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The state of Oklahoma is planning to execute death row inmates with drugs intended for use on animals. Lawmakers want to switch away from the only brand of anaesthetic that has been used in the US for lethal injections because there is not enough to go around. The replacement is likely to attract controversy because it is currently used by vets to anesthetise animals for operations. Other states are watching closely and may well follow suit, but such a move is likely to face a challenge from human rights groups to ensure that it is safe to use.

A crack addict was found guilty today of carrying out a nightmare home invasion that lead to the brutal deaths of a mother and her two young daughters. Steven Hayes was convicted of six capital crimes, all of which are punishable by death. The 47-year-old career criminal was found guilty of 16 of 17 charges, including the murder of Jennifer Hawke-Petit and her daughters Hayley, seventeen, and Michaela, eleven.

According to news received by the International Committee against Executions, 29 people are to be executed tomorrow, Saturday, in Ghezal Hesar prison in Karaj. It has been reported that the 29 have been separated from other prisoners. There is no information on their charges. The executions are being carried out in order to intimidate people and is directed at the protesting people of Iran.

Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the leading challenger to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has issued a fresh call to his supporters to maintain peaceful protests after the government confirmed the result of the disputed election.

HUNTSVILLE, Texas – A man who fatally stabbed a convenience store clerk during a robbery 23 years ago apologized repeatedly to her relatives and to his mother before he was executed Tuesday. "I know I hurt you very bad," Michael Lynn Riley said to his victim's relatives, including her two daughters and husband. "I want you to know I'm sorry." Brandy Oaks said she accepted Riley's apology and was pleased to hear it. She was 4 when her mother, Wynona Harris, was killed. "This is a difficult day and there are no winners on either side," Oaks said. "Her spirit...

McLEAN, Va. -- An anthropologist has died of burns she got when was set on fire in Afghanistan in an attack that authorities say prompted her fellow contractor, a New Orleans resident, to kill an Afghan man. Greg Caires, a spokesman for military contractor BAE Systems, says Paula Loyd died Wednesday at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio more than two months after she was doused with fuel. The 36-year-old suffered burns over 60 percent of her body. Loyd's job with BAE was to help U.S. soldiers navigate local culture. One of Loyd's colleagues has been charged with second-degree...

A Moslem cleric, Sheikh Salih al-Fawzan, a senior Islamic preacher, has said that all TV fortune-tellers (which the BBC Monitoring service translates as “sorcerers”) should be executed. Sheikh Salih al-Fawzan is quoted as saying that if these people appearing on many Arabic TV channels prove to be sorcerers, “they will be committing a sin and violating the Holy Book, the Sunnah and the consensus of Muslims”.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon issued a last-minute appeal to the United States Tuesday to halt the scheduled execution of a Mexican national sentenced to death for murder in defiance of an International Court of Justice (ICJ) order. Jose Ernesto Medellin, 33, was due to be executed by lethal injection at 2300 GMT in the state of Texas. He was convicted of the 1993 rape and murder of two teenagers and is one 51 Mexican nationals on death row in the United States. Less than 12 hours before Medellin's planned execution, Ban called on the US government...

Hey, at least he got the shot, right? Isn't that all that matters? I mean come on, he's a photo-journalist for goodness sake. He can't inject himself into the story. That would be a breach of journalistic ethics. A real credit to his profession, this guy. Photos, but no video.

October 22, 2007 The Ability to Execute Regardless of what you think about “Romney the candidate”… “Romney the campaign” is unmatched in its ability to execute. Take this last week for example. Think of it in terms of a business case study, outlining the “challenge”, proposing a “solution”, targeting specific “benefits” and measuring “results”.CHALLENGE: Disolve concerns about Mitt’s Mormonism among Conservative Evangelicals.SOLUTION: Highlight the Governor as the only leading candidate meeting 100% of the SoCon values and win endorsements from leading Evangelicals leading up to the seminal pre-primary “Values Voters” conference. BENEFITS: Develop day after day endorsements followed by a...

(IsraelNN.com) Pollard supporters are enraged at US Ambassador to Israel Richard Jones for his remarks Monday morning, implying that Jonathan Pollard committed treason or sold US secrets to Israel. Speaking at a conference at Bar Ilan University on Israeli-American relations, Jones said, "Pollard took money and sold out his country... The fact that he wasn't executed shows that he was treated mercifully." "Malicious incitement against both Jonathan and Israel" is how an infuriated Esther Pollard, Jonathan's wife, described it. "For one thing," she told Arutz-7, "the U.S. has no death penalty for the charge on which Jonathan was accused or...

Supreme Court justices clashed on Wednesday over how states execute killers, with one court member saying current lethal-injection drugs would not be used on cats and dogs and a second arguing that executions do not have to be pain-free. The court blocked Florida, at the last minute, from executing Clarence Hill in January, as Hill lay on a gurney with IV lines in his arms. The justices took up his case with a lively and sometimes contentious discussion about the way states carry out capital punishment. The court's ruling will determine whether inmates can file last-minute civil rights challenges claiming...

Taliban execute teacher in front of his pupils for educating girls By Tom Coghlan in Kabul (Filed: 17/12/2005) Taliban insurgents in southern Afghanistan have executed a school teacher in front of his pupils for refusing to comply with warnings to stop educating girls. The attack took place on Thursday at a secondary school in Nadi Ali district, Helmand province, the scene of many Taliban attacks in recent months, according to the police, who learned of the incident yesterday. About 4,000 British troops will be deployed to the province in April to combat an increasingly confident insurgency. Pupils at the school...

...just who is Stanley "Tookie" Williams? Williams, now in his 50s is currently on California's Death Row. It was in his teenage years that Williams befriended Raymond "Truck" Washington and several others local teens in the neighborhood. Williams has similar interest as the other group, including avoiding school, running the streets, drinking and at the age 13, sniffing glue. On February 28, 1979, around 4 AM, Williams had his eye on a 7-Eleven store. After two already unsuccessful robbery attempts, Williams found the store clerk, Albert Owens, out front sweeping the parking lot. Owens, who now would have been a...

Why does the media insist that a cold-blooded murderer who should have been executed decades ago always be referred to as a “journalist”? You will find no references to Wilbert Rideau that do not use the term as almost part of his name: “Journalist Wilbert Rideau”, for example. The truth is still that Rideau robbed a bank, kidnapped three tellers, and cold-bloodedly murdered one as she begged for her life. He tried to kill the others, but they survived. Only by a fluke of legal luck was he not executed back when the crime happened in 1961. Now, the defense...

The Palestinian Authority has decided to resume executions of prisoners on death row for the first time since August 2002, with 15 due to be carried out by the end of the month, a senior PA official in the Gaza Strip announced Thursday. At least half of the inmates were convicted of "collaboration" with Israel, while the others were found guilty of murder in criminally-motivated offences. Saeb al-Kidwa, head of the PA military courts, said 15 prisoners currently on death row "will be executed during this month." He said PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas was expected to approve the executions soon...

Communique (petition)The Islamic Republic of Iran once again demonstrates its contempt for human rights by sentencing three more teenagers to death. Not content with the merciless recent execution of the sixteen year old Atefeh Rajabi , the Iranian authorities plan to execute Ali M, Morteza F and Milad B – all of whom are under the age of eighteen and are currently in detention. Execution of children is prohibited by Article 37 of the International Human Rights (Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). We, the undersigned, express our unreserved condemnation of these executions, and call upon human rights...

The purpose of FreeRepublic.com's multiple message boards is to limit the topics for each board to particular topics. Posting the same message on all the boards defeats the purpose of multiple-boards for special topics. It is very annoying to see the same message on every bulletin board. PLEASE! DO THE READERS A FAVOR. STOP CROSS-POSTING YOUR MESSAGES!

This came to me in prayer at a worship service tonight For those of you who believe God still speaks today, here's what I believe he said to me.

BEIJING (Reuters) - China executed four people, including employees of two of its Big Four state-owned banks, for fraud totaling $15 million, the state Xinhua news agency said Tuesday. The executions occurred in the midst a high-profile government campaign against financial crime. They followed a string of arrests in white-collar crime as China prepares to sell shares publicly in its big banks.