The United States’ Supreme Court, without an explanation or any dissents, has rejected special counsel Jack Smith’s request to expedite arguments on former president Donald Trump’s immunity from federal prosecution for alleged crimes he committed during office.

The court’s recent decision on Friday, which could delay Trump’s trial, is a significant setback for Smith, who requested the justices to bypass a federal appeals court and swiftly resolve a crucial issue in his election subversion criminal case against Trump, CNN reported.

In urging the court to not take the case, Trump’s attorneys argued the special counsel was trying to “rush to decide the issues with reckless abandon.”

“The fact that this case arises in the vortex of political dispute warrants caution, not haste,” Trump attorneys wrote in court papers.

Following the Supreme Court’s rejection, Trump continued to insist he has immunity from federal prosecution, as he took to social media on Friday and wrote: “I was President, it was my right and duty to investigate and speak on, the rigged and stolen 2020 Presidential Election.

“Looking forward to the very important arguments on Presidential Immunity in front of the DC Circuit Court of Appeals!”

The decision follows Trump’s team’s request to review District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s immunity ruling, which rejected Trump’s attorney’s argument that the criminal indictment should be dismissed.

The judge has paused all procedural deadlines in the case while the appeal plays out but Smith’s team sought to bypass the appeals court’s review of the matter by having the justices step in now.

“It is of imperative public importance that respondent’s claims of immunity be resolved by this Court and that respondent’s trial proceed as promptly as possible if his claim of immunity is rejected,” Smith’s team wrote in its petition to the Supreme Court.

Prosecutors are also seeking the court to determine if Trump is protected by double jeopardy, as his defence lawyers argue that due to his impeachment trial acquittal, he cannot be criminally tried again for the same alleged actions.

Meanwhile, Smith had pushed back strongly on Trump’s claim that prosecutors were trying to unfairly rush him to trial this March, writing that those claims “are unfounded and incorrect.”

Doctors accuse Israeli army of desecrating bodies, shooting civilians at hospital

GAZA/JERUSALEM   –  Israeli soldiers raiding a hos­pital in northern Gaza des­ecrated the bodies of dead patients with bulldozers, let a military dog maul a man in a wheelchair, and shot multi­ple doctors even after vetting them for terror links, accord­ing to allegations by staff and patients. The claims relate to an eight-day operation by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) at the Kamal Adwan Hospital last week.

CNN spoke to two senior medical staff, another doctor and a patient at the hospital, who provided corroborating testimonies of what happened. CNN also reviewed video evi­dence for some of the claims.

They paint a disturbing pic­ture of how the IDF carried out the operation, as doctors were interrogated for their connec­tions to Hamas and staff strug­gled to treat patients trapped inside. The IDF claims that Hamas hides infrastructure in and around civilian institu­tions in Gaza, such as hospi­tals, and that targeting them is essential as it works to elimi­nate Hamas from the Gaza Strip. But its operations are contentious, with humanitar­ian organizations saying that medical facilities in Gaza are rendered unable to provide basic services.

Among the most serious al­legations relating to the IDF’s operations at Kamal Adwan is that, as troops were leav­ing the hospital complex, they used bulldozers to dig up bod­ies that had recently been bur­ied in makeshift graveyards in the hospital’s courtyard.

“The soldiers dug up the graves this morning and dragged the bodies with bull­dozers, then crushed the bod­ies with the bulldozers,” said the hospital’s head of pediatric services, Hossam Abu Safiya, in a phone interview on Satur­day. “I have never seen such a thing before.” Videos and im­ages he shared with CNN show decomposing human remains scattered across the hospital grounds. The allegation was supported by the hospital’s head of nursing, Eid Sabbah, and another nurse, Asmaa Tan­teesh. On the other hand, the Israel Defense Forces gave de­tails Saturday on its ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip, detailing gun battles and strikes on Hamas operatives as well as arrests.

No functional hospitals left in northern Gaza: WHO

GENEVA   –  There are no longer any function­al hospitals in the north of the Gaza Strip, the World Health Organization said Thursday, describing “unbear­able” scenes of largely abandoned patients begging for food and water.

The UN health agency said it had led missions to two badly damaged hospitals, Al-Shifa and Al-Ahli, in the north of the Palestinian territory on Wednesday. “Our staff are running out of words to describe the beyond catastrophic situation facing remain­ing patients and health workers,” said Richard Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for the occupied Pal­estinian territory. His comment came amid increasingly frantic dip­lomatic efforts to secure a pause in the war that Hamas says has already claimed 20,000 lives in Gaza, 70 per­cent of them women and children.

The war began when Hamas at­tacked Israel on October 7, killing around 1,140 people, mostly civil­ians, and abducting about 250.

WHO has already described Al-Shi­fa, the largest hospital in Gaza which last month was the focus of an ex­tended Israeli army operation and has been devastated by Israeli bom­bardments, as “a blood bath”.

The smaller Al-Ahli hospital had since become the only place where surgeries were possible in the north, but its director said it had stopped operating on Tuesday after being stormed by the Israeli army.

The WHO-led mission revealed that Al Ahli, which just two days ago was “overwhelmed with patients needing emergency care”, was now “a shell of a hospital”, Peeperkorn told reporters in Geneva via video link from Jerusalem.

“There are no operating theatres anymore due to the lack of fuel, power, medical supplies and health workers, including surgeons and other specialists,” he added.

“It has completely stopped func­tioning.” Of Gaza’s original 36 hos­pitals, only nine are now partially functional, all of them in the south.

“There are no functional hospi­tals left in the north.” Hospitals, protected under international hu­manitarian law, have repeatedly been hit by Israeli strikes in Gaza since the war erupted. The Israeli military accuses Hamas of having tunnels under hospitals and using the medical facilities as command centres, a charge denied by the Is­lamist group.

Asked about the charge, Peeper­korn said “we on our missions have not seen anything of this on the ground”, adding that WHO was “not in a position to assert how any hospi­tal is being used”. Although Wednes­day’s mission had aimed to deliver fuel, he said, the lack of security guar­antees had meant they could only de­liver medical supplies and medicines. But that was not enough, he said.

“Without fuel, staff, and other es­sential needs, medicines won’t make a difference and all patients will die slowly and painfully.” Al Ahli, he said, still counts around 10 staff striving to provide basic first aid,

Top US, Chinese military officials hold talks for first time in over a year

Top US and Chinese military officials held a virtual meeting on Thursday, in the first such conversation in over a year between two rivals, which are locked in a string of disputes.

US Air Force Gen. CQ Brown, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General Liu Zhenli of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army discussed a number of global and regional security issues, local English daily, Global Times reported.

Liu, who is the chief of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the military body responsible for China’s combat operations and planning, said that the “Taiwan question is a purely internal affair of China, which allows no external interference, and the US should respect China’s territorial sovereignty and maritime rights in the South China Sea.”

“Gen. Brown discussed the importance of working together to responsibly manage competition, avoid miscalculations, and maintain open and direct lines of communication,” said a statement from Brown’s office.

Brown, it added, reiterated the importance of the PLA engaging in substantive dialogue to reduce the likelihood of misunderstandings.

China had snapped high-level military communication with the US after then-US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi paid an unannounced trip to Taiwan.

However, in November, China’s President Xi Jinping flew to the US where he held a summit with his counterpart Joe Biden which appears to have eased the tensions.

This is the the highest-level military contact between world’s top two economies at a time when the two militaries have seen close engagement over the disputed South China Sea.

Imran, Qureshi get post-arrest bail in cipher case

ISLAMABAD  –  The Supreme Court of Pakistan Fri­day granted post-arrest bails to former Chairman Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI) Imran Khan and vice-chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi in the cipher case, subject to furnishing of bail bonds of Rs1 million with two sureties. A three-member bench of the SC headed by Acting Chief Justice Sardar Tariq Masood and comprising Justice Mansoor Ali Shah and Justice Athar Minallah conducted hearing of the bail petitions of the PTI leaders.

The bench set aside the Islamabad High Court (IHC) impugned orders, but clarified that the observations made in this order are of tentative nature which shall not in any manner influence the trial court, and that this concession of bail may be cancelled, if the petitioners misuse it in any man­ner, including causing delay in the ex­peditious conclusion of the trial.

The SC order said that in order to answer the question, the bench can­not indulge in the exercise of a deeper appraisal of the material available on record of the case but is to determine it only tentatively by looking at such material. The bench after examining the material available on record, con­cluded that there is no sufficient in­criminating material available, at this stage, which could show that the peti­tioner Imran Ahmed Khan Niazi com­municated the information contained in the cipher telegram received from Parep Washington, USA, to the public at large with the intention or calculation, directly or indirect­ly, in the interest or for the ben­efit of a foreign power nor the disclosed information relates to any of the defence installa­tions or affairs, nor did he dis­close any secret official code to the public at large.