“We have commenced a structured dialogue with China on human rights issues,” stated Italy’s Prime Minister Romano Prodi after meeting his Chinese counterpart Wen Jabao in Beijing. “Dialogue is an important instrument for strengthening the preservation of the right to information, the right to expression and the freedom of religion,” stated Prodi.

three Indonesian Christian militants convicted of leading a mob that killed Muslims will be executed on September 21, the convicts' lawyer said, but there was no immediate word on the fate of their clemency appeals.

pro-Taliban militants executed a tribesman in a restive Pakistani tribal area bordering Afghanistan after convicting him of double murder, officials and witnesses said.

Shahla Jahed, 36, was once again facing imminent execution, after the Supreme Court reportedly upheld her death sentence for the second time.

the military court sitting in Bukavu, DRC, sentenced three soldiers to capital punishment.

chinese courts have sentenced seven gangsters to death in two separate cases in the country's northwestern Gansu Province and eastern Anhui Province, according to the Supreme People's Court (SPC).

as Peruvians debated a proposal to apply the death penalty to individuals who sexually assaulted and murdered minors, the country's bishops urged unconditional respect for human life.

a federal judge ordered the state of Missouri to submit new protocols for carrying out the state death penalty by lethal injection and has refused to authorize executions until revisions are approved.

in the 4th ordinary session of the Kurdistan parliament in Iraq, chaired by the parliament Deputy Speaker, the Kurdistan parliament unanimously voted for the resumption of capital punishment in the Kurdistan Region.

Texas executed Farley Charles Matchett for the 1991 murder of a 52-year-old Houston paint contractor who refused to hand over money in order to feed his drug addiction.

Ethiopia granted amnesties to hundreds of prison inmates in the first such move in five decades that also saw death row convicts have their sentences commuted, officials said.

it was reported that a court in Guinea sentenced nine people to death for the murder of a local politician in the capital Conakry.