Cuban former president Fidel Castro has made a second public appearance in less than a week, state media said Saturday, marking an unusually high-profile spell for the aging revolutionary icon.

The communist island's official newspaper, Granma, published photos of the 88-year-old Castro and said he had met on Thursday with military chiefs and civil servants.

Cuban state television broadcast images Saturday of former president Fidel Castro meeting cheese experts during a rare trip outside his Havana home.

Seemingly alert and sharp, the 88 year old was shown seated at a panel organized by the Food Industry Ministry's research institute on Friday, speaking at length with the "cheese masters."

The number of Cubans heading to the U.S. has surged in the months since the historic thaw in bilateral relations -- a swell experts attribute to uncertainty over the future of U.S. policy that favors such travelers.

According to the U.S. Customs Department, 9,371 Cuban migrants came into the U.S. between January and March, more than twice the number from the same period in 2014.

The U.S. Coast Guard returned 38 Cuban migrants Thursday after they were picked up at sea on unseaworthy vessels.

The migrants were taken to Bahia de Cabanas, Cuba by the 154-foot cutter Raymond Evans, which is based in Key West, Florida, a Coast Guard statement said.

President Barack Obama announced Wednesday that the United States and Cuba will re-establish full diplomatic relations, severed 54 years ago in the angry heat of the Cold War.

The U.S. president and Cuban state television simultaneously announced the landmark agreement, aimed at easing decades of enmity across the narrow Straits of Florida. 

The United States and Cuba have reached a deal to reopen embassies in Washington and Havana, in a major step toward ending decades of Cold War enmity.

President Barack Obama is expected to issue a statement at 11:00 am (1500 GMT) Wednesday in the White House Rose Garden about the deal, which constitutes one of the major foreign policy achievements of his presidency.

The U.S. Coast Guard has repatriated 32 Cuban migrants intercepted in a rickety raft headed to the United States, the fourth such incident in less than a week, officials said Thursday.

The individuals were sent back to Cuba's Bahia de Cabanas Wednesday, the Coast Guard said in a statement.

A court in Panama jailed two North Koreans for 12 years for trying to smuggle Cuban weapons through the Panama Canal in an incident which raised international suspicions, their attorney said Sunday.

Their convictions came as something of a surprise since a lower court had let the men off after their North Korean cargo ship was found to be carrying Cuban weapons including surface-to-air missile systems and launchers when it was stopped in the Panama Canal in July 2013.

A visiting delegation of Republican U.S. lawmakers met Saturday with Cuban Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel to discuss the island's economy and closer ties between Havana and Washington.

Diaz-Canel "welcomed this Saturday Republicans Jeff Flake, Susan Collins and Patrick Roberts, senators from Arizona, Maine and Kansas, respectively, who are paying a visit to Cuba," a presenter read out on state television.

A former Guantanamo inmate who resettled late last year in Uruguay tied the knot on Friday with a woman he met in his adopted homeland, local media reported.

Tunisian Abdul bin Muhammad Abbas Ouerghi, 49, married a Uruguayan woman identified in news reports as Roma Blanco.