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Ecuador says it is considering Edward Snowden's request for asylum.

This is the second-high profile case involving leaks of classified information, asylum and the South American country. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, in order to prevent being extradited to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning over allegations of sexual assault. It's worth mentioning here that WikiLeaks in a statement Sunday said it giving Snowden legal help.

So why would the Andean nation consider giving refuge to Snowden, the former National Security Agency contractor accused of leaking classified surveillance information?

"It becomes the center of attention. [Ecuador's] President Rafael Correa enjoys that," says Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, D.C. "He likes needling the U.S. This satisfies that impulse. It also gives them a sense of consistency and commitment to principles by linking it to the Assange case."

Carl Meacham, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, adds: "Correa is interested in inheriting the mantle of Hugo Chavez and Fidel Castro. To be able to do this with Julian Assange and Mr. Snowden puts him, in his view, as a protector of freedom of information."

But, Shifter notes, Correa probably hopes that by granting refuge to Assange and considering asylum for Snowden he can shift the focus away from Ecuador's own record of press freedom.

Human Rights Watch has criticized the country's new Communication Law, saying the measure "seriously undermines free speech."

"To some extent, Correa can try and use this [incident] to point to the hypocrisy and double standards of everyone else who's coming down hard on him," Shifter says.

As a small country, Ecuador could be vulnerable to U.S. pressure, though its oil gives it a buffer.

Ecuador is the smallest member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries and one of the top sources of crude oil imports to the U.S. West Coast. It's also a beneficiary of the massive Chinese investment in South America.

"There are going to be implications and consequences" to granting Snowden asylum, says Laura Powell, a research associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington.

She adds: "Diplomacy is not going to get very far. The U.S. has to rely on trade sanctions" and similar measures to achieve its goals.

Shifter of IAD says that at most the U.S. won't renew the Andean Trade Preference and Drug Eradication Act that covers Ecuador, Bolivia, Colombia and Peru; Ecuador would like that deal to continue.

"But it's not going to be a fatal blow," he says.

CSIS' Meacham doesn't see it that way.

"It's pretty bad for them," he says. "Their trade benefits from the Andean Trade Preference and Drug Eradication Act are important. Forty-two percent of their goods are sold to the U.S. So on paper, it's not in their interest."

Ecuador and the U.S. do have an extradition treaty, but as Meacham of CSIS notes: "Snowden is charged with espionage/treason, neither of which is covered by the extradition treaty."

Walter Mosley fooled us: We thought he'd killed off Easy Rawlins, the protagonist of his much-loved series. But it turned out Mosley just needed a break from the work — a long break. Six years later, in May, he came back with Little Green, possibly the best Easy Rawlins to date. Like the rest of the books in the series, it's strongly influenced by Los Angeles, the city that helped shape Mosley himself.

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NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health recently polled 1,081 African-Americans about their lives. One of the areas respondents were asked about was their perceptions of their financial status.

As Code Switch's Gene Demby reported in an earlier post, the effects of the housing crisis and a recession — both of which disproportionately affected African-Americans — didn't seem to dampen a sense of optimism and overall life satisfaction among respondents. But the survey did reveal a dramatic — if not exactly surprising — split between two evenly divided groups of respondents: 49 percent who saw their financial situations as "excellent" or "good," and 50 percent who described their finances as "poor" or "not good."

This finding mirrors attitudes of African-American respondents to a 2001 survey by the Washington Post, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard University. Then, the stats were similar: 49 percent polled saw their financial situations as "excellent" or "good," and 51 percent considered them "poor" or "not so good."

Robert Blendon, a professor of public health at Harvard and one of the 2013 study's co-directors, told NPR's Kathy Lohr that many African-Americans who don't consider themselves well-situated financially still have a sense of optimism. A combined 81 percent of respondents said they would one day attain the American dream — owning their own home, gaining financial security — or already had. Only 16 percent said they felt the dream was out of reach.

Working its way through the Ohio Legislature is a state budget bill that has major implications for the way family-planning services are provided. The Ohio budget contains language that puts family-planning clinics at the bottom of the list to receive funding.

Family Planning Association of Northeast Ohio operates several independent family-planning clinics. They do not provide abortions and have no affiliation with Planned Parenthood, but the clinics are still at the end of the line under a new tiered system because they give referrals.

Ahead of the facilities are local health departments, places like emergency rooms and free clinics. Family Planning's executive director, Mary Wynne-Peaspanen, says if there's any money left over — which she says is not likely — "then they could consider applications from independent, specialty clinics like my organization and like Planned Parenthood."

The budget bill from the Republican-controlled Legislature could well put the nonprofit out of business. Since 1970, it has served primarily low-income women, but it's facing an anticipated 40 percent hit to its funding.

"They've been very clear about the fact — at the General Assembly — that their target is Planned Parenthood. But that doesn't change the fact that there are other organizations that will be impacted by this funding," Wynne-Peaspanen tells Jacki Lyden, host of weekends on All Things Considered.

National Trend

In Ohio and elsewhere, family-planning clinics typically provide a range of women's health services, like cancer screenings, blood pressure tests and contraceptive services.

Judy Waxman, vice president for health and reproductive rights at the National Women's Law Center, says the vast majority of women who are sexually active have used contraception at some point in their lives.

"So on one level, we as a nation have recognized that contraceptives are not only what everybody uses, but they also are very important for women's health," she says. "There is, however, a minority of politicians who try to use any issue related to 'sex' to make some kind of political hay out of it."

Waxman says a handful of states are looking at centers that receive Medicaid or state funding for family-planning services — and some are cutting the budgets. Those states include Indiana, Arizona, Wisconsin and now Ohio.

The Anti-Abortion Lobby

Michael Gonidakis is the president of Ohio Right to Life, one of the groups that lobbied hard for the current legislative approach. He admits the ultimate objective is a straightforward one.

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