nine members of a gang were executed after a high court upheld the death sentences handed down to them during an earlier local trial in China's Henan province.

Sang Yuechun, a former Chinese legislator, was sentenced to death for rape, embezzling public funds, defrauding banks, possessing guns and leading criminal gangs, the government said.

Hai Ting and Cao Xiude, two Chinese men who were charged with murdering three Japanese tourists in Xi'an, capital city of northwest China's Shaanxi Province, were sentenced to death by the Xi'an Intermediate People's Court.

China will further refine the death penalty review process this year, Chief Justice Xiao Yang told the on-going annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's top legislature.

it was reported that the No. 1 and No. 3 Hospitals affiliated to the prestigious Sun Yat-sen University in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou was carrying out a lucrative trade in liver transplants using organs harvested from executed convicts.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao insisted his country had made progress on improving its human rights record and said Beijing was working towards ratifying a UN convention on the issue.

it was reported by the Yangcheng Evening News that a woman thought to have been murdered in the 1980s reappeared in China, 16 years after the man convicted of killing had been executed.

three convicted drug traffickers were sentenced to death in southwestern China's Sichuan province, while two accomplices were given long prison terms, the Chengdu Commercial Daily said.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that China "cannot" abolish the death penalty due to the country's "national conditions," but outlined hoped for regulations on how the state imposes capital punishment.

an Iranian man convicted of rape was hanged in public in Salmas, northwestern Azarbaijan province, the Shargh daily reported.

in the largest campaign since 1999, police have made massive arrests across the country in an operation against Falun Gong followers, especially in the provinces of Shandong, Jiangxi, Sichuan, and Inner Mongolia, this according to Falun Gong sources.

according to the Maariv daily China had become the number one destination for Israelis desperate for a life-saving transplant donor as Chinese authorities were selling organs taken from executed prisoners.