North Korea does not appear close to conducting a nuclear or missile test despite its continued preparations, a South Korean minister said Wednesday after a purge in Pyongyang sparked fears of aggression.

"Preparations have been made continuously... but I don't think a nuclear test or long-range missile launch is imminent," Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-Jae told a parliamentary committee.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry toured the typhoon-devastated central Philippine city of Tacloban on Wednesday, expressing shock at the "stunning" destruction and vowing that Washington will not abandon its key ally.

"This is a devastation unlike anything that I have ever seen at this scale," Kerry told reporters as he toured a temporary U.S. aid supply depot for survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan.

The number of journalists killed and imprisoned fell in 2013 but it was still the second worst year on record for reporters in prison, a U.S.-based watchdog said Wednesday.

So far this year, 52 journalists have been killed as a direct result of their work, down from 73 last year, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), based in New York.

Clashes between rival army factions in South Sudan have left up to 500 dead and 800 wounded, a top U.N. official told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday.

The United Nations has been told by local hospitals that between 400 and 500 people have been killed in South Sudan's capital since Sunday, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told the council, according to diplomats who attended a private briefing with him.

A U.S. operation to airlift some 850 Burundians into the Central African Republic to help restore security to the strife-torn nation should be completed this week, a top U.S. official said Tuesday.

Washington also welcomed Belgian plans to send up to 150 troops to join a French and African Union (AU) force, and revealed that it had a few American troops on the ground in Bangui to help with the airlift.

A gunman killed one person and critically injured two others before taking his own life Tuesday at a medical center in Nevada, police and witnesses said.

The incident occurred on the third floor of a building connected to the Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, where the injured were then treated, reports said.

Ex-NBA star Dennis Rodman does not represent the U.S. government, a U.S. official insisted Tuesday, as he prepares to return this week to Pyongyang only days after the execution of a former North Korean official.

State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf stressed that Washington was focused on working with allies to rein in North Korea's nuclear program.

Serbia on Tuesday won the European Union's blessing to kick off talks on joining the bloc on January 21 in recognition of its efforts in normalizing ties with Kosovo.

European affairs ministers set the date after having "acknowledged reform and normalization efforts" by the Balkan nation, the bloc's Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele said.

One of the men suspected of planning the September 11, 2001 attacks was twice ejected from a U.S. military court Tuesday after making outbursts about secret CIA prisons and torture.

Yemeni defendant Ramzi Binalshibh, who is accused of helping the hijackers enter the United States and of financing the airliner attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, also claimed that the judge hearing the case was biased.

A bomb explosion outside a Shiite mosque in north Pakistan Tuesday killed at least three people and wounded 14 others in the latest sectarian attack to hit the nation, officials said.

The blast took place in the Gracy Lines neighborhood of the garrison city of Rawalpindi, which neighbors the capital Islamabad, as worshipers prayed inside the mosque, senior police official Akhtar Laleka said.