Latell says flatly that Castro played a role in Kennedy's murder in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

"Castro and a small number of Cuban intelligence officers were complicit in Kennedy's death but ... their involvement fell short of an organized assassination plot," he writes in "Castro's Secrets: The CIA and Cuba's Intelligence Machine," a well-footnoted polemic about Cuba's General Directorate of Intelligence to be published next month. Latell says accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald told Cuban diplomats in Mexico City in September 1963 that he might kill JFK. Latell also speculates, without any direct evidence, that Oswald kept the Cubans apprised of his plans as he made his way to Dallas.

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The move is a sign that President Raul Castro is serious about pushing through market-oriented policy changes in the country that has seen socialist rule since the revolution in 1959. And it comes in the context of a slight liberalization of Cuba policy by President Obama, who told journalists in late September that "what we’ve tried to do is to send a signal that we are open to a new relationship with Cuba if the Cuban government starts taking the proper steps to open up its own country -- and provide the space and the respect for human rights that would allow the Cuban people to determine their own destiny."

Sarah Stephens, executive director of the Center for Democracy in the Americas, answered my questions on what the new property law means for the future of Cuba.

What exactly does the new law do, and how radical a change is this?

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But while the Arab Spring is still in full effect in many countries, opponents of the Castro government have gained little momentum for a "Cuban Autumn."

In recent weeks, anti-government activists have staged several public demonstrations in Havana and eastern Cuba. News and video clips of the events were posted on social-networking sites and broadcast on Miami television channels.

They show small groups of activists banging cookware, chanting anti-Castro slogans and "Freedom!" until police and state-security agents arrive to whisk them away.

In some of the videos, larger crowds of Cubans stand around watching the protesters, but they do not join in.

The incidents come after a period of relative calm that followed the Castro government's move last year to release scores of imprisoned political prisoners, with the Catholic Church playing a mediating role. The amnesty briefly ameliorated criticisms by Western governments and human-rights groups of Cuba's one-party socialist system and its treatment of non-violent dissenters.

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For some time things were OK. My father took over his father's butcher shop, and my mother took care of me and my older sister. I took to what babies did best: eat, sleep and soil my diapers. Accompanying me in my crib, I had many stuffed animals, but I took a fancy to a small rubber toy cat. When I could talk, I named him Hebertico. No one is sure why I came up with that name but it stuck.

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It was the first time the 84-year-old revolutionary icon has said he no longer heads the Communist Party, which he has led since its creation in 1965. The Communist Party website still lists him as first secretary, with his brother President Raul Castro listed as second secretary.

The declaration raised questions about just how much power Fidel Castro has been wielding behind the scenes -- with or without a formal post -- and to what extent Raul Castro has had true freedom to make his own decisions.

Castro wrote in an opinion piece that when he got sick in 2006, "I resigned without hesitation from my state and political positions, including first secretary of the party ... and I never tried to exercise those roles again."

He said that even when his health began to improve, he stayed out of state and party affairs "even though everyone, affectionately, continued to refer to me by the same titles."

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The protests sweeping across Libya have created challenges for the Latin American allies of Moammar Gadhafi.

Leftist governments in the Americas have long embraced him as a fellow fighter against U.S. influence in the world. Gadhafi has responded over the years by awarding the Moammar Gadhafi International Human Rights Prize to Castro and Ortega, as well as to Presidents Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, Evo Morales of Bolivia.

His relations with Chavez are so warm that rumors that he was headed to Venezuela swept the world on Monday. Gadhafi took to television late Monday to deny them.

Ortega said he had kept in communication with Gadhafi and expressed solidarity due to the "moments of tension" Libya is experiencing. State radio carried excerpts of his remarks on Tuesday.

"There is looting of businesses now, there is destruction. That is terrible," Ortega said during a commemoration Monday of Nicaraguan hero Augusto Cesar Sandino. He said he told Gadhafi that "difficult moments put loyalty to the test."

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U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sentenced Ahmed Ghailani to life, calling the attacks "horrific" and saying the deaths and damage they caused far outweighs "any and all considerations that have been advanced on behalf of the defedndant." He also ordered Ghailani to pay a $33 million fine.

Kaplan announced the sentenced in a packed Manhattan courtroom after calling it a day of justice for the defendant, as well as for the families of 224 people who died in the al-Qaida bombings, including a dozen Americans, and thousands more who were injured.

Kaplan denounced the attacks and said he was satisfied that Ghailani knew and intended that people would be killed as a result of his actions and the conspiracy he joined.

"This crime was so horrible," he said. "It was a cold-blooded killing and maiming of innocent people on an enormous scale. It wrecked the lives of thousands more ... who had their lives changed forever. The purpose of the crime was to create terror by causing death and destruction on a scale that was hard to imagine in 1998 when it occurred."

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Students seeking academic credit and churches traveling for religious purposes will be able to go to Cuba. The plan will also let any American send as much as $500 every three months to Cuban citizens who are not part of the Castro administration and are not members of the Communist Party.

Also, more airports will be allowed to offer charter service. Right now, only three airports in Miami, Los Angeles and New York City can offer authorized charters to Cuba. That will be expanded to any international airport with proper customs and immigration facilities as long as a licensed travel agencies asks to run charters from the airport.

The White House press office sent out a release saying Obama had directed the changes, which do not need congressional approval. They will be put in place within two weeks.

Changes Obama made last year already increased Cuban-Americans' ability to visit family and send money to relatives. The changes are similar to the travel policies under President Bill Clinton.

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For some Cuban exiles, avowed militant Luis Posada Carriles is like the horsemen, a patriot who has long battled a fearsome oppressor. To his foes, Posada is like the waves, a dangerous force responsible for Havana hotel bombings, assassination attempts on Castro and one of the deadliest pre-9/11 airliner explosions.

To others, the 82-year-old is simply the farmer, a harmless relic living out his twilight.

Lawyers began picking jurors Monday in El Paso, Texas, to hear Posada's trial on federal charges connected to the decade-old bombings that killed an Italian tourist.

The case has been four years in the making, and Posada has spent much of that time painting his thoughts and memories. His art says much about the cagey former CIA asset, who remains a lightning rod in much of Latin America.

Publicly, Posada has remained much like the first painting -- defiant. Cocky even.

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The more articulate/acceptable-to-the-mainstream supporters of the Arizona law usually point out that the law forbids police from racial profiling. The proposed Florida bill doesn't really bother pretending.

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The plans, along with a timetable for which government sectors will get the ax first, are laid out in an internal Communist Party document obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press. Cuba on Monday announced plans to cut 500,000 state workers by March 2011 and help them get work in the private sector, in the most sweeping reforms instituted since President Raul Castro took over from his brother in 2008.

Many of those to be let go will be urged to form private cooperatives. Others will be pushed into jobs at foreign-run companies and joint ventures. Still more will need to set up their own small business -- particularly in the areas of transport and house rental -- according to an internal Communist Party document obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press.

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Jeffrey Goldberg, a national correspondent for The Atlantic, blogged on the magazine's website Tuesday that he was on vacation last month when the head of the Cuban Interests Section in Washington -- which Cuba maintains there instead of an embassy -- called to say Castro had read his recent article about Israel and Iran and wanted him to come to Cuba.

Goldberg asked Julia Sweig, a Cuba-U.S. policy expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, to accompany him, and the pair spent portions of three days talking with Castro.

Cuba's state-controlled media reported Aug. 31 that Goldberg and Sweig met with Castro and attended the dolphin show at Havana's aquarium, but the blog was the first to reveal details of what they discussed.

Goldberg said their first meeting lasted five hours and featured appearances by Castro's wife, Dalia, his son Antonio, and several bodyguards, two of which held his elbow to steady Castro when he moved.

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"Any time Bush would stir up fear and make a big speech, bin Laden would appear threatening people with a story about what he was going to do," Castro told state media during a meeting with a Lithuanian-born writer known for advancing conspiracy theories about world domination. "Bush never lacked for bin Laden's support. He was a subordinate."

Castro said documents posted on WikiLeaks.org -- a website that recently released thousands of pages of classified documents from the Afghan war -- "effectively proved he was a CIA agent." He did not elaborate.

The comments, published in the Communist Party daily Granma on Friday, were the latest in a series of provocative statements by the 84-year-old revolutionary, who has emerged from seclusion to warn that the planet is on the brink of nuclear war.

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The move would leave intact the nearly 50-year-old embargo against the communist regime but would expand opportunities for American students, educators and researchers to visit Cuba, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because internal deliberations continue on the scope and scale of the changes.

A decision could be announced before the end of next week. However, the officials cautioned that political considerations could hold up a decision, possibly until after November's midterm congressional elections.

Some in Congress have voiced opposition to a further easing in the restrictions, which President Barack Obama loosened last year to allow Cuban-Americans to visit and send money to relatives on the island. The new changes would extend some of those provisions to a broader group of Americans and could expand direct flights to Cuba, the officials said.

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Elian, then 5, was found floating in the ocean off Florida's coast on Thanksgiving in 1999 as The Guardian recounts. Soon thereafter the U.S. and Cuba were wrapped up in the international-relations version of a squabbling custody battle. Cuba prevailed when Attorney General Janet Reno ordered the forcible removal of Elian, by then 6, from his relatives' house in Miami.

This week the communist nation held a state celebration of the 10th anniversary of Elian's return to his home country, which is where he spoke to reporters. President Raul Castro attended the celebration, according to the Cuban News Agency. The Babble has a short firsthand account of the 2000 protests in Cuba about Elian's custody battle.

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Deputy U.S. Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin said Monday that the change to existing trade sanctions Monday is intended to help people, "exercise their most basic rights."

Protesters in Iran have used online tools, such as instant messaging and Twitter, to pass information about actions against the governing regime.

The department has allowed the export of services to all three countries, while allowing the export of communications software only to Iran and Sudan. The Treasury says the export of software to Cuba is governed by the Commerce Department.

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When the Time-Life publisher coined his famous phrase, his intent was to prod his fellow citizens into action. Appearing in the Feb. 7, 1941, issue of Life, his essay, "The American Century," hit the newsstands at a moment when the world was in the throes of a vast crisis. A war in Europe had gone disastrously awry. A second almost equally dangerous conflict was unfolding in the Far East. Aggressors were on the march.

With the fate of democracy hanging in the balance, Americans diddled. Luce urged them to get off the dime. More than that, he summoned them to "accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world ... to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit."

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ABC News' Jake Tapper reports that other changes include permission for telecommunications networks to build links between the two countries, and an expansion of the kinds of humanitarian items that can be sent to Cuba.

On the campaign trail, Obama had promised to take this step, while continuing the embargo. It's the kind of thing that might have been politically risky at one point, but the power of the Cuban exile community in Florida has been lessening of late as the oldest among them die off and Latinos from other countries move in to the state.

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Ambassador Jeffrey Davidow, the president's principal adviser in preparing for Trinidad, recently said that he "would not be surprised" if the White House announced the new regulations before the summit opens. He noted that the president is considering Congressional proposals for further opening to the island, may well appoint a special envoy to promote engagement, and could conceivably end U.S. opposition to Cuban membership in the OAS. "We are engaged in a continual evaluation of our policy and how that policy could help result in a change in Cuba that could bring about a democratic society," Davidow said.

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