Photo: "Nightboarder" by Chow Dogger, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.

Your Toronto morning news roundup for Friday June 27th, 2008:

A wanted Toronto fugitive has voluntarily returned to Canada from Africa and turned himself in to police. The former freelance accountant has admitted to allegations that he siphoned close to a million dollars from Toronto-area childcare centres before attempting to hide in Kenya and Uganda. You'd think that kind of money would stretch a lot further than a couple of years in developing nations, but the guy was so broke that he couldn't even afford the flight home (which was fronted by the CBC's The Fifth Estate).

18 of 23 trucks inspected in a safety blitz set up near Exhibition Place had safety issues, and 5 were taken off the road on the spot. I'm not sure how difficult it is to meet all safety requirements, but it would appear to be something that only occurs for a small percentage of large commercial vehicles.

The latest Gardiner Expressway makeover plan is pushing to have the spiral exit to York-Bay-Yonge unspiraled and replaced with a straight ramp to reduce the rush hour bottleneck. While they're at it, perhaps they can fix the mess that is the Lakeshore to Strachan intersection, remove the ridiculous new pedestrian-only light on Spadina just north of Front, and work on the timing for the Queen's Quay & Lower Spadina intersection.

--

A young Brampton woman has died after a head-on collision with a TTC streetcar. Late last night, she somehow ended up travelling the wrong way within the dedicated streetcar lane. More details are sure to follow today.

Illegal dumping of trash in city parks is a heavy and expensive problem. Everything from old car parts to toilets are ending up in parks, costing the city a significant amount in clean up costs. A proposal to make dumping more difficult, and up surveillance in an attempt to deter and catch violators is in the works.

And High Park has been declared by Toronto police to be safe for dogs once again. The person and motive for the recently discovered poisoned bread fiasco are still unknown.