Morning Brew: June 24th, 2008

Photo: "Courtesy of Enza" by ryancouldrey, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.

Your Toronto morning news roundup for Tuesday June 24th, 2008:

Toronto City Council voted overwhelmingly in support for Mayor Miller's handgun ban within city limits. Two gun clubs that are currently operating on city property will be forced to move to private locations, and there will be no new operations that manufacture, assemble, warehouse or distribute guns allowed to set up shop in the city. While the new laws will likely have little actual effect on gun-related crime, the message they send out is strong - we don't want guns here, and people that like to play with them are lahoo-zaherz.

A 36-year old man has died in police custody after being tasered during arrest by an OPP officer in Simcoe. Police should really toughen up and go back to their old ways. If suspects are being combative during arrest, have 3 or 4 police officers use muscle power (rather than electric shock) to take them down hard.

Two thirds of municipal waste in the GTA is coming from commercial enterprises. While private citizens do their part, and the city runs successful waste diversion programs for residential garbage, the province is failing miserably in their role to regulate the much bigger beast that is commercial waste.

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Yesterday's storm brought a funnel cloud to Markham/Scarborough, plenty of hail, and the deluge also caused flooding on many GTA streets. Joey Jeremiah even got some photos in CityNews' collection of reader-submitted photos (unless there's another Pat Mastroianni out there). Everybody wants something. A week without wacky storms would be nice.

Two dogs have died after being intentionally poisoned in High Park. Police are attempting to determine if the alleged poisoning of drinking water for dogs is tied to a heated debate over the off-leash area in the park. The person responsible would be charged with first degree murder, manslaughter, and attempted murder, were the victims people.