The North Korean authorities have recently focused on cracking down on “acts of superstition” leading to the execution of a fortune teller in the Chongjin and the arrest of other fortune tellers in Onsong and Hoeryong who are awaiting trial, the Daily NK reported on 19 December 2018.

The Abu Dhabi Criminal Court sentenced an Asian to execution on charges of throttling his colleague to death with ghotra (cloth used by a community to form a turban out of the same), The Gulf Today reported on 18 December 2018.

The Criminal Court on 18 December 2018 sentenced a 29-year-old man to death after convicting him of murdering and decapitating his mother in Amman in November of 2016.

Authorities in the central Chinese province of Henan have executed a petitioner for killing a police officer who was forcibly escorting him home from a petitioning trip in the Chinese capital, Radio Free Asia reported on 20 December 2018.

The firing squad of the Al-Shabaab militia group on 19 December 2018 publicly executed a suspected government military officer in Middle Shabelle’s Galboole village.

A court in Osaka on 19 December 2018 sentenced a man to death for the murders of a 13-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy.

President Mnangagwa wants the death penalty banned and the Zimbabwean government is pressing ahead with plans to have the death penalty removed from its statutes, Minister of Justice, Legal and Parliamentary Affairs Ziyambi Ziyambi said on 19 December 2018.

The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) on 16 December 2018 released details of the death sentences awarded to convicted terrorists and their executions following trial by military courts.

According to the Iranian website, Rokna, a 50 years old man was executed on the morning of 12 December 2018 at Mashhad Central Prison.

A district court on 15 December 2018 sentenced Sheikh Abdullah Nayeem alias Sk Samir, who had links with terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, to death for "waging war against the country".

The ATC Court, Sukkur, on 13 December 2018 awarded capital punishment to two suicide bombers for attacking the Shikarpur shrine, which claimed the lives of four people including the custodian of the shrine, Hajan Shah Mari Waro and injured 17 in 2013.

A soldier of the Special Forces Command and a security guard were on 14 December 2018 sentenced to death for the murder of a Mobile Money agent over two years ago.