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Owner of Rivera plane being investigated by DEA

PHOENIX (AP) — The company that owns a luxury jet that crashed and killed Latin music star Jenni Rivera is under investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and the agency seized two of its planes earlier this year as part of the ongoing probe.

DEA spokeswoman Lisa Webb Johnson confirmed Thursday the planes owned by Las Vegas-based Starwood Management were seized in Texas and Arizona, but she declined to discuss details of the case. The agency also has subpoenaed all the company’s records, including any correspondence it has had with a former Tijuana mayor who U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected has ties to organized crime.

The man widely believed to be behind the aviation company is an ex-convict named Christian Esquino, 50, who has a long and checkered legal past. Corporate records list his sister-in-law as the company’s only officer, but insurance companies that cover some of the firm’s planes say in court documents that the woman is merely a front and that Esquino is the one in charge.

Esquino’s legal woes date back decades. He pleaded guilty to a fraud charge that stemmed from a major drug investigation in Florida in the early 1990s and most recently was sentenced to two years in federal prison in a California aviation fraud case. Esquino, a Mexican citizen, was deported upon his release. Esquino and various other companies he has either been involved with or owns have also been sued for failing to pay millions of dollars in loans, according to court records.

The 43-year-old California-born Rivera died at the peak of her career when the plane she was traveling in nose-dived into the ground while flying from the northern Mexican city of Monterrey to the central city of Toluca early Sunday morning. She was perhaps the most successful female singer in grupero, a male-dominated Mexico regional style, and had branched out into acting and reality television.

It remained unclear Thursday exactly what caused the crash and why Rivera was on Esquino’s plane. The 78-year-old pilot and five other people were also killed. Esquino was not on the plane.

The late singer’s brother, Pedro Rivera Jr., said that he didn’t know anything about the owner or why or how she ended up in his plane.

Esquino told the Los Angeles Times in a telephone interview from Mexico City earlier this week that the singer was considering buying the aircraft from Starwood for $ 250,000 and the flight was offered as a test ride. He disputed reports that he owns Starwood, maintaining that he is merely the company’s operations manager “with the expertise.”

In response to an email from The Associated Press, Esquino said he did not want to comment. Calls to various phone numbers associated with him rang unanswered.

Esquino is no stranger to tangles with the law. He was indicted in the early 1990s along with 12 other defendants in a major federal drug investigation that claimed the suspects planned to sell more than 480 kilograms of cocaine, according to court records. He eventually pleaded guilty to conspiring to conceal money from the IRS and was sentenced to five years in prison, but much of the term was suspended for reasons that weren’t immediately clear.

He served about five months in prison before being released.

Cynthia Hawkins, a former assistant U.S. attorney who handled the case and is now in private practice in Orlando, remembered the investigation well.

“It was huge,” Hawkins said Thursday. “This was an international smuggling group.”

She said the case began with the arrest of Robert Castoro, who was at the time considered one of the most prolific smugglers of marijuana and cocaine into Florida from direct ties to Colombian drug cartels in the 1980s. Castoro was convicted in 1988 and sentenced to life in prison, but he then began cooperating with authorities, leading to his sentence being reduced to just 10 years, Hawkins said.

“Castoro cooperated for years,” she said. “We put hundreds of people in jail.”

He eventually gave up another smuggler, Damian Tedone, who was indicted in the early 1990s along with Esquino and 11 others in a conspiracy involving drug smuggling in Florida in the 1980s at a time when the state was the epicenter of the nation’s cocaine trade.

Tedone also cooperated with authorities and has since been released from prison. Telephone messages left Thursday for both Tedone and Castoro were not returned.

Esquino eventually pleaded guilty to the lesser offense of concealing money from the IRS.

Joseph Milchen, Esquino’s attorney at the time, said Thursday the case eventually revolved around his client “bringing money into the United States without declaring it.”

However, Milchen acknowledged that a plane purchased by Esquino was “used to smuggle drugs.”

He denied his former client has ever had anything to do with illegal narcotics.

“The only thing he has ever done is with airplanes,” Milchen said.

Court filings also indicate Esquino was sentenced to two years in federal prison after pleading guilty in 2004 to committing fraud involving aircraft he purchased in Mexico, then falsified the planes’ log books and re-sold them in the United States.

Also in 2004, a federal judge ordered him and one of his companies to pay a creditor $ 6.2 million after being accused of failing to pay debts to a bank.

As the years passed, Esquino’s troubles only grew.

In February this year, a Gulfstream G-1159A plane the government valued at $ 500,000 was seized by the U.S. Marshals Service on behalf of the DEA after landing in Tucson on a flight that originated in Mexico

Four months later, the DEA subpoenaed all of Starwood’s records dating to Dec. 13, 2007, including federal and state income tax documents, bank deposit information, records on all company assets and sales, and the entity’s relationship with Esquino and more than a dozen companies and individuals, including former Tijuana Mayor Jorge Hank-Rhon, a gambling mogul and a member of one of Mexico’s most powerful families. U.S. law enforcement officials have long suspected Hank-Rhon is tied to organized crime but no allegations have been proven. He has consistently denied any criminal involvement.

He was arrested in Mexico last year on weapons charges and on suspicion of ordering the murder of his son’s former girlfriend. He was later freed for lack of evidence.

The subpoena was obtained by the U-T San Diego newspaper.

A Starwood attorney listed on the subpoena, Jeremy Schuster, declined Thursday to provide details.

“We don’t comment on matters involving clients,” he said.

In September, the DEA seized another Starwood plane — a 1977 Hawker 700 with an insured value of $ 1 million — after it landed in McAllen, Texas, from a flight from Mexico.

Insurers of both aircraft have since filed complaints in federal court in Nevada seeking to have the Starwood policies nullified, in part, because they say Esquino lied in the application process when he noted he had never been indicted on drug-related criminal charges. Both companies said they would not have issued the policies had he been truthful.

Another attorney for Starwood has not responded to phone and email messages seeking comment, and no one was at the address listed at its Las Vegas headquarters. The address is a post office box in a shipping and mailing store located between a tuxedo rental shop and a supermarket in a shopping center several miles west of the Las Vegas Strip.

___

Associated Press writers Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Ken Ritter in Las Vegas contributed to this report.

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How to talk to your children about a school shooting

(Reuters) – When parents ask how they can comfort and reassure their children after a tragedy that receives extensive news coverage, the usual advice is to be supportive and reassuring but don’t offer false assurance, experts say.

“Children want to know they’re safe and will stay safe. Parents can convey that by what they say and how they behave,” said Dr. Victor Fornari, director of child and adolescent psychiatry at North Shore-LIJ Health System in New Hyde Park, New York.

But after a school shooting – especially one as horrific as that in Newtown, Connecticut, on Friday – the challenge of helping kids cope is enormously greater than after, say, a tornado wipes out a distant town. It also poses a much greater risk that children who hear about it will suffer a traumatic reaction.

“Schools are supposed to be safe and nurturing environments for children,” said Fornari. “This shatters that belief. Restoring the sense of security in school will take time.”

The way to do that isn’t to offer false assurances, experts say.

“I wouldn’t lie, because your credibility is very, very important,” said Dr. Michael Brody, a child psychiatrist and chairman of the Television and Media Committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. “To say this would never happen to you, I don’t think that is reasonable.”

But while parents need to be honest, they should also make clear that such tragedies are exceedingly rare.

“Parents can say emphatically, ‘your school is a very safe place,’” said David Finkelhor, professor of sociology and director of the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire in Durham. “It’s a vanishingly rare occurrence, and schools are still the safest places kids can hang out in terms of violence.”

Parents should not let young children watch news coverage of the shootings, and might warn older children and teenagers away from looking for news and disturbing video of the tragedy on Twitter, Facebook and other sites they can access via smartphones.

AVOID UPSETTING DETAILS

As parents talk to their children about Newtown, they should avoid dwelling on upsetting details, such as exactly what the gunman did where and to whom. Younger children should be reassured that the shooting is over. With older children, parents might talk about their school’s safety protocols and emergency plans.

If a teenager argues that school wasn’t safe for Newtown’s children, parents can offer statistics. U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show that school homicides have fallen in the last 20 years from about 30 a year in the 1990s to 17 in 2010, the last year with complete data.

If the child has questions, parents should answer directly and in a straightforward way, said Dr. Joshua Kellman, clinical associate of psychiatry at the University of Chicago Medicine, matching the level of the response to the level of the child. If an 8 year old asks how someone could open fire on little kids sitting at their school desks, simply explaining that “sometimes something goes wrong with people and they are not thinking right,” should suffice, he said.

It can also be helpful to show children that normalcy prevails. The best way to do that is by sticking to standard weekend activities, said child psychologist Dr. Harold Koplewicz, president of Child Mind Institute, a nonprofit treatment, research and education organization in New York City. “Go Christmas shopping, go to church or synagogue, play a game, watch a video.”

Parents should keep in mind that grief, distress, anxiety and worse are normal human reactions to news that little children have been gunned down in their classroom, not signs of psychological illness. In other words, don’t assume that children who become clingy or withdrawn, who demand more parental attention, stop doing schoolwork, have trouble sleeping or regress (parents can expect young children to ask to sleep in their beds, said Fornari) need counseling.

“If their reactions do not seriously interfere with their lives, you shouldn’t necessarily seek out professional help,” said Fornari. “Children are resilient. Most will be able to cope with this traumatic event and be fine.”

The children who will have the hardest time coping are the 10 percent or so who already suffer from anxiety, typically as a result of an earlier trauma such as witnessing violence or losing a close relative, said Fornari. “Parents know if this describes their child, and should expect stronger reactions.”

That, of course, holds especially true for the survivors of the shooting. These children — and adults — are more likely to be psychologically traumatized, suffering flashbacks, nightmares and intrusive thoughts, re-living the sounds of gunshots and the chaos of being rushed out of their classrooms by police officers.

For them, said Fornari, “their lives will forever be marked as before and after December 14.”

(Reporting by Julie Steenhuysen and Sharon Begley; Editing by Julian Mincer and Lisa Shumaker)

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Rent ‘to rise faster than prices’

14 December 2012 Last updated at 06:35 ET

Surveyors are predicting that the cost of renting a home will rise by 4% in 2013, double the predicted rate of UK house price growth.

The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (Rics) said that a slight improvement in the UK economy would be reflected in the property price change.

But many potential first-time buyers would be squeezed and see rents rise.

Lenders have predicted that prices will stay relatively stagnant next year and sales remain well below their peak.

‘Tentative signs of recovery’

Simon Rubinsohn, chief economist at Rics, said that mortgage lenders would continue to demand high deposits, and first-time buyers would continue to struggle to secure a mortgage.

This would add to demand for rental properties, and so raise rental costs.

He said that the group expected property sales in general to hit their highest level since 2007, although this would still be 40% lower than at the start of the credit crunch.

This increase would be assisted by the Funding for Lending scheme, which sees cheap funds supplied to banks by the Bank of England for them to pass on to small businesses and household borrowers.

He suggested the rise in activity would be seen in some of London, as well as the south-east of England and the north-east of England.

“These tentative signs of recovery in the sales market should not blind us to the very real problems that still exist,” he said.

“Even with the Funding for Lending scheme and some other government policies beginning to be felt in the mortgage market, many first-time buyers will continue to find it difficult to secure a sufficiently large loan to take an initial step on the housing market.

“Meanwhile, the alternative of renting is becoming more and more costly with a further increase in rents likely in 2013.”

He called for the government to put the conditions in place for house building to increase.

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NKorea rocket launch shows young leader as gambler

PYONGYANG, North Korea (AP) — A triumphant North Korea staged a mass rally of soldiers and civilians Friday to glorify the country’s young ruler, who took a big gamble this week in sending a satellite into orbit in defiance of international warnings.

Wednesday’s rocket launch came just eight months after a similar attempt ended in an embarrassing public failure, and just under a year after Kim Jong Un inherited power following his father’s death.

The surprising success of the launch may have earned Kim global condemnation, but at home the gamble paid off, at least in the short term. To his people, it made the 20-something Kim appear powerful, capable and determined in the face of foreign adversaries.

Tens of thousands of North Koreans, packed into snowy Kim Il Sung Square, clenched their fists in a unified show of resolve as a military band tooted horns and pounded on drums.

Huge red banners positioned in the square called on North Koreans to defend Kim Jong Un with their lives. They also paid homage to Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, and his grandfather, North Korean founder Kim Il Sung.

Pyongyang says the rocket put a crop and weather monitoring satellite into orbit. Much of the rest of the world sees it as a thinly disguised test of banned long-range missile technology. It could bring a fresh round of U.N. sanctions that would increase his country’s international isolation. At the same time, the success of the launch could strengthen North Korea’s military, the only entity that poses a potential threat to Kim’s rule.

The launch’s success, 14 years after North Korea’s first attempt, shows more than a little of the gambling spirit in the third Kim to rule North Korea since it became a country in 1948.

“North Korean officials will long be touting Kim Jong Un as a gutsy leader” who commanded the rocket launch despite being new to the job and young, said Kim Byung-ro, a North Korea specialist at Seoul National University in South Korea.

The propaganda machinery churned into action early Friday, with state media detailing how Kim Jong Un issued the order to fire off the rocket just days after scientists fretted over technical issues, ignoring the chorus of warnings from Washington to Moscow against a move likely to invite more sanctions.

Top officials followed Kim in shrugging off international condemnation.

Workers’ Party Secretary Kim Ki Nam told the crowd, bundled up against a winter chill in the heart of the capital, that “hostile forces” had dubbed the launch a missile test. He rejected the claim and called on North Koreans to stand their ground against the “cunning” critics.

North Korea called the satellite a gift to Kim Jong Il, who is said to have set the lofty goal of getting a satellite into space and then tapped his son to see it into fruition. The satellite, which North Korean scientists say is designed to send back data about crops and weather, was named Kwangmyongsong, or “Lode Star” — the nickname legendarily given to the elder Kim at birth.

Kim Jong Il died on Dec. 17, 2011, so to North Koreans, the successful launch is a tribute. State TV have been replaying video of the launch to “Song of Gen. Kim Jong Il.”

But it is the son who will bask in the glory, and face the international censure that may follow.

Even while he was being groomed to succeed his father, Kim Jong Un had been portrayed as championing science and technology as a way to lift North Korea out of decades of economic hardship.

“It makes me happy that our satellite is flying in space,” Pyongyang citizen Jong Sun Hui said as Friday’s ceremony came to a close and tens of thousands rushed into the streets, many linking arms as they went.

“The satellite launch demonstrated our strong power and the might of our science and technology once again,” she told The Associated Press. “And it also clearly testifies that a thriving nation is in our near future.”

Aside from winning him support from the people, the success of the launch helps his image as he works to consolidate power over a government crammed with elderly, old-school lieutenants of his father and grandfather, foreign analysts said.

Experts say that what is unclear, however, is whether Kim will continue to smoothly solidify power, steering clear of friction with the powerful military while dealing with the strong possibility of more crushing sanctions. The United Nations says North Korea already has a serious hunger problem.

“Certainly in the short run, this is an enormous boost to his prestige,” according to Marcus Noland, a North Korea analyst at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.

Noland, however, also mentioned the “Machiavellian argument” that this could cause future problems for Kim by significantly boosting the power of the military — “the only real threat to his rule.”

Successfully firing a rocket was so politically crucial for Kim at the onset of his rule that he allowed an April launch to go through even though it resulted in the collapse of a nascent food-aid-for-nuclear-freeze deal with the United States, said North Korea analyst Kim Yeon-su of Korea National Defense University in Seoul.

The launch success consolidates his image as heir to his father’s legacy. But it could end up deepening North Korea’s political and economic isolation, he said.

On Friday, the section at the rally reserved for foreign diplomats was noticeably sparse. U.N. officials and some European envoys stayed away from the celebration, as they did in April after the last launch.

Despite the success, experts say North Korea is years from even having a shot at developing reliable missiles that could bombard the American mainland and other distant targets.

North Korea will need larger and more dependable missiles, and more advanced nuclear weapons, to threaten U.S. shores, though it already poses a shorter-range missile threat to its neighbors.

The next big question is how the outside world will punish Pyongyang — and try to steer North Korea from what could come next: a nuclear test. In 2009, the North conducted an atomic explosion just weeks after a rocket launch.

Scott Snyder, a Korea specialist for the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote recently that North Korea‘s nuclear ambitions should inspire the U.S., China, South Korea and Japan to put aside their issues and focus on dealing with Pyongyang.

If there is a common threat that should galvanize regional cooperation, “it most certainly should be the prospect of a 30-year-old leader of a terrorized population with his finger on a nuclear trigger,” Snyder said.

____

Jon Chol Jin in Pyongyang, and Foster Klug and Sam Kim in Seoul, South Korea, contributed to this report. Follow Jean H. Lee on Twitter: (at)newsjean.

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Microsoft, Motorola file to keep patent case details private

SEATTLE (Reuters) – Microsoft Corp and Google Inc‘s Motorola Mobility unit have requested a federal judge in Seattle to keep secret from the public various details from their recent trial concerning the value of technology patents and the two companies’ attempts at a settlement.

Microsoft and Motorola, acquired by Google earlier this year, are preparing post-trial briefs to present to a judge as he decides the outcome of a week-long trial last month to establish what rates Microsoft should pay Motorola for use of standard, essential wireless technology used in its Xbox game console and other products.

The case is just one strand of litigation in an industry-wide dispute over ownership of the underlying technology and the design of smartphones, which has drawn in Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics Co Ltd, Nokia and others.

In a filing with the Western District of Washington federal court in Seattle on Friday, Microsoft and Motorola asked the judge to allow them to file certain parts of their post-trial submissions under seal and redact those details in the public record.

The details concern terms of Motorola‘s licenses with third parties and Microsoft‘s business and marketing plans for future products. During the trial, which ran from November 13-20, U.S. District Judge James Robart cleared the court when such sensitive or trade secret details were discussed.

“For the same compelling reasons that the court sealed this evidence for purposes of trial, it would be consistent and appropriate to take the same approach in connection with the parties’ post-trial submissions,” the two companies argued in the court filing.

The judge has so far been understanding of the companies’ desire to keep private details of their patent royalties and future plans, although that has perplexed some spectators who believe trials in public courts should be fully open to the public.

In addition, Motorola asked the judge to seal some documents relating to settlement negotiations between the two companies, arguing that keeping those details secret would encourage openness in future talks and make a settlement more likely.

Judge Robart is not expected to rule on the case until the new year.

The case in U.S. District Court, Western District of Washington is Microsoft Corp. vs. Motorola Inc., 10-cv-1823.

(Reporting by Bill Rigby; Editing by Richard Chang)

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One Direction named MTV’s 2012 Artist of the Year

NEW YORK (AP) — They’re platinum. They’re fascinating. And now One Direction is MTV‘s 2012 Artist of the Year.

MTV says the fivesome is “the clear choice for the top spot” after a year that included two No. 1 albums, hits such as “What Makes You Beautiful” and a sold-out world tour.

One Direction’s Louis (LOO’-ee) Tomlinson calls Thursday’s honor “the icing on the cake.”

MTV’s team of music staffers chose Carly Rae Jepsen‘s “Call Me Maybe” as song as the year.

One Direction placed third on the U.K. version of “The X Factor” in 2010 and made their U.S. debut in March with the No. 1 album “Up All Night.” Their sophomore album, “Take Me Home,” was the year’s third-highest debut.

The group also made Barbara Walters’ most fascinating people of 2012 list.

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Blood Clots Are Ready for Their Close-Up [Slide Show]

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Xi Jinping Hits the Ground Running

Barely a month after becoming party secretary, Xi Jinping has been busy showing who’s in charge. He has stepped up a crackdown on corruption, ordered officials to cut down on pomp and ceremony, called for improved relations with the rest of the world, and pushed for a stronger military. On his first official trip outside Beijing, Xi, who should assume the presidency in March, visited the freewheeling province of Guangdong, where he met with entrepreneurs and called for speedier economic reform. There he evoked the vision of paramount leader Deng Xiao-ping, who launched China’s opening to the world some 30 years ago and who traveled to Guangdong in 1992 to energize reforms.

After a decade of relative stasis under outgoing leaders Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, many China watchers are surprised and encouraged by Xi’s boldness. “For Xi to do so much so quickly is quite unprecedented. In the one-party system everyone is supposed to give the feeling that all is continuity and passing the baton. It is almost impolite to make changes too quickly,” says Robert Lawrence Kuhn, author of How China’s Leaders Think.

Reining in corruption seems to be the top goal. “Corruption could kill the party and ruin the country,” Xi warned top leaders in a meeting on Nov. 18, reported the official English-language China Daily. Under Xi’s watch, state media are encouraging whistle-blowers to use the Internet to report graft. The government has announced a trial program in Guangdong that will require officials and their families to report their assets regularly. Xi also has ordered the investigation of a senior provincial official in Sichuan suspected of financial improprieties. “The government is placing a lot more officials under scrutiny now,” says David Kelly, research director at China Policy, a Beijing-based research and advisory company. “But the question is not just whether individual officials are corrupt. It is an endemic problem.” He cites as an example the practice of government positions being sold, a problem highlighted in a recent report by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection.

Xi’s order that officials should limit the lavish displays that usually accompany their public appearances is meant to show that the leadership is more in tune with the people. “You can give an edict like this, and there will be visible changes immediately,” says Kuhn. “The hope is that people will see them and that will give the leaders street cred so they can continue working on harder things.” Xi has also mandated that government meetings be shorter and that “empty talk”—jargon-laden and long-winded speeches—be avoided, according to a commentary by the official Xinhua News Agency on the new rules.

Xi is more comfortable than Hu in dealing with his foreign counterparts, says Douglas Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “He exudes confidence,” says Paal, who served on the National Security Council under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. In a December meeting with foreign scholars working in China, Xi stressed the need for closer relations with the world, saying no country “can go it alone or outshine others in today’s complex global economy,” Xinhua reported.

Xi’s strong ties with an assertive military (his father was a venerated revolutionary guerrilla, and Xi once served as an assistant to an important defense official) could create friction with Asia and the U.S. Since becoming head of the central military commission, a post he assumed when he became party secretary, Xi has met with top brass and promoted to full general the commander of the Second Artillery Corps, which is responsible for China’s nuclear arsenal. “The People’s Liberation Army has been ordered to build a powerful missile force,” reported Xinhua on Dec. 5.

Any of Xi’s efforts to stamp out corruption or weaken the clout of state-owned enterprises are likely to run up against well-entrenched business elites. These include the so-called princelings, the offspring of senior leaders. “Of course Xi wants to send a message saying ‘I will follow Deng Xiaoping’s reform,’ ” says Bo Zhiyue, a professor and senior research fellow at the East Asian Institute of the National University of Singapore. “But that in itself doesn’t mean anything.” Bo cites Premier Wen Jiabao as an official who stressed the importance of reform but accomplished little. “In China, being a reformer is politically correct. Everyone is a reformer because they have to be.”

The bottom line: Even before assuming the presidency, Xi Jinping has signaled he’ll be aggressive about reforms.

Businessweek.com — Top News

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Cuban lawmakers meet to consider economy, budget

HAVANA (AP) — Cuban lawmakers are holding the second of their twice-annual sessions with a year-end report expected on the state of the country’s economy.

Legislators are also to approve next year’s budget.

Cuban leaders have sometimes used the parliamentary gatherings to make important announcements or policy statements.

Observers will be watching for word on the progress of President Raul Castro‘s economic reform plan and efforts to promote younger leaders.

The unicameral parliament will reconvene in February with a new membership following elections. It is then expected to name Castro to another five-year term.

State-run media said Castro presided over Thursday’s session.

It was not open to international journalists.

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