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Raul Castro said Sunday as he accepted a new five-year term that it will he be his last as Cuba's president, for the first time putting a date on the end of the Castro era. He tapped rising star Miguel Diaz-Canel as his top lieutenant and first in the line of succession.

The 81-year-old Castro also said he hopes to establish two-term limits and age caps for political offices including the presidency — an astonishing prospect for a nation led by Castro or his older brother Fidel since the 1959 revolution.

Some constitutional changes are to be so dramatic that they will have to be ratified by the Cuban people in a public referendum, he said, though he added he was not named president in order to destroy Cuba's socialist system.

Cuba is at a moment of "historic transcendence," Castro told lawmakers in speaking of his decision to name Diaz-Canel to the No. 2 job. "It represents a definitive step in the configuration of the future leadership of the nation through the gradual transfer ... of key roles to new generations."

"This will be my last term," he said. Castro's term will end in 2018.

The 52-year-old Diaz-Canel is now a heartbeat from the presidency and has risen higher than any other Cuban official who didn't directly participate in the 1959 Cuban revolution.

Raul Castro fueled interest in Sunday's legislative gathering after mentioning on Friday his possible retirement and suggesting lightheartedly that he had plans to resign at some point.

It's now clear that while he was joking about retiring soon, he was dead serious when he promised that Sunday's speech would have fireworks.

In recent weeks, Diaz-Canel, an electrical engineer by training and former minister of higher education, has frequently been featured on Cuban state television news broadcasts in an apparent attempt to raise his profile ahead of the announcement.

Diaz-Canel traveled to Venezuela for the symbolic inauguration of Hugo Chavez, a key Castro ally who had been re-elected president but was too ill to be sworn in. Diaz-Canel was also seen on TV presiding over a ceremony involving Cuba's national baseball squad, and accompanied Castro to Chile for a summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States.

Lawmakers also named to the ruling Council of State Jose Ramon Machado Ventura, Castro's previous first vice president; comptroller general Gladys Bejerano; second Vice President Ramiro Valdes; Havana Communist Party secretary Lazara Mercedes Lopez Acea; and Salvador Valdes Mesa, head of Cuba's labor union.

In post-independence Ireland, thousands of women found themselves incarcerated in church-run laundries. For the first time, the state has apologized for their treatment.

These women were a diverse group: former prostitutes, unwed mothers, orphans, homeless women, convicts and industrial school transfers put in the care of the Catholic Church.

Nuns ran the facilities, known as Magdalene Laundries, on a commercial basis, doing laundry for the state, private companies and individuals. But the inmates were never paid for the work, and all profit went to the church. The first of such places opened in the 1930s, and the last laundry in Ireland closed in 1996.

Until last Tuesday, these women never received any official recognition for their years lost in the system.

"As a society, for many years we failed you. We forgot you or, if we thought of you at all, we did so in untrue and offensive stereotypes," said Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny. "This is a national shame, for which I again say, I am deeply sorry and offer my full and heartfelt apologies."

A Life In The Laundries

Mari Steed is committee director of the advocacy group Justice for Magdalenes, and her mother was one of the women who worked in the Magdalene Laundries in the 1960s. Her mother was born out of wedlock in the early 1930s, and later put in an industrial school. In 1947 she was sent to the laundry of Sunday's Well in the city of Cork.

"She spent the next 10 years there doing sewing for them. This would have been anything from embroidery to smock dresses, items for the clergy, altering surpluses, that sort of thing," Steed says. "And obviously there was profit being made on these items, but she was never paid for that."

She, like some other lucky girls, was let go with a work referral in 1957. She worked as an aide in a Dublin hospital run by the church.

"At this time, of course, you know, she's out from under the care of the nuns, essentially," Steed says. "But having been raised completely by the nuns, she exited with absolutely no world skills, no sexual education, didn't know anything about men."

In less than two years, she was pregnant. The nuns sent her back to Cork, to a mother-and-baby home. She gave birth to Steed in 1960 and stayed with her until a U.S. adoption was arranged — about 18 months later.

'Exceedingly Meaningful' Apology

Steed has since reunited with her mother, and worked for years to get the state to recognize the abuse that happened in the laundries. She says hearing the prime minister's apology was huge.

"To get an apology was exceedingly meaningful for me, for my mother, for many of the women that suffered with this notion that they were 'fallen' or somehow damaged," she says.

Steed says it has always been difficult for her mother, now 79, to talk about her experience. But the announcement might help her open up.

"I think she recognizes the importance of that weight coming off her shoulders. I think it's freed her up considerably to talk about her past, and that's going to be the case for a lot of women," Steed says.

Steed credits the U.N. Committee Against Torture for provoking an official state response. The committee found the state at fault and called for an investigation, which Ireland then conducted.

"That was the tool that really held their [feet] to the fire and made them act on it because the world was now watching," she says.

The results of the investigation were released Feb. 5. Ireland's Justice Department "found evidence of direct State involvement" in funding and oversight of the laundries. It also cites state involvement in referring girls and women to the facilities.

Ireland will now devise a compensation plan for the survivors; the report estimates that about 800 to 1,200 women are still alive.

Still Afraid

Steed says her mother ended up better off than others. She married, but had no other children because she was too afraid.

"This is a theme that we found very common with mothers of loss who either or weren't even in Magdalene Laundries ... that they're just too afraid that their child might be snatched, either by the religious or by God through death," Steed says.

Steed's mother also had difficulty coming to terms with the family she lost, even with her brother who wanted to reunite.

"There's also a great deal of prejudice and bullying among the Irish expat community in the U.K. [where my mother lives]," Steed says. "Many of them don't out themselves as being former industrial school students or Magdalenes because they'll be made fun of, even by their own Irish community."

Last week we told you about the uproar surrounding the auction of a piece of art by mysterious graffiti artist Banksy that disappeared from its home on a wall in north London.

The Associated Press is now reporting that Fine Art Auctions Miami, the U.S.-based auction house that was due to sell the work on Saturday, announced that the item was withdrawn from sale. The artwork was expected to fetch between $500,000 and $700,000.

Eyder wrote about the controversy surrounding the sale. Here's what he said:

"The controversy began earlier this month, when residents of a north London borough noticed that a piece of art by mysterious graffiti artist Banksy had disappeared.

"It looked like the part of the wall that housed the stenciled work depicting a boy sewing Union Jacks had been sliced, the work removed and the wall repaired with fresh plaster."

When it comes to immigration, Greece faces a dilemma: the country needs new, young people because like the rest of Europe, it faces a falling birth rate and an aging population.

Yet it's also struggling with a backlash against immigrants, especially those from Africa and south Asia. Though Greece has become the main entry point into the European Union for undocumented migrants, the country of 11 million is also home to roughly one million immigrants who reside here legally and have started families here. Their Greek-born children want to become citizens.

So Greece is wrestling with a fundamental question: Who's a Greek?

Greece's highest administrative court recently struck down a 2010 law that made it easier for the children of legal immigrants to apply for citizenship. The conservative prime minister, Antonis Samaras, wants to replace it with legislation that would require immigrants to show they have a "genuine bond" with Greece.

In making it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens, the prime minister is tapping into centuries-old emotions about protecting an ancient national identity.

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