Play the Budget game

Hello from the FT newsroom, where we are preparing for the big October 30 ritual that is the UK Budget.

Earlier this year, I asked our economics and our visual journalism teams to come up with a game that would help readers understand the trade-offs involved in a Budget. The result is this chancellor’s game we published this week. This is your chance to test whether you could run the UK economy and do better than our real chancellor Rachel Reeves. What would you do about taxes, the NHS, capital gains tax and the pension triple lock?

It’s free to play, so enjoy it.

My choices this week

1. If one thing is certain about the US presidential election, it is surely its brazenness. Scandals that would grab headlines and ruin campaigns 20 years ago now get shrugged off entirely. The FT’s US national editor Edward Luce asks: has America lost its shame? To read this story for free, click here to download our FT Edit app.
2. Israel has been accused of a “systematic targeting” of healthcare workers in Lebanon. With more than 150 medical and rescue workers now killed in strikes, hospitals are having to close, and paramedics forced to abandon the wounded.
3. After almost a decade of frenetic construction and investment, Saudi Arabia is tightening its belt. FT reporters in Riyadh explain what has prompted the palpable shift.
4. 23andMe is in serious trouble. The genetics start-up — once a high-flyer whose public listing turned its founder into a paper billionaire — has seen its share price plummet almost to the floor. What went wrong? (Free to read)
5. Thinking about your next career move? Something to consider: FT Alphaville pointed out that even the interns at Jane Street are making more money than Keir Starmer and Jay Powell.
6. A growing cohort of employers are trying to revolutionise the work canteen; out with drab, long rooms with strip lighting, and in with high-quality restaurants. This week HTSI visits some of the best work canteens in the world. (Free to read)

Thanks for reading,

Roula Khalaf, FT editor

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