North Korea test-fired three short-range missiles into the sea between Japan and the Korean peninsula this week, a report said Friday.

The hermit state lobbed the missiles into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) on Wednesday, Japan's Sankei Shimbun newspaper quoted anonymous Japanese government sources as saying.

Ali Larijani, the influential speaker of Iran's parliament, said Thursday during a visit to Turkey that his country was ready for "serious" talks with world powers on its controversial nuclear program.

In comments reported by the official IRNA news agency, Larijani said: "The negotiations can yield results if they are serious and not a game."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai Thursday strongly condemned a video appearing to show U.S. soldiers "desecrating" the corpses of slain insurgents by urinating on them.

"The government of Afghanistan is deeply disturbed by a video that shows American soldiers desecrating dead bodies of three Afghans," said a statement from the president's office.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Thursday vowed to end police repression in Russia and make government accountable, as he kicked off his campaign for presidential elections after mass protests.

In his manifesto for the March 2012 elections where he plans to take an unprecedented third Kremlin term, Putin also promised to build a strong Russia and retaliate against Western states that failed to listen to Moscow.

Members of Nigeria's Islamist Boko Haram could be guilty of crimes against humanity if they carried out systematic attacks on religious targets, U.N. human rights chief Navi Pillay warned Thursday.

"Members of Boko Haram and other groups and entities, if judged to have committed widespread or systematic attacks against a civilian population -- including on grounds such as religion or ethnicity -- could be found guilty of crimes against humanity," said a statement from Pillay.

Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani on Thursday held talks on Tehran's controversial nuclear program with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, a Turkish diplomatic source said.

The source said the fragile situation in Iraq, locked in a political standoff that has raised sectarian tensions after the withdrawal of U.S. troops, also featured during a breakfast meeting.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon on Thursday called for "vital" global support to rebuild Haiti two years after a catastrophic earthquake killed more than 200,000 people.

"The Secretary-General would like to honor the memory of the more than 200,000 people who perished in the tremor, including one hundred and two United Nations personnel," Ban's office said in a statement.

The Afghan Taliban Thursday denounced as "barbaric" a video apparently showing U.S. Marines urinating on dead Taliban fighters.

"This is a barbaric act. Over the past 10 years there have been hundreds of similar cases that were not revealed," Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahed told Agence France Presse.

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad slammed capitalism as bankrupt and called for a new world order Wednesday on a visit to Cuba, steering clear of the controversy over his country's nuclear program.

The Iranian leader arrived in Cuba for talks with his counterpart Raul Castro as the Islamic republic blamed Israel and the United States for the killing of a nuclear scientist in a Tehran car bombing.

North Korea said Thursday the preserved body of Kim Jong-Il would go on permanent display in a Pyongyang palace also housing his father, and memorial towers would be built nationwide to honor the late leader.

"Great leader Kim Jong-Il will be preserved to look the same as when he was alive, at Kumsusan Memorial Palace," the official KCNA news agency reported.