The United States has promised to send "non-lethal aid" directly to Syrian rebels, and is offering to train rebels at a base in the region. This marks the strongest American involvement to date in the Syrian conflict, and a policy shift toward direct help for those opposing President Bashar al-Assad. Secretary of State John Kerry made the announcement earlier today in Rome, saying that Syrian President Assad is "out of time and must be out of power."

The world scratched its head yesterday when it learned that former Chicago Bulls star Dennis Rodman is in North Korea, spreading a message of world peace via extreme facial piercings and basketball just days after North Korea's latest nuclear test. (And also filming an HBO documentary with the Harlem Globetrotters and VICE.) But the choice of Rodman actually seems inspired if you consider this photo of a young Kim Jong Un Kim Jong-Chul, Kim Jong Un's younger brother, glowering at the camera in Rodman's number 91 Bulls jersey from his days at a Swiss boarding school. The Kim clan are noted basketball fanatics, and all apparently a fondness for the Rodman-era Bulls, reportedly.

A U.S. national living in the city of Makati, a part of Metro Manila, was stabbed to death by four men just outside of the gate to his residential community yesterday. The victim, George Anikow, was initially identified as a diplomat himself, with police chief Manual Lucban confirming he'd received a call from the US Embassy after the murder; other sources identify Anikow as "a dependent of one of the officers of the US Embassy" awaiting a return to active duty as a U.S. Marine.

There are multiple cases against America's international program of drone assassinations. There is the humanitarian case: the program has killed hundreds of innocent civilians, due to either bad intelligence or a simple lack of caring on the part of US officials. And, for the more heartless... er, hard-nosed pragmatists, there is the diplomatic case: the US is reportedly operating drones in Pakistan with only the flimsiest level of permission.

Iranian students stormed the British embassy compound today, possibly taking hostages (who may have later been freed), and, in a brutal blow to the British psyche, stealing those two great symbols of the United Kingdom: a picture of the Queen, and a Pulp Fiction poster.

President Obama announced from Bali on Friday that he's sending Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to the human rights disaster zone known as Myanmar, aka Burma, saying, "After years of darkness we've seen flickers of progress." It will be the first such visit to the country, which has long isolated itself from diplomacy, in over 50 years.

What do presidents do when no one else can hear them? The same thing the rest of us do: complain about other people! Like on Monday, when President Obama and his French counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy were caught on microphone bitching about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Russian spies have launched a campaign of psychological harassment against U.S. and British diplomats living there, the Guardian reports, by breaking into their homes and moving things around just to fuck with their heads.

This is all that happens when you let foreign people into the country: unpaid parking tickets, everywhere. Okay, at least that's the case for foreign diplomats, who owe millions of dollars in tickets between New York City and Washington, dating back decades.

Buried in the rubble of Muammar Qaddafi's Tripoli compound is a sheaf of documents indicating that David Welch, the assistant secretary of state for Near East affairs under the Bush Administration who now works for infrastructure giant Bechtel, was providing urgent and detailed advice to the Qaddafi regime as the NATO bombs fell.

The reaction to the Obama Administration's decision to send Vice Talker Joe Biden to China on a supremely delicate diplomatic mission was pretty universal: Fuck! Please please please tell us that he didn't terrify them with awkward jokes about their large holdings of U.S. Treasuries?

Among the myriad things an American diplomat in a nation with a long history of colonialism and racial tension should avoid, characterizing the the locals' skin as "dirty," "dark," and like an unwashed caucasian is among the least advisable. And yet a consulate official in India made the ol' "you look dirty" joke during a visit to a Chennai school last week:

While the president continues his European tour with a stop in Poland, Michelle Obama is heading home. But is she going home to be with her daughters? Or is it because she hates Poland, and more specifically, its president?

Krittika Biswas is a high school senior in Queens and the daughter of the vice consul of the Indian Consulate in New York. Earlier this year, she was perp-walked out of school, arrested, held for a day in central booking, and spent a month at a school "suspension center," all for allegedly sending email threats "with references to rape and prostitution" to two of her teachers. Except she didn't.

Today on Lavish Gifts That Make Me Uneasy, China has agreed to provide Pakistan with 50 JF-17 fighter jets — or roughly the equivalent of a new pony for a 7-year-old girl. It's a direct outcome of Prime Minister Gilani's visit to Beijing this week, a four-day jaunt intended to send a clear signal to the U.S. that killing Osama bin Laden without so much as texting them first was totally not cool. ("Humiliated" was the word Defense Secretary Robert Gates used to describe them.)

Among the classified State Department cables released by Wikileaks—cables so sensitive that, even now, unauthorized federal employees are barred from reading them online—is a report of tense meeting between our ambassador to Norway and Santa Claus.

President Obama "is preparing a fresh outreach to the Muslim world in coming days," The Wall Street Journal tells us. How exciting! Despite the fact that Obama is the most Muslim president of all time, besides Dwight Eisenhower, his approval ratings have dropped precipitously in the Arab world, and Pakistan is certainly not too pleased with him, either. So, Obama will "deliver a wide-ranging speech":

Inspecting video from a meet and greet between Czech President Vaclav Klaus and Chilean leader Sebastian Pinera, a Czech TV show noticed their president inspecting a fancy pen, then surreptitiously pocketing it with a guilty look on his face.

The U.S. has released its annual report on human rights! And guess who gets called out by name? Yes, duh, it's China, which has been cracking down on dissidents and activists extra-hard lately. Of course, China doesn't take kindly to being told it sucks at human rights, especially by the U.S., so the Chinese government released its own "I Know You Are But What Am I" report telling the U.S. to butt out and maybe stop locking up black kids. "Stop the domineering behavior of exploiting human rights to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries," it reads, in part. Guys, guys! You're both massive, cruel prison-industrial complexes with no meaningful avenues for dissent. The U.S. has better TV, though. [Reuters; image via AP]

NATO agreed on Thursday night to take complete command of military operations in Libya. Psych! NATO is only leading the part that involves flying jets around, while the U.S., France and the UK are stuck doing the "actual war stuff" (technical term).