Europe

The State Department on Tuesday ripped into U.S. ally Turkey for calling Israel a “terrorist state” after coming under harsh criticism for failing to do so earlier.

“Well, let me just say that some of the extremely harsh rhetoric coming from Turkey we do not consider helpful at all. And, of course, we don't agree with some of these very difficult statements that have been coming there, and we've made those views to the Turks,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at her daily briefing. 

“I'm not going to get into detail other than we've made clear from this department to the Turkish government our concerns that this kind of rhetoric is not helpful.”

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano reportedly did not deny the allegations when asked point-blank about them.

Members debated the bill briefly, then quickly approved it by voice vote after a handful of members indicated opposition.

The move comes as Congress looks to shield U.S. airlines from Europe's greenhouse gas rules.

Russian leader Vladimir Putin sent President Obama a telegram congratulating him for winning a second term on Wednesday, while the country's prime minister mocked Mitt Romney's aggressive stance against the Kremlin.

“Overall the Kremlin welcomes the news of Barack Obama's victory in the elections,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency. “We express hope that the positive beginnings in bilateral relations and in international cooperation between Russian and the United States, in the interest of international security, will develop and improve.”

And Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev took a dig at Romney, who famously called Russia America's “No. 1 geopolitical foe” during the campaign.

“I am happy that the president of a very big, very influential state is not a man who considers Russia to be its enemy No. 1,” Medvedev said, according to Reuters. “That is ludicrous. It's some kind of paranoia.”

The secretary of State's presence stands in sharp contrast to her widely noticed absence during the Democratic convention in September.

Your morning global affairs speed-read

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wraps up her tour of the Balkans with a visit to Albania today. She is expected to press opposing political groups to work together to push through reforms required to join the European Union. [Agence France-Presse]

Albania is the last stop on a tour that has already taken Clinton through four countries that emerged from the bloody breakup of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, during Bill Clinton's presidency. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia, Kosovo and Croatia, Clinton and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton urged political leaders to overcome ethnic strife and finish the work of rejoining the world community. [Reuters]

Iowa joins Texas in warning an international organization that its observers would not be permitted at Election Day polling places.

The British government rejected U.S. requests to use military bases in the United Kingdom as part of a build-up in the Gulf, citing legal concerns that a pre-emptive strike on Iran would violate international law, The Guardian reported.

Citing unnamed U.K. officials, the Guardian reported that the United States has made informal requests for access to British bases in Cypress and British territories in the Atlantic and Indian oceans as part of contingency planning for Iran.

But British ministers have responded with legal advice from the U.K. attorney general’s office that says Iran does not currently represent “a clear and present danger.”

Forget about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney running neck and neck.

If the rest of the world had a say, the president would be coasting to reelection without breaking a sweat, according to a new BBC survey. The poll of 21,797 people in 21 countries found an average of 50 percent of respondents favoring Obama versus just 9 percent for Romney, with the rest of those polled unsure or indifferent.

France was the most pro-Obama country polled, with 72 percent of people favoring Romney. The Republican candidate did, however, fare better than Obama in Pakistan, where neither candidate saw more than 15 percent support — further evidence that the president's drone campaign has brought relations with the country to their lowest point in recent history.