ABCDE Mostly sunny. 94/78 • Tomorrow: Storms possible. 92/75 • details, B10 FRIDAY, JULY 16, 2010
BREAKTHROUGH ON 87TH DAY
Hope is for high pressure to hold steady 48 hours
by Joel Achenbach The gusher is gone. The plume
is off the well. BP’s Macondo well isn’t dead yet, and it may be back in a flash, but at 3:25 p.m. Eastern time Thursday it ceased to spew oil into the Gulf of Mexico. As part of what BP calls an “in-
KARIN BRULLIARD/THE WASHINGTON POST Army Capt. Nick Stout talks with Karim Jan, district governor in Zhari, at a meeting of elders called to discuss recent grenade attacks.
In Zhari, ‘the people are the jury’ U.S. battle for Taliban stronghold hinges on support from wary Afghan elders
by Karin Brulliard
zhari district, afghani- stan — The battle for this rural Taliban stronghold is not about killing insurgents, U.S. military officials say. It is about getting the new district governor to stop the grenades. Soon after Karim Jan assumed the post in June, the explosives began sailing over mud walls and onto U.S. troops patrolling the
Obama pins hopes on an untested hero: The battery
by Anne E. Kornblut and Peter Whoriskey
holland, mich. — President Obama, struggling to connect with voters on the economy, cast an unlikely hero as the star of his narrative of redemption and re- covery on Thursday: the battery. Standing at a podium in a muddy construction site, Obama celebrated the groundbreaking of an advanced car battery facto- ry that the White House predicts will produce 300 permanent jobs. It was his fourth battery- related trip as president, and it came as the White House makes an aggressive push to tell what one senior official called “the bat- tery story” — the tale of a small piece of technology that could af- fect daily life and spur employ- ment if properly nurtured. But the administration’s $2.4 billion investment in the devel- opment of batteries and other electric-car technology in the United States is an enormous bet on a product that has yet to gain broad commercial success. Major manufacturers have yet to sell
battery continued on A5
labyrinth of Senjaray, the biggest town in a district that U.S. offi- cials say is under near-complete Taliban control. Two weeks later, five soldiers had been wounded in a half-dozen strikes. The at- tacks amounted to a test: Would Senjaray’s elders side with Jan or the Taliban? “All I need you to do is to pro-
tect your village,” Jan, 35, told 80 weathered men who gathered at
his office. “I’m begging you.” As thousands of new U.S. troops push into Kandahar city and nearby villages, their focus is on propping up inexperienced lo- cal leaders such as Jan. The aim is to persuade the population to de- fy the Taliban and back the weak Afghan government at its lowest levels — a mission sure to be watched closely for signs of prog- ress during the Obama adminis-
In poll, broad support for troop drawdown. A10
tration’s war review in December. “It’s a trial, and the people are
the jury,” said Army Capt. Nick Stout, 27, a commander of the 101st Airborne company that has patrolled Senjaray out of a sun- scorched hilltop outpost for two months. “Whoever presents the best case . . . they’re going to side with.”
One new approach in prosecut- ing the case against the Taliban
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tegrity test,” a robotic submers- ible slowly closed a valve on the well’s new sealing cap. That choked the flow until the plume, a fixture of cable TV and many a nightmare, disappeared. The technological breakthrough came 87 days into the crisis, which be- gan with the April 20 blowout that killed 11 workers and sent the burning rig Deepwater Horizon to the bottom of the gulf. BP could nix the test at any mo- ment and reopen the well. Wheth- er the well remains “shut in,” to use the industry term, depends on the analysis of pressures in the well. Engineers and scientists hope to see high pressure hold steady during the 48-hour period
allotted for the test. That would suggest that the well bore is physically intact. Lower pressure would hint of breaches in the cas- ing and leakage into the sur- rounding rock. The initial pressure readings are in an ambiguous range, and officials will have to make a diffi- cult judgment call on whether to keep the well shut in or reopen it, according to Tom Hunter, retired director of the Sandia National Laboratories and a member of the federal government’s scientific team overseeing the test. “If it were a lot higher, it would be an easier decision to make,” Hunter said. Retired Coast Guard Adm.
Thad Allen, the national incident commander, has said that a pres- sure reading of 8,000 or 9,000 pounds per square inch would be
spill continued on A4
Financial regulation moves into new era
ON THE HILL
Artist Benjamin Kelley holds one of his creations, a mixture of pulverized
human bone and resin shaped in the form of a Cadillac hood ornament. Bone dealers are worried that foreign export laws could put them out of business.
TRACY A. WOODWARD/ THE WASHINGTON POST
An artist’s controversial body of work by Monica Hesse “T
hat’s the first question that everyone asks,” says Benjamin Kelley.
“Where I get the bones.” Kelley, 26, is talking about his conceptual art, which is made with bones. Human bones. Fe- murs, mostly. The bones are pul- verized, the powder is mixed with resin, then the mixture is poured into molds of Cadillac hood orna- ments, where it dries into a gold- en color. The resulting art, he says, represents the dehumaniza- tion of modern society and the
way car culture impacts people’s lives in Michigan, where Kelley is from. Conner Contemporary Art gallery in Washington is currently showing two of his pieces. “The overall focus of my work is
industry, and the automotive in- dustry in particular,” says Kelley. “Growing up in Mich — ” But where do you get the
bones?! Kelley sighs: He gets them on- line, of course, where everybody gets everything. The niche bone industry, in all
its Gothic magnificence, does a small but steady trade. In the market for a coccyx, perhaps, or a
tibia/fibula matching set? You might stop by — or visit the Web sites of — Skulls Unlimited Inter- national (based out of Oklahoma City), Maxilla & Mandible or Evo- lution (New York City), or the Bone Room (Berkeley, Calif.), whose site offers everything from assembled skeletons to patholog- ical skulls displaying the effects of disease. One helpful prompt: “Need just a vertebra?” A complete arm at the Bone Room will set you back around $650; individual carpals can be purchased for $10 a pop. Just now
bones continued on A6 INSIDE
WEEKEND Rooftop fun Our guide for the best places to enjoy hot nights, cold drinks and views that go on forever.
THE WORLD Allies in arms Beneath surface tensions, the U.S. and Israel are expanding military cooperation. A9
BUSINESS NEWS.......A12-15 CLASSIFIEDS.....................E1 COMICS..........................C5-6
STYLE
And the winner is . . . America’s Next Great Cartoonist is a young woman from Northern Virginia. C1
EDITORIALS/LETTERS...A18 FED PAGE.........................A16 LOTTERIES.........................B4
MOVIES..................Weekend OBITUARIES...................B6-9 STOCKS............................A14
TELEVISION.......................C4 WEATHER ........................B10 WORLD NEWS .............A8-10
GAS PRICES $2.72 Printed using recycled fiber
That’s the average price per gallon at the pump nationally, which is down from recent months but up from last summer. A14
THE WORLD ‘We made history!’ Supporters of same-sex marriage rights exult after Argentina’s legalization vote. A8
DAILY CODE Details, B2
5001
2 SPORTS Last, but looking up Adam Dunn, left, and the Nationals enter the second half of the season looking to build momentum. D1
OPINIONS 1
Charles Krauthammer: Don’t underestimate President Obama. A19 Eugene Robinson: A playbook for Democrats. A19
The Washington Post Year 133, No. 223
CONTENTS© 2010
Senate passes landmark bill in triumph for Obama
by Brady Dennis Congress gave final approval
Thursday to the most ambitious overhaul of financial regulation in generations, ending more than a year of wrangling over the shape of the new rules and shift- ing the government’s focus to the monumental task of imple- menting them. The final Senate vote, which came almost two years after the nation’s financial system nearly collapsed, was a significant leg- islative victory for President Obama, who had pledged to rein in the reckless Wall Street be- havior behind the crisis and to right the government regulation that failed to prevent it. The massive bill establishes an independent consumer bu- reau within the Federal Reserve to protect borrowers against abuses in mortgage, credit card and some other types of lending. The legislation also gives the government new power to seize and shut down large, troubled fi- nancial companies — like the failed investment bank Lehman Brothers — and sets up a council of federal regulators to watch for threats to the financial system.
regulation continued on A7 GOLDMAN SACHS
$550 million fine to SEC, ‘regret’ to clients
by Zachary A. Goldfarb Goldman Sachs agreed Thurs-
day to pay $550 million to settle a fraud suit brought by the Securi- ties and Exchange Commission that accused the storied Wall Street bank of selling a subprime- mortgage investment that was se- cretly designed to fail. The fine is the largest the SEC
has ever assessed against a finan- cial company. But the settlement also is striking because Goldman agreed to a host of changes to how it does business and because the bank, while not admitting wrongdoing, agreed to express “regret” for including “incom- plete information” in marketing materials touting the investment to clients.
By doing so, Goldman ac- knowledged “the fundamental basis of our complaint,” SEC en- forcement director Robert Khu- zami said at a news conference, standing with 10 colleagues who worked on the case. “Today’s set- tlement is a stark reminder — a very stark reminder — that there will be a heavy price to be paid if firms violate the principles fun- damental to securities law.” While Goldman will pay only a
goldman continued on A13
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‘Integrity test’ halts spew of oil, for now
Libya controversy
back to haunt BP The first anniversary of the Lockerbie bomber’s release from a Scottish prison is refocusing attention on oil exploration agreements. A4
Editorial
Dealing with the spill — and climate change. A18
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