Assange is currently under the protection of the Ecuadorean embassy. He has requested asylum based on a well-founded fear of persecution, torture or death in the United States in connection with the publication of truthful information of matters of interest to the public through his work with WikiLeaks.

Recent developments: On 14 June 2012, the Supreme Court Appeal rejected Julian Assange’s 12 June application to reopen the appeal. He was given 14 days to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. On 20 June, Assange walked into the Ecuadorean embassy and claimed political asylum. On 28 June, the UK police served Assange a letter at the Ecuadorean embassy, requesting he surrender himself to Belmarsh police station on 29 June 2012. His legal advice is that he is exercising his right to seek asylum, and that this exercise takes precedence while the request is being processed to any extradition procedures.

Stratfor e-mails have revealed that a sealed indictment has been issued by a secret grand jury in Alexandria, Virginia, for Julian Assange. The email is dated 26 January 2011. This means that there has likely been a sealed extradition order for over a year, which will be activated (unsealed) against Assange in Sweden, Australia and the UK when the US Government gives the order.

An extensive article published by the New York Times under the title “European Crisis Bolsters Illegal Sales of Body Parts” features Greece among the countries where illegal organ sales have recently been recorded as a result of dire financial conditions. In heavily indebted Greece, a 46-year-old businessman from Piraeus recently said that the only way to save his family from ending up on the streets was to sell a kidney for €100,000, or $123,000. While reliable statistics are difficult to come by, 15,000 to 20,000 kidneys are illegally sold globally each year, according to Organ Watch, a human rights group in Berkeley, California, that tracks the illegal organ trade. The United Nations estimates that 5 to 10 percent of kidney transplants performed each year are the result of organ trafficking.

Organizations and facilities considered "vulnerable to terrorist attacks" to receive funding as part of grant program’s seventh allocation. - The funding, announced last Friday, came from the DHS’s Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which aids nonprofit organizations that are at risk of terrorist threats and helps those organizations coordinate with broader security initiatives. This round of funding was the program’s seventh allocation since its creation in 2005. The program has distributed a total of $128 million during that time, according to a Jewish Federations of North America news release.

The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, [right],
and the guided-missile cruiser USS Cape St. George
transit the Strait of Hormuz. (U.S. Navy / flickr)

The United States has quietly moved significant military reinforcements into the Persian Gulf to deter the Iranian military from any possible attempt to shut the Strait of Hormuz and to increase the number of fighter jets capable of striking deep into Iran if the standoff over its nuclear program escalates. The deployments are part of a long-planned effort to bolster the American military presence in the gulf region... The Navy has doubled the number of minesweepers assigned to the region, to eight vessels, in what military officers describe as a purely defensive move.

“The message to Iran is, ‘Don’t even think about it,’ ” one senior Defense Department official said. “Don’t even think about closing the strait. We’ll clear the mines. Don’t even think about sending your fast boats out to harass our vessels or commercial shipping. We’ll put them on the bottom of the gulf.”

PressTV: Iran drill conveys message of sovereignty
PressTV: Missile drill firm response to military threats against Iran: IRGC cmdr.
Russia Today: Iran lawmakers prepare to close Hormuz Strait

An estimated 10,000 armed men equipped with highly-sophisticated weapons, including anti-tank missiles, have reportedly entered Syria to help fuel the unrest in the country, Press TV has learned. - Informed sources in the Qusayr village in Homs say the terrorists crossed into Syria from the Lebanese border and that they have taken positions in the suburbs of the restive city. Meanwhile, Syrian forces are still tracking armed groups fighting against the government of President Bashar al-Assad across the country. Syrian authorities say while the Joret al-Shayyah neighborhood in Homs has been cleared of armed groups and calm has been restored in the area, clashes are still ongoing in al-Hamidiye, al- Khalidiya and Homs’ old neighborhood. Syrian forces have also discovered the decomposing remains of nine people in the Karam Zaytoon district of Homs, who were killed by armed men.

John Glaser: UN Rights Chief: Foreign Arms to Both Sides in Syria ‘Feeds Additional Violence’

The Home Office has confirmed home secretary Theresa May will not block TVShack founder Richard O'Dwyer's US extradition, despite widespread calls for her to do so. - The office confirmed to V3 that it was aware of Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales' anti-extradition petition, but would not be swayed by it on Monday. "Richard O'Dwyer is wanted in the US for offences related to copyright infringement," a Home Office spokesman told V3.

Boing-Boing: UPDATED: Home Secretary to UK net activists - Hundreds of thousands of Britons have signed a petition asking the Home Secretary to abandon plans to extradite Richard O'Dwyer to America. O'Dwyer, a student, has a website called TVShack that contains user-submitted links to TV show streams and downloads -- some legal, some infringing. This is almost certainly legal under US law, and is absolutely legal in UK law. Nevertheless, O'Dwyer faces being rendered for a round of punitively expensive dirty litigation by US entertainment giants. Despite all this, the Home Secretary has declined to reconsider O'Dwyer's case, and is set to send him off to America. As Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales wrote in the petition, "No US citizen has ever been brought to the UK for alleged criminal activity that took place on US soil."

A New York court is ordering Twitter to hand over a host of user Tweets as they wage into uncharted legal waters while dealing with the arrest of an Occupy Wall Street protester. Malcolm Harris was one of the 700 protestors arrested in October after taking over much of the Brooklyn Bridge during the high point in the financial inequality protests. District attorneys petitioned the judge of the case to order the social media company to hand over Mr Harris's tweets for the days surrounding the arrest because they argue that the messages will show whether or not Mr Harris was willfully disregarding police orders at the time of his arrest.

B’Tselem just released disturbing footage of a Border Police officer kicking a Palestinian child while another officer holds him on the streets of occupied Hebron. The video was shot last Friday June 29 by a B’Tselem activist, from the window of his house, adjacent to the Tomb of the Patriarchs. According to B’Tselem, the person started shooting the video upon noticing a border police officer hiding behind the wall. The name of the child is Abed a-Rahman and he is only 9 years old. You can see the policeman at the start of the video appear, then disappear, and then reappear at about 1:22 when he runs to grab the child and says: “Why are you causing trouble?” As the policeman holds the crying boy, another policeman comes and kicks him. The child is then released and runs away and the policemen disperse. B’Tselem is filing a complaint against the two men with the Police Investigation Department.

IMEMC: Israel Continues To Pound Gaza, Injure Civilians
PCHR: Weekly Report On Israeli Human Rights Violations in Occupied Palestine

Turkey has detained 26 active-duty military officers in police raids across 15 provinces as part of a widening probe against a military espionage gang. - They were picked up after an Izmir court issued capture warrants for 30 people as part of an operation conducted by the Izmir police against the military espionage gang, Turkish media reported on Sunday. Simultaneous operations were launched in 15 provinces, with police officers detaining them following searches of military facilities and the suspects' homes. The 26 suspects were taken to Izmir Central Command, from where they were to be referred to court. Police are still on the look out of another four suspects.

Wayne Madsen: Officers said to hire foreign women as prostitutes for military officers from whom they obtain military information and then sell that information to third parties. How do you spell Mossad?