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Monday, April 22, 2013

Boston nurses tell of bloody marathon aftermath

BOSTON (AP) ? The screams and cries of bloody marathon bombing victims still haunt the nurses who treated them one week ago. They did their jobs as they were trained to do, putting their own fears in a box during their 12-hour shifts so they could better comfort their patients.

Only now are these nurses beginning to come to grips with what they endured ? and are still enduring as they continue to care for survivors. They are angry, sad and tired. A few confess they would have trouble caring for the surviving suspect, 19-year-old Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, if he were at their hospital and they were assigned his room.

And they are thankful. They tick off the list of their hospital colleagues for praise: from the security officers who guarded the doors to the ER crews who mopped up trails of blood. The doctors and ? especially ? the other nurses.

Nurses from Massachusetts General Hospital, which treated 22 of the 187 victims the first day, candidly recounted their experiences in interviews with The Associated Press. Here are their memories:

THEY WERE SCREAMING

Megann Prevatt, ER nurse: "These patients were terrified. They were screaming. They were crying ... We had to fight back our own fears, hold their hands as we were wrapping their legs, hold their hands while we were putting IVs in and starting blood on them, just try to reassure them: 'We don't know what happened, but you're here. You're safe with us.' ... I didn't know if there were going to be more bombs exploding. I didn't know how many patients we'd be getting. All these thoughts are racing through your mind."

SHRAPNEL, NAILS

Adam Barrett, ICU nurse, shared the patient bedside with investigators searching for clues that might break the case. "It was kind of hard to hear somebody say, 'Don't wash that wound. You might wash evidence away.'" Barrett cleaned shrapnel and nails from the wounds of some victims, side by side with law enforcement investigators who wanted to examine wounds for blast patterns. The investigator's request took him aback at first. "I wasn't stopping to think, 'What could be in this wound that could give him a lead?'"

THEIR FACES, THEIR SMILES

Jean Acquadra, ICU nurse, keeps herself going by thinking of her patients' progress. "The strength is seeing their faces, their smiles, knowing they're getting better. They may have lost a limb, but they're ready to go on with their lives. They want to live. I don't know how they have the strength, but that's my reward: Knowing they're getting better."

She is angry and doesn't think she could take care of Tsarnaev, who is a patient at another hospital, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center: "I don't have any words for him."

THE NEED FOR JUSTICE

Christie Majocha, ICU nurse: "Even going home, I didn't get away from it," Majocha said. She is a resident of Watertown, the community paralyzed Friday by the search for the surviving suspect. She helped save the lives of maimed bombing victims on Monday. By week's end, she saw the terror come to her own neighborhood. The manhunt, she felt, was a search for justice, and was being carried out directly for the good of her patients.

"I knew these faces (of the victims). I knew what their families looked like. I saw their tears," she said. "I know those families who are so desperate to see this end."

On Friday night, she joined the throngs cheering the police officers and FBI agents, celebrating late into the night even though she had to return to the hospital at 7 a.m. the next day.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-04-22-Boston%20Marathon-Nurses/id-fd648f43c56d4451b5b1cb8b0f1a49f3

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GM's Opel returns to Shanghai auto show with limited ambitions

By Christiaan Hetzner

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - General Motors' troubled Opel division is returning to China's main auto show after a five-year absence, with three new cars at the center of a long-promised push into the world's largest market.

In Germany, where Opel employs around 20,000 workers, the move may please unions and politicians anxious to preserve jobs in an election year.

But analysts say it falls far short of earlier hopes for an overseas sales revival for the European brand.

Opel badly needs to expand beyond Europe, where it is losing money at an alarming rate - $1.8 billion last year - as it struggles to cover the fixed costs of factories operating far below capacity. The continent's auto market is at its smallest in nearly 20 years and still shrinking.

But an already unambitious China strategy is likely to be undermined by a tiny dealer body, painful import tariffs and fierce competition from other GM brands.

Opel's new CEO, Karl-Thomas Neumann, appeared to emphasize China's potential soon after taking office in March but the former head of Volkswagen in China has since been conspicuously quiet about his brand's goals in the market. GM has distanced itself even from a modest 30,000-vehicle sales target advanced by Neumann's predecessor last year.

"We do not provide details on volume targets," an Opel spokesman said.

GM's plans to develop Opel in China now amount to little more than "lip service" to the brand's potential, said Edmunds.com analyst Michelle Krebs.

"One of Opel's problems is that it isn't sold globally, so the brand is dependent on shrinking European demand," she said.

"But they're only dipping their toes in the Chinese market."

Neumann himself appears to have scaled back his China ambition.

"To become a big brand (in China) we would have to invest hundreds of millions of euros," he told Germany's Bild tabloid in a recent interview. "We have other priorities."

At the Shanghai auto show, Opel is debuting three cars set go on sale in China this year: its flagship Insignia ST wagon, Astra GTC coupe and Zafira Tourer minivan.

However, it faces competition even from its own models, with the Astra hatchback and sedan already made in China by GM as the Buick Excelle XT and GT, and the Insignia rebadged by GM's U.S. brand as the Regal.

POLITICAL BONUS POINTS

Import tariffs also add a formidable hurdle for all carmakers, increasing the sticker price of an Opel built in Europe by about 25 percent.

Opel sold through its 22 Chinese showrooms only 4,500 cars during all 2012 - half of the mostly locally-built cars GM sold on average each day in China during the first quarter.

Rival Volkswagen Group imported just 6.2 percent of its first-quarter Chinese car sales, or 48,000 vehicles, and manufactured the rest inside the country.

"This (return to the Chinese stage) won't do anything for profits, but it's a start at least, said Metzler Bank analyst Juergen Pieper, when asked about Opel's return to the Shanghai auto show.

"Chinese car buyers are known to favor German brands so there is a chance that it could take advantage of that to grow over the next year or so."

Company executives recently approved the first closure of a German car plant in decades, giving possible ammunition to the union-friendly Social Democrats in their bid to unseat popular Chancellor Angela Merkel in September's general elections.

Labor leaders and politicians are now publicly pressuring GM management to seek out export opportunities to compensate for the moribund European market.

China certainly has more potential than most of the other markets that Opel has entered in the past 24 months, such as Chile, Singapore, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.

"Opel remains a political issue in Germany so this is also a message directed at its audience back home, but in the end Buick clearly has priority in China for GM," Pieper said.

(Reporting By Christiaan Hetzner; Editing by Toby Chopra)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gms-opel-returns-shanghai-auto-show-limited-ambitions-173213682--finance.html

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Boston's Ortiz set to return from 8-month layoff

David Ortiz de los Medias Rojas de Boston, izquierda, y Alex Rodr?guez de los Yanquis de Nueva York conversan en el Yankee Stadium el mi?rcoles 3 de abril de 2013. (AP Foto/Kathy Willens)

BOSTON (AP) ? David Ortiz is set to make his return for the Boston Red Sox following an eight-month layoff.

Ortiz was in the batting order to hit cleanup and be the designated hitter in Saturday's game against the Kansas City Royals.

The 37-year-old was activated from the disabled list Friday. Ortiz injured his right Achilles tendon running the bases on July 17 and appeared just once in Boston's final 72 games, going 2 for 3 against the Royals on Aug. 24.

Ortiz was bothered by inflammation in both heels during spring training, and he went 4 for 18 (.222) with a home run during a six-game injury rehabilitation assignment with Triple-A Pawtucket from April 11-18.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/347875155d53465d95cec892aeb06419/Article_2013-04-20-BBA-Red-Sox-Ortiz/id-075654fdafe14f7e88e35c2f8e0b947f

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Sunday, April 21, 2013

It's Only Reasonable To Think That This Russian Volcano Looks Like Mordor

The Plosky Tolbachik volcano in Kamchatka, Russia is going kind of crazy this month. And Live Journal user Lusika33 has been following the eruptions from land and air. It's pretty amazing to think that these rivers of lava are flowing right now. It seems like shooting from the helicopter may have been kind of scary for Lusika33, but it can't be more intense than standing in the volcano. [EnglishRussia] More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/p0xJkcKDhJA/its-only-reasonable-to-think-that-this-russian-volcano-looks-like-mordor

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Rocker Jack White's Nashville store offer "do-it-yourself" records

By Tim Ghianni

NASHVILLE (Reuters) - Rock musician Jack White celebrated Record Store Day on Saturday by giving customers a chance to record their own voices on vinyl on a vintage machine at his record shop near downtown Nashville.

White, who has embraced vinyl over digital both as an artist and as the head of Third Man Records in Nashville, treated customers to a Voice-O-Graph, a record booth from 1947.

"We'll have the record booth open and available for people to come in, sing a song and get a copy of it on record," Third Man Records executive Ben Blackwell said in an interview on Wednesday.

"It's a refurbished 1947 Voice-O-Graph record booth," Blackwell said. "As far as we can tell, it will be the only functioning record booth open to the public in the world."

Record Store Day, which is marked internationally on the third Saturday of each April, aims to encourage people to visit independent record stores.

In addition to the recording booth in the store's "Novelties Lounge," Third Man Records will be staging in-house performances by some of the music label's artists.

Blackwell said record booths were popular in the 1940s and 1950s and could be found in public places, like train stations, along with photo booths.

"They were used as a way to record an audio postcard and send it to someone you love or to go in and sing a little song so you can hear what your voice sounds like," he said.

The Voice-O-Graph is about the size of a telephone booth and fans will pay a fee to produce their own record.

"Just think of it as a blank vinyl record and when you are singing, it is making the grooves into the record," Blackwell said.

White's Third Man Records has been known for experimenting with vinyl, having in the last few months added a record lathe that enables live acts performing in the Blue Room, the company concert venue, to be recorded directly to discs.

Blackwell said the contemporary music fan has "never been faced with the technology to put their voice and their thoughts on a record" and take it home.

"Jack has been looking for a long time for one of these machines," Blackwell said. "After years and years and years he finally crossed paths with one. It was a no-brainer to get it up and running for our Novelties Lounge."

Blackwell said the booth will remain after Record Store Day, and he expects it to be a popular attraction to the store, which sells exclusively Third Man recordings - albums by various artists as well as by White and his three group configurations: The White Stripes, Dead Weather and The Raconteurs.

(Reporting by Tim Ghianni; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Vicki Allen)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rocker-jack-whites-nashville-store-offer-yourself-records-144417718.html

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