jurors in US death penalty cases are often excluded because of race and gender, are not shown critical evidence and tend to be conviction prone, the Death Penalty Information Center said in a report.

Hands Off Cain, together with the Transnational Radical Party and the National Association for Criminal Defence Lawyers, presented its 2005 Report - The Death Penalty Worldwide at UN Headquarters in New York.

Libyan Foreign Minister Abdel Rahman Shalgam rejected a call by US President George W. Bush for Tripoli to spare the lives of five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death in May 2004.

President George W. Bush urged Libya to free five Bulgarian nurses sentenced to death on charges of infecting hundreds of Libyan children with the HIV virus.

the Tennessee Supreme Court unanimously rejected claims that the three-drug combination used to execute killers can cause extreme pain in violation on the Constitution's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

the Nagoya High Court sentenced three men to death for murdering four people in 1994, crimes that occurred when the defendants were still minors.

it was reported that an Iranian woman found guilty of having an extra-marital affair with an Afghan and being an accomplice in the murder of her husband was sentenced to death by stoning.

four gun smugglers were sentenced to death at the first trial by a local court in northwest China's Qinghai Province.

Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev called for constitutional amendments that would abolish the death penalty and strip future presidents of immunity from prosecution after they stepped down from office.

the way executions are carried out in Luzira Upper Prison, Uganda, has a devastating effect on both the prison personnel and the other death row inmates, a report by the International Federation of Human Rights (FIDH) said.

the European Union severely criticised Iran's human rights record, saying its performance on the death penalty, freedom of expression and religious liberty had deteriorated.

the Russian parliament should ratify a document abolishing the death penalty in Russia by the end of 2005, said Chairman of the State Duma Civil, Criminal, Arbitration, and Procedural Law Committee Pavel Krasheninnikov.