Ontario's conservation officer suggests the unbanning of clotheslines. Did anybody even know that clotheslines were banned in certain parts of Ontario? Why would anybody ban a clothesline anyway? Clothes flapping in the wind are aesthetically pleasing! Pakistani police detain Benazir Bhutto in her home. Officials denied that this was a house arrest, claiming instead that they were just vigorously enforcing Pakistan's anti-trespassing laws, and that the five thousand of her supporters that they rounded up......

Microsoft has agreed to buy 1.6% of Facebook for $240,000,000, giving the social networking site a valuation of around $15 billion. The deal is good for both parties, with Bill Gates finally hanging out with the cool kids, and 23-year-old Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg getting to throw an awesome kegger. John Tory has officially backed away from the faith-based schools funding issue that may have cost him the provincial election. Seems kind of silly......

David Miller has enlisted the aid of a team of hired guns to find savings in the municipal budget. Their recommendations should arrive in time to incorporate into the 2008 budget, but too late for Tuesday's vote on controversial new taxes. City Council is optimistic that the group, whose members include Col. John "Hannibal" Smith, Templeton "Faceman" Peck, "Howling Mad" Murdock, and B.A. Baracus, will be able to solve all our problems. Karen Butler-Lynch was......

Today’s Reviews: You, The Living One of the most critically acclaimed films of the festival so far, You, The Living (pictured above), is a very warm look at the hopes and dreams of the misfit inhabitants of a Swedish apartment complex, told through a series of vignettes. From Roy Andersson (Songs from the Second Floor), the warmth isn’t just towards the characters—it coats each shot like a fog. The film unfortunately places its funniest......

Brampton's mayor and police chief are looking to dispel a local urban myth that the municipality is paying Toronto gang members between $5,000 and $10,000 to move to Brampton. Officials deny the payouts, but admit they may have distributed a pamphlet suggesting that in Brampton "the streets are paved with 9 mm shells and the malt liquor flows like water." Back in 2002, a CSIS official with a gift for euphemism noted his belief that......

Farmer finds life ring believed to be from the Edmund Fitzgerald. In response, the Tragically Hip grumble about having to rewrite one of their songs. An in-depth report on whether we should demonetize the penny. Short answer: yes, we should demonetize the penny, even though it looks very pretty in its own way and can be used to scam Europeans. David Miller will announce the full list of service cuts either today or tomorrow. A......

The city is full of high society soirées such as the Brazilian Ball, the Power Ball, and Fashion Cares. Which is fine for the jet set, but the rest-of-us set also likes to get dolled up once in a while. Which is why Gallery TPW is inviting everybody to the D-List Ball this Saturday at 56 Ossington Avenue. The fund raiser will be hosted by Keith Cole and features musical entertainments by Karl Lagerfeld's......

Ottawa reaches $10 million settlement with Maher Arar. Meanwhile, Arar is still on the American no-fly list, so the next time some American asks you why us Canadians are so smug and self-superior as regards them, just point them to this and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh. One in four Canadians lists the environment as their chief issue of concern. Twenty percent say they are very likely or somewhat likely to vote Green......

George W. Bush made his State of the Union address last night. Among his policy initiatives introduced in the speech were a request to Americans to reduce their gasoline consumption by twenty percent in ten years (while simultaneously claiming American needed to increase domestic gasoline production), and a proposal to tax employer-based health plans to pay for HSAs (which don't actually solve the problems facing American healthcare). An annotated and rather niftily clickable rebuttal......

Fresh from their holiday break, the fine folks at This Is Not A Reading Series kick off the Winter/Spring 2007 season with…a film? Well, partly. This evening, join TINARS at the Royal Cinema as they celebrate the launch of Annabelle Gurwitch’s new book, Fired! Tales of The Canned, Canceled, Downsized & Dismissed. As the title would suggest, the book is comprised of tales of getting the axe from a host of contributors, from Bill Maher......

Condoleezza Rice promises to "look into" why Maher Arar is still on an American terrorist watchlist. Remember when you were at work and someone at work kept stealing your yoghurt and you were pissed so you went to your supervisor and complained and he said he'd "look into" it? This is kind of like that, except Maher Arar is probably a lot less important to Condoleezza Rice than yoghurt is. Queen's Park Grits and Tories......

Amazingly, Maher Arar is still on the US government's terrorist watchlist. No, seriously. No joke. He's still on it. Metro police place three closed circuit cameras around Dundas Square for the holidays. Remember, nothing deters criminals determined to shoot at people in the busiest intersection in Toronto like cameras. Ontario Hydro's combined costs have risen 50 percent in five years; during the same time period revenues have increased only 15 percent. At the press......

Twenty machine workers win $22 million dollars. I include this bit of news just to remind you that you, yes you reading this, do not have $22 million dollars. (Probably.) SUCK ON THAT, TORONTO! RCMP commissioner admits to "a mistake" in his testimony regarding Maher Arar. But we shouldn't judge him because everybody makes mistakes now and then. For example, I ate an extra sandwich yesterday, and he lied in a commission to see......

You could sit in a parking lot and watch a movie about cheerleaders (actually, that sounds like fun), or sit in Dundas Square and watch horror films (which also sounds like fun) or you could join the Toronto Public Space Committee at Bellevue Square Park for the launch of the Streets to Screens film series tomorrow evening, 8pm. They'll be showing seven NFB shorts including: "Neighbours/Voisins", an Academy Award winning short by Norman MacLaren,......

Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, extraordinary renditions, security certificates, Maher Arar, enemy combatants, torture, all of them erosions of democracy and symptoms of a larger problem. Government abuse of power isn't anything new, and as the sole holder of power and force in most societies, our elected "representatives" can often do so with impunity. The Alphabet City Festival, looks at how "the war on terror" has created a whole new set of bogeymen, irrational fears and......

We're glad that the Globe's trying to get all young and hip on us, but it looks as if they're also vying for the grand prize in the 'World's Busiest Cover Competition.' Each week brings a new collage of close-cropped heads, excessive text and weirdly useless lines. Maybe they're trying to catch up to the Post, which has reefered its close-cropped heads since the Conrad era. Regardless, we're hoping they'll tone it down a bit.......