The body of US president John F Kennedy should be exhumed for analysis by forensic experts to see if he was the victim of a military-style ambush by several assassins, a British author said last night.
Matthew Smith's call is backed by Cyril Wecht, America's former top pathologist who once led the country's academy of forensic sciences.

Mr Wecht sensationally discovered the president's brain was missing when he conducted an examination of highly sensitive autopsy evidence, but says his skull and remains should still be available for analysis.

As the world remembers the 50th anniversary of the assassination this Friday, Mr Taylor says the macabre demand could finally resolve the greatest mystery of the past century.

Highly respected Mr Wecht has written a foreword for Mr Taylor's fifth book on the tragedy, called simply Who Killed Kennedy?

Retired college lecturer Mr Smith has spent decades analysing all known information and is convinced Lee Harvey Oswald, 24, was not the real killer.

Mr Smith writes: "First, the members of the Kennedy family who have records placed in their protection must reveal those for public scrutiny.

"Second, as painful as it may be, President Kennedy's remains must be exhumed and re-examined, this time by the top pathologist in the nation. We will then learn about the direction of the gunfire, which will result in a decision on whether a new, thorough investigation is warranted.

John F. Kennedy and the Psychopathology of Politics

Today I want to continue with the subject of John Kennedy; there's only one week left before the anniversary of his death, so I'm going to have to really put the pedal to the metal to get to the end of the subject on time. As it happens, now that the subject weighs so heavily on my mind, I find that there are things that constantly remind me of what America lost, the terrible state of the world today as a consequence of that loss, and the ultimate reasons behind it all.

California - A retired California state worker who claims he was interrogated by the CIA because of his psychic abilities is suing the spy agency to prove he's not making it up.

Phillip Mosier, 70, has spent most of his life savings trying to get the CIA to admit its agents questioned him in the summer of 1966 because he had stumbled upon a secret government program aimed at using telepathy as a tool for espionage.

"I don't care if I look foolish," Mosier says. "I'm telling the story the way it is, the way it happened."

Using the pen name Philip Chabot, Mosier wrote a book in 2008 about the alleged program he says was called Operation Blue Light.

Mosier said he was forced to publish the book himself because he couldn't prove what he said was true.

Officials are trying to determine why a drone being used as part of a Navy training exercise malfunctioned off the Ventura County coast Saturday.

Two sailors suffered minor burns in the incident, the Navy said in a statement.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Third Fleet told the Associated Press that it is unclear what went wrong.

The ship sustained some damage and is returning to its home port of San Diego, the Navy said.

The sailors aboard the USS Chancellorsville were using the drone to test the ship's radar-tracking system, something done on a regular basis. The drone, a 13-foot-long aircraft with a wingspan of nearly 6 feet, was being controlled from Point Mugu.

Around 1:25 p.m., the drone slammed into the port side of the ship, a guided missile cruiser with a crew of about 300.

A Tory MP last night sent a bombshell tape recording to the chairman of the BBC Trust which he says proves there was a 'cover-up' over the Jimmy Savile affair.

Rob Wilson has given Chris Patten a recording of Nick Pollard - who headed an independent inquiry into why the BBC's Newsnight programme axed its investigation of Savile.

On the tape, Mr Pollard is heard admitting that he made a 'mistake' by withholding a key detail from his report. He says he was told that BBC head of news, Helen Boaden, had personally informed director-general Mark Thompson of the sex abuse allegations against Savile in December 2011. Mr Pollard added he received the information in a letter from Ms Boaden's lawyer.

The assertion is at odds with Mr Thompson's claim that he was unaware of the allegations against Savile until after he left the BBC in September 2012. In his final report in December 2012, Mr Pollard stated that he had 'no reason to doubt' Mr Thompson's story.

But during the tape-recorded private conversation, Mr Pollard adds: 'It doesn't particularly reflect well on me that I overlooked this [the letter] in the report.'

A total of 50 people are feared dead as a passenger jet crashed on landing in the city of Kazan in Russia's republic of Tatarstan, a spokeswoman for the Emergencies Ministry reported Sunday.

Irina Rossius said the jet, a Tatarstan Airlines Boeing 737 bound from Moscow to Kazan with 50 people on board, crashed at about 19:30 Moscow Time, adding that there was an explosion. According to preliminary data, all those on board died, she said.

The pilot tried to perform a go-around after an aborted landing, a spokesman for Federal Air Transport Agency Rosaviatsiya said, adding that the airport in Kazan is closed.

The Rossiya-24 TV channel reported that there were 44 passengers and six crew on board.

An investigation is under way, the Investigative Committee said, adding that it will send experts to the crash site. Committee chief Alexander Bastrykin will head to Kazan on Monday. The fire on the crash site has been extinguished, the committee said.

The devil made them do it?

According to a Catholic bishop in Springfield, Illinois, Satan was behind his state's recent legalization of same-sex marriage.

So, next Wednesday, at about the same time Gov. Pat Quinn signs the gay marriage bill into law, Bishop Thomas Paprocki will hold an exorcism ceremony "in reparation for the sin of same-sex marriage."

Paprocki, who's something of an expert on exorcism, says he's just following the Pope's marching orders.

When Pope Francis, then Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio, was an archbishop in Argentina, he called that country's legalization of same-sex marriage "a 'move' of the father of lies who wishes to confuse and deceive the children of God."

In a statement released on Thursday, Paprocki said: "The pope's reference to the 'father of lies' comes from the Gospel of John, where Jesus refers to the devil as 'a liar and the father of lies.' So Pope Francis is saying that same-sex 'marriage' comes from the devil and should be condemned as such."

Since his election as Pope in March, Francis seems to have taken a less combative approach to homosexuality. At a news conference in July, for example, he said "Who am I to judge?" a gay person who seeks to be a good person.

Illinois politicians - including Catholics - cited the Pope's words when explaining their support for the state's same-sex marriage bill.

In September, the Pope said the church has no right to "interfere spiritually" in the lives of gays and lesbians and chided Catholics who "obsess" about fighting culture war issues like abortion and same-sex marriage.

The owner of a dog shot that was shot and killed by Colorado police officers is suing Commerce City and three cops for $1 million in damages.

The officers involved in the shooting of the chocolate lab/pit bull mix, Chloe, were cleared of any wrongdoing in a criminal trial.

The video of Chloe's killing went viral on the Internet and many people were horrified by what had happened and protested about the excessive use of force. That is just part of the reason that Gary Branson has decided to file the civil case.

Chloe helped Branson recover after undergoing triple bypass surgery in 2008.

"She motivated me," Branson said. "When you have a surgery like that, that's going to bring you down. She was always there to perk me up, whether it was by licking my toes or begging for a bone. She just brightened my day, every day."

Branson cites the severe emotional distress that he has suffered and, although he's already gotten another dog, he claims his life will never be the same.

"I can't replace Chloe," said Branson, "there are so many dogs being shot needlessly it needs to come to a stop."

A mother is facing felony charges and two state police officers are under investigation after a traffic stop escalated into a wild scene involving broken glass, gunfire and a high speed chase.

Charles Dickens is a man for our season, an artist who got people to think about economic injustice.

Can art do anything for the 99%? The case of Charles Dickens argues that yes - when genius, perseverance, activism, and admittedly, luck, combine, artistic creations can spark fires that burn through encrusted layers of human wrongs. It doesn't happen overnight, and not as often as we wish. But it happens.

Maybe that's why we're turning to Dickens for guidance as America careens toward the nightmare he warned us about in the brutal early days of industrial capitalism. In this late finance-driven stage, as our top-heavy society teeters on the brink of self-inflicted disaster, we need him more than ever.

Dickens is a man for our season.

Poet of the People

Dickens was the most famous writer in Europe and America during his lifetime, just 25 when his first novel, The Pickwick Papers, rocketed him to the heights of literary success. Ebeneezer Scrooge gave us the icon of miserly capitalism, while Oliver Twist indicted economic injustice in the simple request of a hungry child, "Please, sir, I want some more."

A friend of the laborer, the poor, the prisoner, and the sufferer, Dickens was likewise the enemy of the miser, the hustler, the social climber, and the hypocrite, all of whom he could slice and dice in a fury of satire.

In the subjects Dickens took on we find a menu of concerns that reflect our current ills: laissez-faire capitalism (Hard Times), class divides (Great Expectations) child poverty (Oliver Twist), debt (Little Dorrit), legal injustice (Bleak House) and tyranny (A Tale of Two Cities).

No wonder Dickensia is everywhere right now. Since the financial crisis, there have been BBC adaptations, a hit biography, and retrospectives celebrating the 200-year anniversary of his birth in 2012. Oprah doubled down on Dickens with a Great Expectations /A Tale of Two Cities combo for her book club. Most recently, Bill de Blasio rode A Tale of Two Cities all the way to the New York mayorship, making the title of Dickens' novel a campaign slogan for a divided metropolis. A new film version of Great Expectations featuring Helena Bonham Carter as Miss Havisham and an upcoming biopic starring Ralph Fiennes seal the author's resurgence.

Charles Dickens didn't just imagine hard times; he lived them. The world was very nearly deprived of one of its great artists and humanitarians when poverty struck his decidedly ordinary family. When Dickens was 12 years old, his father, a clerk, hit a rough financial patch and was thrown into debtor's prison. Young Charles left school and labored in a rat-infested shoe polish warehouse, toiling 10 hours a day, six days a week, for two years. If not for the death of his grandmother, who left the family a small inheritance, Dickens would likely have remained there and never continued his education. Fortunately he was able to make his way to school and eventually landed a job as a newspaper reporter.

Dickens' childhood story, which haunted him for life, is a vivid example of what happens when people fall on hard times in the absence of a social safety net: they get trampled. No doubt Dickens and his family would have been sneered at today by Tea Partiers and self-serving 1 percenters who pretend that poverty is a deserved condition. But Charles Dickens learned firsthand that poverty is no more a sign of depravity than wealth is an indicator of superiority. He saw that very often the reverse is true. This theme would feature in Great Expectations, where the working-class Pip longs to be a gentleman, but soon finds out that many gentlefolk were either dissipated or conniving or sadistic - or all three.