a court in southwestern Iran handed down 10 death sentences over a wave of ethnic unrest in the key oil province of Khuzestan, the state broadcaster's website reported.

“If I had to choose a parameter to show man’s progress towards a more just society, it would have to be that of the death penalty,” stated President of the Senate of the Italian Republic Franco Marini, participating at the presentation of Hands Off Cain’s 2006 Report – The Death Penalty Worldwide.

Hands Off Cain presented the 2006 edition of the annual Hands Off Cain Report: “The Death Penalty Worldwide”. The worldwide trend towards abolition, underway for at least a decade, was again confirmed in 2005 and the first half of 2006.

Iranian authorities hanged two young men in public in the western city of Boroujerd.

Two teenagers were hanged in public in the town of Aq Qala, northern Iran, the official news agency reported.

a court in the northern province of Dien Bien handed down death sentences to three people and life imprisonment sentences to five others after they were convicted of cross-border drug trafficking.

convicted murderer Brandon Wayne Hedrick was executed in the electric chair in Virginia on July 20 night becoming the first person in the United States to be put to death by electrocution in more than two years.

a Texas gang member has been put to death by lethal injection for the 1996 murder of a San Antonio man - a crime for which he recanted his earlier confession.

more than five years after they committed the heinous crime, the Supreme Court has unanimously confirmed the death sentence passed on Constable Benjamin Oyakhire, one of the three police constables who murdered five businessmen on February 17, 2001 on Okene-Lokoja road.

The state will comply with a federal judge's order to revamp its execution procedures by Saturday's deadline but may not be able to conduct any, the head of Missouri's Department of Corrections said today.

three men, who were convicted of raping a woman in Pakistan's southern Punjab province, were hanged in central city of Lahore, a jail official said.

Libyan court will confirm the death sentences of Bulgaria's five nurses, a newspaper has said citing anonymous sources.