Thousands of negotiators from countries worldwide are meeting in Ottawa this week to draft the first global treaty aimed at halting soaring plastic pollution.

The talks, the fourth of five meetings of the United Nations Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for Plastics, present a "once-in-a-lifetime opportunity", said Inger Andersen, executive director of the UN's Environment Programme.

The "hoped-for treaty" aims to limit plastic production by 2040, said Reuters. If agreed, it could be "the most significant deal" on climate-warming emissions since the 2015 Paris Agreement.

How bad is the plastic pollution problem?
Plastic production currently accounts for 5% of all global carbon emissions, according to a report by the US federal Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. And the industry is on an "exponential growth trajectory", said The Guardian. The report's "stunning" estimates suggest that the industry could account for 20% of the world's carbon footprint by 2050.

The report makes clear that plastic production is a "wrecking ball for our climate", said Neil Tangri, science and policy director at the environmental justice group Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives. It provides the "strongest evidence to date on the need to stop and reverse the expansion of plastic production".

What challenges do these climate talks face?
Countries became "divided" on the treaty's scope during previous talks, said Reuters. Participants are now under pressure to find "common ground", with negotiators in Ottawa facing a "tough task".

Participating nations must decide whether the agreement should focus on health (both human and the environment), limiting plastic production, restricting chemical use – or "any combination of the above", said The Associated Press.

The greatest challenge is resistance from major oil- and gas-producing and exporting countries. Known as the Like-Minded Countries, Saudi Arabia, Iran and China have all opposed plastic production caps, and their resistance could limit the scope of the agreement.

"Production is at the centre of everything," Björn Beeler, international coordinator for the International Pollutants Elimination Network, told AP News. "And it's going to get supercharged. It's not about oceans. It's more about oil."

"When is a biscuit actually a cake?" Britain's Value Added Tax (VAT) rules have long been the butt of such jokes.

VAT rates in the UK have variously been described as "mysterious" and "absurd", said the BBC, but the duty remains central to the government's tax-and-spend plans, bringing in £168 billion to the Treasury last year. 

What is exempt?
There seems little rhyme or reason why some goods are charged at the standard rate of 20%, and others at 5% or zero.

Biscuits are an especially "tricky tax terrain", said The Economist. A McVitie's chocolate digestive, for example, faces a 20% VAT levy owing to the "overindulgent chocolate coating", while a plain one is "unscathed" at 0%. Famously, a 1991 court ruling found Jaffa Cakes to be biscuits, despite their name, and therefore also exempt from VAT.

Women who have undergone surgery for breast cancer are exempt from paying VAT on their bras. But campaigners say everyone should be exempt since bras are a basic necessity.

Why are some goods VAT-free and not others?
The argument for VAT exemptions is primarily based on fairness, as cutting the levy on "essential" goods helps the poorest in society. But this does not always stack up. Toilet paper is deemed to be "luxury goods" and is charged at 20%, while caviar and helicopter rides are classed as "essentials" and are VAT exempt.

The £247 million that the toilet roll levy rakes in for the Treasury each year may be "pennies to the government", said the Daily Express, but it "has a much greater impact on UK households, and disproportionately affects the most vulnerable in our society".

Does the system work?
Despite the estimated £40 billion that would be raised by bringing the UK into line with the OECD average for VAT reliefs, political considerations have long stymied any serious reform of the system.

"Wholesale reform", rather than "piece-by-piece tweaks", is needed, said The Economist, and "would focus the conversation on the overall tax system".

Of course, "some grumbling would be inevitable" and there would be almost certainly be "headlines about 'coffin taxes' and 'zoo levies'". But tax increases could be offset "by a cut to the standard 20% rate of VAT and by more generous benefits for the poorest" in order to "clean up" the tax system.

David Nicholls is a "literary paradox", said The Telegraph. The "One Day" author has "never won a major book prize, yet retains a virtually critic-proof common touch".

He's popular with readers "because he mines with exquisite intimacy the humdrum aspects of daily life", carving out a niche as "a poet of the mundane, like Larkin without the misanthropy". And "these qualities feel embedded in the DNA" of his sixth novel, "You Are Here".

Two "middle-aged and isolated" would-be lovers meet on a walking weekend in the Lake District, both burdened with the baggage of failed marriages, as well as "massive, unwieldy rucksacks", said The Times.

Marnie and Michael are the only walkers in their group "willing to persevere" with a coast-to-coast walk across northern England following a "series of cancellations, drop-outs and hissy fits about the low-grade towels in provincial hotels".

"You Are Here" shares "many of the winning ingredients" from his other bestsellers: "turbulent holidays, marital troubles, witty conversation, a friendship that might become love, plus fear of the wasted life".

Why is the 'sick note culture' so common among the British workforce?
Gavin Esler in The National 
Rishi Sunak's claims about the UK's so-called sick note culture are "nothing new", writes Gavin Esler. The "same trope" of "lazy scroungers" has been used "time after time" by politicians. Rather than "dividing us into 'hardworking' people and 'idlers'", the government should focus on figuring out "how to pay workers a fair and decent living wage for a hard day's work". 

Have Londoners forgotten how to stand up to anti-Semites?
Gavin Mortimer in The Spectator
Of the thousands protesting in London each week, some "genuinely seek peace in Gaza", writes Gavin Mortimer, but others march "because they are anti-Semites". This is "not the first time" such "bigotry" has been "paraded" through the capital. When fascists took to the streets in 1936, Londoners made clear "they weren't welcome". Now, "decent Britons" must again take a stand "peacefully but volubly" against those who would see Jews "chased out of town for good".

PM leads from front in boosting defence
The Daily Mail editorial board
Rishi Sunak's pledge to spend more on defence "in the face of chilling global threats" should be "warmly welcomed", says the Daily Mail. The state of our "woefully ill-equipped" Armed Forces leaves "Britain's interests and security" vulnerable, and it would be "extremely negligent" not to "improve the military's ability to defend the nation". Winston Churchill recognised that "far from provoking war", strong national defence "deterred dictators". It is "reassuring" that Sunak "has reached the same conclusion".