Fritz Haller
Fritz Haller is an American slalom canoeist who competed from the early 1980s to the mid-1990s.
He won four medals at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships with two golds( C2: 1983; mixed C2: 1981) a silver( C2 team: 1983) and a bronze( C2 team: 1985).
Most of his career he was partnered by his older brother Lecky Haller.
Lecky Haller
Jacob Alexander" Lecky" Haller( born 2 August 1957 in Glencoe, Maryland) is an American slalom canoeist who competed from the early 1980s to the early 2000s.
He won four medals at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships with a gold( C2: 1983), two silvers( C2: 1987, C2 team: 1983) and a bronze( C2 team: 1985).
He attended Washington College where he played lacrosse.
In 1979 he became an All American honorable mention, and in 1980 he made the first team for All American Lacrosse.
Lecky graduated from Washington College in 1981 and until 2012 a 7th grade teacher at French Broad River Academy in Asheville.
Now he is a Football, Wrestling, Ski and lacrosse coach at The Asheville School in North Carolina.
He is a 15- time National Champion and a two- time Olympian.
Haller also competed in two Summer Olympics, earning his best finish of fourth in the C2 event in Barcelona in 1992.
In 1996 he was ranked Number 1 in the world for men's C2.
In 1988 he won the inaugural overall World Cup title in the C2 category partnering Jamie McEwan, who was his C2 partner until 1992.
He was also partnered by his younger brother Fritz Haller and Matt Taylor during his career.
His ex-wife, Cathy Hearn, and his ex-brother- in- law, David Hearn, also competed in canoe slalom for the United States.
Cathy Hearn
Catherine Ann" Cathy" Hearn- Röthenmund( born June 1, 1958) is an American slalom kayaker who competed from the late 1970s to the early 2000s.
She won ten medals at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships with two golds( K1: 1979, K1 team: 1979), three silvers( K1: 1981, K1 team: 1989, 1993), and five bronzes( K1: 1989, 1997, K1 team: 1977, 1981, 1987).
Hearn also competed in two Summer Olympics, earning her best finish of seventh in the K1 event in Atlanta in 1996.
Her brother, David Hearn, and her ex-husband, Lecky Haller, also competed for the United States in canoe slalom.
Her brother- in- law is a former Swiss kayaker Mathias Röthenmund.
As of 2009, Hearn serves as a coach for the United States canoe slalom team.
David Hearn (canoeist)
David Carter" Davey" Hearn( born April 17, 1959 in Bethesda, Maryland) is a former slalom canoeist who competed from the late 1970s to the early 2000s( decade).
He won seven medals in the C1 event at the ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships with two golds( 1985, 1995) and five silvers( 1979, 1981, 1983, 1987, 1989).
He also won six consecutive world championship gold medals in the C1 team event( 1979- 1989).
Hearn competed in three Summer Olympics, earning his best finish of ninth in the C1 event in Atlanta in 1996.
Hearn's sister, Cathy, and his ex-brother- in- law, Lecky Haller, also competed in canoe slalom for the United States.
Rocky Ryan
Michael Joseph "Rocky" Ryan (30 December 1937 – 15 January 2004) was a British media hoaxer, who became known in the UK for providing newspapers with numerous stories that turned out to be fabrications.
Earlier in his life, he had been a small-time criminal and film stuntman.
Ryan was born in Tipperary, Ireland, and in his youth served time in borstals.
He was involved in film stunt work, and was injured during work in 1975 on "The Slipper and the Rose" released the following year.
He began his series of hoaxes in the mid-1970s, he said, after one newspaper contacted the police (falsely) claiming he was the Black Panther, the armed robber and murderer.
Ryan used numerous aliases, showing an ability with accents, when he gave stories to the press, including Major Travis, Peter Bernstein, David Oppenheimer, and Rocco Salvatore.
The last name, supposedly a businessman, was used to dupe "The Daily Telegraph" into believing the contact was involved in a military coup in the Seychelles.
Other stories concocted by Ryan included claims that the kidnapped racehorse Shergar was alive and well and living in Jersey, and that the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, was being allowed out of Broadmoor to attend discos.
A tip off that the vanished Lord Lucan was hiding in South Africa led the "Daily Express" to send one of their staff to investigate.
Another newspaper published a false story about Koo Stark, a former girlfriend of Prince Andrew, which led to a libel action and the award of £300,000 in damages.
Threatening behaviour towards "The Observer" journalist Farzad Bazoft, and threats to the journalist's family, ended up in court and Ryan was bound over.
Ryan told "The Independent" in 1993 he had tipped off the Iraqis that Bazoft was spying for Iran and Israel as a result of the personal grudge.
Bazoft was executed for spying by Saddam Hussein's government in 1990; Ryan's involvement in the case is unconfirmed.
In a 1993 interview with "The Independent" newspaper, believed to have been given by Ryan himself, he claimed to have been born Michael Rocco Ryan, with his mother being of Sicilian origin, and to have been raised in the East End of London with the Kray twins.
In fact, only the part about the East End and the Krays is true.
After a stroke in 2001, which affected a hand, Ryan became a recluse.
An inquest after he died found that a potentially lethal dose of painkillers was in his body.
The coroner recorded an open verdict.
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman
Bayan Sami Abdul Rahman is the former Kurdistan Regional Government High Representative to the UK, current representative to the United States and a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.
The Financial Times has described her as" an ambassador without a country."
Abdul Rahman grew up in Iraq until she fled as a refugee to London at the age of 11.
She is the daughter of Sami Abdul Rahman, an important figure in the Kurdish resistance to Saddam Hussein.
Her family needed to move frequently to escape the bombing by Saddam Hussein's military of Kurdish areas.
She told The Telegraph that “ We would be in one village and it would be bombed, so we ’d have to flee.
One time we lived in an empty school, another time in a shelter for nomads ”.
After moving to Kent as a refugee, she won the" Observer" ’s Farzad Bazoft Memorial Prize in 1993 for her writing about Kurdistan in the" Hendon Times."
After the fall of the Saddam regime, her father became Deputy Prime Minister of the KRG but he was killed along with his oldest son Salah and 96 other people in a double suicide bombing in Erbil in 2004.
Abdul Rahman was elected to the Leadership Council of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in 2010.
Abdul Rahman became a journalist for the Financial Times, and then a diplomat.
She was made the KRG's representative in the UK, before moving to Washington, DC in 2015 to act as the KRG representative to the US.
David Ji
David Longfen Ji is an American businessman who co-founded Apex Digital, an electronics manufacturer.
In 2004, he was arrested in China following a dispute with Sichuan Changhong Electric, a supplier owned by the city of Mianyang and the province of Sichuan.
Changhong accused him of defrauding them through bad checks.
Ji was taken, according to an account by his lawyer, to the senior management and told, "I decide whether you live or die."
He has been held in China without charges.
Ji's case highlighted an "implicit racism" in dealings with American businessmen.
As a U.S. citizen he was not granted the same treatment by authorities as non-ethnically Chinese businessmen sharing the same nationality.
Jamie McEwan
James Patrick McEwan( September 24, 1952 – June 14, 2014) was an American slalom canoeist who competed in the 1970s and then again in the 1980s and early 1990s.
He teamed up with his son Devin to compete in the 2000s.
Competing in two Summer Olympics, he won a bronze medal in the C1 event at Munich in 1972.
McEwan was born in Olney, Maryland and began kayaking at his family's Valley Mill Camp.
He earned a degree in literature from Yale University in 1975.
He was married to children's author and illustrator Sandra Boynton, a fellow Yale graduate( class of 1974).
With his partner, Lecky Haller, McEwan won a silver medal in the C2 slalom at the 1987 ICF Canoe Slalom World Championships in Bourg St.- Maurice.
He and Haller placed fourth in the 1992 Summer Olympics.
They have also won the overall World Cup title in the C2 category in the inaugural season of this competition in 1988.
In 1998 McEwan and his brother Tom were members of an expedition to run the Tsangpo Gorge, considered the" Mount Everest" of rivers.
The expedition encountered unanticipated high water and ended in tragedy when teammate Doug Gordon failed to boof a waterfall, missed his roll, and died.
McEwan wrote many children's books.
In 2009 he was diagnosed with Multiple myeloma after suffering back problems and died on June 14, 2014.
Matt Taylor (canoeist)
Matthew McLeod" Matt" Taylor( born 23 April 1970 in Atlanta) is an American slalom canoeist who competed from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s.
Competing in two Summer Olympics, he earned his best finish of eighth in the C- 2 event in Athens in 2004.
During his career in C2 he was partnered by several different paddlers including Lecky Haller( 1997- 2000) and Joe Jacobi( 2002- 2004)
Farzad Bazoft
Farzad Bazoft( 22 May 1958 – 15 March 1990) was an Iranian- born journalist who settled in the United Kingdom in the mid-1970s.
He worked as a freelance reporter for" The Observer".
He was arrested by Iraqi authorities and executed in 1990 after being convicted of spying for Israel while working in Iraq.

Question: Were Farzad Bazoft and Lecky Haller of the same nationality?
Answer: no