In the news

Raul Castro, 81, whom Cuba’s National Assembly appointed to a second fiveyear term as the country’s president with Miguel Diaz-Canel, 52, as his vice president, said the new term will be his last.

Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate in last year’s presidential election, and his wife, Ann, are set to make their return to the national political stage in an interview from Southern California with Chris Wallace on next week’s Fox News Sunday, and Romney will also speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., head of the Senate Finance Committee, said a vote on the nomination of Jack Lew, the former White House chief of staff, to become treasury secretary, is scheduled for Tuesday morning, after the nominee answered the committee’s questions “in a thorough and fully transparent manner.”

The Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said Pope Benedict XVI is aware of allegations of “inappropriate behavior” filed against Cardinal Keith O’Brien, 74, Britain’s most senior Catholic cleric, by three priests and a former priest who say he approached them in an inappropriate manner, with some purported encounters dating back to 1980.

D.J. Corcoran, fire captain in Knoxville, Tenn., and his crew spent more than an hour working to rescue 25 people who crammed into a 5-foot-by-5-foot elevator at the 27-story Plaza Tower for a fraternity party, noting in his report that uncooperative passengers and a rowdy crowd in the lobby extended the delay.

Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, paid a visit to her country’s troops operating Patriot missile batteries along Turkey’s border with Syria before scheduled talks with Turkish leaders about the Mediterranean country’s slow progress to join the European Union.

Betty LeMaster, who became curious about the rock she had used as a doorstop in her Smyrna, Tenn., home for 15 years after watching a TV show, showed it to a geoscientist who told her the rock dotted with dime-sized chambers that appear to have starburst-like protrusions is a 450-million-year-old fossilized coral.

Neofit of Ruse, 67, was elected patriarch of the 6 million-strong Bulgarian Orthodox Christian Church with 90 of the electoral college’s 138 votes, succeeding the popular Patriarch Maxim, who died in November at age 98 after a long illness.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 02/25/2013

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