Manage Stress & Better Y??r Health Depression, negative emotions ?n? stress take a toll ?n ???r mental wellbeing b?t ???? h??? a significant detrimental effect ?n ???r overall physical health. Here ?r? four ways ??? ??n better manage ???r emotions ?n? improve ???r health. Emotions play a role ?n health
According t? Dr Lauri Grossman DC CCH, RSHom(NA), a N?w York based physician, although heart disease ?? quite common ?n today?s world, ?t w?? a medical rarity before th? 1900?s. S?n?? th?t early period ?f ??r country?s history, ?t h?? become increasingly apparent th?t emotional well-being plays a major role ?n th? health ?f th? heart.
?If women w?r? empowered t? better deal w?th stress, th? incidence ?f heart disease w???? drop significantly,? ???? Dr Grossman, wh? specializes ?n integrative medicine. Emotional duress h?rt? th? heart
Wh?n a person ?? struggling w?th depression, grief, ?n? loss, heart disease increases f?r two primary reasons, according Dr Grossman.
First, depressed people ?ft?n ?t?? caring f?r themselves ?n? exhibit unhealthy behaviors, such ?? poor eating, lack ?f exercise, ?n? n?t getting adequate sleep. Over time, th?? lack ?f self-care b???n? t? take a physical toll.
Second, wh?n a woman ?? dealing w?th various negative emotions, arteriosclerosis, ?r thickening ?f th? inside walls ?f th? coronary arteries, ??n occur. It ?? th? thickening ?f th??? walls th?t eventually ??n ???w down ?r block th? flow ?f blood t? th? heart ?n? brain th?t ??n th?n lead t? a heart attack ?r stroke.
Learn h?w ?n??r ?? hurting ???r health Managing stress ?n? emotions ?? key t? health
More ?n? more research indicates th?t managing stress ??n improve health ?n? reduce a person?s risk ?f chronic illnesses, such ?? heart disease.
Even th? m??t skeptical individual w??? feel more ?t ease ?ft?r trying a program ?f yoga ?n? daily meditation. According t? Dr Grossman, th? simple exercise ?f purposefully slowing down ?n? disciplining one?s mind ?n? body ???? wonders. Meditating itself brings a calming sense ?f clarity ?n? focus th?t spills over ?nt? th? rest ?f th? day?s activities.
2. Talk ?b??t ?t
Wh?n a woman joins a support group ?n? ??n express h?r h?n??t cares ?n? concerns ?n a safe environment, h?r stress levels drop. Th?? factor alone ??n reduce th? risk ?f heart attack ?r prevent a second one fr?m happening. Emotional camaraderie counts ?? one ?f th? strongest ?medicines? around ?n? ?t?s ???? cost effective!
3. Lend a helping hand
Many women find th?t b? helping others less fortunate th?n themselves, th?? ?r? better ?b?? t? ??t ?? ?f th??r loss ?n? lessen those ??? t?? intense emotions. Keep ?t simple. H??? prepare meals ?n a soup kitchen, volunteer ?n a hospital ?r school. Offer ???r talents (?r ???t a listening ear) t? th? seniors ?t a community center. If ??? ??n cook, act, sing ?r garden, th?n someone out th?r? ??n benefit. Search f?r th? ????? wh?r? ???r skills ?n? another?s need connect.
4. Homeopathic remedies f?r grief
Homeopathic medicines ?r? ???-natural remedies th?t ??n provide tremendous emotional relief ?n? support f?r th? grief ?n? sorrow stricken individual. Dr Grossman ????, ?M??t women wh? suffer fr?m intense feelings ?f sadness w??? discover th??r symptoms ?ft?n lessening significantly within days, ?n? sometimes even hours, ?ft?r treatment.?
See a professional homeopath f?r directions ?n incorporating th??? medicines ?? ??rt ?f ???r self-care:
Ignatia eases th? sadness th?t comes ?n immediately ?ft?r a loss, especially wh?n ?t ?? accompanied b? uncontrollable ?r??n? ?r mood swings. Aurum metallicum ?? helpful f?r th? woman wh? feels ??k? things ?r? hopeless. Sh? frequently pushes herself beyond wh?t ?? reasonable ?n? becomes overly serious ?n h?r thinking. Natrum muriaticum ?? recommended wh?n a person w?nt? t? withdraw ?ft?r a loss ?n? holds h?r emotions ?n instead ?f letting th?m out.
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Consumer confidence rebounded in April as Americans felt better about the outlook for the economy and their income prospects, according to a private sector report released on Tuesday.
The Conference Board, an industry group, said its index of consumer attitudes rose to 68.1 from an upwardly revised 61.9 in March. Economists had expected a reading of 60.8, according to a Reuters poll.
March was originally reported as 59.7. The expectations index gained to 73.3 from 63.7, while the present situation index improved to 60.4 from 59.2.
Even so, consumers remain vulnerable to concerns over the recent payroll tax hike and the $85 billion in automatic government spending cuts known as the sequester that was triggered last month, the report said.
"While expectations appear to have bounced back, it is too soon to tell if confidence is actually on the mend," Lynn Franco, director of economic indicators at The Conference Board, said in a statement.
Consumers' labor market assessment was mixed. The "jobs hard to get" index rose to 37.1 percent from 35.4 percent the month before, while the "jobs plentiful" index also gained to 9.8 percent from 9.5 percent.
Consumers felt better about price increases with expectations for inflation in the coming 12 months falling to 5.5 percent from 5.8 percent.
(Reporting by Leah Schnurr; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)
A former "teacher of the year" won't serve any prison time after admitting she had a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old student.
A state Superior Court judge in Newark, New Jersey, sentenced 33-year-old Erica DePalo to lifetime parole supervision.
She also will have to forfeit her teaching certificate and register as a sex offender.
A tearful DePalo made a brief statement in court Monday expressing regret for her actions, and saying she was trying to rebuild her life.
She pleaded guilty in February to child endangerment.
Read more from NBCNewYork.com
Prosecutors said the Montclair resident had a brief sexual relationship with a student in her honors English class at West Orange High School.
She initially was charged with aggravated sexual assault, sexual assault and child endangerment and could have faced up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
Her attorney, Anthony Alfano, said DePalo suffers from bipolar disorder and was on bad medication that can cause errors in judgment.
Related:
Erica DePalo, former 'Teacher of the Year,' accused of having sex with 15-year-old student
Personalized leadership key for keeping globally distributed teams on taskPublic release date: 29-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phil Ciciora pciciora@illinois.edu 217-333-2177 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. For companies with employees around the globe, the challenges of distance, diversity and technology may threaten team cohesiveness among their long-distance workers. But according to a new study by a University of Illinois business professor, out of sight doesn't necessarily have to mean out of mind for virtual teams.
Ravi S. Gajendran, a professor of business administration at Illinois, says leaders of globally distributed teams can mitigate the isolation of virtual employees by taking a relationship-based approach in the form of a "leader-member exchange" in tandem with frequent communication on a predictable schedule.
In contrast to the traditional top-down, "one-to-many" leadership approach that treats all employees similarly (and often interchangeably), leader-member exchange involves cultivating a personalized relationship characterized by trust, loyalty, developmental feedback and support between team leader and member, Gajendran says.
"Leadership of virtual teams is tough, for very obvious reasons," he said. "You don't have that type of face-to-face interaction as you do with your real-life team members, so you don't know how things are going, nor can you monitor a team member's performance all that easily."
The study, co-written by Aparna Joshi, a professor of management and organization at Pennsylvania State University, says a top-down style of leadership approach doesn't work well in a virtual context.
"The traditional model of leadership is, 'I'm the leader, you're my team members, and I'm going to articulate my vision for how things should be,' " Gajendran said. "What we find is that a personalized leadership strategy characterized by the leader-member exchange has even stronger effects when the workers are globally distributed."
Since spatial distance can translate into psychological distance, high-quality leader-member exchange relationships are effective in creating inclusivity and involvement among team members, so long as they are accompanied by frequent communication.
"The conundrum is, you're bringing together these talented people from around the globe because you hope that something innovative is going to come from their work," Gajendran said. "You explicitly design a team to get the best experts from different parts of the world. But at the same time, you've structured the team in a distributed manner so that it's easy for team members to feel isolated and that they can't give their input. So there's this tension that has to be resolved, which is why leaders have to work hard at re-creating the team in people's minds."
For leaders, ordinary workaday world tasks such as figuring out if someone is energized on a given day is impossible simply because they don't see virtual workers at the office, Gajendran says.
"As a leader, then, you don't know whether you need to motivate them or give them their space," he said. "And team members also are missing out on the social aspects of work: team space, team dinners and team drinks things like that."
To bridge that gap, a personal touch is required, Gajendran says.
"Even though there is no physical team, leaders need more one-on-one interaction with their virtual team members," he said. "In other words, leadership needs to be uniquely tailored to the team members rather than dictated from on high. It's about building a relationship with each member, and that requires slightly more effort than in it would in a normal workplace setting."
The other finding of the study is the need for constant, predictable contact to ensure that team members understand that their input matters, Gajendran says.
"Personalized leadership seems to matter much more in distributed working environments," he said. "So instead of treating all of the team members the same, it's better for leaders to target and personalize the relationship with each individual. That's why leader-member exchange training should also emphasize the importance of regular and predictable leadermember communication to maximize the impact of member influence on team decisions."
In addition to building relationships and a regular, predictable communication schedule, a team leader also needs to be an advocate for the work of its members, which can easily go unnoticed.
"That's the big danger in these distributed teams the lack of visibility of the end-product, as well as the lack of visibility of the team member," Gajendran said. "In high-tech companies like Google and Facebook, a lot of the work being done is on a server. They're often working at different times, so that creates this distance that makes it difficult for people to appreciate their contribution or to motivate each other or feel part of this one cohesive unit."
Which is why it's incumbent on the leader to make sure that the team's work gets its due, Gajendran says.
"You don't want team members to feel as though they're just sending their work out into a vacuum," he said. "That's why leaders matter they have to make those invisible workers visible, and you can do that by creating that sense of involvement and inclusion."
The paper will appear in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
###
Editor's notes: To contact Ravi Gajendran, email ravisg@illinois.edu.
The paper, "Innovation in globally distributed teams: The role of LMX, communication frequency, and member influence on team decisions," is available online.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Personalized leadership key for keeping globally distributed teams on taskPublic release date: 29-Apr-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Phil Ciciora pciciora@illinois.edu 217-333-2177 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. For companies with employees around the globe, the challenges of distance, diversity and technology may threaten team cohesiveness among their long-distance workers. But according to a new study by a University of Illinois business professor, out of sight doesn't necessarily have to mean out of mind for virtual teams.
Ravi S. Gajendran, a professor of business administration at Illinois, says leaders of globally distributed teams can mitigate the isolation of virtual employees by taking a relationship-based approach in the form of a "leader-member exchange" in tandem with frequent communication on a predictable schedule.
In contrast to the traditional top-down, "one-to-many" leadership approach that treats all employees similarly (and often interchangeably), leader-member exchange involves cultivating a personalized relationship characterized by trust, loyalty, developmental feedback and support between team leader and member, Gajendran says.
"Leadership of virtual teams is tough, for very obvious reasons," he said. "You don't have that type of face-to-face interaction as you do with your real-life team members, so you don't know how things are going, nor can you monitor a team member's performance all that easily."
The study, co-written by Aparna Joshi, a professor of management and organization at Pennsylvania State University, says a top-down style of leadership approach doesn't work well in a virtual context.
"The traditional model of leadership is, 'I'm the leader, you're my team members, and I'm going to articulate my vision for how things should be,' " Gajendran said. "What we find is that a personalized leadership strategy characterized by the leader-member exchange has even stronger effects when the workers are globally distributed."
Since spatial distance can translate into psychological distance, high-quality leader-member exchange relationships are effective in creating inclusivity and involvement among team members, so long as they are accompanied by frequent communication.
"The conundrum is, you're bringing together these talented people from around the globe because you hope that something innovative is going to come from their work," Gajendran said. "You explicitly design a team to get the best experts from different parts of the world. But at the same time, you've structured the team in a distributed manner so that it's easy for team members to feel isolated and that they can't give their input. So there's this tension that has to be resolved, which is why leaders have to work hard at re-creating the team in people's minds."
For leaders, ordinary workaday world tasks such as figuring out if someone is energized on a given day is impossible simply because they don't see virtual workers at the office, Gajendran says.
"As a leader, then, you don't know whether you need to motivate them or give them their space," he said. "And team members also are missing out on the social aspects of work: team space, team dinners and team drinks things like that."
To bridge that gap, a personal touch is required, Gajendran says.
"Even though there is no physical team, leaders need more one-on-one interaction with their virtual team members," he said. "In other words, leadership needs to be uniquely tailored to the team members rather than dictated from on high. It's about building a relationship with each member, and that requires slightly more effort than in it would in a normal workplace setting."
The other finding of the study is the need for constant, predictable contact to ensure that team members understand that their input matters, Gajendran says.
"Personalized leadership seems to matter much more in distributed working environments," he said. "So instead of treating all of the team members the same, it's better for leaders to target and personalize the relationship with each individual. That's why leader-member exchange training should also emphasize the importance of regular and predictable leadermember communication to maximize the impact of member influence on team decisions."
In addition to building relationships and a regular, predictable communication schedule, a team leader also needs to be an advocate for the work of its members, which can easily go unnoticed.
"That's the big danger in these distributed teams the lack of visibility of the end-product, as well as the lack of visibility of the team member," Gajendran said. "In high-tech companies like Google and Facebook, a lot of the work being done is on a server. They're often working at different times, so that creates this distance that makes it difficult for people to appreciate their contribution or to motivate each other or feel part of this one cohesive unit."
Which is why it's incumbent on the leader to make sure that the team's work gets its due, Gajendran says.
"You don't want team members to feel as though they're just sending their work out into a vacuum," he said. "That's why leaders matter they have to make those invisible workers visible, and you can do that by creating that sense of involvement and inclusion."
The paper will appear in the Journal of Applied Psychology.
###
Editor's notes: To contact Ravi Gajendran, email ravisg@illinois.edu.
The paper, "Innovation in globally distributed teams: The role of LMX, communication frequency, and member influence on team decisions," is available online.
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
This Feb. 23, 1945 file photo shows U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raising the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi in Iwo Jima, Japan. Alan Wood, a World War II veteran who provided the flag in the famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima has died. Alan Wood was 90. Wood was in charge of communications on a landing ship on Iwo Jima's shores when a Marine asked him for the biggest flag that he could find. Wood handed him a flag he had found in Pearl Harbor.
By The Associated Press
A veteran of World War II credited with providing the flag in the famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima has died at his Los Angeles County home. Alan Wood died of natural causes April 18 at the age of 90, his son Steven Wood announced Saturday.
Wood was a 22-year-old Navy officer in charge of communications on a landing ship on Iwo Jima's shores on Feb. 23, 1945 when a Marine asked him for the biggest flag he could find.
After five days of intense fighting to capture the Japanese-held island, U.S. forces had managed to scale Mount Suribachi to hoist an American flag. Woods happened to have a 37-square-foot flag that he had found months before in a Pearl Harbor Navy depot.
Five Marines and a Navy Corpsman raised the flag in a stirring moment captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. Steven Wood said his father was always humbled by his small role in the historic moment.
In a 1945 letter to a Marine general who asked for details about the flag, Alan Wood wrote: "The fact that there were men among us who were able to face a situation like Iwo where human life is so cheap, is something to make humble those of us who were so very fortunate not to be called upon to ensure such hell."
In a story on Wood's death, the Los Angeles Times reported that over the years others have claimed that they provided the famous Iwo Jima flag, but retired Marine Col. Dave Severance, who commanded the company that took Mount Suribachi, said in an interview last week that it was Wood.
"I have a file of more than 60 people who claim to have have something to do with the flags," Severance said from his home in La Jolla, Calif.
After the war, Wood went on to work as a technical artist and spokesman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.
His wife, Elizabeth, died in 1985. Besides his son, Wood is survived by three grandchildren.
?
? 2013 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
REYKJAVIK, Iceland (AP) ? In a dramatic about-face, Icelandic voters have returned to power the center-right parties that led the national economy to collapse five years ago.
With all votes counted Sunday, the conservative Independence Party and rural-based Progressive Party ? who governed Iceland for decades before the 2008 crash ? each had 19 seats in Iceland's 63-seat parliament, the Althingi.
The parties, who are promising to ease Icelanders' economic pain with tax cuts and debt relief, took 51 percent of the vote between them, and are likely to form a coalition government.
Voters shunned the Social Democrat-led coalition that has spent four years trying to turn the country around with painful austerity measures. The Social Democrats took nine seats and their former coalition partners the Left-Greens seven.
The pro-Europe Bright Future party took six seats and online freedom advocates the Pirate Party three.
"We are very happy, we are very grateful for the support that we see in the numbers," said Independence Party leader Bjarni Benediktsson.
Either 43-year-old Beneditksson or Progressive Party chief Sigmundur David Gunnlaugsson, 38, is likely to be Iceland's next prime minister.
The shift to the right following Saturday's parliamentary election will almost certainly shelve Iceland's plans to join the European Union, with which it has begun accession talks. Both the Progressives and Independents oppose joining the 27-nation bloc.
The two parties governed Iceland for several decades, often in coalition, overseeing economic liberalization that spurred a banking and business boom ? until Iceland's economy crashed spectacularly during the 2008 credit crisis.
A volcano-dotted North Atlantic nation with a population of just 320,000, Iceland went from economic wunderkind to financial basket case almost overnight when its main commercial banks collapsed within a week of one another.
The value of the country's currency plummeted, while inflation and unemployment soared. Iceland was forced to seek bailouts from Europe and the International Monetary Fund.
Since then, Iceland has in many ways made a strong recovery. Unemployment has fallen and the economy is growing.
But inflation remains naggingly high, and many Icelanders still struggle to repay home and car loans they took out ? often in foreign currencies whose value soared after the crash ? in the years of easy credit.
Some blamed the outgoing government of Prime Minister Johanna Sigurdardottir for agreeing to internationally approved austerity measures and accused it of caving in to pressure to compensate Britain and the Netherlands for their citizens' lost deposits in the failed online bank Icesave. Icelanders have twice rejected Icesave repayment deals agreed to by Sigurdardottir's government.
Despite being widely blamed for the financial meltdown, the Independents and Progressives say they are now best placed to lead the economic recovery.
The Progressives have promised to write off some mortgage debt, taking money from foreign creditors. Benediktsson's Independence Party is offering lower taxes and the lifting of capital controls that he says are hindering foreign investment.
"I think people knew that hard times were ahead in 2009," Benediktsson said. "But they were hopeful, and they were introduced to a plan that would bring us quicker out of the crisis than has been the reality.
"So people are now looking forward and asking themselves ... what kind of a plan is the most likely one to bring more growth, more job creation, to close the budget deficit, and have Iceland grow into the future? These are the issues that I think these elections are all about."
______
Lawless reported from London. Associated Press writer David Mac Dougall in Reykjavik contributed to this report.
NEW YORK (AP) - These no-name Yankees are making a name for themselves.
Brennan Boesch and Lyle Overbay homered on knuckleballs from R.A. Dickey, and New York rallied past the Toronto Blue Jays 3-2 Sunday for a four-game sweep.
Despite missing injured All-Stars Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez, Mark Teixeira and Curtis Granderson, the Yankees are 14-5 following a 1-4 start.
"We felt like if we pitched well, we were going to get big contributions from somebody," said Phil Hughes, who pitched well but remained winless in five starts.
They just weren't sure which bodies following a run of injuries.
Boesch homered into the first row of the right-field seats in the second inning. After Toronto took a 2-1 lead on Adam Lind's RBI single in the fourth and Maicer Izturis' run-scoring double off the base of the right-field wall in the sixth, the Yankees overcame a deficit for the fourth straight day.
Overbay hit a two-run homer into the right field bullpen in the seventh inning that was caught on the fly by Yankees reliever David Robertson.
Boesch began the day 1 for 6 against Dickey and Overbay 1 for 14, with both hits singles.
Overbay has three home runs, one more than his total last season. He said then-teammate Matt Stairs changed his mindset on knuckleballers a few years ago.
"His approach was to just try to pull homers. Ever since I did that, I started hitting them a lot better," Overbay said. "You start trying to feel for it, and it ends up beating you. It's just a matter of taking a big, strong, aggressive hack."
New York's batting order included four players added just before or during spring training: Overbay at first base, Boesch in right field, Vernon Wells in left and Travis Hafner at designated hitter - a day after hitting a three-run homer and go-ahead triple. Other starters included Jayson Nix at third, Eduardo Nunez at shortstop and Chris Stewart behind the plate.
"It's a group that has something to prove in a sense, some guys that are older that had some down years or some injury plagued years. some younger guys that are trying to establish themselves," Yankees manager Joe Girardi said. "You didn't know how the new guys were going to respond, number one. We knew they had been very good players before. We've seen very good players come to New York and take time to adjust. We've seen guys that have injury plagued seasons that continue to have them and you can't shake that. We felt that we were going to have to win a lot of close games."
New York is 9-1 in games decided by two runs or fewer. When spring training began, the Yankees had realized many predicted them to finish at or near last in the AL East.
"It's hard to not notice that. It's talked about so much. First meeting of spring training we talked about that," Hughes said.
"Guys around here have kind of learned to deal with a lot of negative stuff that kinds of swirls around," he said.
Without a win in his first five starts for the first time since 2008, Hughes allowed two runs and seven hits in six innings with a season-high nine strikeouts and one walk. Toronto ran up his pitch count, fouling off 25 of 111 offerings.
Boone Logan (1-1) pitched a one-hit seventh, Robertson threw a 1-2-3 eighth and Mariano Rivera finished with a perfect ninth for his ninth save in nine chances, extending his career record to 617.
Dickey (2-4) pitched in New York for the first time since getting his 20th win for the Mets last September. Dealt to Toronto after going 20-3 and winning the NL Cy Young Award, Dickey already has lost more games this year than in all of 2012.
The 38-year-old allowed three runs and four hits in seven innings, with four strikeouts and a walk. He's been slowed by soreness in his neck and back.
"If I have to battle it for a while, I'll battle it for a while until it goes away," he said. "It gets marginally better between starts. It's just that when I have to start it breaks down again."
Last-place Toronto (9-17) gave up just four hits but was swept in a four-game series in which it led every game for the first time since Sept. 19-21, 1995, at old Yankee Stadium. The Blue Jays were 4 for 24 with runners in scoring position in the series and struck out 37 times, including 13 Sunday.
A favorite to win the division after bulking up its roster, Toronto is eight games under .500 in April for the first time since 2004, according to STATS.
"You want me to go out there and hit or something?" manager John Gibbons said. "I couldn't hit when I played."
NOTES: Yankees 3B-1B Kevin Youkilis was sidelined by a bad back for the sixth time in seven games and will have an MRI Monday. ... Blue Jays bench coach DeMarlo Hale was ejected for arguing in the seventh when New York's Eduardo Nunez was slow to walk to the plate after Overbay's homer. The Yankees said Nunez had something in an eye. ... Yankees CF Brett Gardner was left out of the starting lineup for the first time this season. He entered the game as a defensive replacement in the eighth.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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ATLANTA -- The Indiana Pacers looked so good in the first two games of the playoffs.
They couldn't have looked much worse Saturday night.
The Atlanta Hawks raced to a 24-point lead by halftime and blew out the cold-shooting Pacers 90-69 in Game 3, narrowing Indiana's lead in the series to 2-1. Al Horford had 26 points and 16 rebounds to lead the home team.
Suddenly, it's a series.
Game 4 is Monday night in Atlanta, where the Hawks have won 12 straight over the Pacers dating to 2006.
"It was just one of those nights," Pacers star Paul George said. "Everything we did was uncharacteristic."
The Pacers manhandled the Hawks in two double-digit wins at Indianapolis, but the roles switched after the series headed south.
"We wanted to show them we're here to play," Atlanta guard Jeff Teague said. "We were not going to back down to them."
This one was over by halftime, the Hawks racing to a 54-30 lead that set a franchise record for fewest points allowed in the first half of a playoff game, and matching Indiana's worst effort in a postseason opening half.
The Hawks changed up their lineup ? inserting 7-footer Johan Petro at center and bringing 3-point specialist Kyle Korver off the bench ? after getting bounced around on the road. With more favorable matchups and a lot more energy, Atlanta suddenly looked like a team that can challenge the Pacers.
"We were ready to go," coach Larry Drew said. "Before the game, I went in the locker room to give my speech and it was quiet in there. That told me they were focused."
David West led the Pacers with 18 points. George, who averaged 25 points in the first two games, was held to 16 on 4-of-11 shooting.
Indiana connected on a dismal 27 percent (22 of 81) from the field. Taking Smith and George out of the mix, they were 11 of 56.
"We're a very young team," coach Frank Vogel said. "There's going to be some growing pains. We're going to feel this, experience this, and get better from it."
Josh Smith added 14 points for the Hawks, and Teague had 13. But that's only part of the story. Smith was able to take George out of his comfort zone, while Teague put the clamps on George Hill, who had surprisingly averaged 20 points in the first two games. The Pacers guard was held to three on 1-of-8 shooting.
"They came out with a lot of energy, put us on our heels early, and the rest is history," Hill said. "We turned the ball over a lot and we weren't getting to the places that we want to get to on offensive end."
Drew started the little-used Petro at center in hopes of cutting into the Pacers' size advantage, a move that had a ripple effect on Horford and Smith, providing more favorable defensive matchups all along the front line. Horford was able to shift to power forward, while Smith moved over to small forward.
But, after getting manhandled in the first two games at Indianapolis, the Hawks' turnaround wasn't really propelled by a great strategic move.
Petro played only 14 minutes. Korver, who started the first two games, still got the bulk of the playing time with 29 minutes. Instead, this was more about the Hawks coming out with a lot more passion, the very things Drew had been preaching since the start of the series.
"We were ready," Smith said.
After falling behind 8-1 in the opening minutes and calling a quick timeout, Atlanta dominated the rest of the opening half with a display that had the crowd on its feet time and time again, while the Pacers stood around in a state of shock, looking nothing like the team that averaged 110 points and a 16-point margin of victory on its home court. They made four of their first six shots ? then missed 30 of their next 36 before halftime, many of them the forced, ugly efforts of a team that turned increasingly desperate as the Hawks seemed to get to every loose ball just a little quicker.
Roy Hibbert missed all four of his shots in the first half. The backcourt duo of Hill and Lance Stephenson each went 1 of 6. The Atlanta defense, which was largely nonexistent in the first two games, contested every shot this time. Not only did Petro bring a more physical presence, Ivan Johnson came off the bench to provide plenty of bruising, quality minutes ? not to mention some fierce staredowns when Indiana did manage a rare basket.
But nothing was more telling that when the 6-foot-10 Horford led a lumbering fast break in the second quarter, West sent him tumbling to the court with a hard foul, and Teague came to his teammate's defense. After a bit more shoving and jawing, the teams were separated. The officials reviewed the video and stuck with their original call ? a flagrant foul on West, a technical on Teague.
"I don't think it was a dirty play. It was a hard foul. It's playoff basketball," Horford said.
Still, he was impressed by Teague's reaction.
"I was very surprised," Horford said. "I was like, `Was that you?' I was happy. I was proud. He had my back out there."
For the most part, the game lived up to the nickname the Hawks' PR department has tried to push on the team for years. This was, indeed, the Highlight Factory ? most notably late in the first half, when Devin Harris took off on a fast break, glanced over his left shoulder and spotted Smith sprinting up from behind. Harris delivered a perfect behind-the-back pass, and Smith unleashed a thunderous left-handed slam that would've scored a perfect "10" in a dunk contest.
The Pacers, in fact, spent most of the night in a defensive fog. Stephenson fouled Harris on a desperation 3-pointer with the shot clock winding down, and the Atlanta player knocked down all three free throws. Then, after the Pacers made a couple of free throws with 6 seconds left in the half, Harris let the inbounds pass roll nearly to midcourt to save time, then scooped it up and took off for an uncontested layup that sent the Hawks to the locker room with their 24-point lead.
Notes: The Pacers' last win in Atlanta was a regular-season triumph Dec. 22, 2006. ... The Hawks missed six of their first 10 free throws, extending the troubles they had in the first two games. But they bounced back to make 14 of their last 18. ... Petro finished with six points and four rebounds.
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Follow Paul Newberry on Twitter at www.twitter.com/pnewberry1963
KHARTOUM (Reuters) - Rebels from Sudan's Darfur region launched a dawn attack on the city of Um Rawaba on Saturday, taking their fight closer to the capital Khartoum, witnesses said.
The attack marks the biggest push by a rebel alliance that is seeking to topple President Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Fighting had hitherto been limited mainly to remote regions of Darfur and South Kordofan and Blue Nile states, which border South Sudan.
The Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), which launched an unprecedented assault on Khartoum in 2008, said the rebel alliance stormed Um Rawaba in North Kordofan state, around 500 km (300 miles) south of the capital.
Sudan's army said late in the evening it had restored security in the state's second largest city. It accused insurgents of destroying a power plant, petrol stations and a telecommunications tower.
"The defeated rebels have withdrawn, and the army is continuing to expel elements of the rebels who have run away in different directions," army spokesman al-Sawarmi Khalid told state news agency SUNA.
JEM spokesman Gibril Adam said forces from the group had only withdrawn from the center of Um Rawaba to the outskirts after Sudanese warplanes had launched air strikes.
The rebels arrived at dawn with 20 trucks in Um Rawaba, an important market for a major Sudanese agricultural export product, gum arabic, residents said.
"People are in a state of panic," said one Um Rawaba resident, asking not to be named.
The rebels then opened fire into the air and looted a market and several commercial banks. JEM's spokesman denied any pillaging by rebels.
"The goal of this attack is to weaken the government to realize our strategic plan to topple the regime," JEM spokesman Adam said.
ROAD REOPENED
The government later said it had reopened the key road between Khartoum and the North Kordofan state capital El-Obeid, which had been blocked by fighting, state governor Mutassim Mirghani Zaki Uddi told the state-linked Sudanese Media Center.
On a separate front, the SPLM-North which is part of the rebel movement attacking Um Rawaba, said it had seized four villages east of Kadugli, capital of South Kordofan state. There was no immediate comment from the army on the statement.
Events outside Khartoum are difficult to verify in the vast African country. Um Rawaba is a two-hour drive from Kosti, Sudan's biggest Nile river port.
JEM forces drove across hundreds of miles of desert to attack the Khartoum suburb of Omdurman in May 2008 and were stopped just short of the presidential palace and army headquarters.
The group was one of two main rebel forces that took up arms against Sudan's government in 2003, demanding better representation for Darfur and accusing Khartoum of neglecting its development.
Khartoum mobilized militias to crush the uprising, unleashing a campaign that Washington and activists described as genocide. Sudan's government denies the charge and accuses the Western media of exaggerating the conflict.
In 2011, JEM teamed up with two other Darfuri groups and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-North) which took up arms in South Kordofan and Blue Nile states around the time of South Sudan's secession.
They formed the "Sudanese Revolutionary Front", which says it fights to topple Bashir to secure a fairer share of government in a country dominated by three Arab tribes.
Fighters of the SPLM-North sided with southern Sudan during decades of civil war that ended with a peace deal in 2005, which paved the way for South Sudan's formal breakaway in July 2011.
Sudan on Wednesday started peace talks with the SPLM-North after a thaw in relations with South Sudan.
(Writing by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Mike Collett-White)
VICTORVILLE, Calif. (AP) ? Authorities say the classic Chevrolet convertible featured in the film "Pulp Fiction" has been found nearly two decades after it was stolen.
The San Bernardino County Sun reports (http://bit.ly/15ZvJWK ) movie director Quentin Tarantino's 1964 Chevelle Malibu was recovered in the San Francisco Bay area earlier this week.
John Travolta's character drove the cherry red car in the movie.
Sheriff's Sgt. Albert Anolin said an investigation into an old Malibu in the desert city of Victorville on April 18 led detectives to another Malibu in the Oakland area. They then confirmed that vehicle belonged to Tarantino and was reported stolen in 1994.
Authorities say the car's current owner is not believed to be involved in its theft and is considered to be a victim of a fraud.
A message seeking Tarantino's comment was not immediately returned.
We've just spotted a familiar friend at Intel's Innovation Future Showcase in London -- its Haswell-powered North Cape laptop / tablet hybrid. As a quick reminder, alongside that fourth-generation Intel Core processor there's a 13-inch 1080p display that detaches from the keyboard, and now we've been given a few important updates on the reference device, battery performance on Haswell and how Intel's reference design will transfer between tablet and Ultrabook mode. All that and more after the break.
Amazon's Q1 for 2013 was a bit of a mixed bag. The company saw net income drop 37 percent year-over-year to $82 million, though its net sales were up 22 percent to $16.1 billion. The sequential drop in profits was small (from $97 million) considering Q4's holiday inflation. Product sales accounted for the vast majority of that income, with its various branded services only pulling in $2.8 billion. The United States is still the company's biggest market, with $9.4 billion of that sales revenue coming from here. The rest of the globe only accounted for $6.7 billion, though media was particularly strong in those markets. Media sales were $2.55 billion over seas and just $2.51 billion in the US. Looking over the numbers, its clear that Amazon has a steady stream of reliable income that is continuing to grow. In fact, the company expects another quarter of double-digit growth year-over-year for Q2. But, as we've learned, there are also huge expenses involved. And guidance for next quarter tops out at $10 million in net income -- and a potential loss of up to $340 million (though such a steep fall seems unlikely). Unfortunately, there are no specific numbers for its various kindle products buried in the report (which you'll find after the break), but hopefully the 5PM ET call will offer a comprehensive breakdown. Updates from which you'll find after the break.
Open Your Mind to the New Psychedelic Science In recent years, a small cadre of scientists has cautiously rekindled the scientific study of psychedelics. At a recent conference, they reported new findings on how these drugs scramble brain activity in ways that might help explain their mind-bending effects. ...
Samsung has a thing for releasing budget chasers soon after the main shot. There have already been strong hints of a GS4 Mini to capitalize on the flagship's buzz and now a purported leak over at hi-tech@mail.ru suggests another, even more cut-down model could be on its way, this time called the Galaxy Core. According to the Russian site -- which has some pedigree -- the Core has a 4.3-inch display with an 800 x 480 resolution, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, 768MB RAM, 8GB of internal storage (plus microSD), a 5MP rear camera, 1,800mAh battery and likely Android 4.1-flavored TouchWiz. In other words, it could be very similar to the Galaxy S II Plus or the slightly smaller Galaxy S III Mini or the slightly bigger China-destined Galaxy Win -- so similar, in fact, that it leaves us largely indifferent. The rumored price of 14,000 rubles ($430) also seems way overboard -- although Russian prices often do.
Astronomers have found a galaxy turning gas into stars with almost 100 percent efficiency, a rare phase of galaxy evolution that is the most extreme yet observed. The findings come from the IRAM Plateau de Bure interferometer in the French Alps, NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.
"Galaxies burn gas like a car engine burns fuel. Most galaxies have fairly inefficient engines, meaning they form stars from their stellar fuel tanks far below the maximum theoretical rate," said Jim Geach of McGill University, lead author of a new study appearing in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
"This galaxy is like a highly tuned sports car, converting gas to stars at the most efficient rate thought to be possible," he said.
The galaxy, called SDSSJ1506+54, jumped out at the researchers when they looked at it using data from WISE's all-sky infrared survey. Infrared light is pouring out of the galaxy, equivalent to more than a thousand billion times the energy of our sun.
"Because WISE scanned the entire sky, it detected rare galaxies like this one that stand out from the rest," said Ned Wright of UCLA, the WISE principal investigator.
Hubble's visible-light observations revealed that the galaxy is extremely compact, with most of its light emanating from a region just a few hundred light-years across.
"This galaxy is forming stars at a rate hundreds of times faster than our Milky Way galaxy, but the sharp vision of Hubble revealed that the majority of the galaxy's starlight is being emitted by a region just a few percent of the diameter of the Milky Way. This is star formation at its most extreme," said Geach.
The team then used the IRAM Plateau de Bure Interferometer to measure the amount of gas in the galaxy. The ground-based telescope detected millimeter-wave light coming from carbon monoxide, an indicator of the presence of hydrogen gas, which is fuel for stars. Combining the rate of star formation derived with WISE, and the gas mass measured by IRAM, the scientists get a measure of the star formation efficiency.
The results reveal that the star-forming efficiency of the galaxy is close to the theoretical maximum, called the Eddington limit. In regions of galaxies where new stars are forming, parts of gas clouds are collapsing due to gravity. When the gas is dense enough to squeeze atoms together and ignite nuclear fusion, a star is born. At the same time, winds and radiation from stars that have just formed can prevent the formation of new stars by exerting pressure on the surrounding gas, curtailing the collapse.
The Eddington limit is the point at which the force of gravity pulling gas together is balanced by the outward pressure from the stars. Above the Eddington limit, the gas clouds would be blown apart, halting star formation.
"We see some gas outflowing from this galaxy at millions of miles per hour, and this gas may have been blown away by the powerful radiation from the newly formed stars," said Ryan Hickox, an astrophysicist at Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H., and a co-author on the study.
Why is SDSSJ1506+54 so unusual? Astronomers say they're catching the galaxy in a short-lived phase of evolution, possibly triggered by the merging of two galaxies into one. The star-formation is so ferocious that in a few tens of millions of years, the blink of an eye in a galaxy's life, the gas will be used up, and the galaxy will mature into a massive elliptical galaxy.
The scientists also used data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the W.M. Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii and the MMT Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Arizona.
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McGill University: http://www.mcgill.ca
Thanks to McGill University for this article.
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Train plot suspect rejects Canadian law, cites "holy book"
TORONTO (Reuters) - One of two men accused in an alleged al Qaeda-backed plan to derail a passenger train in Canada appeared in court on Wednesday and disputed the authority of Canadian law to judge him, saying the criminal code was not a holy book. Chiheb Esseghaier, a Tunisian-born doctoral student, faces charges that include conspiracy to murder and working with a terrorist group.
Congress demands more FBI answers on Boston bomb suspect
WASHINGTON/CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - U.S. lawmakers demanded more answers on the Boston Marathon bombing on Wednesday, unsatisfied with the FBI reaction to warnings about one suspect and expressing doubt about the other suspect's claims that he and his dead brother acted alone. Some on Capitol Hill questioned whether the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other U.S. security agencies failed to share information about suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev in 2011, even after reforms enacted to prevent information-hoarding following the September 11 hijacked plane attacks 12 years ago.
Iraq on edge after raid fuels deadly Sunni unrest
BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - More than 30 people were killed in gun battles between Iraqi forces and militants on Wednesday, a day after a raid on a Sunni Muslim protest ignited the fiercest clashes since American troops left the country. The second day of fighting threatens to deepen sectarian rifts in Iraq where relations between Shi'ite and Sunni Muslims are still very tense just a few years after inter-communal slaughter pushed the country close to civil war.
In Myanmar, cheap SIM card draw may herald telecoms revolution
YANGON (Reuters) - Introduced a decade and a half ago under Myanmar's former military rulers, SIM cards sold for as much as $7,000 apiece. Today, they still cost more than $200. From Thursday, lucky winners of a lottery-style sale may get one for as little as $2. This is telecoms deregulation, Myanmar-style.
Baghdad car bomb kills eight people: police
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - At least eight people were killed and 23 more wounded when a car bomb exploded in eastern Baghdad, police and medical sources said on Wednesday. No one claimed responsibility for the blast, but Iraq's al Qaeda wing and other Sunni Islamist insurgents often hit the capital in their campaign to undermine the country's Shi'ite-led government.
Analysis: Iran's unlikely al Qaeda ties: fluid, murky and deteriorating
LONDON (Reuters) - When al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri spoke in an audio message broadcast to supporters earlier this month, he had harsh words for Iran. Its true face, he said, had been unmasked by its support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against fighters loyal to al Qaeda. Yet it is symptomatic of the peculiar relationship between Tehran and al Qaeda that in the same month Canadian police would accuse "al Qaeda elements in Iran" of backing a plot to derail a passenger train.
Egyptian judges accuse Mursi backers of attacking their independence
CAIRO (Reuters) - Egyptian judges accused President Mohamed Mursi's Muslim Brotherhood on Wednesday of trying to clamp down on judicial independence by conducting a campaign ostensibly aimed at rooting out corruption. A rift between Egypt's Islamist rulers and the judiciary is steadily widening amid a broader struggle over the future character of the country following the 2011 uprising that overthrew autocratic President Hosni Mubarak.
Syrian army seizes strategic town near capital
BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad seized a strategic town east of Damascus on Wednesday, breaking a critical weapons supply route for the rebels, activists and fighters said. Rebels have held several suburbs ringing the southern and eastern parts Damascus for months, but they have been struggling to maintain their positions against a ground offensive backed by fierce army shelling and air strikes in recent weeks.
BEIJING (Reuters) - A confrontation involving axes, knives, at least one gun and ending with the burning down of a house left 21 people dead in China's troubled far-west region of Xinjiang, a government spokeswoman said on Wednesday, calling it a "terrorist attack". It was the deadliest violence in the region since July 2009, when Xinjiang's capital, Urumqi, was rocked by clashes between majority Han Chinese and minority Uighurs that killed nearly 200 people.
Italy president names center-left's Letta as new premier
ROME (Reuters) - Italian President Giorgio Napolitano on Wednesday asked center-left politician Enrico Letta to form a new government, signaling the end of a damaging two-month stalemate since elections in the euro zone's third largest economy in February. Letta, from the Democratic Party (PD), said he would start talks to form a broad-based coalition on Thursday. It is likely to go to parliament for a vote of confidence by early next week.
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Should criminal pensioners be given lighter sentences just because they are old? A German police association wants to introduce a senior version of juvenile law for the elderly, but critics say it would be ageist.
A move to make sure older criminals can get off with lighter sentences has come up against criticism from politicians who believe it would be unfair, wrote the Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung on Tuesday.
The initiative by the Federation of German Criminal Police Officers (BDK) wants to ensure judges take elderly criminals' age and personal circumstances - such as growing age-related poverty - into account when handing out prison sentences or fines.
According to BDK figures, six percent of all criminals are currently over 60 and 70 percent of them are first-time offenders - many of them discovering the possibilities of online fraud.
Andr? Schulz, head of the BDK, told the Hamburger Morgenpost back in February that pensioners are driven to crime because they cannot pay their rent or buy their food. And, said Schulz, Germany's rapidly aging population will mean the proportion of criminals over the age of 60 will only rise in the coming years, wrote the paper.
But critics of the scheme - such as North Rhine-Westphalian Justice Minister Thomas Kutschaty - say giving pensioners breaks in the same way as juveniles is both superfluous and potentially ageist.
"The regional government does not see a need to introduce a separate criminal law for senior citizens," wrote Kutschaty on Monday in a reply to a parliamentary inquiry by the regional opposition Conservative (CDU) fraction.
Under existing law, wrote the minister, judges can already take into account personal circumstances - including age - as well as the effect of the punishment.
Also, he said, the demographic shift has not yet seen rocketing numbers of pick-pocketing pensioners.
Between 2007 and 2011, the number of convicted criminals over the age of 60 in North Rhine-Westphalia - Germany's most populous state - has only risen by 59 to 7,540, representing a rise of from four to 4.2 percent of all convicts, said Kutschaty.
Meanwhile, it was wrong to compare senior citizens to juveniles, he said. Young people could be let off lighter because they were not yet mature enough to see consequences of their actions - not something which could be said of pensioners.
TOURNEMIRE, France (Reuters) - A long slow retreat from nuclear power in France or indecision over policy could be very risky as skilled staff retire and young people reject careers with an uncertain future, the state-funded atomic safety research institute said.
If France does decide to pull out of atomic energy it should follow Germany's example and do it quickly, or face operating with inadequate personnel, said Jacques Repussard, who heads the Institute for Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety (IRSN).
"You can't spread the exit of nuclear over half a century. It's very dangerous," he said, adding that this consideration partly explained Germany's decision to opt for a fast exit to avoid a loss of skills.
France's state-owned utility EDF, which operates its 58 nuclear reactors, faces a wave of retirements and will have to replace half its nuclear staff by 2017-18.
While Socialist President Francois Hollande has undertaken to cut the country's reliance on atomic energy to 50 percent of electricity consumption by 2025, from 75 percent now, he has not made clear what would happen after that date.
"If, in the next 10 years, there is no clarity on what the future of nuclear energy will be, we will inevitably see a trend in our universities of young people saying: 'I don't want to do that line of work'," Repussard told Reuters in an interview at one of its research centers in the south of France.
As part of the reduction drive in France, the world's most nuclear-reliant country, the government has announced that Fessenheim in the east, its oldest nuclear plant, will shut by the end of 2016.
While the government has allowed EDF to pursue building its first next-generation nuclear reactor in Flamanville in northwestern France, it abandoned the previous government's project to build another reactor at Penly in Normandy.
Germany decided to shut all its nuclear reactors by 2022, in a policy reversal drafted in a rush after Japan's Fukushima disaster in March 2011.
CONSIDERABLE RISKS
"It was criticized and we asked ourselves how they would do it... But it's wise because doing it slowly means taking considerable risks with the last operating reactors, as finding skilled subcontractors and companies manufacturing certain parts (could become problematic)," Repussard said.
But he admitted that France, where nuclear reactors are on average 26 years old, would never consider a fast exit even though this would be the safest approach if it decided to stop building new reactors or conducting research.
Another issue for the government to consider, he said, was that generic defects would probably appear in several reactors at around the same time, leading them to stop working abruptly.
This echoed comments earlier this month by Pierre-Franck Chevet, the head of France's nuclear safety agency, who said the country needed to ensure there was enough available electricity generation capacity to cope with the sudden outage of 5 to 10 nuclear reactors.
"One day we will see wear and tear appear in the steel of core tanks... and when we see it in one, we will probably see it in all the reactors of the same generation in a short space of time," Repussard said.
Electrabel, the Belgian subsidiary of GDF Suez, has had to close two reactors in Belgium after finding possible cracks in the core tanks that house them.
"To be 80 percent reliant on nuclear energy exposes us to that kind of situation," he added.
(Writing by Muriel Boselli; Editing by Anthony Barker)
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Public release date: 29-Apr-2013
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