Atari is declaring bankruptcy — twice. Both the U.S. video game company and its French parent have done so, the latest twist for the company which largely invented the video game industry and remains synonymous with it, despite having seen its glory days end by the mid-1980s.
But wait. Even though the Atari name celebrated its fortieth anniversary last year, it’s a mistake to talk about Atari as if it’s a corporate entity which has been around for four decades. (The Los Angeles Times’ Ben Fritz, for instance, refers to it as an “iconic but long-troubled video game maker.”) Instead, it’s a famous name which has drifted from owner to owner. It keeps being applied to different businesses, and yes, for all its fame, it does seem to be a bit of a jinx.
Here’s a quick rundown of what “Atari” has meant at different times (thanks, Wikipedia, for refreshing my memory):
1972-1976: It’s an up-and-coming, innovative startup cofounded by Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney.
1976-1984: It’s part of Warner Communications (which, years later, merged with Time Inc. to form Time Warner, overlord of this website). It’s a massively successful maker of video games and consoles, but then it crashes, along with the rest of the industry.
1984-1996: Atari morphs into a semi-successful maker of PCs when it’s acquired by Tramel Technology, a company started by Jack Tramiel, the ousted founder of Commodore.
1996-1998: Tramiel runs Atari into the ground. After merging with hard-disk maker JTS, the company and brand are largely dormant.
1998-2000: Atari resurfaces under the ownership of toy kingpin Hasbro as a line of games published under the Atari Interactive name.
2000-present: It becomes a corporate entity controlled by French game publisher Infogrames, which increasingly emphasizes the Atari moniker over its own and takes over completely in 2008. In recent years, it’s focused on digital downloads, mobile games and licensing of its familiar brand and logo.
The above chronology doesn’t account for Atari’s original business: arcade games. As far as I can tell, the arcade arm was owned at different times by Warner Communications/Time Warner (twice!), Pac-Man purveyor Namco and arcade icon Midway, among other companies. But use of the Atari brand on arcade hardware petered out in 2001.
Basically, Atari has never been one well-defined thing for more than twelve years, max, at a time. That the name has survived at all is a testament to its power and appeal. And even though the current Atari has fallen on hard times, I’ll bet that the brand survives for at least a few more decades, in one form or another. Several forms, probably.
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Al Green says if things had worked out, it would have been him serenading President Barack Obama and first lady Michelle at the inaugural ball.
Jennifer Hudson sang Green's classic "Let's Stay Together," leaving many to wonder why the soul legend wasn't singing his own hit for the first couple.
In a statement to The Associated Press, his representative said Green had been asked to sing, but scheduling conflicts prevented him from attending Monday's festivities. Green said he'd be honored to sing for the president in the future.
The Presidential Inaugural Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Obama famously sang a snippet of the song at an event last year that Green attended.
___
Nekesa Mumbi Moody is the AP's global entertainment and lifestyles editor. Follow her at http://www.twitter.com/nekesamumbi
In the 1970s, women’s health advocates were highly suspicious of mastectomies. They argued that surgeons — in those days, pretty much an all-male club — were far too quick to remove a breast after a diagnosis of cancer, with disfiguring results.
But today, the pendulum has swung the other way. A new generation of women want doctors to take a more aggressive approach, and more and more are asking that even healthy breasts be removed to ward off cancer before it can strike.
Researchers estimate that as many as 15 percent of women with breast cancer — 30,000 a year — opt to have both breasts removed, up from less than 3 percent in the late 1990s. Notably, it appears that the vast majority of these women have never received genetic testing or counseling and are basing the decision on exaggerated fears about their risk of recurrence.
In addition, doctors say an increasing number of women who have never had a cancer diagnosis are demanding mastectomies based on genetic risk. (Cancer databases don’t track these women, so their numbers are unknown.)
“We are confronting almost an epidemic of prophylactic mastectomy,” said Dr. Isabelle Bedrosian, a surgical oncologist at M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. “I think the medical community has taken notice. We don’t have data that say oncologically this is a necessity, so why are women making this choice?”
One reason may be the never-ending awareness campaigns that have left many women in perpetual fear of the disease. Improvements in breast reconstruction may also be driving the trend, along with celebrities who go public with their decision to undergo preventive mastectomy.
This month Allyn Rose, a 24-year-old Miss America contestant from Washington, D.C., made headlines when she announced plans to have both her healthy breasts removed after the pageant; both her mother and her grandmother died from breast cancer. The television personality Giuliana Rancic, 37, and the actress Christina Applegate, 41, also talked publicly about having double mastectomies after diagnoses of early-stage breast cancer.
“You’re not going to find other organs that people cut out of their bodies because they’re worried about disease,” said the medical historian Dr. Barron H. Lerner, author of “The Breast Cancer Wars” (2001). “Because breast cancer is a disease that is so emotionally charged and gets so much attention, I think at times women feel almost obligated to be as proactive as possible — that’s the culture of breast cancer.”
Most of the data on prophylactic mastectomy come from the University of Minnesota, where researchers tracked contralateral mastectomy trends (removing a healthy breast alongside one with cancer) from 1998 to 2006. Dr. Todd M. Tuttle, chief of surgical oncology, said double mastectomy rates more than doubled during that period and the rise showed no signs of slowing.
From those trends as well as anecdotal reports, Dr. Tuttle estimates that at least 15 percent of women who receive a breast cancer diagnosis will have the second, healthy breast removed. “It’s younger women who are doing it,” he said.
The risk that a woman with breast cancer will develop cancer in the other breast is about 5 percent over 10 years, Dr. Tuttle said. Yet a University of Minnesota study found that women estimated their risk to be more than 30 percent.
“I think there are women who markedly overestimate their risk of getting cancer,” he said.
Most experts agree that double mastectomy is a reasonable option for women who have a strong genetic risk and have tested positive for a breast cancer gene. That was the case with Allison Gilbert, 42, a writer in Westchester County who discovered her genetic risk after her grandmother died of breast cancer and her mother died of ovarian cancer.
Even so, she delayed the decision to get prophylactic mastectomy until her aunt died from an aggressive breast cancer. In August, she had a double mastectomy. (She had her ovaries removed earlier.)
“I feel the women in my family didn’t have a way to avoid their fate,” said Ms. Gilbert, author of the 2011 book “Parentless Parents,” about how losing a parent influences one’s own style of parenting. “Here I was given an incredible opportunity to know what I have and to do something about it and, God willing, be around for my kids longer.”
Even so, she said her decisions were not made lightly. The double mastectomy and reconstruction required an initial 11 1/2-hour surgery and an “intense” recovery. She got genetic counseling, joined support groups and researched her options.
But doctors say many women are not making such informed decisions. Last month, University of Michigan researchers reported on a study of more than 1,446 women who had breast cancer. Four years after their diagnosis, 35 percent were considering removing their healthy breast and 7 percent had already done so.
Notably, most of the women who had a double mastectomy were not at high risk for a cancer recurrence. In fact, studies suggest that most women who have double mastectomies never seek genetic testing or counseling.
“Breast cancer becomes very emotional for people, and they view a breast differently than an arm or a required body part that you use every day,” said Sarah T. Hawley, an associate professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan. “Women feel like it’s a body part over which they totally have a choice, and they say, ‘I want to put this behind me — I don’t want to worry about it anymore.’ ”
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WASHINGTON — With the White House and Congress engaged in their second major battle in 18 months over the debt limit, some lawmakers, economists and analysts are offering a simple solution: Just get rid of it.
The U.S. is one of the few nations with such a borrowing mechanism. And as political fights over raising the limit have escalated in recent years, chilling financial markets and triggering the first-ever U.S. credit rating downgrade, critics said the time has come to make a change in Washington.
"Congress has gone from grandstanding on the debt ceiling to actual use of it as an economic weapon of mass destruction," Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) said. "It's extremely dangerous."
Welch and several Democratic House colleagues last week proposed eliminating the debt limit, which has been in place since 1939, to avoid the risk of a default.
They're joined by a growing chorus of analysts who have called the U.S. debt limit "ridiculous," "screwy" and just plain "nuts."
QUIZ: Test your knowledge about the debt limit
"The debt ceiling is a dumb idea with no benefits and potentially catastrophic costs if ever used," Richard Thaler, a professor at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business, wrote in response to a University of Chicago poll of economists released this month.
House Republican leaders, for now at least, want to put off a showdown. They have scheduled a vote for Wednesday on suspending the limit until mid-May. In effect, there would be no debt limit for four months.
The White House backed the short-term plan Tuesday, and House Republican leaders appeared confident that the measure would pass. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) declined to say whether he would take up the bill, but indications were that the Senate would go along with the strategy.
The move would delay the looming threat of a default, but the broader debate over the debt limit and its role would continue to simmer.
In each year's budget, Congress decides how much money should be spent, which also determines how much must be borrowed to cover any shortfall in revenue. So Congress also must frequently increase the debt limit to allow for the borrowing.
The debt limit has been raised 76 times since 1962. It now stands at $16.4 trillion, a level the government will hit as early as mid-February.
The University of Chicago's survey of 38 academic economists found that 84% agreed that "a separate debt ceiling that has to be increased periodically creates unneeded uncertainty and can potentially lead to worse fiscal outcomes." Just 3% disagreed.
"It's a very unusual provision because in most countries, if they vote for a budget, they either have to borrow the money to pay for it or they have to raise taxes or cut someplace else," said Jacob Funk Kirkegaard, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington.
"Separating out the spending from the actual payment for the spending is just a reckless fiscal policy," Kirkegaard said.
Those sentiments were echoed last week by Fitch Ratings.
The company, one of three leading credit rating firms, called the debt limit "an ineffective and potentially dangerous mechanism for enforcing fiscal discipline." But a Fitch executive said the company was not taking a stand on whether the debt limit should be eliminated.
Still, most Republicans said the debt limit is a vital check on long-term government spending.
The Constitution gives Congress the power "to borrow money on the credit of the United States." And the frequent votes over raising the limit on how much can be borrowed offer "a moment of reflection to consider the policies that have led to the current debt" and consider ways to reduce its growth, the Senate Republican Policy Committee said.
"In the simplest of terms, the debt limit helps hold Washington accountable to hardworking taxpayers, who ultimately foot the bill for Washington's spending habits," Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) said Tuesday during a House hearing on the issue.
Fifteen years before the clergy sex abuse scandal came to light, Archbishop Roger M. Mahony and a top advisor discussed ways to conceal the molestation of children from law enforcement, according to internal Catholic church records released Monday.
The archdiocese's failure to purge pedophile clergy and reluctance to cooperate with law enforcement has previously been known. But the memos written in 1986 and 1987 by Mahony and Msgr. Thomas J. Curry, then the archdiocese's chief advisor on sex abuse cases, offer the strongest evidence yet of a concerted effort by officials in the nation's largest Catholic diocese to shield abusers from police. The newly released records, which the archdiocese fought for years to keep secret, reveal in church leaders' own words a desire to keep authorities from discovering that children were being molested.
In the confidential letters, filed this month as evidence in a civil court case, Curry proposed strategies to prevent police from investigating three priests who had admitted to church officials that they abused young boys. Curry suggested to Mahony that they prevent them from seeing therapists who might alert authorities and that they give the priests out-of-state assignments to avoid criminal investigators.
One such case that has previously received little attention is that of Msgr. Peter Garcia, who admitted preying for decades on undocumented children in predominantly Spanish-speaking parishes. After Garcia's discharge from a New Mexico treatment center for pedophile clergy, Mahony ordered him to stay away from California "for the foreseeable future" in order to avoid legal accountability, the files show. "I believe that if Monsignor Garcia were to reappear here within the archdiocese we might very well have some type of legal action filed in both the criminal and civil sectors," the archbishop wrote to the treatment center's director in July 1986.
The following year, in a letter to Mahony about bringing Garcia back to work in the archdiocese, Curry said he was worried that victims in Los Angeles might see the priest and call police.
"[T]here are numerous — maybe twenty — adolescents or young adults that Peter was involved with in a first degree felony manner. The possibility of one of these seeing him is simply too great," Curry wrote in May 1987.
Garcia returned to the Los Angeles area later that year; the archdiocese did not give him a ministerial assignment because he refused to take medication to suppress his sexual urges. He left the priesthood in 1989, according to the church.
Garcia was never prosecuted and died in 2009. The files show he admitted to a therapist that he had sexually abused boys "on and off" since his 1966 ordination. He assured church officials his victims were unlikely to come forward because of their immigration status. In at least one case, according to a church memo, he threatened to have a boy he had raped deported if he went to police.
The memos are from personnel files for 14 priests submitted to a judge on behalf of a man who claims he was abused by one of the priests, Father Nicholas Aguilar Rivera. The man's attorney, Anthony De Marco, wrote in court papers the files show "a practice of thwarting law enforcement investigations" by the archdiocese. It's not always clear from the records whether the church followed through on all its discussions about eluding police, but in some cases, such as Garcia’s, it did.
Mahony, who retired in 2011, has apologized repeatedly for errors in handling abuse allegations. In a statement Monday, he apologized once again and recounted meetings he's had with about 90 victims of abuse.
"I have a 3 x 5 card for every victim I met with on the altar of my small chapel. I pray for them every single day," he wrote. "As I thumb through those cards I often pause as I am reminded of each personal story and the anguish that accompanies that life story."
"It remains my daily and fervent prayer that God's grace will flood the heart and soul of each victim, and that their life-journey continues forward with ever greater healing," he added. "I am sorry."
Curry did not return calls seeking comment. He currently serves as the archdiocese's auxiliary bishop for Santa Barbara.
The confidential files of at least 75 more accused abusers are slated to become public in coming weeks under the terms of a 2007 civil settlement with more than 500 victims. A private mediator had ordered the names of the church hierarchy redacted from those documents, but after objections from The Times and the Associated Press, a Superior Court judge ruled that the names of Mahony, Curry and others in supervisory roles should not be blacked out.
Garcia's was one of three cases in 1987 in which top church officials discussed ways they could stymie law enforcement. In a letter about Father Michael Wempe, who had acknowledged using a 12-year-old parishioner as what a church official called his "sex partner," Curry recounted extensive conversations with the priest about potential criminal prosecution.
"He is afraid ... records will be sought by the courts at some time and that they could convict him," Curry wrote to Mahony. "He is very aware that what he did comes within the scope of criminal law."
Curry proposed Wempe could go to an out-of-state diocese "if need be." He called it "surprising" that a church-paid counselor hadn't reported Wempe to police and wrote that he and Wempe "agreed it would be better if Mike did not return to him."
Perhaps, Curry added, the priest could be sent to "a lawyer who is also a psychiatrist" thereby putting "the reports under the protection of privilege."
Curry expressed similar concerns to Mahony about Father Michael Baker, who had admitted his abuse of young boys during a private 1986 meeting with the archbishop.
In a memo about Baker's return to ministry, Curry wrote, "I see a difficulty here, in that if he were to mention his problem with child abuse it would put the therapist in the position of having to report him … he cannot mention his past problem."
Mahony's response to the memo was handwritten across the bottom of the page: "Sounds good —please proceed!!" Two decades would pass before authorities gathered enough information to convict Baker and Wempe of abusing boys.
Federal and state prosecutors have investigated possible conspiracy cases against the archdiocese hierarchy. Former Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley said in 2007 that his probe into the conduct of high-ranking church officials was on hold until his prosecutors could access the personnel files of all the abusers. The U.S. attorney's office convened a grand jury in 2009, but no charges resulted.
During those investigations, the church was forced by judges to turn over some but not all of the records to prosecutors. The district attorney's office has said its prosecutors plan to review priest personnel files as they are released.
Mahony was appointed archbishop in 1985 after five years leading the Stockton diocese. While there, he had dealt with three allegations of clergy abuse, including one case in which he personally reported the priest to police.
In Los Angeles, he tapped Curry, an Irish-born priest, as vicar of clergy. The records show that sex abuse allegations were handled almost exclusively by the archbishop and his vicar. Memos that crossed their desks included graphic details, such as one letter from another priest accusing Garcia of tying up and raping a young boy in Lancaster.
Mahony personally phoned the priests' therapists about their progress, wrote the priests encouraging letters and dispatched Curry to visit them at a New Mexico facility, Servants of the Paraclete, that treated pedophile priests.
"Each of you there at Jemez Springs is very much in my prayers and I call you to mind each day during my celebration of the Eucharist," Mahony wrote to Wempe.
The month after he was named archbishop, Mahony met with Garcia to discuss his molestation of boys, according to a letter the priest wrote while in therapy. Mahony instructed him to be "very low key" and assured him "no one was looking at him for any criminal action," Garcia recalled in a letter to an official at Servants of the Paraclete.
In a statement Monday on behalf of the archdiocese, a lawyer for the church said its policy in the late 1980s was to let victims and their families decide whether to go to the police.
"Not surprisingly, the families of victims frequently did not wish to report to police and have their child become the center of a public prosecution," lawyer J. Michael Hennigan wrote.
He acknowledged memos written in those years "sometimes focused more on the needs of the perpetrator than on the serious harm that had been done to the victims."
"That is part of the past," Hennigan wrote. "We are embarrassed and at times ashamed by parts of the past. But we are proud of our progress, which is continuing."
Hennigan said that the years in which Mahony dealt with Garcia were "a period of deepening understanding of the nature of the problem of sex abuse both here and in our society in general" and that the archdiocese subsequently changed completely its approach to reports of abuse.
"We now have retired FBI agents who thoroughly investigate every allegation, even anonymous calls. We aggressively assist in the criminal prosecution of offenders," Hennigan wrote.
Mahony and Curry have been questioned under oath in depositions numerous times about their handling of molestation cases. The men, however, have never been asked about attempts to stymie law enforcement, because the personnel files documenting those discussions were only provided to civil attorneys in recent months. De Marco, the lawyer who filed the records in civil court this month, asked a judge last week to order Curry and Mahony to submit to new depositions “regarding their actions, knowledge and intent as referenced in these files.” A hearing on that request is set for February.
In a 2010 deposition, Mahony acknowledged the archdiocese had never called police to report sexual abuse by a priest before 2000. He said church officials were unable to do so because they didn't know the names of the children harmed.
"In my experience, you can only call the police when you've got victims you can talk to," Mahony said.
When an attorney for an alleged victim suggested "the right thing to do" would have been to summon police immediately, Mahony replied, "Well, today it would. But back then that isn't the way those matters were approached."
Since clergy weren't legally required to report suspected child abuse until 1997, Mahony said, the people who should have alerted police about pedophiles like Baker and Wempe were victims' therapists or other "mandatory reporters" of child abuse.
"Psychologists, counselors … they were also the first ones to learn [of abuse] so they were normally the ones who made the reports," he said.
In Garcia's 451-page personnel file, one voice decried the church's failures to protect the victims and condemned the priest as someone who deserved to be behind bars. Father Arturo Gomez, an associate pastor at a predominantly Spanish-speaking church near Olvera Street, wrote to a regional bishop in 1989, saying he was "angry" and "disappointed" at the church's failure to help Garcia's victims. He expressed shock that the bishop, Juan A. Arzube, had told the family of two of the boys that Garcia had thought of taking his own life.
"You seemed to be at that moment more concern[ed] for the criminal rather than the victum! (sic)" Gomez wrote to Arzube in 1989.
Gomez urged church leaders to identify others who may have been harmed by Garcia and to get them help, but was told they didn't know how.
"If I was the father … Peter Garcia would be in prison now; and I would probably have begun a lawsuit against the archdiocese," the priest wrote in the letter. "The parents … of the two boys are more forgiving and compassionate than I would be."
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Samsung (005930) is well known for its clever ads mocking Apple (AAPL) and its fans, but the company has decided to pick on a less powerful target in its newest ad that takes swipes RIM (RIMM) and its BlackBerry smartphones. The ad revolves around an office that is implementing its own bring-your-own-device policy and is meant to show that both the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II are ideal business phones that can enable greater creativity. While most workers in the ad happily switch to Samsung smartphones after the BYOD policy is put in place, one of them insists on clinging to his BlackBerry, which prompts one of his coworkers to ask, “Are you finally going to retire that thing?” The full video is posted below.
[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 OS walkthrough, BlackBerry Z10 pricing]
PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Sebastian Junger wishes his latest Sundance Film Festival documentary never had to be made.
It's been a bittersweet return for Junger at Sundance, where his war chronicle "Restrepo" won the top documentary prize three years ago.
Junger's back with "Which Way Is the Front Line from Here? The Life and Time of Tim Hetherington," a portrait of his "Restrepo" co-director, who was killed covering fighting in Libya in April 2011. The film debuts April 18 on HBO.
Junger and producer James Brabazon, a long-time colleague with whom Hetherington covered combat in Liberia, were glad to share the film with Sundance audiences but uneasy coming to a festival that's billed as a celebration of film.
"It's an odd feeling. James and I are maybe the only filmmakers in the town who are in some ways quite sad our film exists," Junger said in an interview alongside Brabazon. "But it's also our opportunity to sort of communicate how extraordinary our good friend Tim Hetherington was.
"So I'm walking around, I'm seeing restaurants and street corners where Tim and I had conversations. I'm sort of flashing back. Yeah, it's a very kind of poignant experience."
A portrait of a U.S. platoon in Afghanistan, "Restrepo" earned an Academy Award nomination for best documentary. Six weeks after attending the Oscars, Hetherington was killed by shrapnel from a mortar round.
"Which Way Is the Front Line" chronicles Hetherington's early life in Great Britain, where he studied photography and first went overseas in 1999 to cover young soccer players in Liberia. In 2003, he returned there with veteran war photojournalist Brabazon to cover rebels trying to overthrow President Charles Taylor.
In 2007, Junger, author of the best-seller "The Perfect Storm," enlisted Hetherington to shoot photos and video for "Restrepo." The two spent a year filming a platoon in one of Afghanistan's most dangerous war zones, capturing both the boredom of waiting around for the fighting and tragedy as U.S. soldiers lost close friends in combat.
Hetherington was not the usual objective, fly-on-the-wall photojournalist. The new film reveals him as a chronicler of combat but also a humanitarian who engaged with his subjects and put his own life at risk to help them.
Brabazon recounts a day in Liberia when a doctor treating rebels was accused of being a government spy. A rebel leader dragged the man away at gunpoint, and Brabazon, who already had witnessed executions in Liberia, was convinced he was about to shoot video of another.
Hetherington was shooting video right next to him and stepped in to grab the gun hand of the rebel leader. He talked the man down, telling him not to shoot the doctor because he was the only medic the rebels had to tend their wounded.
"That for me more than anything demonstrated Tim's courage, bravery and central humanity," Brabazon said. "That wasn't another picture or part of the story for him. That was something that he needed to involve himself in as a human being with a very specific and concrete outcome. That person survived and was able to continue treating the wounded. That's how Tim saw war."
Hetherington had talked about leaving combat coverage behind, starting a family and settling down in a less-dangerous lifestyle. Though Hetherington had called Libya his last trip to a war zone, Junger and Brabazon said they're not sure he would have followed through and given up the front lines despite new opportunities that "Restrepo" had opened for him.
Junger and Hetherington had enjoyed the glitz of the Oscars, but they definitely felt out of place.
"If you're in the Hollywood world, the red carpet is in some ways, it's a savage sort of competition for attention," Junger said. "It's their combat zone, and we were just visiting it. ... We're kind of going to the zoo and seeing the pretty animals in some sense."
Hetherington enjoyed it and was bemused by all the attention, Junger said. Yet throughout Oscar season, the Arab Spring revolts were erupting in Egypt, Libya and elsewhere in Middle East. Hetherington and Junger kept telling each other they should be there rather than parading around Hollywood in tuxedos.
Soon after, Hetherington was there, back on the front lines.
"He is probably the only person who's managed to do this. He went from the red carpet at the Oscars to dead in a war zone in six weeks," Junger said. "People who make films that go to the Oscars usually don't get killed in war zones, and people who go to war zones aren't often on the red carpet. And he managed to do both."
Obesity carries yet another surprising risk, according to a new study: obese drivers are more likely than normal weight drivers to die in a car crash.
Researchers reviewed data on accidents recorded in the Fatality Analysis Reporting System, managed by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Beginning with 41,283 collisions, the scientists selected accidents in which the cars, trucks or minivans were the same size.
Then the investigators gathered statistics on height and weight from driver’s licenses and categorized the drivers of wrecked cars into four groups based on body mass index. The study, published online Monday in the Emergency Medicine Journal, also recorded information on seat-belt use, time of day of the accident, driver sex, driver alcohol use, air bag deployment and collision type.
In the analysis, there were 6,806 drivers involved in 3,403 accidents, all of which involved at least one fatality. Among the 5,225 drivers for whom the researchers had complete information, 3 percent were underweight (a B.M.I of less than 18.5), 46 percent were of normal weight (18.5 to 24.9), 33 percent were overweight (25 to 29.9) and 18 percent were obese (a B.M.I. above 30).
Drivers with a B.M.I. under 18 and those between 25 and 29.9 had death rates about the same as people of normal weight, the researchers found. But among the obese, the higher the B.M.I., the more likely a driver was to die in an accident.
A B.M.I. of 30 to 34.9 was linked to a 21 percent increase in risk of death, and a number between 35 and 39.9 to a 51 percent increase. Drivers with a B.M.I. above 40 were 81 percent more likely to die than those of normal weight in similar accidents.
The reasons for the association are unclear, but they probably involve both vehicle design and the poorer health of obese people. The authors cite one study using obese and normal cadavers, in which obese people had significantly more forward movement away from the vehicle seat before the seat belt engaged because the additional soft tissue prevented the belt from fitting tightly.
“This adds one more item to the long list of negative consequences of obesity,” said the lead author, Thomas M. Rice, an epidemiologist with the Transportation Research and Education Center of the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s one more reason to lose weight.”
Other factors that might have affected fatality rates — the age and sex of the driver, the vehicle type, seat-belt use, alcohol use, air bag deployment and whether the collision was head-on or not — did not explain the differences between obese and normal weight drivers.
“Vehicle designers are teaching to the test — designing so that crash-test dummies do well,” Dr. Rice said. “But crash-test dummies are typically normal size adults and children. They’re not designed to account for our nation’s changing body types.”
The craft beer revolution kept charging ahead in 2012, when 12% more barrels were shipped than the year before, the sixth straight year of growth.
Of 27 major craft brewers – all of which saw some gain – 16 had double digit increases, according to industry research group Beer Marketer’s Insights' Craft Brew News publication.
In all, the craft beer industry enjoyed a 1.5 million barrel boost to 13.7 million barrels total.
Samuel Adams Boston Lager maker Boston Beer led the segment, with craft beer shipments rising as much as 3% to nearly 2.2 million barrels. But the company’s share of the industry has slid to 15.7% from 21% in 2008, according to the report.
Sierra Nevada, a brewer based in Chico, is the second largest in the sector. It’s 12.6% shipping gain to 966,000 barrels was its best advancement in more than a decade.
Petaluma brewer Lagunitas Brewing had a blockbuster year, with shipments booming 46% to 235,000 barrels. The company – which makes labels such as Hop Stoopid Ale and Little Sumpin’ Sumpin’ Ale, has more than quintupled its shipments in five years.
Unlike the general beer industry, where Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors control some 80% of business, craft beer operators exist in more of a diaspora. More than three-quarters of the craft beer segment is split among 2,000 smaller rivals.
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Beer shipments fall in 2011 to lowest level since 2003
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SAN LUIS OBISPO — A park ranger flagged down the elderly driver as he left a lonely beach parking lot 45 minutes past closing time.
George Taylor, 86, had cuts around his neck and on his wrists. He was disoriented, and there was a body in the back seat with a plastic trash bag cinched around its neck.
"Is that a mannequin?" the ranger asked, scanning the car with his flashlight.
Taylor said that it was his wife, 81-year-old Gewynn Taylor, and that she had been dead since the sun went down that December day. He and Gewynn, his wife of 65 years, had a suicide pact, he said, and he had failed.
The incident shocked a legion of friends who knew the couple from their frequent appearances before the San Luis Obispo County Board of Supervisors, where for years they had protested a massive sewer project in their tiny town of Los Osos.
It also presented local authorities with a problem that has vexed prosecutors and profoundly troubled families across the United States: Where does justice lie for those who, with no apparent motives other than love, help family members fulfill their last wishes and end their lives?
At least twice in the last year, prosecutors in California decided not to bring charges in similar cases. In other instances, assisted suicide convictions can result in light sentences; on Friday, an Orange County social worker received three years' probation for providing an 86-year-old veteran who wanted to end his life with his final meal: Oxycontin crushed into yogurt.
Both George and Gewynn Taylor were active in community causes. By all accounts, they were constant companions. Until recently, they enjoyed doing chores around a small ranch they owned and visited from time to time. Both also were "shepherds" of the late Dr. Jack Kevorkian, the controversial doctor who practiced and preached euthanasia, according to a court document.
George Taylor, charged with the felony of assisting suicide, pleaded guilty last month.
On Wednesday, San Luis Obispo County Superior Court Judge Ginger E. Garrett sentenced him to three years' probation and two days in jail — time already served after his arrest Dec. 10, 2012, at Montana de Oro State Park. His attorney, Ilan Funke-Bilu, said his client would continue to receive mental health counseling and has "bonded" with his therapist.
At his brief hearing, the soft-spoken, slender Taylor, a retired Los Angeles firefighter, expressed gratitude but had no further comment.
In an interview, his attorney called the outcome of the case "a perfect storm of wisdom" — prosecutors brought lesser charges, and the judge was lenient.
The couple had disclosed their pact to their daughter and a few others close to them but did not reveal details, Funke-Bilu said.
"They were sharp, bright and warm," he said. "There was nothing wrong with their thinking. They were active people who always promised one another that if they couldn't lead their lives the way they felt they should, then that would be the end of it."
The attorney said medical problems were taking a toll on the couple but declined to elaborate. Neither had a terminal illness, he said, "but terminal diseases weren't the test for them."
It also wasn't the top consideration for Jack Koency, of Laguna Niguel. At 86, Koency was still mobile but had an acquaintance, Elizabeth Barrett, 66, help him end his life. Barrett bought him yogurt, a bottle of brandy and heartburn medication to help him keep the Oxycontin-and-yogurt mixture down.
Prosecutors in the 2011 case said they weighed several factors in recommending probation, including the wishes of Koency's family and "the nature of the crime."
In San Luis Obispo, Jerret Gran, a deputy district attorney, said investigators found no malice in George Taylor's action.
"It wasn't murder," Gran said. "There was an intent to help her kill herself, not an intent to kill her."
Cases filed under California's assisted suicide law rarely go to trial. Legal experts note that jurors might be torn about convicting elderly defendants they see as legitimately bereaved if not entirely blameless.
