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Republicans on the House Oversight Committee want to hear why the State Department repeatedly denied requests for tighter security for U.S. diplomats in Libya before the deadly September 11th attack on the consulate in Benghazi. The State Department has been tight lipped on the issue.

Americans Robert Lefkowitz and Brian Kobilka have won the 2012 Nobel Prize in chemistry. The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited the two researchers Wednesday "for studies of G-protein-coupled receptors."

Transcript

STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:

The Libya hearing provides a reminder of the role foreign policy is playing in the presidential campaign. We asked two foreign policy specialists about the candidates' approach to the Middle East and the Persian Gulf. Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution is director of research at the Brookings Doha Center in Qatar.

SHADI HAMID: Living here in the region, there is a general here that Obama is a weak president.

INSKEEP: A sense he says persists despite the U.S. intervention in Libya and the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Tens of thousands of angry Greeks protested eurozone-imposed austerity measures as German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrived for her first visit to Greece since the debt crisis erupted three years ago. Merkel struck a conciliatory tone but Greeks carried banners reading: Merkel out, Greece is not your colony.

Penske Media bought the 107-year-old magazine for $25 million. Unlike its longtime competitor, The Hollywood Reporter, Variety has had trouble making the switch to digital media.