Jack Of Diamonds

Decorating his office was a colourful painting of a thoroughbred horse race, and a framed photo of Frank Sinatra with his Rat Pack pals outside the Sands hotel, an iconic Las Vegas casino from a bygone era. Sinatra’s photo was mounted alongside playing cards from a Sands poker deck. The only card face-up in the frame was the Ace of Diamonds. It seems a missed opportunity for it not to be the Jack, because this was the office of a real-life Jack of Diamonds.

Detective-Constable Kevin Williams, an investigator with Toronto Police Service’s financial crimes unit, introduced himself and asked the man for his name.

Jack Kronis, he replied.

Grab a coffee.

Pavel Durov Arrested In France

Guardian;

Pavel Durov, billionaire co-founder and chief executive of the Telegram messaging app, was arrested at the Bourget airport outside Paris on Saturday evening, TF1 TV said, citing an unnamed source.

Durov was travelling aboard his private jet, TF1 said on its website, adding he had been targeted by an arrest warrant in France.

The 39-year-old is understood to have been travelling from Azerbaijan and was arrested at about 8pm local time (6pm GMT).

Durov was expected to appear in court on Sunday.

The Russia-born entrepreneur lives in Dubai, where Telegram is based, and holds dual citizenship of France and the United Arab Emirates.

@ShadowofEzra;

Telegram founder Pavel Durov recently revealed to Tucker Carlson that the FBI approached a Telegram engineer, attempting to secretly hire him to install a backdoor that would allow U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on users.

The FBI also hired agents to infiltrate ‘anti-vaxx’ Telegram groups, with FBI contractors creating multiple fake online identities to join chatrooms run by groups opposing vaccine mandates.

Mike Benz provides background.

We Don’t Need No Flaming Sparky Cars

As EV sales slump, Volkswagen scales back battery factories

Volkswagen will wait to see what electric car demand is like before building out all six of its previously planned battery factories. Thomas Schmall, VW’s board member in charge of technology, told a German newspaper that “building battery cell factories is not an end to itself” and that a goal of 200 GWh of lithium-ion cells by 2030 was not set in stone.

It’s a bit too simplistic to say that all new technologies conform to the now-infamous Gartner hype cycle, but it’s hard not to think of that squiggly line when discussing EVs. After years of hearing lofty goals of all-electric lineups and an end to internal combustion engines from OEMs, Tesla’s skyrocketing valuation got investors interested in electrification, and for a while, things just went mad.

But the promised fall in battery costs never really materialized, and in the US, EVs still command a price premium, at least for the first owner. The initial hype, coupled with the limited availability of new models, saw dealers load the cars and trucks they could get with hefty markups, further alienating potential customers. And now, when those markups and inventory shortages are mostly a thing of the past, interest rates have soared.

Freeze Their Bank Accounts

National Post- Industry awaits labour board decision in railway dispute

Teamsters- Member Update – Lockout/Strike Position

As of this writing, at CPKC the TCRC members’ lockout/strike position has not changed and the picket lines remain.

The Food Professor- AAFC projected a Canada-wide crop of 94.4 MMT, with approximately 71 MMT coming from Western Canada to help feed the world. This shutdown is a matter of global food security.

Typically, around 25,000 railcars cross the U.S. border daily. Nothings is moving…

Misconceptions? Surely, you jest!

SaskPower’s blog speaks about “Misconceptions about wind and solar facilities”

Note:

Facing a groundswell of opposition to a proposed 200 megawatt wind project near Weyburn which would be built, operated and owned by Enbridge as an independent power producer, SaskPower posted the following on its corporate blog on Aug. 23.

That blog posting was then promoted via advertising on social media, including Facebook.

What the blog does not say is that Alberta’s fleet of now 47 wind farms, with a total capacity of 5,214 megawatts was producing 35 megawatts at 3:38 p.m. on Thursday, Aug. 22, according to X account @ReliableAB. That’s after the recent addition of a new 466 megawatt windfarm which is being brought online. And 35 megawatts was 0.7 per cent of capacity at that moment, while 5,214 megawatts is nearly the entire Saskatchewan grid if every single generating facility was running full our, which never happens.

The ads below are not part of the original blog, but part of every Pipeline Online story to pay the bills. This is that blog posting, verbatim.

Vielfalt Macht Stark!

Germany: three killed and four seriously injured at diversity festival

At least three people have been killed and four are seriously wounded, German police have said, after an attack at a festival in the city of Solingen in the country’s west on Friday night.

Police said the weapon was believed to be a knife.

No one has been arrested and police said they had deployed a “large contingent” including a helicopter to search for the male assailant who fled the scene. Police declined to discuss a possible motive or speculate about the identity of the suspect.

Federal health minister Karl Lauterbach said he hoped “rescue teams can save the wounded who are still alive and that police can catch the cowardly and pathetic perpetrator”.

Regional premier Hendrik Wüst, who arrived at the scene early on Saturday, posted earlier on X that “All of North Rhine-Westphalia stands with the people in Solingen, above all with the victims and their families,” he said, expressing “huge thanks to the many rescue workers and our police who are in these minutes fighting for people’s lives”.

The attack happened at an event marking the city’s 650th anniversary and billed as a festival of diversity that began on Friday and was supposed to run through to Sunday. Around 10,000 people attended, many gathering around a stage with live music on the Fronhof market square in the city centre.

Most of those wounded are believed to have been attacked directly front of the stage, the daily Bild reported, adding that the man appeared to target the throats of his victims.

Eyewitnesses report “Arab looking man”, still at large.

Art Of The Deal

RFK Jr endorses Trump: “RFK Jr. Endorses Donald Trump and Drops Out of the Presidential Race, Leaving a Scathing Attack on the Democrat Party.”

Great moments in “Where were you when?”… CNN cuts away

Unburdened by political savvy, Harris refused to meet with him.

Update: Trump rally, live from Arizona, and the Youtube feed is extremely low resolution… weird.

So here it is on Rumble.

Highly recommended: Matt Taibbi and Walter Kirn reaction to the endorsement.

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