Top judges from China’s Supreme People’s Court on 20 December 2018 made a rare defence of the death penalty, with one saying “a life for a life” is ingrained among the people.

The government on 13 November 2018 reported to the National Assembly the status of death sentence implementation in the year 2018 and stated that there was a “dramatic increase from 2017, with 122 more (cases)”.

British taxpayers are funding prosecutions in Pakistan that have led to dozens of death sentences, according to newly disclosed details of a secretive UK aid programme, The Guardian reported on 22 December 2018.

The Bombay High Court on 20 December 2018 upheld a trial court verdict awarding the death penalty to a man convicted of raping and killing a 23-year-old woman techie from Andhra Pradesh in 2014, describing him as a "menace to the society".

Two men were on 18 December 2018 sentenced to death for killing a Kenyan priest in Cueibet, South Sudan on November 15, at around 2 am.

The Court of Cassation upheld a March Criminal Court ruling, sentencing a 27-year-old man to 20 years in prison after convicting him of murdering his younger sister for reasons related to family honour in Mafraq in July of 2016.

On the day of the vote of the UN General Assembly on the Resolution for the moratorium on capital punishment, the International Commission against the Death Penalty went to Italy where it met Pope Francis and Hands Off Cain.

The Criminal Court on 23 December 2018 convicted and sentenced a Libyan man to death for murdering a fellow national in Amman in July of 2017.

Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa on 21 December 2018 confirmed the death sentence awarded to 14 hardcore terrorists involved in heinous acts of terrorism.

The Cairo Criminal Court handed a death sentence to an ISIS-affiliated man who killed a christian doctor in his clinic in Shubra, Asharq Al-Awsat reported on 23 December 2018.

The mastermind of militant car bombs that killed 26 people and injured nearly 40 others in Mogadishu in 2017 was executed in Somalia 24 December 2018, the prosecutor of the military court said.

Japan hanged two men convicted of murder on 27 December 2018, the justice minister said, bringing the number of executions this year to 15 -- tied for the highest amount on record.