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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The Future Is Now: What We Imagined for 2013 — 10 Years Ago

Predicting the future is hard, but that doesn’t stop us from trying. We’re Wired, after all.

Ten years ago, we boldly declared that we’d be living with phones on our wrists, data-driven goggles on our eyes and gadgets that would safety-test our food for us. Turns out, a lot of the things Sonia Zjawinski conceptualized in our “Living in 2013” feature way back in 2003 were remarkably close to what we’ve seen. We even got the iPhone right (sort of).

And so, as we look back on life in 2013 circa 2003, we’re going to spin it forward once again to tell you what life will be like in 2023.

Predicted for 2003 (above):

Apple redefined the desktop, laptop, and MP3 player. The next insanely great thing: an LCD arm cuff that includes a PDA, wireless Internet, a mini iPod, and, of course, a phone. The iPhone bracelet's motion sensor allows you to scroll through apps and files with the flick of a wrist, its clasp holds a digicam for use during video calls, and its wireless ear clip lets you listen and speak to callers. And everything can be done via voice recognition or touchscreen. Talk about the right call. Illustration: Kenn Brown.

Delivered in 2013:

Hey, it turns out, Apple gave us an iPhone after all! We got the name right, and even seemed to know about FaceTime. But the form factor details? Not so much. While you can wear an iPod nano as a watch, or make a call with your iPhone, if you want the watch-plus-phone combination that we teased you with 10 years ago, for now you'll need to pick up a secondary gadget that can transmit to your phone, like this Pebble. Photo: Ariel Zambelich/Wired.

Looking ahead to 2023:

Here's the thing, the screen on a watch is simply too small to display lots of data. And as an input device? Forget it. Yet keeping your phone out of sight means you often can't interact with your data on the go. The obvious answer is a variable size display. Samsung has already demonstrated a pretty convincing foldable OLED display prototype. Given 10 more years, we can easily see one screen serving multiple purposes by taking on multiple form factors, depending on whether you wanted to simply glance at it to read a message, or unfold it to write your reply. Illustration: Simon Lutrin/Wired

Mat Honan is a senior writer for Wired's Gadget Lab and the co-founder of the Knight-Batten award-winning Longshot magazine.

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ESPN’s Hannah Storm returns 3 weeks after accident

NEW YORK (AP) — ESPN anchor Hannah Storm returns to the air New Year’s Day, exactly three weeks after she was seriously burned in a propane gas grill accident at her home.

Storm suffered second-degree burns on her chest and hands, and first-degree burns to her face and neck. She lost her eyebrows and eyelashes, and roughly half her hair.

Storm will host ABC’s telecast of the 2013 Rose Parade on Tuesday. Her left hand will be bandaged and she said viewers might notice a difference in her hair texture where extensions have been added.

“I’m a little nervous about things I used to take for granted,” she said by phone this weekend from Pasadena, Calif. “Little things like putting on makeup and even turning pages on my script.”

The award-winning sportscaster and producer was preparing dinner outside her home in Connecticut on the night of Dec. 11 when she noticed the flame on the grill had gone out. She turned off the gas and when she reignited it “there was an explosion and a wall of fire came at me.”

“It was like you see in a movie, it happened in a split-second,” she said. “A neighbor said he thought a tree had fallen through the roof, it was that loud. It blew the doors off the grill.”

With her left hand, she tore off her burning shirt. She tried to use another part of her shirt to extinguish the flames that engulfed her head and chest, while yelling for help. Her 15-year-old daughter, Hannah, called 911 and a computer technician who was working in the house grabbed some ice as Storm tried to cool the burns.

Soon, police and rescue teams arrived at the house. Storm’s husband, NBC sportscaster Dan Hicks, also had returned home with another of the couple’s three daughters. As her mother was being treated, the younger Hannah calmly said something that, days later, her mom could laugh about.

“OK, Mommy, I’m going to do my homework now,” she said.

Storm was taken by ambulance to the Trauma and Burn Center at Westchester Medical Center and was treated for 24 hours.

“I didn’t see my face until the next day and you wonder how it’s going to look,” she said. “I was pretty shocked. But my overarching thought was I’ve covered events with military members who have been through a lot worse than me, and they’ve come through. I kept thinking, ‘I can do this. I’m fortunate.’”

Other than going to Christmas Eve Mass, Storm hadn’t been outside until her trip to California. ESPN reworked its anchor schedule while she was recovering, and NBC and the Golf Channel rearranged their staffing while Hicks attended to his wife.

Storm is set to host her fifth Rose Parade, with some changes. She’s left-handed, and taking notes is almost impossible. Dressing and showering are challenges, too.

Storm said that long before her accident, she’d been inspired by Iraq War veteran, actor and “Dancing With the Stars” winner J.R. Martinez, the grand marshal at last year’s parade. He was severely burned in a land mine accident while serving overseas.

One attraction of this year’s parade that she was eager to see — the Nurses’ Float, and she hoped to use that moment on air to thank everyone who had taken care of her.

Storm wants to anchor “SportsCenter” in Bristol, Conn., next Sunday. After that, the Notre Dame alum is ready to go in person to watch the No. 1 Irish play Alabama in the national championship game at Miami. She said the school reached out after hearing about her injuries and had been very supportive.

“More than anything, I feel gratitude,” she said. “Something like this really makes you appreciate everything you have, even the chance to wake up on New Year’s Day and do your job.”

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Hispanic Pregnancies Fall in U.S. as Women Choose Smaller Families

ORLANDO, Fla. — Hispanic women in the United States, who have generally had the highest fertility rates in the country, are choosing to have fewer children. Both immigrant and native-born Latinas had steeper birthrate declines from 2007 to 2010 than other groups, including non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians, a drop some demographers and sociologists attribute to changes in the views of many Hispanic women about motherhood.

As a result, in 2011, the American birthrate hit a record low, with 63 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, led by the decline in births to immigrant women. The national birthrate is now about half what it was during the baby boom years, when it peaked in 1957 at 122.7 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age.

The decline in birthrates was steepest among Mexican-American women and women who immigrated from Mexico, at 25.7 percent. This has reversed a trend in which immigrant mothers accounted for a rising share of births in the United States, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. In 2010, birthrates among all Hispanics reached their lowest level in 20 years, the center found.

The sudden drop-off, which coincided with the onset of the recession, suggests that attitudes have changed since the days when older generations of Latinos prized large families and more closely followed Roman Catholic teachings, which forbid artificial contraception.

Interviews with young Latinas, as well as reproductive health experts, show that the reasons for deciding to have fewer children are many, involving greater access to information about contraceptives and women’s health, as well as higher education.

When Marucci Guzman decided to marry Tom Beard here seven years ago, the idea of having a large family — a Guzman tradition back in Puerto Rico — was out of the question.

“We thought one, maybe two,” said Ms. Guzman Beard, who gave birth to a daughter, Attalai, four years ago.

Asked whether Attalai might ever get her wish for a little brother or sister, Ms. Guzman Beard, 29, a vice president at a public service organization, said: “I want to go to law school. I’m married. I work. When do I have time?”

The decisions were not made in a vacuum but amid a sputtering economy, which, interviewees said, weighed heavily on their minds.

Latinos suffered larger percentage declines in household wealth than white, black or Asian households from 2005 to 2009, and, according to the Pew report, their rates of poverty and unemployment also grew more sharply after the recession began.

Prolonged recessions do produce dips in the birthrate, but a drop as large as Latinos have experienced is atypical, said William H. Frey, a sociologist and demographer at the Brookings Institution. “It is surprising,” Mr. Frey said. “When you hear about a decrease in the birthrate, you don’t expect Latinos to be at the forefront of the trend.”

D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center and an author of the report, said that in past recessions, when overall fertility dipped, “it bounced back over time when the economy got better.”

“If history repeats itself, that will happen again,” she said.

But to Mr. Frey, the decrease has signaled much about the aspirations of young Latinos to become full and permanent members of the upwardly mobile middle class, despite the challenges posed by the struggling economy.

Jersey Garcia, a 37-year-old public health worker in Miami, is in the first generation of her family to live permanently outside of the Dominican Republic, where her maternal and paternal grandmothers had a total of 27 children.

“I have two right now,” Ms. Garcia said. “It’s just a good number that I can handle.”

“Before, I probably would have been pressured to have more,” she added. “I think living in the United States, I don’t have family members close by to help me, and it takes a village to raise a child. So the feeling is, keep what you have right now.”

But that has not been easy. Even with health insurance, Ms. Garcia’s preferred method of long-term birth control, an IUD, has been unaffordable. Birth control pills, too, with a $50 co-payment a month, were too costly for her budget. “I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “So what I’ve been doing is condoms.”

According to research by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the overwhelming majority of Latinas have used contraception at some point in their lives, but they face economic barriers to consistent use. As a consequence, Latinas still experience unintended pregnancy at a rate higher than non-Hispanic whites, according to the institute.

And while the share of births to teenage mothers has dropped over the past two decades for all women, the highest share of births to teenage mothers is among native-born Hispanics.

“There are still a lot of barriers to information and access to contraception that exist,” said Jessica Gonzáles-Rojas, 36, the executive director of the institute, who has one son. “We still need to do a lot of work.”

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Senate Passes Tax Increases on Wealthy Americans

Alex Brandon/Associated Press

Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Monday after a meeting with Senate Democrats on the fiscal negotiations.

WASHINGTON — The Senate, in a predawn vote two hours after the deadline passed to avert automatic tax increases, overwhelmingly approved legislation on Tuesday that would allow tax rates to rise only on affluent Americans while temporarily suspending sweeping, across-the-board spending cuts.

The deal, worked out in furious negotiations between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, passed 89 to 8, with just three Democrats and five Republicans voting no. Although it lost the support of some of the Senate’s most conservative members, the broad coalition that pushed the accord across the finish line could portend swift House passage as early as New Year’s Day.

Quick passage before the markets reopen on Wednesday would be likely to negate any economic damage from Tuesday’s breach of the “fiscal cliff” and largely spare the nation’s economy from the one-two punch of large tax increases and across-the-board military and domestic spending cuts in the New Year.

“This shouldn’t be the model for how to do things around here,” Mr. McConnell said just after 1:30 a.m. “But I think we can say we’ve done some good for the country.”

Mr. Biden, after a late New Year’s Eve meeting with leery Senate Democrats to sell the accord, said: “You surely shouldn’t predict how the House is going to vote. But I feel very, very good.”

The eight senators who voted no included Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and a potential presidential candidate in 2016, two of the Senate’s most ardent small-government Republicans, Rand Paul of Kentucky and Mike Lee of Utah, and Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, who as a former Finance Committee chairman helped secure passage of the Bush-era tax cuts, then opposed making almost all of them permanent on Tuesday. Two moderate Democrats, Thomas R. Carper of Delaware and Michael Bennet of Colorado, also voted no, as did the liberal Democrat Tom Harkin, who said the White House had given away too much in the compromise. Senator Richard C. Shelby, Republican of Alabama, also voted no.

The House Speaker, John A. Boehner, and the Republican House leadership said the House would “honor its commitment to consider the Senate agreement.” But, they added, “decisions about whether the House will seek to accept or promptly amend the measure will not be made until House members — and the American people — have been able to review the legislation.”

Even with that cautious assessment, Republican House aides said a vote Tuesday was possible.

Under the agreement, tax rates would jump to 39.6 percent from 35 percent for individual incomes over $400,000 and couples over $450,000, while tax deductions and credits would start phasing out on incomes as low as $250,000, a clear victory for President Obama, who ran for re-election vowing to impose taxes on the wealthy.

Just after the vote, Mr. Obama called for quick House passage of the legislation.

“While neither Democrats nor Republicans got everything they wanted, this agreement is the right thing to do for our country and the House should pass it without delay,” he said.

Democrats also secured a full year’s extension of unemployment insurance without strings attached and without offsetting spending cuts, a $30 billion cost. But the two-percentage point cut to the payroll tax that the president secured in late 2010 lapsed at midnight and will not be renewed.

In one final piece of the puzzle, negotiators agreed to put off $110 billion in across-the-board cuts to military and domestic programs for two months while broader deficit-reduction talks continue. Those cuts begin to go into force on Wednesday, and that deadline, too, might be missed before Congress approves the legislation.

To secure votes, Senator Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, also told Democrats the legislation would cancel a pending Congressional pay raise — putting opponents in the politically difficult position of supporting a raise — and extend an expiring dairy policy that would have seen the price of milk double in some parts of the country.

The nature of the deal ensured that the running war between the White House and Congressional Republicans on spending and taxes would continue at least until the spring. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner formally notified Congress that the government reached its statutory borrowing limit on New Year’s Eve. Through some creative accounting tricks, the Treasury Department can put off action for perhaps two months, but Congress must act to keep the government from defaulting just when the “pause” on pending cuts is up. Then in late March, a law financing the government expires.

Jennifer Steinhauer and Robert Pear contributed reporting.

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Venezuela's Hugo Chavez said to suffer 'complications'

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is confronting "new complications" due to a respiratory infection nearly three weeks after undergoing cancer surgery, his vice president said in Cuba as he visited the ailing leader for the first time since his operation.

Vice President Nicolas Maduro looked weary and spoke with a solemn expression in a televised address from Havana on Sunday. He described Chavez's condition as delicate.

"Several minutes ago we were with President Chavez. We greeted each other and he himself referred to these complications," Maduro said, reading from a prepared statement.

The vice president's comments suggest an increasingly difficult fight for Chavez. The Venezuelan leader has not been seen or heard from since undergoing his fourth cancer-related surgery Dec. 11, and government officials have said he might not return in time for his scheduled Jan. 10 inauguration for a new six-year term.

"The president gave us precise instructions so that, after finishing the visit, we would tell the (Venezuelan) people about his current health condition," Maduro said. "President Chavez's state of health continues to be delicate, with complications that are being attended to, in a process not without risks."

Maduro was seated alongside Chavez's eldest daughter, Rosa, and son-in-law Jorge Arreaza, as well as Attorney General Cilia Flores. He held up a copy of a newspaper confirming that his message was recorded on Sunday.

"Thanks to his physical and spiritual strength, Comandante Chavez is facing this difficult situation," Maduro said.

Maduro said he had met various times with Chavez's medical team and relatives. He said he would remain in Havana "for the coming hours" but didn't specify how long.

Maduro, who arrived in Havana on Saturday for a sudden and unexpected trip, is the highest-ranking Venezuelan official to see Chavez since the surgery in Cuba, where the president's mentor Fidel Castro has reportedly made regular visits to check on him.

Before flying to Cuba, Maduro said that Energy Minister Hector Navarro would be in charge of government affairs in the meantime.

"The situation does not look good. The fact that Maduro himself would go to Cuba, leaving Hector Navarro in charge only seems understandable if Chavez's health is precarious," said David Smilde, a University of Georgia sociologist and analyst for the Washington Office on Latin America think tank.

Smilde said that Maduro probably made the trip "to be able to talk to Chavez himself and perhaps to talk to the Castros and other Cuban advisers about how to navigate the possibility of Chavez not being able to be sworn in on Jan. 10."

"Mentioning twice in his nationally televised speech that Chavez has suffered new complications only reinforces the appearance that the situation is serious," Smilde said.

Before his operation, Chavez acknowledged he faced risks and designated Maduro as his successor, telling supporters they should vote for the vice president if a new presidential election were necessary.

Chavez said at the time that his cancer had come back despite previous surgeries, chemotherapy and radiation treatment. He has been fighting an undisclosed type of pelvic cancer since June 2011.

Medical experts say that it's common for patients who have undergone major surgeries to suffer respiratory infections and that how a patient fares can vary widely from a quick recovery in a couple of days to a fight for life on a respirator.

Maduro's latest update differed markedly from last Monday, when he had said he received a phone call from the president and that Chavez was up and walking.

The vice president spoke on Sunday below a picture of 19th century independence hero Simon Bolivar, the inspiration of Chavez's leftist Bolivarian Revolution movement.

Maduro said that Chavez had sent year-end greetings to his homeland and a "warm hug to the boys and girls of Venezuela."

The vice president expressed faith that Chavez's "immense will to live and the care of the best medical specialists will help our president successfully fight this new battle." He concluded his message saying: "Long live Chavez."

Chavez has been in office since 1999 and was re-elected in October, three months after he had announced that his latest tests showed he was cancer-free.

Opposition politicians have criticized a lack of detailed information about Chavez's condition, and last week repeated their demands for a full medical report.

Information Minister Ernesto Villegas defended the government's handling of the situation, saying during a televised panel discussion on Sunday night that Chavez "has told the truth in his worst moments" throughout his presidency.

He also referred to a new surge of rumors about Chavez's condition and called for respect for the president and his family.

Villegas said a government-organized New Year's Eve concert in a downtown Caracas plaza had been canceled, and he urged Venezuelans to pray for Chavez.

Chavez's daughter Maria, who has been with the president since his surgery, said in a message on her Twitter account: "Thank you people of Venezuela. Thank you people of the world. You and your love have always been our greatest strength! God is with us! We love you!"

Allies of the president also responded on Twitter, repeating the phrase: "Chavez lives and will triumph."

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In Memoriam: 9 Tech Titans Who Died in 2012

"We made machines for the masses," said Jack Tramiel, the founder of the company that gave the world the Commodore 64. Then he nodded to the man sitting beside him, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. "They made machines for the classes."

The year was 2007, and Tramiel was on stage at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Commodore 64, a machine that debuted in August 1982 with a price tag of $595 and was soon selling for a mere $199. That made it several hundred dollars cheaper than the Apple II offered by Wozniak and fellow Apple man Steve Jobs — not to mention the IBM PC — and according to Tramiel, Commodore sold nearly half a million machines a month before he left the company in 1984.

All told, Tramiel said that night, somewhere between 22 million and 30 million Commodore 64s were sold, which likely makes it the best-selling home computer of all time. "We sold half that many," said ex-IBM exec William Love, referring to the original IBM PC.

Tramiel passed away this past April at the age of 83, and though he may not have been a household name, the Commodore 64 certainly was.

He was just one of several tech titans who died over the past year. None had the name recognition of a Steve Jobs -- who passed in 2011 -- but they may have moved our world in bigger ways. Among those that passed in 2012 are the IBMer who invented the bar code and the Zenith engineer who devised the first wireless TV remote -- not to mention one of the physicist who helped built the atom bomb dropped on Nagasaki. Click on the images above to remember them all.

Above:

Jack Tramiel was born to a Jewish family in Poland in 1928, and during the war, he was sent to Auschwitz, before he was moved with his father to a labor camp in Germany. He was freed in 1945 and emigrated to the States two years later, and in the mid-1950's, he founded a business called Commodore.

At first, it dealt in typewriters, but then it moved to adding machines, calculators, and, yes, home computers. After he was forced out of Commodore in 1984, Tramiel bought the consumer division of game outfit Atari and reformed it as Atari Corporation, which he ran until the end of the decade.

Photo: Sal Veder / AP

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List: No love for ‘fiscal cliff,’ ‘spoiler alert’

DETROIT (AP) — Spoiler alert: This story contains words and phrases that some people want to ban from the English language. “Spoiler alert” is among them. So are “kick the can down the road,” ”trending” and “bucket list.”

A dirty dozen have landed on the 38th annual List of Words to be Banished from the Queen’s English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness. The nonbinding, tongue-in-cheek decree released Monday by northern Michigan’s Lake Superior State University is based on nominations submitted from the United States, Canada and beyond.

“Spoiler alert,” the seemingly thoughtful way to warn readers or viewers about looming references to a key plot point in a film or TV show, nevertheless passed its use-by date for many, including Joseph Foly, of Fremont, Calif. He argued in his submission the phrase is “used as an obnoxious way to show one has trivial information and is about to use it, no matter what.”

At the risk of further offense, here’s another spoiler alert: The phrase receiving the most nominations this year is “fiscal cliff,” banished because of its overuse by media outlets when describing across-the-board federal tax increases and spending cuts that economists say could harm the economy in the new year without congressional action.

“You can’t turn on the news without hearing this,” said Christopher Loiselle, of Midland, Mich., in his submission. “I’m equally worried about the River of Debt and Mountain of Despair.”

Other terms coming in for a literary lashing are “superfood,” ”guru,” ”job creators” and “double down.”

University spokesman Tom Pink said that in nearly four decades, the Sault Ste. Marie school has “banished” around 900 words or phrases, and somehow the whole idea has survived rapidly advancing technology and diminishing attention spans.

Nominations used to come by mail, then fax and via the school’s website, he said. Now most come through the university’s Facebook page. That’s fitting, since social media has helped accelerate the life cycle of certain words and phrases, such as this year’s entry “YOLO” — “you only live once.”

“The list surprises me in one way or another every year, and the same way every year: I’m always surprised how people still like it, love it,” he said.

Rounding out the list are “job creators/creation,” ”boneless wings” and “passion/passionate.” Those who nominated the last one say they are tired of hearing about a company’s “passion” as a substitute for providing a service or product for money.

Andrew Foyle, of Bristol, England, said it’s reached the point where “passion” is the only ingredient that keeps a chef from preparing “seared tuna” that tastes “like dust swept from a station platform.”

“Apparently, it’s insufficient to do it ably, with skill, commitment or finesse,” Foyle said. “Passionate, begone!”

As usual, the etymological exercise — or exorcise — only goes so far. Past lists haven’t eradicated “viral,” “amazing,” ”LOL” or “man cave” from everyday use.

___

Follow Jeff Karoub on Twitter: http://twitter.com/jeffkaroub

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Chinese Firm Is Cleared to Buy American DNA Sequencing Company

Ramin Rahimian for The New York Times

DNA sequencing machines at Complete Genomics in California. The firm dismissed concerns about its acquisition.

The federal government has given national security clearance to the controversial purchase of an American DNA sequencing company by a Chinese firm.

The Chinese firm, BGI-Shenzhen, said in a statement this weekend that its acquisition of Complete Genomics, based in Mountain View, Calif., had been cleared by the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews the national security implications of foreign takeovers of American companies. The deal still requires antitrust clearance by the Federal Trade Commission.

Some scientists, politicians and industry executives had said the takeover represented a threat to American competitiveness in DNA sequencing, a technology that is becoming crucial for the development of drugs, diagnostics and improved crops.

The fact that the $117.6 million deal was controversial at all reflects a change in the genomics community.

A decade ago, the Human Genome Project, in which scientists from many nations helped unravel the genetic blueprint of mankind, was celebrated for its spirit of international cooperation. One of the participants in the project was BGI, which was then known as the Beijing Genomics Institute.

But with DNA sequencing now becoming a big business and linchpin of the biotechnology industry, international rivalries and nationalism are starting to move front and center in any acquisition.

Much of the alarm about the deal has been raised by Illumina, a San Diego company that is the market leader in sequencing machines. It has potentially the most to lose from the deal because BGI might buy fewer Illumina products and even become a competitor. Weeks after the BGI deal was announced, Illumina made its own belated bid for Complete Genomics, offering 15 cents a share more than BGI’s bid of $3.15. But Complete Genomics rebuffed Illumina, saying such a merger would never clear antitrust review.

Illumina also hired a Washington lobbyist, the Glover Park Group, to stir up opposition to the deal in Congress. Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, was the only member of Congress known to have publicly expressed concern.

BGI and Complete Genomics point out that Illumina has long sold its sequencing machines — including a record-setting order of 128 high-end machines — to BGI without raising any security concerns. Sequencing machines have not been subject to export controls like aerospace equipment, lasers, sensors and other gear that can have clear military uses.

“Illumina has never previously considered its business with BGI as ‘sensitive’ in the least,” Ye Yin, the chief operating officer of BGI, said in a November letter to Complete Genomics that was made public in a regulatory filing. In the letter, Illumina was accused of “obvious hypocrisy.”

BGI and Complete said that Illumina was trying to derail the agreement and acquire Complete Genomics itself in order to “eliminate its closest competitor, Complete.”

BGI is already one of the most prolific DNA sequencers in the world, but it buys the sequencing machines it uses from others, mainly Illumina.

Illumina, joined by some American scientists, said it worried that if BGI gained access to Complete’s sequencing technology, the Chinese company might use low prices to undercut the American sequencing companies that now dominate the industry.

Some also said that with Complete Genomics providing an American base, BGI would have access to more DNA samples from Americans, helping it compile a huge database of genetic information that could be used to develop drugs and diagnostic tests. Some also worried about protection of the privacy of genetic information.

“What’s to stop them from mining genomic data of American samples to some unknown nefarious end?” Elaine R. Mardis, co-director of the genome sequencing center at Washington University in St. Louis, said in an e-mail.

Dr. Mardis could not specify what kind of nefarious end she imagined. But opponents of the deal cited a November article in The Atlantic saying that in the future, pathogens could be genetically engineered to attack particular individuals, including the president, based on their DNA sequences.

BGI and Complete Genomics dismissed such concerns as preposterous.

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2 Sides in Talks Inch Closer but No Fiscal Deal on Final Day

WASHINGTON — A frantic round of late-night negotiations on Sunday between Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, moved the Senate close to a deal to stave off hundreds of billions of dollars in tax increases and across-the-board spending cuts that would begin to kick in on Tuesday, according to people familiar with the talks.

T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

“It looks awful,” Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat, said after tense negotiations on Sunday. More Photos »

But with almost no time on the clock and the Senate convening at 11 a.m. Monday, officials cautioned that optimism had risen in past days only to burst hours later. An objection by just one senator could derail a deal until the next Congress convenes on Thursday.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican and the House majority whip, advised House members at 9 a.m. “to remain close to the Capitol as additional legislation and votes are possible pending action from the Senate.”

The last of a round of calls between Mr. Biden and Mr. McConnell ended around midnight, with both men promising to resume talks Monday morning.

“The leader and the V.P. continued their discussion late into the evening and will continue to work toward a solution,” Don Stewart, a spokesman for Mr. McConnell, said on Monday.

Both sides were already close Sunday on the central issue surrounding whether Congress would intervene before the nation careened off the so-called fiscal cliff: What would be the income threshold for the families that would absorb tax increases beginning Tuesday? Barely a week after House Republicans refused to vote to allow taxes to rise on income over $1 million, Senate Republicans proposed allowing tax rates to rise on income over $450,000 for individuals and $550,000 for couples. Democrats countered with a proposal to extend expiring Bush-era tax cuts for up to $360,000 for individuals and $450,000 for couples. For both sides, that meant major movement. Mr. Obama has been holding firm at a $250,000 threshold.

But Democrats were inching upward, possibly to $450,000 for all households. That had liberal Democrats nervous but centrists optimistic that a deal was in reach that could pass both the Senate and the House. The House Rules Committee on Sunday night was considering an emergency rules change that would suspend requirements that legislation be posted for at least 48 hours, so that a deal could be rushed to the floor.

The two sides are also getting closer on a new rate of taxation on inherited estates, one source said. The biggest stumbling block remains Democrats’ demand for a one-year “pause” on across-the-board spending cuts, which Republicans say can happen only with other up-front spending cuts.

In the balance are more than a half-trillion dollars in tax increases on virtually every working American and across-the-board spending cuts that are scheduled to begin Tuesday. Taken together, they threaten to push the economy back into recession.

The weekend saw a round of volatile negotiations as senators tried to reach a deal, only to be stalled for hours over a Republican demand that any accord must include a new way of calculating inflation that would mean smaller increases in payments to beneficiaries of programs like Social Security. Democrats halted the negotiations, which did not resume until Mr. McConnell made an emergency call to Mr. Biden and the White House sent the president’s chief legislative negotiator to meet with Senate Democrats. Soon after, Republicans withdrew their demand and discussions resumed, but little progress was made.

“It looks awful,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the second-ranking Democrat. “I’m sure the American people are saying, with so much at stake why are they waiting so late to get this done?”

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, who had said early Sunday that he thought a deal was within reach, said later on his Twitter feed, “I think we’re going over the cliff.”

Weeks of negotiations between Mr. Obama and Speaker John A. Boehner inched toward a deal to avert the fiscal cliff, while locking in trillions of dollars in deficit reduction over 10 years and starting an effort to overhaul the tax code and entitlement programs like Medicare. But earlier this month, Mr. Boehner walked away from those talks.

Instead he tried to reach a much more modest deal to avoid a fiscal crisis by extending the expiring tax cuts for incomes under $1 million. When Mr. Boehner’s own Republican members revolted, he ceded negotiations to the Senate. But compromise has proved equally elusive in that chamber.

Absent a last-minute deal, Mr. Reid is expected to move on Monday to bring to a vote a stopgap measure pushed by Mr. Obama, which would retain lower tax rates for incomes below $250,000 and extend unemployment benefits. But it was not clear that would even get a vote. The objection of a single senator on Monday would run out the clock on the 112th Congress before a final tally could be taken.

Mr. Obama appeared on the NBC program “Meet the Press” on Sunday and implored Congress to act. “We have been talking to the Republicans ever since the election was over,” Mr. Obama said in the interview. “They have had trouble saying yes to a number of repeated offers.”

He added, “Now the pressure’s on Congress to produce.”

Robert Pear and John M. Broder contributed reporting.

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