Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Thursday that international collaboration will be vital as melting sea ice opens up new shipping and oil-and-gas drilling opportunities in the Arctic.

“Some of our energy diplomacy is focused on remote areas like the Arctic, a frontier of unexplored oil-and-gas deposits and a potential environmental catastrophe,” Clinton said during a wide-ranging speech on energy diplomacy at Georgetown University.

“The melting ice caps are opening new drilling opportunities as well as new maritime routes, so it is critical that we now act to set rules of the road to avoid conflict over those resources and protect the Arctic’s fragile ecosystem,” she said.

The U.S. State Department on Thursday announced a $12 million bounty for information on the precise location of two Iran-based al Qaeda money-men.

The rewards, part of the department's Rewards for Justice program, include $7 million for information on alleged al Qaeda senior facilitator and financier Muhsin al-Fadhli and $5 million for information on his deputy, Adel Radi Saqr al-Wahabi al-Harbi. Both men are wanted by Saudi authorities on terrorism charges and are believed to be supporting al Qaeda members who are fighting against Bashar Assad's regime in Syria.

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A top Senate Republican is calling on the Obama administration to outline its position on China's currency before the next round of talks on an Asia-Pacific trade agreement later this year. 

Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner on Thursday to provide the Obama administration’s position on Chinese currency manipulation before the next round of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) negotiations begin in December. 

"Unfortunately, rather than comply with the statutory mandate, you announced on Friday, Oct. 12, that the issuance of the report will once again be delayed,” Hatch wrote in the letter to Geithner. 

The State Department on Thursday began live-streaming its daily press briefings on the Internet, giving people around the world a chance to see where the U.S. government stands on global issues in real time.

"We are finally in the 21st century here," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland announced Thursday. "Starting today, the State Department will stream the daily press briefing live on www.state.gov, which maybe will encourage some of you to watch it in your offices and I’ll have less people in the room – no."

The press briefings are usually held around noon. Interested viewers can find out the time for the weekday briefings by subscribing to the daily schedule here. Transcripts and a video recording of the briefing, which is available several hours after the briefing ends, here. 

Senate hawk Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) is doubling down on his theory that the Obama administration deliberately hid the truth about the attack in Libya that left four Americans dead even as the accuracy of that assertion is increasingly in doubt.

Graham, a longtime critic of Obama's foreign policy, has become the most vocal proponent of the theory that Obama tied the attack to anger over an anti-Islam video so he could look strong on national security. The issue of who knew what when has become an issue in the presidential race, with the Obama campaign now saying the president called the Sept. 11 attack on the consulate in Benghazi an “act of terror” from the beginning but continued to tie it to the video based on his intelligence team's initial assessment.

“The video had nothing to do with this because there was never a mob,” Graham told Fox News on Wednesday night. “If it's a riot based on a video that's spontaneous, they have a lot less blame. And I'd be the first to say that if this was a mob generated by video, that's a different national security threat, harder to plan for. So they wanted us to believe that.”

Reporters on the ground in Libya paint a more nuanced picture, however. Both The New York Times and Bloomberg reported this week that numerous witnesses to the attacks — and the attackers themselves — similarly describe a hastily organized strike, without any warning or protest, by well-known local Islamic militants infuriated by a U.S.-made anti-Islam video that had sparked violent protests in neighboring Egypt hours earlier.

She said administration officials were given "speaking points" by intelligence adviser James Clapper in the immediate aftermath.

The Afghan president said his government will be "happy" to take over security if coalition leaves before end of 2014.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will make the case Thursday that “energy diplomacy” is central to U.S. foreign policy.

The Wall Street Journal got a look at the speech that Clinton will give Thursday afternoon at Georgetown University.

“Today, energy cuts across the entirety of U.S. foreign policy. It is a matter of national security and global stability. It is at the heart of the global economy. It's an issue of democracy and human rights,” Clinton intends to say, the paper reported. “It has been a top concern of mine as secretary. And it is sure to be the same for the next secretary of State.”

Clinton is “expected to stress the role that U.S. energy production, coupled with U.S. diplomatic efforts, has played in ratcheting up sanctions on Iran,” the Journal reports.

Your morning global affairs speed-read

A newly released Congressional Research Service report on sanctions in Iran says they have so far failed to stop the country's quest for a nuclear weapon, raising new doubts about President Obama's approach. The report comes as the European Union is set to decide today whether to send a delegation to Iran, a trip strongly opposed by U.S. lawmakers and Israel.

Energy diplomacy: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to map out a plan for making energy a centerpiece of U.S. diplomacy and foreign policy during a speech at Georgetown today. [The Wall Street Journal]