Blog Posts by Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, and former NBA star Dennis Rodman at an exhibition basketball game in Pyongyang, North Korea. What did Secretary of State John Kerry think of Dennis Rodman's high-profile trip to North Korea—and the former NBA star's suggestion that President Barack Obama just ring up supreme leader Kim Jong Un?

“You know what? Dennis Rodman was a great basketball player. And as a diplomat, he was a great basketball player. And that's where we'll leave it," Kerry told NBC News' Andrea Mitchell in an interview on Tuesday.

The exchange came as North Korea, in response to American efforts to tighten U.N. sanctions as punishment for Pyongyang's latest nuclear test, threatened to cancel the cease-fire that halted fighting in the Korean War 60 years ago.

Rodman's outreach also got the thumbs down on Monday at the White House, where press secretary Jay Carney rebuffed the suggestion that Obama should just pick up the phone.

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre at the Western Hunting and Conservation Expo in Salt Lake City in February. (Jim Urquhart/Reuters)If President Barack Obama successfully drives new gun laws through Congress, the National Rifle Association will fight them in the courts, NRA CEO and executive vice president Wayne LaPierre said in an interview published Monday.

“There definitely will be legal challenges,” LaPierre told Field & Stream as part of the magazine’s series on the response to the slaughter at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. (Vice President Joe Biden also sat down for a question-and-answer session).

“The Second Amendment is one of our most basic freedoms,” LaPierre said. “And so we’re going to stand up for this freedom in every way possible. Whether it’s fighting the legislative fight, whether it’s fighting in the courts.”

The NRA opposes key proposals in Obama’s response to the slaughter at Sandy Hook: a renewed assault weapons ban, universal background checks and a limit on the number of rounds in an ammunition clip. Republicans have signaled that they will oppose the weapons ban, though the

Vice President Joe Biden addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) 2013 Policy Conference in Washington. (Susan Walsh/AP)President Barack Obama “is not bluffing” when he says the U.S. will go to war if necessary to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, Vice President Joe Biden told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in a speech on Monday.

“The president of the United States cannot, and does not, bluff,” Biden told the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group.

Republicans have charged that Obama’s threat to use force—cloaked in the traditional diplo-speak “all options are on the table”—lacks credibility. And they sharply question the president's commitment to Israel’s security.

Democrats hit back by pointing to public comments from senior Israeli officials including Defense Minister Ehud Barak praising the strength of American-Israeli bilateral cooperation.

Biden’s speech served to set up Obama’s trip to the Middle East later this month, including his first visit to Israel since taking office.

The vice president delivered a wide-ranging defense of the administration's policies towards the region and worked to convince any doubters in his audience that Obama is a friend to Israel—and sees U.S. security as inextricably bound up in that of the Jewish state.

"Even as circumstances have changed, one thing has not: our deep commitment to the security of the state of Israel," Biden declared. "That will not change as long as I and he are president and vice president of the United States. It's in our naked self-interest, beyond the moral imperative."

The vice president's remarks came one week after the Senate confirmed Republican former Sen. Chuck Hagel as defense secretary despite opposition from his fellow Republicans and inflammatory past comments about the influence of the "Jewish lobby" over American policy (for which Hagel apologized).

Biden didn't mention Hagel. But he did promise AIPAC that Secretary of State John Kerry would please them.

"He's a good man. You're going to be happy with Kerry," Biden said.

White House tweet
President Barack Obama may have drawn a bit of nerdly wrath on Friday by saying he couldn't just "Jedi mind meld" Congress into agreeing to compromise to avoid painful spending cuts known as sequestration. Obama committed what people who show up to movies two weeks early and in homemade Stormtrooper costumes may consider a cardinal sin: giving the Jedi of Star Wars a skill attributed to the Vulcans of Star Trek.

Twitter erupted, highlighting the entirely unsurprising reality that inside-the-Beltway types take their sci-fi seriously—though not, evidently, as seriously as some.

While the White House's default response is to find your lack of faith disturbing, this time it moved without Rancor to defuse the controversy with a tweet that quite deliberately blended both universes. (For those of you who don't speak the language, it's a play on "These aren't the droids you're looking for" and one of Mr. Spock's refrains, each in the appropriate font).

President Barack Obama speaks about the sequester after a meeting with congressional leaders. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters)

Declaring, “I am not a dictator,” President Barack Obama urged Americans on Friday to help him pressure Republicans to help halt painful automatic government spending cuts. Obama acknowledged that the $85 billion "sequestration" would not be the end of the world, but warned that it would slow the tepid recovery and cost jobs.

"This is not going to be an apocalypse, I think, as people have said," the president underlined. "It's just dumb. And it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt individual people, and it's going to hurt the economy overall."

Obama spoke in the White House briefing room shortly after meeting with Republican House Speaker John Boehner, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Democratic Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. The talks failed to prevent the cuts from going into effect by midnight, as scheduled.

"If Congress comes to its senses a week from now, a month from now, three months from now, then there's a lot of open running room there for us to grow our economy much more quickly," Obama said.

Apparently stung by criticisms that he has overhyped the possible damage from sequestration for political gain, Obama pointed to government workers—notably the janitors who mop the Capitol floors—who will get a pay cut, as well as small businesses that rely on dwindling government contracts, and warned of a "ripple effect" through the broader economy.

"I don’t anticipate a huge financial crisis, but people are going to be hurt," the president said. "We’re not making that up, that’s not a scare tactic."

What dishes would first lady Michelle Obama like to magically turn into guilt-free health foods? What’s her personal fitness regimen? What does she think of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s controversial restrictions on big sodas? And why are the Obamas “a broccoli household”?

The first lady answered those questions and more about fitness in an interview with Yahoo News, where she warned of a “generational” battle against obesity.

Michelle Obama was in her hometown of Chicago to unveil a new initiative to boost exercise in schools as part of her signature “Let’s Move” campaign to get Americans off the couch.

“It’s starting with our kids. And this is an unprecedented collaboration to get kids more active through the school day,” she told Yahoo. “A large percentage of schools do not have daily physical activity, a lot of schools have had to eliminate recess.”

As a result, kids who need “at least 60 minutes” per day of active play are nowhere near that, the first lady said.

The

Pas mal du tout, Monsieur Kerry. Not bad at all.

The Democratic former senator from Massachusetts learned French while attending a boarding school in Switzerland starting when he was 11. And he spent many childhood summers in the Atlantic coast region of Brittany with French relatives.

Those days are long gone—but while Kerry seemed a bit rusty, his opening remarks at a joint press conference with the French foreign minister sounded pretty solid to this native speaker (he starts at 4:51 in the video below, and a transcript is at the bottom of this post). And he poured on the charm to please his audience.

“We’ve just finished one of those wonderful French lunches that have never ceased drawing Americans to Paris for centuries,” he said, seemingly reading from notes or prepared remarks. And he also joked about anti-French sentiment in the United States. “And now I’ll speak in English because otherwise they won’t let me return home.”

President Barack Obama speaks about automatic defense budget cuts on Feb. 26, 2013, in Newport News, Va. (Steve Helber/AP)President Barack Obama declared on Tuesday that “there’s no smart way” to make the deep across-the-board spending cuts set to kick in at week’s end. His remarks effectively rejected efforts by Republicans to give him more power over where and when to apply the cuts, known in Washington as sequestration.

In a campaign-style speech in Newport News, Va., against the backdrop of a huge Navy ship’s propeller, Obama also denied he was trying to “spin” the cuts as more damaging than they actually will be. The president insisted he was not “playing the blame game”—even as he repeatedly laid responsibility for the standoff on GOP lawmakers.

Congressional Republicans have reportedly been working on legislation that would maintain the deep cuts in the sequester but give the president more leeway on what agencies to cut—effectively, a tactic to make him responsible for the results.

In his speech, Obama rejected that approach.

“Lately, some people have been saying, ‘Well, maybe we'll just give the president some flexibility. He could make the cuts the way he wants, and that way it won't be as damaging,’” Obama said.

“The problem is when you're cutting $85 billion in seven months, which represents over a 10 percent cut in the defense budget in seven months, there's no smart way to do that,” he said. “You don't want to have to choose between, let's see, do I close funding for the disabled kid or the poor kid? Do I close this Navy shipyard or some other one?”

Obama and Republicans on Capitol Hill have been waging a war of words over the automatic spending cuts that Congress passed and Obama signed into law. The White House has repeatedly warned that the reductions will hurt the slow economic recovery and cost teachers, police and firefighters their jobs. Republicans have accused the president of hyping the potential damage—even as polls show the public would blame them more than Obama for any pain.