Photo: "It was a nice weekend!" bychewie2008~, member of theblogTO Flickr pool.

What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):

After several years and more than enough money and effort on the part of the Liberals and responsible gun owners across Canada, President Harper is now appealing to Ontario gun owners to help him rally support toabolish the very cumbersome, costly, and only marginally successful national gun registry. Mayor Miller's initial response points topolice wanting to keep it in place.

Tragedy struck on the weekend, when an18-year old was killed by a GO Train in Mississauga. It's believed that he and his friends had just disembarked, and may have been fooling around as the train started off again, when the teen was somehow sucked under the train and fatally injured.

Want to kick-start your acting career and make a quick $100? All you have to do is attend a short training session and thenpretend you're homeless on April 15th. I'm not entirely clear on how this works, but I hope these fake homeless people (who are intended to "test the efficiency of the city's street-needs assessment") are identified as fakes and don't skew the survey.

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Toronto wants to be green, but efforts to get there are mired in red-tape. A report by the Toronto Environmental Alliance suggests thatgreen energy and green jobs initiatives are languishing due to bureaucratic balogna. In related news,Toronto is hoping to push forward on electric car initiativesas well, but policy and infrastructure development needs are likely to significantly delay these efforts as well.

And in national news,Suncor and Petro-Canada are merging to form a Canadian mega oil and gas conglomerate worth $43billion. While their spokespeople talk about global competitiveness and how the new oil and gas giant will spark innovation and improve the quality of life for Canadians, I'm more concerned about what opportunities this might bring for further advancing dirty tar sands development.