WASHINGTON -- Deals of immunity weren't offered to Blackwater guards for statements on the deadly shootout in Iraq in September, a U.S. State Department official said.The statement the senior official gave CNN Tuesday contradicts comments made Monday by a U.S. government official who said the guards were promised their statements would not be used against them in any prosecution as a result of the Sept. 16 shootings in Baghdad in which 17 Iraqi civilians died.Blackwater ... [full story]

UNION VALE, N.Y. -- The Rev. Al Sharpton says U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney should publicly apologize for hunting at a gun club that displays the Confederate flag.Cheney hunted Monday at the exclusive Clove Valley Rod & Gun Club in Union Vale, N.Y., where a 5-foot Confederate flag visibly hangs in an open-doored garage attached to the club headquarters, the New York Post reported Tuesday.A spokesman for the vice president said Cheney never saw the ... [full story]

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic -- Tropical Storm Noel screamed across the Dominican Republic and Haiti late Monday, leaving behind a trail of death and destruction.Dominican Republic national emergency official Manuel Antonio Luna Paulino said least 20 people were reported killed and 20 more were missing as flooding and mudslides swept the Caribbean island nation, the Palm Beach Post reported. While there were no initial reports of fatalities in neighboring Haiti, that country's terrain heightened concern ... [full story]

JERUSALEM -- Hamas vowed Monday to overthrow Fatah and take control of the West bank within a year."Next fall we shall pray in Ramallah," senior Hamas official Nizar Riyan told a rally in Gaza, where Hamas gained control after ousting Fatah last June, The Jerusalem Post reported.In response, a senior member of the Palestine Liberation Organization predicted Hamas would fail. Riyan "should be admitted to a mental institution," Yasser Abed Rabbo told the Post.Meanwhile, Israeli ... [full story]

N'DJAMENA, Chad -- The government of Chad has arrested 18 people, including some aid workers, on charges of trying to abduct more than 100 children aboard flights to Europe.Nine French detainees face charges of attempted child abduction and fraud, the prosecutor's office said, while seven Spaniards and two Chadians are charged with being accomplices, a BBC correspondent reported from N'Djamena.The aid workers are with the group Zoe's Ark, which maintains the children ranging in age ... [full story]

GARDEZ, Afghanistan -- Mercenaries from as far as Siberia are strengthening the ranks of the Taliban in Afghanistan, The New York Times reported Tuesday.Several hundred foreign fighters have been recruited to Afghanistan this year in the largest influx since 2001, the Times reported.The mercenaries are from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Siberia, several Arab countries and perhaps Turkey and western China, U.S. military officials told the Times, noting the foreign fighters are more uncontrollable and extreme than Taliban ... [full story]

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan -- A suicide bomber set off a blast Tuesday in the former capital of Pakistan, killing seven people including three Pakistani policemen, Geo TV reported.Other reports said the blast occurred in Rawalpindi near an area where Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf has an office but the leader apparently wasn't harmed. Rawalpindi was the capital of Pakistan before nearby Islamabad took its place and the old city is now largely a garrison headquarters.The GEO TV ... [full story]

TOKYO -- Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and opposition leader Ichiro Ozawa failed Tuesday to agree on the anti-terrorism refueling issue.The two leaders, however, agreed to meet again this week to break a deadlock on the issue, the Kyodo news service reported. The Fukuda government is pressing for Japanese vessels to continue to provide refueling facilities in the Indian Ocean to support the U.S.-led anti-terrorism operations in and around Afghanistan. The previous agreement on this ... [full story]

ANKARA, Turkey -- The Turkish military began an offensive against separatist Kurds in the southeast Tuesday, with air assaults on suspected guerrilla hide-outs.Witnesses told Alalam Satellite TV they saw helicopters firing rockets and bombing suspected positions in the province of Sirnak held by the guerrillas of the Kurdistan Workers Party, a group that wants an independent state carved from parts of Turkey and neighboring Iraq.The group is known by its Kurdish language initials of PKK ... [full story]

JERUSALEM -- Nearly 40 people, including police and paramedics, were injured in riots Tuesday in the mixed Galilee town of Peki'in, police reported.Various Israeli media outlets said the violence started over an attempt by some 200 border police to arrest a Palestinian youth suspected of trying to burn a cellular telephone antenna.At one point, a female border officer was held by villagers but following the release of several locals who had been arrested, she was ... [full story]