• Jason Reed / AFP - Getty Images

    U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry presents a birthday cake to CBS correspondent Margaret Brennan on his flight from Kabul to Paris on March 26. Kerry held a second round of talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul on Tuesday after the two put on a public show of unity in a bid to repair damaged ties.

    Political party: Kerry recognizes correspondent's birthday on flight from Kabul to Paris

    By Andrea Mitchell and Jamieson Lesko, NBC News

    Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who has infuriated U.S. officials with anti-American rhetoric, on Monday denied suggesting that the U.S. was colluding with the Taliban to convince Afghans that foreign forces were needed in the country beyond 2014.

    In a joint news briefing with Secretary of State John Kerry, Karzai said the media misinterpreted comments he made during a visit by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel on March 10.

    Read the full story.

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  • John Kerry practices soccer skills during meeting with Afghan women

    Jason Reed / AFP - Getty Images

    Secretary of State John Kerry heads an Afghan-made soccer ball towards the captain of Afghanistan's women's national soccer team, Zahra Mahmoodi, as he meets with the women-owned company that makes the ball, and other Afghan women entrepreneurs at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on March 26, 2013.

    By Arshad Mohammed, Reuters

    Jason Reed / AFP - Getty Images

    Secretary of State John Kerry met Afghan businesswomen in Kabul on Monday in an effort to show U.S. commitment to women's rights - at one point heading a soccer ball with a 22-year-old female player.

    Zahra Mahmoodi, captain of the Afghan women's national soccer team, asked Kerry for help to build a dedicated stadium where women and girls could play soccer.

    Speaking to Reuters afterwards, she said she was particularly worried about a return of the Taliban after 2014.

    "Yes, I am worried about that but I don't want to think about it," she said with a nervous laugh. "If the Taliban come back there will be no human rights and I think that it will be even worse than the past." Read the full story.

    Secretary of State John Kerry was wrapping up a trip to Afghanistan to repair relations with the U.S. when he met with a businesswoman who made soccer balls and showed off a few of his own skills.

    Related:

    Suicide bombers kill five Afghan police as Kerry visits Kabul

    Slideshow: Afghanistan, nation at a crossroads

  • Gary Cameron / Reuters

    Childhood passport in hand, John Kerry tells of early trip across Iron Curtain

    John Kerry, the new U.S. Secretary of State, holds the diplomatic passport he was issued at eleven years old, while greeting employees of the State Department in Washington on Monday. Kerry's father, Richard, was a U.S. Foreign Service officer in Berlin after World War II.

    The AP reports: As a 12-year-old in postwar Berlin of the 1950s, Kerry recounted how he could have caused a diplomatic incident by riding his bicycle around the destroyed and divided German capital, past the burnt out Reichstag and the Brandenburg gate and - using his first diplomatic passport - into the Soviet-controlled eastern part of the city.

    "If the tabloids today knew I had done that, I can see the headlines that say, 'Kerry's Early Communist Connections!'" he joked, before describing more seriously how he explained to his irritated parents why he felt the need to cross the Iron Curtain. Full story

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  • A passionate debut, an emotional goodbye: John Kerry leaves the Senate

    Henry Griffin / AP file

    Years before he was a senator, John Kerry, testified about the war in Vietnam before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in Washington D.C., on April 22, 1971.

    Saul Loeb / AFP - Getty Images

    Forty two years later, John Kerry testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations committee for the last time as a senator during his confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 24.

    On Wednesday, John Kerry said farewell to his Senate home of 27 years, as he prepares to take on a new role as Secretary of State. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    By Jon Sweeney, NBC News

    In John Kerry’s farewell speech on the Senate floor yesterday, the former democratic senator from Massachusetts alluded to the first time he spoke to the Senate in 1971.

    During his speech, Kerry said he came “not with my vote, but with my voice — and that is why the end of my tenure here is in many ways a bookend.” He continued:

    Forty-two years ago, I testified before Senator Fulbright’s Foreign Relations Committee about the realities of war in Vietnam.

    It wasn't until last week that I would sit before that Committee again, this time testifying in my own confirmation hearing. It completed a circle, which I could never have imagined drawing, but one our founders surely did: that a citizen voicing his opinion about a matter of personal and national consequence could one day use that voice as a senator, as the Chairman of that same Committee before which he had once testified a private citizen.

    And then as the President’s nominee for Secretary of State — that is a fitting representation of what we mean when we talk about a government of the people, for the people and by the people.

    Several days before his Senate testimony in 1971, Kerry appeared on Meet the Press, telling NBC’s Robert Goralski:

    We are down here to demand that those who call themselves the most committed of all in this country, namely the senators and congressmen who have been talking peace for the past few years, that these men exercise their responsibility, granted them by the constitution of this country, to end this war.

    That is what we are here to demand, and we are here to demand it because we are the men who have seen what is happening in Southeast Asia. And we believe that there is no reason, and no excuse, and no justification, for the loss of one more American life there, or for the loss of more Vietnamese. This war can be ended, and should be ended now, and that is what we are here to say.

    Watch Kerry’s full appearance on Meet the Press.

    The Senate confirmed Kerry to be secretary of state on Tuesday.

     

  • Senator John Kerry appears at speech with injuries from hockey game

    Win Mcnamee / Getty Images

    U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) arrives prior to the start of U.S. President Barack Obama's State of the Union address on Jan. 24, in Washington, DC. Obama said the focal point his speech is the central mission of our country, and his central focus as president, including "rebuilding an economy where hard work pays off and responsibility is rewarded."

    Evan Vucci / AP

    President Barack Obama greets, from second from left, Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., Sen. Scott Brown, R-Mass., and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 24, 2012, after delivering his State of the Union address.

     by Jason Brough / nbcsports.com

    U.S. Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) couldn’t have picked a better time to get smashed in the face with a hockey stick.

    Kerry was at the White House yesterday for the ceremony honoring the Stanley Cup-winning Boston Bruins, and the 68-year-old came complete with two black eyes and a broken nose that he got during a game of hockey with family and friends over the holiday.