At least four people died when an Antonov AN-24 plane with dozens of football fans on board made an emergency landing Wednesday in the eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk, officials said.

"Most passengers have been rescued. Right now, we have four dead," local governor Andrey Shyshatsky told reporters at the airport.

The U.S. government has not denied health insurance to the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden despite a magazine article that implied otherwise, officials said Wednesday.

In a lengthy profile this week in Esquire magazine, the commando -- whose identity was kept secret -- is portrayed as a neglected hero who must buy private health insurance and struggle to earn income after retiring from a 16-year career in uniform.

European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton on Wednesday said she hoped Iran would show some "flexibility" at upcoming talks with world powers on its nuclear program in Kazakhstan.

Iran and the so-called P5+1 -- Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany -- are due to resume discussions in Almaty on February 26, after a months-long break and failed meetings in Istanbul, Baghdad and Moscow.

Turkey's Islamic-rooted government is set to submit a new legal package that would tune its often criticized anti-terrorism laws to European standards, parliamentary sources said Wednesday.

"The changes we have prepared will enable Turkey to move forward in the path of the rule of law and expand freedom of expression," said Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin.

French construction firms Vinci and Bouygues said Wednesday they had evacuated as a precaution around 80 employees from the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine after a section of the roof collapsed.

The two companies are working on constructing the sarcophagus structure covering the reactor that exploded in 1986 in the world's worst nuclear disaster.

Pakistan's government on Wednesday urged the Taliban to announce a 30-day ceasefire as a precursor to peace talks which the militants offered earlier this month, adding the nation had rejected their campaign of terror.

The umbrella Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) faction has stepped up attacks in recent months, leading to fears that violence could mar general elections scheduled to take place by mid-May.

An unemployed Frenchman died Wednesday after setting himself on fire outside the state employment agency in the western city of Nantes, police said.

The man had sent messages to journalists warning he would self-immolate this week after being declared ineligible for unemployment benefits.

Iran on Wednesday announced an upgrade to its uranium enrichment machines, upping the ante even as U.N. experts were holding talks in Tehran on the Islamic republic's controversial nuclear drive.

The announcement comes despite a warning by Washington that an Iranian upgrade would violate U.N. resolutions and claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Tehran is moving closer to making a nuclear bomb.

Zimbabwe's prime minister announced Wednesday that the country will hold a constitutional referendum in March followed by elections in July, a timetable that will decide the fate of veteran President Robert Mugabe.

"There will be a referendum in March," said Morgan Tsvangirai, Mugabe's rival in the power sharing government.

South Korea said Wednesday it would accelerate the development of longer-range ballistic missiles that could cover the whole of North Korea in response to a third nuclear test by Pyongyang.

"We will speed up the development of ballistic missiles with a range of 800 kilometers (500 miles)," Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-Seok told reporters.