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Missing 3-year-old boy found dead in creek in Mississauga, Ont.: police
A three-year-old boy has been found dead a day after he went missing in a park in Mississauga, Ont., Peel police say.
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.
A three-year-old boy has been found dead a day after he went missing in a park in Mississauga, Ont., Peel police say.
Against the rainy Paris night sky, Celine Dion staged the comeback of her career with a powerful performance from the Eiffel Tower to open the Olympic Games.
Premier Danielle Smith said Friday afternoon in Hinton while weather conditions are cooler, the Jasper fire is still considered out of control and that Jasper residents can expect to be away from their homes 'for several weeks.'
An Irish museum will withdraw a waxwork of singer-songwriter Sinéad O'Connor just one day after installing it, following a backlash from her family and the public, it told CNN in a statement on Friday.
A Winnipeg senior is getting soaked with a six-figure water bill.
Nearly two weeks after Donald Trump's near assassination, the FBI confirmed Friday that it was indeed a bullet that struck the former president's ear, moving to clear up conflicting accounts about what caused the former president's injuries after a gunman opened fire at a Pennsylvania rally.
Orillia OPP arrested and charged a driver with impaired driving after flashing their high beams.
A powerful Mexican drug cartel leader who eluded authorities for decades was duped into flying into the U.S., where he was arrested alongside a son of Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, according to a U.S. law enforcement official familiar with the matter.
The lawyer for a former judge whose claims to be Cree were questioned in a CBC investigation says his client is not considering legal action against the broadcaster after the Law Society of British Columbia this week backed her claims of Indigenous heritage.
As fire threatened people in Jasper National Park, Colleen Knull sprung into action.
Video posted to social media on Thursday morning appears to show the charred remains of a Jasper, Alta., neighbourhood.
A Saskatchewan-born veteran of the Second World War was recently presented with France's highest national order.
A local First Nations elder and veteran is helping to bring the Ojibwe language to a well-known film for the first time.
A cat who fled her Montreal home nearly a decade ago has been reunited with her family after being found in Ottawa.
A woman in Waterloo, Ont. is out thousands of dollars for a car crash she wasn’t involved in.
A swarm of bees living in a lamppost in Winnipeg’s Sage Creek neighbourhood has found a new home for its hive.
Around 100 acres of Manitoba Crown Land near the Saskatchewan border is being returned to the Métis community.
Nova Scotia is suspending the licensed Cape Breton moose hunt for three years due to what the province is calling a “significant drop” in the population.