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Fox’s Eric Bolling Sues HuffPo Reporter For $50M After Dick-Pic Article

Fox News host Eric Bolling is suing Huffington Post contributor Yashar Ali following the publication of a bombshell sexual harassment claim which led to his suspension on Saturday night. The report claims that Bolling sent unsolicited dick pics to at least three colleagues at Fox several years ago – according to a dozen sources – including some of the recipients.

Ali writes in Huffpo that “Recipients of the photo confirmed its contents to HuffPost, which is not revealing their identities,” adding that the women who are current and former Fox employees, “concluded the message was from him because they recognized his number from previous work-related and informal interactions.”

The women did not solicit the messages, which they told colleagues were deeply upsetting and offensive. One of the recipients said that when she replied to Bolling via text, telling him never to send her such photos again, he did not respond. Four people, outside of the recipients, confirmed to HuffPost they’d seen the photo, and eight others said the recipients had spoken to them about it. -HuffPo

Accuser steps up in DIFFERENT case

Hours after Bolling was suspended over the claims made in HuffPo, frequent Fox News guest from 2008 – 2011, Caroline Heldman, came forward, claiming the Fox News host sexually harassed her with an unspecified number of advances.

“[Bolling] said he wanted to fly me out to New York for in-studio hits and to have ‘fun.’ He asked me to have meals with him on several occasions, but I found excuses not to go,” Heldman wrote in a lengthy Facebook post. “Once, he took me up to his office in New York, showed me his baseball jerseys, and in the brief time I was there, let me know that his office was his favorite place to have sex.” –Philly.com

Twitter announcements

Following his suspension, Bolling filed a defamation suit against Ali for $50 million in damages, announced by Ali over Twitter yesterday afternoon.

The summons, filed in a New York state court on Wednesday, details both damages and injunctive relief, claiming Ali tried to injure his reputation through “intentional and/or highly reckless publication of actionable false and misleading statements.”

HuffPo Backs Ali

In response to the summons, HuffPo stood by Ali, saying in a statemtn that “Yashar Ali is a careful and meticulous reporter. We stand by his reporting.” Editor-in-chief Lydia Polgreen also wrote on Twitter “Yashar Ali is a paid freelancer under contract with HuffPost. We have no hesitation about standing by him financially in this case.”

According to the Hollywood Reporter, “Because Bolling is a public figure, to succeed on a defamation claim he will have to prove Ali either knew the information was false or acted with reckless disregard for the truth. He has retained Michael Bowe and Ronald Rossi from Kasowitz Benson Torres — the firm whose name partner Marc Kasowitz reps President Donald Trump.”

Damage control

Meanwhile, Bolling took to Twitter Wednesday night to thank people for their support and reaffirm his dedication to “fight against these false smear attacks!”

Reactions from around the web

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Cuban Diplomats Expelled After U.S. Diplomats Attacked With ‘Advanced Sonic Weapon’ In Havana

U.S. officials told AP that in the fall of 2016, at least five State Department employees at the U.S. embassy in Havana, Cuba suffered a variety of ‘physical symptoms’ after they hit with what is thought to be an ‘acoustic attack’ by an advanced sonic weapon – leaving at least two people with health problems so serious they needed to be brought back into the United States for medical attention.

Several of the diplomats were new arrivals to the embassy following it’s 2015 reopening after former President Obama reestablished diplomatic relations in 2015.

Some of the diplomats’ symptoms were so severe that they were forced to cancel their tours early and return to the United States, officials said. After months of investigation, U.S. officials concluded that the diplomats had been exposed to an advanced device that operated outside the range of audible sound and had been deployed either inside or outside their residences. It was not immediately clear if the device was a weapon used in a deliberate attack, or had some other purpose.

The U.S. officials weren’t authorized to discuss the investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. AP

U.S. response

Following the ‘sonic weapon’ incident, two Cuban diplomats were expelled from their embassy in Washington on May 23, according to State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert, who would not confirm how many U.S. diplomats were affected or what their symptoms were – only stating that they had “a variety of physical symptoms.”

The State Department issued the following statement:

“Some U.S. government personnel in Havana on official duty have reported incidents which have caused a variety of physical symptoms. We do not have definitive answers on the source or cause of the incidents.”

“The Department has reminded the Cuban government of its obligations under the Vienna Convention to protect our diplomats. The Department is taking these incidents very seriously and is working to determine the cause and impact of the incidents. The Cuban government has assured us that it is also investigating and taking appropriate measures.”

Cuban Response

The Cuban Foreign Ministry stated it had been notified of the incidents on Feb. 17, and had launched an “exhaustive, high-priority, urgent investigation at the behest of the highest level of Cuban government,” adding that the expulsion of the two Cuban diplomats from Washington was “unjustified and baseless.”

The ministry also said it had created an “expert committee” to investigate the incidents, as well as beefing up security around the U.S. embassy and U.S. diplomatic residences.

Russia?

Cuba employs a state security apparatus that keeps many people under surveillance and U.S. diplomats are among the most closely monitored people on the island. Like virtually all foreign diplomats in Cuba, the victims of the incidents lived in housing owned and maintained by the Cuban government.

However, officials familiar with the probe said investigators were looking into the possibilities that the incidents were carried out by a third country such as Russia, possibly operating without the knowledge of Cuba’s formal chain of command. -AP

The kneejerk ‘Muh Russia’ reaction is sadly comical at this point…

 

 

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On Deck For Thursday: Earnings, PPI, Fed Speak

  • Stocks still near all time highs despite two-day selloff on N. Korea jitters
  • Gold and bonds have done well during the risk-off trading
  • In addition to earnings and N. Korea tensions, investors will be paying attention to Fed Chairman Dudley comments tomorrow.
  • In coming weeks, Jackson Hole Symposium expected to provide further insight into Fed/ECB stance on tightening and trimming the Fed balance sheet.

Earnings:

Before the bell: Macy’s ($M, est $.44), Kohl’s ($KSS, est. $1.18), Blue Apron ($APRN, est. -.26)

After market close: Nordstrom ($JWN), Snap ($SNAP, est. $-.29), News Corp ($NWSA, est $.09), NVIDIA ($NVDA, est. $.69)

Several other retail names also report on Thursday, which should provide some valuable insight into the general health of consumer spending.

(Full list here)

PPI and Jobless Claims: 8:30 a.m. EST: meh

“Even if you get a hotter-than-expected PPI, it’s not going to move the needle,” said Lindsey Group market strategist Peter Boockvar. He said the market is hanging on consumer inflation data, expected Friday morning. Inflation has always been important when the Fed weighs policy, but the lack of inflation has added to doubts that the Fed will be able to raise rates again this year, as it has forecast. –CNBC

Fed President Dudley speaks: 10 a.m. 

Dudley will be speaking at a press briefing on wage inequality in the New York region, and will take questions afterwards. This may provide insight on tightening and rate hikes.

Federal Budget: 2 p.m. 

Upcoming Catalysts / Events

Aug. 24-26 – Jackson Hole Symposium. Fed officials may issue hawkish comments, ECB president Mario Draghi may shed light on expected reduction in easing policies.

While euro-area inflation is still short of the goal of just under 2 percent, Draghi used a speech at the ECB Forum last month in Sintra, Portugal, to say that “the threat of deflation is gone and reflationary forces are at play.” That sent the euro and bond yields surging on speculation that the central bank is almost ready to pare back stimulus. –Bloomberg

Sept. 19, 20 – Fed meets, expected to begin unwinding its $4.5 trillion balance sheet in September amidst another forecast rate hike.

Sept. 29 – debt ceiling reached, if no action taken U.S. could be in default by October.

Sept. 30 – Deadline for Congress to pass a budget or face shutdown as it did in 2013

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Taiwan Deploys PPT To Prop Up Spooked Markets With Nearly $65 Million In Stock Purchases

The Taiwanese government deployed it’s version of the ‘Plunge Protection Team’ yesterday amid a second day of declines over North Korea – U.S. tensions, according to Taipei’s Economic Daily News.

A total of NT$1.96 billion (US$65 million) shares were purchased on the open market on Wednesday by eight Taiwanese government-run banks.

ZeroHedge

Despite their efforts to buy the dip, the Taiwanese exchange dropped precipitously into the close. As ZeroHedge reports, Ironically, this reported intervention comes just hours after The US Federal Reserve’s Jim Bullard seemed to hint that The Fed itself had “reluctantly” manipulated equity prices.

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North Korea Scoffs At ‘Fire and Fury’ Threat, Will Launch 4 Missiles *NEAR* Guam Within Weeks

A defiant North Korea hit back at President Trump’s “fire and fury” threats in a condescending statement from state-run KCNA news agency, ridiculing the U.S. president for a “load of nonsense,” adding “sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him”

To that end, North Korea said it is “seriously examining the plan for an enveloping strike at Guam” by simultaneously launching four Hwasong-12 ICBMs at Guam, adding “they will fly 3356.7 km for 1065 seconds and hit the waters 30 to 40 km away from Guam.” (18-25 miles)

I’m not crazy, you’re crazy!

Taking further stabs at President Trump, the statement reads “sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him.”

Ok Kim Jong Un.

FULL STATEMENT: 

Pyongyang, August 10 (KCNA) General Kim Rak Gyom, commander of the Strategic Force of the Korean People’s Army, released the following statement on August 9:

As already clarified, the Strategic Force of the KPA is seriously examining the plan for an enveloping strike at Guam through simultaneous fire of four Hwasong-12 intermediate-range strategic ballistic rockets in order to interdict the enemy forces on major military bases on Guam and to signal a crucial warning to the U.S.

On Tuesday, the KPA Strategic Force through a statement of its spokesman fully warned the U.S. against its all-round sanctions on the DPRK and moves of maximizing military threats to it. But the U.S. president at a gold links again let out a load of nonsense about “fire and fury,” failing to grasp the on-going grave situation. This is extremely getting on the nerves of the infuriated Hwasong artillerymen of the KPA.

It seems that he has not yet understood the statement.

Sound dialogue is not possible with such a guy bereft of reason and only absolute force can work on him. This is the judgment made by the service personnel of the KPA Strategic Force.

The military action the KPA is about to take will be an effective remedy for restraining the frantic moves of the U.S. in the southern part of the Korean peninsula and its vicinity.

The Hwasong artillerymen of the KPA Strategic Force are replete with a strong determination to fully demonstrate once again the invincible might of the force, which has developed into a reliable nuclear force of the Workers’ Party of Korea and the world, strongest strike service, through the planned enveloping strike targeting the U.S. imperialist bases of aggression.

The Strategic Force is also considering the plan for opening to public the historic enveloping fire at Guam, a practical action targeting the U.S. bases of aggression.

This unprecedented step is to give stronger confidence in certain victory and courage to the Korean people and help them witness the wretched plight of the U.S. imperialists.

The Hwasong-12 rockets to be launched by the KPA will cross the sky above Shimane, Hiroshima and Koichi Prefectures of Japan. They will fly 3356.7 km for 1065 seconds and hit the waters 30 to 40 km away from Guam.

The KPA Strategic Force will finally complete the plan until mid August and report it to the commander-in-chief of the DPRK nuclear force and wait for his order.

We keep closely watching the speech and behavior of the U.S.

 

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Potato Headed Rick Wilson Owned By CNN’s Ben Ferguson Over Definition Of ‘Fire and Fury’

GOP #NeverTrumper Rick Wilson, whose head resembles a potato, got into a heated exchange with CNN’s conservative pundit Ben Ferguson over President Trump’s “Fire and Fury” threat to North Korea.

Wilson, a huge fan of general McMaster – whose burning desire to see the President fail is rivaled only by the likes of Maxine Waters, Chuck Schumer, and Adam Schiff – appeared to have a potato-related mental block regarding Trump’s comments – insisting that “fire and fury”could only mean nuclear weapons.

“Ben’s answer to you betrays a level of naïveté about nuclear weapons and about the Korean peninsula in specific that is utterly staggering,” Wilson told CNN host Brooke Baldwin. “That is some weapons grade stupidity right there.”

The two pundits argued back and forth over the semantics of Trump’s comments for nearly ten minutes. ‘Potato Rick!’ employed a broken-record approach, droning on about ‘muh binary definition’ while an astounded Ferguson couldn’t seem to penetrate Wilson’s mushy potato-skull.

“You’re turning this into second grade here,” Ferguson said, adding “Listen carefully because you’re having a hard time understanding this. There are other options militarily besides only nuclear options. ‘Fire and Fury’ does not necessarily mean only push the red button for a nuclear war. It is incredibly incompetent and ignorant to imply that the only option our military has is to actually do nuclear war.”

See below: 

Check out some of Rick’s retarded tweets and responses below: 

To which Wilson replied in a now-deleted tweet:

Stay classy Rick.

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Fired Google Engineer Tells Molyneux ‘Gender Memo’ Began On 12 Hour Flight To China [Video]

Fired Google engineer James Damore has been making the rounds since his ouster, sitting down for interviews with YouTube host Stefan Molyneux and University of Toronto professor, Jordan Peterson.

In his interview with Molyneux, Damore said that he began to write the now infamous 10 page memo on gender differences in the workplace while on a flight to China, after he says a “secretive” internal meeting on diversity rubbed him the wrong way.

“There was a lot of just shaming: ‘no, you can’t say that. That’s sexist.’ There’s just so much hypocrisy in a lot of the things that they were saying,” Damore said in his first public comments since being fired. “I decided to create the document to clarify my thoughts.”

Damore, whose internal memo entitled “Google’s ideological echo chamber” went viral within the company late last week before making it’s way to social media over the weekend, said he penned the document out of love for Google.

Via Bloomberg:

“A lot of this came from me seeing some of the problems with our culture at Google, where a lot of people who weren’t in this group-think just felt totally isolated and alienated,” he told Youtube chat-show host Stefan Molyneux in an interview posted online. “There were many people that came to me and said, ‘yeah I’m thinking of leaving Google because this is getting so bad.”’

“I really thought this was a problem Google had to fix,” he added.

Interestingly, Wired reports that Damore had a ton of internal support for his memo.

” [T]he internal discussions that followed Damore’s memo and its fallout show Google employees both embracing and advancing its views. Damore himself indicated that his former coworkers had reached out privately to express “their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues.” Others chimed in publicly as well.”

See the Molyneux interview here:

And as Zerohedge reports:

the former Googler sat down for a YouTube interview with University of Toronto professor of psychology, Jordan Peterson, to discuss the circumstances leading up to the release of his controversial memo and the fallout that has resulted since.

In this first exchange, Damore explains that he decided to write his now-infamous memo after attending a ‘secretive’ Google “diversity summit” in which he says presenters talked about “potentially illegal practices” intended to “try to increase diversity…basically treating people differently based on what their race or gender are.”

Peterson:  “Why did you do this?”

Damore:  “About a month and a half ago, I went to one of our diversity summits, all of it unrecorded and super-secret and they told me a lot of things that I thought just were not right.”

Peterson:  “Ok, what do you mean ‘unrecorded and super-secret?'”

Damore:  “Most meetings at Google are recorded.  Anyone at Google can watch it.  We’re trying to be really open about everything…except for this.  They don’t want any paper trail for any of these things.” 

“They were telling us about a lot of these potentially illegal practices that they’ve been doing to try to increase diversity.  Basically treating people differently based on what their race or gender are.” 

Peterson:  “Ok, why?”

Damore:  “Because I think it’s illegal.  As some of the internal polls showed, there were a large percentage of people who agreed with me on the document.  So, if everyone got to see this stuff, then they would really bring up some criticism.”

Damore also talks about how he originally published his memo over a month ago but upper-management largely ignored it until it started to garner media attention.  Then, once it went viral, upper management organized a coordinated attack and misrepresented facts in order to silence him.

Damore: “I actually published this document about a month ago; it’s only after it had gone viral and leaked to the news, that Google started caring.”

“There was a lot of upper management that started to call it out and started saying how harmful it is.  This sort of viewpoint is not allowed at Google.”

Peterson:  “Yeah, what sort of viewpoint exactly?  The idea that there are differences between men and women that might actually play a role in the corporate world?  That’s an opinion that’s not acceptable?”

Damore:  “Yeah, it seems so.  And there’s a lot of misrepresentation by upper-management just to silence me, I think.” 

On why he was fired:

Peterson:  “What was there rationale for firing you exactly?  What was the excuse that was given?”

Damore:  “So, the official excuse was that I was perpetuating gender stereotypes.” 

And finally, an interesting tidbit in which Damore once again points out that Google’s progressives are all too eager to put on their science hats when discussing climate change but are less eager to entertain scientific facts when they’re deemed ‘inconvenient.’

Damore: “I’m not sure how they can expect to silence so many engineers and intelligent people and just deny science like this”

 

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Netflix Drops After Disney Ditches Platform To Launch Streaming Service

Shares of Netflix (NFLX) were clown-raped at the open to the tune of 4% in after-hours trading Tuesday, only to recover throughout the morning after the Walt Disney Company (DIS) announced they would be pulling all content from the platform in order to launch their own streaming service in 2019.

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Of note, NFLX is nearly oversold in Exodus, and has outstanding 10-day returns with an average 13.94% return 9 out of the last 10 times the OS indicator has triggered.

 

 

Disney announced they were ditching Netflix during Tuesday’s earnings call, along with a disastrous 9 percent drop in quarterly profits to $2.37bn and stagnant revenues of $14.2bn compared with the same period in 2016 – sending the stock down nearly 4 percent in after hours trade on Tuesday.

6 mo.

Disney’s new plans include taking majority ownership in video streaming company BAMTech for $1.58bn, increasing it’s stake from 33 percent to 75 percent, as well as an increased investment in original content for both movies and TV shows.

No pricing was announced, however Disney plans to expand the strategy globally after the U.S. launch.

Offensive Move

Disney CEO Robert Iger said the streaming services “mark the beginning of what will be an entirely new growth strategy for the company,” adding “it’s not just a defensive move, it’s an offensive move.”

With the digital push, Disney is trying to insert itself into territory currently claimed by Amazon and Netflix, which have won audiences with a combination of original programmes available on-demand and a business model focused on monthly subscriptions instead of advertising.

Mr Iger said making Disney and ESPN content available on standalone sites and apps is a better bet in the long run than continuing to rely on cable television, movie theatres and licensing agreements to distribute its work.

Disney said its distribution deal with Netflix for new Disney and Pixar movies would end in 2019, with discussions ongoing about the fate of Star Wars and Marvel franchises. –BBC Business

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Markets Spooked For Second Day Following N. Korea Threat To Nuke Guam

Stocks are getting slapped upside the head in a second negative trading session, after tensions escalated in a fiery exchange between between the United States and North Korea.

1 wk.

Small caps are getting murk’d with the Russell 2000 down nearly 1% as of this writing.

1 wk.

And the VIX is is spiking:

6 mo. chart

Gold and silver, meanwhile, are loving the prospect of WWIII:

1 wk.
1 wk.

North Korean state-run KCNA news agency reported that North Korea was “carefully examining an operational plan” for targeting Guam with “enveloping fire” using a medium-to-long range ICBM, after Trump warned earlier in the day that any provocation would be “met with fire, fury, and frankly, power, the likes of which this world has never seen before” after a Washington Post report that claimed Pyongyang was capable of building a nuclear weapon able to fit inside a long range missile.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson dialed back President Trump’s comments, saying there was no sign that the threat level from N. Korea had changed, and Americans should “sleep well at night.”

Looks like markets aren’t buying it…

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Report: China To Go On $1.5 Trillion Global Acquisition Spree Over Next Decade

A Tuesday report by Linklaters LLP concluded that Chinese companies plan to spend US$1.5 trillion snapping up foreign companies and investing in manufacturing over the next decade – a 70 percent increase over the last 10 years, The planned expenditures, however, depend on whether or not the deals receive a nod from various government agencies.

Via the Financial Post:

Government policies encouraging Chinese companies to invest in manufacturing capabilities, particularly for advanced technology, and international trade will help maintain deal flow, the law firm, which specializes in advising on mergers and acquisitions, said in the report. Chinese buyers have spent about US$880 billion on assets in other countries in the last 10 years, according to the data.

The success of China’s bidders will depend on their ability to overcome foreign countries’ concerns about national security and interest, which contributed to the failure of as much as US$75 billion in announced outbound deals last year, Linklaters said in the report. China may also have to bow to international pressure to liberalize its markets, it said.

“While the pace of outbound deals has declined in 2017, China’s long-term aspirations” mean that overseas “investment and acquisitions from China will continue to be a significant force over the long term,” Linklaters said.

Not so fast…

Chinese businesses have been blocked from acquiring companies in industries critical to a country’s economy or national security, such as tech and infrastructure firms. German semiconductor manufacturer Axitron SE saw its planned sale to a Chinese company collapse last December following a protest from the Obama administration’s Committee on Foreign Investment. The same committee also terminated a Chinese deal to buy Royal Philips’ NV’s lighting unit, Lumileds.

Bank blocked?

Chinese aviation and shipping giant HNA Group Co. is one of the acquisitive companies under enhanced government scrutiny, while several major Chinese banks which helped fund their growth have stopped issuing new loans to the company, according to sources familiar with the matter.

That said, the Linklaters report closes by saying “Despite potentially increased scrutiny by Chinese regulators and banks of some of the deals underlying these flows, we expect China to remain ‘open for business’ with respect to genuine strategic overseas acquisitions. If such investments are blocked in some jurisdictions, this may redirect Chinese players’ interest towards other jurisdictions.”

 

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