LOCAL
Toronto is scaling back plans to hike development fees on new homes, and will begin charging it in the summer of 2016 rather than in 2015. The fee for a single home or a semi will still increase by 78%, but is actually less than was planned. [Globe and Mail]
Plans for Porter to start flying jets has a new setback with the news that the city will not have the noise studies in time for December’s report to city council. Staff say Transport Canada doesn’t expect to be able to confirm the noise data until next May or later, but a Porter spokesman was defiant, saying a conclusive report would be ready by November. [Globe and Mail]
Former residents of an Ontario institution for the developmentally disabled say they’re relieved that a settlement has been reached in a class-action lawsuit over alleged abuse at the government-run facility. Some were upset their experiences weren’t chronicled at trial whereas others were happy to receive an apology from the government, but the $35-million settlement fell short of the $2-billion they sought. [Globe and Mail]
NATIONAL
Facebook has banned a company for life after they used a picture of Rehtaeh Parsons in an advertisement for online dating. Parsons died at the age of 17 after a suicide attempt, made after, as her parents allege, she was sexually assaulted and bullied for it relentlessly for more than a year.[CBC]
Staffers in Liberal MP’s offices have begun tracking travel and hospitality expenses, preparing to post them online this time next month. Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said it would be, ‘the first step of what I hope will be a cascade of transparency and openness as the other parties try to outdo each other.” [National Post]
A push by municipal leaders to learn more about hazardous cargo rattling through their communities is meeting resistance in the federal government. Since the rail disaster in Lac Megantic that killed 47 people and devastated the downtown, mayors want information about what’s being shipped so they can prepare in advance, but the federal government worries the information can fall into the wrong hands and pose security risks. [Globe and Mail]
INTERNATIONAL
Details buried in a U.N. report suggest Assad’s top forces brazenly deployed chemical weapons from the same ridges used to fire conventional weapons. The U.N. inspectors were tasked with investigating the attack, not laying blame, but the precise compass directions of flight for two rocket strikes appeared to lead back toward where Assad’s presidential palace is located, and where his Republican Guard and the army’s powerful Fourth Division are entrenched. [New York Times]
Tony Abbott, the new Australian prime minister, will convene the first meetings of his cabinet Wednesday. He plans to formally prepare the carbon tax repeal legislation, but any repeal appears unlikely to pass Parliament until late next year. [The Guardian]
Austrian police searching a farm for a gunman who killed four people found the charred body of the man they believe was the suspect. Police found the body after pushing in a hidden door that led to a concealed cellar in one of the buildings the gunman holed up in. [CBC]
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