Photo: "All 50% off" by blogTO Flickr pooler dpnsan.

Your morning news roundup for Friday December 14th, 2007:

Toronto will participate in a global climate change awareness stunt by joining several other cities and going dark for an hour by switching off non-essential lights on March 28th. Our next step should be to do the same for the remaining 8765h of the year.

Happy holidays, Toronto homeowners. Here's a gift - a small 3-4% increase in property taxes. Isn't it cute?

A survey suggests that the average Canadian spends over $1400 during the holidays - $733 on gifts for others, and $714 on other holiday-related expenses. We've been trained well, fellow consumers.

Police warn that thieves know that you're buying things and leaving them in your car, and they'll smash your windows and steal from you. Don't leave stuff in plain view.

The Vietnamese orphan who was refused treatment at Toronto's Sick Kids Hospital has some restored hope after a Boston hospital has stepped up and may be willing to treat him.

The City of Toronto "stole" the National Post's National Mitten Registry idea and will be creating an interactive art piece for the WinterCity festival dubbed The Lost Mitten. What they fail to realize is that the idea isn't new at all, because people have been attempting to reunite lost mittens since they were in invented in Norwegian nomads in 8500 BC (no link, because I just made that up).