Pop diva Beyonce and her rapper husband Jay-Z on Thursday created a stir as they toured the streets of Old Havana, with hundreds of Cubans turning out to catch a glimpse of the U.S. power couple.

The pair -- who are celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary -- visited historical landmarks in the heart of Old Havana, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site. They snapped pictures and spoke with local residents.

Cuba on Tuesday unveiled rules for its first free trade manufacturing zone, a vast $900 million project being paid for mostly by Brazil in the port of Mariel near Havana.

The Mariel Special Development Zone, a major trial balloon being floated by President Raul Castro's communist government, is slated to feature manufacturing operations both for export and for the Cuban market, as well as a megaport that would take over shipping now done in Havana.

Thousands of emotional supporters waited and wept Saturday after making a pilgrimage to the new tomb of former president Hugo Chavez, the face and leader of Latin America's left for over a decade.

More than 10 days after his death from cancer, the remains of Chavez who was 58, are now entombed in a marble sarcophagus at the Mountain Barracks in Caracas.

Cuban President Raul Castro won re-election Sunday to what he pledged will be his last term, and finally unveiled a 52-year-old political heir to bring the regime into the future.

"This will be my last term," Castro, 81, told lawmakers after the National Assembly reelected him and named a new regime number two, Council of State Vice President Miguel Diaz-Canel.

Cuban President Raul Castro expressed satisfaction with his talks this week with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the daily Granma newspaper reported on Saturday.

"It has been a good visit," said Castro after Medvedev wrapped up his three-day visit to Cuba, where he met with the Cuban leaders and his brother, revolutionary icon Fidel.

President Raul Castro jokingly said Friday he is going to retire, noting that he is nearly 82 and has the right to stop working like anyone else.

Castro made the comments as Cuba's congress is almost certain to elect him to another term on Sunday.

Defense lawyers Monday lost a bid to suspend proceedings at Guantanamo against the suspected mastermind of the USS Cole attack over revelations of outside government censorship.

The issue first arose last week in pre-trial hearings for five accused 9/11 plotters when Judge James Pohl disclosed that, without his knowledge, someone outside the court had cut an audiovisual feed of the proceedings after the subject of secret CIA prisons came up.

Ailing Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro made a surprise appearance in Havana Sunday to vote in parliamentary polls, expressing confidence in the revolution despite a decades-long U.S. trade embargo.

Castro's visit to the voting precinct in Havana's El Vedado neighborhood was the main event in Sunday's elections, during which Cubans chose 612 members of the National Assembly as well as deputies of local legislatures.

Cuba's second cholera outbreak in four months -- after 130 years without the disease -- has sickened more than 50 people and killed one in Havana, authorities and the family of the deceased said Tuesday.

The latest outbreak was from the same cholera strain found to have been introduced in Haiti by Nepalese U.N. peacekeepers, unleashing an epidemic in 2010 that has killed some 7,900 people.

Cuba's Public Health Ministry on Tuesday acknowledged 51 new cases of cholera in the capital amid growing concerns about the illness' spread and disappointment in the diplomatic community over the government's lack of transparency.

The ministry said nobody had died from the latest outbreak, which began Jan. 6, and stressed that preventive measures already taken had put the disease "on the way to extinction." It said cholera was first detected in the capital's Cerro neighborhood, and then spread elsewhere. No other areas of the capital were mentioned, but there have been unconfirmed reports of cases in the leafy Playa neighborhood that is home to many foreign embassies.