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Victor Sheymov, among Cold War's most important KGB defectors, dies at 73
December 10, 2019 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
Victor Ivanovich Sheymov, who is often referred to as one of the most important intelligence defectors of the Cold War, has reportedly died in the American state of Virginia. He was one of the most senior officials in the Soviet Union's Committee for State Security (KGB) to ever defect to the West, and revealed important KGB secrets to the United States.
Sheymov was born in 1946 to a family of elite Soviet scientists. His father was an engineer and his mother a doctor specializing in cardiology. A gifted mathematician and student-athlete, Sheymov was recruited into the KGB almost as soon as he graduated from the elite Bauman Moscow State Technical University, where he majored in engineering. By his early 30s, Sheymov had risen to the rank of major under the KGB's Eighth Chief Directorate, which handled secret communications systems. He oversaw a large unit that monitored the flow of information between the KGB's headquarters and the agency's operatives around the world. In later years, Sheymov was assigned code-breaking and counter-espionage tasks, and oversaw the preparation of daily classified briefings for the Politburo —the Communist Party's highest policy-making body.
But in the 1970s Sheymov grew disillusioned with Soviet politics, and began to feel slighted by the infighting and incompetence inside the KGB. While visiting Poland on KGB business, he volunteered his services to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by walking into the US embassy in Warsaw. The CIA eventually gave him the cryptonym CKUTOPIA and, after verifying his senior status inside the KGB, exfiltrated him to the United States along with his wife and 5-year-old daughter. His was the first known instance of a successful CIA exfiltration of a defector from Soviet territory.
After spending several months being debriefed and polygraphed at a CIA safe house, Sheymov and his family were given new identities and US citizenship. But the defector decided to emerge from hiding in 1990, as the USSR was dissolving. In his book about his espionage work and defection, titled Tower of Secrets, Sheymov said he informed the CIA about the KGB's unsuccessful plots to assassinate Pope John Paul II and about the successful operation to assassinate Afghan President Hafizullah Amin in 1979. His insights were also instrumental in the decision of the US State Department to demolish the US embassy in Moscow, due to fears about the presence of listening devices planted inside the building's walls by Soviet builders. The building was eventually replaced with another structure built by vetted American workers.
Sheymov was awarded the US Intelligence Medal and lived the rest of his life in America, where he headed a computer security company. He died on October 18 in Vienna, Virginia, but his death was not publicly reported until this week. Sheymov's wife told reporters that he died from health complications arising from chronic pulmonary disease.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 10 December 2019 | Permalink
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts Tagged with Cold War, defectors, history, KGB, KGB Eighth Chief Directorate, News, obituaries, Victor Sheymov
Morton Sobell, convicted of conspiracy in the Rosenberg espionage case, dies at 101
January 31, 2019 by Joseph Fitsanakis 1 Comment
Morton Sobell, an American radar engineer who in 1951 was convicted of conspiracy alongside Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in one of the Cold War's most prominent espionage cases, has died at 101 years old. His death was announced yesterday by his son, Mark, who also said that his father died on December 26 last year at a nursing home, but that the family had not alerted the media.
Sobell was born in New York's Manhattan Island in 1917 and worked on radar tracking systems for defense contractors. During college, he and several of his friends, including fellow-engineer Julius Rosenberg, joined the United States Communist Party, partly in reaction to the Great Depression. When the Federal Bureau of Investigation began to arrest members of what the United States government claimed was a Soviet atomic spy ring led by Rosenberg, Sobell escaped with his family to Mexico, where he used a fake identity to evade the authorities. But he was dramatically abducted by a paramilitary force and surrendered to the FBI.
He was then tried alongside Rosenberg and his wife Ethel for conspiracy to commit acts of espionage. The Rosenbergs refused to cooperate with the FBI and were sentenced to death. Both were executed in 1953 and remain to this day the only American citizens to have been executed for espionage after the Civil War. Sobel was found guilty of the lesser charge of conspiracy and no evidence was presented in court that connected him to atomic espionage. He was therefore sentenced to 30 years in prison and served 18 of those, following a successful public-relations campaign organized by his wife, Hellen. He was released from prison in 1969 and continued to insist that he had never been a spy and had been wrongly convicted of conspiracy.
But in 2008, at the age of 91, Sobell spoke to The New York Times and publicly admitted for the first time that he had been a spy for the Soviet Union. He said that he had worked systematically to provide Moscow with information on weapons systems and other classified technologies. However, he had "never thought of it" as spying, he said. He also told The Times that he had developed a favorable impression of Soviet communism during the Great Depression, when he and many others saw the Soviet economic system as an antidote to crisis-ridden capitalism. "Now I know it was an illusion", he told the paper.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 31 January 2019 | Permalink
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts Tagged with Cold War, espionage, history, Morton Sobell, News, obituaries, Rosenberg nuclear spy ring, United States, USSR
Sean O'Callaghan, Provisional IRA defector-in-place, dies at 63
August 29, 2017 by Ian Allen Leave a comment
Sean O'Callaghan, one of the most contentious figures in the history of the Provisional Irish Republican Army, has died in Jamaica. He was born in County Kerry, Republic of Ireland, in a strongly republican family, which sided with opponents of the Ango-Irish treaty and fought against the official Irish government in the Irish Civil War of 1922-1923. In 1971, aged just 17, O'Callaghan joined the Provisional Irish Republican Army, which fought to unite British-controlled Northern Ireland with the independent Republic of Ireland. Not long after, O'Callaghan was arrested by the Garda Síochána (Irish police) in his home county of Kerry, when a small quantity of explosives he was hiding in his parents' house accidentally detonated.
After serving his prison sentence in Ireland, O'Callaghan returned to active duty as a Provisional IRA volunteer, and even pulled the trigger in the killing of Detective Inspector Peter Flanagan, a Catholic officer in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the police body of Northern Ireland, who was assassinated by the Provisional IRA in 1974. Gradually, however, O'Callaghan became disillusioned with armed militancy and distanced himself from the Provisional IRA, eventually moving to London. By 1979, when the Provisional IRA contacted him and asked him to return to active service, O'Callaghan had become an ideological opponent of militant Irish republicanism. He contacted the Irish government and offered to become an agent-in-place for the Special Branch of Garda Síochána.
O'Callaghan operated as a spy for the Irish government within the Provisional IRA from 1979 until 1988. During that time, he continued to participate in Provisional IRA operations, including an attempt (which he claimed to have foiled) to murder the Prince of Wales and his then wife, Princess Diana. He also remained a member of Sinn Féin, a republican political party that was widely viewed as the political wing of the Provisional IRA. In 1985, he was elected county councilor representing Sinn Féin. Three years later, fearing for his life, O'Callaghan turned himself in to British authorities. He was prosecuted, convicted, and served a prison sentence, during which he wrote his best-selling memoir, published under the title The Informer: The True Life Story of One Man's War on Terrorism. In it, he details his ideological change from a socialist republican to a pro-unionist, who occasionally advised the Ulster Unionist Party, a pro-British conservative political party in Northern Ireland.
After he revealed his pro-unionist sympathies, O'Callaghan was disowned by most of his family and did not even attend his father's funeral in 1997. He lived openly in England, refusing police protection and rejecting pleas from his supporters to change his name and hide his whereabouts. He died last week from a suspected heart attack while visiting his daughter in Jamaica. He was 63.
► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 29 August 2017 | Permalink
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts Tagged with Garda Síochána Crime and Security Branch, News, Northern Ireland, obituaries, Provisional IRA, Sean O'Callaghan, Sinn Féin
Yuri Drozdov, handler of Soviet undercover spies during Cold War, dies at 91
June 26, 2017 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
General Yuri Ivanovich Drozdov, who held senior positions in the Soviet KGB for 35 years, and handled a global network of Soviet undercover officers from 1979 until 1991, has died at the age of 91. Drozdov was born in Minsk, Soviet Belarus, in 1925. His father, Ivan Dmitrievich Drozdov, was an officer in the tsarist army who sided with the communists in the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. After serving in World War II, Yuri Drozdov joined the KGB in 1956. Following his training, he was appointed liaison officer between the KGB and East Germany's Ministry of State Security, commonly known as the Stasi.
His knowledge of East German intelligence affairs prompted his involvement in the famous 1962 spy-swap between the United States and the Soviet Union. The Soviets surrendered the American pilot Francis Gary Powers, who had been captured in May 1960, when the U-2 spy plane he was piloting was shot down over Soviet airspace. In return, they received Rudolf Abel (real name Vilyam Fisher) a Soviet undercover spy who was captured in New York in 1957, posing as an American citizen. From 1964 until 1968, Drozdov was stationed in Beijing, China, where he served as the KGB rezident, effectively the agency's chief of station. He returned to Moscow and in 1975 was posted under diplomatic cover in the United States, where he commanded the KGB's station in New York until 1979.
Upon his return to the USSR, Drozdov was promoted to chief of the KGB's Directorate S, which handled the agency's worldwide network of so-called illegals —intelligence officers serving abroad without official cover or formal connection to the Soviet Union. Shortly after his return to Moscow, Drozdov also headed Operation STORM-333, a daring attack on the presidential palace in Afghanistan, during which Soviet special forces killed Afghan President Hafizullah Amin and essentially fired the opening shots of the decade-long Soviet-Afghan war. The experience prompted Drozdov to recommend to his superiors the establishment of a new KGB special-forces unit. It was created in 1981 under the name Vympel (Pennant) and headed by Drozdov himself. He commanded several Vympel missions in and out of the USSR before resigning from the KGB in 1991.
Little is known about the specifics of Drozdov's death. It is believed that he died on June 21, surrounded by his family. The Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), a successor agency of the KGB, issued a brief statement commemorating Drozdov's service. It was followed by a statement issued by the office of the Russian President Vladimir Putin, which praised Drozdov as "a legendary spy, outstanding professional […], incredible person and true patriot".
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts Tagged with Cold War, history, KGB, News, non-official-cover, obituaries, STORM-333, USSR, Vympel, Yuri Drozdov
Werner Stiller, one of the Cold War's most notable defectors, dies
April 4, 2017 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment
Werner Stiller, also known as Klaus-Peter Fischer, whose spectacular defection to the West in 1979 inflicted one of the Cold War's most serious blows to the intelligence agency of East Germany, has died in Hungary. Stiller, 69, is believed to have died on December 20 of last year, but his death was not reported in the German media until last week. Born in 1947 in the German Democratic Republic, Stiller excelled in the sciences from an early age and eventually studied physics at the University of Leipzig, which was known at the time as Karl Marx Universitat. Shortly after graduating, he joined the GDR's Ministry of State Security, commonly known as the Stasi. Within a few years, he was working as a case officer for the Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, the Stasi's foreign intelligence division, where he was in charge of scientific espionage in the West. By the late 1970s, Stiller was handling nearly 30 spies —most of them abroad— who were regularly providing him with intelligence relating to nuclear research, weapons technologies, and biomedical research.
However, the Stasi vehemently disapproved of Stiller's promiscuous lifestyle —he was married five times in his life and was reputed to have had many more affairs— which was one of the reasons why he decided to seek a new life in the West. In January of 1979, with the help of a waitress he was having an affair with, Stiller defected to West Germany along with a packet of microfiche containing hundreds of classified Stasi documents. He later helped the waitress escape to the West with her young son and an estimated 20,000 more pages of classified documents. The West German Federal Intelligence Service (BND) eventually shared the information from Stiller's defection with the United States Central Intelligence Agency. It led to the dramatic arrests of 17 Stasi agents and officers in Europe and the US, while at least 15 others escaped arrest at the last minute, after being urgently recalled back to East Germany. The Stasi is believed to have recalled an additional 40 operatives from several Western countries as a precaution in response to Stiller's defection. The information that Stiller gave to the BND also helped visually identify the longtime director of the Stasi's Main Directorate for Reconnaissance, Markus Wolf. Previously, Western intelligence services had no photographs of Wolf, who was known as 'the man without a face', due to the many decades he spent as an undercover officer.
In 1981, Stiller moved to the US, where the CIA provided him with a new identity, using the fake name Klaus-Peter Fischer, a Hungarian émigré. He studied economics at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, before working as an investment banker for Goldman Sachs in the US and eventually an exchange broker for Lehman Brothers in Germany. It is believed that the Stasi kept looking for Stiller until the dissolution of the GDR in 1990, with the intent of abducting him or killing him. In 1999, Stiller moved to Hungary, where he stayed until the end of his life. He is survived by a son and a daughter.
► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 04 April 2017 | Permalink
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts Tagged with BND, CIA, Cold War, defectors, German Democratic Republic, history, Klaus-Peter Fischer, Markus Wolf, Ministry for State Security (GDR), obituaries, Stasi (GDR), Werner Stiller
Controversial ex-Mossad director Meir Dagan dies in Tel Aviv
March 21, 2016 by Ian Allen 4 Comments
Meir Dagan, who directed the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad for a decade and emerged as a vocal critic of the Israeli government after his retirement, has died. A statement from his family said he died of liver cancer, a disease that prompted him to undergo a complex liver transplant operation in Belarus in 2012. But he suffered constant complications following his return to Israel, which led to his death on Thursday in Tel Aviv. Dagan was born Meir Hubermann in 1945 in Soviet Ukraine, and arrived with his family to Israeli in 1950. At age 18, he enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces and saw action in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. In 2002, a few years after his retirement from the military with the rank of major general, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon appointed him to direct the Mossad, Israel's primary intelligence agency.
During Dagan's tenure, which spanned the rule of three Israeli prime ministers, the Mossad focused intensely on combating the Iranian nuclear program, using a variety of means ranging from alleged assassinations of Iranian scientists to cyber sabotage of Iranian nuclear facilities. However, like many other senior Israeli intelligence commanders, Dagan was strongly opposed to plans by the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to launch military strikes on Iran. Shortly after his retirement in 2011, Dagan spoke publicly against Netanyahu and senior members of his cabinet, including Minister of Defense Ehud Barak, who openly advocated the use of military force against Iran. In May 2011, Dagan condemned a possible Israeli attack on Iran as an act that would be "patently illegal under international law" and "the stupidest thing [he had] ever heard". In June, hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu effectively stripped Dagan of his diplomatic passport, after the longtime Mossad Director called Israel's leaders "reckless and irresponsible" people, who will not hesitate to engage in military adventurism in Iran to ensure their political primacy at home.
But Dagan continued to openly criticize the Israeli government, refusing to describe the Iranian nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel and calling instead for the establishment of a peace treaty with the Palestinians. He said in an interview in 2012 that, when he directed the Mossad, he could "block any perilous adventurism" in the Middle East; but after his retirement from the senior ranks of the agency, he feared that there was "no one to stop Barak and Bibi", referring to Prime Minister Netanyahu by his nickname.
Dagan was 71. His burial took place on Sunday with full military honors in the town of Rosh Pina, in Israel's northern district.
► Author: Ian Allen | Date: 21 March 2016 | Permalink
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts Tagged with Israel, Meir Dagan, Mossad, News, obituaries
Frank Terpil, CIA operative who defected to Cuba, dies
March 7, 2016 by Ian Allen 1 Comment
Frank Terpil, a former operative of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, who defected to Cuba in 1981 to avoid charges of criminal conspiracy, has died. He was 76. Terpil resigned from the CIA in 1970, allegedly after he was caught running a pyramid scheme in India, where he had been posted by the CIA. Soon after his forced resignation from the Agency, US federal prosecutors leveled criminal charges on Terpil and his business partner. The former CIA operative was also charged with conspiracy to commit murder, after it was found that he had helped facilitate the illegal transfer of over 20 tons of plastic explosives to the government of Libya.
Terpil managed to leave the US and reappeared in Lebanon in 1980, shortly before a court in New York sentenced him in absentia to five decades in prison for conspiring to smuggle 10,000 submachine guns to African warlords, including Uganda's dictator Idi Amin. As agents of various countries started to zero in on Terpil's Lebanon hideout, he disappeared again and resurfaced in 1981 in Havana, Cuba. Shortly afterwards, Cuba's General Intelligence Directorate hired him as an operative under the operational alias CURIEL. Since that time, Terpil has been repeatedly mentioned as having played a part in Cuban intelligence operations around the world, but rarely gave interviews. He appeared again in 2014, however, in a documentary entitled "Mad Dog: Inside the Secret World of Muammar Gaddafi". The film was made by British company Fresh One Productions on behalf of Showtime, an American premium cable and satellite television network. In the documentary, Terpil admitted that he helped the Libyan dictator "eliminate" his opponents —most of them Libyan exiles living abroad.
British newspaper The Observer, which published news or Terpil's death, said the former CIA operative's legal status in Cuba "was never quite clear". He had allegedly expressed concerns in recent months that the rapprochement between Washington and Havana could threaten his sanctuary in the Caribbean island. His Cuban wife told The Observer that complications from diabetes had caused his legs to be amputated in recent months. She told the paper that Terpil "died peacefully" on March 1, of heart failure.
Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts Tagged with CIA, Cuba, CURIEL, defectors, Frank Terpil, General Intelligence Directorate (Cuba), obituaries


Want To Know What Is Life Like At ITER? It's Like "Bindas Jhakkas & Shandar" With All The Good Stuff!
Want To Know What Is Life Like At ITER? It's Like "Bindas Jhakkas & Shandar" With All The Good Stuff!
Yes! Every college is cool in it's own way but this place is the coolest of them all! We're here talking about ITER college at Bhubaneswar & all you need to know that what is life like at ITER! Well Virtual Show reel team will tell you how this place is changing everyday and that too with all the good stuff that a college student actually want!
Like one said it's Bindas-Jhakash-Shandar. Watch The Video!


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This week's podcast gives you twenty top Twitter tips.
Whether you are using Twitter to promote your business, your blog or both, these twenty top Twitter tips will help you to get the most out of your account.
Want some tips to help you improve your Twitter?
These twenty tips are for everyone from beginners to long-standing tweeters; there's something for everyone and hopefully you will find at least a few things here you can take away and apply to your Twitter usage in future.


Disney's "Netflix killer" streaming service doesn't have a name or an official launch date (beyond "late 2019"), but it already sounds like a must-subscribe for Star Wars and Marvel fans. Which, at this point, is 95 percent of the world's population (the other five percent are Zack Snyder cut truthers). The "direct-to-consumer app," as Disney CEO Robert Iger refers to it, will include "multiple" Star Wars shows, including one anchored by Jungle Book director Jon Favreau, as well as series around centered two of the biggest names in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Loki and Scarlet Witch. Not only that, but according to Variety, Tom Hiddleston and Elizabeth Olsen are expected to reprise their roles (despite the fact that one of them, y'know, died in Avengers: Infinity War).
Beyond the Loki and Scarlet Witch shows, the streaming service will also "the entire output of the studio, animation, live action at Disney, including Pixar, Star Wars, and all the Marvel films," according to Iger, as well as over 7,000 episodes from various Disney television shows. You think you're unproductive now? Wait until The Empire Strikes Back, The Nightmare Before Christmas, AND every episode of Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers is available in one place.


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Most Inspiration of 2015 – Michael J. Fox
The Michael J. Fox Foundation provides support and advice to Parkinson's sufferers and their families. As of 2015, the foundation is the largest non-profit funder of Parkinson's research worldwide – and has funded more than $450 million to speed a cure for Parkinson's disease.
Michael J. Fox is not your average actor. His talent and efforts go far beyond those of a movie or television show. After receiving a Parkinson's diagnosis, Fox struggled with the reality that he was faced with and once he publically announced his condition in 1998 he made it his personal mission in life to make a difference for those also suffering.
He organized The Michael J. Fox Foundation to help advance every promising research path to curing Parkinson's disease. Fox realized that Parkinson's went further than his diagnosis therefore, he took actions into his own hands by raising money to fund the research necessary to getting an answer. Later Fox penned his first book in hope of inspiring others that also suffered from Parkinson's. He went a step further and voiced a testimony before the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee in 1999 with hopes that his physical testimony would change the course and funding of research. In his book he wrote, "I had made a deliberate choice to appear before the subcommittee without medication. It seemed to me that this occasion demanded that my testimony about the effects of the disease, and the urgency we as a community were feeling, be seen as well as heard. For people who had never observed me in this kind of shape, the transformation must have been startling." Fox went on to write another book and appear on several campaigns that support Parkinson's research.
The Michael J. Fox Foundation provides support and advice to Parkinson's sufferers and their families. As of 2015, the foundation is the largest non-profit funder of Parkinson's research worldwide – and has funded more than $450 million to speed a cure for Parkinson's disease. In addition, with over a million social media followers Fox's foundation documents their every day actions and efforts towards the fight for a cure. Between the foundation participants and social media community, the message is being heard.
Fox also partnered with Bystander Revolution. The organization is spreading the message of anti-bullying and has teamed with many other Hollywood super stars and notable figures to take the power out of bullying. In addition to promoting Bystander Revolution's message, Fox has also donated his time and funds to assisting further anti-bullying efforts be made in public school systems through education and counseling.
Instead of hiding behind the diagnosis, Fox has chosen to shed his insecurities and be the change. In an interview with Letterman this year Fox commented on his revelation by saying, "…once you accept it and you learn about it and you realize you're part of a community and you realize you're in a position to do something and to make a difference and to help..."
Angela Guzman is an Editor at Beliefnet.com.
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redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


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Un transfuge au Québec est une personne qui abandonne son parti politique pour joindre un parti adverse. Le terme est le plus souvent utilisé pour désigner un député à l'Assemblée nationale qui se rallie à un autre parti.

Il n'existe aucune interdiction au Québec pour les députés de changer de parti au cours d'un même mandat.

Liste des transfuges

Voici une liste partielle des députés qui ont siégé au nom de plus d'un parti au cours d'un même mandat à l'Assemblée nationale du Québec. Les députés ayant quitté un parti pour siéger comme indépendant ne sont généralement pas inclus dans le tableau.

Notes et références

Voir aussi

Articles connexes
 Transfuge
 Transfuge (Canada)
 Indépendant (Québec)

Lexique politique québécois
Personnalité politique québécoise

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


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A-level Exam Results
Graphic designer from Tufnell Park to publish third book portraying life with dyslexia
PUBLISHED: 14:30 31 October 2019 | UPDATED: 12:26 01 November 2019
Adrian Zorzut
Sam Barclay.
A Tufnell Park man is teaching the world what it is like living with dyslexia, one word at a time.
I Wonder What it's Like to be Dyslexic. Picture: Sam Barclay
Sam Barclay, 33, has lived with the learning difficulty since he was eight. At school, he was called "lazy bones" by teachers who told him he would amount to nothing.
But after a stint in plumbing, Sam enrolled into a graphics design course at the University of Portsmouth. And several years later, he left with a first-class degree, a commendation from the International Society of Typographic Design (ISTD), and had published his first book called I Wonder What it's Like to be Dyslexic.
Now, six years after the first publication, he is raising funds to print his third edition.
Sam moved to London from Portsmouth five years ago and now works as a freelance graphic designer. When he is not busy designing books, he is either doing photography, DIY or bouldering.
He hopes his latest artwork - a visually perplexing 130-page long novel busting with typographic experiments based off short stories from Philippe Delerm's French novel The Small Pleasures of Life - exposes readers to the frustration and confusion Dyslexic people face on a daily basis.
"Sometimes people with dyslexia are called lazy and it's just not true," Sam told the Gazette. "So, what I want to give people with my latest book is a sense of having something they could sit down and read in comfort but experience the exact opposite.
"It's amazing how the brain struggles when you move a space or a full stop, or play with the colouring. There's even a story in Chinese, just to hammer the point home," he said.
He has even added a story about his parents experience to raise awareness of the struggles they face raising a child with the condition.
He said: "When I was going to school, there really wasn't much out there for my parents. They didn't have a voice or a way to tell their stories so I wanted to make sure I could."
Sam wants his work, which has been recognised by university professors, to inspire kids with any disability to pursue their own dreams.
He said: "Find what you love doing and keep pushing ahead with it - really master it. Don't worry about what you're not good at because someone else will pick it up."
Sam needs to raise money to publish the book. Donate to his fundraiser here.
Homerton rapper Unknown T stabbed Steven Narvaez-Jara to death at Old Street party, court hears
Delivery drivers in stab vests strike against 'slave' wages and poor job security, after Takieddine Boudhane murder
Shante Turay-Thomas inquest: Teen died at Whittington Hospital after combination of human and system error, coroner rules
Susanne Beer: Talented cellist departs, but leaves a platform for future stars to shine
Archway Tavern: Pub chain sells pub for £3.8m while licensing issues to blame for sporadic opening hours
Latest from the Islington Gazette
Nelson can be top player at Arsenal says Arteta
Gazette letters: Local birds, Ocado scheme, EU extradition, reopen rail network, sustainability and devolve railway
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GA-FL News
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Live Story
Your Sports
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Valdosta, GA (31601)
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A clear sky. Low 36F. Winds light and variable.
Your News. Your Voice. Your Times.
Bulger signs with Arizona
Greg McIlvain
Jason Bulger's long summer of negotiations with the Arizona Diamondbacks has come to an end.
The former Valdosta State pitcher, the first-round draft choice of the Arizona Diamondbacks last June, signed with the club last week.
Baseball America reported Bulger received a signing bonus and incentives worth around $950,000. It was less than the players drafted around him received, but Bulger had little leverage with the Diamondbacks since he'd already completed his college eligibility.
Bulger was 7-2 with seven saves and a 1.47 ERA for VSU last spring. He struck out 64 in 49 innings. He was the Gulf South East Division co-player of the year.
The newspaper reported Bulger would work out with the club's Arizona Fall League team later this month, but not play professionally until he was sent to Australia.
Bulger could be the next to join others with Valdosta connections in the majors.
Hahira's J.D. Drew has played in just 90 of St. Louis' 143 games this season due to various injuries. Still Drew is hitting .327 with 24 home runs and 62 RBI.
J.D.'s brother Tim Drew was 8-6 with a 3.92 ERA for Class AAA Buffalo (Cleveland) this season. He struck out 75 and walked 27 in 108 innings in two different tours with Buffalo.
After Buffalo lost in the first round of the International League playoffs, Drew was promoted again to Cleveland.
In seven games in Cleveland, Drew is 0-1 with an 8.22 ERA in 30 2/3 innings.
Former Valdosta State pitcher Scott MacRae became the second Blazer to make the majors. His debut was in mid-July against Atlanta. MacRae is 0-0 with a 2.81 ERA in 19 games (25 2/3 innings) with Cincinnati.
MacRae was a Southern League all-star pick. At Double-A Chattanooga and Triple-A Louisville, he was a combined 7-4 with two saves and a 3.01 ERA.
-- Former VSU pitcher/infielder Scotty Layfield was the relief pitcher of the year in the Carolina League. Pitching for Class A Potomac (St. Louis), Layfield was 1-2 with a league-high 31 saves and a 1.84 ERA in 47 games. Layfield struck out 66 and walked but 18 in 53 2/3 innings. He gave up just one home run, and that was early in the season.
Layfield returned from an elbow problem in July to finish the season.
-- Former VSU pitcher Doug Dimma pitched for both Class AA Tennessee and Class A Dunedin (Toronto). After starting 0-2 with one save in 19 games (5.40 ERA) at Tennessee, he was sent to Dunedin in late May. There he was 1-2 in 24 games (4.88 ERA).
-- Former VSU and Valdosta High pitcher Andy Boutwell went 4-4 (4.92 ERA) with two saves in 32 games for Class A Dayton (Cincinnati). Boutwell struck out 83 in 67 2/3 innings.
-- Former Lowndes High pitcher Aaron Taylor was 3-1 with nine saves (2.45 ERA) for Class A Wisconsin (Seattle). Taylor had 50 strikeouts and just 11 walks in 29 1/3 innings.
-- Former Valdosta High player Buck Coats hit .260 with one home run and 18 RBI for the Cubs' team in the Arizona League.
-- Former Valdosta State player Darren Bush hit .175 with two home runs and 18 RBI for Class A Clearwater (Philadelphia).
-- Valdosta resident Jeff Garber came one day from having another championship series called off before its conclusion.
Garber's Wilmington (Del.) team in the Class A Carolina League lost the fifth game of the championship series to Salem (Va.) on Sept. 10. If the series would have lasted one more day, it would have been cancelled due to the terrorist attacks which happened the next day.
Two years ago, Garber had the last game of a championship series cancelled because of an impending hurricane in the Myrtle Beach (S.C.) area.
Garber, in his fifth year of managing in the Kansas City organization, won both halves of the Carolina League's Northern Division this season.
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Should You Add Your Parents In Facebook Or Not?
Hi, I would be joining the Quran to provide a grain of sand to the knowledge of all.
I am looking forward to join Quora to be part of contributors club and also share thoughts in the form of questions.
I am an Entrepreneurial and Business Coach, Management Consultant to many organizations. I strongly believe that your invite will help me leverage on sharing knowledge on collective contribution model.
Thats great, but I don't think it will help you much in Quora but you can try All the best.
1. To track some really interesting questions and answers(they are usually a good source of insightful answers and good questions).
2.For getting really high quality, authoritative content on any topic that we are interested in.
Hope you will get your information there.
I look forward to your invite to join Quora as an invite is the only way I can join!!
AND I want to join Quora as it seems to be a great platform to share knowledge and insights on a variety of topics with diverse people.
I like to improve my Knowledge bcz Knowledge is Power.
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Please, send me an invitation, i want to imporve my knowledge about Venture Capital. I need to investigate if people at Quora can help me.
We would like to join Quora to further our awareness raising efforts with regard to the world's wildlife crises. These include that of the tigers, rhinos, elephants, sharks, and all other creatures. Our focus is on the human aspect of these problems, with special attention to poaching, bushmeat trade, and all illegal wildlife trade. We hope to hear from you soon. Thanks!
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hi I'm the Managing director of a digital marketing solution company based in Italy, I've read about Quora today in Newsweek and I'm eager to exchange with views on the future of technology in Europe.
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Sorry, I can't give it just like that.. You need to give a proper reason..
I'm sick of all other internetz like twitter, reddit, friendfeed etc. I want a new place to discover. Thanks.
I am graduating in a few months and have accepted my first job at SAP and think i may have some knowledge to contribute. I have read up on Quora and seems to be a very good platform to get and share knowledge from industry.
Thanks for the Help Saket. Its me who posted on your profile moments ago… sorry.
You need to give a proper reason..
I want to start exploring quora, so please send me an invitation.
I am MBA student and technologist. I keep tracking many of the questions of quora manually. Currently doing a research project on Freemium models and Quora questions and answers have helped me a lot. I personally see that Quora is a very good base of knowledge interaction.
Can you send me an invitation, I want to be part of that interaction?
Please send me an invitation to join Quora.
I want to join Quora because I frequently use internet in search of answers to different types of questions and problems which include academic, philosopic, scientific and of course computer and other gadget software and hardware troubleshooting etc.
Looking forward for interacting with you in future.
Please send me an invitation to join Quora; I would like to join Quora because (I think) it's a wonderful place to share knowledge.
Looking to bridge gaps in various areas starting from entreprenuerial management to employee/employer relationships. Kindly provide an invite which will allow me to pass on my learnings to all out there.
would appreciate Quora invite. Will be much needed to power our knowledge base and educational optins. many thanks!
would appreciate Quora invite. Will be much needed for enhancing knowledge base and for all academic/educational needs. Thanks a lot!
Saket i would like to explore Quora. Would appreciate a invite from you.
Sorry, You need to give a proper reason..
Hi.I am so happy that I found this.I want to join Quora as I would like quality answers to many questions that I have.I am tired of Yahoo answers.
I want to get a quora invitation to study and use it to analyse my website. I want to join quora to study the more knowledge and to make my website more well.
I'm a college student from China, and I major in telecommunication. I want to use Quora for learning experience and great mind from pioneers.
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please, send me an invitation at j********@gmail.com! 🙂 thanks!
Hi ! Could you please send me an invite to Quora? Thanks in advance!
You need to give the valid reason..
I am a smechanical designer and like to gain my knowledge. Please invite me in quora.
I would like to learn from people that actually know when they answer. I would really appreciate an invitation and always remember who I got it from.
I am sure Quora will be a good tool to be part of a network which adds genuine value to questions and I want to be benefited by that.
Sorry but you to do as told above then only you able to receive an invitation.


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Fans and Celebrities React to Russ' Last Minute European Tour Cancellation
Posted on September 6, 2022 at September 14, 2022 by Hamp N
Russell Vitale, Atlanta-born rapper known worldwide as Russ, has canceled his upcoming European headlining tour as of August 28th, with his first show being the night of in Stuttgart, Germany.
Russ took to social media to announce his last-minute cancellation. The "Losin Control" Artist expressed his sorrow, reality, and situation via Instagram, Twitter, etc. "I have to cancel the European tour. I could make up excuses so that I don't lose money but the reality is mentally I feel like sh*t." Russ starts. He continues his letter with admission to "some extremely lonely and empty realizations", as he continues to express conflict he faces with his family, destroying him mentally, as he writes, "have my head feeling like it's gonna burst." Russ strays from his sudden mental deterioration, writing excessively about the disappointment he knows his fans will endure. The Atlanta rapper explains that giving his all to his numerous performances would be impossible, describing how instead of "crashing and burning" and having this dull down his performance and the expectations of his fans, he would rather focus on his own well-being, as to not disappoint his fans while struggling to keep himself together. "…knowing that I gotta go out and give my 100% energy to 24 shows is something I cannot do."
Russ expressed a strong disappointment in himself, referring to the fans who wished to see him live. Although fans are disappointed they cannot attend the rapper's shows, spanning from Germany, Spain, and India, Russ has received a multitude of love, understanding, and best wishes from a majority of his fans and fellow celebrities. One celebrity not included in this majority is Soundcloud rapper Gazzy Garcia, known notoriously as Lil Pump. Pump took to Instagram, posting an embarrassingly vulgar video responding to the news, "You think you got mental health issues?" the "Gucci Gang" rapper began. "I'm from Dade County, b*tch. I was born with mental health issues. How 'bout you deal with it and stop being a f*cking p*ssy." Russ has yet to respond to Pump, although he most likely never will. Pump has no correlation with Russ, as Pump, numerous times before, has started internet beef with a number of celebrities, in hopes of gaining popularity after his sudden stardom and falling off in 2016.
Russ has beat himself up over his decision explaining his knowledge and understanding for those who despise him because of this turn of events, as well as those who are mentally struggling, as he is. He writes in his statement that he knows he will receive backlash, and instead of asking for empathy, asks for understanding. "I need time to make sense of certain things and for once I need to put myself first. I'm really sorry. I love y'all."
Hamp N
Posted by Susan C - June 29, 2020 0
Heather Locklear celebrated two special events in April. One-year of sobriety, and shortly after, her engagement to Chris Heisser –…


NEEDS A FAMILY!! LOTS OF ROOM FOR KIDS, PETS & GARDENS!! If you want a nice big yard, in desirable Byron, this 4 side brick ranch is for you! Within walking distance of downtown Byron, close to I-75 yet in an established neighborhood. Corner lot over 1.5 acres. Lot can be divided, with complete road frontage. Seller/agent relationship.


Organizations in the Retails industry envision improving the productivity, robustness and operational efficiency of their Global distribution network. In order to do so they plan to implement standardized processes coupled with integrated infrastructure and systems across all the Contract Manufactures and Packers under a single application ecosystem. As discussed in my earlier blogs contact manufacturing in the retail sector has taken the world by storm and organizations continuously strive to raise their bar each day.
These organizations aim at becoming "An Enterprise of Tomorrow" by using specialized supplier skills in the manufacturing process to help lower packaging and manufacturing costs and increase production quality. What they also aim at is using supplier capacity to increase the overall production capacity. They envision enhancing their stature of "World Class Organization" by reaping the dividends of a successful Contract Manufacturing Organisation (CMO) relationship with its vendors.
World class organizations are learning and teaching organizations. They engage in a continuous endeavor of learning and teaching each day and that is how Best Practices evolve for the Industry to follow.
Another best practice that the industry has benchmarked is the standardization of business and system processes for each contract manufacturer, a retail organization deals with. A SPOC at the retail organization is always a preferred choice to make the multi-vendor CMO engagement successful. Once the magic triangle is laid out, the fruits of a CMO engagement are there to reap.
Insights offered by SMI tools are often generic in nature. A typical insight from an SMI tool will be like, '60% of people have a positive sentiment towards the brand and 40% have a neutral/negative one'. However, there is no way to figure out which customer holds a positive sentiment and which one holds a negative one. Neither is there a way to figure out if a sentiment actually belongs to our customer or it is just spurious one. Therefore, such insights are useful but incomplete.
The ability to track down conversations at a customer level will be useful in determining patterns across conversations. For instance, an Organization might figure out that a large proportion of customers having a positive sentiment are old-time customers (say > 4 years) and a large proportion of customers holding a negative sentiment are newly acquired customers. This insight will send a clear message for an Organization to step up their service quality for newly acquired customers. If such a disparity in sentiments is found across geographic regions, it will send a message to probably have a relook at the customer service teams in negative sentiment regions. So, a generic insight gets transformed into a powerful actionable insight.
Social Media is a noisy space and the number of relevant conversations can be overwhelming. However, the priority that an Organization would like to attaches to each conversation may be different. A negative sentiment expressed by a decade old high-value customer may be viewed and acted upon different from a similar sentiment expressed by a newly acquired customer. Integrating SMI tools with the data warehouse can help Organizations put different customers into different priority buckets based on factors like years of association, customer life time value and social activeness score thus streamlining the way they manage and prioritize a huge pile of social conversations.
Typical customer databases will include traditional fields like name, e-mail & address. This information can be enhanced by adding social information to it. Social attributes, fetched from the social media profiles of customers, can give an authentic reflection of the softer aspects of a customer. This can be precious information from the point of view of understanding the psychographic profile of customers.
If Amazon can benefit from this data by knowing the books that it should target a customer with (say based on the books that a customer has listed on his social profiles), Nike can base the development of its new series of shoes around these insights (say based on discussions where customers are talking about enjoying their jogs on dew laden grass and thus requiring suitable shoes).
Essentially, insights leveraging social attributes in conjunction with traditional data have the potential to help organizations prepare better product development and targeting strategies.
I will delve further into these aspects in Part 4 of the blog.


Building custom new homes in Sisters has many advantages. In addition to great schools, a bustling arts and culture scene, Sisters provides the perfect landscape for new homes in Central Oregon. As a new home builder specializing in timber framing, the forested setting in which the town of Sisters resides provides the perfect backdrop for Ross Built Homes.
One of the many privileges of living in Central Oregon and specifically in Sisters is the access to wood species similarly and naturally found in the area. It's possible to build custom new homes in Sisters from wood species found right in your backyard. From wood purchased from area mills to reclaimed wood salvaged from old barns and buildings throughout Central Oregon, whatever your preference, it can be used to build custom new homes in Sisters.
Of the many advantages of building custom new homes in Sisters, the beautiful landscape may give you the best value as far as view and atmosphere go in Central Oregon. With stunning views of the Cascade mountains and beautiful trees all around, there's no arguing the landscape in Sisters isn't breathtaking.
If you're considering building custom new homes in Sisters and have school-aged children, the Sisters School District is hard to pass up. Many parents choose to send their children to Sisters school for the advanced academic atmosphere and the arts and culture programs. The Americana Project provides innovative arts and music education in collaboration with the Sisters Folk Festival, Sisters School District and Creative Educational Resources.
Building custom new homes in Sisters and moving to this quiet mountain town has many cultural advantages. From the famous Sisters Folk Festival, which brings together musicians from all over the country to the Sisters Quilt Show, there's something for everyone when it comes to music, arts and culture.
When seeking a new home builder in Sisters, browse the Ross Built Homes photo gallery to get an idea of the beautiful, craftsman-style homes we build in the Central Oregon region. With experience as a custom new home builder in Sisters, Ross Built Homes helps incorporate your home into the natural landscape of Sisters, Oregon.


The Steelers are seemingly perpetual Super Bowl contenders, and a lot of that has to do with head coach Mike Tomlin's offensive weapons. Ben Roethlisberger is still the quarterback in Pittsburgh, and he has one of the league's most talented receivers catching passes for him. That would be Antonio Brown, who has an uncanny ability to create separation and will make Roethlisberger's job a whole lot easier moving forward. Pittsburgh also has one of the game's most elusive running backs in Le'Veon Bell.
The Steelers play their games at Heinz Field. Heinz has long been regarded as one of the toughest stadiums for opponents to play in, and that isn't likely to change any time soon. One cool thing you'll find at this venue is the Great Hall, which is on the east side of the stadium. Here you'll find as much Steelers memorabilia as you can possibly handle. Another reason to go to Heinz Field is for the Terrible Towel. This prop is one of the Steelers' ways to rally the crowd up, and all proceeds from its sales go to charity.
Find the right seat, right now. SeatGeek offers the best way to buy Steelers tickets.
The list above displays all upcoming Steelers games. Once you find the game you'd like to attend, clicking the green button on the right hand side of the screen will take you to a SeatGeek event page, which displays all available tickets.
When do Steelers playoff tickets go on sale?
NFL playoff tickets typically go on sale in December. To get alerts on Steelers playoff tickets, make sure to sign up for an account.
Browse the listings above to see all upcoming games. The regular season starts September 6th, and ends December 30th.
How much do Steelers tickets cost?
There are ticket options for every fan at every price point on SeatGeek. Steelers tickets typically start at about $90.
When do the Steelers play the Ravens?
Steelers-Ravens takes place on September 30th in Pittsburgh and November 4th in Baltimore. See our Steelers vs. Ravens matchup page for more information.
What is the Pittsburgh Steelers preseason schedule?
The 2018 Steelers preseason is scheduled to begin August 9th and end August 30th. For Pittsburgh Steelers preseason tickets, visit our Steelers Tickets page.
The Pittsburgh Steelers have a number of exciting matchups each season. Below are some top rivalries.


A combination of careful tooling and paint matching allows drywall repair to conceal cracks on textured walls. If the finished appearance of the filled crack approximates the original texture, a coat of precisely matched paint blends the blemish with its surrounding surfaces. Use the right tools and procedure to repair drywall cracks on textured walls, and you can create a fix that nearly matches your wall's original appearance.
Scrape along the entire length of the crack with a stiff putty knife. Remove paint, texture and drywall mud until you reach the drywall paper. Scrape an area approximately 1 1/2 inches wide on both sides of the crack to create a channel approximately 3 inches wide along the crack's entire length. Clean dust and debris from the scraped areas with a soft-bristled brush.
Load a tube of paintable caulk into a caulking gun, cut the tube's tip and puncture the tube's seal. Apply a bead of caulk into the crack along its entire length. Smooth the bead of caulk with a stiff putty knife. Allow the caulk to cure according to the manufacturer's recommendations.
Apply a layer of latex primer over the crack, the cleared area and the seams between the cleared area and intact wall texture. Use a paintbrush or roller to apply primer to the repair area. Allow the primer to dry.
Open a can of spray-on drywall texture, attach the can's hose, and puncture the can's seal. Spray the texture along the cleared area, lightly blending the spray-on texture with the intact wall texture. Allow the texture to dry.
Apply a coat of primer to the new drywall texture with a brush or roller. Allow the primer to dry. Apply a coat of matched paint to the repair area, blending with the intact wall surfaces. Allow the paint to dry prior to applying additional coats.
Paint changes color as it dries; do not judge your paint job until it has fully dried.
Repaint the entire wall to ensure that your repair area doesn't stand out.


text:
Egan Butcher (born 8 May 2000) is a professional rugby league footballer who plays as a er or  for the Sydney Roosters in the NRL.

Background
Egan Butcher played his junior rugby league for South Eastern Seagulls in the South Sydney District Junior Rugby Football League competition. Younger sibling of Nat Butcher he followed his brother to the Roosters and was a star performer in the S.G. Ball and Jersey Flegg competitions in 2018. Egan Butcher has spent his last few pre-seasons with the Roosters impressing his coaches and peers.

Playing career

2021
Butcher began the 2021 season playing for North Sydney in the NSW Cup. In round 12 of the 2021 NRL season, Butcher made his first grade debut for the Sydney Roosters against Canberra.  Butcher played a total of 15 games for the Sydney Roosters in the 2021 NRL season including the club's two finals matches.  The Sydney Roosters would be eliminated from the second week of the finals losing to Manly 42–6.

2022
Butcher made 12 appearances for the Sydney Roosters in the 2022 NRL season as the club finished sixth on the table. Butcher played in the Sydney Roosters elimination final loss to arch-rivals South Sydney which ended their season.

References

External links
Sydney Roosters profile

2000 births
Living people
Australian rugby league players
Sydney Roosters players
North Sydney Bears NSW Cup players
Rugby league players from Sydney
Rugby league props


Subscription and paywall as a tech category came out as the fifth most popular ones technology publishers will buy in 2018 in the The Top Technologies Publishers Will Buy in 2018 report. Just as a comparison, they were not even in the top ten in 2017.
This report shows that publishers are eager to bring back audiences back to their own properties, nurture them and ultimately win against the advertising-centric model.
Paid subscription models have been a hot potato of the media industry for the past couple of years. Starting 2019 we'll see more and more media brands that actively take on the paid paywall solutions.
It's clear that there are some key technical considerations that every digital content owner needs to keep in mind when selecting the right paywall solution.
Let's revise some of the key elements to consider when choosing the best paywall solution.
The most important thing when choosing between paywall vendors is the level of control the architecture gives in terms of setting up, creation, change and monitoring of paywall campaigns.
On one hand there are paywall solutions like InPlayer's that give full access to their paywall capabilities. This means these kind of paywall solutions let you develop campaigns, segment audiences, control metering settings and much more.
On the other hand there are paywall vendors that require changes to be made through their team to be implemented.
With the first example the main benefit is that the client has a full control and it's easier for them to make any changes required.
But if we're talking about large media company that manages all campaigns, this can be challenging as those teams are usually time-strapped.
If the paywall vendor is the one that sets up the campaigns, then it's advisable to gain access to a resource that fully understands the capabilities of the paywall solution. In this case the time of implementation and the agility to make changes must be taken into consideration.
May will ask themselves what is the right solution? The answers is – depends on the marketing path the content owner wants to take with their paid subscription business.
What's the right solution? The answer to this most likely depends on the type of marketing approach you want to take with your paid subscription business.
If you're more into audience segmentation or want to roll multiple offers at once, then solution with more control is the best paywall solution. Or, alternatively, if you want to set ip metering approach but you're short of time, then a closed solution is a better option.
The amount of work needed to make APIs come to life cannot be diminished.
API paywall development comes up in a few ways. It's important for digital content owners to consider where API work is needed and the impact it will cause in the overall development and implementation of the paywall solution for the digital content in mind.
Sometimes, although this is rare, media brands can find vendors that can provide an integrated subscriber database, in reality, most content owners look at solutions that require combination form one vendor with the subscriber database from another. This is one of the areas where API work will be needed.
There are different ways to segment and target audience. Marketing automation tools and CDPs (Customer Data Platforms) are the most popular ones. Using them it's possible to segment offers for audience members as well through the paywall. In order for this to happen API connections between these tools and the paywall need to be built.
Another key API development lies in the transfer of financial data from the paywall to your financial system. If you have a paywall provider managing financial transactions and tracking paid subscription revenue, it will be critical for you to have an API link between the paywall or subscriber database and your financial system.
Make sure you have information if the vendor has done this type of integration in the past. Additionally, make sure you look for vendors that have published APIs, like us at InPlayer, because this will ultimately speed the API development process.
However, we also provide end users visiting merchant's websites to pay for a premium content. In our paywall solution we have a payment form through which this can be accomplished.
Down the chain, the transfer of money from the end user account to our merchant's account goes through what is called a payment gateway. We do not do that but rather use Stripe as a service that does that for us.
This means that Stripe is central to our user flow, since we are using it as a payment gateway to provide functionalities such as charges, subscriptions, free-trials, vouchers etc.
The integration with the Stripe system is done through their API. Then on top of our Stripe integration, we provide flexible ways for our merchants to manage their assets, events and pricing offers, as well as insights into their audience and revenue.
One important note regarding the flow of money. When an end user pays, the money goes to our Stripe account, and we write accounting records in our system specifying how much of the money is our share, and how much the merchant should receive. At the end of each month we do a payout to our merchants giving them their share.
Now, this is the regular flow. However, in addition to this, we also have a more in-depth integration with Stripe with their Connect feature. What this does is that it basically allows money to be split at the moment of payment, meaning when the user pays, our share comes to our Stripe account, while the share of the merchant goes to their Stripe account.
This is very convenient as it eliminates the need for payouts and merchants are happier because they get their money right away, instead of at the end of the month. In our merchant dashboard we have an easy way for our merchants to integrate their Stripe account, allowing the whole process to work.
As you begin to roll out a paid subscription business for your site you'll have a lot of questions like whether to use metering or present a hard paywall to subscribers, whether to encourage users to pay monthly, annually or pay-per-view?
In order to answer these questions you need to run different A/B tests. Also, it's important to implement fully customizable paywall solution, or that can provide a path to smartwall capabilities, creating offers based on individual needs.
By using these approaches you can try different scenarios for different audiences to find out the approach or approaches that work best for your audience base.
Implementing a paywall can modify the way you affect your existing audience. It'll additionally modify the means you tackle prospecting of your brand's new audiences.
Therefore, once putting in a gateway, make sure you absolutely trust the impact the paywall will have on your operations.


Been diving in Mawali? Please Vote!
Mawali Wreck dive is one of the areas best wreck dives. If you are interested in wreck diving, then the Mawali wreck should shift to the top of your prospective dive site lists. The former 90m/295ft-long Japanese cargo ship went down in flames in 1943 and is now home to a variety of coral species and invertebrates. Melted glass, charred propellers, and broken sail posts all indicate this huge cargo mother ship was scorched before it was forced to start a new beginning at the bottom of the ocean.
The freighter lying on it portside is the most commonly dived site in the Lembeh strait and is covered in a myriad of hard corals, soft corals, and sea fans for divers to explore as well. The wreck is now a very healthy mini ecosystem and home to many different types of marine life. The dive site has many small openings and many sharp navigation points and so it is marked as an advanced dive site for safety. Divers can expect a maximum depth of 31 metres, averaging at 16 metres and low levels of visibility often only around 10 metres.
Melted glass, charred propellers, and broken sail posts all indicate this huge cargo mother ship was scorched before it was forced to start a new beginning at the bottom of the ocean. The wreck begins at about 14 metres into the dive and covers a total of 30 metres, with the topside of the wreck completely covered in corals. Added to this the many nudibranchs, schooling barracudas, and dense numbers of reef fish, this artificial reef has guaranteed perks for divers who are not particularly interested in just wrecks. Divers can find many types of lionfish, scorpionfish, triggerfish, and frogfish. This dive site is also known for its muck diving, as there are many critter species. Pygmy Seahorses and various crustaceans frequent this dive site and in the nooks and crannies, divers will find leaf fish, ghost fish, and mantis shrimps.
For diver safety, divers should stay away from the unstable machine room and they should watch out for large ships or boats that pass very close while ascending.
Map of Lembeh Strait, Mawali dive site.


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The list of Goldcar destinations grows every year, allowing travelers to get behind the wheel of the newest and best value rental cars on the market in ever more locations.
Goldcar employs a highly skilled workforce of over 1,100 professionals dedicated to offering all our clients a quality, transparent, and cutting edge service.


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hemispheric institute
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You are here:Special Collections»HIDVL Artist Profiles»Miscellaneous Holdings»HIDVL Interview Collections»What is Performance Studies? Interview Series»Interview with Antonio Prieto Stambaugh: What is Performance Studies? (2011)
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Video: HIDVL Video
TItle: Interview with Antonio Prieto Stambaugh
Alternate Title: Entrevista con Antonio Prieto Stambaugh
Location: Filmed in San José, Costa Rica
Interviewee: Antonio Prieto Stambaugh
Interviewer: Diana Taylor
Interview with Antonio Prieto Stambaugh: What is Performance Studies? (2011)
Interview with Antonio Prieto Stambaugh, conducted by Diana Taylor, founding director of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics. This interview is a part of a series curated by the Hemispheric Institute, articulated around the question 'What is Performance Studies?' The series aims to provide a multifaceted approach to the often difficult task of defining the coordinates of both a field of academic study as well as a lens through which to assess and document cultural practice and embodied behavior. The contingent definitions documented in this series are based on the groundbreaking experiences and the scholarly endeavors of renowned figures in contemporary performance studies and practice.
Antonio Prieto Stambaugh is a Mexican researcher and professor, focused on issues of performance, contemporary theatre, gender and queer studies. He is currently a full time professor at the Theatre Department of the Veracruzana University, and has previously been visiting lecturer at Stanford Univesity, researcher at El Colegio de Michoacán and director of the Center of Performing Arts Research of Yucatán (Centro de Investigaciones Escénicas de Yucatán of the state's School of Higher Art Studies). He holds an MA in Performance Studies from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, and a PhD in Latin American Studies from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Mexico's National University (UNAM). He is member of Mexico's National System of Researchers (SNI) and of the Hemispheric Institute's Executive Board. He has published many essays on Chicano and Mexican performance art, as well as on issues of gender and border studies, in diverse anthologies and journals such as Cuadernos Americanos, Debate feminista, Gestos, Theatre Journal, Frontera norte, and Conjunto. Co-author with Yolanda Muñoz González of the book El teatro como vehículo de comunicación (Editorial Trillas, 1992). His most recent book is Jerzy Grotowski: miradas desde Latinoamérica, an anthology he edited, published by the Veracruzana University (2011).
Published in What is Performance Studies? Interview Series
Copyright © 1998–2017 Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics


The exact definition is a general cut in government spending. But, what exactly is a "general" cut when the reason there are going to be "general" cuts is due to the government's inability to make decisions on where to make cuts in the first place? "General" refers to cuts across the board where the bureaucrats are not allowed to decide where to make the cuts, causing cuts of the useless as well as the vital (CBSNews, 25Feb13).
I don't typically like to get involved with politics because nothing good ever come of it. However, yesterday, word around campus was that today, March 1st, with the start of the sequester, congress is cutting funds to the National Institute of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA, essentially killing the advancement of science in the United States. There are still private organizations which provide funds for science, but those are few and far between. NIH and NSF provide billions of dollars to scientific research annually. Billions of dollars is a lot of money so you may think, why can't we take away just a few million from them and put it somewhere else? Well, because it actually doesn't make that much of a difference in regards to the US budget but does make a HUGE impact on scientific discovery. The $37 billion annual budget of NIH is less than 1% of the US budget. The 10% cut to NIH from the sequester totals a savings of 0.08% in the US budget (Forbes, 14Jan13). 80-85% of projects submitted to NIH this year are going to have to be turned down because of this cut. One of those projects could be a life changing medical discovery. Is 0.08% worth it?
I tried looking up the Sequester without NIH as the focus and all I managed to find was that the failure to stop automatic spending cuts is a blame game. Republicans say it's Obama's fault while Obama points the finger at the Republican Congress. This isn't junior high, guys. Get your heads out of your asses and start spitballing ideas as to how to get out of this mess.
In my opinion, the first thing that should be cut is the salaries of these politicians (like this whimsical meme suggests), not because we will get a lot of money from it, but because it will put a fire under their butts to do what they are being paid to do. You don't get money unless you make some decisions. What are these politicians doing anyways? Raising money for their next campaign? Fraternizing with lobbyists? The budget seems to have been one of the biggest issues for quite some time, so, whatever they ARE doing, it's not what they should be doing. They need to set some priorities and start making some compromises, and those compromises shouldn't be cuts to the sciences!
Without science there's no innovation, discovery or progress. The US is already falling behind in the sciences.