“Will you let me practise on your piano for a couple of hours?”

“Sure, but you know it’s only an upright and it’s very out of tune. Opponents of the death penalty fear a move to lethal injections could reduce support for their campaign, as injections raise fewer public concerns.. Florida has 375 prisoners on death row, but revokes more death sentences on appeal than any other state. Four of the seven judges, however, urged that Florida consider adopting lethal injections instead Since then, three judges have retired.

Two of them supported the electric chair.Opponents of the death penalty insist changes to the method will not make execution more palatable. Next month, the court is to hear arguments on whether the electric chair amounts to a “cruel and unusual punishment”, which would make it unconstitutional.After the Medina execution, the Supreme Court ruled that the chair was legal. Of 38 states where the death penalty exists, most use lethal injections.The latest incident prompted the Florida Supreme Court to postpone the execution of Thomas Provenzano, set for 9 July. The incident led to international criticism of the electric chair, including an appeal from the Pope.Florida is one of only four states that still use the electric chair as the sole method of execution. Critics, however, said the voltage used to electrocute the man, who weighed 25 stone, might have been inadequate.Concern was compounded by the fact that the 8 July execution was the first to be conducted with a new electric chair, introduced after an incident in 1997 when flames shot from the head of Pedro Medina as he was electrocuted. Subsequent reports said that the lay witnesses – all executions are witnessed – gasped as they watched blood flow on to Allen Davis’s shirt.
The authorities said the bleeding occurred after the man was dead, and they blamed blood-thinning drugs taken by Davis.

THE ELECTRIC chair may be on its way out because of another unfortunate incident during an execution in Florida. The state authorities are to review the use of “Old Sparky”, as the electric chair is known, after it caused the latest condemned man’s nose to bleed profusely, leaving him dead in a pool of blood. Iraq has succeeded in increasing its oil production significantly in recent months and will exceed the $5.26bn (pounds 3.3bn) ceiling set for the present phase of the UN administered oil-for-food plan, which ends in November.Last month the Iraqi Oil Minister, Amir Muhammad Rashid, said that his country would be aiming to raise its oil export capacity to 3.5 million barrels a day next year, making it the biggest Opec exporter after Saudi Arabia.. The government in Baghdad may also be concerned that the air attacks – which are nominally defensive, against anti-aircraft positions – have gone on for so long that an increase in their scope would produce no international reaction.Iraqi diplomacy is focusing on the lifting of sanctions, which were first introduced in 1990. They talk much more about the chances of getting sanctions lifted.”The bombinghas produced no outcry against the US in the Arab world, where Iraq continues to be isolated. The previous worst incident was in the southern port of Basra on 25 January, when allied bombs killed 11 people, most of them women and children.The air strikes have little impact on most ordinary Iraqis or on the stability of the government of President Saddam Hussein, say Iraqi observers outside the country.Laith Kubba, a commentator, said that the bombing “is not a key issue for most people in Iraq.

The Iraqi military statement did not give the location of the targets hit.The US Central Command said its planes had used “precision guided munitions” to hit a missile battery near Abu Sukhayr, 200 miles south of Baghdad, and a military communications centre near al-Khidr, located 150 miles south-east of the Iraqi capital.The attacks on Iraqi anti- aircraft sites continued with little publicity while Nato was conducting the war in Kosovo.Iraq says it does not recognise the no-fly zones imposed by the allies. It could not confirm any Iraqi casualties.
The death toll is the highest in Iraq since it started challenging US and British aircraft entrusted with enforcing the “no-fly” zones in northern and southern Iraq last December. The US Central Command in Florida said its planes had attacked two sites in southern Iraq on Sunday when they were fired on by Iraqi anti-aircraft guns. AMERICAN AIR STRIKES on Iraq have killed 14 civilians and wounded 17 in the south of the country, according to an Iraqi statement, making it the worst incident since almost daily attacks on Iraqi anti- aircraft sites began seven months ago. Mr White and the other men “fitted the description” supplied by a local resident.Anti-racism campaigners said the incident highlighted the harassment frequently endured by black men at the hands of the New York police.. He cancelled his Saturday performance because he had still not recovered.Mr White is now considering bringing a federal civil rights law suit against the police.A police spokeswoman apologised to Mr White, admitting it was a mistake, but defended the strip searching as “routine” in drug-related arrests Officers were looking for armed drug dealers, she said. “When I was sitting in that cell I realised that my perception about good and justice would never be the same, just like Coalhouse, not to the point of violence but the naivete.” He felt utterly powerless, he said.

“They made us take all our shoe strings out and then they put us back in the cells to take us out one at a time.”He said the ordeal, which left him in tears of anger and frustration, had shattered his faith in the police and justice system and that his reaction mirrored that of Coalhouse in Ragtime. All four were arrested, handcuffed, locked up and strip searched.”They took us out of the cells and made us strip and squat,” Mr White said afterwards. Mr White called it a case of life imitating art: his Ragtime character, Coalhouse Walker Junior, is a black man whose path is blocked by racist firemen as he drives through New York at the turn of the century.
Mr White was leaving his apartment building in Harlem on his way to Broadway, intending to stop off first for a session at his local gym, when police stopped him and three other black men who were walking with him. Outraged civil liberties groups called the detention of the black actor Alton Fitzgerald White, 35, who plays a leading role in the award-winning show Ragtime, an example of “racial profiling at its worst”. NEW YORK police were facing fresh accusations of racism yesterday after they wrongly arrested and strip searched the star of a hit Broadway musical, causing him to miss a performance. The Peking-backed Wen Wei Po newspaper in Hong Kong said China had held “wartime mobilisation drills” near Taiwan, and that sailors gathered for the exercises sang: “We will liberate Taiwan.”Taiwan and China were divided in 1949, when the defeated Nationalist government fled to the island after the Communists won China’s civil war.. It has been trying to recover Taiwan for nearly 50 years, so it will not make any sudden decisions now, but that does not mean it will not act at all.”While opinion polls in Taiwan indicate support for Mr Lee’s statement, fears of a military show of force have prompted the Taiwan stock market to drop 13 per cent since the crisis started.