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Anchored by Jake Tapper, The Lead airs at 4 p.m. ET on CNN.
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sports lead
What happens to college football players who don't make the NFL draft?
(CNN) – Draft day is finally here, the day every football fan looks forward to. Unless you root for the Jets.
For a college football star, the move from Saturday to Sunday could mean a signing bonus in the tens of millions of dollars, another pile of millions in endorsements, and tens of millions of viewers for the NFL and its TV partners.
But those who do not hear the commissioner call their names, may be left with a degree that isn't worth the paper on which it's printed, if they graduated at all.
CNN's Sara Ganim reports.
world lead
Did Clinton drop the ball on Boko Haram?
(CNN) – The hunt for 300 kidnapped girls in Nigeria continues, and how the government there has limped into action to find them.
Boko Haram, the terror group that kidnapped 300 girls from their schools in Nigeria is known as Nigeria's Taliban.
They have declared war on western education, and slashed, burned and blasted their way through villages and schools before, demanding that citizens convert to their perverted form of Islam, or die.
Still, the State Department, under Hillary Clinton, reportedly did not seem convinced that they belonged on the ultimate black list.
CNN's Jake Tapper reports.
buried lead
Pomp and protest: Controversial commencement speakers
(CNN) – If there's one thing you want at your college graduation, besides getting across the stage without tripping on your gown, it's a commencement speaker who can impart some inspiring words before you walk into the buzz-saw of the job market.
But increasingly, it seems the free thought promoted at many higher learning institutions, doesn't extend to the person at the podium.
CNN's Jake Tapper reports.
world lead
Pro-Russian separatists defy Putin call to delay referendum in Ukraine
Donetsk, Ukraine (CNN) – Pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine have decided to go ahead with a Sunday referendum on greater local powers, they said Thursday, defying a call by Russian President Vladimir Putin to postpone the vote.
Putin had urged the pro-Russia sympathizers to delay the referendum to give dialogue "the conditions it needs to have a chance."
Representatives from the council of the self-declared Donetsk People's Republic and separatists from Luhansk told reporters they have voted to press ahead to ask eastern Ukrainians there if they want sovereignty from Kiev.
world lead
310 people killed in latest Boko Haram attack; hundreds of girls remain missing
CNN anchor Isha Sesay will be live from Abuja on CNN International on Thursday at 5, 7, 8.30 and 9 p.m. CET.
Abuja, Nigeria (CNN) - Nigerian President Goodluck Jonathan, whose country's effort to subdue Boko Haram has been largely ineffective, declared in a speech Thursday that the terror group's abductions of schoolgirls would be its undoing.
"I believe the kidnap of these girls will be the beginning of the end for terror in Nigeria," he said at the opening of the World Economic Forum meeting in Abuja.
But the task of recovering the girls appeared to grow more complicated Thursday.
U.S. intelligence officials believe the 276 girls abducted last month have been separated, according to a senior U.S. official who declined to be identified because of the sensitive nature of the information.
The source declined to say how U.S. officials came to the conclusion.
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