In 2007 the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles, the body which has the final say in the state on whether executions should go ahead, made a solemn promise. Troy Davis, the prisoner who is scheduled to die by lethal injection at 7pm local time on Wednesday, would never be put to death unless there was “no doubt” about his guilt.

Here are 10 reasons why the board – which decided on Tuesday to allow the execution to go ahead – has failed to deliver on its promise and why a man who is very possibly innocent will be killed in the name of American justice.

1. Of the nine witnesses who appeared at Davis’s 1991 trial who said they had seen Davis beating up a homeless man in a dispute over a bottle of beer and then shooting to death a police officer, Mark MacPhail, who was acting as a good samaritan, seven have since recanted their evidence.

2. One of those who recanted, Antoine Williams, subsequently revealed they had no idea who shot the officer and that they were illiterate – meaning they could not read the police statements that they had signed at the time of the murder in 1989. Others said they had falsely testified that they had overheard Davis confess to the murder.

3. Many of those who retracted their evidence said that they had been cajoled by police into testifying against Davis. Some said they had been threatened with being put on trial themselves if they did not co-operate.

The Lib Dems are worried about rising public anger over the lack of growth in Britain’s economy. But outside the conference bubble, do their answers convince anybody? John Harris takes to the street to find out what the people of Birmingham really think about the coalition government

There was something so unusual about Fenerbahce’s 1-1 draw with Manisaspor in Istanbul on Tuesday that it is surely destined to feature in pub quiz questions for years to come.

The Turkish league game took place in front of a packed crowd comprising 41,000 women and children after adult men were barred from attendance. Fenerbahce, the defending champions, became the first club to pioneer a new sanctions code under which clubs that would normally be ordered to play matches behind closed doors in the wake of crowd trouble will instead exclude males over the age of 12.

After their fans had stormed the pitch during a pre-season friendly against Ukraine’s Shakhtar Donetsk, Fenerbahce were originally poised to be handed the more usual punishment of being forced to play two league games in an empty stadium. Courtesy of some nifty lateral thinking on the part of the Turkish FA, though, the rules were amended to allow women, girls and boys in, thereby ensuring the miscreants felt they were missing out.

Anxious to create a high decibel, as well as a high-pitched, soundtrack from the stands, Fenerbahce distributed free tickets for Tuesday’s match and women – some carrying babies bedecked in club colours – duly formed long queues outside the Sukru Saracoglu stadium ahead of the turnstiles opening.

ideasandopinions:

Trying to understand riots isn’t the same as excusing riots

Writing in the New Scientist, Prof. Stephen Reicher, a specialist in crowd psychology at the University of St Andrews, takes aim at the posturing and macho rhetoric after the UK riots that dismissed anyone who sought a sociological explanation for criminal behavior as “excusing crime.”

Another way in which politicians have restricted explanation is by intimating that any reaction other than condemnation is tantamount to condoning violence. The UK’s education secretary Michael Gove reacted furiously to the suggestion by Harriet Harman, deputy leader of the Labour party, that government policies limiting youth opportunities might have had some relevance, castigating her for “making excuses for what has gone on here”. In this context, whole academic disciplines become suspect: in political vocabulary, “sociologist” and “jihadi” have acquired a kind of moral equivalence…

Those politicians and pundits who have tried to outlaw societal explanations of the English riots have advanced alternative theories, largely blaming the violence on the pathology of the rioters. Cameron’s declaration that they are inherently criminal and lack moral standards is one variant of this. Another is the common suggestion that the rioters lost their moral standards in the crowd; that they were mindless, swept up by the contagion of the moment or perhaps preyed upon by unscrupulous agitators.

These theories translate into convenient solutions. In the short term, don’t try to reason with rioters but use a big stick to repress them; in the longer term, look at the sickness within their communities that has turned them into amoral beasts. That only leaves the question of which communities are dysfunctional and in what ways. Thus Cameron locked horns with former prime minister Tony Blair over whether we should be talking about a broken society or a narrow but recalcitrant underclass.

November is going to a historical month in terms of the anti cuts movement. We need to put pressure and strain on the coalition until it breaks. Rally the students and workers and get them back on the street fighting for what we need so much right now. A population with an Education

Relight the UK Student movement: 9th Nov 2011

Cuilapa, Guatemala: People take refuge in a makeshift shelter after four earthquakes struck the south-eastern part of the countryPhotograph: Rodrigo Abd/AP

Ibiza, Spain: The Santa Eularia wildfire blazes near a residential areaPhotograph: Jaime Reina/AFP/Getty Images

We are hearing much about the prevention of the “lifestyle” (or non-communicable) diseases at the UN summit in New York, which is clearly a very good thing, but little about treatment for cancer, heart and lung disease and diabetes. Curiously, it was the other way round at the first UN high-level meeting on a health issue in 2001, when millions of people were dying from Aids.

But in these austere economic times - and indeed they are austere, as yesterday’s report into the gloomy prospects for the Global Fund pointed out - prevention looks by far the issue most likely to attract funding and consensus. There is also a stigma attached to overweight people who fall prey to heart disease and diabetes - though no worse than the one that people who contracted HIV had to deal with. There are also some cheap - because out of patent - generic drugs for conditions such as heart disease and asthma that everybody will agree should be available in the developing world.

So treatment is low down the agenda and it would appear that some donor governments are keen to keep it there. During the negotiations over the draft declaration that has now been signed by world leaders, the European Union and the United States were very anxious to keep out any mention of the words “Doha” and “TRIPS”. For those who haven’t followed the complex and hard-fought battles over access to HIV medicines, the issue here concerns drug patents.

After a long struggle and amid enormous public hostility to the pharmaceutical industry over its apparent foot-dragging in relation to access to (expensive, in-patent) Aids drugs for the poor in Africa and Asia, an historic agreement was made which is generally referred to as the Doha Declaration of the TRIPS legislation (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights). This is where the World Health Organisation describes it.

Sana’a, Yemen: A doctor carries a wounded child in a field hospital following assaults against protesters by security forces loyal to the Yemeni president Ali Abdullah SalehPhotograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA

San Diego, USA: Two women, who are on active duty in the US navy, dance at a celebration to mark the end of the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy. After years of debate, the military can no longer prevent openly gay people from serving in its ranksPhotograph: Gregory Bull/AP