the swine flu vaccination meant to be sold in Canada incorporates a revolutionary advance that lets it contain less active ingredient than ever before. Pharmaceutical companies have been experimenting with ways to stretch their stock of vaccine antigens (the part of the vaccine that actually does the immunizing), boosting shots’ effectiveness with an additive known as an adjuvant. They’ve proven that as little as 5.25 micrograms of adjuvenated antigen of pure vaccine with no chemical helpers. FYI, neither 5.75 nor 21 micrograms are standard doses for the H1N1 vaccine—in fact, Canada will be getting 3.75 microgram doses or less than two-elevenths of the “pure” vaccine dose used in trials.
Two seventeen-year-old students at Bloor Collegiate were surrounded by a group of youths who pulled knives from their backpacks and stabbed them, leaving one with serious injuries. Police are looking for four or fives males. In the meantime, they say there is no danger to the public and students (polled by the Sun) seem to generally not want a police presence in their school.
For those of you hungry for additional news (as well you should be) Yom Kippur is officially no longer an excuse at York University unless you’re actually Jewish. Oh, and your morning shower could (not really) kill you. So, what’s your next move?