European Union officials told Iraq that it would seek commitments on human rights standards, including a ban on capital punishment, during negotiations on a trade and aid pact.

“We are gathering support with the European Union for the abrogation of the death penalty and a universal moratorium on capital executions.

a 39 year old widow was sentenced to be stoned to death in the Saudi city of Hail, the local al-Watan daily reported.

Iran has publicly hanged five men convicted of rape and kidnapping in the northern province of Golestan.

Iran hanged five men convicted of drug trafficking in the northeastern province of Khorasan Razavi province

China's Supreme People's Court announced that anyone found smuggling more than ten artillery shells across the country's borders would receive the death penalty or life imprisonment.

China acknowledged the practice of "transplant tourism," in which the organs of executed prisoners are sold to foreigners, and said it wants to regulate the sale of kidneys, livers and other body parts.

Mureed Hussain, 35, resident of Noorpur, was hanged in Faisalabad District Jail, Pakistan. The accused had reportedly attempted to develop “illicit ties” with a married woman and had killed her son Ehsanullah, 7, on August 30, 1993.

Pakistan's parliament approved amendments to an Islamic-based law on rape, dropping the death penalty and flogging for those convicted of consensual sex outside marriage, officials said.

President Pervez Musharraf has commuted the death sentence for a British man who has been in jail in Pakistan for the past 18 years for a murder he says he didn't commit, Pakistan's interior minister said.

two Pakistanis convicted of separate murders were hanged after President Pervez Musharraf turned down their pleas for clemency, jail officials said.

an Iranian man convicted of sodomy was publicly hanged in the evening in the western town of Kermanshah, the official news agency IRNA reported.