Woman survives theater shooting, thanks to boyfriend?s father

Heidi Bergman Sodani, whose 22-year-old daughter Farrah was wounded in the Aurora shootings says her daughter is asking if "everyone else is ok?"

By Marcus Harun
NBC News

A 22-year-old victim of the mass shooting in Aurora, Colo., will soon be released from the hospital, a recovery credited to the quick thinking of her boyfriend?s father.?

Michael White Sr. had met his son?s girlfriend, Farrah Soudani, only one other time before they attended the midnight showing of ?The Dark Knight Rises,? accompanied by White Sr.?s own girlfriend and his daughter.

About 15 minutes into the movie, when a gunman began firing in the crowded theater, Soudani was hit. Her boyfriend, 33-year-old Michael White Jr., also was hit and unable to help her.

White Sr., a 20-year U.S. Air Force veteran, sprang into action.

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?The guy just kept shooting ? so then I heard a pause; I figured he was reloading, and I grabbed my daughter and my girlfriend and I grabbed them by the head and told them, ?Escape, go this way, get out, stay low, go out this way,?? said White Sr., 55.

?

But Soudani?s leg and abdomen were torn open by shrapnel. Her boyfriend, White Jr., had been shot in his torso and couldn?t move.

?I saw the gunman start shooting again so I took off my shirt and I put the shirt onto her, holding her guts in,? White Sr. said.

He tried to slow her severe bleeding while shots were still flying. He looked up and saw the gunman walk up the steps toward them and reload. White Sr. said that?s when he jumped onto Soudani, trying to block her from the next gunshots.

In two remarkable stories of survival, one woman saves the life of her best friend, and a father protects his son's girlfriend after she was badly wounded. NBC's Miguel Almaguer reports.

?If he was going to take out somebody, let him take out one person and I?ll save her,? White Sr. said. ?Then her and my son can still have a life together hopefully.?

But before the next gunshot was fired, suddenly, the lights came on and the alarm system sounded.

The gunman, standing two rows in front of White Sr., turned around at the sound of the alarm and ceased fire.

As most people were trying to escape, White Sr.?s girlfriend ran back into the the theater when she realized the whole family didn?t make it out. ?She said she held Soudani?s head in her lap and said, ?You can?t go to sleep. Don?t go to sleep. Look at me.?

They all survived.

Soudani had emergency surgery within hours, and her kidney and spleen were removed. Her stomach, left knee and diaphragm were all seriously injured, and she now faces up to three more surgeries, doctors said.

The human body only holds about nine units of blood, doctors told them, and Soudani had already been given at least 40 units.

White Jr. had surgery after a bullet cracked his rib, and he has now been discharged from the hospital.

?I?m in debt to him for the rest of my life??
Soudani has been in and out of consciousness but still maintains her sense of humor and also her caring nature,?Soudani?s mother, Heidi Bergman Soudani, told NBC News.

?I am so grateful I have my daughter; a lot of other people don?t have their kids or their loved ones because of what happened,? she said. ?She is a very strong person. She is feisty and she is not giving up.?

While lying in her hospital bed, Soudani has asked repeatedly if everyone else is OK, Bergman Soudani said.

Both of Farrah Soudani?s parents are very thankful for the White family?s heroic acts that saved their daughter?s life.

?I am in debt to him for the rest of my life,? said her father, Sam Soudani. ?I really can?t describe it in words. I came up and hugged him and I gave him a kiss.?

White Jr. and Soudani have been in a relationship only for a few months, and the shooting has brought them ? and their families ? even closer together.

?The first time I met her she was somebody that you couldn?t get upset with,? White Sr. said of Farrah Soudani. ?She was respectful to me when we first met. It?s just something I knew that if she went out with my son she would make him very happy and I know he would make her very happy.?

Despite all his efforts, White Sr. says he is not a hero, he?s ?just Mike.?

?My son was a hero because he was trying to get up and save her but he couldn?t move because he was shot, so he was trying to crawl over,? White said. ?There are other people that are heroes.?

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Source: http://dailynightly.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/24/12933836-woman-survives-theater-shooting-thanks-to-boyfriends-father?lite

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Bailed-out banks still struggling to repay government

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hundreds of bailed-out banks are still struggling to repay taxpayers and will soon find it even harder to make required dividend payments to the Treasury, according to a report on Wednesday by the watchdog for the government bailout program.

Of the 707 banks that received taxpayer money from the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program starting in 2008, also known as TARP, about half have repaid the Treasury.

However, 137 of those banks used a government-loan program to repay their taxpayer debts, according to the watchdog's quarterly report to Congress.

And of the 325 banks still propped up with taxpayer money, 203 have missed dividend or interest payments, with some missing as many as 13 payments since receiving capital injections at the height of the financial crisis, said the report.

Adding to their woes, the dividend that the bailed-out banks are required to pay to Treasury is set to increase to 9 percent from the current 5 percent as early as 2013.

"Those banks are not able to raise the capital that is required to get out of TARP," said Christy Romero, the special inspector general for the bailout program.

"We are very concerned about those banks, and want those banks to stand on their own feet without government assistance," she said.

Treasury has been trying to exit the bailout programs that have been criticized by Republican lawmakers for excessive government intervention. And Obama administration officials repeatedly stress that the bank bailouts, including the one used to directly inject capital into banks, have earned taxpayers more than $19 billion.

This week, the Treasury said it would sell preferred stock and debt in 12 of the bailed-out banks. In June, Treasury successfully raised some $200 million from the sale of preferred stock in seven bailed-out banks.

Treasury has been careful in saying that it will exit programs when the time is right and would not make decisions for political reasons.

"We're continuing to balance exiting our investments as soon as practicable and maximizing value for taxpayers," said Treasury spokesman Matt Anderson.

But Romero said it appears Treasury wants to exit their investments as soon as possible.

"If they want to do a swift government exit, (Treasury) has to ensure that financial stability continues otherwise the purpose of TARP is not met," Romero said, adding that she has not seen the analysis from Treasury that she thinks is necessary to make decisions on whether to exit a TARP bank.

According to the inspector general's report, taxpayers have now lost $5.5 billion on its investment in insurer American International Group. The government's remaining investment in the company is $30 billion, down from the initial $180 billion.

(Reporting By Rachelle Younglai; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bailed-banks-still-struggling-repay-government-040213307--finance.html

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Same adaptations evolve across different insects

ScienceDaily (July 24, 2012) ? The famous biologist Stephen J. Gould once asked: If we rerun the tape of life, would the outcome of evolution be the same? For years, scientists have questioned whether evolution is predictable, or whether chance events make such predictability unlikely.

A study published online July 23 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds that in the case of insects that developed resistance to a powerful plant toxin, the same adaptations have occurred independently, in separate species in different places and times.

The paper examines 18 insect species across four orders -- beetles, butterflies and moths, flies, and true bugs -- that all feed on plants containing powerful toxins called cardenolides.

Common to milkweeds and foxglove, cardenolides are lethal to nearly all insects and function effectively as a defense against pests. Cardenolides work by binding to a cell's sodium pump, one of the most fundamental systems found in all animal cells. The sodium pump works when an essential enzyme (Na,K-ATPase) carries important elements, sodium and potassium, across the cell membrane. Cardenolides bind to the enzyme and disable it, thereby shutting down cells, which results in severe damage.

Among the 18 insects surveyed, the researchers found a few methods that the insects use to resist cardenolides. In monarch butterflies and a species of leaf beetle, for example, resistance is due to a specific mutation -- called N122H -- of the Na,K-ATPase gene. The mutation reduces cardenolide binding to the sodium pump enzyme.

"Already knowing how monarchs deal with the toxin, we wanted to see if it was the same molecular solution used by beetles, flies and true bugs that are also resistant to cardenolides," said Anurag Agrawal, a Cornell professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and a co-author on the paper. Susanne Dobler, a professor of molecular evolution at Hamburg University, is the paper's lead author.

By examining molecular changes in the sodium pump gene, the researchers found the mutation N122H in all four orders of insects studied. Furthermore, they discovered a second mutation in the same gene that also conferred resistance in 11 of the 18 species.

"This is truly a remarkable level of evolutionary repeatability and suggests that evolving resistance to the plant toxin had very few effective options," said Agrawal.

The researchers tested the effectiveness of these gene changes by inserting the single Na,K-ATPase mutations into cell cultures and then dosing those cultures with cardenolides. They found the mutations gave the cells resistance, and when cells were given the two mutations that repeatedly evolved together, they had twice the resistance as cells with a single mutation, implying a synergistic effect.

The standard gene for the sodium pump is essentially the same in all insects, and even mammals carry the gene in a relatively unmodified form. The sodium pump thus originated from a common ancestor hundreds of millions of years ago and is central to the functioning of most animals. Out of that background, insects from different orders over the last 300 million years specialized on plants with cardenolides and evolved resistance independently, and in numerous cases, through exactly the same gene change.

"We can't rerun the tape of life, but we can look back over millions of years of evolutionary divergence and show that there has been tremendous repeatability, even at the molecular level," said Agrawal.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Cornell University. The original article was written by Krishna Ramanujan.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. S. Dobler, S. Dalla, V. Wagschal, A. A. Agrawal. Community-wide convergent evolution in insect adaptation to toxic cardenolides by substitutions in the Na,K-ATPase. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2012; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1202111109

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120724144534.htm

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New Category please for Home Brew Or Beer Making

Forum Newbie

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New Category please for Home Brew Or Beer Making

We have a category for Winemaking

Please could we have one or two for

Home & Garden/Food & Drink/Home Brew

Home & Garden/Food & Drink/Beer Making

Kind regards Dean.

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Forum Diehard

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Re: New Category please for Home Brew Or Beer Making

We have a category for Winemaking

Please could we have one or two for

Home & Garden/Food & Drink/Home Brew

Home & Garden/Food & Drink/Beer Making

Kind regards Dean.

A good principle for categories is that there is only one place you would look for something.
If there was both Home Brew and Beer Making then which one of the two would you look in for brewing beer?

Dr Bill sells on Ebid

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Source: http://tysonfrances.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/new-category-please-for-home-brew-or-beer-making.html

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Source: http://shakeable-soulfulness.blogspot.com/2012/07/new-category-please-for-home-brew-or.html

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Source: http://caraballoedwina.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/new-category-please-for-home-brew-or-beer-making.html

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Source: http://scheppenkassie96.typepad.com/blog/2012/07/new-category-please-for-home-brew-or-beer-making-typepad.html

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Source: http://antoinehoover6.blogspot.com/2012/07/new-category-please-for-home-brew-or.html

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4RichardStand: What do you guys think of @MittRomney spike in Twitter followers? http://t.co/aj78pfLu @beyondthebets @WagerMinds

Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.

Source: http://twitter.com/4RichardStand/statuses/227519938657656832

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Automotive chargers are for automobiles, not motorcycles

It happened yet again. A guy went to jump start his motorcycle with a car charger, and it must have had one of the auto boost modes, and poof, there goes all the lights and electronics in the bike. You would be amazed at the amount of damage that was in the radio I just finished working on. That's two this week.

You can use these chargers for their low current modes for quick charging if you monitor them and take them off in a short period of time, but that's it.

Here is what happens:

High current chargers are not voltage regulated. Regulating that much current is prohibitively expensive. Instead, what the designer does is roughly estimates about how much current the dead battery can absorb, then switches in a much higher voltage, sometimes as high as 25-30 volts. (no load voltage) The vehicle never actually sees that much voltage because the high current going to the battery saturates the circuitry and pulls the voltage down to a manageable level.

The problem with using a motorcycle battery for this is that a bike battery can't absorb current at a rate as high as a car battery. When that happens, the higher input voltage does not sag like the designer intended it to. The result is blown capacitors, corrosive electrolyte from the capacitors all over the place, rusting the electronics, and if you are unlucky, you blow out semiconductors everywhere.

Even inexpensive chargers have automatic boost modes now. Do not ever attempt to start a bike with one, or you could very easily end up with thousands of dollars in damage to your bike's electronics.

Just a friendly warning.

Source: http://gl1800riders.com/forums/showthread.php?325496-Automotive-chargers-are-for-automobiles-not-motorcycles

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Colorado movie theater massacre hits home for local family : News ...

Read?more: Local, Crime, Community, News, Local, Crime, Community, News, Colorado Movie Theater Massacre Hits Home for Local Family

CADILLAC -- The pain of the Colorado movie theater tragedy can be felt all across the country including Northern Michigan. One of the victims has family living in Cadillac.

Violet Strohm, the victim's Great Aunt says, "It was unbelievable, I mean how does that happen?"

18-year old AJ Boik is just one of 12 people who were shot and killed after a gunman barged into a Dark Knight Rises movie premiere. 71 people were shot Friday morning.

Boik was there with his girlfriend.

Kevin and Kathy Lytle, the victim's 2nd cousins say, "When the shooting started they got up right away to get out of the theater. AJ fell behind her and so she laid down on top of his body and waited. The shooting stopped for a little while and she tried to pull him out and couldn't. There was chaos and stampedes so she lost track of him."

At first AJ was reported missing and family didn't know if he was at the hospital, still inside the theater, or being questioned by police.

Kathy Lytle says "We knew the longer we didn't hear anything, the more likely that the news was not going to be good."

Days?before what the family describes as a nightmare, AJ dreamed of becoming an art teacher. He planned to attend Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design.

Kevin and Kathy Lytle says, "He was a fun little kid smiling all the time, happy. Because of the miles we didn't see him grow up other than Facebook."

Instead his family is planning a funeral.

Violet Strohm says, "I wanted to go and be with my sister, but I just had surgery so I can't go and be with her."

Friends and family members have set up a memorial page on Facebook to honor those who lost their lives in this senseless tragedy.

Source: http://www.upnorthlive.com/news/story.aspx?id=779612

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