Death Penalty report 2012

Last month, Amnesty International published its yearly report on the death penalty. If we exclude the figures of executions carried out in China ^(*), the number of (confirmed) executions is 682, which stays virtually unchanged from 2011 (676).

Once again, China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the USA were the five biggest executioners in the world, next to them 16 other countries executed the death penalty last year.

"Although the global trend towards abolition remained strong, 2012 saw a disappointing resumption of executions in a number of countries, notably Gambia, India, Japan and Pakistan."

Connecticut 17th US state to abolish death penalty

Governor Dannel Malloy of Connecticut signed a bill into law on Wednesday 25th of April 2012 that abolishes the death penalty. (CNN)

The death penalty is replaced with life in prison without possibility of parole. (NBC)

Death Penalty report 2011

Yesterday, Amnesty International published its yearly report on the death penalty. If we don't include the executions in China, 2011 counts 676 people executed, that is almost 150 more than in 2010 (527):

In other news...

Taken from SF Weekly

For weeks now I am intensely following the uprisings in the Middle East and of course we get flooded with the nuclear situation in Japan. Sometimes I forget that there is also other news.

Here is a short list of some items that have intrigued me over the past days, but time was too short to elaborate on these:

Did you know...

Picture taken from
Susan Loone her blog.

that the death penalty wasn't taken out of Belgian criminal law until August 1, 1996?