A Tennessee woman convicted of a 1995 murder has survived an attempt to execute her by lethal injection. Christa Pike was scheduled for execution yesterday and, after a late stay was overturned, would have been the first woman put to death in Tennessee for more than 200 years. But after the lethal drug pentobarbital failed to kill the 50-year-old, concerns about the fairness of her murder trial are being raised again. 

Uncertain fate
Pike was given two doses of pentobarbital yet remained “somewhat alert”, media observers told The New York Times. Her legal team said she still had a heartbeat and did not lose consciousness. Pike was subsequently transferred to hospital, where her current condition is unknown.

Her fate if she recovers is unclear. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has suspended further executions in the state this year, pending an investigation into the botched attempt. The Tennessee Department of Correction insisted it had “followed every step of the state’s lawful, established execution protocol approved by the Attorney General’s Office”.

‘Uniquely compelling’
During her 1996 trial, Pike confessed to the murder of 19-year-old classmate Colleen Slemmer, “a young woman she viewed as a romantic rival”, said Al Jazeera. Along with her then-boyfriend, Tadaryl Shipp, and a friend, Pike lured Slemmer into the woods, where they beat her with rocks and slashed her with a knife. Shipp, then 17, was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole; Pike was 18, which made her eligible to face capital punishment, and she was sentenced to death.

Her legal team have since uncovered details about her childhood including “sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect”, said the BBC, and “believe that if she was found guilty of the same crime today as a teenager she would not receive a death sentence”. Her lawyers have also presented evidence that her mother drank heavily during pregnancy, impairing Pike’s brain development and her impulse control.

“It is mind-boggling” that her history of abuse was not revealed to the jury, Sandra Babcock, an expert in gender and the death penalty at Cornell Law School, told the BBC. Her case is “uniquely compelling” due to the combination of her traumatic past with “her youth and her mental illness” at the time of the offence.

The vast majority of the 17,500 refugees to be admitted to the US in the coming fiscal year will be white South Africans, Donald Trump told Congress last week. Resettling them is “expected to cost approximately $500 million”, according to a report seen by CNN.

The US president has become a reliable patron of the Afrikaner community – at the expense, critics argue, of other at-risk groups worldwide.

Why is Trump resettling white South Africans?
Of 13,000 refugees admitted to the US since last year, “all but three were South African”, said the BBC. The White House is seeking to portray Afrikaners as victims of racial oppression in post-apartheid South Africa.
The State Department has said white South Africans face “seizure of agricultural property without compensation”, laws designed to “dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education and business”, and “hateful rhetoric fuelling disproportionate violence”. The South African government has consistently denied persecuting the community, which is primarily descended from Dutch colonists.

Why are critics concerned?
The US refugee resettlement programme has historically welcomed “tens of thousands of refugees from countries around the world to new lives in America”, said The Associated Press. Trump has “transformed it into a vehicle to resettle white South Africans” in the US.

By reserving most of the refugee quota for Afrikaners, the administration is “stranding people fleeing persecution without the safety they’ve been promised after years of waiting”, said immigration advocacy group HIAS. The White House is “diminishing and distorting” refugee programmes “in service of its political whims”, said HIAS vice president Naomi Steinberg.

What else has Trump done for white South Africans?
The Trump administration last month pledged to “revoke US visas or reject visa applications” from foreign nationals “responsible for discrimination against whites and other minority groups in South Africa”, said the AP. Trump cited disparate instances of violence and local policies as “evidence of a larger anti-white stance” in the country.

Last year, Trump froze most US foreign aid to South Africa “over a controversial land expropriation law aimed at tackling inequality stemming from apartheid”, said Al Jazeera.

A demonstrator waves a student-union flag outside a secondary school in Toulouse, as students across France protest overcrowded classes and teacher shortages. More than 400 people, most of them minors, have been detained and dozens more injured amid clashes with police.

Ed Jones / AFP / Getty Images

Chichester Festival Theatre has put an “ingenious spin” on “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” by transporting the action to John Major’s Britain, said Fiona Mountford in The Telegraph. It’s the summer of 1994 and the “frolics in the Athenian forest” have been transformed into an illegal rave on the South Downs; a “place of freedom and self-expression away from the constraints of city life”.

In this riotously fun production, Theseus (Tom Kanji) – now “Theseus Howard, Member of Parliament for Chichester” – is preparing to marry Hippolyta (Celeste Dodwell). The “tangled quartet of young lovers” has also been updated: Hermia (Angela Sant’Albano) chooses to run away with a “gender-switched” Lysanda (Ellie Larkin) so she can escape the clutches of Demetrius (Kieran Taylor-Ford), who in turn is the source of the “unrequited affections” of Helena (Freya Parks).

The term “love juice” appears twice in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, which Justin Audibert and Hannah Joss have used as “textual justification” for staging their “lovingly juiced up” play around a “narcotic, orgiastic woodland party”, said Mark Lawson in The Guardian. Comedian Munya Chawawa makes his theatrical debut as a “bewitchingly played” Nick Bottom, and his  “slapstick gymnastics” get “earned applause”.

This is a “punchy, techno delight to revel in for two-and-a-half hours”, said Theatre and Tonic. With standout performances, choreography and costume design, “you would be an absolute fool to miss it”.

The ‘Cornell 7’ case is the next #MeToo – if you’re not furious, you’re not paying attention
Chloe Combi in The Independent
The “chilling” details of an alleged gang rape at New York’s Cornell University, and the apparent failure to punish most of the accused students, have “precipitated a global outcry”, writes Gen Z expert Chloe Combi. In Britain and America, “too many” sex-crime perpetrators are treated with “avuncular forgiveness”, and rape prosecutions “remain shamefully low”. How can teenagers take “lessons on misogyny, violence and sexual assault seriously” if the legal system treats those lessons “as a nuisance and, worse, a joke”?

Burnham’s real plan for Britain is mad, nasty, and shockingly extreme
Allister Heath in The Telegraph
Andy Burnham’s “offer to the country” runs the “gamut of progressive idiocies”, writes Allister Heath. Proportional representation would guarantee “permanent coalitions”, and “rejoining the EU without a referendum” would be “immoral and idiotic”. But this socialist “revolution in all but name” could succeed. Burnham is gambling that, at the next election, his policies “will reunite the Left”, his charisma will “dupe Middle England”, and the Tories and Reform “will focus on annihilating each other”. We need to “pray for a miracle”.

Buckingham Palace has a staff drinking culture? How thrillingly old-school
Hilary Rose in The Times
“I thought workplace drinking stopped in about 1996, but clearly it’s alive and slurring in SW1,” writes Hilary Rose. Buckingham Palace staff have been attending seminars on “mindful drinking”. I agree that a “heavy-drinking environment” can be uncomfortable for many, but “to be fair to the flunkeys, nobody could blame them for taking to the bottle”: with the Palace only open to the public between July and September, “there’s precious little” to do for the other nine months of the year.