Give Me Sports Alex Batt, has reacted to Arsenal’s 3-1 win against Tottenham this afternoon.

The Gunners went into the game as the top-ranked team in the Premier League.

Having failed their first big test by losing 3-1 to Manchester United, everyone was waiting to see how they would perform in this game.

Mikel Arteta’s side had a point to prove and vengeance on their minds after Spurs beat them to end their top-four hopes last season.

Arsenal rose to the occasion and won the game despite being pegged 1-1 at halftime.

Arsenal has just earned a huge win against Tottenham. The 3-1 scoreline suggests it was a routine win, but it wasn’t.

Mikel Arteta’s side had to work very hard against one of the unbeaten clubs in the league this season.

They earned their reward with the win, and it is yet another show of how developed this Arsenal team is.

They relentlessly pressed Tottenham into submission in key areas of the game and earned their points, which keeps them at the top of the league table and opens a 4 points lead over their neighbours.

This Arsenal team is much more confident and different from the one many of us have become used to, and BBC’s Jonny Bentley admits Mikel Arteta is building something special at the Emirates.

Arsenal have earned a much-deserved 3-1 win over Tottenham Hotspur in today’s North London Derby clash to move four points clear at the top of the Premier League table.

It was normal service resumed today with our team playing their usual up-tempo attacking football, and Spurs will to allow us to come at them was always a risk.

Our opening goal came thanks to a wonderous strike from Thomas Partey, with Tottenham granting the Ghanaian way too much space on the edge of the box to pick his spot.

Our lead was short-lived however after a mean counter-attack was turned into a penalty kick thanks to an unnecessary lunge by Gabriel Magalhaes which brought down his international counterpart Richarlison, with Harry Kane firing down the middle to beat his Three Lions’ team-mate.

While we went into the break level, the feeling remained positive knowing that if things continued as they were, we should have no issue picking up all three points, and we didn’t have to wait long after the restart before Gabriel Jesus took full advantage of the mistake by Hugo Lloris, as he tussled his way beyond both Christian Romero and the keeper to tuck the ball into the net.

Granit Xhaka has put Arsenal 3-1 up over Tottenham with just over 20 minutes remaining on the clock, capping off his fine start to the new season.

The Gunners have been much the better side today, and a silly challenge from Emerson Royale minutes before our latest goal has made things even tougher for our noisy neighbours, who now have just 10 men on the pitch.

Thomas Partey and Gabriel Jesus are credited with our opening two goals, and this neat effort from Xhaka has put us well in the driving seat.

3⃣ – 1⃣

Granit Xhaka gives Arsenal a two-goal cushion with this beautifully worked goal… pic.twitter.com/quYCrBVxPK

Marcus and Luke are back with Lions Watch as we look ahead to the World Cup in just seven weeks' time! 

Join us every Saturday as we recap the biggest England news, debate some Southgate Selections™ and tackle your questions. Today, we celebrate the impressive Nations League performances of Jude Bellingham, wonder how we can solve England's Harry Maguire dilemma and unveil our Take Thermometer!

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In my hometown of New Orleans, which is overwhelmingly Catholic, certain men I know go periodically to a Catholic retreat up the river. They go there to repent. Probably they contemplate goodness. And goodness is a lot more interesting than it sounds. 

The Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola are used as the format for these pursuits. Saint Ignatius of Loyola was a womanizer, purportedly—like a lot of the saints. So probably he wanted to repent, too. 

My friends growing up in New Orleans were all Catholic girls, and I’ve often wondered about their Catholic qualities. They seem to have less vinegar in their veins than Jewish girls (like me). It fascinates me to delineate the character traits informed by their religion. I’m drawn to its organized tenets. I’d read the Catholic catechism just for kicks. 

But you don’t have to be Catholic to appreciate Loyola’s Spiritual Exercises. They are a set of prayers and practices divided into tantalizing rubrics such as Three Classes of Men, Three Kinds of Humility, Rules for the Discernment of Spirits, Daily Examination of Conscience, etc. Their goals are constructive: to overcome disordered inclinations; to seek indifference and humility; to elicit courage, discipline, and perseverance. Just take Jesus out of it and there you go. I took Jesus out of all those phrases, which would otherwise include the strange concept that you’re doing all this for his sake—rather than for your own sake, just to be more worthy. I don’t know why you need Jesus to aspire to this quest. So it’s not like I’m some sort of religious maniac. 

Don’t worry, gang - the Premier League is back! Marcus, Vish, Jim and Andy tuck in to all the latest after waving goodbye to our beloved Nations League.

There’s some North London derby jitters for Jim, while Vish seems much calmer about Man Utd’s prospects against Erling Haaland n’ company. We also celebrate the return of Keeping Up with the Icardis and Kevin Keegan’s latest awards show gig. We did wonder about all that disruption at Dover…

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About five years ago, Kat decided to stop taking her birth control pills. She wanted to give her menstrual cycle a chance to return to normal before trying to get pregnant in the future—and anyway, she was beginning to have some doubts about the Pill. Her friends had been talking about what they saw as the dangers of hormonal birth control—blood clots, for instance. “Maybe I shouldn’t be putting chemicals in my body,” she recalls thinking. So Kat, who lives in England, spent about $100 on Natural Cycles, an app and thermometer that promised she could avoid pregnancy simply by taking her temperature every day.

It seemed so straightforward. The thermometer would send her temperature to the app, which would predict when she would ovulate—the hormones produced during ovulation typically raise body temperature by a little less than half a degree. Based on that information, the app used a color-coded system to tell her when she could safely have sex without getting pregnant. “Red days you abstain, and green days it’s safe to go for it,” Kat explains. It seemed just as easy as taking a pill every day, with none of the uncertainty of how hormonal medication could be affecting her body. Best of all, Natural Cycles assured her that when used correctly it was 98 percent effective—almost the same as the Pill.

Various factors drive women to try birth control methods that rely on observations of physical changes throughout the menstrual cycle to predict fertility. (There are many names for the various types of these methods, but for the purposes of this piece, I’ll refer to them collectively as cycle-tracking methods.) Some women experience unpleasant side effects of hormonal birth control and are frustrated that their doctors don’t take their complaints seriously. For others, their religion forbids the use of contraception. But in the last few years, there has been an explosion of interest in cycle-tracking, thanks in part to Silicon Valley companies that have launched cycle-tracking apps promising birth control by algorithm.

Other powerful forces also have mobilized behind this trend. As I have reported, many wellness influencers leverage women’s legitimate complaints about the side effects of the Pill, selling supplements, herbal remedies, and diets that they say will alleviate symptoms like mood changes, acne, and headaches. Those messages have no basis in science—yet they have moved swiftly through social networks and made their way into the mainstream. Celebrities including Dr. Oz, Gwyneth Paltrow, and podcaster Joe Rogan have all promoted the idea that hormonal birth control is unwholesome and potentially dangerous.

But recently, this tidal wave of backlash against hormonal birth control has made its way into another sphere of influence. Anti-abortion activists—many of whom are morally opposed to the idea of contraception because they consider it a form of abortion or just morally wrong—have found that wellness influencers, many of them pro-choice, are a boon to their cause. While previous generations of activists saw picketing outside abortion clinics as their only option for engaging the public, today’s crusaders are also using social media to win followers, incorporating wellness messages into confessional videos and stylish memes to convince their audience that hormonal contraception is not only sinful but also unhealthy. In a strategy I’ve been reporting on in collaboration with UC Berkeley journalism and law students, they are also promoting the false idea that cycle-tracking methods of birth control are just as effective at preventing pregnancy as hormonal contraception. Some downplay their anti-abortion convictions and religious identity in order to undermine trust in the Pill and IUDs.

When the Soviet Union still existed, Anatolii Harahatii made his career as a photographer in the small village of Savintsi in northeastern Ukraine. Snapshots of him as a younger, sharply dressed man appear on many surfaces in the cozy, one-story house he shares with Natalya, a former nurse and his wife of over 40 years. In photos from just a few years ago, he appeared happy and healthy, posing with Natalya and their two adult children.

As was the case for most Ukrainians, Anatolii’s life was forever upended on February 24 when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of their country, and by early March troops had occupied Savinsti. Russia’s goal, which its government justified with an often head-spinning mix of falsehoods, was nothing less than to topple Ukraine’s democratically elected government and install a puppet regime in its place. As Ukrainian resistance proved to be more formidable than Putin had anticipated, Russian troops escalated their attacks on private citizens. Anatolii was one of them. 

Anatolii intensely followed the frightening and chaotic news of the early days of the war. Several months later, we sat in his kitchen, as he recalled seeing the news of grandmothers standing up to Russian armored columns, blocking their path as they tried to make their way through small villages across Ukraine.

“It was heroism,” Anatolii told me, referring to the Ukrainian civilians’ attempts to physically block Russian tanks with their bodies. When he awoke one morning, he decided to find the columns of tanks, which he filmed. He then posted the footage online.  At the end of May, Russian soldiers in masks, likely intelligence officers, arrested the 68-year-old pensioner. They considered his act of filming the tanks dangerous, likely due to the information it might provide to others in Ukraine, and believed he was in some way acting against the Russian authorities. 

Anatolii

Every other day, my WhatsApp bursts with messages from friends in Brazil and abroad expressing equal parts of excitement and apprehension as Sunday’s Brazilian presidential elections approach. On Wednesday, my best friend who lives in the country’s capital, Brasília, texted to say she was scared of wearing red clothes to go vote this weekend because red is the color associated with the Worker’s Party of former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Lula, the current front-runner, has a real, if slim, chance to beat far-right incumbent President Jair Bolsonaro in the first round by getting more than 50 percent of valid votes. “The mood is terrible,” she wrote, later adding that in the last 48 hours, four instances of political violence had been recorded across the country. “It’s very sinister this fear of expressing yourself.”

My friend’s worries are justified. The upcoming presidential elections in my home country are the most fraught and hate-filled in recent memory. In July, one of the president’s followers fatally shot a local Worker’s Party treasurer at his Lula-themed birthday party. Even before the official kick-off of the campaign in August, pro-Lula protesters were bombarded with feces and urine. On September 7, the day Brazil commemorated 200 years of independence, in the midst of a political discussion, a Bolsonaro supporter killed a Lula supporter, stabbing him 70 times and attacking him with an axe. This month, a researcher with Datafolha, one of the main polling institutes in Brazil, was assaulted. In a Rio de Janeiro bar, a 19-year-old woman was struck in the head after a Bolsonaro fan threatened to hit her sister when she criticized the president. Almost 70 percent of Brazilians surveyed in a September poll said they fear being victims of politically motivated violence. 

“Online and offline hate speech and harassment and serious political violence have made many Brazilians afraid to express political opinions and exercise their political rights,” Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “Electoral and judicial authorities, police forces, and other authorities should do their utmost to protect freedom of speech and assembly, and ensure that Brazilians can vote safely.” Experts with the United Nations have also called for peaceful elections and condemned “continuing attacks against democratic institutions, the judiciary and the electoral system in Brazil.” 

“Online and offline hate speech and harassment and serious political violence have made many Brazilians afraid to express political opinions and exercise their political rights.”

This is not the first time political violence has been part of a Brazilian election. In 2018, Marielle Franco, a Black, gay, feminist Rio de Janeiro councilmember and human rights advocate was killed along with her driver after leaving a Black women’s empowerment event. She has become an international icon as a symbol of resistance and activism, but her murder remains unsolved. That same year, while on the campaign trail, Bolsonaro was stabbed by a mentally ill man. Since then, the country’s Superior Electoral Court, which oversees elections, has recorded a spike in violence against candidates. When my American coworkers recently asked me what I thought the outcome of this election would be, I matter-of-factly stated I believed Lula would win, if only he didn’t get murdered first. (The leading candidate’s security apparatus has been reinforced, and he’s been wearing a bulletproof vest at public events.) 

Bolsonaro himself has often incited hostility if not outright violence. A former army captain and a member of congress for 27 years, he was famous for his misogynistic and homophobic views. As president, he is notable for his disastrous handling of the Covid-19 pandemic and disregard for the Amazon and climate change. He has called for the Worker’s Party to be swept into the “trash bin of history” and talked about shooting the “petralhada,” a pejorative way of referring to those who vote for the left-leaning party. This authoritarian president, who received a full endorsement from former President Donald Trump, has loosened firearms laws, which has resulted in a three-digit surge in gun ownership registration and told his supporters to “prepare” for what is likely to be a negative outcome for the president. Before Independence Day rallies in September, Bolsonaro urged his supporters to “go to the streets one last time.”