STOCKHOLM — Sweden's Supreme Court today upheld a court order to detain WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for questioning over rape and sexual molestation allegations.

The 39-year-old Australian, who denies the accusations made by two Swedish women after his visit to the country in August, had appealed two lower court rulings allowing investigators to bring him into custody and issue an international arrest warrant.

He has not been formally charged.

WikiLeaks has angered the U.S. and other governments by publishing almost half a million secret documents about U.S. diplomatic relations and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The search for Assange, whose whereabouts is unknown, was stepped up Wednesday as Sweden confirmed it had issued a European arrest warrant for him. Since leaving Sweden, the computer hacker has appeared in Britain and Switzerland but disappeared from public view after a Nov. 5 news conference in Geneva. He has spoken publicly only through online interviews.

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s spies had information indicating North Korea might attack a front-line island in August, but the intelligence chief dismissed it as a routine threat.Yeonpyeong Island, a tiny enclave of civilians and military bases located near a disputed maritime border, endured a barrage of North Korean shells last week, and lawmakers in Seoul slammed the government today for the intelligence failure. The surprise revelation came the day before in an unusually candid private briefing by spy chief Won Sei-hoon.In the wake of the attack the defense minister has resigned. President Lee Myung-bak has been criticized for leading a military whose response to the attack was seen as too slow and too weak.Won told lawmakers that South Korea had intercepted North Korean military communications in August that indicated Pyongyang was preparing to attack Yeonpyeong and other islands in a disputed slice of sea that has often been the focus of North Korean aggression. Won didn’t expect that attack to be on civilian areas and considered it a “routine threat.”