At least 10 people were killed on Thursday in twin car bombings that hit a military base and a French-owned uranium processing plant in Niger, officials said. "There were at least 10 dead" in the bombing at the military base in Agadez, a Western source told AFP while a Nigerian defence ministry spokesman said that there were dead "on both sides." A nearly simultaneous bombing at the uranium plant owned by France's nuclear giant Areva left the suicide bomber dead and wounded 13 local workers, according to the group. bh-cf-tmo/yad/txw

A new report by the UN atomic watchdog validates Iran's progress in its "peaceful" nuclear activities despite international sanctions, the country's envoy to the agency said on Thursday. The International Atomic Energy Agency's report said Iran had accelerated the installation of advanced uranium enrichment equipment at its central Natanz plant, and was potentially opening up a second route to developing the bomb. Ali Asghar Soltanieh, speaking to Fars news agency in Vienna, where the IAEA is based, said the report was proof of Iran's "technical and scientific success".

By Fredrik Dahl VIENNA (Reuters) - Iran is pressing ahead with the construction of a research reactor that Western experts say could eventually produce plutonium for a nuclear weapon if Tehran decides to make one, a U.N. report showed on Wednesday. In another development likely to worry the United States and its allies, the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency said Iran had added to its capacity to refine uranium, which can also provide the fissile core of a bomb if enriched to a high level.

RALEIGH, N.C. - Federal regulators are launching a special inspection of a nuclear power plant outside North Carolina's capital city that was forced to shut down last week. A Nuclear Regulatory Commission spokesman said Wednesday that two specialists will study what led up to the shutdown after a problem was uncovered using year-old data. They want to know why a flaw inside the nuclear reactor wasn't found until Duke Energy employees took a new look at test results from last year.