Ohio has been one of the more active US states in executing its prisoners, ranking eighth across the country for the total number of executions performed since 1976.
In the Middle East and north Africa overall, the total number of executions increased by 26%.
Their executions bring the total number of executions in the last year to at least 179.
That figure made up at least 40% of the total number of executions in 2015, compared to less than 4% for drug-related executions in 2010.
The total number of executions in the country this year is 58, more than twice the figure for the whole of 2010.
Iranian news agencies reported that 12 people were hanged Tuesday and Wednesday, bringing the total number of executions to 48 in 2008.
Though between them they were responsible for more than a third of the total number of executions in the country this year, neither of them imposed any new death sentences.
And though Virginia trails Texas in the total number of executions, it ranks first in the country in the number carried out per thousand people.
The hangings brought the total number of executions in Iraq this year to 67. (Via AP) 3.10pm BST In a very bleak blog, Neil Durkin of Amnesty International asks whether Egypt is "teetering on the edge of something worse".
And while the total number of executions in 2007 was low, it would have been similar to those in recent years but for the moratorium, if extrapolated to a full year.
