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  • Babak Jalali Drops First Look at Bill Nighy-Starring ‘A Town in Nova Scotia’

    Babak Jalali Drops First Look at Bill Nighy-Starring ‘A Town in Nova Scotia’

    A first look at Babak Jalali‘s Billy Nighy-starring feature, A Town in Nova Scotia, has dropped ahead of Paradise City Sales launching worldwide sales at Cannes.

    His fifth film after presenting previous works in Locarno (Frontier Blues), Rotterdam (Radio Treams) and the Berlinale (Land), the Iranian director gained international recognition with Sundance’s Fremont.

    A Town in Nova Scotia is about a widowed Irish senior, Leon, played by the Love Actually star, who gets a plea from his daughter to join her in Nova Scotia. Instead, he launches a crusade to make his aging Liverpool building safer after news of a tower fire in London. On a mission alongside his neighbor and closest friend, Salah (Makram J Khoury), Leon turns their fellow residents’ quiet lives upside down in what is described as “a warm story of friendsip, stubbornness, and small acts of defiance.”

    The photo released Wednesday shows Nighy and Khoury riding a lakeside carousel.

    The film was co-written with Carolina Cavalli, who collaborated with Jalali on Fremont. Further creatives include production designer Paulina Rzeszowska, cinematographer Crystel Fournier, costume designer Jessica Schofield, hair and makeup designer Caroline Rose, and casting director Lucy Pardee.

    Jalali said his new movie is about community and camaraderie in the latter phase of life, and choosing how and with whom you want to spend that phase. “I’m thrilled to be working with Paradise City Sales again after the wonderful experience I had with the whole team there on my previous film Fremont. I couldn’t wish for a more thoughtful, ambitious, dedicated and kind set of people to take this film out into this big, strange world.”

    Executive producers are Kristin Irving for BBC Film, Ama Ampadu for the BFI, Christopher Moll for Liverpool Film Office, Sonny Gill and Peter O’Leary for Hoopsa Films, Naomi Despres and Michèle Marshall for Desmar, Brad Noel and Mariyah Dosani for Calculus. The film was developed with BBC Film, and U.K. distribution will be announced at a later date.

    Nighy is represented by Independent Talent Group, UTA and Jackoway Austen Tyerman Wertheimer Mandlebaum Morris Bernstein Trattner Auerbach Hynick Jaime LeVine Sample & Klein and Public Eye Communications. Khoury is represented by Paul Becker. Jalali is represented by Independent Talent Group, CAA and Cinetic.

  • FIFA confirms new World Cup rule on yellow cards to reduce suspensions

    FIFA confirms new World Cup rule on yellow cards to reduce suspensions

    Single yellow cards will be cancelled after the group stage and then again after the quarterfinals, FIFA says.

    Published On 29 Apr 2026

    FIFA has tweaked World Cup rules on yellow cards to ensure fewer players are suspended for key elimination games, with single yellow cards to be cancelled after the group stage and after the quarterfinals.

    An extra amnesty for yellow cards – wiping player disciplinary records twice during the expanded tournament in North America – was proposed at a meeting on Tuesday of FIFA’s ruling council.

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    Later, FIFA issued a statement approving the change.

    “Reflective of the expanded format with an extra knockout round, the FIFA Council confirmed an amendment to the regulations for the FIFA World Cup 2026 whereby single yellow cards in the final competition will be cancelled after the group stage and then again after the quarterfinals,” it said.

    At the last World Cup, players had to serve a one-game ban if they were shown a yellow card in two different games, but single yellow cards were cancelled at previous tournaments after the quarterfinals stage. That ensured no player would miss the final for getting a yellow card in the semifinal.

    The expanded 48-team World Cup format, with an extra round-of-32 knockout stage, led to the FIFA review aimed at helping keep players on the pitch.

    FIFA cleared the disciplinary records of players who have one yellow card after the three-game group stage, so they start the knockout phase afresh. A second amnesty after the quarterfinals will apply to players who got one yellow card during the three previous knockout rounds and whose teams advanced to the semifinals.

    FIFA also announced on Tuesday an increase in financial resources to be distributed to all 48 World Cup participating teams by a further 15 percent, totalling $871m, or just over $18m per team.

    The new figures include an increase in preparation money from $1.5m to $2.5m per team and an increase in qualification money from $9m to $10m.

    The World Cup will be played from June 11 to July 19 in the United States, Canada and Mexico.

  • ‘Fool Me Once’ Star Michelle Keegan Reunites With Harlan Coben and Netflix for ‘The Woods’ Series Adaptation

    ‘Fool Me Once’ Star Michelle Keegan Reunites With Harlan Coben and Netflix for ‘The Woods’ Series Adaptation

    “Fool Me Once” star Michelle Keegan is reuniting with Netflix and Harlan Coben for another of the writer’s adaptations, “The Woods.”

    She will star in the eight-episode series alongside Tom Bateman, Mandeep Dhillon and Pearce Quigley, among others.

    “The Woods” tells the story of barrister and single father Paul ‘Cope’ Copeland, whose sister Camille vanished from a summer camp two decades earlier. After her disappearance tore his family apart, Cope was determined to rebuild his life but, twenty years later, the traumatic event returns to haunt him after the body of a man who was believed to have been murdered alongside Camille unexpectedly turns up. With the help of Cope’s first love, Lucy, the lawyer is determined to turn every skeleton out of the closet in his search for answers – and to find out whether Camille might still be alive.

    Rounding out the cast are Rade Sherbedgia, James Buckley, Shannon Watson, Pamela Nomvete, Kerry Howard, Roger Barclay, Simon Lowe, Mila Moring, Dean Fagan, Tom Allen, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Charlotte Beaumont, Christopher Harper, Tre Jordan Holmes, Nicola Stephenson, Harry Goodson-Bevan, Joe Dolan, Thea Achillea, Flynn Allen and Hannah McIver.

    Keegan’s last Harlan Coben project, “Missing You,” garnered 107.5 million global views and became one of Netflix’s most popular shows of 2024, including being the most-watched series for the first half of that year.

    “‘The Woods’ is a haunting and very personal story. It has everything you expect from us — twisty, turning, gasp-inducing — but at the core is a story of old love and yearning,” said Coben. Working with a cast led by Tom Bateman, Michelle Keegan, Mandeep Dhillon, Pearce Quigley, James Buckley, Tom Allen – it’s an embarrassment of riches.”

    Coben’s longtime U.K. collaborators Quay Street Productions (part of ITV Studios) return to produce the series, which is written by Danny Brocklehurst (“Fool Me Once”), Charlotte Coben, Tom Farrelly and Joe Forrest.

    Directors are Andy De Emmony, Claire Tailyour and Isher Sahota.

    Coben exec produces alongside Nicola Shindler, Richard Fee, Danny Brocklehurst, Charlotte Coben. Will McDonagh is producer and Orla Maxwell casting director.

  • Bitcoin rebounds from key support as traders eye renewed push toward $80,000

    Bitcoin rebounds from key support as traders eye renewed push toward $80,000

    Bitcoin is trading around $77,700, up 1.8% since midnight UTC, after rebounding from $75,650, a price that had served as an upper barrier during last week’s rally.

    The rebound suggests a bullish shift, with $75,650 now acting as support — a level that could prove crucial if bitcoin is to make another attempt at breaking through $80,000.

    Ether ($ETH) is at $2,344, and its chart is showing more bearish signals than bitcoin’s, having made a series of lower highs since April 17.

    The broader market is higher, as U.S. investors anticipate a slew of tech company earnings. Alphabet (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Amazon (AMZN) and Meta (META) are all due to report after the closing bell on Wednesday.

    Nasdaq 100 futures are up by 0.25% in pre-market trading.

    Derivatives positioning

    • Bitcoin futures open interest (OI) fell to 715.60K $BTC, the lowest since April 9 and notably below the monthly high of 800K $BTC. The decline shows steady de-risking as the spot price rally slows near $80,000, and some analysts point to potential for a continued bear market.
    • OI has largely held steady across $ETH, SOL, and XRP over the past 24 hours.
    • Traders, meanwhile, continue to deploy capital in $DOGE futures, lifting the OI by 18% in a single day to 16.06 billion tokens, the highest since Oct. 10.
    • With perpetual funding rates steady at around an annualized 4% and the highest OI-adjusted cumulative volume delta among majors, the $DOGE activity appears to be driven more by fresh directional positioning than overheated leverage, pointing to sustained bullish interest rather than a crowded, fragile trade.
    • The Binance-listed SHIB futures are flashing a similar bullish setup. Rising activity in these non-serious tokens suggests a build-up of speculative froth, a pattern often seen ahead of broader market pullbacks.
    • The market for crude oil futures listed on Binance is also heating up, with open interest up 27% as prices top $100, presenting a headwind for risk assets, including cryptocurrencies.
    • The slide in bitcoin’s 30-day implied volatility index, BVIV, continues, and it’s now probing three-month lows below 42%. It shows the market has become desensitized to macro risks such as an Iran war and elevated oil prices. The ether volatility index, EVIV, is displaying similar trends.
    • The story in the Deribit-listed options market remains the same: Puts for both $BTC and $ETH remain pricier than calls, indicating downside concerns. These reservations are more pronounced in bitcoin than ether.

    Token talk

    • The altcoin market showed signs of strength on Wednesday, buoyed by previously oversold conditions.
    • The CoinDesk Memecoin Select Index (CDMEME) is the best-performing benchmark, adding 2.3% since midnight UTC, while the DeFi Select Index (DFX) gained by 2.2%.
    • The bitcoin dominant CoinDesk 20 (CD20) and CoinDesk 5 (CD5) both rose 1.7%.
    • Popular memecoins $DOGE, PEPE and FLOKI were among the top-gaining altcoins in the CoinDesk 100 (CD100), advancing 10%, 6.3% and 6.2%, respectively.
    • CoinMarketCap’s “Altcoin Season” indicator ticked up to 41/100 from 39/100 overnight, demonstrating relative strength in the sector.
  • What’s the Latest Situation in Bitcoin? What Could Happen to the Price? Analysts Explain the Upside and Downside Levels to Watch!

    What’s the Latest Situation in Bitcoin? What Could Happen to the Price? Analysts Explain the Upside and Downside Levels to Watch!

    Amid ongoing uncertainty stemming from the US-Iran conflict, Bitcoin ($BTC) remains trapped in a narrow range. While the $BTC price has been struggling to hold above $75,000 in recent days, one analyst argued that selling pressure on Bitcoin has eased.

    Speaking to Coindesk, Zaheer Ebtikar, founder of Split Research, said that Bitcoin sellers sensitive to macroeconomic uncertainty have already exited the market and selling pressure has decreased.

    At this point, the analyst noted that Bitcoin’s relative calm signaled a shift in the market structure.

    “The Bitcoin surplus has been resolved, and those concerned about macroeconomic changes or quantitative anxieties like quantum technology have already exited the market. This has made selling pressure significantly weaker than it was a few months ago.”

    The analyst also added that $BTC is less sensitive to regulatory rumors or central bank policies than people think.

    Ebtikar concluded by stating that Bitcoin is currently in a stable price range and a sudden wave of sell orders is not imminent.

    Lastly, Bitget analysts also assessed the current situation in Bitcoin. According to the analysts, the $75,000 level, which has held since the end of March, is a very important support level for Bitcoin.

    However, a drop below this level could open the door to further declines. A bounce and breakout above $80,000 from current levels would preserve Bitcoin’s bullish trend and pave the way for a retest of the resistance level that has been rejected in every rally since February.

    *This is not investment advice.

  • Netflix’s Harlan Coben Series ‘The Woods’ Unveils Cast Led by Tom Bateman, Michelle Keegan

    Netflix’s Harlan Coben Series ‘The Woods’ Unveils Cast Led by Tom Bateman, Michelle Keegan

    A Netflix series adaptation of the Harlan Coben novel The Woods will star Tom Bateman (The Love Hypothesis, Hedda) as Paul “Cope” Copeland and Michelle Keegan (Brassic), who previously starred in the Coben Netflix hit Fool Me Once, as Lucy Silverfield, the streamer said in unveiling the cast on Wednesday.

    Coben is an executive producer via his company Final Twist Productions. Danny Brocklehurst is the lead writer and executive producer. The Woods is produced by Quay Street Productions, with Nicola Shindler and Richard Fee as executive producers.

    Also featured in the cast are Mandeep Dhillon (MobLand, After Life), Pearce Quigley (Small Prophets, The Gentlemen), Rade Sherbedgia (Slow Horses, Downton Abbey), James Buckley (The Inbetweeners, White Gold), Shannon Watson (Outrageous, The Jetty), Pamela Nomvete (Nightsleeper, Andor), Amelia Eve (Bly Manor, Leopard Skin), Kerry Howard (Witless, Him and Her), Roger Barclay (Industry, Andor), Simon Lowe (Kirkmoore, Miss Scarlet and The Duke), Dean Fagan (Time, Missed Call), Tom Allen (Titanique, The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice, Tracy-Ann Oberman (Run Away, Friday Night Dinner), Charlotte Beaumont (Broadchurch, Call the Midwife), amd Christopher Harper (Call the Midwife, Endeavour).

    What’s The Woods about? “Twenty years ago, Paul ‘Cope’ Copeland’s sister Camille vanished from a summer camp in the woods, a loss that tore his family apart. Now a top barrister and devoted single father to 10-year-old daughter Cami, Cope appears to have rebuilt his life,” reads a synopsis. “But when the body of a man turns up – 20 years after he was supposedly murdered alongside Camille – Cope becomes convinced his sister may have made it out of the woods alive too. Determined to uncover the truth, Cope reunites with his first love, Lucy Silverfield, and together they begin a search for answers, unearthing years of lies, cover-ups, and family secrets that threaten to destroy everything he has built.”

    The eight-episode series features directors Andy De Emmony (The Feud, Vigil), Claire Tailyour (The Blame, Beyond Paradise), and Isher Sahota (Run Away, Ridley).

  • BAFTA Television Special Award to Go to British Finance Journalist Martin Lewis

    BAFTA Television Special Award to Go to British Finance Journalist Martin Lewis

    The 2026 BAFTA Television Special Award will go to consumer finance expert Martin Lewis.

    BAFTA CEO Jane Millichip revealed the news on the South Bank of the River Thames in the British capital just days after the BAFTA Television Craft Awards 2026 ceremony in London on Sunday, which saw Netflix drama Adolescence win big.

    Lewis, a high-profile financial journalist and campaigner, has long been a staple of British daytime television. He advises the general public on best ways to save, spend and increase their finances. The Television Special Award is given to an individual or organization that has made an outstanding contribution to television, in recognition of a remarkable body of work that has had a significant cultural, social, or industry impact.

    BAFTA said of the decision to honor the 53-year-old: “Through his consumer website MoneySavingExpert.com, his long-running ITV series The Martin Lewis Money Show Live, his role as presenter and expert on Good Morning Britain, and his position as resident expert on This Morning, he has empowered millions of people with the financial knowledge and confidence to take control of their lives.”

    Lewis added: “For many years, people assumed I was a financial adviser. I’m not. I never have been. I am, proudly, a broadcast journalist… That is why this level of recognition at BAFTA’s TV Awards feels so meaningful. If someone had told the young man retraining in 1997 for a postgrad in broadcast journalism that this would happen, his jaw would have dropped, he’d have smiled in disbelief, and asked: ‘What on earth for?’ And, truthfully, I still feel a bit like that today.”

    “Campaigning journalism does not just mean exposing stories,” he continued. “It can also mean engaging viewers to take action. I’m incredibly grateful for the privilege ITV has given me over the past 14 years, inviting me into people’s sitting rooms, in the evenings, with a platform to share information that I believe can help improve people’s quality of life.”

    Lewis shared during a BAFTA Q&A in London on Wednesday that he focuses not on what consumers, viewers and readers want but what they need. TV is “an industry in decline,” with profitability down, he also highlighted, warning that the industry must be “very, very careful” amid cost-cutting pressures about fulfilling its roles, such as “providing a window on society.”

    The broadcaster also said that while his work is “innately political,” he focuses on staying “a-party political.” Though he acknowledged the responsibility of the job means his anxiety levels are “always high,” he told fellow journalists in the room he was “pretty angry” with social media companies when discussing deepfake AI videos that are still using his likeness.

    Could U.K. audiences ever see Lewis doing other work on TV? “I love game shows and quizzes,” he replied. Lewis swiftly ruled out a career in politics, but was visibly emotional when talking about the lives he’d changed through lobbying the government.

    More TV awards, including this one, will be handed out during the BAFTA TV Awards ceremony on Sunday, May 10, at London’s Royal Festival Hall. Comedian and Taskmaster star Greg Davies will host the event. Adolescence leads with 11 nominations, followed by Disney+’s A Thousand Blows with seven.

  • CME Futures Coming May 4 – Avalanche (AVAX) About to Explode or Implode?

    CME Futures Coming May 4 – Avalanche (AVAX) About to Explode or Implode?

    CME Futures is coming on May 4 (five days from now).That’s all that separates Avalanche from one of the most significant institutional validation moments any altcoin can receive.

    CME Group — the world’s largest derivatives marketplace — goes live with $AVAX futures, pending final regulatory clearance.

    $AVAX is currently trading at $9.29. The charts tell two very different stories about what comes next.

    This isn’t just a product announcement. $AVAX futures will trade in two sizes — standard contracts at 5,000 $AVAX and micro contracts at 500 $AVAX — cash-settled, CFTC-regulated, and cleared through CME’s infrastructure.

    That combination gives hedge funds, asset managers, and pension funds the one thing they’ve been waiting for: a regulated, structured way to gain or hedge $AVAX exposure without touching unregulated spot markets.

    It also arrives on top of an already growing institutional stack. Three spot $AVAX ETFs are already live in the United States, and CME’s broader crypto derivatives complex is moving to 24/7 trading from May 29.

    This removes the last structural gap between traditional finance hours and always-on crypto markets.

    On the $AVAX/USD weekly chart (captured: April 29, 2026 — 07:14 UTC), price is sitting at $9.29 — recovering from a brutal low of $8.40 but still pressed beneath the SAR dots that remain above the candles.

    AVAXUSD Weekly Chart. Source: TradingView.

    Technically, the trend is officially bearish. But the MACD tells a more nuanced story.

    Fresh green histogram bars are printing for the first time in months, and the pattern mirrors the exact bottoming structure $AVAX formed before its two previous major recovery legs.

    The SAR flip — price breaking above those overhead dots — would be the first clean confirmation that momentum has actually shifted.

    The $AVAX/$BTC weekly chart is where the caution lives.

    $AVAX is priced at 0.00012061 $BTC — deep in the lower range of a multi-year downtrend against Bitcoin, far below its 2024 high of 0.00113586.

    The MACD histogram has just crossed positive at 0.00000174, which is constructive.

    AVAXBTC Weekly Chart. Source: TradingView.

    But the MACD lines themselves — at -0.00001548 against a signal of -0.00001722 — are still negative and only narrowly crossing. Against Bitcoin, $AVAX has not yet turned.

    That matters: a dollar-denominated $AVAX rally that doesn’t reclaim ground vs $BTC is vulnerable to reversing the moment Bitcoin dominance ticks higher.

    The CME listing is real institutional validation — $AVAX joins a lineup that now covers Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP, Cardano, Chainlink, and Stellar, which accounts for over 75% of total crypto market cap.

    Price targets from analysts range from a conservative $11.14 to a cycle-high return toward previous all-time highs above $140. From $9.29, both scenarios are technically possible.

    What the charts say is that the foundation is forming — but the confirmation hasn’t arrived yet.

    When institutional access opens May 4, will the market greet it with a breakout — or sell the news before the ink dries?

    Disclaimer:
    This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or trading advice. The views expressed are based on publicly available data, market observations, and the author’s interpretation at the time of writing. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile and unpredictable, and past performance or current technical setups do not guarantee future results. Readers should conduct their own research and consult with a qualified financial advisor before making any investment decisions. TechGaged does not accept liability for any losses incurred based on the information presented.

  • Mezo unveils institutional bitcoin yield vaults as demand grows to put idle BTC to work

    Mezo unveils institutional bitcoin yield vaults as demand grows to put idle BTC to work

    Institutional interest in generating returns on bitcoin holdings is gathering pace, and finance platform Mezo said it is joining the ranks of companies offering ways to generate returns from what has traditionally been a passive asset.

    Mezo Prime is introducing segregated vaults, or Enclaves, allowing institutions to earn yield on bitcoin held in custody with Anchorage Digital Bank, according to an emailed announcement on Wednesday.

    The product reflects a shift in how institutions view the largest cryptocurrency. Once treated primarily as a store of value, there are now numerous efforts to rebrand $BTC as capital that can generate immediate returns. Many institutional holders are not content with assets just sitting there, doing nothing.

    That change has been driven in part by the emergence of bitcoin-native yield infrastructure. Projects such as Rootstock and Babylon are building mechanisms that allow $BTC to be used in lending, collateralized borrowing and other financial strategies without leaving the Bitcoin ecosystem.

    Enclaves are designed to meet institutional requirements around asset segregation, reporting and risk controls, areas that have historically limited participation in crypto lending and decentralized finance (DeFi), Mezo said.

    The project is backed by 250 $BTC ($19.4 million) in funding from Bullish (BLSH), the digital-asset firm that is CoinDesk’s parent company. Bullish is also among the first users, deploying part of its treasury into the product while maintaining its existing custody framework, according ot the announcement.

    Bitcoin deposited into the vaults can be locked to earn protocol fees or used as collateral to borrow MUSD, a bitcoin-backed stablecoin, without being rehypothecated.

    For now, institutional adoption of these products remains early and yields are relatively low compared with other crypto assets. Nevertheless, projects like Mezo demonstrate that institutions are beginning to treat bitcoin not just as a digital equivalent to gold, but as a productive financial asset.

  • Google DeepMind Veteran Raises $1.1 Billion to Build AI That Isn’t Trained With Human Data

    Google DeepMind Veteran Raises $1.1 Billion to Build AI That Isn’t Trained With Human Data

    In brief

    • DeepMind veteran David Silver raised $1.1 billion for his new startup Ineffable Intelligence at a $5.1 billion valuation.
    • Silver says reinforcement learning, not large language models, is the best path to superintelligence.
    • The startup aims to build AI “superlearners” that learn through simulations and self-play.

    David Silver, the DeepMind scientist behind AlphaGo’s historic 2016 win over world Go champion Lee Sedol, has raised $1.1 billion to launch a startup betting that the next era of AI won’t come from today’s dominant technology.

    Silver’s company, Ineffable Intelligence, launched in January at a $5.1 billion valuation and is betting on reinforcement learning, a method where AI systems improve through trial and error. Silver argues that approach, rather than the large language models now dominating the field, offers a more credible route to superintelligence.

    “I think of our mission as making first contact with superintelligence,” Silver told Wired. “By superintelligence, I really mean something incredible. It should discover new forms of science or technology or government or economics for itself.”

    Popularized by philosopher Nick Bostrom in his 2014 book “Superintelligence,” the term refers to AI that surpasses human intelligence across nearly all domains, while artificial general intelligence, or AGI, describes systems capable of matching human-level reasoning across a wide range of tasks.

    Silver argues that large language models are fundamentally limited because they learn from human-generated data, instead of building their own understanding through experience.

    “Human data is like a kind of fossil fuel that has provided an amazing shortcut,” he said. “You can think of systems that learn for themselves as a renewable fuel—something that can just learn and learn and learn forever, without limit.”

    Silver has spent much of his career advancing that argument. AlphaGo, which combined human training data with reinforcement learning and self-play, developed strategies that surprised even top human players and demonstrated how AI can exceed human precedent in narrow domains.

    “I feel it’s really important that there is an elite AI lab that actually focuses a hundred percent on this approach,” he told Wired. “That it’s not just a corner of another place dedicated to LLMs.”

    Ineffable Intelligence plans to build what Silver calls “superlearners”—AI agents placed inside simulations where they can pursue goals, fail, adapt, and improve without the limits of a static human dataset. Silver declined to describe what those simulations would look like, but said the approach would allow agents to collaborate and develop capabilities autonomously.

    Silver argued that large language models are limited by the data they are trained on, adding that a model trained in a world where everyone believed the Earth was flat would likely keep that belief unless it could test reality for itself. A system that learns through experience, he said, could discover otherwise.

    Ineffable Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Decrypt.

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