Month: August 2022

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Sports

NRL 2022 South Sydney Rabbitohs v Warriors, result, Latrell Mitchell, teams, Supercoach scores

NRL 2022 South Sydney Rabbitohs v Warriors, result, Latrell Mitchell, teams, Supercoach scores

Superstar fullback Latrell Mitchell put on an absolute clinic as the Rabbitohs thrashed the Warriors 48-10 on Saturday afternoon.

Mitchell scored 24 points after producing two tries, two assists, two linebreaks, four tackle busts and slotting 8/8 conversions.

MATCH CENTER: Rabbitohs v Warriors, score, teams, videos, stats

It was South Sydney’s highest score of the season and the win leapfrogs them into sixth place on the NRL ladder with a real shot at a top-four finish.

Souths started as unbackable favorites and they quickly showed why – scoring at almost a point a minute in the first half.

The Warriors’ defense was atrocious all afternoon and it’s now the worst in the competition.

Rabbitohs lock Cameron Murray set up the opening three tries, with Lachlan Illias, Damien Cook and Tevita Tatola all crossing.

“He’s run for 75 meters, made a bunch of tackles and now has a third, yes a third, try assist,” Warren Smith said on Fox League after 17 minutes.

Murray passed to halfback Lachlan Ilias who stepped off his right foot and went through a yawning gap to score the opener in the fourth minute.

Murray then made a break down the middle and offloaded to hooker Cook who showed some nice footwork to score in the 10th minute.

The Souths captain made it three assists when he broke a few tackles close to the line before offloading for Tatola to score.

Next it was Keaon Koloamatangi who broke through some more soft defense to score from close range in the 22nd minute.

The Warriors pulled one back through Edward Kosi but the Rabbitohs were soon back at it when Mitchell burst through several tackles to score under the posts.

“You can’t put him down when he gets a chance winds up from that sort of range,” Warren Smith said on Fox League after Mitchell charged over from almost 20 meters out.

Mitchell then turned provider for winger Alex Johnston who joined NRL legends Matt Sing and Hazem El Masri on 159 career tries.

Mitchell picked up where he left off in the second half, throwing a bullet cut-out pass for debutant Izaac Thompson to score.

Warriors halfback Shaun Johnson crossed for a sharp try in the 51st minute when he passed and then wrapped around to take back the ball from Josh Curran and score.

Mitchell scored the simplest of tries after Jai Arrow ran a decoy and the former crossed untouched in the 56th minute for his double.

Here are three of the biggest takeaways from the match.

LATRELL SHINES AGAIN

Souths transformed into a different team upon the return of superstar Latrell Mitchell in Round 16.

They’ve now won five of six games since Mitchell came back from a lengthy hamstring lay-off, and their only loss came in golden point against the Sharks.

Mitchell’s individual brilliance simply makes his teammates better – and it was on display again against the Warriors.

The classy fullback scored a personal record 24 points after producing two tries, two try assists, two linebreaks, two linebreak assists, four tackle busts. He was rested for the final 20 minutes of the game.

“That was a big step in the right direction, tonight was about earning the right and all the boys kicked into another gear,” Mitchell told Fox League.

Latrell Mitchell of the Rabbitohs celebrates scoring a try. Getty ImagesSource: Getty Images

“It’s all about holding the ball and whoever does that and defends their line the best takes the lollies.

“I’m really enjoying this group and I couldn’t be at a better club.”

Mitchell set up tries on the each side of halftime for wingers Alex Johnston and debutant Izaac Thompson, with the second leaving rugby league great Steve Roach in awe.

“We are watching a magician in play here, Latrell Mitchell. Sit back and watch just how good that pass is,” Roach said.

“Watch this for class. Just the vision, bang, catch and pass. There’s not a lot of blokes who could throw that pass in the history of the game. That’s just brilliant.”

“That was poor play from the Warriors, they got caught flat footed and Ilias couldn’t believe his luck,” Steve Roach said on Fox League.

RABBITOHS EYEING TOP FOUR

Souths are charging towards the top four after clinching their fifth win in six games, and setting a new club record against the Warriors.

It’s the first time in over 100 years since the Rabbitohs have scored over 30 points in five straight games against an opponent (North Sydney 1917-19).

It was the Bunnies’ highest score and biggest win this season, their fourth 40-point scoreline and fifth win by at least 18 points.

They’re now sitting sixth and just one win outside the top four with four rounds remaining. They face top-eight sides the Eels, Panthers, Cowboys and Roosters on their run home.

“I thought the first half was pretty clinical,” Rabbitohs coach Jason Demetriou said.

“We’re looking good for our back end of the year with some of our key players hitting some form.

South Sydney press conference | 05:54

“Everyone talks about the draw but the beauty about what we’ve got at the back end is that we’ve got teams that are going to influence where we finish and it’s on us.

“Every two points will decide where we finish at the end of the year. There’s another two points up for grabs next week against a team that’s playing some good footy as well.”

Latrell Mitchell and Cameron Murray were sensational as the latter set up three tries but left the game late for an HIA.

“I’m feeling good, I’ve come away from it unscathed,” Murray said.

“Overall I thought we were pretty good tonight, we’re building nicely, everyone is buying into what we’re doing and we’re building our combinations.”

WARRIORS’ WOES CONTINUE

The Warriors started the game with the second-worst defense in the competition and they finished it with the worst.

The Kiwis were simply abysmal in defense as the Rabbitohs crossed with ease, scoring eight tries in the opening 56 minutes.

The Warriors have now conceded 561 points in 20 games this season, allowing more than 28 points per game.

They’ve lost 10 straight outside New Zealand and four of their past six by more than 20 points. It was the fourth time the Warriors have conceded 40 points this season.

Interim coach Stacey Jones said it was the worst performance he’s seen since replacing Nathan Brown two months ago.

“Since I’ve taken over in this role, that’s the most disappointed I’ve been,” Jones said.

NZ Warriors press conference | 03:18

“I thought our attitude to defense was terrible, we didn’t want to get physical with them and if you allow a team like that to dominate early that’s what happened.

“I told the boys we need to address not just how to turn up on game day but how we train. We’ve got four weeks to go and we need to show a lot more than we showed tonight.”

The Warriors copped it from Fox League commentators Warren Smith and Steve Roach all afternoon.

“That was poor play from the Warriors, they got caught flat footed and Ilias couldn’t believe his luck,” Roach after the first try.

“That was a little bit too easy. I said they were brittle, well maybe scratch that, they’re beyond brittle, they’re Swiss cheese, there’s not much defense from the Warriors,” Smith added after the third.

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Categories
US

Democrats go with ‘the least bad’ tax

Democrats go with 'the least bad' tax

Democrats faced a wave of complaints that their proposed new minimum tax on corporations, which they’ve now agreed to narrow, would disproportionately hit manufacturers.

At the same time, their plan to target the “carried interest” loophole that’s now being dropped had riled powerful Wall Street lobbyists.

But the buyback tax, which Democrats have been contemplating for months, has been relatively uncontroversial — at least for a tax increase. That’s probably because it is so small.

“It’s not like business endorsed this, but they also didn’t lay across the train tracks to try to stop it,” said Todd Metcalf, a former top Senate tax aide now at the consulting firm PwC.

“This is the lowest hanging fruit.”

The swap will not only help secure Sinema’s support. It will also allow Democrats to say they are raising taxes on the well-to-do while scratching their long-standing itch to do something about corporate stock reprochases. Democrats were infuriated when, in the wake of Republicans’ 2017 tax cuts, many companies used their savings to buy back stock, enriching shareholders.

The change will also blunt Republican charges Democrats are hurting manufacturers at a time when supply chains remain snarled.

The excise tax appears to be more than enough to cover the $14 billion lost with the carried interest proposal and by squeezing the 15 percent corporate minimum levy, or “book-income” tax. Democrats say it would generate $74 billion in revenue, which would keep the overall savings in the package in the neighborhood of $300 billion.

The savings are less, though, than the $124 billion budget forecasters had estimated last year when House Democrats considered the proposal. One reason for the difference is that the tax would have begun in January of this year, so Democrats have now lost a year of revenue.

The tax changeup could be a little awkward for Sen. Joe Manchin (DW.Va.), who has repeatedly argued in recent days that Democrats’ bill is merely closing loopholes, not imposing new taxes.

“It will take a very, very creative messaging person to say that this excise tax is closing a loophole,” said Metcalf. “It clearly is a new tax.”

It’s the latest change forced by the enigmatic Sinema (D-Ariz.), who has repeatedly forced Democrats to rewrite their tax plans — all the while saying little publicly about what she wants and why. Senate Democrats aim to pass the legislation next week, with the House planning to quickly follow.

“I hate stock buybacks,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (DN.Y.) said Friday. “I think they’re one of the most self-serving things that corporate America does. Instead of investing in workers and in training and in research and in equipment, they simply — they don’t do a thing to make their company better and they artificially raise the stock price by just reducing the number of shares.”

One reason Wall Street is shrugging at the buyback tax is because it is so small. Few expect it to discourage many companies from purchasing their own stock. Many firms see their daily stock prices fluctuate by much more than 1 percent each day.

And some say the tax doesn’t look so bad compared to others that Democrats had been pushing.

“It’s not exactly popular in the business community, but stopping it was never the top priority,” said Capital Alpha Partners’ James Lucier in a research note.

“We don’t believe it’s a good thing for investors, but given the options for increased revenue on the table to help pay for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), it’s probably the least bad.”

The biggest threat for Wall Street could come later: It would be the government’s first tax on buybacks and once it’s on the books Democrats could come back later and increase it.

Neil Bradley, chief policy officer at the US Chamber of Commerce, said: “Unfortunately, the new excise tax on stock buybacks will only distort the efficient movement of capital to where it can be put to best use and will diminish the value of Americans’ retirement savings.”

The problem Democrats faced with their minimum tax on big companies is that the tax code gives capital-intensive industries generous deductions for buying plants and equipment — which can drive a firm’s well below the 15 percent floor.

That led to a torrent of complaints from manufacturers, echoed by Republicans, that they would be hammered by what they called a backdoor repeal of popular depreciation allowances.

Democrats say they’ve Agreed to spare accelerated depreciation from the minimum tax calculations, though the reported cost of doing that — $55 billion, according to Schumer — is lower than many anticipated, and some are eager to see the fine print of the plan. Before the changes, the minimum tax was projected to hit about 150 companies and produce $313 billion in revenue.

“We are glad to hear that accelerated depreciation provisions are removed, but we remain skeptical and will be reviewing the revised legislation carefully,” said Jay Timmons, head of the National Association of Manufacturers.

As for the carried interest provisions, Schumer said he had no choice but to delete it in order to win Sinema’s support.

Lawmakers have been trying to cut or eliminate the break for well over a decade—and somehow, regardless of which party is in charge, the break always manages to live on.

“Carried interest is the greatest survival story since the Shackleton expedition,” tweeted Jon Lieber, a former top aide to Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).

Categories
Technology

Microsoft trackers run after DuckDuckGo, get added to blocklist

Microsoft trackers run after DuckDuckGo, get added to blocklist

Microsoft trackers run after DuckDuckGo, get added to blocklist

Aurich Lawson

DuckDuckGo, the privacy-minded search company, says it will block trackers from Microsoft in its desktop web browser, following revelations in May that certain scripts from Bing and LinkedIn were getting a pass.

In a blog post, DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg says that he’s heard users’ concerns since security researcher Zach Edwards’ thread that “we didn’t meet their expectations around one of our browser’s web tracking protections.” Weinberg says that, over the next week, the company’s browser will add Microsoft to the list of third-party tracking scripts blocked by its mobile and desktop browsers, as well as extensions for other browsers.

“Previously, we were limited in how we could apply our 3rd-Party Tracker Loading Protection on Microsoft tracking scripts due to a policy requirement related to our use of Bing as a source for our private search results,” Weinberg writes. “We’re glad this is no longer the case. We have not had, and do not have, any similar limitation with any other company.”

There are a lot of pervasive, identifying things that load up on most modern webpages. At issue in DuckDuckGo’s apps was its default blocking of scripts from companies like Facebook and Google loading on third-party websites. DuckDuckGo, which uses Microsoft’s Bing as one of its sources for search results, had to allow some of Microsoft’s trackers to load “due to a policy requirement.” In a Reddit response at the time of the revelation, Weinberg noted that Microsoft’s trackers were still blocked in most ways, like utilizing third-party cookies for fingerprinting visitors.

There’s more to the delicate dance between DuckDuckGo and Microsoft than just trackers, however. Microsoft also provides ads that run on DuckDuckGo’s search results. To allow advertisers to see when someone has clicked an ad on DuckDuckGo and arrived at their page, the DuckDuckGo apps won’t block requests from bat.bing.com. Weinberg notes that you can avoid this by turning off ads in DuckDuckGo search entirely. The company is working on validating ads in ways that can be non-tracking, Weinberg writes, akin to similar efforts by Safari and Firefox.

Finally, DuckDuckGo aims to be more open about its tracker blocking. The company committed its tracker blocklist to a public GitHub repository yesterday and published a new help doc on its tracking protections.

It can look like a lot of work over two scripts, but then DuckDuckGo lives inside the tricky balance of trying to make its search product convenient and relevant while offering its users as much privacy as websites can stand before breaking. And the 15-year-old company from Paoli, Pennsylvania, can’t just leave Bing behind entirely. Weinberg noted in his May Reddit response that most of its traditional search results and images come from Bing. “Really only two companies (Google and Microsoft) have a high-quality global web link index” due to the billion-dollar cost, Weinberg wrote. Every company that wants to provide search to the world faces either a duopoly or a very long journey.

Microsoft, meanwhile, continues to expand its advertising markets, most recently to Netflix, and, potentially, into its own operating system. Its advertising revenue was $3 billion for the quarter ending June 30, an increase of 15 percent year over year but the lowest growth rate in more than a year.

Categories
Entertainment

The Seekers lead singer Judith Durham died at 79, six decades after the formation of the group

The Seekers lead singer Judith Durham died at 79, six decades after the formation of the group

Judith Durham, one of Australia’s best-loved entertainers, has died at the age of 79.

Born in Essendon in Victoria, Durham recorded her first EP at 19 and went on to worldwide fame as the lead singer of folk music group The Seekers selling more than 50 million records.

As part of The Seekers, Durham was one of the first Australian artists to achieve international success, with songs like Georgy Girl, I’ll Never Find Another You and The Carnival Is Over.

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The Seekers — comprising Athol Guy, Bruce Woodley and Keith Potger in addition to Durham — moved to the UK in 1964, having formed in 1962.

After recording I’ll Never Find Another You at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios, The Seekers went to number one on the UK and Australian charts.

On their return to Australia in 1967, The Seekers set an Australian record when a crowd of more than 200,000 watched their performance at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl.

They were later named joint Australians of the Year for 1967.

But just over a year later, Durham stunned the music world by leaving the group at the height of its success.

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Over the past three decades, The Seekers played a series of comeback concerts.

In 1995, they were inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame, with I’ll Never Find Another You added to the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia’s Sounds of Australia registry in 2011.

In 2013, during The Seekers’ Golden Jubilee tour, Durham suffered a stroke, which affected her ability to read and write, while not diminishing her singing skills.

Members of The Seekers, including Durham, were honored as Officers of the Order of Australia in 2014.

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Categories
Sports

Watch as Australia’s Donna Lobban and Scottish husband Greg embrace after unique Commonwealth Games squash clash

Watch as Australia's Donna Lobban and Scottish husband Greg embrace after unique Commonwealth Games squash clash

Marital harmony will doubtless prevail once more in the Lobban household. eventually.

But for one night only, it was Australian Donna Lobban who earned the bragging rights over Scottish husband Greg at the Commonwealth Games in squash’s ultimate game of (un)happy families – not that she was out to rub a unique victory in his face.

Watch the couple’s touching post-match moment in the video above

Stream Seven’s coverage of the Commonwealth Games 2022 for free on 7plus >>

“We’re not signing divorce papers after that – I think we’re still alright,” smiled the victorious Donna after she and her cousin Cameron Pilley defeated Greg Lobban and Lisa Aitken in a tense, tetchy, hugely entertaining mixed doubles quarter-final at Birmingham University.

She even forgave him for accidentally smacking her on the back of the leg with his racquet, during the physical close-quarters battle won by Australia’s reigning champions 9-11 11-8 11-8.

It was the only light-hearted moment in a compelling, intense contest, with Greg giving Donna an apologetic hug as Pilley pointed towards Greg gravely: “Oh, you’re in trouble now…”

Greg had to apologize to his wife midway through the match after an accidental strike. Credit: james ross/AAP

Naturally, on a day when Games historians desperately tried to recall when a husband and wife had ever gone head-to-head in sporting combat for different countries at a major championship, Donna ended up with the utmost sympathy for hubby.

“Usually you’d be just going ‘yeeeees!’ after a win like that but my heart kind of sunk. I was happy but gutted we were the ones who put them out of the tournament. Didn’t feel good,” she said.

After his defeat, Greg enjoyed a long embrace with Donna in the center of the court and told her: “I’m proud of you – now go on and win it.”

Greg’s kind words in this post-match hug may have just saved his marriage. Credit: james ross/AAP

EVERYEVENT: Check out the full Commonwealth Games schedule

TALLY MEDAL: Every gold, silver and bronze at Birmingham 2022

LATEST RESULTS: Detailed breakdown of every event at the Games

The match turned on a couple of controversial ‘no let’ calls from the referee late on which Greg had the odd wee cross word with the official.

Ironically, Donna felt she’d been the victim of a huge wrong call earlier in the day when she and Rachael Grinham were knocked out of the women’s doubles quarters.

On the final sudden-death point, a heartless ‘no let’ call granted victory to their Malaysian opponents Rachel Arnold and Aifa Azman which prompted Lobban, quite uncharacteristically, to hurl her racquet in fury flush against the backcourt glass.

Later, she protested they’d been “robbed” and had to cool herself down, regroup and get ready for a redemptive match six hours later.

Greg, who’d been watching in the morning, had helped her get back in the right frame of mind.

“I’m her husband – I support her every day, today’s no different – and I’ll be supporting her tomorrow in the semis,” he said.

In the video below: ‘Embarrassing’ penalty shootout farce helps Aussies

‘Embarrassing’ penalty shootout farce helps Aussies

‘Embarrassing’ penalty shootout farce helps Aussies

Donna said: “People were watching anything to talk about so we weren’t giving them too much.

“Er, I did whack me in the thigh but I’ll take that!

“Might have to put up with him being in a terrible mood for a while – but if I’d have lost, it would have been him putting up with me being in a terrible mood!”

She’d also made a bet with Greg before the match that if he lost, he’d have to make dinner for the next month.

Already she’s regretting it.

“I don’t know if I want him to cook actually – pretty grim,” Donna said.

“I should have made the bet that if I win, I’d get to shave off his mullet and his mustache! I don’t know why I didn’t think of that… too late now.”

Just like Tokyo 2020 on Seven, there will be one destination to watch every epic feat, every medal moment, every record attempt and every inspiring turn from the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games.

7plus is the only place to watch up to 30 live and replay channels of sport, see what’s on when, keep up to date with the medal tally, create a watchlist to follow your favorite events and catch up on highlights.

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Categories
US

Attorney general’s office calls Nashua woman’s death suspicious

Attorney general's office calls Nashua woman's death suspicious

The attorney general’s office said Friday they are investigating a Nashua woman’s suspicious death. Investigators are at a house on Kinsley Street. The road is blocked off by police. The death is unrelated to Friday morning’s shooting at a gas station on Amherst Street in Nashua. The attorney general’s office did not release any information identifying the woman or how she died. New Hampshire Senior Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley said the suspicious death investigation is ” all very preliminary at this time.” “It is very early in the investigation,” Hinckley said. “We are trying to confirm the adult female’s identity of her, still trying to find evidence in terms of eyewitnesses who may have some information as to what led to the circumstances of her death of her.” This story is breaking. Keep an eye on this page, and we will update it with more information.

NASHUA, NH—

The attorney general’s office said Friday they are investigating a Nashua woman’s suspicious death.

Investigators are at a house on Kinsley Street. The road is blocked off by police.

The death is unrelated to Friday morning’s shooting at a gas station on Amherst Street in Nashua.

The attorney general’s office did not release any information identifying the woman or how she died.

New Hampshire Senior Assistant Attorney General Peter Hinckley said the suspicious death investigation is “all very preliminary at this time.”

“It is very early in the investigation,” Hinckley said. “We are trying to confirm the adult female’s identity of her, still trying to find evidence in terms of eyewitnesses who may have some information as to what led to the circumstances of her death of her.”

This story is breaking. Keep an eye on this page, and we will update it with more information.

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Categories
Technology

game changers! A year in gaming – 1997 – STACK

Game changers! A year in gaming – 1997

While the PlayStation and Nintendo 64 consoles got down to serious business, backed up with several top-notch game releases, SEGA were concentrating on opening something quite big in Sydney…

Game Changers - Gran Turismo

Japanese racing game fans got a nice Christmas present to go with their traditional KFC dinners in the form of Polyphony Digital’s PlayStation masterpiece Grand Touringoriginally subtitled The Real Racing Simulator. That was a bold claim, but the racer – which took five years to develop – delivered, offering realistic (for the time) racing in either arcade or more simulation-based modes. Still one of the highest ranked racers of all time, there were 140 real-world vehicles to collect and race on 11 tracks (22 counting their reversed variants). Aussies finally got to join in the fun in May of 1998.

Game Changers - GoldenEye

Arriving two years after the James Bond movie of the same name, there wasn’t much expected from golden eye 007 on Nintendo 64. Then people got to play it… A first-person shooter with a dedicated single-player campaign, it combined shooting and stealth as the player stepped into the shoes of Bond, James Bond, to save London and the world from an economic meltdown. While that was super-fun, what really sold the game was the split-screen multiplayer, where up to four players could get their deathmatch on in various scenarios. Highly-awarded, it’s now seen as an important ground zero in the evolution of multiplayer shooters on consoles.

Game Changers - SEGA World

With the Mega Drive just deleted and the Saturn failing to take it off outside of Japan, it may have seemed a strange time to open a bespoke SEGA-themed amusement center in the heart of Sydney. However, on March 6, 1997 SEGA World opened at Darling Harbour, with a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog themed bits and bobs, the requisite plethora of arcade games and a selection of larger attractions that mostly eschewed any of SEGA’s many top-notch IPs. There was, however, the Sonic Live in Sydney musical, featuring Eggman crashing into, and subsequently trying to take over, Sydney. SEGA World closed in November 2000, and the striking red building was demolished in 2008.

Categories
Entertainment

Social media posts suggest Milli Lucas’ doctor Charlie Teo is engaged

Social media posts suggest Milli Lucas' doctor Charlie Teo is engaged

Sydney neurosurgeon Charlie Teo could be trading scrubs for a wedding suit soon after revealing social media posts hinted he has recently become engaged to his girlfriend Traci Griffiths.

The couple met when Ms Griffiths sought Dr Teo’s expert advice in 2009, although they did not begin dating until 11 years later after the brain surgeon split from his wife.

Dr Teo previously operated on WA girl Amelia ‘Milli’ Lucas, who captured the hearts of the nation during her brave cancer battle. The 14-year-old lost her cancer battle in January 2021.

Wedding rumors have followed the well-known surgeon and his former patient for more than a year, but it appears there may now be some truth to the whispers.

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Categories
Sports

Saliba and Zinchenko fire Arsenal’s early-season hopes in sultry opener | Arsenal

Yis: the rumors are true. The Premier League, which never really went away, has returned. And it felt pretty good on a sultry Friday night, watching an Arsenal team of eager new moving parts do an excellent job of raising some tender early-season hopes at Selhurst Park.

It was 24 degrees in South London as kick-off approached on the earliest date the English top tier has ever begun. This was a desiccated kind of heat, the grass scorched white, the sky a deathly blue. The English summer does at least have a sense of irony. To avoid the Gulf sun the Premier League will instead play through a heatwave in England.

For all that this was a fun, breezy start to the season. If last week’s Community Shield felt like a kind of visitation, football reimagined as a 90-minute Sopranos dream sequence, there was a familiar tang to this. To London derby. A densely bound systems manager. That sallow summer sun. Maybe this was real after all.

It is a question that might also apply to Arsenal in a season that will define the work to this point of Mikel Arteta. They kicked off with a bold starting 11, the kind of 11 that gets bandied around on fan chats, the hopeful 11, the cake for breakfast 11. Saliba! Martinelli! No filler! Except maybe Granit Xhaka! But that’s fine, he’s also good now!

By the end of a hard-fought 2-0 victory, a scoreline that fails to reflect Crystal Palace’s resilience between the goals, it felt as though something might just be stirring here. Gabriel Jesus was good. Oleksandr Zinchenko was good for a while. William Saliba was very good, and he will draw the most attention.

Saliba made seven clearances without ever having to make a tackle. His passing from him was solid. He didn’t look flustered or even very tired by the end, a step up on the fraught, snot-stained showings of Arsenal centre-backs past. He cruised through this, teasing things out a few seconds in advance inside his head. This is good. Where have you been again?

If the game was reassuringly brisk, for opening-day TV viewers there were some disconcerting developments in the Sky Sports coverage. Before kick-off Gary Neville and Jamie Carragher were dispatched to do vox pops with fans, a step up from going out to fetch some milk, but a watering down of the role of expert analyst. Why not go all the way and just stick them in a pub somewhere?

Oleksandr Zinchenko gets away from Jordan Ayew during an assured debut.
Oleksandr Zinchenko gets away from Jordan Ayew during an assured debut. Photograph: David Klein/Reuters

Gaz and Carra did their best. But frowning blokes in replica shirts are in plentiful supply outside the paywall. Forensic, graphics-laden content is what people pay their subs for.

Then there was the weird, claustrophobic prospect of Patrick Vieira being forced to mouth breathless platitudes at half-time. This was unpleasant for all concerned. Scallop doesn’t want to do this. He isn’t part of the spectacle at that stage. This is not American wrestling just yet. Stop over-producing this thing. The game is good. Trust it.

And both of these teams were good, Arsenal right from the start. Gabriel Jesus did something brilliant with three minutes gone, stealing the ball 40 yards from goal and producing a nutmeg and a sidestep. For long periods those pink away shirts, the color of heat-damaged processed ham, found neat zippy little triangles. Zinchenko was excitingly mobile, taking more touches in the opening half hour than anyone else on the pitch.

He had a hand in the opening goal, finding five yards of untended space by making a looping run from the edge of the box. I have headed the ball back. Martinelli said it in.

Jesus was also quick on his feet, and desperate to dribble and turn. He is in outline exactly what Arsenal have needed: pressing, edge, authority. Perhaps people have forgotten how good he is, or how good he was meant to be. Between them Jesus and Martinelli had eight dribbles and four shots in the opening half hour of the season. They played together for Brazil against Japan in Tokyo in June. They should be this good.

Palace have been depleted by injury and the loss of players. Expectations are low, which might just be a useful place to be, but Vieira really does seem to know what he’s doing and which players to trust. They pressed Arsenal back either side of half-time, and used Wilfried Zaha as a weapon against Ben White. But it was also a chance for Saliba to show his qualities about him. Plus Arsenal have Saka, who made the second goal, forcing Marc Guéhi to deflect a hard low cross into his own net.

For Arteta the trajectory is clear from here, at a time to deliver on the investment in time and resources. But they have a style of play and a blueprint. The shadow of the great Arsène has passed. The flaws here are this team’s flaws, the strengths those Arteta has grafted on. Whisper it, but this was actually quite encouraging.

Categories
Australia

Bogie shooting: Police charge Darryl Young with murders of Mervyn and Maree Schwarz, Graham Tighe

Bogie shooting: Police charge Darryl Young with murders of Mervyn and Maree Schwarz, Graham Tighe

New details have emerged about the man police accuse of murdering a respected farming family in far-north Queensland.

Darryl Young, 59, has been charged with murdering Mervyn Schwarz, 71, his wife Maree, 59, and her son Graham Tighe, 35, at the gates of his property in Bogie, which bordered the Schwarz’s farm.

Mr Tighe’s brother, Ross, was shot in the stomach, but miraculously survived after driving more than 40km to a neighboring farm to raise an alarm.

He was flown to Mackay hospital and underwent emergency surgery on Thursday night.

Police said there was a long-running boundary dispute between Young and the Schwarz’s, who purchased the sprawling 30,000ha farm for $10 million last year.

Police said Young, the Schwarz’s and the Tighe’s agreed to meet at the fence of Young’s property in a phone conversation on Wednesday evening.

Police will allege Young shot the four victims “execution-style” with a rifle.

Young is listed to appear in the Proserpine Magistrates Court on Monday.

On Friday he was charged with three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder, after five people were initially taken into custody.

Young is a long-time Bogie resident who reportedly lives with his daughter, believed to be in her 20s, outside of Bowen.

He is said to be well-known in the farming community, having owned property as far south as Gladstone.

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