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Italy's Luca Dini Design & Architecture, known for its work in the luxury yachting sector, revealed new details about Saudi Arabia's latest tourist destination.

MILAN — Saudi Arabia‘s plans for its new ultra-luxury tourist destination, Sindalah Island, have come to fruition as it prepares to welcome its first visitors. The exclusive resort destination is part of Neom, an area that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman designated in 2017 as an emblem of the nation’s future and that lies at the northern tip of the Red Sea, facing the eastern coast of Egypt.

The firm of Italian architect and designer Luca Dini, which was tapped to spearhead the masterplan and the complete design, said Friday the island includes an 86 berth superyacht marina, yacht and golf clubs, a village, three five-star hotels with more than 550 ultra-premium rooms, villas and apartments, 38 restaurants, 51 boutiques and much more.

Covering more than 200 acres, Luca Dini Design & Architecture said the island draws inspiration from elegant Italian tourist destinations and aims to showcase Made in Italy not only through architecture and materials but also through lifestyle.

“The urban planning components are part of a harmonious and sustainable architectural context, respectful of the surrounding fragile marine environment,” Dini said. This is also in line with the Saudi government’s environmental sustainability goals.

The studio said the location will welcome visitors from “every corner of the world over the next few months.”

Dini founded his studio in 1996 in Florence. Over the years, Luca Dini Design & Architecture has risen to the fore for its involvement in the super yacht sector and its designs for luxury yachts. Dini expressed enthusiasm Friday over his participation in redefining experiential luxury.

“Sindalah Island is an extraordinary adventure that is redefining the model of sustainable urban design and we are proud to contribute with our know-how, consolidated over years of transversal experience in the world of nautical, design and international architecture, to the creation of a project that will redefine the very model of ‘experiential luxury,'” Dini said.

According to Neom’s website, the island, which is known for its diverse marine eco system, boasts Mariott Bonvoy apartments and a Four Seasons Resort. Sindalah Island is set to welcome up to 2,400 guests a day by 2028, and will also generate around 3,500 jobs, helping to drive the ongoing development of the Kingdom’s thriving hospitality and tourism industries, thereby supporting diversification of the economy in line with Saudi Vision 2030.

In October, a fleet of superyachts celebrated Sindalah’s debut as a top yachting destination. The celebration was attended by 650 guests, including royalty, Michelin-starred chefs and A-list celebrities. In October, it was also revealed that the Sindalah Yacht Club was developed in collaboration with Italian designer Stefano Ricci.

Inbound tourism in Saudi Arabia increased by 64.8 percent in 2023 versus 2022 to 109.3 million, according to the Saudi Arabian government’s ministry of tourism. The government’s investment in tourism spend also increased 24 percent.

Tourism projects like Sindalah Island are a significant part of the Saudi government’s strategy to drive the growth and diversification of its economy, working toward several of its Vision 2030’s goals, including increasing the private sector’s contribution to gross domestic product to 65 percent and increasing the contribution of non-oil exports from 16 to 50 percent, among others.

Zvi Kogan was abducted and killed in an “act of antisemitic terrorism,” Israel says

A missing Jewish community leader was found dead in the United Arab Emirates, Israel said on Sunday.

Israeli-Moldovan citizen Zvi Kogan, 28, went missing from Dubai on Thursday afternoon, prompting an investigation by Israel’s Mossad spy agency after suspicions were raised that he was abducted in an act of terrorism. Kogan, a rabbi, was an emissary of the Jewish Chabad movement to Abu Dhabi, where he lived with his wife.

Israel said on Sunday morning that Emirati authorities had found Kogan’s body, confirming fears in the local Jewish community.

“The murder of Zvi Kogan, of blessed memory, is an abhorrent act of antisemitic terrorism,” read a statement from Israel’s Prime Minister’s Office. “The State of Israel will use all means and will deal with the criminals responsible for his death to the fullest extent of the law.”

After the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on southern Israel that triggered the Gaza war, Israel warned its citizens and Jews that they might be the targets of attacks abroad by Iran or Iran-linked groups, among others. Amid these concerns, Israel had warned its citizens to limit foreign travel and minimize openly identifying themselves as Israeli or Jewish.

Israel didn’t name a party responsible for Kogan’s killing, but its National Security Council said on Sunday that it believes there is a continuing threat to Israelis and Jews in the region.

Israel suspects Uzbek citizens with ties to Iran were involved in Kogan’s abduction and murder, said a person familiar with the investigation. Iran has relied on Uzbek citizens in the past for foreign missions, the person said. The suspects are believed to have fled to Turkey, where their cars were found, the person said.

Israel has had long-running concerns about Iranian state actors trying to kill or abduct Israelis abroad. Iranian intelligence agents moved to kill Israeli tourists in Turkey in 2022, in a plot uncovered by Israeli and Turkish authorities. Iran has also tried to kill Israeli diplomats, and Iran’s closely linked group, Hezbollah, attempted to kill a former Israeli defense minister. In August, Israel issued a rare travel warning against visiting countries that border Iran, amid threats that Iran-linked actors would try to harm Israelis.

Chabad said that Kogan’s body was found on Sunday morning, in a statement condemning his “murder.” Kogan helped establish the Chabad community in the U.A.E. Israel and the Emirates first normalized relations in the 2020 Abraham Accords.

Abu Dhabi’s Chabad provides Jewish religious support, including for religious ceremonies and celebrations, for the predominantly expat Jewish community in the U.A.E. and broader Gulf region, as part of a global mission to support Jewish life spanning 100 countries.

Chabad’s emissaries are known for supporting Jewish life in countries without large Jewish populations. In some countries, Chabad is the sole or main provider of kosher food or organized religious services. Some Chabad communities are forced to keep a low profile, including in Muslim countries, out of security concerns. Chabad emissaries have also been the victims of past terrorist attacks, including a deadly 2008 attack in Mumbai.

The death of Kogan is setback for the nascent Jewish community in the U.A.E. and broader ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. A Jewish community flourished following the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries in 2020, becoming one of the biggest in the Middle East outside Israel.

The Jewish presence in Dubai and Abu Dhabi represented the first new congregations in an Arab nation since the founding of Israel in 1948.

For the U.A.E., the establishment of the Jewish community was an endorsement of the country’s broader strategy to become an open-for-business hub that could attract global talent, regardless of religion or nationality.

Many Jews living in the U.A.E., an authoritarian monarchy, said they felt safer living in the Arab Gulf state than in cities in Europe. The U.A.E. built a compound with a mosque, church and synagogue in Abu Dhabi called the Abrahamic Family House. The Jewish population grew to roughly 2,000 in 2022, with a range of denominations, from liberal to Orthodox, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Since the start of the war in Gaza, however, Jews in the U.A.E. say they have been forced to keep a lower profile, conducting worship only in private homes rather than in public gatherings at hotels, though the synagogue at the Abrahamic compound has remained open.

The caution reflects how tensions over the war in the Middle East have rippled around the world, with attacks against Israelis and Jews in Europe and the U.S. Earlier this month, mobs in Amsterdam beat Israeli soccer fans after releasing a call for a “Jew hunt” on social media.

The Chabad movement has also been less visible in the U.A.E.

Chabad opened its first chapter in the U.A.E. in 2020 and has since helped establish a kosher certification agency, a kosher supermarket and a Jewish nursery in Dubai called Mini Miracles, according to the website of its U.A.E. chapter.

Jewish community members said Chabad-led public worship had also largely stopped over the past year. A Dubai police car was stationed Sunday outside the Mini Miracles nursery and security guards said teaching had been canceled. The supermarket, called Rimon, was also closed.

The movement’s chief rabbi in the U.A.E., Levi Duchman, was a visible ambassador for the Jewish community in the U.A.E. and had a public wedding in Abu Dhabi 2022, inviting journalists and senior Emirati figures. Videos of Arab Muslims and Jews dancing together at the event were shared widely on social media.

Brokerages seeking to meet the growing global appetite for U.S. stocks are extending their timetables

Round-the-clock trading is becoming a reality. Individual investors say it is about time.

For years, investors were confined to traditional Wall Street trading hours between 9:30 a.m. and 4 p.m. ET on weekdays and “extended hours” starting as early as 4 a.m. and ending at 8 p.m.

Now, brokerages seeking to meet the growing global appetite for U.S. stocks are extending their timetables.

Since Robinhood Markets HOOD 4.45%increase; green up pointing triangle and Interactive Brokers unveiled overnight trading in single stocks last year, other platforms have raced to expand their offerings. The New York Stock Exchange recently unveiled plans to extend trading on its all-electronic exchange to 22 hours a day. Charles Schwab plans to add individual stocks and hundreds of additional exchange-traded funds to its off-hours session. Webull recently expanded its 24-hour trading platform to include U.S. users, and Firstrade is launching overnight trading next year.

Investor appetite for stocks has been voracious in 2024. The S&P 500 has jumped 25%, driven by the artificial intelligence boom and expectations for interest-rate cuts. And investors have piled into funds tracking U.S. stocks since Donald Trump was elected president. Deutsche Bank said its measure of equity positioning posted its biggest weekly jump on record following the election, based on data going back to 2010.

Proponents of 24-hour trading say it gives investors more control over their portfolios and allows them to react faster to news outside regular trading hours. That, in turn, also lets investors manage their risk in real time, they say.

“If a door flies off a Boeing plane over the weekend, you don’t have to wait for the stock exchange to open up in the morning,” said Brian Hyndman, chief executive of Blue Ocean Technologies, the parent company of a platform that powers overnight trading for U.S. brokerages.

Late-night trading can expose traders to dangers, too. Thin volumes can leave markets vulnerable to sharp price swings, whereas huge volumes can lead to kinks in the platforms’ plumbing. Blue Ocean—which powers off-hours trading for Schwab and Webull, among others—saw an hourslong outage during the global markets rout in August. Blue Ocean says it has since upgraded to a new technology platform.

Most of the enthusiasm for 24-hour trading has come from amateur traders and those in Asia where market hours don’t overlap with those of the U.S.

Some institutional investors, on the other hand, have called for a shortened trading day because so much activity now takes place at the opening and closing bells.

Individual investors often take bigger, riskier bets than their institutional counterparts. Schwab and Webull are among brokerages that permit only “limit orders” for certain overnight trades, where investors set a maximum and minimum price at which to buy or sell. That is a strategy often recommended by advisers to ensure investors limit their risk if markets unexpectedly melt down.

For some traders, making supersize late-night bets has paid off. Long Hoang, a 30-year-old software engineer in the San Francisco Bay Area, raked in more than $1 million on a series of trades last month. He bought shares of Trump Media on Oct. 25, ahead of Trump’s interview with podcaster Joe Rogan and sold them when the stock popped during an overnight session days later.

United and Delta dominate industry profits by promoting premium travel options like carved up cabins and luxe lounges

There is a clear formula for running a winning airline in 2024. It’s paying off most for the biggest carriers.

Carving up cabins, catering to high-end travel, and putting a price on nearly every aspect of the flying experience has helped larger airlines haul in more cash from their planes. That is one reason why two companies, Delta and United, accounted for almost 85% of the U.S. airline industry’s profits in the first nine months of this year.

For fliers, the message is simple:

“The more you pay, the more you get,” Delta President Glen Hauenstein said this past week.

Airlines are preparing for a record crush of travelers to descend on airports this Thanksgiving—a test of the way they have been battling for fliers’ business, which has changed dramatically since the Covid-19 pandemic. What was once a race to offer the cheapest tickets and capture the biggest volume of passengers is now all about trying to stand out with a superior flying experience. The result has been a shakeout at the budget end of the industry—Spirit Airlines declared bankruptcy this past week—and a bonanza for bigger carriers flying high from selling first-and business-class tickets.

Airlines that haven’t yet embraced the upselling approach are racing to catch up. Spirit told a bankruptcy court this week that “Project Bravo,” a strategic pivot that includes a new suite of upscale bundles, is its ticket back to success. Even Southwest, which has carried an egalitarian approach to flying for more than 50 years, is soon ditching open seating and adding rows of extra legroom.

Bigger airlines offer a dizzying array of amenities, such as the option to move up a few rows, that can cost a few bucks or hundreds of dollars. Less than half of Delta’s passenger revenue now comes from selling regular coach tickets—something that flipped this year.

The lucrative trade off is a reversal from decades when upstart carriers forced heavyweights to try to match their low prices without hemorrhaging cash. Now, the aviation titans are riding a wave of demand for premium tickets, far-flung locales, and revenue from lucrative co-branded credit cards.

“The ultralow-cost carriers built a better mousetrap than us for customers that only cared about price,” United Chief Executive Scott Kirby acknowledged earlier this year. But that’s no longer the case: “We just are winning. It is structural. It is permanent.”

Bigger airlines are wielding their cheaper-fare options as a competitive weapon. United said that volumes in its bare-bones basic economy—where passengers aren’t allowed a carry-on bag—were up 21% in the third quarter from a year earlier.

After losing over $2 billion since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Spirit’s new playbook calls for selling tickets that come with extras such as free Wi-Fi, carry-on bags, snacks and drinks, an adjacent empty middle seat, and more legroom. The carrier said its data is showing that new options are resonating with fliers. Other budget carriers are doing the same.

“We had to change the game we were playing to try to compete better, because they were competing better,” Matt Klein, Spirit’s chief commercial officer, said of Spirit’s bigger competitors.

For years, upper class seats were basically loss leaders for airlines. Most customers didn’t shell out to sit in swankier sections, but sometimes got upgraded as a reward for flying a lot, even on cheap tickets.

At Delta, paying customers accounted for 12% of its domestic first-class cabin 15 years ago. To nudge more passengers to pay for first class, Delta did something counterintuitive: It began selling those seats at somewhat cheaper prices.

After the pandemic, the airline found that travelers, including leisure fliers, were more willing to buy the seats. Now around three-quarters of the cabin is paid for.

Premium sections now occupy a larger share of Delta’s plane seats—around 30% currently, compared with roughly 10% two decades ago.

Some airline executives believed that travelers would soon return to their thrifty ways once long-sought trips occurred and they burned through pandemic savings. That wasn’t the case.

Coming out of the pandemic, United also aspired to a fancier image. The carrier is outfitting planes with seat back screens and bluetooth technology—improvements that burnish the airline’s image, Kirby has said. And with a massive aircraft order in 2021, the airline said it would eventually boost premium seats by about 75% per departure. The airline has said its premium demand is growing more quickly than non-premium.

“To give them credit, Delta proved that air travel is not a commodity,” Kirby said at a conference in March.

Michael Pomposello, who runs a digital-advertising firm in New York, said it’s often worth paying for a better class of service.

“It achieves the absence of discomfort,” he said.

The industry is piling in. American Airlines is increasing premium seating on its planes and CEO Robert Isom said the portion of travelers who are paying to sit in premium cabins is “historically high.”

Alaska Air is also installing more first-class seats on planes, boosting the share of premium seats to 28% from 25%.

Starting in 2026, those who have booked the cheapest fares on Southwest flights will have seats assigned before departure, while people buying pricier tickets will be able to pick theirs at booking. Today, no seats are assigned so anyone has a shot at their favored seat, though customers can pay for options to get a better spot in the boarding line.

The airline is also retrofitting its cabins so about a third of seats will have extra legroom, for those willing to pay more. And a number of standard seats will be deemed “preferred” (read: not free) due to their locations closer to the front of the plane.

“What you’re seeing actually is the transition of the airplane cabin to look a lot more like American society,” said Vik Krishnan, an aviation consultant at McKinsey.

The selling strategy extends beyond the physical cabin.

United, Delta and American have upward of five fare options on long-haul routes, ranging from the bare-bones to the most luxurious. They also sell add-on features like priority security-line access, and the option to get a full refund as opposed to a flight credit if a passenger cancels.

Delta said this week that it wants to go further. The airline said it’s still experimenting and declined to say exactly what other add-ons there could be, but said that each of its cabins will likely have “good,” “better” and “best” options. Delta’s starting in its main cabin and will be testing options in its Comfort+ section, a step above coach, by the end of next year.

The next step could be deconstructing the business-class ticket. Those pricey fares generally come with all the extras—checked bags, the ability to select a seat, and in the case of international tickets, access to airport lounges. That could change.

Some overseas airlines already offer tiered business-class service. Air France-KLM, a Delta partner, has options on some routes such as “Business Light” and “Business Flex.” Business Light offers passengers only one checked bag and no lounge entrance while Business Flex is a refundable ticket and includes seat selection.

German carrier Lufthansa’s new Allegris cabin configuration includes several business class seating options, most of which will come at added cost. Think an extra-long bed, additional privacy, or surfaces for getting work done.

CEO Carsten Spohr said next year the airline will “see new ancillary revenue streams on business class where, historically, of course, we had none.”

The key for U.S. carriers will be to avoid alienating their high-paying customers by charging them for services that were once included, or annoying them with a deluge of offers. Delta executives said their goal is to provide more choices, not to take features away.

Some consumers are skeptical.

“I just think it’s a money grab,” said Daniel Rivera, 37, an X-ray technologist in Pensacola, Fla. He often flies in Delta’s Comfort+ or Premium Select cabins and fears that the changes will mean he has to pay more for the amenities that are currently included. “It should just come the way it comes now,” he said.

Meta loses ground to Bluesky as users abandon Elon Musk’s X

Social media giant’s Threads app makes changes as smaller competitor to X surges

Meta’s Threads is losing ground to social media start-up Bluesky in capitalising on the exodus of users from Elon Musk’s X following Donald Trump’s election.

Since election day, app usage of Bluesky in the US and UK skyrocketed by almost 300 per cent to 3.5mn daily users, according to data from research group Similarweb. The site was boosted as academics, journalists and left-leaning politicians abandoned X, whose billionaire owner is a prominent supporter of the president-elect.

Prior to November 5, Threads had five times more daily active users in the US than Bluesky, which has just 20 full-time staff and was initially funded by Twitter when Jack Dorsey was its chief executive. Now, Threads is only 1.5 times larger than its rival, Similarweb said.

Bluesky’s growth in the US and UK comes after Meta chief executive Mark Zuckerberg chose to deliberately reduce the prominence of political content across its apps, including Facebook and Instagram.

That move was widely interpreted as an attempt to rise about the partisan fray and avoid being dragged into debates over free speech. Trump, who has long castigated social media platforms for allegedly censoring conservative voices, previously labelled Meta “an enemy of the people” and threatened Zuckerberg with jail were he to return to office. Last month, Trump said he liked Zuckerberg “much better now” because he was “staying out of the election”. 

This contrasts with X, which under Musk’s ownership, has cut back content moderation to allow more freewheeling content to proliferate.

Since its launch in July last year, Threads has prioritised engaging content from accounts that users did not follow, a model closer to that of its photo app Instagram. However, Meta on Thursday backtracked on that choice.

This week, it also swiftly rolled out the ability for users to curate “custom feeds” around topics or people they want to follow, mimicking existing Bluesky capabilities, after testing the feature for only five days.

The moves sparked speculation that Meta was trying to curb Bluesky’s rise.

Meta said: “We regularly roll out new Threads features and updates — dozens in the last few months alone — to serve the now over 275 million Threads users. And we’ll continue to share more as we work to serve this growing community.”

Experts have noted the Threads timeline was not effective for people seeking content on real-time events.

“There is this moment here where they are going to have to make this decision, whether to bring back political content and real-time [conversation],” said Katie Harbath, a former policy director who worked on Meta’s elections strategy for a decade. “Particularly if these Bluesky numbers stay up.”

Adam Tinworth, a lecturer in journalism at City St George’s, University of London described Bluesky as “essentially a Twitter spin-off” and so a “natural replacement” to those disillusioned with X.

“Threads is a very different proposition [and] fluffed it completely during the US election because it pushed news and politics out of the feed,” he said.  

Bluesky was unveiled by Dorsey in 2019 with the aim of developing a single standard, or protocol, upon which social platforms and other developers could build more tailored offerings.

Now led by digital rights activist and software engineer Jay Graber, users can post short messages and images in an interface much like that of X. Growth has been helped by a new feature called “starter packs”, which allow users to follow groups of accounts curated by users with the click of a button.

However, the platform has also suffered from increased outages and glitches as it grows quickly, with questions about how it will create a working business model in the future. Initially funded by Twitter, it raised $15mn in venture funding last year, and $8mn the prior year. 

Adam Mosseri, the head of Threads, said last week that the app had gained “more than 15mn sign-ups in November alone, and [was] going on three months with more than a million sign-ups a day”. But he added: “Now we have a lot more work to do.”

A key indicator has fallen below zero for the first time as market braces for higher German borrowing

Investors are betting on reform of the “debt brake” enshrined in Germany’s constitution as markets brace for an increase in borrowing by Berlin.

A sell-off in Germany’s 10-year debt in recent weeks has seen its yield trade above the rate for euro interest rate swaps of the same duration for the first time, a key market indicator that is sensitive to expectations of future bond issuance.

The move ahead of federal elections in February signals investors’ belief that “a snap election means debt brake reform”, according to Tomasz Wieladek, chief European economist at asset manager T Rowe Price. “That in turn would mean more issuance.”

So-called “swap spreads” have long been positive in Germany — unlike in other major bond markets where they have often traded below zero — meaning investors have been willing to accept a lower return to hold Berlin’s debt relative to expectations of long-term interest rates.

This unusual feature of Germany’s bond market has been a function of the relative scarcity of Bunds, which serve as the benchmark risk-free asset for the entire euro area and have often been in short supply due to the country’s reluctance to borrow heavily.

The debt brake caps new borrowing by the federal government at 0.35 per cent of GDP, adjusted for the economic cycle, and also bars Germany’s 16 individual states from taking on any new debt at all.

It was written into the German constitution in 2009 and took effect in 2016, though it was suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic and again after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, before being reinstated this year.

But economists have often criticised the rule as being too inflexible.

And it has become a bone of contention between the left and right in German politics, the former arguing it should be reformed to allow major investments in areas such as infrastructure and the latter insisting it must be maintained to protect future generations against a huge debt burden.

The debt rule was one of the main reasons why Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s three-party coalition fell apart earlier this month.

Scholz, a social democrat, demanded his finance minister Christian Lindner, leader of the fiscally hawkish FDP party, suspend the debt brake to allow for more aid to Ukraine. Lindner refused, so Scholz sacked him. The FDP then quit the government.

Scholz, who has now lost his parliamentary majority, will table a confidence vote on December 16, paving the way for early elections on February 23 which the opposition Christian Democratic Union is widely expected to win.

The CDU’s leader, Friedrich Merz, had long considered the debt brake sacrosanct. However, last week he said for the first time that it could be reformed.

Speaking to a business conference last Wednesday, he said only a few articles of the constitution were immutable. “Everything else can be debated,” he said.

The decisive question, he added, was what the new borrowing was used for. “Is the result that we spend more money on consumption and welfare? Then the answer is no,” he said. “Is it important for investments, is it important for progress, is it important for our children’s’ livelihood, then the answer can be different.”

Rohan Khanna, head of European rates research at Barclays, said the switch-around in yields and swaps was the culmination of a broader shift in Germany’s economy from one of high growth and low borrowing, to low growth and higher borrowing, making it more like other Eurozone markets.

It is a “reflection of the fact that the German bond market broadly and the economy ideologically have lost their specialness,” he said.

Covid lockdown sceptic is frontrunner to lead Trump health agency

Jay Bhattacharya at the NIH would be the latest ally of Robert F Kennedy Jr to take a role overseeing US healthcare

Stanford University professor and Covid-19 lockdown sceptic Jay Bhattacharya has emerged as the frontrunner to run the National Institutes of Health, according to two people familiar with the matter.

The nomination of Bhattacharya, who rose to prominence during the pandemic for opposing lockdown restrictions, would put another ally of Robert Kennedy Jr, the vaccine sceptic who is Trump’s pick to run the US health department, in charge of one of the country’s most powerful public health agencies.

With an annual budget of $48bn, NIH is the biggest government-funded biomedical research agency in the world, providing more than 60,000 grants a year to support medical and scientific research.

Senior officials within Trump’s transition team have spoken with Bhattacharya, who runs Stanford’s Center on the Demography and Economics of Health and Aging, in recent days, the people said.

The pick for NIH director is likely to be announced in the coming days but plans may change and another candidate may emerge, the people added.

Representatives for Trump’s transition team and Kennedy did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Bhattacharya could also not be reached for comment.

Late on Friday, Trump’s transition team announced a flurry of high profile nominations, including Treasury secretary, Labor secretary and three key health official picks.

Marty Makary, a Johns Hopkins surgeon who opposed the Covid-19 vaccine mandate, was nominated to run the Food and Drug Administration. Physician and former GOP congressman Dave Weldon, who has cast doubts on vaccine safety, was tapped to run the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Bhattacharya appeared alongside Kennedy at a campaign event during his independent campaign for President, during which he unveiled his running mate Nicole Shanahan.

Since backing Trump’s bid for presidency in August, Kennedy has been given significant influence over the president’s healthcare policy agenda as part of his “Make American Healthy Again” campaign. Trump’s choice of Fox News medical contributor Janette Nesheiwat was the only one of the health appointees so far not close to Kennedy, the people added.

Alongside two other professors, Bhattacharya became the face of the “Great Barrington Declaration” during the pandemic, an open letter published in October 2020 opposing widescale lockdowns and instead calling for restrictions focused on at-risk groups, such as elderly individuals. The letter provoked criticism from then-NIH director Francis Collins, who dismissed the authors as “fringe experts”.

Much of Bhattacharya’s public criticism of the NIH has focused on how Collins and Anthony Fauci — former director of the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, a division of NIH — responded to the pandemic.

Bhattacharya told the Financial Times this month that he supported term limits for NIH directors. “I think there’s too much concentration of power in the hands of too few people: there should not be another Tony Fauci,” he said.

Kennedy’s nomination as Health and Human Services secretary has worried the pharmaceutical industry and public health bodies because of his sceptical views on vaccines, his stated aim to eliminate “entire departments” within the FDA and his plans to remove fluoride from drinking water. However, Kennedy has promised not to limit vaccine access.

In an article on digital media site UnHerd published last week, Bhattacharya brushed away concerns about some of Kennedy’s debunked claims, saying: “Kennedy is not a scientist, but his good-faith calls for better research and more debate are echoed by many Americans.”

He added that “the American public voted for disrupters like RFK Jr in 2024, and academic medicine now has an opportunity to atone for its Covid-era blunders.”

Hospitals should check staff use of WhatsApp to ensure patient safety, UK watchdog says

Information Commissioner warns improper use of popular messaging app could be ‘hugely problematic’ for NHS

Hospitals in England should carry out spot checks on doctors’ and nurses’ phones to ensure they are safely using WhatsApp to discuss patient care, the head of the data watchdog has said.

John Edwards, Information Commissioner, told the Financial Times that use of the messaging app could be “hugely problematic” for NHS staff and patients if not used “properly”.

His intervention came after the FT reported last month that frontline health service workers routinely use WhatsApp on personal phones to share confidential patient details, test results and medical documents, prompting experts to warn of a “wild west” for data.

“We have to recognise that [the use of WhatsApp] is a reality,” Edwards said in an interview, but “it needs to occur out in the open and in a way that is in accordance with policies and procedures”.

Citing the Russian proverb “trust but verify”, Edwards added: “I am a big fan of audit and particularly random audit. So from time to time, you just go and say to somebody: ‘I need to look at your WhatsApp, I need to check the settings.’ That’s going to remind people.” 

After years of uncertainty around the use of WhatsApp, the most popular messaging app in the UK, NHS England published official guidance for staff in 2020. It allows the use of mobile messaging to discuss patients but warns that staff “should take sufficient steps to safeguard confidentiality”.

The guidance states that any clinical decisions made on a messaging app must be added to a patient’s formal health record “as soon as possible” and that staff should “delete the original messaging notes”.

Healthcare workers are also advised to unlink the app from their phone’s photo library and disable message notifications when the screen is locked.

Frontline health workers said WhatsApp was an efficient workaround for official systems that were often siloed, making it difficult to access information quickly. However, they also conceded that not all staff followed the guidance at all times and that there was little oversight.

In its guidance for public authorities, the Information Commissioner’s Office says “records management policy should set out mitigating measures for staff if they use non-corporate communications channels for official business”.

For example, if “staff use instant messaging services, then auto-delete options should be in line with the retention policies of your official systems”.

Asked if hospital management should be able to look at staff phones if they were being used to share NHS patient data, Edwards said: “I am sure that they can say ‘I need to check NHS data on your system and you need to show it to me’.”

Used correctly, WhatsApp’s end-to-end encryption may “be more secure than many official systems or sanctioned systems” to share data, Edwards noted, since it allows only the sender and recipients to read messages.

“Two things can be true at the same time,” he added. “These technologies can be used safely and these technologies can create significant risks.”

NHS England has previously said individual trusts must assume responsibility for their own policies on the use of mobile apps, and that they should take “sufficient steps” to safeguard confidentiality.

“My expectation of a trust is that they need to have the policies and they need to be reminding staff of them regularly,” Edwards said.

“Just as they don’t grab hold of any new medical device and start using it on patients without having a process of checking and regulation, [clinicians and trusts] need also to be satisfying themselves that new communications and record-keeping channels can be used safely, before doing it,” he added.

NHS England said trusts were “responsible for their own policies on the use of communication tools, including mobile apps, and should take sufficient steps to safeguard confidentiality through regular training and staff reminders around good practice, including current ICO guidance”.

UK wealth managers warn Rachel Reeves over plan to levy inheritance tax on pensions

AJ Bell boss tells chancellor that ‘complex and costly’ Budget proposal will ‘undermine’ retirement savings system

Rachel Reeves’ plan to levy inheritance tax on pensions will “undermine” the retirement savings system and risk leaving beneficiaries with higher costs and lengthy delays before receiving their money, UK wealth managers have warned.

In a letter seen by the Financial Times, Michael Summersgill, chief executive of investment site AJ Bell, told the chancellor that the Budget proposal was “arguably the most complex and costly way of raising tax from unused pensions on death”.

“If the government presses ahead with the proposals as written, it will risk fundamentally undermining the UK pensions system,” he warned, noting that there were “simpler” ways for the Treasury to raise money via the retirement savings system.

The government said in the Budget that from April 2027, pensions would no longer be exempt from inheritance tax — a move that could raise almost £1.5bn a year by 2030, according to official estimates.

The changes will result in the “double taxation” of unused pension funds on death after the age of 75 because retirement pots will be subject both to inheritance tax (IHT) and income tax.

Summersgill said the changes risked leaving higher-rate taxpayers paying, in effect, a rate of 64 per cent on an inherited pension. He also warned that beneficiaries could face delays in receiving the pension money, since unused retirement pots will have to go through probate before being distributed from April 2027.

“At what will be an emotionally challenging time for those close to the deceased . . . the process of distributing much-needed support will end up stalled in a much more complicated probate process,” he told Reeves.

The warning comes as wealth managers that offer pension advice such as AJ Bell, Hargreaves Lansdown and Quilter rush to rethink retirement savings plans.

The government’s proposals would require pension providers to use a “personal representative” of the deceased pension owner to calculate how much of their pot could be exempt under the nil-rate band — the amount of an estate that is free from inheritance tax.

But this extra administration would raise costs, Summersgill warned, adding that completing the process in six months — the time limit for paying inheritance tax — would “not just be difficult” but “in many cases . . . prove impossible”.

Delays would be most likely when the deceased had not left a will and had several pension pots from multiple employers. Pension funds that hold hard-to-sell investments could exacerbate delays. 

Instead of bringing pensions within the IHT regime, Summersgill called on Reeves to scrap a quirk in the system where beneficiaries do not have to pay income tax on the proceeds if the pensioner dies before the age of 75.

Helen Morrissey, head of retirement analysis at Hargreaves Lansdown, the UK’s largest “DIY” investment site, said: “If the process takes longer than six months to pay the inheritance tax bill then HM Revenue & Customs will start to charge interest, which will add extra headaches for families at what is already an extremely difficult time.”

Jon Greer, head of retirement policy at Quilter, said that while the current interest rate on outstanding IHT was 7.25 per cent, it had previously risen as high as 7.75 per cent.

“At present, pensions offer significant tax benefits, and pulling the rug out from under those who have planned their futures based on the current framework feels retrospective and unfair without some form of transition,” he said. “The government must strike a balance between simplification, fairness and operational feasibility.”

A Treasury spokesperson said inherited pensions will be subject to “inheritance tax once and, if due, income tax once, as is the case with other savings”.

“We continue to incentivise pensions savings for their intended purpose of funding retirement instead of them being openly used as a vehicle to transfer wealth.”