Cement

Flaws in a cement encasement intended to seal BP's well were most likely the root of last month's deadly explosion on the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig, according to interviews, government officials, congressional hearing testimony, drilling reports and other company documents. The April 20 accident, which has resulted in millions of gallons of oil being spewed into the Gulf of Mexico, is the subject of multiple investigations that promise to be long and complex. Hearings in the last two weeks offered multiple lines of inquiry into what one engineer calls "a confluence of unfortunate events."

LAGOS, Nigeria - The chaotic color of the megalopolis cascades past the window of his silver Mercedes SUV. A police escort with a flashing blue light clears the road ahead. Restless and irritated, the billionaire is in his bubble. With a slim, elegant finger, he prods his cellphone screen to redial after the call drops. He grills a squirming subordinate about a production problem that has persisted all week. The call drops again. A small sigh. He redials. "The day before yesterday you gave me a different excuse.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre is hallowed Hollywood tourist ground, the famed site where silver-screen stars such as Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra literally cemented their legends by making hand- and footprints in concrete. On a recent November morning, those movie icons were joined by three gigantic rodents: Alvin and the Chipmunks. Or, more precisely, as Alvin, Simon and Theodore are cartoon characters, by three anonymous guys in chipmunk suits who stuck their "paws" in wet cement while their squeaky, high-pitched version of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" blared over the sound system.

Go ahead and call him old and slow. At 37, Derek Fisher will show you he can still be the master of time. Eight years after 0.4, there is now 3.1. The latter figure represents how many seconds were left Monday night at Staples Center when Fisher made the latest in a series of game-winning shots that have solidified the veteran guard as one of the most clutch Lakers in franchise history. The Dallas Mavericks were so unconcerned about Fisher in the final seconds that they left him open so that they could double-team Kobe Bryant.

I would appreciate your letting your [editors] and reporters know that there are no cement blocks, there are no cement streets or curbs, there are no cement river beds! They are all made of concrete, and cement is a small but vital ingredient in the mix! It is annoying to read an article in your paper and see this error repeated by people who should know better. I do not think that a major newspaper should participate in the bastardization of our language. WALTER G. WILLIS Woodland Hills

LAGOS, Nigeria - The chaotic color of the megalopolis cascades past the window of his silver Mercedes SUV. A police escort with a flashing blue light clears the road ahead. Restless and irritated, the billionaire is in his bubble. With a slim, elegant finger, he prods his cellphone screen to redial after the call drops. He grills a squirming subordinate about a production problem that has persisted all week. The call drops again. A small sigh. He redials. "The day before yesterday you gave me a different excuse.

It took BP a mere five hours to pump a stream of cement down its troublesome well Thursday, completing another major step in its final push to end the Gulf of Mexico catastrophe and forever shut down the source of the nation's largest offshore oil spill. After jamming the deep-sea well with heavy drilling mud earlier this week, the company began shooting cement down the well at 7:15 a.m. PDT. At 12:15, it issued a two-paragraph statement announcing that it had finished the task and was monitoring the well "to confirm the effectiveness of the procedure."

It was founded by the family that built the Happiest Place on Earth. But for many executives on the opposite side of the boardroom, Shamrock Holdings Inc. has been more like a house of horrors. A few years ago, the Burbank investment company owned by Roy E. Disney led a revolt to oust Walt Disney Co.'s then-chief executive, Michael Eisner. It not only was intensely bitter but also thrust the little-known firm into the limelight. Now it's at it again, this time agitating for change at one of the nation's largest cement makers.

A project to build a cement importing plant at the Port of Los Angeles has been given the green light by the city's Board of Harbor Commissioners, despite the objections of Wilmington residents who say the factory will bring too many trucks into their community. The board, however, did make a concession in granting the approval Thursday: It required that the company adhere to a written truck route proposed by the residents.

President Obama missed an opportunity to "cement" his reelection by failing to embrace the recommendations of his deficit commission, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said in a heavily promoted speech in Washington on Wednesday. The tough-talking Republican pointed to his own experience after more than a year in office in the Garden State, saying Americans are desperate for leaders who are actually willing to show leadership in challenging economic times. Before the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Christie detailed the steps he has taken in Trenton to grapple with one of the most fiscally dire budget situations in the country.

Is nothing sacred? Re "Stars' prints set in cement, not stone," Dec. 29 So the owners of Grauman's Chinese Theatre think it's a jolly good idea to "broaden the range" of the theater's forecourt concrete blocks to include athletes and musicians. Such audacity. May we remind them that this theater is not a sports or rock concert venue but an icon that is truly a repository of Hollywood history and film. Check the daily throngs in the forecourt — the tourists are looking for and taking photos of film favorites, and yes, that includes the past.

Grauman's Chinese Theatre is hallowed Hollywood tourist ground, the famed site where silver-screen stars such as Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe and Frank Sinatra literally cemented their legends by making hand- and footprints in concrete. On a recent November morning, those movie icons were joined by three gigantic rodents: Alvin and the Chipmunks. Or, more precisely, as Alvin, Simon and Theodore are cartoon characters, by three anonymous guys in chipmunk suits who stuck their "paws" in wet cement while their squeaky, high-pitched version of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" blared over the sound system.

A CalPortland cement plant near the high desert community of Mojave has agreed to pay a fine of $1.4 million and spend $1.3 million on equipment needed to reduce emissions of pollutants that cause asthma and generate smog, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Thursday. The penalties were part of a settlement that capped an investigation by the EPA and the U.S. Department of Justice into the CalPortland Co. facility, one of the largest emitters of nitrogen oxide pollution in California.

The first perfect game in American League history was thrown by a pitcher who ended it with a taunt, defending his teammates against an insult, screaming at the final batter, "How do you like that, you hayseed?" The year was 1904, and the pitcher was Cy Young. On Wednesday night at Dodger Stadium, imitating that long-ago barb with an inside fastball, Clayton Kershaw proved worthy of winning the award that carries Cy Young's name. Although Kershaw will never admit it, his pitch that plunked the Arizona Diamondbacks' Gerardo Parra in the elbow in the sixth inning of the Dodgers' 3-2 victory appeared to be a retaliation for Parra's crotch-grabbing, home-run posing insult of the Dodgers on Tuesday night.

Just when the ABC television network was feeling desperate, Kirstie Alley and the juggernaut hit "Dancing With the Stars" stepped in with some fancy footwork. Now it's up to Paul Lee, the network's new entertainment president, to demonstrate his moves. Lee is to unveil his first prime-time schedule before hundreds of advertisers in New York on Tuesday to kick off the TV industry's annual springtime sales bazaar. This is an important week for ABC and competitors CBS, NBC and Fox. The networks take turns presenting their upcoming fall lineups with the hopes of grabbing a bigger slice of the $9-billion-plus prime-time "upfront" advertising pie. A former BBC and ABC Family cable executive, Lee was unexpectedly thrust into the top programming job at Walt Disney Co.'s broadcast network in late July after the abrupt departure of his mercurial predecessor Stephen McPherson.

There is a lot of foot rubbing and neck rolling in the room when you hang out with five men from Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater on a morning after they've performed "The Hunt. " The furious and powerful ensemble work serves as the main calling card for Robert Battle, artistic director designate, on Ailey's North American tour. Battle, who takes leadership of the company in July, set his all-male work to a pounding percussion score by Les Tambours du Bronx, with raw, exotic fight scenes inspired by Battle's boyhood martial arts devotion.

A UC Berkeley professor who is conducting an informal assessment of the Deepwater Horizon wellhead blast said Tuesday that BP documents leaked to him indicate that contaminants in cement encasing the well were the initial cause of the explosion that led to the ongoing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. Robert Bea, a UC Berkeley professor who directs the school's Center for Catastrophic Risk Management, said the flaw led to natural gas shooting up a riser pipe from the wellhead to the rig above, where it exploded.

A relief well is "almost touching" BP's blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico, meaning that officials could declare the source of the nation's largest offshore oil spill killed by Sunday, a top government official said Wednesday. Crews working on the relief well, which is expected to pump cement into the damaged well in order to plug it for good, were within 20 to 25 feet of its designated intercept point deep underground, Thad Allen, the national spill response chief, said from Kenner, La. Once the damaged well is intercepted, experts will run tests to determine the condition of its outer ring, called the annulus.

In the three years since playing the imprisoned lover Latika in the Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire," Freida Pinto has appeared in only one film, as part of the ensemble cast in Woody Allen's "You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger. " But though you might not know it from your local marquee, she's been busy. Come November she'll be hard to miss, appearing in two of the season's biggest productions, released within two weeks of each other: the Greek gods saga "Immortals" and the "Planet of the Apes" prequel "Rise of the Apes.

Of all the stars Mia Wasikowska saw at Vanity Fair's exclusive Oscar party last month, Justin Bieber was the one she found most fascinating. There he was, in all his pint-sized teen idol glory, scurrying around the Sunset Tower with Disney star Selena Gomez in tow. "They were just, like, snickering and running away somewhere," the actress, 21, recounted. But unlike Bieber's legion of screaming tween fans, Wasikowska wasn't interested in the romantic status of the pair. Instead, she was struck by how many partygoers also seemed unable to tear their eyes away from the young singer.