61.   The government on Thursday halted the execution of a Hong Kong man convicted of drug smuggling to allow him to file a clemency plea, his lawyer said.

62.   The justices halted his execution early this month just hours before he was to be put to death.

63.   The state Supreme Court refused to halt the execution Wednesday.

64.   The Texas parole board and an appeals court have refused to halt the execution.

65.   The World Court on Thursday ordered the United States to halt the execution of a Paraguayan scheduled to die by lethal injection in Virginia next week.

66.   Ukraine also has halted executions immediately after joining the Council of Europe, but resumed them several months later despite the promise of a ban.

67.   Under a resolution approved Wednesday, Texas voters would decide whether to halt executions for two years to give the state time to study its system of lethal injection.

68.   While it advocates capital punishment to deter crime, it also has been trying to halt the executions of a number of Filipinos convicted of crimes in other countries.

69.   Wohlwend visited Ukraine last month and was unsatisfied with the widely varying information she received from officials on whether executions had been halted.

70.   Nigerian civil rights groups and Amnesty International were among those who claimed Mandela could have done more to halt the executions.