Iran media on Wednesday slammed a proposal made by world powers seeking to scale back Tehran's nuclear program as "unbalanced" and failing to address other outstanding issues.

State media, including the Islamic Republic News Agency, all called the proposal made to Iranian officials in talks in Baghdad "outdated, not comprehensive and unbalanced."

A strong 6.1-magnitude undersea earthquake rattled northeast Japan at around midnight on Wednesday, but there were neither immediate reports of damage nor tsunami alert.

The quake hit at 1502 GMT at a depth of 40 kilometers (25 miles), the U.S. Geological Survey said, 120 kilometers from the city of Hakodate, on the northern Hokkaido island.

Russia is ready to host direct talks between the Syrian regime and rebel representatives, a top official said Wednesday, in a bid to end 14 months of bloodshed that has claimed over 10,000 lives.

Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said peace mediator Kofi Annan's deputy was trying to secure agreement with the fractured foreign-based Syrian opposition on who could meet Bashar Assad's Vice President Farouq al-Sharaa.

A front runner in Egypt's presidential election, former premier Ahmed Shafiq, told Agence France Presse Wednesday the country would face "huge problems" if his Islamist rivals won as Egyptians flocked to the polls on the first day of voting.

Shafiq added that voters had made a "mistake" by allowing the Muslim Brotherhood to win in earlier parliamentary elections.

Speculation was rife on Wednesday among Syrian anti-regime activists over the alleged "killing" of President Bashar Assad's brother-in-law who is also Syria's deputy defense minister.

Assef Shawkat, former head of military intelligence, was poisoned, according to anti-regime activists. The authorities in Damascus could not be reached for comment and have not responded publicly to the claim.

A roadside bomb exploded near a bus carrying Lebanese Shiite pilgrims in a Sunni area of western Iraq on Wednesday, killing three and wounding 10 others, Iraqi police and medical sources said.

"A roadside bomb exploded in the Khamsat Kilo area as a bus carrying Lebanese pilgrims... passed on the highway, killing three of them and wounding 10," a first lieutenant in the Anbar provincial police said, referring to an area west of the provincial capital Ramadi.

Britain's Supreme Court said on Wednesday it will give its judgment in the case of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's long-running fight against extradition to Sweden on May 30.

The court announced the date in a statement on its website, saying the judgment would start at 9:15 am (0815 GMT) next Wednesday and would last around 10 minutes.

The mayor of one of the largest cities in Japan, where body art is associated with gangsters, has told municipal workers to forget about promotion unless they reveal whether or not they have a tattoo.

Toru Hashimoto, the hugely popular mayor of Osaka and a rising star on the national political stage, described the order to about 34,000 city workers earlier this month as "necessary for labor affairs management.”

Russia said on Wednesday that Iran was ready to hold serious talks on its nuclear program that could lead to a gradual lifting of sanctions in exchange for broader transparency from Tehran.

"We have a clear understanding... that Iran is ready to agree on concrete actions," Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters, without elaborating.

Afghan intelligence agents on Wednesday arrested five suicide bombers with hundreds of kilos of explosives near Kabul international airport.

"We have arrested five suicide attackers with 560 kilograms of explosives in a minivan just near the gate of Kabul international airport," National Directorate of Security (NDS) spokesman Lutfullah Mashal told Agence France Presse.