What happened
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander (pictured above) has dismissed suggestions that extensive Budget speculation has stalled business activity after months of whispers about possible tax rises. Media reports had hinted at increases to income tax rates – a move that would have breached Labour’s campaign pledge – until government sources said last week Chancellor Rachel Reeves had dropped the idea following improved fiscal forecasts.

Who said what
Former Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane told the BBC that the swirl of Budget rumours was a “fiscal fandango” that had “caused paralysis among businesses and consumers”. Alexander countered that “people always speculate in advance of a Budget”.

Reeves’ “leaked and counter-leaked” Budget on Wednesday will “finally answer a key question for an exhausted public”, said The Times’s editorial board: are she and Keir Starmer “the country’s fiscally responsible parents” or are they “powerless pushovers bending to the will of the mutinous MPs behind them?”

What next?
Reeves is still expected to announce a package of smaller tax measures in Wednesday’s Budget, along with policies aimed at easing living costs and reducing NHS waiting lists. Conservatives have demanded an inquiry into the leaks.

What happened
David Cameron has announced that he was diagnosed with prostate cancer after a high prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test led to a biopsy confirming the disease. The 59-year-old former prime minister said he also underwent an MRI scan before receiving the news, describing the moment as one every patient fears. His disclosure comes as the UK begins enrolling men in a major health trial known as Transform, which will compare screening methods with current NHS diagnostics. The £42 million project aims to determine whether early detection can be improved without subjecting men to unnecessary biopsies.

Who said what
Cameron told The Times he wanted to “add my name to the long list of people calling for a targeted screening programme”, saying men often “put things off” when it comes to their health.

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer for men in the UK, with about 55,000 new cases diagnosed each year, said Nadeem Badshah in The Guardian, but there is “no screening programme for the disease in the UK because of concerns about the accuracy of PSA tests”. However, in its last assessment the UK’s national screening committee “judged that the costs of prostate testing outweighed the benefits”, said Tom Whipple in The Times.

What next?
The National Screening Committee is expected to assess whether the evidence now supports having a national programme. Results from the Transform trial will help inform that decision, shaping future policy on the disease.

Protesters in Delhi wore oxygen masks and carried gas cylinders as they took to the streets last week to highlight the failure of authorities to tackle the city’s ever-worsening air pollution.

For the past month Delhi’s Air Quality Index, which measures the level of fine particulate matter that can clog lungs, has been “hovering” between 300 and 400, nearly 20 times the acceptable limit, said the BBC.

There’s a “dystopian” environment in the Indian capital as a particularly “persistent toxic haze” shrouds the city, with low wind and cooling temperatures preventing pollutants from dispersing, according to The Independent.

The situation is so severe that the Supreme Court of India has asked health authorities to cancel all outdoor sport in schools until the haze lifts. The court said allowing children to take part in such activities when pollution levels were at their peak would be like “putting them in a ‘gas chamber’”, said The Indian Express.

During the “miasma”, the rich “retreat to their houses, where air purifiers offer some respite”, said the Financial Times, and others “decamp for the cleaner climes of Himalayan hill stations”. But “the poor have to put up with the poison air”.

According to recent polling, almost four out of five households in the Delhi metropolitan area “have had at least one member fall ill due to toxic air in the past month”, said the Hindustan Times. One doctor at the Delhi teaching hospital said wards “are overflowing with people suffering from wheezing, breathlessness, burning eyes and fast-deteriorating COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease)”.