What happened
The British government yesterday unveiled its plan to increase defence spending by £15 billion over the next four years, but Treasury documents show that almost a third of the funding has yet to be found.

The plan requires an additional £4.7 billion to be identified in the autumn budget, leaving prospective PM Andy Burnham facing difficult choices over tax rises or spending cuts. Keir Starmer said frontline public services would be protected, with savings instead coming from cancelled infrastructure projects and efficiency measures.

Who said what
Starmer warned that there were “no easy answers” to closing the funding gap. But when the “smoke cleared” from the “parliamentary fusillade” of the defence spending announcement, there was “something hard to miss in the middle of the battlefield: a big black hole”, said Hans van Leeuwen in The Telegraph.

What next?
The plan at least “offers clarity”, said Larisa Brown in The Times, but “not the cash needed”. The “major projects lack long-term investment” and the “shorter-term ones do not have all the money they need to succeed”. Analysts pointed out that Burnham will have to outline how the remaining funding will be raised while also adhering to the government’s fiscal rules.

What happened
Shetland councillors have given their support to an initial proposal to fund an “economically transformative” £1.5 billion network of undersea tunnels connecting the islands that could be completed within eight years.

Tunnels connecting Mainland – Shetland’s largest island – to Yell, then from Yell to Unst, Whalsay and Bressay, are under initial consideration.

Who said what
Council-run ferries, which currently support nine islands at a cost of £23 million a year, have “served us well for decades”, but are no longer viable, said the council’s transport chairperson Moraig Lyall. “The tunnel is the answer.”

Shetland has “taken inspiration” from neighbouring archipelago the Faroe Islands, which has built 20 undersea tunnels since the 1960s, said the BBC – including the “world’s only subsea roundabout”.

Andy Sloan, executive vice president at engineering firm Cowi, which has been advising Shetland Islands Council, said the project was relatively straightforward from an engineering perspective and described the mood as “positive”.

What next?
Cowi’s tunnelling timeline allocates three years for preliminary work and five years for construction. However, any final decision is provisional and subject to the availability of funding, said the Shetland News.

A crisis is brewing on the small Caribbean island of St Lucia. For “more than a decade” residents have lived with an “intermittent water supply”, according to The Guardian. But the most recent emergency has upended day-to-day life for thousands, turning everything from “normal hygiene” practices to “food preparation” into a struggle.

And despite “millions of dollars of investment” – including $80 million (£60 million) from World Bank financing – the funds have merely “scratched the surface” when it comes to tackling the water supply issues that are pushing islanders “to the brink”.

Water supply is among St Lucia’s “most politically contentious issues”, with the two major political parties, Labour and the United Workers Party, “routinely trading accusations” that resources have been “mismanaged”, said The Guardian. The island has a sole water company – the Water and Sewerage Company (Wasco) – that therefore has the monopoly on supply.

Wasco’s provision of water to homes and businesses is hampered by service issues including leaks, blockages “and damage to key transmission lines”, said the St. Lucia Times. But there is also a “complex mix of challenges” at play, ranging from climate change to the island’s “ageing infrastructure”. Rainfall patterns are now far “less predictable” and the island grapples with “drier years alternating with wetter ones”.

As a temporary solution, citizens have been urged to “engage in rainwater harvesting”, added the St. Lucia Times. In the longer term, the government has already promised “significant investment” along with a “dedicated committee” to examine Wasco’s future. The supplier’s slogan declares that “water is life”, said the newspaper. If that is the case, it is also true that “the company and its systems are gravely ailing”.