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Newsstand: May 3, 2010
lllustration by Clayton Hanmer/Torontoist.
Crime spree on the TTC? A woman lost her iPod to fast-moving thieves while riding the subway Friday night. This follows the incident last week when seventy-nine-year-old Yusuf Hizel was mugged while other passengers on his train did nothing to help, and is the third reported subway robbery in eight days. Transit officials advise that “snatch-and-run” robberies are actually relatively common on the TTC, so caution and awareness of your surroundings is advisable when using an iPod or cell phone. It’s probably not cause for panic just yet, but be assured that Torontoist will let you know when the time comes.
The Sun waxed indignant this weekend over the fact that five years after the initial pilot program, bike racks installed on TTC buses are still not being used widely. Defenders of the program counter than usage has increased over the years, growing from an average of six users per day per route in 2005 to about nineteen in 2009. TTC driver and union steward Paul Stewart says that the bike racks don’t cause any meaningful slowdown in service, pointing out that baby strollers are a far bigger problem. A compromise solution could be to adapt the racks for use by strollers, which would reduce delays and probably be a lot of fun for the babies.
Jack Layton is calling for “emergency hearings” into oil company operations in Canada following the catastrophic April 20 rig explosion and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Layton made the comments on CTV’s Question Period on Sunday. While the word “emergency” smacks a bit of Layton-esque grandstanding, some kind of action to avoid a similar disaster in the Maritimes would likely be a good idea.
Tamils around the world, including thousands of Tamil-Canadians in the GTA, voted over the weekend for a “transnational government” to run a hypothetical Tamil state in Sri Lanka. Voters chose 135 members, including 25 in Canada, in an election criticized by the Sri Lankan government, which defeated Tamil separatists last year after a long-running civil war.
A CSI-worthy story up in Caledon, where a woman found dead in a car following a minor traffic accident on Friday night has been declared a victim of homicide. The eighteen-year-old driver of the car, reported to be the woman’s son, has been charged with second-degree murder.