The law was the White House’s most public strategy to date to counter Iran’s influence in the Americas, and gives the State Department 180 days to draw up a plan to “address Iran’s growing hostile presence and activity.” The US received prompt criticism from Iran who said the US “still lives in the cold war era and considers Latin America as its back yard.”

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will leave office later this month, with Senator John Kerry expected to succeed her. Some Chinese view Clinton as an outstanding political figure. However, public aversion to her in China in recent years has been rising.

With rumors that John Kerry may be tapped to take Clinton's place when she departs the agency this month comes rising speculation over how the current chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee might handle State's technological mandate.

When the United States government signed into law the Countering Iran in the Western Hemisphere Act, the US was quickly criticized for being stuck in the past. The law was the White House’s most public strategy to date to counter Iran’s influence in the Americas, and gives the State Department 180 days to draw up a plan to “address Iran’s growing hostile presence and activity.”

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announces that 12 Burmese youth—six boys and six girls—and two coaches will travel to the United States January 7-20.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was supposed to be back at work in Washington this week, after coming down with a stomach virus early last month, then falling and suffering a concussion. Instead, she was hospitalized Sunday with what doctors say is a blood clot related to her concussion.

On December 18, the US State Department’s Accountability Review Board (ARB) released an unclassified version of its investigation into the September 11 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi, Libya. US Ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were killed in the attack, so the report was widely anticipated by the public and by government officials alike.