The French National Assembly unanimously decided to remove the death penalty from the French Consitution. ‘Noone can be sentenced to death,’ states the only article of the Consitutional Law Bill that modifies the VIII title of the Fundamental Charter.

Superior Court Judge Donald W. Stephens in Raleigh blocked two executions, creating a de facto moratorium on capital punishment in the state until it changes its lethal injection procedure.

a Vietnamese court handed down eight death sentences and 13 life imprisonment on local people on drugs charges. The People's Court of northern Son La province passed the death sentences on Trinh Nguyen

a Saudi Ministry statement published by the official news agency SPA stated a Saudi woman, identified as Hala bint Marzouk al-Outaibi, was executed for murder.

the central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan has adopted a new constitution specifically banning all taking of life and lawyers are now drafting revisions to its legal code replacing the maximum criminal sentence of death by firing squad with long prison terms.

Libya will not execute five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor sentenced to death last month, the son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi said in a newspaper interview, calling the verdicts unfair.

Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi appealed to African leaders to help Italy in its attempt to have capital punishment suspended throghout the world. "We have to be pro life and against death in the same way that we are against injustice and suffering," Prodi said in a speech to the African Union meeting in Ethiopia.

Singapore has executed two African men for drug smuggling after rejecting appeals for clemency by Nigeria's president, the UN and rights groups. Iwuchukwu Amara Tochi, 21, of Nigeria, and 35-year-old Okeke Nelson Malachy, a stateless African, were hanged at dawn.

Delara Darabi, a 20-year-old Iranian woman sentenced to death on charges she killed a cousin when she was 17, tried to kill herself at Tehran's Evin prison. Her mother told Tehran daily Etemad that her daughter is clinically depressed and only weighs 35 kilos.

The North Carolina Medical Board, which licenses and disciplines doctors in the state, has unanimously

Ameneh Salam, a 21 year old Kurdish woman

New U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he backed an international trend to phase out the death penalty. "Life is very precious and every human being has a right to live with dignity and life of human beings must be respected and protected," Ban said in Brussels when asked about an Italian bid for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty.