The Breakfast Meeting: Asylum for Assange, and Jay-Z\'s Stamp on the Nets

By NOAM COHEN

The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Thursday was granted political asylum by Ecuador, whose embassy in London is currently shielding him. Outside the embassy, the scene has become more chaotic with scuffles between the police and supporters of Mr. Assange. Hanging over the Ecuadorean decision is the possibility that the British government could revoke the diplomatic immunity of the embassy and seize Mr. Assange to extradite him to Sweden, William Neuman and Maggy Ayala report, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he sexually assaulted two women. Ecuador's foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, didn't take kindly to the suggestion that the British might move in: “We are not a British colony.” In his statement on Thursday, The Guardian reported, he said: “We trust the U.K. will offer the necessary guarantees so that both governments can act adequately and properly respect international rights and the right of asylum.”

On paper, Jay-Z is a minor investor in the Nets basketball team - one-fifteenth of 1 percent. But in terms of shaping the image of the franchise, which is moving to Brooklyn this September, he may as well be the owner, David M. Halbfinger writes. He helped design the team logos, picking the unusual black-and-white non-color scheme; he advises on what music to play during timeouts and on how best to interact with its patrons. It is an arrangement with benefits for both sides: Jay-Z (born Shawn Carter and raised in the Marcy housing project not far from where the Nets will play) brings credibility to the team as it courts new fans, while he profits from many tie-ins with the new arena.

• If any part of the NBCUniversal empire was banking on the Olympics to be a “game changer,” it was the NBC Sports Network, which had nearly a million viewers a day, which was a sixfold increase from the four weeks earlier, Richard Sandomir writes. Drawing that audi ence â€" including the huge viewership for the women's soccer final â€" offered a chance for the public to see it as viable sports channel, perhaps for the first time. But adding mainly studio-based shows, however, is not likely to be enough to retain much of that audience.

A new tablet from Samsung - the Galaxy Note 10.1 - is a compelling competitor to the iPad, David Pogue writes in his review. Its size and weight are roughly the same as the iPad, but it is crammed with many more features as well as a stylus, which offers the ability to write notes that can be converted (not always perfectly) into text. If there is any flaw with the new Samsung tablet, he writes, it is that there are too many features: “It has a higher feature count than any other tablet, but those features are stuffed into a machine with less coherence than any other tablet.”

The crowds began gathering Wednesday night at Graceland to mark the 35th anniversary of Elvis Presley's death on Aug. 16, 1977. They were greeted for the first time by Elvis's wife, Priscilla Presley, and daughter, Lisa Marie, The Associated Press reported. “I've always avoided this because I felt that it would be too emotional, but I really felt it was important to come down here tonight,” Lisa Marie Presley said. Organizers said about 75,000 people were expected take part in the vigil.