Fair and Balanced: In a stunningly quick and open admission of guilt, Fox News and its parent corporation settled the sexual harassment suit brought by former host Gretchen Carlson for $20 million and apologized. “We sincerely regret and apologize for the fact that Gretchen was not treated with the respect and dignity that she and all of our colleagues deserve,” 21st Century Fox said in a statement.

Nobody … nobody gives in and settles a lawsuit for $20 million just months after it has been filed.

Carlson had accused former Fox News boss Roger Ailes of suggesting they have sex to further Carlson’s career. She says that when she refused she was taken off the popular “Fox & Friends” morning show and given a salary cut.

Other women came forward after Carlson went public and this may not be the last dollar the company spends to settle complaints.

Journalist Gabriel Sherman, who has written extensively about Ailes and his sexual peccadilloes, told NPR, “This is a culture where women felt pressured to participate in sexual activity with their superiors if they wanted to advance inside the company. And it was so — it was shocking to me — it was not that it occurred, but that it was so explicit, that it was – there was no subtext.”

In another bomb exploding at Fox, Greta van Susteren, who’s been at the network for 14 years and publicly doubted Carlson’s claim, abruptly announced she’s leaving the network and was replaced immediately in her 7pm show by Brit Hume. It may be about money, but she said on her Facebook page, “Fox has not felt like home to me for a few years.”

Trigger Warning: Donald Trump, who once said he knows more about ISIS than the military generals, has won the endorsement of 88 retired high ranking officers and admirals. Their joint letter said, “We support Donald Trump and his commitment to rebuild our military, to secure our borders, to defeat our Islamic supremacist adversaries and restore law and order domestically.” Their endorsement is a window into the thoughts and political leanings of a majority of American military leadership.

Foreign to Policy: Hillary Clinton has taken to ridiculing Donald Trump on matters of foreign policy. She said yesterday, “He says he has a secret plan to defeat ISIS. The secret is, he has no plan.” Clinton is leaning on her experience dealing with global issues as Secretary of State. Trump, she said, “is temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be president of the United States.”

Clinton dismissed Trump’s military endorsements, saying is Republican predecessors had more. “I’m doing better than any Democrat in racking up military endorsements,” she said. “He’s doing worse than any Republican.”

There She Is: The new Miss Missouri, Erin O’Flaherty, will be the first openly gay woman to compete in the Miss America Pageant.

Chicawgo: Sixty-five people were shot and 13 of them killed over the long Labor Day weekend in Chicago as the city guns for records in murder. The murder rate has already topped 2015. Labor Day was the bloodiest, with 31 people shot between 6 am Monday and 3 am Tuesday.  

No Jack City: Apple is expected to rock the electronic gadget world today introducing an iPhone that has no sound jack. No more headphones or wires into your dashboard. If you want to connect an iPhone 7 to another device for sound, it will have to be wireless. Apple is offering what’s called a “Lightning” adapter, which is just another thing to leave in your rental car.

Apple likes to lead the way, forcing the rest of the gadget world, and car makers, to catch up. Maybe more earthshaking is that the new phone is expected to be able to survive getting wet.

Cute: China says that its breeding and protection efforts have brought the giant panda bear back from the brink of extinction. The panda’s status has changed from “endangered” to “vulnerable” and there are now 2,060 pandas, of which 1,864 are adults. Key to increasing to population was re-growing the bamboo forests. Pandas eat 26 pounds of bamboo a day, although the Chinese use 80 billion bamboo chopsticks a year.

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