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.

the Council of Europe's envoys urged Russia to fulfill its pledge to abolish the death penalty as it prepared to take over the rotating presidency in the continent's top human rights body.

a Pakistani anti-terrorism court sentenced five militants from an Al-Qaeda-linked group to death for a 2002 attack on a prison van which killed a policeman and a prisoner.

Algeria’s new criminal code, approved by the council of ministers and currently under parliamentary scrutiny, still included references to the death penalty, reported AGR news agency.

a court in Iraq's northern Kurdistan region sentenced to death 12 members of militant group Ansar al-Islam for numerous killings and explosions, an Arbil judiciary official said.

responding to intense public criticism over the high rate of executions, China's apex court established three new criminal tribunals to review certain types of death sentence passed by provincial courts.

a US jury found Zacarias Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty, and the convicted Sept. 11 conspirator shouted as he was led out of the court: "You'll never get my blood. God curse you all."

Sita Raman, a 32 year old former soldier, was sentenced to death for murdering his friend by stabbing him twice in the neck at Nilai, near Bernama, Malaysia.

Chinese police vowed to clamp down on pipeline oil theft, even threatening to impose the death penalty. According to police oil theft cost the industry more than 1bn yuan ($124.6m, £71.8m) and led to 2,877 arrests.

Abdur Rahman, an Afghan Christian convert who had faced the death penalty for abandoning Islam, arrived in Italy and was granted asylum.

a 35-year-old man, Umaru Auta, was sentenced to death by hanging for stealing a bicycle. Auta had been arrested by the police in 1999 in a village near Toro, in Nigeria’s Bauchi State, and arraigned on a three-count charge of robbery, assault and unlawful possession of arms.

a Lebanese military court dropped a death penalty against the head of the Palestine Liberation Organisation in the country.