I work right across the street from where the summit is being held. I have been told to work from home that week due to riots.

Now this.

Fertilizer bomb scare

Yup. Any gathering of foreign leaders is an inviting target to terrorists -- foreign and home-grown.

Nice that you've already been given the green light to stay home.

WTO and World Bank protests have occurred many times here and are best given a wide berth.

1.2 billion dollars for a three day meeting. (there are only 350 million people in Canada)
Over 7,000 armed guards.

Only 200 reporters invited to G8 but a few thousand to be fed the news by remote feed at Toronto Convention Center as they cover G20.

This is a freaking joke!

Why can't these great fiscally conservative genius leaders figure out how to dial up a conference call instead.

Sorry, normally I don't highjack posts, but there's only 30+ million people in Canada (33,311,400 as of 2008).



Yup, there's http://www.gotomeeting.com for things just like this! But there wouldn't be politicking that would happen in the dark corners mixed with Toronto strippers.

Well, they found the fertilizer. According to police it was 'merely a “gardening incident”.' Somebody goofed up on the paperwork.

Attack of the killer-tasty tomatoes!

I bought some Chapati flour last week from the supermarket

Is there any restriction or tracking on the purchase Esbit tablets considering Hexamine is one of the primary ingredients for making RDX based plastic explosive?

It sounds like the 'Terrorists targeting G8/G20 summit' story with a fertilizer bomb is just a way of keeping the rentamob crowd away although this will probably disappoint the members of the local constabulary as they listen to this on their MP3 players

Thanks for the correction Kris. The extra zero was a mistake.
Yes, we are only 35 million (rounding upwards)

Not just a gardening accident... I have questions even if nobody else does. Why did the Portuguese speaking person want the stuff for in the first place? Why did he use an alias when buying the stuff? Why does he need the equivalent of a Timothy McVeigh fertilizer bomb? There were hints that the fertilizer was needed for a grow-op operation (I don't know about you but that must be one heck of large grow-op that would require that much fertilizer! Why was it being stored in 2 different residences? There are also laws about storage and handling this stuff even if somebody screwed up in selling him the stuff in the first place. A residential neighbourhood is NOT the place to store this stuff overnight... How come the stuff was sold in this quantity without more checks and balances? Why was this not reported to authorities for 4 days after the sale?

This story is NOT over, regardless of the impact on the G-20 summit.

I was just paraphrasing the article that appeared in various news sources this morning. The guy who bought the fertilizer contacted police and they followed up (as they should). Result: yawn.

From a farming point of view, it's an insignificant amount of fertilizer. It's harmless unless someone doctors it. The only thing that matters was a sales outlet that didn't follow the rules, which makes me mad (smarten up, dudes).

Overall, I think the media concocted a sexy story with absolutely no substance and plenty of hype. It was a freebie; no actual journalistic effort required. Heaven forbid they should report on actual, complex stories that matter.

No worries... when I left canada it was just over 30 million (that was in 2000). We are slow population risers even with the immigration policy the way it is.