Two days after a quelled military coup, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his administration have doubled down on vindictive rhetoric and going after their perceived enemies with a vengeance.
Turkey’s Prime Minister Binali Yildirim announced there have been 265 casualties and 1,440 wounded as a result of clashes between military personnel and government forces following an attempted military coup in Turkey, the New York Times reports. Yildirim also said that 2,839 military personnel have been detained.
Boris Johnson, a man who once compared our likely future President to “a sadistic nurse in a mental hospital” and noted that Obama’s “ancestral dislike of the British empire” stems from his Kenyan heritage, is the U.K.’s new foreign secretary. And if you want some insight into how the State Department is taking the news, look no further than its own spokesman’s terrified, shit-eating grin.
Jon Stewart got a loving sendoff from nearly all of the correspondents he’s worked with on The Daily Show, but some of the notable people he’s mocked in the past also had their chance to get the last word in.
On Sunday, John Kerry broke his leg while riding his bicycle in France, the New York Times reports. The Secretary of State’s plans to travel to Madrid and then Paris to discuss the Islamic State have been canceled.
I was recently voted one of the 15 most notorious party crashers in the world, a title I don’t take lightly. I am proud to report that I came in at No. 4, beating Tareq and Michaele Salahi (#15), Queen Elizabeth (#14) and Bill Murray (#6). Lady Gaga and Serena Williams were handed honorable mentions, but did not actually make the esteemed list. Better luck next time, ladies!
We recently received the following anonymous tip: “You guys need to write about John Kerry’s facelift. Seriously, no one has made one single mention about it. If he were a woman, it would be all over the news. The guy is a major creepy douchebag, I have a creepy story about him from 1995. But first, please out this douche and let everyone know that he got a face lift!!”
Secretary of State John Kerry might understand global diplomacy, but the neighborhood social contract? Not so much.
The relationship between John Kerry, the Secretary of State of the United States of America, and Francois Hollande, the president of France, has been on the rocks since Kerry stood up Hollande at the Je Suis Charlie rally in Paris last weekend. But in a grandly Richard-Curtisian gesture, Kerry flew to Paris today to make things right. This deeply intimate hug is their touching reunion.
President Obama intends to detail a plan to step up the American offensive against ISIS—including ordering airstrikes in Syria—in a televised address planned for this evening. Administration officials told the New York Times that the plan to be revealed tonight will be a longterm campaign "far more complex than the targeted strikes the United States has used against Al Qaeda in Yemen, Pakistan and elsewhere."
According to a new report in German newspaper Der Spiegel, Israeli officials intercepted phone calls made by Secretary of State John Kerry during peace talks between Israel, Palestine, and Arab states last year. Israel reportedly used information gleaned from the calls to better position themselves in negotiations.
Speaking from Paris on Saturday, Secretary of State John Kerry announced that the U.S. Embassy in Libya has temporarily been shuttered and evacuated as "free-wheeling militia violence" intensifies near Tripoli. All diplomats have been moved to neighboring Tunisia.
Secretary of State John Kerry made the Sunday morning news show rounds to outline the United States' case—citing American and Ukrainian intelligence reports and social media that "obviously points a very clear finger at the [pro-Russian] separatists"—that Russia was responsible for the attack that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, killing 298 people.
In the minutes before his interview on Fox News Sunday, Secretary of State John Kerry spoke candidly about Israel's assault on Gaza to an aide on the phone, all while his microphone was on and the camera rolling. "It's a hell of a pinpoint operation, it's a hell of a pinpoint operation," he told the aide, frustrated.
Egypt's proposal for an Israel-Hamas cease-fire fell apart today after Israel resumed airstrikes on Gaza in response to Hamas's rocket attacks. Israeli officials say the rocket attacks never actually stopped, and Gaza officials claim at least one Palestinian was injured in an airstrike during the supposed cease-fire.
Secretary of State John Kerry, who graduated from Yale in 1966, will speak at his alma mater's commencement this afternoon, the AP reports. It is Yale's 313th commencement, and unlike one former Secretary of State, Kerry has not backed out.
U.S. Secretary of State arrived in London on Friday to hold last-ditch talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov ahead of Sunday's proposed referendum in Crimea, which, if passed, would allow Russia to annex the region from Ukraine. Kerry hopes to delay the vote with threats of sanctions, though it's expected to take place as scheduled.
Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Kiev on Tuesday to show his support for the Ukrainian government, remarking that if Russia continues its militaristic advances, President Putin "is not going to have a Sochi G-8." This will be Kerry's first visit to the Ukraine as secretary of state.
[This photo, from the Facebook account of Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, shows U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presenting an enormous potato to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.]
Secretary of State John Kerry poses upon arrival for a gala dinner in Bali, Indonesia. What are his eyes telling you? Photo via AFP/Getty
