TAIWAN: DEATH PENALTY RETURNS, 4 EXECUTED

Taiwan executed four people, the justice ministry said, in the island's first cases of capital punishment since 2005 when the sentence became a sensitive political issue.
The Ministry of Justice confirmed that four death row convicts, identified as Chang Chun-hung, Hung Chen-yao, Ko Shih-ming and Chang Wen-wei, were executed earlier in the day, two days after Justice Minister Tseng Yung-fu signed the warrants for the executions, the ministry said in a statement.
The four had been convicted of "the most serious crimes", including murder and kidnapping, the justice ministry said.
"The justice ministry gave death penalty orders to the four people on April 28 and the order was carried out on April 30," the one-line statement said.
Former Justice Minister Wang Ching-feng and Amnesty International have urged Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou to scrap the death penalty.
Abolition of the law, which is widely supported, could hurt the government ahead of November local polls.
A further 40 inmates remain on death row, the ministry said. About 500 inmates were executed between 1987 and 2005.