Malaysia’s parliament has voted to remove the country’s mandatory death penalty, potentially sparing more than 1,300 prisoners on death row. The country has had a moratorium on executions since 2018. But lawmakers on Monday overwhelmingly voted to remove the death penalty as the mandatory sentence for 11 serious crimes, including murder and terrorism. Judges will retain discretion to impose capital punishment in exceptional cases.  But for the most serious crimes, the courts will now hand down life imprisonment sentences of up to 40 years, or corporal punishment such as caning, lawmakers said. The reforms still need to clear the country’s upper house but are widely expected to pass. Speaking in parliament on Monday, Malaysia’s deputy law minister said capital punishment was irreversible and had not worked as a deterrent to crime. “The death penalty has not brought the results it was intended to bring,” said Ramkarpal Singh. There are 34 criminal offences punishable by death in Malaysia – 11 of which before Monday carried the mandatory death penalty. The new laws once enacted will apply retrospectively, allowing those on death row 90 days to seek a review of their sentences. There are currently 1,341 such prisoners in the country, more than 60% of whom had received a mandatory sentence according to an Amnesty International assessment. The legislative process of overturning the country’s death penalty began last June, when the former government under Prime Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob announced it would abolish the death penalty as a mandatory punishment.(BBC)…[+]

Russian investigators have detained a woman in their hunt for the killers of pro-war blogger Vladlen Tatarsky in Sunday’s blast at a St Petersburg cafe. In video released by authorities – most likely recorded under duress – Darya Trepova is heard admitting she handed over a statuette that later blew up. But the 26-year-old does not say she knew there would be an explosion, nor does she admit any further role. Investigators said they had evidence the attack was organised from Ukraine. However, Kyiv officials said it was a case of Russian infighting. More than 30 people were wounded in the bombing in Russia’s second city. Tatarsky (real name Maxim Fomin), aged 40, had been attending a patriotic meeting with supporters in the cafe as a guest speaker late on Sunday afternoon. A video circulating on social media showed a young woman in a brown coat apparently entering the cafe with a cardboard box.(BBC)…[+]

The US space agency Nasa has named the four astronauts who will take humanity back to the Moon, after a 50-year gap. Christina Koch will become the first woman astronaut ever assigned to a lunar mission, while Victor Glover will be the first black astronaut on one. They will join Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen to fly a capsule around the Moon late next year or early in 2025. The astronauts won’t land on the Moon, but their mission will pave the way for a touchdown by a subsequent crew. The three US citizens and one Canadian were presented to the public in a ceremony in Houston, Texas. They will now begin a period of intense training to get themselves ready.  In selecting a woman and a person of colour, Nasa is keeping its promise to bring greater diversity to its exploration efforts. All the previous crewed missions to the Moon were made by white men.(BBC)…[+]