Mexico's Senate backed a proposal by President Vicente...

Mexico's Senate backed a proposal by President Vicente Fox to strip the constitution of a provision that allowed military courts to impose the death penalty.
While Mexico vigorously opposed capital punishment on the world stage, its constitution allowed the army to apply it, although no one had been put to death in more than four decades.
Fox, a Catholic who had in the past called the death penalty "inhumane", proposed a comprehensive ban in March, suggesting the military could replace capital punishment by prison terms of up to 60 years.
The proposal still needed to be approved by the lower house of congress, dominated by the opposition, before it could become law.
Fox, who intervened in November 2003 to spare two soldiers sentenced to death by military tribunals, began pushing for the reform shortly before the International Court of Justice in the Hague ordered the United States to review the cases of 51 Mexicans on death row.