Police entered St. James Park earlier this morning and began to catalogue and remove items from the park. So far, no arrests have been made nor has there been any violence. For more on this, check out our dedicated post.

The 2010 G8 and G20 summits are back in the news, thanks to what the RCMP called one of the largest domestic intelligence operations in Canadian history in which police officers across the country infiltrated community organizations in advance of the G8 and G20 summits held in 2010. The information was disclosed as evidence in the court case of 17 people accused of orchestrating street mayhem during the summits. The case ended yesterday before it even went to trial when six of the defendants pleaded guilty and 11 others had their charges dropped.

...But was the presence of Big Brother a help in this instance? The Globe and Mail has learned that despite the undercover police officers having information that protesters were going to do some serious damage on Queen Street and beyond, they couldn't do anything to stop the vandalism. Police have said it would be inappropriate to comment on why they couldn't do more.

Global warming: good for the environment? Well, city councillor and the chair of Toronto's parks and environment committee, Norm Kelly, thinks it's a good thing for the city's trees anyway. Kelly feels that climate change will thicken our tree canopy, citing Bjørn Lomborg's 2001 book "The Skeptical Environmentalist: The Real State of the World", which basically says our world's never been cleaner. (Though in a book written ten years later, Lomborg said climate change is a problem but it's "not the end of the world").

Spacing is featuring highlights from the ongoing exhibit The Fourth Wall: Transforming City Hall, on now at the Urbanspace Gallery. Today they look at those boring planning application notices that no one bothers to read because they have that tiny lettering all squished together and they're, well, boring, so they're not really engaging the public like they're supposed to. They asked a few local designers for their ideas and their notices are way prettier. Read our review of the exhibit here.

You want to know how to build a brewery in two minutes? In anticipation of their early 2012 opening, the Bellwoods Brewery showed The Grid how they set up their 1,700-litre fermenters in their future headquarters on Ossington.

IN BRIEF:

• Leafs hammer Lightning
• Proposed Markham arena would rival ACC
• What Doug Ford is now saying about the Port Lands

Photo by simon.carr in the blogTO Flickr pool