North Korea issued a special decree that called for the maximum penalty of death for its citizens involved in manufacturing and trafficking drugs, a South Korean relief group said.

Afghan police detained a man for converting from Islam to Christianity, Supreme Court judge Ansarullah Mawlavizada said, adding the man could face the death penalty if he refused to become a Muslim again.

opposition supporters in Belarus were warned that they could face the death penalty if they took part in a protest after the presidential election on March 19.

prison officials in Iran repeatedly threatened to execute Valiollah Feyz Mahdavi, a sympathizer of an armed opposition group, during the Persian New Year holidays that begin on March 21, Human Rights Watch said.

nearly 30 percent of death row inmates polled in Japan had no one to visit them, a survey conducted by the Japan Federation of Bar Associations showed. The survey was given to 79 inmates as of January 2006 and 58 people responded.

Tommie Hughes was put to death by lethal injection for the 1997 robbery and murder of a Dallas woman in a movie theater parking lot. Hughes, 32, was condemned for killing Foulke Erinkitola, 25, after he and a cousin robbed Erinkitola and her friend, Roxanne Mendoza, 29.

Hands Off Cain replies to a note sent it by the Iranian embassy in Rome in which it denyed the application of the death penalty to minors.

Algeria, where no executions have taken place since 1993, intends to put an end to capital punishment

Awad al-Bandar a former judge from Saddam Hussein's regime, admitted to sentencing 148 Shiites to death in the 1980s, but maintained they received a fair trial and had confessed to trying to assassinate the former Iraqi leader.

Jordanian authorities executed Adnan Ismail, a man convicted for murdering his wife and seven-month-old son, marking Jordan's third execution in four days.

four cardinal members of a notorious drug ring that was accused of trafficking 21 kilograms of heroin have been sentenced to death at first trial in southwest China's Guizhou Province.

President George W. Bush signed into law a Patriot Act renewal that will allow the government to keep using terror-fighting tools passed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.