Use this check list to assess your communication skills.

Focus

* Do you pay complete attention to others when they are speaking? (A wandering focus discourages open communication.)

* Do you manage your thoughts during a conversation, focusing them on understanding what the other person is saying? (Effective listening requires more concentration than any other form of communication. If you're thinking about anything other than what the person is saying, you're defeating your ability to understand.)  read more

Puberty brought bouts of acne. In your 20s, finding Mr. or Mrs. Right was of chief consequence. When the 30s hit, you worked to raise little Johnnie or Suzie to be a model kid. Now that your hitting the fabulous 40s, you should be coasting through life, right. Well, why are you suddenly dealing with the cosmetic double whammy of acne and wrinkles? Even your insurance company figures that you should have gotten rid of acne by the age of 25.

The number people over 30 needing acne treatments has climbed to the extent that a report published in Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology recommends raising the age for insurance coverage of the acne drug tretinoin to at least 40. The authors of the report, Drs. Steven Feldman and Alan Fleischer, add that many insurance companies refuse to pay for tretinoin prescriptions for patients older than 25.  read more

Inching close to a breakthrough in the probe into twin blasts in Hyderabad, security agencies and police have identified at least two men who is said to have planted the bombs.

Raids were conducted in various parts of the city to nab the duo who could have planted the bombs that were believed to have been assembled by Mohammad Sharifuddin, a Bangladeshi national, official sources in Delhi said.  read more