At least two people were killed when a small plane crashed off the coast of Jamaica in an incident that prompted coordination between longtime foes Cuba and the United States.

The seven-seater aircraft took off from the northeastern United States and flew south over Cuba and across the Caribbean on Friday, ignoring calls from air traffic control with its pilot, according to reports, unconscious in the cockpit.

Cuban ex-president Fidel Castro lashed out at the United States and Europe on Monday, accusing them of war-mongering and comparing the NATO military alliance's representatives to the Nazi SS.

In a tortuous column published in Cuban state media, the father of the island's communist revolution also attacked U.S. Senator John McCain over United States policy in the Middle East, calling him "Israel's most unconditional ally."

The North American Aerospace Defense Command scrambled two CF-18 fighter jets out of Quebec Wednesday to escort Sunwing Flight 656 back to Toronto after a "passenger disturbance," a spokeswoman said. 

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro made a surprise visit to Cuba to meet with Fidel Castro, who praised his guest's "solidarity" with the Palestinian people and condemned the "genocide" in Gaza.

The former Cuban president and leader of the island's communist revolution said Maduro had made the visit Tuesday during a "foreign trip regarding the defense of his country's major oil interests."

Leftist leaders Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela and Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua sent warm birthday greetings to Fidel Castro on Wednesday as the father of the Cuban Revolution turned 88.

Maduro called Castro a "giant of history" as he marked the former Cuban president's birthday on Venezuelan television.

Former Cuban president Fidel Castro has signed an international manifesto "supporting Palestine," demanding that Israel respect U.N. resolutions and withdraw from Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

Castro, who will be 88 next week, added his signature to those of intellectuals and politicians to the document "In Defense of Palestine," the official Granma newspaper said Saturday.

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro compared Israel's offensive in Gaza on Tuesday to a "disgusting form of fascism" that its ally, the United States, is unable to control.

"I think that a new and disgusting form of fascism is emerging with considerable force at this moment in human history," Castro wrote in a column in the newspaper Granma titled "Palestinian Holocaust in Gaza."

A panel of federal judges has upheld a new policy allowing guards at the U.S. "war on terror" prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to search the groin areas of suspects meeting with their lawyers.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit ruled unanimously on Friday that such searches of clothed inmates were "reasonable security precautions" that promote "the safety of the guards and inmates by more effectively preventing the hoarding of medication and the smuggling of dangerous contraband."

Chinese President Xi Jinping ends his Latin American tour on Wednesday with a symbolic visit to the barracks from which Fidel Castro launched the first armed assault of his communist revolution in 1953.

As part of his regional charm offensive, Xi extended a hand to his Cuban communist ally with the signing of 29 bilateral agreements ranging from a credit line to modernize the port of Santiago de Cuba to the development of golf courses on the Caribbean island.

Fidel Castro accused Ukraine on Friday of shooting down the Malaysia Airlines plane that crashed in rebel-held territory, blaming its "pro-imperialist" government for the disaster that killed 298 people.

"Cuba... must express its repudiation of this action by such an anti-Russian, anti-Ukrainian and pro-imperialist government," the 87-year-old father of the Cuban Revolution wrote in the official newspaper Granma.