Australia's domestic spy agency Thursday played down concerns that maps shown in a media briefing revealing the source of homegrown fighters travelling to the Middle East were classified, after fears their publication was a security breach.

The maps, which revealed the Sydney and Melbourne suburbs where fighters heading to join jihadists came from, were photographed and filmed by journalists during a meeting Wednesday between Prime Minister Tony Abbott and spy chief Duncan Lewis.

North Korea issued a call to arms against "gangster U.S. imperialists" in a statement released Thursday to mark the 65th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War.

The Stalinist state's powerful National Defense Commission (NDC) made the appeal on the anniversary of the devastating conflict which the North maintains was started by the United States.

Top U.S. diplomat John Kerry warned Wednesday there would be no deal with Iran if it fails to satisfy all lingering questions about its nuclear program, as he prepares to head back to tough negotiations.

Firing the starting gun on what is set to be the last phase of a grueling diplomatic marathon to stop Iran acquiring a nuclear bomb, the State Department announced Kerry would be leaving on Friday for Vienna.

President Barack Obama urged Beijing to take "concrete steps" to ease tensions over cyber hacking and its wide-ranging maritime claims, as the United States and China ended three days of candid talks.

American officials have voiced deep concerns about both issues at the annual strategic and economic dialogue aimed at setting guidelines to steer future ties between the world's two leading economies.

A second prison worker was arrested and charged Wednesday over the escape of two convicted killers weeks ago from a maximum-security New York jail, with police warning they are likely armed and dangerous.

Richard Matt, 49, and David Sweat, 35, used power tools to cut their way out of their cells at the Clinton Correctional Facility before dawn on June 6 in a spectacular prison break likened to a Hollywood movie.

Human Rights Watch accused some of Colombia's top generals Wednesday of links to the "generalized and systematic" execution of civilians, who were then presented as felled FARC guerrillas.

The Colombian military has been under fire for years over the so-called "false positives" scandal, in which army units are accused of killing hundreds of civilians, mostly poor young men, from 2002 to 2008 and reporting them as rebels or drug traffickers killed in combat.

The United Nations said Wednesday that around a quarter of Congolese militia group the Patriotic Revolutionary Forces of Ituri(FRPI) had been "neutralized" after a three-week military operation. 

The Congolese army, backed by U.N. peacekeeping troops, launched an offensive against the FRPI in early June -- leaving 35 people dead, 52 wounded, and 36 captured alive, according to Martin Kobler, head of the U.N.'s MONUSCO mission in the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

The U.S. Treasury on Wednesday named senior Taliban official Maulawi Abdul Rashid Baluch, arrested by Afghan authorities a year ago, as a "Specially Designated Global Terrorist."

The Treasury said Rashid had been the Taliban's shadow governor of Nimroz province in the country's southwest, where he helped arrange bombs and deployed suicide bombers aimed at coalition forces and Afghan officials.

Boston bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on Wednesday apologized in court for the first time to his victims for the suffering he caused, moments before being formally sentenced to death by a federal judge.

The U.S. citizen of Chechen descent was sentenced to death on six counts over the 2013 bombings, one of the worst assaults on U.S. soil since the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The parliament of ex-Soviet Tajikistan passed a law Wednesday annulling the citizenship of nationals fighting abroad with militant organizations including the radical Islamic State group active in Iraq and Syria.

"People will automatically be stripped of their citizenship of the republic of Tajikistan if they fight in the ranks of terrorist groups and organizations abroad," Zarif Alizoda, the central Asian country's human rights ombudsman said in parliament.