“The death penalty is a brutal and vindictive travesty of justice”, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, Terry Davis, said regarding the resumption of executions in the United States on 17 January.

the US Supreme Court for the first time heard an appeal by a death row inmate using new DNA evidence to proclaim his innocence and demand a retrial. The court's verdict, expected by mid 2006, will do more than seal the fate of convicted murderer Paul House: it will guide US courts as they weigh scientific evidence as new technology casts doubt on long settled cases.

the European Union has welcomed Kyrgyzstan's decision to prolong its moratorium on the death penalty.

a man was sentenced to death and his minor accomplice to 15 years imprisonment after the Minsk Regional Court, Belarus, found them guilty of committing three murders.

a soldier from the Democratic Republic of Congo was summarily executed in a stadium before hundreds of people for murder on the orders of a senior officer, local authorities said.

three convicted serial killers were hanged in Tehran's Evin prison.

an 18-year-old Iranian woman who killed a man she said tried to rape her was sentenced to death for murder, according to the Etemad newspaper.

Behrouz Mehranpour,

New Jersey lawmakers approved a moratorium on the death penalty, becoming the first US state legislature to block executions since the Supreme Court reinstated the punishment in 1976.

the Chinese Supreme People's Court commuted 11.2 percent of all death sentences submitted to it for review in 2005, state media said.

Libya's Supreme Court scrapped death sentences against five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor and ordered a retrial of the cases which have harmed Tripoli's efforts to build ties with the West.

Wen Mengjie, 49, was sentenced to death for accepting bribes and embezzling public funds worth CNY15 million (US$1.85 million), Chinese media said.