Como enviar um pedido HTTP em java?

public static String executePost(String targetURL, String urlParameters) {
  HttpURLConnection connection = null;

  try {
    //Create connection
    URL url = new URL(targetURL);
    connection = (HttpURLConnection) url.openConnection();
    connection.setRequestMethod("POST");
    connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Type", 
        "application/x-www-form-urlencoded");

    connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Length", 
        Integer.toString(urlParameters.getBytes().length));
    connection.setRequestProperty("Content-Language", "en-US");  

    connection.setUseCaches(false);
    connection.setDoOutput(true);

    //Send request
    DataOutputStream wr = new DataOutputStream (
        connection.getOutputStream());
    wr.writeBytes(urlParameters);
    wr.close();

    //Get Response  
    InputStream is = connection.getInputStream();
    BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(is));
    StringBuilder response = new StringBuilder(); // or StringBuffer if Java version 5+
    String line;
    while ((line = rd.readLine()) != null) {
      response.append(line);
      response.append('\r');
    }
    rd.close();
    return response.toString();
  } catch (Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
    return null;
  } finally {
    if (connection != null) {
      connection.disconnect();
    }
  }
}

import java.net.*;
import java.io.*;

public class URLConnectionReader {
    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        URL yahoo = new URL("http://www.yahoo.com/");
        URLConnection yc = yahoo.openConnection();
        BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(
                                new InputStreamReader(
                                yc.getInputStream()));
        String inputLine;

        while ((inputLine = in.readLine()) != null) 
            System.out.println(inputLine);
        in.close();
    }
}

URL url = new URL("http://www.y.com/url");
InputStream is = url.openStream();
try {
  /* Now read the retrieved document from the stream. */
  ...
} finally {
  is.close();
}