New England Sun-Times

This is a common question that most businesses struggle with when deciding to add payment processing to a web site. When should a PayPal account be utilized and when does it make sense to move to a merchant account? First we need to look at the typical charges associated with a PayPal account and merchant account. To accept payments over the internet you need a payment gateway and a payment processing account. The payment gateway’s job is to capture the cardholder information from the business website, encrypt it and send it to the payment processing account.  The payment processing account then authorizes, settles and deposits the funds into the business bank account. PayPal combines these services into one fee structure. The typical payment processor will split the two charges out. Both are represented below. Type Set-Up Fee Monthly Fee Percentage Transaction Fee Merchant Acct None $12.95 2.5% $0.22 Gateway None $10.00 None $0.10 PayPa...

Joanie's story Eighteen years later, a surprise call After 18 years without justice, Joanie Scheske believed the man who raped her would never be caught. That changed when St. Louis police called in 2009. Evidence in a separate, eight-year old sexual assault was finally tested and matched her attacker's DNA. Rapist Mark Frisella, whose attack was so brutal Scheske still suffers from epilepsy, is serving 19 years in prison. "I had a really difficult time wrapping my head around why that rape kit was never tested," Scheske said. "My case is a poster child as to why you test these kits." A USA TODAY Media Network investigation identified tens of thousands of sexual assault evidence kits never tested by police. Instructions sit next to pipettes at a station in the biology lab at the Houston Forensic Science Center in April. In the most detailed nationwide inventory of untested rape kits ever, USA TODAY and journalists from more than 7...

Pesky insects are common in just about every part of the world. Flies, mosquitoes and ants are found in multitude by nearly every property owner in America. But few insects are quite as pesky as the creature known as the gnat. Gnats are small and extremely annoying, and even though they are completely harmless, it is unpleasant to see them hanging around your home. Luckily they are pretty easy to get rid of and there are a number of things you can do to prevent them from coming back again. This can be as simple as setting up a gnat trap, or pouring some ammonia down the drain. Method 1 of 5: Gnat Traps   1. Make a homemade gnat trap. One easy way to rid yourself of a gnat infestation is with an easy and cheap do-it-yourself gnat trap. Find a used can or jar (Mason jars work especially well) and fill it with apple cider vinegar. Gnats are extremely attracted to the scent of vinegar. After you fill your can or jar, seal the lid and poke very small holes w...

How do you know your relationship is over? In a general sense, most of us can agree it's when the bad experiences with your significant other start to outweigh the good.   Still, there's often one single moment that signifies the end of a relationship -- whether or not we recognize it at the time. On Saturday, Redditors on the Ask Reddit board shared the moment they realized their relationship had run its course. Check out what they had to say below. 1. Your number one source of stress is your significant other. "Being with your S.O. should be something that takes away stress , but over the course of a year, my S.O. became my number one cause of stress." 2. You can't see yourself being with your Significant Other for the long haul. "We were at a wedding I was in, and multiple times this thought passed through my mind: 'This will never be us.' It wasn't even a question, it was a certainty. It was scary as hell. He noticed some...

By Amanda Hoover @amahoover A Red Sox fan who was hit in the head with a broken beat in June was helped from the stands at Fenway Park.  Last month, Red Sox fan Tonya Carpenter was taken from Fenway Park screaming and bleeding after shards of a broken bat flew into the stands and struck in her in the head. On Friday night, a foul ball entered the Boston crowd during a game against the New York Yankees, hitting a woman in the face. She was left with a bruise between her eyes and is still recovering. While fans at Fenway Park have had a bad month, they’re hardly alone. Now, an Oakland A’s ticket-holder has filed a class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball for not doing enough to protect fans, The New York Times reports. The plaintiff, Gail Payne, says she doesn’t feel comfortable in her seats because they lack protective netting. The lawsuit would apply to season-ticket holders with seats in the unprotected areas along the first and third ba...

“You get the rifles. I’ll get the powder,” the man told an FBI witness, according to a criminal complaint. Alexander Ciccolo in 2012.   The ISIS-sympathizing son of a Boston Police captain was arrested on weapons charges on the Fourth of July after threatening to use pressure-cooker bombs and guns on an unidentified university, the FBI said in a complaint unsealed on Monday. Alexander Ciccolo, 23, is the son of Boston Police captain Robert Ciccolo, police confirmed. The Adams resident was arrested for taking possession of four firearms from a witness working with the  FBI, the complaint says. “What I am gonna do is prepare fire bombs. I’ll do that today. T[hey] are cheap and effective,” Ciccolo said in a July 2 instant message to the witness, according to the FBI. “You get the rifles. I’ll get the powder.” WalMart receipts show he purchased a pressure cooker on July 3 in North Adams, the complaint says. The firearms Ciccolo got from the FBI ...

  Writing a movie can be a long and arduous task. Sure, it can be hugely pleasurable and result in a vast financial reward, but sometimes, another film beats you to the punch and releases the exact same plot before you are able to release your movie. And it turns out, that was the case with We’re The Millers and Ted 2 , as the 2013 comedy basically told the same story that Seth MacFarlane had originally dreamed up for his sequel. Seth MacFarlane made this admission during a recent chat I had with him regarding Ted 2 , and the comedy’s co-writer and director confessed that their first plan for the sequel was much different to what it turned into. MacFarlane confessed: "The first draft was actually going to be John and Ted trucking a pot shipment across the country, but We’re The Millers came out while we were writing it, and it was the same story. So we had to scrap it." Seth MacFarlane went on to add that the eventual plot for Ted 2 "kind of emerged b...