The defense team for a Saudi man accused of organizing the attack on the USS Cole asked a Guantanamo Bay judge Wednesday to stop him from facing capital punishment.

Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri faces the death penalty if convicted of charges stemming the Cole suicide bombing, and from the attack on the MV Limburg French oil tanker.

U.S. authorities on Wednesday rescued 33 Cuban men who were in an overloaded boat that was taking on water not far from the Florida coast, officials said.

The U.S. Coast Guard said in a statement that the rescue took place about seven miles (11 kilometers) from the beaches of the Boca Raton in Florida.

For the 23rd straight year, the United Nations voted Tuesday in favor of lifting the U.S. embargo on Cuba, with Iran saying the ban was undeserved given Havana's help in fighting Ebola.

The U.N. General Assembly adopted the non-binding resolution on ending the five-decade embargo by a vote of 188 in favor, with two countries voting against: the United States and Israel.

Hunger-striking prisoners who are force-fed at Guantanamo Bay can choose from several flavors, including strawberry, for the liquid meal they must ingest and well-behaved inmates sometimes are force-fed communally, a U.S. court heard Wednesday.

Cuba on Saturday slammed the United States for applying unilateral sanctions as a foreign policy instrument -- like the five-decade U.S. embargo on Havana.

"The extraterritorial implementation of the U.S. laws to the detriment of other sovereign nations is ever more aggressive," Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez told the U.N. General Assembly.

Cuba said it will send nearly 300 more doctors and nurses to west Africa to help fight the Ebola epidemic.

This will raise to 461 the number of Cuban medical personnel that the country will send to battle the disease.

Call it "Eau de Revolution."

Cuba's biggest producer of natural products has come up with a pair of colognes for the discerning supporter of international socialism who wants something more than just the iconic "Che" T-shirt.

Cuba has sent six tons of drugs and medical supplies to Gaza, devastated from seven weeks of war with Israel that killed more than 2,100 people, official media reported Thursday.

The government-run Cubadebate website said the humanitarian shipment was delivered by  officials at Cuba's embassy in Cairo to the Palestinian representative there.

Communist Cuba on Tuesday accused the United States' economic embargo on Havana of costing it $116 billion in economic losses over five decades.

"Through March (2014), the economic cost to the Cuban people of the U.S. blockade has been $116.8 billion," said Deputy Foreign Minister Abelardo Moreno.

The Chilean government is considering taking in detainees from the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, officials said Monday.