Tony Blair says Net Zero is “doomed to fail”. In a new report, the former PM’s think tank argues that the climate debate has become “irrational”, and that racing to phase out fossil fuels is counterproductive. Energy Secretary Ed Miliband says he agrees with a lot of the report, though Politico reports that party activists are “incredibly pissed off” at the Labour grandee’s intervention. Pakistan says it has “credible intelligence” that India is planning an imminent military strike within the next 24 to 36 hours. Islamabad’s claim comes after Delhi accused its neighbour of supporting militants who killed 26 tourists in Kashmir last week. Wales has set up a £1m wet-weather fund to try to attract visitors during the famously soggy Welsh summer. Small business owners will be able to apply for up to £20,000 to install the likes of covered seating, roofs over queueing areas and “mudproof carparks”. Take that, Provence.

Can Blair talk the left out of Net Zero?

I had never thought of Tony Blair as the little boy in the story of the emperor’s new clothes, says John Rentoul in The Independent. But that is precisely the role he has now adopted in the conversation about climate change. “Political leaders by and large know that the debate has become irrational,” the former prime minister writes in a new report on the madness of Net Zero, “but they’re terrified of saying so.” There is a gaping credibility gap at the heart of climate policy, he says, because while voters understand global warming, they are starting to resent being asked to make financial and lifestyle sacrifices when “they know that their impact on global emissions is minimal”.

Blair is the right man to make the case against Net Zero. The right is already against it, which makes it harder for Labour to question. Blair is “used to being accused of betrayal by those on his own side”, and he isn’t looking for votes, so it costs him nothing to confront the soft-headed green assumptions of the left directly. He knows how to marshal big hitters to his cause, on this occasion lining up two top scientists who support his change of heart on climate policy: David King, the UK’s former chief scientific adviser, and Myles Allen, the Oxford professor of atmospheric physics who invented the term “net zero” in 2009. And, crucially, we know that Keir Starmer listens to Blair. This is one of the most important issues on which the former prime minister can act both as a “candid friend”, and as an outrider, to “make an argument that needs to be made”.

Kemi Badenoch confirmed an “eye-popping fact” in an interview yesterday, says Emilio Casalicchio in Politico: the Tory leader takes four sugars in her tea. Four “very small teaspoons”, apparently, but still. No wonder she’s against the sugar tax.

Two speedboat racers in Arizona somehow survived after their powerboat went airborne at 200mph, did a complete backflip and then crashed into the water. The Freedom One Racing team said their crew, who were inside the boat’s covered cabin, were “just a little banged up” after the crash on Lake Havasu. On the plus side, says ABC News, they still managed to cross the finish line, and their top speed of 200.1mph was enough to win them the competition. Totally worth it.

How “Carnage Carney” took the fight to Trump

It’s hard to overstate just how improbable Mark Carney’s election victory in Canada looked a few months ago, says Edward Luce in the FT. The polls suggested the Liberal party he had inherited from Justin Trudeau was heading for a landslide defeat. And at a time when populism was on the march, Carney was – and is – pretty much the face of globalism and elitism. He worked for Goldman Sachs in London and New York, before heading up the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England. He later joined a global investment firm and promoted do-gooding ESG finance initiatives at the UN, “two abbreviations that would normally debar him from impolite company”. But then came Donald Trump, with his punitive tariffs and threats to annex Canada. In stark contrast to the “semi-Trumpian” Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre, Carney took a firm stance against this bullying – and “Canada First” lost out to “Canada Strong”.

We may soon see something similar in other countries, says The Washington Post. In Australia, which goes to the polls on Saturday, the conservative opposition party has fallen behind amid a backlash to Trump’s 25% tariff on steel and aluminium. The fact that they have been promising to “make Australia great again” and create a DOGE-like government efficiency initiative probably hasn’t helped. In Britain, Nigel Farage has notably distanced himself from the US president, even criticising Trump for giving “far too much” to Russia in negotiations over Ukraine and comparing his “Liberation Day” tariffs to Liz Truss’s premiership-ending mini-Budget. Conservative politicians who once hoped to ride Trump’s “populist wave to power” must now be worrying they’ll end up “crashing into the rocks”.

🏒🥊 The Carney campaign’s unofficial slogan was “Elbows Up”, an ice hockey term for playing tough and sticking up for yourself, says Dan Hodges in the Daily Mail. Carney himself certainly followed that mantra: when he played the sport at Oxford and Harvard, his “brutal approach” earned him the nickname “Carnage Carney”.

If you’ve ever wondered how to eat asparagus, says Sophia Money-Coutts on Substack, Debrett’s has you covered. In the company’s New Guide to Etiquette & Modern Manners, published in 1996, John Morgan explains that the vegetable should always be eaten with the left hand, and “never with a knife and fork”. You dip its tips into the accompanying sauce or dressing, eat down to about an inch and a half from the end, and discard the rest. “It is a solecism to guzzle up these stumps and leave nothing on your plate.”

Pope Francis had a great sense of humour, says Matthew Parris in The Times. He was once crossing St Peter’s Square when a pilgrim reached out with a gourd filled with the South American drink maté de yerba. Francis duly took a swig from the traditional silver pipe, prompting one of his entourage to exclaim: “Holy Father! Please don’t! It might be poisoned!” The pope was unmoved. “Don’t worry, my child,” Francis replied. “These are pilgrims, not cardinals.”

It’s a chunk of ice being transported from Greenland to be sold in Dubai nightclubs, says Eric Niiler in The Wall Street Journal. Arctic Ice, a two-year-old startup, grabs car-sized chunks from the frigid fjords, cuts them up with chainsaws and packs them into refrigerated containers for the 10,000-mile journey south. On arrival, the big blocks are carved into normal-sized spherical ice cubes, which sell for $100 per half dozen. The ice is marketed as cleaner and denser than other frozen water, supposedly meaning it doesn’t melt as easily. “It just makes your drink cold, and doesn’t add too much water,” says Valentin Pinault, who takes the ice with his 18-year-old Scotch. “It’s pure.”