Iran hanged 29 people at dawn on Sunday after they had been convicted of murder, drug trafficking and other crimes, state run television reported.

All were hanged inside Evin prison, north of the capital. The hangings were carried out after the death sentences were ratified by Iran's Supreme Court, the television report said.

A separate report on the television station's web site quoted Tehran Chief Prosecutor Saeed Mortazavi as saying the men had records of repeated crimes, including rape, armed robbery and murder. The web site also said some of the convicts had "smuggled thousands of kilograms of various kinds of narcotics" in and out of Iran.

The hangings brought to about 150 the number of people executed in Iran so far this year.

International human rights groups have accused Iran of making excessive use of the death penalty, but Iranian officials say capital punishment is an effective deterrent carried out only after all judicial proceedings are exhausted.

The Rome-based Hands Off Cain, which campaigns to stop the death penalty, said last week that at least 355 people were put to death in Iran last year, compared with 215 in 2006. The group said the actual figure may be even higher because Iran does not publish official statistics on the number of executions.

The 355 executions placed Iran second only to China as the world's biggest executioner.

The group said China alone accounted for at least 5,000 executions based on reports by the media and other human rights groups.

Iranian rights activists said earlier this month that authorities have sentenced eight women and one man convicted of adultery to death by stoning.

Radovan Karadzic's lawyer said he expected his client to be extradited before a Tuesday evening anti-government rally by ultranationalist supporters of the war crimes suspect.

The rally organizers — the right-wing Serbian Radical Party — plan to bus Karadzic's supporters from all over Serbia and Bosnia. There are fears of violence on Belgrade streets and that the ultranationalists will try to prevent Karadzic's extradition by force.

The war crimes court in Belgrade that is dealing with the case of the ex-Bosnian Serb leader said Monday that his appeal had not arrived by the start of morning office hours.

Karadzic's lawyer Svetozar Vujacic said he mailed the appeal at the last possible moment late Friday, trying to delay Karadzic's extradition to the tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, for as long as possible.

The Seoul Western District Court said its appellate court affirmed its sentence against Shin Jeong-ah for using the fake degree to become an art history professor at a Seoul university and win financial sponsorship for a museum where she worked. The court handed down the first ruling in March.

Shin has seven days to appeal, according to court spokesman Kim Myung-su.

Seoul's Dongguk University also filed a suit against Yale in March seeking at least $50 million in damages, saying the American university wrongly confirmed that Shin earned a degree. Yale has called the matter an administrative error and apologized to Dongguk.

Shin made headlines last year when the fake degree scandal led to revelations that she had a romantic relationship with former presidential aide Byeon Yang-kyoon, who allegedly used his influence to help her get hired at Dongguk.

Byeon resigned as an aide to former President Roh Moo-hyun before being convicted of exercising his influence to provide state tax benefits to a Buddhist temple founded by a former Dongguk official who helped hire Shin as a professor.

In March, the district court handed Byeon a suspended one-year jail term and ordered him to conduct 160 hours of community service.

Chen Shui-bian entered the Taipei District Court building as police barred dozens of supporters and opponents from approaching him. But CTI Cable News reported that an elderly man managed to kick the former president before being taken away by two policemen.

Although Chen left the presidency in May, many Taiwan still revile him for alleged corruption and pro-independence policies.

Chen's Democratic Progressive Party lost the presidential election to the Nationalist Party's Ma Ying-jeou.

The libel suit was filed by retired Nationalist Admiral Lei Hsueh-ming, who is demanding $66 million in compensation.

Chen told reporters in 2005 that Lei and several other officials together took $20 million in bribes in a US$2.7 billion deal to buy six French-made frigates.

The deal turned into a scandal in 1993 following the death of a Taiwanese navy captain who was widely believed to have been killed because he was about to blow the whistle on colleagues who allegedly took kickbacks.

Canada transferred US Army deserter Robin Long back to US custody Tuesday following a decision by the Federal Court of Canada denying his asylum request. Long is the first of an estimated 200 US military personnel avoiding deployment in Canada to be returned to the US. Last week the court allowed another soldier, Joshua Key, to remain in the country while he appeals an initial denial of refugee status. In that case, the court named a number of key factors in determining whether or not the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB) should grant an applicant asylum, including the reasons for the objection to deployment, the likely legal consequences of resisting deployment, and the availability of remedies other than Canadian refugee status. Quoting Article 171 of the UN Refugee Agency Handbook regarding the justification for a soldier to be granted asylum in another country, the court wrote:

Not every conviction, genuine thought it may be, will constitute a sufficient reason for claiming refugee status after desertion or draft-evasion. It is not enough for a person to be in disagreement with his government regarding the political justification for a particular military action. Where, however, the type of military action, with which an individual does not wish to be associated, is condemned by the international community as contrary to basic rules of human conduct, punishment for desertion or draft-evasion could, in the light of all other requirements of the definition, in itself be regarded as persecution.

In Long's case, the court said he had not adequately substantiated his risk of persecution in the US were he to be denied asylum, and under Canadian law, being granted the status is the only way he could remain in the country.

Earlier this month, Canada's House of Commons voted in a non-binding resolution to grant US military deserters asylum. In November 2007, the Supreme Court of Canada declined to hear the appeals of Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey, two US military deserters who applied for asylum before the IRB. The Board had concluded that the two men would receive a fair trial if they were returned to the US and that they would not face persecution or cruel and unusual punishment.

Luis Moreno-Ocampo told reporters he informed the U.N. Security Council, which asked the court in 2005 to investigate the Darfur crisis, of his progress before requesting a court warrant on Monday to arrest President Omar al-Bashir.

"This was my last week to do it, so I did it when I had my evidence ready," said Moreno-Ocampo, noting that the court was about to take a summer recess.

He added that his responsibility is to investigate cases and he "cannot be considering political factors."

The world's first permanent war crimes tribunal is based on a treaty adopted on July 17, 1998 and since ratified by 107 nations.