Actor and comedian Michael Rapaport sharply criticized New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani during a Jewish gathering held outside Gracie Mansion on Friday.

“Zohran the moron is the most divisive mayor in the history of this city by far,” Rapaport said. “He’s a two-bit con man.”

Rapaport also alleged that the mayor’s wife is “an antisemite,” “a racist” and “a homophobic.”

Mamdani’s office responded Friday to a request for comment from News Media by pointing to comments the mayor made earlier in the week when he was asked about the planned gathering.

“I welcome them,” Mamdani said. “They can have a vigil, or I’ve heard some describe it even as a protest.”

Whatever the event “is intended to be,” Mamdani said, those attending have “the room and space to do so outside of Gracie Mansion.”

“I think that at the time that they are there I will probably be somewhere else across the city,” he said.

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Rapaport said he is “absolutely considering running for mayor,” while also leaving open the possibility of supporting another contender whom he believes would have “a better chance of winning.” New York City’s next mayoral election is scheduled for 2029.

Rabbi Binyamin Krauss, principal of SAR Academy, a Modern Orthodox school in New York City, explained the plans for the gathering in a piece published by The Times of Israel.

“On Friday morning, students from SAR, Ramaz, and a number of other schools will stand on East 88th Street and daven. They’ll sing. A few of them will speak. Then they’ll get back on the buses and return to class, two days before Yom Kippur,” Krauss wrote.

“Here’s what we want students to learn in the three periods this costs: you belong in this city, and when Jews feel unsafe we gather, and we pray, out loud. We express both our vulnerability and our agency at the same time. Showing up is a civic act, one the Constitution protects and one they’ll need for the rest of their lives,” he noted. “Our students love this city and they love Israel, and they don’t see a contradiction.”

MAMDANI’S NEW $4M NYC PUBLIC BATHROOMS AUTO-OPEN DOORS AFTER 10 MINUTES

There were also individuals who appeared to be Jewish counter-protesters expressing anti-Israel sentiments near the gathering on Friday. They could be seen with a sign with the messages, “Mayor Mamdani A Friend of Jews While Opposing Israeli Crimes” and, “Anti-Zionism Is NOT Anti-Semitism.”

Earl Spencer has stood by his account of a phone call with Prince Charles in the days after the death of his sister, Princess Diana, insisting that he is “telling the truth”.

In his new autobiography, Swan Song: Diana, My Sister, which is being exclusively serialised by the Daily Mail, the Earl alleges that Charles said “we’ll forget her [Diana] soon enough” during a dispute over Prince William and Prince Harry’s role in their mother’s funeral.

Buckingham Palace responded forcefully to the claim, suggesting that Earl Spencer’s “reason, judgment and memory” may have been affected by grief.

However, the Earl has reinforced the version of events set out in his book, declaring: “I can tell you here and now, those are exactly the words he said.”

Speaking to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg at Althorp, his Northamptonshire estate, Earl Spencer said he had been especially attentive during the conversation because he and Charles had spoken by telephone only twice in their lives.

Asked whether he had proof to support the allegation, he said he had repeated Charles’s alleged words to relatives and friends at the time because they were “so monstrous”.

“I’ve only ever had two calls on the line with Prince Charles at any stage of my life,” the Earl said.

“I was hyper alert to what he was saying and those are precisely the words that he said and I promise that to you now.”

Referring to the Palace’s response, he added: “Genuinely, that is what he said. I don’t hear him saying he didn’t say that.”

The earl claims Charles ‘went ballistic’ and ‘ranted for a while’ after he tried to tell the future King that Diana would not have wanted William and Harry to walk in her procession.

‘And then he stopped and I thought, oh now, now he’s gonna pull himself together and say something more appropriate,’ he said.

‘And then, he said, ‘we’ll forget her soon enough’.’ 

Earl Spencer added that the remark ‘stunned’ him, and that he hung up.

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The book’s first astonishing extract made headlines around the world and is splitting society, with rival camps backing either side.

In the first extract, published online yesterday and in today’s Daily Mail, the earl claims:

• The late Queen dramatically offered to restore Princess Diana’s royal title on the day of her funeral;
• Diana told her father she could not go through with the marriage to Prince Charles a month before the wedding – but he told her it was ‘impossible to pull out’;
• The day before the wedding Charles told Diana that while he was happy to marry her, he was not in love with her;
• Diana was so unhappy that she considered suicide and drove herself ‘more than once’ to Beachy Head cliffs in East Sussex;
• Charles sounded ‘giddily elated – like a lottery winner’ shortly after Diana’s death.

A second extract was published on DailyMail.com this afternoon, in which the Earl alleges the Royals allowed a tormented Prince Harry to ‘spin out of control’ after his mother’s death. 

Announcing the book last month, Earl Spencer said that, ahead of the 30th anniversary of Diana’s death next year, he wanted to write down his own thoughts and memories ‘rather than having the discomfort of again reading the opinions of others’.

Prince Harry and Prince William, aged 12 and 15, ultimately did walk behind Diana’s coffin in her funeral procession in September 1997 alongside Charles, Prince Philip and Earl Spencer.

Harry would later tell Newsweek magazine of the decision: ‘My mother had just died and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television.

‘I don’t think any child should be asked to do that, under any circumstances. I don’t think it would happen today.’

The Duke of Sussex, newly returned to the UK with his wife Meghan and their two children, is ‘aware’ of the book but has not read it, sources have told the Mail.

He ignored questions from reporters about it last night as he attended the inaugural Invictus Spirit Awards at the historic Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich.

Swan Song: Diana, My Sister is due to be published next week.

However, several copies of the book were stolen from a lorry parked in a lay-by in the Netherlands earlier this week. 

The tomes had been wrapped in black plastic to hide their contents, but publishing insiders believe they may have been deliberately targeted in an audacious bid to steal them before the official release.

There is simply no replicating Tom Hardy. It is difficult to define exactly what makes him so singular, but the actor possesses a bruising, bizarre magnetism that no other leading man can quite match. Back for the second of three currently approved seasons on Paramount+, Hardy brings his unmistakable gravelly intensity to MobLand, giving the crime drama an edge that feels wholly its own. In other words, dust off that Bane impression and celebrate: HARRY DA SOUZA IS BACK.

Hardy again plays Harry Da Souza, the disheveled-looking yet exceptionally capable fixer employed by the Harrigan crime clan. Calling them a family may be generous at this point, though. Conrad Harrigan (Pierce Brosnan), the calculating patriarch, remains the official boss following his release from prison in the Season 1 finale. Yet his son Kevin (Paddy Considine), the presumed successor, is quietly positioning himself to seize control. With the support of his politically astute wife, Bella (Lara Pulver), Kevin has had enough of his father’s long history of destructive behavior.

Among Conrad’s many betrayals is the truth about Eddie (Anson Boon), the reckless young criminal whose impulsive decisions fueled much of the first season’s carnage. Eddie is Conrad and Bella’s son, though he was presented as Kevin’s. Currently absent from the wider family operation, Eddie remains under the influence of Maeve (Helen Mirren), Conrad’s volatile and deeply unreliable wife. The series has strongly suggested that Maeve abused Eddie in childhood, alongside the traumas suffered by Kevin at the hands of prison guards and Bella at the hands of her father. MobLand does not shy away from dark territory.

Seraphina (Mandeep Dhillon), Conrad’s so-called illegitimate daughter, is also eyeing the top job. This episode finds her joining forces with Kat McAllister (Janet McTeer), a formidable American figure whose influence stretches across legitimate business and organized crime. Seraphina has every reason to trust Kat: McAllister once saved her from a cartel boss armed with a chainsaw, repaying a favor owed to Harry. But when Kat tried to cash in that debt by using Harry to engineer a Harrigan takeover, he refused. That decision has left Kat as a growing danger to everyone involved.

Harry’s personal life is hardly less chaotic. He has recovered from being accidentally stabbed in the chest with a steak knife by his frustrated, estranged wife Jan (Joanne Froggatt). Their daughter Gina (Teddie Allen), however, has struck out on her own and is helping her terrible boyfriend Eddie operate a profitable protection scheme targeting streamers and influencers. Maeve very much objects to Gina being around her beloved Eddie. Now that Harry’s trusted lieutenant Zosia (Jasmine Jobson) has located the pair, it is safe to assume he will have plenty to say about it.

His marriage to Jan appears to be nearing its final collapse, too. Harry seems to be well beyond his last chance when he abandons couples counseling to deal with the Harrigans’ newest disaster. Jan finally reaches her limit and hands him divorce papers. Harry meets the news with the same exhausted, faintly incredulous expression he reserves for every crisis, whether he is trying to repair his marriage or eliminate an inconvenient witness.

Conrad’s latest provocation gives Harry another bloody problem to manage. At a dog track meeting with Turkish business partners, Conrad realizes Kevin has gotten ahead of him. His response is characteristically extreme: with Maeve and his chief enforcer Paul (Emmett J. Scanlan) at his side, he murders the entire group. Paul’s unseasoned nephew Fergus, played by Jack Archer, is intentionally kept away from the violence.

Conrad sees only Kevin’s betrayal, convinced his son undermined him by arranging a meeting with Gakbu (Stewart Scudamore), the Turkish group’s leading figure. Harry, however, recognizes that something larger is at work. He has stayed out of Kevin’s attempt to take power, apparently judging his friend’s connections, assets and likelihood of success with clear-eyed realism—and finding them insufficient.

For someone like Gakbu to partner with an uncertain prospect such as Kevin rather than an established operator like Conrad, Harry concludes, another player must have financed the deal. In his mind, there is only one likely culprit: Kat. As the Harrigans turn their guns toward their own allies instead of focusing on their true adversary, Kat is almost certainly enjoying the chaos.

Even so, Harry does what he always does: he carries out Conrad’s command, killing Gakbu and his men despite believing the move is strategically disastrous. He likely has the right read. Conrad and Kevin need to settle their differences and stand together against Kat, the looming American threat. McAllister now carries the political protection of an American ambassadorship, a position once held by her Irish-American political gangster predecessor Joseph Kennedy. More importantly, she has Seraphina ready to act on her behalf.

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But most importantly, she has the help of the Harrigans’ most dedicated enemy, crooked cop Tattersall (the great Toby Jones). He’s hardly the only dirty badge in play here — Harry’s pet cop Finch (Warren Brown) does most of the mopping up after the dog track massacre, for instance. But even as Harry threatens to kill the bartender who witnessed Conrad’s big shoot-em-up to keep the apparently straight detective Kavanah (Ophelia Lovibond) from coming after the family, Tattersall offers to help Kat find a catspaw through whom she can rule the London underworld. That “paladin,” as Tattersall calls him, comes in the form of Frankie (Johnny Flynn), a family man whose non-threatening nature — he’s grilling wieners, for god’s sake — makes him seem really, really threatening indeed.

Written by Esther Watson and showrunner Jez Butterworth, MobLand’s Season 2 premiere is directed by Guy Ritchie, whose other stylish British gangster thriller, The Gentlemen, just dropped its excellent second season earlier this month. Certain comparisons are therefore unavoidable. MobLand lacks The Gentlemen’s satirical intent, its project of depicting the English aristocracy as gangsterism by another name. It also eschews that show’s emphasis on grand visuals — romantic vistas of the English countryside, screenshot-worthy costuming, gunfights in luscious low light.

Thematically and visually, MobLand is a lower-stakes concern. It’s also less obviously a black comedy, being more of an action thriller drama that’s funny. What it really has going for it is its powerhouse cast, toplined by charisma machines Hardy, Brosnan, and Mirren. You can say whatever you want about Hardy’s mushmouthed machismo, Brosnan’s foul-mouthed Irish gangster caricaturing, and…whatever it is Helen Mirren is doing with that accent. I say to hell with it, and I say the three performances are fun as all get-out. 

Hardy in particular marvelously understates Harry’s menace. He presents abduction, torture, and murder as enormous inconveniences he’s desperate to avoid, rather than grave moral questions he’s fully prepared to answer in the negative. That reaction is both amusing and, when you stop to think about it, terrifying. No wonder this guy’s daughter wished her mom had done a better job stabbing him. 

Now that I think about it, though, I do wonder about the guy. Why does Harry Da Souza prize his loyalty to some idea of the Harrigans above the reality — the backstabbing, the lying, the abuse, the senseless violence he himself helps commit even as he realizes how senseless it is — above his own happiness, and that of the family he supposedly loves more than anything? Why does this man continue serving a system that has done nothing but harm to himself and everyone and everything he cares about?

Huh. Maybe MobLand is asking harder, deeper questions than I thought.

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.

Iran’s sanctioned Persian Gulf Straits Authority (PGSA) briefly restored secure internet access for four days after a Shanghai-based cybersecurity company issued — and later withdrew — its website credentials, according to global internet monitors. The access allowed Tehran to screen vessels, process Strait of Hormuz tolls and keep maritime operations running despite U.S. digital sanctions.

TrustAsia granted the certificate through an automated domain-validation system, a standard method that confirms a party controls a web domain through server-based checks. The process generally does not require human review, detailed due diligence or background screening.

The episode has raised compliance concerns among U.S. sanctions specialists. Jeremy Paner, a partner at Hughes Hubbard & Reed, said TrustAsia should reassess its compliance safeguards before providing additional services to the maritime authority, which is linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Paner warned the firm to address the issue “before it is too late.”

The PGSA first said its website was disrupted Aug. 10 because of “the enemy’s political influence on the internet service provision systems,” according to a post on X.

NetBlocks CEO Alp Toker told News Media that the PGSA had lost its web-security credentials after being added to the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctions list on May 27.

Without conventional SSL/TLS certificates, the PGSA website could not be reached through ordinary web browsers, Toker said. Shipping companies were instead pushed toward unencrypted connections, potentially exposing their data to interception.

No known data breaches have been tied to those connections, and there have been no reported cases of a shipping company suffering harm after its information was intercepted because the certificate expired. Still, Toker said the loss of secure access pushed users toward what he called “insecure protocols.”

“The digital transparency records are authoritative on this,” he said, arguing that the change forced traffic into a format that could be intercepted with relative ease.

“This is a class of vulnerability open to government exploitation, rather than a corporate breach or personal data leak.”

Toker said the vulnerability could give authorities greater ability to review communications sent through the platform and potentially identify shipping companies working with the PGSA.

“The net result was that the website was more difficult to access, because most web browsers strongly encourage the use of secure HTTPS,” Toker said, adding that any form submissions could have been easily “eavesdropped on because they’re no longer encrypted in transit.” 

“The mentioned issue has been resolved, and the secure domain https://pgsa.ir is now once again available for submitting requests using any browser,” the PGSA said six days later on Aug. 17 and in another post shared on X. 

“If the issue recurs in the future, the HTTP domain will again be temporarily available using the Firefox browser.”

Toker confirmed that Iran had turned to Shanghai-based certificate authority TrustAsia Technologies, which he said issued new digital security credentials to the PGSA despite the U.S. sanctions and restoring secure access to its website. 

“Iran’s IRGC extorts vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz through the so-called Persian Gulf Strait Authority,” the Treasury Department said in May when designating the entity, adding that the PGSA “spearheads an Iranian-controlled scheme that flagrantly violates international law and U.S. sanctions.”

“Anyone cooperating with the so-called strait authority may be providing support to and receiving services from the IRGC, which ultimately benefits from this attempted extortion, and may therefore be exposed to sanctions risk,” the Treasury Department warned.

The Chinese firm bills itself as a “leading and professionally certified certification authority in China with its focus on trusted, secure and cryptographic communications in the digital world.”

Its mission, it says, is to “Build trust everywhere in the digital world.”

“Almost all of these root authorities do business with the U.S., so they tend to comply with U.S. sanctions,” Toker said.

But TrustAsia, he noted, had “gone its own way, building a China-first certificate infrastructure that sidesteps the West.”

Toker said TrustAsia had “simply gone ahead and issued Iran’s PGSA with a new certificate, and Iran was once again collecting revenue from ships passing the Strait via its secure online portal.”

Paner warned that U.S. authorities would have enforcement powers over such actions.

“The U.S. has incredibly broad authority to impose sanctions on non-Iranian companies that provide any sorts of services to sanctioned Iranian companies,” he told News Media.

“Many times, that authority will be abbreviated or explained as being providers of material support to sanctioned Iranian companies. But in fact, any level of services whatsoever could be the basis for the United States imposing sanctions against the company for providing services to Iran.”

“Restoration of the certificate is unequivocally sanctionable,” Paner warned.

“Restoring the certificate is/was a service provided to the PGSA, which can be the basis for imposing sanctions pursuant to Executive Order 13224, as amended.

“That authority does not in any way require that the service be “knowingly” provided to the PGSA. In other words, the automated nature of the service is irrelevant and does not make the service any less sanctionable,” the lawyer added.

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In a statement to News Media on Aug 20, a spokesperson for TrustAsia confirmed that the firm issued a “Domain Validated TLS certificate for pgsa.ir.”

“Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention,” the firm said before clarifying that “DV certificates are issued through automated validation of control over the requested domain names.”

“This process does not verify or assert the legal identity, affiliation, or sanctions status of the entity operating or benefiting from the domain.

“As a result, the relationship described in your inquiry was not identified during the automated issuance process.” Following the firm’s review, TrustAsia said it “added the entire pgsa.ir domain namespace to our restricted-issuance list to prevent further issuance or renewal. “

“We also expect to complete revocation of the existing certificate within this week,” the spokesman said on Aug. 20.

These actions are precautionary compliance and risk-control measures. They should not be interpreted as a finding that the certificate was technically misissued, TrustAsia said.

Toker confirmed the TrustAsia certificate’s privilege had been withdrawn on Aug. 21 at 12:15:25 UTC. “This usually means the issuer has taken action,” he said.

The internet expert clarified that the revocation will gradually be coming into effect, with the firm “signaling that the PGSA certificate should no longer be trusted, and they’re distributing this notice that privilege is withdrawn, usually meaning customer misuse or breached terms of use.”

“The secure website will stop working in most browsers, unless the owners can find a certificate authority that’s willing to issue a new certificate,” Toker said.

After reviewing TrustAsia’s statement, Paner also said that OFAC would expect the company to “use the discovery as an opportunity to enhance its compliance program before it is too late.”

The former OFAC official clarified that Iran’s revenue collection in the waterway would likely draw high-level scrutiny in Washington.

“Iran’s attempt to extort the world in the movement of oil through the Strait of Hormuz is of the utmost importance to OFAC, which is the agency that implements and enforces U.S. economic sanctions.

Because major U.S. web browsers currently recognize TrustAsia’s root certificates, American systems would have automatically trusted the sanctioned Iranian portal.

Toker claimed the Treasury Department could have found TrustAsia in violation of sanctions for providing material assistance to a blocked entity, potentially forcing tech giants such as Google and Microsoft to revoke trust in TrustAsia.

There is no evidence that this process had begun or was likely to occur.

“This could have splintered the global chain of trust and potentially render much of the Chinese web inaccessible from the West,” Toker warned.

Paner clarified that the certificates authenticate the site, boosting its credibility, and suggested TrustAsia should have weighed the risks of working with sanctioned entities.

“There’s always reputational risk involved in any company that decides to do business with the IRGC.”

“If I were advising TrustAsia, I would at minimum immediately identify all other IRGC companies receiving services.”

Paner added that this latest situation aligned with broader warnings from administration officials.

“I think this dovetails pretty nicely with Secretary Bessent’s comments about how the coming sanctions are going to be unlike any that has come prior. Sanctions require a careful balancing of the costs and the benefits.

“When it’s a Chinese tech company providing necessary services to the IRGC, I’m confident that the U.S. government is going to forego any sort of balancing in that regard.”

The United States on Aug. 24 had sanctioned nearly 60 Iran-linked individuals, entities and vessels and expanded the threat of secondary sanctions, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said. These did not include TrustAsia.

Bessent described the measures as part of an “economic onslaught” targeting Tehran’s global financial networks under “Operation Economic Outcast.” 

A Chinese Embassy spokesperson also said in a statement: “I am not aware of the specifics you mentioned. I have no information to provide.”

News Media reached out to the U.S. Department of the Treasury and The White House for comment.