Photo: "bike #1" by Jay Morrison, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.

Your Toronto morning news roundup for Thursday May 22nd, 2008:

City councillor Rob Ford had his day in court on domestic violence charges, and all charges were dropped. The Crown prosecutor basically told the court that Ford's wife's accusations weren't founded on truth. Ford can now return to normalcy, without the burden of false criminal charges, and with renewed general wackiness.

In a surprise twist, Smart Centres has requested of the OMB an extension on its case to bring big box to Leslieville. The debate now seems to be centered on the question: are crap jobs better than no jobs?

Yesterday a man was thrown off the subway platform and onto the tracks at College station (sorry, no schematic diagram this time), and a woman was sexually assaulted as she waited for the train at St. Andrew station. Perhaps it's about time we address the greater issue of passenger safety on public transit, since driver safety seems to have been in the spotlight much more.

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Tourism in Toronto continues to wane and to become more blatantly obvious. Would allowing Toronto to become more "naughty" reverse the trend? Somehow my sense is that greater leniency on hard drug use at clubs, later last call, legal brothels and marijuana, and more access to Toronto casinos would result in more visitors of the unwanted type. This is Toronto, not Las Vegasterdam.

Rumours are heating up that Led Zeppelin are going to perform in Toronto. Do DJs still play Stairway to Heaven as the last song at grade 8 school dances, or is there a new, epic, slow dance anthem that's replaced it?

The American war deserter who has called Toronto home for almost two years has been ordered back to the US under the presumption that he'll face usual (rather than unusual) punishment upon his return. I'm not so sure that getting the "usual punishment" is so much a welcome prospect to begin with.