World

Secretary of State Powell resumes efforts to secure a Palestinian-Israeli cease-fire today, with a possible meeting with Yasser Arafat. On side trips Monday to Lebanon and Syria, Powell faced anti-US protests and tough political talk. The visits were aimed at gauging support for a regional peace conference proposed by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon – one that would not include Arafat. Powell also pressed Damascus and Beirut to rein in Hizbullah guerrilla attacks on northern Israel, which threaten a widening conflict. (Related story, page 3.)

With Red Cross teams acting as monitors, Palestinian medics began recovering their dead in the West Bank refugee camp of Jenin, scene of the heaviest fighting of Israel's 18-day-old military operation. The Israeli Supreme Court Sunday rejected an army plan for mass burials. Palestinians claim hundreds died in the camp, many of them civilians. Israel has put that number at a few dozen, and maintains most were armed men. Neither assertion could be independently confirmed. Above, Palestinian women and children pass an Israeli checkpoint in Bethlehem, where a standoff continues at the Church of the Nativity.

New videos show Osama bin Laden kneeling as his top deputy Ayman al-Zawahri declares the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks "a great victory." The footage is among brief excerpts broadcast by the Arab satellite-TV station Al Jazeera Monday. Another clip features a man identified as one of the Sept. 11 hijackers. The editor-in-chief of Qatar-based Al Jazeera said it wasn't clear when the tape was made, but that some material "seems very recent."

At least 115 people were reported dead following the crash of an Air China jetliner in Pusan, South Korea's second-largest city. There were 39 survivors. A South Korean transport official said the Boeing 767 aircraft with China's national carrier was blown off course by strong winds and struck a mountain as it tried to land.

Afghanistan's former king, Mohammad Zahir Shah, will return home this week, according to an official in Italy, where he has lived in exile since 1973. Earlier plans for the trip were delayed amid reports that remnants of Taliban and Al Qaeda forces planned to target the ex-monarch as part of a destabilization campaign.

Rowdy opposition lawmakers disrupted a session of India's parliament, demanding removal of the chief minister of Gujarat state for failing to stop Hindu-Muslim violence that has claimed more than 800 lives. The minister belongs to the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party.