it was reported that an Iranian woman and a foreign man who were convicted of murder had been hanged in recent days in Iran’s north-eastern province of Khorasan Razavi.

Majid Sogan was hanged in public in the western Iranian city of Khoramabad for stabbing a friend to death two years previously.

an Iranian man convicted of kidnapping and armed robbery was hanged in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

two men were hanged till death in Faisalabad Jail in Pakistan.

Britain asked Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf to stop the hanging of Mirza Tahir Hussain, a British man convicted of shooting dead a taxi driver 18 years ago.

five people convicted of heroin dealing were executed in southern Ho Chi Minh City. The five, including two women, were put to death by firing squad before dawn.

the House Representatives began floor debates on the abolition of the death penalty in the country as contained in a bill certified as urgent by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

a court in Bogra, Bangladesh, sentenced six men to death for murdering a teenage girl after raping her at Prannathpur village in Adamdighi.

the Kitwe High Court, Zambia, sentenced to death Evans Mumba, 42, and Ronald Mwaba, 24, after convicting them of murder.

Brothers Ezzat and Hamdi Ali Hanafi have been sentenced to death after an unfair trial and could be executed at any time, Amnesty International said.

the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals voted 5-4 to lift a stay of execution it issued on May 15 for Derrick S. O'Brien. O'Brien had been scheduled to die May 16; a new execution date was to be set at a hearing in July.

Jermaine Herron, a man convicted in the shooting deaths of a woman and her son in 1997 was executed, hours after a court rejected his appeal that the drugs used in lethal injections cause excessive pain.