Kerry breaks Hillary's record

John Kerry is now the most travelled secretary of state in US history, breaking the record as he arrived in the Middle East kingdom of Bahrain on Wednesday.

The trip pushed Kerry past 1.06 million miles as America's top diplomat, narrowly beating Condoleezza Rice by about 1,000 miles. Rice, who was secretary of state under President George W Bush, held the previous mark with 1.059 million miles.

Kerry eclipsed Hillary Clinton's mileage tally in December. With 10 months left before a new president takes office, Kerry is showing no signs of tempering his hectic travel schedule.

He flew to the Mideast on Tuesday from New York after attending an energy conference, stopping in Ireland to refuel. He plans to visit Japan later in the week.

With no immediate plans to leave the State Department, Kerry could easily pad his new record by hundreds of thousands of miles before departing government.

The former Massachusetts senator and former Democratic presidential nominee has spent more than 96 days in the air since becoming secretary of state in February 2013. He has spent parts of 467 different days on his well-worn government plane.

One record eludes Kerry still: Clinton's 112 countries visited on the job. Having shuttled regularly between several favourite destinations, Kerry had only been to 80 countries. Bahrain makes 81.

Kerry's visit to the capital of Manama is the first by an American secretary of state since demonstrations by the kingdom's Shia majority in 2011.