Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was confronted by two of the most senior US government officials for mixing his personal interests with US foreign policy, according to a new book. Kushner, an envoy to the Middle East for his father-in-law, is said to have been robustly challenged by both Rex Tillerson, then secretary of state, and Gary Cohn, formerly Trump’s top economic adviser.

The confrontations are detailed in Kushner Inc by the journalist Vicky Ward, who also describes interference in foreign relations by Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump. The book is scheduled to be released on 19 March. A copy was obtained by the Guardian. Ward reports that Tillerson blamed Kushner for Trump’s abrupt endorsement of a provocative blockade and diplomatic campaign against Qatar by Saudi Arabia and several allies in June 2017. The US has thousands of troops stationed in Qatar.

Tillerson “told Kushner that his interference had endangered the US”, an unidentified Tillerson aide tells Ward. Tillerson is also said to have read negative “chatter” about himself in intelligence reports after Kushner belittled him to Kushner’s friend Mohammed bin Salman, the controversial Saudi crown prince. Meanwhile, Cohn is said to have rebuked Kushner in January 2017 after it was revealed Kushner had dined with executives from the Chinese financial corporation Anbang, which was considering investing in the Kushner family’s troubled tower at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan.(theguardian)…[+]

Several Saudi Arabian women’s rights activists stood trial on Wednesday for the first time since a group of them were detained last year in a case that has intensified scrutiny of the kingdom’s human rights record after the murder of a prominent journalist. Loujain al-Hathloul, Aziza al-Yousef, Eman al-Nafjan and Hatoon Al-Fassi were among around 10 women appearing before the criminal court in the capital, Riyadh, where charges would be presented against them, court president Ibrahim al Sayari said.

He was speaking to reporters and diplomats, who were barred from attending the session. The women are among about a dozen prominent activists who were arrested last May in the weeks before a ban on women driving cars in the conservative kingdom was lifted. At the time of the arrests, the public prosecutor said five men and four women were being held on suspicion of harming the country’s interests and offering support to hostile elements abroad. State-backed media labelled them traitors and “agents of embassies”, unnerving foreign diplomats in the key US ally.

Hathloul’s brother tweeted late on Tuesday that the family had been informed that the trial had been moved to the criminal court from the specialised criminal court, which was set up to try terrorism cases but is often used for political offences. It was not clear what was behind the decision.(theguardian)…[+]

Barbados has been blacklisted by the European Union (EU), and faces the threat of “sanctions”, including reduced funding. The EU Council yesterday announced it was adding Barbados to its list of non-cooperative tax jurisdictions, having assigned the country, United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Marshall Islands to a grey list a year ago “following commitments they had taken”.

“Barbados has replaced a harmful preferential tax regime by a measure of similar effect and did not commit to amend or abolish it by the end of 2019,” the Europeans asserted. In addition to Barbados, UAE and Marshal Islands, the revised EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for tax purposes now includes Aruba, Belize, Bermuda, Dominica, Fiji, Oman and Vanuatu. The EU claimed these jurisdictions “did not implement the commitments they had made to the EU by the agreed deadline”. Based on what the EU outlined yesterday in a four-page “fact sheet”, Barbados and other blacklisted countries now faced the imposition of measures “which will ensure that the EU list has a real impact”.(Barbados Nation)…[+]