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."

A bomb ripped through a military vehicle Saturday killing two Pakistani soldiers in a village in the restive northwestern tribal area bordering Afghanistan, a security official said.

The remote-controlled bomb planted on a roadside hit a patrol party leading a convoy of security forces at Boya village, some 20 kilometers west of Miranshah, the main town of troubled North Waziristan tribal district.

Twelve mourners were killed when their packed pickup truck collided with a passenger bus as they travelled to the funeral of a relative in northeastern Thailand, police said Saturday.

Ten women and two men, many of whom were sitting in the open-top rear of the truck, were killed instantly in the smash in Buriram province. Four other people were injured.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai on Saturday welcomed remarks from the Obama administration saying that Taliban insurgents were not America's enemies.

Earlier this month, Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview with Newsweek magazine that the Islamist militants did not represent a threat to U.S. interests unless they continued to shelter al-Qaida.