Direct HIV financing can work. But, under the Trump administration, will it? That's the question I set out to try and answer over the months I spent reporting this article.

Pistachio is the greatest flavour of anything but macarons are dusty air trash.

I am no saint, there is definitely grumbling about it.

My personal belief is that every second spent in an airport or on an aeroplane is one of great personal indignity.

I am LTTA but if you are in a relationship with an ETTA you must adhere to their way of doing things, otherwise you are simply torturing them.

No one wants to be the world capital of crypto-kidnappings This story involves a rogue tax official, bien sûr.

This week on my newsletter: why has France become the global capital of crypto-related kidnappings?

There’s been an average of one every 2.5 days in France this year. Absolutely wild

open.substack.com/pub/millefeu...

I have found it impossible to read about this story because I cannot compute 'compute' as a noun.

Viktor Orbán leaves an oversized legacy for the global far-right Since 2010, we haven't been living in Obama’s world, but Orbán’s.

I wrote about Orbán's hideous global legacy.

www.crikey.com.au/2026/04/14/v...

I am a little bit obsessed with Georges Méliès and this is wonderful.

Go on my son.

True, this was a once-in-72-year special to mark the FA Cup. I'm sure I won't be troubled by such an occasion again.

Spent a week on a Greek island to recover. It worked.

At the end of every episode, a cliffhanger just tantalising enough to make me set through 45 minutes of the that-explains-everything flashbacks, predictable plot points and painful exposition.

Paradise: fun concept but the dialogue is so bad it makes me groan loudly every 3 minutes or so. Unsustainable.

Well I suppose you're entitled to your opinion...

I promise you, it's the other way round with the Vale.

I'll hold it for you while I'm watching Vale in the final at Wembley.

I grew up right next to Brown Edge! I'll be there with Ian if we make the final.

Typical Observer. Thousands of Vale fans across the country but they manage to find the poshest, most middle class, cosmopolitan fan I have ever come across in my life!

Killing myself laughing over this comment on the (wonderful) One Vale Fan forum about this piece. No pleasing some people!

I only had 'high tea' or 'afternoon tea' for the first time at fancy restaurants because friends visiting from outside the UK wanted to do it.

It's a trick question and the answer is based on region and class (as with all things Life in the UK). High/afternoon tea is for the posh and does indeed take place around 3pm. But many of us, 'tea' is either the afternoon or evening meal, depending on where you live. Where I'm from, 'tea' is dinner

Yes but here's the advanced question: what time is tea?

You'll be drinking it next...

Thank you, I believe we can do it!

It goes without saying that the Shanahans didn’t buy Port Vale for the glory. They bought it to revitalise a part of the country that has been devastated by austerity and is badly in need of support the government will not provide – researchers from Staffordshire University reported last year that Stoke-on-Trent was experiencing a “poverty crisis”, with more than a third of children living in low-income homes. During lockdown in 2020, the club provided 375,000 meals around the city. Vale Park, a ground that never felt welcoming to me as a young girl, now provides ante-natal care to women in the community, as well as mental health services, clothes and food banks, and college courses. The foundation runs a football side for bereaved dads.

One of the remarkable things that has happened at my childhood club is that it was bought by a local businesswoman who transformed it into a way to support a community abandoned to austerity by successive governments.

I used to pray we'd be bought by a celebrity or oligarch. This is so much better

(I have done a lot of things that ten-year-old Megan living in Stoke-on-Trent could only have dreamed of, but writing about Port Vale in The Observer might be the ultimate.)

For this weekend's @theobserveruk.bsky.social, I wrote about the heartbreak and wonder of being a lifelong Port Vale fan, ahead of our quarter-final FA Cup match (!) against Chelsea this weekend 🖤🤍💛.

WNBA Players Had an Ace Up Their Sleeve in Pay Negotiations: A Nobel Laureate Harvard economist Claudia Goldin helped WNBA players win a nearly 400% raise. Starting this season, players’ average salary will top $580,000.

After Claudia Goldin became the first woman to win a solo Nobel in economics, she got hundreds of invitations.

She accepted three.

One was advising WNBA players on a labor deal. She helped players land the biggest % raise in US sports history.
www.wsj.com/economy/wnba...

I was just going to say, no point in using it for research when you would just have to go back and fact-check the research anyway...

I really cannot recommend this podcast more highly for those wanting to understand sex testing in sport.