North Korea fired what U.S. officials said was a short-range missile into the Sea of Japan. The Sea of Japan did not appear to be damaged. (NYT)

The White House said President Bush didn't believe Saddam Hussein would respond to diplomatic efforts to convince him to disarm. (Reuters)

The American woman an English king abdicated his throne for in 1936 turned out to have cheated on him with a car salesman. (NYT, WaPost)

Republican politicians said President Bush's State of the Union address was great, but Democrats said they still didn't think much of his economic policies. Polls indicated the American people felt more or less the same as they did yesterday. (MSNBC)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il didn't meet with a South Korean envoy in Pyongyang. North Korea has alternated between promises to work with South Korea to resolve the crisis surrounding its nuclear program and complete rejections of any option other than direct talks with the U.S. (Reuters)

Freezing temperatures and wind affected much of the eastern United States. Some tourists and residents complained that it was too cold. (CNN, MSNBC)

North and South Korea issued a joint statement saying they would resolve the current standoff over North Korea's nuclear weapons program together. Separately, South Korea said that it had "sufficiently delivered our and the international community's concern on the nuclear issue," but that North Korea had refused to agree to any compromises. (Fox News/AP)

Thousands of protestors, marching in Washington, D.C., on the 30th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision recognizing abortion rights, said they disagreed with each other on whether abortion should be illegal. Some said it should be, but others said it shouldn't. (Yahoo/AP)*

President Bush expressed frustration that other members on the U.N. Security Council want to give U.N. weapons inspectors more time in Iraq. France, Germany, Russia and China have indicated varying degrees of opposition to military action at this time. (NYT, WaPost)

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, wanting lobbyists to be able to give them stuff, have been relaxing restrictions against gifts of meals and entertainment. House Republicans instituted the restrictions in 1995, when they were unhappy that lobbyists had been able to give stuff to Democrats. (WaPost)

If Saddam Hussein voluntarily removed himself from power and went into exile, then the U.S. wouldn't invade Iraq to remove him from power forcibly, Bush administration officials said. Saddam has given no indication he is considering stepping down. (WaPost, NYT)

Local residents around North Long Lake in Brainerd, Minn., have several conflicting theories as to why a half-mile-long patch of water in the middle of the lake hasn't frozen. Scientists remain at a loss for an explanation, however. (ABCNews)

The FBI said that the whereabouts of 30 vials containing samples of bubonic and pneumonic plague bacteria had all been accounted for. The vials had been reported missing from the Texas Tech Health Sciences Center on Tuesday afternoon. (CNN)

Pope John Paul said political leaders should make more effort to avoid war in Iraq. It was the first time since the current crisis began that he made a statement about Iraq directly. (Globe&Mail)

The Los Angeles Times, saying that analysts and activists are concerned about U.S. oil interests there, reported that West African countries have oil, but their regimes are oppressive and corrupt. (LATimes)

A German man local police described as mentally disturbed threatened to fly a small airplane into a Frankfurt skyscraper, before safely landing the plane at Frankfurt International Airport. (CNN)