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Newsstand: November 24, 2014
Don't forget to cheer on the Raptors tonight as they play the Phoenix Suns. #WeTheNorth, right, everyone? We can't leave Drake out there alone. The news this morning: the zoo's revenue is down, a man wants prosthetic legs but can't get them, the TPS website goes down after a DDoS attack, and don't trust something as important as your wedding to a stranger from the internet.
The Toronto Zoo saw a dip in revenue of $8.3 million in 2014, a shocking decrease attributed to the triple whammy of Ripley’s Aquarium opening, celebrity elephants leaving the zoo, and a cold winter keeping people away from the outdoor attraction. While sales were down across the board—parking passes, food, retail sales—it was tickets that took the biggest hit, accounting for almost $3 million of the loss. This is dispiriting news for the zoo, which also welcomed giant pandas Er Shun and Da Mao partway through last year. The zoo is “aggressively managing costs” in order to counteract its losses, but will also draw on a reserve fund of $3 million from its particularly successful year in 2013.
Giuseppe Chessari, who lost both his legs in a work accident, is now facing an uphill battle to get the prosthetics he desires. Chessari wants to go back to the American prosthetics company that inspired him to begin walking, but the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board has ruled that there is adequate care for him here. They also want him to return to the electrical engineering technician program he agreed to join at George Brown now, rather than waiting until after his prosthesis problem is solved, because it’s possible for him to return in a wheelchair.
The Toronto Police Service web site has been the target of a Distributed Denial of Service attack, or DDoS. DDoS is a common protest tactic employed by hackers and the online collective Anonymous. In this case, Twitter user @AerithTOR took responsibility for the attack, as well as one on the Ottawa police web site. @AerithTOR left a message on the Ottawa police site containing the name of a police officer involved with an investigation into an Ottawa teen facing charges for “swatting” (the practice of getting a SWAT team to respond to a fake emergency). @AerithTOR suggested they would also attack the Conservative Party of Canada and the Parliament of Canada websites.
The wedding from hell that keeps on giving: a Peterborough couple that was married in August is now unsure if they’re actually married because the officiant they hired is not authorized to marry people in Ontario. They paid him a $75 deposit and may have to spend about $500 more to get an official marriage license. And to top it all off, the man wore reflective snowboarder-style sunglasses at the ceremony.