Toy Story 4 digs into the weirdest corner of a kid’s play room: the toys that aren’t actually toys, but everyday objects that become playthings because kids are nothing if not imaginative. This teaser introduces one such toy: Forky, a talking spork with pipe cleaner arms.

You might have thought we didn’t need another Toy Story after the genuinely moving tear-jerker of a Toy Story 3 ending. Forky is here to prove you wrong. 

Toy Story 4 hits theaters on June 21, 2019.

Jaywick, on the Essex coast east of London, has a totemic reputation in the United Kingdom.

The media has been known to paint the people there as lazy drug addicts, socially irresponsible and to blame for their own problems.

But the briefest visit tells an entirely different story, and it’s one which cuts to the heart of why the United Nations’ poverty and human rights specialist Philip Alston decided to visit – and one which speaks volumes of how the political class in the UK has failed many of the country’s poorest.

One resident, who’s lived in this small town of 5,000, said in days gone by it was described as Costa del Jaywick – a thriving working class holiday resort which people from London would go to.

There were holiday camps, amusement arcades, work at least during the summer months to sustain the place.

But when the holiday camps closed down, Jaywick became isolated. The railway line linking it to the bigger town of Clacton, up the coast, closed. Now there is only a sporadic bus service.

One of the biggest problems is that there is no supermarket, so if you’re out of work and don’t have transport then getting food isn’t easy.

Until three years ago many of the roads in the town weren’t even paved – they were bumpy tracks an ambulance couldn’t drive down. It’s one of the most extreme examples of British decline you can find.

So Jaywick became a trap people couldn’t escape from. No work led to drugs and alcohol problems. There are people on motorised scooters all over the place with long-term health problems.

Jaywick is ill. Many of the homes aren’t properly insulated either, which doesn’t help.

When the UN’s poverty rapporteur attended a public meeting in the town, he heard a litany of complaints from people about how their benefits are being cut, that they’re classed as fit to work when they are disabled, how the government’s new Universal Credit scheme – supposedly designed to simplify the whole payments system – is leading to them being without any money for weeks on end.

It’s become a common theme in the UK: people simply running out of money completely, and having to choose between turning the electricity on or having something to eat.

These things matter to the UN for two main reasons. The first is the straight fact that in one of the wealthiest countries on the planet, the wealth gap is among the widest.

The second is that under the UN rules the UK signed up to, the country has an obligation to improve the quality and human rights of poor people. The concern is that the UK is failing that obligation.

It’s also worth pointing out that this part of England voted heavily to leave the European Union in the Brexit referendum.

People in Essex believed that in doing so, politicians only a hundred kilometres away in London would understand their frustrations about inequality and would use the proceeds of leaving the EU to improve their lives.

There’s no sign whatsoever that is on any political agenda.

Far from being lazy good-for-nothings, the people of Jaywick are some of the friendliest, proudest souls you could hope to meet. They want what they used to have – a sense of community and something to live for.

That the UN came to their town, that someone is listening to them, has been a source of no little excitement. Whether anything will come of it is another question altogether.

There are two sides to every story, they say, and that was certainly true of the incident between Max Verstappen and Esteban Ocon that decided the destiny of the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Verstappen was cruising to what would have been a superb second victory in a row when the two crashed on lap 44, forcing the Red Bull into a spin, and handing the lead and eventual victory back to Lewis Hamilton.

Verstappen was furious, Ocon unrepentant. The stewards decided the Frenchman was at fault and handed him a 10-second stop-and-go penalty, the most severe punishment before a disqualification.

But in the green room before the podium, Hamilton suggested the incident was not quite so clear-cut.

He told Verstappen that Ocon had the right to unlap himself. Verstappen agreed, yet added: “But you can’t crash into the leader, who’s not doing anything crazy.”

Hamilton’s response? “You had more to lose than he did. He had nothing to lose.”

Verstappen was briefly lost for words. This sounded very much like advice from someone he can not help but admire and respect.

Hamilton’s view is where moral correctness and racing judgement diverge. And, some would say, that’s the difference between a five-time world champion of 12 years’ experience and a brilliantly talented but occasionally rash 20-year-old who still sees the world very much in black and white.

Verstappen’s view

When the incident happened, Verstappen had 27 laps to go before he completed a brilliant win.

He had started fifth, optimistic that despite the Red Bull’s lack of qualifying pace, he would be able to challenge the Mercedes and Ferraris in front of him. He quickly passed Kimi Raikkonen, Sebastian Vettel and Valtteri Bottas and was 1.8 seconds behind Hamilton after just 10 laps and clearly quicker.

His pace persuaded Mercedes’ strategists they had to stop Hamilton as soon as they could, to protect against the Red Bull stopping first and passing the world champion with what is known as the ‘under-cut’.

Hamilton was called in on lap 19, the team over-ruling his request to stay out because he felt it was too early and he still had life in his tyres. Verstappen’s job now was to extend his first stint as long as possible.

He did this superbly, the team not stopping him until lap 35 to give him the biggest possible tyre advantage into the final part of the race, and when he rejoined a couple of seconds behind Hamilton he passed him within three laps.

That should have been the race won. He had better tyres than Hamilton behind him, and the world champion was in any case concentrating mainly on securing the constructors’ title for Mercedes and was running into potentially terminal engine problems.

Indeed, Mercedes at one point had a warning of imminent failure within a lap, before they managed to bring Hamilton’s exhaust temperatures under control.

But the lap after Verstappen had retaken the lead, already into cruise-to-the-end mode, Ocon himself pitted for fresh tyres and came out behind him, a lap down, but on fresh super-soft tyres and going quicker.

After a lap behind Verstappen, Ocon was told by his team he could unlap himself and he went for it, going around the outside of Verstappen into Turn One.

Verstappen fought him, was slightly more than half a car’s width ahead as they turned into Turn Two, and his right rear corner collected Ocon’s front left.

The win was gone. Verstappen was furious.

“I was just trying to do my race and then a back marker takes a stupid risk,” he said. “I lost a victory but hopefully in 15 years’ time we can laugh about it.

“He has the right to unlap himself but still you have to be careful. He has always been an idiot.”

His team boss Christian Horner backed him. “Through the irresponsible actions of a backmarker we have lost the grand prix,” he said.

“Max is the race leader and Ocon had been lapped. He has a car much quicker on the straight. What on Earth he thought he was doing… It was not at all well handled by Ocon and totally irresponsible to be even dreaming of racing the race leader.”

Red Bull’s motorsport boss Helmut Marko went even further, alluding to Ocon’s status as a young Mercedes driver and implying it might have been deliberate, saying: “This is a driver seeking a Mercedes contract and he is an idiot.”

But Horner rejected that. “That’s a coincidence,” he said. “There is obviously history between the two drivers but it was just a very bad judgement call. He is a lap down, not even in the points and he is racing the race leader. The team have to take some responsibility.”

The less simplistic view

Ocon said: “I came out of the box (pit). The first lap I stayed behind. The second lap the team said: ‘You can unlap yourself if you want’. I went around the outside, the same overtake I did on Fernando (Alonso) and many other drivers but clearly he didn’t give me enough space.

“I was side by side and I couldn’t disappear and then I saw he turned and we collided. He can be upset but if you are leading the race you have to control it.”

Hamilton had a grandstand view of the incident from just 2.7 seconds behind.

“I wasn’t surprised by it or anything like that,” he said. “I saw them racing but they weren’t racing for the same position.

“I would have been in a different frame of mind. Fortunately, no one got hurt, and they kept going. It’s a racing incident, I guess. Max is that go-getter guy and every now and then it bites you.

“There are no rules that say you can’t unlap yourself. I’ve done it before. When you’re in Ocon’s position, you’ve got nothing to lose. You can go much quicker on the tyres and you’re trapped. The guy in front is saving his tyres.

“It felt like it was fair game to unlap himself. Of course you don’t want to cause an incident but in those scenarios you give each other space. You can never assume the guy is not on the inside. You have to assume he is and leave extra space.”

Both views have merit. They are not even necessarily mutually exclusive. It’s possible to believe both that Ocon was in the wrong in putting the race leader at risk and also that Verstappen might have been wiser to give him more space in the circumstances.

Hamilton’s team boss Toto Wolff is a friend of Verstappen’s father Jos, and rates Max very highly. Many believe the 20-year-old could one day end up at Mercedes, perhaps as a replacement for Hamilton when he retires.

Wolff said: “You can see there is a future champion coming together. Unbelievable talent and speed and I think once the raw edges are off, he will be someone who will be a world champion one day.

“In a few years he will look at the footage of today and maybe have his own opinion whether it was the right behaviour or not. But you can’t accelerate these things. It’s a learning process.”

The fisticuffs afterwards

Immediately after the race, Verstappen confronted Ocon in the driver weighing area.

Earlier in the weekend, he had talked about his frustration after losing pole at the previous race in Mexico and said he “could literally do some damage if somebody said something wrong to me after qualifying. I was that angry”.

In the car on the slowing down lap, he had intimated the same thing, when he said Ocon had to hope he did not find him in the paddock afterwards.

Now, he pushed Ocon once, then again and again, while clearly expressing his anger in words, too.

Ocon said: “What I am really surprised about is his behaviour after the race. We went on the scales and he started to push me and wanted to punch me and stuff. This is not proper.”

This was not an incident that arose out of nothing. Ocon and Verstappen are old rivals. They have raced against each other since karting, Ocon beating Verstappen to the European Formula 3 title in 2014. They clearly do not like each other.

“There is a lot of history between those drivers,” Horner said. “It goes right back to karting. We don’t know what words were exchanged between them. We don’t condone violence but you have to understand emotions – you’ve had a victory taken away from you and they are running high.

“Of course there is a human reaction in these competitive animals. Emotions occasionally boil over.”

Verstappen was called to see the stewards, and they said that while they were “sympathetic to his passion”, it was “the obligation of sportsmen at this level to act appropriately and as role models to other drivers”. His punishment is two days of “public service” at the direction of the FIA.

It is a penalty that carries echoes of those handed out to Sebastian Vettel for driving into Hamilton in Baku in 2017 and Michael Schumacher for trying to take out Jacques Villeneuve in the 1997 title decider in Jerez.

A remarkable achievement overshadowed

Verstappen’s incident-packed day did two things.

Firstly, it provided a window into a potentially fascinating F1 future.

Both short-term, in the sense of hinting at the strength of the challenge he and Red Bull could mount to Mercedes and Hamilton if new engine partner Honda can deliver on the promise their latest engine is showing this season.

And long-term regarding the intensity of a potential future fight between Verstappen and Ocon, if the Frenchman, as many expect, ends up in a Mercedes in 2020.

But it also overshadowed Mercedes clinching their fifth consecutive constructors’ championship and world title double, the latter matching Ferrari’s achievements from 2000-4 with Schumacher.

This, Wolff said, had been the most difficult championship to win and as a result felt the best of all.

“We had a hell of a fight with Ferrari,” he said, “and being able to win a fifth consecutive championship is something we wouldn’t have dreamt of six years ago. In our wildest dreams it would not have come to my mind, equalising a Ferrari record that seemed unachievable.

“I feel so fortunate to be in this team. That Ferrari success is something I really looked up to and admired. To achieve it, you have to say a thousand times thank you to all the team members.”

And there was a final word for the exceptional job Hamilton has done in overcoming what more often than not was a faster car.

“He is an exceptional driver and an unbelievable human and he has been an integral part of the team,” Wolff said. “He is the one in the forefront and in the car. Many people have contributed to the success but clearly it wouldn’t have happened without him.”

Image: Mustafa Yalcin/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

You know the saying: A bit of rain never hurt anyone.

Well, that’s certainly the message France’s army is sending out today, mere days after Trump cancelled a visit to a U.S. war cemetery near Paris due to “bad weather”. World leaders that day were marking 100 years since the end of World War One. 

Images of other world leaders — like Emmanuel Macron and Angela Merkel — attending Armistice events that day despite the poor weather threw Trump’s absence into sharp relief. Per the Associated Press, the White House cited bad weather grounding the President’s helicopter.

Well, two days after Trump’s rainy no-show, the French army has weighed in with a rather brilliant tweet. 

“There’s rain, but it’s not serious,” it reads. “We’re staying motivated.” 

Even a bit of drizzle might stop the leader of the free world, but it won’t deter these soldiers. 

Erbil, Iraq – It has been more than a month since Iraq’s Kurdish region held its parliamentary election, and a new Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) is yet to be announced. Currently, intense negotiations are taking place between the two main political players in the region – the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) – dispelling speculations that their decades-old power-sharing agreement had come to an end after the severe political fallout from last year’s independence referendum.

But as the two parties are busy evening out their differences and haggling over ministerial posts, there does not seem to be much enthusiasm about the new KDP-PUK government, especially among the youth. 

“I’m 23 years old. Since I was a child, I’ve only seen the PUK and the KDP in control of the region,” says college student Adel Hassan.

“I never saw a good thing these parties did for the Kurdish people. I think there is no hope coming from those parties,” he says, sitting with four friends from college in a cafe under Erbil’s millennia-old citadel.

Hassan was born during the civil war between the PUK and the KDP which lasted three years and ended with the Washington agreement brokered by the Clinton administration and signed in 1998 by PUK’s leader Jalal Talabani and his KDP counterpart, Masoud Barzani. Since then, the two parties have ruled the Kurdish region under a power-sharing scheme, as the international community, and particularly the US, have encouraged them to stay united in power.

But many young people like Hassan are increasingly seeing this arrangement as part of the problem in Iraq’s crisis-stricken Kurdish region, rather than the solution.

“There is a lot of corruption here because of the political parties, they are stealing the money. They are building big projects for their parties’ benefit and the people close to these parties are getting benefits,” says 21-year-old Rajan Mohammed, sitting across from Hassan. “They are not paying salaries, they are not providing services, they are stealing our oil. Parties here are based on families, on family relations – this is one of the main reason for corruption.”

Unlike the older generations, young Iraqi Kurds, such as Hassan and Mohammed, did not witness the nationalist uprisings Masoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani led against the regime in Baghdad in the 1980s and 1990s, which have been their main source of their legitimacy. At the same time, many young people face growing socio-economic difficulties which a deepening political and economic crisis in the Kurdish region have brought about.

According to Renad Mansour, a research fellow at the London-based policy institute Chatham House, the KDP and PUK are increasingly losing ground among the Kurdish youth.

“These youths, they’ve only known one kind of leaders – or make it simpler – they’ve only known a few families who have run the entire system,” he says, referring to the two prominent families, which lead the KDP (the Barzanis) and the PUK (the Talabanis).

“Most of [them] remain disenfranchised and disillusioned from the political process, from Suleimaniyah to even Erbil and Dohuk. They can’t find jobs, they are finding difficulty, […] they don’t feel the KRG has done enough to respond to their needs.”

For Hassan, the prospect of being unemployed or underemployed is indeed causing much anxiety. He and some of his friends readily point the finger at the KDP and PUK as being responsible for this situation.

“I think will be seeking a good job for 20 years [after graduation]. Most of those who graduated in 2014 are still without a job today. Those who got the jobs are people supported by some politicians or by people in the government,” says 20-year-old Aziz Mawlood, another of Hassan’s friends at the cafe.

More than a quarter of the population in the Kurdish region is aged 18 to 34 and much of it is suffering from high unemployment and increasing disillusionment. A demographic survey released in July by the Kurdish Region Statistics Office shows that over 20 percent of youth aged 18-34 have left the work force because they have “lost hope in finding a job”. Of those who are still searching for a job aged 18-24, nearly 30 percent cannot find one.

“I’m studying here, in the area which is under KDP control – the yellow zone. In the college, anyone – a professor, a doctor – if he’s not one of the KDP supporters, he cannot get any high position in the college. Even in the student committees, the members have to be KDP supporters,” says Mawlood.

Each of the two parties informally controls a geographic area in the Kurdish region: KDP – the northwest, or the so-called yellow zone with de-facto capital Erbil (which is also the capital of the region); PUK – the southeast, or the green zone, with de-facto capital Sulaimaniyah. Both parties also retain control over their own Peshmerga forces which man checkpoints between Erbil and Sulaimaniyah.

This arrangement has allowed the KDP and PUK to extend their control over various parts of the public sphere through vast clientelistic networks, which some youth like Hassan, Mawloud and Mohammed, see as a major barrier to accessing economic opportunities.

But among Hassan’s friends, there are also two who support the KDP. They both voted for the party in the September 30 elections – one, who refused to give his name, said he did so because he proudly supports the party; the other – 20-year-old Sarkawt Qader – because he worried about disunity among Kurds and supported the idea of a one-party government.

Hassan himself could not vote because he was born outside the borders of the Kurdish region, while Mohammed decided not cast a ballot because she “was angry”. Mawloud voted for one of the opposition parties.

According to Hogr Shekha, Chairman of the Public Aid Organisation and an election observer, the KDP and the PUK have managed to engage part of the youth into the political structures and patronage networks, but their political pull among younger people is continuously dwindling.

The electoral commission does not release statistics on youth participation in the elections, but in Shekha’s estimate, turnout in the youngest age group was the lowest among all age groups in the September 30 vote. This year’s vote saw 58 percent of eligible voters turn out to polling stations – the lowest overall turnout since the Kurdish region gained autonomy. Some observers like Shekha doubt the validity of the official number, claiming the turnout was below 50 percent. 

“The number of young people rejecting the political process [in the Kurdish region] is increasing for a number of reasons: the shrinking freedoms, the lack of opportunities and the worsening economic situation,” he says.

In his opinion, this trend will continue, as the new Kurdish government is unlikely to be able to significantly improve the economic situation.

For Mansour, disillusionment with the political process among the youth and other parts of the Iraqi Kurdish society could be dangerous for the KRG.

“If the patronage networks are no longer able to be sustained, if the Kurds become increasingly aggrieved because they don’t have their daily needs [met], and if they realise they can’t change things through democratic institutions, there is going to be some kind of conflict between the citizens and the elite, probably a protest movement to begin [with],” he says.

Iraq’s Kurdish region has seen sporadic protests over the past few years across both KDP and PUK-dominated areas. In December last year, six protesters were killed and dozens wounded after an angry crowd stormed party headquarters and government buildings in Sulaimaniyah. Earlier this year, civil servants, teachers and doctors took to the streets of Erbil to protest salary cuts and payment delays; the police forces dispersed the crowd with tear gas, beating and arresting dozens.

Eight years ago, when the economic situation was much better, the region also saw mass protests. In early 2011, the ripple effects of the Arab Spring inspired thousands to take to the streets, angry at the corruption of the KRG; demonstrations took place at Kurdish universities. However, the protest wave was short-lived and was effectively suppressed by a sever security crackdown.

Both Mansour and Shekha agree that despite the simmering anger among the youth, a “Kurdish spring” is unlikely; a possible protest movement, in their opinion, would be organised and contained within the political opposition.

Yet, the kind of despair among the youth that kindled the Arab uprisings in 2010-2011 is increasingly evident in the Kurdish region’s growing exodus of young people. Hundreds of Iraqi Kurds have died each year since 2014 trying to migrate to Europe to seek a better life; the latest victim earlier this month was 19-year-old Danar Fatih Ahmed from the village of Chinara, near Sulaimaniyah.

At the cafe under Erbil’s citadel, pessimism seemed to be the dominant sentiment.

“For me, I don’t have any hope for the future,” says Hassan.

Mind the gap – the difference between the top and bottom of the Premier League looks to be wider than ever.

In the race for the title, just four points separate Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea after all three sides maintained their unbeaten starts to the season this weekend – the first time three teams have avoided defeat after 12 games of a top-flight campaign.

At the bottom, Fulham lost again, meaning they have made the third-worst start by any team at this stage of a Premier League campaign.

Those results – Manchester City winning the Manchester derby, Liverpool beating Fulham and Chelsea drawing with Everton – leave City two points clear of Liverpool, with Chelsea just two points further back in third.

Pep Guardiola’s side actually have two points fewer than they did this time last season, but perhaps more significant is what’s going on immediately below them.

City were eight points clear of second-placed Manchester United this time 12 months ago. Chelsea were third but are three points better off this time around. After their record-breaking 100 points haul last season, it seems City’s title rivals have stepped up a level to try and compete.

But how does that compare with previous seasons?

To put it in perspective, Liverpool have equalled their best start to a Premier League season, matching the total they achieved in 2002-03. Their points tally of 30 would have been enough to top the table at this stage in 18 of the previous 26 Premier League seasons.

And the top three’s combined points total of 90 is the most collected by the clubs in those positions at this stage of a Premier League season.

Mind the gap indeed.

Record-breaking Sarri

Chelsea may have failed to win this weekend but manager Maurizio Sarri was still able to create a little bit of history.

Sunday’s goalless draw at Stamford Bridge means the Italian has become the first manager to avoid defeat in his first 12 Premier League games, moving ahead of Frank Clark at Nottingham Forest in 1994-95.

It’s also just the second time in Chelsea’s history that the club have gone unbeaten in their first 12 games of a top-flight season. The first time they did so – in 2014-15 – they went on to win the league under Jose Mourinho.

Despite breaking the record, Sarri’s total of 28 points from 12 games is only the fifth best start by a Chelsea manager in their first 12 Premier League games. Top of the list is Guus Hiddink, who earned 31 points from his first 12 matches in 2009-10 (Carlo Ancelotti, Luis Felipe Scolari and Jose Mourinho were the other three).

Top five dominating bottom five

One of the reasons the top three have accrued so many points so far is their dominance over the teams at the bottom.

If you take the top five Premier League sides as a whole, they have won 19 out of the 20 meetings with the bottom five so far – with only Crystal Palace’s 2-2 draw against Arsenal last month the exception.

But is the gap between top and bottom in the Premier League widening? We asked Simon Gleave of data analysts Gracenote to dig deeper into the numbers.

He said: “With 40% of matches between the top and bottom five played, the big clubs are more dominant this season than ever before, winning all but one of these games. The top five’s win percentage over the bottom five is 95% and they have won 96.7% of the possible points.

“With 11 goals in 20 matches, the bottom five score 0.55 goals per match in these fixtures. This is the fourth lowest return in the 27 Premier League seasons. This season’s scoring rate of the bottom five against the top five is exactly half of what it was in the inaugural Premier League season (1992-93).

“There has been a remarkable difference in the scoring rate of the top five teams in these matches compared to previous Premier League seasons. The current top five clubs in the Premier League are scoring more than three goals per match against the bottom five, a figure which is unprecedented and nearly a goal per match higher than the average in these fixtures.”

Tough at the bottom?

All those points collected at the top is inevitably having a negative effect on those at the bottom. And while the bottom three may only have four wins between them so far this season, it is a manager of a team just outside the relegation zone who is under pressure going into the international break.

Southampton’s failure to beat Watford on Saturday created an unwanted club record. The 1-1 draw means the Saints have failed to win any of their first six home games in a season for the first time in the club’s history.

The result also means Southampton are only out of the relegation zone on goal difference, increasing the pressure on boss Mark Hughes.

Hughes fulfilled his remit in keeping the Saints up last season, but his record of five wins from 24 games in charge means he has the worst win ratio – 20.8% – of any recent Saints manager.

Not only that, it is also the worst win ratio of Hughes’ managerial career.

The 55-year-old has won just three out of 20 Premier League games in charge, averaging 0.8 points per game. Of managers who have taken charge of 10 Premier League games or more since Hughes was appointed at St Mary’s, only Slavisa Jokanovic, David Wagner and Neil Warnock have a worse points-per-game ratio – the managers of the three teams currently below Saints in the table.

If Southampton maintain their current points-per-game ratio, they are on course to end the season on 30 points. No team has ever avoided relegation from the Premier League with such a tally, with West Brom’s total of 34 points the lowest in 2004-05.

And finally… Newcastle’s league of nations

Newcastle beat Bournemouth 2-1 on Saturday to make it back-to-back wins in the Premier League for the first time since April and climb out of the relegation zone.

But what was also interesting about the Magpies’ win at St James’ Park was Rafael Benitez’s team selection.

The Spaniard used 14 players from 14 different nations during Saturday’s win, only the sixth time that has happened in the Premier League.

Curiously, the previous five occasions all occurred in 2011 and involved just two clubs – Arsenal and West Brom.

11 November 2018: Newcastle v Bournemouth: Martin Dubravka (Slovakia), Fabian Schar (Switzerland), Federico Fernandez (Argentina), Paul Dummett (Wales), DeAndre Yedlin (USA), Matt Ritchie (Scotland), Mohamed Diame (Senegal), Ki Sung-yueng (South Korea), Kenedy (Brazil), Ayoze Perez (Spain), Salomon Rondon (Venezuela), Isaac Hayden (England), Ciaran Clark (Republic of Ireland), Christian Atsu (Ghana).

27 December 2011: Arsenal v Wolves:Wojciech Szczesny (Poland), Per Mertesacker (Germany), Laurent Koscielny (France), Thomas Vermaelen (Belgium,) Johan Djourou (Switzerland), Alex Song (Cameroon), Tomas Rosicky (Czech Republic), Yossi Benayoun (Israel), Aaron Ramsey (Wales), Mikel Arteta (Spain), Andrey Arshavin (Russia), Gervinho (Ivory Coast), Robin van Persie (Netherlands), Marouane Chamakh (Morocco).

26 November 2011: Arsenal v Fulham: Wojciech Szczesny (Poland), Andre Santos (Brazil), Per Mertesacker (Germany), Thomas Vermaelen (Belgium), Abou Diaby (France), Johan Djourou (Switzerland), Alex Song (Cameroon), Aaron Ramsey (Wales), Mikel Arteta (Spain), Andrey Arshavin (Russia), Theo Walcott (England), Gervinho (Ivory Coast), Robin van Persie (Netherlands), Marouane Chamakh (Morocco).

19 November 2011: Arsenal v Norwich:Wojciech Szczesny (Poland), Andre Santos (Brazil), Laurent Koscielny (France), Per Mertesacker (Germany), Thomas Vermaelen (Belgium), Johan Djourou (Switzerland), Yossi Benayoun (Israel), Alex Song (Cameroon), Aaron Ramsey (Wales), Mikel Arteta (Spain), Andrey Arshavin (Russia), Theo Walcott (England), Gervinho (Ivory Coast), Robin van Persie (Netherlands).

23 October 2011: Arsenal v Stoke: Wojciech Szczesny (Poland), Andre Santos (Brazil), Laurent Koscielny (France), Per Mertesacker (Germany), Johan Djourou (Switzerland), Emmanuel Frimpong (Ghana), Alex Song (Cameroon), Aaron Ramsey (Wales), Mikel Arteta (Spain), Andrey Arshavin (Russia), Theo Walcott (England), Gervinho (Ivory Coast), Robin van Persie (Netherlands), Marouane Chamakh (Morocco).

23 January 2011: West Brom v Blackburn: Boaz Myhill (Wales), Jonas Olsson (Sweden), Marek Cech (Slovakia), Gabriel Tamas (Romania), Gonzalo Jara (Chile), James Morrison (Scotland), Chris Brunt (Northern Ireland), Jerome Thomas (England), Youssouf Mulumbu (DR Congo), Paul Scharner (Austria), Peter Odemwingie (Nigeria), Somen Tchoyi (Cameroon), Roman Bednar (Czech Republic).

Sometimes your mouth is just not in the mood to follow instructions from your brain.

We all know the feeling of having no control over the words coming out of our mouths. And now, that feeling has been encapsulated in the “don’t say it” meme.

The meme, which has spread rapidly over Twitter,  is all about those situations where you end up saying the one thing you’re trying your hardest not to.  

This is a classic. 

So relatable. 

Some jokes should not be made. 

Let those dad jokes out. 

TFW Ariana Grande is always on your mind.

When you’re feeling generous but not really.

And finally this all too familiar situation at the bar. 

These tweets are proof that we need to fund more research into a cure for verbal diarrhoea.

Names marked with an asterisk* in this piece have been changed to protect the interviewees’ anonymity.

Madurai, India – In a southern Indian village near Madurai, at around 1am one day in February 2010, Annam*, a daily wage labourer who lived with her bedridden husband, was shaken awake from her sleep by panicked neighbours.

“They were screaming that something had happened to my daughter,” said the now 60-year-old.

She ran to her daughter’s hut, two streets from her own, to find her child’s charred body outside, wrapped in several jute sacks.

She died six hours later in hospital from burn injuries. 

Shortly afterwards, Annam’s son-in-law was arrested for murder.

He has now served two years of a life sentence in Madurai Central Prison. 

After her daughter’s death, Annam took responsibility for her grandchildren, a girl and a boy then aged nine and six.

“For years, I did back-breaking work at construction sites and as an agricultural labourer to put them through school,” she said. 

Annam earns about Rs120 ($1.66) a day.

When 17-year-old Pallavi* graduated, Annam could not afford to send her granddaughter to college. 

That’s when KR Raja, a differently abled prison activist and social worker living in Madurai, stepped in to help.

“He said he had spoken to my father in prison, and wanted to find a way to help us,” said Pallavi. ”At first, I just couldn’t believe it. Why would he care so much? But he sounded so kind and was persistent.” 

Although Pallavi wanted to go to college, she knew it was impractical.

“I’d planned to take a tailoring job, but Raja said the GNE (his non-profit, the Global Network for Equality)  would support me, and that I shouldn’t stop my studies. He helped me apply to several colleges, often travelling with us to meet the principal and to explain my situation.” 

She is now enrolled at a college in Madurai and the GNE subsidises her tuition fees, amounting to Rs12,000 ($165) a year. 

GNE also provides the family with living expenses each month.  

“I never dreamed I’d go to college,” said Pallavi. “I feel so grateful to be in a better position to care of my grandma and family when I graduate.”

On September 30, in the southern Indian suburb of Pudhur, a 60-year-old man fled his home in the middle of the night after killing his wife. 

I’ve seen even hardened criminals change their behaviour after family visits. I tell them that while I can’t promise to solve all their problems, I can promise to never let them face them alone.

KR Raja, activist

Across the world, it has been estimated that around half of female victims of homicides are killed by partners or family members.

There are no statistics for the number of women killed by their spouses each year but, under Indian law, three categories – dowry deaths, encouragement of female suicide and death following cruelty by the husband – deal with the issue.

For an idea of the magnitude of the problem, National Crimes Records Bureau data from 2016 – the most recent available figures – show 39,723 cases of dowry death pending trial in court with 16,315  fresh cases registered that year. 

There were 12,282 cases of abatement to suicide pending trial with 6,223 new cases registered. And 515,904 cases of cruelty by the husband pending trial, with 1,68,053 cases registered that year. 

Children of prisoners are three times more likely to suffer from mental health problems, Raja told Al Jazeera, because of the shame, stigma and unresolved psychological issues they face in their impressionable years.

Supporting hundreds of children

Since 2012, he has made it his mission to seek out the children in family cases involving crime and murder.

For some, he ensures their safety. For others, his GNE organisation provides financial assistance and emotional support to help them get through school. 

The level of financial support depends on the child’s needs and is paid in instalments, directly to the child’s or guardian’s bank account. 

GNE has been operating for six years and currently supports over 200 destitute children of prisoners, aged between eight and 18.

The NGO focuses on those who were left parentless, essentially orphaned, after one parent murdered the other and ended up serving a life sentence.

Born in the southern Indian village of Kallakurichi, 300km from Madurai, Tamil Nadu, Raja is no stranger to adversity.

At eight months, the eldest son of an agriculturist was struck by a fever.

A local doctor treated Raja with a powerful concoction of medicines that left him paralysed. 

Bedridden and unable to walk, his earliest memories are filled with the sacrifices his parents made. 

“They sold property, almost invited financial ruin to ensure that I had good schooling and medical care,” he said.

At the age of five, he remembers how his mother, under psychological strain, laced a glass of milk with poison and suggested they both drink it.

“She said that if we both died, my father could marry again and start afresh. I knocked the glass out of her hands. I wanted to live, to lead a meaningful life. I told her I would take care of us all.” 

In the years that followed, Raja struggled to secure his independence.

He endured painful physiotherapy to walk with the help of crutches. He challenged himself to keep a steady gait on muddy paddy fields and rocky village roads.

In 2010, he arrived at Puducherry Central Prison.

As a master’s student in social work at Puducherry University, for his final year thesis, he set out to interview 70 imprisoned men, many of whom had killed their wives in heated arguments.

Over the course of these interviews, Raja realised that they were ridden with anxiety over the fate of their children, some even begging him to check on them.

“I began tracing their children and reporting back to them and was struck by their relief and joy,” he says. 

In 2010, measures for prison reform were set in motion by R Natraj, the then director-general of police and chief of prisons for the state of Tamil Nadu. 

The inmates were being taught yoga. Prisoners grew organic produce and were gainfully employed in small manufacturing units and cottage industries run inside jails. 

Raja saw Natraj as a mentor. 

“Prison reform has always focused on how to reintegrate convicts into society once they’ve been released,” said Natraj. “But in order to ensure that they don’t revert to a life of crime, you need to change their attitudes when they are still in prison.” 

Easing prisoners’ minds about their families and ensuring they have better social support and resources to be productive in jail is critical, he said, in the evolution and rehabilitation of the prisoner. 

“Raja’s work addresses this and engages public interest in these issues.”

‘I’ve seen hardened criminals change their behaviour’

To access prisoners in jail, Raja had to register as a non-governmental organisation. 

In 2011, he applied to study at Kanthari in Trivandrum, Kerala. 

The school trains social entrepreneurs who wish to create change anywhere in the world. 

Paul Kronenberg, Kanthari founder and codirector, remembers Raja as shy, humble and very dedicated. 

“We realised that the impact of Raja’s work has a reach beyond the lives of the children and prisoners he helps. It extends to entire families, communities and society,” he said.

With Kanthari’s support, Raja travelled to Nepal and spent three months observing the work of an organisation that had similar goals – Prisoner Assistance Nepal. 

On his return, Kanthari provided him with funding to establish GNE.

Raja then began to visit Pallayamkottai prison in Tirunelveli, which had several prisoners serving life sentences for killing their spouses. 

He knew he had to win their trust.

On his first day, a prisoner cruelly asked him: “Are you sure you can help us when you look like you need help yourself?” 

Over time, however, when Raja brought them news from their homes and families, traced missing children and provided financial and educational support to their sons and daughters who would have otherwise dropped out of school, they embraced him. 

Today, financial assistance comes in fits and starts. Raja is helped by friends, donors and volunteers from all over the world.

“I’ve seen even hardened criminals change their behaviour after family visits,” said Raja. “I tell them that while I can’t promise to solve all their problems, I can promise to never let them face them alone.”

Captain Steph Houghton can win as many as 70 more caps for England, says head coach Phil Neville after the 30-year-old earned her 100th on Sunday.

Neville’s side lost 2-0 to Sweden in Rotherham, as Houghton became the Lionesses’ 11th centurion.

But Neville says the result was more on her mind than the landmark.

“The type of person she is, she is more worried about how the team are and how we can react to this and improve,” Neville told BBC Sport.

“Steph’s not bothered about her 100th cap – she wanted just to play the game.

“Her overriding emotions today will be that she wanted to win the game of football, because she is going to go on to play another, 50, 60, 70 caps.

“You always want to celebrate something as special as today with a victory, but it wasn’t to be.

“I still think it’s a fantastic achievement. It doesn’t take anything away from her achievement at all.”

Should Houghton earn the number of caps Neville suggests, she would get close to overtaking the tally of Reading midfielder Fara Williams, who is England’s most-capped player with 170 appearances.

The Manchester City skipper has been a stalwart for the Lionesses since she won her first cap against Russia in March 2007.

But Sunday’s game was ultimately not the celebration many of the lively 9,561 fans at Rotherham’s New York Stadium were hoping to see on the day of her landmark 100th senior appearance.

The visitors’ robust defensive display inflicted the Lionesses’ first defeat on home soil since 2015, and just a second loss in 12 matches under Neville.

Olympic silver medallists Sweden are ranked ninth in the world, six places below Neville’s side, before next summer’s Women’s World Cup in France.

Remember Trump’s campaign promise to “drain the swamp”? 

John Oliver does. In the 16-minute clip above from Last Week Tonight, he breaks down exactly how well he thinks Trump has done when it comes to this particular promise.

Spoiler alert: he doesn’t think it’s gone so well. And to illustrate why Oliver uses three different examples of the type of people currently in power in DC. 

“It seems pretty clear at this stage that Trump has in no way ‘drained the swamp’,” says Oliver. “What he has done is drained the phrase of its original meaning.”