An uncovered letter written by John F Kennedy to the head of the CIA shows that the president demanded to be shown highly confidential documents about UFOs 10 days before his assassination.

The secret memo is one of two letters written by JFK asking for information about the paranormal on November 12 1963, which have been released by the CIA for the first time.

Author William Lester said the CIA released the documents to him under the Freedom of Information Act after he made a request while researching his new book A Celebration of Freedom: JFK and the New Frontier.

The president's interest in UFOs shortly before his death is likely to fuel conspiracy theories about his assassination, according to AOL News.

Alien researchers say the latest documents, released to Mr Lester by the CIA, add weight to the suggestion that the president could have been shot to stop him discovering the truth about UFOs.

Nigeria's incumbent leader Goodluck Jonathan won the presidential election as violent protests against the result killed at least six, underscoring the political frailty in Africa's biggest oil producer.

Jonathan, 53, a Christian from the oil-rich Niger River delta region, won 22.5 million, or 57 percent, of the votes cast, compared with 12.2 million, or 31 percent, for former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, a northern Muslim, the electoral commission said.

Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation with 150 million residents, is roughly split between a mostly Muslim north and a largely Christian south, a divide reflected in voting for the April 16 election. Jonathan will need to convince northerners that he is a credible ruler for all Nigerians while relying on a divided legislature to pass laws to regulate oil exploration and promote investment in the industry.

"The polarized north-south results of the election underline a looming political and cultural divide in the country, which may lead to further tension," Sebastian Boe, a political analyst at IHS Inc. (IHS) in London, said in a e-mailed note.

Opposition supporters in several northern cities burned buildings and attacked members of the ruling People's Democratic Party after results yesterday showed that Jonathan would win the election. A police station and a church in the northern town of Kaduna were burned, and riots spread from Gombe to towns including Bauchi, Zaria, Azare and Potiskum, a police spokesman for the region, Suleiman Lawal, said yesterday.

Bashar al-Assad, the country's president, says he will lift emergency laws that have been in place for 48 years.


Bashar al-Assad says his country's state of emergency will be lifted by next week. He made the announcement hours after his new cabinet was sworn in.

It came a day after tens of thousands of demonstrators rallied in the capital, Damascus, in one of the biggest turnouts since protests began a month ago.

The lifting of the 48-year-old emergency law has been a key demand of the protesters. The current unrest in Syria has been described as the most serious challenge facing Bashar al-Assad and his regime.

Lifting the emergency laws was the latest in a series of concessions made in a bid to satisfy the public.

Not everyone at Saturday's tea party gathering in Madison, Wisconsin were fans of Andrew Breitbart and Sarah Palin.

The two popular conservatives had to talk over the boos of about 3,000 pro-labor supporters at the Capitol.

"Shame, shame, shame!" the crowd chanted, according to The Progressive.

"Tax, tax, tax the rich!" was another chant heard there.

"Go to hell!" Breitbart shouted back at the protesters.

Watch this, uploaded to YouTube April 17, 2011.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Tax Policy Center in Washington have some statistics that will likely make last-minute filers extra-irate today: The super-rich are paying less in income tax than they used to, and nearly half of all U.S. households don't pay any income taxes at all.

The IRS tracks the 400 highest adjusted gross incomes, and how much they pay in income taxes, each year, reports the Associated Press. In 2007, the last available year for IRS data, the average income in that set was around $345 million, and they paid about 17 percent in federal income taxes. In 1992, the average income tax rate for the same set was 26 percent.

It's not just Wall Street that rewards failure.

Bookseller Borders Group Inc. (BGP) wants to give their executives up to $8.3 million at a time the company is in bankruptcy and laying off 6,000 employees.

In documents filed in court late last month, the book chain said that it was losing about five executives per week.

Under the plan, CEO Bennett LeBow would get as much as $1.7 million. The executive vice president would receive $1.1 million, while the vice president for human resources would $374,000. The corporation would pay out another $2.4 million in other bonuses and $1.2 million in various payments to other executives.

Plans to exploit Iraq's oil reserves were discussed by government ministers and the world's largest oil companies the year before Britain took a leading role in invading Iraq, government documents show.

Iraq's burgeoning oil industry: Click HERE to upload graphic (160k)

The papers, revealed here for the first time, raise new questions over Britain's involvement in the war, which had divided Tony Blair's cabinet and was voted through only after his claims that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.

The minutes of a series of meetings between ministers and senior oil executives are at odds with the public denials of self-interest from oil companies and Western governments at the time.

On Tuesday 4th April 2011, our friend, teacher and leader, Juliano Mer Khamis was murdered by an unknown enemy of freedom and culture.

All of us at The Freedom Theatre would like to express our deep condolences to the family of Juliano in this devastating time.

Juliano was a loving father and husband, an inspirational teacher and leader, and a friend to many.

Just as The Freedom Theatre was built on the inspiration and legacy of Arna, his mother, so will its future work be built on the legacy of Juliano. It will carry on his message to promote freedom - not only for a nation but for each human being.

Cuba kicked off a crucial Communist Party congress Saturday with a big military and civilian parade to mark 50 years since the defeat of CIA-backed exiles at the Bay of Pigs, still celebrated here as a landmark triumph over the island's powerful neighbor to the north.

Thousands of soldiers high-stepped through sprawling Revolution Plaza as martial music blared from loudspeakers, not far from an iconic sculpture of Ernesto "Che" Guevara that gazes down from the side of the Interior Ministry building. Helicopters whirred and jet fighters in combat formation roared overhead while freshly painted amphibious assault vehicles and rocket launchers rumbled past.

"Long live Fidel! Long live Raul! Long live the Communist Party of Cuba!" a female announcer shouted, and particpants responded with shouts of approval.

Tweaking a theme from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, a male announcer declared Cuba's revolution to be "Of the humble, by the humble, and for the humble."

The pro-democracy uprisings sweeping through the Arab world are in danger of being manipulated by Iran's Islamic Republic, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu warned in an interview with AFP.

Speaking in an exclusive interview with AFP at the weekend, the Israeli premier said the unprecedented protests sweeping through the Middle East and North Africa could go one of two ways.

"What we hope to see is the European Spring of 1989," he said, referring to the year which marked a turning point for the wave of revolutions sweeping through the Eastern Bloc which led to the break-up of the Soviet Union two years later.

But Tehran, he warned, was trying to cash in on the tide of mass uprising sweeping the region to turn it to its advantage in a bid to repeat the events of 1979 and the Islamic Revolution.

"We could find that the Arab Spring turns into an Iranian winter," he warned.