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Newsstand: November 5, 2010
Illustration by Matt Daley/Torontoist.
It’s Friday, and time to celebrate with beer, chicken wings, and awkward conversation with co-workers while looking surreptitiously at your watch. Oh, yeah, the news. You and Rob Ford get a bonus from David Miller, G20 comedy of errors continues to be unveiled, and it’s fall-back weekend.
$125 million just doesn’t buy what it used to, at least in the world of celebrity politician protection. Hard on the heels of yesterday’s news that some ninety cops would be disciplined for covering up their badges while rousting protestors, a new G20 security bungle has emerged. Prosecutors have dropped charges against some hundred people arrested in a U of T gymnasium on June 27, because while the Crown felt there was “reasonable and probable cause” for laying charges, the fact that the arrests were made without a warrant meant there was little chance of conviction. The police for their part said they did not believe a warrant was necessary. So just to clarify, it is not okay for cops to bust into a place without a warrant, arrest dozens of people without charge, and throw them into temporary detention centres. Bill Blair should probably send out an email to the team.
Looks like there were still a few bucks left over at City Hall after the French lessons and leather fetish parties were paid for. Torontonians could get a break on their property taxes next year, thanks to the projected $275 million budget surplus announced yesterday. Mayor-elect Rob Ford’s chief of staff Nick Kouvalis says that the unexpectedly large windfall means it may be possible to hold the line on property tax increases in 2011. Thanks, Mayor Ford, for, uh, taking credit for the money that was saved by the previous administration.
Evidently God and TV audiences are more forgiving than the feds. A popular preacher who stars in the Hour of Divine Wisdom on Vision TV has been denied citizenship because he scammed a bank out of $300,000 several years ago. Kene Don Ifepe was originally refused citizenship back in 2007, and that ruling was upheld by a judge this week. Ifepe said he was disappointed in the decision, and that he would “trust in what the Lord had to say.” Of course if he’d done that in the first place, he probably wouldn’t be in this situation now.
More turmoil in the Makhniashvili household as the father of missing teen Mariam Makhniashvili was charged with attempted murder following a double stabbing in the east end. Vakhtang Makhniashvili allegedly took a knife to the couple who last year bailed him out of jail after he was charged with stabbing a neighbour. While the injuries are reportedly non-life threatening, the incident is another bizarre twist in the story of the family whose daughter disappeared while walking to school in September 2009.
Time to get your pet goat out of the bathtub and down to the Ex. The ten-day run of the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair starts today at Exhibition Place, featuring straw-chewing men in overalls, pumpkins the size of a tyrannosaur’s head, and happy cattle soon to be turned into happy meals. It’s also a place where you might be able to get a line on buying or selling an $800 vial of black market semen, according to the Star. That’s bull semen, by the way, so you can put away the hand cream and sandwich bags.
And while you’re planning your weekend, don’t forget that early Sunday morning we bid adieu to Daylight Savings Time and turn our clocks back by an hour. Careful though, one year we turned our clocks too far back and ended up having to use a lighter to convince a tribe of Neanderthals that we were a god.