Report: Trump shared nuclear secrets with Australian billionaire at Mar-a-Lago – National & International News – FRI 7Oct2023

Report: Trump discussed sensitive nuclear secrets with Australian billionaire at Mar-a-Lago.

UAW President says “strike is working” after major concessions from automakers.

Bedbugs, hysteria sweep France.

NATIONAL NEWS

Reports: Trump discussed sensitive nuclear secrets with Australian billionaire at Mar-a-Lago

A report has come out that after he left the White House in 2021, former President Trump revealed sensitive information about US nuclear submarines to Australian businessman Anthony Pratt during a dinner at Mar-a-Lago. During the exchange, Trump revealed to Pratt the supposed exact number of nuclear warheads the subs carry and a supposed exact distance that a US sub can be from a Russian sub without the Russian sub detecting it. The intent of the conversation appears to have been that Trump wanted Pratt to use his influence to encourage the Aussies to buy US-made nuclear submarines.

Pratt did then go on to share the information with about 45 people including six journalists, 11 of his employees, 10 Australian officials, and three former Australian prime ministers. One of these exchanges was overheard by a Mar-a-Lago employee just moments after Pratt’s conversation with Trump.

It’s not clear if the figures Trump shared with Pratt were correct or not. However, when Pratt spoke with investigators as part of special counsel Jack Smith’s probe of Trump’s mishandling of classified documents, the investigators did urge Pratt not to spread the information further.

Incidentally, Australia did purchase three US-made subs, though not nuclear armed subs. The US, UK and Australia recently formalized the “AUKUS” pact in which the three countries will collaborate to create a new fleet of state-of-the-art nuclear subs in the Pacific.

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UAW President says “strike is working” after major concessions from GM, Ford and Stellantis

This afternoon, United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain announced in a Facebook livestream (which you can watch here, starts at 15:56) that no new strikes would be called this week, though facilities already called to strike would remain out. Strikes will not be expanded in recognition of significant progress made in negotiations this week.

Ford and Stellantis agreed to bring back 2007 cost of living adjustment (COLA) formulas, something all three automakers had outright rejected before the strikes. Fain said that GM “isn’t far behind” Ford and Stellantis on reinstating COLA.

However, the biggest news came from negotiations with General Motors. Fain said GM had agreed to include all of its new EV battery facilities under its union master agreement. This is a big win for the UAW, which supports the transition to electric vehicles, but wants it to be “a just transition”. EVs require 40% fewer workers to assemble compared to traditional internal combustion vehicles. But the manufacturing of EV batteries and associated industries will require a huge workforce. UAW wants assurances that workers will have other well-paid union jobs available in EVs as layoffs occur in traditional assembly plants.

The growing EV battery industry in the US is currently concentrated in Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia. These are mostly red states where union membership overall is low. Many of these factories are joint ventures between US automakers and South Korean manufacturers.

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INTERNATIONAL NEWS

Bedbugs, hysteria sweep France

Over the last few weeks, there have been reports of pervasive bedbug infestations all over France, and especially in Paris. Reports have come from apartment buildings, hospitals, cinemas, office buildings, government buildings and even mass transit. Most recently, a Paris high school was shut down after an infestation was found. However, in addition to a genuine bedbug problem that seems to get worse every summer, sensationalized media reports seem to have also created mass hysteria.

France’s state railway authority has been inundated with reports of bedbugs on their cross-country trains. Despite extensive searches of all trains and stations where these reports originated, not a single bedbug has been found. Exterminators have been run off their feet with bedbug calls, the vast majority of which turn out to be false alarms.

As Paris prepares to host the Olympics next year, city officials worry that the panic may hurt tourism and their international image. But the contagion, or fear of it, is also spreading to other European cities after Paris recently hosted Fashion Week and the Rugby World Cup.

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