World Briefs

AMSTERDAM – A Turkish Airlines plane carrying 135 people slammed into a muddy field while attempting to land at Amsterdam's main airport in misty weather Wednesday. Nine people were killed and more than 50 were injured, many seriously, officials said.

The Boeing 737-800, en route from Istanbul to Amsterdam, broke into three pieces when it hit the ground short of a runway at Schiphol Airport. The fuselage split in two, close to the cockpit, and the tail broke off. The crash site is about two miles (three kilometers) from the runway.

BUSHEHR, Iran – Iranian and Russian engineers carried out a test-run of Iran's first nuclear power plant Wednesday, a major step toward starting up a facility that the U.S. once hoped to prevent because of fears over Tehran's nuclear ambitions.

Washington worried Iran would turn spent fuel from the plant's reactor into plutonium, which could then be used to build a nuclear warhead, and U.S. officials pressured Moscow for years to stop helping Iran build the electricity-generating facility.

GENEVA – The emergence of new drug resistant malaria at the Thai-Cambodian border could "seriously undermine" efforts to bring the disease under control, the World Health Organization said Wednesday.

"Surveillance systems and research studies.. are providing new evidence that parasites resistant to artemisinin have emerged along the border between Cambodia and Thailand where workers walk for miles every day to clear forests," said the WHO in a statement.

FORT-DE-FRANCE, Martinique – Vandals burned cars and looted stores in Martinique overnight, police said Wednesday, as violence spread to a second French Caribbean island in protests over high prices, low pay and alleged neglect by officials in Paris.

About 20 people were detained following the outburst in Fort-de-France, the island's chief city. Protesters burned at least five cars, and a small grocery store. Several stores also were looted, but no one was injured.

BOGOTA – Two more top deputies resigned from Colombia's domestic spy agency on Tuesday as prosecutors investigate allegations of improper eavesdropping on journalists, Supreme Court judges and opposition members.

The Department of Administrative Security, or DAS, announced in a statement the resignation of its deputy directors of analysis and operations, Gustavo Sierra and Marta Leal, without elaborating on the departures.