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LeBron James, Heat let Game 4 do the talking vs. Pacers
MIAMI — Lance Stephenson ran his mouth at the wrong guy (LeBron James), Chris Bosh didn't want a pity party and the Miami Heat let their play speak for itself.
The result? Miami rendered foul-plagued Stephenson ineffective, Bosh scored 17 of his 25 points in the first half and James scored a team-high 32 points.
The Heat led from start to finish, thumped the Pacers 102-90 in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals on Monday and sent them back to Indiana in major predicament.
"I'm motivated enough to try to get back the Finals," James said of Stephenson's trash talk. "That's motivating enough, and being one of the leaders of this team, I have to do my job. I have to do my part to help us win. That's what it's all about. … I got a smirk out of it."
BOX SCORE:Heat 102, Pacers 90
EAST FINALS:Schedule, analysis
Miami leads the Pacers 3-1 in the best-of-seven series, and just eight teams in 222 series have come back from a 3-1 deficit to win a series in a NBA history.
"Our guys believe in what we do," Pacers coach Frank Vogel said. "Our belief is strong that we'll go back and get Game 5 and come back and fight in Game 6."
Since Bosh and James joined Wade in Miami, the Heat regularly take care of business in closeout games, going 13-3.
"It's going to take a better game than we had tonight. It's that simple," James said. "You have to get better every game. Their back is against the wall, but we have to go in with that mindset that our back is against the wall, too.
"We're going to have to work for it. It's not going to be easy, not against this team. It's the No. 1 team in the Eastern Conference, and they're there for a reason. So we look forward to the challenge."
Too many turnovers, leaky defense, foul trouble again and all-around lack of understanding what's required to win in the conference finals doomed Indiana, and it might be too late to solve of its issues in the next six days.
Since the fourth quarter of Game 2, the Heat have dominated the Pacers with pressure defense and versatile offense. The Pacers trimmed a 94-71 deficit to 99-90 but James ended the Pacers' late-game hopes with a three-point play.
Game 5 is Wednesday (8:30 p.m. ET, ESPN). With one more victory, the Heat will become the first team since the Boston Celtics (1984-87) to reach the NBA Finals four consecutive times.
James performance came one day after Pacers guard Lance Stephenson said James' trash-talking at him is a "sign of weakness."
"He's the best player in the world," Vogel said. "You know he's going to get going. You just have to make it difficult on him."
GALLERY: Top shots from the East finals
George said Stephenson was "barking up the wrong tree." You think? It wasn't the first time James made the Pacers pay after a public slight from Stephenson.
In the 2012 conference semifinals between the Heat and Pacers, Stephenson made the choke sign with his hands across his throat after James missed free throws in Indiana's Game 3 victory. In Game 4, James had 40 points, 18 rebounds and nine assists in Miami's victory.
James didn't retaliate with the same vengeance, but the outcome was the same.
"I have no regrets," Stephenson said after the game. "I tried to get into his head. I guess he stepped up and got the win. I can take the heat. I can take the fire."
Bosh, who hadn't scored more than nine points in any of the first three games, had 10 points in the first quarter. After Game 3, some Heat teammates had dinner with Bosh.
Did that lift his spirits? "I didn't know I had down spirits," Bosh said late Monday morning. "There's no reason to try and lift my spirits. It's just dinner."
But he came out shooting and opened the game on a personal 8-0 run.
"The one cool thing about it was his teammates were really aggressive to try to get him going," Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of Bosh. "That's nice to see when your brothers are wanting you to be aggressive and look for opportunities."
Bosh said, "Sometimes, it's all about simplifying things and getting back to the basics. … I felt I could give more to the team. … I wanted to be aggressive and I wanted to play good basketball."
Stephenson had nine points, and Pacers center Roy Hibbert went scoreless in 22 minutes.
The Heat played Game 4 without forward-center Chris Anderson, whose left thigh was bruised in the previous game.
"Those injuries are tricky," Spoelstra said. "He wanted to fight through, but his range of motion in his thigh isn't great right now."
Spoelstra also changed his starting lineup again, inserting forward Rashard Lewis in place of forward Udonis Haslem, who started Games 2 and 3 in place of Shane Battier. It was a reward for Lewis, who played strong defense against Pacers forward David West in Game 3.
Lewis repeated his low-stat, high-impact performance from Game 3, finishing with zero points and three rebounds to go along with the Heat's plus-14 edge with him on the court.
"Again, I loved his stat line. Really, I just — I get a kick out of it. I think it's great," Spoelstra said. "It's just there's so many different ways to impact the game to win, and he understands that."
Miami bemoaned its slow starts, especially in Game 2 when the fell behind 17-4, and made it a focal point.
James said before the game he had an idea of how he wanted to start the game, and it included a combination of him and Bosh leading the offense. They combined for 18 points as the Heat took a 23-13 lead, the first time it was led by double-digits in the first quarter of the series.
The Pacers' offense was fine in the first half. They shot 51.4% from field but turnovers, foul trouble and bad defense allowed Miami to take a 49-44 halftime lead. Forwards David West and George kept the Pacers close with 12 and 11 points.
Stephenson, who said trash-talking helps his game, had zero points and three fouls in the first half. He played just 9 minutes, 16 seconds in the first half, sitting the final 11:16 of the second quarter after picking up his third foul. Hibbert also had no points and three fouls in the first half.
"I wasn't disappointed in the fight," Vogel said. "I was disappointed in the result."
GALLERY: Ranking every player in the East finals


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Russian authorities have reportedly sent a 20,000-strong team to the Ural Mountains to help with the rescue and clean-up operation after a meteor exploded.
The 10-tonne meteor caused panic in the Chelyabinsk region in southern Russia on Friday when it streaked through the atmosphere and created a sonic boom.
More than 1000 people were injured, mostly by shattered glass.
According to Russia's academy of sciences, the meteor broke apart 30-50km above the Earth's surface, releasing several kilotonnes of energy - the same as a small atomic weapon.
The meteorite is believed to have landed in a lake near Chebarkul, a town in the Chelyabinsk region.
Russian president Vladimir Putin thanked God that no large fragments had fallen in populated areas, while Russia's emergencies ministry urged calm, saying radiation levels were normal.
Dramatic amateur video showed the meteor streaking across the sky on Friday morning. It caused a bright flash of light and left a white trail of smoke.
Tim O'Brien, associate director of the University of Manchester's Jodrell Bank Observatory, said: "It made a sonic boom in the atmosphere, and that hit buildings and shattered windows. That is what seems to have caused the injuries.
"It's a completely abnormal experience. This thing appeared in the distance, raced over the horizon and was followed up 30 seconds or a minute later by a huge boom as the shockwave hit the ground. I can imagine that would be very frightening."
Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, said: "There was panic. People had no idea what was happening. Everyone was going around to people's houses to check if they were okay.
"We saw a big burst of light, then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud thundering sound."

subset: commoncrawl


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Local company tracks music downloaded from Internet
By PHIL KLOER
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
As the music industry continues its war against Internet file-sharing, and tens of millions of downloaders continue to ignore the record labels' efforts, a group of Atlantans stand on the sidelines and keep track of what's at stake.
In a nondescript cubicle farm in a suite at Colony Square, a company called BigChampagne is monitoring what file-sharers on systems like Kazaa and Morpheus are looking for. The data races across computer screens faster than the human brain can process it -- Dave Matthews, Jennifer Lopez, Moby, Pink, Infectious Grooves, Tony Bennett, Eminem, Elton John, the Dixie Chicks. They want it now, and they want it free.
"Sometimes it's kind of overwhelming -- we're seeing 25 million searches a day," says Adam Toll, chief operations officer for BigChampagne.
What Nielsen is to TV ratings, BigChampagne is to the increasingly important measurement of what people are downloading on the Internet. And if you use Kazaa, Morpheus, Limewire or one of the major file-sharing programs, BigChampagne is watching you.
"This is where the action is," says Craig Marks, editor of Blender music magazine, about the importance of tracking music downloading.
After CD sales fell almost 11 percent in 2002, Hillary Rosen, chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America, blamed Internet file-sharing for much of the decline. Citing RIAA surveys, she told an industry conference recently, "Our younger buyers are telling us they are buying significantly less albums because they're finding what they want on the Internet."
No one knows exactly how many people download music or how much, but there are about 20 million people doing it every month. Forrester Research estimates 40 percent of adult Americans have downloaded music from the Internet.
But even as the labels and many musicians, from Jay Z to Madonna, condemn downloading, some of them pay BigChampagne to tell them what's going on in the hard-to-pin-down netherworld of file-sharing. The 2 1/2-year-old company, with 16 employees between Atlanta and Los Angeles, was named from a lyric in a Peter Tosh reggae song, "Downpresser Man." (NielsenNet, a sister company of the TV ratings tracker, gathers some of the same information as BigChampagne, but it's tracking Internet usage, not just file-sharing.)
"We work with all the major labels in the music business," says Eric Garland, CEO of BigChampagne, who's based in Los Angeles. "We work a lot with radio, and dozens of individual artists and their management."
The labels won't admit they use BigChampagne the way TV networks use Nielsen ratings because it might be seen as condoning file-sharing -- and BigChampagne won't name its clients or say how many they have because confidentiality is part of the deal. But "some of the labels [use BigChampagne to] let us know when one of the artists we are playing has heavy file-swapping in Atlanta," says Leslie Fram, director of programming for local stations 99X and Q100. A spokesman for a major music conglomerate confirms some labels use BigChampagne extensively but would not speak on the record.
"[The labels] can't publicly admit it," says Blender editor Marks, "but this is better information than they can get from SoundScan," the service that registers official, in-store CD sales.
Using special software and massive servers and bandwidth, BigChampagne tracks two aspects of file-sharing: users' searches and their individual "folders" of the music they have to share on their computer hard drives. "There is no way to catalog everything," says Garland. "What you want is statistically representative. You don't have to open the door of every last dorm room."
By monitoring searches, BigChampagne can tell the labels whether consumers are looking for a particular song or a particular artist. Users sometimes search for a particular musician -- Garland mentions Eminem and Josh Groban -- because they want to download everything from them.
In general, however, people search for specific songs. "A song can be quite popular online and people download it but nobody goes to buy it," says Garland. "They don't know who does it, or they think somebody else does it." That, of course, is a record label's worst nightmare.
As the millions of searches pour through BigChampagne's computers, it's obvious that movie and TV studios are joining the record industry in a joint nightmare. Users are swapping massive video files of "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets" and "Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," two films still playing in theaters.
"People love to trade 'The Sopranos' and 'The Simpsons'. 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' is huge," says Toll.
"The number of titles people are sharing has gone up," he adds. "I'm seeing more and more feature-length films" being shared.
And while file-sharing movies and TV series has the studios concerned, it's another potential revenue source for BigChampagne. Currently its clients are mostly in the music industry, Toll says, but the company is talking to the studios about what's going on online as well and plans to expand into reporting video file-sharing.
BigChampagne doesn't side with either the industry or the downloaders; it just tracks what's going on. Garland says he understands the labels' point of view: "Wait a minute! They smashed in the shop window and made off with our goods!"
But despite the industry efforts in court to shut down systems like Kazaa, "file-sharing is not going to go away," says Toll. "It's here to stay."
ON THE WEB: For more information: www.bigchampagne.com
The 10 most popular songs being downloaded using file-sharing (according to BigChampagne), as compared with the Billboard magazine Top 10 singles.


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Welcome to Eightplanets.org where you will find the top information and facts about the planets in our solar system.
All of the eight planets can be seen with a telescope or binoculars on a clear night.
There are eight planets in our solar system which orbit the sun, six dwarf planets, moons, asteroids, comets and lots more. A planet is classed as a planet if it orbits around the sun, has enough mass so that its nearly round shape, not a satellite like the moon and has cleared the area around its orbit, dwarf planets are the same but have not cleared the area around their orbit.
is a list of the planets with the dwarf planets shown in (*)
Starting with the nearest to the Sun they are Mercury, Venus,
Earth, Mars, (Geres), Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, (Pluto),
(Haumea), (Makemake), (Eris), (Sedna).
All of the eight planets can be seen with a telescope or binoculars on a clear night.
Hope you enjoy all the planet facts on Eightplanets.org you can visit Nineplanets.org for more in depth information.


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Presented by
|Darrian Owens caught just
four passes, but he proved to be extremely hard for defenders to
Wooster athletics file photo
Games of Oct. 26, 2013
QB Austin Damaschke, Jr., Concordia (Wis.)
Damaschke set the program record for passing yards (425) and total offensive yards (536) in a game. He rushed for a career-high 111 yards and four touchdowns, while completing 28 of 50 passes and throwing a touchdown. Damaschke's performance led CUW to a 45-28 home conference victory over Lakeland.
OL Bryan Auvil (T), Tommy DeVito (G),
Andrew Kincaid (C), Rob Municchi (G), Willie Britt (T),
Muhlenberg set a school record by running 97 plays and the line did not allow a sack against a Juniata defense that came in tied for ninth in Division III in sacks per game. The Mules controlled the clock for nearly 40 minutes (39:51), converted 14 of 23 third downs and had five drives of 10 plays or more.
RB Octavias McKoy, Sr., Western
McKoy set the NCAA all-divisions record with 455 yards rushing on 43 carries and scored five touchdowns, for the third time this season, as Western Connecticut State defeated Worcester State 55-35. McKoy scored on runs of 15, one, 41, 53 and 71 yards as the Colonials outscored the Lancers 27-7 in the fourth quarter.
RB Domonique Hayden, Jr., Thomas
Hayden tied the PAC's single-game rushing record in the Saints' 44-7 home victory over Grove City, finishing the day with 327 yards on 33 carries and four touchdowns. It was the second consecutive week the junior posted four rushing touchdowns. Hayden also established Thomas More's career rushing touchdown record with 49 and set Saints' single-game marks in rushing yards (327) and all-purpose yards (366).
WR Darrian Owens, Fr.,
Owens caught just four passes, but they went for 50, 51, 56 and 73 yards in a 43-21 win against Denison. Three of them went for touchdowns and he threw a touchdown pass as well in the win.
WR Adam Smith, So.,
Smith made seven catches for a career-high 226 yards and three touchdowns in Guilford's win over Randolph-Macon. He had touchdown catches of 86, 54 and 18 yards.
TE Casey Hippert, Jr., Worcester
While McKoy was running all over the field on the opposite site, Hippert was catching nine passes for 163 yards and a touchdown for the Lancers.
DE Rich Ellebie, Jr., Westminster
Ellebie posted a career-high nine tackles, including two and a half tackles for a loss and a sack, in Westminster's 7-6 win at Bethany. Ellebie, making his first career start, broke up Bethany's third-and-18 pass attempt at its own 20-yard line late in the fourth quarter before senior Dylan Heitmeier blocked the Bison punt and recovered the ball in the end zone for the go-ahead score.
DT Chase Kleopfer,
Jr., Wartburg
Kleopfer recorded six tackles for loss, the third-highest in a single game among all Division III players this season. He added four and a half sacks, forced a fumble and had 11 total tackles in Wartburg's 22-15 win vs. Dubuque.
DE Isaac Barber, Sr.,
Barber had eight tackles, seven of them solo, including four sacks as Greenville defeated Northwestern (Minn.) in a battle of contenders for the UMAC title.
LB Adnan Sakiri, Sr., Montclair
Sakiri posted a game-high 20 tackles, the most by an Montclair State player since 2007 and two short of the school mark set by College Football Hall of Famer Sam Mills against Southern Connecticut in 1979. Sakiri also forced two fumbles and added a tackle for loss in a 34-21 win at Morrisville State.
LB Chris Miller, Fr.,
Miller made a game-high 19 tackles, including 11 solo stops and a pair of forced fumbles, in a 34-16 loss to No. 13 Johns Hopkins. Both of his forced fumbles were recovered deep in Bullet territory, allowing Gettysburg to thwart a pair of Hopkins drives.
LB Baylor Mullins, Fr., Mary
Baylor's 23-yard interception return for a touchdown gave the momentum back to the Cru in the third quarter of a 63-7 win at Hardin-Simmons. He also had a team-high nine tackles (seven solo) as UMHB held HSU to season lows of 20 rushing yards, 180 yards of total offense and seven points.
LB John Preston, Jr., Lake
Preston recorded two interceptions as the Forester defense carried their program to a 17-10 victory at Cornell. Preston's first pick led to a Forester field goal, and his second stopped a fourth-quarter drive by the Rams on their 7 yard line. He also had four tackles, three solo.
CB Ed Dobernig, Sr., Lake
Dobernig's fumble return for a TD gave the Foresters their margin of victory in a 17-10 win vs. Cornell. He also had an interception, three pass breakups, and six tackles, five solo.
S Matt Mehlhorn, So.,
A 100-yard interception returned for a touchdown, a blocked field goal, and nine tackles (seven solo) highlighted Mehlhorn's day. With the Gusties threatening to score at the BU 4-yard line, Mehlhorn intercepted Mitch Hendricks and ran it back 100 yards for a Bethel touchdown. Mehlhorn then helped the Royals stop the Golden Gusties for the third time inside the 10-yard line when Mehlhorn blocked a Gustavus field goal attempt.
S Matthew Benedict, Jr.,
With 19 tackles, 10 solo, Benedict helped end Trinity (Conn.)'s 14-game winning streak by helping limit the NESCAC's leading rusher to 28 yards on 13 carries. Benedict added a pass breakup and a tackle for loss in the win.
CB Weston Staubus, Sr.,
Staubus made two interceptions and broke up the final play in the end zone (on fourth and goal from the 10) to seal the win in a 31-23 victory vs. La Verne. His second interception and 34-yard return to the La Verne 20 came with the Sagehens leading 21-20 and set up a pivotal touchdown to stretch the lead to eight.
Special teams
K Max Rottenecker, So.,
Rottenecker and teammate Garrett Nicholson each made two field goals in Ithaca's 25-22 win over St. John Fisher, successfully converting all four Bomber field goal attempts in the game. They are the only teammates in Division III football to each have multiple field goals in the same game this season. Rottenecker connected from 35 yards in the first quarter and 41 yards in the fourth quarter.
P David Fiumara, So.,
Fiumara punted four times for an average of 53.0 yards per punt in Moravian's 52-42 win vs. Franklin and Marshall. Fiumara put two punts inside the 20-yard line, and his first punt of the game was a career and school record long of 67 yards that just rolled into the end zone for a touchback. He entered the game averaging just 34.0 yards per punt. He also hit a field goal and all seven of his PAT attempts.
ST Dylan Heitmeier, Sr.,
Westminster (Pa.)
Heitmeier blocked a punt off of the foot of Bethany's Steven Amic and recovered the ball in the end zone for a touchdown, helping the Titans secure a 7-6 road victory. Heitmeier's touchdown, his first as a Titan, came with just 44 seconds remaining and Bethany holding a 6-0 lead.
RET Chris Wimby, So., Mary
Wimby had a 71-yard punt return for a touchdown in the fourth quarter and he averaged 23.7 yards per return over six punt returns in the win at Hardin-Simmons.


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The Shutdown Winners Club
President Barack Obama solemnly stated at his Thursday news conference that the end of the government shutdown is not a time for partisan scorekeeping: "There are no winners here."
That is certainly the official line from his administration and across Washington, and it no doubt fits the general mood of disgust across the nation toward a dysfunctional capital culture.
Story Continued Below
But it is not exactly true.
Amid the broken glass and overturned tables from Washington's 16-day barroom brawl, there are lots of people who emerged — skip the word "winners" if it grates on the ear — with more influence within their parties and better prospects for new battles ahead than before the shutdown began.
( PHOTOS: Senators vote on budget deal)
The main shutdown survivors, as it happens, have famous names. They are the party leaders of both the House and Senate, and President Barack Obama himself.
The paradox may be easy to miss among the general climate of relief and recriminations in post-shutdown Washington.
The past three weeks are widely, and correctly, understood as a reflection of the weakness of Washington leaders, who in both parties hoped to avoid the confrontation that just ended but proved powerless to prevent it. At the same time, however, the episode clearly highlighted that these leaders got to their positions for a reason — through skill at partisan maneuver and acutely sensitive instincts for self-protection.
( Also on POLITICO: Anatomy of a shutdown)
House Speaker John Boehner — despite being mocked as a weakling by Democrats from Obama on down — has strengthened his position. Before the shutdown, he was intensely mistrusted as a deal-hungry accommodationist by his party's tea party caucus and other staunch conservatives, many of whom were credibly vowing to make this his last term as speaker. Conservatives now say they have gained new respect for Boehner, who stood with them on a strategy that he privately did not support even amid denunciations from Democrats and plummeting poll ratings. The issue now is whether he can use his new credibility with these conservatives to achieve his real objective — which is to try craft a long-term budget deal that can pass the House and cement his own legacy as an effective speaker.
( WATCH: Who won the shutdown? Top 5 quotes)
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi emerges stronger, too. Although she never became a key player in the negotiations to end the shutdown, she was able to keep her Democratic Caucus united in a way that stood in stark contrast to the GOP drama. She also advanced her larger strategy for regaining a Democratic majority — to count on Republican excesses, wildly unpopular in national polls, to draw the sharpest possible contrast with voters in next year's midterm elections.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is a more obvious winner. Democrats in Congress, and even more at the grass roots across the country, had been deeply fearful that Republicans would at the end of the day be rewarded with negotiated concessions for ending the shutdown and averting a default on the debt. Reid was the most effective voice arguing against any concessions from Obama, and keeping his own party — including some senators who might have been inclined to blink for the right offer — in line. With his taciturn personality, Reid may never be a beloved Washington figure, but he is now a more feared one.
( WATCH: Shutdown aftermath: John Harris, Todd Purdum assess damage)
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell emerges from the shutdown with his reputation as a phlegmatic but canny Washington operator enhanced. Like Boehner, he never liked the idea of closing the government in a bid to defund Obamacare. He largely hung back during the opening phase of the confrontation, to avoid being portrayed as a deserter for prematurely embracing the compromise he knew would eventually be required. But when the moment came, he was central to the deal that got cut, and he can portray himself in Washington and back in Kentucky as the adult in the room who can get important work done.


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Hard to believe, but it's true: U.S. Sugar, the granddaddy of Florida sugar companies, is selling all of its holdings to the government. It's a major development in the nation's largest and arguably most ambitious ecological restoration project, allowing reconnection of the Everglades to its historic headwaters in Lake Okeechobee.
Here's an early version of a story from Craig Pittman of the St. Petersburg Times, and here is a reasonably complete story by Carole Williams at the LA Times.
There's something of a Nixon-goes-to-China quality about the whole deal, with ultra-conservative-but-green Florida Gov. Charlie Crist being the lynchpin for the deal.
But, having covered Everglades restoration since before there was such a thing, I have to take issue with a statement made to Pittman by Stu Appelbaum of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, who has captained a lot of the effort (but wasn't party to the land deal between Crist and U.S. Sugar and in fact didn't learn of the negotiations until they were just about a done deal.) Appelbaum said such a land deal is "not something that was ever contemplated or suggested."
Beg pardon. Maybe Stu wasn't thinking that way, but plenty of enviros in the Everglades Coalition were, including Charles Lee of Florida Audubon and any number of folks in Marjory Stoneman Douglas's Friends of the Everglades. Here's one example (third item).
But I would not disagree with Appelbaum's overall assessment of the development:
The whole landscape has changed.
Update 6:53 p.m.: Charles Lee of Florida Audubon reminds me that, in the dim mists of antiquity before the widespread use of the WWW — 1993, to be exact — I wrote a story about something called the "Science Subgroup Report." In it, a government committee composed of scientists recommended basically what's happening here: replacing sugar cane fields with marsh to reconnect the Everglades to Lake Okeechobee.
I can't find a link to the 1993 report but here is something the same group did in '96.
National Public Radio, the New York Times and others followed me on that story. But the proposal went nowhere, because it unleashed unholy howls of protest in the Everglades Agricultural Area. I kept writing about the need for Everglades restoration, though, and the Corps of Engineers got cranking and the Congress and Florida Legislature got excited and the South Florida Water Management District put its shoulder to the wheel. The Washington Post kept up on the story after I left South Florida, and lots of others, too.
And now, what was unthinkable then is coming to pass.