The US ambassador to South Korea, Mark Lippert, was recovering from surgery Thursday after being slashed on his face and arm in Seoul on Thursday by a blade-wielding activist opposed to ongoing US-Korean military drills. The United States condemned the "act of violence" which left the ambassador bleeding profusely and saw him rushed to hospital where his condition was described as stable after two-and-a-half hours of treatment by plastic and orthopaedic surgeons. 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. He was a known political activist who had been handed a two-year suspended sentence in 2010 for throwing a rock at the then Japanese ambassador to Seoul.

Indonesia's security minister said Thursday that Jakarta would press ahead with the execution of two Australian drug smugglers and other foreign convicts, ruling out an offer of a prisoner swap put forward by Canberra. "In accordance with the president's order, the death penalty handed to the convicts will still be conducted," Tedjo Edhy Purdijatno told reporters in Jakarta. Attorney-General Muhammad Prasetyo was also cited in local media rejecting the offer. He said that the foreign minister had told him about the offer, adding: "I said the offer was hard to fulfil and need not be considered." Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop proposed the swap in an 11th-hour bid to save Andrew Chan and Myuran Sukumaran, the ringleaders of the so-called "Bali Nine" drug smuggling gang, who were sentenced to death for trying to traffick heroin out of Indonesia.