South Carolina

Vice president to stand in for Bush at Thurmond funeral

Vice President Dick Cheney will represent President Bush at the funeral of Strom Thurmond on Tuesday, the White House says.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld also will go to the First Baptist Church in Columbia to pay respects to the former Republican senator, said state Sen. John Courson.

Further details of the service have not been released.

Thurmond’s body will lie in state at the South Carolina Statehouse today, Monday and Tuesday. He will be buried with full military honors and laid to rest in a family plot at the Willowbrook Cemetery in Edgefield.

Northern Ireland

Prisoners end protest atop main prison

Convicted Protestant and Catholic militants broke onto the roof of Northern Ireland’s main prison and spent the night there to protest having to share quarters in the low-security facility.

Eight inmates, including members from paramilitary groups on both sides of the Northern Ireland conflict, climbed atop their building at Maghaberry Prison around 6:45 p.m. Friday and refused to come down.

The prisoners kept guards at bay partly by pretending to have discovered a bomb in the prison. Guards summoned British army experts to inspect a suspicious package that turned out to contain no explosives.

The protest ended peacefully Saturday when the eight inmates climbed back to their rooms without intervention by the guards. Prison officials launched an inquiry into how the inmates breached security so easily.

Afghanistan

Patrolling U.S. troops in firefight with insurgents

Insurgents attacked U.S. troops in southeastern Afghanistan, sparking a gunbattle in which American helicopters were called in for strikes, the military said Saturday.

Meanwhile, a U.S. Army soldier died Saturday when his vehicle flipped over elsewhere in the southeast of the country, the military said. An investigation was under way to determine the cause of the accident, which occurred near a U.S. base in Orgun in Paktika province.

The gunbattle erupted Friday elsewhere in Paktika province — near a U.S. base in Shkin, a volatile town near the Pakistan border, U.S. military spokesman Col. Rodney Davis said in a statement.

Thailand

Asia Pacific ministers pledge openness about diseases

Asia Pacific health ministers pledged Saturday to share more information about SARS and other infectious diseases to stem future epidemics that could threaten the region’s public and economic health.

While screening measures have lowered the risk of the virus spreading, “we are fully aware … that this is only the start,” the ministers from Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum countries said in a joint statement.

The ministers agreed to share all relevant information immediately with the World Health Organization and through an APEC network set up to monitor emerging diseases.