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Secretary of State John Kerry has telephoned a top official in New Delhi to express regret for the strip-search of an Indian diplomat after her arrest last week in New York on charges of visa fraud.

"As a father of two daughters about the same age as [Indian diplomat] Devyani Khobragade, the Secretary empathizes with the sensitivities we are hearing from India about the events that unfolded after Ms. Khobragade's arrest," State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said in a written statement, relating Kerry's conversation.

"In his conversation with National Security Advisor [Shivshankar] Menon, he expressed his regret, as well as his concern that we not allow this unfortunate public issue to hurt our close and vital relationship with India," Harf added.

Menon had called the Khobragade's treatment "despicable and barbaric."

As NPR's Krishnadev Calamur reported on Tuesday, the 39-year-old Indian diplomat is accused of using false documents to get a work visa for her Manhattan housekeeper.

Reaction in India has been harsh, and the Indian government even removed concrete barriers near the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi in an apparent signal of its unhappiness over the situation. India has also withdrawn all airport passes and halted import clearances for the U.S. Embassy.

Australian Network News, quoting Indian media, reported that New Delhi had transferred Khobragade to the United Nations Permanent Mission in New York on Wednesday in a bid to grant her full diplomatic immunity. India's Foreign Ministry has yet to confirm the reports, however.

In a year that featured divisive fights over the budget, health care and presidential nominations, the United States Senate took a break from partisan bickering Tuesday night to get in the Christmas spirit.

A total of 65 senators — 42 Democrats and 23 Republicans — took part in a gift exchange after the day's final votes were tallied. As NPR congressional correspondent Tamara Keith reported on Morning Edition Wednesday, "Secret Santa" is taking shape as something of a tradition in the upper chamber, as this is third year in a row the event has taken place.

Here are some of the stocking stuffers that were swapped this year:

Democratic Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota, who organized this year's Secret Santa event, came in well below the $15 limit for his gift. He personally made a map of the United States — which he can draw from memory — for Sen. Joe Donnelly, noting important moments in the Indiana Democrat's life.

He was the man with "the nose of a blood hound," as one wine critic once put it.

Rudy Kurniawan was once the toast of the fine wine world, renowned for his ability to find some of the rarest — and priciest — wines in the world.

He was also, prosecutors alleged, a fraud who duped some of the country's wealthiest wine purchasers with counterfeit bottles of wine that he manufactured in his home laboratory.

And on Wednesday, a Manhattan jury agreed, finding Kurniawan guilty of fraud in connection with selling counterfeit wines and of defrauding a finance company.

The sensational trial began Dec. 9 in a Manhattan federal court. Prosecutors have argued that Kurniawan used his exceptional palate to blend together younger wines with older French wines of poor vintage. He then slapped counterfeit labels on the bottles, prosecutors alleged, and passed them off as some of the rarest wines on Earth. When these bottles turned up at auctions, the excitement of coming across them often overshadowed bidders' skepticism of whether they were the real thing.

Among those who believed they were duped is billionaire industrialist Bill Koch — yes, a brother to those Kochs — who said he spent $2.1 million on 219 bottles of Kurniawan's wine.

Born in Indonesia but residing in California, Kurniawan began turning heads in the fine wine scene around 2002, winning over sommeliers, wine critics and auctioneers with his palate and his generosity. He often footed the bill at restaurants, where he poured thousands of dollars of wine from his personal collection for his friends.

"I've never known him not to bring a bottle," testified Truly Hardy, director of auction operations for Acker Merrall & Condit.

Around 2004, prosecutors say, Kurniawan began passing off his fake wines. Last week, both Koch and Laurent Ponsot of top Burgundy winemaker Domaine Ponsot, testified that they had long suspected that Kurniawan's wares weren't quite what they seemed. Ponsot told jurors that he became suspicious of Kurniawan in 2008, after the collector consigned to auction dozens of bottles of Domaine Ponsot wine of a vintage that had never existed.

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Older Two-Way readers will remember the monthly Golden Fleece Awards from former Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., who spotlighted ways the federal government was wasting money.

Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., has picked up that mantle in recent years with his annual Wastebook.

On Tuesday, Coburn released his 2013 edition, where he points to:

— "Obamacare [and] the failure of its $319 million website."

— The $2 billion or so "to provide back pay to federal employees" who were furloughed during the 16-day partial government shutdown.

— The destruction of $7 billion worth of vehicles and other military equipment in Afghanistan.

— A slew of smaller expenditures that he says appear to have been of dubious value. They include: $10 million spent by the Army National Guard on a "soldier of steel" promotional campaigned tied to this year's Superman movie; nearly $1 million shelled out by the National Endowment of the Humanities to "explore the fascinating, often contradictory origins and influences of popular romance as told in novels, films, comics, advice books, songs and Internet fan fiction;" and the grounding of a "mega-blimp" project after nearly $300 million was expended.

According to Coburn, his staff came up with "examples of wasteful and low-priority spending totaling more than $28 billion."

That is, for sure, a large number. But it's also about 0.7 percent of the $3.8 trillion the federal government spent for the year.