By Asif Shahzad

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -A Pakistani high court on Wednesday turned down an appeal by jailed former prime minister Imran Khan that his conviction on corruption charges be suspended, his lawyer said, suggesting it was unlikely he would be released on bail anytime soon.

Khan, 70, has been at the centre of political turmoil since he was ousted last year as prime minister in a no-confidence vote, raising concerns about Pakistan’s stability as it grapples with an economic crisis.

He has been barred from holding any public office for five years since he commenced a three-year prison sentence on Saturday on charges of unlawfully selling state gifts acquired by him and his family during his 2018-2022 tenure.

The court asked the concerned authorities to respond to Khan’s plea to be moved to an A-class jail cell in a prison in Rawalpindi, which has better facilities that he is entitled to as a former prime minister, his lawyer Naeem Panjutha said outside the court.

The case was adjourned for an indefinite time, Panjutha said, adding; “Our request to suspend the conviction wasn’t accepted.”

The court will issue a written order later in the day.

Khan, who has denied any wrongdoing, was arrested at his Lahore house and is currently in a prison near Islamabad.

(Reporting by Asif Shahzad, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Nick Macfie and Bernadette Baum)

By Maya Gebeily

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The United Nations is set to resume aid deliveries into rebel-held northwestern Syria via a crossing that has been a lifeline for the region, after aid workers said Damascus appeared to loosen terms that had led to a weeks-long pause.

The aid deliveries from Turkey via the Bab al-Hawa crossing stopped in July when Western powers and the Syrian government’s main ally Russia failed to agree on extending a U.N. Security Council mandate for the operation. Syria then gave unilateral approval – but on terms which the U.N. rejected as unacceptable.

After weeks of diplomacy, a Syrian government letter sent to the United Nations this week and seen by Reuters did not mention the rejected conditions. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres welcomed an “understanding” with Damascus on using the Bab al-Hawa crossing for six months, his Deputy Spokesman Farhan Haq said on Tuesday.

The northwest is the last major bastion of rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad in the 12-year-long Syrian war, and millions of people there depend on U.N. aid.

NGOs and individual states have long organised unilateral aid convoys into the northwest, but U.N. agencies will not cross the border without government or Security Council approval.

The U.N. had been using Bab al-Hawa since 2014 with Security Council authorization. Syria rejected the operation as a violation of sovereignty.

The terms set by Damascus in July included barring the U.N. from engaging with what it calls “terrorist organizations” in the rebel-held region. They also limited who could oversee and facilitate deliveries to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC) and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC).

An Aug. 5 letter sent by U.N. emergency relief coordinator Martin Griffiths to Syria’s U.N. Ambassador Bassam Sabbagh and seen by Reuters said the U.N. “may need to engage with different actors in north-west Syria” while it conducted aid operations.

It also said that his office, not the ICRC and SARC, held the mandate to oversee operations in northwest Syria and that the ICRC and SARC did not have sufficient presence in that region to take over such humanitarian work.

In an Aug. 6 letter, Sabbagh thanked Griffiths “for the clarifications on some of the essential operational modalities” and said Syria “looks forward to the involvement” of the ICRC and SARC “when circumstances permit”, without mentioning the earlier conditions.

The Syrian government did not immediately respond to questions on whether it had loosened the preconditions and why.

‘DEVIL IN THE DETAIL’

The spokesperson for the U.N.’s Guterres said late on Tuesday that Syria had reaffirmed its “consent” in recent days to the crossing’s use and that the agreement would allow the U.N. and partners to provide cross-border aid “in a principled manner that allows engagement with all parties”.

A spokesperson for the U.N.’s humanitarian operations agency OCHA said the agency was “ready to resume aid operations through the Bab al-Hawa crossing as soon as possible”.

Sherine Ibrahim, Turkiye director at CARE International, said the letters “did not mention the previous conditions related to ICRC/SARC or not working with de facto authorities”.

But that hadn’t fully allayed concerns.

“When we read these letters, we don’t see the detail – and as we know the devil is always in the details,” she said.

A Damascus-based aid worker told Reuters that Syria’s letter indicated it “accepts U.N. principles” and that aid could now resume through Bab al-Hawa without the “new conditions”.

The announcement came as Syria extended unilateral permission for two other border crossings from Turkey to be used to bring in aid, which it had initially granted in the wake of the Feb. 6 earthquake.

Tanya Evans, country director at the International Rescue Committee, noted the approval agreed for the use of Bab al-Hawa expires in February, in the depths of winter, raising concerns about the ability to scale up the aid response.

Evans said the IRC preferred the security and stability of a long-term Security Council resolution over the Syrian government’s unilateral and short-term approval.

(Reporting by Maya Gebeily; Editing by Tom Perry, Sharon Singleton and Gareth Jones)

By Moira Warburton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Democratic U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein, 90, was briefly hospitalized following a minor fall in her San Francisco home, her office said on Wednesday, the latest incident involving a key member of the committee that approves federal judges.

“All of her scans were clear and she returned home,” after a short Tuesday night hospitalization, Feinstein’s office said in a statement.

Feinstein, a member of the Democrats’ narrow 51-49 majority in the Senate, has suffered from a number of ailments recently, including a bout of shingles that kept her out of action for a month in April and May.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he had spoken with Feinstein on Wednesday morning.

“She said she suffered no injuries and briefly went to the hospital as a precaution,” the top Senate Democrat said.

Feinstein is not the only senior lawmaker to suffer recent health scares. Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell, 81, was hospitalized earlier this year for treatment of a concussion after a March fall and last month froze up for about 21 seconds during a regularly scheduled press conference.

Feinstein is a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee that plays a critical role in confirming presidential appointments of federal judges.

When she returned to the Senate in May, an aide said she was continuing to suffer from a medical complication known as Ramsay Hunt syndrome. Feinstein had also previously suffered encephalitis.

She has at times shown signs of confusion, at one point telling reporters that she had been present and voting, rather than absent for part of the year.

First elected to the Senate in 1992, Feinstein has said she will not seek re-election in 2024.

Democrats’ 51-seat Senate majority includes three independents. Congress is currently in its summer recess, with most lawmakers in their home states rather than Washington.

(Reporting by Moira Warburton, Rami Ayyub and David Ljunggren; Editing by Susan Heavey and Jonathan Oatis)

By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) -Ohio voters on Tuesday rejected a Republican-backed measure that would have made it harder to amend the state constitution, an initiative aimed at helping defeat a November referendum that would protect abortion access in the state.

The results in the special election were a crucial victory for abortion rights advocates, who would have faced the daunting prospect of securing a super-majority of voters this fall if the measure had passed.

The proposal, known as Issue 1, would have lifted the threshold for passing future changes to the state constitution to 60% of voters, up from 50%, as well as imposing more stringent standards for getting such measures on the ballot in the first place.

With more than 1.2 million votes counted, 60% of Ohioans had voted no, compared with 40% who voted yes, according to the Ohio secretary of state’s office. That margin was enough for Decision Desk HQ and the Associated Press to call the race.

“This measure was a blatant attempt to weaken voters’ voices and further erode the freedom of women to make their own health care decisions,” U.S. President Joe Biden said in a written statement on Tuesday evening. “Ohioans spoke loud and clear, and tonight democracy won.”

The election was the latest statewide battle over abortion more than a year after the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated a nationwide right. Advocacy groups on both sides of the abortion issue spent millions of dollars ahead of Tuesday’s vote.

Ballot initiatives have become powerful tools for abortion rights activists in states where abortion opponents, usually Republicans, control the legislature or hold the governor’s office.

Voters in Kansas and Kentucky, both solidly conservative states, rejected measures last year that would have declared that their state constitutions do not protect abortion rights.

On Tuesday, abortion rights groups in Arizona, a key presidential swing state, launched an effort to put the issue before voters in November 2024.

Republican Ohio Governor Mike DeWine signed a six-week abortion ban into law in 2019, which went into effect following the Supreme Court’s decision. The ban was put on hold in September after a legal challenge from abortion clinics; the Ohio Supreme Court has agreed to decide the case.

Some groups opposed to Tuesday’s ballot question had emphasized that the referendum went beyond abortion, arguing it is simply undemocratic to curb citizens’ power.

“This is much larger than one issue; it’s much larger than one party or one election,” said Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio. “This is about a freedom that Ohioans have had for more than a century.”

For instance, good government groups are working on a ballot question for 2024 that would amend the constitution to prevent gerrymandering, the process by which one party manipulates district lines to entrench power. If Tuesday’s referendum had succeeded, getting that issue on the ballot would be far more challenging.

Last year, Ohio Republicans drew sharply partisan state legislative and congressional maps and defied court orders to revamp them; November’s elections were held using maps that had been ruled unconstitutional.

Abortion rights opponents have called the November referendum extreme, claiming its vague language would allow minors to get abortions and gender-affirming surgery without parental consent.

Supporters note the amendment makes no mention of gender-affirming treatment or parental consent.

Tuesday’s election drew millions in outside spending, including from so-called “dark-money” groups that are not required to disclose their donors.

Illinois Republican mega-donor Richard Uihlein donated at least $4 million to the pro-Issue 1 campaign, according to campaign filings. Other groups supporting Tuesday’s referendum collected funds from Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America and The Concord Fund, a conservative dark-money group.

The anti-Issue 1 side got support from the Tides Foundation, a California-based social justice organization, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a liberal dark-money group.

(Reporting by Joseph Ax; additional reporting by Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and Lincoln Feast)