A divided US Supreme Court handed a legal defeat to President Donald Trump on Wednesday, rejecting his bid to freeze some $2 billion in foreign aid payments.

The top court, in its first significant ruling on a legal challenge to the Trump administration, voted 5-4 to uphold a lower court order requiring that payments be made on aid contracts that have already been completed.

The justices said the federal judge who ordered the resumption of payments for contracts with the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department “should clarify what obligations the Government must fulfill.”

Conservatives John Roberts, the chief justice, and Amy Coney Barrett, a Trump appointee, voted with the three liberals on the nine-member Supreme Court.

Justice Samuel Alito wrote a dissent that was joined by the three other conservatives.

“Does a single district-court judge who likely lacks jurisdiction have the unchecked power to compel the Government of the United States to pay out (and probably lose forever) 2 billion taxpayer dollars?” Alito wrote.

“The answer to that question should be an emphatic ‘No,’ but a majority of this Court apparently thinks otherwise. I am stunned,” he added.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has backed several legal challenges to moves by the Trump administration, welcomed the Supreme Court decision.

“President Trump’s attempt to halt foreign aid funding was a reckless, cruel, and unprecedented abuse of executive power,” ACLU executive director Anthony Romero said in a statement.

“The lower court rightly held that President Trump exceeded his authority when he unilaterally declared he was freezing funding for programs Congress had already authorized, stiffing federal contractors who had already done work,” Romero said.

District Judge Amir Ali, an appointee of former president Joe Biden, issued a temporary restraining order last month prohibiting the administration from “suspending, pausing, or otherwise preventing” foreign assistance funds.

Trump has launched a campaign led by his top donor Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, to downsize or dismantle swaths of the US government.

The most concentrated fire has been on USAID, the primary organization for distributing US humanitarian aid around the world with health and emergency programs in some 120 countries.

Trump has said USAID was “run by radical lunatics” and Musk has described it as a “criminal organization” needing to be put “through the woodchipper.”

AFP

Pope Francis suffered two new breathing attacks on Monday, requiring two separate bronchoscopies, the Vatican said, as the 88-year-old pontiff struggles to recover from pneumonia.

“Today, the Holy Father experienced two episodes of acute respiratory failure, caused by a significant accumulation of endobronchial mucus and consequent bronchospasm,” it said in a statement on Francis’s 18th day in hospital, the longest of his papacy.

The Argentine pope was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on February 14 with bronchitis, which developed into pneumonia in both lungs, sparking alarm across the globe.

The Vatican said on Monday in its nightly medical bulletin that two bronchoscopies were performed on the pope in order to “aspirate abundant secretions”.

It said the pope had resumed “non-invasive mechanical ventilation” in the afternoon — the use of an oxygen mask — noting that he was “alert, focused and cooperative.”

As it has since the start of the pope’s hospitalisation, the Vatican said Francis’s prognosis remains “reserved,” an indication that doctors cannot predict the likely outcome of his condition.

On Sunday evening, the Vatican had said the pope’s condition was stable after he suffered a breathing crisis on Friday.

The leader of the world’s almost 1.4 billion Catholics had required the oxygen mask on Friday and Saturday, but not on Sunday, when he participated in mass and spent the rest of the day alternating rest with prayer.

Francis had also on Sunday received Italian Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s secretary of state, and Edgar Pena Parra, a Venezuelan archbishop who is also a senior Vatican official.

The Jesuit, who has been pope since March 2013, is being treated in a special suite reserved for pontiffs on the 10th floor of the Gemelli.

Francis, born Jorge Bergoglio, missed his traditional Angelus prayer for a third straight Sunday, and the Vatican issued a written text instead.

“In it, the pope thanked well-wishers for their prayers, saying: “I feel all your affection and closeness and, at this particular time, I feel as if I am ‘carried’ and supported by all God’s people. Thank you all.”

AFP

Two buses collided on a busy street in Spain’s second city Barcelona on Monday, injuring at least 34 people, four of them critically, local emergency services said.

The four critically injured were taken to hospital, including one who was temporarily “trapped” in one of the buses, emergency services in the northeastern region of Catalonia wrote on social network X.

Officials have not yet released the nationalities of the injured.

The accident happened on Avinguda Diagonal, one of Barcelona’s widest and most significant avenues, not far from the centre of the city.

It comes as Barcelona and much of Spain were lashed by rain and it snarled traffic in Barcelona on the opening day of the annual Mobile World Congress (MWC), the world’s largest wireless technology showcase which is set to draw around 100,000 attendees.

According to witnesses quoted by Barcelona-based newspaper La Vanguardia, one of the buses hit the other from behind, which in turn crashed into a tree.

Images posted on social media showed a green and white bus embedded against a white one, with several ambulances deployed nearby.