QUITO, Ecuador • Ecuador’s foreign minister said Tuesday that WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has taken refuge in the South American nation’s embassy in London and is seeking political asylum. Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino said Ecuador is weighing the request.

The move comes less than a week after Britain’s Supreme Court rejected Assange’s bid to reopen his attempts to block extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning after two women accused him of sexual misconduct during a visit to the country in mid-2010. He denies the allegations. His legal struggle to stay in Britain has dragged on for the better part of two years, clouding his website’s work exposing the world’s secrets. Patino told a news conference that Assange had written to leftist President Rafael Correa saying he was being persecuted and seeking asylum. He said that Assange, who is Australian, had argued that "the authorities in his country will not defend his minimum guarantees in front of any government or ignore the obligation to protect a politically persecuted citizen." He said it was impossible for him to return to his homeland because it would not protect him from being extradited to "a foreign country that applies the death penalty for the crime of espionage and sedition." The reference is to the United States, as Patino says the letter spells out. Assange, 40, claims the U.S. has secretly indicted him for divulging American secrets and will act on the indictment if Sweden succeeds in extraditing him from Britain. In the letter, he accused Swedish officials of "openly attacking me" and investigating him for political crimes, according to Patino.

Winnipeg Free Press: Ecuador says WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seeking asylum at its embassy in London

A new round of statistics released by the British Defense Ministry is showing that the nation is, much like the US, increasingly relying on drone strikes in its overseas wars, with more than 280 missiles fired at “suspects” since 2008, with the number increasing every year. The Defense Ministry’s stats claim that “only four Afghan civilians” have been killed in the campaign, but the reality is the British military, again like its US counterparts, have no real clue who most of the people they kill are. Human Rights Watch was the first to call the British government on this claim, noting that they have no system in place to check for civilian casualties, and that the system relies on the assumption that if British drones kill an innocent man, someone will show up and complain in person at the base. Even if they do, there is no mechanism for the military to investigate these claims, so their official “only four civilians” claim rests entirely on the assumption that not only was every civilian casualty reported, but that whoever was at the gate of those bases actually brought the deaths to the attention of higher ups.

Residents flee their homes after a shelling in Houla, near Homs,
June 18, 2012. U.S. REUTERS/Shaam News Network/Handout

BEIRUT, June 19 (Reuters) - Syria said on Tuesday it was trying to evacuate civilians from the city of Homs and blamed rebel fighters for obstructing efforts to get people out safely.

Activists said the army has intensified shelling of residential districts of Homs, centre of the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, and the head of United Nations monitors in Syria, General Robert Mood, said he was worried about civilians trapped there. Residents say Syria's third largest city has been surrounded by the army and pummelled by mortar and artillery fire almost daily since early June. Tens of thousands of people have already fled to other cities to escape months of bombardment and street fighting. "Contacts have been made with the leadership of the international monitors, in cooperation with the local Syrian authorities in the city of Homs to bring out these Syrian citizens," Syria's Foreign Ministry said. "But the efforts of the monitors were unsuccessful.... because the armed terrorist groups obstructed their efforts," it said, using a label Damascus employs to describe rebels who have joined the 15-month uprising and seek to topple Assad by force. It accused the rebels of using civilians as "human shields".

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A British maritime insurer revoked its coverage of a Russian cargo ship on Tuesday because it was carrying refurbished Russian-made attack helicopters to Syria, potentially stalling the delivery. - The ship, the 400-foot MV Alaed, owned by the Russian shipping company FEMCO , was last tracked about 100 miles to the west of Scotland early Tuesday, according to data available online . The state-owned Russian news agency Ria Novosti reported that it was carrying “a cargo of Mil Mi-25 attack helicopters” and “coastal-based anti-ship missiles” to Syria. Its insurer, the Standard Club, said in a statement that the coverage was withdrawn, raising the prospect that the ship would be delayed as it sought an alternative, because its cargo had breached Standard Club's rules. "We were made aware of the allegations that the Alaed was carrying munitions destined for Syria," the statement said. "We have already informed the shipowner that their insurance cover ceased automatically in view of the nature of the voyage." It was not immediately clear why the cargo ship was off the coast of Scotland on its voyage to Syria or whether the ship would continue in defiance of the insurance policy withdrawal. Calls to the FEMCO management office went unanswered.

Reuters: Syria denies war games with Russia, China, Iran-Ifax

A UN investigator has called on Washington to provide justification for the increasingly widespread use of military drones to carry out targeted killings. He says drone attacks, which take innocent civilian lives, may be violating international law. - The US military and CIA use drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Yemen and Somalia. Washington should clarify the legal basis for the policy of killing suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders and associates rather than trying to capture them, Christof Heyns, Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions, said in a report. The 28-page document addressed to the UN Human Rights Council was released ahead of the body’s debate on the issue in Geneva.

"The government should clarify the procedures in place to ensure that any targeted killing complies with international humanitarian law and human rights and indicate the measures or strategies applied to prevent casualties, as well as the measures in place to provide prompt, thorough, effective and independent public investigation of alleged violations," the report says. "Although figures vary widely with regard to drone attack estimates, all studies concur on one important point: there has been a dramatic increase in their use over the past three years," Heyns said.

The UN official cites figures from the Pakistan Human Rights Commission, which said American drone strikes killed at least 957 people in Pakistan in 2010 alone. Out of the thousands killed by drones since 2004 roughly 20 per cent are believed to be civilians.

With the issuance of a constitutional decree Sunday night, the Egyptian Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) finalized the coup it staged last Thursday and proclaimed a military dictatorship.

Only two days before the run-off of the Egyptian presidential election, the US-backed junta had dissolved the Islamist-dominated parliament and the constitutent assembly, which had been tasked with the drafting of a new constitution. With the constitutional decree, an amendment to the military-authored constitutional declaration issued March 30, 2011, SCAF is asserting full control over political life in Egypt. Under these conditions, the results of the run-off of the presidential election between Ahmed Shafiq, the last prime minister under ousted President Hosni Mubarak, and Mohamed Mursi, the Islamist candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), have little significance. The future president will be nothing more than a figurehead of SCAF.

BBC: Egypt's military grants itself sweeping powers
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Death toll of campaigners involved in protection of forests, rivers and land has almost doubled in three years. - The struggle for the world's remaining natural resources is becoming more murderous, according to a new report that reveals that environmental activists were killed at the rate of one a week in 2011. The death toll of campaigners, community leaders and journalists involved in the protection of forests, rivers and land has risen dramatically in the past three years, said Global Witness. Brazil – the host of the Rio+20 conference on sustainable development – has the worst record for danger in a decade that has seen the deaths of more than 365 defenders, said the briefing, which was released on the eve of the high-level segment of the Earth Summit. The group called on the leaders at Rio to set up systems to monitor and counter the rising violence, which in many cases involves governments and foreign corporations, and to reduce the consumption pressures that are driving development into remote areas.

The United States has recognized Iran's right to access to nuclear energy meant for peaceful purposes and says Washington is committed to a comprehensive negotiated settlement of the issue. - US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin made the announcement in a joint statement issued after a meeting on Monday in Los Cabos, Mexico.

"Our common goal is an all-embracing negotiated settlement based on the principles of a phased approach and reciprocity, and expect constructive negotiations with Iran via the six power talks, including the negotiating rounds in Moscow on June 18-19," the statement added.

Obama and Putin also said they "look forward to constructive engagement with Iran through the P5+1 process,” noting that their common goal is to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue based on the principles of a step-by-step approach and reciprocity. Obama insisted that there was still "time and space" for a diplomatic solution to the dispute over Iran's peaceful nuclear energy program.

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WhiteHouse.gov: Joint Statement by Barack Obama and Vladimir Putin