With the reporting season over, the sector could be in for some skittish trading, and it seems a good time to take some of those recent profits. It is difficult to see share prices rising in a sector where profits are falling, even one where the shares are unfairly lowly rated.A vicious house price slowdown is not yet the most likely situation, but it does get likelier the longer the boom continues. Since Bellway is increasing volumes, too, its profits can continue to grow even if inflation is below that level. But if rising interest rates snuff out demand and slam house prices into reverse, then even Bellway will be in for a torrid time. The company is on course for 6,600 this year, up 5 per cent, with 7,000 next year and a target of 10,000 per year by 2010.So this is a long-term growth stock whose share price, at a measly 7 times earnings, reflects the market’s fear that a slowdown in the housing market could mean meltdown for housebuilders’ profits.Some estimates suggest that house price inflation, currently running out of control at 18 per cent, has to keep above 4 per cent to hold profit margins at the current level. The average selling price of a Bellway home – its speciality is the smallish family home – rose by 9 per cent to £156,900.A significant part of the profit uplift, though, comes from a 250-strong rise in the number of homes sold in the period. All three of the original “axis of evil” countries ­ Iran, Iraq and North Korea ­ were identified as carrying out executions in 2003, but Amnesty had no figures on how many were executed in Iraq in the dying days of the Saddam regime, or in North Korea.

Amnesty released its figures at a meeting of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. Last year the commission called on all countries that allow capital punishment in their laws to agree to a moratorium on executions.”The intense secrecy that surrounds use of the death penalty in many countries makes this depressing log of last year’s executions an underestimate of the true extent of the use of this outdated punishment early in the 21st century,” Lesley Warner of Amnesty said yesterday “In China alone we fear that many thousands of people … are being executed in secret each year, the majority after shockingly unfair trials.”The US’s defiant stance over executing those convicted for crimes committed as children is one particular area of concern, sending a dangerous message around the world. We call on the US to abandon child-offender executions as a first measure towards ending all judicial killing.” The report noted that 113 prisoners had been released from death row in America since 1973 because evidence had emerged that they were innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted ­ raising the possibility that other innocent men and women went to their deaths.

Evidence often emerged of police misconduct, use of unreliable witness testimony or confessions, and inadequate defence representation. The report highlighted the case of Kenny Richey, a Scot who has spent 17 years on death row in Ohio, convicted of arson and murder. Richey is appealing against his death sentence, and attempting to have fresh evidence heard in an attempt to prove his innocence.Kate Allen of Amnesty said of Richey: “His case is one of the most compelling cases of apparent innocence that human rights campaigners have ever seen.”. Squabbling over exchange rate policy between the major economic blocs could trigger a global financial crisis, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warned yesterday. Bellway, of course, was able to report a stonking set of numbers yesterday, with turnover up 21 per cent and pre-tax profits up 36 per cent to £77.4m for the six months to 31 January. The little Newcastle upon Tyne housebuilder set up by John T Bell with his sons in 1946 will this year complete the sale of its 100,000th home.