NEWS IN BRIEF

Date: 13 March 2015 - 19:44

News ID: ۱۱۹۹۴

STOCKHOLM (Reuters) - Swedish prosecutors want to question Julian Assange in London over allegations of sexual assault, potentially ending an impasse that left the WikiLeaks founder holed up for almost three years in Ecuador's embassy.
Swedish prosecutors said on Friday they had asked for Assange's approval to question him in London, a U-turn after years of insisting he must go to Stockholm for questioning about alleged assaults against two women in 2010.
Assange denies the allegations, which are not related to WikiLeaks' publication of U.S. military and diplomatic documents, also in 2010. He refused to go, arguing Sweden could send him on to the United States where he might face trial.
One of Assange's lawyers said he welcomed the request but expressed concern the process could take time because approval was needed from British and Ecuadorian authorities.
"He has been nagging for this for four years. He wants nothing more than to have an opportunity ... to give his version of what happened and to clear his name," Assange's lawyer Per Samuelson told Reuters.
Ecuador's embassy in London could not immediately be reached for comment.
Assange, an Australian citizen, has been unable to leave Ecuador's embassy since claiming asylum there in 2012.

WASHINGTON (Press TV) – US President Barack Obama has acknowledged that police have been "oppressive” in Ferguson, Missouri, but said there is "no excuse" for violence against law enforcement agents.
"I think that what had been happening in Ferguson was oppressive and objectionable and was worthy of protest, but there was no excuse for criminal acts," Obama said Thursday on ABC's "Jimmy Kimmel Live."
The US president made the comments hours after two police officers were shot early Thursday morning outside the Ferguson Police Department during protests against the police force.
One officer was shot in the face, while the other was shot through the shoulder, according to St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar. Both officers were treated and released from hospital.
The officers, who appear to have been targeted, did not work for the Ferguson police.
Ferguson, a predominately black city with a mostly white police force, has been embroiled in mass protests since last August, when a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager.
Obama offered his prayers to the injured officers, but added the protesters "don't want to be stopped and harassed just because of their race."
"What we need to do is make sure that like-minded, good-spirited people on both sides" are able to "work together to try and come up with some good answers," the president noted.

BEIJING (Press TV) – China is building a second aircraft carrier in a move to boost Beijing's maritime power, a media report says.
Beijing has "accumulated a lot of experience” from the first vessel and has now taken the "next step”, Chinese media quoted senior colonel and professor at the National Defense University of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), Liang Fang, as saying.
A second carrier would mark a significant upgrade to China’s current Liaoning carrier, a refurbished Soviet-era ship that Beijing acquired from Ukraine.
"The reason we imported the first aircraft carrier is so that we could be capable of building our own in the future,” the official said, adding, "And now, just like what some media have revealed, that is what we have done -- built the second aircraft carrier.”
Her statements follow recent reports from senior PLA officers on the building of the vessel.
Chinese officials sporadically report – and oftentimes delete – news of a second domestically built aircraft carrier.

The announcement comes as China and some of its neighbors have been involved in bitter territorial disputes in the South China Sea.
Beijing claims the South China Sea in its entirety, while other countries, including the Philippines, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei Darussalam also have claims to the area and are in dispute with China.