One of Cuba's best-known pianists and composers, Bebo Valdes, died Friday at the age of 94 in Sweden where he had lived for more than 40 years, a friend of the family said.

"He died this evening in hospital, his two sons were with him," a close friend and neighbor who was with him when he passed away, Heri Ekelund, told AFP.

Africa's first Nobel literature laureate Wole Soyinka and a renowned poet, John Pepper Clark, said Friday they have lost "a brother, a colleague" with the death of Nigerian novelist Chinua Achebe.

"For us, the loss of Chinua Achebe is, above all else, intensely personal. We have lost a brother, a colleague, a trailblazer and a doughty fighter," they said in a joint statement, a copy of which was sent to AFP.

Sewing machines buzz inside the Iraq Fashion House as dressmakers work late into the night behind concrete blast walls readying intricately embroidered costumes. Models rehearse for an upcoming show upstairs.

The energetic atmosphere is in stark contrast to the nearby Iraqi National Museum, which remains closed to the public a decade after it was looted along with other government buildings following the U.S.-led invasion.

The British government is setting up a new media watchdog to tame the country's scandal-tainted press.

The move comes after a phone hacking scandal caught journalists eavesdropping on voicemails, bribing public officials, and intruding into the private lives of celebrities, athletes, politicians and crime victims. Many journalists, however, fear the new system threatens press freedom. Some are even talking of boycotting it.

Clutching a gaudy homemade doll in flames, students gathered Thursday on a frosty footbridge in central Poland to toss it into the river -- an ancient rite repeated across the country every March 21.

Chanting "Evil winter begone!", the students joined winter-weary Poles nationwide in the centuries-old tradition of burning "Marzanna" dolls to cast away the cold, illness and all other misery.

For the first time in four decades New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art will open seven days a week starting this July, the director announced Thursday.

"Art is a seven-day-a-week passion, and we want the Met to be accessible whenever visitors have the urge to experience this great museum," said Thomas Campbell, who is also the Met's CEO.

Covered from head to toe in white, their faces partly masked by embroidered triangular cloths, Algerian women marched through the capital Thursday to defend their traditional Islamic dress.

"We want to sweep away these clothes which come from Saudi Arabia, black, sad and stifling under the sun, to return to our traditional 'haik' which is the pride of Algerian women," said one, posing in front of the landmark central post office in Algiers.

An exhibition of 50 paintings by hyperrealist artists whose works depict shop windows, camper vans, street views and other everyday scenes in such painstaking detail that they resemble photographs opens Friday in Madrid.

The "Hyperrealism 1967-2012" show at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum explores the evolution of the style from its beginnings in the late 1960s in the United States to its most recent incarnations in Europe.

The most influential U.S. pediatrician's group has endorsed gay marriage, saying a stable relationship between parents regardless of sexual orientation contributes to a child's health and well-being.

The American Academy of Pediatrics' new policy, published online Thursday, cites research showing that the parents' sexual orientation has no effect on a child's development. Kids fare just as well in gay or straight families when they are nurturing and financially and emotionally stable, the academy says.

Religious violence may be on the rise and the Taliban still a threat, but Pakistan is hoping a rich Buddhist heritage will help it boost international tourism to its troubled northwest.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, with its balmy climate in the mountains and its wealth of history on the border with Afghanistan, was once a playground for colonial adventurers and a favorite holiday destination for upper-crust Pakistanis.