the Baghdad Central Criminal Court issued a death sentence against a man convicted of kidnapping, the state- funded Al Sabah newspaper reported.

an Iraqi court tried and sentenced to death a man allegedly linked to Al Qaeda who confessed to the 2003 truck-bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad.

in an historic judgement, Senior Justice Anita Allen sentenced convicted murderer Maxo Tido to death for the 2002 murder of 16-year-old Donnell Connover.

Willie Brown Jr., a man convicted of killing a woman during a convenience store robbery in 1983 was executed by lethal injection.

an Afghan man was hanged in central Iran in the early hours of the day, Iran’s official news agency reported.

ten men convicted of murder were hanged in a prison in the Iranian capital.

more than 2,000 people were known to have been executed around the world last year, the vast majority of them in China, followed by Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United States, Amnesty International said.

top British transplant surgeons accused China of harvesting the organs of thousands of executed prisoners a year to sell for transplants.

President Gloria Arroyo would support legislation to abolish the death penalty despite widespread public support in the Philippines for judicial executions, her spokesman said.

Richard Thornburg Jr. was executed by lethal injection for killing three people over a drug debt in 1996, an Oklahoma prison spokesman said.

the United States and Japan may lose their observer status at the Council of Europe if they fail to abolish the death penalty before the end of 2006, said Konstantin Kosachyov, leader of the Russian delegation to the Council's Parliamentary Assembly (PACE).

a judge who halted an execution because the inmate was mentally ill has agreed to force the man to take anti-psychotic medication so he can be put to death.