Israel kills top Hezbollah figure in Beirut strike, Reuters sources say
Top Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil was killed on Friday in an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs, two security sources told Reuters.
The number of executions recorded worldwide last year jumped to the highest level since 2015, with a sharp rise in Iran and across the Middle East, Amnesty International said in a report released Wednesday.
The human rights group said it recorded a total of 1,153 executions in 2023, a 30 per cent increase from 2022. Amnesty said the figure does not include thousands of death sentences believed to have been carried out in China, where data is not available due to state secrecy.
The group said the spike in recorded executions was primarily driven by Iran, where authorities executed at least 853 people last year, compared to 576 in 2022.
Those executed included 24 women and five people who were children at the time the crimes were committed, Amnesty said, adding that the practice disproportionately affected Iran's Baluch minority.
"The Iranian authorities showed complete disregard for human life and ramped up executions for drug-related offences, further highlighting the discriminatory impact of the death penalty on Iran's most marginalized and impoverished communities," Agnes Callamard, Amnesty's secretary general, said in a statement.
The group said China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the United States were the five countries with the highest number of executions in 2023. The total number cited in Amnesty's annual report was the highest it recorded since 2015, when 1,634 people were known to have been executed.
Amnesty International director general Agnes Callamard delivers her speech Monday, March 27, 2023 in Paris. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
Callamard said progress faltered in the U.S., where executions rose from 18 to 24 and a number of states "demonstrated a chilling commitment to the death penalty and a callous intent to invest resources in the taking of human life."
The report cited the introduction of bills to carry out executions by firing squad in Idaho and Tennessee, and Alabama's use of nitrogen gas as a new, untested execution method in January.
Amnesty said that despite the setbacks, there was progress because the number of countries that carried out executions dropped to 16, the lowest on record since the group began monitoring.
Top Hezbollah commander Ibrahim Aqil was killed on Friday in an Israeli strike on Beirut's southern suburbs, two security sources told Reuters.
Since she was a young girl growing up in Vancouver, Ginny Lam says her mom Yat Hei Law made it very clear she favoured her son William, because he was her male heir.
The province's public security minister said he was "shocked" Thursday amid reports that a body believed to be that of a 14-year-old boy was found this week near a Hells Angels hideout near Quebec City.
An Ontario man says it is 'unfair' to pay a $1,500 insurance surcharge because his four-year-old SUV is at a higher risk of being stolen.
Israel’s military has struck the southern suburbs of Beirut, Lebanon’s capital, in a dramatic escalation in a year-long period of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.
Emergency crews in northern Ontario found the bodies of four people inside a home where a fire broke out Thursday night.
A paid passenger on an expedition to the Titanic with the company that owned the Titan submersible testified before a U.S. Coast Guard investigatory panel Friday that the mission he took part in was aborted due to an apparent mechanical failure.
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The Montreal couple from Mexico and their three children facing deportation have received a temporary residence permit.
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A growing group of brides and wedding photographers from across the province say they have been taken for tens of thousands of dollars by a Barrie, Ont. wedding photographer.
Paleontologists from the Royal B.C. Museum have uncovered "a trove of extraordinary fossils" high in the mountains of northern B.C., the museum announced Thursday.
The search for a missing ancient 28-year-old chocolate donkey ended with a tragic discovery Wednesday.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police is celebrating an important milestone in the organization's history: 50 years since the first women joined the force.
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David Krumholtz, known for roles like Bernard the Elf in The Santa Clause and physicist Isidor Rabi in Oppenheimer, has spent the latter part of his summer filming horror flick Altar in Winnipeg. He says Winnipeg is the most movie-savvy town he's ever been in.
Edmontonians can count themselves lucky to ever see one tiger salamander, let alone the thousands one local woman says recently descended on her childhood home.