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Charter rolls out new Spectrum pricing and internet speeds, aims to ‘be a better service operator’

Charter Communications CEO Chris Winfrey said he wants customers to think of reliability and credibility when they think of their cable and broadband provider.

The cable giant told CNBC it is unveiling a series of changes Monday to bolster that goal, including rolling out new bundles and pricing, increasing internet speeds, offering credits for service outages and promising heightened reliability for customers.

Charter — which provides broadband, cable TV and mobile services and is known to customers under the name of Spectrum — said it is also trying to make the company more approachable and remove the longtime negative connotations around cable companies by announcing Spectrum’s new “first-of-its-kind customer commitment,” branded as “Life Unlimited.”

The rollout comes as Charter and its industry peers contend with several trends: slowing broadband customer growth, continued defections from the cable TV bundle, and a young but speedily expanding mobile business.

“It is hard to be loved when you’re providing a critical service to the household that’s a physical infrastructure that charges over $100 a month,” Winfrey said in an interview with CNBC. “And to the extent there’s a problem, sometimes somebody has to enter your home … in the same vein that it is for an electrician or plumber.”

The first step to changing a less-favorable consumer view is with “pricing and packaging that creates more value than you can replicate anywhere else in the marketplace,” he said.

Spectrum said it will charge as low as $30 a month for its 500Mbps internet plan, or $40 a month for 1GB service, when either are bundled with two mobile lines or cable TV. The company is also increasing the baseline internet speed for current customers at no additional cost.

The company also said it’s planning to be upfront about costs. Under its new plan, taxes and fees are baked in, there are no annual contracts and pricing is guaranteed up to three years, it said. Charter even eliminated the 99 cents it had tacked on to most of Spectrum’s pricing in the past.

In addition, Spectrum pledged to give customers credits when the company’s customer service doesn’t live up to its promises, or for internet outages that are out of the customer’s control but are due to an issue on the company’s part and last more than two hours. Service issues such as those caused by weather, natural disasters or power outages don’t count.

Life Unlimited — a new platform for Spectrum’s internet, mobile and TV services — will roll out across its 41-state footprint this week, the company said.

“We wanted to make a bold statement about our commitment and our capabilities,” Winfrey said. “We also wanted to recognize that we’re not perfect and we’re putting ourselves under pressure, concrete pressure, to make sure that we can be a better service operator every month and every year from here on out.”

The announced changes are some of Charter’s biggest moves since Winfrey took the helm as CEO in December 2022.

He followed Tom Rutledge, who held the post for a decade and turned a relatively small cable operator into the second-largest cable company in the U.S. through the takeovers of Time Warner Cable and Bright House Networks in 2016. Winfrey was CFO at the time and spearheaded the mergers.

Winfrey recalled the various investments and advancements cable companies had made over the years: namely in broadband, but also in the pay TV bundle and the landline and mobile phone businesses.

“For all the value that the industry’s brought over the years, and the service and reliability investments that we’ve made, we haven’t always gotten the full credit that we deserve, and in some cases, we did get the credit we deserve because we could have done things better,” Winfrey said.

He entered the top job at a moment when it was clear growth was unlikely to return to the cable TV bundle.

Winfrey had been a low-key and not widely known executive in the media industry, but he started off swinging.

At an investor day in December 2022, Charter announced an aggressive capital investment plan that included putting $5.5 billion over three years in its broadband infrastructure network. The higher-than-expected spending during a time of growing competition from 5G wireless providers sent alarms through Wall Street, and the stock dropped.

Charter’s stock price has fluctuated greatly in recent years. On Sept. 12, 2021, the stock price was $787.12. It closed at $340.17 on Friday.

Charter’s stock has fluctuated in recent years as there’s been a slowdown in broadband subscriber growth.

That’s in part because broadband customer growth at providers including Charter and Comcast has struggled, according to the companies’ earnings reports. Increased competition from wireless companies such as AT&T and Verizon has also played a role in the stagnation, as has the slowdown in the buying and selling of houses due to high interest rates.

The third quarter was the worst ever for broadband industry subscriber losses, according to MoffettNathanson. Charter lost 149,000 subscribers and had a total of 30.4 million residential and small business broadband customers as of June 30, according to its second-quarter earnings report.

While the losses weren’t as substantial as analysts had feared, Charter’s growth bright spot is now its mobile business, which launched in 2018. Spectrum Mobile has 8.8 million total lines and has grown rapidly due to enticing promotional deals and increased mobile usage on reliable Wi-Fi networks, the company said.

In late 2022, Charter announced its “Spectrum One” plan, the first time it offered broadband, Wi-Fi and mobile in a bundle with promotions that included competitive rates and, in some cases, free mobile lines.

“For wireless, the ‘Spectrum One’ promotion will almost certainly turn out to have been a home run,” analyst Craig Moffett said in a research note in July. “Despite the fact that it was initially viewed as shockingly aggressive, it was, in fact, a rather modest offer.”

Moffett called mobile an “underappreciated growth engine” for Charter, not only because of customer additions but also growth in average revenue per user, or ARPU, which is a metric often used by cable companies.

Winfrey doesn’t expect ARPU to be affected by the new promotions.

“When I think about Wall Street, I think about the customer,” Winfrey said. “If you focus on the customer, provide great customer service, save them money, provide value, then your capital market strategy, your regulatory strategy, all of that just falls into place.”

Customers have been dropping pay TV rapidly across all providers, including Charter. But the company has been vocal about its efforts to preserve the business, especially under Winfrey’s leadership.

The biggest moment came in 2023 when Disney-owned networks went dark for Charter’s customers and Winfrey called the pay TV ecosystem “broken” as he pushed for a revamped deal with Disney.

While these disputes are common — Disney and DirecTV on Saturday ended a roughly two-week blackout fight — this one was different in the age of streaming.

For Charter, the sticking point wasn’t just the fees. The company wanted Disney’s ad-supported streaming options to be part of its TV offering.

Pay TV providers often say the rates that programming companies such as Disney seek from them are too high, especially since the programmers are also funneling much of their content into streaming platforms. Although the cable bundle loses customers, cable providers note it’s still a cash cow while streaming chases profitability.

“Credit to Disney, eventually they were willing to lean in and they understood their role in the industry,” Winfrey said, adding that ESPN is considered the linchpin of the cable TV bundle. “They had to be the leader in the space, and we knew that.”

The deal allowed for ad-supported Disney+ and ESPN+ to be included in “Spectrum TV Select” packages. In addition, when ESPN launches its direct-to-consumer streaming option — which is expected to debut in fall 2025 — these customers will receive access to it, too.

“I give Charter a ton of credit because they walked into the room and they had very specific ideas. They had a vision that they wanted to execute against, and again, it was a hard negotiation,” ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro said on CNBC on Sept. 3 when discussing the blackout fight with DirecTV.

Depending on the tier a customer subscribes to, their package can include the ad-supported versions of streamers Disney+, ESPN+, Max, Discovery+, Paramount+, AMC+, BET+ and/or Televisa Univision’s Vix.

The deals have also given Charter the opportunity to sell and market the streaming services to its broadband-only customers — and includes a revenue share agreement.

The most recent deals with Warner Bros. Discovery and AMC Networks were early renewals. That’s relatively uncommon in an industry where carriage negotiations often come down to the wire.

Charter last year also started offering its own streaming devices, known as Xumo, through a joint venture with Comcast. The device gets rid of the cable box and gives consumers a way to access both their cable TV and streaming apps in one place.

“We still have hurdles to get through,” Winfrey said, noting that Charter’s goal is to offer all ad-supported streaming apps owned by the major programmers it negotiates with on the cable TV bundle in the first half of 2025.

NBCUniversal’s Peacock is still not part of that roster, however. A Charter representative said the company doesn’t discuss renewals and declined to comment.

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC.

This post appeared first on NBC NEWS

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Why these Gulf states want to be AI superpowers

In recent years, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has been signalling its intent to become a major player in artificial intelligence, but now other Gulf countries are also getting serious about the technology.

“Here in the region, people were much more prepared to experiment and get involved with AI than maybe some other parts of the world,” he added.

One issue around the rapid growth of AI is that it can be hugely energy intensive, and it is increasingly becoming a major source of greenhouse gas emissions. Google reported that its 2023 emissions were nearly 50% more than in 2019, which it partly attributed to the energy demands of AI. Energy demand from AI, data centers and cryptocurrencies could double by 2026, according to the International Energy Agency.

But Anderson believes that Gulf countries, whose economies are heavily dependent on fossil fuels, are well placed to become “major players” in the technology, and have the potential to make it greener.

“We’re at the center of the world when it comes to energy – not just old energy, but particularly new energy,” he said. “This is the lowest-cost place anywhere in the world to produce solar energy. So the opportunity to combine sustainability and energy with the computer power that’s required from an AI perspective is really important.”

Anderson pointed to the UAE, Qatar and Saudi Arabia as the region’s leading investors in AI.

As Saudi Arabia looks to cut its economy’s reliance on oil and gas, it has invested heavily in AI, which it says will help to realize the objectives outlined in its “Vision 2030” strategy, a government program to diversify the economy. According to a recent projection from the Saudi Data and AI Authority (SDAIA), which hosted the GAIN summit, AI will contribute 12% of its GDP by 2030, with the sector growing at an annual rate of 29%.

There have been significant efforts across the region to develop Arabic-language models trained on local datasets that capture the nuances of the language in a way that has been lacking on platforms like ChatGPT. Last year, the UAE unveiled a tool called Jais and Saudi Arabia has developed the Arabic chatbot ALLaM.

Last week, it was announced that ALLaM will be hosted on Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform. This follows the news from earlier this year that it would also be accessible through IBM’s watsonx platform.

Nick Studer, CEO at management consulting firm Oliver Wyman Group, who attended the GAIN summit, said that the focus on Arabic language models could help Saudi Arabia compete with English-speaking markets that have an “underlying advantage” in the space because of the many large language models available

According to Studer, there are over half a dozen Arabic-based large language models in development in the country, focusing on a range of uses cases, from chat to governmental and corporate applications. “That combination of governmental and private sector entrepreneurialism may well lead to the development of an AI hub, particularly as the kingdom and the wider region seek to diversify their economies,” he said.

Challenge of governance

One of the major hurdles with the development of AI is public perception and governance: how should AI and data be regulated safely, securely, ethically and fairly?

During the summit, various policies were announced, including the launch of guidelines from the SDAIA addressing the responsible use of deep fakes, the unveiling of the Riyadh Charter for AI in the Islamic World, which establishes a framework for developing AI technologies in line with Islamic values and principles, and a global framework for AI readiness, led by the International Telecommunication Union.

Studer says a solid regulatory framework is essential for the future of AI.

“There are many concerns that go with the development of AI – not just privacy concerns, not just the risks of losing jobs, but also all the way up to national sovereignty if your economy starts to rely on a set of tools which are built outside of your control,” he said. “It is critical that we have sensible regulation in place.”

This post appeared first on cnn.com

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‘Why all this hate?’: Mayoral debate in Brazil turns ugly as candidate attacks rival with chair, live on TV

A mayoral debate in the Brazilian city of São Paulo turned ugly when one of the candidates attacked a rival with a chair.

Video from the debate, broadcast live on Sunday by TV Cultura, shows a tense exchange between José Luiz Datena and Pablo Marçal before Datena swings the chair at his counterpart.

Datena later told TV Cultura that he had attacked Marçal – who required hospital treatment for his injuries – because he had brought up old sexual harassment allegations against Datena that were dismissed several years ago.

“He came with a case that was archived, that was not even investigated by the police because there was no evidence. Something from 11 years ago that caused a very serious situation within my family,” Datena said.

Datena was expelled from the debate but insisted in a statement Monday that while he had made a mistake he did not regret his actions.

Marçal was treated at Sírio Libanês Hospital before being released. His team said he was treated for a possible fracture in the chest region and had difficulty breathing. The hospital said he had suffered trauma to his chest and wrist, but without any major complications.

Marçal compared the chair attack to the July assassination attempt against former US President Donald Trump and the stabbing of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro during the 2018 election, posting an image of all three attacks on Instagram with the caption: “Why all this hate?”

The remaining candidates Guilherme Boulos, Marina Helena, Ricardo Nunes and Tabata Amaral continued the debate following the attack. TV Cultura said it regretted the incident and had pressed ahead with the discussion in accordance with the rules after the other candidates agreed.

Marçal’s team has vowed to take legal action.

“Pablo Marçal was cowardly attacked by José Luiz Datena, who hit him in the ribs with an iron chair,” Marçal’s team said, adding that it was unfortunate the debate had continued without him.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

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Ryan Routh’s support for Ukraine is a propaganda win for Moscow, at a very tricky time for Kyiv

It is exactly the kind of attention Ukraine did not need. Since the start of clashes with Russia over its future in 2003, Ukraine has carefully avoided the sort of political violence Ryan Wesley Routh is accused of.

Yet now, at arguably the most crucial point of the conflict, Routh’s vocal support for Kyiv has somehow been seized upon by Russian echo chambers after he was detained Sunday in connection with an apparent assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump.

Someone like Routh was quite easy to meet in Ukraine in the opening months of Russia’s full-scale war in 2022. Border crossings and railway stations were often haunted by whispering, unshaven expatriates of questionable military provenance, trying to conjure the idea that the very real and painful struggle of Ukraine was something they had a pivotal role in. As the conflict has dragged on, the fantasists have faded, and the resumes of dozens of Western volunteers been vetted, or become less relevant as their alleged experience has been tested in combat. The most brutal fighting Europe has seen since the 1940s, the Ukrainian front line has never been less of a place for amateur thrill-seekers.

Yet Routh tried his best to associate himself with the fight against Russia, expressing support for Ukraine in dozens of X posts that year, saying he was willing to die in the fight and that “we need to burn the Kremlin to the ground.”

Kyiv has enough on its plate now, other than explaining how little it had to do with the author of “Ukraine’s Unwinnable War: The Fatal Flaw of Democracy, World Abandonment and the Global Citizen – Taiwan, Afghanistan, North Korea and the end of Humanity.” This – Routh’s title for his self-published book – does not demand its author’s ideas are taken too seriously.

But already, Moscow’s prolific echo chambers have begun to fashion a narrative in which US support for Ukraine is somehow extremist. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov, asked what he thought about the assassination bid, said, according to Reuters: “It is not us who should be thinking, it is the US intelligence services who should be thinking. In any case, playing with fire has its consequences.”

RT.com, a Kremlin-run English news outlet, also highlighted Routh’s interest in Ukraine, writing that “Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene stated that if the suspect’s identity is confirmed, it is clear he is ‘obsessed with the Ukraine war, which is funded by the US.’”

Do not expect any majorly new or intelligent arguments to surface about the war in Ukraine in the weeks ahead. But instead, anticipate a slow drip of some new voices, and some of the usual, suggesting the war in Ukraine cannot be won, that Putin must be given a chance to negotiate a deal (even one that lets him keep the chunk of Ukraine he has stolen), and that there is an unhealthy infection of extremists in the ranks of those who feel they must – as Routh once said – “fight and die” for Ukraine.

None of this helps Ukrainians who genuinely must fight and die to protect their homes and families. It particularly hampers Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, days before he is set to present a victory plan to the Biden administration. The clamor of support for Ukraine to receive US permission to fire longer-range US-supplied missiles at targets deeper inside Russian territory had been growing. It seemed likely last week that President Joe Biden would follow the course he’s taken when past decisions on arming Ukraine were presented to him, and consent – albeit very, very late – after public pressure from allies.

But now Zelensky’s press appearances may be dogged by questions about Routh, however absurdly distant from Kyiv’s agenda his apparent attack on a Florida golf course was. It will feed into the ultimate paranoia of US isolationists: that actions overseas which appear to benefit America’s global interests carry with them the risk of fomenting violence back home.

Routh’s political leanings and worldview were far from consistent, if not delusional. But in the breathy forum of random gibberish that is social media, they contribute to a narrative, for those who seek it, of support for Ukraine causing chaos in America. That the United States should just stay out of Putin’s war.

None of it connects with the savage reality Ukrainians face every night, shaken awake by Russian missiles, or losing loved ones to the ghastly attrition of the front lines.

Washington’s support for Kyiv is weighty and consequential when it lumbers into play, yet horrifyingly fragile when subjected to US electoral politics and the Republican party’s fickle grip on geopolitics. The sudden insertion of a wayward extremist like Routh is a loud, confusing wild card, at a time when support for Ukraine urgently needed a calm and balanced voice.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

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‘I am a rapist just like all the others in this room,’ says Frenchman accused of mass rape of wife

Dominique Pelicot, the Frenchman accused of drugging his wife and recruiting dozens of strangers to rape her over a decade, on Tuesday admitted to the various criminal charges he faces in a closely-watched trial, French media reported.

Pelicot had been due to testify last week in the case that has shocked France, but his appearance was delayed due to health issues. He appeared in court with a cane.

“I admit to the charges in their entirety,” Pelicot, 71, was cited as saying by BFM TV, whose reporter was present in the courthouse, adding: “I am a rapist just like all the others in this room.”

Prosecutors have said Pelicot offered sex with his wife on a website and filmed the abuse. In addition to Pelicot, 50 other men accused of taking part are on trial, which is taking place in the southern city of Avignon. The other men so far have not commented on their charges.

Pelicot’s former wife, Gisele Pelicot, now aged 72, insisted on a public trial to expose him and the other men accused of raping her.

“I ask my wife, my children, my grandchildren to accept my apologies. I regret what I did. I ask for your forgiveness, even if it is not forgivable,” he said, according to BFM TV.

Pelicot faces charges including rape, gang rape and various privacy breaches by recording and disseminating sexual images.

Pelicot’s bad health required the judges to push back his hearing several times last week. His lawyer previously said he wanted to use the hearing to make an apology to his family.

He told the courtroom he had had a difficult upbringing and had been a victim of rape himself. At times he cried, according to French media.

Gisele Pelicot, 72, was in the courtroom during his appearance on the stand and also spoke, according to French media, saying: “It is difficult to hear from the mouth of Mr. Pelicot what he has just said.”

To many, Gisele Pelicot has become a symbol of the struggle against sexual violence in France. On Saturday hundreds of people, mostly women, gathered in cities across the country to demonstrate support for her.

This post appeared first on cnn.com

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Harris-Trump showdown: Presidential race rocked by 2nd assassination attempt with 50 days until election

Fifty days until Election Day – and the race for the White House is rocked once again.

Two months after former President Donald Trump survived an assassination attempt at a rally in western Pennsylvania, the Secret Service opened fire while Trump was playing golf at one of his courses in southern Florida to prevent what appeared to be a second assassination attempt against the former president.

After decades without an assassination attempt against a sitting president or major party presidential nominee, for the second time this summer, the nation has narrowly avoided a tragedy of gigantic proportions that would only further deepen the nation’s already firmly cemented polarization.

‘Nothing will slow me down. I will NEVER SURRENDER!’ the former president vowed in a fundraising email to supporters on Sunday, following the incident.

A top Trump ally, Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York, argued in a statement that ‘as Americans we must unite behind him in November to protect our republic and bring peace back to the world.’

It is way too early to gauge whether the latest incident will impact the race between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris to succeed President Biden. 

The only thing that is certain is that the time left in the 2024 campaign is fleeting.

Harris emphasized that the ‘clock is ticking,’ as she called on supporters at a fundraiser on Saturday to volunteer and mobilize their friends to vote.

‘Please join our teams in our battleground states and help register folks to vote. … And talk with your neighbors and your friends about the stakes,’ she urged.

With the first and potentially only debate between the Democratic and Republican Party presidential nominees now in the rearview mirror, and early voting and absentee balloting starting to get underway, the showdown between Harris and Trump remains a margin-of-error race in the seven crucial battleground states that determined the outcome of Biden’s 2020 victory over Trump and will likely determine the winner of the 2024 election.

The latest Fox News Power Rankings currently rates six of the seven states as toss-ups.

Those states – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada – have seen the bulk of the campaign traffic from the Democratic and GOP tickets and are the battlefields in the ad wars between the two sides. 

‘I think this is going to be a turnout exercise. Whoever does a better job of turning out their voters in those seven states will win,’ veteran Republican strategist Nicole Schlinger told Fox News.

Harris’ campaign, touting an ‘historic, 24-hour haul,’ last week showcased their fundraising prowess by hauling in $47 million in the immediate aftermath of the debate.

The money raked in by the Harris campaign was the latest sign of the vice president’s surge in fundraising in the nearly two months since she replaced Biden atop the Democrats’ 2024 national ticket.

‘Fifty-days is a lifetime in politics, but today I’d much rather be Kamala Harris than Donald Trump,’ longtime Democratic strategist Joe Caizzzo, a veteran of multiple presidential campaigns, said. ‘I think the enthusiasm remains overwhelmingly with the Democrats but there’s still a lot of work to be done.’

The Harris campaign highlights that it is investing much of its fundraising dollars into its grassroots outreach and get-out-the vote efforts, noting that it is ‘putting its resources into reaching the voters who will decide the election.’

The large ground game operation, originally constructed when Biden was the nominee, according to the campaign, includes over 312 offices and more than 2,000 staff in the key battlegrounds coordinated between the presidential campaign, the DNC and state Democratic parties.

In a straight Harris campaign and the DNC comparison to the Trump campaign and the RNC, the Democrats enjoy a sizable ground game advantage. However, Trump is relying on a handful of aligned outside groups to help run turnout operations that are traditionally performed by a presidential campaign. 

Republican National Committee Chair Michael Whatley took issue with the suggestion that the Democrats enjoyed a stronger get-out-the-vote operation.

‘No, they don’t have a stronger ground game. I feel very, very comfortable about the ground game we’re putting in place through Trump Force 47,’ the RNC chair emphasized in a Fox News Digital interview last week.

Whatley pledged that ‘we absolutely have the resources that we need to get our message out to all the voters that we’re talking to and feel very comfortable that we’re going to be able to see this campaign through, and we’re going to win on November 5.’

Additionally, Schlinger, a veteran of numerous Republican presidential campaigns, says on the key issue, Trump has the advantage.

‘Voters whose number one issue is the economy believe the economy is headed in the wrong direction and believe Donald Trump will do a better job fixing that,’ she emphasized. ‘Harris, I think, has an uphill climb explaining how she’ll do anything different than Joe Biden on that.’

Schlinger added for undecided voters, familiarity with the GOP nominee could give Trump an edge.

‘Nearly a third of voters have said they need to know more about Kamala Harris. With President Trump you know what you get, and I think that’s an advantage for Republicans,’ she argued.

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

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New whistleblower claims on first Trump assassination attempt ‘highly damaging’ to Secret Service: Hawley

GOP Sen. Josh Hawley released a wide-ranging report Monday morning detailing the failures of the Secret Service in connection with the first assassination attempt against former President Trump in July, including new whistleblower allegations that are ‘highly damaging to the credibility’ of the agency. 

Hawley, R-Mo., shared his report with the House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump to supplement their investigation. 

Hawley found a ‘compounding pattern of negligence, sloppiness, and gross incompetence that goes back years, all of which culminated in an assassination attempt that came inches from succeeding.’ 

‘On July 13, 2024, former President Donald J. Trump was nearly killed by an assassin’s bullet while hosting a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the U.S. Secret Service failed to prevent it,’ the Hawley report states. ‘It was the most stunning breakdown in presidential security since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan.’ 

Hawley said the Secret Service, FBI and Department of Homeland Security ‘have all tried to evade real accountability.’ 

‘These agencies and their leaders have slow-walked congressional investigations, misled the American people, and shirked responsibility,’ the report states. 

After the first of two assassination attempts against Trump in just over two months, Hawley visited the Butler rally site to interview whistleblowers and opened up a whistleblower tip line, encouraging those with relevant information to share with officials. 

‘The resulting findings are highly damaging to the credibility of the Secret Service and DHS,’ the report states. ‘They reveal a compounding pattern of negligence, sloppiness, and gross incompetence that goes back years, all of which culminated in an assassination attempt that came inches from succeeding.’ 

Whistleblowers provided valuable information to Hawley, including that the Secret Service’s Counter Surveillance Division, which performs threat assessments of event sites, did not perform a typical evaluation of the Butler site and was not present on the day of the rally. 

Hawley also learned that Secret Service personnel ‘declined multiple offers from a local law enforcement partner to deploy drone technology, despite the fact that the would-be assassin used a drone to survey the rally site mere hours before the attempted assassination.’ 

Hawley also learned that the Secret Service’s Office of Protective Operations-Manpower told agents in charge of security for the rally ‘not to request additional security resources because they would be denied.’ 

The report also outlines other whistleblower allegations, including that law enforcement personnel ‘abandoned’ the rooftop where would-be assassin Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump ‘because of hot weather.’

The report also said the Secret Service agent with the responsibility of the security of the site, including ‘line-of-site concerns,’ was allegedly ‘known to be incompetent.’ 

‘That incompetence led to the placement of items like flags around the Butler stage and catwalk, impairing visibility,’ the report states. 

Whistleblowers also told Hawley that supplemental DHS personnel were used to fill in shortages of Secret Service personnel on the day of the rally. Some of those agents were allegedly pulled off of child exploitation cases. Whistleblowers said their training was ‘merely a poor-quality, two-hour webinar.’ 

Meanwhile, Hawley revealed in the report that the lead agent responsible for the Butler rally ‘failed a key examination during their federal law enforcement training to become a Secret Service agent.’ 

Hawley also was told that Secret Service intelligence units – or teams of Secret Service agents paired with state and local law enforcement to handle reports of suspicious persons – were allegedly absent from the Butler rally.

Whistleblowers also told Hawley that the hospital site where Trump received treatment after the shooting was ‘poorly secured, and the hospital site agent could not answer basic questions about site security.’ 

Kimberly Cheatle, who was the director of the Secret Service at the time of the rally, resigned from her post amid mounting pressure from congressional lawmakers on both sides of the aisle after the massive security failure. 

The Secret Service’s assistant director, Michael Plati, is also retiring. 

At least five Secret Service agents have been placed on leave since the assassination attempt in July. 

Trump was shot with Crooks’ bullet, which pierced the upper part of his right ear. As Secret Service agents led him away, with blood dripping down his cheek and his right ear, the former president raised his arm defiantly. 

Trump, just a day later, traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for the 2024 Republican National Convention. He attended events each night of the convention, and on the final night, formally accepted the GOP presidential nomination. 

Hawley released his report just a day after the second assassination attempt against Trump. 

Trump was golfing at his course at Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Florida, Sunday when Secret Service agents spotted and began shooting at another would-be assassin – Ryan Wesley Routh – who allegedly had an AK-47 pointed at the former president on the green. 

Routh was arrested. Routh laughed and smiled ahead of his first court appearance in Florida on Monday, Fox News confirmed. 

He was charged with possession of firearm by convicted felon and possession of firearm with obliterated serial number. 

The first offense carried a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and supervised release. The second offense carried a maximum sentence of five years in prison, a $250,000 fine and supervised release. Routh responded ‘yes’ when asked if he understood the penalties. 

Fox News is told additional federal charges are possible. The initial charges announced Monday will keep Routh in custody.

The detention hearing is scheduled for Sept. 23, and the probable cause hearing is set for Sept. 30.

Routh has had at least 100 run-ins with law enforcement before his most recent arrest. 

In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Trump said the rhetoric of President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris is causing him to be ‘shot at,’ following the second assassination attempt against him since July, while telling Fox News Digital that the suspected gunman ‘acted’ on ‘highly inflammatory language’ of Democrats.  

‘He believed the rhetoric of Biden and Harris, and he acted on it,’ Trump said of the gunman in an interview with Fox News Digital. ‘Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at, when I am the one who is going to save the country, and they are the ones that are destroying the country – both from the inside and out.’ 

Trump pointed to Biden and Harris’ past comments casting Trump as a ‘threat to democracy,’ while telling Americans they are ‘unity’ leaders. 

‘They are the opposite,’ Trump said. ‘These are people that want to destroy our country.’ 

He added: ‘It is called the enemy from within. They are the real threat.’

This post appeared first on FOX NEWS

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China frees US pastor after nearly 20 years of wrongful detainment

China on Sunday released U.S. pastor David Lin, who has been in jail since 2006 in what the State Department has deemed was a wrongful detainment. 

The now 68-year-old pastor was formally arrested in 2009 for ‘contract fraud’ and sentenced to life in prison after allegedly aiding a non-government sanctioned house church. His sentence was later reduced and he was set to be released in April 2030.

According to a U.S.-based China advocacy group, China Aid, which was founded to assist persecuted activists, Lin had been traveling to China since the 1990s for missionary work.

Lin reportedly applied for a license through the Chinese government to organize a Christian ministry, but the request is believed to have been denied.

House churches are congregations in China that have not been approved by the Chinese government, but are reportedly picking up traction across the country despite government crackdowns, according to Christian websites. 

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) in 2019 warned that it suspected Lin was being targeted in prison due to his faith, and voiced concern over his safety and health.

‘Before his imprisonment, Pastor Lin was active in Beijing’s house church movement, which has long-faced hostility from Chinese authorities,’ the USCIRF said in a 2019 statement. ‘House churches are independent of state-sponsored religious organizations, and those who participate in and lead house churches often face intimidation, harassment, arrest, and harsh sentences.’

The State Department did not respond to specific questions from Fox News Digital regarding Lin’s release but instead said,’We welcome David Lin’s release from prison in the People’s Republic of China.’ 

‘He has returned to the United States and now gets to see his family for the first time in nearly 20 years,’ the spokesperson added. 

Reports show that the Biden administration has been attempting to secure Lin’s release for years, including as recently as July when Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Laos.

The administration, U.S. rights groups and lawmakers on the Hill continue to call for the release of other Americans still wrongfully held in China, including businessman Kai Li, who is being held on alleged espionage-related charges, and Mark Swidan, who was sentenced on drug charges.  

Nelson Wells Jr. and Dawn Michelle Hunt have also been ‘wrongfully imprisoned’ over alleged drug-related charges, according to the Dui Hua Foundation, a U.S.-based human rights group that focuses on political prisoners and other at-risk detainees.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Havana Syndrome study halted as review finds some patients were coerced

A long-term study of Havana Syndrome patients was shut down after a National Institute of Health (NIH) internal review board found participants who reported being pressured to join the research.The study had until now not found evidence linking the participants to the same symptoms and brain injuries. The internal investigation that halted the study was prompted by complaints from the participants about unethical practices.

This comes after the intelligence community released an interim report last year concluding a foreign adversary is ‘very unlikely’ to be behind the symptoms hundreds of U.S. intelligence officers are experiencing, despite qualifying for U.S. government funded treatment of their brain injuries. 

In a statement to Fox News an NIH spokesperson stated, ‘In March 2024, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiated an investigation in response to concerns from participants who were evaluated as part of a study on Anomalous Health Incidents (AHI), the results of which were published in the journal JAMA. The investigation was conducted by the NIH Office of Intramural Research and the NIH Research Compliance Review Committee, an Institutional Review Board (IRB) within the NIH. The NIH investigation found that regulatory and NIH policy requirements for informed consent were not met due to coercion, although not on the part of NIH researchers.’

The statement continued, ‘Given the role of voluntary consent as a fundamental pillar of the ethical conduct of research, NIH has stopped the study out of an abundance of caution. In NIH’s assessment, these investigative findings do not impact the conclusions of the study. NIH has shared this update with both participants and JAMA.’

A former CIA officer, who goes by Adam to protect his identity, was not shocked that the study was shut down.

‘The way the study was conducted, at best, was dishonest and, at worst, wades into the criminal side of the scale,’ Adam said.

Adam is Havana Syndrome’s Patient Zero because he was the first to experience the severe sensory phenomena that hundreds of other U.S. government workers have experienced while stationed overseas in places like Havana and Moscow, even China. Adam described pressure to the brain that led to vertigo, tinnitus and cognitive impairment.

Active-duty service members, spies, FBI agents, diplomats and even children and pets have experienced this debilitating sensation that patients believe is caused by a pulsed energy weapon. 334 Americans have qualified to get treatment for Havana Syndrome in specialized military health facilities, according to a study released by the U.S. government accountability office earlier this year.

Adam, who was first attacked in December 2016 in his bedroom in Havana described hearing a loud sound penetrating his room. ‘Kind of like someone was taking a pencil and bouncing it off your eardrum… Eventually I started blacking out,’ Adam said.

Patients, like Adam, who participated in the NIH study raised concerns the CIA was including patients who didn’t really qualify as Havana Syndrome patients, watering down the data being analyzed by NIH researchers. Meanwhile, also pressuring those who needed treatment at Walter Reed to participate in the NIH study in order to get treatment at Walter Reed.

‘It became pretty clear quite quickly that something was amiss and how it was being handled and how patients were being filtered… the CIA dictated who would go. NIH often complained to us behind the scenes that the CIA was not providing adequate, matched control groups, and they flooded in a whole litany of people that likely weren’t connected or had other medical issues that really muddied the water,’ Adam said, accusing the NIH of working with the CIA.

The CIA is cooperating.

‘We cannot comment on whether any CIA officers participated in the study. However, we take any claim of coercion, or perceived coercion, extremely seriously and fully cooperated with NIH’s review of this matter, and have offered access to any information requested,’ a CIA official told Fox News in a statement noting that the ‘CIA Inspector General has been made aware of the NIH findings and prior related allegations.’ 

Havana Syndrome victims now want to pressure the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) to retract the two articles published last spring using early data from the NIH study that concluded there were no significant MRI-detectable evidence of brain injury among the group of participants compared with a group of matched control participants.

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Legal experts warn that latest Supreme Court leaks are ‘enormously destructive’

Following revelations of private memoranda and conversations between Supreme Court justices published in the New York Times, legal experts are warning that such sensitive leaks are ‘destructive’ to the high court. 

The New York Times reported that internal memos and deliberations that they claimed showed Chief Justice Thomas as having ‘molded’ the outcomes of three major cases the court considered dealing with Jan. 6 rioters, and granting former President Donald Trump certain immunity for presidential acts. 

Roberts wrote the majority in the decisions, and the report claims that he ‘provided crucial support for hearing the historic [immunity],’ and made last minute and unexplained changes to authorship of the politically charged opinions. 

The leak follows the unprecedented leaked draft of the Dobbs opinion which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, and a concerted effort by Democratic lawmakers and the Biden administration to make sweeping changes to the court and ethics enforcement. 

Republican lawmakers, such as Senators Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. and John Kennedy, R-La., claim those efforts are politically motivated to delegitimize one the court now sits with a majority of Republican-appointed justices.

Some legal experts say this latest leak is part of that effort to undermine the Supreme Court. 

‘I think it’s enormously destructive to the court when people inside the court disclose to the press confidential memoranda, confidential emails and what appears to even be remarks made at the justices’ conference,’ James Burnham of King Street Legal and former senior Justice Department official told Fox News Digital. 

‘It’s destructive because the justices can’t be candid with each other if they think that anything they say could end up in the New York Times. And that means they’re going to speak less to each other. It means they’re not going to be able to deliberate with the same openness that they historically have, and it ultimately undermines the court’s decision making,’ he added. 

‘It reads to me like somebody is trying to cast a negative light on the Chief Justice and the other justices in the majority for what I think was a plainly correct and brave decision,’ he said.

Carrie Seveino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, said that ‘if there is someone on the Court who deserves censure for being overly political in this case, it’s the individual who leaked’ the ‘highly confidential internal’ documents.

She added that the incident ‘is of a piece with the continued left-wing PR campaign against the Court.’

‘It’s an attempt to smear the Court as an institution, and as part of that, some justices have been targeted more than others,’ she said. 

John Shu, a constitutional attorney who served in both Bush administrations, Shu says he believes the leaks are politically motivated, and are most likely designed to keep Roberts anchored in the center or perhaps push him towards center-left in the upcoming term, especially if Trump is elected this November.

‘Because he is the Chief Justice, he gets to assign opinions when he’s in the majority, which is much of the time, and he has administrative power that the other justices do not have,’ said Shu. ‘And much like the President is the embodiment of Article 2, the Chief Justice is the embodiment of Article 3.’

‘It’s really scary that yet another norm has been shattered, violating the sacred confidentiality of deliberations and the opinion drafting process,’Shu said.

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