A fast-moving wildfire has forced more than 20,000 people to evacuate parts of British Columbia’s Okanagan region in Western Canada. The Bald Range fire has grown to about 9,500 hectares, threatening homes and farms as firefighters battle blazes across the province.
Published On 9 Aug 2026
Grayscale Research Director Zach Pandl said that the CLARITY Act, which aims to create a comprehensive regulatory framework for the cryptocurrency market in the US, now seems unlikely to pass Congress this year. Pandl noted that the Senate’s busy schedule and election year politics make it difficult to reach a bipartisan agreement on the bill.
According to Pandl, the failure of the Clarity Act to become law will not directly impact the demand for Bitcoin as a store of value, the functioning of major blockchains, or the growth in stablecoin payments in the short term. The cryptocurrency sector has been developing in the US for nearly 17 years without comprehensive market structure legislation.
However, a Grayscale executive noted that the lack of comprehensive regulation could slow new investment activity and capital formation in the U.S. The CLARITY Act aimed to open new avenues for capital formation through blockchain technology, support the development of tokenized securities markets, and create a comprehensive oversight framework for digital asset intermediaries. The bill also included various protections for consumers, investors, and software developers.
Related News Major Development for the Clarity Act After a Long Wait—Affects All Cryptocurrencies
Pandl believes that federal regulators will continue to fill regulatory gaps in the crypto sector even without new legislation. In particular, the SEC and other agencies are expected to develop new rules and regulations in various areas, especially tokenized securities, in the coming months.
According to Grayscale, significant progress has been made in favor of the sector in the regulatory approach to institutional custody services, banking access, staking, and crypto exchange investment products under the current administration. However, Pandl warned that in the absence of comprehensive market structure legislation, a larger portion of new investments and developer activity could shift to countries outside the US.
*This is not investment advice.
TL;DR: A Curiosity Stream lifetime subscription is $112.50 (MSRP $399.99) with code AUG25, through August 9.
Documentary fans get a rough deal on most major streamers, buried under a few thousand reality shows and reruns, but on Curiosity Stream, documentaries are all they do, and they do it well.
The catalog runs deep on science, history, nature, and technology: ancient Rome, deep space, wildlife. Not to mention a solid lineup of David Attenborough programs. New titles are added regularly, so the library doesn’t stall out after the first few weeks.
HD streaming across phones, tablets, and TVs
iPhone and iPad apps support offline downloads, useful for flights or long commutes
The interface is straightforward, and topic-specific search makes it easy to go down a rabbit hole
Bookmarking and resume playback carry across sessions
It’s also a solid pick for background viewing, low-stakes enough to fall asleep to without the jump scares or plot you’d need to keep up with in a movie or reality show. Between that and the actual content quality, it’s a fit for students, lifelong learners, or anyone looking to trim a streaming lineup down to something worth paying for once.
Get Curiosity Stream lifetime access for $112.50 (MSRP $399.99) with code AUG25 before it ends August 9 at 11:59 p.m.
Prices subject to change. PCMag editors select and review products independently. If you buy through StackSocial affiliate links, we may earn commissions, which help support our testing.
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Rachel Reid is pushing back against negative comments about Heated Rivalry‘s latest season two casting.
The author, who wrote the novels that the show is based upon, took to Instagram Friday to weigh into online debate about the casting of the characters Troy Barrett and Harris Drover in the upcoming season. It was announced Friday that Charlie Gillespie was cast as Troy, a professional hockey player who is traded to the Ottawa Centaurs in Reid’s source material, while Justice Smith was cast as Harris, the team’s social media manager.
“Thinking about all the people last summer who told me the casting for Ilya and Shane was wrong and bad…” she wrote on an Instagram story.
Some fans online were criticizing the decision to cast a “skinny” actor to play the character of Harris, who was described as chubbier than the hockey players of the book.
Harris and Troy’s budding relationship drives Reid’s novel Role Model, the fifth installment of her Game Changers series, which Heated Rivalry the series is based on. “Rachel Reid has given us two beautifully layered characters in Harris and Troy who you can’t help but root for,” showrunner Jacob Tierney and executive producer Brendan Brady said in a release about the casting.
“From the start of the casting process, we knew we were looking for actors who could create something truly special together and bring that same depth and heart to the screen. Justice and Charlie do exactly that,” the statement continued. “They immediately connected with the vulnerability and resilience at the core of these characters, bringing an instinctive understanding of who Harris and Troy are.”
Ottawa is expected to be the season two home for main character Ilya Rozanov, played by Connor Storrie, who moves to the low-ranking Canadian team. The Russian hockey player made the decision to move to the team in the finale of the show’s first season to be closer to Heated Rivalry’s other main character and his now-boyfriend, Shane Hollander, played by Hudson Williams.
Crave renewed Heated Rivalry for a second season early into the show’s first season run. HBO Max has confirmed it will continue to air the series. The show will begin shooting its second season this month and is aiming for a spring 2027 release.
Tierney serves as writer, director and executive producer on the series. Brady and Jayme Alter Wilson serve as executive producers, alongside Lori Fischburg and Liane Cunje as producers. Reid serves as a consulting producer. Mike Goldbach joins season two as co-writer alongside Tierney.
Ever since the official trailer dropped for the Callum Turner–Monica Barbaro rom-com One Night Only, quickly racking up millions of views on its way to its nearly 40 million total, internet commentators have had a lot of questions about the film’s central premise in which premarital sex is illegal apart from one 12-hour period a year.
How is this law enforced? Are people breaking the law? How did this legislation pass? What counts as “sex” under this new mandate? Are marriage (and divorce) rates skyrocketing? What about affairs?
Rest assured: Some of those questions are answered in the movie, and explanations are starting to trickle out online for those unconcerned about spoilers. Beyond that, One Night Only writer, Travis Braun, who saw his screenplay top the 2024 Black List, has answers, but they’re not all in the Will Gluck-directed Universal movie now in theaters.
“I set out to write a movie about the circus that is modern dating, and I thought how fun if we could set that all in one night, and I have answers to those questions, and some of them are in the movie,” Braun told The Hollywood Reporter at the One Night Only premiere earlier this week in New York.
Braun said he definitely thought about the specific rules of the film’s alternate reality, framed as three years on from the no-sex act being passed, but didn’t want to get too deep into the politics of the world of the movie.
“There’s a big mythology that I’ve built out and then as you develop a movie you start to pare down and you go: What does an audience really care about, and what are they showing up to see? For me the answer is always a love story, romance,” he told THR. “I hope they can come in and we’ll show them how this world functions, and then they can just enjoy the movie and have fun. The whole focus of this was love story and romance first, and the world-building obviously has to make sense and has to be there, but ultimately we weren’t interested in getting into the politics of it. We wanted to tell a story about these two incredible people trying to find love on this crazy night.”
Producer Jacqueline Monetta, who brought Braun’s script to Gluck, said they didn’t want moviegoers to have all of the answers.
“I had a million questions. I was like, ‘What does this mean? What does this world look like? How do people communicate? What’s different?’ And that’s I think what’s so smart about it,” she said of One Night Only‘s “big idea, high-concept” premise. “We don’t answer every question in the movie, purposefully, because we want those questions to be had on the car ride home. We want people to keep talking about it and really think about what would this mean for our world, what does it mean for our world now. But I think Will and I were really specific on what questions we wanted to answer.”
In a recent Reddit AMA, Gluck also detailed how he and his team approached the world building of the movie while not wanting it to be all about the mandate and offered prospective moviegoers hints for where to find the answers to their questions.
“We spent a lot of time talking about the rules of the world, and if you’ve seen the movie, or when you see the movie, you’ll see that the rules of the world and the world building are all in the background,” he said. “It’s on TVs, signage, in thrown-away lines, because we didn’t want to give the world short shrift, but we didn’t want the movie to be about that. It’s another way I want people to see this. If they see it more than once, they’ll pick up so many more rules of the world in the background. A lot of the questions that I’ve been getting after people have seen the movie are actually answered in the movie, which is by design because I want people maybe not to know them. So, yes, it was a tricky tightrope to have them there, but not for the movie to be about it.”
Turner meanwhile echoes Braun’s advice for curious prospective moviegoers: “Go see the film!”
“You’ll realize pretty quickly what the realm is that you’re working within and it’s a comedy,” Turner says of what inquisitive filmgoers will find. “There are no great political undertones, I don’t think. This is just a place where you can escape for an hour and a half, two hours and enjoy and laugh your head off.”
One Night Only is now in theaters.
Callum Turner and Monica Barbaro at the One Night Only premiere on Monday.
Roy Rochlin/Getty Images for Universal Pictures
AT&T is introducing a new, ruggedized 5G Android tablet with an affordable price and one unavoidable problem for potential buyers: They’re too old for the device.
The carrier’s new, TCL-built AmiGo Jr. Tab 2 is AT&T’s latest addition to the market for child-optimized tablets. The pricing involves some grown-up math: either $239.99 up-front or, if you activate a new line, $4.99 a month for 36 months ($179.64 total) with $1.70 in bill credits off a $20.99/month tablet plan.
The remainder of the AmiGo Jr. Tab 2’s specs are less impressive: an 8.7-inch, 1,340-by-800-pixel display, a stylus, 64GB of internal storage (which you can expand by up to 2TB with a microSD card), an 8MP rear camera and a 5MP front camera, and the older Wi-Fi 5.
AT&T’s spec sheet lists a 6,000-mAh battery and a charge time (“up to 145 minutes” to reach 100%) but not how long it runs on a charge, instead just citing “all-day” usage.
The operating system onboard is also two releases behind, the 2024-vintage Android 15. That does not suggest an update for the current Android 17 is coming anytime soon, not that Google’s new release offers much so far to set itself apart from Android 16.
The more relevant software for potential buyers of the Tab 2, which AT&T recommends for children ages 3 to 10, may be the parental-control app available for Android and iOS, which offers usage monitoring and location tracking, plus the kid-friendly apps installed on the tablet itself. It joins a set of other AmiGo devices, including a smartwatch and a Samsung-made phone.
Editors’ Note: We updated this post to remove an incorrect detail provided in an early copy of AT&T’s announcement.
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Rob Pegoraro writes about interesting problems and possibilities in computers, gadgets, apps, services, telecom, and other things that beep or blink. He’s covered such developments as the evolution of the cell phone from 1G to 5G, the fall and rise of Apple, Google’s growth from obscure Yahoo rival to verb status, and the transformation of social media from CompuServe forums to Facebook’s billions of users. Pegoraro has met most of the founders of the internet and once received a single-word email reply from Steve Jobs.
Ahead of tonight’s final “Cats: The Jellicle Ball” show, composer Andrew Lloyd Webber is speaking out about how producing on Broadway has become “unsustainable.”
“I’m gutted that the wonderful Broadway production of ‘Cats: The Jellicle Ball’ is closing today,” Lloyd Webber wrote on Instagram. “I’m immensely proud to have been a part of an incredibly daring production whose cast and creative team broke new ground on Broadway and gave 17 actors their Broadway debut.”
He also took the opportunity to call out the larger issues affecting the industry: “Maybe the show’s closing just might be remembered as the moment that caused everyone involved with Broadway to come to their senses and address the unsustainable cost of producing and running any new show now on The Great White Way, let alone doing new work.”
“The Jellicle Ball” breathed new life into “Cats” by restaging the popular show as a fierce competition between drag performers. Webber’s original show premiered on Broadway back in 1982 and ran through 2000, winning seven Tony awards. In 2019, it was infamously turned into a critically panned film from “The King’s Speech” director Tom Hooper.
But despite the Tonys awarding “The Jellicle Ball” three awards for best costume design, best direction of a musical and best choreography, strong reviews and online buzz didn’t stop the show from closing five months before planned at the Broadhurst Theatre.
“The Jellicle Ball” started as an off-Broadway production in June 2024. When it premiered on Broadway back in April, the show was initially earning between $900,000 to $1 million a week. But those numbers dropped sharply after “The Jellicle Ball” lost the best revival of a musical Tony Award to “Ragtime.”
This isn’t the first time Lloyd Webber has spoken out about the show’s premature end. In July, he wrote on Instagram: “Without action, Broadway risks rivaling Hollywood’s empty soundstages: increasingly dark theatres where bold new work once lived.”
“The painful truth is that, with things as they are, bringing almost any new show to Broadway makes little financial sense,” Lloyd Webber continued. “The costs are immense. Creators, writers and directors are often forced to accept minimal royalties simply to get work staged.”
Next up, Lloyd Webber and “Sunset Blvd.” director Jamie Lloyd are working on bringing “Evita” with Rachel Zegler to Broadway after its successful West End run.
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One of the greatest artists of all time is adding another honor to her legacy, as Barbie unveils an official Whitney Houston doll, available to buy online now.
The Whitney Houston Barbie Signature Doll captures the singer’s memorable look from her “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me)” music video, complete with a purple tank dress, iridescent heels and colorful beaded drop earrings. The singer’s big hair is an instant nod to the 80s era (the song was released in 1987), as is her purple and gold eye makeup. The collectible doll comes with a black microphone and mic stand.
OFFICIAL COLLECTIBLE
The Whitney Houston Barbie is an officially-licensed release from Mattel and the late singer’s estate. The doll comes in a collectible window pane display box, with images of the singer and her signature in the background. The MSRP is $60.
Mattel says it worked closely with Pat Houston, the singer’s sister-in-law, throughout the creative process, adding that she helped to “shape the doll’s design” and gave “thoughtful details” into what the finished Barbie doll should look like (Pat Houston is married to Whitney’s brother Gary, and she is the executor of The Estate of Whitney E. Houston, and president of the Whitney E. Houston Legacy Foundation).
In a press release, Pat Houston thanked Mattel “for making one of Whitney’s dreams come true,” adding that “we celebrate more than the release of a doll, we celebrate the enduring legacy of an icon.”
“The new Whitney Houston Barbie honors a woman whose voice, grace, beauty, and spirit inspired generations around the world,” she says. “May this doll remind every child and every collector that dreams have no limits, excellence leaves a lasting imprint, and true greatness never goes out of style.”
GET THE ALBUM
It’s been more than four decades since Houston burst onto the music scene with her self-titled album in 1985. “I Wanna Dance With Somebody,” meantime, was taken from her 1987 album, Whitney, and quickly became one of the singer’s signature anthems. The music video was also an instant hit on MTV and BET. The song went on to win the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, and its legacy has continued to this day, with “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” topping Billboard’s list of the 500 Best Pop Songs of All Time, among other accolades.
“I Wanna Dance With Somebody” was also the name of the well-received 2022 Houston biopic, which starred Naomi Ackie as the music legend.
WATCH THE FILM
The film is streaming free on Prime Video, though you can also rent it or purchase the movie on Blu-ray (the Blu-ray disc includes a digital code that you can redeem for a download of the film online).
The Whitney Houston Barbie doll was officially unveiled on August 8 at the 5th Legacy of Love Gala, an annual charity event hosted by the Whitney E. Houston Legacy Foundation in Atlanta. The doll is sure to be an instant collectible for Houston fans and pop culture fans alike. You can find it on sale online through Amazon and Walmart.
Houston’s Barbie doll comes on the heels of other musician Barbie releases, including a Miley Cyrus edition and a Kylie Minogue doll, both of which were released this year. Other musicians who have been honored with a Barbie doll in the past include Diana Ross, Tina Turner and Elton John.
The delay of the US CLARITY Act announced at the end of the business week harmed several altcoins, but $XRP’s price dipped the most among the larger caps.
$BTC and ETH managed to hold support on Friday, remaining above or at key milestones at $64,000 and $1,900. $XRP, on the other hand, slipped to just over $1. That’s why we decided to ask ChatGPT for its analysis of the matter and whether Ripple’s token will continue to face adverse consequences.
The answer to whether the token will inevitably crash below $1, according to the popular AI solution, was “not necessarily, but the risk has increased.” It explained that the cross-border altcoin has become uniquely tied to US regulatory developments, dating back to the beginning of the lawsuit against the SEC nearly six years ago.
Unlike bitcoin, which has institutional and ETF demand, or Ethereum, which benefits from tokenization, stablecoins, and treasury accumulation from companies like Bitmine, much of $XRP’s bullish narrative over the past few years has centered on regulatory clarity.
Passage of the CLARITY Act would likely cement its commodity status in federal law and provide greater certainty for banks, institutions, and ETF issuers. In contrast, delaying the process postpones those potential inflows rather than eliminating them.
OpenAI’s solution pointed out that $XRP had historically rallied aggressively on regulatory optimism earlier in the cycle, making it more vulnerable to disappointment when the catalyst faded. Certain analysts agree with the thesis that $XRP could indeed slip below $1 soon, but they believe this would open the door for a more profound rally.
Again, ChatGPT doesn’t believe this is the most probable scenario; instead, it thinks $XRP has several catalysts that could prevent such a move. Perhaps the most significant support comes from the company behind the token and its substantial expansion experienced over the past few years, which included major partnerships, acquisitions, and regulatory wins, albeit in other jurisdictions.
The AI also noted that markets tend to overreact to legislative delays – after all, it doesn’t necessarily mean the bill will fail. If investors begin pricing in eventual approval rather than focusing solely on timing, Ripple’s token could stabilize before Washington returns in September.
Nevertheless, it didn’t completely rule out a dip below $1.00, especially if the broader crypto sentiment deteriorates and $BTC loses key support. In addition, macroeconomic news or war escalation can trigger another leg down, and both of those factors are outside the scope of the regulatory delay.
For the opening night of the 24th annual Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival (MVAAFF), “Children of Blood and Bone” director Gina Prince-Bythewood and star Thuso Mbedu shared never-before-seen clips of the forthcoming African fantasy film and dished about making the movie.
“Obviously films like this don’t get made very often,” Prince-Bythewood told “The View’s” Sunny Hostin during the Q&A. “They say 70% of directing is casting, and that’s what this was. To be able to put together a cast like this. There are no skips. Everybody is amazing. … And as I was working on the script, I started to envision people that I wanted.”
Based on Tomi Adeyemi’s acclaimed 2018 novel of the same name, Paramount’s “Children of Blood and Bone” was shot on location in South Africa, which subbed in for the fictional kingdom of Orïsha, where magic has been prohibited. There, the logline explains, “a young woman goes on a quest to reclaim the magic that was violently stolen from her people. She and her brother ally with the daughter and son of the king to fight back against his brutal rule.”
Mbedu (“The Underground Railroad,” “The Woman King”) stars as Zélie Adebola, the young woman in question, who has the power to command the undead. Starring alongside her are Damson Idris as Prince Inan, Amandla Stenberg as Princess Amari, Tosin Cole as Zélie’s brother Tzain and Regina King as Queen Nehanda. Lashana Lynch, Idris Elba, Cynthia Erivo and Viola Davis round out the A-list cast.
Mbedu was thrilled to return to her native South Africa to work, and she began preparing for the role — including her stunt training — nearly one year before filming began. “I leaned into the source material a lot,” she said. “I don’t know how many times I read and reread the book, putting it next to the screenplay.” (Prince-Bythewood and Adeyemi share screenplay credit.)
“Tomi created a massive world, a huge world,” Mbedu continued. “We don’t have enough hours to put everything on screen. So finding the moments where, even if we’re not seeing it on screen, how am I bringing the reality of the history or the backstory of what we might have meant into the next moment.”
Thuso Mbedu, Gina Prince-Bythewood and Sunny Hostin attend the “Children of Blood and Bone” clips and conversations event during the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival in Oak Bluffs, Mass.
Arnold Turner/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures
Though the film does not debut until Jan.15, 2027, Adeyemi, who also served as an executive producer on the film, recently announced that she will not watch the finished product. On social media, Adeyemi shared that she left the “Children of Blood and Bone” set “hyperventilating and sobbing” and that she is “still being antagonized behind the scenes.” Neither Prince-Bythewood nor Mbedu directly addressed Adeyemi’s claims at MVAAFF, but the director of “The Woman King” did speak positively about the novelist and the world she crafted.
“Tomi’s a genius,” Prince-Bythewood said. “It’s a beautiful book, incredible characters. And this time when I read it, I was so connected to Lali’s character. And this young woman who was fighting to bring magic back- and we know what magic means for us. And her resilience, her fight and her search for purpose just spoke to me.”
The “Love and Basketball” director also spoke about casting Stenberg as Princess Amari. When the actress’ hiring was announced, there was an outcry over allegations of colorism due to Stenberg’s mixed-race status and lighter skin tone. Additionally, in a now-deleted TikTok video [via the L.A. Times], Adeyemi posted what appeared to be a group chat that included Stenberg. The author wrote, “Do not ever use my name in an interview or video again. Do not text me. Do not call me” and appeared to block the actor. Prince-Bythewood did not address the drama onstage.
“I’ve admired [Amandla’s] work since ‘Colombiana,’” Prince-Bythewood told Hostin and the MVAAFF audience. “But I auditioned every young actor for that role of Amari, and Amandla took it, grabbed it.”
Though the “Children of Blood and Bone” premiere is still several months away, “The Old Guard” director is content to let the work speak for itself until then.
“You’re going to feel every human emotion in this,” she said. “You’re going to be angry, you’re going to laugh, you’re going to cry, you’re going to dance, you’re going to cheer, you’re going to feel hope at the end. And that’s why I hope we go to movies, to feel something, to be moved. So I’m so excited about that. And as we know, these films are rare. I’m so proud of this movie, so excited about this movie and the thing that it can do for us when we see ourselves in this way.”
