Saddam Hussein's half brother and the former head of Iraq's Revolutionary Court were hanged today. A government spokesman said the head of one of the accused, Barzan Ibrahim, had been severed during the hanging.

Carlos Granados, a man convicted of murdering his girlfriend's 3-year-old son, was put to death by lethal injection in Texas' first execution of the year.

Peru's Congress rejected President Alan Garcia's bill seeking to introduce the death penalty for terrorists.

all Italian political parties are backing the decision "to campaign at the United Nations for a global ban on the death penalty" announced by Prime Minister Romano Prodi. "No crime can justify one person killing another," Prodi said.

an Iranian man convicted of murdering a police officer was hanged in the northern town of Tonekabon, Mazandaran province, a press report said.

Iraqi President Jalal Talabani said the government should delay the execution of two of Saddam Hussein’s

main opposition Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) leader George Papandreou had a telephone

four people were executed for drug trafficking in Yulin, a city in south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. Chen Lizhen was one of four people convicted of trafficking 65 kilograms of heroin from

Italy and the Council of Europe are working together to gather as much support as possible for a United Nations General Assembly based initiative for a worldwide moratorium on executions with view to full abolition of the death penalty.

the first execution of 2007 was carried out in Faisalabad jail where a condemned prisoner Waheed Iqbal, 40, was hanged.

“Pannella’s initiative, taken on by the government and by [Foreign] Minister D’Alema, must find a way to carry on,” said Emma Bonino, Italian Minister for European Policies and International Trade, commenting on the initiative for a universal moratorium on capital executions.

it was reported that forty-four death sentences were handed down by courts across Japan in 2006, a record high since 1980, when the Supreme Court began keeping records on such sentences.