An ambitious new plan will see the Labour government reaffirm its commitment to green energy with substantial investment in carbon capture initiatives.

The government plans to allocate £22 billion over 25 years for carbon capture and storage (CCS) projects, a move Chancellor Rachel Reeves has described as part of a "drumbeat" of measures designed to "kickstart economic growth".

What is carbon capture? 
Carbon capture is "one of the most important technologies to address climate change", said The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). It is the process by which atmospheric carbon is caught from concentrated industrial emissions at their source, preventing them from entering the atmosphere at all.

Two CCS projects in Teesside and Merseyside will receive funding as part of efforts to establish the UK as the "largest carbon storage market in Europe," capable of holding carbon equivalent to nearly 200 years of UK emissions, said the Mirror.

What are the downsides?
CCS sceptics "question using huge amounts of energy and resources to build massive machines in the name of fighting climate change", said the WSJ. 

Other environmentalists suggest the money could be better spent elsewhere. Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK, told the Mirror funds could go into "creating new jobs in the green industries of the future", or creating a "nationwide home insulation programme" to help keep energy bills low. 

Will it work for the UK?
While CCS is central to the government's plan to achieve net zero by 2050, some have questioned the "commercial and technical feasibility" of the process "at any scale", said the Financial Times. 

"Several polluting factories and power plants" across the country are attempting to link to new carbon capture facilities, but "no one is yet capturing and storing emissions in anything like the quantity the UK is aiming for". The success of carbon capture in the UK relies upon whether the government can "make good on promises of support" through financial backing, the paper said.

The FBI has warned about a potentially devastating cryptocurrency scam called "pig butchering".

The con, which CBS News said could "wipe out someone's life savings", has been seen increasingly over the last five years and, as China has cracked down on the operation, it has spread around the globe.

Fattening up
The operation was given its eye-catching name because it involves "fattening up" victims before taking everything they have. The operators assume false online identities and spend months "financially grooming" their victims to win their trust and get them to invest on "fraudulent cryptocurrency websites", said CNN.

The process involves "building seemingly intimate relationships with victims", said Wired, and the "attacks often start by texting potential targets out of the blue and getting them talking".

Deepening the levels of criminality involved, many of the scammers are themselves victims of human trafficking, according to a CNN investigation last year.

The FBI estimates that pig butchering scams stole nearly $4 billion from tens of thousands of Americans last year, a 53% increase on the year before. It's "theft at a scale so large", said CNN, that investigators are calling it a "mass transfer of wealth from middle-class Americans to criminal gangs".

Nigeria to the Isle of Man
Beijing has "made a concerted effort" in recent months to "crack down on pig butchering schemes", said Wired, but the activity is now "proliferating around the world".

Since 2021, Dubai has emerged as the "epicentre of pig butchering outside Southeast Asia", and it's also prominent in "multiple African countries" because of "an existing culture of organised scamming".

Closer to home, a "seaside hotel and former bank offices on the Isle of Man" have been used by scammers conning victims in China out of millions of dollars, a BBC World Service investigation found earlier this year.

Mina Chiang, the founder and director of Humanity Research Consultancy, told Wired that fraud is "not being seen as a serious crime – not like drugs, not like terrorism". Chiang says "we need to start shifting that idea, because it creates the same kind of damage", and "maybe even more because the amount of money we're talking about is so huge".

Devon: Abbey Cottage, Honiton
Picturesque cottage in the Blackdown Hills, next to the ruins of Dunkeswell Abbey. 3 beds, shower, kitchen, 2 receps, garden, garage. £630,000; Stags

Devon: The Old Bakehouse, Tuckenhay, Totnes
A beautifully refurbished bakehouse in a waterside setting overlooking Bow Creek and dating back to the early 1800s. 5 suites, 1 further bed, kitchen/living room, recep, garden, barns, garage. £1.25m; Knight Frank

Carmarthenshire: Cliff House, Laugharne
This imposing Italianate villa-style house is perched above Dylan Thomas’s writing shed and boathouse. The property enjoys sweeping views over the Taf Estuary and terraced gardens. Main suite, 2 further beds, family bath, kitchen, 2 receps, self-contained 1-bed flat, garden, garage, parking. £1.35m; Country Living

Wiltshire: Yew Tree Cottage, Court Hill, Potterne
Double-fronted 17th-century thatched cottage with views across to the foothills of Bath. 3 beds, family bath, shower, kitchen/breakfast room, 2 receps, summer house, garden, garage. £685,000; Fine & Country

The era of the peace dividend is at an end
The Telegraph editorial board
Iran's assault on Israel "has once again brought into sharp relief the paucity of British air defence assets in theatres closer to home", says The Telegraph. The RAF's jets and Royal Navy's vessels "appear ill-equipped for the task of intercepting ballistic missiles" and "our existing arrangements may not be sufficient to ensure the security of our homeland". A clear pathway must be set out "for defence spending to reach at least 2.5% of GDP".

Chin up, Wes, things really aren't that bad
Emma Duncan in The Times
Despite the doom and gloom emanating from the government about the NHS, "it's actually not that bad", writes Emma Duncan. "Recent data shows that 71% of people judge their experiences with their GP to be positive" and it is "caring for and curing millions of sick people every year". We could all do with a bit more positivity – "the politicians should stop talking the country down" and "we should stop talking them down".

Varadkar seems intent on ensuring Ireland continues to haunt Starmer's Britain
Finn McRedmond in The Irish Times
When it comes to Ireland "there is plenty for Labour to learn from its forebears' mistakes", says Finn McRedmond. The Conservatives "ignored the realities of Brexit and the Northern Irish border" and consequently "Ireland haunted the Tories". While "a Border poll is far from a priority for Labour", there remains "a huge amount of space between preparing actively for a poll and pretending the question doesn't exist altogether".