By Jacqueline Thomsen and Kanishka Singh

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. special counsel investigating Donald Trump obtained a search warrant for the former president’s Twitter account in January and the company delayed complying, according to a U.S. appeals court opinion on Wednesday.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed the federal trial judge’s decision to hold Twitter, now known as X, in contempt and fine it $350,000.

The ruling said that Twitter had raised First Amendment concerns about a nondisclosure order issued over the warrant, as the company wanted to notify Trump about it.

“Under the circumstances, the court did not abuse its discretion when it ultimately held Twitter in contempt and imposed a $350,000 sanction,” the ruling said.

Trump, in a post on his social media site Truth Social, said the Justice Department “secretly attacked my Twitter account, making it a point not to let me know about this major ‘hit’ on my civil rights.” Prosecutors will often ask judges that targets of subpoenas issued in criminal probes not be notified in order to protect their investigations, a practice the appeals court cited in Wednesday’s ruling.

A spokesperson for Smith declined comment and a spokesperson for X did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Wednesday’s opinion did not identify which judge held Twitter in contempt.

While Trump’s tweets are publicly viewable, the company also holds non-public information on accounts like direct messages, drafts of tweets, location data and the type of device used to send tweets.

The opinion said the warrant was related to Smith’s investigation into the events surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, siege on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of Trump while he was still president.

Republican Trump last week pleaded not guilty to an indictment that charged him with plotting to overturn his November 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.

Trump is the front-runner for the Republican 2024 presidential nomination.

(Reporting by Jacqueline Thomsen and Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Grant McCool)

By Daniel Wiessner

(Reuters) – A new lawsuit accuses the U.S. military of discriminating against as many as 35,000 veterans who were barred from serving because of their sexual orientation by failing to grant them honorable discharges.

Five LGBTQ veterans filed the proposed class action in San Francisco federal court on Tuesday, seeking to force the U.S. Department of Defense to upgrade veterans to honorable discharges and remove their sexual orientation from military paperwork.

A Pentagon policy adopted in 1993 known as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” barred openly gay, lesbian and bisexual people from military service and allowed for the discharge of LGBTQ people who revealed their sexual orientation.

About 14,000 people were discharged from the military under the policy, which was repealed in 2011. More than 20,000 others had been discharged since 1980 because of their actual or perceived sexual orientation, according to the new lawsuit.

Discharges listed as “other than honorable” can bar veterans from receiving various benefits including healthcare, loans, job opportunities and tuition assistance.

The plaintiffs in Tuesday’s lawsuit say that maintaining the status of veterans discharged under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell violates their constitutional rights to due process and equal protection.

The Department of Defense did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

The department has previously said that it has conducted outreach campaigns to inform veterans of existing procedures to seek updates to their records, and has partnered with the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) to make the process easier.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit said the process of requesting updated records can take years and is complex, requiring veterans to hire lawyers and “relive the trauma of their discharge.”

The lawsuit seeks an order requiring the Department of Defense to conduct a comprehensive review of discharges based on sexual orientation and grant honorable discharges when appropriate.

(Reporting by Daniel Wiessner in Albany, New York; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

By Matthew Lewis

(Reuters) -Robbie Robertson, the guitarist and main songwriter in The Band, the Canadian-American group known for songs including “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” has died at the age of 80, his manager said on Wednesday.

Robertson, who left his Toronto home at age 16 to pursue his rock’n’roll dreams, died Wednesday in Los Angeles after a long illness, Robertson’s manager of 34 years, Jared Levine, said in a statement.

“Robbie was surrounded by his family at the time of his death,” the statement added.

    The Band included four Canadians – Robertson, Rick Danko, Garth Hudson and Richard Manuel – and was anchored by an Arkansas drummer, Levon Helm. Originally dubbed The Hawks as the backing band for rockabilly wild man Ronnie Hawkins, they gained attention supporting Bob Dylan on his “Going Electric” tours of 1965-1966.

After changing their name to The Band and rebasing in Woodstock, New York, they became one of the most respected groups in rock. Their 1976 farewell concert in San Francisco was the basis of Martin Scorsese’s 1978 movie “The Last Waltz.”

The Band had a unique chemistry. Known for their vocal harmonies, they had three excellent singers in Helm, bassist Danko and pianist Manuel. Organist and multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson was also crucial.

“They were the goods,” Robertson wrote of his four band mates in his 2016 autobiography, “Testimony.” “This band was a real band. No slack in the high wire here. Everybody held up his end with plenty to spare.”

“The impact of The Band’s first album can’t be exaggerated,” critic Greil Marcus wrote in 2000, referring to their 1968 debut album, “Music from Big Pink.” It contained “The Weight” and Dylan’s “I Shall Be Released,” among others.

Their 1969 sophomore album, titled simply “The Band,” was even better. With their frontiersman look and unique blend of folk, rock, country, soul and gospel, The Band influenced the likes of Eric Clapton, Elton John, the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, and generations of later musicians who played music that was by then called “Americana.”

Their music harked back to an earlier America, reflected in such song titles as “Across the Great Divide,” “King Harvest (Has Surely Come),” “Up on Cripple Creek” and “The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show.”

INDIGENOUS ROOTS

Jaime Royal Robertson was born in Toronto on July 5, 1943. His mother, Rosemarie Dolly Chrysler, was an Indigenous Canadian of Mohawk and Cayuga descent. She married a Canadian Army enlistee named Jim Robertson. Robbie Robertson later learned that his biological father was a man he described as a “card shark” of Jewish heritage named Alex Klegerman, who was killed in a highway hit-and-run accident before Robertson was born.

As a boy, Robertson was impressed by his visits with relatives on the Six Nations Indian Reserve in southwestern Ontario. It struck him that “everybody there could play or sing or dance or do something with music,” he told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s “Metro Morning” in 2017. “To see somebody sitting beside you in a chair and hear their fingers moving on the instrument, and hear them breathing when they were singing, all of that, it gave me chills.”

Robertson became infatuated with the guitar early on and gained a reputation as a guitar hot shot during his time with the Hawks. “Rolling Stone” magazine eventually ranked him No. 59 on its 2015 list of “100 Greatest Guitarists.” His unique guitar style was displayed to great effect on such Band songs as “Jawbone” and “Smoke Signal.”

After soaring to the highest heights on their first two albums, The Band continued to produce good work in the 1970s but a certain lethargy and lack of direction set in, not helped by the substance abuse problems of Danko, Helm and Manuel. They decided to pack it in by holding a star-studded concert in 1976 with such guests as Dylan, Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, Van Morrison and Muddy Waters.

After The Band’s breakup, Robertson created soundtracks for Scorsese films, including “Raging Bull.” He made a foray into acting in 1980 with the film “Carny,” starring Jodie Foster. He released several solo albums, exploring new sonic territory rather than trying to recapture the distinctive sound of The Band.

DARK TIMES

In the 1990s, acrimony emerged when Helm accused Robertson of failing to give co-credits to the other members on songs he claimed they had co-written. Robertson denied he had unfairly withheld credit.

Helm painted a scathing picture of Robertson in his 1993 autobiography. Robertson reacted more in sorrow than anger, often saying in interviews that Helm, in the early days, was “the closest thing I had to a brother.”

The Band’s members reunited in various configurations in the 1980s and 1990s and even made a few albums under The Band name, but Robertson never took part.

After The Band’s breakup, a lifetime of hard living took its toll on the members. Manuel hanged himself in a Florida hotel room at age 42 in 1986. Danko died at age 55 in 1999. Helm died of throat cancer in 2012. Hudson is the remaining member still alive.

In February 2022, “Variety” reported, citing sources, that Robertson sold his music publishing catalog to a firm called Iconoclast for about $25 million.

After all the highs and lows, Robertson looked back at his Band mates with love and affection. “Through all the turbulence, I am left with such a deep appreciation for my journey,” he wrote in his autobiography. “This shining path I’ve traveled being part of the Band – there will never be another like it. Such a gift, such talent, such pain, such madness … I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

(Reporting by Matthew Lewis in Chicago; additional reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; editing by Diane Craft and Rosalba O’Brien)

By Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber and Leroy Leo

(Reuters) -The World Health Organization on Wednesday classified the EG.5 coronavirus strain circulating in the United States and China as a “variant of interest” but said it did not seem to pose more of a threat to public health than other variants.

The fast-spreading variant, the most prevalent in the United States with an estimated more than 17% of cases, has been behind upticks in the virus across the country and also has been detected in China, South Korea, Japan and Canada, among other countries.

“Collectively, available evidence does not suggest that EG.5 has additional public health risks relative to the other currently circulating Omicron descendent lineages,” the WHO said in a risk evaluation.

A more comprehensive evaluation of the risk posed by EG.5 was needed, it added.

COVID-19 has killed more than 6.9 million people globally, with more than 768 million confirmed cases since the virus emerged. WHO declared the outbreak a pandemic in March 2020 and ended the global emergency status for COVID-19 in May this year.

Maria Van Kerkhove, the WHO’s technical lead on COVID-19, said EG.5 had an increased transmissibility but was not more severe than other Omicron variants.

“We don’t detect a change in severity of EG.5 compared to other sublineages of Omicron that have been in circulation since late 2021,” she said.

Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus deplored that many countries were not reporting COVID-19 data to WHO.

He said that only 11% had reported hospitalizations and ICU admissions related to the virus.

In response, WHO issued a set of standing recommendations for COVID, in which it urged countries to continue reporting COVID data, particularly mortality data, morbidity data, and to continue to offer vaccination.

Van Kerkhove said that the absence of data from many countries was hindering efforts to fight the virus.

“About a year ago, we were in a much better situation to either anticipate or act or be more agile,” she said. “And now the delay in our ability to do that is growing. And our ability to do this is declining.”

(Reporting by Leroy Leo in Bengaluru and Gabrielle Tétrault-Farber in Geneva; Editing by Toby Chopra and Angus MacSwan)

By Kanishka Singh

(Reuters) -Canada said on Wednesday that an opposition Canadian legislator with family in Hong Kong had been targeted in an online disinformation operation and said China most likely played a role.

In a statement, the Canadian foreign ministry said the target was Michael Chong, a member of the opposition Conservative party, a frequent critic of China who has drawn Beijing’s ire.

The announcement is likely to further sour poor bilateral ties. Canadian authorities are carrying out several probes into allegations of Chinese interference in Canada’s last two federal elections.

“It has been proved time and again that none of these accusations are based on facts,” the Chinese embassy said in a statement, dismissing the Canadian comments as groundless.

The Canadian foreign ministry said it had detected an information operation on the Chinese social media platform WeChat in May that “featured, shared and amplified a large volume of false or misleading narratives” about Chong.

“While China’s role in the information operation is highly probable, unequivocal proof that China ordered and directed the operation is not possible to determine,” the statement said.

“(We) will raise with China’s representatives in Canada our serious concerns,” it said.

Chong, in an email, lamented what he called “another serious example of the communist government in Beijing attempting to interfere in our democracy,” and demanded Ottawa do more to combat meddling by China.

In May, Canada expelled a Chinese diplomat after an intelligence report accused him of trying to target Chong.

In 2021, Chong sponsored a successful motion that declared China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority amounted to genocide. He was sanctioned by Beijing in the same year.

The Globe and Mail newspaper, citing an intelligence report, said in May that China sought information about Chong and his family in China in a likely effort to “make an example” of him.

China-Canada relations turned icy in late 2018 when Canadian police detained a Chinese telecommunications executive. Shortly after, Beijing arrested two Canadians on spying charges.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Additional reporting by David Ljunggren in Ottawa; Editing by Mark Porter, Matthew Lewis, Andy Sullivan and David Gregorio)

By Zeba Siddiqui

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – The White House on Wednesday said it had launched a multimillion-dollar cyber contest to spur use of artificial intelligence (AI) to find and fix security flaws in U.S. government infrastructure, in the face of growing use of the technology by hackers for malicious purposes.

“Cybersecurity is a race between offense and defense,” said Anne Neuberger, the U.S. government’s deputy national security advisor for cyber and emerging technology.

“We know malicious actors are already using AI to accelerate identifying vulnerabilities or build malicious software,” she added in a statement to Reuters.

Numerous U.S. organizations, from healthcare groups to manufacturing firms and government institutions, have been hacking targets in recent years, and officials have warned of future threats, especially from foreign adversaries.

Neuberger’s comments about AI echo those Canada’s cybersecurity chief Samy Khoury made last month. He said his agency had seen AI being used for everything from creating phishing emails and writing malicious computer code to spreading disinformation.

The two-year contest includes around $20 million in rewards and will be led by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) – the U.S. government body in charge of creating technologies for national security – the White House said.

Alphabet’s Google, Anthropic, Microsoft, and OpenAI – the U.S. technology firms at the forefront of the AI revolution – will make their systems available for the challenge, the government said.

The contest signals official attempts to tackle an emerging threat that experts are still trying to fully grasp. In the past year, U.S. firms have launched a range of generative AI tools such as ChatGPT that allow users to create convincing videos, images, texts, and computer code. Chinese companies have launched similar models to catch up.

Experts say such tools could make it far easier to, for instance, conduct mass hacking campaigns or create fake profiles on social media to spread false information and propaganda.

“Our goal with the DARPA AI challenge is to catalyze a larger community of cyber defenders who use the participating AI models to race faster – using generative AI to bolster our cyber defenses,” Neuberger said.

The Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), a U.S. group of experts trying to improve open source software security, will be in charge of ensuring the “winning software code is put to use right away,” the U.S. government said.

(Reporting by Zeba Siddiqui in San Francisco; additional reporting by Raphael Satter in Washington; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Norfolk Southern Corp has agreed to improve conditions for workers rebuilding and cleaning up the site of its February derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, the U.S. Labor Department said on Wednesday.

The department said the railway company entered into the agreement with the federal government and the Teamsters’ Railway Union to enhance safety at the site following Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) inspections.

A Norfolk Southern-operated train derailed on Feb. 3 in Ohio, causing cars carrying toxic vinyl chloride and other dangerous chemicals to spill and catch fire.

OSHA said the railroad will pay $49,111 in penalties for four violations, including for failing to require workers to wear chemical-resistant footwear when walking on contaminated soil, allowing an employee without respiratory protection to pour cement on potentially contaminated soil and not effectively communicating to workers about hazardous chemicals.

“This agreement will improve the safety and health controls in place for Norfolk Southern employees who responded and help educate the rail operator’s employees on the lessons learned so they are prepared should another emergency occur,” said OSHA Area Office Director Howard Eberts.

Under terms of the settlement, Norfolk Southern will implement a medical surveillance program for all affected employees who worked at the derailment site, provide union employees with 40 hours of Hazardous Waste Operations and emergency response training for future derailments and create a training program on “lessons learned from the Ohio derailment.”

Norfolk Southern on Wednesday said it worked closely with OSHA and the union during the investigation: “We’ve reached a resolution that provides more training for our people, exceeding OSHA requirements, and makes our responses even safer.”

CEO Alan Shaw said in March the railroad supports addressing long-term health risks through the creation of a medical compensation fund and has agreed to work with the community on programs to protect drinking water over the long term.

In March, Ohio and the U.S. Justice Department sued Norfolk Southern, seeking to ensure the railroad pays the full cost of cleanup and any long-term effects of the derailment.

(Reporting by Susan Heavey and David Shepardson; Editing by Doina Chiacu, Deepa Babington and Jonathan Oatis)

By Jake Spring

BELEM, Brazil (Reuters) -A dozen rainforest countries formed a pact on Wednesday at a summit in Brazil to demand developed countries pay to help poorer nations combat climate change and preserve biodiversity.

The joint statement, titled “United for Our Forests,” was issued by Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, Guyana, Indonesia, Peru, the Republic of Congo, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Suriname and Venezuela.

The Amazon, the Congo Basin and Southeast Asia are home to the world’s largest rainforests, critical ecosystems that absorb carbon dioxide and house a riotous diversity of species.

Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called this week’s Amazon Summit in a bid to forge a united front among rainforest nations when they engage in international negotiations like the United Nations’ COP28 climate summit, due to be held later this year.

“We are going to COP28 with the aim of telling the rich world that if they want to effectively preserve the forest that exists, they need to pay money not only to take care of the canopy, but to take care of the people who live under it,” Lula said on Wednesday.

In the joint statement, the dozen countries called for financing mechanisms to be developed for the world to pay for the critical services provided by forests.

They also expressed concerns that richer nations have not delivered on a promise to provide $100 billion in climate financing annually to developing countries. Additionally, they called on developed nations to meet an existing commitment to provide $200 billion per year for biodiversity preservation.

The countries also condemned the use of environmental measures that they said are disguised as trade restrictions, alluding to the European Union’s passage of a law prohibiting firms from importing goods linked to deforestation.

Wednesday’s pact builds on an accord a day earlier by the eight Amazon nations, which was criticized by some environmentalists for failing to secure a commitment to end deforestation by 2030.

Lula, a two-time former president who has long sought to build multilateral blocs with less developed nations, has repeatedly called on rich, industrialized countries to deliver on commitments to finance actions on climate change in poorer countries that did little to cause global warming.

At last year’s climate summit, Brazil, Democratic Republic of Congo and Indonesia agreed to form an alliance to pressure rich countries to pay for conservation. Republic of Congo’s inclusion in this week’s summit marks a gradual expansion of cooperation.

(Reporting by Jake Spring; Additional reporting by Steven Grattan; editing by Miral Fahmy and Deepa Babington)