EVENTS

INDIANA PLANE CRASH PROBED Investigators are trying to discover why American Eagle Flight 4184 from Indianapolis to Chicago crashed Oct. 31 about 60 miles short of its destination, killing all 64 passengers and four crew members. Witnesses said wreckage of the twin-engine propjet was scattered across a muddy 40-acre soybean field in northwest Indiana, 30 miles south of Gary. Cold rain and wind were impeding the probe. Highway workers labored through the night to build a temporary gravel road to the site. Witnesses said there was driving rain when the plane went down. The plane's cockpit voice-recorder was recovered and the flight-recorder was being sought, Jim Hall, chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, said Nov. 1. Mr. Hall told ABC news that ``airplanes operate every day in this type of weather. We'll have to look to see whether there were any unusual weather occurrences that might cause the result.'' He stressed that NTSB investigators would also study all other possible causes. Jackson decries campaign

For Jesse Jackson, a veteran of some of the fiercest civil rights battles of the past generation, this midterm campaign is ``the most painful season of political involvement I've seen in my adult life, frankly.'' In the 1960s, ``there was some sense of guilt and shame, even repentance, about racial injustice,'' said the Rev. Mr. Jackson at a Monitor breakfast Nov. 1. Now, he says, ``the sense of shame is gone.'' Many of the campaign messages on crime and welfare this year are racist in effect, he says. ``When [Georgia Republican Congressman Newt] Gingrich says, `There's nothing in Haiti worth spending one American life,' what he's really saying is it's an all-black country,'' Jackson said.

Rebels reject Mexican talks

Indian rebels in Chiapas state said Oct. 31 that they will not resume peace talks until the Mexican government solves the murders of three prominent Mexicans. The rebels also demanded independent observers be sent to the southern state to monitor activities by the Mexican Army, which they claim is harassing them.

Russia cuts oil to Cuba

Russia has suspended oil shipments to Cuba because the former Soviet client state has run out of sugar to repay its debt, a news agency reported Nov. 1. Under an agreement, Russia was to deliver 2.5 millions tons of oil to Cuba and it was to receive about a million tons of sugar in return, ITAR-Tass said.

Sun-particle probe

NASA launched a spacecraft Nov. 1 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a mission to study the charged particles that continuously hurtle from the sun and can black out cities and interrupt communications.