news
Newsstand: April 17, 2012
If Tuesday were a flower, it would be an okay one that we all agreed to feel sort of indifferent about. But what Tuesday lacks in beauty, it makes up for in news: the city's first case of rabies since 1931, Queen's Park says no to local service on the Air-Rail Link, City Hall mail is getting the fancy treatment, and MGM Resorts International have their sights set on a new Toronto casino.
Toronto Public Health confirmed yesterday that a 41-year-old man is suffering from the city’s first case of rabies in a human since 1931. According to the CBC, the infected man recently returned from a four-month-long working trip to the Dominican Republic, where he initially started showing symptoms. Toronto Public Health are currently trying to determine where and how the man became infected. They say there is no risk to the public at large.
Queen’s Park has shut down city council’s suggestion that the new Air-Rail Link to Pearson Airport include nine additional local stops, including one at Eglinton to intersect with the new Eglinton LRT. Minister of Transportation Bob Chiarelli said, basically, sure nine more stations would be nice, but who will pay for them? Though Metrolinx has said that a station at Eglinton would be pretty sweet. City council also requested that fares on the line should be affordable, to which the province made the super vague guarantee that fares for the train trip will be lower than the cost of taking a cab.
The mail that city councillors receive at the clam shell has always been scanned and x-rayed, for some reason. But now the certified safe mail is getting spiffed up in certified safe plastic envelopes with great big red stickers that certify the safeness of the mail, newspapers, and City-produced documents that are delivered to councillors. Thank goodness for those big red stickers, or else councillors maybe wouldn’t receive the confidence boost that must come with the knowledge that your mail has to be x-rayed and scanned before you can get your hands on it. That pride is surely worth whatever all those plastic envelopes and stickers costs.
Get ready for an awesome fountain, Toronto, because MGM are pushing to build a casino in town. The casino company behind the Bellagio and the Mirage have set their sites and their lobbying dollars on us. Part of MGM’s development team were in town last week to talk with some city councillors and members of the mayor’s staff, and the company has hired a local lobbying firm to make the case. The case being for a $2 to $6 billion dollar investment in a great-big-gambling-hotel-conference-and-spa-resort thing.