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  Set pieces, a mean defence and unorthodox motivation methods are some of the key factors behind Arsenal’s success. Arsenal have ended a 22-year wait to be crowned  Premier League champions  after Manchester City were held 1-1 by Bournemouth. Mikel Arteta’s men  held off the challenge  of Pep Guardiola’s second-place City on Tuesday night to seal a long-awaited triumph with one game to spare. Here are the key factors that helped the Gunners finally get over the line after three seasons as runners-up: Back to basics Arsenal’s title-winning campaign has been ugly at times. For a couple of seasons, Arteta’s Arsenal have been the emblem of a more back-to-basics approach in English football. The era of pretty passing under Guardiola and heavy-metal football under Jurgen Klopp has given way to set pieces, long throw-ins and long balls from the back. It is a world Arsenal have mastered with Gabriel Magalhaes a menace at corners, Declan Rice key with his pinpoint throw...

  Numbers are expected to rise, the WHO warns, as European officials emphasise that the risk of a European outbreak is low. The number of suspected Ebola cases in Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda has risen to 600, with 139 suspected deaths, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said. The WHO Emergency Committee met in Geneva on Wednesday, where Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus confirmed to reporters that the virus remains a public health emergency of international concern, but not a pandemic emergency. “The WHO assess the risk of the epidemic as high at the national and regional levels and low at the global level,” Tedros said. Previous figures  reported  by DRC officials were an estimated 131 deaths from 513 suspected cases. The outbreak has arisen just five months after the DRC declared its previous epidemic over. WHO emergencies chief Chikwe Ihekweazu said at the same news conference that the organisation’s “absolute priority now is to identify ...

  This sanction waiver will allow the UK to import Russian crude oil refined in third countries, such as India and Turkiye. The United Kingdom government said it had eased sanctions on imports of Russian jet fuel and diesel refined in third countries, amid  soaring fuel prices  caused by the Iran war and prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz. The trade licence that came into effect on Wednesday is of “indefinite duration”, according to the UK’s Department for Business and Trade, and will be periodically reviewed. It will allow the UK to import Russian crude oil refined in third countries, such as India and Turkiye. The government also issued a temporary licence loosening sanctions on liquefied natural gas originating from certain Russian plants. The UK and other  Western countries imposed strict sanctions against Russia  following its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, targeting oil exports as well as more than 3,000 individuals and companies. This new decision fo...

President Putin has talked about a ceasefire, but some analysts say it’s a ploy to buy time while Moscow’s soldiers are on the back foot.   While Kyiv has recently come under frequent  bombardment , the residents of Moscow have largely felt safe. That might now be changing. At least three people, including an Indian citizen, were killed in a drone strike on the Russian capital on Sunday. That day, the Russian Ministry of Defence declared it had shot down more than 1,000 drones in 24 hours. The attacks come a little over a week after Russian President Vladimir Putin said the war in Ukraine, which has now raged for more than four years and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, may soon be “coming to an end”. They also followed a Russian assault on Kyiv that  killed  24. Putin made the remarks hinting at winding down the war to reporters during Moscow’s  pared-back Victory Day parade  on May 9. He even expressed a  willingness  to meet with his Ukr...

  The president unseated one of his biggest Republican foes Tuesday in Kentucky, while a Trump endorsement in Texas concerned GOP senators. At the same time, Trump’s  low approval ratings  and the war with Iran have raised red flags in key Republican primaries among base voters who supported his “America First” agenda that included the idea of a focus on domestic issues. Those red flags may persist with independent voters and base turnout alike when the general election gets underway in a few months. But in the meantime, Trump continues to prove he can not only influence the Republican primary electorate but also attack Republicans who have opposed him in any way without feeling there are significant negative consequences. “I think what everyone can take away from this is that Donald Trump is going nowhere,” said a Trump adviser working for his political operation. “He has won and will continue to win.” Trump this month defeated five  Republican state senators in Ind...

  Oil prices ease amid the latest comments from the White House, but experts warn they will remain high even after a deal. Two Chinese oil tankers have left the Strait of Hormuz after waiting in the Gulf for more than two months, as the United States president claims a deal to end the US-Israel war on Iran is imminent and Iran threatens that any new attacks would lead to spillover beyond the region. Shipping data from LSEG and Kpler showed that the two supertankers – Chinese-flagged Yuan Gui Yang and Hong Kong-flagged Ocean Lily – navigated out of the waterway, carrying about 4 million barrels of crude. South Korean Foreign Minister Cho Hyun, meanwhile, told a parliamentary hearing in Seoul that a Korean crude vessel was also passing through the Strait on Wednesday. Yuan Gui Yang loaded 2 million barrels of Iraqi Basrah crude on February 27, a day before the US-Israel war on Iran started, while Ocean Lily loaded 1 million barrels each of Qatari al-Shaheen and Iraqi Basrah crude bet...