In the heart of Manhattan, between Sixth Avenue and 50th Street, Prince’s song 1999 blared from the speakers of Radio City Music Hall. Hundreds of New York Knicks fans gathered amid the concrete jungle, the noise and neon lights, minutes after their team’s 11th straight playoffs win. Their 130-93 rout of the Cleveland Cavaliers to sweep the Eastern Conference final 4-0 was no ordinary victory. Twenty-seven years later, and for the first time in the 21st century, the Knicks are once again in an NBA Finals. The challenge ahead is enormous: to win the franchise’s first title in more than half a century, the only two championships in its history still frozen in black and white in 1970 and 1973.

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LONDON, June 15 — ‌British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said today he would ban social media sites for under-16s and impose restrictions ‌on gaming and livestreaming platforms, in some of the world’s most far-reaching online restrictions to date. 

The sweeping changes will reflect Britain’s values, helping to protect children online while pushing back against the power of big technology companies, Starmer told a press conference. 

”It is clear to me a full ban is the right choice,” he said. “This will change the conversations that parents have and the expectations of children over time. It will make a huge difference, it will make our children safer, it will make our children happier, it will give them more time, more security, more freedom to grow up, more opportunity”. 

As well as a ban on sites such as TikTok, Snapchat and Instagram, he said he would take action against gaming and livestreaming services which allow children to talk to strangers. “Is there a situation in the offline world where you would ‌just let your child pair up with a stranger, an adult that you don’t know anything about? No, so we’re taking ⁠action on that,” Starmer said. 

Ban in place by next spring? 

The government ⁠already has the powers to take the first steps in any ban, he ⁠said, with regulation to follow by the ⁠end of the year and ⁠a prohibition in place around next spring. 

Britain has increasingly toughened its approach to tech companies in recent years, urging or forcing them to impose age verification, adapt their algorithms and, most recently, prevent children from circulating nude images taken on mobile phones. 

But ⁠with a growing awareness of the mental health risks posed by children spending too much time online, Starmer has decided to go further after speaking to parents and considering evidence from Australia, which brought in a ban for under-16s last year. 

Starmer, who is likely to face a leadership challenge in the coming weeks, said people rightly expected action. Australia was the first country to ban social media for children under 16, blocking them last December from platforms including TikTok, Alphabet’s YouTube and Meta’s Instagram ⁠and Facebook. Since then a raft of countries have said they are looking to regulate access to social media amid mounting concerns over the impact on children’s health and safety.

Extensive consultations 

Britain has consulted teachers, parents and ⁠young people on new restrictions, including a possible ban for under-16s, as well as curfews, app time limits and curbs on what ⁠the government has described ⁠as addictive design features.

It received more than 116,000 responses from parents, industry and young people. More than 83 per cent of parents who responded said risks from social media outweighed benefits, while 90 per cent backed a minimum age of 16 to access social media platforms. While many parents and politicians back ‌a ban, some psychologists and researchers have said there is no proof that it would work, and a group of school children in London told Reuters they had a conflicted relationship with the technology. — Reuters

If there's one director working right now who simply doesn't get the credit they deserve for having essentially forged a career akin to that of Steven Soderbergh, it's David Mackenzie. He simply cannot be put in a box, having made movies that belong to genres as diverse as epic historical (Outlaw King) and prison drama (Starred Up). His most popular movie, however, remains the Taylor Sheridan-penned neo-Western Hell or High Water, starring Chris Pine, Ben Foster, Jeff Bridges, and Gil Birmingham. The movie holds a near-perfect 97% score on the aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, which, in any other circumstances, would have set up Mackenzie for life. However, he didn't jump to major franchise filmmaking or prestige television following Hell or High Water's admirable success. He continued down his chosen path of making genre movies. And now, his latest film is emerging as a sudden hit on the PVOD market.

When Mangue Banzima arrived in New York at 17 from an African country — he prefers not to say which — the only thing that made him feel at home was the Knicks. He remembers wearing sneakers as a child like those of his idol Patrick Ewing. And when he arrived in the United States, he found a city where his basketball team was everywhere. Banzima’s arrival in New York coincided with something no Knicks fan will ever forget: they had just reached the NBA Finals, where they lost to the San Antonio Spurs. That was in 1999. It has not happened since in 27 years — until now, when the New Yorkers have finally qualified to compete for the famed ring, for which they will face the Spurs again. After so many disappointments, the success of a team used to failure has infected the whole city with euphoria.

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British postcard by Paramount. Photo: Paramount. James Spader, Jon Cryer, Mollie Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy in Pretty in Pink (Howard Deutch, 1986).

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