Good evening, I'm Jeff Douglas.

This is As It Happens.

Tonight:

An extraordinary mission to avoid extradition. Facing an unwanted trip to Sweden -- and an even more unwanted trip to the U.S. -- Julian Assange holes up in Ecuador's embassy in London.

Pipe dream. The President of Kinder Morgan Canada tells us about the uphill battle his company faces before extending a pipeline through B.C.

Triple threat. For the third time since May, a pipeline in Alberta leaks hundreds of thousands of litres of oil.

Making room for remaking a room. After the death of a New York artist, a North Dakota gallery reconstructs his bedroom -- and welcomes his ashes.

Evolutions per minute. A British scientist supervises a project called Darwin Tunes -- where listeners make sounds turn gradually into music.

And...stroke of genius. You can do the front crawl with your elbows bent, or your arm straight -- and while the second way is harder, it's also faster.

As It Happens, the Wednesday Edition. Radio that issues a joint statement.

Of the countries that would welcome Julian Assange, Ecuador isn't the first to come to mind. But the founder of Wikileaks is clearly hoping to be taken in there.

Today, Mr. Assange is in the Ecuadorian embassy, in London, England. He is seeking asylum, in Ecuador, to avoid extradition to Sweden.

So far, Ecuador has not announced an official decision.

Vaughan Smith is a journalist who had been letting Mr. Assange stay at his country house in Norfolk, England. He's also the person who put up bail for Mr. Assange. We reached Mr. Smith earlier today in London, England.

Bonita Nicholson of Lincoln, New Brunswick woke up from an afternoon nap earlier this month -- and found herself in a serious situation.

The power in her mini-home was off. Which meant the machine that provides her oxygen full-time wasn't working.

She knew the electricity wasn't turned off by accident. She was behind on her power bill, and wasn't able to pay the fifteen hundred dollars the utility said she owed at the beginning of June.

With the help of her brother, and Red Cross volunteer Cathy DeLong, Ms. Nicholson survived the ordeal. But she remains frustrated with NB Power and how her case was handled.

Bonita Nicholson spoke with the CBC's Alyssa Mosher earlier this afternoon at her home. Here's some of what she had to say.

It's the third spill of its kind in the past two months.

Today, Enbridge announced that one of its pipelines had failed late Monday, spilling about fourteen hundred barrels of oil onto land near Elk Point, Alberta.

One week ago, a pipeline owned by Plains Midstream Canada, released crude into the Red Deer River. And in May, the Rainbow pipeline spilled about twenty-eight thousand barrels into the surrounding muskeg.

Steve Upham is the Reeve of St. Paul -- the county where the most recent spill occured. He was at the spill site, earlier today. We reached him nearby on his cell phone.

Today, Alberta's Premier, Alison Redford, was asked for her response to this latest spill. Here is part of what she had to say, for the record.

Are you a deep-catcher? Or a sculler?

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you're not likely suiting up in swimwear for this summer's Olympics. But even if you're just a recreational swimmer, you might be interested in this study.

For years, competitive swimmers have debated whether it's more powerful to do the front crawl digging your arms deep into the water, or bending them close to your body.

And now, after exhaustive -- and exhausting -- examination, a fluid-dynamics expert believes he has the answer. Rajat Mittal is a professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The future of Kinder Morgan's plan to expand its pipeline through British Columbia depends on "real, personal, and meaningful relationships".

That's according to Ian Anderson, the company's Canadian president. His ambition is to add a big new pipe to an existing pipeline pumping diluted oil-sands bitumen to the Port of Vancouver.

The relationships along the route are going to take some work. Municipal leaders, including Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, are already moving to block the proposal.

We reached Ian Anderson, President of Kinder Morgan Canada, in Calgary.

We're past a second opinion by this point.

As we've been telling on on As It Happens, the federal government is about to cut health services provided to refugees. And the backlash against the plan has been widespread.

Last night, to get some clarification about why these changes are being proposed, we spoke Dr. Danielle Grondin, the Director General of the Health Branch of Citizenship and Immigration Canada. And after we spoke with her, Talkback made a diagnosis.

Thank you for that call. We also received several emails on this issue as well.

Alan Hall from Frediction wrote:

"That was an amazing interview. Yikes. What great sorrow I feel for this country."

And Melissa McDonald from Toronto wrote:

"I felt embarrassed for Dr. Grondin when she tried to make the case that everyone misunderstood the imminent changes to refugee health care. She repeatedly tried to make the point that refugees will continue to receive medication, but only in the situation where there is a public health threat. Let me paraphrase: 'damn the refugee and batten down the hatches to protect our own.' No one has misunderstood this, Dr. Grondin. But even this policy falls flat. If a person with a persistent cough has no health care, this person is not going to seek out health care.

"Dr. Grondin is a public servant. She's toeing the line as a faithful public servant must do, or risk losing her job. Jason Kenney should have been talking to you, defending the government's policy."

Thank you for all your calls and emails. We will continue to follow this story.

Barton Lidice Benes will spend the afterlife in the same place where he spent most of his life. Almost.

Mr. Benes worked as an artist and sculptor in New York in a modest Greenwich Village studio. It was crammed with the stuff of his own work -- what he called artifacts of the everyday -- along with his collection of taxidermied animals, voodoo dolls, tribal masks and many, many other objects.

Mr. Benes recently died from complications from HIV at the age of sixty-nine. Now his belongings will be moved to a museum in North Dakota -- along with his ashes.

Laurel Reuter is the director of the North Dakota Museum of Art. We reached her in Pekin, North Dakota.

Sometimes I make a casual little remark to Carol. Just a passing thought as we take a break for news. And every now and then, that casual remark really hits a nerve with you.

Unsurprisingly, for example, last night's remark about "Free Beer".

Last night, I told Carol that in high school my friends and I wanted to name our band "Free Beer" -- you know, so that when we played gigs, the signs would read "Tonight: Free Beer."

Well, it turns out that as brilliant as that idea was, we weren't the only ones to come up with it. Angela Grangle from somewhere in cyber space sent us this note:

"In the nineteen-eighties, Lorne Elliott and Kevin Blackmore were a comedy duo called 'Free Beer'. During that time, a Marystown, Newfoundland bar, The Quarter Deck, posted signs inside and out stating, 'Tonight: Free Beer'.

"I can tell you, my friends and I were thrilled! We were all young and broke from university, college or minimum wage jobs. When we arrived later that evening, everyone had to buy beer because 'Free Beer' would not be available until later. So, we waited.

"When the stated time arrived, we couldn't believe what was about to happen. However, at the poster's stated time, two guys stepped onto the small stage in the corner of the bar and, I believe Lorne Elliott said something like, 'Good evening. We're Free Beer.' "Luckily, they were very talented, funny guys. I'm not sure how things might have turned out otherwise. That night we learned a good lesson. If is seems too good to be true, it likely isn't."

And then Scott Strong from St. John's, Newfoundland suggested:

"Check your record library for a copy of Free Beer's 'Clueless', and play 'The CN Tower'. Might be an education."

Well, all right Scott. We did.

Most people can buy their morning "fix" at their local coffee shop. But some have to bring it with them. And when they do, they inevitably leave something behind.

And those sharp somethings can prove a hazard to staff and customers. That's why a Tim Horton's in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island recently installed needle-disposal boxes in its washrooms.

Tim Longley is the operations manager for Tim Horton's in P.E.I. He explained to CBC reporter Kerry Campbell yesterday why the company made the decision to add the units to the restrooms at its downtown Kent Street location.

That was Tim Horton's PEI operations manager speaking with CBC reporter Kerry Campbell yesterday in Charlottetown. The company has installed what are called "sharps-disposal boxes" in its Kent Street location.

Kerry Campbell also spoke with Alana Leard, executive director of AIDS PEI, who explained that the issue with discarded needles is by no means an isolated one.

A massive, red boulder that sits in a Berlin park is driving a thirty-five tonne wedge between Germany and Venezuela.

Inscribed with the word "love", and situated opposite the Holocaust Memorial in the German capital, the stone is a potent symbol -- part of artist Wolfgang von Schwarzenfeld's Global Stone Project. Mr. von Schwarzenfeld claims it was gifted to him fifteen years ago, by the head of Canaima National Park in Venezuela, where he extracted it.

But Venezuela says it is more than just a symbol. For the Pemón indigenous tribe, it is sacred. And they claim its removal has brought strife to the Pemón, in the form of drought, disease, and a disastrous mudslide.

But Dr. Bruno Illius of Berlin Free University casts doubt on Venezuela's claim. For the past two decades he has studied the Pemón, even living among them for nearly two years. We reached Professor Illius in Berlin.

The closure of the Bowater Mersey paper mill in Liverpool, Nova Scotia is having a devastating effect on the province's South Shore.

A transition committee has been set up to try and replace the three hundred jobs that were lost at the plant. But the fallout is much more far reaching than that.

The lumber and sawmill trade in the region has been hit hard by the paper mill shutdown. And this morning, Ken Gray -- a self-employed wood logger from the region -- told CBC Halifax host Don Connolly how it's affected logging in south-west Nova Scotia.

To many of us in North America, the game we call soccer -- and everyone else calls football -- seems a little quaint. It doesn't involve high-tech carbon-fibre sticks, or shiny helmets, or fancy hardwood floors. There are no shot clocks, buzzers, or even music blared over loudspeakers between breaks in play, mainly because there are very few breaks in play. And only the referee knows exactly when the game is over; there is no clock that marks the exact end of a half.

And that low-tech approach to the sport suits much of the football world just fine. Except, of course, when this happens:

That, if you didn't recognize it, is the sound of a goal being scored, but not being counted -- because the referee didn't see it go in.

In yesterday's European Championship game between England and Ukraine, English defender John Terry kicked the ball out of his own goal before it hit the ground or the netting. The ball had only gone over the line by a few centimetres, but, upon replay after replay, it was clear that the ball had crossed it before Mr. Terry volleyed it away.

But the referee didn't see those replays -- because purists say reviewing replays takes away from the flow and traditional style of the game.

Now, however, that will change. The president of FIFA -- the body that governs international football -- said yesterday that it would now be necessary to use some sort of technology that makes the decision about whether a ball crosses into the goal -- and not a fallible human.

This will come of little comfort to Ukrainian football fans, though, as their team went on to lose one-zero and was eliminated from the tournament.

But then again, had better eyes prevailed seconds before that disallowed goal, another truth about that controversial play would also have emerged: that the player who scored it was offside.

Professor Armand Leroi is a Evolutionary Developmental Biologist with Imperial College London in England. He often bangs the drum for Darwin's theory of evolution. and now he's doing it literally...well, kind of.

Professor Leroi is the co-creator of a music experiment modelled on evolutionary theory, called DarwinTunes.

We reached him via Skype in London.