Washed It!

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Perfection eluded Zenyatta in the Breeders’ Cup Classic on Saturday night when horse racing’s superstar lost for the first time after 19 consecutive wins.

Blame won by a head in a thrilling finish with the 6-year-old mare, who threaded her way through traffic from last place while the crowd of 72,739 urged her on down the stretch under the lights at Churchill Downs.

Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith blamed himself for the loss. He walked off the track with his head down, dirt stuck to his face.

“It was my fault,” he said, sobbing. “She should’ve won.”

It was so close, a matter of inches, the result had to be resolved by a photo — a picture that broke the hearts of not only Zenyatta’s owners and trainer but millions of fans around the world.

Blame went to the front in mid-stretch, then fought off another gutty run by Zenyatta, who lagged well behind 11 rivals — all boys — in her customary style.

Blame ran 1 1/4 miles in 2:02.28 and paid $12.40 to win at 5-1 odds. Fly Down was third, while Preakness winner Lookin At Lucky finished fourth.

Zenyatta was the sentimental even-money favorite, playing to the crowd at every chance on her way to the starting gate. She high-stepped her way to the paddock, playfully pawing the ground as they roared. Co-owner Ann Moss held her finger to her lips as a signal for the fans to quiet down.

Zenyatta proved she could beat the boys last year when she rallied from behind to win the $5 million Classic at Santa Anita. It was one of her 17 wins on synthetic surfaces in her home state of California.

This time, though, she was facing the deepest, most talented field of her career on a surface on which she had limited experience. Still, trainer John Shirreffs had said she preferred it to synthetic tracks.

It was her third time running on dirt; in her two previous races, she beat other girls at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas.

But Blame owned home-court advantage. He won twice before on dirt at Churchill, where Zenyatta had never raced.

“She ran an excellent race and just came up a little short,” Shirreffs said. “She ran her heart out.”

Zenyatta’s 19 consecutive wins tied her for most all-time with Peppers Pride, who retired last year after running against much lesser competition. Peppers Pride never raced outside New Mexico and all her wins came against fillies and mares.

American horses earned 12 victories over the two-day championships, with Europe-based horses winning twice.

Goldikova wins $2 million Mile race

Goldikova won the $2 million Mile at the Breeders’ Cup for the third consecutive year, giving Europe its first win of the two-day championships.

The 5-year-old mare bred in Ireland ran the distance on the turf in 1:35.16 on Saturday at Churchill Downs. She became the first three-time winner in the event’s 27-year history.

She paid $4.60 to win as the 6-5 favorite in the field of 11.

Zenyatta loses Breeders’ Cup Classic by a head to Blame

Weeks before the Deepwater Horizon explosion, oil company BP and subcontractor Halliburton were aware of test results showing that the cement mixture designed to seal the well was unstable — but they used it anyway, President Obama’s special commission investigating the environmental disaster reported Thursday.

The findings shed new light on troubles with the cement job on BP’s Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, which exploded April 20, killing 11 workers and causing the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history. The cement is supposed to secure the well pipes and keeps oil and gas from flowing up the well.

Legal experts said the information could bolster plaintiffs’ cases in the multitude of spill-related lawsuits by helping to show that BP acted with gross negligence leading up to the spill. This could, among other issues, greatly increase the multibillion-dollar penalties BP might have to pay for violation of the Clean Water Act.

“There’s no question that it’s important evidence,” said Charlie Tebbutt, an attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity, which has filed a lawsuit seeking $19 billion under the Clean Water Act. “It serves to confirm the previous reports of significant problems with the exploration and production of the well.”

The information was included in a letter to Obama’s commission by Fred. H. Bartlit Jr., its chief counsel.

David Uhlmann, a law professor at the University of Michigan who formerly headed the Justice Department’s Environmental Crimes Section, said the findings make it appear more likely that Justice officials will file criminal charges not only against BP and Transocean Ltd., the rig’s owner, but also against Halliburton, the Texas oilfield services giant once headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

“There have been questions all along about the integrity of the cement job, and today those questions loom larger and are closer to being answered,” Uhlmann said. “And those answers are not good ones for Halliburton.”

In the letter, Bartlit said that his team recently asked Halliburton to turn over samples of the cement materials like those used at the well. The materials were tested by Chevron employees at a Houston lab. The employees were “unable to generate stable foam cement” from the materials, meaning the cement would not be strong enough to keep the well sealed.

Bartlit then asked Halliburton to turn over all of the tests it had run on the mixture.

Those documents showed that Halliburton had conducted four “stability tests” of the mixture. The first two were run in February 2010 using a slightly different recipe than the one eventually used at the well. Both of these tests indicated that the mix was unstable.

Halliburton sent results from only one of those tests to BP in an e-mail March 8.

“There is no indication that Halliburton highlighted to BP the significance of the foam stability data, or that BP personnel raised any questions about it,” Bartlit wrote.

Two more tests were conducted by Halliburton in April. The first test, conducted about seven days before the blowout, again showed the mix to be unstable, although Bartlit said it may have been improperly conducted. These results were reported internally at Halliburton, Bartlit said, “though it appears that Halliburton never provided the data to BP.”

Bartlit said Halliburton apparently began a fourth test, and after modifying the testing procedure, found the cement to be stable.

“We are not yet certain when Halliburton reported this data internally or whether the test was even complete prior to the time the cement job was poured at the Macondo well,” he wrote. “Halliburton reported this data to BP after the blowout.”

Bartlit said that because BP did not have the test results, “the cement job may have been pumped without any lab results indicating that the foam cement slurry would be stable.”

BP officials did not return a call for comment Thursday. A Halliburton spokeswoman said company officials were reviewing the report.

Late Thursday, Halliburton issued a statement. Its February tests were of a different slurry mixture, the company said, and its first April test was “irrelevant because the laboratory did not use the correct amount of cement blend. Furthermore … BP was made aware of the issues with that test.”

Halliburton said its second April test used the agreed-upon mixture and showed it was stable. But BP changed the mixture that was actually used in the well, Halliburton said, and “a foam stability test was not conducted” on the new formulation.

The cement job was not the only problem that plagued the well on the evening of April 20, and Bartlit did not say that it was the only cause of the blowout.

The blowout preventer — a massive device that was supposed to shut off the well off in case of a dangerous geyser of oil and gas — also failed. Other human errors have been alleged as well. On the day of the blowout, BP canceled a test called a “cement bond log” designed to discover cement defects, saving more than $100,000.

Jesse Gagliano, a Halliburton technical advisor, also told federal investigators that BP risked causing a “severe gas flow problem” when they decided to use fewer devices called “centralizers” rather than the 21 he recommended.

Critics of BP and its partners on the Macondo project jumped on the findings to demand greater oversight of the companies involved in the accident and of the oil industry. Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Energy and Environment Subcommittee, said the counsel’s findings underscored the need for BP’s new chief executive, Bob Dudley, to appear before Congress, which he has recently declined to do.

“The fact that BP and Halliburton knew this cement job could fail only solidifies their liability and responsibility for this disaster,” Markey said in a statement. “We now know what BP and Halliburton knew, and when they knew it. And now we know they did absolutely nothing about it.

The report’s release sent Halliburton shares plunging 16%, to less than $30 in New York trading, but it recovered somewhat to close at $31.68, down $2.74, or 8%. BP’s American shares, however, closed at $40.60, up 1.25%.

Richard.fausset@latimes.com

Nbanerjee@tribune.com

Fausset reported from Atlanta and Banerjee reported from Washington. Rong-Gong Lin II contributed to this report from Los Angeles.
Tests warned of cement problems before well’s blowout

Airline passengers can expect ticket prices to be 7% to 18% higher this holiday season than last year, as an economic recovery — however modest — spurs growing demand for air travel.

Travelers can also look forward to more crowded flights: The airlines have added few new planes or routes in the last several years.

“I expect prices to be quite high compared to the last couple years, as demand is strong and supply is weak,” said Rick Seaney, chief executive of the travel website FareCompare.

Already, airlines are packing more passengers per plane, with the nation’s top carriers recording 86.3% of all seats filled in June — the highest rate in 10 years, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics.

About 41 million Americans are expected to fly during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season, making it one of the busiest travel seasons of the year.

Passengers took advantage of bargains last year, when airlines dropped prices to the lowest levels in decades to entice recession-battered travelers back into the air. But now, travel experts say, demand has begun to pick up, partly a result of pent-up demand and growing optimism about the economy.

“Travel demand for the peak travel days is increasing, driving prices higher as availability diminishes,” said Jack E. Richards, president and chief executive of Pleasant Holidays, a travel agency in Westlake Village.

For example, a nonstop round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to New York departing the day before Thanksgiving and returning the following Sunday was running between $641 and $881 on the major airlines. According to a spokesman for the travel website Expedia, those prices were about 20% higher than last year.

For travelers hoping to relax in the sun, a round-trip ticket from Los Angeles to Cancun, Mexico — departing the Wednesday before Christmas and returning the Monday after — cost about $561 to $939. Those prices were up about 31%, the Expedia spokesman said.

The prices are so high that Marilyn Fils, a frequent traveler from Tarzana, canceled plans to meet her daughter in New York for Christmas.

“I expected somewhat

The ranks of the working-age poor climbed to the highest level since the 1960s as the recession threw millions of people out of work last year, leaving one in seven Americans in poverty.

The overall poverty rate climbed to 14.3 percent, or 43.6 million people, the Census Bureau said Thursday in its annual report on the economic well-being of U.S. households. The report covers 2009, President Barack Obama’s first year in office.

The poverty rate increased from 13.2 percent, or 39.8 million people, in 2008.

The share of Americans without health coverage rose from 15.4 percent to 16.7 percent — or 50.7 million people — mostly because of the loss of employer-provided health insurance during the recession. Congress passed a health overhaul this year to address the rising numbers of uninsured people, but its main provisions will not take effect until 2014.

In a statement, President Barack Obama called 2009 a tough year for working families but said it could have been worse.

“Because of the Recovery Act and many other programs providing tax relief and income support to a majority of working families — and especially those most in need — millions of Americans were kept out of poverty last year,” Obama said.

The new figures come at a politically sensitive time, just weeks before the Nov. 2 congressional elections, when voters restive about high unemployment and the slow pace of economic improvement will decide whether to keep Democrats in power in the House and Senate or turn to Republicans.

The 14.3 percent poverty rate, which covers all ages, was the highest since 1994. It was lower than predicted by many demographers who were bracing for a record gain based on last year’s skyrocketing unemployment. Many had predicted a range of 14.7 percent to 15 percent.

Broken down by state, Mississippi had the highest share of poor people, at 23.1 percent, according to rough calculations by the Census Bureau. It was followed by Arizona, New Mexico, Arkansas and Georgia. On the other end of the scale, New Hampshire had the lowest share, at 7.8 percent.

Analysts said the full blow of lost incomes was cushioned somewhat by increases in Social Security payments in 2009 as well as federal expansions of unemployment insurance, which rose substantially under the economic stimulus program. With the additional unemployment benefits, workers were eligible for extensions that gave them up to 99 weeks of payments after a layoff.

David Johnson, the chief of the Census Bureau’s household economics division, estimated that expanded unemployment benefits helped keep 3.3 million people out of poverty last year.

The 2009 poverty level was set at $21,954 for a family of four, based on an official government calculation that includes only cash income, before tax deductions. It excludes capital gains or accumulated wealth, such as home ownership, as well as noncash aid such as food stamps.

Another 7.8 million people would have been counted above the poverty line if food stamps and tax credits were included as income, Johnson said.

Last year saw the biggest single-year increase in Americans without health insurance, lifting the total number to the highest since the government began tracking the figures in 1987. The number of people covered by employment-based health plans declined from 176.3 million to 169.7 million, although those losses were partially offset by gains in government health insurance such as Medicaid and Medicare.

Diane Rowland, executive vice president of the Kaiser Family Foundation, said additional increases in the uninsured are probable in the short run.

In 2014 under the new health law, Medicaid will be expanded to pick up millions more low-income people, and the government will offer tax credits for many middle-income households to use to buy coverage through new online insurance markets in each state.

By 2019, the government has estimated that nearly 93 percent of the U.S. population will have health insurance, roughly a 10 percentage point increase from today’s level.

Other census findings:

–Among the working-age population, ages 18 to 64, poverty rose from 11.7 percent to 12.9 percent. That puts it at the highest since the 1960s, when the government launched a war on poverty that expanded the federal role in social welfare programs from education to health care.

–Poverty rose among all race and ethnic groups, but stood at higher levels for blacks and Hispanics. The number of Hispanics in poverty increased from 23.2 percent to 25.3 percent; for blacks it increased from 24.7 percent to 25.8 percent. The number of whites in poverty rose from 8.6 percent to 9.4 percent.

–Child poverty rose from 19 percent to 20.7 percent.
1 in 7 Americans live in poverty, Census Bureau reports

Mexican marines captured Sergio Villarreal Barragan, a presumed leader of the embattled Beltran Leyva cartel who appears on a list of the country’s most-wanted fugitives, in a raid Sunday in the central state of Puebla, the government said.

The alleged capo known as “El Grande” did not put up any resistance when he was arrested along with two accomplices, a navy official who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with department policy told The Associated Press. The President’s Office later issued a brief statement confirming the arrest took place in Puebla, capital of the state of the same name.

Villarreal’s capture is the fourth major blow delivered to drug cartels by Mexico’s government in the past year. First came the death of Arturo Beltran Leyva on Dec. 16, 2009. Then soldiers killed the Sinaloa cartel’s No. 3 capo, Ignacio “Nacho” Coronel, on July 29. And on Aug. 30 federal police announced the capture Edgar Valdez Villarreal, alias “La Barbie.” The two men are not related.

Villarreal, “El Grande,” appears on a 2009 Attorney General’s Office list of Mexico’s most-wanted drug traffickers, with a reward of just over $2 million offered for his capture.

He is listed as one of the remaining leaders of the Beltran Leyva cartel, whose top capo, Arturo Beltran Leyva, was killed in a raid by marines outside Mexico City.

Villarreal’s capture comes about two weeks after the arrest of Valdez Villarreal, another alleged capo linked to the Beltran Leyvas.

The once-powerful Beltran Leyva cartel split following the death of Arturo — known as the “Boss of Bosses” — which launched a brutal war for control of the gang, involving mass executions and beheadings in once-peaceful parts of central Mexico. The fight pitted brother Hector Beltran Leyva and Villarreal against a faction led by “La Barbie.” Hector Beltran Leyva remains at large.

The Beltran Leyva brothers once formed a part of the Sinaloa cartel, but broke away following a dispute. An indication of the problems facing the cartel is that three of the four main blows dealt to drug gangs in the past year involve Beltran Leyva leaders or operatives.

More than 28,000 people have been killed in Mexico since December 2006, when President Felipe Calderon launched a military offensive against the cartels soon after taking office.

In the central state of Morelos, police discovered nine bodies in clandestine graves Saturday in the same area where four more were recently found. The Public Safety Department said in a statement that all 13 victims were believed to have been killed on the orders of “La Barbie” in his battle for control of the cartel.

On Sunday, the military announced that it filed charges against four troops for the Sept. 5 shooting deaths of a man and his 15-year-old son along the highway linking the northern city of Monterrey to Laredo, Texas.

Authorities have said soldiers opened fire on the family vehicle when it failed to stop at a checkpoint, though relatives who were also in the car say they were shot at after they passed a military convoy.

The mother and wife of the two victims was also wounded in the shooting.

A captain, a corporal and two infantrymen are in custody in military prison and have been charged with homicide, the Defense Department said in a statement.

Mexico’s military was already under scrutiny for this year’s killings of two brothers, ages 5 and 9, on a highway in Tamaulipas, a state bordering Nuevo Leon.

The National Human Rights Commission has accused soldiers of shooting the children and altering the scene to try to pin the deaths on drug cartel gunmen.

The army denies the allegations and says the boys were killed in the crossfire of a shootout between soldiers and suspected traffickers.

The scandal renewed demands from activists that civilian authorities, not the army, investigate human rights cases involving the military.

More recently, soldiers killed a U.S. citizen Aug. 22 outside the Pacific coast resort city of Acapulco.

In a statement to police, an army lieutenant claimed that Joseph Proctor, who had lived Mexico for several years, shot first at the military convoy on a highway between Acapulco and Zihuatanejo.

The Defense Department says it is investigating the claim, which Proctor’s father, William Proctor, says he found hard to believe.
Mexico catches a suspected leader of Beltran Leyva drug cartel

Five years after Hurricane Katrina, President Obama recommitted the nation to ongoing repair of the Gulf Coast as the region’s fragile recovery hung in the balance and his own popularity needed shoring up amid disappointment with the administration’s handling of the gulf oil spill.

Obama underscored the optimism and ongoing frustration felt in New Orleans, a city that had shown signs of renewal despite lingering devastation.

Residents worry the nation will leave them behind, fatigued over the one-two punch of the hurricane and BP spill. Obama seemed intent on convincing them otherwise.

“I wanted to come here and tell the people of this city directly: My administration is going to stand with you – and fight alongside you – until the job is done,” Obama said at Xavier University, a historically black college where he delivered the commencement address less than a year after Katrina.

After being criticized for his administration’s slow response to this year’s BP oil spill, Obama impressed on gulf residents the improvements he had made in streamlining Katrina aid — including $1.8 billion for Orleans Parish Schools announced Friday.

Obama pledged to finish the largest civil-works project in the nation’s history — shoring up the failed levees — by next year. He noted the June groundbreaking on a new Veterans’ Administration hospital.

The White House sent top administration officials as the region held days of panel discussions, art exhibits — even a funeral for Katrina where attendees hoped to bury their grief and move on from the largest residential disaster in the nation’s history.

Yet for a president who works to separate his legacy in the gulf from that of his predecessor, President Bush, the administration’s handling of the BP spill links the two by the perceived inability of government to adequately respond to disaster.

“We are going to stand with you until the oil is cleaned up, the environment is restored, polluters are held accountable, communities are made whole and this region is back on its feet,” Obama said.

Obama made an unscheduled lunch stop before the afternoon speech, ordering a shrimp po’boy at the Parkway Bakery and Tavern, a 100-year-old restaurant in the Mid-City neighborhood of New Orleans, eating with the first lady and their daughters. The president greeted patrons with hugs and handshakes.

“We’re just going to keep on building, we’re going to keep on working, alright?” the president said, according to the pool report.
Obama, in New Orleans, promises to ‘fight alongside’ Gulf Coast

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — BP claimed a key milestone Wednesday in the effort to plug its blown-out well as a government report said much of the spilled oil is gone, heartening officials who have taken heat during the tricky cleanup but leaving some Gulf Coast residents still skeptical.

BP PLC reported that mud forced down the well overnight was pushing the crude back down to its source for the first time since the Deepwater Horizon rig exploded off Louisiana on April 20, killing 11 workers.

And a federal report being released Wednesday indicated that only about a quarter of the spilled oil remains in the Gulf, with the rest having been contained, cleaned up or otherwise disappeared.