president will attend that conference on climate change in copenhagen, at the same time, because the oslo, norway, on december 10th to accept the nobel peace prize. >> no small challenges right there. from the white house, mike, thank you for that this morning. >>> for the latest now on the ground in afghanistan i am joined by nbc's jim miklaszewski in kabul. what can you tell us about the situation there? >> reporter: well, dan, it's been a relatively quiet 24-hour period, except in the south in the hellman province where marines are locked in intensive fighting, with the taliban, trying to root out of their stronghold there. over the past 24 hours only one service member killed. american service member. in all of that, afghanistan, and it is the marine believed to have been killed in the fighting down there, and the objective there is twofold. first of all, to drive the taliban out of their stronghold and bring some kind of stability to that region. but also to interrupt the drug trafficking coming out of this province, which quite frankly, is the single -- the single lone spot in the e