Cuba accused the United States Friday of supplying opponents of the government with the technological means to access the Internet as part of an effort to "subvert the constitutional order."

The accusation, leveled in a foreign ministry statement, comes amid a simmering dispute over the jailing of American contractor Alan Gross three years ago for distributing laptops and electronic gear to members of the island's Jewish community.

Across the eastern United States, Americans scrambled Saturday to stock up on supplies and secure homes as Hurricane Sandy -- billed as a superstorm -- lumbered north after leaving dozens dead in the Caribbean.

The so-called Frankenstorm was expected to make landfall somewhere between Virginia and Massachusetts early Tuesday, possibly causing chaos during the frenzied last days of campaigning before the November 6 U.S. presidential vote.

Hurricane Sandy pounded the Bahamas on Thursday as it careened toward the eastern United States after claiming 21 lives in the Caribbean, including 11 people killed in eastern Cuba.

The hurricane -- now a category two storm -- has wreaked havoc in Jamaica, Cuba, the Bahamas and Haiti, downing power lines, damaging hundreds of homes and ruining crops.

Self-declared 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and his four alleged co-conspirators skipped the last day of a week of pre-trial hearings Friday at Guantanamo Bay.

The five men, who face the death penalty if convicted, had received clearance earlier in the week from the military judge, Colonel James Pohl, in the tribunal on a U.S. naval base in Cuba not to attend the proceedings.

Fifty years after the Cuban missile crisis, Havana remains virulently hostile to the United States, which reciprocates by maintaining a crippling economic embargo against the communist-ruled island.

Despite the passage of time, official speeches from the Castro regime and state-controlled media still refer to the superpower 90 miles (145 kilometers) across the Florida Strait as "the enemy" or "the Northern empire."

Cuban health officials warned Thursday about an increased number of mosquitoes in the country's urban areas that can spread diseases such as dengue fever.

The communist island's 23 largest municipalities are affected by an uptick of the Aedes aegypti mosquito, including the capital Havana, state television reported.

The widow of Cuban dissident Oswaldo Paya has rejected a government report that blamed the car crash that killed her husband on the driver because she has been denied access to witnesses of his death.

Ofelia Acevedo criticized the government for not allowing her to talk to the two survivors of the crash, including the driver, who have been kept in custody since the July 22 incident in southeastern Cuba.

Russia is holding talks about opening naval bases in Moscow's Soviet-era allies Cuba and Vietnam as well as the Seychelles, the commander-in-chief of the Russian Navy said Friday.

"It is true, we are working on the deployment of Russian naval bases outside Russian territory," Vice Admiral Viktor Chirkov told the RIA Novosti news agency.

A new biodiesel plant in Cuba -- the first of its type -- is turning seeds from the so-called "bellyache bush" into a green energy source, it was announced Monday.

Jatropha seeds are rich in oil but toxic for human consumption, explained Jose Sotolongo, director of the province's Center for Applied Technology for Sustainable Development.

Cuban leader Raul Castro sought on Wednesday to revive a historic but flagging friendship with Russia as he met Vladimir Putin for talks on economic relief for his sanctions-plagued communist state.

The Cuban leader's second visit to Russia since his 2006 assumption of power from older brother Fidel extends a recent revival of contacts that had ground to a halt when the Soviet Union fell apart two decades ago.