The US ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert, was recovering from surgery Thursday after having his face and arm slashed by a knife-wielding activist in an attack applauded by North Korean state media. The United States said it will never be deterred by "acts of violence" as the ambassador was rushed to hospital where his condition was described as stable after two-and-a-half hours of surgery that included 80 stitches to a deep gash on his right cheek. Witnesses described how a man armed with a 25-centimetre (10-inch) paring knife had lunged across a table and attacked Lippert at a breakfast function in central Seoul. In a brief despatch, North Korea's official KCNA news agency called the attack "just punishment" and a valid "expression of resistance" that reflected South Korean public opposition to the joint drills which went ahead over Pyongyang's bitter protests.

A major winter storm slammed parts of the United States Thursday, as thousands of flights were canceled and government offices shut down in anticipation of more than half a foot of snow in the nation's capital. Snow started to fall in some parts of Washington DC Thursday, where the Office of Personnel Management ordered government employees to stay home. If you must travel, keep an extra flashlight, food, and water in your vehicle," the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration cautioned.

One of Thomas Edison's little-known ambitions was to build a device to hear the voices of the dead, according to a nearly lost chapter of the inventor's memoirs which is being republished in France this week. Edison (1847-1931) detailed his efforts and they were published posthumously in 1948 as the final chapter of his "Diary and Sundry Observations".