Powell reaches Israel, will talk to both sides

JERUSALEM - Secretary of State Colin Powell embarked Sunday on a mission to revive the Middle East peace process after Yasser Arafat's death, saying he will ask Israel to help with the upcoming Palestinian election to pick a successor.

Israel said it would consider pulling back troops from disputed areas in the West Bank.

On his way to the Middle East, Powell told reporters on his plane that U.S.-Palestinian cooperation in setting up the elections "will encourage a degree of cooperation that can spread into other areas."

Powell arrived in Israel hours after Assistant Secretary of State William Burns held talks with both sides, becoming the first senior U.S. diplomat to meet with top Palestinians in several months. Powell has separate meetings scheduled with Israeli and Palestinian officials today.

ARAFAT'S RECORDS: Yasser Arafat's nephew arrived in Paris on Sunday to collect the Palestinian leader's medical records.

Nasser al-Kidwa, who is also the Palestinian representative to the United Nations, would not say when he would collect the records.

But he is expected to deliver them to the Palestinian Authority, which has promised to make public the cause of Arafat's death on Nov. 11.

VIOLENCE: Near Ramallah in Beitunia, Israeli special forces killed a Palestinian fugitive and two other militants in a car Sunday, the military said. The military said the Palestinians opened fire first. Palestinian security officials said the three were members of al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade, a violent offshoot of the ruling Fatah party.

Israeli troops also shot and killed an armed Palestinian who tried to attack a Gaza road used by Jewish settlers, the Israeli army and Palestinian Islamic Jihad said.

British company releasing

JFK assassination game

GLASGOW, Scotland - A British company said Sunday it is releasing a video game recreating the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

David Smith, a spokesman for the president's brother, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., called the game "despicable."

The Glasgow firm Traffic said JFK Reloaded is an educational "docu-game" that will help disprove conspiracy theories about Kennedy's death. The game is due to be released today, the 41st anniversary of the shooting in Dallas.

Traffic's managing director, Kirk Ewing, said the game - available as an Internet download for $9.99 - will "stimulate a younger generation of players to take an interest in this fascinating episode of American history."

Passenger plane crash kills 54 in China

BEIJING - A passenger plane crashed in an ice-covered lake in northern China seconds after takeoff Sunday, killing all 53 people aboard and one person on the ground after an apparent midair explosion, the government said.

There was no immediate word on the cause of the crash, the country's deadliest in more than two years and was a setback to efforts to improve air safety after a string of accidents in the 1990s.

The China Eastern Airlines plane went down in Baotou, a city in the Inner Mongolia region 330 miles northwest of Beijing, "only about a dozen seconds" after takeoff at 8:20 a.m., the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Elsewhere...

CARIBBEAN QUAKE: A strong earthquake shook the Caribbean islands of Dominica and Guadeloupe early Sunday, killing a 3-year-old boy in Guadeloupe, destroying numerous homes and knocking out power to thousands of people. The temblor had a preliminary magnitude of 6.0, said John Minsch, a seismologist at the U.S. National Earthquake Information Service.

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