Malaysia’s Court of Appeal upheld a High Court decision to send an Indonesian man to the gallows for trafficking in cannabis.

human rights groups claim that the village courts, set up in Rwanda in 2001 to deal with a crippling backlog of genocide cases, are being hijacked by villagers using the pretence of genocide allegations to settle land disputes and family feuds.

the Nghe An People’s Court, central Vietnam, sentenced Tran Van Hoi, 34, to death for drug trafficking.

Alice Hoagland's son, Mark Bingham was killed on September 11 as he joined with fellow United Airlines passengers to ground a plane that may have been headed toward the White House.

Vietnamese Prime Minister Phan Van Khai called for a review of capital punishment while authorities sought to replace the firing squad with remotely-fired weapons to shield the troops from any trauma.

the Falun Dafa Information Center revealed that, in response to public exposure, officials in China had begun a massive, deadly campaign to destroy evidence of concentration camps holding practitioners of Falun Gong; at the camps, the Falun Gong were killed after having their organs extracted for sale.

a Women and Children Repression Prevention Tribunal in Brahmanbaria, Bangladesh, convicted ‘Bulbul of Jhautali’ and sentenced him to death for killing his wife.

an Iranian man convicted of murder was hanged in southern Kerman province.

the European Union welcomed Philippine President Gloria Arroyo's decision to commute the sentences of dozens of inmates on death row.

a court in Moga, in the Indian state of Punjab, sentenced to death a woman exactly a month after burning her daughter-in-law to death in a fit of rage.

an Iranian man convicted of murder was publicly hanged in southern Kerman province.

the number of homicides in Houston, Texas, rose nearly 25 % during the first 3 months of 2006, compared with the same period last year, despite a multimillion-dollar police effort in the city's most crime-ridden areas, the Houston Chronicle reported.