Photo: "The object of my affection" by blogTO Flickr pooler ej (umop ap!sdn).

Your morning news roundup for (a leap year) Friday February 29th, 2008:

The provincial government may have made a huge mistake when they allowed one company to apply to secure pretty much all of the remaining Crown-owned land suitable for wind power generation. Haven't we learned enough about the detrimental effects of monopolies, especially in the energy sector?

In other eco news, the Toronto Zoo wants to be more than a place where they hold cute and exotic animals captive so we can point at them and smile. In addition to setting up grizzly bear and panda exhibits, the zoo wants to bolster their eco-image by focusing on teaching about biodiversity and sustainability and being active participants in global conservation projects.

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A four-alarm blaze broke out just after 3pm yesterday in an industrial building in Etobicoke and sent a huge plume of smoke into the air. It required several hours to get under control, and when I (serendipitously) passed by at 6:30pm, fire crews were still working away.

Eight more Toronto-area driver training centres have had their licenses revoked by the Ministry of Transportation. The message to the companies that run these schools is clear: don't be giving registered students course completion certificates if they don't complete the course!

Once again, our Prime Minister is being accused of being dishonest. This time, he claims that there's no truth in allegations that he knew about the Conservative party's attempt to bribe a dying British Columbia MP to vote in their favour. But in a newly-surfaced recorded audio interview from 2005, Harper's own words suggests otherwise. How anyone can trust anything the guy says is completely baffling.