news
Newsstand: October 27, 2009
Stop. Look outside for a second and breathe in deep. The morning news can wait just one more minute. Sip your coffee if you’ve got one and smile a little, because between pranksters blinding pilots and a cash-starved city blowing much-needed millions on garbage stunts, there’s not much relief ahead.
Okay, so you can’t read a headline like “Spike in laser attacks rattles pilots” without thinking, “Wow, it’s the future!” Only apparently the morons somehow got there before us! Next they’ll be crashing jetpacks through our living room walls and locking hungry aliens inside our cars. The Star, using technology for something useful, has made a map of attacks across the GTA in which pilots were dazzled by laser beams, usually during night-time takeoffs and landings.
Michael Bryant Kuldip Kular, the provincial politician who hit a pedestrian with his car and ran away, leaving the man bloodied on the road, says he didn’t realize he’d struck anyone. A source close to the Liberal MPP is talking anonymously to newspapers to say that Kular thought his victim, a thirty-nine-year-old man witnesses say could hardly walk and had “blood all over his face” after the collision, had just slipped and fallen down. By the way, you know we were just kidding about that Bryant thing, right? The two incidents are totally dissimilar. Michael Bryant regrets having been involved with the man he ran over, if he did indeed run over anyone, and anyway Darcy Allan Sheppard was a drunk. To further discuss Michael Bryant’s feelings and his long history of public service, call Dan Robertson of Navigator Ltd. at 416-642-4736.
Women living near Kensington Market are being warned to watch out for a home intruder who may be targetting lone females. The cops’ theory is based on two break-ins in roughly three weeks by the man, who entered houses through unlocked windows while their female occupant was alone and ran off when the woman screamed. There’s not enough information right now to say whether the burglar chose the houses because of who lived there or whether the similarities of the two cases are just coincidental, but 14 Division police say the possible sexual aspect of the crimes has them on “a higher alert” than normal.
And a stretch of Jarvis Street between Charles East and Bloor will be renamed “Ted Rogers Way.” Rogers Communications thinks honouring their founder in this way is just great, and there’s no denying that Rogers started a corporate giant that employs thousands of Torontonians. But, frankly, it seems like Toronto could’ve gotten a better deal by tying the naming rights to a multi-year commitment, tossing in a system access fee, billing Rogers extra for incoming traffic on said street, maybe adding a premium for text messages posted along the roadside, you know, that sort of thing. But hammering out those details would’ve taken forever. If only there were a standard contract we could’ve used as a reference.
Call us cranky if you want, we’ve got money troubles on our minds today. With the city trying to permanently cut its budget by 5% across the board (as we told you in yesterday’s Newsstand) a pack of city councillors took a golden opportunity to assert their independence from David Miller and dump $4.8 million to save valuable public services. Er, no, that’s not it. Oh yeah, they spent the money to save you about five bucks per year on garbage pickup. Well, we might need to keep a few libraries closed on weekends to cover the cost, but that’s worth it. We might also need some nicer news tomorrow morning—get cracking, Toronto!