Considering our new captain Odegaard got his first goal of the season after just 4 minutes against Bournemouth, it was a bit of a surprise that he has doubled our lead.

Ben White and Saka have been causing havoc down the left side of the pitch, and they did it again and when the ball broke to Jesus, his touch was just a little heavy, which allowed Odegaard to steal it off his boot and smash it into the net.

This is looking like it could be a cricket score!

COYG!

IT'S ØDEGAARD AGAIN! 2-0!

Arsenal have taken the early lead against Bournemouth after some neat work down the left from Gabriel Jesus, with Martin Odegaard finishing off the move.

It has been a bright start by the Gunners who have taken an early grip on the game, and it was some truly skilful ball control by Jesus which has opened up the opportunity to score, leaving Martinelli I space to shoot before the rebound into the path of our captain.

ØDEGAARD! ARSENAL LEAD!

How about THAT Gabriel Jesus run though… #BOUARS pic.twitter.com/hRQDW8VjQv

— Sky Sports Premier League (@SkySportsPL) August 20, 2022

Federal Judge Leigh Martin May from Georgia rejected a request from Sen. Lindsey Graham to delay his testimony before a grand jury investigating former President Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 elections in the state. Graham is scheduled to testify next week. “Under the circumstances, further delay of Senator Graham’s testimony would greatly compound the overall delay in carrying out the grand jury’s investigation,” the Obama-appointed judge wrote in a ruling. “Further delay thus poses a significant risk of overall hindrance to the grand jury’s investigation, and the Court therefore finds that granting a stay would almost certainly result in material injury to the grand jury and its investigation.” Sen. Graham’s legal team had appealed an earlier ruling by Judge May ordering him to testify and asked her to stay the order pending the appeal, but she found that granting the request would not serve the public interest. 

Last month, Fulton County issued subpoenas for Graham, Rudy Giuliani, and other Trump allies as part of a probe into what prosecutors have characterized as “coordinated attempts to unlawfully alter the outcome of the 2020 elections.” The South Carolina GOP senator initially tried to quash the subpoena by arguing the District Attorney’s questioning focused on two phone calls he made to made to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger following the November 2020 election, which constituted “legislative acts” as part of his work as senator and former chair of the Judiciary Committee.and were, therefore, protected under the Speech or Debate Clause of the Constitution. 

The blow to Sen. Graham’s legal maneuvering comes a few days after Giuliani gave a six-hour closed-door testimony at an Atlanta courthouse. “Grand juries, as I recall, are secret,” Trump’s former personal lawyer told reporters. “They ask the questions and we’ll see.” Giuliani’s lawyers had tried to postpone his testimony saying he had undergone a stent heart surgery that prevented him from flying.

It would appear that Mikel Arteta’s philosophy is based on “Why change a winning team unless necessary’ as seen towards the end of last season and in our first two matches in this campaign. With our Europa League games not starting for another few weeks, the boss will find it hard to keep our newly expanded squad happy.

As Arteta admitted on Arsenal.com: “I think the first three or four weeks of the competition are tricky because we are only playing once a week as there is no Europe or no cups, and we’ll have the manage the frustration of players who aren’t in the squad. But it is a long season and everyone will have their opportunities.”

But I don’t think he will be making many chancges this week, except for bringing back Tomiyasu in place of Ben White, which I discussed earlier.…

Here is the team I chose earlier…

Ramsdale
Tomiyasu….Gabriel…Saliba….Zinchenko
Partey…Xhaka
Martinelli…Odegaard…Saka
Jesus

Gabriel Jesus has hit the ground running for Arsenal since joining from Manchester City, and the latest stat shows just how much has improved our side.

The striker is believed to have been earmarked as our priority summer signing quite early on in 2022, and we are believed to have fended off interest from other big sides in order to win the race for his signature, and all our hard work appears to be paying off.

The new signing was involved in all four of our goals last weekend, scoring the first two against Leicester before teeing up Granit Xhaka and Gabriel Martinelli for the two in the second half, and the latest statistic comparing him to our main striker Alexandre Lacazette last term is surprisingly shocking.

Gabriel Jesus has had 26 touches inside the penalty area in his first two Arsenal starts, Alexandre Lacazette had 31 in all 20 of his PL starts last season.

A look at the transformational impact Arsenal’s £45m man has had on Mikel Arteta’s attack https://t.co/eb3VxDk5za

On Thursday, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis made a spectacle of a press conference to announce the arrest of 20 people with felony convictions for voter fraud. Surrounded by law enforcement, DeSantis, who’s running for re-election and has his eye on the GOP nomination for the 2024 presidential race, touted the work of the state’s newly created election crime task force and said the former felons, who make up a minuscule proportion of the more than 11 million Floridians casting ballots in the state, were ineligible to vote because they had previously been incarcerated for murder or sexual assault charges. The people arrested have since been charged with a third-degree felony that could lead to $5,000 in fines and up to five years in prison. “This is just the opening salvo,” the governor said. “This is not the sum total of 2020.” 

DeSantis’ latest political stunt scapegoats ex-felons and willfully ignores the shortcomings in the implementation of an amendment to restore voting rights, which the governor himself has tried to undermine, and that has led to confusion about voting eligibility. In 2018, 65 percent of Florida voters approved a change to the state’s constitution known as Amendment 4 to allow people convicted of felonies who had completed their sentences to vote, with the exception of those convicted of murder or a sexual offense. My colleague Pema Levy wrote about the potential impact of the historic amendment at the time: 

Returning the franchise to formerly convicted felons could upend the political landscape in Florida, a state divided evenly between Democrats and Republicans. The majority of those who were disenfranchised are expected to support Democrats, since felon disenfranchisement, a policy embraced and expanded after the Civil War specifically to deny voting rights to black men, has always had a disproportionate effect on African Americans and Latinos in Florida. This gives the Legislature, the incoming Republican governor, and his cabinet an incentive to thwart the will of the people. 

Five of the people arrested on Thursday told the Miami Herald they were unaware that they weren’t eligible to vote because of the nature of their offenses “and had faced no issue registering.” They’re not alone in facing criminal charges over voting fraud allegations. In 2019, DeSantis signed a bill requiring that felons pay court fines and fees before having their rights to vote restored. Opponents of the bill compared it to a “modern poll tax” and pointed out that the state doesn’t keep a centralized database tracking people’s legal financial obligations, which has led ex-felons to unknowingly register to vote without having paid outstanding fees and being charged with voter fraud as a result, a ProPublica investigation showed. 

“What DeSantis wanted from his event on Thursday was for the media to elevate his assertion that he’s taking a hard-line position against fraud,” Philip Bump writes in the Washington Post. “What he demonstrated most effectively, though, is how he has repeatedly taken steps that restrict voting access despite the undeniably minor frequency of fraud in Florida elections (as he himself has pointed out).” 

Arsenal will look to maintain their 100% record so far this season when they make the short trip to the coast to take on Bournemouth today.

The Gunners have already beaten both Crystal Palace and Leicester so far this term, scoring six goals in the process, and will be in a confident mood when they return to the pitch this evening.

Gabriel Jesus will be in an equally assured mood after being involved in all four of our strikes last weekend, scoring a first-half brace before adding two assists after the break, and he will certainly be one to look out for today.

Bournemouth have only just returned to the top flight this summer, but have already opened their account by beating Aston Villa to start their season off, but were unsurprisingly beaten by Manchester City last weekend. They may be boosted by a return to their home ground today where they currently have a 100% record at stake also, whilst knowing that they haven’t been beaten there since February, but they will be well aware of the threat posed by our side.

Despite their strong home record, I’m struggling to imagine anything but a win for our boys. I feel like are only going to get better as our confidence continues to grow, and the Cherries are unlikely to be able to stop us today. I feel like a 3-1 win is on the cards for our side, with Saka and Jesus to get their names on the scoresheet also.

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

The Democrats’ new climate legislation, which President Joe Biden signed into law this week, has been described as “transformative” and “game-changing.” But perhaps the most apt word is “shocking”—in a good way, for once. According to analysis after analysis, it’s become clear that this is what the United States needs to make good on promises to fight climate change. For climate scientists long accustomed to shouting into the wind—or at least their Twitter feeds—it’s something to celebrate. “We’re so pumped about this bill,” says Morgan Rote, director of US climate at the Environmental Defense Fund.

In a bill as sprawling as this one, compromises will always be necessary. Provisions for new oil and gas leases are the obvious doozy, slotted in to appease Senator Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.). So are potential compromises on environmental permitting, which include ample deference to oil and gas pipelines. But perhaps nothing is as confusing—or as potentially far-reaching and long-lasting—as the bill’s generous incentives for “clean” hydrogen. If this bill allows more fossil fuel development, it’s with the tacit hope that the industry is facing an inevitable decline. The theory is that it’ll kick the bucket anyway as demand for oil and gas withers, outmoded and outcompeted by cleaner sources of energy. Hydrogen? It’s here to stay.

That push isn’t new, exactly. The provisions, which are modeled after those that helped kickstart solar investment decades ago, build on other recent efforts, like an $8 billion investment in the Biden administration’s 2021 infrastructure bill to build Hydrogen Hubs across the country that can serve as epicenters of the fuel’s production and distribution. Those were widely derided as potential “bridges to nowhere,” without incentives that would ramp up hydrogen supply and demand. This bill has them, with production tax credits that get more generous depending on how “clean” the hydrogen is.

The definition of “clean” differs depending on which federal laws you consult: “Right now it’s a completely meaningless term.”

Using hydrogen is undoubtedly clean—it is combined with oxygen to produce water vapor and energy and has applications for powering utilities, homes, and cars. But it can involve dirtier sources of energy, often natural gas, which contains climate-warming methane. One reason hydrogen has backers in the oil and gas industry is because the fuel, which can come in gas or liquid forms, allows for the repurposing of fossil fuel infrastructure that is poised to be abandoned during the shift to renewables.

The Department of Transportation says that airlines must start providing more information to passengers stranded by flight delays and cancellations—and even start providing perks to passengers who have had their travel interrupted through no fault of their own. Letters signed by Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg were sent on Friday to major airlines warning that if they do not improve their treatment of customers, the Biden administration might create rules to formalize new rights for consumers.

The warning comes as 2022 has seen both a massive increase in travel—passengers are returning to the air following the pandemic—and a massive increase in flight disruptions. Airlines are largely blaming staff shortages, specifically a lack of pilots, whose ranks have been depleted over the course of the pandemic by voluntary retirements and a lack of recruiting new replacements. This summer thousands of flights have been canceled across the country, snarling air travel, and often leaving passengers stranded with few options to get to their destination. As many as 24 percent of flights in the United States have been delayed so far this year and 3.2 percent have been canceled. 

Earlier this month, the DOT said it would start making new rules in order to facilitate refunds from airlines to passengers when flights have been canceled or not taken for health reasons. On Friday, Buttigieg told NBC News that airlines were a long way from delivering the kind of service that should be expected of them.

“The message to the airlines is that you’ve got to make it easier for passengers to understand their rights,” Buttigieg said. “And you’ve got to support passengers when they experience delays or cancellations.”

In his letter, Buttigieg said airlines should begin offering passengers more help. Those who have delays of three hours or more should receive meal vouchers, for instance, and passengers forced to stay overnight due to delays or cancellations should be given free lodging or hotel vouchers.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis will appear at a rally in Pittsburgh for Pennsylvania’s GOP gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano on Friday, sparking outrage from Jewish groups in DeSantis’ home state. DeSantis is one of the few GOP politicians who comes close to former president Donald Trump in terms of popularity among conservative voters, and his fundraising is on a record-breaking pace. But Mastriano is considered to be much further on the extremist fringes of the political spectrum—even for a Republican. 

Mastriano, who easily won the GOP primary earlier this year, is facing Democrat Josh Shapiro in November and is currently trailing by a sizable margin. In fact, Mastriano may owe some of his success in the primary to a Democratic effort to back the candidacy of someone so far to the right, he would defeat moderate GOP candidates who might have been more palatable to voters. Mastriano, often described as a Christian-nationalist, supports a total ban on abortion, expanded gun rights, and claims climate change is just “pop science.” He also has denied that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and has said that if elected governor, he would force everyone in the state to re-register to vote. In May, he suggested he would only certify a national election result if a Republican won. 

But he also has gushingly described DeSantis as the model governor and described his own vision of turning Pennsylvania into the “Florida of the north.” The flattery seems to have worked, as it appears that the invitation to DeSantis did not originate with Mastriano. In a Facebook posting, Mastriano said that DeSantis had contacted him about appearing.

Doug Mastriano says Ron Desantis reached out to him about doing a rally for him, and it will be Friday in Pittsburgh: “My goal as Governor is to make PA the Florida of the north. He set the gold standard for the good a Governor can do leading a state.” pic.twitter.com/KUzII1Mdnu

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) August 18, 2022