Greuel faults DWP for bypassing bids on lobbying contracts

The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power repeatedly bypassed its competitive bidding process when it awarded $480,000 in contracts to lobby Sacramento decision-makers, according to a report issued by City Controller Wendy Greuel.

DWP executives issued four no-bid contracts for state lobbying over the last two years, two of them to Mercury Public Affairs, a firm that includes former state Assembly Speaker Fabian Nuñez as one of its partners. No public debate or vote by the utility's five-member Board of Commissioners was required under DWP contracting rules because each agreement was $150,000 or less.

Greuel, who is running for mayor in the March 5 election, said the city utility had "lax controls" over the lobbying contracts and failed to require that two of the firms prepare reports showing what they had accomplished. Mercury also was paid $50,000 for a month of work to help secure passage of legislation on power plant upgrades that had been withdrawn on the first day of the firm's contract, the report found.

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FOR THE RECORD:
DWP lobbyist: An article in the Jan. 3 LATExtra section about DWP lobbying practices said the agency had been paying $15,000 to its in-house lobbyist Cindy Montañez in 2009. The article should have specified that Montañez was being paid $15,000 per month.

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"DWP should have terminated" the contract, Greuel wrote.

The inquiry, which was conducted with help from the city Ethics Commission, was launched last year after Greuel's office received a tip alleging that the lobbying work was awarded in exchange for favors. But no evidence of "a 'pay to play' arrangement" was found, her report said.

Mercury received DWP lobbying contracts worth $50,000 in 2010 and $150,000 in 2011, both focused on state government. The firm also received a no-bid, nine-month contract worth $141,000 in 2010 for lobbying at the federal level, which was not examined in the controller's report.

The DWP said the no-bid contracts were reviewed and approved by the city's lawyers. The three lobbying firms helped shape costly state regulations dealing with greenhouse gas emissions and pollution of ocean plant life caused by coastal power plants, utility officials said.

"Their effective advocacy contributed to favorable outcomes that will save LADWP's customers in excess of a billion dollars," the DWP said in a statement.

Mercury Managing Director Roger Salazar said his firm provided strategy for dealing with water quality regulators, as well as state lawmakers. "The legislative process doesn't always end with the pulling of a bill," he added.

The DWP's hiring practices for outside lobbyists attracted scrutiny in 2009 after high-level officials proposed a contract worth up to $2.4 million with Conservation Strategy Group — a Sacramento-based firm that planned to use Mercury and a second company as subcontractors.

The deal would have included the involvement of Nuñez, author of the state's landmark 2006 climate change law. But it was scuttled after DWP commissioners raised questions about the cost. The agency already was paying $15,000 to its in-house lobbyist Cindy Montañez, a former Assembly member who is now a City Council candidate.

DWP officials subsequently began using simple purchase orders instead of competitive bidding procedures to hire lobbying firms. The utility awarded a one-year, $130,000 agreement to Weideman Group in 2010 and a one-year, $150,000 agreement with Conservation Strategy Group in 2011.

Mercury received its $150,000 contract in April 2011, during the same week that Nuñez contributed $3,000 to three of the mayor's legal defense funds and $1,000 to a separate officeholder account belonging to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. The defense funds were set up to pay nearly $42,000 in ethics fines levied against Villaraigosa for accepting free tickets to sports and cultural events.

Salazar said there was no link between the contracts and the donations from Nuñez. "Any insinuation that they are connected is absurd and irresponsible," he said.

Last month, the DWP's five-member board awarded a Sacramento lobbying contract worth $1 million annually to KP Public Affairs. That vote was taken after a competitive search process.

david.zahniser@latimes.com

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Philippines May Curb Pursuit of Marcos’s Wealth

MANILA — A commission that has been pursuing the wealth of the former dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos should be abolished, despite the fact that much of his allegedly ill-gotten wealth has not been recovered, its chairman said on Wednesday.

Andres Bautista, the chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, told reporters on Wednesday that he had recommended to President Benigno S. Aquino III that the special commission be phased out.

“Our recommendation was to wind down work,” said Mr. Bautista, noting that it is more efficient, and less costly for the government, if the Department of Justice handles the hunt for assets and any future cases against Marcos associates. In an earlier interview with Agence France-Presse, Mr. Bautista said, “It has become a law of diminishing returns at this point.”

Mr. Marcos led the Philippines from 1965 to until 1986, when he was overthrown by the bloodless popular revolt known as People Power. He declared martial law for part of his time in office and empowered his flamboyant wife, Imelda R. Marcos, to help lead the country.

Investigators have accused the Marcos family and its associates of plundering an estimated $10 billion from the Philippines while millions of Filipinos suffered in grinding poverty. In particular, Mr. Marcos’s wife was noted for extravagant displays of wealth that included lavish shopping trips to New York City with a huge entourage, spending millions on jewelry and art.

But in recent years, members of the Marcos family, including Mrs. Marcos, have taken prominent political posts, complicating the commission’s efforts.

The commission was created after the pro-democracy leader Corazon C. Aquino, the current president’s mother, came to power in 1986, and it was charged with the worldwide pursuit of the assets of the Marcos family and its associates.

According to one analyst, the abolition of the commission will effectively end the pursuit of that wealth — much of which, by all accounts, remains unrecovered.

“If a special body with extraordinary powers specifically tasked with finding the hidden wealth of Marcos cannot do it, then who else is going to?” asked Edre U. Olalia, the secretary general of the human rights organization National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers. “The government is giving up the fight.”

Mr. Olalia said a special commission was still needed because the Marcos family and its associates had the resources to hire top defense lawyers who could thwart or delay government cases. He said the family was expert at hiding wealth overseas and at using influence within the government to obstruct the investigations.

Mrs. Marcos, 83, is now a member of the House of Representatives, while her son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., is a senator. Her daughter Imee Marcos is the governor of a northern province where the family is still well regarded.

Former President Marcos died in exile in the United States in 1989. Some of the largest companies in the Philippines are controlled by people who were his close associates, and have been accused by investigators of helping the family plunder billions from the country.

No one in the Marcos family, whose members all deny wrongdoing, has been convicted in connection with plundered wealth, nor have any associates.

“The Marcos family is back in power, and they have no fear of conviction,” Mr. Olalia said. “They are prancing around with their wealth, saying they are a poor family being prosecuted by the government.”

Mr. Bautista, the head of the commission, noted that the agency had recovered 164 billion pesos (about $4 billion) since its creation, including a 150-carat ruby and a diamond tiara, hundreds of millions of dollars hidden in Swiss bank accounts and prime real estate in New York City. It worked recently with New York authorities to indict Vilma Bautista, Mrs. Marcos’s former social secretary, and to recover several valuable paintings, including one from the water lily series by Claude Monet. Ms. Bautista and Mr. Bautista are not related.

President Aquino and both houses of the Philippine Congress would have to agree for the commission to be abolished. On Wednesday, lawmakers disagreed about its fate.

“Everybody agrees that the hunt and recovery was not going to be a walk in the park,” said Senator Francis Escudero. “But it’s disappointing that they are throwing in the towel.”

But another senator, Joker Arroyo, noted that the agency had been intended from the beginning to have a limited mandate.

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HTC rumored to debut flagship ‘M7′ smartphone at CES

HTC (2498) will reportedly unveil a new flagship smartphone code-named “M7″ at the Consumer Electronics Show next week. The rumor comes to us from XDA-Developers forum member “Football,” who reported accurate information about unreleased HTC devices in the past. The phone is believed to the be the successor to the One X and could be equipped with a 4.7-inch full HD 1920 x 1080-pixel display, a 1.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon processor, a 13-megapixel rear camera, LTE and HSPA+ connectivity, Beats Audio, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of internal memory and a 2,300 mAh battery. The M7 is also said to be HTC’s first smartphone to utilize on-screen navigation keys in place of traditional hardware buttons. 

[More from BGR: ‘iPhone 5S’ to reportedly launch by June with multiple color options and two different display sizes]

The problem for HTC in the past has been the company’s ability to market its high-end devices to consumers. Despite class-leading features and hardware, HTC’s smartphone sales have stalled in the past year and the company has continued to lose market share. It will be interesting to see if it can turn things around in 2013.

[More from BGR: Microsoft lashes out at Google’s decision to spurn Windows Phone]

The Consumer Electronics Show is scheduled to take place from January 8th to January 11th in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This article was originally published by BGR

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Patti Page, '50s Pop Star, Dies at 85

01/02/2013 at 05:50 PM EST

Patti Page

Michael Ochs Archives/Getty

Patti Page, one of the most successful pop stars of the '50s – famed for hits such as "Tennessee Waltz" and "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" – died on Tuesday in Encinitas, Calif., the New York Times reports. She was 85.

Seacrest VIllage Retirement Communities, where she lived, confirmed her death to the Times on Wednesday.

Page's songs sold millions – "Tennessee Waltz" spent months atop the pop, country and R&B charts and sold a total of 10 million copies – but her singing style and sentimental hits, though favored by the public, did not always receive critical praise.

''A couple of critics back then said my voice was like milquetoast,'' Page told the Times in 2003. ''My music was called plastic, antiseptic, placid. It was only five or so years after the war, a different time. A simpler time. The music was simpler, too.''

Born Clara Ann Fowler on Nov. 8, 1927, in Claremore, Okla., Page was one of 11 children. She began her career at Tulsa radio station KTUL, where she took over a country-music radio show called "Meet Patti Page," which is where she adopted her pseudonym. She went on to be signed by Mercury Records, where she had her first platinum-selling hit, "With My Eyes Wide Open, I'm Dreaming," in 1950. Among her other notable musical accomplishments: she recorded the theme to Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte, the 1964 thriller starring Bette Davis, which was nominated for an Oscar. In 1965, Page performed the song on the Academy Awards telecast.

Page also had a television career, hosting 1952's Music Hall on CBS, a 15-minute show that followed the evening news. She also hosted The Big Record, which ran for one season in 1957 and 1958, and The Patti Page Show on NBC in the summer of 1956.

Meanwhile, she continued to sing professionally into her early 70s. In 1999, she won a Grammy, her first and only one, for Live at Carnegie Hall, an album she recorded in 1997 celebrating 50 years in the music business.

Page was married twice, first to Charles O'Curran, a choreographer, in 1956. They divorced in 1972. She married Jerry Filiciotto, a retired aerospace engineer, in 1990. Together, they co-founded a company that marketed maple syrup products. He died in 2009.

Page is survived by her son, Danny O'Curran; her daughter Kathleen Ginn; and some grandchildren.

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More bears mean more strife at Lake Tahoe

HOMEWOOD, Calif. — She was born under a house on the west shore of Lake Tahoe and quickly became a beloved fixture in this rustic community.

She rambled through backyards and climbed into open windows to snack. She swam in the lake's impossibly blue water and sunned herself on the beach as if on an extended vacation.

Residents nicknamed her Sunny. She was one of Lake Tahoe's "celebrity bears" — animals so familiar, so seemingly at ease around humans that they've become de facto residents of this forested idyll where the boundary between wilderness and civilization has all but disappeared.

"She was the epitome of how bears and humans can coexist," said Ann Bryant, an animal rights activist here. "Until she was murdered."

The morning of July 30, Sunny was found dead on the beach, felled by a shotgun blast.

The killing infuriated Lake Tahoe's large and vocal community of bear lovers, who raised $35,000 for a reward leading to the arrest and conviction of Sunny's killer.

Others thought that wasn't enough.

When no arrest was made, the suspected shooter's name and address were posted on a Facebook page established by a bear advocate to shame businesses with unlocked and overflowing dumpsters.

Reaction was swift — and, at times, disturbing:

I hope the person who did this is not only prosecuted to the fullest, but suffers the same fate Sunny did.

Can we have open season on the person who shot the bear??

Burn his cabin down.

*

Early November, and Lake Tahoe is dozing. Boats are gone for the winter, the notorious summer traffic has ebbed and neighborhoods of vacation homes are silent as ghost towns.

The bears, though, are hard at work.

An adult black bear will consume upward of 25,000 calories a day to prepare for hibernation. That's a lot of berries and pine nuts. Or, in the case of Lake Tahoe's bears, a lot of dumpster diving.

More than a thousand bear complaints a year are reported to officials on the lake's California side alone. They break into homes to forage in refrigerators, at times surprising terrified residents. They den under porches and have learned to twist the tops off food jars. They make the trash-can exploits of the Southern California bruin nicknamed Glen Bearian look like the fumblings of an amateur.

"It's been an enormous evolutionary change," said Bryant, who runs the Bear League, a self-styled detachment of some 250 volunteers who respond to calls round the clock from residents who've had a bear encounter. "The bears living here with us are evolving far faster than we are. They've learned to take advantage of us. We haven't learned to coexist with them. And they're dying for it."

At any given time, there are between 500 and 1,500 black bears around the lake. In July, the Tahoe Daily Tribune reported that 2012 was shaping up to be a "perfect storm of bears." A mild winter meant more cubs, and the parched backcountry was forcing more bears to scrounge for food in populated areas.

At one resort, three bears were legally killed after they entered numerous cabins; a cafe was evacuated when a bear strolled in during dinner.

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Kim Jong-un, North Korean Leader, Makes Overture to South

SEOUL, South Korea — The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, called for an end to the “confrontation” with rival South Korea on Tuesday in what appeared to be an overture to the incoming South Korean president as she was cobbling together South Korea’s new policy on the North.

North Korea issued a major policy statement on New Year’s Day, following a tradition set by Mr. Kim’s grandfather, the North Korean founder Kim Il-sung, and continued by his father, Kim Jong-il, who died in December 2011, bequeathing the dynastic rule to Mr. Kim.

Although Mr. Kim inherited the central policies of his father, outside analysts see him as trying to distance himself in a variety of ways from his father’s ruling style. Kim Jong-il was more feared than respected among his people, and his rule was marked by a major famine.

The most significant feature of Kim Jong-un’s speech was its marked departure of tone regarding South Korea.

“A key to ending the divide of the nation and achieving reunification is to end the situation of confrontation between the North and the South,” Mr. Kim said. “A basic precondition to improving North-South relations and advancing national reunification is to honor and implement North-South joint declarations.”

He was referring to two inter-Korean agreements, signed in 2000 and 2007, when two South Korean presidents, Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, were pursuing a “Sunshine Policy” of reconciliation and economic cooperation with North Korea and met Mr. Kim’s father in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

As a result of those agreements, billions of dollars of South Korean investment, aid and trade flowed into the North. Billions more were promised in investments in shipyards and factory parks, as the South Korean leaders believed that economic good will was the best way of encouraging North Korea to shed its isolation and hostility while reducing the economic gap between the Koreas and the cost of reunification in the future.

But that warming of ties ended when conservatives came to power in South Korea with the inauguration of President Lee Myung-bak in 2008. Mr. Lee suspended any large aid or investment because of the lack of progress toward dismantling the North’s nuclear weapons programs, and inter-Korean relations spiraled down, further aggravated by the North’s shelling of a South Korean island in 2010.Mr. Kim’s speech on Tuesday, which was broadcast through the North’s state-run television and radio stations, was another sign that the young leader was trying to emulate his grandfather, who was considered a more people-friendly leader and is still widely revered among North Koreans.

Mr. Kim returned to the tradition of Kim Il-sung, issuing the statement in a personal speech. During the rule of Kim Jong-il, the statement — which laid out policy guidelines for the new year and was studied by all branches of the party, state and military — was issued as a joint editorial of the country’s main official media.

In his speech, Kim Jong-un, echoed themes of previous New Year’s messages, emphasizing that improving the living standards of North Koreans and rejuvenating the agricultural and light industries were among the country’s main priorities.

But he revealed no details of any planned economic policy changes. He mentioned only a need to “improve economic leadership and management” and “spread useful experiences created in various work units.”

Since July, reports from various media suggest that Mr. Kim’s government has begun carrying out cautious economic incentives aimed at bolstering productivity at farms and factories. Some reports said the state was considering letting farmers keep at least 30 percent of their yield; currently, it is believed, they are allowed to sell only a surplus beyond a government-set quota that is rarely met.

Mr. Kim also vowed to strengthen his country’s military, calling for the development of more advanced weapons. But he made no mention of relations with the United States or the international efforts to halt North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. He simply reiterated that his government was willing to “expand and improve upon friendly and cooperative relationships with all countries friendly to us.”

Mr. Kim’s speech followed the successful launching of a satellite aboard a long-range rocket in December. North Korea’s propagandists have since been busy billing the launch as a symbol of what they called the North’s soaring technological might and Mr. Kim’s peerless leadership. Washington considered it a test of long-range ballistic-missile technology and a violation of United Nations Security Council resolutions banning such tests, and is seeking more sanctions to impose on the isolated country.

The incoming leader of South Korea, Park Geun-hye, who was the presidential candidate of Mr. Lee’s conservative governing party, did not immediate respond to the speech. Ms. Park is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, the former military strongman under whose rule from 1961 until 1979 a staunchly anti-Communist, pro-American political establishment took root in South Korea.

North Korea had engineered a couple of assassination attempts on Ms. Park’s father, one of which resulted in her mother’s death in 1974. But Ms. Park also traveled to Pyongyang in 2002 and discussed inter-Korean reconciliation with Kim Jong-il.

During her campaign for president, she said that if elected, she would decouple humanitarian aid from politics and try to hold a summit meeting with Kim Jong-un. She was in part reacting to widespread criticism in South Korea that Mr. Lee’s hard-line policy did little to change the North’s behavior.

During the campaign, however, Ms. Park stuck to Mr. Lee’s stance on the most contentious issue of large-scale investment, which the North considers crucial. Ms. Park, like the current president, insisted that any large-scale economic investments be preceded by the “building of trust” through progress in curbing North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Peace bought with “shoveling” of unrestrained aid under the Sunshine Policy was “a fake,” she said, citing the North’s long history of using military threats to win economic concessions.

Earlier, North Korea called her a “confrontational maniac” and “fascist.” But since her election, it has refrained from attacking her.

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9 Apps to Fast-Track Your New Years’ Resolutions

Whether your goal in 2013 is to lose five pounds, manage your finances, or spend more time with friends and family, there are a growing number of apps that fall into the self-help category and can assist you in accomplishing these resolutions.

At Mashable we’ve tested a lot of them out, but we’re still always hearing about new ones. There are a ton of fitness and health apps to chose from, but you might be pleasantly surprised to know they’re not all about weight loss. A device and app called Tinke monitors your stress levels and how deeply you’re breathing. An app called Fig will remind you to drink more water, skip fried foods and take breaks at work to keep you feeling good. Arianna Huffington also released an app called, “GPS for the Soul” that focuses on wellbeing.

[More from Mashable: Time Machine App Transports You Back to 2012]

Other apps can help you organize your social life, make new friends or save money for a vacation.

We’ve compiled a list of apps that can help you accomplish all sorts of goals this year. Check it out and let us know if we missed any that you plan on using in 2013.

[More from Mashable: It’s Easy to Save Videos From Facebook Poke Permanently]

OurGroceries

If you’re trying to eat out less and cook at home more often, make sure you always have a current grocery list at your fingertips. Mashable wrote about several grocery list apps this year. The standout seems to be OurGroceries for Android and iOS. If you have roommates or a significant other, everyone can download the app and sync lists. That way if you’re making a quick after-work trip to the grocery store you’ll not only be able to see the items you added, but also see what they’ve added, too.

Click here to view this gallery.

Photo courtesy of iStockphoto, hocus-focus

This story originally published on Mashable here.

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Jessica Simpson and Kendall & Kylie Jenner Make Readers Smile - and Frown

01/01/2013 at 07:00 PM EST

Splash News Online; Michael Simon/Startraks

What's on the minds of PEOPLE readers this week? We love getting your feedback, and as always, you weighed in – even while celebrating during the holidays – with plenty of reactions to all of our stories.

From Kelly Osbourne's dramatic weight loss to Jessica Simpson's happy baby news to the tragic death of hero surfer Dylan Smith in Puerto Rico, readers responded to what made them happy, what made them laugh out loud and what made them sad this week.

Check out the articles with the top reactions on the site this week, and keep clicking on the emoticons at the bottom of every story to tell us what you think!

Kelly Osbourne says loving herself was the key to her 60-lb. weight loss. She had to get to a place where she respected herself enough to take care of her health – and she emerged a fierce style star who is not afraid to rock a bikini.

Jessica Simpson became a new mom just 8 months ago – so the news that she's expecting baby No. 2 with fiancé Eric Johnson made readers say, "Wow!"

Reality stars Kendall and Kylie Jenner showed off expensive Christmas gifts on Instagram, and their pricey public display turned many readers off. From a pair of Louboutin spike heels to Balenciaga boots with a more than $1,000 price tag, the teens cleaned up with lavish presents that most could only dream about.

Dylan Smith captured our hearts with his heroic efforts during Superstorm Sandy, saving six people on his surfboard. But the Queens, N.Y., lifeguard, 23, who was named one of PEOPLE's Heroes of the Year, drowned on Dec. 24 in a surfing accident off Puerto Rico.

Does the idea of Tom Cruise dating a new woman make you laugh? Maybe. A story that falsely linked the actor romantically to a 26-year-old restaurant manager, had readers clicking LOL. Or maybe the funny part was this quote from a source, who told told PEOPLE: "He's single and will be talking to women – all of whom he won't be instantly dating."

Check back next week for another must-read roundup, and see what readers are reacting to every day here.

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Brain image study: Fructose may spur overeating

This is your brain on sugar — for real. Scientists have used imaging tests to show for the first time that fructose, a sugar that saturates the American diet, can trigger brain changes that may lead to overeating.

After drinking a fructose beverage, the brain doesn't register the feeling of being full as it does when simple glucose is consumed, researchers found.

It's a small study and does not prove that fructose or its relative, high-fructose corn syrup, can cause obesity, but experts say it adds evidence they may play a role. These sugars often are added to processed foods and beverages, and consumption has risen dramatically since the 1970s along with obesity. A third of U.S. children and teens and more than two-thirds of adults are obese or overweight.

All sugars are not equal — even though they contain the same amount of calories — because they are metabolized differently in the body. Table sugar is sucrose, which is half fructose, half glucose. High-fructose corn syrup is 55 percent fructose and 45 percent glucose. Some nutrition experts say this sweetener may pose special risks, but others and the industry reject that claim. And doctors say we eat too much sugar in all forms.

For the study, scientists used magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, scans to track blood flow in the brain in 20 young, normal-weight people before and after they had drinks containing glucose or fructose in two sessions several weeks apart.

Scans showed that drinking glucose "turns off or suppresses the activity of areas of the brain that are critical for reward and desire for food," said one study leader, Yale University endocrinologist Dr. Robert Sherwin. With fructose, "we don't see those changes," he said. "As a result, the desire to eat continues — it isn't turned off."

What's convincing, said Dr. Jonathan Purnell, an endocrinologist at Oregon Health & Science University, is that the imaging results mirrored how hungry the people said they felt, as well as what earlier studies found in animals.

"It implies that fructose, at least with regards to promoting food intake and weight gain, is a bad actor compared to glucose," said Purnell. He wrote a commentary that appears with the federally funded study in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers now are testing obese people to see if they react the same way to fructose and glucose as the normal-weight people in this study did.

What to do? Cook more at home and limit processed foods containing fructose and high-fructose corn syrup, Purnell suggested. "Try to avoid the sugar-sweetened beverages. It doesn't mean you can't ever have them," but control their size and how often they are consumed, he said.

A second study in the journal suggests that only severe obesity carries a high death risk — and that a few extra pounds might even provide a survival advantage. However, independent experts say the methods are too flawed to make those claims.

The study comes from a federal researcher who drew controversy in 2005 with a report that found thin and normal-weight people had a slightly higher risk of death than those who were overweight. Many experts criticized that work, saying the researcher — Katherine Flegal of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — painted a misleading picture by including smokers and people with health problems ranging from cancer to heart disease. Those people tend to weigh less and therefore make pudgy people look healthy by comparison.

Flegal's new analysis bolsters her original one, by assessing nearly 100 other studies covering almost 2.9 million people around the world. She again concludes that very obese people had the highest risk of death but that overweight people had a 6 percent lower mortality rate than thinner people. She also concludes that mildly obese people had a death risk similar to that of normal-weight people.

Critics again have focused on her methods. This time, she included people too thin to fit what some consider to be normal weight, which could have taken in people emaciated by cancer or other diseases, as well as smokers with elevated risks of heart disease and cancer.

"Some portion of those thin people are actually sick, and sick people tend to die sooner," said Donald Berry, a biostatistician at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The problems created by the study's inclusion of smokers and people with pre-existing illness "cannot be ignored," said Susan Gapstur, vice president of epidemiology for the American Cancer Society.

A third critic, Dr. Walter Willett of the Harvard School of Public Health, was blunter: "This is an even greater pile of rubbish" than the 2005 study, he said. Willett and others have done research since the 2005 study that found higher death risks from being overweight or obese.

Flegal defended her work. She noted that she used standard categories for weight classes. She said statistical adjustments were made for smokers, who were included to give a more real-world sample. She also said study participants were not in hospitals or hospices, making it unlikely that large numbers of sick people skewed the results.

"We still have to learn about obesity, including how best to measure it," Flegal's boss, CDC Director Dr. Thomas Frieden, said in a written statement. "However, it's clear that being obese is not healthy - it increases the risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and many other health problems. Small, sustainable increases in physical activity and improvements in nutrition can lead to significant health improvements."

___

Online:

Obesity info: http://www.cdc.gov/obesity/data/trends.html

___

Marilynn Marchione can be followed at http://twitter.com/MMarchioneAP

Mike Stobbe can be followed at http://twitter.com/MikeStobbe

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Ruling over bumper-car injury supports amusement park

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court, protecting providers of risky recreational activities from lawsuits, decided Monday that bumper car riders may not sue amusement parks over injuries stemming from the inherent nature of the attraction.

The 6-1 decision may be cited to curb liability for a wide variety of activities — such as jet skiing, ice skating and even participating in a fitness class, lawyers in the case said.

"This is a victory for anyone who likes fun and risk activities," said Jeffrey M. Lenkov, an attorney for Great America, which won the case.

But Mark D. Rosenberg, who represented a woman injured in a bumper car at the Bay Area amusement park, said the decision was bad for consumers.

"Patrons are less safe today than they were yesterday," Rosenberg said.

The ruling came in a lawsuit by Smriti Nalwa, who fractured her wrist in 2005 while riding in a bumper car with her 9-year-old son and being involved in a head-on collision. Rosenberg said Great America had told ride operators not to allow head-on collisions, but failed to ask patrons to avoid them.

The court said Nalwa's injury was caused by a collision with another bumper car, a normal part of the ride. To reduce all risk of injury, the ride would have to be scrapped or completely reconfigured, the court said.

"A small degree of risk inevitably accompanies the thrill of speeding through curves and loops, defying gravity or, in bumper cars, engaging in the mock violence of low-speed collisions," Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote for the majority. "Those who voluntarily join in these activities also voluntarily take on their minor inherent risks."

Monday's decision extended a legal doctrine that has limited liability for risky sports, such as football, to now include recreational activities.

"Where the doctrine applies to a recreational activity," Werdegar wrote, "operators, instructors and participants …owe other participants only the duty not to act so as to increase the risk of injury over that inherent in the activity."

Amusement parks will continue to be required to use the utmost care on thrill rides such as roller coasters, where riders surrender control to the operator. But on attractions where riders have some control, the parks can be held liable only if their conduct unreasonably raised the dangers.

"Low-speed collisions between the padded, independently operated cars are inherent in — are the whole point of — a bumper car ride," Werdegar wrote.

Parks that fail to provide routine safety measures such as seat belts, adequate bumpers and speed controls might be held liable for an injury, but operators should not be expected to restrict where a bumper car is bumped, the court said.

The justices noted that the state inspected the Great America rides annually, and the maintenance and safety staff checked on the bumper cars the day Nalwa broke her wrist. The ride was functioning normally.

Reports showed that bumper car riders at the park suffered 55 injuries — including bruises, cuts, scrapes and strains — in 2004 and 2005, but Nalwa's injury was the only fracture. Nalwa said her wrist snapped when she tried to brace herself by putting her hand on the dashboard.

Rosenberg said the injury stemmed from the head-on collision. He said the company had configured bumper rides in other parks to avoid such collisions and made the Santa Clara ride uni-directional after the lawsuit was filed.

Justice Joyce L. Kennard dissented, complaining that the decision would saddle trial judges "with the unenviable task of determining the risks of harm that are inherent in a particular recreational activity."

"Whether the plaintiff knowingly assumed the risk of injury no longer matters," Kennard said.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

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