IN BRIEF (Page 12)

Australia

WikiLeaks founder fumes

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday reacted angrily after Australia's attorney-general said he should be "man enough" to face Swedish sexual assault allegations. The Australian, who has been holed up in Ecuador's embassy in London for more than two years, lost a court bid on Wednesday to get a Swedish arrest warrant against him scrapped.

Sri Lanka

Commission gets complaints

A special commission appointed to investigate thousands of missing people during Sri Lanka's three-decade war has received about 18,000 complaints during hearings in the for-merly war-torn areas, an official said on Thursday. In February, President Mahinda Rajapaksa extended the mandate issued to the special commission tasked with investigating thousands of people who disappeared during the country's brutal conflict that ended in 2009.

United States

Drug dealer executed

A former methamphet-amine dealer was executed for killing three people in remote northern Missouri out of fear that they would report his drug activity to police. John Middleton, 54, died on Wednesday night from an injection of pentobarbital, the sixth execution in Missouri this year. Middleton was convicted of killing Randy "Happy" Hamilton and Stacey Hodge in early June 1995, then Alfred Pine-gar several days later.

United States

Actress gets 18 years for ricin

AUS actress who tried to blame her husband for sending ricin-laced letters to President Bar-ack Obama, then-New York mayor Michael Bloomberg and a gun control activist got 18 years in prison on Wednesday. US District Judge Michael Schneider sentenced Shannon Guess Richardson to 216 months in federal prison on a biological weapons charge and ordered her to pay $367,000 in restitution. In December, Richardson pleaded guilty possession of a toxin for use as a weapon.

AFP - Xinhua - AP

(China Daily 07/18/2014 page12)