South Korea's president opened the door Monday to possible nuclear talks with North Korea and warned the neighboring country to avoid any provocations, saying the Korean peninsula is at a crucial turning point.

Lee Myung-bak's comments in a nationally televised speech come as the young son of the late Kim Jong Il takes power in North Korea as Supreme Commander of the military and ruling party leader after Kim's death last month. The North vowed Sunday in a New Year's message that it would bolster its military and defend the son, Kim Jong Un, "unto death."

Pakistan on Sunday detained three Iranian border guards after they allegedly crossed the border and shot at a car, killing a Pakistani national, local Pakistani officials said.

The Iranians reached Mazan Sar Mashkail, in Washuk district, three kilometers inside Pakistan where they opened fire on a vehicle they were chasing, according to officials in Pakistan's Baluchistan province.

The home of former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani Sadr near Paris was burgled overnight and cash stolen, police and his daughter said Sunday.

Police were called to Bani Sadr's Versailles home which was empty at the time of the break-in early on New Year's Day, police said.

Eight people died and 44 were injured on Sunday during an attempted jail break in the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo's Sud-Kivu province, police said.

The casualties occurred at the Bukavu central prison after a grenade exploded in the hands of an inmate, senior regional police official Gaston Luzembo told Agence France Presse.

Three Pakistani soldiers and an anti-Taliban fighter were killed on Sunday in two separate bomb attacks in Pakistan, officials said.

The first incident took place in Salarzai town, about 20 kilometers northeast of Khar, the main city in Bajaur tribal district along the Afghan border when a remote-controlled bomb hit a shop, killing an anti-Taliban militiaman and wounding three others, an official said.

Iran defiantly announced on Sunday that it had tested a new missile and made an advance in its nuclear program after the United States unleashed extra sanctions that sent its currency to a record low.

The developments raised the stakes in a budding confrontation between the longtime foes, as concerns mounted that Iran could make good on threats to close the world's most important oil route, the Strait of Hormuz, if it is backed into a wall.

Iran's central bank will confront new U.S. sanctions with "strength," President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday, a day after U.S. leader Barack Obama signed into law extra measures against the institution.

"The central bank is the backbone of dealing with the enemies' pressure and it must with strength and self-confidence have the solidity to eliminate all of the enemies' plots," he told an annual assembly of the bank's senior officials, according to a statement on the presidency website.

Five people were killed in a New Year's Eve hand grenade attack and shooting in a bar in the eastern Kenyan town of Garissa near the border with Somalia, police said Sunday.

"There was an explosion in a club in town shortly before midnight (Saturday) and five people died," a senior police officer at Northeast provincial headquarters told AFP.

New Year's festivities in Italy turned deadly when firecrackers blew up a home killing a 31-year-old man, and a ricocheting bullet from celebratory gunfire took another life, Italian media reported Sunday.

Despite a ban on firecrackers in Italy's main cities and thousands of towns across the country, 561 people were injured according to police figures, including 76 children, many suffering burns to the hands or eyes.

At least 50 people were killed in clashes between two neighboring communities in Nigeria's southeastern Ebonyi state, a government spokesman said Sunday.

"Upwards of 50 people were killed when a group of people from Ezza community attacked residents of neighboring Ezilo community over a land dispute," the Onyekachi Eni told AFP by telephone.