BBC News. This is Mike Cooper.

President Obama has given his backing to building the first nuclear reactors in the United States in three decades. He said the country needed a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power stations to meet its energy needs and fight climate change.

Mr Obama is offering an 8-billion-dollar loan guarantee to the first plant, but only if legislation against greenhouse gas emissions is part of the package.

He said that without funding for new technologies, the US risked falling behind other nations.

"Make no mistake whether it's nuclear energy or solar or wind energy. If we fail to invest in the technologies of tomorrow, then we are gonna be importing those technologies instead of exporting them. We will fall behind. Jobs will be produced overseas instead of here in the United States of America. That's not a future that I accept."

The Afghan Taliban is said to have lost one of its key leaders. Reports say its top military commander and leading strategist, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, was captured at the beginning of this month in a joint operation by Pakistani and American forces in Karachi. A spokesman for the Afghan Taliban denied that the leader had been taken. From Karachi, Orla Guerin reports.

Pakistani security sources say Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar was detained on February 8th at a religious school outside the city limits without a shot being fired. He is second only to the Taliban's