Vatican Roman Catholic cardinals set April 18 as the date they will start electing a successor to Pope John Paul II, as a million pilgrims massed at the Vatican determined to pay their final respects. Iraq Iraqi MPs chose Kurdish former rebel leader Jalal Talabani as the country's first freely elected president, paving the way for a new government more than two months after landmark polls. Afghanistan A US military helicopter went down in southeastern Afghanistan, killing 16 people and leaving two others missing, in the worst crash suffered by US-led forces since they toppled the Taliban in late 2001. North Ireland Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams urged his party's military wing, the IRA, to take an "historic" decision to abandon the armed struggle and engage in the democratic political process in Northern Ireland. Monaco Monaco was mourning the death of Prince Rainier, the 81-year-old leader who transformed the tiny Mediterranean state into a thriving modern economy and touched the world with his fairy-tale marriage to Grace Kelly. India India's prime minister pledged that the first trans-Kashmir bus service in almost 60 years would go ahead as planned despite a bloody attack by militants on a complex housing passengers. Vatican Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian will attend Pope John Paul II's funeral in Rome, a move sure to anger China which regards the island as part of its territory, the foreign ministry said. South Africa Ivory Coast leaders declared an end to a two-and-a-half-year civil war that has left the west African country, once one of the continent's most prosperous and stable nations, divided and ruined. Zimbabwe Zimbabwe's opposition accused President Robert Mugabe's ruling party of stealing last week's elections as it released a list of irregularities in 30 constituencies that it said showed "massive fraud" in the elections. Netherlands A Dutch court acquitted a Dutch national of Moroccan origin of planning terror attacks on government buildings, only sentencing him to three months in prison for illegal firearms possession.