Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, was seeking political asylum inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London last night, days after the Supreme Court dismissed his attempt to reopen his appeal against extradition to Sweden over alleged sex crimes. Mr Assange was said to have walked into the Embassy in Knightsbridge earlier in the day. He requested political asylum from the Ecuadorian Government under the United Nations Human Rights Declaration after writing to President Correa saying that he was being persecuted. He will now remain under its protection until Ecuador has decided whether to grant his request, Ricardo Patino, the Foreign Minister, said. The Supreme Court has given him until June 28 to ask Strasbourg to consider his case on the basis that he has not had a fair hearing from the British courts. It would then have been for the European Court t

David Cameron was embroiled in a diplomatic bust-up with the President of Argentina about the Falklands yesterday as he refused to accept an envelope thrust at him by Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. The Prime Minister believed that Mrs Kirchner was pulling a stunt and walked away from their confrontation after stressing repeatedly that the Falkland islanders had a right to self-determination. The details of their diplomatic spat emerged from British officials who said the envelope wielded by Mrs Kirchner was A4 size and “stuffed full” of documents. It bore the word “Malvinas” on the outside. British suspicions were aroused in part because one of Mrs Kirchner’s officials appeared to be filming the confrontation. Mr Cameron and Mrs Kirchner had planned to meet unofficially in the margins of the G20 summit in Mexico to talk about the islands. But the tone of