An extra day and the lure of an appearance by the Rolling Stones pushed attendance at the 2024 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival to a half a million people, organizers said Monday.

That was the second highest attendance in the festival's history — just behind the 600,000 attendees in 2001. In 2023, more than 460,000 people passed through the festival's gates.

Protesters in New York converged near the Met Gala in a rally against the ongoing war in Gaza, leading to several arrests, police said.

Among the rallying points Monday were the gates of Columbia University, which has been the center of spreading demonstrations, before protesters marched through Manhattan to American fashion's biggest night -- or at least as close as police would let them.

Organizers of the Eurovision Song Contest said Thursday they reserve the right to remove any Palestinian flags and pro-Palestinian symbols at the show next week in Sweden.

The announcement came amid heightened tensions surrounding Israel's participation in the annual music competition over its military campaign against Hamas in Gaza, now in its seventh month. Pro-Palestinian groups are expected to stage large protests in Malmo to raise awareness of their cause.

A drug and child molestation gang led by a famous Lebanese TikToker has been busted by Lebanese security forces, in a case that has shocked the country.

The well-known TikToker, Georges Moubayed, is a barber whose shop lies in the Metn neighborhood of Sabtyieh near Beirut, media reports said.

Billie Eilish is hitting the road.

The pop performer will embark on a worldwide arena tour this fall, kicking off in Quebec City in Canada on Sept. 29 and concluding in Dublin on July 27, 2025. She'll hit many major cities in North America in 2024 before heading to Australia and then Europe.

Britney Spears and her father Jamie Spears will avoid what could have been a long, ugly and revealing trial with a settlement of the lingering issues in the court conservatorship that controlled her life and financial decisions for nearly 14 years.

A hearing on those issues — including a request from Jamie Spears for a broad ruling dismissing them — had been scheduled for Monday but was pulled from the court calendar after the settlement was approved by a judge on Friday.

Ralph Lauren has been known for many a grand fashion show over the years: taking over Central Park for a sumptuous anniversary celebration, for example, or staging a runway show amid his eye-popping classic car collection.

But for his Fall/Holiday 2024 collection, he decided to go minimal — at least, minimal in Ralph Lauren terms. That meant an intimate show Monday night in a (relatively) small design studio at his New York City offices, inspired by his first women's fashion show in 1972, where he displayed his wares to editors and friends in his own office.

Taylor Swift continues to dominate in the week following the release of her 11th album, "The Tortured Poets Department." The 31-track album has hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, tying Swift with Jay-Z for second-most No. 1 albums at 14. Only The Beatles, with 19 No. 1 albums, have had more.

The double album has amassed 2.61 million equivalent album units, according to Luminate, the industry data and analytics company. A shocking 1.91 million of those units come from traditional album sales — people purchasing downloads, CDs, cassettes and vinyl. Vinyl accounts for 859,000 units sold, the highest number of vinyl sales in modern history.

Morgan Freeman spoke the words, but pretty much everyone who took the stage at the presentation of the AFI Life Achievement Award agreed: " Nicole Kidman. She makes movies better."

The line came in a video parody of Kidman's AMC Theatres "we make movies better" ad that opened the Saturday night ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. It got huge laughs from the crowd of multigenerational A-listers there to honor the 40-year career of the 56-year-old Australian that has included roles in "Moulin Rouge," "Eyes Wide Shut" and an Oscar-winning turn in "The Hours."

French media are reporting that police have summoned actor Gérard Depardieu for questioning about allegations made by two women that he sexually assaulted them on movie sets.

Broadcaster BFMTV and the daily Le Parisien both reported that the 75-year-old actor was called in for police questioning in Paris on Monday.