World IN BRIEF : RUSSIA : Plane Feared to Have Crashed; 97 Aboard

An Aeroflot plane with 97 people aboard disappeared from radar screens in Russia’s Far East and was presumed to have crashed, an official spokesman said. The TU-154 plane was en route from Yuzhno Sakhalinsk on the Pacific island of Sakhalin to Khabarovsk on the mainland when it lost radio contact, said spokesman Vasily Yurchuk of the Emergency Situations Ministry in Moscow. Radio monitors in Japan quoted Radio Moscow as saying the plane had been spotted in flames on the ground about 120 miles from Khabarovsk. That account was denied by the ministry.