Arabella and Joseph Kushner sang a Chinese song and recited Chinese poems for President Xi Jinping and Madame Peng Liyuan at Mar-a-Lago Friday. The performance was well received in China where the state news agency Xinhua News said “Trump’s grandson and granddaughter sing traditional Chinese ballad What a Beautiful Jasmine.” Next, in Stockholm, police have detained a man said to be from Uzbekistan for yesterday’s truck attack on shoppers. Then in Cavendish PEI, Lucy Maud Montgomery might find it hard to recognize her childhood home as Green Gables gets a serious re-make. Finally, a diminutive woman is lifting weights with the ease of a much larger person and she loves it.

Leaside – The Scouts are coming! (door to door). Pls support the 132nd's Garden Products campaign. Online orders: https://t.co/y6fzVXXFK6 pic.twitter.com/g2Tk1ju6ag

— Wilmar Kortleever (@WKortleever) April 7, 2017

Toronto Zoo has posted details of the hatching of four African penguin chicks starting on Good Friday (April 14). No names yet for any including this hearty character. Chicks are viewable in their indoor viewing area from 11 am to 2 pm daily. Lots of detail on Facebook

The Canadian mint has taken no chances in its design of the 150th anniversary edition of the ten dollar banknote. It touches four bases of ethnic and gender importance. There are likenesses of Canada’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, fellow Father of Confederation (and Quebecer) Sir George-Étienne Cartier, Canada’s first female member of Parliament, Agnes Macphail and James Gladstone, Canada’s first Indigenous senator and a member of the Kainai (Blood) Tribe. CBC

Joke shop humour brought the Yonge subway (Line 1) to a halt Friday afternoon during rush hour when someone threw a “stink bomb” smelling like rotten eggs into a car at St. George Station. The device filled the train with stench causing crew and passengers to abandon it a stop later at Museum. One person suffered a minor injury and was treated and released. Service was delayed for about an hour.

So much fun to start the alarming ignition count down

It remains unknown just what 58-year-old Joseph Galaska was carrying to Chicago Thursday when he ran afoul of US customs at Pearson airport and landed in jail for carrying a mock bomb. There has been no precise description of what it was but “the bomb” had zero capacity to explode. Except in Galaska’s face. Was it one of the bomb look-a-like alarm clocks that the twisted manufacturers think are such fun? No one is laughing about this escapade, especially the judge who told Galaska he will spend another night in a Mississauga jail cell until his son arrives Saturday to post bail of $5,000.

15-YEAR-OLD CHARGED IN 2015

The charge is mischief. Galaska is required back in court April 10. We know about alarm clock bombs because a 15-year-old was charged with mischief at Pearson in September 2015 when he carried the oh so funny Nootropic Design manufactured  “Defusable Clock.” into customs.

So say we all

Re-built bank building keeps 1920 heritage

Who knows?

Metrolinx has scheduled a public meeting for Tuesday, April 11, 2017 on the LRT stop at Eglinton Ave East and Mt. Pleasant. That’s the 1920 bank building which will be rebuilt to accommodate passenger traffic and commercial concessions as well. The elegant former Imperial Bank branch (later CIBC on the merger with Canadian Bank of Commerce) then Second Cup Coffee shop will retain the charming Palladian window over the former front door on the corner. That door will still be there but most of the hordes of train riders will come and go by wide new doors to be installed on Mt. Pleasant. At last word there will be shops including maybe the return of Second Cup. Not sure about that. The building was taken down stone by stone in 2016 and will rise again on a date not too far off. Metrolinx release on the meeting at Northern Secondary School

Jennifer Pagliaro of the Star’s City Hall bureau posts this view of the hole getting dug at the 99 Broadway towers site in Yonge-Eglinton Centre and observes that the house on the corner, and its residents, are still hanging in. Not everyone’s idea of life in Midtown.

https://twitter.com/tpscalls/status/850332845776281600

The Toronto Fire Service active incidents review shows this call as a child birth on Mt. Pleasant Rd. between Stibbard Ave. and Sheldrake Blvd.

Another productive meeting with my friends at @SERRAtoronto today. We're working together for our South Eglinton/Davisville neighborhood.

— Josh Matlow (@JoshMatlow) April 6, 2017

There’s lots to talk about in this development pressure-cooker of a neighbourhood.