News Round-Up - 31 December 2012

• Syria's special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said that if there is no political solution to Syria it will be "transformed into hell," likening the potential situation to Somalia.

• After meeting with AU chairman Thomas Boni Yayi over the weekend, CAR's President Francois Bozize has said he is ready to form a national unity government with the Seleka rebels that have taken much of the country in recent days.The Seleka alliance has accused Bozize of failing to honour the 2007 peace agreement.

• The Pakistani Taliban have executed 21 of the 23 policemen kidnapped last week in Waziristan in a dawn raid.  The policemen were government-allied paramilitaries recruited from local tribes.  For more on the reprisals carried out in Waziristan in response to drone attacks by the US in the region, see Declan Walsh's piece in the New York Times.

• In Iraq, a car bomb has killed 3 and injured 21 in Hillah, 60 miles south of Baghdad.  It is thought that Shiite pilgrims may have been the target.

• AP has reported that violence in Afghanistan dropped overall in 2012, though more Afghan troops were killed and there was a threefold increase in uniformed Afghan troops killing their foreign allied counterparts.

• Israel has allowed building materials for private sector into Gaza for the first time in five years.  Up until now many private contractors had been relying on smuggled materials from Egypt.

• Obama has signed into law a five-year extension of the FISA Amendment Act which allows the government to monitor communications where one of the parties is located overseas.  

• In the blogosphere, an interesting debate has started on comparisons between the Newtown bombings and drone strikes.  See here for Kevin Jon Heller's piece at Opiniojuris, and here for Benjamin Wittes's piece over at Lawfare.