The city of Paris is unveiling a monumental artwork built around an actual monument: the Arc the Triomphe completely wrapped in silver and blue fabric.

The installation by late artist couple Christo and Jeanne-Claude, who conceived of the project in 1961, will open on Thursday. Visits will take place for nearly almost three weeks. At weekends, the Arc de Triomphe's traffic-heavy roundabout will be entirely pedestrianized.

Britney Spears announced her engagement Sunday to her boyfriend Sam Asghari with an exuberant post displaying a diamond ring engraved with the word "lioness."

The news comes days after her father filed to end the court conservatorship that has controlled the singer's life and money for 13 years.

Whether it was Timothée Chalamet's beaming face greeting fans, Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain's playfulness for the cameras, Josh Brolin's ear-to-ear grin in the front row of a "Dune" event or those looks exchanged between Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck, the 78th Venice International Film Festival mixed elegance and fun in a way rarely seen since early 2020.

Reminders of the pandemic were all around — fans were kept farther back, films played in cinemas with empty seats, and masks remained, albeit in the background. At photo calls and on the red carpets, sunglasses were often the only thing covering stars' faces as the shutters clicked.

Lebanon's TV star-turned-information minister Georges Kordahi returned Sunday to Beirut from the UAE in order to assume his missions as a member of the new government.

Perhaps the best-known face in the new government, Kordahi's years as the host of the Arabic version of the popular game show 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire' made him a household name in the entire region.

Soulful British singer-songwriter Arlo Parks has won the prestigious Mercury Prize for her debut album "Collapsed in Sunbeams."

The 21-year-old Londoner beat acts including singer Celeste, rapper Ghetts and bands Wolf Alice and Mogwai to the 25,000-pound ($30,000) prize, which recognizes the outstanding British or Irish album of the year.

Michael Constantine, an Emmy Award-winning character actor who reached worldwide fame playing the Windex bottle-toting father of the bride in the 2002 film "My Big Fat Greek Wedding," has died. He was 94.

Constantine died Aug. 31 at his home in Reading, Pennsylvania, of natural causes, his family said. The news was confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday by his agent, Julia Buchwald.

It was a soggy, gray day in Manhattan, but Moschino had the antidote: a burst of color and whimsy filling a runway in midtown's Bryant Park.

Jeremy Scott, the fertile mind behind the Italian luxury label, filled his New York Fashion Week collection with bright baby blues, pastel pinks and greens and purples, and brilliant yellows — fitting for a show inspired by children's toys and cartoon animals.

With Katie Holmes and Lil' Kim on his front row and singer Marina on the mic high above his runway, Christian Siriano helped kicked off New York Fashion Week's first big pandemic round of in-person shows Tuesday with a flurry of neon and lace inspired in part by all the Italian women in his life.

From ornate Gotham Hall, beneath a stained glass skylight 70 feet up, Siriano's commitment to size inclusivity was never stronger as he opened and closed the show with plus-size breakout model Precious Lee. She first walked in a stunning yellow trouser suit with wide loose pants and an asymmetrical jacket, a matching crossover bralette underneath.

Filmmaker Cary Fukunaga has been waiting more than a year and a half for the biggest movie of his career, the James Bond film "No Time to Die," to arrive in theaters. It has been a strange and surreal wait. Months before the much-delayed movie is even released on Oct. 8, the film's theme song, by Billie Eilish, has already won a Grammy.

"I had a dream last night where Sam Mendes was there," Fukunaga said in a recent interview, referring to the director of the previous two Bond movies. "We were on vacation on some frozen lake. He was done with Bond films. And he was like, 'Oh, you finished one. Now you get a break.' Then we started, like, water skiing on a frozen lake."

Some of the world's largest broadcasters including American network NBC are being asked by human rights groups to cancel plans to cover next year's Winter Olympics in Beijing. The Winter Games are scheduled to open on Feb. 4.

The request comes in an open letter from rights groups representing minorities in China, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kong residents and others.