A group of anti-North Korea activists in Seoul on Sunday launched leaflets that criticized the North's new leader and urged its people to rise up against the communist regime, a group leader said.

About 70 activists floated large gas-filled balloons carrying some 50,000 leaflets and instant noodles after an anti-Pyngyang rally at Imjingak, a tourist site near the border north of Seoul, said Choi Woo-Won.

A major 7.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Tokyo Sunday as Emperor Akihito led Japan's New Year celebrations by urging people to work together in rebuilding the nation from March's quake-tsunami disaster.

The tremor struck at 2:28pm (0528 GMT) with its focus deep at about 370 kilometers (230 miles), Japan's Meteorological Agency said. The U.S. Geological Survey put the depth at 348 kilometers.

Top negotiator Saeed Jalili said Iran was ready to rejoin EU-led talks with major powers on assuaging Western concerns over its nuclear program even as tensions with the United States soared in the Gulf.

"We will give a resounding and many-pronged response to any threat against the Islamic Republic of Iran," Jalili told Iranian diplomats gathered in Tehran in comments reported on Saturday.

French defense Minister Gerard Longuet held talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai Saturday on a two-day visit to Afghanistan to meet troops over the New Year.

Longuet touched down in Kabul two days after the death of two French Foreign Legion soldiers who were shot dead by a man wearing an Afghan army uniform in eastern Kapisa province.

Russian riot police arrested dozens of people on Saturday in Moscow and Saint Petersburg who tried to stage unsanctioned New Year's Eve protests against 12 years of Vladimir Putin's dominant rule.

The show of police force marked the first time the authorities had cracked down on members of the Russian opposition since allowing two massive rallies on December 10 and December 24.

Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan on Saturday declared a state of emergency in areas hard hit by violence blamed on Islamist sect Boko Haram and ordered the closure of part of the country's borders.

He announced the measures after branding Boko Haram a "cancerous" body that was bent on destroying Africa's most populous country and vowing that the group blamed for a wave of bloody attacks would be crushed.

A British soldier has been killed in an explosion while on foot patrol in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defense said Saturday, becoming the 46th Briton to die there this year.

"It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defense must announce the death of a soldier from 1st Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment on 30th December 2011 in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province," a statement said.

The United Nations has reinforced its peacekeepers in the flashpoint South Sudan town of Pibor and is airlifting food to the region, where tribal violence has prompted thousands to flee, a senior U.N. official said Saturday.

"We have deployed a battalion-sized force in Pibor to support the government to protect civilians," Lise Grande, the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for South Sudan, told Agence France Presse, adding that the provision of food aid was an "urgent step.”

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday said there was nothing unusual in the mass protests against his domination of Russia, describing the turbulence as the "unavoidable price of democracy.”

Tens of thousands took to the streets on December 10 and December 24 to denounce the alleged rigging of parliamentary elections and the Russian strongman himself, ahead of his candidacy in March presidential polls.

Iran's navy is about to test-fire a variety of missiles in war games in the Strait of Hormuz, a spokesman said Saturday, underlining Tehran's threat to close the strategic oil waterway if new Western sanctions are applied.

Commodore Mahmoud Mousavi told the state television network IRIB: "In the next days, we will test-fire all kinds of surface-to-sea, sea-to-sea and surface-to-air as well as shoulder-launched missiles."