The Mexican Chamber of Deputies voted 353-134 on Dec. 12 to approve a series of constitutional amendments providing the groundwork for President Enrique Peña Nieto's controversial "energy reform." The Chamber's vote completed the amendments' passage through Congress, since the Senate had approved the measures on Dec. 10. The required ratification of the changes by 17 of the 32 state legislatures is considered certain, since the main sponsors of the "reform," the governing centrist Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) and the center-right National Action Party (PAN), dominate the majority of state legislatures.

The body of Honduran journalist Juan Carlos Argeñal Medina was found on Dec. 7 at his home in Danlí in the southern department of El Paraíso; he had been shot dead. Argeñal was a correspondent for the independent Globo radio and television network and also owned Vida Televisión. He was at least the third Honduran journalist killed this year and the 37th since President Porfirio ("Pepe") Lobo Sosa took office in January 2010, according to Globo. Another Globo journalist, Edgardo Castro, has announced that he plans to leave the country because of death threats. (Miami Herald, Dec. 9, from AP; Adital, Brazil, Dec. 11)

The US Department of Defense announced Dec. 16 that two Guantánamo Bay detainees have been transferred to Saudi Arabia. Saad Muhammad Husayn Qahtani and Hamood Abdulla Hamood had been held since 2002, but neither had been charged with a crime. The two men were recommended for transfer in 2009 after a review by the the interagency Guantanamo Review Task Force. According to a statement:

The bodies of at least 21 people, including women and children, were found after an attack near Beni in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, the UN "peacekeeping" mission MONUSCO said Dec. 16. Local civil organization North Kivu Civil Society blamed the massacre on Ugandan Islamist group ADF-NALU. (AFP, Dec. 17) Days earlier, MONUSCO announced that following the defeat of M23 rebels in North Kivu province, UN and government forces will shift focus to northeastern Orientale, giving armed groups there a two-week ultimatum to surrender their weapons and return to civilian life. Said MONUSCO commander Gen. Carlos Alberto dos Santos Cruz: "We are going to use force. We will do everything we can to allow the FARDC [DRC armed forces] to take on these armed groups." He named ADF-NALU, along with the Congolese People's Liberation Army (ALPCU) and the Patriotic Resistance Front in Ituri (FRPI). (IRIN, Dec. 13) The Allied Democratic Forces-National Army for the Liberation of Uganda has operated in the DRC-Uganda borderlands since 1995. (International Crisis Group)

The Bangladesh government on Dec. 12 executed Abdul Quader Mollah, assistant secretary general of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) party. Mollah was convicted by Bangladesh's International Crimes Tribunal (ICTB) for crimes committed during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and sentenced to life in prison; however, the Supreme Court of Bangladesh in September sentenced Mollah to death without appeal. Mullah's execution has sparked widespread protests throughout the country, with opposition groups calling for a countrywide strike on Dec. 15.

Elements of the US national security establishment have clearly got their money on Bashar Assad. Ex-CIA director Michael Hayden on Dec. 12 outlined three options for Syria's future at the annual Jamestown Foundation counter-terrorism confab: "Option three is Assad wins. And I must tell you at the moment, as ugly as it sounds, I'm kind of trending toward option three as the best out of three very, very ugly possible outcomes." Option one was ongoing conflict between radicalized sectarian facitons. Option two, which Hayden considered the most likely, was the "dissolution of Syria." (It isn't explained why this option ranks two if it's the most likely.) This, in turn, "means the end of Sykes-Picot... it sets in motion the dissolution of all the artificial states created after World War I." (AFP via Maan News Agency, Dec. 13)