AFP

One-third of the executions by lethal injection in the United States this year were “botched,” a capital punishment watchdog group said Friday.

The Death Penalty Information Center (DPIC) said 18 executions were carried out in the country in 2022, the fewest in a non-pandemic year since 1991.

“2022 could be called ‘the year of the botched execution’ because of the high number of states with failed or bungled executions,” the nonprofit DPIC said in its annual report.

“Seven of the 20 execution attempts were visibly problematic — an astonishing 35 percent — as a result of executioner incompetence, failures to follow protocols, or defects in the protocols themselves,” it said.

In Alabama, for example, it took three hours to set an IV line for the July 28, 2022 execution by lethal injection of convicted murderer Joe James Jr., the DPIC said.

Two other execution attempts in Alabama were halted because of problems setting IV lines and the governor ordered a moratorium on executions while a review of procedures is carried out.

The DPIC said 37 of the 50 US states have abolished the death penalty or not carried out an execution in more than a decade.

The governor of Oregon this month commuted the sentences of all 17 inmates on the state’s Death Row to life in prison.

This year there were five executions in Oklahoma, five in Texas, three in Arizona, two in Alabama, two in Missouri and one in Mississippi.

Among those executed in 2022 were “prisoners with serious mental illness, brain damage, intellectual disability, and strong claims of innocence,” according to the DPIC.

It said the number of death sentences imposed was also on the decline with just 20 so far this year.

In perhaps the most notable case, the young man who carried out the 2018 mass shooting at a high school in Parkland, Florida, was given life in prison after a jury declined to sentence him to death.

Goldman Sachs could cut up to eight percent of its staff, or around 4,000 jobs, according to reports Friday, as the financial giant eyes sluggish global growth in 2023.

The job cuts are expected early in 2023, according to reports in Semafor and CNBC that said the final figure could ultimately be smaller than eight percent.

Goldman Sachs typically trims about one to five percent of headcount each year, targeting underperforming staff.

This year’s culling will be deeper than usual in light of the uncertain economic outlook and the growth in Goldman’s staffing in recent years, a person familiar with the matter told AFP.

Goldman’s staff stood at 49,100 at the end of October, up nearly 30 percent from the end of 2019 after hiring campaigns and acquisitions.

The move comes as Goldman Sachs and other investment banks have seen a big drop in fees tied to initial public offerings and described a cloudy outlook for merger and acquisition advising in 2023 due to economic uncertainty.

At a financial conference last week, Goldman Chief Executive David Solomon said capital markets activity had also been weaker than expected, with clients “taking risk down” after a volatile year.

“At the same time, we continue to see headwinds on our expense lines, especially in the near term,” Solomon said. “Ultimately, we will remain nimble and we will size the firm to reflect the opportunity set that we see in front of us.”

US basketball star Brittney Griner said Friday in her first remarks since being released from a Russian prison that it was “so good to be home” and vowed to play again for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury.

The 32-year-old Griner, in an Instagram post, thanked a long list of people for securing her release with a “special thank you” to President Joe Biden.

“It feels so good to be home!” Griner said. “The last 10 months have been a battle at every turn. I dug deep to keep my faith and it was the love from so many of you that helped keep me going.”

A two-time Olympic gold medalist, WNBA champion and LGBTQ trailblazer, Griner was arrested on drug charges at a Moscow airport in February, against a backdrop of soaring tensions over Ukraine.

Griner — who was swapped last week for Viktor Bout, a notorious Russian arms dealer — said she would do what she can to help secure the release of Paul Whelan, another American held in Russia.

“President Biden, you brought me home and I know you are committed to bringing Paul Whelan and all Americans home too,” she said. “I will use my platform to do whatever I can to help you. Every family deserves to be whole.”

Griner also said she planned to be back on the court.

“I also want to make one thing very clear: I intend to play basketball for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury this season,” she said.

The 2023 WNBA season begins in May. Griner’s Mercury are scheduled to play their first game against the Los Angeles Sparks on May 19.

– Home for the holidays –

Griner was taken to a US Army base in Texas for a medical checkup after being swapped in Abu Dhabi for Bout, an arms dealer known as the “Merchant of Death” who had been serving a 25-year sentence in a US prison.

It was not immediately clear from Griner’s Instagram if she had already left the military base, but she said she would be “home to enjoy the holidays with my family.”

Her Instagram post was accompanied by a picture of Griner stepping off a plane on US soil and another of her embracing her wife, Cherelle Griner.

At the time of her arrest, Griner had been playing for a professional team in Russia, as a number of WNBA players do in the off-season.

She was accused of possessing vape cartridges with a small quantity of cannabis oil and sentenced in August to nine years in prison.

She pleaded guilty to the charges against her, but said she did not intend to break the law or use the banned substance in Russia.

Griner testified that she had permission from a US doctor to use medicinal cannabis to relieve pain from her many injuries.

The use of medical marijuana is not allowed in Russia.

A barrage of deadly Russian strikes battered Ukraine’s grid on Friday, worsening dire conditions for Ukrainians across the winter-worn country by knocking out water and electricity services in several regions.

The national energy provider warned Ukrainians already braving near freezing temperatures that it could take longer to restore electricity after dozens of Russian missiles targeted key infrastructure sites in the north, south and centre of the country.

“Priority will be given to critical infrastructure: hospitals, water supply facilities, heat supply facilities, sewage treatment plants,” Ukrenergo said in a statement Friday.

Residents of the capital wrapped in winter coats crammed into underground metro stations after air raid sirens rang out early Friday: the ninth wave of Russian aerial bombardments since October.

“I woke up, I saw a rocket in the sky,” Kyiv resident 25-year-old Lada Korovai said. “I saw it and understood that I have to go to the tube.”

“We live in this situation. It’s a war, it’s real war,” she told AFP.

The onslaught is the latest brought by Russian forces to target what Moscow says are military-linked facilities. The air assaults follow a series of embarrassing battlefield defeats for Russia.

– ‘Biggest’ missile attack of invasion –

Ukraine’s second largest city Kharkiv, near the border with Russia, was left without electricity, its mayor said. Oleg Synegubov, head of Kharkiv’s regional adminstration, said later they planned to have power restored by midnight.

The central cities of Poltava and Kremenchuk were also without power and regional officials in Kryvyi Rig, where Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky was born, said the airstrikes had hit a residential building.

“A 64-year-old woman and a young couple died. Their little son still remains under the rubble of the house,” the region’s governor Valentyn Reznichenko said, adding that 13 more were injured.

Oleksandr Starukh, head of the frontline Zaporizhzhia region, which houses Europe’s largest nuclear power plant, said more than a dozen Russian missiles had targeted territory under Ukrainian control.

Kyiv meanwhile “withstood one of the biggest missile attacks since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. About 40 missiles were recorded in the capital’s airspace,” regional authorities said in a statement. 

Air-defence forces had shot down 37 of them, they added.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the water supply had been disrupted and that the metro had stopped running so people could shelter underground.

“Due to damage to the power system and emergency power outages, subway trains will not run until the end of the day today,” city officials later announced.

The Kyiv metro is a vital resource for the capital, which had a pre-war population of three million. It has been used as a city-wide bomb shelter since the Russian invasion.

– ‘Survive winter’ –

About half of Ukraine’s energy grid has been damaged in sustained attacks and the national provider warned Friday of emergency blackouts because of the “massive” wave of Russian attacks.

In Ukrainian-held Bakhmut — an eastern city at the epicentre of the war — some residents received wood stoves distributed by volunteers, AFP journalists said.

Bakhmut resident, 85-year-old Oleksandra was braving the cold to collect medication at a nearby pharmacy in the Donetsk region city.

“I’ll survive winter. I’ll just walk more to get warm,” the old woman told AFP. 

In the south, fresh Russian shelling in Kherson, recently recaptured by Ukraine, killed one person and wounded three more.

Kherson has been subjected to persistent Russian shelling since Moscow’s forces retreated in November and power was cut in the city earlier this week.

The UN humanitarian coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, said a woman working as a paramedic for the Ukrainian Red Cross had been killed by Thursday’s strikes on Kherson.

Russian attacks overall killed 14 on Thursday, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidency Kyrylo Tymoshenko said. 

In the Russian-controlled region of Lugansk in eastern Ukraine, Moscow-installed officials said shelling from Kyiv’s forces had killed eight and wounded 23.

– Putin to visit Belarus –

“The enemy is conducting barbaric shelling of cities and districts of the republic,” the Russian-installed leader of Lugansk Leonid Pasechnik said on social media.

Moscow has said the strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure are a response to an explosion on the Kerch bridge connecting the Russian mainland to the Crimean peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.

The Kremlin has said it holds Kyiv ultimately responsible for the humanitarian impact of the strikes for refusing to capitulate to Russian negotiation terms.

But Ukrainian defence officials said this week that its forces had shot down a swarm of more than a dozen Iranian-made attack drones launched at Kyiv, a sign that Western-supplied systems are having an impact.

Separately on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced he will visit Belarus next week for talks with his counterpart and ally Alexander Lukashenko.

Minsk said the pair would hold one-on-one talks as well as wider negotiations with their ministers on “Belarusian-Russian integration”.