What happened

President Donald Trump’s two main envoys, his friend Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner, Tuesday held back-to-back negotiations in Geneva aimed at securing a nuclear deal with Iran and an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine. The indirect talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, mediated by Oman, were “more constructive” than previous talks and made “good progress” toward a “clear path ahead,” Araghchi told Iranian TV.

Who said what

Sending Witkoff and Kushner to solve two entrenched conflicts “in a single day in Geneva” has “raised questions not only about whether they are overstretched and outmatched, but about their serious prospects for resolving either of the twin crises,” Reuters said. Trump’s “diplomacy without diplomats” gambit, The New York Times said, was a “stark example” of his “conviction that the State Department and the National Security Council, the two institutions that have coordinated negotiations over global crises for nearly 80 years, are best left on the sidelines.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who heads both organizations, was not involved in Tuesday’s shuttle diplomacy.

“Some countries really welcome this informal structure” of transactional deal-making, said Asli Aydintasbas of the Brookings Institution, per the Times. But “I have not seen anyone hugely impressed with the diplomatic skills of the current team.” Having “Witkoff and Kushner tasked with resolving all the world’s problems is, frankly, a shocking reality,” Mohanad Hage-Ali of the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut told Reuters.

What next?

The U.S.-Russian-Ukrainian talks are continuing for a second day, but “expectations were low for a breakthrough,” Reuters said. Today’s talks, the Times said, “were expected to focus on the fate of Ukrainian-held territory” that “Moscow wants under its control as the price for ending the war.”

Vladimir Putin could sit alongside Tony Blair, Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner on Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. The Kremlin confirmed the Russian president had been invited to join the new body, which was formally launched last week and will be chaired by Trump himself.

Originally part of the US-brokered 20-point peace plan to end the war in Gaza, the Board of Peace will oversee the territory’s reconstruction, but recent developments suggest ambitions for the organisation go well beyond Gaza.

Who is on it?

With his characteristic effusiveness, the US president posted on Truth Social that the committee he has assembled was the “Greatest and Most Prestigious Board ever assembled at any time, any place”.

The founding executive board, headed by Trump himself, includes former UK prime minister Tony Blair, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, US special envoy Steve Witkoff, World Bank president Ajay Banga, and Trump’s son-in-law and close adviser, Jared Kushner.

The “exact structure” of the board “remains unclear and members are still being invited”, said the BBC. Invitations have also been sent to the leaders of “Argentina, Paraguay, Turkey, Egypt, Canada and Thailand”, said The Guardian. The White House and the Kremlin have both confirmed that an invitation has been extended to the Russian president, a gesture that lends “considerable weight to long-standing suspicions that Trump leans heavily in Putin’s favour in his approach to the Ukraine conflict”.

As chair, Trump will decide who is invited to join, giving him an effective veto. Member states will be limited to three-year terms on the Board of Peace, but those that contribute more than $1 billion in the first year can become permanent members, said Bloomberg.

How will it work in Gaza?

The Bulgarian former UN Middle East envoy Nickolay Mladenov will serve as the executive board’s high representative for Gaza. A 15-member Palestinian technocratic committee, the National Committee for the Administration of Gaza (NCAG), has also been set up, tasked with running day-to-day affairs on the ground in the devastated enclave. Major General Jasper Jeffers, the former head of US special forces, has been appointed to lead an International Stabilization Force (ISF), a multinational peacekeeping unit that will be responsible for security across the territory.

Yet another committee, the Gaza Executive Board, will work with Mladenov, the NCAG and the ISF. The board is “designed to provide regional and international coordination”, said Middle East Eye, although it is “unclear what responsibilities the board or its members would have”.

What else could it do?

According to a draft of its charter, the board will seek to “solidify peace in the Middle East” and, at the same time, “embark on a bold new approach to resolving global conflict”, said The Guardian.

Notably, there is no mention of Gaza in the charter itself, adding to “speculation that the group may have a broader mandate to cover other conflicts and could even be aimed at creating a US-dominated alternative to the United Nations Security Council”, said The New York Times.

US officials had already “floated the idea of allowing the board to mediate in other hotspots such as Ukraine and Venezuela”, said the Financial Times, and the wording of the charter “appears to give credence to diplomats’ fears that the Trump administration is seeking ways to sideline the UN”.

“It’s just very confused as an idea,” said a senior European official. “What does ‘membership’ mean? Is it an alliance or a body for mediation between adversaries?”

What happened

Jared Kushner’s private equity firm Affinity Partners Monday pulled out of a deal to finance a Trump-branded development in Serbia’s capital, Belgrade. Affinity’s withdrawal came hours after a member of President Aleksandar Vucic’s Cabinet and three other officials were indicted for allegedly abusing their positions and falsifying documents as the government worked to strip the bombed-out former military site of its cultural-heritage protections.

Who said what

Affinity said it was withdrawing from the half-billion-dollar deal “because meaningful projects should unite rather than divide, and out of respect for the people of Serbia and the City of Belgrade.” It was an “abrupt end to an increasingly controversial project that Kushner,” President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, “has worked on for more than two years,” The Wall Street Journal said.

The project to build apartments and a Trump-branded luxury hotel on a central Belgrade site bombed by NATO in 1999 involved Kushner and the Trump Organization, “run by the president’s sons Eric and Donald Trump Jr.,” The New York Times said. The project, “fiercely championed” by Vucic, “exemplified the willingness of foreign governments to bend over backward to further the financial interests” of Trump and his family. Serbia “has plenty of things it wants from the Trump administration, such as lifting sanctions on its sole oil refinery,” the Journal said.

What next?

The Serbian prosecutor’s office said its corruption investigation was ongoing and could lead to further indictments. Vucic in recent days has “vowed to pardon any officials caught up in the case,” the Journal said, and “stepped up his rhetoric” against the “semi-independent” prosecutor’s office.

One of the biggest gaming companies in the world, the US-based Electronic Arts, is about to be taken over by a consortium of buyers that include Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund.

The “blockbuster” $55 billion (£41 billion) takeover is the “latest win” for Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, an avid “video-game fan” who particularly enjoys playing (Microsoft’s) “Call of Duty”, said Bloomberg.

Electronic Arts makes some of the biggest gaming franchises, including “Fifa”, now known as “EA Sports FC”, “The Sims”, “Madden NFL” and “Battlefield”, and the deal is set to be the largest leveraged buyout of a publicly traded company in history.

‘Money-printing machine’

The EA takeover is “part of a push to deepen trade ties” between Saudi Arabia and the US, said Bloomberg. In May, the crown prince promised to “boost investment” in America to “$1 trillion (£745 billion) in the coming years”.

Also involved in the deal is Affinity Partners, a private equity firm run by Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner. He was apparently “key” to winning Saudi Arabia’s interest, said the Financial Times. His presence may also “ease the deal’s path” through the Committee of Foreign Investment in the United States, which is responsible for reviewing company transactions involving buyers from abroad.

“It’s not hard to see why EA is an attractive target for private equity,” said GamesHub. The company is a “money-printing machine” with a “low-risk, high-reward” profile.

For Saudi Arabia, this “advance into gaming” is part of its effort “to diversify its investments away from oil”, said The New York Times. Its Public Investment Fund had already committed to spending $38 billion (£28 billion) across the gaming sector by 2030. Riyadh hosted the Esports World Cup over the summer, and will host the first Olympic Esports Games in 2027. The “gaming push is part of a broader bet by the kingdom on sports”, including backing LIV Golf and making major investments in football and mixed martial arts.

‘Gameswashing’ questions

Just as that investment in sports triggered accusations of “sportswashing” – investing in sporting events to “launder” its international reputation and distract the world from its poor human rights record – Saudi is now facing questions about “gameswashing”, said GamesHub.

The Public Investment Fund has already spent billions on equity stakes in Nintendo, Take-Two Interactive and Activision Blizzard and, earlier this year, acquired the gaming division of Niantic, whose titles include “Pokémon Go”. But the EA deal “is by far its most significant soft power move”.

The Albanian government has approved a controversial $1.4 billion deal with Donald Trump's son-in-law to develop the island of Sazan into a "luxury resort", said Balkan Insight.

Sazan, an uninhabited island off the southern city of Vlorë, was an "isolated military outpost" of Fascist Italy and later of Communist-era Albania.

Jared Kushner's investment firm, Affinity Partners, has "big plans for tiny Albania", said Air Mail, and although "not all of the plans are crazy", they have already elicited plenty of opposition.

Lavish and Jurassic

Albania's "Cold War designation" as the "North Korea of Europe" means it is one of the last undeveloped spots in Western Europe.

Affinity's plans include a 1,100-acre luxury resort on the country's Adriatic Coast, with 6,000 hotel rooms and villas. Architectural plans for the project show "modernist multistorey structures" built along the shore, dunes and headlands around the Narta lagoon, a spot currently "prized by birders for its rich avian diversity", said The New York Times.

On Sazan itself, which lies about six miles off the coast from the edge of the lagoon, within a national marine park, the firm wants to build a "similarly lavish" 1,400-acre resort community.

The island's landscape is "Jurassic", said The Guardian, with "ferns, giant lavender, plumbago, rosemary, broom and laurels" growing on its central mountain, which enjoys "dramatic sunsets" and "dizzyingly beautiful" views.

More corruption

Negotiations about the sale of Sazan were "kept secret" from residents and parliamentarians, who weren't aware of the $1.4 billion deal until it was reported in the media.

Those reports "have stirred resentments among some local landowners who question whether the Albanian government is courting Mr Kushner in order to curry political favour with his father-in-law", said The New York Times. The prime minister, Edi Rama, has forcefully denied this suggestion.

With Sazan "on the verge" of becoming a "mecca for ultra-luxury tourism", there are lots of questions from environmentalists, said The Guardian. The area is "prized for its biodiversity", said the NYT. A local ornithologist said that there will be a "tremendous" ecological and economic cost to development.

Kushner, who is married to the US president's daughter Ivanka Trump, and his team have dismissed the concerns. Asher Abehsera, the executive overseeing the developments, said the firm recognises the "rich biodiversity and natural landscape" of the area and have a "master plan" designed to "restore and improve ecological conditions".

But even so locals have "expressed fears of overtourism" and water shortages, or that they would lose their land or public access to the lagoon and beaches. Others said that "more infrastructure" would only mean "more government corruption".

Albanians are "not anti-tourism", said one. They're just "against tourism that will destroy our land and our traditions".

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting Arab foreign ministers and a leading Palestinian official in Cairo today as he calls for a pause in the fighting in Gaza.

Washington wants an "immediate and sustained ceasefire" between Israel and Hamas, while the British government has demanded an "immediate pause in fighting", followed by "progress towards a sustainable ceasefire". But the international community has been less forthcoming with specific ideas for how to move forward. 

As the violence continues, some have suggested creating a demilitarised zone, or even transforming Gaza into a rich, waterfront property empire.

What did the commentators say?

"Reaching a peaceful solution is easy if people would only make the decision to do it," Saudi prince Turki al-Faisal, a former ambassador to the US, told The New Statesman. 

The royal believes the solution is a ceasefire that leads to a "prolonged truce of at least five years", said the magazine. A Palestinian state would then be created and recognised by the international community – including Israel – and negotiations would begin between Israel and Palestine, "as two sovereign states, for the resolution of the conflict between them".

Donald Trump's son-in-law and former foreign policy adviser Jared Kushner has put forward an alternative idea that "sparked a backlash", said The Independent. During an interview last month at Harvard University, Kushner praised the "very valuable" potential of Gaza's "waterfront property" and suggested that Israel should "clean up" the strip after expelling Gazan civilians to the Israeli Negev desert.

Broadcaster Jon Stewart has had his say too. He suggested last month that the Arab countries who "claim Palestine as their top priority" should "come in and form a demilitarised zone between Israel and a free Palestinian state", said The Guardian. The Saudis, Egypt, UAE, Qatar and Jordan could "all form like a Nato arrangement guaranteeing security for both sides", Stewart said on his "The Daily Show". "Anything is better than the clusterf**k cycle we have now." 

But Jonathan Lord, director of the Middle East Security programme at the Center for a New American Security think tank, told Business Insider that "every American administration going back decades has discussed some version" of Stewart's suggestion. Anna Jacobs, a senior Gulf analyst based in Qatar for the Belgium-headquartered International Crisis Group, added that Stewart's idea would risk "angering Iran", which is a "massive concern for the region", said the news site.

Writing for The Spectator, Stephen Daisley suggested another "way to break this impasse". Recalling how the League of Nations created a mandate for the British administration of Palestine in the 1920s, he argued that the "basic concept is still sound". So "if the international community wants Israel to stop bombing Gaza", the international community should "take over Gaza and stop Hamas attacking Israel".

More familiar suggestions have also been repeated. In November, the United Nations called for the international community to move towards a two-state solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, with Jerusalem serving as the capital of both states.

But, said Reuters, the idea would hit the long-standing obstacle of Palestinians wanting East Jerusalem, "which includes the Old City's sites sacred to Muslims, Jews and Christians alike", to be the capital of their state, while Israel insists that Jerusalem should remain its "indivisible and eternal" capital.

What next?

Blinken is meeting foreign ministers from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Jordan today. Also present will be the Emirati international cooperation minister and the general secretary of the Palestinian Liberation Organization's executive committee, an Egyptian foreign ministry source told Reuters.

Although the subject of the meeting in Cairo has not been officially disclosed, Egyptian security sources said that Arab nations would present plans for a political solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Such long-term plans had been "put on hold", said Al Jazeera, as mediators from Qatar, Egypt and the US have sought to secure a deal for a ceasefire in Gaza.

A Dominion Voting Systems court filing Monday featured excerpts of News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch's January deposition, focusing on Murdoch's acknowledgment that several Fox News hosts "endorsed" on TV claims about 2020 voting fraud that Murdoch and his network knew to be false. But the filing also pointed to an unsealed exhibit in Dominion's defamation lawsuit against Fox News suggesting Murdoch tried to tip the scales in former President Donald Trump's favor during the election.

"During Trump's campaign, Rupert provided Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor, Jared Kushner, with Fox confidential information about Biden's ads, along with debate strategy," the court filing said.

That little bombshell set up testimony from Murdoch that he declined to step in when Kushner called him on election night, after Fox News was the first network to project that President Biden won the key state of Arizona (and thus, likely, the election). "My friend Jared Kushner called me saying, 'This is terrible,' and I could hear Trump's voice in the background shouting," Murdoch said in his deposition. "And I said, 'Well, the numbers are the numbers.'"

A spokesman for Murdoch declined comment to The Washington Post on those sections of the deposition, but pointed to a statement from Fox News saying Dominion had "cherry pick[ed]" salacious details "utterly irrelevant to the legal issues in this case." Dominion's Monday filing is part of its argument against Fox News' motion to prevent the case from going to trial.

Democrats insist they have options after Senate Republicans filibustered their major voting rights bill on Tuesday night, but not even Santa is buying that on Tooning Out the News.

"Democrats wanted things like automatic voter registration and Election Day to be a national holiday, while Republicans wanted every polling place to be at a yacht club," Jimmy Fallon joked on Wednesday's Tonight Show. Meanwhile, "I read that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner are trying to distance themselves from former President Trump because they're tired of him complaining about losing the election. When he heard that one of his kids wanted distance, Trump was like, 'Please be Eric, please be Eric.'"

"Trump's inner circle is almost as small as his hands right now — even Jared and Ivanka are said to be distancing themselves from presi-daddy," Jimmy Kimmel said on Kimmel Live. "Trump has reportedly become so distant from Ivanka, he's started calling her Eric, which is really sad. And they say that Trump is now, without his family at his side, he's become increasingly surrounded by shady groupies and enablers who take advantage of him to advance their own agendas. He's like a monkey and three giraffes away from being Michael Jackson in 2008. And while the less of him we get is good news for most of us, for some it's creating a financial strain." Those people, per Kimmel's PSA, are out-of-work Trump impersonators.

Trump slammed Alec Baldwin's Trump impersonation when he denied trying to sic the Justice Department on Kimmel and SNL, Stephen Colbert noted at The Late Show. "It is possible the only reason he didn't single out my impression is that it's so bad he didn't realize I was doing him." Trump "then complained about the election and ominously closed his statement hinting at the QAnon conspiracy theory that he will be reinstated, with this rhyme: '2024 or before,'" he said. "Nah, I think you're 2021 and done."

"Speaking of the former president, his daughter and son-in-law don't want to," Colbert said. He imagined a specific Trump complaint Ivanka and Jared are distancing themselves from — it doesn't involve the election — but "apparently the feeling is somewhat mutual, because insiders say there is jealousy from the former president about Kushner's seven-figure book deal. Early reports are that Jared's book is going to be a lot like Jared: glossy and no spine."

Olly Mann and The Week delve behind the headlines and debate what really matters from the past seven days.

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In this week’s episode, we discuss:

Kushner on tour

With Donald Trump’s time in office coming to a close, he appears desperate to cement his legacy in the Middle East, be it one defined by unprecedented stability or new levels of chaos. So with senior adviser Jared Kushner heading on an 11th-hour trip to Saudi Arabia and Qatar this week, is Trump about to leave his mark?

Puberty battle

The High Court has issued a landmark judgement making it harder for children under the age of 16 with gender dysmorphia to be prescribed puberty blockers. The case was brought by Keira Bell who was given the drugs in her teens, but later decided to detransition. Campaigners against the ruling say it will make it harder for children suffering intense discomfort to access the treatment they need. So what comes next for those transgender children?

Arecibo down

On Tuesday, the vast Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico was destroyed when its 900-ton receiver collapsed onto the 1,000ft reflector dish below. Its loss was a sad day for astronomers, less because of its scientific relevance - it has been superseded by other telescopes - but because of its cultural place in the history of their field.

You can subscribe to The Week Unwrapped on the Global Player, Spotify, Apple podcasts, SoundCloud or wherever you get you get your podcasts.

President Trump had speculated about potential voter fraud for weeks, even months, in the lead up to Election Day, prompting many observers to assume he might try to challenge some results if they didn't play in his favor. As it turned out, his campaign has launched lawsuits seeking to halt vote counting in crucial battlegrounds including Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Georgia. But the plan, seemingly long in the making, apparently really only came together on Wednesday, The New York Times reports.

Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kusher, apparently spent Wednesday making phone calls in an attempt to find a "James Baker-like" figure — the attorney who oversaw former President George W. Bush's successful 2000 presidential election recount in Florida — to lead the legal effort, a person briefed on the matter reportedly told the Times.

Observers were certainly perplexed by the fact that he was cobbling it all together on the fly. Read more at The New York Times. Tim O'Donnell

Facebook CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg reportedly has a direct line to the White House.

At Facebook's outset, Zuckerberg was "completely apolitical," a former Facebook public policy director tells The Wall Street Journal in a deep dive into Zuckerberg's politics. But that all changed in 2016 amid criticism that Facebook steered the election, leading Zuckerberg to start getting closer with the company's top publishers — and the White House.

Publicly, Zuckerberg branded himself as "a work in progress, open to self-reflection and eager to understand other perspectives," the Journal writes. But "behind the scenes," was focused on ensuring the site didn't seem partisan with an emphasis on free speech, leading some Democratic officials to see him as "overly deferential to conservatives," the Journal continues. Indeed, Zuckerberg started forming close ties to conservatives with the help of the Trump-backing Facebook board member Peter Thiel and global head of policy Joel Kaplan, a former deputy chief of staff to George W. Bush.

One of Zuckerberg's newfound ties is to President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. The two "sometimes discuss Facebook policies over WhatsApp," the Journal reports. And earlier this year, people familiar with the matter say Zuckerberg talked about the video app TikTok's U.S. presence with Kushner and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. "Zuckerberg also has forged ties with right-leaning publishers that drive engagement on the platform," including Ben Shapiro, who formerly ran the conservative Daily Wire, the Journal writes.

"Any insinuation that [Zuckerberg] encouraged the administration to ban TikTok is false," a Facebook spokesperson said. Zuckerberg declined to comment to the Journal. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.

Russell Crowe surprised his longtime friend Nicole Kidman by revealing for Variety's "Actors on Actors" issue that he shmoozed with Jared Kushner, of all people, at Hugh Jackman's 50th birthday party in New York City in 2018. Crowe, who once described former President Barack Obama as "the light and the future," joked that part of the reason he bothered talking to Kushner at all was because "nobody else" at the party "was talking to him."

Admittedly, Crowe had other motives for having "a very long conversation" with Kushner; at the time, he was preparing to play the late Fox News founder Roger Ailes in The Loudest Voice. Kushner "had a very direct relationship with Roger," Crowe explained, adding that their talk "gave me that contemporary insight that [The Loudest Voice book] could not give me."

Jared Kushner, President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, put together an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that earned praise from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, immediate dismissal by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and unanimous rejection by all 22 Arab League member states, including several U.S. allies. The plan is "100 percent the ideas I personally heard many times from Netanyahu and his negotiators," said former Palestinian chief negotiator Saeb Erekat. "I can assure you that the American so-called peace team have only copied and pasted Netanyahu's and the settlers' councils plan."

But Netanyahu's allies among Israel's commentariat, rather than lauding Kushner, "started on Sunday what looked like an orchestrated campaign" against him, "attacking him for stopping the Israeli prime minister from annexing parts of the West Bank" and apparently using "many of the same talking points," Israeli journalist Barak Ravid writes at Axios. Kushner has said publicly several times that Israel shouldn't annex any part of Palestinian territory until at least after Israel's March 2 elections. "Netanyahu — who promised to annex the Jordan Valley and the settlements as soon as this week, hoping it would help his election campaign — was forced to back down," Ravid reports.

Among the common points these commentators make is that Trump risks losing his evangelical Christian base if Kushner messes this up by pressuring Netanyahu into waiting on annexation. Talk radio host Yaakov Bardugo even appeared to threaten Trump on Israel's Army Radio: "With all due respect to Kushner, there are millions of evangelicals in the U.S. and Netanyahu can mobilize them against Trump like he did to Obama."

Some of the world’s biggest names in finance and politics are attending a Davos-style Saudi investment conference this week, a year on from a mass boycott of the event following the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

The killing of Khashoggi, a Saudi Arabian columnist for The Washington Post, in October 2018 caused a wave of business and political leaders to pull out of the subsequent summit, officially known as the Future Investment Initiative.

The journalist was assassinated while visiting the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul, in an attack that the CIA reportedly concluded was ordered by the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Salman has said he takes “full responsibility as a leader in Saudi Arabia” but has denied any involvement.

The murder “triggered Riyadh’s biggest diplomatic crisis since the 2001 attacks on the US”, with a host of executives refusing to attend the Saudi conference, says the Financial Times. The World Economic Forum, which organises the Davos summit in Switzerland, sent out a press statement last year objecting to the use of the nickname “Davos in the Desert” and noting that there was no association between the two.

However, many of those who steered clear of the Saudi event are back this year, the newspaper notes.

Al Jazeera agrees that the annual summit, launched in 2017, is “set for a reboot this year, as global outrage over the killing fades”. The news site adds that a strong turnout will “further rehabilitate de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s global image”.

Around 300 speakers from 30 countries are expected to attend, including five presidents, a British MP and heads of global banks.

Although some big names have decided to stay away, those set to return are doing so “even though little has been done to prosecute those responsible for the murder”, says Quartz. Although 11 people have been put on trial, Human Rights Watch says that the prosecution does not meet international standards and that Saudi authorities have “obstructed meaningful accountability”.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro are due to speak at this week’s summit, which runs from today until Thursday.

Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, is also “apparently over [the] Khashoggi killing” and is to speak on a panel at the conference, says Quartz. The moderator will be Stephen Schwarzman, chief executive of the leading investment firm Blackstone, who was among the attendees who pulled out of last year’s event.

US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin will also return. He will be joined by a host of former prime ministers - including the UK’s David Cameron, France’s Francois Fillon, Italy’s Matteo Renzi and Australia’s Kevin Rudd - along with Conservative MP Graham Stuart and American musician will.i.am.

“As the conference kicks off, the challenge for the crown prince is to turn the glitz and celebrity into inward investment as Riyadh struggles to deliver on an ambitious plan to overhaul its oil-dependent economy,” says the FT.

President Trump doesn't think criminal justice reform is the ticket to another four years in the White House, Politico reports.

Jared Kushner, a White House senior adviser who doubles as Trump's son-in-law, reportedly urged the president this spring to highlight the passage of last year's First Step Act — a sweeping, bipartisan criminal justice reform bill — during his upcoming re-election campaign. But Trump reportedly told Kushner that he didn't think his voting base would care that much about it. In fact, Politico notes it likely lacks appeal to some members of his base, especially in rural parts of the country, where Trump supporters tend to respond better to hard-line, partisan crime rhetoric.

"It was clear he thinks it's a total dud," a person familiar with the spring meeting said. "He made it abundantly clear he doesn't think it's talking worth about."

That actually might not be a new development, either. Sure, Trump has touted the bill and brings it up at social events, in response to reporters, and when speaking to religious groups, but it's reportedly never been all that high on his priority list. "It would be difficult to say it's a change of heart," an anonymous White House official said. "I don't think his heart was ever really in it."

The official added that some Trump aides questioned why he endorsed the bill in the first place. Another White House official, however, told Politico that the idea Trump doesn't care about the First Step Act is "false" and he the president is "clearly proud of all of his record-setting accomplishments." Read more at Politico.

The Trump administration’s long-awaited ‘economic plan’ to revive the Middle East peace process has been met with widespread scepticism, anger and derision.

CNBC says the plan, the details of which are to be thrashed out over day and a half of seminars in Bahrain, had “been billed as the first part of Washington’s long-delayed broader political blueprint to revive the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process”, which will be unveiled at a later date.

“This aspect of proceedings also does not lack boldness,” admits The Times’s Richard Spencer.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law and envoy, Jared Kushner, envisages a $50 billion investment fund to break the decades-long deadlock. Half of this would go to the Palestinian territories and the other half to Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan “possibly whether they want it or not” says Spencer. There is also plans to raise $5 billion to spend on a transport corridor to connect the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.

However, it is “an economic blueprint that shreds decades of diplomacy and which even its mooted financial backers seemed reluctant to embrace”, says The Guardian’s Martin Chulov.

“There has been no sign of a political dimension to the proposal,” he writes, with “critics across the region suggest[ing] the US was replacing the long-agreed ‘land for peace’ formula with a blunt new ‘money for peace’ that attempted to buy off the Palestinian cause”.

Nancy Okail, the executive director of the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, said: “The Palestinian issue is primarily political, and pouring money into it won’t solve it. Kushner’s plan is indicative of his lack of understanding of the history and dynamics in the region, offering a simplistic and unviable, immoral non-solution to a longstanding, complex issue.”

Neither Israeli not Palestinian governments were represented at the launch, but Reuters reports that the Palestinian leadership “has previously reiterated its disdain for the plan”, which has been almost two years in the making.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose Palestinian Authority exercises limited self-rule in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, was scathing about its prospects of success.

“Money is important. The economy is important. But politics are more important. The political solution is more important,” he said.

Al Jazeera says there will now be “close scrutiny as to whether attendees such as Saudi Arabia and other wealthy Gulf Arab states show any interest in making actual donations to a US plan that has already elicited bitter criticism from Palestinians and many others in the Arab world.”

In a blow to the White House, hours before the conference dinner, the US’s most staunch ally in the region, Saudi Arabia, reiterated its support for the two-state solution.

Riyadh said that any peace deal should be based on the Saudi-led Arab peace initiative that has been the Arab consensus on the necessary elements for a deal since 2002.

That plan calls for a Palestinian state drawn along borders which predate Israel’s capture of territory in the 1967 Middle East war, as well as a capital in East Jerusalem and refugees’ right of return - points rejected by Israel.

The Jerusalem Post says “it is not clear whether the Trump team plans to abandon the ‘two-state solution,’ which involves creation of an independent Palestinian state living side by side with Israel”.

The United Nations and most countries back the two-state solution and it has underpinned every peace plan for decades, “but Trump’s team has consistently refused to commit to it, keeping the political stage of the plan a secret” says the paper.

Canada’s Globe and Mail said “any such solution would have to settle long-standing issues such as the status of Jerusalem, mutually agreed borders, satisfying Israel’s security concerns and Palestinian demands for statehood, and the fate of Israel’s settlements and military presence in territory in Palestinians want to build that state”.

The Trump administration has said an investment-driven pathway forward for the Palestinians was a necessary precondition for ending the decades-old conflict, however, with Palestinians refusing to engage with the White House over its alleged pro-Israel bias a political solution looks as far off as ever.

Stephen Colbert enjoys interviewing people but also likes watching interviews, he said on Monday's Late Show. "Well, there was a really interesting interview this weekend with presidential son-in-law and Victorian ghost-boy Jared Kushner." Colbert started off with Kushner half-fielding Axios reporter Jonathan Swan's question on whether President Trump is a racist. Kushner said no, adding, "You can't not be a racist for 69 years then run for president and be a racist."

Colbert kind of agreed: "He's right, you don't just become a racist at 69 years old. But Trump was 67 when he called all Mexicans murderers and rapists, 43 when he campaigned for death sentences for the Central Park 5, and a boyish 27 when the DOJ sued him and his father for racist housing policies." When Swan asked about Trump's birtherism, "Jared's brain went to its panic room," he said, showing the clip. "Wow, Jared has not been taken to the woodshed like that since he was carved by Geppetto."

Kushner said he thinks Trump's legacy will be bringing people into government "who are not 'qualified' by conventional standards." Colbert laughed at Kushner's air quotes: "Fun fact: Not 'qualified' by 'conventional standards' is actually the first line of Jared's résumé. I'm joking, of course — he doesn't have a résumé."

"Despite his important role in the administration, Kushner rarely does on-camera interviews," Trevor Noah said at The Daily Show, and now we know why. He explained some shortcomings of Kushner's first-hand theory of racism, but he found it kind of "refreshing that Jared didn't just lie, like Kellyanne Conway or Sarah Huckabee Sanders would. Because you know if one of them got asked that question, they would be like, 'No, Trump wasn't racist for birtherism — Obama was racist for being born in Kenya.' But seriously, how is Jared so bad at lying? He's around Trump all the time. You would think that he would practice." Watch below. Peter Weber

White House senior adviser Jared Kushner has expressed uncertainty over whether Palestinians can self-govern.

In a rare television interview, Kushner, who is spearheading a White House effort to draft a new peace proposal for the Israelis and Palestinians, was asked whether he believed the Palestinians were capable of governing themselves without interference from the Israeli authorities.

He replied: “That’s a very good question. That’s one that we’ll have to see. The hope is that they, over time, will become capable of governing.”

Speaking to HBO, the son-in-law of Donald Trump refused to be drawn on whether the White House plan would include a two-state solution.

Referring to the Palestinians, he said it would be a “high bar” for them to expect freedom from Israeli military and government interference. But he added: “I do think they should have self-determination. I’m going to leave the details until we come out with the actual plan.”

He added that the Palestinians “need to have a fair judicial system ... freedom of press, freedom of expression, tolerance for all religions” before their territories can become “investable”.

Asked whether he understood why the Palestinians might not trust him, Kushner said: “I’m not here to be trusted” and added that he believed the Palestinian people would judge the plan based on whether “they think this will allow them to have a pathway to a better life or not”.

Bloomberg points out that Kushner is “notoriously press-averse” and that the interview “represents some of his most extensive public remarks since joining his father-in-law’s administration”.

During it, he was also asked repeatedly whether the "birtherism" conspiracy that former president Barack Obama was born in Africa, in which Trump played a leading role, was racist.

Kushner avoided answering directly, saying: “I wasn’t involved in that.” But he added that the Democrats' claim that Trump is a racist does a “disservice” to people who experience “real racism”. New York magazine commented that Kushner’s “defence unwound with great speed”.

The White House is pushing back on a new book, Kushner Inc., detailing Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner's role in President Trump's administration. Its author, Vicky Ward, told The Late Show's Stephen Colbert on Monday that "if Sarah Huckabee Sanders wants to get into a credibility ratings battle with me, I'll take her on."

Trump is "very ambivalent" about having his daughter and son-in-law working in his White House, Ward told Colbert, and "he hates it when they get negative press." If that's true, Colbert said, "why do you think the president doesn't get them out of there?" Ward said then-Chief of Staff John Kelly tried to force them to resign, on Trump's orders, and "they came to resign, and Trump couldn't do it. ... He cannot send his daughter home."

Some of Trump's supporters argue "his daughter and her husband may be his undoing, that they are far more dangerous to him than Robert Mueller," Ward said. For example, she said, Kushner's role in firing James Comey as FBI director was much greater, more public, and more apparently self-serving than is widely known. "Is there anybody left to check the influence of Jared and Ivanka?" Colbert asked. Ward said yes, first lady Melania Trump, "the only person in my book who has ever successfully stood up to Ivanka Trump and won."

Ward revisited the Melania-Ivanka standoff in an ABC News The Investigation podcast posted Tuesday, and she suggested a motivation for Jared and Ivanka's misbehavior: "Most people go into government for public service. They do seem to have gone in for self-service." Ward said she doesn't know if "these two will be held accountable," but it could happen via "a combination of Congress and prosecutors or, you know, their path, their trajectory will continue as it has, which seemingly is remarkably unstoppable." Listen below. Peter Weber

A US government official says the White House is investigating a $500 (£352m) loan to the family firm of Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, asking if it broke ethics codes or criminal law.

The New York Times reported last month that Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies, accepted $184m (£130m) from Apollo Global Management and $325m (£230m) from Citigroup last year, after Kushner met officials from the two firms.

It also said Joshua Harris, a founder of Apollo, was advising Trump administration officials on infrastructure policy and held several meetings with Kushner.

As Donald Trump’s son-in-law and key adviser, “Kushner plays an influential role in domestic and foreign policy decisions”, says The Guardian.

The acting director of the Office of Government Ethics, David Apol, said he had “discussed this matter with the White House Counsel’s Office in order to ensure that they have begun the process of ascertaining the facts necessary to determine whether any law or regulation has been violated”.

In a letter to the ethics agency, which is responsible for investigating potential conflicts of interest within Washington, Democratic Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi said the loans “raise serious ethical questions that need to be investigated”.

He also asked whether Kushner’s actions “constitute a breach of his ethical obligations to the American people”.

Citigroup has denied there was any impropriety, saying last week the loan was “completely appropriate” and the transaction was already in the works in 2016, before Kushner met Citigroup’s CEO Michael Corbat in 2017.

According to a letter sent to members of Congress this month and seen by The Wall Street Journal, an attorney for Apollo also denied it provided the loan after its executive met Kushner.

Despite selling off most of his family business assets following Donald Trump’s election, Kushner “still maintains a stake in some company’s properties, including those that received the loans subject to a probe”, Fox News says.

Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior White House adviser, has been stripped of his top-secret security clearance after Trump's chief of staff John Kelly ordered changes to the security clearance system.

The Washington Post reports that several concerns had been raised inside the White House over Kushner’s contacts with “certain foreign government officials”, which contributed to the rejection of his application for permanent security clearance.

National security adviser H.R. McMaster reportedly requested intelligence briefings on conversations where foreign leaders discussed interactions with Trump officials, including Kushner.

The request was made after McMaster learned that Kushner had contacts with foreign officials without informing or coordinating with the National Security Council.

According to CNN, at least four countries had sought to take advantage of Kushner’s complex international business dealings, lack of experience and apparent financial problems.

Mexico, Israel, China and the United Arab Emirates are all believed to have discussed those as possible leverage points when dealing with Kushner, according to “current and former US officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter”, CNN says.

The New York Times says the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, saw Kushner as a “target of influence”, noting that the United Arab Emirates has been a “particularly influential player” in policy areas Kushner has directly overseen.

The security downgrade is expected to sharply impact Kushner’s role as senior advisor to Trump, and will see his access to some of the most sensitive material, including the presidential daily brief, cut off entirely.

Jared Kushner was warned by US spies in early 2017 that Wendi Deng Murdoch might use her friendship with him and his wife, Ivanka Trump, to “help China”, it has been claimed.

The report about Rupert Murdoch’s ex-wife - published in Murdoch-owned newspaper The Wall Street Journal - says US officials feared the Chinese-American businesswoman “might seek to help the Chinese government” using her US political connections.

Concern reportedly focused on her lobbying for a Beijing-funded $100m garden project for the National Arboretum in Washington DC, which could have posed a security risk because the design includes a tall tower that could be used for surveillance.

At a Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs briefing today, a spokesperson failed to answer a question about Deng Murdoch, instead saying “certain people in the US should stop creating problems when none exists”, CNN reports.

The White House described Kushner’s meeting with US security as “routine” and said none of the people involved had been accused of wrongdoing.

Deng Murdoch, who holds an MBA from Yale, also counts former UK PM Tony Blair among her political contacts, says Vanity Fair.

The Senate Judiciary Committee panel is demanding that White House senior aide Jared Kushner produce evidence of his email correspondence about WikiLeaks that he failed to disclose to investigators.

President Trump’s son-in-law received emails about WikiLeaks and a “Russian backdoor overture” and forwarded them to another Trump campaign official last year but withheld the information. Two senators, Republican Charles Grassley and Democrat Dianne Feinstein, sent Kushner a letter demanding that he send additional documents regarding the emails as part of the investigation into whether Russia meddled in the 2016 US election, the BBC reports.

Kushner was asked to turn over documents last month but the senators say the emails were omitted from his documents.

The news follows Donald Trump Jr., Kushner’s brother-in-law, revealing earlier this week that he communicated with WikiLeaks, the whistle-blowing website that released damaging information surrounding Hillary Clinton and the Democrats, over private Twitter messages during the campaign. U.S. intelligence agencies believe the damaging emails and information had been hacked by the Russians and supplied to the website.

“Committee leaders said Kushner also withheld from the committee documents concerning a ‘Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite’ that he had forwarded to other campaign officials,” the Washington Post says. “And they said Kushner had been made privy to ‘communications with Sergei Millian’ — a Belarusan American businessman who claims close ties to the Trumps and was the source of salacious details in a dossier about the president’s 2013 trip to Moscow — but failed to turn those records over to investigators.”

The senate panel says there are several documents known to exist because other witnesses in the investigation provided documents that Kushner was copied on but did not provide himself.

“If, as you suggest, Mr Kushner was unaware of, for example, any attempts at Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, then presumably there would be few communications concerning many of the persons identified,” the senators wrote in the letter.

Kushner’s lawyer, who has until 27 November to provide the requested documents, says Trump’s son-in-law is “open to responding to any additional requests.”

GQ writer Luke Darby says, "Even if nothing hard turns up as far as collusion with Russia goes, Kushner’s constant failure to be transparent is alarming."