New Year festivities in China ended in tragedy for one family when a cousin set off explosives at table over a land dispute, killing himself and four others, state media and a neighbor said Monday.

The man, surnamed Liao, had travelled home to his village in the central province of Hunan for the first time in years to celebrate the Lunar New Year -- the most important holiday of the year for the Chinese -- the Xinhua news agency said.

President Goodluck Jonathan visited Nigeria's second largest city of Kano on Sunday after at least 166 people were killed in one of the deadliest waves of attacks in the mainly Muslim north.

Jonathan, facing the biggest crisis of his rule, arrived in the city two days after the coordinated bombings and gunbattles rocked Kano in attacks claimed by the Islamist militant group Boko Haram.

An Afghan soldier who shot dead four French troops has said he did it because of a recent video showing U.S. Marines urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban insurgents, security sources told Agence France Presse.

The attack on the soldiers, who were unarmed, came on Friday at a base in eastern Afghanistan and left 15 other French troops wounded, eight of them seriously.

France insisted Sunday it reserved the right to decide on a possible early pullout of forces from Afghanistan despite Washington saying Paris had vowed to ensure the mission's "strength and effectiveness."

The apparent differences between the two NATO allies emerged after a renegade Afghan soldier on Friday shot dead four unarmed French troops and wounded 15 others at a base in the east of the country.

Four Bulgarian nationals were killed and 26 people were injured in a bus crash in Turkey close to the Bulgarian border, the foreign ministry in Sofia said Sunday.

The crash occurred Saturday evening as the bus, which belonged to a Turkish company registered in Bulgaria, was travelling from Istanbul to Silistra in northeastern Bulgaria, the ministry said in a statement.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has cancelled a Brussels visit Monday in order to follow the French Senate's vote on a bill criminalizing the denial of Armenian genocide, a spokesman said.

"We decided to postpone this trip in order to stay in Turkey, regardless of the outcome of the vote at the French Senate," the ministry spokesman told Agence France Presse on Sunday.

Taliban militants have released a video showing the execution of 15 Pakistani soldiers whose bodies were found earlier this month after they were kidnapped in northwestern Pakistan.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan had claimed responsibility for the killings.

Croatians went to the polls Sunday in a nationwide referendum on EU membership, a vote that political leaders see as key for the future of the Balkan country 20 years after independence.

Surveys show that some 60 percent of Croatians back entry into the European Union, paving the way for the former Yugoslav republic to formally join the bloc in 2013.

A 6.2 magnitude earthquake struck near Mexico's southern coast on Saturday, U.S. Geological Survey seismologists said, but initial reports indicated there were no injuries.

The quake occurred at a depth of 66 kilometers some 57 kilometers southwest of Mapastepec, in Chiapas state, and was felt as far away as San Salvador, the capital of El Salvador.

Claims by French President Nicolas Sarkozy that Iran is seeking to develop a nuclear weapon are "baseless and far from reality," Iranian foreign ministry's spokesman said on Saturday.

"Apparently by making false claims, the French president wants to put pressure on Iran... (by forcing the imposition of) illegal and unfair sanctions," Ramin Mehmanparast said in a statement posted on the state broadcaster website.