MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico's president will approve a law that decriminalizes possession of small amounts of marijuana, cocaine and other drugs to concentrate on fighting violent narco gangs, the government said on Tuesday.
President Vicente Fox will not oppose the bill, passed by senators last week, presidential spokesman Ruben Aguilar told reporters, despite likely tensions with the United States.
"The president is going to sign that law, there would be no objection," he said. "It appears to be a good law and an advance in combating narcotics trafficking."
The approval of the legislation, passed earlier by the lower house of Congress, surprised Washington, which counts on Mexico's support in its war against gangs that move massive quantities of cocaine, heroin, marijuana and methamphetamines through Mexico to U.S. consumers.
Under the law, police will not penalize people for possessing up to 5 grams of marijuana, 5 grams of opium, 25 milligrams of heroin. Nor does the law penalize possession of 500 milligrams of cocaine -- enough for a few lines.
The legal changes will also decriminalize the possession of limited quantities of LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, amphetamines, ecstasy and peyote -- a psychotropic cactus found in Mexico's northern deserts.
Hundreds of people, including many police officers, have been killed in Mexico in the past year as drug cartels battle for control of lucrative smuggling routes into the United States.
The violence has raged mostly in northern Mexico but in recent months has spread south to cities such as vacation resort Acapulco.
While likely to complicate relations with the U.S. government, the legislation has drawn relatively little attention from the media in Mexico, where drug use is less common than in the United States.
Aguilar did not say when Fox would sign the bill.
Under current law, it is up to local judges and police to decide on a case-by-case basis whether people should be prosecuted for possessing small quantities of drugs.
 Meiwes has always said his victim "wanted to be eaten" |
Meiwes was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight years in 2004 after admitting killing and eating a Berlin engineer he met on the internet.
But a federal judge ruled the verdict was too lenient, prompting a retrial.
Meiwes insists his victim wanted to be eaten and died "a beautiful death", but prosecutors said Meiwes had a "fetish for human flesh" and could re-offend.
Prosecutor Markus Koehler told the court in Frankfurt that Meiwes should be barred from parole after 15 years, as is usual for those serving life sentences in Germany.
Known as the "Rotenburg cannibal", Meiwes placed an advert on the internet before meeting his victim, 43-year-old Bernd Juergen Brandes. 
Joachim Bremer
Defence lawyer
The pair met at Meiwes's home in Rotenburg in March 2001, where they had sex before Meiwes cut off Brandes's penis, which the men then cooked and attempted to eat.
Meiwes later stabbed and killed Brandes, before cutting him to pieces and freezing parts of his body, some of which he later ate.
Fantasies
His defence lawyers argue that Brandes willingly agreed to Meiwes's plans, saying the original advert clearly stated that he was looking for a volunteer to be "slaughtered and eaten".
"This was not murder. His [Brandes's] goal was to be eaten and that meant being killed," defence lawyer Joachim Bremer told the court.
However, Mr Koehler insisted that Meiwes killed Brandes "like a piece of livestock" and was obsessed with power and dominance.
Meiwes has admitted that he still fantasises about killing when he sees pictures of attractive young people, a fact prosecutors used to stress that he remains likely to kill again.
Psychiatric assessments of Meiwes during his time in prison have suggested his behaviour cannot be controlled by therapy, prosecutor Annette von Schmiedeberg told the court.
"I find this extremely worrying," she said.
A verdict is expected later this month.
incapaz (tan incapaz como lo es el pendejo de Santiago Creel) y sólo atiende las variables macroeconomicas.
Eso, que según informa CNNMoney, parece ser que Gartner, ese viejo oráculo del sector tecnológico que vive en lo alto de una montaña con su bola de cristal (una bola de cristal muy pequeñita, por eso sólo es capaz de ver acrónimos en ella) ha dicho que Microsoft no será capaz de cumplir sus plazos y que, finalmente, la salida de Windows Vista se retrasará hasta Abril-Junio de 2007. La razón, por lo visto, es el cálculo llevado a cabo por Gartner de la complejidad de la tarea que la empresa tiene que llevar a cabo: la fase que va entre la segunda test release y el comienzo de la producción llevó cinco meses en Windows XP, pero dada la magnitud del cambio tecnológico que supone Vista, estaría mucho más cerca del caso de Windows 2000, en el que dicha fase consumió un total de dieciseis meses. Y una vez iniciada la fase de producción, aún hay que añadir las seis a ocho semanas que lleva a los fabricantes de equipos instalar el nuevo sistema operativo en las máquinas que ponen a la venta.
from Wall Street analysts to Google -- the last thing the company needs is a rumor that Windows Vista won't be available by its recently revised January launch date. But that's what Redmond is getting hit with today, in the form of a research note from Gartner, which predicts a delay until at least June for the consumer version of the program. According to Gartner, the new OS is "too complex" to be ready by January. Microsoft has responded by saying that Vista is on target to make the launch. Gartner also says that a delay until the spring is "nowhere as bad" as the slip from fall to January, which will result in a Vista-free holiday season. Somehow, we suspect that beleaguered PC makers hoping for a sales bump from Vista upgrades might have a little trouble taking solace from that argument. 
Denle click para verla, de verdad es enorme.
