Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro said he “had decided to offer asylum to former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden, who has petitioned several countries to avoid capture by Washington,” the New York Times reports.

Said Maduro: “In the name of America’s dignity … I have decided to offer humanitarian asylum to Edward Snowden.”

Maduro added: “He has told the truth, in the spirit of rebellion, about the U.S. spying on the whole world. Who is the guilty one? A young man… who denounces war plans, or the U.S. government which launches bombs and arms the terrorist Syrian opposition against the people and legitimate President Bashar al-Assad? Who is the terrorist? Who is the global delinquent?”

“As regime change was unfolding in Egypt, Secretary of State John Kerry spent time on his boat Wednesday afternoon in Nantucket Sound, the State Department acknowledged to CBS News on Friday, after repeatedly denying that Kerry was aboard any boat.”

“On Thursday night, CBS News obtained a photo of Kerry on his boat and sent it to the State Department, asking whether they still stand by their denial that Kerry was on a boat. The response: Yes.”

The State Department spent $630,000
to attract more Facebook “likes,” in an effort that struggled to reach its target
audience, according to a searing Inspector General’s report
from May, Foreign Policy reports.

Egypt’s top generals “summoned civilian political leaders to an emergency meeting Wednesday, conferring with them past the 48-hour deadline they had set for President Mohamed Morsi to leave power, as signs pointed further to an impending military takeover,” the New York Times reports.

“The military’s intelligence service placed a travel ban on President Morsi and senior Islamist aides including the Muslim Brotherhood’s Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie, and his influential deputy, Khairat el-Shater… People close to the president said at around the same time that talks with the generals continued but looked increasingly futile. A decisive move was expected within hours, these people said, although the president and his advisers remained at liberty.”

Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi defiantly rejected protesters’ calls for him to step down in a late-night address, telling Egyptians he was willing to “pay my life to protect the legitimacy” of the country’s ballot box and Islamist drafted constitution, the Wall Street Journal reports.

His statement “came as protests over his rule erupted in deadly clashes late Tuesday, with just hours to go before Mr. Morsi faced the deadline of a military-imposed ultimatum to patch relations with the country’s opposition.”

Former Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak has watched the demonstrations demanding that President Mohamed Morsi stand down, the Egypt Independent reports.

“The imprisoned dictator reportedly expressed astonishment at the number of protesters on the streets of Cairo, commenting that crowds dwarfed those that rose up against him in January 2011.”

Egypt’s military gave Mohammed Morsi a 48-hour ultimatum to “resolve the crisis” before the military intervenes, setting the stage for a possible military coup a day after millions thronged Egypt’s streets demanding the president’s resignation, the Wall Street Journal reports.

BBC:
“Anti-government protesters in Egypt have stormed the national
headquarters of President Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood in the
capital, Cairo. People are reported to have ransacked the building in
the eastern Moqattam district and also set it on fire. Eight people have
been killed outside since Sunday.”

Al Jazeera:
“Protesters seeking to force Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi from
office are gearing up for a second day of action, after large crowds
thronged the streets of Cairo and cities around the country and marched
on the presidential palace. In the capital, the seat of the powerful
Muslim Brotherhood to which Morsi belongs, was set ablaze before people
stormed and looted the building.”

Michael Crowley: “Recent polling shows America more unpopular than ever in Muslim countries, enraged by Obama’s heavy reliance on drone strikes against suspected terrorists. Though occasionally cooperative, Russia and China are content to speak about America with borderline hostility. Even a bite-sized nation like Ecuador is thumbing its nose at the U.S. over Snowden’s fate…turning around world opinion has been severely complicated in recent weeks. Snowden’s leaks about U.S. surveillance, spying and hacking activities revived the image of an arrogant post-9/11 America that acts without regard for the law, and forced Obama to publicly protest that he is no Dick Cheney.”

Wall Street Journal: “The Central Intelligence Agency has begun moving weapons to Jordan from a network of secret warehouses and plans to start arming small groups of vetted Syrian rebels within a month, vastly expanding the Obama administration’s role in support of moderate forces battling Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) vowed to block all State Department nominations until President Obama appoints an inspector general to investigate the attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

“While tangling with the leaders of two cold war antagonists of the United States is nothing new, the two bruising encounters in such a short span underscore a hard reality for Mr. Obama as he heads deeper into a second term that may come to be dominated by foreign policy: his main counterparts on the world stage are not his friends, and they make little attempt to cloak their disagreements in diplomatic niceties,” the New York Times reports.

Daniel Drezner: “It’s worth remembering that Tony Blair was both Bill Clinton and George W. Bush’s closest friend on the global stage. Those friendships produced… mixed results. So maybe, in the end, this is a big bunch of nothing.”

Afghan President Karzai “suspended security talks with the U.S. to
protest the American outreach to the Taliban — jeopardizing plans to
maintain a U.S. military presence beyond next year,” the Wall Street Journal reports.

Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) was announced as a special representative for the United States to the Great Lakes region of Africa by Secretary of State John Kerry, the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reports.

“Feingold brings an expertise in the region to the job. He served as chairman of the Senate foreign relations Africa subcommittee.”

Der Spiegel: “It is Obama’s ninth European trip as president, but only his first state visit to Berlin. It took him four-and-a-half years to pay his official visit to Germany, the undisputed dominant power in Europe. The trip carries a great deal of importance for the Germans.”

“Obama’s visit this month and the memory of the Kennedy visit 50 years ago highlight the special relationship between Germans and Americans, but they also show how much the world has changed since then. Kennedy’s trip to Berlin was an almost ecstatic celebration of the protection and defense alliance, while the visit by the no less charismatic current president will probably end up being a more or less unexciting family affair.”

First Read reviews Obama’s international trip so far: “It could have been worse.”

President-elect Hassan Rowhani of Iran, speaking for the first time since his election victory, said he wanted to reduce tensions with the United States but ruled out direct talks between the two estranged nations, the New York Times reports.

Rowhani called the issue of nonexistent relations between Iran and the United States “an old wound, which must be healed.”

A new Pew Research poll finds 70% of Americans oppose the U.S. sending arms and military supplies to rebels in Syria while 27% favor the move.

The poll also found that 68% of Americans say the country is too
overcommitted in other issues to get involved in another conflict.

Hassan Rowhani, the most moderate candidate in Iran’s presidential election, won with surprisingly large margins.

New York Times:
“But while the election of the new president, Hassan Rowhani, a former
nuclear negotiator who is considered a moderate compared with the other
candidates, was greeted by some administration officials as the best of
all likely outcomes, they said it did not change the fact that only the
country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would make the final
decision about any concessions to the West. Even so, they said they
wanted to test Mr. Rowhani quickly, noting that although he argued for a
moderate tone in dealing with the United States and its allies when he
was a negotiator, he also boasted in 2006 that Iran had used a previous
suspension of nuclear enrichment to make.”

The Week: 4 things you should know about Iran’s new president.