The kirpan, which is a stylized representation of a sword, will be allowed in public areas of Toronto courthouses subject to certain conditions.

For instance, the court officer must be informed the person is a Khalsa Sikh, which is an initiated Sikh, and that they are carrying a kirpan.

The kirpan, which has an exaggerated curve at the end, must also pass the metal detector. The kirpan has a tip and can have a sharp end much like a pen or pencil.

The total length of the kirpan, including sheath, may not exceed 7.5 inches with a blade of not more than 4 inches. In addition, the kirpan must be worn under clothing and not be easily accessible.

The kirpan is often described as a dagger, which it resembles, but Sikhs say that description is misleading. It is an important article of faith, representing spiritual wisdom and the duty to stand against injustice.

“The risk of the kirpan being used as a weapon has been virtually eliminated,” Balpreet Singh, legal counsel for the World Sikh Organization of Canada, told the Star.

The religious ideology of the Sikhs spells out that the kirpan should not be used as a weapon, and it is retained in a fabric belt worn under clothing, Singh said.

The World Sikh Organization of Canada worked on developing the policy with the Ontario Human Rights Commission, Toronto Police, the Toronto Police Services Board and the Ministry of the Attorney General.

The policy was developed as a settlement of two separate human rights cases.

The first one involved a Sikh who was to attend a mandatory class trip to the victim/witness assistance program at the Old City Hall courthouse. That student was denied entry because she would not remove her kirpan.

The second instance involved a Sikh man who was summoned for jury duty at the University Ave. courthouse and was allowed to enter with his kirpan in the morning, but denied re-entry after the lunch break.

The Attorney General’s office will work with Toronto police to identify the best way to have security screenings at each Toronto courthouse.

“This is a step in the right direction, combining respect for a person’s religious observances with accommodation principles and Code obligations,” chief commissioner Barbara Hall said in a news release.

Toronto police Deputy Chief Jeff McGuire said in statement that the procedure “recognizes the needs and rights of the Sikh community and the obligation to provide a safe, secure and accessible courthouse environment.”

WSO legal counsel Balpreet Singh said the policy was developed for Toronto courthouses, but Singh said he hopes to work with other police services in Canada to bring about a similar policy.

Local police services are responsible for court security in Ontario.

“This is a good first step to ensure the kirpan is accommodated in other courtrooms as well,” Singh told the Star. “We’re going to have to move forward to make sure this accommodation policy can be introduced in courtrooms York Region and Peel Region.”

Although there are courthouses in other cities that allow the kirpan, Toronto is the first city to have a formal policy with respect to the kirpan.

While the Supreme Court of Canada allows kirpans, there’s no formal policy.

Toronto police spokesman Mark Pugash said police has a long history of working with the Human Rights Commission.

“This is the latest result of our work,” Pugash said. “It’s an accommodation that respects the traditions of diverse communities, while at the same time ensures public safety in courthouses is protected.”

This policy has been communicated to all court offices in Toronto and there is ongoing training, Pugash added.

They’re angry about the Conservatives’ move to legislate away a backlog of some 280,000 applications created before 2008.

The government announced the decision in its March budget, saying it is a necessary part of modernizing the immigration system.

But Toronto lawyer Lorne Waldman, who is representing some of the applicants, says the decision is unfair to the thousands of people who were given a realistic expectation that their immigration application would be reviewed.

The government has said those who are having their application and related fees returned can re-apply under new entrance rules.

The changes to the immigration system are wrapped up in the omnibus budget bill, meaning it is unlikely for the cases to come to court before that bill passes.

But Waldman says he’ll ask the court to force the government to keep his clients’ files open until their cases can be heard.

The Mounties conducted a five-month review into an alleged leak of cabinet documents under the Security of Information Act, which was recently used to charge a naval intelligence officer in an apparent spy case.

Records obtained by The Canadian Press under the access-to-information law show investigators had doubts almost from the outset in July 2010 that any laws were broken by the Globe and Mail story.

The story revealed angst within government about possible alienation from Washington if a competition was held to replace the air force’s CF-18s.

Still, the review pressed ahead and drew in one of the RCMP’s four Integrated National Security Enforcement Teams, whose job it is to chase terrorism threats.

The probe was shut down in December 2010 for lack of evidence.

The case file shows the complaint was laid by Wayne Wouters, clerk of the Privy Council, the country’s highest ranking civil servant and adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, shortly after the article appeared on June 11, 2010.

An expert in defence and security matters, Wesley Wark of the University of Ottawa, says revelation is disturbing and has the whiff of politically motivated “chill.”

RCMP Sgt. Brigdit Leger says the arrests are in connection with the death of Amber Kirwan.

Police have said they are treating Kirwan’s death as a homicide.

Leger declined to provide any details about the two people arrested, other than to say they are both adults and that no charges have been laid.

Kirwan’s body was found on a property about a 30-minute drive from a pool hall in New Glasgow, where Kirwan was last seen.

She was seen on a surveillance video leaving the pool hall last Oct. 9 and was believed to be walking to a convenience store to meet her boyfriend, who said she never arrived.

RCMP and the New Glasgow police have scheduled a news conference for Thursday to provide an update on the case.

Scientists from the United States and England say brain tissue in four American military members showed signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE, a progressive disease normally linked to repetitive concussions.

The condition has been identified in more than a dozen professional football players who have died after suffering multiple concussions. In some cases, they developed memory loss, irritability, dementia and suicidal thoughts before they died.

Patric Stanton, a cell biologist at the New York Medical College, said the international team of scientists found telltale signs of the disease in veterans exposed to even just one blast from an improvised explosive device, a weapon that became the hallmark of the Afghanistan conflict.

“This is really the first demonstration that their brains look indistinguishable from that you see in athletes that have had multiple concussions,” he said upon the release of the findings Wednesday in the online journal, Science Translational Medicine.

“It’s very worrisome.”

The researchers, based largely at Boston University, looked at the brains of four veterans after they had died, three of whom had been exposed to IEDs.

The fourth had suffered concussions in and outside the military and developed post-traumatic stress disorder, but didn’t have a blast exposure.

He said they all showed signs of CTE and that it may only take one blast exposure to develop symptoms, rather than multiple hits to the head suffered by some athletes who have the condition that is characterized by abnormal protein deposits.

“It’s as if the blast has concentrated in a second or so repeated concussions — like a whole NFL career might be concentrated in a few seconds,” he said.

The researchers said they found that the blast produces a wind that can reach a velocity of 530 kilometres per hour and moves the person’s head back and forth very rapidly, causing the brain to get compressed several times as it floats in fluid.

They recreated the effect in mice and discovered signs of the disease only two weeks after exposing them to a single blast.

The blasts can cause traumatic brain injuries, which can lead to symptoms that are thought to be short-lived, depending on the severity of the blast.

Thousands of military members in Canada and other countries have been exposed to the potent blasts from IEDs, the crude bombs that maimed and killed dozens of Canadian Forces in Afghanistan over the course of the 10-year mission.

It’s estimated that just over five per cent of personnel deployed to Afghanistan from 2009 to 2011 experienced a mild traumatic brain injury.

Col. Rakesh Jetly, a senior Canadian Forces psychiatrist, said he had read the Boston University report and was awaiting further details on the research. He added that the Canadian Forces has created a special panel on managing brain injuries in the military.

“The Canadian Forces Health Services is constantly studying evidence-based research related to blast exposure and seeking ways to improve care to personnel suffering from brain injuries,” he said in an emailed statement.

A report from November 2009 found that 6.4 per cent of Canadian Forces members deployed to Afghanistan had experienced mild traumatic brain injury.

The military reported that the vast majority of those screened weren’t showing symptoms three to six months post-deployment.

But Stanton says the progression of disease can take years to play out.

“So when the military assures people that all your symptoms will be short-lived and you will be fine, they have no basis on which to prove that,” he said.

The scientists compared the veterans’ brain tissue to that of young football players and a wrestler who had suffered repeated concussions. They found disturbing similarities between the two groups.

“Our study provides compelling evidence that blast traumatic brain injuries and CTE are structural brain disorders that can emerge as a result of brain injury on the battlefield or playing field,” said Lee Goldstein, associate professor at Boston University School of Medicine and the report’s lead author.

“Now that we have identified the mechanism responsible for CTE, we can work on developing ways to prevent it so that we can protect athletes and our military service personnel.”

A conversation with CJAD host Aaron Rand was suddenly interrupted.

The former Vermont governor and Democratic presidential candidate paused and told the radio host: “We just got hit by a car, sorry — I’m gonna have to — goodbye.”

Someone else in the car was heard gasping, “Oh, no.”

Dean was riding in a car that was hit by a taxi. His aide, Amanda McKay, who was also in the car, said they were on their way Tuesday to a television interview elsewhere in Montreal; they were taping the interview for later use on-air.

When Dean called back the radio station 20 minutes later, he laughed off the accident. Nobody was hurt.

“We were in a traffic jam when someone turned into traffic and nicked our car,” McKay explained.

Dean was in Montreal to attend a luncheon and speak about the current American presidential race. Dean had a strong start in the 2004 Democratic race, but petered out in a campaign many now remember for the notorious “Dean Scream” following a defeat in Iowa.

By all accounts, there was no screaming this week, as Dean handled the traffic incident rather calmly.

He apparently laughed off the incident when he called the station back.

“He told me it was a first for him and I wished him a safer trip home,” Rand said.

The department says officials responded Tuesday evening after the animal bit the boy’s leg and buttocks while he was on a trail near Edwardsville.

The boy’s wounds are not considered serious.

Natural Resources officials are investigating and have called in a trained trapper to remove the animal.

In addition to the direct indictments, the Public Prosecution Service of Canada announced new charges against the men.

Misbahuddin Ahmed and Hiva Mohammad Alizadeh of Ottawa, and Khurram Syed Sher, of London, Ont., were arrested in August 2010 in the case known as Project Samossa.

They are charged with various offences including conspiring to facilitate terrorist activity.

In 2010, police said they seized terrorist literature, videos and manuals, along with dozens of electronic circuit boards allegedly designed to detonate homemade bombs remotely.

Police said the alleged plot reached to Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Dubai.

When the federal government signed a free-trade agreement with the South American country last year, it agreed to submit annual reports on how human rights were being affected.

But the report released this week does not include an assessment of the situation.

The Department of Foreign Affairs says since the treaty was passed last August, there wasn’t time to do a proper analysis.

It promises to create methodology and review the state of human rights by next year.

Amnesty International says it is deeply disappointed by the response and highlights the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Colombians last year because of violence.

Philip Owen described the “badly handled” investigation as a national embarrassment for the city.

Owen, who was mayor and chairman of the city’s police board from 1993 until 2002, told the missing women inquiry that a mix of indifference and incompetence within the Vancouver police and the RCMP allowed Pickton to continue killing for years.

“The lack of response to the disappearances of all these women was a function of the part of the city they went missing from and class, the disadvantaged, vulnerable position they held in society, wasn’t it?” asked Cameron Ward, a lawyer representing the families of missing and murdered women.

“Partially,” said Owen. “And also because it involved the RCMP in Port Coquitlam and that slipped through the cracks.”

Owen suggested police should have been able to catch Pickton as early as 1998. He noted by then Pickton had already been accused of attempting to kill a sex worker at his property in Port Coquitlam in 1997, though charges in that case were never brought to trial.

The inquiry has heard the former mayor and the police board ignored the community’s concerns about missing sex workers and instead adopting the police line that there was no evidence of a crime, let alone a serial killer.

But Owen said there was little he or the board could do to find out what police were doing or order the force to change direction. The board sets broad policy, Owen said, but can’t interfere with the day-to-day operations of the police.

Owen acknowledged he initially accepted the police department’s view there was no evidence a serial killer was preying on sex workers, but he said he grew skeptical over time. The police chief and other senior officers within the force, he said, were slower to change their minds.

“It was a horrible issue. It was a disaster. It was badly handled. It was badly managed,” said Owen.

“It’s an embarrassment right across the country.”

Family members and community groups in the Downtown Eastside had been raising alarms about missing women in the neighbourhood for years. By 1999, those concerns had escalated and family members of the missing women were calling for a police task force and a $100,000 reward.

Owen was initially opposed to a reward, but eventually supported it during a police board meeting in April 1999. The police argued against issuing a reward, saying it wasn’t necessary because there was no evidence the women were victims of foul play.

An obscure crime news website quoted Owen in 1999 dismissing the reward as little more than a “location service,” paying people to locate sex workers who had merely moved away to other cities.

On Wednesday, Owen cast doubt on the report. He said he couldn’t recall ever making the statement and didn’t recognize the reporter’s name at the top of the story.

Owen insisted his main concern was ensuring the city wasn’t on the hook for the entire reward.

“I was concerned about Vancouver being on the hook,and I had no authority to commit Vancouver to $100,000,” he said.

In the end, the city put up $30,000 for the reward and the B.C. government contributed $70,000.

In 2010, Vancouver police announced some of the reward money had been paid out to six tipsters, although the force didn’t identify who received the money or how much was paid to each.

The inquiry is examining why the Vancouver police and the RCMP failed to catch the serial killer as he murdered sex workers in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Pickton wasn’t caught until February 2002, when police obtained a search warrant for his farm on a tip about illegal firearms.

The arrest sparked a massive search of the property, where the police found the remains or DNA of 33 women. Pickton once boasted to an undercover police officer that he killed 49.