(CNN) - The co-pilot of a Northwest Airlines flight that overshot the runway in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by 150 miles says he and the pilot weren't asleep and they weren't arguing.

However, Richard I. Cole, who spoke to CNN affiliate KGW-TV from his home in Portland, Oregon, wouldn't say much more on Friday. He said an investigation will reveal what took place.

After repeatedly saying he couldn't talk about the case, Cole said that contrary to media reports, "Nobody was asleep in the cockpit. No arguments took place. But other than that, I cannot tell you anything that went on because we're having hearings this weekend, we're having hearings on Tuesday. All that information will come out then."

America's ambassador to the United Nations made her first trip to Iraq on Saturday, discussing how to help the country move on from debt and sanctions and expressing sympathy over massive bombings in August.

Susan Rice met Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari for talks at the Foreign Ministry compound in Baghdad. While they toured the ministry building, they surveyed damage there from the August 19 bombing, one of six targets hit within an hour that day.

Zebari said the Iraqi government has been asking the United Nations for help to investigate the bombings, which also targeted the Finance Ministry. At least 100 people were killed and more than 500 wounded in the attacks.

KABUL, Afghanistan (CNN) - A roadside bomb killed two U.S. service members in southern Afghanistan on Friday, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said Saturday.

The number of American troop deaths in Afghanistan this month stands at 33, according to a CNN count of military numbers.

A Danish soldier was shot and killed Friday during a patrol in Helmand province, located in the south, the Danish Defense Ministry reported Friday.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) - Sixteen people were killed Saturday when a suspected U.S. drone struck a village in northwest Pakistan, local officials said.

Two missiles hit a militant hideout in the village of Damadola, a Pakistani military and political officials said.
The strike comes as the Pakistani military has stepped up its offensive against Taliban fighters, and missile attacks from suspected U.S. drones have targeted militant leaders.

The United States is the only country in the region known to have the ability to launch missiles from drones, which are controlled remotely. U.S. officials do not comment on suspected drone strikes, which have caused tension between Pakistan and the United States.

LONDON, England (CNN) - From seabeds to mountaintops, people around the world were staging a day of demonstrations Saturday to call for urgent action on climate change.

The events were being coordinated by a group called 350.org, whose name refers to the parts per million of carbon dioxide it considers the safe upper limit for our atmosphere.

The group said it wants to "inspire the world to rise to the challenge of the climate crisis" ahead of the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, in December.

Divers at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and in the ocean off the Maldives held banners with the 350 logo. Skiers and snowboarders formed the number 350 on a snow-covered slope in Wanaka, New Zealand, and hikers unfurled a 350 banner atop Vinson Massif, the tallest mountain in Antarctica.

Other events around the world were planned for Saturday, from Britain and Zimbabwe to Bermuda and Guatemala, according to 350.org.

In all, more than 5,400 rallies and demonstrations were scheduled to take place around the world, all of them centered on the number 350, the group said.

"We had no idea we would get the overwhelming support, enthusiasm and engagement from all over the world that we're seeing," said Bill McKibben, a writer and environmentalist who founded 350.org. "It shows just how scared of global warming much of the planet really is, and how fed up at the inaction of our leaders."

The number of 350 ppm originally came from a NASA research team headed by American climate scientist James Hansen, which surveyed both real-time climate observations and emerging paleo-climatic data in January 2008, according to 350.org.

It concluded that atmosphere containing carbon dioxide above 350 ppm couldn't support life on earth as we know it, the group said.

"It's a very tough number," McKibben said. "We're already well past it - the atmosphere holds 390 ppm today, which is why the Arctic is melting and the ocean steadily acidifying. To get back to the safe level we need a very rapid halt to the use of coal, gas and oil so that forests and oceans can absorb some of that carbon."

McKibben and Hansen are "messengers" for 350.org, along with prominent leaders and climate change campaigners including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Bianca Jagger and David Suzuki.

"I believe climate change is the 21st century's greatest human rights and security challenge," said Maldives President Mohammed Nasheed, who is one of the messengers. His country, an archipelago of 1,200 islands, is threatened with disappearing under water if sea levels continue to rise.

"If we cannot save 350,000 Maldivians from rising seas today, we cannot save the millions in New York, London, or Mumbai tomorrow," he said in a recorded statement released by 350.org. "Climate change is happening, and it is happening faster and with greater severity than previously thought."

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) - Fourteen people were killed Saturday when a suspected U.S. drone struck a village in northwest Pakistan, local officials said.

Two missiles hit a militant hideout in the village of Damadola, a Pakistani military and political officials said.

The strike comes as the Pakistani military has stepped up its offensive against Taliban militants in the country's north, and missile attacks from suspected U.S. drones have targeted militant leaders.

The United States is the only country in the region known to have the ability to launch missiles from drones, which are controlled remotely.

U.S. officials do not comment on suspected drone strikes, which have caused tension between Pakistan and the United States.

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) - International officials will arrive in Iran on Saturday to inspect a newly disclosed nuclear facility near the city of Qom, state media reported.

Inspectors from the United Nations nuclear watchdog - the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - will visit the installation to make sure it is being used for peaceful purposes, said Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency.

The three-day visit comes after Iran said Friday that it needs more time to decide whether to sign onto a deal that could help end the international showdown over its nuclear activities.

That proposal calls for low-enriched uranium produced in Iran to be sent abroad for further enrichment and then returned for use in medical research and treatment.

Tehran is studying the draft proposal and will have an answer next week, Iranian diplomat Ali Asghar Soltanieh said on state-run Press TV.

Delegations from Iran, France, Russia, the United States and the IAEA met in Vienna this week to work out details of the tentative deal reached in early October.

Tehran sent shock waves through the international community recently by revealing in a letter to the IAEA the existence of a second nuclear enrichment facility near Qom.

"It is important for us to send out inspectors to do comprehensive verification ... to assure ourselves that it is ... fit for peaceful purposes," IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei said earlier this month.

After the inspection, but before the end of the month, Iranian officials are expected to meet with the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States - plus Germany to further discuss Tehran's nuclear program.

Iran's leaders maintain that their nation's nuclear program is intended solely for peaceful purposes, but many in the West believe Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons capabilities.

Low-enriched nuclear fuel can be further enriched into weapons-grade material.

By Ivan Watson
CNN

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) - Pakistani troops have seized a key village in the Taliban stronghold region of South Waziristan, a senior Pakistani military official said Saturday.

"Kotkai village has been captured by the military," said the official who did not want to be named because he is not authorized to talk to the media.

Kotkai has been a major target because it is the hometown of the Pakistani Taliban's leader Hakimullah Mehsud, as well as of Qari Hussain, believed to be behind some of the deadliest suicide bomb attacks in Pakistan.

The development comes a day after the military said it had captured one of the heights overlooking Kotkai.

The Pakistani military launched its long-awaited offensive against Taliban militants in South Waziristan a week ago, which the military said faced stiff resistance from militants in South Waziristan.

On Friday, the army reported one soldier was killed in fighting around Kotkai. The military said another soldier was killed in a different part of the mountainous district, where militants "are firing rockets from different locations on advancing forces."

International journalists and aid workers have been barred from traveling to South Waziristan.

(CNN) - Environmentalists kept a wary eye on the skies over northeastern Puerto Rico Friday, watching a chemical-laden plume of grey smoke emanating from the explosion and fires of 15 fuel tanks at a Caribbean Petroleum Corp. storage facility.

They're worried about acid rain and dangerous air pollution levels, depending mainly on which way the wind blows.

"Whatever there might be inside this plume will rain down into our water sources," said Camilla Feibelman, Coordinator of the Puerto Rico Chapter of the Sierra Club.

As trade winds move the cloud westward, there's also the potential for contamination of drinking water on the west side of the island, but only if the plume travels that far, she added. Rains could also affect Las Cucharillas Marsh, wetlands in Catano, just north of Bayamon, Puerto Rico, the site of the blast.

(CNN) - The candidate who will face Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a runoff election next month said Friday that he won't join Karzai's government if the incumbent wins another term, but instead will remain in opposition.

Abdullah Abdullah, who served as foreign minister in Karzai's government until quitting nearly four years ago, said he would congratulate Karzai if he "is elected through a transparent and credible process."

"My trust in becoming a candidate was not to be part of the same government, part of the same deteriorating situation," told CNN's John King in an interview taped for broadcast on Sunday's "State of the Union."

"Mine was for a change in this country. Mine was for bringing hopes for the people of this country, and making the people of Afghanistan true participants in their politics, in the governance, in the developmental process, in the security situation and as a whole."

Abdullah and other charged massive fraud in the August 20 vote. The initial results gave Karzai the win, but a subsequent review by a U.N.-backed panel of election monitors threw out nearly one-third of Karzai's votes because of "clear and convincing evidence of fraud."

The result left Karzai short of the 50 percent need to avoid a runoff. After a flurry of meetings with U.S. and U.N. officials, the Afghan president agreed to the November 7 vote.

In a separate CNN interview to be broadcast Sunday on "Fareed Zakaria GPS," Karzai insisted that while there were "mistakes" and "some incidents of fraud" in the election, "the election as a whole was clean."