Photo: "Clock Watchers..." by chewie2008~, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.

Your Toronto morning news roundup for Thursday September 18th, 2008:

A Brampton man has died after being tasered by Peel Region police. Clearly a "measured approach" to using the devices isn't working. Perhaps if authorities treated rogue citizens like rabid dogs or escaped zoo animals, and dart tranquilized them rather than electrocuting them, less would die.

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty is renewing the call for a nation-wide ban on handguns. Hopefully his campaign is more effective than Mayor Miller's online video attempt, which accrued a mere 8,300 views in a city of 2.5million people.

It's one of the oldest tricks in the book (pick up a Lonely Planet for any country in SE Asia and read the "dangers and annoyances" section) but it still works. Ketchup squirted on a Toronto woman's clothing was used as a diversion to nab $600 from her purse.

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A 2-alarm fire on Queen St W (at Lansdowne) early this morning will have the street blocked for cleanup today, and of course, will remind us of the tragic, bigger one that ripped through half a block last winter.

A former school bus driver who was charged with driving under the influence is now in court, and the defence strategy suggests that he wasn't drinking at all, and that his erratic behaviour was the result of hypomanic manifestations of his bipolar disorder. Am I missing something here, or does the prosecution not have a blood alcohol test result to go with the charge?