US President Donald Trump has threatened ‘economic D-Day’ on any countries that help or do business with Iran. Al Jazeera’s Mike Hanna explains how the threat, though vague, signals a renewed focus on economic, rather than military, action.
Published On 20 Aug 2026
Spider-Man: Brand New Day looks to continue its indefatigable run at the box office against such new challengers as horror sequel Insidious: Out of the Further and the Jason Statham-led Mutiny.
Sony Pictures releases Insidious: Out of the Further in roughly 3,000 North American theaters on Friday, with the studio projecting an opening weekend around $23 million. Hailing from Screen Gems, Stage 6 Films and Blumhouse Atomic Monster, Out of the Further is the sixth title in the franchise that kicked off with 2011’s Insidious and carries an $18 million production budget.
Amelia Eve, Brandon Perea and Lin Shaye star in writer-director Jacob Chase’s film that centers on a young mother who can bring spirits back with her to the real world. Out of the Further follows 2023’s Insidious: The Red Door, which saw the return of original series stars Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne and opened to $33 million domestically before hitting a global total of $189 million for its run.
Insidious: Out of the Further holds a 65 percent approval rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. In his review for The Hollywood Reporter, critic Frank Scheck wrote that the film “proves routine in its elaborate plot machinations that remind you how tiresome a place the Further can be.”
Jason Statham as Cole Reed in Mutiny.
Dan Smith/Lionsgate
Opening in roughly 2,700 North American locations is Mutiny, starring Jason Statham as a former Marine who sets out to prove his innocence after he is framed for murder. Lionsgate releases the movie that is tracking to open in the high single-digit range and carries a $40 million production budget. MadRiver Pictures and Punch Palace Productions produced the project.
Jean-François Richet helmed the feature that holds a 49 percent approval score from reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes. Statham’s recent films include Shelter, which opened to $5.5 million domestically earlier this year, while 2025’s A Working Man launched with an initial weekend of $15.5 million in North America. Next year sees the star leading The Beekeeper 2.
Tom Holland in Spider-Man: Brand New Day.
Jay Maidment/Sony Pictures
Other new theatrical offerings this weekend include the Andrew Garfield-led The Magic Faraway Tree and Spa Weekend, starring Isla Fisher, Leslie Mann and Anna Faris.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day continues its historic run into the waning days of summer, as the Sony Pictures juggernaut that stars Tom Holland and Zendaya is set to lead the box office for its fourth consecutive weekend. Having recently set the record as the fastest movie to hit $800 million domestically, director Destin Daniel Cretton‘s feature is expected to surpass 2021’s Spider-Man: No Way Home as the No. 3 highest-grossing title ever in North America.
The success of Brand New Day — along with other titles like The Odyssey and Toy Story 5 — has helped bring the 2026 summer box office to a total of $4.24 billion domestically as of Sunday, according to Rentrak, putting the season 23.7 percent above last year’s tally to that point. The all-time summer mark remains 2013’s $4.75 billion.
The Zurich Film Festival (ZFF) will honor two-time Oscar nominee Naomi Watts this year with a Golden Eye Award for her performance in Ben Shirinian’s The Housewife.
In the ’60s-set drama, based on a true-story, a young New York Times journalist, played by Tye Sheridan, tracks down a man he suspects of being a Nazi officer living secretly in Queens (Luke Evans). But when the reporter befriends the suspect’s elegant and enigmatic wife (Watts), the implications of his investigation become much more unsettling.
The Housewife will have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival before heading to Zurich. Watts will accept her Golden Eye honor in person in Zurich on Sept. 26 and take part in a ZFF masterclass.
“Since her breakthrough in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, Naomi Watts has been one of the most fascinating actresses of our time,” said Zurich Festival CEO Christian Jungen, announcing the honor on Thursday. “Her greatest performances thrive on the tension between glamour and darkness, between what a character reveals and what she conceals — making her the kind of character actress Hitchcock would have loved.”
In The Housewife, said Jungen, Watts “masters this ambiguity as an elegant and mysterious woman [and] delivers one of the most compelling performances of her career.”
Watts is a two-time Academy Award nominee, nominated for best actress in 2004 for her turn as a grieving mother in Alejandro González Iñárritu’s 21 Grams; and in 2013 for her role as a survivor of the 2004 tsunami in J.A. Bayona’s The Impossible. On the small screen, her performance as Baby Paley in the second season of Ryan Murphy’s Feud earned her an Emmy nomination for best actress in a limited/anthology series or TV movie.
Previous winners of Zurich’s Golden Eye Award include Kristen Stewart, Jude Law, Benedict Cumberbatch and Dakota Johnson. The 2026 Zurich Film Festival runs Sept. 24 – Oct. 4.
Zurich Film Festival is to honor actress Naomi Watts with the Golden Eye Award for her performance in Ben Shirinian’s “The Housewife.”
In Zurich, she will present the film, in which she portrays the enigmatic wife of a suspected Nazi. The actress will personally accept the award on Sept. 26 and offer insights into her career during a ZFF Masters session.
The festival described Watts, who has earned two Academy Award nominations, as “an artist renowned for her emotional depth, versatility and unwavering commitment to her roles.”
In “The Housewife,” she plays an elegant and inscrutable woman living in 1960s New York whose flawless façade gradually begins to crack when a young journalist from the New York Times uncovers clues about her husband’s dark past.
Christian Jungen, CEO of the festival, said, “Since her breakthrough in David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive,’ Naomi Watts has been one of the most fascinating actresses of our time. Her greatest performances thrive on the tension between glamour and darkness, between what a character reveals and what she conceals – making her the kind of character actress Hitchcock would have loved.
“In ‘The Housewife,’ she masters this ambiguity as an elegant and mysterious woman. At the same time, the film tells a true story that powerfully illustrates how indispensable investigative journalism is in uncovering historical crimes. Naomi Watts delivers one of the most compelling performances of her career.”
Watts said, “It is such an honor to be presented with the Golden Eye Award from Zurich Film Festival. I cannot wait to be there, accepting this award among such great company, and I thank the film festival for honoring my role in this film.”
Josh Radnor recently told the “Half the Picture” podcast that he is “not even a little bit” close to his “How I Met Your Mother” co-stars, despite filming together for 208 episodes across 9 seasons.
When asked if he’s still tight with his “How I Met Your Mother” family, Radnor said, “No. Not even a little bit.”
He explained, “I don’t mean that in any dramatic way. It’s just… We had Neil [Patrick Harris] on the podcast, and he and I had a really interesting conversation about some of the tension we had on set that was fascinating and kind of healing.”
Radnor hosts a “HIMYM” rewatch podcast with series co-creator Craig Thomas. Harris appeared on an episode earlier in 2026.
He explained that he and Jason Segel “send each other texts every once in a while,” but he hasn’t seen him in “a really long time.” As for Cobie Smulders, who’s been on his podcast a few times, he’s “seen her mostly on Zoom.” Radnor recalled seeing Alyson Hannigan last at his wedding in 2024.
“I have love for all these people,” Radnor said. “It’s like college where you have this very intense time together, and you think you’re going to be — you can’t imagine not seeing each other every day because you’ve seen each other every day for so long. And then it just disperses, and you just go out and live your life.”
He continued, “I think it’s a little more like family than friends in that you don’t get to choose your family. We were cast. We didn’t choose each other. And family dynamics come out to play when you’re in an environment like that for so long. But you also have love that is quite deep and rich and probably everlasting, but it’s not an active love. Acting is like love affairs that you have, and then you move on.”
Counterfeit wallet apps are not a new threat, but Operation ASTERIX shows how much more precise these schemes have become. Rapid7 uncovered a campaign built around roughly 885,000 phone numbers, crypto account-validation tools, phishing emails, vishing calls, and fake Trezor, Ledger, and Exodus apps designed to capture recovery phrases, according to the original report.
The most striking detail is not the volume of phone numbers. It is the validation layer. In one German dataset, operators identified 43,066 CryptoCom accounts from 316,002 phone numbers. That is a hit rate high enough to justify the infrastructure. After confirming which numbers were tied to exchange accounts, the group enriched those targets with personal details, making support impersonation calls much harder to detect. A public list of phone numbers is a nuisance; a list that has been cross-checked against exchange account data is an operational asset.
Rapid7 found signs that the operators used GitHub Copilot and Claude Code across multiple stages of the campaign. Those tools were applied to process target data, develop and debug malicious software, and build phishing infrastructure. That matters because it shrinks the distance between target discovery and an active fake wallet app or phone scam. Tasks that once required a dedicated developer can now be handled by smaller crews using AI coding assistants.
The sector’s broader AI adoption is not limited to hostile actors. Rankings of Top 10 Blockchains by Developer Activity This Week track code contributions across major chains, and those workflows increasingly include AI-assisted development. The same productivity gains that help legitimate teams ship faster also make malicious wallet apps easier to produce, which is precisely the dual-use problem Operation ASTERIX exposes. AI tooling now runs through legitimate Web3 infrastructure too, including scalable AI-driven Web3 applications.
One interaction stands out. When Claude refused requests related to code obfuscation, the operator switched to Kimi and attempted to bypass its safety controls with a custom jailbreak prompt. Rapid7 could not confirm whether the attempt succeeded. That uncertainty is relevant because it separates a simple misuse of general-purpose tools from a more deliberate effort to defeat model restrictions. The former is a moderation gap; the latter is a red-team exercise run by criminals.
Without confirmation, the report avoids overstating the jailbreak result. It does, however, confirm that the campaign treated AI model refusals as an obstacle to route around rather than a reason to stop. Security researchers and platform providers will likely scrutinize that behavior when deciding how aggressively to restrict coding assistance around wallet-related software.
The counterfeit apps named in the report target the same recovery phrase users are told never to enter anywhere. Fake Trezor, Ledger, and Exodus apps create a direct path from a convincing interface to a drained wallet. That is why download source matters more than app appearance. Official hardware wallet vendors do not ask users to enter recovery phrases into software, and exchange support lines do not call customers with a full personal profile already loaded.
The operation also sharpens a hard truth for exchanges. If account validation is cheap enough to run against hundreds of thousands of numbers, then user data leaks and public breach corpora become a higher-value input for vishing campaigns. The report does not allege an exchange breach; it shows how seemingly thin data can be enriched into actionable targeting information.
Lawmakers weighing crypto market structure rules may find this kind of disclosure hard to ignore. Banking groups have already been pressing against the biggest crypto bill in US history, and cybercrime incidents involving retail wallets could sharpen the debate over liability, consumer protection, and platform responsibility. Whether Operation ASTERIX becomes a regulatory data point depends on how quickly similar campaigns are detected elsewhere.
Circle has expanded Circle Mint to support direct local-currency $USDC on- and off-ramps across eight currencies. The company said in an Aug. 18 post that foreign exchange is handled inside Mint, removing the need for a separate conversion step or pre-funding additional accounts.
Alongside USD and EUR, Circle listed the Brazilian real, British pound, Hong Kong dollar, Mexican peso, offshore Chinese yuan and Singapore dollar among the local currencies supported for eligible Mint account holders.
Circle says customers can activate cross-currency exchange, link a bank account for the local-currency side and register that account for the currency they intend to trade. The company describes each transaction as a quote, trade and settlement process, with $USDC arriving in the Mint balance after conversion.
Circle says settlement uses local payment rails nearly around the clock where supported. Availability remains subject to jurisdiction and account eligibility, and the company notes that some account-registration steps are handled offline.
The update is directed at businesses and eligible Mint customers, including payment providers, financial institutions and fintechs. Circle states that Circle Mint is not a bank account and that funds are not protected by FDIC, SIPC or comparable government insurance.
The announcement is a Circle product update. It does not mean all currencies, regions or users have identical access, so institutions need to check Mint eligibility and local requirements before relying on the new routes.
Hey, let me ask you a question. If I told you about a political candidate with impeccable patriotic bona fides, a compelling backstory and a deep war chest, wouldn’t you think he’d win by a landslide or at least turn out a competitive race?
That’s what Alex Vindman and his supporters thought. But they underestimated the Larry David factor.
Vindman, a Florida Democrat, seemed a lock to win his Senate primary bid on Tuesday. A retired lieutenant colonel in the Army. A Purple Heart-decorated Iraq veteran. A whistleblower on Donald Trump for the 2019 quid pro quo attempt with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy that led to an impeachment trial. Vindman had major name recognition. He raised $16 million ($15 million more than his opponent) and was believed to be a big favorite over said rival, Angie Nixon — a little-known Jacksonville-based member of the Florida House of Representatives.
Nixon was a DSA candidate in a state that leaned moderate, and these days really doesn’t lean Democrat at all. No way a million Democrats would give the edge to her. (The pair were battling to take on sitting Senator Ashley Moody, a Republican, to finish out the remaining two years of Marco Rubio’s term.)
But that’s exactly what happened Tuesday. Nixon swamped Vindman by more than 12 points, garnering over 700,000 of the total 1.25 million votes. She pulled off the ultimate chat-and-cut.
How could this happen for the retired Army lieutenant colonel and Soviet refugee? What did Vindman do? Did he not respect wood?
I’ll tell you what happened. What happened was Larry David.
Vindman appeared in two episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm as himself, including the series finale in which he testifies against Larry for his political bribery. David even campaigned for the candidate, sending out a fundraising text message earlier this summer (including to people who didn’t live anywhere near Florida). “The man is everything I’m not, which should give you an idea of what a tremendous person he is. Vindman is not a puppet. He loves this country. He loves it so much it’s almost off-putting. I love it too, but come on. Get a life, Vindman!”
And David, in addition to schlemieling up everything on the show, has a curse attached to him. A curse that ensures people never get the votes they should.
It’s called the Curb curse, and it seeks to explain — because there is no explanation — how David never won a writing or acting Emmy in the entire 12-season, 24-year history of the show. Yes, 120 episodes and he never got a thing. (The show won just two overall, for directing and editing.) A post on Screen Rant after his most recent strikeout and last attempt in 2024 said: “Curb Your Enthusiasm Continues a 24-Year Larry David Curse After The Show’s Ending.”
And now that the show is over, it carried over to Vindman. David couldn’t win an Emmy in 2024 and Vindman couldn’t win a primary in 2026.
If this was a Curb episode, you could almost imagine Vindman showing up at David’s house.
“You cost me the election, Larry.”
“What are you talking about? I didn’t cost you the election.”
“You cost me the election.”
“Get the hell out of here! Cost you an election. Poor Candidate Vindman. Like Al Gore. [Fake crying] Cost him an election.”
And then Vindman would angrily leave, but at the end of the episode happen to be in the Santa Monica restaurant when Larry does something untoward and the camera would pan to him and he’d tip someone off and then have his revenge. The curse would be avenged.
Of course this may not be a curse so much as, you know, simply irascibility. For the character but also the personality — the real-life David wasn’t one for the glad-handing, even at parties, and it’s not like he kissed the awards ring. He didn’t even show up to the Emmys the last time he was nominated. When you attack Elmo, you don’t get love.
That irascibility also may have singed Vindman. Who wants to get a hectoring message from David? Especially asking for money. It’s not cool de la.
Sure, if you’re trying to analyze the results of the election, you can talk about the swing of Democrats to the DSA even in a place like Florida, auguring a new future for the party. Or that many of the moderate Dems in Florida have ditched for the GOP and couldn’t vote in the state’s closed primary.
But, eh. It was probably Larry.
Centrifuge [$CFG] declined more than 14% in the past 24 hours at press time, extending the double-digit decline in market cap over the past week. The daily trading volume increased, supporting the selling pressure experienced across multiple altcoins.
However, the sharper decline in $CFG points to a coin-specific weakness with its real-world asset (RWA) niche.
As per data from Token Terminal, Centrifuge’s RWA activity declined on multiple fronts.
For instance, the Monthly Asset Transfer Volume on the chain fell by 10%. This week alone, the metric has decreased from a peak of $11.67 million to $281K, indicating very low usage of the ecosystem in the RWA sector.
Additionally, the Monthly Asset Transfer Count lost more than 58% of its share. Since the start of August, this count has plummeted from 6.7K to 2.2K, representing a 67% loss.
Apart from its RWA niche’s underperformance, $CFG faced a broader, weaker altcoin market. To be specific, the Centrifuge ecosystem saw net USD outflows of more than $2.25 million.
Moreover, the Total Value Locked (TVL) was flat at around $1.709 billion after a sharp drop from its highs attained when the RWA narrative was thriving. The TVL of $CFG in April was above the $2 billion mark.
Furthermore, the activity on the chain was low, evident from the fees generated. As per DefiLlama, the ecosystem generated about $200.9K in the past 24 hours as of writing.
Even the market structure of $CFG was bearish since mid-July.
The altcoin was falling inside a wedge pattern and broke below the lower trendline support. Over the past 24 hours, the $CFG price has fallen from $0.1672 to $0.1379 as of writing.
Momentum indicators reinforced the bearish control with the reading of Bull Bear Power (BBP) bars at -0.0243. Moreover, Chaikin Money Flow (CMF) crashed to -0.22, indicating capital flight.
Looking at the market structure and overall RWA sentiment, $CFG may continue dipping. It could even lose its all-time low (ATL) at $0.06712.
However, the altcoin is closer to $0.1257, which is the demand zone that pushed it to a peak value of $0.3497. This level could be the start of a recovery if bulls return.
