William Saliba has supposedly informed both Arsenal and Marseille that his clear wish is to extend his loan in France.

The defender is yet to make his senior debut for the Gunners despite signing in the summer of 2019, enjoying three separate loans in Ligue 1 since, with his most recent outing by far the most impressive.

Saliba picked up the Ligue 1 Young Player of the Season award for his troubles after helping Marseille to finish second in the division, earning them a place in next season’s Champions league, but is supposed to return to to north London ahead of the new campaign.

The defender is now claimed to have made his intentions clear that he has absolutely no interest in staying at the Emirates next season to play as a ‘spare part’.

William Saliba absolutely wants to remain at Marseille & both clubs know his desire – he has no intention of being a spare part at Arsenal, according to @MohamedTERParis – will be up to Marseille to make a compelling proposal.

Here is today’s transfer Show featuring Alfie and Rob, and today they are talking about the possible return of Serge Gnabry to Arsenal. The ex-Arsenal Academy graduate has had a very successful time in Germany with Bayern Munich, winning trophies galore, but now it seems he is ready to move on to pastures anew (or old, we hope!)

I don’t think that there are many Arsenal fans that would complain if he came back home, and hopefully he feels the same.

Fingers crossed!

The post Video – The Transfer Show discusses Serge Gnabry’s possible return to Arsenal appeared first on Just Arsenal News.

Former president Donald Trump spoke at the National Rifle Association’s convention in Houston, Texas, Friday night, giving a speech laden with falsehoods about gun control and school shootings. He ended with a strange dance, more fitting for one of his elaborate campaign events than a policy speech in the wake of this week’s horrific attack at an elementary school in Uvalde—250 miles east of the NRA event—that left 19 children and two adults dead. 

While other major GOP politicians decided not to show up or canceled their appearances at this year’s convention in light of the school shooting—including Texas governor Greg Abbott who recorded a speech and Texas senator John Cornyn who stayed in Washington, DC, to negotiate with Senate Democrats about possible new legislation—Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz were both on stage at the George R. Brown Convention Center Friday night.

Trump opened his speech by reading the names of the children slain in Uvalde, accompanied by the sound of a recorded bell tolling. 

This is just gross. They have Trump trying to pronounce and read the names of the dead children while the NRA rings a bell. Disgusting. pic.twitter.com/AADaVc4o0s

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) May 27, 2022

Tottenham Hotspur have emerged as contenders for Leicester City star Youri Tielemans, a player believed to be on Arsenal’s radar also.

The Gunner have been strongly linked with a move for the Belgian international in recent months, with him believed to be open to quitting the club in the near future.

With just one year remaining on his current deal, this summer looks like a great opportunity to tempt his current club into a sale, knowing fully well that they could potentially lose their star for nothing in 12 month’s time.

The Metro quotes ESPN in claiming that Tottenham now rank Tielemans amongst their main targets this summer, which could well lead to a battle between us and our noisy neighbours, and the player will have to decide whether his priority would be to play in the Champions League this season, or to potentially win trophies with his next club.

I could understand why it would seem attractive to play under a top manager like Antonio Conte, but you can’t be expecting them to win anything any time soon nor can you expect the Italian boss to still be around in another year or two, but what we are building on the red side of London is a long-term project which should look attractive to any serious players who are looking to join a top club.

Fabrizio Romano claims that Arsenal have agreed a new five-year deal with Eddie Nketiah, a player who had been targeted by a number of clubs around Europe in recent months.

The 22 year-old took his chance with both hands when Alexandre Lacazette was absent with illness heading into the final weeks of the current campaign, and he earned the right to hold onto that first-team role after a string of fine performances including starring against both Chelsea and Manchester United.

We had worried that we would lose our academy star with his contract having entered into it’s final weeks of late, but thankfully we now look to have tied him down to a new long-term deal.

Eddie Nketiah’s new contract will be valid until June 2027. Five year deal now set to be signed, as Arsenal wanted him to stay at all costs. #AFC

Crystal Palace, West Ham and two Bundesliga clubs approached Eddie but he’s staying. pic.twitter.com/tQQmBtpSNL

Napoli are claimed to be pricing the likes of Newcastle, Arsenal and Manchester United out of a move for their striker Victor Osimhen, but I’m not convinced that we should give up on a potential deal.

The Gunners are in desperate need of a new striker at present, with both Eddie Nketiah and Alexandre Lacazette set to become free agents in the coming weeks if extensions are not signed, leaving us with just Folarin Balogun as the most senior striker amongst our ranks.

While we are believed to be prioritising a striker this summer, it wouldn’t be a shock if we was to break our current club record to bring in a player with exceptional talent, and Osimhen certainly ranks as somebody who could well be worth such a fee.

Napoli are claimed to be in want of €110 Million (£93.5 Million) this summer to part ways with their exciting forward, which is believed to be putting off us, United and Newcastle, but I wouldn’t be shocked if we would in fact be willing to pay such a fee.

This summer is our opportunity to make a statement in the market, and such a signing should show other potential targets that we mean business, while also easing any worries of our current crop who may have been dismayed by our recent failure to seal Champions League football.

Arsenal are believed to be keen on a reunion with Serge Gnabry this summer, and will have been boosted by reports of the asking price set by Bayern Munich.

The German giants signed the forward from Werder Bremen back in 2017, a year after he had left north London on a permanent deal due to a lack of first-team opportunities.

We have since regretted our failure to bring him into the first-team and develop him as we should have, with him becoming a superstar for club and country in Germany. We could get the chance to bring him back to the Emirates this summer however, with him seemingly unwilling to extend his current contract in Bavaria.

It remains to be seen whether he would be willing to return to Arsenal this summer, but with Bayern claimed to be willing to sell for just €40 Million I struggle to believe that we won’t at least enter into negotiations in an attempt to sign him.

Bayern's asking price for Serge Gnabry this summer is around €40m [@BILD] pic.twitter.com/RtL9ra2wFb

This season, Arsenal began the campaign with four strikers, namely Aubameyang, Lacazette, Nketiah and the youngster Folarin Balogun. But without any European football and an early exit from the FA cup, we only had Lacazette and Nketiah after January.

We all expected Laca and Nketiah to be leaving this summer, but Arteta surprised us all by persuading the English U21 international to sign a contract extension.

So we now have one striker, and maybe we are expecting Balogun to return to the squad, but there is still need of at least one more striker. Currently we all are hoping that Gabriel Jesus will our main frontman next season, but will we still need one more striker to get through all the Europa League games on top of our domestic schedule?

The Arsenal expert Charles Watts certainly thinks we are in the market for more than one. Speaking on his YouTube channel he said: “I still think there is a very good chance Arsenal go out and sign two forwards because there is going to be lots of demands on the squad, certainly a lot more demands that were on the squad this season because of those extra games in the Europa League and things like that, so I still think there is a very good chance they’ll go out and sign two.”

So if we get Gabriel Jesus as competition for Nketiah, surely any new man would have to be prepared to fight for his place in the team, so who do you think could be our next striker target?

This story was originally published by Undark and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Last December, a young patient was admitted to Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, after several medications had failed to quell the child’s relentless seizures. A hospital pediatrician, Vignesh Doraiswamy, consulted with neurologists and then tried a different drug. The child had fewer seizures, became more interactive, and was ready to go back home, says Doraiswamy. But there was a problem: The patient’s insurance company refused to authorize the new medication for the parents to administer. The family had to remain in the hospital for at least two more days, Doraiswamy recalls, while the decision went through an appeals process.

Doctors have long asserted that prior authorization—the need to get approval from the patient’s insurer before proceeding with treatment—causes delays that can hurt patient care. In an American Medical Association survey conducted in December 2021, one-third of physicians reported that such delays have caused at least one of their patients to experience a serious problem, such as hospitalization, the development of a birth defect, disability, and even death. In that same survey, more than 80 percent of surveyed doctors said patients at least sometimes abandon their recommended treatment because of prior authorization hassles. Just over half of the physicians who treat adult patients in the workforce said prior authorization has interfered with patients’ ability to do their jobs.

Prior authorizations also exact a toll on doctors, who say the paperwork has gotten out of hand. The average physician must now seek approval for dozens of prescriptions and medical services each week, an administrative burden that contributes to burnout and costs physician practices an estimated $26.7 billion in time each year.

Perhaps counter-intuitively, prior authorization is one of several strategies that insurers use to reduce wasteful medical spending. (Other strategies include patient cost-sharing and requiring patients to try low-cost drugs before the insurance company will pay for a more expensive therapy.) These strategies can discourage the use of inappropriate and overpriced medications and promote the use of better options. But, as drug prices rise, insurers are intensifying prior authorization requirements and physician practices have built up a huge infrastructure to fight for the drugs they want to prescribe.

As gun violence ravages communities and the country reels from a string of horrific mass shootings, Americans have been left with an all-too-familiar question: Will our lawmakers finally do something to stop the carnage? We’ve been here before, many times; we’ve watched as Republicans (and some Democrats) bowed to pressure from the National Rifle Association and blocked even the most basic gun control measures.

But as the Trace’s Mike Spies pointed out the day after the Uvalde massacre, there actually has been a seismic shift in the political landscape. The NRA is still a powerful force, but years of scandal and infighting and a failed attempt to declare bankruptcy may have left it substantially weaker than it was in 2013, when pro-gun forces killed a bipartisan background check bill in the wake of the Sandy Hook murders:

2/Its longtime PR firm, which served as the voice of the organization and devised Wayne LaPierre’s persona, is long gone. Its most effective spokespeople are long gone. Its most effective leader, Chris Cox, is long gone. Cox’s team is gone. Oliver North is long gone.

— mike spies (@mikespiesnyc) May 26, 2022

The NRA still spends millions on lobbying, but Chris Cox, its legendary chief lobbyist, stepped down in 2019. The group shelled out more than $29 million on the 2020 elections, according to Open Secrets. But that was barely half of what it spent in 2016.

Brace yourselves, some of the season's biggest games are happening this weekend! Plenty for Kate, Jim and Andy to get stuck into on today's Preview Show, sponsored by Betway.

Liverpool have the straightforward task of dispatching 13-time winners Real Madrid in the Underdog Derby, while Huddersfield and Nottingham Forest are one game from the promised land. You can also now speak to a Diego Maradona hologram on an Argentinian plane bound for Qatar 2022... Yep.

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Once upon a time, Alex Berenson was a New York Times journalist covering major stories, from the Iraq War to Hurricane Katrina to the Bernie Madoff scandal. But over the last several years, he’s increasingly focused on a new pet project: owning the libs. In his Substack newsletter “Unreported Truths” he rails against Joe Biden, derides the pro-choice movement, and complains about inflation to his “tens of thousands of subscribers.”

One of Berenson’s favorite themes has been to downplay the effectiveness of the Covid vaccines—and it’s this work in particular that has made him a star. Before Twitter kicked him off the platform for spreading vaccine disinformation last year, he had hundreds of thousands of followers. Berenson’s Substack newsletters over the last month have mostly been more of the same: He rails against “woke media whoppers about Covid vaccines” and describes Pennsylvania Democratic Senate nominee John Fetterman as a “fat vaccinated cannabis activist.”

But earlier this week, Berenson took aim at a new target: the growing global outbreak of the monkeypox virus. In a post titled “Is It Monkeypox or Crystalpox?” Berenson writes that public health authorities have “almost got another epidemic on the go—the perfect way to distract the shiny-haired robots in the media from the complete failure of the mRNA vaccines.” He then goes on to argue that monkeypox is strictly a disease of gay men. “Are you a gay man who likes sex with lots of other gay men?” he wrote. “Maybe in a bathhouse? Maybe names optional? Maybe with a meth bump on the side? No? Are you sure?… Okay. Don’t worry about the monkeypox thing then.”

With those two points—a supposedly overblown illness plus some homophobia—Berenson did what anti-vaccine activists do best. He managed to build upon his previous talking points and pivot to the current news cycle, neatly weaving the latest headlines into a grand conspiracy theory with necessary villains and egregious profiteering.

There is seemingly no topic too far afield for these zealots to exploit. Recently, I’ve reported on anti-vaccine influencers’ embrace of pro-Kremlin ideology and their promotion of dangerous disinformation about the baby formula shortage. But the monkeypox outbreak offers especially fertile ground because it allows the purveyors of misinformation to recycle many of the same talking points that they developed for Covid. The addition of homophobic rhetoric is particularly toxic, as it’s likely to unite anti-LGBTQ extremists with Covid denialists. As Yale epidemiologist and AIDS activist Gregg Gonsalves put it on Twitter earlier this week, this might be “that moment when homophobia meets far right pandemic politics.”

For many years now, every horrific gun massacre has ricocheted widely with a familiar theme of outrage and surrender. On Wednesday, the day after a heavily armed, suicidal 18-year-old slaughtered 19 children and two adults at a Texas elementary school, Washington Post columnist Brian Broome published one of the more powerful versions of that narrative I’ve ever read. “Nothing happened after innocent children were slaughtered the last time, or the time before that, and nothing is going to be done now,” he wrote, citing Columbine, Virginia Tech, Sandy Hook and Parkland.

Broome’s column articulated the enduring shame of our nation’s political stalemate and pathetic inaction on gun policy. It was piercing and poignant—and, in my view, wrong.

It’s not just that we shouldn’t resign ourselves in perpetuity to such outrage, rightful as it is. This narrative has become part of the problem itself—in some cases possibly even fueling the escalating cycle of mass shootings. That’s because it validates the recurring violence, framing it as an indefinite feature of our reality.

And mass shooters pay heed. After nearly a decade of studying these attacks and how to prevent them through the work of behavioral threat assessment, I documented extensive case evidence for my book, Trigger Points. The research shows that many perpetrators are keenly aware of media and political narratives about their actions.

They hope the public will focus on sensational coverage of their rage-filled “manifestos,” their sinister photos uploaded to social media, their ghastly livestreams. They want notoriety, and they seek justification and credibility for their acts of violence. And in the message that America will never stop these mass shootings, they find such affirmation.

“We don’t know his motive yet, but authorities believe he acted alone”…“it was a lone gunman”…“the shooter acted alone…”

No, he didn’t.

A motive will probably be assigned to him. We have studied every mass shooting since 1982. And the “motives” are usually some combination of the following: He struggled with bullying. Or self-loathing and depression. Maybe he had an ax to grind with an authority figure. Maybe he hated a certain group of people.

But whatever we learn about the Uvalde shooter, or any future ones—because there will be more—don’t say they “acted alone,” which is largely media code for “this doesn’t appear to be Islamic terrorism.” No matter the particulars, these “lone” gunmen all have scores of accomplices. Here is a wholly incomplete list of those who bear direct responsibility in this slaughter of 19 children and two teachers, and the brutality visited on those still in the hospital, all the families, and the community and country at large:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: A relentless cheerleader for gun extremism, last year he gleefully signed seven bills rolling back gun regulations—including abolishing licenses for handguns. In the aftermath of this shooting he blamed mental health issues, a go-to tactic to distract from the gun debate, despite having cut $211 million from the agency that provides state mental health services.

A New York appellate court dealt Donald Trump another blow Thursday when it ruled that the former president and his daughter must sit for sworn depositions in the New York’s civil fraud investigation into the family business. New York State Attorney General Letitia James subpoenaed Donald and Ivanka Trump back in December, but Trumps’ attorneys argued that the they shouldn’t have to because, they said, James’ whole investigation was baseless and politically motivated. Arthur Engoron, the lower court judge handling the case, disagreed, writing in his decision that there was actually “copious evidence” that the Trumps might have committed fraud and no evidence that James’ probe was motivated by an improper political bias. 

In Thursday’s ruling, four appellate judges from the New York Supreme Court’s First Department agreed with Engoron’s assessment, writing that the Trumps presented no evidence of politically motivated persecution or selective prosecution.

During oral arguments back in February, the Trumps’ attorneys seemed far more focused on appealing to public perception than on convincing Engoron. At one point, Alina Habba, Donald Trump’s personal attorney in the case, complained that James refused to go after Trump’s 2016 presidential rival.

“Are you going to go after Hillary Clinton for what she’s doing to my client, that she spied at Trump Tower in your state?” Habba demanded to know. “Are you going to look into her business dealings?”

In his own public statements, Trump has complained that James, who is Black, is one of several “radical, vicious, racist prosecutors” investigating him. In court, Habba claimed the investigation was about “viewpoint discrimination,” but the appellate judges were thoroughly unconvinced. To successfully make the argument that you are being illegally singled out for investigation, you have to show that someone else is not being investigated for a similar offense when they should be, and the judicial panel concluded—arguments about Hillary Clinton aside—that the Trumps “have not identified any similarly implicated corporation that was not investigated or any executives of such a corporation who were not deposed.”

The beats are almost always the same. 

A shooter enters a crowded space with a loaded gun, usually one modified to kill dozens of people in seconds—and usually one that they obtained legally. They open fire and murder innocents. Earlier this month it was 10 patrons at a Buffalo supermarket; this week it was 19 children and two of their teachers in Texas. As the news spreads, well-intentioned people flood Twitter with reminders not to share unverified information about the shooting in its early moments. Some people share it anyway. If the shooter has proclaimed their motivations on paper, more well-intentioned people vociferously demand that others don’t share the document. Some people share it anyway. 

Within a few hours of the shooting, large swaths of the public demand a policy solution—gun control. Others claim to be upset about how the tragedy is being too quickly politicized. If there is footage of the carnage, the videos ping around tech companies’ platforms endlessly, despite their commitments to the contrary.  The location of the tragedy inspires a hashtag: #[place name] strong. The Onion republishes the same article it always publishes, about how this all keeps happening. People vow to handle this at voting booths at the next election. But eventually, they seem to forget, and almost nothing changes. 

In the 15 years that I have been old enough to pay attention to the news, this is the only story arc I have known. With mass shootings, but also, it feels, with almost every other issue that has become a point of political contention, from police brutality to LGBTQ discrimination to whatever the culture war du jour is. The problems differ, but the pattern is the same: public outrage and political will swell, wane, and then little changes. The doomcycle repeats itself. 

When police killed another Black man, George Floyd, in the summer of 2020, protestors flooded the streets. Politicians vowed to enact major policy change. But two years later, those police reform demands have faded. When another lawmaker, this time in Texas, proposed a bill that would criminalize medical care for transgender kids, businesses and advocacy groups criticized the policy—yet it has moved forward unabated. And when school districts in 26 states (and counting) banned books about racial justice and gender identity, parents and students voiced their opposition at school board meetings across the county, only to be drowned out by board members and other parents.

History was made last night! The first Europa Conference League spiraliser was dished out and it only went to José Mourinho’s Roma! No beer going in that thing though – sorry Jack.

Marcus, Andy and Pete reflect on a proud night in Europe for Roma. They also discuss the latest injection of chlorine into Spurs and discover another strange tale from the life and times of Ivano Bonetti. Plus, Kompany to Burnley and Steve Bruce makes one last stand.

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On the eve of Jose Mourinho’s fifth European final, he’s finally gone and binned the Special One tag. This time, it’s for the people.

A sceptical Marcus, Andy and Jim bring you all the squad news from *checks notes* Harry Maguire’s England, as Jarrod Bowen can finally escape his uncle’s potato farm for the summer. Plus, we cast our eyes over the Kylian Mbappé saga and pour one out for Florentino Pérez! Well, before pouring out one for our own reputations as we unveil another round of dire predictions.

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Kate, Luke and Pete are here with some deserved props for Sunderland after their promotion back to the Championship, while Grimsby Town set up a tie with Wrexham despite the efforts of international man of mystery, Ian Burchnall. Who is also football’s least recognisable man. 

Elsewhere, we get a trailer for season five of So You Think You Can Manage Manchester United and we unveil some of our Premier League predictions! Remember Xisco?

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It’s blue ribbons and cowboy hats on today’s Ramble, as Man City claim another consecutive league title and Leeds stayed up by the skin of Wout Weghorst’s foot. Marcus, Luke and Jim are here to recap it all!

Liverpool put up an excellent fight and were left a point short, while Arsenal put on an end-of-year picnic for a job (somewhat) well done. Oh, and Man United lost - paging Erik ten Hag…

The Ramble will continue as normal for the next few weeks, as we get stuck into the Champions League final, playoffs and Nations League. See you tomorrow!

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