15-year-old still fears her abusers who were jailed after case drew worldwide attention

I know what you're thinking, because sometimes I think it too. You look at the bovine, witless features of Anders Breivik in that Oslo courtroom and you think: maybe capital punishment isn't so bad after all.

Norway has shown that true justice, though messy and frustrating, is the mark of a civilised society

What does a country do with a remorseless, apparently sane, mass-murderer? Unusually, Anders Breivik, perpetrator of the Utoya massacre, was left alive – something even he finds surprising. Now, safely in custody, famously liberal Norway is struggling to know how to deal with him.

Would the British political establishment have been able to resist demands for the restoration of the death penalty if such a horrifying massacre had taken place here? Support for capital punishment remains largely passive, but widespread; it occasionally surges in the aftermath of horrifying crimes, particularly when children are involved, such as the Soham murders in 2003.

What our rulers could learn from the country's Prime Minister

Copycat haircuts, missile testsand mass denial. By Tomiko Newson in Pyongyang

'Democracy comes from the bottom up,' he wrote. 'Marxism is like a worn dress that must be put aside'

Accused September 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four suspected co-conspirators were directed today to stand trial before a Guantanamo war crimes tribunal on charges that could carry the death penalty, the Pentagon said.

Werner Herzog, cinema's laureate of derangement, seems ideally equipped to investigate America's romance with the death penalty.

Dance: I saw the Nederlands Dans Theater 2 at Sadler's Wells, which was fantastic. The dancers are all aged between 17 and 23, and the final work in the triple bill was Paul Lightfoot's 'Passe-Partout'. The quality of movement was amazing, showing the fluidity, grace and capabilities of human bodies. Modern dance at its best.

Three death row inmates in Japan were executed by hanging today as the country carried out its first death sentences in more than a year and a half.

There were question marks yesterday over the future of one of China's most popular television shows, "Interviews Before Execution", in which death row prisoners are interviewed shortly before their execution, after its presenter was the subject of a BBC documentary.

Three men were jailed today after becoming the first to be convicted of stirring up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation for handing out a leaflet calling for gay people to be executed.